OKLAHOMA CITY: AFTER THE BOMB : Slower Approach to Anti-Terrorism Laws Urged : Legislation: Senate leaders, Atty. Gen. Reno suggest that existing guidelines give agents all the power they need to curb violent acts.

Once apparently eager to respond legislatively to the Oklahoma City bombing, Capitol Hill and White House leaders urged a cooling of rhetoric Sunday and a slower, more measured approach to threats of domestic terrorism.

Chief among their concerns appeared to be fears that by moving too quickly and with too much emotion they might jeopardize the rights of innocent people.

In television broadcasts Sunday, several members of Congress suggested that federal investigators already have the authority they need to infiltrate domestic terrorist groups--that new interpretations of the laws would be sufficient to give authorities the additional latitude they need.

“We’d better move slowly on the legislation we’re considering . . . instead of getting caught up with emotion and going too far and maybe ending up trampling on somebody’s rights, some innocent group or some innocent person,” said Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

GOP lawmakers were equally cool to suggestions of a congressional investigation into the federal raid of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., two years ago.

Asked whether the Senate should hold hearings to review the Waco siege, Dole and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) demurred. The standoff and its tragic climax in a fire that claimed 86 lives has mobilized many anti-government groups and is said to have consumed bombing suspect Timothy J. McVeigh.

Dole said he doubted a congressional investigation would satisfy the many groups that have cited the Waco siege as evidence of federal encroachment on individual liberties. “It seems to me that they already have their minds set.”

Noting that “there were tremendous mistakes made” in the federal government’s handling of the Waco raid, Hatch said on the NBC-TV program “Meet the Press” that he would wait until after a House hearing on the issue to decide whether Congress needs to investigate further.

That hearing, to be held sometime this spring or summer, was scheduled before the Oklahoma City bombing and is to focus broadly on federal enforcement of gun laws. A House Judiciary Committee spokesman said it is to deal with the Waco siege only tangentially.

Meanwhile, U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno predicted that a nationwide investigation will find the second suspect sought in the Oklahoma City bombing, a man now known only as John Doe No. 2.

“We’re going to do everything that we can to make sure that man is brought to justice. And based on what the FBI and federal law enforcement and local law enforcement working together have been able to do, I think we’re going to do it,” Reno said on “Meet the Press.”

Her comments came as the search for those responsible for the April 19 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building entered its 12th day.

With one suspect in custody and as many as four others being sought, investigators were focusing attention on Kingman, Ariz., where they now believe the bombing was plotted.

In their televised remarks, Senate Republicans appeared eager to distance themselves from policies or positions that could ally them in the public’s mind with right-wing extremist groups that might encourage or harbor potential terrorists.

Dole, for instance, said he will seek to delay any vote on repealing the ban on a number of assault-style weapons until later this year, and possibly next year.

“I think people have somehow connected the assault-weapon ban with the Oklahoma City bombing, though assault weapons were not used,” said Dole. “I think it does conjure up a lot of things in people’s minds.”

Also on Sunday, Hatch rejected a congressional proposal drafted by Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Ida.) to require federal officials to register their firearms with state and local police and seek such officials’ approval before engaging in any law enforcement activities, such as making arrests.

Hatch said such a rule could antagonize relations between agencies. “We have to have a cooperation between the federal agents and state and local agents,” he said.

At the same time, however, GOP lawmakers seemed to tread a fine line between approving more intrusive measures for government investigators and protecting civil liberties.

In that, the lawmakers appeared to be responding to polls indicating that while many Americans strongly support giving federal agencies broadened powers to track down terrorists, they also are concerned about encroachments on individual freedoms.

A Times Poll released Sunday indicated more people are concerned that the government would go too far in restricting “the average person’s civil liberties” than those who say the government must enact “strong new anti-terrorism laws.”

Such findings suggest that legislation to increase federal investigators’ powers might meet with resistance from a skeptical public, but the public might more readily accept new interpretations of existing laws.

Reno said: “I think (current laws) give the FBI the tools to do the job.”

Hatch said the Senate Judiciary Committee already has asked the FBI to look at its investigative guidelines “to make a determination whether or not they’re interpreting them broadly enough.” In some FBI offices, he said, agents have interpreted laws to forbid them even from attending open meetings of groups espousing extreme views.

“That’s ridiculous,” said Hatch. “We’ve got to be able to watch some of these extreme groups--and there is a difference between extreme groups and people who are terrorists, but some of the extreme groups have a tendency to become terrorists--and our FBI and our law enforcement people ought to be involved in going in and making sure that they’re on top of these groups.”

The ranking Democratic member of Hatch’s committee, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), confirmed that FBI investigators “need no new additional authority” to make such probes possible.