apr 19, 1993 - 1993: Branch Davidian compound raided by FBI

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What Really Happened at Waco
Thirty years later, an avoidable tragedy has spawned a politically ascendant mythology.

By Rachel Monroe

April 12, 2023
Branch Davidian compound in smoke and fire.
The Branch Davidians appeared to see a kinship between their struggle and those of other victims of state violence. In the decades since, the people who have got the most mileage out of the tragedy have told a narrower story.Photograph by Susan Weems / AP

The federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound, thirty years ago, was flawed from the start. The Branch Davidians were a fringe offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and, in the early nineties, they were led by David Koresh, a charismatic long-haired man who believed that the end of days was imminent. The Davidians lived on a compound called Mount Carmel, twenty miles northeast of Waco, and were well known to local law enforcement, who considered them relatively benign.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms suspected the Davidians of illegally converting semi-automatic rifles into fully automatic weapons. (The weapons allegations seemed to inspire more reason for action than reports that Koresh was sexually assaulting his followers’ underage daughters.) During the ensuing investigation, A.T.F. agents repeatedly overestimated their capacity for subterfuge. When a group of undercover agents posing as college students moved into a house across the street from the Branch Davidian compound, their rental cars gave them away. The agents hosted a party to deflect suspicion, but it had the opposite effect: “Some of the Branch Davidians showed up, mingled, and reported back to Koresh that these were federal agents for sure,” Jeff Guinn writes, in the recently published “Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage.” Another agent, Robert Rodriguez, posed as a potential follower to gain access to the group. Koresh quickly pegged him as a Fed but kept inviting him to Bible study anyway; after all, as he reminded his followers, Jesus had preached to a Roman centurion.

The day before the Sunday-morning raid, Treasury Department officials in Washington attempted to call it off, concerned that it relied on unnecessary force. Why couldn’t Koresh be arrested when he was away from the compound? But a plan, once in motion, has a certain momentum, and the A.T.F., which had a congressional budget hearing approaching, was in need of a splashy, successful operation. One A.T.F. agent was so confident that the mission would be over in a few hours that he booked tee time in Houston for Sunday afternoon.

On the morning of February 28, 1993, Rodriguez, still ostensibly undercover, listened as Koresh was tipped off that a raid was imminent. Rodriguez rushed to report the news to his superiors, sure that they would abort the mission, since the plans relied on maintaining the element of surprise. Instead, the raid proceeded, disastrously. Agents swarmed the compound and were met with heavy gunfire. When the battle ended, a few hours later, four federal agents and six Branch Davidians were dead, and many more wounded on both sides.

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