NewsMax.com
Report to
Congress on Infrared Footage at Waco
The following is a summary of conclusions reached by Carlos
Ghigliotti, an infrared film expert. Mr. Ghigliotti completed this
report as a consultant to the Congress. He determined federal
officials had, in fact, fired into the Koresh compound.
Summary of the most important events that occurred on April 19, 1993
A complete analysis of the FLIR videotape (#3) taken between 10:41:57
and 12:16:13 was made using the equipment listed in volume 1.
An electronic grid was placed on the videotape and divided into 4
quadrants. The top left section is quadrant 1 or (Q1). The top right
section is quadrant 2 or (Q2). The bottom left section is quadrant 3
or (Q3) and the bottom right section is quadrant 4 or (Q4). A
videotape was recorded with this grid pattern and provided.
At 11:16:27 the tank or CEV (combat engineering vehicle) first
appears.
At 11:18:40-Q1 the tank starts to demolish the rear wall of the gym.
This continues on until 12:09:02-Q3 when the tank leaves the rear
area of the gym. There were a total of 19 instances that the tank
penetrated the gym.
At 11:23:02-Q3 & Q4 the tank has penetrated the gym for the 6th time.
At 11:23:23 the tank is completely inside the gym.
At 11:24:17-Q2 two unknown subjects appear from underneath the tank.
Between 11:24:30:16-Q2 and 11:24:36-Q1 the unknown subjects shoot
into the hole made by the tank in the gym wall.
Between 11:24:50-Q4 and 11:25:04 there is a response in the form of
gunfire from the inside of the gym directed at the 2 unknown subjects.
At 11:26:04-Q2 the tank breaks through the front wall of the gym.
Between 11:26:13-Q1 and 11:26:27-Q1 additional gunfire comes out of
the gym directed at the 2 unknown subjects. This gunfire has pinned
down the 2 unknown subjects on the ground.
At 11:26:26-Q1 the tank backs over the 2 unknown subjects. The
approximate height of the tank is 20 inches and 6 feet in width
between the tracks.
At 11:26:39-Q4 one of the 2 unknown subjects is clearly visible
exiting out the hole in the front wall of the gym the tank previously
made. The unknown subject turns to the right into the courtyard.
Between 11:28:04-Q1 and 11:28:14:04-Q4 there is gunfire emitting from
the position the unknown subject was seen at 11:26:39-Q4 (the
courtyard) the direction of this gunfire is into the structure.
Between 11:28:18-Q4 and 11:28:22-Q4 there is a response of gunfire
coming out of the structure.
Between 11:30:09-Q4 and 11:30:15-Q4 there is gunfire from the same
area in the courtyard directed into the structure.
At 11:33:51-Q4 there is gunfire between the gym wall and the swimming
pool. The direction of this gunfire is into the structure (possibly
unknown subject #2) since the infrared signature from this weapon is
different from the rounds fired in the courtyard.
At 11:34:32-Q4 there is one gunshot directed at the unknown subject
on 11:34:33-Q3 that is running and hiding between the gym and the
swimming pool.
Between 11:34:33-Q3 and 11:34:34-Q3 unknown subject is being shot at.
Between 11:34:45-Q4 and 11:38:31-Q3 there is gunfire coming out of
the structure.
Between 11:38:34-Q3 and 11:38:36-Q3 an unknown subject is seen hiding
in front of the tank.
At 11:43:34-Q4 is the 3rd time the tank enters the front middle
section of the structure. This is the side facing the cameras from
the media. The tank enters the front part of the structure on
numerous occasions and is fired upon every time it enters the
structure.
Between 11:43:36-Q4 and 11:59:03-Q3 there is gunfire from the second
floor front side directed at the tank.
At 12:03:59-Q2 unknown subject appears next to the tank in the rear
of the structure.
At 12:05:17-Q2 1st time the tank inserts the boom into the corner of
the front tower.
At 12:07:42-Q4 the fire is now visible in the infrared spectrum
coming out from the window of the second story tower.
At 12:08:12-Q4 unknown subject comes out of the tank and shows up at
12:08:51-Q3 shooting at the other unknown subject that appears at
12:08:34-Q4.
Between 12:08:31-Q4 and 12:08:32-Q3 a cluster of thermal anomalies
appear at the corner of the gym.
Between 12:08:34-Q4 and 12:08:44-Q4 unknown subject runs from the
area where the thermal anomalies are. The subject hops over the
rubble and hides in the gym.
Between 12:08:51-Q3 and 12:08:52-Q3 there is automatic gunfire into
the area where the unknown subject at 12:08:44-Q4 was hiding.
12:09:02-Q3 rear tank leaves the area.
Between 12:10:41-Q3 and 12:11:15-Q1 numerous rounds of gunfire are
shot from the center of the courtyard and all are directed into the
structure.
No additional events of importance are viewable due to the fire
overloading the detector on the FLIR.
CONCLUSIONS:
No additional gunfire is detectable on the videotape because the
infrared detector on the FLIR overloaded with the infrared energy
emitted by the fire. The gunfire did continue on. There is visible
video evidence taken by the media to support this and there is
gunfire recorded on the audio track of the aerial FLIR tape #4 taken
by the same aircraft.
Total number of gunfire shots coming out of the structure 69
Total number of gunfire shots going into the structure* 57
Total number of flash devices 1 cluster
SUB TOTAL 127
Total number of times the tanks penetrated into the structure** 33
Total number of times the tanks penetrated thru the structure 1
TOTAL NUMBER OF EVENTS 161
7 *THERE ARE 3 THERMAL FLASHES WHERE THE WEAPON USED, HAD A POSSIBLE
FLASH SUPPRESSOR DEVICE INSTALLED, THEY OCCURRED AT 11:24:31:28,
11:24:35:10 AND 11:28:14:13. THEREFORE THE POSSIBILITY EXISTS THAT
MORE THAN ONE ROUND OF AMMUNITION WAS FIRED DURING EACH OF THE 3
EVENTS. ALTHOUGH ONLY ONE ROUND OF AMMUNITION WAS USED AS THE AMOUNT
FIRED FOR THIS LIST. 7 **AFTER REVIEWING THE VIDEOTAPE NUMEROUS
TIMES. THE FOLLOWING PATTERN APPEARED, WITH ONLY A FEW EXCEPTIONS.
THE BRANCH DAVIDIANS SHOT AT THE TANKS, ONLY AFTER THE TANKS
PENETRATED THE STRUCTURE. TOTAL NUMBER OF TIMES, UNKNOWN SUBJECTS
APPEAR ON THE FLIR VIDEOTAPE. 7
TOTAL NUMBER OF EVENTS THAT OCCURRED BETWEEN 10:41:57 AND 12:16:13
(FLIR TAPE #3) 198
-- Uncle Bob (unclb0b@aol.com), April 30, 2000.
Exclusive: Lawyer Reveals Expert Witness Findings
David
Hardy
April 30, 2000
David Hardy is an attorney who has been involved in civil litigation
relating to the Waco raid of 1993. Hardy had significant dealings
with Carlos Ghigliotti, an expert Congress had hired to review
infrared film taken during the FBI raid of the Koresh compound. For
the first time Hardy reveals what Ghigliotti told him about the film.
For the last year I have been privy to certain secrets which I was
sworn not to reveal. For reasons I'll mention later, I am now
released from my promise of secrecy.
The presence of FBI gunshots on the Waco FLIR [Forward-Looking
InfraRed] videotapes has been news for the past few months, but the
story had been sitting on media shelves for years before that time.
The FLIR videotapes were made by an FBI aircraft orbiting the
Davidian building and show the scene as if it were a black and white
video, in terms of heat and cold. The most important tapes were made
on April 19, 1993, the day of the fire.
On that day, FBI swore again and again it did not fire a single shot
and tried its best to keep Davidians from burning in the blaze.
My involvement in the Waco matter began in 1995, when a friend of
mine contacted me about the case. Apparently "60 Minutes" had taken
an interest in the aerial infrared footage and sent it to be analyzed
by a private firm called Infraspection. While experts at
Infraspection determined the blips of light on the footage were
gunfire, "60 Minutes" decided not to air the story at that time.
I contacted Infraspection and they offered me the names of other
infrared specialists who might be willing to take on the work.
They highly recommended Ghigliotti, who ran a lab in Laurel, Md.
Ghigliotti said that before he would put his name on an opinion, he
would need a first-generation copy of the original FBI tape; he would
stake his reputation on nothing less than the best material. At that
point, the best we had were third-generation copies in VHS, so we had
to let the matter go.
Three years later, in late 1999, I got a call from Ghigliotti. He
needed some other Waco videos which I had pried out of the FBI and
ATF.
He related that he had been retained by the House Government Reform
Committee, chaired by Congrssman Dan Burton, and was examining the
FLIR tape under their authority.
Ghigliotti added that he had obtained a remarkable copy of the FLIR,
a quantum leap above what anyone else possessed. He had discovered
that, even when the FBI said it was passing out a first-generation
copy, it was in fact giving out a copy, not of the original tape, but
of a digitized "master copy."
Knowing that digitization compresses the image and discards detail,
he had demanded and gotten a copy of the original 1993 tape, made in
Super VHS with some format specifications which ensured it had all
the sharpness and quality of the original.
By good fortune, I was flying to his area on some work anyway, so I
arranged to visit him in his lab.
It was impressive. He had a bank of Super VHS recorders feeding a row
of large monitors, and tapped into a pair of the hottest computers
I'd yet seen. With this, and some hardware he had personally
designed, he could coordinate two, three, or four different videos
and show them in parallel, frame by frame; thus an infrared image
could be played alongside a simultaneous video made in visible light.
He was a pilot, and used the arrangement to track things such as
illegal water pollution (the polluting water is generally warmer than
the river or bay into which it flows, and thus shows up on infrared,
while the coordinate visible image makes it easy to spot the
location.).
Ghigliotti had no politics that I ever noted, he was proud of his
skill, and he was rigorously honest. He staked his reputation on
every opinion, and made sure that it was unimpeachable.
In fact, he once mentioned, he'd been hired by the FBI in the past,
and cited them as a reference. He would let the chips fall where they
might.
Sitting there in his lab, I was a bit cautious about asking his
opinion of the Waco tape. I got a feeling, though, when he
remarked, "The only thing that pisses me off over this, Dave, is when
I hear government officials lying about things that I know happened,
because I've seen the evidence."
It was perhaps typical of him: A lack of honesty was more offensive
to him than the prospect of official abuse or even homicide. Carlos
lived by the truth and could not condone any failure in that arena.
Carlos Ghigliotti did offer me a few previews. He ran a portion of
the FLIR video, which depicted events after an FBI tank had
demolished the large room, commonly known as "the gym," at the back
of the Davidians' home.
By this point, the gym was a field of construction rubble loosely
attached to the main building. In the midst of the image a strange
flash occurred, perhaps ten feet long.
I asked what it was clearly it was too long for a gun flash.
"That's a bullet in flight," Carlos said. I knew that a bullet after
firing is far too hot to pick up, but I'd never realized they could
be seen in infrared. I asked him if he was sure.
"I've imaged them when I've flown over shooting ranges. I know what I
see there," was his reply.
Carlos rewound the tape.
"Now, let's see what he was shooting at." He pointed to a spot in the
gym wreckage. The unmistakable image of a human being was there,
jumping up from behind the cover of one pile of wreckage and
sprinting to dive behind another.
The bullet flash came just after he dove down.
"Missed him by half a second," Carlos said.
I almost gasped. On my FLIR copies previously described as first
generation, the best you could get the flash was visible but the
man was not.
Carlos' copy, and equipment and his eye for detail had found the
holy grail.
He had proof that the FBI was lying.
FBI agents had dismounted from the tanks and engaged in a foot
assault, invading the building.
"Yes," Carlos said, "they're lying."
He showed me another preview. This one was from ordinary color video,
shot by telephoto media cameras from their position miles away. It
was shot aftter the fire was already raging. The images were blurry
and the angle shallow bushes and tanks blocked part of the view of
FBI agents moving around.
I'd seen the tape before, but Carlos' eye had seen what mine had not.
"Watch this guy here," he said, pointing to a specific human image on
the other side of the parked tanks.
The agent moved, stopped ... and took a shooting stance. You couldn't
see the weapon, but it was the stance of a man shouldering a rifle.
Then he turned his head toward the cameras, saw that he was on a line-
of-sight with the media positions, and suddenly ducked down and
lunged in front of one of the tanks.
That wasn't all. Carlos showed me another of the conventional video
sequences.
From in front of one of the tanks came a long bright streak of fire,
looking like a large tracer bullet.
"That's not a sunlight flash. I've imaged the same flash from videos
taken at two ... no, three ... different angles," Carlos said. "I
think it's the fuse on a pyrotechnic grenade."
The "pyros" are teargas shells, well known for starting fires.
I noticed that the angle of the flash was decidedly downward. Carlos
explained that the FBI was shooting down into the Davidians'
underground storm shelter, sometimes called "the pit."
I said wait a second ... the pit was the exit of the underground
tunnel leading out of the Davidian house.
The tunnel was where the FBI (incorrectly) thought the women and
children had been placed. So now the FBI is gassing what it thought
was their only escape route out of the fire. Carlos nodded
affirmatively.
Before I left that day, Carlos gave me another tip.
There is a soundtrack on the last FLIR tape I should listen to it
carefully. When I got back to my office, I did just that.
Before I was through, my jaw was sagging. FBI officials had admitted
they stopped fire engines from responding to the fire, but only for a
few minutes, until they thought it was safe for the engines to go in.
The soundtrack of the FLIR picks up their radio traffic that day. On
the soundtrack, the commander at the scene is calling for fire
engines, being told they are on the way, and hearing reports that
none are arriving.
He finally gets so upset that he screams into the radio, "If you have
any fire engines down there, get them up here immediately!"
He is told they will be there momentarily ... and none arrive.
Either he had been overruled by higher command, or the agents had
gone insubordinate and were making sure the Davidians would burn.
There was also a strange conversation about someone outside the
building, and then pops that sounded like gunfire, and the FLIR
aircraft pilot's asking another crewman "did you hear that?"
Carlos and I stayed in touch by telephone and e-mail. I sent him
useful data when I found it, and kept my mouth shut.
By the end, Carlos told me that he had spotted nearly 200 likely
gunshots, many at full auto.
The FBI hadn't merely fired shots on April 19, it had hosed down the
back of the building with rapid gunfire.
Carlos had carefully plotted the movements of each shooter. He could
now show shots from one location, the shooter moving to another, and
shots from his new site.
At least two individuals were shooting, close in to the building,
with others lending support from a distance. And, all the while, the
FBI was giving out press statements claiming that the flashes could
not be gunfire because no shooters were visible near them.
The FBI was digging itself deeper and deeper into the hole.
Carlos also told me that he'd seen FLIRs from nights before the
gassing assault, and that it was apparent that the FLIR aircraft was
being used to monitor the Davidians' water supply.
The water was stored in those big plastic tanks at the rear of the
building, and the coolness of the water inside showed up as a darker
area. It was apparent that the water supply was shrinking, and by
April 19 was almost gone. He had heard the aircraft crew talking
about it and noting that the level was going down.
So, essentially, they knew that thirst would force an end to the
siege within a few days of April 19. Which also meant that the FBI
officials had lied to Reno when they said the Davidians had plenty of
food and water and the siege was unlikely to end soon.
During this time-frame, Carlos's name first cropped up in the press,
as an expert for the House Government Reform Committee who had opined
that the FBI fired shots. Strangely, the Committee distanced itself
from its own expert, stating in the same article that his opinion was
based on regular video rather than FLIR which wasn't the case.
I asked Carlos if the Committee was abandoning him and covering
matters up.
No, he replied, it was quite the opposite. He was briefing them on
virtually a weekly basis.
They had uncovered a lot more information than he had. What he knew
he couldn't talk about, except that one tiny part of it was that, not
only the initial ATF raid, but the entire siege, had been funded out
of money dedicated to the war on drugs.
One might say that the entire Waco affair was funded by official
embezzlement, since all legal guidelines for use of those millions
had been violated by ATF and FBI.
There were other things, he added. But these could simply not be let
out.
They were sufficiently shocking to where the Committee was genuinely
concerned that, if known, they might inspire violent retribution from
radicals.
I said I'd heard statements like that the truth about Waco could
not be explored, for fear of violence, but discarded them as agency
excuses.
Carlos said no the fear is real, and it's not poppycock. The truth
is really that grim. The Committee had not yet figured out how to
reveal the truth without running this risk, and until it did, it had
to disavow his work and sit on the other information.
Much of the data was in the hands of certain key reporters (a few of
whom he named), and they were sitting on it for the same reason. But
it would come out in time.
In March of this year, Carlos called with several more discoveries
that truly sealed the matter.
He'd managed to spot when a hatch opened on the tank at the back of
the building, and when a crewman got out of it.
That crewman then fired at an image of a man who fled back into the
burning building. Carlos had said that the House Government Reform
Committee knew the name of the FBI agent under that hatch. When his
testimony was taken, he denied everything but began shaking
violently as he did so.
Carlos had another breakthrough. I'd spotted a strange flash on the
tape, and for once had found one that he'd missed. While he was
looking for that, however, he found some other flashes.
He told me that he could now link, by time and place, one of the
conventional video images of an FBI agent taking a shooting stance,
to the FLIR image of a gun flash at the same location and instant in
time. The case was now open and shut.
Then, sometime in March of this year, his relationship with the
Committee began to break up. I have only his side of the story on
this. Apparently, the committee staff wanted quick results.
His response was that he had cataloged nearly 200 likely gunshots. To
pin down each one to the certainty he required would take some more
months. He wanted, not merely to say something looked like a gunshot,
but that after examining every other possibility, after tying in the
media videotapes and soundtracks, that there was no possibility it
could be anything else.
He had reached that certaintly with some gunshots, but not with the
rest. The staffers got into arguments with him. They wanted results,
right then.
Some threatened not only to stop payment, but to sue him for what
he'd already been paid. Chairman Burton himself called and tried to
chew him out.
I urged him to stay on with them this was vital, and politicos were
often hard to work with, you just had to put up with them. He called
back a day later and said he'd thought it over and, no, he had better
things to do than work with people who threatened him.
He was going to give a preliminary report, brief majority and
minority staff, finish his report on the gunshots of which he was
certain, and present that with a list of all the things he had not
been able to analyze.
On March 18, he faxed me a copy of his preliminary report,
identifying when the FBI agent (described simply as an "unknown
subject") exited the tank hatch, and the gunfire of which he was
certain, together with a brief outline of the movements of the FBI
shooters. (As it turns out, this fax is apparently the only surviving
copy of that preliminary report, other than those given to the
Committee.) In late March, he briefed the staffs.
It goes without saying that by this point, Carlos had become a rather
dangerous commodity.
He had found the most solid of evidence that implicated virtually the
entire FBI Hostage Rescue Team, and the FBI's high command, in clear
perjury.
To the extent they were shooting and gassing in order to pin people
in the fire, they were tied in on attempted murder, and accessory
after the fact to attempted murder, as well.
Men were collecting government pensions who deserved to be in prison.
The survival of HRT the reputation and perhaps survival of the FBI
were on the line.
This was far worse than J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO, far worse than
Watergate, and after years of covering up, the entire agency
hierarchy was now stuck to the tar baby.
Now Carlos was no longer under the Committee's control; he was free
to talk to whomsoever he chose. Indeed, he had already briefed one of
the Davidians' attorneys, and was mulling over whether to testify in
the wrongful death suit they had brought.
I've said that I had sworn secrecy, and that I'm now released from
that promise. This is a rather long article, but there is a reason.
It's in part a memorial for a feisty and totally honest guy I came to
like a good deal.
On April 19 of this year, from a hotel room in Waco, I called Carlos
to report a minor discovery I had just made at the scene. I got his
answering machine, but when it came time to leave a message, the tape
just said "tape finished. Thank you for calling."
I thought he'd run out of tape never happened before, but who
knows?
I tried again from time to time, with the same result. I sent e-mail
asking him to call. No reply. Well, maybe he was out of town. He did
have other court cases going, and had been talking about taking a
vacation,
Early on April 29 I tried again, and this time nothing picked up; the
phone just rang off the hook.
That afternoon I received a call. Carlos had been found dead in his
office. (The press reports said in his apartment, but the address was
that of his office; it was on the third floor of an office building,
and had no living quarters.)
Perhaps his time was up. He was only 42, and looked in excellent
shape (I bet he worked out), but he did have a Type-A personality.
Whatever it was, the man most dangerous to a very powerful agency and
scores of its agents had been removed from the scene.
The next day the House Government Reform Committee was quickly
distancing itself from its own expert, a man who had been briefing it
for months, had submitted his preliminary report a few weeks before,
and had been briefing its staffs within the past two weeks.
An AP story quoted committee staff as saying that "Ghigliotti's work
for the committee ended some time ago." Rumors were quietly placed
that he was "controversial" and had been "fired by the Committee."
Let me set the record straight: I owe it to that honest man. In my
phone log I have two calls from him, sometime between March 18 and
March 23 (I often overlook writing in the new day). These are about 3-
4 weeks before his death:
Notes on first call:
Kevin Binger, chief of staff to Burton, wanted report rewritten his
way. Carlos needed stuff from locker (presumably Rangers' evidence
locker or locker in custody of court) and committee refused to send
him (Carlos) down there. [Again, the indication is that he's not
fully broken off relations.]
Notes on second call:
Shots from side of tank. He had been showing the FLIR of a tank hatch
opening and a guy coming out of the CEV to the Demo staff members;
they agreed that the hatch opened but some didn't agree they could
see the person. They knew by name the person under that hatch. Guy
dismounts and shoots at a Davidian. Something about audio track at
another point says tank is in pursuit of an unidentified subject.
[Word unclear, begins with C, likely "Congress"] only wanted his
anomaly list [i.e., his list of thermal anomalies, rather than a
study of each]. Over a hundred of those. Something about four
gunshots. He suggested Demos might pay for analysis of the rest.
Demos unaware. [As I recall, he said the minority staff had been kept
apprised only of the major developments, and were surprised to learn
of all the details.]
I had placed high hopes on the Congressional inquiry, but my trust
level is rapidly declining.
Carlos had said that the Committee would let it all out eventually,
that they were just keeping a distance from him in the press reports
until that time.
But now he's dead, and the Committee is claiming falsely that he was
fired and had not worked for them for some time. But for his fax, and
a phone log, the story might pass muster and his discoveries be
buried with him.
I'm beginning to wonder if Carlos wasn't a bit too trusting of his
employers. There are ways to silence congressional oversight.
J. Edgar Hoover was a master of that ... it was amazing what a few
files on the pecadillos of congressmen could do. And so far, for all
the thousands of pages of documentation the Committee has gotten
for the secrets they had uncovered, that Carlos takes to his grave,
but considered so damning of the agencies that it might inspire
another Oklahoma City not one word has been revealed to the public,
and no hearings are scheduled.
Nobody ever said that politics is conducive to honor. But Carlos
deserved better he was a genuinely honorable man.
-- Uncle Bob (unclb0b@aol.com), April 30, 2000.
