Word: reno
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
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...
...morning, as the assault began, reporters asked Clinton if he knew what was happening. In fact, Clinton had been briefed periodically on the progress in Waco from the start, by Reno's predecessor Stuart Gerson and by her deputy Webster Hubbell, a close friend of the Clintons'. "I was aware of it," he said. "I think the Attorney General made the decision." Pushed further, he added, "I knew it was going to be done, but the decisions were entirely theirs...
While a normal politician's instinct, as disaster burns around them, is to run for cover, Reno drew herself up tall, 6 ft. 2 in. tall, and went on national television to say, The buck stops with me, I take full responsibility, it was my decision, I approved the plans, until journalists and pundits and pols were breathless at the audacity of it, an act of political self-immolation. She was everywhere on the evening news and the talk shows, declaring that after hard thought she had reached the best judgment she could and that "based on what we know...