- Reviewing the Beltway Sniper Case retrospectively, the
media (collectively) has egg on its face, and for once it's not their fault.
As the "sniper" Task Force gave less and less hard information,
the media published stories based on information from "usually reliable
sources" within the law enforcement community. Almost all of them
got "burned" at least once with stories that later proved to
be false. There should be intensive behind-the-scenes reviews by news organizations
of sources for law enforcement information and their trustworthiness for
the future.
-
- The "transmission belts" that can be relied
on to promote the government's "spin" were not exempted, e.g.
The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS. Even
the venerable New York Times (the lead transmission belt) got caught with
a story that was demonstrably false.
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- The misinformation (or disinformation) revolves around
the key "facts' that led to the identification of John Allen Muhammad
(aka John Williams, Wayne Weeks, and Wayne Weekley) and the 17-year old
John Lee Malvo (whose real name apparently is Lee Boyd Malvo).
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- The first misinformation was fed to Fox Cable News through
reporter Rita Cosby (no relation to the entertainer). Cosby and Fox Cable
News were fast acquiring a reputation for straight reporting (ignoring
government spin). Fox is reported to be the White House's least favorite
news organization. It may be for just that reason that Fox and Cosby were
"given" the opportunity to break the big story which went something
like this.
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- A note supposedly left by the sniper at the scene of
the shooting in Ashland, Virginia demanded that $10 million be transferred
to a certain credit card account. Cosby was told that credit card had been
stolen in an attempted robbery and murder at a liquor store in Montgomery,
Alabama on September 21st.
-
- The two perpetrators were nearly caught by a cruising
patrol car but managed to escape. During the chase one of the two had dropped
a "magazine" later identified as a gun catalog. A fingerprint
from the catalog was obtained by the Montgomery (Maryland) Task Force and
run through the FBI's national data base matching that of John Lee Malvo.
Malvo had been in custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) at one time in the State of Washington and was known to be closely
associated with a John Allen Muhammad. The investigation shifted to Tacoma
and Bellingham, Washington. Without disclosing any names, the media trumpeted
the credit card and fingerprint as solving the case.
-
- That fairy tale scenario began to crumble the following
morning (October 24th) when Montgomery, Alabama Police Chief, John Wilson
in a live television press conference emphatically denied (at least twice)
that a credit card had been involved in the liquor store shooting. (It
was later disclosed the credit card had been stolen from the purse of a
bus driver in Arizona during a run between Nogales and Flagstaff on March
25th of this year.). The original report said a $12.01 charge for gas in
the Washington D.C. area had been made against the card before the account
was closed. That was later changed to the purchase being made in Tacoma,
Washington.
-
- Once the credit card link was proved to be non-existent,
Plan "B" was circulated throughout the media. The note left at
the scene of the Ashland, Va. shooting (presumably by the shooter) complained
that agents answering the hotlines did not believe calls made by the writer
of the note that included references to a crime in Montgomery (according
to the Task Force). It also included a reference to a call to an unnamed
priest in Ashland. Although the note listed telephone numbers the writer
had called, none was given for the priest.
-
- The message the anonymous caller gave the priest (Monsignor
William V.Sullivan) was that the crime to which he was referring was in
Montgomery, Alabama, not Montgomery County, Maryland. The New York Times
published a story claiming the priest then forwarded the information to
the Task Force which started the chain of events that resulted in matching
Malvo's fingerprints.
-
- However the bishop of the Richmond Catholic Diocese (Walter
F. Sullivan) said father Sullivan did not call the Task Force thinking
it was a crank call. The following morning an FBI agent showed up and,
according to Monsignor Sullivan, he said they suspected one of his parishioners
was involved in the sniper attacks. The agent said they had traced a telephone
call to the rectory! It was at this point that Father Sullivan told the
agent about the call he had received and the reference to Montgomery, Alabama.
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch this all occurred on Sunday, October
22nd.
-
- The next day (October 23rd) a Task Force member traveled
to Alabama and obtained the fingerprint evidence which was brought back
to Maryland and run through the FBI national data base.It was the following
day that Chief Wilson shot down the credit card story.
-
- Plan "C"" now claims that the tip about
the liquor store murder in Montgomery, Alabama was received in a previously
undisclosed telephone contact with a person the Task Force believes to
have been the shooter. Of course there is no one but the caller and the
Task Force who can contradict that scenario if indeed such a contact was
made.
-
- Montgomery police forwarded the print to the Alabama
State Police forensic lab on Sept. 24th, three days after the murder at
the liquor store. However, because of short staffing and a backlog, the
print was not processed into the FBI data bank for 27 days.
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- In its Sunday edition October 27, the New York Times
(perhaps in retaliation for its embarrassment from previous "tips")
claimed the name of John Muhammad and a description of the Caprice he was
driving was being given to some police agencies in the D.C. area as early
as Tuesday evening, October 22nd, the same day as the last killing of the
bus driver.
-
- When the Task Force finally released Muhammad's name
to the media it did not mention the Caprice.The capture on the 24th was
the result of an enterprising reporter who caught an APB on a police scanner
which gave the license number and description of the Caprice. This may
well have been the information referenced in the NYT article.
-
- According to yesterday's NYT the FBI's national data
base was queried eleven times about the Caprice's license tags over a period
of about a month and a half by police in the D.C. area. Four of them occurred
in an 18-day period before the first shooting. In each instance no action
was taken because the data base is said to contain no information on outstanding
warrants.
-
- However, when Muhammad was arraigned after his capture
he was charged with a violation of Federal Gun Laws based on an outstanding
warrant. The warrant stemmed from Muhammad's sale of a Bushmaster rifle
similar to the one alleged to have been used in the shootings to the gun
dealer (for $500) from which he had previously purchased the weapon for
$800. This was a couple of months after his ex-wife had obtained a personal
protection order (PPO) against him. Federal law prohibits any person the
subject of a PPO possessing or owning a firearm.
-
- If that warrant was missed when the checks were run (if
they were run) there should have been another arrest warrant in the data
base for Muhammad. Earlier, Muhammad and Malvo (who gave police the name
of John Muhammad, Jr) were arrested on a shoplifting charge in Tacoma.
Muhammad was scheduled to appear in court in March of this year but failed
to show. This should have resulted in issuance of a bench warrant for his
arrest.
-
- There are other conflicting stories that have appeared
based on information from usually reliable sources.
-
- Most of the media claimed Muhammad had earned an "expert"
marksmanship rating (the highest) in the army. However, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
said it had access to the official military record of Muhammad which lists
his highest rating as "sharpshooter" one step below expert.
-
- Although there has been little discussion of it in the
media, the most controversial issue may turn out to be the source of Muhammad
and Malvo's funds. Of those venturing into this minefield, the consensus
appears to be their money came from doing odd jobs. It is pointed out that
for the nearly two years the pair were in the Pacific northwest, they stayed
(off and on) at a homeless shelter and at other times slept in their car.
-
- However, the director of the shelter, Reverend Alan Archer,
said Muhammad appeared to have plenty of money. Muhammad made numerous
airplane trips away from the area including journeys to his home state
of Louisiana, the Caribbean, and Denver and Salt Lake City for skiing trips.
This was so incongruous to Archer that he suspected Muhammad might be a
sleeper terrorist which he so reported to the FBI nearly a year before
the spate of shootings.
-
- Others say the pair may have financed their travels through
crime, pointing to the attempted liquor store robbery in Alabama. Washington
D.C. officials are said to be reviewing unsolved bank robberies in the
area.
-
- One thing government officials seem unanimous on is that
Muhammad had nothing to do with any organized terrorist groups as stated
by Montgomery County (Maryland) state's attorney Doug Gansler on NBC's
Meet the Press last Sunday. Yet Muhammad's activities and associations
in the Caribbean island nation of Antigua need official explanation.
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- Muhammad/Williams lived for several years in Antigua.
With no visible means of support he nevertheless could afford to send his
three children to one of the few private schools on the island. He was
known by friends and associates there to be involved in arranging illegal
entry for non-citizens into the U.S.
-
- Evidently Muhammad would furnish fraudulent passports
and birth certificates for a fee of from $1,000 to $1,500 per person. The
illegal aliens would then be furnished with the return portion of a round-trip
airline ticket from the U.S. to Antigua.That doesn't sound like a one-man
operation. Gansler said, We're looking into the angles and explanations."
-
- Antiguan acquaintances of Muhammad relate a couple of
instances when he had brushes with immigration authorities but was never
charged after talking to higher-ups. Muhammad was said to boast that he
had contacts in the FBI and CIA.
-
- It may have been in the smuggling operation that Muhammad
made the connection with Malvo. Lee and his mother, Uma James were illegal
entrants into the U.S. Landing first in Florida, Lee attending a high school
there for a brief time. Eventually they migrated to Washington and ended
up in Bellingham where Lee enrolled at the high school there.
-
- When school officials could not verify legal documentation
they notified the INS. Malvo and his mother were apprehended and confined
in a Seattle detention center to be deported. Ms. James claimed they had
been brought to Florida on a cargo boat filled with illegal Asians. Evidently
she could not or refused to identify the ship. Under changes to immigration
laws in 1997, that made her and her son eligible for mandatory deportation
without a hearing.
-
- However, in violation of the law, Seattle INS officials
freed James on $1,500 bail and Malvo without any bail. According to syndicated
columnist Michelle Malkin, who followed up on the story, Seattle officials
refused any explanation and referred her to INS headquarters in the Justice
Department in D.C. Those officials also stonewalled referring Malkin to
the Maryland sniper Task Force which refused to comment. It almost seems
as though both Muhammad and Malvo had "guardian angels" in at
least the ranks of immigration officials.
-
- Most of the media, back in "synch" with government
officials, have portrayed the sniper Task Force operation as a model of
inter-agency cooperation and efficiency. This despite all the missed opportunities
to apprehend and arrest Muhammad and the disingenuous stories about how
they came into possession of evidence.
-
- One of the unquestioned premises of the investigation
is that the persons with whom the Task Force was dealing in telephone calls
and cryptic statements delivered through the media were also the shooters
who seemed bent on giving the Task Force enough clues to effect their apprehension.
That just doesn't make any sense at all. It boggles the mind to believe
that Muhammad was stupid enough to think he could get away with collecting
$10 million dollars in extorted funds without getting caught. In other
words, were Muhammad and Malvo (who most likely are the shooters) set up
to be captured at the end of the terror inspiring killing spree?
-
- There is one theory, rife on the Internet, that will
be immediately rejected by most. That is that Muhammad and Malvo were operating
under some kind of mind control. This writer must admit that County Police
Chief Charles Moose's delivery of cryptic statements in live television
press conferences to one he believed to be the sniper sent a chill down
the back. It immediately brought to mind the Frank Sinatra/Laurence Harvey
movie, The Manchurian Candidate about an assassin programmed by mind control
who was triggered by spoken phrases.
-
- At any rate, there are still a lot more questions than
there are answers.
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- Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its
entirety.
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- The author is a free lance writer based in Romulus, Michigan.
He is a former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs
administrator and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S. Constitution.
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