HEARINGS LEAVE MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT DAVIDIANS

The congressional hearings on the federal raid of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, reveal in dabs the truth of what went wrong there.

While Republicans try to link the Clinton administration to the botched raid, Democrats cling to the notion that cult leader David Koresh is wholly and solely responsible for the more than 80 deaths from the debacle. They erect straw men -- the National Rifle Association and militias -- as greater threats to citizens' safety than any federal law enforcement agency.

The partisan posturing at the hearings prompted newspaper columnist Paul Greenberg to coin a new term, "ojayification," to describe the congressmen whose skill in attracting TV coverage at the Waco hearings rivals the lawyers in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

The bits of information that have emerged are damning, though. We know that an undercover agent told Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raid supervisors that someone tipped off Koresh that the initial ATF attack was imminent. Despite an order to the contrary, the ATF supervisors ignored the information and waged their surprise attack without the benefit of surprise.

The undercover agent, Robert Rodriguez, was inside the Branch Davidian compound just prior to the raid. He testified this week that not only was his passioned plea to abandon the raid ignored, his former bosses lied about the incident later. In the process, Rodriguez said, "they just about destroyed a great agency."

We also know from Koresh's lawyers that their client twice tried to surrender to government agents who ignored the pleas, interpreting them as stall tactics.

One of the lawyers, Jack Zimmermann, seemed troubled by the type of questions congressmen asked. Despite his criticism of the ATF raid plan and the FBI's final assault on the building, Zimmerman said "none of us want the FBI or the ATF to be destroyed by this. We want them to be enhanced by it."

Restoring public faith in federal law enforcement ought to the goal of the hearings. But to do that, a number of questions still need to be asked and answered.

-- We know a deadly type of gas was used in the final raid on the Branch Davidians, fired into the building from tanks that poked holes into the building. We don't know why Nor do we know who picked the plan.

-- Questions remain regarding whether federal agents violated the Branch Davidians' civil rights by serving arrest and search warrants without probable cause.

-- The hearings also should examine what happened to the surviving Branch Davidians. A jury convicted the Davidians of minor charges, but a judge sentenced them as if they had committed a premeditated, lethal assault on the ATF agents. The judge's actions prompted the presiding member of the jury to complain, saying she wished "everyone had just been acquitted on all charges."

ATF Director John Magaw, who took over after the Waco raid, says he is committed to correcting mistakes that were made at Waco. He also cautioned Congress against using the raid as an excuse to go after the agency. "I strongly believe that only the criminal will benefit from weakening ATF," he said.

He is right. But so far, those who called the shots in the raid are unwilling to admit their mistakes. If Magaw is to correct agency mistakes, and if Americans are again to trust and respect their federal law enforcement agencies, a bipartisan Congress must continue to ferret out those mistakes with detached tenacity.