WACO: THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
William Gazecki, USA, 1997
Thursday 17 April 2003 10pm-11.30pm
On April 19 1993, FBI agents attacked and burnt down the compound belonging to the Branch Davidian sect at Waco, Texas. Seventy-six Davidians died, including women and children. The FBI maintained that the Davidians killed themselves by setting fire to the building. This Oscar-nominated film reveals that the sect members were murdered. It also examines the lengthy cover up that took place at the FBI's investigation.
ON THIS DAY
BBC News looks back on the end of the Waco siege
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Nick Fraser
Storyville Series Editor
I think Waco: The Rules of Engagement is the most remarkable investigative documentary made in the 1990s. It was not funded by a broadcaster, and the cash appeared to come from private people. It began life as a hit around college campuses, and picked up a huge number of sales via the internet, some of them no doubt from members of militias.
Its proposition initially seems dubious - that the FBI not only countenanced but organised the burning of the Branch Davidians at Waco in April 1993. The astonishing thing is that all these assertions, except for the question of motive perhaps, were proved to be correct five years later.
Waco received an encomium from the New Yorker. And by that time of course it had won a number of prizes. It is also a technically impressive film - anyone who truly likes journalism should view it as an example of how to tell a difficult story, and one packed with facts, in such a way that it reaches a wide audience.
