Posted on 10/12/2005 4:45:14 AM PDT by texianyankee
Imagine a man with a bomb strapped to his body making his way into a packed football stadium, reaching his seat and blowing himself up. There would be a heavy death toll in what would be the first successful terrorist act on U.S. soil since 9-11.
Jolting us back to memories of the Oklahoma City bombing, this would obviously be a massive headline in our ongoing war on terror. One would think attention would be heightened even further if such a story were to occur again in Oklahoma.
Well, there's reason to believe it nearly happened, and it was indeed in Oklahoma, making the paltry coverage of the story unfathomable.
On Oct. 1, as the Oklahoma Sooners hosted Kansas State in front of 84,000 fans, University of Oklahoma student Joel Hinrichs III blew himself up outside the stadium.
There is evidence that he sought to enter the game and was turned away by security after refusing to allow his backpack to be searched. Some minutes later, that backpack, containing the chosen explosive of shoe bomber Richard Reid and the London subway bombers, exploded, killing Mr. Hinrichs as he sat on a bench.
There have been some dutiful print and broadcast accounts of this event, all leaning heavily on the favored establishment take – that this was a troubled young man who sought only to kill himself, simply doing so in an offbeat way.
Oh, really?
Well, what if the young man had a Pakistani roommate? What if he had been spending time at the Islamic Center of Norman, Okla., once frequented by "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui? What if the warrant used in the search of the bomber's apartment had been sealed by federal authorities?
What if explosives had been found in that apartment? What if the young man had tried to purchase ammonium nitrate, the chosen explosive of Tim McVeigh, at a Norman feed store days earlier?
That's a lot of what ifs, and they range from the confirmed to the unconfirmed. But the parts we do know – the Pakistani roommate, the attempted fertilizer purchase, the veil of secrecy around the investigation – should be enough to cast doubt on the simplistic "troubled young man" theory favored by, among others, OU's nervous president, David Boren.
Mr. Hinrichs' father told me his son was not the type to join radical causes and would not want to hurt anyone. But his son's chosen method – blowing himself up in a public place – would seem to cast doubt on his concern for his fellow man.
As for the terrorist angle, Mr. Hinrichs is now the subject of understandably intense scrutiny, virtually none of it from the mainstream media. You might think the story fizzled because there was, in fact, no death beyond the bomber. True enough, but I'd suggest that if a raid revealed some radical plan to bomb an abortion clinic anywhere in America, the suspects would be household names by nightfall without a single fuse lit.
Something about the nature of this event has swallowed almost whole the normal curiosity one would expect from the usual sources.
Is it political, because acknowledging a terror threat on our soil might bolster President Bush's war logic? Is it economic, out of fear of scaring people away from football games? Is it geographic snobbery because it didn't happen on either coast? Or is it a PC fear of seeming to lunge toward a jihadist angle?
Whatever the reason, hunting for details of this shocking story puts you in some offbeat company.
Jayna Davis is a writer who has spent years documenting what she asserts is an Islamic connection to the Oklahoma City bombing. She has a fan in Douglas Hagmann, director of an outfit called the Northeastern Intelligence Network, whose Web site (homelandsecurityus.com) has a conspiracy geek vibe that might spark scoffing.
But the fact of the matter is that these people are breaking fresh news on this story that only later winds up in more conventional news outlets.
I'm not calling for a leap to the conclusion that Mr. Hinrichs was another in a series of Caucasians pressed into service by terror cells for their undercover value. But it seems equally unwise to shrug dismissively at the possibility.
Mark Davis is a DFW area Talk show host. WBAP 820. His show is on right now in fact, 9-11:45 (the last 15 minutes are for Time for News (Paul Harvey).
WBAP 820 AM 9-11:45 AM. You might get it in College Station. I can get it quite well in Killeen.. during the daytime at least. But once the sun goes down, it become more problematic, although I can usually still get it, just not in the car with the ignition noise, which in my car, gets worse when I turn on the headlights. ???
BTTT
Thanks - got him on right now!
Someone needs to advice Rep. Cole(R) that having a firearm need not have anything to do with being a hunter, under either the US or Oklahoma Constitutions.
Could it be that those who knew about the explosives, Hinrichs' roommate and his Islamic buddies, were part of the scheme? Maybe the roommate made the stuff? Lots of obvious potential answers, which apparently Rep. Cole and the FBI don't want to contemplate.
As to the ongoing speculation that Hinrichs had attempted to enter the stadium only to be turned away by security, Cole said the FBI briefer conceded "honestly, we don't know," but added no confirmation of those reports has been found.
He said the FBI also cannot confirm the path Hinrichs took right before the bombing. Considering that Hinrichs' apartment is on the other side of the stadium from where the explosion occurred, surely he could have found somewhere to sit down over there. It was a nice evening, he could have sat on the ground, either in the creek bed behind the apartment complex or in the field or golf course (aerial photos not clear on that, and I'm not familiar with that area, although I've likely been by it a couple of years ago) across the road to the north, well away from the 84,000 people in the football stadium.
Great column! So glad someone in a daily newspaper is finally looking at this incident. I wouldn't expect the NYT to cover it, but you'd think others would. This writer (Mark Davis) asked some great "what ifs" and I'm sure we could all add one or two more--just glad someone is putting them out there at all!
You can listen to Mark on the internet if you can't get him locally:
http://www.wabcradio.com/
He's on from 6 to 8 ET
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post, but it seems to me that trying to purchase ammonium nitrate prior to the "suicide" is pretty damning, and has little to do with brands of backpacks.
You know, what would serve these College left wing jerks justice, is if the very people they are protesting in favor of across this country, ended up killing them first in bombing attacks on these liberal college campuses.
Maybe then the great unwashed will finally get a clue that the Islamonazi's don't CARE how warm and fuzzy the libs are. They want them DEAD just as much as they want the rest of us DEAD.
That's the thing, right there! Report the danged news, and let people make up their own minds.
*Seems one of the cable news outlets used have a slogan like that..."We report, you decide..." What ever happened to that, I wonder?
His father actually said he'd exploded himself where he did because "he didn't want to hurt anyone." The fact is, there was a large parking lot at his apartment complex where it would have been far less likely he'd "hurt anyone." But no, he chose a much more crowded venue, and by most accounts, tried to get into the stadium three times.
I think his father knows more about this guy's religion and politics than he'd like to let on, and is doing a lot of spinning to make it look "innocent."
Wonder if that "agent" had asbestos applied to his backside? ("Liar liar pants on fire...")
How true is THAT!
Thanks for the ping!
And for those of us who live here and watched the newscasts as they morphed from reporting to being the mouthpiece for the FBI (and Janet Reno/Bill Clinton), you didn't even have to buy Jayna's book. However, I do advise it, because it validates everything we saw and heard before the media changed the entire story.
Oh, thank you for that post. I thought I'd been following this pretty closely, but I'd missed the part about the raid happening within minutes. They didn't announce who the suicide bomber was on local news for I think a couple of hours (someone correct me if I'm wrong about this), but they knew who he was right away. Sounds like surveillance?
Fly-over country, they vote Republican, the don't count unless something bad happens that can be blamed on Bush. No important Dim voters in a football stadium.
A fake NYC threat is much more interesting as it threatens Dim voters who are much much much more important than a bunch of football fans. You just have to understand who is important in modern America.
As for the authorities, that naturally want to down play this and not do the terrorists job and create fear and panic. So between the two, it is not surprising this story has been under played.
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