Video Review
Title: The F.L.I.R. Project
Produced & Directed by Michael McNulty
Available From: www.flirproject.com
Another release that seriously challenges our perceptions of events
is Michael McNulty’s The FLIR Project, the third in a series that
began with the Academy award-nominated Waco - The Rules of
Engagement. McNulty’s documentaries have been lone voices
calling out for
justice in the
wilderness of
government
opinions,
judicial
inquiries and
fudged reports
by the FBI. In
Rules of
Engagement,
infra-red
footage shown
suggested that
federal agents
fired into the
Mt Carmel
compound in
April 1993, an
allegation that
has been
strenuously
denied by
figures as high
up as Janet
Reno and Bill
Clinton. This
footage was
enough to
spark a Special
Counsel who
attempted, as
part of his
inquiry, to
recreate the
exact
conditions of
that day in an
effort to
disprove the
theory of the
government
firing on
innocent civilians. The counsel agreed with Ms Reno - no federal
agent fired a weapon. The FLIR Project is McNulty’s response.
In a similar method as Rules of Engagement, but with
straight-forward evidence and comparative footage instead of
opinions and testimonies, The FLIR Project rips through the heart of
the Counsel’s arguments by meticulously discounting the recreation
of events. McNulty filmed his own recreation - one that used exactly
the same type of weapons and bullets used at Waco, at a similar
temperature to the April day, and with similar environmental
conditions, included dust. According to the government and its
infra-red recreation, federal agents would have been visible on the
footage. McNulty explicitly shows how easily disguised these agents
are by their suits treated with chemicals to ensure low detectability.
McNulty hammers his points home by comparing government footage
against the original footage and then finally against his own
recreated footage. It’s convincing, it’s horrifying and it’s a
challenge to our faith in justice that the cover-up continues.
What clinches it for me is the final five minutes where all possible
hope of the gunfire flashes visible on the film being “glint” - ie
reflections of debris - is systematically destroyed by the comparative
methods. Like Rules of Engagement, you’re left in silence,
wondering how this could happen in the “land of the free”. On
American release at present, with further distribution hoped for, The
FLIR Project is a documentary not to be missed.
 
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