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

DATE: TUESDAY, July 25, 1995                   TAG: 9507250088
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

ATF KNEW KORESH KNEW

Wiping away tears, a federal undercover agent told lawmakers Monday that he was certain his supervisors knew that Branch Davidian leader David Koresh had been tipped off to the impending raid on the morning of Feb. 28, 1993. But they chose to plow ahead anyway, he said, with deadly results.

``I [said], `They know, they know, they know we're coming.' I'll remember that as long as I live,'' said Robert Rodriguez, a special agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who visited Koresh 45 minutes before the raid. He was horrified, he said, to learn that the operation, involving three Texas National Guard helicopters and two cattle trailers bearing 75 federal agents, had not been halted instantly.

As the second week of hearings opened into the disastrous confrontation near Waco, Texas, Republicans tried to determine how an operation that depended on the element of surprise could continue once Rodriguez had passed on his belief that Koresh had been alerted.

In sharply conflicting testimony, ATF's Chuck Sarabyn, the raid's tactical commander, and Phillip Chojnacki, Sarabyn's supervisor, said it was not clear to them that Rodriguez meant that Koresh knew specifically that agents with arrest and search warrants for illegal firearms would be pulling into the driveway of the Mount Carmel compound later that morning. Chojnacki said Koresh had often talked in general about a coming confrontation with federal authorities.

Rodriguez countered by accusing both men of lying. ``There was no question in my mind they got the message,'' he said.

In later testimony, Treasury Undersecretary for Enforcement Ronald K. Noble reiterated that a lengthy and highly critical 1993 Treasury Department report had ``uncovered and reported disturbing evidence of misleading statements'' by Sarabyn and Chojnacki and ``deliberate attempts ... to shift blame'' to Rodriguez. Sarabyn and Chojnacki were fired last year but later were reinstated with full back pay and attorneys' costs by a civil service review board. Rodriguez, who remains on duty, has filed suit against the ATF and his former superiors.

Monday's hearing attempted to get at the heart of the ill-fated raid that led to the deaths of four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians and prompted a 51-day standoff that ended in further catastrophe April 19. Nearly 80 Branch Davidians died that day as government tanks advanced with CS tear gas, and fire consumed the flimsy walls of the compound.

``To raid without the element of surprise was, in my opinion, the greatest mistake of the Waco tragedy,'' said Rep. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.

by CNB