Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 17, 1993 TAG: 9305170095
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SPOTSYLVANIA LENGTH: Medium
Then the past came calling.
It was March and for two weeks federal agents had been getting nowhere with religious cult leader David Koresh, who was barricaded with heavily armed followers inside his Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The FBI needed an expert to head negotiations with the cult, and Van Zandt was the obvious choice.
He'd spent years on their special operations and research unit, charged with hostage, crisis and SWAT team assignments. He had trained other agents in the art of negotiating. He'd been through prison riots and a standoff with a religious cult in Arkansas, which ended peacefully after five days.
"When they called me I thought, wait a minute, I don't do this anymore," Van Zandt, 48, said in an interview at his home in the Chancellor area of western Spotsylvania County. "But when the FBI says, `We'd like you to go,' it pretty much means you're on the way."
Before he'd return, Van Zandt would find himself debating Bible scripture with Koresh, agonizing over what he saw as the group's blind, stubborn devotion and finding comfort in the prayers of his family and fellow parishioners at Spotsylvania's New Life in Christ Church.
He is confident that authorities tried everything. Yet the blaze believed to have killed Koresh and 85 men, women and children is a memory that will always haunt him.
"As a negotiator you are kind of a fisherman," he said. "Your lures are psychological ones and you keep trying different lures until you can have a good exchange of information and a nonviolent solution. I didn't find one for David Koresh."
Van Zandt estimates he and his negotiating team made 800 contacts with Koresh or his top lieutenants over the 51-day standoff. There were countless offers - to send in lawyers or a computer so Koresh could finish his religious manuscript - but all were rejected.
Before the standoff, the FBI had known little about the Davidians. Van Zandt said there was not even a file for him to study on his way to Waco. That changed quickly.
Agents learned Koresh was a ninth-grade dropout, reportedly dyslexic and a wannabe rock star. He told his followers to avoid alcohol, tobacco and meat, but was seen in Texas restaurants indulging in all three. Husbands and wives in the cult were made to sleep in separate quarters, while Koresh was free to have sex with anyone there.
A number of followers were well-educated, with degrees from Harvard or divinity schools. Van Zandt said Koresh claimed his special gift came from uncovering the secret of the Book of Revelations in the New Testament.
When Koresh asked for a "Christian FBI agent," Van Zandt got on the phone. "I got my Bible and he had his."
Koresh "twisted the Scripture to serve his own needs," Van Zandt said. When the cult leader claimed to be Jesus, Van Zandt told him, "a good shepherd protects his flock. You're endangering yours."
While he hoped some of the cult members would see the truth and escape, Van Zandt predicted Koresh would never surrender.
"I'm as convinced of that now as I was then. For him to come out, he would have had to face the truth, to give up being God. His followers and the media would have scrutinized him and he would have failed the test."
Van Zandt would occasionally talk to other Davidians on the phone. He would plead with them to "come to safety." But they'd say Koresh wasn't ready.
"I'd just want to shake them and say, `You're an adult and a parent. Don't abdicate your decisions.' "
"I kept praying the children would come out. I kept waiting to see this line of little kids coming. . . . I want people to know that the FBI agents cared deeply about what happened to them." Many agents, including Van Zandt, had children waiting back at home.
"Is there anything else we could have done? I really don't think so."
by CNB