Bombing rehash
Not much new in congressman’s report

Oklahoman Editorial

Published: December 28, 2006

WE keep thinking we’ve heard the last from U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who is among the crowd that feels it necessary all these years later to continue probing the Oklahoma City bombing. Alas, it’s wishful thinking.

Rohrabacher, R-Calif., on Tuesday released the findings of his congressional subcommittee that spent two years looking into the case. Groundbreaking, it’s not.

After two years, the subcommittee found “no conclusive evidence” that foreign terrorists played a role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The claim that foreign ties assisted Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols is one of the favorites of the conspiracy theory crowd, and has been since shortly after the attack.

Rohrabacher’s panel laments that McVeigh, convicted in federal court in 1997 and executed in 2001 after he dropped his appeals, was put to death as quickly as he was. It would have been better, the backseat drivers concluded, for the feds to take more time to question McVeigh about others who may have helped him. Never mind that McVeigh had six years after the attack to start singing, and that he made no mention of others besides Nichols in his biography. In fact he boasted, “Isn’t it kind of scary that one man could reap this kind of hell?”

How much more time to talk with McVeigh would have sufficed? Another six years? Twenty-six?

Of course, no skeptic’s look into the Murrah bombing is complete without a jab or two at federal investigators, and Rohrabacher’s report doesn’t disappoint. It says the FBI didn’t fully investigate whether others may have assisted McVeigh and Nichols, and that the FBI shouldn’t have called off its two-month, worldwide hunt for John Doe No. 2.

An FBI spokesman, rightfully so, defended the agency. “Agents at virtually every office, domestically and overseas, covered thousands of leads,” he said. “Every bit of information was investigated and reviewed.”

There were investigation-related problems along the way, yes — for example, the subcommittee noted the explosives found just last year at Nichols’ former home in Kansas. But these do little more than provide fodder for conspiracy theorists, who wouldn’t be satisfied with any government explanation for what happened that Wednesday morning.

Say this for Rohrabacher: He took his work seriously. He traveled to Colorado last year to interview Nichols in prison, and he and subcommittee investigators went to the Philippines to interview friends and family of Nichols’ ex-wife. But the report is little more than a rehash of what others have been suggesting for more than a decade now.

Rohrabacher says questions remain. He had intended to dig around even more, but dropped those plans because of trouble contacting witnesses who have moved on. Would that others might do the same.