Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 30, 1993                   TAG: 9304300416
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-15   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHY A STANDOFF?

Since most people apparently believe - as polls confirm - that the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Federal Bureau of Investigation officers were blameless, there will be heavy pressure to acquit them of culpability in the final inferno.

More than 80, including women and children, perished in it, and President Clinton and his administration claim, and the officers on the scene maintain, that Koresh and his cult are alone responsible for their own immolation.

Still, many otherwise sensible Americans believe that Ronald Reagan and George Bush were great presidents, and some that the Earth is flat. The mere fact that people believe something does not, of course, mean that it is true. So revelations surely are ahead, and they may prove uncomfortable.

One, I suspect, will be that the standoff and its culmination in massive death need never have happened.

Federal agents, led by the ATF officers whose charge upon the Koresh compound the last day of February provoked the initial killing of four of their own men, as well as the standoff that followed, claim that Koresh and his cult had stockpiled weapons illegally and were, thus, a danger to the society around them. They also maintain that they had reports that Koresh was sexually abusing some of the children under his authority.

Yet - what is obvious - immense caches of firearms of all sorts have accumulated all over the country in recent years, some in the hands of religious or political cults, others in the hands of what the National Rifle Association delicately calls "law-abiding citizens" who only want assault weapons, it seems, to hunt squirrels and tin cans.

Koresh, moreover, was a familiar figure on the streets and in the shopping malls of Waco, where he went almost daily to purchase provender for his flock, manna and loaves and fishes being, until the Second Coming, unavailable. He could have been busted, had the ATF agents wished, at any time.

The government, moreover, has now ceased to claim that Koresh was sexually abusing anyone, boy, girl or grapefruit. Why, then, was it necessary to storm the Koresh fortress? Was the ATF's initial assault, instead of a legitimate attempt to arrest a dangerous suspect, perhaps a bid for headlines by an agency that believed itself under-funded and in need of greater federal support?

Another unpleasant truth I expect to come out is that the FBI's final assault - tanks, tear gas and all - badly violated the demonstrated psychology of cult living.

Academic and psychiatric experts in cult behavior are no longer rare in American life, and their advice, given often over television while the siege continued, was that the most foolish response to cults is to try to blast them out of their ways.

One after another, the experts argued that a cult - with a charismatic leader, a following of frustrated but often idealistic people, and a belief that doom is imminent - inhabits a world that is implicitly paranoid. To question its beliefs or to attack its quarters is to confirm both the paranoia and the conviction that, indeed, the final battle is at hand. So why couldn't the FBI wait as long as necessary for Koresh's cult to quit?

The truth of the federal case may yet be demonstrated, to be sure. That Koresh was a nutcake seems certain, and that his contribution to the final outcome was great seems indisputable. But the suspicion lingers that federal agents regarded him as a high-profile, low-risk target for a sensational raid. That things weren't that easy the world now knows.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, where messiahs abound and faith in their infallibility is high, we should be cautious about whom we attack.

Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.