Tracing a legacy of rage
Historian gives Branch Davidian tragedy a human face in ‘Waco’
Jeff Guinn begins his gripping new book, “Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage,” with an epigraph from historian Rick Perlstein: “A fog of crosscutting motives and narratives, a complexity that defies storybook simplicity: that is usually the way history happens.”
In this book and most of his others, including studies of Charles Manson and Jim Jones, Guinn, a Fort Worth native, savors the task of slicing through that fog. He tells stories we thought we knew and makes us realize we really didn’t. He takes devils of the popular imagination and carefully explains that they’re actually human — a fact that makes them even more terrifying.
There are few heroes in Guinn’s books. Here we find a complete portrait of David Koresh, who convinced his followers 30 years ago that he was the Lamb, the one who would open the seven seals from the Bible’s Book of Revelation and lead his Branch Davidian followers in a holy war against Babylon, or the outside world. He was also a polygamist who had sex with underage girls in order to spread his seed to rule over his postapocalyptic world.
Scary stuff. But Guinn also shows how woefully unprepared Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents were when they raided the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco in February 1993, looking for illegals firearms. That raid left four agents and six Branch Davidians dead, and set the stage for the subsequent FBI siege that ended in a massive inferno that resulted in the deaths of 76 more Branch Davidians.
On a long-term level, Guinn shows how the incidents also set the stage for the “legacy of rage” in the book’s title. It’s been well documented that Timothy McVeigh was closely watching the Waco catastrophe unfold and that his rage, at what he saw as a case of the federal government overstepping its bounds, fueled his own act of domestic terrorism that killed 168 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., in 1995.
In the book, FBI analyst Ferris Rookstool recalls seeing a young man selling anti-government Tshirts and bumper stickers in the crowded, gawker-filled area outside the Davidian compound. He later confirmed that it was McVeigh; an SMU student journalist took his photo and got his information. As Rookstool tells Guinn, “Two years later, McVeigh did what he did in Oklahoma City.”
But the legacy goes well beyond McVeigh. The Waco events energized a vocal community of antigovernment conspiracy theorists that grows to this day. The Davidian memorial service was led by a budding Austin conspiracist named Alex Jones, who had recently founded InfoWars. Militia membership began to skyrocket in the wake of Waco, inspired largely by the belief that the feds are coming for your guns (an argument that was already in play during the 1992 presidential election). As Guinn writes, “Leaders of prominent (farright) organizations, such as Stewart Rhodes of Oath Keepers, cut their movement teeth on rage resulting from Mount Carmel.” He quotes a Southern Poverty Law Center analyst who draws a direct line from Waco to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Guinn, an investigative reporter for many years, knows how to get his subjects to open up. He talks to people on both sides of the tragedy, including surviving followers of Koresh and former ATF agents, who help explain how the opening raid was doomed from the start when the element of surprise, deemed crucial to the operation, was eliminated. Guinn also uncovers fascinating new information, including the existence of a 19thcentury Floridian, Cyrus Teed, who also claimed to be the Lamb and who also called himself “Koresh” (the Hebrew pronunciation of the Persian king Cyrus). Teed’s followers published a book, “Koreshanity: A Religion for the New Age,” a copy of which eventually found its way to the Waco Public Library. In other words, it appears that David Koresh, born and raised Vernon Wayne Howell, was a plagiarist.
So, yes, Guinn delivers new information here. But that’s hardly the only reason to read. “Legacy of Rage,” like “Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson” and
“The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple,” asks us to consider what it means to believe and why people choose to follow who they follow. These books are laden with context. Guinn rarely casts judgment; he doesn’t have to. He knows when the facts are damning enough.