Via Salon, I learn that the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page is pushing a range of conspiracy theories implicating Iraq in both World Trade Centre attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing. The interesting thing about these theories is not Iraq but the fact they require the continuing complicity of the US government at all levels.

On Oklahoma City, the WSJ relies on a local journalist Jayna Davis and reports

Ms. Davis, for example, has a copy of a bulletin put out by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol immediately after the Murrah bombing. It specifies a blue car occupied by “Middle Eastern male subject or subjects.” According to police radio traffic at the time, also obtained by Ms. Davis, a search was on as well for a brown Chevrolet pickup “occupied by Middle Eastern subjects.” When an officer radioed in asking if “this is good information or do we really not know,” a dispatcher responded “authorization FBI.” Law-enforcement sources tell Ms. Davis that the FBI bulletin was quickly and mysteriously withdrawn. (emphasis added)

Similarly, on the First World Trade centre bombing, the source is a ‘Middle East expert” Laura Myroie, and the WSJ says:

Beyond this, Ms. Mylroie contends that the bombing was “an Iraqi intelligence operation with the Muslim extremists as dupes.” She says that the original lead FBI official on the case, Jim Fox, concluded that “Iraq was behind the World Trade Center bombing.” In late 1993, shortly before his retirement, Mr. Fox was suspended by FBI Director Louis Freeh for speaking to the media about the case; he died in 1997. Ms. Mylroie says that Mr. Fox indicated to her that he did not continue to pursue the Iraq connection because Justice Department officials “did not want state sponsorship addressed” (emphasis added).

Of course, all of this was under the hated Clinton administration (which just happened to be bombing Iraq on a regular basis, but let that pass). The Bushies have been in office for two years, and, if the WSJ is to be believed, seem equally determined to give Saddam a free pass.

The WSJ opinion pages have always been extreme, but, in my opinion this kind of thing, which is, after all, news (claims about fact) rather than opinion, undermines the credibility of the paper as a whole. (To anticipate criticism, I should note that the WSJ does not explicitly endorse these conspiracy theories – it simply reports them and fails to mention the extensive contrary evidence or discuss their inherent improbability).