The 1993 Waco Siege

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“Welcome to "Stuff You Should Know," a production of "I Heart Radio."”

Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is "Stuff You Should Know," and if you're going to do it, do it right. Do it with us. Is that a song? Yeah, it's a George Michael song.

Okay. I don't remember the song. It was like "Baby, I'm your man." Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

I think that's why I'm in it. Maybe, could be. They're virtually interchangeable. Sorry Andrew. Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Did you know George? Did everything with last Christmas? I mean, he wrote it all. He composed it. He sang it and he played the instruments. No, I didn't know that. I didn't know he played instruments and I haven't even saw a documentary on him. I didn't either, but I saw that somewhere. I didn't follow up about it.

No, I'm sweating that it's not true. Well, hopefully at the end of this episode, no one will have a George Michael's Christmas song. Great point, Chuck, because this episode is much more serious than George Michael's heart that he gave away foolishly last Christmas. This is about one of the darkest moments in American law enforcement history.

And very maddeningly, one that the federal government just basically walked away from just

kind of dusting off his hands like we got out of that one, there hasn't really ever been any real accountability for Waco, despite attempts like there are tons of hearings and stuff like that, but really, like, overall, there just wasn't any huge reckoning over it. And there should have been because it was an American tragedy, even if in some ways, the branch dividian group were at least partially responsible for their part, too.

Yeah, like I hope that comes across in this episode, because I know we're going to get a little probably riled up here and there about like how it was handled, but I'll go ahead and just say my takeaway at the beginning, you know, you can't you can't hold up and be a pedophile in a house and you can't illegally, like collect and sell and modify guns and a machine guns and sell those,

“like no one's disputing that stuff. I think the the issue is is the way this all went down”

in the end when it could have probably gone down with the loss of zero lives, much less the loss of what was at 86 people total? Yeah, including 20 kids. Yeah, so that's sort of the issue at hand for me personally. Yeah, I think that that hits it on the nose. Well, let's talk about the branch division day. Yeah, what? Because I up until two days ago, I thought that the videons came from David Carrash. I thought they got that name from him as their leader, just because I didn't know

a ton about it, except aside from, you know, kind of following it as it happened when I was in college on the news. But the branch divisions, they got that name because in 1955, a guy named Benjamin Rodin started a branch, a new sect of seventh day Adventist, a division sect, which had, you know,

Right, he retrofitted his name. He was actually born Vernon Wayne Howell and he's like, yeah, you know, I could probably get a lot further trying to become the leader of this sect. If I change my name to the same name as the name of the sect. Yeah. So, yes, they actually split. They were a branch, but then they split fully from the Adventist church because they started to predict the date of, you know, end times, started to follow leaders as prophets, and the

seventh day Adventist were like, we did that like a century ago. We don't do that anymore. You guys go away. And so the teachings, though, of the people before David Carrash when he came in, there was a woman named Lois Rodin, they attracted dozens of people. At any given time, they were probably somewhere around 100 people who were living and working and worshiping, I guess, at what was called Mount Carmel, their compound outside of Waco. The branch divisions were pretty

well-suited for the Waco Texas area. They were into guns. They were into religion. They interacted with the rest of the community. They were free to come and go. They didn't believe that David Carrash was God. Like, it wasn't like a cult in the way that it's often portrayed or that we generally think of cults. But at the same time, they were millennialists. They thought that end times was coming in that essentially what they were doing and what the ATF was doing to them was bringing about

“judgment day. That's what was going on with these guys. And they were such believers”

that they were willing to dig in and sacrifice their own lives to help bring judgment day sooner, I guess. Yeah. But some of them fully believed he was the Messiah, by the way. That's really? Yeah. Did you watch the documentary? No, I didn't see the documentary. I saw just

said the stuff I read basically was that they believed he was the lamb, which is the person who

can interpret the seven seals that will bring about judgment day. But beyond that, he wasn't like God or anything like that. He was a prophet of sorts, but not like a Messiah. That's what I saw. Yeah. Well, he be said with his own mouth. I am the Messiah. And there are divisions that are still alive that believe he was the Messiah. So, well, there goes me. Another thing I didn't know is that Mount Carmel had been active since 1935. So, it had been around a long, long time. It's about

13 miles northeast of Waco, Texas. And so, they had been around for a long, long time and in 55

“is when that official split came. And then 59 was when, and I think that's why they were like,”

hey, don't predict these secondcomings because when they don't happen, you end up looking kind of dumb. Exactly. And that happened in 1955. The second coming did not happen. And so, they ended up there. With that last group, like you said, about a hundred people, Kareye should have been around since he was in his early 20s. He got off to a kind of a rocky start there because he had had an affair with Louis Rodin, who I guess was Benjamin Rodin's wife.

Yes. If the math checks out, she was in her 60s. And he was in his 20s. And he got into a squabble with her son about who was going to become leader and ended up shooting him. And like,

he was arrested and everything. And it was a hungry. So, he never, he never had to serve time for that

shooting. Right. So, he, he took over. Like, after that, he was pretty much the undisputed leader. One of the first things he did was he married a 14 year old member of the church and her parents consented and said, yeah, sure, be, be married to our, a 14 year old daughter who you are 10 years older than, which made it legal in Texas at the time. That was, you know, sign number one. But if, if you rewind a little bit before he showed up at the branch, the video compound,

he had actually been defella who shipped is what it's called where the Adventist kicked you out.

“Because he had seduced, which I think means that he sexually assaulted and actually successfully”

assaulted a 15 year old daughter of one of the church's elders. Yeah. You know, he had a pretty rough upbringing before that. Like you said, he was born in Houston. He was reportedly had suffered sexual abuse of his own at the hands of older boys. He had dyslexia and did not do

well in school. I think he failed first grade a couple of times and was a dropout by the time he was

in middle school. And yeah. So, you know, that was his sort of rough childhood. For sure. And over the years he kind of got into guns. He really got into the Bible. Like that was one of the things that I think people were drawn to about him at the branch of the

And he could essentially run Bible studies that ran, you know, 10, 12 hours at a length. And people weren't getting fatigued. Like they were still just jazzed the whole time. So he definitely knew what he was talking about. He wasn't just making stuff up off the top of his head. Like he very much understood the book of revelations in particular.

Yeah, for sure. One of the first things he did once he was in charge was he said,

God has told me that I need to bear a lot of children. And I need to have multiple wives in order

“to do that. I think he was supposed to God told him to have or at least he said, God told him to”

have 24 children. And they would be sort of the rulers in the future kingdom. And so at first he started with the single women of the group. And then that wasn't enough. And he was having a lot of kids. I think he had 17 in the end. Then he moved on to the married women and separated the couples out and said, All right, you can no longer be with your husband. I'm the only one here. I'm the only male here who was allowed to have intercourse. All the other guys have to remain

celibate. And they all went along with it. And you know, this included taking children up girls. There was this one woman Kathy Schroeder who was very disturbing because she still believes all this stuff. But she was interviewed. Who said that like they were all trying to stay awake all the girls at the end of these marathon Bible studies, even though they were exhausted. So he would pick them to go back to his room and have sex with them. And she also, it was really hard to watch.

But she still to this day was like, They weren't children. We weren't children. They sure some of them were as young as 10. But they were adults in our culture. Yeah. Man, you know how the world found out about that too, Chuck? About which part? Well, about him sexually abusing miners,

children. It was a current affairs show. Well, first the way they should be inherited in a

series of articles on it. So that caught the local attention, but a current affairs show called a current affair, the Australian version back in 1992, went and interviewed David Correshin. If this was before anybody knew who David Correshin was, so they had a lot of foresight and they went and investigated it because this is a, I mean, obviously, it's a really big deal that there's a essentially what everyone thought of at the time and still do in a lot of ways, a cult leader

who is sexually abusing the children of his sect that's definitely worth investigating. That's not what the ATF investigated him for them. No, they're the ATF. They don't, they don't dabble in that kind of stuff. What they do dabble in is guns and firearms. And that is what got them. You know, I mentioned early on, they were illegally collecting and buying and selling and retrofitting,

“basically making machine guns and then selling those illegally at gun shows. And so that's what”

caught their attention. And, you know, they were collecting these guns and supposedly, like,

more than, like, close to 2 million rounds of ammunition, training, everyone there to, to use,

like, including the kids to use these weapons, they were preparing for, you know, the end days. Yeah, exactly. And they were going to go out with guns, blades and yeah, well, which is what they did. Allegedly, the thing that initially caught the ATF's attention, they were already aware that there was such a thing as the branch to VDans and that they had a business selling guns at gun shows. But the thing that really caught their attention was

apparently a UPS driver was delivering a box and I guess the box fell open in a bunch of grenade shells fell out and the UPS driver thought, that's odd. Like, who gets 50 grenade shells delivered to their compound? And I guess alerted the federal authorities. And that's when they really started investigating the branch civilians. I see we take a break and talk about how well that investigation was conducted. How about that? Yeah, we'll be right back.

Hey, it's us, the Jonas brothers and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, the news? We've created our own podcast. Oh, hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. First, people to do podcasts. Pretty. Yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. But this one's extra special. So how do we, how do we actually

“come up with a name, hey, Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about”

what we should call it. And oh, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early

I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast.

People could call in and say, hey, Jonas, and then I broke down on my little note pad. Hey, Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title. Oh, the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to hey, Jonas, on the iHeart Radio Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen, we don't care where he here. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite on humor me with Robert's Michael and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Oden

Kirk to David Letterman help make you funnier this week. My guess SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter streeter side L helped an occupile band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert's Michael and friends on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games.

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“All right, I think a Snickard when we left because you rightly said we'll talk about how that went”

because it did not go well for a while and in fact none of this went well. Before the raid ultimately happened, there were a lot of stupid moves from the ATF. One time they were like, hey, we need to keep an eye on this. So there's a house sort of nearby. I think it was like 70 acres at the whole compound. But there was a house about a half a mile away and they said, let's pose this college students. They're like renting this house. But they come in here.

I feel like anytime like these people try to go undercover like that. Like let's pose this kids

out having a good time and it just never goes well and it didn't. They had suitcases.

They had rental cars, like new rental cars. They eventually were like, I think they're on to us. So let's have a party and one of the branched evidians came to the party and I'm sure they were like, hey, would you like a brusky and the branched evidians went back in like, by the way, there's

“definitely not college students. All right. Don't you hate mortgages to fellow young person?”

I thought they also carried briefcases as well rather than backpacking stuff. So yeah, it wasn't the best undercover operation. They send another undercover agent to pose as a UPS employee and he did all sorts of stuff that UPS employees don't do like he insisted that they branched evidians, let him use the phone and a bathroom and then he went to another part of the compound and tried the same thing and they met him at the door with the role of toilet paper.

And then another guy, Robert Rodriguez, he actually managed to successfully embed himself in the branched evidians. He showed up as a student and follower and started attending Bible studies.

And it was successful in that like, he was never kicked out, but it was successful in that they knew

that he was a federal agent almost from the outset. And later on, I think during these negotiation talks,

“that B.I. was like, well, if you knew he was undercover, why didn't you kick him out?”

And I don't remember who said it. One of them said, we liked him, like we saw it as Corey, he was a good guy and we liked being around and we came to like him. So why would we kick him out? So it was really weird, like they were almost toying with the feds because they knew the feds were investigating them and it was so clumsy that they didn't feel particularly threatened at this point. But the whole thing started in May 1992 and by February 1993, I guess the ATF was like,

we have enough information that we're going to carry out a raid. We're not just going to show up and ask him to come out, we're going to carry a hard-hitting raid. Why did they do that, Chuck? Well, I mean, they got a warrant. So they had enough information to at least get a like a legal warrant to search everything. Their goal initially was to just get those illegal weapons. Arrest David Koresh, who, by the way, and I think you found this was that like he had a relationship with the

local sheriff and at any point the local sheriff could it? And I think did say like, hey man, once you come in and like talk to us about what's going on and that happened. So like none of the seem to have been completely necessary. I think they also were the undied impression that like they were

kind of regularly would leave the compound and they probably could have lured him out. But they,

you know, they were kind of bungling this from the beginning. So they planned to surprise kind of raid warrant serving where they would force entry and they were like, we're going to catch them off guard. They won't have time to arm themselves and it's going to go great. They had a lot of bad intelligence too that this raid was based on. One, I don't know where they got this, but they

“were under the impression that all of the weapons were kept under lock and key and that you only”

access those with Koresh's direct permission. That's not true at all. The weapons were all over the compound and basically everybody walking around the compound knew how to use them and was prepared to, right? That's a really big intelligence failure when you're planning a raid. Another is there was a pit that they assumed that most, if not all of the men would be working in and apparently during the surveillance, the most bend that had ever been seen there at one time

was 13. So that was a bad assumption. And then like you said, they were like, he never leaves the

compound. So we have to raid them. There's one other thing about the raid. So the ATF was conducting the raid at the time the ATF reported to the Treasury Department and they planned this raid based on the element of surprise, right? The whole thing was supposed to have the element of

“surprise and later on there would be a lot of disagreement about whether this was said or not,”

but supposedly the higher-ups of treasury were like, if there's no element of surprise anymore, if you lose it, you don't do the raid and that's not what happened. No. And you know, part of this makes me wonder if they were feeding that informant bad information too. Oh, yeah. I didn't, I didn't ever see anything about that, but like I've seen enough movies to know if they kept inviting this guy back to Bible study,

then they may have been saying like, you know, all the guns here under lock and key or whatever, but who knows? That is Chuck speculation, so don't don't talk quote me on it. It seems like it could be. But yeah, so the raid is is blown because of another just this wasn't so much a blender by the ATF. It was just a blender by the media because it was a cameraman named Jim Peeler and a reporter. He was he's all over the stock of memory. He stopped on the way out there because he was tipped off.

They don't know who maybe a sheriff's deputy or somebody tipped him off that this is going to be going down. So he wanted the scoop. So he couldn't find the compound and he stops a mail truck

“a friendly mail carrier. So, hey, where's this branched a video in compound? I think there's a”

raid going on and I want to cover it. And that mail carrier was a branched a video. So he high-tailed a back there and was like, we're about to get raided, you guys. Yeah. And so when he tells David Kourish, this we're about to get raided. Robert Rodriguez, the undercover student who had embedded himself as a follower who they knew was a Fed, he's standing right there talking to David Kourish when the mail carrier David Jones runs up and tells him they're about to get raided.

So, knowing that the element of surprise has been blown, Robert Rodriguez runs back to the safe house to call his superiors, gets in touch with them and apparently is like, the surprise is blown. We need to call off the raid and the I guess the superiors were like, oh, bad, bad connection. I can't hear you see, we're going to go raid them now. And that's essentially what happened. They carried on with the raid, knowing full well that Kourish knew they were coming.

And that apparently gave them a sense of urgency that hadn't even been there before. And then

on top of that, one of the reasons why they planned the raid in the first place, this big

was bang forced entry raid with like a tactical team going in, was that they were up for budget review, congressional budget review. And they wanted something splashy to get the attention of Congress to be like, see, this is what you give us money for. So they had every incentive to go in unnecessarily roughly. Yeah, for sure. So on February 28, there were 76 armed agents that came up from porthood. They were obfuscated and cattle trucks. They had cannabis thrown over the back of these

trucks hiding, of course, Kourish and them knew they were coming anyway. So it's not like that mattered. And at the very beginning of this thing, David Kourish comes to the front door. And it's on video like all the stuff you can watch happen. And eventually you were watching it in real time as it played out. But it's all over this documentary. Like Kourish comes to the front door and opens it and says, hey man, there's a bunch of women and kids in here. You don't want to you don't want to do

this kind of quickly shuts the door and goes back in and all hell breaks loose and from the descriptions

and thousands of rounds being exchanged. Yes. And there is a lot of disagreement still today. Who

“was the first one to shoot, right? Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is, and again, later with the fire,”

you still get to completely conflicting stories from each side. Right. So the branch to video

in say that the feds fired first and the feds obviously say the branch to video is fired first.

The thing that supports the branch to video in claim is that there was an ATF agent who was part of the raid who apparently told an investigator right after the raid that they may have shot first because one of the agents shot a dog as they were coming into the compound and that that would have set off all of the shooting in general. He apparently later retracted that when asked about it, but apparently the branch to video is also say that their dogs were shot too. So

it's entirely possible that that's when the shooting started. It's also possible to branch to video and started shooting first. Yeah. Because on their side, at least this is what they say,

they said that the first rounds that they heard is the ATF speaking. We're from an M60 and a 50

cow rifle and those are guns that they didn't have. And I'm just reminded, didn't they shoot the dogs at Ruby Ridge too? Yeah. Yeah. So like you said, this was like a war. People died here.

“Like I think 4 agents died during this raid. I mean the branch to videoids had massive fire”

power. I think six branch to videoids were killed in the exchange as well. A bunch more were wounded. David Kuresh was wounded and all of a sudden this raid had been so thoroughly botched that it became day one of a 51 day siege where the the ATF and then eventually the FBI surrounded Mount Carmel and were trying to get the branch to videoids to come out and the branch to videoids were like,

no, we're not coming out. You guys go away. Yeah. And you know, they also had the superior ground.

I think one of the guys that was like, you know, when we pulled up on this place, we were all of a sudden a little shaken. He said it was full of windows. He said it was the high ground. And he said, this is not the kind of like, we were immediately at the what do you call it when you're at a disadvantage. That's the worst. Yeah. Yeah. Like a siege of a castle up on a cliff. You're not in the best position unless you're in the castle. Yeah. And it also had its hour. That's where Gresh is bedroom was. Oh, yeah.

It was also made almost entirely of like plywood, right? There was some concrete to it, but wasn't the most part wasn't it wood? Yeah. I mean, it was huge, but it was definitely one of

“those things that was kind of built by hand over many years. Yeah, for sure. I think it was a three-hour”

gun battle. And eventually there was a call from the inside to the outside where David Koresh gets on the phone with an officer Lynch. And he says he says he's officer Lynch and Koresh says, that's kind of a funny name. And then he says, this is David Koresh, the notorious. And he said, would you guys do that for? Yeah. That's the, I think that's the thing, Chuck. Like I'm so conflicted about this is like he was genuinely a bad person for sexually abusing kids. They,

they were preparing for the end of days. But at the same time, he was aware enough of what they must have looked like to outsiders, like a crazy cult or something like that. That he was like, he was out of his mind. It seems like at any given point in time. He was just kind of like an average dude who had kind of worked his way into this really unique situation and then abused it in many, many different ways. But he wasn't crazy. He wasn't some really,

it wasn't like talking to Charles Manson. Like imagine trying to negotiate with Charles Manson. It was nothing like that. It was like negotiating with somebody who had different views with you than you. That we're so far out as far as religious. Yeah. This goes that even a religious negotiator wouldn't have brown and brown in that sense, right? So they seemed crazy to the FBI, even though they weren't crazy people. It's really hard to get that across and not sound like

in a polygist or like him crazy yourself. Yeah, for sure. We should point out that Koresh was wounded in this initial gunfight and the religious imagery was not lost on his followers because he was shot through the wrist and he was shot through the side. You know, those were the wounds Jesus suffered on the cross and he was he was 33 at this point and I think the most people think

supreme like religious symbolism happening. Right. Do you want to take a break and come back and start talking about the siege and the negotiation attempts? Yeah, sure. Hey, it's us, the Jonas brothers and guess what, we have some big news. What's the news, the news? We created our own podcast. Oh, hey Jonas, we invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it.

We just contributed to it. First people to do podcast. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts,

right. But this one's extra special. So how do we, how do we actually come up with a name,

“hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it.”

And oh, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. Well, this is how you guys remember going down. Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast. We could call in and say, hey Jonas, and then I broke down on my little note pad, hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title. Oh, I got it. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to hey Jonas on the

I heart radio apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen, we don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy. Not quite on humor me with Robert's Michael and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Oden Kirk to David Letterman, help make you funny this week. My guess SNL's Mikey Day and Headwriters Streeter side L helped an Occupella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some

retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert's Michael and friends on the I heart radio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days I put on 10 pounds. I was having troubles stopping the muscle growth. Listen to superhuman on the I heart radio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay Chuck, so like I said, the raid very quickly turned into a 51-day siege which makes a very ironic that one of the ATF agents was so confident that the raid would be over and done with very quickly he had set up a tea time for the same afternoon as the raid and he missed

the tea time obviously because like I said it turned into a siege at first. So the FBI was on the

scene almost immediately because when a federal agent is killed the FBI investigates and they're like well we might as well stick around since this is now a siege we're going to take over from the ATF. So basically on day one the FBI took over this and their negotiators started getting to work

“apparently they had trouble finding the phone number for the compound but I think the”

branch to video is called them first. Is that correct? I mean I know that during the shoot out they called out but I'm not sure about after work. Okay well at any rate they were in communication on the phone very very quickly I think maybe even the same the same day. Yeah and things were

going pretty well like negotiations were going well at first. I mean I think for a front and

everyone's mind was let's get these kids out of here because they knew there were a lot of children inside and so they were trying to get you know courage to agree to get the kids out. He said yep we can do the do this two by two as what he said and he said in return I want to broadcast this hour long sermon on the Christian broadcasting network and that'll be the swap for the kids and so they're they're working on this they're trying to get everybody out basically and

surrendering and on March 2nd it was almost there like everybody was about to come out and they were relenting and then Curesh said nope I got a message from God and he told me to wait. Yeah and I'm sure the FBI negotiator pinched the bridge of his nose harder than he ever has in his life.

“Yeah for sure. So that was that kind of did that. I think more children were released after that”

21 total between the first day and the fifth of March that left about 20 still remaining in there and they started negotiating for milk. I guess Kathy Schroeder who you mentioned earlier she was on the phone with the FBI negotiator saying hey we need a bunch of milk for the kids and they're like

our little kids need some milk just give us some milk this isn't a bargaining chip.

“They ended up bringing them I think six gallons of milk three times and I guess the”

branched of idiots gave them proof of health and wellness by sending video tapes of the kids. Yeah and I think the other thing those video tapes did was it sort of sent a chill through the FBI because it was really clear when you watch these video tapes that no one was being held hostage. Nobody was being held against their well. They all were believed that what they were doing

was right and was God's plan in the end like Janet Reno never saw those tapes so there's

a lot of speculation on what information she was being fed because she did been on the job for like a week or two. Oh yeah that's right I forgot about that. And so they are basically saying like now they kept those tapes from her because it showed a different picture of what was going on inside and he was painted to her as like you know a sex upender illegally selling guns they killed four of ours and it's a cult that's holding like he's kind of holding all these people hostage inside

“which apparently was never the case. Yeah and that was the general consensus among law enforcement.”

This is a crazy cult just like all the other crazy cults and that just did not fit into that whole paradigm right and so that kind of undermines a lot of what you're trying to do and there was a

a lot of undermining going on within the FBI itself because essentially it was almost like

two different branches of the multiverse that were this event layered over one another at once in one reality because you had the FBI negotiators who were trying to negotiate and get this resolve peacefully and simultaneously you had the FBI's hostage rescue team which is like the FBI's version of the SWAT team. Yeah like let's just go in there and get these get this guy and we'll just end it like that and they kept there was like just this tension like the negotiators

would make some progress and then the hostage rescue team would do something to tick off the branch of idiots and so that would put a kibash on those recent negotiations and it just kept going

“like that. Yeah it was they weren't communicating well either it was just a real mess.”

At one point they very sort of legendary criminal defense attorney in Texas was called by Koresh's mom and said I need you to go get my son out of there and like do this in court and so he went out there he managed to talk the FBI and to letting him walk up and knock on the front door and he went inside he's the only one who ever got inside and met with Koresh and was like hey listen man I'm a criminal defense attorney my job is to look after you and see that you and everyone here

gets out alive and that we handle this in court he said because between you and me they haven't done this right and like you know you've got a lot going in your favor and Koresh was like all right I trust you but what I need to do is stay in here until I write God told me to write my own version

of like an updated book of revelation basically and when I deliver that manuscript I'll willingly

come out. Yeah and that was thanks to two Bible scholars Philip Arnold and James Taber, who had been following this like the everybody else at least in the United States on CNN and every news network it was just constant while the wall covered you could just get up in the middle night and watch what was going on at the Siege and Waco for weeks right these guys had seen and they it became clear to them that like the FBI had no idea like no touch point with what

the branch civilians believed and that they were just talking over each other they just couldn't grasp who they were dealing with and these guys were like weekend where Bible scholars we understand what's going on so I guess they went on TV and we're talking about what the branch civilians believed Koresh saw it and he that's when he was like I need to write down my interpretation of revelations and give it to these two who can actually do something with it

that are trustworthy for safe keeping so that lawyer like you said negotiated that and Koresh was like sure I will come out and there's I read a transcript of him talking to negotiators and they're like what does that mean though what does it mean you're going to come out like you can come out guns blazing you can come out two weeks 10 days one day like when you're going to come out and he's like I'm going to come out right after I'm done what is that like two weeks

what does it mean you're going to come out it's like I'm going to come out and go into a jailhouse so it was very clear that he was willing to come out after this the FBI was like we don't believe you like we've already you've already missed deadlines left and right this is just a stalling tactic yeah for sure so they're hearing one thing from the FBI negotiators like trying to get them out peacefully in the meantime on the news and with their own eyeballs

out the windows they see them pulling up with Bradley fighting vehicles like clearing obstacles

kind of jumped on in having all their stuff searched right in front of them they see Kathy

Schroeder leave and get arrested and like see her in an orange jumpsuit on the news and so they're getting all these mixed messages eventually they see two Abrams tanks pull up it is that's the the mother of all as I think it's the largest war vehicle in the US fleet is an Abrams tank and they at one point one of the guys is bragging he's like you know I could take one of these tanks and drive through this house from one into the other and the FBI negotiator said why would

you do that yeah like what are you even talking about so it just kind of puts a pin on it like how in conflict they were right and the FBI in general was just treating this like a normal hostage situation but again the branch of Indians weren't hostage is they were there on purpose and I guess when you have a normal hostage situation you you have demands and then you also are slowly or maybe even not that slowly increasing like your tactical presence like showing up with tanks

I think there were 14 other combat vehicles on site basically showing like there's no way out of this

“except you coming out if you want to do this peacefully and they also did a lot of tactics that had”

been used before in normal hostage situations which was basically you keep everybody inside from being able to sleep from being able to think from being able to hear themselves and you do that with really bright lights all night and loudspeakers playing all sorts of annoying stuff yeah for sure like they were I think on March 21st they were close to having this resolved again I think Koresh was in the final stages of of his book of Revelation and they were negotiating like

fairly successfully to get more people out I think they got five people out of March 21st the guy in the documentary said a two dozen more were set to be released and that's when the the hostage the HRT team started unilaterally just making decisions like playing that music they were they played these boots are made for walkin 24 hours a day they just as a complete like show a power they ran a tank over David Koresh's antique Ford Ranchero vehicle

in full view of everybody so they're doing this stuff to like they're purposely agitating them these people that are already and one of the divisions it's like we were already like like you think this is going to solve anything to agitate a further with this music and by keeping us a week awake he's like this could only lead to tragedy yeah and so since the FBI started buying the idea that his his agreement Koresh's agreement to come out after he finished this book of

Revelation's interpretation was just stalling um they went to Janet Reno and they're like look we have this plan to go in with gas it's not lethal gas they're not going to like it but it'll make them come out and just sign off on this but that was essentially like the the premise of them going in

and it they basically did but you said that one guy was talking about they drove a tank through

the wall at least one wall of the compound for sure but yeah they they called in and said hey

“we're not shooting we're not coming in but we're placing tear gas in the house like that's what”

we're doing I know you see it's coming to the house all we're doing is placing tear gas in there it's not going to kill you it'll just irritate your eyes and skin because we're trying to get you guys out so we can get this resolved without any more bloodshed so they fully announced they were doing this they fill the house up with tear gas um there were a lot of high winds so they think it was like kind of blowing the tear gas away so that's when they rammed the tank through

because they thought they were kind of huddled in this bunker where the tear gas couldn't get to them and they also had gas masks so they they're ramming the thing with the tank at this point and all of a sudden you know hell kind of breaks loose again yeah the place starts to catch on fire

“very importantly this is about four hours after the tear gas was used right so just remember that”

once the place caught fire that was that was essentially it we kind of talked about how it was made mostly of wood and it was kind of made slipshot it was um it went up really fast not just because it was made of wood but also they had like blocked entrances with hay bales and mattresses and stuff like that so yeah there were Coleman lanterns everywhere there was a lot of fuel and accelerant for the fire so it went up pretty quick yeah and I think what I took from listening to

they got to come out now like they just kept waiting like any second now people are going to

come pouring out of there and we're not going to lose any more life and that didn't happen I mean I think a handful of people came out but uh everyone basically stayed in there and it's sort of any one's guess what happened in there I know koresh uh was found dead from a single bullet to the head and a forehead and they there's a lot of speculation that his number two Steve Schneider kind of realized he was a fraud and shot him in the head and then killed himself

“but there no one knows what bullet ended up in David koresh's forehead yeah I think he said”

some people just a few people rushed out of the building there were nine people who left

while this building was on fire right like imagine like your dedication to your beliefs that

you're like nope not going to leave this burning building there were 75 other people inside at least 20 were kids and I think 13 of the adults were found to have fatal gunshot wounds two most of the head two were in the back which is very awful to think what was going on with that and then three kids were shot to death and I think six women and children were deemed to have died of blunt force trauma and the narrative that was created around that was that they were

beating each other to death apparently later on they it was determined that they died of blunt force trauma when the FBI came through with their tank and a bunch of concrete fell on these

women and children and killed them that was where the trauma came from but that's not to say

that they didn't do other unspeakable things like we said three kids were shot one boy died of a stab wound to the chest like those there's just no other way to interpret that you know like you don't accidentally stab a three-year-old to the chest at when the FBI's coming through your

“door you know yeah and I think that's where all this speculation comes from is like what was”

going on inside there I know one of the guys was like shot in the stomach and asked to be put out of his misery by his own people which they did so yeah it's just I mean I can't imagine what was going on inside that place but it's horrific to think of. And I mean all this happened in minutes you know yeah once that fire started it was it was pretty quick. The thing is is you know the there are plenty of accusations by the the branch of Indians and there's supporters and critics of the federal government that

that FBI actually started this fire. The FBI said right off the bat we didn't use any incendiary tear gas canisters and then three years later that like well we used some incendiary tear gas canisters despite that it does not seem that the fed started this fire.

“Remember they used tear gas and the fire didn't start for four more hours it started in three”

different places none of which coincided with where tear gas was used so the tear gas almost certainly didn't do it. They also had I guess they had like monitored like listening devices inside is that right uh I don't know. I saw somewhere that they had monitoring like they were monitoring them over audio and that they had heard them talking about like previously talking about lighting the place on fire so it's almost 100% certain that the branch of Indians set the place on fire.

Yeah and you know the surviving division say that absolutely did not happen and it was all framed to look that way so it's and then the guy comes on right after and says well he's a liar um so it's it's definitely one of those things where they're both still digging in. The thing that got me checked this really upset me was after all this was done after the fires were put out and everything was like starting to get calm um somebody raised the ATF flag on the compounds flag

poll. They had just been conquered and I found that really awful. Yeah it's pretty awful uh and like you mentioned earlier no one from the government side uh was brought up on charges or anything the FBI and the Clinton administration was clear to wrongdoing in 2000 um there was a uh a report in 1993 that was you know they didn't say they did it right they it was a pretty damning report about the ATF raid uh and that became like um you know a teaching moment for any new ATF students coming in there

like hey look how bad things can go when you really screw things up uh and the one big um result from this was it really um inspired and galvanized the militia movement and right wing anti government radicals uh like there's there's video footage of Timothy McVay there he went to wakeo during the

was and then of course you know on the same day on April 19th two years later carried out

the Oklahoma City bombing. Yeah killed 168 people in 19 children in um as payback for for wakeo and yeah I remember very clearly in the throughout the 90s like that whole new world order black helicopter FEMA concentration camps conspiracy theories um and that was I mean wakeo to people who believed in that um this was like proof positive that yes the if you had guns and you were religious the government would send a tank through your your house and and set it on fire and kill

you um so this really helped that and Ruby Ridge both really fed into this end of the millennium paranoia

“that I think the ex files rode so high on oh yeah I mean this is less than a year after Ruby Ridge so”

I'm not that guy at all but I remember being in college and all this stuff was going on and it was it was just a real uneasy feeling in time for sure really was for sure um the branch divisions are still around too chucked did you know that although they they have changed their name to branch the Lord our righteousness but they're still at Mount Carmel yeah for sure nine of them were convicted nine of the the nine survivors that is uh five on voluntary manslaughter and weapons

charges I think if you got weapons charges and one other I don't know what the charge but uh it's just as a lesser charge but they're all out they've all been out since at least 2007 and you know but at least the the two surviving members that stayed till the end or I guess the the one was arrested they were

“they're still believers and still think David Kresh is was the Messiah and that they were doing”

God's will and they don't have any regrets um the one woman who got out as it was she's one of the children that was released just really really all of her interviews were just devastating because she's just a lost person now you know yeah she lost both of her parents right well her mom split once they said separate now start impregnating you her mom left him in the middle

the night but they they removed her from her father basically and said you can't even be with them

in the compound anymore man that's that whole story is just rough from beginning to end huh yeah for sure I mean there nobody want you know no definitely not um there's a lot more that you can read about this stuff if you're interested be very very careful who you believe in and where your sources are because there's a lot of conspiracy theories out there and then of course there's a lot of cover up associated with it too but there's a lot more to read this is basically just the

tip of the iceberg oh tell them about Madonna you gotta tell them about my dog so apparently David Kresh he had a picture of Madonna tape two his motorcycle and he had told one of the

the branch to video members that god had told them I will give Madonna on to the so basically it's

just waiting for god to have Madonna come hang out at the compound and he gets to impregnate her too yeah so we started out talking about George Michael and we ended up talking about Madonna right the funny thing is is under different circumstances like you know he might have had a shot with early 90s Madonna he might be right um you got anything else I got anything else okay well then that's it for branch to videos as far as we go and that means it's time for listen or mail

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