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Anarchy: a journal of desire armed. #38, Fall 1993
THE SAD TRUTH
-includes FBI vs. the Branch Dividians, Messiah
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FBI vs. the Branch Davidians: Assembling an alternative
understanding
by Dina Fisher
On April 19, 1993, live broadcasts of armored tanks and burning
buildings flooded my TV screen. Flipping from station to station,
I gathered that somewhere between 70 and 100 people were burning to
death inside the buildings.
The news reports cut back and forth between live footage of the
fire and replays from earlier that day of a U.S. government tank
repeatedly smashing into the buildings. I could see dark spots
where huge holes had been ripped into the exterior walls. Over
these blurred, grainy images, newscasters explained that up until
several minutes before the fire started, the FBI had used a
specially-equipped armored tank to inject massive amounts of tear
gas into the buildings during the proceeding six hours.
What I was watching looked to me exactly like a military attack
on civilians. Tanks and gas are blatant military weapons, and it's
not surprising that a building would burst into flames after a six-
hour assault. As the fire began to die down and it became clear
that there would be only a few survivors, I haltingly told my lover
over the phone that the FBI had just killed dozens of people on
national television.
The site of the fire was a ranch on wind-swept prairie land
several miles outside Waco, Texas. The dozen or so adjoining wooden
structures there, which would burn to ash and rubble within only 30
minutes, had been home to a tight-knit community of prophetic
Christians called the Branch Davidians. The ranch and surrounding
area had also recently become temporary home to an encampment of
FBI agents and reporters focussing a slew of weapons and cameras on
the residents inside.
For seven weeks leading up to the fire, the Davidians had been
surrounded in their home by hundreds of heavily armed FBI agents
who circled the buildings with razor-sharp concertina wire and
bombarded them at night with amplified sounds of rabbits being
slaughtered. The FBI quickly moved in after a raid on the ranch by
100 other federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms (ATF) had erupted in a 45-minute gun battle. That initial
raid on Feb. 28 left four ATF men and several Davidians dead. It
too was recorded live and widely publicized by the news media.
From that day on, the FBI and ATF labeled the people inside the
buildings with terms that were repeated by reporters around the
country. The words "apocalyptic" and "cult" became media catch-
words. Another key word emerged when an ATF spokesman claimed only
hours after the initial raid that mass "suicide" amongst the
cultists was a clear possibility.
On the day of the fire, in stark contrast with graphic visual
images of the tank assault, the FBI claimed almost as soon as the
flames started that the victims had in fact participated in a
suicide pact and lit the fire themselves. Newscasters repeatedly
used the word "suicide" during the live fire coverage. The next
day, it was used nationwide in newspaper headlines, sub-heads, and
text. The Chicago Sun-Times went so far as to use a direct FBI
quote for a two-page-wide headline which read, "'Oh My God, They're
Killing Themselves.'"
While I was still on the phone watching the live fire coverage,
one on-location reporter heatedly said that half the photographers
watching the buildings through high-powered telephoto lenses didn't
believe the suicide story. He described the FBI's claim as "one of
the greatest hoaxes" ever played on the American public. The
strength of conviction it must have taken for this man to clearly
say what he believed on live television, despite professional
consequences, was impressive. I was surprised by his admirable
candor, but not by the content of his words.
Having been involved in grassroots political groups for years, I
was not naive about FBI tactics. I'd heard the Bureau implicated in
everything from intimidating political activists to assassinating
civil rights workers. On a more personal level, the alternative
high school where I teach in Chicago was subjected to a surprise
raid in June of 1983 when FBI agents and Chicago police took files
and caused as much as $40,000 in damages. Members of Dr. Pedro
Albizu Campos High School say that absurd FBI claims about the
building being used as a bomb factory were the pretext for the
raid. Teachers say the school was actually targeted in an attempt
to destroy its credibility among Puerto Ricans because it was
exposing Puerto Rican students to alternative ideas about colonial-
ism and radical independence movements. The FBI was eventually
forced to publicly issue a statement distancing the school's name
from terrorism, but stolen files were never returned and the
damages never paid for.
Two years later the FBI was involved in an armed attack which
killed 11 members of MOVE, a communal group of socially radical
African-Americans. The circumstances of that attack bear a striking
resemblance to the recent assault against the Davidians.
On May 13, 1985, MOVE's main house in Philadelphia was burned to
the ground, along with 60 other row houses on the block, after an
especially flammable explosive covertly supplied by the FBI was
detonated on the roof. The fire ended a day-long shoot out between
several MOVE members inside and hundreds of Philadelphia cops
surrounding the house outside. Burned, dismembered bodies of six
adults and five children were found in the rubble, some containing
bullets. MOVE members, too, were labeled in the media as suicidal
cultists and accused by the government of burning their own home.
Only two people inside the MOVE house that day survived: Ramona
Africa, an adult, and Birdie Africa, a 13 year old boy.
Almost eight years later, on the day after the Davidians' home was
burned to the ground, an Associated Press article titled "Texas
Flames Evoke Past Attacks" in the Chicago Sun-Times quoted Ramona
Africa as saying "It's May 13th all over again...I hope it is an
example for people...to stop hallucinating about the system they're
dealing with and realize that this system is insane."
Given the disparity between the term "suicide" and what I had seen
on TV, my curiosity and healthy distrust of government agencies
were aroused. Comments made by Ramona Africa and the admirable on-
location reporter started me on a library investigation of events
surrounding the attack on the Davidians.
My investigation spanned eight weeks and included over 60
newspaper articles from around the country. The majority of these
were published between March 28 and May 28 in two Texas dailies,
the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News. For earlier
newspaper accounts, I read microfilm articles from the Los Angeles
Times and New York Times. Also included in my research were
archival magazine articles about the 1985 MOVE bombing, plus one
book by Margot Harry called Attention MOVE! This is America! and
another called Burning Down the House, by John Anderson and Hilary
Hevenor.
One of the most striking points I learned about, and perhaps the
most crucial to understanding information about the Davidians in
the news media, was the degree to which the FBI seized control over
information going in and out of the buildings where the Davidians
were holed up during the 51-day siege.
Almost immediately following the original raid, contact between
the Davidians and people outside the FBI was severely limited when
telephone service inside the buildings was disconnected and
replaced by a direct line to federal agents.
Similarly, members of the press were forced to move a minimum of
two miles away from the site when the FBI arrived. Although the
grainy, blurred quality of ensuing photographs and TV footage
hinted at this fact, there was very little mention of it by the
media. One of only two direct references I found to this was a
paragraph in the Houston Chronicle which succinctly stated the
significance of moving the press so far away. It quoted Paul Fatta,
a Davidian who happened to be away form the ranch on the day of the
initial raid, as saying, "When the media was pushed way back more
than two miles down the road, the FBI could say and do anything
they wanted, and the whole world was just getting the information
they were giving." The same article also said Fatta believed the
FBI had intentionally set the fire to flush the Davidians out.
During the second week of the siege, the Davidians began hanging
large bedsheet banners out of windows in an effort to communicate
with the world beyond the FBI. Two of these messages were, "God
Help Us We Want the Press," and "Rodney King We Understand." The
following week, after FBI spokesmen publicly accused the group's
religious leader, David Koresh, of effectively halting negotiations
for surrender, the Davidians displayed another banner that read,
"FBI Broke Negotiations, We Want Press."
As far as I could tell, the only direct press contact permitted
to the Davidians came within two days of the initial raid, when
Koresh was allowed to air a 25-minute live interview and a 58-
minute taped sermon on a Texas radio station.
After this, the only communication the Davidians were allowed
outside the FBI (that I know of) was several face-to-face meetings
and closely monitored phone conversations with attorney Dick De
Guerin, who was hired by Koresh's mother. Another attorney for the
Davidians, Jack Zimmerman, was also present during some negotiation
sessions, but was sometimes not permitted by the FBI to speak.
Concerned relatives and friends were at no time allowed to speak
with the people inside.
With such tight control over information and communication,
government officials were able to make a series of unsubstantiated
accusations and block any response from the Davidians. Much of the
mainstream news media, having access to little material outside FBI
and ATF statements, repeated these accusations daily. Emerging in
the media was an image of the Davidians as suicidal, child-mo-
lesting cult members led by a madman fanatically bent on
stockpiling weapons and explosives for a final confrontation with
the U.S. government.
The Davidians were also specifically accused of converting semi-
automatic weapons to fully automatic capacity. While the Davidians
supposedly obtained this equipment with relative ease from an
Illinois-based company in the weapons trade, it is illegal to
actually make the conversions without governmental approval. This
was the official explanation given for the February raid by the
ATF, whose mandate it is to regulate arms flow within the U.S. The
ATF additionally accused the Davidians of shooting first in the gun
battle on the day of the February raid.
Many of these accusations have been seriously challenged by
almost everyone=FEapart from government agents=FEwho was directly
involved during the siege, including attorneys De Guerin and
Zimmerman as well as the nine survivors who managed to escape from
the burning buildings.
De Guerin in particular has been an outspoken critic of FBI and
ATF behavior in the case, saying that the government is conducting
"a massive cover-up, a white wash" of its actions.
Approximately five weeks after the fire, De Guerin publicly
released a lengthy tape-recorded telephone conversation he had with
Koresh before the FBI disconnected the lines on the afternoon
following the ATF raid. The Houston Chronicle reported that Koresh
sounded tired on the tape due to being seriously wounded, but
seemed agitated by government comments to the media: "They said we
were throwing grenades at them, I mean, for crying out loud...you
can't believe anything they tell you." The Chronicle stated also
that Koresh sounded especially irritated by government suggestions
that the Davidians were considering mass suicide, saying, "That's
not even sane, it irks me."
The accusation that the Davidians were suicidal was also refuted
after the fire by several of the survivors including Renos Avraam,
Jaime Castillo, Derek Lovelock and others. Louis Aliniz, a Houston
man who slipped past the FBI and into the buildings during the
siege, said he was convinced the Davidians hadn't committed
suicide, due to their religious beliefs. He left the ranch two days
before the fire.
Survivors also reportedly told De Guerin that those on the inside
couldn't get out because some were blocked by fire and smoke, while
others were completely immobilized by massive amounts of gas pumped
in by the FBI. Survivor Jaime Castillo, in similar statements,
refuted accusations that Koresh had used death threats to prevent
people form fleeing the fire. Castillo said he personally had been
afraid to leave the buildings because of the imminent danger he
perceived from the FBI's attack.
Under the assumption that the government did not want an armed
confrontation with the Davidians, the ATF's action in the initial
February 28 raid was widely criticized in the media as being poorly
planned. More recently, the Bureau's official statements about
events leading up to and during the raid have been discredited by
a series of contradictory statements and outright lies.
The ATF originally justified the raid by claiming that it was the
only way to serve Koresh with arrest and search warrants because he
never left the ranch. But preachers, merchants and other townspeo-
ple said in newspaper accounts that Koresh had been regularly seen
purchasing goods in town.
The Bureau also claimed to have conducted the raid as soon as
agents obtained evidence of illegal activity. Federal court
affidavits by ATF officials later contradicted this. Agents
allegedly discovered eight months prior to the raid that the
Davidians might be illegally converting weapons. The Houston
Chronicle reported that in the meantime, spies were planted in and
around the Davidian's home while 130 ATF agents spent several
months preparing for the attack.
Through a series of disclosures by high ranking ATF officials
during Congressional hearings and legal testimony, it was also
brought to light that the Bureau carried out the raid with
supervisors' full knowledge that the Davidians had been tipped off
by a telephone call. The ATF spy who had infiltrated and lived on
the ranch, Robert Rodriguez, reported the telephone call back to
the Bureau and advised that the surprise raid be canceled. ATF
director Stephen Higgins also admitted that the Bureau invited six
local press members and two from CBS news to attend the raid,
ensuring national media coverage.
All along, government spokesmen contended that the Davidians fired
first during the raid, setting off the gun battle that would leave
four agents dead and 16 others wounded. The Bureau claimed that,
having been warned the agents were coming, the Davidians had time
to set up a surprise ambush.
Several people who participated in the gun battle, however,
including anonymous ATF agents, Koresh, and Davidian survivor
Castillo, were listed in newspapers as having said that the first
shots were fired by ATF men.
Koresh was quoted on March 1 in the Los Angeles Times as saying,
"They fired on us first...the bullets started coming into the
door." In the taped telephone conversation with De Guerin, Koresh
said that the ATF's guns were "cocked and locked" as agents jumped
out of cattle trucks.
Weeks later, after the deadly fire, De Guerin said he wanted to
keep the federal agents out of the ruins of the burned buildings.
"It's in the ATF's interest to jimmy up the crime scene to make it
seem like they were justified in going in like the marines," he
said.=20
In mid-May, 12 bulldozers hired by the federal government leveled
the ruins. At that time, nobody outside law enforcement officials
had been permitted near the crime scene since federal search
warrants were still in effect. The closest that reporters would be
allowed before the bulldozing, was 200 yards away, were they were
escorted as a group by government agents. Zimmerman was quoted as
saying, "I guess what it does, it forever prevents any checking on
the ATF's rendition, that the fire was intentionally set" by the
Davidians.
Jeff Kearney, lawyer to Castillo, declined to publicly state in
the Houston Chronicle that the fire was part of an intentional
government plan. He did say that the fact the buildings burned "is
a benefit to the government...These government agents can say
whatever they want, and there is little physical evidence to
dispute that. I felt they knew that if that building was damaged,
burned or destroyed it would be to their benefit."
The Houston Chronicle reported that the Waco fire trucks en route
to fight the fire were held at an FBI checkpoint several miles from
the buildings and that firefighters were ordered not to talk to
reporters. By the time the trucks arrived, the blaze was out of
control.
Although the heads of 12 corpses could not be recovered after the
fire, the charred bodies of the 12 youngest children were found in
their mothers' arms.
As of the end of my investigation, I had found no mention of any
government agency clearly stating whether or not the Davidians
possessed illegal weapons. The Texas Rangers released a list of
weapons retrieved in the ruins, but ambiguous language made it
impossible to discern whether any of these were automatic.
I was able to find almost no information about the Davidians'
political beliefs other than a few intriguing details. Listed in
the original search warrant, which prompted the entire siege, was
a video critical of the ATF and writings which detailed Koresh's
alleged hatred for law enforcement.
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MEMO TO GOD (for future reference)
WE PRAY
YOU, DO NOT
SEND
THE MESSIAH
UNLESS
THE
MESSIAH
IS
NICE
THE MESSIAH
OBEYS
AMERICAN LAWS
and
THE MESSIAH
CO-OPERATES WITH THE FBI
In order to rationalize events in Waco, a lot of rhetoric has been
drawn from pop psychology. Koresh was "psychopathic," "sick,"
"suffered from paranoid delusions."
There was also a kind of theologization of Koresh, so that he was
spoken of as if he was Satan: the fires which consumed him were the
flames of Hell. Not the flames of a burning home. This kind of
rhetoric, on the covers of magazines and on TV, suggests they
defeated the Devil down in Texas. But nobody defeated Satan. There
was no Satan in Waco. There were people.
We never penetrate the facades placed before us, representing the
"truth" of Waco. Nowhere have I seen any serious discussion of the
consequences if Koresh really was the messiah. I am not advocating
this view. But if you're Christian, ask yourself why you did not
ask: Could this man be the messiah? Must the True Messiah abide by
the laws of an imperfect nation-state? Does resistance to the FBI
prove a man or woman is not the True Messiah? Now, very few people
believe in a Coming Age. If there really is a "God," and if this
God "sent" a divine incarnation to live among us, to usher in a
milleniumn of perfect peace, would that Messiabh get good press? Or
would we simply kill him?
Something to think about, now that a man is dead. -E.R.