Uh, one day after the, uh, the, April 19th fire, um, President Clinton walked out on the White House lawn and asked the following question, to the, uh, press. "Is there something else we should have done. Is there some other question we should have asked? Can I say for sure there was nothing else we could have done to make the outcome different?" I want to suggest that in the order those questions were asked, the answers are yes, yes, yes.

Uh, I am at the tail end of a year's worth of research. We're closing out a book commissioned by the University of Chicago Press. Uh, fifteen scholars from all over the country, uh, historians, uh, sociologists, uh, uh, scholars in law and religion, are working on different aspects of the Branch Davidian conflict. And we're trying to work though some of these, um, issues. And the conclusion among my peers is that, uh, the series of errors and miscalculations probably could have been stopped or interrupted at any point. The final outcome of what occurred, was not just one mistake, not just two mistakes, not just three miscalculations, but a whole series of miscalculations that are very confounding to those of us who studied, uh, marginal or alternative religious movements. I'll avoid the word cult because I think it's a pejorative term that people use to beat up on groups they don't like. A cult is a group that you don't like. That basically what we're left with in terms of a definition.

Uh, one of the things I want to address is the specifics of the psychological warfare that the, uh, the FBI decided to employ about ten days into the standoff. Uh, we now know from the government reports, both the Justice Department reports and the, um, Treasury Department report, that the FBI gave up on negotiations very early on in the whole process. That's confounding and, and, puzzling to a lot of us. During the same time, in which the, the Branch Davidians were engaged in negotiations with the FBI negotiations, negotiators, we successfully negotiated a peaceful settlement, uh, in Ohio, for a prison riot. It seems to me that the prisoners got a better shake in the situation than the Branch Davidians got. Uh, they were so successful in Ohio, and one wonders why we were so miserably unsuccessful here in, uh, Waco, Texas.

Uh, the psychological warfare tactic, uh, which basically was an option, uh, that supplanted, it took the place of negotiations, I think contributed largely to the outcome of April 19th. If you know anything about psychological warfare and pressure tactics, and perhaps you don't, the idea is, to destabilize a group, by sending them mixed messages, by refusing the message that has just been sent, to basically send them into a mental state of chaos, so that you get alternating methods and messages and tactics of theat and conciliation, coercion and conciliation. So that one day the FBI's attitude would be very conciliatory, sympathetic rather, apologetic, extending themselves to be friends and, uh, ameliorative, and the next day they would be aggressive, coercive, they would send tanks out to smash, uh, the cars, and the kids' motorcycles and so forth. This was by design. And the result they got was that those inside didn't know who they were dealing with. They couldn't possibly trust those on the outside. They didn't know what to expect from the government. It's not that surprising that they expected to be killed by the government. And that is, I think, a direct result of the methods that the FBI chose to use. No one has explained to me why, um, they thought that would produce a positive outcome. We know that in some other situations, against terrorist groups, perhaps, um, perhaps this has been used successfully. One case that was cited with Manuel Noriega. But I don't think the, the analogy, the comparison is a very good one. Uh- as Lawrence Sullivan said in his, uh, report to the Justice Department, he was one of the panelists, from Harvard, he was asked to review the actions of the FBI. He said they totally ignored the fact that this group was religious, that their motivation was religious, the thinking was religious, that they were a religious group. Because the FBI dismissed their religion as a front. As a con, and that basically, uh, they were a criminal group using religion as a front.

So, we have a logic which, uh, has a lot of flaws, which probably helps to, uh, complicate, uh, the matter, and probably contributed to, to the outcome. Because the group thought themselves to be, under attack, um, and to be victims, uh, in this situation.

Let me say just one more thing, um, and I'll, uh, cease. Uh, Nancy Ammerman, uh, who was one of the Justice Department's, uh, experts, asked to review, uh, the, uh, the actions of the FBI, is a good friend of mine. And, uh, right after I found out she was chosen to be on this panel, I called her up and I said, "Nancy? How is it that you were selected? I, I- no offense, but I don't really consider you to be, an expert on, uh, new religious movements, or, or apocalyptic sects, or, uh, these kinds of groups." Uh, Nancy stuttered, studies, Southern Baptists. Uh, she has two books out, uh, both on Southern Baptists. And I, I said, "Either the, uh, FBI thinks that Southern Baptists are a cult, or, uh, they're not able to make a distinction between Southern Baptists and Branch Davidians." Um- and she laughed, and she said, "I'm not quite sure why they picked me, but I got a phone call one day, and, uh, Phillip Heymann, the assistant, uh, secretary- deputy- under, uh, Reno, asked me if I would, uh, participate." And she said, "Well, I don't think I'm really the person you'd talk to. Let me give you a list of people who I know are scholars, who've spent their whole lives studying, these kinds of religious movements. They would be in a better position, to make an evaluation." And, and Phillip Heymann said, "Well, uh, we're only interested in, in getting you. And if you're not interested, we already have our own lists. And we'll go to the next person on the list." And Nancy said that she thought about it for a while, and decided that she would go ahead and, and, and agree to be on the list, because they would exclude, uh, the very people that, that needed to be on the list, and at least she had contact with, with the people, who, uh, she thought could be most helpful. And so we talked, and in fact she's got a chapter that will appear in my book, and it's sort of revealing about the internal dynamics of the FBI culture. And, uh, I can tell you that, uh, there's a lot of dissensus within, the FBI, sort of an internal warfare between the tactical people who like to go in with guns and, and, uh, and, and solve their, uh, their problems, uh, in military fashion, and those who would prefer to negotiate. And you know who won, that, uh, internal conflict, the tactical people, and that's why we had the outcome that we did. Thank you. [applause]