Remembering Waco and Okla. City bombing

Clint Van Zandt • Profile • E-mail

April 19^th is a dark day in American history with the siege at Waco and the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building both taking place respectively on that day.

It has now been 15 years since the terrible conflagration that occurred at the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas, and 13 years since the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., with our country suffering wounds and losses that even exceed those who died and were injured in these two horrific incidents. I can still remember a bumper sticker I saw on a pickup truck shortly after the destruction at Waco. It said, "I love my country, it's the government I'm afraid of."

Many people associate the name “Waco” with the nearby fatal confrontation between agents of the federal government and a group of heavily-armed private citizens that occurred in the spring of 1993. The standoff ended when the government used armored vehicles to insert CS gas into a large, poorly-constructed wooden building that was both the home and last stand for almost every member of this doomsday cult. It was subsequently set afire by its very occupants as ordered by their 33-year-old leader David Wayne (Vernon), a.k.a. David Koresh, and resulted in the death of almost all of the members of this cult.

David Koresh was born to a 15-year-old girl and he never knew his father. He had a challenged childhood because of his looks and his dyslexia; he was relentlessly teased by his peers causing him to eventually drop out of school. Koresh then took on the task of studying the Bible in depth, and associated himself with a breakaway apocalyptic segment of the 7^th Day Adventist Church.

He eventually became the leader of the group that was called the Branch Davidians, one that under his leadership would separate itself from the world outside of their large wooden group home outside of Waco. Koresh would preach to his followers for hours at a time, eventually convincing them he was the Messiah and that the men in his group needed to give up their wives and older female children to David alone, which they did.

Some will remember the initial confrontation between ATF agents and the Davidians involving illegal weapons believed to be possessed by the cult and allegations of child abuse. 

I had the chance to speak directly with David Koresh on multiple occasions during the many weeks that I spent at Waco as an FBI hostage negotiator. I remember one particular night when Koresh asked to speak to a Christian FBI agent. I was one of many, and the negotiations team that I led suggested Koresh and I speak, and so we did. We talked about many things for a few hours, but mostly we discussed the Bible, or Koresh’s interpretation of it. We’d race from book to book and chapter to chapter with Koresh trying to use scripture to justify his actions, including his sexual contact with the young girls and the adult women members of his clan.

'I'm the Christ'
When we talked late one night, David said, “Brother Clint” (as he called me), “do you know who I am? I’m the Christ.”

“David,” I said, “We may agree or disagree on a number of things, but your actions do not appear to agree with those of Christ... In John 10, for example, it says, ‘I am the good Shepherd; the good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.’ You’re talking about taking the lives of your entire flock, not saving them.”

Koresh was not accustomed to being challenged on his interpretation of the scriptures, as his small congregation was said to accept whatever David said. He rebuffed our efforts to bring negotiations to his level though, passing us off as people who obviously didn’t understand the book of Revelation and the seven seals. By his own definition, he was the only one who really understood and who could unlock the seals as described in that complicated book of the Bible. The next morning I was told by the on-scene commander’s representative, “No more Bible babble.” They (the FBI) just didn’t seem to get it. I felt the key to Koresh was meeting him on a Biblical level, and I was told “never again…”

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