Texas Rangers Submit Waco Report to Congress
nytimes.com
WASHINGTON -- A dozen spent rifle cartridges of a type often used by
snipers were recovered from a house used by the FBI during the 1993
standoff with the Branch Davidians, the Texas Rangers reported on
Monday.
In a report submitted to Congress, the
Rangers also released a letter by a federal
prosecutor who told Attorney General
Janet Reno that Justice Department
officials may have withheld facts from
her regarding the FBI's use of potentially
incendiary tear-gas canisters.
"I have formed the belief that facts may
have been kept from you -- and quite
possibly are being kept from you even
now, by components of the department,"
Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Johnston in
Waco, Texas, wrote in his Aug. 30 letter.
The Rangers report said 12 .308-caliber
casings and two dozen
Israeli-manufactured .223-caliber casings
were recovered from a house used by the
FBI's Hostage Rescue Team during the
51-day siege.
In an account the FBI has since said was
wrong, an FBI agent initially reported
hearing shots fired from that house on
the siege's final day.
The FBI, which has insisted for six years
that its agents didn't fire a single shot
during the standoff, refused comment
today, as did the Texas Department of
Public Safety, which oversees the
Rangers.
Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms, who provoked
the siege with a botched raid to serve
weapons warrants on the Davidians,
used the house as a sniper post during a
fierce gun battle on Feb. 28 -- raising the
possibility the spent shells were theirs,
rather than the FBI's.
The independent inquiry led by former
Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., will examine that question and others stemming from
the escalating controversy over the government's conduct outside Waco, Texas,
said FBI spokesman Steven Berry.
In June, the Rangers began re-examining selected items from the 24,000 pounds of
evidence in their custody from the Davidians' charred compound amid questions
about whether incendiary tear-gas rounds were fired by the FBI despite years of
statements to the contrary.
The report, subpoenaed by the House Government Reform Committee, confirmed
that a 40mm shell casing re-examined by the Rangers was a type of military tear gas
round that "burns at 500 to 700 degrees Fahrenheit, and is capable of igniting
flammable items."
The Dallas Morning News first disclosed contents of the report today.
The FBI, in an about-face last month, acknowledged that a "very limited number"
of incendiary devices were used April 19, 1993. But FBI and Justice Department
officials said no evidence exists that those canisters, fired early in the morning,
played any role in the fire that broke out shortly after noon.
Questions about the fire's start and the possibility that agents did fire shots are
among those that Danforth has said he will examine in a narrowly focused inquiry.
"It's not going to be sort of a general sweeping investigation into whether or not
good or bad judgment was used," he said Sunday. Danforth, appointed by
Attorney General Janet Reno last week to head the independent probe into the
events at Waco appeared on all five Sunday news programs.
Asked what he had learned from Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's
investigations of President Clinton, he said, "This cannot be absolutely
open-ended where one issue sort of morphs into another issue."
The House Government Reform Committee chairman, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.,
meanwhile, promised a broader investigation. "We need to find out who's
responsible. It may not be an illegal activity, but if it was incompetence, we don't
want people in charge of things like Waco if they're not doing their job properly,"
he said on "Fox News Sunday."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said it would be better to wait until after Danforth
finishes his inquiry before launching congressional investigations which "become
very partisan, very noisy." But he acknowledged on ABC's "This Week" that
"that's not going to happen."
Burton made public a letter he sent to Reno about documents on Waco the Justice
Department submitted to Congress several years ago that omitted one page
mentioning the use of military-style tear gas rounds.
He said the missing last page of the 49-page FBI lab report "raises more questions
about whether this committee was intentionally misled during the original Waco
investigation."
He said he wanted to interview this week three Justice Department staffers who
were involved in the discovery that some copies of the lab report didn't contain
the final page.
The Justice Department and the FBI for years denied the use of such incendiary
rounds, and it was the recent disclosure that several such canisters were fired at a
storm bunker in the Branch Davidian compound that sparked the new look at the
1993 tragedy.
A Justice spokesman said the missing page was included in documents turned
over to lawyers in criminal and civil cases involving Waco survivors, and the
special counsel will have to look into why it never reached Congress.
The administration also continues to stress that there is no evidence to contradict
past findings that followers of Davidian leader David Koresh set the fire that
destroyed the compound. Some 80 cult members perished in the fire or, the
government says, were shot by other members. |
