at Ft. Hood, Texas, March 19, 2000.

Background

          In August of 1999 the Citizens Organization for Public Safety had completed its investigation and review of information discovered during its inspection of Waco evidence at the Texas Ranger storage facilities in Austin Texas.

           A new documentary film was being prepared at MGA film studios in Ft. Collins, Co. A reporter for the Dallas Morning News was given the opportunity to review a rough copy of the new film at the studios. Through a contact with former FBI Deputy Director, Danny Coulson, the reporter broke the story that pyrotechnic devices had indeed, been used at Mt. Carmel on April 19, 1993, the day of the fire that destroyed the compound. 1  This was directly contradictory of the FBI and Justice Department's position that "no pyrotechnics were used on April 19th." 2

           As a direct result of this controversy the Attorney General, Janet Reno, appointed former Republican Senator John Danforth as Special Counsel, ordering

him to fully investigate the fire issue and other "Dark Questions" arising out of

the recent revelations from the C.O.P.S. investigation.

            The most significant of the "Dark Questions" facing the Danforth investigation arose out of an FBI surveillance video made the day of the fire. That video was made by a device called a F.L.I.R. camera (a Forward Looking Infra Red imaging device). Instead of visible light the device recorded data that can be used to infer apparent temperature differences in the scene being filmed. The scene was captured from a fixed wing aircraft circling the compound allegedly at a 4,200 to 6,200 foot altitude.  A review of this footage by independent F.L.I.R. experts uncovered a series of flashes coming from outside the compound, and apparently directed into the interior of the structure.  The experts opined that the flashes matched the signature of gunshots, directed toward the Davidians, from positions outside the building.3

         From the day of the fire to the present, the FBI has claimed that it had not fired a single shot at the Davidians that day, so the question of whether the flashes were indeed gunshots posed a serious issue.

          To explain the flashes, the Justice Department officials defending the FBI in a civil case declared that the flashes were caused by specular (solar) reflections and reflections from other heat sources (i.e.  the engine of a tank). These, they asserted, were reflected off rubble such as glass and shiny metal parts in the debris created by the tanks as they demolished the structure. 4

        The Davidian attorneys demanded a re-creation of the events of the April 19th, involving test gunshots and reflections, filmed by a FLIR camera under identical conditions. The Government opposed such a re-creation. Mr. Danforth interjected the Office of Special Counsel into the court proceedings and offered to provide a disinterested and impartial FLIR expert, Vector Data Systems [VDS] to conduct the re-creation of the alleged shooting events. The trial judge, Walter Smith, accepted the offer and ordered the re-creation to proceed.

        A protocol was developed by the OSC and VDS, with input from FBI. The Davidian Plaintiffs were given an opportunity for input in to the test at a meeting held in St.Louis at the OSC's offices on Feb. 13, 2000. The Davidian FLIR expert demanded that the exact weapons and ammunition, carried by the FBI at Mt. Carmel  on 4-19-93, be tested in the re-creation. The FBI protested adamantly that the key weapon requested, a "CAR-15" (an informal term for a short-barreled M-16), was not even in their inventory at Waco. At the insistence of the Davidians' counsel, however, the OSC and VDS agreed to test a short-barreled version of the M-16.

         The test was scheduled for March 19, 2000 at Ft. Hood, Texas. At the insistence of Mr. Danforth, the media was barred from observing the test.

        During the course of preparations the OSC determined that it would use military ball ammunition, not the commercial ammunition employed by the FBI on April 19th.5 Additionally, documents disclose that an "M-16 A1" would be substituted for the "CAR-15" demanded by the Davidian Plaintiffs.6  Assurances were given in a letter to the Davidian Plaintiffs that the "M-16A2" would be a short barreled variant with a 14 1/2 " barrel, simulating the weapons carried by the FBI the day of the fire.7 In fact, both the M-16A1 and the M-16A2 have full length, 20" barrels. Whether or not the correct M-16 variant was ever tested is in dispute.

    Danforth claims that the VDS report lists a "CAR-15" as the test firearm.8  On the other hand, one of Danforth's staffers, Mr. Robert Stuart, offered contradictory evidence, both photographic and verbal, that was later confirmed by a reporter from the Associated Press - the only weapon used the day of the Ft. Hood test was an M-16 A2 standard rifle with a 20" barrel.9 Mr. Stuart was on the firing line the day of the test and was cited as one of Danforth's "gun guys."

            The agreed-to protocol also included an obscure provision buried in the Annex B subsection that would allow the OSC to "...add moisture to the soil content of the shooting positions if required...". 10  No explanation was offered for this unusual practice in the protocol or operations document. This issue would prove to be critical in the outcome of the re-creations results.

March 19, 2000 - The Re-creation

          The day of the re-creation presented difficulties for the OSC and the Davidian and Government participants. The Davidians' chief F.L.I.R. expert had suffered a near-fatal stroke days before and could not attend the recreation. His replacement, Fred Zegel, had yet to receive a copy of the protocol and operations plan prior to the morning of the test.11 There was no Davidian firearms expert present.12  The ambient air temperature at Ft. Hood that day was only 65 degrees F., the absolute minimum acceptable by the protocol standards.13 The actual temperature at Mt. Carmel on April 19,1993, was 85 to 90 degrees F.14 The Branch Davidian counsel, Mike Caddell, wanted to inspect the firearms to be tested to assure the correct weapons were present. The OSC would not allow the Davidian Counsel to even approach the weapons area. No corroborative inspection of the weapons was ever made.

            The OSC had (presumably at the insistence of the Vector Data Systems personnel) watered down the entire test area the night before, and covered the entire test area with blue tarpaulins the night before the test.15  Later, this was justified by the OSC by the fact that rain showers had fallen the preceding days at Mt. Carmel and wet down the soil.  A flaw of great significance occurs at this point in the re-creation. The OSC fails to recognize the presence of the sun as it rose at about 6 am the morning of April 19,1993. The OSC did not take into account the affect of the rising sun and ambient air temperature on the moisture in the soil around Mt. Carmel. Nor did the OSC consider the additional impact of the tanks churning of the soil around Mt. Carmel and the drying and spreading effects of a 30 MPH wind on the large amounts of dust around the building.

         Finally, the OSC did not account for the effects of the building demolition on the dust situation and it was not included in the re-creation.

         Matching the thermal conditions, atmospheric conditions, weapons and ammunition present at Waco on April 19, 1993 was the entire purpose of the test. Yet the test was undertaken against a water-saturated background, substantially 

cooler than Waco had been, and with little wind and no dust. Moreover, military ammunition was used, when civilian ammunition had been employed at Waco, and the firearms tested appear to have been the standard M-16 with a 20" barrel instead of the 14" barreled carbine versions used by the FBI. As will be seen, every one of these incongruities biased the results in the same direction - to favor the spectral flash theory and to disfavor the gunshot theory of the flashes.

         The first requisite of any scientific endeavor is basic, rather than applied, research, aimed at establishing a baseline of data that will act as a place to start the scientific inquiry. With the Waco FLIR issue, for example, it would have been important to know what gunshots look like on FLIR, what solar reflections look like on FLIR, and what variables (firearm and ammunition on the one hand, size and nature of reflector on the other, together with atmospheric, temperature and other factors) can affect either. Only after these determinations are made could a scientist decide what factors had to be replicated, and what degree of precision was necessary.

            The Danforth Waco re-creation did not establish a base line for the actual field test conducted on March 19, 2000 at Ft. Hood. The Vector Data Systems personnel did not know how gunfire of any kind appeared on a FLIR device like the one used by the FBI on April 19, 1993. In addition, neither they, nor anyone else, knew what "glint" looked like under the conditions that existed on the day of the fire at Mt. Carmel. We are informed that the FBI would not provide the operational parameters of the FBI's FLIR device.16 The FBI claimed that this information was "classified." As a result, there were no performance specifics upon which to set up the British device employed for the re-creation.

 A Gross, and Unexplained, Deviation

         The process was also flawed because the Department of Justice and the FBI gave input to Vector regarding the design of the re-creation protocol while holding the high cards of knowledge of the system involved, while Plaintiff's attorneys were left to guess. This would explain the apparent lack of understanding of the Davidian attorneys regarding the watering down of the entire operational area the night before the re-creation and its significant effects on the test results.

        The issue of watering down the test area was raised as a minor atmospheric issue in the protocol annex 'B' on page B-1. The protocol provided that "In the event of very dry weather conditions, the OSC will consider increasing soil 

humidity to match that of 19 April 1993 by dampening the firing trial positions prior to the trial. It must be noted that this (a) only applies to the firing positions, not those where potential reflective materials were placed; (b) only applies in event of "very dry" conditions, and (c) only provides for "increasing soil humidity."

           It might be noted in this regard that, while there had been rain at Mt. Carmel on previous days, April 19, 1993 was sunny, and the ambient air temperature rose to between 85 and 90 degrees F. It was sufficiently dry to where thick clouds of dust raised by the tanks were visible, via telephoto, from two miles away.  Waco on April 19, 1993 may not have been bone-dry, but it was not swampy, either. Between the churning of the soil, and the destruction of the building, there was sufficient dust in the air to be seen from a substantial distance and to encrust everything laying on the ground.17

         Yet when the time came for the Ft. Hood re-creation, the OSC had the entire test area watered down, after the tanks disrupted the surface of the soil, to such an  extent that there were large pools of standing water in the test area.18  In addition, the OSC had the area covered with large, blue tarps lest any of this water evaporate.  The effect of this deviation from the protocol will be addressed later in this report.  Suffice it to note here that the saturation had several effects, all of which could be expected to bias the results toward a "no gunshot" result. First, dust was suppressed, and dust has been shown to increase the duration and size of gunshots in the infrared spectrum.19 Conversely, dust encrusting the reflective surfaces in sufficient quantity will reduce the prominence of a solar reflection, so that eliminating dust both reduces the signature of gunshots and increases the signature of solar reflections. Second, by cooling the ground surface the water enhanced the visibility of shooters' warm bodies, supporting the hypothesis that "if shooters were there, we would see them on the FLIR."20

Equipment Malfunctions

          There were several indications that the FLIR imagery generated by the Lynx helicopter platform the day of the re-creation was flawed and useless due to mechanical problems. In fact, the gyro stabilizer unit on the Lynx helicopter was malfunctioning the day of the re-creation to the degree that it could not perform 

the correct circular flight pattern and instead simply went back and forth from 

point "A" to point "B", passing the target area in a flat, one dimensional aspect, negatively impacting the key point of solar geometry in the specular reflections issue.21

Atmospheric Deviation

         Ground temperatures are critical to FLIR imaging. Cool ground of necessity makes warm objects more prominent, and the sensors employed during the recreation automatically adjusted their sensitivity to the average of the entire area being imaged; if that area were cooler, sensitivity would be higher. This is critical when the re-creation turned to the question of whether hypothetical shooters could be discerned glowing on FLIR. Despite this consideration, the protocol made no effort to secure comparable ground temperatures. It instead employed air temperature as a rough surrogate.

          During the Waco incident, on April 19, 1993, the ambient air temperature had risen to between 85 and 90 degrees F. Yet the air temperature the day of the Ft. Hood re-creation only rose to the absolute minimum established in the Protocol: 65 degrees F.22 We must consider this as an addition to the problem posed by the saturation of the soil with water. Both acted to produce a very cool earth background, against which the warm body of a shooter would be prominent, much more prominent than it would have been on the FLIR tapes of April 19, 1993.

Weapons and Ammunition

          One of the most hotly disputed issues of the February Protocol meeting in St. Louis was the issue of what weapons, and to a lesser degree what ammunition,

was to be tested at Ft. Hood in March. The ammunition and weapons were to be the same items used at Mt. Carmel. The Davidian attorneys demanded that a "CAR-15" be tested, and they defined that gun as being a short-barreled carbine

style M-16 weapon. While there was debate with FBI about other weapons, the hottest debate was reserved for the "CAR-15" discussions. The FBI insisted that they did not have and never did have a "CAR-15" in its inventory. This was a quibble over words: "CAR-15" is an informal, but technically inexact, description of an M-16 with a short barrel, a carbine in ordinary nomenclature. Thus FBI could insist that it did not have "CAR-15s" even though it had firearms  that most shooters would call by that name.  It was the same process by which Porsche might insist it did not make "sports cars," if it had never used that term in a catalog.

            In any event, the Davidian attorneys made it clear they wanted a short barreled M-16 tested, however it might be designated. Finally the FBI agreed. A "CAR-15" would be tested along with a standard 20" barreled M-16-A2 rifle.

           The Davidian attorneys did not, however, have much knowledge of rifles, and this enabled the FBI and/or the OSC to pull a "bait and switch." On March 9, 2000, only a few days before the re-creation, OSC attorney Brad Swenson sent a letter to the Davidian attorneys, presenting certain "representations" made by the FBI to the OSC. He avowed:

 "Since our meeting on February 16, 2000, the FBI has advised the OSC  that the FBI has never had a CAR-15 weapon in its inventory. The M-16A1 and M-16A2 weapons are commonly referred to as CAR-15 weapons. The FBI will supply a M-16A2 weapon which is representative of all the M-16 weapons the HRT had at Waco. It has an approximate barrel length of 14 inches and is capable of firing in the automatic mode." Based on this representation, VDS (Vector Data Systems), the court appointed expert, has agreed to receive the M-16A2 from the FBI and use it in place of the CAR-15 weapon indicated in the test protocol."23

          The statement is a series of falsities. (1) M-16A1 and A2 rifles are not commonly referred to as CAR-15s;  (2) they do not have barrels of approximately 14 inches, but rather the full 20 inches; (3) M-16A1 and A2s were not the only weapons carried by FBI/HRT at Waco.24

         The "bait and switch" was inadvertently documented in the operations plan for March 19, 2000 when Vector Data Systems, [itself no weaponry expert, and probably unconscious of what it saw here], notes that items requested from the FBI would include item, "#6 (a) CAR-15 (Actual M-16 A1)." [emphasis added].25

          That a full-length M-16A2 was the firearm tested was verified when in May of 2001 a query was made by C.O.P.S. to one of the staff members at the OSC, regarding exactly which M-16 variant was in the re-creation. A Mr. Robert Stuart of the OSC's staff represented that the only M-16 variant that was used at Ft. Hood was an M-16A2. Mr. Stuart sent a photo blow-up of the M-16A2 that was tested. The weapon in the photograph supplied by Mr. Stuart was a 20" barreled standard M-16A2 rifle, not a carbine.26 

          A question might remain as to whether the OSC staff made this substitution inadvertently, through a lack of firearms knowledge. The evidence suggests otherwise. First, on the day of the re-creation one of the Davidian attorneys sought to inspect the weapons before the test so as to verify that the correct weapons were tested. The OSC would not allow the attorney to go to the firing area and inspect the weapons.27  Second, when an AP reporter inquired of an (unnamed) member of the OSC staff regarding the weapons substitution, the staff member said that Danforth knew of the substitution on the day of the test, and was angry regarding it.28   If this report is confirmed, it would appear that Danforth (at the very least) knew of the substitution of weapons before he filed his report with the court, with the Attorney General, and with the American public, asserting that the test had proven "to a 100% certainty" that no shots were fired.

          All of the elements required to produce the desired result were in place by the day of the re-creation. The soil had been thoroughly watered down, to prevent the dusty conditions found at Waco, and firearms and ammunition not used at Waco were ready for employment.  The press was barred from the scene entirely, and the Davidian attorneys were kept in the bleacher section, away from the weapons test area. Federal Judge Smith had flown down with Mr. Danforth and had been thoroughly "briefed", albeit ex parte. 29      

Weapons and Ammo

         The selection of weapons and ammunition was agreed to in the protocol 

supposedly designed to replicate the exact weapons and ammunition that were used by the FBI at Mt. Carmel on April 19, 1993.The importance and singular significance of this point will become clear through the following exposition.

       Weapons - Barrel Length / Ammunition - Gun Powder

         A major military concern is avoiding gunshot flash, which gives away the shooter's position.  Design of both ammunition and small arms takes this into account. Modern military ammunition employs powder grains treated with various flash suppressing chemicals, while design of rifle barrels also seeks minimize flash. The key to this lies in preventing "secondary flash," where the expanding 

ball of incompletely burnt powder gasses is ignited by hot carbon particles and blossoms into an incandescent plume.

          The optimum barrel length on an M-16A2 rifle is 20 inches. By the time the powder gasses reach the end of the 20" barrel the powder grains are consumed and the gasses cooled to where, when vented through the "flash suppressor," they produce little muzzle flash.  In the visible spectrum, the resulting flash may be almost nonexistent; in the infrared spectrum, the heat is still visible, but much reduced, compared to a shot using civilian ammunition and/or a shorter barrel.   A standard was developed that produced the dictum presented in the government's position on flash duration during the Davidian civil trial: a muzzle flash from an M-16 weapon (M-16A1or A2 rifle with a 20" barrel) would not produce a muzzle 

flash longer than 8 milisec. and would range between 2 and a maximum of 8 milliseconds.30  This brief period of time would cover only a small portion of the scan rate and thus may escape detection.

          In NTSC video, the American standard, the camera completes scanning a frame every 33.3 milliseconds and each field of that frame 16.67 ms. There is, thus, a good probability that an event lasting only 2-8 ms. will never be seen on video at all; it can appear and vanish between scans. Even if recorded, the appearance in a single field or frame may not be noticed by an operator. (Note: Here, we are discussing only military issue ammunition. Makers of civilian ammunition had no need to be concerned about hiding muzzle flash or escaping IR detection.) Going into the Ft. Hood test, it was known that the flashes on the 4-19-93 footage had a long duration of anywhere from two to as many as ten continuous fields of flash. If it could be shown that gunshots could not generate IR images that spanned that many fields, the FBI would be exculpated, since the 4-19-93 flashes could not have been gunfire. The FBI thus had a vested interest in ensuring that the flashes recorded during the Ft. Hood test had a very short IR signature duration. Thus, it is not surprising that only military issue ammunition and long barreled weapons, designed for a minimal IR flash, were used at the Ft. Hood test. When the FLIR Project team did its base line research at Ft. Collins and Tucson the following hard facts were established by experiment.

·        An M-16A2 with a standard 20" barrel firing standard Military Ball ammunition would produce a series of flashes about 2 to 8 milliseconds long, (less than half the duration of one field), with very little or no viable infrared image visible on the video recordings made.31

·         When an M-4 carbine with a shorter 14 1/2" barrel was employed with standard military Ball ammunition the flashes produced ranged from 16 to 24 milliseconds or about 1 to 1 1/2 fields long. That is, reducing the barrel length to that actually used by the FBI increased the flash duration.32

·         When an M-4 carbine was employed using Federal commercial or civilian brand ammunition, whose gun powder was not treated with the flash suppressant, the flash duration ran 33 to 49 milliseconds or 2 to 3 fields long.33

·         This last combination of 14" barreled carbine and commercial, non-suppressed ammunition reflected the firearm and ammunition actually used by the FBI at Mt. Carmel on April 19, 1993 as verified by the ground truth imagery34  and the verification of FBI Special Agent Chris Whitcom, a sniper present at Waco on the day of the shooting.35 The 33 to 49 millisecond flash duration from the database developed by the FLIR Project team is solid and repeatable.36

·         When an M-4 carbine fired civilian ammunition, in three-shot bursts, through a dust-laden atmosphere (and video of the 4-19-93 demolition of the building shows the creation of heavy clouds of dust ),37  the duration of flash leaped to a continuous series of flashes that cover eleven fields of continuous video or about 183 milliseconds.38 This duration and size match the duration and size of all the longer flashes seen on the April 19, 1993 footage from Mt. Carmel.

WHAT COMMON SENSE TELLS US

          As most of us have experienced in everyday life, a "glint" of sun light off of a clean, brightly polished surface like the rear window of the car in front of us on the highway or street can nearly blind us. However, if that same window is crusted over with a sufficient layer of dust, and that same flash or glint of reflected sun light were to occur, the dust would substantially reduce the intensity of the "glint". The same principle is at work in the invisible infrared end of the light spectrum. A sufficient amount of dust on a brightly polished surface like glass or aluminum can greatly diminish the reflectivity of these surfaces in the infrared spectrum.

          In conclusion, the elimination of dust from the working historical time line at Waco during the Ft. Hood Recreation had two effects. Little or no dust at Ft. Hood prevented the amplification in both time and space of the weapons muzzle flashes and its absence allowed the "glint" to be maximized and uninhibited. The attendant results of this paradigm allowed the government's theory of the circumstances at Mt. Carmel to prevail.

Vector Data Systems Report  

            It is noteworthy that, at the point of Danforth's appointment, the flashes on the 4/19/93 FLIR had been identified as gunshots by an array of experts and scientists. Among these were Dr. Edward Allard and Ferdinand Zegel, both retired from the Army s Night Vision Laboratory, James Seffrin of Infraspection Institute, and Carlos Ghigliotti of Infrared Technologies. The issue was seriously raised and merited a searching and impartial inquiry.39

           To assess the issue, OSC hired Vector Data Systems [VDS], a 17-man British company, which the OSC identified as independent and qualified. The report was prepared by a three-employee team, two of whom were later deposed in the wrongful death trials. The depositions demonstrated that VDS was in fact neither independent nor qualified.

          VDS was hardly independent: it was 80% owned by the defense giant Anteon Corporation. With 17 employees, VDS was but a tiny part of Anteon s 4,000 person staff. Anteon appoints seven of VDS's nine directors, and was organizing VDS into one of its corporate divisions.40 VDS was a tiny, completely dominated, part of Anteon.

         Anteon derives 65-80% of its revenue (or over three hundred million dollars a year)  from U.S. government contracts, has sales representatives designated to ATF and Department of Justice, and identifies its corporate strategy as to expand its government contract base.41 VDSs employees knew that, if they issued a finding which implicated Justice Department in a major scandal, their tiny division would be jeopardizing the core of Anteon's customer base and its entire corporate growth plan. It could be a career-ending event for the analysts themselves. It is notable here that the VDS representatives informed Judge Smith, on the evening of the Ft. Hood trials and before the flashes could be examined, that they had negated a number of the flashes as potential gunfire.42

          VDS was not independent, and it was also not qualified. It is a  small manufacturer of workstations for reconnaissance work. An internal VDS memo acknowledged that "we may not be able to match the scientific or technical qualifications or FLIR sensor knowledge of some individual players on the other side of this activity and this could be our Achilles heel." 43

          When one of the VDS team was asked how many VDS employees do FLIR analysis, he forthrightly replied "Oh, I see what you're saying. This is basically the first job that Vector has actually performed as an analysis-type function. 44  How OSC came to hire a firm which had never done FLIR analysis before, and which admitted that its lack of qualifications was its weakest point, has never been explained. The witness also conceded that neither he nor the other Vector employee sent for deposition were competent to identify gunfire on FLIR.45

          The lack of competence displayed itself in VDSs attempt to conduct a re-creation. Although ground temperature is critical to FLIR assessment, the ground temperatures were not measured. The closest surrogate would be air temperature, but the tests were begun with an air temperature twenty degrees lower than that at Waco on the day in question.46 The air temperatures were in fact outside the generous 20 degree range allowed by the protocol.47 The differential in the ground temperatures was probably even greater, and was artificially increased. 

          The ground was wetted and covered with tarps; the analysts admitted that moisture affected FLIR imaging and that they had no idea whether the wetting and tarps would have affected the results.48

          To be sure, VDS did not bear sole blame; Danforth's office made its own contribution. FLIR analyst Carlos Ghigliotti had sent Danforths office a lengthy and scientific criticism of the protocol. Danforth apparently did not pass on the criticism to VDS; it was not in their files and they had no recollection of ever seeing it.49 If Danforth had allowed VDS to see it, VDS would have been reminded, among other things, that a British FLIR will probably record video in the British PAL format, at 25 frames per second instead of the American 29.97; a conversion to the American standard is going to require duplicating every fifth frame, contaminating any timeline of short-duration flashes.

         VDS's report, submitted to Danforth and to Judge Smith, claimed to rule out gunfire on three main bases: the 4/19/93 flashes had too long a duration for gunfire, they were not elongated in shape, as gun flashes should be, and no persons were visible near them. When Vector's analysts were confronted with the actual tapes and asked to justify the report, these conclusions quickly disintegrated.

          The report claimed that numerous flashes had a duration of .07 seconds, and others of .06 seconds. When its analysts replayed those sections of the FLIR, field by field, they found that both sets were in fact only.03 seconds in duration, half the duration claimed in the written report.50 Why the report claimed one duration, when the tape showed half that, was never explained. The analysts had to concede that the 4/19/93 flashes were elongated, like gunshot images, contrary to what their report claimed.53 Vector's staff also conceded that the shooters were not always visible on the Ft. Hood tape,54 invalidating the report's last argument that the 4/19/93 flashes were not gunshots because shooters were not visible near the flashes on that tape.

           It should be noted that there were no qualified weapons experts on the VDS staff. VDS relied upon the FBI and the OSC to supply the right firearms and ammunition, viz. , the same firearms and ammunition the FBI had used at Waco. It appears that the FBI did not supply, and/or, the OSC did not supply, the correct weapons and ammunition, and VDS made no note of the substitution. 

          At Waco, the FBI employed a carbine version of the M-16/M-4, with a short 14" barrel which made for prominent muzzle flashes because the gunpowder was less completely burned. It used civilian ammunition, which has less flash retardant additives than does military ammunition. Asked after the tests what firearm had been tested, a Mr. Stuart of Danforth's staff confirmed that VDS had tested only the standard M-16A2 with 20" barrel, and had fired military ammunition.

           In short, VDS's report was an exercise in fictional writing. The report called flashes long in duration when in fact the authors had to admit that they were short, and claimed they were not elongated when a simple glance showed that they were just that. VDS had drafted whatever was necessary to justify a conclusion that the flashes were not gunshots, rewriting the evidence whenever it needed to do so.

Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations   

Summary

             Considered individually the various errors that riddle the Danforth "Re-creation" of Waco events could be the product of massive technical incompetence. But, when all of these issues are looked at cumulatively, it is very difficult to accept this simple explanation.

             The preponderance of evidence at this point speaks rather of a rigged test and a continuing cover up of the Waco tragedy, by the very persons who were charged with finding the answers to the "Dark Questions."  The key may lie in Mr. Danforth's prologue to his interim report, where he defines his mission as one of "restoring the faith of the American People in their government", and inferentially  the FBI.  This mission could hardly be accomplished by an affirmative finding on the question of FBI gunshots on April19, 1993.  At the very least, a negative finding would have been something to be immediately, and gratefully, accepted, whatever the flaws of the process that produced it. Whether the test was properly run or not, whether VDS was actually qualified and independent or not, would take second place to the need to put the issue at rest and exonerate the government of a charge of seven years of covering up.

Conclusions

·         Contrary to the Protocol, the re-creation employed ammunition which the FBI did not use at Waco, and appears to have used firearms which the FBI did not use at Waco. The choice of firearm and ammunition were both slanted so as to reduce the duration and prominence of gunshot flashes during the test. 

·         Since the test results were then used to argue that gunshots could not explain the Waco flashes because gunshots were shown to have shorter duration and be 

     less prominent than the Waco flashes, these unexplained substitutions were      

     critical to the result.

·        There were several anomalies in the actual re-creation regarding air                                                                                                           temperature, equipment failure, the watering down of the entire test area - all contrary to the signed Protocol.  The effect of copious dust is particularly critical, since it has been shown to prolong the duration of gunshot flashes and, if it settled upon glass or metal, could be expected to reduce the signature of reflected solar flashes. Eliminating dust would thus be a priority if a test were to be biased toward reducing gunshot signatures and making more prominent the solar reflections.  At the Ft. Hood re-creation, exceptional measures were taken to suppress dust. Not only were the tanks restrained from driving about the area, but the entire testing area was watered down and kept under tarps until the test was ready to begin.

·         The critical Lynx helicopter footage of the Ft. Hood re-creation was recorded on video using the PAL format, rather than the American NTSC format on which the original Waco FLIR was recorded.  Since (in addition to having different frame sizes), PAL records at 25 frames per second rather than the NTSC standard of nearly 30 frames per second, the timeline was made incomparable.

·         Due to the forgoing, the Vector Data Systems final report is clearly flawed. We have little reason to believe that, had the conditions present at Waco been faithfully replicated, the same results would have been achieved. Indeed, since the errors and anomalies are not randomized or balanced, but all point in the same direction (biasing the data toward a non-gunfire conclusion), there may be reason to believe that the test was not merely flawed, but consciously rigged.

·         There are now concerns about the possibility that there was criminal behavior involved with the conduct of the re-creation. If so, this should be the subject of further investigation and additional hearings.

Recommendations

The authors of this report would recommend the following:

1.) A new re-creation should be conducted in a Texas setting with a "non Federal Family" member presiding. The new re-creation must incorporate all of the 

principles illustrated in the FLIR Project, employing the proper arms,                                                                                                                                               ammunition, conducted under the proper atmospheric conditions. The entire process should (unlike the first re-creation and its planning), be open to observation by the press, interested scientists, and all concerned parties.  There is nothing here that merits any secrecy, and much to be gained by input from the scientific community.

2.) The results of said new re-creation must be published for any interested party to view freely.

3.) Depending on the results, further investigations and criminal referrals may be  warranted with regard to the original incident on 4-19-93.

4.) A complete and through investigation should be conducted by the appropriate House and/or Senate bodies into the Danforth re-creation and the contractors who supposedly ensured that Waco conditions were being replicated, with an eye to determining why the errors were made and whether the FBI, Mr. Danforth, or his staff knew of the errors prior to announcing their conclusions.  If the errors are determined to have resulted from intent rather than negligence, or were known to exist before proclamation of the result, consideration should be given to application of statutes relating to perjury, filing of false reports, and filing of false financial claims.

This report is respectfully submitted by:

                                                The Staff of the F.L.I.R. Project

                                                                      And

                                          The Citizens Organization for Public Safety

                                           __________________________________

                                            Michael J. McNulty, Director C.O.P.S.

 End Notes