Waco after Twenty-five Years: Media Reconstructions of the Federal Siege of the Branch Davidians

The year 2018 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of what has been called one of the worst federal law enforcement disasters in American history: the siege and assault targeting the Branch Davidian sect near Waco, Texas in 1993. Throughout 2018, there was a wave of television documentaries and renewed media coverage of the historic conflict. This media review examines six Waco documentaries and a six-part miniseries that premiered on major television networks, all alleging to uncover the "real truth" or "inside story" of events at the Branch Davidians' Mount Carmel property outside Waco.

Together these programs make bold claims about new discoveries or revelations previously unknown or undisclosed. However, as a scholar who has invested hundreds of hours researching this tragic confrontation over the last quarter century, I find these claims to be largely exaggerated, perhaps for commercial appeal or possibly to attract a new generation of viewers too young to remember this calamity. We now have a substantial body of scholarly research on this conflict that offers considerable clarification on some of the still publicly contested issues and facts highlighted in these programs. ¹As such, this body of scholarship provides a baseline for fact-checking some dubious claims.

In the 2018 documentaries, notably the ones aired on CBS, ABC, the History Channel, the Smithsonian Channel, and to a lesser extent, HLN, there are a number of assertions made by individuals that are not supported by the evidence, yet seem to be taken at face value by the film-makers. To assess the validity of these assertions would only require that the filmmakers do some digging into the published research. Instead, we see what appears to be a conscious effort to pursue the more salacious elements of the Branch Davidians' beliefs and practices in a distinctly tabloid-style of journalism. It is not disputed that Koresh took multiple wives, some of them underage, to fulfill what he believed was a messianic mission. While this and other controversial sectarian practices based on extraordinary religious claims are intriguing, they are secondary to the larger set of problems that define the 1993 conflict at Mount Carmel. I will return to this argument shortly, but to finish my point, the focus of several documentaries is distinctively myopic.

The CBS 48 Hoursepisode, "Secrets of Waco," for example, turns to critical ex-members to highlight what one individual called "mind control," a pseudoscientific concept found in science fiction literature and promoted by anticultists that has been thoroughly debunked by social science research. ²The producers make no effort to challenge the assertion of "mind control." Indeed, that concept is woven into the narrative and left to become a key theme in the framing of the story. The tone of sensationalism here is stark. One of the ex-members who appears on the program, Marc Breault, authored a turgid autobiographical account ( Inside the Cult, 1993) shortly after the deadly assaults on the Branch Davidian community. In the book, Breault reveals that he actively worked with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) investigator Davy Aguilera as a self-proclaimed "cult buster" attempting to have Branch Davidian leader David Koresh (1959–1993) arrested. ³There are numerous problems with claims made by Breault, who was, among other things, the source for...