From Fox 25 KOKH:

Police say a man has been found dead inside his tent at a protest at a park in downtown Oklahoma City. Fellow protest participant Mark Faulk says the man was in his early 30s and was homeless. Faulk says the man had delivered a passionate speech Sunday night about the problems of homelessness and drug abuse.

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More than 18 months after publishing a piece about the whereabouts of the unedited versions of the Oklahoma City Bombing surveillance tapes, I learned Wednesday that a federal court hearing concerning a Freedom of Information Act request for those videotapes is set to take place May 11 in Salt Lake City.

The hearing will take place with Judge Clark Waddoups presiding in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, Central Division. It comes some three and a half years after Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue used FOIA to request the FBI turn over copies of surveillance video captured April 19, 1995, by more than 20 cameras operating in the vicinity of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City.

I don’t agree with Trentadue’s belief that the bombing was likely a U.S. government-sponsored operation; instead, I side with the conclusions offered by Jayna Davis, award-winning investigative reporter and best-selling author, in her 2004 book, “The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing.” Still, I remain troubled that the FBI has fought the release of videotape footage likely to reveal the identity of at least one additional person involved in the bombing that took place less than 30 minutes from where I was living at the time.

Specifically, Trentadue requested footage captured prior to 9:02 a.m. Central, when a truck bomb exploded, killing 168 people, and footage from the dashboard camera of Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Charles Hanger’s vehicle showing the arrest of Timothy McVeigh. He received footage from several cameras, but not from the cameras on the Murrah Building itself; hence, the reason for the May 11 hearing.

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The great OklahomaWatchdog.org is starting to crack open the documents ACORN left behind in the Sooner state:

The internal documents obtained by Oklahoma Watchdog show how focused ACORN was in Oklahoma in 2007 and 2008, leading up to the presidential election.

For instance, a “Power Plan” document begins: “Oklahoma ACORN has been virtually non-existent since its glory days in Tulsa, over 20 years ago. 2007 is Year Zero.”

The document continues, noting that Oklahoma ACORN, in 2007, was looking towards a five-year plan to obtain power and that is the key term – power – that is evident is this particular document.

Note: “Therefore, the route to power is twofold: First, build powerful city organizations in Oklahoma City and Tulsa that can control these municipalities. Second, become an influential organization by shaping a handful of strategic legislative districts that, by themselves, can change who controls the state legislature.”

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