by Steven J. DuBord
October 1, 2009
TheNewAmerican.com
The Federal Bureau of Investigation claims that surveillance tapes
of the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April
19, 1995 have not been edited, despite the fact that all of the more than two
dozen tapes released fail mysteriously to show the moments just before the truck
bomb exploded.
Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue obtained the tapes through a Freedom
of Information Act request as part of his investigation of the bombing. All
of the tapes feature blanks just before the bomb went off at 9:02 a.m., but
“the interesting thing is they spring back on after 9:02,” Trentadue
said. “The absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence
that there is something there that the FBI doesn’t want anybody to see.”
The Associated Press reported on September 30 that FBI spokesman Paul Bresson
told them in an e-mail the Bureau didn’t edit the tapes before releasing
them. Bresson said the FBI responded to Trentadue’s request by turning
over 26 videos taken from surveillance cameras in 11 different locations. The
agency did not report finding any tapes from the Murrah Building itself.
“The FBI made no edits or redactions in the processing of these videos,”
Bresson stated. “The tapes are typical security cameras — the view
switches camera to camera every few seconds.” Bresson declined to elaborate
when AP made further contact with him.
Even if the cameras were switching views, it is highly unlikely that they would
all switch simultaneously away from the location where the truck bomb went off.
Trentadue is convinced that the complete lack of footage from before the blast
is evidence by omission that the FBI doesn’t want the public to know what
the cameras recorded. “They don’t do anything by accident,”
he noted.
Trentadue would probably make one exception to that statement: Federal officials
don’t do anything by accident except when they mistake the identity of
an innocent person as someone who is guilty. It was just such a case of mistaken
identity that started Trentadue on his quest to unravel the mysteries of the
OKC bombing.
Trentadue’s brother Kenneth was being held on an alleged parole violation
in the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center in August 1995 when he supposedly
committed suicide. Although Kenneth was not a suspect in the bombing, Trentadue
believes that federal officials mistook him for an associate of Timothy McVeigh
named Richard Guthrie. Kenneth’s body showed signs of beating, torture,
and strangulation that were much more in line with the treatment given prisoners
at Abu Ghraib than with self-inflicted wounds.
When the Trentadue family attempted to investigate Kenneth’s death, they
found that crime scene evidence had been intentionally destroyed, and that the
government was stonewalling their efforts. The family finally won a U.S. District
Court case in 2001 and were awarded $1.1 million dollars due to the government’s
intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The ineptness and cruelty of federal officials may thus be the undoing of the
government’s coverup of what really happened on April 19, 1995. The settlement
from the case against them has provided the funding for Trentadue to continue
his investigation, but it has not been an easy road.
“It’s taken a lawsuit and years to get the tapes,” Trentadue
said. “The more important thing they show is what they don’t show.
These cameras would have shown the various roads and approaches to the Murrah
Building.” And these views would almost certainly have revealed how many
bombers were involved and how they made their getaway.
A television news video posted on YouTube in September 2008 featured an anonymous
source who saw portions of some of the unedited tapes in federal custody. The
source’s information confirms that Trentadue is correct; the tapes did
show multiple bombers, including the infamous John Doe No. 2.
Photo: AP Images
The New American has stayed on top of the OKC bombing story from the
beginning. William F. Jasper most recently wrote about “New Court Decisions
in OKC Bombing” on October 15, 2008. The story includes links to his other articles
that supply much more detailed information about the case, including the involvement
of German national Andreas “Andi” Strassmeir and federal undercover informant
Carol Howe.
Jasper’s determined investigation of the OKC bombing dovetails nicely
with Trentadue’s pursuit of the truth. To find out why the federal government
would want to hide what took place before 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 2005, read
Jasper’s reports.