Release the Videotapes!

Newsmax.com ^ | 09 Nov 2002 | Nutra Trulock

[TXnMA]

Release the Videotapes

Notra Trulock Saturday, Nov. 9, 2002

In 1995, the worst act of terrorism on American soil, prior to the 9/11 disaster, was committed in Oklahoma City. On April 19, terrorists blew up the Murrah Federal Building and killed 168 Americans and wounded scores more. Not long after the bombing, Timothy McVeigh was arrested about 60 miles east of Oklahoma City and a few days later Terry Nichols surrendered to police in Herrington, Kan. With those arrests, the Justice Department shut down any further investigation into who had committed this awful crime.

But as with the Kennedy assassination, many Americans remained deeply skeptical about the government's assurances that McVeigh and Nichols acted alone in this horrible crime. And for good reason, as it seems that the FBI ignored important investigative leads, failed to interview potentially significant witnesses, and destroyed the Murrah building before experts could examine the crime scene.

The involvement of a John Doe Number Two in the bombing has remained a simmering controversy. Skeptics ask why the FBI canceled an all-points-bulletin for a Middle Eastern male subject or subjects fleeing the scene issued in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. Numerous eyewitness accounts have identified Middle Eastern males in the company of McVeigh in the days and weeks before the bombing.

Dr. Frederic Whitehurst's allegations against the FBI crime lab sparked a Justice Department investigation that found the lab had provided "inaccurate pro-prosecution testimony in major cases including Oklahoma City." Retired Air Force General Benton K. Partin, an explosive expert, disputed the FBI's theory that the damage to the Murrah Building was caused by a single truck-bomb. His analyses were later endorsed by numerous physicists, physical chemists and experts in structural mechanics as well as a series of live tests conducted at Eglin Air Force Base. These are just some of the lingering questions about the 1995 bombing.

Beyond covering McVeigh's execution and the FBI foul-ups that delayed it, the mainstream media have devoted little effort to digging into any of these questions. Concerned citizens have had to go to Internet media outlets like World Net Daily and NewsMax or be on the lookout for the occasional investigative report in obscure outlets like the Los Angeles Weekly or the London Evening Standard.

In early September, the Wall Street Journal did one column on its editorial page about possible Iraqi involvement in Oklahoma City and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, but seemed to lose interest after that.

One columnist who has refused to let the story die is James Patterson, an editorial writer at the Indianapolis Star. Patterson was one of the first to report a potential crack in the wall of silence erected around the Oklahoma City bombing by the government and the elite media.

Twice in recent months, Patterson has reported that Chairman Dan Burton's House Government Reform Committee investigators have uncovered the possible whereabouts of videotapes and photographs of the Murrah Federal Building from the day of the bombing. The Final Report of the Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee (OKBIC) noted the existence of such tapes, but the Justice Department has adamantly refused to release them, even in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

Burton believes that the tapes and photographs may be held in the archives of Naval Intelligence at the Washington Navy Yard and he has issued a subpoena to the Secretary of the Navy to obtain them. The tapes are said to contain video of a John Doe Number Two getting out on the passenger side of the Ryder truck just prior to the explosion.

Former FBI Deputy Director Weldon Kennedy told the Philadelphia Inquirer that talk of withheld videotapes is "ludicrous and insulting." Kennedy says that agents nailed down "98 to 99 percent" of McVeigh and Nichols' movements in the months before the bombing and he is absolutely convinced they acted alone.

Cate McCauley, who worked on McVeigh's appeal, goes beyond Kennedy and charges that talk of Middle Eastern men helping McVeigh is "perhaps the worse case of misinformation and pandering" she has come across. The allegations, she says, are easily refutable and those who promote them are "standing on the graves of thousands of people."

A quick, easy way to resolve the controversy over John Doe Number 2 would be to simply release the videotapes and photographs and let the American public judge for itself. Release the tapes and bring this case to closure. The victims of the Oklahoma City bombing deserve nothing less.

Notra Trulock is Associate Editor of the AIM Report.

[Tailgunner Joe]

bump

[Lion's Cub]

What was the score in OKC anyway - one actual federal agent killed or missing?

I'm not sure what you meant by that--whether you were referring only to FBI agents; but, for the record, the following federal investigative personnel were murdered/assassinated in the M.B.:

Source: DID A LAWSUIT STOP MCVEIGH'S EXECUTION?
http://www.devvy.com/graham_20010526.html#meat

DOD
Harley Cottingham, 46, special agent, Department of Defense
Peter DeMaster, 44, special agent, Department of Defense
Norma Jean Johnson, 62, executive secretary, Department of Defense, Defense and Investigative Service
Rogert Glen Westberry, 57, Daytona Beach, Fla., special agent in charge, Department of Defense, Defense and Investigative Service

SECRET SERVICE
Alan Gerald Whicher, 40, Oklahoma City, assistant special agent in charge, Secret Service
Kathy Lynn Seidl, 39, Shawnee, investigative assistant, Secret Service
Mickey Bryant Maroney, 50, Oklahoma City, special agent, Secret Service
Donald Ray Leonard, 50, Edmond, special agent, Secret Service
Cynthia Lynn (Campbell) Brown, 26, special agent, Secret Service
Linda McKinney, 47, office manages, Secret Service

CUSTOMS
Claude Medearis, 42, senior special agent, Customs Service
Paul Douglas Ice, 43, Midwest City, senior special agent, Customs Service

DEA
Kenneth Glenn McCullough, 36, Edmond, special agent, Drug Enforcement Administration
Carrie Ann Lenz, 26, Choctaw, contract employee, Drug Enforcement Administration
Carroll June "Chip" Fields, 48, Guthrie, Drug Enforcement Administration
Shelly Turner Bland, 26, Drug Enforcement Agency
Rona Linn Chaffey, 35, Oklahoma City Cleveland County sherriff's secretary, assigned to DEA

There were others murdered there that day whose deaths were convenient for various reasons, but I've listed only those who were obviously connected to various investigations. I have no idea how many files and records and how much information was lost.

[Lion's Cub]

Actually, there was apparently one more. Since he was working with HUD, I hadn't thought of him as an investigator-- but he is listed as a Special Agent on the Officer Down Page, here:
http://www.odmp.org/officer.php?oid=809

Special Agent Paul Gregory Broxterman, United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, US.

[Lion's Cub]

Speaking of "Dipole Might", here's an older thread in which archy has even linked a "google" search for it in reply 13:

Is This Evidence of a Practice Run for the OKC Bombing
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b1ac0882350.htm#13

Of course, this would only include articles up to June, 2001...

[BlackVeil]

Your point about coverups, Cyberant, I don't think that the current govt is doing well. Unless they are working on some brilliant strategy, which we all have yet to see. But it is up to the federal govt to examine the Oklahoma bombing, and there is nothing yet. Meanwhile, the whole issue of the anthrax attacks is another unanswered question, and not a minor one.

[CyberAnt]

I don't disagree with you on the issue of OK being important to look at and totally investigate ... however, I do think the President has his hands full at the moment. But ... how do you know whether or not the President has already given orders to investigate it. He just doesn't feel the need to brag about it. Besides, why tell the crooks you're coming!

And ... as we have already seen several times in the last 2 years, there is investigation going on - it's just that we don't tell the criminals we're looking at them the way x42 used to do - and then, out of the blue they are making a statement about uncovering this or that or arresting this person or that person ... and all the time it didn't appear they were doing anything.

I don't think we should be wanting results when we have no idea what's going on. Everything cannot be done in one day - even if we'd like it that way.

[norton]

Then let me put it this way:
Notice any remarkable gaps in agencies?
(HINT: FBI...ATF...)

After all, that was my question - how many FBI agents...

[Lion's Cub]

Yeah, I thought that was probably what you meant. BTW, the FBI, IIRC, was actually housed in another building--which, IIRC, was why many people thought it odd that there were so many of them behind the building that morning before the attack.

[AtticusX]

but for the fact that the persistent "bombs in the basement" myth really bugs me!

I thought Gen Partin's report said the charges were strapped to the third floor support columns? Am I remembering this wrong?

Thanks for the flags on these threads everyone, I appreciate them.

AtticusX

[TXnMA]

I thought Gen Partin's report said the charges were strapped to the third floor support columns? Am I remembering this wrong?

You remember correctly, and if you go back and read the text above the graphic in my comment #25, you'll see that I said,

"One of my conclusions was that ' IF supplemental high VOD 'cutting charges' (as suggested by Partin, et al) were used, they (three of them) were placed at or near the third floor level,at the junctures of the three main (exterior) columns and the 3' X 5' X 200' "main header/transfer beam" that spanned the width of the building at the third floor level."

And, if you look at my graphic in #25, you'll see that is exactly where the damage that I believe could be attributed to cutting charges occurred. My main emphasis was that those locations are on the exterior of the building, not in a "basement" or deep inside the structure.

[Poohbah]

General Partin offered to testify at the trial, but the compliant judge who first presided ignored his offer. There's no question that he is a veteran expert witness, and that his report is persuasive to anyone who takes the trouble to read it.

His report is persuasive only if you think buildings are two-dimensional constructs without any height, because all distances are the horizontal distances to various pillars. In particular, Partin ignores the effects of setting off a very large bomb on the floor slabs above the blast hypocenter. The floor slabs were subjected to upward forces many times their standard loads.

[AtticusX]

"One of my conclusions was that ' IF supplemental high VOD 'cutting charges' (as suggested by Partin, et al) were used, they (three of them) were placed at or near the third floor level,at the junctures of the three main (exterior) columns and the 3' X 5' X 200' "main header/transfer beam" that spanned the width of the building at the third floor level."

So sorry to not have read everything closely enough. I concur with your conclusion.