Scroll down to the bold text for important information, you need not read every word. Commentary is given at end of each article.
 
Source: DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Headline: Man who had sneaked into compound leaves
               FBI says Koresh lying to drag out standoff
               (by Lee Hancock, staff writer of the
               Dallas Morning News)
Date: April 18, 1993     Dateline: WACO
Home Final Edition, News Section, Page 28A
 
Waco -- One of the two men who slipped into the besieged Branch Davidian compound last month left Saturday afternoon, federal officials said.
 
Louis Anthony Alaniz, a 24-year-old Houston man described by his family as a religious fanatic, walked out of the compound and was turned over to the Texas Department of Public Safety about 3:30 PM, said Jerry Singer, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
 
Mr. Alaniz, wearing a T-shirt with the words "David Koresh, God" printed on it, was taken to the McLennan County jail where he was charged with interfering with the duty of a police officer. He was being held as a material witness.
 
Mr. Alaniz sneaked into the compound March 24 and remained inside for 3 1/2 weeks, telling federal negotiators that he wanted to receive religious instruction from sect leader David Koresh.
 
A homeless drifter who also penetrated the federal perimeter March 26 was ordered to leave April 4. That man -- identified as Jess Amen -- faces a charge of interfering with police officers.
 
Mr. Alaniz's departure was the first development in a week in which federal officials called Mr. Koresh a liar, telling reporters Saturday that the sect leader has even lied to this mother.
 
Repeating what has become a daily litany of what he termed the sect's bizarre statements, baseless pledges and outright lies, FBI Special Agent Bob Ricks told reporters that he is emphasizing the Branch Davidians' untruths to show why no credence can be given to their latest promise to give up.
 
Perhaps most notable was what the FBI spokesman left unsaid Saturday, the 49th day of the standoff: If negotiations have failed and Mr. Koresh cannot be trusted, then aggressive tactical moves may be the only way to end the standoff.
 
Knowledgeable federal officials say the FBI cannot undertake any tactical operations until it receives Clinton administration approval for using force against the heavily armed sect.
 
Agent Ricks said Mr. Koresh is stalling.
 
"I think he's a classical sociopath, in that his way of thinking is: " One more day, the world's gonna be better for me." Agent Ricks said, "And that's his ultimate game, to keep it going one more day. I don't think he can think beyond that: "One more day, maybe, God will strike everybody dead."
 
Agent Ricks said the 33-year-old sect leader lied to his mother about being mortally wounded and lied to the public about losing a daughter during a Feb. 28 firefight in which four ATF agents died and 16 were wounded.
 
Official have since learned from sect lieutenant Steve Schneider that no children were killed in the gunbattle that erupted when the ATF tried to serve arrest and search warrants at the compound, Agent Ricks said.
 
"So we've had a continuation of not only broken promises but a series of lies," Agent Ricks said, ". . . So it seems futile for everybody to sit around and hold their breath. ...We've all been down that road before."
 
On Wednesday, Mr. Koresh's attorney, Dick DeGuerin of Houston, announced that his client would lead his followers into federal custody after completing what he described as a divinely inspired manuscript.
 
The manuscript will supposedly reveal the truth about the seven seals, a mystical passage of the Book of Revelation detailing the plagues and disasters that will mark the world's end.
 
On Saturday, Agent Ricks said negotiators had been told over the past 24 hours that Mr. Koresh was working on the second of seven sections of his manuscript.
 
Although there was no word on whether the first section has been edited, Agent Ricks said, negotiators were told that the opus is being typed by Judy Schneider, a sect follower who was telling federal authorities a month ago that one of her fingers was so swollen an infected that she was considering cutting it off.
 
When FBI negotiators asked whether they could help speed the dyslexic, ninth-grade dropout's writing process, Agent Ricks said, sect members "complained about their typewriters and typing tapes. They wanted a complete word-processing system and numerous batteries.
 
That request isn't likely to be honored, he said, because authorities suspect that the Branch Davidians have misused batteries provided in the past.
 
One federal official confirmed Saturday that authorities fear that fresh batteries could be used to power cellular telephones inside the compound.
 
Sect members were monitored making cellular telephone calls several weeks ago, the official said, "but we think their batteries have run down."
 
Agent Ricks suggested for the first time Saturday that federal officials are employing jamming equipment to prevent the Branch Davidians from monitoring anything but the daily news briefings. He refused to detail what is being done.
 
But the federal official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Federal Communications Commission brought in special equipment weeks ago to help block the compound's radio and TV reception.
 
Agent Ricks said that negotiations with the sect have produced nothing since March 19, when three sect members were released.
 
"This case has not involved what one would characterize as the normal negotiation process almost from the very beginning. We have never gotten into a quid pro quo situation, where we actually engaged in negotiations," he said.
 
Last week, he said, Mr. Schneider hinted that three people might be considering coming out but never revealed their names.
 
"We believe, again, it's just a game. The game was to stall this thing out as long as they could, to release those that were not vital or those that were causing them trouble," he said, referring to three men who apparently were ordered to leave last month for excessive drinking and rules violations.
 
"There are no indications at all that Mr. Koresh wants any of those people (still inside) to come out, " Agent Ricks said, "He views those people as necessary for his protection, and we still believe that the final outcome that he wants to take place is a showdown with the government where massive casualties and deaths will take place."
 
END of April 18 article.
 
Comment: FBI's jamming operations were in violation of Sections 305 and 333 of the Communications Act. FCC's supplying the jamming equipment was in violation of Section 326 of that Act.
 

Source: DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Headline: Koresh vowed to give in
               FBI bugged compound, heard plans
               (by Lee Hancock, staff writer of the
               Dallas Morning News)
Date: April 21, 1993     Dateline: WACO
Home Final Edition, News Section, Page 1A
 
Waco -- Law enforcement officials heard the Branch Davidians plan the fire that apparently killed most of them shortly thereafter, a federal official said Tuesday.
 
In fact, federal officials had been listening to conversations inside the cult compound for some time, side the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
 
During the seven weeks of negotiations, agents slipped electronic listening devices into material delivered to the compound, the official said.
 
In the last week, FBI officials listening to conversations inside the compound became increasingly alarmed that the cult was planning to provoke a shootout with federal authorities.
 
"They were gearing up in there -- bunkering in, readying for a fight. No talk of suicide, but they were getting ready for fight, the federal official sid. "They talked freely of that. They just couldn't get the FBI to do it."
 
The planted bugs also enabled federal officials to learn that their plans for a peaceful resolution had failed. They heard cult members giving instructions about setting the fires that consumed the buildings Monday afternoon, the officials said.
 
Jeffrey Jamar, An Antonio-based special agent in charge of the FBI's Waco operation, refused to comment Tuesday morning on reports that listening devices had been planted inside the compound during the 51-day siege.
 
"I won't discuss what our intelligence techniques are, I'll just say to you that we had outstanding intelligence in many respects with varying consistency and sometimes very inconclusive", he said at the new briefing.
 
But he later said that the FBI had "absolute certain intelligence" that cult leader David Koresh's latest promise to his attorney to come out after completing a seven-part manuscript was "another sham, another stall."
 
The Federal official who would comment said that agents could be so certain because they had "ears" inside the compound: tiny, battery-powered listening devices sent inside with periodic deliveries of magazines, videotapes, video camera batteries and milk.
 
Officials mum
 
Federal officials would not describe the devices in detail or say how many were used.
 
But state-of -the -art bugs are not much bigger than a dime, have antennas as thin as a human hair and cost about $1,000, said Richard Aznaran, president of Phoenix Investigative Services and Spy Supply in Dallas. The devices can easily broadcast a roomful of conversation to a receiver hundreds of yard away, he said.
 
"We do a lot of electronic counter-measures", he said, "which is basically finding bugs."
 
Mr. Aznaran said federal agents would have access to the best in modern technology.
 
But even the best has limitations, which may explain why Agent Jamar said federal intelligence was sometimes "inconclusive."
 
For instance, if the bug were hidden in a videocassette and the cassette were in a camera, the camera's electronics would interfere with the signal. And if the device were in a room like the central concrete "blockhouse" described by federal officials, metal reinforcements in the walls would block the signal far more than the wooden frame of the rest of the compound, Mr. Aznaran said.
 
Even in the best of broadcasting conditions, the battery would go dead in about a week, he said.
 
Federal negotiators worked out several deliveries during the seven-week standoff, offering the chance to send in new bugs as the batteries on the old ones died,. And that's why the negotiators agreed to the deliveries, the official said.
 
"That's why they sent stuff in occasionally," the official said. "They had a purpose."
 
The devices operated on frequency unaffected by federal jamming devices around the compound and were small enough to place unobtrusively inside the packages sent in, the official said.
 
"They put it in all kinds of different things."
 
Heard mood shifts
 
Authorities were able to listen in on the mood shift of the cult and its leaders, Mr. Koresh and Steve Schneider, the official said.
 
They heard things that were being said inside, comments about how they thought things were going," the official said.
 
Equipment supplied by the Federal Communications Commission was used to jam radio and television reception in the compound, but authorities ceased jamming every morning so the cult could monitor daily news briefings.
 
Those briefings provided some of the most virulent responses from cult members, the official said.
 
"You would hear their comments about news conferences, yelling about (FBI Special Agent Bob) Ricks and (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Intelligence Chief David) Troy, yelling and screaming about people were lying about them," the official said, referring to the two federal officials who served as spokesmen of their agencies in the briefings. "That came mostly from Schneider."
 
The listening device was switched off during the five visits that a Houston attorney had with Mr. Koresh, the official said. But authorities later eavesdropped on conversations between Mr. Schneider, Mr. Koresh and others disparaging the meetings as a ruse for more time.
 
"The conversations about Koresh playing games with the attorneys came after those meetings," the official said.
 
Staff writer Jeffrey Weiss contributed to this report.
 
END of April 21 article
 
Comment: Notice the detail that listening devices did not operate on those frequencies being jammed by FBI. This shows that jamming was not casual or sloppily done, but was systematic. It also shows that the level of interference was severe enough to destroy the function of listening devices. The report of jamming operations is a repeat of the story from April 18, repeating FCC's involvement in the jamming, but points out the political-psychological nature of the jamming. This was not a legitimate part of any public safety or law enforcement operation. It even points out that the jamming was truly unnecessary, and could be stopped at FBI's whim. 

End of Dallas Morning News articles.

Letter to FCC Chairman Kennard

George Zimmerlee  1998  Research on Criminal Government  Rev. 11/98
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