27. In the summer of 1995 a mysterious American named Daniel Spiegelman was arrested in the Netherlands for trafficking in stolen diamonds and antiques.
In July of 1995 the Janet Reno Justice Department quietly applied for Spiegelman s extradition to the United Stated in CONNECTION WITH THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING. This was accompanied by representations at the highest level demanding that the Netherlands courts hear the case in camera and that the proceedings be kept completely secret. Through his attorney Spiegelman fought extradition, a Dutch judge refused to impose secrecy on the hearing, the media got hold of it, and Janet Reno allegedly withdrew the extradition request, whereupon the entire bizarre episode vanished from public view. No more media blackout in the OKC case has been more complete than the blackout imposed over the name of Daniel Spiegelman; it is as if he has stepped off the face of the planet.
Who is Daniel Spiegelman? What connection does he have with Oklahoma City? JD-2? Does he know who JD-2 is? Source
John Doe #5 has been positively identified by the Intelligence
Service as Daniel Spiegelman
(a.k.a. William Taylor), a fund raiser
for the Oklahoma City
bombing operation. He was arrested and
imprisoned in the Netherlands when he attempted to sell
historic
documents that were stolen from Columbia University for the
purpose of financing the OKC bombing.
Spiegelman was extradited
from the Netherlands to the United States on the condition
that he
would not be charged with a capital crime for which he could
receive the death sentence. United States District Judge Lewis
Kaplan, a Zionist, sentenced Spiegleman to 60 months in jail,
3
years probation, 300 days of community service in an adult
literacy
education program, and restitution to Columbia in an amount
not
yet determined. Daniel Spiegelman's
conviction will most likely be
set aside because his defense lawyer Paul Kurtz was discovered
to
be a fake lawyer. Paul Kurtz, 56, of Bethesda, Md., was
charged in a
41-count indictment issued by a Manhattan federal jury for
claiming to be a licensed attorney and defending clients
including
Daniel Spiegelman who was
convicted of stealing rare manuscripts
from Columbia University.
Spiegelman was sentenced in April
1998.
Daniel Spiegelman is Jewish.
Throwing the Book: The story of a rare upward departure.
In the summer of 1994 Daniel Spiegelman shimmied up an abandoned dumb waiter in the Columbia University library to get to the rare books floor six stories up where he then proceeded to dismantle a wall, steal books, reassemble the wall, and go back down the shaft – several times over a two month span. He eventually took this loot – roughly $1.3 million in books – to Europe to sell to collectors. When he was caught in the Netherlands after about a yearlong tour he tried to avoid extradition to the U.S. by telling the Dutch authorities that he was a financier of the Oklahoma City bombing knowing they wouldn’t extradite people to the U.S. who might face the death penalty. When he was finally brought back to New York the federal sentencing judge there was about to sentence him based on the monetary value of his theft; Jean Ashton, head of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia, knew that the books were more valuable than simply their price on the market. She set about convincing the judge of that fact the result of which was an upward departure from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines – something unique in the history of the Guidelines. There are some really amazing details to this story including two prison escape attempts, one suicide attempt, a previous forgery conviction, a subsequent federal sentence and several trips to Connecticut.
Michael Brescia is one of the members who leaps to the forefront in any discussion concerning ties to Timothy McVeigh. A one time Eagle Scout and son of a battallion chief of the Philadelphia Fire Department, Michael was thought to be the "All American Boy" ~ until he became a skinhead. As an accounting student at LaSalle University, Brescia's work was fine but his extracurricular activities were not. According to an article published by the Inquirer, "Neighbors, acquaintances and former classmates say Brescia flirted with ultra-right ideas for years and cultivated an image as a dangerous loner. In his 1990 high school yearbook, he chose this slogan to appear beside his name: ``Spill the blood, dude.'' Further, it was stated that while at LaSalle, Brescia hung out with skinheads, distributed hate literature and engaged in bizarre rhetoric. And it was here that he met Scott Stedeford and Kevin McCarthy, two other members of the Aryan Republican Army. Stedeman played in a shinhead rock band and was from Ardmore, Oklahoma. McCarthy was another skinhead who later would turn states evidence on the ARA. Stedeman and McCarthy introduced Bescia to Mark Thomas. Thomas, an aging neo-Nazi and KKK leader from Pennsylvania had long been on the list of racist gurus in this country.
At the urging of Thomas, Brescia moved to Elohim City where he resided for two years. He became engaged to the step-granddaughter of Robert Millar, the "spiritual leader" of the compound. For a time, Brescia was a roommate of Andreas Strassmeir. It was Brescia who was identified as being with McVeigh and Strassmeir in Herington, Kansas shortly before the bombing. It was Brescia who was identified as being at Lady Godiva's with McVeigh and Strassmeir eleven days before the bombing. It was Brescia who Carol Howe, federal informant, said went with Strassmeir to "case" the OKC Federal Building on three occasions. And it was Brescia who numerous witnesses have identified as John Doe #2. Brescia's mother and father have denied any involvement by the son with the extremist right. Yet, while Michael was building a house at the Elohim City compound, his parents came to visit him. They have never commented on the armed, racist, Bible defiling inhabitants of that village.
The editor of the John Doe Times, Mike Vanderboegh, outraged that Brescia had not faced interrogation, at the least, or arrest which would have been preferable, printed posters and had them placed around Brescia's neighborhood. Among the charges of Bresica's probable complicity in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building, Vanderboegh asserted, "Also, Mr. Brescia and Mr. Strassmeir have been mentioned in press accounts in connection with the abduction and triple murder of a family in Arkansas that also seems to be related to the OKC bombing." Of course, he was referring to the brutal murder of the Mueller family.
Robert Millar insists that Brescia, who is engaged to Millar's granddaughter,
NOTE: 1ACR has been assisting Glenn & Kathy Wilburn with their private investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing and the search for ALL of the killers of their two grandchildren and 166 other Americans. The analysis below is my own, and it should be made clear that I do not presume to speak for the Wilburns. The Wilburns are two very courageous Americans who have suffered much in their search for the truth. Other Oklahoma City victims have criticized the Wilburns for seeking to get McVeigh off the hook. Nothing could be further from the truth. None of the information that they or their many volunteer helpers have discovered (of which I am but one) exculpates Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was the truck driver, and a key player in the plot. What we are after is the rest of the bombers and the murdering bastards that sent them and sheltered them after the fact.
MEET JOHN DOE #2:
Michael Brescia (Xerox of photo available upon request) is the son of Mr. & Mrs. William M. Brescia, 859 Manatawna Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 19128. Neither Mr. Brescia (a Philadelphia-area fire fighter) nor his wife will comment on their son or his movements. A graduate of LaSalle High School (215 233-2911), Brescia attended LaSalle University (215 951-1000) without graduating, although sources say he made inquiries about attending this fall.
While a high school student he reportedly was into survivalism, but in time he grew into the white supremacist movement. Sources familiar with his university career say he was the subject of a fraternity disciplinary hearing when he reportedly attempted to recruit his fellow frat brothers into a "white supremacist cell." Brescia left the university and Philadelphia shortly thereafter for a stay at that most bucolic of racist antisemite retreats: the Elohim City "Christian Identity" compound in Oklahoma.
(The uninitiated often struggle with the differences between the Christian Identity movement and the paganist neo-Nazis such as the Aryan Nations, as they share a virulent racism and antisemitism and have been known to cooperate on paramilitary ventures. The principle difference between the two is that unlike the neo-Nazis (who worship Odin, Thor and miscellaneous Norse biker-gods but have no limiting illusions about morality or charity), Christian Identity folks think racism and antisemitism is OK because God and Jesus told 'em so.)
WELCOME TO JOHN-DOEVILLE...
Michael Brescia was introduced to Elohim City by Mark Thomas, Aryan Nations' big shot in the eastern Pennsylvania area. Some of Mark's other buddies included the recently captured Midwest bank robbers who also hailed from eastern PA (more about them in an upcoming article).
Elohim City, a 400-acre compound of about 20 buildings located 35 miles northwest of Fort Smith, AR,(near Sallisaw, OK) was founded in 1973 by Robert Millar, age 70. Elohim City has about a hundred residents these days including all four of Millar's sons and 25 of his 34 grandchildren.
"Things are different here. Elohim City operates on its own calendar and clock. Each year begins with the spring equinox and each day begins at noon. Millar said the concept is found in the Bible in Genesis and Deuteronomy. Residents adhere to a religious doctrine called Christian Identity, which contends that white Anglo-Saxons, not Jews, are God's chosen people, and that America, not Israel, is the Promised Land. According to Christian Identity, Jews are Satan's children, and non-whites are believed to be 'pre-Adamic,' a lower form of species than white people. Those who monitor right-wing extremist groups say Millar is probably the most influential Christian Identity leader in the Great Plains." ( From "We Are Not Dangerous, Leader of Separatists Says" by Judy Thomas, The Kansas City Star, Sunday, March 17, 1996.)
Elohim City attracts an eclectic bunch. Ray Lampley, who differed with Millar on the finer points of theology (Lampley styled himself as "Prophet of Yahweh") but not the racism or antisemitism of Christian Identity---intended to practice bomb detonation at Elohim City the day he was busted for (and subsequently convicted of) planning to carry out the terror bombing of five targets including the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL. Millar said he knew Lampley but had no knowledge of the plot.
Richard W. Snell, white supremacist and copkiller resides there, too. Unfortunately for him he doesn't get around much anymore since he was executed by the state of Arkansas for the 1983 murder of a pawnbroker he mistakenly thought was Jewish. (Hey, nobody ever said antisemites were all that bright.) He was executed on April 19, 1995, the same day as the OKC bombing with Millar in attendance as his chaplain and execution witness. Millar brought his body back and buried it on the compound.
Former leader of the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord (and federal snitch) James Ellison currently resides at Elohim City. "Ellison, 55, was convicted on racketeering and weapons charges brought against him and other Covenant members after a four-day standoff that began April 19, 1985, at the group's camp near the Missouri-Arkansas border. His 20-year sentence was reduced after he agreed to testify against some comrades in a trial in Fort Smith Arkansas, in 1988. Ellison was released in February, 1991 after nearly six years in prison. He moved to Florida but was sent back to prison in 1993 for violating parole. He was released again in June, 1994 and returned to Florida before moving to Elohim City, where he married the granddaughter of its leader, Robert Millar. Dressed in faded jeans, a T-shirt and a camouflage cap, Ellison talked candidly about his violent past. He said he had no regrets. 'How can you regret something you felt like God told you to do?'" ( Judy Thomas, ibid.)
Other routine "guests" at Elohim City were Andreas Carl Strassmeir (aka "Andy the German, aka John Doe #3) and Dennis Mahon, Aryan Nations organizer. (More about these two in Part Two.)
Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 2025 M Street, NW,
Suite 610, Washington, DC 20036.
Free admission.
Exhibition will be on view at the Institute until September 12, 2003, 10:00 AM
to 4:00 PM, Monday through Friday.
The exhibit recounts the history of the
Jews of Brescia, whose
origins dated from the time of the Roman Empire. During the Renaissance, their
most prominent role - and their impact on the economy and politics of northern
Italy - derived from their dominance of the iron industry, from mining to the
production and sale of firearms and other weapons. The exhibition reveals the
tensions and, sometimes, violent relations between Christians and Jews through a
series of xylography prints (woodcuts) executed by the typography studio of
Ghersom Soncino. The 15th- and 16th-century manuscripts and documents in the
exhibition trace Jewish life and social customs, economics, and the impact of
the fluctuating politics of the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Milan on
this remarkable community up to the ultimate expulsion of the Jews from Brescia.
The exhibition, curated by Father Franco Bontempi, was produced by the Circolo Culturale San Alessandro, Brescia, Italy and previously traveled to Europe, North America and Israel.
FBI fails to follow up on leads provided by paid
government informants to German provocateur Andres Strassmeier, KKK kingpin
Dennis Mahon, and possible John Doe suspect
Michael Brescia, all of whom were
fingered as participants in discussions about targeting federal buildings for
terrorist acts ...
Morris Dees
had informant at Elohim City before OKC Bombing
McCurtain Daily Gazette ^ | 12/14/03 | J.D. Cash and Lt. Col. Roger
Charles
Posted on 12/31/2003 1:33:26 PM PST by
GlockGrrl
The McCurtain Daily Gazette has obtained an unclassified copy of a memorandum marked From the Director of the FBI containing several new facts that could impact the upcoming state murder trial of Terry Nichols, scheduled to begin March 1 in McAlester.
The electronic message was sent to the OKBOMB investigation task force and a select group of FBI offices around the nation some eight months after the 1995 federal building bombing in Oklahoma City left 168 dead.
The potentially explosive contents of the teletype, among other things, exposes an informant operation being conducted by nationally known civil rights lawyer Morris Dees through his organization the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
Exposed for the first time, the FBI acknowledged the SPLC was engaged in an undercover role where they monitored subjects for the FBI believed to be linked to executed bomber Timothy McVeigh, the white supremacist compound at Elohim City and the mysterious German national Andreas Carl Strassmeir.
Dated Jan. 4, 1996, the four-page cable was drafted and issued under the authority of FBI director Louis Freeh and is heavily redacted (portions blacked out).
Despite these redactions, the document clearly describes individuals the FBI believed were associated with the OKBOMB and BOMBROB cases – two high profile domestic terrorism cases the FBI was investigating as possibly connected.
Many of the details in this potentially explosive document have never been made public before.
The OKBOMB case focused several hundred FBI agents on the truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
The FBI’s BOMBROB investigation was much smaller. It involved a wide-ranging search for a group of neo-Nazi bank robbers in the mid-1990s whose stated goal was the overthrow of the U.S. government through violence.
Only days after the Jan. 4, 1996, cable was sent, the first two arrests were made in the BOMBROB case. Within 13 months of the electronic message, four more persons were jailed in connection with 22 bank robberies the radical rightwing group participated in across seven Midwestern states.
Each of the six individuals arrested in the BOMBROB case had ties to Elohim City, a Christian Identity paramilitary training camp near Muldrow.
Only two persons have ever been charged in the Oklahoma City bombing – the 20th Century’s most brutal act of domestic terrorism that left 149 adults and 19 children dead.
In 1997, McVeigh was found guilty and executed in 2001 for his role in the crime.
Nichols, McVeigh’s co-conspirator, is serving a life sentence handed down by a federal judge in 1998.
It is widely believed that when Nichols goes on trial in McAlester – facing an additional 161-counts of first-degree murder – his lawyers will point the finger at other conspirators who they believe can be linked to McVeigh and the bombing in Oklahoma City conspiracy.
Director warns of plan for Strassmeir’s escape In the Jan. 4, 1996, document from the director, sketchy details of a plan are provided regarding an escape by a key subject wanted for questioning in the OKBOMB case. Facts would later emerge that this key individual also roomed with several members of the bank robbery gang rounded-up during the BOMBROB investigation.
Although his name was redacted, the key subject in the electronic message was Andreas Carl Strassmeir. He was a person the FBI officially listed as “possibly armed and may be dangerous” and who the director expected to cross the Mexican border “in the near future.”
Inexplicably, none of the offices that received this memo were in the state of Texas where Strassmeir had just arrived and was expected to make his escape across the Mexican border.
Other documents obtained by this newspaper indicate Strassmeir entered Mexico within a very short time of the director’s statements predicting the move. Strassmeir made his way to Germany and the safety of his politically connected family in Berlin.
Equally difficult to understand, FBI agents apparently did not go to a residence in North Carolina noted in the electronic message where Strassmeir had been staying with a friend prior to his escape from the U.S.
This newspaper first reported that Strassmeir had been singled out for arrest by the ATF in early 1995, but those plans were thwarted by the Oklahoma City FBI office.
The Tulsa ATF office sought an arrest warrant in early 1995 for Strassmeir after an informant, Carol E. Howe, told them about a plot at Elohim City to bomb federal installations, commit mass shootings and kill large numbers of Americans.
Ms. Howe identified Strassmeir as one of the ringleaders in the plot.
Tulsa ATF officials were able to determine that the heavily armed German national was an illegal overstay on his travel visa, therefore subject to arrest on a host of charges.
However, last minute efforts by then-FBI special agent in charge of the Oklahoma City field office, Bob Ricks, scrubbed plans for Strassmeir’s arrest when the FBI agent contacted U.S. Attorney Steve Lewis in Tulsa and complained about the ATF plan to raid Elohim City.
When this newspaper discovered documents confirming the FBI interdiction, Ricks sought to explain his actions by saying he successfully lobbied against Strassmeir’s arrest in late February of 1995 because he wanted to avoid another Waco-style disaster by the ATF.
Months after the Oklahoma bombing, Strassmeir fled Elohim City and began hiding in Black Mountain, North Carolina. after this newspaper discovered and reported on a phone call to Elohim City from McVeigh was linked to him.
Nichols not a conspirator? Also contained in the four-page document is a remarkable statement that raises doubts about the FBI’s belief that Nichols was a conspirator in the OKBOMB case.
Regarding this revelation, the memo again describes the telephone call widely believed to have been made by McVeigh to Elohim City where Strassmeir and several members of a bank robbery gang were living on April 5, 1995.
The FBI director makes the following observation:
“Prior OKBOMB investigation determined that (name redacted) had placed a telephone call to (name redacted) on 4/5/95 a day that he was believed to have been attempting to recruit a second conspirator to assist in the OKBOMB attack.”(Emphasis added)
Thus, a plain reading of the Jan. 4, 1996, memo suggests the FBI director did not believe a second conspirator in the bombing existed on April 5, 1995 – an embarrassing admission, indeed, considering that during two trials in 1997, federal prosecutors argued that Nichols was deeply involved in the bomb plot dating back to Sept. of 1994.
Morris Dees’ informant? Also disclosed for the first time are references by the FBI director to an informant working for the Birmingham, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), headed by civil right’s attorney Morris Dees and who was present at Elohim City in the critical hours leading up to the bombing in Oklahoma City.
Referring to a telephone call on April 17, 1995 (alleged to have been from McVeigh), the memo states: “(Name redacted) telephone call from (name redacted) on or about 4/17/95, two days prior to the OKBOMB attack, when (name redacted) of the SPLC, was in the white supremacist compound at (redacted), Oklahoma, notes the director. (Emphasis added)
References to an informant working for the SPLC at Elohim City on the eve of the Oklahoma City bombing raises serious questions as to what the SPLC might know about McVeigh’s activities during the final hours before the fuse was lit in Oklahoma City – but which the SPLC has failed to disclose publicly.
Questioned during a press conference at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant recently, Dees confirmed someone from his organization was inside the white supremacist compound at Elohim City on April 17, 1995.
“If I told you what we were doing there, I would have to kill you,” Dees replied when pressed to explain what this person was doing at a terrorist training camp.
Dees did acknowledge that his information network long ago established that McVeigh had been to Elohim City before the bombing.
“But we didn’t have him on our radar screen until he was arrested,” Dees said.
Dees has written a number of books and articles about the militia movement in this country.
Many have criticized Dees’ attacks on right-wing militias and gun owners in the U.S. as inaccurate, exploitive and designed to get donations to his tax-exempt foundation, which receives substantial contributions each year.
The director’s electronic message also alludes to a person at the Oklahoma white supremacist compound described by the FBI head as a subject with an allegedly, “…. lengthy relationship with one of the two indicted OKBOMB conspirators (emphasis added).”
John Millar, a church elder at Elohim City, told the McCurtain Daily Gazette, “I don’t know who was out here back then. It doesn’t surprise me that a bunch of Jews that work for Dees and that Southern Poverty (SPLC) bunch would be spying on us. They don’t understand our message or anything about us. Why don’t you ever write about the fact that no one has ever found a link to McVeigh here?”
Until this memo surfaced, spokespersons for the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice steadfastly denied they had any reliable information concerning any relationship between either McVeigh or Nichols and subjects living at or who had frequented the Elohim City compound before the bombing.
Attorney Stephen Jones, who represented McVeigh at trial in Denver, Colo., said he was not provided this information from the government despite repeated motions filed with the court.
“We filed motions with the judge specifically asking for details of surveillance activities at Elohim City and other places. We were told by prosecutors that they had no records. Now you have some of them,” Jones explained.
“Also, as you know the FBI kept saying they had no information linking McVeigh to Elohim City beyond the one phone call on April 5. Well, as you can see, there’s much more than that here.”
Attorneys representing Nichols are bound by a gag order and unable to comment on the contents of this new information or whether they had copies of the material this newspaper had received.
A spokesman for the FBI office in Oklahoma City, Gary Johnson, said, “The FBI still stands by the results of the most expensive and thorough investigation in history.
“We arrested everyone in this crime and these conspiracy stories just waste our time.”
Andy the German to flee As noted earlier, one of the principal subjects referred to in the memo from the director of the FBI is Andreas Strassmeir, a foreign national with extensive military training the FBI identified as the person responsible for providing terrorist training to a number of neo-Nazi skinheads at Elohim City in the early and mid-90s.
Despite obvious links to bombing conspirator McVeigh at such a crucial time in the plot – and the fact that several of the German’s neo-Nazi roommates and trainees later went to prison for criminal activities including murder, bank robbery, bombings, weapons violations and a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government – the DOJ has said that Strassmeir was never officially questioned by the FBI while living for over seven years in the U.S. – much of that time after his visa had expired.
Days after the director’s memo was sent to the OKBOMB command post and five FBI field offices, Strassmeir crossed the Mexican border with the assistance of a former member of the U.S. Special Forces, David Holloway.
Strassmeir’s flamboyant attorney, Kirk Lyons of Black Mountain, N.C., issued a bizarre statement after his client fled the U.S., admitting the C.A.U.S.E. Foundation (a non-profit organization established to help the victims of the Waco massacre) provided the money for Strassmeir’s escape.
Lyons, the managing director of the C.A.U.S.E. Foundation, quickly confirmed that Strassmeir received help in the escape with one of the foundation’s associates, Holloway, with additional assistance provided by an elite corps of German counter-terrorism troops after the pair exited the U.S.
Although Strassmeir was wanted for questioning in the OKBOMB case at the time of his escape… was illegally in the U.S. at the time of his escape and those facts were known to his attorney…has subsequently been listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist…and was considered “armed and dangerous” by the FBI when he crossed the Mexican border with a member of the C.A.U.S.E. Foundation, Lyons has never been charged with harboring a fugitive, obstructing justice or disciplined by the North Carolina Bar Association for his admitted role in assisting a client elude federal authorities.
(Special thanks to John Solomon with the Washington, D.C., AP office for his
generous help and contributions that made this story possible.)
An allegation is that 48 hours prior to th Oklahoma City bombing, the SPLC and the FBI received word that the bombing was to take place. It is not known whether the documents substantiate that claim.
Morris Dees’ informant?
Also disclosed for the first time are
references by the FBI director to an
informant working for the
Birmingham, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC),
headed by civil right’s attorney Morris Dees and
who was present at Elohim City in the
critical hours leading up to the bombing in
Oklahoma
City.
Referring to a telephone call on April 17, 1995 (alleged to have been from
McVeigh), the memo states: “(Name redacted) telephone call from (name redacted)
on or about 4/17/95, two days prior to the OKBOMB attack, when (name redacted)
of the SPLC,
was in the white supremacist compound at (redacted),
Oklahoma,
notes the director. (Emphasis added)
References to an informant working for the
SPLC
at Elohim City on the eve of the
Oklahoma
City bombing raises serious questions as to what the
SPLC
might know about McVeigh’s activities during the final hours before the fuse was
lit in Oklahoma
City – but which the
SPLC has failed to disclose
publicly.
Questioned during a press
conference at Southeastern
Oklahoma
State University in Durant recently, Dees confirmed someone from his
organization was inside the white supremacist compound at Elohim City on April
17, 1995.
“If I told you what we were doing there, I would have to kill you,” Dees replied
when pressed to explain what this person was doing at a terrorist training camp.
Dees did acknowledge that his information network long ago established that
McVeigh had been to Elohim City before the bombing.
“But we didn’t have him on our radar screen until he was arrested,” Dees said.
Dees has written a number of books and articles about the militia movement in
this country.
Many have criticized Dees’ attacks on right-wing militias and gun owners in the
U.S. as inaccurate, exploitive and designed to get donations to his tax-exempt
foundation, which receives substantial contributions each year.
The director’s electronic message also alludes to a person at the
Oklahoma
white supremacist compound described by the FBI head as a subject with an
allegedly, “…. lengthy relationship with one of the two indicted OKBOMB
conspirators (emphasis added).”
John Millar, a church elder at Elohim City, told the McCurtain Daily Gazette, “I
don’t know who was out here back then. It doesn’t surprise me that a bunch of
Jews that work for Dees and that Southern Poverty (SPLC)
bunch would be spying on us. They don’t understand our message or anything about
us. Why don’t you ever write about the fact that no one has ever found a link to
McVeigh here?”
Until this memo surfaced, spokespersons for the FBI and the U.S. Department of
Justice steadfastly denied they had any reliable information concerning any
relationship between either McVeigh or Nichols and subjects living at or who had
frequented the Elohim City compound before the bombing.
Attorney Stephen Jones, who represented McVeigh at trial in Denver, Colo., said
he was not provided this information from the government despite repeated
motions filed with the court.
“We filed motions with the judge specifically asking for details of surveillance
activities at Elohim City and other places. We were told by prosecutors that
they had no records. Now you have some of them,” Jones explained.
“Also, as you know the FBI kept saying they had no information linking McVeigh
to Elohim City beyond the one phone call on April 5. Well, as you can see,
there’s much more than that here.”
Attorneys representing Nichols are bound by a gag order and unable to comment on
the contents of this new information or whether they had copies of the material
this newspaper had received.
A spokesman for the FBI office in
Oklahoma
City, Gary Johnson, said, “The FBI still stands by the results of the most
expensive and thorough investigation in history.
“We arrested everyone in this crime and these conspiracy stories just waste our
time.”
Andy the German to flee
As noted earlier, one of the principal subjects referred to in the memo from the
director of the FBI is Andreas
Strassmeir, a foreign national
with extensive military training the FBI identified as the person responsible
for providing terrorist training to a number of neo-Nazi skinheads at Elohim
City in the early and mid-90s.
Despite obvious links to bombing conspirator McVeigh at such a crucial time in
the plot – and the fact that several of the German’s neo-Nazi roommates and
trainees later went to prison for criminal activities including murder, bank
robbery, bombings, weapons violations and a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S.
government – the DOJ has said that Strassmeir was never officially questioned by
the FBI while living for over seven years in the U.S. – much of that time after
his visa had expired.
Days after the director’s memo was sent to the OKBOMB command post and five FBI
field offices, Strassmeir crossed
the Mexican border with the
assistance of a former member of the U.S. Special Forces, David Holloway.
Strassmeir’s flamboyant attorney, Kirk Lyons of Black Mountain, N.C., issued a
bizarre statement after his client fled the U.S., admitting the C.A.U.S.E.
Foundation (a non-profit organization established to help the victims of the
Waco massacre) provided the money for Strassmeir’s escape.
Lyons, the managing director of the C.A.U.S.E. Foundation, quickly confirmed
that Strassmeir received help in the escape with one of the foundation’s
associates, Holloway, with additional assistance provided by an elite corps of
German counter-terrorism troops after the pair exited the U.S.
Although Strassmeir was wanted for questioning in the OKBOMB case at the time of
his escape and was illegally in the U.S. at the time - and those facts were
known to his attorney when he crossed the Mexican border with a member of the
C.A.U.S.E. Foundation - attorney Kirk Lyons has never been charged with
harboring a fugitive, obstructing justice or disciplined by the North Carolina
Bar Association for his admitted role in assisting a client elude federal
authorities.
(Special thanks to John Solomon with the Washington, D.C., AP office for his
generous help and contributions that made this story possible.)
Brian
Levin From EmergencyNet NEWS Service ...
If you thought that militia, hate groups and extremist organizations were only a product of the South, Southwest and Northwest portions of the United States ... you were wrong. Last week, Brian Levin, the associate director of Klanwatch, which is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that in the past few years six militia groups have sprung up in Massachusetts and eight have appeared in New Hampshire. New Hampshire is one of 21 states in which regular paramilitary exercises are being conducted. There are also at least 12 other militia organizations operating in the rest of New England. Levin said that the militia movement in the U.S. is "growing." He said, "The vast majority of the movement is benign. The groups just want a rhetorical sounding board for their theories. But that ten percent underbelly are plotting against the government and carrying out illegal paramilitary training." The Southern Poverty Law Center acts as a clearinghouse for information on military militias, hate groups and extremist organizations. They are recognized as being experts in this field. Levin said that support for militias and armed citizens' groups is now coming from other groups such as Second Amendment gun "fanatics," tax protesters and even radical anti-abortion activists. In practice, any number of these groups that oppose the government and the current administration seem drawn to ally themselves in preparing for potential violent actions. It appears that in the 1990s the militia and all other types of movements have become united in their anti-government rhetoric. Three developments brought this into being. They were: the Ruby Ridge incident in 1992, the Waco, Texas, incident in 1993 and the passage of the Brady Bill in 1993. And, many are now waiting and watching for the outcome in Jordan, Montana; perhaps the next rallying point for anti-government forces. Levin said, "It's a rallying
point for these groups." He said that the movements anti-government rhetoric
are really only a disguise for racism and bigotry. "I call this 'stealth
bigotry.' You can't use the n-word, but if you talk about the government,
people will listen to you," Levin added. |
Rise of the 'Patriots'
In the 1990s, the Project noted the rise of the antigovernment "Patriot"
movement and the militia groups it spawned.
In 1994, a special Intelligence Project task force began monitoring this
movement and its strategic links to white supremacist organizations. In a
letter that year to then-Attorney General Janet Reno and attorneys general of
six states, Center co-founder and chief trial counsel Morris Dees raised an
alarm about extremists in the militia movement. Dees warned that the "mixture of
armed groups and those who hate" was a "recipe for disaster."
In the aftermath of the tragic 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Intelligence Project investigators' thorough knowledge of the militia movement was put to use by law enforcement agencies and media. Dees later testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on terrorism, while another Project official appeared before the U.S. House regarding antigovernment terrorism.
In particular, Hammer’s testimony (if it reflects his past private statements) could point to the role of a covert federal undercover informant, former German army intelligence officer, Andreas Strassmeir, in matters surrounding the tragedy.
Strassmeir’s close friend and attorney, Kirk Lyons, is undoubtedly watching the unfolding events, having proclaimed that Strassmeir is a victim of “conspiracy theories”—a theme echoed by the major media and by Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who is now known to have had an informant, probably Strassmeir, with foreknowledge of the OK bomb conspiracy.
Yet
another likely informant was Elohim
City's
security director,
Andreas Strassmeier.
The son of a high-ranking German official,
Strassmeier spent several years in the German army, including a stint as
an intelligence officer. He came to the United States in 1989, when the
U.S. and German governments were running an operation to stop the flow
of neo-Nazi literature from America to Germany, where it is illegal.
Strassmeier immediately moved to Elohim
City,
where Millar put him in
charge of security. He is the person McVeigh phoned two weeks before the
Oklahoma City
bombing with his Spotlight calling card. Strassmeier fled
the country after his name surfaced in the press.
ADL tries to implicate Spotlight magazine
Andreas Strassmier
was originally identified as a Nazi, white supremacist, anti-semite,
who joined the organization at Elohim
City.
He was none of those, because he was a JEW SPY in that organization. The SPOTLIGHT NEWS, published by Liberty Lobby, knows that the Jews were involved in the bombing and also had FORE-KNOWLEDGE. That is a PROVEN FACT, because the Jews were caught in a slip-up, when they tried to implicate Liberty Lobby with complicity.
McVeigh
was in contact with Andreas Strassmeir, JEW. The ADL knew from their Zionist
agents, including Strassmier, about the ad McVeigh put in the Spotlight before
the bombing. However, the ADL did not know the ad had been delayed. The
Zionist spy organization slipped up, gave the original date for the ad, showing
they had an "inside" source for the information from their agents. That
connected the Jewish plotters to McVeigh. Contact the Spotlight News for all the
details.
Despite the fact that BATF officials knew of Mahon's activities and plans, they failed to arrest him. [14] Carol Howe also reported on the activities of Andreas Strassmeier, a German citizen and former intelligence officer, the son of a high-ranking German Intelligence officer. While living in the United States he had full diplomatic immunity despite the fact that his visa had expired and he should have been deported. In addition, while staying at Elohim City, he carried concealed weapons, practiced using explosives, and talked about bombing the Murrah Building. He was obviously an agent provocateur because the FBI intervened and prevented other government agencies from raiding Elohim City and arresting both Mahon and Strassmeier. [15]
Glen Wilburn's two grandchildren were killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. Despite the fact that he was dying of pancreatic cancer, he spent the last months of his life trying to find out who was responsible for the bombing. Ambrose Evans Pritchard quotes him as saying:
Dennis Mahon
![]() |
"The best indications were that the
plot was hatched at Elohim
City in the fall of 1994 under the guidance of Dennis Mahon and
Andreas Strassmeier,
two men who are clearly enjoying the protection of the FBI . . . . McVeigh was
undoubtedly part of the movement . . . . The bombing was probably a sting
operation that went disastrously wrong. [16]
|
I believe that Glen Wilburn was mistaken about Strassmeier working for the FBI. In all probability he was a CIA asset because when Timothy McVeigh's defense attorneys asked the Central Intelligence Agency for Andreas Strassmeier's file:
"The Agency provided its findings to prosecutor Beth Wilkinson, who refused to hand the material to McVeigh's defense team. The Justice Department even ignored a motion to compel, without suffering any sanction . . . ." [17]
Ambrose Evans Pritchard telephoned Andreas Strassmeier after he had returned to Germany. Pritchard first assured him that he didn't believe that he was responsible for what had happened in Oklahoma, then said:
"There comes a time in every botched operation when the informant has to speak out to save his own skin, and that's now, Andreas."
"How can he?" he (Strassmeier) shouted back into the telephone. "What happens if it was a sting operation from the very beginning? What happens if it comes out that the plant was a provocateur?"
"A provocateur?"
"What if he talked and manipulated the others into it . . . . The relatives of the victims are going to go crazy. He's going to be held responsible for the murder of 168 people. . . . Of course the informant can't come forward. He's scared . . . right now." [18]
C-SPAN: Last Monday, syndicated columnist Robert Novak wrote this piece, "A Sting Operation Gone Awry." And he talks about Andreas Strassmeier, "a former West German army lieutenant illegally in the U.S." Who is he, and why is he important to the bombing?
AEP: Tim McVeigh telephoned him 2 days before the bombing, after he had called the Ryder Truck rental agency. And that's how he got drawn into the whole question of the bombing in the first place. [Strassmeier] spent 8 years in the German army. And he told me he'd had intelligence training and he'd done some intelligence work in the German army. And he came here with the intention of working undercover for the U.S. Justice Department. And he admitted that to me. So it's quite significant that he should figure as a character in the extended McVeigh circle. He's also been named by an undercover informant of the ATF, Carol Howe, as somebody who's stirring up race war and a terrorist campaign against the U.S. Government. Now with his background, I find it very hard to believe that he's a genuine neo-Nazi terrorist (which is how he presented himself.) I suspect that he was here on some kind of undercover mission; whether it was for the German government, or the United States Government, or both, I don't know. My own conjecture (I can't prove it) is that he was a joint asset, penetrating the neo-Nazi far right.
Strassmeier's son Andreas appears to have been the mastermind of the Oklahoma City bombing. For more on the bombing and the connection of Andreas Strassmeier to the incident, see also FTR #'s 27, 60, 87, 88, 92,
named Andreas Strassmeier moved to Elohim City in 1991. Some time afterward, he began to run paramilitary training weekends for skinheads and Neo-Nazis on the premises, to the discomfort of Elohim's somewhat-more-harmless kooks. The drills included weapons training and were generally intended to encourage "revolutionary" activities around the country.
Strassmeier's little seminars made for an interesting circle of networking chums, including members of the Aryan Republican Army bank robbery gang, and Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.
Despite the fact that Elohim City had already been under heavy surveillance by the federal government prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, no one in the FBI could seem to find the reports which would have implicated the Aryan bank robbers in the April 19, 1995 blast. In fact, virtually all the information that the feds had on Elohim City went missing after it became clear that McVeigh was connected to the camp.
The reasons for all this apparent covering-up are still pretty baffling. The whole thing seems pretty pointless on the face of it. The story would never even have seen the light of day if not for the determined efforts of a tiny Oklahoma newspaper and the Associated Press to keep on digging until they turned up key documents (albeit too late to save Timothy McVeigh from Lethal Injection). The whole thing does make you wonder what else they're not telling us.
Despite the fact that no one seemed interested in pursuing Elohim City's links to OKC, and the fact that no one seemed interested in prosecuting residents there for harboring the Aryan bank gang, and the fact that no one even cared enough to stop Strassmeier from fleeing the country later in 1995.... Whew... Yes, despite all this, Elohim City's fortunes did nevertheless take a turn for the worse after the bombing.
Pritchard talked with him and with
Carol Howe, who had been an undercover
informant for the
ATF
in Elohim
City and uncovered apparently serious planning for bombing the
Murrah
building, led by
Andreas Strassmeier (Andy the
German), about which the federal government seemed to have little curiosity.
It's a colorful story with wacky characters and Evans-Pritchard tells it well. I
don't know if he's gotten to the bottom of it, but he has documented planning
trips and evidence that John Doe II, for whom the feds originally did a manhunt,
then announced that he was a figment, does exist. What emerges is powerful
evidence that quite a few more people were involved than McVeigh and Nichols,
that "Andy the German" is Lt.
Andreas Strassmeier
of the Panzer Grenadiers. "If I had to bet," writes
Evans-Pritchard, "I would hazard that
Andreas
Strassmeier's real purpose at Elohim
City was to find out whether the U.S. neo-Nazi movement had the capability and
intent to graduate to weapons of mass destruction,
particularly biological and
chemical devices. A high-level counterintelligence operation of this kind would
explain why Elohim
City was being protected, even though it was engaged in every weapons violation
in the U.S. code, not to mention manifest sedition."
McVeigh was seen with others in a light
brown pickup truck. Other John Doe suspects have been identified. (Source - the
Intelligence Service of William Cooper's Organization). Here they are:
John Doe #2, Michael Brescia, JEW
John Doe #3, Andreas Strassmier, JEW
John Doe #4, Gary Hunt
John Doe #5, Daniel Spiegelman (a.k.a. William Taylor), JEW
John Doe #6 photographed but remains unidentified at this time.
Strassmeir himself spent seven years in the German Army as a Bundeswehr officer, where he served with the Panzer Grenadiers, which is an elite intelligence unit. And, in case you’re wondering, Strassmeir’s area of expertise was none other than disinformation. This point is extremely important, as we’ll see later, because even though Strassmeir is portrayed as an ardent neo-Nazi, he spoke fluent Hebrew (Israel’s state language), while the London Times reported that he had a Jewish girlfriend who served in the Israeli Army. Is this what we would expect from a notorious “Jew-hater”?
"Andy the German" is one
Andreas Strassmeir and probable
mastermind behind the attack. A German born visitor to the United States
whose visa had expired, Andreas took up
residence as Chief of Security at Elohim City where he set up a terrorist
training camp. Dennis Mahon became friends with Andreas Strassmeir while they
were both living in Elohim City. Andreas had been linked to the bombing and has
fled the country back to his homeland in Germany. Carol Howe, the confidential
informant, reports that Mahon and Strassmeir cased the Alfred P. Murrah Building
on at least three different occasions prior to the bombing. While Strassmeir has
never been named as a member of the Aryan Republican Army, his ties to the group
are well documented. Evidence has been rapidly mounting that "Andy the German"
was really a government operative involved in a major sting operation in Elohim
City and that the operation went terribly awry. When presented with the
possibility of Andy being employed by the government, Mahon's response was,
"Oh, sweet Jesus, I am fucked."
He and his Sayanim team need to stand trial for placing the charges on the columns inside. The truck bomb was only a distraction for the collapsing the columns inside.
The FBI has documents that name the informants. Teletypes from then FBI director Louis Freeh dated January 4, 1996, and August 23, 1996, confirm that the FBI had informants imbedded with the Mid-West Bank Robbery Gang and in Elohim City. In these documents, Freeh reports to various FBI field offices that the Elohim City informant (possibly explosives expert and German national Andreas Carl Strassmeir) "allegedly has had a lengthy relationship with Timothy McVeigh" and "that McVeigh had placed a telephone call to Elohim City on 4/5/95, a day that he was believed to have been attempting to recruit a second conspirator to assist in the OKBOMB attack."
|
McCurtain Daily Gazette (Idabel, Oklahoma)
1 July 1997
THE REV. ROBERT MILLAR IDENTIFIED AS FBI INFORMANT
By J.D. Cash
Tulsa-- Near pandemonium broke out in a federal courtroom here Monday when a senior agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shocked observers by telling the court that the spiritual leader of Elohim City, the Rev. Robert Millar, was a confidential informant for the FBI.
The McCurtain Daily Gazette has long been reporting that Elohim City is a religious and paramilitary compound in east-central Oklahoma that is frequented by some of the most dangerous members of the neo-Nazi iunderground in the United States and Canada.
Although residents of the cult have continued to deny it publicly, the Gazette has reported that its sources believe one of those shadowy figures was Timothy McVeigh.
Stories published in this newspaper have also exposed Elohim City as the center of a wide-ranging conspiracy to overthrow the federal government by members of a group called the Aryan Republican Army.
Several of those members have since been arrested on charges related to a string of bank robberies across the midwestern United States.
The incredible revelation that the leader of Elohim City himself was part of a government intelligence operation came during a pre-trial hearing associated with the upcoming trial of another confidential informant and frequenter of the compound, Carol E. Howe.
Howe, a former Tulsa beauty queen, debutante and one-time paid undercover informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, is scheduled to stand trial later this month for conspiracy charges associated with making bomb threats and possession of bomb-making components.
Howe was indicted shortly after the Gazette reported that she intended to be a key witness in the trial of Timothy McVeigh.
U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, who presided over the McVeigh trial, refused to let Howe testify in Denver-- ruling that her information that Elohim City was the center of the bombing conspiracy "might confuse the jury."
Under questioning Monday by Howe attorney Clark Brewster of Tulsa, Special Agent Peter Rickel stunned everyone when he reluctantly admitted that the man Elohim City cult members call "Grandpa" is really a cooperating source for the FBI.
Millar's status as a confidential informant began in the fall of 1994. The FBI admitted in court that Millar was a paid confidential informant, although the amount of his paycheck was not revealed. When Rickel disclosed this startling information, a senior FBI agent and several U.S. attorneys bolted from the courtroom in an agitated state. Millar's encampment was heretofore considered by experts in domestic terrorism to be the "Switzerland" of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States.
ELOHIM CITY is a 400-acre compound located near Muldrow, Oklahoma, about thirty-five miles northwest of Fort Smith, Arkansas. It was founded in 1973 by ROBERT MILLAR, a Canadian who preaches that white Anglo-Saxons are God's chosen people, non-whites are descendants of pre-Adamic species lower than whites, and Jews are Satan's children.
The John Doe Times is an on-line, electronic newsletter devoted to the Oklahoma City Bombing conspiracy and coverup, published by the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment, Constitutional Militia, and friends. Our motto: Sic Semper Rodentia!
Our email address: Mo10Cav@aol.com. Our snail mail address: P.O. Box 926, Pinson, AL 35126.
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McCurtain Daily Gazette (Idabel, Oklahoma)
1 July 1997
THE REV. ROBERT MILLAR IDENTIFIED AS FBI INFORMANT
By J.D. Cash
Tulsa-- Near pandemonium broke out in a federal courtroom here Monday when a senior agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shocked observers by telling the court that the spiritual leader of Elohim City, the Rev. Robert Millar, was a confidential informant for the FBI.
The McCurtain Daily Gazette has long been reporting that Elohim City is a religious and paramilitary compound in east-central Oklahoma that is frequented by some of the most dangerous members of the neo-Nazi iunderground in the United States and Canada.
Although residents of the cult have continued to deny it publicly, the Gazette has reported that its sources believe one of those shadowy figures was Timothy McVeigh.
Stories published in this newspaper have also exposed Elohim City as the center of a wide-ranging conspiracy to overthrow the federal government by members of a group called the Aryan Republican Army.
Several of those members have since been arrested on charges related to a string of bank robberies across the midwestern United States.
The incredible revelation that the leader of Elohim City himself was part of a government intelligence operation came during a pre-trial hearing associated with the upcoming trial of another confidential informant and frequenter of the compound, Carol E. Howe.
Howe, a former Tulsa beauty queen, debutante and one-time paid undercover informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, is scheduled to stand trial later this month for conspiracy charges associated with making bomb threats and possession of bomb-making components.
Howe was indicted shortly after the Gazette reported that she intended to be a key witness in the trial of Timothy McVeigh.
U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, who presided over the McVeigh trial, refused to let Howe testify in Denver-- ruling that her information that Elohim City was the center of the bombing conspiracy "might confuse the jury."
Under questioning Monday by Howe attorney Clark Brewster of Tulsa, Special Agent Peter Rickel stunned everyone when he reluctantly admitted that the man Elohim City cult members call "Grandpa" is really a cooperating source for the FBI.
Millar's status as a confidential informant began in the fall of 1994. The FBI admitted in court that Millar was a paid confidential informant, although the amount of his paycheck was not revealed.
When Rickel disclosed this startling information, a senior FBI agent and several U.S. attorneys bolted from the courtroom in an agitated state.
Millar's encampment was heretofore considered by experts in domestic terrorism to be the "Switzerland" of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States.
Elohim City, a 1,000-acre area of rolling timberland, is the residence of some 80 followers. But more importantly, it has played host to some of this nation's most notable subversives.
Thus Millar's position as a mole for the FBI could explain why the compound has never been raided.
Despite its use as a hideout for gunrunners, drug dealers, bank robbers and suspected members of the conspiracy that bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Elohim City has enjoyed a reputation as a place fugitives can live without fear of arrest.
In the weeks before the Oklahoma City bombing, BATF agent Angela Findley had planned to raid the compound and arrest its security advisor, Andreas carl Strassmeir.
Strassmeir, an illegal alien who migrated to Elohim City from Germany, was supected by Findley of converting semi-automatic weapons to machine guns as well as plotting with other Elohim City residents and visitors to bomb federal installations.
Carol Howe reported to Findley during the time she worked for the BATF.
Howe told Findley that Strassmeir was the ringleader in the plot to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building and that Millar was preaching twice a day to his flock that the group had to act by April 19, 1995, or they would end up like the Branch Davidians in Waco.
The arrest of Strassmeir was scrubbed after senior members of the BATF, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office met in February, 1995 and discussed Findley's plan.
Sources have told the Gazette that Strassmeir was also an important source of intelligence for the U.S. government.
In January, 1996, shortly after it was discovered that it was Strassmeir that Timothy McVeigh had called for in the days before the bombing, the German national fled to his native Berlin with the aid of German intelligence officers.
With Millar now exposed, the loss of Elohim City as a virtual nest of spies for the U.S. intelligence community is almost assured.
But such a loss could have consequences far beyond the obvious.
If Millar was reporting a wider conspiracy to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building, and those reports were not subsequently turned over to Timothy McVeigh's defense team, then the withholding of such critical information by the FBI could get McVeigh a new trial.
Those reports, as well as Howe's, will likely be sought by the defense teams for both McVeigh and Terry Nichols and may also be subpoenaed by the grand jury convened in Oklahoma City to investigate the bombing.
Also those reports could prove important in several civil suits that are pending against the government for its alleged failure to notify the occupants of the Murrah building that there was a heightened risk of danger on April 19, 1995. And Congress is also looking into the government's intelligence role in the bombing.
Calls to the compound to get Millar's comments about the situation were not returned.
END OF STORY
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JDT Commentary: Three other observations about the hearing not mentioned by J.D. in his story--
1. The Feds were particularly interested in a discovery motion that they filed against the accused, Carol Howe. Howe it seems had the effrontery to tape many of her phone calls with Angela Findley, her ATF handler. The government would like to get copies of the tapes before Findley goes on the stand and commits perjury. The Feds are very put out that Ms. Howe would use their own tactics on them. We say: "Bravo, Carol!!"
2. The fed witnesses, while afflicted with a tremendous amount of "earlier onset of Alzheimer's" (as in "I don't recall...." and "I can't remember......") did spend an inordinate amount of time trying to shield Unterscheissfuhrer Dennis Mahon of the White Aryan Resistance from negative allegations made by Carol Howe about bomb making plans, components, etc. "It was almost as if Mahon was also a snitch, even though one FBI man denied it on the stand," said one witness in the courtroom interviewed by this writer.
Perhaps the Feds and Dennis have reached a "modus vivendi" with each other on the subject of Carol Howe.
3. If Millar really was an FBI snitch/provocateur before the bombing, that would make most of the senior leadership at Elohim City at one time or another to be Federales-- Millar, Ellison, Strassmeir, etc. Indeed, not even in Czarist Russia did the secret police send paid provocateurs to provoke other paid provocateurs. Elohim City can thus be seen in its true light-- not as an operation infiltrated and suborned by infiltrators-- but rather as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the FBI/ATF. This throws McVeigh's E.C. days in a whole new light.
It also begs the question of what happens to Millar now... does he face a new Night of the Long Knives when the E.C. "herrenvolk" find their "Pastor" has been passing the plate to the Feds?? What, too, will happen to Special Agent in Charge Thomas Kukor of the OKC FBI office? I guess we now know what happened when he "sang in the choir" on special trips to E.C. Was Kukor playing "choirboy" or "bagman" for the coverup when he visited Elohim City on his "community outreach program?"
One thing is certain: the FBI could open a new money-making opportunity: franchised "Rent-A-Nazi" outlets. They own so many of them they might as well put them to some use that doesn't get buildings blown up and hundreds of people killed. Just a thought.
-- Mike Vanderboegh, 1 ACR
Editor, The John Doe Times
Also, the committee obtained seismologic evidence from an expert source that "supports the fact that there were multiple explosions" that morning.
FBI has secret docs
it's reticent to give up
Judge ordered disclosure of info on informants that could shed light on Oklahoma
City tragedy
The FBI says it has located 340 documents related to the
bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, documents that could
reveal damaging information about what the agency and its informants knew about
the mass murder plot, reports the McCurtain
Daily Gazette.
According to the report in the McCurtain County, Okla., paper, the documents address the monitoring of the bombing by FBI informants, Alabama attorney Morris Dees and Dees' organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center. Writes reporter J.D. Cash in the Gazette: "If proven true, the ramifications of such disclosures would be far-reaching. Not only could the discovery of these documents lead to additional arrests and prosecutions in the OKC bombing case, but evidence of a cover-up of a sting operation involving the FBI and a private charity ( the SPLC) could ruin a number of careers of highly placed individuals."
The documents are part of an extensive filing made in federal court in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Monday. A court order was obtained by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, the plaintiff in a Freedom of Information suit against the Oklahoma City FBI office, the Gazette reported. Trentadue has been seeking evidence in the untimely death of his brother, whose body was found beaten and slashed while the inmate awaited a parole violation hearing.
Trentadue believes his brother was tortured and killed by government agents who mistakenly thought he was involved with executed killer Timothy McVeigh and others in a string of bank robberies and the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.
After learning the FBI was involved in a sting operation with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Trentadue, the Gazette reports, sought a copy of two teletypes from former FBI Director Louis Freeh that discussed the undercover operation "that proved the FBI knew in advance McVeigh's plans for bombing a federal building."
The FBI initially denied it had the teletypes, but after Trentadue produced redacted copies of them, he went to court to force the FBI to cough up copies of their original un-redacted versions.
On May 5, U.S. District Court Judge Dale A. Kimball ordered the FBI to turn over un-redacted copies of two teletypes sent by Freeh to a select group of FBI field offices, including the OKBOMB task force in Oklahoma City. Kimball's order also included instructions to perform an extensive search for other records involving McVeigh, his alleged co-conspirators and informants working for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The paper reported that, according to a Jan. 4, 1996, teletype, Freeh disclosed the Southern Poverty Law Center had an informant at the white supremacist Elohim City compound when McVeigh called the facility requesting assistance with his plans. The teletype said the call was made on April 17, 1995 – 48 hours before a truck bomb destroyed the Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 persons and injuring 500 more.
For years, the FBI has repeatedly denied the agency had any prior knowledge of the bomb plot.
The FBI now says it has found 340 documents that could also link the SPLC to McVeigh, Elohim City and members of the Aryan Republican Army.
On Monday, the FBI proposed several alternatives to turning over the documents listed in Kimball's order, saying it did not have time to comply with the judge's order to turn over the material Trentadue is seeking by June 15.
Said an agency representative: "In the past, the backlog in the FOIPA Section has been exacerbated by the high volume of administrative appeals that will require review and response by the FBI's FOIPA Section personnel. … At the present time, the FBI is involved in over 150 pending lawsuits in various federal district and appellate courts throughout the United States."
The agency further argued that revealing the elements of its intelligence-gathering operation at Elohim City would not be in the best interests of the nation.
Retired Air Force General Benton Partin, who spent 25 years in non-nuclear weapons Research & Development, has sent a widely-distributed letter to patriot organizations and Congressmen stating "I can say with a high level of confidence that the damage pattern on the reinforced concrete superstructure could not have possibly been attained from the single truck bomb without supplemental demolition charges at some of the reinforced column bases. The total incompatibility with a single truck bomb lies in the fact that either some of the columns collapsed that should not have collapsed or some of the columns are still standing that should have collapsed and did not."
X beams collapse and O beams
Sketch of Murrah Federal Building, columns, rubble line and truck bomb crater.
"An oversimplified analogy will help you see this point. It would be as irrational or as impossible as having a 150 pound man sit in a flimsy chair and the chair collapses, then a man weighting 1500 pounds sitting [sic] in an identical flimsy chair and it does not collapse -- impossible."
"When I first saw the pictures of the truck bomb's asymmetrical damage to the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, my immediate reaction was that the pattern of damage would have been technically impossible without supplementing demolition charges at some of the reinforcing concrete column bases (a standard demolition technique)."
"First, a blast through the air is a very inefficient energy coupling mechanism against heavily reinforced concrete beams and columns. Second, blast damage potential initially falls off far more rapidly than an inverse function of the distance cubed. That is why in conventional weapons development, one seeks accuracy over yield for hard targets."
"I would strongly urge that the U.S. Congress take steps to assure that evidence in Oklahoma City be independently evaluated by a collection of demolition experts from the private sector before the building is demolished. It is easy to determine whether a column was failed by contact demolition charges or by blast loading. I understand the building is to be destroyed May 23rd or 24th. Why the rush to destroy the evidence?"
Why the rush indeed! Why do you think there was a rush? Could it be . . . . the government has something to hide? It's not too hard to become cynical or paranoid in short order with this rapscallion government around. Some people call it Waco-ising evidence. Policemen involved destroy the evidence, say "mistakes were made," blame the victims or some pre-selected target group, and proclaim to an increasingly dubious public that they are still capable of conducting their own housekeeping. If only the SS could of investigated Dachau! Schoolchildren would have "learned" that the Holocaust was a myth promulgated by Zionists.
General Partin observes that there are no shortage of patsies to take the rap for government misconduct. A country that produces a Lee Harvey Oswald can easily produce a Manchurian Candidate like Timothy McVeigh. He could even be taught to grin, smile, shuck and jive upon command. He's an Army man.
If McVeigh is a militiaman or a patriot, the best thing he could do for his country is kill himself, or better yet, to either lie or tell the truth and say that the government put him up to it. The Army's microchip implanted in his ass gave him the nod. Get ready for the show-trial of the century or even millennium.
--------------------------------------------
.
Closely related, and sometimes even a part of the above mentioned conspiracy theory, is the Magic Blasting Cap Theory. Ever hear of the Magic Bullet Theory regarding the Kennedy assassination? The Magic Bullet was no ordinary bullet, it did a whole bunch of stuff with Kennedy's head as if it was radio-controlled by LBJ hisself.
So with the Magic Blasting Cap. It detonated a whole bunch of ammonia nitrate and diesel fuel in ten or twelve blue-plastic barrels at the same time in an aluminum-bodied Ryder truck so that none of the explosion was wasted. Yeah, really. The Army ought to stop firing expensive milled artillery shells of brass and steel out of its howitzers -- it can use plastic shells. It's just a matter of using the right fuse.
This theory does make sense when you figure out that countries throughout the world have had such fuses for quite some time. It takes such a fuse to detonate high explosive around a nuclear warhead, pushing the uranium or plutonium into a critical mass necessary for fission, then fusion, causing a hydrogen-bomb blast. These type fuses have been available for 40 years, because they are necessary for modern nuclear warfare. The United States took the lead in developing such incredibly timed fuses, followed by Russia, Britain, France, Israel, and China. Without these fuses, a thermonuclear bomb needs quite a lot of megatonnage to work. Saddam Hussein wanted these type fuses, literally worth more than their weight in plutonium, but we wouldn't let him have any, which is probably a good thing. Sovereign nuclear powers don't sell these things at Radio Shack. So how did two nitwits like McVeigh and Nichols get a hold of such a timer? Or did they just get lucky and have all twelve barrels go off at once so that none of the fuel oil and fertilizer mixture was scattered around before it could detonate? Naaaah! So, according to this theory, where did these Army homeboys get the fuses?
Oh, I don't know! Could it be . . . . the government? Noooo! Our government wouldn't do anything like that would it? Well, would it? I need some hand-holding and reassurance right now.
True connoisseur conspiracy theorists mix this one up or drink it straight from the bottle to create their favorite volatile cocktail.
----
1
The Mannlicher-Carcanno Bomb
"It had to have been mined," said the gruff, gnarly voice on the other end of the line. "It's real simple. You cannot bring down a building like that without cutting charges set on the support pillars."
Bud, an ex-Green Beret who saw heavy combat in Vietnam, should know what he's talking about. Bud had military demolitions training — the kind taught to men who need to know how to blow up hardened targets.
"It couldn't have been done externally like that," added Bud. "Without cutting charges, there's just no way to do it."
Bud didn't want me to use his full name. He was worried about his VA benefits.
One man who wasn't worried about government reprisals was General Benton K. Partin. A retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General, Partin had responsibility for the design and testing of almost every non-nuclear weapon device used in the Air Force, including precision-guided weapons designed to destroy hardened targets like the Alfred P. Murrah Building. Partin has exhaustively researched the bombing and the resulting pattern of damage.
In a letter dated May 17, 1995, hand-delivered to each member of the Congress and Senate, Partin stated:
When I first saw the pictures of the truck-bomb's asymmetrical damage to the Federal Building, my immediate reaction was that the pattern of damage would have been technically impossible without supplementing demolition charges at some of the reinforcing concrete column bases…. For a simplistic blast truck-bomb, of the size and composition reported, to be able to reach out on the order of 60 feet and collapse a reinforced column base the size of column A-7 is beyond credulity.
The full text of Partin's report, reproduced in the appendix, is too complex to elaborate on here, says a truck filled with ammonium nitrate could not have caused the degree of damage done to the Alfred P. Murrah building. Not when it was parked at least 20 feet away from that building. Without direct contact, the fall-off from the blast would be too great to do any serious structural damage.[5]
Another man who knows a thing or two about bombs is Samuel Cohen, inventor of the Neutron Bomb. Cohen began his career on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, where he was charged with studying the effects of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During his 40 year career, Cohen worked with every application of nuclear weapons design and testing.
Cohen stated his position in a letter to Oklahoma State Representative Charles Key:
It would have been absolutely impossible and against the laws of nature for a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil… no matter how much was used… to bring the building down.[6]
Interestingly, the Ryder truck-bomb has earned the nickname the "Mannlicher-Carcanno Bomb" after the cheap Italian-made rifle with a defective scope that was allegedly used to kill President Kennedy. District Attorney Jim Garrison joked during the Shaw conspiracy trial that the government's nuclear physics lab could explain how a single bullet could travel through President Kennedy and Governor Connally five times while making several u-turns, then land in pristine condition on the President's gurney.
In the Oklahoma bombing case, it appears the government is attempting to perform a similar feat of light and magic. The fact that a non-directional, low-velocity fertilizer bomb parked 20 to 30 feet from a modern, steel-reinforced super-structure could not have caused the pattern and degree of damage it did is not being widely touted by the government or the mainstream press. The government expects the public to believe that two disgruntled amateurs blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building with a homemade fertilizer bomb.
Dr. Roger Raubach doesn't believe the government. Raubach, who did his Ph.D. in physical chemistry and served on the research faculty at Stanford University, says, "General Partin's assessment is absolutely correct. I don't care if they pulled up a semi-trailer truck with 20 tons of ammonium nitrate; it wouldn't do the damage we saw there."
Raubach, who is the technical director of a chemical company, explained in an interview with The New American magazine:
"The detonation velocity of the shock wave from an ANFO (ammonium nitrate/fuel-oil) explosion is on the order of 3,500 meters per second. In comparison, military explosives generally have detonation velocities that hit 7,000 to 8,000-plus meters per second. The most energetic single-component explosive of this type, C-4 — which is also known as Cyclonite or RDX — is about 8,000 meters per second and above. You don't start doing big-time damage to heavy structures until you get into those ranges, which is why the military uses those explosives."[7]
The government is not happy about people like Dr. Roger Raubach. They don't want you to know what Dr. Raubach knows. Sam Gronning, a licensed, professional blaster in Casper, Wyoming with 30 years experience in explosives, told The New American:
"The Partin letter states in very precise technical terms what everyone in this business knows: No truck-bomb of ANFO out in the open is going to cause the kind of damage we had there in Oklahoma City. In 30 years of blasting, using everything from 100 percent nitrogel to ANFO, I've not seen anything to support that story."[8]
In an interview with the author, Gronning said, "I set off a 5,000 lb ANFO charge. I was standing 1,000 feet from it, and all it did was muss my hair, take out the mud in the creek that we were trying to get rid of, and it shattered a few leaves off the trees around it. It didn't cause any collateral damage to any of the deeply set trees that were within 20 feet of it."
The FBI has a different story to tell.
The FBI claims that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bought several thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate at a farm supply store in Manhattan, Kansas, then drove to Geary State Park where they mixed a bomb. The FBI claims that the suspects then hauled their magic bomb a distance of over 500 miles, where, nearly 24 hours later, they blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
Yet what the FBI — those bastions of truth and justice — don't want you to know, is that fertilizer-grade ammonium nitrate isn't a very good blasting agent. As a publication from the Atlas Powder company states:
…agricultural fertilizer prills when made into ANFO had very poor explosive characteristics. They would not detonate efficiently because of their high density, lack of porosity and heavy inert coatings of anti-setting agents.… The ability of an oiled prill to be detonated depends greatly upon the density of the prill. Dense prills, such as agricultural grade, often are not detonable at all; or if initiated, perform at a very low rate of detonation and may die out in the bore hole performing no useful work.[9]
U.S. Army Technical Manual TM 9-1910 states it thusly:
The grade of ammonium nitrate used in the manufacture of binary explosives is required to be at least 99 percent pure, contain not more than 1.15 percent of moisture, and have maximum ether-soluble, water-insoluble acidity, sulfate, and chloride contents of 0.10, 0.18, 0.02, 0.05, and 0.50 percent, respectively.
Moreover, a bomb like that is not easy to mix. According to Gronning, "You'd have to stir and stir and stir to get just the right mixture for proper combustibility. And then, if it isn't used immediately, the oil settles to the bottom and the bomb doesn't go off."
"ANFO is easy to make if you know how to do it," adds Jeffrey Dean, Executive Director of the International Society of Explosives Engineers, "but it takes years of experience to work with safely." According to Dean, "It is almost impossible for amateurs to properly mix the ammonium nitrate with the fuel oil. Clumps of ANFO would inevitably fail to detonate."[10]
The scenario of two men mixing huge barrels of fertilizer and fuel-oil in a public park also stretches the limits of credulity. Such a spectacle would surely have been seen by anyone passing by: hikers, picnickers, fishermen.
"That would have drawn so much attention," said Rick Sherrow, a former ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) agent with 25 years experience in explosives. "It would have required an area twice the size of a truck just to walk around… that would have not have gone okay."[11]
Naturally, the expert who testified for the government disagrees. Linda Jones, an explosives specialist who has studied IRA bombings in Great Britain, "concluded that there was one device… in the rear cargo compartment of a Ryder truck…." Jones added that it wouldn't be difficult to build such a large bomb "provided they had a basic knowledge of explosives and access to the materials — it would be fairly simple. One person could do it on their own, but more people could do it quicker."[12]
While the government built its case on witness accounts of the single Ryder truck, numerous witnesses, uncalled to testify by the prosecution for the McVeigh trial, recall seeing two trucks. Could two trucks — one rented by McVeigh, and one rented by the suspect known as John Doe 2 — have been used to transport the huge quantities of material necessary to build such a bomb?
"I would buy two trucks simply for logistics," said Sherrow. "One truck full of barrels of ammonium nitrate, and you still got to put the fuel into it. Because you don't want to put the fuel in and let it settle for days at a time. They would have to have something to bring everything together and mix it, and that's going to take more then one truck."
Two days prior to the Murrah Building bombing — on April 17th — David King, staying at the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas, where McVeigh and John Doe 2 spent time, remembered seeing the Ryder truck with a trailer attached to it. Inside the trailer was a large object wrapped in white canvas. "It was a squarish shape, and it came to a point on top," said King. "It was about three or four feet high." King said that later in the day, the trailer was gone, but the truck was still in the lot.[13]
Was this witness describing some sophisticated explosive device? Or was he describing a Lely farm mixer? A Lely farm mixer is about four feet high with a pointed top. What happened to this trailer? Why did we never hear anymore about it?
Then around 2:00 a.m. on April 19, a Ryder truck pulled into the Save-A-Trip convenience store in Kingman, Kansas, followed by a light colored car and a brown pick-up. Assistant manager Richard Sinnett clearly recalls three men, including McVeigh and a man resembling John Doe 2 enter the store. Yet Sinnett was particularly struck by the odd contraption they were towing — a large plastic, semi-transparent tank full of clear liquid.[14] Was this diesel fuel that the bombers intended to add to their ammonium nitrate mixture at the last minute?
Despite a mountain of evidence against the [government's] ANFO theory, the government has gone to great lengths to convince the jury and the public that the Murrah Building was destroyed by a single ANFO bomb delivered by a pair of disgruntled Right-wing extremists. In fact, the ATF televised a demonstration of an ANFO truck-bomb detonating in an effort to prove their contention. "They fired the thing off," said Gronning. "We saw it — it was on CNN — so what? All it did was set off an explosion and wiggle the trees behind it. It didn't even knock them over.
"My knowledge comes from practical handling of explosives," added Gronning. "And my belief is that 4800 lbs of ANFO wouldn't have scuffed the paint on the building!"
The FBI also changed the size of the bomb numerous times. They originally claimed that it weighed 1,200 pounds, upgraded that figure to 2,000 pounds, then to 4,000 pounds, and finally, they issued a press release stating that the bomb weighed 4800 pounds.
"It appears the government keeps up-grading the size of the vehicle and the 'fertilizer' bomb to coincide with the damage," said retired FBI SAC (Senior Agent-in-Charge) Ted Gunderson.
The government also originally claimed the bomb cost less than $1,000 to build. Then just before the start of McVeigh's trial, that figure was upgraded to $5,000. Their rationale was based on the "discovery," almost two years after the fact, that the suspects had constructed their magic bomb with racing fuel, not diesel fuel, which is far less expensive.
To maintain some semblance of credibility in light of increasingly publicized reports of General Partin and others, the government also conceded — right before the start of McVeigh's trial — that the suspects probably hadn't built their bomb at Geary State Park after all.[15]
If Timothy McVeigh or anyone else with military training wanted to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah Building, it is highly unlikely they would use ANFO. As Army demolition manuals clearly state, ANFO is not good for destroying concrete or steel. McVeigh, the consummate soldier who studied every conceivable Army manual in his spare time — including Army Manual TM 31-210: Improvised Munitions Handbook — certainly would have known this.[16]
Yet the FBI insists that amateur bomb-makers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols built this amazing ANFO bomb that killed 169 people and destroyed a modern nine-story steel-reinforced concrete building. Of course, that was before the government's damage-control apparatus went into effect. Before it did, even the usual government talking-heads were insisting that no amateurs could have done this.
Vince Cannistraro, ABC News corespondent and former CIA intelligence advisor to the National Security Council stated, "This is something professional and it really implies that the person who constructed the explosive device has experience, was trained in the use of explosives, and knew what they were doing."[17]
Before he began attacking critics of the government's case, Oklahoma Governor and former FBI agent Frank Keating stated, "…obviously whatever did the damage to the Murrah Building was a tremendous, very sophisticated explosive device."[18]
The very next day, the government was insisting that a homemade ANFO bomb, made with agricultural grade ammonium nitrate, did the job. FBI Special Agent John Hersley contends that traces of a military-type detonation cord known as PDTN (pentadirythri-tetranitrate), commonly known as Primadet, were found on McVeigh's clothing at the time of his arrest (In another report it was PETN, or pentaerythritol-tetranitrate). PDTN was allegedly used to wire the barrels of ANFO.[19]
Senior FBI chemist Frederick Whitehurst conducted a test on McVeigh's clothing but found no residue there, or in McVeigh's car either.[20]
Whitehurst came forward with allegations that the FBI has been slanting results of its forensic tests for years. Collected in a 30-page memorandum, Whitehurst criticized FBI laboratory personnel for incompetence. As a Justice Department memorandum states: "Dr. Whitehurst contends that the Explosives Unit and the Chemistry and Toxicology Unit inappropriately structure their conclusions to favor the prosecution."[21]
According to the Wall Street Journal, "[Whitehurst's] accusations of bias and even manufacturing evidence have called into question several high-profile government cases, including the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings."[22]
Whitehurst's allegations were further elaborated on in a highly revealing report issued by the DoJ Inspector General's Office, which concluded that "[SSA David] Williams repeatedly reached conclusions that incriminated the defendants without a scientific basis and that were not explained in the body of the report."
Indeed. It appears Williams reached his conclusions based, not on empirical evidence, but on the fact that Terry Nichols allegedly purchased large quantities of ANFO. As the OIG (Office of Inspector General) report states:
Without the evidence of these purchases, Williams admitted he would have been unable to conclude that ANFO was used. Indeed, Williams stated that based on the post-blast scene alone it could have been dynamite….
Williams claimed "that the initiator for the booster(s) was either a detonator from a Primadet Delay system or sensitized detonating cord." Yet as the OIG report states, "No evidence of a Primadet system or sensitized detonating cord was found at the crime scene."[23]
Controversial scientist and bomb expert Michael Riconoscuito told former FBI agent Ted Gundersen that the theory of drums of ANFO being detonated by PDTN-soaked loops of rope or "det" cord is highly improbable, if not impossible. "The only way to obtain blast control is with volumetric initiation," explained Riconoscuito. "This takes electronic circuits of similar sophistication as would be required in nuclear weapons. This sophistication is not available to the average person," he added, stating that the resultant blast would have been "confused and uncontrolled," and the energy would have ultimately "canceled itself out."[24]
Finally, the OIG report states: "Whitehurst questions Williams' conclusion that none of the structural damage evident within the Murrah building was caused by secondary explosive devices or explosions."[25]
So why is the government going to such great lengths, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, to make us believe that the Alfred P. Murrah Building was destroyed by an ANFO bomb? Because the government's case is built upon the premise that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols built their alleged bomb with ammonium nitrate. The calls allegedly made by McVeigh were to stores that sell racing fuel and ammonium nitrate. McVeigh's fingerprint is allegedly on a receipt for ammonium nitrate. And a small trace of ammonium nitrate was allegedly found at the scene. The government's case must proceed along those lines. Any evidence that proves the bomb was made of anything other than ANFO would not only destroy the government's case, it would open up inquiries about who really bombed the Murrah Building… and why.[26]
The government [also had to stick] with the ANFO theory is because Michael and Lori Fortier agreed to testify in a plea-bargain that their friend McVeigh arranged soup cans in their kitchen to demonstrate how to make a "shaped charge." Yet as bomb experts explained, there is no way to make a shaped charge out of a collection of ANFO barrels.
But the [government doesn't want any serious inquiries as to who really blew up the Murrah Building. The] government expects us to believe that two lone amateurs with a crude fertilizer bomb, out in the open, twenty to thirty feet away from a hardened target, destroyed eight reinforced columns and killed 169 people. As General Partin said, such a scenario is "beyond credulity."[27]
Former ATF [agent] Rick Sherrow, who wrote an article for Soldier of Fortune magazine entitled "Bombast, Bomb Blasts & Baloney," contends that General Partin's assessment of the bombing is somehow inaccurate. Sherrow claims that the pressure wave that would have struck the building from the [rapidly deteriorating] blast of the ANFO bomb (375 p.s.i. according to Partin's figures) would be more than enough to destroy reinforced concrete columns, which Sherrow claimed in his article disintegrate at 30 p.s.i. (pounds per square inch).[28]
To Sam Gronning, such a statement is preposterous: "That's bullshit!" exclaimed Gronning. "Thirty p.s.i. wouldn't take out a rubber tire!" Both Partin and Rabauch contend that at least 3,500 p.s.i. is required to destroy reinforced concrete. In a letter to Partin, Rabauch states:
I took the liberty of checking with the leading concrete supplier in my area in order to confirm the compressive yield figure that you used, that being 3,500 p.s.i. What I was told about concrete was very interesting. A 3,500 p.s.i. figure is extremely low for structural concrete. A properly mixed and cured structure of the type dealt with in your report would probably have a yield strength of 5,600 p.s.i.[29]
Those who rush to refute the evidence presented by Partin, Raubach and others, cite as evidence the 1982 destruction of the Marine bunker in Beirut by a truck-bomb driven by an Islamic terrorist. In that instance, however, the truck was driven directly into the building — a structure much smaller and lighter than the Alfred P. Murrah Building.
In August of 1970, 1,700 pounds of ANFO parked in a van exploded outside the Army Math Research Lab at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Although parked closer than the Ryder truck was to the Murrah Building, the bomb merely blew a hole in the outer wall and took out the windows. One person was killed. (See photo)
In 1989, Colombian narco-terrorists detonated a truck-bomb outside the National Security Department in Bogota, Columbia. The vehicle was parked approximately ten feet from the modern high-rise building. The bomb decimated the face of the building, but left the support columns intact. Fifteen people were killed.
In the summer of 1996, an IRA truck-bomb detonated in the heart of Manchester's financial district. The device, constructed of ANFO and 3,500 pounds of Semtex, a high-velocity, military-grade plastic explosive, caused considerable damage to the surrounding buildings, but left them relatively intact. Although the device managed to break a lot of windows and injure 206 people, no one was killed.
On June 25, 1996, a tanker-trailer packed with RDX plastic explosives blew up outside the Khobar Towers apartment complex at King Abdul Aziz Air Base in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds more. While the blast produced a crater 35 feet deep and 85 feet across (the crater in Oklahoma was approximately 6 feet deep and 16 feet across, although the government claimed it was 30 feet), it didn't do the same amount of damage done to the Murrah Building — a building constructed to much more rigorous codes and specifications. Yet authorities claim that the bomb was at least the size as that which blew up the Federal Building.[30] [See photo]
In an analogy offered by Partin, "It would be as irrational or as impossible as a situation in which a 150 pound man sits in a flimsy chair causing the chair to collapse, while a man weighing 1,500 pounds sits in an identical flimsy chair and it does not collapse — impossible."
"But," contends Sherrow in Soldier of Fortune, "the [Murrah] Building was not designed to withstand explosions or earthquakes, and it's basically a weak building."
Jim Loftis, one of the building's architects, told me they were asked to make the building bomb-resistant, due to left-wing radicals who were blowing up federal facilities in the early 1970s. Loftis also said the building was designed to meet earthquake standards. "We designed it to meet the building codes and earthquakes are part of that code," said Loftis.
Loftis also said that the north side of the lower level (the area impacted by the truck-bomb) was steel-rebar reinforced concrete without windows. He also concurred with Raubach and Partin that the pressure necessary to destroy reinforced concrete is in the 2,500 to 4,000 p.s.i. range — a far cry from the 30 p.s.i. cited by Sherrow.[31]
Yet Sherrow concludes that since there was so much collateral damage (damage to the surrounding buildings) the truck-bomb must have been responsible. "The collateral damage just discounts [Partin's] material," says Sherrow.
Two experts who seem to agree with Sherrow are Dorom Bergerbest-Eilom and Yakov Yerushalmi. The Israeli bomb experts were brought to Oklahoma at the request of ATF agent Guy Hamal. According to their report, the bomb was an ANFO bomb boosted with something more powerful… and it had a Middle Eastern signature.[32]
The Athenian restaurant, which sits approximately 150 feet northwest of the Murrah Building, was almost completely destroyed. Pieces of the Murrah Building were actually blown into the Athenian. As video producer Jerry Longspaugh points out, only a bomb inside the Federal Building would be capable of projecting parts of the building into another building 150 feet away.
As Gronning notes in a letter to Representative Key: "Not in your wildest dreams would that much ANFO affect peripheral damage at that distance. Which leads me to suspect that another more powerful explosive was used."
According to a source quoted in the Rocky Mountain News, an ammonium nitrate bomb made with a racing fuel component known as hydrazine "would create one of the largest non-nuclear blasts possible." McVeigh had allegedly attempted to procure the substance from a dealer in Topeka, Kansas, who refused. In fact, hydrazine is extremely hazardous and difficult to obtain.[33]
While not knowledgeable about hydrazine, Gronning noted that "C-4, for example, would be capable of creating those kinds of pressure waves and destroying the local foundation of the Federal Building.
"If you had 4,000 lbs of C-4 in there," Gronning said, "now you're talking a real high-order explosive at some serious speed. And when that goes off, you're liable to take out the thing. But I still have a problem believing even at that distance away from the building, it would create that kind of damage. All you have to do to see what I'm talking about is to see what kind of bomb damage you get from a bomb in the [WWII] attacks on London."[34]
It is precisely this analogy that Sherrow attempts to use in Soldier of Fortune. "For perspective, notes SOF 'demo' expert Donovan, "consider that the German V-1 and V-2 missiles that devastated London carried only 1,650 pounds of an explosive not dissimilar in brisance and yield. In other words, would three V-2s simultaneously striking the first floor of the Murrah Building do such damage? Of course they would."
Yet the Ryder truck did not impact the Murrah Building at the speed of a rocket, nor did it impact it at all. Even to the layperson, one can see that such an analogy is ridiculous. In his article, Sherrow never speculates that C-4 or any other high-velocity military type explosive might have been used.
Still, the former ATF man contends that an ANFO bomb parked out in the open could have caused the pattern and degree of damage done to the Murrah Building. "Absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt, and I base that on 30 years in the business, and shooting ANFO — from a couple pounds to 630 tons in one shot." Sherrow goes on to state that Partin's conclusions were based upon mere "theoretical analysis," not hands-on experience.
Yet Partin spent 25 years in the defense research establishment, including hands-on work at the Ballistic Research Laboratories; Commander of the Air Force Armament Technology Laboratory; Air Force System Command, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) management. Such credentials speak of a man who knows his explosives.
It is unclear why the former ATF man was trying to discredit Partin, and by association, others who disagreed with the government's theory. What is clear however is that Soldier of Fortune, the magazine in which Sherrow's article appeared, is owned by Paladin Press, regarded a CIA proprietary. Robert K. Brown, the magazine's publisher, is an associate of General John Singlaub, a key Iran-Contra player who ran the genocidal Phoenix Program in Vietnam, and helped train death squads in Central America. Both men reportedly played an ancillary role in the 1984 La Penca bombing, which resulted in the deaths of eight journalists. [See Chapter 14] Sherrow admitted to working for the CIA in Africa. What he did there wasn't exactly clear.[35]
If the CIA (or one of its tentacles) were involved, as they invariably tend to be in such cases, they would have a strong motive to cover up their involvement and re-direct the investigation. The most common way of doing this is through the use of propaganda and disinformation. While Sherrow himself has criticized the ATF, and wrote several articles debunking the government's theory regarding militia groups, this particular article appeared to be a "hit-piece" designed to discredit any legitimate analysis of the bombing.
Yet some critics of the government's story have gone beyond the relatively ordinary explanations of Partin, Gronning and others to suggest that the Federal Building was destroyed by a device called an "A-Neutronic Bomb." These advocates cite as evidence the nature of the spalling (the disintegration of the concrete into tiny pieces) on the top of the building, and the extent of the damage to surrounding buildings that even men like General Partin claim would be impossible for an ANFO bomb.
Larens Imanyuel, a Berkeley assistant physics professor who has studied the bombing, is one such advocate. Imanyuel's analysis, which appeared in Veritas newsletter, indicates that the wide extent of the collateral damage was not consistent with a conventional explosion. As Imanyuel writes:
There was some very sophisticated bomb that was capable of causing a tremendous blast atmospheric pressure wave that blew out windows in so many of the surrounding buildings. This had to be some sort of very high-tech dust explosive-like bomb — one that creates a widely dispersed explosive mixture in the very air and then detonates it with a secondary charge. This last spectacular high-tech bomb served the purpose of convincing the general public that the alleged solitary truck-bomb was powerful and "devastating" enough that it could wipe out and collapse a nearby building.[36]
Consider the comments of a local structural engineer, Bob Cornforth, "The range of this blast has really impressed me — the extent of the damage and the distance out." A mile away, window frames had been pushed back two feet. On the other hand, he inspected two buildings just a little over 200 ft. from the so-called crater, the YMCA center and the Journal Record building, which lost part of its pitched concrete roof. To his surprise, "The structural frames performed extremely well. We design for 80-mph winds," which he says seems adequate. The lack of damage to the frames, despite the massive light-structural damage showed that the shock waves were of short duration. This was consistent with a many-point explosion, but not with a single-point explosion large enough to knock out the four heavy columns that had collapsed in the Murrah Building.[37]
The A-Neutronic bomb, or "Electro-Hydrodynamic Gaseous Fuel Device," was reportedly developed by the young scientist-prodigy in the early 1980s while he was working for Hercules Manufacturing in Silicon Valley, CA. The first bomb test at the Pentagon's super-secret Area 51 in Nevada apparently resulted in the death of a technician and injured several others due to their underestimation of its power. The project was reportedly compartmentalized and classified under a "Nuclear Weapons" category by President Reagan. [For a description of the device, see Appendix]
[What does Samuel Cohen have to say about the A-Neutronic bomb? "Well, I'm not expert enough to really vouch for his statements, but I've got a hunch that it's technically well-based. I've spoken to Michael Riconosciuto (the inventor of the A-Neutronic Bomb) and he's an extraordinarily bright guy. I also have a hunch, which I can't prove, that they both (Riconosciuto and Lavos, his partner) indirectly work for the CIA."]
According to Imanyuel, a member of a public watch-dog group that monitors military and nuclear procurement activities, "The design would be particularly suitable for use as a cruise missile warhead, where a non-nuclear charge is required that can reliably destroy a hardened target despite a several-meters targeting error. Such weapons are designed as part of the Advanced Technology Warhead Program of Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories."
Ted Gundersen, who has independently investigated the bombing, included numerous letters and memos in his report which pointed to the existence of such a device. He reported that the government contract number for the bomb was DAAA-21-90-C-0045, and was manufactured by Dyno-Nobel, Inc., in Salt Lake City. Dyno-Nobel was previously connected with Hercules Manufacturing, where Riconosciuto worked. The Department of the Army denies that contract DAAA-21-90-C-0045 exists. Dyno-Nobel refused to respond to inquiries from Gundersen or the author.[38]
Curiously, the bomb specialist the government called as its expert witness during the Federal Grand Jury testimony was Robert Hopler. Hopler recently retired from Dyno-Nobel.
Sherrow raised the issue of the Electro-Hydrodynamic Gaseous Fuel Device in his Soldier of Fortune article. According to Imanyuel, "Gundersen's bomb model was clearly unworkable as presented in Soldier of Fortune, but contained the essential information that the bomb generated an electrostatically charged cloud."[39]
One victim in the HUD office in the Murrah Building described in a National Public Radio interview on May 23, 1995 how she felt a heat wave and a static electricity charge immediately before the windows blew in.
Daina Bradley, who lost her mother and two children in the bombing, said she felt electricity running through her body right before the bomb went off.[40]
Another victim, Ramona McDonald, who was driving about block away, remembers seeing a brilliant flash and described the feeling of static electricity. "It made a real loud static electricity sound. It sounded like big swarm of bees — you could actually hear it. The next thing was a real sharp clap, like thunder.…" McDonald also described both gold and blue flashes of light. Interestingly, Riconiscuto has called his device "Blue Death."[41]
Another survivor of the blast was quoted on CNN as saying, "It was just like an atomic bomb went off. "The ceiling went in and all the windows came in and there was a deafening roar…"[42]
Proponents of the A-Neutronic Bomb conclude that these are all signatures of such a device.[43]
While both Gundersen and Riconosciuto have received ridicule for suggesting that a super-secret pineapple-sized device may have destroyed the Murrah Building, Cohen cautions: "Look, when I first came up with that concept (the Neutron Bomb, developed in the 1970s), the ridicule I took from the scientific community was something awful. And this included scientists at the Nobel Prize level." "Regarding Riconosciuto," adds Cohen, "the guy's a madman… but technically, there's no doubt in my mind that he's brilliant."[44]
Gene Wheaton, a former Pentagon CID investigator, claims that the fuel-air bomb was deployed in the Gulf War, along with other experimental weapons responsible for much of the massive devastation inflicted on Iraq.[45] The fuel-air explosive, or FAE, can cover an area 1,000 feet wide with blast pressures of 200 p.s.i. According to a CIA report on FAEs:
[T]he pressure effects of FAEs approach those produced by low-yield nuclear weapons at short ranges. The effect of an FAE explosion within confined spaces is immense. Those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringes are likely to suffer many internal… injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner-ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possible blindness.[46]
Moreover, it seems that Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm supplied Iraq with plans for a fuel-air explosive. The blueprints were allegedly passed on to the Iraqis by the Egyptians, and Iraq commenced commercial production of the weapon — the force of which is the equivalent of a small atomic explosion.[47]
A few minutes before 9:00 a.m. on April 19, a young Arabic man carrying a backpack was seen in the Murrah Building hurriedly pushing the elevator button as if trying to get off. A few minutes after he exited the building, the bomb(s) went off. The elevator doors, which were on the opposite side of the building from the truck-bomb, had their doors blown outward.
Another former military source agreed that a device similar to the fuel-air explosive exists. "It's called a Special Atomic Demolition Munitions or SADM," said Craig Roberts, a Lt. Colonel in Army Reserve [Intelligence]. According to Roberts and Charles T. Harrison, a researcher for the Department of Energy and the Pentagon, this munition has been deployed with artillery units in Europe. The SADM can also be carried in a backpack.
Another source who has monitored top-secret weapons projects confirmed this information:
I do not know a lot about SADM's, but I have friends — ex British SAS and RAF — who were trained in their use a few years ago for behind-the-lines sabotage in the event of a Russian breakthrough in Europe. They believe from their still-serving military contacts that the earlier football sized back pack weapons that they were trained on have been significantly microed such that a device would now easily fit in a grapefruit and deliver five to ten tons TNT equivalent — or less [i.e: down to one ton TNT]. These things easily fit into a 105mm howitzer shell or a briefcase. ...
Exactly what components are utilized in these weapons is difficult to get as the still serving British officers are reluctant to talk about them in detail. One can assume that a mixture of Plutonium 239 (highly refined hence relatively low radioactivity emission on detonation), Lithium 6 Deuteride Tritide, Tritium, and possibly Beryllium and Uranium 238 (NOT 235) would be involved as a series of lenses in a Bi-Conical shape. I am endeavoring to get more data but this a very touchy area…[48]
An article in the The Nashville Tennessean insists Iraq's Saddam Hussein has been developing 220 pounds of lithium 6 per year. lithium 6 can be converted to tritium, an essential ingredient in thermonuclear reactions.[49]
Other sources say that 6,000 to 7,000 SADM's were produced, some of which made their way to Israel and other countries.[50] Sam Cohen confirms this information in the Fall issue of Journal of Civil Defense. Cohen, echoing Harrison, charges that the U.S. has purposefully underestimated the number of nuclear warheads that Iran, Iraq and North Korea could produce, and deliberately discounted their capacity to produce substantially smaller warheads.
"A couple of years ago," states Cohen, "disturbing statements on advanced small, very low-yield nuclear warheads, began emanating from Russia.[51] Cohen adds that these articles "revealed a massive smuggling ring had emerged where the material was being sold around the world to a number of countries, some of which were terrorist nations."[52]
[Writing in Nexus Magazine, Australian journalist and military authority Joe Vialls points out that the bombing which destroyed a financial center in London in July of 1993, and which almost destroyed the World Trade Center in New York four months later, could not have been caused by conventional explosives. In a bizarre coincidence predating Cohen's analysis, theoretical physicist and former Pentagon nuclear expert Theodore B. Taylor stated in his book, The Curve of Binding Energy, that someday someone was going to blow up the World Trade Center with a nuclear device the size of a stick of gum. Taylor's prediction first appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 1973.[53]
Vialls adds that the British government was quick to blame the London attack on an IRA (Irish Republican Army) truck-bomb, in the same manner that U.S. authorities were quick to blame the Oklahoma bombing on a truck-bomb constructed by a pair of so-called disgruntled anti-government loners. Yet at the same time the British government was issuing these statements, their bomb technicians were exploring the bomb site in full nuclear protective suits.]
Had the Murrah Building been destroyed by a SADM or a backpack nuke, using the truck-bomb as a cover? British bomb experts, with extensive experience dealing with terrorist truck-bombs, told McVeigh's attorney, Stephen Jones, that the ANFO bomb could not have done all of the damage to the Murrah Building.[54]
British bomb expert Linda Jones, testifying for the prosecution in McVeigh's trial, came to the opposite conclusion however. Nevertheless, the site was quickly demolished and covered over with concrete; the remains taken to a secure dump and buried. What was the government trying to hide? Nuclear Physicist Galen Winsor, General Ben Partin, and KPOC manager David Hall went to the building and disposal sites with radiation measuring equipment, but were kept away. They managed to gather some fragments anyway, and when they measured them with Winsor's NaI Scintillator detector, they registered radiation levels 50 percent higher than normal.[55]
[The specter of radioactive terrorism is not exactly brand new. In Paris, the French secret police foiled terrorists planning to set off a conventional bomb designed to spread particles of deadly radioactive plutonium in the air.
Cohen suggests that if it had been a radioactive attack, and it were made public, it would have panicked a public already frightened about terrorist attacks: "If the perpetrators had been able to get their hands on just a traceable amount of radioactivity, and mixed it up with the explosive, so that it would virtually assure that it would be picked up by some detecting meter, and this had gotten out, that there was a fairly copious amount of radioactivity in the explosive, all hell would have broken loose…. It would scare the pants off a very large fraction of the U.S. citizenry, by saying this was used by terrorists, and contaminated an area…"[56]
Given the government's long history of covering up radiation tests on U.S. citizens, from radiating entire towns downwind of nuclear test sites, to slipping radioactive isotopes to crippled children in their oatmeal, it goes without saying that they would also cover this up.]
"A new class of nuclear weapons could exist which could have an extremely disturbing terrorist potential," said Cohen. "And to admit to the possibility that the warheads might be sufficiently compact to pose a real terrorist threat was equally unacceptable [to the government]."[57]
So was the Federal Building blown up by demolition charges, a truck filled with C-4, a fuel-air explosive, a miniature nuke, or some combination of the above?
["It really doesn't make any difference," says Cohen. "From the standpoint of practicality… I would lean towards Ben Partin. Because all the stuff Partin's put out, it just holds up — it makes eminent sense — he doesn't have to get into this exotica. Partin says using ordinary Primacord wrapped around these pillars could have done the job." [58]
In fact, it does make quite a bit of difference from an investigative point of view, since the more sophisticated the bomb, the more sophisticated the bombers. And Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols weren't that sophisticated.]
KFOR-Channel 4 reported that the mysterious severed leg clothed in military garb found in the rubble allegedly had PVC embedded [in] it. PVC pipe is sometimes used to pack plastic explosives. It increases the shear power. Had this leg, unmatched to any of the known victims, belonged to the real bomber?[59]
[In fact, it does make quite a bit of difference from an investigative point of view, since the more sophisticated the bomb, the more sophisticated the bombers. And Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols weren't that sophisticated.]
Then on March 20, 1996,Strategic Investment Newsletter reported that a Pentagon study had been leaked which backed up General Partin's analysis:
A classified report prepared by two independent Pentagon experts has concluded that the destruction of the federal building in Oklahoma City last April was caused by five separate bombs. The two experts reached the same conclusion for the same technical reasons. Sources close to the Pentagon study say Timothy McVeigh did play a role in the bombing but peripherally, as a "useful idiot." The multiple bombings have a Middle Eastern "signature," pointing to either Iraqi or Syrian involvement.[60]
Finally, in the Spring of 1997, explosives experts at Eglin Air Force Base's Wright Laboratory Armament Directorate released a study on the effects of explosives against a reinforced concrete building similar to the Federal Building. The Air Force's test closely matched the conditions under which the government contends the Murrah Building was destroyed.
The Eglin Blast Effects Study, or EBES, involved a three-story reinforced concrete structure 80 long, 40 feet wide, and 30 feet high. The building constructed for the test, the Eglin Test Structure (ETS), while smaller than the Murrah Building, was similar in design, with three rows of columns, and six-inch-thick concrete panels similar to those in the Murrah Building. Overall, the ETS was considerably weaker than the Murrah, which had five times the amount of steel reinforcing than the ETS, and 10 times the amount of steel in its columns and beams. As New American editor William Jasper noted in regards to the EBES:
If air blast could not effect catastrophic failure to the decidedly inferior Eglin structure, it becomes all the more difficult to believe that it was responsible for the destruction of the much stronger Murrah Building.
The experts at Eglin conducted three tests. They first detonated 704 pounds of Tritonal (equivalent to 830 pounds of TNT or approximately 2,200 pounds of ANFO), at a distance of 40 feet from the structure, equivalent to the distance the Ryder truck was parked from the Murrah Building. The second test utilized an Mk-82 warhead (equivalent to 180 pounds of TNT) placed within the first floor corner room approximately four feet from the exterior wall. The third test involved a 250-pound penetrating warhead (equivalent to 35 pounds TNT), placed in the corner of a second floor room approximately two and a half feet from the adjoining walls.
The first detonation demolished the six-inch-thick concrete wall panels on the first floor, but left the reinforcing steel bars intact. The 14-inch columns were unaffected by the blast — a far cry from what occurred at the Murrah Building. The damages to the second and third floors fell off proportionally, unlike that in Oklahoma City. The 56-page report concluded:
Due to these conditions, it is impossible to ascribe the damage that occurred on April 19, 1995 to a single truck-bomb containing 4,800 lbs. of ANFO. In fact, the maximum predicted damage to the floor panels of the Murrah Federal Building is equal to approximately 1% of the total floor area of the building. Furthermore, due to the lack of symmetrical damage pattern at the Murrah Building, it would be inconsistent with the results of the ETS test [number] one to state that all of the damage to the Murrah Building is the result of the truck-bomb. The damage to the Murrah Federal Building is consistent with damage resulting from mechanically coupled devices placed locally within the structure ....
It must be concluded that the damage at the Murrah Federal Building is not the result of the truck-bomb itself, but rather due to other factors such as locally placed charges within the building itself .... The procedures used to cause the damage to the Murrah Building are therefore more involved and complex than simply parking a truck and leaving ....[61]
Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was forced to conclude that 4,800 pounds of ANFO could have not caused the so-called crater in Oklahoma City. FEMA's report, published on August 30, 1996, inadvertently concluded that the bombers would have had to use approximately three times the amount reportedly used in Oklahoma City.[62]
Another interesting confirmation came from FBI agent Danny Defenbaugh, who, along with U.S. Attorney Beth Wilkerson, visited General Partin in June of 1995. Part of the team that prosecuted McVeigh and Nichols, Wilkerson interviewed Partin on the presumption that he would be called as a witness. "…and [Agent Defenbaugh] was going through the report that I did," said Partin, "and he put his finger on that picture I had in the report… the designated crater, and he said, 'Suppose I told you that is not the crater?'"
Partin believes Wilkerson and Defenbaugh (who Partin described as belligerent) interviewed him as part of a ruse to find out what he knew about the blast(s), so the government could carefully avoid those issues at trial. While they pretended to be interested in Partin's analysis, they never kept their word to follow up the interview.
"I think what they did," said Partin, "was they looked at my credentials and technical justification of all this stuff, and they felt found that what I had was based on some pretty sound footing.… I think that's why they framed the case the way they did."[63]
Whatever blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Building, one thing's for sure, there was enough ANFO present at the site to leave visible traces. Randy Ledger, a maintenance man who was in the building at the time of the blast, claims fellow workers who rushed into the building immediately after the explosion "complained of burning eyes, heavy dust and choking lungs. That is right out of the textbook of a diesel-fertilizer bomb, because it creates nitric acid," said Ledger. "The guys I work with, they're not going to make it up that their eyes are burning."[64]
Dr. Paul Heath, a VA psychologist who was on the fifth floor of the building at the time of the blast, said, "I picked fertilizer out of my skin… I could see the fertilizer actually exploding in the air; you could see it popping all around you."
Ramona McDonald, who also survived the blast, concurs with Heath. "There was a bright flash, and then boom! And you could see the fertilizer popping in the air."
Given this scenario, it's reasonable to conclude that the Ryder truck was filled with something more powerful, with just enough ANFO to leave a visible trace.
Cohen agrees. "The damage that resulted could not have occurred from a van parked outside… I don't care how fancy an explosive was used. What did in that building… was an inside job."
It would appear that experts' analysis' are not the only evidence of an inside job. In an interview with a local TV station, a man who escaped the building said, "I was sitting at my desk, and I felt a rumbling, a shaking in the building… so I decided to get under my desk.… the glass windows blew in and knocked down the ceiling and some of the stuff above the ceiling and it all landed on top of my desk."
Another man said, "I thought it was an earthquake because I resided in California for many years, and it was almost like it was in slow motion. I felt a shake, and then it began shaking more, and I dove under my desk, and then the glass all came flying in."
A friend of Dr. Ray Brown's, who's secretary was in the building said, "She was standing by a window. The window cracked, then she got away from it and then she was blown across the room and landed in another woman's lap. Another woman I know, Judy Morse, got under her desk after feeling the building shake, and before the glass flew."
"Dr. Brian Espe, who was the sole survivor in the Department of Agriculture's fifth floor office, told the author he first "heard a rumbling noise."
According to these individuals' accounts, if the truck-bomb — the alleged sole bomb — had detonated first, how would they have felt a rumbing, had time to think about the situation, then dive under their desks? The resulting blast wave from the truck-bomb would have been immediate and total. Such an account could only be indicative of demolition charges placed inside the building.[65]*
"The inside charges — demolition charges," said Cohen, "may have gone off first, and so the columns now started to collapse. Boy, that would produce one hell of a rumble, to put it mildly…."[66]
A caller to the Oklahoma Radio Network related the experiences of his friend, a Federal Government worker, who had witnessed the blast first-hand. "He was approximately five blocks from the building whenever the building went up. He claims that the top of the building went up like a missile going through it. The debris was coming back down when the side of the building blew out. He said third and last, the truck blew up on the street."[67]
Notice this witness said the building "blew out." This is contrary to the effect of an explosive blast from the street blowing the building in from the street. Candy Avey, who was on her way to the Social Security office when the explosions occurred, was blown away from the building, struck a parking meter, and then hit her car.[68] Said Suzanne Steely, reporting live for KFOR, "We could see all the way through the building. That was just the force of the explosion — it just blew out all the walls and everything inside."[69] Ramona McDonald saw a flash and smoke rising up from inside the building, "like a rocket had shot out the top of the building."[70]
It should be obvious to the reader that it's implausible an ANFO bomb parked out in the street would have the force to blow all the way through a huge superstructure like the Alfred P. Murrah Building.
No matter how hard the government tried to lie, obsfucate, and distort the truth, the evidence would come back to haunt them.
On April 19, a tape recording made during a conference at the Water Resources Board directly across from the Murrah Building appears to indicate a succession of blast events, spaced very close together.[71]
The tape recorder at the Water Resources Board was not the only instrument recording explosions that morning. The seismograph at the Oklahoma Geological Survey at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, 16 miles from the Murrah Building, recorded two waves, or "two events," on the morning of April 19th. Another seismograph at the Omniplex Museum, four miles away from the Federal Building, also recorded two events. These seismic waves, or "spikes," spaced approximately ten seconds apart, seem to indicate two blasts. [See Appendix]
Professor Raymond Brown, senior geophysicist at the University of Oklahoma who studied the seismograms, knew and talked to people inside the building at the time of the blast. "My first impression was, this was a demolition job," said Brown. "Somebody who went in there with equipment tried to take that building down."
Not so, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's analysis. The USGS put out a press release on June 1st, entitled "Seismic Records Support One-Blast Theory in Oklahoma City Bombing."
The bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City produced a train of conventional seismic waves, according to interpretations by scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey and the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS).
Scientists from those agencies said the seismic recordings of the May 23 demolition of the building reproduced the character of the original, April 19th seismic recording by producing two trains of seismic waves that were recorded on seismometers near Norman, Okla.
"Seismic recordings from the building's implosion indicate that there was only one bomb explosion on April 19," said Dr. Thomas Holzer, a USGS geologist in Menlo Park, Calif. Holzer is one of several USGS and OGS scientists who analyzed the shock waves created by the April 19 explosion and the May 23 implosion.[72]
Holzer added that the two distinct waves from the April 19 explosion(s) were the result of the same wave traveling at two different speeds through two separate layers of the earth's crust. The "illusion" of a double explosion was simply the result of the building's collapse, he claimed. "So the bottom line then," said Holzer, "is I think these observations are totally consistent with a single explosion. It doesn't require multiple explosions to do it."[73]
Dr. Brown has an honest difference of opinion with folks at the U.S. Geological Survey. "I will candidly say that we are having trouble finding that velocity difference," said Brown. "We have not identified a pair of layers that could account for the ten-second difference.
"Whatever the USGS saw in that data convinced them that the original blast was one bomb," he added. "I find that hard to believe…. What was uncomfortable and might be construed as pressure is that they were going to come out with a press release that says we have concluded that data indicates one bomb. It puts us in the uncomfortable stance of saying that we, too, have concluded that, and we haven't."
Yet the USGS press release said that Dr. Charles Mankin of the OGS, Brown's boss, was "pleased with the work performed by Dr. Holzer and his USGS colleagues in the analysis of the seismic records." Yet Mankin had actually urged Holzer to delay the press release. "Everybody that has looked at the signal has said a refraction (an echo) would really be strange because there's absolutely no loss of energy in the recorded seismic signal. The second event has the same amplitude as the first… The arrival time is wrong for a refracted wave… We've ruled out reflections, refractions, and the air blast… We determined that these two records of these two events corroborate our interpretation that there were two explosions."[74]
The mainstream media, of course, jumped on the USGS's findings, with headlines like "Single Bomb Destroyed Building" and "Seismic Records Shake Murrah Multiple Bomb Theory." "The news media even reported two bomb blasts initially," said Mankin, "but later changed their story."
"The USGS's conclusions are not supported by either data or analysis," added Brown, who asked that his name be taken off the report. Although Brown cautions that his own conclusions are far from conclusive and require "more thorough investigation," the most logical explanation for the second event says Brown, is "a bomb on the inside of the building."
"Even the smallest of those detonations (from the May 23rd demolition) had a larger effect on the recording than the collapse of the building," he added, "which demonstrates that the explosives are much more efficient at exciting the ground motion than is the collapse of three-fourths of the building. So it is very unlikely that one-fourth of the building falling on April 19th could have created an energy wave similar to that caused by the large [truck-bomb] explosion."[75]
One of the problems with the two event theory is that the spikes on the seismic readings were ten seconds apart. With that much difference, most everybody in the vicinity should have heard two separate blasts. But given the traumatic nature of being in the immediate vicinity of a bombing, would witnesses necessarily have heard two explosions? Although the sound of a truck-bomb would certainly have made a loud, roaring noise, complete with lots of smoke and flying debris, experts say that the "crack" of a C-4 cutting charge is "downright disappointing" to hear.
One man who works as a parking garage attendant one block north of the Murrah Building told The New American that he was test driving a new pickup truck near the building when the bomb went off. "It seemed like one, big, long explosion," he said, "but I can't say for sure. My ears were ringing and glass and rocks and concrete were falling all over and around me."[76]
Dr. Paul Heath, who was on the fifth floor, says he heard only one blast. But fellow VA worker Jim Guthrie stated in an interview with the Washington Post:
"I felt a boom and was picked up off my feet and thrown under a water fountain." He heard a second explosion and covered his ears. Diane Dooley, who was at a third floor stairwell, also believes she heard a second explosion.[77]
P. G. Wilson, who worked in the Murrah Building, told researcher Michele Moore, "A second explosion came after the first one and shards of glass began flying in the office."[78]
Hassan Muhammad, who was driving for a delivery service that day, had his ears ruptured by the explosions. Muhammad told the author he clearly recalled hearing two distinct blasts. "…when I was crossing the street [at 10th and Robinson]… the first explosion went off, and it was a loud explosion. And my friend who was coming out of the warehouse asked me what was it, because we thought it was a drive-by shooting… and we got on the ground, and by the time we got on the ground, another one went off, and that's when all the windows came out." Muhammad recalls that it was about three to four seconds between blasts.[79]
Jane C. Graham, a HUD worker injured in the bombing, also clearly felt two distinct blasts. As Graham stated in a videotaped deposition: "I want to specify that the first bomb — the first impact — the first effect, was a waving effect, that you got when the building was moving, you might have maybe felt a little waving, perhaps an earthquake movement, and that lasted for several seconds.
"About 6 or 7 seconds later, a bomb exploded. It was an entirely different sound and thrust. It was like it came up right from the center up. You could feel the building move a little.… But there were two distinct events that occurred. The second blast not only was very, very loud, it was also very powerful. And as I said, I just felt like it was coming straight on up from the center of the building — straight up."[80]
Michael Hinton, who was on a bus near NW 5th and Robinson — one block away — also heard two explosions. "I had just sat down when I heard this violent type rumble under the bus," said Hinton. "It was a pushing type motion — it actually raised that bus up on its side. About six or seven seconds later another one which was more violent than the first picked the bus up again, and I thought that second time the bus was going to turn over." [81]
What Hinton is describing is consistent with a two-bomb scenario. The first, smaller explosion being the more subdued blast of the demolition charges. The second, larger explosion being the blast of the truck-bomb — the blast pressure wave of which almost tipped the bus over.
In an interview with Media Bypass magazine, attorney Charles Watts, who was in the Federal Courthouse across the street, described hearing, and feeling, two separate blasts:
Watts: I was up on the ninth floor, the top floor of the Bankruptcy Court, with nothing in between the two buildings. We were on the south side, out in the foyer, outside the courtroom. It was nine o'clock, or just very, very shortly thereafter. Several lawyers were standing there talking and there was a large explosion. It threw several of the people close to me to the floor. I don't think it threw me to the floor, but it did move me significantly, and I threw myself to the floor, and got down, and about that time, a huge blast, unlike anything I've ever experienced, hit.
Media Bypass: The blast wave hit?
Watts: A second blast. There were two explosions. The second blast made me think that the whole building was coming in.
Watts, a Vietnam veteran, has experienced the effects of bombings, including being within 100 feet of B-52 air strikes. Watts told Media Bypass he never experienced anything like this before.[82]
Another veteran who heard the blast is George Wallace, a retired Air Force fighter pilot with 26 years in the service. Wallace, who lives nine miles northwest of the Federal Building described the blast as a "sustained, loud, long rumble, like several explosions." Wallace likened the noise to that of a succession of bombs being dropped by B-52s.[83]
Taken together, the evidence and witness accounts appears to indicate that there were at least two blasts on the morning of April 19.
General Partin, along with Senator Inhoffe, Representative Key and others, asked Congress that the building not be demolished until an independent forensic team could be brought in to investigate the damage.
"It is easy to determine whether a column was failed by contact demolition charges or by blast loading (such as a truck-bomb)," Partin wrote in his letter to Congress. "It is also easy to cover up crucial evidence as was apparently done in Waco. I understand that the building is to be demolished by May 23rd or 24th. Why the rush to destroy the evidence?"[84]
Cohen echoed Partin's sentiments: "I believe that demolition charges in the building placed at certain key concrete columns did the primary damage to the Murrah Federal Building. I concur with the opinion that an investigation by the Oklahoma State Legislature is absolutely necessary to get at the truth of what actually caused the tragedy in Oklahoma City."
Yet the feds in fact did demolish the Murrah Building on May 23, destroying the evidence while citing the same reason as they did for quickly demolishing the Waco compound: "health hazards." In the Waco case, what was destroyed was evidence that the feds had fired from helicopters into the roof of the building during the early part of the raid, killing several people, including a nursing mother. In the Oklahoma case, what was destroyed was evidence that the columns had been destroyed by demolition charges.[85]
The rubble from the Murrah Building was hauled by Midwest Wrecking to a landfill surrounded by a guarded, barbed-wire fence, sifted for evidence with the help of the National Guard, then subsequently hauled off BFI Waste Management and buried. Along with it was buried the evidence of what really happened on the morning of April 19.
"It's a classic cover-up," said General Partin, "a classic cover-up."
"Everything Short of a T-72 Tank"
If the bombing of the Murrah Building was the result of an inside job, who is responsible? Was it wired for demolition, and if so, who could have wired it?
Dr. Heath, who has worked in the Murrah Building for 22 years, was present on the day of the bombing. Although Heath personally discounts the second bomb theory, he explained that poor security in the building would have permitted access to almost anyone, anytime.
"The security was so lax in this building, that one individual or group of individuals could have had access to any of those columns," said Heath, "almost in every part of the building, before or after hours, or even during the hours of the workday, and could have planted bombs."
Guy Rubsamen, the Federal Protective Services guard on duty the night of the 18th, said that nobody had entered the building. Yet Rubsamen took off at 2:00 a.m., and said that nobody was guarding the building from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.[86]
"It was a building you could have planted a bomb in anytime you wanted to," said Heath. "It was a building that was not secure at all. I've gone in and out of this building with a pen knife, just by slipping a knife in the south doors, slide the bolt back, and go in without a key. I've done that ever since the building was new. If you wanted into it, you could have gotten into it any time you wanted to."[87]
Heath also explained that visitors could drive right into the garage, anytime. "There was no guard. You could drive inside the garage — four stories — anytime you wanted to, and carry anything you wanted to inside the car."[88]
It appears that alleged bomber Timothy McVeigh (or someone driving his car) did just that. On the morning of April 19, attorney James Linehan was stopped for a light at the corner of NW 4th and Robinson at approximately 8:38 a.m. when he observed a battered yellow Mercury run the light and drive directly into the underground parking garage. Linehan said the driver had sharp facial features similar to McVeigh's, although he thought the driver may have been a woman.
Referring to the well-publized scene of McVeigh being led out of the Noble County Courthouse, Linehan said, "…that's it! That's the same profile." Curiously, one month later Linehan said, "My gut feeling is that it was a female driving."[89]
Why did "McVeigh" drive into the garage? Could he have done so to plant additional bombs? Or perhaps someone in McVeigh's car made it appear that he was doing so? A fall-guy for the real bombers?
"If McVeigh was totally outside the law, he certainly wouldn't have snuggled up against them like driving into that basement that morning," said David Hall, general manager of KPOC-TV in Ponca City, Oklahoma, who has investigated the ATF's role in the bombing."
Yet Hall doesn't believe "the ATF or the FBI or anybody went around and wired columns or anything like that. What he (Partin) said was that there may have been some explosives stored by some columns that went off. I don't feel that those people set out to kill 168 people in Oklahoma City intentionally. But I think that because of incompetence on their part that very well may have happened in two or three different ways…"\
Shortly after the bombing, an unidentified witness called Representative Key and told him that she saw two men in the garage who appeared to be "sawing" on the pillars. The men were working in almost total darkness. When she asked them what they were doing, they said, "We're just putting things right again."
Were they "putting things right," or were they weakening the support columns just enough to make sure that they'd fail at the appropriate moment?[90]
Then, on the Friday before the bombing, HUD worker Jane Graham noticed three men in the garage whom she thought were telephone repairmen. As Graham stated in her deposition, the men were holding what appeared to be C-4 plastic explosives:
"It was a block, probably 2 by 3 inches of 3 by 4, in that area, but it was a putty color — solid piece of block — I don't know what it was. But they had that and they had this wiring. When they saw me watching them, they were down there and they had plans of the building. They were discussing — they were arguing in fact — apparently there was a disagreement, because one of the men was pointing to various areas of the garage. They were talking about, I assume, plans of the building. I thought maybe they were telephone men at first.
"When they saw me watching them, they took the wiring — it looked like cord, telephone cord — it was putty colored — they took whatever else was in their hand, they put all of that back into a paper sack, they put it in the driver's side, behind the passenger seat [of a] pale green, slightly faded station wagon."
Graham later told me that one of the men was holding a one by two by three inch device that looked like "some sort of clicker, like a small TV remote-control," she said.
The men stopped working abruptly when they saw Graham. "They looked uncomfortable," she said. "They were as intent looking at me as I was at them."
She also stated that the men were not wearing uniforms and were not driving a telephone or electric company truck. They were, however, very well built. They "obviously lifted weights" said Graham.
(Graham's account is backed up by IRS worker Kathy Wilburn, who also saw the trio of men in the garage, as did a HUD employee named Joan.)[[91]]
Although the FBI interviewed Graham, they never showed her any pictures or brought her before a sketch artist. "They only wanted to know if I could identify McVeigh or Nichols," she said. "I said it was neither of these two gentlemen."[92]
A call to the local electric, telephone, and natural gas companies revealed that the men were not authorized repairmen. Nor were they construction workers inspecting the premises for a proposed renovation project by the General Services Administration (GSA). The 20 or so contractors involved in that bid stated emphatically that the men were not their employees.[93]
David Hall (who stopped working on the case in late 1995 due to an IRS audit) wasn't aware of the Graham deposition, he did drop a bombshell.
"We do know that explosives were delivered there without a doubt. We know there were six boxes of 25 to 35 pounds marked 'high explosives' delivered to the building two weeks prior to the explosion. We had contact with the truck driver who was involved in that delivery. The name of the trucking company is Tri-State, located in Joplin, Missouri."
Tri-state… is an explosives carrier.
"We've talked to the driver," said Hall. "We've talked to two drivers. Nobody knows what was in them because they were boxed and marked 'high explosive.'"
Then Hall dropped another bombshell.
"We also know that the ATF had a magazine inside the building, which was illegal. But the floor was blown out of that magazine. And there's some question about what was in there too that created that damage, because that was a foot of concrete that was blown out of that magazine."[94]
While several other unexploded bombs were pulled out of the wreckage, none were widely mentioned.
One such bomb was a 2 X 2 foot box marked "High Explosives" which had a timer on it. This was confirmed by Oklahoma City Fire Marshal Dick Miller. The timing mechanism apparently had been set to detonate at ten minutes after nine. Apparently it had malfunctioned due to the initial blast.[95]
According to Toni Garrett, a nurse who was on the scene tagging dead bodies. "Four people — rescue workers — told us there was a bomb in the building with a timing mechanism set to go off ten minutes after nine." According to Garrett, witnesses told her it was an active bomb. "We saw the bomb squad take it away."[96]
This fact was confirmed by an Oklahoma City Police officer who inadvertently began to walk into the building when a fireman yelled, "Hey idiot, that's a bomb!" The stunned officer looked over and saw the 2 X 2 box surrounded by police crime tape. He then heard the fireman yell, "There's one over there and another over there! We're waiting for the bomb squads to come back from hauling off the others."
Investigator Phil O'Halloran has Bill Martin of the Oklahoma City Police Department on tape stating that one of the bombs found in the building was two to three five-gallon containers of Mercury Fulminate — a powerful explosive — one not easily obtainable except to military sources.[97]
Citizens monitoring police radios heard the following conversation on the morning of the 19th:
First voice: "Boy, you're not gonna' believe this!"
Second voice: "Believe what?"
First voice: "I can't believe it… this is a military bomb!" [98]
Apparently, the containers, with "Milspec" (military specification) markings clearly visible, were found in the basement. Could this explain what McVeigh's car was doing in the underground parking garage? Mercury Fulminate is a highly volatile booster material. Volatile enough to create a very powerful explosion.[99]
Shortly thereafter, a fireman up on the third floor of the building noticed two military ambulances pull up to the building, and saw several men in dark fatigues carrying stretchers from the building to the waiting ambulances. What were on the stretchers were not bodies, but boxes, which appeared to contain documents. One of the stretchers had on it what appeared to be a missile launch tube. The missile, apparently part of the Army recruiting office's display, was confirmed the 61st EOD to be inert.[100][101]
What is also interesting is that General Partin stated the building's support structures failed primarily at the third floor level. In speculating who would have access at that juncture, it may be relevant to note that the Department of Defense (DoD) was on the third floor, adjoining column B-3, which Partin believes contained the main detonation charge.[102]
Partin was also informed by an acquaintance in the CIA that several of their personnel who examined the site discovered Mercury Fulminate residue on several rooftops near the building. [103]
Around the same time as the Eglin Air Force Base report was being made public, William Northrop, a former Israeli intelligence agent, told me that a friend in the CIA's Directorate of Operations informed him that there was plastic explosive residue on the building's columns.
Adding more fuel to the theory of an inside job was the dismembered military leg found in the wreckage — a leg not belonging to any of the known victims. (Although authorities would later attempt to attribute the leg to Airman Lakesha Levy.)
Nor was the local media attributing the bombing to the work of amateurs. "Right now, they are saying that this is the work of a sophisticated group," stated a KFOR-TV newscaster. "This is the work of a sophisticated device, and it had to have been done by an explosives expert, obviously, with this type of explosion."[104]
Even Governor Frank Keating told local news stations: "The reports I have is that one device was deactivated, and there's another device, and obviously whatever did the damage to the Murrah Building was a tremendous, very sophisticated explosive device."
Newscasters live on the scene could be heard throughout the day announcing, "We have reports of two other bombs pulled out of the building," and "The second two devices were larger than the first," and so on:
KFOR Channel 4: The FBI has confirmed there is another bomb in the Federal Building. It's in the East side of the building. They've moved everybody back several blocks, obviously to, uh, unplug it so it wont go off. They're moving everybody back. It's a… it's a weird scene because at first everybody was running when they gave the word to get everybody away from the scene, but now people are just standing around kind of staring. It's a very surreal, very strange scene.
Now, we want to get some information out to people, to people who are in the downtown area. You don't want to stand on the sidewalk, and the reason for that is there are gas mains underneath and if there's a second explosion, that those gas mains could blow. But, again, we do have confirmation. There is a second bomb in the Federal Building. We know it's on the east side. We're not sure what floor, what level, but there is definitely danger of a major second explosion. They're warning everybody to get as far back as they can. They're trying to get the bomb defused right now. They are in the process of doing it, but this could take some time. They're telling people that this is something to take very seriously, and not to slip forward to get a look at this, because this thing could definitely go off.
KWTV Channel 9: All right, we just saw, if you were watching, there, there was a white pickup truck backing a trailer into the scene here. They are trying to get people out of the way so that they can get it in. Appears to be the Oklahoma Bomb Squad. It's their Bomb Disposal Unit, is what it is, and it is what they would use if, if, the report that we gave you just a few minutes ago is correct, that a second explosive device of some kind is inside the building. They'll back that trailer in there, and the Bomb Squad folks will go in and they'll use that trailer. You see the bucket on the back? This is how they would transport the Explosive Device away from this populated area. They would try to do something.
Finally, KFOR announced:
The second explosive was found and defused. The third explosive was found — and they are working on it right now as we speak. I understand that both the second and the third explosives were larger than the first.[105]
[Paramedic Tiffany Smith, who was working with other rescue personnel in the Murrah Building that morning, claims she was told by a black-suited ATF agent that another bomb had been found attached to a gas line.[106]]
When Channel 4 interviewed terrorism expert Dr. Randall Heather at approximately 1:00 P.M. he stated: "We should find out an awful lot, when these bombs are taken apart.… We got lucky today, if you can consider anything about this tragedy lucky. It's actually a great stroke of luck, that we've got defused bombs. It's through the bomb material that we'll be able to track down who committed this atrocity."[107]
In fact, it is uncertain if the bombs were taken apart and examined. As stated in a report prepared by the National Fire Protection Association: "The device was removed in the sheriff's bomb trailer and exploded in a remote location."[108][109]
Incredibly, all these reports were quickly hushed up and denied later on. Suddenly, the additional bombs inside the building became a car-bomb outside the building, then a van containing 2,000 pounds of ANFO, then a truck containing 4,800 pounds.
Governor Keating, who himself had reported a second device, would later reverse his position, leading a statewide cover-up proclaiming that Representative Key and others investigating additional bombs and suspects were "howling at the moon," and "off the reservation."
When J.D. Cash, a journalist writing for the McCurtain County Gazette, tried to interview members of the Bomb Squad, Fire Department and Police, he was generally told by potential interviewees, "I saw a lot that day, I wish I hadn't. I have a wife, a job, a family… I've been threatened, we've been told not to talk about the devices."[110]
When I attempted to interview two members of the Sheriff's Bomb Squad who were first on the scene, they told me there were no additional bombs taken away or detonated. When questioned further they became visibly uptight and referred me to their superior.
One law-enforcement official who had a little more practice at lying was Oklahoma City FBI SAC Bob Ricks, the master propagandist of Waco fame, who coolly stated to the press, "We never did find another device.… we confirmed that no other device existed."[111]
The ATF, who initially denied even having any explosives in the building, eventually recanted their statements and told reporters that the 2 X 2 foot box was a "training bomb." I asked General Partin if there could be such a thing as an ATF "training bomb."
"I would certainly not think so," said Partin. "Look, when you have an EOD team — EOD teams are very well trained people. And any training device would have to be so labeled — so labeled. And the EOD people who were there were claiming it was explosives."[112]
Former ATF man Rick Sherrow had his own thoughts on the issue of training bombs. "All the field offices have that material (training bombs). It's 100 percent on the outside — weighs the same, looks the same, but it has no fill — no inert markings or anything else. I can't say absolutely that's what was found in the building, but it's more than likely. They had stun grenades too, which are live. They can't contribute or anything [to the damage], but they lied about it, and that jams up their credibility."[113]
Cash interviewed GSA workers who helped the ATF unload their arsenal room two weeks after the blast. Cash described in a series of Gazette articles beginning on May 4, 1995, how the ATF had stored weapons, explosives and ammunition in the Murrah Building in contravention of the very laws they were supposed to enforce:
Both the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau (ATF) and the Drug Enforcement Bureau (DEA) had explosives and weapons — including an anti-tank missile — illegally stored in the building when it blew up April 19, the McCurtain Gazette has learned. An eyewitness observer told the Gazette recently of assisting federal agents to remove weapons and explosive devices from a partially-damaged arsenal inside the Federal Building after the explosion.[114]
Lester Martz, ATF Special Agent in Charge for the region, denied this. "That locker was intact," said Martz in an interview with the Dallas Morning News, and with the author. Martz went on to say that the blasted out area between columns B-2 and B-4 was the result of DEA ordinance. Yet the DEA offices were on the west side of the building on the seventh floor, nowhere near that area. The ATF offices, however, were in close proximity to it, being located in the top rear corner of the building, on the east side.
ATF officials were adamant in denying that no explosives were stored in the building. But it seems they did have C-4. OCPD Officer Don Browning, who viewed video footage taken by Sheriff Melvin Sumter, says C-4 was "definitely" carried out of the building. Browning, a Vietnam veteran, described the explosives he saw: "It was in wide blocks, about 3/4" thick, around 10" long, and about 2" wide, wrapped in cellophane."[115][116]
Cash interviewed at least one unnamed witness who described helping ATF agents remove ordinance from their storage locker:
"One night, up on the ninth floor, where the ATF offices [were], I helped some of their agents load onto an elevator small arms, machine guns, several cases of ammunition and even some boxes marked 'Explosives'" he said.[117]
The Gazette interviewed two more witnesses who assisted in the post bombing clean-up. One, a civilian contractor hired by the GSA, told the Gazette July 30th:
"They had everything! …home-made zip guns, AK-47s, sawed-off shotguns, AR-15s, M-16s — literally hundreds of guns. You name it, they had it all… any kind of weapon you could ever want." He also said he recalls seeing an ATF agent with a five-gallon bucket of hand-grenades.
"They carried out every conceivable type of firearm known to man," Cash told video producer Chuck Allen, "including hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, boxes marked explosives, hand grenades, everything short of a Russian T-72 tank." Finally, a witness told the Gazette:
"What was left of that [ATF magazine] room is in the far south-east end of the ninth floor, but much of it was blown away and [apparently] disappeared into the rubble right on top of the America's Kids Day Care Center."
The area just below the ATF's arsenal room — the coned-in area on the far left (south-east) side of the building seen in aerial photographs — is where most of the casualties occurred. This area extends one to two stories below the street level. (See Appendix)
Apparently, this is not the first time such a "mishap" has occurred. Approximately 10 years ago, some captured Soviet ordinance, including rockets with high-explosive warheads, wound up stored at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. There was a subsequent fire, and the exploding ordinance caused more than a little consternation among firefighters, especially when one rocket took off and blasted a two-foot diameter hole in a cinder block wall. When the story leaked out, the ATF reacted by removing more than 30 pounds of explosives from their offices down the street.[118]
In Allen's video, Cash makes the assertion that the massive internal damage to the building was the result of secondary explosions caused by these illegally stored explosives. The ordinance, which included percussion caps for C-4 (and C-4 itself), had fallen from their ninth floor storage area after the initial truck blast, Cash suggests, to one of the lower floors, where it detonated, causing massive internal damage. According to Cash's experts, although C-4 is relatively safe to handle, it can be set off with 3500 p.s.i. of pressure.
General Partin disagrees with Cash's analysis, explaining: "For anything to have tumbled down from up there and done the increased damage is technically impossible… If something had fallen after that section had collapsed and caused an explosion that brought down [column] B-3, the thing would not have cropped the way it did. If you look up there at the top left hand side, you don't see anything up there that would indicate that you had a big blow-out at the top. If it had, it wouldn't of had anything to do with the column collapsing down below — they're too far away."
I asked Partin if C-4 could explode due to the increased air pressure resulting from the truck blast, from the weight of falling debris, or simply by falling eight or nine stories.
"Look," said Partin, "C-4 is kinda' tough to get to go; ammonium nitrate is even tougher. It takes a real intense shock wave to get that kind of explosive to go." Partin then added, "I thought I explained it to Cash, but I guess he's persisting with his story."
Why Cash would persist with his story while largely side-stepping Partin's analysis is curious. Yet if the ATF were responsible for the secondary explosion, it would seem they would have reason to lie.[119] [Not only were they storing explosives illegally in a public building containing a day-care center, but almost the entire contingent of approximately 13 agents was absent on the day of the bombing (more on this later).]
Was the ATF in fact responsible, knowingly or unknowingly, for the explosion that destroyed the Murrah building? Consider the following article which appeared in the June 5, 1995 issue of Newsweek:
For the past year, the ATF and the Army Corps of Engineers have been blowing up car bombs at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. The project, code-named Dipole Might, is designed to create a computer model to unravel terrorist car-and truck-bomb attacks. By coincidence, a ATF agent assigned to Dipole Might, happened to be in Oklahoma City on April 19th, working at the Federal Courthouse, which stands across the street from the Murrah Building. He saw the devastation and called the ATF office in Dallas. The Murrah Building had just been hit by 'ANFO' (ammonium material) bomb of at least several thousand pounds, he reported. Within minutes, explosives agents trained under Dipole Might were dispatched to the scene. They identified the type and size of the bomb almost immediately.
Just how this agent (Harry Eberhardt) was able to immediately ascertain the building had been blown up by an ANFO bomb, when no forensic analysis had yet been conducted, is unclear. When Phil O'Halloran, a freelance journalist, attempted to ask the ATF Public Relations Bureau why a Dipole Might expert just happened to be in the courthouse at that moment, and how he could immediately have known the exact nature of the bomb, O'Halloran, rather than given a rational explanation, was accused of attacking the agency and was promised a fax of agency views on Right-wing conspiracists (which never arrived).[120]
It is also unclear why was the Sheriff's Bomb Squad was in the parking lot between the Murrah Building and the Federal Courthouse at 7:45 that morning. The Bomb Squad denies being there. But Norma Smith and other Federal Courthouse employees recall seeing the Bomb Squad's distinctive white truck. "We did wonder what it was doing in our parking lot," recalled Smith. "Jokingly, I said, 'Well, I guess we'll find out soon enough.'"[121]
Oklahoma City attorney Daniel J. Adomitis told the Forth Worth Star-Telegram he also saw the Bomb Squad there that morning. "As I was passing the back side of the County Courthouse, I noticed a truck with a trailer and the truck said 'Bomb Disposal.' I remember thinking as I passed that , 'Gee, I wonder if they had a bomb threat at the county courthouse?'"[122]
Was the bomb squad alerted that something was in the works? Not according to the ever-controvertful Lester Martz. "I have not come across any information that any kind of bomb unit was at the building prior to the bombing," announced Martz with a straight face at the same time he lauded the heroism of Luke Franey, the ATF agent who supposedly "karate-kicked" his way through three walls.[123]
What is certain is that the Murrah Building had a bomb threat one week prior to the 19th. Michael Hinton remembers looking out the window of his YMCA room a week before and seeing about 200-300 people gathered outside. The incident didn't jog his memory until the local TV networks announced on the morning of the blast that the Federal Building had received a threat just a week before.[124]
Nurse Toni Garret recalled talking to several people who said there had been bomb threats two weeks prior to the bombing. "The FBI and the ATF knew that these bomb threats were real, and they did nothing about it."
Terrorism expert Dr. Randall Heather confirmed these reports, adding, "I know that there had been a threat phoned in to the FBI last week, but I don't know what the nature of that was."[125]
According to the Oklahoma City Fire Department, the FBI phoned in a warning on April 14, almost a week before the bombing. Assistant Fire Chief Charles Gaines told Glenn Wilburn, who lost two grandsons in the blast, that there was never any warning. The grieving grandfather then walked down the hall to Assistant Chief Dispatcher Harvey Weathers office. Weathers told Wilburn in no uncertain terms that the Fire Department had indeed received a warning on April 14. Relating Gaines' apparent loss of memory to Weathers, he replied, "Well, you asked me and I told you. I'm not going to lie for anybody.…"[126]
[Of course, one person perfectly willing to lie for everybody was FBI SAC Bob Ricks.] When asked during a press conference if the FBI had received a warning, Ricks said, "The FBI in Oklahoma City has not received any threats to indicate that a bombing was about to take place."
Interesting play on words. Was Ricks surreptitiously suggesting that one of the other FBI offices had received a warning? Or was there simply no reason for the FBI to receive a warning because they were in charge of the bombing from the beginning?
The transparent stories of the ATF and FBI are strikingly familiar to those propounded in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In that case, the FBI had one of its own informants — former Egyptian Army Colonel Emad Eli Salem — inside the group responsible for the bombing. According to Salem, who made secret tapes of his conversations with his FBI handler, Nancy Floyd, her supervisor refused to let Salem substitute a harmless powder for the real explosive. The agent then pulled Salem off the case. Soon afterwards, the bomb blew up, killing six people and injuring almost a 1,000 more.[127]
It also seems that the "coincidence" of the ATF's Dipole Might tests were uncannily similar to the May 24, 1990 bombing of Earth First! activist Judi Bari. The FBI claimed that Bari and her companion Daryl Cherney, who were on their way to a peaceful protest rally, had inadvertently blown themselves up with their own pipe-bomb. After Bari sued the FBI for false arrest and civil rights violations, she found out though discovery that the FBI ran a "bomb school" at Eureka College of the Redwoods in April of 1990 for both FBI and local police. The classes included blowing up cars with pipe bombs, ostensibly to demonstrate the tactics used by terrorists (the same reason cited in the ATF's case). The instructor for this "school of terrorism" was none other than Frank Doyle Jr., the FBI bomb squad expert who showed up at the scene of Bari's car bombing one month later.
According to Freedom of Information Act records, Project Dipole Might was initiated under the authorization of Clinton's National Security Council. One of the stated purposes of the project was to produce computer models of bombings to "be displayed in a courtroom to aid in the prosecution of defendants." The Justice Department used the video tapes shot at White Sands during McVeigh's trial to "prove" that an ANFO bomb blew up the building. As Lawrence Myers, writing in Media Bypass magazine, asked:
Why the National Security Council would fund such an ATF project, despite the absolute rarity of the crime, has not been explained.… Nor has it been explained as to what specific threat assessment information the government had when it decided to engage in such a project, just a few months before a Ryder Truck laden with ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded in front of the Murrah Building.[128]
As Myers points out, the last-known case of a truck-bomb exploding in the U.S. was in 1970, when an ANFO bomb exploded in front of the Army Math lab at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Why then, would the National Security Council suddenly feel the need for detailed information regarding ANFO truck-bomb attacks?
Was the ATF expecting such a bombing? Were they in fact responsible for blast or the secondary damage to the building? Or was the building wired for demolition as part of a larger plot?
["I'm firmly convinced that the ATF is guilty of an awful lot of things," said Bud, our ex-Green Beret. "I mean, if you look at what the ATF and the FBI did to Randy Weaver (and at Waco), it's just awful. They've gone hog wild and have [become] a power unto themselves."
Asked if he thought a rogue group or special unit within the military/intelligence community could or would commit such an act, Bud replied "It wouldn't really stun me."]
Next | Previous | Contents | Text Version
Farm collapse of 1982
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CENTRUST SAVINGS
AND LOAN (House of Representatives - July 10, 1990)
[Page: H4416]
(Mr. WALKER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)
Mr. WALKER. Mr. Speaker, we heard a Member earlier today ask the question of what happened to all the money lost in the S&L scandal. I would like to discuss one institution that has contributed significantly to the taxpayers' burden.
CenTrust Savings and Loan of Miami, FL, is expected to eventually cost the taxpayers $1.5 to $2 billion.
In March of this year, the House Banking Committee had fascinating hearings concerning CenTrust and its chief executive officer David Paul. The committee hearings made startling revelations concerning David Paul's lavish lifestyle which included a priceless art collection, private jets, and big bodacious yachts. The committee also revealed a pattern of activity with which this House has become well acquainted. David Paul regularly provided the services of his plane and his yacht to the Democratic Senatorial Study Committee much like others provided the services of their planes and yachts to Jim Wright, Tony Coelho, and the Democratic National Campaign Committee.
David Paul
was in fact honored at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta for
his service to the Party. Mr. Paul, incidentally, provided $50,000 to help fund
that convention. Several questions remain as to the activities of
David Paul
related to elected officials, but I would hope that our Banking Committee would
hold further hearings to get to the bottom of this issue.
No doubt about it, BCCI is a scandal, but so is the Centrust Savings and Loan fiasco--a multibillion dollar rip-off of the taxpayers by a high flier named David Paul, who often bragged of his big-time connections with the Washington political establishment.
David Paul's Centrust has left the taxpayers with a multibillion-dollar price tag--right up there with the Lincoln Savings-Keating scandal--yet, I do not hear any of my Democratic colleagues calling for a formal congressional investigation.
BCCI should be a top priority, but so should Centrust.
Congress should get to the bottom of
Centrust,
and tell the American people about the web of political connections and
regulatory negligence that may have allowed the
Centrust
ulcer to bleed unabated for years.
FBI Analysts Attend ADL Training
Posted: May 13, 2005
FBI intelligence analysts attended a special version of ADL's Law Enforcement and Society training this month in Washington, D.C., specifically designed for intelligence analysts.
Conducted in partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons of the Holocaust, challenges law enforcement professionals to explore issues of personal responsibility and ethical conduct. Using the museum as a centerpiece, the program helps law enforcement officers address issues of conduct and responsibility and administer authority in an ethical manner.
Begun in 1998, the program has reached more than 20,000 officers and is part of the mandatory training for all new FBI agents. Some FBI analysts began attending the training in 2004, and because of their interest, a version of the training was created specifically for intelligence analysts. Eventually, all new FBI analysts are expected to attend the training.
In 2003, ADL was awarded a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) to expand the program to other cities in the U.S.
Why did McVeigh, a highly trained combat NCO, after bombing the Murrah building, speed out of the state at almost 100 mph in a yellow car with no license plate virtually guaranteeing that he would be stopped? National Public Radio, Jan. 1996, interviewed 6 witnesses who personally saw "John Doe II" in the Ryder truck with McVeigh on the morning of the bombing and yet none of these witnesses were contacted to testify by either the prosecution or the defense at the McVeigh trial. Why was the Murrah building, the main piece of evidence that could have unraveled the whole mystery, destroyed?
NOTE: 1ACR has been assisting Glenn & Kathy Wilburn with their private investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing and the search for ALL of the killers of their two grandchildren and 166 other Americans. The analysis below is my own, and it should be made clear that I do not presume to speak for the Wilburns. The Wilburns are two very courageous Americans who have suffered much in their search for the truth. Other Oklahoma City victims have criticized the Wilburns for seeking to get McVeigh off the hook. Nothing could be further from the truth. None of the information that they or their many volunteer helpers have discovered (of which I am but one) exculpates Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was the truck driver, and a key player in the plot. What we are after is the rest of the bombers and the murdering bastards that sent them and sheltered them after the fact.
MEET JOHN DOE #2: MICHAEL BRESCIA
Michael Brescia (Xerox of photo available upon request) is the son of Mr. & Mrs. William M. Brescia, 859 Manatawna Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 19128. Neither Mr. Brescia (a Philadelphia-area fire fighter) nor his wife will comment on their son or his movements. A graduate of LaSalle High School (215 233-2911), Brescia attended LaSalle University (215 951-1000) without graduating, although sources say he made inquiries about attending this fall.
While a high school student he reportedly was into survivalism, but in time he grew into the white supremacist movement. Sources familiar with his university career say he was the subject of a fraternity disciplinary hearing when he reportedly attempted to recruit his fellow frat brothers into a "white supremacist cell." Brescia left the university and Philadelphia shortly thereafter for a stay at that most bucolic of racist antisemite retreats: the Elohim City "Christian Identity" compound in Oklahoma.
(The uninitiated often struggle with the differences between the Christian Identity movement and the paganist neo-Nazis such as the Aryan Nations, as they share a virulent racism and antisemitism and have been known to cooperate on paramilitary ventures. The principle difference between the two is that unlike the neo-Nazis (who worship Odin, Thor and miscellaneous Norse biker-gods but have no limiting illusions about morality or charity), Christian Identity folks think racism and antisemitism is OK because God and Jesus told 'em so.)
WELCOME TO JOHN-DOEVILLE...
Michael Brescia was introduced to Elohim City by Mark Thomas, Aryan Nations' big shot in the eastern Pennsylvania area. Some of Mark's other buddies included the recently captured Midwest bank robbers who also hailed from eastern PA (more about them in an upcoming article).
Elohim City, a 400-acre compound of about 20 buildings located 35 miles northwest of Fort Smith, AR,(near Sallisaw, OK) was founded in 1973 by Robert Millar, age 70. Elohim City has about a hundred residents these days including all four of Millar's sons and 25 of his 34 grandchildren.
"Things are different here. Elohim City operates on its own calendar and clock. Each year begins with the spring equinox and each day begins at noon. Millar said the concept is found in the Bible in Genesis and Deuteronomy. Residents adhere to a religious doctrine called Christian Identity, which contends that white Anglo-Saxons, not Jews, are God's chosen people, and that America, not Israel, is the Promised Land. According to Christian Identity, Jews are Satan's children, and non-whites are believed to be 'pre-Adamic,' a lower form of species than white people. Those who monitor right-wing extremist groups say Millar is probably the most influential Christian Identity leader in the Great Plains." ( From "We Are Not Dangerous, Leader of Separatists Says" by Judy Thomas, The Kansas City Star, Sunday, March 17, 1996.)
Elohim City attracts an eclectic bunch. Ray Lampley, who differed with Millar on the finer points of theology (Lampley styled himself as "Prophet of Yahweh") but not the racism or antisemitism of Christian Identity---intended to practice bomb detonation at Elohim City the day he was busted for (and subsequently convicted of) planning to carry out the terror bombing of five targets including the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL. Millar said he knew Lampley but had no knowledge of the plot.
Richard W. Snell, white supremacist and copkiller resides there, too. Unfortunately for him he doesn't get around much anymore since he was executed by the state of Arkansas for the 1983 murder of a pawnbroker he mistakenly thought was Jewish. (Hey, nobody ever said antisemites were all that bright.) He was executed on April 19, 1995, the same day as the OKC bombing with Millar in attendance as his chaplain and execution witness. Millar brought his body back and buried it on the compound.
Former leader of the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord (and federal snitch) James Ellison currently resides at Elohim City. "Ellison, 55, was convicted on racketeering and weapons charges brought against him and other Covenant members after a four-day standoff that began April 19, 1985, at the group's camp near the Missouri-Arkansas border. His 20-year sentence was reduced after he agreed to testify against some comrades in a trial in Fort Smith Arkansas, in 1988. Ellison was released in February, 1991 after nearly six years in prison. He moved to Florida but was sent back to prison in 1993 for violating parole. He was released again in June, 1994 and returned to Florida before moving to Elohim City, where he married the granddaughter of its leader, Robert Millar. Dressed in faded jeans, a T-shirt and a camouflage cap, Ellison talked candidly about his violent past. He said he had no regrets. 'How can you regret something you felt like God told you to do?'" ( Judy Thomas, ibid.)
Other routine "guests" at Elohim City were Andreas Carl Strassmeir (aka "Andy the German, aka John Doe #3) and Dennis Mahon, Aryan Nations organizer. (More about these two in Part Two.)
Sessions accuses Jews
During his tenure as Director of the FBI William Steele Sessions created the National Security Threat List, which was approved by the Attorney General in 1991, it changed its approach from defending against hostile intelligence agencies to protecting U.S. information and technologies. It thus identified all countries--not just hostile intelligence services--that pose a continuing and serious intelligence threat to the United States. It also defined expanded threat issues, including the proliferation of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons; the loss of critical technologies; and the improper collection of trade secrets and proprietary information. During a press conference in 1993 (during the Waco fiasco) FBI Director William S. Sessions warned the nation of a Jewish underground which threatened the National Security of the United States of America.
He was immediately politically attacked by AIPAC interests and its political stooges. He appeared on television two weeks later to announce his resignation as Director of the FBI with his arm (broken) in a sling.
Though not always in the public eye, this action does arise, often in violent ways. One Identity group which has risen into the public eye because of its initiatives is the Order (known to its members as Bruders Schweigen, or the Silent Brotherhood). Founded by Robert Matthews in the fall of 1983, the Order embarked on a series of robberies, counterfeiting schemes and murder until Matthews was killed in a shootout with police in December of 1984 (Barkun 1994, 228).
The Order was patterned after a paramilitary group in the novel The Turner Diaries. First published in serial form between 1975 and 1978, The Turner Diaries recounts the seizure of southern California by a white power group calling itself the Organization. The novel's hero, Earl Turner, joins the group by expelling nonwhites from their area of control and fighting "the System" with nuclear arms stolen from Air Force bases. Though not an Identity text per se, the novel does depict Turner's initiation in the Order, the Organization's inner circle, during which Turner describes a feeling of being "born again," and of realizing that "we are truly instruments of God in the fulfillment of His Grand Design," thus appealing to a wide audience of Identity sympathizers (quoted in Barkun 1994, 226-227).
The Order was finally brought to the public's attention during a wave of violent crime in 1984. In July of that year members of the Order pulled off a daring hijacking of an armored car, recovering $3.8 million. This money was contributed to various right-wing causes and used to fund the Order. However, the Order's most notorious act of violence was the murder of radio talk-show host Alan Berg in December of 1984. Known for baiting extremists on his Denver program, the Jewish Berg may have been a last-minute substitution for Morris Dee, the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The murder led to a massive manhunt, ending in Matthews' death and the apprehension of other Order members (Barkun 1994 228).
Gary Hunt, paid informant of the BATF who was videotaped in the company of two other ATF agents at the Grand Continental Hotel in OKC a full-week before the bombing.
He was also videotaped, along with
a companion, on April 19, 1995 by a OKC television station right after the
bombing. Both men were carrying transmitters and walking rapidly from the
Alfred P. Murrah building. Hunt was even videotaped as a pall bearer at the
funeral of an ATF agent.
"I was not in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. I first heard of the bombing while on the phone with someone who claimed to be John Stadtmiller. He asked me if I had heard of the bombing in Oklahoma City, he said that hundreds had been killed. I shrugged it off as another claim of millions of troops on the Mexican border. After the conversation, I turned the television on and the news reports had already begun.
Except for passing through, perhaps getting gas or eating a meal, none of which I can say I recall, I had never been to Oklahoma City until I responded to the invitations later that year. I had spoken with Dr. Millar, for the first time, AFTER the bombing, and as a result of the suggestions by the press that Elohim City was involved. I did, however, visit Elohim, introducing Cash and two of the defense team members to Dr. Millar, and then remained at Elohim for a very comfortable stay of about a week.
The extent of my knowledge of the OKC bombing is based upon investigation and review of existing reports. I am not now, nor was I ever "John Doe #3".
I hope this clears thing up. Of all
those who have accused me of such, only Thompson and Cooper refuse to review
the available information. But, then, of course, they have never made a
mistake, have they?"
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Character assassins are still trying to falsely link Lyons to the Oklahoma City bombing via a client of his, Andy Strasmeir, son of a famous German political operative and advisor to Helmut Kohl. Lyons has also defended patriots in the famous "Fort Smith Sedition Trial" and has since been vilified by the ADL.
Kirk Lyons, who is representing three Davidian survivors of the fire and relatives of 23 dead sect members, said he has been told that "somebody accidentally pulled the plug, and the bodies turned to soup."
"It just destroys any chance for anybody to come back and challenge what the government said happened," said Lyons of Black Mountain, N.C.
On April 20, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Arhonot wrote:
Yesterday, it was made known that over the last few days, U.S. law enforcement agencies had received intelligence information originating in the Middle East, warning of a large terrorist attack on U.S. soil. No alert was sounded as a result of this information.[501]
Northrop also said that the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, the equivalent of the American CIA), also sent a warning to the U.S. State Department. That was followed by a warning from the Saudis. "A Saudi Major General… informed former CIA Counterterrorism Chief Vince Cannistraro, who in turn informed the FBI. There is a 302 (FBI report) in existence."[502]
The agent Cannistraro passed the information to was Kevin L. Foust, one of the FBI's leading counterterrorism agents. Ironically, the information was given to Foust on the same day as the bombing.
According to the information obtained by Stephen Jones, the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service reported that Iraq had hired seven Pakistani mercenaries — Afghani War veterans known as the Mujahadeen — to bomb targets in the U.S., one of which was the Alfred P. Murrah Building. They also advised the FBI that — as is often the case — the true identity of the sponsor may not have been revealed to the bombers.[503]
Interestingly, Northrop stated that three Israelis were in Oklahoma before the April 19th attack to "keep an eye on things." Avi Lipkin and William Northrop were two such individuals.[504]
In addition to these warnings — as well as the mighty armada of U.S. intelligence agencies, analysts, and surveillance technology which would have undoubtedly been monitoring the situation — at least one local informant tried to warn authorities in advance. His warnings went unheeded.
The Drug Connection Informant
After the bombing, Cary Gagan stepped forward to tell Jones that he had been present at a meeting of bombing conspirators including Middle-Easterners, Caucasians, and Hispanics which took place in Henderson, Nevada.[505]
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Early yearsRobert Mathews was born in Marfa, Texas, the last of three boys born to Johnny and Una Mathews. His father, of Scottish descent, was mayor of the town and president of the Chamber of Commerce, and an upstanding businessman and leader in the local Methodist church. His mother was the town's den mother. When Robbie, as he was known to his friends and family, was five years old, the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona. An average student in grade school, he was very interested in history and politics. At age eleven he joined the John Birch Society. While still in high school, he was baptized into the Mormon faith. He became a staunch anti-communist and active in the Young Republicans. A year after leaving high school (without a diploma because of an incomplete grade in an economics class) he formed the Sons of Liberty, an anti-communist militia dominated by Mormons and survivalists. At its peak, it had at least 30 members. After filling out his employer's W-4 Form claiming 10 dependents (reportedly as an act of tax resistance), he was arrested, tried and placed on probation for six months. After a falling out between the Mormon and non-Mormon members, the Sons of Liberty became moribund and Mathews withdrew from it. After the probation ended in 1974, he decided to relocate to Metaline Falls, Washington, which he grew to love for its rugged beauty. Matthews and his father purchased 60 wooded acres, which became their new home and a provided the family with a fresh start. Two years later, Matthews married Debbie McGarrity, a Kansan who shared his love of nature. He began to raise Scottish Galloway cattle. The couple adopted a son in 1981. Matthews kept his hair short, and it is reported that he didn't drink, smoke or curse. His favorite snack was apple pie.
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