Agent Testifies About Fatal Raid on Davidians, Contingency Plan

A defense attorney grilled a federal agent Friday on the decision to go ahead with a raid on religious leader David Koresh despite a plan to abort the move if the element of surprise was lost.

In the federal murder trial of 11 Branch Davidians, attorney Tim Evans asked special agent Barbara Maxwell about a decision by supervisors to send two cattle trailers full of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to confront Koresh on Feb. 28, 1993.

“And no one told you that you were supposed to call that raid off if you lost the element of surprise?” Evans asked.

“I believe that could have been a contingency of the plan, yes,” Maxwell said.

“No one did that though, did they?”

“No, sir.”

“You lost the element of surprise and your supervisors went ahead with (the raid) anyway?”

“Yes, sir.”

Four agents were killed and 16 were wounded in the failed attempt to arrest Koresh on weapons charges. Six Branch Davidians also are believed to have been killed in the raid.

Defense attorneys have said they will try to show that key ATF personnel ignored orders and risked their own agents’ lives by sending them in against the heavily armed Davidians to pull off a high-profile success, needed to prove the agency’s importance.

Maxwell’s testimony echoed findings in a critical review of the raid by the Treasury Department, which concluded that supervisors Chuck Sarabyn and Phil Chojnacki defied orders by then-agency director Stephen E. Higgins to call off the raid if Koresh knew that agents were coming.

The report so far has not been allowed into the trial’s evidence by U.S. District Judge Walter Smith Jr.

In other testimony Friday, ATF special agent Lowell Sprague recalled how a bulletproof vest on the body of a dead agent lying on top of him blocked gunfire during a bloody 45-minute battle with the Davidians.

Sprague told jurors how he attempted to rescue agent Steven Willis and said Willis’ body ultimately saved him. Sprague said he rushed to assist Willis after watching him get shot in the head in front of the Davidian compound in Waco, Tex.

Koresh and about 80 followers died April 19 when fire engulfed the compound, ending a 51-day standoff.