The Waco Siege
Near Waco, Texas
East of Waco, near the community of Axtell, a stretch of empty ground marks the site of what was once the Mount Carmel Center, the compound where, in nineteen ninety-three, a fifty-one-day standoff between federal agents and the Branch Davidian religious community ended in fire and death.
The Branch Davidians were an offshoot of the Davidian Seventh-day Adventist Church, led by a man named David Koresh who believed himself a messiah chosen to interpret scripture. His followers lived communally at the compound on seventy-seven acres, and by early nineteen ninety-three, federal agents had received reports of weapons stockpiling and child abuse inside the compound.
On February twenty-eighth, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms attempted to serve arrest and search warrants. The raid went wrong immediately. A gunfight broke out, killing four federal agents and six Branch Davidians. The ATF withdrew and the FBI surrounded the compound, beginning a fifty-one-day siege.
Negotiators worked by phone throughout March and into April, periodically obtaining the release of children and some adults. But David Koresh did not surrender. On April nineteenth, the FBI began injecting tear gas into the building with armored vehicles. About six hours into the operation, fires broke out simultaneously in multiple locations. By the time firefighters were allowed near enough to fight the flames, the compound was gone.
About seventy five people died in the fire, including roughly two dozen children. Investigations could not definitively determine whether Koresh's followers set the fires deliberately, and federal agencies faced lasting criticism for the tactics used during both the initial raid and the final assault.
The Waco siege transformed American political culture, directly inspiring antigovernment militia movements that grew dramatically through the nineteen nineties. The Oklahoma City bombing of April nineteenth, nineteen ninety-five, was carried out two years to the day later, by men who cited Waco as their reason.
