Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 04:06:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Carol Moore <[c--oo--e] at [CapAccess.org]> Subject: WACO--NY Times: FBI Expert Talks (fwd) Carol Moore [c--oo--e] at [CapAccess.org] FBI agent at Waco says bureau pressured him on Koresh reports __________________________________________________________________________ New York Times WASHINGTON (3:45 p.m.) -- Links between the April 19 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 FBI siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, have renewed questions about the FBI's handling of the 51-day standoff. Now, two years after religious cult leader David Koresh and 74 followers died in the fire that swept the compound, Peter Smerick, the FBI's lead criminal analyst and profiler of Koresh, has broken his silence to charge that bureau officials pressured him into changing his advice on how to resolve the situation without bloodshed. Smerick, now retired from the bureau and working as a consultant in the Washington area, said he had counseled a cautious, non-confrontational approach to Koresh in four memos written from Waco for senior FBI officials between March 3 and March 8, 1993. But he was pressured from above, Smerick says, as he was writing a fifth memo March 9. As a result, that memo contained subtle changes in tone and emphasis that amounted to an endorsement of a more aggressive approach against the Davidians. The following month, the FBI got the go-ahead from Attorney General Janet Reno for its plan to inject tear gas into the compound. Koresh and his followers then set the place on fire, according to a Justice Department review of the siege. Interviewed several times before the terrorist bombing at the Oklahoma City federal building, exactly two years after the Waco fire -- Smerick was at first loathe to point an accusatory finger at his former superiors within the bureau. He changed his mind, he said, after becoming convinced that the traditionally independent process of FBI criminal analysis had been compromised at Waco. "The whole point of our assessment was to provide unbiased intelligence (to FBI decision-makers)," he said. "If I couldn't analyze it as I saw it on site, the process was jeopardized." Smerick's complaint takes on new meaning as evidence grows that Timothy James McVeigh, the former Army sergeant charged in the Oklahoma City bombing, had visited the Waco compound and had voiced dismay over what happened there. McVeigh's views are shared by many people in two dozen or so paramilitary groups around the country. They see the Waco fire as evidence of a government conspiracy to kill anyone who resists government control. The FBI, in its nationwide hunt for additional suspects, is interviewing members of the groups. Smerick said he believes the bureau rushed to judgment on what kind of man Koresh was, as well as what it would take to make him give up. At the time of Waco, Smerick was a senior agent from the bureau's Behavioral Science Center in Quantico, Va. He was in Waco from March 2 to March 17, the standoff's crucial early period when the FBI's strategy was still evolving. Smerick wrote psychological profiles of Koresh to counsel FBI tacticians and negotiators on what kind of approach might work best. These memos urged the FBI to out-wait Koresh and warned that Koresh might order a mass suicide if he felt threatened. While pressure tactics might work in typical hostage situations, Smerick advised, such a strategy when dealing with a charismatic zealot like Koresh, "if carried to excess, could eventually be counter-productive and could result in loss of life." The warning was clear: Confront Koresh at your peril. But FBI officials not only rejected this advice, they sought to get Smerick to change it. Senior FBI officials had complained the first four memos counseling caution "were tying their hands," Smerick said. He declined to name the officials involved, saying only their views were communicated to him through intermediaries manning the Waco desk at the command center at FBI Headquarters in Washington. These senior agents "didn't want a memo coming up (to FBI headquarters) saying the same thing," Smerick said. In several phone conversations on March 9, the intermediaries made clear Smerick needed to discuss what he was saying with headquarters before the fifth memo could be sent. At that point, Smerick said, he realized his viewpoint was being sanitized. "You don't have to be hit with a two by four to get message they want their own input on memos coming up," he said. As a result, he adopted a get-tough approach in his March 9 memo and downplayed caution. Since talks had met with limited success, the memo said, "other measures" should be employed, such as turning utilities on and off, moving agents and equipment outside the Davidians' house around suddenly and cutting off negotiations. Smerick said he left Waco in disgust after writing the fifth memo rather than see his work compromised. The following month the memo emerged as a key ingredient in the factors Reno weighed in deciding to back the FBI's gas-insertion plan. In the torrent of criticism and self-examination that followed the Waco fire, the FBI sought to justify its decision to attack the Davidian compound by arguing that its criminal-behavior experts had concluded Koresh would never give up peacefully. The inference drawn by agents: The messianic zealot would have to be forced out. Reno told reporters after the fire that she had approved the FBI plan "after very careful studies, after discussion with people in the field, after unanimous representation from the field, that this was the best way to achieve a resolution of this matter without further loss of life." FBI spokesman Mike Kortan, asked whether FBI executives had pressured Smerick to change his assessment, declined comment. AThe bureau will not discuss the Waco episode because the U.S. government is the target of seven civil lawsuits accusing it of causing the wrongful deaths of those in the compound, both from the FBI tear-gas attack and an earlier aborted raid (Feb. 28, 1993) on the compound by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, in which four agents and five Davidians died and 28 agents were wounded. -- What, another $200 bad hairday for prez. Billary?