(Missed this one somehow -- thanks IronSoldier: Bush Re-organizes National Security Council)
Was the BATF in fact responsible, knowingly or unknowingly, for the explosion that destroyed the Murrah building? Consider the following article which appeared in the June 5, 1995 issue of Newsweek:
"For the past year, the BATF and the Army Corps of Engineers have been blowing up car bombs at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. The project, codenamed Dipole Might, is designed to create a computer model to unravel terrorist car-and truck-bomb attacks. By coincidence, a BATF agent assigned to Dipole Might, happened to be in Oklahoma City on April 19th, working at the Federal Courthouse, which stands across the street from the Murrah Building. He saw the devastation and called the BATF office in Dallas. The Murrah Building had just been hit by 'ANFO' (ammonium material) bomb of at least several thousand pounds, he reported. Within minutes, explosives agents trained under Dipole Might were dispatched to the scene. They identified the type and size of the bomb almost immediately."
Just how this agent (Harry Everhart) was able to immediately ascertain the building had been blown up by an ANFO bomb, when no forensic analysis had yet been conducted, is unclear. When Phil O'Halloran, a freelance journalist, attempted to ask the BATF Public Relations Bureau why a Dipole Might expert just happened to be in the courthouse at that moment, and how he could immediately have known the exact nature of the bomb, O'Halloran, rather than be given a rational explanation, was accused of attacking the agency and was promised a fax of agency views on right-wing conspiracists (which never arrived)....
It also seems that the "coincidence" of the BATF's Dipole Might tests were uncannily similar to the May 24, 1990 bombing of Earth First! activist Judi Bari. The FBI claimed that Bari and her companion Daryl Cherney, who were on their way to a peaceful protest rally, had inadvertently blown themselves up with their own pipe-bomb.
After Bari sued the FBI for false arrest and civil rights violations, she found out through court discovery that the FBI ran a "bomb school" at Eureka College of the Redwoods in April of 1990 for both FBI and local police. The classes included blowing up cars with pipe bombs, ostensibly to demonstrate tactics used by terrorists (the same reason cited in the BATF case). The instructor for this "school of terrorism" was none other than Frank Doyle Jr., the FBI bomb squad expert who showed up at the scene of Bari's car bombing one month later.
According to Freedom of Information Act records, the Treasury Department's (BATF is under the Treasury Department) Project Dipole Might was actually initiated under the authorization of Clinton's National Security Council. One of the stated purposes of the Dipole Might project was to produce computer models of bombings to "be displayed in a courtroom to aid in the prosecution of defendants." Naturally, the Justice Department plans on using the video tapes shot at White Sands during the trial of McVeigh and Nichols to "prove" that an ANFO bomb blew up the building. As Lawrence Myers, writing in Media Bypass magazine wrote:
Why the National Security Council would fund such an ATF project, despite the absolute rarity of the crime, has not been explained. Nor has it been explained as to what specific threat assessment information the government had when it decided to engage in such a project, just a few months before a Ryder Truck laden with ammonium-nitrate fertilizer exploded in front of the Murrah Building.
As Myers points out, the last-known case of a truck bomb exploding in the U.S. was in 1970, when an ANFO bomb exploded in front of the ROTC building at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. Why then, would the National Security Council suddenly feel the need for detailed information regarding ANFO truck-bomb attacks?
Was the BATF expecting such a bombing? Were they in fact responsible for blast or the secondary damage to the building? Or was the building wired for demolition as part of a larger plot?
"I'm firmly convinced that the BATF is guilty of an awful lot of things," said Bud, our ex-Green Beret friend. "I mean, if you look at what the BATF and the FBI did to Randy Weaver (and at Waco), it's just awful. They've gone hog wild and have [become] a power unto themselves."
Asked if he thought a rogue group or special unit within the military/intelligence community could or would commit such an act?
"It wouldn't really stun me," said Bud.
Published in the Feb. 3, 1997 Issue of The Washington Weekly Copyright (c) 1997 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com)