Christopher Whitcomb was operating as a sharpshooter for the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Unit in February 1993 when they were summoned to help with a siege in Waco, Texas.
They had no idea what to anticipate, but by the time it was over about two months later, 86 people had died.
As Whitcombe noted, his squad was ‘the United States’ government’s only final backup in the case of some unusual criminal or terrorist action’.
Remembering the unpleasant job that they were presented with after arriving to the Mount Carmel Centre ranch in the new three-part Netflix documentary series, Waco: American Armageddon, Whitcomb characterised the scene as ‘apocalyptic carnage’.
A precise account of what transpired when Branch Davidians cult leader David Koresh faced up against the federal authorities in a brutal 51-day siege, the series investigates the specifics of the struggle which would wind up becoming the bloodiest shootout on American soil since the Civil War.
Today, 30 years after the siege, the documentary gives viewers access to newly discovered videotapes shot inside the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit, raw television footage never before seen by the public, and FBI recordings.
It all started when the ATF attempted to raid the ranch to serve a search and arrest warrant, accusing the cult of stockpiling weapons and even creating explosives.
Nevertheless, a hail of bullets erupted, killing four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians.
The siege lasted 51 days after the FBI was called in, until officials launched a tear gas strike to try to force the Branch Davidians out, but the facility was soon engulfed in flames.
While the origins of the fire are still being debated by both sides, who both say the other side started it, 76 Branch Davidians were killed, including 25 children, two pregnant women, and Koresh.
Whitcomb, who was 34 at the time, recalls the agony of seeing the facility burn down and the devastation it created.
‘I just could not believe that they’re all going to die [while watching the fire engulf the building],’ he said.
‘There was nobody coming out.’
After the fire had extinguished, he remembered walking a few hundred yards to the burning piles of embers.
‘It was a rain of paper that had burned, and that had floated up into the thermals of heat and there were individual pages of Bibles,’ he explained in the documentary.
‘It was raining Bible pages into these embers and in the embers were 1.6 million rounds of rifle ammo that was cooking off and popping up.’
He added: ‘There were skulls everywhere and half-burned bodies. It was apocalyptic carnage.’
‘I don’t know what hell looks like, but …maybe that.’
Three decades on he still struggles to reconcile with the tragedy.
‘I wanted to find some way to reconcile that a cow field in central Texas had become a fire that killed 80 human beings and went back to being a cow field,’ he said.
‘I wanted some kind of sense…how the hell that could happen.
‘All I know is that violence appears out of nowhere, destroys life and drifts off into another scene, and I think I’ve just gotten over trying to figure out why.’
The documentary also includes firsthand accounts from all sides of the conflict, including one of Koresh’s spiritual wives, the last child released from the compound alive, the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit Chief, journalists covering the story, and ATF members who witnessed their colleagues die in the shootout against religious sect members.
Waco: American Apocalypse is now streaming on Netflix.