Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, everybody. Welcome along to the dispatchers. My name is Brendan Malone, and today I've got a bit of an extra special treat for you. Now, instead of doing our Dispatches on the Clock episode, which would normally be about 15 minutes. And yes, I know I take a few liberties, and sometimes they go a bit longer than 15 minutes. Today's episode is definitely going to be a lot longer because I'm going to share with you an episode that was previously behind our Patrons Only Paywall all. And we published this lengthy episode back in April, on April the 19th, in fact, which was the exact day 30 years ago this year that the awful Waco siege came to an end, and it came to a very fiery and tragic end. A lot of lives were lost that day after a 51 day siege where the Branch Davidians were surrounded by the FBI. And this episode goes into the backstory. It explains how the Branch Davidians came to be, a bit of their history, some of their beliefs. And then it talks about the siege and what happened. And most importantly, I end the episode by sharing my thoughts about what I think we really need to learn and understand about this particular incident. Now, as I said, this was previously behind our Patrons Only Paywall, and our patrons said they really enjoyed it. And I thought it would be something that you would enjoy listening to as well. Also, it's a way of giving you a bit of a taste of some of the patrons only content that our $5 monthly patrons get exclusive access to. If you want to enjoy all of our other patrons only content and get access to the exclusive patrons only podcasts that we publish every single week, go to Patreon.com Leftfootmedia and become a $5 monthly patron. The link is in today's show notes. Before I hit play, though, one other little thing, and that is this. There is a mistake in this podcast. Now, one of the sources that I draw on for this episode was a book called Waco David Koresh The Branch Davidians and a Legacy of Rage. Now, you'll hear me talking about that source along with other sources at the beginning of the episode. And I wasn't sure how to pronounce the author's last name, and I got it wrong. And in the episode, you'll hear me say that I think his last name is pronounced Gunn. It's actually not. His last name is Gwynn. So the author of that book is Jeff Gwynn, not Jeff Gunn. Right? With that out of the way, please enjoy this episode that was previously behind our Patrons Only paywall called 30 years ago today. Waco happened. Why it still matters.
[00:02:53] 30 years ago today, the 19 April 1993, the 51 day siege of the Mount Carmel Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas came to a truly horrific and tragic end. It was a siege that had started as I said almost two months prior, after one of the largest gunfights that has ever taken place on US soil happened when the ATF attempted to raid the Branch Davidian Mount Carmel property. Monday, the 19 April 1993 saw the final assault by the FBI, who had now taken over the control of the siege on the Mount Carmel compound. And that event resulted in the deaths of 76 members of the Branch Davidian sect, including 28 children. And they were killed when the buildings at Waco were gassed by the FBI, and then fire started and they burnt to the ground. And there's a whole lot more we're going to unpack about this, but I want to talk about the events. I want to give you a bit of a history to sort of understand what led up to this and how this all came about. And then I want to talk about not just the events themselves, but I think even more importantly, what I think we can learn from this and why I think this still matters 30 years later. I don't know about you, but I remember these events. I was saying to someone recently, this particular incident was sort of one of those pivotal events in my adolescent years. I was in high school at the time, I think second to last year of high school when this happened. I remember it. I remember it being on the news. It's sort of one of those hallmark moments in my personal history that I remember and are part of sort of, if you like, the shaping of my younger, more sort of formative years. And so it's an event that maybe some people today have forgotten or it slipped right off their radar, or younger people may not have even heard about. But it's one that really, really does matter. And that's why I think that it's worthy of our conversation here today.
[00:05:38] Now, I'm drawing from a couple of sources here, and I would recommend these sources, actually. First of all, there's a new documentary that's available on Netflix called Waco American Apocalypse. It's a three part documentary. It's very good.
[00:05:52] It really does sort of give the story, and I think it gives a reasonably fair accounting. It has people from both sides of this. So the people who were inside, a small number of people who were inside the compound on 19 April and who managed to get out and survive the fire. So you've got those people involved. You've got law enforcement agents, I guess maybe some of them now would be former like ATF and FBI agents who tell their story. They were involved in the actual siege. And then they've also obviously drawn from other historical sources and documentary sources that document the events. It's very, very well crafted as a documentary, and it gives you a good insight. There's two other books that I'd recommend. One is by a guy called David Thibodeau. It's called Waco a Survivor's Tale. And david Thibodeau was a drummer. For those who don't know, David Quresh was a bit of a musician, not particularly flash by all accounts, but fairly competent. And David tibeto met Quresh and became part of the Branch davidian Sect. They met in a music store, actually, and they said they were looking for a drummer and did he want to join their band. And so that was the sort of the beginnings of his involvement. Now, Tibeto was there throughout the 51 day siege. He was there when their final assault by the FBI on Mount Carmel happened, and he was one of the few to actually come out and escape. So it's a very interesting insight. It tells his story, his backstory, it tells a bit of the story about the life inside Mount Carmel and the Branch Davidian sect and then particularly the events from an insider perspective and his take on things. It's a pretty good book.
[00:07:28] It needs some balance because, as I said, he was very, very much someone who is absolutely he's got his biased take on it because he was inside, he was part of the Branch Davidian sect. He is very defensive of the Branch Davidian sect and so he comes from that perspective. But it is a very good book. It's very well written, by the way, as far as memoirs go, and it gives, I think, some good balance about and some perspective that I think is important to understanding these events and what happened and to sort of take a fairer eye.
[00:08:04] If you can look at these things with a fairer, more balanced eye, I think that's a good book to read. There's also another book that you should read. If you're going to read books, don't just read David Thibodeau's, because that's one side of the story. You need to get the other side. And I think, actually, the best that I've seen is Waco David Koresh the Branch Davidians and A Legacy of Rage by a guy called Jeff Gunn. I think it's Gun, or it might be Guine. I'm not sure, actually, how that's pronounced, but it's spelled G-U-I-N-N so I think it's actually gun. G-U-I-N-N. I'm pretty sure that's gun, but anyway, it's Jeff. J-E-F-F-G-U-I-N-N waco david Koresh the Branch Davidians and a legacy of rage. What I'll do is in the show notes for today's episode, I'll actually put links to all of these things so you can check them out. They'll be the only links in today's show notes. And what I like about Jeff Gunn's book is that it's a very, very methodical and comprehensive documentary of the history that led up to David Quresh taking over at Mount Carmel, the ATF background, the events themselves and then the aftermath. It's very, very good. It's a very, very well written book. And what it does is it gives some much needed perspective and balance to the other side that you don't really get from David Thibodeau's book. And the two together, I think, funnily enough, by the way, David Jeff Gunn sorry, actually quotes David Thibodeau a couple of times in his writings. So he's drawn from a lot of sources and it's a very fair, I think, and balanced take on all of it. And so these are really, really good sources if you actually want to read more. Like I said, I'll post links for all of these books. Now, if you're going to understand what happened at Waco, you need to actually take a big step back. And we're going to do this and we're going to go right back to the early 19 hundreds. And a guy called Victor Hotef, who is a Bulgarian immigrant to America, breaks away from the 7th day Adventist Church. This is the origin of the Branch Davidian compound at Mount Carmel. They're an offshoot. They come out of the 7th day Adventist Church. And this is important to understand as well, the events that happened in April 93, because the 7th day Adventists had an apocalyptic theology that was a big part of their movement. I think they're originally called Millerites, aren't they? And they have this prophetic reading of the Apocalypse in the end of the world that is a big part of their sort of theological and ecclesial heritage, who they are and how they identify themselves as a church. And so what happens, though, is that all of this is already part of the backstory, if you like. And then Victor HOTIf, he breaks from the 7th day Adventist because he says basically there's not enough.
[00:10:56] He sees himself as, I guess, almost like a Martin Luther type figure, a reformer of the SDA movement. He's really pushing what he considers to be more of a pure, faithful and holy sort of orthodoxy. And he's concerned that the SDA has sort of lost its way a little bit and they need to get back to a much purer theology and practice of the faith. And he forms this group called the Shepherd's Rod. And in 1935, he buys 200 acres of land northwest of Waco, Texas, which he named Mount Carmel. Now, this is not the original sorry, this is the original Mount Carmel. It's not the Mount Carmel where the 93 events take place. We'll get to that in just a second. Now, World War II rolls around, obviously, a few years after that, and the draught happens. And so young men are being drafted into the army and members of the Shepherd's Rod are not exempt because they were not legally certified as a church. So the members of the Shepherd's Rod, they can't actually escape the draft. And Victor HOTIf is frustrated by this because he wants his young men out there spreading and teaching and proclaiming and evangelizing for the Shepherd's Rod. He doesn't want them off fighting in a war. So what he does is he reorganizes his group and he renames them or I think this is part of the reorganization process. They become officially reorganized as the Davidian Seven Day Adventist Association, and that's how they get their legally certified church status. Now, this is where the name the Davidians came from, and this is the name that sticks and is around in 1993 with David Quresh. Now, what happens is this. Victor HOTIf then dies in 1955 and his young widow Florence, takes over. I think she was about 17, if I remember correctly, when he married her. And so she's quite a bit younger. She takes over. Not long after this, though, there's a guy called Benjamin Roden and he claims that he is the rightful successor of Victor Hotef. So there's already what you've got going on here is a bit of a tussle over who actually has the spiritual mantle and the spiritual legacy, who can rightfully claim that legacy to be the leader. And so Benjamin Roden claims he's the rightful successor of Victor HOTIf. Florence says she is. He forms a breakaway sect based on new doctrines that were not connected with the original Davidians. So this often happens. Groups develop new doctrines and break away. And that's exactly what's happened here. And what happens during this period is Rodin signs off his letters that he's written proclaiming these new doctrines as the, you know, kind regards the branch. He wouldn't have said kind regards, but you get the point. Signs them off the branch. Now, this is where the new breakaway sect gets the name Branch Davidians from, and that's what they're known as in 1993. Now, 1957, Florence sells the original Mount Carmel property. And a big reason for doing this is to fund her new radio outreach focus. She is adamant that they need to move into a new direction. Radio is the big new technology.
[00:14:25] They can sell this, what is now more lucrative property and invest in property that's in other parts of Texas, et cetera, and help fund the radio evangelism. Eventually, that will all just shut down, by the way. But that's what happens in 1957, they buy a new, less expensive property in Waco, which they call New Mount Carmel. And that's where the events of 1993 actually took place. Now, after this, there's a failed prediction from Florence about the end of the world and the return of Christ. And she says, this is going to happen April 1959, and it doesn't happen. And so that's a pretty good test of your prophetic abilities. If you've got a movement that you've founded on prophecy and you proclaim that there's a really important prophecy that's going to happen and it's just absolutely irrefutable, and you put solid time frames and dates on that and it doesn't happen, then you're in trouble. And surprise, surprise, things dwindle and support dwindles. And what happens is, after this, she ends up dissolving the Davidian Association and selling the New Mount Carmel property. If I remember her history correctly. I think she actually ends up leaving, marrying some other guy and becoming a secretary for IBM or something. So quite a big deviation from the head of this religious commune claiming a sort of rightful spiritual legacy to be the prophet and leader of Victor Hotif's movement. Now to working for IBM, but that's what happens to her nonetheless. Now Benjamin Rodin ends up becoming the owner of the property.
[00:16:09] You know, various things happen and over a period of time he manages to purchase the property and it becomes known then as Mount Carmel. So it's not new Mount Carmel, it's just Mount Carmel. And as I said, this is where the 1993 events take place. Now Benjamin Roden dies in 1978 and his wife Lois Roden takes over as the next Davidian Prophet at Mount Carmel. And this is where things sort of start to really get, I mean, as if they weren't sort of kind of a little bit hinky already, they really start to get a lot more hinky. And this is really important that lead up to what's happening in 1993. In 1981, Lois is now in her sixty s and a young man named Vernon Wayne Howell joins the sect at Mount Carmel and she takes him under her wing and she disciples him. And what she's really trying to do here, or commentators think anyway, is that she's sort of trying to protect her hold on the community. She is in a bit of a dodgy position here because she's got a son and her son George Roden is, I mean, I think he's mad. He's not on the level at all. He ends up in prison for shooting and killing a man in an argument and there's a whole lot other things we'll get to him in just a second. But basically she's sort of trying to protect her hold on the community because her son clearly has designs of his own. And if you're going to be a prophet and you are going to maintain your hold on a community and your rightful, I guess, mantle of leadership, you've got to offer some sort of prophecy, some sort of reason and substantial reason that you are the prophet. You can't just be parroting what's gone before.
[00:17:53] You got to come up with something new. And so there's this political machinations in jeopardy for her leadership going on all around this. And so when Vernon Wayne Hell turns up and she starts discipling him, it seems that she sees this as a potential sort of to protect her legacy, if you like. And she also begins a sexual relationship with Vernon Wayne Howell and the claim is that she's supposed to bear a child in her barrenness. This is again drawing back to incidents in the Old Testament about barren women who are blessed by God and give birth to children. So they're sort of drawing on that legacy to try and sort of claim it for themselves. Now, by 1983, though, vernon wayne howell had gained a group of his own followers, and so he formed yet another breakaway sect called the davidian branch davidian 7th day adventist association.
[00:18:54] This thing's just offshoots for africa, and you can see that's a really complex name, right? The davidian branch davidian 7th day adventist association. Now, this group in 1983, they leave mount carmel, and they operated from another location until about 1987, when lois roden dies. Now, at that point, vernon wayne howell files legal documents claiming that he is the president of the branch davidian 7th day adventist association. That's Lois's sect. And it's dwindled a bit now, and he's claiming, hey, look, I'm the rightful guy here. I should be back on this property. He also took some of his followers to mount carmel and engaged in a shootout with lois Roden's son, george roden, and that led to this group occupying the land. So vernon wayne howe's group have now occupied the land.
[00:19:49] It's very messy, this whole situation, and it's really bizarre. So george roden, just to give you a bit of background here, what's going on. George roden makes this claim that he was just moving the cemetery. So they've got a cemetery area where they've got former members who have been interred on site at mount carmel, and some of them for several decades. And he claims he's just moving the cemetery. So they're digging up bodies to move the bodies. But in actual fact, what happened was he dug up the body of a former member who had died a couple of decades before. And he challenges vernon wayne howell to a test of their spiritual powers and their spiritual legacy, whether or not which one of them is the rightful here to take over mount carmel. So he digs up this body of this woman who's been dead a couple of decades, and he says, well, christ raised people from the dead, and whichever one of us can raise this woman from the dead, that's proof of who's the real leader at, you know, it's utter madness, basically. It's messy, though, because vernon wayne howe is saying, look, this is illegal. And he figures this is his chance to sort of get control.
[00:21:06] And so what he does is he, oh, we didn't go there to have a shootout with these guys. We went to collect evidence of george Roden's illegal activities.
[00:21:19] You're not allowed to dig up bodies. And so we went there, and the FBI told, you know, this guy's armed, and you'd have to be careful, and all the rest of it. Apparently, though, he never took a camera. If I understand the facts of the case correctly, he never took a camera with him, vernon wayne howe, which is kind of odd. If you're there to collect evidence, you just take a whole lot of guys who are armed, but no camera. And this is what leads to the gunfight when they go there they're claiming, they're collecting evidence. The gunfight starts, George Roden fires on them. There is a trial after this.
[00:21:49] It seems like one of those sort of good old boy moments because Vernon Wayne Howell basically says, well, look, we talked to the sheriff and the sheriff said, you can't really confront this guy unless you're armed, because know so well armed, he's a bit mad. And so we just took our guns and confronted him like the sheriff told us to. And it seemed that it was sort of yeah, it's all very OD. But basically what happens is the jury can't agree on a verdict. So Vernon Wayne Howe and his followers, they're acquitted in the case.
[00:22:20] The point is that Vernon Wayne Howe ends up taking over at Mount Carmel, and he also sort of earns the good graces, if you like, of local law enforcement, because he gets in there and takes over and he says, oh, there's a whole stash of weapons here that these guys had, that George Roden had that you didn't know about. And he hands them over and apparently the local sheriff was like, wow, this guy's really honest. Because he didn't keep the weapons for himself. He actually contacted us. We didn't know about them. He had no reason to do that. It would have been in his best interest to keep them, but he didn't. He handed them over. So what happens is Vernon Wayne Howell is now in charge at Mount Carmel and Vernon Wayne Howell is none other than David Quresh, who is the Prophet, the lamb, the man in charge when the events of 1993 happen. Now, how did he become known as David Quresh? Good question. Well, he legally changed his name to David Quresh in 1990 to assert his spiritual authority as leader at Mount Carmel. Now, the name David is taken because this is a self proclaimed symbolic lineage directly back to King David, to the house of David Quresh is the biblical name of Cyrus the Great. And Cyrus the Great is the Persian king who is the only Gentile called a Messiah by the Jewish people because he freed the Jews during the Babylonian captivity. And so he's David Quresh, that's the name he took. Now, when I was younger, I remember hearing and thinking that David Quresh basically claimed to be like Jesus, but that's not correct. It's a little bit more complicated. How David Quresh sees himself is he sees himself as a promised or the promised Messiah, if you like, in the Book of Revelation, but not as Jesus. And how he sort of views it is. And he makes this sort of it's very tenuous and it's not legit, but the sort of theological justification he's using is he's claiming, look, there's Melchizedek and he's a savior, then there's Jesus, he is the big savior and then there's another savior coming in the Book of Revelation, and that's me. And so he's not viewing himself as like the return of Christ or Christ Incarnate or anything like that for a second time. I remember being mistaken about that when I was younger. It's a little bit more complicated than that. And that has implications, really, for what unfolds in 1993 and some of the ways that law enforcement really didn't handle the situation well at all. Now it seems highly likely, and this is a really important point, that David Quresh actually stole his identity, his doctrines and his prophecies from a man who had existed decades and decades before him named Cyrus TEAD. And Cyrus TEAD, in 1869, claiming divine inspiration, took the name Quresh, and he declared a new set of scientific and religious ideas, sort of the burgeoning scientific thing that was going on around that period in this new supposed power of science. And he's marrying it up. He's a bit of an alchemist. He's marrying it up, like, literally an alchemist. And he's marrying it up. All of this with different ideas from Christianity and spirituality and stuff like this. And he claims this merging of all of these ideas as this new religious faith, this new sect. It's called Quresh anity. As in koresh anity. And so this is really interesting because this guy, Cyrus T, doesn't outside of the history and locality of where this happened, it's not particularly well known, but a book is written, and this book is in various parts of America, including the Waco or one of the local Waco public libraries. And this issue of this book and this sect of Corey Ashanity, it comes up actually during the siege at Mount Carmel. And the FBI towards the end make reference, or they highlight the fact, because it's quite interesting how it actually comes about. There's a scholar, a religious scholar who understands a bit more clearly and takes David's religious claims seriously. He doesn't believe them. He doesn't believe they're valid, but he understands what David Quresh is doing. And this is something this is one of the big flaws we'll talk about with the FBI. They didn't take the religious elements seriously. And so he understands what he's doing. He understands how he's taking the Christian Book of Revelation and the Seals in the Book of Revelation, and he's interpreting them for himself. And so this scholar understands, which is a couple of scholars, they understand how this actually matters. It's purely by accident. They actually stumble across a reference to Koreshanity. It's not particularly well known group, and he's like, Koreanity. Hold on, hold on. David Koresh, Korea shanity. And this leads him to discover this book about this Korea Shanity, this Cyrus Teed who'd called himself Quresh. And he realizes, okay, this is quite an important link. And so the FBI mention this Cyrus Teed. They ask him, have you heard of Cyrus TEAD? They're talking to a guy who's, like, second in command inside Waco at the time during the siege, and they say, no, we've never heard of this well, David claims he's never read this book, which is conceivable. I'll talk about Harry in just a second. And then they say, are they quite interested in reading that book? They want to read it. And that book, by the way, could have been potential leverage because there were some smart cookies inside waco and it's conceivable. They could have read the book and realized, hold on, david Quresh is not actually wholly original. Maybe he's not the prophet he claims to be. It could have actually been a real wedge. But the FBI never delivered the book. They never took the book into them, and so they never read it. Now, David Koresh claims he'd never heard of it, but here's how that could still all make sense. Lois Roden, who is the discipler, the rabbi, if you want or if you'd like, of David Quresh. She spent a lot of time seeking out and studying the doctrines of other religious groups and sects.
[00:28:42] So she's widely read, and she's deliberately someone who's going out of her way to read this stuff and to actually understand it and to understand what these groups believe. And it's part of her whole ethos, if you like. And so, remember, she's the one who is actually forming and shaping the thoughts of David Krish, who by all accounts was a pretty simple guy. He struggled with dyslexia. He's not a great scholar or anything like that when he arrives at Mount Carmel. And so she, though, is someone who's widely read about all these other sects. And interestingly, she even claims a vision of her own. And this vision is how she sort of cements or locks in initially her claim to be a new prophet. She brings a new prophecy, a new vision. And this new vision is about claiming that the holy spirit is actually female. And she claims an angel brings her this vision, et cetera. Now, what's interesting is apparently, according to people who know about these things, that her own claims of a vision seem to have been plagiarized directly from the writings of Cyrus Teede. He claims an angel comes to him. He claims that god is male and female, etc. And apparently there's some really strong parallels. So it's quite conceivable. She takes and plagiarizes Cyrus Teede's work, and then she's shaping and teaching this stuff to David Quresh, and Koresh takes it on through her and learns it that way. Or maybe he's just lying and he actually did read that book at some point. And it seems highly unlikely, though, like scholars who know about these things have said, these are the only two guys who ever claimed the name Quresh for themselves. And this is either one of the world's greatest coincidences or this is not coincidental at all. And they think it's not. They think it's just too much of an obvious point of similarity. And it's the fact that they're the only two guys doing this for this to. Be not deliberate. Now, David Koresh's upbringing as a human being, as a child and then into his adulthood is severely dysfunctional. He's born to a 14 year old single mother. He was well before he's actually born. His 20 year old biological father abandons his mother for another teenage girl, and his mother then moves in with a violent alcoholic. She leaves that boyfriend about four years later and places four year old David in the care of his maternal grandmother. And she returns three years later when he was seven. And at this point, she's now married to another man. Now, David did not meet his real father until he was 17 years old. He struggles in school. He drops out of junior high. And for those who are not living in America, junior high is usually around ages twelve to 15 years old. So that's obviously quite young. He's dropped out of school at that point. At 19, he gets a 15 year old girl pregnant and she has an abortion. This affects him greatly.
[00:31:55] There's another incident where he's adamant he sort of converts around this sometime around or after this period, he converts and initially becomes like a Baptist. And he's adamant there's a local Baptist who's whose daughter he's quite keen on. God's told me, I'm going to marry you. And the whole thing doesn't go anywhere. It's messy and crazy. In 1981, age 22, he moves to Waco and he joins the Branch Davidians. And according to David Thibodeau in his book, david even had a cousin who tried to sexually assault him.
[00:32:29] It's really messy. His upbringing, by all accounts, is not a particularly good one. And there also appears to be based, like people who are close to him, like Thibodeau and others, there clearly appears to be what sounds like moments of mental illness of some kind. And we shouldn't underestimate that. You have people who can be people who experience mental illness but are very high functioning. And so they seem credible. They have perhaps a certain charisma and other things. And in the right circumstances they can seem very, very credible. But in actual fact, they have mental illness going on as well. So all of this is part of who David Quresh is. And we move forward a bit now. It's 1990 and David Koresh is leading the sect at Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas. And his doctrines are apocalyptic in nature. They are based on the seven seals of the Book of the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation.
[00:33:26] And then, by the way, this is also around this time, I think it's about the end of 1989, he publicly declares a new doctrine that he calls the New Light. Now, before I get to that, apparently he's very, very astute. So clearly he's not unhinged. This is a guy who's clever enough and who is absolutely manipulative. You can see it. There's manipulation going on. And he's manipulative enough to do certain things like it was normal within the Branch Davidians, apparently to make tape recordings of messages and Bible studies and stuff like that, and they would be sent to other parts of the world. There were people who weren't living at Mount Carmel who were also part of the sect, and they're in other parts of the world, even in the UK. Australia, I believe, we even had people from New Zealand who were who are part of this group. And so they get sent these tape recordings of these Bible study messages. Now, if you're astute and you're saying things that, you know, might get you into a spot of bother, then you're probably not going to want those things recorded and sent out around the world. So he stops tape recording his messages. He's delivering these Bible studies in person on site, and they're not being taped and they're not going out. And that certainly also gives you an interesting protective advantage. What it does is it allows you to actually adapt your message and adjust things without people being able to head back to a tape recording, say, from two years ago and say, hold on, you're now saying a completely different thing which contradicts what you said two years ago. If there's no tape, there's no contradiction, right? So clearly this is a mind who is sharp enough to act in ways that are very much protective of his own self interest. Now, in 19 or around the end of 1989, I believe it's, in August, david Quresh publicly declares a new doctrine which he calls the New Light. And he claims that this New Light doctrine, god has told him that he has to procreate with all the women at Mount Carmel in order to establish a new house of David, a legacy of offspring of children. And the new doctrine, the New Light, involved all of the married couples moving into separate quarters and agreeing that the wives would no longer have sex with their husbands. They would only have sex with David and also him, quote, unquote, marrying other young females on site there as well. And there's clear testimony on the record of this guy engaging in sexually abusive and sexual assault behaviors on younger women, younger girls, as mean. Even David Thibodeau, who's sort of a bit I mean, he's a guy who's still in his book, is sort of trying to justify this away.
[00:36:15] You see, he also grapples with, at the end of his book, the testimony from a woman that he knew, and she was a young girl, and she shared her testimony. And he talks about having to grapple with what is clearly her testimony of being assaulted, sexually assaulted by David or abused. And it's not done in a violent kind of way. It's very manipulative. It's sexual abuse. And he's sort of grappling with the fact that this is also real because he trusts this woman as well. He knows her. They lived that thing together. And so it's clear that this is going on.
[00:36:52] So this is happening inside the compound. And he's also again, this is the example of his manipulative cleverness. He has young men who are single at Mount Carmel who basically, effectively, they form legal marriage type partnerships with these women that he's having sex with, so these other women, so that to the outside eyes, it looks like these women are married to other men.
[00:37:22] And meanwhile, this is actually what's going on inside the compound. Now, I just wanted to stop for a second and talk about a little side note. And I think this is something that really struck me as important when I was reading David Thibodeau's book. He describes an experience that he had at Mount Carmel that I think is clearly demonic in nature. And he describes this incident being a young guy who's brought into this Mount Carmel situation where David Quresh is holding Bible studies that go for hours and hours at a time. Like, according to Thibodeau, they would have dinner, and then after dinner, they would go into the main auditorium room, the compound's not particularly flash. It's a sort of basic setup, but they have this auditorium area, and David Koresh and the band that Thibodeau was part of, they'd play for about an hour or so, apparently, and then he would start delivering Bible studies. And these things sometimes would just go right into the sort of early hours of the morning. And so hours and hours of Bible studies. And you can see and you can imagine sort of the effect this would have on shaping people and also breaking them down to make them more compliant if they're constantly in this place of being, quote unquote, Bible studied, if you like, by this guy, and you see how powerful that would be.
[00:38:43] But he talks about being a guy who's, in this environment, he's not quite sure what to make of it all still. And then this one night, he goes to sleep at Mount Carmel, and he wakes up. He's sharing a bunk room with some other single blokes, and he wakes up and he has this oppressive force pressing down on him. And he knows he's awake, but he can't cry out, he can't scream out, he can't attract the attention of the other men in the bunk room, and he describes it as this oppressive force that's on him now. He relays that experience I think it's like later that morning, he relays that experience to some of the other blokes there, and they say, oh, yeah, that's your spiritual awakening. We've had the same thing as well.
[00:39:33] And so to me, that speaks to and I'm not surprised by this, that he had a demonic experience. For those who don't know, I am a believer that there is a spiritual realm. I'm a man of faith. I believe there is a spiritual realm. I've got no problem with that belief at all. To me, it is absolutely logically consistent.
[00:39:52] And so it doesn't take much of an act of faith on my part to believe that to be real. And I believe there are actual forces at work, including demonic forces that would be at work in a place like this where you've got a guy, he's an antichrist, effectively claiming and preaching and acting in truly evil ways. It's a combination of a whole lot of things you wouldn't want happening at one place. And so it's interesting reading that account from Thibodeau and him talking about other men experiencing it. But here's the thing. They claim this was a spiritual awakening. They're trying to claim this is a positive thing, but what he's describing at all in its fullness is not actually good at all. So that's a bit of a side note, by the way, just about what's going on and what people are experiencing at Mount Carmel. Now, we jump ahead a little bit here, and I'm missing out some different details. At some point leading up to 92, there's a claim made because some members of the sect leave around the time of this proclamation of the new light. And there's a guy who leaves who was really like the confidant and close ally and really probably, I think, by the sounds of it, david Koresh sees him as like the man who will succeed him, or certainly he's right there with him in some sort of brotherly type partnership and all of this. And this guy called Mark Bro, he leaves. He's an Australian, if I remember correctly. He leaves and then he starts trying to contact everyone in America that he can senators, I think, the media, all sorts of people to try and get them to do something about what he considers to be the problems at Mount Carmel. It seems he's not 100% accurate in what he's claiming, though. Some stuff he's on the money, other stuff, it seems, maybe it's not accurate. So there's these claims he makes about very serious violence, child abuse. So not sexual abuse, but violent abuse of children going on. And that's one of the accusations he levels. There is an investigation that goes on. There's a lady, I think her name from memory is called Kathy Schroeder who's part of the Child Protective Services who goes in there and she says, look, in actual fact, the children don't seem particularly there's not clear signs that this thing's out of order. But there are things they can't prove either. But the children are not being neglected. They're not covered in bruises, so their investigation sort of goes nowhere. And there's certain things that they can't prove around the whole the sexual abuse stuff side of things and things like that. So that happens in the lead up, but it doesn't go anywhere. But she spends time investigating and understanding and they sort of cooperate. And it seems David is trying to play this game of, I guess, negotiating his way out of the problem and cooperating to sort of, I guess, again, manipulate things to make sure it looks better for himself. That happens in the lead up to all of this and there's other things going on around this time. But in May 1992, local law enforcement in Waco end up calling the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the ATF federal agency, to notify them. And by the way, if you want to find out a bit more about the ATF and their history and why this is important to what happens at Waco, because they've sort of got this little brother to the FBI type thing going on and they're not highly respected and regarded and they're not well liked by the public. They have a history of being sort of started in the Prohibition era and they're not particularly well liked. They have this perception that they're just targeting lawful gun owners in America and all sorts of stuff like this. And so there's a whole lot of backstory here. If you want to get a bit more of that backstory, then I would highly recommend the book that I was talking about earlier called Waco David Koresh the Branch Davidians and A Legacy of Rage by Jeff Gunn, because he goes into that background in a bit more detail and it's kind of important to understand as well in all of this. We'll talk about some of it in just a moment. But basically the ATF are notified because a local courier driver has contacted the local sheriff because he's quite concerned. He's delivering packages to Mount Carmel and one of the packages he delivers one day gets broken open and transited, I think it drops on the ground or something like that. And he sees about six or so empty grenade husks. Now, it's not illegal to own grenade husks, but potentially they could be filled. And of course they're also receiving other parcels from arms dealers. This has been going for months and he knows this, including things like black powder deliveries. And so there's sort of this assumption, well, heck, if you've got grenade husks and you can put black powder in them, you can make grenades. And it is fair to say that David's teaching around this time from people who survived Mount Carmel, they say it became more apocalyptic. And Tony starts preaching this message that they are going to have to be sacrificed in a battle against Babylon. And the forces of Babylon include the federal agencies. And so their calling is to die in this battle and to be what they call translated up into heaven to the throne of God. And then they will lead the know, the apocalypse, the end of days, god's avenging armies, they will return and Koresh will be leading the armies and all that sort of stuff. And he's starting to preach this in the lead up. So it's getting more apocalyptic in tone. You've got that going on. You've got the fact that they're know shipments from arms dealers and others for months. And these grenade husks. Now, David Thibodeau points out in his book about the grenade husks, they were making money. We'll talk more about this in the arms and making money because they were actually manufacturing ammunition. And black powder is obviously needed for that. Now, what is also going on with the grenade husks, according to David Thibodeau, is that David Quresh had started selling and they were going to gun shows to do this. And I believe by mail order that they were selling these customized vests, hunting vests. And I guess some people just love this sort of stuff and this get up. And part of it was part of the look of the vest was they looked tactical, and they even had empty grenades hanging off the vest. And so David Thibodeau says that's what the grenades were for. However, what happens is this. In June 1992, the ATF opens a formal investigation. In July, ATF agents David, Aguilera and Skinner visited the branch. Davidians gun dealer, a guy called Henry McMahon. I think that's how you say that, isn't it? McMahon, yeah. Who tried while he's there, they're asking about what's going on. And he says, look, no, they're importing guns. I've got the necessary licenses because I'm a gun dealer. And what's happening is they can create AR 15 rifles out of various parts, assemble them, we sell them at gun shows, and we make a lot more profit by doing it that way because this is a cheaper way to manufacture them. And I'm taking a cut and they're taking a cut. And they're doing this to make money, to actually fund their Branch Davidian sect. And it's about 15 grand us a month or something they have to come up with to keep a very basic lifestyle with food and power and propane and other things going. And so this is what they're doing to actually this is part of their income stream, is making AF fifteen s and selling them on the cheap. And he says this is a great deal. And apparently the ATF informed him then, well, do you realize that if you sell more than 50 of these weapons, you then have to pay a special seller's tax? I'm not sure exactly what it's called, but basically, all of a sudden he realizes this is not profitable. And so he cuts ties with the Branch Davidians after this. But what he does is when the two agents, Aguilera and Skinner, they come to visit him and ask about, well, what's going know with these guys at Waco? He actually rings David Koresh, gets him on the phone and he says, hey, look, we've got the ATF here. They're asking about this. And Koresh says, Put them on the phone. I'll talk to them. I'll explain it at all.
[00:48:01] We'll discuss it. We can talk about they can come out and see if they want. And Koresh apparently offered to let the ATF inspect the Davidian's weapons and paperwork, and he asks to speak directly with Agent Aguilera. But Aguilera declines. He waves it. No, don't put me on the phone with him. I think the understanding or their belief is, look, we don't have a warrant, so we can't go out there right now and visit this guy. This is what they're saying anyway, that if they go out and visit this guy, they don't have a warrant. They can only search areas of the property that he lets them search. And so what that means is that basically they're not going to be able to see what they want to see anyway, and if he's got illegal arms, he's going to destroy these things or hide them, and we're not going to get anywhere. So it's better not to go out on the fly and start talking to this guy.
[00:48:49] Now, the thing is, though, the local sheriff is sort of frustrated by this, and he tried to convince the ATF to, quote unquote, this is what Jeff Gunn says in his book, just go out and talk to them. What's wrong with notifying them? He sort of doesn't understand this approach that's being taken now. Several months later, the ATF begin what can only and very fairly be described as an absurdly clumsy surveillance operation. Across the road from Mount Carmel, you have agents who are in their 30s with brand new cars that are all and the Davidians do this. They trace back the dealership where they came from. They all come from one dealership in, I think, it's Dallas, and it's just down the road from the ATF offices in Dallas. And all these guys have got cars that were bought at this same place, and they're all brand new, but they're claiming they're college students. They are not registered, though, at any local schools, and they didn't keep a schedule that a student or even a regular employed person would keep. And so if you're a Branch Davidian and these dudes move up, you're living in this rural area. And these dudes in their 30s with flash cars who claim to be students, but who are not and don't know anything. When you quiz them because some of the people at Waco had been to local community colleges and you quiz them about what the college, what classes they're taking and who their teachers are and all that sort of stuff. And they don't know what they're talking about, and they're not keeping a proper schedule. You know, something's not making sense here. You've really only got a couple of options. These people are either law enforcement or they're drug dealers or something like that, right?
[00:50:28] There's not too many other options you can sort of choose from at that point. And David Thibodeau is actually very clear in his book that they knew from very early on it's very, very quickly they figured out that these guys were government agents who were spying on know, they go to see them and they wouldn't let them in certain rooms and stuff like that. That's because they had camera equipment and stuff set up there. They also sent an undercover agent into Mount Carmel, a guy called Robert Rodriguez, and they need him to try and sort of gather any intelligence they can because they don't really know much about the layout. The people who have been working with them who have previously left Mount Carmel have left a couple of years ago. And so there's constantly these renovations and changes happening. It's not a well built structure, by the way, but there's constant changes happening. And so even since they've left, things have changed.
[00:51:18] And because it's done DIY by the guys who live at the compound, they don't have blueprints on record anywhere. They can't go to the local authorities, the local council or the district governance, whoever's in charge of that sort of stuff for building regulations. They can't get blueprints to tell them what this place looks like on the inside. So Robert Rodriguez is charged with trying to gather as much information, but apparently David Koresh very quickly realizes that Robert Rodriguez is actually an agent. Now, according to David Thibodeau, when he quizzed David Koresh about this, he was hopeful. This is, you know, that Robert Rodriguez would be a good man and that he would help his bosses to realize that the Branch Davidians were actually not a violent militia. And so he thought he could sort of convince him.
[00:52:09] Jeff Gunn in his book, says that, and I think this is also equally plausible, that David is absolutely tempted by the thought of imagining himself being able to convert an ATF agent to the Mount Carmel sect, to the Branch Dividians, because that would mean he would have someone from Babylon now converted and in his group. And you can imagine how that would be impressive, not just to his followers, but also it would give him a serious advantage, particularly if you could convince a guy like this to actually hide the fact that he was now part of the sect and carry on working for the ATF and feeding information to David. So there's that possibility going on as well. But either way, David Quresh and people inside Waco, they know early on that this guy is actually an ATF agent. And the ATF is oblivious to all of this. They think they're carrying out clever surveillance, and they are just not at all. And it is rightly criticized and critiqued after the events for the ineptitude of what happened.
[00:53:16] Here's the thing, though, about the whole guns side of it. There's definitely this apocalyptic preaching that's going on. They're definitely collecting and growing their supply of weapons. But it's also murky in the aftermath if the claims being made about the weapons and how much they had, how much of this is actually true. Because what we also know for a fact is that they had been selling guns and ammo at gun shows as a way to make money to pay for life at Mount Carmel. One of their guys, who's very business savvy had figured this out, they quickly cottoned onto this as a good way to actually make money. You manufacture ammunition and you sell it, et cetera. And even on the day of the initial raid that took place there, the failed raid that happens in February and leads up to the siege and then the subsequent events in April, the guns had been taken out of the storeroom and packed into a van by one of the members to take off to a gun show to sell. A whole lot of guns had been taken. So it's kind of a little bit murky about what's going on. It could well, it seems like it's like a both and thing maybe, but it's still murky what's happening here. And the ATF aren't really clear and they're not gathering good intelligence and the whole thing's a mess even at this point. Now, the ATF obtains a search warrant, though, on suspicion that the Davidians were modifying guns to basically have illegal automatic firing capability to basically take semi automatics and to turn them into machine guns. And obviously, what are these guys doing, this religious sect? What the heck are they doing? And I'll talk about why this matters in just a moment and why they would have been on heightened alert about all of this around this time. They also start working with this former Branch Davidian. I talked about him before, who tells mean he's had a big falling out with Koresh. This is Bro, he's had a falling out with Koresh. And in the lead up to the ATF raid, accusations have been made, as I said, about child welfare, including maltreatment, sexual abuse of young girls and violent treatment of children.
[00:55:30] There was also false claims that were made that they were operating a meth lab on the property. And that is absolutely not true.
[00:55:38] Well, certainly not true. I mean, some things have been lost to history in the aftermath of a fire, of course, but there were drug dealers who were on the site. This was during the period of George Roden, before Vernon Wayne Howe. David Koresh took the property back at Mount Carmel. He was renting out properties. There were originally individual houses on the site of the commune, not one big compound. And he's renting out these properties because the numbers who are following have dwindled dramatically and they need revenue. So they'renting out properties or dwellings on this rural property. And as you can imagine, the kind of people who are happy, who want to and are happy to live at a rural property, that's pretty average. Very basic facilities with not much going for it, almost like shacks, basically. They want those kind of properties because they don't want to be noticed by law enforcement. So there were pornographers, for example, who were pumping out and producing pornography on site. There's drug dealers, there's a motorbike gang who's got a drug, a meth lab apparently set up and stuff like this. And so that was during the period of George Roden. But when David takes over, there's this purifying and cleansing of the property that goes on, and all of these people are kicked.
[00:56:53] So that had not been happening. But the ATF puts that in there and claims that this is a thing. It's not.
[00:57:00] In his book Waco David Koresh the Branch Davidians and a Legacy of Rage by Jeff Gunn, he highlights the fact, and I think this is important to understand, that the ATF raid on Mount Carmel was timed to happen just before their and they were desperate around this time, their budget review, their federal government budget review. And this was really important to them for securing some much needed federal funding. And what you've got during the initial raid on Mount Carmel is you've got agents who are wearing cameras, et cetera. They are clearly doing this. Their belief is, we're going to conduct this raid, we are going to go in there, we're the ATF, and this is what they believed because this is generally how things had happened for them in the past. No one's going to start a shootout with us. They're going to see our superiority. We're government agents and tactical gear and with guns, and they're just going to surrender. We're going to find some illegal weapons in there. Our guys will go in with cameras. They've got cameras in a helicopter filming it. And this will look really impressive. This is a big PR coup for us. We've kept America safe from this dangerous religious sect. We did this amazing raid on the property. Look at our skilled guys, a lot of them are ex military, et cetera. And look at the prowess and the way we keep America safe. And that looks pretty good. You've got to admit. It's a great PR coup. And if you're looking for a legitimate reason to keep funding an organization, this is it. And they need it. They're in a state where they actually need the funding. And so this was really, really important to them. And Jeff Gunn points out that this is actually a fundamental motivator and a factor that you need to consider when you think about the events of Mount Carmel and what happened there. And this is another thing that you need to understand. We need to take a little bit of a step back here and talk about the Ruby Ridge incident. The Ruby Ridge incident happened in August 1992, and this is a place called Ruby Ridge in Colorado. It's the location of an eleven day siege that began when some US. Marshals come to arrest a guy called Randy Weaver, an ex Green Beret, who's him and his wife and kids, they're really disillusioned at the state of society. They. Go to a property at Ruby Ridge, they sell up what they've got and move out into, I guess you'd call it rural wilderness type property. And they just sort of want to separate themselves from the state of affairs in the world, disillusioned about it all. And there's arrest. They come to arrest Randy Weaver at his Ruby Ridge home. And this is in August 92, after his failure to appear on federal firearms charges. He's wrongly accused of being part of a white supremacy group. He's not, he has friends or something or people he's associated with who are part of those groups, but he's not part of that. Now, during what was supposed to be the surveillance part of this operation, one of the US Marshals shot Weaver's dog, which then causes his son, Sammy Weaver, who's 14 years of age, to return fire. They see guys in tactical gear, they shoot the family dog. The sun shoots in the direction of the agents.
[01:00:22] And this results in the US Marshals opening fire on Sammy Weaver and another guy who's there with them, apparently an older guy, an adult friend of the family. What happened was they duck behind these tree roots as the Marshals are firing on them. And the adult friend of the family puts his shotgun up and literally fires blind, just puts it up, points it in the air, back in the direction of the Marshals, and fires his shotgun off. And he actually ends up killing one of the US Marshals. And then at this stage, 14 year old Sammy Weaver is retreating away from the Marshals. He's running up a hill. He's fleeing from this, and the US Marshals shoot him in the back and kill him as he's retreating up the hill. This begins an eleven day siege and standoff at the Weaver cabin. And during this time, an FBI sniper shoots and kills Randy Weaver's wife Vicky, while she was still holding their baby daughter inside his home. Now the standoff is ended after eleven days by civilian negotiators, and Weaver and his three daughters surrender on the 31 August 1992, and he goes on trial. This whole thing, it's an absolutely shocking incident. When you read the whole story, it's a whole nother story, but it's important to understand because this incident involving US Federal agents came to an end almost six months to the day before federal agents from the ATF launched their disastrous raid at Mount Carmel in Waco. And it was being talked about by the Branch Davidians as proof. There's this growing proof. Look, the forces of Babylon are targeting civilians. They're going into their homes. This is not good. It's a sign of what they're planning for us. So this is the mindset and this has all happened, and this does not look good. And this is all happening in the lead up to this. Then Sunday, the 20 eigth of February 1993 happens. Six months later, the ATF decided that a surprise raid on a Sunday morning. Once the men of Mount Carmel had come outside to start their daily labor jobs. They observe the Sabbath on a Saturday. They follow the 7th day Adventist tradition. They observe their Sabbath day. A Saturday. And so they're out working on a Sunday morning. They start sort of eight or nine or something, I think it's after eight. Anyway, they start their daily chores. And so the thinking is these guys will come out to work in the area on the compound outside, and that means that if we conduct the raid, then they won't have a chance. We know they kept their weapons in a locked storeroom and David is the only one with access. And so they won't have times or enough time to arm themselves. They'll be outside, we raid. It's just not likely they're going to get inside in time to get themselves armed up. And so they think the logic of this plan makes sense. Now, military experts have subsequently, or did subsequently criticize the raid and they said they went during the day. They said that's an absolute no no. You should normally go dusk or dawn times, early hours of the morning times, when people are actually not up and about and people are sort of hazy and just getting started. It gives you the advantage. They had no element of surprise. We'll talk about that in just a moment. Why that was so important. And they trained for this raid. They didn't have full intelligence about the actual facility they were going into because there's no blueprints, remember? And they trained for this raid at a facility close to where they go to a military base, and they train for this raid at a facility close to where the raid actually took place. And so what these military critics have said is and these are experts, not just say guys who are soldiers who are saying, I'm going to critique this after the fact, but actual people involved in this kind of thing. Who said it's. Basically, they went the wrong time of the day, they lost the element of surprise, and they trained close to where this was happening. Which means that people could have easily let words slip about what was going on. I don't know if that I don't think there's any clear evidence that did actually happen, but they said it's foolish to do that. You'd normally train in a place where the locals don't know what's going on and can't tell or potentially tell people at Waco what's happening. Now, the Davidians were quite exclusive in how they conducted their affairs, so it's not likely that would have happened, but this thing just wasn't planned and executed well now. So they're already also in an adversarial relationship and they've got mixed motives surrounding the raid. Remember the budget pressures that are on them. They also have no plan B for what happens if things go sideways. They are conducting an assault a raid on a compound, a series of buildings literally in a sort of a compound shape in an open area with no cover. And one of the agents or a couple of the agents ask in the planning briefings, what's the Plan B here? And they say, no. There is no plan B. And apparently some of the agents were like, what the heck, there's no Plan B.
[01:05:36] They couldn't figure that out. These guys literally drive up in cattle trucks with tarpolons over them, and then they all jump out and they're supposed to execute this thing. But there's no Plan B for what happens if it goes sideways. And remember, this is an armed group who they are claiming are apocalyptic and dangerous and might start an armed conflict and all the rest of it and want to see themselves launching the apocalypse. So this is potentially serious. On top of that, David could have been grabbed off site. They weren't collecting proper intelligence, and they said, oh, well, no, David doesn't leave the compound. He doesn't go into town. But in actual fact, no, he was taking trips into town still, and he was jogging in the mornings. He would go for a run in the roads, the area around Mount Carmel. And so they could have easily have arrested him away from everyone else and basically quietly done what they needed to do and none of this would have unfolded. The whole thing would have been a completely different situation, but they didn't do that.
[01:06:34] Here's the thing, that it happens on the day they lose their element of surprise. And the element of surprise is essential to their plan. It's the essential component. They're acknowledging this in the briefings and the lead up. That the element of surprise. If that's lost, they're not to go ahead with it because that's essential to them actually winning the day they arrive and the men and the people in the compound don't know what's happening. So a surprise is absolutely essential to the plan, and they lose it. So what happens is a local TV reporter gets a tip off about the raid and he drives out to Mount Carmel. He gets lost. So he stops and asks the local postal driver for directions. What he doesn't know is that that postal agent that he stopped is actually a member of the Branch Davidians. Some of them have got jobs off site, and this guy actually has a job working for the local postal agency. And his know it's got postal agency on the side. And he thinks, oh, this guy's postal. Ask him. And he tells him about what's going on. And so this guy talks to him for a few more seconds and then says, yeah, see you later. Thanks. He has directions. And then he drives straight back to Mount Carmel to tell them that the ATF are about to raid the property. Now. David Koresh.
[01:07:43] And remember Robert Rodriguez, the undercover guy? He's there. The ATF send him in on that Sunday morning when they're about to conduct their raid. And even he said, I don't want to go back in there on the day you conduct the raid. What if I get stuck and killed in the crossfire? What are you doing? And they're like, no, we need intelligence. We need to know what's going on just before we go in there. And so he reluctantly agrees to go back. He's there when the news arrives that the ATF are coming, and he's like, oh, my gosh. And what happens is David Koresh comes to Robert Rodriguez next and he says, look, mate, I know the raid's imminent, and apparently Robert Rodriguez is kind of shocked at this point because he realizes David knows I'm an undercover agent.
[01:08:31] He had no idea up until this point, apparently, that he knew that he was an agent. So he thinks his cover is safe. It's not. It's been blown, I don't know how long exactly he was in there, but weeks ago. So David knows who he is and he thinks, oh, my gosh. And so he takes off immediately to try and warn the ATF. His fellow agents call off the raid.
[01:08:52] We've lost the element of surprise. Apparently, as he's leaving the building, he's thinking, I'm going to get shot in the back. Like, he's thinking, because he's on his mind about what's going to happen and they're going to kill me as I leave. They don't. He gets in his vehicle, flicks on the lights. So at the surveillance house, the snipers there by the stage, they can see what's happening and they know something's amiss. And then he tries to get back to the station, or I guess the HQ, the positioning station they're using to try and warn them. And he says that they know what's going on, they've lost the element of surprise. And they ask him, well, what's going on in there and what were they doing when you left? He says, well, they were all gathered together to pray. And are they armed up? No, I didn't see them getting armed up, but you've lost the element of surprise.
[01:09:35] And now they're in a situation where they know they've got no element of surprise. And despite that fact, they proceed with the raid on a location with no cover and with an operation that was totally dependent on maintaining the element of surprise and which was not supposed to go ahead. If they lost that, they carry on with it. This is absolutely insane. So the ATF arrive, they jump out of their horse trailers and they surround the building. Now, eyewitnesses, including David Thibodeau, say that David Koresh told his followers not to panic, that he would go outside and talk to the agents to resolve the issue peacefully. Next thing you know, though, the ATF are firing on the buildings of Mount Carmel. And so there's this claim and counterclaim about who actually fired first. The ATF says they started firing from outside of the compound sorry, from inside of the compound, out at us, and then we returned fire. The people in Waco are saying they fired into the compound first and we returned fire because this is Texas and you can actually you can defend yourself even against law enforcement if they are acting in an unjust and disproportionate way. I don't know if that's still the law, but it was at the time and so that's what their claim is. And then there's the media. The media who were present say they think the firing came first from inside the compound and that they started firing in the ATF first.
[01:10:57] There's confusion here, there's conflicting accounts. And I don't know if it is actually still clear.
[01:11:04] I've read different accounts of this and I'm not clear if we've got to the bottom of this point. Actually, as I said, the survivors are saying, look, that they didn't shoot at us or we didn't shoot at them first. They shot at us. Now, one theory is this, and this could explain all of this, is that there was an accidental weapons discharge from an ATF agent because they're around the compound at this point and that caused the other ATF agents to panic and start shooting into Mount Carmel. Another theory is this that the ATF dog teams, they sent a group of agents round the back to quell the dogs and they had a fire extinguisher with them. And they were supposed to spray the extinguisher at the dogs because they thought the dogs might attack them. But what they did was they shot and killed the dogs instead. And even that, I mean, how is this helping at all? If you're trying to keep a nice calm situation, that's not helping. So one theory is that basically the ATF dog teams, when they shoot the dogs, this is a big enough area that it sounds like there's gunfire coming at you. Maybe it started on, they're shooting inside the compound, so we'll shoot back. So that's a possible theory. I'm not sure it particularly matters because this whole thing, the whole tension has been built up and it's not good what's led up to this. And the gunfire starts. So whoever starts it, however it started, you've now got a firefight. And within minutes of the raid starting, david Quresh has been shot in the stomach, in the arm, and he is seriously wounded. The gunfight carries on for 2 hours, during which time four ATF agents were killed. They try and breach the building. They can't get in, they fail. They are pinned down, they've got no cover, they've got no plan B. This is really bad. And the Branch Davidians are actually shooting back at them. And this is the thing, they have been trained, there are survivors who talk about the fact that in the lead up they were training for this to defend their property and they were being trained for this moment and they had expected that everyone would just lay down. This is where a failure to take their religious belief seriously really matters, because this is about a group of people who believe that they are going to be translated up into heaven and they're part of this apocalypse. If they do this and you don't take that seriously, you don't realize that they're not going to act like ordinary suspects. Do you turn up at an ordinary criminal's house and what's their biggest driving instinct? Self preservation and self interest. That's not who these people are. And so they don't take their religion seriously enough. They are now in this gunfight, this firefight that lasts for 2 hours, and the ATF start running out of ammo. And there's four agents killed, 16 wounded in the gunfight. Five Branch Davidians have been killed by ATF agents as well. And there are a couple of times where there's attempted ceasefires, but they don't quite work because despite what the ATF think, the compound is just sort of sprawling area and they haven't got radios, not communicating with each other, so it's not like David is giving orders and almost instantly, everyone else gets those orders. So they're having to send runners through the buildings, know, do this, do that. And so when they call for a ceasefire, they send a runner to parts of the building to try and tell everyone, hey, stop shooting. But the message doesn't go out very quickly and so the battle goes on and then the ATF shoot back because they think it's still going, so you can't get a ceasefire happening. It's really, really hard. 2 hours later, they managed to actually get a ceasefire and the Branch Davidians allowed the ATF dead and wounded, to be evacuated and they held their fire during the ATF retreat when this ceasefire is called. And the reason, as I said, is the ATF are running out of ammunition and apparently the order goes out, look, save some of your ammo because we think these guys could rush us. They could come out of the building, they've got more ammo than us. We might need ammunition to actually shoot back. If this gunfight erupts outside the actual compound buildings now, this is an absolute disaster. The FBI pretty much takes over at this point and this begins a standoff siege that will last another 51 days until the FBI launch a final raid on Mount Carmel. Using tanks to break into Mount Carmel and fire CS gas tear gas rounds into the building. A lot of CS gas in the lead up to this, they're negotiating with David. It looked initially like David was going to die. He rang his mother and left a message on her answer phone about, your boy has been shot.
[01:15:37] I'm going to go to heaven. I'll be returning soon. So he thought he was going to die, but then he perks up and he doesn't and he's wounded, but he's lucid and he's communicating. And so he actually lives. He's alive right up until the very end. He's killed on the final day of the raid, actually, the assault on Mount Carmel, April the 19th, 1993, and he's killed by a gunshot to the head.
[01:16:02] It's not clear where it came from, but there's a reasonable belief that because they're trapped by the fire and what's going on, that he has killed himself. And then the guy next to him, because there's clear indication he's got a gunshot through the mouth, so that they took their own lives to sort of spare themselves from the fire, but that's when he dies, so he survives right up to the very end. But what happens is the assault begins 51 days later, 19 April, and 6 hours later, around noon, mount Carmel bursts into flames. And then not long after that, 76 people, including 28 children, are dead. And they are dead as a result of either being shot asphyxiated poisoned by the CS gas, crushed by debris, or burned in the flames. This thing is an absolutely evil, tragic end to this whole thing. By the end of the standoff, 82 US civilians from Mount Camel, the Mount Camel, the Branch Davidian sect, have been killed, like I said, including 28 children, it's horrific. And hearing the accounts of people who had to clean up afterwards in some of the areas of the facility where the heat like people trapped children trapped in these rooms where the heat got up to 3000 degrees. And hearing these guys, these stories of having to clean up the bodies and I won't repeat it to you, it's just horrible. It's just truly, truly awful. And some of them, they say to this day, they still have this PTSD. One guy talks about the fact he can't see young kids wearing tennis shoes as a result of what he saw in the aftermath of that. Now, here's some things that I think are vitally important to understand about all of this. And I'll talk a little bit more about the final day as well as we go. Regardless of the spiritual abuses going on inside Mount Camel, the sexual deviancy, the manipulation by David and all that kind of stuff, it's clear he set up a cult.
[01:17:58] And I know David Thibodeaute's book says he doesn't like that word, but I think David Quresh has clearly set himself up in a very advantaged position with a group of people who are spiritually vulnerable. They seem to be, some of them, like doctors, lawyers. They're quite clever people by all accounts, but they're people who want to believe. They are good people and they have a good natural instinct to believe, to believe in God, to have faith in something bigger themselves. And here's a guy who's taken advantage of that and who's manipulated people, and he's set himself up in an advantaged position, and he's preaching these dangerous and weird theologies and heresies and all sorts of stuff like this.
[01:18:39] And so regardless of all of that, there's some glaring problems in all of this. There's the failure to arrest David when he was actually leaving Mount Carmel and could have been arrested off site. I've already mentioned the loss of the element of surprise and the lack of a plan B. There's also a problem that develops in the 51 days during the siege where you have this dispute and basically this rivalry that's like a hostility, effectively, between the tactical teams, the guys who and this is their own fellow agents describing them this way. The sort of the type A testosterone driven guys who are used to getting in there and solving a problem and getting things shut down in a couple of days, who are this thing's dragging on and on. And they want to go in there and have a show of force. And remember, some of their brother agents have been killed. And so they've got a sense of probably wanting payback and all that. So those guys versus the Negotiators who want to actually negotiate a peaceful way out of this, who think we can negotiate and they had been successfully people dribs and drabs, had been coming out, but the negotiations were hampered by this. And so the tactical guys were doing in some ways, they were operating at times completely independently of the Negotiators and they would do things which were bad faith, which would ruin the ability of the Negotiators. And it made a situation where David Quresh towards the end starts to see that the Negotiators don't actually wield that much power. So he's talking with guys on the phone who can't really deliver effectively because the other guys who the tactical teams are the ones making all these sort of arbitrary decisions of their own. And David sort of sees it this way there is absolute law enforcement ineptitude and also dishonesty.
[01:20:26] Why would you do things like on the final day they have and they're already there. They bring these on before this, but they bring tanks onto the property.
[01:20:35] So they surround the place with tanks. And it's the sort of show of force. Remember, you're dealing with an apocalyptic cult who believe that they are called to be part of this final battle against the forces of Babylon. And what happens? The forces of Babylon turn up with armies and with weapons of war. Actual tanks, abram's tanks. Like, what is that supposed to do to the psychology of these people? Why would you leave those tanks around Mount Carmel? And remember, this is the point too, by the way. They used the tanks on the final day to smash into the walls and fire ferret rounds containing the CS gas into the structure, which they're warned about, we'll talk about in just a second, is a flimsy structure. And so they've driven tanks and they've smashed into these buildings where these people live. They've fired rounds of CES gas into the building. They've collapsed parts of the building, and then they've backed off. And they're on a loudspeaker going, come out. You won't be harmed. You won't be harmed. Like, if you think that's a strategy for anybody, let alone a group of people who have been under siege for 51 days and who have these religious beliefs about an apocalypse, you just are inept. You are absolutely inept. This is all wrong. And anyone with half an ounce of common sense could see this. And then they leave the tank sitting there, as one person describes gun barrels still smoking after having fired these CS rounds into the property. And they're trying to convince people to run towards the tanks to come to safety.
[01:22:16] Why would you naturally think that's where you're going to find safety? And especially if you're these particular people, the tanks, by the way, in the final assault on the building that final day, they ran over and cut the phone line, and so they had no way to actually communicate with the outside world. Famously, there's this incident where the Branch Davidians turfed the phone out the window because it's useless. They've now got no way to communicate with the people on the inside. They're just yelling at them over a loudspeaker, but they're not able to talk to people directly. But here's the thing. They've also got some bugs, secret bugs that the FBI have got inside the building. They've managed to sneak into the building, and they are listening on these bugs as the assault is happening. And the FBI bugs pick up things like the Branch Davidians. Remember, this is they've got tanks smashing into the building and pumping gas in. And while this is going on, they're still talking about the fact that David is almost finished his manuscript. This is something we'll come to in just a second, that the FBI had a final sort of, I guess, a deal with David, and he's preparing his prophetic writings about the seals from the Book of Revelation, and they have promised that this thing will be published. And so he's saying, right, if I do this, then this is the message. This is god has actually told me this is how we will deliver the message. David's saying, I waited on the Lord. This is during the 51 days, and the Lord has told me that this is how the message will go out, and this will be a chance for people to hear the message and repent. And so he's saying and this is going on for days now that he's typing up this manuscript, and they're bringing it out. They're showing the FBI, they're proving that he's actually doing it. But the tactical guys have become impatient about all this. But on the final morning, they've got bugs. The FBI picking out bugs with the Branch dividends, talking about David almost finishing his manuscript. And can we let the FBI know he's almost finished and what's going on?
[01:24:02] This is just madness, this whole thing. The tanks also smashed into one part of Mount Carmel compound, and the roof immediately collapsed and killed mothers and children who had fled to that room to take shelter. This happened again in another part of the compound, where they smashed through the walls. And here's the thing. The FBI was warned that this was a likely outcome. It's in one of their briefings, apparently in big block letters about the structural integrity of this building not actually being good and about smashing tanks into it. They still greenlit this as a particular strategy, and they killed people by doing that. Those deaths are not caused by David Quresh as much as President Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, who was in charge at the time, tried to claim subsequently, oh, this is all David Quresh's fault. No, this is a much more complex situation than that. You can't blame those deaths on David Quresh. They also did things like in the lead up to the final raid, they used sleep deprivation techniques on these people. They have big, glaring spotlights to light the place up at night, pointed into the buildings, and they have these loudspeakers blasting away. Remember Trevor Mellard did this kind of thing. Well, these guys did this. And they had songs playing repetitively, really loudly. They had things like, apparently screeching chickens, awful, like random noises, I believe bunnies being killed. It was just all sorts of horrible stuff and loud music just to try and really pile the pressure onto these people. Apparently, they were also heard to be screaming obscenities over this PA speaker at the people inside Mount Carmel. Now, remember, you want these people to come out, apparently, and you want them to surrender, and you want them to put their hands in the air and trust you enough to do that, and this is what you're doing. And also, you think these people are a lunatic, apocalyptic, fringe cult, and that's what the ATF and the FBI are thinking about these people, and they deprive them of sleep. Why would you do that? Do you want them to be more crazy and less prudent and aware and smart about the decisions that they're making, like more detached from reality? Why would you do that? But that's what they did.
[01:26:32] And then, by the way, they lied about some of the stuff. They were dishonest in the lead up. What they presented to Janet Reno to get her sign off to do this. They were not 100% accurate.
[01:26:43] There was an aptitude and dishonesty all over the show. They tried to lie about some things after the fact. We'll talk about one of those in just a second.
[01:26:51] There's bad faith behaviors going on. They have tanks driving around, and they start destroying the property that's owned by the people who live at Mount Carmel, like David had. I think it's a Camaro, this car that he'd done. Up. He was something he was quite proud of, and it was his, and they drove right over it with a tank and smashed it up. Like, does this endear you to people if you're doing this? It doesn't, right? We all know this is not endearing them to people. They're abusing people inside Mount Carmel. Apparently, they would raise guns and point their guns at them in threatening gestures. None of this is helping this situation at all. And one of the biggest problems, as I said, was their refusal to treat the religious beliefs of the Branch Davidian sect with an appropriate degree of seriousness and respect. Now, I don't mean that you believe and accept their beliefs and say, okay, well, these guys, I think their beliefs are legit. But what I mean is they're not treating them with enough respect to say we need to factor these religious beliefs into our activities, our negotiations, and our responses to this guy. Because as a couple of very regarded scriptural theologians who got involved in this incident pointed out, there were actually ways they believed to allow them all to come out of the Mount Carmel compound without compromising any of their theological beliefs. If you turn it into a standoff where it's the forces of Babylon and a final battle or nothing else, then you're in a really hairy and dangerous situation with that group. But as these theological scholars said, well, in actual fact, David has been very clever. They don't accept his interpretation of these various parts of scripture, but he's been very clever. He's very knowledgeable in what he does know, and so you've got to take that seriously. But here's the thing. We can actually, if we engage with him seriously. And remember I told you about how this guy found out by chance, he heard a radio broadcast that mentioned the coreshians. I think it had something to do with baseball. Actually, it wasn't even religious. But he heard about this Koreshian sect, and that sent him on a journey to figure out who the Qureshians were. And he figured out that basically, here's a possible way that we can resolve this. We can have a theological symposium. And so you've got these serious top level scholars who are appearing in the media hoping that David Quresh will hear these guys who are saying he should be taken seriously. And we could have a theological symposium, and he could present his message to the world. Because they're like, this is a way for him to make sure that the message of the Lamb, quote, unquote, is heard by the whole world. And you don't then have to have a fiery gunfight and a battle and a war against Babylon to do that. You can have a theological symposium. And they believed that this was a very, very real way, a very real possibility of actually achieving. And basically what you're doing is you're not asking the Branch Davidians to abandon their deeply held religious beliefs. You're asking them, inviting them to see them in a different light. That doesn't require the battle with Babylon and the final standoff. And the FBI, they didn't take that seriously.
[01:30:14] When you bring tanks on, for example, they're bringing tanks onto site, people believe they're going to be in a final battle with Babylon and it's going to involve the armies of Babylon. And you bring army tanks onto the site.
[01:30:27] See, if they were treating the religious beliefs with a appropriate degree of respect, they wouldn't have done that because they would have realized this is actually not going to help our case here. If we actually look like we're not the forces of Babylon and probably even just actually going back to the perimeter with the FBI and using other people, like civilian law enforcement, probably might have been a lot more advantageous to their cause, actually, because it would have given the message, no, there's no final Babylon. When you get women and children who leave the compound and the promises, children will get taken to relatives and then that doesn't happen, and people get arrested. And then they find out inside the compound because they're watching the news each day that these people have been arrested after the promises that they will or that kids have not been united with the right people and they've gone into protective care. You're like, These people are lying to us. None of this is helping, right? There's lots and lots of stuff like this that's going on in the buildup, and they're not taking their religious beliefs seriously enough. And on top of that, by the way, with the tanks that they brought onto site, they didn't even have trained tank drivers. It's not easy to drive a tank, by all accounts. I've never driven one, I don't know, but apparently it's not easy. And they didn't have any trained drivers, so they had just agents who had been undergone some basic training how to drive these things.
[01:31:40] The whole thing was clumsy and it was messy and nothing more reflects that in their failure to respect the religious theological beliefs, because that's a potential mechanism that they can use. They constantly say things like, this is just Bible babble. Towards the very end, on the final sort of lead up, the final hours before the or days, I think it might be actually a couple of days before the final assault, the FBI are just accusing David. They're saying, well, no, God I believe in is okay with sexually abusing children and killing women and kids.
[01:32:13] It's really adversary. When it's hostile, it's not good. Then there's the use of the CS gas. Just prior to this raid and the use of the CS gas, the Americans had signed a UN agreement that CS gas would not be used on any foreign combatants in theaters of war. And they used this thing on their own people domestically, and they ignored the studies. Again, this is where you get this ineptitude and dishonesty. They ignored the studies which showed, and this is also warnings from the manufacturers of these products saying that these things, they should be used outdoors, not indoors, like they're doing, pumping it into a building. There's a warning that you can actually create flammable conditions by using this internally and too much of it, and they used a lot of it.
[01:33:04] A lot of it got pumped into that building in a very short space of time. They are warned that it can be very dangerous on vulnerable groups, particularly children, I believe, people who obviously have health conditions, maybe the elderly, stuff like that, in enclosed spaces. This thing can actually be deadly. It can kill people. They ignore all of those warnings. They still use the CS gas and they use a lot of it. And there is evidence well, according to Thibodeau's book, there is. And towards the end of his book, he actually quotes from various sources. There is expert autopsy evidence that some people, it looks like, may well have been killed by the gas itself. And then, of course, there's the total lack of patience. David is writing his seven seals. Prophetic manuscript. And this is the deal. You write this manuscript, you type it up, it will be published, it will be seen by the whole world. And apparently he's excited by this. He's telling his people, the people in the compound genuinely believe the end is coming, they're going to walk out peacefully at this point. And he's apparently reinvigorated. He's quoting at them scriptures, like, I waited for the Lord. The Lord gave me a message and told me, and after I waited on the Lord, that this is how this would be delivered. So this is how he's talking, he's writing this. But the FBI have got it in their mind because of a previous incident in the 51 day siege where he reneged on a promise to come out. And what happens is, he claims that people inside the compound, because they were all excited, they were going to be leaving the next day, and they do things that they're not supposed to be doing as good Adventists. They have secret stashes of cigarettes and I think chocolate and donuts, and some of them have got alcohol on site and things that they're normally not supposed to be doing. And they have a bit of a celebration and they pray out loud and they're sort of hooping and hollering about all of this. And apparently, David, the next day is like, no, I failed you. You people are not pure enough. And if we go now, this will mean that you might die and go to hell. And God's told me, no, we've got to wait because your purification is not complete. So it's kind of messy what's actually going on. But the point is that he renegs on the deal that they were all going to come out and so the FBI from that point on takes this attitude, no, he's never coming out, we can't trust him. And that colors their thinking. And so there's this loss of patience. David's writing his Seven Seals manuscript, though, and this does sound a lot more promising and positive and people, by the way, were being allowed to leave. David Thibodeau says no one was forced to stay. So the idea is they're all locked in there and told you can't leave. But David Thibodeau says anyone could leave anytime they wanted to. And people did leave at various times throughout that 51 day siege. And so David's now writing his Seven Seals, but they're like, nah, let's launch the raid anyway, and they go, now the fire breaks out, obviously, and there is still debate today about who actually started the fire, but I actually think it's kind of irrelevant. There's four possible theories. One is that the FBI deliberately set the fire. I don't think that's likely at all. And I'm not convinced even their ineptitude and dishonesty that they would do that. I just don't believe for a second that they would deliberately burn alive or do something that they thought had the risk, serious and very real risk of burning alive women and children. I just don't believe that for a second. But one thing we do know and why this particular theory gained a bit of popularity was they actually at one point, there's one particular corner of the building. They were trying to fire rounds of CS gas into the building. And the ferret rounds that they were using were not actually effective at penetrating this particular part of the compound. And so they started using explosive military rounds on one part of the compound. Lied about that subsequently, by the way, because they knew that this was not good what they'd done. They lied about it. And then they were forced to admit when all the evidence came out that they had actually used these rounds. There was some spent evidence found, some spent shell casings. I guess they found the evidence after the fact. So they were forced to admit they had done this. But the rounds apparently didn't actually penetrate know, cause an explosive situation. So that's quite conceivably where that theory came from, but it seems unlikely. Theory number two is that the FBI accidentally caused the fire with their tank rate. So they were doing things know, you're punching into this building, you've got one hallway with propane tanks, they're knocking over propane tanks and fuel heaters and stuff like that. It's a dry, hot, windy Texas day. The building is made of wood.
[01:37:24] It's not a flash building. It's pretty basic sort of structure. And so all of this contributes to, as David Thibodeau says, you've basically got a tinder box now and also the gas as it builds up in a confined space and it coats everything, it actually creates a potentially flammable substance, apparently. And so you've got the situation where he said it's like a fire, basically with a damper open, ready to just ignite, and it's not good. So that's theory number two. That's an accidental start of the fire. Theory number three is that the branch davidians set the fire themselves.
[01:37:58] And the FBI are claiming that they've got bugs, recorded conversations of people saying set the fire, light the fire, and stuff like this, and that the fire was deliberate. It seems though, that even if it was deliberate, so someone deliberately lit the fire, this would not have been known to most people. Remember I talked about earlier how the compound was just so sprawling and spread out. There weren't general orders that were being given instantaneously to everybody. They were all spread out throughout the compound at the stage in different locations. So it's quite conceivable that most of them would not have known what the heck was going on even if someone had given an order to deliberately start the fire. It's still not clear, though apparently.
[01:38:39] Another possibility too, by the way, is that it's a combination. So one possibility is that you've got an accidental fire that starts and then others add to that fire or both happen around the same time. That's another possibility. And theory number four is that david quresh ordered the fire, but not to, you know, not to destroy and die in a fiery blaze, but because he thought, because he's in this biblical mode of thinking. Remember, he's writing his prophetic manuscript. And so one theory is that he's just absolutely, because he is right up to the final end, that he is thinking of references from the scriptures, like in the book of zechariah, there is this passage talking about a barrier of fire that protects the city of jerusalem. So this barrier of fire around the outside to protect jerusalem from the enemies who are attacking them. And so there's a speculation, well, maybe he's thinking we will have our own barrier of fire. Because again, he's in this mode of religious thinking and this is why his religious thought matters and why you have to give it a basic degree of respect. I think in some ways it's just irrelevant though, what actually caused the fire, because none of this should have ever got to this point. That's the most relevant bit. And it seems pretty clear that there were things that we need to learn from this. And I'll talk about those to finish with in just a second. Before I do that, though, there's one final chapter, and it really is the final chapter in this dark, awful series of events. And it comes exactly two years later with the Oklahoma City bombing at on the 19 April 1995, exactly two years to the day, timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two former army guys who are part of a militia group, a nationalist militia group, detonated a bomb outside the Alfred P. Murray Federal building, targeting federal agencies deliberately in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. They killed at least 168 people. They injured more than 680 other people, and they destroyed more than one third of the building, which had to be demolished. The blast was so big that it destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16 block radius. It shattered glass and 258 nearby buildings, and it destroyed 86 cars. It was the deadliest act of terrorism in the US. Until the Al Qaeda September the 11th attacks in 2001, and it still remains the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in American history. Now, here's the thing. Timothy McVeigh actually visited Waco during the 51 day siege of Mount Carmel. He's captured by TV cameras on film outside Waco, expressing his outrage about what the US. Government agents were doing there and what they'd done to the people inside Mount Carmel. And after the Oklahoma City bombing, McVeigh said they were motivated to carry out their terrorist attack because they were angry about the FBI actions during the siege at Ruby Ridge and the government, the federal agencies, and their actions during the siege of Mount Carmel in Waco. And that's why they chose the anniversary of the Mount Carmel destruction to carry out their evil, repugnant plot, a very, very, very dark incident 30 years ago today. Why does this matter, though? Just to finish with? Well, there's some really key lessons, I think, that really matter here. And I'm not convinced that we've actually learned all of them or particularly well. One is the militarization of domestic policing. Now, yeah, it's federal agencies, but they are policing a domestic population. And you can see how, when you read these accounts, the militarization and that attitude that goes along with it, we've got these weapons of warfare, we should be using these things. It creates in us versus them a very militaristic mindset. And that is nothing at all like domestic policing.
[01:42:43] Winning a war is about winning. Policing is about restoring and maintaining peace. And that's not the same thing as winning, because sometimes you don't get a win, quote, unquote, in order to restore peace and protect the peace.
[01:43:01] There is clearly some lessons here about the accountability of government agencies. And when I was younger and when I heard about these events, and when I read about them in the aftermath and for a very long time afterwards, my inclination was to believe the FBI and what they were claiming. But it's really you can see now the record is pretty clear about the dishonesty that went on around all of this and the ineptitude and everything else. And it also, I think it paints an interesting light on things like the recent events in America with the FBI and the raiding of Trump and all of those other things that have gone on lately. And you realize, yeah, gosh, some of these agencies are just so compromised politically.
[01:43:41] And there's a real issue here about accountability. The media and the role that they played in all of this because there was absolutely a massive media circus was generated around this, and it did not help, and it really fueled us versus them. Suspicions, an unhealthy pressure on this whole situation, narrative driven stuff. It just none of this was good at all.
[01:44:08] The evils of utilitarianism is another important lesson that need to be learned from all of this. The initial reason for the raid, ultimately a big factor, was budgetary concerns, the utility of conducting this raid and filming it and the PR glory and how that would help them on a budgetary level. And then at the end, the economic specter returns again in the final document, arguing for that final assault on Mount carMORE on the 19 April. They are explicit when they're talking to the Attorney General, Janet Reno. This is costing us this many dollars every single day. This siege is expensive and we need to stop spending money.
[01:44:59] It's about utility.
[01:45:01] There is a consequentialist utilitarian argument being made here. If we assault this building, we'll get a good financial outcome. That's the argument that's being made, and you see the evil of this and how it all plays out. There is also a lesson to be learned about the dangers of the state escalating tensions with overly vigorous policing and a lack of basic engagement with other groups. And you know what I think of when I think of Waco? It's nowhere near as extreme, but I think of some of those same behaviors around the parliamentary protest and why people wonder why I'm so hot under the collar about some of this stuff. The fact that MPs didn't actually go and dialogue with people outside. And I'm watching this and I'm thinking, do they not realize the refusing to dialogue is actually not helping? It's just making things worse. And it actually just fuels the very things that you claim you don't want happening in your country.
[01:45:57] Because another lesson in all of this is the risk of creating extremist outcomes through demonization and alienation. And that's what we saw, again, parliamentary protest, the river of filth speech from Michael Wood and all of the other stuff, the media and politicians, their refusal to engage, the name calling, the insults, the demonization, the alienation of an entire group of people. This stuff is madness. And you see in Waco how that kind of stuff can end very, very, very badly. Dialogue would have made all the difference in the world here. Genuine dialogue would have made all the difference in the world. It's just astounding when Jeff Gunn in his book, talks about the final hours, sort of the final day sorry, leading up to that final assault, where they are hanging banners because they've got no other way to communicate now with the outside world. The FBI cut their power off, by the way, inside the building. It's not flash. They're not living it up large inside this building. They've got no proper sewage facilities. So they're basically excrementing into buckets excrementing, I should say excreting, rather sorry, into buckets and things like that. And then they're putting them in this dumping them in this room. I think it had been an old gym or something, and it was just not flash. The power has been cut off. They allow them to turn it on once a day to watch the news and then they cut it off again. And so they're communicating by hanging bedsheets out the windows with painted messages on them. And one of these bedsheets they hang out is, we'll be coming out soon. And they talk about, I think they mentioned about how we'll have a beer with you.
[01:47:40] You can see that contrasted with the diabolic and demonic evil that happened on the final day when all of these women and children were killed.
[01:47:49] It is just awful, absolutely awful.
[01:47:57] The dialogue would have made all the difference in the world, the turning down of the temperature.
[01:48:03] What was missing here, ultimately, was virtue. And this is why I talk a lot about virtue. Virtue really matters. It's not a lofty sort of idea about morality that's detached. It's not a hyper spiritualized thing. Virtue is a very practical, natural law thing that changes the world in very tangible ways. These are very practical things, the virtues, and when they are practiced, we do flourish and communities flourish. So if the virtue of prudence had been applied here, the virtue of temperance, the virtue of patience, all of these things would have helped. All of these things would have helped. But they're all missing. And the outcome was truly diabolical. 30 years ago today, 76 men, women and children burnt to death, shot asphyxiated crushed in a federal assault on a religious commune called Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas.
[01:49:06] A truly, truly tragic and evil outcome. And regardless of the evils of David Quresh and the madness of what was going on inside those walls in the lead up, the response was not good. And we need to always, I think, be aware of this incident and to learn from it because the lessons were so stark. And particularly when, two years later, Timothy McVeigh did what he did. The warnings are so very stark about how a lack of prudence, a lack of temperance, a lack of patience, a lack of basic virtue not only can cause bad things to happen, but the echoes and the ripples of those things can cause other very evil things to happen as well. Now, Timothy McVeigh, what he did was evil and he should be judged accordingly and held accountable. And he was held accountable, obviously, by the law for that. So there's no excusing that behaviour. But the spark is lit which creates the tinder box that leads up to that situation. That's the problem. And that's why this stuff really matters. And that's why the governance of society really matters. And that's why when I see people like Sanjana Hatotua becoming more and more hysterical from the Disinformation Project and the claims that he is making about our country and our society. This is like someone piling on the fuel and the fire and it's just waiting for a very dark, evil spark to light the whole thing up. It is not good. Sanjano Hatotua warning New Zealand about the dangers to our democracy and our society while using words like or claims like the levels of hate against the trans community I've seen in the last couple of weeks have become genocidal.
[01:50:48] What does that even mean? And why does a supposedly serious academic think that it would be prudent to be even using that word? Talk about throwing a match into a tinder box.
[01:51:00] There is no genocide going on here. That's a lie. I'm not even sure what genocidal amounts of online hatred means. You mean the words are genocidal? That's not even possible. It's not a real thing.
[01:51:12] But that word is incendiary. There's hysteria that's being pumped out here that is very, very dangerous and it's not good. And this is why dialogue matters so much and we should fight so hard for it. So on this day, as we've discussed, and we remember these evil events, let's remember to do the things that matter, to actually build a culture of goodness, of truth and beauty, a culture where human flourishing is protected as best we possibly can. You can't build the utopia, but we can protect these things. And it needs to start with each of us and our interactions with the world around us. Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I will see you next time on the dispatchers.
[01:52:55] Sam. Sam. Sam. Ram. Sam.
