Jared Loughner and his John Doe #2

Jared Loughner is the 22 year old Arizona man who's been identified as the gunman who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D.-Ariz.) in Tucson earlier this month.

The media reports I'm reading about him are interesting.

His picture-perfect insane mugshot aside, there has been mention in media reports that he was seen just before the shooting in the company of a middle-aged man. These reports have become much less frequent since first being mentioned, though there's been no word on whether law enforcement has investigated this aspect of the Tuscon shooting and resolved the identity of this middle-aged man or if he knew Jared Loughner.

One thing that strikes me as odd so far about this Jared Loughner is that there are a couple of YouTube videos attributed to him.

One of these videos is just text on the screen. No voice-over, no music. Why not just write a blog post?

I realize -- because he's craaaaazy.

The second video has some dreamy music behind it and the text flashing on the screen during it is even more bizarre.

The third video is set outside and is described on one right-wing Web site as "This is Jared's 'music video' -- this flag burning madness. This is Jared, dressed as a Muslim [terrorust?], in the video burning the flag. (FOX confirmed this is Jared in the burka-like get-up.)"

Fox News verified that the figure in the video is Loughner? Fox News is the least trustworthy news source amid the compromised, useless media.

Then there is a video with heavy metal playing in the background that purports to show Loughner dressed as "terrorist" garb -- one outlet referred to it as a burka-like outfit -- lighting an American flag on fire. Fox News has apparently verified that it's Loughner. Fox News -- the network nobody can trust. I saw the video. There's no way a person who wasn't there when it was made or uploaded to YouTube could verify that it was Loughner.

These observations prove absolutely nothing. I point them out merely because they strike me as odd.

When people post videos to YouTube, 99.9 percent of the time that person has their face jammed into a Webcam, speaking to the universe like they're Galileo.

Not doing that certainly differentiates one's video among the shit heap of videos on YouTube.

Right after the shooting, there was talk in the news about a possible accomplice to Jared Loughner.

Haven't heard much of this lately. I wonder if this narrative is going to fall to the wayside like John Doe Number 2 after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Interestingly enough, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called "Underwear Bomber" had a middle-aged male accomplice who helped him board Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

Abdulmutallab didn't have a passport. He was turned away by airline personnel at the gate -- until the well-dressed middle-aged man accompanying him took action.

Passengers who observed the conversation at the gate, and just assumed the young man with no passport was out of luck, were shocked when they later saw him on the plane.

Then he attempted to blow up the plane with explosives secreted in his underwear.

The middle-aged accomplice narrative immediately reminds me of Lee Harvey Oswald who had three middle-aged male handlers: Clay Shaw, George DeMohrenschildt and former FBI man Guy Bannister.

James Earl Ray, the man on whom the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was once pinned, was handled by a man he knew as "Raoul."

Arthur Bremer, the man who shot George Wallace in 1972, was said to have been seen in the weeks leading up to that shooting -- during a time he was traveling the country in a manner he had no economic means to do unaided -- in the company of Watergate henchman, G. Gordon Liddy:

Wallace then had his own investigation and told Jack Nelson that Bremer had been seen with a man who looked like G. Gordon Liddy on a Lake Michigan ferry. The governor said he thought he saw Liddy standing behind Bremer. The bureau advised the Wallace family to drop the matter.

And, similar details are also echoed in the Loughner case:

Bob Woodward reported in the Washington Post: "Within hours of the Wallace assassination attempt, a White House official was asked by the Washington Post about the identity of the governor's attacker. During a subsequent conversation that evening, the official raised the possibility of Bremer's connection to leftist causes and the campaign of Sen. George McGovern, through literature found in his apartment.... One White House source said that when President Nixon was informed of the shooting, he became deeply upset and voiced concern that the attempt on Gov. Wallace's life might have been made by someone with ties to the Republican Party or the Nixon campaign."

It later emerged that Federal Bureau of Investigation officers found both left-wing and right-wing propaganda in Bremer's apartment. They also found a diary where Bremer wrote about his plans to kill George Wallace or Richard Nixon. The opening sentence was: "Now I start my diary of my personal plot to kill by pistol either Richard Nixon or George Wallace." The diary was eventually published as a book, An Assassin's Diary (1973).

People's Temple madman, Jim Jones, also had a middle-aged male handler in his life going back to the early 1960s in Jones's home state of Indiana. CIA torturer Dan Mitrione played an intriguing and incongruous role in Jones's life.

Will Jared Loughner's alleged accomplice be pursued, or will this narrative be dropped by the media and law enforcement, as other similar narratives have been dropped in the past?