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"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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