The Branch Davidians: Oh, My God, They're Killing Themselves!

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The snipers stood shifts around the clock at observation posts that were well within the range of Koresh's .50-cal. sharpshooting rifles and M-60 machine guns. "All our positions were chip shots for them," says Coulson, "an easy head shot." The snipers kept their rifle scopes trained on the compound's windows, watching as they were fortified for tripod-mounted machine guns that could be fired by a man lying on the floor. "I don't know if anybody has ever spent any time staring through a scope," says one agent, "but I did it for 15 or 20 minutes, and it is terribly disorienting. These people had been there for 50 days."

The cult leader had broken one deal after another, officials reminded Reno. "There were never any real negotiations," says Jeffrey Jamar, the beefy FBI agent in charge on the ground. "We stayed in touch to avoid provocation, but everything was done on his time -- he was in strict control." Negotiators had learned that Koresh had a particular dread of jail, a fear of being raped. "He had all the wives, food and liquor he wanted," Coulson says. "Inside, he's God. Outside, he's an inmate on trial for his life. What was he going to do?"

They had tried to break him down, switching tactics midway through the siege. At first they were respectful. That approach got 37 people out, including 21 children, before it stopped working. Then their tone switched to disdain, even mockery, and the harassment campaign of lights and noises began. "It was not there just to irritate them and make their lives miserable," said agent Byron Sage. "It was to keep them on guard, to keep them so they weren't at a fine-honed edge."

To make their tactical case, officials had to depend on their intelligence from inside the compound, but as Koresh grew more paranoid it was harder to gather. The atf had an undercover agent inside before the original raid, but his shooting skills on the target range may have aroused suspicion. After negotiating to send in milk, magazines and a typewriter, they tucked in tiny listening devices as well to help them monitor Koresh's moods. But cult members were said to have found the bugs and destroyed them.

So they had to rely more on the hours of conversations and the letters Koresh occasionally dictated to be sent out to the besieging forces. The FBI brought these to a team of experts they recruited, who drew a psychological portrait of an ever more menacing figure, one who believed himself invincible.

Over the weekend of April 10, Koresh sent the FBI two letters from God, which Time has obtained, neatly penned on lavender notepaper by one of his 19 wives. "I AM your God," he wrote, "and you will bow under my feet. Do you think you have the power to stop my will?" The ominous letters persuaded the psychologists that Koresh would come out only on his own terms, probably violent ones. "It is hard to believe that Koresh will abdicate his godhood," the experts concluded, "for a limited notoriety and time behind bars."