Now that I've been granted my own column in the Times' Thursday newspaper - the first column since my university days at the University of Texas at Arlington - I finally have a chance to tell about some of the behind the scenes events during the Branch-Davidian standoff in 1993.
I worked at the Waco newspaper at the time as the general assignments/farm reporter and retrieved a fax in April of 1992 alleging the Branch-Davidians planned a mass suicide and that child abuse occurred at their compound.
The fax led to an investigative series by journalists Mark England and Darlene McCormick subsequently nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The series won first place for public service in the nationwide Associated Press Managing Editors contest.
Everyone in the newsroom, myself included, begged to work on the series centering on Vernon Howell, aka David Koresh, and the cult that lived in a compound about 10 miles outside Waco. But England and McCormick had to sell the executive editor, Bob Lott, on the idea and worked on the series by themselves, almost exclusively on their own time.
To make short the story leading up to the day the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms launched their abortive raid on the Davidian compound, the ATF asked the newspaper to hold the story until after executing a search warrant. Then the weekend the series began the ATF called with a tip to stay close to the telephone over the weekend. Word reached reporters the raid was set to go Sunday.
The newspaper's reporters and photographers, myself excluded because I was on my way to church when the call came, accompanied the ATF to the compound and ran to a ditch for cover when gunfire began.
Something that to my knowledge has never before surfaced is that a reporter made a continuous audio recording of the gunfight as he and the others sat in the ditch.
With the whine of bullets in the background, England could be heard joking "I hope we're getting paid overtime for this" while another reporter could be heard sobbing in fear.
Lott later suggested the tape be destroyed.
The group had chosen a position in a crossfire between ATF agents firing from a house behind them and Davidians inside the compound.
Meanwhile, on a back road to the compound, editor Brian Blansett and McCormick drove toward the conflict. Both later claimed they were cut short by a spray of bullets fired from a helicopter overhead at the ground in front of the station wagon they were in.
Blansett slammed on the brakes before the vehicle was struck.
After the raid came the standoff complete with media circus, where reporters and locals learned there is a limit to cell phone traffic. All lines were frequently tied up, making cell phones useless, due to all the law enforcement and reporters in the area.
The impromptu media city that sprang up with hundreds of reporters living in campers and recreational vehicles posed the county problems in sanitation. The media encampment featured occasional games and elected a mayor.
As the standoff stretched to 51 days the population of reporters dwindled.
Then came the compound's fiery end.
That April day a photographer and I were sent to the compound once news of the FBI's insertion of tear gas there reached the newsroom.
I returned after photographing Koresh's attorneys, using a chair to push television photographers out of the way, and heard an editor lament the fire.
"The children" was all she said as she watched another re-run of the fire on the television.
Twenty-five children under the age of 15 died during the fire, to us in the newsroom the greatest tragedy. A total of 76 Branch-Davidians were killed.
That night, there was a great letting-off of steam at a local bar and grill that I captured on videotape where highly-inappropriate remarks were made and a French television crew became the butt of jokes. Patrons finally pelted them unmercifully with peanut shells, running them off.
My observations about the whole debacle are not original but follow those who observed Koresh and several of his lieutenants could have been nabbed outside the compound and the debacle avoided.
However, I believe the ATF had every right to execute a search warrant, and the Branch-Davidians were wrong to resist.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, were wrong to try to end the standoff the way they did, but a fiery suicidal end was almost unavoidable.
And things were never the same after the media circus left town.
©Harrison Daily Times 2001