Siege in Waco

These reversals were found on David Koresh only days after the siege in Waco began. Two reversals occur. They are: “We’re sad. Look what’s happened” and “We see the meaning with my blood. The answer’s soon.” Both of these reversals were submitted to the FBI during the siege along with my report suggesting that a diaster would occur if the FBI and ATF did not leave. I also stated that David Koresh would leave if either his grandmother or mother were allowed in. Neither events happened.

WACO Article

Officials flooded with tips, insights on Koresh, his message
By David McLemore / The Dallas Morning News

WACO – The callers believe that Armageddon is at hand and that they can help federal authorities break the siege at the Branch Davidian compound east of Waco.

The siege by federal and state authorities of more than 100 followers of David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidian sect, at their compound has prompted a flood of phone calls to authorities offering help in understanding Mr. Koresh’s apocalyptic message.

Sociologists say the extensive media coverage of the siege offers people with similar beliefs a relatively painless way to spread their religious message.

For agents of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, it’s a nuisance of monumental scope.

Federal authorities said the calls began coming in the day after the siege began Feb. 28 at the heavily armed fortress compound that Mr. Koresh sometimes referred to as Ranch Apocalypse. And they just kept coming. And coming.

Over the first eight days of the standoff, FBI officials logged more than 2,000 phone calls around the clock, from all over the world, offering Biblical insights and help in understanding Mr. Koresh.

Many came from Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, according to federal authorities. Many of the followers of Mr. Koresh barricaded behind the compound’s fortified walls are believed to be converts he gained during a visit to those countries several years ago.

“It’s amazing how many have come out of the woodwork. It’s just been mind-boggling,’ said one federal agent close to the investigation, who asked not to be named. “We’ve gotten a lot of calls from self-styled cult experts who say they can get Koresh out of his compound. But mainly, it’s religious types who say they’re able to give Biblical interpretations from the Old and New Testament of what David Koresh is talking about.”

Most of the callers told authorities they believe that Mr. Koresh is correct in preaching the coming of the end of the world, authorities said.

The messages initially clogged phones at the McLennan County sheriff’s office and the Waco Police Department until federal authorities routed callers to the FBI office in San Antonio.

Callers’ names and phone numbers were then faxed to FBI and ATF negotiators in Waco for any potential intelligence purposes, federal officials said.

Joe Handley, FBI spokesman for the San Antonio office referred all media calls about the offers to the FBI negotiating team in Waco. An agent answering the FBI command center in Waco declined to comment on the flood of calls from well-meaning evangelicals, as did a spokesman for the ATF.

“The media coverage is a tremendous vehicle to help them spread the word to the world,” said Dr. Russell Curtis, a sociologist at the University of Houston. “It’s what we sociologists call the “free rider effect’-the story gives them vicarious recognition and a way to proselytize without pain.”

Dr. Curtis also said that the media coverage helps create a modeling effect among those people who identify with Mr. Koresh or his religious beliefs.

For example, he said, “there’s a lot of similarity in the situation in Waco with the well-documented occurrences of many suicides following a highly publicized suicide.”

Dallas radio station KRLD-AM (1080) also has received tips and offers from “every weirdo and wacko in the world,” said station manager Charlie Seraphim.

KRLD was drawn into the standoff early on when Mr. Koresh offered to release children from the compound if the station would broadcast a religious message from him.

Mr. Seraphim says he weeds out “about 99 percent”of the calls. He said he passes any that seem to have substance to the federal agents handling the case.

Mr. Seraphim told of one envelope that arrived at the station addressed to Vernon Howell-Mr. Koresh’s former name-in care of the FBI. Where the return address would normally have been were the words “Message from God.” The envelope contained a novel about Vietnam.

One caller to The Dallas Morning News sought Mr. Koresh’s date and place of birth (Aug. 17, 1959, in Houston). She explained that she and others interested in astrology wanted to work out Mr. Koresh’s astrological chart.

David Oates, founder and president of Reverse Speech International Inc. of Wylie, says that his analysis of Mr. Koresh’s 58-minute tape broadcast March 2 on KRLD indicates that the cult leader “wants to be heard and accepted, hopefully as the prophet of God, but at the very least as a sane man who loves God.”

Mr. Oates contacted The News this week and said he has been in touch with federal negotiators near the cult’s compound, but he said he didn’t know how much credence, if any, negotiators give his analysis. He acknowledged that his process of listening to a person’s speech in reverse to detect subconscious messages is a relatively new technique and is not broadly accepted.

Mr. Oates faxed printed passages from Mr. Koresh’s tape, along with reversals that he said he found in Mr. Koresh’s speech at the same time.

For example, Mr. Oates said, when Mr. Koresh said, ” . . . we know he just gave counsel to the seven churches of Asia,” he was also saying in reverse speech, “Let me warn you.”

In that case, the forward and reverse dialogues had a connection. In others, there is no connection. As an example, he said, when Mr. Koresh was saying, ” . . . dollars cannot tell you. Look at all these courses. They don’t know. Again it’s found again in Isaish 45,” this unconnected reverse dialogue came through: “I fought no one/Don’t want to kill/I feel afraid.”

“Its almost like he has his religious fervor and his humanity, and they are battling,” Mr. Oates said.

Staff writers Victoria Loe and Lowery Metts in Dallas contributed to this report.

Printed below is an extract from my soon to be released book, “Its Only A Metaphor.” that covers my involvement with the Waco seige.

Just down the road from Dallas in Waco, Texas, the FBI and ATF raided the Branch Davidian cult compound known as Mount Carmel. They held its leader, David Koresh, and his one hundred followers at siege for several weeks. I taped Koresh from TV broadcasts and wrote a rather lengthy report based on the speech reversals I found. I sent the report to the FBI through two different sources. One was with some contacts in Dallas I had developed over the years and the other was through contacts I still had in Washington DC.

My report gave a profile of David Koresh. It detailed three approaches the FBI could use to get him out. One was simply to have his mother or grandmother enter the compound and ask him to leave. The reversals told me he would listen to them and quit. The other way was to have everyone go away. Speech reversals said that the more the negotiators talked to him, the more he would dig his heels in, the more Messianic he would become, and the more he would not leave. The two prime solutions, according to reverse speech, was to either have his mother go in or have everyone else go way. Both would have worked and he would have come out peacefully.

The other solution which I detailed, was to use the techniques of Reversal Feedback and play his own reversals back to him through loudspeakers. I believed this to be a very powerful technique for accessing deeper unconscious processes. Once I know someone’s reversals it is very easy for me to slip them into a sentence unnoticed as an Imbedded Command and achieve a certain amount of influence over that person’s decisions and actions. I theorized that this also had a good chance of working successfully with David Koresh.

I subsequently had a couple of phone conversations with FBI agents on the case and obtained some local media in Dallas about my involvement. I was a little shocked when I saw on TV that they had actually brought loudspeakers out and were pumping sound into the compound. I wondered if they might be doing it without consulting me further. I was concerned because I hadn’t told them what reversals to actually use and reversal feedback can very dangerous if the wrong reversals are used.

Then, as we all know, nothing worked. The siege came and went and the compound burned down and everyone, men women and children, died. Like many people I was furious watching it on television, especially seeing them send his mother and grandmother away and then just digging their heels in and doing everything wrong. The outcome was inevitable according to the speech reversals and I was horrified, but not all that surprised, when the ultimate tragedy occurred. It had been predicted backwards. Something was going to break and either Koresh was going to kill everyone, or the cops would.

My real surprise came the following day, as I tried to put it behind me, when I got a phone call from the FBI in Washington DC. Apparently my little report, which I assumed had just gathered dust on some agent’s desk, had made more of an impact than I had realized. In fact the man I was speaking to was quite concerned that it would come to light that they had this report in their hands and had taken no action on it. It was all too accurate, he said.

Then he said something that surprised me. According to him, certain people were still a little shaken by Simone and Desert Storm and did not want to be asked any questions about reverse speech on the floor of Congress. I was amazed because I did not know that I had been taken that seriously. He further told me that it was in my best interests to remain quiet for a few months and not tell anyone about my involvement. He essentially said that if I was a good boy, once all this had died down they would take another serious look at reverse speech and do something with it. If, however, I decided to go to the press they would have no choice but to discredit me and I would be, quote, unquote, “Crushed.”

The sting of those last words ring in my ear today as I write this book, and even now everytime I see a police officer I still hear them echoing in my mind. I think I always will. I will be crushed, he had said. What on earth did he mean by that?

Substantial damage was done to my innocence at that stage and I was no longer an Aussie from the outback. This was supposed to be America’s illustrious law enforcement agencies speaking to me, but in my mind they sounded more like out of control school yard bullies. I wondered who the real enemy was and I was so disgusted by it that from that moment on I ceased working with law enforcement. When my classes later resumed I refused entry to the one and only local police officer who did apply. There was no way I was going to give my technology to thugs!

Of course they never did contact me again, at least not to my knowledge, and I finally learned not to trust the dangerous forked tongue of American law enforcement. They had not spoken a truthful word to me yet. The words of Christ echoed in my mind. “Don’t cast your pearls before swine.” That attitude and a high level of anger stills exists today although, foolishly, I still have hope. Perhaps it was just the isolated bad seed that had spoken to me. Time will tell.