Word: raids
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Here Magaw disagrees. The worst error, he says, was the decision by the raid's top two commanders to take part in the assault, thus eliminating the perspective that might have allowed them to call it off and avert disaster. One leader rode in a helicopter, the other joined the raiding party that entered the compound. "It's the same effect as if the Redskins would send their coaches onto the field," Magaw says. "Your coaches were where they couldn't see what was taking place." The ATF, he says, had never trained the leaders to recognize the flaws...
Despite all those changes, some agents wonder if life within ATF has really changed. Immediately after the Waco raid, many agents were outraged when the raid leaders, Phillip Chojnacki and Chuck Sarabyn, tried to blame the fiasco on a young undercover agent. The Treasury report, which condemned both leaders for serious errors and for lying to postraid investigators, stated, "Their consistent attempts to place blame on a junior agent were one of the most disturbing aspects of the conduct of senior ATF officials...
What prompted the "raid" was Katona's arsenal of machine guns. Under the National Firearms Act of 1934, anyone hoping to buy a machine gun must first fill out a federal authorization and have it signed by the chief law-enforcement officer of the community. Until September 1988 Katona was an auxiliary Bucyrus police officer and took his forms to his boss, Chief Joseph Beran--an immense, bearded man with a shaved head and a passion for Harley-Davidson motorcycles. At one point, Katona claims, the chief presigned a large stack of forms. Beran denies...
PERHAPS THE HARSHEST CRITIC OF THE ATF'S WACO RAID was the bureau's own master, the Treasury Department. In the raid's aftermath, the department launched an investigation by veteran agents from its other law-enforcement agencies, backed up by independent outside reviewers, including Willie Williams, the Los Angeles chief of police. The result was a 500-page indictment that pulled no punches yet whose details, surprisingly, went largely unreported. The Blue Book, as it is known, portrayed a dark carnival of ATF errors. Among them...
...established an undercover house adjacent to the compound and installed eight agents there under the guise of students at Texas State Technical College. But they were too old to be convincing. They carried briefcases and drove cars too new and expensive for students to afford. Raid planners gravely underestimated David Koresh's savvy and suspicion--the review team discovered that Koresh had had checks run on the cars and found that three of the four had no credit liens outstanding...