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The citizen as enemy: Ten years after Waco, unanswered questions
By Jack King
It was a late winter Sunday afternoon in Washington. I was downstairs at
the Calvert Grill, a restaurant below my apartment in Alexandria, VA,
watching the television with a handful of expert golfers. Some places
are music bars, some places are sports bars, the Calvert was a “golf
bar.” The volume was turned off on the TV so the real experts could do
their own commentary. The USA was leading in the Chrysler Cup, and team
leader Tom Weiskopf was 14 under par in his first senior PGA tour event.
When I next glanced at the television, the torpor of the senior tour
erupted into a firefight.
Heavily armed federal agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms were taking hits outside a sprawling white clapboard building
on network television, beginning the worst disaster in the history of
law enforcement. It was February 28, 1993. The long siege at Mt. Carmel,
in Waco, Texas, had begun.
The Branch Davidians were an anachronism. An offshoot of the Seventh Da
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