Testing on Waco guns ordered-- Oh, *this* will be helpful...!

L

Long Path

New member
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>By Lee Hancock and David Jackson / The Dallas Morning News

Turning aside prolonged federal objections, a U.S. district judge on Monday ordered independent field testing to help determine whether government agents fired at the Branch Davidian compound in the last hours of a 1993 siege.

U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. of Waco issued a three-page order late Monday saying that he was "persuaded" by arguments from Branch Davidian lawyers and the office of special counsel John Danforth that the tests are needed to resolve whether flashes of light recorded by FBI infrared cameras came from government gunfire.

FBI officials say none of their agents fired a gunshot during the 51-day standoff, and flashes recorded by an airborne FBI infrared camera just before the Branch Davidian compound burned were inexplicable electronic "anomalies."

But FBI officials secretly offered to conduct private tests for Mr. Danforth and his investigators, even as Justice Department lawyers last month rejected a proposal by the Branch Davidians' lawyers for a joint public test, according a Nov. 5 letter to the court from Mr. Danforth's office.

Those actions and a warning from Justice Department lawyers that they planned to use national security exemptions to withhold data needed to ensure accurate public tests prompted Mr. Danforth's office on Nov. 5 to seek a court-supervised test.

The special counsel's office also has asked the FBI to turn over its hundreds of guns deployed at Waco for ballistics comparisons and other testing. Officials said they are still working out the logistics to ensure that the "precise" weapons are surrendered but expect to comply. Those weapons could be used in the court-supervised infrared tests.

Testing FBI guns also could resolve the origin of a dozen .308-shell casings found in a house used by FBI snipers during the siege. Agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also used the house during a gunfight, which broke out as the ATF tried to search the compound and arrest sect leader David Koresh on weapons violations. Four ATF agents died in the battle that began the 51-day standoff.

All of the ATF's guns used at Waco were sent in 1993 for testing by the FBI laboratory, but records indicate there was no effort to tie any of the guns to the shell casings.[/quote]

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Okay, I'm sorry it's so long, but I like y'all to get the full story. Also another look at the same thing at:
URL Page

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Now, if you're at all like me (gawd help you...), it's with not a little skepticism that you're considering this. What are the chances that every firearm that was at the seige gets turned in? EVERY firearm...? How do we hold the agents to this? Ohhhhhh, their honor... yeah, that'll bring 'em on in!!

And what are we thinking, here, that we'll get a positive match on bullets and cases found on the scene with the barrels and bolt-faces and extractors and firing pins of the rifles that DO get turned in?

"SURE, I'll turn in my AR-10, my AR-15, and my MP-5! Lemme just clean 'em up for you, real quick. Hand me that steel wire brush over there? And the Swiss files. Thanks. be done in a jiffy..." ;)

So they get a "vindication." Very nice...


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Will you, too, be one who stands in the gap?

Matt


[This message has been edited by Long Path (edited November 16, 1999).]

[This message has been edited by Rich Lucibella (edited November 16, 1999).]
 
LP-
I edited the above to keep the URL from spreading the page too far. All text and content remains the same.

On topic:
Have they also asked for records of how often FBI sniper rifles are rebarelled? I think they'll find those used in the early nineties are long gone.
Rich

[This message has been edited by Rich Lucibella (edited November 16, 1999).]
 
Didn't I read somewhere that they changeout the barrels every six months?
Hmmm...so this could die out due to lack of evidence?

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
 
Hi, folks,

This does not address the other weapons at Waco, the guns belonging to the Davidians. Those were supposedly converted to full auto and were the ostensible reason for the BATF raid. But they have been put in a Texas Ranger warehouse and BATF has flatly refused to let anyone look at them. I can't imagine why.

Jim
 
Uh, Jim, don't you think that if one single auto-sear or modified sear had been found, they'd have shouted it from the rooftops to justify the raid?

NOT ONE has been found. I've always said that the thing that really needs to be looked at was the legitimacy of that warrant. This topic, by the way, doesn't obsess me, by any means. I don't go looking for new evidence on Waco. But there are so many completely intolerable facts about the whole deal, it makes one really sit up and take notice when even National (P)Socialist Radio reports them...

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Will you, too, be one who stands in the gap?

Matt
 
That entire twelve tons of evidence was turned over to the court by the Texas Rangers. They got tired of being in the middle. When the people suing for wrongful death would ask to see the evidence under discovery, they would have to deny them as the BATF and FBI had not released it. When they would ask the BATF and FBI, they would say that the Texas Rangers had possession.

The TR didn't trust the BAFT or FBI to have the evidence turned over to them so they went to the court on one of the days that the Davidians were appearing and turned the whole mess over to the judge. The judge, being no dummy, then told the feds he wanted all of their evidence also -- an unprecedented move. Reno and the DOJ are livid and are attempting to block the seizure by the court. Of course, this stall may also give them time to get rid of what they don't want to give the court or manufacture what they do.
 
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