Waco Siege - Films and Books

Films and Books

The Waco siege has been the subject of a number of documentary films and books. The first film was a made-for-television docudrama film, In the Line of Duty: Ambush at Waco, which was made during the siege, before the April 19 assault on the church, and presented the government's view of the initial ambush of February 28, 1993. The scriptwriter, Phil Penningroth, has since disowned his screenplay.

1993's Inside the Cult co-authored by ex-Davidian Marc Breault, who left the group in September 1989, and by Martin King who interviewed Koresh for Australian TV in 1992. In July 1993, true crime author Clifford L. Linedecker published Massacre at Waco, Texas. Davidian survivor David Thibodeau wrote his account of life in the Branch Davidian and of the siege in A Place Called Waco, published in 1999.

The first documentary film that was critical of the official reports was Waco: The Big Lie, produced by Linda Thompson and followed by Waco II: The Big Lie Continues. Thompson's films made a number of controversial allegations, the most famous of which was footage of an armored vehicle with what appears to be light reflected from it; Thompson's narration claimed this was a flamethrower attached to the "tank". Michael McNulty, of the Citizens' Organization for Public Safety, released footage showing the "flame" to have been a reflection on aluminized insulation that was torn from the wall and snagged on the M728 CEV, which is a vehicle that does not come equipped with a flamethrower (in fact, the Department of Defense stopped using flamethrowers in 1978). Thompson's "creative editing" was exposed by the film Waco: An Apparent Deviation (produced by Michael McNulty, as the result of a comprehensive investigation). Thompson worked from a VHS copy of the surveillance tape; McNulty was given access to a beta original.

The next film was Day 51: The True Story of Waco, produced by Richard Mosley and featuring Ron Cole, a self-proclaimed militia member from Colorado who was later prosecuted for weapons violations. Thompson's and Mosley's films, along with extensive coverage given to the Waco siege on some talk radio shows, galvanized support for the Branch Davidians among some sections of the right including the Nascent Militia Movement, while critics on the left also denounced the government siege on civil liberties grounds. America Wake Up (Or Waco) is a 2000 film by Alex Jones that documents the 1993 incident with the Branch Davidians.

In 1997, when professional film makers Dan Gifford and Amy Sommer produced their Emmy Award winning documentary, Waco: The Rules of Engagement. This film presents a history of the Branch Davidian movement and, most importantly, a critical examination of the conduct of law enforcement, both leading up to the raid and through the aftermath of the fire. The film features footage of the Congressional hearings on Waco, and juxtaposition of official government spokespeople with footage and evidence often directly contradicting the government spokespeople. In the documentary, Dr. Edward Allard (who held patents on FLIR technology) maintained that flashes on the FBI's infra-red footage were consistent with grenade launcher and automatic small arms fire from FBI positions at the back of the complex toward the locations which would have been exits for Branch Davidians attempting to flee the fire. Waco: The Rules of Engagement was nominated for a 1997 Academy Award for best documentary and was followed by another film in 1999, Waco: A New Revelation. In 2001, another Michael McNulty documentary, The F.L.I.R. Project, researched the aerial thermal images recorded by the FBI, and using identical FLIR equipment recreated the same results as were recorded by federal agencies April 19, 1993. Subsequent government-funded studies contend that the infra-red evidence does not support the view that the FBI improperly used incendiary devices or fired on Branch Davidians. Infra-red experts continue to disagree and film maker Amy Sommer stands by the original conclusions presented in the Waco: The Rules of Engagement.

The Assault on Waco was first aired in 2006 on the Discovery channel, detailing the entire incident. A British-American documentary Inside Waco was produced jointly by Channel 4 and HBO in 2007, attempting to show what really happened inside by piecing together accounts from the parties involved. The City of God: A New American Opera, an opera by Joshua Armenta dramatizing the negotiations between the FBI and Koresh, premiered in 2012, utilizing actual transcripts from the negotiations as well as biblical texts and hymns from the Branch Davidian hymnal.