Tear Gas Report Didn’t Reach Congress : Inquiry: Justice Department says it learned years ago that military projectiles were used near Waco, Texas. Lawmakers never saw the key page.

The Justice Department acknowledged Friday that in 1995 it sent congressional investigators an FBI crime lab report without including a potentially incriminating page that referred to the use of military tear gas canisters during the Branch Davidian siege.

Justice Department officials said that they suspect the final page of the report may simply have been left out by accident. But the omission seemed certain to fuel the controversy over the Branch Davidian disaster, offering Atty. Gen. Janet Reno’s congressional critics what could prove to be critical evidence that they were misled about the tragedy.

“I don’t want to characterize this [omission] as a cover-up until the Justice Department has a chance to explain itself. But if that page was withheld intentionally, that certainly would be of great concern to us,” said John Williams, a spokesman for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, one of several panels examining the department’s handling of the Branch Davidian investigation.

“It’s certainly something we want to take a long, hard look at,” he said.

At issue is a 1993 crime lab report prepared by the FBI on evidence at the Branch Davidian compound. The report was 49 pages long, officials said Friday, and the last page said that FBI investigators at the scene had found two expended 40-millimeter tear gas projectiles.

Reno has said that, when she approved the FBI’s use of tear gas on the final day of the 51-day Texas standoff, she was assured agents would not use any munitions that could start a fire. Repeatedly over the last six years, she and other federal authorities have denied that any pyrotechnics were used.

But the FBI was forced to reverse that position last month after evidence surfaced in Texas revealing that agents had in fact fired military tear gas canisters, which are pyrotechnic, at a concrete bunker near the main dwelling used by Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and his followers.

Federal authorities maintain that the canisters had nothing to do with the fire that broke out four hours later--immolating about 80 people. But the controversy forced Reno this week to name former Sen. John C. Danforth, a Missouri Republican, as a special counsel to investigate the matter.

With Republican lawmakers expressing outrage over the Branch Davidian controversy, several congressional committees in the last two weeks have subpoenaed documents from the Justice Department to aid in their own investigations.

In collecting internal documents last week to comply with those subpoenas, the Justice Department discovered that the key last page of the crime lab report had been omitted from copies sent to Congress in 1995 as part of its hearings on the disaster, officials said Friday.

A memo prepared within the Justice Department last week notes that the final page was not included in material originally sent to Congress. That new memo and the complete 49-page report were sent to Capitol Hill this week, officials said.

Several other FBI documents--including memos, handwritten notes and tape-recordings--have turned up in the last two weeks that refer to the use of military or potentially incendiary devices at the compound. These documents do not appear to have been forwarded to Congress. But this is the first suggestion that material acknowledging the use of pyrotechnics was originally part of documents destined for Congress but was omitted from the report Congress actually received.

Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin said Friday that Danforth likely will investigate the omission of the report’s final page.

“Whether it was an administrative error for that last page not to have been included is something the senator may have to look into,” Marlin said.

Marlin also noted that complete sets of the FBI report were sent years ago to several lawyers in Texas involved in the civil and criminal cases that grew out of the Branch Davidian disaster.

If confirmed, that could buttress arguments that the material was left out inadvertently when the report was sent to Congress.

“This is one of those things that looks real bad,” acknowledged one government official who asked not to be identified. “But when you look at it, it may not be.”

Danforth said Friday that he was not familiar with the omitted page and declined to speculate on what part it might play in his inquiry.

“I’m committed to being as open-minded as I can in this investigation, and I do not want to do anything to prejudice it,” he said.