WACO, Texas — For now 30 years, we have heard the Waco story told, retold, twisted or even exploited to fit an agenda.
A Netflix documentary debuting Wednesday is the latest to tell the story of the federal government’s attempted siege of the Branch Davidian compound, resulting in a 51-day standoff and the fiery ending that took the lives of 86 people.
While perspectives on the raid and its legacy run the spectrum, a Fort Worth author wants to focus on the truth ... including some never told before.
“Facts still matter,” said Jeff Guinn. "We live in a time when people ignore the ones inconvenient to them.”
After writing books on other famous cult leaders Jim Jones and Charles Manson, Guinn spent more than two years researching David Koresh, the Branch Davidians and the Waco saga. For the book named Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage, Guinn spoke to surviving Davidians as well as ATF agents who were part of the siege and discovered details still largely unknown three decades later.
“There are people that are pleased this is so much new information and everything is documented,” Guinn said.
Among the most surprising revelations to Guinn was ATF agents admitting the siege focused on the task of removing the weapons inside the compound but failed to explore the religious beliefs of the Branch Davidians.
A fateful lack of knowledge with dire consequences.
“The thing (ATF agents) emphasized was they were just going in there for the guns and had no idea what the Branch Davidians believed," Guinn said. "It was considered unimportant.”
Had they understood the group’s beliefs, they would have known Koresh and his followers welcomed the bloodshed. From his interviews with surviving sect members, they felt the raid fulfilled a prophecy.
“This was a group where death was part of their agenda,” Guinn said. “That is what Koresh prophesized.”
But it was another unexpected discovery that left Guinn astonished.
“We found definitive proof that David Koresh plagiarized all his major prophecies,” Guinn told WFAA.
As for the “Legacy of Rage” referenced in the title, Guinn believes what happened in Waco can be used to fit any agenda, any theory, or whatever political opinion a person or group wants to make either against the government or organized religion.
As he puts it, conspiracy theories and now a conspiracy industry, yet that does not make any of the theories true.
“There was never a conspiracy," Guinn said. "There was human fallibility, and it was tragic but we cannot make this something it was not. The conspiracy theories are convenient but absolutely absurd.”
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