Fox News has learned that a Ryder truck was pulled over in Oak Harbor, Washington last Tuesday near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station and found to have traces of TNT on the gear shift and traces of RDX plastic explosive on the steering wheel.
The FBI, INS, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and local police are all investigating.
I would have said "STILL investigating" since it's been going on for seven days, but..
Shortly after midnight on May 7, federal officials say local police pulled the vehicle over for speeding. Documents read to Fox News indicate that the driver and passenger told local police they were delivering furniture from California but that authorities doubted that story because of the early morning hour.
Midnight just doesn't seem to be totally out of the realm of possibility for driving furniture interstate. Especially since it just seems to be two guys with a rental truck, not a regular moving company.
What WOULD make me suspicious is if there were no furniture in the truck, and if they got to the bomb-sniffing dog part, they definitely searched the truck. Was there furniture in there or not?
Documents read to Fox News indicate that both driver and passenger were Israeli nationals. Investigators say a roadside check of the national database of immigration records indicated that one of the men had not entered the country legally, and the other was in violation of his visa. Both men were taken into custody for immigration violations.
Good. I don't care where they're from. Deport them, no exceptions. The deportation process takes sufficiently long in itself that there should be ample time in which to charge them for other things, if applicable.
At 7:30 that morning local police were notified that the BATF and FBI had tested the truck and found traces of explosives on the steering wheel and gear shift. Officials say no other charges of been filed against the driver and passenger and an investigation is ongoing.
Well, frankly, there doesn't seem to be much else to charge them with right now. The truck is not theirs, and there's nothing in here to indicate that they found traces of xplosives anywhere except on the steering wheel and gearshift. Not even on, say, the driver's hands or clothing, and he'd been touching the steering wheeel and the gear shift...
Authorities say records for the Ryder truck do not indicate any recent rental for the purposes of transporting explosives, which would require special permits.
Truly ridiculous. Ramzi Yousef and Tim McVeigh sure didn't fill out their Ryder explosives-transporting permits, did they? Unless there is some method by which the investigators can determine how "fresh" the explosive traces were, they're going to have to look at everybody who's rented that truck in the last year, not just the two who were caught speeding in it.
Ryder has some explaining to do too, I think. I didn't think they rented trucks to just anyone anymore, and without all sorts of ID.