ALSO: The FBI's Waco surveillance tapes MESSAGE BOARD Waco revisited

September 10, 1999
Web posted at: 10:47 p.m. EDT (0247 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Congressional investigators probing the assault on the Branch Davidian compound four years ago were never given a portion of a 1993 FBI report showing military tear gas canisters were found at the scene, CNN has learned.

CNN has obtained documents showing that the final page of a December 6, 1993, FBI lab report -- prepared less than nine months after a fire destroyed the compound near Waco, Texas, killing more than 80 people -- mentioned the discovery of a "U.S. military 40 mm shell casing which originally contained a CS gas round" and other projectiles.

Back in 1995, when congressional committees were looking into the Waco fire, the Justice Department provided 48 pages of the 49-page report -- omitting the last page containing the canister reference, sources tell CNN.

The Justice Department has found other internal documents referencing military canisters at Waco which also were not provided to Congress, two government sources tell CNN.

However, the 1993 FBI report did not indicate whether the devices found were potentially flammable, government sources tell CNN. Because of that ambiguity, those same sources say that FBI and Justice Department officials might not have realized the significance of the reference to canisters.

The final page of the 1993 report was turned over to the House Government Reform Committee this week, according to the Associated Press.

6 years of denials

For more than six years, FBI and Justice Department officials had maintained that no potentially flammable canisters were used during the assault on the Branch Davidian compound. But after press reports earlier this month, law enforcement officials finally conceded that canisters had been used, although they said there is no evidence they caused the fatal fire.

On Thursday, Attorney General Janet Reno appointed an outside special counsel, former Sen. John Danforth, a Missouri Republican, to investigate the revelations.

Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin told CNN that the page was provided to lawyers in criminal and civil cases involving Waco survivors.

Correspondent Pierre Thomas and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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