Lawyer Says Newly Released Okla. Bombing Tapes Appear Edited
A lawyer is questioning a gap in some tapes of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal bombing.
Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue obtained the tapes through a Freedom of Information Act request. ”The real story is what’s missing,” Trentadue told the Associated Press. The tapes show the confusion after the bombing, which killed 168 people.
”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 told AP.
”The interesting thing is they spring back on after 9:02,” he told the wire service. ”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.”
Trentadue said government officials told him the tapes did not record the minutes before the bombing because the tape had run out or the tape was being changed.
The Oklahoman, which obtained the tapes from Trentadue, offers another possible explanation. The newspaper says many clocks on the tapes are slower than the actual time and the glitches could be from the explosion.
Many of the recordings are from Southwestern Bell, an apartment building, the public library and the Journal Record Building, the Oklahoman said in an earlier article.
Trentadue asked for the tapes because he is pursuing a lawsuit that claims his brother died in custody after government officials mistook him for a bombing conspirator and beat him. The government says Trentadue’s brother committed suicide.
