From the Publisher

By Elizabeth Valk Long

For 51 days, until last Monday morning, members of our Waco coverage team waited for the standoff between the FBI and the Branch Davidians to resolve itself. They interviewed federal agents, local residents and family members in an often frustrating attempt to sense what was going on within the compound and what the FBI intended to do. Then suddenly Monday morning Richard Woodbury, our Houston bureau chief, found himself returning pell-mell up Highway 6 from a weekend at home, knowing that the patient journalistic groundwork was about to be tested. He and Atlanta bureau chief Michael Riley, Los Angeles correspondent Sally Donnelly and stringer Carlton Stowers stared at the hot ruins of David Koresh's compound and tried, like the rest of the nation, to understand the meanings, motives and mystical beliefs that had gone up in smoke. To start, they continued to work contacts within the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, visited sources wherever they could find them and divided the survivors of the fire between them, in the hope that some would talk. The efforts began to pay off when we obtained copies of the last three letters Koresh sent to the FBI. "People may scoff at Koresh's belief, but it was a deep and strong belief," says Riley. "I think these will shed light on why the outcome was probably inevitable." The Waco team's efforts paid off in other areas, and then Washington correspondent Elaine Shannon delivered exclusive interviews with top officials that completed our account of the events.

Our photographers were successful in their endeavors as well. At 6 Monday morning, photographer Shelly Katz called SABA photographer Greg Smith at home in Houston, asking him to return to Waco at once. Because the media were kept three miles from the scene, Smith found himself covering a story he could barely see with high-powered telephoto lenses. Katz, who had put 6,500 miles on his Jeep Cherokee as he roared about questioning residents and checking out the countryside, says he had never covered a story "so intense and frustrating." Nothing, however, could prepare the photographers for what they saw when the story finally broke. "It was total shock," says Katz. "We kept looking for people to come out. Everybody kept yelling, 'Where are the children? Do you see the children?' It was very depressing to see that building go up." At such a point, veteran photographers know, all you can do is take pictures. All we can do, after 51 days of waiting and 30 minutes of horror, is tell you the story.