But neither they nor FBI technical experts who operated FBI infrared cameras during the standoff could explain the origin of repeated flashes on an infrared videotape recorded by an airborne camera during the last hours of the tear-gas assault, Mr. Caddell said. Experts hired by the plaintiffs have said the flashes could have come only from government gunfire. Government experts dispute that, but an independent expert hired by the House Government Reform Committee to examine the infrared video has said he also thought that flashes were thermal signatures from gunfire. I would say fewer than a dozen people really knew what was going to happen or what did happen that day. Government officials and lawyers have adamantly denied that any Delta Force personnel were actively involved in the April 19 assault, which ended in a massive fire that consumed the Branch Davidian compound with more than 80 people inside.
Government officials maintain that members of the sect set the fire.
The Branch Davidians' federal lawsuit, set for trial in May in Waco, alleges that government negligence and actions caused the deaths of dozens of innocent women and children and other Branch Davidian followers. Lawyers for the sect have alleged that government agents, possibly including Delta Force members, repeatedly fired guns into the compound in the last hours of the siege. Justice Department lawyers initially tried to limit the Branch Davidian lawyers to written questioning of Delta Force members who were in Waco on April 19. Secret units Defense Department documents indicate that three soldiers from a secret military unit were present as observers on April 19 and that other Special Forces personnel from a classified military unit were shuttled in and out of Waco during the 51-day standoff. Delta Force is a classified military unit so secret that the Defense Department routinely refuses to acknowledge its existence.