In memory of Rob Williams

On February 28, 1993, I drove to my fiance's apartment to pick her up for lunch. From the parking lot, I noticed there was a note on her door. I ran up the steps to the second floor and read the note. I read it again. And I read it again. It sank in after a few more reads. "Keith, Rob was killed in Waco today. I'm going to  meet Cindy." I took the note and drove myself home, still in shock.

My fiance worked for ATF and her co-worker, Robert Williams, and his wife, Cindy, were close friends. Rob befriended her as she was young, new to law enforcement, and new to the South. She applied for an internship with Customs and was offered a job with ATF a year after graduating college. Adjustment to working Little Rock, Arkansas was not easy. She was told by fellow coworkers that white women don't date black men, for example. She was completely out of her element. Rob saw that and it wasn't long until she was meeting with Rob and Cindy socially.

Rob had been out of town for a few days. I heard about his investigation through my fiance, but I didn't know the details. I would get snippets of things like he was looking into a cult leader in Waco, Texas who was stockpiling weapons, the cult leader had sex with young girls, and the cult leader seemed hellbent on creating a stand with police.

After I arrived home, I turned on the TV to reporters talking about a shootout. There on TV I saw my fiance's coworkers in quick clips. One of them crying as he walked alongside a vehicle with a body on it. I knew that must have been Rob. I also saw her boss on the roof of the building getting shot from rounds fired up through the roof. The clips made great television and were repeated regularly. I stopped watching.

Meanwhile, my fiance and another agent waited outside of a building where Cindy was working. She had already heard there were some deaths at the raid in Waco. When she came out of the building and saw them, she said she already knew.

My fiance spent some time with Cindy and went to Rob's home town of Jackson, Mississippi as funeral arrangements were made. I drove there to meet them. The day before the funeral was spent in a bar with ATF agents and a collection of cops from other agencies and local municipalities, all with a connection to Rob. They were a tight group.

Terry, a coworker of Rob as well as a close friend, was at the raid. Terry told me what happened that morning. I had not watched TV since the day of the raid and I wasn't familiar with the series of events. I would find out later that the media wasn't either.

Terry said around five in the morning, agents boarded two cattle trailers. The trailers were to disguise the agents since it wasn't unusual to see them around Waco. Terry said as they got closer to the compound they heard "pinging". Then Terry said he noticed beams of light appear where bullets opened small holes in the trailer. Terry thought this raid was going to be one in which they served a warrant but without resistance. Once agents started noticing the bullet holes, fear set in. Terry told me he felt panicky but he was also former military and well-trained. I knew by then even when someone like Terry says they panicked, that was secondary to training and skill.

ATF agents wore body armor and bullet-proof helmets. Terry injured his neck and back by diving behind a concrete structure. He would later require surgery to correct, but never have a full recovery. According to Terry, Rob took cover behind a structure (I can't remember specifically what the structure was). Rob was shooting over the structure and squatting back down. At one point Rob was struck by a bullet in the helmet, knocking him back. When Rob got back up to fire, he was still in the shooter's sights and killed.

In the following weeks, I would hear firsthand stories from people who were there, including my fiance's boss who was hospitalized with several gunshot wounds. The chain of events following the raid were chilling and out-of-sync with the media. I will touch on a few things I know to be true.

• David Koresh was a crazy cult leader. Why some right-wingers want to make him into a martyr is beyond my comprehension. He had thirteen children by having sex with other children.
• David Koresh was stockpiling weapons illegally. I don't care if you agree with a law or not, if you break a law expect consequences. Our system is set up so that any law can be challenged in many different ways. However, firing on police who have sworn to protect the public is not one of those ways. They were looking for trouble and got their wish. In fact, I was told by one of the agents involved that David Koresh said if they don't have their own Armageddon at the compound, they would have to take it into town.
• ATF leadership initially blamed undercover agent, Robert Rodriguez, for not notifying them that the element of surprise was gone. Rodriguez was later exonerated of the  accusation, but not before he locked himself in his home and struggled with serious depression. Someone told my fiance that he was already messed up from being undercover in the cult. Bible drills, the constant preaching, and the mentality of Koresh's followers took its toll on Rodriguez. ATF leadership using him as a scapegoat was enough to send him over the edge. I don't know Rodriguez, but I always felt bad for him.
• David Koresh ordered his own people to set fire to the compound. The FBI has recordings of that order and the subsequent attempts to put the fire out after the FBI backed off. This happened on April 19 when the FBI drove an APC into one wall of the compound.
• Prior to the fire at the compound, Koresh let all of the children out of the compound except the ones he fathered. Again, why he is any kind of martyr defies explanation.
• Right-wingers who complain about Islamic terrorism should recognize David Koresh for what he was. We have prosecuted potential terrorists for way less that what Koresh was getting by with. Religious terrorism is a real issue. People's faith can be used to manipulate them into unspeakable acts. Koresh was doing that to some people who might have otherwise led normal lives. Koresh was a terrorist, plain and simple. You can spin it anyway you want, but the fact is he broke the law and fired on law enforcement during a search warrant. In the end, Koresh is the villain of this story and he took the coward's way out by killing himself and murdering his own children.

One lesson I learned from this whole thing was the disparity between what is reported and the reality. TV news only provides a window into an event. I was 23 when this all happened and I lost a lot of idealism as a result. The misreporting and fabrications that followed the tragedy only made all of it worse on victims' and families on both sides of the standoff.

The most honest reporting of the Waco tragedy was on National Geographic's "The Final Report". By watching that documentary, you will truly understand what happened and how the leadership who made bad decisions didn't have long-term consequences. I watched Rob's widow go through hell because of all of this and I can tell you none of the leadership suffered like she did.

April 19 is an infamous date when it comes to domestic terrorism. Today, I've read mentions on conservative websites about the anniversary of the fire, for example Michelle Malkin's blog article. The articles are all framed around intrusive government practices. Would conservatives be so quick to yell "gun rights" if David Koresh was Islamic? Terrorism is terrorism. I want protection from Christian cults as much I want protection from Islamic militants. I detest them all. David Koresh was responsible for the series of events leading to the deaths of his own people. ATF may have made tactical mistakes and ATF leadership may have unforgivably screwed up. However, it was Koresh and his people who broke the law and fired on law enforcement. To spin it any other way is disservice to my friend, Rob, and the other victims of Koresh's insanity.

A Quiet Flame

I finished A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr the other day. I can't get enough of Bernie Gunther and his hard boiled cynicism. In this fifth book of the series, he winds up in Argentina in 1950. It was a fascinating read as Kerr knows his history well and expertly mixes it into his narrative.

So after I finished, I got on the Web to look up some of the events mentioned in the book. Curiously absent from Wikipedia is any mention of Nazi war criminals at all. None. Not even in the Argentina talk page. I can't even begin to speculate why.

But the lack of anything about Nazis escaping to Argentina on Wikipedia is part of the scary side of crowd-sourcing. Crowd-sourcing's design-by-committee ways are effective at keeping things unpublished.

Maybe nobody brought it up. Maybe it was suppressed. Maybe nobody cares.

In his author's note at the end of A Quite Flame, Kerr recommends Uki Goni's The Real Odessa as a resource on Nazis in Argentina. I certainly can't recommend any place online to get the same information.

I was rummaging around in Half Price Books the other day and there was a cart in there marked "Last Chance Collectibles Cheap". Ah, old books. I found a couple of treats. One was an old sci fi book I'll post about later. The second was Technical Writing: Third Edition by T. A. Rickard. It was copyrighted 1931 and is full of retro tech writing goodness.

The book is a style and grammar guide. Rickard was an editor for "Engineering and Mining Journal" , "The Mining Magazine", and "Mining and Scientific Press". According to the front matter, he delivered lectures at universities in an effort make engineers aware of good writing. If he had only known back then that 80 years later engineers would still write horribly, he may have given up after the first edition. From the first chapter:

It has been stated, by Sir James M. Barrie, that "the man of science appears to be the only man who has something to say, just now—and the only man who does not know how to say it". The friendly jibe of the novelist contains enough exaggeration to make it humorous to the followers of Huxley and Spencer; but could any litterateur poke similar fun at the exponents of the avowedly utilitarian branches of science—the men of technology—without suggesting an unpleasant truth?

Indeed the engineer does bungle language deplorably. He makes a fetish of efficiency, yet he shows no regard for the effective use of one of his most important tools—the pen; he believes devoutly in accuracy, yet he employs an instrument of precision as carelessly as a small boy handles a gun.

This book is better than most modern books on tech writing.