Moore is not only a treasonous stooge with a primay narcissistic dizorder he was totally wrong in Bowling for Columbine. Psycho\Sociopathic disorder far outweighed any potential connection to the arms production, gun culture in the USA.
GT@adhominum-.gov
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What ifs" remain at Columbine
By Peter Chronis
Denver Post columnist
Friday, September 24, 2004 -
It's a recurring nightmare: I'm at Columbine High School, waiting in a hallway, holding a reporter's notebook and leaning with one hand against a wall that still smells of fresh latex paint. Suddenly the wall gives way, and on the other side, more murdered children lie heaped on the floor. "Oh, my God!" I yell in horror. "There's more than we thought!"
Covering the Columbine tragedy in the daylight hours was horror enough, but perhaps the dream is metaphorical: Many questions about the worst school shooting in U.S. history remain unanswered, hidden behind walls of silence.
Last week, a state grand jury report was released that suggests strongly that somebody covered up information about a 1998 investigation of threats and bomb-making by teen killer Eric Harris.
Current Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink asked Attorney General Ken Salazar to have the grand jury investigate the disappearance of sheriff's documents from the 1998 investigation. Nobody was indicted, but the grand jury issued a report saying it found some aspects "troubling," including the shredding of Columbine-related documents late in 2000.
Several Jeffco officials and law enforcement officers, including District Attorney Dave Thomas, were briefed on the earlier case during a private meeting after the April 20, 1999, shootings. But the fact that a Jeffco deputy had wanted to search the Harris family home was kept from the public at an April 30, 1999, press conference, apparently because of litigation fears.
Investigator Mike Guerra had prepared a draft search warrant affidavit more than a year before Columbine while probing threats that Harris allegedly made against schoolmate Brooks Brown and possible ties to a pipe bomb found in a Jeffco field in February 1998. That bomb allegedly was similar to ones that Harris and Klebold had made. But the case went nowhere, reportedly because there was no probable cause to link Harris to the pipe bomb.
Columbine families view the grand jury report as proof of a conspiracy to hide the embarrassing possibility that the school attack might have been averted.
Former Sheriff John P. Stone deservedly has been criticized for inept handling of Columbine, but the earlier case wasn't on his watch. Ron Beckham was the Jeffco sheriff in 1998.
Stone did a fan dance with facts about Columbine, feeding suspicion that the investigation that followed was meant to salvage his reputation. All for naught: Stone's reputation was beyond redemption. Mercifully, he didn't seek re-election in 2002.
"What if?" is a question often asked about Columbine.
What if Guerra hadn't been pulled off the investigation to work on the Cody Neal murder case and the search warrant had been obtained and executed? District Attorney Thomas says there was no probable cause to proceed. Oh? One kid threatens a classmate and, by the way, is boasting that he's making bombs? Just like one found in February 1998? Does it take a narrated video to prove probable cause in Jeffco?
What if the Harris home had been searched and deputies found bombs or materials used to make them? What if the thread of evidence led them to Dylan Klebold? The teen killers were already on probation for breaking into a car and stealing tools in January 1998. What if they had been arrested, convicted and sent to a juvenile facility? Or gotten some serious psychiatric treatment? (Well-balanced people don't fantasize about mass carnage.)
But that's conjecture: They might still have carried out their murderous plot at a later date.
Clearly, the facts of the 1998 investigation look embarrassing for Jeffco officials. But being forthcoming even when the news is bad beats being caught dissembling.
Some phantoms never rest. Only the truth can exorcise the specter that still haunts Jefferson County.
Peter G. Chronis is a member of the Denver Post's editorial board.
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