Cult Children’s Fate Pains Radio Callers : Inferno: In early test of opinion across nation, many question why they had to die. Some doubt FBI actions.

Across America, the flames and smoke of David Koresh’s Waco compound have been seared into national consciousness.

In hamlets and cities, the siege and its apocalyptic conclusion were the day’s topic on that early opinion barometer, talk radio. Many callers who inundated radio stations, dismissed Koresh as a psychopath but raised the same agonizing question: Why did the children have to die?

“The general response has been that most of them got what they deserved, but we could have done something to save the children,” said Lou Guzzo, a commentator for KIRO-TV and radio news in Seattle.

“There seems to be incredulity on the way the FBI handled this in the final instance, and it has to do with this,” Guzzo, former managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said. “When you are determined to have a policy of waiting it out for 51 days, then why in the hell would you reverse that? If the FBI was justified initially, why didn’t they just go in to begin with? I think the public is really puzzled over this two-ply type of policy.”

The climax to the siege in which Koresh, his followers and at least 24 children presumably died, eclipsed the mayoral election on some stations in Los Angeles.

Reaction to Waco “took over the show entirely,” said talk show host Michael Jackson on KABC. “Nine-tenths of the callers wanted to talk about nothing else. There was almost no interest in today’s mayoral race.”

“There is concern for the innocents, the children,” said Roger Gray, a popular talk show host on KPRC in Houston. “Everybody rightfully wants an investigation of the whole affair. There is a sense that the government’s judgment calls may be questionable and should be investigated--but you’re not hearing ringing calls for mass resignations.”

Across America, other issues bubbled up out of the great free-form national talk stew:

* In New York, a listener asked Gene Burns, a talk show host on radio station WOR why, if the FBI said Koresh was crazy, did agents try to make him and cult members even crazier with music and nerve-straining sounds. “They can not have it both ways,” the listener said. “ . . . If they want to say that David Koresh was crazy, well, why didn’t they treat him as if he was crazy, which requires a bit of compassion? If he was crazy, why did they try to drive him crazy?”

* In Atlanta, a listener inquired of Sean Hannity, the morning drive-time host for station WGST, if there weren’t other ways they could have arrested David Koresh. Couldn’t he have been picked up while he was downtown and out of the heavily fortified compound?

Hannity said that some callers were suspicious of the FBI’s handling of the standoff. “The talk of bugs being placed in the compound bothered some Atlantans,” he said. “There were those who were suspicious of how the bug got in there, and was it put in there before the whole thing started, and was the FBI bugging a religious compound?”

* In Miami, a listener asked Mike Thompson, the morning call-in impresario on radio station WMBM a simple question: “Why didn’t they send Federal Express to deliver the summons, not the federal agents?”

* In Los Angeles, talk show host Jackson said his callers were evenly split on who was to blame for the violent outcome. He said opinions ranged from “they had it coming to them” to “those who felt we should have left them alone until they ran out of food” and everything in between. Jackson said the one question that came up over and over from both supporters and critics of the FBI was “did this have to happen?” He said all callers, regardless of their views, believed an investigation was needed.

So did many politicians, who pondered the degree to which the Clinton Administration will pay a political price.

“The scent from some of those ashes is going to be floating over Washington for a long while,” said David Garth, the veteran New York campaign consultant. “ . . . Clinton’s problem has always been promises vs. production. I would think this puts production once again in question.”

“The American people are shocked,” said New York’s Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. “This is an awful tragedy and the American people want an explanation. I think that’s right, and everyone agrees, so let there be investigations, let there be explanations for what happened, and then let’s make judgments. But to start now and say (Atty. Gen.) Janet Reno was wrong, I’m not prepared to say that. I don’t know enough.”

“She’s a tough lady,” said Florida’s Metro Dade County Commissioner Larry Hawkins. “I think she’s handled herself professionally, the way people who know Janet Reno would expect. She does not shoot from the hip. She takes everything into consideration, and then makes an informed, calculated decision.”

Some other Florida politicians had less praise. “It’s hurting Clinton, the way he’s handling it,” said state Rep. Luis Rojas, a Republican, from Miami. “It almost looks like he doesn’t want to be blamed. . . . I think for Reno to go on ‘Nightline,’ ‘Larry King Live,’ the whole media circuit and take responsibility makes it look like Clinton sent her out there.”

“I think in two or three days people will forget. It won’t be a big deal,” Rojas added. “The thing that made this so terrible was that everybody saw the fire on TV. But it’s going to pass.”

In Washington, political consultant Robert Shrum agreed.

“It’s a tragedy,” Shrum said. “People understand when you have to make decisions like the kind of decisions the President and the attorney general have to make, things don’t work perfectly. They will judge him (President Clinton) by the economy and health care and important foreign issues. I don’t think it will be a major standard by which he is judged.”

But in the short term, interest was intense.

A spokesman for “Nightline” said that after Reno’s appearance on Monday, the program received five to six times as many phone calls on voice mail as usual. A spokesman for “Larry King Live” also said that program received “more than the usual number of calls.”

Reflecting the national debate, CNN broadcast letters Tuesday and said viewer mail was up two to three times the norm after the compound’s destruction.

“Uncle Sam proved today that if you are different, you will not be tolerated in the U.S.A,” Charlie Hummel wrote to the all-news network.

“If they wanted to take all of the cult alive, then why did they go in like storm troopers in the first place? I think David made an expensive joke of the authorities,” wrote Joseph Shanklin.

The debate quickly spread abroad to Britain, where officials said Tuesday at least 24 Britons were believed to be among the 86 casualties in the compound. Koresh traveled to England in 1988 to search for followers.

On the floor of the House of Commons, calls were issued for new legislation regulating cults, and there was criticism of the FBI’s handling of the Waco siege.

But Prime Minister John Major rejected any new laws to protect Britons from recruitment from cults like Koresh’s Branch Davidians, arguing it “would be difficult to focus legislation to restrict the establishment of those cults.”

In Waco, meanwhile, local residents attending a noontime prayer service remembered both survivors and those presumed dead. Memories of the children reduced many to tears.

“We weep for the children,” said Jo Pendleton, who read “A Mother’s Lament,” a prayer she had written. “The 10 billion words that have been written, speculations that have been made, the fingers of blame that have been pointed all make no difference here.”

Times researchers Audrey Britton in New York, Doug Conner in Seattle, Lianne Hart in Houston, D’Jamila Salem in Los Angeles, Edith Stanley in Atlanta and Anna Virtue in Miami contributed to this report.

The Debate Over Waco

A look at the national debate over how the government handled the cult siege in Texas:

THE WHITE HOUSE

* “(Koresh) killed those he controlled, and he bears ultimate responsibility for the carnage.”

* “What I’m saying is I didn’t have a four- or five-hour detailed briefing from the FBI. I didn’t go over every strategic part of it. (But) it is a decision for which I take responsibility.”

--President Clinton

THE FBI

* “Those children are dead because David Koresh had them killed. There’s no question about that. He had those fires started.”

* “Do we wait 90 more days until the children die . . . ? How would the federal government look when we finally get into the compound, there are children dying of hunger or children dying of disease because of the conditions?”

--Jeff Jamar, FBI agent in charge in Waco

THE CRITICS

* “No one inside set any fires. The tanks knocked over the gas lanterns . . . there were no plans for suicide.”

--Survivor Graeme Craddock

* “When you have 100 TV crews but not one firetruck, that’s not a well thought out plan, that’s box office.”

--Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. (D-Ohio)