03/05/2000
By Lee Hancock / The Dallas Morning News
© 2000, The Dallas Morning News
Crime-scene records, videos and photographs from the Branch Davidian
siege call into question the FBI's account of where, when and how many
pyrotechnic tear gas rounds were fired by its hostage rescue team at the
end of the 1993 standoff, investigators say.
The Texas Rangers completed a lengthy final report last month on efforts
to identify questioned evidence from the standoff and locate
a pyrotechnic tear gas projectile that disappeared in 1993 after it was
photographed by a Department of Public Safety photographer.
The photographer's field notes show the projectile was "located about 200
yards northwest of the [compound water] tower," the Rangers report
states. That means the device probably was fired from behind the building,
and not from the area where FBI officials have previously said that only
two such devices were launched that day, said investigators involved in the
ongoing inquiries.
Based on the accounts from some FBI agents involved in the Waco
operation and commercial television footage of the April 19 tear gas
assault, investigators say they are also questioning whether members of the
hostage rescue team, or HRT, may have fired pyrotechnic gas rounds on
April 19, 1993, at a time far later than previously acknowledged.
One investigator also says the appearance of distinctive white smoke
characteristic of M-651 pyrotechnic tear gas grenades on video recorded
by a Waco television station about 12:09 p.m. suggests that one of the
rounds might have been fired as the sect's compound began burning.
"With all that we are seeing, it seems quite probable that the HRT fired
more pyrotechnic rounds than they've ever fessed up to," said the
investigator. "You have to remember: They were running out of tear gas
that day."
Congressional committees and the office of Waco special counsel John C.
Danforth are looking into the matter with the Rangers' help.
Bureau officials did not return telephone calls. But they have previously
said their agents fired only one or two of the military tear gas rounds during
their tear gas assault. They have said those rounds were fired away from
the sect's home, at an underground bunker, and were fired before 8 a.m. -
hours before the compound caught fire.
More than 80 Branch Davidians died as the compound burned, and
attorneys for surviving sect members and families of the dead have filed a
federal wrongful death lawsuit alleging that the government's actions and
negligence caused the 1993 tragedy.
Government's response
Government officials have insisted that their agents were not responsible.
They have noted that 17 sect members had fatal gunshot wounds, one
child was stabbed to death and a government arson investigation ruled that
sect members deliberately set the compound blaze in three separate
places.
But a fire investigation expert hired by the sect's attorneys has criticized the
government fire inquiry as woefully inadequate and based on what he
described as suspect evidence never before used in a major fire
investigation.
Questions about what the government did on the final day of the standoff
have mounted since FBI officials were forced last August to admit the use
of pyrotechnic tear gas at Waco.
Top FBI officials had previously insisted that their agents used only
nonflammable gas powder and nonburning, plastic tear gas shells known as
"ferret" rounds in the April 19 assault. Attorney General Janet Reno had
banned the use of anything capable of sparking fires when she approved
the FBI's gas assault plan.
But in August, a former FBI official told The Dallas Morning News that at
least two military pyrotechnic rounds, known as M-651s, were fired at
Waco.
M-651 grenades burn a 20- to 30-second pyrotechnic charge to release a
cloud of tear gas. The devices emit a distinctive white smoke while burning
and are described in U.S. military manuals as being capable of sparking
fires.
The FBI's admission that several of the grenades had been used, in
violation of Ms. Reno's ban, prompted new congressional investigations
and the appointment of Mr. Danforth to re-examine the government's
actions in Waco.
Something was missing
Texas Rangers began their own inquiry early last summer. They were
brought in to help investigate the Waco case just after it began and were
asked by the Justice Department to retain custody of all key physical
evidence after a 1994 criminal trial.
After years of denying all public requests for access to that evidence,
federal authorities told the Rangers in 1998 that it could be viewed by an
independent filmmaker.
That filmmaker, Mike McNulty of Fort Collins, Colo., told Rangers after
being shown the evidence that one key item was missing: a spent gray
projectile with a shiny brass top and a red stripe. The item had been
photographed by a Department of Public Safety photographer, but it was
never turned in or entered into the Rangers' computerized evidence logs.
The Rangers began an investigation to learn what the projectile in the
picture might be and what happened to it. They also began trying to
identify a 40-mm casing that was found in their collection of Waco
evidence.
They were nearing a conclusion last August that the photo showed a spent
M-651 pyrotechnic round and that the casing was also from a M-651
grenade when the former FBI official publicly admitted that several of the
devices had been fired.
'Somebody pocketed it'
The Rangers searched through tons of stored evidence in Waco late last
fall but never found the missing round.
"It's the only item that anyone can think of that was photographed and not
entered into evidence," one investigator said. "You can't help but think that
somebody pocketed it."
But the Rangers were able to determine more about where the missing
projectile was photographed after a federal judge in Waco told the FBI
last September that all Waco negatives and accompanying field notes from
DPS photographers must be returned to Texas. The bureau had previously
responded to DPS requests by sending a partial set of prints of the DPS
crime scene photographs to Austin, officials in Texas said.
Field notes checked
After gaining access to their DPS field notes, the Rangers' February report
states, their photographer determined that he photographed the projectile
on April 30, 1993, in an area in front of the compound.
Investigators say that location suggests that the device was fired from the
back side of the compound toward the building.
They say they have doubts about the FBI's claims that M-651s were shot
only twice at the underground bunker and were aimed away from the
compound because the spent M-651 photographed by DPS was found
well behind where bureau officials said their agent fired.
"If it had been shot toward the bunker like they say, that shell should've
been found on the back side and not the front," another investigator in
Texas said. "Nobody had any logical explanation or reason for why it
would be out in the area it was, unless they were firing at something else."
In a motion filed last week in U.S. District court in Waco, attorneys for the
Branch Davidians noted that hostage rescue team members in a Bradley
armored fighting vehicle on the back side of the building fired tear gas
rounds into the kitchen just before it caught fire. That motion alleged that
there is evidence that the rounds may have been pyrotechnic and could
have triggered at least one of the three fires that quickly consumed the
compound.
By that time, FBI agents in the Bradleys had fired almost all of the
400-round supply of nonflammable ferret rounds brought to Waco for the
assault, records show. Notes found last fall at the hostage rescue team's
headquarters in Quantico, Va., state that each of the Bradleys used by the
FBI in Waco was stocked with M-651 rounds.
White smoke noted
Notes from a prosecutor's interviews with hostage rescue team agents in
the fall of 1993 stated that one agent stationed behind the compound saw
"white smoke" coming from the compound kitchen just after noon, and it
appeared less than 30 seconds after another agent fired three rounds of
tear gas into the kitchen.
The interview notes indicate that the agent who fired those three rounds
was the same team member who fired several M-651 rounds at the
underground bunker.
Video footage recorded by Waco television station KWTX at 12:09 p.m.,
just after the compound fire began, shows wisps of white smoke moving
low to the ground from the side to the front of the compound.
That smoke is similar to the white plumes that appeared in an area where
FBI agents fired pyrotechnic tear gas grenades at that area earlier in the
day. A CBS television crew recorded video footage of the agents opening
a Bradley hatch to fire that M-651 and the appearance of billowing white
smoke where that device landed.
One investigator said the appearance of similar white smoke after noon
raises concerns because it is strikingly different from the black smoke rising
from the burning building. He said it is also being looked at closely because
it appeared well before the fire became hot and big enough to spread to
the ground surrounding the building.
"It doesn't mean that the FBI set all three of the compound fires. It raises
the question of how much they've been lying about their use of pyrotechnic
devices," the investigator said.
Melted evidence
The discovery of a melted mass of bluish plastic among the evidence
inventoried last November by the Rangers and investigators from Mr.
Danforth's office fuels additional uncertainty about how the FBI deployed
tear gas on April 19, an investigator said.
The plastic is about the size and weight of one of the nonpyrotechnic ferret
rounds used by the FBI. Those rounds have blue tips on milky white
bodies, and the blob of plastic is an identical shade of blue, the investigator
said.
It was recovered from the bunker deep within the compound where many
Branch Davidian women and children went for shelter from the gas attack
and later died.
If the plastic came from a ferret round, the investigator said, the device
either had to be fired at relatively close range into the bunker or carried in
by a Branch Davidian. The investigator called the second prospect unlikely
because the ferret round would have been coated by the same tear gas
powder that it had expelled on impact, and picking up anything
contaminated with that powder would have would caused intense skin
irritation.
"It needs to be analyzed to see if the plastic matches the plastic used in
manufacture of ferret rounds," the investigator said.
The February report by the Texas Rangers noted that the one roll of DPS
crime scene film that was not returned last fall by the FBI was a roll taken
inside the bunker.
"With the magnitude of what was pulled out of there, you'd expect maybe
to see something like a bullet might turn up missing. But a big projectile?
That's unusual," another investigator in Texas said. "A roll of film? That's
weird. Remember that was taken where all the bodies were, inside the
bunker. Who knows what it means, but having it come up missing? It
doesn't make sense."
---------------------------------------------
Anyone want to guess how bad the FBI is sweating right now?
LawDog
By Lee Hancock / The Dallas Morning News
© 2000, The Dallas Morning News
Crime-scene records, videos and photographs from the Branch Davidian
siege call into question the FBI's account of where, when and how many
pyrotechnic tear gas rounds were fired by its hostage rescue team at the
end of the 1993 standoff, investigators say.
The Texas Rangers completed a lengthy final report last month on efforts
to identify questioned evidence from the standoff and locate
a pyrotechnic tear gas projectile that disappeared in 1993 after it was
photographed by a Department of Public Safety photographer.
The photographer's field notes show the projectile was "located about 200
yards northwest of the [compound water] tower," the Rangers report
states. That means the device probably was fired from behind the building,
and not from the area where FBI officials have previously said that only
two such devices were launched that day, said investigators involved in the
ongoing inquiries.
Based on the accounts from some FBI agents involved in the Waco
operation and commercial television footage of the April 19 tear gas
assault, investigators say they are also questioning whether members of the
hostage rescue team, or HRT, may have fired pyrotechnic gas rounds on
April 19, 1993, at a time far later than previously acknowledged.
One investigator also says the appearance of distinctive white smoke
characteristic of M-651 pyrotechnic tear gas grenades on video recorded
by a Waco television station about 12:09 p.m. suggests that one of the
rounds might have been fired as the sect's compound began burning.
"With all that we are seeing, it seems quite probable that the HRT fired
more pyrotechnic rounds than they've ever fessed up to," said the
investigator. "You have to remember: They were running out of tear gas
that day."
Congressional committees and the office of Waco special counsel John C.
Danforth are looking into the matter with the Rangers' help.
Bureau officials did not return telephone calls. But they have previously
said their agents fired only one or two of the military tear gas rounds during
their tear gas assault. They have said those rounds were fired away from
the sect's home, at an underground bunker, and were fired before 8 a.m. -
hours before the compound caught fire.
More than 80 Branch Davidians died as the compound burned, and
attorneys for surviving sect members and families of the dead have filed a
federal wrongful death lawsuit alleging that the government's actions and
negligence caused the 1993 tragedy.
Government's response
Government officials have insisted that their agents were not responsible.
They have noted that 17 sect members had fatal gunshot wounds, one
child was stabbed to death and a government arson investigation ruled that
sect members deliberately set the compound blaze in three separate
places.
But a fire investigation expert hired by the sect's attorneys has criticized the
government fire inquiry as woefully inadequate and based on what he
described as suspect evidence never before used in a major fire
investigation.
Questions about what the government did on the final day of the standoff
have mounted since FBI officials were forced last August to admit the use
of pyrotechnic tear gas at Waco.
Top FBI officials had previously insisted that their agents used only
nonflammable gas powder and nonburning, plastic tear gas shells known as
"ferret" rounds in the April 19 assault. Attorney General Janet Reno had
banned the use of anything capable of sparking fires when she approved
the FBI's gas assault plan.
But in August, a former FBI official told The Dallas Morning News that at
least two military pyrotechnic rounds, known as M-651s, were fired at
Waco.
M-651 grenades burn a 20- to 30-second pyrotechnic charge to release a
cloud of tear gas. The devices emit a distinctive white smoke while burning
and are described in U.S. military manuals as being capable of sparking
fires.
The FBI's admission that several of the grenades had been used, in
violation of Ms. Reno's ban, prompted new congressional investigations
and the appointment of Mr. Danforth to re-examine the government's
actions in Waco.
Something was missing
Texas Rangers began their own inquiry early last summer. They were
brought in to help investigate the Waco case just after it began and were
asked by the Justice Department to retain custody of all key physical
evidence after a 1994 criminal trial.
After years of denying all public requests for access to that evidence,
federal authorities told the Rangers in 1998 that it could be viewed by an
independent filmmaker.
That filmmaker, Mike McNulty of Fort Collins, Colo., told Rangers after
being shown the evidence that one key item was missing: a spent gray
projectile with a shiny brass top and a red stripe. The item had been
photographed by a Department of Public Safety photographer, but it was
never turned in or entered into the Rangers' computerized evidence logs.
The Rangers began an investigation to learn what the projectile in the
picture might be and what happened to it. They also began trying to
identify a 40-mm casing that was found in their collection of Waco
evidence.
They were nearing a conclusion last August that the photo showed a spent
M-651 pyrotechnic round and that the casing was also from a M-651
grenade when the former FBI official publicly admitted that several of the
devices had been fired.
'Somebody pocketed it'
The Rangers searched through tons of stored evidence in Waco late last
fall but never found the missing round.
"It's the only item that anyone can think of that was photographed and not
entered into evidence," one investigator said. "You can't help but think that
somebody pocketed it."
But the Rangers were able to determine more about where the missing
projectile was photographed after a federal judge in Waco told the FBI
last September that all Waco negatives and accompanying field notes from
DPS photographers must be returned to Texas. The bureau had previously
responded to DPS requests by sending a partial set of prints of the DPS
crime scene photographs to Austin, officials in Texas said.
Field notes checked
After gaining access to their DPS field notes, the Rangers' February report
states, their photographer determined that he photographed the projectile
on April 30, 1993, in an area in front of the compound.
Investigators say that location suggests that the device was fired from the
back side of the compound toward the building.
They say they have doubts about the FBI's claims that M-651s were shot
only twice at the underground bunker and were aimed away from the
compound because the spent M-651 photographed by DPS was found
well behind where bureau officials said their agent fired.
"If it had been shot toward the bunker like they say, that shell should've
been found on the back side and not the front," another investigator in
Texas said. "Nobody had any logical explanation or reason for why it
would be out in the area it was, unless they were firing at something else."
In a motion filed last week in U.S. District court in Waco, attorneys for the
Branch Davidians noted that hostage rescue team members in a Bradley
armored fighting vehicle on the back side of the building fired tear gas
rounds into the kitchen just before it caught fire. That motion alleged that
there is evidence that the rounds may have been pyrotechnic and could
have triggered at least one of the three fires that quickly consumed the
compound.
By that time, FBI agents in the Bradleys had fired almost all of the
400-round supply of nonflammable ferret rounds brought to Waco for the
assault, records show. Notes found last fall at the hostage rescue team's
headquarters in Quantico, Va., state that each of the Bradleys used by the
FBI in Waco was stocked with M-651 rounds.
White smoke noted
Notes from a prosecutor's interviews with hostage rescue team agents in
the fall of 1993 stated that one agent stationed behind the compound saw
"white smoke" coming from the compound kitchen just after noon, and it
appeared less than 30 seconds after another agent fired three rounds of
tear gas into the kitchen.
The interview notes indicate that the agent who fired those three rounds
was the same team member who fired several M-651 rounds at the
underground bunker.
Video footage recorded by Waco television station KWTX at 12:09 p.m.,
just after the compound fire began, shows wisps of white smoke moving
low to the ground from the side to the front of the compound.
That smoke is similar to the white plumes that appeared in an area where
FBI agents fired pyrotechnic tear gas grenades at that area earlier in the
day. A CBS television crew recorded video footage of the agents opening
a Bradley hatch to fire that M-651 and the appearance of billowing white
smoke where that device landed.
One investigator said the appearance of similar white smoke after noon
raises concerns because it is strikingly different from the black smoke rising
from the burning building. He said it is also being looked at closely because
it appeared well before the fire became hot and big enough to spread to
the ground surrounding the building.
"It doesn't mean that the FBI set all three of the compound fires. It raises
the question of how much they've been lying about their use of pyrotechnic
devices," the investigator said.
Melted evidence
The discovery of a melted mass of bluish plastic among the evidence
inventoried last November by the Rangers and investigators from Mr.
Danforth's office fuels additional uncertainty about how the FBI deployed
tear gas on April 19, an investigator said.
The plastic is about the size and weight of one of the nonpyrotechnic ferret
rounds used by the FBI. Those rounds have blue tips on milky white
bodies, and the blob of plastic is an identical shade of blue, the investigator
said.
It was recovered from the bunker deep within the compound where many
Branch Davidian women and children went for shelter from the gas attack
and later died.
If the plastic came from a ferret round, the investigator said, the device
either had to be fired at relatively close range into the bunker or carried in
by a Branch Davidian. The investigator called the second prospect unlikely
because the ferret round would have been coated by the same tear gas
powder that it had expelled on impact, and picking up anything
contaminated with that powder would have would caused intense skin
irritation.
"It needs to be analyzed to see if the plastic matches the plastic used in
manufacture of ferret rounds," the investigator said.
The February report by the Texas Rangers noted that the one roll of DPS
crime scene film that was not returned last fall by the FBI was a roll taken
inside the bunker.
"With the magnitude of what was pulled out of there, you'd expect maybe
to see something like a bullet might turn up missing. But a big projectile?
That's unusual," another investigator in Texas said. "A roll of film? That's
weird. Remember that was taken where all the bodies were, inside the
bunker. Who knows what it means, but having it come up missing? It
doesn't make sense."
---------------------------------------------
Anyone want to guess how bad the FBI is sweating right now?
LawDog