The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 2

2A unda. rbnif 27 1994 THE TENNESSEAN 11 Davidians cleare "This says to law enforcement that you don't negotiate with tanks, you don't assault a house with people inside DAN COGDELL Defense attorney "The findings make clear that the government had a responsibility to act." JANET RENO U.S. attorney general of most serious charges you don't negotiate with tanks, you dont assault a house with people inside and you dont bring a case that you can't prove," said defense lawyer Dan Cogdell, who represents Clive Doyle, one of the four acquitted Davidians. The trial, which lasted seven weeks, was moved from Waco to San Antonio because of pretrial publicity. The jury deliberated four days before returning the verdicts.

Seven defendants were convicted of various weapons charges. U.S. District Judge Walter Smith threw out convictions for using or carrying a firearm during murder conspiracy because nobody was convicted of the murder conspiracy charge. He let stand other weapons counts against two defendants. "I guess I hoped that they would be found guilty.

That's about all I really care to say," said Marjory LeBleu, mother of one of the slain ATF agents, reached at her home in Lake Charles, La. Star prosecution witness Kathryn Schroeder, who agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of forcibly resisting federal officers in exchange for helping the government, testified Koresh told his followers: "If you cant kill for God, you cant die for God." Dick DeGuerin, the attorney who had represented Koresh during the seven-week standoff, said he hoped that the families of the slain ATF agents would sue the government "They were surely sent in there when they shouldn't have been. Their supervisors and the leaders of the ATF need to be held responsible." He said he was certain some cult members would sue: "I'm not going to file it, but I know there are others who will." A Treasury Department report blamed flawed decision making, inadequate intelligence gathering and mis-communication for the raid's failure. It also said ATF commanders failed to abort the raid when they learned the element of surprise was lost, then denied the operation had been compromised. Koresh and search for weapons.

They went ahead despite learning the cult had been tipped off they were coming. Prosecutors argued that Koresh and his followers stockpiled weapons and conspired to kill federal agents in the months before the raid. Defense lawyers countered that cult members fought back in self-defense. Jurors heard a dramatic 911 call from the compound pleading with authorities to halt the raid because of the women and children inside. On April 19, FBI armored vehicles battered the cult compound and pumped in tear gas in an effort to force the cultists out and end the standoff.

Hours later, the compound went up in flames. Prosecutors said cult members set the blaze in a mass suicide. Koresh and 78 followers, including 18 children, died amid the flames. Koresh and some other Davidians had been shot Nine cult members survived the inferno, watched live on television by people around the world. Eighteen children and 22 adults left the compound during the seven-week standoff.

"This says loud and clear to law enforcement that Report says Israeli troops opened fire 1 Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen replaced ATF Director Stephen Higgins and suspended five high-level ATF officials, two of whom later resigned. The report concluded Higgins had been misled by top aides. Reno had been in office only about six weeks when she approved the plan to end the siege. "In any human "effort there will be mistakes," ATF Director John W. Magaw said yesterday.

"Mistakes do not justify the mass murder that David Koresh ordered on Feb. 28 and concluded on April 19. We have met our responsibility to be accountable, and are meeting our responsibility to learn and improve." The defendants were Norman Allison, 25; Renos Avraam, 29; Brad Branch, 34; Jaime Castillo, 25; Graeme Craddock, 32; Clive Doyle, 52; Livingston Fa-gan, 34; Paul Fatta, 35; Woodrow Kendrick, 63; Ruth Ottman Riddle, 30; Kevin Whitecliff, 32. Rabin faces huge test in controlling militants KIRYAT ARB Occupied West Bank (AP) In this Jewish settlement, the New York-born doctor who carried out Friday's mosque massacre is a hero among those who were his neighbors. Dr.

Baruch Goldstein "did what he did to stop the peace process, and it was an heroic deed. But it will only work if more people will take up. his example," said Dani Ozel, a high school senior. ''And there are more people willing here." How to deal with anti-Arab radicals is the key challenge confronting Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in restoring the Israeli-PLO peace process. PLO officials want Israel to disarm Jewish extremists and begin discussing the future of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories now rather than two years down the road, as agreed in the Sept 13 accord.

Rabin is reportedly prepared to crack down on armed Jewish extremists but is against changing the agenda of the peace talks to start negotiating the final status of the 144 Jewish settlements and their 120,000 inhabitants. Few settlers wholeheartedly back the accord because of security concerns. While the majority support legal opposition to it, only an estimated 5,000 are potential troublemakers. Most of these are in Kiryat Arba, the only settlement where the anti-Arab Kach movement has gained significant influence, said Ehud Sprinzak, an expert on settlers at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Extremism is not confined to the Israeli side, however Settlers have borne the brunt of attacks by Islamic militants since Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed their accord.

In; all, 24 Israelis have died in shootings, most claimed by the Islamic funda- mentalist group Hamas, which opposes the accord. Most pressing now, however, is the Israeli government's search for a solution to violent extremism in the occupied territories. The Cabinet will consider calls to outlaw the Kach movement, founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated the use of violence to drive Arabs out of the biblical land of Israel. Goldstein was a disciple of Kahane. I -V -7 should have been on duty outside the mosque was not there, and it took an army unit 20 minutes to arrive, Barak said.

He said a full inquiry would be complete in a day or two. Questions about army involvement fueled Arab fury. Troops killed three Palestinian teen-agers and wounded more than 50 Arabs in widespread clashes yesterday throughout the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The army sealed off the West Bank, Israel army radio reported late yesterday. The Gaza Strip had been sealed on Friday.

Riots spread to Arab areas in Israel for the first time since the Palestinians rebelled against the Israeli occupation in December 1987. Thousands of Israeli Arabs marched in the streets and threw stones at police, who answered with tear gas and shots in the air. In Tel Aviv's Jaffa district, hundreds of rioters attacked Jews, smashed the windows of Jewish stores and burned cars. In the West Bank town of Nazareth, 3,000 protesters marched with placards calling for Israel to "disarm settlers and enforce the law." Some stoned the police station. Yesterday's fatalities raised the two-day casualty toll to 61 dead and more than 300 wounded.

The violence came as PLO officials demanded Israel rein in Jewish extremists and disarm settlers as a condition for resuming the peace negotiations. Faisal Husseini, a top PLO official in Jerusalem, told The Associated Press the PLO would demand the future of the 144 Jewish settlements be put on the negotiating agenda immediately, rather than wait until 1996 as mandated in the Israel-PLO autonomy accord: "Yesterday proved that the settlements and the set- AP A Palestinian boy runs past burning tires, part of a road barricade in East Jerusalem. Violence continued for a second day after Friday's slaying of at least 39 Muslims at a West Bank mosque. tiers are timebombs." But Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's spokesman, Oded Ben-Ami, said this was against an agreement reached In Norway, which led to the historic accord. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres urged the Palestinians not to suspend the autonomy talks, saying it would be giving in to hard-liners who want to destroy the peace process.

Israel's Cabinet will meet today to consider outlawing Jewish extremist groups as a "first step" to improv ing security, Peres said. The mosque gunman belonged to one such group, Kach. Israel's Channel Two news said security forces officials were drawing up a list of dangerous Jewish extremists at the request of Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair. Those extremists may be detained or at least banned from the territories, and their weapons confiscated, Channel Two said. Churchgoers leaning on God to shed their unwanted pounds It was founded by a registered 3 To learn more The Weigh Down program costs $103 for the first 12 weeks, $55 to repeat it for an optional 12 weeks, and free for the third 12 weeks.

Some churches are subsidizing the cost to their members. For more information, call 1-800-844-5208. enskj ft duction program that has been adopted by some 45 local churches. "I was no longer going to rely on my own will power I decided I didn't have any," said Suddeath, a member of Woodmont Hills Church of Christ Suddeath said her weight problem started after she was raped at 16. That compounded emotional difficulties caused by being molested by a neighbor as a child: "I've been through 18 diets, antidepressant medicines, counseling but nobody could heal my heart Nothing worked until I fully asked God for healing." Call it will power, call it a miracle, but since September, Suddeath, 5 feet, 3 inches tall, has lost 93 pounds and was 202 when she weighed herself last week, she said.

Under the same program, her husband, Lee, has lost 52 pounds and weighs 130, she said. They have done it, she said, by embracing a few simple principles that take their cue from the Bible: Forget the evil word "diet" Eat whatever you want when you're dietitian, Gwen Shamblin of Cooke-ville, a weight counselor who started the program in 1986 and began basing it in churches in 1991. "This is not a diet it's about moderation, not deprivation," said Diana Johnson, a local organizer for Weigh Down Workshop. "When you diet it makes you too food-focused all the preoccupation with fewer calories, less fat changing foods, avoiding food giving food too much glitter and power. But when God sent us here, he didn't send us with a diet sheet from a doctor.

God has given us an internal hunger mechanism. If we can get back in touch with that we'll eat when we're hungry, stop when we're full." Shamblin likens her program to God's liberation of the Israelites from Egypt "Dieting rules dont work if you don't change the inside of a person. "If you dont replace the urge to eat with a relationship to God, you've done nothing." Johnson said the program breaks the "diet-binge" cycle, instead emphasizing that overeating is not about being hungry but a destructive way to deal with private "We've had weight cut out of us, sucked out of us, we've counted calories and taken liquids, and all it does is bring us to low self-! esteem," said Randee Crosby, who J' helped organize a Weigh Down1 support group of 25 people at Her-! mitage Hills Baptist Church. "For a lot of us, this program! was a last resort It took this to! force me to look at myself and my behavior. You finally have to stop and say, 'Lord, help me through! I'm learning that my esteem is tied to being a child of God." Not that there are specific vers-! es in the Bible that refer to weight; reduction.

But Weigh Down high-! lights several passages praising God that participants embrace as; their own. Typical is Jonah "But I with a song of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good." "It's a spiritual discipline," said the Rev. Dean Haun, minister at Hermitage Hills Baptist Church and a member of the weekly support sessions himself. "It teaches you to say, 'Wait a minute.

Am I really We learn the idea of glorifying God by not overindulging. "The Bible tells us the body is the temple of the Holy 1 pi Above: Despite years of diets, Paula Suddeath, 32, came to weigh 313 pounds. Only then did she turn to a Christian-oriented weight reduction program that has been adopted by some 45 local churches. Left: As of last week she had lost 93 pounds. hungry, but stop when you're starting to feel full.

And drop to your knees in prayer when you feel a weakness for food coming over you. Believe that overindulgence is displeasing to God. "When I need them, I had Bible quotes on the fridge and in the pantry and on index cards in my purse. "I hadn't thought of overeating as a sin before, as something disobedient to God. I know that God's interested in my welfare and my weight It's too much work for me alone, but it's nothing to him." Suddeath and hundreds of other local churchgoers give the credit to God and the Weigh Down Workshop, a program of books, tapes and weekly support groups in some 450 churches in 30 states.

That insight underscores several other weight-reduction plans that are already out there. This one stresses that God is the missing ingredient, the power strong enough to help people break bad habits. Some participants describe it like a conversion experience a conversion to the idea, after so many failures on conventional dieting plans, that the discipline needed to lose weight is tied to everyday accountability to God. KENTUCKY LOTTERY Poll shows 74 of Tennesseans favor having state lottery 6 9 30 34 46 47 3 Kentucky Lottery, tolMra number TENNESSEANS: 1-BOO-LOTTO KY KENTUCKIANS: 1-800-477-7700 LEARN EXCEL') the current leveL Opposition has declined. Support is lowest in East Tennessee, although 70 of voters there support a lottery.

In Middle and West Tennessee, 76 of voters want a lottery. Support is greatest among voters under 30 at 81, and least among those over 60 at 64. About equal 1 numbers of men and women, black and white, support the lottery. Tennessee is one of 12 states without some form of legal gambling. Seven of the eight states bordering Tennessee have legal gambling, including bingo, lotteries, horse racing and riverboat casinos.

An 1834 provision In the Tennessee Constitution prohibits a state lottery. A two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives already has approved a November referendum on removing that provision. A two4hirds vote in the 33-mem-ber Senate would complete the legislative process, putting the mea sure on the ballot Most counts of the Senate, including Cohen's, indicate the proposal is three or four votes short of the necessary 22. Because of the cumbersome process, the proposal could not go on the ballot until 1998 if it fails this year. Cohen said he will bring the lottery to the Senate floor, but probably not until late in this year's session.

The legislature is expected to adjourn in mid-April. A competing proposal, to call a constitutional convention to authorize a lottery but prohibit casino gambling, has not been debated in Poll method Mason-Dixon PoliticalMedia Research Co. of Columbia, polled 806 regular voters by telephone Feb. 17-19, throughout Tennessee to achieve proportional geographical, racial and gender balance. Margin of error is 3.5 percentage points, meaning figures given could be that much higher or lower in statistical probability.

Margin could be higher in subgroups, such as likely Democratic or Republican voters. either House or Senate committees this year. The convention route could produce a referendum in late 1995 or 96. Either with a direct vote removing the constitutional prohibition against a lottery or a constitutional convention, the next legislature would have to pass the mechanism for putting a lottery into place. A lottery would produce up to $150 million a year in new state taxes, according to Cohen's estimate.

Other officials place the figure closer to $50 million. Each penny of the state's 6 sales tax produces about $460 million. MS-DOS Windows WordPerfect WORD Lotus 1-2-3 EXCEL I DID IT! CALL NOW! 297-9867 kiteractMLMrning Carter 4121 Hilsboro Road Green His Call 242-NEWS for Home Delivery The TENNESSEAN.