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Salon.com
Aug. 28, 1999
Delta team at Waco?
A former CIA official says Army commandos played a
role in the deadly
standoff.
BY JEFF STEIN
With congressional Republicans calling for hearings
on the FBI's handling of
the deadly 1993 Branch Davidian crisis, thanks to new
revelations about the
bureau's long-denied use of gas grenades, it's clear
the whole story about the
federal response to the Waco conflagration has yet to
be told.
Salon News has learned that U.S. Army Delta team
commando officers sat in
on a meeting at CIA headquarters to discuss the
ongoing Waco hostage
situation in March 1993, according to a former CIA
security officer. Such
involvement by U.S. military personnel in a domestic
conflict could be illegal.
Former CIA officer Gene Cullen told Salon News he
attended a meeting at
CIA headquarters on the Waco crisis where Army
representatives were
"mostly observers," but indicated they were prepared
to step in and help if
any more federal agents were killed. The standoff
ended with the fiery deaths
of 76 people at the Branch Davidian religious
compound.
"My charter at the agency was facilities personnel,
and operations worldwide.
So we called this meeting [at CIA] during the Waco
crisis ... to see how the
[FBI's hostage rescue team] would respond if it was
one of our buildings in
this country, and if it were overseas, how Delta
would respond.
"So we're all sitting around the room talking about
scenarios. The FBI gave us
a briefing on what had transpired. The Delta guys
didn't say much. They were
playing second fiddle to the FBI."
Pentagon officials denied the story. "We had no
operational involvement in
this activity, or planning," an official said.
Salon has also learned that a senior Army Special
Forces lawyer advised the
special operations command that aid to federal police
forces could violate the
so-called posse comitatus provision of U.S. law
barring the use of U.S.
military forces in domestic operations, except for
training, maintenance of
equipment or "expert advice." There is also an
exception to the law allowing
the use of military personnel in drug operations if
requested by an agency
head.
Col. Philip W. Lindley, judge advocate general for
the Pentagon's Joint
Special Operations Command, wrote a memo on Feb. 3,
1993, three weeks
before the Branch Davidian standoff began, saying "an
exception under
federal law would have to be found."
"Since there are point targets with identified
civilian subjects this falls outside
the scope of JTF mission approval and cannot be
accomplished" legally,
Lindley wrote.
Four agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms had been
killed during an initial siege of the compound.
"Their biggest fear was that
more agents would be killed," said Cullen, who was a
senior officer in the
CIA's Office of Security. Participants at the
meeting, which occurred in "early
or mid-March 1993," Cullen said, also discussed the
use of "sleeping gas" that
might end the siege peacefully.
A senior former FBI official, Danny Coulson, admitted
this week that
munitions were fired into the Branch Davidian
compound that could have set it
on fire -- after denying it for six years. A visibly
angry Attorney General Janet
Reno said it was news to her and vowed to get to the
bottom of the affair.
Cullen said Delta operatives he met with in Bangkok
first told him about the
operation in Waco. "They said there were about 10
guys, fully armed, fully
operational, they were ready for war. The last thing
they wanted was to be
sitting there with their thumbs up their rear end."
One of the Delta commandos was helping drive a
Bradley Fighting Vehicle,
according to conversations Cullen had with Delta
commandos during his trips
overseas to inspect security arrangements for CIA
installations. Cullen said
that in his experience, Delta teams rarely went on
any operation with less than
10 commandos.
"I was surprised at the amount of involvement they
had," he added.
Cullen said he heard the "same basic story"
separately on "three or four
occasions" from different Delta operatives in
different places overseas. He
was deployed to Somalia during the crisis there in
1996, ferrying payments to
an agent on the CIA payroll who turned out to be
working as a double agent
for a warlord.
After Cullen told a version of this story to the
Dallas Morning News, the CIA
refused to confirm his employment there. But he
showed pay slips to Salon
News that confirmed his senior rank.
Cullen joined the CIA in 1980 and attended the career
officers course at
Camp Peary, Va. He was assigned to CIA headquarters
from 1990 to 1995,
with primary responsibilities for area security.
salon.com | Aug. 28, 1999
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