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

(8 of 10)

Then he vanished. At about 1 p.m., after the fire broke out, White House communications director George Stephanopoulos kept a safe distance from the issue at his regular daily briefing for reporters: "It's a decision by the Attorney General and the FBI." Like everyone else, the White House spent the afternoon waiting and watching to see if anyone might survive. But after the smoke cleared, Clinton, never camera shy, remained in the shadows. The White House released a statement one paragraph long. "The law-enforcement agencies involved in the Waco Siege recommended the course of action pursued today," it said. "I told the Attorney General to do what she thought was right, and I stand by that decision."

While a normal politician's instinct, as disaster burns around them, is to run for cover, Reno drew herself up tall, 6 ft. 2 in. tall, and went on national television to say, The buck stops with me, I take full responsibility, it was my decision, I approved the plans, until journalists and pundits and pols were breathless at the audacity of it, an act of political self-immolation. She was everywhere on the evening news and the talk shows, declaring that after hard thought she had reached the best judgment she could and that "based on what we know now, obviously it was wrong."

She lost her temper only when reporters suggested that she was covering for the President. "I don't do spin stuff," she said, "and I'm not distancing anybody from anything." But by the time Larry King came round, she still hadn't heard from her boss. "They kept missing each other," was the official White House explanation. The next day Stephanopoulos began to retreat from the retreat as best he could. Clinton rejected calls for Reno to resign just because "some religious fanatics murdered themselves," and called for investigations at Justice and the Treasury Department. The House Judiciary Committee announced it would hold hearings as well.

At the scene of the carnage, forensic experts tiptoed through still smoking ruins, amid popping ammunition and exploding cans of fruit. They removed one soft, crumbling body after another, laying them in body bags side by side for removal in a refrigerated truck. Tiny orange flags fluttered everywhere that bodies had been found -- nine of them clustered at the central cinder-block bunker, with a weapon still visible mounted on top. On the main flagpole, where Koresh liked to fly his Star of David flag, the Texas and ATF flags flew at half staff.

Throughout the week family members issued scorching assessments of the FBI's performance. "There were law-abiding, God-fearing people in there," said Koresh's mother Bonnie Haldeman. "They didn't hurt anybody." The most damaging blasts came from those who had made it out of the compound. Survivors spoke out, either on their own or through DeGuerin and Schneider's lawyer Jack Zimmerman, to challenge the official version of what happened. "There was never any suicide plan," protested Renos Avraam, a 28-year-old London native who had lived in the compound for more than a year, "and never any order to destroy the compound. We intended to come out."