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At Least 31 Are Dead, Scores Are Missing After Car Bomb Attack in Oklahoma City

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Aphrodite
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« on: April 19, 2010, 07:13:09 am »

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Aphrodite
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« Reply #1 on: April 19, 2010, 07:13:36 am »

At Least 31 Are Dead, Scores Are Missing After Car Bomb Attack in Oklahoma City Wrecks 9-Story Federal Office Building
CLUES ARE LACKING U.S. Officials Scurry for Answers -- Reno to Ask Death Penalty
By David Johnston

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Washington, April 19 -- The authorities opened an intensive hunt today for whoever bombed a Federal office building in Oklahoma City, and proceeded on the theory that the bombing was a terrorist attack against the Government, law-enforcement officials said.

President Clinton appeared in the White House press room this afternoon and somberly promised that the Government would hunt down the 'evil cowards' responsible. 'These people are killers,' he said, 'and must be treated like killers.'

Attorney General Janet Reno, speaking to reporters at the White House in early evening, said that casualty figures from the scene were climbing and that of the 550 people who worked in the building, 300 were unaccounted for.

Ms. Reno said Federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty against the bombers. 'The death penalty is available,' she said, 'and we will seek it.'

But the authorities said they had no suspects, and questions about the identity of the bombers swirled around the case. The only solid fact was the explosion itself.

Some law-enforcement officials said the bombing might be linked to the second anniversary today of Federal agents' ill-fated assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., an operation that ended in a fire that killed about 80 people, including many children. Among the offices housed by the Federal building in Oklahoma City was one quartering local agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the agency that Branch Davidians and their sympathizers blamed for the confrontation.

But other officials said that neither the Branch Davidians nor right-wing 'militia' groups that have protested the Government's handling of the Davidians were believed to have the technical expertise to engage in bombings like the one today.

Some experts focused on the possibility that the attack had been the work of Islamic militants, like those who bombed the World Trade Center in February 1993.

But if so, it was unclear why they would have struck in Oklahoma City. Some Middle Eastern groups have held meetings there, and the city is home to at least three mosques. But of the estimated five million Muslims in the United States, 'there's just very, very few out that way,' said Imam Muhammad Karoub, director of the Federation of Islamic Associations, based in Redford, Mich, a Detroit suburb.

Several news organizations, including CNN, reported that investigators were seeking to question several men, described as being Middle Eastern in appearance, who had driven away from the building shortly before the blast. There were also reports that the authorities had interviewed employees at a National Car Rental office in Dallas about a recently leased truck.

But Federal officials here said they could not confirm those reports. Indeed, investigators said they did not know whether the bombers were domestic or international terrorists.

The authorities said the bomb had probably been packed in a vehicle parked outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, where the explosion left a 20-foot-wide, 8-foot-deep crater in the street.

Officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said they had not determined the bomb's chemical makeup, which they suspected to be ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, both easily available substances of the type used in the World Trade Center bombing. They said the damage led them to conclude that the bomb, if it was made of ammonium nitrate, might have weighed 1,000 to 1,200 pounds, about the size of the trade center bomb.

From offices and bases around the country, Government aircraft carried to Oklahoma City an array of Federal law-enforcement officials, emergency management personnel and military forces, an operation that constituted one of the vastest responses to a crime in American history.

The firearms bureau sent national emergency teams to coordinate the examination of the bomb site, the analysis of the explosives and the search for fragments of the vehicle in which the bomb was believed to have been planted.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation sent four special agents in charge of field offices in New Orleans, Houston, Phoenix and Dallas to manage the investigative operation.

From Fort Sill, Okla., the Pentagon sent two medical evacuation helicopters, Army soldiers trained in bomb disposal and two canine bomb detection teams. The Air Force sent a 66-member rescue squad, along with two ambulances, from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. It also dispatched 38 trauma-team members from Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio.

Military transport aircraft flew 68 civilian firefighters and a 60-member search and rescue team to the site. In addition, the Pentagon said about 80 soldiers from the Oklahoma National Guard's 745th Military Police Company were helping to provide security around the Federal building.

A 24-hour F.B.I. command center with 400 telephones was established in Oklahoma to coordinate the work of explosives teams, bomb technicians and portable scientific gear used to analyze chemical residues.

Mr. Clinton learned of the explosion about 10:30 A.M. from his press secretary, Michael D. McCurry, just as the President was beginning an Oval Office meeting with the Turkish Prime Minister.

The White House chief of staff, Leon E. Panetta, left the meeting about 11 with instructions from Mr. Clinton to call Attorney General Reno and make sure that Federal agencies were coordinating their responses and had all the resources they needed.

The President later dispatched James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to Oklahoma, and left the Oval Office periodically the rest of the day to watch reports from the scene on a television in his secretary's office.

'Like most Americans,' Mr. McCurry said, 'he was troubled, expecially by pictures of the children' who had been killed.

The President also discussed the situation with Oklahoma's Governor, Frank Keating, and members of the state's Congressional delegation. Later he wrote out remarks in longhand, then went to the White House briefing room about 5:15 to deliver them to the waiting reporters.

But aides said Mr. Clinton had also felt that it was important to keep up with the rest of his schedule. So he met as planned with representatives of three Iowa television stations who had come to interview him about a conference on rural America that is scheduled for Ames next week.

Justice Department officials heard early reports of the blast but said later that they had not realized the extent of the damage until they watched television accounts from the scene. Ms. Reno spent much of the day monitoring developments and sent Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick to the White House to advise officials there.

Later, Ms. Reno met with Mr. Clinton, discussing Federal statutes that might apply to the crime and telling him that a standing emergency response plan had been put into effect, sending teams of Federal agents to Oklahoma City.

It is unclear whether the Government had received any intelligence indicating that any group had been planning an attack, and also unclear whether there had been any sign of movement like that leading to the explosion at the World Trade Center.

In the case of the trade center, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, charged with being the mastermind behind the bombing, entered the United States under an assumed name, recruited local supporters to carry out the detail work and then fled the country within hours of the blast, the authorities say.

Several officials said there had been no threats before the Oklahoma City blast and no credible claims of responsibility afterward. The officials added that there were numerous witnesses among occupants of the building and said the site could yield a wealth of clues about the chemical composition of the bomb and the identity of the vehicle that presumably carried it.


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"He who controls others maybe powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.” - Lao Tsu
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