Poor Decisions at Waco

Poor Decisions at Waco

Neither the Branch Davidians, nor the ATF, nor the FBI, were composed of or led by stupid persons. Yet at Waco, all of these groups made extremely bad decisions. One reason for the high-risk, low-quality decisions of the Branch Davidians, ATF, and FBI is that these groups of intelligent individuals could collectively make decisions much worse than the individuals might have made if they had decided alone.

Many of the factors leading to groupthink were present, on all sides, at Waco. First, in groups that are vulnerable to groupthink, group members tend to value the group above everything else. The social isolation of law enforcement officers from the non-police community has been documented by many researchers.[123] Unquestioning adherence to group norms is likely all the higher in special high-prestige law enforcement groups, such as the FBI, the HRT, or the Special Response Teams (the BATF versions of the HRT). The Branch Davidians, of course, explicitly saw their church as the only good thing in a Babylonian World permeated by sin.(p.644)

Groupthinking groups tend to have certain structural flaws: insularity; no tradition of impartial leadership; no norms requiring methodical decision-making; and a homogeneous background for their members. The militaristic HRT and SRTs, heavily drawn from ex-military personnel, had these flaws, as did the BATF and the FBI. While the Branch Davidians were highly heterogeneous in terms of race, nationality, and social background, they were intensely homogeneous in their ideology.

Groups likely to suffer from groupthink often overestimate their group's morality and invulnerability, while also stereotyping out-groups. The Branch Davidians thought themselves the ...

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...ented by decision-makers in crises. First, every group meeting should have a designated devil's advocate, who will point out potential risks. Second, special care should be taken so that no one agency or coalition of experts can monopolize the flow of incoming information. Janet Reno, by allowing the FBI to monopolize the information coming to her, made it almost inevitable that she would eventually do what the FBI wanted. Finally, the virtues which make the military such an effective international killing force--such as uniformity, obedience, and group cohesion--make it especially susceptible to groupthink. For this reason, the military should have no participation in law enforcement; quasi-military units such as the FBI's HRT and the BATF SRT should be thoroughly demilitarized, and should play, at most, a very subordinate role in law-enforcement decision-making.