where you begin immediately questioning, what kind of personality are we dealing with? day of the lord. god will be in the position for blood. koresh and the davidians were well supplied for a long siege. in addition to their arsenal, they had stockpiled military mre s. what we ultimately had come to realize is that we had well over 100 individuals inside of the heavily fortified compound that were there voluntarily because they had backed what they felt was their messiah. what do you think about all this? i don t know. you don t know? getting the children out is the top priority. koresh uses them as pawns to get what he wants. air time on the radio. i gave them a message for the radio so that the public can listen to where i m coming from. i explained that every time they play it, i would send two of the children out. the message is played several
accepted him as having a message from god. clive doyle is a branch davidian survivor, and to this day a believer in david koresh. david was constantly talking to god. god told me to do this. god told me to do that. we accepted that. god speaks to me. i have a message to present. to outsiders koresh soon transformed the davidian church into a cult. the most important element of the cult is the leader. and they always describe the same way as being charismatic. i mean, there are some things that god has concealed in his written word that are to be brought to do right before the end of time. koresh preached end of days philosophy to his followers, a belief system that was centered around an apocalyptic battle
i believe that was our last best chance to get him to ever come out. he was fatigued. he was wounded. he was hurt. we had been working on him for three days. but at the very last moment he couldn t do it. if i say i m christ, the proof is if i can open up the seals or not. he couldn t leave this place where he was god with unlimited sexual favors and walk out to a cold jail cell. he tricked us. he fooled us. he played with us. on day six of the standoff another child comes out with a note pinned to her jacket. it says, once the children are out, the adults will die. we never got another child. we had a total of 21, and i will be eternally grateful for the
trying to gain a cease-fire. we were taking an awful beating. so many men were hurt and wounded and were laying down there. and i called in the compound, it was steven snyder. steven snyder was koresh s top lieutenant. he started screaming through the phone that we had no right to be there, to get off the property immediately. i tried to stay calm. i said, steve, we have to talk. we have to work this out. you and i have to work this out. people are dying. people are hurt. we need to stop the shooting. soon cavanaugh is talking directly with david koresh. anything is okay. just you and me are talking. and that s the main thing. [ inaudible ] i had a radio mike in one ear with an agent pleading for his life, and i had this guy on the phone who thought he was god.
we banked on the fact that a parent if they found their children exposed to that kind of discomfort would move heaven and earth to get them to a position of safety. we were wrong. the beginning of the end comes just after 12:00 noon. a wisp of smoke floats from a compound window. my instructions over the loudspeakers went from instructions to, please, david, don t do this. david, don t do this. all of a sudden you see bursts of flames. i m, like, my god, i hope they allowed the children to leave. this is not the way to end this. leave your people out, david. be a messiah, not a destroyer.