Expert Tells Norman City Council Oklahoma Univ. Bomb Explosion An Accident )

KOCO TV ^ | March 1, 2005

[jacksy]

Cicero, you are exactly right. The NPD has been told to keep this quiet. Reps of NPD were talking big time for about 2 days after the incident and then they were obviously told to keep their mouths shut. All of a sudden stories changed. As a resident of Norman who heard first hand accounts of what NPD heard and believed, I am glad that Mauldin came out with his statement. Anyone can read between the lines and I think that is what he expected people to do. By the way, I do not know Mauldin nor do I purport to know what he thinks or knows but I am glad that someone as gone on the record to say that this was not a mere suicide by a lonely guy in a beautiful place.

[Tunehead54]

"Someone saw him fiddling with it (the backpack) shortly before the explosion occurred. I think he got cocky, and it went off," Mauldin said.

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I believe he went to the stadium, was going to drop off the backpack (with timer), saw he wasn't going to get through security, turned around and didn't quite have time to defuse his bomb. Luckily. ;-)

[Tunehead54]

Oops! Sorry meant to include you in the ping: #42

If anyone knows how to get the URL for a post (like #42) so I can post a direct link I promise I'll remember! ;-)

[Victor]

Please see my tagline.

[PhiKapMom]

Same here about the first hand accounts of NPD and others. I think Mauldin went as far as he could go and it is not hard to connect the dots. When I was told they had to make numerous trips to take the bomb making material to the disposal area because if they didn't a city block could have blown, I knew there was a lot more to the story.

[Enchante]

“My view is that [the explosion] was an accident,” Mauldin said. “He accidentally set it off.”

This is clearly a case in which the word "accident" obscures more than it reveals. No terrorism, nothing to see here, just move along folks..... Yes, there is some literal sense in which it was very likely an "accident" that the guy blew himself up at that particular moment and location (when he really meant to be inside the stadium???). That in no way reduces the gravity of what he was doing walking around near a crowded stadium with a highly lethal BOMB. Surely it is highly misleading to say it was some mere "accident" that he happened to be that close to 70,000 people at that particular time and place with a BOMB. Consider that roughly 99.99999% of Americans would never be found with any BOMB so close to any STADIUM full of innocent people. It is more than a bit improbable that this guy was at that location with a BOMB merely by "accident"............. he just may have had an act of terrorism in mind.... and the findings of much explosive material in his apartment, including shrapnel to increase the lethality of any bombs, strongly suggests he was up to something different than a lone suicide.

[MizSterious]

I think he intended for us to read between the lines. I don't think Mauldin believes for a minute that "nothing" happened except a suicide--he words things very carefully, and he's saying all he can without getting into trouble (possibly losing his job).

[04-Bravo]

I agree with Sgt. Mauldin; I don't think Hinrichs intended to kill himself by detonating the bomb at the bus stop bench.

Not long after the incident, a freeper posted a map of the area, showing the locations of Hinrichs' apartment, the football stadium, and the bus stop. If I remember it correctly, the stadium was north of the apartment, and the bus stop was farther away, somewhat west of the stadium.

I think the most likely scenario is that Hinrichs tried to enter the stadiuim with the bomb hidden in the backpack. The detonator was probably timed to explode during the game. But due to the stadium security procedures, he couldn't get in the with the backpack, so he walked to the bench to consider an alternate plan.

He may have wanted to change the timer, to detonate the bomb as the crowd was leaving the stadium. Or he may even have been trying to take the bomb out of the backpack, to conceal the bomb some other way, still hoping to get it into the stadium before the game ended.

I think we are very lucky that the device was unstable, and blew up when it did.

And I bet all of us think the roommate is suspicious. How can you not be aware of somebody working with dangerous chemicals in a small apartment?

[jacksy]

Obviously you are from Norman and have many of the same sources. This guy intended to do great harm to the people in the stadium. I don't know his motives but the "accident" to which Mauldin refers has to be the timing of the explosion and that it was intended for another and greater purpose, i.e. to kill people in the stadium. The only "accident" was that it killed only Hinrichs. By all accounts, Norman is a crossroads for terrorist meetings and activities. There are too many coincidences in the past that link Norman and the group that his roommate belonged to that cannot be ignored. Sometimes things actually are what they seem - Hinrichs had a roommate with a ticket to Algiers; Moussoui (sp?) used Nick Berg's computer simply because they "sat together on a bus" and Moussoui asked for his password? Give me a break. Add that to the fact that one of the 9/11 hijacker's ticket was bought from a computer at the OU library?? We have a real hornet's nest in Norman and I for one thank the NPD for at least trying to spread the word as to what really happened. By the way, I have a kid working for me who takes classes at OU - one of his professors is a former CIA operative who insists there is more to this than what the FBI and even the NPD say.
I would love to know the real truth because in this case, ignorance IS NOT BLISS.

[PhiKapMom]

There is definitely much more to this then has come out. King Kopy near Sooner Textbooks was supposedly a front for these people. OU Daily couldn't print some stories because they couldn't get a second source on record. The list goes on and on. BTW, I do live in Norman and have two kids at OU and we were all at the game that night.

In fact, a girlfriend of the of my son's fraternity brothers swears up and down that the two guys she saw run in the stadium after the blast had something to do with what happened and were part of everything. She was from Iran and she was talking to anyone that would listen at my son's house about these two guys but she wasn't counted credible nor was another brother who was knocked down by the blast when he told the authorities what he saw.

I am with you that we have a right to know -- I always said the Moussaouri (sp) and Berg connection was much more then was admitted as well. Do you remember the guy with the long beard that he could tie behind his head -- used to see him wandering around downtown Norman -- he was part of that group but I haven't seen him since he was arrested. Hope he never shows back up because he gave me the creeps.

[PhiKapMom]

I was in the stadium that night with two of my kids and two of their friends. The guys left to go back to the fraternity house via the route nearest the scene but ended up being routed way around while my daughter and I were routed to the north.

We were walking with a group including one man from the major donor section who was talking on the phone to someone about just having talked to the head of Oklahoma Highway Patrol and saying it was no accident that it happened and no suicide. Have no idea who the guy in the suit was doing the talking but his car was parked in the parking garage and he was walking north with the rest of us after the game. He was furious that he could get no details.

I picked up the car at my son's fraternity, turned on the radio, and Boren already knew who it was and was calling it a long suicide bomber. From that minute on the cover-up started IMHO.

[sully777]

I've got a bridge in Brooklyn that is for sale.

[jacksy]

I keep checking back to see if there is any interest in this story. To me, this is such a scary situation and most people have no idea that it even happened. Why is it that a fellow blowing himself up with TAPT outside of a stadium holding 85,000 people is not national news?

[jacksy]

I keep checking back to see if there is any interest in this story. To me, this is such a scary situation and most people have no idea that it even happened. Why is it that a fellow blowing himself up with TAPT outside of a stadium holding 85,000 people is not national news?

[jacksy]

I keep checking back to see if there is any interest in this story. To me, this is such a scary situation and most people have no idea that it even happened. Why is it that a fellow blowing himself up with TAPT outside of a stadium holding 85,000 people is not national news?

[jacksy]

sorry to everyone for the triplicate posts - I am new here and obviously do not know what I am doing,

[PGalt]

Don't worry about triplicates on this one. They bump and important story.

Welcome aboard!

Thanks to all contributors.

[El Gato]

And he says that he thinks the perp got too cocky and fiddled with his bomb once too often

Wonder if he was just putting a battery in the firing mechanism? Or even setting a timer.

[Cicero]

The early stories said that he was turned away from the stadium gates, according to one account three separate times from two different gates. Then the FBI denied some of these stories, so who knows? If he had set a timer before entering the stadium he may very well have been delayed long enough that he thought he'd better reset it.

Or maybe he didn't get a chance to reset it soon enough, and it went off before he could get to it.

It makes sense that he might have used a timer, because then he wouldn't have to open his pack inside the stadium or fiddle with push buttons where someone might see him.

[El Gato]

Can anyone say REMOTE DETONATOR?

Sure, but even a blown up circuit board would probably reveal its function. At least if it was a radio receiver. It may have been a timer.