Letter: Let’s finally get facts straight about tragedy of Waco

Friday, Nov. 5, 1999 | 9:16 a.m.

Seems like deja vu all over again. Once again the rabid right is trying to make hay over the Waco siege.

This time their pretext is several minor unresolved, tangential issues. Lest we forget, let me reiterate the basic facts of this whole sad episode.

There existed a group of people who so hated liberty and democracy, they chose to retreat into a communist enclave and submit to the tyrannical rule of a psychotic pedophile by the name of Vernon Howell (aka David Koresh).

This semiliterate half-wit had a record -- he once led a violent armed assault against a competing cult leader and was a predator known to indulge in physical and sexual child abuse.

Despite this, his craven followers worshipped him and offered up their children for his depraved amusement.

Vernon Howell not only ran a house of horrors, but was stockpiling weapons (many of them illegal) and mountains of ammunition.

Enter the honorable and decent men and women of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Unfortunately, they underestimated the fanaticism of this cult.

When the ATF went to serve a warrant and seize illegal weapons, four agents were murdered in a cult ambush. Following that ambush, the FBI negotiated in good faith for 51 days and pleaded that the cult abandon their strategy of employing their children as human shields.

The end came when cult members set fire to the compound, murdering each other and their children.

KELLY KRIEG