claimed that at all times, it had an "inside man" in the CSA. Siege On 16 April 1985, the FBI obtained a warrant to search the CSA's compound. Beginning on 19 April 1985, the FBI and the ATF, led by the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), positioned around 300 federal agents in Elijah. The operation needed to be kept secret, but doing so was not easy in the small community. However, the FBI and ATF agents took advantage of Pontiac being a common destination for anglers by pretending to be fishermen and registering at different motels near the various fishing destinations. On the morning of 19 April, they moved in and surrounded the CSA compound, putting some of their agents in fishing boats in an attempt to seal off the lakeside area of the compound. There they waited, until a few hours later when two guards emerged from the compound. They appeared to be unaware of the presence of the officers and walked towards a sniper hold-out until an officer yelled commands to return to the compound to the guards, with which the guards complied. Later, an unnamed individual emerged from the compound, talked to the federal agents and informed Ellison that the FBI agents were outside and willing to negotiate his surrender and the emptying of the compound. Ellison emerged later. FBI agents had expected that he would not go down without a firefight, but the FBI negotiators convinced him that the CSA would certainly lose if a firefight broke out. Interviewed on March 9, 1993, by KXAS-5 News, during the Waco standoff, Kerry Noble asserted that the CSA was expecting to be relieved by other far-right groups and acts of God. When neither manifested itself, the group's morale and its willingness to resist were severely affected. FBI negotiators convinced Ellison that they wanted peaceful cooperation, and he asked his spiritual adviser, assumed to be Millar, to come to the compound and instruct him. The individual was flown to the area and he seemed eager to convince Ellison to stand down. They allowed the individual to enter the compound, and the FBI instructed him to call in every 30 minutes and report on how the negotiations were going. U.S. Attorney Asa Hutchinson, who later successfully prosecuted Ellison and other leaders of the CSA, put on an FBI flak jacket and entered the compound to join the negotiations, leading to