Oklahoma City Bombing

[Richard Booth]

The FBI failed to put any notes in Graham's 302 report about the putty or the wires she said she saw. The 302 report merely says that the men "had something" in one of the cars. I have posted Graham's FBI 302 below, followed by her written affidavit which has more detail about what she saw. What she said she saw is identical to what witness Ruth Schwab said she saw in the MFB garage:

graham-pg1

 

graham-pg2

 

written affidavit:

"I contacted the FBI first by phone then by letter to inform them of three (3) men who I saw on the 2nd level of the parking garage the week before. The 2nd level of the parking garage is that level which is directly below the street level and customer parking.”

"These three men were standing just west of the double doors leading to the elevator, behind an older station wagon parked on the south side. 

They had a set of plans which appeared to be of the Murrah building. The reason I assumed the plans were of the Murrah building is they were obviously disagreeing on something and pointing to areas in the garage. Two of the men were approximately 5'8" and one man 6'1 or 2.

Two men had brown hair, the tallest had very dark hair almost black and a mustache. He was wearing black cowboy boots, jeans and jacket and a cowboy hat. His hair was collar length. 

The other two men wore jeans one had a brown plaid short sleeved shirt and obviously lifted weights. 

At first I thought as I studied them they were with the phone company because I saw what looked like telephone wiring. Cream colored but short pieces. He also had a paper bag with something in it. We had been having some telephone difficulty off and on in the building and that was the first thing that popped in my mind. But then I thought why would they be in the garage? They are always on a floor at the closet area when they are fixing a problem and would not be in the garage. Next I thought they must be with the gas company. There have been over the years gas leaks and maybe they were there for that purpose. 

As I studied these 3 men they were also watching me. At that time the man in the brown plaid shirt said something to the other man and he went to the station wagon and put the sack and wiring in the wagon behind the driver's seat and returned to the group. 

They watched me until I went through the doors to the elevator. I had first thought of going up to them but thought they must have approval to be there in the building and they did have plans which they were discussing. 

The man in the brown shirt obviously knew what he was doing and was in charge even though you could tell there was disagreement among them. 

He reminded me of a surveyor or construction foreman except that I doubt that they would have been in that good of shape.

These men were definitely physically well trained. I had intended to go to GSA but since I was in a hurry to get to work, I let it go by. Regrettably I wish now I had taken the time to go to GSA or to have gone up and talked to these men. When I first told my story the only question asked was "Was one of the men McVeigh?" I told the agent absolutely not. 

Then I was asked can I positively identify the three men? I told him I didn't think I could be positive, and no one had asked me to view any pictures of anyone."

"I believe they were afraid I might be able to identify someone they did not want me to identify. I do have a good memory and I will continue to seek out and watch for these men to reappear and when I do I will confront them."

Graham’s affidavit provides enough material to produce a rough profile of the three men says she saw. Based on Graham’s testimony, a profile rundown for each suspect is produced below:

(1) SUSPECT A:  6'1 or 6'2. Dark almost black hair. Mustache. Cowboy boots, jeans, jacket, cowboy hat. Collar length hair.  (Graham would go on to identify this man as Andreas Strassmeir—improbable as Strassmeir did not have a mustache, collar length hair, nor was he 6 foot 2.)

(2) SUSPECT B: 5'8. Brown hair. Brown plaid short sleeved shirt, jeans. Strong build, like a weight lifter. Appeared to be the man in charge of the group. This sounds very similar to the descriptions of suspects Robert Jacquez and John Doe #2.

(3) SUSPECT 😄 5'8, jeans. Brown hair. Military demeanor.

Just who were these three men? 
 

 

[Richard Booth]

Timothy McVeigh's Trip to Oklahoma: Week of April 6 to 12

Here is an excerpt from a rough draft of an unpublished manuscript I wrote. Forgive me for any errors in parallel structure or passive voice, I wrote this several years ago, before improving my writing skills. This excerpt will explain McVeigh's presence in Tulsa, OK and OKC, OKC in early April.

March 31st, 1995-April 11th

The Imperial Motel

Kingman, Arizona

Timothy McVeigh checked into the Imperial Motel in Kingman, Arizona on March 31^st, 1995. According to the official narrative, McVeigh would remain in room 212 at the Imperial Motel, alone, until April 11^th. Most accounts will indicate that McVeigh paid for the first week of his stay up front, then extended his stay on the 7th, paying for an additional five days.

During the first week of McVeigh’s stay, he would be observed acting paranoid and suspicious at the hotel by construction worker Alfred Luna, who told the Denver Post he’d have a beer with McVeigh after work and noticed that McVeigh would post up by the window of the motel room where he kept looking out the window. McVeigh would tell Luna “I’m just looking at my car. Making sure nobody takes my car.” Other than Alfred Luna, housekeeping, and hotel proprietor Helmut Hofer, the only other people to see McVeigh during the first week of his stay at the Imperial Motel (according to the official story) were Michael and Lori Fortier.

Michael Fortier would visit McVeigh at the Imperial during this period, and it was during these visits that McVeigh’s behavior is interesting. He appears hostile towards Fortier according to accounts published in Mark Hamm’s In Bad Company and in McVeigh’s authorized biography American Terrorist. According to these sources, McVeigh lectured Fortier on the need to take action and had some sort of falling out with Fortier. McVeigh gave Fortier a Mojave public library copy of the book The Silent Brotherhood, the seminal non-fiction account by Kevin Flynn of the neo-Nazi terrorist group ‘The Order.” McVeigh also gave Fortier a copy of James Coates’ Armed and Dangerous: the Rise of the Survivalist Right, instructing Fortier to read chapter two which has a short summary of the history of “The Order.” Based on these accounts, it appears that McVeigh was advocating to Fortier about the type of direct action he felt needed to be taken, providing examples in historical accounts of “The Order.”

Curiously, it was during his lecture of Fortier at the Imperial Motel that McVeigh told Fortier that he was “going off to Colorado to join the Order . . . to find some real friends.” Strange, in that “The Order” was long defunct, it’s members all in prison at the time. So, who was McVeigh talking about? Was McVeigh referring to meeting up with members of the Aryan Republican Army—then a terrorist bank robbery gang that had modeled themselves after The Order? At the time, that was the only existing group that fit the definition of “The Order” in terms of worldview, organization, and tactics: the two groups were nearly identical. McVeigh’s next actions while he was booked at the Imperial Motel, independently reported in multiple accounts of this subject, will provide strong evidence that is cause for concern and legitimate skepticism concerning just where he was between the 7^th and the 11^th. As it turns out, McVeigh will be spotted with a member of The Aryan Republican Army during this time period. In that respect, McVeigh’s comment to Fortier that he was “going off to join ‘The Order’” begins to make some sense.

After Fortier left, McVeigh would place a number of phone calls deserving of scrutiny. Firstly, McVeigh placed about eight phone calls to white supremacist William Pierce’s western U.S. National Alliance headquarters in Mojave. Who did he talk to in these calls? What was their purpose?  Next, McVeigh would place a phone call to a Ryder truck rental agency in nearby Lake Havasu. Interestingly, it will later come to light that a Ryder rental franchise in Lake Havasu had a Ryder truck that was unaccounted for—either rented and never returned, or stolen from the lot in the weeks before the bombing. The rental franchise was owned by Sandy Crigler, who told the Ryder rental VP of operations about the missing truck. This detail came out in a 2003 show cause hearing in preparation for Terry Nichols’ State trial. We’ll come back to the Lake Havasu Ryder rental agency later—for now, it’s a detail worth noting given later events that suggest more than one Ryder truck was used in the bombing operation and the Lake Havasu rental agency’s missing truck fits the bill as a possible source for the other truck.

Another phone call deserving scrutiny, possibly central to the bombing conspiracy, was placed to Andreas Strassmeir of Elohim City. Elohim City was a radical neo-Nazi compound in Oklahoma where members of the Aryan Republican Army were staying. According to the official narrative, McVeigh simply left a message: “Tell Andy I’ll be coming through.” This phone call lasted for almost two minutes leading to the question “was it more than just simply leaving a message?” There is reason to believe that, as McVeigh will be seen with Strassmeir and his roommate, Michael Brescia of the Aryan Republican Army, within days of the call. Both men were identified from photo lineups by the witnesses who encountered the men with McVeigh.

All of the various accounts of McVeigh’s stay at the Imperial Motel note that while there was a flurry of phone call activity showing up on McVeigh’s calling card right after he checked in, and for a week thereafter, there was no activity or phone calls after April 7th, the date that McVeigh extended his stay at the motel.

McVeigh frequently made phone calls during his motel stays and his calling card records show this was his pattern of behavior. Yet, after the 7^th his calls stopped. It was as if McVeigh wasn’t actually in the motel room after the 7^th if we are to judge this matter by his typical behavior during motel stays as exemplified by the calling card records.

 In Roger Charles’ book on the bombing, Oklahoma City: What The Investigation Missed and Why It Still Matters, Charles writes that “it is also possible that [McVeigh] made a quick trip to the Midwest between April 7 and April 11. He was checked into the Imperial Motel on those dates, but the owner later said he did not see him, he used no towels, and his bed was undisturbed.” In Wendy Painting’s book, Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh, Painting takes the matter further. She writes that "[McVeigh’s] defense team noted that while the handwriting on the original registration form at the Imperial resembled McVeigh’s, the registration extension form dated April 7, had very obviously been filled out by someone other than McVeigh." Both Painting and Charles strongly suggest that McVeigh was not physically at the Imperial Motel between the 7^th and the 11^th.  There is good reason for this speculation--not only did all of McVeigh’s calling card activity cease on the 7^th, but he would be encountered elsewhere by multiple witnesses who identified him, and identified his companions. Specifically, McVeigh was spotted with Andreas Strassmeir and Michael Brescia at a Tulsa strip club on the night of April 8^th. Multiple dancers at the club later identified McVeigh and Strassmeir from photographs, and a video recording of one of the dancers talking about McVeigh was captured on the strip club’s security cameras that evening. Following this, sometime between the 10^th and the 11^th, McVeigh was encountered in Oklahoma City, in the basement area of the Murrah building by Murrah employee Dolores Watson. During the same time period, between the 10^th and the 13^th, a Ryder truck will be spotted parked at Geary Lake by a half dozen witnesses. These witness accounts will be documented with more detail later in this chapter, but it’s necessary to highlight these sightings in relation to McVeigh’s Imperial Motel stay as serious questions arise concerning McVeigh’s actual whereabouts between the dates April 7^th and 11^th.

It appears as if McVeigh put himself at the Imperial Motel “on paper” – thus concealing his true whereabouts – while he was actually elsewhere carrying out actions with others in furtherance of the bombing conspiracy.

The next account in this chronology occurs on April 8^th, where McVeigh was identified by multiple witnesses who saw him in the company of two men and where he would brag to one woman—who talks about it on video recorded that evening—that “on April 19th, 1995, you’ll remember me for the rest of your life.”  

 

April 8th, 1995 (Saturday)

Tulsa, Oklahoma

Lady Godiva’s Gentleman’s Club

Approximately 9:00 PM to midnight

 Saturday evening, April 8^th, 1995, Timothy McVeigh and two other men paid a visit to Lady Godiva’s, a Tulsa strip club. The club was owned at that time by Floyd Radcliffe and his wife Julie Radcliffe. Dancers from the club later identified one of the men as Timothy McVeigh. The dancers were equally certain about another man with the group: he was Andreas Strassmeir. Julie Radcliffe told journalist Jon Ronson that "the girls identified Strassmeir. They all did identify that gentleman."

In an interview with CBC's Trish Wood, the dancers said they were "positive" Strassmeir was there. They noticed and later reported that the man they identified as Strassmeir spoke with a German accent and had buck teeth—perfectly describing Strassmeir to the exclusion of most others. Strassmeir, who will be examined in a later chapter, was from Germany and was at that time the director of security at a neo-Nazi compound in Muldrow, OK called Elohim City. Strassmeir was a German national living in the country illegally on an expired visa under questionable circumstances. He would go on to flee the country following the bombing under equally curious circumstances.

So, we have McVeigh, Strassmeir, and an unknown third man who according to the dancers and staff had paid for all the drinks that night. Investigative journalists J.D. Cash and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard identified the third man as Michael Brescia. Brescia was Andreas Strassmeir's roommate at Elohim City, and was a member of the neo-Nazi terrorist group that called itself “The Aryan Republican Army” (ARA). According to the witnesses, McVeigh and his friends sat at a table in the back for a couple of hours drinking and talking with the dancers. One of the servers, Tara, who had served drinks to McVeigh and his associates, was recorded by closed circuit television security cameras at the club discussing McVeigh with another dancer that very evening.

The club had an audio and video security system in the dancers’ prep-room where footage shows Tara enter the room at 8:37 PM and approach two other girls. Tara begins to tell them about her very unusual encounter with McVeigh:

"One of them said, 'I'm a very smart man.' I said ‘You are?' and he goes 'Yes, I am. And on April 19, 1995, you'll remember me for the rest of your life!' I said 'Oh really?' and he says 'Yes, you will.'” It must be stressed that this discussion was captured on video the night that it occurred, which strongly suggests that McVeigh was in the strip club that night and not at the Imperial Motel. If McVeigh was talking to a stripper about the bombing, what are the chances he might have spoken to his companions at the club about it?  It seems more than likely, if not probable.

Lady Godiva's general manger and owner Floyd Radcliffe initially kept the security recording of the evening of April 8^th because it contained a physical altercation between two of his employees. Only later, upon reviewing the contents of the entire tape after the bombing would Radcliffe discover the exchange between his server and the dancers regarding McVeigh. After viewing the tape, Radcliffe phoned the FBI. "Several days later," Radcliffe reported, "a couple of agents came to the club, confiscated the [original] tape, talked to the girls involved and showed them pictures.”

Fortunately, Radcliffe had made a copy of the footage showing Tara talking with the dancers about McVeigh, unbeknownst to the FBI. Thanks to his keeping a copy of the tape, Radcliffe was able to provide the footage to national news media. The footage was first aired on national TV news programs in October of 1996 when it was broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Company's news program The Fifth Estate. Several years after the CBC broadcast, Washington Post magazine contributing reporter Peter Carlson interviewed one of the other dancers who was there that evening. The dancer would only reveal her stage name, “Cassie,” out of concern for her safety. Cassie identified McVeigh from photos as one of the three men at Lady Godiva’s that evening. When she was shown the FBI sketch of John Doe #2 she told Carlson: "I recognize him; he's the one who was sitting in a back booth, talking with other girls." It appears here that Cassie identified John Doe #2 as the man other dancers had identified as Michael Brescia—the man who was most talkative to the dancers. This identification, among others, would single out Michael Brescia as a possible candidate for John Doe #2. Bombing victims Glenn and Kathy Wilburn would later name him in a civil suit relating to the bombing. This dancer, like the others before her, also identified Andreas Strassmeir as having been there that night. Although he was relatively quiet, Strassmeir’s German accent and buck teeth left an impression, enough such that he was readily identifiable by any who had seen him or interacted with him.

It is also notable that a Lady Godiva's security staffer identified having seen a yellow Ryder truck parked outside the club that night. One of the dancers at the club got into a verbal and physical altercation with another dancer and was ejected outside the club, to the parking lot. That dancer urinated in the parking lot right next to the Ryder truck and this was documented in the FBI’s witness interviews from that evening. This is well before the bomb truck was rented at Elliott's Body Shop, and the description of this truck matches the "older" and "faded" Ryder truck that witnesses began seeing frequently on and after April 10^th at Geary Lake and at the Dreamland Motel in Kansas. Those accounts are detailed next in this chronology.

 The question that arises here is “was the truck spotted at Lady Godiva’s driven there by Strassmeir and Brescia?” Or was it merely a coincidence that a Ryder truck was parked in the lot of the strip club the night Timothy McVeigh and a man identified as John Doe #2 were there? What are the odds?

 

April 10th, 1995 to April 12th, 1995

Oklahoma City, OK

Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building

exact time and date unknown

 

Delores S. Watson's grandson, P.J., was severely injured in the Oklahoma City bombing. He was just four months shy of 2 years old at the time. P.J.'s miraculous recovery was covered by the Associated Press when he was released from the hospital on June 21^st, 1995, and Watson was quoted in the report.

Watson was later quoted again by the Associated Press in several pieces that covered bombing victims' reactions to the bombing and subsequent trials. What you won't find in newspaper coverage of Delores Watson, however, is that Watson called the FBI right after the bombing to say that sometime between April 10^th and April 12^th, 1995, she saw Timothy McVeigh in the basement area of the Murrah building.

Watson was interviewed by FBI agents R. Guy Noholi and Timothy Burke on May 26^th, 1995. During her interview, Watson stated that sometime between 4/10/95 and 4/12/95 she saw Timothy McVeigh walking in the basement tunnel at the Murrah Federal building in downtown Oklahoma City. Watson described the man she saw as "mid 20s, 6 feet, thin build, with blonde hair cut short." She saw him up close – Watson said that when she first saw McVeigh in the basement she had initially mistook him for someone she knew, so she called out to him. McVeigh turned and looked at her for a moment but said nothing.

The McVeigh defense team had Watson's FBI interview in their records and defense attorneys on the case wrote that Watson "describes [McVeigh] very well" and that she could potentially be called as a prosecution witness.  In her report to the FBI, Watson states that when she saw McVeigh's picture on TV following his arrest she said "That's the guy I saw in the federal building."

The official narrative places McVeigh in Kingman, Arizona in the Imperial Motel at the time of this sighting. However, as previously detailed, McVeigh's room received no calls during this time, nor is there a record on the Daryl Bridges calling card reflecting outbound calls made from the motel during this time. Additionally, the handwriting on McVeigh’s motel room registration extension—signed on April 7^th—does not resemble McVeigh’s.  This increasingly looks like a ruse whereby McVeigh was paid-up and officially "checked in" at a motel in Arizona, meanwhile he was elsewhere carrying out preparatory tasks related to the bombing.  It begins to appear as if McVeigh’s Imperial Motel registration renewal on the 7^th was designed to give him a paper-trail alibi for his whereabouts at a time when witnesses like the dancers at Lady Godiva’s, and Dolores Watson, could place him in Oklahoma and at the scene of the crime.

If indeed McVeigh’s April 7^th Imperial Motel registration renewal was signed by someone else, who would this person be?  Their actions would directly contribute to the bombing conspiracy, and as the reader will find in this chronology, something very similar occurred on the 16^th at the Dreamland motel in Kansas, when motel owner Lea McGown eavesdropped on two male voices in heated discussion in McVeigh's motel room when McVeigh wasn’t there.

Who were these other people involved with McVeigh's motel stays? Were they involved in the bombing?  It seems probable these other men would be McVeigh’s co-conspirators, sighted with McVeigh in Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing. These co-conspirators would also be spotted less than eight hours before the bombing on April 19^th, 1995, at a Sav-A-Trip in Kingman, Kansas, fueling up for the journey to Oklahoma City in a three-vehicle convoy which necessitates at minimum 3 people. Who were these people?

 

Edited October 3, 2020 by Richard Booth

[Guest]

10 hours ago, Richard Booth said:

1999 -- FSB blew up Moscow apartment buildings and blamed it on Chechans. FSB whitleblower Litvinenko talked about this and he was assassinated for it.

I think there was one foiled plot, where people got spotted laying charges, the building never blew up. 
 

I didn’t know Litvinenko blew the whistle on that, perhaps the timing is why the west kept so quiet about it, thinking about the timeline.

[Richard Booth]

16 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

I think there was one foiled plot, where people got spotted laying charges, the building never blew up. 
 

I didn’t know Litvinenko blew the whistle on that, perhaps the timing is why the west kept so quiet about it, thinking about the timeline.

The first apartment bombings happened in early September, then later in the month "a suspicious device resembling those used in the bombings was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September." "Three FSB agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police. On 24 September 1999, head of FSB Nikolay Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill" -- where have we heard that before, a "drill" ?

You raise a good point about the west being so quiet about it: if we said anything untoward about the Moscow bombing, Putin could have had his SVR leak information about the fuller extent of the U.S.'s Oklahoma bombing, if he wanted to retaliate. I suspect that there was and probably is a sort of unwritten agreement between our two countries that we will not interfere with or make noise about one anothers' affairs. There are a lot of shady things that have happened in Russia since 1999 and we have been largely totally silent about those things. Probably because people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks?

Edited October 4, 2020 by Richard Booth

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Richard Booth said:

The first apartment bombings happened in early September, then later in the month "a suspicious device resembling those used in the bombings was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September." "Three FSB agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police. On 24 September 1999, head of FSB Nikolay Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill" -- where have we heard that before, a "drill" ?

You raise a good point about the west being so quiet about it: if we said anything untoward about the Moscow bombing, Putin could have had his SVR leak information about the fuller extent of the U.S.'s Oklahoma bombing, if he wanted to retaliate. I suspect that there was and probably is a sort of unwritten agreement between our two countries that we will not interfere with or make noise about one anothers' affairs. There are a lot of shady things that have happened in Russia since 1999 and we have been largely totally silent about those things. Probably because people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks?

Well, I don’t know about the US media but, ant chance the BBC, Sky, The Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Independent have to attack Russia, they do it, even when its fake. I mean UK and Russian jets buzz each other very often in the north sea/atlantic, and yet our news networks make out we are under attack every time there is an EU/Brexit vote happening imminently. The same when Russian warships pass through the English Channel, we make out like they are about to shell London and we should all be terrified and yet its a shipping lane that every other military passes through without a mention. 
So, yes, our press would have been all over that Russian FSB drill, unless they were asked not to. Seems obvious doesn’t’ it. 
 

Propaganda/manufacturing consent. 

[Richard Booth]

1 hour ago, Chris Barnard said:

So, yes, our press would have been all over that Russian FSB drill, unless they were asked not to. Seems obvious doesn’t’ it. 

I don't know necessarily that they would have been *asked* not to cover it, more like the media knows what's good for them. If they know the official narrative is "oh, it was a drill" then that's what they're going to say, if anything at all. Anything else they would call "baseless assertions" (their new favorite term) or "conspiracy theories."

One thing I noticed is that the FSB whistleblower who said that Putin blew up those apartments, Alexander Litvinenko, was poisoned with polonium. He was clearly targeted and taken out much like the former Soviet Union and the Bulgarian did to Georgi Markov in 1978.

The assassination of Litvinenko tells me that he was most assuredly telling the truth in his book about the apartment bombings "Blowing Up Russia." 

One thing I also noted is that the U.K. took the Litvinenko assassination seriously. They almost had to -- it occurred on their soil. They had a commission and an investigation and they essentially determined that Litvinenko was assassinated by figures connected to the former KGB.

Anyway, I pretty much agree with your assessment and believe that our media is complicit in keeping a lid on the greater truth surrounding any number of events. Whether that be the Moscow apartment bombings, or other things.

One thing I have studied is the media's coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing: early on, from April through October of 1995, the media covered additional suspects with a pretty good level of detail. John Doe #2 was covered. So was surveillance camera footage of the bombing that was seized by the FBI.

By the late 2000s, that had all changed. Look no further than Rachel Maddow's segment called "The McVeigh Tapes" where a highly sanitized narrative was presented which included only Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. There was no mention of John Doe #2, no mention of Michael Fortier's obvious involvement in the plot, no mention of any of the surveillance tapes reportedly seized by the FBI, nor any other part of the plot that was deemed "inconvenient" to the FBI's official narrative.

[Richard Booth]

deleted

Edited October 24, 2021 by Richard Booth

[David Andrews]

Here's some thoughts, Richard, though perhaps you have already had these yourself:

I see in McVeigh a soldier following orders.  I think it was Wendy S. Painting, in her book Aberration In the Heartland, who suggests McVeigh was recruited for Special Ops during his post-Army work for a security guard company in western New York that (like many security companies) has intelligence community ties, and hires veterans.  I think it's McVeigh here - and not the Nichols brothers or Fortier - who's the Oswald-like intelligence dangle, sent among various groups and individuals to gather info and coalesce a bomb plot.  (Is it any wonder McVeigh was worried about getting hit, like Oswald, during a perp walk?)  He may have had other intel figures around him, such as John Does #2 and #3, and "Andy the German," but McVeigh was the footloose dangle, a role his right-wing views and racism primed him for.

Similarly, I see a soldier in Mohammed Atta.  I can't prove it, but I suspect his background has been fudged, and he received training in the Egyptian military, and possibly in one of the US military's foreign officer training schools, such as at Ft. Bragg.  Everything about Atta - his walk, his posture, his taste in expensive dress clothes, his Spartan rectitude - screams military to me.  Even if his entertainments did run to coke and alcohol and strippers, that suggests to me a soldier off the rails overseas and not a slumming fundamentalist.

Two of the most troubling things about OKC are the motive and the outcome.  Very few right-wing groups were rolled-up or suppressed after that slaughter; based on today's Trump-age climate, it seems that the bombing and investigation only created more groups.  In contrast, FBI and CIA suppressed and arrested a greater number of Muslim terrorists, and mere disaffected Muslims, after 9/11.  It could be argued that these were mop-up operations, intended to quash Al Qaeda wannabes in the wake of 9/11 after the real global mission had been accomplished by the intelligence services, military and politicians, and blamed on UBL and Al Qaeda.  Yet these anti-terror operations proliferated, surveilling Muslims of varying culpability. 

A good source on consolidated CIA-NYPD anti-terror ops is the late Leonard Levitt's column for New York Newsday, called One Police Plaza.  Look for the articles 2002-2013 mentioning former CIA DDO David Cohen, who became the NYPD's intelligence czar after 9/11: 

http://nypdconfidential.com/columns/archive/all-col.html

Sample column:

http://nypdconfidential.com/columns/2009/090209.html

Cohen and some active CIA officers were integrated into the NYPD's Intelligence Division in a Bloomberg mayorality palace coup that minimized the role of the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force, and allowed NYPD Intelligence detectives to be stationed in foreign countries.  It also gave CIA a domestic spying arm in the US northeast, using NYPD Intelligence officers to spy on political organizers and demonstrators as well as American Muslims.  It's not OKC-related, but it's a fascinating development in the "War on Terror" that seems to have been (often unnecessarily) more active than FBI's efforts to surveil and stop right-wing terror after OKC.

Thanks for the new article - I'll get to it soon.

Edited October 10, 2020 by David Andrews

[David Andrews]

On 10/2/2020 at 6:15 PM, Richard Booth said:

Regarding explosives, which Chris asked about:

I have a couple-hour long VHS tape that was recorded at the scene of the crime on 4/19/95. This VHS tape recording was made by Melvin Sumter, a Sherriff. On this video tape you can see when the rear axle of the Ryder truck was discovered, and Sumter zooms-in on the VIN# on the axle. 

[...] So I remain open minded about [internally planted] explosives

One of the things I've read (unfortunately, before I started keeping notes and citations on OKC) is that McVeigh's self-touted arrangement of the explosives barrels into a shaped charge designed to blow out the side of the truck facing the Murrah building is faulty.

The source I read said that when terrorists overseas construct a building-destroying bomb truck, they pull the truck into a terrorist friendly mechanic's shop and weld steel plate into a box inside the truck, leaving the side intended to face the building open to shape the charge.

We've all seen rental box trucks: the rear doors are on the flimsy side, don't seal tightly, and use rubber weather stripping to cover considerable gaps.  This makes the rear doors the path of least resistance for an explosion, unlike the steel-box technique above.  While there was enough explosive power to destroy the entire Ryder truck, the source I read posited that the main force of the bomb blew out the rear of the truck, and not the side.  The proof, it suggested, was in the flying rear axle of the truck landing two blocks directly behind the vehicle.

Edited October 10, 2020 by David Andrews

[Richard Booth]

On 10/10/2020 at 12:55 PM, David Andrews said:

One of the things I've read (unfortunately, before I started keeping notes and citations on OKC) is that McVeigh's self-touted arrangement of the explosives barrels into a shaped charge designed to blow out the side of the truck facing the Murrah building is faulty.

The source I read said that when terrorists overseas construct a building-destroying bomb truck, they pull the truck into a terrorist friendly mechanic's shop and weld steel plate into a box inside the truck, leaving the side intended to face the building open to shape the charge.

We've all seen rental box trucks: the rear doors are on the flimsy side, don't seal tightly, and use rubber weather stripping to cover considerable gaps.  This makes the rear doors the path of least resistance for an explosion, unlike the steel-box technique above.  While there was enough explosive power to destroy the entire Ryder truck, the source I read posited that the main force of the bomb blew out the rear of the truck, and not the side.  The proof, it suggested, was in the flying rear axle of the truck landing two blocks directly behind the vehicle.

Hi David,

You raise some very good questions here. Unfortunately I am not an expert on either the bomb configuration in that truck, or explosives. However, this is a subject worth analyzing and I do have some key points that relate to your questions I'd like to offer up.

What I do know about the design of the truck bomb is we have two different versions of that:

(1) McVeigh's version, from his book American Terrorist

(2) Terry Nichols' version, provided to the FBI in 2005 and via affidavit.

Additionally, Nichols also provides in his affidavit another version of the bomb configuration, one that was described by McVeigh to Lori Fortier, using soup cans. In her kitchen, McVeigh arrange soup cans and showed her how he was going to align the barrels and she testified about this. 

Notes

* Terry Nichols says that the "half-assed bomb" that they built at Geary Lake does not resemble the diagram or description that McVeigh provided in his book. Nichols says what he helped McVeigh build was nothing whatsoever like what McVeigh described.

* McVeigh's honesty: a major problem to consider

One thing I can say with certainty that may apply here: Tim McVeigh was a xxxx. He was caught lying by his attorneys so many times they compiled a document that documented Tim McVeigh's various different stories and lies (similar to how the HSCA compiled something like this regarding Marina Oswald).

In addition to that, I know that McVeigh is lying when he says there is no John Doe #2, and when he makes himself the martyr by declaring himself the sole perpetrator, and after the bombing when he preposterously claimed that he was not a white supremacist: that he just loved the terrorism parts of The Turner Diaries but that he disavowed the racist parts. Preposterous because racism is at the heart of The Turner Diaries, it permeates every page; additionally, he made hundreds of phone calls to the National Alliance (prominent White Supremacist group ran by The Turner Diaries' author) as evidenced by his "Daryl Bridges" calling card. For someone who isn't a racist he sure is calling up white supremacists daily. So he lied about John Doe 2, he lied about not being a racist (some kind of P.R. effort on his part). Would he lie then about some things about the bomb? That is my central question here knowing his dishonesty.

Here is a comparison of the two bomb designs I wrote about above, both McVeigh's revised 7,000 pound bomb from his book, and Nichols' diagram for what he says was the actual bomb they built (which he says wasn't nearly 7,000 pounds).

Worth considering: every report on this bomb in the newspapers went up in size: started out as 2400 pounds, then 4800 pounds, where it stayed at around 5,000 pounds for years until McVeigh came out with his book and the all-new ultra-mega 7,000 lb "shaped charge" bomb. 

Diagram from Terry Nichols:

[David Andrews]

Richard - Thanks.  It's good to see the diagram.  I had assumed that ANFO bags piled at the "back" of the shape charge meant they were at the side of the trailer facing away from the building, as shown in drawing #2.

[Richard Booth]

On 11/1/2020 at 10:50 AM, David Andrews said:

Richard - Thanks.  It's good to see the diagram.  I had assumed that ANFO bags piled at the "back" of the shape charge meant they were at the side of the trailer facing away from the building, as shown in drawing #2.

Drawing #2 does indeed have the ANFO bags piled on the side facing away from the building, and that is the configuration that Terry Nichols says was actually built at Geary Lake. Nichols described what they built at Geary Lake as a "half-assed bomb."  There were major problems during the construction of the bomb: much of the ammonium nitrate fertilizer had gotten wet, and McVeigh was very sloppy in putting it together according to Nichols. He gives the impression that what they built would not have functioned.

Meanwhile, I have reason to believe that the bomb was overhauled or reconstructed on in the late hours (3:00-5:00 AM) of April 19th at a warehouse in downtown Oklahoma. The warehouse was called "Emrick's Storage" and one little known fact is that the address to this facility was written on a scrap of paper that McVeigh had on him when he was arrested. One of McVeigh's cellmates on death row wrote a book about the bombing which is allegedly based on information that McVeigh shared with him, and he writes that the bomb was built at Emrick's under supervision of an expert in bomb-making. Whether or not this cell-mate is credible is a valid question, but I don't write the notion off entirely. Note that the information about Emrick's Storage was located in a Defense team memorandum that was not available online or written about in newspapers, so this cellmate had no way of knowing about it. If he didn't get that from McVeigh, someone would have had to have written to him in prison and told him about it. Anyhow.

I was having a discussion with a source, and told him that I felt the bomb may have been constructed at Emrick's. This source told me "that is correct" then almost immediately said "wait, didn't the government say it was built at some lake?"  Because I told this source that I would not publish their name, I am going to keep that person anonymous for the time being.

Other concerns are related to explosive charges in the building. Multiple times throughout rescue operations, rescue personnel was pulled away from the Murrah building during a "bomb scare" when explosive charges or materials were found in the rubble. This bomb scare can be found on CNN's transcript of live coverage that day, and the researchers who worked on the documentary film "A Noble Lie" spoke to rescue personnel who found these explosives. 

Regarding the explosion, my mind was changed after I was given a copy of a VHS tape made at the scene of the bombing on April 19th. On that VHS tape you see the carnage up close, and it it absolutely massive. I noted that columns of the building farther away from the bomb-truck were entirely demolished, while a column closer to the truck was left standing. If the damage were solely the result of a pressure blast wave coming from the Ryder truck then those columns closest to the truck would be demolished but that is not the damage pattern you see. 

What it looks like is that there were explosive charges on the building and that they failed to all go off in sequence. This is supported by the blast pattern you see on the building, and by the subjective experiences of the bombing survivors who said that the building shook like an earthquake, with a loud boom, followed a second later by louder explosions. Supporting these witnesses are the seismic records from two locations in Oklahoma which show two distinct explosive events close together. 

It's not an area I tend to focus on because I am not an expert on explosives. However, this is my opinion as it relates to the bomb/s.

I tend to focus, in my writing and my work, on those areas I am more of an expert on where I know for sure I'm not going to get things wrong. In my manuscript and my articles, I don't even address the bomb. Precisely because I am not an expert on bombs and I don't want to talk like I am. I am an expert on what the witnesses all saw, the timeline and sequence of events, and matters relating to other areas of the investigation...so I stick to those.

 

Edited November 28, 2020 by Richard Booth

[Richard Booth]

This is a lead that I haven't followed-up on or analyzed with any detail, but find it interesting. It may be significant, or it may be nothing.

Former CIA director William Colby wrote this to a friend days before the Oklahoma City bombing: “I tell you, dear friend, that the Militia and Patriot movement in which, as an attorney, you have become one of the centerpieces, is far more significant and far more dangerous for American than the Anti-War movement ever was, if it is not intelligently dealt with. And I really mean this.”

Timely foreshadowing? Prescient? More than that? 

After the bombing, William Colby's Strategic Investment newsletter published an interesting report. The March 20, 1996 issue included an article which suggested that bombs were placed inside the Murrah building. The report said that a classified report prepared by two independent Pentagon experts has concluded that the destruction of the federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 was caused by five separate bombs. 

William Colby would be found dead the following month. 

I believe he was murdered--not related to Oklahoma City but rather for many past perceived transgressions that involved him talking too much. He was far too forthcoming to Congress and he might just have said too damn much one too many times. (more on Colby's death: http://www.pythiapress.com/wartales/colby.htm) 

Another OKC researcher I know told me that OKC can be linked to Ted Shackley and Iran-Contra figures. What I have seen on this is compelling. For instance, a key goverment witness in the case was gun dealer Roger Moore. Roger Moore essentially funded the OKC bombing. He was robbed of tens of thousands of dollars worth of guns and precious metals which Timothy McVeigh, Michael Fortier, and Terry Nichols sold to raise money for the bombing. Insurance company investigators who examined Moore's claim for the robbery, and investigative reporters, believe that Roger Moore set-up this robbery and staged it. That he was a witting participant. His neighbors, whose phone Moore used immediately after the robbery, also expressed suspicion about Moore's status as a robbery victim. 

Well, as it turns out, Roger Moore became a millionaire through a business he ran in Florida in the 1980s which manufactured speed boats and cigarette boats. Moore was allegedly involved with Iran-Contra figures at this time, and according to one researcher he was a bag-man and a cut-out involved with "The Enterprise" organization affiliated with Ted Shackley, Richard Secord, etc. Moore is supposedly the key figure in the bombing which connects back to the sponsors. There is a researcher who is actively investigating this area and more will come out about it, eventually. 

[Richard Booth]

On 11/28/2020 at 5:28 PM, Richard Booth said:

Well, as it turns out, Roger Moore became a millionaire through a business he ran in Florida in the 1980s which manufactured speed boats and cigarette boats. Moore was allegedly involved with Iran-Contra figures at this time, and according to one researcher he was a bag-man and a cut-out involved with "The Enterprise" organization affiliated with Ted Shackley, Richard Secord, etc. Moore is supposedly the key figure in the bombing which connects back to the sponsors. There is a researcher who is actively investigating this area and more will come out about it, eventually. 

To add some more context to the above.

A 1996 memo of a visit between Defense investigator Amber McLaughlin and Timothy McVeigh has quite a few germaine details in it that investigators of this case should examine. One of those details is how McVeigh recounts a trip he made to Florida with Roger Moore's girlfriend, Karen Anderson. McVeigh and Anderson drove a van filled with guns and explosives to Florida. McVeigh said it was "only" about $4,000 worth and included rocket launchers, automatic weapons, and other "product."

When he was asked who these weapons were going to, McVeigh said that Moore had an "arrangement" with a "group of people" who were "training to overthrow or assassinate Castro."

He was running Moore's guns to anti-Castro cuban exiles.

Note that again, Roger Moore is the central figure that investigators have linked to the Iran-Contra "Enterprise", he funded the OKC bombing, and it appears he also dealt firearms to the exile community as late as the early 1990s.

We see figures on the fringe of the OKC bombing, through witness/suspect Roger Moore, that we saw in many past crimes that we investigate here. When I think of Roger Moore and his connections, I cannot help but recall the anti-Castro cuban exiles and his work with "the Enterprise" in the 80s. 

What was a guy like that -- spooky as all hell -- doing associating with Timothy McVeigh. Much less, funding Timothy McVeigh. 

This guy, Moore, sent McVeigh a letter. It was recovered from McVeigh's mailbox by the FBI. On the top right hand corner of the letter was the word "BURN"

The FBI asked Moore about that letter and naturally his memory failed him. Particularly the FBI wanted to know what Moore meant when he wrote “the important thing is to be as effective as possible” and "let's let May go."  That same letter also had Roger Moore writing to McVeigh these troubling lines:

“Plan is to bring the country down, and have a few more things happen, then offer the 90 percent a solution. (Better Red than Dead).”

This guy turns out to be a chief government witness in the case. In retrospect, according to almost anyone who looks at the case, he looks increasingly like a suspect and a paymaster for the bombing operation.

Moore died in 2011 or so. Heart attack.

Here is the man, very few photos exist of him:

[David Andrews]

On 11/28/2020 at 8:28 PM, Richard Booth said:

Another OKC researcher I know told me that OKC can be linked to Ted Shackley and Iran-Contra figures. What I have seen on this is compelling. For instance [...]

Would love to hear anything else you encounter on Iran-Contra>OKC beyond the "For instance" material.  PM me if need be, we can swap e-mail addresses.

Things like this are reasons I look at OKC as something of greater intent and involvement than "a government sting op gone wrong."  My question is: What good did murder in OKC do in terms of later achieving the larger planners' objectives?  What were the bombing's objectives in the first place?

Roger Moore is starting to remind me of a larger-scale Contra war player named John Hull, an American who owned a ranch in Costa Rica that was used for arms and drugs transshipment and guerilla training, and who was exposed in a lawsuit involving the assassination attempt on Eden Pastora.  No connection to OKC, but a similar middleman-facilitator-collaborator type:

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKhullJ.htm

Edited December 6, 2020 by David Andrews