Bentsen Introduces Waco Inquiry Panel : Investigation: The three outsiders will ensure a fair review, Treasury secretary vows. Probe focuses on cult shootout that killed federal agents.

Promising “an impartial, comprehensive and uncompromising” inquiry into the events that led to the deaths of four federal agents at a Texas cult compound, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen introduced Monday the three outside experts who will guide and review the probe.

The three, whose appointments were announced earlier, are Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams, Edwin O. Guthman, a USC journalism professor and member of the Los Angeles city ethics commission, and Henry S. Ruth Jr., a former Watergate special prosecutor.

Through their involvement, Treasury is giving outsiders more of a role in its probe of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms actions than is the Justice Department in its review of the FBI’s role in the siege. The 51-day standoff ended in the deaths of as many as 86 cult members.

Justice plans later this week to name 10 experts in such disciplines as psychiatry and hostage negotiation. But unlike the Treasury panel, they will not be asked to make independent assessments, draw conclusions and make recommendations, said Carl Stern, the Justice Department’s chief spokesman.

Stern noted that Treasury had decided to involve the three outsiders in the fact-gathering phase of the inquiry because of a dispute over what took place just before ATF agents tried to serve search and arrest warrants at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco.

“There’s no dispute here over what happened” when the FBI, with Atty. Gen. Janet Reno’s approval, used armored vehicles to break down walls at the compound and insert tear-gas.

Deaths followed the actions of both agencies. The ATF’s efforts started a shootout on Feb. 28 that began the standoff. The FBI’s maneuver preceded a fire that immolated the compound and its occupants on April 19.

President Clinton, in announcing the investigation by the two Cabinet agencies last month, said he wanted to be sure that independent law enforcement experts took part to “bring to bear the best evidence we have.”

Some surviving cult members contend the fire began when an armored vehicle knocked over a lamp inside the compound. But the FBI has photographs from observation aircraft that show the fire breaking out at three to five different sections of the compound in less than a minute, supporting the theory that it was started by cult members.

The conflict hanging over the Treasury inquiry involves an ATF undercover agent’s statement that he told superiors that cult leader David Koresh knew that an ATF raid was imminent on Feb. 28, but that the ATF went ahead with the raid anyway. ATF officials said the raid depended on the element of surprise. The officials initially indicated that they would not have proceeded with the raid attempt if they had lost that element.

Ronald K. Noble, assistant Treasury secretary for enforcement, said the varying statements would be examined, along with the question of whether ATF could have attempted earlier to search the compound for a suspected stockpile of heavy weapons.

“We want to know what led to the decision being made to go in on Feb. 28 as opposed to Jan. 1 or Dec. 1 or some other date” or “as opposed to never,” he said. But Bentsen made it clear that he was giving no consideration to the suggestion raised at congressional hearings that ATF should give up some of its law enforcement activities and concentrate on its Treasury regulatory functions.

In another development, a forensic expert who conducted an autopsy on the body of Koresh said Monday that the gunshot wounds to Koresh and his lieutenant, Steve Schneider, were not typical of suicides. Schneider’s wound is in the back of the head.

The expert, Cyril H. Wecht of Pittsburgh, Pa., a controversial pathologist who has consulted on many famous deaths, told the Washington Post that he had not ruled out the possibility that Koresh and Schneider were shot by outside snipers.