Our taxpayer dollars seem to be at work finding the culprit of the Boston terror attack last Monday. But on taxpayer-funded NPR, counterterrorism reporter Dina Temple-Raston was already guessing this was domestic not foreign. “The thinking, as we've been reporting, is that this is a domestic or extremist attack,” Temple-Raston declared on the April 16 All Things Considered.
So, besides the pressure cooker bomb, whose directions on building it can be found on the Internet, what evidence shows that this is probably domestic terrorism? Where’s the manifesto? Who’s claimed responsibility? All are question marks at this point, so what’s with the incessant speculation by some in the media. Yes, it could be a crazy right-winger, or an al-Qaeda operative, but what ever happened to a simple narrative of there was a bombing, it’s awful, people died, and federal authorities are investigating the matter? But Temple-Raston heavily implied this matches with past acts of right wing – and domestic – terror:
Well, officials told us that they have some promising leads, though no actual smoking gun. They expect this case will take weeks, not months, to solve. The thinking, as we've been reporting, is that this is a domestic extremist attack. And officials are leaning that way largely because of the timing of the attack.
April is a big month for anti-government, and right wing, individuals. There's the Columbine anniversary. There's Hitler's birthday. There's the Oklahoma City bombing. There's the assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. And the FBI right now is comparing this to the Eric Rudolph case. That’s the 1996 bombing at the Olympics in Atlanta. That involved a relatively simple bomb that was hard to trace.
First of all, what does Hitler’s birthday, a huge statist and war criminal, have to do with someone who is anti-government? Most American right-wingers are not pro-Hitler. Also, Tax Freedom Day, which is today, is the date that most on the right side of the political spectrum are enthralled about, and the celebration is usually done in private – without bombs. On Twitter, NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep noted that Temple-Raston scoffed at foreign Muslim involvement: "Asked about "Saudi national" off-air, @nprdina scoffed."
Temple-Raston also mentioned how authorities were relying on the public, and their knowledge, for any new leads. Yet, what’s ironic about Raston’s Atlanta reference is that the same media fiasco after the bombing led to them falsely implicating the security guard, Richard Jewell, who discovered Rudolph’s bomb in Centennial Olympic Park. When Jewell became an unofficial suspect, the Atlanta Journal Constitution described him as being no different from serial child killer Wayne Williams. NBC’s Tom Brokaw later said:
The speculation is that the FBI is close to ‘making the case’ in their language. They probably have enough to arrest him [Jewell] right now, probably enough to prosecute him, but you always want to have enough to convict him as well. There are still some holes in this case.”
Right now, no one knows anything. It’s not al-Qaeda. It’s not right wing extremists. It’s not environmentalists. It’s not leftists. If one should speculate, at least mention all the possible parties involved. Lastly, let’s not repeat the Jewell debacle. This could take a long time. Eric Rudolph would commit three more bombings before being arrest in North Carolina in 2003, seven years after Atlanta.
(H/T Revealing Politics)
