Deadly Siege Simulation Filmed

KILLEEN, Texas — Deep in a remote firing range, camouflaged men crouched and fired, military aircraft pounded from above and Bradley fighting vehicles lumbered over crushed metal and glass that glinted in the bright sun.

All were either actors or props, filmed Sunday at Ft. Hood military base to address corrosive questions circling the 1993 Branch Davidian tragedy near Waco.

The chaos was a re-creation of the day of the disaster, designed to be filmed with aerial infrared cameras for comparison with real footage from 1993.

Ordered by U.S. District Judge Walter Smith, the simulation may explain the source of rhythmic, flashing lights in original videos of the tragedy that are the basis of a case by Branch Davidians’ families against the U.S. government. Lawyers for the families contend that FBI agents shooting from ground level prevented those in the sect’s compound from fleeing to safety before the building burned down April 19, 1993.

Glints in the Forward Looking Infrared footage indicate signatures from that gunfire, the plaintiffs maintain.

“If we . . . show that there are flashes from gunfire, I am hopeful FBI leaders will acknowledge that guns were fired and the FBI will find out who fired and on what orders,” the plaintiffs’ lead counsel, Michael Caddell, said before the test started.

Attorneys for the government, however, consistently deny that the FBI fired shots that day, the disastrous finale of a 51-day siege prompted by federal agents’ attempt to arrest sect leader David Koresh on weapons charges. Flashes on the video, they maintain, emanated from glinting puddles, shattered glass, aluminum and other debris.

“Our position has always been that the FBI was not shooting out there,” said U.S. Atty. Mike Bradford on Sunday. “It makes no sense to allege that FBI agents were out walking around, exposing themselves to gunfire.”

At a news conference today, a weary-looking Bradford said government representatives had completed a preliminary review of the films and found that they confirmed the U.S.’s earlier position.

“We are very pleased with the results of what we have seen so far,” he said. In particular, Sunday’s films showed the debris fields meant to replicate those of the siege clearly reflected rhythmic flashes.

Koresh and about 80 other members of his sect died inside their wood compound that collapsed in flames during the confrontation. The FBI insists the Davidians caused both the fire and the deaths of its occupants, while survivors and other critics blamed the inferno on federal agents.

After the test, Caddell said Koresh and all of the adults inside the compound shared some culpability for the disaster. Now it was time, he said, for the government to admit to its role.

As they spoke, Caddell and Bradford had to fend off hectoring from Alex Jones, an Austin radio show host and Davidian supporter, who was accompanied by Clive Doyle, a Davidian survivor.

An angry Doyle said Caddell had sold out his clients by cooperating in Sunday’s project. “I have no confidence in the test,” Doyle said. “The test is being done to prove the government’s line.”

During the exercise, Caddell added, Smith also chose to bar public viewing of the film until court experts assess it over the next month. Media also were prevented from observing the test.

Shifting and shooting in several kinds of camouflage and bullet-proof garb, the eight reenactors may also help show if the infrared film can record human movements.

Agents wearing such garb would have clearly been visible on the video, but were not during the latter part of the crisis, FBI officials say. However, lawyers for the Davidians argued that the agents’ drab-colored vests and headgear were of a similar temperature to the soil and made them undetectable on the film.

At the news conference, Bradford said the tapes clearly show human figures, reinforcing the government’s stance that FBI agents were not positioned on the ground behind the compound.

First proposed by the Davidians’ attorney, the elaborate simulation could also illuminate several, broader inquiries by Congress and by the government’s special counsel on the case, former Republican Sen. John C. Danforth.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno appointed Danforth in September, shortly after the FBI admitted firing at least one incendiary tear-gas canister at the compound during the siege.

Reno said she had gone uninformed of the actions for six years. FBI officials have said the canisters played no role in the fire.

After Danforth asked for the simulation first proposed by the plaintiffs, a federal judge agreed. Filmed by crews on a British-loaned Lynx helicopter, and the FBI Nightstalker plane flown near Waco, military employees dressed as both Davidians and FBI agents sprinted around the heavily guarded test field for about 15 miles inside Ft. Hood’s boundaries.

The British craft bore an infrared camera like that used seven years ago, while the FBI plane used recently updated equipment.

Performing in brilliant light worthy of a movie set, the enactors fired dozens of rounds from MP-5 machine guns, CAR-15 rifles, sniper rifles, pistols and a MK-19 grenade launcher, which projected both regular tear gas and incendiary grenades.

Although both sides in the wrongful death suit had negotiated the reenactment in February, government representatives voiced some questions about what it can definitively prove.

Because ballistic experts for the Davidians had testified that the rhythmic flashes were consistent with a particular kind of grenade launcher, for example, the weapon was included in Sunday’s panoply.

Government representatives maintain that the Mark 19 launcher was not at the original site and voiced concern beforehand that its presence at the Killeen test would distort results.

More than the latest phase in a legal proceeding, Sunday’s exercise once again reflected the confusion and bitterness that still accrue to the disaster. Enacted at a gigantic base often used for testing national military field problems, the briefings about the exercises were observed from nearby by several soldiers in high school or younger when the tragedy happened.

In the years since, the siege has transformed American culture, said Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups.

“First it was the No. 1 galvanizing event for the radical right in the 1990s,” he said. “Now, of course, with the various new revelations, Waco has the potential for becoming a kind of ideological disaster for the government. From my perspective, there as yet is not a shred of evidence to show that there was shooting in the compound. But the fact that at least some lies were told, or serious omissions made, has certainly helped . . . light up distrust of government.”