THE LOW POST: Murrah Redux

How about faked evidence? In the Murrah case, there was much suspicion about one crucial discovery. "The truck axle found at the site is alleged to have been moved or planted, or to have its vehicle identification number doctored to implicate McVeigh," recounts the Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories. Numerous Murrah conspiracy sites complain that the axle should have been destroyed in the blast, that the government must have known about McVeigh in advance and planted the truck-part at the scene (I love the idea of the government blowing up a normal truck axle, carving McVeigh's VIN number on it, surreptitiously leaving it at the scene -- probably dropping it through a pant leg a la The Great Escape -- and then finding it themselves a few hours later).

In 9/11 Truth, it's the fragment of hijacker Ziad Jarrah's passport that too-mysteriously survives, making it famous as the "crash-proof passport" which one source says strains "the credulity of the staunchest supporter of the FBI's War on Terrorism." Popular Mechanics, in its 9/11 Truth debunking, also recalled one site that listed all the evidence found implicating the hijackers, including Mohammed Atta's suitcase and the rental car, and wrote after each notation: "HOW CONVENIENT!"

How about the "the attacks were too sophisticated for such hicks to pull off" argument? It too was present in both OKC and 9/11. In the Oklahoma City bombing we were told time and again that the bombing was beyond the capabilities of a pair of dolts like Nichols and McVeigh, while the line about "nineteen box-cutter-wielding Arabs led by a guy in a cave outwitting the U.S. military" is one of the most commonly repeated lines of the 9/11 movement.

One could go on in this way forever. What good conspiracy theory, for instance, would lack an allegation of some highly-placed insider who is warned ahead of time to stay away from the crime scene? This one you can find in almost any popular scandal dating back a hundred years. J.P. Morgan, it is said, was warned off the Titanic. Remember those rumors about Richard Nixon being warned off Korean Airlines Flight 007? How about Lockerbie? Conspiracy theorists back then insisted that state department employees were "tipped off" in advance of the fateful crash.

In Oklahoma City, there were repeated whispers that government employees were warned in advance to stay away from the Murrah building. Some conspiracists were even more specific: "The first appointed trial judge in the OKC case, Judge Wayne Alley, was removed after it was learned that he was warned to stay away from the Murrah Federal Building in the days before the bombing," wrote William F. Jasper, who of course would surface years later with nearly identical allegations of government foreknowledge in 9/11. As for insiders serendipitously warned away from the bomb site, there are plenty of those stories in 9/11 lore, too -- I even got a letter from one Truther pointing to the fact that Bush nephew Jim Pierce had a meeting in the towers rescheduled as evidence of foreknowledge. (The source saying Pierce's meeting was rescheduled was Barbara Bush, which would mean that the Bushes were intentionally informing the public about their dastardly efforts to warn off their relatives.)

That the motive for the bombings would be the same in both cases is no surprise, I guess. OKC conspiracists believed the Murrah bombing was a smokescreen for the "introduction of laws cracking down on 'patriot' militias," while the usual 9/11 explanation, ironically, involves an excuse to pass the Patriot Act. "Can you imagine the Patriot Act passing without 9/11 having taken place?" screams one site.

No surprise, again, because the motive of most secret government conspiracies is usually supposed to be some kind of aggrandizement of power. But it's certainly an interesting coincidence that both the Murrah and the WTC bombings were also imagined to have been committed to destroy actual physical evidence of the plot inside the respective buildings.

"There has been a U.S. government (primarily BATF and FBI) cover-up motivated by the desire to destroy evidence of a 'government sting gone bad,' " writes Grabbe about the OKC bombings.

This dovetails nicely with the usual explanation for the "pulling" of WTC-7: "WTC 7 was allowed to be taken down so it would destroy evidence of the greatest crime in American history," insists one of many 9/11 Truth sites.

I think this last contention has to be the absolute funniest detail in all 9/11 lore -- the contention that the CIA or whoever destroyed a whole building to get rid of the "evidence" of the 9/11 plot, which many alleged was masterminded from the CIA offices in WTC-7. The same people who complain endlessly that they can't get the evidence they need without subpoena power imagine that the Central Intelligence Agency somehow needs to destroy its own buildings in order to keep its "secret plans" (contained in a Mission Impossible -style folder, no doubt!) from leaking to . . . the 9/11 Truth movement! Why would the CIA need to do that, if they don't even need a shredder -- shit, not even a four-dollar Master Lock -- to keep their 9/11 secrets hidden now?

And what evidence could possibly exist that would be so unwieldy that it would require the destruction of an entire building to be rid of? What, did the CIA carve its 9/11 plans in a 7,000-pound slab of New Hampshire granite in the WTC-7 basement? Were they doodled on the CIA bathroom stalls? Here I sit, brokenhearted. Came to shit, but only . . . planned controlled demolition of the World Trade Center! Seriously, what "evidence" had to go? And why wouldn't they just remove it surreptitiously, rather than blowing up a gazillion-dollar building on live international television, leaving the rubble to the mercy of firemen and whoever else was down there?

The obvious answer to this entire essay, of course, is that both conspiracies are absolutely true. The government committed both crimes, in both cases leaving no evidence except that which can be deduced by engineers, amateur seismological readings, mysterious forewarnings, pictures of men in suits concealing evidence, rumors about patsies seen on military bases, and, of course, the always-reliable Cui bono? If that's the case, one really has to give it to the government -- those guys are good. They can't keep sex scandals or fundraising corruption or classified Pentagon war assessments or clandestine wiretap programs a secret, but they can commit two humongous mass murders and get away with them, being arrogant and devious enough to leave exactly the same maddeningly incomplete circumstantial evidence behind for us to stew over in both cases. Almost like they did it on purpose that way, to fuck with us.

Which is kind of funny, when you think about it. In fact, if they did pull that off, they fucking deserve to get away with it. Anyone that clever must know what they're doing.

p.s. Truthers are going to complain that I still haven't addressed the science claims. That's coming next.

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