Word: koresh
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Indeed, the desire to spread the message was so strong that it helped persuade agents that Koresh did not mean to end his life. Reno had to balance conflicting reports about whether the Davidians were prepared for a mass suicide, the one finale she hoped to avoid at all costs. Four times negotiators asked if Koresh planned to kill himself, and four times he denied them. "If I wanted to commit suicide," he told them, "I would have done that a long time ago." Agents pointed out that Koresh had backed away from the brink before. On March 2, when...
Reno finally reached her decision on Saturday night. The Attorney General convened top aides in her fifth-floor conference room and demanded that the FBI once again justify its operation. "Is this the best way," she asked, to prod Koresh without aggravating the situation? "What would happen if we don't do it?" What was the risk of losing more lives both inside and outside the compound? She shook her head in horror as an FBI official offered a graphic description of human waste being thrown outside in pails. There was some discussion of child abuse, at which point Reno...
...after another, laying them in body bags side by side for removal in a refrigerated truck. Tiny orange flags fluttered everywhere that bodies had been found -- nine of them clustered at the central cinder-block bunker, with a weapon still visible mounted on top. On the main flagpole, where Koresh liked to fly his Star of David flag, the Texas and ATF flags flew at half staff...
Throughout the week family members issued scorching assessments of the FBI's performance. "There were law-abiding, God-fearing people in there," said Koresh's mother Bonnie Haldeman. "They didn't hurt anybody." The most damaging blasts came from those who had made it out of the compound. Survivors spoke out, either on their own or through DeGuerin and Schneider's lawyer Jack Zimmerman, to challenge the official version of what happened. "There was never any suicide plan," protested Renos Avraam, a 28-year-old London native who had lived in the compound for more than a year, "and never...
...That's ridiculous. I saw the tanks at different points from where the fires were." He, like others, had no choice but to stand and watch. "I can't tell you what was going through my heart," he says. "A combination of anguish, reflection and absolute anger for David Koresh. Because the bottom line here is that with complete and unthinking malice he had murdered all those people...