The Davidians moved to Waco, Texas in 1935, and since then have minded their own business. James Wood, a professor of religion at Baylor University and resident of Waco since 1955, said that before February he hadn't heard of them referred to as a "cult." The librarian at the Waco Tribune-Herald confirmed that until their seven-part series on the Branch Davidians -- the first installment of which began one day before the initial assault on February 28, 1993 -- the Tribune-Herald referred to them as a "religious group," not a "cult."
The reporters for the series relied on "experts" from the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). A year earlier there had been allegations of child abuse, and the child protective services went to the compound, knocked on the door, walked in, and interviewed the children. They found no evidence of abuse and left.[1] But that was before CAN began playing the media like a fiddle.
Rick Ross, who was convicted of jewel theft in 1975 and boasts of more than 200 "deprogrammings," has been praised by CAN executive director Cynthia Kisser as being "among the half-dozen best deprogrammers in the country." In 1992 Ross, Adeline Bova, and CAN national spokesperson Priscilla Coates worked their magic on David Block, a group member for five years. He told them about the guns in the compound, and Ross tipped off the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF).
The affidavits supporting the search warrant used the word "cult," and BATF even adopted one of CAN's media savvy: they alerted television stations before the February 28 raid so that cameras could catch the action. It was expected to go as smoothly as those drug raids on cop shows, and might prove helpful to next year's budget.
To serve the search warrant, 100 BATF agents approached the compound on February 28. But the Branch Davidians had been tipped off and were in an apocalyptic mood, so four agents and six group members were killed by gunfire. This began a siege that lasted 51 days. CAN "experts" such as Priscilla Coates alleged child abuse, and others consulted further with authorities. CAN president Patricia Ryan recommended the use of lethal force.[2] Janet Reno and Bill Clinton picked up on the allegations of child abuse, and decided to put an end to it. This was finally achieved on April 19, when federal stormtroopers attacked again and over 80 men, women, and children perished in a fire.
During the 51-day siege, Koresh allowed 13 adults and 21 children to leave the compound. After a nine-week study of these children, the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services concluded that there were no indications of abuse. Even while Reno and Clinton were speaking of abuse, FBI director William Sessions said that his agency had no such evidence. Coates' response was, "I know how these types of groups work and children are always abused." Within a week the press dropped the child abuse angle as effortlessly as they had hyped it. It seemed like a good story at the time.[3]
Before the trial of eleven Branch Davidians began in San Antonio, one defense attorney asked that prosecutors and their witnesses be barred from using the word "cult" during the trial because i has "negative and dangerous" connotations. The judge denied this motion, but did allow the jury to consider self-defense in their deliberations. The verdict was a mixed bag. During the trial, BATF agent Dan Curtis defined a "cult" for the court as "a group of people who live together differently than the rest of society."[4]
Meanwhile, a diverse group of activists, ranging from the ACLU to the National Rifle Association, recommended increased oversight of federal law officers, and less reliance on uncorroborated, paid informants as a basis for obtaining search warrants. NRA legislative counsel Richard Gardiner pointed out that federal agents ignored an offer by David Koresh that would have allowed them to inspect all firearms in the compound.[5] Even Soldier of Fortune magazine, which had never met a well-armed, patriotic assault team they didn't like, referred to the BATF as a "gun gestapo."[6]
But the message appears to have been lost. BATF director Stephen Higgins was replaced by John W. Magaw in September 1993, and two months later the new acting director was still determined to keep an eye on other cults: "They're out there. They don't yet have the weaponry that we saw in Waco ... but they will develop if society allows them to." Magaw said the BATF was currently keeping tabs on cults in "three or four places around the country," but declined to be more specific.[7]
The problem with the word "cult" is not that cults don't exist, nor that they should be left alone. The problem with the term, and with others like "brainwashing" and "mind control," is that they are too easy to use. Larger issues get lost when convenient labels are attached to complex phenomena, and sometimes the larger issue is more important than what the label attempts to describe. CAN, BATF, and the media all used the word "cult," and thereby obscured the fact that these were men, women, and children with civil rights. By the time everyone could see that this issue was more important than whatever weapons they were said to have possessed, it was already too late.
There is no legal or scientific basis for the use of such terms, only a broad and vague recognition that certain techniques (hypnosis, food and sleep deprivation, confinement, degradation, fear of punishment, threats of death, repetitious propaganda, peer pressure, and other forms of abuse) can be effective with certain persons as a means of lowering their resistance to stimuli. In other words, they foster authoritarian social structures in which individuals are content to follow orders. But with other persons, the same techniques may provoke opposite reactions. mere fact that orders are followed may also reflect a reasonable decision to subordinate one's individual interests to a higher ideal. And to complicate matters further, the techniques used by so-called "cults" are frequently more subtle. It's a tough call in all but the most flagrant situations. As Judge T.S. Ellis III admonished deprogrammer Galen Kelly, "One man's cult is another man's community, no matter how wacky you or I might think that is."[8]