OU football stadium bombing update.

When University of Oklahoma (OU) student Joel Henry Hinrichs III blew himself up on October 1, 2005, the FBI and OU officials held a hurried press conference to assure the public that the incident was merely a tragic suicide by an emotionally disturbed student, with no connection whatsoever to terrorism. That is the line that most of the media have followed in the months since, discounting evidence pointing toward--as we reported in "Terrorists in Mid-America," in our October 31, 2005 issue--Mr. Hinrichs' involvement with an Islamic terror cell in Norman, Oklahoma. The bomb inside Hinrichs' backpack detonated on his lap as he sat on a park bench outside the OU stadium, where 85,000 fans had turned out for the OU-Kansas State game. If the bomb had detonated inside the stadium, there could have been many more deaths besides that of Mr. Hinrichs.

In a February 28 briefing on the explosion investigation, Norman Police Department bomb expert Sgt. George Mauldin told the Norman City Council that Hinrichs probably didn't commit suicide, as had been widely reported. "I believe he accidentally blew himself up," the Associated Press reported Mauldin as saying. When asked if he believed Hinrichs meant to enter the stadium with the explosives, Mauldin replied, "I don't believe he intended for an explosion to occur at that spot [on the park bench]." "Someone saw him fiddling with it [the backpack] shortly before the explosion occurred," Mauldin continued. "I think he got cocky, and it went off."

However, if Hinrichs, a 21-year-old engineering student, was fiddling with the bomb, it may not have been out of cockiness. According to witnesses, Hinrichs did indeed try to enter the stadium--more than once--but turned away rather than allow his bag to be searched by security guards. Very likely, he then decided to disarm or reset the explosive device, which, according to Sgt. Mauldin, was composed of two to three pounds of homemade triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a highly unstable explosive. TATP was also the explosive-of-choice for Islamic convert Richard Reid, the shoe bomber who was subdued by fellow passengers while he was trying to detonate his bomb with a match aboard a Paris-to-Miami American Airlines flight on December 22, 2001. According to witnesses, Hinrichs converted to Islam and, together with his Muslim roommate, a Pakistani student, attended the same Norman mosque attended by 9/11 conspirator Zecharias Moussaoui, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing suspect Melvin Lattimore (aka Mujahid Abdulqaadir Menepta), and other radical Muslims.

Sgt. Mauldin confirmed that the police and FBI removed "a lot" of military ordnance and explosives from Hinrichs' apartment, and that Hinrichs' notes, along with shrapnel found in the apartment, showed that he had been experimenting with bombs intended for killing others, rather than himself only.