Recent Tragedies to Be Basis of NBC Movies

The World Trade Center bombing and the bloody confrontation in Waco, Tex., between the FBI and a religious cult will soon be coming to the small screen on NBC in made-for-television movies.

NBC officials said Monday that the deals were made over the past few days by the network’s West Coast president, Don Ohlmeyer, even though the drama in Waco was still unfolding and the investigation into the bombing was intensifying after the arrest of prime suspect Mohammed A. Salameh.

Network officials credited Ohlmeyer with moving quickly to make the deals, and said it was part of his strategy to help NBC bounce back from a spate of bad publicity about its news coverage and the loss of popular talk-show host David Letterman.

Both movies will be produced quickly and could air during the next major ratings period in May.

The movie on the bombing will be produced by John J. McMahon and his Wilshire Courtyard Co. and will center around the human drama in the Feb. 26 explosion that left five people dead and more than 1,000 injured.

The terrorist angle of the story will also be explored, and the movie will not be “just a disaster picture,” said a network spokesperson.

The story of the Waco siege will be told as one of the network’s “In the Line of Duty” series of TV movies about law enforcement agencies. Tom Patchett and Ken Kaufman will produce.

The film will chronicle the drama surrounding David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidian cult, and his followers, who were still holed up early Monday, more than a week after federal authorities unsuccessfully attempted to arrest him Feb. 28 on weapons charges. A disastrous raid on the compound left four agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms dead and another 15 people wounded.