Clinton and the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building Office building - what did he do the

[hedgehog]

day it was bombed? I'm wondering because why was the first assumption on 9/11 that the country was under attack? What was the difference in the reactions, and why? Clinton did not go on a rampage to root out all the native terrorists trying to take down the US government. While it made sense to ground commercial air traffic, just why did Bush scurry to hide all across the country? Looking back, wouldn't it have made more sense for Clinton to worry about a truck bomb that day in 1995 than for Bush to worry about someone dropping an airliner on his head on 9/11?

This isn't meant to be an opportunity to praise Clinton and condemn Bush. There really is something important going on here about the different reactions and how American public opinion was orchestrated. Is is simply a matter that we all saw footage of the 2nd airliner hitting the tower and of both towers falling down while all we saw in Oklahoma was the aftermath? Is it because no one ever heard of the Murrah Office Building before that day?

Does anyone rememebr the implications at the time that Clinton was ultimately responsible for the attack on Oklahoma because of the Branch Davidian fiasco? Yet very feww dare to suggest to this day that we helped create and motivate Al Quada!

[Orsino]

1. Also because the perps were quickly caught.

The 9/11 hijackers vaporized themselves along with their targets, leaving * no one to pillory.

[hedgehog]

3. No one remembers that the guys involved in attacking the World Trade Center the first

time are now sitting in US prisons for the rest of their lives! I guess when you let the police do their job, no one notices!

[stirlingsliver]

2. I Do Remember One Thing...

I do remember one thing about the Oklahoma City bombing.

It doesn't have anything to do with President Clinton, though.

What I remember was that in the first few days following the bombing, nearly everyone assumed that a "Middle Eastern" person or group had done it.

I remember the press reporting that the FBI was on the look-out for a "Middle Eastern" group or person.

[hedgehog]

7. I must be the weirdest or smartest person in America!

As soon as I heard a federal building in the West had been bombed, I knew it had something to do with our fringe radical right. When I heard the claim that it was an Arab group that did it, I was asking myself if there was a single Arab who'd even heard of Oklahoma City!

[bunkerbuster1]

12. The minute an NPR reporter noted it was the one-year anniversary of Waco

I remember exactly where I was parking my car when I heard it, and I knew it had to be a right-wing lunatic.

Of course, it was.

[ComerPerro]

4. fuck, there are people who TO THIS DAY still say Clinton was responsible for the OKC bombing

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

17. There are people to this day who think Saddam was responsible.

And some of them work for Cheney.

[Beer Snob-50]

5. It is partially that we saw the plane and the buildings fall

but I think Bush and Cheney going into hiding didn't help quell the feeling of panic in this country.

[hedgehog]

8. But Clinton and Gore didn't go into hiding as far as I know.

Barriers were added on Pennsylvania Avenue to prevent an attack by a truck bomb and the biggest question at the time was whether they could be made to blend into the background! Why were Bush and Cheney so terrified?

[Beer Snob-50]

10. those who wear tin foil hats would say it was all part of

bush's plan to use these events he staged to scare the bejeezes out of us and we would go along hand in hand into iraq.

personally, i think bush and cheney were and still are totally unfit for the job.

as far as i know, clinton and gore didnot go into hiding.

[Spoon]

6. There is an audio file somewhere on the internets

of a meeting that was happening at the time of the explosion, a block or two away. Wish I could find it again.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Clinton learned about the OKC bombing about 50 minutes of it happening. The governor of

OK, Frank Keating, declared a state of emergency about 45 minutes following the bombing and Clinton declared it a federal emergency by 4PM. FEMA was activated and all but 3 bodies had been removed from the building by May 4. The other 3 bodies were recovered when the building was demolished. I'll never forget when Bill and Hill went to OKC and met with the kids on TV.

[tulsakatz]

11. on 9/11, 2 planes hit buildings in a similar way........

...which is why everyone believed it was an attack. One plane could be an accident or maybe some kind of mechanical malfunction but 2 planes makes it an attack!

Although the OKC bombing was bad, it was still only 1 building.

Bill Maher likes to complain about Bush sitting in the classroom for 7 min after he knew the country was under attack. And indeed that did look fishy.......or wimpy. I think the reason why he didn't react is because he knew that was going to happen. Either he was in on it or he knew something like that was going to occur.

Also, I heard that al qaeda was a reaction to the first Iraq war.

[benddem]

13. for some reason

I listened to Rush Limbaugh that day. He went on and on about how it had to be a middle easterner that did this. Wish I could have listened the day they arrested McVeigh.

[jobycom]

14. There were multiple attacks on 9-11. And there was anti-Muslim hysteria over OKC

By the time the second plane hit, it was obvious there was an attack. Then we learned two more planes were hijacked, so no one knew exactly how big the attack was.

Not defending Bush. He fled like a coward, and afterwards made up a lie that Air Force One had been specifically targeted by the hijackers, and that they had received calls at the White House warning them of it, using the proper "terrorist codes." They stuck to that story for a couple of weeks, until it was proven a lie.

But it was clearly a major attack on 9-11.

After OKC, several people reported seeing "Middle Eastern" looking men fleeing the scene, and there were reports of Muslims being harassed. I remember being on web sites (yes, they existed back then) and arguing with people who were condemning all Muslims for the attack. When it turned out to be a white Christian guy, as many of us guessed it would be, the attacks faded, although to this day there remains a wacko conspiracy theory that McVeigh was working for Muslim organizations.

There was also fear of other attacks after OKC. Federal buildings went into high security mode, and for months after that if a cargo van parked too long somewhere bomb squads were called in. Militias were investigated, there was much reporting on them. People were afraid McVeigh's conviction would bring about more attacks. So there was a lot of fear because of OKC, and a pretty big reaction. Not as extreme as after 9-11, but the attack wasn't as extreme. 185 fatalities to 3000, one truck bomb compared to four hijacked airliners. One culprit (ultimately three) to 19, with the backing of a possible international group. 9-11 was a bigger event.

[hedgehog]

15. it was a bigger event, so it differed in terms of quantity, but in what way

was the quality of the event different? As you noted, steps were taken to improve the security at federal buildings. However, where was Clinton's Patriot Act? Why wasn't the FBI sent in to roust out the orators who egged Timothy McVeigh on? Why was one event handled by law enforcement and the other by the military?

Why is crashing a plane into a building (or planes into buldings) an attack but using a truck bomb isn't? Was the Murrah building any less a Federal building than the Pentagon?

[jobycom]

18. Your questions seem odd to me.

How is it similar, other than a big boom with lots of dead people? McVeigh lived here, so law enforcement had to handle it--the military cannot, by law. The suspects still alive after 9-11 were in other countries, so our law enforcement wasn't authorized to do anything. It had to be done by the military and our intelligence agencies. The country in which the main suspects lived was also suspect, so extradition laws weren't likely to help. I'm not agreeing with Bush's reaction--I still oppose the way we attacked Afghanistan and feel that there was not a convincing investigation into who exactly was behind the attacks--but it was a different situation completely.

Clinton, you seem to have forgotten, unleashed a barage of bills giving him much greater authority. Wiretapping, surveillance, loosening of warrant searches, etc. There was a massive law enforcement effort to infiltrate and even pretty much destroy the militia movement in America, whether they were connected to McVeigh or not. I remember this well, partially because of an odd coincidence that involved me in one of the militia crackdowns, and also because there was an outcry from both liberals and extreme righties about Clinton's power grab, and his violations of our rights. There was also a lot of talk and fear about suitcase nukes, dirty bombs, chemical attacks, and all of that. One of the most annoying memory lapses amongst conservatives to me is that the same people who claimed Clinton was overreacting to OKC and the first WTC attack back then are now claiming Clinton didn't do enough to fight terrorism. They were the ones opposing everything he did.

Clinton's reaction wasn't as extreme as Bush's, and obviously Bush slipped a lot of other crap into the Patriot Act and into our military reaction (Iraq, for instance) that wasn't related to 9-11. But the event wasn't as extreme. At worst, after OKC, we were facing a network of militias making bombs out of fertilizer and maybe improvising other weapons (remember the tags they wanted to put in fertilizer after that?). With 9-11, at worst there was fear of foreign nations supporting the terrorists, with the possibility of massive funding, nukes, chemical weapons, etc.

And there's just the issue of scale. If you go out for a hike and get attacked by a dog, you may bring a big stick with you the next time. If you get attacked by a bear, next time you will bring a firearm, hopefully an automatic with the power to stop a bear. The attack on 9-11 showed Americans who had not considered it yet what all was possible.

Anyway, that's the summary. I think you are understating our response to OKC, and I don't think the two reactions were that different, except in scale. But the events were equally disproportionate. I'm not trying to say our response to 9-11 was proportionate--although I think at first most Americans tried to make it so. I'm just saying... well, what I said.

[hedgehog]

22. This is information we need to drag out and look at.

My guess until I read your post would have been that very little was done and is being done by home grown militias.

The knee jerk response to kill someone after 9/11 wasn't the only possible option. What if diplomacy had been used to make it impossible for terrorists to move about the world? What if we'd let loose an army of accountants to find the money? Where was the effort to keep nuclear weapons from floating about freely? (the front company Brewster Jennings was directed at doing exactly that, but Cheney took it off the board!)

Our home grown militias could have just as easily seized the planes on 9/11 if it had ever occurred to them. They might have even had an easier time of it; I would hazard a guess that at least a few trained pilots have joined militias over the years.

The Patriot Act was ready to go on 9/11, yet I have never heard an explanation of why this was so. Did the Patriot Act develop out of bills that Clinton passed?

I do think the two reactions did differ in more than scale. I think Clinton responded with existing institutions without making significant changes. I think Bush took existing institutions and distorted them Now we have the NSA listening in on Americans and the Armed Forces engaging in torture and guarding prisons that Kafka couldn't;t imagine!the institutions available to respond. I think Bush distorted the institutions


Thanks for saying I'm asking odd questions. That confirms my judgement that these are quesations we haven't taken time to ask.

[theboss]

16. Clinton did go on a bit of a rampage against homegrown militia groups

One of my first jobs as a law clerk was working for a defense attorney who was defending a bunch of militia members on what was actually a pretty BS case.

[jobycom]

19. We seem to forget his grab for greater surveillance authority, too.

He passed laws giving him greater wiretapping ability, loosening warrant requirements, and all that. Some people were up in arms over his reactions.

[AnnieBW]

20. People Were Screaming to "Bomb Iran" or Iraq

People were screaming to "bomb Iran/Iraq (take your pick) back to the Stone Age" during that time. Once we found out that it was a home-grown terrorist, I asked them if we should bomb Michigan.

[onenote]

21. aftermath of OK City bombing: new laws, new barriers

It wasn't as instantaneous as the reaction to 9/11, but there were definitely actions taken in response to the OK City bombings. Most notably, the enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (roughly a year after the bombing) and the installation of barriers around the WH and other federal buildings (within days/weeks of the bombing)