A year after their bloody encounter with David Koresh and his Branch Davidians, federal law officers are making leadership and training changes that reflect hard lessons learned in the botched Texas raid.
The most important lesson is that cover-ups won't be tolerated, said Assistant Treasury Secretary Ronald Noble, whose duties include oversight of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.The soul-searching within the FBI and ATF went public last fall with the release of two reviews of federal agents' performance. One, a scathing report from the Treasury Department, blamed flawed decisionmaking, inadequate intelligence gathering and miscommunication for the raid's failure.
The most damaging conclusion was that ATF commanders failed to abort the raid when they learned the element of surprise was lost and then denied the operation had been compromised.
Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen used the findings to replace ATF Director Stephen Higgins and suspend five high-level ATF officials, two of whom later resigned. The report concluded Higgins had been misled by top aides.
Noble said ATF managers needed to be "forthright and candid so we can all learn from their mistakes."
The ATF management shake-up and harsh public review weren't duplicated at the FBI. Lingering ethical questions, rather than Waco, forced the ouster of William Sessions as director last July.
The Justice Department's review absolved senior Justice and FBI officials of any wrongdoing, saying Koresh "choreographed his own death" and those of his followers.
While jury deliberations were going on in the trial of 11 Branch Davidians in San Antonio and after a gag order imposed by the judge, FBI officials were loath to discuss post-siege events. Yet it's clear the FBI and ATF have paid heed to the criticism. Among the changes:
- The FBI is adding 25 people to its 50-member Hostage Rescue Team after being urged to double or triple its size. Attorney General Janet Reno cited the team's fatigue as a reason for approving the tear-gas attack.
- FBI and ATF training has been revised. ATF curriculum now stresses the need to exhaust all options before forcing entry.
- Noble now meets weekly with the heads of ATF, the Secret Service, the Customs Service and the Internal Revenue Service and must receive advance notice of sensitive operations.
- FBI Director Louis Freeh has taken part in crisis management training at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va., and Reno will do so, said Justice spokesman Carl Stern. Fifteen of the 56 FBI special-agents-in-charge also have received new crisis management training.
- Where ATF commanders once were given tactical responsibility for any operations that fell within their geographic jurisdiction, command assignments are now awarded on experience.
The verdict is out on whether the changes will improve agents' performance.
"We have not had a situation even remotely like the Waco situation arise, so there's been no opportunity to apply the lessons learned to a specific crisis," Stern said recently. He added, however, "I have no reason to think the lessons are going to be ignored the next time around."