WHY WACO?

By James D. Tabor and Eugene V. Gallagher
University of California (1995)

Originally published in The San Francisco Review of Books

Once, some years ago, in the small Southern village where I used to live, a white police officer went to the home of a black man to serve a warrant on him. Can't recall what the warrant was for...something petty and innocuous, I think...but I do remember the old black man pretty well. He was an eccentric fellow who lived by himself in a little hut up a long dirt road. He used to hang bottles from all the trees and bushes in his yard, and they tinkled when the wind blew. In the winter, he'd wear a coat that he'd sewn reflective things into, so that you could see your own eyes in it many times over as he walked toward you. He used to sing to himself a lot as he walked, and talk to unseen companions, and laugh out loud, suddenly, when nothing funny had been said by anybody around him.

The police officer drove up the long dirt road to serve a minor warrant on this man, and when he drove back down the road a half hour or so later, he had shot the old man dead. When asked what happened, the police officer said, "He tried to kill me." When pressed for further explanation, the police officer said, "Well, he was a crazy nigger, wasn't he?" Which seemed explanation enough, for a lot of folk, and pretty much settled the matter.

It's been said quite often before: words are our most powerful weapons. More powerful than sharp-edged knives, or semiautomatic pistols, or heat-seeking missiles, or nuclear fission bombs. Words are more powerful than weapons because it is with a single word that we can decide upon whose bodies and homes such weapons will be launched. With one word, we can label who is Enemy and who is Friend, and sometimes their fate can hang upon that single, simple, either/or verdict.

Call someone a "Serb," or a "Tutsi," or a "Fidelista," or an "Orangeman," or "blasphemer of the Prophet" and in the wrong neighborhood in the right part of the world, it can mean ostracism or exile or a sentence of death. Most of these prejudices are ancient, some going back to a time when the peoples' histories were kept in the heads of the village elders. But in the United States, a little over 200 years old, we cannot always put on the white gauze of tradition to dress up these running sores. Now and then we Americans are forced to make up our hatreds as we go along, to fit these new times.

And so we have come up with the post-modern epithet: Cult-member...an old word to which we have attached a new horror. Like calling someone a "crazy nigger," the shouting of "Cult! Cult!" at a religious group can be the sound of the sepulcher door slamming shut. At the very least, it allows us to dismiss their ideas without the annoyance of first having to hear them. At worst, such a designation can lead directly to their deaths. This is the conclusion of "Why Waco?", a reasoned, non-emotional study by Religious Studies professors James D. Tabor and Eugene V. Gallagher of the case of the 80 Branch Davidians who died in their housing complex at Mt. Carmel near Waco, Texas in the winter and spring of 1993.

Such a non-partisan, non-inflammatory look is necessary in these times when "Waco" has become as much an American political code word as "Watergate" or "Whitewater"--no longer something to think about but merely something visceral to react to--"Waco," complete with its own live-on-CNN Senate hearings and its own coveted chair at the table of the 1996 Presidential campaign. So much invective. So little search for the truth.

Most of America had heard nothing about the Branch Davidians prior to February 28, 1993. On that date, agents of the BATF (Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) attempted to force their way into the Mt. Carmel complex to serve a federal warrant for firearms violation. In the fierce gun battle that followed, 6 Branch Davidians and 4 BATF agents were killed. In that moment, simultaneously, the Branch Davidians were both revealed to the world for the first time and sealed off from it forever.

The FBI began a siege of the Mt. Carmel complex, cutting off all contact between it and the outside world.

There are vague national memories of the three months that followed.

We learned about David Koresh, the spiritual leader of the Branch Davidians. He was reported to be crazy, a religious fanatic, and the label "the Wacko from Waco" was so inspired, so cutsey, so 90's, that it stuck, and has persisted to this day. Attorney General Janet Reno, newly-appointed by newly-elected President Clinton, publicly fretted about what to do. There was talk of illegal arms caches at Mt. Carmel. There was talk of the molestation of the many children who were living at the complex. There were quick comparisons to Jim Jones, who led some 900 of his Peoples Temple followers to commit mass suicide in the Guyanese rain forest 20 years ago. More than anything else, the superficial similarities to the Peoples Temple made the American public think they understood the Branch Davidians.

"Why Waco?" is both a detailed accounting of the Mt. Carmel attacks and siege, a theological/political history of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, and an attack against our reliance on professional "cult-busters" in setting national religious policy.

In sorting out how a minor religious group in the Texas heartland became a national fixation, Tabor and Gallagher write:

"The popular caricature of Koresh and the Branch Davidians [as vaguely amusing and slightly irritating American weirdoes] might have remained only a minor annoyance to the group had it not contributed directly to the disastrous consequences of both the BATF raid and the final FBI assault. The widespread failure to take the religious convictions of Koresh and the other Davidians seriously, signaled by the facile adoption of the term 'cult,' contributed directly to their deaths. Since 'cults' purportedly represent intellectual, moral, and spiritual aberrations, for many it is unnecessary, and even counterproductive, to delve too deeply into their teachings. Accordingly, the FBI brusquely dismissed the Branch Davidians' religious discourse as 'Bible babble.' Since 'cults' represent a dangerous threat to the social order, it is necessary to oppose them with all the resources that the state can muster, including tear gas, SWAT teams, and tanks. Since 'cult leaders' are power-mad megalomaniacs, no one should lament their passing and they alone should bear the blame for the deaths of their followers."

Tabor and Gallagher show how serious a Biblical interpreter Koresh was, tracing the roots of his thought back through the beginnings of the Seventh Day Adventist movement, from which the Branch Davidians broke off. They show how the failure of FBI negotiators during the siege to understand Koresh's Biblical references led directly to the final, disastrous assault against the compound, arguing that such an apocolyptical ending was neither inevitable nor necessary. They show how the decisions of law enforcement agencies were influenced by the band of self-appointed "cult-busters" who seem to be able to roam the country at will, accountable to no-one, free to apply their labels of ostracism to any group they so choose. The parallels to the "Communist" labeling of the McCarthy period are chilling.

In so doing, the authors do not overlook what many would consider the "weirdness" of Koresh and the Davidians. They give accountings of the Davidians' fascination with guns (odd, perhaps, for serious Christians, but certainly in fashion with the times). They repeat the story of how at one point, long before the Davidians came to national attention, a rival of Koresh laid out a corpse at Mt. Carmel and challenged Koresh to raise it from the dead. Instead, Koresh and a group of followers invaded the temple and engaged in a Texas-style shootout with the rival faction. The authors also discuss at length Koresh' belief that he was the last revealed angel of the Book of Revelations, one of whose duties was to take virgin brides for the purpose of procreating the family of elders who would rule the earth in the last days. It was tabloid tales of Koresh' liaisons with his "many child brides" that helped to develop his national image as a sexual pervert and a "wacko." Remarkably, Tabor and Gallagher are able to put such conduct into the Davidians' theological context without attempting to either sensationalize, downplay, or excuse it.

One of the most valuable contributions of "Why Waco?", one that can leave the reader a little breathless, is the humanization of the Davidians themselves. The handful of included pictures of children giving shy smiles to the camera are particularly heart-rending, considering that most of them eventually burned to death in the fire that destroyed Mt. Carmel.

One of the major causes of confusion as to who the Davidians really were is the fact that, post-mortem, their cause has been taken up as a rallying cry of the militia movement. Knowing little or nothing about the Branch Davidians, the public has tended to transfer any perceived attributes of the militias directly to the followers of Koresh. Tabor and Gallagher never directly address this issue, but two things can be reasonably surmised from their account. First, there is no record that the Davidians were associated with the secular militias. Second, whoever the members of the militia are and whoever the Davidians were, they come from two different worlds and should and must be studied and understood independently of one another.

As to problems with "Why Waco?", they are minor. There is some annoying repetition of facts and argument throughout the book. In addition, the authors are open to a charge of bias in their account. Tabor approached the FBI during the siege, offering his services as a Bible scholar who might be useful in interpreting Koresh' often obscure references. He was used for a time, but the FBI eventually rejected his contention that in the last days of the siege, Koresh had made a decision to peacefully surrender and was actively preparing for it. Tabor has his own reputation to protect and "Why Waco?" could be considered a means of doing it.

But everybody seems to be protecting their own backsides in the Branch Davidian situation. Tabor and Gallagher, at least, provide us with a history and a foundation upon which readers can make up their own minds. That is a rare occurrence in the Waco saga, when almost all of the other living players want to make up our minds for us.

Koresh and most of the Davidians are dead, and no longer able to speak for themselves. Some 74 were shot or burned to death during the April 19, 1993 FBI assault upon Mt. Carmel. 21 of the dead were children. "Why Waco?" gives us one of the few chances we will ever have to see who the Branch Davidians actually were on something approximating their own terms.