Bob Ricks, the FBI’s main spokesman during the 51-day standoff outside Waco, Texas, between federal agents and an apocalyptic religious sect known as the Branch Davidians, remembers April 19, 1993, as beginning with hope that the conflict could be resolved.
Instead, the Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and more than 75 of his followers, including children, died when their compound burned to the ground after FBI agents in an armored vehicle smashed the buildings and pumped in tear gas. The Justice Department maintains that Branch Davidians set the fire.
Ricks disagrees with those who described Koresh as a madman or psychotic.
