UFO History / Tragedy at Waco

About the show

In the first half, filmmaker Tom Orzechowski of Black Tie Labs and David Marler of NUFOHRC discussed their collaboration to publish comic books on UFO history. Titled "Estimate of the Situation," the series is intended to educate the public on what the two say is a broad and rich past full of UFO sightings and encounters. For too long, they went on, academic journals and government accounts have ignored or suppressed the phenomenon, and even the current Senate hearings on the topic are underwhelming and inadequate.

Marler offered an outline of the cases addressed by the comics series. 1947 was a key year in UFO history, he noted, with the Kenneth Arnold case, and the beginning of the US military's focus on the question of alien visitation. Consistent with the Cold War tension of the day, officials initially suspected that UFO cases were actually Soviet military craft, and some in leadership were not convinced by the suggestion that the craft were extraterrestrial, Orzechowski added.

Marler revealed that he hopes to someday combine his vast archive of UFO research with those of several others into a "National Archives of UFOlogy" open to the public. It's a project born out of necessity that he hopes will benefit the next generation of researchers, he said. Housing the archives in New Mexico makes sense, because of the state's openness to the topic as well as its own history of UFO activity. "It's amazing that we don't already have this," he related. Thus far, Entitled Estimate of the Situation has garnered considerable interest, with strong presales ahead of its release next month.

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Journalist Stephen Talty was the guest in the second half. He talked about his writing on the 1993 siege of the compound in Waco, Texas inhabited by the Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh. He embarked upon an extensive review of the incident that included research into Koresh's friends and family members, FBI transcripts, and news items.

Born Vernon Howell, Jr., Koresh endured an unhappy and abusive childhood before discovering the Branch Davidians, an obscure religious group in Waco. In time, the charismatic Koresh assumed control of the group, and eventually drew the attention of law enforcement for possessing illegal weapons and sexually abusing the children living at the compound.

In Talty's view, a number of missteps by the federal government led to the 51-day standoff that ended in a fire that killed Koresh and over 70 of his followers. Tipped off that the siege was imminent, the Davidians were able to prepare by fortifying the compound, positioning themselves in defensive positions, and convincing their ranks that a biblical prophecy was about to be fulfilled. Koresh quickly figured out that there were infiltrators among his followers, and that the FBI was staked out in what looked to be agricultural trailers. A preliminary raid on a small building on the property heightened the sense of paranoia among the Davidians, which damaged the negotiations between Koresh and the government. Finally, the FBI missed information that would have allowed them to arrest Koresh and others on their trips off of the compound, thereby avoiding the standoff that claimed so many lives.

Talty also noted that the events in Waco have had a ripple effect on American media and politics. The weeks-long siege was constantly on cable television news at the time, paving the way for the 24-hour news cycle we now live in. Wary of government overreach, a number of militia groups have sprung up in the years following Waco in response to the siege. That Donald Trump's announcement of his run for president in 2024 was made in Waco is significant as well, said Talty.