Once it was easy to pass over a story like David Thibodeau's. He says he saw the shiny thing embedded in a wall of the chapel in the Branch Davidian compound, where he took refuge with fellow believers. It was the middle of a lull between government tear-gas assaults, and in the calm, Thibodeau studied the thing. "It was the size of a Coke can," he says. "Silver, stainless steel in color. There were three fins on the back. It was some kind of projectile." Before he could look more closely, however, the screech of tanks started up again. Chaos ensued. Then fire. Thibodeau's tale of the wayward rocket is one of many now rekindling David Koresh's Waco--especially after a week in which other suddenly identified flying objects have turned this piece of rural Texas into Janet Reno's Area 51, a place full of things she did not know existed.
Angry and embarrassed, the Attorney General admitted last week that it appears the FBI fired pyrotechnic military tear-gas rounds during the showdown with the Branch Davidians on April 19, 1993. For years, she and the bureau had denied that such "hot" devices were used, an allegation made by conspiracy buffs who believe the feds set fire to the compound. Reno said last week--and most evidence indicates--the grenades were launched too early in the day and landed too far away to cause the fires. But, she added, "I did not want those [hot grenades] used. I asked for and received assurances that they were not incendiary." She confessed the news did not help her credibility and promised another probe, most likely overseen by an outside legal expert, into a controversy she thought she had put behind her. "She is not a person who screams or throws things," says a Justice Department official, "but she is doing the functional equivalent of throwing a Ming vase."
The use of military tear-gas rounds had actually been noted in a number of documents amassed by the FBI and other law-enforcement officers over the years, but no officials realized they were technically--and thus figuratively--"hot" until the press started calling around a month ago. Reno's foes are already sharpening their barbs. House Republicans like Dan Burton, who have seen her as Clinton's protector through various scandal probes, have always relished pitting her against her rival, FBI director Louis Freeh. Though overlooking the troublesome pyrotechnic fact is actually the fault of Freeh's bureau, watch for the G.O.P. to place the blame on Reno. Already the longest-serving Attorney General since 1829, Reno is not likely to find much comfort from Hill Democrats, who are tired of defending her over the years and who found her performance last week to be less than inspiring.