OK... so there I was, checking out my daily Yahoo! News when I came upon an article that caught my attention.
"Attorney: Oklahoma City bomb tapes appear edited"
In the article, it discusses how a Salt Lake City attorney named Jesse Trentadue has been privately investigating the April 19th, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Apparently he just received security camera tapes from the FBI and feels there is a problem...
The tapes turned over by the FBI came from security cameras various companies had mounted outside office buildings near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. They are blank at points before 9:02 a.m., when a truck bomb carrying a 4,000 pound fertilizer-and-fuel-oil bomb detonated in front of the building, Trentadue said.
"Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995. There ain't no such thing as a coincidence," Trentadue said.
Apparently Jesse feels that the US Government is not being completely forth coming with the evidence it has, and has no problem shooting his mouth off about it...
He said government officials claim the security cameras did not record the minutes before the bombing because "they had run out of tape" or "the tape was being replaced."
"The interesting thing is they spring back on after 9:02," he said. "The absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI doesn't want anybody to see."
He's not done yet...
FBI agents did not report finding any security tapes from the federal building itself.
The FBI in the past refused to release the security camera recordings, leading Trentadue and others to contend the government was hiding evidence that others were involved in the attack.
"It's taken a lawsuit and years to get the tapes," Trentadue said.
He received the latest batch of tapes over the summer in response to an April request for video from security cameras in 11 different locations. Nothing on the tapes was unexpected.
"The more important thing they show is what they don't show," Trentadue said. "These cameras would have shown the various roads and approaches to the Murrah Building."
The more important thing they show is what they don't show??? OK... I have had my fill of layer double talk. I realize our judicial system is a joke, but I am just not sure I can take any more. When the words "beyond a reasonable doubt" were coined, it was meant to make sure a jury was sure they were convicting the right person. And that, if they weren't certain this was the guy, they didn't convict him wrongly.
Is it just me or have the attorneys of today decided the best defense is to create reasonable doubt? Reasonable doubt was never meant to be 'created', it was simply meant to either be present or not. When did it go from, "As this man's defense attorney, I present you this evidence that my client is Innocent and could not have possibly been the man who committed the crime" to "As this man's defense attorney, here are 100 other possibilities that are meant to confuse and distract you from the fact my client committed the crime."
And now... we have this 'do gooder' lawyer in salt lake that is making the same argument about the Oklahoma City Bombing evidence. Essentially he is saying that, because I wasn't given the evidence, the evidence must be missing rather than non-existent. I will admit that he has two things going for him... 1) it is rather coincidental that 4 cameras did seem to mis-function at the worst possible moment that would have provided much needed evidence, and 2) our federal government seems to be less than forth coming with evidence to the public.
Which leads me to my second half of my rant (the first being about lawyers, the bums)... why is our government so secretive with it's own people? I understand they can not give out every detail, but all to often they seem to hide even the simplest of details. I will chose one of the most contested 'conspiracies' as my example.... JFK. Personally, I believe there was a cover-up. What all it covers, I am not certain. But from the evidence I have seen, it appears to me that there was more than a single shooter. But yet, our government emphatically denies any conspiracy and that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman. Why? If they have fool proof evidence that he was, then why don't they release it? Instead they have classified documents, mis-placed evidence and (in my opinion) made a joke of themselves in how obvious information has been withheld... and all in the interest of public safety. Safety from what?
Why does our government repeatedly cover up things or hide information from us? Now, I am not suggesting they start sending out mailers with the nuclear codes on them... I realize some secrets are needed and most would pertain to military. But why couldn't it simply open to the public all evidence of the JFK assassination? Who would it hurt (besides those that covered anything up to begin with)? And think of what would be achieved politically by the president that did such an act. He/She would be a god!
Picture if you will... Obama sitting at his desk in the oval office giving a public address to the nation (OK nothing new there)... "My fellow Americans, tonight I sit before you humbled as your leader and must admit that our government has been part of a massive conspiracy against it's own people. For 40 years now secrets have been kept and hidden from you the people, secrets that should have been available for all to see. As of this moment the secrecy ends. (President hold up a black binder with the presidential seal on it) This is a presidential decree in which I am lifting any withholding of information in regards to the assassination of our former president John F. Kennedy. For all those that have wanted access to the evidence, you shall now have it. (Opens binder and signs the document). I have appointed a Czar (couldn't help myself) to oversee all other 'classified' documents that should also be released to the public. By this I mean all documentation regarding Roswell NM, Big Foot, the chupacabra, etc. Provided there is no information contained within that would otherwise compromise our military or law enforcement agencies, you shall have full transparency into what your government has previously hid from you. You are the people of the United States, and you deserve to know the truth. Thank you, and God bless the United States."
If this ever happened, the man would be untouchable and go down in history of one of the greatest presidents ever! He could completely botch Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Korea, etc. The people would applaud his forth coming and honesty above any other failure. So why doesn't the government step up to the plate? Why can it not be honest... even with itself? I mean of course... why other than the fact that government and honesty are complete polar opposites. I guess my question is.... why does government feel it must be dishonest with the citizens that elected it? And why, as the citizen, do we tolerate it?
I have a theory... I think it is because uncertainty is more powerful than truth. If the government gave us truth, we the citizens probably wouldn't know what to do. Obviously those that agreed would go along, and those that disagreed would abstain. But, by keeping all of us confused and uncertain, we all just 'go along' since we don't have hard evidence one way or the other. Our suspicions are just that, suspicions. If we know a politician is lying to us, we wont vote for him. Likewise, if we think he is telling the truth... we will. But if none of us are sure what he is saying is true or not... we might assume he is lying as all politicians do, but still vote for him since we are unsure.
So... to come full circle, is it any wonder that our government it now ran by lawyers? The same people that like to confuse a jury with 'reasonable doubt' are the same people that would like to keep us in the dark and confused as citizens. We are more controllable that way. And thus why we keep electing them, and they keep hiding the truth from us.
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Thought you might be interested in my follow-up to the recent AP piece about Jesse Trentadue’s FOIA-obtained surveillance tapes from the area around the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. On Monday, I wrote and published a copyrighted story about those recently-released tapes, based upon materials provided by — and conversations I had with — Jayna Davis, author of “The Third Terrorist.” Important note: I sought her out and became the first journalist/blogger with whom Davis has spoken about the case in four years. link
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, the History Channel (yeah, I know) had a piece on the JFK assassination in which they re-created the scene virtually and accounted for every single piece of evidence, including the audio tape (the extra shots were attributed to echos from the nearby buildings). They also proved that one man expertly trained could cycle the bolt on a rifle (remember that Oswald was a former Marine) fast enough to fire all the necessary shots. It looked pretty convincing to me, but there again, take it for what it's worth (I'm not a forensics expert and don't play one on TV).
ReplyDeleteBob – Thanks for the added info about the Oklahoma City Bombing, your posts were quite informative. I hope you did not take my post to be condescending to the subject of the Bombing itself, but rather that I was addressing an ever increasing popularity by lawyers to fabricate reasonable doubt. Perhaps the lawyer in the story was not doing this, but the way he phrased things it seemed to fit the theme I have seen time and time again in recent trials.
ReplyDeleteLarry – There is still a tremendous controversy over the JFK Assassination. I have seen reenactments in favor of both scenarios and both were quite convincing. I have even been to the sight of the incident and looked out the very window from which LHO supposedly fired his 3 shots, I have stood on the grassy knoll behind the fence… in the end, a single individual seems a bit of a stretch to me based on the way the events happened. In the end, I would be far more convinced that LHO was the loan gunman had our federal government not immediately classified most of the evidence it used to convict him and kept it from the public. Whether there was a cover-up, the feds made it seem as if there was. Unfortunately, I feel that we will never truly know the truth.