Original subtitles

All we knew was that a shootout had occurred.

Four law enforcement agents are dead and at least

14 injured in a shootout with heavily-armed

religious cult members outside Waco, Texas, tonight.

They were an apocalyptic group.

Well, you know what they think of me?

They think I'm the Son of God.

- Do they? - Yeah.

It was very, very confused.

What happened, how it happened--

The 75-member group stockpiles

military-type assault weapons in preparation

for the end of the world.

We wanted to get the kids out of there.

You know, we train for these situations.

You can't point guns in the direction

of my wives and my kids.

, I'll meet you at the door any time.

All of that went downhill fast.

This is every law enforcement's worst nightmare.

narrator: In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.

Drug busts, mob stings,

terrorist takedowns...

Get down! Get down!

narrator: We understand why

people want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it. - Freeze!

- FBI. - FBI!

Action!

narrator: But they don't know the half of it.

What really goes down?

We save that for each other,

when we're talking agent to agent.

This is "FBI True."

narrator: Kristy Kottis is a 24-year veteran of the FBI.

She worked gangs, crimes against children,

as well as human and drug trafficking.

Kottis was the supervisor of the FBI's

threat response squad

overseeing the bureau's response to terrorism threats

in New York City.

The Waco siege started February 28.

Where were you? How did it start?

I was reading the Sunday morning paper,

an article about the Branch Davidians

that I'd never heard of.

narrator: Rick Shirley is a veteran

of the Austin Police Department,

where he served as a crisis negotiator for 28 years.

It was a history of the Branch Davidians,

and mostly about Vernon Howell, AKA David Koresh.

The newspaper was referring to them as a cult at the time--

religious cult.

Howell claims his group is an offshoot

of the Seventh Day Adventists.

The Adventists say they cut off all contact with the group

more than ten years ago.

They were an apocalyptic group,

and their beliefs were based on Revelations of the Bible.

And the main function or main focus that David Koresh had

was on the seven seals that's mentioned in Revelations.

According to him, he was the Lamb of God

because he could reveal the meaning of the seven seals.

I don't care if you're an alcoholic.

I don't care if you can't keep your marriage together.

All I care about, without judgment, is one thing.

Do you want to know the seven seals?

Do you wanna know where they are?

He calls himself the Lamb of God,

and also the one who will be in charge of the Book of Life

and the seals mentioned in Revelation.

Is he as dangerous as he appears to be?

He's extremely dangerous.

And the state had already looked into him,

because there was a lot of things going on there.

narrator: As an FBI special agent, Charlie Rasner

worked domestic terrorism and civil rights cases

before joining the FBI's

Hostage Rescue Team as a sniper.

He was awarded the FBI Shield of Bravery

for his courage in the line of duty.

A lot of the people that came there were lost people.

They were just mixed-up people.

They came seeking a greater truth.

And he took advantage of them, and he convinced them

to give him all their worldly possessions and their wives

and their underage children.

He had had sex and had children with

many, many underage girls.

This is my family.

It may not be like your family.

We knew early on from the intelligence

that we were given,

ATF had been doing an investigation on him

for a while.

It makes nobody's business whether we have

a gun or not at this place.

UPS, a driver, was delivering all kinds

of suspicious packages to them,

and he was always troubled,

he said in statements to the ATF,

about what was going in there.

And finally, one of the packages broke open,

and these grenades spill out.

The hand grenades, those were inert hand grenade casings.

But they also had been buying gunpowder

and other types of materials

to turn those into functional grenades.

And in fact, they did.

The neighbors would also hear explosives

going off from time to time.

And the Sheriff's Department, they contacted ATF.

That, and the automatic weapon fire.

It's pretty noticeable to hear, you know,

when an automatic weapon is being fired.

It's going to be, boom, boom, boom.

narrator: Jim McGee began his career as a firefighter

for the National Forest Service.

As a member of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team,

he received the Medal of Valor for exceptional heroism.

His Mighty Men were out there training

in a range they had built.

Now, who are the Mighty Men?

The Mighty Men was a group of his male followers

that he kind of designated as the beginning of his--

called it "army of God."

They would be there when that confrontation came

between the Davidians and the government.

Yeah.

And they were expecting some form of government

to come knocking at the door anyway,

because they weren't stupid.

They knew that their behavior

and the things that they were doing that were criminal

were going to get somebody's attention eventually.

So they actually trained for dealing with the government

before all of this took place.

The straw that broke the camel's back that morning,

February 28th, was the lost reporter

that pulled over the mailman.

The reporters, they knew the raid was going to take place.

One of the reporters got lost,

and he pulled over, flagged over a mailman.

And he asked him the directions

to the Branch Davidian compound.

And I think there's some words exchanged to the fact

that there was going to be a big event there today.

And so the mailman was a cult member.

And the mailman immediately told him that ATF was coming.

Sadly, now, federal agents have learned

what the locals long suspected,

that the group calling itself God's Marines

would not give up without a fight.

All of this started with a search warrant

and a cache of allegedly illegal weapons.

I was in Old Town, Alexandria--

there was still snow on the ground.

And all of a sudden, I look on the news--

In Waco, Texas, four law enforcement agents

are dead and at least 12 injured

in a shootout with a religious cult.

The first dramatic pictures have just come in

from our Waco affiliate, KWTX,

and we caution you, they are graphic.

All of a sudden, I get the 333 on our pager,

which meant "report to Quantico immediately."

When I got to the HRT facility at Quantico,

people were saying, dude, aren't you from Waco?

I said, well, yeah.

And they said, well, ATF just got in a big shooting there,

and there's four of them dead.

Another 16 were wounded.

And they need us, because it's out of control.

A Texas prairie ten miles east of Waco

is ground zero in a smoldering holy war.

Authorities were trying to serve

a search warrant on the group's leader when gunfire broke out.

One of the cult members was killed as well.

The ATF negotiators, are they engaged with Koresh

on the phone yet, or anybody from the compound?

Yes, they had been engaged with him for some time,

as well as Steve Schneider.

And then, a little later in the afternoon,

the first FBI negotiator that arrived on the scene--

and they had been on the phone with Koresh as well

as with Wayne Martin, who was one of the Branch Davidians

that was actually an attorney.

Through the beginning negotiations,

you could hear rounds going on.

They're basically yelling at the negotiators

that y'all need to back off.

We have children-- women and children in here.

Tell them that they need to stop firing,

and the whole time, you could hear

they were firing from inside.

Koresh was wounded.

Not as bad as he tried to indicate that he was,

but he was wounded.

And so things were kind of going back and forth.

They negotiated a ceasefire

at that point in time that afternoon.

I thought to myself, well,

I'm going to be getting the 333.

And next thing you know, I'm on a plane.

So I got paged that I had to go to Waco.

Our team sergeant at the time,

he said it looks like we're going to have

a negotiate situation.

Initially, they sent us in to the wrong place.

They sent us into the perimeter area,

where the tactical team was set up.

There are people moving, and it's pitch-black

and pretty eerie.

And so then, they finally figured out

who we were and got us rerouted

to the airport manager's office.

And that's where the ATF negotiator was,

along with the Texas DPS negotiators.

And so we went in and saw they were pretty well stressed out.

Oh, yeah, I can't imagine.

My name is Jeff Jamar.

I'm the special agent in charge of FBI operations

here in Waco.

We're here because David Koresh and his followers

killed four ATF agents.

The area is a crime scene.

The goal is to resolve the situation,

ultimately, in federal court, with no further bloodshed.

We knew that ATF was there.

Legally, they had a search warrant signed

by a federal judge, looking for firearms,

illegal firearms.

We knew we had four federal agents dead,

and FBI investigates, as you know,

assaults on federal officers.

This is what we do. We were there.

This was our mission.

We're unpacking our gear, and there's the sheriff.

And he said, oh, God, I'm so sorry about what happened.

He felt genuinely distressed.

He was sad.

He said all those boys got shot.

He was talking about the ATF folks.

We didn't know how many Davidians

had been shot at that time.

And he said, I feel so bad. I was talking to David,

and I thought we were going to be able to work things out.

This is every law enforcement's worst nightmare.

What's going through your mind?

It must have been very confusing,

not just because of the logistics, but emotionally.

What are you thinking?

Personally--and I think this was probably consistent

with the team we've got,

you know, federal law enforcement officers,

you know, our brothers and sisters.

Absolutely.

And you know, I'm thinking, they have spouses.

They have children. They have siblings.

They have parents.

You know, this is devastating for these families.

So we came in and set up our equipment

and got everybody on the headphones and stuff,

and get ready to roll.

I'd been a negotiator for only about five years

at the time that this happened.

Although I had a lot of experience

with dealing with suicidal people

and at least one hostage situation,

nothing compared to this scale.

Federal agents continue trying

to negotiate with the group by phone,

in hopes of arranging a peaceful conclusion.

It's dark by the time we got to the perimeter

of the compound.

Probably a mile out from the compound.

The situation remains at a standoff.

Myself and another operator, we were sent out into that,

you know, that pasture and told to set up a location there.

And we basically just hunkered down

and tried to set up a 360 perimeter for ourselves

so that we could monitor

and make sure none of the Davidians

were trying to escape from the compound

or attack our positions.

So Connie, we are just waiting to see

what daylight brings here.

In reality, we really couldn't see anything

until it started to become daylight.

But it didn't take long, daybreak,

to realize this is a massive compound.

If we're going to try to do any type

of deliberate assault on this place,

it's going to stretch our resources to the max.

Did some bullets come in your room?

- Yeah. - How many?

A lot.

What was your--

what did your mom tell you to do?

What were you doing? We were getting--

we got on the floor.

- Were you scared? - Yeah.

The children were always paramount in our concerns.

We wanted to get the kids out of there.

That was a big question among the operators.

Are there hostages involved here?

From our perspective, the children are the hostages.

'Cause they don't have a choice.

A lot of beliefs people have may seem abnormal

and sort of strange to other people.

But that doesn't mean that it's not right, though.

A cult compound near the city of Waco

is surrounded by hundreds of law enforcement officers

almost a day after four federal agents

were killed in a shootout.

There was rumors that there may have been tunnels

coming out of the compound.

We didn't know where those tunnels led to

and where they came out.

They had an arsenal of weapons.

.223-caliber AR-15 that have been converted

to fully automatic shoulder weapons.

And then, the one that really concerned us was--

.50-caliber sniper rifles,

which could shoot about a mile, accurately.

They were actually used in the Iraq War for sniper kills.

And they had used them against the ATF,

and they're very deadly weapons.

And you're not going to get wounded by that.

You're going to die if it hits you.

You know, the way we were positioned

around the compound,

there initially were two,

we would call "sniper-observer positions."

And one was what we called the Sierra One,

and the other was what we called the Sierra Two.

Then, in support of those sniper teams,

we had our assault teams, and there were two assault teams

at each of those Sierra One and Sierra Two positions

to provide protection to the snipers

in case they were rushed or something happened.

So the negotiators, what do they want to talk about?

We were going for hours

where he's doing most of the talking,

where he's talking about the Revelations

and the seven seals.

If we try to discuss the things that initially

drew the government's attention to them,

that would tend to firing Koresh up a little bit,

because he did not want to be accused of any wrongdoing.

And as far as he was concerned,

that was their house,

and that we were infringing upon their privacy.

You can argue with me.

You come and argue with me.

You come pointing guns in the direction

of my wives and my kids?

, I'll meet you at the door any time.

So it is still a waiting game,

the messianic cult leader holed up in his fortress

with dozens of followers,

surrounded by hundreds of lawmen

who say they are waiting-- willing to wait

as long as it takes

to end this confrontation without bloodshed,

if possible.

What were some of the negotiations

that were conducted that made people believe,

or made the negotiators believe this might be a success?

There was a lot of events that took place early on that--

that we thought that this situation

was going to be resolved relatively quickly.

We first started getting some of the children out of there.

The bright note during the night

was that eight of the children

were brought out of the compound.

For a couple of days, he had agreed

to surrender and have everybody come out.

We worked out an agreement with him

that he would do a recording to address the--

his knowledge of the seven seals,

and we would have that publicly transmitted over the air.

It was broadcast, and then they were able to listen

to those broadcasts inside.

The plan was that everyone would

come out and load up on buses

that they were going to bring in there.

And then they would transport them down to the facilities

where the other people had been taken to,

down at the Sheriff's Department.

Charlie and Jim, when you see those buses pull up,

did you get a sense like, oh, good,

this is going to finally come to an end?

We were hopeful. We thought, this is it.

We've--the negotiations have worked.

Let's get out of here. We're done.

The rest of the children are going to be safe,

which was the goal all along.

As it turned out,

he declared that he had heard from God

that now is not the time to surrender.

And then, when they never came out,

that all of that went downhill fast.

The best thing that has happened here

in the last 24 hours

is that more children have been released.

But there has been a big disappointment as well.

Cult leader David Koresh promised to surrender,

but then he didn't.

He says that he did not fulfill his promise

to leave immediately with his followers

because God told him to wait.

When they left with nobody on them,

we said, OK, we're dealing with a complete psycho

who's not going to give up easy,

and it's going to be

a different ending, unfortunately.

The dangerous standoff drags on.

Cult members remain sealed inside the compound.

Federal agents remain on alert.

The families continue their agonizing wait,

and no one knows when or how this will all end.

We have a slew of people coming out and saying,

he's had sex with 14- and 13-year-old girls.

Have I committed adultery is what you're fixing to ask?

Have you committed adultery?

They knew they were running the show.

It was pressure, like a balloon.

And every day this thing goes on,

and more pressure gets in that balloon,

and it gets more and more dangerous every day.

Then, I see, on the red-white corner, a wisp of smoke.

We can see flames from two miles away.

Now, the flames-- oh, my goodness.

And I'm like, they're starting fires.

Oh!