Bugs Gave Agents `Ear' On Waco Cult -- Agents Sent Listening Devices Along With Supplies Sought By Koresh

WACO, Texas - Federal agents slipped listening devices into the Branch Davidian compound during the 51-day standoff and heard cult members planning the fire Monday that apparently killed most of them a short time later, a federal official said yesterday.

Agents used tiny battery-powered listening devices sent inside with deliveries of magazines, videotapes, video camera batteries and milk, said the official, who requested anonymity.

In the last week, FBI officials listening to conversations inside the compound became increasingly alarmed that the cult was planning to provoke a shootout with federal authorities.

"They were gearing up in there - bunkering in, readying for a fight. No talk of suicide, but they were getting ready for a fight," the federal official said. "They talked freely of that. They just couldn't get the FBI to do it."

Jeffrey Jamar, FBI special agent in charge of the Waco operation, refused to comment yesterday on reports about listening devices but said agents had "outstanding intelligence in many respects with varying consistency and sometimes very inconclusive."

Federal officials would not describe the devices in detail or say how many were used.

But state-of-the-art bugs are not much bigger than a dime, have antennas as thin as a human hair and cost about $1,000, said Richard Aznaran, president of Phoenix Investigative Services and Spy Supply in Dallas. The devices can easily broadcast conversations to a

receiver hundreds of yards away, he said.

But even the best has limitations, which may explain why Jamar said federal intelligence was sometimes "inconclusive."

For instance, if the bug were hidden in a videocassette and the cassette was later placed inside a camera, the camera's electronics would interfere with the signal. And if the device were in a room like the compound's concrete "blockhouse" described by federal officials, metal reinforcements in the walls would block the signal far more than the wooden frame of the rest of the compound, Aznaran said.

Even in the best of broadcasting conditions, the battery would go dead in about a week, he said.

Federal negotiators worked out several deliveries during the stand-off, offering the chance to send in new bugs as the batteries on the old ones died.

The devices operated on a frequency unaffected by federal jamming devices around the compound and were small enough to place unobtrusively inside the packages sent in, the official said.

Equipment supplied by the Federal Communications Commission was used to jam radio and television reception in the compound, but authorities ceased jamming every morning so the cult could monitor daily news briefings.

Those briefings provoked some of the most virulent responses from cult members, the official said.

"You would hear their comments about news conferences, yelling about (FBI Special Agent Bob) Ricks and (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Intelligence Chief David) Troy, yelling and screaming about (how) people were lying about them," the official said, referring to the two federal officials who served as spokesmen for their agencies in the briefings.

"That came mostly from (Steve) Schneider," he said. Schneider was an aide to cult leader David Koresh.

The listening device was switched off during the five visits that a Houston attorney had with Koresh, the official said.