Southwest
Oklahoma City bombing: FBI agent reflects on response to attack 29 years later
Nearly 30 years ago, Ret. FBI Special Agent Barry Black responded to the worst homegrown terrorist attack in U.S. history with just a year of experience as a bomb technician under his belt.
Black was one of two FBI bomb techs in the entire state of Oklahoma, including Jim Norman, when he arrived at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which housed offices for approximately 500 government employees, around 9:30 on April 19, 1995. Nearly half an hour earlier, at 9:02, ex-Army soldier Timothy McVeigh ignited a bomb that took a third of the nine-floor building, killing 168 victims.
“It was horrific and chaotic. The scope and magnitude of the destruction was something like I had never seen before,” Black told Fox News Digital of his memories of the attack 29 years later. “{I’ve] sadly seen similar since. But other than the first World Trade Center attack, the U.S. had not seen an attack like this.”
Black’s responsibility as a bomb tech was to “assess the scene,” he said.
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“We were told maybe it was an airplane crash or a gas main explosion. Clearly it was not. And … the scale was something that few had seen in this country,” the former special agent said.
The explosion registered a 6.0 on the Richter scale and was felt an estimated 55 miles from the scene, according to the Justice Department. It left cars upturned and damaged more than 320 nearby buildings.
Among the 168 who perished in the attack, 19 were children, as the Murrah building housed a daycare on the second floor. The last of the deceased was a nurse who had been responding to the emergency when a piece of falling debris struck and killed her.
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Black went into the building every week to pick up a paper paycheck. The tellers who handed him that paycheck every week “were all killed,” Black recalled.
His wife, a federal probation officer, was also in the building that morning, but she drove out at 9 a.m., two minutes before the explosion.
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“I have been to a number of these catastrophic events. What makes this a little different is: this was in my backyard. These were people I knew. My wife was in the building. At 9:00, she drove out — two minutes before the detonation — and it was about an hour and a half before I knew she was OK,” Black recalled.
When he arrived, “the devastation was overwhelming,” he said.
“But as I did what we call the initial survey — kind of a walkabout to try to assess the damage and get a handle on what may or may not have occurred — I asked some of the security people … if they’d seen my wife, and I recall one specifically said, ‘Yep, I’ve seen her and she’s fine.’ Well, that sort of freed me up. He later told me that he had not. He just thought I needed to hear that she was OK. So, good, bad or indifferent, that’s what he told me. And it took a little of the load off.”
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While sorting through rubble for evidence a day after the attack, investigators came across the rear axle of a Ryder rental truck used to detonate the bomb with an identification number on it.
“That morning, a reserve deputy called myself and the other bomb tech, Jim Norman, to that rear … axle, and he wiped away some grease, and we wrote down that CBI and then physically gave it to a runner who … took it to the command post,” Black recalled.
From there, investigators were able to track down the fake name McVeigh used to rent the vehicle, and employees at the rental shop were able to help investigators put together a composite sketch of their suspect. Once the sketch was released to the public, a hotel employee in Junction City, Kansas, identified the suspect as 27-year-old McVeigh.
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By April 21, authorities learned McVeigh was already in jail after a state trooper pulled him over about 80 miles north of Oklahoma City, just 90 minutes after the bombing, for a missing license plate, according to the FBI. He had a concealed weapon on him at the time and was detained.
Later on, federal agents found evidence of the chemicals used for the bomb on McVeigh’s clothing and a business card on which he had written, “TNT @ $5/stick, need more,” according to the FBI. Authorities also arrested Terry Nichols, who helped McVeigh make the deadly bomb.
Following 28,000 interviews that were conducted across the world, investigators were able to piece together McVeigh’s and Nichols’ motives for the horrific act: They were angry about the April 19, 1993, Waco siege, as well as the August 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, according to the FBI and DOJ.
“I’m confident we know his motivation. It was intended to be the first blow in an upheaval and overthrow of the federal government,” Black said. “Intent is one of those things that’s intangible but required to prove. So there was a great deal of time spent looking into why he would do this. And the same is true whether it’s domestic or international terrorism. But his motivation was proven clearly.”
Black said lessons from the FBI’s investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing are still relevant today, and those lessons are part of what he teaches as a professor at the University of Central Oklahoma Forensic Science Institute.
“There are specific things we would look for on scene, like parts of the bomb, parts of the vehicle that carried the bomb. And that information needs to get relayed quickly to the command post so that the larger, broader external investigation can begin. And that’s how we had McVeigh and Nichols in custody in about 54 hours after detonation,” Black explained. “It was a massive undertaking with law enforcement work[ing] very, very well together.”
McVeigh was executed in 2001 at age 33.
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Southwest
Dallas to Tokyo flight canceled after Japan Airlines pilot's booze-fueled 2 am hotel rager
Japan Airlines grounded a flight from Dallas to Tokyo last week after a hotel room noise complaint exposed the captain’s excessive drinking the night before its scheduled takeoff.
The airline confirmed that flight JL11 from Dallas to Tokyo on April 23 was canceled because its unidentified 49-year-old pilot was allegedly drinking with crew members the night before, Japanese outlet The Mainchi reported.
Guests reportedly made several complaints about the pilot and crew members’ behavior in the hotel lounge and a hotel room after they returned from dinner in Dallas. Police issued a warning to the pilot after they were called to the scene around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, Japan Airlines told USA Today.
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Although the pilot did not violate the airline’s guidelines against drinking within 12 hours of liftoff, Japan Airlines said they canceled the flight due to “the need to assess the captain’s physical and mental well-being.”
The airline specified that the flight was not canceled because the pilot was intoxicated at the time of the flight:
“It is true that the captain consumed alcohol,” a spokesperson told the Japanese outlet, noting that “there was a sufficient interval between alcohol consumption and the scheduled duty time.”
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Japan Airlines said they were unable to find a replacement pilot in time for the flight’s scheduled departure.
“We sincerely apologize to the customers who were involved in this flight cancelation,” the airline wrote in a statement. “In order to prevent such an incident from happening again, we will thoroughly implement measures to prevent recurrence and work to restore trust in our airline.”
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Passengers on flight JL11 were transferred to an American Airlines flight – it is unclear whether they experienced delays.
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This segment aired on 05/02/24.
Southwest
Cowboys' Dak Prescott will not face charges in 2017 alleged assault case: report
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott will not face any charges in connection to an investigation into an alleged assault that took place in 2017 after police said they found insufficient evidence to support that a crime had taken place, according to a report.
Prescott, 30, was accused earlier this year of assaulting a woman in the back of a vehicle in a strip club parking lot back in February 2017.
According to The Associated Press, attorneys representing the woman sent a letter to Prescott in January requesting $100 million in exchange for her silence, including that she would not pursue criminal charges in connection with the alleged assault.
But Prescott instead filed an extortion lawsuit in Collin County, north of Dallas, against the woman in March.
“Sexual assault is a despicable crime that no person should ever endure,” the lawsuit read. “Defendants’ false claims in this regard undermine the courage of actual sexual assault survivors everywhere as well as the legitimacy of the horrific traumas they have endured.”
The woman then filed a countersuit and criminal charges, prompting the police investigation.
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But a police official told The Dallas Morning News on Thursday that investigators had found “insufficient evidence” to support the case.
“I want to thank the Dallas Police Department and Dallas County District Attorneys’ office for their thorough investigation of the allegations against Dak Prescott,” Prescott’s attorney Levi McCathern told the outlet. “As we knew they would, they found nothing in their extensive exploration of the facts that would support a criminal prosecution. We are confident that at the end of law enforcement’s investigation into the extortion case that they will find the accuser and her attorneys just as guilty as Dak is innocent.”
“As I have said from the beginning, Dak is a great football player, and an even better human. He would never assault any woman. These false accusations were brought up seven years after the alleged events for one reason and one reason only: to line the pockets of the accuser and her attorneys. Their behavior is an affront to all the true survivors of sexual assault.”
Attorneys for the woman have said they will continue to move forward with their counterclaim. According to ESPN, they filed a motion on Monday to have Prescott’s lawsuit dismissed.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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