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04/23/93
Reno hopes for lessons on future confrontations; `Nonlethal means' of coping sought
By Anne Reifenberg / The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON-Attorney General Janet Reno said Thursday that she hoped federal agents could find "nonlethal means' to resolve future confrontations such as the one with the Branch Davidians that ended in fire and death.
"We want to review everything that we did with as much detail as possible. . . . We want to look to the future, recognizing that this problem can occur again,' Ms. Reno told a Senate subcommittee. Members praised her handling of Monday's assault on the cult compound near Waco, led by the FBI.
In the House, however, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms came under renewed attack Thursday for a failed raid that triggered the standoff.
Ms. Reno told the Senate panel that during the 51-day siege, she wished for "some magic weapon' to avoid bloodshed. She said an investigation ordered by President Clinton could help agents devise new strategies for dealing with armed antagonists.
Members of the Senate subcommittee on Justice Department appropriations greeted Ms. Reno warmly. Democrats praised her, sidestepping the criticism that's been leveled this week at the FBI, which is part of her department.
"I don't think we're going to achieve very much by trying to point fingers at people,' said Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas.
Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., went further, telling the attorney general that she acted in an "outstanding fashion' and calling the 51 days that agents gave cult leader David Koresh to surrender "a gracious plenty of time.'
But he questioned the tactics of the ATF, the Treasury Department agency that staged the Feb. 28 raid on the Branch Davidian compound. Four ATF agents died in the raid.
"I think maybe something could have been done in the original stage of this with the alcohol and tax unit,' Mr. Hollings said. "Otherwise, those who are lamenting and moaning and groaning at the present time, I don't hold much stake with them.'
The ATF came under more fire on the other side of Capitol Hill during a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing.
The chairman, Rep. Jake Pickle, D-Austin, grilled Director Stephen E. Higgins about the decision to conduct the Feb. 28 raid-in which 16 other agents were injured-rather than put Mr. Koresh under surveillance and arrest him when he left for a jog or to go shopping.
"Did you move in at the right time?' Mr. Pickle asked. "Why did you insist in going forward with the raid knowing that you were outgunned?'
Mr. Higgins denied his agents were outgunned and suggested he resented intimations that the ATF made a deadly mistake in staging the raid.
"There's no one in ATF I know of that would deliberately lead ATF agents' into an ambush, Mr. Higgins said.
David C. Troy, chief of the ATF's intelligence division, said agents had no choice but to attempt to seize Mr. Koresh inside his headquarters.
By the time agents had probable cause to arrest him, he said, Mr.
Koresh was "so kinked up' that he rarely left the compound.
Agents would have had to serve a search warrant at the compound even if Mr. Koresh had been arrested outside, Mr. Troy added, and still would have encountered resistence because other cult members "were just as violent.'
Mr. Pickle appeared unsatisfied.
"The leader of that compound was a nut and his followers agreed to
live with a nut,' he said. "You knew what they were doing and they knew what you were doing.'
Later, at a news conference, Mr. Troy said an undercover agent inside the compound who knew that Mr. Koresh had been tipped to the raid saw no preparations for battle when he left about 40 minutes before agents arrived.
"We had no indication that inside they were passing out guns and taking up positions for an ambush,' he said. "They were tipped off to the point they were deployed in an ambush situation.'
The investigation ordered by Mr. Clinton is to cover the Feb. 28 raid, agents' conduct during the 51-day standoff and other events leading up to Monday's fiery conclusion. The compound went up in flames after the FBI began pumping nonflammable tear gas into the buildings; authorities say cult members set the buildings afire.
At another congressional hearing Thursday afternoon, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen said the investigation would get underway "very quickly' and be conducted by an "outside group.' He was not more specific.
"We will have a thorough investigation,' Mr. Bentsen told a House appropriations subcommittee. The ATF is an agency of the Treasury Department.
Ms. Reno told the Senate panel that Branch Davidian members had sufficient food to hold out "as long as a year' and also had access to a limitless source of water.
Questioned by senators about the cost of the standoff to the government, Ms. Reno said she did not have figures on hand.
"It was expensive,' she said.
Staff writer Robert Dodge in Washington and The Associated Press
contributed to this report
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