The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation [Tapa dura]

Now, if you are pro-ATF/FBI then you will not like this book. The author does have a decidedly pro-Davidian bias to his writing so it is not an evenhanded version of the story but it stops short of being an ultra-right wing diatribe. It is what I believe to be basically the truth concerning the matter and that is that despite the technicalities of the alleged wrongdoing of the Davidians the government grossly overstepped its authority and trampled the Constitution that they are sworn to uphold in order to get their way.

The real issues here are not whether the Davidians broke some relatively minor firearms law or even whether they committed suicide by setting the fire that killed them or whether the government set the fire accidentally or deliberately. It is about a government that has a warped sense of what's right and basically makes war on its own citizens in order to prove that it is in control. It is about the frightening trend of our government to think of themselves as our rulers and above the law that they are sworn to uphold and it is certainly a chilling realization of that old saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely.

The bottom line for me is that the ATF planned this raid as an attack from the get go to make itself look good for their upcoming budget review and chose a fringe religious group to exploit because they thought that they would be good fodder for them from a political perspective. Then when their home invasion tactics blew up in their face they and the FBI basically systematically assassinated those people because they had the temerity to stand up to the federal government's thuggery. In the end they tried to cover up their wrongdoing and punish the survivors for embarrassing them. Even if you believe that David Koresh and his people were a bunch of kooks it shouldn't matter: what the government did to those people is just wrong.

If you have any interest in hearing the non-government version of what went on during this business then give this book a try, but read other versions too. I also recommend "No More Wacos: What's Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix it".

Law enforcement should not be about using tanks to smash down walls to force people to submit; those are war tactics that have no place in how a government treats the citizens of a free society.

Perhaps the aspect of this book that I like the most is its even handedness. Many people seem to have a sense that a useful lie is often better than an inconvenient truth. To them making your case is what's important, and getting at the facts is secondary. Dick Reavis clearly rejects this and believes in bringing forth the truth, even when it does not support his own sympathies. I find this very refreshing. He covers both the seamy side of David Koresh, and the evidence of both illegal and immoral activity on the part of the Davidians and of law enforcement officials. Where evidence is inconclusive or conflicts with other evidence he lets us know what evidence there is, and lets us decide.

Perhaps more importantly than the catalog of events this book also gives us a look at the Davidians as people. It tries to tell us who these people were. We are presented information about life in Mt. Carmel, how they lived and how they viewed the world. This is at least as interesting as the presentation of the facts.

I do have some criticisms of this book. For one this book does have a tendency to waste its already too few pages on what amounts to side issues that seem to me irrelevant to an understanding of what happened at Waco. Examples of these include arguments about the constitutionality of gun control, and a digression on other apocalyptic groups with rather tenuous relationships with the events at Waco. Also, I would have liked to see more of the negotiation tapes. Apparently Dick Reavis had access to all of them, but in his book we get only brief glimpses at what was going on in the negotiations.

In all these complaints should be seen as very minor. This is an excellent book and a great summary of the events at Waco, from an author who deserves our thanks for sticking with the story for long enough to get at the facts, and for presenting them to us so clearly and objectively.