Feds Anticipated (Different) OKC Attack?

February 11, 2003 10:00 PM

Did the Feds bungle intelligence on the 1995 OKC Bombing? FBI officials feared that white separatists might lash out on April 19, 1995 -- the day McVeigh chose. They were so concerned that a month earlier they questioned a reformed white supremacist familiar with an earlier plot to bomb the Murrah federal building, the one McVeigh selected. Does this affect earlier theories on OKC? Does it make the current advisories more significant?
posted by subgenius (6 comments total)

Taking the first crack at my own questions, I don't think this is on all fours with the various conspiracy theories (e.g., the Feds did it, the Feds knew, OBL did it, etc.) -- the rule of parsimony suggests typical incompetence -- but it is disconcerting to learn about all of this eight years later. (And I've already heard too many remarks around the office, in Midtown Manhattan, about what we'll be hearing in 2010 or 2012.)

As for the advisories, it sounds like there may have been enough information to have warned people in '95 -- even if they were ultimately wrong about who was going to attack the federal center. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like there was a "they" who was able to issue such a warning; obviously the feds weren't much better at tracking this sort of information even six years later. I might appreciate such detailed advisories, but the current warnings are basically worthless.
posted by subgenius at 10:10 PM on February 11, 2003

Problem:

Determine when a catastrophic event is going to transpire, given the following shreds of evidence:

Persons or groups: A, B, C, D, E, F
Places: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Actions: alpha, beta, gamma, delta
Times: The 365 days of the year

Solution:

Wait until person D completely unexpectedly performs action Gamma in location 4 on the 17th of July, and then blame it on a failure in the intelligence community (since they very obviously had those pieces of information). For extra credit, hint that if the Democrats were in power, none of this would have ever happened.
posted by oissubke at 10:43 PM on February 11, 2003

There's some history that doesn't come out in Solomon's article. The 1985 incident also led, for example, to a plot to kill Asa Hutchinson. Millar's attorney, Kirk Lyons, certainly has a lot of history, most recently leading a radical coup in the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Not really connected to those little bits of American whackjob trivia, from the little googling I've done tonight, I get the impression there's a lot more to this story than Solomon's included in that piece. According to an old ADL page, McVeigh definitely called Elohim City two weeks before the bombing.
posted by jbrjake at 10:55 PM on February 11, 2003

Actually they have proof of McVeigh connected to Elohim City but they didn't want to take it to court. I actually talked about this last year which you can read more about if you do a Google on Elohim City you'll dig up court transcripts that go into a lot of detail.

Bascially, the OK bombing was a revenge bombing for the execution of another Elohim City member who was executed in Texas on the same day April 19th 1995. There is a lot of CYA going on in the FBI because, obviously, the connections are so strong they should have done somthing.
posted by stbalbach at 6:33 AM on February 12, 2003

...on the 17th of July,...

My birthday.... surrrrrreal
posted by Witty at 10:28 AM on February 12, 2003

The Bush administration is now reporting that Iraq was involved in the bombing as well...
posted by hellinskira at 12:51 PM on February 12, 2003