Security Tapes of Oklahoma City Bombing Raise More Questions

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At the heart of the Oklahoma City bombing case lies a lingering question: How did just two men—Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh—manage to mix up a large bomb overnight at a Kansas lake, drive it into Oklahoma City and set it off at the Murrah Building on April 19, 1995?

For a time, the FBI believed there was a third accessory to the crime, referred to as John Doe No. 2 and depicted in a police composite sketch as a muscular man with dark hair. Investigators initially pursued the possibility that John Doe No. 2 was in the cab of the truck, jumped out before the bomb blew up, and made a clean getaway.

But then the government dropped all references to John Doe No. 2. Early on in the case it maintained that there was no evidence supporting the existence of a third participant, and insisted its extensive investigation proved that the bombing had been carried out by two main players: McVeigh and Nichols.

In the July/August 2007 issue of Mother Jones, I wrote about a strange twist in the investigation: the case of a laborer called Kenney Trentadue. His brother Jesse, a Salt Lake City attorney, has accused federal agents of wrongly suspecting Kenney of being John Doe No. 2. When Kenney did not confess to aiding the bombing, Jesse Trentadue alleges, the agents beat him to death in a prison outside Oklahoma City and tried to cover it up by claiming he had killed himself. Kenney’s death was indeed ruled as a suicide, but Jesse said his body bore numerous injuries that could not have been entirely self-inflicted. (The government later awarded the Trentadue family a $1.1 million settlement for its handling of the death.)
 
Ever since the bombing, Trentadue has been fighting the Bureau and Justice Department in one lawsuit after another to try and figure out what happened to his brother. In the process he has delved deep into the bomb case itself. He has sought to interview Nichols, a move opposed by the FBI and denied by a federal appeals court. He has submitted FOIA requests to obtain CIA files on the bombing, with scant success.

Now his search has at last borne some fruit. As the Associated Press reported Sunday, the government has released a set of surveillance tapes filmed moments before the bomb went off—tapes which have, until now, been withheld from the public. When Trentadue looked at footage from the various cameras around the site, he said the tapes had a blank spot in the minutes before the blast—eliminating imagery of the truck carrying the bomb and  people in the vehicle. Trentadue concludes that key parts of the tapes have been edited out—an accusation certain to fuel suspicions that the government may have withheld relevant evidence in the case. You can see the newly disclosed footage here.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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