Charles C. Johnson of gotnews.com thinks a Google Earth photo from last September proves that the January 6th “NAACP bombing” in Colorado Springs is a hoax. I think his analysis is wrong, but I have my own doubts about what the NAACP, SPLC, etc., were quick to characterize as a “hate crime.”
Johnson sees “soot marks” on the side of the building in the Google photo he posted and thinks those are being passed off as the bomb damage. But that’s not the case. Here’s an AP tweet with a picture:
Colorado NAACP office stays vigilant and makes no conclusions after explosion outside office: http://t.co/M0QhvbN7sA
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 8, 2015
The bomb damage, such as it is, is on the right at the base of the wall. The darkened area visible in the Google photo is to the left of that.
Here’s a photo from the Colorado Springs Gazette that makes the relationship clearer and shows that the dark area to the left is clearly weathered:
But it also shows even more clearly how pitifully little damage this “bomb” did. Looks like one or two large firecrackers like M80s to me. According to the FBI, a gasoline can was placed “adjacent to the device.” The plastic gas can was clearly undamaged:
Think about that for a minute: a plastic gas can sitting within a couple of feet of the “bomb,” judging from the picture, survived the explosion completely unscathed.
The NAACP said items were knocked off the walls of their office. I find that difficult to believe, both because of the miniscule impact of the explosion and because of the location. This picture from the Gazette shows that the NAACP office is on the left side of the building, a barber shop is on the right, and the “bomb” went off at the right rear against the barber shop wall:
In my opinion, this was either the work of the most utterly incompetent bomb-maker ever (and possibly directed at the barber shop) or yet another in a long list of hate crime hoaxes.