I need to use the pass key on the console in the room with the big enclave guy.
I need to use it to make the minigun turrets attack him but when i use the pass on the console nothing happens, i go into the console and the options are still *back* and *maybe i should try this somewhere else*.
The walkthroughs say this should work but i must be missing something.

I ran into the very same problem. After some frustration and finally experimenting with a character editor I found out that you actually need a science skill of, I think, at least 80% to reprogram the turrets. I am not sure if this is a problem in Fallout 2 in general or maybe just a little bug introduced with killapp's unofficial patch that I used, as the need for a high science skill just seems totally unreasonable in this case. But anyway, using the "FALCHE" to just set my science skill a little higher finally solved the problem for me.
By the way, I actually tried winning this fight without reprogramming the turrets, but it ended in a lot of frustration for me. I was able to kill Horrigan a few times, but the turrets were always still alive. While they usually couldn't hurt me, every so often one would critically hit me, thus completely bypass my power armor and instantly kill me. That then wouldn't have been a problem, because I constantly saved, if not each and every save I made after killing Horrigan wasn't automatically corrupted, so that I always had to restart the whole fight. Really, really frustrating..
Well, I hope you don't need to experience that and can actually enjoy the battle :)

Turns out you need really high intelligence to use the pass, also, the near invincible horrigan problem is caused by the AP ammo fix included in Killap's unofficial patch!
Peace