David Andrews Wrote:Sorry -- didn't notice the pre-2001 pub date on the Coulson book. Don't know what to tell you on the lie.
The Richard Jewell thing was one of their stupidest moves. If they didn't have some unfathomable tactical reason for making that accusation, I don't know how they thought they were going to make that stick against that poor guy, based on the evidence reported.
The pre-2001 pub date makes it all the more interesting, doesn't it? Surely Danny Coulson had to have asked John O'Neill if he could do that. So at least their stories would match up. Which of course implies they knew one another well enough that Coulson knew John would say "sure Doc, go for it, I've got not problem with that."
And I suspect that Jewell thing was 100% politics. It was some ultra-liberal Clinton worshiping politically correct blowhard at FBI HQ who really, really wanted the white middle aged guy to be the bomber...
Looking forward to that film--trailers look great. Eastwood has made films that are not great, but do stand out as good.
BTW, I sent an email to my friend Roger Charles to ask him if he knew anything about John O'Neill vis-a-vis Oklahoma City.
Roger is a former 60 Minutes associate producer and ABC News 20/20 associate producer. He wrote the book 'Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed and Why It Still Matters." He's a fountain of wisdom on this case, so I thought i'd ask him.
Rog said he had no information on John O'Neill, but did provide some details I wasn't aware of. For example, a book I didn't know existed called "On Scene Commander" by Weldon Kennedy.
This is a cool find for me--Weldon Kennedy was one of the 'good' agents. Respected by street agents because he was decisive and backed up his fellow agents and wasn't what Coulson derogatorily calls a 'driver' in his book. Coulson refers to 'bad' agents--the kind who kiss ass, cover ass, and throw you under the bus--as 'drivers' ... said that Weldon Kennedy was 'not a driver.' (He doesn't say the same about Bob Ricks...)
Kennedy was the first OKC inspector-in-charge... About a month into the case he was sent to Phoenix (where he was SAIC) and made 'Field Commander' on the case while Danny Defenbaugh took the mantle of Inspector-in-Charge (reporting directly to Larry Potts and Louis Freeh -- picked precisely because he WAS a 'driver').
Anyhow, Roger said that Bob Ricks ran the investigation 'inside' the FBI, dealing with FBI matters while Weldon Kennedy dealt with anything outside the FBI such as interfacing with other law enforcement or agencies or organizations.
I bought and am reading 'On Scene Commander' now. If he mentions John O'Neill I'll put that text here.
John O'Neill is mentioned just once in On Scene Commander by Weldon Kennedy. Not really any information worth anything, but here it is, page 222. Looks like O'Neill was working under ADIC Bear Bryant as a Deputy Assistant Director over counter-terrorism and participated in regular conference calls with the principals. I find it interesting that Weldon Kennedy does not mention Bob Ricks in this part, given Ricks was the Assistant Director (Larry Potts)'s man in OKC at the command post. If I were to guess I would suggest that Weldon Kennedy, like Danny Coulson, didn't have a very high opinion of Ricks. While Weldon Kennedy and Coulson were known as self-made street agents who worked hard, Ricks was a bureaucrat and apparatchik at the FBI who threw people under the bus and managed to bungle his way out of the FBI via Ruby Ridge and Waco, and probably, too, improper activity in the OKBOMB investigation which Danny Coulson alludes to having happened. Anyway, here is the excerpt from Weldon Kennedy's book:
I had learned through experience that in any major case there are bound to be leaks, and Oklahoma City was no exception. There's not much one can do about it. We could only warn people and plead with them to hold the information close, not to disseminate it. But after all was said and done, when a case is this intense, there are going to be people who will leak information. Purposefully.
Leakers think, "Hey, I'm on the inside and I really, really know what's going on! Boy, I attended a meeting! Let me tell you what they were talking about." That's really juicy stuff: inside information from someone who participated in the discussion. Even though the journalist doesn't quote the source, the leaker stills feels important, I suppose, though of course I can't say for sure what their motivations are. There are some instances when leakers have had a long-time association with a particular newsperson or feel comfortable discussing things with that newsperson, and believe that they won't be betrayed or double-crossed.
In these conference calls Louie, Janet Reno, the director of the U.S. Marshals, the DEA administrator, the head of the Secret Service, and the heads of the relevant agencies had people from their staffs who would be in attendance and be free to participate. It was also assumed that they would report back to their bosses about what happened. I certainly knew a lot about reporting back to headquarters. I was having several conference calls a day with Washington, giving a briefing of what was taking place. On the other end of the line were: the director; the assistant director in charge of counterterrorism, Robert Bryant; his deputy assistant director, John O'Neill, who perished on 9/11 in the World Trade Center; the deputy director at the time, Larry Potts; and the general counsel, Howard Shapiro. And these were just the principals. There were a lot of other people on the line, too. However, it was not assumed that the contents of our briefings would be on CNN or the networks an hour later, as was sometimes the case.
The leaking became a constant nuisance, as you can imagine, but it came to a head when I made trip to Kingman, Arizona, where a major part of the investigation was being conducted, only to come across something very disturbing. A Phoenix FBI agent approached me and asked, "Boss, have you seen this?" No, I certainly had not. In my hands, though, I was now looking at the source of many of these tremendous leaks. Without my knowledge, ATF reps in Oklahoma City were sending a summary document to their headquarters about each of our meetings. And without the reps' knowledge, ATF headquarters was disseminating the document daily to all ATF offices across the United States.
Kennedy, Weldon L.. On-Scene Commander: From Street Agent to Deputy Director of the FBI (pp. 221-223). Potomac Books. Kindle Edition.
Here is a photograph of Weldon Kennedy holding the FBI sketch of 'John Doe #2'
One thing I'd like to add in this thread. I was going to cover this in my article about the surveillance footage but didn't get to it.
Basically, an FBI agent based out of Los Angeles attempted to sell surveillance camera footage of the bombing to Dateline NBC, in the fall of 1995.
The agent had a lawyer and a private investigator (Robert Jerlow) representing him at meetings with NBC concerning sale of the footage. The LA agent wanted one million dollars for the footage. NBC offered $800,000 reportedly.
Well, the day that this guy's representatives (Jerlow and the attorney) made contact with NBC this was reported back to FBI HQ almost immediately--FBI had an informant of sorts, someone friendly to the FBI, working on staff and over a period of a couple weeks he reported to the FBI everything concerning the attempted sale.
As it turns out, the footage was one VHS tape featuring 18 minutes of footage taken from several sources. The footage shows the Ryder truck pulling up to the Murrah building, and two men getting out of the truck. The footage then cuts to another camera which recorded the detonation of the bomb. I believe that footage depicting the delivery of the bomb truck existed from surveillance cameras mounted on the 2nd floor of the Regency Towers apartments as well as footage from the Journal Record Building. (covered in my article in this thread). Other potential sources include the YMCA on 5th street. One OKC police detective told Media Bypass (alternative news media magazine in the 90s) that there were "at least five cameras stationed along 5[SUP]th[/SUP] street" that were "focused in the general area around the federal building."
According to a 1995 article in Media Bypass magazine, the FBI's office of professional responsibility conducted an investigation and through that investigation found that the LA-based agent got his copy of the tape from an FBI agent in Oklahoma who was assigned to the OKBOMB case. The investigation also uncovered that one Oklahoma based agent had made at least a dozen copies of the tape for friends.
The Media Bypass piece quotes a Texas-based agent saying that at FBI people were expecting this footage to eventually show up on A Current Affair or Hard Copy--there were so many copies of it floating around that there was the potential for hundreds of dubs of the tape to exist. It was only a matter of time before someone shared it with newsmedia. In that respect it's practically a miracle that we haven't seen this footage anywhere given how many people potentially have copies.
Attached are some FBI documents detailing the attempted sale and the 1995 Media Bypass article on the attempted sale.
The agent who tried to sell the tape is not identified by name but I'm sure the FBI determined who it was, they had a great deal if information about the purported source: (1) was based out of the Los Angeles Field Office (2) was a GS-13 (3) a 16 year FBI veteran (4) age 38-42, (5) was a former sniper instructor at Carlos Hatchcock Sniper School (6) served in US Marine Corps in Beirut alongside Robert Jerlow (OKC private investigator) between 1986-1988.
This attempted sale of the tape is yet another thing that supports the notion that surveillance footage depicting the bombing, and the bombers, exists. I have no doubt that the footage exists today, via the bootleg copies. The FBI might have destroyed their copy, but surely out of the dozen or so copies one agent made, at least one copy still exists. I think one day we may see this footage--either the agent(s) who have copies will send it to the media or it will be uploaded online or shared with newsmedia after the death of the agent(s) who currently possess a copy.
Another quote from Weldon Kennedy's book On Scene Commander:
"this was going to be a case largely built from forensic evidence since there were no eyewitnesses."
This is patently false. There were over two dozen eyewitnesses who both saw McVeigh and the Ryder truck -- some who spoke to McVeigh in the half hour before the bombing. There were enough eyewitnesses to account for McVeigh's whereabouts between 8:30 AM and 9:02 AM with a great degree of accuracy.
Eyewitnesses:
Mike Moroz, a mechanic at Johnny's Tire a couple blocks from the Murrah building gave directions to McVeigh about a half hour before the bombing, around 8:30. The Ryder truck pulled into the lot of Johnny's Tire just as Allen Gorrell, one of Moroz's co-workers, was arriving for his 8:30 AM shift. Moroz went outside and gave the driver directions to the federal building. McVeigh stepped out of the Ryder truck, and spoke to Moroz, who pointed towards downtown and gave McVeigh instructions on how to navigate two one-way streets to get to the federal building. Moroz said there was a passenger in the Ryder truck. Moroz' co-workers Allen Gorrell and Byron Marshall saw the entire scene, all three were interviewed by the FBI. Moroz was later taken downtown in OKC on April 21st where he picked McVeigh out of a lineup for the FBI. Moroz is a key witness putting McVeigh in the Ryder truck asking explicitly how to get to 'The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building' and he picked McVeigh out of a lineup before having seen him on television.
About 5 minutes after the Johnny's Tire encounter, Dena Hunt, a police technician, observed the Ryder truck moving slowly down Broadway street, turning right onto Park Avenue, then turning right onto Harvey. The truck was navigating the one-way streets that Mike Moroz had just minutes before told McVeigh about. Dena Hunt identified two men in the Ryder truck, and said the truck was moving very slowly, about 5 miles per hour. She got a good look at the driver who was described as 30-40, very short hair, dusty blonde. Hunt identified the driver as the man depicted in the John Doe #1 police sketch.
Shortly after Dena Hunt's sighting, the Ryder truck was evidently parked in front of the Regency Towers apartments, which had a convenience store on the first floor. This was mere yards way from the Murrah Building--right across the street and down a bit. Danny Wilkerson, the clerk, said that Timothy McVeigh came in and purchased two sodas and a pack of Marlboro cigarettes around 8:45, or 5-10 minutes after the Johnny's Tire encounter. Wilkerson, seeing the Ryder truck, asked McVeigh "Are you moving?" to which he replied simply "No." Wilkerson watched as McVeigh went outside and got into a Ryder truck which had another man in the passenger seat.
Rodney Johnson, a catering truck driver, saw Timothy McVeigh and John Doe #2 run away from the Ryder truck. They had just parked the truck and were crossing the street--going directly in front of Johnson's truck. Johnson had to brake in order not to hit them. Johnson called the FBI the night of the bombing and he identified McVeigh as the man he saw two days later.
Gary Lewis, a printing pressman, observed Timothy McVeigh from 10-15 feet away in the minutes before the bombing. Lewis made eye contact with McVeigh as he sped past the Journal Records building with another man in the passenger seat next to him. This vehicle is where McVeigh and John Doe #2 headed immediately after parking the Ryder truck. They had 1 to 1 1/2 minutes to reach the vehicle after parking the truck and Lewis saw them make their escape. Lewis' testimony was cited by FBI Agent John Hersley in an April 29th, 1995 preliminary hearing where Hersley talks about the encounter, the passenger in the car with McVeigh, and also talks about surveillance camera footage of the Ryder truck
Mike Moroz, Dena Hunt, Danny Wilkerson, Rodney Johnson, and Gary Lewis are five witnesses who could put McVeigh directly at the Murrah building--both immediately before delivering the Ryder truck and as McVeigh made his escape in a Mercury Marquis.
These are just five witnesses out of over two dozen whose accounts put McVeigh -- and another man -- both at the crime scene on April 19th and in the days immediately prior to the bombing.
When Weldon Kennedy wrote "since there were no eyewitnesses" he was lying, what he meant to say was "there were no eyewitnesses who saw McVeigh alone."
I have the FBI FD-302 reports from almost all of these eyewitnesses and they all paint a picture that shows McVeigh could have been identified at the scene of the crime. The only problem is, they also would have put another man with him, and the FBI could not account for that other man. Why? Who was he?
15-11-2019, 06:07 PM (This post was last modified: 15-11-2019, 10:06 PM by Peter Lemkin.)
One big question in my mind is how they forced or bought the silence of McVeigh. He was clearly in the 'know' and involved to some non-minor degree...but he seems NOT to have been the mastermind, NOT the instigator, NOT working alone, and surely not running the cover-up [which continues to this day from seconds after the blast and arguably before it]...yet he went to his death without [to my knowledge] letting on to anyone's involvement, and that he was basically scapegoated and made into the one and only culprit/patsy..... Anyone know why he played 'good soldier' with his own life? I can only guess that he was blackmailed into silence on naming others, and/or he really believed in the goals of the bombing [a WHOLE OTHER IMPORTANT issue - and NOT the official bullshit]. ::willynilly:: I believe his silence is the main factor in the public by and large buying the official bullshit myth.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Peter Lemkin Wrote:One big question in my mind is how they forced or bought the silence of McVeigh. He was clearly in the 'know' and likely to some not minor degree...but he seems NOT to have been the mastermind, NOT the instigator, NOT working alone, and not running the cover-up...yet he went to his death without [to my knowledge] letting on to anyone's involvement, and that he was basically scapegoated and made into the one and only culprit/patsy..... Anyone know why he played 'good soldier' with his own life? I can only guess that he was blackmailed into silence on naming others, and/or he really believed in the goals of the bombing [a WHOLE OTHER IMPORTANT issue - and NOT the official bullshit]. ::willynilly:: I believe his silence is the main factor in the public by and large buying the official bullshit myth.
There is the speculation that he his execution was faked or that he was told that it would be faked. In other words, his executioners brought him to near death. He was taken out and revived. Or they just convinced him of his great service and that he would be given a new identity and money and then they killed him.
I don't have any strong opinion these scenarios.
"We'll know our disinformation campaign is complete when everything the American public believes is false." --William J. Casey, D.C.I
"We will lead every revolution against us." --Theodore Herzl
15-11-2019, 09:07 PM (This post was last modified: 15-11-2019, 09:28 PM by Anthony Thorne.)
Peter raises the subject of the goal of the bombing. It's almost like the elephant in the room in threads on this subject but doesn't come up as much as I would expect.
I haven't studied this nearly as much as the others in this thread, but understanding the goal requires crossing out and removing what they chose not to do, and looking carefully at what they did do. The truck exploded, obviously, but there were also explosives in the building. So, as everyone here knows, the truck bomb wasn't intended to be the main source of damage to the building. The truck bomb was intended to cover the fact that there were explosives in the building and that those explosives had gone off at the same time. (I can see how someone could examine whether all insiders knew that both the truck bomb and building explosives would be used, or whether only a select handful did, and others perhaps only knew of the truck bomb and weren't informed of what was being prepared to accompany it).
But forgetting the truck bomb for a moment - with the bombing inside the building, they used more than one explosive device, as there's footage out there where multiple folk discuss this. (Again I know other posters here have discussed this before). Someone felt that just one big bomb inside the building wasn't sufficient. If they just wanted to create a bigger explosive, destroy something within the building, cause substantially more damage, it probably would have been. But this wasn't sufficient. Whatever the goal was, it required multiple explosive devices.
Looking at before and after pictures of the building is instructive, and something I hadn't done for a long while. But the Alfred P Murrah building was a multi-storey office building with a sheer, flat glass front, in which explosive devices were covertly installed to bring it down via a controlled demolition while another simultaneous terrorist act served to provide the explanation for what had destroyed the building. This sounds awfully familiar.
In the case of the false flag events that hit the US, some of us - and I'm not excluding myself - are occasionally guilty of missing the forest for the trees. So there will be discussion about anomalies and what witnesses saw and government lies and who the patsies were, but some bigger parts of the story sit waiting at the back of the queue. But I know everyone here likely has some good opinions on it.
Here is mine. I think 9/11 required significant planning and preparation. It required that insiders have access to airline security systems and procedures. It required that insiders have access to security systems and procedures in the WTC, and it required that those same insiders could successfully bring down a multi-storey office building with a sheer, flat-glass front using multiple explosive devices.
In 1988, the Lockerbie bombing allowed insiders to thereafter gain access to airline security systems and procedures. After the bombing, the US government sponsored an investigation into the broad theme of terrorism prevention, and as part of that investigation, groups were permitted to scope out and investigate and document airline security procedures. You can find this cited in the reports released by the Office of Technology Assessment titled TECHNOLOGY AGAINST TERRORISM - THE FEDERAL EFFORT, and TECHNOLOGY AGAINST TERRORISM - SUSTAINING SECURITY, both of which are online, and where this is cited explicitly. Rumsfeld's later terrorism advisor' at RAND, Brian Jenkins, was a member of the group who participated in this, and he isn't the only name of interest in the group who did that work.
After the WTC bombing, another similar investigation occurred, looking at the security system of that building. In his book ANOTHER 19, Kevin Ryan cites Jenkins as either being part of that investigation, or of running it.
If you have access to airline and aircraft security systems, and access to the internal workings of the WTC buildings, you're well on the way to having a lot of what you need to get started on the 9/11 conspiracy. But the final part of the equation is that you're going to need to bring the buildings down on 9/11, you're going to need to do that part right, and somewhere along the way, a good time out from the event itself, you're going to need to blow up a building - preferably one with a somewhat similar design or layout to the WTC, but on a smaller scale - to see if your multiple explosive devices are going to work and initiate a collapse the way that you think they will, or if further testing - or replacement methods - will be required. So while Peter Dale Scott and others have documented how Oklahoma advanced steps towards the Patriot Act and other civil liberty restrictions, I think the Oklahoma bombing itself should be considered in light of a group that was very determined to carry out a much larger bombing event just a handful of years down the track, and was determined to have that later event be as well-rehearsed and studied and prepared as they needed it to be.
