Cover-up in OKC

On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:32:23 -0500, Morgan <...@email.non

Cover-up in OKC
by William F. Jasper

In trying to pin the blame for the bombing solely on despicable
mass-murderer Timothy McVeigh, federal officials have ignored and
covered up evidence of a wider conspiracy.

Readers of The New American are familiar with many of the charges
leveled by Jannie Coverdale, Kathy Wilburn, Jane Graham, and others
personally affected by the Oklahoma City bombing (see page 12). The
extensive investigation carried out by this magazine over the past six
years has confirmed that their fears and charges of cover-up, coercion,
deception, and obstruction are fully justified.*

Our investigation has led to several major conclusions that completely
contradict the official government line, which holds that Timothy
McVeigh masterminded and carried out the terrorist assault on the Murrah
Building, with his only significant assistance coming from former Army
buddy Terry Nichols. Those conclusions, more fully examined in the
remainder of this article, are summarized in the following bullet points:

* Multiple Accomplices — Credible witnesses saw McVeigh with John
Does in Junction City, Kansas, where the Ryder truck was rented, in the
days before the bombing. Many additional credible witnesses saw McVeigh
with one or more John Does in Oklahoma City on the morning of the
bombing. Still more credible witnesses saw McVeigh with one or more John
Does in or around the Murrah Building in the days before the bombing. In
fact, the prosecution did not present any eye-witnesses in Oklahoma City
who saw McVeigh alone on the day of the bombing; virtually every
eyewitness saw him with one or more John Does.

* Multiple Bombs — Physics, the available forensic evidence,
official records, eyewitnesses, and an impressive array of world-class
experts compellingly argue that the Ryder truck bomb could not have
caused the terrible damage and deadly destruction of the federal
building without the help of explosive charges placed on the columns of
the building. This clearly put the bombing operation beyond McVeigh’s
level of technical expertise and necessitated two or more additional
accomplices.

* Prior Knowledge — Documents from the ATF, FBI, and U.S. Marshal’s
Service, as well as witness testimony and the testimony of federal
undercover informants, indicate that high officials in the federal
government were given prior warning about the impending attack on the
Murrah Federal Building.

* Misconduct, Coercion, and Cover-up — In an astonishing number of
instances, vital evidence was ignored, suppressed, tampered with, and
even destroyed. Witnesses were coached, harassed, and coerced in
attempts to get them to change their testimony.

Making the "John Does" Disappear



Many credible witnesses reported seeing another individual with McVeigh
strongly resembling the infamous sketch of John Doe #2. Among them,
Vickie Beemer, who handled the rental transaction of the Ryder truck
used in the bombing, informed the FBI of John Doe #2 only to have
investigators claim that she had mistaken him for a different man.



Shortly after the bombing, eyewitnesses provided the FBI with
descriptions of two suspects, which formed the basis for the famous FBI
sketches known as "John Doe No. 1" and "John Doe No. 2." The John Doe
No. 1 sketch turned out to be a pretty close depiction of Timothy
McVeigh, who was arrested by an Oklahoma Highway Patrolman on a routine
traffic stop as he fled north on the interstate highway after the
bombing. John Doe No. 2, who for weeks was the "world’s most wanted"
fugitive, was never arrested. Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI
officials swore that "no stone will be left unturned" in the pursuit of
this elusive suspect. Instead of turning over stones, however, the
Department of Justice and FBI were soon burying evidence and leads. The
DOJ-FBI sleuths soon concocted a cover story, still used by the media,
that John Doe 2 was a product of faulty memory and mistaken identity.
According to this story, the witnesses at the Ryder truck rental agency
in Junction City, Kansas, had mistakenly fingered Army Private Todd
Bunting, who had come in to rent a truck with Sergeant Michael Hertig
the day after McVeigh, and who had no connection to the bombing.

There were many problems with this story. For one, it conflicted, in
many details, with the original accounts provided by the three Ryder
witnesses to the FBI. Besides, Vickie Beemer, who handled the rental
transaction, knew Sgt. Hertig and was not likely to confuse him with a
stranger. What’s more, she remained steadfast in her sworn testimony
before the grand jury and the trial jury that she was "absolutely 100%
certain" that the "Robert Kling" who rented the Ryder truck used in the
bombing (whom the government says was McVeigh) was accompanied by
another individual.

Another major problem with the government theory is that even if the
Ryder witness mix-up story were true, there are still many additional
eyewitnesses who saw McVeigh with a man resembling the John Doe 2
sketch. And still more witnesses also saw McVeigh with several other
individuals immediately before the bombing. In any criminal case — and
especially in one this important, involving the "most deadly terrorist
attack on U.S. soil" — the prosecution normally desires to use
eyewitnesses who can establish the connection of the accused directly to
the crime, and particularly to the crime scene. Prior to the McVeigh
trial, the prosecution filed a list of 327 witnesses with the court.
Only 141 were called. Very few were eyewitnesses, and none placed
McVeigh in Oklahoma City. There were many witnesses who could have
placed him there. Why were they not called?

One of the eyewitnesses never called was Mike Moroz, who worked at a
tire store several blocks from the Murrah Building. Moroz picked McVeigh
out of the FBI lineup, providing identification that led to McVeigh’s
arraignment. According to Moroz and his co-worker, Brian Marshall,
McVeigh pulled the Ryder truck into the tire shop’s parking lot around
8:40 a.m., about 20 minutes before the explosion. Moroz spoke briefly to
McVeigh, who was driving, and also saw a passenger in the truck with
McVeigh.

About five minutes later, McVeigh stopped his truck in front of the
Regency Towers, one block west of the Murrah Building, and purchased two
sodas and a package of cigarettes from Danny Wilkerson, who ran the
Towers’ convenience store. The truck was caught on the Regency
surveillance tape. Wilkerson stated that a male passenger accompanied
McVeigh. This remained his death-bed testimony, when he died of cancer
in 1998.

Around 8:58 a.m., about five minutes before the explosion, Rodney
Johnson, a paramedic, was driving in front of the Murrah Building when
he was forced to brake for two men walking from the direction of the
Murrah Building to the parking lot across the street, where another
witness saw McVeigh and a John Doe get into McVeigh’s Mercury Marquis
and hurriedly drive away. Rodney Johnson notified the FBI that night,
and his description of the two suspects closely matched McVeigh and John
Doe No. 2 — before the FBI sketches were made public.

Many other important eyewitnesses saw McVeigh in or near the Murrah
Building with one or more John Does, including:

* Kyle Hunt, a Tulsa banker;
* Morris John Kuper, an employee of the nearby Kerr-McGee Oil Company;
* Debbie Nakanashi, a U.S. Postal Service employee;
* Dr. Paul Heath, a public affairs officer with the Veterans
Administration;
* Danielle Hunt, the former operator of the Murrah Building daycare
center;
* Priscilla Salyer, an employee of the U.S. Customs Service; and
* Germaine Johnson, a HUD branch chief.

Other eyewitnesses who saw Timothy McVeigh with John Does in the
Junction City, Kansas area, where he stayed before driving to Oklahoma
City, or who saw John Does in McVeigh’s motel room, include:

* Jeff Davis, who delivered Chinese food to McVeigh’s motel room;
* Hilda Sostre, a maid at the Dreamland Motel where McVeigh stayed;
* Joan Van Buren, a Subway sandwich clerk;
* Donald and Connie Hood, visitors at the Dreamland Motel; and
* Barbara Whittenberg, owner of the Santa Fe Trail Diner.

How compelling is the cumulative eyewitness testimony? According to John
Douglas, the FBI’s legendary criminal personality profile expert, it is
very compelling. Mr. Douglas, the author of the nonfiction bestsellers
Mind Hunter and Journey Into Darkness, is a 25-year veteran with the FBI
and a consultant to law enforcement agencies nationwide. He was
interviewed for the September 3, 1996 broadcast of NBC’s Dateline
segment on the bombing investigation. Douglas stated that based upon his
personality profiles of McVeigh and Nichols, as well as practical
considerations involved in building and delivering the truck bomb and
the compelling testimony of so many witnesses with no apparent motive
for lying, he is convinced there must be other co-conspirators.
According to Douglas: "I believe there has to be someone who looks like
the sketch because there are too many people who have looked at the
sketch and said ‘that’s who I saw on or about that day.’"

John Douglas suggested that "the FBI may be in trouble here. There are
other people involved in this and they’d better find them. I don’t know
what happened precisely, but I do know the criminal personality. But
when I look at Nichols and I look at McVeigh — these two people are
solely and exclusively responsible for this type of crime? I doubt it."
Later, in 1997, when this writer discussed the Oklahoma City bombing
case with Douglas, the famed consultant and crime fighter stated that
additional evidence and witnesses had made his earlier opinion even
stronger. "I think the government’s position, in light of all the
evidence to the contrary, is absurd," he said.

Science Is Silenced

Almost before the dust had cleared from the explosion, the official
government line was that the attack on the Murrah Building had involved
only a truck bomb, composed of ANFO (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil) and
parked on the street next to the building. From that point on, the
government story on the size and composition of the bomb mutated several
times to fit the official line. As the McVeigh trial was about to start,
the Department of Justice issued a report by the Office of the Inspector
General that particularly censured the work of Special Agent David
Williams of the FBI lab explosives unit, and Williams’ supervisor,
Thomas Thurman. Williams, the main explosives analyst for the
prosecution in this case, had grossly fudged evidence on all of the
major points: the size and composition of the truck bomb; the velocity
of the explosives; the type of detonator used; the containers that
supposedly were used; and the presence of explosive residue on clothing
and other articles belonging to Timothy McVeigh. The Inspector General’s
critique found that Williams’ forensic report was flawed, unscientific,
biased, improper, unjustified, invalid, and appeared "to tailor the
opinion to evidence associated with the defendants."

Long before this, however, many genuine experts had already concluded
that it would have been physically impossible for the truck bomb alone
to have accomplished the massive structural destruction of the heavy
concrete, steel-reinforced columns. The evidence pointed overwhelmingly,
they insisted, to the detonation of high-explosive contact charges on
the columns inside the building. This stellar group of experts includes
legendary physicist and defense analyst Sam Cohen, inventor of the
neutron bomb; Brigadier General Benton K. Partin, former director of the
Air Force Armaments Technology Laboratory; Dr. Frederick Hansen,
professor of physics at the University of Oregon, former research
scientist with NASA, and former head of earth and astro sciences at the
General Motors Defense Research Laboratories; Dr. Ernest B. Paxson, an
engineer with over 30 years’ experience in civilian and defense-related
projects and a published author in many professional journals; and Dr.
Robert G. Breene, author, former professor of physics, and formerly a
visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

In addition to the authoritative assessments of these and other experts,
there is the equally compelling testimony provided by eyewitnesses;
official police, military, and fire department logs; and television
video coverage showing that there were additional internal charges
within the Murrah Building that failed to detonate and that were later
removed by bomb squads. (See, "Proof of Multiple Bombs," in our issue
for July 20, 1998.) This matter could have been settled with finality if
an independent, technically competent analysis of the crime scene and
the forensic evidence — especially from the concrete columns — had been
allowed. But, incredibly, one month after the bombing, before such an
evaluation could be made, the crime scene and evidence were destroyed,
as the building was imploded by commercial demolition blasters. Then the
massive evidence of the crime scene was hauled away and buried. This
happened at the very time that heated arguments in the O.J. Simpson
trial, "the trial of the century," centered on charges that the Los
Angeles Police Department had failed to preserve the crime scene and
other important evidence in that case. It is elementary doctrine and
procedure to preserve the crime scene and preserve evidence; why in
this, of all cases, was there such a rush to destroy the evidence?

Prior Warning

On the morning of April 19, 1995, the second anniversary of the federal
assault on the Branch Davidian church complex in Waco, the ATF office at
the Murrah Building was all but abandoned. Had they been warned of a
possible attack? Compelling evidence led many survivors to begin asking
questions about this. Bruce Shaw rushed to the building immediately
after the blast to try to find his wife, an employee with the Federal
Credit Union. In an interview with this reporter, and in sworn
affidavits, Shaw said he was informed by an ATF agent at the scene that
the ATF staff had been warned on their pagers not to come in. Two
paramedics at the scene, in separate incidents, also reported hearing
similar statements from ATF agents. The paramedics, Katherine Mallette
and Tiffany Bible, have provided sworn affidavits of their testimony.

The ATF responded immediately, claiming "malicious rumors" of prior ATF
warning "are entirely false." The ATF rushed to cover the fact that only
two, three, or five (depending on which account one takes) of the
agency’s 17 employees were in the office that morning. ATF spokesman
Lester Martz presented an apocryphal tale of ATF heroism to counter the
mounting concern, claiming that Agent Alex McCauley was in an elevator
with a DEA agent when the bomb exploded. "The elevator dropped in a free
fall from the eighth floor to the third," said Martz. "The two men were
trapped in the smoke-filled elevator.... On their fourth attempt, they
managed to break through the doors and escape from the elevator. The
agents made their way to the stairwell and brought with them 10 or 15
people they found along the way...."

This ludicrous scenario soon proved to be a lie, and an embarrassment to
the ATF. The New American interviewed Oscar Johnson, the president of
Midwestern Elevator, and his technicians who were at the Murrah Building
minutes after the blast. They certified that "none of the elevators
fell," and that "all of the elevators’ cables were intact." They
presented photographs and their official reports to back up their
assertions. Johnson and other elevator experts we consulted assured us
that although the elevator free fall is a staple of Hollywood action
films, "it is not something that happens in real life." Moreover, as
Johnson pointed out, if a free fall of five stories had occurred, those
inside would have suffered severe injuries. (See "Prior Knowledge," in
our issue for December 11, 1995.)

At least two undercover federal informants repeatedly warned federal
authorities weeks in advance of the April 19, 1995 attack of specific
plots to blow up federal buildings: Carol Howe, an ATF informant in
"Elohim City," a rural enclave providing refuge to violent criminals and
members of the Aryan Republican Army, the Ku Klux Klan, and Aryan
Nation; and Cary Gagan, an informant for the U.S. Justice Department
amongst a group of narco-terrorists operating through Mexico that
included foreign nationals of Middle Eastern extraction, as well as
domestic Caucasian-Americans. Both Howe and Gagan had formal, written
agreements with federal authorities, and both provided substantial
documentary evidence to back up their claims that they had provided
ample warning to their federal superiors to have foreseen and prevented
the devastating attack. (See "Undercover: The Howe Revelations" in our
September 15, 1997 issue, and "Fighting for Answers in OKC" in our issue
for August 4, 1997.)

Obstructing Justice

We have already mentioned the incredible destruction of the Murrah
Building crime scene and the Inspector General’s report on the
fraudulent FBI analysis of the truck bomb. Decorated FBI scientist Dr.
Frederick Whitehurst has charged that the abuses at the FBI Crime Labs
are serious, conscious, and systemic. Senator Charles Grassley was far
more critical than the IG report, suggesting that criminal charges
against FBI agents may be in order.

Title 18 USCS 1512 provides criminal penalties for intimidation,
physical force or misleading conduct directed at a witness. Other
sections of the code provide additional penalties for other forms of
conduct aimed at falsifying, misrepresenting, or improperly influencing
a witness. Penalties would seem to be in order with regard to FBI and
DOJ treatment of many OKC witnesses, including: Jeffrey Davis; Danny
Wilkerson; Debbie Burdick; Jane Graham; Arlene Blanchard; Morris John
Kuper; Paul Heath; David Kochendorfer; James Miller; Kimberly Tolson;
Russell Stuart Green; Lana Padilla; Barbara Whittenberg; Eldon Elliot;
Vickie Beemer; and Tom Kessinger.

As important as the sins of commission in the OKC bombing case are, it
may prove that the FBI’s and DOJ’s sins of omission are even greater.
Following the Nichols trial, Kathy Wilburn made an issue of the fact
that the FBI had only checked the more than 1,000 fingerprints in the
case against a very small number of suspects (12), many of whom were
members of the Nichols family (including two-year-old Nicole Nichols).
They had, however, refused to run checks on prime suspects such as
Andreas Strassmeir, Dennis Mahon, Michael Brescia, Tony and Peter Ward,
Chevie and Cheyne Kehoe, Mark Thomas, and others. Wilburn said FBI Agent
John Hersley told her that they would run the prints later. The Justice
Department, though, has announced that there is no on-going
investigation and "no evidence" of other suspects in the case.

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