After watching the Waco program, I am overwhelmed with sorrow for all parties involved.
How could this have happened here? Are we not the same country who figured out the intricacies of the atom, and put a man on the moon? All during the program I kept telling myself - why don't they (the FBI HRT) back off? The people in danger (namely the women and children) have no control of the situation, and the decision maker (Koresh) is obviously bent on confrontation.
I support the FBI, the ATF, and the Police/Sherrif's department. Their anguish over what happened is second only to the families who lost loved ones. I know that those people had only the best intentions - but come on...
The reason we had to act was that the children were being beaten? And Ms. Reno, or anyone else does not remember who informed them of it? This smells like the LADP nightmare (Furman/VanAdder) saying that they went over the wall, not because OJ was a suspect, but that he was in danger...
We are all in danger when we start to use the end to justify the means... This country was founded on a principle that ensures that some guilty people will never be brought to justice, to protect the innocent. We have to accept the fact that sometimes it will take a long time for justice to be served...
We have to be willing to wait, and not force it to fit our time schedule.

Date: 10/20/95 1:35 PM

To: Frontline
From: tc@edsel.ftc.nrcs.usda.gov
From: Anthony B. Cramer
I watched the Waco episode the other night, and was very impressed with its balance and thoroughness. However, I do have one quibble - as a rare liberal who is also a gun enthusiast, I was struck by the reference early in the broadcast to the Davidian arsenal including a ".50-caliber cannon." There is no such weapon. The term "cannon," although richly descriptive of any large firearm, is usually used in military circles to refer to heavy armaments larger than .60 caliber (the smallest cannon in the U.S. inventorythat I'm aware of fires 20-mm shells, roughly .80 caliber). The.50-caliber machine gun, to which the story was probably referring,has been a mainstay of military arsenals for most of this century;although certainly a fearsome weapon, it should be noted that.50-caliber big game rifles have been in civilian use for more than100 years and remain available to this day.
At the time of theCivil War, non-military weapons firing .50 or .60-caliber shot(or larger!) were not unknown. This remains a minor semantic pointgiven the show's focus on FBI procedure rather than the gun-controlaspects of the story. I only mention it because such errors serve to reinforce the perception in gun circles that the media, gun-control advocates, and liberals in particular know nothing about guns. I also took some issue with the last line of the broadcast, about the mistake of allowing Koresh to write the ending. I'm not convinced there was any way of preventing that - even if everything had gone right for the FBI the compound might still have been torched, given that Koresh seemed hell-bent on staging his own peculiar little Armageddon.
Thus, sadly, there may never have been any hope of preventing the tragic and horrible death of so many children. I do not fault the government for the gas attack -the situation had dragged on for so long that something had to be done.I do fault the government for what your report highlighted so well -the fact that the negotiation and hostage rescue teams were working at cross purposes, doubtless prolonging the situation and snuffing out what faint hope there might have been for a negotiated end or atleast the release of the children. I've seen chilling echoes of your report through the Ruby Ridge hearings and can only hope the various agencies learn from their mistakes. The paramilitary machismo of some of the agents in each incident is not encouraging.

Date: 10/22/95 8:13 PM
To: Frontline
From: 71041.445@compuserve
From: Brian Uitti

Thanks for the balanced picture of the tragic events. Each of [us] can make up our own minds on the conclusions.
Brian Uitti

From: Bob Engelhart

Thanks to everyone at Frontline for creating such a wonderful series. It's so refreshing to get an unbiased account of the issues. I wish your program was on more often. However, please don't sacrifice quality for quantity.
Thanks again,
Bob Engelhart
Plano, TX.

Date: 10/18/95 1:07 AM

Well, it's great. One of the more useful and pertinent web pages I've run across. The show (WACO) was excellent. I've enjoyed trying the audio of Koresh and the Sheriff on the web page.
Keep up the good work! I'll see if I can't contribute more this year to PBS, I know ya'll deserve it

Bruce Weir, Austin, TX---home of Austin City Limits
Date: 10/18/95 4:46 PM
I very powerful mixture of Internet with sound, pictures, text and television.
It shows how we were feed half-truths during the Waco crisis and what went on behind the the 30-second newscast what the average TV viewer saw on telephone.
You're right. If PBS doesn't do it, who will.
Ted Lee
Richmond, BC Canada