Word: koresh
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Dates: during 1993-1993
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...affidavits also show that the ATF had compelling evidence that the Feb. 28 raid should have been called off. Testimony from an ATF agent makes plain that Koresh knew of the raid in advance -- and that top ATF officials were alerted to this before it got under way. Top officials, who steadily maintained that they had launched the raid unaware that Koresh had been forewarned, are now shifting tack. "The element of surprise does not mean they don't know you're coming. Only that they can't take control," says ATF intelligence chief David Troy. That explanation does...
...newly unsealed documents recount how an ATF undercover agent inside the compound, Robert Rodriguez, was talking with Koresh on the morning of Feb. 28 when the cult leader was called away by one of his disciples. When Koresh returned, he said, "Neither ATF or the National Guard will ever get me. They got me once, and they will never get me again. They are coming. The time has come." Rodriguez left the compound soon after and alerted officials. Forty minutes elapsed before the ATF moved...
Meanwhile word quickly spread through the compound that "the Assyrians are coming." Koresh garbed himself in black and grabbed an AR-15 rifle. By the time the 91 ATF agents pulled up Double EE Ranch Road, most adults inside the compound were armed. Brandishing a search warrant, an ATF agent approached the open front door. By the ATF's account, a man slammed the door and gunfire erupted from within. Koresh's attorney counters that ATF agents fired first. Either way, the cult's barrage of automatic fire so overwhelmed ATF agents that some never got off a shot...
...bureau chief, found himself returning pell-mell up Highway 6 from a weekend at home, knowing that the patient journalistic groundwork was about to be tested. He and Atlanta bureau chief Michael Riley, Los Angeles correspondent Sally Donnelly and stringer Carlton Stowers stared at the hot ruins of David Koresh's compound and tried, like the rest of the nation, to understand the meanings, motives and mystical beliefs that had gone up in smoke. To start, they continued to work contacts within the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, visited sources wherever they could find them...
THERE WERE OCCASIONS WHEN David Koresh enforced discipline among his followers the hard way. One of his hand-picked lieutenants would paddle the rule breakers with an oar on which were inscribed the words IT IS WRITTEN. Most of the time that wasn't necessary. In the manner of cult leaders before him, Koresh held sway largely through means that were both more subtle and more degrading. Food was rationed in unpredictable ways. Newcomers were gradually relieved of their bank accounts and personal possessions. And while the men were subjected to an uneasy celibacy, Koresh took their wives and daughters...