Report on Waco evidence contains classified military secrets, DPS reveals

Sep. 10, 1999 | 10:24 p.m.

By Leah Quin and Mike Ward c. 1999 Cox News Service

AUSTIN, Texas -- In an admission sure to fuel new questions about military involvement in the Branch Davidian siege, state officials revealed in an Austin courtroom Friday that parts of a Texas Rangers' report on evidence collected at the scene contain classified military secrets.

Attorneys for the Texas Department of Public Safety said the report can't be made public yet because other agencies needed time to review it to see if any parts of it should remain confidential.

The report, completed Thursday afternoon, consists of a 13-page narrative and about 200 pages of exhibits. The department sent copies to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Waco and to House Committee on Government Reform, which is investigating whether federal officials used incendiary devices during the 1993 siege on the Branch Davidian sect's compound near Waco.

They also said the findings would be forwarded to former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, who is heading an independent inquiry into the Waco debacle at the request of U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.

Friday's disclosure happened during a hearing on a lawsuit filed by the Austin American-Statesman to force the DPS to immediately make public the entire report. The agency had announced Thursday it would make the report public, but on Monday at noon when the report was scheduled to be posted on the DPS Web site.

Four federal agents were among those who died during the 51-day seige at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, most of them in a fire that destroyed the compound on April 19, 1993. Sect leader David Koresh, the target of a federal firearms investigation that triggered the standoff, was among the victims.

After the siege ended, the Justice Department asked the Rangers to conduct the follow-up criminal investigation. Since that inquiry was completed, the tons of evidence have remained under Ranger control -- locked in an Austin storage warehouse.

In June, DPS Chairman James B. Francis Jr. ordered the Rangers to re-examine all the stored evidence after learning that military pyrotechnic tear gas canisters may have been fired by federal agents in the waning hours of the seige. Federal officials had repeatedly denied that any such fire-starting devices were used.

The Rangers' final report had been completed Thursday. ``This will be a document the whole country will be interested in,'' DPS spokesman Mike Cox had said.

By Friday afternoon, after the Statesman filed suit seeking to have the report immediately made public, the agency's stance had changed.

Don Walker, who represented the Department of Public Safety, which prepared the report, said its legal staff and other agencies had not had time to determine if the report contained documents that might not be public, such as classified Army documents. The department needed the chance to retract certain information, if necessary, Walker said.

The department would seek a state attorney general's opinion on whether to release deleted information, he said.

In forwarding the Rangers' report on Thursday to the house committee, DPS Assistant Director Thomas A. Davis made no mention that it contained classified material. At the end, he noted that DPS planned to make public the report on Monday ``unless otherwise directed.''

Cox was among several DPS employees -- none with any known security clearances -- with access to copies of the report. On Friday, The Associated Press reported that congressional aides were busy sifting through the the report after it arrived in Washington.

Randall Terrell, attorney for the newspaper, said the Statesman and other newspapers had requested the report, then being prepared, at least eight days ago.

Terrell cross-examined Duncan Fox, an attorney for the Department of Public Safety, who said he did not know yet why parts of the report might not be public. Fox also testified that there is no state criminal investigation pending, which is an exception to open records laws.

``It's easy for attorneys to say there is no exception to open records laws,'' Walker countered. ``It's difficult for a state agency to cite confidentiality statutes on very short notice.''

Judge Davis asked the state for a copy of the report, which he had requested earlier in the day. They gave him the 13-page narrative but said they hadn't brought the 200 pages of exhibits.

Appearing irritated, Davis read the narrative in private. He then ordered the state to turn over the report to the American-Statesman, but postponed his own order until Saturday. State attorneys would then have time to seek a reversal of his order from the Third Court of Appeals in Austin, he said.

While federal officials have long insisted there was no active military involvement in the FBI's final tear gas assault, Francis was quoted last month in one published report as saying the DPS had evidence that could corroborate reports of active involvement by the secret Delta Force in the April 19 debacle.

Any direct military involvement in a civilian law enforcement operation would have required a presidential waiver of the law barring such activity. But military officials have insisted that the military personnel on the scene were only observers.

Earlier, Department of Defense documents had disclosed that three special operations personnel were in Waco to observe the April 19 assault. A Government Accounting Office investigator who looked into military involvement in the Waco standoff was quoted Tuesday in one published report as saying that military documents indicate that classified technical gear provided to the FBI in Waco included specialized robot-driven video equipment and electronic jamming devices.

Published reports this week also have revealed this week that a GAO investigation on military involvement during the seige was unable to resolve questrions about why the FBI acquired high-explosive 40mm military rounds during the seige or why a number of U.S. Army Special Forces personnel were sent to Waco.

In other developments Friday, the Associated Press learned that a lab document that the Justice Department failed to give Congress discloses that the FBI knew within eight months of the fiery end of the Branch Davidian siege that military tear gas projectiles were used.

A key final page from a 49-page FBI lab report was turned over to the House Government Reform Committee this week, along with an internal Justice Department memo acknowledging it ``was not produced to Congress'' during the 1995 investigations into the tragedy near Waco, Texas.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Story Filed By Cox Newspapers

For Use By Clients of the New York Times News Service

NYT-09-10-99 2254EDT http://www.postnet.com/postnet/news/wires.nsf/National/8ACA03CDDA5E8B27862567E9000FB916?OpenDocument

-- Mumsie (Shezdremn@aol.com), September 12, 1999

Answers

Thanks mumsie.

Sigh.

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), September 12, 1999.

You know, the more they cover up the harder people will dig. You'd think that .GOV would have learned that by now. People will be going to jail on this one...

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), September 12, 1999.

people are going to jail

Not if the shooters were British SAS and other elite foreign professional killers. No Posse Commitatus problem!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), September 12, 1999.

People are going to jail? I doubt it.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), September 12, 1999.

What a stinking cesspool the U.S. government has become. If anyone had told me when I was a kid a good while ago that I would feel the kind of disgust and contempt for the federal gov't that is now common and well-deserved, I would not have believed him.

-- cody (cody@y2ksurvive.com), September 12, 1999.

From today's Waco Tribune-Herald. Fair use, for educational purposes only. You can see the original (and keep up with their coverage, which has been good) at their site at http://www.accesswaco.com

News: Local

FBI officials reportedly were warned of likely fire at Davidian compound

By MARK ENGLAND and TOMMY WITHERSPOON ) 1999 Waco Tribune-Herald

FBI officials were warned that the Branch Davidians might start a fire if the agency launched an assault and that their compound was a tinderbox, according to a former member and a visitor who sneaked into Mount Carmel during the siege.

One-time Davidian Marc Breault told the Tribune-Herald that the FBI was concerned enough in 1993 about the possibility of a fire to contact him in Australia just three days before flames consumed the Davidians' residence 10 miles east of Waco.

Breault said he was contacted by law enforcement officials in Melbourne, acting on the FBI's behalf, who showed him numerous Scriptures taken from letters written by David Koresh during the 51-day siege. All mentioned fire.

"They were afraid based on some of the things he had written that if they tried to assault the compound he would start a fire," said Breault, a former confidant of Koresh. "They were afraid if they sent people into the compound there would be explosions, there would be fires set. They had lots of Scriptures, all he had gone over with us many times."

Clive Doyle of Waco, a Davidian who survived the fire, said Koresh taught that the Davidians would move to Jerusalem where there would be a war.

"Toward the end, he kind of hinted that things might start happening before we went to the Middle East or Jerusalem," Doyle said. "But I don't know if he ever specifically taught that it had to be by fire. I'm sure there is prophecy about people being killed by fire and other ways."

Breault, who left the Davidians in 1989, said he told authorities that fire was very much a part of Davidian prophecy.

"There's a Scripture in Daniel 11 that talks about how the righteous will fall," Breault said. "Some are taken captive; some die by the sword; and some die by the flame. Two parts of that prophecy had already been fulfilled, according to their beliefs. That was the problem. The Davidians thought they were seeing prophecy fulfilled before their very eyes. Flames were the only thing left."

Richard Schwein, former special agent in charge of the El Paso Division, said the FBI hada lot of concerns  not just the possibility of a fire starting at Mount Carmel.

"There was a concern they would burst out of the building shooting," said Schwein, a shiftcommander during the Davidian siege and now retired. "There was a concern they would use the children as shields. I know at one point they intended to come out wired with explosives and set them off to kill FBI agents. We had a lot of concerns. We tried to plan for every eventuality."

Toward that end, the FBI contacted former Davidians all over the world, Schwein said. "We were trying to find out as much as we could what this was all about," he said. "Frankly, we wanted to give our negotiators more tools to work with. I have no way of knowing if Breault's information even got back in time to use it. It's possible. I just don't know."

Louis Alaniz, the Houston man who sneaked into Mount Carmel less than a month after the ATF's botched raid, wasn't really thinking about the place being a fire hazard when he talked to the FBI.

He left the Davidians' residence on April 17, 1993  two days before the fire that led to the death of Koresh and 75 followers. FBI and ATF agents  and even, Alaniz claims, the CIA  grilled him into the early morning hours after he left Mount Carmel.

Alaniz left hoping to act as a mediator of sorts between the Davidians and the government. "I asked for a pad and paper," said Alaniz, who now lives in Louisiana and works as a sheet metal drafter. "I drew a diagram of the building. I wanted to help resolve it. I gave them a complete layout. I told them, 'These people don't want to fight. But if you go in, do it in a way that you don't hurt anyone.'"

He told authorities that hay was stacked against Mount Carmel's walls and lanterns were in some rooms, Alaniz said.

"I told them there was hay up against the wall and in the foyer trying to stop bullets," Alaniz said. "They thought they were going to be shot at again." A Texas law enforcement official, who asked not to be named, confirmed that Alaniz reported the Davidians were using hay as a barricade.

Alaniz said he decided to sneak into Mount Carmel after hearing people talk about the Davidians while riding a bus in Houston. People were saying the government should kill all of them, he said. After praying, Alaniz took a Greyhound bus to Waco and somehow walked through an armed perimeter right up to the Davidians' front door.

Davidians didn't know what to make of Alaniz or Jesse Amen, who also sneaked into Mount Carmel, Doyle said. "We were wondering if they might be spies for the government," Doyle said. "But David's attitude was that they were souls to be saved so give them a Bible study."

Some people are still suspicious of his motives, Alaniz said. "A guy nobody knows sneaks in past hundreds of ATF and FBI agents and after he comes out the government goes in and burns the place down," Alaniz said. "Yeah, it does look strange. Believe me, I had to go through a lot. I've been called baby burner and everything else in the book."

Much of his time at Mount Carmel was spent reading the Bible and talking with the Davidians, Alaniz said. He sensed while inside that things weren't going well and decided to leave.

"There was so much aggression going on that I knew they were fixing to do something," Alaniz said. "The government was cursing them, mooning them, shooting the finger at girls standing in the windows. I saw more evil on the outside than I did on the inside."

Worried about the Davidian children, Alaniz said he told authorities that there was a nursery on the second floor where the infants slept. Lanterns were kept there, he reported, to give the mothers light while they bathed their children.

Doyle said there was no central nursery at Mount Carmel. However, he said all the women did sleep with their children on the second floor. Men, who were forbidden by Koresh from having sex with their wives, slept on the first floor. Diagrams of Mount Carmel printed in the Tribune-Herald and elsewhere before the fire noted the segregated living arrangements.

Alaniz said he was shocked to see a tear gas boom rip into the second floor on April 19, 1993.

"Why did they have to hit that spot?" Alaniz asked. "That told me they didn't care. If they did, they wouldn't have pumped gas inside there where the infants were. No, sir, they can't lie to me no more about caring about those kids. They wanted them all dead."

FBI officials at the time said they believed the Davidian women would flee with their children in the face of a tear gas assault. It was just another in a line of government miscalculations.

In light of what he told the FBI, Breault was also surprised to see the tear gas assault on Mount Carmel. "They were definitely worried about the possibility of a fire," Breault said. "So I'm surprised they had any incendiary devices there. They knew there was hay stacked up and lanterns about. If one of them was knocked over, it could have caused a fire. Then they went and started knocking things down. I think they just lost it."

Electronic bugs inside Mount Carmel picked up voices yelling, "Start the fire," and "The fire is lit," among other things. Davidians, however, claim the tanks ramming Mount Carmel caused the fire, possibly overturning the lanterns.

It would take firefighters 15 minutes to arrive after the FBI called for help.

Government concerns about the possibility of a fire at Mount Carmel went back to early April 1993, according to the Justice Department's report on Waco. Assistant U.S. Attorney LeRoy Jahn raised the issue. Despite Jahn's concern and what people like Breault and Alaniz told them, the FBI balked at having firefighting equipment on standby at Mount Carmel.

The FBI did not let firefighters approach the burning building until 31 minutes after the fire was first reported.

Schwein still supports the FBI's decision not to have firefighters at the ready."They would have had no protection whatsoever," Schwein said. "We couldn't move around except in Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Bullets were flying at our guys. We had put a plan together. We all know the results."

The FBI never got a good grasp on Koresh, said Breault, who calls Koresh by his given name of Vernon Howell.

"I think they decided Vernon didn't believe any of this stuff," Breault said. "They thought he was a con man. They failed to take into account the level of his belief and that of his followers. They couldn't believe there was anyone that dedicated to an apocalypse."

Schwein willingly admits the FBI never figured out Koresh. "I don't think anyone really understood what he was all about," Schwein said.

Although critical of the FBI, Breault stresses that he believes that Koresh and the Davidians played a leading role in their destruction.

"I think people should keep in mind that in his theology the apocalypse was inseparable from fire," Breault said. "I've always believed Vernon started the fire at Mount Carmel or set up a situation where an assault would start a fire. It's possible the FBI inadvertently  you might say negligently  set the fire. But I think Vernon set it up."

-- mommacarestx (harringtondesignX@earthlink.net), September 12, 1999.

It is time to stop saying what they "think" any of the Davidians believed, or what they "think" they might have done, and to exam cold hard evidence. I stated before that I found their (Davidian's) beliefs to be misguided and repellent; HOWEVER that should not factor in to this. The FACTS are: the dead civilians, the fact that our military was illegally involved, the fact that there was not a criminal charge in place to justify the radical deadly action taken, the fact that evidence was removed, destroyed, and now "liquified", the fact that the officials have admitted to some lies already, and the fact that the offcial government story has glaring holes. We must stop thinking of what David Koresh was or was not as a pseudo pastor/leader or whether or not we thought he was despicable. As I also stated before, the due process of law could have eventually been followed and enforced regarding any child abuse. I DESPISE CHILD MOLESTERS! As it was, the 'victims' were not helped, they were executed viciously. We must look at the facts. Did our government have the LEGAL right and did they follow LEGAL procedures, or did they TWIST and LIE and COMMIT ATROCITIES for nefarious reasons of their own? The feds love to tell about how worried they were of the potential volatility of Koresh. Uh huh. That's why they used the bright lights and sounds of rabbits being murdered and cut off milk to the kids. Sure. That's why they declined the sheriff's offer to just pick him up and avoid the whole hassle. That's why the ATF turned down the invitation to come in and inspect all the weapons. That's why the feds tipped off the reporters about the raid. The feds are playing the Religious Whacko Bad Guy card just as surely as Johnny Cockroach played the Race Card. The only cards that should be on the table are the Facts. Not theories, not suppositions, just the facts please. There is enough in that deck already to gag a maggot .

-- Mumsie (Lotsakids@home.com), September 13, 1999.

Where's "Truth" or "Flint" to tell us that we're all "anti-government" and WE'RE the problem? I really wish that were true, when I think about what this degree of corruption portends.

Liberty

-- Liberty (liberty@theready.now), September 13, 1999.

I dare anybody to re-read just these few sentences - from one witness - and then consider that just this exposes twelve government lies: from "who fired" - the government says "the FBI never shot" - so who did? The ATF and Delta Force? To child molestation - to "aggression" and "hatred" - look at how the government agents were behaving while the Davidians were reading that most hated of books - the Bible! .. to finally having knowledge of what was happening inside - the government attacked as soon as they had this knowledge of the layout, to his ability to simply walk up to the door - while the place was under siege!

<<"I told them there was hay up against the wall and in the foyer trying to stop bullets," Alaniz said. "They thought they were going to be shot at again." A Texas law enforcement official, who asked not to be named, confirmed that Alaniz reported the Davidians were using hay as a barricade.

Alaniz said he decided to sneak into Mount Carmel after hearing people talk about the Davidians while riding a bus in Houston. People were saying the government should kill all of them, he said. After praying, Alaniz took a Greyhound bus to Waco and somehow walked through an armed perimeter right up to the Davidians' front door.

Davidians didn't know what to make of Alaniz or Jesse Amen, who also sneaked into Mount Carmel, Doyle said. "We were wondering if they might be spies for the government," Doyle said. "But David's attitude was that they were souls to be saved so give them a Bible study."

Some people are still suspicious of his motives, Alaniz said. "A guy nobody knows sneaks in past hundreds of ATF and FBI agents and after he comes out the government goes in and burns the place down," Alaniz said. "Yeah, it does look strange. Believe me, I had to go through a lot. I've been called baby burner and everything else in the book."

Much of his time at Mount Carmel was spent reading the Bible and talking with the Davidians, Alaniz said. He sensed while inside that things weren't going well and decided to leave.

"There was so much aggression going on that I knew they were fixing to do something," Alaniz said. "The government was cursing them, mooning them, shooting the finger at girls standing in the windows. I saw more evil on the outside than I did on the inside."

Worried about the Davidian children, Alaniz said he told authorities that there was a nursery on the second floor where the infants slept. >>

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 13, 1999.

This from the Dallas morning News today -

By the way, if the military was "not involved, " and if no rounds were fired, just exactly what can be "classified military information"?

A 40 mm round is like a small cannon shell: about 1.5 inch in diameter, with a substantial explosive capacity. In a closed room, a flash-bang grenade is devestating.

Also, this report confirms my suspicions that if the FBI never fired a shot, then they never said that the ATF or Delta Force never fired a shot....or this FBI sniper - who had already murdered at Ruby Ridge - was simply "re-assigned" to Delta Force administratively for a day to give "plausible deniablity" to the FBI... <<

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 13, 1999.

Quote follows, link is from Drudge report..

Rangers' report doesn't resolve questions about gun use on last day of siege

FBI has said casings could be from ATF

09/13/99

By Lee Hancock / The Dallas Morning News

A Texas Rangers report on evidence from the Branch Davidian siege resolves some mysteries but deepens others, including questions about whether the government fired guns or high explosives on the final day of the 1993 tragedy.

The report sent Friday to Congress indicates that the Rangers' evidence trove includes a dozen .308-caliber sniper rifle shell casings and 24 Israeli-made .223-caliber casings recovered from a house used by the FBI's hostage rescue team throughout the 51-day siege. It was the same house from which FBI documents indicate an FBI agent initially reported hearing shots fired on the final day of the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco.

The agent has since said that account was wrong, and FBI officials insist that none of their agents fired a single shot during the standoff. Bureau officials have noted that the shell casings could have come from agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who used the house as a sniper post and shot repeatedly at the Branch Davidian compound when a gunfight broke out as as they tried to search it on Feb. 28, 1993.

But the issue is a cornerstone of a federal lawsuit filed by surviving Branch Davidians against the government. And the discovery of shell casings is potentially even more explosive because the FBI agent in charge of the sniper post was Lon Horiuchi, the FBI sniper who fatally shot the wife of a white separatist during the federal standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in late 1992.

Mr. Horiuchi has denied firing any shots in Waco, but a federal judge presiding over the Branch Davidian lawsuit recently refused to drop him as a defendant in the case.

While the Rangers' report conclusively answers questions about the nature of some evidence - including shell casings from a pyrotechnic tear-gas grenade and two 40-mm projectiles - it offers no conclusions about the potential significance of those items, the sniper rounds or any other evidence under scrutiny.

But law-enforcement officials in Texas say that the report presents compelling questions for both Congress and former Sen. John Danforth, the special investigator appointed last week by the U.S. Justice Department to re-examine the Waco case.

"We now have ballistics exams that can take a shell casing and determine exactly what gun it was fired from," said one Texas official. "We need to see what weapons ATF had and what weapons FBI had, and we can tell you exactly which ones fired these shells.

"This is something that has never been looked at," the official said. "There are things here that are potentially very troubling."

Question of control

The Rangers' report suggests how limited the initial investigation of the tragedy may have been and how tightly it was controlled by the FBI - although federal officials had publicly insisted that the case was led by a special task force of more than 30 Texas Rangers.

"There needs to be a re-analysis of everything in this case in light of what's recently come out," one official said. "People have said there have already been investigations. But there has never been an investigation of what happened on the law-enforcement side."

In the report, a Texas Rangers sergeant assigned to sort through the Branch Davidian evidence kept by the Texas Department of Public Safety wrote that his efforts were slowed by the lack of a complete set of crime scene photographs from the case.

"It is my understanding that the FBI had taken all of the 35-mm film, negatives and reference material into their possession, and only a limited number of photographs were returned to the Texas Department of Public Safety," Ranger Sgt. Joey Gordon wrote in the report obtained by The Dallas Morning News.

Unusual inquiry

The inch-thick document arrived Friday on Capitol Hill, where it had been subpoenaed earlier this month by the House Government Reform Committee. It details an unusual inquiry launched in June by James B. Francis, chairman of the commission that oversees the state's chief law-enforcement agency.

Mr. Francis told the Rangers to try to identify "problematic" projectiles and other items kept in DPS evidence lockers for almost six years since the standoff, which ended April 19, 1993, in a fire that consumed the Branch Davidian compound.

Leader David Koresh and more than 80 followers died in the blaze, which began about six hours after FBI tanks began ramming and tear-gassing the compound.

The siege began with the gun battle that broke out on Feb. 28, 1993, as ATF agents tried to search the compound and arrest Mr. Koresh on weapons violations. Four ATF agents and several sect members died in the exchange.

Government officials have long maintained that FBI agents used no pyrotechnic devices on the day the compound burned.

But last month, the Justice Department and the FBI admitted that tear-gas grenades capable of starting fires had been fired by the government on April 19, in direct violation of an order by Attorney General Janet Reno that no pyrotechnic devices be used that day.

The FBI now says the pyrotechnics were fired at the compound, but hours before the blaze started. Officials still maintain that the fire was set by the compound's occupants.

The admission came only after a former FBI official told The News that use of two U.S. military pyrotechnic tear-gas grenades "was common knowledge" among the FBI's hostage rescue team.

Even before then, the Rangers had been working for several months to try to identify a shell casing that proved to be part of one of the military CS gas rounds and other projectiles that had never been properly identified.

Mr. Francis ordered the inquiry after learning that the Justice Department had tried to block all public access to the evidence trove. The issue came to his attention after Justice Department lawyers defending a massive wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Branch Davidians angrily complained about an independent filmmaker being allowed to view the evidence in DPS custody last fall and this spring.

Following up

Based on the questions raised by the filmmaker, Michael McNulty, Rangers began trying to identify an oddly-shaped 40-mm shell casing, several unidentified 40-mm projectiles and a number of other items never scrutinized during the initial criminal inquiry.

By mid-August, Ranger Sgt. Gordon had identified the shell casing as part of a U.S. military gas grenade known as an M651. With the help of U.S. Army experts, the Ranger was able to determine the two-day period in which it was made at a North Carolina factory in 1969 and even acquire two unfired M651 grenades from the same batch that were still in an Arkansas Army arsenal.

Late last month, the Ranger also identified two 40-mm projectiles as German-made "flash-bang" grenades, devices that emit a loud, concussive noise and a blinding flash and are used by U.S. law enforcement to stun or distract suspects. Although tests are still being completed, both appear to be German NICO flash-bang devices from a shipment of about 50 sent in 1990 to the FBI, the report stated.

Mr. McNulty, who is now completing a new documentary on Waco has questioned whether the two black-and-silver devices might be some form of exotic explosive or incendiary device used to deliberately start a fire.

But the report heightens other questions about what the FBI used on the final day of the standoff. It includes a statement from another Texas Ranger who recalled being told by an FBI agent that the bureau had gotten permission on April 19 to fire a device to knock down a door.

A recent government audit of military assistance during the standoff stated that the FBI's arsenal at Waco included 250 40-mm high-explosive rounds. Bureau officials have said they do not know why the rounds were obtained from Fort Hood, Texas, but they have said that none were used in Waco.

After the compound fire, a Ranger found a strange shell casing among debris left by the FBI. Rangers who were military veterans said at the time that the it looked like a "thumper round," a high-explosive Army munition, the report indicated.

The Ranger said he was approached by an FBI agent in January 1994, just before the Ranger testified in the federal criminal trial against 11 Branch Davidians. He said the FBI agent reported that the shell was used against a door "in an attempt to knock it down."

The shell was ultimately identified as part of a CS gas round, but the Ranger's account raises questions about what might have been fired at a door.

Other evidence

The Rangers' report indicates the DPS has preserved other problematic evidence, including other flash-bang grenades misidentified as silencers, a spent military flare, and DPS photographs and videos.

Mr. McNulty has contended that those videos could determine whether members of the U.S. Army's secret Delta Force unit were active during the tear-gas assault. Defense Department officials have said three special-forces personnel were present but only watched.

The report also indicates that some evidence initially reported missing during the 1994 criminal trial had inexplicably reappeared. Among the items found by Mr. McNulty during his visits to the evidence lockers was a watch cap worn by a Branch Davidian who was shot to death by ATF agents as he tried to approach the embattled compound on Feb. 28.

ATF agents testified that they shot the man, Michael Schroeder, nine times after he fired first at them. He was shot several times in the head, and DPS photographs of his body showed that he was wearing a watch cap when he died.

But defense attorneys for the Branch Davidians were told that the cap couldn't be found before the criminal trials. Mr. McNulty said the hat contains visible residues that should be tested to determine whether Mr. Schroeder was shot at close range or "finished off."

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 13, 1999.