At Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launches a tear-gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound, ending a tense 51-day standoff between the federal government and an armed religious cult. By the end of the day, the compound was burned to the ground, and some 80 Branch Davidians, including 22 children, had perished in the inferno.
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On February 28, 1993, agents of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) launched a raid against the Branch Davidian compound as part of an investigation into illegal possession of firearms and explosives by the Christian cult. As the agents attempted to penetrate the complex, gunfire erupted, beginning an extended gun battle that left four ATF agents dead and 15 wounded. Six Branch Davidians were fatally wounded, and several more were injured, including David Koresh, the cult’s founder and leader. After 45 minutes of shooting, the ATF agents withdrew, and a cease-fire was negotiated over the telephone. The operation, which involved more than 100 ATF agents, was one of the largest ever mounted by the bureau and resulted in the highest casualties of any ATF operation.
David Koresh was born Vernon Wayne Howell in Houston, Texas, in 1959. In 1981, he joined the Branch Davidians, a sect of the Seventh Day Adventist Church founded in 1934 by a Bulgarian immigrant named Victor Houteff. Koresh, who possessed an exhaustive knowledge of the Bible, rapidly rose in the hierarchy of the small religious community, eventually entering into a power struggle with the Davidians’ leader, George Roden.
For a short time, Koresh retreated with his followers to eastern Texas, but in late 1987 he returned to Mount Carmel with seven armed followers and raided the compound, severely wounding Roden. Koresh went on trial for attempted murder, but the charge was dropped after his case was declared a mistrial. By 1990, he was the leader of the Branch Davidians and legally changed his name to David Koresh, with David representing his status as head of the biblical House of David, and Koresh standing for the Hebrew name for Cyrus, the Persian king who allowed the Jews held captive in Babylon to return to Israel.
Koresh took several wives at Mount Carmel and fathered at least 12 children from these women, several of whom were as young as 12 or 13 when they became pregnant. There is also evidence that Koresh may have harshly disciplined some of the 100 or so Branch Davidians living inside the compound, particularly his children. A central aspect of Koresh’s religious teachings was his assertion that the apocalyptic events predicted in the Bible’s book of Revelation were imminent, making it necessary, he asserted, for the Davidians to stockpile weapons and explosives in preparation.
Following the unsuccessful ATF raid, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) took over the situation. A standoff with the Branch Davidians stretched into seven weeks, and little progress was made in the telephone negotiations, as the Davidians had stockpiled years of food and other necessities before the raid.
On April 18, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno approved a tear-gas assault on the compound, and at approximately 6:00 a.m. on April 19 the Branch Davidians were informed of the imminent attack and asked to surrender, which they refused to do. A few minutes later, two FBI combat vehicles began inserting gas into the building and were joined by Bradley tanks, which fired tear-gas canisters through the compound’s windows. The Branch Davidians, many with gas masks on, refused to evacuate, and by 11:40 a.m. the last of some 100 tear-gas canisters was fired into the compound. Just after noon, a fire erupted at one or more locations on the compound, and minutes later nine Davidians fled the rapidly spreading blaze. Gunfire was reported but ceased as the compound was completely engulfed by the flames.
Koresh and at least 80 of his followers, including 22 children, died during the federal government’s second disastrous assault on Mount Carmel. The FBI and the Justice Department maintained there was conclusive evidence that the Branch Davidian members ignited the fire, citing an eyewitness account and various forensic data. Of the gunfire reported during the fire, the government argued that the Davidians were either killing each other as part of a suicide pact or were killing dissenters who attempted to escape the Koresh-ordered suicide by fire. Most of the surviving Branch Davidians contested this official position, as do some critics in the press and elsewhere, whose charges against the ATF and FBI’s handling of the Waco standoff ranged from incompetence to premeditated murder. In 1999, the FBI admitted they used tear-gas grenades in the assault, which have been known to cause fires because of their incendiary properties.
This memory always brings to mind Frank Zappa’s quote: “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
And his old man was in army intel so he knew what he was talking about.
The bell tolls for thee…
Asusual in court historian accounts is the fact that the BATF simply arrived on the scene and opened fire as soon as Vernon Howell opened the front door. Howell was holding his two year old daughter.
The BATF was there to serve a warrant that they didn’t have. They called their assault operation “Showtime”. Everyone involved from top to bottom should still be serving multiple life sentences.
That would include the two rabid dykes who masterminded the slaughter; Janet Reno and Hillary Clinton.
Amen.
Can someone help me get this posted as an article please?
http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can.html?ref=patrick.net
I’m still waiting for the 59 cruise missiles to strike the ATF to avenge the beautiful babies.
I lived in Texas at the time, Waco was just down the road.
When the big burndown came, I was at work when the news came through. Many looks of disbelief were exchanged, nobody said much. We all knew it was a takedown. Stormtroopering by the ATF? When was the last time the ATF had cornered and murdered dozens of citizens in a siege? Everybody knew the government was rolling out a program of blitzkrieg.
Hard to believe it was 25 years ago.
How much worse it has all gotten since then…. 🙁
Hi,
I lived in Austin at the time and was on a flight from Dallas to Austin. We flew over Waco at a very low altitude and the flames looked like a huge forest fire.
The more I read about this, the more I agree with the other posters. This was a perfect example of jackbooted thugs – much like when they forcibly kidnapped that Cuban child and sent him back to Cuba. They could have routed them with water trucks and planes like they put out forest fires. It sure looks like the government wanted to make a terrifying statement to the world.
I agree with you, things don’t seem to be getting better. It’s no wonder people fear the government.
We’re at an inflection point. People are increasingly angry, and that anger is beginning to outweigh their fear of the government in even the most docile of them.
The government is, increasingly, afraid of the people. They should be terrified. People I’ve known for decades, people that I have always viewed as rather spineless, literally want blood. All it needs is the right spark, and the very worst atrocities in human history are going to look like a friendly water balloon fight between children in comparison to what is coming.
We tried voting our way out of this, and that was utterly subverted by our domestic traitors, and the parasitic foreign Tribe.
There is no way voting our way out of this. Most people realize this now.
Whites descend primarily from absolutely ruthless and cunning killers. Why would you pick a fight with a man who has the blood of an entire army of genocidal warriors running through his veins? I mean, when you’re dealing people whose scale and mastery of organized violence is beyond comprehension when it is directed at other White nations, how well can non-Whites expect to be treated when they aren’t on good terms with Whites?
The last time Whites got angry, really genuinely angry, at a non-White race, we developed an entirely new class of weaponry, based on a new branch of science, and incinerated the entire population of an enemy city. Then we did it to another enemy city a few days later, for no reason. Seriously, they should not have fucked with White people.
When this occurred I had a sales route that was fairly close to home so I usually ate lunch at home.
I can remember coming in & flipping on the tv and the flaming building was all over the screen.
I can still remember the tears of rage I had knowing that all those people were being burned alive because government would not leave them alone.
Whatever the question or context I will never forget, Janet Reno replied, “…yes, he is slapping babies around.”
So they burned them all to death.
Whenever they talk about “the babies”, that’s a sign of what they have in mind. In the Kuwait/Iraq show, it was the babies being thrown out of the incubators…
Continuing to publish history.com versions of events (especially those that involve massive crimes by the US government) does little to support the credibility of this site. Most of the regular visitors to this site have bothered to investigate beyond the sanitized lies of the government, the mainstream media, and the countless justifiers, to understand what really happened, all the government lies that got them their search warrants, and the blatant murder of this people on that fateful day. And of course lets not forget the immediate bulldozing of the crime scene (as with 9-11) to ensure that all evidence of their crimes was kept from public scrutiny. This was just another in a LONG, LONG list of heinous mass murders committed by the president and the US government. April 19th seems to be a popular day for the feds to murder lots of people. Let us hope we make it through another anniversary without another one of their crime sprees.
MrLiberty
I post these history.com versions in order to have people respond with why they are wrong. The point isn’t to support their version. I think the 11 comments so far has done exactly what I hoped. And I don’t give a flying fuck what you think about the credibility of this site.
keep posting ’em,your reply was right on-
if nobody corrected the original post mr liberty would be right but it’s a rare day that guys on the site do not correct the original if it’s wrong–
“And of course lets not forget the immediate bulldozing of the crime scene…”
That is a good point and pisses me off. It’s like cremating a body before an autopsy can be performed. It stirs up more conspiracy theory than it shuts down. When JFK was shot it’s not like they went in and bulldozed the book depository and all of Dealy Plaza. I visited that area 50 years after the event of 1963, peered out the window Oswald allegedly fired from and though, hell, I could make that shot, the narrative makes sense. Something tells me the “deep state” is getting lazy.
Lazy? Their lies are UNSUPPORTABLE and they must destroy the evidence before it can be examined and the truth gotten out.
This and Ruby Ridge did more to start the Militia and small government and 2nd amendment movements than anything else I’m aware of. As a result many of us were audited by the IRS and threatened by the EPA all over the country. The EPA is a powerful coercion tool of the Feds that gets little attention. Anyone owning a 1 acre retreat can have their property impounded by an agent or his stooge by just pulling the leg off a grasshopper and suddenly you have a new endangered species to protect. Never mind that it can be easily disproved in court. Humans can’t yet live long enough to out wait the Feds in court.
Mr. Liberty. I like you but sometimes I wonder what grade you are in.
They should have ducked.
The BATFaggots only retreated on Day 1 not because they just got their asses whipped by women, kids and the elderly after months of training on a full-size mock-up, but because they didn’t have enough rounds left for each to shoot themselves in the head.
At least the prolonged siege lasted long enough to bring in British SAS and their FLIR-equipped planes, SF operators to shoot most of the would-be survivors in thr head before escaping the inferno, and shoot and produce a full-length propaganda made-for-TV movie.
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
TPTB immediately bulldozed the Murrah Building to prevent a forensic investigation of the Federal Government’s C4 charges placed on the third floor’s three front columns; the main explosion was from inside the building.
RHS..it was a Pineapple bomb inside the Murrah Bldg.