Tapscott's On a Roll

Mark Tapscott's appearance on CNN definitely raises some interesting points that relate directly on to how the Hinrichs investigation is proceeding and how various officials are portraying the situation.

Which brings us to what may be a significant development coming out of the CNN segment. Pat DeMuro (SP?), the former FBI agent who was in the New York studio with Aaron Brown tonight, described an agreement when the FBI was reorganized a few years back that all explosions would be presumed to be terrorist acts until proven otherwise.

But in this case the presumption virtually from the outset has been that it was not a terrorist act, so Boren, who was Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee when he retired from politics in 1994, needs to come clean about why the FBI's policy of presuming a terrorist link was junked so quickly in the Hinrichs investigation.

Also significant: At the end, DeMuro made it clear that he "is not saying this wasn't a terrorist act." So far, his former colleagues in the FBI in Oklahoma are insisting they have no evidence that it was a terrorist act, but others in the law enforcement community are beginning to strain at having to toe such an obviously flawed official line.

It would seem that the folks down in Georgia were on the same page as the 'official line,' which is to treat all incidents involving explosives be presumed terrorist acts until proven otherwise. That protocol does not appear to be followed in the Hinrichs' case, despite the fact that there are unanswered questions about motive, methods, and background.

It would seem that the OU President Boren has jumped to a conclusion despite the lack of evidence to support or deny the assertion. He's stated that this was not a terrorist act, but rather the act of a depressed student. Do we really know enough about Hinrichs' background to make that statement?

The one thing I don't quite get is the lack of a suicide note. Did investigators find one? What did it say? Or, was it a martyr's letter - similar to ones found after the scores of suicide bombings around the world.

We simply don't know.

And Mark is joined by Powerline and Rusty of the Jawa Report in taking apart the WSJ article about Hinrichs. Rusty notes:

They simply cite the University of Oklahoma President David Boren's assurances that it was not terrorism--statements he began to make before the investigation had even begun--the protests of Hinrichs' father that his son was not a Muslim, and a single FBI statement in an ongoing investigation.

There are simply too many questions about Hinrichs to make blanket assertions so early on in the investigation as Boren did.

Asking questions about media reports isn't making conspriacy theories. It's called getting to the bottom of the situation. It's about getting the facts straight on a story. It's about pushing the media to cover a story with major significance if the facts do corroborate a working theory that Hinrichs was a suicide bomber looking to kill football fans during or after the OU football game or to confirm that Hinrichs was in fact a loner and depressed when he took his life using the unique method of high explosives.

Technorati: terrorism, suicide bomber, hinrichs, bomb.