Rick Ross

David Koresh had sent him on a kind of trip to get some money and do some fundraising in California. And his brother retained me and I did an intervention and he never came back. And he still lives in California, and he has a family. But he was a witness to illegal weapons and stockpiling that was going on inside the Davidian compound. David Koresh was manufacturing guns.

He was converting semi-automatic weapons to fully automatic. He was breaking the law regarding firearms. And so the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms investigated him. They called me. They interviewed the young man that I deprogrammed.

It was their interview with that young man that I deprogrammed and in part his testimony that led to an affidavit that was then the basis for a warrant for the search of the Davidian compound and a warrant for the arrest of David Koresh. So the BATF went there. I was shocked at the way they went.

I mean, we had warned them about how many weapons and how huge the stockpile was and how militant the group was and how totally, really... psychopath like David Koresh was. And the BATF just raided the group in a way that shocked me. I mean, they just went in like it was any normal raid, which it wasn't. And of course, it was a gun battle. People were killed. Davidians died.

Federal agents were killed in the process. And then they created a perimeter around the compound, and there was a 51-day standoff. 51 days? 51 days. And during that time, I worked for CBS News and I was interviewed by the FBI and by their hostage negotiator that they had.

But the problem that the FBI had at that time, which I don't think they have now, because they learned from Waco and subsequent situations, that... This was not a conventional hostage situation, that the Davidians were not hostages. They were programmed. They were completely and totally subservient to David Koresh, and that that dynamic needed to be understood.

And so much of what I suggested to the FBI They did not do some of the things I suggested that they do, they did. For example, David Koresh who said, I am Jesus, I am the Messiah. They said, well, Jesus loved children. And he said, suffer not the little children to come unto me. So would you let some of the children out? And David Koresh did let out 21 children.

and he let out some of the elderly people, people that he thought were essentially a burden or expendable. He kept most of the Davidians in. Now, then the FBI set up these big, loudspeakers around the compound. And they would keep the Davidians up at night. They would blast them with rock and roll music, rabbits screaming, things that probably fit within the typical hostage negotiator playbook.

But they did not understand. They were dealing with a cult. They were dealing with cult members. And what I suggested was that they give them every opportunity to get sleep, to be rested, so they could think more clearly.

And then maybe during the nine to five hours, bring in family and let the family talk to their loved ones through those loudspeakers, because David Koresh was controlling all communication in that compound. when families wanted to visit someone, you had to go to visitation in the compound. And there would be Koresh or a delegated person that would be monitoring your visit with your family member.

There were only two phones in the compound. One was an old gigantic mobile phone. Hard to believe how big those were. And the other was a hard line. He controlled both. He listened to all conversations. So what I suggested to the FBI, and they did not do this, was use the loudspeakers so the families can speak to their loved ones.

Kind of like, almost like radio-free Davidian, you know, where there could be communication that he did not control. They did not do that. And then I also told them... please don't act aggressively on the perimeter because that that basically validates his narrative, that you're Satan, that you are the army of Satan come to attack the people of God.

What you want to do is make yourselves as peaceful and non-threatening as possible to undercut his narrative, which they did not do. In fairness to the FBI, they had never dealt with a cult like this before, and it was their first experience. And they learn from it painfully.

But in the final analysis, I don't think it was going to end any way other than it ended, which is how David Koresh wanted it to end. And he did not want to live. He was like Jim Jones. He wanted to go out with his followers on his throne, king to the bitter end. That's how David Koresh left the world, ruling over his flock in the compound, just like Jim Jones at Jonestown.

Could you go into Jim Jones? Yeah, Jim Jones was at one time a very popular figure in San Francisco. He was considered one of the leading lights of social action in the Bay Area. He was very connected to the Democratic Party, the Democratic leaders, Governor Jerry Brown, Assemblyman Willie Brown. When Rosalind Carter visited San Francisco, she did a photo op with Jim Jones.

So Jim Jones was a kind of icon, and the People's Temple was a huge church with thousands and thousands of members, but no one really knew what was going on inside. And so ultimately what happened is that people that left

started to talk about the abuse they experienced, children being beaten brutally, people being exploited financially, and people came out of the church and they talked to the media. And so Jim Jones became more and more paranoid, again, a malignant narcissist, a psychopath, And then he decided, I'm leaving the Bay Area because the press is against me, the media is against me.

I used to be a celebrity, now they say bad things about me. I'm going to pack up and leave. And so he took about a thousand of his most devoted followers and he moved to English-speaking Guyana in South America in the middle of the jungle. They carved out a little community. that they called Jonestown. He controlled all communications, all social interaction. People were totally isolated.

Now comes families of those thousand people. And in particular, they approached Congressman Leo J. Ryan, and they said, please help us. We're very worried about our family members, our children, our grandchildren that are in Jonestown. Leo J. Ryan then gets Jim Jones to agree for him to come on a fact-finding trip with his staff to Jonestown. He comes there. At first, things go fairly well.

Then people are passing notes to Ryan and his staff. Take me with you. I want to get out of here. Bad things are happening in here that you don't know. And so Jones ultimately agrees to let some of these people go with Ryan. And then he recognizes that they're going to tell what's really going on in Jonestown. And so he dispatches his security force, and they murder everyone. Some people survive.