Congressional Republicans vow to investigate Waco

WASHINGTON - Senior congressional Republicans, declaring a lack of faith in Janet Reno's explanations, said Sunday they will move quickly to open House and Senate investigations of how the administration handled the 1993 Branch Davidian confrontation.

Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said he would issue subpoenas this week to Justice and Defense Department officials to ask why information on the deadly operation is just now coming to light.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he, too, is launching an inquiry. Attorney General Reno and other leaders at Justice, he said, don't "have much credibility at this particular point."

The FBI revealed last week that "a very limited number" of incendiary tear gas grenades was shot at a bunker in the Waco, Texas, compound in the early hours of April 19, 1993. Later, the main wooden structure where the Branch Davidians had barricaded themselves burst into flames.

The revelation contradicted previous claims that no pyrotechnic devices were used in the effort to end the siege. Reno said Thursday she was "very, very troubled" by the disclosure and ordered a full review of the case.

Burton, who has openly clashed with Reno in past investigations into Whitewater and Democratic fund-raising practices, said he does not trust the attorney general.

"It would not surprise me if Janet Reno tried to keep a lid on this because I think she has done that in other areas," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Hatch, on "Fox News Sunday," said he had no evidence to question FBI and Justice assertions involving the incendiary tear gas grenades. The bureau insists they were fired only at the concrete bunker and not the main structure, and the government did not cause the deaths of Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and some 80 of his followers.

The Justice Department, in a fact sheet released Sunday, said the military type gas canisters were fired at the underground bunker several hours before the fire started. The department cited "clear evidence," including electronic surveillance tapes, that the fact sheet said proves conclusively the Davidians started the fire.

But Hatch said one reason he is running for the Republican presidential nomination is to "change the people at the Justice Department." Reno, he said, "never really quite comes out in a forthright way with anything."

The attorney general was defended by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who said on NBC that he had "real faith in her integrity." But Schumer also said she should seek an independent, outside investigation rather than have the FBI or Justice look into why the information on the incendiary devices did not come out earlier.

"The FBI had its chance to do this investigation on its own, they clearly muffed it," Schumer said.

Two former FBI officials involved in the Waco operation said they were certain their agents did not cause the fatal fire and blamed the confusion on a bureaucratic foul-up.

There was a reference to the pyrotechnic grenades in the volumes of official documents produced after the 51-day siege, but "in some ways we are so bureaucratic I think it can get lost in the recesses of the agency," Bob Ricks, FBI spokesman during the WACO siege, said on ABC's "This Week."

"This was not a cover-up, this was not any grand conspiracy or anything else. What it was a very glaring oversight," Byron Sage, the FBI's chief Waco hostage negotiator, said on NBC.

Sage and Ricks also played down disclosures that officers from the Army's secretive Delta Force anti-terror unit were on the scene at Waco.

Sage said two to four Delta Force officers were present from time to time, but only as observers and advisers. He said the FBI hostage and rescue team has long trained and exchanged information with the military.

Branch Davidian family attorney Michael Caddell said on ABC, however, that a Delta Force presence at a police operation violates the law.

He also said a court hearing two years ago alluded to puffs of smoke around the underground bunker. "Somebody was involved in a cover-up," he said.

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