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- The lead lawyer in the Branch Davidians' wrongful death
lawsuit asked a federal judge Monday to impound all information relating
to the 1993 siege of the sect's compound from a Washington-area office
where an infrared expert was found dead last week.
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- Mike Caddell of Houston said he sought emergency intervention
from the court in Waco to ensure that all significant information was preserved
from the Laurel, Md., office and home of Carlos Ghigliotti.
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- Police were still investigating the cause of Mr. Ghigliotti's
death Monday. An official with the Maryland medical examiner's office in
Baltimore, where an autopsy was performed over the weekend, said the inquiry
remained pending Monday afternoon.
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- Police found Mr. Ghigliotti's decomposed body in his
office on Friday after being called by a building manager, who had become
concerned that the 42-year-old infrared analyst had not been seen for several
weeks.
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- Mr. Ghigliotti gained attention last fall after being
hired by the House Government Reform Committee to review an FBI infrared
videotape taken on the final day of the Branch Davidian siege.
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- He told The Washington Post that he had determined that
repeated flashes on the video came from government gunfire - an assessment
that mirrored the analysis of two retired Defense Department experts the
sect's lawyers hired.
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- Government officials have said no one on their side fired
any shots on April 19, 1993, the day that a federal tear- gas assault ended
in a fire that destroyed the compound. More than 80 sect members were killed.
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- British infrared experts retained by the federal court
in Waco and the office of special counsel John C. Danforth to conduct a
field test to help resolve the issue recently told U.S. District Judge
Walter Smith that they believed none of the flashes on the video came from
gunfire.
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- Judge Smith told both sides in the case that the British
firm, Vector Data Research, would submit its final report on May 8 and
would provide "conclusive evidence" linking each flash to a specific
cause, such as sunlight reflecting off broken glass.
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- Some other experts, including those retained to help
defend the government, had previously said that the flashes on the video
were caused by falling debris, sunlight reflecting off objects on the ground
or the movement of FBI tanks that were injecting tear gas into the compound
that day.
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- But Mr. Caddell and other lawyers representing surviving
Branch Davidians and families of those who died have questioned Vector's
conclusions, particularly the finding that no people were visible on the
infrared video until well after the sect's compound began burning.
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- Mr. Caddell and another lawyer, David T. Hardy of Tucson,
Ariz., said Mr. Ghigliotti had recently shown each of them repeated examples
of what he said were images of people visible in the vicinity of some of
the unexplained flashes that appeared on the film in the hour before the
fire.
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- Mr. Caddell wrote Mr. Danforth's office on April 17 and
asked investigators to interview Mr. Ghigliotti, saying that the analyst
had shown him one particularly compelling image on the video in which the
hatch of an FBI armored vehicle "clearly opens, and it appears someone
emerges from that tank."
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- Mr. Caddell's letter stated that image appeared as the
compound began burning and only seconds before a series of flashes appeared
near the same armored vehicle.
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- "I have been trying to reach him for the last few
days, but he is apparently out of town," the April 17 letter stated.
"In any event, his work is by far the most impressive I have seen
in terms of analyzing the April 19 . . . [videotape], and I do not think
you can fully appreciate his work unless you visit his lab and spend several
hours with him reviewing key points."
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- Mr. Caddell also told the court last month that he planned
to hire Mr. Ghigliotti to replace his principal infrared expert, who recently
suffered a stroke.
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- "Mr. Ghigliotti's work product on this issue is
extremely important to plaintiffs and to the court's analysis and conclusions,"
Mr. Caddell's Monday motion stated.
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- "Accordingly, plaintiffs seek an order from the
court preserving the completeness and integrity of that work product. Without
such an order, plaintiffs have no assurances that third parties will not
lose, damage or destroy (innocently or intentionally) irreplaceable work
product by Mr. Ghigliotti."
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