Word: koresh
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...best way to go? On Wednesday night she called in members of the Army's elite Delta Force to ask their opinions. Her questions always came back to the children. FBI officials explained that the longer the siege lasted, the more the children would suffer. "Children are like hostages," Koresh had told one negotiator, "because they're too young to make decisions...
...indeed he seemed prepared to treat them that way. When negotiators asked him to send out videotapes to show the youngsters were safe, Koresh was happy to oblige. The tactic worked brilliantly for him. Agents were wrenched by the pictures, and even more profoundly engaged after Koresh began putting the children on the telephone. "Are you coming to kill me?" a tiny voice would ask. "Those kids' faces, you can still see them," says FBI agent Bob Ricks. "They are precious, innocent children, controlled by a madman...
...Koresh would use food as a weapon, even on his own children. The cult had stockpiled enough Army rations to last for months, but Koresh dispensed them all. His favorites usually had the first claim, like the members of his rock band, and his Mighty Men, the term referring to the warriors who fought under King David in the Old Testament. So for the ultimate task, the fight to the death, the warriors would be fed. The weak, the vacillating and the helpless would grow weaker and weaker, unable to split off if given the chance...
...idea, officials said, was not to provoke one major showdown, but to gradually increase the pressure. Even as the debate in Washington progressed, the Hostage Rescue Team was sending in Abrams tanks to close in on the compound, closer and closer. Anything lighter, Koresh had threatened to blow "40 feet in the air." Then the FBI began removing the fence. "Everyone on scene said that's the most provocative thing we can do," says an official. "If we touch that fence, we stand a chance that there will be some kind of violent response. So we thought long and hard...
Above all Reno needed to know how Koresh would react to being pushed and whether the others inside would follow him, even unto death. Koresh held over them all the power of the Apocalypse; he was the Lamb of Revelation, who alone could open the seven seals and foresee the end of the world. FBI agents made some effort to get a handle on the theology at work, but scholars have been trying to explain these passages for centuries with little success. Among those they consulted was Phillip Arnold, a specialist in apocalyptic faiths whom Koresh respected. He was happy...