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January 2, 2023

In January 1997, the Clinton White House issued an unintentionally comic 332-page report titled, “The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce.” Even before social media, the Democratic-media complex understood they were losing their grip on information flow. Their response was to deem all real investigative reporting as conspiracy theorizing.

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On April 19, 2005, I learned that there was a European version of this complex, one even more tenacious and absurd. That April day was the day all my streams crossed.  I was well aware of the date on that day because it marked the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and the 12th anniversary of the FBI’s lethal attack on the religious community in Waco. 

I was aware of those dates for two reasons. I had recently released “Mega Fix: The Dazzling Political Deceit That Led to 9/11″, a a semi-documentary that reviewed the events at both Waco and Oklahoma City. More to the point, a few weeks earlier I had received a tip that an explosive cache was still buried in the former Herington, Kansas, home of Oklahoma City conspirator Terry Nichols. My source, concerned that the explosives might be used in a tenth anniversary attack, also contacted the FBI.

On Saturday, April 2, 2005, I drove out to Herington from Kansas City to check out the tip. What I discovered is that on late Thursday, March 31, the FBI had descended on Herington. On Friday, April 1, the Topeka Bomb Squad evacuated the neighborhood and retrieved the explosives. By the time I arrived on the morning of April 2 there was no sign of anything amiss and no reports in the news beyond Junction City.

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The original source of the tip was Terry Nichols himself. His apparent goal in sharing this information with my source was to expose the man who allegedly supplied the explosives, a reported FBI informant named Roger Moore. Nichols also wanted to expose the FBI’s role in supplying the material to Moore. Nichols was sure Moore’s fingerprints would be on the material. Sound like a familiar M.O.?

My source had tipped off the FBI three weeks earlier, but the agents waited until March 31, I suspect, because Terri Schiavo died early that morning. Schiavo’s highly publicized fight for life sucked all the air out of the news. It was a little embarrassing for the FBI to have found this cache four years after Timothy McVeigh was executed for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

On that same afternoon of March 31, former Clinton national security advisor Sandy Berger pleaded guilty to stealing classified documents from the National Archives. That story was a little embarrassing too—the less attention paid to the details the better. Also consuming much media attention during those days was the death watch on Saint Pope John Paul II. In fact, I was on my way back to Kansas City on April 2 when I heard the news that he had died.

On the morning of April 19, 2005, I arrived in Paris to attend a media conference on TWA Flight 800. Since that flight was Paris-bound when destroyed off the coast of Long Island in July 1996, the French media were still interested in who shot it down. The American media were not. I suspect the documents that Berger risked his very freedom to steal concerned TWA 800 and possibly even their connections to a Philippines-based plot that tangentially involved Terry Nichols.

Having a day to kill before the conference on April 20, I wandered around Paris jet-lagged and found my way to Notre Dame—back when the famed cathedral still had a roof. Two things surprised me when I entered. One was that there were large TV screens set up in several places, which struck me as a tad blasphemous. Even more surprising was that the pews “reserved for the faithful,” were actually filled with the faithful watching the TV screens.

I was in the cathedral no more than 30 seconds when the image on the screen switched from a French talking head to the balcony of the Vatican. There it was announced that a new Pope had been selected, and it was German Cardinal Josef Ratzinger.