Draft:Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy theories

From RationalWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Information icon.svg This is a draft that anyone is free to edit as they would a mainspace page.

Do not add categories to draft pages; use {{draft categories}} instead for a view.

Contributors should nominate draft articles for deletion only if they believe that the article is not applicable to RationalWiki's mission.

Articles involving living persons must conform to our guidelines on biographies of living people.

Some dare call it
Conspiracy
Icon conspiracy.svg
What THEY don't want
you to know!
Sheeple wakers

No event in United States history can occur without somebody coming up with an elaborate theory to explain it, and the Oklahoma City bombing, done by Timothy McVeigh on April 19, 1995,[1] is no exception. Although the conspiracies around this event have largely been supplanted by the 9/11 Truth Movement, this is not to say that some haven't thought up odd justifications about the event which, like all conspiracy theories, have no real evidence to back them up.

Many of these ideas come down to little more than noting gaps, which, to be fair, are sometimes actually there (a surprisingly rare point for the conspiracy theorist), and using them as a jumping off point to promote their pet theories. The problem with this should be obvious: Although somebody could legitimately use information we don't have to conclude "we don't know anything," or even justify a vague sense of "something's going on," that doesn't actually prove the pet theories the person is promoting. Furthermore: If we don't have the evidence to fully justify the narrative put forward by the federal government, how exactly are we supposed to believe that some guy on the internet has the evidence to indite the entire federal government or whatever group said person is mad at?

John Doe no. 2[edit]

John Doe Number 2

Shortly after the bombings, many witnesses reported seeing a second conspirator along with McVeigh, who was nicknamed "John Doe No. 2."[2] Since the incident, numerous theories have been brought forward over who exactly John Doe No. 2 actually was. The FBI once arrested bank robber and white supremacist Michael Brescia because of his physical resemblance to John Doe No. 2, but they later released him on lack of evidence.[3] Others have proposed that Richard Lee Guthrie, Jr., who was a member of the same group as Brescia, was the actual man the FBI were looking, but they dropped the lead after arresting the wrong person and said person dying in their custody.[4]

Another common suspect is Jose Padilla, American-born al-Qaeda operative who also shares a decent physical resemblance with the alleged helper.[5]

However, again, nothing about this is even close to concrete. In truth, the odds of a person having an exact doppelganger is about one in one hundred thirty five,[6] and you don't need to be an exact doppelganger to resemble another person to the point of confusion. As mentioned above, nobody knows for sure who exactly John Doe No. 2 is, and anybody claiming otherwise is just plain lying to you.

Just plain stupid[edit]

As you would expect, these theories start to go off the wall rather quick, with talk about who was "really behind" the bombings. Suspects include:

  • Saddam Hussein[7]
  • The Clinton Family[8]
  • Iran--yes, seriously.[9]

References[edit]