Original subtitles

♪♪

This is my family,

and no one's gonna come in on top of my family,

and start pushing my family around.

It's just not gonna happen, ain't gonna happen.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

On the first day of March, 1993,

the eyes of the world were focused on the siege at Waco.

The day before, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

had conducted a disastrous raid of the Branch Davidian compound,

home to more than 100 followers of a spiritual leader

known as David Koresh.

Four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians

were killed that day, and Koresh was wounded.

The FBI was called in to take over the case,

and now it was up to them to convince David Koresh

and his followers to surrender before anyone else got hurt.

The events of the next 50 days would shock the world

and become a rallying cry for change.

This is "How It Really Happened."

Koresh: He put also a new song in my heart.

Many shall see it and fear and trust in the name of the Lord.

Doyle: We believed God was talking to David,

and David was relaying to us what God wanted.

All I care about when I judge men is one thing,

do you want to know the Seven Seals?

Wessinger: The Branch Davidians believed that David Koresh

was receiving divine inspiration from God to interpret the Bible.

God speaks in that book of the things

he's made concerning his --

All: Son.

Essentially what they believed

was that the apocalypse was imminent,

that the armies of Babylon were coming soon.

And so they bought guns because they thought

that someday they were going to have to take place

in an end-times battle,

and they wanted everybody to know how to use them.

Yeah. We got a gun here, got a gun there.

Potok: The Branch Davidians were buying semiautomatic weapons,

AR-15s and so on

and converting them to fully automatic weapons,

and that is illegal in 50 states.

The Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms officials

say that they have been investigating

this facility for -- for some months.

So the decision was made to go ahead with the raid.

Rayburn: A federal search warrant was issued.

There was also an arrest warrant issued for David Koresh.

Buford: The plan was to try to get in there by surprise

and get in as quickly as possible

to prevent anyone from getting to weapons to return fire.

The Davidians learned about the raid before it occurred.

Once we lost the element of surprise,

the big mistake ATF made,

the huge mistake, was to move forward with the raid, anyway.

When the ATF arrived, the Branch Davidians were waiting for them,

and a huge gun battle began.

Buford: The firefight itself went on for about 2 1/2 hours.

There was rounds being fired almost constantly.

And I really started coming face-to-face with mortality

because I'm thinking, "I'm gonna die right here."

I don't think anybody could have imagined

the kind of artillery inside this compound.

The shots started coming from the front of the building.

Gunshots in the back, helicopters going by,

people yelling downstairs.

Koresh was shot during the initial confrontation.

Woman: It's bleeding.

Yeah. Probably because you --

♪♪

Hustmyre: The FBI took over negotiations

because they had primary jurisdiction

over the murder of Federal Agents.

David Koresh had those people inside convinced

that we were the Devil's servants, so to speak.

It was clear that the Davidians were very angry at the ATF.

You want to keep playing that game?

I'm talking to you.

Somebody's gonna 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.

Noesner: Opening negotiations probably could not have been

undertaken under worse circumstance.

To show up and say, "Well, let's all be friends now

and forget all the shootings and the deaths,"

and you just can't turn that switch off.

I felt it was important that we sort of separate our identity

from them for the good of the outcome.

We wanted to humanize ourselves,

and we sent in a videotape of ourselves

holding up photos of our families.

He responded in kind and sent a video out

of him introducing his family.

I'd like to start off first of all with my oldest son.

His name is Cyrus.

How old are you?

Seven. Seven.

Say hello to everybody.

Hi. Wave at them.

Camera right there.

Man: Agents insisted they planned to negotiate,

not use force, in removing cult leader

David Koresh and his followers.

Our goal right from the beginning

was to initially get the children out of harm's way,

then get the women and then the men, in that order.

On the first day, there were 10 children released.

As the children came out, they were taken to an orphanage

there in McLennan county run by the Methodist church.

One of the negotiators on the team

had a great idea to videotape the children.

-Hi. -Hi, there.

Hi, Mama. Hi.

Our intent was to show the parents,

"Hey, your kids are being well cared for,

but we're waiting for you to come out

and resume your parental custody."

Lynch: There was one incident

after this first group of children came out.

They kept hearing a toilet flush.

The house parent went in there,

and there was one of the kids standing by the toilet,

flushing it, watching the water run out.

Never seen a toilet.

Sage: When David started to release those children,

that's a huge indicator that negotiations are progressing.

Noesner: We're making good progress,

to the point where David Koresh talks about

wanting to give a message to the world.

Sage: David advised us that he had a taped message or sermon

that he wanted us to facilitate being played over the radio.

Noesner: A message about his interpretation

of the Book of Revelation.

We said, "well, if we do this, if I go out on a limb

and convince my boss that we should do this,

will you and your followers surrender?"

He said, "Absolutely. We will all come out."

Man: Koresh's demand is to get an airing

of his religious views.

"They would play that," he said.

"We'd all come out together."

Christian Broadcasting Network picked it up and broadcast it.

What they were all unified in was their idea,

as clarified by David Koresh, that doomsday would soon occur.

He felt that he needed to get his message out to the world

so people could convert, people could be saved,

so people would understand which side to be on

when the judgment takes place.

When I heard the sermon, I realize the FBI

is not going to understand this guy,

but I do understand him.

I'd just finished a PhD studying apocalyptic groups,

and I understood what the man was saying,

so I packed my bags,

drove to Waco to talk to the FBI.

As this is happening, literally as his sermon is being played,

we're moving buses and ambulance service

and everything out for --

we're ready for them to start coming out.

The FBI believes Koresh has so much power over cult members

that when and if he decides to surrender,

the rest will follow him.

Man: Federal Agents turn up psychological warfare heat.

I remember being in the chapel,

and the whole building starts shaking.

That ended up ratcheting up the situation significantly.

Schneider: Running over property.

Let me run your house over, and you tell me that.

God speaks to me. I have a message to present.

I mean, I believe that.

Reporter: Koresh promised authorities he'd give up

if they'd help him broadcast a 58-minute religious message

on a national Christian radio network.

March the 2nd, David had said he was going to surrender.

Reporter: Authorities brought in buses, apparently to carry away

the cult members following the broadcast,

but despite the airing of the tape,

there was no movement around the group's facility.

Noesner: When we called back in to Steve Schneider,

Koresh's number-one guy, I said, "Steve, what's going on?

You know, we have a plan here.

What's the holdup?"

All of a sudden, this anticipation,

this balloon just burst.

Reporter: Koresh had promised to give up peacefully yesterday,

and now he says he must wait for further instructions from God.

Sage: He said, "I follow what my God tells me to do."

Well, how are you going to negotiate with God?

Noesner: When I had to report the news to the on-scene commander

and the tactical leader that Koresh didn't come out,

they had a very angry, visceral response.

Reavis: Bob Ricks, who was the FBI's man

in charge of the daily press conferences, said,

"Koresh thinks God told him," and laughs.

If it is the message from God,

then we have to know what the heck the message is.

From very early on in the siege, there developed

these two different tendencies within the FBI.

On the one hand, you had the negotiators

who were very much about working out a peaceful solution.

And on the other, you had the hostage rescue team

which was a very different culture within the FBI.

Noesner: The tactical side felt very strongly

that the way to get them to do

what we wanted was to apply increasing pressure,

to tighten the noose, as it were,

to force them to come out.

They thought the negotiators had been duped,

thought that Koresh was purposefully

screwing around with us, and they got very, very angry

and, in fact, ordered some movement of tactical equipment,

armored vehicles, to the compound to demonstrate

our unhappiness with that decision.

Doyle: I remember being in the chapel,

and the whole building starts shaking.

We don't have earthquakes in Waco.

You know, like, what is this?

Reporter: Four M1A1 Abrams battle tanks,

the same kind that gained fame in Operation Desert Storm,

had been moved into position around the compound.

Reavis: And the tanks were driving over the graves

of some of those who had been killed on February the 28th.

That ended up ratcheting up the situation significantly.

2,000 years ago, hey, who believed in Christ's doctrine?

Noesner: Increasingly, David Koresh would try to engage us

in very lengthy religious discussion and sharing with us

his take on the Book of Revelation,

and almost taking on a position of lecturing to us.

David Koresh's message was from the Book of Revelation,

the Seven Seals, which are a series of prophecies

that lead step by step to the end of time.

Reavis: He believed that he could do

what none of his predecessors had done,

which is open or explain the Seven Seals

in the Book of Revelation.

Noesner: We were trying to project that we didn't discount his religion.

We told him straight up, "You know, we don't

understand the Bible like you.

We don't pretend to understand it."

And Jesus came to say in Matthew 23 to the Jews,

"Warned you that believe not all the prophet has spoken."

Noesner: It's a fool's game to get into someone's religious,

strongly-held beliefs.

It wouldn't have got him to do anything,

such as release a child, which we were working on.

That happened when we talked about more practical,

realistic, down-to-Earth things.

We came to a point in time where they needed milk

for the children,

and we decided that we wanted to get that milk in.

We were able to deliver the milk.

It was a very strong demonstration of our desire

to get things back on track.

Thanks for the milk, too.

Thanks for the milk.

Who drinks the milk?

The baby. Okay.

Unfortunately, the tactical team subsequently, arbitrarily,

without coordinating, cut off the power.

Doyle: All the frozen food and the refrigerated food

either had to be eaten in a hurry or thrown away.

Every time, strong tactical action

would sort of dig us in a hole,

and we'd have to dig ourselves back out of it.

This kind of battle between these two forces continued,

you know, kind of quietly,

but it was going on through the entire siege.

Reporter: Federal Agents turn up psychological warfare heat,

hoping to give David Koresh an early morning headache.

They played loud music to use sleep deprivation

as one of their tactics.

Reporter: From a mile and a half away,

what sounded like rock music

coming from the Branch Davidian compound area.

"These boots are made for walking."

♪ These boots are made for walking ♪

The sounds of rabbits dying,

chants from Dalai Lama, whatever.

This is an agitation technique

that it's proven, it doesn't work.

When you're dealing with people

who have this world view that Armageddon is coming,

you don't want to precipitate it.

You don't want to hit the first domino

that causes the thing to go up in flames.

Noesner: The harder you push someone, we know as negotiators,

the more likely you are to be met with resistance.

Ronan: There were a lot of accusations.

David Koresh lived what you might call

an unconventional lifestyle.

He had sex with the women, some of them underaged girls,

with whom he fathered children.

See this here?

This is my family.

It may not be like your family.

Noesner: On the 21st of March, we'd been there 21 days,

and all of a sudden, seven adults came marching out.

I remember almost gleefully advising the on-scene commander

and the tactical commander of our success.

To my surprise, I was met with disappointment that,

"Well, that's not very many people,

and at this rate, we'll be here for many months,

and they're just still screwing around with you."

In response, a strong tactical action was taken.

The tank drivers several times mooned

and gave the middle finger to the people at Mount Carmel.

We went outside to a tank that was waiting for us

halfway down the driveway, and they handcuffed us.

I didn't know when I'd get back to see them,

but I kept hoping they would come out eventually,

but when I think now 25 years later, I --

I -- there's a part of me that wish I had stayed.

Arnold: One of the Branch Davidians named Livingstone Fagan

was in the Waco jail.

I cannot emphasize enough

the importance of knowing what the Seven Seals teach.

He can tell us what David Koresh thought was coming next

in the prophecies in the Seven Seals.

The waiting period in the fifth seal

is followed by a catastrophic event.

So the Branch Davidians are watching and waiting.

Will the FBI trigger this catastrophe?

If the Branch Davidians can see that the FBI

was not going to attack them, that the FBI was backing off,

then they would feel they could surrender

because the Bible prophecies were not being fulfilled.

Wessinger: So if the FBI had pulled back,

I believe the Branch Davidians would have ultimately come out.

Did you ask the FBI to let you talk to Mr. Koresh?

They did permit me and a colleague, Dr. James Tabor

of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte,

to produce an audio cassette tape

which went into the compound.

Reporter: Arnold says it could give Koresh different options,

options that might convince him

that the end of the world is not at hand,

and now is not the time to die.

After our tape went in, he began to see

that he had more time and he could come out.

Schneider: Yeah. He's a doctor of --

of probably theology, I would imagine.

♪♪

Noesner: There was national pressure.

Everybody saying, "it's a bunch of nuts out there.

Why don't they just go in and get them?"

DeGuerin: I had no involvement until I got the call

from David Koresh's mother.

She asked me if I would be interested in getting involved,

and I said, "Yes."

Late March, the on-scene commander authorized us

to facilitate a meeting between David Koresh, Steve Schneider,

and Dick DeGuerin, a very sharp defense attorney.

Very unusual to let a defense attorney go inside of,

what in essence, is a crime scene.

But that was a chance that was taken.

This is some real progress and I'm hopeful

that we can bring this thing to an end real quickly.

Reporter: He is a prominent Texas attorney.

Dick DeGuerin Tuesday shook hands with cult leader

David Koresh outside the compound,

and together they walked inside to meet behind closed doors.

DeGuerin: I saw that he was a very intelligent person

and that he was deeply devoted to his religion

and believed what he believed.

Ronan: But it appears there was another side to David Koresh.

There were a lot of accusations

he lived what you might call an unconventional lifestyle

with more than one wife,

and he'd had more than a dozen children.

We're fixing to another one here pretty soon.

DeGuerin: He did say that he had had children

by several of the women in there,

and I met all of his children that were still there.

Noesner: He had sex with the women, some of them underaged girls,

with whom he fathered children.

See this here?

This is my family.

It may not be like your family.

I can't justify that.

That's a little different from than the way

I was raised. You got her?

But apparently it's somewhat common in some religions.

This one here, you know, he's my family, too, right, Joseph?

Yeah. Tell them. Tell them. You know?

Look in that camera, and tell them what you think about it.

Who's treated you good?

David.

Koresh believes all those children are his,

and that they won't be leaving until he does.

We were troubled by that.

We were hoping that he would continue

to let more children out, including his own.

Life inside the compound became tougher and tougher and tougher.

Doyle: People went to the bathroom in buckets,

and that was one of my jobs,

was to take care of that every day.

They had no electricity.

They were using Coleman lanterns

and Coleman fuel for heat and light.

The ATF shot up our water tanks on the first day of the raid,

so we had no water in the building.

All we were doing was collecting rainwater

in buckets outside of windows, on roofs.

DeGuerin: They were scared and worried about what was gonna happen,

but at the same time, they were somewhat defiant.

They were angry about what had been done.

Noesner: Pressures were mounting politically.

Here we are, the big ol' FBI made to be look powerless.

We made the best judgment we could based on

all the circumstances

that this was the best time to escalate the pressure.

We did not foresee at that time

the tragedy that would happen later.

Welcome back.

In early April,

there were about 75 people still left inside

the Branch Davidian compound, 25 of them children,

and conditions were deteriorating fast.

David Koresh's attorney, Dick DeGuerin,

spends hours over several visits

trying to convince his client to surrender.

It's now day 34 of the siege.

Tensions are running high,

and time is running out for David Koresh

and the Branch Davidians.

Reporter: The FBI insists DeGuerin is not working for the government.

Retained by Koresh's mother, the lawyer was warned by the FBI

that a face-to-face meeting could be very dangerous.

Noesner: Dick DeGuerin went inside,

and Koresh basically promised to surrender

once he wrote down

his interpretation of the Seven Seals.

Ronan: And when he was done with a manuscript,

he'd give it to a theologian,

a man by the name of Phillip Arnold.

The letter that he gave to me on April the 14th

was very clear of what he was gonna do

and that is he was gonna finish his exposition

on the Seven Seals, and then he would come out.

Was Mr. Koresh gonna turn

these Seven Seals over to you, to your knowledge?

Yes, and this was the letter that was given

to Dick DeGuerin, the attorney.

Now, the FBI ridiculed that thought,

and said that's just another excuse, more Bible babble.

Noesner: And, of course, on-scene command,

"Well, how long is this gonna take?"

And now the whole crisis management

apparatus was on hold.

Sage: David had told us that he thought it'd take about

two days per seal for Seven Seals,

and the boss authorized that.

That's two weeks we were willing to wait,

but they had to provide us with tangible proof

that he was making progress.

DeGuerin: Let me say that when I left Waco on April the 14th,

the FBI said we've got all the time it takes.

Meanwhile, the standoff goes on,

and still no one knows when or how it will end.

Ronan: You never knew when something was gonna happen,

so there were camera folks, reporters, photographers,

journalists, standing out there, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning,

waiting for something to happen.

There were probably more media in Waco

than anything I've ever seen before.

Ronan: We were kept far away from the actual compound,

probably two miles away,

and the reporters and the photographers used

Potok: As the siege went on, enormous numbers of people

from radical groups around the country

made essentially pilgrimages to Waco

in order to look at the compound,

in order to sell anti-government T-shirts

and bumper stickers and so on.

And one of those anti-government protesters

was this young man with a flat-top type haircut,

very clean-cut military-looking guy.

And it turns out it was Timothy McVeigh.

Timothy McVeigh was there to denounce the government

like so many others.

Arnold: On April 16th, Steve Schneider informed the negotiators

that David Koresh had already written

his interpretation of the first seal.

He was beginning to write the second.

Sage: But David was reluctant to send anything out,

said he needed it as a reference,

and we said send out the chapters

and the seals as you finish them.

We never received anything.

Reporter: Koresh's attorney insists his client is not stalling,

not giving agents the runaround,

but the FBI has been burned by David Koresh before,

and skepticism was remains.

Noesner: Pressures were mounting politically.

Here we are, the big ol' FBI made to be look powerless.

Why can't we get this done?

Ronan: Now about six weeks into the siege, the attorney general,

Janet Reno, was briefed by the FBI,

and she was told it was possible the children inside

were in imminent danger.

Potok: She was told that it was very likely

the children were being abused inside the compound.

We were concerned for the children.

Based on everything we knew,

the possibility existed now or some time in the future

of what he might do to the children,

what he might do to all of them.

I think Janet Reno had the wool pulled over her eyes

as far as political things are done in Washington.

The FBI knew how to push her buttons.

My criticism of that process was that on-scene command

and tactical people,

along with some military experts,

briefed the attorney general.

No negotiators' input was sought.

And so once again, all of the progress that had been made

by the negotiators was being undermined

by the FBI agents on the scene

who wanted to take much more aggressive tactics.

Sage: I'd get notice, on-scene commander,

"We're done with this.

This siege is over.

We're gonna bring this to a conclusion."

Man: You are under arrest.

This standoff is over.

I tell you what, being an American first,

I'm the kind of guy that I'll stand in front of a tank.

You can run over me, but I'll be biting one of the tracks.

Reporter: Negotiations between David Koresh's followers

and Federal Agents appear to be going nowhere.

Agents seem to be sending messages to David Koresh.

"We are losing patience, and we do not want children harmed."

Sage: On the 18th of April, I'd get notice to call Jeff Jamar,

on-scene commander.

He says, "We're done with this.

This siege is over.

We're gonna bring this to a conclusion."

I had no idea what had driven this

because we just agreed to give them up to two weeks

to write this manuscript. What's changed?

The FBI all of a sudden was fed up waiting for David Koresh

to finish his Seven Seals manuscript.

The plan was designed to induce serious negotiations

or the evacuation of the compound.

We made the best judgment we could based on

all the circumstances,

that this was the best time to escalate the pressure.

What was identified to be used

was what's commonly called CS gas, or tear gas.

Noesner: In a barricaded situation,

gas is often effectively used to,

in essence, encourage or force a surrender.

Reavis: You get burned.

It irritates the nasal passages and the lungs,

but it doesn't kill you.

♪♪

My job was to broadcast to them that this siege was over,

that it's time for them to come out.

It's time to depart from that building.

Ronan: The people inside the compound were given

an ultimatum by the FBI.

Come out now, or the tear gas was coming in.

Sage: They had the opportunity to signal us

that they were prepared now to come out,

and the tear gas would never have been inserted. Never.

You are not to come out of the building with any type of weapon

or anything that would appear to be a firearm.

Doyle: When Byron Sage got on the loud speaker,

the ones that were awake

began waking up the ones that were asleep.

Sage: We do not intend to enter your building at this time.

This is not an assault.

We've got the other agents up forward in the house,

watching for any sign that they want to come out.

They used the booms of the tanks to spray in CS gas.

Sage: The gas you smell and will continue to detect

is a nonlethal tear gas.

I heard Steve yelling to people to put gas masks on.

So it was indicative that we weren't just coming out.

Man: See, they've made a massive hole in the side of that building.

Doyle: They were actually bulldozing the building,

making holes in the walls.

Wessinger: They used grenade launchers to fire in ferret rounds

that break on impact and release CS gas.

Sage: The thinking was this --

If you injected tear gas into this room with my wife

and kids and grandkids, I would move Heaven and Earth

to get them to a position of safety,

and that's what we were banking on.

Doyle: If it got on any bare skin, it acted like battery acid.

Women were coming down and soaking blankets or towels

or whatever in bucket of water,

and they would wrap the kids up in it.

Capps: You are seeing another one of these CEV vehicles moving in,

and it looks like he's about ready to turn it

and punch another hole in the building.

I think virtually all of us

expected to see people coming out.

You know, these are parents

with their very small children in there,

and the building is crashing down around them,

and these huge CS gas projectiles

are being tossed into the building.

And the building is filling with this gas.

I remember looking out the hole in the South wall.

There was a tank right across the grass from us,

a guy outside the tank with a gun.

I remember going, "If we jump out of the hole,

do you think they'll shoot us?"

There's a certain amount of hesitation as to what to do.

Sage: You are under arrest.

This standoff is over.

We grossly underestimated the amount of control

that David Koresh had over those people.

I will never understand how a parent could have allowed

their children to undergo that type of thing.

And all of a sudden, you know,

all of us see the same thing at the same moment.

There's a lick of flame

that comes out of one side of the building.

And then all of a sudden, you see one fire,

two fires, three fires.

Capps: Now we have a very large-scale fire breaking out

on what might be the south side.

Once I saw the flames, the requests turned into a plea.

You claim to be the leader.

You claim to be the prophet.

You claim to be the messiah.

The time is to lead your people out now.

I said, "David, don't end it this way."

Woman: There's a great deal of smoke coming out of the building.

I remember hearing a voice, somebody yelling from upstairs,

"the building's on fire."

Reporter: Winds gusting up to 30 miles an hour fueled the fire,

and in minutes, the compound was engulfed in flame.

Potok: It was mind-blowing to see this happening.

People are dying as you watch.

Doyle: I could feel this tremendous heat over my head.

It was so, so hot and so oppressive,

and it kind of pushed me down onto the ground,

and I'm praying pretty much the whole time, like,

"God, if you're gonna do a miracle, you better hurry up

and do it because it's getting hot."

It was some massive flames.

I remember seeing the skin rolling off my hands.

I thought there's no way

that anyone's gonna come out alive.

Martin: I just kept hoping that the children at least,

that my four children had been saved.

Woman: A large part of the compound, the Branch Davidians' complex,

known to them as Mount Carmel, is in flames.

Doyle: I began to hear voices further in behind me,

in the building, screaming,

and that kind of galvanized me to jump onto the ground.

I remember seeing the skin rolling off my hands,

and I kind of I looked back over my shoulder

at the hole I just came out of, and it was a mass of flames.

I thought, "Oh, my God.

Nobody is gonna come out after that."

Capps: As the flames consumed the compound,

David Koresh's vision of an apocalypse was fulfilled.

Sage: The on-scene commander comes up to me,

put his hand on my shoulder and he says,

"Well, looks like negotiations are over.

You've got the crime scene."

And he left, and I was dumbfounded.

Martin: I just kept hoping that the children at least,

that my four children, had been saved.

They said, you know, "We're gonna get back to you.

And we'll find out if any of the people that came out

are any of your family."

You're realizing, "These people are gone."

Doyle: I learned that my daughter hadn't made it.

It tears you up inside,

thinking of the pain and the horror

and the fear and everything else she probably went through.

That entire building was reduced to about 18 inches of rubble.

Within the rubble, authorities found more than 300 weapons.

Most of them were legal, however,

they did find some illegal weapons such as AR-15s

which had been converted from a semiautomatic

to automatic weapons.

The children were all confined in a cement room.

Most of whom are shot at point-blank range.

Reavis: Parents killing their own children

because the fire was closing in on them.

Sage: I wish I had never looked inside that room.

It was just so devastating, so tragic.

Steve Schneider and David Koresh

were located right near the front door of the compound,

and both had died from single gunshot wounds.

The conclusion most people come to

is that Schneider shot Koresh and then shot himself.

Capps: Many questions remain unanswered here

as investigators continue searching through the rubble,

looking for clues.

Many of the people that live here say,

as far as blame, there's plenty to go around.

I approved the plan, and I'm responsible for it.

The FBI became fed up with waiting for David Koresh

to write his Seven Seals manuscript.

The FBI would claim David Koresh was not writing

his interpretation of the Seven Seals.

If David would have sent out proof of his progress

as he'd promised,

I don't think we ever would have moved forward.

We never received anything.

We have absolute certain intelligence

that the first seal wasn't even started.

Arnold: But, a Branch Davidian, Ruth Riddle, survived the fire,

and she brought out evidence to the contrary.

Reavis: Ruth Riddle jumped out of Mount Carmel

with a disk in her pocket,

which is Koresh's explanation on the first seal.

You can read it on the web today.

Reporter: It's all over in Waco,

but did it have to end like this?

This whole incident is an American tragedy.

I think it was a warning and a lesson to all of us.

It was the beginning of the end

of these really aggressive siege tactics.

The decision to send tanks and tear gas in,

where they knew that there were women and children

that had nothing to do with any crime,

that's a terrible, terrible decision.

I think Waco reinforced for me what I believed for a long time.

We really have to listen to other people.

We don't have to agree with them,

but listening is the cheapest concession we can make.

DeGuerin: Was Koresh partly to blame because he refused to come out?

Sure, but in his defense and in the defense of those

who did not surrender, this was their home.

They had no reason to give up their home, none.

♪♪

The government violated their Constitutional rights.

Waco became this rallying cry for the radical right.

It was all stupid. But what about the babies and the women?

Don't you care about them?

Anti-government protesters believed

the government was infringing on the right of people to own guns

and, most importantly, that it was killing American citizens.

Timothy McVeigh had been at Waco,

selling bumper stickers

and peddling his anti-government theories.

Just -- Just arrived today.

Potok: Timothy McVeigh, on the second anniversary of the Waco fire,

would carry out the ultimate act of revenge.

McVeigh constructed an enormous bomb and murdered 168 people.

Reporter: The Murrah Federal Office building in Oklahoma City

was ripped apart by a truck bomb.

Reporter 2: You can see just smoke and debris and fire on the ground.

It's just devastating.

Potok: Oklahoma City was bombed by Timothy McVeigh

explicitly in response to Waco.

The Oklahoma City bombing sparked renewed interest

in the government's handling of the Waco siege,

with the public demanding answers

as to what exactly went wrong.

This led to a special counsel investigation

into the events at Waco

led by former U.S. Senator John Danforth.

The subsequent Danforth report, released in 2000,

cleared the ATF and FBI of conspiracy to commit murder,

but it also criticized the FBI's aggressive tactics at Waco.

In the years since, the agency has made changes.

Waco is now the FBI's "never again,"

and these days, when Federal Agents

are up against armed extremists,

they resort to a nonaggressive approach

they call "infinite patience."

I'm Hill Harper.

Thanks for watching.