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The Washington Post
Sunday, October 17, 1999; Page X09
The Burning
By Roberto Suro
A PLACE CALLED WACO
A Survivor's Story
By David Thibodeau and Leon Whiteson
Public Affairs. 365 pp. $25
Reviewed by Roberto Suro
It was the end of a long, inglorious day at the FBI, and the voice on
the other end of the phone sounded weary. I was talking to a senior FBI
executive just hours after Attorney General Janet Reno had dispatched
U.S. marshals to the J. Edgar Hoover Building to take custody of newly
discovered evidence related to the 1993 Waco incident. The unprecedented
step suggested that the nation's premier law enforcement agency might be
engaged in a cover-up. Reflecting on the indignity, the FBI veteran
said, "David Koresh won."
The FBI's standoff with Koresh lasted only 51 days, but more than six
years later, and after repeated investigations, "dark questions" remain,
as former Senator John C. Danforth put it when he agreed late last month
to take over the latest inquiry. With the passage of time, however, some
fundamental perceptions have changed. Hardly anyone is willing to simply
take the FBI or Reno at their word about the events of April 19, 1993,
when Koresh and 73 of his followers and their children died as federal
agents tried to drive them from Mount Carmel, their compound in central
Texas. Moreover, Koresh has come to seem much less threatening than when
he was the subject of all-out demonization by the FBI and much of the
media.
While it is an exaggeration to say that Koresh has "won," it is
certainly true that Reno and the FBI do not seem like winners anymore as
far as this episode is concerned. Koresh is hardly blameless, but over
time the siege of Mount Carmel increasingly seems a cruel and dangerous
exercise.
Reading A Place Called Waco leaves you with the sickening conclusion
that the Branch Davidians' fiery end was a highly foreseeable train
wreck. The book is the story of David Thibodeau, one of only nine people
who survived the final day at Mount Carmel. With co-author Leon
Whiteson, who in the acknowledgments gets credit for "putting it all
into written form," Thibodeau offers a compelling and remarkably
balanced first-person account of life and death with David Koresh. Most
important, the authors provide a crisp narrative of the confrontation
between Koresh and law
enforcement as seen from within the compound. That perspective reveals a
conflict between two ornery parties, both unwilling to back down,
neither capable of even trying to understand the other's demands. But
these were not two equal parties. Representatives of the federal
government stood on one side of the barricades, and they had a
responsibility to act judiciously no matter how wackily Koresh behaved.
Thibodeau was a follower but no fanatic. We meet him as a struggling
drummer fresh out of high school. Koresh, a guitarist who mixed the
psalms with hard rock, invites the youngster to join his "Messiah
Productions." Thibodeau starts out skeptical, but he tells a highly
believable story of gradually, hesitantly accepting Koresh as a
spiritual teacher. At Mount Carmel, life in a religious community gives
him discipline and companionship. Disappointingly at times, Thibodeau
seems naively protective of Koresh. For example, he acknowledges that
Koresh's penchant for sexual relations with girls 14 years old or even
younger was illegal and unwisely attracted attention from the
authorities, but Thibodeau never confronts the sheer evil of this
behavior or explains how he could remain at Mount Carmel after knowing
this about his leader.
During the initial raid on the compound that left six Davidians and four
federal agents dead, Thibodeau is hugging the floor in fear. He says
that he never fired a gun during the entire confrontation, a claim
backed up by the fact that he was never charged with any crimes. His
account benefits as a result because he can claim some objectivity. On
the other hand, he was not in Koresh's inner circle, and so he has no
direct insights about some of the enduring mysteries of Waco: What was
the real size and purpose of the Davidians' arsenal? Did Koresh ever
intend to surrender? Who initiated the apparent suicides and mercy
killings that left 21 Davidians dead of
close-range gunshot wounds within the burning compound?
Much of what has been learned about the events at Waco through various
investigations is summarized by Thibodeau and Whiteson in a very
accessible and fairly objective form. However, the book is almost
agnostic on the origins of the fire that finally consumed Mount Carmel.
Thibodeau does not attempt a point-by-point rebuttal of FBI claims that
the Davidians set the blaze, nor does he recite the allegations by FBI
critics that federal officers directed gunfire at the compound and
otherwise took actions directly responsible for the deaths inside.
Instead, he concludes that although neither the Davidians nor the FBI
deliberately set the compound ablaze, the law-enforcement side knowingly
created the conditions for a conflagration.
That captures much of what has changed in the public view over last six
years, according to opinion surveys that now show deep skepticism about
the FBI's role at Waco. After so many investigations, many Americans
have wearily realized there may never be clear findings of intentional
wrongdoing. But with the latest revelations of evidence that should have
but didn't come to light, there seems to be a growing sense that fault
can be found even in ambiguous events. The Danforth investigation need
merely support suspicions that government negligence contributed to the
death toll at Waco for Reno and the FBI to emerge as the real losers in
the long run.
Roberto Suro, a staff writer at The Washington Post, has reported
extensively on federal law enforcement.
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
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