Tabor and Arnold made a tape—a long, technical discussion of an alternative reading of Revelation—aired it on the radio, and sent it to Koresh. Koresh listened and was persuaded. He had been called a liar, a child molester, a con man, and a phony messiah. He had been invited to treat his children like bargaining chips and his followers like hostages. But now someone was taking his beliefs seriously. “I am presently being permitted to document in structured form the decoded messages of the seven seals,” he wrote back. “Upon the completion of this task, I will be freed of my waiting period. . . . As soon as I can see that people like Jim Tabor and Phil Arnold have a copy, I will come out and then you can do your thing with this beast.”
Inside Mount Carmel, Doyle writes, there was rejoicing. Soon they would all come out together, and the ordeal would be over. The F.B.I., however, remained skeptical. “Then what’s next?” one of the agents in charge allegedly said. “He’s going to write his memoirs?”
...
That conversation took place on Friday, April 16th. [Branch Davidian suvivor Clive] Doyle says that he thinks Koresh would have finished the manuscript within two weeks. The F.B.I. waited three days. By the morning of April 19th, the Feds had had enough. The F.B.I.’s tanks rumbled up to the Mount Carmel buildings, and punched holes in the walls with their mechanical arms. [...]