Congressman Fears Police State, Says Waco Expert
May Have Murdered
NewsMax.com Tuesday, May 30, 2000
Democratic Rep. James A. Traficant says America
is a virtual police state, and he worries that a leading forensic expert hired
by Congress to investigate Waco may have been murdered.
Late in April of this year NewsMax.com first broke nationally the story about the suspicious death of Carl Ghigliotti. Ghigliotti was an expert FLIR (Forward-Looking
InfraRed) videotape analyst hired by the House Government Reform Committee to
analyze the flashes on infrared film taken by the FBI during its March 1993 Waco
raid.
Ghigliotti baldly said the FBI had lied when it
claimed it had not fired into the compound. He confirmed that the infrared film
showed gunfire coming from the assault weapons of FBI agents.
Maryland police officials say Ghigliotti
officially died of a heart attack last April.
His badly decomposed body was discovered in his
office on April 28, after his building manager called the police telling them he
hadn’t seen Ghigliotti for weeks.
Traficant believes too many coincidences,
including Ghigliotti’s death, have occurred during the Waco investigation and is
now calling upon Congress to take action.
The Ohio congressman is not buying official
claims that Ghigliotti, age 42, died of a heart attack in his sleep. "Something
stinks," he said.
"Ghigliotti said the FBI lied, that they did
fire automatic weapons into the burning [Branch Davidian] building,” said the
congressman. "But Vector Data Systems of England said the FBI did not lie. Two
scientific groups totally disagree.”
"Vector gets hundreds of millions of dollars in
contracts from the FBI,” continued Traficant. "To boot, FBI audio tapes of the
burning building are now lost. To boot, FBI autopsy reports confiscated of
victims are now missing.”
Traficant also pointed out the FBI lodged an
alleged or false child abuse charge against the Davidians. The FBI had also
initially denied using combustible incendiary tear gas canisters, only to admit
doing so later.
Although Traficant is pushing for a
congressional investigation, the Laurel City Police Department told NewsMax.com
it was no longer investigating the case.
"The investigation’s been closed on the basis of
the report from the medical examiner’s office which showed that he died of a
heart attack brought on by arteriosclerosis,” said Mary Bulla, the
administrative specialist at Laurel City Police Department. "They found no
indication of foul play, and they put that it was a natural death, so that
concludes our investigation.”
Police State Fears
"We have developed a stone cold police state in
America, believe me, from Waco, Ruby Ridge, to Miami, Florida,” Traficant said.
"Every American knows it, [but] no one is doing anything about it. There must be
a full investigation into the death of Carlos Ghigliotti.”
In an effort to move forward an investigation of
the Justice Department’s handling of the Waco tragedy, Traficant has sponsored
H.R. 4105, a bill that would enact the Fair Justice Act of 2000.
The act, if passed, would establish the Fair
Justice Agency, a new federal agency that would independently have the power to
investigate and prosecute alleged misconduct, criminal activity, corruption or
fraud by an officer or employee of the Justice Department.
The bill states that the president would appoint
the director of the proposed FJA for a 10-year term subject to a Senate
confirmation. Only inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office would
be a cause for the director’s dismissal by the president.
Under the bill, the FJA would have the same
prosecutorial and investigative authority as the Justice Department. The agency
would be authorized with $10 million for fiscal year 2001 with a $5 million
increase each year for the next two years.
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/5/29/202125 Bard
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