Conspiracy: History’s Greatest Plots, Collusions and Cover-Ups (22 page)

The answer the conspiracy theorists offer is that he was blackmailed, that the CIA threatened to tell his pregnant wife that he was having an affair with Kopechne. This is a pretty thin explanation, however. If Kennedy was so easy to blackmail, there would have been no need to fix up such an elaborate and risky scheme as the one that involved Mary Jo Kopechne. Overall then, it seems likely that the only real conspiracy was the one launched by Kennedy in an attempt to save his career.

Over the past twenty years several events have shaken America and made a significant minority of Americans deeply cynical about the behaviour of their own government. Among the most significant of these is the incident that took place at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco Texas, in early 1993. This culminated in the loss of more than ninety lives as the government appeared to declare war on a tiny religious sect.

The sect in question, the Branch Davidians, were an offshoot of an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventist Movement. They had been based in a compound called Mount Carmel, outside Waco, Texas since the 1930s. By 1955 the leadership of the group had passed to one Benjamin Roden, who was succeeded in time by his wife Lois. In 1981 a charismatic young man named Vernon Howell joined the group and he soon became a leading light, especially after he began an affair with the much older Lois. A power struggle began between Howell and Lois's son George. George Roden was the initial victor and Howell left the group to start his own splinter group in 1984. Lois died in 1986 and George Roden assumed control for two years until Vernon Howell returned and managed to wrest control back from the increasingly mentally unstable George.

Vernon Howell began to impose his own vision on the sect. He decided that he was a Messiah figure and should be allowed to be polygamous. He was believed to have recruited as many as twelve women as his concubines, some of them the wives of other members and some of them as young as twelve years old. As the Messiah he also exempted himself from the sect's restriction on diet and alcohol. In 1990 he gave himself a new, rather more biblical-sounding, name: David Koresh. His teachings became increasingly apocalyptic with the United States government being denounced continually as Babylonians. The compound was renamed Ranch Apocalypse. The group stockpiled enough food to last for a year as well as large quantities of arms and ammunition. Dealing in guns – legally – also became a significant source of income for the group.

Gradually the activities of the Branch Davidians and their leader started to worry their Texan neighbours. Reports began to appear in the newspapers that Koresh had been accused of abusing children. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms started taking an interest in their group. When a postman reported a delivery of what appeared to be grenade casings, the investigation intensified and the bureau found evidence of several minor firearms violations.

Rather than simply waiting for Koresh to make one of his regular visits to the city, however, the BATF decided to launch a huge raid on the compound. Scheduled for 28 February 1993 it was meant to be a surprise but news crews had been tipped off and the BATF helicopter flying over the compound shortly beforehand must have warned the residents that something was amiss.

F
ORCED TO RETREAT
The agents approached the compound that Sunday morning in vehicles disguised as cattle trailers. However, the Branch Davidians were not fooled and the situation very quickly got out of control. As the agents approached the compound, shots rang out. It is still not clear who fired first, with both sides accusing the other, but before long a full-scale gun battle had broken out. By the time the shooting ended four BATF agents and five Branch Davidians were dead and many more were injured.

The BATF had been forced to retreat because they had underestimated the firepower and determination of the sect members. The raid had been an unqualified disaster which had been caught on film for the world to see. Still, the government could not back down now, so a siege began immediately, with the FBI soon taking over the leadership from the BATF. The siege lasted for an amazing fifty-one days. During that time the FBI seemed to employ two distinct tactics. On the one hand, hostage negotiators talked regularly with David Koresh and in the early days of the siege they secured the release of several groups of members, mostly children.

However, although the negotiators were accustomed to hostage situations this one was very different. The remaining people inside the compound did not see themselves as hostages. They were determined to stay with their leader and it became increasingly clear that Koresh was not intending to leave in the near future. At the same time, hostile tactics were also being used. After a while, the electricity was cut off to the compound and later on giant floodlights were trained on the building in order to prevent the occupants from sleeping.

Notoriously, the FBI also played tapes at deafening volume to demoralize the occupants – the sounds on the tapes included Tibetan Buddhist chants, bagpipes, seagulls crying, helicopters, dentists' drills, sirens, dying rabbits, a train and songs by Alice Cooper and Nancy Sinatra. Such tactics had been seen to be useful in the operation against the Panamanian leader General Noriega a couple of years before, but the Branch Davidians seemed to be made of sterner stuff and the FBI started to run out of patience. The operation was enormously expensive and the eyes of the world were upon it. Surely the might of the American government could not be halted by a handful of religious fanatics?

U
P IN FLAMES
Eventually, Attorney General Janet Reno approved plans for a final assault. This was launched on Monday morning 19 April. The FBI called the compound to warn the occupants that they would be using tear gas. Armed vehicles then approached the compound, punched holes in the walls and sprayed tear gas into the building. Still the Davidians refused to leave. Instead, they started firing at the vehicles. Then the telephone was thrown out, a sign that the talking was over. Later, towards noon, as the FBI pondered its next move, the compound went up in flames. Fires were raging and these were soon punctuated by huge explosions. Finally, nine occupants emerged. One woman came out with her clothing in flames and then tried to go back in, but she was restrained by a BATF agent and taken to safety.

It was too dangerous for firefighters to approach the blaze. Even when it appeared to be in its last stages a soldier was shot at when he approached the building. Eventually, however, the compound was razed to the ground and the FBI was able to inspect the damage. They found eighty dead bodies amongst the rubble of which twenty-three were children (fourteen of whom were fathered by Koresh). The body of Koresh himself was identified by his dental records. He had been shot in the head.

This was an operation that had gone about as wrong as it possibly could. The FBI tried to stress that the Branch Davidians had set the fires themselves and so had committed mass suicide, but it was inevitable that the conspiracy theorists would soon get to work.

D
ELIBERATE MURDER?
Essentially the conspiracy theorists were all saying the same thing, that the FBI had deliberately murdered the Branch Davidians. Evidence for this, however, was at first slight but the dogged investigations of a right-wing maverick named Michael McNulty started to raise embarrassing questions. He would air his findings in two successful films about the affair – the Academy Award nominated
Waco: The Rules Of Engagement
and
Waco: A New Revelation
.

Two key allegations are made by McNulty. The first is that the FBI caused the fires. After the event, the FBI had always maintained that it had not used any flammable substance or weapon in its assault on the compound. McNulty discovered, however, that flammable tear gas canisters had been used in the attack. The FBI finally reversed its earlier statements and admitted this in 1999. Secondly, McNulty examined heat-sensitive film of the operation and noticed flashes coming from behind the building. These, he claimed, were muzzle flashes – proof that the FBI had been firing on anyone trying to escape the fire.

Some of McNulty's other charges were supported by rather less documentary evidence. They included the suggestion that soldiers from the Army's super-secret Delta Force participated in the attack; that hand-held grenade launchers were fired at the kitchen and could have ignited the fire; and that a demolition charge was placed on the roof of the bunker which was detonated by remote control.

So how has the FBI responded to these charges? The explosion in the bunker has been blamed on the quantity of arms possessed by the occupants. The use of grenade launchers and the active involvement of Delta Force soldiers (though they were acknowledged to have been present) were both flatly denied. The flashes on the heat- resistant film were written off as reflected sunlight, with experts pointing out that a muzzle would have to be attached to a human being who would also show up on heat-resistant film. As for the flammable CS gas canisters, the FBI says that they were launched four hours prior to the fire breaking out but, in any case, they had failed to reach their target. This was backed up by a civil jury, Congress, the Court and the Special Counsel who, in the year 2000, all concluded that the FBI had not caused the fire. The FBI also point out they had introduced bugging devices into the compound which clearly recorded cult members spreading fuel about and preparing to light it.

T
RAGIC CONSEQUENCES
All this, of course, has cut little ice with conspiracy theorists. What they and many other Americans point out was that here was a religious group surrounded by government forces but still going up in flames. The Waco incident made for potent TV images and proved a powerful recruiting aid for the far-right militias. This incident would bear terrible fruit two years later when, on the anniversary of the Waco deaths, a young man named Timothy McVeigh decided to take vengeance on the government by perpetrating the Oklahoma City bombing.

So, do the conspiracists have a point? Could Waco have been a massive plot by the government against its own people? It seems unlikely, because in the final analysis there is no reason why the government would have actively wanted to bring about the annihilation of this obscure religious cult. What seems far more likely is that this was simply a disastrously badly handled affair. It was less a conspiracy than a shambles. Unfortunately, however, the consequences of the government's actions were tragic, both in the short and the long term.