Koresh is on the Radio

David Koresh, leader of an apocalyptic Christian sect, was dying to be on the radio. We all heard his CNN interview, but his broadcast on KRLD-AM was first. [I first read of this event in a VOX JOX column written by Phillis Stark in an issue of Billboard from March of 1993.] Most of the news media attention happened in the first 72 hours, and the siege lasted for 51 days. But if you look at Waco as the center of a media event and not just it's topic, other stories emerge...

Sunday, February 28th

• 9:30 AM - Failed ATF assault on Branch Davidian Compound
• 11:00 AM - FBI is belatedly notified
• 11:30 AM - Texas Rangers Arrive
• 4:00 PM - Koresh broadcast over KRLD.  (Repeated 12x).
• 5:00 PM - Gunfight
• 8:00 PM - CNN carries live telephone interview with Koresh.
• 10:00 PM - Koresh talks for about 20 minutes on KRLD

Monday, March 1st

• 3:00 PM - Koresh promises to exit if his taped message is played nationwide.
• 6:00 PM - Armored vehicles arrive
• 6:30 PM - 10 children are released

Tuesday, March 2nd

• 1:30 AM - Two children are released
• 8:00 AM - Two adults and two children are released
• 1:30 PM - Koresh's taped message played on KRLD and the CBN Network
• 6:00 PM - Koresh states that he is waiting for a sign from God

Let's go back to KRLD. Today KRLD-AM is only a 2.1 share in Dallas today. Back in the 90s they still pulled in double-digit numbers. The station sat on 1080 Mhz for most of it's existence but it didn't get there until 1941. Prior to 1934 it was on 1040, 890, 840 and 650. The 50,000 watt station was chosen by Koresh and the FBI not just for it's ratings book, but also for it's reach. CBN is a christian radio network, but KRLD is a powerhouse commercial talk radio station. At night the signal is clear from Oklahoma City to Austin. Between February 28th and March 1st KRLD aired Koresh's statement 12 times. In exchange for those broadcasts he released children in pairs for several days. You can hear the taped Koresh statement here.

Wednesday, March 3nd

• 4:30 AM - One child released with puppies
• 8:00 AM - Two adults and two children are released

Thursday, March 4th

• 7:30 AM - One child released 

Friday, March 5th

• 8:30 AM - One child released

You can credit all those saved lives to KRLD. The FBI reached out to the station, and possibly others but KRLD gave away their airtime to a civic cause and historically they get little credit. It's worth nothing that Koresh also agreed to KRLD because of Phillip Arnold. Arnold was from the Reunion Institute of Houston. he was a religious scholar who has been on KRLD and discussed the seven seals. (He also did an interview on the topic over KGBS-AM during the siege.) Some credit also goes to CBN. Some sources claim local affiliate KBBW aired the tape at locally. Billboard claims that CBN aired it on 41 affiliates on the Craig Smith program. Smith had invited Koresh to speak on his program if he would end the ordeal. It was perhaps a poor choice of words.

Before the negotiations degenerated into incoherent preaching and idle threats, there was one last radio event. On March 2nd Koresh had said he was waiting for a message from God. The FBI tried their hardest to give him one. On March 11th, radio personality Paul Harvey happened to describe a comet called the “Guitar Nebula" due to the odd shape of it's wake. The FBI called Paul Harvey and asked him to repeat and expound on the stellar event on his next show. He obliged. In Waco, TX his program was carried on WACO-AM. It was for naught. Almost everyone left in the building was killed by federal agents on April 19th. Harvey didn't admit his involvement until he wrote about it for the Los Angles times on April 26th. You can read a complete timeline here.

Paul Harvey: The Last DJ

Paul Harvey died Saturday at the age of 90 at a hospital near his winter home in Phoenix. In the year 2000 ABC renewed his program for another 10 years; a vote of confidence at the end of a radio that lasted over 70 years. He was the last DJ in America older than radio itself. He was born in 1918, three years before the first commercial radio license.

His program "News & Comment" began on ABC in 1951, his other "The Rest of the Story" began in 1976. He began at KVOO a radio station in his home town of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He briefly worked at KSAL in Salina, KS, KOMA in Oklahoma City, KFBI in Abilene, Kansas and KXOK in St. Louis. In 1941, He became program director for WKZO in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

But a year later he moved to Chicago for a gig at WENR Chicago. It was there that his 10 p.m. newscast became the top-rated program and his real career began. It is rumored that Paul Harvey Jr. may take over the program.

Paul Harvey - CAPTURED

Paul Harvey is normally considered somewhat tame even sublime. His program is mild, not hard hitting, fast-paced, trendy or edgy. His program is syndicated by ABC to over 1,000 radio stations with 22 million listeners. He appeals to a set of older, more conservative Americans residing in rural areas. What they don't know, is that Paul Harvey is a criminal mastermind. His real name is Paul Harvey Aurandt. Isn't' that a German name Herr Harvey?

In the 1950s Harvey's programs began taking on a paranoid twist. Maybe he was inspired by McCarthy's witch hunt. He criticized poor security at government installations. He got fixated on nationalistic ideas. He'd always been a populist and a conservative but the mood of the day drove him to strange depths. It's probably why he sprung to action when heard about poor security at Argonne National Laboratory a nuclear research facility.

In 1951 a security guard at the facility named Charles Rogal, reported the slacker security at the site to Illinois Rep. Fred Busbey [R], a personal friend of Harvey's. The whole idea of it stuck in Harvey's craw. The Rosenbergs had stolen nuclear secrets for the commies in the 1940s and Harvey was still pissed. (No really, Harvey is an absolutely rabid anti-communist.)

Harvey brought two friends, Rogal and John Crowley (from the office of naval intelligence.) They entered the Argonne compound at night in the dead of winter. But the entry was bungled, at the top of the 10-foot fence, his winter coat got caught on the barbed wire. While he struggled to disentangle himself, he was detected patrol discovered him.

Crowley and Rogal were more covert. They hid in the bushes, then after the patrol left with Harvey, they left. However they left their wallets and papers in Harvey's car nearby. So they two were identified. Harvey was turned over to FBI agents.

The Chicago press mocked Harvey mercilessly. The intimation that he was a patriotic idiot probably helped him when the federal grand jury convened. On March 21st , 1951 Harvey was charged with conspiracy to obtain information on national security and transmit it to the public. On April 4, 1951, the grand jury voted not to indict Harvey. He was free to return to broadcasting.

Were he convicted, he could have been fined up to $10,000 and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. In 2005, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. Any of the rest of us would still be in prison.