Waco Trial Speeds Ahead Without Revelations

The judge was getting impatient. The lawyer for the Branch Davidians wanted to question a sect member on the witness stand last week about efforts to rebuild a church on the site of the 1993 inferno at Mount Carmel, but the judge demanded to know the relevance.

The rebuilding effort was important in showing that “you can’t crush religion,” insisted Ramsey Clark, an attorney for the plaintiffs and a former U.S. attorney general. The judge was unswayed. “That’s not the purpose of this trial,” he answered.

Indeed, as the Branch Davidian trial in Waco, Texas, enters its third and perhaps final week of testimony, the trial’s narrow scope--determining whether the government bears any responsibility for the deaths of some 80 Davidians--has become increasingly clear.

Amid scant nationwide media attention, the testimony appears to have broken little new ground in the public’s understanding of what happened at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco. And the trial is moving toward a rapid conclusion, weeks ahead of schedule.

‘I Live With This Every Day’

In the view of government officials, the trial in the end will serve only to confirm their long-standing version of what happened near Waco: that sect leader David Koresh and his followers ambushed federal agents who were trying to serve a warrant on their compound and, after a bloody shootout and a 51-day standoff, then set the place on fire and killed themselves.

“I think it’s fair to say that there is little new material coming out, and what we’re seeing at this trial is a focus on several fairly narrow issues,” Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the Justice Department said in an interview from Waco.

But Michael Caddell, lead attorney for 15 survivors and 85 relatives of the dead in the $675-million wrongful-death lawsuit, said he believes his side has already demonstrated that negligence and recklessness of government agents contributed to the deaths of the Davidians, including many children inside the compound.

The first few days of government testimony last week from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents who took part in the initial shootout on Feb. 28, 1993, have only buttressed his case, Caddell asserted in an interview.

“The big surprise in the government’s case is that it’s so weak. Seven people have testified for the government so far, and not one of them has been able to testify that the Davidians fired first on Feb. 28,” Caddell said.

“We didn’t go into this expecting an ATF agent to get up there admitting or confessing that they fired the first shot, but what we’ve gotten is that the great preponderance of the evidence so far shows that,” he said.

The plaintiffs are trying to prove that the ATF agents’ indiscriminate gunfire triggered the bloodshed on the first day of the standoff and that the FBI was reckless in its final stages--both by rushing into the compound with tanks to deliver tear gas on April 19, 1993, and by failing to have firefighting equipment on hand.

To be sure, the first two weeks of the trial have had some emotional moments.

Branch Davidian Clive Doyle, a survivor of the fire and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, talked passionately about how he devoted himself totally to Koresh because “we believe that God was speaking through him.” He wept as he recalled losing his 18-year-old daughter in the fire.

“I live with this every day,” he said.

But under pointed cross-examination by the government, Doyle--whom authorities believe may have helped start the fire--was forced to acknowledge that he had rescued his dog from the burning building but hadn’t tried to find his daughter before she died.

The government’s case offered some poignant moments as well, as when ATF agent Kris Mayfield recounted the unexpected barrage of gunfire that met him and his fellow agents from the Davidian building as they approached the door on Feb. 28 to serve warrants on Koresh.

Mayfield was asked what he saw after a cease-fire was declared. “I saw Steve Willis, a friend of mine. I wasn’t able to talk to him. He was dead,” Mayfield said. Three other ATF agents also were killed in the gunfight, along with six Davidians.

As testimony continues this week, the government is expected to shift its focus from the “ambush” faced by ATF agents on Feb. 28 to the ferocious blaze that began just after noon on April 19.

Government attorneys will try to demonstrate, as they have maintained for years, that the Davidians torched the compound themselves in a mass suicide rather than leave peacefully.

Hours earlier, the FBI had begun tear-gassing the compound because they had been unable to reach a negotiated solution and said they were convinced that no end was in sight with Koresh.

Moreover, the FBI had “no duty to rescue the plaintiffs” from a fire that they themselves set, the government argued in a court filing last week. “No such duty exists under Texas law,” and as a result the Davidians’ arguments that the FBI should have had a fire plan in place at the conclusion of the standoff is a moot point, government lawyers asserted.

Key testimony in the trial could come this week if two central players at Mount Carmel near Waco--FBI Hostage Rescue Team commander Richard Rogers and FBI regional chief Jeffrey Jamar--are called to the witness stand.

Both men have drawn criticism from the Davidians for allegedly breaking from the plan approved by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno in their execution of the tear-gassing.

Mrozek, the Justice Department spokesman, said last week that “we are considering [calling both men] but have not made a final decision yet.”

Two Witnesses May Shed Light

Testimony from Rogers and Jamar, now both retired, might help the government answer several key questions from the April 19 operation--including why the FBI decided to use tanks ahead of schedule to help spread the tear gas that day; and why, once the fire broke out, they believed it was too dangerous to allow firefighters near the compound.

Reno said in a sworn deposition in March that the FBI officials on the ground at Mount Carmel had the discretion to carry out the tear-gassing operation as they saw fit and that she would not second-guess their decisions.

Testimony resumes Wednesday after the July 4 holiday, and attorneys say it could conclude as early as this week or next.

In an unusual setup, U.S. District Judge Walter Smith Jr. is using a five-member jury to give him an advisory verdict on whether the government is liable in the Davidians’ deaths. The final determination will rest with him.

If the government is found liable, the judge would then consider financial damages.