A July 1, 2017 Washington Post article by Stephanie McCrummen was headlined, “Love Thy Neighbor? When a Muslim doctor arrived in a rural Midwestern town, ‘it felt right.’ But that feeling began to change after the election of Donald Trump.”
The article describes in detail the experiences of 42-year-old Ayaz Virji, his wife, Mussarat, and their three children who moved to rural Dawson, Minnesota (population 1,450), where Dr. Virji accepted a position as Chief of Staff and Medical Director at the Johnson Memorial Health Service, a small three-doctor hospital.
The Washington Post article was later described by Jihad Watch as a “puff peace” and as “yet another mainstream media whitewash of Islam.” The Post article goes on to describe several speeches arranged by a local Lutheran minister in which Dr. Virji attempted to proselytize local residents, convincing them that Islam is, in fact, a “religion of peace.” The Jihad Watch article goes on to say that, “Virji’s popular claim, based on FBI studies, that “non-Muslims have perpetrated 94 percent of American terrorist attacks between 1980 and 2005″ is still frightening, considering that Muslims are only one percent of Americaâ’s population.”
The Jihad Watch article cites a study of American terrorism in the years 1990-2006 which claims that, “If you remove two outlier events… the September 11 (2001) terrorist attacks and the Oklahoma City Bombing… far-right extremists have killed more than twice as many people (272) as Islamist extremists (130).” The old adage that “figures don’t lie, but liars figure” has never been more appropriate. Or, as Benjamin Disraeli once said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Having spent a good deal of time over the past six weeks helping to edit a soon-to-be-published book on the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, I am fully aware that the only way Dr. Virji can conclude that far-right extremists are more deadly, statistically, than Islamic terrorists is by assigning all 169 of the Oklahoma City deaths to the actions of right wing anti-government zealots. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The book, The Medusa File II — The Politics of Terror and the Oklahoma City Bombing, is written by a friend and neighbor, Craig Roberts, a 27-year veteran of the Tulsa Police Department and the author or co-author of some twenty books, both fiction and non-fiction. Because of his vast international network of contacts, Roberts was the only local police officer assigned to investigate the bombing at the specific request of the FBI.
The U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for FBI Director-designate Christopher Wray have been very instructive. Having read the 350-page Medusa manuscript three times, as well as Patrick B. Briley’s book, The Oklahoma City Bombing — Case Revelations, and investigative reporter Jayna Davis’s book, The Third Terrorist, one time each, I can only conclude that Mr. Wray and the Judiciary Committee members who questioned him exist in an alternate universe.
The picture we get of the FBI while listening to the senate confirmation hearings is 180 degrees out of sync with reality. Given the FBI’s criminal coverup of the TWA Flight 800 shoot-down, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the assault on the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, and other disasters, there is not much about today’s FBI that resembles in any way the agency depicted in the long-running ABC television series of the 1960s and ’70s.
For example, while the lead investigative agency, the FBI, was quick to conclude that the attack on the Murrah Federal Building was carried out by just two anti-government radicals, former Army buddies Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, unimpeachable eyewitness testimony confirms that there were at least four terrorists present at the Murrah Building in the minutes before the explosions (plural) occurred.
In the minutes prior to the first explosion at 9:03 AM, eyewitnesses saw Timothy McVeigh and a dark-complexioned Middle Eastern man, referred to as John Doe No. 2, park their Ryder truck, containing a large Ammonium Nitrate/Fuel Oil (ANFO) bomb, at the intersection of NW 5th Street and North Harvey Avenue, just one block west of the entrance to the Murrah Building.
Why were they parked a block west of their target? They were parked at that location because the parking space at the entrance to the Murrah Building was temporarily occupied by a United Parcel Service delivery truck. When the UPS driver reentered his truck and drove away, two other Middle Eastern men, both dressed in blue jogging suits, stepped into the vacant parking space and signaled McVeigh to come forward with the Ryder truck.
Eyewitnesses testify that, when McVeigh had parked the Ryder truck at the entrance to the Murrah Building, his Middle Eastern companion walked briefly to the rear of the truck before hurrying across the street with McVeigh to the Journal Record parking lot where McVeigh’s yellow Mercury Marquis had been pre-positioned. They entered the getaway car and sped away, nearly running over a Journal Record employee who was taking a smoke break outside his workplace. The two Middle Eastern men in blue jump suits who had saved the parking space for McVeigh, ran to a late model brown Chevrolet or GMC pickup truck with a dark plastic bug shield on the front of its hood, parked at the intersection of NW 5th Street and Broadway, just yards in front of the Ryder truck. They made a right turn onto Broadway and sped away.
One might ask, weren’t there security cameras in the neighborhood to record all of that activity? The answer is, yes, there were security cameras, all of which recorded the activity in front of the Murrah Building. In addition to the security camera on the front of the Murrah Building itself, which was likely destroyed in the explosion, a security camera mounted on the Regency Towers apartment building, across the street and one block west of the Murrah Building, and a security camera mounted on the nearby Oklahoma Water Resources Building, recorded everything that took place in the minutes before and after 9:00 AM.
However, the only people who have ever seen those tapes are FBI agents assigned to the case. A former employee of an Oklahoma City videotape duplication service has told investigators that he produced 400 copies of the tapes and that two FBI agents were at his side throughout the entire process to ensure that he did not “purloin” a copy or two for himself. It was later learned that one rogue FBI agent attempted to sell a copy of the tapes to a Los Angeles TV station for $800,000.
In addition to reproducing some 400 copies of the tapes, the FBI ordered all security cameras in the area removed, the mounting holes filled in and painted over, and the electrical wires removed from inside the walls. They made it appear as if the security cameras had never existed. Since that day, the FBI has refused to allow anyone to view those tapes, not even when ordered to do so by the federal courts.
Just after 10:00 AM, one hour after the bombing, as first responders were combing the building, looking for the injured and dying, the FBI ordered everyone out of the building. Then, for the next hour or two, as the screams and moans of those still trapped inside filled the air, a team of 40-50 federal agents, dressed in black raid jackets with no identifying FBI or BATF markings, were seen loading a large number of file cabinets and file boxes into ambulance-type vehicles backed up to what was left of the Murrah Building.
Asked when rescuers could reenter the building to search for more dead and injured, FBI spokesman Gene Pogue replied, “It’s unfortunate, but no one is allowed back until the files are secured.”
Because of the large pit blown into the floor of the building’s subterranean parking garage from a second, but larger, bomb placed inside the building, it is unlikely that the federal agents could retrieve all the file cabinets and file boxes that they were sent to recover. That being the case, it is understandable that the federal government ordered the building leveled to the ground at the earliest possible time.
We may never know what critical “secrets,” more important than life itself, are buried forever beneath the shimmering reflecting pool of the Oklahoma City National Memorial. And unless Craig Roberts’ new book is able to create renewed interest in the terror attack that everyone from Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno, down to federal prosecutors and dozens of FBI and BATF agents were so anxious to mischaracterize and cover up, we may never know the identities of all those who participated in the murder of 169 people that day.
What is most interesting about the investigation that followed is that, even though Bill Clinton himself assured the nation just days after the bombing that there was “no Middle Eastern connection,” local law enforcement officials, freelance writers, and investigative reporters were quick to determine that a number of individuals of Middle Eastern descent were directly involved in the attack. Within days, a number of those individuals were identified as employees of an Oklahoma City realtor and slumlord, a Palestinian named Samir Khalil.
So, what is most interesting about Mr. Khalil? Almost any reasonable person would begin to draw conclusions upon learning that Mr. Khalil was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York… unless, of course, we are agents of the FBI, the BATF, or prosecutors for the U.S. Department of Justice. Then, and only then, would we view the active participation of Mr. Khalil and his Muslim employees as nothing more than an “unfortunate coincidence.”
Paul R. Hollrah is a retired government relations executive and a two-time member of the U.S. Electoral College. He currently lives and writes among the hills and lakes of northeast Oklahoma’s Green Country.