Posted on 04/19/2003 9:50:08 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
10 years after Waco siege, police face another standoff
04/19/2003
GUN BARREL CITY, Texas – Sheriff J.R. "Ronny" Brownlowe isn't ready for a showdown. Not like the one 10 years ago a few miles outside Waco.
On Saturday, survivors will mark the passing of a decade since at least 74 people died at the fiery end of the Branch Davidian siege. But for Sheriff Brownlowe's Henderson County deputies, it will only be another day in another standoff, now nearly three years old.
Militant fundamentalist John Joe Gray, 54, retreated to his 47 acres near Cedar Creek Lake about 40 miles southeast of Dallas after warrants were issued for his arrest in May 2000. Seven adults and three children are believed to be holed up on his property, hunting, fishing, planting gardens and patrolling the land with guns.
"The entire thing is not worth one of those children getting hurt," said Sheriff Brownlowe.
Patience may not always work, but Sheriff Brownlowe is willing to try. It's a lesson he and other law officers took from Waco, where those who lived through the 51-day siege still debate whether greater patience could have changed the outcome.
In the past decade the government's handing of the standoff has been held up as an example of how not to deal with militant groups. Negotiators and tactical leaders were sometimes at cross-purposes, especially when FBI commanders, smarting from the deaths of four federal agents during the Feb. 28 gunfight that started the standoff, opted to make a strong show of force to weaken the will of the Branch Davidians.
"I think there was a belief that if you put enough pressure on this group that has killed federal agents... then the psychic glue that holds them together will crack and they'll come in one by one two by two and surrender," said Clint Van Zandt, a lead FBI negotiator at Waco. "Had it worked we all would have said, 'Hooray.' "
It didn't work. The raid – to search the Mount Carmel compound for illegal weapons and arrest sect leader David Koresh on weapons charges – and the tough tactics which followed seemed to confirm the Branch Davidians' belief that they would face an apocalyptic ending in a battle with the government.
Ten Bradley fighting vehicles, two Abrams tanks and five other combat engineer vehicles were brought to the scene to counter the heavily armed sect members.
"How do you protect your agents against a 50 caliber rifle? You put them in a tank," said Danny Coulson, an FBI deputy assistant director at the time of the standoff. "It hurt to see FBI agents in tanks, but on the other hand, would you rather see an FBI agent with his head blown off?"
Breakdown of trust
Negotiators worked constant 12-hour shifts. Dozens of agents, including snipers, surrounded the property northeast of Waco.
Federal agents allowed Branch Davidians to retrieve their dead for burial, gave them medical supplies, milk and food, and even allowed the retrieval of Bible study materials left in a car.
At first, negotiators made steady progress in persuading Mr. Koresh to send out members of the sect, especially children.
On March 2, authorities arranged to have a 58-minute religious message by Mr. Koresh aired on the radio. But he reneged on a promise to surrender afterward, saying God told him to remain inside to write an interpretation of the Seven Seals mentioned in the Book of Revelation.
Trust began to break down.
Dr. Nancy Ammerman, a religion and sociology expert who co-authored a 1993 report to the Justice Department critical of how the FBI handled the standoff, said commanders failed to properly consider the depth of the Branch Davidians' beliefs.
"When they refer to the way Davidians talk as 'Bible babble' then you have to wonder about the level of respect," she said.
Mr. Van Zandt disagreed.
"I was on my phone multiple times calling back to my pastor in Virginia just bouncing ideas off him. ... I spent 2 ½ hours with Koresh one night one-on-one because he wanted to talk to someone who was a Christian."
Mr. Coulson said Mr. Koresh reneged on several promises of surrender. By March 23, 35 people had left the compound, but little trust remained. Only two more sect members would leave before April 19.
Determining tactics
Starving out the Branch Davidians was not an option. Officials believed they had a year's worth of food and plenty of water.
Tactical commanders rejected Mr. Van Zandt's idea to erect a tall fence around the compound and send the military hardware away.
"At a barricade situation like Waco or Ruby Ridge" where federal agents had been killed, "the people involved are anywhere from afraid to pumped up or empowered. ... We denied them the vision of tomorrow."
The FBI's Hostage Rescue Team was headed by Dick Rogers, who developed rules of engagement at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. That 11-day standoff in 1992 followed a gunfight in which a federal marshal and the 14-year-old son of separatist Randy Weaver were killed. Mr. Weaver's wife was shot by an FBI sniper while holding her baby and standing in the doorway of her home during the standoff.
Mr. Rogers has left the FBI and could not be reached for comment. As the standoff dragged on, he was ready to force a showdown with Mr. Koresh. "Being nice to him was playing right into his hands," Mr. Rogers has said.
As the days dragged into weeks, the FBI cut off the electricity, used "flash bang" devices to set off loud but harmless explosions, blared music and recordings of the sounds of rabbits being slaughtered into the compound, and directed blinding spotlights at the building during the night.
The armored vehicles, which were disarmed, were driven around the site at all hours to keep the sect members off guard.
Mr. Rogers and negotiators were often at odds during the standoff. Mr. Van Zandt, like other negotiators, said both Waco and Ruby Ridge "put negotiators in conflict with tactical teams... in both cases tactical teams won out and they ended in a way government wished they wouldn't."
Mr. Rogers endorsed using tear gas to end the standoff.
He told Justice Department interviewers in 1993: "I have never commented to any investigators concerning negotiations because I don't view it as having a lot to do with the outcome at Waco. I think given enough time, any negotiator could get them out if there was no suicide, but what is enough time?"
Beginning of the end
The tear gas proposal went to Attorney General Janet Reno on April 12 although some outside experts and FBI agents worried that the sect might commit mass suicide. Concerned about the children because of sex abuse allegations against Mr. Koresh, Ms. Reno approved the plan on April 17 after several days of debate.
Mr. Van Zandt said FBI tactics used against the Branch Davidians had only brought the group closer together and limited the possibility of surrender. "Koresh was the core of a bomb," he said.
Although Mr. Koresh's mother, Bonnie Haldeman, said her son "never, never" believed in suicide, she acknowledged that "on a human level it would have been very hard for him" to surrender.
Beginning at 6 a.m. on April 19, loudspeakers ordered sect members to walk out and surrender. Armored vehicles began to ram the building, punching holes into the structure and inserting tear gas.
Bugging devices secretly inserted into the walls of the compound recorded Branch Davidians after the attack began and before the fire saying things such as, "Have you poured it yet?" and "David said we have to get the fuel on" and, the last statement recorded,"Let's keep that fire going."
Mr. Koresh chose suicide by fire rather than surrender. His prophecy of a final battle against the government was self-fulfilling.
"The Davidians started the fires," said Mr. Van Zandt. "The only question is, did the government put them in a position to facilitate that, and the answer is probably yes."
That lesson is not lost on Sheriff Brownlowe, still patiently awaiting Mr. Gray's surrender. The former member of an anti-government militia is wanted on felony charges after biting a state trooper and trying to grab his gun during a traffic stop. He now faces weapons charges, too.
The family has a well, but no running water. They have a small generator for limited power, but the electricity was cut off long ago.
"At some point in time that's got to get old," said Sheriff Brownlowe. "They're prisoners on their own property."
It may not be too late for Mr. Gray and his family, but the Branch Davidians are a dying religious sect.
Forensics specialists could never determine how many died from gunshot wounds inflicted by the Branch Davidians or from the roaring inferno. Some burned bodies were fused together and specialists could not differentiate between them. But the Branch Davidians say 74 died in the fire, including more than 20 children. And two unborn children are believed to have died.
"All these faces of Waco are like ghosts sliding past you one at a time," said Mr. Van Zandt. "You have to say, 'Was it foolhardy or was it not? Did you die for a good cause or die uselessly?' "
E-mail dhiott@dallasnews.com
We would all be happy to hear about some realistic alternatives, but with Vernon Wayne Howell I don't believe or think there was ANY possible way he was going back into the pokey ...
(And welcome back. Again.)
They'll take my M1A1 Abrams when they pull my smoking, charred corpse out of its blackened turret
I can walk into any bank with a machine gun and everybody had better just get over it - the Constimatooshkun says so
They'll take my Stinger SAM from me when they can pry it from my cold dead fingers in the airport parking lot
I had heard, and perhaps there is someone who could verify this, that Koresh regularly left the compound to go shopping. This was before he was put under siege, of course. Couldn't he have been lured off-site to buy some grenade launchers?
The 'thin' veil (or is it a burka now?) under which you would claim 'to operate' - like this perp, I'm sure, who bit a state trooper.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight ... that's what all that staff he had was for ...
I'm with you...there is always plenty of time to die. More importantly, it is a local issue and if this is the way the local elected official chooses to handle it, fine. If the locals don't like it, vote him out next election. Sounds like he might still be out there guarding the detainees.
Of course, then again, the "true believers" here would insist on the Constimatooshkinal right of everyone to own a grenade launcher.
Do you know for sure that he didn't or are you just mocking?
And non-Caucasians count as only 3/5ths of a person for Census purposes.
(sarcasm OFF)
We can't? Uh-oh. ;-)
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