Plan to Use Tear Gas at Waco Was Questioned, Panel Told

A high-ranking Clinton Administration official expressed concern in 1993 about the potential for tragedy if the FBI were to launch a tear gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., according to a memo released Friday during congressional hearings.

Then-Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman issued a warning to his boss, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, on April 15, 1993--four days before the FBI launched a tank attack on the compound using tear gas that led to the fiery deaths of more than 80 sect members and children.

Altman told Bentsen in the memo that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno was weighing a request to authorize the gassing operation.

“My rough guess is that she won’t,” Altman wrote on official government stationery. “The risks of a tragedy are there. And, if the FBI waits indefinitely, Mr. Koresh eventually will concede.”

The Altman memo was among 20,000 pages of documents that Treasury officials turned over to the joint panel consisting of two House subcommittees. The letter makes clear for the first time that senior Administration officials in the Treasury Department, which oversees the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, were fully aware of--and concerned about--the risks involved in the plan to insert tear gas into the Davidian compound.

While Treasury officials dismissed the letter as “governmental gossip,” Republican leaders conducting the hearings pounced on the new disclosure and raised questions about who participated in the decision to approve the tear gas plan.

The joint committee is trying to determine whether President Clinton or anyone else in the Administration pressured Reno to approve the plan. Reno, who initially was reluctant to use tear gas on children, insisted that the decision was hers and hers alone.

“How can we say poor old Janet Reno made all these decisions by herself?” Rep. Bill Zeliff (R-N.H.), co-chairman of the joint committee, asked in an interview. “I think we’re going to find a lot more decision-makers were involved.”

The same concerns raised in the Altman memo were the subject of hours of discussion at the Justice Department in the days leading up to the April 19, 1993, assault, said Justice spokesman Carl Stern.

In another development, a Democratic member of the joint committee said that he was asked within the last few days by Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin not to elicit unflattering testimony regarding the initial disastrous raid carried out by the ATF on Feb. 28, 1993. Four ATF agents and six Davidians were killed in the raid during a gunfight that lasted more than two hours.

“He encouraged me not to ask questions that could show someone in a bad light,” Rep. Bill Brewster (D-Okla.), said in an interview. “I said I was only interested in what really happened and I would ask whatever question I thought would lead to finding out what happened.”

Rubin responded Friday in a statement: “I did ask him to seek the truth, like the rest of us, and not to join any effort to undermine law enforcement. Calls like this are made by administrations all the time.”

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Another member of the congressional panel conducting the Waco hearings, Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), said that he wants an independent counsel appointed to determine if Rubin’s comments to Brewster violated the law. Buyer said that if he succeeds in gathering support from a majority of Republicans serving on the House Judiciary Committee, he will submit a formal request to Reno as early as Monday.

Republican members of the panel vowed to focus attention next week on what Clinton and other top members of his Administration knew about the FBI’s plan to end the siege and what they did about it.

At the start of the third day of hearings that have focused on the facts surrounding the initial ATF raid, Zeliff held up the Altman memo and began pressing Bentsen, the former Texas senator who oversaw the ATF in his role as Treasury secretary. Altman is to testify Monday about the memo.

Democrats protested the manner in which Bentsen, the esteemed Washington veteran clad in a traditional dark pin-striped suit, was sternly grilled by GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Hyde said that he found it difficult to understand why Bentsen did not inquire further after he was alerted by Altman that Reno was weighing an FBI request to use an advanced form of tear gas. In the letter, Altman reminded Bentsen that he had said four days earlier on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that no such decision to storm the compound “would occur without [Bentsen’s] knowledge.”

Hyde asked of Bentsen: “Did you think enough of the information in here to call the White House and give them the benefit of your sagacity on this?”

Bentsen responded that after the initial ATF raid, Treasury officials were not in the loop and all calls with regard to ending the siege were “totally” up to FBI and Justice officials.

“You just put it aside and said it’s up to Janet Reno?” Hyde asked incredulously.

Treasury officials said that Bentsen had no reason to act on the memorandum because it was part of the daily informal dispatches that were regularly sent by Altman.

“This was not an effort at serious communication in terms of providing the Treasury secretary with information he needs to conduct his duties,” said Edward S. Knight, general counsel for the department. “This is more like passing on gossip. It must be seen in that light.”

Later in the day, a Texas social worker who had visited the Davidian compound and studied in depth the conditions of children living there testified that federal law enforcement officials did not listen to her recommendations for dealing with the sect.

Social worker Joyce Sparks had gained credibility with congressional Democrats by bringing to light the National Rifle Assn.’s controversial contact with her before the hearings began. But Sparks pleased Republicans on Friday by criticizing the approach at Waco taken by the ATF and the FBI.

Referring to the deadly end of the 51-day siege at Waco, Sparks said: “I was really angry after the raid. The result was very predictable.”

Based on her understanding of the Davidians’ religious doctrine, Sparks said that the bloodshed could have been averted. For instance, Sparks said, the sect members would not have resisted a search if authorities had first arrested their leader, David Koresh, while he was away from the compound.

It was only when Koresh was with his flock, Sparks said, that the Davidians would feel compelled, by prophecy, to resist with their weapons the federal authorities, whom they regarded as “Babylonians.”