A new book unearths truths about the infamous Waco siege of 1993.
Early in the morning on April 19, 1993, the FBI sent in tanks to doze the walls of the massive Mount Carmel compound in Waco, Tex. It was a drastic measure to force Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and his people to surrender and face justice after a 51-day standoff that had begun with an illegal weapons investigation and the shooting deaths of six Davidians and four agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The Feds had attempted to get Koresh’s followers to surrender in the days and weeks prior with little success.
So the FBI — who already looked bad after two followers of Koresh snuck through police lines to join the Davidians — began lobbying for approval to use more forceful tactics to take control of the situation.
“When this event started to dominate the news … the pressure escalated on the FBI to end this thing. It made the Clinton administration look terrible, it made the FBI look silly,” Kevin Cook, author of “Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America’s Modern Militias,” out Tuesday, told The Post. So the Feds pressured then-new Attorney General Janet Reno to allow them to use tear gas — “a tear gas that wasn’t allowed in warfare and she did.”
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