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They didn't follow the rules
WASHINGTON - Officials involved in the deadly Feb. 28 raid on a Texas cult botched the job and were less than truthful about their actions later, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen said today. He replaced the head of the agency responsible and suspended five subordinates.
Armed with the results of a probe into the raid, Bentsen said the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms had lost the element of surprise in its attempt to seize David Koresh and enter his Branch Davidian compound. Officials should have called off the raid, Bentsen said.
Four ATF agents died in the raid, along with six cult members. It was the opening act in a drama that led to a 51-day standoff between the FBI and Koresh and his followers and ended with an inferno in which as many as 85 cult members died.
"Numerous officials were less than truthful about the facts," Bentsen said.
Bentsen said he was immediately replacing ATF Director Stephen Higgins with John Magaw, the director of the Secret Service. Magaw will serve as acting director in place of Higgins, who announced Monday he planned to retire Oct. 30.
The secretary placed five top ATF officials on administrative leave: Daniel Hartnett, associate director of law enforcement; Edward Conroy, deputy associate director; David Troy, chief of ATF intelligence; and the two Houston-based agents who led the raid near Waco.
Bentsen made public a 220-page Treasury Department report that faulted ATF for making plans for the operation that were "based on seriously flawed assumptions" about the cult and its leader.
The field commanders, who were suspended, "erred by failing to abort the mission" as soon as they learned that Koresh had been warned, Bentsen said.
"ATF did not adequately explore the possibility of arresting David Koresh away from the compound," Bentsen said.
Instead, ATF officials devised a high-risk strategy to catch cult members by surprise, the report said.
Bentsen said further action would be taken in a number of personnel cases.
Bentsen said Higgins had "assured Treasury that the raid would not proceed if . . . surprise was lost."
Asked why Charles Sarabyn, one of the two field commanders, went ahead with raid anyway, Bentsen said: "I don't know what went on in the man's mind when he made the decision" that was "in absolute violation of the instructions."
ATF agents blamed the loss of surprise for the raid's failure.
The report also found that ATF officials and agents made misleading and inaccurate public statements. Higgins, too, made such statements, but they were based on inaccurate information from subordinates, the report concluded.
The report found that the planning document that was required for the raid was not written until five days after the raid. It was later altered by Sarabyn and Phillip Chojancki after the Texas Rangers requested a copy. The report said the planning document was rewritten by the two field commanders "in a concerted effort to conceal their errors in judgment."
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Carbon is not the problem, it makes up 0.041% of our atmosphere , 95% of that is from Volcanos and decomposing plants and stuff. So people in the US are responsible for 13% of the carbon in the atmosphere which 95% is not from Humans, like cars and trucks and stuff and they want to spend trillions to fix it while Solar Panel plants are powered by coal plants
think about that
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