Being mad enough to lose a decade of my life chasing the truth of a Government cover-up, I would inevitably insist that every one reads Dick Reavis' debunking of the American Government's justifications for burning 76 men, women, and children to death at the Mount Carmel commune on 19th April 1993; but there are many other reasons for acquainting yourself with The Ashes of Waco.
Apart from demonstrating that the FBI's tear-gas demolition job led to the blaze and that President Clinton's assertion that 'Some religious fanatics murdered themselves' hides a more damming truth; Mr Reavis - in less than 300 readable pages - reveals hundreds of reasons why libertarians need to oppose governments. As long as the evidence which emerged, both during and after the 53 day siege, has not been aired on this side of the Atlantic, the British will not realise that whatever Koresh may or may not have done, his accusers are far more guilty.
The initial raid was conducted by the infamous Treasury Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, once known as the Bureau of Prohibition, and was undertaken with an illegal warrant. Far from the child-molesting, gun-running, religious nutters of Bureau primed popular media fame; the followers of Koresh were simple folk drawn from the mundane Seventh Day Adventists church, who had become convinced that Koresh held the key to unravelling the meaning of the Seven Seals mentioned in the Book of Revelations.
O.K. Koresh had some wacky ideas, but no weirder than your average Charismatic, and he was far less dangerous than some Catholic priests; and the commune's members would still be harmlessly awaiting the End-Time in their non-fortified ranch house to this day if the Bureau had not intervened strafing 'the compound' from helicopter gun-ships while an unarmed Koresh was standing at the open door waiting to greet and parley with the Bureau's 'Special Agents' (it does not have any ordinary ones) despite being convinced the Bureau was the agent of Babylon. But once the group exercised their right under Texas Law to return fire from an illegally acting law enforcement officer, and had proved that inexperienced but God fearing folk are more than a match for any over-paid macho hot-shots in a Government regulation overall, the siege that followed became a matter of honour for both the Bureau and the Justice Department.
The embarrassing truth is that the alleged 'arms stash' consisted of: dummy grenades for sowing on to commune- made hunting vests to be sold to outsized gun hobbyists at gun shows; 90 pounds of powdered aluminium for reloading spent rifle cartridges, a common activity in many rural US households; and the 104 'upper receivers' for converting AR- 15 rifles into semi-automatic weapons were for selling at gun fairs: that is how the group made their money.
Even if Koresh had been stockpiling weapons, there is no Federal or Texas law forbidding him from doing so, and as Koresh's gun supplier Henry McMahon had already explained to the Bureau that the guns were an investment to be legally sold on, the Bureau knew the real score.
Koresh was 'fingered' for a different reason. The Bureau was desperate for a PR stunt to justify its existence in front of Congress on March 10th, and picked up on the allegations banded around by an apostate and former rival to Koresh's leadership who had given the local sensation-seeking Waco Tribune Herald a juicy story. The one thing guaranteed to get everyone overexcited, was that amongst Koresh's more exotic Biblical interpretations was his task, as the new Messiah, to enjoy conjugal relations with several commune women, some of whom were legally married to their now celibate husbands. In one case, Koresh had apparently also bedded a girl who had not reached the legal age of consent. While this charge technically made Koresh a child abuser, previous investigations by the local Child Welfare agency had found nothing untoward: apart from the groups beliefs.
Like the main Adventist church, the Davidians avoided the world, were careful what they ate, were obsessed with seeking signs of 'end-time', and had a healthy distrust of government - if only because they sought to follow their God given visions rather than (devil inspired) human law. Unfortunately, the latter delusion led also led to an expectation amongst the group that the closer they came to revealing God's truth to the world, the more likely they would be attacked by the Devil's agents in one guise or another. The reason why they were also prepared to fight off the Government to the end was that they also believed that at the very moment of (a prophesy determined) conflagration, the commune members would be whisked off to heaven. Consequently, while Koresh was not looking for a fight, nor planning one, if one came his way, he and his followers had an ordained interest in not avoiding it.
Mr Reavis does an excellent job in setting the scene by unveiling the history, beliefs, and practices of the group; and the reason why one can trust his as opposed to the many others is that Mr Reavis alone amongst the many commentators has an eye for detail. Not only does he point out that the group were not actually Branch Davidians, but 'students' of the Seven Seals and can explain their eschatology (belief about the End-Time); he unravels the Government's fallacious justifications, and the role of the Bureau in the Government's attempts to ride rough-shod over constitutionalists and the gun lobby amongst others.
Having established the background, Mr Reavis uncovers: the way in which the Bureau knowingly repeated erroneous allegations regarding the Carmelites and drug peddling; who started the firing; how many Bureau members suffered from 'friendly fire'; how autopsies belied the Government's version of commune members deaths; how Carmelites found outside the commune were killed; how critical reporters were attacked by the Bureau; the reneging on negotiation deals; how the treatment of the children initially released convinced the others to stay; and why the Bureau refused to accept mediation.
Like all good reporters Mr Reavis continues to dig, and does not balk from highlighting the Carmelites own 'myths' about the raid. He is also, as you will be, incensed by the subsequent trial, poorly reported in Britain, in which the judge refused to accept the jury's 'not guilty' verdicts.
The political lessons from this volume are clear. The Bureau's initial excuse for gassing and burning the residents at Waco was that it wanted to question Koresh about allegations concerning the weapons; but rather than question him during his regular early morning jog around town, it turned up at the compound 200 strong with machine guns, grenades, helicopters and tanks; for a reason.
The Bureau has a habit of going in hard, as senior citizen's Harry and Theresa Lamplugh of Pennsylvania can testify. They lost three of their cats and most of their furniture in 1994 when the Bureau called to impose the State's ever-increasing power and control over the ordinary citizenry; but libertarians do not need reminding of that. What is more disturbing is how, given the unlikely event of gaining public sympathy for such raids against 'white folks' in a pro-gun State, the Bureau peddled child abuse allegations and anti-cult propaganda to justify what it did, and divert attention from the real issue of creeping State power. Libertarians must work to expose the nature of moral panics and debunk attempts to create folk- devils to disarm the State's recourse to such excuses when it has lost the political argument.
William Thompson