Reno, FBI Agent Differ in Views of Waco Talks

WASHINGTON — Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, confronting new questions about her handling of the deadly 1993 disaster near Waco, Tex., said Thursday in a news conference that she relied on FBI assurances that negotiations with cult leader David Koresh could not succeed before approving a controversial tear gas assault.

Reno’s understanding of the view held two years ago by Byron A. Sage, the FBI’s chief negotiator at Waco, contrasts with Sage’s testimony before a congressional hearing this week. He told the committee that a Justice Department review of the tragedy, published in 1993, overstated his purported pessimism toward continuing negotiations with Koresh.

“I never abandoned the concept or the hope that negotiations could successfully and peacefully resolve this matter. . . ,” Sage testified Wednesday. “I felt [as of April 15, 1993] that we were at an impasse. . . , not that it was completely over.”

The apparent inconsistency between Sage’s account of the negotiations in the days leading up to the April 19, 1993, inferno and Reno’s version has emerged as one of the central points of a joint House committee’s hearings into the Waco events.

Another contentious issue surfaced at the hearings Thursday when two FBI supervisors said that they were unaware of the on-site commander’s belief back in 1993 that there was a “99%” chance the Branch Davidians would respond with gunfire to a government tank launching tear gas into their compound.

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Their statements are significant because the FBI operations plan approved by Reno stipulated that if the Davidians fired at the first combat vehicle, authorities would immediately begin launching gas into all windows of the compound with six tanks. Reno has consistently defended the FBI plan because it called for a gradual firing of CS gas over a period of 48 hours.

If the FBI supervisors had known about the “99%” factor, it “certainly would have called for further discussion of the [tear gas] plan,” Dick Rogers, head of the FBI hostage rescue team at Waco, said in an interview Thursday. “I don’t know if I’m prepared to say one way or another whether that would have stopped it . . . but we would certainly have looked at it a lot harder.”

About 80 sect members and their children died in the fire that engulfed the Davidian compound following the gas assault on the 51st day of the standoff, the longest and deadliest in the history of American law enforcement. In all, more than 90 witnesses are expected to appear before the committee as it continues to dissect the decision-making process behind the FBI assault of the Davidian compound.

On Thursday, the seventh day of the hearings, FBI agents who negotiated with Koresh and supervisors who participated in briefing Reno said that their decision to launch tear gas into the building was based on the expectation that mothers inside would lead their children out. Although they were aware of the risk of suicide, the FBI officials said, they did not believe Davidians would set the building on fire.

“Had our crystal ball been working that day, there would not have been an insertion of gas into that compound,” Rogers told the committee.

A civilian Army scientist said he advised Reno that the FBI’s plan to launch CS gas into the Davidian compound posed no long-term health risks for the children inside.

The scientist, Harry Salem, called CS the “safest and most potent riot-control agent that we know of.” But Salem acknowledged that research on the effects of CS on small children is limited to a pair of studies, including the case of an infant who was exposed to more than two hours of high concentrations of the chemical.

“After only 28 days of hospitalization, [the child] was released as cured,” Salem said. His conclusions were contradicted by earlier testimony from three witnesses who criticized the use of tear gas on children in a confined setting as “inappropriate.” Two of those witnesses were ridiculed by Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) as having “as little expertise on the issue of tear gas as I do.”

Reno is scheduled to testify before the congressional panel for several hours on Monday, the ninth and final day of the hearings. Speaking Thursday at her weekly news conference, Reno said that she believes she acted appropriately, based on the information available to her at that time.

Reno, who had been in office less than one week when she inherited responsibility for the Waco siege in March, 1993, told reporters that her decision to approve the firing of tear gas into the Davidians’ living quarters was the most vexing of her life.

“It is the most difficult decision that I have ever made,” Reno said, “and one that I live with regularly.”

Even in hindsight, Reno said that she still believes the FBI provided her with the information she needed.

“I still see no indication whatsoever that the FBI misled me or in any way pressured me,” Reno said.

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Overall, Reno did not express regrets about how the FBI, the Justice Department or the White House dealt with the confrontation. But Reno noted that her earlier findings that FBI personnel at Waco were exhausted and without qualified replacements before the end of the 51-day siege has prompted her to oversee the creation of a second, specially trained hostage rescue team.

If the second team of trained specialists had been in place in 1993, Reno said, “I could have pulled back the [original] HRT team and put another one in and waited.”

Before Reno made her decision to approve the FBI’s gas assault plan, “there were extensive internal discussions that went on for a period of several weeks,” Larry Potts, the FBI’s former deputy director who supervised the Waco operation, said Thursday.

Two attorneys representing Koresh and his second-in-command testified on Tuesday that they believed a new surrender pledge made in writing by Koresh on April 14--five days before the tear gas assault--was never given a serious chance to succeed. Koresh had promised to give himself up after completing a religious manuscript that he claimed to be writing.

Jeffrey Jamar, the FBI’s on-site commander, testified Thursday that negotiators at least initially considered the offer viable.

Reno told reporters that she relied in April, 1993, on the understanding from Sage, the FBI’s lead negotiator, that “negotiations had reached an impasse and that there was no indication whatsoever as of that date [April 15], that further negotiations were likely to be fruitful.”

After spending the following two or three days failing to confirm the progress of Koresh’s written works, FBI negotiators said, they concluded that the sect leader was stalling.

“We took that offer very seriously,” Sage testified on Thursday. “[But it was] yet another in a series of delays.”

Also on Thursday, Jamar indicated to the committee that he was not surprised by the hail of gunfire that came from the Davidian compound in response to the initial tear gas launch. Jamar said he believed that there was “a 99%” chance that Davidians would start firing “when we approached with the tank. . . . Not all people agree with me on that, but I believed that at the time, yes.”