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Wednesday, March 01, 2006

February 28th to April 19th, 1993...

In early April, 1993, I went to Waco, TX. with my future wife, and two friends, in order to try and fake our way into the media encampment around the Branch Davidian compound. Our intention was to interview the media that had been there since February 28th of that same year for our college cable access station. February 28th, 1993 was thirteen years and one day ago. We arrived later, and passed through the second ring of security, into the press encampment using our fake NTTV Press passes. We could see the compound, with our own eyes. We didn't have to see it through the eyes of the media. We could see it. It was right there, about a half a mile away.

We interviewed reporters from CNN, CBS, NBC and others. We laughed. We took pictures of the funny structures the reporters had set up over the intervening weeks of the ongoing raid. We laughed about the golden oldies that the government played at night for the Davidians who were cooped up in their compound with their leader, David Koresh. What we didn't know was that, out in the outer ring of security, the one we'd passed through, among the protesters that we'd seen, was a young, fresh faced man, recently back from Iraq. His name was Timothy McVeigh. He saw something dreadfully different than what we saw that day, and acted on it two years later.

On April 19th, one week after we had laughed in the media camp with the reporters, the Branch Davidians died in fire.

I've been thinking about this a lot today because I have to write a paper and give a presentation in my anthropology class about Timothy McVeigh. About what his motives were. About why he thought blowing up innocent people was a good idea. About what drove him to his action. It's dark thinking, but it's still interesting. I'm finding that his motives were more complex than I had at first thought.

I'll be posting the video we made in '93, once I get it converted to mpeg. It never aired on cable access because it was to have aired the day the compound burned down, and was pulled by our producer. I hope you enjoy it!

I've finished converting the video. It's an avi file, you may have to have quicktime to view it...I hope you have it. Here it is: Sattelite City. Oh, and by the way, I'm not in the video this time...I'm behind the camera.

: toadman : at Wednesday, March 01, 2006 |