By Chuck Hustmyre
(Continued)
In September 2005, Joel Henry Hinrichs III, a 21-year-old engineering student, blew himself up with a homemade bomb outside the University of Oklahoma football stadium. Police later found jihadist propaganda in his apartment. According to published reports, Hinrichs had connections to a local mosque and may have recently converted to Islam.
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| Joel Henry Hinrichs III |
Authorities later identified the explosive he used to construct his bomb as TATP, the same explosive used in the July 2005 London subway bombings and the same type jammed into the shoes of Richard Reid, the man dubbed the "shoe bomber" after his failed attack on a commercial airliner in December 2001.
Authorities said Hinrichs's death was a simple suicide and not an attempted suicide bombing at the packed OU football stadium.
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| John Allen Muhammad (left) and Lee Boyd Malvo |
In October 2002, Muslim convert and Nation of Islam member John Allen Muhammad and his teenage sidekick, Lee Boyd Malvo, terrorized the Washington, D.C. area when they went on a three-week shooting spree that left 10 dead and three wounded.
Federal, state, and local authorities did everything they could to convince the public that Muhammad and Malvo were not terrorists. At Malvo's trial, the jury got a look at some of his drawings, which included sketches of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and the burning twin towers in New York.
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| Hesham Hadayet |
On July 4, 2002, Hesham Hadayet, a 41-year-old Egyptian, walked up to the El Al Airlines counter at Los Angeles International Airport armed with two pistols and a knife and shot six people, killing two, before an Israeli security agent shot him dead.
Immediately after the shooting, FBI spokesman Matt McLaughlin said there was no indication the shootings were terrorist-related. The same claim was made by the mayor of Los Angeles and echoed by a Bush administration official. It took a year before the FBI acknowledged the shootings were an act of terrorism.
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