Negatives from film shot at Waco are missing, U.S. says
By WILLIAM H. FREIVOGEL and TERRY GANEY
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
April 18, 2000
- The Justice Department admits it can't not find the original negatives of an
important roll of film taken on the last day of the siege of the Branch Davidians'
complex. But it says it hasn't tampered with those photos or with infrared and
electronic surveillance tapes of the 1993 episode that left about 80 Branch Davidians
dead.
The government acknowledged in a court filing Monday that it is missing 30 original
negatives from the first of at least seven rolls of film shot by an FBI photographer
who circled 1,000 feet above the complex in a Cessna surveillance aircraft.
But the government does have prints of the missing negatives and the original contact
sheet of the negatives.
This roll of film is important because it appears to show that there are no government
agents standing where flashes show up on infrared surveillance tape of the incident.
The absence of agents undercuts the Branch Davidians' claim that the flashes are from
the guns of agents firing into the complex.
One strip of original negatives from that first roll of film has been turned over to
the federal court that is hearing the Branch Davidians' wrongful death suit against
the government. That strip contains a key photograph that appears to have been taken
at 11:24 a.m., within seconds of flashes on the video. That photograph shows no agents
in the vicinity of the flashes.
But the other negatives from that roll of film have been missing since at least 1997
and have not been found despite an extensive search by the FBI, the Justice Department
said. Agents searched for the negatives at least five times.
The department said that the strip of original negatives with the photo from 11:24
a.m. was separated from the missing original negatives when Congress requested it as
part of its 1995 investigation of Waco.
A document analyst with the Special Photo Unit of the FBI, identified only as "ALS,"
found that the negatives were missing around April 1997. The FBI then made a duplicate
set of the negatives from photographs and marked them with the notation "originals
lost."
The Davidians' attorney, Michael Caddell, had claimed that one of the photos from the
replacement negatives had a white scratch that appeared to obliterate a speck that
might be a person. But the Justice Department said that the contact sheet, made from
the original negative, had no person or speck.
The Justice Department also disputed Caddell's claim that several rolls of the film
were missing. The photographer taking the film that said he took about 10 rolls, give
or take one or two. The FBI produced seven rolls. In Monday's court filing, the
department produced logs and records that appear to show that only seven rolls were
shot and developed.
The government argued in its court filing that it should not be fined for any
discrepancies involving the photos or tapes.
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