In the Arthur Conan Doyle story “The Adventure of Silver Blaze,” master sleuth Sherlock Holmes deduces that the failure of a watchdog to bark while a horse was being stolen meant only one thing: the dog recognized the man who stole the horse.
On January 6, vice president-elect Kamala Harris was the dog that didn’t bark. Harris did not bark then. Nor has she barked in the three-plus years since. This is surprising. On the surface, at least, she would have had a lot to bark about. Harris’s failure to bark suggests her complicity in a plot that—thanks to the good work of Rep. Thomas Massie, Darren Beattie, Dan Bongino, and others—is gradually unraveling.
On January 6, 2021, at just about 1 p.m., an undercover police officer found a pipe bomb just feet from the exterior of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in DC. A bomb had been discovered minutes before near the RNC headquarters. Unknown to the bomber, Harris would be at the DNC when the bomb was found.
Politico was the first to report on Harris’s whereabouts at this critical moment. “Harris’ presence inside the building while a bomb was right outside raises sobering questions about her security that day,” reported Politico. “It also raises the chilling prospect that the riots could have been far more destructive than they already were, with the incoming vice president’s life directly endangered.”
Politico reported this story on January 6—January 6, 2022, that is. For a year, no one beyond a small circle of conspirators knew Harris was at the DNC that day. Everyone else assumed she was at the Capitol. That “everyone” included federal prosecutors who, in dozens of indictments, had informed J6 judges and juries that Harris was among those under threat from the mob at the Capitol.
Not until November 2021 did prosecutors amend their filings to undo this deception. Politico wrote at that time, “It’s unclear why DOJ included the erroneous information in the first place and continued to do so for months.” The Politico article cited above was titled, “DOJ error highlights Jan. 6 mystery: Where was Kamala Harris during the attack?” It would take two more months before Politico learned the answer to this most basic of questions.
Politico, however, had no interest in unraveling the deeper mystery of why Harris remained silent. During a televised speech from the Capitol on January 6, 2022, the still-cryptic Harris acknowledged for the first time she was elsewhere while “extremists” roamed the halls of the Capitol, targeting the “lives of elected officials.”
What Harris did not say is where she was. Although she shamelessly compared January 6 to “December 7, 1941” and “September 11, 2001,” she refrained from saying she was within mere feet of being blown to smithereens. Biden, too, has resisted a seemingly great opportunity to blame the bombing on the white supremacists and neo-Nazis he imagines lurking everywhere.
On January 6, 2022, Politico was still reporting on the bomb plot as though it were real. Its reporters quoted the FBI as saying both the RNC and DNC bombs were “viable” and that they “could have been detonated, resulting in serious injury or death.” A single suspect was alleged to have planted the bombs the night before. Politico linked to a detailed FBI press release complete with maps and still shots of the suspect, as well as the promise of a $100,000 reward for useful information.
The FBI has since raised the reward for relevant information to $500,000. Despite the reward, the DC pipe bomber has vanished into the ether as seamlessly as did John Doe #2, Timothy McVeigh’s accomplice in the April 1995 destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
A week after the bombing, the FBI’s John Hersley testified to multiple “eyewitness accounts of a yellow Mercury with McVeigh and another man inside speeding away from a parking lot near the federal building.” Several other witnesses had seen McVeigh’s accomplice in the hours leading up to the blast.
The FBI created a composite drawing of this man, described as “full-faced and stocky, with dark hair and an olive complexion,” and labeled him “John Doe #2.”Hundreds of investigators” joined in the nationwide manhunt for McVeigh’s elusive co-conspirator. They need not have wasted their time.
Sensing an opportunity, President Bill Clinton advisor Dick Morris immediately sent the president a memo: “Permanent possible gain: sets up Extremist Issue vs. Republicans.” The Clinton White House had in McVeigh a poster boy for Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution.” If John Doe #2 proved to be a Muslim co-conspirator or a confidential FBI source, he would have spoiled the picture.
Clinton followed Morris’s advice and saved his flailing presidency. With Clinton’s poll numbers rising, the White House and the media lost interest in finding John Doe #2. Inevitably, so did the FBI. To this day, despite his role in the murder of 168 people, John Doe #2 has never been identified.
What happened in the wake of Oklahoma City happened again after January 6: the media lost interest in finding the most wanted man in America. The pipe bomber—for continuity’s sake, John Doe #3—has all but faded from memory. Those pulling the strings likely sensed that finding the bomber would undo the story they had so successfully spun. Better to let him disappear into the night.
This was no rogue plot. Those in the know stood to gain by having the certification process shut down, and Trump blamed for the disruption. That group did not include President Donald Trump. He remained hopeful to the end. Even if Vice President Pence rejected the proposal to allow each state a ten-day election audit before certification, that day’s scheduled airing of fraud allegations would have revealed why so many people believed the election was stolen.
Despite her flirtation with death and her own penchant for self-dramatization, Kamala Harris has still not barked. Neither has Biden. As with the watchdog in the Sherlock Holmes story, their silence suggests a familiarity with the bomber. If they do not know his exact identity, they both strongly suspect he is a friend of the family.