----- 3 stars ----- The FBI Agent Who Can’t Stop Thinking About Waco / Texas Monthly A quarter century after 82 Branch Davidians and 4 federal officers were killed, Byron Sage is still arguing about what happened. [...] At 12:32 p.m. on Monday, April 19, 1993, FBI agent Byron Sage placed his right hand on his PA system’s power switch and flicked it from on to off. Sage knew the small gesture was momentous. For the previous seven weeks, he and 51 other negotiators from various agencies had tried to persuade the Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and his more than one hundred followers to leave their home, a rambling, multilevel structure on a 77-acre property ten miles east of Waco known as Mount Carmel. Now that building was engulfed in fire. “It’s one of those points in your life that you’ll never, ever forget,” Sage says. “By turning that switch off, it was like I had fifty-one other guys that were looking over my shoulder, watching me say, ‘We failed.’ ” Nearly two months earlier, Sage had been the first FBI negotiator to arrive on the scene after a disastrous Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms raid left four federal agents and six Branch Davidians dead. Ever since, he’d been the lead negotiator, speaking frequently with Koresh and his deputy, Steve Schneider, cajoling them to cooperate when he could, arguing with them when he felt that he had to, making demands when it seemed nothing else would work. On that final day, when the FBI’s on-scene commander, Jeff Jamar, picked a negotiator to tell the members of the sect that they had to surrender, Sage was the obvious choice.
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----- 3 stars ----- The FBI Agent Who Can’t Stop Thinking About Waco / Texas Monthly A quarter century after 82 Branch Davidians and 4 federal officers were killed, Byron Sage is still arguing about what happened. [...] At 12:32 p.m. on Monday, April 19, 1993, FBI agent Byron Sage placed his right hand on his PA system’s power switch and flicked it from on to off. Sage knew the small gesture was momentous. For the previous seven weeks, he and 51 other negotiators from various agencies had tried to persuade the Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and his more than one hundred followers to leave their home, a rambling, multilevel structure on a 77-acre property ten miles east of Waco known as Mount Carmel. Now that building was engulfed in fire. “It’s one of those points in your life that you’ll never, ever forget,” Sage says. “By turning that switch off, it was like I had fifty-one other guys that were looking over my shoulder, watching me say, ‘We failed.’ ” Nearly two months earlier, Sage had been the first FBI negotiator to arrive on the scene after a disastrous Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms raid left four federal agents and six Branch Davidians dead. Ever since, he’d been the lead negotiator, speaking frequently with Koresh and his deputy, Steve Schneider, cajoling them to cooperate when he could, arguing with them when he felt that he had to, making demands when it seemed nothing else would work. On that final day, when the FBI’s on-scene commander, Jeff Jamar, picked a negotiator to tell the members of the sect that they had to surrender, Sage was the obvious choice.