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03/17/93
FBI meets with cult leaders; Agents say no end to standoff seen
By Arnold Hamilton / The Dallas Morning News
WACO-For the first time since a bloody shootout 17 days ago, law officers and Branch Davidian leaders have met face to face outside the cult's rural compound.
But authorities said Tuesday that the negotiations with envoys of sect leader David Koresh failed to spark an immediate end to the armed standoff.
FBI Special Agent Richard Swensen said he considered the one-hour meeting Monday to be helpful-especially since it focused on legal issues related to the siege, not on biblical discussions of the apocalypse.
"At this stage, we view any meeting as a successful meeting, and we're hopeful it will lead to something better,' said Agent Swensen, chief of the FBI's New Orleans office.
"I think they were glad to meet, and I know we were glad to meet. .. . We felt this might be a positive way to move forward.'
Still, he said, cult representatives appear more interested in a "piece-meal' approach to resolving the crisis than in discussions that could lead to a comprehensive surrender agreement.
"Plus there's that overlying problem of waiting for God's word,' Agent Swensen said.
Mr. Koresh reneged on a promise to leave the compound in the early days of the confrontation because he said he was waiting for a message from God.
Meeting directly rather than by telephone has various advantages, said Bob Wiatt, a 30-year veteran of the FBI who heads the campus police at Texas A&M University and is not connected with the siege east of Waco. It allows each side to get a better feel for the other, and it can allay the Branch Davidians' fears that they will be harmed if they leave the compound, he said.
"This is one more effort to assure them that the whole object of these negotiations is to achieve a peaceful solution,' Mr. Wiatt said Tuesday.
As of midmorning Tuesday, Agent Swensen said, no more face-to-face meetings had been scheduled.
Meanwhile, Agent Swensen said Mr. Koresh's condition appears to have worsened, altering somewhat the sporadic telephone negotiations between federal agents and the religious sect.
Mr. Koresh reported he was wounded in the Feb. 28 shootout with agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
He said Mr. Koresh's wounds were not believed to be immediately life-threatening, nor did they appear to be affecting his ability to control the 17 children, 46 women and 42 men that Mr. Koresh says are still holed up in the compound.
One of the last adult sect members to leave the compound appeared in federal court Tuesday afternoon to request her release from jail.
Kathryn Schroeder, a mother of four who surrendered Friday to federal agents, stood in leg and arm shack-les and an oversize orange jail jump-suit as her attorney, Scott Peterson of Waco, argued for her release.
Mrs. Schroeder, whose driver's license gives her age as 30, was jailed Friday and ordered held without bail after federal prosecutors contended that she was a material witness in connection with the Branch Davidian investigation. She has not been charged with a crime.
U.S. Magistrate Dennis Green said he will decide Wednesday whether to release Mrs. Schroeder.
Mr. Peterson told the judge that a sealed federal affidavit arguing for her detention did not prove that she had witnessed any crime or posed a flight risk, both requirements, he said, for detention of material witnesses.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Phinizy said the affidavit and a pre-trial report on Ms. Schroeder showed she has no ties to Waco other than the Branch Davidian sect.
After the hearing, Mrs. Schroeder smiled slightly but declined to answer questions as she walked to a U.S. marshal's van.
Mr. Peterson said after the hearing that the judge's decision will be "absolutely' key in bringing a peaceful resolution to the impasse.
"If she is released, she would like to send that message to her friends in her home that when you go through the system, and you have-n't done anything wrong, that you're treated well,' he said.
A detention hearing for Oliver Gyarfas, 19, who also left the compound Friday, is scheduled Wednesday. Mr. Gyarfas is being held as a material witness.
Brian Pollard, his attorney, said Mr. Gyarfas is being secluded in the McLennan County Correctional Center, where he has a television and a telephone.
"He's worried about their (other cult members') safety and welfare and he wants the people inside to know that he's safe and comfortable,' Mr. Pollard said.
Also Tuesday, an official of Children's Protective Services said that four children released earlier from the compound have been reunited with their relatives after completion of initial home studies.
"We are aggressively working on home studies with the relatives of the other children so they can be reunited,' said Bob Boyd, the state agency's program director.
He said he could not identify the children, citing confidentiality laws.
A British consular employee said one of the children released from state custody was an 11-year-old English girl, who returned Saturday to London with her father.
The girl is believed to have lived with the Branch Davidians for about eight months, said David Hook, a representative of the British Consulate in Houston. Her mother remains in the compound.
Twenty-one children were originally in state protective custody.
Three were released March 9 to Mrs. Schroeder's former husband.
Fourteen remain in protective custody.
Monday's face-to-face meeting between cult members and negotiators came 16 days after ATF agents stormed the sect's compound. Four ATF agents and an undetermined number of cult members were killed in the Feb. 28 shootout.
Agent Swensen, speaking Tuesday at a daily briefing at the Waco Convention Center, said federal officials requested the meeting because telephone negotiations had lagged in recent days.
He said McLennan County Sheriff Jack Harwell and an unidentified FBI negotiator met with cult spokesman Steve Schneider and another cult member, Wayne Martin, for about an hour beginning at 4:20 p.m. Monday.
In what Agent Swensen described as a "symbolic' gesture, the four men met about halfway between the cult's buildings and the nearby roadway.
He said the discussions primarily centered on the physical conditions of those inside the compound and the legal processes that would occur if the cult members surrendered.
Some messages also were delivered from family members to the cult members, he said.
"When we suggested meeting, they were anxious to do it also,' Agent Swensen said. "I think it's in our best interest, both sides, to try to get this thing moving.'
He also said cult members "probably sound more tired' with each passing day. But he said he didn't sense a growing anxiety among them to resolve the standoff immediately.
Agent Swensen said he believed such feelings "will come. It's not like we're going to go away.'
He said Sheriff Harwell was invited to participate in the face-to-face meeting because he previously dealt with the Branch Davidians and has credibility with them.
The other cult member in attendance, Mr. Martin, may have been present because of his legal background. He attended Harvard University School of Law, federal officials said.
Agent Swensen said the two cult members were not searched, so authorities didn't know whether they were armed during the meeting.
The agent said federal officials have no intention of allowing outside lawyers to speak to cult members.
The meeting came a few hours before authorities, for the second night, switched on large stadium lights outside the compound. Officials said the lights are designed to make it more difficult for cult members with night-vision scopes to follow the activities of federal agents.
Agent Swensen said that neither Mr. Schneider nor Mr. Martin mentioned the lights in the meeting.
Also at the briefing, a top ATF official confirmed that his agency moved up one day-from March 1 to Feb. 28 -- the initial storming of the Mount Carmel compound.
Associate ATF Director Dan Hartnett declined to discuss specifically why the date was changed, saying only that it was done for tactical and other reasons.
Staff writers Victoria Loe and Lee Hancock and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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