School Bus Transportation News at STN Media

Editor's Perspective:

David & Goliath Meet on Capitol Hill

Ryan Gray | Senior Editor

You may have read news reports out of Tampa, Fla., in May about two Saudi nationals who were arrested for boarding a school bus destined for the local high school (see pg.22).

Investigators later determined the men were in the country on valid student Visas, and they meant no harm; it seems they simply wanted to visit the high school. I never saw an explanation as to why.

A few days later testimony from a Rockville, Md., court room riveted the nation as convicted sniper Lee Boyd Malvo recounted how John Allen Mohammed told him of plans to eventually bomb schools and school buses as the prologue to the pair’s Reign of Terror that lasted three weeks in 2002 and left 10 people dead and three wounded.

Let me reiterate: school buses!

As reported by CBS News and the Associated Press, Malvo said Mohammed told him, “We’re going to terrorize these people.”

Despite assertions made to me by some in the national press, al Qaeda at least would never dare a school or school bus attack, as it would spell a “public relations” disaster with fellow radical Muslims around the world and would further solidify the resolve of the United States and its allies to win the war on terror. If things weren’t so deadly serious the comments would almost make me laugh out loud.

Still, shouldn’t we, perhaps, be more concerned on a day-to-day basis with potential home-grown mayhem, as proven by the actions of Malvo and Mohammed — the latter was awaiting a jury’s decision whether he should also be convicted and sentenced to death in Maryland as he was in Virginia — failed airplane shoe bomber Richard Reid and most recently the Norman, Okla., bomber?

What?

Interestingly — not to mention scarily — enough, not much beyond a passing mention has been published in the traditional press about 21-year-old Joel Henry Hinrichs III. On Saturday, Oct. 1, the Oklahoma University engineering student attempted to gain entry into a Sooners home game vs. the Kansas State Wildcats, only to be turned away at the prospect of having his backpack searched by security guards posted at the gate.

It is thought by those in world security intel circles that Hinrichs became spooked and left the stadium area for a nearby park bench, presumably to gather his thoughts, and maybe to disassemble the bomb. Shortly before the game started a bomb detonated on that same park bench, with the blast being felt inside the stadium and up to five miles away, turning Hinrichs into what military and tactical law enforcement officials refer to as “pink mist.”

Authorities discovered the bomb was composed of triacetone triperoxide (TATP), a derivative of various household products including hydrogen peroxide. TATP is an extremely unstable compound and will sometimes detonate spontaneously.

The incident was labeled a suicide. No announcements of the explosion were made in the stadium and, except for local news coverage, little was reported nationally. But as Mark Tapscott of the Washington, D.C. think-tank Heritage Foundation later pointed out, “There are about 30,000 suicides in America, unfortunately, every year. And you can go back a decade, and you will not find a single one of those suicides who blew themselves up in proximity, close proximity, to 84,000 people at a football game.”

Consider, too, the fact that Hinrichs had suffered several severe bouts with depression since he was 10 years old, and had reportedly been a frequent vistor to the campus Muslim center. It’s all unconfirmed heresay, but supposedly his roommate was also a Pakistani student, and Hinrichs was a recent Islamic convert who attended the same Norman mosque where Zacharias Moussaoui had previously attended — the president of the Muslim Student Association at Oklahoma University denied Hinrichs attended any mosque in Norman.

Still, Heinrichs lived near the mosque in question, and there were also claims that investigators found Islamic jihad material in his apartment. U.S. Sen. Tom Cole (R-OK) said he asked the FBI about the jihadist material and was told that absolutely none was found.

The point here is, without obviously ignoring the international terrorist issue, we must also prepare for the much more likely scenario that a nutcase would attempt to blow up a school bus packed with 60 children on the afternoon rush-hour ride home from school.

And the lesson? Without good data and good intel you can’t have a good security assessment.

With regard to the Tampa school bus incident, whether or not it was the “real thing,” someone reported this activity before it could possibly reach a Columbine-type level. But, as patriotic Americans, we must ask questions of our leadership and be concerned about how much security intel is regularly squashed, such as in the Norman, Okla., bombing, either because we don’t need to know or, if we did, the information would scare us to death.

Maybe, just maybe we need that jolt.