BATF at Waco
BATF at WacoIt started out easy enough. Over a hundred agents from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms would pack themselves shoulder-to-shoulder inside cattle trailers, and pull up to the front of the building in broad daylight. At the cry of “ShowTime!” The agents would pour out, divide into four columns, and storm the building. Some would surround the building, others would take ladders to the right side, go into the second floor with flash-bang grenades, and still others would storm the front door with battering rams. The dogs would be sprayed with fire extinguishers and, if they did not depart, be shot on the spot. The raid plan overlooked the fact the humans were involved. Both sides might be armed as the agents came running up; over a hundred persons would be looking down the muzzles of each others guns, hands shaking, adrenaline pumping, tunnel vision setting in, each person convinced that if shooting broke they would be the first one hit… A situation where one gunshot could result in everyone, on both sides, yanking the trigger. All in all, not a setting for shooting dogs and setting off stun grenades. And the dogs where indeed shot.
The raid plan assumed that all male Davidians would be outside and behind the building, working on a construction project, and thus in a position to be cut off when the cattle trailers pulled up to the front. In fact, the intelligence reports said only many Davidians were often working on the project. The plan assumed all firearms were in a second-floor room on the extreme right of the building; a special team would dramatically scale ladders and seize the room to cut off all access to thefirearms. In fact, the intelligence was years old; the firearms had been moved months before to a first-floor room in the central building. Men would die storming and empty room. Under the raid plan, three National Guard helicopters would race in at the back, just before the raid began, to distract everyone as the cattle trailers pulled up in front.
The helicopters were late, arriving only as the agents were exiting the trailers and the shooting began. Audio tape of ATF radio traffic (which the agency admits was not revealed to Congressional investigators) shows why. The two raid commanders got on different radio channels and could not converse. The radio van tries to sort out the confusion, instructing the commanders to reset their “Sabres” (portable encrypted radios), without success. For nearly four minutes before the raid begins (the transmitted announcement of “ShowTime!”), the ground commander is calling to the air commander in increasing desperation for the helicopter support.
The arrival of the helicopters poses another critical question. Several Davidians state that the first shots came from the approaching helicopters (perhaps in desperation for being late, and the...
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