Did the University of Oklahoma Bomber Try to Enter the Football Stadium?

Michael P. Wright —
Norman, Oklahoma, USA
mpwright9@aol.com

Summary of Events:

On the evening of Saturday, October 1, while a football game was in progress at the nearby stadium, Joel Hinrichs, a University of Oklahoma engineering student, was packed with explosives and seated on a bench near a sidewalk in front of the microbiology building. He knew that within a few minutes the sidewalk would be full of people during the halftime break. The west gate of the stadium was a two-minute walk from the bench. Three minutes before the half, the bomb exploded and killed him.

The bomb was powerful enough to be heard five miles away, rattle homes five blocks from ground zero, disintegrate Hinrichs’ upper body, destroy the bench, and blow out two windows in the microbiology building. Police later searched Hinrichs’ apartment and found more explosives. Two days before the bombing he was seen attempting to buy ammonium nitrate in a feed and seed store, but the clerk was suspicious and refused to sell it to him. Ammonium nitrate was used in the Oklahoma City bomb of April 1995.

OU president David Boren, widely known as the patron and sponsor of George Tenet, has been frantically trying to convince the public that this event was no more than an "individual suicide" by an "emotionally troubled" individual. Boren is highly concerned about keeping the flow of revenues from ticket sales and donations into the athletic program. Others in the OU community not encumbered by these interests are suspicious that Hinrichs had intended to kill football fans during half-time but experienced an early accidental detonation.

Reports of Hinrichs Trying to Enter Stadium

There have been reports of eyewitnesses having seen Hinrichs attempting to enter the stadium but fleeing after being asked to submit to a search of his backpack. On October 7, the Tulsa World reported that OU officials want to convince the public that Hinrichs did not try to enter the stadium before the explosion. OU student Adam Smith tells a different story. The World reports a conversation between Smith and a ticket-taker, who wanted to know what had happened.

Smith said he told the gate worker that there had apparently been an explosion outside the stadium and that someone had been killed. "He gave me a wide-eyed look, and said: ’Oh, that’s really strange,’ " Smith said. The ticket-taker recounted that a young man who looked strange and was wearing a backpack that looked full tried to get into the stadium. Smith reported that he was told that the man with the backback did not submit to the search and "sprinted away."

Adam Smith also told the same story to Oklahoma City TV news station KWTV. The video is available at their website at the time of this BellaCiao post. Follow these instructions to find it:

http://www.newsok.com/video

Select 2005-10-05 as video date;

Scroll to bottom of list;

Select: "Sources: OU suicide bomber attempted stadium entry."

Officials Not Disclosing Evidence

KWTV also reported that the Justice Department requested that the warrant enabling the search of Hinrichs’ apartment be sealed. The court granted this request, and this insures that the public cannot know what was taken from it. There have been suspicions that extremist Jihad literature was found.
Follow these instructions to find this report, which follows the bus driver interview:

http://www.newsok.com/video

Select 2005-10-07 as video date;

Select: "Part-time bus driver recalls OU suicide blast."

This raises questions. Boren wants us to believe that no terrorist conspiracy existed and that the death was just an "individual suicide" by an "emotionally troubled" student. If there were no other suspects, then certainly no harm would come to a prosecution effort by describing all the evidence found in the Hinrichs investigation, for the purpose of informing the public about the true nature of the event. We deserve all the evidence available in order to assess our own risk level for terrorism. Football fans deserve to know this in the process of deciding whether to attend games. There can only be two reasons for keeping a lid on the evidence, at this time:

1. there are other suspects, and disclosing it at this time might interfere with prosecution strategies, or

2. Hinrichs, acting alone, did have terrorist intentions, but the courts and FBI are helping their friend Boren in covering this up.

See these related reports:

Direct link to a news video featuring David Boren denying that there is any "sensational" information about the Hinrichs bombing:

http://www.kfor.com/global/video/po...

BellaCiao posts:

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php...

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php...