OSHA had a course on the chemicals involved and their combinations which could result from unintended combinations thereof, a definite possibility in a drug raid. Not one of the agents on the raid team had had either course.
Other excuses were fielded as well, but the DEA should have taken down a drug lab.
Texas CPS should have investigated allegations of abuse, physical o sexual which were bandied about.
The last agency which should have gone in was the BATF.
one more thing, the phones were tapped.(the 9-1-1 tape has the phone ringing on it like you hear when you make the call, not when you answer the phone. The agency knew the Davidian who worked for the USPS who had been asked for directions to Mt. Carmel by a media team coming to film the raid had warned Koresh of the impending raid, yet they ran the operation anyway.
It all reeks of a provoked, grandstanding incident which was later used to demonize Christians of any stripe as crackpots and dangerous domestic terrorists, the whole while decrying firearm ownership.
That is the very sort of tyranny the second amendment would have us be armed against.
They did, and dropped the investigation for lack of evidence. The FBI had also investigated reports of a woman being held against her will, also dropped.
And the reaction was the flocking of men to the militias and the acquisition of arms and ammunition-by-the-case by large numbers of people. As horrible a precedent as those 2 actions were, they showed the Our Leaders that such actions were going to get more difficult and would provoke active opposition. That seems to be why there were no further Wacos or Ruby Ridges. And further, the assault weapons ban and noisy attempts to begin the arms banning process in general were followed by state after state getting on the concealed carry bandwagon and the further rationalizing of gun laws, not necessarily cause and effect here but lots of interesting timing for the Agencies to muse upon. Frankly I never put these cause and effect possibilities together until I reflected on it all again prompted by this thread. After it happened and there was no accounting for it I was convinced that They Got Away With It. Now I don't quite think so any more. The individual actors didn't suffer for their crimes but perhaps they learned that repeating them would become more and more expensive and even dangerous.