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Wednesday, February 25, 2004
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DEAD BUT NOT GONE
June 11, 2001 - I woke up at approximately 7 am, PST in Fremont, California warm and comfortable in my then girlfriend's bed. I turned on the rado, wanting to hear the news I had been expecting but feared wouldn't come. It did. Timothy James McVeigh had been put to death by the United States government at Terra Haute, Indiana 45 minutes before. Timothy McVeigh was dead. I smiled and made love to my girlfriend. It was a good day. The perpetrator of the worst act of terrorism on U.S soil was gone.
September 11 was exactly 3 months away. After 9/11, Timothy McVeigh was largely forgotten.
April 19, 1995 - It was a short day at work and I was home slightly after 10 am, EST. As I usually do, I turned on CNN and was greeted with a "Breaking News" flash. The anchors went on to describe a massive explosion at a federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Within minutes, the pictures came in from OKC via Atlanta to my kitchen in Toronto.
This was what remained of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The only time I had seen damage like this inflicted on an occupied building was the marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983. The above picture doesn't really do justice to the size of the building or the scope of the damage. The was a 9 story building and the center of it had literally been scooped out. The entire interior of the building was visable to the television cameras and it was hard to discern that it had ever been an office building, let alone that it had been one mere hours before. As the hours passed, the body count started to rise. It finally, finally stopped at 168. 19 children, some under one year old were murdered at precisely 9:02 that morning. The immediate speculation was that this was an act of foreign terrorism, most likely of Muslim origin. Attorney General Janet Reno went on television and, in a shocking departure from normal procedure, announce that the government would seek the death penalty for the bomber or bombers.
As the days passed, the story became clearer. Timothy McViegh and Terry Nichols were captured and indicted. The government dismissed the notion of a wider conspiracy. McVeigh and Nichols were tried and convicted. McVeigh was executed 6 years later.
In the wake of 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing was largely forgotten. Terry Nichols, jailed for life following his fedral trial was indicted by the state of Oklahoma and faces the death penalty for charges of conspiracy and 168 counts of murder. His trial is scheduled to begin next week. The Nichols trial has not recieved a great amount of media attention. People have largely forgotten that these men placed a truck, with 4,000 pounds of explosives directly under a day care center and walked away. The blast was timed for the beginning of the work day so as to exact maximum casulaties. For no other reason than demented politics, two Americans took the lives of 168 others.
Or so we were told. Through McVeigh's trial, his attorney, Stephen Jones contended there was a wider conspiracy at work - that McVeigh and Nichols were unable to execute this plot on their own. Federal prosecuters and, indeed, McVeigh himself laughed of this claim.
Now, on the eve of Nichols trial the Associated Press is reporting that there may well have been a larger conspiracy. According to the report, the FBI was investigating whether McVeigh had involved a white supremecist group in the bombing conspiracy. One of the skinheads, currently serving a federal life sentence, says that he was prepared to testify at McVeigh's trial and that he expects to testify at Nichol's.
This leaves some questions to be answered. Was there, in fact a "conspiracy involving up to ten people" in the Oklahoma City bombing? How much of this did the FBI know? Was this information supressed and, if so, why?
If there was a larger conspiracy, all involved should be indicted by the state of Oklahoma (and not the federal government) and recieve the death penalty upon conviction. If there was credible evidence of a wider conspiracy and elements of the FBI and U.S attorney's office covered it up, those agents of the federal government should be indicted by the state of Oklahoma for obstruction of justice and acting in furtherance of a conspiracy after the fact.
These allegations may turn out to be a fantasy, although the AP appears to have documentary evidence, but it may not.
And there are 168 reasons to find out if this is truly to be a war on terrorism.
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