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03/18/93
Inquiry of leak to cult shifts to news media; Officials believe call, meeting tipped off sect
By Lee Hancock / The Dallas Morning News
An investigation of tips that may have allowed an armed cult to ambush ATF agents during a raid has shifted to determining whether the news media were the source of the leaks, federal officials said Wednesday.
Almost three weeks into their investigation, Texas Rangers have disproved speculation that the leaks to the Branch Davidians came from local or federal law enforcement officers, said the federal officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Four agents were killed and 16 wounded in a 45-minute gunbattle Feb. 28.
The investigators believe leaks occurred in a telephone call to cult leader David Koresh and a separate meeting in which a tipster warned a cult member that the Branch Davidian compound east of Waco was about to be raided, the officials said.
The disclosures came the day that a federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent wounded in the firefight filed a state lawsuit alleging that Waco Tribune-Herald employees warned the cult just before federal agents raided their rural compound.
A 15-page lawsuit filed in state District Court in McLennan County by Special Agent John T. Risen-hoover charges that newspaper employees leaked information directly to Mr. Koresh and to one of his followers because the newspaper wanted a conflict that would make a good news story.
Tribune-Herald editor Bob Lott said the lawsuit, which names the newpaper's Atlanta-based parent, Cox Enterprises, and subsidiary Cox Texas Publications, is baseless.
"The injuries to Agent Risen-hoover and the deaths and injuries to others are regrettable. But they were not caused by this paper,' he said.
Mr. Lott said the newspaper will cooperate with the Rangers' investigation to the extent that cooperation does not violate journalistic ethics or confidential sources.
An ATF official in Washington said the agency cannot comment on the allegations. While sympathetic to the wounded agent, the ATF official said, the agency does not support his lawsuit seeking unspecified damages from the newspaper.
"We had some sense that it was coming. . . . We're unhappy with the timing of this suit, obviously, because there is an ongoing criminal investigation,' the official said. "We asked them not to file suit, but we could not order them (not) to do so.'
Texas Rangers began investigating the possibility of leaks almost immediately after the raid, and an ATF official said state officers were brought in "precisely because it was our agents that were killed. An independent agency with jurisdiction over homicide cases is needed.'
ATF officials won't talk about the Rangers' inquiry, and information has been limited even within the federal agency.
One federal law enforcement official said the investigation has determined that one leak to the cult resulted from a direct encounter between a tipster and a cult member outside the compound the morning of the raid. The official declined to comment on the possible identity of the tipster.
"The member was tipped and somehow got word to Koresh,' the official said. "In addition, there was a phone call to Koresh that was witnessed by our undercover agent.'
Federal officials said the agent did not realize the importance of the call or Mr. Koresh's reaction to it until after the raid.
Agent Risenhoover, a San Antonio resident and four-year member of the ATF, was a member of the Houston division's special response team assigned to enter the front of the compound. He was shot twice in the ankle and once in the hip as he crouched behind a vehicle during the firefight. Four shots that hit his chest were stopped by a bulletproof vest.
James. R. Dunham of Waco, Agent Risen-hoover's attorney, said doctors have told the agent that his ankle may have permanent damage and probably will require reconstructive surgery.
Agent Risenhoover, 31, is the son of noted Texas journalist C.C.
Risen-hoover, a former Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter who has taught journalism at Baylor University and Southern Methodist University.
ATF agents have privately criticized the Waco newspaper because it began publishing a lengthy investigative series on Feb. 27, one day before the raid. The series reported that Mr. Koresh had declared himself Christ, routinely had sex with female followers as young as 12, stockpiled a huge arsenal, practiced polygamy and was preparing his followers to fight the apocalypse.
Seven newspaper staffers-reporters, photographers and an editor
* went to the compound on the morning of Feb. 28 after receiving a confidential tip and witnessed the bloody raid.
Federal agents also have privately cricitized a Waco television station because of the presence of its news crew, which filmed powerful footage of the 45-minute firefight.
A producer for KWTX-TV said its news crew has been ordered not to talk to the news media and referred questions about its presence at the compound during the raid to the station's president, who has not returned telephone calls.
ATF officials and Mr. Lott, the Waco newspaper editor, told The Dallas Morning News that the federal agency had approached the newspaper about a month before the raid and asked its management not to publish the series until after a federal action against the cult.
Both said the newspaper refused the request, and they said federal officials never specified when action might be taken or what it might involve.
The agency then decided about a week before the raid to move it from March 1 to Feb. 28.
Newspapers traditionally begin high-profile series on Sundays, so ATF officials expected that the Waco newspaper would begin running its Branch Davidian stories on Feb. 28, one federal official said.
Because officials feared that the series would heighten tensions at the compound, they wanted as little time as possible between its publication and their attempt to arrest Mr. Koresh and search his compound for illegal weapons, the official said.
The ATF agent's lawsuit alleges that newspaper employees who were waiting outside the compound told a cult member or sympathizer that they were awaiting the arrival of federal agents. The lawsuit charges that the member went inside the compound to warn its occupants.
In allegations paralleling some of what Rangers apparently have learned, the lawsuit charges the newspaper should have known its series "would alert David Koresh . . . and would heighten the potential for violence.' It also contends that the presence of reporters at the compound "attracted the attention of those in the compound and those in the surrounding community.'
The suit alleges that the leak was made "for the sole and selfish motive of . . . obtaining a news story . . . and financial gain and publicity for themselves.'
If sources of the leaks can be proved, one federal source said, any prosecution would be "a massive legal undertaking.'
The Rangers' investigation will not be completed until at least several weeks after the siege ends, and only then will federal prosecutors determine whether there is evidence to present to a federal grand jury in Waco, the official said.
If there is enough evidence, sources of the leaks could could be prosecuted on charges of obstructing justice, interfering with federal agents, or revealing information about impending federal search or arrest warrants, said one law enforcement official.
The official said the prosecution could be complicated by apparent widespread talk around Waco that federal action against the compound was imminent the weekend it occurred.
Even motel maids have said that they knew a massive federal action was under way because large numbers of federal agents were staying at their motels during that weekend and left their rooms the morning of Feb. 28 heavily armed and wearing dark raid clothing.
But several federal law enforcement officials told The News that there are strong indications that the leak was not inadvertent and that without it, the cult could not have been armed, ready and waiting to shoot agents participating in the ATF raid.
"This is a terrible allegation. It involves an allegation that someone sent four men to their deaths,' the ATF official said.
"We don't make scapegoats, and we aren't making scapegoats here,' the ATF official said. "The fact remains that ATF needed five minutes for surprise to accomplish our objective.
"What's believed to be a tip to the compound caused the people inside to set an ambush in which four federal agents were killed.'
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