-911, what's your emergency? -There are 75 men
around our building and they're shooting at us in
Mount Carmel -- tell 'em there are children and women
in here and to call it off!
[ Gunfire ] -I hear gunfire.
Oh, shit! -Good evening, friends.
It has been over 36 hours now since federal agents
first confronted a heavily armed religious cult near Waco.
They were met by a hail of gunfire,
killing four of the agents
and wounding over a dozen others.
-This event was totally unprecedented
in law enforcement history.
-Clear the roadway! -Well, the leader of this
"Branch Davidians" cult calls himself David Koresh.
-The ATF, you boys are wrong.
-David was a manipulator and a liar.
-Stalemate: the cult members
breaking their promise to surrender.
-It was 51 days
of very dedicated and difficult negotiations.
-More than 80 people are believed to have died
in yesterday's fiery conclusion to the 51-day siege,
24 of them children.
-It was the most horrific crime scene I've ever seen.
What you see on TV is about 90% Hollywood
and 10% accurate.
There's been a very skillful effort to rewrite history,
and I refuse to let that stand.
My name is Byron Sage.
I was there when the Branch Davidian siege began,
all the way through until it ended tragically
on the 19th of April.
♪♪
I'd been a negotiator in the FBI since 1976.
On February 28, 1993, it was a Sunday.
My wife and I were getting our boys up
to get ready to go to church.
I was just getting ready to jump in the shower
and the phone rang -- it was my boss, who said,
"Byron, there's been a raid
that has gone horribly wrong.
I need you to proceed as soon as you can to the Waco area
and assist with negotiations."
And I got ready to go, and sped up to Waco,
red light, siren, and a lot of prayers.
We had no prior knowledge that ATF
was going to conduct a raid that day.
We knew that they had an investigation
into the Branch Davidian,
and we have a parallel interests into allegations of violations
of civil rights and child abuse and so forth.
-The siege began Sunday morning when ATF agents went to
the Branch Davidian compound near Waco
to arrest cult leader David Koresh on weapons charges.
-When ATF rolled in to conduct
their lawful execution of a search warrant
and an arrest warrant for Vernon Howell,
they were met by simultaneous gunfire
from over 40 different shooting positions --
that's not an arbitrary response
to what they claimed later in court
was an overzealous action by ATF.
That's garbage. -The cult actually called
or known as the Branch Davidians
is an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
-As far as the Branch Davidian sect,
the only thing I really knew about them
was that they were a self-isolated group
that lived in a large communal setting,
and that David was very controlling of those individuals
who were there to listen to his ministry.
We'd also heard that they had a substantial number of weapons
and possibly ammunition at the location.
So I knew of them, but I didn't know a lot about them.
That was very soon to change.
As I'm entering into the Waco area,
I'm diverted to join with the negotiation
that wasn't ongoing over the emergency line,
the 911 line.
-And I believe that line is open into the compound
in case we need to do some negotiation.
-The gun battle was still raging about eight miles northeast.
It wasn't in Waco, by the way.
It occurred near a small area known as Elk.
Later in the media, they told me flat out, you know,
"Byron, think about it,
the wacko from Elk, or the wacko from Waco?"
-I'm sorry some of you guys got shot.
But, uh, hey,
God'll have to sort that out, won't he?
-The best thing that you could do as a negotiator
is listen to the individual
to try to get the story behind
what brought us to this point.
When I first got on the phone with Howell, I introduced myself
and then I said, "Mr. Howell, how do you want me
to refer to you, or what do you want me to call you?"
And David is speaking with gunshots
being fired in the background, people screaming,
and very calmly -- too calmly --
he says, "Agent Sage, have you ever heard a person die?"
And I said, yes, I have.
He said, "Then you know how to pronounce my name."
He said, it's like that last breath, the death knell.
It's "Koreshhhh."
And he drug it out.
We both knew that we were in for
a very difficult situation here.
♪♪
Well, now, David, no question,
was 100% in charge of those people
inside the Branch Davidian.
He had slowly but subtly
not only taken over control of the ministry,
but every aspect of their life.
So you're speaking to a very manipulative man.
We were finally able to get an agreement
that David would order his people to cease firing,
and we would get an assurance that ATF would cease fire.
We offered to send in medical assistance
and they refused it.
Now, it's important to realize that although
I was the first negotiator from the FBI,
we eventually would have 52 of the best negotiators
I've ever worked with.
We fell into a -- a routine talking to David,
talking to Steve Schneider, for the ensuing days.
The average length of a hostage barricade type situation
in the United States is six to eight hours.
This event was totally unprecedented
in law enforcement history.
We had done a number of things
to try to induce a surrender by David.
We had aired a 58-minute sermon that he had prepared
and promised as soon as we aired the sermon,
that he and all of his followers would immediately come out.
They did not.
-I, David Koresh, agree upon
the broadcasting of this tape
to come out peacefully with all the people.
-He was a liar, and it was very difficult
to not lose your temper with them.
Every single day that he remained in there,
he'd been ordered to exit the building
and to face charges of murder or attempted murder
and any number of things.
He knew that, in addition to that,
he was going to be facing charges of child molestation,
sexual exploitation of children.
He was not looking at a very easy time in custody.
He wasn't budging.
-The cult leader, David Koresh,
told the FBI he hadn't surrendered as promised
because God had told him to wait.
-We would eventually get a total of 21 children released.
-21 children have been released
since the standoff began February 28th.
Most came out with messages from their parents
listing relatives that might take them.
-I'm very proud of that, and I'm relieved and thankful
for each and every one of them.
We kept after David, kept after Steve,
about sending more children out.
-You can argue with me,
you catch me on the side of the road somewhere
and you come and argue with me,
you come pointing guns in the direction of my wives
and my kids, (bleep),
I'll -- I'll meet you at the door any time.
-Finally, David, on the 7th of March,
got a little peeved.
He kind of barked at the negotiator and said,
"Hey, you're not dealing with those other kids anymore.
These are my children. They're not coming out."
That was a huge setback.
-Here, the FBI says it's doing everything it can to ensure
that none of the 90 adults and 18 children in this cult
comes to any harm.
-We needed to be patient and try to expend every effort
to get these people out peacefully
before we resorted to a tactical resolution.
-Koresh has been playing loud rock music,
exploding into tirades on the phone with the FBI.
There's nothing to suggest he's giving up soon.
-He has made such statements as, "We are ready for war.
Let's get it on. Your talk is becoming in vain."
-We would eventually get a total of 35 individuals out,
including the 21 children,
but ultimately David continued to refuse to come out.
-We're not negotiating.
We're saying come out, come out with your hands up.
This matter is over.
-On the morning of April 19, 1993,
that's a day that will live with me forever.
Our intention was to force,
through the use of tear gas,
the systematic exit of all of the Branch Davidians.
David would come out with the children,
then the women, and lastly, the men.
Both Steve and David had agreed to all of it.
The majority of windows were barricaded
with mattresses or with bales of hay.
It was clear that they were angling or prepared
for this final confrontation.
We estimated that it would take up to 48 hours
to systematically saturate the far ends of the compound,
drive them to the center and out the door.
The problem was, once they opened fire on our vehicles,
those armored vehicles look like they were rigged with sparklers
from the bullets bouncing off the...
It was amazing.
It was like Fourth of July in a very depressing realization
that they were engaging us
instead of coming out as they had promised.
When they tried to open the front door
with the CEV boom,
it was barricaded.
So there was no way those Branch Davidians
could have come out the front door
as they'd agreed to do.
The tanks managed to poke several holes along the front
and south side of the compound
in order to give them a means to exit.
I had prayed that we would see
those kids streaming out of that building,
but we... we never did.
We had microphones that we had inserted into the compound.
Once you cleared out the background noise,
you could make out conversations.
The first one we made out very much after the fact
was Steve Schneider hanging up on me.
He ordered two things -- put on your tear gas masks,
and then the second thing, a minute or two later,
he said, "spread the fuel."
Almost 12:00 noon,
about five to 10 minutes after the last insertion of tear gas,
my partner came running in, he said,
"Give me the mic, give me the mic,"
and he said, "We've just observed somebody appeared to be
pouring some liquid and has lit a fire,
come out of there immediately, that place is on fire."
When we saw the fire take hold, it started spreading swiftly.
By this time, there's about a 35-knot wind
blowing right through the compound,
through those holes that we had punched in the building,
not realizing we had turned that building into just a funnel
for the fire to take hold.
My demands, that turned to requests,
became pleas -- "David, don't do this.
Don't end this this way.
You claim to be a savior, save those people in there.
Lead them out now, before it's too late."
A total of nine adults came out that last day,
the 19th of April.
The rest of the people were likely to stay inside
or were forced to stay inside, I don't know.
One of them brought out a dog;
not one brought out a child.
They began to give orders to the Davidians who came out
and took them into custody,
and when I heard that,
I, um, made probably
the toughest decision I have ever made in 50 years
in law enforcement to this day:
I elected to turn off the microphones,
which represented
51 days of, uh,
very dedicated and difficult negotiations.
It also acknowledged
that we had not gotten them all out.
[ Clears throat ]
In essence, we had failed.
I'm not in the business of failure.
This hit me hard.
I looked around the corner at that building,
by this time it was nearly fully engulfed.
I looked and pleaded that we would see those kids.
Nowhere to be seen.
As I'm looking at it, I'm still --
I don't know, I guess I was in shock
or I was emotionally devastated.
Jeff Jamar, who is a good friend of mine,
the on-scene commander, came over to me
and put his arm around my shoulder,
and he said,
"Well, it looks like negotiations are over.
You've got the crime scene."
I ended up helping to exhume
two of the bodies that were in that compound,
I don't know why I did that to myself,
but, you know, I was there to get a job done
and I was going to help get it done.
You know, these could have been people
I had been talking to for 51 days.
It was already a lot of questions starting to come up
about, you know, how could this have happened?
How could we have allowed all these people to die?
Well, we didn't.
They elected to stay in there at David's direction.
We officially turn the crime scene over to
McLennan County Sheriff's Office,
and that was about midday on the 6th of May.
I packed up and headed home.
The rest is history.
I carry this with me to this day,
I celebrate those 21 kids that we got out.
I know that they'd been influenced
by some of this negative propaganda,
but I hope that they also will seek out the truth
and come to realize
that it was their parents
that elected not to come out.
-Those children are dead because David Koresh had them killed.
There's no question about that.
He had those fires started.
He had 51 days to release those children.
He chose those children to die.
-There was not one shot fired by the Bureau
or by any other law enforcement or ninja outfits,
as I've heard people claim were there.
They were not there.
That's just total garbage to inflame the public.
My job in the FBI for nearly 30 years
was to protect and defend the citizens of this country
against all enemies, foreign or domestic.
The biggest problem that I think the general public does not know
is that this is a systematic effort,
quite successful effort, to undermine the credibility
and the trust of the American public
in agencies like the FBI, and I refuse to...
To allow that to happen as long as I'm alive.
♪♪