By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

The Branch Davidians were a bunch of weird people who just wanted to be left the fuck alone. The buzzing hivemind of the mainstream maelstrom will scream otherwise on every conceivable platform that they have at their disposal but that really is what Waco all comes down to at the end of the day. As the 30th anniversary of the federal government’s deadliest massacre in the post-Manifest Destiny era slowly creeps towards us, every Hollywood producer and their creepy cousin seems to be cashing in on highly stylized excuses for why a bunch of loopy bible thumpers were just begging to be burned alive. “It was a terrible mistake” is a common refrain. But it wasn’t. It was something far more sinister and somebody who isn’t just another right-wing ideologue needs to fucking say it out loud. Waco was a deliberate act of mass murder perpetrated by a growing police state and there are no excuses for killing children.

It started with a no-knock raid, and it ended in a massacre. In the early mid-nineties, the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had found itself in dire straits with politicians openly discussing slashing their bloated budget and even merging them with another federal office. As if that wasn’t bad enough, 60 Minutes was in the production stages of a story covering the ATF’s long hidden history of rampant sexual harassment amongst its ranks. The agency badly needed a ratings-friendly PR stunt to validate their continued existence and they hit the jackpot when they stumbled over David Koresh. A sex-crazed gun nut who looked like the lead singer of a heavy metal cover band, Dick Wolf couldn’t have cast a better villain himself and David’s followers were just kooky enough for the feds to kick around for the cameras while still looking like the good guys again. It was perfect.

The only problem with this made-for-tv narrative was that the Davidians never really hurt anybody. They were a tiny splinter sect of about 100 Seventh Day Adventists prepping for the end times on a desolate compound known as the Mount Carmel Ranch in the scrublands outside of Waco, Texas. They were small-time players on the local gun-show circuit, but they were also generally considered to be harmless eccentrics by the local community, and they had a long history of compliance with local law enforcement to boot. This fact was made painfully obvious to the feds during the early stages of the case against the group for non-violent weapons violations when David Koresh told the ATF’s star informant that the federal government was more than welcome to come by the ranch and check on his paperwork and inventory.

The ATF declined the offer. They also declined to arrest Koresh on one of his routine jogs or trips to the local Guitar Center. That’s because the ATF wasn’t interested in a peaceful resolution. They wanted a high-octane publicity stunt that they could play on repeat like an infomercial devoted to their bottomless budget. This is also why they tipped off the local media and declined to call off their big raid even after they learned that the media had inadvertently leaked the news to Koresh through a local postal worker who also happened to be David’s brother-in-law. All the ATF wanted was a blockbuster showdown so they could show the whole country how fucking macho they were. They even held dress rehearsals for the raid with the US Army Special Forces at Fort Hood. But when zero day finally came these swaggering cowboys bit off more than thew could chew.

The initial raid at Waco began at 9 A.M. on February 28, 1993, with National Guard helicopters carrying ATF agents circling the Mount Carmel compound as an attempted diversion from their ground assault. This was launched simultaneously with unmarked pickup trucks hauling covered cattle trailers that concealed another 76 heavily armed agents. A wild hour-long gun battle ensued which only ended when the Davidians held their fire to allow the badly battered ATF cowboys to retreat with their tails between their legs. Once the smoke cleared, two Davidians lay dead and another five, including Koresh, were wounded but not before they claimed 24 ATF casualties, four of them fatal, making February 28th the worst day in the history of federal law enforcement measured by casualties. It was a humiliating blow, not just to the ATF but for the entire police state. Goliath had stepped to David and David rained hell.

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