Instant pre-play?

Over on DU, a continuation of our lively "name the most corrupt state" contest (scroll down) includes a response referring to a book by Marting Keating, brother of Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating. The book is called The Final Jihad, supposedly written in 1991 though not published until 1996, and supposedly containing an eerie prediction of the Oklahoma City blast:

Four years before the devastating Oklahoma City bombing Martin Keating wrote of a terrorist network in Oklahoma with a central figure named Tom McVey. He tells of the terrorist's arrest based on a minor traffic violation by an unsuspecting highway patrolman.

At the time Timothy McVeigh was originally apprehended by an unsuspecting state trooper near Perry Oklahoma -- only an hour and a half after the bombing -- televised news accounts for several hours thereafter were reporting the arrest of "Thomas McVeigh" (Tom McVey?). Was this a simple mistake or an unplanned slip?

Is this a bizarre, uncanny coincidence or is there some strange connection? The publicity notes which promote the book on an Internet site claim that "Martin Keating is a master storyteller with unique access to government intelligence agencies and clandestine terrorist groups. His brother Frank Keating, currently governor of Oklahoma, is a former FBI agent and assistant secretary of the Treasury who supervised the Secret Service, U.S. Customs, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms."

The notes further reveal that Keating was "introduced to the intelligence community through generations of family involvement. Martin Keating knows intimate details of what the rest of us can only imagine. Armed with firsthand knowledge...Keating accurately reveals what the highest government officials have known."

All very intriguing. However, one churlish reviewer on Amazon feels that the "Tom McVey" material could have been inserted into an already-extant manuscript, or into a work in progress. A governor's brother, like any other author, wants to sell books -- and the market for fiction is saturated.

The situation reminds me of the 1972 quickie paperback novel Black Abductor, which proved oddly prescient regarding the Patty Hearst kidnapping. (The re-issue was nearly ubiquitous after the event; I recall seeing it everywhere.) The details of the fictional and real heiress kidnappings were indeed quite similar. Fueling the mystery was the authorship controversy:

Reporters for the New York Post made elaborate efforts to track down both the publisher and author of Black Abductor, and ran into a dead end. The only address given for Regency Publishing Co. is a San Diego Post Office Box--20756. The U.S. Postal Service said that Regency had moved the box to Burbank in February, 1972. A spokesman for the San Diego Police Department's vice squad said Regency had specialized in adult sex books and magazines, distributing them through the San Diego News Service. Both Regency and the distributor have since vanished.

According to Burbank postal officials, Regency still leases P.O. Box 6729 through a Rita Williams Loob. She is not listed in the telephone directory, and she has not responded to attempts by reporters to make contact with her.

Also a mystery is the identity of the man behind the pseudonym of Harrison James. The Post did locate one writer of erotic material in California who acknowledged that he wrote under the pseudonym of Harrison James. He denied that he was the author of Black Abductor.

All very goose-pimpling. But I've never bought into the rather fanciful conspiratorial scenarios arising from such factoids. Why would "They" (with a capital T) use little-known works of fiction to warn the public of Their fiendish plans? Real life is not a James Bond movie, and the bad guy does not pause to explain his evil plot before killing the good guy.

There's a certain type of paranoid who revels in the notion that "They" pant subtle clues of Their nature and intentions -- clues that come in the form of corporate logos, symbols, works of popular culture and so forth. I'd advise readers not to give serious thought to such speculations. That way madness lies.