HELLFIRE : DID ANYONE INVOLVED...

Recent Congressional hearings on the Waco tragedy are supposed to help the nation understand what happened on the Texas plains in 1993, when about 80 people died during government raids on a heavily armed “cult compound.” A 14-year-old girl’s testimony of sexual abuse inside the compound explains, in part, the decision to arrest the people known as Branch Davidians and their leader, David Koresh. And the tales of incompetence and machismo told by some of the agents who participated in the raid illustrate the mistakes made by those who directed the two disastrous assaults.

Although this new information is helpful, it is also tainted by the forum from which it emerges. Republicans have made no secret of their desire to use the hearings to embarrass the Clinton Administration and humiliate Atty. Gen. Janet Reno. And Administration officials involved in the Waco controversy seem determined to justify their actions, even if it means obscuring contradictory evidence.

Fortunately, in the middle of Waco’s revival as a political issue, two fresh books offer compelling revelations about what actually happened before, during and after the siege. These books--one a journalistic investigation, the other an academic study--explain how the federal government, the press and the public misunderstood Koresh and his followers. They also suggest that the tragedy might have been averted had authorities been calmer, smarter and more open-minded.

In “The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation,” journalist Dick J. Reavis artfully reconstructs the founding of the Waco group as an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. He places the Branch Davidians in the American tradition of Bible-based, end-of-time movements, which have periodically arisen to announce the pending completion of apocalyptic prophecy. Reavis also describes the evolution of the Waco settlement--called Mount Carmel--along with the internal struggles for leadership that have marked its history.

The sect in Waco was just one of many radical or dissenting offshoots from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Like others, the Waco group had undergone years of turmoil, including a long-running battle over control of the Mount Carmel complex. Indeed, the Davidians were armed, at least in part, because they felt threatened by a competing--and particularly bizarre--prophet whom Koresh had succeeded after a gunfight at Mount Carmel.

Unlike many journalists, Reavis took pains to learn and understand the religious foundations of the Davidians. He sought the help of key Adventist institutions and current leaders of the church, cites the important works of Adventist pioneer Ellen White and shows how White and other Adventist prophets influenced Koresh. With his properly tuned ear, Reavis discovered that the Davidians were more devout and less menacing than their popular image. And he describes them as people who, though perhaps troubled, had each made a deliberate choice to live as they did. No one was forced into the crude, sometimes exhausting existence at Mount Carmel. Members came and left at will. It was their adherence to the sect, nothing more, that tied them to the place.

One of the most telling illustrations of the power of the Davidians’ belief is offered in Reavis’ account of a survivor’s experience during the first of the two assaults on the compound, which many of us forget was her home. This attack was met by ferocious gunfire from inside the building. During the battle, she was certain that the Bible’s prophecies were coming true, so she was not afraid. The Davidians believed that ultimately God was going to deliver them, rescuing them either bodily or in death. As one of the survivors explains: “To see what we believed was fulfillment of God’s words, spoken thousands of years ago, was very exciting.”

Though he is even-handed in his approach to the Davidians, Reavis does not ignore their delusions, paranoia and weaknesses. He describes Koresh as an abused child who “probably” took his revenge on his own children. Reavis details the rather bizarre sexual arrangements of the Davidians--Koresh considered nearly all women his “brides” and sexual property--and he shows the inconsistency of his beliefs and behaviors: Koresh was a messiah who sinned grandly, and he openly confessed those sins.

Reavis’ portrait of the press and government authorities is no less revealing. By Reavis’ account, credulous reporters, manipulated by federal officials, willingly depicted the compound’s residents as a mindless cult of crazies. Little effort was made to present the Davidian’s view in a way that took into account a religious orientation. And during the siege of Waco, little protest was voiced when court hearings were held in secret, documents were sealed and information was suppressed.

The most disturbing analyses in the “The Ashes of Waco” focus on the two decisions to attack Mount Carmel. In the first, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms went ahead with a dangerous raid even though they had alternatives. Koresh often left Mount Carmel and could have been arrested off the grounds. Months before the raid, he had even invited agents to the compound, offering to let them investigate the group’s stockpile of weapons.

In the second assault, the one conducted by the FBI and ending with Carmel in a pile of ashes, agents quickly abandoned the tactic of slowly forcing the residents out with tear gas. Instead tanks were used to knock down portions of the building. According to Reavis, Reno was surprised by the escalation of the attack. Quoting government documents, Reavis notes that Reno had not read the entire report that justified and explained the operation, including the escalation of tactics. “Like a naive used car buyer, she hadn’t checked the fine print that the Bureau’s salesman placed before her.”

Altogether, Reavis’ book lays the blame for Waco mainly at the feet of the government authorities who investigated Koresh and his followers and carried out the attacks on the compound. The evidence presented in this book suggests that the Davidians and their leaders were strange, zealous and, possibly, in violation of some laws. But it also suggests that authorities could have avoided the tragedy by quietly confronting Koresh on the streets of Waco, or simply knocking on the door of Mount Carmel.

In their book, “Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America,” James D. Tabor and Eugene V. Gallagher help us understand why the authorities did not just knock on the Davidians’ door. Tabor and Gallagher, both professors of religious studies, argue that officials did not try to understand their opponents. From the very beginning, the government regarded Koresh’s theology as “Bible babble.” If they had grasped the connection between this “babble” and the real-life decisions made inside Mount Carmel, the authors say, the government might have seen that it possessed “the ability to influence Koresh in his interpretations and thus, his actions.”

In a sophisticated analysis, Tabor and Gallagher illustrate how ignorance about religion, and fear of the unknown, drove events in Waco. From the start, they note, officials described Koresh as a “power-mad, sex-crazed con man who constantly made up and changed the rules as things unfolded.” As evidence, authorities cited Koresh’s broken promise to leave Mount Carmel on March 2, 1993, and end the siege.

The law officers didn’t understand that Koresh and his followers were deadly serious about Bible prophecy and their efforts to understand Scriptures relating the return of Christ and the end of time on Earth. “The Bible provided the script for their lives,” the authors tell us. Koresh broke his promise because he was awaiting God’s word. Of course the Davidians considered that a promise could be broken under such conditions.

Because they viewed the residents of Mount Carmel as cult-caricatures rather than full, competent human beings, the BATF and FBI didn’t see the signals that might have pointed to a peaceful resolution of the stand-off. As “Why Waco?” suggests, the Davidians were just waiting for the government to attack and thereby fulfill the prophecies. The escalation of psychological warfare confirmed their belief. As tensions mounted, the Davidians were less and less likely to leave. This resolve wasn’t connected with mental illness, as the government’s consultants surmised. It was a product of their religious conviction. As Tabor and Gallagher write: “The only strategy that seemed promising was that of a dispassionate, reasoned dialogue based on the prophecies of the Bible. . . . Unfortunately, by that time the government forces on the ground in Waco were exasperated and had already decided to move with force.”

Though their book is concerned primarily with Waco, Tabor and Gallagher may be at their best when confronting the larger problem of society’s reaction to unusual religious movements. “Why Waco?” dissects the organized anti-cult movement in America and includes a piercing critique of the way the media responds to fervent religiosity found outside the mainstream: Oprah Winfrey, Phil Donahue and a host of journalists eagerly accept the horror stories told by disaffected cult members while they neglect to present the other side of the story.

In general, as “Why Waco?” points out, the press and the public are quick to demonize groups that look like cults. Tales of strange sexual arrangements and physical punishment can make more exciting copy than complex considerations of the life-choices made by sincere, serious seekers of truth. Cults make us uncomfortable, Tabor and Gallagher write, because “they strive to provoke us to an unsparing examination of self and society.” It is easier, and less threatening, to condemn the cult.

In the end, the authors argue that tolerance and caution might have prevented the Waco tragedy. Koresh and his followers could have been held accountable to the law--whether it concerned guns or children--without the loss of so many lives. But such an outcome would have required that the Davidians be understood on their own terms.

It is unlikely that even the most dedicated C-Span watcher will fully understand Waco after the Congressional hearings are over. But these two books do offer an alternative way toward understanding. Together they provide the most complete picture yet of David Koresh, his followers and the events leading up to their death. They also illuminate the fatal role that intolerance and ignorance about religion--in the media, in law enforcement and among the public--played in this disaster.