Conspiracies: The Oklahoma Bombing

On the 19th April, 1995, a massive explosion in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma destroyed a huge part of a Federal office building, tragically killing many people inside. Before then, America had often considered itself immune to terrorist attack, glossing over those that had occurred previously. The Oklahoma bombing was extremely high-profile however, and as well as killing and injuring a lot of people, it also rather nastily wounded the national psyche — although nowhere near as much as the horrors of 9/11 would, of course.

Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran, was convicted of the bombing in due course. Certainly there is plenty of evidence that he was peculiar enough to have carried it. He sent a series of letters to his sister some considerable time before the bombing took place, talking about his “anger and alienation”. These included comments about committing suicide, about dropping out of society and into hiding, and about the government of the “Evil King”. The letters were so disturbing that McVeigh’s family suspected him of being the Oklahoma bomber almost immediately. His sister believed that McVeigh’s mania against the government stemmed from the army’s insistence that he repay them $1,000 that he had been overpaid.

However, McVeigh had applied for Special Forces training, and had failed the assessment course. He claimed in one of his letters that his assessment at Fort Bragg had revealed several unsavoury duties. Special Forces operatives, apparently, would be required to work with civilian police, silencing — killing — people who were considered a security risk. They would also be expected to help “the CIA fly drugs into the USA to fund covert operations”. It was the evil nature of these assignments that supposedly turned McVeigh against the US government.

Timothy McVeigh

So was McVeigh actually guilty? Some conspiracy theorists have suggested that the Oklahoma bombing was conducted by US secret services agents to distract attention from a far more critical action: the attempted rebellion of a cabal of top military officers against the US government. Sickened by the Clintons’ excesses — not the sexual ones, but Hillary’s supposed theft of fifty million dollars from the US reserve, and Bill’s treasonously illegal alleged sale of nuclear missiles & launch codes to Israel — a group of morally-upstanding army and navy officers were going to arrest Clinton and expose him.

On Monday April 17th 1995, Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr reportedly handed a sealed indictment charging Hillary and Bill with embezzling $47 million, and receiving moneys in payment for conveying missile launch and tracking codes to Israel. That same evening, a plane carrying top members of the military and intelligence communities crashed in Alabama, killing everyone inside. Witnesses said that they heard two explosions in the air before the one on the ground, suggesting sabotage or missile strike. One army officer on the supervisory boards of the NSA and the ASA — the Army Security Agency — was amongst the dead.

The cabal, theorists allege, was killed. Oklahoma was then bombed shortly afterwards, to monopolise media attention and thereby cover the deaths of the cabal members. It also served to draw the minds of more junior officers away from potential presidential scandals, and concentrate them on the humanitarian emergency. McVeigh was a soft target to frame because he was so insanely paranoid about the government. All this happened just before the sealed indictments were due to be made public. Instead, the special circumstances of the bombing delayed the indictments, and swung public support back to the president.

It’s an interesting aside that Media Bypass Magazine is a small publication dedicated to exposing intelligence agency action, and presenting the truth to the public. On the morning of the bombing, Lawrence Myers, a writer of bomb manuals and other survivalist literature, was in the offices of Media Bypass, interviewing for a job writing about serial bombers. While he was being interviewed, the Oklahoma bomb went off, and the news broke. He was hired on the spot, and quickly became the editorial controller of the magazine.

However, there are claims that Myers had been a counter-insurgency operative in Central America as part of the Delta Force, and was now working in counter-intelligence. His latest role was to infiltrate Media Bypass so as to spread ludicrously bogus exposés, suppress true exposes, and generally discredit the magazine.

Media Bypass eventually resolved to fire Myers, but they re-hired him the same day when he suddenly conducted an interview with McVeigh (in maximum security prison at the time, and inaccessible to normal journalists) and offered it to the magazine in return for his continued employment.

Conspirologists generally suggest that the CIA killed the conspirators, acting to preserve the Clinton administration and avoid a scandal that would weaken America. They set up the Oklahoma bombing as a smoke-screen. At the same time, they decided to infiltrate Myers into Media Bypass with the aid of the bombing, killing two birds with one stone so to speak. To arrange this, they must have been planning the multiple assassination and subsequent bombing for at least a week.

On the other hand, odder theorists say that the American version of the British Israelite movement which claims that white Americans are the true descendants of Moses may have been involved in the bombing. Certainly, the Identity is very popular with right-wing maniacs. There have been suggestions that McVeigh was acting on the instructions of a powerful Christian Identity leader to help fulfil the prophecies leading to the return of Christ.

Rationally though, killing scores of innocent government workers seems rather like overkill, both in distracting from a minor rebellion and in getting a spook into a job. Surely the former goal could have been better achieved by declaring the whole incident a matter of national security, and the latter by giving Myers a stronger resume?