The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. WOODRUFF: Good evening. I'm Judy Woodruff in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Tuesday, we cover the day after the Waco cult disaster with FBI Director William Sessions, a Tom Bearden report on Waco, excerpts from FBI and presidential news conferences, and a discussion about decisions and second guesses. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton today defended what the FBI did yesterday at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. He said officials made every reasonable effort to end the situation without loss of life. Federal agents began sifting through the smoldering rubble of the compound today. They said it would be some time before the wreckage cooled enough to recover bodies. As many as 86 people, including 24 children and Cult Leader David Koresh are believed to have been inside when the building burned to the ground. At least nine escaped, four were hospitalized and the other five were taken into custody. Mr. Clinton spoke this afternoon at the White House about the FBI's actions.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I was informed of the plan to end the siege. I discussed it with Attorney General Reno. I asked the questions I thought it was appropriate for me to ask. I then told her to do what she thought was right, and I take full responsibility for the implementation of the decision. Yesterday's action ended in a horrible human tragedy. Mr. Koresh's response to the demands for his surrender by federal agents was to destroy himself and murder the children who were his captives as well as all the other people who were there who did not survive. He killed those he controlled, and he bears the ultimate responsibility for the carnage that ensued.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Clinton said he was ordering a full investigation to see if anything could have been done differently. Members of Congress said they would hold hearings.

REP. HENRY HYDE, [R] Illinois: We don't want to second guess, but, on the other hand, the worst possible result happened from this operation, a lot of lives lost, and so a lot of questions arise as to whether this was the most appropriate course of action to be taken, what other options existed, what other possibilities have been explored since bringing the families more deeply into play and other many questions which occur to all of us.

REP. CHARLES SCHUMER, [D] New York: Now there is going to be a lot of second guessing: What should have happened? What went wrong, et cetera. Those are legitimate questions, but I think we have to wait and withhold judgment on that until we get all the facts.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have much more on this story including a Newsmaker interview with FBI Director Williams Sessions right after the News Summary. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Inmates holding five guards hostage inside an Ohio prison were told the state will review some prison rules. Prison officials used loud speakers today to communicate with inmates. They said there would be no retaliation against the prisoners and that their civil rights would be protected. One guard and seven prisoners have been killed since the rebellion began ten days ago. Also today, officials let medics enter the prison and allowed three prisoners to meet with a lawyer.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton met with is top advisers about Bosnia today. Sec. of State Christopher earlier told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee air strikes on Serbian physicians were a possible option. He said such action would only be taken in coordination with U.S. allies. Heavy fighting raged in Central and Southwestern Bosnia today. It was between Muslims and Croats who had been recent allies against the Serbs. We have a report from Jane Bennett-Powell of Independent Television News. It begins with the fighting in the Central Bosnian town of Vitez.

SPOKESMAN: This guy here says he's got about four people that were killed in this building that are still under the rubble.

MS. BENNETT-POWELL: The destruction of Vitez in which 200 people have died has continued for five days. These pictures filmed from the relative safety of a British armored vehicle show the damage brought by Howitzers, rockets and mortars in the heaviest fighting between Croats and Muslims since the war started a ear ago.

SPOKESMAN: We're being very cautious. There's a lot of sniper fire going on at the moment.

MS. BENNETT-POWELL: As the fighters dodged the bullets, they passed what was left of the bomb which exploded near the mosque two nights ago. Gen. Morrillon is reported to have been in Vitez to try arranging a new cease-fire, though earlier cease-fires broke down. And last night, as tonight, sporadic fighting's continued. Road links are severed between the Adriatic and the North and Eastern Bosnia. In Zenica fighting between Croats and Muslims has been fierce, with artillery barrages and small arms fire. A shell yesterday in the market killed 13 people. The U.N.'s High Commission for Refugees has evacuated half of its team of aid workers so dangerous is the situation. Two vital food convoys trying to go North to Tuzla have been held up. This route carries 80 percent of Tuzla's supplies. At the hospital in Tuzla, children brought in from the besieged town of Srebrenica are to be sent to Germany for treatment. More than 400 casualties were brought into the town in the airlift, and doctors are worried they can't treat the children properly. Those here in Tuzla are dependent, as is the town, on supplies from the South, and the road is blocked.

MR. LEHRER: NATO reported the first verified violation of the Bosnian no-fly zone today. A statement issued in Rome said two U.S. fighters spotted a helicopter flying near the main Bosnian Serb air base. The helicopter landed shortly after the sighting.

MS. WOODRUFF: Chances of a compromise between the Clinton administration and Senate Republicans over the President's economic stimulus package appeared dim today. Republicans refused to end their filibuster. Last week, the President said he would reduce the plan by $4 billion, an offer rejected by Senate Republicans. The standoff between the two sides was the main topic in today's Senate debate.

SEN. GEORGE MITCHELL, Majority Leader: I hope my colleagues will join in supporting this bill, an important part of the President's program. He's been the President for less than three months. They don't want to give him a chance. That's what this is all about. This is an effort to embarrass President Clinton, to make him look bad in his first couple of months in office. And I think we ought to rise above that.

SEN. MARK HATFIELD, [R] Oregon: It's not to embarrass the President. It's because we believe that we have reached a day of reckoning of which we as a party have participated in bringing about this day in the past and the Democrats have done as well participated in bringing this day to past but this is the day of accountability.

MS. WOODRUFF: In economic news, the Commerce Department reported today construction of new houses and apartments dropped 4.6 percent in March. It was down in every region but the West. The Department blamed bad weather in much of the country.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the day after the fire near Waco. FOCUS - THE DAY AFTER

MS. WOODRUFF: We go first and only tonight to the tragedy that occurred yesterday in Waco, Texas. Within moments after the Branch Davidian compound was consumed in flames, questions were raised about the government's decision to move in. Those questions turned today into a flood of criticism that the FBI made a terrible miscalculation. We'll hear some of what government officials had to say today in their own defense. We will talk with the FBI's top man, William Sessions, and we'll debate whether it was right or wrong. But first, Correspondent Tom Bearden spent the day with people closest to the disaster, and he filed this report from Waco.

SPOKESMAN: I wish to welcome you to this service of prayer and lament in response to yesterday's tragedy outside of this community.

MR. BEARDEN: Waco residents gathered at an inter-denominational prayer service to mourn for the people who died at the Branch Davidian compound yesterday and the federal agents who were killed there 52 days ago.

JO PENDLETON: We weep for the children. The 10 billion words that have been written, the speculations that have been made, the fingers of blame that have been pointed all make no difference here. They are empty and meaningless as we mourn the loss of each child's life. I read about a one-year-old baby dying in the flames and I remember my children as babies, and God, my heart cries out.

MAYOR ROBERT SHEEHY, Waco: I'm sure that you were, as I was, unbelieving as we watched that fire on TV. I happened to be in a tall building, and I could look out and see the fire there at the TV and look out and see the flames even from where I was downtown. And it was such a sense of unreality but it is a fact. It has occurred. We have had the tragic deaths, the tragic waste of young life, and now we shall mourn.

MR. BEARDEN: Texas Governor Ann Richards attended the service. Her hometown is near Waco. Afterwards, she warned against second guessing federal authorities.

GOV. ANN RICHARDS, Texas: There were too many circumstances that we had no knowledge or control over. I think we all wish the outcome had been different. But we are not in a position or place, I don't think, to determine at this time what should or should not have been done, nor can we give what we would have done had we been in charge.

MR. BEARDEN: But a relative of one of the Branch Davidian members, Balenda Ganem, is highly critical of the FBI. Her son, 24- year-old David Tibidow, the third man to exit the van, appeared in federal court today. He was one of only nine cult members who escaped from yesterday's inferno with their lives. Ganem says she and other family members repeatedly offered to help the FBI resolve the standoff peacefully and were rebuffed.

BALENDA GANEM, Cult Survivor's Mother: We were hoping with our intervention to create a situation of understanding and love and conflict resolution so that our people inside the compound who already had a fairly, fairly good frame of reference to their familial outside world would be able to draw upon that and say, I don't really want to be here, it's okay for this to end now. While it's very easy to speak very angrily, it's very difficult to take a step back and try to look at it analytically, especially for me, because I made many, many efforts to, to reach the FBI, reach the White House, to reach Janet Reno, to reach William Sessions, to try to make them understand that the program that I spoke of and the program that other psychological professionals who have lived in cults and worked with cults and escaped themselves from cults and got a particular kind of help worked very hard to try to make them aware of that, and my anger again is at a system at this point in time that doesn't allow another alternative.

MR. BEARDEN: Do you blame the FBI?

BALENDA GANEM: I think it's really unfair to just start pointing the fingers of blame. The FBI have a program that they've used again and again and again, regardless of whether it works or not. I blame the procedure. I blame the program, and I blame the absolute stubbornness of the FBI to not be willing to consider something else seriously. I think that what we had in this whole situation from day one were two very hostile, angry, armed survival-oriented factions and no humanity in-between the two.

MR. BEARDEN: Both the FBI and the Koreshians?

BALENDA GANEM: They hated each other. No understanding, very little base for trust, for working together. They needed an intermediary, and I felt that that intermediary would have been a team of cult awareness professionals and a team of families. If we had been allowed the opportunity to try and had failed, then we would have had no choice but to have stood back and say, it is in your hands and there's nothing we can do. Our anger, our disgust, our humiliation, our great shame is in the fact that we were not allowed the opportunity to try.

MS. WOODRUFF: The FBI's man in charge of the Waco operation held a news conference today to try to explain what happened and why. Microphones weren't able to pick up all the day after questions hurled at special agent Jeff Jamar. But here are some highlights:

MS. WOODRUFF: Question: Was the FBI responsible for yesterday's tragedy at the Waco compound?

JEFF JAMAR, FBI: David Koresh controlled those people's lives, absolutely, absolutely. He's the one responsible for their deaths.

REPORTER: Would they have died that day had you not gone in there?

JEFF JAMAR: I don't know. Would they have died in July, August, September? I think this was his plan from the beginning. It's clear to us. It would have happened 30 days ago if we would have gone in there, so if you want to, to say, well, if the FBI would have done nothing, these people would still be alive, that's probably true. For how much longer would they have been alive? Are we prepared to wait that --

REPORTER: Say a month, say a year.

JEFF JAMAR: We were not prepared to do it, and our judgment was that we could do that effectively.

MS. WOODRUFF: Question: Why weren't better preparations made for the possibility of a fire.

JEFF JAMAR: The reason the fire trucks were not allowed to go in immediately was the firemen's safety. It's that simple. There were people in there with automatic weapons ready to fire. The other point is there wasn't water there, where you had to pump it out of the other thing. The possibility of fire, suicide by fire, in those conditions, if we'd have had fire trucks lying around that place with all the water in the world, with that wind, I don't think we could have slowed that fire down one iota.

MS. WOODRUFF: Question: What happened inside the compound yesterday -- Did people try to get out?

JEFF JAMAR: We were of the opinion that deep inside the compound -- you've seen your pictures -- that there's a concrete structure standing there -- we are of the opinion that they were inside that structure and that they were able to survive in there even with the gas because maybe it protected them from the gas, maybe it was sealed. They were, I think, very disciplined to put their masks on. The people had masks. They were observed with masks. I think they gathered in an area, a central area where the impact of the gas was limited. I think the people were in such control, absolute control, that very few of them resisted any instruction until the very end, and there's appearance, like I said earlier, that maybe some of them were forced, forced to stay. Some of the people came out, and the people in the Bradleys were given instructions. Example: Two of the people, one person was lying upon the roof and wouldn't come out. The Bradley even pulled up to talk him, to try to get him to come down. He finally fell off the roof and exposing themselves to danger, the HRT people came out and put him out -- he was on fire - - and saved him. Another woman came out that appeared to be disoriented. She went back into the compound. They got out and went to get her. So there was constant communication with everybody trying to get them to come out.

MS. WOODRUFF: Question: Why did the FBI decide to make their move yesterday?

JEFF JAMAR: Timing was based on long discussions and several days of planning. The -- when the approval was obtained from Washington finally, we're all agreed on that the plan that was agreed upon, we decided that when's the best time to implement it. We thought the longer time passed more, all the areas that we were concerned about would become more and more complicated.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton spoke about the Waco tragedy in the White House Rose Garden this afternoon. He read a statement and then took questions from reporters. Here's an excerpt.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I asked a number of questions, and the first question I asked is: Why now? We have waited seven weeks. Why now? The reasons I was given were the following: No. 1, that there was a limit to how long the federal authorities could maintain with their limited resources the quality and intensity of coverage by experts there. They might be needed in other parts of the country. No. 2, that the people who had reviewed this had never seen a case quite like this one before, and they were convinced that no progress had been made recently and no progress was going to be made through the normal means of getting Koresh and the other cult members to come out. No. 3, that the danger of their doing something to themselves or to others was likely to increase not decrease with the passage of time. And No. 4, that they had reason to believe that the children who were still inside the compound were being abused significantly, as well as being forced to live in unsanitary and unsafe conditions. So for those reasons they wanted to move at that time. The second question I asked the attorney general is whether they had given consideration to all the things that could go wrong and evaluated them against what might happen that was good. She said that the FBI personnel on the scene and those working with them were convinced that the chances of bad things happening would only increase with the passage of time. The third question I asked was: Has the military been consulted? As soon as the initial tragedy came to light in Waco, that's the first thing I asked to be done because it was obvious that this was not a typical law enforcement situation. Military people were then brought in to help to analyze the situation and some of the problems that were presented by it. And so I asked if the military had been consulted. The attorney general said that they had and that they were in basic agreement that there was only one minor tactical difference of opinion between the FBI and the military, something that both sides thought was not of overwhelming significance. Having asked those questions and gotten those answers, I said that if she thought it was the right thing to do, that she should proceed and that I would support it, and I stand by that today.

MR. LEHRER: And that brings us now to a Newsmaker interview with the director of the FBI, William Sessions. Mr. Director, welcome.

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: Good afternoon.

MR. LEHRER: From the FBI's point of view, is the President offering the kind of support you feel you want and deserve?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: I think it's very strong and very positive, very factual, and yes, it's totally appropriate.

MR. LEHRER: He has accepted responsibility. Attorney General Reno has accepted responsibility. Do you as well accept responsibility for what happened?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: Of course. As director of the FBI, I have the responsibility to review those plans, to take that information that came to me, to review it in a fashion that was acceptable and presentable to the attorney general, all of which was done.

MR. LEHRER: Now did the fact that -- what caused the plan to be brought to you in the first place? Was this something that you initiated, or was it the agents on the ground in Waco? Give us the step by step please, sir, as to what caused this plan to be drawn up in the first place.

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: Well, that's very fundamental to the understanding of what the FBI did, Jim. From the very beginning, the intent was to reduce the perimeter around that compound. For instance, early on it would not have been possible for us to even become within 300 yards of the building, itself, without having encountered a hostile reaction from Koresh, himself, or the threat of fire or the threat of blowing vehicles 40 feet in the air. As we gradually reduced the perimeter, as we gradually had negotiations and talked with them and put our vehicles into place and gradually gained the confidence of the people inside the compound, there were people who came out, there were people who said that they would be, they would be delivered out, and they were. We got the children out. We got the dogs out. We got a grand total of thirty-six people out, plus the nine who came out yesterday. So over the period of time there was a gradual working back and forth. The ability though to reduce the perimeters of where were up right by the house we removed vehicles from up there. We were right by and bumped into the house inadvertently on occasion in moving cars and equipment from up there. So to be able to do that meant that we gradually reduced ourselves down from hundreds of yards out to being right there in armored vehicles up by the house. Now there was no place else to go to reduce the constrictors and the strictures on those people other than to reduce what was available to them in the environment inside the house, to actually get them to come out. All those negotiations, they still resulted in those 95 people still being in that house, not coming out, not being amenable to law enforcement warrants for arrest or warrants for searches. It appeared that we were at a deadlock. So we decided that in order to do that, it was necessary to somehow make the environment in the house more hostile, more less inhabitable, and we did exactly that.

MR. LEHRER: What was the hurry about getting them out of there?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: Well, there was no hurry per se, but they had been in there for 51 days. There were 51 days where the promises had not been kept by Mr. Koresh. There were 51 days where the circumstances were deteriorating inside. There were no facilities inside. There were apparently dead people inside.

MR. LEHRER: From the original assault?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: From the original assault back on February 28th, that's correct. So actually it meant that at some point those people were going to surrender to authorities. There had never been a promise kept. You'll recall that Mr. Koresh said on Day Two that if we would play the 58-minute tape or facilitate that being played --

MR. LEHRER: On radio, that audio tape.

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: -- he would actually come out. And he promised in the tape, he said, I will come out, I will lead my people out, and we will do it in this fashion. Those kinds of promises were made in varying forms over the period of the weeks, seven weeks.

MR. LEHRER: But when your folks came to you and said, okay, we think the time is up, we have to take an overt act of some kind, 51 days or whatever, what was the rationale for doing it now?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: The rationale, Jim, was the continuation. It was the continuation of the bringing of the pressure to actually bring those people out safely, bring them out without harm to themselves or to our agent. You have to remember that there was a barrage of firearm, fire power brought to bear against those agents that killed four agents of the Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, and injured fifteen. There were explosives in there. You saw that thing explode yesterday. It was a conflagration of the first magnitude. We had to be sure that we could bring them out safely, that we would actually get them out and we would not also risk the lives of our own agents.

MR. LEHRER: Did you ever consider at that point the idea that this thing would, you would just hold the stalemate as long as was necessary, or were you always operating under the state of mind, we, the FBI, have to do something to get these people out of here, get this thing resolved?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: Well, I look on this as part of a continuation of a negotiation setting. For instance, with everything we did to make it possible for those people to come and talk with us, there were days that would go by where Koreshwould not talk with us at all, or he would preach to us by the hour, instead of negotiating. We wanted to take those people over whom he had control and bring them out. The only way to do that was to actually continue talking, to continue to have the agreements that could be made to actually bring them out, and that was not happening.

MR. LEHRER: You saw the tape that we just ran, the interview with Tom Bearden, our man in Waco --

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: -- and the relative said, we were prepared, "we" meaning the relatives of some folks that were in there, we were prepared and anxious to act as intermediaries between the FBI and Koresh. And she said you all declined the invitation. Is that true, and, if so, why?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: I wrote down the words that she said. She said, "hostile, angry, armed camps." We were not hostile and we were not angry. Quite the contrary. We were wanting very much for there to be an agreement that they would actually come out. The hostage rescue team's responsibility and their motto is to save lives.

MR. LEHRER: This was 50 FBI people, is that right?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: Those are the FBI people who are the hostage rescue team, approximately that. That's correct. I think they demonstrated that later on. You saw that they exited vehicles to go and save people, to try to get people. The one woman who was going back into the compound, they actually went and even though she was resisting and fighting, they saved her life. The same thing was true of the man on the roof. He wanted us to go away. When he eventually fell off the roof, we got him, and he was on fire, I believe, and we saved his life. Now the point is that the hostage rescue team was there to facilitate those people coming out safely.

MR. LEHRER: Now what is this business about this hostage rescue team was tired and needed to be retrained or needed to be replaced, and that was what caused the impetus to do this thing yesterday?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: It was a consideration. It was given the fact that they had been there since February 28th. They had moved in that second -- pardon me -- February 29th. Well, the first of March, on Monday, the very first day after the event. They had been there. Their ability to perform what they do is to be able to do extremely well timed operations. They were at a point I think where in the next week or ten days they would be at a point where they needed to be coming out. They needed to be given relief. They had been in those sniper positions. They had been in very difficult circumstances with cold and rain and the elements camped out. It was a tough circumstance. They needed to be relieved. That's correct. But as to the --

MR. LEHRER: Was that a determining factor?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: No, it was not a determining factor but it was one of the factors that they at some point were at the edge of that envelope where they needed to be actually brought out and relieved.

MR. LEHRER: And the, the end result of this was clearly not what you all had in mind. You wanted these people brought out peacefully and you wanted these people brought out alive. In retrospect, we realize there's a lot of questions that have to be asked and answered, but at this stage of the game what was the piece of information that you did not have or the piece of misinformation that you did have that caused this thing to go so badly?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: I don't think anybody who was sitting there looking at the television screen when those fires were lit had any contemplation that that would happen. There were fires lit at three different parts of that compound with oil, kerosene or some, something that would enhance the capability of the fire, and the place simply exploded in fire, and you saw it happen. I don't think anybody contemplated that he would actually take and destroy those people, in effect, murder those people.

MR. LEHRER: So that was really, you all did not believe that either David Koresh wanted to die himself or that if he did, he could cause these other people to go with him. That was basically it, was it not?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: We knew that they were very strong adherents of his and followed very strongly. Everything that we've seen, heard from anybody, says that those people believed in him, and they would follow him, and he was extremely demanding, but every single analysis made of his writing, of what he had said, of what he had said to his lawyers, of what the behavioral science people said, what the psychologists thought, the psycho linguists thought, what the psychiatrists believed, was that this man was not suicidal, that he would not take his life, and certainly no one contemplated that he would actually put those children at risk. Quite the contrary, that risk in that way, that is to actually kill them, that he might take at some point and have a break out that would involve people carrying the children as shields, knowing that we would not, would not harm the children, and that we were determined to be able to bring them out peacefully. The fact is that he fired a tremendous number of rounds at our people the day that it happened and it was --

MR. LEHRER: When they were up there, they were up tear gassing?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: When they were up there before they put the tear gas in, before they were there. We did everything possible to be sure that we did not deal with those children in a way that was to bring the gas to them, that would waken them out of their sleep when they were being tear gassed, to be sure that we did something that would allow them to find a way out. For instance, the breaking down of the front door, the pushing in of the front door was to provide them an exit from and escape from the gas because the reaction to CS, that is, the tear gas, is normally to get away from it, to provide a way to do that, and certainly that's what we contemplated.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Sessions, the questions about this have just begun. You're here tonight. Ms. Reno was here last night, and you have been other places. She's been other places. The President was asked today about it. Congress is going to have hearings on it. From the FBI's point of view, from your point of view, what are the major questions that you want answers to?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: Well, I think first of all the mind of man probably cannot think of all the things in the minds of the Congress and the people who go through and re-examine it piece by piece are asking. I think they need to know that within the context of the work that we were doing that having previously dealt with those circumstances where we were trying to extract people who were captive that we have gone through it a number of times. We were successful at Oakdale, Louisiana, with the prison riots down there, extracted 25 people in Oakdale, 125 in Atlanta. The point is that we've dealt with these things and feel like we know what we are doing. But there may be questions, and I think as the attorney general indicated, we are, we are prepared to respond affirmatively and to answer fully every question we can that's put to us.

MR. LEHRER: You, lay people are all suggesting, hey, wait aminute, this, the original assault by ATF, Federal Alcohol & Tobacco Firearms agents, turned out badly. Four agents, their own agents died. We don't know how many people. How -- do we know yet how many people inside the place died in that original assault?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: No, we do not.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. Then there was the action yesterday. More people died. So there have been. This was a failure of something, was it not?

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: Well, there is a successful side to it. There are 45 people who are alive today because we were out there and because we did not simply let it sit and fester. We did not allow what could have continued to happen over a period of months, that is, those people would continue to defy a court order, would continue to defy law enforcement in carrying out their proper role, would continue to be a danger to the community in which they lived, would continue to -- if you looked at it as a possibility -- to escape from that compound and thereby escape any possibility of being tried for the crimes which they had committed, that is, the murder of four federal agents and the wounding of many others. It simply had to be at some time resolved but it was a constant reducing of the perimeter and the constant pressure on them to actually come out and to submit to lawful authority. And that's what we were attempting to do, and that's what we believe we're accomplishing.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Sessions, thank you very much.

DIRECTOR SESSIONS: My pleasure.

MR. LEHRER: Judy. FOCUS - SECOND GUESSING

MS. WOODRUFF: Was the government's decision to move in aggressively yesterday the right one? We hear five views on that now. Robert McGuire is the former New York city police commissioner and the president of Kroll Associates, an international securities firm. Frank McGuire is editor of Counterterrorism and Security Intelligence, a bi-weekly newsletter on terrorism. Michael Langone is a psychologist and the executive director of the American Family Foundation, a non-profit organization that gathers and distributes information on cults. He joins us from Naples, Florida. And we are also joined by two members of Congress who are on committees that will be investigating the events in Waco. Congresswoman Pat Schroeder is a Democrat from Colorado and a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Sen. Arlen Specter is a Republican from Pennsylvania and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Gentlemen, and Congresswoman Schroeder, we all well know in retrospect that what happened was a terrible disaster. It was a mistake. Even the people who were involved are saying, attorney general Reno said yesterday that they wished it hadn't happened. But based on what we know that the FBI and others who were involved and made the decision ahead of time, did they do the right thing based on the information they had at the time, Robert McGuire?

MR. ROBERT McGUIRE: I think it's a hard question to answer. I think the first issue is strategically was it a correct decision to decide to go in at this time, or should you have continued to try to just contain the situation and wait them out, which is a classic hostage negotiating situation for law enforcement. The second question, if you resolve that in the affirmative that you're going to go in for whatever reason, I would ask the question how much intelligence we had in terms of going in. Tactically, was this the best way to do it? Were you really upping the ante and reducing the perimeter and causing them, giving them enough time to make, you know, to take action, or should you have gone in in a more classic way that the Delta Force would use or the SAS? And you can't --

MS. WOODRUFF: What does that mean?

MR. ROBERT McGUIRE: That means that you go in in the middle of the night with percussion grenades, lights, cameras, action, and within fifty or twenty seconds it's all over, and everybody is neutralized. And you use overwhelming force to basically contain this situation.

MS. WOODRUFF: You know there's going to be some loss of life in the situation.

MR. ROBERT McGUIRE: No, you don't know because in many, many cases, the fact that you go in with such overwhelming force and so quickly basically reduces the possibility of catastrophe or casualties to a minimum. We do know, in retrospect, with all of the benefit of hindsight here, that the escalation with a person who has a cult mentality who had already killed four of our agents, who was heavily armed, did create an environment where unfortunately there was tragedy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Frank McGuire, in Washington, based on what the FBI knew at the time, did they make the right decision?

MR. FRANK McGUIRE: I think they did. Mr. McGuire's comment that if you go in with overwhelming force you might be successful, I would direct him to videotapes of the February 28th raid that ATF tried to mount. I think the FBI had no choice. I think in the real world there was only one thing they could do, and that was let's get this finished, and I think that Agent Ricks' words, this matter is done. I think that's about the way that a law enforcement agency has to look at it. But I think they did the right thing by punching holes in the wall and effectively telling those people inside that the protection that they perceived from their compound did not exist and there was lots of fresh air, and if they wanted to, they could walk out.

MS. WOODRUFF: Dr. Michael Langone, did the FBI do the right thing based on what they knew?

DR. LANGONE: I think based on their understanding of what they know, they did the right thing. The question was whether or not they had some false assumptions guiding their decision making. For example, was this really a hostage situation, or was it something different? Those of us who have studied cults saw it more as a cult crisis and a cult situation, rather than a classical hostage taking situation.

MS. WOODRUFF: Can you explain what you mean? What's the difference?

DR. LANGONE: Well, in a hostage situation your hostages don't want to be there. They want to be rescued and are going to cooperate with rescuers. In a cult situation, at least a large number of them are dedicated to the leader and are going to follow them and are going to resist any rescue attempt. So it seems to me right there you've got a major distinction. Whether or not there was a solution is questionable, and I think it's unfair to put the blame just on the FBI because ultimately it was David Koresh who was calling the shots, and it's quite possible that no matter what the had done there would have been a tragedy.

MS. WOODRUFF: But when you say if they had treated it, for example, if they had done what you suggested and treated it more as a cult situation, as you put it, what should they have done differently in the days preceding what happened yesterday?

DR. LANGONE: Well, some of the things that I had questions about, and not knowing all the facts, I don't want to come on too strong in my criticism, but the psychological warfare tactics, the keeping them awake with lights and Tibetan monks chanting and so on, as a cult researcher, this made me wonder because it seemed to me that the goal ought to be to try to enhance rationality and this kind of harassment tactics would, would be more likely to make David Koresh hear voices and his followers believe those voices. I also am inclined to think that they perhaps should have worked more closely with the families who in a sense have a more direct link to the psyches of the people involved. Whether or not Koresh would have allowed them, I don't know. It's quite possible if they had tried that he would have prevented it because it might have been too threatening to his control.

MS. WOODRUFF: Frank McGuire, what about some of the points Michael Langone is making, that in the days leading up to this the FBI could have done some things differently?

MR. FRANK McGUIRE: Well, I think the federal government as a whole could have done some things differently years in advance. David Koresh left a trail of criminal behavior behind him going back to at least 1987, when the Australian government complained to the United States government that he was taking under aged females from Australia to the United States. He was under investigation in Southern California by the Immigration & Naturalization Service, and they lost track of him apparently when he moved to Texas, and I don't know why it took 1992 to bring about something that should have been handled much more discreetly in 1987. So I think that a lot of these points sound very good, but I think that in the real world they just won't work because the FBI was not running a day center down there. They were handed a problem that was a mess when they got it. And I think the problem is not necessarily whether the FBI was wrong or right by taking the tanks in there, but why was it in that condition when they were given it?

MS. WOODRUFF: Robert McGuire, what about that?

MR. ROBERT McGUIRE: Well, I think right now we're analyzing what occurred yesterday unfortunately, and these are very valid points, but I don't think they address the issue of the narrow, you know, resolution of this problem, which we know resulted in a catastrophe and a terrible tragedy, the loss of human lives. There were lots of innocent kids in there. Some of the adults arguably were not innocent. But I get concerned, and I oversaw this for the New York Police Department obviously, and nobody wants to be second guessed, but I think issues do get raised as to whether it was an appropriate strategy to decide to go in. And I mentioned before, what was the intelligence that we had? Were we using, you know, the most modern electronic technology to determine what was going on inside?

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, all we know is what we've said so far. Among other things, they've said that they have reason to believe the children were being abused, but they haven't been specific about that, and they've also said that the evidence was inconclusive.

MR. ROBERT McGUIRE: Yeah, well, I guess I'm a conservative person. If I don't know what I'm going to face, then I'm not going to move. I'm going to wait until I get sufficient information to enable me to make judgments about how they're going to react, and I think we have the capability electronically to have picked up conversations within the compound to be able to give us some idea as to what their thinking was. I reiterate what the doctor said. This is cult mentality. You're dealing with people. You have to worry about the Jones type, Jonestown type situation. More importantly, in the normal case where you're going to take a compound like this and I defer to others, I would have gone in in the middle of the nightvery quickly.

MS. WOODRUFF: Yeah. You should explain.

MR. ROBERT McGUIRE: And I think to escalate it up and to reduce their options gave them either the ability to surrender or doing something violent to themselves. The director said at one point he didn't contemplate fire. I think that's fair enough, but you could contemplate suicide. You could contemplate massive use of their firearms and their weapons.

MS. WOODRUFF: Isn't that the case, Michael Langone, that the FBI had reason to expect, or did they have reason to expect that the people inside would, would take some suicidal course of action?

DR. LANGONE: Yeah. It seems to me that given that the history of cult groups, that that should have been a possibility. Now there's certainly no way of predicting whether or not it's going to happen and even really assessing with any reliability what the probability is, but I think that it should have been factored in as a possibility and the contingencies should have been made. I mean, I'm not a law enforcement expert, but it seems to me just on psychological grounds that if they were going to put Koresh in a situation where he had the choice of either surrendering and being humiliated or doing something violent that they would want to try to act quickly so that he wouldn't have time to do something violent.

MS. WOODRUFF: Frank McGuire, this whole notion -- Janet Reno, the attorney general, brought this up yesterday when she first appeared in Washington to explain to try to answer questions about this, this notion that the hostage rescue team who came to Texas from Quantico, Virginia, was tired, they'd been there 50 days without a break, they were wearing down, is that a legitimate argument for them to be using?

MR. FRANK McGUIRE: Well, it may be a legitimate argument Judy. It works both ways. If they were tired, so was David Koresh and everyone in sight, so you can emotionally and psychologically exhaust somebody. I would be surprised if the FBI made its decisions based on whether or not the hostage rescue team was tired. Perhaps they did. I suspect that it was just one thing in a great many ingredients in the equation.

MS. WOODRUFF: How about that point?

MR. ROBERT McGUIRE: You have to understand. You're dealing, you know, with professionals. You're dealing with people of courage. You're dealing with people whose agents had been killed and it's terrible to sit here and second guess. There's no venality attached to this process. These are perhaps mistakes in judgment by professionals, and we have to keep that in mind. I, I would not accept an argument obviously that the fatigue of a hostage negotiating team is even remotely a concern with respect to a situation like this. There are hostage negotiators in police departments around the country. Obviously, they would have been flown in, could have been used as back-up. You have to have some continuity with respect to hostage negotiating, but I think you could have worked other people. And the Bureau, itself, probably had hostage negotiators. I cannot believe that that was a major consideration. I agree with Frank.

MS. WOODRUFF: Frank McGuire, and what about the argument that's been made that they could have just waited? I mean, obviously, what we've just been talking about is relevant to that, but say they could have brought in relief somehow and just waited David Koresh out.

MR. FRANK McGUIRE: Well, wait for how long? He'd had 51 days. He killed four federal agents. He's had all sorts of supplies and water inside apparently and ammunition. At some point any government at any level has to exercise its sovereignty, and at some point the government has to say, this property is inside the state of Texas, it is inside the United States of America. This man has killed, or his people have killed four federal agents. At some point you have to say enough is enough. And I would not have been as patient as Mr. Ricks was in Waco.

MS. WOODRUFF: Does he have a point, Robert McGuire?

MR. ROBERT McGUIRE: I respectfully disagree. I think under the circumstances you just wait Koresh out or you get sufficient intelligence that you know he's going to be doing damage to himself or his people or he's going to be taking some other action which requires you to go in, and at that point I guess I would -- and I'm just one person -- I would have argued for a different tactical approach to not allow him to escalate the violence but to neutralize him immediately and to reduce down the possibility of casualties, and then that is the normal response here. I think the issue of reducing perimeters and reducing options, as the doctor said, and putting him in a position of either surrendering or doing something violent is probably a major question that has to be looked at here.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, speaking of questions that have to be looked at, let me bring in our two members of Congress who've been listening patiently to all this. Congresswoman Schroeder, as you listen to what, this discussion tonight and what representatives of the FBI, the President and others have said, are you satisfied with the government's reasoning here?

REP. SCHROEDER: From what I've heard so far I definitely am. I mean, I keep going back to the premise that if I live in a neighborhood and there's someone there that we could put all these pieces of evidence together that's a threat to that neighborhood and it's so serious you can get a search warrant, then let's assume that the government officials, law enforcement officials show up to search that place and guess what happens? They kill some of the officials and everything else. They then wait and they're very nice and they try all sorts of things for 51 days, but at some point, at some point you have to act. And I think that sometimes listening to these debates makes American taxpayers crazy! They wonder what in the world is going on with us. But let's face it. They had search warrants. They knew that this man could be very dangerous. He had huge, huge inventories of weapons as we know. They knew that there were all sorts of problems. They show up. You have four killed, many injured, and they wait for fifty-one days. How long do we want to fund this kind of an operation and what kind of obligation do we owe this man who's being disruptive of a community? It seems like we owe something to the law enforcement officers too.

MS. WOODRUFF: Senator Specter, the Congresswoman has raised a pretty fundamental question here, the concern of taxpayers, how long do we want to fund an operation like this, versus the possibility that something like what happened yesterday would happen?

SEN. SPECTER: I think the question of funding is not at all important in the scheme of things. The critical question is how you get the job done, and the conversations which have been going on for the better part of an hour now raise a lot of questions, a lot of hypotheticals, and I for one am not ready to make a judgment based on what I know as of this moment. When Mr. McGuire said, and I try to write this down, the government must exercise sovereignty, that's Mr. Frank McGuire, I disagree with that totally. This is not a question for government authority. This is a question for discretion and judgment, and maybe the Department of Justice and the attorney general and the FBI all acted entirely properly and maybe they didn't. And I don't think you will know that until you get some detailed answers and perhaps look at some documents. The media has a tendency, if you'll pardon me, to rush to judgment. Already there are a lot of critics and the editorial writers are coming to conclusions, and I know that this incident is not going to have the news value tomorrow or Thursday or Friday and certainly not in three or four weeks, which it does today. But the important aspect of what happened near Waco, Texas, in my opinion, it's a horrible situation, we're grieving about the loss of life. And the most important factor is: How do we prevent its recurrence? And the Judiciary Committees in the House and Senate have the job of providing for intelligence gathering and personnel, and we ought to take a look at exactly what happened. We live in a dangerous world, the World Trade Center, et cetera, et cetera, and try to prevent recurrences.

MS. WOODRUFF: Congresswoman Schroeder, you heard what the Senator said, that what's really important is preventing this from happening again, and he dismissed the notion that funding really should be even considered a relevant issue.

REP. SCHROEDER: Well, I happen to think funding is a very relevant issue. There's just not enough money to do everything that we should be doing. Now, look, for all the days that these people are away from home and they're doing that, that costs us a lot of money, and it should be. We also owe an awful lot to the people who put their lives on the live to protect us, the citizens. You see, I guess where the Senator and I disagree is I think the No. 1 thing a government is to do is to protect its citizens. And here we have all these people who are doing it and trying to do it professionally. Now there may have been some mistakes and we ought to look at the facts, but I think to say they rushed to judgment in 51 days, after all of this, I, I just don't understand where that's coming from. I must also say I am terribly refreshed by having an attorney general -- and it's the first time I can remember in years -- who walked out and at least said, I made the decision and I'll take the hit; if it was wrong, come after me. And I think that's, we haven't seen that in a long time, and that may be the best thing that came out of this.

MS. WOODRUFF: Sen. Specter, are you saying there was a rush to judgment here?

SEN. SPECTER: I'm saying there was a rush to judgment by the news media. I'm not saying there was a rush to judgment by the Justice Department or FBI after waiting for 51 days. I'm saying when you pick up the morning paper and see an editorial which comes to a lot of condemnatory statements knowing relatively little and a lot of criticism, I think that's the rush to judgment.

MS. WOODRUFF: Frank McGuire, let me come back to you. You heard Sen. Specter say that he, he disagrees with your point that government needs to exercise sovereignty at some point in these situations.

MR. FRANK McGUIRE: I'm still trying to recover from the Senator's statement that this was not a government affair when ATF certainly seemed to think so. We have stockpiled illegal arms and munitions. We have, apparently had grenades in there. This man had been breaking laws left, right and center for four or five years at least. A foreign government had complained to the United States government about it, and the first voice I heard after the fire calling for a congressional investigation was the Senator. So I'm astounded to hear him say this is not a governmental matter.

SEN. SPECTER: Well, I didn't say that it wasn't a governmental matter. I said that it is not a matter, as you put it, that the government must exercise sovereignty. When you say the government must exercise sovereignty, I quite agree with that and when Congresswoman Schroeder says that you have to protect the people, that's true, and you have to protect law enforcement officers. I was a district attorney for eight years. But there are also people inside the compound. There are children. They all have to be protected. This is a governmental matter, and it's up to the government to act wisely.

MS. WOODRUFF: Sen. Specter, are you suggesting that if it's discovered that mistakes were made by the government, by the FBI, and others in pursuing this that people should be held accountable and, if so, what do you mean by that?

SEN. SPECTER: Well, yes, I think people should be held accountable if we find that what they did was wrongful conduct, and the degree of accountability as a complex legal question turns on governmental immunity and exactly what they did. But we're not going to be able to come to conclusions on that for some considerable period of time.

MS. WOODRUFF: Just quickly, Congresswoman Schroeder, you want to comment?

REP. SCHROEDER: Well, I guess I would disagree a little bit. I honestly think the standard we should be looking at is whether a reasonably proven law enforcement officer would feel that after 51 days they had tried everything they knew, they didn't see it coming to an end, and they didn't find anyone or they found the gentleman on the other side was not someone whose word they could rely on and they couldn't really negotiate with. He'd broken deal after deal and had an incredible record. So I think a reasonably prudent law enforcement officer might decide enough is enough and what else can you do.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Well, just quickly, we've got less than half a minute.

MR. FRANK McGUIRE: I've seen a parade of the attorney general, the President and the director of the FBI. I'm eagerly awaiting a parade of senior ATF managers to explain a lot of things that we haven't heard from them yet.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Well, on that note we're going to have to leave it. Thank you, Frank McGuire in Washington, Robert McGuire here in New York, Congresswoman Schroeder, Sen. Specter, and Dr. Langone, thank you all. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, as we've been hearing, the aftermath of yesterday's tragic ending to the Waco cult standoff is the lead story of this day. President Clinton said the ultimate responsibility for the FBI tear gas operation was his. On the NewsHour tonight FBI Director Sessions said psychological experts consulted by the FBI said David Koresh was not suicidal and would not put children at risk. Good night, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.