OKLAHOMA CITY — Long-secret security tapes showing the chaos immediately after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building are blank in the minutes before the blast and appear to have been edited, an attorney who obtained the recordings said Sunday.
“The real story is what’s missing,” said Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City lawyer who obtained the recordings through the federal Freedom of Information Act as part of an unofficial inquiry he is conducting into the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people. Trentadue gave copies of the tapes to The Ok lahoman newspaper, which posted them online.
The tapes came from security cameras various companies had mounted outside nearby office buildings. They are blank at points before 9:02 a.m., when a truck bomb detonated in front of the building, Trentadue said.
“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 said. “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.”
The FBI in Oklahoma City declined to comment and referred inquiries to FBI officials in Washington, who were not immediately available for comment Sunday.
