Cult Leader Playing Standoff Game, Has Nothing to Gain by Giving Up : Siege: Hundreds of heavily armed lawmen have met their unlikely match in 33-year-old Koresh. The holdout has entered its 2nd month.

Like a wily fox, David Koresh plays his game. And he plays it well.

He’s been at it for a month. Inside his rural compound, bolstered by almost 100 loyal followers who think he is the Messiah, he plucks the strings of this drama like a virtuoso, drowning out every effort by federal agents to conclude what already ranks as one of the major standoffs in modern American history.

Only the 70-day federal siege of militant Indian activists and supporters at Wounded Knee, S.D., in 1973 rivals it in length. And the meter in Waco is now ticking at a clip of more than $1 million a week.

The main reason for the impasse is clear enough: Koresh has nothing to gain by leaving. Negotiators have little to offer in exchange for surrender except jail and possible murder charges in the deaths of four Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents who died in a raid on the compound Feb. 28 seeking illegal weapons.

And in this oddest of situations, the traditional methods of ending a standoff have had only marginal success.

No doubt about it--so far, the hundreds of heavily armed lawmen surrounding the compound have met their unlikely match in Koresh, a 33-year-old self-styled prophet who seems to have directed his life for a moment like this. Having built a slavish following and a well-equipped fortress in anticipation of the long-foretold day of reckoning, Koresh is living out a prophesy come true.

“It would be nice to know if he is playing the game as well as they are,” said David Charters, director of the Centre for Conflict Studies at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. “Perhaps he wants to make this last as long as he can. There is no real incentive to give up now, is there? Koresh doesn’t really have anything to bargain with. The only thing in the cards is his surrender.”

With each passing day, the level of frustration rises as FBI agents take the podium for a daily press briefing. They talk occasionally of hope, of a large release, of promises made only to have them unmade. And while it is possible that the standoff could end at any moment, it also appears just as likely that federal agents could still be in Waco a month from now.

During the course of this first month, a pattern emerged. Koresh would promise and retreat, promise and retreat. He has the knack of apparently sounding quite genuine in his pledges to federal agents, only to back off at the last second.

The first and most visible example came on Day 3 of the siege, when Koresh said he would surrender to federal authorities if he were allowed to broadcast a tape of his beliefs. At the beginning of his rambling sermon, there seemed to be no doubt as to his intent. “I agree upon the broadcast of this tape to come out peacefully with all the people,” Koresh said.

But then the hours passed, and it eventually became clear late that night that nothing was going to happen. Koresh’s reason: He needed a sign from God that it was time to surrender. Predictably, God has not yet come through.

That same scenario has been played out again and again, even as Koresh allows his followers to depart in dribs and drabs, giving at least the semblance of progress.

However, one source close to the investigation said he believed Koresh was only winnowing out people who were not his hard-core followers, as well as those who might become a liability over time. They include children he is not the father of, as well as the elderly and a few others who may not have been completely indoctrinated. The source said he had been told the remainder intended to hunker down for the long haul.

And they are well prepared for a siege. In addition to a cache of weapons and ammunition, the cult reportedly has enough food to last a year or more. The only real question is whether their water well is operating. Since the start of the siege, cult members have been seen putting out buckets and pans during rainstorms.

Through it all, the FBI, which is handling the negotiations, has been given generally high marks. Agents have kept the talks moving, managed to extricate more than 35 people--including 21 children--and over time have conversed with a lengthy list of individuals living in the compound.

At the same time, they have ratcheted up the pressure on the compound members almost daily. That has included controlling the telephone, cutting off the electricity, lighting the compound at night, shining a spotlight in windows, playing tapes of Koresh’s promises so all inside could hear, broadcasting Tibetan chants and, somewhat inexplicably, playing Mitch Miller tunes and the Nancy Sinatra version of “These Boots are Made for Walkin’.”

Negotiators have been on hand around the clock, often having conversations with Koresh or his lieutenants until the early hours of the morning.

Wayman Mullins, a psychologist and professor of criminal justice at Southwest Texas State University, said the monthlong siege may actually be more wearying on the federal agents than on those inside.

“Even a simple negotiation is a stressful process,” he said. “It does get to be frustrating, disheartening and discouraging. These negotiators are well-trained individuals who are running into a brick wall they can’t seem to get around.”

Frank Bolz, one of the nation’s leading hostage negotiation experts, said that those inside the compound may be in a routine not unlike their normal regimen before ATF agents staged their ill-fated raid seeking to arrest Koresh and seize a large cache of weapons collected by the sect.

“There’s all kinds of things they might be doing,” said Bolz. “They might be playing chess or cards or whatever. There are any number of ways that people can reduce their own anxiety level.”

Bolz said that several things make the standoff unusual and therefore more difficult to resolve. First is the large size of the interconnecting buildings that make up the compound, including dorm-style sleeping quarters, living areas and the three-story structure that apparently served as a lookout tower before the raid.

Bolz, a retired New York police officer who helped write the book on hostage negotiation after the tragedy of the Munich Olympics in 1972, said that in a more conventional setting, the strategy would be to isolate those inside into the smallest space possible, thereby creating discomfort that might hasten the end of a siege.

“That way we can watch them, control the egress and cut down on the number of (law enforcement) people we will need,” he said.

Other factors, he said, included a lack of cover for federal agents around the compound, the large number of people inside--among them 17 children who must be considered innocent hostages--and the fact that several people have already been killed. The latter, he said, makes negotiating a much more difficult proposition.

“It creates a problem in a state that has the death penalty,” Bolz said.

Mullins thinks the coming of Easter could have some bearing on the negotiations. At the very least, he said, Good Friday, the day of Christ’s death, is almost certainly on the minds of the negotiators.

“I think Good Friday will be a big day,” said Mullins. He theorized that one of the objectives of the negotiators “is to get the innocents out of the way and then talk him through that deadline.

“If he thinks he’s the 20th-Century Jesus,” Mullins said, he might try to induce some action that would make him a martyr on that day.

During the course of the standoff there has been some pointed criticism of federal officials as well. Dick DeGuerin, the lawyer hired by Koresh’s mother to defend her son and one of the top criminal lawyers in Texas, said those inside the compound should have every opportunity to know their rights. Being advised of them, they would probably surrender, he contends.

“I certainly disagree with them (the FBI) not wanting any interference or help from an outside source,” he said. “I’m tooting my own horn but I believe that, given full information, they would come out peacefully.”

DeGuerin also said he believed a neutral, non-federal party, such as the Texas Rangers, should accompany authorities when they first enter the compound, to assure that nothing illegal is planted there by the ATF.

In the wake of the raid, the ATF came under heavy criticism for the way it staged the attack on the compound. Since then, ATF officials have been less than forthcoming on almost every facet of the case, contending it is all part of an ongoing investigation.

Not even the search warrant of what was being sought has been unsealed, although a source told the Dallas Morning News last week that the warrant charges the Branch Davidians with illegally machining semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic versions.

“There’s every motive for the ATF to leave something illegal in there,” DeGuerin said.

He also speculated that this far into the siege, ending it with the use of a third party would only add to the sense of the case being mishandled.

“What are they afraid of for a lawyer to advise Koresh?” he asked. “His mother hired me. What harm is it for me to tell him his rights? What they may be afraid of is they won’t be able to get him to confess to something once he comes out.”

Another who feels the case could have been handled better is Tony Cooper, a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas who advises the government on terrorist issues. Cooper said the job of the negotiator is to find out exactly what those on the inside want as a prelude to surrender and that it appeared the FBI had failed on that issue.

“That is the job of the negotiator,” he said. “If the negotiator is not up to that, we must find another negotiator or another way of finding that certainty.”

Cooper also said he believes that use of another independent agent, such as a lawyer, would be the best way of ending the siege. In essence, he said, federal officials are too close to the case and therefore suspect in the mind of Koresh and others inside the compound.

“This man is best addressed by someone who is not involved in the mechanics of this,” he said.

Bolz said that patience has to remain the watchword, even this late in the game. “Time is still cheaper than death,” he said.