Counterterrorism Blog

There's an interesting story out of Oklahoma that has gotten surprisingly little media attention.  Joel Hinrichs III died on Saturday after apparently detonating an explosive device while sitting on a bench about 100 yards from Oklahoma University's football stadium during the Kansas State-Oklahoma University game.  There's speculation that Hinrichs may have been a suicide bomber.

Obviously, some terrorism experts have had bad experiences trying to make sense of past events in Oklahoma -- and it's good that the media didn't make a spectacle of this incident before the facts became known.  However, information has come to light in the past couple of days that makes this case worthy of more sustained attention.  First of all, a local TV station has reported that Hinrichs had been attending the same mosque in Norman, Oklahoma that alleged 9/11 "twentieth hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui frequented.  On top of that, Dustin Ellison, a feed store operator in Norman, claims that Hinrichs attempted to purchase ammonium nitrate a few days before his death.  The store didn't carry the product because of federal guidelines regarding its sale.  Ammonium nitrate was a key ingredient in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

A local television station reports that sources have stated that one of the components in the bomb used by Hinrichs was triacetone triperoxide (TATP).  TATP is relatively easy to make, and is one of the most sensitive explosives.  Attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid had TATP in his shoes.

Local television in Oklahoma is also reporting that Hinrichs attempted twice to enter the Kansas State-OU game before he exploded.

However, the FBI released a statement Tuesday announcing "that there is no current threat posed by additional explosive materials, that there is no known threat from anyone else related to the incident and that there is no known link between Hinrichs and any terrorist or extremist organization or activities."

What to make of these various facts?  A definitive conclusion cannot be drawn at this point.  The FBI's statement seems to reflect the fact that the Bureau couldn't find additional threats or links between Hinrichs and terrorist organizations in the three days following the incident; I don't take it to mean that they've investigated exhaustively and determined that no such links exist.  Oklahoma University officials and Hinrichs's father have played down any possible terrorism link.  Hinrichs's father said that Hinrichs was skeptical of ideology in general, and that "Joe would have become a Muslim fanatic when pigs fly."  Alan Swann, a psychiatrist at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, stated that this may have been an intentional suicide, but that if it was, Hinrichs probably wasn't trying to hurt anybody else.  He did allow, however, that blowing yourself up with a bomb is an unusual method of committing suicide if you don't intend to harm anyone else.

Indeed it is.  Perhaps Hinrichs's attendance of the mosque that Moussaoui attended and his attempt to purchase ammonium nitrate have reasonable explanations unrelated to terrorism.  (Or perhaps the sources are wrong about this information; one hesitation I have about drawing conclusions in this case is that many of the reported facts are based on fairly sketchy sourcing.)  However, there's enough to this story that it deserves more attention.  It would be significant if Hinrichs had been motivated by radical Islam.