Finally... my first conspiracy theory post.
This morning, listening to NPR on WRVO out of Oswego, New York, I heard an interview on the Diane Rehm Show of an author who has written about a city destroyed by a massive explosion in Texas in 1947:
In his book City on Fire (HarperCollins) Journalist Bill Minutaglio writes about the massive explosion that ripped through the thriving port of Texas City, Texas, in 1947, killing hundreds of people and injuring thousands. The tragedy prompted landmark legal battles against the U.S. government.In the interview it was explained how the US government had ensured post-WWII continuation of production of an explosive chemical through facilitating its secondary use as a fertilizer. The chemical was ammonium nitrate and was moving through Texas City by the shipload when it blew in 1947. Sound familiar? This is the same chemical which was used to blow up the Oklahoma federal building in 1995 and, two years earlier, in the first World Trade Centre bombing. At the time of the Oklahoma bombing, all I heard was this was a matter of a common fertilizer being used for evil purposes. Similarly, you can find comments like this on web conspiracy sites:
Some of the terrible fertilizer explosions -- Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center -- were intentional. But I finished high school in the logging town of Roseburg, Oregon the same year Texas City burned. Twelve years later, in 1959, a truck delivering six tons of fertilizer parked overnight in downtown Roseburg. Loggers needed it to blow up large stumps. Lay a sack of fertilizer and a quarter stick of dynamite on a stump -- good-bye stump! This time, someone dropped a cigarette into a trash barrel next to the truck. The fire detonated the truck at 2:00 AM. Luckily the downtown was almost empty. Thirteen people died nevertheless, and the devastation was total over an area six blocks in diameter.As the Eisenhower government - to ensure a supply of explosives for the Cold War - now seems to have maintained wartime production levels by creating a large but previously non-existent peacetime market for the chemical as fertilizer, didn't they not also hand out the tools used later by terrorists knowing full well what it could do? Apparently the stuff is so pervasive that to now retract what is really an armament from public use would undermine US industrial agriculture.
Comments
Brad Pineau - August 28, 2003 10:43 AM
...you and your crazy conspiracy theories...
Alan - August 28, 2003 10:55 AM
Hey, who else is going to take the time on the web to kick the Eisenhower administration? Only bleeding edge thought here.
Alan - April 14, 2004 5:15 PM
I caught this in today's <i>Toronto Star</i> on the arrest of the Canadian in relation to the UK bomb plot:<blockquote class="smalltext">Last month's raids, involving 700 police officers, were one of the largest anti-terrorist operations in Britain in years. The arrests spurred intense media speculation about a plan by Islamic militants to bomb civilian targets in Britain, but police have released no details of the alleged plot. The recovery of the ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer frequently used in bombs, was the biggest seizure of potential bomb-making material in England since the Irish Republican Army called a 1997 ceasefire. </blockquote>I think that really should read "a bomb-making material then used as fertilizer now frequently used in bombs."
SayNay? - April 15, 2004 2:33 PM
I hope you realize, Al, that by merely discussing "ammonium nitrate" in your postings, you have unwittingly invited further scrutiny of your activities and blog site, by the "appropriate government authorties" charged with "homeland" security. You should expect a dead-of-night visit by the "boys" with Fedoras and the black late model Ford, who, you know, will just want to "talk" to you in some "safe" location about "all this fertilizer stuff". You might be seen again, but you won't, believe me, be the same.
Alan - April 15, 2004 2:42 PM
I am willing to share my cheese sandwich lunch with super secret spies at anytime. I had an RCMP file on me in my teens for my Radio Moscow correspondence (confirmed to my Dad by a nice RCMP office in our congregation) and I expect it is still getting little notes added from time to time.
Isn't the history of the stuff amazing, though? I was very tempted to buy the book when I heard the interview. It would be interesting to know how many factories there are that make the stuff and whether there is any need for them to operate now given modern fertilizer science.
Alan - April 23, 2004 3:35 PM
Another reference to the stuff from the North Korean train explosion:<blockquote class="smalltext">North Korean officials had invited foreign counterparts to visit the disaster site tomorrow, she claimed. Speaking about the cause of the blast, she said: "What they've said is that two carriages of a train carrying dynamite ... they were trying to disconnect the carriages and link them up to another train. They got caught in the overhead electric wiring ... [then] the dynamite exploded." In Beijing, Red Cross spokesman John Sparrow said that the trains had been carrying explosives similar to those used for mining. China's Xinhua news agency reported that the blast had been blamed on ammonium nitrate - a chemical used in explosives, rocket fuel and fertiliser - leaking from a train. South Korea's unification minister said that the trains had been carrying fuel.</blockquote>From The Guardian.<p>[<i>Later</i>: The Aussies are on top of this issue.]
Alan - March 23, 2006 12:57 PM
Interesting information about use of A.N. coming out of the Old Bailey today.