Federal Judge Slaps FBI for Continuing OKC Bombing Cover-Up

Fascinating read if you have twenty minutes or so.

"During a March 20 hearing in Salt Lake City, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups described as “astounding” the FBI’s claim that critical video of the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing had simply gone “missing” – an assertion that buttresses attorney Jesse Trentadue’s belief that the Bureau has spared no effort to cover up critical facts about the atrocity. Trentadue, whose brother Kenney was murdered by federal agents in Oklahoma shortly after the 1995 terrorist attack, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for surveillance video of Timothy McVeigh parking the truck bomb outside the Murrah Federal Building, and dashcam video of his arrest by a state trooper 90 minutes after the explosion. The FBI claims that these indispensable pieces of evidence regarding what was at the time the worst terrorist act in U.S. history have simply vanished in the tenebrous depths of an official warehouse, much like the Ark of the Covenant was at the end of the first Indiana Jones film. The attorney filed his first FOIA request in December 2006, and the Bureau has done its formidable best to ignore, mislead, misdirect, and otherwise obstruct efforts to produce the records, as it is required to by law. “The FBI has submitted several declarations from its top records manager to show the agency has searched electronic databases and evidence warehouses without success,” reports the Deseret News of Salt Lake City. “But Waddoups said the declarations lack credibility because they do not include firsthand knowledge or details about who, when, where or how the searches were conducted.” Attorney Kathryn Wyer, representing the criminal clique that wittily calls itself the Department of Justice, produced the novel complaint that compelling the FBI to comply with its legal duty to find the video evidence – as opposed to conducting cursory database searches and then dismissing the matter – would be tantamount to issuing a “search warrant.” This objection, which emits the pungent odor of bad conscience and the rank aroma of desperation, is absurd: The purpose of a search warrant is to protect the privacy rights of individual citizens from government invasion, not the reverse. With each new enrichment of the federal government’s surveillance powers, the public is told that the innocent need not fear enhanced scrutiny. Yet the FBI – which is a pillar of the surveillance state – is so anxious to prevent disclosure of key OKC documents that it will take refuge in facially ludicrous claims. What is the Bureau trying to hide? After roughly a decade and a half of investigating the murder of his brother, Jesse Trentadue is convinced that the Bureau is trying to conceal its criminal complicity in the OKC bombing – either by way of culpable negligence in a blown “sting” operation, or as a full partner in a “false flag” operation intended to frame the “radical right” as a domestic terrorist enemy."