An Insider Reflects on the Waco Standoff

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“A Journey to Waco,” Doyle’s memoir, is an account of what it means to be a religious radical—to worship on the fringes of contemporary Christianity. Doyle takes the story from his childhood in Australia through the extraordinary events of 1993, when some eighty armed agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms raided the Mount Carmel community, in an effort to serve a search and arrest warrant on Koresh, on suspicion of violating federal firearms rules. “I want you all to go back to your rooms and stay calm,” Doyle recalls Koresh saying, as federal agents descended on Mount Carmel. Doyle goes on, “I could hear David’s steps going down the hall toward the front door. . . . Then all of a sudden I heard David say: ‘Hey, wait a minute! There are women and children in here!’ Then all hell broke loose—just a barrage of shots from outside coming in. It sounded like a bloodbath.”

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Outside the Mount Carmel complex, the F.B.I. assembled what has been called probably the largest military force ever gathered against a civilian suspect in American history: ten Bradley tanks, two Abrams tanks, four combat-engineering vehicles, six hundred and sixty-eight agents in addition to six U.S. Customs officers, fifteen U.S. Army personnel, thirteen members of the Texas National Guard, thirty-one Texas Rangers, a hundred and thirty-one officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety, seventeen from the McLennan County sheriff’s office, and eighteen Waco police, for a total of eight hundred and ninety-nine people. Their task, as they saw it, was to peel away the pretense—Koresh’s posturing, his lies, his grandiosity—and compel him to take specific steps toward a resolution.

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On another occasion, the Davidians asked the F.B.I. to bring milk for their children, and the bureau insisted that some of the children be released before the supplies were handed over:



F.B.I.: We got the milk for you . . . we’ll bring the milk down. We’ll drop it off. . . . In return, we want four of your kids to come up, and we’re going to give you the milk for the kids.

This is how negotiations are supposed to work: tit for tat. But what proposal could have been more offensive and perplexing to a Branch Davidian? The bureau wanted to separate children from their parents and extract them from the community to which they belonged in exchange for milk. “That doesn’t make any sense,” a Davidian named Kathy S. tells the negotiator. But the negotiator thinks she means that the terms of the deal aren’t good enough:



F.B.I.: Listen. I’ll, I’ll get the milk to you for two kids.

Again, Kathy S. reacts angrily, and the negotiator gives up. He thinks the problem is that he’s saddled with someone who just isn’t reasonable:



F.B.I.: Kathy, perhaps we’re wasting each other’s time. All right? Put somebody else on.
K.S.: I mean, all you want, all you want to do is bargain?
F.B.I.: Kathy!
K.S.: Are you going to bargain with human lives?
F.B.I.: Kathy! I’ve told you what we’ll do and, and if that’s not agreeable to you, perhaps we’re wasting one another’s time. All right? . . . Why don’t you put somebody else on, please?
K.S.: Look . . . there are babies here that need the milk. Are you that inhumane that you can’t just send us the milk for not sending out kids, or sending out David, or sending out women?
F.B.I.: Our concern, our concern is for those children first and foremost and the rest of you also. All right? The children—
K.S.: So, your concern is that these babies get fed the milk they need?
F.B.I.: Kathy.
K.S.: It doesn’t sound like you are concerned.

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