Гор Видал - Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace

It will be interesting to see if the FBI is sufficiently intrigued by what Joel Dyer has written to pursue the leads that he has so generously given them.

Thus far, David Hoffman's The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror is the most thorough of a dozen or two accounts of what did and did not happen on that day in April. Hoffman begins his investigation with retired air-force brigadier general Benton K. Partin's May 17, 1995, letter delivered to each member of the Senate and House of Representatives: "When I first saw the pictures of the truck-bomb's asymmetrical damage to the Federal Building, my immediate reaction was that the pattern of damage would have been technically impossible without supplementing demolition charges at some of the reinforcing concrete column bases. For a simplistic blast truck-bomb, of the size and composition reported, to be able to reach out in the order of 60 feet and collapse a reinforced column base the size of column A-7 is beyond credulity." In separate agreement was Samuel Cohen, father of the neutron bomb and formerly of the Manhattan Project, who wrote an Oklahoma state legislator, "It would have been absolutely impossible and against the laws of nature for a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil. no matter how much was used. to bring the building down." One would think that McVeigh's defense lawyer, restlessly looking for a Middle East connection, could certainly have called these acknowledged experts to testify, but a search of Jones's account of the case, Others Unknown , reveals neither name.

In the March 20, 1996, issue of Strategic Investment newsletter, it was reported that Pentagon analysts tended to agree with General Partin. "A classified report prepared by two independent Pentagon experts has concluded that the destruction of the Federal building in Oklahoma City last April was caused by five separate bombs. Sources close to the study say Timothy McVeigh did play a role in the bombing but 'peripherally' as a 'useful idiot'." Finally, inevitably — this is wartime, after all—"the multiple bombings have a Middle Eastern 'signature,' pointing to either Iraqi or Syrian involvement."

As it turned out, Partin's and Cohen's pro bono efforts to examine the ruins were in vain. Sixteen days after the bombing, the search for victims stopped. In another letter to Congress, Partin stated that the building should not be destroyed until an independent forensic team was brought in to investigate the damage. "It is also easy to cover up crucial evidence as was apparently done in Waco. Why rush to destroy the evidence?" Trigger words: the Feds demolished the ruins six days later. They offered the same excuse that they had used at Waco, "health hazards." Partin: "It's a classic cover-up."

Partin suspected a Communist plot. Well, nobody's perfect.

"So what's the take-away?" was the question often asked by TV producers in the so-called golden age of live television plays. This meant: what is the audience supposed to think when the play is over? The McVeigh story presents us with several take-aways. If McVeigh is simply a "useful idiot," a tool of what might be a very large conspiracy, involving various homegrown militias working, some think, with Middle Eastern helpers, then the FBI's refusal to follow up so many promising leads goes quite beyond its ordinary incompetence and smacks of treason. If McVeigh was the unlikely sole mover and begetter of the bombing, then his "inhumane" (the Unabomber's adjective) destruction of so many lives will have served no purpose at all unless we take it seriously as what it is, a wake-up call to a federal government deeply hated, it would seem, by millions. (Remember that the popular Ronald Reagan always ran against the federal government, though often for the wrong reasons.) Final far-fetched take-away: McVeigh did not make nor deliver nor detonate the bomb but, once arrested on another charge, seized all "glory" for himself and so gave up his life. That's not a story for W. E. Henley so much as for one of his young men, Rudyard Kipling, author of The Man Who Would Be King .

Finally, the fact that the McVeigh-Nichols scenario makes no sense at all suggests that yet again, we are confronted with a "perfect" crime — thus far.

Fallout

Once our media has invented a cartoon image for a national villain or hero, it does not take a benign view of anyone who contradicts its version. My reasonably mild analysis of McVeigh was interpreted as approval of the bombing at Oklahoma City and I was said to have hailed him as "a freedom fighter," a phrase, as you have seen, that I never used. I thought it was obvious that I agreed with the examining psychiatrist who said, "Had there been no Waco, there would have been no Oklahoma City." Therefore, the truth-seeker should concentrate on the various elements that led up to the federal massacre at Waco on the ground that whatever the Federal government does it does in the name of all of us. What McVeigh did he did on his own for reasons well worth understanding since he appears to represent, in many ways, millions of heartland Americans.

In the original article I quote Joel Dyer at greater length than I do now. He had spent years following up on leads to potential coconspirators with McVeigh. There was even a potential Iraqi connection in Oklahoma City, which might well have brought roses to the cheeks of our right-wing activists, eager for war with Iraq as well as Iran, Somalia, and just about any Islamic nation that does not obey us. In any case, I have now left out all those leads not followed by the FBI on the ground that the spoor, as Tarzan used to say, grows, with passing time, ever more faint.

But at the time Dyer and I were ready to share our findings, no matter how unwanted, with the FBI. The mysterious Louis Freeh had left as director and his place was taken by R. S. Mueller, for whom I prepared the following letter, which I read on NBC's Today Show , leaving out the names of those who had given leads, but including the document numbers of the FBI reports collected by Dyer during various "discovery" court hearings.

August 27, 2001

The Honorable Robert S. Mueller III, Director-Designate Federal Bureau of Investigation

J. Edgar Hoover Building

935 Pennsylvania Avenue, K.W.

Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

Dear Director-Designate Mueller;

Congratulations on your recent appointment as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If recent news reports are to be believed, it seems your first priority is to restore the tattered image of the Freeh-based bureau. We see you as Shane come to town. With that in mind, might I suggest a bona fide investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing? To that worthy end, I am providing you a list of "302" reports from the Bureau's alleged "investigation" that I hope you will find more interesting than did your predecessor Mr. Louis Freeh.

McVeigh Discovery Materials 302 Reports

DCNO 005290001-1 DCNO 004623001-1

DCNO 016598001-1 DCNO 004622001-1

DCNO 004412001-1 Russell Roe DCNO#-illegible

DCNO 004613001-1

DCNO 016417001-1 DCNO 007936001-1

DCNO 006333001-1 DCNO 008597001-1

DCNO 015040001-1 DCNO 015830001-1

DCNO 015042001-1 DCNO 016016001-1

DCNO 015039001-1 DCNO 007986001-1

DCNO 015041001-1 Lead # 15004 DCNO#-illegible

Upon review, you will find that, these 19 "302" reports were generated as a result of your organization's interviews with Kansas law enforcement personnel, eyewitnesses, confidential informants, militia members, etc. Collectively, they contain information regarding, among other things, four men, resident in East Kansas at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, who were well-known anti-U.S. government radicals.