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03/16/93
FBI officials are starting to boost pressure on cult; Negotiators refuse to discuss religion
By Lee Hancock / The Dallas Morning News
WACO-FBI officials said Monday that their negotiators are ratcheting up pressure on the be-sieged Branch Davidian cult, refusing to discuss the group's religion or anything not directly aimed at ending the 16-day standoff.
Cult members answered the hard-line FBI negotiating tack Sunday with a banner calling for the news media and using a flashlight to send late-night Morse code signals reading: "SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. FBI broke negotiations. We want negotiations from press.'
FBI Special Agent Richard Swenson said negotiators have not broken off talks but began refusing Sunday to participate in the lengthy "Bible studies' and religious talks that have dominated their discussions with cult leader David Koresh and Steve Schneider, his chief lieutenant.
"For long, long periods, we listened-literally for hours and hours,' he said. "It was not leading to anything. . . . And frankly, we're not here to be converted. We're here to get this thing resolved peacefully.'
The Branch Davidian compound about 10 miles east of Waco has been surrounded by federal officers since a raid by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on Feb. 28 ended in a firefight with four agents and an undetermined number of cult members killed. Since then, 21 children and four adults have left the compound.
Agent Swenson said Monday that agents were not in regular contact with the compound last weekend, confining the compound's communications Sunday to telephone calls from Mc-Lennan County Sheriff Jack Harwell and two calls from former cult members who surrendered to authorities Friday.
One of those cult members, Oliver Gyarfas, talked briefly to Mr.
Koresh, marking the first conversation the group's leader has had with anyone outside the compound since Friday night, the FBI agent said.
"We've had people at the phones 24 hours a day. They know how to reach us, and we're ready and willing to talk,' Agent Swenson said.
He confirmed Monday that the heavily besieged compound has been without electricity since Friday-another move he said was designed to "try to get this thing moving off the dime.'
But he said large banks of high-intensity lights switched on at the compound Sunday night were a "purely defensive' response to frequent provocations such as sightings of armed cult members peering from windows and aiming guns at federal agents.
Some federal law enforcement officials have indicated privately that the trailer-mounted lights are another tactic used to "tighten the screws' on cult members, an attempt to disrupt sleep patterns and other normal activities. Lights and loud music have been part of the psychological gambits employed by federal authorities to end other prolonged standoffs.
Agent Swenson said, however, that the lights were installed chiefly in front of the sect's buildings to protect the federal perimeter that lies 250 yards outside the compound.
"We're hoping to make less of a target to people in the compound,' he said. "We just don't want them seeing us back there.'
He said cult members have not complained about the lights, and can block or cover windows to maintain darkness in the compound's interior.
As the talks drag on, officials have gotten no encouraging signals that any other cult members are considering surrender. Agent Swenson said Mr. Koresh's lieutenant, Mr. Schneider, has told federal officials that two men and a woman who expressed a desire to leave last week have since changed their minds.
Although Kathryn Schroeder and Mr. Gyarfas, the two Branch Davidians who surrendered Friday, told cult followers they were being treated well and pleaded for a peaceful end to the standoff, Agent Swenson said, their talks Sunday with Mr. Schneider and Mr. Koresh did not appear to have much effect.
"But I still believe it will be helpful in the long run,' he said.
Another federal law enforcement official who asked not to be named
said the cult may seriously seek an end to the siege after it sees how Mrs. Schroeder and Mr. Gyarfas are treated in federal court hearings.
"I still think those two may be a test,' the official said.
Monday, aircraft occasionally could be seen flying in the drizzly,
gray sky near the compound, and authorities moved a sandblaster and vacuum truck in the direction of the Branch Davidian buildings.
Agent Swenson said he did not know what the new equipment might be used for, but he said aircraft periodically patrol the area "just to make sure that no one goes into the compound and no one comes out.'
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