Bill Buford — He Owed It to the Men He Lost at Waco | Part 2

In Part 2 of this two-part conversation, retired ATF agent Bill Buford takes listeners back inside the gun room during the February 28, 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. He walks through the exact sequence of the firefight: the moment a rifle round came up through the floor and hit him, the two AK-47 rounds that followed, and the fellow agent bleeding out beside him from a severed femoral artery. He describes climbing off the roof of the compound with no memory of how he did it, and the ATF medic, Ken Chisholm, who covered him with his own body while starting an IV under continued gunfire.

Buford also shares a story from his time as a Green Beret in Vietnam, a moment when an enemy soldier's rifle failed to fire at point-blank range, and the bullet he has kept ever since as a reminder of how close that day came to ending differently. The conversation turns to the origin of ATF's first Special Response Team, formed in the raid's aftermath, and closes with Buford's own explanation, in his words, of why he chose to go back to a job that had nearly killed him.

This episode honors the four ATF agents killed in the line of duty at Waco: Robert J. Williams, Steven Willis, Todd W. McKeehan, and Conway C. LeBleu.

Heroes Behind the Badge is a production of Citizens Behind the Badge, telling the real stories of the men and women who serve.