I’m not one of those OKC bombing consipiracists, at least not in the general big government, the President knows kind of way. But if you were to ask me can this be part of an operation run by an element of the ATF that went horribly wrong, I’d say there is a chance.
Why? Let’s look at a recent example for an answer. It has been discovered AFTER a long investigation by Congress and the CIA that one of its small group of analysts had, in fact, run an “off the books” operation. And the guy who they were running was a prisoner in Iran. ?? Think of what I just said, a small isolated group of analysts ran an operation, without the knowledge of the larger CIA organization, and did it successfully for a while, until their guy got caught. Even after that, they were able to cover up their involvement- in this day and age of no secrets. So, I ask this question; if they can do it today, why can’t a small group of ATF agents, thinking they were doing the right thing, run an operation involving McVeigh?
And get away with it.
A former FBI agent who went missing in Iran was working for the CIA there, not conducting private business as officials have previously claimed, The Associated Press and the Washington Post reported on Thursday.
Both the State Department and Bob Levinson’s family have long denied he was working for the U.S. government when he disappeared on a trip to Iran in 2007.
But Thursday’s reports from the Washington Post and the AP claim that Levinson had been on a CIA mission to dig up information.
A source who’s involved in the matter told CNN that there’s proof that Levinson worked for the CIA undercover and under contract while also working as a private investigator.
The AP says it decided to move forward with publishing the sensitive story after holding off several times.
Basically, it goes like this-
Levinson, a former experienced agent, is recruited by a group of analysts needing some intelligence work done and didn’t want to wade through the bureaucracy to get the operational side of the CIA to do it for them. So they hired Levinson through a cut out contract and sent him around the world digging up information he fed back to the group’s leader through her personal email or by packages delivered to her home.
The vaunted CIA- which knows everything about you illegally it seems, never knew- and this is key. To their defense, the CIA operational side may be a bureaucratic nightmare, but for a reason. When they put together an operation, they make sure everybody involved as a way out. It looks to dicey, the agent doesn’t go. In this case, Levinson went even when others were concerned about the safety of the operation.
When the group sent Levinson to Iran he is kidnapped. (Cocky got him caught.) The CIA is confronted, they check their files and say “Nope, no Levinson is working for us.” and they weren’t lying. Then after being pressed by the family the CIA kept digging, and with the help of a private attorney and investigator hired the family, the CIA stumbled onto the small group.
After Levinson was snatched, the group made an effort to hide their involvement- and did not get fired or arrested for doing it. They were punished or forced to retire- with benefits (again that big government keeping embarrassing things secret thing…). The CIA did the right thing by the family and gave them a 2.5 million dollar annuity (about 12,500 a month for life).
So if you put this case, running through two administrations, into the mix of “it had to be an ATF operation gone bad” then maybe the nuts aren’t so nutty.
The theory I heard was that there was an uncover ATF agent working with McVeigh and the plan was the ATF was going to swoop down and snatch McVeigh at the last minute, thus creating a “hero” moment. The ATF was a small agency that wanted to be a big agency. And it strove to create situations proving its worth. Ruby Ridge and Waco from that period are examples. So did the ATF, or more likely some agents inside the ATF, run an off the books operation that went sideways?”
‘Questions unanswered’
In 1998, no less than the presiding judge in the federal trials, U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch, acknowledged the presence of nagging questions surrounding the bombing. “It has been mentioned here and certainly was mentioned at the trial that there are … a number of questions unanswered,” Matsch told prosecutors in a pre-sentencing hearing for Nichols. “I expect the government is continuing its investigation to attempt to answer some of these unanswered questions.”
After two federal trials, one state trial, scores of books and innumerable news accounts, lingering mysteries remain. Among them:
—More than 20 eyewitnesses, some of whom testified for the government at trial, said they saw McVeigh with one or more unidentified men the morning of, and in the days before, the bombing.
—Among those witnesses were three employees at Elliott’s Body Shop, in Junction City, Kan., where McVeigh on April 18, 1995, rented the Ryder truck that carried the deadly cargo to Oklahoma City. The trio said McVeigh was with a shorter, dark-haired man who would come to be known as “John Doe No. 2.” Investigators believe the workers had confused the elusive figure with an Army soldier who had been in the shop the day after McVeigh.
—There were sightings of a Ryder truck at Geary Lake, the Kansas location where the bomb was mixed, days before McVeigh rented the truck.
—It remains unclear exactly how McVeigh got to Elliott’s. About 20 minutes before he rented the Ryder under an alias, a surveillance camera placed McVeigh at a McDonald’s 1.3 miles from the body shop. McVeigh had no car and it was raining lightly, but he did not appear to be wet when he rented the truck at 4:20 p.m.
—A severed leg found in the rubble of the Murrah building points to the possibility of an unidentified 169th bombing victim.
But not all mysteries are created equal. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously problematic, and Ricks said the Oklahoma City bombing case is no exception.
True. It could be exactly what it appears to be. But haven’t recent events proven that there is a likelihood it isn’t? Haven’t we seen a tendency by the feds to run operations involving people who think they are committing a crime, only to provide the perp with fake bombs and the like? This is done all the time by the FBI and others. Now they make sure the bad guy gets fake bombs. The question could be asked, “Is that a learned behavior from a past mistake?”
Everybody in law enforcement saw the prosecutors in the bombing were picking all the low hanging fruit they could to close the case. There was a ton of unanswered questions they never asked and McVeigh took to the grave with him, convinced he was a martyr.
Ten years later, Terry Nichols, the other guy convicted in this more than two guy operation, stated as much.
WASHINGTON — After a decade of silence, Terry L. Nichols, who was convicted in the Oklahoma City bombings, has accused a third man of being an accomplice who provided some of the explosives used to kill 168 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building 10 years ago.
Nichols, in a letter written from his cell at the U.S. government’s Supermax prison in Colorado, said Arkansas gun collector Roger Moore donated so-called binary explosives, made up of two components, to bomber Timothy J. McVeigh that were used in Oklahoma City, as well as additional bomb components that recently were found in Nichols’ former home in Kansas.
The claim that a third man — in addition to McVeigh and Nichols — was involved in the plot comes as a California congressman has begun pressing for answers to lingering questions about what, until Sept. 11, 2001, had been the worst terrorist attack in the United States.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), chairman of the investigative arm of the House Committee on International Relations, has been collecting new evidence in the bombing and said he would announce soon whether formal hearings would be opened into the April 19, 1995, tragedy.
He believes Nichols’ knowledge about other potential conspirators is central to his investigation, especially since the components found in March in a crawl space below Nichols’ former home remained undetected for nearly a decade.
The congressman said it was important to determine whether others were involved beyond Nichols and McVeigh, two Army pals who became antigovernment zealots.
“That this mass murder of Americans was accomplished by two disgruntled veterans acting alone seems to be the conclusion reached by those in authority,” Rohrabacher said recently on the House floor, referring to the FBI’s investigation of the bombing.
“However,” Rohrabacher said, “there are some unsettling loose ends and unanswered questions.”
And who cares now with the new scandals erupting every day? Nobody. Which is why you see agencies covering up for their mistakes. They are simply playing for time to pass.
It works, so why stop.
