All right, y'all.
Welcome to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
And our next guest is Carol Moore.
She's a libertarian activist from Washington, DC.
She keeps a website, carolmoore.net and secession.net.
And she's the author of what I would have you believe because it's the best I can tell.
And there was quite a few, though, but still, I'm pretty sure the single best book about what happened to the Branch Davidians, The Davidian Massacre.
You can buy the book wherever good books are sold.
And you can also read the entire text of the book for free at carolmoore.net.
And since today is the 19th anniversary of the initial raid, which began the Waco siege and the Davidian massacre, I thought it'd be a good idea to bring Carol on to tell the story, especially for those who aren't too familiar, but would like to be about just what happened to the Branch Davidians.
Maybe the state of justice in any individual case and lessons we can learn, that kind of stuff.
Welcome to the show, Carol.
How are you?
OK, so today is the anniversary of the day of the first ATF raid.
So I was wondering if, to start, maybe you could give us, as best you can, the brief version, sort of the outline of the way, how it was that the raid took place that morning and how the stage was set for the rest of the siege, basically.
Sure.
Well, during the reign of George Bush, number one, the militarization of law enforcement had already started getting going.
And basically, they had these ATF agents in three or four different cities and they wanted to have a national response plan where they could all get together on one target, but they needed a big enough target.
And they looked around and they found the Branch Davidians and they basically decided that this was the target that they were all going to go after in one big raid.
So, of course, then they had to, you know, there was the information about the shootout that had happened a few years before.
They had a gun business.
There were the former members who wrote nasty things about them being a cult.
And they decided this was a real good group to go after.
So they basically started getting their plan together, getting whatever information they could.
They put a undercover agent inside to check things out, get the lay of the land, see how the building was structured.
And the Davidians actually suspected he was an undercover agent.
Now, Koresh had cooperated before when there was the child abuse allegations and he had let people in.
I mean, there probably was something going on with him and the 14 year old girls.
Well, there obviously was because a couple of them got pregnant.
But he was cooperating.
It wasn't like he was keeping them away.
And if they kept at it, they probably eventually would have gotten him on charges, you know, for being with underage girls.
But the important thing is he did cooperate.
And if they had worked with the local police and the local sheriff, which they did not, they would have been able to deal with any real issues they had, including the gun issue.
And eventually down the road, it did turn out and partially because they knew they were under surveillance, they felt that they had to get weapons.
And of course, there was their whole religious view that eventually they would get attacked as part of the apocalypse to come.
And this, of course, the fact that they knew they were under surveillance for six months certainly aggravated it.
So they did in the end, and they did admit that they had a couple of automatic weapons without the proper authority.
They had a couple of homemade grenades without the possible, you know, well, I don't even know if you get authority to do that.
So basically, as February 28th approached, the BATF was ready to go.
So you want the story basically of what happened on the 28th?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, the way I remember it from the TV movie of the week is our heroic Superman pulled up to execute a search warrant and this insane death cult opened fire with M60s and probably 50 calibers and whatever in order to massacre them all.
That's the Davidian massacre that you must have written about here.
Well, what really happened, what really happened was, first of all, they did have all the trucks and everything surrounding.
And one of the members was the local postman.
So he asked what was going on.
And basically the policeman told him, oh, we're going to go shoot up that cult over there.
So, of course, already he had a bad impression of what was going on.
So he ran back and he told them.
And as it happened, the undercover agent was there and he told them what was going on.
The undercover agent decided to leave because he could tell them that they knew he didn't exactly hear it.
But they knew are getting ready because what did they heard?
They were going to be shot up, not that somebody was going to, you know, give them a search warrant, but they were coming to shoot.
And so the undercover agent ran across the street and said they know we're coming.
We know we're coming.
You have to stop.
And that had been one of the rules engagement.
If they knew they were coming, they were going to stop.
But they decided to go ahead anyway.
When the police, when the ATF drove up in front of the building.
First of all, they did.
This didn't come out until the hearing.
They didn't.
They probably did not have the search warrant on them because the ATF agent claimed that the reason that was never produced was it was all shot up in the truck.
So it sounds like somebody they didn't even bother to bring the search warrant.
So Correction, his father in law came to the front door and according to them, the ATF just started shooting and they say they didn't shoot at all.
But the worst thing that happened was that they had the helicopters.
They claimed that there was shooting from the helicopters, blind shooting, which is illegal.
And four people were shot and died from the helicopters that day.
And there was all sorts of bullet holes coming down indiscriminately through the roof.
Now, right there, ATF agents could have been prosecuted for murder if that had if the building had been allowed to stand.
So there was once the FBI came in, you know, they had to protect their little brothers.
So the whole 51 days was really a way to keep them in there to harass them until they had an excuse to destroy the evidence.
And I mean, their attorneys went in there and they said it's clear that they were shooting.
I don't know why they didn't take pictures.
That would have helped.
But, you know, one of their attorneys went on to represent the governor of where the senator from Texas.
So it's not like they had, you know, low life as their attorney.
Well, but then, of course, that's your interpretation of senators from Texas, depending on your interpretation, I should say.
And one of the members was trying to get back and it looks like he was just shot.
So that's basically the story there.
So well, details you want to tell.
Sure.
Well, I mean, it was always a big fight about who fired first.
And I actually played a clip earlier on the show of Wayne Martin's call to the local sheriff's department.
Help us.
Help us.
They're shooting at us.
And it was, I think, a bit telling that the deputy says, who is this?
And he says, it's Wayne.
And, you know, implicitly, the everyone at the sheriff's department knew who these people were on a first name basis.
That's what, you know, I mean, they really sold this thing, Carol, like it was a preemptive war against crazy old Saddam Hussein.
He was about to march on Waco, David Koresh, with his army of cult followers and all his illegal weapons.
And we had to stop him before he, you know, launched his terrible war against us.
And they actually used the same model against Iraq later that they used on Koresh, where they said that, well, he's crazy and he's bad to his own people and he has illegal weapons.
And so we got to stop him before he strikes.
Exact same, you know, brainwash that they used on us against the Davidians and definitely against the Davidians, but on us so that we'd all go along with it.
It's this very same script that they used against Hussein that they're using against Iran right now.
They're just too crazy to negotiate with these people.
They want to die.
Exactly.
Well, they're doing the same thing with Muslims in this country.
I mean, almost all the so-called terrorist prosecutions, except for four or five where, you know, only four or five people tried to do something was basically people shooting their mouth off.
And then they send in a government agent to encourage them to do more.
Yeah.
Send in a government agent to convince them to shoot their mouth off in the first place.
A lot of times, too.
All right, well, hold it right there.
We'll be right back with Carol Moore from Carolmore.net, author of The Davidian Massacre.
Read that.
We'll be right back.
Please look at Carolmore.net, a website of libertarian activist Carol Moore, that's M-O-O-R-E, Carolmore.net.
And you can find also her website, a link right there to Secession.net and the text of the entire book, which you ought to buy so she can make a little bit of money off it.
The Davidian Massacre, a text of the published book, plus extensive research and photos.
And I read a lot of books about Waco, and this is the one that's, well, that you need to read.
If you're going to read one, this is the one.
What I really do is I just systematically go down and, you know, have have section headers on everything they did.
And that's the way that's the way you got to do it.
You know, just just go in there.
I mean, it's nice to tell the story in an emotional way, which some people do, but you have to really just as if you were writing a legal document to show what they did.
I would love to update it some because a lot of things happened, of course, after 1995 when the book came out.
And of course, yeah.
Well, and, you know, I'm sorry because it's been so many years since I read the thing.
If I had read it recently, my praise would probably be more specific, like, wow, you would not believe her ability to not miss a single outrage and make sure that just at least of everything that was out in 1995, you had, you know, all of the very worst, most important stuff in there.
And that was before websites.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know exactly how you got all your research done.
You must have had a friend down at the local library or something.
Actually, I was working with some of the attorneys and the researchers who were working on the civil lawsuit.
Yeah, there you go.
I mean, because it really this thing is put together like forget about it for real.
And you can all just read it for free right now.
Carol Moore.net/Waco.
And that's the one thing I certainly remember about it is just how incomparable it was.
But the really scary thing is that it's so much it's so relevant today.
I mean, it hasn't happened again yet, but like I tell people now with this indefinite detention, everything next time they can do it, take survivors away and pretend it was a fire or a gas explosion.
Yeah.
Well, and the thing is, you know what?
It has happened over and over again.
What hasn't happened is the victory by the victims on the first day, like what happened to Waco and then the 51 day siege leading to the ultimate thing.
But what usually happens is April 19th in the first place, they just go in with overwhelming force, like what the ATF was trying to do here.
And they just win on the you know, and haul you away if you survive it.
And they do it all day, every day in every county in this land.
And that's disgusting.
Well, one website I brought up is called civil civil freedoms dot org.
And it's a new coalition of every group in the Bill of Rights Association, a lot of Muslims associations, defending dissent foundation.
A lot of groups are working.
I mean, what they're really calling it now is preemptive prosecution.
In other words, they want to prosecute before you do something bad.
So this is why this is their excuse for sending in all these agents.
They want to stop your thought crimes.
Well, yeah, I mean, and they even say they change their guidelines officially right where they may now just go ahead and investigate people, not crimes.
And we'll just figure out what we can get Carol Moore on.
And that's their actual policy, like stated the rules of how the DOJ works now.
I mean, it's the end of American freedom.
There's no doubt about it.
So then we could talk about the session that a little bit.
Yeah, well, actually, that's a good one.
But I think that one will have to wait because I do want to talk a little bit more about Waco because, you know, I was I think 15 at the time that this happened and very impressionable.
And what made a real impression on me was how easy it was for the government to take a group of people who, you know, admittedly, they kind of isolated themselves in that they lived on the edge of town, I guess, like they had they deliberately to a degree had separated themselves off from the rest of society where.
But how easy was it for the government to say that these people are basically a bunch of foreigners among us and it's OK to kill them all with the military, with military force?
They're not suspects anymore.
And in fact, they're not even all people anymore.
They are all David Koresh now.
And David Koresh said he was Jesus.
And David Koresh is crazy.
And David Koresh deserves to die.
And everybody knows that.
And so it's OK to kill all of them.
And that was the you know, that was what all the ladies down at the grocery store thought.
I was telling Zoe earlier I was sacking groceries then.
And all the moms in the neighborhood say, go in there and end it, end it.
You know, blood dripping from their fangs.
That was the consensus of the housewives in northwest Austin during the Waco siege.
Oh, really?
You're down there.
So you're right by there.
Yeah.
So you've been to the site, I'm sure.
Yeah.
I mean, the people should say, wow, that's just 100 miles from here.
You can't just go riding roughshod over the rights of people, you know, that might as well be in mind my next door neighbors for intents and purposes.
You can't do that.
Instead, people took the side of the cops immediately.
The cops didn't even need to ask them to.
They ran to the people, ran to the front of the lynch mob.
Yeah, it's pretty sad.
But one of the things I do talk about is that one of the reasons or their excuses was the Davidians perceived separatist and secessionist tendencies.
The sheriff said they were like living in another little country out there.
And that trial, the ATF agent said that they didn't feel they had to go by the laws of the country.
And if the prosecutor said it at the trial, he said they were just a bunch of secessionists out there and they deserve what they got.
But I did, you know, when I first wrote to the Davidians in prison, I said, you know, you probably probably should have gone out there in a circle and been singing hymns when they got there and things would have gone down differently.
And they did agree with me.
So, you know, shooting back is not usually the best response unless you know they're really out to kill you.
And in that case, I think they could have gotten away with it.
But nowadays, who knows?
Who knows?
I mean, it's out of control.
Yeah.
Well, a lot of the military guys coming back, you know, it's all bull, you know.
So it's not like every single one of them is going to be recruited to kill us.
Just a certain percentage of them.
Right.
Well, and, you know, it was I think I don't know how groundbreaking it was.
At least it had been a while since the president had used the special forces against Americans.
I don't know, maybe Wilson or FDR did or Nixon, maybe or something.
But but Bill Clinton and he admitted this in a deposition to Judicial Watch that he had ordered the Delta Force to go there with the FBI and had given and and for years now, Bill Clinton had said, well, he had given the authority to Reno and she had made the call.
But he contradicted himself on his way out of the presidency and said, I think, in 1999 or 2000 and said that, no, he had given the order.
And, of course, he had because Janet Reno couldn't order the Delta Force to kill people.
And as Lee Hancock reported in Dallas Morning News 100 times over, the eight that the Army Delta Force was in the back of the house shooting people that day.
And so it had to have been Bill Clinton who sent them to do it.
Well, Dick Morris has said, oh, Clinton was involved from the top to the bottom.
OK, Dick, give us, you know, give us the detail.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's right, but he certainly was in charge that day.
He claimed he was he was in charge that day.
And in fact, they also say he was sitting on the couch with James Riotti and John Wong watching it on TV as the fire burn, which I thought was funny, you know, unlicensed Christians being persecuted by the government when he's there with his Chinese intelligence connections.
May that was a different tangent.
Yeah, there's, you know, the whole somebody has to really write the book with all the new stuff that's come out, make it twice as big, you know, and just again, systematically do it.
I can't do it.
But if they decide to do it, they do a good job.
Yeah.
Well, the resources, there's always rumors of Mike McNulty that made at least took part and I guess made Waco Rules of Engagement and a new revelation that he was making a movie movie about it.
Well, I don't know if that's ever going to come out or what.
I'm sure there's political opposition to such a thing.
Yeah.
Well, the thing is, it's so expensive.
I mean, of course, the thirty four hundred forty thousand dollars to get other rights to use some of the footage.
A lot of people have unless they want to do it illegally.
Well, yeah.
But, you know, when you're talking about trying to make a major picture, you can't do that.
You got to go the hard way, the harder route.
But all right.
Well, unfortunately, that's the bumper music plan and we got to leave it there.
But people are interested in the story of the Branch Davidians.
I urge you to check out Carol Moore dot net and her book, The Davidian Massacre.
It's the single best book on what happened there.
Just compile facts like you wouldn't believe and learn the story.
Well, thank you very much for your time.
OK, hear me out.
All right.
I'll see y'all tomorrow.
Thanks for listening.
