01/29/2000
By Lee Hancock / The Dallas Morning News
A British military expert said Friday that infrared cameras identical to those used by the FBI in the Branch Davidian siege have been used regularly by British military forces to identify and record gunfire.
His comments came as U.S. officials were completing negotiations for the use of a British Royal Navy helicopter and infrared camera for a test in Texas aimed at determining whether government agents fired guns at the Branch Davidian compound on April 19, 1993.
Paul Beaver, a former military pilot who is now an analyst and spokesman for Jane's Information Group, said he has participated in British military operations in which such airborne forward-looking-infrared or FLIR cameras detected and recorded distinctive flashes or thermal signatures of gunfire.
"We were doing similar operations in Northern Ireland. You're looking for just that," said Mr. Beaver, who has worked extensively with infrared technology during a 10-year military career and two decades as a defense analyst and writer for Jane's. The British company is among the world's leading authorities on military technology.
"I have personally been in a situation where I've seen gunfire, using the GEC-Marconi system," he said. "In a firefight situation, it's very, very useful to detect where the enemy is."
FBI officials have refused to reveal the make or manufacturer of the airborne infrared camera used at the Branch Davidian compound during the siege. They have said the information is classified because even the most general details about their infrared surveillance systems could compromise U.S. law enforcement operations.
But independent infrared experts have identified the FBI's Waco camera as a GEC-Marconi made by a British defense firm.
Officials confirmed earlier this month that assistants to Waco special counsel John Danforth traveled to London earlier this month with FBI lawyers to negotiate for the use of a military camera for the court-supervised field test.
Mr. Danforth's office has declined to comment on the matter.
But Mike Caddell, an attorney for the sect, said Friday that a camera "identical in all material respects to the FBI's 1993 FLIR" has been located for the test.
He declined to say where the camera has been located but confirmed that it is mounted on a military helicopter that a foreign government has agreed to lend the United States in March.
"There is one obstacle: transportation. The cost of getting it here could run into hundreds of thousands of dollars," he said.
Mr. Beaver said he learned earlier this week from British defense ministry officials that the camera is mounted on a Royal Navy helicopter, and the British government has indicated its willingness to lend the aircraft and its crew to U.S. officials. The aircraft does not have the range needed for the trans-Atlantic flight and would have to be transported in a cargo plane.
"They have put a request in to the U.K. government," he said. "It could be easily sent over on one of your military cargo planes."
The effort to obtain an FLIR camera similar to the one deployed by the FBI in Waco came after Mr. Danforth persuaded U.S. District Judge Walter Smith to order a test last fall. Judge Smith is presiding over a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by surviving sect members and families of the more than 80 people who died in the Waco tragedy.
The Waco special counsel sought court intervention Nov. 5 after FBI officials offered a private "accurate re-creation" for Mr. Danforth's investigators even as Justice Department lawyers scoffed at proposals by the Branch Davidians' lawyers for a joint public test.
The Branch Davidians' lawsuit alleges that repeated bursts of white light captured by the FBI's infrared camera in the last hours of an FBI tank and tear gas assault were muzzle blasts from government guns. The suit contends that gunfire kept innocent women and children from escaping a fire that consumed the compound within little more than an hour after the flashes first appeared.
U.S. officials deny that government personnel fired guns that day or that the FBI's camera could have recorded thermal images of gunfire. Government-retained infrared experts have said they believe that the Waco camera was too far away to record the tiny thermal blips that would have been generated by gunshots on the ground.
Those experts and the FBI's FLIR operators have said they believe that the flashes that appear on the bureau's infrared videotape from April 19 were caused by electronic glitches in the camera or by the "glint" of sunlight reflecting off ground debris.
But former U.S. Defense Department scientists hired by the Branch Davidians' lawyers and some independent analysts have said that the repeated, rhythmic flashes on the video could only have been caused by gunfire. A scientist retained by the House Government Reform Committee echoed that assessment last fall.
And lawyers for the sect have noted that the FBI's agents most experienced in infrared operations have said in recent depositions that they have never seen anything like the flashes recorded by their camera on the last day of the siege.
Justice Department officials initially tried to convince Judge Smith that it would be impossible to conduct a scientifically valid field test to determine whether gunfire could have caused the flashes.
They and FBI officials said the Waco camera was one of a kind and had been altered and upgraded after 1993. But after December negotiations, the special counsel's office announced that it had learned from the camera's manufacturer that identical cameras were still being used by a foreign government.
Mr. Danforth then notified the Waco court in a late December filing that the Justice Department had dropped its challenge to the field test and agreed that a British infrared firm selected by the special counsel could serve as a court-appointed test supervisor.
Mr. Beaver examined excerpts from the April 19 video for the CBS News program 60 Minutes II and concluded that the flashes on it were from gunfire.
The show's segment aired Tuesday. It included footage from a test recording that Mr. Beaver made with a British infrared camera similar to the FBI's Waco device and a CAR-15 assault rifle like those carried by members of the FBI's hostage rescue team in Waco.
Some analysts say that bursts of automatic fire from those weapons would be particularly prone to show up well on infrared recordings because their short barrels produce a far longer blast than other assault weapons such as M-16s.
"It's quite straightforward. It's shooting," Mr. Beaver said of the rhythmic flashes on the FBI's April 19 infrared video.
He disputed arguments by FBI officials and some government-retained experts that the flashes could not be gunfire because no thermal images of gunmen were visible. FBI officials have said their agents wore only fire-retardant Nomex flight suits during the tank attack.
But Mr. Beaver said that gunmen would be hard to detect with infrared cameras if they were wearing Kevlar, a protective fabric commonly used in police and military body armor.
"They've also got kits [clothing] so they don't stand out. If they thought the Davidians had thermal imaging capabilities, they would have some sort of protection against detection," he said. "We're talking about some very sophisticated law enforcement."