Among those who made the denials was Danny Coulson, a senior official at the operations center in Washington at the time and founder of the FBI's hostage-rescue team (HRT).
"This was a classic, textbook situation, " said Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI negotiator who worked with the hostagerescue team repeatedly before retiring in 1995.
It has only been almost 10 days since the FBI sent a rescue team into the bunker in Midland City, Alabama, where Ethan was held hostage for nearly a week by Jimmy Lee Dykes.