- An analysis of raw news footage and reports in the immediate
aftermath of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City,
Okla., shows local television reporters stating repeatedly that two additional,
sophisticated, undetonated explosive devices were found by investigators
on the scene.
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- The television reports raise questions about the official
government version of events that an "extremist" and his friend
acted alone, using a Ryder rental truck and a 1,200-pound ammonium nitrate
and fuel oil, or ANFO, bomb to destroy the face of the building.
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- For example, initial news broadcasts by KWTV-9, KFOR
TV-5 and Channel 4 News all feature reports confirmed by state, local and
federal officials that a total of three bombs had been placed inside the
Murrah building.
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- TV news footage showed Oklahoma County Sheriff's Department
bomb squad vehicles being brought to the scene within a half-hour of the
explosion, "amid reports" that "more bombs have been found"
by rescuers.
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- Also, reporters at the scene confirmed that the two other
bombs were larger than the first one, and that the bomb that had exploded
blew up inside -- not outside -- the building.
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- Reports said the other two bombs were found on the east
and west sides of the building; the explosion occurred at the front, or
north side, of the building.
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- In one clip, the medical director for St. Anthony's Hospital
told reporters that local OKC police had informed him that rescue efforts
had been called off temporarily "because of the other bombs found
in the building. Ö"
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- And, TV-9 reported that "the U.S. Justice Department
has confirmed" that other bombs were found in the structure.
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- In subsequent reports, within the first few hours of
the explosion, news crews were reporting that federal and local authorities
had confirmed that the two other explosives had been "defused"
and "moved off site."
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- The 'lone' suspects
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- Timothy McVeigh, now 32, was convicted in 1997 for his
role in the April 19, 1995, bombing, and is scheduled to be executed by
the government May 16 at a federal prison facility in Terre Haute, Ind.
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- The Justice Department said Friday that bombing survivors
and victims' families would be able to view the execution via closed-circuit
television. He will be the first federal prisoner executed in 36 years.
In 1997, he was convicted in the bombing deaths of 168 people, including
19 children.
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- McVeigh has said he bombed the Murrah building in retaliation
for the FBI's raid on a Branch Davidian religious facility April 19, 1993,
in Waco, Texas, which led to a fire that killed 80 men, women and children.
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- McVeigh said he did it to give the federal government
"dirty for dirty."
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- Meanwhile, Terry Nichols, also convicted in 1997 as an
accomplice in the OKC attack, is currently serving a life sentence in federal
prison. But he also faces Oklahoma state charges of capital murder pressed
by prosecutors who have pledged to seek the death penalty.
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- Early news reports indicated government sources were
saying that "bombs were brought into" the Murrah building, and
that because they were able to find undetonated devices, authorities would
be able to "find out who is responsible" for the bombing.
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- In one clip, Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating also confirmed
the presence of other explosives.
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- "The reports I have are that one device was deactivated
Ö [and] apparently, there was another device. Whatever did the damage
to the Murrah building was a tremendous Ö a very sophisticated explosive
device. Ö" Keating was heard saying.
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- One TV news report then said that then-President Bill
Clinton "has called Gov. Keating Ö and said three FBI anti-terrorist
teams" were being sent from Washington, D.C., to OKC, ostensibly to
investigate the incident. The report further stated that "the White
House and Justice Department Ö have said [the bombing] was the work
of a sophisticated group Ö and would have to have been carried out
by an explosives expert."
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- McVeigh and Nichols were not explosives experts, critics
of the government's official version of events point out.
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- Later in the day and into the next day, details of the
official explanations and information that had been witnessed or confirmed
early on by news organizations, reporters and authorities handling the
rescue efforts began to change.
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- Within 24 hours, federal officials from the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were saying that the explosion had not occurred
within the building itself but instead the damage had been caused by a
"car" parked in front of the building, loaded with the ANFO bomb.
Soon afterward, the "car" became a Ryder rental truck and the
explosives grew in size, to about 4,500 pounds.
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- Also, officials began to discount the second- and third
bomb story, instead focusing only on the outside, north-face explosion
as the one and only explosive source at the entire complex.
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- At one point, news reports began to suggest that officials
believed the outside explosion was intended to set off the other explosions
inside, but witness statements began to be reported that would refute the
single-bomb claim.
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- Witnesses interviewed by local TV affiliates said they
felt the Murrah building "shake and shift" for several seconds
before "glass blew in" on top of them. One witness said he saw
the ceiling collapse as he dove under his desk, "several seconds before
the glass came in at me."
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- Experts began to theorize that the ANFO bomb in the Ryder
truck was indeed integral to what happened, but not as Washington said.
Rather, they theorized that the ANFO explosion -- which came after the
internal explosion -- was intended to mask that first explosion and gave
the government plausibility for its single-bomb-outside-the-structure version
of events; the version that eventually became widely accepted.
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- Backup evidence
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- In the years following the bombing, independent investigators,
journalists and bomb experts have studied the available evidence and found
new evidence to suggest the earliest reports of what happened just over
six years ago were probably the most accurate.
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- For instance, one particular website has published official
government documents and statements that substantiate the 3-bomb reports
first aired by local television news.
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- A Department of Defense Atlantic Command memo, issued
one day after the bombing, says "Ö a second bomb was disarmed;
a third bomb was evacuated. Ö"
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- A Federal Emergency Management Agency "SitRep"
(situational report), dated April 20, 1995, also confirms the presence
of three bombs inside the building. And a U.S. Forces Command daily log
report from the same day said: "Two more explosive devices were located
vicinity the explosion site. Evidently intended for the rescuers."
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- Finally, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol radio log said, "OC
Fire Dept. confirms they did find a second device in the bldg/OK. Ö"
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- Also, independent engineers, explosives experts and military
analysts conducted studies of the available evidence, many concluding that
the government's "single truck-single bomb" explanation was technically
impossible.
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- Perhaps one of the most dominant of these was conducted
by Brig. Gen. Ben K. Partin, a retired Air Force officer with decades of
military experience in the design of explosives and warheads.
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- His exhaustive study, completed July 30, 1995 -- less
than three months after the bombing -- also concluded that explosive charges,
or "demolitions," were most likely placed inside the structure
at key points designed to "bring the building down. Ö"
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- Coming to closure
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- Despite those early reports and later studies that appear
to substantiate the information contained in them, federal prosecutors
and the FBI were resolute in discounting much of it when the case went
to trial. Instead, the Justice Department's cases were entirely built on
McVeigh, Nichols, and the Ryder truck bomb theory.
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- Even though McVeigh is scheduled to be executed in just
a few short weeks, and even if Nichols ends up with a similar fate, there
will always be questions from some who remain convinced -- as those early
reporters were -- that something other than Washington's official version
really happened that fateful day in 1995.
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- Many questions will probably never be answered, however.
The Murrah building was demolished two weeks after the attack; the site
was covered with dirt and the building materials were trucked to an off-site
dump manned by armed guards and buried.
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- Further independent analysis of the materials was not,
and has not, been permitted.
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- Other questions still nag critics of the government case:
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- Two weeks after the bombing, Time and Newsweek magazines
both ran "artist's conceptions" of the "immense 30-foot
crater" allegedly left by the Ryder truck bomb. But news footage in
the aftermath of the bombing showed no such crater.
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- Domestic anti-terrorist bills were stalled in Congress
before the bombing, but sailed through to become law shortly afterward.
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- Witnesses reported seeing three men in the parking garage
of the Murrah building (it had nine stories above ground and had a four-floor
parking garage underneath) working with "electrical equipment and
pointing at various parts of the garage in the days before the attack.
Many survivors reported that some of these men were dressed in Government
Services Administration uniforms but had never seen them before or since.
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- An independent aerial photo was taken of a Ryder truck
the size used in the attack parked at an Army facility near Camp Gruber-Braggs,
Okla., outside of OKC, in the days leading up to the attack.
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- One London journalist, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, uncovered
evidence that suggested the entire OKC bombing was a government sting operation
gone awry. BATF and FBI officials were working on a case involving a "Christian
Identity" group prone to violence and plotting the OKC attack, operating
out of Elohim City, Okla., but failed to arrest them before the bombing
occurred.
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- Jon E. Dougherty is a staff reporter and columnist for
WorldNetDaily, and author of the special report, "Election 2000: How
the Military Vote Was Suppressed."
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