2/26/18 Surviving Branch Davidian David Thibodeau recalls the Waco Massacre 25 years later

Hey guys, here's how to support my show.
First of all, buy my book, Fool's Errand, Time Down the War in Afghanistan.
It's at foolserrand.us and any day now, I don't know what they're waiting on, soon it'll be out in audiobook, foolserrand.us.
Also, the YouTube project is done.
All 4,600 and something interviews are all now at youtube.com slash Scott Horton Show.
So you can sign up there as well as, you know, the RSS feeds at scotthorton.org, iTunes, Stitcher, and all that stuff.
And then check out scotthorton.org slash donate.
Anybody who donates 50 bucks gets a signed copy of the book, 100 bucks, and you get a QR code, commodity disc, a silver disc, you scan it with your phone, it tells you the instant spot price.
And a $200 donation will get you a lifetime subscription to listen and think libertarian audiobooks.
They already have a bunch and mine's coming out on there real soon too.
And by the way, take all kinds of digital currencies as well.
Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Zencoin, which I'll talk to you more about in a minute, and stuff like that.
So check all that out at scotthorton.org slash donate.
And I would tell you to go to Patreon, but my campaign is frozen.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm a Russian bot.
But yeah, check out all that stuff.
And hey man, leave me a good review on iTunes or Stitcher wherever you download the show.
Or if you read the book and you like it, how about check out the reviews there on amazon.com.
That stuff always helps.
Oh yeah, and I give speeches at reasonable prices.
So email me scott at scotthorton.org.
Thanks.
Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the wax museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing David Thibodeau, surviving member of the Branch Davidians and author of the book, A Place Called Waco.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing, David?
Good.
How are you today, Ben?
I'm doing real good.
I appreciate you joining us on the show and especially, I know you're under the weather today, so I really appreciate it.
Hey, fun fact here.
You're the first person I ever interviewed on my show, Say It Ain't So, back in 1999.
And then I think again in the year 2000, I think we talked twice on that first show.
Wow.
Yeah, those archives are long gone unless you happen to have a tape.
No?
No.
I've done so many interviews throughout the years, I have no idea what happened to that.
Wouldn't that be cool though?
Anyway.
Yeah, it would.
So yeah, you're the first guy I ever interviewed on my first radio show that I had on Free Radio Austin back when, and yeah, all those tapes are gone.
Wow.
I feel very honored.
So, but the reason I have you on is because, to my surprise, there's been a documentary, or not a documentary, pardon me, a dramatization TV miniseries about what happened at Waco back in 1993 that not only really gives your side a fair shake, but is even, I have come to understand, based on your book as well as on the book of an FBI negotiator.
And I admit to you, I haven't been watching it because I have studied so much about this incident.
I don't want to get my facts polluted with, you know, kind of TV narrative and stuff in my head.
But I know people who are watching it who say that it's really just great.
And I did watch about 10 or 15 minutes of it where they made it clear, kind of how the case against the Davidians started at the ATF after, you know, they needed a PR stunt after Ruby Ridge and all that.
So I could tell the theme and the tone of the show from that small part of it I watched.
But so, I guess, you know, that's my first question for you is just, you know, what all do you think of this?
I know you helped advise on it and all of that, but did it live up to your expectations so far?
Yeah, I've been pretty stunned, actually.
I never thought something like this would happen, especially in my generation.
When you think series, you think, oh my God, it's just going to be scandalous.
There was no such, you know, you didn't come home and watch the after school special and not expect it to be totally over the top and just ridiculous.
So, you know, when you think of a series, that's kind of the first thing you come to find out.
It's going to be a TV thing.
Of course, it's American propaganda.
So it's going to be, you know, very one-sided.
And, you know, it just, it wasn't the case with this.
I think, I think this generation is kind of demanding more truth.
Maybe it's the, you know, it's this new thing called the internet.
Yeah, it really has changed everything.
It isn't really new, but it is changing the way people perceive things.
And I think what it's really doing is it's showing Americans how propagandized we are and we don't even realize it.
Yeah.
Well, that's, it's exceeded my expectations for what I ever thought.
I never thought we'd get a fair shake, especially from a television thing.
And honestly, the Donalds have just been great as Derek and John Donald, these two guys, they read my book and they just knew that that this is a story they wanted to make.
And they contacted me.
It took a lot of convincing, but, you know, the more I talk with John, the director, the more I realized that this guy, and I saw the word world through similar lenses, really.
And we, you know, we read a lot of the same books, things like that.
And I just, I had a connection with it, but I never had a connection with any film project concerning Waco ever.
So it was, it was exciting, you know, and I hadn't put quite a bit of faith and trust in them, but I really think they did an excellent job with it.
And I'm kind of surprised to say that, but they really did.
All right now.
So this is, you know, kind of just a little side issue, but I wanted to make sure of this because I had talked with Mike McNulty who had made the documentaries, Waco, the rules of engagement and Waco, a new revelation before he died.
Yeah.
And he had told me that he had a script and he was trying to get his movie produced in Hollywood.
And so I had wondered whether this grew out of his script, but it sounds like you just answered that in the negative, right?
Yeah, it had nothing to do with it.
I wasn't trying.
So imagine that two movie scripts that were, you know, fair and accurate on this case, because obviously McNulty did fantastic work.
He was just a phenomenal person, a great, great investigator.
He dug up, of course, you know, first time I ever saw the red tape was because of Mike McNulty and the process of the rules of engagement being done.
And it was, yeah, he put together more.
He's done more, I think, than anyone else for the community and the survivors.
So yeah, I can't say enough about him.
You know, he is best.
That is for sure.
He is.
He is very best.
All right now.
So just to get this out of the way, but I feel like mentioning on the personal note, you know, when I was a kid, people would talk about the Kennedy assassination, how they would never forget where they were that day and that kind of thing.
Well, I'll never forget where I was the first time that I saw the footage of the raid.
And my first impression, not sure what I was looking at, was this like the second floor of a motel where they're out on the balcony?
And then I realized, oh, no, okay, they're on the roof of some building.
They're going in the window.
And, you know, just my first little initial confusion at what exactly it was I was looking at.
And then also never forget the day of the fire either, you know, is a huge part of not just my politics, but who I am, to my very core, really, ever since that day.
And it's also a big part of my fascination with radio, because when I first got a car, just, you know, I don't know, six months or a year later, something like that, I got a car.
And I thought, oh, I know, I think I'll try out the AM radio band.
I've lived in Austin my whole life.
And I have no idea what's on the AM, you know, my parents always just listen to easy listening or whatever.
So I turned to the AM. And the first thing I heard was it was Johnny Walker, the FM radio DJ, who was opinionless.
He was just hosting.
And he was hosting Surviving Branch Davidians.
And I don't know if it was you, it may have been Clive Doyle, or I'm not sure exactly who it was.
And they're taking calls.
And that just hit me like a right hook from Mike Tyson that like, wow, people, not only did they survive, but here they're allowed to speak for themselves.
And they have a point of view.
And it's like in this open forum where then anybody with a telephone can pick up and call in and say, well, I know a thing about this to check this out, or ask their question and whatever.
And it just blew me away that this is my medium.
This is, you know, the only way to get around then, you know, before the internet became what it has become now.
This is the only way to get around TV.
Rather Jennings and Brokaw say it was a suicide.
But Johnny Walker actually is hosting the other side of the story here for a minute.
And, you know, I've been stuck on radio ever since then, ever since that day.
So it's just, you know, I don't know, the way things come together and all that kind of deal.
And then like I said, you're the first guy I ever interviewed once I finally got my own show on Free Radio Austin.
My first show was about Waco.
And my first interview is about Waco, of course.
So anyway, this is kind of my thing.
For years, I did every every April 19, I would do a Waco special and that kind of stuff.
I probably should.
So listen, and I read your book, but it's been 20 years or whatever, since I read it.
But I remember it was great.
And so I guess I just sort of want to kind of just, you know, I'm not going to be too particular, but I want to just go through a few old things here.
First of all, can you talk a little bit about how it was that you got involved in the Branch Davidian group yourself?
Well, yeah, I was, you know, a young guy has played drums in a band living in Los Angeles.
And it's really funny, I recently reconnected with my old singer from that band.
And he told me the story, I kind of remembered it differently.
But I think he was right.
It was, we were going to a band rehearsal, and he was using my drumsticks to tap on the dashboard of the car, and he broke my drumstick.
And I was furious that because it's like the only pair I had.
So we had to stop at a guitar center on the way to band rehearsal, to be able to have a practice.
Because literally, I had enough for a pair of drumsticks, that was it.
So somehow I had enough money to go up and get a pair of drumsticks.
And I went into the electronic room, where Dave Koresh and Steve Snyder were looking at one of the electronic drum sets, and they asked me if I'd play it for them, and I did.
They liked it.
They heard the set, you know, my name's Steve Snyder, this is Dave Koresh.
And, you know, he's a musician, I'm his manager, and we're looking for a drummer.
I wondered if you might be interested.
They handed me a card.
The card in the back had all this religious scripture on it, Isaiah, and a bunch of different, you know, prophets, Revelation.
I instantly handed them the card back and just said, yeah, I'm not really interested in being in a Christian band, but thank you very much.
Good luck to you.
Yeah, you know, it kind of just does these escalations, which I thought was very interesting, but all over the world.
But really studying the scripture, they kind of had a deeper meaning as to what it really meant, that they really kind of viewed it as a study.
Very serious.
Yeah, I thought that was very interesting, just the way he kind of explained it.
But I took the card leaving, thinking, you know, I'm not going to call these guys back.
And I just noticed I kept thinking about it.
For some reason, that experience of meeting these two guys.
A few days later, I ended up calling them.
We got together and played some music and had a study.
And that was kind of the first, my first introduction to Dave Koresh, Steve Schneider, the Davidian community.
And then, so I don't know, I mean, I guess they made a big deal about, and we'll get into the PR campaign during the siege here in a minute, but obviously, you know, the story that, as most people received it, was that this guy Koresh was basically like a Charles Manson, sort of a Jim Jones, kind of a cult leader.
And, you know, it's certainly part of the story, all the accusations about child molestation aside, that he, you know, had these exclusive relationships with the other wives in the community and this kind of thing.
So can you talk about, you know, the degree of his power over the group exactly?
And what role he played in the group?
If it was, if he was not Charles Manson, who was he?
Yeah.
Well, the degree of his power was strictly scriptural.
And here's kind of what I mean by that.
I mean, it's a deep question, really.
But, you know, there was probably 40 or 50 people that lived in Mount Carmel year-round.
The rest of them went back to their countries.
You know, they lived in different countries from all over the world, all over the country, all over the United States and abroad.
And they would come to the festival days of God, if you will, that are written in the scripture, or the festival days that the Jewish religion from the Old Testament would keep.
That's the festivals that David Koresh kept, and the people there kept.
So to make a long story short, people from all over the world would come to learn the seven seals from David.
David had gone to different countries, I guess, over the course of the 80s, really, before I met him, and spoken to many people, many different religious schools about his view of the scripture, revealing the seven seals in Revelation.
And what he would do is he would take people from Genesis, through all the minor prophets, through all the major prophets, through the New Testament even, and kind of harmonize it and show you each seal that's found in Revelation, and where that seal is found back in the scriptures, back with the prophets, if you will.
And he would make it all come alive and all make sense.
And when I first went to Texas for one of the festival two-week periods, there were people from everywhere, literally, I mean, people were coming in from Australia, New Zealand, England, other countries, just literally everywhere.
It was amazing.
It came from all over the world.
And the places where David had been and spoke to some of these religious universities, all the people that came to learn from him told me the same thing, that they learned more from David Peresh.
Studying with him in, like, 10 or 15 minutes, they had their years and years of paying these schools and getting the knowledge from the schools, and they were able to get these schools and getting the knowledge from the schools.
And he would just open things up to them, and they could understand for the first time what the scripture really meant.
And that was pretty powerful when you're hearing that over and over from various people that you're meeting for the first time.
But that's what would happen.
All of a sudden, there would be 150, 200 people in this community in Waco.
Literally, it was Axel, Texas, a little town outside of Waco in the middle of nowhere, where David built a building, and, you know, people would come and learn the seven seals.
But as I started to learn these things, you know, it just became...it was an awesome thing.
David would take the Bible, and he would put it to his head, and he'd say, you know, when some people see this thing as a book with two pieces of cow leather and a bunch of pages in between filled with these mystical writings, and he'd hold it up to his head, and he goes, I see it panoramically as if it's happening before me right now.
And, you know, I mean, that was one of the first studies.
I mean, that's a pretty top-down thing.
Over the course of the next two weeks, when he was really breaking down the seals, you came to believe that he really did kind of see the entire book panoramically.
When David gave a study, it was as if he lived it.
It's not like he was just regurgitating information.
It was just kind of unworldly.
That's the only way I could describe it is that he believed it, and you believed it, and you saw for the first time in your life what it really said and what it really meant.
And that's how you feel.
You didn't feel like it was his interpretation.
You felt like it's what the book really says.
And I found that, as a worldly kind of guy, as someone who was not looking for religion, to be very, very powerful.
The other thing that I thought was incredibly powerful is when I was talking to some of the older people that have lived in the community for, you know, 30, 20, 30 years, the Joneses, Clive Doyle, Sheila, Sheila Mark, some of these people that have been in it for a very long time were telling me the story of Lois Roan, Brother Hodduff, and some of the people that had left the Seventh-day Adventist Church and formed the Branch Davidian.
And they did it because they wanted the Scripture to be purer and truer than what their church was doing with it.
So they branched off, formed, you know, their community.
They each believed that they had a prophet, and each of them talked about the seven seals would be revealed one day, but for now, this is what God has shown me to show you, and that it would be the next person, Lois Roan, who had the the Scripture of the Holy Spirit being feminine.
That was the message that she went all over the country and talked about, Proverbs 8 and 9, and some other scriptures, and, you know, really enlightening stuff.
It's very interesting if you're into biblical study.
But they always talked to one person that would come who would be able to put the whole thing together.
And so Vernon Howell comes on the scene, and he starts teaching some studies.
He was gifted with the Scripture.
He knew a lot about it, but he wasn't teaching the seven seals.
And I found this out.
I was reminded of this recently, speaking to Kathy Schroeder, that he came and, you know, he would expand upon what the others had taught, and he would take it further, but he wasn't really teaching the seals until he went to Israel.
And I'm not sure what the timeline is.
I guess he was there maybe a year or so before he went to Israel.
But when he went to Israel, he came back teaching the seals, and he came back like a different—from what Kathy Schroeder told me.
It seemed like he was a different person.
He went from, you know, teaching the Holy Spirit, Feminine, the Kingdom to being set up, to teaching the seven seals, what they really meant, how it related to the group, and how they were going to move forward from there.
And apparently that was a mind-blowing thing for some of the older people.
Now, I came in much later.
So the group was established pretty much—everyone had been studying with David for a long time, and I had not.
I learned things very quickly.
I learned things that would have taken other people years to learn.
I had to learn very fast.
So, you know, I never considered it to be a cult group.
I can see why people would say that.
To me, it wasn't just a little community of people living that really believed in the Bible, but I guess that can be cultish, maybe.
Well, here's the thing about it, though, right?
It's the part where he says, aha, here's the part of the Bible where it talks about me, and it says, I get to screw your wife.
Oh, I got you, yeah.
Well, the Scripture, he would—and again, even that came later, okay?
It came, obviously, before my time, but there was an upper-level experience, and a lot of people left when it came to him, if you will, having the children of God.
Well, didn't that just seem to you like, you know, come on, power corrupts, and he's just a man, and he's taking advantage of this position he's in?
Of course it could seem that way, and you know, as kind of a worldly guy, it would absolutely seem that way to me.
But what happened was—you have to understand how I came into it.
I didn't come into it knowing what we all know now.
I came into it learning some incredibly deep things, and then seeing a bunch of women walking around with children, not knowing whose the father were of all these particular children.
So, you know, it took a little time to get to understand that they were all David's kids.
And by that time, I had already, like, kind of known the children, known the people, known the women, known the community.
I got to know them individually, and they all seemed like very smart, rational people to me.
So my attitude was, okay, this is not what other people would do, this is not the kind of family that other people have, but who am I to say that, you know, I was not a judgmental person, I was a physician.
So to me, if all these women could live together and not kill each other, that was kind of a miracle the way I viewed it.
Sure.
Well, and there's been polygamous communities all through all different societies throughout the world in any way.
But so, I'm the one who brought up Charles Manson, but just so for the record here, he wasn't sending these people out to rob stores and murder actresses or any such thing.
These are just, go ahead and describe the people there.
Yeah, most of the people there, you know, the older ones, of course, were more scriptural about, you know, probably that— They're not like LA runaways, you know, desperately looking for someone to fill their empty head kind of thing.
No, correct.
There were some musicians from LA.
Some of the ladies came from Los Angeles, but definitely not the type that you think of when you think of Manson.
You know, we had, of course, Wayne Martin, Harvard-educated attorney, Steve Schneider, taught comparative religions at the University of Hawaii.
Very, very bright people.
And most of the people that are coming from England, they're all coming from the seminary school, so these were people that were involved in higher levels of education, higher levels of learning.
They simply learned more from David than they did from the university, so they decided to come and follow him or learn from him.
Yeah, well, an important point, really, yeah.
I think the short clip of the documentary has your character talking to this young lady and using some common slang that she had never heard before.
Yeah.
Kind of portrayed them as pretty isolated out there.
Just how isolated were they out there?
Well, you know, I mean, it's pretty much you got up, you got breakfast, you did some work, you know, you took care of the kids, or you prepared the meal if you were female for the other guys who were going out and working on the house.
It was the middle of nowhere.
There were some people that worked in the community, but not everyone did, and certainly not the mothers.
So, I mean, it was a biblical community.
These people studied the Bible.
That was it.
So, what was your question?
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't want to sound like I'm picking on them or anything like that.
I guess I'm thinking more, or you guys, I'm more thinking of it in terms of a long time has passed now.
This is now 25 years ago.
Wednesday is the raid, was the raid.
And so, there are a lot of people listening who really just don't know the first thing about it.
And a lot of people have been asking me about it lately.
And I just have been referring them to the rules of engagement and this kind of thing.
But I imagine there's going to be a lot of people listening to this who don't really know anything about it.
So, really, like, you know, the portrayal of the people here that I'm trying to get at is just for the contrast coming up when we talk about what happened after the raid and the siege began and the public relations campaign against these people.
But I don't want to really skip ahead.
I hope you have the time to go with me here because we got to talk about what happened with that raid and what was the ATF doing there anyway?
If David Koresh wasn't a Charles Manson criminal cult leader sending his people out to commit crimes, what was he doing that got the federal police on his case?
You know, the other thing, too, David knew a lot of people in the community of Waco.
He knew the sheriff, Jack Harwell, on a first-name basis.
And, you know, there was never any problem.
The sheriff was always welcome out to Mount Carmel if he ever had any questions or problems.
They knew that, and they all knew that.
But the ATF, of course, decided they wanted this kind of militaristic style raid, and they had a judge to support it.
And I'm sure that other law enforcement agencies within Waco knew what was coming.
You know, obviously, no one told us.
But the ATF really, you know, their budget was coming up.
We know that.
We know that Bill wasn't too happy with it for whatever reason.
He couldn't, of course.
There was talk of doing away the ATF, cut their budget quite a bit.
So this is when Bill Clinton was brand new in power, right?
Just to set the stage a little bit here.
He was just inaugurated a month and a week before, and he was coming in on this whole new wave, the Reagan-Bush era now is over, and it's this whole new PC thing.
And part of that was Al Gore reinventing government, and they were going to at least consolidate, or had talked openly about consolidating the ATF, taking it away from Treasury, and putting it under the Department of Justice, and making it even a littler brother of the FBI, basically, and ruining the lives of all the bosses there.
So that was, yeah, a very important context, right?
They said, oh, look, well, what, we're going to go be heroes here?
Yeah, yeah.
I know you probably want to go in a succession here, but when you look at how badly they screwed up, and the fact how they're more powerful than ever, it's really quite awesome how they got it wrong.
I mean, they ultimately screw up, and they get promotions, they get more budgeting, I mean, they're just more powerful than ever.
I guess I just don't understand how government works, you know, and I'm glad that the kids today are upset enough to try to get things done, because something needs to change here.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
So yeah, I mean, you know, they wanted a big raid, they wanted to look like there was this dangerous group of religious fanatics that had firearms, were planning to do some destruction to the community, and they could save everyone, they would look great.
Problem is, that wasn't really the case.
On the question there of, you know, about being armed to the teeth, this was actually something that I saw in the miniseries, again, it's just called Waco, it's on the Paramount channel, everybody, I hope you'll look at it.
One of the things they showed there was the subordinate says to the ATF boss, oh yeah, and they've got all these guns.
And he says, oh my god, what would they need with that many guns?
But so that's a legit question, right?
Why do the Branch Davidians have so many guns, David?
You know, they went, okay, Paul Fata said, David, there's a guy named Henry McMahon, and they would do the gun shows together, and Henry was a licensed firearm dealer.
And they became friends, and Henry started to listen to David, and Henry actually called David his preacher.
And Henry kind of showed them the gun business, so they would go and they would buy certain firearms.
There was a lot of legislation that Clinton was trying to get imposed that if that were to occur, the ammunition was going to go up in value, certain firearms would go up in value.
So they started to look at it like a business.
They started to buy and sell gun shows legally.
So a lot of that was inventory.
Now there's also, me being from Maine, it's kind of funny to go down and see all these people that had firearms and shot every weekend outside of the firing range.
It wasn't something that was my everyday life.
But living in Texas for a while, I started to realize it was just what everyone did.
I knew people that were in other bands that would come and shoot at the firing range with us on the weekends.
It was just kind of a good old boy thing.
Everyone did it.
The point being that this was not training for the Davidians' eventual assault on downtown Waco.
This is just shooting guns for fun, because that's what people do.
Absolutely.
It's a part of life there.
It's part of the culture.
And now let's talk about Paul Fata for a minute, because I guess I don't remember my footnote anymore, but I know I'm right, that he left that morning in a dually pickup truck with a camper shell, towing a U-Haul trailer, both the back of that truck and the U-Haul trailer full of rifles, hundreds and hundreds of rifles, 90-something percent of the entire inventory, of the entire amount of firearms on the premises.
And he left before the raid that morning, at like seven in the morning, and not to escape in some dastardly plot conspiracy, simply to drive down the road here to Austin to sell them at the gun show at the Old Best building on 290 and I-35.
And that was it.
And when he found out about the raid, the first thing he did was call the ATF or call the FBI and say, Hi, I'm Paul Fata, the Branch Davidian with all the guns.
Are you looking for me?
And they said, No, you're free to go.
And he was like, Okay, and later did, you know, a decade in prison or better.
But that was the story of the Branch Davidian's guns, that 90-something percent of them left that morning in the, in the course of perfectly legitimate gun business.
As simple as that.
Yeah, I'm not sure what the percentage was, but I know he definitely had a, he had a trailer full.
It was going to conduct business like we had every weekend.
So it was nothing out of the ordinary, that's for sure.
I mean, that, when you put that context on it, for those who remember the, the way it was spun instead, it's just incredible.
You know, I remember finding that out for the first time.
And just, well, you can tell I never forgot that little data point.
Alright, so then now the dynamic entry started to talk about that.
So the ATF shows up on the morning of February 28, 1993.
And then what?
Well, at first, you know, it started like any other day, I got up to have breakfast.
I remember one down the hall to the foyer area, which is where the double doors were in front of the building.
And there was David, he was sitting there talking to Robert Rodriguez, who was the undercover agent, we know now who, you know, lived across the street, they just moved in.
You know, these ATF guys moved in a few weeks before the raid, they didn't move into the, there was a little house that existed on the other side of El Carmel, across the street.
They moved in with a bunch of electronic gear, you know, big cases for electronics and things like that.
They didn't move in any furniture or anything.
And they had really nice SUVs, Serengeti sunglasses, and they were just in their mid 30s, and they were claiming they were college students.
Pretty inconspicuous, it sounds like.
It was even called the undercover house, right?
Oh yeah, those guys over there at the undercover house?
Yeah, the undercover house, that's right.
Oh, that's funny.
And you know, I mean, it was ridiculous, but it was just like, okay, so this is, if it weren't so serious, it would be really funny.
As you can tell, I am laughing over it just because, you know, the ridiculousness of it is just pretty profound.
But you know, over the course of time, whatever, David, he realized they were probably working with the government, but he said, hey, you know, I could talk to this guy, Robert.
He wanted to show him the seals.
He wanted to show him how he viewed scripture.
And he looked at Robert as a soul that he could help.
And that is legitimate.
That's not just, I'm not just saying that.
He really wanted to do that.
And I think Robert was responding to it, because one of the most fascinating interviews I'd ever read was one that one of the Texas papers did with Robert Rodriguez.
And he said that he would come home after like a six-hour study with David or whatever it is.
His fellow agents would be like, are you getting converted, dude?
You know, come on, you're here to do a job.
We had to talk him back all the time about talking back about being an ATF agent.
And they asked him, the interviewer asked him if he was close to being converted.
And he said, he said, I was close.
And to me, for an ATF undercover agent to say that, period, even one time in an interview, is so incredibly telling and powerful as to the skill that David had with the scripture.
Okay?
That one statement blew my mind, and I think about it all the time.
And so whatever, you know, Rodriguez has a different story now, of course, and it's always like, oh, he was just evil.
He's taken pretty much the Fed headline.
What he's supposed to say as a former agent, you know, even though he sued what a lot of money from the agency, he's still, you know, I don't think he would let on that he was that close.
But I remember reading the article and it blew my mind.
So, you know, definitely there was some power there.
And there was definitely a rapport between the two individuals.
And I think David, the day of the raid, when Robert left, I think David really wanted Robert to talk to the higher-ups to, you know, for him to talk to the people in charge and say, okay, I found no sign of illegal activity here.
I've not seen any fully automatic firearms we need to call the raid off.
That's what Robert tried to do, frankly.
He said, you know, the element of surprise is lost.
They know you're coming and we need to call this raid off.
And of course, the tactical commanders did it anyway.
The ATF commanders went forward with the raid, including helicopters and, you know, the cattle trailers and all the agents, despite the fact they knew the element of surprise had been lost.
And also, they went against their own inside person, telling them what they shouldn't do.
The guy that they sent in for information, they went directly against what his advice was, and then they threw him under the bus and said that he lied and he had never said that to them.
That's crazy.
I mean, that's just crazy.
Well, there's a clip of that, actually, of the congressional hearing in Waco, the rules of engagement, where he's talking about how he tried to stop them and they say, no, that never happened.
But they're sitting right there at the same table with him testifying before Congress.
And he's like, basically crying and says, did too.
You know, it's pretty clear who's lying.
They're just like, you know, looking down and clearly being the dishonest ones there.
And so, yeah, I mean, apparently he really did.
So he was there that morning and talking with David, and David was saying, look, we know that they're coming.
Go try to stop the raid.
And he went and tried to stop the raid, but they blew right past him.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah, they just totally ignored what he had to say and they went forward with it anyway.
All right.
Now, but the story was, though, that this cult, they were all lined up at the windows with their machine guns waiting for the ATF in an ambush, and then they massacred him and killed four guys.
Listen, if they could, if they could have made the American public believe that we got on buses and went to the ATF offices and opened fire on them, that's what they would have had you believe.
The fact that, you know, these people have lied so thoroughly, it blows my mind that there's even any, any question as to who fired first.
Yeah, there really shouldn't be a question about who fired first.
I mean, we know that they had a video camera at the surveillance house.
We know that there was a guy on the ground from the media who was filming the early stages of the raid.
For some reason, the very first shot to the front door, especially from the surveillance house, which I think would have been a great day, all those tapes disappeared.
Now, the story that everybody at the front door told me was the same story.
I talked to everyone separately and they all said, press him to the door, got his hand up and said, hold on, there's women and children here, let's talk about this.
And the door blew back with his hand, his other hand from the velocity of a bullet hitting it.
And that's when he shut the door and fell back.
Perry Jones, you know, 70 year old that aren't banned was shot in the stomach and he went down in pain.
Well, you know, there's at least one ATF agent who in his initial debriefing said exactly that as well.
Oh, good.
There's been a lot of facets, man.
It's easy to forget things over the course of 25 years.
Yeah.
And, you know, I don't remember all of my footnotes necessarily anymore, but I know I'm right about everything.
And if anybody wants to double check me, Carol Moore's The Davidian Masker is really the best documentary book about this.
There was also a, there was the guy, there was a couple of people, a couple of the ATF guys trial that indicated that one person's firearm went off accidentally and that could have been the first shot.
Well, and I think they said they shot the dogs, right?
They had a couple.
That's the other thing is, is the other, other people that were near the dog, say that the first shots were them shooting the dog.
Although, yeah, it sounds more like if, if that was even really right, then that would negate the story about them shooting past caression, killing his father-in-law there, which is, as you say, that was what everybody said happened there was clear enough.
And well, I don't think it would negate it.
I think it all kind of happened at once.
I mean, once someone pulled the trigger on the dogs, for example, within literally seconds, some other agents are probably shooting at the door.
But to me, that makes sense that, yeah, the one startles the rest into just going for it.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And to me, it's the fact that, that those, those tapes are all gone there.
They disappeared.
They, uh, no one knows where they went.
They somehow disappeared at the ballet.
It's just ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
Uh, those tapes were taken for a reason.
They were taken for the reason that we know, but it shows the ATF are culpable.
Uh, the other thing that happened when there's, there's two steel metal doors at the front of the building.
And when the David had his hand, the majority of the bullets were coming from the outside in and the two attorneys that came in during the scenes, uh, Dickey Garrett and Jack Silverman confirmed that.
And yet that steel door has disappeared.
It was not entered into evidence.
The guy said, Oh, it must've disintegrated at the fire.
That's very convenient considering how the other door was entered into evidence.
All right.
Now, so here's the thing.
Um, six Davidians were killed.
Six Davidians were killed in this raid for ATF.
Um, and then they finally withdrew the Davidians.
You guys were you shooting that day or you're not supposed to say, or what?
No, I wasn't shooting that day.
My, my, I'm pretty much a pea stick and I've always have been.
Um, I believe in your right to defend yourself.
Absolutely.
Uh, as long as we do not live in a utopian dream and bad people can have guns, I think that good people should be able to have guns as well.
Uh, I wish that we lived in the utopian dream and guns weren't necessary, but that's just not the case.
And if the good people give up their guns and it's only going to be left for the bad people that would give up their guns.
So there's the dilemma.
Okay.
Call it a catch 22, but that's, that's, that's the world that we exist in.
And this country was founded on being able to protect yourselves, uh, for all kinds of various reasons, be it religious, be it against your own government, enemies, foreign and domestic as it does the constitution.
Uh, you know, these are all, I think very important American values.
But what was your question?
Whether you were participating in the firefight was the question.
Oh no, no, no.
I, I would like to meet my bakers knowing that I didn't take another life on this earth.
That's my worldview.
Well, and the fact that only four ATF were killed, I think is proof enough that it was not an ambush.
The battle itself lasted for how long?
45 minutes.
I'm a 40 minutes was my understanding.
There's no way to tell when you're going through it because you're going to tunnel vision and time really has no time doesn't exist anymore.
It's like being in another dimension for me being shot at that kind of, you know, back and forth you know, back and forth of volleys of bullets.
It's just, uh, it's stunning.
I don't, I don't know how to explain it.
I was definitely in shock.
There's no doubt about it.
Hey, there's two people that took me a day or two to come out of shock.
Yeah, I bet.
All right.
So there are two people who died that day.
Um, that I wanted to ask you about, um, because just they're so often overlooked and I guess the one guy is just to me is the ultimate irony because the story was he was just sitting on his bed in his underwear, eating a bowl of cornflakes and a helicopter, a army Huey flew by and shot him like he was the VC.
And then the other one, uh, I guess they were both killed by helicopters.
The other one was the kid.
I believe his name was Daniel something who was, uh, doing chores, cleaning the water tower and your jets.
Oh, Peter Jen.
And they just flew by and shot him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That always blew my mind.
Uh, the other one though.
Um, uh, the other one, uh, Winston, Winston, Winston Blake.
Yes, that's right.
That's right.
That's right.
Winston.
Winston was actually dressed.
Oh, okay.
I'm sorry.
He did have a, I remember, I don't know where I got that embellishment.
I may, it may have been me.
Who knows?
Well, he was on the edge of his bed eating breakfast, which is true.
Uh, but, but he was dressed, you know, I remember seeing his winter coat, um, cause it was kind of orange and that was the first body I'd seen.
He was just laying there on the ground and you know, all this water was coming in to the room, but it was coming in from the water tank that had been shot from the air.
And I could tell because, you know, later on, I went in and I looked through the bullet hole and I could see the bird, the diverse, the, the diverse at the edge of the plastic where the bullet had come out.
So I knew that, you know, the bullet hadn't come from the outside in.
And when I got down and I looked through the bullet hole trajectory, it was up at the air, um, kind of near the tower actually.
Um, or it looked like a little bit about that, that, that height.
So it was, it's kind of weird where, you know, I mean, it was definitely from the air.
So definitely the helicopter firing.
The other thing is after, after the, uh, the ceasefire, I remember talking to Kevin Whitecliffe who was at the back of the building that day, the cafeteria area.
And he said, he was yelling it cause the adrenaline was pumping so much.
He said, those helicopters came in firing that he watched the agent shooting from the helicopters.
And of course they denied instantly that the helicopters ever fired at all.
It was just another lie, you know, just the beginning of another lie.
They weren't very good at reconstructing history the way they wanted to, wanted it to be presented.
That's for sure.
We'll just look at the camera and lie blatantly at, uh, at the press, at the American public, and they didn't care.
They just had to protect their ass at all costs.
All right, y'all, we got to talk a little bit of business here.
First of all, check out my new sponsor, Zen Cash.
That's zensystem.io.
Learn all about it.
It's a brand new kind of digital currency, but it's also an encrypted messaging and a document application and all kinds of things.
Check it out, zensystem.io.
And also check out this great book, The War State.
Everybody tells me, man, thanks for recommending that book, The War State.
It's so good.
It's, uh, the great Mike Swanson and it's about the first three presidencies, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the rise of the military industrial complex after World War II.
And, uh, you'll really want to check that out.
It's great.
And check out all his great investment advice and sign up for all his newsletters and things at wallstreetwindow.com.
The great Mike Swanson there.
And then listen, when you do take his advice and you buy gold, silver, platinum, palladium, you want to go to Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc.
They're a great sponsor of this show.
They've been around for, I think, 40 something years, uh, longer than me.
And they do great business and, uh, they charge a very low premium on all of their exchanges.
And in fact, if you buy with Bitcoin, they charge no premium at all, uh, to buy, uh, gold, silver, platinum, palladium.
So, uh, you gotta have precious metals in your savings.
Everybody knows that.rrbi.co and libertystickers.com.
I know the site looks terrible now, but just wait.
So we've got a brand new website and, uh, we're revamping the art and we're going to reintroduce Liberty Stickers.
And I actually got Adobe Illustrator back on my computer again.
And so I already have made up a couple of new ones.
I'm going to get back to work on that.
Libertystickers.com, especially here in the near future.
Check that out.
And listen here, if you're in the business for a new website and you need a new 2018 model website, not a 2000 model website, you need a brand new website.
And, uh, so what you do, you go to expanddesigns.com, expanddesigns.com slash Scott, and you'll save 500 bucks.
So now the siege, um, I guess, you know, the common understanding certainly then was, um, well, whatever happened the day of the first raid, then, you know, the ATF raid, then the FBI comes and says, well, you guys got to come out and subject yourselves to the law, boy.
Then you got to do that.
Who do you think you are telling the FBI?
No.
And then not only that, but for 51 days.
And, and according to what they said in the cops narrative, constantly promising to come out and then not coming out.
And that basically, you know, Koresh was holding all you guys as his hostages in there in some, you know, personal melodrama of his at the expense of you.
And at the expense of the American housewives who are trying to watch the price is right that you were interrupting.
And so, you know, how dare you guys, what the hell was really going on there anyway, man?
Why didn't you just come out, David?
That's a great point, dude.
Uh, you know, it's, uh, it was complicated.
Um, there was, we were originally going to come out and then the FBI and this thing where David did is a message on tape, David, they would play it nationally actually said on television, which they did.
Did they play that on his message on a Christian radio station, a national Christian radio station, which wasn't really part of the deal, but I don't think that's why David did come out.
He just basically we're all getting ready to come out.
And he says that his God told him to wait.
So that, that was it.
We waited, we just waited and waited, waited.
It sees what on and what happened then is every time the negotiators would work with us, talk with us, one of the tactical commanders would do something totally different and forward as to what was promised.
They started instantly within the first day where they started having the press conferences and they started calling, they were calling us of course, a cult.
And they were using all their demonization words very, very early to paint the picture of a very violent criminal group of people.
Now remember up to this point, it was just a group of people living in the middle of nowhere.
I mean, it's actually kind of hard to get to Axel and to where we were.
You'd have to go down a lot of farm roads and you have to travel out to the country quite a distance to even get there.
So I can't think of a group of people that posed less of a threat than this group of people to the community.
And yet they somehow came out and still found us with their dynamic entry.
And then after the ACF, of course, screwed it up, the FBI took over and, you know, it's just, the psychological games went on and on and on with them.
Every time they would promise something, they would do something else.
They would, you know, say they were going to send us in milk and they'd send in milk and the milk would be bugged.
Then they would cut the power so the milk would go bad.
I mean, it just went on and on and on.
And some of this is really covered pretty well in the series, which I'm happy that people can see the kind of frustration that was going on in the inside of the building, as well as the frustration that was going on outside.
Yeah, that was something one of my friends...
I see both sides more clearly than I did before.
Yeah.
Well, one of my friends had mentioned to me that that was one of the things in the, that made it into this miniseries, was how they had had you guys film yourselves and say, hey, you know, this is who I am and this is what I'm doing here.
And they were going to use it to show what freaks everybody was and to demonize you.
But then they realized that, oh, these are just regular people and they're going, this is, if the people, if the American people see this, it's going to drum up way too much sympathy.
So instead they covered those tapes up.
And then, and if people watch Waco, The Rules of Engagement, you can see some of that footage.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, there was one tape they, that was on the phone with one of the negotiators at one point.
And they asked me to make a tape for my mother because my mother was out here and she was on all the shows.
She was asking a lot of questions.
She came down from Maine right away.
And one of the FBI guys asked me if I would make a tape for my mother.
And I did that, a video tape, but they never got it to her.
I think that she still hasn't seen it to this day.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Well, and they just, they certainly didn't put it on TV to say, oh yeah, here's these Branch Davidians that were demonizing for you.
Yeah.
I mean, it was a personal lie to me for them to not show that to my mother.
Yeah.
But I didn't find that out until afterwards, but it was just like, that's why they told me the whole purpose to make a tape.
You know, I didn't realize that they wanted me to make a tape.
So they just try to have some, hopefully, I think the other thing they did is hopefully people would say something that would incriminate themselves.
Well, now, so in the movie, or not in the, pardon me, not the miniseries, but in the documentary, the way they portray it is that, and I mean, the rules of engagement, sorry.
The way they portray it is that you guys were told, and at some point, clearly this happened, they play the audio of the FBI negotiators saying, you guys are not allowed to leave the building.
And if you do, you'll be dealt with.
And then they give examples of Davidians leaving the building and then the cops would throw a flashbang grenade at them or shoot near them and drive them back into the house.
But so I wonder how early was that?
And did that really, as portrayed in the movie, play a significant role in basically forbidding anybody from coming out at the same time that they were telling everybody else that you were all just so stubborn and refusing when maybe people would have come out one at a time if they'd been willing to help them, quote, unquote, help, you know?
Yeah, that did happen.
I mean, I remember, I think David Jones would go out on the roof and smoke.
He was one of the, he was a smoker that was in the building that day.
David Jones was the guy that had the post office.
He was the postman.
He lived outside the building.
He didn't live in the community.
But he was there and I guess one of the ATF guys asked him for directions.
I don't know, the news guy asked him for directions about Carmel.
So he was one of the people that told David that they were coming.
And they would, I mean, I remember that there was a lot of controversy about him going out on the roof with the smoke and they'd be like, even the FBI was like, he can't go outside, he can't go out on the roof.
And they kept telling us that we couldn't just leave the building at all.
And the other, they wouldn't throw flashbang grenades at people if they would have left the building.
True, that is true.
They did a lot of things to antagonize us.
They would do bird calls like they were getting ready to come in, you know, back and forth.
And you can tell it was them.
They would stand on the tanks and mood the people in the windows.
So if you were like a kid or one of the women looking out the window, you know, you see these grown men moody, you really professional.
When they drove over the graves of the people who've been killed on the first day of the raid there.
Yeah, well, Greg Summers had gone out.
Now, this is one of the things that I like to talk about, too.
In the series, they have been going out and burying, excuse me, Perry Jones at the front, the front of the front of the building.
It was actually Greg Summers went out and he was burying Peter Hibbs, who was one of the individuals who was I'm sorry, he was buried.
Peter Jett was one of the individuals that we talked about earlier that was killed on the top of the water tower.
And they buried him there in the front.
And then he lined up all the dogs that were shot, put them in the front where people with cameras could see the dogs and, you know, put the cross up so people would know there was a grave there.
And of course, during the siege, the tanks would run over the grave over and over again.
But, you know, they changed that in the series because it was hard to have so many different characters.
So they attributed what Greg did to my character going out and burying a body.
And it was actually it wasn't Perry's.
So these are some of the things that the series.
I don't want to say got wrong, because those events did happen.
It's just some of the characters change.
If someone really wants to know exactly what happened, you know, from my experience, my book is the best way to go.
They took certain dramatic liberties, but it's nothing that I can't live with.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Well, that's kind of why I'm not watching.
I'm really glad to know that it's good.
But I know enough about this already, that I don't want to get confused on little points.
I don't think you I mean, if you've read my book, I mean, I don't know what my experience was.
You talk to me, of course, do.
Yeah.
So right now, so there's subtle little things, though.
All right.
Now, so part of the propaganda.
Well, there's it.
Okay.
I don't know even how to approach this.
It's so vast.
First of all, the level of demonization of David Koresh and the Latia.
In fact, I guess it's fair to say that the Davidians didn't really exist.
It was just David Koresh in there and then his sort of half human clones or whatever sort of thing.
But you guys he was demonized as the sinful messiah and this evil Charles Manson cult leader, child rapist.
And you guys were demonized basically just by being airbrushed out of existence.
You know, you were the Davidians, but we never got to hear any of your names or or any of your stories told in any way other than you're just the followers in this cult kind of thing during the deal.
But, you know, the reason I mentioned the housewives is I'm deliberately picking on them because I was sacking groceries at the time and the women of Northwest Austin wanted y'all dead.
They would say to me, David, I think they just ought to go in there and end it.
And so that wasn't just the cops that wanted to kill y'all.
That was Texas.
You know, that was that was our our loving women folk.
They were happy to see you guys all whatever had to happen in collateral damage in order to get that Koresh and get that problem off their TV.
I'm sure Hillary Clinton felt that way.
And Bill, too, about their first hundred days in power being, you know, completely marred.
This was a big emergency for a lot of people that they had to get this thing wrapped up.
And so they really just and especially looking back on it, the level of demonization of Koresh and then the rest of you, too.
It's really something else to behold.
And it amazes me that people don't resent it as much as they should, you know?
Yeah, me, too.
You know, we know that Texas is a capital punishment state and there's kind of this attitude, oh, you're a criminal, hang a bed, period.
And story, you know, sometimes I kind of kind of thought process that leads to a lot of problems.
We know that a lot of criminals who we consider to be criminals, a lot of people have died thanks to DNA testing.
I've been exonerated and it's too late.
They're already gone.
So there's been quite a few innocent people that have died because of that kind of mentality.
And one of the problems I've had with the whole thing with demonization is I just thought that my country was a lot better than it is.
I thought we were way more humanitarian than I have seen us to be.
You know, it doesn't stop here.
You go to the bombing of Syria.
It's just it's crazy.
Some of the things that are going on in the world that we're supporting, and it's literally killing women and children.
It's just happening a lot.
But here it happens.
It happened in Waco, of course, right in front of us.
And it still went on.
It still was allowed to go on.
And because it went on for so many days, people didn't have that attitude.
It doesn't matter at this point, just go ahead and kill them.
They just should probably die without really understanding.
But that's how powerful that the press is.
And that's how powerful the government in controlling the press is.
They've got the soundbite down to a science.
They know what they're doing.
And what took this is another point that I've always thought was interesting.
And well, you know, why did you guys come out?
How come David had so much power?
And how come, you know, David really didn't have a lot of power.
He just revealed the scripture.
He worked with people for years and years to come to an understanding of what he could teach and why the people were there, why the group was even there.
What took David years was some certain individuals took the FBI 51 days to the press to control the entire country and to control the outcome of what happened.
And the best way I've ever heard it expressed is Senator Henry Clay in the 1800s.
A very famous Southern senator said, the devices of its power and its vision are the same in all countries of all age.
It marks its victim and denounces it, exciting the public hatred, so it can conceal its own abuses and encroachments.
When I read that quote, I memorized it instantly because you just said everything that I felt about the situation.
Yeah.
Well, and you're certainly right that they use it in all their wars too.
And I'm being repetitive now for this audience, but I'll go ahead and make the point to you that, you know, they've used this exact same Waco template really against Saddam Hussein, against Iran.
They haven't launched a war against Iran yet, but it's the same thing and with North Korea too.
And the narrative is this dictator is irrational, so we can't negotiate with him.
He's either too religious or too self-interested or too Shiite or whatever his problem is.
And so we can't negotiate with him because it's impossible for them to negotiate in good faith because of the craziness on that side.
Oh, also they're bad to their own people.
So we're going to rescue their own people from them and they have illegal weapons.
And so we have to go in there, we're going to send in the army Delta force to save the day and solve the cure.
And so, and then they just use it over and over again.
And that's how it works.
I mean, look back, nevermind Quresh, look at Saddam Hussein in 2003.
And can you imagine the narrative that for some reason, we just, the most powerful country ever just can't negotiate with this guy for some reason, even though here's a picture of literally Donald Rumsfeld negotiating with him, you know, right here.
No, we just, this is an implacable foe that we only have one choice, invasion.
I mean, what a crock.
And yet that's the exact thing they did is they just replayed their demonization of David Quresh onto Saddam Hussein.
They're doing it right now with Korea too.
Absolutely.
It's crazy.
The Waco template.
There you go.
Sorry.
What a tough thing.
And also I should say too, this is important.
I don't know if this is in your book or what, but the fact that the American people fell for this and cheered for it and said, fine, call it a suicide, whatever you want.
We'll get to that in a minute.
But the fact that people went along with this by and large was really a huge turning point on our path to a totalitarian police state here.
All this militarization of the police.
It's not all just the war on drugs and the war on terrorism.
It's the David Quresh precedent.
In fact, it's in the documentary, Waco, the Rules of Engagement, is the testimony by the ATF officers saying, because of people like David Quresh, the days of two detectives in three-piece suits serving a search warrant of any kind is over.
From now on, we'll have Waco style dynamic paramilitary raids to serve all warrants at all houses because we stand between the David Qureshs of the world and you helpless members of the House of Representatives.
And so that's the new rules of the game, the new rules of engagement for everybody.
And that could have been absolutely killed in its crib, right?
The American people could have said, oh, hell no.
In fact, a lot of them did join militias and all kinds of things.
But by and large, the American people said, yeah, whatever, dude, go ahead.
And mostly it's poor and browner people who are subject to this kind of tyranny, the people without political power to do anything about it.
And so it just goes on.
People go, yeah, Waco and Ruby Ridge, like they're isolated incidents, but no, there are Waco raids every day.
It's just that what was unique about you guys, just like at Ruby Ridge, was most of you survived the initial encounter in order to hold them off for a little while longer.
And so it turned into this big TV drama.
But in terms of the actual raids, this is happening, you know, Radley Balco says it's 50,000 SWAT raids a year, 50,000.
And yeah, it's our enemy, the state, but it's the American people are the enemies of themselves on this issue.
You know, they only can do this because we don't give a damn.
Even when they burn a place like the Branch Davidians house to the ground, the American people don't really care at all.
And so that's why it really rolls on.
But anyway, just thought I'd mention how we're all Branch Davidians now, and it's somebody's responsibility other than mine to, you know, all right.
So listen, I'm sorry, I shouldn't take up your whole day here.
But let's talk about the fire, man.
Tell me what happened.
Okay.
It's funny the way you phrase it.
I'm sorry.
Well, you know, I don't want to be too prejudicial in my question, even though obviously, I have my point of view on this.
But on the particular points, on the particular points of fact, I want to let you have your say your own way, you know?
Yeah, sure.
This is actually a really good way to start that question.
I'm gonna start out with recently, I watched a documentary.
Documentary was on ABC.
No, that was a bad one, too.
But there was another documentary that A&E had done recently, which was surprisingly good.
Good in the sense that it had a lot of different perspectives.
A lot of perspectives from David's past, Roger, his stepbrother was interviewed, for example, people that had known him.
I thought it was thorough, in the sense that there were some people that had left the group that was speaking against David.
But there were people that were sympathetic to the group or new people in the group that were kind of speaking and just telling the story of David and Vernon, being Vernon Howell.
Anyway, I thought it was pretty thorough, up until the end.
And I was really surprised.
I was like, I couldn't believe that I was watching this A&E documentary that was being this thorough.
And at the end, they showed an FBI guy, the FBI guy was talking about how nobody came out of the building during the fire, how even, you know, like some of the survivors came out.
One of the survivors had a dog.
But no one brought any kids that came out of that building.
Why didn't those adults grab kids and escape that fire with those children?
That's what they said over and over and over again.
And that's how they ended it.
So they ended up actually saying that it was a suicide.
And I can't believe, in this day and age, that there's some people out there that don't think that was a mass suicide.
That blows my mind.
None of the evidence shows that.
None of the evidence proves that at all.
It's quite the contrary.
What they didn't tell you, which really, honest to God, blew my mind, that 25 years later, they never mentioned the infrared videotape of the plane flying above the building that had heat signatures of flashbang grenades at various points where the fires start.
In two different points, you see flashbang grenades where two of the three fires have started.
And then you see fully automatic weapons fire from a position next to one of the tanks at the back of the building fired into the cafeteria area of the building.
Now, the cafeteria area of the building is where the women and children are.
We know from the autopsy reports that were done, 13 different autopsy reports, that's the number I can remember from all those years ago, had bullet holes in the center of the chest and the center of the head, which is not conducive of a mass suicide, but more of a homicide.
People being shot trying to escape a building at the back.
While the women and the children were at the back, no one came out of the back of the building.
Yet a lot of bodies, the majority of the bodies were.
If nine people survived, those nine people all came out to the front of the building or the side of the building with the cameras from three miles away could still see us.
I came out of the side of the building.
Law of averages would say that the majority of the people were at the back of the building, but some people would have survived coming out of the back of the building.
Yet the only one that survived was Graham Craddock, and he was in, I guess, that tower area structure, and he wasn't found until after the fire had burned to the ground.
The other thing that they say that they have video, audio tape of people saying, let's set the fire, pour some here, pour some there, okay, light it, light the fire.
Now, I have a huge problem with those tapes for a couple of reasons.
Number one, the FBI claims that those tapes were recorded at 6 a.m., that's six hours before the fire.
They also say that the FBI could not hear what was being said, and they didn't realize what was being said until they took the tapes back to the FBI lab and scrubbed them, quote unquote.
I have a problem with the word scrub them, because to me, scrub also means add things, take things away.
You can make tapes, say whatever you want them to say.
We've seen this happen in movies.
We've seen this happen in history.
Audio tapes can be manipulated, but more importantly, the problem of six hours before the fire, people are spreading fuel, and we're getting ready to start a fire to kill ourselves, why on earth would we do that six hours before, with tanks coming into a building, sparking things as it's hitting walls, hitting sheet rocks, you know, probably taking out some lighting systems with metal.
I'm sure there was a lot of sparks when the tanks went through, and I know for a fact that these tanks were hitting cobalt lanterns that were in just about every single room, and probably spreading fuel that way.
Why did it take six hours for the fire to start?
Well, I don't know.
There was one explanation, David, that, you know, again, it's too long ago.
I don't remember the exact footnote on this, but it may have even been in a new revelation that maybe it was Dick DeGaran, the lawyer, or Dick Rivas, the author, or one of these guys, I forget, maybe, had said that, well, it sounds like that's a discussion of that they were preparing Molotov cocktails to throw at the tanks, but then clearly they thought better of it, because of what you just said, they're living in a plywood house here, that this is just, you can't fight that kind of fire with this kind of fire, I don't care how much you believe in Jesus, let's try something else, right?
Yeah, sure, absolutely.
So, I mean, assuming that that tape is legitimate, that's at least one alternative explanation for that, that, you know, they were going to try to use flammable liquids as a defense, but then ended up not doing that anyway.
And now, well, so, but now, did David Koresh not sit you guys down and say, now listen, it says in the Bible we're all going to have to burn ourselves to death in order to fulfill the prophecy?
Oh, hell no, no, no, no.
Okay, but did he whisper that to his commanders and lieutenants?
No, I don't think that, I don't think that happened at all.
No, I don't.
I think, you know, I think David had a couple of options, and the biggest option that he was leaning toward was working with Bill Arnold and James Tabor to get the seventh seal manuscript completed, which they had finished the first seal the day before the FBI came in with the CS gas attack.
Oh, that's something else, too, we need to talk about is the CS gas.
Well, actually, wait, go back to writing the seal, too, because this is something that I screwed up.
I should ask you about this specifically during the siege talk.
Here's, it looks like he finally was negotiating y'all's way out of there.
He was going to write these seven seals, his interpretation of them, which he hadn't written down before, and then he swore he was going to come out, and that was supposed to be just days away, right?
Yeah, that was something, of course, the FBI just chose not to believe it at all, but he had finished the first seal the other day before the raid, and it actually came out of the fire.
Ruth Riddle brought it out on a disc that she had helped type it, I guess, the night before and finished that, so we actually have a copy of that somewhere, I think.
A physically surviving document, yeah, that proves that, yeah, he was working on it.
It was very important to him, but it wasn't just a stalling tactic.
Yeah, I think that's an important point.
I believe that they knew that he was working on it.
They just, they had lost their patience.
Yeah, so it's not, I mean, a worse interpretation is that they were worried that he was going to go ahead and come out, and they wanted to burn down Defense Exhibit A before it came to that.
I always wondered about that, since, as you talked about the bullet holes coming from the helicopters and coming through the doors and walls, it seemed like that was a real incentive for them to make sure that this thing ended in catastrophe, but that may just be like a hindsight interpretation type of thing.
Sure, you know, here's how I view that.
It definitely benefited the government, that building not standing.
I'm not going to say that, you know, battered all of this.
It definitely benefited them.
That's all I'm going to say there.
You know, and when I watched the infrared videotapes, and I see the flashbangs at the back of the building, and I see the fully automatic weapons fire, I think it's pretty clear what happened at the back of the building.
Well, yeah, I want to get back to that.
So, yeah, and the fact that the government and the media still will not touch it with a 10-foot pole really upsets me.
I just think it's wrong.
Even 25 years later, they're still rewriting American history, because they refuse to face the fact that government agents shot people at the back of that building.
Government agents shot people at the back of that building.
It's not my fault.
I can't help it.
I'm sorry I have to say that, but it's on infrared video.
Government agents shot people at the back of that building.
Flashbang grenades went off in the areas where the fires began.
I'm sorry.
A four-year-old can view the infrared tape and know what they're seeing there.
And serious experts, too.
And listen, so let me talk about this for just a second.
Well, they get their own experts to say that it's not getting sunlight reflection.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Go ahead.
What?
They get their own experts, the FBI, to say that it's sunlight reflections or it's something else.
Well, yeah, anyway.
But I just wanted to say, it doesn't...
What I'm saying is if you have a government mind, that you're going to lean toward that view.
Yeah.
It's just an unfortunate cliche, though, about the children, because then it almost sounds like, well, if you're naive, you might think it's gunfire, but not really, or something like that.
A real expert knows better.
But I'm saying, no, there are real experts who agree with any four-year-old who will look at this.
And so let me just say real quick, if people just Google the Libertarian Institute, or my name, and the Waco massacre, you'll find this blog entry I wrote.
And I have here all three Mike McNulty documentaries, Waco, The Rules of Engagement, and Waco, A New Revelation, both of which show this footage.
And then there's the FLIR Project.
And the purpose of the FLIR Project is to refute the government's attempted refutation of the footage in A New Revelation and what it shows.
As David says, you watch it, you can clearly see men get out of the back of the tanks and fire their machine guns at the house as it's burning.
And they tried to refute that, and they absolutely rigged the test in every way they could.
When they replicated it, they used extra long barrels on their rifles.
They used flash-suppressant ammunition, different than what was used that day.
And they even hosed down all the ground on the test area at Fort Hood so that there wouldn't be any blowing dust at all.
Everything would be wet to limit the amount of muzzle flash.
And then they filmed that, and they said, see, it doesn't look like that at all.
And so here's Mike McNulty refuting that.
That's the third chapter.
And so you can see this with your own eyes.
And if you get the documentary, you can get it in, I'm sure, Blu-ray quality, what have you.
Especially A New Revelation has higher quality footage in it than the first one.
But with either one, it's absolutely plain to see that men get out of those tanks and fire their machine guns at the back of that house.
It's beyond question.
So that's it.
Just the Waco Masker.
My name and the Waco Masker.
And you find all three of those documentaries there.
So, man.
And now, so by the way, the forward-looking infrared that you're referring to here, this is the FBI's Cessna flying circles overhead with this infrared camera that's taking this footage.
That's the origin of the footage is discovery under law.
They had to fess up to it.
It was their own footage.
And like I say, the second documentary has the higher quality version because he kept fighting and fighting for the higher quality version when they would only give them a second generation dub and this kind of thing.
And he finally got the better one from the Congress, I guess.
But anyway, so yeah.
And now here's the other thing, too.
You mentioned the women and children.
According to, you know, the autopsy official results and whatever, at least some number of women and children were killed by falling concrete in that one concrete room.
Can you describe that room?
They called it, you know, the bunker in the compound where Koresh and his commanders and lieutenants were organizing their aggressive war.
But what was going on in that room?
And then, you know, it seemed like some of these people just died from blunt force trauma, not even from the gas.
They were in there hiding from the gas under blankets and towels, but ended up being crushed by fallen concrete.
Yeah, that was known as the walking cooler area.
It was a concrete structure that had survived a fire many, many years ago.
And it was just, you know, food storage, things like that were kept there.
Oh, excuse me.
That's where, you know, they figured it would be a safe place for the kids, maybe under wet blankets, because it had survived a fire.
Of course, that fire was so intense that, you know, a lot of them probably just cooked it there.
But the biggest problem was the fact that one of the tanks came into that area and punched all over the structure and sprayed a lot of CS gas into that building, into that structure.
And it seemed like there was a lot of debris at the front of the structure that was blocking the entrances.
So literally, to me, the kids were gassed to death is the way it looks.
Okay, this is an image that I have kept for my head for years, actually, because I was not in that area.
So I did not see directly what happened.
But when you're watching this last episode that's coming up in the series, being there for the filming, one of the most intense scenes to me was the gassing of the children.
This scene is incredibly heavy.
And when they were filming this scene, I just remember, I just remember the profound thought that I was witnessing one of the ovens, or one of the rooms that I was which were, as I call it, bee was used to gas the people to death.
It was similar.
It was eerie.
It was so eerie, watching the scene being filmed, because that's what I was, that's what I was seeing in front of me happening during during as the series is being filmed.
And so anyway, I haven't even watched that last episode yet.
It was the 50th anniversary of the Nazis final assault on the Warsaw Ghetto there, too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So listen, and I, you know, why, why not mention this part, because it's worse, right?
The CS gas, first of all, this isn't tear gas, this CS gas is banned by International Convention, America will launch a war against you, if you're accused by Al Qaeda fighters of using CS gas, probably.
But so it's, this is the severest form.
And and then also, when you burn it, it makes hydrogen cyanide, the as one of its byproducts in the smoke, which is the gas chamber gas that they use.
And there's footage in at least the second documentary, I'm pretty sure I forget which of the McNulty documentaries their rules of engagement or a new revelation, where they show, and it's children to where their muscle contraction spasms are so bad that they shatter bones, including spines.
And there's a picture of a child whose spine is broken in half and is bent backwards, simply from his or her own muscle contractions, from inhaling the burning CS gas.
That's what the FBI and the Army Combat Applications Group Team B did to them that day.
That's what Janet Reno approved.
And Bill Clinton too, because of course, Janet Reno can't order the Delta Force into combat, only Bill Clinton can do that.
And he admitted it, in fact, like, yeah, they talked me into it.
Oh, now you take responsibility on your last day in office or whatever it was.
Good going.
In fact, he never mind.
I kind of want you to say it.
Well, he was sitting on the couch watching it happen with John Wong and James Riotti, who were his Chinese intelligence connections from another scandal.
And, you know, everybody always hung out Johnny Truong and this other idiot, I forgot, to dry, and poor Wen Ho Lee, who didn't do anything, when it was James Riotti and John Wong all along that were the whole story.
But anyway, and Bill Clinton was sitting there watching, you know, his own persecution of these people on TV with them in a meeting at the White House at the time.
It later came out in the thing.
It's just kind of a side note, but it outrages me.
I skipped it because I didn't think anybody else would know or care or appreciate the diversion onto China issues.
But anyway, they helped pay for his re-election in 96.
Come on.
But, oh, I mean, pardon me, and I should have said 86 and his election to president in 92, and then again in 96.
All right.
So, what happened with you in the fire then?
I guess, you know, sorry to be a dick, but why didn't you rescue a bunch of kids before the big conflagration or whatever?
Sure, because I was on the other side of the building.
I was at the chapel area of the building.
And I had tried to, earlier on in the day, I had tried to get down the hall to where the cafeteria was, so I could check on Serenity and some of the other children.
And there was so much debris in the hallway from the tanks coming through the front of the building that that way was blocked off.
There's no way to get to there.
So, when the fire, someone yelled that there was a fire upstairs, there was a fire.
I guess it would have been the corner of the building.
And when I heard that, excuse me, I went to the back of the building.
Behind the chapel area, there was a structure that, well, it was a ladder that took you upstairs.
There was a causeway over the church that led to the second story hallway.
When I took that causeway to the second story, there was a blanket over the door while leading to the second story.
It was what I, to that hallway, I mean, sorry.
And when I opened the blanket, I just saw this wall of flame shoot down the hallway in front of me.
It was amazing, it was so powerful, so loud.
It was all flame.
So, I knew there was no getting into that hallway.
So, there was, I knew at that point that I had lost access to the cafeteria.
So, I came back the way I came.
By the time I get back down the ladder, oh, the fire in the chapel was pretty much on fire.
In the back area, there was a little side room between the chapel with the gymnasium.
The gymnasium had been destroyed by the tanks.
Excuse me.
I remember just sitting in that little causeway with a bunch of people around me.
And I was looking out the window, and I was going to go out there, but I didn't want to get shot in the side window.
But then I, you know, I guess I looked at my son, Derek Lovelock, go out the window, Jamie Cascio went out the window.
And the fire started, the wall behind me started to catch fire.
And it started to crackle my hairs, the side of my face.
And I knew, you know, that was it, I was going to burn.
So, I didn't want that.
So, I decided to go up the hole that the tank had made.
And I get out.
I remember thinking, God, that was the last second no one could get out behind, other than, you know, behind me.
So, walking up the side of the road, I turned around, I saw Clive Doyle come out of the hole.
And he was patting his arms down, his arms were on fire, his coat had caught fire, and he was patting it out.
And I just remembered, that was just a horrific sight.
You know, and we walked up, it was a Red Cross sign at the end of the property.
And the speaker systems were saying, the siege is over.
Come on out, head to the Red Cross sign.
Come out with your arms, your hands up.
So, I opened my hands up.
I got about halfway up the property, between the building, about halfway between the building and where the EE Ranch Road was, I turned around.
And I turned around just in time to see that top part of the building, explode.
And it was just, it was phenomenal.
I could feel the fire, when it exploded, I could feel the fire intensify, and I could feel it on my face from where I was, which is about halfway down the road.
So, that was a very intense explosion.
You're talking about the famous big fireball.
Correct.
And now, this is the one where Stephen Berry says, the hole in the ceiling of the concrete room shows conclusively that this was Special Operations Forces contact explosives, that they went in there and put a demolition charge, whatever you call it, charge up there.
I don't know for sure.
So, I stay away from that one.
There's certainly a hole in the ceiling and downwards bent rebar.
And people can look at it.
They destroyed it, but there are pictures of that.
So anyway, but yeah, there were experts who said that that was what happened there.
I want to make sure I mentioned that.
I don't know if that's an absolute fact or not, but sure seemed plausible to me.
In fact, I think that one of the guys, it was General Parton, who said that the high explosive charge there goes off first, and then that detonated a propane tank and caused that to explode as the secondary explosion is what caused that big fireball.
Anyway, so you mentioned the flashbangs there.
And this is again, Mike McNulty's work.
He went and found flashbang grenades, which are pyrotechnic grenades at all three origins of the fire.
And they were mislabeled as silencers in the evidence lockers at the Department of Public Safety here in Texas, the state police.
And, and they were at all three origins of the fires at the, I guess, southwest corner, and then back in the, in the back of the gymnasium.
And then I guess I'm not exactly sure where the third one was.
So somewhere further east along the front of the house somewhere.
Yeah, I got my directions straight.
Anyway, or maybe no, I guess it's further north.
Anyway.
But so yeah.
Now, do you think do you have, other than you know, your your earlier inference?
Do you know exactly how it started?
If, if it was a lantern here, or maybe a muzzle flash from a defensive shot, ignited some gas or something?
Because that was a possibility to that someone had raised.
I think McNulty.
For sure.
I know someone yelled from upstairs, there was a fire.
That's what I try to get up there.
Yeah.
I can tell you, I had nobody from where I didn't see anybody poor feel.
I didn't see anyone light anything.
I didn't hear anyone talk about it.
So, you know, to me, that this is coming, you know, I, I was there.
So yeah, I wouldn't have believed.
Okay, here we go.
All right, I'm just gonna say it.
I would never have believed the government capable of doing that until I saw the infrared video.
And that's even after all I had been through.
When I didn't want to believe our government was capable of what I believe it is capable of that, that all steps from seeing the infrared videotape, the infrared videotape changed my life.
It made me very angry.
I stopped giving lectures and talks after seeing the infrared videotape because I couldn't give a lecture without raising my voice and losing control of my emotion.
Mostly anger.
So yeah, that's it.
I mean, I believe that they are capable and guilty of the things they have been accused of.
Hey, look, you know, they, they were in control of everything.
They covered things up.
They hid things.
They lied.
They did it.
They did it.
They did all this stuff to people, to Americans, people from all over the world.
And it's just, I don't know, man, it's hard for me as an American growing up with believing in the constitution and the American way of life and the American dream to live with that.
But that's what I live with.
My government killed these people.
That's all.
That's it.
That's the truth.
You know, if you're so damn patriotic that you don't want to believe me, that's fine.
Be patriotic.
I don't care.
But the truth is the truth.
And they say the truth, set you free.
And at the end of the day, that's what I hold on to.
You know, when people accuse me of being whatever cultist or whatever people say, I really, I don't care.
I have one, you know, I'm, I'm worried about what God thinks of me.
You know, I worry about the judgment.
I don't really care.
They can do what they want.
I'm extremely lucky.
I'm extremely fortunate.
And I, I count my blessings every day.
I really do.
And you know, I, I still love my country as incredibly dysfunctional as it is right now.
And I think there's a lot of mental illness in this country, not just at the higher ups, but pretty much every, every branch of society seems to have a certain kind of mental illness that I think we haven't suffered from before.
I'm not quite sure how to put my finger on it, but it just seems like everything is wrong.
It just seems like the, uh, the entire country is, I don't know, it's some kind of free fall.
I've never seen anything like it in my life.
But I think that maybe the best way for the government to win the trust of its people again is to start being honest.
And people need to start waking up and becoming smarter, getting these people out of office and getting good people in office if that's possible at all.
And I think the only reason that the only way that's going to be possible is if we start letting the corporations run this country and influence the country that we are, we have to become more humanitarian, you know, maybe a little bit about the bottom line, but a little bit less about money, a little bit less about the bottom line, a little more about people, especially its people.
And then I think we can thrive.
Hey, we're, uh, it's all about the money here, kid.
As long as it's all about the money, then we're going to have serious problems.
Yeah.
Well, everything's corrupt as the song says, no question about it.
And yeah, you know, it's the proverbial camel nose under the tent.
I think the Waco massacre is just such a huge part of this story, you know, about the level of criminality that the American people will tolerate on the part of their government, the people in charge of enforcing the law and the rules on the rest of us.
Um, and look at how far down that path we've come now.
And yeah.
Hey, if you were an armed salesman, you'd make a deal with the police union too.
You know, business is business, right?
Yeah.
All right.
Listen, man, um, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming back on my show.
I appreciate you coming on my show.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming back on my show after all these years, David, and, uh, how much, you know, I value talking with you again here.
So thanks.
Hey, it was really nice to hear from you again, buddy.
All right.
Well, take care, man.
Yeah, you too.
Thanks.
All right, you guys, that's David Thibodeau surviving member of the branch Davidians, and he wrote a book called a place called Waco.
And, uh, this new mini series Waco it's called on the Paramount network is, uh, based in part on his book.
And, uh, as you heard him say, he thought it was really worthwhile to see.
Uh, it sounds like it really gave the truth a fair shake because the truth is not somewhere in between the truth is on the branch Davidian side.
And, uh, so I'm really happy to hear that.
And again, if you go to the Libertarian Institute and just search for the Waco masker, it's just a blog entry I did there where I have embedded the three YouTubes of the most important documentaries to watch about this, as well as a link to a book called the Davidian masker by Carol Moore, which I think is the single best take overall on what happened there.
Um, so, okay.
Thanks very much, everybody.
You know, me, I'm at Scott Horton.org and iTunes and stitcher and all that.
Now youtube.com slash Scott Horton show has everything 4,600 something interviews going back to 2003 all at youtube.com slash Scott Horton show.
So sign up for that.
And then I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute at libertarianinstitute.org.
I'm the editor of antiwar.com at antiwar.com.
And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton show.
Oh yeah.
And by my book fool's errand timed and the war in Afghanistan.
And you know what?
There's a chance that by the time you hear this, the audio book will be available.
It's supposed to be available.
They just didn't like my cover art, but I fixed it.
So what's the holdup?
The audio book.
If you want to listen to me talk for 16 hours, it's available there soon.
Fool's errand time to end the war in Afghanistan.
Go to fool's errand.us.
Okay.
Bye.
Thanks.