WASHINGTON (AP) -- A new film alleges that while flames raced through the Branch Davidian compound in a horrific ending to the 1993 Waco siege, federal agents' automatic gunfire pinned down cult members, cutting off their only route of escape.
That claim, strongly denied by the FBI, is one of many startling allegations in "Waco: A New Revelation," a documentary that looks at the 51-day standoff that ended in the deaths of Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and some 80 followers.The government says its agents played no role in the deaths or the fire.
"We are aware of no incidents where gunfire emanated from any law enforcement source," FBI spokesman Bill Carter said Wednesday.
Fresh controversy over Waco began earlier this year after the documentary's main researcher, Michael McNulty, discovered a potentially incendiary tear gas canister amid thousands of pounds of evidence held in storage lockers. That discovery led FBI and Justice Department officials to recant their long-standing contention that only nonincendiary tear gas was used.
McNulty and the film's producer, MGA Entertainment, previewed the documentary Wednesday for reporters and others before it heads for direct-to-video sales and limited theatrical release.
Rep. Clifford Stearns, R-Fla., who attended one of two screenings Wednesday, said members of Congress and the public should see the film and not dismiss it as biased.
"I don't visualize it as propaganda," Stearns said. "I visualize it as an attempt to bring questions to the American people."
The film, which includes interviews with former FBI, CIA and military personnel as well as surviving Branch Davidians, alleges that:
-- Federal agents planted a powerful explosives charge to blast into a steel-reinforced concrete bunker where Branch Davidian women and children died. Video footage shot later shows a gaping hole in the bunker's roof. Steel rods that reinforced the concrete were bent inward, which the film's analysts say was caused by a blast that would have devastated people inside. Carter said he was unfamiliar with the allegation and could not comment.
-- Army Delta Force members -- prohibited by federal law from active involvement in domestic law enforcement unless the president orders it -- served in a tactical role at Waco, said former CIA officer Gene Cullen, who appears on camera. The Pentagon has said the operatives were there only as observers.
-- The FBI, using bugging devices in the compound, knew the Davidians had discussed setting the place aflame. Bureau officials have long denied they had advance knowledge of the cult members' intent, saying the transmissions were too garbled to understand.
-- Three hours before the blaze began, federal agents fired from a helicopter at a cult member who ventured outside, according to a videotape analysis by Edward Allard, a former Army night vision lab supervisor hired as an expert in the Davidian survivors' wrongful-death lawsuit against the government. "In our opinion, it's clearly machine-gun fire from the helicopter," Allard says in the film.
-- Infrared surveillance videotape shot by an FBI plane shows two people rolling out from under a tank and firing dozens of rounds of machine-gun fire at the compound, Allard says. He also says the tape shows federal forces fired into the compound as it burned. Fifteen Davidians with gunshot wounds were found near the dining room area into which shots were fired, the film contends.
Government officials have long said a number of Davidians were killed by gunshot wounds -- which they say were inflicted by fellow cult members. The FBI insisted Wednesday, as it has for six years, that its agents fired no shots during the siege that stemmed from a botched raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.