Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Oklahoma Sooners Aptly Named
UPDATE from TigerHawk: I have long been intrigued by a strange passage from Richard Clarke's book Against All Enemies, which relates to the suspicion that al Qaeda might have been behind Timothy McVeigh's attack:
Another conspiracy theory intrigued me because I could never disprove it. The theory seemed unlike on its face: Ramzi Yousef or Khalid Sheik Muhammad had taught Terry Nichols how to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building. The problem was that, upon investigation, we established that both Ramzi Yousef and Nichols had been in the city of Cebu on the same days. I had been to Cebu years earlier; it is on an island in the central Philippines. It was a town in which word could have spread that a local girl was bringing her American boyfriend home and that the American hated the U.S. government.
Yousef and Khalid Sheik Muhammad had gone there to help create an al Qaeda spinoff, a philippine affiliate chapter, named after a hero of the Afghan war against the Soviets, Abu Sayaff. Could the Al Qaeda explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American who proclaimed his hatred for the U.S. government? We do not know, despite some FBI investigation. We do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned. We also know that Nichols continued to call Cebu long after his wife returned to the United States. The final coincidence is that several Al Qaeda operatives had attended a radical Islamic conference a few years earlier in, of all places, Oklahoma City.
As I wrote last spring:
That was the entire passage -- there was no disclaimer, no qualification. It looks for all the world as though Richard Clarke believes that there is an al Qaeda connection to Oklahoma City, but is unwilling to say quite that much without evidence. It will be interesting whether new evidence surfaces, and whether Clarke says anything about it.
The links between al Qaeda and Oklahoma, of all places, are too weird to be ignored. Does this week's "sooner boomer" explosion warrant a closer look at the Oklahoma City attack of ten years ago? Perhaps it does.
Gateway Pundit, by the way, has a huge round-up. Instapundit's post is here.
UPDATE by TigerHawk (2:15 pm): Here's Stratfor's map of the stadium and the location of the explosion:
University officials have said they believe Joel Henry Hinrichs III used the improvised explosive device (IED) to commit suicide and that he was not attempting an act of terrorism. The FBI has said there is no evidence that Hinrichs was tied to a terrorist group.
Coincidences are rare in counterterrorism, however. A blast occurring less than 100 yards from a stadium packed with more than 84,000 people certainly has the hallmarks of a terrorist attempt.
Yup. Stratfor speculates, though, that this attack is "lone wolf" rather than directed by any organization.
5 Comments:
By 
Cardinalpark, at
Wed Oct 05, 12:24:00 PM:
When these things start happening, it's easy to get caught up in lots of speculation -- for instance, what do you think Sandy Berger was hiding by destroying documents he lifted from the National Archives? Could he have scribbled some marginal notes which pointed to Iraq, for instance? Or connecting dots like Clarke was doing?
We should all acknowledge we can move quickly from facts to speculation here. But this kid, in my view, was no suicide. He was trying to bomb a large number of people at a college football game. And like Richard Reid, he turned out to be incompetent, thank goodness....it is worth exploring whether Al Qaeda is overtly exploiting American malcontents with a parallel interest in anti-government, anti-american activity -- McVeigh, Nichols, Eric Rudolph, John Muhammad, etc. Too many coincidences...
By 
, at
Wed Oct 05, 01:55:00 PM:
It reminds me of the Weather Underground, only worse. The Weather Underground never intended to kill anyone. I have long thought that McVeigh was a malcontent that started to belive the enemies propaganda and finally acted as he did. Whether you convert to Islam or you just march with it's radical agenda, you are still an enemy of the USA.
By Charlottesvillain, at
Wed Oct 05, 04:21:00 PM:
I don't subscribe to Stratfor and therefore don't have access to the full analysis. I have heard rumors, however, that he had a Texas Longhorns tatoo. Hmmm.
By , at
Thu Oct 06, 10:13:00 PM:
Great post, as all of yours are. I've linked to it from
http://smalltownveteran.typepad.com/posts/2005/10/if_an_oklahoma_.html
By , at
Thu Jul 13, 04:24:00 PM:
If you really want to talk conspiracy, try monitoring what happens between the sooners and longhorns on the football field. One team spying on the other. great fun.
