I'm supposed to speak ten minutes, and I hope I make it even shorter than that. Um- just yesterday I sent off the final draft, of what I believe will be the definitive book, about what happened here. The book doesn't have a title yet, because, in the world we live in now, marketing departments give books titles, and not authors. My publisher, Simon and Schuster, will spend the next couple of months trying to gear up a sales campaign for that book. For a writer, it's kind of a brave new world, but, this will get the word out. Most of what I say in that book, will sit well with most of this audience. Speaking to it, I'm kind of appreciative of the choir. Uh, the book is a hundred thousand words long. Covers everything I learned in about 18 months, trying to figure out what happened here.

Um, before I say anything about what happened here, I want to mention someone. There's a guy in Maine, the civilized state of Maine, I might say, named Mark Swett, who last week wrote me an e-mail message, "Reavis, if you're going to speak, speak for all of us." Mark Swett is an average American whose father is living in an old folks home. He's been unemployed for so long since the economy went south, that he's not even bitter about it anymore. And he's devoted these last few months to collecting the religious documents of those whom you call the Branch Davidians. And putting them in electronic form. I don't think that anybody can fully understand what happened here, till they see those religious documents. If you want them, I will give you Mark Swett's e-mail address. The other thing that I'd say, is just, to those of you in the press, is that if you ain't hooked up to e-mail, you're behind! (laughs)

Um- now for what I have to say. I am speaking mainly to the press this morning, because, this has been my career, my father's career, was my grandfather's career- I am a priest and practitioner of the press and don't know a lot about a lot of other things.

The reason why, I quit a salaried job, to write this book, was not because of anything I felt about the government, though I felt it was wrong from several things I saw- but because I thought- it would get us- it would get me personally, a little closer to solving a problem that all of us have- I hope it will get the readers of my book a little closer to that. And that problem is of the blind men and the elephant. Most of you know this story; I think it originally comes to us from Kipling or India- It's about a bunch of blind men who go out to look at an elephant, and one of them says, "Oh, it's like a snake!" He's holding its tail. And another one says, "Yeah, but it's like a big snake;" he's holding its trunk. And another argues that it's like a tree because he's holding- its leg.

This is the central problem of human existence. We don't know who we are. We don't know where we are. And, I might say that in covering the Waco situation, the press had ahold of the elephant's tusk, and of its sexual organs. And it said, "Ah, those people out there at Mt. Carmel- they are sex organs and tusks." And they had a part of the picture. And that was sold, it was cheaply, come by- the government gave us that information, and that's why the press barons put that out as truth. But there are all kinds of truth, and none of know, which one is absolute. That's the problem of human existence, at least in the secular world.

Now when you look at what happened here, there are always two sides. We don't talk much about the second side. The second side is religious. It says, "God sees that elephant. And if we have faith in him, he will tell us as much, about our existence, as we need to know." The people who lived here believed that. And their take on what happened, and what happened involved that belief. Which no one in the press, has fathomed yet. Which most of our Constitutionalists ignore. Which is beyond our discourse. And which comes- how do you say? Which is the very most important question in our lives. I'm not a religious person. But that search for the whole elephant, for meaning, is what life is about.

One time I asked one of the, residents of Mt. Carmel- I was sitting in a restaurant with 'em, smoking, and I said, "When are you going to get around to asking me, when I'm going to accept, Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour?" Because I was expecting that from Bible readers! And what they said was, "Well, we don't do much of that, because what we believe can't be explained in fifteen minutes." When you begin to look at what they believe, you're going to find out that's true. Almost every person who lived on this property, was an intellectual of the Bible. In the same way that Am-, the American nation as a whole is a bunch of football intellectuals. They knew its ins and outs.

Now then- if I can break down for you what they believed and what influenced what happened here- in fifteen minutes or less, maybe two minutes- here's what it was. This little building out here, was Noah's Ark. God told them to get in it. Now if you'll think back to the days of Noah, God told Noah to build an ark. Everybody thought he was crazy. He built the ark. God told Noah an', whoever he could get, to get in that ark. So they got in that ark, seven days before the flood. These people out here were in their ark.

If the flood hadn't come- the Bible says no more water, there's fire next time- they were expecting it to come. They were expecting fire. They were expecting to be attacked by Babylon. And Babylon, is just this secular world, where we're confused, and we can't decide what the truth is. They were expecting Babylon to attack them, and sure enough- along comes Babylon and does it on February the 28th. The whole secular world then said, "Why don't you come out? Why don't you surrender, and why don't you send your children out?" And the people on the inside said, "God has not sent us a sign. The fire hasn't come." And they stayed inside, waiting to hear from God. Secular people say, "Well why didn't you send the children out?" And some came out, but the essential answer to that is, do children not have souls? The person who is religious does not put life on this earth, as his principle value. His principle value is eternal life. God told 'em to stay in that ark. If they stayed in that ark,. God was going to take good care of their eternal life. And nothing on earth, compared to that.

So the people who died here, are in their own- circles- regarded, as martyrs, to religion. Which is supposed to be untrammelled in America. You can look around and see the results, and, uh, they've been trammelled a little.

That's all I want essentially to say this morning. I want to tell you that there were, two reasons. When you look at this situation, there are two forms of logic. One, and Mr. Pate is the master of it. It's the logic that the government had. It's the logic of the blind men holding the elephant. The other is the logic that the believers had. Those peop-, people who believed that God was showing them what the elephant is really like. You can't understand this situation, without keeping in mind, the two tensions. The tension of those two views, which essentially are incompatible.

I have one last thing to say. I came down here during the siege, when the government was handing out information that the press barons took and sold to everybody at a higher price and made a good profit from. And I looked at the situation, and said, "There ain't no story here. We can't get it, until it's over. That's when the documents will be around, that's when the people will be around." That's also when the press abandoned Waco. When this building burned, everybody left. As if they were here to cover a visual story. TV has its own logic, maybe that's what it shoulda done. The print media shoulda hung on. And gone through the documents that were available, they're a bird's nest on the ground. And demanded the documents that the government has not yet released, some of which it tells us, it will not release until the year 2000. I don't know why they want to hold on to them, keep them in secret that long, but it's going to be that long. But I saw something here that changed my mind and that interests me in this story. I went with a man who calls himself a Constitutionalist- to file some papers in court. And he was arrested. For trying to file papers in court. And I said, "Dick Reavis, when have you ever seen the government behave this way before?" I'm not too shocked by much of what this government does, I had seen it before. When I was a civil rights worker, in Demopolis, Alabama, in Dr. King's movement, in 1965. I have not seen such government arrogance, in my life, except two places. Waco, Texas, and Demopolis, Alabama.

The last thing I want to say is this. It's to the press. I'm a veteran of the New Left. The civil rights movement, the anti-war movement. There is today a movement, you've heard from some of their speakers today- calls itself Patriot, it calls itself Constitutionalist. And from what I've seen in the last 18 months, I think it's as big as the New Left was. But the New Left got more press. I don't understand why. I don't understand the Constitutionalist movement, and I wish the press would start asking these people what they represent, so it can tell us. They have some things to say that, I personally cannot evaluate. Because I can't, I want to distinguish myself, from certain sectors I've noticed and condemned. I want to reiterate- I am a New Leftist. I believe that, all races, and all religions, including the Jewish people, are human beings. So were the people who lived on this property. I think our government should respect us all. Thank you. [applause]