From: hal@finney.org
Date: Mon Sep 27 1999 - 23:15:44 MDT
I got a copy of the film "Waco: The Rules of Engagement" from the library
and have spent several hours watching and studying it.
I don't find the evidence entirely persuasive that the Forward Looking
Infra Red (FLIR) imaging shows gunfire directed at the building. It is
possible that it is gunfire, but there are some things about this
interpretation that bother me.
There are five different instances of infrared flashes which are
interpreted by Dr. Edward Allard, the FLIR expert in the movie, as
gunfire. You can read his commentary in the copy of the movie script
at http://www.mnsinc.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum/burial/doc/wre_scr4.html,
starting at page 34.
- A gunshot apparently from the rear deck of the tank as it approaches
the building.
- An "infrantry/tank maneuver" in which bursts of gunfire are seen
from two positions behind a tank which is breaking up the edge of
the building.
- Rapid fire in the courtyard behind the dining room, also from two
positions
[Skipping to page 38 of the script]
- Automatic weapons fire to the left of a tank, twenty seconds after a
pair of flashes which may have been the start of a fire inside the
building. [The script here is slightly different here from my copy
of the film, which does not say anything about a thermal signature
like a grenade launcher.]
- Rapid prolonged gunfire from two locations outside the burning kitchen/
dining room area, preventing people from escaping.
Now, I have several concerns about the interpretation of these flashes,
but I will give the two most important ones first.
First, all of the supposed gunfire is aimed in the same direction relative
to the camera, left to right horizontally from this overhead view.
But the video quality is poor and it has a tendency to stretch pixels
horizontally. So the flashes which are observed look like horizontal
streaks, which makes them look more like gunfire. This is essentially
an optical illusion due to the poor video quality, and what we see is
consistent with point sources. Hopefully this optical illusion would
not fool an expert like Dr. Allard, but it is curious that all the cases
he cites happen to have this geometry.
More significantly, in each of the five cases the airplane is observing
the scene from approximately the same angle. It has just completed its
turn around the corner of the building where there is a large rectangular
pond of some sort. All five of the gunfire instances involve the same
gun/building/airplane geometry.
Of course it is reasonable to suppose that the shooters would not have
wanted to carry out their deeds in front of the television cameras,
so it is plausible that they would stay on one side of the building to
do their shooting. But it seems to be a severe coincidence that all
of the cases where they shot were when the airplane was off to the same
side of the building.
On the other hand, if sunlight reflections are involved, it is plausible
that the plane would be at about the same angle each time.
I have a few other issues, which are more general. First, we do not see
the entire tape. If these are reflections, I would expect to see other
flashes which might have less resemblance to gunfire. They might have
had less ideal geometry, or be from a less reflective surface, so that
we would see a range of brightness in flashes. Watching the excerpts
which are available, there is a lot of "video noise" and flickering,
but none of it is nearly as bright as the gunfire flashes. It would
be helpful to see the rest of the video to see if there is a clear
demarcation between the gunfire flashes and possible ground reflections.
It is especially frustrating that the last gunfire sequence is not shown
in full. Dr. Allard says that it involves 30 seconds of almost continuous
gunfire, during which time the shooters retreat from the burning building.
On the tape he points to the left as the direction in which they would
be retreating. This would be very different from the behavior expected
of a reflection; since the plane is moving to the right we would expect
if anything that the reflective area would move to the right. However
we don't see this 30 seconds of video.
It would also be helpful in evaluating the film to know what gunfire looks
like on FLIR. I don't have a clear understanding of what exactly we are
seeing in these flashes. Is it the hot gases emitted by the gun barrels?
Is it the barrels themselves? Do gun barrels become warm after firing a
dozen rounds or so, warm enough to show up on the FLIR? It is not clear
to me that we would see the kind of flashing that we are shown here.
Dr. Allard does say, in discussing the first gunshot, that "nothing else
appears with the type of thermal signature that we get of... gunshots."
He may mean that based on his expertise he knows what gunshots look like
on FLIR and this is exactly the kind of thermal signature they have,
with nothing else looking like them. But it is not worded clearly.
The narrator says, on page 39, "Sunlight reflections would show-up as a
flash on regular film which records light. But reflections don't generate
enough heat, say specialists like Allard, to create a flash on infra red."
This does not appear to be consistent with the statements of other experts
in the article I posted last week, and makes me suspicious that Dr.
Allard is adjusting his views to reach the desired conclusion.
Overall, it is clear that this is a documentary which is making a
statement. It does not pretend to be presenting a complete or unbiased
record of what happened at Waco. We can expect that what we are shown
has been carefully selected and edited to make the strongest case possible
with regard to the evil nature of the government's actions. In that case
I think we as observers have the responsibility to exercise skepticism.
>From that perspective I don't think the case has been made that there
was gunfire directed towards the Waco compound on that day.
Hal
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