Siege Continues at Texas Cult Site : Violence: Members of sect release six more children but others are thought to be inside compound. Officials believe Davidian Branch group was tipped off to raid.

By STEPHEN BRAUN and RICHARD A. SERRANO

March 2, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

WACO, Tex. — Ringed by hundreds of armed law enforcement officials, machine-gun wielding members of a messianic religious sect released six children from their fortified compound Monday, but the concession did little to ease the state of siege that has set in since four federal agents and two cult members were killed in a chaotic firefight on Sunday.

Law enforcement authorities said that more children and women were believed to be still holed up in the 77-acre compound, a complication that has dictated caution to strategists from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and FBI who negotiated for much of the day with cult leaders.

Although federal officials remained tight-lipped about their aborted raid on the compound, several law enforcement authorities speculated Monday that the operation may have been compromised when sect members were tipped off about the impending raid. Sources also said ATF agents were surprised by withering fire from an armor-piercing .50-caliber machine gun in a four-story watch tower atop the compound.

“If they know you’re coming, you’re had,” said one federal official.

As night fell, a caller to a local television station, identifying himself as a member of the Branch Davidian cult, said sect leaders wanted all of the children and women out of the compound before the night was over. The caller gave no reason for the decision. At about the same time, a blue and white flag with the Star of David was unfurled over the roof of Mt. Carmel, the sect’s two-story compound in a lush farm field about 10 miles north of Waco.

The daylong standoff set in after the furious gun battle between cult members and about 100 ATF agents, who were trying to serve arrest and search warrants on Branch Davidian leader David Koresh, 33, for federal firearms charges. Four agents were killed and 16 were wounded. Later Sunday, two sect members were killed as they tried to shoot their way out of their bunker.

The 16 wounded agents were listed in stable condition, hospital officials said.

Three Branch Davidian members arrested after the shootout were charged Monday with attempted murder of a federal law enforcement officer and use of a firearm during commission of a violent crime, according to Jim Deatley, a spokesman in the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The six children released Monday joined four others sent out from the compound the night before. The children, who were reported to be in good health, were taken to local hospitals and placed under the care of the Texas Department of Human Services.

Talks continued through the day between federal hostage negotiators and sect members. Authorities were aided by the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, which reached the scene Monday, according to officials.

“We negotiated through the night, and they are negotiating again this morning,” said Sharon Wheeler, a spokeswoman for ATF. She declined to say who was negotiating for the cult.

Koresh, who was reportedly shot in the stomach during the gun battle, spoke with resignation Monday about his fate in a rambling interview granted to a Dallas radio station and in an ominous message left on his mother’s telephone answering machine.

A charismatic figure who earlier went by the name Vernon Howell, announced himself as the Messiah to KRLD radio in Dallas and admitted that “I’ve been shot. I’m bleeding bad.”

Koresh’s mother, Bonnie Haldeman, told the Associated Press that he had left a message on her answering machine, saying: “Hello, mama. It’s your boy. They shot me, and I’m dying, all right? But I’ll be back real soon, OK? I’ll see y’all in the skies. Bye.”

As police reinforcements and at least eight armored Bradley personnel carriers shuttled into the siege area, one ATF official acknowledged that the agency’s raiders had been “outgunned” Sunday morning by members of the sect.

“The main problem wasn’t that we were outmaneuvered or planned poorly,” said ATF spokeswoman Wheeler. “It was that we were outgunned. They were shooting through doors, which is how some of our agents were hurt.”

ATF officials said they had little choice but to launch the raid given the growing size of the Branch Davidian’s arsenal, combined with reports that children were being sexually abused. For example, informants said Koresh was regularly having sex with girls between 11 and 14.

Simply laying siege and demanding a surrender might have resulted in a scene similar to the mass suicide of followers of Jim Jones in Guyana in 1978, officials said.

“You want to draw the analogy? It was Jonestown,” ATF chief spokesman John C. Killorin told the Washington Post. “There was a high potential for that.”

But other federal officials said Monday that the decision by ATF director Stephen E. Higgins to raid the compound was apparently blown by an informant inside the cult who had been providing federal investigators with allegations that the sect was stockpiling illegal weapons.

According to federal officials, the informant had told ATF investigators that Koresh had begun drilling church members in paramilitary maneuvers with automatic weapons. And the informant also provided enough information about the sect’s fortified compound that ATF agents were able to erect a full-scale replica of the structure in an undisclosed Arkansas location and use it in secret rehearsals for the raid over the past two months.

But several federal officials suggested Monday that the informant played both sides of the fence, tipping off sect leaders about the ATF raid.

“Something must have slipped,” one federal official said. “That’s always the chance you run.”

Another official said that the ATF agents had gone to the compound expecting that sect members would not be armed as they conducted morning religious services. But as agents stormed the house, they were met almost instantly by a blizzard of gunfire--evidence that they had been relying on faulty information.

As they mounted their assault, ATF agents said they were also surprised by the rapid-fire machine gun mounted in the sect’s watchtower.

“They were definitely waiting for us,” he said, adding that investigators believed the weapon, which cannot be purchased legally, most likely was stolen from a federal military post. “There are certainly a lot of those in Texas,” he said.

A television news cameraman who witnessed the ATF’s retreat from the raid site Sunday likened the returning agents to “the German army returning to Berlin at the end of World War II.”

Dan Mulloney, a video cameraman with Waco’s KWTX television news station, said that after yelling, “No shooting! No shooting!” anxious ATF agents picked up their fallen comrades and, protecting them from further fire with bullet-proof shields, lifted the dead and wounded and ferried them back to waiting trucks.

“They carried one agent out, four of them holding one limb,” Mulloney said. “They were very agitated and somber. You could tell that he had a head wound and he had already passed.”

ATF spokeswoman Wheeler identified the four slain agents as Steve Willis, 32, of the agency’s Houston field office, and Rob Williams, 26; Conway LeBleu, 30, and Todd McKeehan, 28, all from the agency’s New Orleans field office.

How the Shootout Began

The violence erupted Sunday when federal agents stormed the compound. Authorities believe the sect received a phone tip as agents moved in.

1) 10 a.m. Sunday: Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms convoy arrives from Waco with two pickups pulling cattle trailers with as many as 50 ATF officers hidden inside each one. Local news teams tag along in a Ford Bronco.

2) ATF officers use ladders to climb the compound’s fortress-like walls but are fired upon as they reach the roofs of the buildings. Much of the firing comes from the tower in the center of the complex.

3) As ATF officers storm the front of the compound, two ATF Apache helicopters and one Sikorsky Blackhawk helicopter buzz the compound from the northeast. Gunfire from within the compound drives them back almost immediately.

4) Last shot fired almost 90 minutes later. A truce is reached so wounded and dead can be removed.