FBI Skeptical of Koresh Surrender Plan, Officials Say : Waco: Proposal from the Branch Davidian leader’s lawyer was given little credence, they testify. The offer ‘was just another delaying tactic,’ one says.

Disputing criticism that they acted in haste, FBI officials who supervised the deadly siege of a cult compound near Waco, Tex., testified Wednesday that they gave little credence to a surrender plan proposed by sect leader David Koresh’s lawyer five days before a final assault on the complex.

The officials said they saw no need in mid-April, 1993, to relay the proposed surrender to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, who was about to approve the use of tear gas to force out the Branch Davidians.

“There was never any reason to [tell Reno] because it was not a serious” offer of surrender, testified Jeffrey Jamar, who was the FBI’s on-site commander at the standoff. “It was just another delaying tactic.”

Jamar and other officials involved in the siege appeared before a congressional committee examining the Waco events. Four federal agents were killed in an initial raid on the compound on Feb. 28, 1993. After a 51-day confrontation, about 80 Branch Davidians, including Koresh, died in a sweeping fire that apparently was set inside the buildings.

Committee Republicans, pressing Wednesday to determine the basis upon which Reno and President Clinton approved the final tank-led assault on the compound, repeatedly asked Jamar about the extent to which he discussed the surrender offer with his superiors. Reno is scheduled to appear before the committee Monday, the ninth and final day of the hearings.

A former Justice Department consultant urged the committee to question Reno about her controversial approval of the use of tear gas on the compound, which had 19 children inside. Alan A. Stone, a Harvard professor selected two years ago by the Justice Department to review the events at Waco, noted that Reno had at first postponed the assault because of her reservations about the tear gas. Stone said that review did not determine the scientific reasoning Reno relied on.

Experts who testified Wednesday were split on the advisability of using the tear gas. Stone, an Environmental Protection Agency toxicologist and a Utah chemistry professor said the gas poses high risks to children. Others, including a Los Angeles Police Department SWAT leader, said the gas has been used without injury on hundreds of occasions.

Republicans distributed an FBI log from three years ago stating that using tear gas would pose “a high degree of risk to small children.” The log was written during the FBI’s standoff with white separatist Randy Weaver, at Ruby Ridge, Ida.

Said the panel’s co-chairman, Rep. Bill Zeliff (R-N.H.): “If CS [tear] gas was bad at Ruby Ridge, why wasn’t it bad at Waco?”

At the hearing, Jamar and the FBI’s lead negotiator at Waco testified under questioning from the panel’s other co-chairman, Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), that neither relayed the April 14 surrender plan to their bosses in Washington.

But a Justice Department spokesman, Carl Stern, said later that Reno was apprised of the surrender proposal before the FBI launched the tear gas on April 19.

The surrender proposal called for Koresh to compose over the next three weeks a manuscript explaining aspects of the Bible’s Book of Revelations. Two theologians had pledged to distribute Koresh’s completed work once it was transcribed onto a computer disk by a sect member.

Other testimony and documents released at Wednesday’s hearing underscored that at least one FBI official had deep reservations about forcing the Waco siege to an end.

Pete Smerick, who was a behavioral analyst for the FBI, confirmed that he told his superiors during the siege that he thought agents should negotiate, be patient and work toward gaining the release of children and others in the compound. But Smerick said that after learning his earlier memos had angered then-FBI Director William S. Sessions, he decided to be a “team player” and endorsed the April 19 assault.

On March 7, 1993, Smerick had written: “If the compound is attacked, in all probability, David Koresh and his followers will fight back to the death. . . . If we physically attack the compound and children are killed [even by Davidians], we, in the FBI, will be placed in a difficult position.

“The news media, Congress and the American people will ask questions: Why couldn’t you just wait them out? What threat did they pose to anyone, except themselves? Why did you cause children to be killed?”

Smerick, now retired, testified that he at no point thought Koresh would surrender voluntarily.

The FBI took control of the siege immediately after the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms launched its failed raid.

Jamar’s depiction of the final surrender plan as insignificant was at odds with testimony on Tuesday from Koresh’s lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, and the two theologians, who said they believed that Koresh had agreed to give up.

The seriousness with which Jamar and others--including Reno--may have viewed the surrender plan is important to those who question if it was necessary to launch the assault on April 19. Jamar testified that he viewed it as another ploy to buy time after Koresh had broken three promises to give up.

Jamar also said he was concerned that Koresh or other of the heavily armed Branch Davidians would try to bolt from the sprawling compound, using children as “shields.” Another fear, Jamar said, was that Koresh would lead his followers on a mass suicide.

“What we wanted to do,” Jamar testified, “was do it on our schedule as best we could. . . . We didn’t want him doing it at 1 o’clock in the morning on his schedule. The ending was going to be the same. He was going to have that ending no matter what. He was going to have that ending one way or another.”

Both Jamar and the FBI’s lead negotiator at Waco, Byron A. Sage, confirmed in their testimony that upon learning of the terms of the surrender proposal, Jamar had told DeGuerin on April 14: “We have all the time it takes.”

Jamar and Sage both said that they were skeptical of the surrender proposal when they first learned of it and quickly decided to discount it entirely, on the belief that Koresh was not preparing the promised manuscript. That belief was based on an FBI negotiator’s phone conversation on April 18 with Koresh’s No. 2 man within the compound, Steve Schneider.

Jamar testified: “We pushed and pushed and pushed, [asking] ‘What’s the progress on the manuscript?’ and all we got was a stall.”

Times staff writers Paul Richter and Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.