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04/13/93
Officials doubt standoff with cult will end soon ; Lawyers plan more talks with Branch Davidians
By Lee Hancock / The Dallas Morning News
WACO-Federal officials were increasingly pessimistic Monday that the 44-day standoff with the Branch Davidians will end soon, but lawyers for the cult's leaders arrived here hopeful that new talks with the group could end the siege.
Dick DeGuerin, an attorney representing cult leader David Koresh, said he and attorney Jack Zimmermann hope to speak by telephone Tuesday afternoon with the cult members.
Mr. DeGuerin said the talks were planned, and he did not expect them to be followed by a direct meeeting with Mr. Koresh Tuesday. However, Mr. Zimmermann, who represents cult lieutenant Steve Schneider, said he was hopeful that the new talks would bring the group closer to surrender.
"We just figured the way the briefings have been going the last two days we should try to speak to our clients,' Mr. Zimmermann said, referring to a statement made in a Saturday FBI briefing indicating that the cult's leaders had requested more talks with their lawyers.
FBI Agent Bob Ricks told reporters that the two attorneys would be allowed to speak by phone to their clients, but he repeated the government's position that the attorneys would not be allowed to re-enter the compound until their clients are ready to surrender. The attorneys were allowed into the compound earlier this month.
Four federal agents were killed and 16 were wounded when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms tried to serve arrest and search warrants on the heavily fortified compound Feb. 28. Cult members have said at least six people inside the compound were also killed, but federal officials have said they cannot confirm those reports.
Federal officials were decidedly downbeat Monday.
Any remaining hopes that Passover might end the standoff waned
Monday as Agent Ricks said that cult members denied ever considering surrender after the weeklong religious observance.
Agent Ricks said Mr. Schneider told negotiators that "he and Koresh never discussed leaving the compound around Passover with the attorneys.'
Mr. DeGuerin and Mr. Zimmermann told reporters April 4 that they were optimistic that the cult would surrender after their Passover observance. The observance ends Wednesday.
Agent Ricks discounted hopes that Mr. Koresh had finally received his long-awaited message from God in the form of two threatening letters delivered to federal authorities over the weekend.
The letters were sent out about the same time Friday and Saturday afternoons, and each purported to be directly dictated to Mr. Koresh by God. The second letter included threats of destruction of Mr. Koresh's enemies and an entire chapter of the Book of Revelations, which Mr. Koresh claims identifies him as the second coming of Jesus Christ.
"The tone of the (second) letter is one of a vengeful God who will seek reprisal against those who defy the lamb or his son, which is portrayed as David,' Agent Ricks said.
"When you have a letter from God, to me, that's a pretty big event,' Agents Ricks said. "They apparently are waiting for a more direct message from God. What we gathered from that is David is not only looking for verbal messages, but certain signs, and he has continually reinforced he's looking for certain natural disasters to take place.'
In fact, during 15 telephone calls between Saturday and midmorning Monday, Mr. Schneider told authorities that Mr. Koresh could predict natural disasters and was excited about a minor earthquake that rattled South Texas last week.
"There was some indication (from cult members) that maybe David Koresh had predicted that earthquake,' Agent Ricks said. "They were terribly excited because they thought the earthquake was taking place very close to Waco. When it was learned that it was down in South Texas they decided maybe it wasn't as significant as they thought.'
Agent Ricks also responded to a question about a story in Monday's Dallas Morning News that reported Clinton administration officials have blocked proposed aggressive tactical operations. "So far we have not had any proposals submitted by us vetoed from Washington, D.C., and we have been satisfied with the support we have received from our counterparts in Washington,' Agent Ricks said.
But law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity said Monday that the Clinton administration has not given the approval necessary for any federal tactical operations to move forward.
The law enforcement officials said that frustration among federal agents in Waco is growing because administration officials are opposed to any strategy that could result in further bloodshed.
"They haven't been told no. They just haven't gotten the green light for anything,' one official said Monday. "And it's tough. The pitch for a tactical operation is this: A. Negotiations are over. B. We're setting a terrible bench mark for any other nut who wants to hold out against us. C. We can't give you any guarantee as to how this could be done without more people hurt.
"C is the problem,' the official said. "We can do all the tactical options or at least many of the options at our disposal with no risk to law enforcement. But we can't do them with no risk to those still inside the compound.'
Federal agents were completing a concertina-wire fence Monday designed to seal of the compound from outsiders and funnel any surrendering cult members into a tightly secured area, Agent Ricks said.
Even with the fence, Agent Ricks said, FBI officials have no immediate plans to scale back the number of heavily armed agents surrounding the rural compound. He did not rule out reducing federal force in the future, however.
"I don't know what capability they may have to cut through that wire. We still don't have a complete understanding as to the extent of explosives and other materials they could use to go through that particular wire,' he said.
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