The siege of Branch Davidian compound 30 years ago and the fire that ensued is still burning in the extreme right factions of the United States, writes the Editorial Board.
On Feb. 28, 1993, an 80-vehicle caravan organized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms left Fort Hood before dawn and headed toward Waco, 65 miles to the northeast. The caravan, a mile-long melange of nondescript cars, station wagons, pickups and two cattle trailers, carried 76 heavily armed agents. At a staging area in a Waco suburb, they donned riot gear and equipped themselves with flash-bang grenades and zip-tie handcuffs.
Of course, the most enduring image is that rickety wooden building engulfed in angry orange flames and billowing black smoke, as FBI agents in Bradley fighting vehicles and Army tanks launch a final tear gas assault 51 days after the initial raid. Fifty-three adults and 23 children burned to death inside that building, making April 19, 1993, the deadliest action by federal forces on American soil since soldiers killed nearly 300 Lakota people at Wounded Knee in 1890.
During the siege, a modest hilltop about three miles south of the compound became a gathering place for curiosity seekers, journalists, t-shirt vendors and Koresh admirers. Among them was a young Gulf War veteran selling bumper stickers that read “FEAR THE GOVT THAT FEARS YOUR GUN.” His name was Timothy McVeigh.
At the dedication ceremony the next year, Jones proclaimed that the FBI had “machine-gunned men, women and children as they tried to exit” the compound and that the Oklahoma City bombing “was an inside job – a false flag operation” coordinated by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Despite a recent billion-dollar judgment against him for defaming survivors and family members of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, Jones is still talking.
In his book"Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage," Guinn quotes Rachel Carroll Rivas, an analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Waco is the one [cause] that has continued,” she told him. “It is still this topic that people talk about. It is still there.”
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