Wes Vernon
Thursday, Aug. 9, 2001

By the time you read this, a House investigating subcommittee may have in its hands further proof of the FBI’s role in the siege near Waco, Texas, in which more than 80 people died.

That proof adds to the doubts about last year’s report of a government investigation. Former Sen. John C. Danforth, R-Mo., appointed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno, was the special counsel for the probe. His final report exonerated the FBI of charges that its agents fired on the Branch Davidians as they were fleeing their burning headquarters.

Michael McNulty, producer of "The F.L.I.R Project,” a video that already presents material indicating that the FBI did indeed fire on the Branch Davidians on April 19, 1993, has sent the new evidence to the House panel. FLIR is an acronym for forward-looking infrared.

"We are expecting further information,” Conn Carroll, spokesman for the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources told NewMax.com on Wednesday.

"Indeed they are,” McNulty told us. His new material consists of a scientific finding that dust plays a significant role in determining whether a flash of light caught on a thermal-imaging videotape system from a plane circling the Branch Davidian compound at the time the facility burned down, was a "glint” reflection of sunlight or muzzle flashes.

The new scientific evidence clearly shows that a large amount of dust, which was present when the government finally confronted the Branch Davidians, reduces or eliminates the effect of glint and amplifies muzzle flashes. This would tend to support the Branch Davidian claim that the FBI opened fire on its members.

McNulty says that when Danforth conducted tests purporting to show what "really happened,” his own staff’s cameras depicted "people watering down soil and rubble.”

The Danforth report has also taken considerable heat for using the wrong kind of assault rifles in tests that were used to re-create the raid on the Davidians.

That test, conducted in March 2000, used a standard M-16 rifle with a 20-inch barrel. Just one thing wrong with that. The FBI does not use standard M-16 rifles, and during the violent confrontation that ended the 51-day siege, its agents were using a smaller version with just a 14-inch barrel.

The discrepancy was pointed out by Robert Stewart, a postal inspector, in an interview with the Associated Press.

After this discrepancy was pointed out, a bureau spokesman said that, oh yes, a shorter-barreled rifle was among the weapons tested by the Danforth inquiry.

That does not convince Branch Davidian lawyer Michael Caddell. He thinks, if anything, this "completely undermines the test results.”

Interestingly, Danforth acknowledges he received "something less than total cooperation” from the FBI. "I don’t know what weapons were tested there myself,” he admitted last June after the discrepancy came to light. Nonetheless, he says this was part of an agreement with the government lawyers and the Davidians and that the test was "pronounced fair.”

However, Caddell says he was prevented, before and after the test, from inspecting the weapons that were used in it.

As of now, it appears that all we have is the word of an FBI spokesman, with all the appearances of an afterthought, and an anonymous FBI official who told the AP that the bureau had provided one of the shorter rifles to Danforth’s office.

If the test was genuine and reflected the conditions and the weapons used on April 19, 1993, it raises a question: Why, then, did the Danforth staff prevent the Branch Davidian lawyers from inspecting the weapons used in the test?

The politics of this scandal is where the plot thickens. Of course, any investigation would embarrass the Democrat administration of Bill Clinton. But it’s less cut and dried than that. And it leaves open the question of how much action the Justice Department is prepared to take on any congressional report that tends to discredit Danforth’s work.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and former Sen. Danforth go back at least to the 1960s, when they were young ambitious Republican politicians in what was then an overwhelmingly Democrat state.

That Missouri has more Republican presence today than it did then is due in no small measure to the efforts of this group: Ashcroft, who went on to become governor, U.S. senator and U.S. attorney general; Danforth, who was state attorney general and then a U.S. senator; Kit Bond, who went on to become state attorney general, governor and U.S. senator; and Clarence Thomas, whose career path made him assistant secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan, chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, and finally U.S. Supreme Court justice.

While the loyalty and cohesiveness of this foursome is an admirable American success story, questions arise as to whether Attorney General Ashcroft can do anything to use his office to follow through on Waco findings that cast aspersions on his old friend. Even if he recuses himself in a future case, how many Justice Department lawyers would want to tackle it?

There is also a belief that Danforth, the least conservative of the four, might be considered for any Supreme Court vacancy that may occur, and that he could pass the Senate Democrats’ confirmation meat-grinder, should President Bush nominate him. This is a classic example of why no one in Washington likes to upset too many applecarts.

McNulty, the "F.L.I.R. Project” film director, three weeks ago sent material on Waco to the Senate Judiciary Committee. As of this writing, that panel’s chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. had not returned our call for comment.

Recently, Leahy’s committee held confirmation hearings on Robert Mueller to be the new FBI director. The nomination slipped through the committee and the Senate faster than a greased pig.

That kind of bipartisan approval is usually accorded a government official who is adept at playing both sides of the political playing field, a skill that Mueller has perfected.

FBI Director Mueller promised during his hearings that he would clean up the agency, which has managed to get a black eye for Waco and other scandals.

If the Waco scandal is revived because of the above questions, the new FBI chief will be watched to see how many applecarts he is willing to upset.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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