It wasn’t long before Koresh caught the attention of two law enforcement agencies: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the FBI. The Davidians had been converting semi-automatic rifles into automatics and selling them at gun shows for a handsome profit. This wasn’t illegal, but paperwork had to be filed and taxes paid, and the Davidians had done neither. In 1992, a UPS driver called the county sheriff’s office to say that he had dropped a package he was delivering to the Davidians and fifty grenade shells had bounced out. Worried about the size of the arsenal Koresh and his followers seemed to be amassing, ATF agents set up a surveillance operation. The operation failed to produce much hard evidence that the Davidians had violated gun laws, but a judge gave them a search warrant anyway. On 28 February 1993, the ATF attempted to raid Mount Carmel. A fierce gun battle followed, in which four ATF agents and five Davidians were killed.
The FBI then took over and conducted a 51-day siege of the compound. It seems to have been a frustrating experience for everyone. Government agents sometimes blared out loud music or the sound of crying babies or power drills in the middle of the night. During phone calls with the hostage negotiators, Koresh embarked on lengthy monologues about his beliefs. He assured the FBI that the Davidians would emerge peacefully from Mount Carmel after he had finished writing down his revolutionary interpretation of the Book of Revelation, but as the weeks passed the government started to get impatient. The siege ended on 19 April when the FBI sent in tanks, which breached the walls, and fired tear gas into the buildings. Several hours later, the compound went up in flames. Seventy-six Davidians died, including 23 children and Koresh himself. He was 33 years old, the same age as Jesus when he was crucified.
The events of 19 April have generated a great deal of disagreement over the last thirty years. The first debates, which started immediately after the siege, concerned who was to blame for one of the deadliest days in the history of American federal law enforcement. For the ATF, the FBI and the Department of Justice – whose head, the Clinton-appointed attorney general Janet Reno, had signed off on the tear-gas plan – the episode was a disaster from start to finish, as two new books by the journalists Kevin Cook and Jeff Guinn make clear. Among the most damning details is that the ATF didn’t need to carry out the February raid in the first place. Koresh had a cordial relationship with the county sheriff, Jack Harwell, who would drive out to Mount Carmel and ask Koresh to come down to the station whenever the police needed to talk to him about something. According to Harwell, the ATF never discussed the details of the raid with him.