Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 25, 1993 TAG: 9305250290
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB SABLATURA HOUSTON CHRONICLE
DATELINE: HOUSTON LENGTH: Medium
"It would've been better if you just called me up or talked to me," Koresh told ATF negotiator Jim Cavanaugh. "Then you all could have come in and done your work."
The recordings - made in the hours after the shootout while ATF agents tried to negotiate a truce with Koresh - contain dozens of cellular telephone conversations and police radio transmissions.
The recordings also indicate that Koresh knew the identity of the undercover agent placed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the Mount Carmel compound near Waco, Texas, who was using the name of Robert Gonzalez.
"I was telling Robert, you know, I told him this morning, I said, `Look, I had this vision' and I told him, I says, `Robert, . . . you got to do what you got to do," Koresh said to Cavanaugh.
Koresh repeatedly implied on the recordings that he was the son of God, at one time imploring the negotiator to get the armed agents outside the compound to read a Bible so they would realize what they had done.
"Will you ask them to read Revelation 22 so they can know who they've shot," Koresh said. "Tell them all I wanted to do was show them the seven seals."
He elaborated: "When someone asks me who I am, I say, `Do you remember the cross?' And they go, `Yeah.' And I say, `Let me show you. For 72 hours I was beaten up, ridiculed, laughed at, flogged.' "
Cavanaugh would not comment on the tapes or on his negotiations with Koresh.
The first federal agent to deal with Koresh, Cavanaugh negotiated the cease-fire that allowed officials to recover ATF agents who were wounded and killed during the Sunday morning gunbattle.
ATF spokesman Jack Killorin said agents at the Mount Carmel compound gave Koresh an opportunity to surrender but that he chose not to do so.
"ATF agents, when they arrived at the premises, called out their identity and their purpose to serve a federal search warrant," Killorin said.
Phillip Chojnacki, the agent in charge of the Houston ATF office who directed the raid, would not comment on why his agency did not try to arrest Koresh while he was away from the compound.
Killorin said he had no way of knowing when the tapes were made. Although he confirmed that the ATF taped many of its negotiations with Koresh, he did not know if the newly surfaced tapes overlapped existing ATF tapes, which are in the hands of federal prosecutors.
by CNB