ANAHEIM, Calif. – More than 30 years ago, an unmarked VHS tape sent to Disneyland triggered federal authorities to discreetly mobilize emergency resources at the theme park as the FBI embarked on a counterterrorism investigation, according to government records recently acquired by News 6.
The video featured a mysterious individual wearing rubber gloves as they handled glass jars filled with liquids and extracted unidentified items from a freezer, which were wrapped in foil.
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On the screen, the words “NERVE GAS” appeared, followed by “DEAD GUEST” superimposed over home video shots of Disneyland’s parking lot.
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A calendar highlighting the date of April 14, 1995, was captured on video next to an image of a clock displaying either 9 a.m. or 9 p.m.
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Three weeks before the videotape arrived in the mail at Disneyland’s security department, a Japanese doomsday cult killed more than a dozen people by releasing sarin gas in Tokyo’s subway system.
Just five days after federal authorities feared Disneyland could be attacked, an anti-government extremist detonated a truck bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people, including 19 children.
During a news conference about the Oklahoma City bombing later that week, President Bill Clinton addressed the threat at Disneyland.
“There was one recent incident with which I was intimately familiar, which involved a quick and secret deployment of a major United States effort of FBI and FEMA and Public Health Service and Army personnel,” Clinton said. “We went to the place, and we were ready. We were ready to try to prevent it. And if it occurred, we were ready to respond.”
I remember that week in April 1995 quite well.
That’s because I happened to be working at Disneyland at the time.
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While studying broadcast journalism at the University of Southern California in the mid-90s, I earned some extra spending money working part-time at “The Happiest Place on Earth” as Jungle Cruise skipper and driving the Jolly Trolley through Mickey’s Toontown.
Although most Disneyland employees like me were unaware of the terror threat, I vividly recall the heightened security in place that busy Easter holiday weekend.
Some of those added security measures, like bag checks, would not become routine at theme parks until after the Sept. 11 attacks more than six years later.
My curiosity about the 1995 Disneyland threat grew after a guest speaker in one of my college journalism classes, Frank Snepp, talked to us about his reporting on the subject.
At the time, journalists had learned a threatening videotape had been sent to Disneyland, which authorities later deemed to be hoax.
But the video itself had never been publicly disclosed, and there were still many unanswered questions about the terrorism investigation.
Decades later, in August 2021, I sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI seeking videos, photos and documents related to the 1995 Disneyland threat.
Due to the volume of FOIA requests the FBI receives and the agency’s need to thoroughly review potentially sensitive materials before release, I was told my request could take approximately three to five years to fulfill.
Those records finally began arriving last month.
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Yet little did I know, as I was waiting for the FBI materials to be produced, a copy of the threatening videotape sent to Disneyland in 1995 had already been posted on YouTube by an enthusiast of old VHS cassettes.
Todd Werkhoven, who runs the YouTube channel Dr. RIP VHS, said he found the video footage in 2019 while rummaging through a bin full of VHS tapes at a Goodwill thrift store in Portland, Oregon.
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“When I put it in, I was like, ‘This is something very strange,’” Werkhoven told News 6. “And then it just kept getting weirder, and it just felt very heavy and ominous.”
Watch my full report about the 1995 Disneyland terror threat and see how key evidence in a decades-old FBI terrorism investigation wound up at a thrift store here.
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