Re: Waco FLIR Update

From: Ian Goddard (Ian@goddard.net)
Date: Fri May 19 2000 - 08:58:40 MDT


At 08:21 AM 05/18/2000 -0700, Hal wrote:

>Ross A. Finlayson, <raf@tiki-lounge.com>, writes:
> > Consider this hypothetical situation: group A and group B have a dispute.
> > After the fact, group A is dead, while at some point when they more alive
> > group B was armed with armored tanks and automatic weapons and was in
> > the state of assaulting group A. The consistency of group A was a set
> > of civilians and group B military.
> >
> > Later some people who are still alive decide to have a simulation and
> > see what they can determine about the facts as they occurred. Group B
> > runs all aspects of the simulation without oversight, where group B's
> > goal is to show certain things. What conclusions do you expect to be
> > apparent from group B's simulation?
>
>Don't forget, the plaintiffs (Waco survivors and heirs) have lawyers
>as well. The test was originally proposed by the plaintiffs and the
>terms were agreed to by them. I believe they also agreed upon the firm
>to conduct the analysis (unfortunately I suspect the only organizations
>with experience in this kind of analysis have military or law enforcement
>ties because those groups are the main users of this technology).

   IAN: Since VDS has a conflict of interest by being employed
   by the defense, and since most or all IR-based companies have
   the same conflict, a team composed of people selected by the
   plaintiffs and the defense should have been assembled to
   review the tapes so that plaintiff experts could have had
   an oversight role during the actual analysis of the tapes.
   As it turned out, even if the plaintiffs agreed to the terms,
   the tapes were analyzed only by a party employed by the defense.
   So what attributes of what flashes were used to compare flashes
   on the 1993 and 2000 tapes was left to the defense's employee.

   It's curious to note that ALL of the three FLIR experts for
   the plaintiffs died or almost died within a month of the FLIR
   test. A few days after the FLIR test, Dr Zegel collapsed
   unconscious and barely survived after 10 days in the hospital.
   The diagnosis was blood poisoning. A few days before the FLIR
   test Dr Allard almost died of a massive heart attack. Another
   expert to testify for plaintiffs would be FLIR expert Carlos
   Ghigliotti, who was found dead several weeks after the FLIR
   test, and had been dead for a few weeks. Attorney David Hardy
   had, however, spoken to him shortly after the FLIR test, and
   this is what Ghigliotti told Hardy about the FLIR test:

"I talked to him [Ghigliotti] after the re-creation, and his assessment
was that it was pure junk -- the aircraft wasn't even at the right
altitude, they didn't have the right procedures to verify that the sensor
was functioning comparable to the one of 4/19, etc. He predicted (correctly,
as I learned this week) that a British camera would be set to record on the
European PAL format, rather than the American NTSC format, and this would
create a major complication, since they use different frame rates and
frame sizes. The best thing that could be done with any resulting tape
(and this is BEFORE the results were known) was to drop it in the
wastecan. The Independent Counsel had blown it.

"I remember talking to him outside his office, after the first visit,
standing there in the parking lot after dark. He'd mentioned that the
guy with Infraspection Institute, who had analysed the FLIR for 60
Minutes back in '95 or '96, and found FBI gunshots and shooters on it,
had been terrified. In fact, he'd sent copies of the tape to Carlos and
to several others in the IR field, with notes saying "If anything happens
to me, you'll know why." I asked Carlos if he'd ever been fearful. He
said only for a while, between the time he made his findings and the
time he reported them to the Committee. But once he told others of
his results, he figured the cat was out of the bag."

   See: http://www.indirect.com/www/dhardy/Carlos.html

   Here's a summary of Ghigliotti's preliminary report that he
   sent to the Congressional Committee on Waco a few days before
   he got dead: http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/4/30/160306

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