Original subtitles

♪♪

They come in here with a gun, and they start shooting at us.

What would you do? Tell me.

Be realistic. This is America.

This is not where a country overthrows a bunch of people,

takes away their weapons

so that the people cannot argue any issues.

We have freedom, not freedom for religion,

not freedom for state, but freedom for all.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "How it Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

Freedom of religion and the right to bear arms,

two Constitutional guarantees afforded to all Americans,

but in the early 1990s,

both were tested in a bizarre and unimaginable standoff

that played out on televisions around the world.

It began with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms

investigating the Branch Davidians,

a religious sect living near Waco, Texas.

The ATF received a tip that the group and its spiritual leader,

David Koresh, were stockpiling illegal weapons.

What followed was a series of ill-fated decisions

that would lead to a violent and disturbing conclusion.

This is how it really happened.

♪♪

Reavis: Mount Carmel was a rambling wooden structure

and rudely constructed.

It was crude.

There was no air-conditioning, which is important in Texas.

There was no heat, either.

Man: This area is fairly remote.

You can see the headquarters behind me.

We're about 10 miles outside of Waco,

and that is part of this 77-acre compound.

And what God says, God is to bring to pass.

That's what prophecy is, and when Christ brings his book,

that book contains what?

A revelation of who?

Jesus Christ.

Ronan: David Koresh was, by all accounts, a biblical scholar,

a young man who could take large parts of the Bible,

read them, have almost a photographic memory

and recite exactly what he had read,

and then carry on these five- and six-hour discussions

about a particular verse of the Bible.

People that follow David Koresh are very loyal to him.

They believe him to be the messiah,

the Latter-Day King that will reign over the Earth.

They will do anything that he says.

David Koresh's gift was the ability

to really bring the Bible to life for people.

Did death stop the truth?

Absolutely not.

Bunds: He could illustrate things very clearly,

go into incredible detail,

link things together in ways that I had never seen before.

Essentially, what they believe was

that the apocalypse was eminent,

that the armies of Babylon were coming soon,

and that they, the elect,

would have to fight these armies of Babylon

in order to make the world right for the second coming of Christ.

Ronan: And they need to be weaponized

to be able to fight off the forces

that they would have to fight off in the Book of Revelations.

And so they bought guns because they thought that some day

they were going to have to take place in an end-times battle.

And you know what? We're under fire.

Death, murder, killing, that's religion.

So, increasingly they were expecting some sort of assault.

Potok: They would buy weapons, sell them at gun shows,

travel around the country.

A lot of people, in fact, make their living that way.

Kendrick: The people that lived out in Mount Carmel,

all they wanted to do was lead their daily lives

and live happily, raise their children

and be left alone, so why were they targeted?

Potok: The way the whole investigation starts is

in May of 1992, a package falls out of the back

of a UPS truck addressed to the Davidians.

It splits open, and what spills out are empty grenade hulls,

the grenade without the explosive.

The UPS driver was quite freaked out by this,

went to the authorities, local authorities,

who ultimately went to the ATF.

Once ATF opened an investigation into the Branch Davidians

and their compound, they put the compound under surveillance.

♪♪

There was a house across the street,

and ATF rented the house

and put in some agents to surveil the compound.

♪♪

These men are supposed to be college students,

but the ATF for some reason

does a particularly lame job of this undercover operation.

The men are all in their 30s, and they're also driving,

you know, very nice cars and trucks, right?

These are supposed to be students,

so it didn't ultimately fool too many people.

♪♪

Hustmyre: ATF decided to send an undercover agent

into the compound to try to find out

what was going on inside the building,

you know, what their intentions were,

where their weapons were.

Reavis: He called himself Robert Gonzalez,

posed as a convert, came to the services where Koresh spoke,

hung out there, and so on.

And he learned what the agents suspected,

and that was that the Branch Davidians

possessed a whole slew of weapons.

Yeah, we've got -- we've got a gun here and got a gun there.

A lot of people say, "He's got guns.

That makes him bad. That makes him a cult."

The gun issue was grossly overblown.

I mean, yes, definitely, we had firearms in there.

Woman: But why did he feel he needed all those weapons?

Well, there's a couple reasons. Number one, we went to gun shows

and made profits buying and selling firearms legally.

It's not against the law to --

to buy anything that they sell at a gun show.

Number two, there was also the issue

of actually being able to protect yourself

from what you call the final days

according to the scripture.

♪♪

Wessinger: ATF agents went to talk

with David Koresh's licensed gun dealer,

and they were asking questions about the weapons.

Reavis: And the weapons dealer says,

"Well, why don't you just go talk to him?"

And he picked up the phone and called David,

and David says, "Tell them to come on out,"

and the weapons dealer handed the phone to the ATFers,

and they wouldn't touch it.

Hustmyre: Anybody with a huge arsenal of weapons

has the potential, of course, to be a threat.

There was talk, Koresh, he was eventually going to go

into town with these weapons and start shooting people,

committing some kind of crazy terrorist act.

You know, I don't know what he was going to do,

but it certainly had the potential

to be extremely dangerous.

Reavis: At that point, the ATF began

investigating by electronic means.

They found that someone there had ordered kits

to convert four AR-15s, which were semiautomatic,

to M-16s, which is the automatic version.

That's illegal without a license,

and there were no license applications to cover that.

So, that was the basis for the ATF investigation,

that the Branch Davidians were making illegal

fully automatic rifles and machine guns.

Buford: Our goal at that time was to arrest David Koresh

and also to seize all of the illegal weapons

that were on the compound.

We first started planning the middle of December of '92.

For almost 3 months, we were developing different plans

in order to figure out what is the best way

we could seize all the firearms and arrest Koresh.

The agents considered a number of arrest scenarios.

One of them was arrest David Koresh

when he's away from the compound.

I mean, I jogged every morning, every day,

all the way down to the end of this road and back.

I mean, I could have easily been picked up any -- anytime.

They considered that option and rejected it

because if they grabbed him by himself,

that didn't necessarily mean that the Branch Davidians

at the compound were going to surrender,

and it wasn't just an arrest warrant for David Koresh.

We have a search warrant to execute,

so you have to search the entire compound.

You still have to force your way in there.

Seeing if we could get in fast enough, secure the weapons,

keep the Davidians from accessing the weapons,

then no one would get hurt.

Finally, the decision was made to go ahead with a raid.

Rayburn: I don't know that any of us grasped the magnitude

of how it changed law enforcement

for the whole United States.

♪♪

Ballesteros: As part of the special response team,

we were basically given the order to prepare

for an operation, and that's when I became

directly involved with the investigation.

Hustmyre: ATF had both an arrest warrant for David Koresh

and a search warrant for the property,

two separate warrants to execute.

Then you have to figure out the best way

to get into the premises to conduct the search.

There are a number of options.

You can conduct a dynamic entry,

which is basically a forced entry.

You knock the door down, or you use some ruse,

and you force your way into the premises.

Buford: And make a controlled rush into the building

to secure anyone on the inside, especially anyone with --

with a weapon, or --

That was the basic plan --

move in really fast, secure all the Branch Davidians,

make sure nobody had access to the weapons,

and then we could call in the evidence search teams.

Had the county sheriff, who knew Koresh quite well,

come and knocked on the door and said,

"David, we need to take a look at your guns,"

I don't think there's much question in a way.

David would have said, "Come on in."

♪♪

Here I am at the front door totally unarmed,

and the exact words that I hollered out were, "Get back!

There's women and children here. Let's talk about this."

That's what I do. I learn about people.

I learn about myself.

What about these people here? What do they think of you?

Well, you know what they think of me?

They think I'm the son of God.

Do they? Yeah.

Doyle: Branch Davidians believe the Bible is the word of God,

and it's also written in code so that nobody can understand it

unless God shows it to them.

Wessinger: So, someone who seems to be particularly skilled

in interpreting the Bible,

they regarded those individuals as prophets,

as being divinely inspired to interpret the Bible

and specifically its prophecies about the end-time.

Doyle: Branch Davidians believe in prophets in this day and age

just as much as the people

in the Old Testament believed in prophets.

And, of course, they regard David Koresh as a prophet.

But David Koresh wasn't a prophet.

He was born in Houston.

His name was Vernon Howell.

Vernon Howell did not have an easy start in life.

His mother was a 15-year-old unmarried teenage girl.

He never knew his father.

He was a very troubled kid.

He was bullied. He was harassed.

He was given, you know, a real hard time growing up.

Haldeman: As a little boy, he loved going to church

and Sabbath school and took an interest in it,

and, so, I was not surprised, you know,

as he got older, to take an interest the way he did.

He dropped out of high school in the 10th grade.

He had a learning disability.

Writing was very hard for him,

but he was very smart, very verbal.

It certainly expressed itself.

Whatever his learning disability was,

it didn't prevent him from studying the Bible

and memorizing portions of the Bible.

Ronan: Vernon Howell, this young man, was almost like a savant

when it came to his knowledge of the Bible.

He could read it and understand it

and regurgitate large quantities of the Bible almost at will.

So, Tobias says, "He will not do inequity.

He will bring forth his judgment to light every morning.

But the unjust know" --

All: No shame.

♪♪

First time Vernon Howell, who later became David Koresh,

showed up at Mount Carmel, it was 1981.

When I first met Vernon Howell,

Lois Roden was the minister at that time.

Wessinger: He started studying what Lois Roden was teaching

in terms of her interpretations,

and she found him to be a very talented interpreter

of the Bible's prophecies.

And she becomes impressed with his ability to preach

and his ability to tell people his interpretation of the Bible.

The just Lord is in the what? All: Minister.

He will not do?

But he brings forth his judgment to light.

All: Every morning. Every morning.

Wessinger: And the core group of Branch Davidians

began to look more to Vernon Howell as their prophet.

Ronan: For the first time in his troubled life,

Vernon Howell found his niche, a place in the world

where he really believed that he fit in.

Vernon Howell legally changed his name

to David Koresh in 1990.

David for the Davidians, of course, and, you know,

this was a biblically significant name to the group.

Now Vernon Howell has got what he always wanted,

and that is the chance to be the leader

of this religious community, to preach, to sing,

and to try and convince people that we are in the end of times.

The basic theology of the Waco Davidians

was Christianity splinter group from the Seventh-Day Adventists.

I'd say over 99% of the members of the --

of the group are -- are former Seventh-Day Adventist members.

Others were people that David met in bars.

He would talk to anyone who would listen.

Reavis: Since its founding in 1934,

the Davidians had said they were open

to the people of all nations, and at Mount Carmel,

you had every race on the Earth living there.

From the U.K., from Israel, from Australia, from Hawaii.

There were Hispanic people, Native Americans.

It was a very diverse group.

King: How long was your daughter a member of that movement, Ruth?

About four to five years.

Do you know why she joined?

Yes, there were two people that she met in Hawaii,

and they said, "You've got to listen to this man.

He is terrific. He knows his Bible.

He is a wonderful teacher.

Martin: When I first spoke to David Koresh,

I didn't know who he was,

and once we got to Texas in May 1985,

we realized that this is what we wanted.

This is the situation that we had read about.

My husband gave up his job,

and people wondered what we were doing.

Why were we doing all this?

And they were very, very surprised

that a Harvard Law School graduate would be involved,

but Wayne wanted very much,

once he learned how beautiful the message was,

he wanted to be a part of it.

So, the attraction is for people

who can't understand The Bible on their own,

they will go to David Koresh,

and through his teachings and studies,

which could go on for hours and hours,

they will eventually be sucked into his group

because they'll be impressed

with what he teaches from The Bible.

He'd say, "What do you people want?"

And we'd say we want to study,

and then he'd sit down, and we'd have a night-long Bible study.

And those works testify, point blank,

that they knew nothing of God, and he did.

I wanted to remember as many things as possible,

the people, the things we did.

I was able to put some of these things on paper.

It just was a -- a regular home for us.

We had seven children.

They had friends and played and had fun with each other

with the new people that were coming all the time.

And we had our own dairy. We grew our own vegetables.

We just had a very pleasant life.

The main things was we all felt like a big family.

And we were happy we were there.

Everyone was happy.

You might get the idea that it was a bunch of crazy people.

They weren't really.

I mean, they're just average, ordinary people.

We had unusual beliefs.

It was not a matter of David Koresh

exercising some kind of mind control over the people.

2,000 years, men have suffered and died,

taught theories.

Wessinger: He was presenting an interpretation

of The Bible's end-time prophecies

in a way that the Branch Davidians found plausible,

and they committed their lives to him.

There's a revelation of Jesus Christ to be dealt with here.

♪♪

Ross: David Koresh would have what he called spiritual wives.

This would be any woman that he chose or a child.

You know, it's a fact that David Koresh was sleeping with

12- and 13-year-old girls.

Doyle: We believe that David was doing

what God instructed him to do, no matter how weird.

Martin: If David had asked me or my daughters

to become one of his wives, I would say yes.

♪♪

Ronan: While the ATF's mission was to seize illegal weapons,

there were all kind of rumors that many illegal activities

were taking place at the compound.

We were also briefed on a lot of other stuff

that Koresh was involved in.

In the course of the investigation,

they did learn that children were being abused,

women were being abused.

Ronan: David Koresh believed in polygamy,

and he believed that since he was the anointed one,

he was entitled to have relations

with as many women as he wanted to.

Bunds: The marriages were dissolved.

The men in the group were to be celibate,

and all the women would belong to him.

Ross: David Koresh would have what he called spiritual wives.

This would be any women that he chose or a child.

He began, you know, taking young women as his wives.

You know, it's a fact that David Koresh was sleeping

with 12- and 13-year-old girls.

Doyle: We believe that David was doing what God instructed him to do,

no matter how weird or how unacceptable in public opinion

it was or whatever, and he kept telling us,

"It's all for judgment."

And he told us the story about how God told him to do it

and how it was in The Bible and described

all the theological arrangements to justify this.

I never thought I would believe in polygamy,

but for a period of time in the cult,

you know, you have to accept polygamy

because that's what David Koresh is teaching.

Kendrick: My youngest daughter was one of David's first wives.

I was thrilled because I thought that was an honor.

If David had asked me if my daughters --

To be a part of his life and to become one of his wives,

I would say yes because of how he showed us

what type of person he is.

Hustmyre: So, there was a whole dynamic to the Branch Davidian cult

that we were briefed on, but it didn't directly apply

to federal firearms and explosives laws.

Ballesteros: ATF has no jurisdiction over state matters

of child abuse, sexual harassment.

Our mission in investigating the Branch Davidians

was solely the fact that these people were involved

in manufacturing illegal weapons.

♪♪

Hustmyre: This is a very isolated structure.

There's no way to sneak up on it.

You have hundreds of yards of open ground to cover,

and you have to go down a gravel driveway to get to it.

Man: There is a guard tower with windows on all four sides.

There is one road that really goes up to the -- the compound,

and so they are able to see pretty much anything

that develops around them.

We referred to the raid itself as Trojan Horse

because of the fact that we were going in

in these covered cattle trailers.

And the plan was cattle trailers

are so ubiquitous around Western Texas and central Texas

that the Branch Davidians would maybe not realize

that we were government agents inside the cattle trailers,

that maybe we were just a couple of lost ranchers

pulling, you know, herds of cattle.

Rayburn: Typically at that time of day, the Branch Davidians were out.

They had an exercise area. They had chores to do.

They had things that they were working on,

and they would be out there at that time.

The helicopters would come in,

and they would all look up, and as that's happening,

the cattle trailers would pull in,

and it would give us that moment to get out of the trailers

and be able to contain those people before we went inside.

Ballesteros: We were hoping, of course, to conduct an operation

where we don't have to use force,

just secure everybody,

put people on the ground, handcuff them

and then move on to conduct searches.

Although, now looking back on that with 25 years of hindsight,

that plan itself seems pretty stupid.

Potok: In a way, the most remarkable thing

about this whole story is the fact that the raid

was compromised before it happened.

Several news reporters got tips this raid was coming.

Get that camera out of here.

The element of surprise was lost when a local news crew

was looking for the compound.

Okay, the compound's out in the middle of nowhere.

It's not that easy to find.

He saw a postman passing by and stopped him

and asked for directions to the compound.

"Hey, we heard there was gonna be some kind of police action

going on, and we were here to film it."

But unknown to the television reporter, the postal worker was,

in fact, David Koresh's brother-in-law.

The whole thing is blown.

Man: That conversation may have tipped David Koresh.

And the undercover ATF agent actually hears

this conversation.

He makes an excuse and gets out of there fast and hightails

it to where the ATF people are gathering

for the raid to let the leaders of the raid know,

it's been completely compromised.

"They know you're coming."

David Koresh and the Branch Davidian men

had half an hour to prepare.

Doyle: Morning of the raid, I wandered into the cafeteria,

and it's maybe a dozen or so people in there or so,

but we just heard the news somebody's coming.

You know, it sounded ominous.

Potok: Koresh called the Davidians together,

and he had the men don these black suits

that the women had sewn over the months

before which were fighting outfits.

They had, you know, pockets for ammunition clips.

He had the men go upstairs to the large second-story barracks,

and they sat them one in front of each window.

♪♪

Hustmyre: Once we lost the element of surprise,

the big mistake ATF made, the huge mistake,

was to move forward with the raid anyway.

And at that point, myself and the other team leaders, we said,

"Look, what do you mean they know we're coming?

We can't go if they know we're coming."

I didn't have the authority at that time

to call off the raid,

so we went ahead and loaded up and went out to the compound.

Hustmyre: It's never a good sign when, you know, the --

the leadership comes to you and says,

"Okay, we think we're compromised.

We need to go now."

You know, instead of stopping and sort of reassessing,

they just push, push, push.

Ballesteros: The case agent caught me as I was getting ready

to load the cattle trailer, and he said,

"Roland, these guys are going to -- be careful.

These guys are going to shoot at you."

You know, I thought, "Well,

I don't know how we're going to get out of this."

There was no plan whatsoever to extract us

if we got pinned down by gunfire.

♪♪

Gunfire was just pouring into the building.

Man: Help! I'm under fire!

I tell them, "there are children and women in here,"

and to call it off!

The first thing that I thought was,

you know, I had a 2-year-old son at home,

and I didn't get to say goodbye.

Welcome back.

ATF agents decide to go ahead with the raid

of the Branch Davidian compound

knowing full well they'd lost the key element of surprise.

The consequences of their decision have been debated

and analyzed ever since.

Could they have arrested David Koresh in town?

Should they have tried to negotiate?

Instead, they never strayed far from the option they chose,

to go in any way, locked and loaded.

♪♪

Usually, when you're going out on a raid,

everybody's pumped up.

In this case, as we drove out there,

everybody was very quiet and solemn.

Hustmyre: You're driving towards this great unknown.

You just don't know what's going to happen.

It could go really simply, or it could be a disaster.

It just looked so quiet, and it was so eerie.

The men aren't working. There's no activity.

I thought, "Oh, no. They're all inside waiting for us."

Rayburn: I actually looked at one of the other agents

that was standing next to me, and I'm like,

"That's not good," and they're like, "No.

They should be outside."

Hustmyre: The big problem was, of course,

that once you've lost the element of surprise,

these dynamic entry raids don't work so well.

The second we got out of the cattle trailers,

they were already positioned in all of the windows with guns.

And I saw a man jump out with an Army uniform on,

and he had a gun in his hand, and he says something like,

"Okay, let's go."

My first thought was,

"Oh, there's going to be a bloodbath."

I opened the front door.

They've got their guns aimed and everything.

They started hollering, you know, all of them hollered.

I didn't know what they were saying.

I could hear him screaming.

I was already hollering, "Go away.

There's women and children here. Let's talk."

Ballesteros: And he's asking me, "What's going on?"

I'm yelling at him that, "This is a search warrant.

Lay down."

He looks at me, and he smiles at me, and he backs up,

and he shuts the door.

Gave me a chill.

There's a short exchange, and someone shoots a gun.

[ Gunshot ]

[ Gunfire ]

♪♪

I fell back in the door,

and the bullets started coming through the door.

Doyle: Gunfire was just pouring into the building.

People down the other end of the hall were yelling at me,

"Get down! They're shooting!"

I can see bullets coming through the walls.

We're being fired upon.

The bullets are hitting around on the ground.

Hustmyre: I mean, it was like a day at the firing range.

There were, you know, shots going off all around me.

[ Gunfire ]

♪♪

Buford: We just went around to the side of the building,

put our ladders up, and went up onto the roof

and started trying to make entry into the windows on the roof.

And as soon as they got up on the roof,

the automatic weapons just started opening up.

The rounds started coming through the walls in the room

and also up through the floor.

It wasn't just a second, and I was shot in the butt.

He went down. It looked like a bullet

came through the roof from the inside,

and he slid down his ladder and was carried off.

Hustmyer: And of course, then they realized,

well, they have to get off the roof.

I mean, it's a death trap.

That's where my partner was killed was up on the roof.

He was a good friend of mine.

♪♪

The Davidians themselves called 911 on us.

Martin: My husband, Wayne Martin,

was downstairs yelling into the phone.

There was a frantic voice on the other end of it.

I was laying next to my 6-year-old and 4-year-old.

My son said, "Why are the bad people here?"

He knew something was very wrong,

and we just stayed down as low as we could.

At some point, I knocked on the wall

and I said, "What are we going to do?

What are we supposed to do?"

The person on the other side said, "Just stay there.

Just don't move."

There was gunfire in the background.

There were people hollering in the background.

Martin: We were sitting there thinking

this is what David talked about,

what we read about, what we studied about.

Potok: In many ways, this plays, obviously, right into

what David Koresh has been telling

his followers all along, right?

At any moment, the armies of Babylon

are going to come and try and murder us,

and we have got to fight them and win, right,

in order to make possible the second coming of Christ.

No one's going to hurt me or my family.

Hustmyre: It was like a movie.

I mean, it seemed unreal to me.

I had no idea where the rest of my family was.

Koresh: No one's going to expect me,

when they come busting in on my door with guns drawn

and pointed in the air and someone fire at me,

that I'm going to lay down and die for anybody.

And I'm sorry some of your guys got shot,

but, hey, God will have to sort that out, won't he?

♪♪

The fire fight itself went on for about 2 1/2 hours

with rounds being fired almost constantly.

Ballesteros: Finally, they negotiated a cease-fire,

and it was at that point in time that I think everybody's nerves

on the inside kind of calmed down a little bit

knowing that we weren't going to shoot at them.

They could stop shooting at us.

Martin: And I kept hearing, "Cease fire! Cease fire!"

all over the building.

I just was so happy.

I was just saying that this is over.

You know, no one's going to shoot anymore.

I began to realize afterwards

that people were in other rooms, had been shot.

We were getting bits and pieces from people

from different areas of the building.

Somebody came and says, "Winston's dead."

I went up the hall, and I could hear water running,

and when I turned into his room, Winston was laying on the floor

in a big pool of water and blood.

Martin: When I picked up my son and looked at him,

I was wiping blood off of him.

The glass was coming down and hitting him on the face.

I thought at first he had been shot,

but it was just the glass fragments.

I had no idea where the rest of my family was.

♪♪

It was like a movie.

I mean, it seemed unreal to me.

We had wounded all over the place.

We got one more -- one more.

We could see, on either side of us, officers down.

We could see that -- tell that one of them was dead,

one of them was being performed CPR, and other injuries.

Hustmyer: Me and another agent, we picked up a dead agent,

and we were bringing him to an ambulance,

and the back of the ambulance

was packed with wounded agents. There was no room.

Buford: I had been shot four times.

I had been wrapped up in a sleeping bag

because I was going into shock and very cold,

so they lifted me up and put me on the hood

of a television crew's Bronco,

I believe it was, and I rode out down

to where the other ambulances were on the hood of a truck.

Eventually, word just kind of circulated

that four agents had been killed.

Four agents of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agency

were killed.

Just a feeling of total shock.

Buford: Rob Williams, one of the agents,

he was more like a son to me than an agent.

He was just the kind of kid that couldn't get enough of it.

I'll never forget watching him when he was shot,

because I knew immediately when he was hit that he was --

he was dead, and it just broke my heart.

It was the day before his 26th birthday.

This has been the largest loss we have sustained

in one operation.

Ronan: The CNN newsroom at that time was bedlam.

We were just starting to get pictures of what was coming in.

We were just starting to get a sense of the size of the raid.

Four agents were killed and more than a dozen wounded

in a blistering shootout when agents arrived at the compound

this morning to arrest the cult's leader.

All of a sudden, you start getting phone calls on the air

from people who live,

you know, within a couple miles of the compound.

One of the assignment editors answered the phone and said,

"There's this guy calling from Texas,

and something strange is going on."

We have with us on the live line

the leader of the Davidian branch.

Mr. Koresh, how are you doing?

I understand you've been wounded.

Would you describe your condition?

Koresh: Weakening.

Are you shot, sir?

Yes, I am.

Where, sir?

Several places, to the guts, side, arms.

Mr. Koresh, from your point of view,

because we don't have it,

can you describe how whatever happened this morning --

They all came locked and cocked.

Somehow, the shooting started.

They started firing at me, and, so, what happened was is

that some of the young men and stuff

started firing on them.

It became a huge question, of course -- Who fired first.

The ATF says they might have fired

at one of the dogs they thought was aggressive,

but they say they didn't fire into the compound first.

The first gunshot could have been an agent

firing at one of the dogs

because we did have dogs that kind of came after us,

but we certainly didn't open fire on the compound.

I can tell you that they were shooting at us

before we got fully unloaded from the cattle trailers.

Before my feet hit the ground, there were gunshots everywhere.

We were ambushed. That's what it was. We were ambushed.

I think it's false, any idea that we ambushed them

or were waiting for them.

The Davidians, of course,

allege that the ATF just started shooting.

French: It is your contention

that the approaching officers fired first.

They fired on us first, and you can't blame these men,

and I don't judge them for doing their job.

And to this date, no one knows who fired the first shot.

Mr. Koresh, what will it take to bring it

to a peaceful conclusion, if it can be brought to one?

Checking now our top stories on "Prime News."

In Waco, Texas, at least four federal agents

are dead and 14 are injured in a shoot-out

with members of a religious cult.

Man: Inside the armed fortress, more than 100 men,

women, and children remain holed up apparently with enough food,

water, and ammunition to keep going for a long time.

And there's still no sign

that there's going to be a surrender anytime soon.

This is ain't America anymore when the ATF

has that kind of power to come into anybody's home

and kick doors down and things like that,

and I did not appreciate it,

and never will I ever appreciate somebody coming here

with helicopters and cattle trailers

and all that and pushing people around with guns.

So, after this long gun battle,

David Koresh is inside the compound.

He's badly wounded.

There's one of them.

But he's not coming out, so the FBI takes over.

When a federal agent is killed,

it's a crime that is investigated by the FBI

regardless of the federal agency for whom the death occurred,

so that was the rationale

upon which the FBI was deployed to Waco.

[ Telephone rings ]

Sage: The phone rang just as I was getting ready

to jump in the shower.

I picked it up, and it was my boss,

who was the agent in charge of the entire division,

and he just said, "Byron, there's been a raid

that's gone horribly wrong near Waco.

Get to Waco as soon as you can."

The FBI was to assume overall command and control

of attempting to resolve this situation.

Man: Some 200 federal, state, and local lawmen

have surrounded the 77-acre compound

as the standoff continues.

Noesner: When I arrived at the command post,

it was filled with a dozen

or so ATF agents who still had their --

Their tactical gear on, and I'll --

I'll never forget the looks on their faces.

They had been through a traumatic experience.

They looked shell-shocked.

I was lucky to be alive.

I was very lucky. I was very lucky.

It could have been a lot worse for me.

Buford: I wish now that I had just said,

"Hell, no. We won't go," and told my guys to stand down,

even if it cost me my job.

Ronan: Once journalists, CNN and others,

learned about what was going on, everybody,

it was all hands on deck to get down to Waco

as fast as you could.

This small little speck of a town in central Texas

is now the focal point of the world.

Man: Hundreds of journalists from the U.S.

and dozens from overseas rush to Waco, Texas.

Satellite technology beamed the story worldwide.

Photographers actually built a stand

so that they could get a better look at the compound,

and you had cameras lined up from one end to the other

with long telephoto lenses to try and follow the action,

whatever was going on at the compound.

Woman: Possibly 40 are wounded including Koresh himself,

the self-proclaimed messiah.

Potok: The whole world was kind of riveted

by what was happening in Waco.

It was an amazing story,

and it was kind of a television story.

French: Mr. Koresh, could I ask you how you integrate

what's been happening to you today with your core beliefs?

Koresh: It is written. It is written.

That's why I've brought to this world

the knowledge of the seven seals.

I had just heard on CNN this conversation

with David Koresh about the seven seals.

This got my attention because the seven seals

are in the Book of Revelation,

and I had just finished my PhD dissertation

on apocalyptic groups and what they believe.

God really did write the Bible,

but unless we know the testimony of all the prophets

in the light of God's own word,

the seven seals, we really cannot confirm

that the scriptures are inspired of God. They shot me.

French: Mr. Koresh, we were happy to let you go on

and explain your beliefs because I --

I can tell it's important to you.

I realized this is not going to make sense to most people,

particularly the FBI, but I understood it.

I understood that David Koresh had a message that was coherent

and was following certain basic interpretations

of the Book of Revelation.

I realized that if he were not understood,

this could end in tragedy.

Man: Agents stay on high alert here

trying to figure out what to do next.

No one knows exactly what they should do

or how this will end.

What will it take to bring it to a peaceful conclusion,

if it can be brought to one.

Arnold: I realized I was the scholar

that David Koresh wanted to talk to,

and I realized that I could take him on,

and I could debate the seven seals with him

or show him another way of understanding them,

so I packed the bags,

I threw them in the car, I drove to Waco.

Woman: At least on the outside, tensions remain high,

and nerves are frayed as the 400 or so federal, state,

and local officials play a waiting game

with the estimated 75 members of the Branch Davidians

still believed to be inside the compound.

Noesner: I've studied hostage situations, not only in the United States

but around the world for well over 35 years,

and I've never seen anything that approaches

the complexity and difficulty that we faced at Waco.

See, I'll meet you at the doorstep any day,

you know, and somebody will get hurt.

I would submit to you there wasn't an agency in the land

that was prepared for what we were fixing to go up against.

You want to keep playing that game?

I'm talking to you.

Somebody's going to get hurt.

♪♪

♪♪

Many lessons were learned from the ATF raid,

including the most important one.

It never should have happened

once they lost the key element of surprise.

Four ATF agents and six civilians were now dead,

and now the pressure was on the FBI

to figure out how to talk David Koresh

and his followers into surrendering.

What followed would become one of the most controversial

uses of force against U.S. civilians in history

and a textbook case on whatnot

when dealing with armed extremists.

That's later in part two of "How it Really Happened: Waco."

I'm Hill Harper.

Thanks for watching.