Waco: American Apocalypse (2023) s01e03 Episode Script
Fire
1
My trigger broke
just under two pounds of pressure.
Sneeze and it goes off.
[dramatic music playing]
[Chris] If I pull the trigger,
David Koresh is dead.
Almost zero margin for error.
No question what was gonna happen.
And the entire scene is set.
It's there. Crosshair's on his nose,
and I think to myself,
"If I shoot him here, now, it's over."
"They all come out."
There's this weird thing in my brain
that says it is the right thing to do.
I'll go to jail for the rest of my life,
but I can save 90 human beings
in this moment.
Should I have shot him? No.
Did I shoot him? No.
Do I think about it a lot?
Oh hell, yeah, I do.
- [sheriff 1] Let's go, guys.
- Get out of the way.
Back it up! Off the roadway!
Get off the roadway.
[sheriff 2] Come on! Make a hole.
- [sheriff 3] Off the pavement. Other side.
- [reporter 1] Why did you?
Let me just say this one time.
I'm not gonna take any questions.
I'm I'm only here because David Koresh's
mother has asked me to be here.
Lawyers have a reputation
for being ambulance chasers. [chuckles]
And here it was more like, uh,
tank chasers.
[reporter 2] Mr. DeGuerin, you gonna
file anything in federal court today?
[DeGuerin] I got a call from
David Koresh's mother, Bonnie Haldeman.
She knew that her son needed a lawyer,
but she didn't know what to do.
Dick DeGuerin is one of the best criminal
defense lawyers in the state of Texas.
I mean, he's legendary.
Just a damn good lawyer.
[DeGuerin] Nobody was allowed
at the checkpoint except FBI,
and I was the first person
to be allowed there.
Later, I got a call from Jamar,
and he said, "We think that
you have parallel interests to ours,
and we think we can
put you in contact with Koresh."
I said, "Can I talk to him now?"
He said, "Yeah, we can make that happen."
So, a few minutes passes,
and they have Koresh on the line,
and they say,
"Okay, we're gonna put him on the line."
"We're gonna get off the line.
We're not gonna listen in."
"It's just private
between you and Koresh."
- [DeGuerin] All right. David?
- [Koresh] I'm here.
This is Dick DeGuerin.
I'm a lawyer in Houston.
I don't know what you know about me,
but, uh, your mother, Bonnie Haldeman,
called me and asked me to help you.
[Koresh] They're still on the line.
I can hear them.
[DeGuerin] Yeah.
I didn't know what to expect
because all I'd heard was from Bonnie,
uh, who said that
he's sincere in his beliefs.
But also what the FBI was putting out,
that he was the devil incarnate.
[Koresh] It's a bizarre situation.
It's, you know,
something that
it should've never happened.
Like I keep trying to tell them,
if they wanted to pick me up,
they had every opportunity in the world.
They didn't have to come out here
and do what they did.
- And, you know, they messed up bad.
- [DeGuerin] Mm-hmm.
[Koresh] You know
[DeGuerin]
They'll try to cover their asses.
[Koresh] They are gonna
give me the time to recuperate,
or they're gonna kill me.
[DeGuerin] He sounded reasonable
and, uh, had a real appreciation
for the situation that he was in.
If I could convince him
that he had a chance
of defeating the case,
then he would come out,
we'd go into court, and we'd have a trial.
I'm thinking we're gonna negotiate a deal.
We're all gonna come out.
It felt like the end of one chapter
and the beginning of another, somehow.
I almost felt like the tide had turned
and maybe they were
actually thinking of coming out.
Yes, ma'am?
How are you viewing this telephone contact
between DeGuerin and Koresh,
when it happens?
Is this a positive sign now
that perhaps things are a little closer
to a peaceful resolution?
Are we hopeful?
Obviously, we are.
We believe it was necessary
at this point in time
to bring in a third party intermediary.
Dick DeGuerin, he's been hired,
or in any case contacted,
and has agreed to represent David
in this situation.
Yeah. You know,
I can see this is working very, very well.
This will go very well and very smoothly.
While we were very optimistic
with our discussions with Steve today,
we all have to bear in mind that
David has always made the decisions.
More and more, I really think that you
and I are moving in the right direction.
I really feel more positive now
than I ever have.
What happens
if Mr. DeGuerin is not successful?
Right. If he's not successful,
we will have to go back, reorganize,
and restart the process all over again.
[ominous music playing]
[line ringing]
- [Steve] Hello?
- Steve.
- [Steve] John.
- How are you?
[Steve] Not bad. How are you?
[John] Doin' okay.
We're ready to get going today, huh?
[Steve] Today, in fact,
I think you're pretty quick.
Let I believe there's one or two
coming out right away.
[John] Getting asked here
some questions from the boss
on how many we should expect,
just for planning purposes.
[Bob] That day,
probably up to two dozen more people
were gonna come out, or more.
[John] 'Cause it's critical
that we keep in contact today.
- [Steve] Right.
- Especially today. Okay?
The biggest, most incredible day of Waco
was March 21st.
[reporter 3] Two older women and a man
climbed aboard a Bradley
for their ride to the outside world.
Two other women left earlier in the day,
American Rita Riddle,
and 67-year-old Gladys Ottman of Canada.
This is an indication
of our strategy working.
This is like
we just hit the fucking lottery.
This is the logjam breaking up.
- [tank whirring loudly]
- [metal crunching]
[Gary] Immediately after,
without consultation,
HRT crushed Koresh's
antique Ford Ranchero.
It's a fuck you.
That's exactly what it is.
And it's done in a very in-your-face way.
What rationale are we using
to crush these cars?
And why are we doing it now?
I remember watching a tank
run over our cars and crush it to nothing.
We thought that was incredibly outlandish.
They were destroying
our personal private property.
[Davidian woman 1] Watch them!
They're destroying our place.
They're doing the green truck now.
The green van.
[Davidian man 1] How can they?
That's evidence.
Look at all the bullet holes in that.
[Bob] That was one
of the hardest days for me,
because we really had a promise
that they were coming out.
[Koresh] We had something worked out.
[negotiator 1] Yep.
[Koresh] You and I did.
And it was working.
The boys on your side stopped it.
[negotiator 1] We can work it out.
[Koresh] You can't do anything.
- You've already proven that.
- [negotiator 1] Well
[Koresh] You don't have no charge
of your commanders.
[Gary] And so, when we try
to separate ourselves as negotiators
from the tactical team's activities,
the Davidians say,
"Well, why should we even talk to you?"
"You don't control those guys."
"You don't have any power,
don't have authority or juice."
[Steve] David has been getting adamant
about bypassing you negotiators
if you have no influence
or input in the first place.
What's the sense in it?
You can say something with your mouth,
but people see the actions loud and clear.
So, I went to Jeff Jamar,
who's the on-scene commander,
the ultimate decision-maker.
I said, "Boss, we just
got seven people out,"
and he said, "That's not enough.
They're not moving quick enough."
The FBI was spending
over a million dollars a day.
Enormous media presence.
So, all these pressures were on Jeff Jamar
to to get this thing over with.
So, the FBI,
they were gonna do something else
to ratchet up the pressure
and punish them.
And we could expect
that something stupid was gonna happen.
[unsettling music playing]
[HRT agent 1 over speakers] Okay, we'll
give you something new to listen to,
and sweet dreams. Bye-bye.
[jarring sounds playing over speakers]
We have always taught against the use
of agitation deprivation techniques.
They only thwart relationship-building.
The HRT decided unilaterally
to use the speakers to play sound effects.
Nancy Sinatra,
"These Boots Are Made for Walkin',"
they played that song
over and over for like 24 hours.
And then a rabbit being slaughtered,
and a jet engine taking off,
and a door slamming shut,
and somebody speaking Latin backwards.
And then they played "phone off the hook"
for about two days straight.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.
At 130 decibels, from loudspeakers
that were ten feet from my head.
[obnoxious singing coming from speakers]
[Koresh] You know, the generals
are serenading us, I believe.
[Dolan] The generals are serenading you?
[Koresh] Yeah, they're doing
their own personal announcements now,
of all their strange and unique sounds.
[animal screeching over speakers]
There has been some suggestion that this
Some of the tactics you're using now
is having a negative psychological effect
on some children.
How much of a concern is that of yours?
We believe the conditions in there
are greatly deteriorating.
I can't believe that a father would
want his children to go through that.
You're saying you've got a bunch of
religious fanatics living in a building,
who are unstable,
and you're gonna try to
make them more unstable,
and you think that's gonna be a tactic
that's gonna work? That's insane.
People assumed this was
surely a negotiation tactic.
It wasn't. [chuckles]
We were dead set against it.
And this stuff
was driving us almost to madness.
As a negotiator, I know
that's what we call the paradox of power.
The harder you push,
the more likely it is to get resistance.
And about this time,
I had been scheduled to go overseas
on a training mission to the Middle East.
And I think they used that.
"Well, you gotta go on this.
It's very important."
So, they replaced me with someone else,
and, um, I left on the 25th,
and not a single other person came out.
There were certainly mixed messages
that were coming out of the FBI,
but I basically told Jamar and Ricks that,
"You want this to end
without any further violence."
"I want a client in court."
And the only way to do that
is for me to get into the compound
and have private conversations
with my client.
They seemed reluctant.
But they said, "All right."
The FBI commander would say later
that nobody in law enforcement
thought this was a good idea.
The ATF was outraged.
"You're going to let this killer criminal
defense attorney into the crime scene?"
I was completely baffled by that.
It had nothing to do
with David Koresh's legal rights.
It had to do with the decision
to introduce a third party
to a hostage situation.
[Thibodeau] So, when Dick DeGuerin
came in, I was very happy about it.
That's a huge amount of hope.
Our rights are being violated daily here.
Thank God someone sees this
for what it is.
[producer] How big of a deal was it,
Dick DeGuerin going in?
- Do you remember?
- Oh, it was massive. It was the deal.
Nobody was allowed
to go anywhere near Mount Carmel
because the feds had everybody believing
that they would be shot on sight.
[unsettling music playing]
[DeGuerin] That morning,
I got inside one of the tanks.
And we fishtailed
all the way up to the compound.
And as we got out,
I see the Hostage Rescue
wearing combat gear and bulletproof vests.
And they asked me,
"Do you want some body armor?"
And I said, "No. I'm not afraid of them,
but I want to make sure the snipers
that you have out here know who I am
and they're not gonna shoot me."
As I walked the next hundred yards
up to the front door,
my boots started crunching
on hundreds of expended shells.
When I went to knock,
there was bullet holes in the door
from the agents shooting in.
The first thing that I noticed when
I walked in the front door was the smell.
It was sewage and garlic.
They were treating the wounds
that David had,
and the others, with holistic methods.
And we had a meeting room
that couldn't be seen from outside,
and I told David
I wanted to get him in court
so I could do my work.
And basically what he said
was he had been told by God
that it was his mission to write his
interpretation of the Book of Revelation.
He said, "I'm on my own schedule,
and I'll come out
when it's time for me to come out."
I just said,
"You've gotta take my advice."
"If you don't take my advice,
there's no reason
for me to be your lawyer."
Have you set any kind of a time limit,
or do you even see,
um, any sort of end to this?
Mr. DeGuerin has indicated
he doesn't want it to go on forever.
People had begun to make rueful jokes
that here we are in Groundhog Day.
[reporter 3] As the standoff
heads into its eighth week,
people are asking, "How long can it last?"
And, "How much will it cost?"
About the only ones not losing patience
are the fanatics, zealots,
and the merely curious
who converged on Waco.
This incident got the attention
of gun rights people,
Second Amendment people,
what we would now consider militia people.
Just, uh, just arrived today.
[Lee] Tim McVeigh showed up,
was sitting on the hood of his car
selling anti-government bumper stickers.
[reporter 3] Agents have ringed
the compound with razor wire,
and cult leader David Koresh's attorney
is back in case surrender is near.
Basically he says that, uh, as soon
as the manuscript is delivered to me,
that he will come out
and stand before, um, you and the courts
so his story can be told.
So, David Koresh
has now come up with a solution
that will end all of this.
If he can just write his own thesis.
And once that's done,
his work will be complete
and he will come out.
Everybody else will come out with him.
Before we get too excited about this,
I think it's important to remind everyone
that we've had similar promises
in the past.
Ricks said that
it was just another stalling tactic,
and I was trying to say
that I think that this is real,
and that he'll really come out.
NBC's Jim Cummins
has been following this story for us,
and tonight he has word Koresh is again
talking about an end to the standoff.
What's the latest there, Jim?
That's right, Tom.
Koresh has promised to end the standoff
once he's had time to write a manuscript
In short, it seems like a con game again.
We're highly skeptical. So, we're asking,
"Okay. Where are we in the process?"
Steve Schneider,
who's with him constantly:
"I don't know."
[negotiator 2] Well, can you give me
any kind of timeframe at all?
[Steve] Considering the Bradleys
running into the building,
and all the
[recorded conversation continues]
- [Steve] He's doing it. If it takes
- [negotiator 2] Steve, listen.
At this point, our belief was that
negotiations had not worked
and the only way that we could end this
was through some tactical intervention.
We were not going to do an assault
because then we would
lose a lot of FBI agents.
So, the other solution
was throwing tear gas.
At some point in that time,
Dick Rogers had flown to Washington
to meet with Janet Reno.
She had just been sworn in
as Attorney General.
And the FBI had a case file
with affidavits from former Davidians
talking about child abuse.
And they were telling Reno
that it was still ongoing.
And when the FBI went to Janet Reno
to get permission to use tear gas,
they never showed her the video
that Koresh sent out to the FBI.
See this here?
Okay, this is my family.
It may not be like your family.
- Right, Joseph?
- Yeah.
[Koresh] Tell them, you know?
Look in that camera
and tell them what you think about it.
Who's treated you good?
David.
The FBI leadership in Waco recognized that
these videos made Koresh look pretty good.
And you would think that
she would have wanted to see the video
and wanted to know of its existence.
I don't believe it's true
that anybody manipulated Janet Reno
into making a decision.
I think she was given the facts
about David Koresh,
what he had done in the past,
and this was abhorrent to her,
that that a grown man would have been
having sex with underage children.
And I basically don't have
anything really to say, except
you know, God grant us all time.
[ominous music playing]
[phone line ringing]
[recorded conversation playing]
- [line clicks]
- [dial tone]
[negotiator 2 speaking]
[Steve] Everybody, grab your masks.
Everybody, grab your masks.
[Thibodeau] Steve started saying,
"Get your gas masks."
"They're gonna come on in."
The plan was to penetrate the building,
insert gas,
and issue a command for people
inside the compound to surrender.
So, then they divided up all the snipers
into different firing ports,
so that we could cover individual sectors.
Because there was a very strong sentiment
that they would fight their way out.
- [HRT agent 2] Firing her up!
- [HRT agent 3] Firing her up.
[tank engine rumbling]
[Chris] And then you hear
the diesel engines firing up,
and you hear that cranking,
"clanketing" sound of tracked vehicles.
They issued the command over the radio
to deploy the gas,
and away we went.
[pensive music playing]
- [HRT agent 4] We still up on the PA?
- [HRT agent 5] Not now.
- [HRT agent 4] I want up.
- [HRT agent 5] Okay.
- [HRT agent 4] Loud. Loud.
- [HRT agent 5] Go ahead, you're loud.
[Thibodeau] And then
the speaker system came on,
saying, "The siege is over.
You're all under arrest."
[HRT agent 4, on speaker] We are in
the process of placing tear gas
into the building.
This is not an assault.
Do not, under any circumstances,
discharge your weapons.
If you fire, fire will be returned.
Come out of the compound
with your hands up, carrying nothing.
[building crumbling]
[HRT agent 4] Do not shoot.
This is not an assault.
They're telling you
this is not an assault,
that they're not gonna enter the building,
and there's a tank in the building.
Then we start to hear the popping sounds
from 40mm Ferret rounds
shooting into the building.
[explosions]
[Davidian man 2] What's that?
[Davidian woman 2] Tear gas.
[Davidian man 2] But what's that noise?
[Davidians] Tear gas!
At that point, they got buckets of water
and they were putting face cloths
over the children.
It's not every day you see
a tank come through your front door,
and it's an unbelievable experience.
[Bob] Soon as we throw
the first tear gas canister,
we were fired on.
We probably had a thousand rounds or more
that was fired at us during that morning.
We never fired a single round back.
On the morning of the 19th,
the phone rang. It was my wife.
She said, "Turn on the television."
And I saw the tanks and the tear gas.
And I immediately
got Ricks on the telephone.
I said, "I'll come right down there.
I'll go back in."
"I'll tell him they've gotta come out now.
This is the end."
And he said, "We don't need you anymore."
Reportedly, this morning,
the FBI called the compound and said,
"Surrender or be prepared to gas."
The Davidians reportedly hung up on them.
We've been told that the FBI
has enough gas to gas them for 48 hours,
and we also believe that
they expect them to come out before noon.
[Balenda] We wake up.
We're in our hotel rooms.
Then there's this knock on the doors,
the press telling us it started.
The tanks are demolishing the buildings.
[reporter 4] This is live camerawork.
They are deliberately using the boom,
the tow-truck end, if you will,
to back into and ram the building.
You can see the boom laying out there.
[reporter 5] They've made a massive hole
in the side of that building.
He's taking the roof off of it.
[Bob] There's this bunker area
inside the compound.
And I hear on the radio transmission
that they believe many of the Davidians
have huddled up in there
and that the tear gas is having no effect,
and they're asking for permission
to go up and knock the front door down
and make a pathway to insert tear gas
into that inner structure.
[crashing]
[Thibodeau] And when the tanks
started coming through the front door,
I felt doomed at that point.
I knew that we were going to die.
[reporter 6] Obviously, we are watching
a very thoroughly orchestrated
FBI assault on that building,
trying to bring that building down
to the point where those who are in it
can come out.
[tense music playing]
The news briefing
is just about getting underway.
Bob Ricks from the FBI
is now approaching the podium.
Then I was told, "Around 10:30,
you have to go do a press conference."
[Lee] At the news conference that morning,
there was a feeling
that this thing was finally gonna end
and these people were gonna come out.
We have put, uh, tear gas
into the watchtower.
We have also put tear gas into what is
commonly believed to be Koresh's room.
You had tremendous winds
that were blowing today,
which has the effect
of cleaning out the compound,
but we will continue
to apply the pressure.
We'll try to make their living environment
as uncomfortable as possible.
At this point, we're not negotiating.
We're saying, "Come out.
Come out with your hands up."
"This matter is over."
At some point through a sniper scope,
I see flames.
[pensive music playing]
And my first reaction is, "Holy shit."
[McLemore] The producer says in my ear,
"It's on fire."
I turned around, and I looked.
"Oh my God."
The whole compound
had started to catch fire.
[McLemore in 1993]
They are coming out the window.
You can see them. Lots of smoke.
This, uh, should be
a definite determining factor.
You should see some people
come out of this building.
[Kathy] I was in prison in a medical wing,
and the nurse came to my door
and told me to turn my television on.
I didn't know about the gassing.
I didn't know
this had been going on since 6 a.m.
All I knew is the building's on fire.
[Balenda] We're taking it all in,
what our eyes are seeing.
What our brains are telling us.
"Our kids are gonna die.
Our kids are gonna die."
Someone yelled, "There's fire up here!"
And I'm like, "Okay, what does that mean?"
Some people are saying,
"Should we go out?"
And I'm like, "I think they're gonna
shoot us if we go out there."
[HRT agent 6, on speaker] You people
on the roof at the second story,
jump from that window.
In order to save yourself,
you must jump from the roof.
[McLemore] Okay, we got a man on the roof
coming out, as you can see.
This should be a very determining factor.
People should be coming out.
You can see it spreading
through the entire building.
It's coming out the watchtower.
[reporter 7] It looks like Now we have
a very large-scale fire breaking out
on what must be the south side,
right near the front side
of this building.
And then I see a second site of flames,
and it's the opposite direction
of the wind.
And I just had this moment in my mind,
and I thought,
"They're lighting the place on fire."
[Bob] The FLIR video
showed that the fires
started simultaneously
at three separate locations,
and it had nothing to do
with anything that we we had done.
The fires were started by the Davidians.
I didn't see anyone start a fire.
No one talked about it.
So, I don't believe
that people inside started the fire.
I never have. I've never believed that.
- [producer] What's your response to that?
- Yeah. David Thibodeau is a liar.
Uh, he knows the truth.
Recordings indicated that the fires
were started by the Davidians.
[Koresh] What about the fuel?
[Davidian man 3] There were two cans here.
I poured some of one
and the rest was taken.
[Koresh] We should have got
more hay in here.
I immediately picked up the phone
and called a source I knew
that was in the federal command post,
and just started screaming at him.
"What the fuck are y'all doing?
What the hell? What is this?"
"The place is on fire."
And he was screaming back at me.
"I don't know what the fuck is going on."
"That's not us. We're not doing it."
And there isn't a bloody thing
any of us can do
but sit there while this horrible thing
is happening around us.
[McLemore] You can see the black smoke
from behind us. This is horrible.
We have heard no running water
inside the compound,
so there's no way
for them to put this out.
And I kept waiting. I just knew that
people were going to come flooding out.
I remember hearing myself say,
out loud, "Well, they gotta come out now."
[reporter 8] We have cameras
on several sides,
and we see no people at this time
making any move
to come out of the compound.
The tanks had done so much destruction,
and there was so much debris,
you could not
have gotten down the hallway.
So, I figured, okay,
I'm gonna go up the back stairs
that leads to David Koresh's room.
And I went up the stairs,
and then this wall of flames
shot from the left to the right,
and it was huge. It was a fireball.
It just went [whooshes]
It was incredibly loud.
And it just went "whoosh"
all the way down the hall.
[reporter 9] Still no sign
of anyone coming out, Bonnie.
[McLemore] The entire complex
is fully engulfed now.
Uh, flames coming out both sides.
[Balenda] The news is on.
I go over to Isabel Andrade's hotel room.
Isabel has two daughters
and a granddaughter inside Mount Carmel.
We're sitting there together,
and we're watching
this horrible thing unfold,
and I just buried my head
in a towel on the wall,
and I just screamed.
We're all crying at this point.
We know that the worst thing
that could possibly happen is happening.
This is it, and there's no turning back.
[HRT agent 6, on speaker]
Exit the compound as soon as you can.
[Thibodeau] Wayne Martin,
he had his gas mask on,
and as the smoke's coming in,
he was leaning against the wall,
and he took his gas mask off,
and the smoke started to envelop him.
And I watched him slide down the wall
into the crouching position.
And by the time he got to the bottom,
I could no longer see him
because of the smoke.
And the wall was catching fire
at this point.
I could hear my hair crackle,
and I could feel a little singeing here.
People are frantic.
Some people have
taken their gas masks off.
[Davidian man 4] Go the other way!
[Davidian woman 3]
There's too many people the other way!
[Thibodeau] So, I looked out.
There was a window,
and there was a big hole there.
And I saw Derek Lovelock
and Jaime Castillo exit the hole,
and I just ran behind them,
and I exited the hole after them.
I didn't think anyone
was gonna make it out after me.
[flames roaring]
[Thibodeau]
They're walking with their hands up,
and I'm walking behind them
with my hands up,
and I got about halfway out between
the building and the Red Cross sign,
and I turned around to see
the building completely engulfed in flame.
And that black, black chemical smoke
coming up off the building.
And then an explosion and this fireball.
[explosions]
[HRT agent 6, on speaker] Proceed to
a position of safety away from the fire.
Place your hands in the air.
The agents will come to you.
[Thibodeau] Then these two FBI guys,
they put these plastic straps
behind our back.
The next thing that happens,
they pick us up and they put us in a tank,
and they handed us over to the ATF.
[somber music playing]
[Chris] And we waited
for the wave of bodies coming running out
and they didn't.
There was nothing on the radio
that they were coming out the front.
I got up out of my sniper position,
and I walked out through Sierra Two,
and I was standing there,
shoulder-to-shoulder
with this other guy on my team.
And we're looking at the building,
which is fully engulfed in flames.
I mean, it's a it's an inferno.
All of a sudden, a rifle round
goes right between our heads.
Somebody in that building,
as it was burning to the ground,
fully engulfed in flames,
stayed behind a sniper rifle
to the bitter end,
and their last act on Earth
was to try to shoot me in the head.
That's commitment.
I was probably eight,
ten miles from Mount Carmel,
but I got out there as fast as I could.
And by the time I got out there,
the place had totally been engulfed
and was almost gone.
Everybody was just absolutely stunned.
[McLemore] And still, we have not seen any
significant amount of people come out.
[reporter 9] Can you at least hear
any sirens from fire trucks?
[McLemore]
We haven't heard a thing, Gordon.
I I couldn't understand.
Where are the fire trucks?
And later we were told, "Oh,
they couldn't let the fire trucks in,"
because they were afraid of
all the weapons that were gonna blow up.
[McLemore in 1993] Looks like the fire
has completely destroyed the top floor
and is well on the way
Here comes someone else
moving among the rubble.
[Chris] An FBI Hostage Rescue Team member
saw a woman.
She walked to the edge of the building.
He ran across open terrain
to the front of the building
to try to grab this woman and save her.
And he kept screaming at her,
"Where are the kids? Where are the kids?"
And she just stared him in the eye
and didn't say a thing.
And I just could not believe that
they're all gonna die.
They're all gonna die.
There's nobody coming out.
[somber music continues]
[Heather] We were at
the Children's Home in Waco.
[voice breaking] And I see Mount Carmel.
And I remember the women
in the kitchen saying
that our parents must have not loved us.
And then thinking
my dad loves me, our parents, all of us.
Then, when it burnt down and you could see
the other side and there were no people
Oh man.
[clicks tongue]
[sirens blaring]
[reporter 8] This looks like probably
the fire chief and fire marshals.
And we have, at this point,
two fire engines headed by.
[sirens continue blaring]
I've stopped breathing.
And then I get a familiar voice
on the television set.
Nine cult members survived the blaze,
and they are 24-year-old Jaime Castillo,
24-year-old David Thibodeau
He is the son, by the way,
of Brenda Ganem,
who had kept an almost constant vigil here
since the standoff began.
That's my kid.
He's alive.
I'm so incredibly happy,
and my friend Isabel turns to me,
and she says,
"I am so glad you got your son."
"Balenda, I'm so glad
that you got your son."
She knows her children are dead.
Chanel, look at your
Maybe your grandma might see this film.
Say hello.
[Balenda] We were just weeping.
And I happened to be in the proximity
of a woman who can turn and say to me,
"I'm so happy you have your child."
[dispatch] And we know that
you've rolled units out there,
but they're in dire need of water.
Would you have
any additional pumper vehicles?
[sirens blaring]
[dispatch] And you'll encounter
the first unit at DPS checkpoint,
and they will bring you through.
[somber music continues]
[McLemore in 1993] Horrible to imagine
that that many people
would stay inside a burning building
and follow someone to their grave.
This was a tragedy that the entire country
got to watch in real time.
[Chris] I got up out of Sierra Two,
walked that 307 yards
to the burning pile of embers,
and it was a rain of paper
that had burned,
and that had floated up
into the thermals of the heat,
and there were individual pages of Bibles.
It was raining Bible pages
into these embers,
and the embers were 1.6 million rounds
of rifle ammo cooking off.
So, it's ammo popping up
everywhere you go,
and skulls everywhere,
and half-burned bodies.
I mean, it was apocalyptic carnage.
I don't know what hell looks like, but
uh
maybe that.
[haunting music playing]
I have a statement I would like to read.
On February the 28th,
four federal agents
were killed in the line of duty
trying to enforce the law
against the Branch Davidian compound,
which had illegally stockpiled weaponry
and ammunition
and placed innocent children at risk.
Because the BATF operation
had failed to meet its objective,
a 51-day standoff ensued.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
then made every reasonable effort
to bring this perilous situation to an end
without bloodshed
and further loss of life.
The Bureau's efforts
were ultimately unavailing
because the individual with whom
they were dealing, David Koresh,
was dangerous, irrational,
and probably insane.
I made the decision. I'm accountable.
The buck stops with me.
There is no doubt that the ATF and FBI
messed up and messed up badly at Waco.
This is a profound disgrace
to law enforcement
in the United States of America.
More than 90 people,
including four law enforcement officers
and 22 children,
died as a direct result or indirect result
of federal government action.
Everyone who touched the ball fumbled it.
[explosion]
[indistinct screaming and shouting]
[Lee] Several years after,
when the Oklahoma City Bombing happened,
somebody on the radio
mentioned something about the date.
It was April 19th.
And I had to stop the car
and throw up in a ditch,
because [snaps fingers]
there is a direct line
from Waco to Oklahoma City.
Bob Ricks,
the FBI's main spokesman in Waco,
was also the FBI Special Agent in Charge
of the Oklahoma City office.
Tim McVeigh, feeling compelled to take
revenge because of what happened in Waco.
I hate that day for many reasons.
[McLemore] After that day,
it's hard to see that kind of stuff
and say,
"Wow, how could this happen?"
"How could a omnipotent God
let something like this happen?"
And you have to step back and say,
"Well, it's not God that let it happen.
It's man made it happen."
[Gary] David Koresh
is ultimately responsible,
but that doesn't mean we didn't
make mistakes as an organization.
And we did.
And in Waco,
we did not save every life we could.
Therefore, in my mind, it's a failure.
[Bob] The hostages were not
those Davidians in there.
The hostage in this whole process
was the FBI.
We had to respond
to the demands of David Koresh,
and we were like actors in his play.
He had already written the script.
We tried to change the script.
We tried to make it
have a different ending.
In the final analysis,
everything rested under
the control of David Koresh.
David Koresh learned how to abuse power,
and he did.
The federal government in Waco, Texas,
knew how to abuse power, and they did.
And the outcome?
Some of our ugliest history.
The people that died at Mount Carmel
were martyrs.
They literally died for their faith.
That's how I look at it.
That's how they looked at it.
That was their home.
That was their sacred land.
And they were attacked.
And they fought those forces,
and they held out for 51 days.
They died for God.
[Kathy] Watching everybody I know die is
painful, but acceptable.
Because they did it for a reason.
They did it for their own glory,
worship, and
praise of their God.
[Jim, crying] We tried everything,
but we could not overcome
the hold he had on their minds.
You could not convince them to come out,
because that would be repudiation
of the person they believed was God.
[Bill] I think of Waco every day.
Every day for 30 years.
For Koresh
you're the most worthless individual
on this Earth, or you were,
that you would do that to people.
And I hope you're rotting in hell,
burning in hell.
'Cause that's what you deserve.
[DeGuerin] Wayne Martin kept his law books
in the building.
Of course, it burned down,
but one thing that didn't burn
was a page out of a law book
that he had on the Fourth Amendment.
And it's charred at the edges.
And the Fourth Amendment says
that all persons have the right to be free
from unreasonable search and seizure.
It survived the fire.
[haunting music continues]
[Chris] I wanted to find
some way to reconcile
that a cow field in central Texas
had become a fire
that killed 80 human beings
and went back to being a cow field.
And I wanted some kind of sense
of how the hell that could happen.
All I know
is violence appears out of nowhere,
destroys lives,
and drifts off to another scene.
And I I think I've just gotten over
trying to figure out why.
I feel guilty on
being alive.
All the pain that they went through
I can't imagine it,
but I think about it every day.
My whole family was murdered. [cries]
And they're all gone.
And I feel alone.
[haunting music continues]
[haunting music fades to silence]
[somber string music playing]
My trigger broke
just under two pounds of pressure.
Sneeze and it goes off.
[dramatic music playing]
[Chris] If I pull the trigger,
David Koresh is dead.
Almost zero margin for error.
No question what was gonna happen.
And the entire scene is set.
It's there. Crosshair's on his nose,
and I think to myself,
"If I shoot him here, now, it's over."
"They all come out."
There's this weird thing in my brain
that says it is the right thing to do.
I'll go to jail for the rest of my life,
but I can save 90 human beings
in this moment.
Should I have shot him? No.
Did I shoot him? No.
Do I think about it a lot?
Oh hell, yeah, I do.
- [sheriff 1] Let's go, guys.
- Get out of the way.
Back it up! Off the roadway!
Get off the roadway.
[sheriff 2] Come on! Make a hole.
- [sheriff 3] Off the pavement. Other side.
- [reporter 1] Why did you?
Let me just say this one time.
I'm not gonna take any questions.
I'm I'm only here because David Koresh's
mother has asked me to be here.
Lawyers have a reputation
for being ambulance chasers. [chuckles]
And here it was more like, uh,
tank chasers.
[reporter 2] Mr. DeGuerin, you gonna
file anything in federal court today?
[DeGuerin] I got a call from
David Koresh's mother, Bonnie Haldeman.
She knew that her son needed a lawyer,
but she didn't know what to do.
Dick DeGuerin is one of the best criminal
defense lawyers in the state of Texas.
I mean, he's legendary.
Just a damn good lawyer.
[DeGuerin] Nobody was allowed
at the checkpoint except FBI,
and I was the first person
to be allowed there.
Later, I got a call from Jamar,
and he said, "We think that
you have parallel interests to ours,
and we think we can
put you in contact with Koresh."
I said, "Can I talk to him now?"
He said, "Yeah, we can make that happen."
So, a few minutes passes,
and they have Koresh on the line,
and they say,
"Okay, we're gonna put him on the line."
"We're gonna get off the line.
We're not gonna listen in."
"It's just private
between you and Koresh."
- [DeGuerin] All right. David?
- [Koresh] I'm here.
This is Dick DeGuerin.
I'm a lawyer in Houston.
I don't know what you know about me,
but, uh, your mother, Bonnie Haldeman,
called me and asked me to help you.
[Koresh] They're still on the line.
I can hear them.
[DeGuerin] Yeah.
I didn't know what to expect
because all I'd heard was from Bonnie,
uh, who said that
he's sincere in his beliefs.
But also what the FBI was putting out,
that he was the devil incarnate.
[Koresh] It's a bizarre situation.
It's, you know,
something that
it should've never happened.
Like I keep trying to tell them,
if they wanted to pick me up,
they had every opportunity in the world.
They didn't have to come out here
and do what they did.
- And, you know, they messed up bad.
- [DeGuerin] Mm-hmm.
[Koresh] You know
[DeGuerin]
They'll try to cover their asses.
[Koresh] They are gonna
give me the time to recuperate,
or they're gonna kill me.
[DeGuerin] He sounded reasonable
and, uh, had a real appreciation
for the situation that he was in.
If I could convince him
that he had a chance
of defeating the case,
then he would come out,
we'd go into court, and we'd have a trial.
I'm thinking we're gonna negotiate a deal.
We're all gonna come out.
It felt like the end of one chapter
and the beginning of another, somehow.
I almost felt like the tide had turned
and maybe they were
actually thinking of coming out.
Yes, ma'am?
How are you viewing this telephone contact
between DeGuerin and Koresh,
when it happens?
Is this a positive sign now
that perhaps things are a little closer
to a peaceful resolution?
Are we hopeful?
Obviously, we are.
We believe it was necessary
at this point in time
to bring in a third party intermediary.
Dick DeGuerin, he's been hired,
or in any case contacted,
and has agreed to represent David
in this situation.
Yeah. You know,
I can see this is working very, very well.
This will go very well and very smoothly.
While we were very optimistic
with our discussions with Steve today,
we all have to bear in mind that
David has always made the decisions.
More and more, I really think that you
and I are moving in the right direction.
I really feel more positive now
than I ever have.
What happens
if Mr. DeGuerin is not successful?
Right. If he's not successful,
we will have to go back, reorganize,
and restart the process all over again.
[ominous music playing]
[line ringing]
- [Steve] Hello?
- Steve.
- [Steve] John.
- How are you?
[Steve] Not bad. How are you?
[John] Doin' okay.
We're ready to get going today, huh?
[Steve] Today, in fact,
I think you're pretty quick.
Let I believe there's one or two
coming out right away.
[John] Getting asked here
some questions from the boss
on how many we should expect,
just for planning purposes.
[Bob] That day,
probably up to two dozen more people
were gonna come out, or more.
[John] 'Cause it's critical
that we keep in contact today.
- [Steve] Right.
- Especially today. Okay?
The biggest, most incredible day of Waco
was March 21st.
[reporter 3] Two older women and a man
climbed aboard a Bradley
for their ride to the outside world.
Two other women left earlier in the day,
American Rita Riddle,
and 67-year-old Gladys Ottman of Canada.
This is an indication
of our strategy working.
This is like
we just hit the fucking lottery.
This is the logjam breaking up.
- [tank whirring loudly]
- [metal crunching]
[Gary] Immediately after,
without consultation,
HRT crushed Koresh's
antique Ford Ranchero.
It's a fuck you.
That's exactly what it is.
And it's done in a very in-your-face way.
What rationale are we using
to crush these cars?
And why are we doing it now?
I remember watching a tank
run over our cars and crush it to nothing.
We thought that was incredibly outlandish.
They were destroying
our personal private property.
[Davidian woman 1] Watch them!
They're destroying our place.
They're doing the green truck now.
The green van.
[Davidian man 1] How can they?
That's evidence.
Look at all the bullet holes in that.
[Bob] That was one
of the hardest days for me,
because we really had a promise
that they were coming out.
[Koresh] We had something worked out.
[negotiator 1] Yep.
[Koresh] You and I did.
And it was working.
The boys on your side stopped it.
[negotiator 1] We can work it out.
[Koresh] You can't do anything.
- You've already proven that.
- [negotiator 1] Well
[Koresh] You don't have no charge
of your commanders.
[Gary] And so, when we try
to separate ourselves as negotiators
from the tactical team's activities,
the Davidians say,
"Well, why should we even talk to you?"
"You don't control those guys."
"You don't have any power,
don't have authority or juice."
[Steve] David has been getting adamant
about bypassing you negotiators
if you have no influence
or input in the first place.
What's the sense in it?
You can say something with your mouth,
but people see the actions loud and clear.
So, I went to Jeff Jamar,
who's the on-scene commander,
the ultimate decision-maker.
I said, "Boss, we just
got seven people out,"
and he said, "That's not enough.
They're not moving quick enough."
The FBI was spending
over a million dollars a day.
Enormous media presence.
So, all these pressures were on Jeff Jamar
to to get this thing over with.
So, the FBI,
they were gonna do something else
to ratchet up the pressure
and punish them.
And we could expect
that something stupid was gonna happen.
[unsettling music playing]
[HRT agent 1 over speakers] Okay, we'll
give you something new to listen to,
and sweet dreams. Bye-bye.
[jarring sounds playing over speakers]
We have always taught against the use
of agitation deprivation techniques.
They only thwart relationship-building.
The HRT decided unilaterally
to use the speakers to play sound effects.
Nancy Sinatra,
"These Boots Are Made for Walkin',"
they played that song
over and over for like 24 hours.
And then a rabbit being slaughtered,
and a jet engine taking off,
and a door slamming shut,
and somebody speaking Latin backwards.
And then they played "phone off the hook"
for about two days straight.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.
At 130 decibels, from loudspeakers
that were ten feet from my head.
[obnoxious singing coming from speakers]
[Koresh] You know, the generals
are serenading us, I believe.
[Dolan] The generals are serenading you?
[Koresh] Yeah, they're doing
their own personal announcements now,
of all their strange and unique sounds.
[animal screeching over speakers]
There has been some suggestion that this
Some of the tactics you're using now
is having a negative psychological effect
on some children.
How much of a concern is that of yours?
We believe the conditions in there
are greatly deteriorating.
I can't believe that a father would
want his children to go through that.
You're saying you've got a bunch of
religious fanatics living in a building,
who are unstable,
and you're gonna try to
make them more unstable,
and you think that's gonna be a tactic
that's gonna work? That's insane.
People assumed this was
surely a negotiation tactic.
It wasn't. [chuckles]
We were dead set against it.
And this stuff
was driving us almost to madness.
As a negotiator, I know
that's what we call the paradox of power.
The harder you push,
the more likely it is to get resistance.
And about this time,
I had been scheduled to go overseas
on a training mission to the Middle East.
And I think they used that.
"Well, you gotta go on this.
It's very important."
So, they replaced me with someone else,
and, um, I left on the 25th,
and not a single other person came out.
There were certainly mixed messages
that were coming out of the FBI,
but I basically told Jamar and Ricks that,
"You want this to end
without any further violence."
"I want a client in court."
And the only way to do that
is for me to get into the compound
and have private conversations
with my client.
They seemed reluctant.
But they said, "All right."
The FBI commander would say later
that nobody in law enforcement
thought this was a good idea.
The ATF was outraged.
"You're going to let this killer criminal
defense attorney into the crime scene?"
I was completely baffled by that.
It had nothing to do
with David Koresh's legal rights.
It had to do with the decision
to introduce a third party
to a hostage situation.
[Thibodeau] So, when Dick DeGuerin
came in, I was very happy about it.
That's a huge amount of hope.
Our rights are being violated daily here.
Thank God someone sees this
for what it is.
[producer] How big of a deal was it,
Dick DeGuerin going in?
- Do you remember?
- Oh, it was massive. It was the deal.
Nobody was allowed
to go anywhere near Mount Carmel
because the feds had everybody believing
that they would be shot on sight.
[unsettling music playing]
[DeGuerin] That morning,
I got inside one of the tanks.
And we fishtailed
all the way up to the compound.
And as we got out,
I see the Hostage Rescue
wearing combat gear and bulletproof vests.
And they asked me,
"Do you want some body armor?"
And I said, "No. I'm not afraid of them,
but I want to make sure the snipers
that you have out here know who I am
and they're not gonna shoot me."
As I walked the next hundred yards
up to the front door,
my boots started crunching
on hundreds of expended shells.
When I went to knock,
there was bullet holes in the door
from the agents shooting in.
The first thing that I noticed when
I walked in the front door was the smell.
It was sewage and garlic.
They were treating the wounds
that David had,
and the others, with holistic methods.
And we had a meeting room
that couldn't be seen from outside,
and I told David
I wanted to get him in court
so I could do my work.
And basically what he said
was he had been told by God
that it was his mission to write his
interpretation of the Book of Revelation.
He said, "I'm on my own schedule,
and I'll come out
when it's time for me to come out."
I just said,
"You've gotta take my advice."
"If you don't take my advice,
there's no reason
for me to be your lawyer."
Have you set any kind of a time limit,
or do you even see,
um, any sort of end to this?
Mr. DeGuerin has indicated
he doesn't want it to go on forever.
People had begun to make rueful jokes
that here we are in Groundhog Day.
[reporter 3] As the standoff
heads into its eighth week,
people are asking, "How long can it last?"
And, "How much will it cost?"
About the only ones not losing patience
are the fanatics, zealots,
and the merely curious
who converged on Waco.
This incident got the attention
of gun rights people,
Second Amendment people,
what we would now consider militia people.
Just, uh, just arrived today.
[Lee] Tim McVeigh showed up,
was sitting on the hood of his car
selling anti-government bumper stickers.
[reporter 3] Agents have ringed
the compound with razor wire,
and cult leader David Koresh's attorney
is back in case surrender is near.
Basically he says that, uh, as soon
as the manuscript is delivered to me,
that he will come out
and stand before, um, you and the courts
so his story can be told.
So, David Koresh
has now come up with a solution
that will end all of this.
If he can just write his own thesis.
And once that's done,
his work will be complete
and he will come out.
Everybody else will come out with him.
Before we get too excited about this,
I think it's important to remind everyone
that we've had similar promises
in the past.
Ricks said that
it was just another stalling tactic,
and I was trying to say
that I think that this is real,
and that he'll really come out.
NBC's Jim Cummins
has been following this story for us,
and tonight he has word Koresh is again
talking about an end to the standoff.
What's the latest there, Jim?
That's right, Tom.
Koresh has promised to end the standoff
once he's had time to write a manuscript
In short, it seems like a con game again.
We're highly skeptical. So, we're asking,
"Okay. Where are we in the process?"
Steve Schneider,
who's with him constantly:
"I don't know."
[negotiator 2] Well, can you give me
any kind of timeframe at all?
[Steve] Considering the Bradleys
running into the building,
and all the
[recorded conversation continues]
- [Steve] He's doing it. If it takes
- [negotiator 2] Steve, listen.
At this point, our belief was that
negotiations had not worked
and the only way that we could end this
was through some tactical intervention.
We were not going to do an assault
because then we would
lose a lot of FBI agents.
So, the other solution
was throwing tear gas.
At some point in that time,
Dick Rogers had flown to Washington
to meet with Janet Reno.
She had just been sworn in
as Attorney General.
And the FBI had a case file
with affidavits from former Davidians
talking about child abuse.
And they were telling Reno
that it was still ongoing.
And when the FBI went to Janet Reno
to get permission to use tear gas,
they never showed her the video
that Koresh sent out to the FBI.
See this here?
Okay, this is my family.
It may not be like your family.
- Right, Joseph?
- Yeah.
[Koresh] Tell them, you know?
Look in that camera
and tell them what you think about it.
Who's treated you good?
David.
The FBI leadership in Waco recognized that
these videos made Koresh look pretty good.
And you would think that
she would have wanted to see the video
and wanted to know of its existence.
I don't believe it's true
that anybody manipulated Janet Reno
into making a decision.
I think she was given the facts
about David Koresh,
what he had done in the past,
and this was abhorrent to her,
that that a grown man would have been
having sex with underage children.
And I basically don't have
anything really to say, except
you know, God grant us all time.
[ominous music playing]
[phone line ringing]
[recorded conversation playing]
- [line clicks]
- [dial tone]
[negotiator 2 speaking]
[Steve] Everybody, grab your masks.
Everybody, grab your masks.
[Thibodeau] Steve started saying,
"Get your gas masks."
"They're gonna come on in."
The plan was to penetrate the building,
insert gas,
and issue a command for people
inside the compound to surrender.
So, then they divided up all the snipers
into different firing ports,
so that we could cover individual sectors.
Because there was a very strong sentiment
that they would fight their way out.
- [HRT agent 2] Firing her up!
- [HRT agent 3] Firing her up.
[tank engine rumbling]
[Chris] And then you hear
the diesel engines firing up,
and you hear that cranking,
"clanketing" sound of tracked vehicles.
They issued the command over the radio
to deploy the gas,
and away we went.
[pensive music playing]
- [HRT agent 4] We still up on the PA?
- [HRT agent 5] Not now.
- [HRT agent 4] I want up.
- [HRT agent 5] Okay.
- [HRT agent 4] Loud. Loud.
- [HRT agent 5] Go ahead, you're loud.
[Thibodeau] And then
the speaker system came on,
saying, "The siege is over.
You're all under arrest."
[HRT agent 4, on speaker] We are in
the process of placing tear gas
into the building.
This is not an assault.
Do not, under any circumstances,
discharge your weapons.
If you fire, fire will be returned.
Come out of the compound
with your hands up, carrying nothing.
[building crumbling]
[HRT agent 4] Do not shoot.
This is not an assault.
They're telling you
this is not an assault,
that they're not gonna enter the building,
and there's a tank in the building.
Then we start to hear the popping sounds
from 40mm Ferret rounds
shooting into the building.
[explosions]
[Davidian man 2] What's that?
[Davidian woman 2] Tear gas.
[Davidian man 2] But what's that noise?
[Davidians] Tear gas!
At that point, they got buckets of water
and they were putting face cloths
over the children.
It's not every day you see
a tank come through your front door,
and it's an unbelievable experience.
[Bob] Soon as we throw
the first tear gas canister,
we were fired on.
We probably had a thousand rounds or more
that was fired at us during that morning.
We never fired a single round back.
On the morning of the 19th,
the phone rang. It was my wife.
She said, "Turn on the television."
And I saw the tanks and the tear gas.
And I immediately
got Ricks on the telephone.
I said, "I'll come right down there.
I'll go back in."
"I'll tell him they've gotta come out now.
This is the end."
And he said, "We don't need you anymore."
Reportedly, this morning,
the FBI called the compound and said,
"Surrender or be prepared to gas."
The Davidians reportedly hung up on them.
We've been told that the FBI
has enough gas to gas them for 48 hours,
and we also believe that
they expect them to come out before noon.
[Balenda] We wake up.
We're in our hotel rooms.
Then there's this knock on the doors,
the press telling us it started.
The tanks are demolishing the buildings.
[reporter 4] This is live camerawork.
They are deliberately using the boom,
the tow-truck end, if you will,
to back into and ram the building.
You can see the boom laying out there.
[reporter 5] They've made a massive hole
in the side of that building.
He's taking the roof off of it.
[Bob] There's this bunker area
inside the compound.
And I hear on the radio transmission
that they believe many of the Davidians
have huddled up in there
and that the tear gas is having no effect,
and they're asking for permission
to go up and knock the front door down
and make a pathway to insert tear gas
into that inner structure.
[crashing]
[Thibodeau] And when the tanks
started coming through the front door,
I felt doomed at that point.
I knew that we were going to die.
[reporter 6] Obviously, we are watching
a very thoroughly orchestrated
FBI assault on that building,
trying to bring that building down
to the point where those who are in it
can come out.
[tense music playing]
The news briefing
is just about getting underway.
Bob Ricks from the FBI
is now approaching the podium.
Then I was told, "Around 10:30,
you have to go do a press conference."
[Lee] At the news conference that morning,
there was a feeling
that this thing was finally gonna end
and these people were gonna come out.
We have put, uh, tear gas
into the watchtower.
We have also put tear gas into what is
commonly believed to be Koresh's room.
You had tremendous winds
that were blowing today,
which has the effect
of cleaning out the compound,
but we will continue
to apply the pressure.
We'll try to make their living environment
as uncomfortable as possible.
At this point, we're not negotiating.
We're saying, "Come out.
Come out with your hands up."
"This matter is over."
At some point through a sniper scope,
I see flames.
[pensive music playing]
And my first reaction is, "Holy shit."
[McLemore] The producer says in my ear,
"It's on fire."
I turned around, and I looked.
"Oh my God."
The whole compound
had started to catch fire.
[McLemore in 1993]
They are coming out the window.
You can see them. Lots of smoke.
This, uh, should be
a definite determining factor.
You should see some people
come out of this building.
[Kathy] I was in prison in a medical wing,
and the nurse came to my door
and told me to turn my television on.
I didn't know about the gassing.
I didn't know
this had been going on since 6 a.m.
All I knew is the building's on fire.
[Balenda] We're taking it all in,
what our eyes are seeing.
What our brains are telling us.
"Our kids are gonna die.
Our kids are gonna die."
Someone yelled, "There's fire up here!"
And I'm like, "Okay, what does that mean?"
Some people are saying,
"Should we go out?"
And I'm like, "I think they're gonna
shoot us if we go out there."
[HRT agent 6, on speaker] You people
on the roof at the second story,
jump from that window.
In order to save yourself,
you must jump from the roof.
[McLemore] Okay, we got a man on the roof
coming out, as you can see.
This should be a very determining factor.
People should be coming out.
You can see it spreading
through the entire building.
It's coming out the watchtower.
[reporter 7] It looks like Now we have
a very large-scale fire breaking out
on what must be the south side,
right near the front side
of this building.
And then I see a second site of flames,
and it's the opposite direction
of the wind.
And I just had this moment in my mind,
and I thought,
"They're lighting the place on fire."
[Bob] The FLIR video
showed that the fires
started simultaneously
at three separate locations,
and it had nothing to do
with anything that we we had done.
The fires were started by the Davidians.
I didn't see anyone start a fire.
No one talked about it.
So, I don't believe
that people inside started the fire.
I never have. I've never believed that.
- [producer] What's your response to that?
- Yeah. David Thibodeau is a liar.
Uh, he knows the truth.
Recordings indicated that the fires
were started by the Davidians.
[Koresh] What about the fuel?
[Davidian man 3] There were two cans here.
I poured some of one
and the rest was taken.
[Koresh] We should have got
more hay in here.
I immediately picked up the phone
and called a source I knew
that was in the federal command post,
and just started screaming at him.
"What the fuck are y'all doing?
What the hell? What is this?"
"The place is on fire."
And he was screaming back at me.
"I don't know what the fuck is going on."
"That's not us. We're not doing it."
And there isn't a bloody thing
any of us can do
but sit there while this horrible thing
is happening around us.
[McLemore] You can see the black smoke
from behind us. This is horrible.
We have heard no running water
inside the compound,
so there's no way
for them to put this out.
And I kept waiting. I just knew that
people were going to come flooding out.
I remember hearing myself say,
out loud, "Well, they gotta come out now."
[reporter 8] We have cameras
on several sides,
and we see no people at this time
making any move
to come out of the compound.
The tanks had done so much destruction,
and there was so much debris,
you could not
have gotten down the hallway.
So, I figured, okay,
I'm gonna go up the back stairs
that leads to David Koresh's room.
And I went up the stairs,
and then this wall of flames
shot from the left to the right,
and it was huge. It was a fireball.
It just went [whooshes]
It was incredibly loud.
And it just went "whoosh"
all the way down the hall.
[reporter 9] Still no sign
of anyone coming out, Bonnie.
[McLemore] The entire complex
is fully engulfed now.
Uh, flames coming out both sides.
[Balenda] The news is on.
I go over to Isabel Andrade's hotel room.
Isabel has two daughters
and a granddaughter inside Mount Carmel.
We're sitting there together,
and we're watching
this horrible thing unfold,
and I just buried my head
in a towel on the wall,
and I just screamed.
We're all crying at this point.
We know that the worst thing
that could possibly happen is happening.
This is it, and there's no turning back.
[HRT agent 6, on speaker]
Exit the compound as soon as you can.
[Thibodeau] Wayne Martin,
he had his gas mask on,
and as the smoke's coming in,
he was leaning against the wall,
and he took his gas mask off,
and the smoke started to envelop him.
And I watched him slide down the wall
into the crouching position.
And by the time he got to the bottom,
I could no longer see him
because of the smoke.
And the wall was catching fire
at this point.
I could hear my hair crackle,
and I could feel a little singeing here.
People are frantic.
Some people have
taken their gas masks off.
[Davidian man 4] Go the other way!
[Davidian woman 3]
There's too many people the other way!
[Thibodeau] So, I looked out.
There was a window,
and there was a big hole there.
And I saw Derek Lovelock
and Jaime Castillo exit the hole,
and I just ran behind them,
and I exited the hole after them.
I didn't think anyone
was gonna make it out after me.
[flames roaring]
[Thibodeau]
They're walking with their hands up,
and I'm walking behind them
with my hands up,
and I got about halfway out between
the building and the Red Cross sign,
and I turned around to see
the building completely engulfed in flame.
And that black, black chemical smoke
coming up off the building.
And then an explosion and this fireball.
[explosions]
[HRT agent 6, on speaker] Proceed to
a position of safety away from the fire.
Place your hands in the air.
The agents will come to you.
[Thibodeau] Then these two FBI guys,
they put these plastic straps
behind our back.
The next thing that happens,
they pick us up and they put us in a tank,
and they handed us over to the ATF.
[somber music playing]
[Chris] And we waited
for the wave of bodies coming running out
and they didn't.
There was nothing on the radio
that they were coming out the front.
I got up out of my sniper position,
and I walked out through Sierra Two,
and I was standing there,
shoulder-to-shoulder
with this other guy on my team.
And we're looking at the building,
which is fully engulfed in flames.
I mean, it's a it's an inferno.
All of a sudden, a rifle round
goes right between our heads.
Somebody in that building,
as it was burning to the ground,
fully engulfed in flames,
stayed behind a sniper rifle
to the bitter end,
and their last act on Earth
was to try to shoot me in the head.
That's commitment.
I was probably eight,
ten miles from Mount Carmel,
but I got out there as fast as I could.
And by the time I got out there,
the place had totally been engulfed
and was almost gone.
Everybody was just absolutely stunned.
[McLemore] And still, we have not seen any
significant amount of people come out.
[reporter 9] Can you at least hear
any sirens from fire trucks?
[McLemore]
We haven't heard a thing, Gordon.
I I couldn't understand.
Where are the fire trucks?
And later we were told, "Oh,
they couldn't let the fire trucks in,"
because they were afraid of
all the weapons that were gonna blow up.
[McLemore in 1993] Looks like the fire
has completely destroyed the top floor
and is well on the way
Here comes someone else
moving among the rubble.
[Chris] An FBI Hostage Rescue Team member
saw a woman.
She walked to the edge of the building.
He ran across open terrain
to the front of the building
to try to grab this woman and save her.
And he kept screaming at her,
"Where are the kids? Where are the kids?"
And she just stared him in the eye
and didn't say a thing.
And I just could not believe that
they're all gonna die.
They're all gonna die.
There's nobody coming out.
[somber music continues]
[Heather] We were at
the Children's Home in Waco.
[voice breaking] And I see Mount Carmel.
And I remember the women
in the kitchen saying
that our parents must have not loved us.
And then thinking
my dad loves me, our parents, all of us.
Then, when it burnt down and you could see
the other side and there were no people
Oh man.
[clicks tongue]
[sirens blaring]
[reporter 8] This looks like probably
the fire chief and fire marshals.
And we have, at this point,
two fire engines headed by.
[sirens continue blaring]
I've stopped breathing.
And then I get a familiar voice
on the television set.
Nine cult members survived the blaze,
and they are 24-year-old Jaime Castillo,
24-year-old David Thibodeau
He is the son, by the way,
of Brenda Ganem,
who had kept an almost constant vigil here
since the standoff began.
That's my kid.
He's alive.
I'm so incredibly happy,
and my friend Isabel turns to me,
and she says,
"I am so glad you got your son."
"Balenda, I'm so glad
that you got your son."
She knows her children are dead.
Chanel, look at your
Maybe your grandma might see this film.
Say hello.
[Balenda] We were just weeping.
And I happened to be in the proximity
of a woman who can turn and say to me,
"I'm so happy you have your child."
[dispatch] And we know that
you've rolled units out there,
but they're in dire need of water.
Would you have
any additional pumper vehicles?
[sirens blaring]
[dispatch] And you'll encounter
the first unit at DPS checkpoint,
and they will bring you through.
[somber music continues]
[McLemore in 1993] Horrible to imagine
that that many people
would stay inside a burning building
and follow someone to their grave.
This was a tragedy that the entire country
got to watch in real time.
[Chris] I got up out of Sierra Two,
walked that 307 yards
to the burning pile of embers,
and it was a rain of paper
that had burned,
and that had floated up
into the thermals of the heat,
and there were individual pages of Bibles.
It was raining Bible pages
into these embers,
and the embers were 1.6 million rounds
of rifle ammo cooking off.
So, it's ammo popping up
everywhere you go,
and skulls everywhere,
and half-burned bodies.
I mean, it was apocalyptic carnage.
I don't know what hell looks like, but
uh
maybe that.
[haunting music playing]
I have a statement I would like to read.
On February the 28th,
four federal agents
were killed in the line of duty
trying to enforce the law
against the Branch Davidian compound,
which had illegally stockpiled weaponry
and ammunition
and placed innocent children at risk.
Because the BATF operation
had failed to meet its objective,
a 51-day standoff ensued.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
then made every reasonable effort
to bring this perilous situation to an end
without bloodshed
and further loss of life.
The Bureau's efforts
were ultimately unavailing
because the individual with whom
they were dealing, David Koresh,
was dangerous, irrational,
and probably insane.
I made the decision. I'm accountable.
The buck stops with me.
There is no doubt that the ATF and FBI
messed up and messed up badly at Waco.
This is a profound disgrace
to law enforcement
in the United States of America.
More than 90 people,
including four law enforcement officers
and 22 children,
died as a direct result or indirect result
of federal government action.
Everyone who touched the ball fumbled it.
[explosion]
[indistinct screaming and shouting]
[Lee] Several years after,
when the Oklahoma City Bombing happened,
somebody on the radio
mentioned something about the date.
It was April 19th.
And I had to stop the car
and throw up in a ditch,
because [snaps fingers]
there is a direct line
from Waco to Oklahoma City.
Bob Ricks,
the FBI's main spokesman in Waco,
was also the FBI Special Agent in Charge
of the Oklahoma City office.
Tim McVeigh, feeling compelled to take
revenge because of what happened in Waco.
I hate that day for many reasons.
[McLemore] After that day,
it's hard to see that kind of stuff
and say,
"Wow, how could this happen?"
"How could a omnipotent God
let something like this happen?"
And you have to step back and say,
"Well, it's not God that let it happen.
It's man made it happen."
[Gary] David Koresh
is ultimately responsible,
but that doesn't mean we didn't
make mistakes as an organization.
And we did.
And in Waco,
we did not save every life we could.
Therefore, in my mind, it's a failure.
[Bob] The hostages were not
those Davidians in there.
The hostage in this whole process
was the FBI.
We had to respond
to the demands of David Koresh,
and we were like actors in his play.
He had already written the script.
We tried to change the script.
We tried to make it
have a different ending.
In the final analysis,
everything rested under
the control of David Koresh.
David Koresh learned how to abuse power,
and he did.
The federal government in Waco, Texas,
knew how to abuse power, and they did.
And the outcome?
Some of our ugliest history.
The people that died at Mount Carmel
were martyrs.
They literally died for their faith.
That's how I look at it.
That's how they looked at it.
That was their home.
That was their sacred land.
And they were attacked.
And they fought those forces,
and they held out for 51 days.
They died for God.
[Kathy] Watching everybody I know die is
painful, but acceptable.
Because they did it for a reason.
They did it for their own glory,
worship, and
praise of their God.
[Jim, crying] We tried everything,
but we could not overcome
the hold he had on their minds.
You could not convince them to come out,
because that would be repudiation
of the person they believed was God.
[Bill] I think of Waco every day.
Every day for 30 years.
For Koresh
you're the most worthless individual
on this Earth, or you were,
that you would do that to people.
And I hope you're rotting in hell,
burning in hell.
'Cause that's what you deserve.
[DeGuerin] Wayne Martin kept his law books
in the building.
Of course, it burned down,
but one thing that didn't burn
was a page out of a law book
that he had on the Fourth Amendment.
And it's charred at the edges.
And the Fourth Amendment says
that all persons have the right to be free
from unreasonable search and seizure.
It survived the fire.
[haunting music continues]
[Chris] I wanted to find
some way to reconcile
that a cow field in central Texas
had become a fire
that killed 80 human beings
and went back to being a cow field.
And I wanted some kind of sense
of how the hell that could happen.
All I know
is violence appears out of nowhere,
destroys lives,
and drifts off to another scene.
And I I think I've just gotten over
trying to figure out why.
I feel guilty on
being alive.
All the pain that they went through
I can't imagine it,
but I think about it every day.
My whole family was murdered. [cries]
And they're all gone.
And I feel alone.
[haunting music continues]
[haunting music fades to silence]
[somber string music playing]