ATF Director John Magaw announced that federal agencies would be keeping close watch on groups suspected to be cults. If any of these groups had been on edge before, this could not have helped lessen their anxieties. For a number of people, both on the left and the right, the events at Waco represented, not a growing threat of brainwashing cults, but the willingness of federal authorities to use whatever means necessary to quell dissent and assert their authority, even if it meant murdering American citizens to prove a point. As with Ruby Ridge, the government’s actions at Waco proved more
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