When Worlds Collide : Waiting Game Is Newest Weapon : Historically, law enforcement authorities seemed bent on quick ends to siege situations. But today, authorities would rather wait them out.

It could take an hour.

That’s all the time LAPD needed to take out the Symbionese Liberation Army in a 1974 firefight that left six terrorists dead. It could last 10 years.

The Greeks waited that long outside Troy before Odysseus wheeled in his wooden horse and defeated Paris.

Attica: Five days of negotiation, then 42 prisoners and guards killed by troops in the ultimate demonstration of riot control.

Philadelphia: Eleven people, including five children dead after police dropped a bomb on a house to end a one-day siege against the radical group MOVE.

Historically, American law enforcers seem dead-set on solutions through quick, violent confrontation and Pyrrhic victories, especially when innocents die.

And now Waco.

But despite its fatal overture, say psychologists and criminal scientists, this 11-day siege outside a religious compound may reflect the emergence of a new form of law enforcement--one without ultimatums and with no time limit on negotiations nor the use of lethal force. Even the introduction of military tanks, they believe, is part of the waiting game and more of a precaution than a direct threat.

“In the past, expediency was all the issue: ‘Let’s get it over with now, and if anyone happens to survive, that will be gravy,’ ” explains Dr. James Fyfe, professor of criminal justice at Temple University. “But now we seem to have become much more sophisticated at dealing with these situations.”

He says police have learned from Attica, Munich and Philadelphia: That protecting of life, not taking it, is the primary responsibility of law enforcement. That during any siege, those on the inside will wear out first, so time becomes irrelevant to those on the outside.

“Any effort to deal with that (Waco) situation forcibly is almost certainly going to result in a blood bath,” Fyfe believes. “If I were in charge of it, unless it became clear that people were dying or being killed inside, I’d tell police to starve them out. And it really doesn’t matter how long it takes.”

Among other expert projections for the Texas standoff:

* If an armed assault become inevitable, it should be launched by the military’s combat-hardened commando teams.

* A religious leader who believes he is Jesus, as does Branch Davidian leader David Koresh, just might break the stalemate at Easter--on the day Jesus died.

* But if a peace prevails at Waco, then officials must let it be for however long it takes.

* And negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.

Four federal officers were killed and 15 wounded on Bloody Sunday when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried serving weapons warrants on Koresh, a self-proclaimed messiah. Three cult members are also believed to have died in what is generally considered a botched assault.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has assumed command of the siege. Experts say they are playing it by the book.

Frank Bolz, a retired detective captain with the New York Police Department, agrees. He wrote the book. Literally.

It was in 1972--and as a direct result of the hostage tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when 11 Israeli athletes were killed during a rescue attempt--that Bolz was assigned to draft his department’s “Guidelines for Barricaded Felons and Hostage Confrontations.” Assisted by a psychiatrist, he selected, trained and commanded a neophyte hostage negotiating team, the first in U.S. law enforcement.

Before retiring in 1982, Bolz had negotiated more than 286 incidents that saw the release of 850 hostages. Today, he teaches and consults, and has advised about 3,700 police departments.

He thinks Waco is a bad dream. Too much open ground surrounding the compound. Too many people involved. And the presence of children, whom he considers hostages because “they aren’t decision makers at 7 years old.”

But the FBI--the first agency to embrace his hostage guidelines-- has brought restraint and siege technology to the incident.

“Hopefully the FBI will continue to be patient and his (Koresh’s) resolve to die, as he is professing, will diminish,” Bolz says.

How long will that take? “The job is over when it’s over.”

Two months? “Who cares?”

Bolz knows exactly what is working in Waco, and it’s a replay of what he has done 286 times.

Clinical psychologists, maybe a psychiatrist, are monitoring taped telephone conversations and the stress levels of Koresh. Friends, relatives, even the clergy will be kept away because they could be a root of the cult leader’s anger and imbalance.

Negotiators, Bolz continues, will be talking evenly with Koresh and about anything. He remembers conversations on “hot-air ballooning, geraniums . . . basically to get them to ventilate, to talk and bring them down from a highly anxious situation . . . to let him get out his agenda.”

Common ground is vital. Bolz read the New and Old Testaments, the Koran, even “Quotations From Chairman Mao” and carried them in his police car for emergency reference.

“I read the book of mitzvahs, “ he says. “Do you know how many mitzvahs there are in the book? Six hundred and thirteen. Here I am, a goyim (non-Jew) and I know that.”

Wayman Mullins, a psychologist who teaches criminal justice at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, does not see the Waco siege resolving itself any time soon. Or peacefully. He is concerned that some children have been released from the compound by their parents who have “made their choice, they’ve had time to reflect . . . and they don’t want the kids there when they make the ultimate religious sacrifice.”

Mullins says that through an expressed, apparently ingrained messiah complex, Koresh feels a need to die for God and take his followers with him--and that could put a red circle around Easter Sunday, April 11.

“When did Jesus die?” Mullins notes. “If he (Koresh) is the right hand of God and replacing Jesus, or if he is Jesus, what better parallel than to die at Easter time?”

Mullins has advice for the public and the official watchers at Waco: “Get a lot of coffee, hunker down and wait. I think this is going to be a long one.”

From critiques of similar situations, from the SLA shootout to the Israeli raid on hijackers at Entebbe, Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block also sees the rewards of patience. But experience tells him no standoff is forever, because events quickly sour.

Koresh’s thinking may be clouded by possible wounds, and he could turn on his own people, particularly those who might want to defy their leader and leave, Block says. He adds that if such danger develops, law enforcers will have no alternative but to assault the compound.

“It’s a tough call,” he says. “I can tell you that I’m delighted that I don’t have to make it.”

Then who will supply the assault team? Koresh is known to have machine guns and .50-caliber weapons. Grenades and rocket launches are rumored in his arsenal.

“That requires the use of extraordinary devices which are possessed by, say, SEAL (Navy Sea, Air and Land commandos) teams,” suggests G. Gordon Liddy. “Middle of the night, everything blacked out, fast roping down to targets already designated by infrared sensing, using flash-bang grenades to stun people, an overwhelming force-type thing.

“That would require superb planning. I would not want to do that without SEAL Team Six. Delta Force is pretty good, not as good as the SEALs.”

Liddy, former FBI agent and Watergate burglar, is now a security consultant to several corporations and a talk-show host with a Washington radio station. He sees several pressure points at Waco.

There is the reported irritability of Koresh: “Given that allegedly he has been shot through the gut and the bullet has smashed his hip, that would tend to make somebody irritable.”

There is his religious delusion: “You’ve got an awful problem with somebody who thinks he is Jesus Christ. A heavily armed Jesus Christ is even more of a problem.”

There is a reported 5-year supply of food and water at the compound: “So you aren’t going to starve him out. But there could be a revolt in there. He’s only one man, and the other 43 men could take over and say: ‘Hey, it’s over, this is a ridiculous situation.’ ”

But for the time being, Liddy says, trust the talents and resources of the FBI. Time is on the side of those outside the compound. Inside, nobody is dying of thirst or hunger.

That makes armed assault “a worst-case alternative . . . You do that only when reports come out that this guy has really gone totally round the bend and he is killing people. Then your hand has been forced.”

Liddy has heard a suggestion that watchers borrow a page from a Vietnam-era manual on psychological warfare.

A large loudspeaker would be mounted on a helicopter. The chopper flies at night high over the compound. Then a voice tells Koresh it is God speaking and time to surrender peacefully.

“If this guy has any brains at all, he won’t believe it,” Liddy says. “Unless God is speaking in Aramaic.”

Negotiation expert Bolz doesn’t doubt that Easter could be a critical date for Koresh.

“We had that with a group in Jasper, Ark.,” he remembers. “They thought they would rise from the dead on the third day. But they didn’t. They just died at their own hand.”

One criminal expert, who requested anonymity, says he understands the benefits of official tolerance and the philosophical structure of the problem. He also recognizes the constitutional constraints that police--but not the military--must observe at Waco.

“Don’t print this, please,” he says. “But if it was me, I’d take an M-1 (tank), drive it through the front door and say: ‘Knock, knock. I’m here. You wanna fight?’ ”