Sloppy Reporting by the Wall Street Journal about Joel Hinrichs and the University of Oklahoma Bomb

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

To appreciate these comments, readers need to review this Wall Street Journal article about the OU bomb.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email...

It was written by Ryan Chittum and Joe Hagan. Chittum is an OU journalism graduate. OU president David Boren, mentor and patron of George Tenet, has worked frantically to convince the media that the death of bomber Joel Hinrichs was just an "individual suicide" by an "emotionally troubled" student.

It was quite a disappointment to see Chittum’s involvement with this amateurish work of pseudo-journalism. His reporting on The Oklahoma Daily, when he was an OU student in the fall of 2001, was actually much better. Additionally I have reviewed his comments to the Power Line blog.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/0...

Of Hinrichs, Chittum writes to PowerLine:

"All I can say about how it is known he didn’t try to enter the stadium is that authorities have reviewed camera footage and talked to the guards and ticket-takers, specifically the ones at Gate 6, which was where the second-hand report of someone trying to enter came from. The Gate 6 people specifically denied to authorities they ever saw anything suspicious or told anyone that they did."

The problem is that, in his Wall Street Journal article, Chittum did not write that the "Gate 6 people specifically denied" the claims by Adam Smith, who told the Oklahoma press about a strange character fleeing from Gate 6 after being told to submit to a backpack search. Smith was not mentioned in the Journal article, so it appears that Chittum did not even interview him. That failure, along with his lack of familiarity with what Smith said, definitely reflects Chittum’s descent into amateurism. (Smith’s comments were in The Tulsa World, October 7.)

Chittum wrote that it was an "untrue" claim that Hinrichs had "tried to enter the stadium twice but was rebuffed." Adam Smith did not make that claim. He did not identify Hinrichs, but only reported a person with a backpack fleeing after trying to enter and being told to submit to a search. Smith did not say that the event happened twice. Chittum has set up a straw man. He has falsely constructed a phantom claim, and then triumphally announces having refuted it.

Chittum also adds to the confusion with this statement: "Several bloggers have jumped to try to connect the dots in the case and speculate that the 21-year-old Mr. Hinrichs was a suicide bomber under the influence of Islam."

As PowerLine has pointed out, the question of whether Hinrichs was influenced by extreme Jihadism is separate from the question of whether he wanted to commit mass murder.

Chittum is parroting Boren, a master propagandist who has worked frantically to use the claimed absence of Jihad materials in Hinrichs’ apartment as the basis for dismissing consideration of the possiblity that Hinrichs had intended to kill other people with his powerful bomb.

In the WSJ article, Chittum tried to dismiss the entire matter with this statement: "The FBI’s investigation is nearly complete. On Oct. 4, the FBI issued a statement saying, ’At this time, there is no known link between Hinrichs and any terrorist or extremist organization(s) or activities.’"

This is extremely misleading. The Associated Press has reported that "investigators [presumably FBI] have said they may never know whether Hinrichs wanted to get inside the stadium [with his bomb]."

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/new...

There are other deficiencies in Chittum’s WSJ article, which apparently was constructed largely from statements provided by OU administrators. He fails to report the following confirmed facts: (1) that the explosion was three minutes before halftime, (2) that Hinrichs was seated on a bench adjacent to the sidewalk, and (3) that Hinrichs was blown apart by the bomb, which also destroyed the bench, blew out two windows in the microbiology building, rattled homes five blocks from ground zero, and could be heard five miles away.

Go here for more information about the OU bomb:

http://journals.aol.com/mpwright9/m...