The Cult, Standoff, & Conspiracy of Waco

hello everybody today we're going to talk about the branch davidian cult of waco texas the 51 day standoff between them and federal authorities and the conspiracy of what really happened regardless of opinion the waco siege is widely regarded as one of the largest tragedies in law enforcement history and depending on who you ask it was either the result of a deranged cult leader and his loyal followers or a massacre at the hands of a tyrannical government despite being one of the most widely publicized and documented standoffs in american history where the guilt is to be placed and even some of the events that might have happened are still up for debate after pouring over dozens of news reports and several hours of interviews with both federal agents and branch davidian survivors i feel confident that we can put together a picture of not only what happened but where this cult came from and how it all ended so tragically and if that sounds interesting to you then stick around as we get 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all the way back and talk about the origins of the branch davidians the branch davidians trace their roots back to the seventh day adventist church now it will become very clear in a moment that the beliefs of the davidians do not align with the beliefs of the seventh-day adventists so just to clarify the beliefs i'm about to talk about do not represent the religion as a whole in the 1920s a man emerged from the seventh-day adventist church by the name of viktor hoteff one of the focuses of the seventh-day adventist church at least among the members that i know personally is a focus on the book of revelations and the imminent coming of jesus christ it's believed by many that in the book of revelations it says that jesus christ the son of god will come to earth and then take the believers in god back to heaven with him victor decided to take this a step further and determine the actual figures who were mentioned in revelations see in the book of revelations there is a lot of language that is heavily debated as either being symbolism or literal representations from the seven seals of judgment being poured out on the earth to the hundred and forty four thousand who will be left here after christ's return there seems to be a lot left up to general interpretation and victor was not okay with this victor decided that he was going to determine the identities of the figures mentioned in revelations and make the preparations for christ's return victor wrote a manuscript regarding these beliefs called the shepherd's rod he passed it around to several church leaders who all seemed disinterested in his ideas and after repeatedly berating leaders of the church to believe what he's saying he was eventually disfellowshipped from the seventh-day adventist church in 1930. at this point however he had managed to sway enough people to join him by the time that he was removed from the church so he began to form his own religious offshoot known as the shepherd's rod the shepherd's rod was officially organized in 1934 and shortly thereafter began calling themselves the davidians this is because in the old testament king david is mentioned as being a righteous king and his offspring would be the ones to inherit the earth victor believing himself and his followers to be those offspring referred to themselves as davidians in april of 1935 the davidians purchased a piece of property just outside of waco texas which they named mount carmel mount carmel comes from an old testament story in which the prophet elijah challenged the prophets of the god baal to a competition to see whose god was real a name while at first symbolic would become much more literal in the coming years initially there was about 125 people at mount carmel however these numbers would grow rapidly as did the property the property had massive dairy farms and gardens as well as schools for children and even a sanitarium victor also began various mission trips to begin to spread his word of determining who the true followers of god were and while not all of them lived at the property in 1950 it's believed that up to 100 000 people were part of the davidian religion in 1946 a man by the name of benjamin rhoden joined the church at mount carmel he had a more unique and steadfast approach when it came to his interpretation of scripture this caused several people within the davidians to begin following the teachings of rhoden specifically this would manifest itself when in 1955 victor suddenly died without warning after victor's death his wife florence hotef would take over florence and benjamin did not get along primarily because of benjamin's unique take on scripture see benjamin believed in the apocalyptic ideas of the davidians however he believed that the scripture itself was more malleable and subject to change over time he said that this interpretation of scripture was given to him by god or the branch which is another reference to the old testament so his followers began to refer to themselves as branch davidians so keep in mind at this point the branch davidians are two degrees of separation from the original religion when florence took power benjamin rhoden and his followers left in their newly defined branch davidian group and in 1959 became their own thing florence who still maintained leadership of the original davidians as well as the property of mount carmel said that she had received a revelation from god that on april the 22nd of 1959 the world would end or more specifically the events of revelation would begin but same thing her followers believed her and they all joined together at mount carmel to which when april 22nd passed the world didn't end shocking i know this created distrust among the group and from there they began to fracture after this fracture and florence's loss of power benjamin roden stepped back in and purchased the property of mount carmel for the newly defined branch davidians so davidians buy property branch davidians separate during the property davidians lose property branch davidians come back now keep in mind the group at this point was much smaller than victor's original davidian religion less than 100 people were probably with him at this time and when benjamin died in 1978 similar to victor his wife took over lois rhoden reigned the cult normally for a few years until in 1981 when a man by the name of vernon howell joined the branch davidians shortly after joining this new member vernon became very close to lois vernon was a very charismatic man not only was he a good public speaker but he was also a musician who would lead the group in song furthermore he claimed to have his own revelations from god regarding the meaning of scripture this if you'll remember falls in line with the branch davidian idea the two were so close in fact that according to members of the branch davidians they began to have an affair when lois was in her late 60s and vernon was in his early 20s this was another one of vernon's revelations as he said the child that they would have together would be the chosen son of god lois's son george rhoden as you can imagine hated vernon a lot not only did george consider vernon's teachings bizarre even by cult standards but the whole affair with his mom thing probably didn't help members of the core branch davidian group began to lose faith in lois again probably in part because she was giving so much faith to vernon so in 1983 her son george rhoden took over one of his first orders of business was removing vernon from his place of power see lois had allowed vernon to do his own teachings to the side of the regular teachings that she would give and because of that as is now the third or fourth time it's happened in this story vernon started to garner his own following so george not wanting a repeat of what his own father benjamin did cut out vernon's story time for like a year vernon just kind of like lived in proximity to george i mean they're still in the same building at mount carmel but presumably during this time vernon drove george insane like not only was vernon still presumably teaching people in secret but he would also undercut some of george's messages and the two hated each other to such a degree that whenever part of the building caught on fire in 1984 george immediately blamed vernon and vernon said that i don't know maybe god did it which it's wild to imagine two cult leaders who are kind of forced to live with each other and like something bad happens to one of them so the other one's like oh no maybe god hates you did you ever think of that over the course of this argument george and his own followers forced vernon and his followers to leave at gunpoint so vernon and his believers left for a while and george rhoden renamed mount carmel to rodenville you know the colt story is getting good when they rename a small compound after themselves for three years with vernon and his followers staying on a different side of town they kept having these petty squabbles with each other like george would show up to do business on this side of town and then vernon would conveniently be doing business right next to them and then george would witness to this group of people and then vernon would show up right afterwards this came to a head when in 1987 vernon went back to the mount carmel now renamed rodenville compound and according to witnesses while there george rhoden dug up the body of a davidian who had died like 20 years ago because you know they had their own cemetery on the property and challenged vernon to a competition of who can raise the dead this is where the mount carmel joke about elijah challenging the other prophets comes back into play george would later say that he was just moving the bodies for some reason and supposedly right after this challenge vernon went to the police and reported george for defiling a corpse the local sheriff's department said they can't prosecute or perform a real investigation unless they had something like photographic evidence so shortly after this in november of 1987 vernon and seven of his followers armed with rifles broke into the rodenville compound according to them they were doing this in order to get evidence of the exhumed body and claimed that the weapons were just there in case they were attacked lois rhoden had also died the year before in 1986 and some believe this may have given david the go-ahead to conduct a violent raid on the compound but that's up to opinion while making their way into the compound they were spotted by george and a gunfight broke out the gunfight lasted about half an hour before the police arrived and as soon as the police showed up vernon and his men threw down their guns during the fight no one was killed but vernon had been hit in the trial that followed vernon claimed that he was there investigating suspicious activity that concerned himself and that over the course of the gunfight he was just firing bullets in the air in order to protect himself and never meant to hurt george or anyone else at the compound all of vernon's men were acquitted and vernon himself was given a mistrial also after it was over members of the jury hugged vernon because he was just that much of a likable guy apparently and as soon as the court proceedings were over he invited the prosecution over to his place for ice cream george in the meantime was held in contempt of court because he had said such horrific things to the judge and legal teams there that they considered it a threat and indecency after being released george found out that several of his followers had converted over to vernon's teachings vernon had got under george's skin to such a degree that in 1989 whenever one of george's own followers approached him and said that he had a new revelation from god george killed him with an axe because he was convinced it was vernon trying to get at him somehow so with george now in jail for murder and the majority of george's followers following into vernon's teachings vernon just walked his way back into rodenville and renamed it mount carmel vernon now the unchallenged leader of the branch davidians which is at this point an offshoot of the branch davidians so we're three degrees of separation now vernon renamed himself to david koresh david being the reference to king david the one who the davidians took their name after and quresh being the hebrew pronunciation of king cyrus the great the king who freed the children of israel with his new group david began his own interpretation of the book of revelations in the book of revelations the lamb of god is mentioned as returning to earth now this is widely believed across the majority of christian doctrine to be a reference to jesus christ the son of god however david's revelation with this was that the lamb of god was someone separate from jesus and as a matter of fact christ is not exclusive to the son of god but is instead a name given to any sons of god who carry on his prophecy and message david believed himself to be one of these christ and more specifically the lamb of god mentioned in revelations so because of that in his teachings david told his followers that they were to be the ones to fight the armies of babylon or the wicked world that would enclose around them during the final days of earth what about these people here well those people here are people well you know what they think of me they think i'm the son of god do they yeah is he the son of god i hope he is this belief would shape the majority of their actions going forward see the entire waco incident is incredibly misattributed and we're going to talk about why that is in a little bit but the majority of news sources just say that david believed himself to be god and that the branch davidians or more accurately the qureshians because again this is a removal from even the branch davidians were simply a doomsday cult who believed in the glory of their own death during the end times the reason that narrative is pushed so hard is because it helps justify what would happen later but these branch davidians did not have some idea that taking one's own life would cause some greater purpose or state of existence i think in the case of the davidians if people had listened carefully to their rhetoric with an ear toward an understanding of religious apocalyptic language would probably not have been worried about them using these weapons against their neighbors as a matter of fact it was the opposite and believed that it was their job as the lamb of god to hold out till the very end david's belief was that he was to build an army and prepare for the eventual coming war would you use a gun if somebody came in here they come in here with a gun and they start shooting at us what would you do tell me be realistic this is america this is not australia this is not europe this is not where a country overthrows a bunch of people takes away their weapons so that the people cannot argue any issues the king david have swords did jesus tell the apostles to carry a sword with you yeah and in 1989 he would begin to put praxis to that belief david said that he received a revelation from god that he was to father several children 24 to be exact that would be the eventual leaders or judges in the end times and to do this he would have the children with the women in the congregation again stating this all to be some higher purpose and here's something i want to emphasize in my research and this is something you can totally disregard or do your own research and say that i'm dumb about like i said this is just opinion but from everything that i've read and interviews i watched with him and members of the group and people who talk to him i think david really believed what he was saying and you may think yeah duh every cult member believes what they're saying but not really most cult members at least the ones that i have read and studied about for this job on youtube they're always trying to sell something or maintain a sense of dominance so that there's never a question of one's own servitude towards the cult leader and while i would normally just chalk up david to being another charismatic guy who likes to rule over people who he thinks are lesser than him looking at his history i think david truly believed his own hype david was born to a single mother who was 14 years old and from a young age began to live with his grandparents david had several learning disabilities and was relentlessly mocked for it at school and i emphasize this whenever i talk about things like serial killers and needs to be reset here i am not saying any of this to justify or explain away the evils that david committed everyone wants to look at the story of the waco standoff and either say good guys attacked bad guys or good guys were attacked by bad guys and as with most things in life it's not that simple while it's easier to look at the branch davidians as helpless victims of the evil government that came in and attacked them and trust me we will get to that but i believe it to be more accurate to look at the actions of david koresh as evil and the things he did to those around him as evil but to also say that he legitimately believed in that evil and again the things that happened to him at a young age or his upbringing does not excuse anything he did later in life but instead for us now analyzing it can provide a deeper picture or explanation during this time period when he was bullied as a child and being raised in a 7th day adventist church he began to say that god would give him revelations regarding the bible and say things like god directly speaks to him supposedly according to those around him whenever he would preach from the bible or of these revelations from god his stutter would go away a stutter that he was otherwise mocked and ostracized for when david was around 19 years old he went to the pastor of his church and said that god told david that he was to marry the pastor's daughter the pastor told him to not approach him with that idea again but in response to that david got his daughter pregnant so david went to leaders of the church and said that he felt that god wanted him to marry this girl and in response david was kicked out of the church during the time that he was expelled from mount carmel he went to countries like israel and australia and began to recruit people to come back and join him also during this time he found another girl who he said god wanted him to marry and this time the father approved this girl was 14 years old and david was 29 now while it's legal for a 14 year old to be married in texas given the parents permission i do not care what the law says that is disgusting but given his entire history and eventual destination there never seems to be a point where david was doing it as a farce and while these things are absolutely bizarre and abominable to us it seems to david this was all in line with his greater purpose and again i don't feel that any of this is excused i don't feel this justifies any bit of it as a christian myself i consider the majority of his actions to be blasphemous at best but david didn't see it that way if he was selling a lie i don't think he was in on it i say all of that because we're about to get into the main story of the waco standoff and it seems that because of these beliefs david was in it for the long haul and tragically so were those around him now that the branch davidians were done with their infighting their new wave of problems came from old members members who had left the davidians either because they were upset with david or just became disinterested in the entire religion began to tell news sources and the police that there was severe child abuse occurring at mount carmel which let me state to be clear yes there was legal or otherwise having a child with a 14 year old is gross but regardless of how gross you or i think it is it was still legal by texas law so the stories of ex-members began to change instead of just the stories of david taking on a 14 year old wife it began to be stories of several of the adults in the compound abusing children as young as eight years old and it began to paint this picture in the media of a depraved group of monsters who trapped children inside of this massive doomsday facility around 1987 mark breaux a self-proclaimed prophet from honolulu hawaii joined the branch davidians at mount carmel he was asked to leave in 1989 when he tried to take over the leadership of the mount carmel center from david koresh mark bro vowed revenge he called several international agencies and made allegations against david koresh of adulterous sex child abuse and gun stockpiling in 1992 mark breaux was provided a golden opportunity to get his revenge when a disc jockey named david jewell became embroiled in a custody battle with his wife sherry jewell a branch davidian who lived at mount carmel mark bro approached david jewell's mother to tell his sordid tales of sex abuse and guns at least it did to outsiders see the weird thing about the branch davidians when researching them is that comparatively they were pretty normal and i emphasized the comparatively they still had a leader who fathered several children with different women as well as married a 14 year old in years previous and he also said he was like the lamb of god kind of but typically whenever you hear that you would imagine okay i guess these members weren't allowed to go outside of the facility or to watch media from outside the facility however that wasn't the case the entire group was free to come and go as they pleased they all had vehicles they would regularly drive out to town in order to eat dinner on the evenings pretty much all of them had jobs at different places out in town david himself led a band that was made up of members from the church and they would tour around at local bars and sing music and no not like spiritual hymns like rock music of the 90s [Music] they would convert the auditorium into a theater and have movie nights and they would regularly invite people from the town over to the compound and have these massive ice cream parties they were active in the community of waco and were known for having an open door policy where anyone could come and listen to david's teachings or just hang out if they wanted to as a matter of fact several people who joined the branch davidians were just people from the town who thought they were cool and wanted to live there so whenever these allegations came out of child abuse people in the town were pretty shocked so in 1992 cps did an investigation to see if any children were being abused at the same time a news channel from australia came to mount carmel in order to interview david and figure out more about the branch davidians cps ruled that there was no evidence of child abuse and dropped the case however this investigation had left a sour taste in the once positively viewed branch davidian group and public opinion slowly started to shift that for a couple years in fact we had the department of human services go out and interview some of the kids and and whatever they could do i had people go out with them to interview to this day we don't have a case that we can make against vernon hell or anyone for child abuse even though the news media here and other people kept saying this is what happened a man from australia said this is what happened but we could never get them to give us anything more than just we know that's what happened you have to have proof people say you've been sleeping with the women here is that true no only one and she's tired of it now i mean she's tired of the accusations we also put to koresh claims that he had sex with children and underage girls did you do it no i didn't do it another detail about the branch davidians that's about to come into play is that the group really like their guns which again for the record don't really have a problem with and david was known for having several people in the community over to shoot a bunch of the cool weapons that he had amassed in the investigation and trials that followed there would be a lot of misinformation thrown around about the nature of these firearms and specifically something known as the mag bag the mag bag was the name of a business that was ran by one of the people within the branch davidians for those that don't know there's this thing you can do as an individual or a gun store called an ffl an ffl or federal firearms license is essentially the license you get if you want to start making or selling guns this is what every gun store does in order to legally sell guns and perform background checks and it's also what individuals do who have a large collection and want to sell part of it and do the following background checks paul feda had his ffl and used it as a revenue source where he would travel to local gun shows and sell guns which the money would then go back to the branch davidians this was all done extremely above the board they had their official license they would manufacture and register all of the guns legally and then whenever they would sell part of their collection which is something that people who collect firearms often do the ffl allowed them to keep background checks and records of all the guns sold and they kept files and everything was above board a lot of the language that was used to demonize the coat would later paint this mag bag as some kind of front they would say oh well there was supposed to be a gun store and that's how they got weapons delivered to their address but there was a gun store and that's how they got weapons delivered to their address all gun dealers stockpile weapons all gun shops stockpile weapons we call those stockpiles and inventory how can one use firearms as an investment the guns that he was buying would go up in value no question okay and do you know other people who do that yes sir it's not uncommon by itself it was a hobby for the men to build rifles and then register them and then sell them at gun shows and again all legal however this came into question when in february of 1992 a ups worker was delivering a package to the mag bag or in other words paul's ffl when according to him a box fell open and he saw inside several training grenades as well as black powder among other various gun pieces now this is not something out of the ordinary if you've ever been to a gun show dummy grenades are a very popular cell because you know it's a little toy grenade and people think they're neat and the branch davidians would load their own ammunition which is where the black powder came from and the assortment of other gun stuff that they were stocking up on however when this ups driver reported to the local sheriff's department that there was suspicious items in the package he was delivering that message got passed on to the atf the atf or the bureau of alcohol tobacco firearms and explosives are the bureau that regulates anything to do with alcohol tobacco firearms or explosives if it sounds weird to group tobacco and explosives together in the same group that's because the atf essentially works as an extension of the irs see if someone was to manufacture or purchase a fully automatic firearm or machine gun then that would be illegal not because they're impossible to have but because you have to pay your taxes for it machine gun fire in itself is not evidence of illegal activity it is legal to own a machine gun if the owner pays a 200 tax on the gun but there was no evidence the branch davidians owned any machine gun at all so bottom line the raid on february 28 1993 was launched because the atf merely suspected that the branch davidians might have a machine gun that they had failed to pay a 200 tax on not only is the process very time consuming and thorough on the individual purchasing it but the weapons themselves are very cost prohibitive and that's a whole other discussion so when the atf heard that the davidians were being delivered what was for them a normal restock of supplies instead they heard dummy grenade black powder that can make an untaxed explosive and they immediately began an investigation on june the 9th they began looking into the history of the branch davidians and eventually on july the 30th of 1992 they sent two agents to a local gun shop to inquire about the branch davidians the local gun shop said that they knew the davidians for years and that they were always very above the board and they even traded weapons back and forth on occasion the atf not trusting their word called the local sheriff and the local sheriff got in contact with koresh through this three-way conversation the sheriff and koresh openly invited the atf to come over koresh even saying that they're welcome to go through all their paperwork and weapons if they want to the atf for some reason denied this offer which seems bizarre i mean even if you think they'll be hiding something you would at least want to go check out the operation especially if the sheriff's going with you but instead the atf left and said there wasn't any headway made shortly after this the atf began renting a house across the road from mount carmel under the guys they were a group of college students who were just renting the house for the semester what's funny is even on the most like pro government websites that give this account of events they all list that the atf's cover was awful like they're supposed to be college students right but they're all driving these brand new matching vehicles none of them ever go off to school none of them ever are enrolled or do anything in the local community not to mention they're all like 30 year old dudes one of these atf agents robert rodriguez posed as an undercover agent and joined the davidians and by joined i mean he would walk across the street and listen to a couple of their sermons and then come back it turns out early on david figured out that robert rodriguez was undercover but didn't say anything and just let him be a part of what they were doing again david had already invited the atf in before so it's not like he was scared that they were going to see something rodriguez eventually filed his findings within mount carmel and they were something else rodriguez said that he had found lower receiver parts as well as aluminum blocks and fake grenades which as already established duh to explain the absurdity of the legality and for youtube this is airsoft i guess i don't know this is an ar-15 modeled to look like an m16 very similar to the same semi-automatic rifles that david and the davidians would have had around this time within the realm of legality the part of the weapon that is legally the gun itself is the receiver on an ar-15 like this this lower piece is the receiver and this is just a hunk of metal the reason being there has to be one piece that is serialized and transported to the individual so the block that holds the trigger is often considered the receiver part on the ar-15 specifically any mil-spec ar15 shares the same part dimensions so you can take any receiver that you have and then combine it with the other pieces of a barrel or whatever other assembly you're working with and create your own rifle from there it's kind of like legos for those that are familiar with firearms it's very common for someone to buy a receiver and then build out the rest of the gun however they want it because the receiver is the only part that matters and it was very common as proven by records for the davidians to order a bunch of receivers and then build out the rifles and then sell them again legally at gun shows the atf looked at this report that said there are receivers laying around and said ah but what if this time for the first time they decide to use those receivers for something nefarious because if you were going to illegally convert your weapon to be fully automatic you would have to damage and alter the receiver itself and even though they had a long history of never doing that the atf decided that this time it means they're making illegal weapons that would be like if i walked into your house and then saw steak knives on your kitchen counter and immediately assume that you were going to stab me to death because that's apparently the only function of a steak knife if it sounds weird for me to show examples and to go into that amount of detail regarding the legality just know that this was the justification for the atf's later actions in a word what the search warrant found was gun parts it was the duty of the atf to show that those gun parts were owned with an intent to create illegal weapons i'm not a lawyer or a judge but my reading of the warrant does not convince me that that intent was there also listening to the rest of rodriguez's report was painful the affidavit describes how an undercover agent had observed the upper and lower receivers of disassembled ak-47s the ak-47 has a one-piece receiver there are no separate upper and lower receivers on an ak-47 obviously agent aguilera didn't have a clue and magistrate green failed to notice they listed that as their justification for a search warrant along with a noise complaint from a neighbor a few months before this a neighbor had reported to the local sheriff's department that he had heard what sounded like full auto fire coming from mount carmel what the atf did not mention in their request for a search warrant is that this was already followed up on by the local sheriff who investigated and saw it was just the guys firing a trigger really fast but the atf left it in implying that the davidians had unregistered machine guns the atf received their search warrant that must be carried out by february the 28th of 1993. the behavior of the atf during this time is very odd they began to amass reports from local journalists of the branch davidians abusing children and used that as part of the reason that they should search the property for illegal firearms my investigations convinced me that david koresh was guilty of statutory rape but i don't understand why two-thirds of the search warrant is about child abuse and statutory rape when the atf has no jurisdiction over those offenses furthermore whenever david koresh bought the property he reported to the local sheriff's department that he had found a meth lab that someone had set up on the outskirts of the property so the sheriff's department came picked up the meth lab and there was no issues however the atf cited this as evidence that they might be making meth so why would the atf a bureau that's dedicated to the registry and tax filing of things like tobacco and firearms be investigating reports that have been disproven by cps of child abuse along with things like meth making which is for one a dea problem and two no evidence of if anything evidence against since david called the police to get rid of it as a matter of fact why any of this right because it's not uncommon for an ffl to order gun parts and then build and legally sell weapons so why all of a sudden decide that it's a big deal and then act so coy about it refusing to step foot on the property unless it's an undercover agent well as many have since pointed out the reason is publicity and the reason the atf would want good publicity at this time is because of a little incident known as ruby ridge to give a very brief overview of a topic that deserves its own video in august of 1992 the atf was doing an investigation into a man named randy weaver who supposedly created two short barreled shotguns once again for those that don't know rifles and shotguns have to be a certain legal barrel length shotguns 18 inches and rifle 16 inches so if this rifle were to say have a barrel that was down here that would be a felony similar to the machine guns i explained earlier it's only a felony if you don't pay the tax after the atf determined that randy weaver had sawn the barrels off of two shotguns he was given a court date to which he missed most likely because the date was rescheduled and randy who lived off the grid wasn't exactly one to check his mailbox one night again in august of 1992 u.s marshals came to randy's property a property known as ruby ridge in order to arrest him upon arriving there the dog began to bark at them to which the marshal shot insert shooting dog joke here and randy's son sammy weaver who was following his dog outside just saw a random guy in the woods shoot his dog so naturally sammy shoots back a gunfight ensued and sammy was killed along with an agent this resulted in a two week standoff where negotiators were given false information about what even happened thinking that the people inside of the cabin just fired on federal agents when in actuality the agents shot first and didn't identify themselves and culminated when a sniper named lon horiucci began to fire at randy as he walked out to his shed in order to get the body of his son lon continued to fire shots at randy as he ran to his house with one of the shots going through the door and hitting randy's wife vicki weaver as she held their child randy now fearing for the life of his other children not expecting the fbi to just start shooting at them surrendered himself along with his two children in fear that they'll keep shooting so in the end the fbi and the atf had killed a mother and son over two short shotgun barrels it cannot be overstated how hated the atf was at this point in time movements and protests begin calling for the atf to be destroyed and in the midst of all of this they hear the story of a supposed group of child abusers who are manufacturing illegal weapons and they view this as their ticket back to the top now i understand everything that i just said is opinionated and subjective however the majority of people who are close to the case agree with that opinion and that explains why everything they do has to make that narrative fit that's why they go to local newspapers and get stories of child abuse that's why they use disproven information like the noise complaint to justify there being illegal weapons on the property that's why they say they're making meth because it further vilifies this evil cult and i want to clarify i'm not saying all of this to imply that anyone who works in government or any three-letter organization is inherently evil all of my friends and everyone that i've talked to within those organizations universally agree that waco was a horrific tragedy as with all of my videos this isn't some push to make you upset this is a look at an event that happened in the past so that we can more properly prevent things like this or at least understand them as they happen in the future and i'm not implying that everyone on the government side in this tragedy is some diabolical ghoul or that the davidians were patron saints and i still hold fast that david koresh was a wicked man who led people astray regardless if he believed he was doing the right thing or not and that several leaders on the opposing side were performing wicked actions regardless if they believed they were doing the right thing or not and on both sides we see what happens when an individual has just enough of a twisted will and just enough people willing to follow orders in the atf's request for a search warrant they said the reason that they have to raid mount carmel directly is because david koresh never comes out of the compound i can only say that this is willing ignorance not only did they have people across the street watching the compound every day but they also had an inside man who would have plainly seen that david koresh performed with his band several nights a week and went out to eat and work several days a week this decision would be heavily scrutinized later as instead of arresting a potentially dangerous individual when he was out on his own they were now bringing that danger to a facility that they knew had several civilians and children the day before the raid was scheduled to take place on february the 27th the waco tribune herald ran a report called the sinful messiah this openly accused david of several of the things the atf had mentioned in private like the multiple accusations of child abuse which again i'm not claiming him to be innocent of but it seems the atf did not approve of this move because you know the day before you raid someone probably not a good idea to put them on edge the atf would also later claim that the reason they performed the raid on february 28th is because they had to move their time scale up because of this report being published however that is not true because as mentioned earlier february 28th was the deadline for the raid itself and plus in the days before february the 28th the atf had set up a mock course of the mount caramel compound at a local military facility and had been running routes training the course of the building itself so they knew what they were doing it's interesting to note how on paper this is just a search warrant as in someone comes to the door serves a warrant and then does a search however it seems the training that the atf had as well as the way they pulled up to the scene implies that they were never planning to carry out a peaceful search in the first place and instead were treating it much more like a military operation a problem that could have been solved with a couple of agents just carrying out a normal search warrant or following up on koresh's offer months ago was now being treated like an armed assault against foreign invaders with the agency backed into a corner and their reputation at stake it seems they were determined to fix the problem that they had created and when your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail the raid began on the morning of february the 28th 1993. a local reporter had been tipped off that the raid was about to take place so while driving towards the area he pulled over and asked a postman if he knew how to get to the branch davidian compound because a big atf raid was about to go down unbeknownst to that reporter the postman that he just asked was david koresh's brother-in-law another branch davidian so crash's brother-in-law hops in his car speeds to the compound and warns everyone that a raid's about to happen according to whatever the reporter said it was going to be loud and violent and everyone in mount carmel started to panic quresh ran to agent rodriguez who if you'll remember is supposed to be undercover at this time but david figured him out and begins to beg rodriguez to call the atf and to call off the raid rodriguez plays dumb and slips out the front door he says that as he was leaving everyone began to pray also to get across how ready the atf was for a fight not only did they roll up dozens of agents in full kit but they also wrote their blood type on their wrist and neck in case they were shot and needed a quick transfusion at this time there were about 115 people within mount carmel the women and children began to hide in their rooms while several of the men took up arms crescent the others assumed that the atf was going to come loud and was looking to make an example it's here that we start to get into discrepancies and normally i would tell the whole story in a straight run through of the official report and then go back and talk about the theory surrounding it but this event is so long i'm just going to hit the discrepancies as we get to them beginning with the question of who shot first at about 9 45 the agents roll up in covered trailers and begin to surround the front door of the premises crush comes outside with his arms up and tells them to stop because there's women and kids in there while everyone is yelling back and forward someone fires a shot now initially it was declared by all of the agents that one of the davidians shot first however later reports would recant this the two leading theories is that either one of the agents fired after seeing a davidian holding a gun in a window or that part of the atf's dog kill team who was sent forward according to some of the reports i read with the intention of shooting the dogs first went forward and shot the branch davidians dogs again insert joke about shooting dog here these dogs were shot by the agents and this seems to be the most likely moment that would have happened this caused the rest of the agents to erupt into gunfire and the gunfight started a big point in contention of deciding who shot first was the right door at the front of mount carmel see david was standing just outside of the door with his hands raised in the air and in the initial gunshots he was hit in the stomach and hand he immediately ducked back inside of the door and closed it behind him the rest of the shooting or at least the vast majority of it came from the upper windows of the compound reports would later say that david probably got shot whenever he went up to a different floor or began to engage the officers however the evidence on that front door showed several bullet holes implying that the atf fired at david while he was standing outside for a few seconds which would mean they would have had to be the ones to take the first shots this front door with this supposed evidence totally disappeared even after everything that went down the left door was retained in evidence and in fine condition the right door disappeared off the face of the earth and according to one agent who later testified against his initial report he said that he saw a group of investigators after the whole standoff was over loading it into the back of a u-haul in the following congressional hearings the door was never recovered crazy how evidence like a door can just fly away wayne martin one of the davidians called the local police and asked them to get on the phone with agents and to stop shooting continuing to exclaim that they were shot at first and now the women and kids are in danger [Music] [Music] tell me what's happening [Music] [Music] during this initial gunfight the first agent was shot whenever he tried to make his way around to the back of the compound and was hit by a shooter in a top window and helicopters began low flying back and forward supposedly to draw attention away from the men on the ground however according to many of the survivors these helicopters were shooting at them just as they had trained the officers began putting up ladders on the front of the building in order to make their entry into the top floors of the compound where they expected the majority of the weapons would be according to rodriguez report while gathering outside of the window the three initial agents who crowded around it began to be shot at before they throw a stun into the room and make their entry during this entry you can see where bullet holes are flying out of the wall being shot from inside and this results in another agent being hit and then falling off the roof while not on video according to the atf on entry another agent was killed and they in turn killed a davidian who fired at them while searching for weapons they were then ambushed by another davidian where two more agents were injured and then that davidian was killed the agents then make their exit from the window one agent hits his head and then falls down the roof as the agents begin to take cover behind the davidian's vehicles and return fire this shooting continued at a high rate for 45 minutes and only then slowed down because the agent started to run out of ammo even then the gun fight itself continued with the agents occasionally firing rounds for two hours the sheriff as well as others on the scene say that the altercation only quit because they ran dry once they were out the davidians said that the atf could come retrieve their wounded and dead and on the atf side four agents had been killed and 16 were injured on the davidian side five had been killed and several more injured again including koresh himself the davidians began to collect their dead and bury them in the cemetery on the property while the men who buried their dead were walking back inside one of them was shot and killed by the atf according to the atf this guy had decided to start firing at them although this has never been confirmed this makes a casualty count for the first day six davidians and four atf as soon as this happened it became a media storm initially it was just this weird group in texas who a few people knew about who were being investigated on weapons charges by the atf but now it had become an open gun fight with 10 dead so at this point it was off to the races with journalists and news crews from across the country showing up the situation was then taken over by the fbi the fbi took it over because once a federal agent is killed it then becomes their case specifically the situation was taken over by the fbi hrt or hostage response team this was conveniently the same team who was at ruby ridge in the initial hours david began to call local news teams and began doing interviews and explaining what had happened of course david maintained that they were fired upon first by the atf in response to this the fbi cut the phone lines so that way david couldn't speak to anyone that they didn't want him to and ran a phone line directly from the negotiators to him so that that was the only means of communication however what little david did manage to say became all the rage within the media frenzy he talked about how they were fired upon first and how it was his right as an american to defend himself and to stand up to tyranny and blah blah and many began to view the davidian's actions as defensive violence over the following days koresh spoke to the fbi negotiators for hundreds of hours he would talk about his family he would talk about the bible he would ask about the negotiator's life if you die wouldn't you tell me what if you died from that wound i want you to tell me what's gonna happen well i'm not gonna be around anymore ever to influence anybody right david listen this has been painkillers come on listen jim there's nothing that hurts me more than being called a co-leader all right if i'm wrong people like me don't deserve to live okay [Music] don't [Music] god teaches it is for them to decide and for a while they just existed in the stalemate with the fbi encircling the compound and the davidians inside just waiting for something to happen this is why earlier i was emphasizing the difference between a typical doomsday cult who's just anticipating the end and the davidians who were prepared to hold out until the end throughout the fbi's internal logs jonestown was constantly brought up the negotiators and the fbi general was not understanding the mental concept of what the davidians were trying to say they just assumed oh crazy religious cult here do crazy religious cult thing over here and they were waiting at any moment for the group to either drink the kool-aid or go out in a blaze of glory however after several days nothing happened the group who had provisions to wait out the war with babylon were just setting inside waiting for the next move eventually david said that he had a message for the american people and if they played it on the news then he would willingly surrender the fbi kept up their side of the bargain and played the message however after it was played david said that god decided he was not yet to come out he gave us his word that after the message was yes but what if there is a higher power than you and i that speaks to an individual if there is a god in this universe and there's the laws of man and there's the laws of god and this god that has led him all his life says to him to wait what do you do we find no incident those of us who've listened to the negotiation tapes and stated the transcripts of quresh line on march the second he said he was coming out and then said god told him not to if any lies were told it was that and we would have to know what god said to quresh in order to call that a lie do you people believe that quresh is actually talking to god [Music] karash believes he's talking to god this is again another discrepancy one either views this as koresh playing hooky with the fbi or the fbi making things difficult see in the midst of all this where david's explaining why did you shoot at us this is my vision from god can you play this message the fbi was doing stuff like rolling tanks up to the compound and cutting off power to the entire facility and just generally being crewed they were mooning the women for instance they would drop their pants and bend over and bear their rear end to people that were looking out the windows which was you know not a situation that some of the women or even some of the men took to lightly in the sense well do we want to send our children out to these kind of people steve every time we're aware of movement we've told you controlling these guys i mean if you've got guys out there right now pulling their pants down men that are mature that are they're sticking their butts out in the air and flipping the finger give me give me a moment see the guys that gravitate toward uh you know riding in tanks jumping out of airplanes and stuff like that a little different mindset right i agree so when they get a chance to use a bradley probably half of them have never been in the bradley before it reminded me of a lot of kids in there absolute opportunity let's drive [Music] regardless for one reason or another david decided he was not going to come out the negotiator asked if he could send out some of the children and david said he'd be happy to send out anyone who doesn't want to be there the ones that chose to leave were several mothers as well as 19 children aged 5 months to 12 years old that meant that 23 children were still inside the building after this departure about 98 people remained inside of mount carmel the mothers were immediately separated from their children and arrested and the children were immediately taken to be interviewed keep in mind the media frenzy around this entire thing is the story of child abuse and that the atf and fbi are doing the heroic thing by trying to save these children from these monsters so whenever the children were set down in question they were asked about child abuse now during the time of the standoff it was seen as a 100 percent cut and dry evidence that the children said they were being abused by their parents and koresh however there is no logs or records of any of this happening as a matter of fact according to people who were there and later testified there was zero evidence that there was ongoing child abuse because the story at this point had not just escalated from koresh being a creep to young girls into the idea that a bunch of the parents were being creeps the story now was that as the standoff was going on the children inside were actively being tortured and the interrogators used leading questions to get vague answers that further justified this david said that he wanted a video footage of himself and his followers so that the outside world could see what they were about so on day 9 the fbi sent in a video camera and the davidians began recording and bringing these tanks and stuff around here 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 back in one of the tracks no one's going to hurt me or my family that's that's american policy here you could have arrested me any day as i jog up and down this road you could have arrested me going to town or going to walmart waco is going to bear witness against the atf the two agents across the street over here uh robert gonzalez i love the guy i was honest with him i brought him into my home he was gonna stay here for two weeks all this stuff you make you guys may want to avoid and deny you know you know he wanted to around a place i promised him a tour he could have talked to any of these guys around here anybody he was free to come and go as he chose i do not appreciate it and never will i ever appreciate somebody coming here with two helicopters and cattle cattle trailers and all that and uh pushing people my own guns say i'll meet you at the doorstep any day you know and somebody will get hurt if you want to keep playing that game i'm talking to you somebody's going to get hurt because this ain't america anymore when the atf has that kind of power to come into anybody's home and kick doors down and things like that you know i heard i i do understand someone reminded me this i do understand that one of the officers says his gun went off on accident and that you know that was just like a signal and all that you know but look besides the point ats you boys are wrong your practices your habits yeah drug dealers fine you know but even there's always a question if there's any question whatsoever the kids or women are involved damn you i tell you what you keep your damn gun in your holster you shoot a couple of big brave invincible kind of men you let them knock on the door they're so damn involved to where they can risk their lives for the name of the log and send them out bulletproof put them in some kind of uh night armor or whatever and let them knock on the door and ask the questions first but no one's gonna expect me when they come busting it on my door with guns drawn and pointed in the air and someone fired me that i'm gonna lay down and die for anybody this isn't going to happen in this country you see this here this is my family it may not be like your family know it may not be like your family 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 [Music] you know do you mind that son huh do you love joseph your best buddy yeah yeah you too damon [Music] so you know you guys you guys you have it you do it your way i do it my way you don't argue with me you catch me on the side of the road somewhere you come and argue with me you come point guns in the direction of my wives and my kids damn it i'll i'll meet you at the door any time and i'm sorry some of you guys got shot but uh hey god will have to sort that out and what brings you all the way from england a nice lovely home of which i've seen and been in what brings you to america to a place called waco texas or waco wacko texas anybody want to speak first i've always wanted i've always wanted to know to understand the bible and i wanted to know about the certain sales when i met somebody you can show me the seven sales i asked my pastors my ministers i was a former seventh-day adventist nobody could show me and now i found what i've been looking for the fbi chose to not follow through on their deal because they felt that the video would garner public support at this point with a week and a half under their belts and no development infighting arose in the fbi the negotiators said that they were talking to david as well as other members of the facility and that it takes time to get progress this way and the hrt team said that that was too slow and that they need to speed it up so the hrt began what i can only describe as psychological warfare they started taking their tanks and just running over the davidians cars that were parked out front and then through the night they would shine spotlights at the building and play disturbing noises on loudspeakers like they would play variations of old music to the sounds of rabbits being murdered and at one point literally dolphin noises yes right here mr ricks is there a consideration to use psychological warfare have you discussed it at all i i don't know what psychological warfare is this uh it was reported in the paper that you would play loud music keep bright lights on the compound all night to try to agitate the entire group is that a possibility we will we will not discuss uh tactics of that sort but i would say the chances are minimal of doing that type of activity yes ma'am [Music] [Music] day seven finds reporters facing a banner reading god help us we want the press reporters respond with a statement of their own god also as the tanks were running over the cars they kept running over the bodies of the people who were previously buried and they just kept like doing it backing back and forth just to i don't know make them sad and even if you're a staunch believer in the idea that the government's actions were justified and koresh needed to be stopped by any means necessary and i'm not even disagreeing with you on the idea that koresh needed to be stopped however what purpose does the whole plane dolphin noises serve like if their concern is that this guy is some crazy jim jones type who's gonna kill everyone before he comes out of there then what does playing sounds of rabbits being murdered accomplish all you're doing is making someone who you claim to be unstable more sleep deprived and unstable fbi push david or the rest of us to the limit did they want to create an incident did they want us to come out you know crazy and start shooting so that they'd have an excuse to gun us down we didn't know we realized that you have the ability and it's not below you people to do something like to erase all evidences why do you have the press so far back you can give me any kind of crap he wants i know you know the reason we're not talking to the press is you people have got to cover your butts from what you did and that's what's going on here at this point they cut all power and water lines into mount carmel and while the davidians had water tanks to ensure they would have reservoir of water if they needed it two of them had been damaged and drained in the initial shootout so the entire davidian compound was down to one water tank again another layer of stress added on to what was supposedly a very delicate situation around this time 11 people left several of the children didn't want to leave because as they could see initially the parents were immediately arrested and the children taken to their own questioning so the kids decided to stay while again 11 adults left at this point the fbi began bringing in religious leaders as well as cult experts to try to better understand the psychology of the people they were negotiating with when i first was asked to be involved as a member of the panel i thought the main problem was going to be understanding the psychology of the people inside the compound but as i got into it i quickly became aware that the psychology of the people outside the compound was more important to an understanding of what happened it was unanimously decided by everybody that was brought in that the correct approach to a group of people who think that they are about to face the end of the world and the armies of babylon is to not be the armies of babylon this went on for several weeks with people being consulted on the news and being brought to the site and saying that violence isn't going to work against a group of people who are determined to fight violence at all costs but meanwhile around fort carmel it was just a carnival they were selling t-shirts and there were like ice cream vendors and they were like playing games with each other and taking pictures there were protesters someone dressed up a dog in an atf shirt and it was just so bizarre that during this massive standoff that you could just drive up and take selfies next to a bunch of federal agents also at this point the fbi had pushed the press a few miles back at a place that they could still see the compound but they couldn't hear or see any of the actions of the agents themselves again the fbi hrt who really wanted some action and were desperate to get it began debating on april the 10th of what if we just like snipe koresh like what if he comes by a window and we just shoot him keep in mind these were the same people at ruby ridge truly a one-size-fits-all group of guys but then they said that they shouldn't do that because they figured as soon as we kill koresh they'll all probably kill themself which again shows the lack of understanding of care between what the agents thought of them and what the davidians thought themselves however the hrt wasn't the only one getting antsy dc was getting a lot of pressure to wrap things up special live call-in show here this morning listeners had strong opinions on how they think this tragedy should now be handled a majority seem to want law enforcement to end it all quickly good morning 100 i vote for go in and just take him out which when you take a step back and think about it it's so stupid like you showed up you instigated the violence and i don't even mean the first shot i mean like you drove armed people up to the front door and then after the gunfight they don't do anything and you keep poking them with more stuff and they keep not doing anything and they're just standing around like if we don't end this fast it could get out of hand attorney general janet reno told bill clinton the at the time president that things were rapidly escalating no they weren't and that children were being abused every day that they don't do something clinton initially said why can't we wait and reno said that would be too expensive because remember kids the only time the government cares about budget is when it's your life when later asked about this and after it was brought up to her that there was no evidence of children being abused during the standoff she said that that wasn't the actual reason she wanted to finish it she wanted to finish it because she was afraid that other militias from across the country would show up and try to take back mount carmel okay so reno got the go-ahead and they decided that they were going to end the standoff one way or the other on april the 14th david said that he had received his final message from god david asked if he could write down his final message of the seven seals of revelation and then after that he would willingly come out as he gives over his manuscript to the media on april the fourteenth there was a major breakthrough and that breakthrough was david korsh's letter to me which i promptly gave to the fbi that said that he'd received his mission that he was working on writing his interpretation of the seven seals and that everyone inside was relieved that they didn't have to die now that the prophecies were not being fulfilled now and that this would be resolved however this was unacceptable to the hrt who wanted to see something happen fbi testified before the house hearings that their negotiations had reached the impasse they told the attorney general they weren't coming out and that there was a stalling tactic and they weren't working on the seven seals their own negotiators had reached an agreement knowing that the first sale was finished and in order to get proof of it had sent in typewriter ribbons so that they could get that proof in their hands and yet the very next morning they launched the gas and tank attack on april the 19th of 1993 several cevs began to encircle the compound and punch holes within the walls of the building earlier that morning the fbi called and said this is your last chance which again had been 51 days at this point and they watched as someone threw the phone that they were previously negotiating with out the front door supposedly the fbi took this as the go-ahead the tanks that had made these holes began pumping cs gas a type of tear gas into the structure whenever the gas began pumping into the building the women and children made their way to a bunker located at the side of the building itself it's believed that one of the reasons they did this was not only for shelter but because most of the gas masks could not fit children and i can just see those kids barfing vomiting screaming because you can't possibly have a gas mask to fit a little kid didn't their reports say that gas masks don't fit on these babies that's correct and didn't they know that they should have known that several of the men began putting on gaske's mask and shooting at the tanks that had made entry into the building during this time someone reaches out the front door and pulls the phone back in they also begin waving a white flag outside of an upstairs window as well as a banner that said we want our phones fixed the fbi began to announce that if you want to surrender simply step outside however it now seems that the reason that they wanted to get in contact with the fbi was because the bunker that the women and children were inside of had had its entrance and underground tunnels destroyed by the tanks the fbi had also inserted a listening device into the walls of the compound and during this time men can be heard yelling and praying and saying things like wait for the tank to come to light it it's believed that the men were perhaps making molotovs as some means of defense against the gas attack and then at around noon the building caught on fire the fire was massive and seemed to start up all at once engulfing the majority of the structure it had been six hours since the gas attacks began but now with the building on fire people tried to make their way out of the windows a total of nine people made it out as the building was burning these were the final survivors of the branch davidians fire trucks that were arriving at the scene were stopped by the fbi who were halted because they quote didn't want the firemen to be shot at the building burnt fast and it burnt all the way to the ground the bodies that were found were nearly unrecognizable from the positions that the bodies were located it seemed the majority of the men had died trying to free the women and children from the trapped bunker and within the bunker it seems that they died of a combination of suffocation and poisoning from the cs gas when cs gas burns it creates a sort of cyanide poisoning and from the disfigured forms of the bodies it seems many of them succumb to this cyanide effect several of them seem to have died from a gunshot wound seemingly as a sort of mercy killing one of the survivors who made their way out of the building as it was burning brought with them the beginning transcript that david koresh had been writing showing that at least to our knowledge he was following through on his word and then he said the word came to him and said right and he wrote this was brought out with day of the fire by one of the survivors he was keeping his promise of april 14th we believe they would have all come out safely [Music] this this was pulled out of the fire uh the tapes were and then then this this then was written up um as evidence that he was working on that message on the seven seals david koresh was found shot supposedly by his assistant steve schneider who then took his own life again most likely as a form of mercy killing given the effects of the gas and heat and suffocation there is a take on this that is widely propagated by the waco mini series that came out a few years ago and the mini series is good for the most part it does a good job at visualizing a lot of the standoff however in order to make it more of a story they showed the agents being very remorseful and distraught at the way the situation ended and while there were certainly some of that in the days that followed that was not the initial reaction that happened on that day as soon as the branch davidian star david flagg had fluttered to the ground they ran the atf flag up on that flagpole as a symbol of a military conquest because the whole world saw this as a symbol that the battle was over i was a lawyer and i had a david cresh's grandmother with with me and i wanted to see about talking to him and uh after a few minutes another one came up to me who was obviously the guy in charge and was very surly declined to give me any information at all so i started to leave and just as i left and turned my back and started walking toward my van i heard a voice say coming from one of those people i don't know which one but one of them said i hope she has told him goodbye that was the mentality of the people who were guarding the gates those were federal law enforcement authorities and their attitude was we are going to get revenge against david koresh and if that means we have to eliminate all of them in there that's just fine too that was the attitude that they had like them or not or like what we do for a living or not they've been law enforcement officers some of them longer than i've been alive and with that comes a lot of experience what i'm saying is you have to trust the people in charge at the time [Music] i'm low on the food chain so i'm not i'm standing by what they did because i i do what i'm told as long as it's legal and moral my god torturing babies and saying it's part of their job and saying it's okay because their parents were bad our whole society is structured around the notion that if parents are bad we protect the children even against the parents in this case the fbi and the government took the position why not only do we not protect the children we use them as an instrument to try to get their parents to do some we'll torture them so their parents will do right oh my god where did they think that up not only did they wave a victory banner but they began to pose with their rifles over the bodies of dead children as well as do things like remove the aforementioned door and other pieces of evidence from the compound not to mention running the massive story that the entire group had died due to one massive suicide is there any doubt in your mind or the justice department's mind that the fire was set by the cult members i have absolutely no doubt at all that the cult members said it based on all the information that has been furnished to me david koresh and the davidians set fire to themselves and committed suicide the government did not do that which leads us into the big question and conspiracy of waco who started the fire so the state department maintains to this day and everything that you look at that the davidians started the fire in order to go out in one big place of glory now ignoring everything that i've said up until this point and everyone who is there and all of the experts that this was in no way their intention the evidence itself doesn't line up with that either do you remember how i said there was audio from listening devices of what the men were doing whenever the building began to burn well they used phrases that were supposedly picked out like light it when the tank gets here to imply that they were planning to light themselves up however not only is that taken out of context and again probably about the molotovs according to the survivors who ran out of the building but in the trials that followed the juries couldn't even pick out if that's what was being said as the audio was too garbled to tell despite this this was used as evidence to show another crazy cult offing themselves furthermore if this was a cult suicide then why do things like try to wear gas masks and people trying to escape and the men trying to get the women and children out of the bunker and even going to the bunker in the first place this is also excluding the testimony of the nine survivors who said everyone was panicked and trying to survive not to mention the fbi was saying weird stuff before it even began implying that they knew a fire was about to take place at one point the fbi asked them do they have fire extinguishers and schneider sends someone to check and comes back with the report that there's only one fire extinguisher in the building the fbi negotiator's response is somebody ought to buy some fire insurance one of the big contentions in the trial that followed was the use of cs gas as you can imagine and several of the state appointed experts said that cs gas is not flammable which yeah it is for one cs gas is not just cs it is a powder in its natural form and it needs some other compound to make it an aerosol spray the agent that was used at waco was methylene chloride which is flammable and cs gas is also flammable and when you put the two together it's still flammable attorneys would skirt around this and say things like yeah in an open flame which whenever you're destroying an entire house with several tanks there's a chance that something's gonna spark and the most that they would say is well maybe the cs gas added to the accelerant after the davidians had begun their suicide attempt not only that but the fbi maintained for years that there was no shots or pyrotechnics used at the final day of the siege well for one the thermal imagery shows that that's a lie 20 seconds after the two gymnasium flashes still more automatic gunfire can be seen coming from the field to the left of the demolition tank and it turns out six years later that there was pyrotechnics used as a matter of fact the pyrotechnics had been sourced from a local military base which is another lie the fbi said when they claim that they receive no weaponry from the military but it turns out that 40 millimeter grenade casings were discovered in the wreckage this pyrotechnic projectile is one of two found in the rubble of mount carmel it's a 40 millimeter military device that's fired from a handheld grenade launcher this one was found here near the corner of mount carmel where the first fire started the other was found here in the kitchen dining room area this is a civilian version it's a 37 millimeter launcher which is pretty much just for shooting flares and looking neat but it's similar in construction to the one that would have been used at waco you load a grenade in there and then shut it and then it fires a grenade towards your intended target i don't know how to tell you this but this is about as pyrotechnic as it gets and whenever it came out that for six years over 100 federal agents had lied saying that to their knowledge no pyrotechnics were used their defense was that they were shooting the water reservoir behind the building which for one no you weren't two why would you do that and three that that's still a lie you still shot pyrotechnics at a building full of flammable gas that's not flammable and also like even if you strip all of that away you strip the fact it was flammable and then they shot explosives at the flames and then blame the cult for doing it themselves what was their plan with all of that right because again they're still operating under the assumption that this is some crazy doomsday cult and the reason they didn't want to just shoot koresh is because they're afraid everyone would freak out and off themselves so what solution is it to run tear gas through holes that you made into the house if this was such a crazy scenario did you think that would make it better not to mention that they were knowingly gassing children and the elderly in order to make them come outside i have never met or heard the opinion of anyone who felt like this was a good idea except for you know random documentaries new sites and youtube channels but that's besides the point that day 82 people died 23 of which were children in the aftermath 12 of the survivors were charged with illegally aiding and embedding the murder of a federal agent as well as possessing and manufacturing illegal weapons four were acquitted and eight were given charges related to using a weapon during an illegal act as of july of 2007 all have been released in audio tapes that made their way out to the public in the weeks following david koresh was heard stating that he simply asked for two more weeks to finish his final revelation and then they would all leave the compound you can judge the validity of this yourself but after a standoff that lasted 48 days when koresh asked for 14 more the fbi only allowed him three assertion to me that the media and the government has made a kind of blanket declaration that the branch davidians committed quote mass suicide to equate it to a jonestown guyana suicide is the most irresponsible statement that can be attributed to anything having to do with the waco incident as one of them afterwards said livingston fagin who lost a wife in the fire and his mother in the fire he said those of our people who died are highly honored in heaven and so we should not worry about them the thought was that the army of babylon would kill them as perhaps it ultimately did the way things are supposed to happen in this country is when someone suspected of a crime even if it's child abuse even if it's capital murder we give them a trial the jury finds them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt before they go to sentencing then a jury or a judge sentences them and an appeals court makes sure the trial couldn't was conducted with due process and then and only then did we kill them we don't kill them first like happened in waco on april the 19th the trials that followed were a political storm from people who steadfastly agreed with all the actions that the fbi and atf pursued as well as those who called for an immediate removal of pretty much the whole government and it seems that a lot of stuff conveniently went missing and kept in contact through the white house council i'm sure the white house council advised the president we're missing some of your telephone logs particularly april uh 17th 18th and 19th and our problem is is that they've all been redacted and is there any chance that we could get those uh the thing that really concerns me is why the building was so totally destroyed afterwards after the fire was was out there was no firefighting whatsoever attempted and in the crime scene and it was a crime scene was totally absolutely destroyed i've seen this happen before did you see the fbi changing the crime scene in any way yes sir i'd said earlier and didn't get to finish the answer they were moving the vehicles which uh destroyed valuable trajectory evidence and in the end it turned out it wasn't didn't matter because the but it didn't it didn't seem to be standard operating procedure you don't you don't consider that standard operating procedure certainly not in any crime scene i've ever been on no lon hiruchi the guy who fired the shot that killed vicky weaver back at ruby ridge was stationed with his sniper rifle on the final day of the siege if you'll remember the official story is that no shots were fired at the davidians however this seems to not be true supposedly long fired several shots at the compound as people were trying to escape however when an investigation began it turns out that he had immediately re-barreled his rifle meaning that no shots could be traced back to him on top of that all independent autopsy footage was confiscated by the fbi and seemingly disappeared during the trials that followed they told us that they'd misplaced it at one time they told us that i have it my briefcase and i'll give it to you in fact we said that we're going to delay giving you reports until you give a tape back and of course uh they said sure we'll give it a date back next time we come to your office um we in fact suggest that we would go to waco and collect the tape from them and they said no it's san antonio office and and at one at a certain point along this discussion they finally said the tape is lost we can't give it to you initially everyone maintained a tight lip of superiority but in the following years as i mentioned earlier people began to come forward with stories of pyrotechnics being used to stories of the door disappearing and even matters of who shot first regardless to many in government this was viewed as a win with clinton using this victory over a crazed cult to further justify his 1994 assault weapons ban as is the case with most tragedies it would go on to spark many more disasters when timothy mcveigh committed the oklahoma city bombing the largest terror attack in the united states up until 9 11 he cited waco and ruby ridge as his primary reasons even appearing outside of several of the trials following waco selling t-shirts and bumper stickers of individuals like lon horiucci several of the survivors would go on to file lawsuits and tell their stories such as david thibodeau whose book that he wrote about his experience became the inspiration for the miniseries waco as well as other stories and narrations of the events that occurred in 1993 such as the one you're listening to right now and again at the end i know that it's easy to get heated on both sides of this why did the government do such violent actions why didn't david just come out why did both sides have to become so steadfast and stuck in their own mindset that it led to such a needless tragedy and i don't have all of the answers for that uh i wish i did i wish i could just give you a blanket statement of this why bad thing happened here on to stage two but as with most of my videos i am just the storyteller or i'm the order who is trying to recount this to you again i think there was a lot of evil on both sides and the only people i consider to be blameless victims are the children's who were a victim of two different kinds of tyranny it's a depressing gut-wrenching tragedy that hopefully some of us can learn from and as with most of the stories that i try to tell hopefully learning about the past can teach us something about the present and what is that lesson to be learned i i i don't know i'm just the youtube guy and i understand this story's very depressing but hopefully it was at least a little bit educational and didn't totally ruin your day i'm so sorry if it did but hey even if it did i just want to say thank you for watching this video is probably going to get nuked in either the algorithm or by monetization or by my channel we'll just have to see but uh this is something that i've known about you know obviously me being weird in the way that i am for a while now and something i've wanted to talk about for a while and i thought it deserved a longer video like this and it deserved its due justice um and like i said i'm not saying this to vilify one side or exemplify the other more so to point out faults on both ends and the eventual fault of the entire situation itself it is very sad i would say the one thing like i know i went a bit harder on the criticism of the government than i did koresh i think in the beginning i adequately described why i don't like koresh you know the whole 14 year old thing there's always going to be bad people who hurt others and take advantage of others and try to exemplify themselves and like i said i do think koresh believed in himself but you know what they say about good intentions but he is supposed to be the exception he's supposed to be the people that were protected from by the people who showed up supposedly to protect these children they are the ones who are to be held to a higher standard so if it sounded like and i was i understand more harsh to the federal agents in the story that's because the federal agents are supposed to be the ones who protect us they're the ones who have their livelihood and the trust of the people around them to protect us from people like david kresh i'm not broken down and disheartened by the immorality of a cult leader i'm broken down and dishearted by the immorality of the justice system so yeah i was a bit harsh with them but i expect them to be held to a higher degree but that's enough rant about waco and ruby ridge and all of that this is going to be the video that does me and isn't it it's been a good run boys um really though thank you for watching um i'm probably going to need to dial back the seriousness a little bit a lot of you seem to like the um uh what was what's less the north hollywood shootout video and i really appreciate that that video got demonetized and then i fought on twitter and got it back i'm going to have a much harder time fighting this one but we'll see how it goes but really though thank you all for watching it like i said it's worth it uh to talk about some of this stuff and if you guys like it then mission accomplished um but hopefully it stays up so that you can like it uh like like i said in the last video if one or two gets demonetized that's fine the whole channel not so much um but hope i i don't think this will be that awful knock on wood we'll see but thank you all for sticking around either way it means a lot i love making videos for you guys i'm glad that you enjoy them um it just really is heartwarming to see the channel is growing it's doing fantastic we're at 1.39 million which is really it means a lot thank you all for that uh thank you for putting me to this level thank you for allowing me to make weird um however long this video is going to cut down to i've been recording for like five hours thank you for allowing me to make these weird rants about waco and you all watch them and it really does mean the most so um that is that like i said i'm probably gonna need to take it easier on the uploads at least for the heavy stuff probably do some more arg's or funsy little out here any funsy little creepy stories i am a mess um rather than just whatever these past couple uploads have been but let me know if you like this kind of thing because i like doing it and like i said assuming this doesn't kill my channel i would like to do more like this in the future so we'll see how it goes um but for now i just want to say thank you for watching i hope that you enjoyed and i will see you in the next one bye

Channel: Wendigoon

Views: 2,659,387

Keywords: iceberg, explained, scp, analysis, breakdown, scary, spooky, horror, creepy, comedy, funny, laugh, humor, cringe, intel, deep web, dark web, hidden, tier list, secret, top ten, top 10, countdown, compilation, meme, memes, meme compilation, internet horror, reddit, ask reddit, redacted, childhood, trauma, Mary Celeste, Flannan Isles, Eilean Mor, Island, Lighthouse, Kaz 2, Kaz II, Leviathan, Kraken, conspiracy, theory, mystery, sci fi, true crime, unsolved, hysteric, hell, heaven, shootout, seige, branch davidian

Id: xZwFxWb0y7w

Length: 97min 36sec (5856 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/dustyspectacles]

I like his content most of the time, he has an easygoing manner that makes it hard to change the video regardless of the subject, but I really enjoyed this one. Very in-depth, not particularly favoring either side, just an engrossing history of the event and doesn't skimp on explaining details.

I wish I'd been old enough to understand watch this go down on TV though. I was like five and there's no way anyone was going to sit me down and explain what was going on when they could hand me some toy dinos and think grownup thoughts in peace instead lol