Trent just finished binge watching the new Netflix mini-series Waco and so he’s sitting down with Jimmy Akin to learn more about the religious beliefs of the Branch Davidians as well as to take a closer look at what really happened during the disastrous Waco siege.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
My wife and I got to do something we rarely get to do. Actually, we haven’t done it in a really long time. That is binge watching something. I mean, we’ve watched movies on TV when we put the kids down. But we haven’t had a series where we watch it and then say, what happens in the next episode? We recently had the opportunity though, to do that with the Netflix series Waco, which is a dramatization of the Waco siege that took place between February 28th and April 19th of 1993, that tragically resulted in the deaths of 76 people at the Mount Carmel Center in Waco, Texas. The miniseries is a dramatization of that. It’s got great actors in our Netflix. I thought, stylistically, it was just done really well and had a big emotional impact on me. I mean, you have John Leguizamo playing one of the ATF agents, Melissa Benoist playing the wife of David Koresh.
Michael Shannon, I think is his name, Shannon, playing Gary Noesner the FBI agent involved in negotiations. Taylor Kitsch does a good job, play a very good job I would say, playing David Koresh, who is the leader of the Branch Davidians during the siege. I was watching it and I just got really amped up by the end of it. Like I said, it was done well. I had been familiar with the Waco siege before. I knew a lot of the basic facts related to it. But after watching the miniseries, I just went on a binge myself to read articles, excerpts of books related to this, watching other documentaries. There’s a frontline documentary on Waco, other reports and there’s so much information to dive into. I thought to myself, will people probably watch this show?
I bet people are interested in it like I am. I should do a podcast or I could talk about faith and reason what happened at Waco and what are the religious beliefs that are going on here? Because they go all the way back to Seventh-day Adventism. This would be neat to all put together. And in my research, I saw that my colleague, senior apologist here at Catholic Answers, Mr. Jimmy Akin had done the heavy lifting for this. I have a sneaking suspicion. He may have been in my same place when he was at my age.
He got interested in Waco and did all this research. I looked at it and thought, I would just be reinventing the wheel if I just tried to do the exact same thing myself. It’d be way more fun to have Jimmy come on the show today. And we could talk about it and inform you all who are listening, how we look at this major event in American history, especially major event in the history of U.S. law enforcement.
I think this is one of the most important events in 20th century, U.S. law enforcement. Yeah, easily the 20th century. We’ll talk about that today. Though a reminder by the way, this weekend, May 22nd to the 24th, I think the way I’ve dated the shows it will be this weekend. But May 22nd to May 24th, I’ll be speaking at the Love Life Conference. That’s an online conference hosted by Virtual Catholic Conference. It’s going to be Jason and Crystalina Evert speaking. Krista Fannick, Matt and Cameron Frat.
It’s going to be 70 speakers on issues related to chastity. I have a new talk called Finding Jesus at LGBT Pride Parades. If you want full access, not just this weekend but perpetual access to all these talks, go to my Twitter page, go to Trent Horn, Twitter. Click on the pinned post. It’s going to be the top post on my Twitter page. You can’t miss it. There’s a link there for you to go through a special portal, to be able to fully access this conference.
It’s free this weekend but if you want exclusive access and bonus content and the ability to watch the talks, even after this weekend, be sure to go into that portal, that link, which is on my social media page, just go to Trent Horn, Twitter. Click on the pin post on the link and then you’ll be able to access that. Now without further ado, here is our guest today, Mr. Jimmy Akin, senior apologists to Catholic Answers. Jimmy, welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast.
Jimmy Akin:
How’s it going, Trent?
TH:
Oh, it’s going really well. Yeah, when I was watching all this, it was so fascinating to study so many elements to this event. I vaguely remembered the Waco siege because I was about eight years old when it happened. I have vague memories of being a kid and looking on television, seeing that this thing is on fire and people are all really worried about this. But then after seeing the miniseries and I had been familiar even before the miniseries came out, I had read articles on Waco and was familiar with a lot of the other elements of it. But the more I dove into it, it just ignited a sense like, there’s a lot more to this story a lot of people don’t know about. I think something similar may have happened to you as well.
JA:
Yeah. I was in grad school at the time. In fact, it was shortly after the death of my wife. I was teaching Philosophy at the University of Arkansas. I think about 400 miles from Waco. I was aware that there was a group of religious people that were surrounded by federal law enforcement agents and it went on for a really long time. The siege, it was 51 days.
TH:
Yeah.
JA:
Then one day, I came into my office and one of my fellow teaching assistants told me that the Waco compound was on fire. That was not expected. I tuned in the news and yeah, it was on fire. The narrative that the government was promoting in the aftermath of this was that they were a dangerous suicidal cult that was building stockpiles of weapons and then they finally killed themselves by setting this fire. I didn’t have a particular reason to question that narrative at the time but more than 10 years later, I did some further research.
I tend to read books about unusual groups of people and I would see references to the Branch Davidians. I, eventually, became aware of documentaries that had been done that challenged the government narrative. I watched them and I thought there’s some merit to this. But I didn’t do a whole lot of study at the time. There’s some merit to the alternative case for what happened.
TH:
Right.
JA:
Then this year and as we came up to the anniversary of the events for my Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World podcast, I went back into the evidence. I did a bunch more reading and ended up doing a two parter on David Koresh, the leader and then what actually happened at the siege.
TH:
Let’s then talk about, because for me, when I was thinking about doing a podcast on this episode, I like to do things in a chronological linear way to help people understand things. I always like starting as far back at the beginning as I can and then moving forward to the present. When we talk about this group, there are terms that get thrown around and I think people don’t understand the important backstories to them. One of those terms would be, the Branch Davidians.
JA:
Yeah.
TH:
That this group is called the Branch Davidians. I think a lot of people and this is something, when it comes to the Netflix documentary, it was fairly accurate. I would say, it’s the most… Sorry, the Netflix miniseries I should say, it’s a fictional miniseries that’s been released. It was probably the most sympathetic towards the Branch Davidians, I had seen. They incorporated a lot of material from one of the surviving members of the Branch Davidians, a man named Jason Thibodeau. They incorporated that well. Though there were a few things, that if you watched it, you might get the wrong idea. One of those is and people hear about this, they think that David Koresh just started the Branch Davidians which is not true. There are actually more of, you used the term, an offshoot of an offshoot. What would you mean by that?
JA:
Well, the movement they grew out of is the Seventh-day Adventist Movement. The Seventh-day Adventists, are themselves a group that began in the 1800s out of a Protestant context. They had a founding prophetess named Ellen Gould White and they are fairly well known today. In 1929, there was a gentleman who was a convert to Seventh-day Adventism named Victor Houteff. He also began to report that he was receiving prophecies. His ID [inaudible 00:08:28] with those of other Seventh-day Adventists and so he was disfellowshipped or ex-communicated in 1930. He then set up a commune in Waco, Texas, which was named Mount Carmel. He died unexpectedly though. I should mention, that’s where the name Davidian comes from. He, in 1942, named his group, the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists. They’re called Davidian, in reference to King David. Because they wanted to bring about the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, the son of David. That’s why they’re called Davidians.
TH:
Yeah.
JA:
Then he died in the 1950s and there was a power struggle between his widow who also made some predictions in his name and a gentleman named Benjamin Roden who also claim to be receiving divine revelation. God was telling him things like, you need to be the leader of this group. When the widow’s predictions didn’t come true, Benjamin Roden ended up in control of the Mount Carmel Commune and he named the group Branch Davidians. After the Book of Zechariah where there’s a prophetic figure called the Branch. So they’re an offshoot of an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventists.
TH:
Do you think that a running theme with this, since it’s coming out of Seventh-day Adventism, is a focus on personal revelation from God and this idea that the end of the world is imminent or apocalypticism is imminent? In fact, if any of you who are listening are interested, there is a great CD set Catholic Answers to just put out by Tim Staples called The Great Disappointment. Which is about Seventh-day Adventism, which grew out of a failed prediction of the end of the world in 1844. Do think that this apocalypticism and personal revelation is a common strain in all of this?
JA:
Yeah. The whole reason that the Adventists are called Adventist is because they believe the Second Coming or Second Advent of Jesus Christ is going to happen soon. They’re very much on board with the idea that the world’s about to end in the near future. That’s a common theme in all Adventist movements. It’s naturally common in the Davidians. Also, since Ellen Gould White claimed to be a prophetess, it’s hard to say, oh, well, there aren’t any prophets anymore and thus leads other members of the Adventist movements to say, hey, I’m a prophet too. That can lead to cisms.
TH:
Right. One of these people who would later claim this prophetic status and then also a messianic status, would be a man named Vernon Howell, who we more popularly know as David Koresh. How does he fit into this?
JA:
He was born in 1959 and he had a pretty rough life growing up. He ended up joining the Branch Davidians. He was not initially a Seventh-day Adventist. But he ended up joining the Branch Davidians in the 1980s and reported receiving revelations himself. He went to Israel and had a vision there where he thought God was telling him, he’s going to be a new Cyrus the Great. Cyrus the great was the King of Persia in the Old Testament. He was the one that gave permission for the Babylonian exile to end and for the Jewish people to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. He’s viewed as a good guy by the Old Testament authors. In fact, he is described in Isaiah as Meshia. A Messiah. An anointed one.
TH:
Right.
JA:
He’s God’s Messiah for purposes of letting the Jews rebuild the temple. He’s not the Ultimate Messiah. He’s a mini Messiah. That’s what Vernon Howell thought he was. He thought he’s going to be a new Cyrus the great so he ended up changing his name. In Hebrew, the word for Cyrus is Koresh. That’s where the name Koresh came from. Since Vernon Howell thought he was going to help bring in the new Davidic kingdom, he took the name David. That’s how Vernon Howell became David Koresh. He did think he was a lesser Messiah like Cyrus the great but not the full Messiah, Jesus Christ. That was sometimes misunderstood in the press. They thought he was claiming to be Jesus Christ and he was not.
TH:
That’s a very common one. You’ll hear. That was something that I had believed for a while until I dug into the story a little bit more that, oh, here’s another guy who thinks he’s Jesus. They actually do a good job of this in the Netflix miniseries. They have the ATF agent who infiltrated the group and we’ll get to the actions of the ATF here in a second. Played by John Leguizamo whose name is Robert Rodriguez. I can’t remember if that’s his real name or the alias he used.
JA:
It is.
TH:
Okay. Yeah. His real name is Robert Rodriguez. He used an alias to try to infiltrate the group and he became sympathetic towards them. In one scene of the miniseries, the guys are saying, there’s this crazy guy who thinks he’s Jesus and Rodriguez portrayed by Leguizamo says, he doesn’t think he’s Jesus, guys. He doesn’t think that he’s Jesus. He thinks he’s Messiah. The Messiah is just the guy who brings your eyes to God or something like that.
I think misunderstandings led a lot of people to… This is where things can become problematic. Because I hear people will say, oh, well, aren’t the Branch Davidians occult? Weren’t they a cult? When people say that to me about other groups as well like Heaven’s Gate which had the mass suicide right here in San Diego and other groups, Jonestown, people will say, aren’t they occults? I’m very hesitant to use that word cult because it’s meaning has changed so much over time in history. I bet you probably feel the same way.
JA:
Yeah. I never described one group as a cult compared to another. The original meaning of cult, it’s from the Latin word Cultus and that meant care or devotion. That’s actually where we get the word agriculture, the care of the fields.
TH:
Right.
JA:
If you’re cultivating something, you’re caring for it, you’re nurturing it. It also took on a religious meaning of essentially devotion. And when Catholic church uses the word cult, that’s how it uses it. Just for any devotion. It’s not used as a term for people who have a bad devotion. But that is how it’s used in English. In English, the term cult does not have a neutral meaning in popular speech. It’s used to refer to some bad religious group and as a result, there’s no objective meaning for it. There’s no list of criteria that makes somebody occult. I mean, you can invent a list but colloquial English doesn’t have one. The term cult in colloquial English just means, religious group I don’t like.
TH:
Right.
JA:
As a result, it adds heat rather than light to a discussion. I see people get engaged in all kinds of conversations about, oh, you’re in a cult. Well, no, I’m not. Then they got to argue about what the word cult means.
TH:
Right.
JA:
It doesn’t have a meaning. People just make up their own meanings for it. My attitude is stick with the issues. If you want to say a group is wrong about something either its teachings are false or its practices are bad or something like that, say it straight out and then argue your case. Don’t add insult words into the discussion that are just going to get people distracted by the insult word. Make your case straight out, keep it clean and precise and objective.
TH:
Yeah. I’m inclined to agree with that. I think, for me as a popular usage, I would only use the word cult in an extremely restricted sense. Not about a group’s belief systems per se but if they’re using some extremely psychological manipulative tactics to isolate people or hurt them. But even there, that can be subjective to determine what that is because many people in cults will say, under that term when it’s used, will say, I’m not being held to do anything against my will at all. That leads to, I think, when people look to the Branch Davidians from the outside, they saw people. It’s interesting. I watched one documentary. You have the miniseries on Netflix. It was just pretty pro, sympathetic to the Branch Davidians.
Then I watched the frontline documentary, which has done, I think about two years after the Waco siege. Which only really had one survivor and then five or six law enforcement officials who were interviewed. They portray the Branch Davidians as this apocalyptic group obsessed with guns, that they were a military force to fight at the end of the world, who were abusing children, child brides. I think that there’s a real truth that’s in the middle there about who this group really is versus what motivated the ATF to start their initial investigation. What do you think?
JA:
Yeah. There are certainly grounds for criticism of the Branch Davidians. I wouldn’t criticize them on the grounds that, okay, there are a commune, this kind of like a monastery. They have a communal life, they all eat the same meals. They’ve withdrawn from the world. All those big deal about all that.
TH:
Right.
JA:
Also, most of them practiced continents. Which, again, is something you’re going to find in a monastery. Don’t have a problem with that. Where I think there are problems, it’s connected, partly with their theology. Koresh thought he was this prophetic figure that he wasn’t. He thought he was this mini Messiah, he thought he was a prophet. He thought he was talked about in the Book of Revelation in various passages and none of that was true. There were doctrinal problems.
There were also practical moral problems. Because he thought that he had a revelation telling him that he needed to father the 24 Elders from the Book of Revelation, personally. Since one woman can’t have 24 children in a short space of time, he needed to take multiple wives. He annulled the marriages of other Davidians, so he could take their wives as his own and breed children. He also took some brides that were under age.
Now in Texas, at the time, you could get married at age 14, if you had your parents’ permission. The parents in this case, we’re granting their permission. It created this bizarre legal situation where because he didn’t officially marry these people, it was hard to prosecute for bigamy because there had never been these additional ceremonies. He was legally married to only one woman. On the other hand, these multiple brides are all consenting and their parents, if they’re under age, are also consenting. The Texas authorities, which are the proper authorities legally to look into that, looked into it and said, well, no, one’s being forced here. Given the murkiness of the legal situation, they didn’t think they could make a case stick in court so they didn’t prosecute him. The Texas Child Welfare authorities also looked into the situation and they said, there is no physical abuse going on here. Children are not being beaten. They’re not being starved.
TH:
Right.
JA:
Actually, they’re quite healthy and intelligent and well adjusted. But despite that, the ATF thought that they were a violent group. Now, they did believe that the end of the world is coming soon.
TH:
Right.
JA:
So do lots of people. Like evangelicals. Lots of evangelicals think the world’s going to end soon. But that doesn’t make them a violent lawless group. So the issue of, well, they’ve got all these weapons, came up.
TH:
Well, it’s Texas.
JA:
It’s Texas and hey also had a reason for the weapons they had. They weren’t stockpiling them for the end of the world. They were stocking them to sell at gun shows. To make money, to keep the commune going because they needed income. Despite that, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms people thought, oh, this is sinister. This is really a violent lawless group and they started an investigation. When one of the gun dealers that the Davidians worked with was contacted by the ATF people, he got David Koresh on the telephone and David said, “Oh, yeah, bring them on out. I’ll show them all the guns I’ve got. They’re welcome to look at my stock.”
At that point, the ATF agents panicked and said, no, we can’t go out there. Get off the phone with him. They refused to go out and look even when they were invited. What they did instead was go to a judge and ask for a warrant so that they could go out there and do a search, under cover of law. But they severely misled the judge about several things. This was later highly criticized by members of Congress when they did a congressional investigation.
TH:
Right.
JA:
What the warrant said they could do was go out there, present Koresh with the warrant and then do a search. This is a normal standard warrant. It was not, what’s called, a no-knock warrant where you get to just break in.
TH:
Right.
JA:
You have to serve this upfront. What they did instead and bear in mind, this was just a few months after the Ruby Ridge disaster which really blackened the FBI and federal law enforcement’s reputation because they killed the son and the wife of a guy who was living in a cabin up in the woods. They were really wanting to redeem their image in the media. They had all of these reporters to watch the search of Mount Carmel and they actually named this operation, Showtime.
TH:
That’s why we have footage today you can watch online. You can see the original raid that took place on February 28th. When the ATF agents go there, you can watch them climbing up the ladder, going in the windows, getting chased out of the windows, exchanging gunfire. As you said, Jimmy, that they had these incorrect pretenses, they went in and started this firefight and that’s what initiated the siege. Before we get to the siege and its tragic outcome, I will say that they do show that very well in the miniseries itself. They show, for example, that the group did have a lot of guns but that they sold them at a gun show. The women knit bulletproof vests to try to make money to get them sold.
They also do talk about Koresh’s multiple wives though my only criticism of the miniseries is that I felt, any way you portray a person in history, you can always do so in a favorable or unfavorable light. To me, they did acknowledge the sexual sins and escapades of Koresh. But I did feel like it was almost downplayed a bit. Though they do mention at least that there’s a provoking scene between Rachel Koresh and her sister and her-
JA:
David’s wife.
TH:
Right. Rachel Koresh is David’s wife. But David also married Rachel’s sister. I believe her name is Michelle. She was only 12 years old when their sexual relationship began. In order because you said, there’s this catch 22. It’s like, well, it’s not statutory rape if you’re married to a minor but you can’t be married to more than one person under Texas law. They discuss this in the series. So they show in the series, how Jason Thibodeau, was asked to marry-
JA:
David Thibodeau.
TH:
Oh, why am I saying Jason? David. Yes. David Thibodeau was asked to marry Michelle in a ceremony to keep up appearances. I guess they do have it in there. But for me personally, when I look at Koresh’s backstory, seeing how even before this siege he had been kicked out of a Seventh-day Adventist Church for going after the pastor’s daughter aggressively. He was involved in a relationship with a 15 year old girl when he was 19. For me personally, I see this individual is bearing the hallmarks of a sexual predator. Now that, of course, does not justify the ATF’s completely botched and horrific response to this as we’ll get in here with the siege. But for me personally, I feel like it’s important to put out my thoughts on the matter itself.
JA:
Yeah. I have not seen the miniseries so I can’t really speak to it. It wouldn’t surprise me if they did downplay it because there is a trend in our culture towards broadening the concept of marriage and polygamy is next on the list.
TH:
Right.
JA:
Child marriage is after that. It wouldn’t surprise me if a Hollywood miniseries was trying to soft pedal that stuff.
TH:
Well, let’s move on then. Unless you had another thought, I wanted to move on to how the siege unfolded.
JA:
No. I just wanted to mention about the initial ATF raid. Even if Koresh had been a polygamist legally or had been committing child abuse of sexual or physical nature, that’s not within the purview of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
TH:
Right.
JA:
They had no jurisdiction to go after offenses. Those offenses would have been under Texas law, for Texas authorities to deal with. Also, when they approached the compound and the way they did it was they came in with agents in cattle trailers. Instead of doing a no-knock raid, instead of doing a normal raid or a normal search where they present you with the warrant and then go in and look, they wanted to do a no-knock raid. They were going to pile out of the cattle trailers, smashed down the door with a battering ram and take everybody by surprise. But they didn’t have the element of surprise. David Koresh, unarmed, went to the front door and said, “Hey, how can I help you?” They panicked and charged.
TH:
Right.
JA:
He then shut the door and somebody started firing. According to the ATF, the Davidians started firing out of the compound even though it was through a metal door that would cause ricochets.
TH:
Right.
JA:
The Davidians said the ATF started firing in and they just started defending themselves-
TH:
And-
JA:
There is-
TH:
Oh, go ahead.
JA:
There’s a hybrid position that says, around the back of the compound maybe some ATF agents were shooting the Davidians dogs and that made the agents out front think they were being fired upon so they started firing too. Now, it should be easy to sort this all out because they took video tape of all of this and there’s a metal door and you can look and see which way to the bullet holes go. But the metal door has vanished from the ATF’s evidence locker as has all of the video tapes they made and several pages of their log books. It’s really damning. It looks like they started firing first and then covered it up.
TH:
Yeah. They said that the metal door must have been destroyed in the fire. But not the other metal door, not the other one that didn’t have bullet holes in it. So yeah, that my detectors go up at that like, oh, wait a minute. Something’s not right here. Actually, the mini series takes that hybrid view, Jimmy, where they show, it looks like the agents shoot at the dogs who charged at them. And that gunfire spooks the other agents who then start to unload.
Then what happens is the Branch Davidians stay inside and then the FBI’s Hostage Negotiation team comes out and the rest of the miniseries. I noticed this in another documentary as well, over the course of the next 51 days, there was a tension or a disagreement of style between two groups of people in law enforcement. The FBI Negotiators who try to diffuse situations to get them to end voluntarily and the Hostage Rescue Team that is apt to want to take action to end things in a swift way including if violence is necessary.
As you see in the mini series, the negotiators will try to diffuse the situation whereas the HRT wants to bust in or use psychological operations. PSYOPs like loud music, lights to try to wear down resistance. Jimmy, when I see this, it’s almost like watching two different kinds of parenting styles. One is trying to be emotionally sensitive and listen and the others that authoritarian parent that’s like, if I just spank them hard enough, they’ll start to behave. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that disagreement in your own studies.
JA:
Oh, yeah. This is something that the main hostage negotiator, a guy named Gary knows Noesner talks about, in his book, Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator. He points out that you had, basically, these two philosophies. One, with the negotiating team that was trying to get everybody to calm down and make incremental progress, getting a few people out at a time and they were having success. They got lots of people out of the compound over that 51 days. They were expecting what would happen. They called it a flow, trickle, gush strategy where they said, we want initially a [inaudible 00:31:03] of people to come out. Child or two here or there, a couple of old women here or there. Then after the trickle, we’ll start to get a flow where larger groups of people start to come out.
Then eventually, rather than be the last person in their Koresh in order to save face, will lead the rest out. That’s when we’ll have the final gush of people coming out. And they were having success. But they kept being hamstrung by the hostage rescue people who wanted to punish the Davidians. Instead of calming things down and being reasonable, they wanted to put pressure on them. For example, one of the ways they tripped each other up was, the negotiators got a request from the Davidians for milk for their infants.
TH:
Right.
JA:
So they said, sure, we can arrange milk for your infants. We’ll send in some milk and they did. Immediately after that, the hostage rescue people cut off the Davidians electricity. How are they supposed to keep the milk from going bad?
TH:
Right.
JA:
This is just one example. But Gary Noesner makes the point, every time we made progress they would do something new to punish the Davidians and that would set back the negotiation efforts.
TH:
Then let’s go to April 19th. That’s the famous day the siege ended when the compound burned down was on fire. What happened that day is that around 6:00 AM, the Hostage Rescue Team decided that they wanted to flush the Davidians out of the compound through the use of what is called CS gas. Which is a highly potent tear gas that would be delivered via tanks. So they would break down the walls of the compound, inject the gas into the compound. Their plan was for everyone, the Davidians to come out because they were overwhelmed by the gas. That has been the subject of intense scrutiny because this gas is something. I know, Jimmy, you’ve read into this a lot. But also from what I’ve seen is that, one, it’s only supposed to be used… The Geneva Convention had outlawed its use against soldiers in war. It’s use was only supposed to be against rioters in an open air area like if you have a riot or street protest.
Because if it is used indoors at high concentrations, it can cause lung damage. It can suffocate a person. This was used against women and children in enclosed spaces. Also, the gas can be highly flammable. We have in this compound because the electricity had been cut off, the Branch Davidians had been using oil lanterns to provide them light and heat. You had literally all the elements put together for an actual tinderbox and then that ended the assault. They said in the thing, it’s not an assault, you can come out. But I’m sure it seemed like an assault to the Branch Davidians when the tanks were coming in. Then at around-
JA:
Well, that was six.
TH:
Yeah, go ahead.
JA:
Yeah. Because they’re smashing holes in the wall, you have another, not only does this seem like an assault if tanks are smashing holes in your walls and even driving into the building. But you’re punching such large holes in the walls that you’re exposing the compound to wind providing oxygen for a fire-
TH:
And it was a windy day.
JA:
There were high winds that day. Also, these kids didn’t have gas masks.
TH:
Right.
JA:
Some of the adults did but the kids didn’t. The FBI abandoned its plan because what they had planned to do was a limited insertion of tear gas over a period of two or three days. Then if that didn’t work, they would start firing tear gas canisters into the compound. Well, they got an hour or something into the siege and then they just went crazy. They lost all restraint. They pumped three days worth of tear gas in there within a few hours. They started firing pyrotechnic tear gas rounds into which caused fires into the compound. Then, they claimed, oh, it was a suicide pack. They burned themselves.
TH:
That’s something is that there’s two elements here. People will say, one, why didn’t the Branch Davidians just leave? Because there was six hours between when the assault started and the fires broke out. Why wouldn’t they just leave when the tear gas is sufficiently high concentrations? Then, two the other question is, who started the fires that erupted at around noon that quickly engulfed the Mount Carmel Center? One, I’ll say, I’m sure you would agree with this that there is evidence from FLIR cameras. Forward-looking infrared is, I think what it stands for.
JA:
Yeah.
TH:
Yeah. Which are heat sensitive cameras to show that while law enforcement says that they weren’t shooting at the compound, there appears to be evidence both from helicopters and from agents on the ground of muzzle blasts of shots being fired at the compounds. If you have tanks coming in and you hear people shooting from the outside, you don’t want to go out. Thibodeau said in his memoir about the incident, the only reason he left when the building was on fire was because he preferred to be shot rather than burned alive.
JA:
Right. This now, the government, disputes this. But this is covered in some documentaries that I’ve watched. Actually, it really does look like the Forward-looking infrared or FLIR footage from the overhead airplane. It does look like you have agents on the ground shooting in. It’s hard to convey that evidence over radio, if you can’t see it but that’s really what it looks like. Even apart from that, the ATF had been using psychological warfare tactics on them. Like playing crazy loud noises and using bright lights all night long for weeks including things like Nancy Sinatra’s, These Boots are Made for Walking, lyric. One of the lines of that song is, one of these days these boots are going to walk all over you. So it just communicated to the Davidians that these people are your enemy. They mean you harm. Then when they inject three days worth of tear gas in a few hours, many of the people, especially some of the children could have been overcome and unable to come out. They could have been incapacitated for that reason. Just like the manufacturers warnings on the CS gas say.
TH:
Right.
JA:
Then they’re thinking they’re going to be killed. In fact, one of the things, I understand the documentary or the miniseries does not go into this. But there were a couple of gentlemen who did try to exit the compound and were run over and dismembered by a tank.
TH:
Yeah.
JA:
The autopsies confirmed that.
TH:
Yeah.
JA:
David Thibodeau was an eye witness of that. If you’ve just seen two of your fellow church members run over and dismembered by a tank, it really doesn’t motivate you to go outside.
TH:
Right. We’re coming near the end of our time together. I’ll just briefly say, the Netflix miniseries ends with the fire and ends with the phrase, we may never know who started it. But when you look at the evidence… The Netflix series says, look, there in the past, CS gas has been used and it catches on fire it’s flammable. Each side says the other side was responsible for doing that. There’s some ambiguous audio evidence of people carrying or emptying fuel but that could, of course, meant people were just moving fuel.
JA:
Or something else, water. Because they also moving water around to use for rags to try to help the children with the tear gas. To put over water soaked rags over their mouths and it could be water they’re pouring out. All we know is they’re pouring something. I do want to say that I don’t know for sure how the fire was set, if it was someone on the Davidian side, it wasn’t them as a group. There was no suicide pack. They would have heard that over the bugs that they had planted in the commune if there was a widespread suicide pack. If it was the Davidians, it would have been a subset, a small group of people who did it on the fly. On the other hand, when you set up these conditions with the flammable tear gas and the high winds and you’re shooting pyrotechnic rounds that explode and make fire, it’s easy to see the government setting it off accidentally too. So I don’t know how.
TH:
Sure. And their oil and turns all throughout the compound.
JA:
Yes.
TH:
Yeah. I mean, you’ve got all the elements there. As we said, it ended tragically. This effort to try to rescue women and children ended up with 76 deaths. I think 25 of them were children to pregnant women. But I think, ultimately, last question I have is it seems like at least lessons were learned both from law enforcement and maybe in popular imagination. You don’t want to impose a narrative upon a group you’re trying to understand. You should do your best to work with the actual evidence you have and not overreact towards it, especially with violent means that can quickly get out of hand.
JA:
This is actually a point I make regularly, in describing how to do apologetics is, don’t assume you understand the other person’s position. Ask them questions desiring to understand. Don’t impose a narrative on other people and just assume it’s going to be the case because that’s going to lead you to make mistakes. That happened here. They assumed they were an apocalyptic group of a type they weren’t and it led to all these people being killed. Fortunately, after two debacles in a row, after Ruby Ridge and then Waco, the FBI did learn some lessons. The hostage negotiating people got their hand strengthened. The negotiators did. Few years later when there was another lengthy siege, the Montana Freeman, the FBI was allowed to take its time. The negotiators, they didn’t bring the siege to a sudden conclusion and everybody got out alive.
TH:
Good to hear that. You know what? Oh, man, there is so much we could have gone into. So much more. I really enjoy Jimmy being able to go back and forth with you on this because we both have quite an interest in the subject. For those of you who think, oh, man, Jimmy entrenched, there’s so much more we could talk about. There actually is a lot more you could get into. I would recommend you listen to Jimmy Akin’s, Mysterious World podcast. He has two whole episodes on this topic that we will link to in the description of trenthornpodcast.com. But Jimmy, where can people go to hear those episodes and hear other episodes from your podcast?
JA:
They can go to SQPN.com or just Google, Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World. If you don’t have a link handy in front of you, it’s episodes 96 and 97. Are on David Koresh and the Waco siege.
TH:
Okay. Very good. Thank you so much, Jimmy, for being here today.
JA:
My pleasure. Thank you.
TH:
All right. Thank you guys for listening and I hope that you all have a very blessed day.
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