Koresh, page 36
“Koresh is probably a functional, paranoid type psychotic. He appears in a superior mode to the people who he has gathered around him . . . He is not a multiple or split personality, but his own different external manifestations of the same personage.”
David moved through various identities; when challenged or opposed, he seamlessly flowed into the next one. This was a protective measure; David saw the world as belonging to him. No one had the right to put him down. “Koresh is a user of others . . . He is willing to kill, to see his followers die, and to die himself. In his fluid identity mix, the delusional Messiah God is stronger than the human reality of his trial, television talk shows, and any book deal . . .”
The two experts presumably knew little of David’s early relationships with older men, but they’d picked up on his childhood fears. He’d built barriers to the kind of psychological erasure that his stepdad and others had tried to enforce on him. David had protected himself as a boy by imagining various heroic roles to play: the track star, the rock star, the preacher. The analysis hearkened back to the poem he wrote as a teenager: “To me there was, yet never was / one person for me to be.”
The memo ended on a pessimistic note. David wasn’t going to go down easily. “The government,” the authors wrote, “is the hostage in this situation.”
46
The Manuscript
ON APRIL 10, another letter arrived.
Friends,
I offer to you My Wisdom. I offer to you My sealed secrets. How dare you turn away my invitations of mercy? I know your sins and your iniquities. None are hid from Me. When will you ever fear and be wise? Your only Savior is My Truth. My Truth is the “Seven Seals.”
You’re not rejecting a man by fighting against David My servant, no, for I have given and revealed My Name to Him. Read Isaiah 45. The Name Koresh is My surname and all men are My sons and the work of My hands . . .
Yahweh Koresh
Steve asked about another note. If David wrote to President Clinton, would the president read it? Because David had composed one. Was it worth sending out?
The negotiator said that Hillary might not let Bill see it. It wasn’t clear if he was kidding or not, but the letter never arrived.
Still, the president. David was growing more grandiose, not less. The April 10 letter was written as if David had merged with God. It didn’t bode well.
Concertina wire arrived at the site, double-stacked in bright steel rolls six feet high that sparkled in the sunlight. The Hostage Rescue Team began enclosing the compound with the stuff. It was to keep anyone from going in or out.
Two days later, the FBI sent Janet Reno a plan for another tear gas assault on the compound. She responded by asking, “Why now? Why not wait?” The FBI replied that, among other factors, should the siege continue even a couple of weeks longer, the HRT would have to be withdrawn for training, possibly before the end of April. Reno wanted more information before she would make a decision.
On April 14, Brigadier General Peter Jan Schoomaker, assistant division commander at Fort Hood, and an Army colonel flew to Washington. Dick Rogers was on the FBI airplane with them and brought the two men up to date on the plan. It called for the gradual insertion of nonlethal tear gas over hours or days, to slowly force the Davidians from the compound. At one point, Rogers asked Schoomaker what he thought. “We can’t grade your paper,” Schoomaker replied. At the meeting, the military officers were just as tight-lipped. They were briefed on the operation but offered no significant thoughts or comments.
Reno met with a tear gas expert. He related the fact that no one had ever conducted laboratory tests with regard to the impact of tear gas on children. There were only anecdotal reports of kids having been exposed accidentally. They were generally positive in that no permanent injuries had been observed. One of the participants in the meeting, in trying to show the relative safety of the method, told Reno that American soldiers were exposed to tear gas “at least annually” during training.
Around this time, President Clinton called Bernard Nussbaum, his White House counsel. “What do we do about Waco?” he asked. Nussbaum replied that he’d consulted with Janet Reno and told her to get advice “from the professionals,” then make her decision. “We should stay out of it,” he told Clinton.
“No, I know a lot about this stuff, Bernie.” Clinton mentioned a prison riot and some other law enforcement crises that had occurred when he was governor of Arkansas.
Nussbaum repeated his advice: Stay clear of it.
“I want to have some input into this,” Clinton said.
“Mr. President, you’re the president of the United States, you’re not the governor of the United States.” Nussbaum thought it was a good line.
Clinton finally relented. But he wanted Reno to consult with the military—specifically, with Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Colin Powell—before she did anything.
“That’s a good idea, Mr. President,” Nussbaum said. He passed the message on to Reno.
Soon after, David told the negotiators he was going to compose a manuscript on the Seven Seals. He’d dictate it to Judy, who’d type it up. When it was finished, he and the others would leave Mount Carmel.
David was high on the prospect. He was going to write something world-altering.
DAVID: I’ll be in custody in the jailhouse. You can come down and feed me bananas if you want. I’ll be splitting out of this place. I’m so sick of MREs.
NEGOTIATOR: So, I’m gonna let you go so you can get back to work because, David, frankly, I’m eagerly awaiting this manuscript.
DAVID: And I’ll tell you what, it’s gonna blow your socks off.
But the more David thought about the manuscript, the more pessimistic he grew about its reception. When he emerged from Mount Carmel, people weren’t going to be interested in the Seven Seals. “They’re going to say, do you molest young ladies? Have you eaten babies? Do you sacrifice people? Do you make automatic weapons? . . .
“That’s what they’re going to be interested in. Sensationalism . . . You know as well as I do, that people in this world, they want something dramatic and sensational. No one’s going to let me sit in front of the camera and read Psalms 40 to them to prove the first seal.”
Steve was coming to the same conclusion. He couldn’t understand why people weren’t responding to David’s message. “When it comes right down to it, people want to have their plastic Jesus or their plastic Gods or whatever in their imagination they think God is or isn’t.”
Despite the gloom, Judy Schneider continued to type David’s manuscript. One of the negotiators asked when might this thing be done. Judy replied that at this rate maybe a year.
For Jeff Jamar and his team, that was unacceptable. It was a hard marker. They would go a different way. Jamar and the others began to press for approval to insert tear gas into the compound.
Reno dug into the details of the FBI’s plan. David and Steve had made numerous references to flames, but Reno was more concerned with the possibility of an explosion inside Mount Carmel. The FBI believed Koresh had the materials to cause a large detonation.
On Thursday or Friday night, April 15–16, the attorney general was unable to sleep. “Oh my God, what if he blows the place up?” she thought. “What if he holds children up in the windows and threatens to shoot them?”
Webster Hubbell, the assistant attorney general, called Byron Sage. He asked how the negotiations were going. Was there hope? Byron told him they were at a “total impasse” with the Davidians.
Briefings on the proposed tear gas assault continued. During one, Reno recalled an FBI official saying that children were being abused inside the compound. “He’s beating the babies,” the official said, in her recollection. “Wait a minute, actually beating the babies?” Reno replied, obviously concerned.
Reno assumed the remark was prompted by the FBI’s listening devices. That the FBI was hearing abuse or hearing about it through the bug tapes. Hubbell recalled hearing the same thing: Child abuse was happening inside Mount Carmel.
David had raped and beaten children before the siege, that was well-documented. But the FBI had no information that sexual abuse was currently happening inside Mount Carmel. Koresh was seriously wounded and likely physically unable to do much except rest. It was old information.
Reno peppered the FBI with questions. Could they insert some kind of gas into the compound that would put the Davidians to sleep? Could an airplane fly over and spray the gas? The FBI told her no on both counts.
FBI Assistant Director Danny Coulson spoke to the idea of building a fence around Mount Carmel and starving the Davidians out. There were several downsides to the plan: First, it was estimated that the group had a year’s worth of food inside the compound. Then there was the hierarchy: David and his lieutenants would probably get most of the available food and water, leaving his followers to suffer. If supplies ran short and the rest of the Davidians were on the brink of starvation, Koresh would most likely negotiate new supplies in order to avoid deaths in the compound.
If they went ahead with an even longer siege, Reno thought about what the next year would look like. The Davidians would be filthy and increasingly malnourished. The sexual abuse, which she believed to be ongoing, would most likely continue. When the siege was finally over, HRT might enter the compound and find most or all of the residents dead.
Still, on Friday, April 16, Reno rejected the FBI’s tear gas proposal. She didn’t state her reasons. Hubbell relayed the decision to Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mark Richard. When Hubbell asked how the bureau would respond, Richard said they would be upset. Hubbell called FBI Director Sessions and asked him to come to his office. Furious at the news, Sessions requested a meeting with Reno to ask her to reconsider.
Hubbell left to grab Reno. He returned about ten minutes later with the attorney general. Reno and Hubbell hadn’t discussed the matter at length, but something had changed in the director’s mind. She ordered the FBI to prepare a statement and briefing book.
It was an indication she was going to approve the mission. The assembled officials were startled. There’d been no conversation with Sessions.
The next day, the FBI delivered a three-ring binder, which included all the relevant information given to Reno over the preceding weeks, along with a statement outlining the tactical operation to insert tear gas into the compound. Reno scanned the statement. She didn’t read the supporting documents, she only wanted to know they were there. What Reno paid the most attention to was the chronology of events.
One of the sections, Tab B, number 11, stated that during one FBI meeting with the attorney general, there were references to Koresh physically abusing minors at the compound during the siege. FBI officials later said the dating of that information was a typo. The references were to the bureau’s earlier interviews with ex-Davidians, which had resulted in allegations of child sexual abuse and physical beating of minors.
The proposed date for the tear gas assault was Monday, April 19. As with the initial ATF raid, the choice was intentional. Weekends were typically the busiest times for emergency rooms, so Saturday and Sunday were ruled out, in case Waco became a mass casualty event.
On the afternoon of Saturday, April 17, Reno gave the operation the green light, with conditions. If the Davidians did anything to risk the lives of the children during the assault, the agency was to withdraw. “Get the hell out of there” was Reno’s summary of her directive.
The attorney general didn’t reveal the basis for the reversal. Later, she commented: “I can’t say there was one particular point that finally tipped it . . . As of Friday night, I didn’t feel comfortable enough with proceeding. But I think it was the culmination of all the factors, that the situation in the compound was deteriorating, that we were concerned about people in the compound and the fact that he could do what he did at any time and we would be in the less favorable position to control it.”
On Sunday, Reno went to the White House to brief the president. Her account of the meeting and Clinton’s memory of it are somewhat different. In Reno’s version, she emphasized that April 19 was not “D-day.” Getting the Davidians to surrender might take time. The tear gas insertion was only the start of the endgame.
Clinton’s account of the conversation was more expansive. He recalled that Reno told him that the FBI wanted to storm the compound and arrest Koresh and those who’d taken part in the killing of the ATF agents and other offenses. Reno said that she was concerned by reports that Koresh was molesting children and that he might initiate a mass suicide. Clinton also recalled Reno saying that the FBI believed that too many resources that were needed elsewhere were being utilized at Waco. She told him the FBI estimated that the tear gas would cause the followers to leave the compound within two hours. Reno asked for Clinton’s okay for the plan.
The two accounts weren’t necessarily in conflict. Reno and Clinton each came away from the meeting with different aspects of the operation front and center in their minds.
For his part, the president told Reno about a standoff that had occurred when he was governor of Arkansas. A right-wing group was burrowed into their mountain camp in the north of the state. They were spread out among several cabins and were heavily armed. The FBI proposed storming the site.
Clinton decided to consult a war veteran, “someone who’d fought in the jungles of Vietnam.” The veteran flew above the site and came back and told the then-governor, “If those people can shoot at all, you’ll lose fifty men in the assault.” Clinton canceled the operation and ordered a blockade of the camp. The standoff later ended peacefully.
The president suggested something similar. But Reno responded with several points: the FBI didn’t want to delay any longer; the reported child abuse could continue; the Davidians had food supplies that far outpaced what the right-wingers in Arkansas had; and the standoff was costing a million dollars a week.
“It is your decision,” Clinton told the attorney general. The talk lasted fifteen minutes.
As the FBI finalized its plans, David’s attorney, Dick DeGuerin, received a letter. It was signed by David and was in his voice:
Hello Dick,
. . . I was shown that as soon as I am given over into the hands of man, I will be made a spectacle of, and people will not be concerned about the truth of God, but just the bizarrity of me – the flesh (person).
I want the people of this generation to be saved . . .
We are standing on the threshold of Great events! The Seven Seals, in written form, are the most sacred information ever!
David Koresh
On April 16, David told the FBI he’d finished the section on the First Seal. Judy was busy typing it out.
But the FBI seemed to have given up on the whole idea. “Mr. Koresh does not have any more than a ninth-grade education, so he does not write very well,” a spokesman told the press. “So everything will have to be rewritten . . . We really have no idea how long it’s going to take . . . They have refused to be pinned down on any time certain.”
The next day, another letter was placed outside the compound, much in the same vein as the first two. “I begin to do My ‘strange work,’” David wrote in it. It was a quotation from Isaiah 28.
A milk-carton bug caught the Davidians talking about keeping fire trucks off the compound. “Nobody comes in here,” one said. “They couldn’t even bring in the fire truck,” Steve replied, “’cause they couldn’t even get near us.”
Steve talked with the FBI about the Bible being fulfilled. “If you look at the prophecies, it talks about a place in the last days that’s plowed like a field. Do you think, perchance, it could be this place?” The Brads had left ruts and furrows all over the property, which, if you thought about it, resembled a field that had been plowed. “It seems like it’s being fulfilled,” Steve continued. “I would have never dreamed.”
And if you went deeper, wasn’t the compound, scarred and abused as it was, a place larger in its implications? “This has been America,” Steve said. “It’s come to the place where I think this all needs, everything needs to really end as far as I’m concerned . . .”
“The Constitution has been so ripped apart and run over its principles that, you know, do what you got to do, honestly? . . . They can burn the place down. Bring—like I said the other day—bring in your Abrams tanks and just run the whole place over and then stick a gravestone over the place.”
Why leave the compound if the whole country was being disfigured and brought to heel by hidden Babylonians? Let it turn into a graveyard until David redeemed it.
47
Letters
IN WACO, FAMILY members of the Branch Davidians were gathered in motel rooms, hoping for the chance to see their loved ones. Some spoke to journalists. Others sent tapes into the compound or simply watched the live feed on TV.
Journalists tracked down Sandy, David’s old girlfriend. In the years since she’d dated David, she’d moved more than once, trying to keep one step ahead of him. She felt like a fugitive—not just because of David, but other weird stuff that had happened in Texas. She seemed to draw the crazy energy of the world to her, like she was dragging this long tangled-up trail of bad experiences and wrecked things, clanking and clattering behind her. At least that’s how it felt.
But before the ATF raid, David would find her once or twice a year and come see her, trying to win her back. He would show up at her house. “Come to Mount Carmel,” he’d say. “Come sing with my band.”
In her mind, she knew he wanted to control her, but the way he spoke, it was as if he cared about her so much that he didn’t want her to make one false move, and that’s why he was there.
Sandy refused to go. She’d tell him, “You’re not who you see yourself as, David.” But David wouldn’t listen, as always. He’d get spun up into some long-winded speech, and there went a couple of hours out of her life.
