Original subtitles

In Waco, Texas, four law enforcement agents are dead

and at least 12 injured

in a shootout with a religious cult.

Through the beginning negotiations,

you could hear rounds going off.

We wanted to get the kids out of there.

Cult leader David Koresh raised hopes

that a peaceful end might be on the horizon.

He declared that he had heard from God

that now is not the time to surrender.

It makes nobody's business whether we have a gun or not.

This is every law enforcement's worst nightmare.

The dangerous standoff drags on.

It was like a pressure, like a balloon.

And every day, it gets more and more dangerous.

These are powerful signs of the government

taking control of the situation.

There was one person

that could have avoided this outcome...

And that was David Koresh.

If you're a true Christian and you believe the truth

and you know the truth, the truth will set you free.

And the fire had started to consume the building.

And I see a woman standing on the second floor.

And then she jumped.

In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.

Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

Get down! Get down!

We understand why people want to tell stories about us.

Mark it.

- Freeze! - FBI.

- FBI! - Action!

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."

Cult leader David Koresh raised hopes

that a peaceful end might be on the horizon.

He promised to give up if authorities would

allow a radio station to play an audio cassette

in which he explained his religious views.

So here we are, at this point.

You know, hostage negotiators have spoke to Koresh.

There was a plan for him to give up.

I, David Koresh, agree, upon the broadcasting of this tape,

to come out peacefully with all the people.

He doesn't. He blatantly lies to us.

We now know that he's untrustworthy and he's a liar.

At this point in the investigation,

what do we know now?

Well, we know we have a murderer

who killed four federal agents without remorse.

We know we have a child molester,

because we have a slew of people coming out

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

and the kids are there, in the compound with him.

A lot of beliefs people have may seem abnormal

or strange to other people.

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

He's demonstrated horrific faith,

and he's not to be trusted.

We need to kick the can down the road.

The dangerous standoff drags on.

Cult members remain sealed inside the compound,

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

So when we talk about Koresh's wives

and his underage "wives"...

- How many wives do you have? - One.

- One wife? - One wife.

- Have you committed-- - I've always had--

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

Have you committed adultery?

No, I don't commit adultery.

What's your understanding of that?

There was only one that

he was legally married to, and that was Rachel,

and she was 16 at the time that they were married.

And the reason why that was legal

is because her dad signed a agreement

to allow her to marry him.

And what is your understanding

of some of his youngest "brides," in his eyes?

Bye.

God was telling him to marry them.

And then his belief system was that if he had sex with them,

then that meant they were married.

It's not like they had to have some sort of formal ceremony.

Raping these young girls, that then made them his wife.

And that also included

any of the women that joined the cult

who were already married to other men.

They surrendered their wives to Koresh.

And they not only surrendered their wives,

but any children that they already had with their wives

became Koresh's children.

So all children were his children.

All women were his wives.

And the youngest age of one of his brides?

- Ten. - Ten years old?

Yeah.

Law-enforcement officers described

the present situation as static.

They say they want to end this confrontation

without bloodshed, and they are willing

to wait as long as it takes

as long as the delay does not endanger anyone's life.

- So now we're at day 25. - Right.

Koresh has lied to us over and over and over again.

What are you thinking? Ten more days?

What's the passage of time feel like for you at this point?

Groundhog Day.

It became almost, you know, complacent.

Day after day, we'd ride by the front of the compound,

and sometimes Davidians would be waving at us

through the window.

They knew they were running the show,

it felt like, you know?

And it was like a pressure, like a balloon.

And every day this thing goes on,

the more pressure gets in that balloon.

And it gets more and more dangerous.

Koresh was always trying to do little things

to show that he was still in charge.

And he would do stuff. Like, at 2:00 in the morning,

he would start with his guitar, serenading us essentially.

I'm sitting there watching the compound,

and I see Koresh sitting up

on the second story on a windowsill.

And he's playing his electric guitar.

And he's intentionally showing the wound to his wrist

and the wound to his side,

trying to compare himself to Jesus Christ

and the crucifixion.

Then stops and eats a little bit of ramen noodles

and drinks some Juicy Juice.

It's like, "I can stay here forever.

This is my kingdom, and I'm the king."

What were some of the distraction tactics?

With the music?

And what kind of sounds is being thrown out

to put the pressure back on them?

I mean, they were playing some pretty interesting songs,

like Nancy Sinatra.

# You keep playing

# Where you shouldn't be playing #

And then, you know, rabbits being slaughtered.

I mean, that's always fun.

- Chanting monks. - Chanting monks.

I mean, I don't know where they came up with this stuff.

We're sitting back in our position,

listening to it and going, "OK, that would keep me awake."

Who set up the speakers for all this?

- We did. HRT did. - Yeah, the HRT guys.

So when you guys are setting up the speakers,

what are you thinking at this point?

"Don't get shot."

Oh, so you were having to go right out front

and expose yourself? Yes.

I'm thinking, "Charlie, cover me

while we do this." Yeah.

During the day, there were military

and medical helicopter flyovers

and tank maneuvers on the compound grounds.

These are powerful signs of the government

taking control of the situation.

Federal agents want David Koresh and his followers

to get the message.

What else did we do to apply some pressure?

- Power had been cut off. - Yeah.

How long was the power cut off?

Just almost the whole time.

That's typical in barricaded subject situations,

as you know. Yes.

That's not an unusual tactic.

We are trying to reinforce to them

that we are in charge of the situation,

that the compound is under

the complete control of the government.

Right, they're gonna cut the power,

they're gonna cut the phones. Yeah.

- They're gonna cut lights. - Make sure

they don't have gas. Right.

And then on top of that, they had no plumbing,

so they were living in pretty primitive conditions.

And then you add sleep deprivation to that,

and, you know, you're making it

a pretty miserable type of environment

that hopefully, they're gonna try to come out.

Were there other moments

where you felt like there was hope?

Well, there were a couple of times that they decided

they needed to try to go up and do a face-to-face,

with Koresh preferably,

but it ended up being with Steve Schneider.

We developed an approach

to where we were going to try to convince Steve Schneider

to break from Koresh.

He is like the aide-de-camp to David Koresh.

And David Koresh had taken his wife,

impregnated her... Correct.

- And had a baby with her. - Correct.

So what possibly could you say to Schneider

to have him break from the bad messiah?

Well, we knew that Koresh had convinced the men

that they needed to give up their wives

so that they could all become his wives

and have his children.

And we knew that Steve Schneider's wife

was one of those and that she had had a baby by him.

- Huh. - What is your name?

My name is Judy Schneider-Koresh,

and this is my daughter, Mynah.

And so we decided that our best shot at that

was to try to go after Schneider

and really get him upset about that aspect of it...

And really appeal to his emotional side

and to his side as a husband

and see if we could get him really, really angry

to the point of where he would break away from Koresh.

And so we went at him.

We told him, you know, "How does it feel

"knowing that the woman that you love

"and your wife for several years

"is no longer available to you

"and really is not your wife anymore

"and that he has taken her as his wife?

"And in fact, how does it feel, you living there,

"seeing that baby every day,

knowing that that baby is his blood?"

And we kept hammering him with that,

and he got pretty upset,

because he knew what we were saying was definitely something

that had been bothering him for a long time.

So man to man, you were able to tickle that man gene

a little bit, like, "Yo, brother, that's not normal."

Correct. And we tickled it pretty hard.

You know, he got upset, and then a very quick,

complete reversal, like he flipped a switch.

He went back to being the Steve Schneider,

number two guy to David Koresh.

And when he flipped that switch,

it told us that we had wasted our time.

Were there other moments where you felt

like there was hope?

He had told the attorneys that he would surrender

once he had an opportunity to prepare his manuscript

with his disclosing of the Seven Seals

and prove that he was the Lamb of God.

All I care about in our judgment is one thing:

do you want to know the Seven Seals?

Do you want to know where they are?

But we were somewhat skeptical.

That was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back,

because from then on, it was a trust issue.

When did you guys start hearing

that we were going to arrest and rescue?

I was on one of those 24-hour off.

- Yeah. - And so

I was at the hotel room,

and another operator came and said,

"Hey, we're doing it in the morning at 0600."

And I'm like, "Are you serious?"

We could rescue the kids, get them out,

put Koresh where he belonged, in prison,

and do what we came there to do.

Yeah, and bring those to justice

who had killed four ATF agents. Exactly.

Start the process.

Ultimately, that was

what the attorney general approved.

And take me from there, what you guys do.

It would have been probably,

you know, 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning.

And basically, the negotiators had announced to the Davidians

that, "Look, there's gonna be a gas insertion."

"You're gonna want to come out of there

"because it's gonna get very uncomfortable.

"It's not gonna be good for the children

to be exposed to that environment."

And so 6:00 a.m. rolled around,

and we all began the procession

in the Bradleys and the M-88 tanks.

And the tanks, which had been configured

so that they could crush a hole in the exterior wall

and then spray gas into the compound.

Sure enough, we literally hadn't crossed the threshold,

and an operator from one of the sniper positions

said "compromise."

And "compromise" means that the Davidians

were in the tower with long weapons,

and they were opening fire on us.

Now we're under fire, and that meant, you know,

our "rules of engagement" were gonna accelerate.

Basically, any time a sniper called out and said,

"There's a Davidian in this window with a long weapon,"

then I would fire gas rounds into that window

to try to run him out of there.

Sorry, in the sniper positions, you guys are--

We were covering,

but we couldn't identify targets and be certain

that they didn't have a child underneath them as cover

or some other human being that was innocent.

We wanted to be able to hit the target.

So we couldn't fire. We wouldn't fire.

We didn't fire even though we received gunfire

the entire morning all around us.

The negotiators is reaching out to the Davidians,

saying, you know, "Please come out"...

Thinking that maybe they'll start to file out

through the doors and some of the openings

made by the tanks.

But there's nothing, no response.

Nobody's coming out. Nothing.

Charlie, what's happening at this point?

We've moved the Bradleys forward.

We're pumping gas in.

The gas is ineffective.

Windy day. Place was a barn.

Windows open. Gas was just blowing.

The wind was blowing it right out the windows.

They had masks. I don't even know

if they needed them, to be honest with you.

It wasn't affecting them. They were still shooting at us.

They were not responding the way we had hoped

they would respond by letting the kids out.

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

Another operator calls out that he sees a wisp of smoke.

I can't see that corner. Yeah.

He can't see mine. The compound is too big.

So therefore, I know, OK, there's got to be

two "wisps of smoke." Yeah.

That means two fires have been set.

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

I had a pretty unique perspective

because I was in an angle

where I could see most of the structure.

And I start seeing puffs of smoke, puffs of smoke,

puffs of smoke in three different places

simultaneously along the building.

And the next thing you know, with that wind...

We can see flames from two miles away.

Now the flames-- oh, my goodness.

And we wanted to get out.

We said, "We've got to go get those kids."

And we started to, but we could feel the rounds

impacting the sandbags and hear them going off.

We knew it was a death sentence to do that.

And the fire has started to consume the building,

and I see a woman standing on the second floor.

And then she jumps.

And then she turns around and walks back in

to the first floor of the compound, back into the flames.

I climb back into the back of the Bradley.

I tell the guy who's driving, I said, "Let's go over there.

"I'm gonna see if I can get in there and get her.

And maybe she's with the children."

And I find her laying on the concrete floor facedown.

And I shake her and identify myself.

And I said, "Listen, where are the children?"

And she just was nonresponsive.

And I grab her, and I say,

"Look, if we don't get out of here, we're gonna die as well."

I'm having to drag her over the burning debris,

back out to the back of the Bradley,

and lay her on the back.

I'm still asking her, "Where are the children?"

She never does respond.

I was pissed 'cause I'm like, well, those kids aren't out.

I'm praying now that there's a bunker

or a tunnel or someplace safe.

As many as 86 people, including 17 children,

are thought to have died

in yesterday's inferno outside Waco.

Today, investigators will search the ruins

of the cult compound for remains of the victims.

And after the fires had kind of turned

to just, you know, smoldering embers,

I got tasked with being the first

to go into that first-level concrete bunker.

That was hell on Earth,

a hell created by David Koresh.

And then, in a pile, you see a--

you know, sort of bone fragment or skull.

It was like 40 children and, you know, their mothers.

It looked like a lot of the children

had died in their mother's arms.

The forensics afterwards, we were told

that some of the children had been killed by their mothers

to escape the hell of dying in a fire like that.

All we cared about were those kids.

Once we knew they weren't coming out and they were dead,

we were crushed.

This tragedy that's beyond even articulation

is solely because of David Koresh.

That's it.

The guy didn't want to come out

because he was a pedophile.

He had sexually assaulted underage girls--

14, 13-- had children with them.

And every child of his was a living, breathing,

walking piece of evidence against him in court.

And he would have gone to jail for a very long time

for child molestation, and he knew that.

The record of the Waco incident documents mistakes.

What the record from Waco does not evidence, however,

is any improper motive or intent

on the part of law enforcement.

David Koresh and the Davidians set fire to themselves

and committed suicide.

The government did not do that.

How does this case rank in your career,

and what are some of the thoughts you have?

I had a long career, 31 years.

I enjoyed pretty much every minute of it.

This was one of the most distasteful aspects, of course.

And the reason it still sticks in my throat

is the kids

who had no choice in the matter

and were essentially murdered by their biological father.

And the four ATF agents...

Nobody was really held accountable

for their deaths, their murders.

I've not spoken about this in over 30 years almost.

It just breaks my heart, you know?

- Yeah, I agree. - Anyway...

I think there were definitely

some lessons learned by the FBI.

And one of the big ones was to have a better relationship

between the tactical side of the house and the negotiators.

And I do think that was accomplished.

Something that I think was not accomplished

was how to deal with a cult.

"Thou shall break them with a rod of iron.

Thou shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."

The guy is tough.

He's got more than guns. He's got God.

The bottom line is, there was one person

that could have changed the outcome of it

but chose not to do so,

and that was David Koresh.

And until people stop following false prophets,

this will happen again.