ATF Chiefs Testify on Cult Raid : Inquiry: The federal officials tell House panel that there was no chance to arrest Koresh outside the compound before the bloody Feb. 28 shootout.

By HOWARD LIBIT

April 23, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON — Federal officers never had a chance to arrest David Koresh outside his Waco, Tex., compound before he became so afraid of law enforcement that he apparently decided not to emerge again, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms officials insisted Thursday.

“Once we had gotten an arrest warrant, he had walled himself in the compound and made statements that he was never going to come out of the compound,” said David Troy, chief of the ATF’s intelligence division, defending the agency’s decision to approve the ill-fated Feb. 28 raid attempt.

There have been some reports in Waco that Koresh frequented local bars in the weeks preceding the raid and that he and others jogged for six miles the day before the raid. That initial raid, in which four officers were killed and 16 wounded, began the 51-day standoff that led to the conflagration on Monday that left as many as 86 cult members dead, 24 of them children.

Even if federal agents had arrested Koresh outside the compound, there was no guarantee that the standoff could have been averted, said ATF Director Stephen Higgins. “We still had the problem that he was surrounded by 15 to 20 people who were equally violent.”

Higgins and Troy testified before the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee, which is investigating the incident, and Troy later spoke at a press conference, where some House Democrats used the Waco episode to call for more stringent gun control laws.

Meanwhile, in separate testimony before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice, state and judiciary, which is also conducting an investigation, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno warned that a situation similar to the Waco standoff “probably could occur again.”

Reno promised to “speak with the experts and determine what if anything must be done to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.”

At least four separate groups, including House and Senate subcommittees, the Justice Department and the Treasury Department, have pledged to examine the actions of both the ATF and the FBI, which was in charge of the standoff after the ATF’s failed raid.

As the multilevel investigation proceeded, conflicting information emerged from Waco and Washington Thursday over whether some of the cult members killed in Monday’s fire had first been shot.

Justice Department spokesman Carl Stern said Wednesday that three of the bodies found had gunshot wounds. But Tarrant County Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani said state investigators had failed to find any evidence of bullet wounds among the 35 bodies that have been located.

It was unclear, however, whether Peerwani had examined the bodies referred to by the Justice Department, and he has completed only one autopsy.

In their testimony and later statements, ATF officials disclosed more information about the Feb. 28 raid, defending their decision to attack, even though ATF agents and others have said they knew Koresh had been tipped before the raid took place. An affidavit filed by one ATF agent on April 18 gave a detailed account of how Koresh responded to the news that the federal agents were on the way.

However, Troy said that an undercover agent inside the compound just 40 minutes before the raid saw no evidence that cult members were arming themselves in preparation for an attack.

After the undercover agent left the compound, ATF officers continued their surveillance from 200 yards away but saw nothing to suggest Koresh had ordered his followers to arm themselves, Troy said. “We had no way to know that inside they were passing out guns.”

Troy said the agents, who knew Koresh was aware that the ATF was investigating him, still believed they had a tactical advantage. They probably would not have proceeded with the raid had they known that cult members had armed themselves for an ambush, he said.

But ATF officials also acknowledged for the first time that they believe cult members, rather than spontaneously firing at federal agents during the initial Feb. 28 raid, actually had been lying in wait for them.