Terrorists in mid-America: the October 1 suicide bombing outside the University of Oklahoma football stadium may have been the work of a terrorist cell, not simply the act of a disturbed student.

Many of the 85,000 football fans at the Oklahoma University-Kansas State game on Saturday, October 1 thought they were hearing thunder. Others thought fireworks or a game cannon had been set off. But some in the packed Oklahoma Memorial Stadium were anxiously thinking "BOMB!" The loud explosive noise that erupted during the game's second quarter "was heard as far as five miles away," according to a report in The Oklahoma Daily, the university's student newspaper.

It was indeed a bomb that had caused the explosive sound, but many in the stadium did not know that until after the game. By then, news stories were already reporting some of the grisly facts. Some 30 yards from the entrance to the stadium was the lower half of a man's body; the upper half had been completely blown away in an apparent suicide bombing.

The following day, the remains of the body were identified as those of 21-year-old OU engineering student Joel Henry Hinrichs III. University officials and spokesmen for federal law enforcement agencies reacted quickly to assure the public that the bombing was simply the act of a mentally disturbed student, with no evidence of any connection to terrorism.

"We know that he has had what I would call emotional difficulties in the past," said University President David Boren in an October 2 press statement. "There is certainly no evidence at this point which points to any other kind of motivation other than his personal problems." In a joint statement, U.S. Attorney John Richter, FBI Oklahoma Bureau Chief Salvador Hernandez, and OU Police Chief Elizabeth Woolen said, "At this point, we have no information that suggests that there is any additional threat posed by others related to this incident."

Another Coverup

But some local media and independent sources in the Norman, Oklahoma, area where the incident took place, contacted by THE NEW AMERICAN, have challenged that official line, pointing to ample evidence indicating that Hinrichs was involved in a terrorist plot--and that the above-named officials are involved in a massive coverup.

KWTV Channel 9, the Oklahoma City affiliate of CBS, has reported a number of stories that conflict sharply with the official line that there is "no evidence" pointing to a connection between Hinrichs and terrorism:

* Police found Islamic jihad literature, as well as 1,000 pounds of explosives, in Hinrichs' apartment.

* Hinrichs shared his apartment with Fazal M. Cheema, a Pakistani; and a search of the apartment turned up a one-way airline ticket for Cheema to Algeria. The FBI questioned Cheema and released him. Now they don't know where he is.

* Hinrichs dropped out of school in 2003 and did not reenroll at OU until the spring of 2005. The FBI has not accounted for his whereabouts during this interim.

* Hinrichs, who sported a Muslim-style beard, had been attending the nearby mosque and was associated with a group of Muslim Pakistani students.

In addition to the above, a number of other disturbing facts that defy mere coincidence point toward a terrorist connection in the Hinrichs bombing:

* The Norman Police Department has confirmed that on September 28, three days before the explosion, Hinrichs had attempted to purchase 1,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from Ellison's Feed Store in Norman. Mr. Ellison, who refused to sell him the fertilizer, has confirmed the story in several interviews. Ammonium nitrate, which has been a common ingredient of bombs used by al-Qaeda and other Middle Eastern terrorist groups, was also the main ingredient of the 1995 Oklahoma City truck bomb.

* According to unconfirmed reports, Hinrichs had made more than one attempt to enter the stadium, but was turned away when he refused to allow security personnel to search his backpack.

* The Parkview Apartments where Hinrichs resided are located less than a block away from the mosque attended by 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, Melvin Lattimore/Menepta, and other members of al-Qaeda's Norman Cell.

* The OU football bombing took place during the first week of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which is in keeping with the al-Qaeda plan for a great October Ramadan offensive that first came to light in a May 30, 2005 letter from al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden.

The Boren-Tenet Connection

As former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Oklahoma University President David Boren has been in the thick of a stinky intelligence morass concerning terrorism since long before the 9/11 attacks. Boren was the main sponsor of George Tenet to be named director of the CIA, and it was Boren who urged President Bush to keep Tenet as director in his new administration. Tenet, who was not qualified to head the powerful spy agency, had served as Boren's staff director on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Boren resigned his Senate seat in 1994 just a step ahead of a major sex scandal that could have killed his political career. W. Scott Thompson, a homosexual activist professor at Tufts University (and fellow student with Boren at Oxford University) had "outed" Boren as a longtime homosexual. Boren took a political appointment as president of OU where for the past decade he has reigned.

While Boren has reigned at OU, al-Qaeda's Norman Cell and a radical fundamentalist mosque have operated under his nose (and his protection). Zacarias Moussaoui, Marwan al-Shehhi, Mohammed Atta, Melvin Lattimore/Menepta, and Ziad Jarrah can be considered some of his honorary OU alumni.

Hussain al-Attas and Mohammad Yaseen Haider are some of his official OU alumni. Al-Attas was a recruit of Zacarias Moussaoui and Lattimore/Menepta. Al-Attas also is the man who drove Moussaoui from Oklahoma to the Minnesota flight school where Moussaoui intended to receive the pilot training that would enable him to participate in the 9/11 hijackings.

Haider is an especially interesting case, since in 2002 Boren personally intervened to side with him against an American student, Chance Shipman, whom, according to multiple witnesses, Haider was harassing. Among other things, Haider, president of the Pakistan Student Association and allegedly a homosexual, was reportedly making obscene gestures and blowing kisses at Shipman. Boren caused a scandal when he violated the rights of Shipman and another student, Gary Frizell, expelling them in deference to Haider. Boren then provided Haider with a job at the Parkview Apartments where OU bomber Joel Hinrichs would later live and store his explosives. Unfortunately for Boren, his protege, Haider, virtually flamed out in public, first coming under charges of indecent exposure and stalking, then admitting to engaging in a criminal e-mail anthrax threat and lying to the FBI. Even more significant is Haider's arrest by the FBI, along with Moussaoui's associates Hussain al-Attas and Mukkaram Ali, shortly after 9/11.

Then there is Boren's more famous protege, George Tenet. Tenet and his predecessors at the CIA had been pouring tens of millions of dollars into the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, for years. General Mahmoud Ahmad, the head of the ISI, was forced to resign on October 6, 2001 when it became known that he, our "prized asset" in the war on terror, was intimately involved with the 9/11 hijackers, having wired $100,000 (via Ahmad Umar Sheikh) to 9/11 "ring-leader" Mohammed Atta. Tenet managed to hang on nearly three more years, resigning in 2004, amid steadily mounting criticism over his 9/11 "failures."