Waco David Koresh Quotes

Both David Koresh and Timothy McVeigh fell in the fight for freedom, the right of the Americans to be left alone.

What we learned from the Manson interview was later applied to the bureau’s dealing with other cults with charismatic and manipulative leaders, such as Reverend Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple in Guyana, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and the Freemen militia movement in Montana. The outcome is not always as we would like it, but it is important to understand the personality of those we are dealing with so we can try to predict behavior.

Sometimes in history the name of God has been invoked on behalf of actions and movements that have ennobled the human soul and lifted the body politic to a higher plane. Take the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and the American civil rights movement, or Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the struggle against South African apartheid, as examples. Other times religious fervor has been employed for the worst kinds of sectarian and violent purposes. The Ku Klux Klan, the troubles in Northern Ireland, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and David Koresh's Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas, are frightening examples. Is there a reliable guide to when we are really hearing the voice of God, or just a self-interested or even quite ungodly voice in the language of heaven? I think there is. Who speaks for God? When the voice of God is invoked on behalf of those who have no voice, it is time to listen. But when the name of God is used to benefit the interests of those who are speaking, it is time to be very careful.

In Waco, once best known for the Branch Davidian standoff between David Koresh and the ATF, Chip and Joanna have created a new cult, one of affordable design.

The dehumanization of those inside Mt. Carmel, coupled with the thoroughgoing demonization of Koresh, made it easier for those in authority to develop tactics that seemed organized for disaster.

Koresh didn’t encourage adoration. He frequently cautioned, “I don’t want you to worship the person, but the teaching. I’m just a messenger of the truth. I’m like a Dixie cup that God will crumple up and throw away when He’s done with it.

Perhaps the most thrilling aspect of Koresh’s teaching was the concept that the prophets of the Bible were writing about modern times as much or more than their own. These were current events, not old news.

When Thibodeau asked Koresh why he required so many women, he replied, “It’s like winning in the bedroom. If you don’t win in the bedroom, son, you’re not going to win on the battlefield.

J. Phillip Arnold, whose professional career has been dedicated to studying religious history and faiths, says that anyone doubting David Koresh and his followers’ sincerity about dying in a mandated fight should have considered it from the Branch Davidians’ perspective: “If you believe in God, and if you believe that God has told you to do something, wouldn’t you do it?

But ATF’s agents relied on what it had heard from the former members, and felt certain that if Koresh chose to resist a raid, it would take significant time—likely half an hour or even more—just to arm his followers and position them to fight. It was a crucial misjudgment.

The agents couldn’t understand why the raid went forward after the element of surprise was lost. They felt that a promise to them had been broken, and four good men died because of it. Rory Heisch says, “We were pissed.

You don’t deliver an apocalypse to an apocalyptic group. The [ATF] raid in a sad way confirmed David’s prophecies to his followers more than ever before.

It’s impossible for participants in gun battles to be objective about them afterward. Their memories are skewed.

In the late fall of 1992, the wave of bad publicity following Ruby Ridge was such that all of the agencies involved badly wanted to avoid another illegal arms confrontation that could potentially turn deadly, especially if it involved women and children.

Another aspect never discussed in any detail by planners or agents was the Branch Davidians’ religious beliefs, and how these might cause them to react to any ATF approach on their property.

A raid of the scope, expense, and logistical complexity contemplated by the planners of the Waco operation can generate a momentum that, if unchecked, can be inexorable.

Even with clouds of gas permeating much of Mount Carmel, the Branch Davidians still held some hope that if the FBI understood that Koresh was working hard and keeping his promise, agents might relent and keep their promise to wait until his writing was complete.

Thibodeau wrote, “By noon, the building is a tinderbox. A thick layer of methylene chloride dust deposited by the CS gas coats the walls, floors, and ceilings, mingling with kerosene and propane vapors from our spilled lanterns and crushed heaters.… The whole place is primed like a pot-bellied stove with its damper flung open. Suddenly, someone yells—‘Fire!

The FBI’s tactics on April 19, 1993, created the situation that led to the fire, but the agency did not deliberately set the fire itself.

A second, more plausible theory, is that the fire was an accident. Tanks crashing into Mount Carmel caused lit Coleman lanterns and space heaters to fall over and ignite pools of accelerant leaking from other overturned containers.

Agents asked repeatedly where the children were—how could they reach them and try to bring them to safety? None of the survivors knew.

Kathy Schroeder, in custody at a Waco hospital, was told by a nurse to come and see what was happening on TV. She watched Mount Carmel burn, and says nearly thirty years later, “Those that died in fire attained a place in the future event [End Time]. They’re coming back. While the rest of my friends became Wave Sheaf and translated through fire, I was left behind.

Militia enlistments skyrocketed in 2009, when Democrat Barack Obama became president. According to Southern Poverty Law Center research, “antigovernment groups” (which, besides militias, included tax protest and unarmed “sovereign citizens” organizations) in America rose to 542 by year’s end, then 824 in 2010, 1,274 in 2011, and, with a surge linked to the rise of the Tea Party movement, peaked at 1,360 in 2012.

When the elders expressed doubts about following a preacher who might lace a sermon with “shitfuck” and “cuntpiss,” he insisted his medical condition had no bearing on his right of succession, which came directly from God.