Trial Opens in ’93 Deaths of Davidians

Seven years after the conflagration at Mount Carmel, the lingering questions over what exactly happened at the Branch Davidian compound are about to fall under the national microscope once again. This time, the U.S. government is on trial.

Beginning today in a civil trial in Waco, Texas, federal authorities will have to answer accusations that the alleged reckless tactics and negligence of its agents caused the deaths of about 80 people on April 19, 1993, at the fiery conclusion of the Davidian standoff.

“This is not going to be a referendum on David Koresh or the Davidians’ religious or sexual practices or whether they should earn some good citizenship award,” promises Michael Caddell, the lead attorney for 15 survivors and 85 relatives of the dead.

“This case is about the government’s abuse of power in a situation where you’ve got dozens of innocent children and women involved, and I think most people have a pretty easy time separating that,” Caddell said in an interview.

Federal authorities see it differently.

Justice Department attorneys will seek to show that the Davidians alone bear responsibility for what happened that day outside Waco--first by killing and wounding federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents in a botched raid in February 1993, then by setting their complex ablaze and engaging in a mass suicide after a 51-day standoff.

The government’s legal team is headed by U.S. Atty. Mike Bradford of Beaumont, chief prosecutor for the eastern district of Texas.

Bradford says that, while plaintiffs will try to keep the focus on the government’s actions, he intends to remind the jury of Koresh’s incendiary behavior--his stockpiling of weapons at the compound, his “messiah” complex and his belief that the apocalypse was near.

It was Koresh, he said, who ambushed the ATF agents during the initial February raid, killing four and wounding more than 20 others.

“The evidence is clear that the Davidians initiated the gunfire and that ATF was responding in self-defense,” Bradford said in an interview.

As for the lack of emergency response after the fatal fire broke out 51 days later, Bradford said authorities made the legitimate decision not to send firefighters into a situation that might expose them to gunfire. And with the flames spreading so quickly, “there was really little or no realistic chance of fighting the fire,” he said.

The prosecutor also noted that opposing attorneys have backed off their earlier claims that federal authorities, in effect, killed the Davidians.

“The focus [of the trial] now has shifted to really just second-guessing some decisions that were made,” Bradford said. “That’s a very different case. To that extent, I think we have already won.”

It is a case that U.S. authorities hoped to put to rest long ago.

After years of congressional hearings, investigations, documentaries and a criminal trial that led to the convictions of eight Davidians on gun charges, interest in the tragedy had largely died down by last year. Then came new disclosures and an acknowledgment from the Justice Department that, despite years of denials, FBI agents had fired pyrotechnic munitions at a bunker near the main compound just hours before the blaze started that final day.

Government officials continue to insist that the pyrotechnics had nothing to do with the start of the fire. But the acknowledgment that they were used gave new motivation to those who charge that Koresh and his followers were murdered.

After a torrent of negative publicity, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno last September appointed former Sen. John C. Danforth to conduct an ongoing investigation into what Danforth called the “dark questions” of the standoff.

David Thibodeau, a former Davidian who escaped the compound, insists that Koresh and his followers were murdered by government agents. He is likely to take the witness stand to testify about what he saw and heard at Mount Carmel.

Thibodeau, a former Los Angeles rock band drummer who says he was drawn to Koresh by the power of his teachings, said in an interview that for all the public dissection of the events at Mount Carmel, he believes most people remain in the dark about what really happened.

“I just want the truth to come out,” said Thibodeau, one of only four survivors who were not convicted for their roles in the standoff.

“I know there’s going to be a lot of dirt slung both ways at the trial. But my whole stance is that, whatever you think of David Koresh and his people, what the government did, from the ATF raid on, was wrong, and these people in the government should be put on trial.”

Attorney Caddell wants to do just that, but he has adopted a moderate approach, distancing himself from the types of sensational accusations that have fueled legions of Davidian critics. His case is built on a foundation of alleged government negligence, not murder.

“I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest the government made any decision to kill these people. I think most of the conspiracy theories out there are based on tiny kernels of truth taken out of context,” he said. “I don’t see anything necessarily sinister.”

Rather, Caddell said he wants to show jurors that government agents were reckless and negligent in five areas: in rushing the compound in a hail of gunfire in the original Feb. 19 raid after the Davidians had been tipped off to the operation; in moving prematurely to “demolish” the building 51 days later, even though earlier plans allegedly called for them to wait; in allegedly using “unnecessary gunfire” during that operation; in spreading the fire through the use of tanks and other heavy weaponry; and in failing to put in place an emergency plan that could have saved lives after the fire broke out.

U.S. officials dispute these allegations. Government attorneys will use infrared tapes to assert that FBI agents never fired a single shot during the final raid, and they say Reno and her top aides exercised abundant caution and authorized the final raid only after it became clear that Koresh was unwilling to negotiate a peaceful solution.

Reno, in a deposition given in March, said of her decision to authorize the use of tear gas in the final raid: “This was the best time in which we would have the best opportunity to control [the situation] and try to protect lives.”

Caddell said he has not even discussed possible monetary awards with his clients. But he added that “this is not a crusade; this is a lawsuit, and at the end of the day you judge a lawsuit by whether you’ve made a [financial] recovery. And in this case if we’ve made a recovery for just one person, that will be a victory.”

Caddell said he believes the Justice Department is running scared, its case weakened by several recent pretrial decisions in the case.

He pointed to U.S. District Judge Walter Smith Jr.’s recent decision to impanel a jury to hear the case, rather than decide it himself, and Smith’s rejection of a sealed motion by the government earlier this month seeking to delay the trial.

“The truth is the government is in a state of panic about this,” Caddell said. “I think they were taking the judge for granted because of his handling of the criminal trial and thought they were going to get a free ride from him.”

Smith oversaw the criminal trial in 1994 in Waco in which eight Davidians were convicted for their roles in the shootings of the ATF agents and the standoff.

But the Supreme Court earlier this month threw out the 30-year prison terms that Smith handed down against five of the defendants on gun charges, saying that he erred in sentencing them for the use of machine guns when the jury had convicted them of using regular guns, which carries a five-year sentence. Their convictions stand.

Smith has made clear that he enters the civil trial with a different mind-set than he adopted during the criminal trial.

“The focus now is entirely different, looking in a different direction: what government agents might or might not have done that was wrong, poor judgment,” Smith said in an interview last year with the Dallas Morning News.

For the people of Waco, the trial--expected to last one to two months--returns the unwelcome glare of the public spotlight.

As the city of 108,000 in central Texas braces for an onslaught of visiting attorneys and journalists, some residents hope the trial may finally help put to rest an episode that, as they are quick to point out, happened 10 miles outside the city limits.

But others accept the renewed attention as almost inevitable, as certain as the rash of conspiracy theories surrounding the siege.

Unfortunately, said Dan Savage, publisher of the Waco Tribune-Herald, “I guess it’s just become part of our community.”

James B. Francis Jr., who, as chairman of the Texas Department of Public Safety Commission, helped last year to bring to light the government’s use of pyrotechnics, said: “I just hope the truth comes out and the facts fall where they may.”

But will the trial put to rest the long-simmering questions surrounding the tragedy?

“If history is any judge,” he said, “it probably won’t.”