Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 21, 1995 TAG: 9507210060
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The president told a group of senior law enforcement officials that it was ``irresponsible for people in elected positions to suggest that the police are some sort of armed bureaucracy acting on private grudges and hidden agendas.''
He said it was wrong to equate the innocent, if fatal, mistakes of federal agents and the moral ``depravity'' of the leader of the Branch Davidians sect.
On Capitol Hill, in the second day of hearings into the events that led to the 1993 standoff at the sect's compound near Waco, Texas, Republicans sought to turn attention from the cult's leader, David Koresh, to the two failed government raids and to the threat posed by military officers' assistance to the federal agents who stormed the sect's headquarters.
The contrarian clash of words that marked the hearings' opening day Wednesday continued. Conservatives defended the counterculturalists. Liberals took a law-and-order stance. Republicans and Democrats cried shame at one another for the conduct of the hearings.
The Democrats continued their accusations that the National Rifle Association had infiltrated the Republicans' investigative staff. Republicans called the Democrats panderers for questioning a 14-year-old girl Wednesday about how she was sexually abused by Koresh.
But no significant new evidence was cited as the members of the House Government Reform and Judiciary committees questioned military officers and a five-man panel of law enforcement experts dubbed ``the hindsight team'' by some of the lawmakers.
The 1993 siege began Feb. 28 with a raid that left four agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms dead and ended 51 days later with an FBI assault and a fire that killed about 80 members of the sect.
Keywords:
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by CNB