Chapter 133. Waco: The Branch Davidians, the Federal Government and the Legacy of Rage

Mount Carmel, the Branch Davidian centre outside Waco, Texas, is the most politically contested case in this part of the study. Its story runs from an Adventist schism of the 1920s and 1930s through the Roden family’s leadership to Vernon Howell, who as David Koresh claimed to be the Lamb able to open the Seven Seals of Revelation. It ends with an ATF raid on 28 February 1993, a 51-day FBI siege and a fire on 19 April 1993 in which some seventy-six people died [Guinn, #65191; Willis, #63203]. Two years later to the day, Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. The library’s sources fall into four groups that disagree on almost every critical point: a reference history of the FBI, journalists’ narratives (Jeff Guinn, Stephan Talty), the memoir of Koresh’s mother Bonnie Haldeman edited by Catherine Wessinger, and conspiracy literature. They disagree over who fired first, how the gas assault was conducted, how the fire began and how the children died. This chapter sets them out side by side.

From the Shepherd’s Rod to the Roden succession

Sylvia Browne writes that “in 1919, a man named Victor Houteff joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church” [Browne, End of Days, #42246, ch. 6 “Doomsday Cults”]. Jim Willis dates Houteff’s adoption of Adventism to 1918 and gives the rest of the lineage. Houteff was a Bulgarian who left the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, taught Sabbath classes in Los Angeles and published tracts called The Shepherd’s Rod. He was rejected at the 1929 Adventist convention, and in 1935 he settled 37 followers near Waco at a site they called Mount Carmel. He taught that 144,000 purified believers had to gather before Christ could return. In 1942 he named the group the General Association of Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, after the Davidic kingdom that had to be restored. After Houteff’s death in 1955 his widow Florence moved the community to New Mount Carmel. Some 900 people gathered there for 22 April 1959 (Passover), “but nothing happened” [Willis, American Cults, #63203, “David Koresh and the Branch Davidians”].

Willis passes straight from the 1959 disappointment to Howell. The other sources include the Roden family, Benjamin and Lois Roden and their son George, whose Branch faction held Mount Carmel. Haldeman recalls Lois Roden inviting the young Vernon to study there in 1981. She remembers a 1983 visit when “George Roden was up on the podium in the church with a gun strapped to” him, and her memoir has a chapter titled “David Koresh’s Shootout with George Roden at Mount Carmel” [Haldeman, Memories of the Branch Davidians, #70974, “David and the Core Group of Branch Davidians Leave Mount Carmel”; table of contents]. The anonymous The Secret Terrorist describes the 1987 incident as “a shoot out over the leadership of the Branch Davidians between David Koresh and his followers and George Roden and his followers”. Koresh and seven others were tried for attempted murder, and the prosecutor, Vic Feazell, said: “We had no problems. We treated them like human beings rather than storm-trooping the place” [Anonymous, The Secret Terrorist, #79644, ch. 9 “The Waco Massacre”]. Browne describes Howell as “a twenty-two-year-old dyslexic high school dropout and failed rock star” who joined in 1981. By 1990 he “staged a heavily armed takeover of the Mount Carmel Center” and changed his name to David Koresh [Browne, #42246]. Haldeman’s notes confirm the name change in 1990 [Haldeman, #70974].

The Lamb, the Seals and the “New Light”

The FBI reference history summarises Koresh’s claim: “Howell changed his name to David Koresh, and the Branch Davidians came under his control since he claimed to be the Lamb that would usher in the second coming of Christ” [Anonymous, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, #75514, “Waco”]. Willis writes that Koresh studied the Seven Seals of Revelation and believed he held the key to “releasing fire, blood, and thunder upon the earth”. He also records Koresh’s sexual privilege: the group “were ordered to practice celibacy. But not Koresh. He was the only one permitted to procreate. … At one point he had at least 20 wives” [Willis, #63203]. Haldeman’s editor gives the doctrinal source: “In 1989 David revealed ‘New Light’ saying that even the married women of the community were his wives, that he was the only male in the community who could propagate children, and therefore all the men should be celibate” (citing Wessinger, How the Millennium Comes Violently, 82–84). The memoir’s appendix prints Koresh’s poems [Haldeman, #70974, Notes; Appendix “Poems by David Koresh”]. Guinn reports that Koresh taught that his children “weren’t children at all, but rather old, sacred souls from Heaven who returned to earth in the form of infants” [Guinn, Waco, #65191].

The investigation and the media frame

The Secret Terrorist quotes Newsweek of 15 March 1993: “officials of the Seventh-day Adventist church heard from colleagues in Sydney that the Branch Davidians were planning a mass suicide for Easter Sunday. About the same time the State Department got word from sources in Australia that Koresh’s group was stockpiling arms and planning suicide. State passed it on to the ATF … which began its investigation in June [1992].” The book rejects these warnings as “malicious rumors”. It quotes the Waco gun dealer Henry McMahon, who said that in July 1992 Koresh told him to invite the ATF agents out to inspect his purchases, “but the BATF agents declined” [Anonymous, The Secret Terrorist, #79644, ch. 9]. Haldeman’s editor stresses the press: “the Waco Tribune-Herald editors were trying to publish their ‘Sinful Messiah’ series before the raid, and the ATF agents wanted to carry out the raid before the series came out”. The series “painted David Koresh as a ‘cult leader’ and the Branch Davidians as a ‘cult'” and “was the first reference for the hordes of reporters” who descended on Waco [Haldeman, #70974, editor’s notes].

28 February 1993: the raid

Willis states the outcome: when the ATF tried to serve warrants “a gunfight broke out, resulting in the deaths of four government agents and six Branch Davidians” [Willis, #63203]. Talty’s chapter “Hood” follows agent Todd McKeehan, one of the four [Talty, Koresh, #83771, ch. 35]. The 1993 Treasury “Blue Book”, as Guinn summarises it, found that the raid “should not have proceeded after the element of surprise was lost”. It also found that the raid commanders Phil Chojnacki and Chuck Sarabyn had altered key documents [Guinn, #65191, ch. 38 “After the Siege”]. The Secret Terrorist offers a radically different account. It says that “100 BATF agents stormed the compound” and that agents “opened fire with automatic weapons at the front door”. It claims, on the basis of Linda Thompson’s video Waco, the Big Lie, that the four dead agents “were killed by their own people” and that all four had been Bill Clinton’s bodyguards. It adds that Wayne Martin’s 911 call (“We’re getting shot at. We’re getting killed”) went unanswered [Anonymous, The Secret Terrorist, #79644]. In the Romanian literature, Traian Tandin describes the raiders as a local police team that expected a routine weapons check and found “infernul”. In his account Koresh, warned by an anonymous telephone call, “decided to unleash the ‘Apocalypse'” [Tandin, Secte criminale, #23557, “Secta davidienilor înfruntă America”].

The siege: negotiation versus pressure

Talty opens his book on 28 March 1993, when “David Koresh was in a bitter mood” [Talty, #83771, Prologue]. Willis describes the FBI’s methods as cutting supply lines, “blasting loud rock music toward the compound all day and all night” and shining spotlights. He argues that this unwittingly re-enacted the signs Koresh had preached from Revelation 8 [Willis, #63203]. Haldeman’s editor cites “an interpretive log of the siege events compiled by James Tabor”, which “demonstrates that every time Branch Davidian adults came out, the FBI punished them by increasing the psychological warfare”. She describes tanks making “menacing maneuvers”, drivers making “insulting gestures” and electricity being cut [Haldeman, #70974, editor’s notes]. Guinn quotes Jeff Jamar’s later admission to Time: “There was never any real negotiations. We stayed in touch to avoid provocation” [Guinn, #65191, ch. 38]. The scholars Tabor and J. Phillip Arnold, whom Koresh trusted, received his unfinished Seven Seals manuscript. Willis reports Newsweek‘s verdict that it was “a serious exegesis, carefully organized and reasoned” [Willis, #63203; Guinn, #65191, ch. 37].

19 April 1993: gas, fire and the dead

The FBI history gives the official sequence. “By early April, frustrated bureau officials concluded the standoff … could last indefinitely”. They drafted a plan “to slowly inject the gas over forty-eight hours, allowing the Davidians to exit. Attorney General Janet Reno … initially rejected the plan but finally approved it on April 17”. On 19 April “a bureau combat engineering vehicle began inserting the gas at 6:00 a.m.” and “Davidians deliberately set fires and discharged guns” [Anonymous, The FBI, #75514]. Haldeman’s editor adds that the plan gave on-site commanders “the discretion to speed up the assault” if fired upon. She also quotes the FLIR soundtrack. At 12:35 p.m. HRT commander Dick Rogers radioed that agents were trying to reach the buried bus to rescue the children, and Jamar replied: “No one else, I hope.” Several FLIR experts concluded that flashes on the film “indicated gunfire was directed toward the back of the residence” [Haldeman, #70974, Notes to p. 80]. Talty’s chapter “Gas” draws on negotiation tape #245, which opens with “Steve? This is Byron Sage”, and on Rogers radioing “his okay” to escalate [Talty, #83771, ch. 48].

Guinn reports that nine adults escaped, some “had traces of accelerant … on their clothes or shoes”, and firefighters were held back about ten minutes. The Tarrant County autopsy found that Koresh died of a “gunshot wound of mid-forehead” and concluded “Schneider shot Koresh, then himself”. “Some Branch Davidians died of gunshot wounds rather than burning or smoke inhalation. One child was stabbed to death.” On the deaths he writes: “There is no way to be certain.” He also suggests a theological motive for the fire: a “wall of fire round about” (Zechariah 2:5) as a holy barrier [Guinn, #65191, ch. 37 “To Die in Flames”].

Bonnie Haldeman “lost fourteen grandchildren in the fire at Mount Carmel on April 19, 1993, including two babies in utero” [Haldeman, #70974, editor’s text]. The question of pyrotechnics changed the official record. Guinn writes that Reno had testified that she had “assurances that the [CS] gas and its means of use were not pyrotechnic”, while Rogers, “the man who approved the use of combustible military rounds”, sat behind her. In 1999 the Justice Department “first denied, then admitted” two pyrotechnic rounds. Special Counsel John Danforth’s 2000 interim report then declared, “The blame rests squarely on the shoulders of David Koresh. This is not a close call”, yet found the earlier failure to disclose the rounds “clearly negligent”. Guinn concludes: “It has never been definitively resolved whether … the FBI fired guns into Mount Carmel or not” [Guinn, #65191, ch. 38]. Willis notes that the event is called “‘the Waco Siege’ by some, ‘the Waco Massacre’ by others” [Willis, #63203].

Trials and the legacy of rage

Haldeman’s memoir includes chapters on the “1994 Criminal Trial” and “2000 Civil Trial” [Haldeman, #70974, contents]. Guinn records the outcomes. In 1994 the jury acquitted all eleven defendants of conspiracy to murder federal agents. Judge Walter Smith nonetheless imposed forty-year sentences, which the Supreme Court later found excessive. In 2000 Smith dismissed the wrongful-death suit, holding that “there was nothing reasonable about the adult Davidians’ behavior” [Guinn, #65191, ch. 38].

Guinn’s photo caption makes the link to what followed: McVeigh, photographed on his car among protestors during the siege, “blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City” on 19 April 1995, “a lethal indication that events in Waco spawned a lasting legacy of rage”. Guinn also reports McVeigh watching the fire on television and saying, “What is this? What has America become?” [Guinn, #65191, photo 16; ch. 37]. Willis connects Ruby Ridge and Waco to the bombing and to “the modern-day American militia movement” [Willis, #63203]. Elsewhere he recounts the 19 April 1985 federal siege of the Covenant, Sword, and the Arm of the Lord compound [Willis, #63203]. The Secret Terrorist goes furthest. It calls Bill Clinton a “Jesuit” and argues that “the Jesuits used their man, Bill Clinton, to instigate and carry out the destruction at Waco” so as to pass gun laws and warn people away from independent churches that identify the papacy as the Antichrist [Anonymous, The Secret Terrorist, #79644, ch. 9]. This is that book’s own thesis, and it is reported here as such.

Key points

• Browne dates Houteff’s Adventism to 1919 and Willis to 1918. The Shepherd’s Rod led to the Davidians (1942) and, through the Rodens, to Howell. Howell’s armed 1987 confrontation with George Roden preceded his 1990 renaming as David Koresh [Browne, #42246; Willis, #63203; Haldeman, #70974; The Secret Terrorist, #79644].
• The FBI history records Koresh’s claim to be “the Lamb” who would usher in the Second Coming. Haldeman’s editor dates the “New Light” plural-wives doctrine to 1989 [The FBI, #75514; Haldeman, #70974].
• Newsweek, as quoted in The Secret Terrorist, reported Australian warnings of a planned Easter mass suicide and of arms stockpiling, which the State Department passed to the ATF in June 1992. The “Sinful Messiah” series shaped how the press framed the siege [The Secret Terrorist, #79644; Haldeman, #70974].
• On 28 February four ATF agents and six Davidians died. Who fired first remains disputed, and The Secret Terrorist claims that the agents were killed by friendly fire [Willis, #63203; Guinn, #65191; The Secret Terrorist, #79644].
• Reno approved a 48-hour gas plan on 17 April, with discretion to accelerate. Insertion began at 6:00 a.m. on 19 April, and FLIR recordings and alleged gunfire remain contested [The FBI, #75514; Haldeman, #70974; Talty, #83771].
• Guinn counts 76 dead inside plus two newborns, some of whom died of gunshot wounds. Bonnie Haldeman lost fourteen grandchildren. Danforth blamed Koresh, but the FBI’s pyrotechnic rounds were concealed until 1999 [Guinn, #65191; Haldeman, #70974].
• Waco fed the militia movement and McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing on the second anniversary. The Secret Terrorist reads it as a Jesuit operation [Guinn, #65191; Willis, #63203; The Secret Terrorist, #79644].