The Fire That Time
(Page 3 of 7)
Hustmyre Someone got ahold of a black Chevy pickup, and we hauled ass back to the compound. The guy who was driving put it in reverse going about 30 miles an hour, and when he stopped, we loaded two dead agents into the bed of the truck. One of them was my partner from New Orleans, Todd McKeehan. I had just been asking where Todd was. I sat with him in the back of the truck, and his face was totally white.
Doyle I was looking out the window when the ATF agents got up from their hiding places, and I couldn’t believe it. You know, I hadn’t realized how many of them there were. Later, I thought, “Oh, my God, we’re in for it. They’ll be back for revenge.”
David Thibodeau, 39, is a Branch Davidian who was living at Mount Carmel at the time of the raid. He now lives in Bangor, Maine, where he is a drummer in the rock band Phat Sally. Those guys had such pained expressions as they walked away. They couldn’t believe the outcome, obviously. They couldn’t believe they had lost. They were like, “What the hell just happened here?”
Peeler Mulloney took his tape of the raid out of his camera and put it in his britches. He was street-smart enough to know that the ATF would want to confiscate it. Sure enough, some agents grabbed him and started smacking him—just beating the total crap out of him. Emotions were running really high. Sheriff Jack Harwell was standing there, and he said, “You SOB! I knew this was going to happen. Now, get out of here!”
McLemore After the raid, Peeler and Mulloney and I were wrongly blamed for tipping off the Davidians. We were cleared by the FBI report a year later, and I even received a letter from the director of the ATF thanking me for assisting wounded agents that day. For a while, I was bitter about the whole situation, but I got past it and rarely think about it anymore. But it still haunts Peeler, and he did nothing wrong. Peeler is the nicest guy in the world, salt of the earth.
Peeler The ones who should have felt the heat—the person who originally tipped off the media and the ATF commanders who led their agents in even though the raid had been compromised—they didn’t get the flak that we did. I was killed that day. You know what I mean, kid? I’ve never been the same since.
Matteson David had been shot, and he was in bad shape. There was blood all over him. He was lying in the hall on the second floor, propped up on pillows, and he didn’t move for days. He was so white that I thought he was going to die.
Thibodeau He was 33 years old, and he had been wounded in the side and on his hand. Yeah, we read some significance into that.
Bonnie Haldeman, 63, is David Koresh’s mother. She is a nurse in the East Texas town of Chandler. I was in the backyard when David called me, and he hung up before I could get to the phone, but the answering machine recorded it. He said, “Hello, Momma, this is your son. They shot me and I think I’m dying, all right? Tell Grandma hello for me. I’ll be back real soon, okay? I’m sorry you didn’t learn the [Seven] Seals, but I’ll be merciful to you, and God will be merciful to you too. I’ll see y’all in the skies.”
“They Came Out Two By Two.”
On March 1, the day after the shootout, the ATF officially handed over command of Mount Carmel to the FBI. More than 100 Branch Davidians were still inside. The bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team established a perimeter around the building, deploying sharpshooters and Bradley fighting vehicles. Negotiators immediately focused on getting Koresh to release as many children as possible.
Sage The average length of a hostage-barricade situation in the United States is between six and eight hours. Worst-case scenario, we thought this might last three days.
Gary Noesner, 57, was in the FBI’s Special Operations and Research Unit in Quantico, Virginia, and was the negotiation coordinator for the first half of the standoff. He is now a crisis and security consultant in Fairfax, Virginia. We quickly realized that this was not a typical hostage situation. No one was being held against their will. It was very different than, say, a bank robbery, when a robber is holed up inside a bank and is threatening to harm customers if he isn’t given a getaway car. In that scenario, the success rate for law enforcement is very high, because the person came in to rob a bank; he didn’t come in to die. He’s hoping to leverage hostages to secure what he wants. The Branch Davidians were different. They were very devoted followers of David Koresh, and they didn’t want anything from the authorities other than for us to go away.
Martin We prayed, and we tried to keep our hearts in a heavenly place. We believed that God was going to take care of us and that soon things would be better.
Noesner The goal was to convince the Davidians that it was in their best interest to come out and that they would be treated fairly, with dignity and respect. That was a very difficult task, since the incident began with an extraordinary amount of bloodshed. So to come in on the heels of that very violent action and say, “Oh, forget about all that—we’re here to be your friends,” constituted the most significant challenge I’ve ever encountered as a negotiator.
Doyle By the time the FBI had finished setting up the perimeter, the property was surrounded by snipers. We could see their sniper nests. If you went to the cafeteria and looked out toward the community of Elk, you could see them on the high point on the property behind ours. We counted seventeen agents on that ridge watching us.
Sage David agreed to send the kids out if certain passages of Scripture were read over the radio. So whatever the designated passage was would be read on local radio, and as soon as the Davidians heard that, then kids were released. They came out two by two. Everything was biblical. By the third day, we had gotten eighteen kids out.
Noesner They came out with little notes pinned to their jackets saying things like “Please send me to my aunt Sophie in Des Moines.” Well, we didn’t do that. The first thing we did was bring them to the command center. And we would say, “Let’s call your mommy and let her know you’re okay.” Koresh would usually let the moms get on the phone, and that gave us an opportunity to identify who they were, because we didn’t know who all was inside. It allowed us to convey the message we wanted heard, which was “We’re not here to hurt you.” Most importantly, we let them know that their kids weren’t going anywhere. We were waiting for them to come out and resume custody.
Sage Some of those conversations were just heartrending. The kids would say, “Please come out,” or “Please come and get me!” Some of them were scared to death. Most of the negotiators were dads themselves, and these guys would push back their chairs and set these kids on their knees and try to make them feel less threatened.
Matteson About five o’clock in the morning on March 2, someone woke me up and said that David wanted to talk to me. I went to see him and he said, “I made this tape, and I’d like you to take it so it can be played on prime time. I’ve made arrangements.” He said that he wanted the world to see that we were just Bible students.
Sage David believed that he had unlocked—that he had been given, by God, the key to—the Seven Seals of the Book of Revelation. He put together this tape, and he guaranteed us that as soon as it was broadcast nationally, he would come out and bring everyone with him. Frankly, he thought he was dying, and he was milking it for all it was worth. This was going to be his parting message to the world. We required him, as part of the deal, to put a preamble on the tape that said he would bring everyone out peacefully once it had been played. I called the Christian Broadcasting Network, and it was on the air at nine or ten o’clock that morning. We started moving buses forward, and we put everything in place for the Davidians’ release. I was convinced that this was it.
Doyle Quite a number of people had their bags packed. The plan was that we were all going to come out the front door, and David would be carried out on a stretcher.
