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Branch Davidians' attorney questions source of deadly fireBy Michelle Mittelstadt WASHINGTON -- For all the recent furor over the FBI's use of pyrotechnic tear gas canisters on the final day of the siege near Waco, a lawyer suing the government on behalf of Branch Davidian survivors and relatives says that the inferno may have been triggered by other causes. Cult leader David Koresh and about 80 followers perished during the fiery climax to the siege on April 19, 1993. Michael Caddell, the lead lawyer in a wrongful-death lawsuit against the government, is wary of tying his legal case to the military canisters lobbed by federal agents. Alternate theories under examination include the possibility that the fire was caused by contact between exhaust from military tanks used in the assault and the flimsy wooden walls of the Davidians' compound, he said, adding that the exhaust could have reached 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. "There are a number of possible explanations and I don't want to get sucked in too much into the whole pyrotechnic issue," Caddell said in a recent interview. "It may turn out to be a red herring." But a spokesman for General Dynamics Land Division, which manufactured the M728 Combat Engineer Vehicles used near Waco, said the tanks' diesel engines produce heat that "does not get hot enough to start a fire." Federal officials have always said the fire was set by the Davidians, not agents, a position maintained after the FBI acknowledged last month that its agents fired a few pyrotechnic tear-gas projectiles on the siege's final day. There's no evidence that those canisters, lobbed several hours before the fire, ignited the flames, they say. That view is shared by an arson expert on the team that investigated the tragedy as part of the Justice Department's 1993 Waco investigation. "I still say what we came to the conclusion on at the end of our investigation down there still holds today, regardless of what they are saying about these pyrotechnic devices," said Thomas Hitchings, chief deputy fire marshal in Allegheny County, Pa. Caddell and others who accuse the government of a cover-up also are examining theories that: * Military armored vehicles that punched holes into the building to insert nonburning tear gas knocked over lanterns that the Davidians relied on after the FBI cut off electricity. * Other devices used by federal agents ignited the building.
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