Independent Panel Will Probe ATF Raid : Waco cult: L.A.’s police chief and two others are to investigate the Feb. 28 action against the heavily armed Branch Davidians’ Texas compound.

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams will be named Monday to a three-member panel to aid in the investigation of the government’s bloody February raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., Clinton Administration officials said Saturday.

Williams and two others--former Watergate special prosecutor Henry Ruth and USC journalism professor Edwin O. Guthman--will be named to the independent panel by Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen to look into the actions of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the federal law enforcement agency that conducted the initial action against the cult compound on Feb. 28. The raid left four ATF agents and several cult members dead.

The ATF’s handling of that raid has been the focus of much of the criticism of the government’s involvement in the Waco tragedy, and pressure to resign has been building on the agency’s director, Stephen E. Higgins.

ATF officials, already under fire for going ahead with the raid on the heavily armed compound after losing the element of surprise, faced new questions last week when Higgins admitted in congressional testimony that the news media was tipped off about the raid by the agency before it took place.

The independent panel will report to Ronald K. Noble, assistant secretary of the Treasury for enforcement, who oversees the Treasury Department’s law enforcement agencies, including the ATF.

A broader, joint investigation by the Justice Department and Treasury also has been announced by Bentsen and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno. That investigation will review the entire Waco tragedy and will delve into issues of whether federal law enforcement agencies are adequately equipped to deal with radical, heavily armed cults.

The independent panel, however, will focus on the ATF’s role. Members will have access to internal ATF documents on the raid, and its conclusions will be made public, the Administration said.

Williams, reached Saturday in Watts, where he was serving as grand marshal in a Cinco de Mayo parade, said he could not comment on the investigation because, “I haven’t really talked to anyone about it yet. We’ll have to wait and see what happens Monday.”

Guthman, former national editor of the Los Angeles Times, also said Saturday that he was still unsure what his role would be. Guthman, who served as press spokesman for then-Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy in the early 1960s, added: “I know enough as a soldier, a reporter and an official in the Department of Justice that it is important to get the facts before you make a judgment.”

If there is a common thread to the members of the new panel, it is their familiarity with a similar tragedy: the firebombing of MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia by that city’s Police Department in 1985. After a lengthy siege of the radical group’s headquarters, the police used a bomb designed to force an end to the standoff. But it resulted in the deaths of 11 people and sparked a fire that destroyed two blocks of homes.

At the time, Guthman was editor of the editorial page of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which pushed for reforms of the Police Department in the wake of the MOVE tragedy. Ruth was a member of an independent commission that investigated the city’s handling of the case. And the Police Department reforms ultimately helped the career of Williams, who later became Philadelphia police chief.

Noble was a federal prosecutor in Philadelphia at the time, and he told the Washington Post on Friday that his career has been shaped and influenced by the MOVE case.