Fbi Studied Every Aspect Of Waco Plan, Potts Says Officials Say That Safety Was Their Foremost Concern

From April 12, 1993, until the fatal fire a week later, top FBI officials said they thoroughly briefed Attorney General Janet Reno on their “impasse” with David Koresh, their plan to use CS gas to force him out, and always, their foremost concern - the safety of the Branch Davidian children inside the Mount Carmel compound.

Larry Potts, who led the FBI operations from Washington as an assistant director, testified Thursday before a congressional panel that Reno “made extensive inquiry into virtually every detail of the FBI’s plan, including the effects of tear gas on children and pregnant women.”

Potts said the plan, approved by Reno on April 17, also was studied by then-Associate Attorney General Webster L. Hubbell, then-FBI director William S. Sessions and other officials.

“The attorney general and the FBI, with advice from the U.S. military, reviewed several options, everything from an assault on the compound with walls or barbed wire and seeking assistance to secure the area,” Potts said in a written statement, “before concluding that inserting tear gas was the only viable, nonlethal option.”

The decision to use CS gas in an attempt to force Koresh and his group to end the stalemate - and the timing of the move - remain among the most deeply disputed aspects of the tragedy.The siege ended in tragedy April 19, with the FBI’s gas assault and an immense fire. The bodies of Koresh and some 80 of his followers were uncovered in the ruins.

In a related event Thursday, Reno again defended her decision to allow FBI agents to enact the gassing plan, saying she still believes it was the best hope for peacefully ending the conflict.

“I could have gone in with a frontal assault, which could have been extraordinarily dangerous to all concerned, and we knew that up front,” she said. “I could have waited, and I won’t know and will never know what David Koresh (would have done) six days later or six months later or six years later.”

In Thursday’s hearings, members of Congress continued to probe who knew what about the unraveling events, and the nature of information given to Reno, then a newcomer to her job, by her advisers as she weighed the critical decisions.

A slate of high-ranking witnesses, including Potts, reiterated that they did not believe Koresh was about to surrender to authorities, despite earlier conflicting testimony by defense lawyers, and that they do not believe the CS gas contributed to the deaths of any Branch Davidians, including the young children who were huddled with their mothers inside the compound. Without gas masks to fit them, many of the children had their faces covered with wet towels. “April 19 was not any kind of a D-Day where we said, “We’ve got to end this thing right now,’ ” Potts said. “April 19 was to put some gas in one portion of that compound and then back away. They can go to another part of the compound, they can go to another place that doesn’t have gas. But what it does is hopefully begin … to provide an opportunity for some of those people who are inside to come out.”

Potts was demoted July 14 as deputy FBI director for his role in the July 1992 Ruby Ridge episode in Idaho involving white supremacist Randy Weaver - seen by some as a precursor of the siege at Waco in terms of the federal government’s mishandling of armed resistors who refuse to emerge from their homes and surrender. He will return for more testimony today.

Reno, who has insisted she never felt misled or pressured by the FBI, is to be the panel’s final witness Monday. She said Thursday that she had been informed of Koresh’s announced plan on April 14 to write an interpretation of the Seven Seals of the Book of Revelation - what was termed as a sincere surrender plan in testimony earlier this week by Houston defense attorneys Dick DeGuerin and Jack Zimmermann. Reno disagreed.

“Again and again,” she said, “he had said he would come out and did not come out. And the FBI advised that they had asked their expert to look at (Koresh’s) letter, and he concluded, based on his expertise, that (Koresh) would not be coming out anytime soon.”