ABSTRACT
The basic events of “Waco” are strongly etched in many people’s minds. On the morning of Sunday, 28 February 1993, about eighty heavily armed agents of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) engaged in a shootout with members of the Branch Davidians, a Seventh-Day Adventist splinter sect led by a young charismatic who called himself David Koresh. Six or more sect members and four BATF agents died in the firefight. After an uneasy truce was finally established that Sunday, a new phase of confrontation began: the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiated a siege of the compound. In the weeks of the standoff that followed, however, FBI attempts to unnerve the Davidians with floodlights, sound blasts of Tibetan chants, and an old Nancy Sinatra record seem to have pushed the Davidians only to more intense Bible study. The FBI concluded that their negotiations with the Davidians were unlikely to bring the besieged Davidians out anytime soon. Then, in the early morning hours of 19 April, the FBI, frustrated at the lack of progress at negotiating a surrender, rolled tanks up to the front of the woodframe compound, started injecting tear gas, and in the course of the morning began destroying walls of the building itself. Shortly before noon a fire broke out, quickly engulfing the structure. Seventy-four Branch Davidians died in the inferno, either in presumed “mercy killings” by gunshot or from the smoke and flames of the blaze itself.
