The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation.

• Author: Easterbrook, Gregg

That a mostly innocent group of people died in Waco, Texas on April 19, 1993 at the government's hand is the thesis of The Ashes of Waco, an excellent new book by Dick J. Reavis. The Waco assault was among the strangest acts the American government has ever engaged in, worse (by proportion and death toll) than the Philadelphia city government's 1985 bombing of the MOVE house, in which 13 people died.

Yet, as Reavis points out, big media outlets generally embraced the notion that the attack on the Branch Davidian compound was inevitable, even implying that those inside deserved to die. Most journalists accepted Justice Department blandishments about the "need" to attack the compound--which was isolated and surrounded by armed squads. "The job of finding out what had happened at Mount Camiel ultimately fell to people outside the media's salaried circles, to scholars, defense attorneys, survivors and self-financed independent researchers," Reavis writes.

Reavis, a journalist affiliated for years with Texas Monthly, spends considerable time explicating the evolution of the Branch Davidian belief. His strongest point is that, however odd, this set of convictions--particularly its longing for a cataclysmic confrontation between the believers and some generic enemy--did constitute an opening for negotiation. The feds should have brought in biblical scholars to convince David Koresh that the Book of Revelation offered another path. At least they should have made an effort to understand his views. But they didn't. And this, Reavis shows, increased the odds that the standoff would end in violent confrontation.

The Ashes of Waco contains original contributions to the understanding of this event, more information about which is now being provided by congressional hearings. Not only was the first raid apparently illegal-alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agents entered with a military thrust even though they did not have a "no knock warrant" (and even though local police had driven up to the Waco compound and walked in peacefully)--its tactics were shockingly belligerent.

According to Reavis, the ladder teams trying to enter the compound's second floor were under orders to break in and start lobbing concussion "flash bang" grenades, which can maim at close range and always generate an end-of-the-world noise. They were ordered to do this regardless of how the raid developed. Had Koresh opened the door and said, "Come in. I surrender!" the grenades...