Who here even remembers the Oklahoma City Bombing?

I thought I would post this since the conspiracy trial is currently underway in Oklahoma. After posting some rather shocking information (see below), I got little response. I asked some twenty-somethings what they remembered about this event and their answers were vague at best. For me, I remember it like it was yesterday.

This was the biggest terrorist attack in the U.S. in modern times prior to 911. If the conspiracy trial finds that there was a larger conspiracy than we were led to believe...will it matter?




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Go to http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1846269 for a short but interesting audio clip. Click on "All Things Considered audio" and you can listen in RealAudio or Windows Media.



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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20040419/ap_on_go_c...

Document: Oklahoma City Bombing Was Taped
By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
Mon Apr 19, 6:59 PM ET

WASHINGTON - A Secret Service document written shortly after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing described security video footage of the attack and witness testimony that suggested Timothy McVeigh (news - web sites) may have had accomplices at the scene.

"Security video tapes from the area show the truck detonation 3 minutes and 6 seconds after the suspects exited the truck," the Secret Service reported six days after the attack on a log of agents' activities and evidence in the Oklahoma investigation.

*SNIP*

An entry a day earlier on the same log reported that the security video was consistent with a witness' account that he saw McVeigh's getaway car in the lead before a woman guided the truck to its final parking spot in front of the Murrah building.

"A witness to the explosion named Grossman claimed to have seen a pale yellow Mercury car with a Ryder truck behind it pulling up to the federal building," the log said. The witness "further claimed to have seen a woman on the corner waving to the truck."

A Secret Service agent named McNally "noted that this fact is significant due to the fact that the security video shows the Ryder truck pulling up to the Federal Building and then pausing (7 to 10 seconds) before resuming into the slot in front of the building," the log said. "It is speculated that the woman was signaling the truck when a slot became available."

*SNIP*



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INS Deported al Qaeda-Linked Suspect Just Days After Oklahoma Bombing

Gov't Returned Evidence, Erased Charges, Despite Ties to OKC Bombing Confession

By J.M. BERGER

http://www.intelwire.com/khalifa100603.html


Seven days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the INS agreed to deport a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden who had been implicated as a possible accessory to the attack by a jailhouse confession and documents relating to bomb construction.

*SNIP*

Arrested in San Francisco on an immigration violation in December 1994, Khalifa was a figure of primary interest to the FBI, which suspected him of assisting al Qaeda operatives Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Hakim Murad in a plot to bomb a dozen U.S. airliners from their base in the Philippines earlier that year, according to Peter Lance (http://www.peterlance.com ), author of "1000 Years for Revenge," a new book covering the FBI's investigation of Yousef.

Evidence in the FBI's possession at the time potentially implicated the Saudi businessman in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the airliner bombing plot and the Oklahoma City bombing. Khalifa was formally named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 New York City Landmarks bombing plot.

*SNIP*

On the basis of evidence in the FBI's hands at the time a deal was finally approved in April, Khalifa was at minimum a material witness in the three biggest criminal cases in the history of the United States.

On the day of the Oklahoma bombing, Murad told a prison guard that the "Liberation Army" was responsible for the attack, an allegation he repeated to the FBI the following day, according to documents obtained by Lance, who contributed to this article.

Convicted World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef had claimed responsibility for the 1993 WTC attack on behalf of the Liberation Army. Items seized from his Manila apartment and at the time of his arrest also contained references to the group.

*SNIP*



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March 28, 2004
Ex-Terror Czar: Feds Couldn't Disprove Nichols-Yousef Connection
By J.M. Berger
INTELWIRE.com
http://www.intelwire.com/2004_03_28_exclusives.html


Federal agencies were "never able to disprove" claims that Ramzi Yousef and Terry Nichols may have met in the Philippines prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, according to the former National Security Council director of counterterrorism Richard Clarke, who also reveals that Nichols and Yousef were in Cebu City on the same days.

Amid the controversy over Against All Enemies, Clarke's expose of the Bush Administration, there has been only sporadic coverage of his brief mention of the Oklahoma City bombing and rumors that al Qaeda may have provided training to convicted conspirator Terry Nichols, which he cited as a loose end that still weighs on his mind.

"We were never able to disprove" the alleged connection, wrote Clarke, who headed a Clinton administration interagency task force on terrorism at the time. He said Nichols and Yousef "visited Cebu on the same days." Previously, the two had only been conclusively verified as being in Cebu together on one specific date (Dec. 11, 1994), but there is significant evidence to suggest more overlap.

*SNIP*

It's unclear whether the results of the investigation cited by Clarke were fully disclosed to defense lawyers for Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The production of documents by the FBI and other federal agencies has been a major issue in the state trial of Terry Nichols.

An investigation by the Associated Press has turned up significant evidence that the FBI failed to provide and in some cases even destroyed evidence related to a broader conspiracy in the Oklahoma City bombing. AP's reports prompted the FBI to open an internal investigation into the bombing last month.

*SNIP*

I cannot remember the date, but I can tell you what happened. It was sunny that day. I was a college junior at the time, and got home from class to the news coverage. It was shocking and numbing at the same time. I had a major paper due that day, and when I went to that class that afternoon, the mood was both tense and distracted. I got home, and I watched Oprah Winfrey (which I NEVER do) and saw a very emotional outpouring. I remember the media was already trying to pin it on the "brown people" of the world. I cried some.

It was April. I was working part time and going to school. I was at work that morning (at a restaurant). Some customers came in and OKC was being bombed. We turned on the tv in the back and got the images. I live in Wichita KS just about 2 hours to the north. At first, they didn't know if other attacks were planned or if we would be attacked too.

I was living in OKC at the time.

I remember where I was when it first announced--driving in my car...

And I remember all of the National Guard troops at the airport. I remember thinking, "Wow, I never thought I'd see troops at American airports." It was a horrible day, and I will never forget the image of that firefighter cradling the bloodied body of that year-old baby.:cry:

on the anniversary of the Mt. Carmel fire near Waco. I remember a pregnant Muslim woman in St. Louis(?) who lost her baby after being accosted by an angry mob that was sure this was carried out by Muslims. I remember that Catholic altar servers were not prejudged and attacked when it came out that one of the perpetrators was Catholic and an altar boy in his youth, nor did they attack former special forces people.

I remember being glad that the perpetrators were not international but native born citizens not because I was happy about what they did but because I know us and we would not condemn ourselves out of hand. I remember how any person who is different by color, birth and faith were attacked after 911 - it didn't matter that they were Hindu or Sikh or atheist for that matter all that mattered is the they were vaguely from south west Asia.

I remember then and recently calls to just kill all Muslims because they hate us- for crying out loud if the Muslims need a reason to kill us they can use that arguement - let's kill the Westerners because they hate us.

and remember the day clearly as I heard the explosion.

One of my third grade students asked if the sound he heard was thunder (on a clear day).

John Doe 2 was seen everywhere, the feds were accused of hiding him because he was an informant, McVeigh was really a patsy, it was an inside job done by Clinton with plastic explosives to do all the same stuff similar people accuse Bush of doing with 9-11.

A lot of theories were based on racist beliefs that Islam has vowed to destroy America so it must have been Muslim related somehow.

There are lots of qualifiers in the articles you cite: alleged, unclear, suggested, may have had, potentially implicated, etc. Lose a few of these, for reason, and I'll start paying more attention.

Otherwise, I've seen these evolutions of conspiracy theories before. They never die, they just move on to more qualifiers, different implications, whenever one is squashed. I won't waste the rest of my life worrying that no one has yet explained why one of McVeigh's childhood girlfriends suddenly decided to order hashbrowns instead of grits at the exact same time that McVeigh bought the pair of shoes he wore the day of the bombing, or whatever.

When you study history for a while, you'll find that every single event in history has just as many "inconclusive" suggestions as this one.

...conspiracy theories were interesting but not really worth delving into. After listening to that clip, I don't know anymore. There is no way that a secret service agent could describe a surveillance video in such detail if it did not in fact exist. The agent's "I don't know" answer when asked at the trial as to why he wrote what he did is not very convincing either.

It has a reporter describing an agent describing a video that the agent now claims he never saw. The reporter doesn't quote the agent as saying he saw the video, just that the woman's testimony agreed with the video, so it isn't clear whether the agent claimed he saw the video, or whether he was just given his thoughts on whether the woman's evidence was consistent with other evidence. Remember that at that time they were still looking for John Doe 2, so the agent and everyone else assumed that there were suspects, not suspect.

Say, for instance, this agent is assigned to interview the woman and decide whether she's credible. She tells him she saw a woman direct the truck into a parking spot. (It's not clear to me on the NPR clip whether she saw anyone get out of the truck). The agent notes her testimony, then fits it into what he's been briefed on the case-- two suspects, video showing the truck passing a building, other witnesses who saw the truck park, FBI timeline of when the truck parked, when it exploded... yep, nothing contradicts the woman, so pass the evidence on.

I don't see anything conclusive, in other words, or anything that can't be explained pretty easily and without stretching the evidence. Maybe there's more to the story, but keep in mind that the judge is not very happy with the feds, and is not likely to overlook glaring inconsistencies. For that matter, the defense attorney couldn't make a better case.

My own feel for the case is that there are feds trying to cover up blunders here and there, trying to hide the facts that they could have stopped this if they'd have paid more attention, and so some evidence is being hidden. Some informants may be being protected, and it's pretty standard in any investigation to claim evidence came from one source when it really came from some other source you want to hide, either because it was illegal, or because you are covering for someone.

Two examples. First, a while back, the National Republic of Texas group were holed up in the Davis Mountains because the state had issued a warrant for their leader for not showing up to court on a weapons violation. The story was he was pulled over for a traffic violation, a gun was discovered, and he was arrested for that. I had inside info on that case. I was with someone who reported to the police that he had a gun. The police, to protect my friend, pulled the man over for failure to use his blinker. I have no idea if the blinker story was true or not, but I know for sure that the cops were following him because of a tip. This part of the story never came out, to protect the innocent (I never thought of it, but it protected me, too). Second, I knew a man in JFK's motorcade when JFK was shot. This man is sometimes used as proof of a conspiracy, because of some comments he made about gunpowder and shots ringing out from all directions. This man, however, convinced me that Oswald was the lone gunman. His comments were taken out of context, and in fact, once I got to know him, I realized that the drama of his statements were just the normal rhetoric he used about everything. Someone reading his statements without knowing him wouldn't realize this, and would reach a wrong conclusion.

So I don't trust official stories much, but I also understand that there are a lot of things they hide that are not as nefarious as they may seem years later. And I've learned that witness testimony should not override evidence to the contrary, without good reason. (And I know most people disagree with my JFK conclusions, but my point is that this witness did not say what people thought he was saying, not that his conclusions were right.)

So when they find that tape, or find other evidence, I'm interested in hearing it. Until then, Nichols and his attorney can worry about it, I won't. The official story still (mostly) works for me. I'm not attached to the story, I'll change my views if more evidence comes out, but nothing I've seen goes beyond the normal incongruencies around such events.

...is from things like that I'll quote below.

It still sounds like the FBI logs are first hand accounts of the contents of a security video that has been viewed by the agents who are writing in the log. I'm trying to see it your way though.

I do think that this was supposed to be a bust that would shine a better light back on the FBI and ATF and that they were expecting McVeigh to position the truck early in the morning and set the bomb off at eleven o'clock. I think they knew exactly what McVeigh's car looked like because they saw it hauling butt out of there. That would explain the speeding policeman's stop of McVeigh....whose tag had fallen of his license plate.

If this is a coverup of a plan that went awry then it is not as big a deal...but if there were other people that escaped justice, or bomb makers left to roam the country, then it is.



QUOTE:
An entry a day earlier on the same log reported that the security video was consistent with a witness' account that he saw McVeigh's getaway car in the lead before a woman guided the truck to its final parking spot in front of the Murrah building.

"A witness to the explosion named Grossman claimed to have seen a pale yellow Mercury car with a Ryder truck behind it pulling up to the federal building," the log said. The witness "further claimed to have seen a woman on the corner waving to the truck."

A Secret Service agent named McNally "noted that this fact is significant due to the fact that the security video shows the Ryder truck pulling up to the Federal Building and then pausing (7 to 10 seconds) before resuming into the slot in front of the building," the log said. "It is speculated that the woman was signaling the truck when a slot became available."
QUOTE:

The truth is that OKC is connected to 9-11. The same people did it. McVeigh screwed up and got caught - then took the needle for the team. A team that includes Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Myers.

There IS a vast conspiracy going on - and they hide behind the manufactured "War On Terror" to conduct their evil deeds.

And they COUNT on the ignorant masses of Americans to remain uninformed and apathetic.

titled Others Unknown: The Oklahoma City Bombing Case and Conspiracy. Yet to read it, though.

It's clear to me Terry Nichols can be linked to Ramzi Yousef. We're not talking about a couple of militia types acting on their own. The shit goes deep.

While I applaud you for seeking out info on the subject, I highly suggest you read "American Terrorist" by Lou Michael and Dan Herbeck, two newspaper reporters from Buffalo, NY, for balance.

Herbeck and Michael had no real agenda either way and the book makes a lot of sense. I'll leave it to your imagination what Jones' motives might have been when he floated the "foreign" terrorist angle.

is The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror, by David Hoffman

From the Foreward:

"...Yet, why is there such extreme opposition to keep this independent grand jury from being allowed to assemble? As you will learn by reading this book, that is because some in our federal law enforcement agencies (i.e. ATF and FBI) had prior knowledge that certain individuals were planning to bomb the Murrah Federal Building!

Prior knowledge on the part of some individuals in the Federal Government may also be why the federal prosecutors barred every single witness to John Doe(s) from the Federal Grand Jury. Of the more than 20 witnesses to one or more John Doe(s), none — not even one — were allowed to tell the Grand Jury what they saw.

Additionally, when the prosecution's list of witnesses was unsealed, we found that the one witness who will be allowed to testify in the trial to McVeigh being in the company of a John Doe can't describe in any way who he saw. Indeed, the best witnesses who can positively place McVeigh in downtown Oklahoma City that morning saw him with one or more individuals and are able to describe to some degree what that person or persons looked like. Those witnesses were not even allowed to testify at McVeigh's trial.

As bizarre as that sounds, Federal Prosecutors were not allowing any of those witnesses to be seen or heard by the Federal Grand Jury. This gives "blind justice" a whole new meaning...."

...good but I have not had a chance to read it yet. The book is called The Third Terrorist. The author's website is: http://www.jaynadavis.com/

This was done by Americans against Americans in a government building. I felt uncomfortable going to government buildings for months afterward -- and I work in one.

I was a freshman in college at the time. Students at my university were pretty cut off from the rest of the world as far as current events go, so my memories are on the vague side. I don't remember what I was doing the exact minute I found out about it, but I do remember watching the coverage in the commons. Sometimes I think my memory blocks some of it out because the images were so horrible.

I am surprised by the lack of coverage concering the current trial, though.

I worked 15 miles north of the Murray Building and we felt the blast at our office....we thought there had been and earthquake or perhaps a truck had hit the building. The most sickening day of my life.....in particular when you have to go home and talk to your children(10 and 12 years old at the time) and try to explain to them why someone would do this. Still makes me sick to think about it.

all his life and retired just a couple of years before the bombing. He worked for the GAO, and knew many people hurt and killed there. The woman who had been his secretary for many years and still worked at his office called in sick that day. Her grief at the deaths of her friends and her guilt from not being there that day drove her to commit suicide one year later. It was awful.

My sister-in-law and her two littlest girls had visited the Credit Union there (completely destroyed by the bombing) at 9am the day before. She was questioned by the FBI.

It was a horrible day. I live in Denver, and I wasn't able to stop watching television that day, just like during 911. Oklahoma City is still devastated by this event, and most people I know there believe the conspiracy theories.

So, i definitely remember. I took a sick day to wait for the doctor's call sometime that morning and was watching CNN when they broke in with a special report.

I watched it all morning, except when the doctor called.
The Professor

Since people are telling their personal stories:

One of my sisters works in a nearby bank building. Her building shook and they lost a lot of windows. Then when the Moore tornado hit, that same sister's house was spared by one block. A house that my family lived in years earlier was leveled. Last year when there was another OKC tornado, her husband had to interrupt his CPA exam.

Then another sister lost use of her dance studio for about a year. It was three buildings away from the WTC. (The balcony of her studio was used in the balcony scenes in the movie "Kate and Leopold")

The other sister lives in a small town in Southeastern Oklahoma, so far all is well in Poteau, Oklahoma.

I was in my office talking to a friend and her friend and had a local talk radio station on real low. I heard the words "gas main explosion" on the radio but did not catch much else and only remarked on what I had heard. A few minutes later there was a report that the building's facade may have come off so I turned the radio up. They said the name of the building finally and my friend's friend said that her father was going to be in that building that day. When the radio announced that half the building was gone and the death toll would be high my friend and her friend left hurridly. I went and watched the news feed from the local station in Oklahoma City. I'll never forget those images.

it was absolutely horrifying. The image of that fireman carrying the body of 1 year old Bailey Almon will stay with me for the rest of my days.

Are you kidding?

n/t

must be. I'm jealous! Hehe

n/t

I, like most people, immediately thought it was the Arabs. It would be somehow easier to accept their terrorism than from one of our own. To this day the image burned into my head is the fireman carrying out that little baby all bloody. What a tragic, senseless, insane thing to do.

especially the part about that guy Richard Snell, the arayan that was executed the same day as the Murrah bombings....

n/t

n/t

n/t

...not so much different than the ones in power now.

Oh, and curiously enough, he got his training from where??? from his military service. Something to think about when the troops come back home...

n/t

n/t

And I read your postings. Sorry I didn't respond to your posts, but I would have had very little to add other that "Gasp. Yikes! What the hell is going on? Something stinks!" Which doesn't seem like real insightful commentary on my behalf.

I try to post only when I have something intelligent to say, which isn't often. But please know that I did read what you posted, and I find it curious to say the least.

about the whole thing, that Baylee Almon reminded him of a younger Chelsea Clinton?????????????


On edit I remembered Bill Clinton's outraged speech about not letting the United States being intimidated by evil cowards.

I'm sure that everyone old enough to watch television and distinguish fact from fiction remembers that April 19th. I don't think the image of that huge building, with its facade gone - and its inners exposed can be forgotten. Mostly, I remember the horror that there was a day care center in the building and children had been killed. People remember.....

...we Americans are to lose interest in an event. True, it was nine years ago but the current state trial in Oklahoma is a conspiracy trial and looks at the question of whether or not more people were involved. Many people think so and believe that others were left unpunished so that a quick trial could be had. It sounds, to me, that we now have a secret service agent all but proving that there were others involved...and it barely gets mentioned in the popular press. It even gets very little interest here. If Jamie Gorelick (911 Investigation) were not involved I doubt even the freepers would have noticed the story.

exactly where I was, what I was doing, and virtually all of the details of that day. The others are November 22, 1963, the day my draft number was drawn in 1970 (plenty high enough) and September 11, 2001.