The Real-Life Story Of The FBI's Gary Noesner

Noesner had a three-decade career with the FBI, 23 of those years as a hostage negotiator. As opposed to the story the series tells, he was rotated off the Waco incident about half-way through — 25 days in, as reported by Time. Nor was he at the Ruby Ridge standoff the year before Waco — that was his partner. He did successfully negotiate the end to an 81-day armed standoff in Montana in 1996, according to Smithsonian. "No shots were fired, everyone surrendered and nobody knows about it because it ended so well it didn't get much news coverage," he told Oxygen. "It was a tremendous validation of the learning points of Waco."

Men's Health tells us that Noesner retired from the FBI in 2003 and became vice president of a firm that specializes in managing international kidnapping cases. He published his memoirs in 2010 — it's one of the books that provides factual basis for the miniseries — and does occasional speaking gigs and works as a consultant.

He remains critical of the tactics used at Waco, but also firmly believes there was no evil intent on the part of his FBI colleagues. "In their own minds they were trying to bring everybody out alive," Noesner said. "It's not like they had this sinister agenda whereas I think you could say David Koresh did have a sinister agenda."