Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Remember Jayna Davis? (and related questions)













She's the reporter and investigative journalist from Oklahoma who has spent years tracking down leads that indicate that Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols were involved with various Muslims in planning and executing the terrorist attack in Oklahoma City in 1995 (including a shadowy network of Filipino terrorists associated with al Qaeda, and one or more Iraqi Muslims associated with Saddam Hussein's military).


And Jayna Davis is still at it; though I'm not quite sure what the current status is of her project.

In 2005, she published a book that represents a thorough summation of her investigations up to that point, titled pointedly and provocatively enough:

The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Her website includes a detailed and informative blurb on the book's contents and its reception by various important individuals -- including David P. Schippers, former Chief Investigative Counsel of the House Judiciary Committee for the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton and a former federal prosecutor (under U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy) who scored convictions against a number of high profile organized crime figures.

According to Schippers:

"There is contained in this book not one fact, not one allegation, not one accusation, not one conclusion that is not supported by evidence sufficient to constitute proof in a court of law... The Third Terrorist may well turn out to be perhaps the most vital expose of the young 21st century."

In May of 2005, Schippers conducted videotaped interviews with principal witnesses featured in Jayna Davis's book. Afterward, he noted:

"Given the credibility of these witnesses, I could get an indictment with just one day of testimony before a grand jury".

Others whose appraisal praises the book include former director of the CIA, James Woolsey:

"This fascinating product of Jayna Davis' near-decade of brave, thorough, and dogged investigative reporting effectively shifts the burden of proof to those who would still contend that McVeigh and Nichols executed the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing without the support of a group or groups from the Middle East."

In a 2004 interview, Jayna Davis provides a wealth of information about the issue. In reading her detailed responses, one detects the sober, dispassionate and mature tone of a genuine investigative journalist, not that of a conspiracy theorist.

Nagging Questions:

1) Jayna Davis began her investigations and raised her questions while Clinton was still President, and she continued them into the Bush Administration. Why did neither President take her seriously enough to help her in her investigation? (Forget about Obama; he's hopeless -- at best -- in this regard.)


2) You'd think, considering all the grief President Bush went through trying to persuade the American public, a hostile Democratic party, a biased press, and European allies of the necessity and cogency of an Iraq invasion, that he would have welcomed this supremely juicy casus belli and would have thus pulled out all the stops to help investigate Jayna Davis's theory. Why didn't he?

3) In her 2004 interview, Jayna Davis has recounted the reluctance and resistance she has experienced from F.B.I. officials and from the Department of Justice (among others) when she has tried to raise this issue with them. Why have the F.B.I. and the D.O.J. -- whose job, paid for by our tax money, is to protect us -- been unconscionably remiss in their duty in this regard?

4) Why have our political representatives in Congress, whose responsibility is to protect us American citizens, not opened a formal investigation into this?

5) Why have journalists in the news media, whose responsibility, among other important activities (such as keeping us up to date on Weiner), is to uncover important facts concerning our society's safety, not shouldered some of the burden of investigation into this issue that Jayna Davis alone, apparently, has been bearing all these years?

6) Consider all those hardnosed, hard-hitting conservative news pundits out there -- Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity: Why has none of them taken the trouble to bring the crucial thesis of Jayna Davis to the spotlight for the education of their viewers, and to light a fire under our political representatives?

7) Why has not one potential or rumored (yet still highly influential) Presidential candidate -- Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Giuliani, Palin, McCain, Gingrich, et al. -- at the very least expressed awareness and concern about this issue, let alone promise to make it a priority should they win?

Update:

8) I forgot another nagging question -- one more intriguing (if not any more important than the previous seven): If the Oklahoma City terror attack was plotted and executed with the help of -- or (more likely) under the direction of -- a cell of Muslims, why did no Muslims take responsibility for the attack in order to boast about it and in order to use it as leverage for continued threats against us?

(One possible answer would be that the Muslims involved thought it was in their best interest to make this particular attack seem like a domestic, non-Islamic terror attack; perhaps for polemical uses in the War of Ideas. For, how many times have we heard the “What about Timothy McVeigh?” tu quoque response — at least back in those days we fondly remember when we still thought it was worthwhile to bother with even debating Muslims at all.)

5 comments:

Zeb said...

Hesperado,
I am a friend of the Davis family, read the book several years ago, and I keep abreast of the current events surrounding the Third Terrorist. Here is my take on your questions as I’ve come to understand from reading the book, personal interaction with Jayna and Drew, and from my own experience.
1. President Clinton specifically did NOT want a connection to the Middle East when he heard about the bombing. Within an hour of the bombing, he phoned the governor of Oklahoma and made that desire very clear. And so it followed that the FBI and the DOJ followed suite. Clinton did not pursue justice because he did not want to potentially send soldiers to Iraq. As for Bush, it is possible if not likely that he did not know all of the facts of Jayna’s investigation. Really, if you did not read her book, you would not know the particulars of the Middle Eastern connection to the bombing because the FBI and the DOJ suppressed the facts.
2. Bush was likely not given all of the information about Jayna’s investigation when he entered office. It was a cover-up that would put Clinton in a very bad light if the truth were revealed. So Clinton was under no obligation to put all of the facts in front of Bush.
3. Presidential influence. See answer to question #1.
4. They have. Representative Dana Rohrabacher leads the way, but has very little support. Rohrabacher has, most recently, interviewed Hussain al Hussaini as the man was in jail for taking place in a bar fight up in Maryland.
5. Journalist saw how Jayna ended up getting blackballed, and they did not want the same to happen to them. Jayna lost her job over this investigation. I’m sure that most journalist and their producers probably feel that they can report on more current issues and not fear hitting a wall like Jayna did when she investigated the matter.
6. Bill O’Reily, Glenn Beck, John Gibson and more interviewed Jayna on their programs after the book came out and they entertained her experience for many episodes. What you have to remember is that the time at which this book was released (2004), Bush and the military were already coming under criticism for invading Iraq. For a reporter to stay on the topic of Jayna’s investigation would have likely labeled them as a “conspiracy theorist” in the modern media and ratings would have dropped.
7. My opinion is that when you are a presidential candidate, press time is a commodity. And the things that Americans want to hear right now include plans on employment, repealing Obamacare, cutting spending, establishing a foreign policy, lowering taxes, securing the border, and much more current events than finding the truth behind the OKC bombing.
Hesperado, I am with you in the spirit of your questions. I do wish that congressmen/women and the press would do more to bring light to the facts in Jayna’s book. I know that our country got duped into believing that two anti-government goons managed to resource the materials and pull off the most violent and deadly act of terrorism against the U.S. in the 20th century. Yes, it bothers me. But I do have hope that someday the truth will be brought to light by some brave souls who have the leverage to do so. In the meantime, Hesperado, ask something else…why can’t CURRENT Freedom of Information Act requests get the UNEDITED surveillence videos of the moments prior to the bombing. There are only about 30 of them! “Most transparent administration” eh?

Hesperado said...

Zeb,

Thanks for your informative comment.

I appreciate and agree with most of what you say; but I find the excuses for Bush's negligence in this regard implausible and unpersuasive.

Hesperado said...

Zeb,

P.S: Just to clarify, my question #6 refers not to a mere failure to have Jayna Davis on their show once or twice initially for 15 minutes (at best); it refers to a failure to highlight it and re-visit it several times at least once a year -- because, simply put, it is that important and relevant today as it was 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

Zeb said...

Hesperado,

I agree that there is definitely some sort of negligence in Bush not picking up on the investigation. But I really think that Bush is the only one who could really answer why he never pursued the matter if he had knowledge of the alleged conspiracy. I mean, the bombing happened 7 years before he took office, and he did have the aftermath of 9/11 to deal with after being in office for less than 8 months. I can't say whether he had the power or knowledge or time to investigate this...I mean, the early 2000's was quite a different time in history when you get down to it. But, I agree with you wholeheartedly that if Bush even a little bit of insight into the matter that he was obligated to bring it to light, which he did not.

And regarding the extra air time on the news cycles...I agree that I wish it had been more than 15 minutes here and there. But I'll tell you from an inside perspective regarding television reporting, the entirety of the pursuit of the truth lay in control of the producers. And the producers make it a point to stay unemotional and make decisions solely based on what they feel will get the best ratings. So we have to ask else was going on in 2004...and the answer is "an election"! Do I feel that it was responsible journalism to have Jayna on for 15 minutes and then drop the issue? Absolutely NOT! Her allegations deserved to be brought into bright sunlight for all to examine for more than 15 minutes! I'm not making an excuse for the producers of the shows, because their ignorance was rather shocking since they had no follow-up. I'm just letting you know how it likely happened.

As for your updated question on #8, I don't have much of an answer. I have struggled with that one myself since the trademark of Middle Eastern violence seems to be taking credit for an attack. About the only possible explanation I can come up with is that there were many contributors to the bombing who were located in the U.S., and that silence was to protect those "sleeper cells" instead of taking credit for the attack from half a world away.

Thanks for the questions, Hesperado! This is a passionate topic on which I often feel a loner.

Hesperado said...

Thanks again Zeb.

Time will tell.