OVer at Jayna Davis’ website she claims Timothy McVeigh andTerry Nichols were “lily white” recruits for Islamic terrorists.
This seems to be getting a lot of press supporting her claims and I have found almost no media sources disputing them.
What do you think about her accusations? Crackpot with good intentions or is she really on to something?
Dubya would be thrilled to lay the Oklahoma bombings on the doorstep of Islamic terrorists and given his track record so far I don’t think I’d take him at his word on this.
My vote is for crackpot.
[QUOTE]
"Her theory has been embraced by Fox News celebrity Bill O’Reilly and by the wild Clinton-haters at Free Republic. She’s recently been toasted in the far-right editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times as a ‘brave’ and ‘intrepid’ reporter. And defense hawks like former CIA detector James Woolsey, and former Reagan Defense Department official Frank Gaffney–always on the hunt for additional reasons to invade Iraq – have been singing Davis’ praise.
"[But former USA Today reporter Tom Potok says: “I just think it’s folly. The Oklahoma City case attracted every conspiracy theorist on the planet, including some second-rate reporters who believe they’ve stripped the cover off the conspiracy of the 20th century. Nothing against Jayna Davis, but she’s gotten an idea in her head that’s not based on real evidence.’”
/QUOTE]
From http://media.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2551-2002Dec3?language=palm&vendor=avantgo
There’s a vote against her.
Right. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
She’s an AssHat, Admiral Class.
It’s interesting that none of this came out before 9/11, the miraculously appeared after the attacks.:rolleyes:
Her story seems to depend on allegations of McVeigh’s being seen with an Iraqi resident of OK City named Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini.
Al-Hussaini lost a defamation suit over this issue against Davis in 1999, and the 10th Circuit Court dismissed his appeal just last month.
So, although Davis’s reporting was not legally considered to be deliberate defamation or reckless disregard of truth, the guy she fingered has continued to live and work and file lawsuits in the US for the last eight years. If the feds really thought this guy was involved with terrorism, it seems to me they’d probably have picked him up by now.
(I especially liked the claim that Davis “has also found evidence that Islamic terrorists boasted of having recruited two ‘lily whites’ for terrorism.” What evidence, the article doesn’t say.)
If you want a different flavor of conspiracy theory, you can check out the argument that white supremacist groups were responsible for the OK City attack.
But of course, the white-supremacist theory is useless as a justification for going to war in the Middle East.
I can’t give any cites, but I read several stories around the time of the Timothy McVeigh trial, that either/both he and Terry Nichols spent some time in the Philippines and met with Muslims. I’ll admit that’s rather flimsy evidence, but it’s a start.
medstar: …either/both he and Terry Nichols spent some time in the Philippines and met with Muslims.
That’s apparently derived from one of Davis’s allegations, to wit (from the link above):
In other words, the evidence seems to consist of the alleged fact that Nichols and Yousef were in the same city at the same time. Since Cebu City is a reasonably big place (nearly three-quarters of a million people) and a very popular tourist destination, I’m not sure I consider that terribly conclusive.
After all, my aunt in Florida was probably in the same city as one of the 9/11 terrorists at some point, but I don’t think I’m going to bother to call the FBI about her.
Well, you may chose to follow your heart.
But I have been instructed by my government to report all suspicious things, whether they’re suspicious or not.
So tell your Aunt to expect a knock at her door any day now. She’s on my list.
I had heard her on the radio awhile back. She didn’t come across as a total wackjob. I got the impression from what she said that McVeigh went to the Philippines to hook up with people who were knowledgeable about explosives. It was a McVeigh/terrorist connection, not the other way around.
If there was a connection with Iraq, it was an opportunistic one.
It’s all okay in the end, because we blamed Muslims anyway when Ok bombing happened anyway. Rather unprofessional leaps to conclusions were made, and several Muslims in the city were attacked.
That’s true; everyone seemed rather confident Arabs/Muslims were responsible. I don’t know why McVeigh would need a link to Iraq to do what he did. He didn’t need major international financing or anything like that.
Shoot, meant to say a little more. His terrorist equipment was a rental truck and some home-made explosive (fertilizer and gasoline or some such). Different tools from the suicide bombers and things we’re seeing today anyway. Also completely different goals. I’ve never read anything to make me think he was a Muslim, either. Wasn’t he a Gulf War vet?
In addition to this, McVeigh is also known to have met with a white supremacist group known as Elohim City, and members of Elohim City actively encouraged terrorism against the United States government. Both groups viewed Islam as a Satanic effort to engender violence against the White race, so I find it difficult to believe that he ever followed Islam or worked with any Muslim terrorist organizations. McVeigh’s ties to Elohim City and the Aryan Republican Army are covered in the book Messianic Revolution, by David Katz and Richard Popkin, if you’d like a cite.
Magiver has a good point about opportunistic. Gun runners and people looking to be naughty often end up shopping in the same places.
True. Although we have the problem of a distinct lack of evidence. :rolleyes:
cite?
For documentation of anti-Muslim hate crimes after the OKC bombings, check out the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) publication “Rush to Judgement”.
Read "American Terrorist to get Timothy McVeigh’s account of the details surrounding the bombing. No Islamic or Iraqi terrorist links. It is a great read, though. HIGHLY recommended. This guy was a whack-job from jump street.
Jayna Davis is trying to jump on the increasingly overcrowded conservative pundit/author bandwagon. She’ll eventually have a book advertised at the top of The Drudge Report home page.
Sorry, Jayna. Another vote against your “journalism”.