Waco, Texas: Where A Part of America's Heart and Soul Died
By Robert McCurry
April 1993
David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas, held center stage in America for fifty-one days. A Rambo-style raid on a quiet Sunday morning in February by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) touched off one of the most incredible and tragic events in American history. The ATF stormed the Branch Davidian home to serve a search warrant issued on the suspicion that the group was stockpiling automatic weapons.
Within minutes it was evident that the raid was an utter failure. The whole thing had been orchestrated by some bureaucrats whose brains were obviously on vacation and whose allegiance to the U.S. Constitution is totally defective. It was a fiasco from the start that resulted in senseless, needless, carnage and human suffering - not only of those inside the home, but also of the ATF agents who were wounded or killed and forced to retreat. Credible sources report that the ATF fired the first shots; those within the home returned fire. Four agents were shot to death; 15 were wounded; in addition to that, an indeterminate number within the home were killed or wounded.
Thus began the worst, darkest, most despicable, and most grievous saga in American history. Fifty-one days later on Monday, April 19, 1993, the government's massacre of almost 100 men, women, and children who lived in the Branch Davidian home marked the climax of this "drama in real life."