Waco
David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage
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“Impressively researched and written with storytelling verve” (The Wall Street Journal), this is the definitive account of the disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, featuring never-before-seen documents, photographs, and interviews, from former investigative reporter Jeff Guinn, bestselling author of Manson and The Road to Jonestown.
For the first time in thirty years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, Waco raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. The revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies’ mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America. Notorious conspiracist Alex Jones is a part of the Waco story. So much is new and stunning.
Guinn puts you alongside the ATF agents as they embarked on the disastrous initial assault, unaware that the Davidians knew they were coming and were armed and prepared to resist. His you-are-there narrative continues to the final assault and its momentous consequences. Drawing on this new information, including several eyewitness accounts, Guinn again does what he did with his bestselling books about Charles Manson and Jim Jones, revealing “gripping” (Houston Chronicle) new details about a story that we thought we knew.
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Journalist Guinn (War on the Border) documents in this comprehensive and judicious account the 1993 raid by ATF agents on the Branch Davidians' Mount Carmel compound near Waco, Tex. In 1992, the ATF gathered evidence that sect leader David Koresh and his followers were illegally purchasing and altering guns with the intent of selling them or using them in a plot "to bring about the end of the world." Though the ATF's plan to seize the weapons hinged on the element of surprise, when that was lost—a tipped-off TV cameraman asked someone he didn't know was a Branch Davidian for the compound's address—ATF commanders decided to go ahead anyway. Four federal agents were killed in the resulting gunfight, which devolved into a seven-week standoff that ended after the compound was destroyed in a fire (Guinn suggests the blaze was either an accident or started by the Branch Davidians). Seventy-six Branch Davidians died in the conflagration, including Koresh, who appears to have been shot in a murder-suicide pact with a high-ranking member of the sect. The disaster inspired Timothy McVeigh's bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, and Guinn also persuasively links it to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Scrupulous and frequently enthralling, this is a sobering account of a tragedy woven into the fabric of modern America.
