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Nevertheless, they provided the ATF with a perfect scapegoat: Everyone loves to hate the media. The lawsuits over the botched ATF raid started before the fire at Mount Carmel did. Early that April, an ATF agent filed a suit that was quickly joined by dozens of other ATF staffers against KWTX, the Waco Tribune-Herald and a Waco ambulance company, claiming that their employees were responsible for tipping off the Davidians about the ATF raid.

All three defendants denied wrongdoing. Their legal defense relied on the fact that the ATF stormed the compound, even after losing the element of surprise. But the case was eventually settled out of court, and the plaintiffs reportedly received $15 million, divided among more than six-dozen ATF agents and their families or survivors. Peeler and Mulloney were left with nothing but damaged reputations and no chance to be heard in court.

Left to fend for themselves in the court of public opinion, they have not fared well. Peeler, a man of slight construction with a television camera constantly balanced on the bony blade of his shoulder, still works at KWTX. Now 47, married with two daughters, Peeler supplements his meager salary by mowing lawns on weekends. Mulloney, who shot the now-famous video of the ATF assault on the Davidian compound, spends his time slicing lemons and limes and mixing drinks in a Waco tavern. John McLemore, the KWTX reporter who aired the first TV stories on the raid, has been unable to get a job in television. He works in public relations for a Waco insurance company that buys policies from dying AIDS patients.

Peeler says the accusation that he is to blame for the deaths of the ATF agents and the Davidians remains a specter that haunts him every day. "Have you ever seen the movie, 'The Sixth Sense,' where a man was completely dead but really didn't know that he's dead? Well that's me, ya know," said Peeler. "My body, physically, doesn't know that its dead, but my heart, my heart really knows that it's over with. I ain't ever gonna be the same again."

In his first public statements since the end of the civil trial, Peeler said that Jones appeared to be on reconnaissance when they stopped their cars for a brief chat on Old Mexia Road, a few miles west of the Mount Carmel compound. Jones had been doing counterintelligence on the ATF for several weeks, according to findings of the 1993 Treasury Department report. He had repeatedly asked to go inside the undercover house that ATF agents were renting near Mount Carmel, only to be refused by the agents. On another occasion, Jones refused entry to an ATF agent posing as a UPS delivery man who asked to use the bathroom inside the Davidian compound. Jones pointed him to the outhouse.

During their brief conversation, Peeler told Jones that he was looking for Mount Carmel, and they briefly discussed the series of articles on Koresh that had been running in the Waco Tribune-Herald. While they were talking, both men heard the three National Guard helicopters that were warming their engines at Texas State Technical College, a few miles to the west. The weather that morning was rainy and overcast, factors that helped carry the whine of the massive engines on the two OH-58 Kiowas and one UH-60 Blackhawk to the spot where Peeler and Jones were talking.

"He heard helicopters," said Peeler. "I heard helicopters." According to Peeler, the Davidian asked him "Are there helicopters out here? Something's gonna happen out here today. There's too much traffic on the road." Shortly afterward, Jones left Peeler, saying he was heading home to "watch TV and see what will transpire." Jones sped back to the compound and alerted Koresh. He died in the fire that consumed Mount Carmel 51 days later.

By blaming the media for the ATF's botched operation, federal authorities deflected much of the criticism that should have been directed at them. The government conveniently overlooked all of the other clues being provided to Koresh. Earlier that morning, ATF agents were assembling right next to busy Interstate 35, wearing their marked uniforms and toting automatic weapons.

Additionally, helicopter flight logs from that morning show that engines began turning more than an hour before the assault. Choppers are rare in that area and their noise that morning could have easily been heard at the compound. There was also a question about the route taken by the cattle trailers. They passed a building known as "the Mag Bag," where Davidian men hung out working on cars. Ten minutes from the compound by automobile, a simple phone call as the agents rode past would have given Koresh sufficient time to find his guns.

And even assuming that Peeler's contact with Jones was the only way Koresh could have heard about the impending raid -- an assumption that now seems wrong -- scant effort has been put into learning how Peeler and other members of the media knew to be at the compound that morning. Dicky Grigg, an Austin-based attorney who represented one of the ATF agents, told Salon News and the News of Texas that he and the other plaintiffs' lawyers had no reason to find out who the newsmen's source was. "That turned out to be not that important to us since the way Koresh was tipped off was through Peeler," Grigg said.

The earliest news reports from Waco show that the ATF got a fast start blaming the media -- with the help of the media. Two days after the siege began, a reporter from the Houston Chronicle appeared on "Nightline" with Ted Koppel saying that the ATF believed it had been "set up" by "at least one reporter." The Chronicle reporter, Kathy Fair, also told Koppel that the alleged "set up" had included "perhaps one local law enforcement official."

Fair and the ATF agents may have been just guessing. But it appears that the ATF agents suspected early on that the leak about the raid had come from someone within the Waco Police Department or the McClennan County Sheriff's Office.

Next page | ATF claimed that Koresh and the Davidians were deep in the drug trade