Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - The Waco Tragedy feat. Dave Hardy, Dan Gifford, James Tabor, Paul Fatta, David Thibodeau, Jim Bovard, Barbara Grant, Mike McNulty

Episode Date: June 17, 2023

Scott discusses the 1993 Waco tragedy with David Hardy, Dan Gifford, James Tabor, Paul Fatta, David Thibodeau, Jim Bovard, Barbara Grant: the Branch Davidians' history and theology, David Koresh, the ATF's investigation and raid, the 51 day siege, the FBI's tank and gas attack, the April 19 fire, analysis of infra-red imagery, the role of the U.S. Army's Delta Force, the trial and various coverups. Related Articles Will ABC really tell us what happened at Waco in 1993? by Dan Gifford| New York City, NY Patch FBI Mass Murder Of The Branch Davidians At Waco And The Establishment Collusion To Cover It Up | Dan Gifford How the Government Covered Up the Waco Massacre by James Bovard | The Libertarian Institute Waco Archives | James Bovard ATF's 'Good ol' boys' | Tampa Bay Times Delta team at Waco? | Salon.com Was Army Active at Waco?: Ex-CIA Man Says Elite Commandos Took Part | NY Post The Man Who Knew Too Much | The Washington Post F.B.I. Says at Least 7 Agents Attended Gatherings Displaying Racist Paraphernalia - The New York Times Waco: A Massacre and Its Aftermath by Dean M. Kelley | First Things Branch Davidian Compound History - Mount Carmel Center Waco Today Films Waco: Rules of Engagement Waco: A New Revelation The FLIR Project When the Government Lied: Waco's Infrared Deception Books The Davidian Massacre, Carol Moore This Is Not An Assault, David T. Hardy with Rex Kimball Waco, A Survivor’s Story, David Thibodeau The Ashes of Waco, Dick Reavis The Waco Whitewash, Jack DeVault Armageddon in Waco, Stuart A. Wright Why Waco?, James D. Tabor, Eugene V Gallagher Stalling For Time, Gary Noesner Documents Waco Search Warrant Texas Rangers Report FBI Records: The Vault — Waco / Branch Davidian Compound Forward Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR) Used During the Final Assault of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas | Edward F. Allard Report to the Deputy Attorney General on the Events at Waco, Texas Report of the Department of the Treasury on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms investigation of Vernon Wayne Howell al House Report 104-749 - Investigation Into the Activities of Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Toward the Branch Davidians Letters from David Koresh during standoff at Mount Carmel - Ashes Of Waco Interviews David Thibodeau Barbara Grant James Bovard Paul Fatta James Tabor Mike McNulty And of course, Dan Gifford and David Hardy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is The Waco Tragedy, produced by James Hill. I'm Scott Horton. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute and the editorial director of anti-war.com. I'm the author of the book's Fool's Aaron, time to end the war in Afghanistan, and enough already, time to end the war on terrorism. And I'm the host of the Scott Horton show.

The Waco mask was a huge influence on me as a teenager and the evolution of my politics, from anti-government to vary. anti-government. I learned many important lessons about power and media and the bloodlust in the hearts of and malability of the minds of my neighbors. Later on, I got to know a few of the surviving Branch Divideons, Clive and Edna Doyle, Catherine Madison, Sheila Martin, David Tibido, and now Paul Fata, I mean a little. And I helped marginally to rebuild their church in 1999. This is free radio Austin 97.1. You're listening to Say It Ain't So. We're talking to David Tibido. He's the author

of a new book called A Place Called Waco, A Survivor's Story. I guess, David, we should just start at the beginning. Who are you? Where are you from? And how did you get to Waco? Well, I grew up in Bank, Maine. And, you know, after I was a small-time high school kid, I just wanted to get out and I went to L.A. and I started pursuing my dream of everything. I also learned how easy it is to learn the truth about things like this and how important it is to win these fights. We are simply not going to let lying murderers have the final say about the history of this catastrophe.

The dominant narrative the government and media told us in 1993 was that the Branch Divideans had committed mass suicide like the Jim Jones cult, only by fire and firearm. They might have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't have been for Mike McNulty and Dan Gaines. Gifford and their 1997 film, Waco, The Rules of Engagement. Introducing Dan Gifford, he's an Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated film producer and former reporter for CNN, the McNeillera News Hour and ABC News, and a descendant of a Texas

Ranger. He produced the 1997 film Waco, The Rules of Engagement, which raised huge doubts and questions about the government's entire narrative of those events. Having immediately assumed, correctly, that in fact the FBI had murdered the Davidians, I was there on opening night at the Dobie Mall in Austin. Introducing David Hardy, he is a lawyer from Tucson, Arizona. He's the former editor of Arizona Law Review, a gun rights activist, and in 1999 to 2000, he helped force the Department of Justice

to launch an entire new cover-up of the Waco massacre, by helping Mike McNulty gain access to Texas Ranger evidence lockers and humiliating the FBI's chief spokesman on ABC Nightline. Hardy is the author of the books, I'm from the government and I'm here to kill you, the true human cost of official negligence. Dred Scott, the inside story. And this is not an assault,

penetrating the web of official lies regarding the Waco incident. Back to you guys in a minute. but I've got to finish up my introduction to the story here. Bottom line first. The goal of the discussion ultimately is to show that the government killed a bunch of innocent people and got away with it.

Despite all their recent work along these lines, including new books and documentaries, we will not let the government and its courtiers succeed in writing a false history, a whitewash of what happened at Waco in April 1993. Despite the fact that the liar have gotten out ahead and have the mighty government and TV PR machine, ultimately, the truth will be the official history of the Waco massacre.

This is crucially important because the federal government set the precedent at Waco that they can make a foreign nation out of a group of people on a piece of property in the middle of Texas and go to war against American civilians. And if they could do it to them, they could do it to anyone. And they have. What was so notable about Ruby Ridge and Waco was not the paramilitary assault and the deaths of innocent civilians. It was just that the victims fought back effectively on the first day, leading to prolonged sieges, negotiations, and media hype. Government and TV narratives can be very powerful, however, as we will be discussing.

David Koresh may very well have been guilty of statutory rape. However, in context, this is little more than a red herring. The Treasury Department and ATF had no jurisdiction over that issue, and it had nothing to do with the question of how the ATF conducted the initial raid, the subsequent failure of the FBI to de-escalate, or their involvement in the final conflagration at the end of the seven-week siege. The ATF's entire case was based on weak evidence and was completely self-serving in nature. They were interested in protecting their agency and increasing its budget and fame. They botched their raid plan, killed six innocent people, and had no backup plan or communication with local police. During the subsequent standoff, the FBI negotiators failed to do their job, and they made trust between those inside Mount Carmel and those outside impossible.

The failure of the FBI would range from immature, like men mooning the women and children, to downright evil, for example, driving tanks over the freshly dug graves of murdered Branch Divideans. The FBI lied to the new Attorney General Janet Reno to get her to approve the raid. The cause of the fire is hard to confirm, but all evidence seems to indicate that the FBI played a major role in the fire and that there's no reason to believe the Branch Divideans had deliberately done so. The FBI asserts that no FBI agents fired any weapons on the final day, but Fleer, forward-looking infrared video analysis, showed otherwise.

The subsequent trial for the surviving Branch Divideans was also a travesty since the charges didn't really make sense, but an activist judge still threw the book at them, despite the jury believing that they should have gone free. That is where we are going with this, and now we will get started. But first, back to our guests, Dan Gifford and David Hardy. Nice to be here with you guys in Los Angeles, where I like to be from time to time.

y'all please tell me how you became interested in this story as you have and tell us if you could also both of you about mike mcnulty and your relationship with him i think the beginning of this story dan doesn't it begin with his attempt did it bunk another documentary about waco before he found out the real truth of what was going on there well yeah i don't know when he settled on what the real truth was, but I had just moved here from New York. And I met Mike someplace. I don't remember where, but he was spending these wild stories. And like everybody else, I had seen the Davidian standoff. I mean, it was on 24-7. It was just, it was nothing. It was, you know, and the story was completely believable that the government was promoting him, because we had

seen Jim Jones. We had seen, well, you have the fictional Elmer Gantry. You have. You have all these characters in our culture, folklore, about preachers that get control of a group and do various things. So like everybody else, for most people, I believe the official narrative, that you had a Sphinxali running this group called the Davidians, and his name was David Koresh, and he had them all commit mass suicide rather than surrender to proper authority. and then as I started listening to Michael and looking into it, I found out that the official story was not true.

So we were looking for a project at the time, and we devoted some funds to it, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. I thought it was going to just be a half hour or something or other, but it was just more every time you turn the corner of what was going on here. You know, I have a little bit of, I hate the phrase. I don't like the phrase law enforcement, but I'm going to use it anyway. Very anti-labertarian.

But Dave and I share some law enforcement ancestry here. My great uncle was a U.S. Deputy Marshall in Arizona territory, a business partner of Wyatt Earps. And Dave's, you know, my correct you, your grandfather. You're great. Yeah, I have us. So they probably knew each other. That's what we've determined. And, of course, justice was different then than it is today in some ways.

But that's basically how this thing started. And I can tell you that when you start deviating from the official narrative, the sky falls on you. I mean, you suddenly become a Nazi. You become a, of all kinds of. a child molester myself i'm surprised i don't i wasn't uh said to be it involved in the waco itself uh that's mount carmel so that's basically how they started all right and then can you elaborate a little bit about mike mcnulty and who he is and how you knew him and and that whole angle i don't know where i met him i think it was at a meeting of some sort and i and i don't know what

it was it might have been an an nRA meeting or something i just don't remember but he he was talking and he was very involved in this project and this whole story and he kept telling me that there was a video of people being run over by tanks at Mount Carmel and I probably said something like yeah yeah yeah sure sure and started looking into it and turned down he was right and he was it was worse than anything I thought when you start lighting a place on fire and shooting at the people to keep him from getting out of the building

you know that's it's pretty horrific so he was very invested in this I think he also had an extra incentive with Michael was a Mormon and a lot of the FBI agents are Mormons and that when I was listening to the negotiation tapes

during the standoff seemed to fit in because the Mormon, I presume, or evangelical FBI agents were arguing theology with David Koresh. And it sounded at times as if that was getting kind of heated, you know, about, no, I say five angels can sit on the head of a pen and you say only three. That's non-stuff to me. I don't care. Especially, as you said before, it's not within any jurisdiction that the people in Washington have any say over. So Michael did fantastic work. He is tenacious.

He with David here filed a freedom of information request with the government to get in to see the evidence that was being hidden after the trial. Turned out that they could see that the evidence that they claimed were machine gun parts or whatever were not. and again that was just more lying going on and it was just one thing after another

Michael unfortunately died a couple of years ago and so Michael we salute you for keeping this stuff going on he and I had some disagreements on things but you always have disagreements on projects that's no big deal but this was just a horrific thing to be finding

out and proving that when I thought the official story was true. I mean, the FBI agent to me is still Jimmy Stewart in a 1956 movie or, you know, some Ephraim Zimblis Jr. on, you know, the FBI in color. And we were butch everybody with how many people were watching in the 70s and 80s. And this was just horrific. I kind of run out of words to describe it because it's just at the upper end of how far you can go. Yeah. Okay, well, so tell us, should I call you Dave or David? Do you go by? I go by Dave. By Dave. Okay, I thought so. I want to make sure I'm not overstepping here.

So I guess tell us, Dave, about yourself and how you first got interested in this and your involvement in it. Oh, I'm an attorney out in Tucson. I graduated from the University of Arizona. Sorry for my voice. I've got allergies today. Good radio voice. but how I got interest in this was I don't actually remember now going back 20 years I know I saw the report on the fire

at the time it happened I was catching dinner in a sort of sports bar and it came on the TV and then I followed it in magazine Soldier Fortune which was interesting Initially, the first couple of issues, they were very much, you know, the main line. These were a bunch of religious fanatics who shot it out with federal agents, and then they

started investigating and finding out that, no, there's another side to the story, and they very strongly shifted to revealing the truth. But I first met Mike McNulty. There were house hearings, or maybe join. hearing on Waco and I forget the year but I first met him at one of those he was preparing the footage for the documentary Waco the Rules of Engagement and so we talked and met and you know exchanged data and then it wound up going on into the Freedom of Information Act requests and all of

that sort of thing. I'd done Freedom of Information Act work on both sides of the aisle. I spent 10 years with the government agency. And so I knew the statute pretty well. And when Mike had given me the information he wanted, we would sit down and just figure out how to get it. Well, we're gonna get into what y'all got because it sure is a huge advance in the story.

Did I just add something here? One of the things that came out of this was the misprisoned, I think that's the right term, charge against the prosecutor, Johnston, who prosecuted the Dividians, So you had the, this is an extraordinary situation. You had the prosecutor who prosecuted the Vittians being prosecuted by the government for withholding evidence. And the concept of misprision, is my saying that correct? I don't actually know how that word is pronounced. I know how to read it, but I don't know.

But it basically says that he should have stepped in and stopped the Freedom of Information Act request, as I remember the thing, so that the information that the government lied would stay hidden. And that's, I mean, think about that. From the standpoint of a guy who was a GS-14 bureaucrat, the only unforgivable sin is embarrassing your agency. Anything else is acceptable. And in that case, the prosecutor had allowed Mike to see the evidence, which led to the whole thing blowing up.

So after the Danforth investigation, the prosecutor was the only person who was charged with anything. And I thought it was interesting that he, I think he finally pled out to a felony. Danforth's people sent the report to the State Bar of Texas. And the State Bar of Texas sent back a message that amounted to a politer version of Get Bent. We know you screwed this guy over. enough tangents on the lawyers for a moment it's time to talk about the branch dividians and who's a branch dividian and what's a branch dividian and how could anybody know and i have here a lengthy clip from an interview that i conducted in the last couple of weeks with james taber professor of religious

studies at the university of north carolina and expert on the book of revelations and on the Branch Divideans. And so here's that. The chorus came in late in that sense. The movement itself is a breakoff from the Seventh-day Adventist Church. And you really have to go back to the 19th century. And there was a Baptist preacher named William Miller. who calculating through different Bible prophecies, mainly the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation, remember this is 1840s. He came up with this idea that the coming of Christ, the return of Christ, would be, first he had said 1843, and then he figured out that he was a year off in his math,

and he said 1844, nothing to do with, Adventists, they didn't even exist then. He wasn't a Adventist. Seventh-day Adventist means seventh-day keeping the Sabbath, what Christians would call the Jewish Sabbath. In other words, Saturday. And Adventist means you think that the Advent is soon coming, the advent not being the birth of Jesus, but the second coming, as Christians call it. So it goes, the movement actually goes back to that prophecy movement of the 1830s, 40s, 50s, and even people like Joseph Smith, who began the Mormons, as we know them today, he was kind of swept up in that as well. But there's one particular woman, Ellen G. White, and she's the one who actually founded and incorporated what we would call the Seventh-day Adventist Church. And that was after Miller's failure, because obviously we're sitting here and talking here in 2023, and Jesus didn't return.

But she came up with the idea that Jesus, that actually that date was correct. But Miller had the wrong event, and she was very allegorical, which is really going to help us to understand David Koresh, way down the line. So in the 1840s and 50s, when that prophecy failed, she began to teach and preach in claiming to be a prophetess herself, which Miller never claimed. He's just a Bible student, literally with his, you know, his pencil and paper adding updates and figuring out how many days of Daniel are mentioned in this chapter in the book of Revelation. and there are these periods of time, 1,160 days, 1,290 days, 13, 35, and so forth. And people all through history have played with those, and many of them have thought, well, a day is a year. So if we could figure out, you know, the years until Christ comes, then we might come up with a date. But what she said was the date was correct, but Jesus had been doing what is called

of atoning for the sins of the world in heaven. I guess it took a long time. In other words, he's up there in heaven, paying for all the sins in some kind of way. And he had left the sanctuary, which is the heavenly temple, and now it was opening the books. So Miller's Day was correct, she said. It was in October 1844. Jesus left the temple in heaven and the books were opened and the investigative judgment is what she called it.

And what that means is, of course, she thought it wouldn't be long until the actual visible second coming. But she was very keen on saying that was not wrong. That date wasn't wrong. It's just something that happened in heaven, not on earth. And as soon as Jesus was finished with going through the lives of all the people who ever lived in history and making some sort of judgment of determination, it's mentioned in the book of Revelation. It says the books were opened and the dead were judged according to what they had done and the living were judged rather according to what they had done. And so that became a period. Now, obviously, as I said, she didn't expect it to go, you know, 100 and what, 200 years almost, nothing like that. She thought she would live to see the end and her husband James White as well. But she did claim to be a prophetess and she did write books that her movement then that began to be called the Seventh-day Adventist considered to be inspired. writings. The reason all that's important is that David Koresh in the 1980s would

refer to Sister White. That's what he called her. And all Adventists refer to her that way. And they believe that her writings are infallible. They're perfect as interpretations of the Bible. So he just as well could be quoting Isaiah or Jeremiah or the book of Daniel or the book of Revelation from the Bible, and he knew it quite well. He had much of it memorized, whole chapters memorized. But then he would say, as Sister White said, or as Sister White wrote, so he was building off of that heritage. So the Adventist Church began at that point in the 19th century. But in the 1930s, there was a minister, or actually he was a lay person, of the Adventist Church. His name is Victor Hoddiff. And he decided that the interpretations of prophecy

in the church, not necessarily Sister White, but as they called her, but the interpretations of certain prophetic events were incorrect. So he started something called the Davidians. And that was in the night 1935 he moved to waco texas so the mount carmel center that we know of so well from the fire and all the tragic events of 1993 uh the reason they're in waco texas goes all the way back to victor haughtoff now koresh would have said that victor haughtoff was also an inspired prophet And Hadoff basically he died in 1955, so basically 35, so basically 35, 20 years was his ministry. And he would preach almost entirely to seven-day Adventists. And they refer to something they call present truth.

And the idea would be that Ellen G. White was a prophetess of the last days, but that God's to raise up subsequent prophets and prophetesses that will continue the revelation. And that's what Koresh began to wonder when he began to connect with the Branch Davidians. And I think it was around 1980, 81. He was looking for a living prophet. Like he's been raised to seven-day Adventist, Ellen G. White has been dead since the 19th century. And so where's the living voice? Why isn't God speaking today if he spoke to LNG White, wouldn't he continue to speak since

the end had not come in way over now 100 years at the time when he began to get interested in it? Well, Hoth died in 55, and it was a great shock to everybody. All of his followers, they lived in Waco on a different property. still there in Waco, but it was kind of more of a permanent settlement on the lake there, and it had brick buildings and an administration building and much, much more organized and substantial than what we find in the 1990s with David Koresh, with those frame buildings. And it's a different property.

So when he died, his wife, Florence, sold the property. and bought this new property, they call it New Mount Carmel, and that's where David Corrish ends up. And she set the date of the end four years after her husband's death. She had her own calculations. And she literally said, you know, on Passover, they keep the Jewish festivals as well as the Sabbath day of 1959, which would be in the spring of 1950. Jesus is going to return. And hundreds of people came from all over the world and all over the country. I'm not sure how many, when I say hundreds, more than David had, you know, maybe four or five, six hundred people might have gathered.

And they're coming in cars and they're traveling in various ways. This is the 1950s. And they're camping out and they're waiting for the end of the age to come, for Jesus to return. And of course, they call it the great disappointment. So Miller was the one who first coined the term the great disappointment. He said in his diary, we wept and cried all night, thinking Christ would come. So now in 1959, it's getting repeated. So Florence basically just gave up.

She disappeared. She went to California. She no longer had faith that the movement was correct. I don't know anything about what her personal beliefs were. But there were two members of that group, Ben and Lois Roden, Rodeon, who took over. And they had joined in the 1950s when Hadoef was still alive. and Ben actually, he died, I believe, pretty shortly after that. I didn't write down the exact day of his death, but he did add the word branch to the

Davidian name. So Hotif said we're Davidians, and the reason they call them Davidians is they believe there would be a literal reign of Jesus Christ on the earth when he returned in Jerusalem and there before the millennium and all the nations would start coming up and learning the way of God and it would be the kingdom of God set up on earth and there would be a branch of David sitting on the throne of David ruling and reigning and so you get this term branch Davidian that there's going to be this final messianic age But remember, they're not claiming as Vernon Howell did, also known as David Kourish. That was his birth name, Vernon Howe.

They're not claiming that they are the Messiah. That was something that he claimed, that Koresh claimed, it was something new. Anyway, Ben died, and then Lois, his wife took over, and both of them claimed to have this gift of prophecy. So when David Koresh arrived in 1981, Ben was gone. He was dead. George, the son of Ben and Lois Rodin, was around. And he very much wanted to succeed his father. So he resented this Vernon Hal character showing up. And he very much saw him as a rival. And we won't go into all those details but there was a rivalry but Lois favored Vernon to make a long story short she she felt that you know she was getting older and Vernon how later to

be David Koresh he changed his name I believe not sure I wrote down the time that he changed his name 1991 I did write it down so you can say he's he doesn't change his name for ten years after he's he's uh come and join them so he joins the branch davidian group of seven-day adventists a break-off group and they believe that uh christ is still coming very soon so literally there have been this i guess you could say three disappointments first of all way back lmg white 1844 and then not coming and not the end and uh or william miller and l in G-White. And then Hadef, thinking that he would certainly live to see the end, and he dies.

And then finally, the rodents taking over. So when the rodents took over and Ben died, Lois was a prophetess. She very much had prophecy. She published a magazine called Shikana, S-H-E. She believed that one of the great revelations that she had brought was that the Holy Spirit, was female. And so God the father is one part of the Godhead, but there's also God the mother. That's the Holy Spirit. And then Jesus, the son of God. So it's a family with a mother, a father, and a son. Now what Vernon began to believe, and I'll just call him David Koresh, because that's the people, that's the name people know, even though I'm talking about the earlier period. They began to believe that God was restoring what they call present truth. In other words,

William Miller had calculated the right date for the investigative judgment. Ellen G. White had come along and restored the Sabbath day, Saturday. She had a vision of heaven and she saw the arc of the covenant and heaven opened. And she saw the tablets of the Ten Command. commandments. And she saw a circle around the one that said, remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. The seventh day, not the first day of the week that most Christians see as a kind of a new Sabbath or a new holy day. So she restored that truth. And then when Rodin had come along, he restored the idea that Christ is not going to just come and take people to heaven, but there's going to be a kingdom on earth. So that was very major to them. So suddenly they can read all of these prophecies in the Bible about Israel, even the modern state of Israel being reestablished. That was in 1948. And prophecies getting fulfilled, 1967, the Six Day War, they got very excited because the Israelis took back the old city. And like many evangelical Christians that follow Bible prophecy, they begin to get encouraged that we have to be living in the last days because look how God is fulfilling

his promises, bringing the Jews back to the land, giving them Jerusalem back as their capital and that sort of thing. And then the Rodin's added, Ben Rodin added, well, we got to keep not just the Sabbath with the Jewish festivals. Now this really plays into the drama with the FBI I because David Koresh would use terms like Passover and normally you would associate that with a Jewish group, but this is a Christian group, the branched of Indians, but they're keeping all the feasts of the Hebrew Bible of the of the Lord, they call them, the feast of the Lord. So Passover, Pentecost, the feast of tabernacles, some of your listeners will have heard of some of those because some groups today even are aware of those festivals. And so the idea would be that

LNG White restored the Sabbath, Odef restored the kingdom of God on earth, Rodin restored the festivals, and now David Koresh is coming. And he also is claiming to have the gift of prophecy. see. And he's bringing what he calls the new light, which is that he is the messenger of the book of Revelation chapter 10. It says when the seventh messenger, seventh is the final one. There's seven of them. When the seventh messenger begins to blow his trumpet, which would be like putting out your message, that to him would be revealed all the mysteries of the prophets. So David found himself described in Revelation chapter 10. He began to say, okay, all this other stuff has been restored by my predecessors, but I'm restoring all the

mysteries of the prophets. So what are the mysteries of the prophets? And that was his claim to have this new light, this new message, this present truth. it was appealing mainly to Adventists because they were already kind of acclimated to go along with this idea that there's going to be this progressive revelation and more and more truth will be revealed and we can update our understanding of what's happening and what's going to happen and when things would be fulfilled. And so he began to give his interpretations of the Bible. And apparently by 1985 or so, he went to Jerusalem. By the way, travel with Lois a couple of times to Jerusalem. They did have a sexual relationship. So he became, you know, her husband's dead.

She's free to marry. She's the prophetess, and he becomes the prophetess. But I think some of the members were pretty blown away by that because they thought, well, this is really strange behavior. I mean, Lois, I don't remember her exact age, but she's an older woman in her 60s, I think, at least in David is in his 20s. And at one point, there was even a story going around that she had become pregnant, as if it was, you know, like a miraculous birth because she was. also past menopause. That didn't turn out to be the case and there are different stories about that. But either way, the people we know from 1993 when you had this confrontation with the BATF and the FBI, most of them, many of them, I shouldn't say most of them, many of them went back

to the older days, especially some of the leaders. For example, Clive Doyle, I know you've Probably talked about him a lot. And Perry Jones and some of those members, they had known the rodents, and some of them had even gone back further than that and would consider themselves Branch Davidians. But then David began by his new teaching, his new light, to attract more and more people. And he at first just claimed to be the prophet. He began to then see himself as not just the final prophet who's going to reveal all the mysteries of the end time, but he's also going to fulfill a different role that the Branch Davidians and the Adventists had never even thought of, and that is the role of a so-called sinful Messiah.

And this is something entirely new. It's unique to David. And I've got my Bible here. I'm actually going to open it up and look at a couple of things with you where I can just read a couple of passages here. But in the Psalms, there's this figure that David identified as a sinful Messiah. and he would talk about this sinful Messiah, who is a Messiah for sure. So, for example, Psalm 40, there's a figure, it's a Psalm of David, King David, the ancient King David of the Bible. But what he says is, lo, I come in the role of the book, it is written of me.

I delight to do your will, O God, your law is in my heart. And Koresh read that and he thought, well, Dave, that could have applied to David, but it has an in-time application as well. And then it goes on to say, my iniquities have overtaken me till I cannot see. There are more than the hairs of my head. And he would begin to make the point to his followers, who is this Messiah? And that's not the only passage. there are quite a few others, particularly in the Psalms and in the book of Isaiah, about a prophetic figure that would come, an anointed one.

They would be called Koresh, which is the word Cyrus in English, but Koresh is the Hebrew word that he used. And he would actually be a Messiah. He wouldn't be Christ. That's where the FBI and ATF had a lot of trouble. they used to say in the press conferences everything from oh he thinks he's god or he claims to be Jesus Christ which he absolutely did not claim the branch Davidians believe in Jesus of Nazareth Jesus Christ who lived 2,000 years ago they saw him as their savior he died for their sins they have all the standard teachings of the Adventists about faith in Jesus so they are

a Christian group. What they've come to is the Sabbath day, the festivals, the Holy Spirit as the female side of God. And now David is adding, well, there's going to be a final figure, he called it. There's a final revelatory figure. He's also going to be the Messiah, and he's going to destroy Babylon. So anciently Babylon, we're talking about the 6th century BC, King Nebuchadnezzar, you know, when we talk about Babylon. And later Cyrus, King of Persia, which would get us into the 600s, 7th century, 6th century, 6th century BC. But David would read these prophecies and he would say, well, look, though, it also talks about the time of the end in those same chapters. So there has to be a final, just as Cyrus, the king of Persia, released the captives of his day and destroyed Babylon,

because Cyrus did destroy the kingdom of Babylon and freed the Jews. Then there will be a new Cyrus, a final Cyrus, who will be a Messiah. And Cyrus is called a Messiah in Isaiah 45, verse 1. That says the Lord to Cyrus, my Messiah. But David's now saying, well, it's called type and anti-type. I know there's a former meaning in history, but then there's a second meaning at the end time. And he began to believe that he was that one. He did claim to hear voices to get revelations that God would actually tell him things,

such as during the siege on March the 2nd when he had proven. promised to come out. He heard a voice that said, wait. Just wait, one word. Don't come out. And he, of course, reported that to the FBI. They got a big kick out of that because they said, there he goes, you know, he broke his word and so forth. But to the Davidians, when you listen to the tapes, it's as if I wouldn't say God's speaking, but God's prophet. But God's prophet is speaking and God through that prophet has said wait and he was connecting it to a prophecy of the book of Revelation called the seven seals and it's in the chapter six of the book of revelation i mentioned sometimes in interviews that the FBI some of them thought that the seven

seals were animals but uh i don't know how many thought that but i think i opened my book by saying when the FBI arrived at Waco and checked into the Hilton Hotel, they really didn't think to bring their Bibles with them. You know, this wasn't the idea of the hostage barricade rescue team. All right. So obviously a lot there, but the bottom line being that these are truly believing people. And sometimes there are people who maybe are nominally religious. or especially for non-religious people,

it all just seems so unreal. But these are people who are literally living in the pages of the Bible every day and whatever you make of that degree of faith. It was an honest one and a deeply held one and the point being that it was the only way that they saw the world that they were living in. It was all biblical prophecy unfolding around them and so forth.

So I have a few more clips here to play. This one is fairly important. This is of Tabor on Koresh. I asked him about apocalyptic movements in the 1990s. It was kind of all the rage approaching the millennium and that kind of thing. And so I asked him to sort of compare and contrast if he could Koresh with the other popular millennialist preachers of that time. Some real similarities and some real differences. The Adventists themselves tend to allegorize anything about the Jewish people or the people of Israel, and they, I'm talking about the Adventists, not the Branch Davidians. And they would tend to say that's the church.

You know, we're the new people of Israel. We're spiritual Israel. They would go with the apostle Paul who began to say, you know, anybody who follows Christ is the seat of Abraham. But you're exactly right that it really begins in the 1920. 20s and 30s with what are called dispensationalist, is the technical term. They follow a guy named John Darby from England, who is one of a group called the Plymouth Brethren. But by the time we're talking about, it really gets ramped up in the 70s, 80s, and 90s by people like Hal Lindsay. Howell Lindsay was a Baptist. He was of this dispensationalist view. And the big difference is that the dispensationalists, the Darbyites, they often use a Bible called the Schofield Bible.

It's the King James. Koresh did not use it. It wasn't his belief. He just used a straight King James. But the Schofield Bible has all these notes. And it was published in the 1920s. And if you remember hearing about this book, or maybe you're old enough to remember the late great planet Earth, It was the all-time bestseller of the 1970s.

It sold millions of copies. And then Tim Leahy after that, with his books left behind, and then movie series. And all of those books were saying basically the same thing, that when Israel returns to the land in 1948, that's the fig tree ripening. and this generation will not pass till all these things are fulfilled. So they basically thought about like a 40-year period. So if you add 40 years to the 1948, you're into the 80s. Now, David Koresh and the Branch Divideans

are certainly influenced by that to some degree. It's out there everywhere, but they would believe that because these Sunday-keeping churches, are not keeping the Sabbath and the festivals and the dietary laws, you know, of the Torah. They're not following the laws of God in the way of God. They are actually Babylon. So even though Hege or somebody like that might think the end is near and be watching prophecy and interpreting all of these events in a somewhat similar way, troop movements in the Middle East and the

Gulf War and all that kind of thing that was going on in the 1990s right around this time. David was watching the Gulf War as well and was convinced by those events. But he would not think that those people had the present truth, just that there's this general atmosphere, as you noted, that's in the air. You also had Herbert W. Armstrong, the Worldwide Church of God, his son, Garner Ted Armstrong, I think they had the major radio program in the country, if not the world, also teaching and preaching that the end was near. So back in the 70s, 80s, 90s, I remember following this and hearing about it very heavily. It was all over the place.

And then once 40 years passed, as always happens, I tell my students, I teach a course in apocalypticism through the ages. And I tell them, you know, we're going to start the study of a topic or a subject, an idea that so far has a 100% failure rate. And I know that sounds cynical, but it's actually true. Think of an enterprise that people have engaged in, put their whole livelihood in, their whole lives in, and it's always failed. And that's what you get into when you get into apocalypticism. but each subsequent movement thinks that they are right now the big difference with koresh would be none of those groups i think heggy included how lindsay tim lehaye they're writing books based on how they read and interpret the text of the bible itself prophetic teachings they're

still all over the place today especially on youtube and on different kinds of television stations Pat Robertson, the 700 Club was very big at one point. He's always been predicting the end. But they're not saying, I am the living prophet. I'm the final messenger. I'm the one who's going to bring the final truth, and I'm gathering the remnant of God's people. And I should add that.

What Hottif believed, what Rodin believed, both rodents, and what Kaurish believed, was that God was going to choose 144,000 people scattered throughout the world and they were going to become the true Israel. They would return to the land. They would be believing in Jesus Christ.

So even though the Jews are going back to the land, Zionism is not a Christian movement. It's supported by Christians because they want to see prophecy fulfilled. But this is the idea that people like the followers of Hata, the Rodens, and Koresh, would finally number 144,000. And this is mentioned in the book of Revelation that before the judgment falls, God seals. And this is the same word, the idea of on the forehead, he's going to put a mark on the people that will be spared the wrath when it's poured out. So David's whole message would not be the message of Hal Lindsay, of Hagee, or any of these other prophecy types of the 70s, 80s, 90s, even into our day, because he would believe that he uniquely has the message that is going to seal these 144,000.

They're called the first fruits in the book of Revelation. If you think of a harvest, and in the ancient days of the harvest at Passover, two weeks before Passover, you would do the wave sheaf offering. It's a barley harvest, and as it begins in the spring of the year, you would take some sheaves of grain and wave it in the temple before God, and that would show the acceptance of the first fruits of the harvest. And then finally, the wrath of God is poured out in the world and on Babylon and on what they called the beast power. Okay, so I have a couple of more clear.

here along these lines before we get to the action, you know, to wrap up about the Divideons themselves was, so this clip is Alan Stone, who is featured in your movie, the Rules of Engagement. He's a professor from Yale of psychiatry and psychology. Psychiatry and law. And law, right. And so, and he was quite indignant in your interview of him. And this is just a short clip of that here. Koresh was not a criminal psychopathic type.

He had, as a youngster, spent months memorizing the Bible, and particularly these particular passages about the seven seals. And that sort of repetitive study, memorization, throwing herself into that kind of disciplined project is not what sociopaths do. And he was able to convince the other people by his knowledge of the Bible and the way he put it together. That's how he convinced people like Mr. Martin and Mr. Schneider were both intelligent, serious

people. Mr. Martin was a graduate of Harvard School. He was one of our earliest African-American graduates. He was certainly not a weirdo. He was certainly not a criminal. He was certainly not a psychopath. He had gone on and done further religious studies after leaving Harvard law school and had become interested in Koresh's teachings. That is how he got into the compound. So the idea that these people like Snyder and Martin were somehow criminal types or people who had just been sort of buffaloed by Koresh,

I think, is a most unfortunate mischaracterization. Okay, and then here's one more, and it's lengthy, but I think, worth it from James Tabor. Yes, of course, but it all connects to the 144,000 because the person who gathers the 144,000 is the figure that he claims to be, who goes to Jerusalem, a young man, and measures it. So he's found himself in the text of the book of Revelation and then these other scriptures. And what he has convinced them of is that there is this final lamb, this L-A-M-B, this sinful lamb, who's going to come and open the seven seals. And his argument was that that is not Jesus of Nazareth. that Jesus of Nazareth gives the revelation of the final lamb.

So who's the final lamb? And what Steve Snyder, who was one of the seminary guys, Livingstone Fagan, who also had an advanced degree in theology, what they would say is exactly what you ask. They would say, well, show me someone who can open the seven seals. Now, what are they? well, in chapter six of Revelation, you have this figure, the Lamb, who he argued is not Jesus, and he would give all his reasons through all these scriptures, kind of like a Bible savant, I would say.

I'm including the Psalms, Isaiah, many other texts that he had found that he thought referred to this figure. And he would then say, everybody opens Revelation 6, and you open the first, seal, right? And it's a rider on a white horse. Well, that has to be Jesus, because in chapter 19, Jesus comes, and he's the rider on the white horse. And he would then show you by opening that seal that that's not actually Jesus. That's this other figure. And it would almost be like, if not me, who? Because I'm the one who's opened these seals. And he would go through. all seven of them and would apply them in this intricate way. I remember, Scott, I listened to all of the negotiating tapes. It took me two years, either read the transcripts or listened, and he would

try to get the FBI guys into Bible studies, and they would tend to just glaze over. But, you know, he would go, let's turn over to Psalm 40, and then we have Isaiah 45, who is this figure in so forth. But as I'm listening, I'm realizing that what? I'm beginning to get a glimpse of what he was weaving together. And in his own worldview that these people have begun to share, it made a kind of logical sense to them. And what they would say repeatedly is show me someone else that can open the seven seals. Who is the figure of Psalm 40 and Isaiah 45 and so forth, who's going to destroy Babylon. And it was convincing to them on a very detail level. I saw in a recent interview that you did. You compared him almost to Dustin Hoffman

and Rain Man counting matchsticks on the ground or something like that, where this guy had just memorized the entire Bible in a way that very few people that you have any experience with have ever accomplished in a way that you respected his level of expertise here, not that you were buying his whole stick, but what I noticed, besides listening to negotiation tapes, I did two other things. I call Phil Arnold and I, we did it together. We call Livingstone Fagan, who was in jail. And he was in his today, one of the most knowledgeable about the teachings of the Branch David Koresh and all of his claims. So we were tutored by him over. the telephone to begin to get an idea of what he taught then i got tapes uh cassette tapes i

remember one in particular he goes from the book of isaiah chapter 40 verse by verse through isaiah 66 okay and if you had asked me before i listened to those tapes i would have told you hey scott yeah i think i know almost what's in every chapter name a chapter I can probably tell you what's in it. You know, I've studied Isaiah pretty extensively. It's used in the ancient world, and I work on those texts. But I was pretty astounded. Now, not in the sense that I was convinced by it at all

because I would take a more historical approach. What I was convinced by or what I was impressed with was how he could weave through them and consistently pull out this figure that he would find mention. and then would say, now, who is this figure? Because it can't be Jesus, because Jesus is spoken of in other passages and other times. Who is this sinful Messiah?

And that's, it was a, it had it, you know, he didn't have the Bible memorize the way you would say, David, what second chronicles three verse two? He probably wouldn't know that. I mean, I'm just being arbitrary here. That's not what I mean by memorized. What he had memorized was whole chapters of the Psalms, particularly and the prophets. And, of course, the book of Revelation and the book of Daniel, those are the main text that he would use. And some of the other prophets like Josea Amos, probably all of the minor prophets, as they're called, Nahum, Habakkuk.

Most people have never even read them. Well, David could quote them from memory without even looking, but then he would weave together this interpretation that was quite elaborate. And once you begin to follow it, you could see how people are being impressed with it if they come from that worldview. Even somebody like Steve Snyder, who had done graduate work in the 70 Adventist Seminaries

and Livingstone Fagan. So that's more of what it was. And it had to do with this, you know, a mathematical savant can tell you what day of the week it was in July 2nd, 1846 in, you know, one second. So it's not that kind of savant. But given the body of things that I'm talking about, Revelation, Daniel, all the Hebrew prophets, all the Psalms, that would it be his canon or that would be his body of expertise. Within that, he could move through that and quote this, that, and the other. And it was, in fact,

I was impressed by it in the sense that I was trying to understand just what you're asking me, why would they be attracted? Why would they decide that this is the one? What would make them think that? And so a lot of it had to do with finding this voice in the prophets and then saying, that's me. Like there's a psalm that says morning by morning, he awakens me, he speaks in my ear. And then David would go to that, and he would say, who is this, who is this that God wakes up every morning and speaks to? But then he would connect it to some other texts that would seem to have, in some ways, part of that same kind of idea. Okay, so I appreciate y'all bearing with me here. I guess the idea is, and I hope that this is acceptable, that we're really trying to tell the whole story.

So we're not just explaining the setting so that people understand who we're dealing with, but we're going ahead and I guess airing on the side of taking our time and being comprehensive here so that people can really understand. So I wanted to add a couple of clips of the cops here just for people who've never heard them before. This is first captain, oh no, forgot his first name. Is it James Burns, the Texas Ranger? I think so. I'm sorry, I should have had that in the title.

It's Captain Burns, the Texas Ranger, and then Captain Jack Harwell, who is the sheriff of McClendon County there. And this is their take on the Branch Divideons. Majority of those people in there were not criminals in the sense of the word that we think about them. They were truly believing, people, I believe 99% of those people, their sole purpose, was the attainment of eternal life,

which is, after all, what I believe all of us that, you know, at least that are Christians and believe in. You had a bunch of women, children, elderly people. They were all good, good people. They had different beliefs from others, different beliefs than I have, or maybe different beliefs. different beliefs than you have in their way of life, and especially in their religious beliefs. But basically, they were good people. I was around them quite a lot.

They were always nice, mannerly. They minded their own business. They were never overbearing. They were always clean and courteous. I like it. Okay. And now, so here's where we start talking about guns. And the Branch Divideons, obviously, this is where the controversy begins.

So, first of all, I finally had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of Paul Fada this last April 19th in Waco at their remembrance there for the 30th. April the 19th, 2003, Scott Wharton, I'm here with Paul Fata, surviving Branch Davidian. So here is Paul Fatton. talking about Koresh and his talent and his influence and you know control over the people and all of that as Tabor explained it's not the average minister who claims to actually be in the Bible right so there's a little something extra here we're all free moral agents I make my own choices nobody forces me to do anything you know you get a certain amount of credibility talking about David through his message.

I witnessed him debating with scholars and people with PhDs. And I was amazed. I don't think he couldn't learn this. He couldn't have got a book and went and researched to have the knowledge he had. To me, it was impossible. I saw him when he was, I don't know, I can't remember,

it was some ministers or some leadership of the Adventist Church. He was talking, it was almost like he was a megaphone. That's what I'm saying. Like God was actually using him to talk. He told, he often said this, prophets are like Dixie Cups. They're disposable. God uses who he will I never felt like

I was following David the the fleshy whatever you said you saw I felt like in every generation the Bible says that there

got that you be established in the present truth the question is in my faith and being in the Adventist church there is a present truth. God uses people to put his truth forward. So you have a right to make a choice. That gate was always open. People weren't shackled to their beds. If you, if in the middle of night, I said, I had enough. I'm out of here. I could have just walked right out the gate. And anybody could at any time.

Nobody was held hostage. So you made your choice if you want it. And a lot of people did leave. Dana left. All right. So now, Vamsa, I guess I should have really said this when I first introduced him here, that this story of Paul Fata, as we're going to talk about more in just a second, I guess, is that he wasn't there that day, but went to prison anyway.

but so he sure has a lot of perspective on what all happened now um so i have uh i guess i'll ask all the bear patience with me here and play one more clip of james tabor on cults and the likenesses and sames between them and other religions well it's a really important question And in my book, Why Waco, the subtitle is really important because the title, Why Waco Question Mark Doesn't Tell You Life. In the subtitle, this is University of California, Berkeley, so high-level academic book, Colts and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America. Now, when you hear that, you could think, oh, this is a book about fighting cults because,

and then you go, wait, but religious freedom, hmm. So you see where the title is going, if you know anything about this whole issue. So the notion of cult, it's basically the N-word among academics. And in other words, it's pejorative, it's prejudice, it's judgmental. I think it was the day after the fire,

and I'll work back to Rick Ross and all of them, but the day after the fire, April 19th, President Clinton appeared in the Rose Guard, very important kind of press conference announcement to talk about how horribly it had been, you know, had it ended. Janet Reno's there. Everybody's there. The cabinet's there. But at one point, he says in his speech or prepared statement, well, maybe this should be a warning to those who would be tempted to join cults. And I just thought to myself at that time. I was listening live. Oh my God. He, you know, wouldn't expect him to be any different, although he was a Rhodes Scholar and reads things. So does the government give us a list of approved

and disapproved religions, the ones that are manipulative and could be called cults, as if a conservative Catholic family perfectly acceptable in our culture? is teaching their little kids at age 3, 4, 5, 6 about an ever-burning L. And there are any number of things that establish religions teach, that we don't call cults. So the problem with cult, Tom Wolfe said, the famous novelist, a cult is a religion with no political power. And my teacher, Morton Smith, at Columbia said, one person's religion is another person's cult or reverse it one person's cold is enough i think that's what he said

one person's cult is another person's sincerely believed religion so what is what we have to do what we're pleading for and it's an absolutely losing battle scott in 30 years i don't even think we've won anything in making this point because we're called cult apollo you have to find more sociological and accurate ways of describing groups. So the Jesus movement, which is my field of study, as you know, was a cult in its own time. You got a charismatic leader who says, I'm the only guy, and if you don't follow me, the highway. And he even says, give up your father, mother, brother, sister, even says hate them. Well, Rick Ross is a devoted Christian.

He's evangelical from a background, I think. Well, he clearly went, oh, but Jesus is not a cult leader, and you go, well, why? Oh, because he was the true Messiah, see. So this is what you get into when you deal with religion. The Romans certainly thought Jesus was a cult leader, and they used the word cult in a similar pejorative way. So what we try to ask for in our academic discourse is to just say what you want. Like I wrote a book on suicide, I think I might have mentioned to you. And what we argue in the book, it's written with Arthur Droge, my co-author, a professor at the University of Toronto.

And I said, we say, you commit murder, you commit adultery, you commit suicide, you commit suicide, you commit suicide. suicide. All of a sudden, you've judged it. And we say, well, heroes in war, that's not suicide. That's heroic death. So we went to, it's called a noble death, ideas of suicide and, you know, death by choice in antiquity. This is Greco-Romans, Masada, all these things, all the way back. And it's very similar to the cold argument. If you say somebody committed suicide, why don't you just say, say he took some pills or she took some pills or in the ancient world she jumped off a roof and then you ask why and as you don't label it so that's the problem what the word called so what they mean of course i think you and i would probably agree a high demand group with a charismatic leader that in many ways not brainwashes because i think that word is problematic but gets all a group of people to align so heavily behind his or her thoughts and views and insights as being some kind of a special enlightened figure. And therefore, that high demand ends up like,

yeah, you need to give your whole life and give your money and leave aside this, that, and the other. So yes, David Koresh is a quintessential example of that kind of movement. But the word cult isn't helpful all right and i asked taber to about the cult busters there's one former dividian named mark bro and then there was this sort of professional cult de-programmer named rick ross if you read bro's book which is out of print but well worth reading it comes across very much like david bunz's broadcast that he's doing now in pretty well reporting anecdotes and stories that have a ring of truth to them. You know, like, Chorus did this and Chorus did that, and this happened, and that happened.

So I wouldn't put them in the category of Rick Ross, which is literally, you know, have gun will travel, you know, almost like a business. I got to expose these cults. And I don't know what his own personal beliefs are, but maybe I, as a religious studies professor, having broad views of religion might even call his views cultish. You don't have to have a charismatic leader to scare the hell literally out of people and really mess up their lives with all kinds of religious mythology and stuff like that. So any, I would say it's any kind of system of thought, whether it's congregationally or denominationally based or an individual leader like Koresh, that actually tries to persuade people by backing it up with eternal life and heaven and hell and so forth. And I think you've known from interviewing some of the Waco people involved. You mentioned Thibodeau and Fata, and you get this all the time in the negotiation tapes and everything you read. Even the Branch-Dividian video where it's in their own words, you know, just have them talking.

Part of the motivation and it's huge is we don't want to be lost. And David would say that. You know, in his famous tape where it's called the screaming tape, he just loses it. I don't know if you've heard it yet, but it's like a high-pitched rant for about 20 minutes. And it just sounds like a mentally ill person and a mental word. And he's talking about Mark Broe leaving in Elizabeth and what they're doing.

And he just loses it, just literally unhinged. And it's recorded. And David Buns plays it on his channel. And it's hard to listen to. It's very uncomfortable to listen to because it makes you think the man is a maniac, basically. But what is his power in that scream fist? You branches are going to lose it all. You know, when I come back with my wrath and all that.

So I just want to compare that to churches, for example, that would say the same thing to their kids, It's this sort of hellfire and brimstone thing. And young people today, thank God, I think largely throw kind of that kind of shackle off. But a lot of kids don't because I teach Christianity. I have people writing me all the time, Scott. You know, my email's public and they write and say, dear Dr. Tabor, I'm wondering whether any of this is true, but I'm afraid I'll go to hell if I don't believe Jesus, this, that, and the other. And what do you think?

like I have and I always say look I can't be your spiritual advisor but I can point you to what historical studies seem to say yeah but you've got to educate yourself all right so you know I think that's basically enough of that I miss my opportunity to crack the joke about how Koresh thought that they were going to all move to Israel and join the IDF to fight against the forces of the devil and all that that was a couple of clips ago I can just add some something here. I think the in common usage today, contemporary usage, the word cult,

I know when we did stories about the Manson stuff, didn't exist as a pejorative. Manson was really the line when that started, became a bad word because we didn't know what do you call something like the

Manson gang. Now it certainly wasn't religious. I mean, I don't think he didn't claimed to be Jesus that I'm aware of or anything else, that there was just a bunch of knuckleheads out run by a crazy guy. But from then on, we start using cult as a very important pejority. And like he said, in the academic world, that's called, it's equivalent to the inward, which I think is a very good comment. But all through the descriptions of the Davidians, we have lots of loaded words like compound.

I mean, these are clearly put in there to militarize the situation and make them sound as if they were going on. I talked to Peter Jennings. Remember Peter Jennings used to be the anchor on ABC News when I was in New York. And I was asking him, why is he continuing to tall about a compound that the Divideons were in and the defensive wall. And I had to look, we looked at a picture and said, well, where's the defensive wall?

I don't see a defensive wall. And it's not a, I mean, we have the device, the Kennedy compound, but that is a compound. That's at multiple buildings behind a wall. There's nothing like that here. This is simply a word that we use and carries a certain loaded baggage with it. And that's where it's tough to get out of your head.

Well, and at the time, the guy's name might as well have been Charlie Manson because he was mentioned in the same breath all the time, you know? And so it was the equivalency there. And, of course, later with the Jim Jones' whole mass suicide angle, too, oh, we've seen this before. This fits into this pattern of things that we're told to recognize. and so how simple and easy it is to just go along with kind of a narrative like that that seems to make sense on its face.

Certainly, Koresh never told any of his harem to go out and murder people in their houses. Right. Nothing like that. And now, and it's also interesting that, again, with the Manson thing, that the way it was used at the time during the siege and the whole propaganda against the people, the evilness of the cult it became all of reflection on the guilt of Koresh

and what a monster he is the way he is in his lieutenants there's some more loaded language his lieutenant Steve Schneider is helping him and they're holding these people hostage like essentially under this magic spell of control which I like the way Tabor puts it

it's high demand allegiance to this thing. So there is, you know, whatever exactly you want to call it, call it, there is a certain pattern of behavior here that is different from the way that most ministers are, that's for sure. But in terms of public relations, I was going to say, you know, they use it to attack him with, but they never said, whoa so that really means then that from the point of view of the people who believe in this guy that they really believe in this guy and we've got to find a way to reach them and really you know they do this all the time you'll hear them say you know European countries like

France Germany Putin you know France Germany Poland Putin so you're not allowed to even say Russia because that implies lots of people it's the one guy that we hate and they do that to Saddam Hussein all the time, of course. And that was what they did to David Koresh. Of course, by the end, it was like, yeah, they're killing women and children in there and everything, but they're, like, been grayed out. They're really not part of the story.

It's Koresh, that's the enemy, and he's got to get gotten. And then this other thing is sort of collateral damage that they've been so dehumanized that they're, you know, and made invisible because of somehow their status as cult members that way. is again the story of waco is the story of waco and how wrong it is just in every way and how just how misled people were in the way that they considered that thing at the time and as it all played out okay here's where we start with the guns as first in terms of what it meant to the group and what they were doing and then of course how that caught the attention of

the ATF and leads into our real saga here. So this is out of order from the interview, but this clip is Paul Fada, who was nominally in charge of running the gun business for the branch Davidians talking about, and we get more into the business later, but this is him explaining the context of the Davidians in their position on guns.

You know, I try to think of the exact year, probably, probably 91, somewhere in there. Okay, I mean, that's actually a huge revelation, in fact, right? So if the community, did the community always have guns before that, but just not in quantity and not as a business, right? The only guns we had were those leftovers from that incident. That's it. So whatever was there. There was no particular interest. in firearms among the branch of

idiots until McMahon got y'all interested in this side business is that yeah that's that's true maybe go plink cans sometimes or not even that they just sit there in the corner well I mean obviously they were put away somewhere

I don't know exactly where but in a safe place I mean we had kids there and I mean I have to say Paul I don't think well look it's been a long time since I read all about this, I admit. Today's the 30th anniversary we're talking here in Waco. That's right. I'm trying to remember. But, you know, of course, the official story is that the firearms themselves were integral to the religious apocalyptic view that someday they're going

to have to have a shootout with the FBI and this kind of thing, where you're telling me that here this religion's been founded in the 20s and 30s and has lasted this long. And here in the 1990s, finally in 1990, 91 sometime, a guy who is a Christian, but not a member of the group, who is considered by the ATF, we know, to be a legitimate gun businessman in town, the very same one that y'all are dealing with. He's the one who recommends that you guys do exactly what he's doing, participate in the legitimate gun business on the open market in the state of Texas, just

like everybody else. And that's the origin of the beginning of the collection of any kind of remarkable quantity of firearms is simply, as you're saying, because he saw the Democrats coming in and said, buy low now and sell high when they pass the assault weapons ban, which is exactly what they did, right? Exactly. That's exactly it. All right. I'm sorry. That clip is mostly me talking to him, but still the point made. And they didn't even start buying guns in any quantity until 1991. And it was strictly just to resell.

them but so uh this one is also go ahead smart yeah absolutely right it's that's because that's uh i've explained this to many people uh that as soon as Washington says we're going to ban child safety seats you you can bet they're going to jump and ban anything for that matter during this period and we were doing the film I actually got uh myself for myself a dealer's license from the ATF because I wanted to see how they operated. I've been hearing all this from people, and this is a period when you had a lot of people doing business over kitchen tables around the country, because there was a period when the ATF had encouraged everybody to get a license, otherwise they'd get prosecuted.

You know, say, you've got an old gun, your granddad owned, and you sell it to Dave, and, well, do you have a license? Did you pay your fee? Did you pay your taxes? Did you, whatever? I mean, we have a smorgasbord of laws here that can be just hammered on people for it. Yeah.

And you're a gun lawyer, you were going to say? Well, the original Gun Control Act of 1968 encouraged people to get a dealer's license. The idea was that if you're a dealer, you have to keep records, and today you have to do background check if you aren't. You don't. So why not make it very?

I think the initial licensing fee was $10 a year. The idea was get everybody licensed. And of course, in that, there is also the attempt to give the ATF something to do. I mean, if I go back when I was a child and back in the woods and I was a Ridge Run and Packerwood in North Carolina, if you went in and bought a bunch of mason jars, you had to fill out a form your address and everything else because that's what the moonshiner has put their stuff in and your mom might be putting up peaches or something but they wanted to know if you

secretly make it shine in the basement or something so and then that went away and it's progressed when the gun control act of 68 came about I think there was a period there they were talking about questioning why do we even need this agency what should we get rid of it and somebody said hey well let's let them out there and so but i mean that's what is this joint thing alcohol tobacco firearms what is it now exploices yep of of they got liver worse i'm just waiting for to turn into a convenience store rather than a government agency i've actually seen a couple of pictures of old country stores called tobacco and firearms like that yeah they get the jump this is interesting to me

about Paul Fata here. Well, in the trial, they kept using the term that I was the blood merchant. The blood merchant. No, I'm serious. That's what the prosecutor kept saying. That my main goal was to buy firearms with the intent of killing federal agents.

And that's totally not true. I'm not, I think a lot of people were disappointed that I'm not some gun expert, and I'm not. I personally, I really don't like guns. I mean, I'm telling the truth. Now I wish I could own one. If I have a gun and I get caught with it, I'm going to prison for eight years. Yeah, don't bother now.

No questions asked. Too late now. So, you know. For you to begin to like guns, Paul. No, I know. So, I look, I mean, I'm sorry, this is highly relevant. relevant to me. And it was great to meet this poor guy. He did 12 years in the pen. I'm skipping ahead. But that's who we're talking about here. And I'm going to get to his role a little bit

more. But here he is. He says, he's not even a gun guy. And even when Koresh said, hey, listen, I need you to help run the gun business here. He was like, all right, you know, whatever you say, pal. But he was not, I think, I was under the impression that, of course, he must have been a gun guy. Otherwise, why was he the gun guy? But it turns out, nope, it's just because David Koresh had asked politely. And that was it. He's, there was not even necessarily his thing at all. And then so I asked Paul about the hellfire triggers, which, uh, seemed to cause so much trouble here. First of all, I'm not, I've seen those hellfire. I think you could buy them back then mail order. It's a little piece that goes on the trigger. It, it,

makes it very sensitive. They were legal. I don't know if they cost five or ten bucks. But they can be mistaken by ear for a fully automatic rifle. Correct. Correct. Yes. Yes.

Exactly. So then one of the neighbors had contacted the ATF over that, but I believe Koresh or someone had gotten word of that and had then contacted the sheriff's department to try to get the all clear, something like that? Yes. I believe that's true. Yes.

Okay. And do you know whether they had actually taken the rifles down to the sheriff's office or if they had just, you know, talked to them about it and said it's just one of these seniors? I think he might have just made a phone call. You know, we had a pretty good rapport with the sheriff's department. Talk more about that. Well, we didn't have a lot of problems. I mean, there was the issue.

I don't know if we were talking about that in 87. Go ahead. The, uh, when, uh, George Rodin, this is prior to us taking over the property. George Rodin had, uh, been living there. He'd taken on some shady people. He's renting houses too. Uh, and I know it's crazy, but he, I heard he dug up a casket of a woman that was a, uh, uh, Davidian that had died at me.

Mount Carmel, he dug this body up and made a challenge to David that whoever can resurrect his body is a true prophet. Did you hear that story? Yes, this is all on the record, part of the history. Go ahead. Okay. So David was obviously not interested in that, but a lot of the people within the church were upset that he was digging up the graveyard and this woman that had been buried, it's desecrating a grave. So we called the sheriff's department and said, this is what's going on. And the sheriff was like, well, if you can get some pictures of it. So you know about all that.

I know the story. Please continue. I want to hear your side of it for sure. So, David first tried, there was one of Perry Jones' sons was living on the property. I think he paid him like 20 or 50 bucks. He goes, hey, can you just go get some pictures of that casket? And you were with Koresh around this time? Yes.

Okay, go ahead. He said if you can get pictures of that casket, take a picture of them and give it to us so we can take it to the sheriff. And they'll go out there and deal with George. Anyways, come to find out, George had moved the casket. The kid was scared. He didn't want to do it. So David divides the plan where we were going to go out late at night, go on the property. We took a couple cameras and go out there and take pictures of the casket.

So I don't know the exact date or anything, but yes, it was like eight of us. We went out late at night. It was probably like two in the morning. And the casket was supposed to have been in the church. They had a church there. I had never been on the property. Actually, that's the first time I've been there, and that was at night. We went to the spot where the casket was supposed to be.

It wasn't there. He moved it. And so we were waiting for daylight. Anyways, there used to be a lot of maybe, I don't know, six, seven homes on the property, small homes. So we were going from house to house to find it. And one of the houses, he had somebody living there. We just told that person, hey, just leave the property.

We're looking for something. Anyways, when they left, they told George we were there. And George came out with an Uzi. And there was a shootout. With an Uzi, okay. Yes, he came out with an Uzi. and there's a shootout and then what happened there's a shootout uh i never fired it george i mean i had a ruger 223 i think and we had some different firearms but uh the main part was to get

the picture of the casket the whole goal was to get george off the property but get them off legally and the sheriff's department knew we were going there and they even told us this is dangerous but we said we're going to try to do this so george came out started shooting at people he had two guys pinned down it was uh floyd haughtman stan sylvia were were laying behind this concrete and uh another miracle david took some shots at george he went behind behind him the tree and he was sticking his arm out around this big tree you know he's using it for protection and shooting well david fired a shot it hit the magazine on the oozy it disengaged the gun and he couldn't fire anymore no way i i'm dead serious i'm it hit right in the top front of the

magazine and it was over he couldn't fire anymore and within three three minutes the sheriffs all converged on the property helicopter came and they ran on the property david jones was part of our group the postman and when they ran on all the sheriffs knew who he was they were like he he yelled at the sheriffs arrest george he's the one that's uh you know shooting at us and And so they run over there. Anyways, it came down to, they told us all to lay on the ground. They got all the guns. And there was no, there was full cooperation with the Sheriff's Department.

They took us all in. And so what I'm trying to say is from that incident, when we came in, Sheriff Harwell was standing in the Sally they walk us all in and we're all standing around him and I remember him saying and he goes boys you can't do this in America is what he said his exact words and then he goes hey I really appreciate that you guys cooperated you didn't you know put any of my men in danger thank you and we'll get this figured out and that was we ended up doing county or we were held at the county jail

and then we were indicted and we went to trial eight of us I only know the short version of story which is that you guys won and got the property and rode and his guys lost but I don't know how it happened can you explain what happened?

Well there was a there was a trial we were indicted for attempted murder on George and a few other charges so the big

the big thing was in our trial was the reason why we're there they said we just went there to kill George which wasn't true so the proof was we were there to get pictures of this casket that he dug up

and they they kept saying there is no casket so we went and got the casket you can go into the archives of the waco tribune herald and it shows us carrying this casket into the into the courtroom to show it and the judge he freaked out he started screaming and goes get that thing out of here and you can so that was the proof Anyways, they brought in baskets. They showed our ammunition. We were wearing like duck hunting type suits, camouflage. They had all the weapons and shopping carts. So they just made it look like we were there to murder George, which wasn't the truth. Anyways, the jury acquitted all of us of all the charges, except for David.

David got a mistrial. trial and they did they decided not to you know and then try them and so once you all proved that about that that was the point so what i'm saying is we had history with the sheriff's department we had history with those people and i think after that incident there was peace i mean there was was rodent then charged with digging up the corpse well what happened was and you can look this up he went in and told the judge he was going to curse him with AIDS and herpes or something like that. Judge found him in contempt of court and put him in jail. So while he was in jail, we moved all the old people and the kids and all the people that George had run off.

Because it's really church property. It wasn't his property. It belonged to the church, the people. and all the people got moved back on and then George ended up going to jail I don't know if they ended up he ended up having to go to a psych ward or something I don't I believe he was convicted of murdering someone else well that yeah that happened later is the guy's name was Dale Adair he was a member of an older Davidian I that's before my time but but yes you're right and then he escaped he escaped from the and i remember the sheriff called us and he said hey george escaped he goes uh it's dangerous he goes i i suggest you guys have guards or you're looking out because he might come there and we had the guns

from that shootout we had a whatever those leftover guns and ammunition and the sheriff Harwell he knew we had guns he knew we had ammunition and he said

you need to be ready to protect yourselves he told us that all right so there you know never mind their natural rights and their Second Amendment rights they had the explicit recommendation of their local sheriff. You guys better arm up because everything is not secure out there. Oh, that wouldn't

happen in Los Angeles. Right. Well, you know what? I'm glad that you said that. This is a very important point. We ought to go ahead and get into it a bit now. I know you have some opinions about this, and I'm sure you do as well. Dave's from Arizona. I'm from Texas, and you're from all

over the place, I guess, but let's talk a little bit about, elaborate on what you just said that some places in America, this sounds crazy that people would have guns some places in America people wear guns on their hip like it's nothing yeah sure so

but I guess to maybe to both sides the other side is a bit unbelievable and incomprehensible maybe if you live in L.A maybe you never go to Tucson and you never see someone wear a gun on their hip and if you did you might have a panic attack or something and then

the people from Tucson can't imagine why the Angelenos can't understand but this is a real important thing right, is that even if in certain cultures in America, people really don't have guns a lot, you've got to accept the fact that others really do. And to them, it's not a murder weapon, and it's not a big deal. But you guys are more and better gun guys than me, so why don't you all have a bit of a discussion about that? Well, I don't know that I'm a gun guy, but that's, I mean, I respect the Second Amendment and it's, there's got four reasons.

for existence which are all still valid and this is when I hear things like this somebody heard what was a rapid fire and they thought it could be a machine gun well it's Texas and you people there are legally owned machine

guns out there and God knows how many there are I should remind people this is Dan Gifford talking now go ahead and people could order machine guns out of comic book ads until the mid-19 80s, about 85 or 86, when the law was changed. You know, you've seen the ads that you could...

Yeah, May 19th, 1986, I think. But, yeah, it had to buy him from a gun dealer or another private person after getting licensed and all that. But, yeah, in 1986. Yeah, I spoke to, I think it was Rep. Hughes, the Congressman Hughes, who was the guy who put that in there, and I asked you know why he did that. He said, well, the opportunity, He just came in and he slipped it into one of these gigantic bills that gets passed in Congress and nobody has chance to read, and so it's in there, and that's that. I don't think it's any big deal. The problem that the machine gun stuff is that it is so easily interpreted by the ATF to ensnare people

for something that they didn't do, and that's also true of other firearms. You remember this, you mentioned earlier, what was his name, Randy Weaver, up in Idaho. And here's a guy who was a veteran, by the way, a special forces guy, and he needs money. Now, the ATF guys in town, no, he needs money. So they talk him into sewing off the barrel of a shotgun below the legal limit, which is 18 inches. and that was put on the books back in the 1930s when not assault rifles, not AKs, but gangster guns were the big things.

You see, that was machine guns were gangster guns, short-barrel shotguns, all that. Meaning like submachine guns? Yeah. Like a technologist. You've got to remember, a lot of the, you know, I'm sure you see this, a lot of the,

the characterization of these firearms comes from movies and comes from the, what do you see? You see criminals, crazies, and then the FBI or the local police step in and make everything right. So that's our little morality play there. But here you have firearms that are, you know,

as you mentioned, an Uzi. And I just didn't check here, if there was a case for the hand of God reaching in, cutting something, I mean, I can't even begin to compute the odds of what, having a bullet hit the magazine of my Uzi and knock it out of kilter so it won't work anymore. And I'm going to, isn't that something? Yes, that's, I'd say that's a case for Yahweh, maybe. There you go.

But these things are really, the triggers, the trigger mechanisms, the bump stocks, which came up about, That was Las Vegas, the questioning whether the guy had a machine guy or not. And to people who, like myself, who've always been around them, this is nothing new. Even North Carolina, everybody had a gun. Houston, when I lived there in the 80s, I think every pickup truck downtown had a gun rack with guns in it.

I don't know if he can still do that. They probably... Well, it used to be the law that you had to have a gun rack of your... weapon in Texas if your weapon was accessible it had to be observable try that in los angeles no it's just it's just a no big deal of my but but but interesting like like okay so about the branch devidians now this was not really a gun culture no at all and so you had a funny anecdote there dave d'all yeah i i was present when the the government took Clive Doyle's deposition in connection with the civil case, and the government

attorney asked him if he had ever gone shooting with David Koresh, and he said, yes, I think he said once or twice, and the government attorney asked him, what type of gun did you shoot? And he said, a black one. And the government attorney was an AR-15 or an AK or something else, and Clyde just said it was a black one. I don't know what it was. So, I mean, that was literally his state of knowledge as two firearms. There's another addition to that, which was that the Rodriguez, the guy inside. The ATF undercover informant. Yes, the L.L.G. Or undercover agent. Yeah, who everybody knew he was an undercover agent, was talking about, they wanted to see how well the Davidians shot, could shoot.

And that's what he went out there. They wanted to see what they could do, which tells me that, I think it's rather obvious, they wanted to have a safe gunfighter or something as much as what you can. They didn't want to see if all these guys had been cracked shots. It might have been a different leavening on what their plans were. But this stuff is just, it was set up.

I mean, that's what it reeks of. It was set up by intent. and that's what happened to the guy in Idaho. You have, so he saws it off. He's given the wrong date for his court date, I was told, so he didn't show up on the day of court. You have a, the marshals come out. His son kills one of the marshals, or maybe it's two,

and then he has another standoff, and his wife is standing in the doorway with holding a baby, and an FBI sniper kills her while she's holding a baby. and she has nothing to do with any of the stuff going on. Well, slight correction, the son was actually just shot in the back and killed. It was the family friend who supposedly killed the cop, but it was quite likely, according to Alan Bach's great book, ambush at Ruby Ridge, that it was actually a friendly fire.

It was federal marshals that first day, and the boy was 14 years old, but they say looked 12 and was running away, and they shot him in the back and killed him, and then they killed the wife later. see i see a and in fact you know what dan part of that is that waco was to make up for that because even though it was the federal marshals who killed the boy and it was the fbi hostage rescue team that killed the wife it was the ATF who had set him up in the first place and caused the

problem and they're sort of the red-headed stepchild inside the bureaucracy so they took the blame so then wakeo at least you know one version of the story is that the reason for for Operation Showtime here was to try to make up for what trouble that they were in, partially because of Ruby Ridge. See, I consider these rather heinous acts, and I start to wonder, well, where does

the edict at Nuremberg fit in here? Because we established there that following superior orders is not a valid defense against doing heinous acts. It's certainly not, I would think, setting people up

knowingly so that they're going to break a law or knowing that you're just using this for your own political machinations. That is a really problem. I've been thinking about this first. That is, we're going to have a lot of people in Nuremberg dockets if we get the thing in Ukraine straightened out or whatever. I mean, there's a lot of heinous stuff going on, and that's not on the same level, I understand. but still we're talking about federal agents who are supposed to be enforcing

you know real law that is defensible and I sometimes wonder well this goes to the question of the Davidian's interest in and or obsession with and or simple business involving firearms

again this goes to the government its entire theory of the case, right, is that their belief in this apocalyptic religion, this is the conspiracy charge at the trial, even. Believing in this religion at all meant that that was essentially a conspiracy against federal agents because it demanded this eventual violent confrontation with the forces of evil, the government. But then importantly, as James Tabor explains there,

that wasn't the idea. The idea was that the U.S. government was Babylon, sure, but Babylon wasn't the enemy. The enemy was when they all go to Israel to fight against the forces of Satan who are supposed to be, I don't know, the communist Chinese or whoever is supposed to be, you know, eventually come to destroy. That was what John Hagee said. I don't know. It's got to be somebody. I don't know.

The Hungarians are coming for? Somebody's coming to Israel. You got to watch those Hungarians. Yeah, you got to watch out. No offense, Hungarians. I pulled that one out of a hat. But the whole story was, Koresh was to help lead the 144,000 true believers to Israel, where they were joined the Israeli defense forces. Poor Palestinians stuck in between this thing.

And then they would fight against the forces of Satan at the Battle of Armageddon. So this had nothing to do with fighting the federal government, luring them into an ambush and a trap and a confrontation to fulfill. prophecy in the middle of waco texas and as taber explained that it was after the raid they had to begin to adapt there in fact i have that clip later they had to begin to adapt go back and address the bible and try to figure out what's happening here and make changes in their beliefs all right so then the next clip here from paul fata addressing the davidians gun business is um about when koresh met McMahon and McMahon is the Waco arms dealer who is a regular gun salesman who was I believe retail level

who was not a branch Davidian but was friendly with Koresh and and here Paul Fad explains how that relationship came to be and again this wasn't until like 1990 let me give you a little background so David was into music and he played a lot we went to a place here in waco where they had live music and while he was there we met some people and one of the girls that we met said that her dad was a gun dealer and that's Henry McMahon okay and anyway she said that her dad was very interested in spiritual things and all that so David was was interested in in meeting him so we set up a meeting and uh david ended up giving uh henry some bible studies and he ended up coming out to the property and henry told david you know hey i'm a gun dealer i know you guys

are refixing up cars uh what is it we were doing cameros and and uh corvettes and um what was it one other car we were fixing up to make money. He's like, why don't you invest in firearms? So he brought that up to David. He goes, this administration, they want to disarm America, they want to take guns away. You could probably make a lot of money by investing in firearms. So that's how this whole firearm thing started.

Okay. So now there's a famous clip in your movie, Waco, the Rules of Engagement. where Henry McMahon, the gun dealer, is testifying before Congress. That's right. And talking about when the ATF came to visit him. You want to set this up? Yeah, I forget who the congressman was,

but that was the question being put to him. And incredulously, it's like, so you're saying that when we start talking about passing laws, prohibiting certain firearms, they go up in price? Is that what you're telling us? And we have men said, yeah, that's right. They go up. You're kidding.

serious? Yes, they go up. Yes, yes. Supply, demand. It's a curve. You guys go to college. As I recall, the prices on AR-15s doubled in a matter of a few months after the supposed assault gun ban. And you figure you have a wholesale price probably a quarter, probably half of the retail. Well, that means the Divinians would have made one big killing on those sales. I mean, multiply their money by a factor of four. And as Fadda says, almost all of them just stayed in their boxes. It's Dick Revis, the author, I believe from the San Antonio Express News, who wrote the book, The Ashes of Waco, says, well, of course they had, you know,

these hundreds of guns. But he said thousands of Texans also have that kind of quantity of guns. We call that arsenal an inventory. Yeah, first of a lot. That's what it was. It's just like, you know, the grocery store stocks more corn flakes than anyone could eat because they're selling them to all different people. And so if you just take the snapshot, you go,

why is one person hoarding so many corn flakes? But that's not what's going on here. We have to look into that, by the way. Yeah, I know, yeah, that's a big mystery. All right, so now, so here's this clip of Henry McMahon. The ATF comes to visit him to ask him about David Corret. And I go, I got David Koresh on the phone. And Davey Aguilera, he goes, he jumps up.

And Donald goes, don't call, don't call. And I go, I got him on the phone. And he goes. Okay, so you can sort of hear the sound effect, but he's doing his hands like, almost like an umpire calling safe. But it's the, it's not safe. It's the don't do it, you know, from, from left to right there. can imagine the panamine. That's the ATF agent quietly telling him

to shut this conversation down. David Koresh is on the phone saying, oh, the ATF is interested in what we're doing out here. Tell him to come on over. We got full transparency here. Last thing we want is a problem with those guys. And the ATF's reaction

is, no, no, no, don't do that. You're stepping on our whole thing here. Yeah, that shows real. real intent. Now, here's what's new that I have for you guys, which is that Paul Fada was standing right there while David Koresh was on the phone

with Henry McMahon on the other side of this conversation. I was actually there when Henry McMahon, the gun dealer, called David and said, hey, the ATF's at my place right now, and they're looking at my books. They see that you've purchased quite a few, firearms and it it could be not a random thing from time to time they may want to come out and inspect the guns and see the guns I think what it was is you're not supposed to move the guns out

of state or transfer them they may want to see the guns and David was on the phone with Henry and said hey they're welcome to come and see the guns send them over right now they can come over and inspect all of them. And you were standing right there during this. I was standing there. Okay. Yes. He said, tell him to come over.

Well, we found out from Henry, when Henry went in the other room and told the agents, hey, I got David on the line. David says, you're welcome to come over and inspect the firearms right now. they started yelling at Henry they said what did you do we didn't tell you to tell them they said we don't want to do it that way and you can verify that with Henry

if you can get in contact with him but he testified to that to Congress he told Congress the story it's in rules of engagement people can see him okay so I'll play the clip so I'm telling the truth on that so my thing is which is actually really great Paul that you didn't even know

that the clip of Henry telling that story is out. So you couldn't be like mimicking it or anything like that. You're telling the story thinking, I'm only hearing this for the first time. No, I was an eyewitness. That's been in Rules of Engagement since 97. No, I was standing there. Yeah, that's amazing. And then that's when he said, hey, the ATF may be coming over to inspect the firearms.

Yeah, boy, ain't that a nice way to put it. Yeah. Okay, and now here's one more clip of Paul Fata about the gun. And I forgot exactly the point, but it's a minute long. Most of those firearms were brand new in the box in the case being kept for resale. That's what they were being bought for. I know you bring up about this apocalypse and shootout. Texas is a big gun state.

I met people, families that owned 100, 200 firearms in this state. That's right. So it's not unusual for people to have guns. I personally wouldn't buy that many, but I just was learning it. I was getting to know it. And I was buying and selling firearms legally, proper paperwork,

and then I would turn it over to Perry Jones, and he would do as he will with the money or the that was made from, the firearms. Okay, and then this last clip is, well, not last anything, but this clip of FATA

I think is important just because it shows his character and, you know, probably in contrast to what people might have been led to believe about this guy. So, you know, it's just, it is what it is. I feel like

I'm a taxpayer. I'm a law-abiding citizen. I support law enforcement. I'm not against law enforcement. I'm not against ATF or FBI. I'm not against any of these guys. They have a difficult job to do, especially the local police department and sheriff.

They're dealing with a lot of, you know, sick people, and they want to defund the police. I don't believe in that. Lawlessness. People are just going to take over. I mean, it's craziness. You know, they have a difficult job, but I do feel like those are in management or positions of making major decisions. They need to be responsible for how they conduct themselves and their men and how they conduct their missions.

There's got to be accountability. You can't just, you know, hey, we're going to go raid this place. And too bad if a bunch of people die and we're not going to take responsibility. We're just going to blame it, blame it on them and move on. He hasn't even become a political radical in reaction to this happening to his people at his home. He's still essentially a conservative center right Republican take on law and order right there. Yep. Yep. So this is a clip of I'm almost certain, I'll have to, to check this, but it's an ATF agent named H. Jeffrey Moulton on, you know, essentially

summing up the narrative, the government's narrative about the branch of Vidians here. In addition, it had reason to believe that Correctioners, as followers, might pose a danger not only to themselves, but to the surrounding community. And so that was the threat, was that these people not just are arming up and they're afraid that Babylon's going to get them and they would fight back if that ever happens so we better fulfill that but not even that but geez they have guns so they must be preparing to use them against someone which is essentially just a completely unreasonable prejudice that they had just decided on when as we're discussing this is a society in central Texas where people own firearms and having many of them is not an indication of an impending massacre at all

the city in Boston or Brooklyn or someplace or Seattle this is horrifying this is just the very thought that this is what else would they be doing with these things yeah um all right so we're going to get to that alleged threat in a sec but then the in fact I guess that was out of order to was this should be next we have to touch on this which is so um the the The child abuse allegations, as we talked about, essentially are a red herring in terms of the ATF's case or in the rest of the story until, you know, we get to the last day it comes up again, but it's a lie then too. But it is true as David Tibido told me that there was spanking of children, which he found upsetting, but of course is completely normal and legal. but there was nothing like the beating of babies or anything like that, Tibido explained to me and yet he does document in the book or he explains in the book and argues about the sexual abuse of young girls.

So Koresh, first of all, was taking the wives of his followers and essentially making them be celibate and found in the text where it was supposed to be that. way somehow and then he moved on to their daughters and he married two of clive doyle's daughters and one when she was 14 rachel jones was the first one and then her younger sister 12 years old michelle jones who um almost certain tibodeau says bore him a child at 13 and then there was 14 year old karen doyle who is clive doyle's daughter and oh i'm sorry i said doyle first there i should have left him out it's uh jones as perry jones's uh i believe daughter and uh and her sister

and then was karen doyle who is clive doyle's daughter uh 17 year old robin buns who i guess that's her father that's putting these videos out now about some of this stuff that uh james Tabor referred to there and 19 year old Nicole Gent though I think she he married her before or she became pregnant before that I forgot exactly Asia Guyferus was somewhere between 13 and 16 when she married Koresh and bore him a child that's 16 and then there was Michelle Jones's daughter Serenny Jones was four years old when she died and since Michelle was 18 when she died in the fire, that means that she was likely, uh, between 13 and 14 years old when she and Koresh conceived Serenity Jones there. And then Kerry Jewel is the most famous

of the abuse victims. And I know it was disputed by her mother and her grandmother who said, uh, who told the, the lawyers back then Jack Zimmerman. And I, I guess she told you. Yeah, no, to guarantee. Yeah, I spoke with it several times. She didn't. It's very important. Remember, she did not want to be on camera. And the Tom Lantos, who was the congressman from Northern California, knew that the grandmother disputed the story and said that the girl was with her when this incident supposedly happened. So it could not have happened. And then told, said the reason that she was out there appearing with her father was her father was trying to use this as a way to get. attention for himself for a show business career he wanted to get going. He was a disc jockey up in southern Michigan, northern Indiana, someplace up there. So this was just completely blowing. Now it's important to remember she was Carrie Jewell was put on in the testimony seat knowing all this background. So Lantos put her in there and there's a history for this

If you go back to 1990 with nurse Naya who said she was a Kuwaiti nurse and she saw Iraqi soldiers come into her hospital and rip babies out of the incubators and throw them on the floor. Total baloney. That was the same kind of manipulation we're talking about here. And Zangarisman, Tom Lantos, who set that up. And Lantos did this. But the nurse...

However, though, I think at that time, when Keri Jules' mother and grandmother disputed this to you did you know that we had this list from david tibode who is naming all of these girls who are having sex with david care when they're 12 and 13 and 14 years old because i think that makes carry jules accusations a bit more believable even with the dispute there and in fact she also dan she grew up and became an adult and sticks by her story too yeah which which david tells me he doesn't understand why because i think it's they're they're all and pretty said when I spoke with him, that this didn't happen. Well, David Tibido told me that, hey, if she says it, he believes her.

Okay. Because in context with the rest. And the point is, for, in this case, I mean, as far as Carrie Jewel goes, I would side with Tibido and with her that, that must be true if there really was this, you know, at least full handful of them who were, and the age of consent for marriage in Texas at that time was 14 years old with parental consent, which they did have. But when you're talking 12,

13, you're talking about a guy who's guilty of felony statutory rape. And so, as David Tibido told me, yeah, no, he should have gone to prison for that. The point is that, yeah, no, that's true. And for those victims of that, that's ugly as hell. And it

makes David Koresh a pretty sinful Messiah for a Messiah. You know what I mean? Where he's, this is, and this is what powerful men do it. James Tabor says, this is the same thing with the, you know, the honorable Elijah Muhammad was the exact same way over at the nation of Islam. And you see priests and ministers, you know, taking advantage of their position on a pretty regular basis. I don't know how regular, but it happens. And it's, it happened in this case. And so I guess, you know what, Dan,

the reason that I thought is important to emphasize here for at least a part of this is because it is certainly part of the government's narrative about Quresh and the Devidians and how bad he and they, including those same children, I guess, had it coming and all of that. So it has to be mentioned and tackle. And I don't feel like being a partisan for the truth in this story means that in any way we've got to be partisans for Koresh in every decision he ever made. But that itself is a red herring. So we should just go ahead and completely tackle it. But you mentioned a key thing is so what? What jurisdiction does these guys in Washington have over that allegation?

That's a state charge, and the sheriff investigated it, and so did the child protective services, and they came up with nothing. But it's nothing that the ATF should be dealing with. Right. And in fact, I do have a clip of Sheriff Harwell from, I'm not sure. I'm sorry, if this is from Rules of Engagement, and this may be from McNulty's sequel, a new revelation here. We're being pretty liberal with the documentary clip.

Stan. We worked on that for a couple of years. In fact, we had the Department of Human Services go out and interview some of the kids and whatever they could do. I had people go out with them to interview. To this day, we don't have a case that we could make against Vernon Howell or anyone for child abuse, even though the news media here and other people

kept saying this is what happened. A man from Australia said, this is what happened. But we could never get them to get them, give us anything more than just we know that's what happened you have to have proof to go into court keep in mind too that most of the girls who were involved were at least 14 years old and 14-year-olds get married with parental consent so if their parents were there and letting them letting things happen in a way of sexual activities and what have you with their 14-year-old kids you have common-law husbands and wives I don't say that I agree with that

and that I approve of it but at the same time if parents are there and they're giving parental consent we have a problem with that and making a case okay that's from Waco and look not to split hairs

because it's just as disgusting to all three of us at this table and for it goes without saying all of our listeners but technically there's a difference between pre-pubescent children and young teenage girls where this is clearly, you know, statutory rape. It's clearly crossing the line.

These are still people that we would absolutely protect our daughters at those ages and hurt someone who tried to cross that line. But it's not the same as saying that the guy was a pedophile. It's bad and wrong but different for, you know, because it does, you know, if he was doing this to very young children and everyone in there is tolerating that, you're not going to find an interpretation of the Bible that makes that okay. You know what I mean? But that wasn't what was happening.

So instead of, again, having this, some sicko Charlie Manson cult, you have a guy who I guess the point is, right, he's skating the line at the edge of believable to his people. And I guess there's no reason to believe he was attracted to preach. pubescent children but he's clearly um crossing what we would consider the moral line there and 12 years old is pretty young 13 so um but anyway the point being uh one more here is and this goes to the overall treatment of the children and this is a clip again from your film dan of joyce sparks from the cps and she's explaining to the press conference about the children who had come out of

the compound after the initial assault and her assessment of those children. We have 21 children that have been released to our care thus far. The youngest of those children is five months old and the oldest one is a 12-year-old. The children appear to be smart and well-educated, very sharp children. They seem to have been very well cared for. so it's yeah yeah it is what it is that's the whole point we're just being completely up front and honest about all sides of that argument as far as it goes uh the guy as he said himself david caresh was uh certainly no saint so now i think we should take a break we're at two

and a half hours so i want to save some files and um let everybody stop and get a drink of water or whatever and then we'll get on to the next segment of the ATF but if you guys are interested I'm going to go ahead and play them for the audience here have a couple of clips from bill hicks for lighten the mood a little bit at a segue here but I was in Australia and the Australians had a big contingency at the branchedividing compound and I'm from Texas so they were very curious they were asking me all about it you know oh this guy's so weird didn't he this guy Koresh is so weird Oh, wait a minute. Frustrated rock musician

with a messianic complex, armed of the teeth, and trying to fuck everything that moves. I don't know how to tell you this. Sounds like every one of my friends in Austin. I don't know if this is going to be an isolated incident. Down in, I'll see. Australia when the Waco debacle ended.

I was very bummed because I thought that was the most fascinating story of the year, bar none. And everyone was so upset with that guy because he called himself Jesus. Right? And I said, come on, you know, the guy's real name is Vernon.

Let him be Jesus for a couple of months. You know what I mean? What's it to you? I just love that that's the punchline. Yeah, go ahead. right so for our next segment we're really getting into the background of the raid here and my first note to myself in the outline here dan is ask gifford for his great rant on the history of

ATF law enforcement and then i guess up to and including your actual interactions with these individual guys in their local watering hole precincts ATF law enforcement well ATF the predecessors back in 1920s were referred to by H.L. Macon, who was one of the best known commentators and political columnists at that time, as legalized murderers with badges. And this is when the predecessor agency was part of the Treasury Department. It was out enforcing the alcohol ban, prohibition, and then the drugs, there was a drug ban that was put in at the time.

And it pretty much didn't care. who they shot, how they shot them, what not, but we put up with it. So over the years, that agency has been given different tasks. Because it started out doing one thing. And so at some point, it was thought, okay, they'll go out and collect the taxes on alcohol. And taxes on tobacco. After all, they're part of the Treasury Department. And then in 1968, we had the Gun Control Act of 1968, passed the federal one.

And that's had several aspects to it, which gets us into the weeds a little bit. But who's going to enforce this? Well, the natural was the alcohol, tobacco, what was becoming, I think it was just the AT then. Alcohol and tobacco tax unit. Yeah, okay. so we'll just slap firearms on there as well since they're collective firearms. And that's what that was already going on to some degree because certain firearms like shotguns with barrels are less than 18 inches and machine guns, which were legal for people

to own, the owners had to buy a tax stamp, and I think it was $200, which in 1930 was probably a lot of money. But the idea was to get the amount of hands of gangsters, which everybody was freaked out of about. And the phrase at that time, the big scare phrase, you know, was gangster guns. You know, today we have assault weapons and other things, which are meaningless phrases except to just get people upset. So fast forward, we're coming up here. And the ATF has several times been in danger of being done away with because it's, look, well, can't the FBI do this? Can't somebody else go out and collect taxes?

I mean, it's just not, and we're paying all these benefits, and it's causing trouble. And so they were tasked with keeping track of the firearms and collecting the enforcing the new laws that were put on the books. And it needs to get a higher profile, because most people in Washington had never heard of it most Americans have never heard of it. I think that people thought probably the FBI did that.

In fairness, the FBI went through much the same period or kind of thing when it first started. And J. Edgar Hoover took over and gave it, started a public relations campaign, and that bumped it up. And I've been told that some of the people in D.C. who are headed at the ATF are aware of that and said, well, we can do the same thing. We can pump up our image.

we can get good, you know, public relations. So down the road, we're talking here about the Divideons. And what's going to freak out people more is if we go in and save the country from a bunch of religious nut cases who are stockpiling weapons, these words again, and start hauling them off and everybody will be safe again. so you have a thing the plan concocted that we know now about what happened

at the wake of business there were other incidents prior at the Ruby Ridge incident where the entrapped some some guy to saw the barrel off a shotgun and there have been lots of other ones the whole thing about the machine guns is crazy

because as Dave can tell you if you have the component parts of a certain kind of firearm, usually a semi-automatic you can be charged with having a machine gun. Semi-automatic for people who don't know is an action that fires one shot

for each pull of the trigger. Automatic, it would fire as long as you hold the trigger back. So we've all seen movies and that's usually where the freak things come and to get pushed up to freak out the public about these supposed

people out there that have them like Branch Divideans or like gangsters or drug dealers or all the negative things and so we put all this together now and that's not the only reason though each year the Bureau of the Alcohol Pacan Farms used to have it may still have something called the good old boys roundup. And the reason they have that is a lot of the people in that unit used to go out and hunt for moonshiner's out in the woods. So they're kind of like me before I learned how to talk right and wear shoes.

So they got a definite attitude. And there was something that didn't, my style, at least in doing stories, is to try to get mixed in and, and, get at the source. So in this case, I made a contact who got me in with a bunch of ATF agents at the bar in Washington, and that's where straight up, we're drinking whiskey and says, we had to go in there because David Koresh was miscegenating with nips. Exactly what he said. And you go out to this good old boys round up. They're having, supposedly, they're handing out niggins. money licenses.

Supposedly nothing. We had pictures of them. Yeah. So this is real stuff. I mean, it's still out there. It's still alive. And there's a picture on my website with a film of one of these. It's an official photo.

And I mean, the only thing missing is the clan robes. That's right. And this was exposed on 60 minutes. And I believe I have the date here. See? It's November 3rd, 1992, the day of the president. election oh no no I'm sorry pardon me they were warned about it then the special aired in January 1993 and so it featured as you said all the hunting licenses so-called all the

pictures of the guys with the Confederate flag and it wasn't like all in good fun like the General Lee it was more like the bad kind of use of it and also there was sexual harassment suits and also racial harassment suits and discrimination suits from employees of the ATF, which you'd be surprised they hired black people in the first place, I guess, but then once they do, they treated them terrible and treated the women

terribly, and so they were being sued for that. So these guys were in real trouble, and you say Dan, about how they were the ATF was going to come and save the day from these terrible cultists, but even better than that, they were. They were going to save the new Clinton government. Well, first, they were going to protect themselves. This is one thing I always leave out. As Al Gore came into power as vice president, he was running on, remember, they called it reinventing government, which is just marginal fighting waste, fraud and abuse. Yeah, right, you know, marginal stuff. But one of the tenants of it was, let's take the ATF and we'll move it from Treasury over to the Justice Department. or maybe just get rid of it all together

and let the FBI handle that stuff. As you said, the average American might assume that'd be the FBI's job anyway. So the ATF, even if they got to keep their agency, they were now going to be way under the thumb of the FBI over at Justice

instead of having the degree of independence that they had at Treasury. So this was an absolute red alert crisis to them to protect themselves. And then I remember this well because I was in high school at the time, and I don't know exactly that you guys time and place

during this era. But I remember at the end of 12 years of Reagan and Bush, here comes the not just center right, or pardon me, center left, but supposedly at that time anyway, he was defined as a more of a liberal left, a Democratic president,

with his co-president feminist wife, Hillary Clinton, coming in, and that, and this was all the exact same time you had captain planet and recycling and you know all the whole new phase of global warming and environmentalism and you know baby blue flags and all of this stuff so it was there was this you know as they would say the massive cultural at least politically the culture was swinging to the left right then during that time and here the ATF are exactly the kind of even far-right rednecks that you describe here, the meanest kind, and they know that

they have to suck up to these Democrats. They have to stop this attempt by the vice president to ruin their agency or even destroy it. And so they've got to find some mullet-headed transam driving rednecks to pick on somebody from this kind of country, white, lowest social class type people with guns so that they're like essentially i'm not exactly reading their mind but a little bit they're trying to impress Hillary clinton and this and and her husband bill that this is the kind of we fit in with what you guys are doing now don't sacrifice us so this was a absolute as you mentioned with ruby ridge had taken place just what six months before or eight months before or something so this is a major crisis for them and they have to find

a way to find somebody to beat up and make it look good. And somehow they pick way too big of a house with way too many people in it, full of guns to target for their endeavor here. The intent can be seen just by the things we're talking about, about the going shooting with David Koresh and the undercover there. I mean, they should have, they had a guys in there. They should have known that there was just nothing there. This is just pure, pure respect, pure of public relations.

And I'm sorry because we hunted high and low for the 60 Minutes episode, but it cannot be located anywhere on the internet. However, we did have a couple of good quotes from it, including Agent Bob Hoffman, who had cooperated one of the female agents' sexual harassment complaints, told Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, quote, in my career with ATF, the people that I put in jail have more on, than the top administration in this organization.

I know it's a sad commentary, but that's my experience with the ATF. And that's, you know, from the very inside there. Dave. This is Dave Hardy. With regard to the ATF motivation, back a quarter century ago, I was a GS-14 in the federal government

and a representative small law enforcement agency, much smaller than ATF. but like them interested in growing. And we attorneys had a joke every year their house appropriation cycle would start when Congress decides what their budget is. And every year the agency would come up with Operation This or Operation That

something guaranteed to grab a bunch of publicity and they would always do it just before their House Appropriation cycle started. So one of my first questions when the raid went down was one was their house appropriation cycle. And the answer was, I think, 11 days later. It was all time for this. Very interesting because I think that has been part of this sort of alternative history of this story all along.

But it's interesting to hear that from you that as a federal government police officer, that's exactly how it works, huh? Yeah. And you won't say the name of your agency. Well, I was. with Office of the Solicitor Department of the Interior. Okay. Interesting. Conservation and Wildlife

Division, Fish and Wildlife Branch. I see. Very interesting. This is Ron Paul talks about. There are a lot more armed government agents than you would ever imagine. And that's very, you know, almost all the stories I've done was where somebody wound up getting screwed by the

government started out very much like the Waco, but somebody picked up a phone and called the police or the newspaper and complained about something that fit in with a political agenda. One story I did, and it took place in Pennsylvania, and the guy is supposedly ruining a protected wetland, which it was not,

but he got the largest, fine, longest jail term in the history of environmental crime. And it all started because a guy across the street wanted to get in bed with his daughter. And she didn't want anything to do with him, so he figured he's going to screw the old man. To get him out of him? Yeah, like, huh?

To get him out of the street. way. Yeah, well, you'll punish him out. Or just punish him out. So he calls the Corps of Engineers and the Corps of Engineers calls up the people in Philly at the Environmental Protection thing and next thing you know he's being hauled in on federal charges

he beat him. We got him out of prison at one point but he got put it back in on appeal the third of the Court of Appeals and Ken Starr was the Solicitor General, and he caved with, I am told, its brilliant lawyer logic, which was there was a picture, a photo that supposedly showed water going from this piece of property

into the Trenton River. And that meant it was polluting navigable waters. The only problem with it was, Ken Starr had to admit to the judges. It didn't show that at all. But he said, our presentation was so compelling the conviction should stand and it did that was the argument that was the argument why not and it probably I just was nonplussed about there are other examples I could hear you but that's just one that that was I wrote that was just terrible all right

so in fact that's a great segue then into the next subject here which is how the investigation began this is not the same question as how do they decide to make it operation showtime the massive paramilitary raid but this is how they originally came to the attention of the ATF and so there's a government accountability office report that says it was originally the sheriff's office that called the ATF and then there was the story of the UPS man who had said that okay the Davidians had had this, um, uh, property, uh, a small business called the mag bag that was run out of a property a few miles away, I guess. And he had been delivering a package there and some fake

grenades had fallen out. But he didn't know they were fake grenades. So he called the cops. And the cops had called the ATF. Hand grenade holes. Hand grenade holes. Tell us about those. Well, hand grenade holes. Well, most everybody's seen a hand grenade holes. And These are going to be World War II. The pineapple ones from the Vietnam movies, right? Exactly. But people use them for different things. I guess you can put gunpowder in them and make them go bang,

but that's highly dangerous unless you know what you're doing. I mean, it can blow up in your hand. But these were sold everywhere. Here in Santa Monica, there was an Army Navy store down at the corner of Lincoln and Santa Monica Boulevard, and when you walked in, there was a big box full of these hand grenade halls. hand grenade hulls. And what the Davidians were doing with them is they were dressing them up and putting them on a plaque that said

complaint department, you know, pull pin or something like that. Take number. Take number, yeah. And you can, there are other people that advertise these things online and it's nothing, nothing defarious at all. Now, I was told by somebody that they were actually putting gunpowder in them and that presents a problem because for getting technical here about how you fuse this thing because the kind of fuse that you have in a hand grenade is not something you can go down to Walmart and buy and it's well Dave you might have a comment about that too and so I I tend to disbelieve this was going on that they were

planning to make an attack on their neighbors with hand grenades and yeah other things well they were they were practiced grenades and where you got those grenades from is you bottom off of the government's surplus. So if the government is selling these things, and like you say, the problem is, if you ever wanted to do something with it, you'd have to find the fuse, and the government doesn't sell you

the fuse. Yeah, that's right. And that was, that's just one story that was going around. I'm sure you've noticed that when you discount one story about bad stuff

the Divideons were going to do, there's another one coming along. And there's another one. That's right. Like sequence. You know what? I'm so glad that you said that because the comparison obviously directly is to the classic conspiracy theory, which the government, of course, quite unfairly uses that term against anyone who doesn't believe in their conspiracy theories because they like to pretend that it's only a fringe thing that fringe right wingers or fringe left wingers or some kind of coop believe in. But the government has their own conspiracy theories all the time, like Saddam

and Osama or for example, in this case if you read the search warrant it's total truthorism kookery. They go well, you know, you have this little strand of this little information and this little strand of this little information

and if you put it all into a mosaic, it all fits but they don't have probable cause at all. They have, you know, Judge, we were daydreaming and we could imagine that that if you combine these data points in just the right way

that you could conjure the possibility that something is going on here. That's what we're talking about here. And just like if you, for example, well, I don't want to pick on any particular conspiracy theory group here, but conspiracy theorists off, let's say rush a gate, that's a good one. Debunk any part of it and they'll switch to the next one.

Debunk any part of it and they just switch to the next one and switch to the next one. And since there's a thousand accusations, it's pretty difficult to shoot them all down in a row a lot of times. So there's always a little something there somehow to still believe the thing that you believed before. All right, let me make sure I'm not skipping too much here. So, oh, and then we have this.

Robert L. Cervenka. He complained to the sheriff's department that he had heard machine gun fire at Mount Carmel. So I guess I played a little bit out of order there, but this was the clip about the, hellfire triggers and the George Roden fight there that we played earlier. That should have been two separate clips. And this guy, Servenka, offered to allow the sheriff to use his property as a surveillance post. And the Divideons had heard about that. So that was one of the ways that they knew

that the ATF was interested in them. And as we heard in that clip of Paul Fata, he says they had called the sheriff's department. This story's been told a few different ways, including that they had taken their rifles down to the sheriff's department, but Paul Fattis says he doesn't remember anything like that, but they had called the sheriffs and said, well, we have these hellfire triggers and we want to make sure that you guys aren't worried about it and whatever. And they had apparently straighten that out, although that wasn't the version that the ATF had told in the search warrant, where they pretended to believe still that this was machine gun fire. Well, it's an easy story to sell. And that's about the text.

end of it. In fact, even the New York Times had written that the Davidians, I guess they quote Paul Fada then saying that they had asked the sheriff that if you guys are worried about it, come on out and look. They had told that to the ATF and they had told that to the sheriff too. You guys come and come look at our guns.

The other reason they wouldn't have had probable cause from that is of some we heard automatic weapons fire coming from the area of your house. Okay. was it on your land or not was it you or somebody you gave permission to or somebody who was out there without your permission just knowing that sound came from a general area doesn't show anything and we are talking out in the country where it that sound could be coming from oh sure you know yeah it wouldn't necessarily be that easy to tell exactly where so we cover the hell the hell fire triggers and all that

and the reason that they had all those rifles at the sheriff's suggestion. So let's talk about this for a minute. I'm not sure if either both of you know a whole lot about this. But part of the accusation here, and this goes to the rules, as you were alluding to earlier, Dan, about the ATF can just change the rules. It's not the law, but it's the rules change about whether you can have this kind of armstock or that this kind of pistol grip or not or this and that they do it all the time in a way that makes it very confusing and sometimes it's retroactive and sometimes it's not and so especially if we're

talking about you know late 80s early 90s here um there have been new laws that have gotten rid of and i guess new rules that have gotten rid of some of the ambiguities since then but um essentially i have an army buddy who explained to me and he showed me a little diagram about what it takes to convert an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to an M-16 or like an M-4 and in other words, capable of fully automatic rifle. And he says, I think the quote is, six parts, five swapped parts and one added to make it fully automatic. But there's a thing also called a drop-in auto sear that is, you know, specially machined

to, I don't know, compensate for enough of those parts to make. make it work and and they had some really screwy rules in the beginning of the 1980s that even having the auto seer itself at all was considered a machine gun part or if it was on the same property as another rifle without the right kind of license that kind of thing do you know a lot about that Dave can you talk about that absolutely a fair amount the National Firearms Act as It is in effect. Yeah, it says that any part or combination of parts that is meant exclusively to turn a semi-auto into a full auto, that part is itself a machine gun.

And it has to be stamped with tiny little serial numbers and registered. So that's its status. And for a tax stamp price to get a registered, that kind of thing. Now, does that get into, this is something interesting, I think we're talking about the Chevron case, about agencies being able to have this wide leeway to interpret laws as they see fit. Doesn't that kind of, does this fit into that scenario? Well, in this case, it's in the statute. The statute says part or a combination of parts for this purpose.

So it isn't quite the agency, you know, seeing how far they can stretch it. And I've seen an auto sewersore type thing. And indeed, like you say, you have to put. this tiny little cereal number on it because we're only talking of basically a trigger mechanism. Well, I was telling, we were talking before you got here, when I was a kid, I remember somebody in my hometown did that to a 45, 1911, 45 auto, and by filing down the sear. Oh, yeah. So, of course, the problem is when you pull the trigger, it rips off, but you can't stop it.

And so it's doable, and that may be doable on some other firearms as far as for what all I know. How many different types are there? But that's, I don't know how you can... Do I understand that's right, Dan, you're saying it's full ought to, but once you pull the trigger, you have to essentially hold it down the whole, until the magazine's empty. It won't release, even halfway. Yeah, the trigger series comes down, and the idea is when you at least trigger, it goes back up and catches the slide.

So in other words, even if you're messing with that, there's no utility to that other than screwing around shooting at hay bales or something. Yeah, shooting yourself or somebody else. It's about it. Accidentally only, though, probably. Accidentally only, yeah, right?

And now, so this is where I was going to play the clip of that cuck accusing these people being dangerous, but I don't even think I really needed that. I brought this up to you the other day, I think when we talked on the phone. This is a new one for me, but I believe, Dan, that you said that you had heard this before. This is Agent Robert White, an ATF agent.

And this interview was conducted by KWTX, which I believe is the NBC affiliate there in Waco. Yeah, Waco. Right. And they interviewed him on this last February the 28th, the 30th anniversary of the raid. Well, I've had people tell me that, well, why didn't you just leave him alone? They just had guns out there and they weren't bothering anybody.

but their plans were to bother people. They were putting together a plan to go into Waco, which they wanted to go into McDonald's and the bus station and places where there are a lot of people, and they were going to kill off all the non-believers, the people that didn't believe Christ, then they were going to come back into the compound, where they were going to set up this shootout with police,

then they were going to all be killed, and then they would be translated, to heaven and then come back and rule the world. And, you know, yeah, we could have left them alone and eventually they would have come off their compound and followed through their plans. And then everybody would have been yelling, well, why didn't somebody do something about it before this happened?

That's the scare stuff. Scarce stuff? Come on. Well, look, I'm not even putting any credibility in it. I mean, my question for you is, have you ever heard that before? Is that one from? They were going to attack the local McDonald's and the bus station? Maybe not McDonald's, but I mean, I've heard they were going to come off and they were planning on wreaking havoc out in the world.

But McDonald's itself doesn't necessarily ring a bell to you? Because that sounds completely crazy to me. It sounds like completely made up nonsense. You know, I don't know who made it up necessarily. Well, that was part of what I used to hear, but they were making plans that to go out and, you know, kill people in the neighborhood. You're going to kill the mayor and take over Waco, right?

Turn it into the sovereign state of the Brimson. Once you know anything at all about the Divideons, that just makes no sense. It's just crazy. But it's the kind of thing that you could flow out there that scares the public and enables you to do things that you're outside the legal limits. And that is... The image of Clive Doyle is a ruthless terrorist. Give me a break.

Doesn't fit too well, does it? Exactly. All right, so we got to talk about drugs now for a minute here. Oh, yeah, the drugs. Of course, with my look, this is off the air, so I don't have the clip. I asked David Tibido about the accusations of drugs, and he laughed, and he said he would have strongly preferred if there had been some drugs there. And unfortunately, they were allowed to drink beer, but there was no alcoholism of any kind, no heart. hard liquor, no cigarette smoking, and apparently they, Paul Fata told me the other day on the

phone, they avoided even taking aspirin. I think maybe if someone was having a real bad time, they'd take an aspirin or something. But these people were certainly not drug abusers. And as Paul Fata told me on the phone the other day, they just absolutely would, that David Koresh would never have tolerated it from anyone. Smoking a joint one time would have got you kicked right out of there. It was just not the way that he did things. And he said to me there was absolutely nothing. That's the exact quote from Paul Fata. This was, I had forgotten to ask him this when I interviewed him on the 19th. It was one thing that I had overlooked. So I had a follow up phone call with him where he talked about this. And now the accusations about the drug lab, right? They said not just

that they had drugs there and this goes into the legalities as we're getting to with the raid here and the military involvement in the National Guard and the rest special forces was that they had a methamphetamine lab there. And so one of the stories, you guys may have heard this, was that the branch TV, obviously the official story was, yeah, they had a drug lab, but one of the versions of the Davidian side of the story

was that the sheriff's department had sent out the hazmat team or somebody to come and take out. the remnants of a meth lab that had been there under the previous leadership, this guy, Rodin. And so this is where I screwed up the transition there was from Hellfire Triggers to Rodin. And then the fact that Rodin had allowed these two guys to live there. There are a few people who live there who evidently he had given them permission to create a drug lab. Although Paul Fata said that at the time they took it over, he doesn't think.

think there was a lab there. He thought there was, first of all, the bad guys were gone, and whatever they had left was just the remnants of something. And he said, he didn't remember the cops coming out to do anything about it, but he does remember

that Koresh or someone had called the police and said, hey, now that we're moving back into this property, we're finding this stuff, and we want you guys to know that and come and do something about it. And then he said he wasn't sure if the cops had done something about it

or if it all just went in the garbage. He said maybe it just went in the garbage. But that that was the end of it. And as he specified to me, the house where that allegedly was taking place at all did not even exist at the time of the raid in 1993. Once the Koresh followers had taken the property over from George Rodin, they had torn all those homes down.

I don't know how long after. I don't mean to say, once they had, but after they had taken over, they tore those houses down and built what we know to be the compound there out of it. So the ATF was essentially knowingly pretending to believe that there was anything like a drug nexus there. They really had nothing.

That's another thing about scaring the public. Well, that and also the law is that military can furnish assistance to a law enforcement agency, but it must reimburse the agency. And unless it's part of the war on drugs, if part of war on drugs, you get it for free. And so ATF had three military helicopters along in the raid. They probably had other support. And even after FBI took over for the siege, FBI maintained that same fiction so that they were getting the tanks, they were getting sandbags, weapons, night vision, equipment, et cetera, all for free.

All because supposedly there was a drug nexus. So they never have to pay it back? No. Oh. It's yours. Our tax dollars in action. Oh, yeah. And the GAO report focuses a lot on that and talks about all of the, you know, this is

The GAO report talks about sort of the conspiracy theory thinking of, they seem to ratify it, but they document it of the ATF on this. Because they were making the case because they wanted not just all that equipment, but they wanted training from special forces from the Green Berets to come in and teach them the close quarters so they could go, this is one, right? What if they had all gained access to the building and gone through sweeping and clearing each room to room,

the way that that was what they were planned. on doing we all see we take the the gun battle as we see it as it was the cop stayed on the outside of the house they never got an entry to the inside of the house on that first day at least but we'll get to that but um so yes they got national guard and joint task force six was the drug task force that they were able to to get all this stuff from and including of course the hughy helicopters left over surplus from the vietnam war And so people are thinking, you know, footage you've seen of Vietnam, those olive green helicopters with all the troops climbing and in and jumping out of.

That's the Huey's there that they used during the rate. So then we have a list. I'm not going to read through the list here, but we have a collection of the list of the drug accusations that the ATF had compiled against the Devidians. And it was all like, oh, got caught with a joint. 15 years ago here, had a gram of cocaine 20 years ago there, you know, was suspected of having pot, which I don't know, I guess means a cop said he smelled something, but nothing was found.

And this guy, Brad Branch, had been arrested for pot possession. I'm not sure the quantity, but I don't think very much. Five years before he joined Mount Carmel in 1983. And so the cops, they... They report this same list, and they go, oh, my God, right? Like, this guy got caught with a joint and this other guy had some cocaine, but what are you talking about? That doesn't amount to anything, and none of it has to do with their property or anything like that. It's essentially a smear to make it seem like this is a den of criminals.

Again, Charlie Manson, not a group of devout, you know, women dressed like Little House on the Prairie. They weren't waiting for Jesus. Yeah, no, definitely not. This is all, they're just out there, you know, doing drugs and committing crimes and this kind of thing, the way that they spun it in order to, I guess, have a good time with all that military equipment and get all that. Well, that's a very erotic thing with some of these law enforcement agencies, you know, this military gear. That's real eroticism. I mean, it gets some pumped. Look, I think that's an important point. We might as well dwell on that for a minute.

I remember when the cops started dressing in SWAT gear all the time thinking that it's so laughable. I mean, me and my friends, when we were 9 and 10, we played guns in the woods. And it was a lot of fun, but we were 9 and 10. And honestly, when we were 11, the girls looked at us and were like, you guys are dorks. And we quit because we had turned 11. And for these kinds to be dressing up like they're at war when they're in Austin, Texas, or in Santa Monica, California. You've got to be kidding me, dude. Who do you think that you're fighting?

what do you need all this body armor for and then it took me a while i guess my point to get it that they don't get the joke they don't think it's funny at all and attitude follows behavior dress a cop up like a soldier and he's going to convince himself that of course it's necessary or else why would he be doing it and that's what he's up against is terrible david caresses everywhere and that's how he has to frame it right you remember how swat came into our vernacular and our culture I think Chief Gates in LAPD was the first one to really do it.

They were complaining about we can't crack, you know, barge into crack houses because the doors are reinforced and he got a couple armored vehicles and, of course, it escalated. At the same time, and this is very important too, there was a TV show called SWAT. Remember starting Steve Forrest?

And every night he'd put on his battle games, and they'd go out and do battle with heavily armed criminals. And so the legitimacy of it, and that's where an awful lot of the stuff that we have in society comes from is, you know, in Hollywood from these depictions. But where you wind up is one of the most chilling testimonies I heard during the Waco hearings was a detective.

And he was being asked, well, why didn't you just go up and serve the warrant of the door? and he was angry he says the day of a couple of detectives going up to serve a warrant is over we're going to crush him and i forget the name of the guy but damn um all right so the the house government reform committee found quote the subcommittees concluded that operation alliance personnel knew or should have known that at f did not have sufficient drug nexus to warrant the military support provided to it on a non-reimbursable basis. So I love that.

Isn't it just like Brazil or THX-1138 where the reason that any of these agencies care is the dollars and cents? So you have the government accountability office that used to be called the General Accounting Office, right? And so they're saying, this agency owes this other agency money. And then we get to find out because, yeah, they spent it on this, you know, you know, lie-based activity, you know, and that's how we end up finding out the details. And I love the bureaucraties, phrasiology of it.

Exactly. Okay. And interestingly, that included support from the Alabama National Guard as well as the Texas National Guard. I hadn't realized that. You know, there's a tank. You saw their flags in there. That overkill, just ridiculous.

I mean, that's somebody's having a fantasy. and then the sinful Messiah series appeared I believe the day before the raid on that Saturday and so that was a bit of a clue that boy something is really up there and the articles you know they were really a hit on him and had a lot of quotes from disgruntled former members and so forth in there and really scan began already the demonization the scandalization of the people there, I think.

Now, in my opinion, they pumped up the volume on this thing. Because that's... Yeah, I mean, I'd like to see the deep dive on where the newspaper got the idea to do that series, but I bet it came from the government in the first place that, you know, we'd like for you guys to start standing the stage. Well, it's my understanding the guy from Australia who had the falling out with Koresh or theological,

whatever's started calling. with all these wild stories, the newspaper, and then they put them in there. And, of course, you put that in the newspaper, and it's going to stir a call for action. Do something. Save us from these people. Do save the children, whatever it is. Yeah, and that is a huge part of you see that guy,

at least the one guy, Mark Bro, and I'm not sure if he's Australian or not. Yeah, that's the guy I'm thinking of. And then there's Rick Ross as the guy, not the CIA backcrack dealer of L.A. in the 1980s, and not the rapper, but Rick Ross, an entirely different Rick Ross, the anti-cult deprogrammer guy

that goes around, as Tabor call them, have gun, will travel, and goes around making a living, doing this. It's really important those guys' roles, both of them, in setting the narrative, and really demonizing. Again, Koresh, not just him,

but Koresh, in place of all those other people who were with him in that place. which is so important that whatever sticks to him sticks to everybody else 100% for some reason that that was the way that they would have portrayed it so um so we covered how the the warrant is essentially a mess it's just conspiracy theory stuff there is no probable cause and it it's essentially you know a pile of claims that any one of which falls short and then all of them together also fall short you know just like a lot of these just like rush a gate or just like the case of Saddam Hussein it's 10 times zero still equal zero but it added up to the search

warrant in this case now so here's where we talk about um Robert Rodriguez okay so especially for people who've ever been out there to Waco you know there's still there I think the small house across the street from the Davidian compound that the Davidians quickly called the undercover house when these kind of young obviously upper middle class white guys with nice haircuts and upper body builds and stuff moved in across the street there to like oh welcome to the neighborhood what are you doing out here in the country oh we're going to college and this so they knew that they were cops and that included this guy's name was Robert Rodriguez and he was going under the name Robert Gonzalez and he they sent him so he was a cop

He was not an undercover informant. He was an agent of the ATF, full agent. But undercover, not very deep, undercover who had infiltrated the Dividians. Do you guys remember it's a matter of weeks, two or three weeks before the raid or more? Yeah, some of me. It was quite a few weeks. Yeah, quite a few. Well, I don't know when he infiltrated, but the undercover house had been there for quite a few weeks, maybe months.

Well, he didn't infiltrate because they nailed him right away. Yeah, it doesn't count as infiltrated, but went and met them, and they invited him in. Right, yeah. Well, that's something that amazed me about my experience, which I had all kinds of alleged undercover people show up in my life, is how spotable these guys were. I mean, there's a certain body type, and there's a certain language, and there's a certain thing you go. I remember I was at the Seattle Film Festival, and I was surrounded outside by four guys,

as I recall, and one of them was wearing a Johns Hopkins t-shirt. I went to Johns Hopkins. Another one was wearing a University of Baltimore T-shirt. I went there for a short time. And I'm getting questions like, do you know anybody that likes to make anti-government movies? You know, it's just... Pretty transparent.

That's really sharp work. With regard to Robert Rodriguez, because it's really obvious that they knew he was undercover because after the first raid, Koresh has been shot and wounded. He's talking to 9-11, and he says something about, you know, our firearms were always open to inspection.

That's what I told Robert. And the 9-1-run guy has no idea of what he's talking about just as yes. And then Koresh says, you know, the guy you sent out here. So, I mean, this is, in the immediate aftermath of the gunfight, Koresh always knew this guy was undercover. Yeah, right. Well, as I understand, David told me they were trying to convert him to...

David Tibido. David Tibido, yeah, to see Jesus or get religion or whatever, save souls. And I think they were doing the same during the siege with the negotiators. Yeah. Right. So, and in fact, they were teasing Roder. guess and the ATF agents and they were saying because he was reporting to them that these divinians are not so bad i mean they're just studying the bible all the time and where and they

were going aha you got the stockholm syndrome or you know you're falling for it and you're joining their cult and that he jokingly replied well maybe and then um there was another quote where he had uh done an interview with a newspaper where he said in a non-sarcastic way that he was getting close to being convinced he he really was learning a lot and he was really taking what they were saying very seriously which is interesting because you know with a name like Rodriguez you'd think that he was raised Catholic and that this is pretty far apart from his upbringing but he was like man you sure know this seven seals off pretty well and which is right not to say that he was hypnotized they none of them were hypnotized

the guy had a compelling thing if you're interested in that kind of subject evidently right so and that even had worked on Rodriguez and then so as we know and as you mentioned the ATF took caress shooting or asked him to take them shooting and I'm not sure if you guys can clarify this

I believe my understanding is that the Divideans had no guns when they went the cops brought all the guns and they were just shooting there These were guys in the undercover house, and they were instructed to find out how well-armed the Davidians were. So they took their own AR-15s. These are ATF agents, and went over and asked, can we go shooting on your land? And David Koresh himself came down and said, sure, and I've got some ammunition for those guns.

So Koresh is carrying the ammunition. The agents have all the guns. and this was, if I remember correctly, nine days before the raid and the shootout. They had him with him. They had all the guns. And if that wouldn't have worked, you could just invite him out to go shooting again.

And this time set everything up. Yep. And amazing. They're handing him, and I'm sorry because I don't have this clip, but Paul Fata told me that Koresh had told him that when the cop had handed him the AR-15, that it had whatever markings on it, identified it as U.S. government property.

I think, all right, guys. Like, hey, what did you guys do today? Well, we were out shooting with the cops, right? Like, there was no secret about it. They might as well have been wearing badges around their necks. I arrest my case. Yeah, absolutely right. And Koresh did eventually get armed when one of the agents loaned him as 38 super.

And Koresh shot in and said, it's a nice gun. I've got to get one of these someday. So, I mean, yeah, he's an arm to tell you loan him the gun because it's just not decent to shoot off his ammunition and not let him shoot. You know, I mean, this is the thing, as long as we're taking our time here, guys, we're like, you know, forget every other thing

that you know about this story. And we're just think about that itself. This one thing, this one story, it could be about any group of people in any state in this union. That, yeah, what they did was they went shooting with the guy. And then nine days later, they led a 60-man paramilitary assault on his church on a Sunday morning. And they had to do that because they couldn't arrest him peacefully, the guy they

just went shooting with. Now, here's David Koresh himself on that question. You could have arrested me any day as I jog up and down this road. You could have arrested me going to town or going to Walmart. All this stuff you may, you guys may want to avoid and deny. And I do not appreciate it and never will I ever appreciate somebody coming here and pushing people around with guns. Hey, I'll meet you at the doorstep any day, you know, and somebody will get hurt. If you want to keep playing that game, I'm talking to you. Somebody's going to get hurt. Because this ain't America anymore when the ATF has that kind of power to come into anybody's home and kick doors down and things like that.

And you know, I guess I'm pretty happy to say, guys, that I think if anybody ever says Waco, that one of the first kind of general knee-jerk response sort of answers from John Q. Public is they could arrested that guy while he was out jogging. They could arrested him when he went to Walmart. Well, people know that. That's a real, like, widespread, widely accepted truth, that this didn't have to happen at all. And wait, go ahead. No, I'm just saying, I'm not sure it's as widely known as you're indicating.

And I've also noticed that when I'm writing articles on this 30th anniversary of things, I was having people ask it. The newspapers are not publishing them. You're publishing the stuff, the other stuff that tells the other story. Yeah. And that's why we're doing this because it is, you know, definitely they are having their chance. And I'm going to play a clip for you guys that's going to flip you out in a minute along those lines.

But now, so here's where we really switch to February the 28th, okay? And the start of the raid. Now, I have a correction to make for my audience, for going back probably for 20 years, for those of you who've been listening the longest since the first time

I interviewed David Tibido. This is in his book, and it's an error, and it's an error in good faith, but it's not right. and it's something that I made the biggest deal of because I thought it was so important and honestly the point stands

it's just not as good and and you know the anecdote doesn't hit as hard anymore but the story was as told by dibedo and I think especially I think he told me on my show that the morning of the raid on February 28th 93 that Paul Fada had left that morning with a pickup truck with a camper shell on it and towing a U-Haul trailer,

I thought, I'm not sure where I got this version of it, both full of guns. So that whole inventory rifles that we're always talking about, that 90% of them had left that morning to go to Austin to the gun show. And that's too perfect, and I should have known better.

So I asked Paul Fata, this is actually the number one most important reason, knowing that we were going to do this. this is the main overriding reason that I drove up to Waco on April 19th to meet Paul Fata and interview him about this because I had to know what exactly was the truth of that and the truth of that was that this was completely wrong first of all the show started on Thursday

not the day of the raid so I was at that show on Thursday and we I went with Steve Schneider We had a couple tables there. It was, I think, an old Coliseum in Austin, Texas. When I went, I took a lot of paraphernalia, but there weren't a lot of firearms.

So I'd like to see the information you're quoting from, but there were some firearms. There was like magazines, bags. We had a company we called Magbag. They were making these, like, bags that held magazines and just other things that I picked up at gun shows over the past year. So to answer your question, when I left that morning of the raid, I left in a car and with my son, and there was nothing in it. I mean, I left early in the morning. Nobody was awake unless somebody told them that.

But I didn't really have a lot of communication. We had certain things that we'd been taking to the shows. But that particular show, we were filling in for Henry McMayon. Do you remember that name? He was a gun dealer. He was supposed to have been at that show. He came to David and said, hey, I'm not going to. to make it to the show. I don't want to lose my money for the tables that I already

prepaid for. Would you guys mind taking the tables and going? So that's how that all happened for that for that show. All right. So the point being that really the inventory had already been moved to Austin on Thursday and was still there. So the two perfect story that he left with all the guns that morning, you know, innocently and unknowing of the, the raid just leaving to go about his business to go sell them at the gun show is a little too good to be true but the point is that um though they did still have weapons inside the house a good part of what they had was actually there um at the gun show and they were covering for McMahon and and his thing there so do the ATF uh yank McMahon's license i don't think I were

asked with that I never heard that part of it. I don't think he got in any trouble. Well, same for them. He didn't do anything wrong. I don't know what case they would have had against him. Well, if you can lock people up who weren't at the Divideons up who weren't even there. I mean, that's, that's... Yeah.

Well, you know, yeah, it's a... No, he was never charged as part of this case. Certainly, that's true. If they went after his license or something, I don't know. But certainly, you know, as we know from the anecdote, they were welcome in his gun shop, which unlike the Branch

of idiots he had a front door right yeah so that's a bit different um speaking at the front doors where is it oh we're coming to that don't you man you're you're getting such a hurry no i'm hungry too but wait so here's um here is david caresch on robert rodriguez a k a.k a robert gonzalez and um and what david tibedo saw of uh his conversation with koresh before the right after i had i went i got up i had breakfast then i went down the hall and i saw kreche talking to robert rodriguez this was nothing new they were they had they had talked every day for months so i didn't think anything of it other than the fact that of course the sinful messiah series had come out on the night before and i think that i recall david having the paper in his hand

and he was talking to robert so i i don't I was still waking up so I just went back down in the cafeteria and then I'd heard several stories of course you know like the lore people had talked about what happened there and you know David said good luck Robert Robert

Robert got up and left said that he he said that the element of surprise was lost and they went forward with the rate anyway because I guess his higher up I think it was Chuck Sarabin anyway they said

was anybody arming and he said no nobody was arming um that's why they felt i guess it was okay for them to go forward right so um you know this is of course important for a couple of reasons there that the element of surprise is blown but they're not arming up contrary that's our first indication that what they're going to soon start shoveling that the ATF agents were ambushed doesn't really seem right because the order didn't go out oh no they're coming everybody grab a rifle and take a station at a window or something like that instead even the ATF informant himself reports that no they're sitting there praying

and so then that's why the cops the ATF agents then decide well let's go ahead a raid in them they won't be caught by surprise but they'll be caught innocently praying so we ought to not meet much resistance it should be okay and so if you guys are ready we're going to get into the raid on the branch of videos on February the 28th now and I appreciate if I've been trying your patience with all this preamble here but I think it's important so at 745 a.m. A.m. A. KW.TX TV reporter and cameraman showed up at Mount Carmel and at 8.30. another ATX cameraman James Peeler got lost on the road and he flagged down a local postal worker and asked him for directions and he warned the postal worker stay away there's going to be a shootout with those religious nuts and but the postal worker was David Jones Perry Jones's son and so he then drove directly to Mount Carmel and told everybody that this was going to happen. And so then at 8.45, three cars from the newspaper, the Waco Tribune Herald, also showed up.

So, and then as we discussed, Robert Rodriguez was there. And I guess it must have been apparent from all of those things, that whatever is happening is happening in the next few minutes here at some point. This is from Lee Hancock at the Dallas Morning News, who's been their Waco reporter Lowe these many years and who broke a lot of important stories back of the day

and yet is essentially a regime journalist, of course. But this is from her interview of an ATF agent who was there the morning of the raid named Blake Bottler. A little after 9 o'clock, the tactical commander, Chuck Serban, rushed into the area and said, everybody gather around. I've got news. Robert Rodriguez,

who was our undercover agent, had just come out of the compound and just spoke with David Koresh. And Chuck Shervin says, they know that the ATF and the National Guard are coming, but they're shaking and holding Bible, so we're going to go ahead and go. And we were all a little bit set back because all of a sudden the clock had been turned up on us. So we quickly started getting our gear together. It was organized, but they were a little bit. there was a sense of urgency. As we quickly were getting our gear together, some of the medics would come by.

And I remember distinctly when I'm asking, what's your blood type? And I said, hey, he positive. And he wrote it on my neck with a marker. And I just looked to the agent on my right. I said, that's the first time we've ever done that. And obviously, it was the last time we ever did it. But that was one of those moments that really

stick in my mind from that morning. The name of the operation from the onset was Operation Trojan Horse. And it derived that name from the fact that we were going to use cattle trailers, draped with tarps so that they could be seen in from the top. The two trailers, pulled by the trucks, were to pull into the drive and approach, and then as soon as we got into the position, we would open the trailers and come out and execute the search warrant. As you're driving along, it was deadly quiet in the cattle trailers.

There was none of the normal joking around that law enforcement has when we're going to do one of these things. Part of it's to calm our nerves, part of it's to show that brotherhood, but it was just deathly quiet in the cattle trailers as we pulled up to the compound. My team leader, Jerry Petrilli, over the radio, put out it's showtime, which indicated to us that the warrant was going to move forward. same time you also put out there's no one on the compound grounds over the radio. And I remember looking to my left saying, that's not good.

When you hear that news that he says the ATF and the National Guard are coming, did anybody ask any questions or say, hey, wait a minute. And you heard a few rummings about, well, they know we're coming, is that true? Did I just hear that correctly? And right as we were getting on the cattle trailers, I distinctly heard one agent say, well, if they know we're coming, then why are we going? Once we'd lost that element of surprise, some people figured then it was time not to execute the warrant. And, you know, obviously, the information that the tactical commander had was that they were not preparing for a fight,

but were rather praying and shaking hold in their Bibles. So the thought was at that time that we could safely do the warrant in his mind. Obviously, it did not turn out that way. It seems really relevant there that the way he's talking about how afraid they were right in the catch right we're deathly afraid nobody's joking everybody's deathly quiet somebody wrote my blood type on my neck yeah so these guys are amped up they're afraid and they're you know they don't know exactly what's going to happen but they're ready for again a shootout not not warrant service they're ready for a fight

is that right uh yeah i think so i one thing i should mention though that going in um they were not equipped for a fight. I mean, they plainly thought this was going to be an easy job, a milk run, because you can look at their testimony, and quite a few of the agents mentioned having only one spare magazine for their gun or maybe two spare magazines. They were not really prepared for a firefight. And so, yeah, then it turns around with this may be getting really serious,

and now you're facing the fact. that you've only got 20 rounds of ammunition on you. Right. Well, I've had some people point out things like, you know, the building is like 100 yards off the road. And in those days, the road was very much, the driveway up to it was very much, what do you call, washerboarded?

Right. And so, as they said, they come through with these agents and cattle trailers if you're doing more than about five miles per hour, you're going to be bouncing them off the roof. So you're going to go 100 yards at somewhere under five miles per hour. Yeah. And the Divideans wouldn't notice

a big cattle trailer coming up anyway. Yeah. But, you know, it's important in it, Dan, that they talk about the element of surprise being lost all the time. Sure. But it's oftentimes, even if not deliberately, it's very heavily implied in there

that yeah so the Davidians were ready for them when they came. Divideons had their rifles and were ready for this ambush but then no that's not right and here we have from two different agents we've played where they said in their own words that they were told the Davidians were not arming up

they were praying and oh I guess one of those was Tibido quoting the guy the other one was from this guy's own words saying the exact same thing we were told by robert rodriguez that even though the element of surprise was lost they were praying so it was okay to go ahead and go ahead but you know oftentimes i guess is reduced to a cliche that the element of surprise was lost meaning then that that was why the raid went wrong because the branch devidians having prior knowledge were prepared to meet these guys with deadly force and all that when it seems to me like the actual only thing

that we can really learn from that is that the ATF agents were afraid that they expected to be ambushed because of the loss of prior knowledge and so they you know probably were extra itchy trigger fingers walking into something where in fact they were just praying

and there was Sunday morning dude they were arming up but in the cop's imagination they were better write A, B, positive on my neck here in this kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. So it's pretty powerful even if it ain't true when it's in their minds at that time. I think a couple of things. One, Dave mentioned that they asked the postal worker and was told that there's going to be a shootout. I mean, if that went from there back to the house, I could see serving a warrant without a shootout,

but he's planning, if that's literally what he said, that's going to go back. and, well, we better get ready. But I don't think there's any question that the ATF people shot first because they went up and shot the dogs at the very least. That's pretty much standard operating procedure, as I understand it now.

Yeah. And so you're inside and you hear the gunfire going off. What are you going to think? You know, whether you're... I'm not convinced... Well, I'm not convinced they were really looking for an ambush in the sense that they were going to ambush the ATF. They were ready, you know, there's going to be a gunfight?

Yeah, I mean, but that doesn't even imply that anybody had grabbed a rifle or anything like that at all. Just that maybe everybody, the word had gone around that something is going to happen or something. That doesn't really imply any other activity on their part that I know of. But was he told to stay away there was going to be a gunfight? Well, no, that was what I read here, but I actually don't have the exact source of that quote. I could have said that more generally that what the cameraman told Jones was enough to make Jones run home and warn them that a raid of some kind was coming. Whether he said firefighter or not, that, it may very well be true, but I'm not the one who embellished it if it was embellished. I'm not sure.

I spoke with that cameraman. And he's, you know, he said it just, it happened, lickedy split, but everything that's told me indicated that the ATF just came up, shot the dogs, and then that's, uh, yeah. Okay, so before we get to that, we got one small deviation, which is poor Paul Fada. Paul Fattas, we said, left that morning, not with a truck full of guns for the gun show,

too perfect story, but he left that morning and was at the gun show in Austin with his son, filling in for Henry McMahon there and he got caught at the at the roadblock they turned him back and so he went and got a hotel and he called them and said look I'm Paul Fatter are you looking for me the sheriffs told him no hang tight you're fine

whatever and he hung around for days he ended up giving exclusive interviews to a reporter for the New York Times who wrote a couple of stories based on on him and he ended up being eventually indicted and charged with the rest of them on I don't have the entire list of charges here on me but they were separate and different

I think maybe the conspiracy charge but not the murder charge but then it was trumped up gun charges gun handling and trading charges I'm sure and then of course enhanced with drug enhancements so he ended up sentenced to 15 years and did 12. You know, the whole business, you remember the yawns, you know, the husband and wife? Yeah. Yeah. I, a lot of the stuff they were coming up with just didn't make sense to me. You know, about the, like this, how's a guy who's not even there, even part of this?

That's, uh... And that's just one story, but it's like, where do you put poor Paul Fattah's story in here? We might as well just cram it right here in the mid. in the beginning because he's involved that morning but that's the last anybody sees of him until he goes to court with the rest you know um so the cattle trailers pull up the cops jump out now here's where we really get into the meat of things and especially into your great book dave um and we have plenty of audio clips to play to illustrate different points of from both sides of the argument and all of this um the what we do now

know as the ATF left the trailers and very quickly a gunfight broke out. So now let's see where we're at. I guess I want to play the sound of the battle right here. Okay, when does that... Get me... Get me... I'm rolling. I'm rolling. I'm rolling.

Don't turn the camera. Go to the back of the car and give me another tape then. I don't know what he's down. Get out. Get out. We're looking at all right. All right. All right.

Go ahead. Get down. Get down. Keep your hands, guys. All right All right And people can all see that All right

So And people can all see that scene It's from Waco The Rules of Engagement is where I got that audio from And you can hear the dogs plainly in there

You can hear the dogs being shot and killed In their pens Yep Although this would seem to detract from the narrative That those were the first shots fired Yeah right

You hear the dogs a little bit further into it you you can't hear any discussion about you know at the front door or not as far as that part of the story goes but it is very noticeable that in that footage the cops are not particularly taking cover they sort of are but the area around them is not being hit by gunfire at all they're completely opening up with fire but there's no evidence of gunfire hitting the ground hitting the cars breaking car windows or ricocheting off any metal you hear nothing virtually everything in that segment there is just them full on loading onto the house it doesn't seem like there's much of any fire coming from the house at that point which is very very early there and the range

as i recall was only about 20 or 25 yards so basically if a dividian was actually taking aim at you with a rifle, you're dead. Right. But the agents have, they're standing up, they're not bothering to have complete cover or anything like that. They're firing back.

Right. Yeah, I think it's absolutely valid. And I think that the expectation of that, they expect to just come in and everybody's going to fold. Yeah. And, well, it came close to happening. If all, everybody agrees that

Koresh ran out of the building toward the agents, telling them something along the lines of their women and children here, trying to calm the agents. Then gunfire breaks out. And Koresh runs back in and gets shot either in the process of running inside or inside. Well, if you know there are two bands of people, both of them with arms, both of them scared as hell of the other one. Do you run into the middle of that no man's land saying there are women and children in here no you'd stay inside the door right so he didn't

anticipate any of this happening and they say then he had opened the door and a gunshot went under his arm and killed his father-in-law or at least fatally wounded his father-in-law Perry Jones at that time and then one of the bullets hit him

he was shot oh yeah and so now in your book You do such a fantastic job, Dave, of taking all different audio that we have available, because we do have some opinions and some eyewitness statements. We're going to play those. But you match up all different audio to say,

here's what we can really verify of what we know of the timeline here. And this gets pretty complicated, but I don't care. We're going to take our time and go through it here. So here's the first part of this. And this will be familiar with people who've seen. Waco the Rules of Engagement. This is the 9-1-1 call from Wayne Martin. And we're not going to play the whole thing,

but I have the whole thing here, but we just play the first little bit of it. But this is, again, the second black man to graduate from Harvard Law School. He's highly respected, who we played the clip earlier of Alan Stone, saying this man was not a weirdo, et cetera. So here's his reaction to the ATF raid.

911, what's your emergency? Number one, what's your emergency? There are men, 75 men around our building. Okay, just a moment. This Lynch. Hello? Hello? Hello?

There's 75 men. Hello? Hello? Hello? Yeah, this is Lieutenant Lynch. May have you? Yeah, there's 75 men around our building and they're shooting. building and they're shooting at us in Mount Carmel.

Mount Carmel? Yeah, tell them their children and women in here and they call it off. All right, uh, you know. I hear gun fired. Oh, shit. Hello? Who is this?

Hello? Call it off. Who is this? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?

I don't mind. Hello? And he said there was 75 minutes of circling. More and right. And that's a hook of the gunfire. Hello? No, he's honoring there's kids in here and everything. We know that.

God Almighty. That fucking newspaper. Hello? Hello? Wayne. You might page barber and tell him I've got an open line into the compound it sounds like. Just tell him to get him to call you and then tell him I'm down here and that I've got an open line into and that I've got an open line into the compound.

I believe. I'll tell you what. Get on our primary channel and call radio van and see if they'll respond. That's going to be ATF to say radio van. You know, Waco Dispect. All right. So, David Hardy, let's talk about what we just learned from that 911 call. And then, of course, you can add to what you like.

learned when you synced it up with all the other audio there, but just your first takeaway from hearing Wayne Martin call 911, sir. It was obvious that Wayne Martin was terrified and that his reaction was to call the police as far as, you know, they're attempted to pick the Divideons as criminals. Criminals do not call 911. The one thing that has always mystified me, though, is that he says there's 75 people around our building and they're shooting at us. That's almost an exact head count of the number of agents. I forget the exact number, but it's in the mid-70s. How in the heck did he figure that out?

I mean, some of them are going around the back, others are going around the front, and in the few seconds he could scope out somehow come up with a remarkably accurate estimate. Yeah. So it's amazing. He must have thought, but geez, that's just 50 right there. And there's a whole other group over there, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Amazing. Okay. So now, you know, let's play a couple more clips here. We have a few more clips. We're going to essentially on, on who shot first here is what we're focusing on. And we have a few different sides of the story. And everybody's going to get to have their say here. And then I think we're going to get to your thesis from the book, Dave.

about what you think really happened there to wrap this part of it up. So this is Sheila Martin, and she was at the front of the house. So a truck come in, and very long, truck in the front, then this long thing. The second truck stopped and barely stopped, and a man jumped out, and all kind of whatever gear it was he had on and had a gun in his hand. He says, okay, boys.

Then I heard a voice to the right of me, downstairs. I could tell it was at the door. Then I heard a voice on the outside, then I heard another voice inside, and then I heard shots outside. And then, so there's a question of the dogs. Now, we have the sound of at least some of the dogs dying. That doesn't preclude the idea that some of them had already been shot before that audio begins. It's not that that's one single piece of audio stretching back to when they first pulled up or something. So I'm not exactly sure.

And there were definitely, you know, I don't know, at least four or five dogs or something like that. But now, it's interesting that there's an ATF agent named Ronald Ballesteros. And he testified that he believed that the shots fired were from his fellow agents directed at the dogs. He was the fourth agent out of the cattle trailer. And the three agents preceding him were tasked to deal with the dogs. The dogs were to be shot if they could not be put down with fire. extinguishers which they were in their pens anyway yeah so they might have noticed

that and just said oh well forget it they're behind chicken wire whatever it was so but then so this is an important point especially right now guys because in the new documentary they claim that they used fire extinguishers on the dogs and that was in the TV movie, the fictional TV movie Ambush at Waco that they put out also showed that too, that the agents come up and pull up with fire extinguishers, but then Agent Ballesteros says that that is not right,

that they were the ones who shot at the dogs first. He later changed his story saying that the first shots came from the second floor of the compound as they left their cattle trailers and it's worth noting that he added in his second changed testimony that he could see Koresh at the front door and he says quote

he kind of smiled them backed off and closed the door but he hadn't said any of that in his initial debriefing at all so you take that for what it's worth and now I want to play two clips here of a game And this is Agent Blake Bottler from his interview with Lee Hancock of the Dallas Morning News.

This is just recently, 30th anniversary stuff here. Yes. The first shot was semi-automatic, but shortly thereafter, automatic weapon fire was intense. We were not armed with any automatic weapons. We had semi-automatic weapons, mostly 9mm, and the rapidity of the fire was definitely automatic weapons fire. Talk to me about what cover you guys had out there. Cover was limited and vehicles would not stop the rifle rounds that they were firing so they were more concealment. As I came out of the gate I remember telling my team leader he was standing behind a wooden fence I yelled at him I said that's

concealment not cover which in our world means that concealment hide you but it doesn't stop the bullets so I went behind this red car and At that time, there was an agent there, and I met him for the first time, and Clay Alexander, and Clay was asking me if I had been shot, and I said, no, I don't believe so. I said, have you been shot? And he said, yeah, I think I've been shot in the legs. So I felt the back of his legs, and I pulled back my hand. I didn't see any blood, so I said, well, if you're shot, you're not bleeding bad.

And then you guys both went back to shooting. Went back to work, yeah. That was, again, the hale of gunfire was intense in those first 40, 45 minutes of the gunfight. There was a van next to the red car. I was behind, and there were four agents behind that van. One of those was Steve Willis. So, Steve Willis, shortly into the gunfight had been returning fire and got back behind the van, and I saw the glass on the side of the van shatter, and as I looked, I saw the glass on the side of the van shatter, and as I looked I saw Steve Willis fall

and the bullet had gone through the side glass of the van, the back glass, and it struck him in the left side of the head and he was killed immediately. The bullets, there were so many of them. And then shortly after that is when they started finding the 50 caliber barrett at us. And several of the agents actually were wounded with one of those rounds.

Were you close to where that happened? Did you see that? There were several agents that were behind a red and white truck, which was right behind me. We were trained in law enforcement to hide behind vehicles, engines and tires, the rims of the tires, to protect us from gunfire. But a 50 caliber barrett is a kind of a bullet that you used to shoot down airplanes and things like that.

And that engine block did not stop that round. It went through there, fragmented and wounded both of the agents that were behind that truck. Okay, so now here is where the same agent, Blake Bottler, insists that it was the Davidians who fired first. And as the vehicles came to a stop, just as our door became to come open, I heard the first gunshot. What kind of gun did it sound like? Because it wasn't the distinct crack of a gunshot, it was a more muffled sound.

But immediately after that, it was followed by a cascade of bullets coming. Did you hear anybody from inside the compound? I heard someone yelling, get down, get down, was the only thing that I made out. And then the gunshot, gunfire started. We were in a dead run as soon as we hit the ground, running towards the front doors. As I was running and looking at the building on the second floor, I could see muzzle flash in several of the windows as I was running. the curtains, blinds, glass flying out towards us.

And so I was returning fire to wherever I saw muzzle flashes as I ran. And you got fairly close to the front door before you were driven back, correct? My momentum carried me through the gate and then as I looked down, anticipating the front doors to have been opened, they were shut and rounds were coming through the front door. I can only describe it as looking like snow as the white foam inside the doors and the paint came off. I could see agents to my right were trying to get away out from the opening area there. So I was giving them covering fire until I was pushed back by a machine gun fire that

hitting the sidewalk in front of me and hit me in the face with concrete and bullet fragments. Do you have a sense of who started this? The first round came from the inside, followed by a cascade of bullets. And then we returned fire, and in the end, I think the Texas Rangers estimated that the Branch Davidians had fired somewhere around 10,000 rounds at us, and that we had returned fire with around 1,100 rounds. Okay, so we have another clip from him about the order, but I think we better stop because there's quite a few points that he already made there,

that Lee Hancock offered no resistance to whatsoever, interestingly. But he claims, Dave, that the Devidians fired immediately upon them beginning to exit the cattle trailers. He claimed that they almost immediately added fully automatic weapons fire to the fire and still tells the story of how him and his team made it almost to the front door. and retreated and then just hid behind the little fence there and then made it back to their cars

and none of them were machine gun to death somehow. It seems a little strange to me. What did you think of that? Yeah, a machine gun firing on you at 20 yards distance and you escape. That might be miraculous. Hand of God again. Yep.

Yeah. Well, a lot of divine intervention here on everybody's side. As a part of the freedom, actually there were several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits that I filed and one of them got them to cough up the radio van tape and they had a van which was being used for the radio communications and it was within hearing of Mount Carmel and so you and they had an open open mic to record all conversations but also picks up the gunfire and you hear

semi-automatic fire but I don't know how much ATF and how much Davidian but you hear semi-automatic fire for I believe 12 and a half minutes and at that point there is I think one burst

of full auto fire and then the radio van when the radio van guys cries out a machine gun plainly they were surprised then maybe a minute later one of the radio van guys receives a transmission which you can't hear

and rejoices and says the snipers got him and there's a book by one of the agents who was a sniper who mentions doing just that but yeah it sounded to me like there was one machine gun and the fellow with it was killed almost immediately could it have been one of those fancy what do you call them hellfire triggers that i don't know i've never heard one of those used but it could have i mean that's it does what a machine gun does it makes it fire rapidly yeah and it was 12 and a half minutes into the

fight so whatever it was was something you couldn't grab right away but of course you know i mean The whole story is ridiculous. I mean, being drenched with machine gun fire at that close a range and they only lose four men. I mean, give me a break. Yeah, and that really says it all right there, but there's so much more to it. But that does say it all. And Lee Hancock does not push back on this at all. These guys open up with machine gun fire and people should go and if you're not familiar with it,

go and look at pictures of the front of Mount Carmel, be specific. in your Google searches and find some close-up shots of the distance that we're talking about from these trailers to the front door and the little picket fence there and all of that, these are not great distances. And so obviously they could have just waxed them all in their trailers still. They had no intention to doing that. But even at that close range, at that point, it's clear that there's just very limited fire being returned to them for. from inside the house at that point. Yeah.

It's just, you know, 90, 10 or more in the other way. You should see what the criminal trial transcripts have. ATF is swearing that there were multiple belt-fed automatic weapons, some in 30 caliber, some in 50 caliber, and these guys are swearing this was all happening. None of that was even vaguely close to true. Yeah, they claimed that they had M60s. Is there any evidence that they had M-60s as Rambo's gun from the Vietnam War,

the big heavy one from Vietnam, everybody, if you saw those movies. Well, the biggest thing they had was the Barrett, apparently. The Barrett is the 50 caliber. Now, so what do we know for sure about the use of the Barrett by the Davidsians on the 28th? I know of no evidence that was used at the front of the building. Now, at the rear, it apparently shot at some helicopters that were coming in, because there are some holes in them that certainly look to be 50 caliber to me. But no evidence of it being at the front.

And it was a relatively slow-firing weapon. So, you know, you're not going to get off a whole lot of ammunition with it. But you've heard what is being said is that the Davidians had a 50-calibur machine gun, which they did not. I mean, that's the Barrett. And I think you're probably right about the machine-gun fired the front. Yeah. So they claim that it was a 50-caliber bullet that hit an engine block

and then fragmented and wounded two agents. Have you guys ever heard that one? You know that's true? I very much doubt that a 50-Cal would make it through an engine block. It would make it through any other part of the car, but not an engine block. I suspect it probably glanced off and, you know, disintegrated, and thus people might have gotten some fragments. but that could have then been any caliber too as well oh sure yeah and look i mean he describes it as a

cascade of bullets well look i mean unless you're superman that ain't how it happened it makes for a very dramatic report and how do you guys like the claim about 10 000 rounds being fired by the branch davidians in that initial attack that's just completely impossible anything close to it would be completely impossible. The agents fire probably greatly overwhelmed that of the Davidians, and he says they fired 1,100 rounds. I mean, come on, 10,000? And they've got four dead.

Yeah, yeah. And we know, you know, two of them died on the roof. Yeah. In fact, I'm about to ask you that in one second, actually. Two of them died on the roof. One of them, this guy described how he died, was right there in the front. a bullet went through the window and shot him in the head. That's three out of four

right there. So I'm not sure if I know the position of the fourth guy died. So now, in your reconstruction from the audio, before we get all the way into the choppers, because that's a somewhat separate subject, but the choppers were late. First of all, right? And you have this demonstrated from the radio traffic.

Yes. So the purpose of the chopper was what? Ostensibly it was to have a diversion so that they expected the Davidian men to be out back doing some digging and so the choppers would sweep in from the back and keep them distracted

while the cattle trailers pulled up to the front personally I suspect the helicopters were just we can get them for free let's have a little fun I mean really why Yeah. That's shown on the video. You've seen the Asian's all giddy. Oh, yeah. Inside the, you know, they were all happy. It was a lot of fun.

Yeah. Oh, yes. Heavy equipment. If you were born too late for Vietnam, here's your chance to fly around in a Huey. Oh, goody, goody, goody. You know? And so, now, and it's also clear, of course, that there's no ambush. The reaction, as we discussed just from the Wayne Martin call there, is panic and to call 9-1-1. And then what's really great is that you got the audio

from the sheriff's side and the radio van and the 911, the various 911 calls. We only heard the initial one, but then as you talk about in the book, the sheriff called back and Wayne answered, at least eventually. And so there's the open line again. So they eventually negotiated a ceasefire and everything.

right so um can you talk about that a little bit more because this goes on how long is the whole firefight last and or can you describe it in stages for us or something i think it was under an hour uh now i forget but yeah i do and initially you can pick up there's gunfire again you don't know which side is contributing most uh then things start to peter out In the meantime, Wayne Martin is talking to the sheriff, and the sheriff wants to structure a ceasefire, but the problem is they had no way to contact ATF. ATF apparently hadn't given them their radio frequencies or any other way to contact him. What they eventually do is a policeman from one of the local colleges is in the area,

and he can go over to the ATF agents, and then they finally get contact established. And then both sides are de-escalating, that sort of thing. It's interesting in problems of communication because everybody is deaf. And at one point, Wayne Martin, it's agreed there will be five, I think five agents can come on and remove one of the wounded agents. And then the 911 people, the sheriff's people, say, hey, the ATF says you're hearing you shouting, they've only got five minutes to get the guy out. And Wayne says, what? Start shouting, who said that? And eventually he gets back on the line and says, okay, miscommunication. I said five of them would come in. Somebody thought they heard me

save five minutes. But eventually they get things worked out and retrieve the wounded agents and fall back. And you show in there, too, where there was a guy on the second floor who started firing after the ceasefire because he didn't know or he was... Well, the problem is they were shouting a ceasefire and he was, I'm sure, death is a post. And so somebody had to go over and grab him. No, no. And at that point, you emphasized, too, that Wayne Martin says on the phone, no, no, no, you're right about that one.

Our bad, but we talk to him, and now it's okay. And he's being very forthright about, you know, what's happening. In fact, it's really interesting, kind of the scene that you portray with just, you know, quoting their own documents there, the transcripts there, of you can see Wayne running around the house, telling everyone, stop firing, stop. firing and in fact I think as you say before he has anything like an agreement from the ATF he's already calling for ceasefire on his own side in good faith in order to essentially impress the sheriff and tell the sheriff to tell the ATF that see we're not shooting anymore but they're still playing the telephone game and all this is taken forever right yeah yeah yeah one little sideline the fact that all that became public record was due i think in part

to, in the Freedom of Information Act requests the judge, Judge Marquez. I heard this years later from one of his law clerks. ATF said, we can't give up that tape. It's got confidential agent identifiers. It's got secret codes, all of which was BS. And Judge Marquez agreed he would listen to it in his chambers and make a judgment then. And apparently at various points after the ceasefire was created, the ATF agents wanted to go in and retrieve their wounded, but their supervisors said, no, no, it's too dangerous, you know, we've got to work all this out and make sure. And Judge Marquez had been a U.S. Marine who went to shore and Okinawa and a few other sunny islands during World War II, and he had a different code of how you deal with your

wounded and he was reportedly heard muttering those cowardly SOBs in his chambers and all of a sudden it was nope this goes out you get the tapes yeah so let me ask you about the two guys that died on the roof you're the master of the footage here and this is something that's always been frustrating to me and i'm sure a lot of other people who are interested in this story is it's you see the same short clips over and over again. And it depends on who tells the story exactly, but I think that

the cops go into the they go up the ladders. You go up the ladder on the side of the roof to the window. They break the window open. Uh-huh. And then one of them goes in and gets shot in there. That's what I was told. Now, I don't, you can't see it

on the video. But I was told the guys actually on the roof that you see rolling around actually did survive so yeah you know it is confusing about which ones were killed because i think in in your book what you have on the radio there is there are two dead guys on the roof and i think that that must be not the roof of the chapel that must be on the other side of the house over above the cafeteria or something or further toward the courtyard do you know i don't know because in the you're right in the foot they slide they're wounded and one rolls down and it's slides down the ladder.

That's what I was told is they survived if they were not, those the guys were not killed. So I think that must have been a different part of the roof. It certainly looks like an auto bid. Yeah. Well, in the sequence, there's always an edit. But in the sequence, what I'm trying to get to is it looks like an agent goes in the window and then bullets start coming out that window

and hit the fellow agent. They come out of the roof too. Right. Somebody was inside shooting up. You know, that's why I say it's hard to believe that those guys survived. But I was told me, did you ever think that there was a question of any friendly fire that the ATF had actually shot each other up there? I've not heard about it, but it wouldn't surprise me knowing the competency of the ATF. I recall reading that one of the guys who went in to the, in through the window, took a friendly fire hit.

He was wounded, not killed. the bullet that they had now I forget what type of bullet ATF was using at a hollow point hydroshock those were very scarce at the time the Divideons didn't have them

ATF did and what bullet they took out of this guy was a hydro shock and now you show in your analysis Dave of the audio that the first shots are not fired for 35 seconds after they leave their trailers. And so, which, I don't know exactly what all you can conclude from that, but certainly you can conclude that this guy's story

that he told Lee Hancock with no pushback from her whatsoever, no follow-up question even whatsoever, that they just immediately opened fire on them. 35 seconds is not immediate. And then you also show that, I guess, the main part of the battle itself was only 25 minutes long, even though that seems to be always embellished, right? Yeah.

And I might add that at the civil trial anyway, I was present there, the testimony from everyone was that Koresh ran out of the door, like I say, waving his hands, and shouting there are women and children in here and then the first shots rang out they came around the back of the building and at that point he realizes you know he he's standing right in the middle of no man's land between two bands of people who are probably going to start emptying their magazines and so he runs back in and interestingly you know the agent that talked to lee hancock

makes no mention of Koresh at the door at all. Right. He just says that the gunfire, in fact he says the gunfire is coming through the front door. No wonder the door is missing because the FBI was covering for the branch divinians who were apparently the ones firing blindly through the door, Dan. The attorneys

visited DeGarren and Zimmerman said their polls were punched in. And that's that I can totally believe it. Now I know both DeGarren and Zimmerman. They're two big criminal attorneys and know Houston and were involved in a lot of the stories that I did and others did

there too but if they said they were punched in I believe it yeah one Zimmerman said hey I'm a Marine captain yeah I know what's an incoming bullet round and a metal door yeah right that's as expert opinion as you need right there so and now I have to say although I don't have my footnotes handy on this day but I guess the version I had always heard was that Koresh had opened the door by I guess you're saying this now is probably the first I've heard that he had run outside

you know, down the steps and out there to talk to that. He got outside, yeah. Okay, wow. So that's a much even larger omission than him opening the door. And this is when his father-in-law shot right in his sternum to, Perry Jones.

Well, it's the same story. I hadn't heard he ran outside. He just said he went out and said, hey, this women and children here and got shot. Essentially like in the door jam was more or less the way I had taken. it but um so but either way there was a reason that he had opened the door it wasn't an ambush anybody he wasn't armed he went out there presumably his hands on the air saying hold it everybody

don't do anything crazy this is a house full of civilians here i don't know what you think because you can even imagine right where he is imagining that they must think it's all fighting age males in this house or something they must not know that it's women and children in here you know he's like presuming, wow, they must really think the wrong thing about what they're up against kind of thing. And so he's telling them, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's innocent people, by definition, innocent women and children here. I think there's another indication here. There's a later video of him. You might remember him with his wife and a couple of the kids, and he's on the floor, and he's saying, this is where I got shot. And he said the bullet came in here from the front.

I believe you can see the wound in the front. Right. Oh, yeah, you can see it. I think it's totally consistent with being shot from the front as opposed to being the crossfire and somebody in the back. Because he said this is where it went in and came out back here. I've seen the autopsy report. Koresh took one vicious hit there. It was in the groin and punched out through the pelvis, the what do you call the components of the pelvis on the side,

punched a hole through there about the size of a 9 millimeter so yeah he took some bad damage okay so now we get to the helicopters first of all here is the great journalist James Beauvard there were so many farcical elements

in the federal storyline especially after the shit hit the fan with the initial raid and you got for dead ATF agents and you've got to find scapegoats real fast and you know there was yeah go back to that by the way because that was the original question way back when

was about who fired first because it does matter a lot doesn't it? Yeah and the tell tell thing on that was that the feds said that the Davidians fired first ATF claimed that they had a video proving that too bad that video

somehow vanished into either so But what happened was that the ATF agents, according to, I think, at least one, if not two or three of their testimony, the shooting started when they pulled up and killed the Branch Devidian's dogs prior to assaulting the building. And, you know, you go and you shoot a Texan's dog, you know, not a good idea. So, I mean, I was raised in the mountains of Virginia. You go around shooting people's dog, you know, you can have a lot of trouble. So that was one storyline of how the shooting started. Another one is that the ATF fabricated a drug nexus, claiming the Divideons had a meth lab on their basement,

and used that to get military equipment and assistance for their attack on the Davidians. And the ATF used a National Guard helicopter, according to some of the Divideons, that helicopter was passing over the Divideon's house, and firing into it so this is a crucial part of the story here is these hughies now first of all it's just the crime of them being used in this way and i love this clip it's uh i guess from the congressional testimony poached from your film rules of engagement here dan of dan kavanaugh from the at f

denying that the helicopters ever fired on the davidians being teed up by then con Congressman Charles Schumer from New York. Is there any way that somebody could believe that justifiable homicide could be used as a defense here? No, Mr. Schumer. They shot through the doors, they shot through the ceilings. Assertions that we had helicopters or men from Mars shooting at them is nonsense. Our agents were laying on the ground, shooting at a tower three stories high. Should we be surprised there's bullets in the roof?

Of course. I agree with you, Mr. I'm sorry. Thank you. And, you know, I don't know. To me, it's a tell. I guess you can make of it what you will. But nobody had mentioned men from Mars until he brought them up.

Helicopters were flying around with armed policemen on them. And being piloted, presumably by National Guard pilots, right? And so that's, we. Within the realm of possibility, at least, seems to me like invoking men from Mars is really nothing but a smokescreen and a panic there to try to just cast the sort of shadow or the smear of absolutely crazy conspiracy stuff on what is the obvious question. Hey, bullet holes in the roof. He's conceding bullet holes in the roof. Now we're arguing about how they got there. Okay. This is a perfectly reasonable discussion for gentlemen to have. to resort to all this UFO crap, but he, I think it's a sign of desperation, isn't it? Absolutely. It makes me wonder, well, why does anybody believe anything the ATF or given the recent history of the FBI says anybody? I mean, when they swear I tell the truth or take an oath,

does it mean anything? I'm seriously doing it. Yeah, let's see what happened in the Freedom of Information Act suits on that score. among other things they finally gave up the clear tapes the infrared tapes and they had no soundtrack on them excuse me it was you barely make out some sounds at a certain point turned out they deleted the soundtrack in copying it because on the soundtrack you had a bunch of very incriminating statements over the radio and they gave an affidavit to the court saying we've provided an exact copy of these things. There were affidavits they filed that said that no, no infrared tapes were made before a certain point in the day. Turned out no, they were made twice that long. I mean, they were saying

things under oath that were just plainly false. But do they ever get called this? Does any judge ever said, call these guys on perjury and file charges? Hey, you have to get the U.S. attorney to file charges. So guess what? of anybody getting called on perjury is about zero. In fact, the Danforth report, the Independent Council report, mentioned that affidavit because I made sure to send it in and said something effective, well, it's sort of troubling, but it's sort of understandable that they made these mistakes.

Oh, yeah, mistakes. Give me a break. The other thing was when they started coughing up tapes of the day of the raid. At first, they coughed up one, and I pointed out, you can see two more people making videotapes in this footage.

So where is that stuff? And they coughed up another and said, well, actually you've got two images, but they're of the same man. And I said, look at the bloody tape. One man is plainly

an African-American. the other man you only see his arm but he's almost albino so if this is the same man he's had rather unusual limb transplant and then they coughed up the next one but it was that constantly and the audio tapes like I say they were they swore to the judge this was a secret agent identifiers secret codes and law enforcement techniques etc and the judge in his findings said the only agent identifiers are last names and the only secret codes that I can hear, I can't hear anything.

So, yeah, they were lying through their teeth. Something else on the tapes about those tapes about the way that governments and large corporations, particularly lie without, you know, saying a lie, is the tapes themselves, the Fleer tapes, were horribly degraded. They must have been second, third, fourth, fifth generation. They were not the same tapes that the congressmen saw during the hearings because it was fuzzy.

And this is something that I've seen, well, Uncle Sam do, the large corporations is, let's say, you request certain amount of information, and they send you train loads of it. It's more than you could ever go through. Or something like the tape here has been, it's a fifth generation. whatever it was, but you can't see things as clearly as you can on the generation that was in Congress, and that's very, very illustrative. That's what we got. We had to work with was the fuzzy-wasies here on the... And there was Flair from the February 28th raid too, right? They're not not overhead, but there was some kind of... There was one from a helicopter, and I got that one too. it was pretty interesting you'd see the helicopter you pick up some of the radio traffic you

see the helicopter sitting down after the raid that sort of thing one of the local ranchers they landed on this property I talked to him and so you have the fleer images of a herd of cattle as they're coming in okay so now this clip is from Rules of Engagement and this is taken from the negotiations or from the negotiation tapes there's not much of a negotiation going on but this is steve schneider uh who i guess you know you could call caresh's right hand man and caresh as well arguing with jim kavanaugh himself there of the ATF who pardon me i don't know his exact rank but he was the ATF commander on scene from the undercover house across the street he was the highest ranking guy during the raid.

So, and the same guy who we just heard invoke men from Mars as also preposterous, just like helicopters are preposterous. Well, I think we need to, you know, set the record straight, and that is that there was no guns on those helicopters. There was national guard officers on those helicopters. He says there was no guns on those helicopters. That's a lie. That is a lie.

He's a damn liar. Did you hear that? I know what he said, but it's not true. He said. He went to talk to you now. Okay. Now, Jim, you're a damn liar now. Let's get real.

David. No, you listen to me. You're sitting there and telling me that there were no guns on that helicopter. I said they didn't shoot. There's no guns. You are a damn liar. Oh, you're wrong, David. You are a liar.

Okay. Well, just contact. And, you know, let me tell you something. That may be what you might want the media to believe. But there's other people that fall, too. Now tell me, Jim, again. You're honestly going to say those helicopters didn't fire on any of us? David?

I'm here. Yeah, what I'm saying is that those helicopters did not have mounted guns, okay? I'm not disputing the fact that there might have been fire from the helicopters. What I'm telling you is there was no mounted guns. you know, outside mounted guns on those helicopters. I agree with you on that. All right, and that's the only thing I'm saying. Now, the agents on the helicopters had guns.

I agree with you on that. Okay. You understand what I'm saying? Well, no. What the dispute was over, I believe, Jim, is that you said that they didn't fire on us from the helicopter. Well, what I mean is a mounted gun. Yeah, but beside the point, what they did have was machine guns. Okay, I don't know what they had. They were armed.

The people inside had pistols or rifles. We agree. Okay, all right, that's good. That's good. We agree. Okay. Let's just leave it at that. Okay. All right, so, I guess, you know, if you want to be very generous to Mr. Kavanaugh, maybe he got further information after that, that no, really, we got every bullet accounted for. But his admission to Koresh there long precedes his testimony to Congress under oath that that's completely crazy and a lie and not true.

He didn't imply to Congress that there was even the slightest possibility. that was true, where then you heard him back down to Koresh after Koresh just asked him nicely instead of yelling at him. Koresh goes, now, come on. You're really going to say that? And he goes, oh, not twice, I won't.

So, come on, you know. But don't you love how the obfuscation, though, there were no guns on that hell capture. No, no, I mean, fixed. So now they have to be the pods on the skis. And look, we know

Well, I guess there's a strong reason to believe that Winston Blake was killed by a helicopter that flew by and killed him as he was sitting in his room eating breakfast that morning. And it's Peter Gent. He was found dead on top of the water tower and it's shown in rules of engagement. It's pretty far away footage,

but seems like possibly he is shot from the helicopter and falls after the helicopter flies by although I think there's other information that says maybe he was just shot from a sniper from below because this is in your book that they're confused what's tower one and tower two and all this so maybe they're being shot from that three-story tower in the center of the building but they believe they're being told that they're being fired on from the water tower and Peter Gent was in the water tower and went up obviously unarmed he has a trowel he's not a sniper he goes up there to see what's going on and they shot him so it could have been from the ground yeah and then it is its own

horrible scandal that they refused to let the dividians go up there to get his body for five days yeah after that which is absolutely disgrace but so there are you know Winston Blake Winston Blake is said to have been shot from the helicopters flying by his bedroom and then I guess on Peter Gentwitz it's like 50-50 whether it was you know yeah but it does I guess it does look like the helicopter is flying by, and then he falls to the deck there. Yeah. Right. Well, one thing, too, in the book I sort out, the gunfight begins at the rear of the building.

Well, does it begin with the helicopters firing on the Davidians or the other way around? Right. So this is my next section I was just going to ask you about, right? So this is the crucial question is we've had this discussion from the ATF and from the Davidians about what happened at the front door, right? And did they shoot the dogs or they just shot Perry Jones or was it the Davidians who had opened fire on them? But now you have a very sophisticated audio analysis in the book.

This is not an assault. And you draw, I think, unique conclusions from the audio from the helicopter and also synced up with audio from the ground. So explain that for us. Well, there were a couple of agents making videos from the, helicopters so you can use those and in particular the soundtrack was very interesting because you do hear as a helicopter is coming in you hear gunshots pop pop pop pop pop pop pop the question is is it from the helicopter or from the

ground then you hear two I think two or three impacts I think those are the 50 calibers okay at that point there's no question the helicopter is on the receiving end. But if you listen after those, you don't hear any gunshots, which tells me from the helicopter, you couldn't even hear a 50 caliber being fired at you. The helicopter is an incredibly noisy machine. And so basically, it was sufficiently loud to drown out even the sound of a 50 caliber. And the reason I say after the, you don't hear it after the shots is the bullet is traveling at about Mach 2 or Mach 3. The sound is traveling at Mach 1. So if, in fact, a shot is fired at you with a rifle, you will hear the shot

after the bullet passes you, not before. So, but basically that's... And the impact from the sound of the bullet hitting the helicopter, that's going to be immediate to the mic picking it up. Yep. and so basically I thought I could eliminate the sound of eliminate the ground as a source for the gunshots that you do hear on the tape. It has to be

something much closer and much louder. Okay, so just to rehash that and make sure that I understand and the other people catching on who just went to get a drink and are coming back, understand. You're saying that this is audio recorded from the helicopter. You can hear

gunshots in it, but of course it's just audio We can't see exactly what's happening. So now we don't know where it's coming from, but we know we're picking up gunshots. But then you hear some version of plink, plink, plink, as gunshots are hitting the helicopter. Yes. But we do not hear the corresponding sound

of the explosion of gunpowder from the rounds being fired. So now that means we can explicitly eliminate the possibility that the sound of the gunfire that we just heard previously, was coming from the ground because we're definitely not hearing it correlated with the shots

with the sound of the impact hitting the helicopter. And now, in fact, just to be like double extra blind study here, what about the difference in time period between the shots that we do hear and the sound of the impacts hitting the helicopter?

Several seconds, but the gunshots that we do here come before the bullets hit the helicopter. right so they cannot be from the bullets that hit the helicopter and how clear is it that that's what you're hearing is the bullets are definitely hitting the helicopter in this audio it's clear thunk funk funk yeah and at the criminal trial the helicopter pilot testified that he heard the sound of the impacts and described it so it's pretty clear these are the impact noises and then but so what makes you believe that this is how it began

the fact that the people around the front in the civil trial everyone on both sides testified that the first shots were heard at the rear of the building so that's where the gun battle began whichever side began it

it was at the front at the back and it only spread around to the front after they heard the sounds you know you've got two bands of men armed, scared, mentally, the first shot is going to hit you. I mean, that's your mental orientation. So in that setting, all you need is a few gunshots and everybody pulls the trigger. Just like with the dogs, you know, you wax the dogs.

That might be enough right there. Well, so, okay, there's sort of two things that are being proven here, right? The first one is that there are gunshots from the helicopter. now trying to pin it in the moment the exact moment in time i guess i'd ask the both of you this how consistent is that testimony that the first shots were heard in the back of the house from that civil trial that you're talking about with the rest of the the narratives that we've heard all along from both sides because i guess i'm not familiar with those claims coming from any other time period then and i'm not sure how many how many how many

different witnesses you're citing here saying that but it's an interesting four and and also there was another witness that I found of the rancher who was just uh had property adjacent to the davidians uh he he was a shooter and he told me that that morning he heard not only the first gunshots but also the sound of the bullets tracking through the air make a sort of snapping sound and that they were at the rear of the building. He couldn't tell whether they came from the helicopters or Mount Carmel, but they were definitely at the rear. Very interesting.

Okay, so now here's our third Martin clip here. This is the son, Daniel Martin, from, I'm sorry, I believe it's from Rules of Engagement. It may be from a new revolution here. shot up our whole room we were at the top and man it was so so tore up lines everywhere and everything was tore up it was hard to believe uh david's room what was at the very top was all holy and the building was basically made out of wood and sheetrock so it was easy to get through

didn't slow the bullets down much so this is a crucial point that's not I didn't play that just for you know some emotional tear jerk thing there the point is that those cops were just absolutely firing blindly through the walls and windows of this house for some half an hour or more

six dividians were killed in the thing and here this kid he's talking about his bedroom was all toward well no one was firing from daniel martin's bedroom or no reason to believe that they were and yet his room you know he's describing it must have been hit some serious number of times right five or ten times or more well the the agent testified that uh the government fired off about 1100 rounds yeah you're firing at a building that is like i say 20 yards away. I doubt many of them missed the building. So they're probably to 1100 bullet holes in

Mount Carmel. And they're firing blindly at walls. You can see even from far away there's, you know, holes in the walls, which I guess you could argue from far away, uh, which direction they're all going. But the cops seem to be disobeying rule number one of, well, depending on which order you like them, but you guys correct me from wrong. He's not rule number one. of handling a gun that you don't ever point it at anything that you are not willing to destroy and so you don't take a shot

at what you're not exactly sure what you have to be 100% confident of your target and what is beyond your target to make sure there's no collateral damage there the rest of these and these are highly trained cops who practice all the time it's not a panicky homeowner in the middle of the night these are guys whose job it is to know when and when not to pull that trigger

and here they're just blasting in a house just blasting the one lady I don't have this clip but it's in your film she says oh yeah thanks a lot for shooting me and she shows where they shot her in the hand and she was holding nursing her baby when she was you know shot in the hand

clearly she was not holding a rifle and pointing it at an ATF agent at the time so look I mean it's not a pedantic point it's kind of the biggest deal in the world that there was no ambush and there's no reason to believe the Davidians fired first. And I don't know, maybe someone dropped a book and a

Davidian did fire first accidentally because they were startled. No reason to believe that. Even still, you're talking about a full-scale military assault on a church on a Sunday morning. And, I mean, there's just really no reason. I don't think to believe that the Davidians fired first, but certainly they were being put in an extremely awkward position either way there. Yeah, I'll see it was awkward. But the government, again, my attitude is they've told so many lies, and I'm not aware of the Divideons having done that. That's right.

About whatever their lifestyle, whatever they were doing there, and the guns, their comments hold water. Well, one point worth mentioning is that the jury that in the criminal trial, the Davidians were charged, of course, with murder the jury acquitted them a murder and found voluntary manslaughter which is oh no not even no no no they were they it was they were found on guilty on a gun charge only and acquitted a murder and conspiracy to commit murder we'll cover the trial but okay but anyway the point was they were found that you're making they were found as fighting in self-defense there that they had not murdered anyone

at all well you know dick to garran and Zimmerman pointed out something that's very important I think is in Texas, it is legal to use deadly force against police if they start the encounter. Before anything else starts, if they start shooting, that's not the case in other states. And they may have changed the law since then, but I know that that's what Dick DeGaron says in the film is that, yeah, everyone has the natural right of self-defense and even recognized by the law. If someone is using deadly aggressive force against you, you have the right to have. yourself even against a cop in other words that's the law for everyone and they are not exempted from that even though now obviously under the law the cops do have the right to initiate aggressive

force but it has to be reasonable and proportional within some kind of standard if they're truly murdering you you don't have the obligation to accept being murdered yeah and that brings up the question i was asked before is when the police show up or whoever it's your house and start shooting, do you have a right to defend your life by shooting back if you can? Or are you expected to be a good citizen and let them kill you? Yeah, lay down and die. Yeah, and I'm surprised how many people will say the latter? Well, and the courts seem to uphold that few, so.

And we touched on the double white doors, but importantly, again, the two front doors of the house were these white-painted metal doors and we heard the cops say that the bullets were coming out he remembers the stuffing from the door like snow coming out into the air he says which I suppose is possible but then as you said Dick DeGarren and Jack Zimmerman the lawyers said that they saw incoming rounds

obviously easy to distinguish in a thin metal door like that the way the depression around the bullet hole is going to be. And then that door disappeared and was never examined. It was removed by the feds. The Texas Rangers never got a hold of it. And we have a whole section on the cover-up, you know, at the end of the day later. But this is the cover-up of the question of the first day. And it doesn't necessarily prove who fired first, but it does prove that they were firing blindly through that door in large quantities that whoever happened to be behind it. Well, there is a still photo from the first day in which you can see two agents kneeling down in front of the door with their guns

aimed at the door. I'd be pretty sure they were dumping ammunition. And the Divinians during the siege taunted the government with the fact that we've got the door. We've got the proof. That's in the transcripts where they're saying, just you wait until we get that door out. Yeah. And I had some information. I can't give the details. But, the suggestion was that the missing door went to their base at Quantico as a pallet on which the firearms confiscated firearms were stacked

and came from a pretty good source There it hangs on the walls a trophy to this day Any chance of getting a free of information request out of for something at Quantico that we think it might be there residual evidence that was taken from Waco it's in a closet someplace or... Yeah.

I think that... Yeah, that might be interesting. I just, I mean, the more, it's just very plain what, you know, what went down here. And I've just, you know, there's so many lies that, I mean, I, no, I know Zimmerman and Degarin, and they're straight shooters. I've never, over the years, I mean, I've got seven, eight years of experience, say, interview. interviewing him in Houston and certainly if I'd go along with what they say yeah I've certainly believe them too and especially the way Zimmerman says look congressman I'm a captain from the Marine Corps and I'm telling you like come on that's authoritative that's all you need to know

it's certainly all he need to know and he's clearly being honest there um So, before we get to the cover up here, we have an important clip, and this is in a sadly ironic way, some comic relief in a sense from your movie, Dan. This is a clip of Charles Schumer tangling with Bob Barr on the question of flashbang grenades being thrown into the building by ATF agents during the initials. raid. Do you doubt that there were 48 illegal weapons and hand grenades? I've never said I knew all the details of the trial. And I'm sorry, he's, it starts out, he's arguing with Dick DeGarren. That's, uh, Koresh's lawyer. Do you doubt that there were 48 illegal weapons and hand grenades? I've never said I knew all the details of the trial. Do you doubt that? I'm asking you that right now, sir. What is your question? My question is,

do you doubt, do you have doubts that Mr. Koresh had on his compound, illegal weapons and illegal hand grenades. You have any doubts about that? No, he told me he had illegal weapons. He did not tell me that he had hand grenades there. I see. And I saw no hand grenades. I did see some grenades that the ATF had thrown in and I brought one out. What do you mean

thrown in? The ATF threw in grenades in their dynamic entry. No, they didn't throw any grenades in as I understand it. They were flash packs. They did not explode. Have you ever seen what a flash bang can do to somebody? It's a grenade. It has an explosive charge in it. It's very dangerous. It can blow your hand off. It can blow your face off. It can kill. I would have brought out some of the unexpended grenades that the ATF threw in, but I was worried about bringing out a live grenade. So I left them there. There were a number of grenades. Okay, Mr. DeGarren. I think that

would hamper your credibility because you're the first person who would say that those were grenades. I've never really sat through a hearing the likes of yesterday. Six and a half hours of defense lawyers, their marathons, their ways of sliding over the truth was very unfortunate. This idea of the FBI having hand grenades, not flashbangs, but hand grenades. And finally, coup de Gras, Mr. Degeren said flashbangers can kill, injure, maim, anyone who knows anything about these things knows they can't. Mr. Kavanaugh, I have in my hand here a amount of Play-Doh. Bush, if you could, this is just standard Play-Doh.

If that were a flash-bang grenade or a stun grenade, the same thing, which was live, which pin had been pulled, would you feel comfortable just holding that in your hand? Well, Mr. Barr, a flash-bang grenade? My answer is no. I would not want to hold it. Those are classified as destructive devices under 26 U.S.C. Section 5845F, aren't they? Yes, sure they are. that they can kill people. Is that true? Certainly, yes, sir. Well, a gentleman by the name of Warren L. Parker, an explosive enforcement officer, Bureau of ATF on May 11, 1994, in court, said under oath that they are designed to help kill the suspect while not endangering the law enforcement officer when they're used for

those purposes. I just love the way he cites all the decimal points and everything in the code there, the way it's defined. And it's a great trick the way he made him hold. It could have just been hand of my pen But instead he has a big wad of pink Play-Doh He says, okay, I want you to pretend That that that's a flashbang whose pin had been pulled And then I love the way Kavanaugh just stammers And has to admit that hell no

Get that thing away from me You're familiar with MED firecrackers, cherry bombs That sort of thing Yeah, they'll blow your hand off Yeah, now just imagine when the size of a beverage can That's a flashbang Yes, it will do a job on you okay so uh before we get to the cover up there's one last bit i wanted to play from the actual

raid of the 28th which is just a clip of poor old clive doyle talking about you know the very human side of this these people were so damned dehumanized that it seems like uh they ought to have a chance where people can hear them you know I went running down the hall and found Perry Jones laying in the hole, screaming that he'd been shot. Perry Jones was in his 60s. He was unarmed, as was David Koresh. When they went to the front door, both were shot in the area of the front door.

David was shot in the wrist. Perry Jones was shot in the stomach. So, anyway, there's Clive. talking about finding Perry Jones and you know a little bit of humanity for you there now on the cover up i love this part uh september 17th 1993 treasury department confidential memo to assistant treasury secretary ronald noble states that a march 1st batf initiated shooting review and quote immediately determined that these stories of the agents involved did not add up at this point

oh sorry Justice Department attorney Bill Johnston quote at this point advised ATF supervisor Dan Hartnett to stop the ATF shooting review because ATF was creating

a sculptory material that might undermine government prosecutions of branched dividends so we do have we quoted before Ballastaro said it was my partner was the guy who shot first. Surely that's all you need to know

that you have even just one ATF agent admitting that it was his buddy that fired the first shot. So I guess whatever it was that they were all saying, they were having a hard time making it jive. So then the U.S. attorney said, stop writing stuff down

because they're going to use it against us later. Yep. Now that's got to violate some right. probably not if you have the exculpatory material material that suggests the defendant is innocent you have to turn it over i don't know of any duty to prepare it if it doesn't already exist now what is miss what was that word misprision uh then worded in different ways it amounts to having knowledge of a felony and failing to report it And, like I say, it's different ways.

The one in Arizona is sort of funny because it says if you're, if you are asked by a magistrate, you must say whether a felony occurred. We're talking about government agents. That law doesn't apply to any citizen that they must report felonies. But you're saying government officers must report felonies that they know about. Oh, no, no. at the federal level anyway, it applies to every citizen. And in Arizona, I mean, it's never enforced, okay?

In Arizona, it only applies to magistrate and encounters you walking down the street and asks you, do not have any felonies lately, which to my knowledge has not happened in the history of the state. But yes, there is a statute out there, which on various terms says you're supposed to disclose any. felony known to you. Now, how, what would Johnston have been, how would, what he did fit in this where he's, I guess he's the one to selling, stop producing information. So that's, he's aware, he's aware of a felony and he's stopping it, is that? Yeah, that might, yeah, might just.

Well, it seems like there's at least government guidelines and rules about making it mandatory for government agents and not necessarily all, employees, but agents, meaning having the power of attorney to arrest people and federal cops, FBI agents, DEA agents like that, are they not bound by the rules of their governments to? I mean, we know they're never going to obey it, but technically they're supposed, there's not supposed to be a thin blue line. You're supposed to prosecute felonies against anybody, even your fellow agents. Yeah. That's supposed to be the law. Yeah, and they would have agency guidelines. I don't know what they are for the shooting review.

So there would have been something in ATF where it's not totally discretionary. You do a review or not, as you please, rather, under these conditions, you will do a review. And so, obviously, that had kicked in and they had started to do the investigation. And obviously, they didn't like the results they were getting, or the U.S. Attorney's Office didn't. They sent a memo. that justice does not want treasury to conduct any interviews or have discussions with any of the participants because of the fear of creating exculpatory material.

While we may be able to wait for some of the witness to his testified in the criminal trial, the passage of time will dim memories. So justice wanted to completely monopolize the story and not even, they didn't even trust the ATF to investigate themselves because they figured they'd be too hard on themselves in a way that.

I guess, put them in a difficult position as the Justice Department? No, the whole case. See, I don't see how they got any, the Davidians even in prison, especially some that weren't even there. Oh, well, we're going to get to that crooked trial. Yeah, it sure ain't because it's fair. I mean, this is really a lot of the stuff that people talk about, that the system is horribly corrupt.

So it's the new documentary. I knew this was in here somewhere. The new documentary on Netflix. makes a bunch of claims about automatic weapons fire and from m60s which again in all in all y'all's research on this y'all never seen them accuse i know it is in ambush at waco the phony documentary yeah the the the tv movie right portrays i think even katherine madison the little old lady holding an m60 just because i guess they're making fun of us very rambo-esque yeah but so but there are no in the actual criminal proceedings or justice or treasury reports on this,

no one ever said that they had M60s before. No. This is just made up new. But you have to look at the connection between the Justice Department or ATF and Washington and whatever favors might be in the past, might be coming down to pike, or putting that stuff in there because those images stick in people's minds. Yeah.

This is real proper agenda. Honestly, I got a picture of my head right now of a little old lady holding a machine gun. I may be transposing the M60 or not, but she's definitely holding at least an M16. And it's from the TV movie, Ambush at Waco, which is not a documentary. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that film later, but I still got that image. So there's no way to overstate the way you just said it, that when they make a claim like that, they met us with M60s this is the one again this is Rambo's gun

not the M16 from Vietnam the big heavy belt fed one that a really really big tough guy like Sylvester Stallone can handle by himself but usually is a two man gun yeah right yeah one guy's got it on a bipod and his buddy is helping

feed it ammo right so this is not a civilian firearm in any sense but it's also one that would have left a lot more than four dead ATF agents had it been in use that day and it's almost

amazing that they want to try that like don't they know they're just provoking me and that I'm local and that this is this is crazy guys you got enough lies without adding M60s to it

you know come on okay and I guess as soon as the cops ran out of ammo that was when they finally ceased fire and then the Davidians were happy to let them leave without shooting them at all and cease fire. I guess we're beating a dead horse at this point, but it's clear that the ATF were the aggressors

and these Texans defended themselves and won. And that's the big scandal here, right? Yeah. Usually the SWAT raid comes in. It's the Powell Doctrine, overwhelming force. 3 a.m., you and your family lose and are dragged out in cuffs or maybe shot. And, you know, as we talk to, we're going to talk about it in here somewhere.

There's 50 to 60,000 SWAT raids per year in the United States of America. Really? A thousand a week, including, you know, the holidays. The ACLU count, 60,000. It was 50. So this is the kind of thing that happens all the time. It's just, it usually doesn't happen like this, where it goes completely. completely to hell, and then not only do the people on the defensive win,

but then they've all these reasons why they've got to stay in there and all of that, as we're going to discuss here, which is what, you know, makes it such a unique thing, is, you know, the scale of it. But we have essentially 10-man, you know, assault squads. In Afghanistan, in the war, they call it a night raid. The Navy SEALs or the Rangers go in they climb out of helicopters in the middle of the night delta force as well and it's called a night raid and a lot of times innocent people end up getting shot just like here and so it's pretty hard to tell the difference between civilian police doing night raids and and soldiers at war but that was essentially what happened here is the first thing in the morning rate but essentially the same

shock and awe and overwhelming force and in afghanistan they're at war that's not supposed to be the case here. Yeah. Although we're still talking about civilian homes of people who are just as innocent. Yeah, but... Huge. So, yeah, and it is funny, and I guess worth reiterating, right? And for all of these claims by the ATF about what happened that morning, only four of

them got shot. And what, six wounded? I think that's... I think that's the number. Yeah. Four is a very low number. And again, two of them were up on the roof before they got shot. one of them in the front

at least a few minutes into the initial fighting there a couple minutes at least minimum, right? So there's this just absolutely and of course what we hear from Wayne Martin and all that on the audio and all this,

it just absolutely puts the lie to the claim that they were ambushed by the Branch DeVittians that the Branch DeVidians took that prior knowledge the surprise has the element of surprise has been lost. Oh no, and we went anywhere. it doesn't matter because it still wasn't an ambush anyway they still were just sitting

there reading their bibles anyway it's the same reason they proceeded because they were not preparing for war and then they just lied about that and again it's impossible to overstate you know they dropped it now they don't say that word as much now sometimes lee hancock will give them a platform to lie handcock will give them a platform to lie like that amazingly but you know for the most part they don't they've kind of backed off of those claims that it was just outright an ambush um but at the time that this happened and in the six seven week siege that this happened oh man these guys were worse than charles manson and his cult right they had deliberately lured these ATF agents in there and just wax them and then but still just like in lee hancock's mind to this day people don't

object and say, well, wait a minute, those numbers don't add up. You got 60s, 75 men. You got fully automatic rifles, M60s, 50 calibers, and boy, you guys got off easy, huh?

Right? Lee Hancock did not ask that to the cop shoveling this story at her. That that was how it was. A cascade of bullets rained down, and after 40 minutes, four of us had been killed. Mm. Yeah. And anyway, I'm actually surprised that there was any fully automatic weapons fire at all, just because that was one of their claims. But I am not surprised at all that you, Dave Hardy, are more than happy to report the facts of that because you don't care about any narrative other than what's true. And you can say, yeah, it sure sounds like fully automatic weapons fire that lasts for how many seconds?

maybe two or three I think you say 10 in here somewhere I don't think I was 10 there was prolonged burst at one point I thought I could hear two bursts but you know

firing 10 rounds per second you know even a two second burst is going to be a big one and then that was it and then the snipers got him right away they went whoa fully automatic nail that guy and then they just got him yeah and one of the snipers

Pippers wrote a book. Now I forget the title in which he mentions that incident. Right, yeah. Okay, so, oh, now here's an important part about the 50 caliber, was the ATF initially had claimed that the Branch Divideans had fired with an M60, oh, I guess they had originally claimed that back then, and a 50 caliber, and the new documentary states both of those as a matter of fact. but on March 8th they admitted that that wasn't true and it's Daniel Hartnett

associate director of ATF had said quote we are not able to say that anyone was shooting at us with a 50 caliber weapon and our footnote from that is the New York Times US pleads with cult leader to let his followers go so that is you know in almost real time there the ATF themselves saying well those claims we're not so sure we can stand by that and that ought to be all we need to know about that i think um all right so here's the casualty report the ATF casualties was 20 agents had gunshot or shrapnel wounds 12 agents gunshot wounds so 12 of them 12 of the 20 seven agents shrapnel and And one, both. And then two agents suffered broken bones due to falling or other movements.

So I guess falling off the roof, that kind of thing. And then six agents got other non-threatening injuries such as ear pain from firing their rifles out of church on a Sunday morning, back pain from falling down the ladder and chipped teeth and things like that. Four agents were killed. Conway LeBueh, Todd McKeon. Robert Williams, and Steve Willis. And now, something that you talk about in your book, Dave, I think, is that, and I had not known this.

I had forgotten this if I ever had known this anyway, that the leaders or the raid leaders were all immediately fired by the ATF. Yeah. Oh, really? Well, there were a couple of them. They were fired. I never heard that. Was it Winooski?

I forget they fired him, as I recall, for basically lying. And then they sued. And they were ultimately reinstated with back pay. And one of their attorneys hinted during the suit that basically he knows a whole lot of things that you don't want to come out. And that was the point when they decided, okay, he gets back pay and reinstitute. Yeah, believable. Funny how that works. Yeah.

Well, and considering what else we know about what went on there, sounds like a credible threat. Yeah, it was something in effect of the decisions went all the way to the top, suggesting that my best guess would be the decision to go ahead after they knew that the Davidians were informed wasn't just made by the guys on the ground,

went up to somebody in headquarters. which would make sense considering the priorities yeah considering what they wanted to accomplish you wanted to get national coverage all right so branch dividing casualties there are four branched dividians who suffered non-life-threatening injuries David Jones was shot in the butt David Koresh was had his wound to his pelvis as we talked about and his left wrist Judy Schneider was the woman I talked about who was shot in the hand while she was nurse her baby and scott sonobi was wounded in the leg six branch dividians were killed winston lake

was um killed presumably by a helicopter unarmed eating breakfast peter gent as we discussed was killed on top of the water tower either shot by a helicopter or from a sniper at the undercover house or possibly another location. The footage, again, seems to show the helicopter to do it, and that's featured in Waco, the Rules of Engagement. Of course, he also was unarmed. As we talked about, that may have been a matter of radio confusion about which tower was firing.

And again, they left him up there for days before the rest of the Davidians were allowed to go up there and get him. without being threatened that they would be shot if they tried. Then there was Peter Hipsman. He was 28 years old. Shot in David Koresh's room on the fourth floor, likely from a helicopter.

Or maybe this is the guy with the fully automatic rifle that got hit by the sniper here. It could be. Could be. It could be. I can't, I don't recall exactly where the sniper city was firing. I think it must be here because we're running out of people. it could have been at this point we have um uh he was found by steve schneider after the ceasefire

in immense pain and then apparently they put him out of his misery so this is the guy who was um likely the guy firing the automatic weapon because then that leaves perry jones the father-in-law who was shot at the front door and michael schroeder this is out of order jdine wendell a Hawaiian she was breastfeeding her child you know what were they both breastfeeding their children or maybe the other one was shot just holding her child I'm sorry Jdean Wendell she was breastfeeding her child when the firing started found dead with a gunshot wound of the head Jack Zimmerman who had visited Mount Carmel

testified that he saw bullet holes in the upper bunk wall suggesting she had been shot while she was still in bed and Catherine Schroeder, who I think may not be the most reliable Davidian source, said that she saw Wendell's body on the bunk and held her bloody gun, implying that she may have been firing. That doesn't sound right. Now, David Tibino told me that she's been threatened by the government to having her child taken away.

That was the original thing. He said she'd never see her kid again. oh schroeder yeah well i wouldn't doubt that she was one of the first ones to come out yeah that's why she turned so uh so david said well you know she's actually quoted in the new documentary saying some pretty crazy things and at the um at the 30th i guess anniversary i don't know what else to call it uh yearly remembrance here on april 19th she got up there and you know begged forgiveness and insisted that she had been misquoted, in other words, and I don't know the exact quotes.

I didn't watch the documentary, the new one, but evidently she said something like she started talking about what the Bible says about the age of consent, and they sort of took that and made it sound like she was justifying whatever had been happening at Mount Carmel at the time, which she said was not true, and then she herself was a victim of childhood abuse, and she would never justify such a thing

and that that wasn't the question but they made it look like that was the question she was answering when she was just saying well what the Bible says about that so in other words you could accuse her of walking into a trap and not being extremely careful about what she's saying in front of this camera right but you know I don't know exactly what she said

but you know she's the one featured in Waco a New Revelation saying it's just like in the book of Nabokabakabak and all of this stuff like she's you know one of the more over the top although she is one of the first ones to leave which is interesting I'd be interested in why that is but but you just know that Uncle Sam leaned on these people to turn or make up a different story yeah I wasn't aware of that I you know I may be able to get in contact with her and ask her about that I did get to meet her briefly this last April there and then the last one is Michael Schroeder and he's an interesting

case because he wasn't there he was trying to return to Mount Carmel this is Kathy Schroeder's husband and he was with another two guys Bob Kendrick spelled a little funny but I probably just Kendrick and norm alison and one of them was arrested one of them got away somehow i guess was arrested later and michael was shot and they left him out there for five days i think again and in a new revelation they talk about how his beanie cap went missing but that he still had three bullet wounds to the head that evidently came from very close range. In other words,

he was shot from far away, and then someone came and gave him the coup de grace and shot him in the head, essentially execute him. And that would have been ATF agents. That was before FBI had gotten there. And then they left him out there, and I guess it rained too

and made sure to wash away all the evidence of what was going on there. So that one always gets kind of Barry. They bring that up in a new revelation, but otherwise you hardly ever hear about that one. Well, it was in rules of engagement too. Oh, is that in rules of engagement? I'm sorry. Because he gives a whole spiel about how he was just coming home to his family and he didn't kill anybody. Okay, I thought that was in the second film. I'm sorry about that.

And whether he had a gun or not, but the ATF had a sniper group out in the back. Yeah. Now, the FBI comes to town. takes over the uh crime scene regardless of which side you think shot first it clearly is one on march the first so that's the next morning and san antonio special agent in charge jeff chamois is put in charge at waco he's reporting to larry pots who's the assistant fbi director for criminal investigations and uh pots was also involved at ruby ridge and we're going to find more Ridge characters later in this as well.

But importantly, again, this is the very beginning of the Bill Clinton administration, and there's an outgoing FBI director, William Sessions. And Sessions is, I guess, was attempting to get involved and negotiate an end to this thing, but was not allowed to. Now, here's a short clip from your film, Dan. Everybody knows that I had contact directly from people associated with Mr. Koresh about the possibility of my going down and negotiating with them coming in down there. Now, some people played that as ridiculous and ridiculed it or as grandstanding,

but it's indicative of what I felt and continue to feel. You can't discard any possibility that you can resolve that kind of circumstance when you can take and apply that. negotiating capability. And do I remember it, right, that they stopped him at the airport? He was trying to get on a plane to come to Texas, and Bill Clinton sent White House officials to prevent him? Oh, I don't remember that, but...

Dave, do you remember that? I don't recall that. I recall that he didn't go, but I don't remember any details. I know that in, I believe in a new revelation, they have an interview. with his wife and she blames Floyd Clark who was I guess at that time the incoming assistant director and she says oh you know these guys are elbowing sessions out and now they're going to prove that they're in charge now

they're the cowboys and they all this tough guy stuff basically to sort of make their mark on the office as they take it over and now so there was some allusion to this earlier day, but can you talk again about the military support for the FBI, beginning almost immediately, right, once they take over the scene here? The FBI carried on the ATF claim that this was a drug-related case, and therefore they should get military assets without reimbursement. They military contributed almost everything you see in the way of equipment. Helicopter, tanks, combat engineering vehicles

that were used to tear the Davidian building down. But they also contributed a whole lot of minor stuff like the helmets, sandbags, air conditioning units for their tents, that sort of thing. Again, I had a long list of military assets that were devoted to the FBI at Waco. All right. And now, of course, this also includes the advice from the National Guard and special forces,

including top-tier special forces, the Delta Force, which we're going to talk more about that. And then there are, of course, all these joint task forces, which are these sort of extra constitutional kind of organizations where they mix all these jurisdictions together here. And now, do we know, by the way, they keep mentioning in all the very, literature, Dave, about special forces there. Does that always mean Delta force or is that green berets as well, like one tier lower than Delta, but still Army special forces? You can use special forces in both senses. Right. We do know that a general from the special operations command, Boykin maybe, was involved. Shoemaker was the general and then Boykin, I believe, was the colonel at the time. Yeah. I'm not saying that he was

on the scene, but I have the memos showing that he was involved in some of the decision making. Okay. Yeah, we're going to get back to Shoemaker and Boykin both because they become very important later on in the story here. Now, so we

have, and this is from your book, page 246, from This is Not an Assault. Military provided the FBI with four helicopters. Three buses, two heavy tanks, 10 armored Bradley fighting vehicles.

10. 100 sets of body armor, 2,000 sandbags, 896 man days of National Guard time, up to 23 active duty regular troops. And the FBI surrounded the property with floodlights and ring them with barbed wire and with military, close-caption TV cameras. And on March 7, 1993, they borrowed three battlefield robots from the U.S. Army Missile Command's unmanned Ground Vehicle Project, together with teams of operators and 22,000 feet of expensive optical cable that controlled them.

It went to the Air Force to secure a satellite reception jamming system with 13 operators, which was used to disrupt the Davidians' reception of TV news channels for a week, mid-Sage. So, boy, talk about a blank check. Somebody said something about a meth lab and so we can use everything that the Pentagon and even the Special Operations Command have to offer for use against this little property in Northeast Waco, Texas. Yep. It's really incredible.

It was sort of interesting. The battlefield robots didn't prove practical in the end because the FBI kept running their armored vehicles over the optical cable, and then they'd have to figure out a way to retrieve it from right up against the building. One of the memos on the robots said they were deliberately sending it up right against the building and right against the windows in hopes of the Davidians could be induced to shoot at it. Right. Trying to bait them. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay, now, so here we've got to talk about the media a little bit and the demonization here.

I think it's in your book, Dave, where you quote a reporter from the Houston Chronicle, essentially admitting that, yeah, they did kind of make us puppets and tools, I think, is the word that he used of the FBI. It was just a simple matter

of access journalism, right? What are you going to do? You need a story tomorrow, so you have to print what they want you to say today. Sure. Sure. And then, and it really did turn into a circus, right? I mean, can you take us back to, you know, the way that it was covered in the media at the time a little bit? No, it was pretty much all that the Davidians are essentially nuts.

They're a cult. And after the fire, of course, they're a cultly committed suicide. And there was, I can't, other than Soldier of Fortune magazine, I can't think of a single dissenter from that view. So the thing about all the media circuses, of course is that it worked and people were more than happy to believe it and i could testify as a grocery store bagman at the time that all of the upper middle class white women of northwest austin texas wanted those people dead dead dead yesterday hated them and wanted them killed

and they would all say just go in there and end it I say just go in there and end it and the real crime and it sounds stupid but I you know sounds like maybe I'm not serious but I really do believe it

the real crime was the Davidians were taking up all their soap opera time and game shows the price is right press your luck all that stuff was on hold while we talk about branched dividians all day

but meanwhile all you can see is the shot of the house from far away just sitting there and so they just hated it and you know the all of the rest of the people in there with koresh essentially were invisible the government would never tell the people about them and then so here's the short clip and this is from rules of engagement and um and this reminds me of exactly you know the ladies at the grocery store i remember one lady at the grocery store saying he said he was jesus they should go in there and get them And then I was joking, like, yeah, they should nail them to a tree, you know. Yeah, we should not think this through.

We should just be really mad. You know, I don't know. And then so this is a clip, though, from that you guys included in the documentary from the local talk radio station where they're taking calls from the public to see what they think about what's going on here. On a special live call-in show here this morning, listeners had strong opinions on how they think this tragedy should now be handled. A majority seem to want law enforcement to end it all quickly. Good morning, Waco, 100. I vote for going and just take him out. All right.

Well, I do believe, and I think they ought to go in there to get it over with because I think it's costing us a lot of... Yeah, I just like that, how expensive it is. Now, you could scale down the operation a little bit. That might be an option there. But you see how, when they talk there, it's just go in there and end it. And the implication clearly is kill as many people as you have to to make this thing go away. And essentially all the Davidians in that building are reduced to caress himself, the bad guy. And that's all anybody needs to know.

And, you know, this is something that you got into a course when you mentioned talking with the ATF agents. about that one of their problems with him was that he was allegedly having sex with black women in there, which I don't know if that was actually true or not. Maybe it was. That was the accusation. I don't know, but almost half of Davidians are black.

And that's, that was the claim. That's what they thought. And they're from a culture where that's a big problem. Yeah. So, but so we're in a culture where even then, this was again, you know, 1993, era woke and it might have made a big difference if the population of the country had known that roughly half the people inside that building were black. But, you know, and people will say

about this now that, well, where was Al Sharpton then? And where was Jesse Jackson then? And I think without knowing specifically, I think it's a fair assumption that they had no idea that there were black people in there. We all were led to believe essentially that these are these mullet-headed redneck white trash trailer trash people why would there why would half of them be black and from england and australia and bermuda or jamaica or wherever all over the world so it wasn't part of the narrative the narrative was these are all a bunch of trans am driving rednecks and probably racists right well it's that's all racist wasn't used so often then as it is today as a

pejorative but yeah that's what they thought and again these guys are part of a culture that lives out in the woods and goes out and finds smooth giant stills and I think they still recruit from that gene pool

yeah it's a very just as you saw the good old boys roundup okay so and we already talked about you know the the compound and the bunker and the lieutenants and all the militarized language of the thing and they never they

never stopped and said well here's the other side of the story at all here's the other point of view at all and in fact you know not to get on too much of a personal tangent but when i turned 16 and i first got a car i was driving down 183 and thought oh i wonder what's on the a m channel i've never heard any a m radio in austin lived here my whole live i was just listening to the music you know so i tuned it to the a m and there was a surviving branch to be and i think it must have been katherine madison um but it was a woman and it just hit me like a ton of bricks i'm like wow you could actually listen to a branch dividian say things you have access to their side of the story at all you would have thought that they had all been killed

or that they had all had their tongues cut out that you know tvs that you know tv rather Jennings and Brokaw they were never going to tell us they were going to never give Catherine Madison half an hour to elaborate on how she feels about the situation well it's a big failure of the media that's where they owe us we the people whoever to tell both sides of the story and there's nobody to push them yeah I mean nobody came to I mean I told you my experience with Peter Jennings I was at ABC that time in New York, and he was using language like, you know, compound

and fortified compound and all these other things. And I was telling his producers, it ain't there. Not true. Right. I mean, even then, this is before I moved out here to L.A. Not that they would drop it, though. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so now here's a comment on that, in fact. Here's Steve Schneider, Koresh's right-hand man on the phone with the FBI complaining about the media. We realize that you have the ability, and it's not below you people to do something like to erase all evidences. Why do you have the press so far back? You can give me any kind of crap you want. I know. You know the reason we're not talking to the press is you people have got to cover your butts from what you did.

And that's what's going on here. And we're talking about, even if you just took the New York Times, you probably had six or seven guys at that time who'd been to war. You know, Chris Hedges, for example, had covered 14 wars. He was writing for the New York Times at the time.

I bet he would have had the courage to approach that compound. He didn't give a damn. He'd had bullets whiz by his head a hundred times by then. And they'd say, oh, no, you wouldn't be safe anywhere near there. Pal, I just got back from Beirut.

What are you talking? about. Depends of whether the producer his boss would let him do it. Well, no, right? It just, the FBI had already given a blanket refusal for anybody to get closer than however many

thousands of yards away it was with their telephoto lenses. And it's interesting, right, that it just kind of went without saying that no, we just will not let Dan rather walk up there and knock on the door and see if he can get an interview, or we're not going to

arrange for them to do an interview with the press in the United States of America and they you know you have quotes in your book Dave where um reporters are saying look I've been to war and I've never seen such restriction they're held miles away yeah and they're not allowed anywhere near there and I guess what's fascinating to me about it that I'm belaboring here and trying to articulate is that somehow they were able to say listen none of you are ever going to get a chance to interview these people. Just forget it. And that was it. And it wasn't even a controversy. It wasn't like an ongoing discussion during the 51 days. They're like, man, we really ought to send Dan Rather in there and hear from these people. You know, we're just left to, we see the outside of the house

and the rest is left to our imagination and the accusations of the FBI. Well, the narrative is so powerful that they're in that situation. There was no other side. There was only what we had. what you saw it. Yep. Okay, so now here's a bit of the view of the branch dividians on the inside to remind us again who exactly we're dealing with here. This is Kathy Schroeder. Again, her husband, Michael, was killed on the first day trying to get back to her.

To read Neum or Habakkuk, and you're in it, you're experiencing it. It all fits together. It's all a conglomerate of different prophecies by different men at different times talking about a war of Babylon, a great war. And so, you know, there you go. It's just like in Hubakak. Just like you can't deny it, dude. It says it right there. And this is the view that they're looking through it.

In their mind's eye, everything that they see. is a page from the Bible, and not just a page from the Bible, but prophecy and prophecy of the end times. And so if they have to pick and choose from Daniel here and Habakkuk there and these different things, the book of Naham, and then just like an MSNBC cook during Russia Gate, it all fits together if you fit it all together. But this is just absolutely the mindset in which they're perceiving everything that's going on around them. And now here also is a clip of Steve Schneider talking to his sister. We're talking about the Bible and all the prophecies.

But I know. Look at, when you get off the phone, you look at the book of Neum. Yeah. The chariots with flaming torches are tanks. That's what Neum saw in the final days. They're surrounded us. It's the first time in the history of the United States that the government has used tanks against its own people, Sue. It's stupid. I know it.

So you see even there with his own sister doesn't quite understand. understand, right? So she's like essentially responding to the civil liberties point. They're like, my God, they're using tanks against civilians. But he seems to be saying that they wouldn't do that unless it was the Bible coming true. This is America. We don't use tanks against people. How could this be happening unless it was the prophecy coming true? And she doesn't even quite grok what he's trying to explain there. But that's the only way that they can understand what's happening to them. And yet, of course, outside, the cops don't see it that way at all. They look at this as just essentially make-believe, right?

Again, this is, oh, yeah, Charlie Manson has this very serious theology that we're supposed to pay close attention to. They couldn't possibly take it seriously in any way. And especially four cops were dead. And so from their point of view, like, that was all that they needed to know here, that these people are as guilty as guilty criminals could possibly be. for what we know now, and as the jury decided, as we'll discuss later, was self-defense, but that certainly was not even a possibility point of view from what the FBI was looking at

when they were there. So, but yeah, and so back on the racial thing and just the videos of the people in there, the lesson of really how normal these people were, aside from their particular interest in end times prophecy and these are basically all very normal people and so it wasn't just that they covered up the home videotapes that would have portrayed them in their own environment to the American people but it was the success that they had in portraying them in exactly the opposite way right so like in other words this is almost I mean obviously there are circumstances here but But, you know, considering many of the Branch Divideans and who they were, you talk about

Clive Doyle here, this kind of thing. Like, you might as well just go and frame up somebody's mama and say that she is this dangerous murderer, this insane cultist. You know, it's the furthest thing from a plausible story, right? But they made it stick anyway. they made people believe that even the little old ladies there essentially were cold-blooded murderers. The ability of government and TV to gang up on American citizens

and just, for example, erase the fact that half of them are black so that Jesse Jackson doesn't have a word to say about it. You know, erase the fact that, you know, so many of them are women and children, or so many of them had been there for so many years before Koresh even arrived on the scene. or, you know, any of these things that would help people understand who they are at all, and it worked. And that's the thing that I'm, the point I'm belaboring is, like, they really could have just framed up anybody's mama from the street you grew up on and treated her the same way. And succeeded, succeeded at demonizing, you know, your grandma, your auntie, or whoever.

And that's crazy. You know, demonizing Saddam Hussein, I mean, the guy. is a dictator after all. You know, demonizing David Koresh. Yeah, he is wielding a lot of authority over people in a way that's pretty distasteful to most of us, but completely dehumanizing and demonizing

the rest of the people there should have been impossible. Right, but it was a cinch. It was as easy as just trying it, and it worked. You know, and again, including the ladies at the grocery store, the shoppers at the grocery store, where I worked.

They didn't give a damn if every single person in there was killed. They only wanted it to happen today, not tomorrow. Oh, yeah. You know. A friend of mine, attorney Bill Daley, did a Freedom of Information Act request on communications with the FBI by the outside world. And he got a number of letters like a foot stack of paper that was just absolutely appalling. I mean, like you say,

go in there and destroy them. I don't care what it takes. And several of them specifically said you ought to burn them out. I mean, set fire to the building and they'll have to come out. Yeah. You know, once you've accepted their false premises,

then I guess these are the conclusions were left to make, as Carlin would say, right? we need to talk about the fact that Koresh did say that he would come out at first and they did send out, you know, a couple of dozen people, I guess, left in the first few days there. And so there's a couple of things about that.

And this is something that we heard in a clip from Tabor earlier that he alluded to was that Koresh had promised to come out, but then he said that God told him to wait. And the FBI went, Yeah, right. Oh, God told you. Koresh, to whatever degree we can't know, took that seriously. Certainly his followers took that seriously. You can't question that.

God is talking to his prophet, telling him not to come out. Maybe Koresh really believed he had that insight. You know, I guess that part's unknowable. And there's always the possibility God really did talk. Hey, there you go. I shouldn't completely discount it. What do I know? I mean, just slip the Gresh and flage in here, you know?

It's an infinite universe out there, pal. I know that much but now so this is something that you talk about very specifically in your book Dave which is

the split between the negotiators and the hostage rescue team here where you had some negotiators not just trying but really succeeding

in making some progress with the Divideans and then the hostage rescue team would deliberately intervene to reverse that so I guess first of all

what's the hostage rescue team? And you feel free to jump in here whatever you want as far as explaining that part of the story. And then talk to us a little bit about the split between the negotiators and the tactical guys and how they behaved out there. Well, the FBI has its own SWAT teams,

but it also has the hostage rescue team, which isn't necessarily concerned with hostage rescue. that just makes a nice title. And they're basically the hyper SWAT team, the guys who were constantly training at the highest level of paramilitary pursuits. And so the hostage rescue team, the HRT, was brought in to maintain the perimeter at Waco.

And they mostly consisted of a very action-oriented type fellows. You know, too much to saucerone and, you know, that manner of thing. The one of the interesting things is one of their snipers, as opposed to ATF sniper, wrote a book on the subject, cold shot or something like that. It's interesting to read because this is plainly the type of guy who was, you know, the hyper jock type. We ought to go in there and kick their butts and why are the negotiators wasting their time, with this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, the action guys wanted action, and the negotiators

wanted to negotiate, and the two were inconsistent. So the action guys were doing things like hanging women's panties on the cars of the hostage negotiators, implying what they thought of their femininity, you know, actually talking with these guys. And so basically the action guys seem to be out to sabotage any successful breakthroughs that the negotiators could make. At one point, they had some negotiators had a very favorable result. I forget what it was. It's getting people to come out, right? Yeah.

And the action guys turned, as I recall, turned off the electricity to Mount Carmel. So, yeah, you're punishing them when they agree with you. Mm-hmm. And then they did the same thing with they'd get another big breakthrough with people coming out and then they destroyed all the go carts and all the trucks and all the property out front. Of course. It's completely within that kind of personality trait.

But the guys who are the, as you say, the action guys and all that wanted to get in and mix it up and the counter productivity was just horrible. Okay, so here's this clip then of one of the negotiators just breaking some bad news to Steve Schneider here. Steve? Yeah. There's been a change. The tactical people have changed a situation,

and for security reasons and for safety reasons, no one is now authorized to come out of there for any reason. And what they're telling me is that if anybody does, they are going to be dealt with in such a fashion that the people will have to retreat back to the compound. What, I'm not, I'm missing, I guess, what you're saying. Are you saying, make it as plain as possible? The patience of the bosses is no longer where it was earlier.

Okay, I'm about to listen to me now, Henry. I don't really give about your bosses. When you tell me one thing or you tell us that is okay, and this Bradley comes up and says something contrary to, to what you are, you tell your bosses to get their butts together. Do you hear me? So this is an ongoing thing

for six, seven weeks here, right? Is it, and I guess we already know anybody could just guess if you had to stop and think about it, but we know from just watching Sam Jackson movies or whatever kind of popular culture thing. The negotiators supposed to play the good cop.

In this case, the FBI itself, tactical and negotiators, are supposed to be playing good cop to the ATF's bad cop that boy you know what those idiots from the ATF sure screwed this up well don't worry over at the Department of Justice we are real professionals and we want to work this thing out with you guys and build a rapport you know what you look hungry can i get you a sandwich how about some cigarettes you guys need some cigarettes that's how a negotiator gets uh you know an informant to flip or gets a hostage to come a hostage taker to come out of a bank or

whatever it is. Don't worry, man. I can protect you from these guys. I got the juice here, but you're going to have to go with my plan now. This is how a clever negotiator works. And instead, even when the negotiators are trying that, they got the tactical guys making sure that that can never really take root, that that rapport can never be firmly established. And you'll notice in terms of the FBI command, who has the power here? The FBI is going to give in to the action guys and go against the negotiators. In the conflict

between the two, the action guys win every time. Which goes to show what, I guess at the very least, a failure of leadership by Jeff Jamar to control Dick Rogers, who was his nominal subordinate in this situation, right? Dick Rogers wanted

to spray the whole building with machine gun fire. Yeah. That's what I was told, and he was voted down, but that tells you the mindset that they would have. That's the head of the HRT, Rogers. Yeah, the head of the HRT. I think it's also good to keep in mind here,

the HRT and the SAS and the French equivalent and the German equivalent are really the same unit. They all trained together. I got, my contacts in England said that the HRT was over training with the SAS at their, place. And then the SAS came to camp out at Mount Carmel. Yeah, now the story was that supposedly they were only observers and they were at Fort Hurd at the time. But other information said, nope, they were actually in there.

When I was in London and we showed the film at the Contemporary Arts Institute, we had a bunch of them right on the front line. They were very, you know, fit guys, short haircut, all of the, stuff, and they were very adamant. The Vittians got what they deserve. Does that mean you were involved in the shooting? He just gave me that look, you know, tells the brook. Now, I wasn't the only one who saw that.

We had some professors at London School of Economics at Oxford and Cambridge who were there too, and they were livid about all this. They went to the Home Secretary to try to find out what they were doing there, everything is secret. You know, it's that anything that SAS does, basically, is secret. And that goes to show also, like you were saying about the hostage

rescue team, that these guys are really soldiers. They're not cops on the way, as you said, the FBI has plenty of SWAT teams. But HRT, they are essentially trained as special operations troops by Green Berets and by, or trained with them.

They're peers with the SAS, with I guess, Marsok, forced recon, than, you know, the different special operations, Rangers and, or I guess, Green Beret is higher than the Rangers. And one evidence of that is the final excuse is given to Jeanette Reno as to why they had to go in on the day of the fire. One of them was that the HRT is, their training is declining because they have to be here instead of constantly training for conflict.

Right. And we're going to get back to that. That definitely comes up. but it does go to show, again, their identity. So we know who we're talking about when we're talking about the HRT. There's no wonder they don't want to negotiate. These guys are warriors, essentially.

They're not police officers. They are soldiers. Now, you know, I don't know, people listening with their kids, you might want to mute this part. I don't know. We talked about some adult situations earlier, but this is just the ugliest damn thing.

This is audio of the, I believe the sound is of horses and rabbits being slaughtered, that they played on full volume all night long for weeks for psychological warfare against the women and children inside of this house. Dogs? You know, they'd have been better off playing Barry Manilow records or something. Yeah, boy, it's just insane. And, you know, this reminded me, 20 years ago, I interviewed Dick Revis.

And this is in the Ashes of Waco. Mm-hmm. And he said, you know where this comes from is the war in Panama? I remember H.W. Bush completely illegally and unconstitutionally launched an aggressive war against Panama because his former CIA lackey fell out a line and needed regime change. So he killed a few thousand people in this aggressive war. But anyway, Noriega escaped his sanctuary in a church. and one thing was while they were negotiating with Noriega there were reporters nearby

with shotgun microphones people can picture those microphones that have like a little saucer shape and a little thing so they were trying to listen in on the negotiations so the cops or the soldiers I guess the Pentagon turned on a bunch of music and I think it was like really annoying John Denver music or something like that

in order to drown out the negotiations. But when they were asked about it, they said that it was psychological warfare to drive Noriega out of there. And then the next day or something, he came out. So from there, it became folklore that this is how you get someone to come out, is you play horrible music that they can't stand. So that was where this started with the Divideons, is they would play Nancy Sinatra. These boots are made for walking. Those would be jackboots in this case. Which I don't think because that's what that song is about is government jackboots

stomping civilians into the ground but that's certainly what it was meant by the FBI when they played it. And they played the worst song probably of the 1990s at least, which was Billy Ray Cyrus, achy breaky heart and they would play it over and over and over

again. These are a bunch of guys who like that music. You're talking about these bubbles who they like that. Yeah. Well, I would tire anyone's patience out. I'll tell you what. It sounds like, and they use that same sort of torture on people at Guantanamo Bay. But psychological warfare, the siops, is very big. I mean, this is something people don't know.

The Army has a siops guys at CNN in Atlanta. And they've had them there ever since that I'm aware of, 1990, when we started to have the first Iraq war. When you worked for CNN there, you're saying. Yeah. Now they don't admit it, but they're there. and their And their active duty army guys? Yeah.

It's psychological warfare. There's a unit at Fort Bragg, and that's where they were assigned, and they twist stories or shape stories so that they comport with whoever is paying the freight. It's not a big secret. We just don't want to hear about it. And I think if you had a situation where the,

the rabbits being killed and all that that was I don't think people really grasp it what that what's going on there but you might remember the the girl the woman that won the Oscar

for the Panama deception that was the first Oscar ceremony I attended when I first moved out here was booed off the stage because she said this movies about one thing. Our government lied to

us. Boo. I mean, there's something, a problem within our society here. Certain parts of it for sure. Don't want to hear talk like that. I know that.

And, you know, look, you got to figure seriously. Like, imagine you know, people out there with kids. You have little children. And this is what they're being subjected to is the sound of horses going what through a band saw

is that what I'm listening to in that? I don't know what that was they said it was rabbits being slaughtered but well and there's horses whinnying in there too and it sounded like dogs toward the end like they're just mixing together sounds of who are who's murdering these animals and in what context this is how horses are put down in the most horrifying and painful manner possibly in America it's probably not anything it's just

just an annoying sequence of series of sounds Well, they got it from somewhere. And they're playing it at that full blast. I mean, our reproduction here for the podcast is nothing compared to literally having that blasted into your home at full volume, these massive speakers. Well, yeah, they were trying to go for sleep deprivation and many of the things that work with Psiops.

And so, you know, the lights and all that. So the kids couldn't sleep and there you go. It's absolutely brutal. Make it more compliance. Yeah. Okay, now, so, well, hell, here's a little bit more of Steve Schneider on the phone with the FBI here. Dick, over the radio, there's been a number of people that have wanted to come in and be a negotiator between ourselves and you. I do believe it would be in the best interest of all if there was a news person in between yourselves and ourselves.

We'd about take anybody. Okay. But right now, it seems like we're coming to a stalemate, you know, where... Who would you like to have here when you guys come out? Who would you like to invite here? No, no, no. Boy, you've got rocks in your ears, Dick. Okay, explain to me.

I'm sorry. You're saying when we come out, I'm talking about right now. Let's get somebody in between us right now to do some negotiating. Now, you know, famously, or I don't know how famously anymore, but the Davidians, had hung out that three-story tower various banners including Rodney King

we understand which is I really appreciate the politics of that reaching out to the left and reaching out to black victims of police brutality and saying hey pal we we know what you're going through victim of some of that right here ourselves but also

they said FBI broke negotiations we want press And they also said at one point, God help us. We want the press. And then what did the press do? Nothing. They did not protest.

Dan Rather did not say, let me in there. If only one reporter is in there. I'm the star of CBS News. I want to go and interview David Koresh. Let me in. But the point is... Well, Ratherer has a high political's. element in his, we both spent a lot of time talking to a guy named Squatty Lyons.

He probably, he was a councilman, city councilman in Houston. Now, that's, rather it was from there. And he's very savvy about the politics of situations. And I know what the kind of things he was touching and what he had, you know, taught for, rather and myself too I was in there I mean I spent a lot of time with these kind of guys and I think that there's

you know testing the wins with the Divideons and that's not going to do me any good if I take their side the public and I think his job was safe but how would he be seen by the audience and the brand new incoming Clinton administration which he would like to interview and get a lot of exclusive scoops from

and all those incentives, of course. Okay, and now, first of all, in May of 1993, so right about a month after the end of the thing, 60 minutes rebroadcast its original January report about sexual harassment and racism and so forth inside the ATF.

And after the rebroadcast, Mike Wallace added an editorial note. I said almost all of the ATF agents that he talked to said that they believed the initial rate on the branch of Vidians in Waco, quote, was a publicity stunt.

The main goal of which was to improve the ATF's tarnished image. So that's... Again, the ATF agents themselves. Talking to 60 minutes. Again, CBS News, you know?

In fact, this should have been a turf war between Wallace and rather for who gets to go in there, but no. And then, importantly, we've alluded to this a couple of times. And this is really amazing that they were able to do this, right? They built up a set, and they wrote up a script and trained up and rehearsed up, a cast,

and they shot a TV movie of the week called Ambush at Waco that came out during the siege. Just what, four weeks into the siege of the seven week siege, right? You think there might have been some coordination there? Boy, oh boy, it's something else. And now, I believe you had the quote of the guy,

and this is really important because the show itself was important. Again, I still have the image in my head from the TV show of what it was like inside the house as they were ambushing and firing out. And I know it's alive, but it's still in my brain because I've seen it with my eyes. And so that worked on so many people.

It was so effective, including little old ladies they had with machine guns and everything. And then so, but the thing about the guy who did the dirty work here, his name was Phil Pennington. Phil Pinnigroth. Oh, Pentegroff. I'm sorry. And tell us about him.

Well, he's the person who wrote the script, and he was hired to write the script, and of course they told him what to write or what the situation was and how terrible the Davidians were and all the things were talking about, and so he wrote a script that reflected that. And then he started looking at it and learning more about what really happened, and this is what he wrote. Within days of the BATF raid, the Davidians. and especially Koresh, were demonized as the Jews were in Germany before World War II. And as we all know, the government and the media painted a portrait of Koresh and the

Davidians that I know now was insidious, malevolent, and ultimately destructive. To my everlasting shame, I added to that distorted view. And, of course, it made it easier to get away with mass murder. Yeah, that's what that's exactly would. And he didn't just release that statement. I mean, he went to the Branch Divideon's remembrance ceremonies and begged their forgiveness in person to their face, which is, you know, the honorable thing to do. And he should be commended for that, you know, as bad as what have.

And because just like anybody who's not already somehow radicalized, the idea is these are the cops. These are the good guys. They wouldn't lie to me. They wouldn't have me write a script demonizing good people as evil. They're good guys themselves. and so the guy obviously wrote the script in good faith and it's only in retrospect that he's completely kicking himself like oh my God I can't believe

why would I believe them but hey well again we have a situation like Janet Reno we're talking about now Janet Reno we only knew what she was told about what was going in there she'd only been in office I don't know what one day two days and so when the FBI comes in and says well they're beating babies we have to act now Well, you're ahead of this story now, but the point is she believed him. Yeah, and that's all these people have to do is you've got a government official who's telling him,

this is what happened, these are the facts, write something that encompasses that, and that's what he did. He didn't know any more than that. But when he found out, then he apologized for it. Right. And good for him for that. Because there's a lot of people involved with this who certainly never did. That should happen more often, too.

Right. Yeah, and they sure don't. Okay, so intimidation factor here. The place is completely surrounded by FBI. They have three sniper positions, Sierra, one, two, and three. They have clear views of all areas of the property. And I want to say amazingly, guys, but I guess we would all disagree with that. Lon Horiucci, the guy that took the kill. shot on Vicki Weaver, the unarmed wife holding her baby daughter in her arms, and he shot

her in the throat. He was in charge of Sierra 1, which was their code name for the undercover house across the street, holding down that sniper position there, and including, as we'll see, on the last day. And Sierra 2 was hidden from public view in the very back, and then Sierra 3, I believe, was on the south end of the property and covering any exit, which would have been the chapel side, the gymnasium side of the building. And so one of the things that came up repeatedly,

Clive Doyle talked about this repeatedly, and Tibido talked about this repeatedly, was that the Davidians had been allowed finally to go out and bury those who had been killed on February the 28th. But then the FBI agents went and drove their tanks repeatedly back and forth over their graves to disturb their graves. And one of the men, Peter Gent, who was armed with a trowel or a rust, you know, some implement for scraping rust there, who they killed on the water tower.

They ran over his grave multiple times and deliberately so. And they would moon the women and children. And, right, we see you, David, on the windows. I guess backwards to intimidate them but this is something that Clive Doyle talked a lot about was the idea was

well geez at least send your children out it was like send my children up to this guy he's showing his bare bottom to my old mother here no that wasn't all they were showing yeah I mean they dropped trowling were flat you know around two that's

that tells you a lot about the kind of guys you got in there and these are people who are genuinely pious in there. We're like some grown-ups might say yeah, yeah, yeah, that's gross, but we've all seen parts before or whatever. But these are people where like

absolutely not. These are people who would never say damn. These are people who are very serious about it. So the idea of even a bare bottom would just be so far over the line way more than probably other people would consider that. Other people consider

that to be very rude. But to them, this is just absolutely forces of darkness but you still wouldn't send your kids out there to i can't imagine doing that but but if you're in that situation where the guns are pointed at you and you never you don't know whether guys like people like that are liable to do yeah the other consideration is uh the FBI was of course portraying them as fanatics and it had to use tanks because they'd otherwise kill them, et cetera, et cetera. Wait a minute.

If you're mooning somebody who has a rifle, you're not worried about him shooting at you. Right. Yep, that's an important point. Their arguments don't hold up on their own merits, obviously. And now, so it's important to note that the Divideons were attempting to collect rainwater because the ATF and FBI both had destroyed their water tanks. but it's worth noting here

that they were running out of water and the government knew that because the infrared footage showed that whatever they had in their tanks was at such a low level, et cetera. So that's another reason at least in the back of their mind to know that the Davidians time is short in there

that eventually they're going to and probably sooner rather than later they're going to have to come out and flare footage taken on the night before April 19th on the night of the 8th, 18, showed their water levels essentially at zero. And so, but by that time, it was too late because the plan was already in motion and they weren't going to turn it off.

So, and at one point, a Davidi and Julie Martinez told an FBI negotiator that they were afraid that, quote, you guys will just run your tanks through the building and you know, hurt us all. And the FBI negotiator countered and said, I don't think anybody said anything about tanks going through the building. If they did, they're not telling the truth. No, because nobody's going to run tanks through buildings that contain people

be assured her. That's laughable. Yep, absolutely. So important to the good cop, bad cop thing that we talked about with the hostage negotiation that during the Waco siege, they actually, the FBI had another hostage situation at a prison.

And this was Southern Ohio Correctional facility. Prison riot erupted. Well, HRT was unavailable. They were busy persecuting the branch of idiots. And so what happened instead was the negotiators handled it without tactical support and they settled the matter bloodlessly in 10 days. And Stuart Wright, who was the other religious scholar who had teamed up with James Tabor on this story, he went and found their guidelines for crisis negotiation and found where they had violated 16 of their own rules. Save lives. Exercise patience. Negotiators should build trust with the hostage taker.

Negotiators should avoid escalating stress. Exercise genuineness in communication. Meet legitimate interests of both parties. Establish reliable communication. Take into account personality factors of the hostage taker. Provide assurance of safety and security of person in crisis. conduct negotiations without challenging hostage-taker's sense of control. Negotiators should not set deadlines for incidents resolutions. Avoid making decisions based on fatigue. Resist pressure from tactical team to resolve the conflict with assault.

That's actually, they had to rhyme that in the rules somewhere. Communication between components of the crisis response team is imperative. C. ASCAS is unreliable and dangerous should. only be used under very specific conditions assault should be backed by emergency medical services personnel and the fire department and then right goes through in details each violation and so it really does seem although this is an inference right day but you write in the book that the HRT in practice certainly sabotaged everything the negotiators were doing and it seems like fair to say probably that was intentional because they wanted a final battle.

They did not want to see people walk out of their peacefully. They wanted to show them who's boss. These are a bunch of cop killers. And we're going to show them who's boss. And these stupid negotiators are standing in the way, wimping out, trying to talk to them and get them to come out when they ought to get out of our way and let us do the job. And then, you know, this is in your dog.

documentary you show, Dan, that Koresh's grandmother, who raised him as his mother, came to talk to him to try to negotiate. And they told her, beat it and told her, we hope you told him goodbye was the quote. There you are. I just think about that. Like, you know, again, because it's such a famous story and it has so many aspects and including just the visual of the giant strangely shaped house and all of just everything that comes with it. But just think of that. in a vacuum by itself that you have a crisis situation you have something like a hostage situation with all these innocent people pent up with the guy who said to be the bad guy and the bad guy's mother his grandmother who raised him comes and they don't immediately say great here's the deal

lady you tell him this this and this but don't you say that now here's the phone they don't do that. Instead, they tell her, get the hell out of here. And what can you say about that? See, what I think, I find interesting about the HRT situation and all this is that the whoever was in control of everything didn't just tell the no negotiators to stop talking and send the HRT in. That would be much more in character with what I would think they would do. And possibly, is that because they were having such a conflict over the attorney? Attorney General and who's going to be the new Attorney General at that time?

I think the leavening factor would be the politics of it, especially if you, you know, when you start, you know, a big, amassed thing, death. But that's what these guys are about, you know. And I think whoever's at the top of the chain, well, whoever was the director at the time, I think he's probably, the assistant director. He's probably cut from the same cloth. Yeah. Right.

He's from Ruby Ridge, too. he approved the rules of, Dick Rogers' rules of engagement for Ruby Ridge that said kill on site. Yeah, my father was a, you know, career, 30-year combat army guy, and I've, you know, he's, he was in before World War II and Korea and three tours in Vietnam and all the rest of that. That's his attitude, you know, but that would be his and most of the people I was, I met and he's heard with, uh, there. Yeah. I mean, I guess it would be fair to say, right, that you've got to presume that, in fact, probably the negotiators and presumably the bosses at the FBI weren't planning on killing them all, that somebody like Jamar or Potts is probably trying to appease Dick Rogers and the HRT, and he's also got to deal with the griping from the negotiators, but that essentially the HRT, which started out with no patience whatsoever. they're constantly grinding on the patience of the bosses too and trying to get the bosses to agree with them that this is taking too long finally

so by the time of April 19th we're talking about essentially they're just out of patience and in fact I guess I forget the exact date but it's weeks before two or three weeks before that they ordered up the gassing plan and started preparing the engineering vehicles and all of that So they had run out of patience and decided that they were going to do something about it, you know, a bit previous, even, what, two or three weeks previous to the actual assault coming down. But I guess it makes sense that there is a good cop and a bad cop going on among the lower ranking guys. And then Jeff Jamar, their boss is a bad cop. And Larry Potts, the boss is a bad cop. Maybe not quite as bad as Dick Rogers.

but they're leaning more and more towards his point of view the whole time. And then the negotiators are saying, wait, wait, wait, slow down, but they're just, you know, tugging on Lex Luthor's cape here, I guess. Yeah. And it was always suggested, well, why didn't they just fence the place off and just wait them out? Right. But that's not within character of a guy who's in HRT. Right.

And although that was, I mean, officially the policy. what are we doing we're waiting them out you know the violence is over now we're going to wait them out until they surrender that was you know what bob ricks claimed that they were doing what jestermore claimed except the guys in tanks kept driving around and going over graves and everything else and provoking provoking reaction yeah okay so um now here's where this gets a little bit more interesting with Tabor and Arnold getting involved. The religious scholar that we heard earlier describing the history has a guest appearance in our saga here. Philip Arnold and I have known each other for years. We both have doctorates in Christian origins. And Philip,

let's see, he got his PhD from Rice University, probably five or six years after I did. And we both ended up, I got mine from Chicago in the 1980s. He's a little lighter than that. We even had some of the same, like I wrote on Paul, he wrote on Paul, the Apostle Paul. So we have very similar interests. And we knew each other in terms of studying apocalypticism as, you know, scholarly colleagues and so forth. Like we had made a conference and over the years. So he became one of my personal friends. Well, then when Waco broke out, for us, February 28th, you know, when the raid happened,

my wife calls me the television and I run down and start watching, she said something like, James, come here and quick, there's this crazy guy in Texas. You know, I'm from Texas, so kind of like one of your people. there's been a gunfight and he's on the radio and he's quoting the Bible because David immediately called into some stations and right away even though he's wounded he's like well you know in Isaiah 40 years you know like that so that's what she was hearing over CNN I think and so I ran down well I call Phil I think I call Philip immediately like during the probably after the shooting stop because I wanted to follow it and I said Phil I assume you know this here in Texas. What the hell was going on? Do you know this guy or whatever? And he goes, no, no, no, I don't. But I listen. You know, it sounds like he is some kind of guy under Bible prophecy. Well, see, that's what we work on. Mostly ancient, but we do it through the ages. Like I handle apocalyptic groups all through history down to our time. I didn't know he was

connected to LNG White and the Adventist. And I didn't know anything about how. Hadoff and the Davidians and then the branch Davidians. But he did know the Adventists really well and the Millerites that we've talked about. So he said, well, I'm going to jump in the car and go up there. And I said, well, good luck. I think he did it maybe the second day. The FBI had been called in. So he starts going to the press conferences.

And he quickly realized from, I would say basically it was those daily briefings from was it Rob Ricks? Was that his name? Yes. Yeah, and he was very negative. Oh, yeah, two-bit Charleston, who interprets the Bible from a barrel of a gun. And then we got the March 2nd tape right away. And he sent me the transcript of it.

That's when Koresh went on one of the Christian radio stations and did a one-hour rambling thing. So he fedxed me that we, I think we could have used faxes, but he had a printed copy and he just FedExed it. I remember getting to FedEx. And I read it and then I called him and this is all within like by March 3rd, we got a plan. And he said, well, I'm going to start going up there. I'm going to, you know, try to talk to the FBI. And he said, would you come down? And I said, well, yeah, if you, I'm teaching, but if you need me, I could come down and help.

But why don't you just see how it's going? Talk to the FBI guys, see if they, you know, find somebody at the press conferences. So I think he did. He was visible from the first or second day at those daily conferences. I think he got a room at the Hilton where everybody was staying, all the correspondence. And he then just began to attend, and he did talk to a few people. And I would, if you talk to him, he could tell you. in detail, but he basically felt rebuffed like John Henry and everybody and his uncle are calling in

saying, oh, I know all about the Bible and let me interpret. And he felt like maybe he was being put in that category. And the idea, I think, of the negotiators was, you know, we don't really need, like, we will find our experts. Like, they end up going to people at Baylor, which is fine. It's right there in Waco. But I don't think any of those people at Baylor, and they would agree, I think, were experts in, say, the Book of Revelation, which we were. So time went on, and Phil then decided to go kind of independently. So he would go on Ron Engelman's show, which is a local radio station that the Davidians were listening to. And we knew they were listening because they would move their antenna saying,

yes, I'm listening. And so Phil appeared on that quite a bit. And then we didn't know at the time, but now we know, Steve Schneider, who's, of course, is main spokesperson, started saying, well, we've been listening to Dr. Phil, Arnold, he sounds like he knows something, could you put him on and let David talk to him and we'll put it on speaker? And, you know, if he can show David where he's wrong on the seven seals or if he has an interpretation that we will find more convincing, then Steve was kind of baiting.

And he said, you know, we would then, you would get a considerable problem with the people staying because they would start thinking, well, wait a minute, you know, this guy, Phil Arnold. He seems to know a lot too, you know, maybe, maybe this isn't right. Now, he clearly is just saying, oh, God, I can't wait, because he will devastate Arnold. You know, he will just talk circles around Arnold, which actually I don't think he would have been able to do. but he would have, you know, he would have put up a show of his positions. Phillips is very skilled and gracious and dealing with people like this if you've seen him on any interviews. But he does, he's a great defender of religious freedom or religious rights.

And he always emphasizes this is a worshipping community. They take communion twice a day. They have prayers and Bible studies and so forth. So he wants them to be seen as a. modified, you know, American religious phenomenon. So the FBI didn't do that. They refused to do that. I wrote down here on March 16th,

just to give you that idea of chronology. They said, we want Dr. Arnold. So he was really the face of it. But on March the 7th, even before that, we did our, no, I'm sorry, on April, April the 7th. We did our broadcast together. And that was after being tutored by Livingstone, Fagan, in jail for hours over the phone. He was one of the spokespeople that David sent out. I think it was actually expelled for a dietary infraction, but he had a degree, a theology degree, and he still was a believing Davidian and actually has his own teaching and still believes David is coming back. all that. So he's a very well-informed guy. So we've been tutored enough to kind of know what David thought. And then we pitched our program, not in the, not in an absolutely manipulative way, but to some degree. The whole idea of it, it's really very simple, is I talk to Philip, he talks to me. And we talk about if somebody thought this and this, and this, like they're in the fifth seal, which says, wait for a while to the rest

are killed. That could be understandable, and yet there are other texts in the book of Revelation, which has a lot of ideas in it, particularly in chapter 10. And so I would say something to David like, and I can send you a transcript of it. It's public if I can find it sooner. I don't have the tape handy, I used to have it, but it's been transcribed. You know, something like, I'd say, you know, Phil, from what I understand, David Koresh believes he's the seventh and last messenger mentioned in Revelation 10. And it is true that when the seventh messenger blows his trumpet, the end is near.

It's all over. I mean, if you read it, anyone can read it in the Bible. Seventh messenger blows his trumpet. that said so he must you know blowing your trumpet would be kind of getting the word out and it does say that that messenger will be given an understanding about all the mysteries of the prophets you see so that was the key so here these divinians thinking okay a guy's going to come at the end of time and they thought they were at the end because they thought the gulf four was the sign and they had read daniel 11 which is you know about the middle east and the final

final events in the Middle East, King of the North, King of the South. And it fit the Gulf War pretty well. I wrote a paper on that, just trying to show people how somebody could interpret it that way. And we've had many interpretations of these things over the years, of course. So what we said was, so in the days, it says in the days of the sounding of the trumpet, like it's a period when all the mysteries of the prophets are revealed. So see these people sitting on the edge of their seats. FBI had no idea.

And they're thinking, oh, my God, it's happening. You know, we're hearing all the mysteries of the prophets. This is the seventh messenger. So fortunately, the text is always infinitely flexible. And we found that in the text, that chapter, Revelation 10, that was the key, we used the Bible, that that messenger eats a little book. And when you eat a book in the Bible, this goes back to Ezekiel. It means you totally absorb a message, like you eat it.

And so he would say that he's eaten the book of Revelation. You know, he's totally absorbed it into his body. And then it says the last verse, you must prophesy again to many nations, kings, and peoples. And so that's what we used. And what we said was, you know, I said to Philip something like, you know, I don't, I certainly don't have any reason to believe David is fulfilling this or not fulfilling it. But the people in there do. And if they do, doesn't their texts say that he has to preach, he eats the book. So that would be him teaching them.

But now he's got to go to the world and preach it to all nations. How is he going to do that? I mean, you know, it's not happening. If he would write the book, the little book of the seals, just write it and put it out, we will take it to the top theologians of the world. And that was the hook. And it would fulfill prophecy then, see? So that was it. And let me tell you this amazing story.

Dick Degarin started going in shortly after that. This is Koresh's lawyer. Yeah, I think, yeah, sorry, and Jack Zimmerman did, but Dick Degarin first. He's very skilled, very well-known lawyer from Houston. He's had very high profile cases. And he got rather attached to the Davids and met all the children. And, you know, he was convinced that the BATF had really mishandled that initial raid and that there was a good chance of a self-defense kind of defense of any kind of charges or

a case rather. So he went in for that. So when that started happening, we had hope in that. We'd already done our program. But we thought, well, who heard it? Well, I found out later from Tivodeau that some had heard it on their radio because they were listening to Ron Engelman. This would be April 7th. But Corish hadn't heard it. He didn't hear us. He was busy doing something else. And I don't think Steve had heard it either. Well, that's kind of a problem. We put out our big thing and the boss is not listening and the boss's main guy is not listening. And I don't know that Wayne Martin heard it. Maybe they were having a meeting of their leaders. But anyway, some of the people thought, yeah, that's Arnold again, this new guy, Tabor, you know,

that's interesting. So Bill and I are talking all through April every day. What's going on? And he's up there all the time. He's going back and forth and staying at the Hilton Hotel. So I said to him, this is absolutely true, this story. You'll think I'm exaggerating. It's not. I can't remember the date, but it was around April 10, 11, 12, right in there, right before Passover. And they're going to shut down for Passover. And DeGaron has made his last visit. He said, we got it. legal stuff is done, you know, we're going to work out. After Passover, he's going to come out. It's all done. And it's agreed to. And there is even some kind of document to be signed that the Davidians later sent out was, but I know Texas Rangers had to handle the exit, just certain

kinds of arrangements like that, who would come out first and how it would be done. So that was all worked out. So I said to Phil, if you could just talk to Dick and get, the uh somehow get across maybe this tape of the radio program to david that could add to the legal side so that the religious side could maybe be covered as well you know that david could say god has told me to come out just like not like i made an agreement with a very smart lawyer or something like that to protect my rights so remember he's david's lawyer he's not the lawyer for all the dividends so uh i said on the phone and it was in the evening one night i can't tell you i could look it up but probably 10 11 12 April i said well if you could just get to de garen and he goes

oh yeah right de garran is somewhere in waco we don't know where so right as phil hung up these are pay phones at the hilton you remember those pay phones where you'd stand at the wall And there's a whole bank of them. Okay, he's in a pay phone lose like that. I just said, if you could just get to the gear, and he hangs up the phone. And there's this woman next to him, and she drops her wallet or whatever with all these cards, you know, credit cards or, you know, driver's list. And it goes all over.

So, and she's very attractive. And Phil, he said, you know, hey, you got to help this beautiful woman. slowly kneels down and here, ma'am, here's your cards. Oh, thank you, sir, thank you. And then just to be friendly, she said, well, I guess you're a reporter and you're here for the same reason everybody else is. And he goes, no, actually, I'm a Bible scholar. What are you here for? He said, I missed it in the message, you know, the religious side of it.

And she said, well, I'm here with my husband. And he goes, who's your husband? She says, Dick to Karen. and he says really and she says so do you what do you do and he said well mainly you know I know a lot about the book of revelation and so forth she said you need to talk to my husband and he said believe me I would if I could where is he said he's upstairs on the seventh floor or whatever you know I don't remember the floor but it was up hidden away from the crowd and he said I'd love to talk to him she says well come up

right now let's go up i know we want to meet you because he's been saying i don't understand what he's saying he keeps going into the bible and i just try to follow it and you know i can't he's trying to teach dick de garing the seven seals so philip goes up it's about nine o'clock at night they're together till four in the morning he's in his hotel room talking to him and he doesn't um at one point he said they had to go get to get something to eat, you know, just take a break. So they're driving around talking. He gave him the tape and Dick called the FBI the next morning, bleary eyed. And he said, I've got some information I need to take back in. And I said, what? I thought you're finished. We don't have plans for that. And he said, I need to get this in before Passover. And I said, okay, okay, you can go once more. So they let him go in. So anyway, Phil didn't call me immediately that morning. I think he was just so tired.

And I'm watching CNN every day because they were really covering it. So, you know, all day, every day. Not like the networks, just covered at night. And it says, I still have the tape somewhere. It says, surprisingly, Dick DeGaron is going back and he says he has some new information that must get to the Dividea.

And I'm like, oh, my God. So I call Phil, I think I wake him up, and I said, is that like our stuff? He goes, yeah, yeah. And he tells me the whole story. Amazing. So we're very excited. Then Timito tells us because he was there, David Timito, Survivor, that he got the tape. Dick's sitting there.

David Quares calls the whole group together in the dining hall. They're all around a table. They have a little cassette recorder. They hit play, and for one hour, they listen to us. And he said, David is just nodding his head and listening and listening and nodding his head. And at the end of it, he says, you know, this is what I've been praying for. These two guys, I think, are the ones that I should be dealing with. So DeGaron's happy with that.

And he said, well, you know, just, you know, I know it's passed over, but he said, look, I will give you the word after Passover. So we felt that even from that moment, he was beginning to think, oh, yeah, you must prophesy again. And these guys are going to do this, this, this. And that's where he came up with the idea. We had said he should write it. That was our idea. And we used the example of Paul in the Bible. He's put in prison. And he writes two of his main letters, Ephesians and Colossians. These are like in the New Testament, very major any Christian knows these from prison. Like his main message, he wrote it from prison. So we thought that might appeal to him.

You're like, Paul, you're going to write prison epistles. So anyway, we didn't know, and that was Passover last eight days. And lo and behold, the day after Passover, we've got a copy right here in my hand. He sends out this letter. that I know you've seen and other people have seen, but I'll read you just a portion of it, April 14th, 1993. Now, people forget, this is addressed not to the FBI, but to Dick, DeGaron. Okay. It says, Dear Dick, April 14th, I think it was a Wednesday, maybe.

As far as progress is concerned, here's where we stand. and i'm going to skip on down he warns about a earthquake coming and then he says i'm presently being permitted to document and structured form the decoded message of the seven seals every word of that sentence is important permitted means he thinks god is letting them do it structured meaning you're not going to ramble all over the place he's going to actually go seal one seal two decoded he's going to tell you what it means Upon the completion of this test, I will be freed of my waiting period. Notice how he phrases it, not, I will end my waiting.

I'll be freed of it, meaning God told me to wait, and I've now been told that that will be lifted by God. I hope to finish this as soon as possible and to stand before man and answer any and all questions. And then he says, I've been praying so long for this opportunity to put the seals in written form. I was shown that as soon as I'm given over into the hands of men, I will just be made a spectacle of. And people will not be concerned about the truth of God, but the bizarity of me in the flesh. Very similar to what he says on a tape around that timeline, I'm going to come out and you can do your thing with this beast, you know, poke me, says, be me bananas or whatever in a cage. So then he said, then he gets to the details. I will demand the first manuscript of the seals has given to you.

Many scholars and religious leaders will wish to have copies. I will keep a copy. But once I see that people like Jim Tabor and Phil Arnold have a copy, I will come out. Oh yeah, that's in this, this son. And you can do your thing with this beast. so we were so ecstatic oh we were so happy and then you know we got the tapes the next few days he's writing and some of the FBI people are saying well we don't know it's another delay tactic we don't know if he's writing Jamar kept saying that right up to the end he's still living

but somebody said that he's not doing interviews anymore maybe just just not up to it right now in terms of memory and so forth. But I talked to him at the congressional hearings in 95. I walked up to Jeff Jamar and I said, you know, why did you not believe he was writing? He said, well, I'm still not sure. And I said, have you read the first seal that survived on the disc? Because they typed it the night before.

And I said, I have the disc and, you know, I can see the date and everything. And also he refers in the seven, first seal that he completed to the siege and to coming out. So it's absolutely, he said, well, he could have written that any time. I said, no, because there wasn't any, you know, he absolutely wrote it. We've got good evidence that he wrote it and was going to write the others. So at that point, the negotiating team was following that trail, and the tactical team had already decided what they were going to do. And they've been planning that actually very early on. to maybe use the CS gas as one technique of getting them out and ending them.

And didn't you say in your book, James, that Jeff Jamar admitted or possibly boasted that they didn't bother telling anyone in Washington, D.C., in other words, at FBI headquarters or at the Justice Department that this was happening? You'll see, I sent you a log of detailed chronology, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 17th, and 18th. And of course, you know the 19th. Very important to follow. Who met in D.C. with Janet Reno. How many meetings there were?

And later, I think I told you, I talked to Janet Reno. She came to our campus and she asked to talk to me. She'd read my book. And I met her. She gave us, you know, a talk here, a speech on whatever. And did mention Waco and said that it grieved her terribly, you know, and she'd never be over it. And the buck stops here and all that stuff.

So we talked and she said, I'm telling you, I did not know of this plan, this letter. I wasn't shown the letter. And she said, she has said in testimony, sworn testimony, I asked them repeatedly, is there any other way? is there any other possibility than the raid you know the raid you're proposing the this is not an attack effort as they put it and she was told no no no and he's probably abusing children so we really need to hurry and that's what supposedly got to her so she was not told she got a briefing book kathy can fill you in on

this kathy wessinger if you get a chance to talk to her because i think she even maybe has seen the briefing book, but I'm almost certain that the letters were not in there. You know, he'd sent out several letters, but this letter was not there. She didn't call Dick DeGaron and say what was worked out. So on the day of the 19th, the tapes with Steve are very instructive because he says on the tapes. This is on the record. What are you doing? We finished the first seal.

We agreed. there was this agreement to, will you send out one? And David goes, no, no, no. It has to be the whole thing. You know, it's a message. I don't send it out piecemeal. But then the negotiators said, no, you got to do it as a test of good faith. If you'll do one, then I think I can hold up any further action.

The bosses are getting restless. They always call them the bosses. And so David said, okay, okay, I've got the first one done. We'll type it up tonight and I'll send it out tomorrow. and tomorrow is Monday the 19th. So this is just so tragic. And so Snyder is saying we got it tight. We stayed up all night.

I think, I believe, well, Ruth Riddle was involved somehow, but I think Judy Schneider also might have been involved in typing it. And they said, we can send it out. And then, as you know, the phone line was cut by the tank. And Kathy Wessinger has. done a lot of research on the request to reconnect it. And she's convinced that the FBI refused. Like it wasn't like, oh, we can't do it. What they say now is there was so much shooting, we couldn't risk the lives of anybody. They're in Bradley tanks. You know, you could get behind

a tank or do something. But anyway, that was the tragedy. And I'm telling you, Scott, on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, was the letter, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, until Monday morning, I was just, we just thought this is it. He's going to write the seals. It's over. We did it. You know, thank God. They're going to be okay. And he doesn't even have to write it. It's an important kind of a minor data point here that he's just doing his typical sermon and she has a dictaphone belt and is, I don't know exactly how that works, but she's just transcribing it. So it's not like this guy has to figure out how to write well now or something like that. This is what he's always talking about.

We do know from Schneider on the tapes that he has yellow pads, but he's making notes. You know, he's scratching out. Yeah. Probably sloppy things like I'll do this. Now, the other thing, and this is new, I don't think I've ever, I think I told Jeff Gwen this and he put it in his book, but I'll tell you this is, this is. This isn't a big discovery of mine. With the letters on the computer disk,

I found dated April 19, 1993, same type font as the letter of the 14. Contents of computer disk and an outline of it. So they had actually typed an outline, Not of the contents, but of scriptures that they didn't have time to put in. Isn't that something? So what it says is poem, Eden to Eden, introduction, John 18, 1st Peter 1, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and so forth. Chapter 1, Revelation 6, because they were in such a hurry, he would just say, put in here Psalm 45, 1 through 11.

Put in here, Isaiah 33, 17. I'm reading off the page. That also was typed the day of the letter. And I don't know how this survives, but I found it online with the letter. So that means the FBI got this with the letter. This is big. This is smoking gun stuff.

So they knew not only that, I don't know, they got it the day of the letter, but between the letter on the 14th and the 19th when everything burnt up, he sent out something that had contents of the computer disk because it doesn't make any sense unless you put the scriptures in. And so in the version I created, the one you see all the time online, the decoded message of the seven seals. I did that in Word. That's my computer. I created that whole thing, but I had to put in the scriptures, and I'd call Ruth Riddle, who was in Canada, and would talk to her all the time about it. And, you know, she looked at my transcript word for word. She gave me a few corrections, and she made sure I had every quote of the Bible exactly right, so David has to have every word right, as he argues about all these terms. so I know for sure he was writing it now can I say for sure that he would have come out

if he finished the first seal first seal is the longest seal by the way and he finished that in I would say four days three to four days then I would say we're talking about another week to 10 days at the most to get the others I think he was ready to come out okay so just to recapitulate that story real quick here. That was the long version of it. But Tabor is talking about that he and Wright figured out what Koresh was talking about as far as identifying himself in the book of revelations and all those things. They examined it very carefully, and they found where this Lamb of God is supposed to make himself famous and preach to the whole world. And he's not going to be able to do that. If he dies here, he's only just become.

famous his name is now a household word around the world so now it says here he's supposed to spend days teaching this so there's this period of time that's to begin now so they convinced him not with any other argument they convinced him through his own theology and through his own interpretation of the apocalyptic thing that hey man it looks like you're overlooking this part that says that you have to live so that you can write your famous books from jail so that you can have your message sent. And then the deal that he made was as soon as he knows that Tabor, I'm sorry, I called him Wright before, I'm sorry, as soon as he knows that Tabor and Arnold, right is a different scholar here, as soon as Tabor and Arnold have it, and he knows that they have it, then he'll come out

because they had promised they're going to give it to Billy Graham, they're going to give it to Pat Robertson, and they're going to give it to all the most important Protestant ministers in America. But they identified in the text where, hey, man, according to your story, you still have some work to do, and you're going to have to leave the compound in order to do it. So let's work this out. And then it worked. They flipped his switch, and they made the deal that the FBI wasn't even really trying to make

or didn't have the ability to make. here and they really deserve a lot of credit and i feel bad for the guy you hear him talk about how for that whole weekend they were just a static and then now he has to live with the fact that his solution which was in effect and working was pulled out from under him and they went ahead literally the next day they started the attack and so before we end this section of the siege there's just one more clip and this is an important clip it comes from McNulty's film The Sequel to Rules of Engagement. Waco, a New Revelation.

It's an interview with Stephen Barry, who is a former Special Forces officer, I believe. And this is what he claims to know about the Army Delta Force. Their operators had penetrated the buildings on several occasions, planning surveillance devices, listening devices, sensors. And on one occasion, I believe it was April 17th, late 17th, early 18th. A crash was actually within six feet of one of the operators. And they were ready to go back to the tactical operation center for permission to grab them.

Within minutes, the word came back from Justice Department. No, we already have a plan in place. That plan, of course, being what happened on April 19th. So that clearly would have been absolutely illegal. It's probably illegal for the Delta Forest guy to be in the house at all at that point. And yet, if we're at this level of lawlessness already for that Delta Force operator to put Koresh in a New York subway train sleeper hold and drag his ass out of that house at that moment could have saved so much.

I had not heard that it was a Delta Force. I'd heard it was an HRT member that was in the place. But that makes perfect sense. And I think probably it would have been the Delta guys going and putting the the sensors and so forth in there is that your understanding yeah i think so yeah um and so it would have been a crime but then again it was already a crime for him to be there and it would have been a crime that could have absolutely diffused the situation from that moment on and then they told them nope we already have a better idea and that being the gassing plan here with

Dan Gifford, the producer of Waco, the Rules of Engagement, the Best Documentary about the Waco Masker, and with Dave Hardy, who is the author, co-author with Rex Kimball, of this is not an assault penetrating the web of official lies regarding the Waco incident, which is the best book on the issue. And so I have both these gentlemen here, and where we left off yesterday, We're ready to talk about the final assault on April the 19th. But that begins with the gassing plan. Now, where we left off, negotiations were actually incredibly fruitful. And James Tabor and Philip Arnold had made this incredible breakthrough

where they convinced Koresh by applying his own teachings that he should write down his sermons. now for the first time and that once he would write down his interpretation of the seven seals then they would come out and the night of the 18th the negotiators told steve schneider there is no deadline we know how you guys are about deadlines don't worry about that just keep working on the thing and schneider had promised that they would send out each seal as they were finished as a show of good faith. And as we know,

because of one of the women who survived the fire brought the disc out with her. We know that he had already written the first seal and we know that he had this outline where he had already said where each psalm was supposed to be copied and pasted in later when they got to it and everything. So they were, and that was for the later seals.

So not only had he finished the first one, but he was already outlining and working on how the others were to be. But the problem then is that the feds had already decided they were going to gas the place days and days ago, maybe weeks ago, they had begun this plan, convert these combat engineering vehicles to deploy this gas. And they had gone through the trouble of convincing the Attorney General to let them in everything. And so they were not going to let these fruitful negotiations get in the way of their plan. So even though on the night of the 18th, they said, okay, good work, guys, really appreciate working with you on this.

It's all good. The Devidians woke up in the morning to their house being attacked. This is not an assault, though. Yeah. Yeah, definitely not. Well, now, so let's start out with the question of just what exactly is. CS gas? Well, I can't pronounce the chemical name because it's about five inches long. But it's a fine powder, like a talcum powder. And to disperse it, you could spray it out and it just settles down

or the air carries it around like a dust. Or in this case, they mixed it with a volatile chemical methyl and chloride, which then disperses it and it vaporizes, but it leaves the stuff behind. CS burns readily. All this stuff is widely known. It was used in Vietnam to put into the tunnels of the Vietnam, and that got to be an issue internationally as far as for using banned chemicals in the warfare efforts, you know, like many other things. And CS is banned by the Geneva Convention. Yes, that's how it got banned, was because the complaints,

And they were, it was actually being used successfully to root out people in Vietnam, the Viet Cong. That was, you probably, most people have probably heard of the tunnel rats. Somebody had to go down and dig around and explore these tunnels. Well, they could spray this stuff down into the tunnel and people tended to come out. So, but that wasn't well received by the, especially the political left and whatnot. So, yeah, we had these international hoo-haha, and then it got banned. But it does... You can still use it on your own citizens, though.

Yeah. Yeah. If you're a sovereign government. Right. But it does produce hydrogen cyanide when it burns. This is well-known. And this is not something that it was... Now, Janet Reno certainly, I doubt, knew that.

The FBI certainly knew that. I knew when as soon as I saw, that's what they were talking about originally because from my time at Edgewood Arsenal, which is the chemical warfare center of the U.S. Army above north of Baltimore. It's part of Aberdeen Proving Ground. And this was used extensively. I have been through the little tank where you send people in, you have a gas mask on, you pick up a little side of it and get a whiff of it.

And, yeah, it's nasty. I'd get out of the room, or I'd get out of the tunnel. but to say that when Reno she asked would anybody be hurt any children and she's told by the FBI

no no no no no that's a lie and they would have to know that that would be I think she as she started realizing she'd been had she got angrier and angrier I'm not a Janet Reno

fan by any means but you've got to look at what's going on the FBI's in control and they're telling their version of the story, and this works in a vacuum of ignorance. Great. Well, so speaking to which, what is metalin chloride, Dave? It's a powerful solvent.

It was used in the stuff that was injected, the CS that was injected at Waco because CS will dissolve in it, but will evaporate almost instantly. It has a couple of bad characteristics. one of which is that it in the body metabolizes to carbon monoxide at a very high rate of return. And, of course, that's not something you want to expose people to if there's a fire in the near future. It is dangerous enough in that sense that it was originally used as a powerful paint remover. I've been told they took it off the market because it killed some people. It's heavier than air and if you were down in the basement using his paint stripper and you had impaired heart function while you get enough of carbon monoxide load in your bloodstream and you're dead

and so carbon monoxide people are probably familiar with this is how people die from car exhaust sometimes by suicide sometimes accidentally and what's tricky about this gas is it's odorless and for whatever reason your cells prefer it to oxygen and we'll take it so where your body expels carbon dioxide, it will accept carbon monoxide before it'll accept oxygen, and this is how you suffocate from it. So now we've got to get back to the gassing plan. Okay, now that we know what we're talking about here, they had been preparing this for a while.

So you can see the sort of sunk cost in there that they had decided on March the 25th, which is almost a month before, that this is what we're going to do. but it took a while to equip the combat engineering vehicles and rig the little boom and all the different things and interestingly right to get approval from Janet Reno but that only came at the very end in fact can either of you guys really nailed down when she was sworn in

because as we know the first two appointees for attorney general had to quit because of nanny scandals right and so she was the third choice yeah they weren't paying income tax on their nannies and so she was the third choice and I forget exactly when she came in as attorney general but it was pretty late in the story for sure I think just a few days as you said earlier yeah she'd only been in office a day or so

it's right you know what I bet we could just look that up right now couldn't we okay so she was sworn in to March the 12th so that's still you know more than a month before the fire but again she only knows what the FBI is telling her that's right and she's believing them which is foolish and why wouldn't she believe the FBI yeah and and this is where we finally get to Delta Force too because we know that when the HRT met with Reno on the 14th which is the same day that they finally worked out this deal it was the same day they're meeting with her and the HRT brings Delta with them. They bring Colonel Boykin and Brigadier General, two-star general,

Peter J. Shoemaker, who was at that time the commander of Delta Force. And I believe both of them under, at that time, are under Wesley Clark, commander of Fort Hood. And I think this is in your book, Dave, is that it was Webster Hubble, who was a friend and associate of the Clintons who had come with them from Arkansas who associate attorney general okay so he was number two to Janet Reno and then he but he's the liaison too with the white house yeah is that right okay um and so he says he wants delta there at this meeting to advise Reno but do we know why Do we have an indication of what Hubble hoped to accomplish with that? I'm unaware of such.

No. Well, he was, this again is what Roger Stone told me, is that Hillary blew up at him. They were allegedly at one-time lovers back in Arkansas. You know, he was a big star, football star, one time. People used to make phone on Chelsea saying she looked just like him. Yeah, a pretty bad insult. That's right. Yeah, he was drafted by Chicago Bears.

I mean, he was a big time jock hero at Arkansas and so they knew each other quite quite well and she supposedly berated him and got you know, you go tell we want this going on she wanted this stuff off the front page

and the purpose of Delta here is right these are the highest considered the most specialized warriors at the top tier special operations them and seal team six or the not even the rest of the seal teams. Just six. These are the very top-tier special operations forces.

So the idea is, I guess, then we can infer that the reason that they're being included here is sort of like to oversee the HRT, which would be more like second-tier special operations forces. So whatever HRT is telling Reno, Hubble wants Delta there to be like the grown-ups in the room, maybe? Maybe, but I don't understand why bringing Delta, see that that's all wonderful.

You've got a top-tier. combat unit, but are you going to use it against American citizens? Are you going to use it domestically? This is where the question that's not being asked. That's for use in foreign enemies. That's why the reference I put in the paper I wrote here, I was getting information at the House that confirmed many of the things that I at first didn't believe.

Now, and this was coming from the former head of the CIA, I thought. because I knew his son, who lived about three doors down from mine. And it was... You're talking about William Colby. Yeah, William Colby. And the reason was that he didn't think all these things should be used against American civilians. This is what you do overseas someplace, but not here. This is interesting you bring up Colby because he's a big part of this story, but in a minute.

So, you know, let's get back to that in a minute. I got a lot of questions about him and his role in this. But so then, now, what do we know for sure about what Delta told Reno there? They did approve and recommend the gassing attack? Reading their record, it sounds more to me like they were trying to discourage it. I mean, they didn't have the power to say, don't do this. But they gave a whole lot of cautions. And if you're a bureaucrat and somebody's giving you a whole lot of caution,

what he's really saying is don't do it. Right. The warden that mothers may panic and flee and leave their children, things like that. Right. One thing about the involvement of Delta was, if we're asking ourselves, why did they ask Delta to come into the meeting, isn't the answer rather obvious? They want to conduct against American citizens the type of operation that Delta is already conducting against foreign enemies.

And so if you want to get advice on how to carry out such an operation against Americans, you go to the guys who've carried it out against other people. So in other words, perhaps HRT, or maybe we know, HRT were the ones who brought Delta along or asked Webb Hubble to insist that they be included because HRT wanted the help from Delta to do what they had in mind. Yeah, that I don't know. It might have been Webster Hubble's own idea. I see.

Or HRT. But that makes sense. that if we're going to do this, we want not necessarily adult supervision to call it off, but adult supervision to make sure it's done well. Yes. Right. And now, so it's important, too, that we know about Boykin. He later made himself famous as an anti-Muslim demagogue during the terror war,

not that the terror war is over. But he was the one who said, my God is bigger than your God, and your God is Satan and all of that in his private speeches and was eventually demoted or at least, you know, made to be quiet. uh for talking like that and um so that's the same guy and he had been involved in the black hawk down incident in mogadishu lost 18 killed and 84 wounded during that and that was just a few months later right and then not not to forget the optics of it too with the body is being dragged through the right so now let's go back to what you were saying about janet reno in the way that they lied to her and they said to her for one thing we know that this won't lead to any

permanent damage to children if we use it on children, which is an interesting way to phrase it, right? Because I don't think that's the law that you can torture children as long as there's no permanent damage. But this is the same language that John U.S. later made up under W. Bush for when we get to torture people, that the pain would have to be equivalent to organ failure or would have to cause permanent damage. So if it doesn't cause permanent damage, then that makes it somehow okay. And maybe it was Bill Clinton and Janet Reno who had set the precedent for you at Waco. In fact, one of the questions that you was later asked was, you're saying that there's no law or treaty or constitutional provision that binds the president's power. Well, what if the president

wanted to crush a child's testicles in order to get his father to cooperate? Are you saying that that would be legal? That there's no law that can stop George W. Bush from ordering that? And John Huse said, well, there's no treaty, there's no law. It would be up to W. Bush to make that determination. So that's apparently the standard that we're dealing with here, right? You know, on that permanent damage thing, what they were relying on was a medical journal article about a small child who'd been exposed to pretty good doses of CS during a hostage situation. And if you read the medical article, caused no permanent damage is better,

red as almost killed him. I mean, it was, I believe they had to put the child on a ventilator, going to respiratory failure, that sort of thing. Yeah, they survived, but that's about all you can say for their experience. And how old was the child in that? I forget now, but the toddler, infant or toddler stage early. I think what Dave was saying is important when we're trying to discern what was said and is that these people speak in bureaucraties and in metaphor and other things and so you really they always have plausible deniability later on well we never said that I mean even though plainly you can look in and that's what I'm talking about about the way this whole operation was set up I mean you look at it I mean I don't see how anybody comes to another

conclusion right it's very obvious but it's going to it's going to be hard to get them saying this is the best way to make it burn fast, right? You're never going to quite get that. No, but now on, so on the, the lie to Reno here about the child and the CS gas, the other part of the plan and coercing her essentially into approving the plan was, as you mentioned, Dan, the accusation of the beating of the babies. Yeah. And you talk about this in the book that they told her, yeah, I mean, he is slapping these children around and that essentially they set it up in a way where to Reno, she is now authorizing the beating up of babies if she is not authorizing the stopping of the beating up of babies. Right. And so that's her choice. Are you going to allow this assault on these infants to continue? Because baby means on. under one-year-old, right?

You don't allow this to continue or not? And, of course, I do that would be a trigger for her. Yeah, exactly. That was her, preventing child abuse was her big issue. You know, her big thing in Florida was she was used the anatomically correct dolls, which were later outlawed in terms of, for child abuse and sexual molestation and all that. And, you know, you show a child, the doll, and, you know, you get a yes, get a conviction. went back. Yeah, she was caught up in the whole satanic panic thing in the 1980.

Convicting innocent people on some crazy allegations. But, yeah, so that was her whole reputation was based on how she's the protector of the children and all of that. You know what? So I didn't realize this, but I learned this from your book, Dave, is that they admitted that they lied to Reno about that, or at least that wasn't true about the beating of the babies. within two weeks of telling the lie. So I got a few footnotes here for people. We have a quote from the Justice Department report. There was no direct evidence indicating that Koresh engaged in any physical or sexual abuse of children you could put in brackets here at any time during the standoff. Given that Koresh had been shot and wounded on February 28th, he probably lacked the physical ability to continue his abuse.

they say. And then they complained that, well, however, there was evidence that sanitary conditions inside the compound had worsened considerably. So it was unhealthy at best for the children to continue to live there. Fine. Well, bring them a porta potty then. I mean, what are we talking about? Let them go outside. On Tuesday, the 20th, William Sessions said that the FBI, quote, had no contemporaneous evidence, end quote, of child abuse or beatings to justify the assault. Then, Reno eventually admitted herself during testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on April the 28th, 93. April the 28th, 93, nine days later, there was no evidence of child abuse during the standoff, none. So there you go, and that's interesting that they, for whatever reason, decided to tell the truth about that pretty soon afterwards.

I guess it really only mattered that she believed the lie for 10 minutes, right? Sure. During the meeting. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. Yep. You have to manipulate your superior. As an old bureaucrat, I'll tell you, that's how you do it. They know what options are available.

They're dependent upon you outlining them. And in this case, the options are perfectly obvious. And they're dependent upon you for information. So manipulate the information and make sure they get the result you want. Right. Okay. So do we think that actually went on with Reno? All right, so now to your point about the weather.

Now we get to the actual attack that morning. It's the morning of April 19th. Jeff Jamar, special agent in charge, has permission now from the Attorney General. He orders the attack. Yeah, well, he was asked at the hearings. Why did you do the attack at this time or this day? And he said, the weather. Well, what about the weather?

There was a 30-mile-per-hour wind blowing on one corner of the divinity, and I forget whether it's north-southeastern west. Be it a southwest corner. Okay, southwest corner. And it fit with the plan they were coming into it. That's why I say this didn't just happen. This was carefully thought out. So they've already injected the CS into the building,

and they poked holes in it so it can breathe. and then from the Fleer aerial surveillance video, the first place you see the fire or flame is this corner. I got to say, though, I'm worried that maybe you're assuming too much here because, I mean, clearly, the holes in the building and all that and at the time of the fire, the way that the wind fed the fire and everything, like obviously that's all indisputable. But whether that was really the purpose or not in the beginning of the morning,

I think we're assuming too much and skipping ahead there because wasn't the plan that to force these people out with the gas they spent six hours gassing them before the fire broke out and you talk about from the radio traffic and so forth in your book Dave

that they were really frustrated and upset this was supposed to work it worked against VC guerrillas in Vietnam to force them out of their tunnels these women and children and the rest of the branch Davidians were supposed to come out. Yep. And then, so after six hours of this, they're still not coming

out, and this is leading to this frustration. They don't really have a backup plan. No. So like, but so to your question, I mean, is it really fair to say they deliberately were setting up a pot belly stove starting at six o'clock in the morning? Yes, they were because they had pyrotechnic devices that would start a

fire, which they lied about not having, and we didn't prove that until Dave and Michael Menlde got into the evidence lock. and I had a couple of ATF agents come see me on the sly with pictures of, you know, this is an incendiary device. Also, the flashbang, they also had fragmentation pieces there too. Well, let's get more to how the fire started later,

but just in terms of like whether that was what they were going for from the very beginning. I mean, it seems like the plan was maybe even to kill him with the gas, but certainly to gas them. Well, you need to also tie this in with the nudges and the taunts about how much fire insurance do you have? How many fire extinguishers? This is an important point that's been brought up repeatedly, and it's in rules of engagement. But my producer and I went and tracked this down and looked through all the transcripts of the negotiations.

And these are two totally separate conversations that are cut and pasted in an improper way. So one conversation is saying, David Koresh is saying that God could strike this whole place with lightning. He's basically like God is Zeus. He's going to start throwing lightning bolts around. And the negotiator says, oh, come on, you're going to start throwing lightning bolts? And he goes, no, not me, God. And the agent says, oh, geez, I guess we all better buy some fire insurance. and Koresh goes blah blah blah the Bible so this is not a threat by the cop the cop is just saying

oh geez if God's going to throw a lightning bowl at me I better get some fire insurance he's really talking about everyone including the cops outside and Koresh doesn't take it as a threat at all and Koresh just continues to go on so that is not in relation to a separate conversation It's a different day. It's a totally separate conversation about, do you guys have any fire extinguishers in there? And Schneider sends someone to check and says, no, I think we only have one.

And then they're concerned. But they don't threaten him. They don't make a joke about, oh, you don't have any fire extinguishers, huh, boy, you better get some. That's just not in there. Well, I think it's in the subtext, but you're saying...

Well, it's not in the subtext. It's really not. It's your two entirely separate conversations. So you're saying Dick misread the... I'm saying Dick misread it. And I asked him about it, And, you know, we went and tracked down through the transcripts and we looked every, every or any possible reference to fire insurance or fire extinguishers on through all those negotiations. And that's all we got.

Okay. But you're still left with the physical setup with it, which was absolutely right. And look, I'm just, I just want to be right. I don't really care who did what as much as just that we get what's true as best that we can. And I think that Revis is an honest journalist. I think he just made a mistake and got his notes conflated. He must have gotten his notes conflated on that particular point. Well, let's, you know, speaking of an FBI state of mind on the day of the gassing,

you've got to understand that Jeanette Reno left the Department of Justice headquarters to give a speech in Baltimore about 30 miles away. and the whole plan was, I believe, to carry out the gassing while she's out of touch. Now, she's technically not out of touch. I can tell you back in the 90s, high government officials had not cell phones, but some manner of radio contact in D.C. I've ridden a car with that equipment. You're telling me the Attorney General of the United States cannot be reached

because she's got to give a speech on something, reached on something of this crisis, level? No, they got her out of the way. Okay, these are action guys. Genet Reno is a nice old school teacher type. They don't like her being in charge of their military operation. Get her out of the way and we'll do what we want. So as the time is going on, no one's coming out. That frustration is building. I mean, she's not going to be the speech all day. Right. We've got to get this done. And I think that plays a big role in how massively they gasped the building. They were increasingly frustrated if the amount of CS we dumped in didn't work, double it, treble it. For Pete's sake, just get them out.

Right. Okay, so headphones on because we've got a couple clips to play for you here. And this is from the very beginning of the raid. It's the title of your book, Dave. David, individuals inside the branched The Bavidian compound. Exit the compound now. Submit to the proper authority, David.

David, you have had your 15 minutes of fame. It's time to leave the building. So there you go. This is not an assault, they say. We're not entering the building. We're just spraying this methylene chloride CS powder mixture inside. and David your 15 minutes of fame are up pal time to come out they mock

he also says submit to the proper authorities and I say if I put on my libertarian hat I got questions about that yeah exactly right and of course they're talking to a guy who claims and seems to truly believe he has a direct and personal relationship with the god of the entire universe who considers their authority to be quite a few steps down from that So that went about as far as I guess anyone could expect there. But so here are some clips from Bob Ricks,

and he at least became the head of the Tulsa office, the special agent in charge of the Tulsa office. At this time, he was the spokesman for the FBI. And here's him explaining essentially the FBI's thinking here. Our desire was to get them out to use non-lethal means in a systematic manner so that they would come before the bar and face justice. We did not want this to occur. At some point, we had this up the ante. He was continually fortifying.

He was demanding and was seeking provocation to get into a shootout with us, which we were refusing to do. So he's saying, right there, he's kind of giving away. the game. You know, he's essentially talking about their emotions, right? He's saying, we had to up the ante at some point, which is just another term for, we ran out of patience

for this, right? That's it. There's nothing that's changed. If the policy has been for seven weeks, we can wait these people out until hell freezes over. FBI, we have unlimited tax and Federal Reserve printed money at our disposal here. Don't forget the FBI

has taken its, oh, you you a bunch of pussies. You can't handle a bunch of that. They're getting their up and so on that. So, yeah, they, they're embarrassed. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about this before we, before we play this next clip. You allude to this, Dave, a second ago. There were two plans. The plan that they got Reno to endorse, someone might mistakenly think was near reasonable. But there was a clause. Yeah. In there. So tell us about what's going on with that. Well, they had a, the original plan that was presented to her was we'll basically give them a dose of CS enough to irritate them and they'll come out eventually.

And then they had a little clause in there that if any of the Davidians shoot at the tanks, then we can escalate. Well, who cares if you shoot at a tank? AR-15 does not do much damage to an M-1. Well, they had an answer for that, remember. As I remember, there is a slit somewhere on the side so the driver can see what's going on. And if by chance a bullet had hit that little place, the odds are infinitesimally small,

then you could have theoretically shot one of the guys the tank. But that was it. Yeah. Well, and of course, they could just say, Oh yeah, somebody shot at us and it doesn't even matter if it's true or not. Sure, sure. Also, I found this interesting too.

This was in the testimony, you remember. It was asked, well, what does the damage to the tanks show? And remember, I forget one of the congressmen, and nobody ever came up with the report on the damage to the tanks, which leads me to believe, well, there wasn't any damage to the tanks. It was just a claim being made, and here he's being called on it. Let's see the damage. and then it was never forthcoming.

And don't you say in the book that one of the drivers of the tanks or something said he didn't even perceive that he was being shot, he didn't hear any bullets hitting his tank. So we had that from their own words. Like, as far as I know, nobody was shooting at me, says the guy driving the CVE. There's a C-EV, combat engineering vehicle, it's called. It's not the same as the Bradley or the M-1.

I believe there's an M-1 that's there. It's a specially outfitted M-60 tank. And you'll notice on the things that it has a very short barrel where the barrel of the gun is. And that fires a high explosive charge for demolition for houses or fortifications or something of that sort. It's not a long barrel where the high velocity issue would use against another tank. And it has a special towing capabilities too. So it's specially designed for combat engineering, clearing minefields. this you might have seen on the this can be put on an attachment which is a spinning chain for

lack of a better phrase and you can go through and clear a mine area so at least they claim that at some point I think very early on right uh oh says here after nine minutes the FBI claims the Divideans have fired on them and now they go to plan B yep and what's plan B uh dump in all you can, all the gas you can, all the CS, just to engage in a headlong assault against the Davidian home. And this is on the booms. They have these gas canisters, the methylincloric canisters where they're dumping it in by 10 pounds at a time or so, right? And then they also have fired, it says in the book, there, 400 ferret rounds by 709 a.m. So what's a ferret round, Dave? Well, a ferret round was co-invented by Colonel Rex Applegate, who I knew. And it

basically is designed to be a way to distribute tear gas without it being a fire producing. It looks like a mortar shell, if you know, artillery or if not, but basically a plastic container, about an inch and a half in diameter, maybe three or four inches long, tail fins, so it will fly straight. And when you shoot it, it becomes a high-tech water balloon. It hits a window, that sort of thing. It punches through. The plastic is shattered.

The methylincloride and CS is sprayed into the air. The methylin chloride almost instantly evaporates, and so you've got CS. So you had a way to get the CS in without fire, which had been used in all projectiles up to that point. I'm tell you, a gunpowder-like mixture would expel it. And that was all purposes of ferret. And they were, like I say, about an inch and a half in diameter and three inches long or so.

So each ferret carries a pretty good dose of this liquid. And you quote, I think, the, is it DuPont or whoever, the chemical company saying that you would use maybe one or two of these on a regular-sized bedroom or something with people in it. Yeah, I mean, it's, like I say, it's a good quantity, and I know Colonel Applegate, who was the co-inventor, was appalled at the amount they used at Waco. I talked about it with him.

I mean, we're talking 400 rounds. I mean, this is possibly enough to be killing Branch Davidians long before the fire breaks out just from this. We're talking about this is the 40-millimeter grenade launcher they would fire them out. the same so all the munitions here are interchangeable in other words you if you didn't want to shoot that you could put in a fragmentation grenade or an incendiary grenade or anything else of which they did have and this this becomes very important here when you know we get to the fire in a minute here but this is i i think i read uh cops use the 38 millimeter and the military uses the 40 right 37 and 40

37 and 40 okay well you have to stop that drug stuff go on that's right that branch civilians are getting high and relaxing in there I heard okay so now so they panic right the the HRT

panics that they used up all their CS already they got their huge bottles full and their ferret rounds and it's only still early in the morning so what do they do they just call for more to be flown in from Houston They hunt around everywhere that they could find CS projectiles and that manner of thing. I know they were hunting for a 37-millimeter projectiles. They were using 40-millimeter, which is the military size.

Police use a 37-millimeter. So they were hunting for 37-millimeter launchers and projectiles just because they'd run out. What are they going to do? and now they're going at that point too when they're asking the local cops they're essentially asked for any old brand of tear gas any old kind of tear gas you got too right

all right so here's a quote from Eric Larson who was an expert on fire propagation and chemical anesthesiology who's featured in the movie Rules of Engagement here they would be coughing choking they would probably be unconscious

some of them would probably be dead some would be basically inert they may still be alive they may still be breathing but they're not going to be doing anything so now some of the adult i guess all the adults had gas masks so there's you know various degrees of you know they get clogged up you know over time and they don't necessarily see well of course none of the children had gas masks that could fit them. So, you know, he's mostly talking, I guess, about the children, but that would be some adults that that applies to as well that he's saying here. And this is, you know, again, before the fire breaks out.

And now, so this gets into the pyrotechnic rounds, but we don't necessarily need to go quite that far yet, but we need to talk about just the fact of the gassing of the buried buses at the north end of the building? Why are these buses buried there, Dan? And wouldn't that be an escape route that the feds are claiming that they're trying to force the Davidians

to maybe use to get out? Well, that's my understanding is that was an escape, a safe house, if you will. It's like a storm shelter that they built right. Yeah, you get to remember some horrible tornadoes through there. This is part of tornado alley. Texas Prairie out there, yeah. So that's probably the origin of why you had it.

Now, there's a section here that I did not put in the film because I received death threats from people. I received a lot of death threats. Remember, we had one person who was working on this project that was murdered. And it's an unsolved murder going back to 1999, and it happened right after I received a death threat. Her body was found in her home. in a closet with one bullet in the back of the head.

Who said? This was Jan of one of the Warner Brothers, people we were working with at the time for a follow-up movie. Janet's, some Burroughs. And this is, this ties in with this piece because there was a strip from the local TV station, WTX, in Waco, where the anchor or the reporter was doing on camera

and pointing out what you're pointing out that about this time, about stuff that was coming out of the bus and out of the billing, it didn't look like a gas, it didn't look like this, a number of things, and we don't know what it is. And the Texas Rangers, so he said, did not want to comment on it

for fear of retaliation by the FBI. now there were two so I kept somebody didn't want that in and having one person dead already I didn't want to I thought the threat was against my children that's how I took it but it was she's the one that got it and I there are several there are three stories about floating around about that one is that her husband had her killed her husband was the producer of a crime show that was on TV at the time. Another was that she was copying down license plates of drug dealers around town. I don't know how realistic that is, but I can certainly vouch that I did receive death threat

about that if you put this in, somebody near close to you is going to get whacked. And so I just figure, well, that's much bigger than I. can handle. This does end up in a new revelation, the sequel, after I guess you and McNaulty had had your breakup and he went on and he does show where they gas those buses. And he, he, he, he, you know, eventually died of natural causes, right? But he, but in the meantime, let's not forget, he told me that agents visited the school where his children attended in Colorado. That's clearly a threat, Clearly an intimidation. And for the longest time, and the last episode, I guess, was about five months ago,

primarily at coffee shops where I'm a coffee clutch. It's all over the place. Friendly people show up and they start asking leading questions. And it's very obvious. They're not just random people and all this. I've often found that dealing with police, there's a certain body type and language and if, well, you know, read Les Mazarablas. You know, Inspector Zvere talks about that, how you can spot a policeman by the way he walks,

by the way he opens a door, by the way he does. Especially a guy who's an experienced journalist like yourself. That's right. You've been around these guys. No, that's, so my method is, you know, getting truthful information is to go drinking with him. But to get, go drinking with him. I've got to have an entree. I've got to have somebody who vouches for me

or they don't know who I am, which is I've always avoided the, you know, being, having my face on too much, even though I was on TV. Most people don't remember me. I mean, I was in 1980s, so I have people look and say,

oh, yeah, I kind of remember you, but you wouldn't, you wouldn't know who I was. But this is a, this is a nasty stuff. Yeah. Well, let's hope that it's long enough ago now that they won't murder any of the three of us. You guys have been way the hell out ahead of me on this this whole time, and all three of us are still alive.

So that's a good indication. We're going to be all right, I hope. And none of us has suicidal inclinations. Got that right. I want to live. But here, so let's get back to our narrative about what's happening to the Davidians here during the gassing. Now, we have. quotes in the book here Dave of Bob Ricks saying that he has audio of David

Koresh standing inside the bunker and ordering the fire to be lit and he claimed that twice or he claimed that that day or the next day and then in a speech I guess a little while later but then later he admitted that he kind of made that up is that right yeah entirely I mean Koresh was not in the bunker. The FBI at one point thought that he was. No, the bunker is where they stash the children to protect him.

It's the only part of the building that has any concrete in it. Koresh was, I believe, up on the second floor. And so, yeah, Ricks is totally pulling this out of the air, throwing out whatever he wants. But importantly, though, he is bringing up the

fact that that house is riddled with bugs, audio and video by April the 19th. They can see, certainly they can hear pretty much whatever they want. I guess I read, I forget where, that the Divideons would find the bugs from time to time and destroy them too, but there were enough. And in your book, you talk about a military observer. Now, this guy's not with the Delta Force, right? What's this guy? Rod Rawlings? Yeah, the colonel. I forget his exact military capacity, but he was there on the day of the fire, and he told reporters about what he heard coming from the bugs, including some that FBI has never admitted existed, and he claimed that they were basically the armored vehicle, the combat engineering vehicles were closing in

on Koresh's position and that well they picked up a number of conversations from Koresh one of which was that to the effect of basically maybe I shouldn't die here and at that point according to him Stephen Schneider who was going to die here

rather lost it and put a bullet into him Mm-hmm which now this the military guy said he heard that or that was ricks oh the military guy and now he had also placed caresh in the bunker as well when he said that right i think he did yeah yeah so in other words in in one sense he debunk ricks but in another sense he's also clearly off on yeah i mean there's and there's never been confirmation of this. Because if there was such a bug, FBI will not admit that it existed. Well, and this is the important point, right? They have audio of Steve Schneider

shooting Koresh in the head. They have audio of David Koresh ordering the fire to be lit. Well, let's hear it then. Sure. Sure. You know, they're covering up the FBI and Bill Clinton and his whole regime are covering up for David Koresh. Now, Dan, what do you think? forget Biden. Yeah, well, here's Joe Biden right here. The record of the Waco incident documents mistakes. But the record from Waco does not evidence, however, is any improper motive or intent on the part of law enforcement. David Corrash and the Davidians set fire to themselves and committed suicide.

The government did not do that. Horship. That's Senator Joe Biden from 1995, from the hearings there. All right, let's see where we're at here. Here's Jeff Jamar, again, Special Agent in charge of the FBI that day. Those children are dead because David Corish had them killed. There's no question about that. He had those fires started.

He chose those children to die. We didn't have anything to do with their deaths. Now, you know, not to belabor the point, but to belabor it, why can't they prove that? why can't they even attempt to demonstrate that it was the Davidians that set the fire? The best that they can do is play some audio of a couple of guys

talking about pouring Molotov cocktails at 6 o'clock in the morning, which even they have to concede has absolutely nothing to do with the origin of the fire at 1230 whatsoever. Right? Yep. And again, you have Ricks

and you have this army colonel both claiming that they can hear koresh giving orders during this time contradicting each other but both making extraordinary claims about koresh on audio that has never surfaced audio that it's virtually inconceivable that they would cover up if it truly showed i mean they could play us a two second clip of koresh saying i said light it and that would be it right they wouldn't have to play the whole context and incriminate themselves they could play just the incriminating of part of him and they don't we never heard any of that ever and it's must be because they're lying then well you know for

artificial intelligence and deep fake technology that may surface yeah you know what yeah it's coming soon yeah computer i need you to forge me some audio on the following parameters here and no joke that's going to happen not just on this situation but lots of other ones yeah all right so now let's talk about again that bunker that that so-called bunker it's the vaults is what it is the pantry the concrete room and a tornado shelter, although not as good as the buried school buses, but still it's an emergency shelter. And it's all women and children in there. There are no men found, no men's bodies found in there at all. Not a single man, no, all women and children. Okay, this is the important clip here, Ricks. We knew that that protection was in there.

We believe we finally were able to make entry into that compound and were able to insert gas inside that protective area. We put massive gas in there. Their gas masks by that time had to be failing. We thought that their instincts, their motherly instincts would take place and that they would want their children out of that environment. It appears they don't care that much about their children, which is unfortunate. It sets up, puts that a mythical story. People believe it. what's even amazing is even if you take it at face value is true that's really your plan you're going to torture these babies until their moms finally give in to you

and you're like yeah well we were betting on their motherly instincts I guess they don't have any he says that creates the myth I tortured their children and they didn't give in so it must be their fault Well, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. And perhaps we should expect more and more like that. Okay, so I played a clip or two yesterday of James Bovard, and I just called him great, but I didn't really introduce him. James Bovart is the most accomplished libertarian journalist in America,

and he is essentially he's got this great bit that, It's similar to a few other notable writers in the past where he does investigative opinion columns, right? So he will absolutely skewer him, but he has original research and real journalism in each piece, too. And he's now regular at the New York Post, and of course he's a fellow at the Libertarian Institute. But during this time, and unfortunately, I didn't know the name Bovard. I didn't learn about him until later. and people can find on his website jimbovard.com a massive archive of articles that he wrote about waco

i think mostly for the wall street journal but for various publications all through the 1990s and he was a good source we talked about a lot of this thing one particular episode uh at the bar in the train station in washington dc we were sitting at the bar and who came up and sat next to me but this guy that just had had cop written all over him, and on his belt was something that was a plainly a recording device. And did Bovar give him a, oh, oh, oh. Jim says he doesn't remember it. He says that was a lot of beers ago, which is true.

Fair enough, fair enough. But this we're talking. Jim loves to drink Pilsners, I know. Yeah, 1996. But that was there, and that's the kind of stuff that we went through. Yeah. Okay, so here's a clue. of the great Jim Bovar talking about some of the fire evidence and the cover up here.

There was so much evidence that the feds covered up after the April 19th fire caused by the FBI. And there were audio tapes. And back in May 1995, Attorney General Janet Reno was trying to whitewash the FBI by Janet Reno claimed there were words that were tape recorded while they were spreading the fuels to ignite the fire. The Branch Divideon's words were captured on tape. However, there were a lot of controversies about those audio tapes from inside the compound from the federal listening devices. At the trial in 1994, federal prosecutors put out a transcript that they said was from the electronic listening devices inside the compound, claiming that it showed a Davidian suicide scheme. But the defense attorneys challenged them.

and the government's audio expert admitted that he had altered the transcripts after meeting with Justice Department officials. New York Times report, the Divideon's lawyer showed that more than 100 hours of FBI tapes from the compound had been reduced to a single hour of excerpts by the audio expert for the prosecution. And this defense lawyer says what we didn't hear today was from the transcripts such as people praying as the tanks were smashing about. cashing in their homes or children calling out for their parents as the FBI was crushing their house. But it's important here because, and look, here's our whole section on the possibility of the Davidian side setting the fire. We do have, as previously mentioned here, a tape recorded discussion. This could have been faked, but it doesn't sound like that. it's fate. It could be edited, but

it seems to be genuine audio of, and I believe that this is even in a new revelation, maybe it's only in the sequel, where Davidians are saying, no, pour it, hand it here, this, that, whatever. In fact, what they're talking about is pouring

Molotov cocktails, and the idea is, if the tanks advance, they're going to throw Molotov cocktails at the tanks. Evidently, somebody said, Brilliant, dude. No, we're not doing that. We're living in a match box.

You're not throwing Molotov cocktails, dumb, dumb. And then they never did that. And we know that that was recorded at six something in the morning, and the tank attack continued for hours and hours and hours. And they did not ever throw a single Molotov cocktail. There's no evidence of any kind that that was relevant to the discussion of the fire breaking out, right? Anybody have an extra comment about that? No.

I mean, the tanks would have been fearfully vulnerable to a Molotov cocktail, given how they were designed. But as the divinity was pointing out, you're living in a matchbox. You can't afford that. Well, I made up that part, pardon me, just to be clear. Yeah. But evidently, someone had that idea. Yeah.

Okay, so now there's something else here. So here's where we get to Colonel Rod Rawlings now. He's saying, and this is just from memory, he's not claiming to have the tape and listen to it 10 times. but he's saying that he was at an observer post listening to the audio coming over the bugs and so forth. And he makes three major points. The FBI, and he has been critical to the FBI here. He's saying that they expected that the CS gas would work and that went to force everyone out of the building.

And when it didn't, they were completely at a loss. And in fact, as you point out in the book, from their point of view, they're being made fools of that their brilliant gas plan is not working here. and they have no other, you know, secondary plan, basically. Then he also said that earlier in the attack, the FBI bugs overheard the women and children being told to go to the vault. And so when we play that clip of Bob Ricks bragging, we put massive gas in there. That's what he's talking about, is that concrete room.

They already knew that it was women and children there. And we don't know that they knew that it was only, women and children in there. But we know that they knew that. And according to Rawlings, the children, the women and children can be heard, quote, crying, begging,

and praying. End quote. And so then after the CEV began gassing the vault, that's when he claimed that Koresh gave the order to start the fire, which we'll just have to not take his word for that one. But you know what?

I mean, I don't know. Confirmation bias, right? This guy says two things I like and one thing I don't. I don't know. You do what you can with it. But there's no proof of any of his claims as far as that goes. Well, there's no secondary reason to believe what he says about Koresh there. But we know that it was women and children in the vault. So that's more believable that they had overheard that.

But then the most important point being that, look, why would any of these men cover for Koresh, then? If there's audio of Koresh ordering this to happen, then we should have it. And if we don't have it, then we should not believe that it ever existed. There's just no reason to believe these, as Dan continues to point out, at the part of the story where we have to have faith in these federal cops being honest with us, we don't do that because that's foolish. When that's all they have is trust me, and especially on the crime,

of the issue, the leader of the group ordered the suicide, pony up or shut the hell up. Yep. Right? Yep. Now, I don't have this on tape. This does not come from an interview,

but this comes from a private conversation that I had on the phone with Mike McNulty in probably 2007. And he was telling me about how he was negotiating with people in Hollywood to try to make a movie about it. And one of the parts of the discussion that we had, and I can't reproduce the whole thing,

I'm sorry, I don't have the recording. There was no recording. But he told me that he believed that the original fire, which may or may not be the origin of the other fires, and we can talk about that because there are three separate origins of the fire. But McNulty told me, that he had come to believe

that the first fire broke out at that southwest corner of the house from the muzzle flash from a Davidian's rifle that in that footage the tank dumps a ton of methylene chloride and CS gas

they'd just been I guess rearmed with you know more tanks full and the CEV comes dumps a load of gas into that room drives away and then shortly after

the smoke starts coming out and McNulty said I guess that he had done tests where a muzzle flash would ignite or he knew of tests others had done I guess a muzzle flash could ignite that mevelin chloride

CS mixture so it could be that the Davidian was firing a defensive round at the tank attacking him and accidentally started a fire. He said it would have been like an alcohol fire, that blue sort of hot fire. That's the corner I'm talking about because you see there's an injection, the tank tears that piece off. This is pretty late though, right? Yeah, but there's

no reason that I can see why you would have to tear that whole large piece off there. He could have just going right in the window, right? Yeah, a large piece off. That's right. Because you have the vents already in the rest of the building and that's where the wind is focused is coming right in. That's what that's the only reason I can see that you would that was certainly the effect of it and the fire broke out then and it's clear and you point this out too in the book this is now this is complicated right but I don't know if

most of this matters but this is now the third wave of attacks by the tanks right we had one has been detract we've run out of CS we they have run out of CS poison and all of this stuff and have had to go back, be re-armed. Yep. Now we have one fresh new combat engineering vehicle on the ground.

Yep. I think you say the new one goes around back to the gym. Yeah, I think so. And the other is the one that's poking the old. And in both cases, we have, in one case from the Fleer and in the other from plain old video, right around this time, the tank in the back and the tank in the front,

both absolutely ski-dattle from, the house right the one at the southwest corner he pokes that hole you keep referring to and then he beats it out of there to the southwest he makes a left turn right and gets gets gone and then the fire breaks out shortly after that yep now so the thing with mcnulty now i don't think he was claiming to have proven this or anything it was just what he had come to believe was best evidence was it must have been an accidental muzzle flash that set off that first one on the other hand he's really the guy with some help from his friends here at this table to give the strongest indications otherwise as far as origins of these fires.

So, but I thought I'd bring it up because he did tell me that. And so it's, I figure, you know, in the interests of raising all the possibilities, I think if a Fed had said that to me, I'd have dismissed it. But coming from McNulty, you know, it's at least worth considering, I guess. I got two more things here about supposed admissions from Branch Devidians that they set the fire. Now, this comes from the Danforth report in 1999, which we're going to talk about who's Danforth and what's his report and all of that in more detail coming up. But he claims that two Branch Devidians admitted that they set the fire. He claims Danforth, that is, former Senator Danforth, claims that Climb that Clive Doyle,

admitted it and that Graham Craddick admitted it. And it's just not true. So what happened was Clive Doyle, quote, admitted to spreading Coleman fuel in certain places through Mount Carmel according to them. The FBI asserts that a torch and four gas cans had been found in the dining room, and they do not quote him directly, or at least not in complete sentences in the Danforth report. But if you go back and look, what he actually admitted was that he had gone around filling Coleman lanterns. Who me? Yeah, I was pouring fuel into Coleman lanterns. And then they go, aha, see? He admitted he was pouring fuel. That's the level of absolute dishonesty that we're dealing with here from these cops. Okay? That's Clive Doyle. He never admitted to starting

any fire. He never said anything about, I poured fuel in the interests of our mass suicide pact or anything like that, okay? That is what did not come out of his mouth. All right. Then there's Graham Craddock. Graham Craddock allegedly testified that he saw other Branch Divideans pouring fuel in the chapel area and that he had testified that he had heard Mark Wendell, another Branch Davidians say light the fire. However, if you actually look at what he said, he's saying that they were concerned that the tanks would roll into the entrance of the chapel where the fuel tanks were. So he, Pablo Cohen, and ten others started to move the fuel away from where the tanks were. So there were about a dozen or so gallon cans. And he testified that he heard people

scream about a fire, and he both heard the phrases, light the fire, and don't light the fire. So someone, I guess, had said, light it. And someone else said, no, don't. And then he also testified about seeing someone pour fuel after fire had already been started elsewhere. But after Cohen spoke to the person, that person stopped pouring it. But even that, the prosecutor is essentially just badgering the hell out of him and attempting to confuse him and putting words in his mouth and trying to make him deny it. Oh, so you're saying

this. Oh, so you're saying that. Anyone who's ever been a guest on TV news where they don't like you, that's how they do it. In other words, if you give the guy, you know, a fair take on what he's saying there, he's like sort of conceding to them that maybe it was possible

that someone had said that at whatever point. But if you look at the part that they're quoting from him, they're misquoting it. And he had also told the press that no one inside of Mount Carmel had lit any fires and that the tanks had knocked over fuel cans and that there was no suicide pact. They had not discussed that, hey, we're all going to set ourselves on fire, any sort of thing like that. So, you know, out of 120 people in there or something, somebody, after, he says, after the fire was

already lit in the house or the house is already burning that someone said light something and then someone else said don't

but even that is vague enough you don't even know who's talking or what specifically they're talking about do you want to talk about the Ramsey Clark version

sure so Ramsey Clark that's Lyndon Johnson's former Attorney General of the United States who was a big civil rights I actually met him at Mount Carmel in probably

1997 98 by the time this happened he has people had forgotten who he was and his prestige and everything that he had at the time. But he claimed, and I'm sure Dave remembers this, that there was a huge explosion device that was put on top of the concrete room. And you remember there's a portion where you see this big explosion. And that that's the big explosion and that's, you know, goes through the fire.

Now it's baloney because it's obviously a gas fire that's where you see the way it sits looks up it's not an explosive device but this is kind of the stuff that gets into the story and poisons rationality about what really happened yeah I'm really glad that you brought that up

and this is in my notes to bring up at some point I actually kind of had it you know lower on the list here but there's a hole in the roof of the concrete room that they show and I have a friend who's in special forces and I asked him about that and he was saying that we went around and around about it

but essentially if it was an explosive well okay two things first of all the fireball is clearly the propane cylinder and in the case of the rules pardon me in the case of Waco a new revelation they essentially make the case

that the one detonation set off the other even though the first detonation would be on top of the first floor of that concrete room That's a new revelation. That's in a new revelation. Oh, okay. And the propane tank is in the courtyard.

So whether this explosion set off that one seems, you know, iffy. But, you know, I'm not a video expert, but there does seem to be possibly a high explosive charge going off, possibly in that room. No. But the thing is, if you look at the hole, the rebar is not severed. The rebar is, it seems to be indented down. and I guess what my buddy was saying was perhaps if you had some explosives in that room that had some weight on top of them that just from the fire they exploded that could have caused that but like an actual shaped charge that would have been meant to blast into that room would have severed the rebar unless it just got so lucky that it went perfectly through but a lot of heat will do that to concrete if you got it supporting that's that's a

lot of weight, and if it gets heated enough, you're going to have something fall off of it. It's very... In other, so you didn't need anything to explode to make that circular hole just from concrete failure from the heat of the fire. And this is part of the problem. These things are lingering out there, and Michael and I had arguments about this that you cannot put this stuff in there if you don't have any basis of rationality or proof about it

and it doesn't have to be proof beyond a reasonable doubt but it's not even possible I mean that was we looked at this all right but now so let's rewind because we do got some really good we have some high quality McNulty here for people as well and some points of clarification

I'm going to need but before we get into the evidence lockers and all of that I want to play this clip of David Tibido talking about his experiences on April the 19th. Now, this is still six hours goes by before the fire. So at this time, it's understandable that people would be thinking, that you might be thinking,

all right, enough of this, man, I got to get outside and get some fresh air. And if a cop arrest me, I guess I'm under arrest. but my gas mask is jammed and this sucks and no. But instead, you guys don't come out still after six hours of this. I thought they're going to shoot me. That was. Yeah, absolutely thought they're going to shoot me if I exit that building. The only reason I left is because when someone yelled from the upstairs,

they said there's a fire up here. Now, when they did that, I went to the front and the whole, the tanks had already come through the two front doors and they moved them back to where the beginning of the chapel was because I had to and we had a panel up against those doors

so they moved all of that back the tanks coming through the front doors when they did that they also took out the staircase that led to the second story so that was destroyed and I remember looking down the hallway and seeing all you could see was just like plywood and beams

all over the place I mean it was completely blocked off no way to get down that hallway So I went to the back to where the stairwell was that led up to where David Kresh's office was. And then I walked over the beams that led to the second-story hallway. And, you know, I wanted to get to Serenity. I wanted to make sure she's being put in the underground bus. So I was hoping to get there. And there was that, there was a blanket over the doorway.

And when I opened the blanket, a big gust of smoke came at me. And I had to dodge back to, you know, to. until it dissipated. And then I went to go into that hallway and just this wall of flame from the left to the right shot in front of me. Just whooshed down the hallway. It was like this huge wall.

Big ball of flame. I'm sorry. I never... I never had this clear in my head. This is the fireball is going from which direction to which direction now? It's going from, okay, if I'm looking at the surveillance house,

from left to the right, so from that corner tower all the way down the hallway. All the way across the front of the house from, essentially from south to north. The second story, yeah. Okay. So it took off that whole second-story hallway. It makes sense.

In other words, it essentially ignited everything as it traveled down the hole. The wind were 33 miles an hour or two. So I think one of the holes in the second story, they made it right through where that hallway was. But if I remember right, you eventually escaped out of a hole in the chapel wall. right so you turned around and went back to the chapel let me explain when I knew that I couldn't get back into the second story I went back the way I came and then I

got down to that hallway which is between the chapel and between the gym we'd heard these scraping sounds all morning and that was from the tanks going in and literally and you have pictures of this I know you've seen these pictures they just totally

destroyed the gymnasium area in the back everything was on the ground and in the flare tape we see you know that plane's flying overhead and you see the two explosions in that window that's right near where the tanks are

and then after that you can see fully automatic weapons fire so that's happening near the tank you know and you know that's I didn't hear any of that at the time the tanks coming through the gym were so loud it would just like shake the building

well that was one of my questions for you is we see in the flare that there's all these shots and Dr. Allard counted 60 but Gigliotti he counted 130 shots so I was wondering if you know and by the way and we see in the Fleer that they're shooting long before the fire breaks out I'm not exactly sure all the time stamps but there is ample footage of them shooting before the fire and I guess into essentially the cafeteria area there so but you weren't aware of any of that you're in your position you're essentially on the southwest part of the building and then back to the chapel and all that is happening to your north

basically and behind you and you're not hearing any of this no see that's but that's the thing that's what I believe you that the tanks were loud what was so powerful to me about the flare tape two things were after the fact

I remember reading the autopsy reports and I just was like, how come this person died with a bullet one with the center of his head? How come this person is a bullet one of the center of their chest? That's not how you kill yourself. And there were like 10 or 11 autopsy reports. I don't know the number of the top of my head right now. But several that had this, center of the head, center of the chest.

And it never made sense for me. I just, I don't, I didn't get it. Right. I just, I didn't want to think. I had no idea why that would be. And then when they were making the rules of engagement, I was invited over to the studio to see them. the flare tape for the first time.

And when I saw the flashes and I realized people were being shot, it changed everything from me. All of a sudden, the autopsy reports made perfect sense. People were trying to escape out the back and they were being gunned down. Right.

Or there was a gun battle going on between the two. But I don't see any flashes coming from the building. You can only see it from the outside. So I don't know what the thing. And all I know is I believe, to this day, And I will always believe that people were shot at the back of that building, that the government shot them. Let me get back to the cafeteria. So you go from the cafeteria to the front of the building.

Everything's blocked. The stairs are broken. There's fire now in that whole front hallway. So you turn back to the chapel. Yeah. But did you and Clyde, I guess Clive got out the front of the building. Did anybody else get out the same place as you? Yeah.

Four. four different people came out four all together okay three other than me so how here's what happened so I get back down there into that area and someone talks about going

out and I said they're probably going to shoot us if we go out so we're just kind of waiting there people are praying to God I look over to Wayne Martin who's to my left and Wayne is just he's leaning against the wall

and I see the smoke start to come and surround him and he takes his gas mask off he leads against the wall and he just kind of scoots down the wall to where he's resting on his feet and by the time he gets down to the bottom of the wall and he's like holding his nose like this he's got this gas mask off the smoke totally engulfs him and i can't see him anymore and then the second after that happened I hear the wall ignite next to where I'm leaning against, and my hair starts to crackle. When that happened, I just looked out to the big,

the tank had come into where one of the windows was and would spray gas through there. And they made this huge hole in that window. I looked over and I said, Jamie can see it when Derek Lovelock go out of that hole. And I just said, okay, I'd rather be shot than to burn to death, period. and I went after the I went out of the hole after them I uh there's a wet red cross sign I can hear the speaker systems at this point saying come to the red cross sign don't

anyone you know if you drop if you have a weapon if you should ask we're going to shoot at you come to the red cross sign you're under arrest so we're all walking up to the red cross sign I turn around in time to see Clive come out I didn't think anyone was going to make it out after after me I thought there was no way he someone could make it after me. Of course, there's Clive coming up, but he's patting his arms out. They were on fire. He had a jacket on.

I think his jacket caught fire. And so then I just kept going to the Red Cross sign. I know Clive's out. I've fallen, we all have our hands up. I get about halfway up the road. I turn around. I see this huge explosion, this big fire bomb that you see the big explosion. And I can remember I was probably about 50 yards away, half a fire.

football field. And I could feel the heat from that thing, man, that fireball was like, it was like a sign on my face. It was crazy how hot it was. And I just it was like surreal. Everything's on fire. There's that explosion. I turn back around to the red cross end. I just

follow it up. And at this point it's like I'm seeing in tunnel vision. I'm just seeing directly in front of me. And every, you know, he's in shock or something like that. He's going to shock. They get us to where the tanks are and they put us all down on our faces. and they put our arms behind her back,

little plastic straps. And there's two FBI guys. One was a blonde guy and one was a brunette guy. And the blonde guy had the piece of paper and the pencil and the other guy had an AR and he was pointing at us. And they're like, where are the kids? You got to live with this for the rest of your life. Where are the children?

And I said, they should be in the underground bus. You guys know all about it. Because I didn't even know at that point they were in the cafeteria. area. This is all the stuff I put together later because I could never get down to where that area was. It was just destroyed. And then he said, the other guy said, well, we tear gas that bus. And I was just like, oh, my God, I can't believe you guys did. I was thinking of myself. And so the one guy looked at the other guy and he said, I knew this wasn't going to work. We should have gone with plan A or plan B. He said, one of my care. I remember if that I'm

and he says do you think they let the they set the fire and the other guy says you're goddamn right to set the fire there wasn't one pyrotechnic in that building and that's they just i could they couldn't believe what was happening the FBI guys the two guys that I was talking to they were stunned I like when he said I have to live with this for the rest of my life I'm thinking well so to you that's exactly what I was thinking and I don't think that guy realized but I I know that the FBI guy on the ground really felt that. So I felt that the FBI guy on the ground really believe what he was saying. I mean, it wasn't, you know, he didn't think there were any prior technical devices used in that building.

Of course, you know, we know that there were six or seven pirate technology devices that were mislabeled as silencers that were found in the evidence locker. They say they were used in the underground structure, but I don't know. Why would you lie about it for three years and then, you know, all this. Well, we did have prior protective devices, but they weren't used. But I think he was telling the truth about that. Yeah, we guessed that. They guessed the only place that the women and children could have escaped to. And they, I think they blocked everyone from even getting to it through the, there's like a trap door down there from the north end of the building, right?

Yeah. And that was buried from the very beginning when the tank poked that very first hole. That thing was covered in lumber. Must have been. Yeah. Or the route to it was. Yeah. I've looked at pictures,

and I've tried to see a hole that may have indicated that there was debris over the actual trap door, but I can't really tell. So I'm thinking maybe more when it went through the cafeteria that it blocked out of any way to get down there. This is what he told me and others

that when you got into the evidence locker that stuff was mislabel or labeled as machine gun parts. I remember McNulty telling me that something was labeled as a silencer that wasn't. And now I can't remember if it was the pyrotechnic projectiles or not. But McNulty said that some of the stuff in the evidence locker had been mislabeled. And specifically, some things were labeled as silencers that were something else entirely. All right, so this is, you know, right where we get into the kind of reinvestigation and the recover up and then all of that because you guys found in the evidence lockers, at least a picture of, or tell me, how did you get the picture of the one incendiary round that's in the puddle of water at the north end of the building that was taken early in the morning there?

I can't tell you. anymore were that happened no that was uh Mike Mike got it okay so well I can tell you where I got it oh you're I'm sorry I had I had an ATF agent come and uh I took him to lunch and he gave me the photograph out but this evidence is not in the rules it's not in rules of engagement it came out yeah in the second film there were still yeah so you got the picture yeah I got the picture but you got it after the first movie I got it I got it the way I got some other information which was the Colby connection I'm convinced since I knew his son

who lived down the street for me and I knew that or I'd been told that the old man was really pissed about what the FBI did using military equipment against civilians et cetera et cetera You got a Colby story too You had an investigative partner

in all your work on this who I don't know if you ever Colby, but he said that he was working with Colby to get a lot of this information. Yes. Including the second generation, or the, pardon me, the first generation flare footage that makes it into the second movie a new revelation, correct? Yeah, well, that was Gordon O'Vell, and he was, in fact, at the core of the idea of the gunshots being on the flare tape.

at the time he just called me up and said put on your Fleer tape that's forward-looking infrared from the FBI helicopter or maybe it's a fixed-wing aircraft Yeah I believe the latter there you're overhead of infrared tapes And then he would take me to go to you know three hours 12 minutes and 20 seconds and look in the extreme upper right corner you'll see see a flickering flash. And so I'd do that. And there were plenty of cases of it, maybe 20 or so. And later on, he mentioned to me that a CIA person, which he still later said was Colby,

had flown into his location and had taken out something that he said was like a portable VHS player. I think what he probably was seeing was a laptop with video in the days when nobody owned a laptop and very few people understood there could be computer video because he described it as how they showed it and the screen that you could see it on and that Colby had told him about the gunshots on the flare and I might add that after Colby died

Gordon gave me a call and it's the only time I've ever heard him fearful He was terrified He was convinced Colby been whacked And he was probably next on the list Yeah that was a big That's still a big deal in the East Because people that live in Maryland

Know the currents They're in Chesapeake Bay And they're saying that If Colby had had a heart attack out canoeing Which is what he was doing His canoe would not have wound up Where it was found Now that's

Yeah I don't know who knows but that at the time it was mysterious and i remember watching the coverage of it on cnnnn live and how even the mainstream media kind of admitted in the sense that like they didn't know they didn't get an explicit instruction not to say this part out loud so it had come out that his breakfast and what was left of it was still laying on the kitchen table and his family said that oh no this guy is ocd he would have washed the dishes dried them and put them back in the covered before he left that room for any reason. There's just no way in the world he'd have to eat a half-eaten meal sitting there on the

table like that. And that's all I need to know when the former DCI winds up dead at a young age. You know, come on, guys. Well, David is confirming some of the things that I've experienced. And again, it was just information would show up that would confirm stuff that I'd heard, which was pretty wild and sometimes. I have a quibble, though, Dave, which, is that Mike McNulty told me

that the reason that the footage is better in the second movie than in the first movie is because this goes back to something that you said earlier. They did lose you with so much information. And he said that in the same boxes of

evidence that he already had that they used this footage for rules of engagement, the Fleer we're talking about, that in the second movie, he just had found a better video in the same pile of evidence. It was just they didn't have a chance to get to it until later. So does that conflict with what Gordon Novell told you and the...

At that point, we had only a very crude copy of the Fleer. Oh, I see. And Gordon is talking about, well, the head of the CIA playing it, so I assume he had a very good copy on his laptop. But that wasn't the origin of what made it into the second film. That was just something that Colby had showed Novell. Yeah. And then Novel knew that you had a Fleer copy from the first generation that he's telling you to go look at. Yeah. And like I said, he was very precise. Here is the second where you will see the event. Here's where you look. We'd all been looking at those tapes for months. I mean, this wasn't just

Gordon having some insight. In other words, yeah, this was Colby's analysts had given him a piece of paper with some numbers on it that he had given to Novel. Yeah, I'll give you another Now, there's something for the FOIA too is what does the CIA have on the Waco Fleer? Let's see it all. See if they'll answer that. Well, this is just to make everybody angry.

Now, maybe the government, the FBI, the ATF did some wrong things, but they didn't light the fire. They didn't start the fire. That is not one of these questions. That is very debatable. Yeah, I like how he added Barry in there, too. He had to add that extra quibble.

Now, here's from my interview. Oh, go ahead. No, he's protecting the Clinton administration, clearly. That's what he's doing. And if you've seen Schumer in action enough, you know what a partisan he truly is. Along the same lines of Colby and the CIA, yeah. During the civil lawsuit for damages.

I was sitting second chair that is deputy to Ramsey Clark for a particular group of Devidians. There were three attorneys, four attorneys. Anyway, at one point I talked to Gordon Novell, and I said, Gordon, all these expert witnesses are coming out of woodwork. Guys have never heard of, all very well-qualified giving opinions that help us. they're all from the intelligence community tell me what's going on and Gordon smiled and said well it's a turf war and I said okay being an old bureaucrat I understand turf wars he said the traditional division after the church investigation was the CIA handled all intelligence overseas the FBI handled all intelligence in the United States well lately the FBI has

establish something called a foreign attache program, which has FBI agents assigned to American consulates overseas gathering foreign intelligence. The CIA does not like this trespassing upon their turf, and so they are mightily inclined to help you if you're going up against the FBI. That starts going to a long way to explaining stuff I've, you know, what I experienced. in terms of sources coming to you from Yeah, I mean, because I thought the connection was from Carl Colby, again, who was doing a film about his father, and his house was not far from mine

at the time, and again, it fit a pattern that I'd had in the past in New York and Houston where agents showing up with information that I couldn't get otherwise, and they were usually embarrassed that the Bureau that was, they were being suppressed. I mean, there's a lot of games and stuff that goes on here. But I thought that that was probably triangulation of the old man,

because I'd heard enough stories about the father not liking what happened and being very angry about it. So things are done quietly. But things would be in the mailbox, things would be slipped under the door over the transom. all right well yeah lucky you you guys got both of y'all got incredible information in the movie and the book here um i gotta tell you at one point i spoke it back in those days with a friend of mine who is a psychiatrist and i asked her is it paranoid if you believe there's some secret government conspiracy that is out to help you and she laughed and said no

that's not paranoid it's so good good i just want to know i'm not paranoid Right, that's funny. A bunch of evil CIA guys scheming. Like, we really got to get those Waco researchers the material they need. Yeah. Well, it makes sense in the context. Thanks, guys. Yeah, it makes sense in the context that they've got a turf war going on.

Sure. I mean, that's which I did not know about. Well, you did, but just not, you hadn't thought about it in this context yet, right? Like, this is even the official story of 9-11 is if they didn't hate each other so much, they could have stopped the attack, but they did, you know. So, now here's a clip of Mike McNulty for my interview of him on the pyrotechnic devices. Now, let me hold you right there. When you talk about the incendiary rounds that you proved in your second film.

I don't use the word it's incendiary. That's a different kind of device than a pyrotechnic device. Okay, okay, these pyrotechnic rounds. The picture from TV and the newspaper is one of these rounds in a puddle of water. And the Danforth investigation conclusion was they shot two of these into puddles of water far from the house hours and hours and hours before the fire broke out. Is that correct or not? That's a misconception. The two projectiles that, first of all, they couldn't find the projectiles in the evidence chain.

They had been removed and nobody had ever found them. All we had was photographs. The two projectiles were military CS gas rounds. 528s, I believe they were. And they were fired not into puddles. They were fired at the roof of the storm shelter to the north end of the building. And they found their way, they did not penetrate the roof, and they wound up skipping off into the dirt with water puddles. And best as we can tell, they were fired. Those two projectiles were fired earlier in the morning. before the fire started. However, it's interesting to note that Mr. Danforth's report totally ignored

the fact that seven or eight of the DevTec 25 hand-placed flashbang grenades, which are known fire starters, were found inside the building, in the burned rubble, some of them more intact than others, but they were found near or at the points of origin of the fire starting. Branch Divideas didn't have any flashbangs. They had possession of one that was noted by one of the attorneys. They didn't have possession of six. The other problem is the other types of projectiles, which were 40-millimeter penetrating stun munitions. Interestingly enough, those devices were manufactured by one of the experts that we

hired to go in and take a look at the evidence chain. And he had sold them to the FBI agent in charge of those devices in the hostage rescue team. And when he examined them in the aftermath, he noted that they had been tampered with and that apparently the charges that had been carried by them in order to cause a detonation and a flash and a bang had been increased substantially so that they became even more dangerous than they already were because a penetrating stun munition is something you fire through a wall. As it passes through the wall, it detonates.

You have no idea, unless your name is Superman, what's on the other side of that wall or window or door. And, you know, they are definite fire starters, and they, too, had been found to have gone through the building. They penetrated a little too well. so and then there's no telling how many of these devices may have been actually used because the government's not fessing up and mr. Danforth made sure that those devices were not dealt with at all they were totally ignored in the in the reviews of the reports that he wrote so now we're talking about first of all when you talk about the ones in the in the water there as he said they were fired again at these underground buses these buried buses that were

storm shelter there at the north end of the building and oh here's where we went off on the tangent was death threat surrounding your coverage of this particular issue here there's a tunnel that there's a trap doors that you heard in the discussion with david tibito there's a trap door at the north end of the building on the first floor to get down you climb a ladder down to get down into the buried buses so one of the very first things that they did was seal off that interest with tear gas and fire these military pyrotechnic rounds

down into the school bus area or over near it enough their first priority was sealing off what any decent human would think that even if you accepted the premise for the sake of argument of gassing the people

in the building you would want the mothers and children to do what to possibly run to the shelter and then you can get out from there you know or you could they could have gotten them out from there they're cutting off the first thing they do is cut off an escape route and then it's my claim in the in the tibodeau uh interview there but i think this holds up right isn't it correct from the very first footage as featured in your film this is not an assault this is not an assault they announce in that clip that we played

as they're doing that they are smashing through the ceiling of the first floor into the second floor right at the very north end of the building, collapsing all of that area directly onto that trapdoor into the escape route to the bus. So this is like our segue into whether these pyrotechnic rounds lit the house on fire or not, is that their plan is to not let anyone leave the building from the north no matter what. Someone signed off on that, gave that order, others followed. it. Yep. And the means was using these 40mm military pyrotechnic rounds. And then how does this, again, explain a little bit if you could, Dave, about, and I'm sorry, say whatever you were going

to say too, about how these pyrotechnic rounds work to deliver the CS, et cetera, so people understand here. That's exactly what I wanted to talk about. There are mainly two ways of delivering CS to a target. One of them, the original one was pyrotechnic rounds, which are essentially they burn a gunpowder-like mixture and then expel

the CS powder from that. And they have the advantage on open ground that they heat up so you can't just grab one and throw it back. But they have the disadvantage that they can start fires and every now and then they malfunction actually

shoot out active flames, and then in particular, they start fires. So the ferret rounds were designed to get around that. There's sort of a high-tech water balloon with a CS gas dissolved in methylion chloride. So the whole purpose of the pyrotechnic is to deliver the gas, but do not use it against a building. The projectiles have that standard labeling because, yes, it will start a fire if you use it against a building. And the first time the difference came to my attention was I was listening to the first set of house hearings on Waco, and Clive Doyle was testifying.

And he said, they're in the chapel. They could see the ferret Browns coming in, and he shouted, and hissing, and he shouted to throw them out of the building, and someone said they're too hot. I heard that and said, wait a second, ferret rounds do not get hot and they don't hiss those weren't ferret rounds going into the building yeah in the film i have an example of the shooting how that goes through the wall you know the 40

millimeters now that's because that was that was a question that was being asked that uh at the time that how would they penetrate the wall how would they well obviously they do yeah right so now I hope that you guys can help me solve all of this in y'all's film the first one rules of engagement you show two 40 millimeter rounds with a green stripe on them they're identified as pyrotechnic rounds

that were found inside the building but the ones that are pictured there's one in the pictured in the puddle that the other one is missing forever I guess but they admit existed that is different has a yellow stripe on it

and I have two discrepancies I'm trying to resolve guys the first one is is it fair to say that the green ones featured in the first film are also mark

651 mark 651 CS projectiles like are identified in the second film as the one that caused the scan and the whole Danforth investigation to be appointed and everything when the second film came out. They both are identified separately as pyrotechnic military rounds, 40 millimeter rounds. And then the second discrepancy is that in the second film, which it's clear that you disavow responsibility for its conclusions here, that's on the record, but just to make sure that we're all talking about the same thing.

I know you've seen it. In the second film, and I believe in that clip that I played of McNulty there, right? Now we're not talking about those two green-striped 40-millimeter rounds anymore from your first film. Now we're talking about they found flashbang grenades, two at each origin of the fire, mislabel the silencers in the evidence locker.

So now you two experts, hash this out. Well, we knew they had flashbangs. In fact, some of the testimony that was asked, well, why didn't you leave? And I forget who said it, but well, every time you'd step outside, somebody shoot a flashbang at you. Yeah. So we know they had them. And that's, and y'all, somewhere in here, you can go ahead and add your story, if you want, about how y'all got access to the evidence lockers finally, because I know they gave you the runaround. but you finally got in there and what exactly was it that you found there

was it all in Austin at the DPS headquarters in Austin I forget some of the location and I myself never visited the locker I see you did you did the legal work that got it done though right yes okay so go ahead and tell us that story well

Mike and I were discussing the locker and that he had information I assume through the prosecutor Johnson about it, but only in generalities. And so I said, let's do some Freedom of Information Act work. And I sent to, I guess it was probably the FBI, maybe the Marshal Service, maybe both, a request, Freedom of Information Act requests for access to that locker.

And they sent back and said, it's not within our control. It's within control of the Texas Rangers. So I wrote a state Freedom of Information Act request to the Texas Rangers, and they wrote back and said, no, it's not under our control, it's within control of the FBI. And it kept on, and then it became the U.S. attorney controls this. Right. And finally, ultimately, we got access and ability to take pictures, that sort of thing. And now this is a side story, but it's something that you brought up before.

I think now's the time we finally get to it, was the U.S. Attorney Bill Johnson got in trouble for helping you on this. Yep. So when you say it finally worked out, it was he finally said, go ahead and let McNulty in there. And then he was prosecuted for that. And he's the only guy that got in trouble for the whole thing. Well, just think of the absurdity of that scenario, the government prosecuting the prosecutor that prosecuted the Divideons. And what was the charge on that? They call it Miss Prision.

That's the term, and Dave's the lawyer. But I think it basically means knowing that some evidence is being withheld. It's allied to Brady material, as I understand, but it's not the same. Yeah, the charge against him was that he was called in front of the grand jury, and he deleted a page from his notes. and the page had reference to incendiary projectiles, which pyrotechnics aren't, but, you know, they're sort of similar. So that was a reference to it.

And he omitted that page. And for that, they went after him on a felony charge. Of course, his real sin was he embarrassed his agency. That's unforgivable. But that was the real problem. And this is the same guy who put them all in prison, by the way, that we're talking about here, right? We're just talking about years later. Well, he didn't put him in prison.

The judge put him in prison. Right. And that's the... We'll get into that whole story. That's a real travesty. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's part of our narrative, too.

But I'm just identifying the character that we're talking about. This same Bill Johnson is the same guy who led the prosecution. We're agreed, I think, that... And you're saying that when McNulty got evidence, got his hands on the evidence fine, that was what he found was flashbanks mislabel. He didn't find 40-millimeter rounds. in there. He found flashbangs that were mislabeled as silencers. Is that correct? He found something that was mislabeled as silencers. Now I'm not clear. He did find some 40mm

flashbang projectiles. Oh, I see. And the, what was it? They were a special type of projectile that was a, you know, regular flashbangs like a grenade. Well, this was a 40 millimeter projectile. an inch and a half in diameter, and it had a steel casing and was designed to go through a wall, and on the inside, shoot out a core filler that was like a giant firecracker. So it was a smaller projectile than the standard hand grenade,

but it was designed to penetrate a wall. Right. And it was, we tracked them down, and they were manufactured, I think, originally for the military. And it would have been logical for Delta Force to lay their hands on them because, I mean, who else in the military needs to penetrate a wall and stun people on the inside? You're out to kill people, not to stun them.

And then was it also in that same time that, who was it that identified that there was a magnesium parachute flare found in there somewhere? I remember that, but I don't remember who first identified it. Okay. And now, so if you remember, Dan, can you please take us back to, you guys never actually got your hands on them. You got a hand, you got your hands on a picture. Yeah. Is that correct? Of these two 40 millimeter rounds with the green stripe. You know, and they had the little measuring device around just like they do for evidence. In fact, the agent, an ATF, was from Tucson. And I think maybe you probably know him and said he used to date Lender Ronstadt when he, is in high school there. No, I don't know them, but she is a local girl. Yeah, but he was clearly upset about the misrepresentation, the lies and all that. And that's just like the FBI, a couple of them that would show up at my house with stuff.

You do have some people who break ranks on the things when, you know, it just gets to be absurd. But do we know where those two were found? No, I don't know exactly where they were found That's been 25 years now since then. I'm trying to remember from the film If there's more detail About where they were alleged to have been found then I believe that the assertion in the film

Is that they were found inside the house Oh yeah, they were definitely inside the house Because that's where the fire started I have In fact, I think there were some that were there On that corner that we were talking about earlier in that vicinity anyway. So,

but remember the FBI denied they had anything, any munitions that would kill people, they never fired a single shot, yada, yada, yada, yada. And not a single pyrotechnic. Yeah. Yeah, I suspect word games on, what did Gordon Novell die from?

I don't think I ever heard. I was, like, a Zoom meeting for his funeral. but I didn't hear. Here, we can fill time while I'm control effing this thing with, let me ask you this side point. Who was this Gordon Novell guy that he was so connected and able to get you all this stuff? Both Dan and I are laughing. Let's just put it this way that he was a fellow who, the more improbable the tale he told you, the more you could be sure it was absolutely true.

He was connected in everything, including Watergate, where he came up with a plan for erasing Nixon's tapes from outside the building. And I know enough about electronics to know, yes, he spotted the problems with that and solved them. What else? John DeLorean, the car designer, he was critical in getting him acquitted. and I think Dick Revis looked him up and said what Gordon was telling him is so incredible he couldn't believe it and he managed to get through to DeLorean and DeLorean said essentially, yeah, he saved my butt

was convicted of bugging a meeting His big claim was that he had rigged some device that recorded Clyde Tolson and Jay at your Hoover in bed together okay yeah now never seen that never heard that i i my reaction was oh yeah sure yeah well he he was quoted in the story about that and i think in time magazine and and and the side was looking into UFOs and in the kennedy assassination was had jim garrison pursuing him on the grounds that he was probably involved and you can verify all this this all really happened. Wow. All right. So through the magic of Control F on the transcript here, I was able to pull up this short clip from Rules of Engagement. So let's see what we have here.

FBI made it clear from the beginning. It used nothing that could have started a fire. Non-piratechic delivery systems were utilized to insert CS gas. Pyro-technic devices actually burn. And as they do, tear gas is dispersed. This pirate technique projectile is one of two found in the rubble of Mount Carmel. It's a 40-millimeter military device that's fired from a handheld grenade launcher. This one was found here near the corner of Mount Carmel where the first fire started. The other was found here in the kitchen dining room area. And that's you talking, right?

That's me talking. Yeah. Okay, so, and now how did you know that where they were found? Do you remember? I don't remember that's just pointed out I couldn't tell you who or what now. Okay.

I mean, this is not really contradictory and it's not, you know, necessarily complimentary either, but it's just, you know, seems like you have two military rounds fired at the north end of the building

early in the morning that amount to a red herring except for the fact that they are what kicks off the Danforth investigation. Then we have two military rounds, and I was wrong when I said green stripe. Most of the thing is green in the picture here. Yeah, and then you have those two military rounds

are found first at one definite origin of the fire area and then the second at one where it seems like the second fire had started toward the kitchen area. and then the third fire origin was in the back in the gymnasium so and then we have on top of that six to eight flashbang grenades I think the number was six flashbang grenades that were found and I guess de garran we we heard before in the earlier fight with schumer from February 28 that de garran says the davidians had one of the flashbangs that didn't detonate yep and so that must be the one that McNulty was referring to that that uh we knew that

uh they had one that was where they got it the ATF threw it in their window but it didn't explode otherwise they wouldn't have had any um but that wouldn't account for there being six of them throughout the house as david tibito said so now look you make the case in in your book quite clearly that they went from gas to fire gas wasn't working so they decided to set the house on fire and they used these flash bangs and or these pirate technique rounds to do it Dave is that your conclusion here that's the most likely conclusion of yeah they were getting really really desperate janet reno was going to get out of that meeting or speech eventually and so far they look like absolute fools I mean they're being defied by a group that was largely little old

ladies and they're the hostage rescue team by gosh you know we can stand down terrace we can surely deal with uh old ladies and children and i think they got awfully desperate and they didn't particularly care what it what it took to drive the people out of the building i mean they're human okay they've reached the end of their rope and now we're skipping a step the machine gun fire because we're going to get back to that in a second but the machine gun fire came between the gas and the fire but there's going to be plenty of talk about the fleer in a moment here now we get back to your position is you're convinced that they had decided very early maybe even before the sun came up oh yeah that they are not just gassing the place they're gassing the place

maybe even to fill it maybe even to make it extra flammable and then they are going to burn this house down. I think so. And I can't, it's hard to argue with anything Dave said, but, you know, did they make the decision as God, she's going to, Janet Reno's going to get out of the thing and we've got to get this thing wrapped up. I think they, they, this was the plan all along. I mean, don't forget, Dick Rogers, I was told by one of the, uh, my sources, uh, wanted to rake the building with machine gun fire. And that, uh, you know, fits the personality of a guy in that kind of unit and you've got these guys in the hostage rescue team out waving their dicks around and mooning people and uh that sets all macho stuff uh i mean they're they were they were there for

to you know it's interesting quite contradictory and and interesting to me is from your book dave you have from the radio transmissions which i'm not sure if you heard this yourself or if there's just transcripts of this or what, but you have Dick Rogers yelling at Jeff Jamar, send the fire trucks, and Jeff Jamar is holding them back. Yes. Which seems to be a bit of a role reversal there, right? You guys want to talk about that? Well, Jamar's testimony on that, as I recall, was that they weren't going to send the fire trucks because they'd run into gunfire. Now, he doesn't say who's gunfire, but I suspect we're talking about if B-I gunfire

unless the Divideons were shooting back because that's the thing at the back of the building. Or he's just lying. Yeah, or let, but the back of the building, you can, and this is the thing

that discussed our expert on the Fleer, so this is the most disgusting thing you've seen was, and also the other Fleer expert, is you can see the muzzle flashes from the government side directed inside the building.

Probably there's a fire going there, so people are trying to get out. I mean, that's what Timito was saying. This is pretty heinous stuff. And, of course, they want to, the best way to get rid of that, if you want to practically, I guess, is you just burn the building down.

All the evidence is gone. Yeah. Sure makes sense. I mean, one severe contraindication of that. I mean, it's true that they are, you know, as we talked about, they're blocking off the north and exit. I guess you could read the whole destruction

of the building as sort of, like a, a backwards way of, you know, making it look like they're trying to force everyone out of the building when really they're blocking all the escape routes out. They're knocking down the stairs. They're, you know, blocking the exit to the trap door. But then again, it's a big building. And I guess you've got to admit, Dan, right, that, like, you put a bunch of gas in a building. You expect people to come out, like the VC.

You expect them to come out and arrest them. it seems like the idea that like we're going to turn this thing into a pot-bellied stove and all that I don't doubt that was deliberate I got no reason to doubt it was deliberate but I guess I just figure that well you know what it's a matter of double thing for me because I've actually long believed too that the house itself was defense exhibit A and it was going to show that they had fired from the helicopters it was going to show that they had all the the bullets in the door and all the walls and that were going to prove and the Texas Rangers were going to take control of it all

and it was going to prove how innocent they were, at least how guilty the ATF was. But, I mean, the fire didn't break out at 6th. The fire broke out at noon. So it's just, you got it, man. And I guess we have in the radio transcripts, right, or in the radio audio itself that you've heard where the cops are saying,

we have David Tibido in the clip I just played where the cops can't believe that the people didn't come out. Oh, yeah. Right? They really thought it was going to work. That was also afterward in the investigations. It made it perfectly clear. As far as they were concerned, you know, they had just escalated the plan they'd given the Genet Reno. And now they're dumping in probably 10 times as much CS as they expected. And as Dan can tell you, CS is really wicked stuff. It's hard to decide to hold out when your eyes are on fire and your nose and throat are on fire and you know all of that and you feel like you're suffocating but somehow the dividians held out well see

that's something i don't get with given this is a combat unit essentially these guys does anybody remember let's say japanese who would not come out of a cave and you had to go in and flame throw them all? Does anybody remember the Germans who did the same thing and all throughout history? If you've got somebody who believes in whatever it is they believe in, you might make fun of it and say, well, that's stupid or whatever it is, but they believe it, and they're willing to die for it. Well, look, and the fact is the adults all had gas masks and the children, at least for a time, were protected in that center building under wet blankets and towels and with the door closed, right?

And they may have thought that if the children die, they go to heaven. I mean, that's crazy to me, but that's what they believed. And we've heard crazy belief systems. Yeah. Okay, so before we get to the gunfire, I want to make sure that we're all wrapped up here on the origins of the fire, the probable origins of the fire. Oh, it is worthy of note that I guess, I'm not sure why I don't have this audio,

but I do have the quote that when the second film came out and it showed these military rounds, although again, there were military rounds showed in the first film too. But when these ones were shown in the second film, that kicked off the scandal that led to more media coverage and then Reno appointing Danforth and all that.

And Bob Ricks, the spokesman, Massive Gas guy, said on September 1st, on Ted Cobble's nightline. He said, I was shocked to find out they used pyrotechnic rounds because the plan, and then the tape is kind of messed up. Was he also shocked to find gambling going on in the background?

Maybe, but here's what he says, though, Dan. He says, because we were very much concerned that a fire might be started by the FBI if a pyrotechnic device, and then the tape kind of messes up again. but it's so he's I don't know if he's being genuinely shocked or just

Casablanca style pretend shocked but he's using this explicit language and like well come on you can't use a pirate technique round because everybody knew that would start a fire and you don't want to start a fire right you know

this is even Bob Ricks himself so I you know if it was a deliberate plan he didn't necessarily have to be read in on it maybe he was kept out of the loop for that or maybe as you say he's just sort of faking it you know he had time to practice in the mirror before going

on Cople that night you know well he was insisting on achy-breaking heart being played that was him that's a son of a bitch you know what this is reflects poor taste right there far too R-rated for this

horrible you know coverage of this massacre but Bill Hicks got revenge on Billy Ray Cyrus for us if people want to check out Rantany Minor there So back to the parachute flare Because this is in the evidence somewhere And the thing is about a parachute flare

Is why would they even be there at all Because from the very beginning You have these massive searchlights And these are military searchlights As you documented in the book These came from Port Hood or somewhere These massive search lights That illuminate everything to

daytime or brighter qualities in the middle of the night if they need it shining in every window and doing whatever they need so and again this house is essentially a matchbook waiting to go up at any time and a parachute flare which is magnesium right burning that bright burns burns extremely hot and was found in there somewhere well i don't know if we have a explicit cause and effect. But man, what might you do if you were a bunch of tissue paper and I threw some burning magnesium at you? You know? Well, yeah, I might have moose. I'll tell you what. Now, by the way, so here's an important part of the story that is rarely mentioned. And I don't think I came up with this. I heard someone else finally say this and said, oh yeah, that is a good point.

that none of the Branch Divideans were charged with any crimes for what happened on April 19th. They were not charged with arson. They were not charged with conspiring to commit mass suicide and kill all these kids. They were not charged with firing on government tanks on April 19th.

They were not charged with any crimes for April 19th. The government had no intention of prosecuting them for setting a fire. They didn't want to test that case, I guess. They didn't want to talk about put their own activities you know putting the ATF sort of on reverse trial under cross

examination for February 28th is one thing. Putting the FBI under cross examination for April 19th. You know what? Let's just skip that. Yeah. You know? We don't have to mess with that. We're going to lock them all up anyway. So how much paperwork does that save? Yeah, that too.

I'm going to have a contractor do all that. Okay. All right. Now, so the fire trucks were not until 1213, 8 minutes after the fire broke out. They didn't arrive until 1234, and then once they arrived, Jeff

Jamar held them up for 7 or 10 minutes, depending on who you ask. Even though, as you document, Dick Rogers is on the radio saying, where are the damp fire trucks? Yeah. And the CNN videotape shows that it's 31 minutes

after the fire was first reported that the building was almost entirely gone. By the time the fire trucks were allowed to get there it was essentially over there's no building to soak the thing had been completely destroyed but i was curious still curious what jemar was talking about who's gunfire were they going to run into yeah oh that i mean that was clearly a farce okay will you be able to pull off the audio from the uh of the helicopter or aircraft fleer tape where the do you have that conversation between Jamar and, uh, no, but if you have any audio that you want

me to splice in anywhere, well, sure as hell put it in. Okay, sure. You have it? Yeah, I got it. Okay, great. And that goes for anything that we've talked about where you go, ooh, I have a clip of that that we discussed or I have a clip of that that we discussed. And for you to, anything that you go, hey, man, you could play this clip because we do discuss it anyway. Okay. Then I can cut, I can paste in anything I want. So absolutely right. me a few seconds to give you a lead on that. Okay, great. Well, the FBI had an aircraft orbiting of the Waco building on April 19th, and it was taking a forward-looking infrared videotape. The tape also has a soundtrack, and at certain points, the crew in the plane turns it off,

because it's recording everything that's going on in the cockpit. They think it's safe to turn it on at one point and they're wrong because on the tape you can hear SA1 which is special agent one that's Jeff Jamar the overall commander and HR1 the HRT commander Dick Rogers and they're talking and the conversation is remarkable because Rogers who is on the scene is calling, almost begging for fire engines. And Jamar is, you know, just dodging the question of there's calls out. There's no fire engines at the Y, which was an intersection nearby. And finally, Jamar says something, the effect of, fire engines would concentrate on the school bus area for the kids. And Roger says, that's what we're trying to do. And Jamar says, no one else, I hope.

so I think that oh that's a good one that gave a very interest this audio gives a very interesting insight into the state of mind of FBI that's completely consistent with everything I've heard about Roger Rogers in his attitude rake the building with a machine gun fire but it killed everybody you know okay so first of all so let's play that audio here then Our people focused on the bus area for the kids. S.A.1. H.O.1. Go ahead, S.A.1.

Our people focused on the bus area for the kids. Is that what we're doing? That's what we're trying to do. Now one else, I hope. What can you carry on a fire agent is that, sir, Warren? Should be there momentarily. There's no question where that wind's coming from. What was that? What was that?

What was that? Something about fire engines? No, fire engines. Repeat, no fire engines at the team. So despite, you know, we talked earlier about they had all this hype about the branch Davidians having M60s and how that wasn't true. But you say in the book that on April 19th, I guess the sniper posts and whatever surrounding the building, the FBI did have M60s, and they even had assault. which what is a saw it's a squad automatic weapon a light machine gun uh lighter than an m60 yeah okay

lighter than an m60 yeah and a question you have to ask is why i mean what would you do with those guns i can see snipers but what do you need belt-fed machine guns for when you're holding a bunch of civilians largely little ladies in this plywood house well boys like their toys. Well, and remember, I mean, the whole pretension was, come on everybody, we're pretending that these people are dangerous. You know, because remember, they ambushed

us and all of the thing, right? We're living in a narrative. It's just people, and this goes back to our friend Alan Stone from our first segment yesterday, right? Is that the FBI are a bunch of raving, lunatic cult members, too.

and they believe their narrative. And we can be as critical as we want of the Branch Divideans for seeing every single thing through the eyes of biblical end times prophecy. But the FBI see everything through their own self-serving narrative about how the U.S. government is the true victim here and how they have to save society

from these horrible Charles Manson cult member murderers who they're going to attack a McDonald's I heard and whatever else, right? That's right. That's right in their noggined, exactly. You know, these people are living through their belief system first, you know, right? Well, as a former bureaucrat, GS-14, Washington, D.C., thank you. I had a phenomenon that I referred to as institutional psychosis, which is basically there is the truth,

there is falsity, and there is our position. Yeah. And literally, they would debate what our position was. And this exists outside the continuum of truth or falsity. It is your reality, but it need not be true or false. It's on a different plane of existence entirely. That is the most savable and repeatedly quotable soundbite probably in my entire history of broadcasting anything.

I'm going to quote you on that forever, Dave. I saw it happen many times. Oh, and you know, I have, too. I just didn't have the proper English words to put it in its exact context like you just said, but that's exactly what it is. Well, and of course, this is always my hobby horse because I studied it for a semester in junior college, so I know it's the key to everything is it's all social psychology. So even as we're recording this, we all know that the only people who care about the

branch of idiots, especially 30 years later or a bunch of right-wing cooks or a bunch of something somethings there's a certain kind of person who's interested in that and if you don't identify as one of those kinds of people well then maybe this story isn't for you and you know that kind of you know just the basic sort of question of what are your people going to think about you if they think that you think this and that's a very high priority and and you know what those branched divisions were a bunch of mullet-headed redneck cultist gun nut weirdos who were just so different from me and the people in my neighborhood that we just don't talk about that or we don't we don't have a particular interest in what happened there why would we

there's a lot of truth in that and it it really did weigh on my marriage at the time because my my then wife was all gung-ho loves the awards love the attention and all that, but she felt excluded and probably was from the inner circle in Hollywood because this was not something that you could do. Remember, we got the top award of the International Documentary Association. We were booed, just like the person that won the award for Panama deception at the academy. There's a group think here. You were booed for rules of engagement men? Yes, the international documentary, they booed it. And then just like the, there's a position that's a correct position,

and this went over the edge. And so here we have a woman who's wealthy, Jewish, all the things that you would think, all our friends are wealthy and Jewish, and yet, oh, but. But you guys got nominated for an Academy Award, right? That takes a real consensus to choose to do that, doesn't it? Yeah, and she's, very happy about that but then and so others want to fawn up to you about oh maybe i can be on your

next project that's that's the that's the not in this case well as long as it's not something icky like this it has to be something politically correct which we were that was a term we were still using at the time remember this is the era when and this still goes on if someone told a george boast joke you would have people looking around to see who laughed hard harder. If you didn't laugh hard enough, that meant you were suspect, and we just, we'll take your phone number out of the rollerdecks. And this, and this is, for the record, George W. Bush is a complete piece of shit. But that, but that's, that attitude still permeates here. And I don't know where the, where it is now, the, but it's, there is a red line somewhere that you dare not

cross and then it turns it's all this stuff turns you know it's uh so the the dividian businesses uh the narratives are powerful yeah at some at some point this i could see this turning and being used as an example of the things we would probably like it to be shown and to contain the abusive power but that's not the case right now well you know i don't know what the percentages are but i know that waco is a huge symbol to not just the far radical right in the militia movement and all that but for a lot of americans who don't really identify left right libertarian or any of those things but just look at that fire especially people on the right look at that this all started in the name of gun control

this is what they will do to you if you resist their power and it is an important lesson a lot of people have learned it and taken it mostly you know in its most important sense by now even if it's not, you know, the full consensus. But you do see, you know, every February 28th and April 19th, the ATF, or, you know, on the 28th, the ATF, and maybe the FBI on the 19th, they'll say, oh, you know, boo-hoo for our people and whatever. And they get ratioed to the grave. They get, you know, two likes and 7,000 comments telling them to join their dead friends and

worse. Well, let me give you one of the great examples. right now about this. There are three, you know, you have, what, three conservative talk show hosts, more than that, you know, say Larry Elder, Dennis Prager, Chanity, go down the list. There were only one nationally known talk show host who would have us on when we were making the film and talk about it. Everybody else was shut down. And the same thing going on. Who was it? Lady? No, Michael Reagan. Reagan, his son.

I sent this to the, I know it's not, self-promotion isn't something you ought to do in media terms, but to these guys, Prager, et cetera. The night we won the Emmy in New York, Hannity did not want me to sit to be on camera. He was trying to push me out. So there's something here that cuts across this, even the ideological line. And it's just too dangerous.

Yeah, believe. And so, well, let's just talk about the end of the day there, the end of the morning. The Davidians are all dead. The six escape the fire, I believe, correct? Around there. And then the ATF puts, pulls down the star of David, which was, I don't think, so much the Israeli flag,

but more like a Jewish star of David flag. And there was... To the Davidians. It could have represented, I guess, the nation of Israel as well. They tore that down, and they put up an American flag and an ATF flag on that poll. Just think of Yajima. And we got pictures,

and I'll go ahead and debunk of popular rumor here because there's this guy, Chip. Help me out with the last name, Dan, if you know it, who they tried to nom, Biden tried to make him head of the ATF. Well, I remember the guy you're talking about. He had pictures of himself at the site? Well, that was the joke. So there were people who put up a picture of a guy standing over a smolding corpse with a rifle

and a big smile on his face, and they claim that it was this guy. But it's just not true and so obvious. And I don't think any credible researcher who knows the first thing about Waco ever said, that the ATF were involved in driving tanks or shooting people or setting fires on April the 19th. The ATF was not there doing that. Or if they were, that's the topest secret that I still have never heard the slightest rumor of.

The men depicted in those pictures are a hostage rescue team and or possibly some members of Delta Force. But when this came up in the news, Lee Hancock said, well, I have that picture and it's on a disc labeled hostage rescue team pictures. And here it is with a few others, too. And she put that online. This was two years ago when Biden's first year in power

when he's trying to nominate this guy to leave ATF is when this came up. And so it was a fun smear and an attack on a horrible evil ATF agent. But this ATF agent was not involved in the raid, but he was involved in Waco. He helped prosecute them. So he's going to hell anyway, and who cares what happens to him? and if those smears and attacks actually kept him from being named director

of the ATF, then fine, I don't care. But it wasn't true. The men depicted in those pictures were FBI hostage rescue team. Those are the trophy pictures. And those are the trophy pictures. And they're standing, and you can literally see burning, smoldering corpses

and even bone skeleton showing of these people in the rubble in the background, laying behind them. And there's four or five of them. And they're all standing around. They're all so proud. of themselves and they all look like soldiers you would think if if you just saw the whole group of them you wouldn't know which ones are hr t and which ones are delta force they don't look one bit

like police officers at all they are operators that's what they are called special operations forces um even when they're under the so-called rubric of the justice department that's essentially a fiction and they're spotable too that's i go back to inspectors of error and his description of how do you know a cop you know he's yeah and how do you know a soldier well that one doesn't look like a cop to me man yeah yeah especially even when they're standing together and stuff you could tell um and and again that counts for HRT I mean I'm the HRT guys many of them came straight from the army anyway you know um well they're still in basically basically I mean it's as I said the SES and all these guys trained together they're basically functionally the same unit exactly

so now we know from there's a lot we don't know but there's a lot we did learn from the autopsies and from the ranger reports and another crime scene reports was it all of the women and children who were in the concrete bunker or just many of them were found there but only they were found there well one or two got out and i don't recall where they were in the building. I don't think they were in the bunker. There was one or two women. But basically the group annihilated in the bunker

was women and children. And then, and I think this is probably in the movie and in the book here, guys, that some of those children were shown to have died before the fire had broken out. There was no evidence of smoke inhalation

only of poison gas inhalation or suffocation from other causes. They're worse. Some of them were bit alarmed backwards. And that was, well, that's a separate question now too, but go ahead and talk about that. Well, that's supposedly one of the signs of cyanide poisoning. And that's the, we were told that's why at San Quentin they used to strap the person down. It wasn't to keep them from getting up and running away. But so that the people who are the witnesses don't see some of the extreme contortions.

that cyanide causes when they breathe it in. You might remember there was a movie in the 1950s called, the title was I Want to Live. And it was about a woman who had murdered a couple of people and she was sentenced to San Quentin. And I think Bert Reynolds, not Bert Reynolds, Bert Lancaster was the, played the attorney. And this was part of the thing that they were talking.

talking about how can you do this to a woman that's soon let me tell you something dan i spent years quoting your movie talking about that because it's absolutely outrageous and the pictures in it are just absolutely sickening of this young child's body contorted that way and i said that i guess in an interview and some jerk on twitter said i was wrong and i emailed you and you said no that's right in fact i have the documents where from the autopsy reports where in their words the people had received a lethal dose of cyanide and then every reason there was then every reason to believe that they had that was what had killed them was that they had died of cyanide poisoning from inhaling the effects of the burning c s and but now i got this for it here this is from the cdc hydrogen

Cyanide, systemic agent. Effects of short-term, less than eight hours, exposure. Early symptoms of cyanide poisoning include lightheadedness, giddiness, rapid breathing, nausea, vomiting, emesis, feeling of neck constriction and suffocation, confusion and restlessness and anxiety. Accumulation of fluid in the lungs, pulmonary endema may complicate severe intoxications. Rapid breathing is soon. followed by respiratory depression, respiratory arrest, cessation of breathing.

Severe cyanide poisoning progresses to stupor, coma, muscle spasms, in which head, neck, and spine are arched backwards, convulsions, seizures, fixed and dilated pupils, and death. So, yes, essentially, that is solid as solid. confirmation as you could get, Dan Gifford, that that young girl whose picture you show in Waco the Rules of Engagement, that that's how she died was the muscle spasms shattered her spine. Yeah, twisted her around backwards. Yeah, horrible way. And so that guy on Twitter can go to hell too. I recall researching the point, and in ordinary house fires, you do get some cyanide.

smoke, chiefly from burning plastics. But none of them, I found a study, none of them came anywhere near what you find in some of the Davidians who died at Waco. So they were exposed to something that makes a uniquely high proportion

of cyanide gas when burned, which CS satisfies that. All right, so... Yeah, the movie I was referring to as I want to live, Susan Hayward won the Academy Award for Best Actors that year, and she portrays Barbara Graham, who was a multiple murderer here in California.

But the whole thing about using cyanide, which they used at the time for executions in there, if you ever want to look up the movie. There you go. Okay, so according to my clips and according to my own, outline. It's time to talk about gunfire on April the 19th. Let's start with Captain Burns from the Texas Rangers. The information that we've always been given was that there was no federal gunfire on the day of April 19th. Well, in reviewing the photographs and the 302s, the statements in them, I would say there are some questions that need to be answered. Some questions that

need to be asked that's a good start and based on what based on evidence that he'd already seen so we'll get to some of us this is one area

that pissed me off because I think I've got told you I have four four maybe five Texas Rangers in the ancestrally my family

was some of the early settlers of Kerrville I hope you played that card on them when you were interviewing them yeah well but they

that's a piece that I was threatened not to put in there had the Waco, the local TV reporter, said the, we asked the Texas Rangers about this, they wouldn't comment for fear we were told of retaliation by the FBI. And they meant hit men. Yeah.

But since when the fucking Rangers were, you know, back down on that, I mean, all these, these guys, none of these guys backed down from crap. They were involved in, you know, big battles with Comanches and Kawha. I'm part Comanchee, by the way. And, you know, battles, one was killed in an ambush over in New Mexico's territory. And, well, Dave, you know, said my great... Good times make Rangers soft, I guess, huh? I must, it must.

They're not the same type, I suppose. I guess not. Well, maybe the FBI was going to take their money away. Well, FBI can do a lot. I mean, I don't mean to minimize it. There's no question they can pull a lot of levers. Okay. Lon Horiuchi, the guy that killed Vicki Weaver,

he's stationed on April 19th at the undercover house. Now, I believe it's in your film that he also was riding around in one of those combat engineering vehicles for at least part of the time that day. Yeah, probably. But then, so here he is. He's at the undercover house. This is Sierra One sniper position.

and it's demonstrated, I think, in part two, that, I mean, it's so funny to me, I don't know, seems strange that they would snipe people and then just leave shell casings all over the floor when they could just as easily pick them up and put them in their pocket, you know what I mean? But they just left shell casings all over the floor where apparently they were snobing people. We don't know when they were taking shots, but they were taking shots. But they're not worried then about consequences. I guess not. In fact, I think they said, oh, that's left over from the,

28th. We didn't even clean up our mess from the 28th. We just left them. But here's the game that I thought I've detected there is, the FBI is playing. You remember, you heard Rick say not a single shot was fired by the FBI on the last day. Plenty of groups

of shots, though. Yes. Does that mean no shots at all? Does that mean a whole bunch of shots? Does that mean, this can be a... Or does it mean, hey, look, we took off our badges and did this as privateers you know

we were all honorary members of the Delta Force that day that's all but this really does hit to that whole plausible deniability about well you got to dig in deeper what do you really mean and I it's plain that on the

video the Fleer there's gunfire from the government side and you heard Tibido earlier talk about the people trying to get out the gunfire coming in from and people being shot in the chest. I mean, that's consistent. Yeah. Well, you know what? How about this for the dog that didn't bark?

Dave, you report in your book that the government claims have no audio of any radio transmissions on their side from April 19th at all. Yep. Is that correct? No, it was a lie. But I'm correct that that's their lie. Yeah, yeah. Because that's unbelievable that they would even pretend to say that. That's actually their position. Audio from the 19th, we have none. Yep. That was their position. And when they first produced the infrared videotapes, the Fleer tapes to me, they had no records that had the soundtrack deleted in copying.

So basically they didn't want anyone listening to their radio traffic that day. The problem with Fleer tapes was their audio did pick up some radio traffic. and that was, they didn't want that getting out. So officially, yes, they never recorded any of their radio traffic on April 19th, and they also had no closed circuit TV cameras operating on April 19th. And in the initial version, they didn't even make an infrared videotape prior to halfway through the operation. This was lies under oath. Do we know how many cameras they had encircling the building at any point during the siege?

Because it must have been a dozen or more, right? I would imagine. But we don't know because they weren't there, of course. They just straight lie about that. Yeah, sure. Didn't happen. Well, but no, wait a minute. I mean, even if they don't name the exact digits there,

they do admit that they had closed circuit TV cameras surrounding. the building throughout the siege, don't they? I believe they did. And the defense was that while we didn't record it, we just watched it. Oh, I see. Plausible deniability again. Yeah. And not that plausible, but...

Yeah. Let's just leave it at a denial again. That's better. Everybody raises the question, do oaths mean anything or somebody... Not for these guys. I mean, you know, right now you could go. down today to the South Tucson Police Department. It's all of a square mile and get all of their radio traffic for the last month. But FBI on the April 19th didn't record any of it.

Yeah, sure. Okay. Now, in our story, we're now jumping back in time because there is gunfire during the fire, but there's also gunfire long before it. So we kind of cover the fire and the pyrotechnic rounds and the possible origins and all of that but now we're skipping back in time to earlier in the morning when there's gunfire you know at least as far as we know the first instances of gunfire recorded by the fleer and now even as a prelude to that is well i mentioned the casings i have the note here there are 308 winchester casings that are found uh you know bullet shells found at the undercover house across the street. But then there's also a question of Jimmy Riddle

who was found, his body was found in the back of the house and had apparently been run over by a tank in the back of the house. Was that the red lining of the jacket? You mentioned that you, yes, because Dave spotted that. That was very much. And I have a clip here of Dr. Wayne Allard, and I'm going to have you introduce him to us in a moment, Dan.

But this is not Fleer. This is regular video that he's commenting on, and it's possibly, I think quite possibly, he's referencing to fire from a helicopter killing Jimmy Riddle, and then the tank would have run over his corpse later. On the other hand, since this is on a helicopter, and people might say that it's reflections from the windshield,

It's impossible for these shots that you're seeing with your own eyes to be solar reflections. Because if it were so, the helicopter would have to be violently moving back and forth like a mirror in your hands. And this is impossible. So in our opinion, it's clearly machine gunfire from the helicopter. Okay, so now in that footage the Allard's referring to in that clip, Dave, the helicopter's in the back of the house. This is from the morning of the 19th. And I guess the implication in the second movie in a new revelation is that this is how Jimmy Riddle died here. He was shot by that helicopter.

What do you know about that? I just know he was shot of his autopsy shows that I have no idea whether it came from a helicopter or a sniper on the ground. But then he was also, his body was totally torn apart or half torn apart. or half torn apart by a tank, evidently? Is that right? I can tell you that story because it was the first time I met Mike McNulty. Okay.

And it's what got me kind of involved in this. Okay, I'll go a little later, yeah. Well, he showed me a four-by-six photo made from an FBI aircraft that was circling the Davidian place before and during the fire. And this one photo... This would be the same flare plane.

Probably a different plane, because there are two up there, as I recall. Well, in it, this is relatively late in the attack, and it's at the back of the building, what they called the gym, and the gym is better than half demolished at this point. So you're looking at a field of construction rubble. It's not like things stand out. It's a wreckage. So McNulty shows that to me.

and he says, what do you think about this? Well, I was very near-sighted. So I take off my glasses and I can focus down to maybe six inches. I look at it and say, dang, you found the body. And Mike says, what body? And I say, why were you showing this to me? He says, that big splotch of red just outside the building, I think that's a pool of blood.

and I say, no, that's the red flannel lining of a man's Levi jacket. The man has black hair. He is lying on the ground face down. His right wrist is caught in the tank's tracks, and it must be backing up because it's pulling his right arm up toward the tank's brocket. And Magnetzi said, you're hired. Yeah, right?

Well, at that point, he whips out of magnifying glass because he wasn't near-sighted, looks at it for a while and said, I've been looking at this photograph for weeks, and it takes a blind man to tell me what's in it. And then he said, Gordon, Gordon Novell, bring me the autopsy of Jimmy Riddle. We dug it out, and there was Jimmy Riddle, killed by, I believe, a gunshot wound to the head, right arm, traumatically amputated. Now, how would that get traumatically amputated? and I don't know if it was on this occasion or maybe later we got his Jimmy Riddle's autopsy photo now Jimmy Riddle's body officially was found inside the perimeter of the burned out building that is in that is the wooden floor underneath his body had to be completely burned to ash

and two stories above him had also burned to ash and dropped on top of his body if it was at that position when he died. If you look at it, the edges of his clothing are a bit singed. That's all. Now, tell me this man had a wooden floor burn under him and two wooden floors drop on top of him. No, his body did not start out. He did not die where his body was found.

He died outside the burning building. And someone put it back inside after the fire died down. well but you know that does raise the question about men who we can see in even the first i mean sorry the second or third or whatever the poorer generation i keep calling it the first generation it's not the first generation it's the poorer generation the first version we've seen of the flare footage you can plainly see air-conditioned black dots that are men get out of the back of the bradley's which that's where the door and the bradley is a big door in the bradley is a big door in the back. And you can see them get out and then fire machine guns at the house. And it raises

the question, I'm not sure if this comes up in either of the documentaries, but it does come up in your book, Dave, is the question of whether these men went inside the house and shot the Divideons at close range and finished them off. Yeah, that I don't know. But you do see them advance into the gymnasium. Yeah, the wreckage, yeah. And Carlos Gigliotti, he was an infrared expert retained by the House government oversight committee, right? Yeah. And he produced a report on this and was there gunfire outside the building on April 19th? And he concluded there was at the back of the building and his reconstruction of it was that someone, he could vaguely make out the image of someone moving out of the building, presumably a division.

Vidian. Then in front of the FBI combat engineering vehicle, there are a couple of big flashes. He said he couldn't tell what that was, but his probable interpretation was whoever came out of the building threw something at the tank that had two detonations. And then he said you saw the hatch on the tank open and you could see the interior was cooler. So he said that was readily visible. And then guys got out, I believe, two of them. And they worked through the wreckage, and you saw gunshots from them. And this was all that he had, which was on the best equipment that I am familiar with

at that time by a man who was an expert. So he said, yeah, it was a gunfight at the rear. And his interpretation was it wasn't planned. It was something the hostage rescue team did in reacting to what something that a Davidian did. So I have a VHS copy of a new revelation, and the footage in that, the FLIR footage in that, is far clearer than in rules of engagement. No offense. We note that the difference between what the Senate, the congressman saw, you know, in the event. investigation of what we had to work with, and I make that point.

And then again, as I said, McNulty said, oh, we had the better version of the film. We just didn't know it. We found it later in the pile. That's what I mentioned about the trick. It has used, you get involved with something with Uncle Sam, with the government, or a big corporation, and you get five train loads of stuff,

and you can't go through it. It's the lost arc in the warehouse, right? Yeah, exactly. So, but here's the thing. As I was saying that even in the original, is whatever third or fourth dub generation footage you can clearly tell its men getting out of the tank and moving and then shooting but in a new revelation boy you really can tell that it is like i guess i'm not going to claim you can see their legs separate from their bodies but maybe you can

it's just much clearer footage i i don't have it that clear my mind's eye and i don't know how well it works on the youtube version which is you know obviously much later generations again same problem again. But on the VHS version, especially if you have like a, you know, high quality out to a high quality television, it's extremely compelling. And you can see them, yeah, shooting all in the back of the house there. We're going to play a bunch of clips of Allard and all this. But I'm going to go ahead and bring this up, even though it's just hearsay. I don't care. It ain't court. And it's not that speculative. It's worth mentioning. It's not really question of like, do you believe it or not?

because it's not enough to believe but I think it's still enough to raise and I think that the question that it raises is believable so it goes like this Paul Fada told me in a follow-up interview which I didn't record but it was just on the phone that his lawyer told him that a Davidian who survived a young woman named Misty Ferguson who is known for losing her fingers in the fire she told Paul Fada's lawyer allegedly that she saw men dressed in black enter the house with guns now is all I knew

but the story didn't come from media anywhere it came from Paul Fadda told me his lawyer told him that he had no other source in the world where he could have got it from because that's not a rumor that's going around that's it's the only place I've ever heard it was directly from a surviving Davidian and he claimed that his lawyer attributed it to this woman our producer tried very diligently to track her down to attempt to ask her and to verify this rumor which I will identify it as a rumor that is what it is and he was unable to do so. Is she American or Australian or who was the other?

I'm not sure. My information was that she lived in the United States, but I won't be more specific than that. She appeared during the civil trial. So that might be some way to find out if she was subpoenaed for that or, of course, that'd be a location 20 years ago. I wouldn't doubt it. I mean, it's, it's completely within the mentality, the, the mindset of the guys who are wanting, they want to kill.

Yeah. You're sort of talking about, you remember Arlo Guthrie on the, when he got drafted, he says, yeah, I want to kill, want to kill. And these guys, that's what these guys are in, or are like, and that's what the Harvard professor. said that that's the mentality that you is conducive to this kind of kind of a situation I mean I saw it my old man and isn't it right that they said all these branched divisions

they didn't die from fire they die from all close gunshot wounds to the head and then the idea was well they all obviously shot each other Dave I mean you're you're telling this story earlier about the from this soldier observer at least from the audio that he claimed that Schneider got mad and shot Koresh, because Koresh was wimping out and running away,

and that Schneider pulled rank on him and murdered him. That doesn't sound right, you know? Does it? It sounds like I guess I would believe that somebody shot Koresh in the head at close range. It doesn't really sound like probably Steve Schneider would have done that. Yeah, I mean, clearly Koresh got shot in the front of the head at some range anyway. After the body was sort of semi-incinerated, there wasn't much left to determine.

But, yeah, I mean, plainly, he was shot and not by himself. And it's interesting that they would even bother need to get out of the tanks and fire from such close range right there adjacent to the pool in that back courtyard area when Sierra 2 is right behind them. And, you know, it wouldn't make sense to just rake the place with machine gun fire, but it would make sense to pick people off one at a time with those sniper rifles. Instead, they're back there with M4s, it looks like, or M16s, M4s, I guess. But Rogers wanting to rake the building was way early.

Yeah, right, right. But so here, they're still, they're using, like, probably three-shot burst right on, like, rifles that can go on full auto fire, but they're on, like, three-shot-burst mode, M-4 kind of mini-M-16 rifles, is what they are, right? The M4 Carveans that they used in a Rockport 2 and so forth, right? And so, anyway, it just seems excessive since they already had a sniper team right behind them anyway. But snipers take a coffee break.

I guess we're just going to do this. Well, you know, we're going to go inside or we're just going to machine gun them from the yard. Yeah. Well, if Carlos's reconstruction is correct, this wasn't something planned. It just happened. Divideon's threw something at one of the tanks and the tank crew got hacked off. and decided to settle these things. That's interesting.

Okay, so introduce us to Dr. Edward Allard. Well, Dr. Allard is, I'm told, the inventor of forward-looking infrared, and what that is is a camera that records the infrared range off of objects, which we all have. Humans give it off. And did he develop it working directly for the Army or as an Army contract? I don't know if it was directly for the Army, but he was certainly was a military contractor.

That's what it was designed. That's where it comes from. Yeah, that's what it was designed to do. And so what you're getting is, if you look at the screen, you're getting a black screen with white images. The white, some things will be more, will be whiter than others.

and those are things that have more heat coming off of them than others. And so these cameras were on planes during the whole process here. And from those, you can see muzzle flashes from the guns on the government side shooting into the building. And, of course, as the building starts to burn, it produced. is a lot of infrared heat and eventually it just obliterates so you can't see anything but prior to that you can see let's say anybody sneaking around walking around what have you what the first thing I saw that Michael showed me McNulty was and I didn't

believe it he said well he was telling me to look at this picture you were just told Dave was describing or similar one and he claimed that this tank was running over somebody at the building this was after all that had everything happened and i said sure sure now somewhere along that way i he made me a believer when i started looking at the thing and uh and saying damn that's that is what that is that's a tank that and somebody this thing is being running over people or or somebody's somebody's somebody's body. So this is his same story,

but just a week later or something, right? You're the one who showed it to... Yeah, I'm not sure if it would be the same... What year are we talking about here? 95? Yeah, the year of the first house hearings. I think those were... Yeah, 95.

Yeah, 95. Yeah, 95. Okay. And I just... Because we almost didn't do the story. Almost didn't do it. Because I just thought it was too crazy. Wait, and what story?

This was a story that you did for TV? No, we almost didn't do this Waco film. Oh, the movie itself. Yeah. because I just thought initially I like everyone so many others I believe the official

story I thought it was true and then I started getting bits and pieces things showed up at the front in the mailbox or over the transom and this is McNulty's story too I forget if we talked about this a little bit I think you and I talked about this off the air

before we started yesterday which we should never do that it is that McNulty got started because this woman Linda Thompson had made a movie called the Waco the Big Lie. And for Bill Hicks fans, you'll be familiar with Bill Hicks saying that he's seen this footage with his squeegeeed third eye of a Bradley tank shooting fire into the front of the building. And what that is is it's just a piece of drapes or some big piece of cloth hanging off the nozzle of this combat engineering vehicle, which is not even a Bradley tank and is not, you know, armed with, you know, flamethrowers. um and i i guess she colored it orange or maybe it was orange or it appeared orange for whatever

reason in the video i think maybe she had even colored it orange and said well there you go see they shot flames in the thing and i give her a little bit of credit that it got a lot of people interested in it but it was a red herring and it was wrong and it ruined a really it didn't really ruin but it tainted a really great bill hicks bit about waco that that's sort of the premise for the whole bit is this thing that's wrong but so Then Mike McNulty sees that and says, that's not right. Give me a break, lady. And he decides he's going to go and he's going to debunk Waco the big lie and show that this lady Linda Thompson is a fraud.

And then he finds out X, Y, Z, I don't know exactly what, and goes, holy crap, never mind how full of it she is. How full of it they are. Oh, my goodness. Look what I'm on to now. And then this is where he runs into you. runs into you and off to the races from there. I believe that's the origin story. Yeah, it's

certainly been percolating within the I don't know what to call it, the prognon the... In the Patriot movement at the time, whatever it's called. The only thing I remember about Thompson, I've never met her and talked to her, but she posted something on the website of the film

at the time that I was a government disinformation person. Boy, talk about not doing a limited hangout well you're going to get in real trouble there gufford yeah it's supposed to be a limited hangout dan not an unlimited hangout yeah but that business with the flame throwing tank has been around well there again we're talking about you know lack of military service how few people have actually seen or even have any concept of just you know the 200 yard

sheet of flame that comes out of one of these suckers. Dave, what did Mike McNulty die of? A heart attack, from what I understand, was at home. He laid down on the bed to rest and was found with basically his heart stopped. And he just never made it from there. Wow. How long ago was that?

Must have been 10, 12 year or more. Not that many. Wasn't that far back? No, no. I was thinking more like five. Yeah, five or less. I hadn't talked to him for so long, so I guess. Time flies when you're getting older, though.

I know that. Yeah. Yeah, it goes faster. I really regret that I had probably a longer conversation with him off the air than on the air, which is one of those things where I should have just turned on the mic and told him, hey, I'm recording this phone call by the way or something and just gone ahead, but he's a decent guy, man, that's for sure. And a hero of this story.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, never would have done it if it hadn't met him and gotten mixed up in it. Like I said, I thought he was feeding me a lot of bullshit at first and then started looking at this and, dad just doesn't look right, you know? Well, so that's a great segue into our next topic, which is some of the good guys on this, including the two at this table with me here, of course, Dan Gifford and Dave Hardy,

but also we have Dr. Allard and we have Carlos Skigliotti and my new acquaintance and this great expert, Barbara Grant, is another one. And I mean, you Dave didn't just write the book about this. U.S. were, as we were speaking of before, very involved in the lawsuits and helping McNulty get the evidence out of the lockers. And then obviously you play a big role in the FLIR project and all of that. So we're going to talk all about that because, hey, in all this horror, you do have a lot of good people stepping up to the plate. And then through telling their story, y'all's stories, we find out about what really happened to the Branch Divideons, too. So how about this, Dan? Tell us how you.

you met Dr. Edward Allard. And was he really, I guess, the first real expert that you guys consulted about the Fleer? In fact, hell, tell me the story about when you first got the Fleer. Well, the Fleer was forward looking infrared camera stuff. Were you guys the first one? Oh, I guess they had at the congressional hearings. Was that the first?

Yeah, that's first. I was really, and I don't know who located him at first, but he was he and his brother are both geeks of some sort and we contacted him how did that happen was that McNulty did he get a hold of him I don't know he was the first major expert that you guys brought again we talked about a minute ago that he was a military contractor work with the whatever exactly the name of the night vision laboratory I believe he may have contacted us i just i just don't remember and and but that was we had questions about

the fleer about uh what we were seeing but well he was it real was were these reflections off of uh swamp gas and venus or something and it was nope turned out would be real stuff and that was that was a revelation to me i'll tell you i just i just thought the stories that were being passed around were all baloney but some of them were of course but uh that makes it very difficult to separate them sometimes but he's uh when he got he got into looking at this stuff and just he was horrified and he was really especially the last day here where you had the fire and you can plainly see the muzzle flashes on the outside pointing in from the government side so The stories we'd heard about people being shot trying to get out of the place were true.

And, of course, you heard David Timito earlier talking about how people got shot in the chest. And we have the unconfirmed story of the survivor who says he saw black, of wardrobe guys in the building, shooting people. I tend to, that's not, given what we're talking about here, that's not out of the question. it's just not yeah okay well listen so you have extensive clips of um edward allard talking in rules of engagement and the mcnulty in his sequel a new revelation as well and so i think this collection includes clips from both but here's a little bit of dr edward allard again we heard him talking about the helicopter a minute ago but that's from some regular footage

but this is him talking about his analysis of the forward-looking infrared. What we have is we have then firing automatic weapons and they're firing into the burning building and like some sort of a cowboy movie, they're retreating down the building and firing as they're retreating. I cannot remember something more sickening

that I had to do to witness this. I stopped counting after about 62 individual shots. They open up with, automatic gunfire. We've measured the actual time of the individual flashes and they occur at a fraction of a second, in some cases a 30th of a second. There is absolutely nothing in nature that can cause thermal flashes to occur in a 30th of a second. What we have here is a tank infantry type of an operation. As the tank moves forward, as the tank moves forward two men have dropped out of the escape hatch they roll over and as they roll over they open up with

automatic gunfire okay and so this is this man speaks with absolute certainty about what he's seeing there and we can urge all listeners to go and find a copy of rules of engagement or a new revelation and especially a new revelation if you can get a high quality a copy of that it's quite a bit clearer rules. But you know what, let me ask you, do you guys, either of you have the original or the highest quality generation copy? And is there a way that we can just go ahead and have that and link to it ourselves here for people? I've got literally, after I won the Freedom of Information Act suit, ATF and FBI just deluge me in materials. And so I've got probably six cubic feet of VCRs that I've never actually gone through

because a bunch of them are duplicates, I've never actually gone through to see which one of these is the best. And some of these are super VHS? Or do they're all regular VHS to know? I think they were all regular VHS. I'm trying to think about super VHS. Carlos may have recorded in Super VHS.

Someone used that. That is he may have copied them onto Super VHS. Someone used that format, but these are all regular. VHS. Okay. And but you're talking about what dozens of tapes? Probably about 50. You know there are a lot of good libertarians in Tucson. I wonder if we could recruit an assistant for you. Oh, that'd be great. You'd be open to that sounds like. Mm-hmm. Yes. Well, word up. Tucson libertarians that get this far into the podcast. Let's

see where you're at. You know how to contact me. and then if not if I don't hear from anybody I'm going to go ahead and try remind me about that if I let that go but I think that would be really great if we could get the highest quality version that we can get our hands on and go ahead and upload it ourselves in the highest quality rip that we can get if we can rip it at 4K or whatever with you know as loss less as possible right and then get it online where people can see because clearly you know even in the regular VE

VHS version of rules, especially of new revelation. Men, you can see men get out of those tanks and shoot, and there are times where they sort of turn invisible for a bit due to camouflage or due to, you know, varying heat patterns or whatever. There are times where it is absolutely clear. These are men with machine guns firing into that building, and any expert like Edward Allard could tell you, an idiot and his mama could tell you, too.

There's no mistaking what you're looking at there. Yeah, that's what Paul Beaver, the British Army guy said. His job was to spot IRA snipers when they had the troubles in Ireland. And he has some great quotes here. He knows this is no question whatsoever. He said, this is a guy shooting down here. This is not reflections off the pieces of glass or something of that sort. Dave, would the committee, would there be someplace in Washington

where things like the tape he's talking about be preserved? Probably have to preserve them with National Archives eventually. I'm not sure of how the justice regulations work in with National Archives regulations. Well, that might be the place to look because when they played that And for the Congress, it was just crystal clear. Okay, Congress would be under their own rules, and I'm not sure what those are. I can find out.

Because even we pointed that out, but even just, you know, looking at, you're showing it to the congressman on television, and that's what we're looking at, where we took it from a screen, and wow, it's night and day or different. And now, so I'm sorry because I should have paged further down my outline. I do have the actual job description here. Dr. Allard, Edward Allard, worked directly for DOD as a civilian employee at the DOD Night Vision Laboratory is what it was called. I think I said that right, but that was just from memory, but so that's what it was. He was just extremely cooperative and helpful.

importantly as we were discussing before this is going on and I don't know exactly all the different time skills I think you probably did the best job Dave of going through and trying to figure this out in terms of where exactly on the timeline throughout the day all these different events are going on but in most of the flare footage that we can see in rules and revelation

there's no fire going on this machine gunning of the people is happening long before the fire breaks out and in fact you sort of have a little syllogism in the book Dave where you say okay lethal doses of gas plus shooting plus eventually fire and then eventually holding back the fire trucks

that's murder yep with or without the fire insurance quip that's murder the way that they escalated this and escalated this and for all the Davidians who were victims of gunshots inside any other time if someone said no yeah that's some of them shooting each other to put them out of their misery or to save them from the pain of dying in a fire or like even suicide in their own desperation or whatever

I'd believe that except for all this and now I'm thinking no the cops did all those gunshots until proven otherwise there's no real reason to believe that they're innocent of any of those gunshot wounds, really, right? Not to mention Jimmy Riddle's body and the fact that someone wanted to relocate it from outside the building of where he was killed to inside. Yeah. They don't believe in resurrection. They look that quickly.

Well, and you know what you point out to in the book that these are Christians who believe that they are banned from suicide and there's in the, in the, do I have this right? This is from during the siege that at some point caress them. starts yelling. Stop bringing up suicide. Nobody said anything about suicide. This is the third time I got you guys talking about suicide. I guess they got Jim Jones on the brain or whatever.

But Koresh is saying, look, we're Christians. We don't kill ourselves. It's part of the deal. You know, you sacrifice your whole covenant if you kill yourself. That's breaking the deal there. So, and this is a guy who would take that very seriously. And now maybe look, burn into death sucks, so maybe

he would shoot himself then. But hey, he's got a gunshot wound with the head. I got no reason to presume his guilt and the FBI or the Delta Force's innocence at that point on that. Sure. You know. Well, I can just see the guys in these units chomping at the bits. They wanted to get in there and get back at these guys. And I think that we had only children in that concrete room, right?

Women and children, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they were more than happy to get through and plug a lot of the dividians. Oh, yeah, we heard, you know, Bob Rick's boasting about it. Yeah, they were getting ribbed. Yep. So, all right, now here comes a clip of Danforth, and I know this is going to try everybody's patience.

I should have deleted a lot more of the silence out of this. The guy talks so slow, but, and it's also infuriating in other ways, but this is Senator Danforth, which after Dave Hardy here and Mike McNulty succeeded in prying loose. further evidence of pyrotechnic mark 561 military rounds being fired there. They had to launch a new investigation. It made the news, and so Janet Reno was very upset, she said. And so this is now a clip of Danforth.

Essentially, I think this is a clip of him announcing his conclusions to the Congress. Now, there have been a lot of suspicions that have been raised, and the basis for the suspicions has to do with the fact that at one point on the morning of April 19th, three pyrotechnic tear gas rounds were fired. And that was not disclosed. It was not known by the Attorney General. It was not known by Director Sessions, but it was known by somebody, and it was not disclosed. And we have spent, I would say, most of our time and effort trying to figure out why it was that the firing of the three pyrotechnic rounds was not disclosed. Well, why is this? What happened?

But one thing that is absolutely clear is that the fact of their firing was in constant. consequential, had nothing to do with the disaster. The three pyrotechnic rounds were fired four hours before the fire broke out. They were fired in a direction away from the building itself, and they caused no damage to anybody. There really is a distinction between bad judgment or human mistakes and truly bad acts With respect to the events on April 19th in particular, I want to again make it clear that the alleged bad acts just did not happen.

Thank you very much, Senator Danforth. I mean, the guy's a senator. What else is he going to say? Former Senator. It's like he's some scrappy young prosecutor looking to make a name for himself or something. Might as well be a Bush or something. Yeah, it's like the problem with blue ribbon committees. Does the guy really have the expertise to decide on what he's talking about?

No. So he ultimately is rubber stamping a staff document, which was obtained from whoever they consulted. And he puts his name on it. It's all optics, political optics, and as we said, it's powerful. He also, of course, claimed that there was nothing to the gunfire. It was all just sunlight reflections and that he had definitely. demonstrated that with a recreation of the back of the Waco, so-called compound at Fort Hood in 1999. Pardon me, March 2000.

Now, the thing about this was, and I just remember this from the time, and I know you guys absolutely document this so thoroughly in the Fleer Project, which is movie three, if we call it the, no offense, the McNulty series. series here, Dan, the third movie is the Fleer Project, which is the debunking of the debunking, where Senator John Danforth went and arranged this hoax and said, see, that doesn't prove anything, which is what it was made to do. And then, but you guys went and debunk that. So I guess, first of all, before we get to you guys tests and what you were able to demonstrate, which is half the movie or more, can you please explain to us the basic parameters, of the Danforth test at Fort Hood? It's been so long. I've forgotten most of them.

I know that they used an infrared imaging system the same as FBI used, and they may have had it in the original FBI plane, and then they had some soldiers down there to fire under different conditions. And as I recall, they said, well, it's not gunshots, because I think gunshots were briefer. in terms of time than the muzzle flash was briefer in terms of time than the images seen on the tape

and so that that was basically what they said to rule things out and the of what mike did was he got an infrared imager may have been the same model as the FBI elevated it quite a bit wait hold that part about yel's recreation for a second because let's talk about their recreation first because i remember just watching this on the local news at the time it wasn't a secret you'd think it might be they just openly talked about what they were doing sure one of the things was they took water trucks you know that that sprinkle out and spray out i guess you'd use i don't know what you use those for no suppress dust well yeah in this case for sure and that that is what they did is They went and drove around, and they got all the dirt wet.

And then they covered it with tarps to make sure that nothing would even evaporate overnight. And this is only the spring in Texas. It's not that hot yet. It's March, you know? I guess you can have a warm March day, but they want to make sure that essentially none of that dried out, which is clue number one that these guys are being dishonest. And now I'm not sure who's the narrator here,

but this is a short clip from the Fleer project. The government contends that flashes on April 19th could not be gunfire because they were seen so often and appeared to be of such long duration. Again, the Fort Hood test was supposed to use the same weapons and ammunition that the FBI used at Mount Carmel on April 19th. As seen on this April 19th image, a certain brand of ammunition was employed by the agents. This ammunition has been found in many FBI photos of the scene at Mount Carmel on April 19th. The cartridges used by the FBI hostage rescue team are manufactured by the federal cartridge company. This was to be the ammunition used at the Fort Hood Recreation. Instead, the government used standard military ball ammunition.

This ammunition uses a chemical coating on the gunpowder that reduces or eliminates muzzle flash when used in combination with a weapon that has an optimum barrel length. The effect of this combination of gunpowder and barrel length reduces or eliminates muzzle flash and prevents the detection of American troops in a combat situation. The commercial federal ammunition used by the FBI at Mount Carmel was not charged with this flash suppressorpressant powder. Besides ammunition, the weapons used at the Fort Hood test were to have been identical to those used on April 19th. In fact, the weapon used at Fort Hood was a standard M16A2 with an optimum barrel

lower length of 20 inches. The weapons actually used by the FBI on April 19th were short-barreled car 16s or M4 carbines with 14.5 inch barrels. In this Fleer project footage, a standard M16A2 with a 20-inch barrel firing standard ball ammunition is visible. There is very little muzzle flash recorded by the Fleer's sensor. However, when using an M4 short-barreled carbine and federal brand ammunition, as carried by the FBI on April 19th,

the Fleer registers muzzle flashes that are more prominent and longer in duration. So there you go right there. This is a deliberate fraud, Dan. At Waco, on April 19th, they were firing M-4. with 14-inch barrels firing federal brand ammunition 223 or 556 which is almost exactly the same thing I guess right different names for essentially

5.156 by you all right so 223 and then for the recreation they're firing M16s which is the older if you think Vietnam War footage this is the rifle this has a 20 inch barrel and they're using different ammunition and now let me ask about that

can you verify that part of the detail about what the military ammunition that they were using at the Fort Hood test they outright say this is the ammunition we were using and you could just say oh well that's you know right there I don't know I don't remember I mean it's been a while but they show it in the movie

in the movie in it's called the Fleer Project and you can find online my buddy Will Porter from the Institute has it on his YouTube channel right now and we'll have that in the links and they show that and so this is again just like they sprayed down the area with water they gave them different ammo yep and different rifles so like you know some lady senator or tv host might mistake an m4 for an m16 but they're different the major difference being

the length of the barrel right yep and so it makes all the difference and that was the purpose clearly was this was a fraud. They set up this so-called replication of the situation at Waco and they made it fail deliberately, right? They must, yes, they must have experimented beforehand because dust would become critical. And like you say, they wet the ground down, they put tarps over it. Obviously, they'd done something that told them that keeping the dust to a minimum

was very important if you want to pass the test. Which anyone could have guessed that right, even like a little kid. I'm going to imagine me at 9. Hey, do you think a dusty day makes a difference for Muscle Flash? Yeah. You know what I mean?

Anybody could tell you that, right? Yeah, sure. Anybody would say that that makes sense, of course. That would, and this is what you guys found. So this is where we get to the FLIR project. So this is you and Mike McNulty. and out in Arizona. Yep.

Right? And so I guess the first question is how close was the Fleer equipment that you had to what they had? Do you know? I believe it was the same. That is not physically the same camera, but the same image, same make and model.

Right. And then, so tell us, because you must have done all different experiments out there to get what you got so what did you do and what did you get well he elevated the imaging thing on a what do you call him a cherry picker got got the longest when he could and i think he i know barbara grant went up in it and baby he did and then they took images and we shot different weapons down there we were on a shooting range and then we start experimenting with different conditions to see if those would make the argument was that the flashes on the tape were too short

to be muscle flashes and we start experimenting to see can does anything change the duration of the muscle flesh and eventually we found yes one thing that does is dust now say if you had a tank driving around behind a church that they'd been demolishing something like that on the 30 mile power or wind day yeah and spring of powdered poise and everywhere, that kind of thing. And now, Mike had to throw dirt up in the air because obviously we don't have a scientific testing laboratory. We have to improvise.

But the point is, once you know that dust lengthens the duration of the flash and that they did everything to suppress dust during their recreation, put the two together in the very least their recreation, recreation is useless. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, even if they didn't rehearse it, which is pretty obviously they probably did before the test that we know about,

which they could obviously do it for Hood any day of the week if they wanted to. But even if they didn't, they were just, could have just been using their intuition. We ought to spray that dirt down. You know, it's so obvious. And I mean, it just goes with the rest. but isn't this outrage other than the mass murder of all of the people

but is also just the absolute floor to ceiling morning to night, dishonesty of these people and cynicism of these people. It's just Olympic and incredible. I got to tell you something about the Danforth Special Counsel Investigation. In the civil suit, we took the deposition of, I believe it was the British Fleer experts. I had to confess they'd never analyzed a fleur tape before, but we took it, and we show up at the special counsel's headquarters, and understand the special counsel, as I recall, all of their staff were federal employees, as they're temporarily detailed from, like, postal inspectors to the special counsel, but the bottom line is they will then go back to the regular federal job.

When the Department of Justice attorneys came in with us, the special counsel staff invited them to go back into their personal area and talk for about 20 or 30 minutes and left us in the waiting area, which told you, of course, they were viewed as insiders and we were viewed as invaders, foreigners, whatever, not one of us. okay well you brought up the name barbara grant there can you tell us who is barbara grant uh barbara grant was then in uh Tucson uh she's now in northern california and she's an expert in i i would have should have looked it up there electro optics or optical opto electrolytes basically the interface between light and electronics. And she knows her stuff very well. She got her degree from the University of Arizona. She's, I think our latest project is producing and editing

what will become likely the text on the study of FIre, infrared imaging. So she, and she knows their stuff, she found the patents for the imager used in the FBI camera. And so she was basically the technical expert on the people of the people who were trying to find out what happened at Waco. Okay, well, I have some clips. I believe, if I've labeled these correctly, the first four of these are from an interview that I conducted with Barbara Grant. last year and then the final two are from her film which is called when the government lied waco's infrared deception and that's at barbara grantmedia.com and you can watch it on vimeo and so i believe the first as i say the first i think four clips here from my interview of her and then the other two are from the

film and which is interesting because the way that she speaks is so perfect and professional that you can't tell the difference from her answer in an interview from her narration of her own movie, which is professional and practiced and polished reading off of a script. Sounds exactly the same both ways. She really speaks

to her intelligence and level of professionalism that she brings to this, I think. When we see the multiple repetitive flashes, I've provided a number of instances of those in the video. We're looking at gunfire. Gunfire

directed toward the building. Now, I will say I'm not a weapons expert, so I don't have detailed knowledge on the weapons types, but it's definitely weapons fire. All right. But so why are you so sure then? Well, because I took a number of approaches to reach my conclusion. The first thing was to test muzzle flash. And the second thing was I followed what Maurice Cox had done, looking at footage of the tape from a number of different angles and looking at the path that a sun reflection would take in those particular images. And the path that a sun reflection would take was very different from what I was seeing in the images. And not only that, we are not talking about one sun reflection here, supposedly, in the case of the multiple flashes.

about several. So in order for the sun reflection hypothesis to work as the reason for the flashes, debris would have to be shiny, watered down, and precisely positioned for the aircraft's camera to observe them. So when I made my initial conclusion, I said that these are likely to be from weapons fire, these flashes, multiple repetitive ones. And as I studied the problem further, over time, I became completely convinced that that is what we're seeing. I delivered my initial result really basically 20 years ago. If I'm talking about one flash here and one flash there, I would be much more suspicious. But, you know, part of the interesting situation is that people that I knew of who analyzed the tape were not given the system

parameters of the FLIR by the investigation. They were just not given them. So that leads people, that leaves people to assume things like how much spatial detail can you see on the ground and how is the sensor operating. I would have to say that if you see these multiple flashes, you see them more than once, you see them in similar circumstances, it's hard to dismiss that is a scan artifact. That is true for debris lying flat on flat ground. That is absolutely true. Now, we have a sequence, or I have a sequence in the video, where someone is picking up

a piece of glass and flashing it toward the sensor, and that's how you see it. So, you know, unless that happens, you will not get multiple flashes. if you are not at the appropriate angle. And I do have an example in there where we do see a sun reflection at an appropriate angle. So the real clincher to the argument of these multiple flashes

not being caused by sun reflections is the fact that they are multiple flashes. You have to have four or five debris surfaces or pieces of debris lined up at a very specific angle to generate something like that. One, I can imagine, sure, if it's at a certain angle, but here we have several instances of multiple flashes.

So it's the combination of the multiple flashes with what I learned in gunfire testing and research and participating in tests. It's the combination of those two conditions that leads me to the gunfire. inclusion. I was not a physical on the ground observer for the Ford Hood test, but by that time, I was looking at the test protocol. So there I am going through the protocol, and I'm thinking, boy, you know, this took a long time to develop this particular protocol. So, you know,

who's working on it? Who is working on it? Because we were only told, I guess, publicly about vectors experts. There were three experts, I suppose, but they were backed up by people who I believe had significant infrared experience. Now, I've always heard from, I guess it was Carlos's opinion and maybe Ferdinand Zagel's opinion. Oh, these people weren't experts. They did a lousy job at the test. It was just terrible. They're incompetent. And at the end of the test, a civil trial was going on. Attorneys for both sides in the civil trial were saying, the test proves our point of view, no, the test proves our point of view. So some were attributing this to vectors and competence. I see it differently. I think there's a fair amount of intelligence in the test.

There is enough information in the test to throw somebody off who doesn't know what the heck muzzle flash looks like. And this is the thing that really got me. They picked specifically pieces of debris, aluminum, glass, curved aluminum, and they lined them up in kind of a hopscotch pattern of eight foot squares. So the aluminum is here and the glass is here and the tin foil is here and the crushed glass is over here. And they were very careful with this debris, which doesn't at all mimic the conditions at Mount Carmel on that very windy, dusty morning, but they were very careful. They watered down the field and covered it with tarps the night before. And so when you had the test instrument, the Fleer, looking at that, I'd have to believe that the results at those

specific angles for that specific altitude probably were already known, known by who, whatever technical people with vast expertise laid out the debris field and see as an analyst, I look at things like organization versus randomness. I mean, when things are falling in the middle of this tank assault on April the 19th, they don't fall in specific patterns, but the debris tested was specifically patterned. And I think that there was a lot of preliminary research and measurement going on at Fort Hood by the test conductors. In other words, they did the whole test before announcing it and they had people in communication with their plane

and figured out how to make it look like that. Then they did it again and called it the test, sounds like. Well, yeah, they knew the proper imaging angles. And, you know, it was just very, there was a lot of intelligence behind that test. In the next segment, we'll consider, a multiple flash sequence. Special counsel experts believed that these multiple flashes were reflections from debris, while others averred that they were the infrared signatures of weapons

fire. The sequence shows multiple repetitive flashes along with one final bright flash. To the right of the flash positions is the Mount Carmel cafeteria. Here's the sequence. Note the position of the flashes. Note the direction of the long shadows in the image, from the large cylindrical tower at the bottom right, from nearby structures, and the tower length along the cafeteria roof. They point to the azimuth angle at which a solar reflection from flat debris will be captured, and it is nowhere near the position of this aircraft and its infrared sensor. To make the asmuth point more clear that the flashes at 1128 could not have come from flat debris

on the ground, it's useful to compare them to a known instance of glint which we've already seen. The blue arrows show the direction in which the camera is looking, and the red arrows show the position of the solar reflection azmuth for that particular time. While we were in proper position to see the sun glint from the post at 1054, we are not in position to see reflections from flat debris on flat ground at any time during this multiple flash sequence. As we've seen in a previous clip, reflective debris such as glass can be angled and aimed

toward a sensor to produce a multiple flash effect. debris were elevated and precisely positioned, its reflection azmuth wouldn't have to align exactly with the positions of shadows we've seen. But the trick is, to make this explanation work for the flashes at 1128, five debris surfaces must be exactly positioned. The Cox report considered several scenarios like this before dismissing the possibility as ridiculous. okay so that's barbara grant uh the first four clips there were from my interview of her and then the latter two from her show there so she's really taking into account all their explanations and showing why they couldn't be right and i could tell from your body language over there day that

you certainly agreed with and were impressed by her argument that they had set this up to get the result that they wanted oh yeah had to been like i said barbara knows her subject matter Yeah. And then the way she talks about, hey, look, this could be sunlight if the plane was here, not there. But the way that reflections were, you can just go off of the shadows about the way it would have to be lined up and so forth to work that way. And the repeated nature of the flashes in different places around the yard during the whole episode and the rest. So, and I urge everybody to, of course, check out that great film as well as the FLIR project. And so that's the thing. She really shows in detail in there. And you guys, you described this in great detail in the book. This is not an assault as well about the discrepancy in the length of the muzzle flash is accounted for by you guys test.

And so the way that they say, no way, it's not within the margin of error. Yes, it is too. It's only because they faked it. Simple as that. Yep. Yeah. Okay. So, next here then, that only tells us so much.

There is also the question of what all could be found in this story. For example, there was an expert in thermal imaging who had been retained by the House Government Reform Committee named Carlos Gigliotti. Can you tell us about him, please, Dave? I did not know a lot about Carlos. I visited him at his office a couple of times. We talked often on the phone. I can't even recall how we first got in touch. But he was officed in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.

And he was just fascinated by infrared. And this guy had at a time when we're talking, the hottest computers are IBM 386s, almost nobody remembers back to the point. He'd managed to make, I think, three of them work so that he could process infrared images side by side. And he could also look at visual, you know, regular videotape versus the infrared

and feed it into his computer and then sequence the two so they would be the same thing. And he had pictures all over his office of images that he'd made and things that he'd solved, problems that he'd solved. So it was just, he'd been in the Navy and then went out, I guess, into the private Fleer end. He was a rather exacting fellow.

I remember at one point, he said of the FBI's imager in their aircraft, heck, I had better equipment than that years ago. that must be it he he was a little disdainful the fact that they also used VHS he was using something better maybe that's where my memory of super VHS comes in he was using the super VHS and I think the idea here is that this would have been maybe the second generation dub off of the original tape this is the highest quality tape that anybody had was in his possession yeah and I mean you know upload updubbing it from a regular VHS to a super VHS is not going to help you right you're only going to get what was on the original one so I guess the implication here is he has a much higher resolution on the super VHS tape and then so all I really know about the guy is that he disputed Edward Allard and said no you're wrong it's at least twice as many gunshots as you've counted here allard said it was 62 and Gigliotti was at 130 and counting something yeah and then what happened to gigliotti well adard said he stopped counting

right i guess yeah at some point it was the principle of the thing right or something but i think it up to that proves the point did you ever ask him why he stopped counting that is kind of strange right he should have gone ahead and finish he was i i know that uh toward the end there we talked on the telephone fairly frequently and he faxed me a copy of a written report that he given, it was informal that he'd given to the House committee. And he also said that he had showed the

videotape to them both minority and majority staffers and that at certain points, in particular when he could point out the hatch to the tank was being open before someone climbed out, he said they looked like they were sucking on lemons.

And then the report outlined where all the gunshots were fire fired and everything and you know like I say he faxed me a copy well uh he was found dead in his office where apparently he often slept and uh apparently heart attack early age but his father had the same at the same age and they uh immediately apparently the police or whoever found him found a business card of one of the House staffers and they called up the House committee and the House Committee immediately disavowed all connection with them. They said he never gave us a

report. Well, I've got the faxed report. I know what was in it. He never did what we wanted and we were going to fire him anyway and basically don't listen to this guy. And, you know, I could think of no good reason to disavow an expert you hired and who has already made his report and lie about the fact that he has made that report. Obviously, the stuff he wanted, nobody wanted to hear about. Wow. On either side?

On either side. Can we have that report now? Well, I've got an image back at my office. Sure. Great. Let's post it. Okay. That's an interesting question is if you've got to deal with it, where does this go if it gets out and the public and gets publicized?

And, of course, it's got to have the media get friendly and start on or get honest to put this stuff out. What is what's the result if we put this stuff out here? And I have a good idea myself. Sure. What do you think? I think the result is exactly what you wouldn't want, whether you were at. a congressional Republican or a Democrat. Imparing faith in law enforcement,

federal law enforcement, and in the FBI and in the fact that they can do, they can injure us and get away with it. They can and do, yes, I agree. Whichever party you're in, if you're in the legislature, you don't want to have that message, get out. We're in there, that territory, key custodian ipso custodas.

Who protects us from our protectors? We hire police, we hire, we pay an army. What if it turns on us? Yeah, monopolies. They deliver lousy services for high prices. Who would have thought good, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay, so additional Fleer commentary.

Oh, let me... Go ahead. I just recalled in the lead plaintiff's attorney in the civil suit, now I forget his name, he told me that after Carlos died, the House committee staff met with Carlos' sister and himself,

the attorney, and that they were really pressing to get all of Carlos' data, exclusive possession of all of Carlos' data, and I believe they were threatening her with whatever charges of taking government property

or something like that. He said they were, these guys were really hot on laying hands on all of Carlos's infrared analysis and his images. So she gave him up? I don't know. I know I do recall him saying that you could tell she was Carlos's sister, meaning she was pretty stubborn. I mean, my answer to your question, what happens?

I think the worst case scenario for federal government employees of any description right is embarrassment. none of them are ever going to be held accountable for anything but that was what happened that's a clip that I left in my lesser folder and didn't include here because why but it's janet reno saying i'm very very embarrassed yeah and even ted coppel said you know because she also said i take full responsibility and he goes what does that even mean when you don't resign nothing happens to you that's not taking responsibility that's just saying worse what are you talking about. And everybody, it was a joke at the time. What do you mean you take responsibility? That would mean I quit. I'm out. But nobody took responsibility. Well, it still amazes me that there is no

general outrage about what happened. Now we have Gordon Ovelle, your guy. Yeah. And not only him, but I guess McNulty and the lot of, I don't know, had arranged with Texas instruments and with all different organizations that were experts in forward looking in for red to examine this and come to their own conclusions here and you know dave came out with novell and and they've stayed nearby i was really suspicious of novell i got to say i just he just sounded like he could be sounds like a very connected guy with an agenda of one sort or another right yeah but how connected i mean is there a connection here is he working with us to feed information to somebody is Is he trying to poison the whale?

I don't know. As long as it's true, you know, you got to make sure it's true, but yeah, very well could. Obviously, it comes with some agenda. Well, I mean, here's your introduction. This is Gordon, but you shouldn't believe everything that Jim Garrison said about him being involved in the Kennedy assassination. But otherwise, take him very seriously, you know, yeah.

And he's working on UFOs right now in a single source energy. And all these other things, he was involved in Watergate, but he didn't, he just planned things. He didn't actually do anything. By the way, here's a real high-quality copy of the Waco flare footage in case you guys are interested. Given to him by the head of the CIA, though we didn't hear that until later.

It's just amazing. Okay, so now this is actually its own little scandal, right, is all the other experts who said, I agree, but don't quote me on that, and this kind of thing, right? So we have Texas Instruments top infrared expert who agreed that it was gunfire but didn't want to be an expert witness in court.

We have another guy who was recommended by that same Texas Instrument employee who had retired as the director of T.I.'s Fleer operation. And this individual also agreed that the footage showed gunfire but would not testify. And Novell had a contact in New York who worked with 60 minutes. He provided them the story in the tape.

60 Minutes was interested, wanted a second opinion. So they reached out to Infrospection Institute in Vermont. And this part is featured in the rules of engagement, right? The Inferspection Institute said, oh, yeah, that's gunfire all right, but we don't want to be in your 60 Minutes episode. Yeah. Right? So in April 1996, 60 Minutes got their opinion.

the firm's expert confirmed Allard's assessment gunfire beyond any doubt. Quote, it was obvious to me on several occasions that there was gunfire or automatic weapons discharge seemingly fired toward the building from the outer perimeter. There were occasions on the video that seemed to appear as though people were entering, exiting, or being run over by an armored vehicle. I also observed firing discharges from the armored vehicle. Despite this evidence, that's unique, right? gunshots from the out of the vehicle ports themselves i didn't realize that was one of the accusations uh but end quote there i'm sorry so i also observed firing discharges from the armored vehicle end quote despite this evidence 60 minutes kill the story claiming it was unlikely to be a

career advanceer i'm not sure whose quote that was but that was their reason is that what they told you this was going to get us in trouble if we do it well not so much i mean there's code talk just oh well you know Yeah, we're going to cover something else. Again, conspiracy theory was, you know, that was a phrase that was being widely used at the time, still for a very long time. So anything that was outside the norm, and this had just taken off as a whack job, but that's from the very beginning with the plan of that first TV special on there, which the writer then disavowed after he realized he'd been had. they lied to and what really went on and several other writers

have done the same thing, but you don't hear about them. Right. Yep, the narrative is still all important, but we're building another one here. So tell me, do you know Maurice Cox? Don't know. Okay. Oh, yes. Okay, so

tell us about Maurice Cox, because Barbara Grant refers to him a couple times there when she says the Cox report. She's not talking about Christopher Cox, the Republican congressman of that era. No. She's talking about this guy, Maurice Cox. So who's that? Now to tell you truth, after 20 years, I'm having trouble recollecting, but he did do his own report on the Waco flashes. But now it's, I'm hard put to remember.

I put you on the spot there. So he was a retired intelligence analyst, a mathematician who worked on military satellites, and he's featured in a new revelation. And he had written a report. Was he the one that? There was a gentleman who gave us an analysis of the aerial photos and specifically was finding in that jumbled wreckage images of human beings moving around that is not on the fleer tape but the aerial photos.

That may have been the same fellow. I don't know. He worked with the National Reconnaissance Office. All right. So I think if you go through the whole list, there are a couple of, well, this would be the case with almost all of these organizations, that they're all going to be very close to governments. But you have, I think it's something like seven out of ten agreed that there's gunfire and then three say, I don't know what you're talking about. No, you just, that's very important because that is one of the things that Stone from Harvard said, you know, he'd, they hired him. to come back with a report based on the fact that he's a psychiatrist and a lawyer

talking about how out of touch or wacko or whatever the Davidians were and he said well I found out that it's the FBI guys that are there that those are the guys and he was told well your services will never again be required in Washington and these guys were talking about that was the problem as many of them is their existence their livelihood depends on a government paycheck because that's who they work for and if they step out of line and start doing something that Uncle does

it like, yeah, the checks are going to stop. Okay, so this is Mike McNulty. I think people need to ask the question today. Well, why is Waco important today April 18th, 2007? Well, the

answer to that question is found in the second film, Waco, a new revelation. And I think the question is raised about two-thirds of the way through when we discover that people in the White House were actually calling with shots that day. Again, not to defend her, as we've all disclaimed repeatedly in this thing, but they really scapegoated Janet Reno for this,

who, after all, was the idiot lady that they backed into the corner and essentially forced to sign on the job line. Sure, she's the fall guy. they could get. Yeah. And they, to this day, say Waco and people who are good on Waco will go, oh, that Janet Reno. But you know what? Jana Rino's not the boss of the Delta Force.

Is she, Dave? Let's see. Well, Delta Force would be Department of Defense. That's right. Yeah, that's exactly right. And in fact, in the Clinton years, the structure was Delta and the top tier special operations were even outside of the chain of command of Secretary of Defense. I thought it was the Arkansas Mafia.

Yeah, a little bit of that, yeah. So, you know, Delta Force answers directly to the President of the United States. And you can infer that and deduce that, but also we know that because it came out in a lawsuit by judicial watch on the issue of Bill Clinton and when they sued to find out about all of his connections with this guy, James Riyadh, who was the Chinese Indonesian banker who paid for his reelection in 19. 1996 and whose right-hand man got the job issuing, John Wong was his name, got the job issuing missile technology transfer licenses in the Commerce Department. And when they sued about that, Waco came up. And this hilariously is a clip of Britt Hume asking, I'm sorry, was it Carl Cameron? I forget about it. Now, David, the president said something about Waco in this interview, correct?

That seems to have some people interested. What's that all about? Well, Brett, James Riotti was at the White House in April the 19th, 1993, the day that the Branch Davidian compound in Waco burned to the ground. Mr. Clinton, in talking about that day to investigators, suggested the tragic outcome wasn't his fault, though he does take some responsibility. Mr. Clinton testified, quote, I gave end to the people in the Justice Department who were pleading to go in early, and I felt personally responsible for what happened, and I still do. I made a terrible mistake. Officials at the Justice Department were caught by surprise. Which, by the way, you know, this is a Fox TV news segment. The guy's in a real hurry, and this is a breathless thing.

But that's really important what he just said there, if you take that for a moment. And we're taking the time here. The president said there was a huge mistake. He gave in to the Justice Department that we're pushing so hard. And he looks back on it in horror, whatever, whatever. I'm paraphrasing poorly. But, and Bill Clinton, he doesn't really care about other people. but for him to even go that far

making an admission like that even trying to look good to the people in the room or whatever it was his motivation at the time goes to show that essentially even from that station in the government the official story is that that was bad the official story is not that no those people were bad and they deserved it and they did it to themselves

and this and that and whatever the official story is that the president of United States says he told them go ahead and crash your tanks into these people's house and fill it with poison gas, which one way or another led to that fire and nobody here

thinks it was a suicide. But even if it was somehow accidental like McNulty's theory with a muzzle flash or a lantern turned over, something clearly the assault that morning led to the destruction. And here's the President of the United States and the guy's quoting it,

but he's obviously reading in a hurry, but I think that's actually worth maybe taking a listen to a second time real quick here this statement from the president of the United States then the tragic outcome wasn't his fault though he does take some responsibility mr. Clinton testified quote I gave in to the people in the Justice Department who were pleading to go in early and I felt personally responsible for what happened and I still do I made a terrible mistake officials at the Justice Department were caught by surprise by the

president's statement they say that Attorney General Reno and Webster Hubble a longtime Clinton friend who was in charge of the Waco standoff coming into an end consulted with the president but didn't have to twist any arms. They say that they consulted with the president merely to apprise him with the situation but not to get his permission. They suggest that Mr. Clinton's suggestion

that he gave in to the people who wanted to go in early simply not accurate. David, thank you very much. Coming up next, Bill Crystal on Dick Cheney. Be right back. Ha! I love that.

The Dick Cheney and Bill Crystal bit at the end there. So, yeah, a couple things there so they dispute it and they say well they're kind of in a way going no we were the ones who decided not him but really what they're disputing in a way they're also contradicting themselves and saying well we didn't have to twist his arm he gave us permission so they're like admitting that he gave them permission but also saying kind of in a way that they did it on their own authority somehow yeah amusing the attorney general is saying that the president is lying when he says that he yeah exactly he did it not her uh but again now look you could have a situation

where general shoemaker says go ahead boys on his own authority but not likely the most absolute you know conclusion has to be there that part of what bill clinton is talking about in that admission is he gave orders to the army combat applications group delta force to help the FBI hostage rescue team finish those people off yeah well you all wanted it finished it was just taking up you know as we said it was on television 24-7 on CNN and that's about all there was at the time yeah everybody was watching it and we were divided into those who wanted us to everybody in there to be snuffed out and those who were more like in line with us yeah so here comes uh jean cullen he was a former CIA officer at the time.

And, well, you know what? In fact, before I play that clip, we need to discuss this. It shouldn't go without saying people maybe don't know. After the Civil War, Congress passed what's called the Posse Comitatis Act. And there's an Insurrection Act as well, that these have very strict rules about when the military can be used against American citizens or for policing, for backing up. Well, a war on drugs chipped away at some of this, didn't it? Yeah, it did.

That's where they allowed military personnel to essentially not get involved in law enforcement as such, but they could do things like at Wago, fly the helicopters, train the people, give them material assistance, that sort of thing. Okay, so Shoemaker is the head of Delta at the time, and he's got Boykin under him, I guess, is the commander on the ground there. and again officially they all admit that these guys were observers in that although officially yeah um again in the ranks of things hr t are at least second tier special operations forces but probably maybe are more considered like third tier since they're under the fbi and the delta force are would be you know considered their bigger brothers

in this situation probably right if you guys are going to be driving tanks around we're going to be helping you do it right you're going to be shooting at these people we're going to make sure nobody gets a way to tell the tail yeah well FBI guys said they had people who were perfectly qualified to run the tanks

and do all the equipment which makes sense well they certainly would be not as well trained as Delta but as we definitely discuss they are well they all highly trained special operations forces and now and we know too right from what documents that they've released or admissions that they've made that the delta operators were wearing fbi jackets so essentially in disguise as civilian employees there so boy why do you think that might be sorry but

you know um and now oh and this is so important from the book judge smith ordered that all federal agencies turn over everything they have to the court. The military handed over 30,000 documents, which one day when I win the lottery, I'm going to hire somebody to go through that. And then 7,000 pages were regarded as classified. Yep. Yep. Now, I wonder if maybe that's the kind of thing that we could foyer again and again and see if maybe we can get some of those redactions lifted and some of those documents out. What do you think about that? That's an interesting idea. Because, man, isn't that the crux of all of this is what always common. combat applications group doing there.

Yep. And some of the documents they did disclose were declassified. I mean, they were marked with top secret, no foreign, which means they cannot be shared even with foreign officers, even ones allied to us. And specat, which is special category, which is higher than or in addition to top secret. so a number of these things that were declassified were originally very highly classified and this is dealing with a domestic law enforcement operation

okay so here's Gene Cullen he's a former CIA officer and he was involved in a lot of the discussion and planning that was taking place at Fort Hood and these clips, I'm pretty sure all of them come from Waco, a New Revelation. And by the way, in fact, let me fast forward here a little bit, as long as I'm talking about this, that we have the note here where I thought we did. Yes, we do.

It was disputed for a minute. The government tried to say that, oh, Gene Cullen's no CIA officer. He's only just something, I don't know, bookkeeper or something. Not true. And there's an article at salon.com, which people probably don't know this, but a very long time ago, they ran serious pieces, including something by Karen Katowski and others. And, of course, the thing is just an entirely different, you know, organization than it once was. And anyway, so there's an article at Salon that's called Was Army Active at Waco, ex-CIA man says elite commandos took part. Delta team at Waco

that's sort of the sub headline Delta team at Waco question mark Salon.com anybody can Google that we'll have it in the show notes of course here and they went and did their own independent journalism and got full confirmation about Gene Cullen's status as a CIO officer

and that he was exactly who he claimed to be as he presented himself to McNulty and the team that made a new revelation here there's just no question that what they're involved But, well, so here Gene Cullen verifies that these orders came from Bill Clinton all right. It was discussed at the meeting that the senior levels of the Clinton administration had authorized Delta to be deployed to Waco, Texas, and not just two or three people deployed there, but enough people there to get the job done.

So he knew that that order had come from the White House, and then here he further explains that. In mid-March, 1993, I attended a senior. executive staff meeting at CIA headquarters. And it involved senior agency management along with the liaison officers from the U.S. military, in particular from Delta Group. The briefing centered on Delta's operations in Waco, Texas. Originally I was told that there was just going to be one or two Delta personnel there as observers, but during the briefing it was mentioned that there was over 10 Delta

operators at Waco, Texas, and they were not there merely. as observers, but would be participating in any type of operational or tactical effort against the Branch Divideans. Now, I'm sorry, this might be redundant from that, but let's see. Originally, I was told that there was just going to be one or two Delta personnel there as observers, but during the briefing, it was mentioned that there was over 10 Delta operators at Waco, Texas, and they were not there merely as observers, but would be participating in any type of operational or tactical effort against the branch division.

Okay. And now, this is the most important quote from Gene Cull on the CIA officer. Approximately a year after the Waco incident, I was deployed overseas in Europe and I had the chance to meet some of the Delta operators that I had been on previous assignments. They had told me on several different occasions during my meetings with them in Europe that not only were they forwardly deployed at Waco, Texas, but they were actually involved in a gunfight with the branched Divideons. There you go.

So that's hearsay, but credible testimony by him that certainly that's its firsthand testimony that they told him that, and you can take that part as true. Yep. And then so the question is whether they were lying or not, I don't have any reason to doubt I'm making a concession like that

when that's his suspicion anyway, right? It fits perfectly with, and everything else. Yeah. No question. Okay. And also there's a also question about the SAS in there too. You think that they were shooting that day?

Absolutely. I was, the film, when we showed the film in London at the Contemporary Arts Museum, which is down from Buckingham Palace, front row, I think we had five or six guys

who were obviously British military. You know, the crossmen, they just, and they were pissed off that we were there showing the film. They were, and said they got what they deserve. We gave them what they deserved, was the phrase.

And I said, does that mean you were, you guys were involved? He said, just gave me that look that tells you the book. So I asked him, you beat the clock? You know what that means. Go ahead. Oh, at Hereford, they have a clock.

What's Hereford? Hereford is where that's the essay. as headquarters, Hereford, England. And there's a clock on a big plent pedestal. And if you go out in an operation and get killed, they put your name on the clock. So on the clock face. So if you go on an operation and don't get killed, they say, well, you beat the clock, mate. And that's what they said to you?

Or that's what you said to them and they wouldn't touch it? Yeah. The latter. You know, I said, you beat the clock. And they liked that. They responded that way. Oh, yeah, because not many people know that. But they didn't answer you out loud, but they just smirked a lot, is what you're saying?

In my British cousins say, it's the look that tells the book. And yeah, and they were, and they obviously were cranked up about it, otherwise they wouldn't have been there. I mean, they're watching the film. the academics I mentioned before and there were a number of them were angry about the possibility that they were there about this and took this to the British Home Office

and we're talking about professors at London School of Economics, Oxford and Cambridge, what not, they all, no inch, no dice. Catherine Wessinger, I believe, the academic who was at a different school then.

Where is she down in New Orleans? Yes, Laiola of New Orleans. Okay. She was, you know, she knows all the people and there are, but they were pissed off

about this and, I tried to track her down and didn't work. I just didn't have the time to do it. Okay. Now, so we do have a clip also Stephen Barry, who's former special forces

and he essentially, you know, is a secondary source verifying what Gene Cullen said there about delta but i did talk to some combat applications group guys and they did confirm that yes portions of b squadron were there pulling triggers pulling triggers so that's double hearsay and pretty good from some guys who are you know seriously quotable about that now um and i don't think that was

ever refuted i mean i think you know lee hancock in the dallas morning news said yeah but no documents that prove that, but what, they didn't write down that the Delta Force was in the back helping machine gun the people? Well, I'm surprised by that, Lee. I'm surprised as you are. I got a call back when we did this, the film, from

Seymour Hirsch. Tell me his story. And well, he was, he wanted proof about all these things, and he says, do you have documents? And a lot of these things don't have documents. You know, when you go in and get, gather, and listen to people,

It's not written down. They don't put it on a billboard. And everybody knows that. And he, of all people, ought to know that. Now, Hirsch is the one that exposed the Mili massacre. You know, hell of a lot of other things. And other things. And he's the center piece right now about the who blew up the pipeline,

up in the gas pipeline from Russia into Germany and probably some other things. But he's... You know, you could have given him enough to go. one, that's for sure. If he wanted to crack the case, he's the kind of guy who could get some CIA types to leak him, you know, Gordon Novell, and then some worth, you know?

Well, maybe, but I, my sense, what I got from him was he was looking for a way to kibosh it. He wanted to do, he, I, no, I don't know. I don't trust the guy, really. Yeah, he's all right. Okay, you say so. he's kind of a mean old crank but I love him

all right so I think here we play Bovard so at the time that of the final federal assault at Waco feds were saying well you know they they had this excuse and they had that excuse flash forward two years later after the Oklahoma City bombing and after there was more pressure on the Justice Department to provide answers Janet Reno gave a speech in front of in front of a bunch of federal prosecutors,

and she announced that the first and foremost reason for that final FBI assault was that law enforcement agents on the ground concluded that the perimeter had become unstable and posed a risk that individual sympathetic to Koresh were threatening to take matters in their own hands and basically attack the federal agents from all sides. There was no evidence of this. She was just pulling that out of her,

ear. And it was completely brazen, and she would say that. But like everything else that she made up, she got away with it. And it's such an obvious like, because obviously they would just arrest anybody that they thought was, what, the Michigan militia was going to come down there and go to war? Come on. Yep. Yeah. Well, and it was, this was the same speech in which Janet Reno talking to federal prosecutors was very emphatic that it is unfathed. it is unreasonable, it is a lie to spread the poison that the government was responsible at Waco for the murder of innocence. This was their pushback in 1995, absolute total self-exoneration. Yeah, ain't that always the way? Now, so there's a colonel of something that he's referring to

there where this isn't, the lie isn't entirely made up out of whole cloth by Reno, as he said, come out of her ear but it was a lie in other words she doubled it but i think what they were really saying in the first place is this came from the fbi i and you talk about this in your book dave that this is part of the meeting with the delta force commanders shoemaker and boykin in their meeting with hr t and with reno saying where for exactly whatever purpose delta is saying that we're getting to the point where the HRT is going to have to be pulled back and retrained, get some R&R and refreshed and all this kind of thing. And the FBI is denying it, right? And they're saying, that's not true. We're doing just fine. And so that would seem to undercut her reasoning that like, oh, yeah,

no, that was the, so I guess part of what I'm stuttering here is that by losing control of the perimeter doesn't necessarily imply that any militia is coming. But it just means that, it's been seven weeks some of these guys need to take a break and we decided that any less than 1,000 men on scene is not enough to secure it so therefore if we had to send 25 guys home then it would be hell breaking out you know what i mean again our position not anything like the truth but yep yeah just uh phrase it that way you know they they're perishable skills are declining Well, I mean, she's a new attorney general. Does she know anything about their perishable skills?

No, she has to take the word of the guy who's advising her. And this is essentially, I guess, am I right? Like, is your interpretation that the Delta Force was kind of bringing this up? Like, hey, these HRT guys maybe need to be pulled back. And the HRT guys were saying that this is why we need to hurry. If there's a problem at all, there's no problem, we're fine. But if there's a problem at all, this is why we need to go now, not later. Is that essentially right?

Yeah, my memory of that is unclear. Okay. Yeah, I'm sorry. I know the issue came up and someone told her that, yes, their skills are declining. And Koresh is beating little kids and I forget what the third one was. Well, in the other order is this is the way you write it in the book, Dave, is the first one, was the talks are going nowhere oh yeah there's no progress at all and then the second one was he's beating up the baby so if you won't let us stop the beating of the babies you're a beating of the

baby's accomplice kind of an attitude the way they frame that and then the third one was this sort of semi dispute about the as you put the quoting there the perishable skills of the hr t guys on scene there so possibly one interpretation could have been if Reno had had any courage at all, it could have been. Well, geez, if you guys are so strong out on this thing, maybe we should turn it over to the Texas Rangers and let you guys go to Hawaii for a week instead of killing all these people. But instead, I guess she decided to take it that like, well, I guess this is why we need to go now, not later. And I guess it's pretty easy to imagine, right, guys, that if we already discussed this, but it kind of goes back

to this, I guess, that they had decided on March 25th we're doing this gas attack. Now they're refitting the combat engineering vehicles with new equipment including these custom booms with the wire guy, a wire

thing you got to pull to deploy the gas and all this custom Mr. Wizard's World stuff, right? Anyway, the point being just that they had so much invested in the plan, but it took weeks to get it ready.

It took almost a month to get everything ready to do the gas attack. Now you're telling me you have this breakthrough on the 14th of April that Koresh is going to write the seven seals and come out and everything's going to be okay. Not before we guess that some bitch it's not.

It's already just... You can totally put yourself in their position that we are not putting this CS powder back where we found it. Yeah. You know what I mean? We have it now and we're going to something fun with it, no matter what. As I've said, how the bureaucrat controls his political superiors is by controlling the knowledge

of options and of information. They made sure she knew the only option conceivable was to gas them, and instead of telling her about Professor Tabor and his comrades' breakthrough with the negotiation, they just left that out. There's no hope for the negotiations and didn't mention that the dividends were about to run out of water. So you cut out, and then you start inventing things like Koresh was beating up babies when, in fact, you could barely stand at that point.

So, yeah, you control the information, you give her false information, you suppress the true information, and say essentially there are two alternatives, wait forever and spray the gas. Yeah. That's how you control a population, too. We just look at the news organizations. surprised. Let's skip. Yep. Absolutely right. The public square.

Now, 76 branched of idioms were killed on April the 19th. 22 children, 54 adults, and two trauma-born children. That is, babies that, I guess you would have said they just died, you know, with their mothers, but for some reason from the fire that induced labor, and so the babies were born on fire and died that way. it's terrible 76 people there and of course

we'll have in the notes here the full list of the names for everyone I'm not going to sit and read them all I read them all from the 28th but I think it's going to try people's patients to just do the list here but I'll do respect to them and so

that brings us to the aftermath and I guess I don't really know like a great place where this fits I think probably I'll end up keeping it but I'm not sure if this is I'm not sure how useful it is but man I don't know

we'll discuss it after I play it here this is David Tibido who survived the fire on the 19th who you heard my clip from me interviewing him back in 99 and then from just this last April here and this is him talking about his feelings about the situation now at the end of the day when i'm a i used to be angry completely at the government for what they did especially after being going through the psychops

and going through everything okay then even after you know and then time goes by years go by more books more research i get to see new things and now i'm i'm still far more angry at the government because those people were alive before they were gassed, before power techniques were used in the building, before everything that happened happened. But now I find that there's a percentage of my anger that is reserved for David. And it almost seems like if you study historically

any good religious movement, it's always some person, some man, that ends up screwing it up because of his lust for power and getting the girls and getting the money and getting everything, and then it's more, more, more, and more. And it always seems to take this same thing.

You can look at the prophets of old. You can look at the kings of old. King David himself made those mistakes over and over again. It doesn't matter how many wives you have. It doesn't matter how much money he got. More, more, more. It's just this greed and this megalomania that seems to seep in. And it's all of them.

They all do it. They all fall in the same thing. Warren Chaffes, David Koresh. whoever you know and so I had an experience of going out to see David Koresh's grave site in Tyler I had never done that and I didn't know what I was going to say or what I was going to think and then I saw the grave and I saw his name and I was very angry at him for his role in it and I scream and yelled for a little while as I do scream and yell at God all the time and when I see the FBI lying I scream and yell at the FBI lying I scream and yell at the

FBI screaming yell at the ATF. It's what an angry middle-aged man does, I guess. But definitely there was a, no, it was interesting to see that shift in anger. Because definitely both sides were wrong. Yeah.

He was, David wasn't, well, people say I'm defending David Koresh. I don't look at it as defending David Karrasch. I look at it as as, as, as, as, I knew someone who everybody was one of the most hated men ever, but I knew I saw a lot of good in that person as well. I saw him do things for people. I saw him give musicians bases when they didn't have it.

I saw him give people money when they needed. I saw him do a lot of other things. He wasn't just this one-dimensional demon that everyone has made him out to be. So it's not sticking up for him. that's not entirely the truth. He was a very complicated individual. He understood scripture from genesis to Revelation in a way that it came alive and you could see it. I think many people who were seeking would easily have wanted to stay there to learn more from David

because of the knowledge that he had of the scripture, how complete it was. And it's something that, you know, I don't, I don't, I think a lot of people would have listened he just he's you know he screwed it up he did a lot of damage that's where that's where it comes down to at the end of the day for me hurt people hurt people as an old saying david crashed an incredible amount of damage to people you know i think uh you know it doesn't take away a thing from what we've learned about these military rounds or about the flare footage or any of that but he felt like he wanted to have his say about that and it seems important enough as a part of the story that yeah this guy's not necessarily the best shepherd if you're

one of his sheep that's for sure well um it's a very important i thought he made a very good point about uh historically and just go back and find the guys who started various movements that wind up getting burned at the stake or whatever it is and uh they fit into a pattern it's probably the primary motive for being a great man in the first place is having access to women that's the deal you know and of course you get also like david said well it's more money doesn't matter more women doesn't matter uh who knows if i mean it's it's big universe maybe god did tell him to do this is we we don't we don't know or maybe he sincerely believed a hell of a lot of it anyway i think that's probably true oh i think

he did. Yeah, I think he did. But you start with the Grecian Fraga, and do you believe in God? Do you believe in God? Do you believe and you try to get the quick answer?

So, I mean, look, we had a short discussion about this yesterday before we started, Dan, about responsibility is a quality and not a quantity. So you can divide it up however the hell you feel like, man.

It's a matter of opinion. So Bill Clinton can be 100% responsible for every single thing that every one of those government employees did on his watch under his command. He could have ordered the end of that at any time. How do I know? Because if it was me, I could have and would have. Texas Rangers, you guys take care of this. Feds leave the state. That's it.

Get it done that at any time. He didn't do it. Janet Reno could have said, what? Put poison gas on little kids because of some reason. get the fuck out of my office right now and that could have been the end of that I like being attorney general dude I'm kicking people's asses already

you know you think you're a big tough guy she's a little bit him and her sort of pronouns herself dude she could could you know could have stood up for herself and her office and did not right and then the same thing for Dick Rogers oh now you want fire trucks you a son of a bitch

right and same thing for Jeff Jamar all of these people are 100 percent responsible each one of those delta force operators and in general shoemaker and colonel boykin and all of their men responsible for murdering those people and david koresh being responsible for his part in this doesn't take away from any part of that at all they can all divvy up that responsibility they can all be however you like it doesn't have to add up to a hundred whatsoever you know there's a lot of what went wrong here and quite contrary

to John Danforth this is misdeeds all over the damned place and you can tell about the lies how purposeful it all was people want to talk about mistakes were made and misjudgments and maybe a Monday morning

quarterback might know better but at the time we were doing our best bullshit if that's your best you're a serial killer mass murderer good at that so and so yeah so anyway let David Tibido damn David Koresh

that's what he needs to do that's good with me but now back to the cops so they just bulldoze the crime scene Dan is that right they just came in destroyed the thing poor bleach all over the place what is this you document this in your film sure they wanted to destroying all the evidence that's plainly what it is

but now so what's the legality here guys because the Texas Rangers own that crime scene at some point, but how long does that take to actually kick in? Days? Well, I don't know they ever actually own it. I mean, it belongs to the Davidian church, however. No, but I mean, who has jurisdiction

there? Sorry, as a figure's speech, the Texas Rangers at some point, in other words, the siege itself is operated by Uncle Sam in the form of Jeff Jamar, right? And Larry Potts and the guys, President Clinton. But at some point after the fire, control over the crime scene and the evidence collection and everything

goes to the Rangers, right? Well, does it really? I mean, that's the FBI has tremendous power and I don't know what all the federal laws are. I can tell you, my memory is that the Texas Rangers took it over, but they were first commissioned as special deputy marshals, I believe. Okay. So back to the federal side.

under the federal courts at that point then? Well, yeah. I mean, if they're bringing criminal prosecutions, it's going to be federal. And what was interesting was there's something in the Texas law or Texas Constitution that says that a state employee cannot simultaneously be a federal employee. But I gather nobody figured that out until after these events. But back when I was requesting the records for Mike McNulty, that was, yeah, There was requested Rangers, Rangers said we were special federal marshals, so talk to the Marshal Service, talked to the Marshal Service, they sent us back to the deputies.

You know, everybody was, these guys were working for somebody else at the moment they did it. Yep. The feds had the big foot there. They could exercise whatever power they wanted. And I, and just Dave says, I mean, I, I, I think. think it's probably a law there that it lets them do that uh it takes it out of the hands of the locals i'm sorry for scoffing i'm just picked i get the image in my head from the film uh you guys show i guess it's still pictures that you show in the film of these FBI agents standing around

with these bottles of chlorox bleach which are all red white and blue logos you know sitting there and i'm going i think i remember i believe unless i'm making it up but i don't think so um that at the debut the premiere of your film as it played in austin in 1997 i think that the audience was basically everyone stopped to talk to each other for a second look at all the got in chlorox bleach look at the bottles of bleach what am i looking at your frame scene with bottles of bleach well you got to what in the world is that well i think what the pro the deal here is that the physical evidence basically backed the davidian story they were worried that that was the case. Especially the, especially those missing front doors. I mean, that's... Only one was missing. Oh, the critical one with the bullet holes, yes. Yeah, the one with all the bullet holes pointing inward that the Divideans told them

proved that they were innocent. That's the half that vanished. The other half they found. Right. Well, that ascended into heaven and now rests up on the... I think you show in rules of engagement a still picture of a troll. with what looks like a door in the back of it, a federal could be one of those white doors right about the same color and size that would be an interesting

freedom of information to where's the door because I think that's probably been made and they claim it I'm sure it does not exist anywhere in time and space now but that's clearly what they're doing and by the way

call back to earlier in our program right where we're talking about how first of all the Davidians as you put it, Dave, I believe, we're taunting the feds during the negotiation phone calls. We got that door, and so you

guys are screwed at the end of the day, truth is on our side and ha-ha for you, right? And then we also have their lawyers, Dick DeGaron and Jack Zimmerman, who clearly have a conflict of interest, but at the same time also, we're not liars, and you can tell, and people, again, watch

the film, it's in Rules of Engagement. Both of them address this under oath before the U.S. Congress and you tell me they're lying. Give me a break. Both of them are telling the truth. Dick DeGaron says look, I know from a bullet hole. I think he says he's a hunter. He grew up hunting.

He says these are incoming bullet holes. And then as we talked about Jack Zimmerman, the other lawyer who I guess is what, Steve Schneider's lawyer? Yeah, I believe so. He says, again, I'm a Marine Corps captain. That's an incoming round. So that's the front door that we're

talking about here. And they're saying that this front door is riddled with incoming bullet holes and now that the fire is over and the feds come and do their trophy pictures and all of this kind of thing the door goes missing just half the door

just the half the door with evidence the right hand door if you're looking at that's why that story earlier on somebody one of the ATF guys says he the bullets were coming from the inside and he could see the stuffing from the end central that's baloney you know it's possible that

some of the rounds that the Davidians might have fired back through the door I don't know why it's impossible but I don't think you know I don't think Jack Zimmerman ever said none of those holes were outgoing rounds what he did say was I saw in coming round

no he said the as I recall he says the I looked at that door and the bullet holes were punched in and DeGaron said the same thing so in other words implying at least the word all well they said they used the trade punched in, which is from the outside. But more importantly, they, the holes, meaning all the holes, they weren't making

exceptions. They didn't allow for exceptions in the way that they phrased it anyway. Well, I don't know if we counted all the holes. Well, it's interesting, because we played that clip of the ATF agent, and it's possible he was just outright deliberately turning the truth inside out and lying about that to cover for that. Well, that's the thing here you have the government turning all the truth inside out to back its position.

And it's just very obvious, the more that you look at it, the more that it doesn't hold. So now, let's talk about illegal firearms here, because we talked about this before, but they made a big deal certainly after, and later we'll get to the trial and just to hopefully not too long from now, but at the congressional hearing and so forth and in the popular telling by the FBI, that, look, we found all these illegal weapons. And I believe at the congressional hearing, they held up what looks like an AK-47, except that not every rifle that looks like an AK-47 is an AK-47. Of course. Isn't that right?

Yep. The true AK-47 is full automatic. The semi-automatic versions are commonly known as AKS, from the outside the look almost exactly the same. And so if somebody holds it up out of hearing and tells you this is an AK-47, you might not have ever heard of an SKS or an AKS or whatever the hell before. And you go, oh, it looks like an AK-47 to me.

I've seen movies. Well, of course, keep in mind that the workings of the rifle are one thing. What you're seeing, like the pistol grip and all that, it can be taken off. And that was, points been made many, many times. The SKS has a, basically, you feed it at 10, rounds through the magazine to the top it does not have a detachable magazine but somebody later

on they have been made they do have detachable magazines and an AK-47 magazine will fit in that's one that I think was being talked about banning in California but it's so it's you know it's old it's anyway the point really here is do we have any independent confirmation that the branch devidians had fully automatic rifles other than that 10 seconds or less of audio that we spoke of before from the first day? So far as I know, that's it. Now, they talk about that a lot, and they claim that a lot. And I guess it's possible that maybe just through Auto Sears,

I mean, we talked before about my Army buddy. He sent me a diagram about what it takes to turn an AR-15 into an M-16. It's five parts plus a swapped one and all there. five parts swapped out plus a whole new part that was what it was and so for them to do all of that during the siege with you know whatever equipment that they're you know likely to have in there and in fact this is a clip i didn't play i don't have but that paul fadda talked about that there was some kind of machine shop there but there was no one who was expert enough to do that kind of a conversion we talked before right about the auto seer is sort of a the ghetto conversion

kit for an AR, right, that makes it fall. It could have been that there was some of that, if that's what they mean by it. But the point being that they never really demonstrated it. It's just the same way as they say, you know, an assault rifle or, sorry,

they say assault weapon implying that they mean assault rifle when assault rifle means fully automatic. An assault weapon means weapon that looks sort of like a fully automatic to a Democrat. Right. And so it has essentially lost its true definition.

Well, that's what Josh Sugerman, who's the guy who popularized the assault weapon phrase allows me. He's an activist in Washington, and this goes back to the 1990s, late to 1980s. He says anything that looks like a machine gun in people's popular mind, they both think is a machine gun. And he said, we're going to play on that. And it works. And it's part of the popularity of AR-15s, and it's part of the reason people are so terrified of them, too. They look like M-16s, which are the Army's cool gun from the wars, right? But I think if they'd had automatic weapons, they'd have been using them,

and I don't, I, you've heard a lot of stuff, and this is just baloney. But I guess the most important part is it's not been demonstrated, so there's probably a reason for that is because they can't demonstrate it. Well, they, right? Because otherwise they could say, you know what, we turned it over to the experts at guns and ammo magazine and they took the thing apart or they fired it on their range and they confirmed it's full auto all right. But we don't have anything like that. They could have turned it over to anybody. It doesn't have to be guns and ammo.

I don't have to be any independent expert on fire arms. As I recall at the end here, there was a rifle that was shown that supposedly had been converted in my memory. I think it was an AK look like. but I've had ATF people in my presence say we can take anything back to there and put some lube on it and cause it to fire two shots with one trigger pull and that's enough to charge somebody with possession of a machine gun

I mean these are really nefarious laws and do they ever display a 50 caliber barrett? Yeah at the trial there were two of them I believe Okay. So they did have those. But people still are told that they had 50 caliber machine guns. Which they did not. That's a separate thing.

Oh, completely separate. Yeah. Okay. But again, most, you know, this, all this stuff only works because most people today don't know squat about firearms. Whereas in an earlier generation, say the World War II guys that came back over or Vietnam or Korea would have. have a better understanding of that. So who wants to talk about the bodies in the refrigerated truck? Not before dinner.

I can do it, yeah. Well, after the fire and the deaths, the dividing bodies were stored in a refrigerated truck, which was sort of like an emergency addition to the local morgue. because, you know, it's a small city and all of a sudden you've got 70-odd corpses. And somehow mysteriously, someone, as I recall, unplug the refrigeration mechanism. In any event, the bodies, by the time it was discovered, the bodies had become essentially skeletons and mush.

How convenient. Yes. Accidents happened. After cleaning up the crime scene with bleach and whatever and the bodies disappear. That was, who is the corner was Pierwani? Yes, I believe. You know, he was the Tarrant County guy. And they strong-armed him and took his assistance video footage and never gave it back.

That's another part of the movie. Now, here's a clip of Frederick Whitehurst from an interview that I conducted with him in 2004. and I asked him about, and he's the narrator of Waco New Revelation, and he was the FBI Crime Lab whistleblower on the case of Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, and one other thing I can't remember anymore, whether it was Cobar Towers or Flight 800 or whatever it was from back then. I'm sorry.

But anyway, on Waco and Oklahoma City. Now, when we talked, we mostly talked about how they faked all the, just made up the ammonium nitrate. evidence from Oklahoma and all of that was part of the discussion in my original question I asked him about Waco he never really answered and I'm an idiot and I didn't follow up and I think I do have a second interview of Whitehurst so maybe we talked about Waco on that one but I didn't get a chance to review it but anyway even though he didn't specifically address Waco I think that you know this part of the interview of Whitehurst is still you know relevant to our discussion here

Well, and, you know, I think maybe we should explain to people your background a little bit. If they're not familiar with the name, Dr. Frederick Whitehurst, you came out publicly in 1997 about serious problems in the crime lab in other major cases as well as the Oklahoma City bombing, correct? Yes, that's correct. And what was it that made you come out public at that time? Actually, I had issues with the FBI crime lab the day I walked in the area in which I was working was in. pigsty, from the trace analysis point of view, you might have been willing to eat eggs off the floor because it would have appeared to be that clean. But when you're looking for materials that you can't even see, that you have to have highly

sophisticated instruments to find, and there's dust bunnies in the corner, and there's a public thoroughfare going through where, you know, people in the FBI building could go through and tours and whatever. There's various insundry things going on like folks rewriting your reports without your knowledge or authorization or whatever. And that happened to you? Yes. Those things are troubling.

That's troubling to me that I have a doctorate in chemistry and a fellow with a degree in political science who has no scientific training or expertise at all can for five years rewrite my reports about my knowledge or authorization. Did you not find out about this until the end of the five years or you kind of you found out halfway through? was about 1993 that that came out. I mean, in that particular situation, the technician of mine had carried some stuff over to the fellow. The guy said, I don't care what he wrote, I'm going to fix it anyhow. Well, that was astonishing. I just went to all my reports

that had written for him and found out he altered them all. And, you know, those were not the only issues. There were people testifying beyond their areas of expertise. The lab was not an accredited lab. It's never been audited in. If the FBI has anything to do with, with it then there will be an independent audit of the lab, but I'm afraid that's going to change. Well, that's quite surprising. I hear you say it's not even audited. I thought that the FBI, I mean, again, this is, I'm sure just the public relations on TV, but the FBI is always referred to as the hired standard of scientific evidence, and if they say so, then it must be true. Well, you know, that's one thing about science. It doesn't satisfy itself with dictators,

and science in secrecy ceases to exist. And that's what's going on there. If you really delve into the science in many areas, there isn't any. It's simply, I said it, therefore it's true. And we've found, you know, we are impatient as an American people with that kind of authority. We struck out from another nation and became an independent nation because we wouldn't be dictated to. And frankly, these inappropriate activities that we see there at the FBI and the Kruckenland

We shouldn't be appropriating funds for and we believe that and we go along with that. If you follow the history of the lab since about 1995, you see they've had one problem after another. They just convicted a woman in the DNA group for putting out false reports for what, almost two years, two and a half years. They had a bullet-led examiner convicted last year in Kentucky of telling a lie in a trial. any hearing. You know, they're not going to, you know, they've just had this fingerprint business with Mr. Mayfield. They're being discovered and we just won't tolerate it. I'm

certainly sure you won't and I won't. And when we get in our representatives, get ready to appropriate funds, they'll be looking for places where they know they're getting the right answer. We don't know what answer we're getting from the FBI. We don't know if it's the right answer or not because they refuse to be audited. But every forensic lab in the United States is following suit. You know, to carry this a little further, clinical laboratories are audited. Any testing laboratory in the United States is audited. You want to know if they're giving you the right answer.

You have no idea when you walk into a court of law on the FBI standing there in the role of scientists whether they're giving you the right answer because nobody's ever determined that. They'll tell you what's the right answer. It sounds like a pretty scary thing to be on trial in federal court. Or they don't just go in federal court. About 80% of the cases are state court also. As we see innocent people being free based upon DNA,

and we project that further to people being freed as a result of revelations from that IG report of the FBI lab, we, you know, we begin to realize that these are simply human beings, and they can fail, too. And their biggest failing is they refuse to determine what their failure rate is. That's really bottom line what it is. That's really, that's really horrifying. You think about people in prison or something they didn't do or because of the politicalization. of a scientific result doesn't fit the politics, so we're going to rewrite the report.

Now, I've gotten four people out of prison who didn't do the crime, and they were put there by false testimony, false evidence by police. And this is a bunch of much larger than anything I've done. And that raises a question is, how many people are there out there? how many of can you trust any of this stuff right uh yeah exactly right and i'm sorry because

you know if i if i have a chance to review that second whitehurst interview and find a good clip about waco i'll just punch it in here somehow and hopefully make it sound he's worth it long the same lines obviously waco was being handled by these same people i mean assuming the Waco evidence even made it as far as the FBI Crime Lab, right? What were they even looking at? Well, this subject is worthy of through it in a dumpster. Well, this subject is worthy of a full

bore treatment, and your institute could be the heroes of this. With the right publicity, you could be the guys who are making a major difference. And I think you'd have the whole country behind you.

Wow. So I need is another project. somebody do it for free and sign up um okay so more classification cover up here janet reno announced that she'd appoint the independent council but then they had the fbi i had 171 thousand pages of waco writ materials thousands of audio tapes hundreds of videotapes and over 10,000 photographs the military had 30,000 pages but as we discussed about 7,000 were still classified. The CIA turned over some files as well.

And I guess you got the mother load of all of this. Yeah, pretty much. And how much do you have already published on your website of this? Actually, I've got to repair my Waco website. The guy who was hosting it apparently quit business. I'll tell you what. Here's the makings of a project right here. we already host the world's greatest Oklahoma City bombing archive

of open source I mean original documents court documents FBI Secret Service ATF local police files etc put together by the great Richard booth a lot of those documents were mine but he supplied the mother load of them and all of the very best original journalism on it and so it always should have been the case that we also have Libertarian Institute.org slash Waco and have the ultimate Waco archive that we can possibly have on there. So I'd be more than happy.

I got two guys in Arizona. Two of my very best guys are in Phoenix, Scottsdale. Okay. So I know that's a little bit of a drive, but that's sure better than living in Illinois. So we're going to do this, right? We're going to do this. Sounds good.

great um all right the trial this is as bad as any part of this whole story which this whole story is so bad yeah but um

so i'm I forget now the total who were put on trial here this is the total who were oh here we go okay no we got it all renos avaram was given 40 years but five years supervised release and a $10,000 fine.

We'll skip the fines here. Brad Branch was given 40 years with five years supervised release. Jamie Castillo, the same. Livingstone Fagan. Kevin H., pardon me, Kevin A. Whitecliff both got all of that as well.

Those three also got the same, 40 years with, they did five. And then Graham Craddock got a sentence of 20 years with also did five paul fata oh you know what i'm reading this wrong i'm sorry three years supervised release i don't know what that means because this says paul fada did 15 years with three years supervised release but he did 12 so that means sorry take three years off the sentence not that's how many they did so he got i guess i'm supposed to read ah fuck it i'm just going to skip this because i don't know what the fuck it means i know that paul fadda did 12 out of 15 they they they

were all sentenced to decades. And I think many of them did at least one decade. And then Clive Doyle, Woodrow, aka Bob Kendrick, and Norman, Washington, Allison were all found not guilty. So here's the thing about this story, right? Is they're charged with murder of federal agents and this is all again about February the 28th no charges for the 19th cops don't want to get into that

murder of federal agents conspiracy to murder federal agents and using a firearm during the commission of a felony right now Paul Fada has some extra gun charges for being the guy in charge of the business there which is a bunch of trumped up crap anyway

but so here's what happened. The jury found all of the Davidians, not guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder of federal agents. Now, I don't have a footnote for this anymore. I look

for it, but I couldn't find it, but I remember this from back then. There were too hard-ass, thin blue line types on the jury that were just beside themselves and couldn't believe that we're going to let these people get away with this. Four cops are dead and the crazy cult and all these things. And here we are at the end

our deliberations and we're going to let them all walk no way we got a compromise we got to do something and everybody wants to get home to their family so they compromise and they find a good number of them here let me see at least it's um one two three four five six seven i think seven were found guilty of this charge who had admitted i guess to firing on the first day or there had been an eyewitness who had said so or something. So the judge gets this compromise verdict back from the jury and he says, I'm throwing this out. You can't convict people of using the firearm in the commission of a felony when you've acquitted them of the felony.

The charges are tied together. The felony was murder and or a conspiracy to commit murder. the jury was really offended by the prosecutor's theory of the case, which was the Davidians' religion that said that they would one day fight the forces of evil was the conspiracy to murder federal agents itself. And the jury was like, no way, are we? And they're from San Antonio, the land of the Cornerstone Church, where Jesus is going to come back any day now.

So this is just, no. And they reject that part of it. And so the, judge says, well, forget it and sends everybody home and goes home for the weekend. And we don't know who he went golfing with or who he did a weird ceremony with or who made a threatening phone call to him.

Hang on, helicopter. That's just a coincidence, guys. Be quiet. Come on. so yeah seriously right i'm checking for black helicopters out the window right now um so he comes back on i think it's a three-day holiday weekend he comes back on tuesday and he says well you know i was right that the conviction is inconsistent but i was wrong to throw it out i'm going to go ahead and keep that conviction and i'm going to go ahead and keep that conviction and i'm

I'm going to understand it to mean that for whatever reason you guys decided in the jury room, I don't know or care. What you really meant to say was that they did, in fact, commit that felony of murder of federal agents in using that firearm in the commission of a felony, which you have found them guilty of. So, how do you like that? Gotcha. And sent them to prison for decades. And with poor Paul Fata, use some drug enhancement and all. this to give him 15, which he did 12. This was a major black eye for Uncle Sam, even this side.

But what I heard, and maybe this is what, you know, you're asking, well, who did he talk to over the weekend, is that the feds made some phone calls, went in to see him, whatever, worked him over behind closed doors, and got him to do what you're talking about. Sure sounds like it. Because it's, it's really not justice. I mean, honestly, it could have been his idea. I mean, there's no reason to think that he. he meant well in the first place, you know what I mean?

But he could have, we don't know. Yeah. We don't know. But he changed his mind and he took their kind of hairbrained call that they made on his obviously poor instructions in the first place. And then he took their confusion and twisted it to the exact result that they didn't want. Now, Zimmerman and DeGeron, you'll remember. during the hearings made a point that in Texas what really saved him on the murder charges

and conspiracy and all the rest of that was that in Texas it is legal to use deadly force against a policeman under certain circumstances and that those circumstances were met here now people in other states find out you know really yeah incredible we talked about that before a little bit it came up but this is worth repeating in this context at the trial. Because this is the charge is murder. And you have Devidians who said, yeah, I shot some of those cops, whichever ones, I'm sorry, I forget which ones

were quoted as what. But some of them had admitted at least that they had fired on cops. I don't know if they had claimed to have hit one fatally or not or what exactly, but they had admitted to being in a firefight. And the government's position was you can't do that

and especially because you started it, right? That was the government's theory of the case. And the jury found that, no, the government fired first, and that is the magic word, just like in any other civilian situation, government employee or not. You're not allowed to just shoot at somebody unless it's in an immediate and proportionate use of violence to protect innocent life of yourself or of someone else. Sure. But you've read what the four women said, reform and said after word said the wrong people were on trial the agents should have been the people

on trial right and that expresses a lot of sentiment of a lot of people not certainly the thin blue line types are talking about and a lot of those are people you wouldn't suspect yeah and this is the four woman is sarah bane yeah and here's an anecdote that we learned about her from Paul Fata in my interview of him this last April 19th, 2003. I'm going to tell you about Sarah Bain if I didn't already tell you. So I was

at FCI Latuna. That was the first prison where I started my time. She wrote me a letter. And in her letter, she pretty much said exactly what you said. She said well, I know

in the jury instruction, Walter Smith told the jury That's the judge The judge said told the jury You don't worry about the time How much time they're going to get That's up to the to me I just want you to either say they're guilty or not guilty

That's all you have to worry about The problem with that is If they knew the length of the sentences It would have changed the way they They made their decision now and Sarah did when she wrote to me and I'll try to find the card that was in 1994 and she says Paul I really want to apologize to you she goes this was never the intention of the jury she apologized in behalf of the jury she or the jury did not know the length of sentences we were going to receive if they would have have known, they would have found us not guilty of everything. She said that we thought you were going to get time served and be done with it. We didn't know that they were going to impose

those kind of sentences. We're sorry. You know, that's not what we intended. And I ended up writing to her, you know, I just said, hey, look, you guys did the best you could. You tried to do the right thing the system as it is they're corrupt they needed their pound of flesh they went and they gave us excessive sentences they based it on some drug thing to enhance like me i i've never been in trouble with the law i i've never had a conviction i had zero nothing uh i was in prison with people that had similar charges to me are the same. The most I saw was three years. My lawyer, Mike DeGarren, said I should have got probation. Anybody else would have got probation. But our case was so highly politicized and

there were a lot of people's jobs on the line. Janet Reno, the head of the ATF, the head of the FBI. they needed convictions. They had to have somebody to blame for this. So they took the remaining younger people that survived, and we were put on display, you know, because everybody else was gone. Who are they going to convict? The dead people, the people that are gone?

No, they can't. So they have to take the rest of us. So what was your sentence? I ended up 15 years And you did all of them or? I did 12 years, nine months Dave, can that be reversed or challenged? Has anybody challenged that?

I don't know if they challenged it, but the judge's ruling would actually be correct in the end. The jury can come back with verdict that is completely inconsistent. And in fact, I have the quote here from Sarah Bain. she says though we found the defendants not guilty of the charges of murder or attempted murder or conspiracy to murder we mistakenly found several of them guilty of the linked charge of using firearms during the commission of a crime a crime of which they were innocent this was a totally inconsistent

verdict after the trial was over judge smith came into the jury room and told us he had no choice but to throw out the firearms convictions on the basis of that inconsistency however the prosecution then argued from a legal precedent that an inconsistent jury verdict did not necessarily negate that verdict. The judge then reinstated the firearms convictions and handed out his harsh sentences. So he wasn't able to,

he wasn't able to pretend that there was a conviction on the murder charges, but he went ahead and sentenced them as harshly as he possibly could on the related charge as though he was convicting. And that's purely political. And vengeful, right. And vengeful.

Yeah. Now, so, and she wrote immediately to the judge saying, oh, I can't believe that you did this. That wasn't what that we intended to happen and so forth. So learning a little bit the hard way about, you know, the way that they're. Well, hard way.

And I think there's a lesson here, too. I think they did what nice Americans want to do. You want to believe your government. You want to believe. And that there's, there's, you know the government's going to do the right thing and it doesn't necessarily they you can expose somebody what i don't understand is how somebody can get put in prison who wasn't wasn't somebody who wasn't there is that fraughta yeah fada well it's because they gave them the firearms

charges they just accused them of you know tax evasion essentially right that was this what this all came down to not having the proper tax stamp for your machine gun yeah right so um now here's thing too and I didn't know this or if I ever knew this I had forgotten guys that the Supreme Court overturned these sentences oh yeah and said that you can't do this and reduce them down to five years did you know that no I didn't know that oh yeah my friend Steve Halbrook was the attorney who brought the appeal oh well heroic tell them that so they're all out of prison now uh yeah I think they are all out the the the SC reduced five of the lengthy sentences yes I should that's it would have been that

In the sentences for use of a firearm in a federal felony, the court ruled that essentially that was a penalty the judge imposed as part of the sentencing, and the Supreme Court ruled that no, that's a separate offense, and so you have to give it to the jury. Only the jury can convict on that. You can't just add it on as part of the sentence. So that's really a black eye for Uncle Sam. that's a major one too and I haven't heard anything about it that that's one that ought to be publicized yeah and that was in I'm sorry I believe it was in I can't remember I'm sorry which

year it was way back yeah now the jury could have nullified this all these laws they could have just said well okay they did the crime but we think they were justified in doing whatever they did and that's it they gave in the good people like Sarabane gave in to the thin blue line guys on the jury which if I remember right there was two to ten and the two made the ten give in yeah just just stupid but that's how it goes now here's something that I learned I called paul fata I had missed on April 19th the one big one that I had dropped was the drug lab and about them calling the sheriff the stories about them calling the sheriff or whether the sheriff had helped clean it up or not as we discussed earlier in the program here but one of the things that

Paul told me was that his lure was Mike Degarin, Dick Degarin's brother. Right. He spells his name differently, by the way. Oh, that's right. I remember that. Yeah, that's interesting. That's one of the quirks that everybody chuckled about at

Houston when he was here is they got two Degarin brothers and one spells it one way and one spells it. And it's all like a E and a U and a I. Yeah, it's kind of like my name in England. Some people have the A at the end. I think Degarin dropped the U. Mike dropped the U. And Dick kept it.

so Mike de garran was fattah's lawyer and he tried to convince fata to let him lobby the judge to get his case tried separately because again he wasn't even there that day and Paul fata and he would have probably stood a better chance right and instead Paul fattah said no way if you're defending me you're defending everybody else and if they sink I sink with him and so I thought that that was worth mentioning that that was brave of him to do and that his lawyer then agreed to that and said whatever you say pal and did his best anyway and again and succeeded right

the jury found them not guilty Mike deGaron got there and helped kill him so to speak and but by a trick of the law lost anyway a trick of the law so guys to wrap up the section

on the trial here I wanted to play this short clip of Mike McNulty? The evidence that the ATF had was rather skimpy, but they claimed that he had weapons that were made illegally. And, of course, in light of recent news, like the shooting at the Virginia Tech, you know, that sounds horrendous. Oh, that's terrible.

But the fact was that after all that had happened there, I had the opportunity to ask the U.S. attorney, Bill Johnson. who was the prosecutor in the case. Bill, if Koresh had been taken in quietly and prosecuted and he was found guilty, what would he have expected to be sentenced for all of this horrendous crime? And he says, oh, well, he probably would have gotten about five years probation. You mean for the charges on the original warrant? Right. All this over a tax violation that would have led to five years.

probation if they had just proverbially arrested him as he was jogging or shopping at Walmart. All right. So this show is titled The Waco Tragedy and less inflammatory than what I might have called it, but most of those names are already taken anyway, I guess. And I got that name from Kathy Schroeder, who is in your documentary, Dan, featured talking about, you know, life inside the compound. She had come out after the raid. and she's featured in the new documentary.

I haven't seen it, but word is she made a fool of herself. But as I said, she said she was very sorry and so she was a bit misquoted and whatever. But I just want to say, you know, I didn't really talk to her. But I said at the end of the table that she was at when we all went out to lunch at the Golden Corral on April the 19th after the remembrance ceremony there in Waco.

And she was just a sweet lady, man. And I heard her talking. First of all, her speech at the remembrance where she's talking about all the other people, all the other Davidians in her life, all she's talking about is what great moms they are and what great babysitters they are and how they all help take care of each other. And what a just a bunch of sweet ladies, right? Grab a group of sweet ladies from somewhere and they're just no different at all. That's exactly who they are.

And then we're sitting at lunch, and she's calling it a tragedy. and she's saying she's insisting to the other people at the table that of course we have to forgive them for what they did you know the ATF and the FBI and all the liars and the media and everyone else that's the religion we're Christians she said and she bears them no ill will whatsoever she said I was in the Air Force I know what it's like to have to do your job they're doing their job and that was what they were told to do and they did it

and I'm sure they probably all regret it now. And think about the families of the four ATF agents who were killed. And she just went on like that. We have to forgive them. I hope you all understand that. You don't really have a choice in that. That's the faith. I was impressed by that.

She seemed like a good person. So she titled our show here. You know, if you, at the Waco Memorial site, I found it interesting that they have a memorial, the Davidians that put up a memorial to the four agents who were killed. Right. That's true. That's at Mount Carmel this day. Big granite monument.

It's funny how none of that ever finds its way, at least that I've ever seen in stories about this in the mainstream media to use the term. were used. Speaking of terms, I wish there was something else we could use besides compound, but that's the, that's the franka lingam, but it's really, I try to use church, dormitory, build, just, but that compound. There's a mansion made a plywood, dude. That's what it was.

Yeah. But that's, that, it's just one of those words that's used to demonize and militarize and have a pejorative statement in the, process. Yep. Absolutely. To militarize the entire thing. Yes. And it's just, that is part of what motivates me to continue to do this to this day is the level of dishonesty. 20 years ago, on February the 28th, I was standing out in front of the Texas Capitol building on what was in the 10th anniversary. I can't believe

about time flies like this. It's the 10th anniversary of the Waco raid. And it was a month before W. Bush invaded Iraq. So I had a big sign I said, forget Waco. And it was just me out there protesting

by myself. And the joke was, I guess, that I felt like, remember Waco sounds too kind of corny and trite. And I'm a more angry type. So my point, was basically fuck you because you already all forgot Waco

you don't give a damn about Waco you never gave a damn about Waco and so forget it and then so an AP reporter came up to me and said what's with the sign what's the gag and I said

well can't you see what they're doing to Saddam Hussein is exactly what they did to David Koresh they said he's crazy so we can't negotiate with him We got Colin Powell, a four-star general as a secretary of state, but somehow he can't negotiate, was Saddam Hussein.

Okay. How about his old best friend, the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who paid him all that money in the 1980s for Ronald Reagan? He gave him all those weapons. Nope, can't send him either. He's crazy like David Koresh. Can't negotiate. And did you hear, he's got illegal weapons.

He's going to use those illegal weapons to go down to the McDonald's and kill everybody. He's going to invade side of. Arabia. He's going to become the Hitler of the Middle East after he takes over everything with his illegal weapons that are against the law. And he's bad to his own people. Has Saddam Hussein, he's beating the babies, raping the kids, throwing human beings into giant human shredders when they get out of line. And so we're going to send in the Delta force to kill him. Crazy, illegal weapons, bad to his own people. We're the here. We're

the heroes, so we send in the killers. And the AP guy said to me, hey, that's pretty good. And I said, well, put it in the newspaper. And he said, I'll do what I can. I'm just kind of a stringer, but I'll submit it. Never ran, of course. But I think the analogy is good. And I think that when you reverse it around, Waco's just a Rock War II writ small. they took this piece of property a hundred miles from my doorstep in central Texas

and they made it a foreign nation they made it an enemy nation a compound where Saddam Hussein and his son's Uday and Kusei lived and raped the babies and had a meth lab and so we're going to send in the Delta Force to kill them

because they're too crazy to negotiate with and they've got these illegal weapons What's a guy in an M1 going to do about a guy with an AK-47? So it's intolerable that the situation remains, as Bob Rick says, we had to up the ante. We had to bring this thing to a logical conclusion, waiting them out for a peaceful resolution, waiting for the inspectors to finish not finding sarin canisters.

We don't have time for that. We have to go now. And that's the real point of it all. And again, with the same kind of propaganda campaign that they used against Iraq. You and your mom and your dad and your brother and your sister and your son, you've got to all agree with us on this.

This is for America. Don't tell me you side with these communists and these terrorists-loving America-hating traitors. We got to go get that Saddam Hussein before he helps Osama bin Laden attack us again. And everybody now, three cheers. And even when they were revealed to be torturing people to death, they said, hey, all good American patriots support this. And Americans said, yeah, we do.

Just like after the fire and after the Branch of Edians were dead, after two of their babies were born burning to death, the American people loved it. They loved it. The USA Today poll said 93% of the American people supported the tank attack. What, two days later? when the tank attack led to a giant fire and the death of all the people and they go yeah well whatever dude we thought it was we wanted to watch the prices right

we want to watch days of our lives and we're sick of this redneck idiot and his stupid people getting in the way of our quality TV time death penalty for that they loved it they did love it and they didn't turn against the Iraq war you know the second Iraq war for years

too. In for a penny, in for a pound. And just the same way here, too, is they're just live from morning to night. They don't give a damn. Yeah. And so that's why it's important to talk about this still, right? It's because it isn't over. They do this to us all the time. They did it to us on Russia Gate. Hell, they did it to us on COVID. They're doing it to us on Ukraine right now. And on China, too. Well, you're touching back on that Arlo Gethri thing. It's the kid sitting on the bench and I want to kill, I want to kill. There seems to be something in the water

in Washington or among bureaucrats they want a war in some place to justify their existence and that's as old as civilization. You know, in Iraq War I, R.W. Apple, the legendary New York Times reporter wrote that, in approvingly so, not in any cynical way,

that and I think this was actually even on the occasion of Panama this might have been before a rock war one but it was that there is a ceremonial letting of blood that a president must go through to truly achieve presidency remember they said they hated Donald Trump so much oh my god they hated him but when he bombed ashar al-Assad they all went yeah Donald Trump finally really became president today that's a leader which was treason by the way right it was a false flag attack by al-Qaeda terrorists

to get us to fight a guy in a three-piece suit on their behalf and he fell for it and that was the one time the two times sorry in 17 and 18 with the false flag seren attacks the two times that the American media and Democrats and mainstream consensus

supported him was the letting a blood of their enemies and I mean I really do think that R.W. Apple, I guess I could look up the quote. I'm pretty sure he calls it ceremonial. Like this is a right of passage for a president to do. You got to kill somebody, man. Otherwise, what are you? You think Putin has somebody whispering in his ear till I'm, you got to go in and shed blood? Yeah, the CIA. Poak, poke, poke, poke, poke, poke. I bet you won't do anything about it. Pop, poke, poke, poke. Here we go. Yeah, it was Panama. It wasn't even Iraq.

He calls it a right. Quote, Greenwald. After George H. W. Bush ordered the invasion of Panama, New York Times correspondent R.W. Apple wrote that starting new military conflicts is a, quote, presidential initiation right. That, quote, most American leaders since World War II have felt a need to demonstrate their willingness to shed blood, end quote.

And that Bush's order to attack tiny defenseless Panama, quote, has shown him as a man capable of bold action. Well, that's why Barbara Trent was booed at the Oscars when she won for Best Documentary, the Panama Deception. Right. Remember because she took the lid off of that. God, it's even the title. The R.W. Apple piece in the New York Times

is called Fighting in Panama, the Implications, War, Bush's presidential right of passage. Let's rewind a little bit more. Remember Ronald Reagan invading Green. Yeah. I mean, there was, that was... To make up for his humiliation in Beirut. Yeah, that was plainly stated.

That's what they were, why they're doing it. Yep. But then, so for every one G. Gordon Liddy, there was 500,000 Rush Limbaugh clones in this country who didn't give a damn about those people, Dan. So what about that? Because it's funny to see now the way right-wingers pretend that they had sided with the branched of idiots,

but that ain't how I remember it. Oh, yeah. Well, that's the reality. To give us a background on the film, we were looking initially for public relations firm to handle publicity. Nobody would touch it. Our first choices were some

in the Democrat establishment and that had been working with Carter because the messenger matters in these things. There's a big obvious. optics thing that you really have to pay attention to about who's saying things. But nobody wanted to touch it because this was considered right-wing or low-class. Too right-wing, yeah. And it didn't really matter.

So finally, we found a guy who booked authors, book authors around the country in K Street in Washington, and he took it. Now, he had some baggage that I was very concerned about at front. He's a intelligence officer with the Army Reserve. So my first thought was, well, am I playing right into the game here? But the more I talked to him and checked him out, I think he wasn't. And, of course, I kept up a wall, so I was careful that certain information didn't get out and he couldn't triangulate in on it anyway.

but he was a good guy. But he said when we were trying to get a bit booked on all the shows at the time, think of you mentioned Rush Limbaugh. There's also Barry Farber, who was a friend of mine from North Carolina, and he had a national talk show in New York, Southern Boy. He died. We had Sean Hannity. Who else was on at that time?

But anyway, none of them except Michael Reagan. Reagan's son and Michael Savage, the Savage Nation guy from those... I'm surprised to hear that he was good on it. Yeah, he was the only two that would even have us on

or anybody from the film or even talk about it. But, you know, Larry Elder here in town. John and Ken, I'm just picking names out. John and Ken was, I was listening one day

and I said, oh, you should have gone out and shot him with a rusty bullet, meaning the government should have shot him. the divinians, the rusty boy. What about Carl Wigglesworth in San Antonio? Nobody. I presume he was contacted.

We contacted through. You never talk, Carl never had you on? Nope. Oh man, because he was good on Waco. I'm surprised to hear that. I'm disappointed to hear that. Yeah, it was just, it was a third rail. It's just no question about it and nobody wanted to talk about this in any ways. But at the same time, in the other side of their mouths, they were talking, in many cases, about what went on there and how it was demonstrating the boot,

you know, combat boot mentality that we've gotten into with police. Yeah. And Dennis Prager was a great one here. I finally got a chance to unload on Larry Elder because he was in an organization. In fact, I think it was libertarian organization. had a fundraiser and they wanted to have it at my house and they had a featured speaker, which was Larry Elder.

I didn't know it at the time, but when I saw who it was, I was able to unload on him about this. And I think he's embarrassed, but I don't know what the, I don't understand this, the problem. Now, I think I've detected that there's a shadowed banning about this, like the piece I wrote just showing what we went through. Because, you know, the revisionists, again, they like to pretend like they were good on this all along, just like they pretended they didn't support the Iraq War.

So it's the same kind of thing now where right-wingers pretend, and I want to be specific here, I should discriminate and differentiate. The populist right was good on it, the Patriot movement, and of course the militia movement grew up in large part in reaction to Waco, and the libertarian movement, especially people like James Beauvard, and some of our better riders were absolutely. heroic on Waco and some of the further right people, you know, really

did care. But it was the establishment right, the W. Bush right, the Rush Limbaugh, Republican right. Law and order, boy, thin blue line. Cops told you to do something. You do it or you die.

And that's what they still believe to this day. All right, now here's the thing. It's 30 years later. But it's 28 years since the Oklahoma City bombing and so it's part of the Waco story and has been part of the Waco story ever since then just two years into it and of course it's probably true to a degree and it's absolutely the broad narrative is that McVeigh and his associates did this as revenge for Waco and there was an ATF office in that building although no ATF officers were there that

day or injured or killed in the bombing. But that's really interesting, isn't it? You know, we're going to leave that aside for now, but yes, it is interesting. But the point being that, well, here, let's let Jim Bovart take it from here. There was a letter that the Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin sent on July 6th, 1995, just before the House hearings on Waco. and he said that Waco, federal action at Waco, quote, cannot be understood properly outside the context of Oklahoma City,

even though Oklahoma City happened two years afterwards, and it was Expo Factor Exoneration. And that's very real, and it wasn't just that cop that Jim's referring to, is the entire consensus in government and media that David Koresh and the Branch David Hivdivians blew up Oklahoma City and Oklahoma City is why they deserved it and Oklahoma City

which obviously I'm overstating that but that was essentially the take. The take was you can't care about the Branch Divideans and what happened to them or else you're just like that guy who blew up the building killed all the kids there and obviously the kids of federal employees are worth

much more than the kids of a bunch of bad people and that's it and if you talk about Wake in a sense where you're sympathetic to the branch of vidians, you sympathize with Timothy McVeigh and the bombing of that building and you're not allowed to say that you don't. It's just built in and it's just true.

And I know as a cab driver at that time who was determined to talk about politics with my people on my cab all the time, that if I say Waco, they say Oklahoma City. So there was this thing about Waco. There's this guy, Dan Gifford, and he made this movie, oh, yeah, I guess you got a bomb in your trunk, huh, cabby? and that is the absolute idiot level of thought that the American people have put into this topic

and how easy they are to manipulate on this and the disservice that those neo-Nazis, including Timothy McVeigh, all of them, did to the entire movement of the people who also cared about Waco and were mad about what had happened to those people. And that's a whole, other subject and i'll tell you for the record here everyone can go to libertarian institute

dot org slash okayc and we have the ultimate archive of primary sources about the real story about what was behind that attack right there it's not conspiracy garbage it's the debunking of the government's fake story about the whole story of what happened there and yes it was mcvay who drove the truck and was a bad guy it's that's not the case we're making but the points. There's a lot more to the story than that. But the main point for our purposes here is that Bill Clinton said, yeah, you know, the forces of right-wing radical hate of government is responsible for this. And that meant to Bill Clinton and to the mass media, that included Rush Limbaugh, who, by the way, in context here, I don't know if you guys agree with this,

but in my eyes, this guy is like one hair to the right of center, right? This is. This is the most establishment conservatism that you could possibly conjure, right? And they're saying Rush Limbaugh, and everyone to the right of him did Oklahoma City. All of you did it, especially the branched of Indians,

but any white man who owns a gun did it. All you did it. And that's what it means to be on the right in America is you're the Oklahoma City bomber. And then what happened? The militia movement absolutely just died. The Patriot movement wiped out. And then, of course, with Bill Clinton's sex scandal, the entire subject was changed from the ATF, the FBI, the IRS, the U.S. government too big, too out of control, to, yeah, that Bill Clinton, he personally is a greedy type who likes to be sexually satisfied by women.

I mean, the nerve of that. And so from 1998 through the January 2001, that was all anybody gave a damn about anymore. He can sit and watch Waco burn on the couch with James Riyadi, his Chinese intelligence connection and financier. And nobody gave a damn. He cheated on Hillary Clinton. Can you believe that? And that was the end of anybody giving a damn about anything important

in the last decade of the 20th century. Yeah. One thing is I rewind back to the same. 60s, and we had the Symbionese Liberation Army, and who else, we had several of these going around. But they were never described, and I recall, as radical left-wing in the terms that we're using today about the right, whatever that is. This was some vast conspiracy of going on, may have been, but they didn't do it. These were separate entities, separate people with issues that wanted to get out and kill people,

Rob Banks, what have you, Rob Banks to support their politics. We have Bill Ayers, who's openly said, you know, when his side wins, they're going to have to kill about 25, 30 million people. You know, I've yet to hear anything like that from the... Good luck with that, pal. Radical right.

But that tells you there's, you know, what kind of psychopaths he got there. I don't find that on the right at all. Well, and look, I mean, the truth of the matter is, and I paled around with a lot of militia guys in the 1990s. I mean, I don't know a lot of them, but a few of them. And they didn't talk about blacks and Jews. They were not fascists.

They were constitutionalists. They were George Washington, red, white, and blue patriots, man. And they were just anti-this post-constitutional domestic empire. And it's abuse. And meanwhile, the Oklahoma bombing was not done by the militia. It was not done by the Patriot Movement. It was done by Nazis. literal Hitler-lovin neo-Nazis,

which is different and separate and a much, much smaller and more marginal faction than the broad militia movement. I mean, I remember watching Bill Curtis investigative reports on A&E went around and did these in-depth investigations

and spent time with these different militia groups around the country. And he just said, listen, I talked to these men and they're decent guys. They're not that far right. They're not that well-educated to be into, like, political doctrines.

They're not fascists. They're not dangerous. They basically are here for one reason. If anything like Waco happens again, they want to tell the cops you can't do that, don't kill those people, or we might shoot you, and that's it.

And Bill Curtis, he was a very mainstream guy. He was a courageous reporter. You do I have Bill Curtis in Chicago? I'm not sure if he's from Chicago or not, but he had a long-running show called Investigated Reports on A&E. They covered a lot of issues.

Yeah, that was Bill Curtis. Yeah. And really, journalist, no crank at all. And he was just saying, look, I'm reporting from Missouri where I'm meeting with these guys and they're not bad guys. They're not the Oklahoma bombers. Neo-Nazis were the Oklahoma bombers. But meanwhile, everyone between them, everyone to the left of them, all the way to Rush Limbaugh got blamed for it. And then, and especially the Branch Divideans. Somehow, David Koresh and his

lieutenants got in a DeLorean time machine and went forward two years and killed all those people in Oklahoma retroactively justifying their massacre at the hands of the ATF and the FBI and the Army's combat applications group. And people bought that. People buy that to this day somehow

that that made it okay, you know? Well, we'll just have to register all flux capacitors in for that DeLorean so we can't be doing that. You got a license for that thing, boy? Oh, you know, this reminds me there was this, um, a movie that Hollywood put out called

Arlington Road has Tim Robbins and Jeff Bridges. Jeff Bridges is the professor who's a good liberal professor who's interested in right-wing radicalism, and Tim Robbins is his right-wing Timothy McVeigh terrorist-like neighbor. But Tim Robbins is not a radical right-wing Nazi paling around at Elohim City and Robin Banks and all this crazy stuff. Tim Robbins is a local family man from your suburban neighborhood. And Tim Robbins is the most radical thing, I swear, he says in the movie. I remember this day.

I was keep a track. Just how crazy radical right wing did they portray this guy in the movie that he's a terrorist, and he's going to bomb somebody and kill somebody. And the most radical thing Tim Robbins says in the movie is he says, the government owes us the truth. And that's it. And that's how you know that somebody's a radical right-wing terrorist with a bomb in his trunk. And they love that movie.

It was a huge hit. Truth is a very dangerous thing, you know. seriously and and he didn't say anything more threatening than that in the entire movie and um but that was their take on oklahoma city was this is not something that even caresh did or that um a bunch of you know all the way as far right as you can get right wingers did this is the kind of thing that your conservative neighbor across the street might do better keep an eye on him keep fbi on speed dial, you know. Dave, what do you think? Well, I think Dan was talking about the bug discovered during film ride. Oh, yes. Yeah, the film was called Star Maps. Okay, better back up,

explain what this film is. Well, what the film is about is inconsequential. The thing is that I leased my house out to a film company to make this film. It was for location. And it was called Star Maps. And the audio man kept hearing a buzz in his audio and couldn't, they had to stop production for a while, couldn't film because it was interfering a little bit. And they finally brought in a couple of guys that did a sweep and they found listening devices, bugging devices in the house, which I knew were there. I just, I didn't, never thought they would be interfering. but because I may have mentioned I knew what some of these guys were doing

when they came over to the house as they were planning stuff they were allegedly trying to find the bugs and I that's why I was suspicious of Gordon Novell when you came over at my house I was wherever he put his hands I was looking to if he was something he'd left there

but this was very real at the time and there's a little history to it it. One of the first people who approached me after we started doing the Waco film was a good-looking woman, lawyer, and she had, they all tend to use the same rap. I guess they go to the same school and learn this is the best way to get somebody's confidence or get him into a conversation and she fit it all. And she wanted to have me come over to a place that has, had hot tubs for rent, which was a place up on San Monica Boulevard at the time. So fine.

I wasn't married. It was great. So I'm sure there's probably video that someplace in somebody's file. But she was always asking questions. And then she said she wanted to introduce me to a person who could help me have assured the things with the secrecy of what we've, confidentiality of what we're doing information because I talked about that. And he was

the guy who had dual authority, he was the LAPD lieutenant and federal authority with his office over here in the Union Pacific Railroad yard. So we had lunch and he suggested these guys come over and sweep my house

for books. I'm sure came over. Well, two guys showed up that had a cop written all over them. I mean a big stamp. A little cop. Yeah, we're going to sweep your house for mug. They're planting more. And they did the classic thing.

You know, he's got a little laptop computer gizmo. And he says, well, let's go walk around the other rooms outside this room to, because this was my office, and look around. Nothing anywhere. So later on, I just was careful about what we said in that room. and it was useful for feeding bad information too because stuff was coming in and whoever was sending it was savvy enough to know that you're not going to use electronic communications

because I'm not sophisticated with electronics but I'm aware that there are ways of intercepting them and everything else so there were other methods that were used and I had places in Washington, D.C. when I'd go there to meet people. And even there, though, I was offered rides to the airport by a couple of guys with the Crown Victoria parked outside. Yeah. Yeah. So they were there. And there was a very obvious concern on their part about letting certain information out or what we knew or what the public was going to do.

So that was basically it And when my usefulness Was ended with this woman She went back to her law practice You know But she was a lawyer in a A firm here at town Which I was told is a front

For federal cops And Don't be surprised I mean this stuff is all out there You know it's nobody's wearing it On their t-shirt But it's there and it's just very obvious what people are up to but that we had this thing going on

I think McNulty told me he was approached several times by people that fit the profile I told you I thought this is just my own putting two and two together thought that William Colby's had something to do with the information I was getting or having confirmed and especially since I knew his son who lived down the street from me who was also doing a film about his father at the time. That was another one. The man that nobody knew.

So he didn't know anything. Is that film out? Yeah, it's been out for 20 years now, I guess. Oh, interesting. Yeah. In fact, if you look, anybody looks on my blog and you'll see that cover of the box, this has been out there.

So he's he didn't admit to anything. which I didn't think he would, but it may not even be a connection with him. But there was something going on there. Well, especially since Gordon Ovelle said that that was his connection. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a pretty strong indication.

Yeah. Mike Mangalty said he'd, the Gordon gave him some recordings of their conversation. And McNulty retained an expert in voice recognition. And the guy confirmed from other, you know, public appearances of Colby that, Yes, that was Colby's voice. Yeah. That's, so, so I, my take is on somebody's radar screen,

this is probably still a hot issue. Now, what it would be, what the big issue would be, you know, how, how Labyrinthine is Washington. Yeah. You've got all these little power centers that see things their way or want information. So that's basically it, but any, I had guys parked outside my house for a while. There were, you know, we'd leave a driveway and they'd hustle off.

Welcome to the USA, dude. You know, I thought, at times I wonder if the paranoids don't have it too optimistic. They just don't know how bad things really are. I have. And the thought is that, you know, in their view, you have this gigantic conspiracy with a purpose and leadership and everything like that. Well, such a conspiracy would restrain itself and stop at some point. You don't have that. What you have is a whole bunch of little bitty conspiracies. This agency needs publicity. ATF needs publicity this weekend, so we'll raid your house. And other groups, and, of course, they don't. go up to the president and ask, can we do this? No, they do it on their own. And a whole bunch of other organizations are all doing the same, basically to feather their own nests, not for any grand purpose or world scheme. And the problem is unlike a real conspiracy of that type,

they don't necessarily stop. I mean, they're going to need publicity tomorrow also. Or they're going to need more appropriations and their hearings are coming up, that sort of thing. So, yeah, maybe the paranoids don't have any idea how bad it really is. There is no leader up there. Yeah. Well, it's a big government. I mean, it's uncontrollable at some point. It just is no way to rein it in.

And it becomes a, it's like a tornado. It just sucks, sudden, starts gathering energy on its own. And as much as I like to think that, I look at the ATF, and this has been, I'm not the only person to ring this up. Do we really need it? Does it do anything useful? I mean, this was being asked back in the 1930s, you know, when it was okay, it's out, you know, getting taxes

or enforcing prohibition. Well, now we don't have prohibition. Do we still need it? Well, yeah, let it collect taxes on cigarettes, on tobacco. Okay, so we got the alcohol, tobacco, and, you know, the moonshiner. so they're out going those. But, and then that's how the guns got added on to it. And there's no way to control the representatives,

the politicians who bring this stuff up, often to satisfy their own lifestyle or their religious beliefs or their pressure they're getting from their constituents. And they just can't say, no, we don't need that much power on. Sam Irvin, who was my, childhood professor on such things.

He was the Watergate Committee chairman. He used to say, pass no new laws and repeal half of them you got. I always thought that took me a while to... More than half. That'd be a good start. Yeah. It's like the old joke about what do you call

20 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean with concrete footies. A good start. All right. So Dave, what have you been up to? Other than writing this great book about Waco and helping McNulty with all your legal and your firearms expertise and all these great things that you've done here. Oh, handling a bunch of Second Amendment cases, filing amicus briefs in the Supreme Court on that issue, writing a few more books, including Dred Scott, the inside story. Tell us about that.

What I found the Dred Scott case, 1857, basically made Abraham Lincoln President of the United States and led to the Civil War, Supreme Court decision. Well, what I found that all the professional historians had missed was the answer to the question, why did Dred Scott's attorneys sue a man who had no claim to being Dred Scott's slave owner, John Sanford? He was a New York City businessman. Scott was in St. Louis. What's a connection? And they had various questions as to why it might have been. Well, I found the truth, which was that Dred Scott's real owner was that person, Sanford's sister. But she didn't want her name in the records because she had married a prominent anti-slavery congressman.

And so it was agreed that Sanford would pose as. the slave owner and be sued and go to the Supreme Court. I found the unpublished memoir of a man who was in the room when they made the deal. Wow. Which also told, the given who he made it with tells you that the case was actually a pro-slavery set-up job. So it changes the whole context of the case then. Yes, yes. Elaborate what you mean a little bit there about the, how it was a setup?

Well, the guy was posing as Dred Scott's owner, and the deal he made to pose was made with an attorney named Reverdy Johnson. Reverdy Johnson was a former attorney general of the U.S. He would become a senator from Maryland, pro-slavery senator, and he was the guy who argued the side of slavery in the Dred Scott case. So before the case even starts out, they're arranging. for this guy to pose and the guy who's a range of him to pose

is the pro-slavery attorney general. Man, that's great. And now you wrote this other book, too. I'm from the government and I'm here to kill you. What's that? It's about, the basic theme is that the legal system is so set up as to reward and protect government agents

who harm or kill people. It really is. the Federal Tort Claims Act, which lets you sue the government, is set up in such a way that it encourages the government to be unsafe and encourages the government to be irresponsible. And so I go through incidents where people were killed by agency action just because the agency screwed up. And Waco is one of those, but there are plenty of others.

Or airplanes crashed because an agency had no incentive to make them safe, that sort of thing. The Texas City explosion, 1947, where a government stored fertilizer, which was actually bomb material produced under a patent for making bombs, blew a city flat and killed hundreds or thousands of people. All of that sort of thing. And, of course, everyone escaped legal liability for that because, hey, the Federal Tort Claims Act. Was that Texas City?

Texas City, yeah. Yeah. You know, I just read an article in the New York Times of all places, but there was about a new journal article that's been written. And in fact, a judge ruled on a case of qualified immunity said, nope, the cops have it. You can't sue them. But he also said, hey, I'm just middle management here.

The Supreme Court is going to have to take this up. There's a new law journal study. Now, I'm not sure what the original law is exactly, but I believe it's from the 18-7. 70s, it was part of the Reconstruction Acts, and it's a law that forbids government employees from violating citizens' civil rights and gives them the power to sue. Yes. Now, the new journal, now, essentially the qualified immunity doctrine was invented by the Supreme

Court, and it says, yeah, yeah, yeah, however, all these previous existing immunities still apply, and in fact, we're just going to embellish them so much that cops have a license to kill and you can never sue them at all, never mind criminal liability. But here's the deal. Somebody found that the law as passed by Congress includes a whole paragraph that was excluded by a clerk

when he entered into the record. And the paragraph says all previous common law and customary and legislative law to the contrary, Notwithstanding, all of that is hereby canceled by this law. And so that paragraph completely kills the doctrine of qualified immunity. And according to the scholar here, it was just a clerk who left that paragraph out, maybe to save space.

But the law as passed by Congress and signed by the president says that. And so the idea is that the Supreme Court is going to have to revisit this because it's not the American way. it was never supposed to be. Okay, so I guess all I have to say is that Waco is a huge part of why I am and how I became who I am and what I'm about. And foreign policy is really no different than Waco policy, as we discussed here in my mind in a lot of ways. And it's the same big government you talked about, the tornado. out of control, creating its own energy? I like that.

It's the same with the world empire as well. Again, not one conspiracy, but a thousand of them, all in cooperation with each other, mostly in the open to accomplish our position in the most terrible ways. And so, you know, whatever we can do to help people identify the root of the problem here, the better, I think, you know.

So I really appreciate both of you joining me for this project. The edited version is still going to be probably 14 hours long or more. Wow. We're counting. So, but I know that people are really going to enjoy this. I don't know if anybody's ever done a podcast exactly like this with two great expert guests and then all these other interviews and sound bites and things like that. I'm going to edit out the worst of my stumbling and hopefully make the thing sound.

good, but I think that this project is going to definitely prove to have been worth it. And I just want you both to know how grateful I am that you take the time to come out here and spend all this time with me to record this and help put this thing together for everybody. And that goes for James Hill as well, who produced this show. So thank you. All right. Very cool. Yep.

Right you guys. That's the Waco tragedy.