Thirty-one years ago today, a religious commune in Waco, Texas was raided by FBI and BATF, resulting in the holocaust of 76 people including children, burnt alive. The official story was initially that the tragedy was a mass suicide, that authorities never fired a shot and never set fire to their compound. That became — through constant repetition — the narrative that everyone believed.
Then, out of nowhere, a little-known independent documentary entitled Waco: Rules of Engagement hit the theaters. The film ripped the lid off of the government’s case and took it apart piece by piece, indeed so effectively that it was nominated for an Academy Award. As Roger Ebert put it at the time, “Whatever happened at Waco, these facts remain: It is not against the law to hold irregular religious beliefs. It is not illegal to hold and trade firearms. It is legal to defend your own home against armed assault, if that assault is illegal. It is impossible to see this film without reflecting that the federal government, from the top down, treated the Branch Davidians as if those rights did not apply.”