Critics have longed argued that the FBI started the fire, while others blamed the agency for screwing up negotiations and flexing their muscles much too soon. Who started the fire? Four months after Waco, a federal grand jury indicted 12 Davidians for aiding and abetting the murder of agents and illegally possessing firearms, according to the Texas Monthly. Four were acquitted. Eight were acquitted of murder, but served varying sentences on firearms-related offenses.
By , everyone was out of prison. Even after the arrests, many Americans were left asking: Who started the fire? In , then-U. Attorney General Janet Reno selected U. What happened to the Branch Davidians? Charles Pace became the new leader, and, like his predecessor in Koresh, declared himself the new Lamb of God of Revelations. Pace thought they should have been following Christ instead of Koresh. That was April 19, in Waco, Texas. Newswire Powered by. Close the menu.
Rolling Stone. Log In. To help keep your account secure, please log-in again. You are no longer onsite at your organization. But people in large religious groups as well as secular organizations also engage in bad behavior. Richardson draws on the work of Edward S. Little effort was made in national media to depict the rest of the Branch Davidians and their children as individuals. During the siege, the general public had no way of learning about the Branch Davidians as people, because FBI officials decided to withhold footage filmed inside the residence.
Separate studies conducted by sociologist Nancy T. Ammerman and myself reveal that during the siege FBI officials ignored advice from their own profilers, negotiators and psychiatrist consultants to de-escalate the situation.
Koresh had predicted that the group would be assaulted and killed during Passover week, which, in , took place between April 6 and April After Passover came and went, Koresh sent out a letter on April 14 outlining his plan to come out after he wrote a short commentary on the Seven Seals of the book of Revelation. Significantly, the FBI log also reveals that on April 14, Koresh sent out a signed contract to retain his defense attorney.
In his letter, he had promised to come out after the the manuscript was in the safekeeping of two Bible scholars, J. Phillip Arnold and James D. Tabor, who had communicated with him via radio. Reno approved the plan for the assault on April Branch Davidians continued asking for word-processing supplies, which were delivered on the evening of April A surveillance device audiotape reveals that, after the assault started at 6 a.
But the telephone line to negotiators remained broken, and the assault proceeded. At a. But all too often, notes Dr. After all, there is no standard way to define a cult. And when it comes to the experiences of the Branch Davidians, who belonged to an established religious community that predated Koresh, that designation gets even trickier.
Does dismissing their experience as that of brainwashed cult members diminish their own agency to make free choices about faith? Would the FBI have used armored tanks and tear gas in an attempt to protect victims of, say, similarly institutionalize sex abuse in evangelical Christian or Catholic communities?
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. The Waco tragedy, explained. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Getty Images This week marks the 25th anniversary of one of the strangest and most tragic incidents in American religious history: the bloody ending of the siege between FBI agents and members of the Branch Davidian religious group in Waco, Texas.
A Texas Monthly story captures this mentality well : For 51 days federal agents camped outside the compound, paralyzed by their own ineptitude, while this notorious liar and con man was permitted to broadcast his incoherent message to the world. As Gary Cartwright wrote: For nine years, Koresh had relentlessly drilled his followers to prepare for Armageddon, had preached its inevitability, had forecast its imminence. Malcolm Gladwell, writing on the siege for the New Yorker , captures the sheer scale of the operation: the F.
For some, the story of Waco is the story of government overreach By and large, the public treated the ending of the siege of Waco as the story of a crazy cult that had gotten the end it deserved, similar to the mass suicide at Jonestown. Next Up In Identities. Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. For more newsletters, check out our newsletters page.
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