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04/21/93
Koresh vowed not to give in; ATF cites Feb. 28 statement
By Lee Hancock / The Dallas Morning News
WACO-A defiant David Koresh swore that he would never give in to federal law officers trying to arrest him, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday.
"Neither ATF or the National Guard will ever get me. They got me once and they will never get me again,' the documents quoted Mr. Koresh as saying.
"They are coming: The time has come.'
The court papers said the leader of the Branch Davidian cult made
the statements Feb. 28, shortly before a shootout with raiding agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
His remarks were overheard by an undercover ATF agent who left the cult's headquarters just before the assault, which sparked a seven-week standoff, according to the documents filed in federal court April 18.
The documents and affidavits from the ATF appeared to bolster claims, made repeatedly by authorities the past two days, that Mr. Koresh was bent on destroying not only himself but also those holed up with him in the cult's compound east of Waco.
The compound was leveled Monday by a roaring fire believed to have been set from within. The blaze apparently killed 86 of the 95 cult members-including 17 children-that Mr. Koresh said had remained.
In other developments Tuesday:
* One of the nine people who escaped from the compound during the fire was charged Tuesday with conspiracy to murder federal agents and was jailed. Four others were ordered held in the McLennan County Jail as material witnesses. Four remained hospitalized with burns and other injuries.
* FBI Agent Jeff Jamar said investigators had inconclusive evidence some of the cult members may have been killed as they tried to escape the inferno. One body with a gunshot wound was found, but the person could have been dead for weeks, the agent said.
* Exploding rounds ignited by embers continued to thwart authorities trying to search the rubble for bodies and evidence, said Mike Cox, spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Two ATF demolition experts and a Texas Ranger spotted several badly charred bodies, including some of children, amid the rubble but were unable to remove the bodies, he said.
"The biggest fear right now is that if we try to move a body, something will blow up,' Mr. Cox said.
* Many of the children released earlier by Mr. Koresh remain in the care of state child welfare workers. Those children were told Tuesday that their parents had died in the conflagration. Caseworkers and counselors also contacted the families of the 10 children who already had been released to relatives.
On Tuesday, the FBI said the messianic cult leader could have spared the children from fiery death by stowing them away in an underground bunker at the compound.
Bunker found
As authorities made their way through the still-smoldering rubble of the compound, they came upon an area behind the buildings where followers of Mr. Koresh had buried a bus for use as a bunker, Agent Jamar said.
"In that bus, the air was cool,' he said, and there was no trace of the irritant gas that agents used Monday morning in a failed attempt to peaceably end the 51-day standoff between authorities and the Branch Davidians.
"Had Koresh wished those children to survive, that was one place they could have hidden safely when he had the fires started,' Agent Jamar said.
He said the FBI was not responsible for the fatalities. "Those children are dead because David Koresh had them killed,' he said. "There's no question about that. He had those fires started. He had 51 days to release those children. He chose those children to die.'
In response to a question, he likened the deaths of the cult members to the Jonestown massacre.
"Is it where the leader causes the deaths of all the people in the compound?' he asked. "Yes, it is another Jonestown.'
Federal officials-up to and including President Clinton-on Tuesday continued to defend their actions in bringing the standoff to a head. One person and one alone, they said, was to blame for the horrific last chapter to the Brach Davidian saga.
"He killed those he controlled,' the president said of Mr. Koresh.
Mr. Clinton, while expressing unequivocal support for the decisions
made by Attorney General Janet Reno and the FBI, ordered an inquiry into the government's handling of the standoff. Congressional hearings also have been scheduled.
Others continued their criticism of Monday's action.
Speaking in Tuesday night in Dallas, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said
the Branch Davidians "were not a threat to society, only an embarassment to the government and its tacticians.'
"The government lost its patience, and the people lost their lives,' said Mr. Jackson, the civil rights leader and former presidential candidate.
Dick DeGuerin of Houston, who served as Mr. Koresh's lawyer, told reporters that the cult did not have a death pact and that the fire was not deliberately set. That assertion comes from information he said he received from two of the survivors.
FBI Agent Bob Ricks told The Dallas Morning News that federal officials have evidence that every adult in the compound had been trained in handling weapons-and using them to kill.
"David would test them. He would say, "Are you willing to die for God?' ' Agent Ricks said. "Then he would ask, "Well, are you willing to kill for God?' He would convince them that if you're willing to die, you've got to be willing to kill.'
A 70-year-old woman among those who surrendered during the siege came out of the compound with a handwritten notebook detailing how to kill police wearing body armor, he said. An ATF affidavit unsealed Tuesday in federal court identified the woman as Catherine Mattson, who left the compound on March 2 and was one of the first two adults released.
"In her notes . . . it said to shoot them in the head,' Agent Ricks said. "Even the ladies who came out yesterday (during the fire) had flak jackets with hand grenades and multiple cartridges.'
The agent depicted the cult headquarters as a veritable fortress, housing a massive aresenal. He said that when he inspected the ruins after the fire, he saw crates of ammunition "stacked 10 feet high.'
Agent Ricks said the FBI, after weeks of stalled negotiations, became convinced that it was time to act against the cult members because Mr. Koresh seemed to be increasingly anxious to provoke a massive gunbattle.
"He was making statements to the effect that he could die in jail or he could die in here. He preferred to die in here,' Agent Ricks said.
Agent Jamar said Mr. Koresh's last pledge to his lawyer, to surrender after completing a prophetic manuscript, was nothing more than "another sham, another stall.' He said the agency had "absolute certain intelligence' to that effect, but did not elaborate.
"Where does that leave us? Do we wait 90 more days until children die? How would the federal government look when we finally get in the compound and there are children dying of hunger?' Agent Jamar said.
The original affidavit-used to obtain the warrant to search the compound Feb. 28 -- detailed the group's purchases of almost $200,000 in assault rifles, explosives, tons of ammunition and other ordnance, federal officials have said.
According to one of the new affidavits, signed by an ATF agent and obtained from the U.S. attorney's office, government witnesses reported that the cult collected at least 100 fully automatic AR-15 assault rifles by January 1993, several silencers for the assault weapons and grenades.
Federal agents also said that some cult members asserted that Mr.
Koresh was abusive, claiming exclusive sexual relationships with all women in the group and girls as young as 11.
An escalating fear nagging authorities during the last days of the siege was that Mr. Koresh would order women to run from the compound with babies in arms and fire guns at agents to try to provoke an attack, Agent Ricks said.
Under the plan implemented Monday, FBI officials were prepared to inject gas into the compound continuously for up to 48 hours, he said.
"There was a friendly dispute amongst ourselves,' he said "In effect, we were kind of wagering among ourselves on when they would come out. Some people thought they'd get a taste of the gas and run out immediately. . . . My bet in the pool was probably that zero would come out on the first day.'
Emergency call
Waco fire officials said they received the fire alarm from the compound via a 911 emergency call at 12:13 p.m.-eight minutes after the blaze erupted.
Agent Jamar said the firetrucks were not allowed in sooner for fear that cult members might shoot at them.
When the fires began, Agent Ricks said, he and other agents in the FBI's command center at Texas State Technical College were monitoring the agency's video of the compound as well as live network news shows.
Incredibly, almost no one even tried to escape, he said. "People just don't know how hardened those people were in there,' he said. "The last two people to leave were the two guys who snuck in. Once they realized what this person was bent on doing, they beat a hasty retreat.'
Staff writers George Kuempel and Steve Scott contributed to this report.
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