FHP probes crash report

Brothers falsely blamed in collision

BY BRAD BENNETT AND DAVID KIDWELL bbennett@herald.com

The Florida Highway Patrol has ordered an internal probe into why the agency falsely blamed two dead Lauderhill brothers for a drunken FBI agent's fatal mistake.

The order came one day after a rookie state trooper accused senior colleagues of producing and releasing an inaccurate account of the deadly accident -- caused by FBI agent David Farrall driving the wrong way on Interstate 95 -- and having the trooper sign off on it.

Meanwhile, new details emerged about the night of the crash on I-95 near Atlantic Boulevard in Pompano Beach, including the fact that Farrall had been drinking with another FBI agent in the hours before the crash.

FHP Director Charles Hall ordered the internal inquiry following Herald reports that 23-year-old rookie Trooper Rene Guillen was told by senior officials to sign off on a news release and accident report containing statements he did not know to be true.

``Who wrote that news release? Based on what information?'' asked Maj. Ken Howes, chief spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol. ``We're looking into the matter to try to see if there were any policy violations that may have been committed.''

As of Wednesday, Guillen was still the only Florida Highway Patrol employee facing corrective action for mishandling the investigation of the Nov. 23 accident, Howes said.

But Howes did not rule out the possibility that other FHP investigators could also face corrective action.

``We're not looking to fire anybody over this,'' Howes said. ``Once we have all the facts, [we will] take whatever action necessary to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Certainly, we want to restore the public's confidence in us,'' Howes said.

FALSE ACCUSATION

The initial news release falsely accuses brother Maurice Williams, 23, and Craig Chambers, 19, of going the wrong way on I-95 at the time of the head-on collision. Since then -- and after weeks of public lashings from the brothers' family and the family's attorney -- an embarrassed FHP has done a turnaround.

In a news conference Dec. 23, FHP brass finally conceded it was a drunken Farrall going the wrong way and causing the crash, and blamed a rookie Guillen for the ``honest mistake.''

Guillen, through his union representative, said Tuesday he was following orders and the erroneous reports were produced by a patchwork of experienced FHP investigators under deadline pressure from superiors. Then he was asked to sign off on them, which he did.

Citing privacy regulations, the FBI in Miami declined to discuss details about a second agent who had been drinking with Farrall at a Broward pub that night.

But FBI Special Agent in Charge Hector Pesquera said the name of that person and all others with relevant information have been given to the FHP, Broward prosecutors, and his own internal investigators, who began their probe Wednesday.

Pesquera angrily denounced allegations his agency is shielding Farrall or impeding the FHP investigation.

``We only did what we would do in any case where an agent is injured,'' Pesquera said, speaking publicly about the case for the first time.

MOTHER UPSET

Pesquera said he is ``deeply hurt'' by allegations from the mother of the two brothers that his agents were at the Broward County morgue and stopped her from seeing the bodies of her sons.

``This is not our investigation. It never has been our investigation,'' he said. ``We weren't even at the morgue. I think it's very, very irresponsible of some people to come out with statements that are entirely inaccurate.''

As agency rules require, Farrall has been on administrative leave with pay since the FHP on Dec. 23 announced he was at fault, Pesquera said. Investigators from Washington began an internal investigation today, and Pesquera said he expects a final decision on whether Farrall will be fired within a month.

``I asked them to put it on the fast track,'' he said.

Farrall, 36, suffered a broken wrist and internal injuries during the crash. He has been in Arlington, Va., with his family since being released from the hospital. Since he was first hired by the FBI in April 1998, Farrall was working with the organized crime group, focusing on Russian organized crime investigations, sources said.

Farrall was driving his personal car and was off duty at the time of the accident, Pesquera said. ``Regardless, this agency has very strict policies regarding driving under the influence, whether you are on duty or not,'' he said.

CLAIMS OF COVER-UP

Both the FBI and FHP have been the targets of intense criticism and allegations of cover-ups by the family of the two brothers.

One criticism centers on whether FBI agents at the hospital shielded Farrall from FHP accident investigators.

Pesquera attacked that notion, saying it's possible in the days immediately following the accident that agents assigned to Farrall's hospital door relayed his wishes not to make a statement to the FHP.

``I was personally at the hospital when the troopers came, and I can tell you everything we did was proper,'' Pesquera said. ``We're not going to cover up for anyone. It doesn't make any sense.''

Hall of the FHP, who declined an interview request from The Herald, wants to know what happened in his agency's accident investigation from beginning to end.

``He wants to know . . . if any undue influence was placed on that trooper while he was writing the report,'' Howes said. ``He's basically going to be checking out the allegations that were brought up in that [Herald] report.''

The FHP inquiry will seek to answer several other key questions raised by Guillen, such as whether senior officers assumed that because Farrall is an FBI agent, he could not have been going the wrong way.

Guillen and FHP officials maintain that race was not a factor in the case. The FBI agent is white; the brothers were black.

``A person's skin color, occupation, race, sex, national origin or any other factor should not be considered during a crash investigation as to who was at fault,'' Howes said.

``Decisions on who was at fault should be based on evidence, facts, witnesses,'' Howes said. ``If a decision or judgment on a trooper's part as to who is at fault in a crash is based on anything other than evidence, witnesses or other facts, then there is a problem. And it's wrong.''

-- Vern (bacon17@ibm.net), January 07, 2000

Answers

Here's another one...

Friday, January 7 2:39 AM SGT

Tape of NATO strike on train shown at three times normal speed WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (AFP) - A videotape of a US missile hitting a commuter train on a railroad bridge in Serbia last April was inadvertently shown to the public at three times normal speed, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed Thursday.

"There was never any intent to deceive or mislead," said Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Vic Warzinski.

The April 12 attack, which destroyed the train and killed at least 14 civilians, was one of the most dramatic cases of "collateral damage" of the 11-week NATO air war.

Captured by a camera in the nose of the missiles that struck the train on the bridge, the videotapes were shown the next day by General Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme commander, at a NATO press conference in which he explained that the pilot had no time to pull the missile off its target.

Clark said the pilot's attention was focused on an aim point on the bridge "when all of a sudden, at the very last instance, with less than a second to go, he caught a flash of movement that came into a screen and it was the train coming in."

"Unfortunately, he couldn't dump the bomb at that point. It was locked, it was going into the target and it was an unfortunate incident which he and the crew and all of us very much regret," Clark said at the time.

Warzinski, however, confirmed a report in the German daily Frankfurter Rundschau that the videotapes which accompanied Clark's presentation were shown at three times their actual speed, which made the train entering the frame appear to be traveling faster than it really was.

He said that, as is routine, the digitized gun camera footage was compressed and accelerated to run at twice actual speed for quick viewing by intelligence analysts at the combined air operations center in Vicenza, Italy.

In this case, officials said, the computer file was transferred to NATO headquarters in Mons, Belgium without being reset to normal speed.

Timing control data that normally would appear on the file also was lost as it was transferred from one computer platform to another, they said.

In addition, the footage was transmitted over the Internet using software that compressed it a second time by eliminating similar frames, which gives the footage a jerky quality, they said.

They said the fact that the footage was accelerated went unnoticed in Mons where officials were rushing to prepare for Clark's press conference.

"If you look at the race to get all that put together, there aren't a whole lot of people studying this stuff," said Lieutenant Colonel Michael Phillips, a US military spokesman at Mons.

The pilot's view of the bridge was confined to a five-by-five inch monochromic cockpit monitor which blinded him to the train's approach until the last instant, Phillips said.

NATO first became aware that the tape was accelerated in October when a German publication raised questions about it, but has not remove it from its Internet sites because it considered it "part of the historical archive of the air campaign," Warzinski said.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), January 07, 2000.