Oklahoma City bombing

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Timeline

Suspects

Timothy McVeigh

Main article: Timothy McVeigh

White supremacist groups

Islamist groups

US intelligence

Related articles: Roger Moore, Dave Hollaway, Kirk Lyons, Frank Keating

See also

References

External links

  • The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror by David Hoffman (1998)
  • Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed—and Why It Still Matters by Andrew Gumbel and Roger G. Charles (2013)
  • Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh by Wendy S. Painting, PhD (2016)

McVeigh background

Elohim City suspects

  • Andreas Strassmeir background
    • McCurtain Sunday Gazette, "STRASSMEIR HELPED FORTIFY, ARM ELOHIM CITY BUNKERS" by J.D. Cash, 1997/04/13: "Kirk Lyons says that Strassmeir's next step was Elohim City. "I'm the reason that Andy was at Elohim City. I put him there," said Lyons. "So if there was a plan... I guess I'm part of it." Lyons said that since Strassmeir had no work permit, the attorney "had to find a place for Andy where he could live off the land." "We asked Millar to take him in," Lyons recalls. "They had an agriculturally based economy community out there. And there would be a way for Andy to live and prosper without violating any immigration laws. That's why we put Andy out there.""
    • Jewish Press, "Al Qaeda’s Neo-Nazi Connections", 2004/03/24 (pages 1, 2, 3, 4): "Groups associated with Elohim City have included The Order, Covenant Sword and Arm, White Aryan Resistance and the Aryan Republican Army. The latter group included Timothy McVeigh among its members. Extremists residing at Elohim City received military-style training from a number of sources. One of the trainers there was Andreas Carl Strassmeir of Germany, a neo-Nazi and the son of Guenter Strassmeir, a chief aide of disgraced former German chancellor Helmut Kohl. The elder Strassmeir is widely regarded as the architect of Kohl’s reunification plan that merged the former East Germany with the Federal Republic in 1991. And Guenter’s father was one of the original members of the Nazi Party in the early 1920’s. [...] According to an FBI report dated May 10, 1995, ”Additional documents reveal that at one time Strassmeir was attempting to purchase a 747 aircraft from Lufthansa; however, the reason for the purchase is not reflected in the documents.”"
  • CBS, "Did The FBI Destroy Evidence?", 2003/02/12: "The FBI and prosecutors ordered the destruction in 1999 of evidence from a bank robbery they once suspected linked Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to white supremacists who were threatening before McVeigh's bombing to attack the government, documents show. The evidence included a surveillance videotape of a bank robbery by some of the supremacists that occurred in Ohio five months before the bombing. The FBI lab compared the tape to pictures of McVeigh, but concluded a match was "inconclusive," internal memos show. The 1999 destruction order, obtained by The Associated Press, was unusual because at the time McVeigh and one of the bank robbers had legal appeals pending. And the government knew, but had turned aside, an offer from one of the bank robbers, Peter Kevin Langan, to provide information about possible other conspirators in the McVeigh case. Langan and his lawyer claim he still possesses Oklahoma City information the government hasn't heard. [...] Some of those supremacists, including the robbers, frequented an Elohim City compound in eastern Oklahoma where a federal informant warned federal law enforcement weeks before McVeigh's bombing that members were agitating to attack the government. The FBI connected McVeigh to Elohim City through hotel receipts, a speeding ticket, prisoner interviews, informant reports and phone records and strongly suspected in the beginning that members there were familiar with his plan, the memos show. [...] The documents show the FBI suspected McVeigh participated in a December 1994 Ohio bank robbery with the Aryan Nation robbers."
  • Douglas Linder, "Were There More OKC Conspirators?: The Elohim City Connection": "What McVeigh's "authorized biography" says about the Elohim City connection: McVeigh admitted calling Elohim City for Andreas ("Andy the German") Strassmeir on 4/5/95. He says the purpose of the call was ask Strassmeir,who he met at a Tulsa gun show in 1994, whether he could use Elohim City as a hideout after the bombing (p244). McVeigh admitting discussing political issues with Strassmeir, the grandson of a founder of the Nazi party, but claimed that Strassmeir had nothing to do with the bombing itself. A polygraph test taken by McVeigh, however, showed that while he was truthful in discussing his own role in the bombing, he "showed signs of evasion" when he said no persons, other than those already charged, were involved in the bombing (p351). [...] What the FBI's scene commander for the Oklahoma City investigation, Danny Coulson, said in 2003: "I think you have too many coincidences here that raise questions about whether other people are involved. The close associations with Elohim City and the earlier plan [of Elohim City residents] to do the same Murrah Building all suggest the complicity of other people." (AP, 2/13/2003) [...] What a 2003 AP report said about McVeigh's connection to Elohim City and white supremacists: AP writer John Solomon's investigation led him to conclude that white supremacists from Elohim City played a major role in the bombing conspiracy. [...] Even more compelling evidence, Solomon reported, came from informant John Shults, who "told agents in 1997 that he was sure 'beyond a shadow of a doubt' he saw McVeigh at Elohim City in 1994 at a meeting about a mysterious delivery and use of a Ryder truck." [...] From a January 1996 story in the Spokane Spokesman-Review According to the manager of a Spokane motel, about 7:15 PST (45 minutes before the bombing), Chevie Kehoe, a former resident of Elohim City, asked to have the motel's lobby television turned to CNN. According to the manager, "Days before that , he had mentioned to me that there's going to be something happening on the 19th and it's going to wake people up." The manager described Kehoe as ecstatic when the bombing was announced on television. "It is about time," Kehoe reportedly exclaimed."

US intelligence operations

Frank Keating connections

  • Role in finding the Ryder truck rear axle
    • Charlotte Observer, "Probe's first steps are bomb, truck", 1995/04/21: "Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating said the axle and other debris have been located from what is believed to be the attack vehicle. "The axle that I saw from that car was two blocks to the east," he said. "And there are little pieces not any bigger than your fist that fell from that car. Broken charred metal. And it was an enormously powerful blast.""
    • From p.32 of All-American Monster by Brandon M. Stickney (1996): "Investigators and firefighters soon revealed to reporters, who had arrived about as fast as the rescuers, that the explosive had been made of fuel and combustible fertilizer packed into the rented Ryder truck. One of the truck’s axles bearing a traceable serial number had also been found. Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating pointed out the twisted axle to some television reporters and cameramen during a walk two blocks from the crime scene. A report said he had apparently come across the truck part by accident and made an offhand comment about how the entire area was to be searched for clues. But this bone of evidence, this metal hunk of death machine, once tested and traced by the FBI, would eventually lead to three men being charged for various crimes associated with the bombing."
  • Authorship by his brother Martin Keating of The Final Jihad
    • Voices of Oklahoma interview with Frank Keating from 2013
      • "John Erling: Your brother Martin wrote the book The Final Jihad.

        Frank Keating: Um-hmm (affirmative).

        JE: That’s a work of fiction. It was written four years before the Oklahoma City bombing. And in the book a Tom McVeigh was a mastermind in the bombing of the Federal Building.

        How bizarre is that?

        FK: It was, yeah. Yeah."

Other curiosities

  • Daily Oklahoman, "Agencies Try To Reassemble Lost Records", 1995/05/01 (pages 1, 2): "Crucial evidence and information may have been destroyed-in several-pending criminal cases, said a source who is familiar with such matters in Oklahoma City. The source, who asked not to be identified, said the blast may have wiped out an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration of a possibly far-reaching narcotics conspiracy. The source said an attorney told him his client, a defendant in a narcotics case, was offered a "memorandum of cooperation" by the DEA to implicate "at least a dozen high-level distributors" of cocaine, marijuana and heroin. The case, the source said, was still in an early stage and would likely be in the files of DEA agents on the seventh and ninth floors destroyed by the bomb. The source said that DEA agent Ken McCullough, killed in the blast, "had people working for him as informants who were caught on small charges.""
  • Physical evidence from the bombing
    • Kevin Ryan, "Twenty Years Later: Unreported Facts About the OKC Bombing", 2015/04/12: "Gene Corley, the engineer who was hired by the government to support its claims about the structural fire at the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, was brought in to investigate the destruction of the Murrah Building. Corley brought along three other engineers: Charles Thornton, Mete Sozen, and Paul Mlakar. Their investigation was conducted from half a block away—where they could not observe any of the damage directly—yet their conclusions supported the pre-existing official account. A few years later, within 72 hours of the 9/11 attacks, these same four men were on site leading the investigations at the Word Trade Center and the Pentagon."
  • Islamist connections
    • Denver Post, "Wild theories spun in book", 1998/10/12: "In his new book, the lawyer for convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh claims that co-defendant Terry Nichols met with Ramzi Yousef, an Iraqi intelligence operative who masterminded the World Trade Center bombing and was behind a plot to blow up 12 U.S. jets. In Stephen Jones' "Others Unknown," he claims the meeting occurred sometime in the early 1990s on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, a "hotbed of fundamentalist Muslim activity." [...] Present were Nichols - who referred to himself as the as "The Farmer" - and Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah, according to Jones. The subject of the meeting was terrorism. Specifically, three topics were discussed: bombing activities; providing firearms and ammunition; and training in the making and handling of bombs, claimed Jones. [...] Jones claimed that an extensive investigation by his office in the Philippines, aided by Filipino officials, indicated that one of the convicted plotters, Wali Khan Amin Shah, was acquainted with Nichols' wife, Marife Torres Nichols, a Filipino by birth. Jones also claimed that Nichols' marriage to Marife was little more than a cover for Nichols as he made his way six times to the Philippines to perfect bomb-making techniques he originally tried to develop on the Nichols farm at Decker, Mich. [...] Jones bases his claims about the Nichols-Iraqi intelligence meeting on interviews he said Filipino police had with Edwin Angeles, described as an associate of Yousef, who was arrested in the Philippines and purportedly turned informant against Iraq."
    • LA Weekly, "The Terrorist Motel" by Jim Crogan, 2002/07/24: "What happened at the nondescript roadside motel outside Oklahoma City was just a fleeting encounter during the twisted cross-country odyssey of the terrorists who would carry out the September 11 attacks. Mohamed Atta, alleged leader of the plot, and two companions wanted to rent a room, but couldn’t get the deal they wanted, so they left. It was an incident of no particular importance, except for one thing. The owner of the motel remembers Atta being in the company of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called ”20th hijacker,“ who was arrested prior to September 11 [...] After the attacks, said the motel owner, he recognized his visitors in photos from television reports. ”I was really stunned,“ he said. Then he decided to call the FBI hot line. [...] In the interim, he also spoke to a former law-enforcement officer who was investigating reported sightings of Mujahid Abdulquaadir Menepta at the same motel during the mid-1990s. Menepta, reportedly a friend of Moussaoui’s, was arrested 30 years ago in Colorado for aggravated robbery and served more than three years in prison. [...] A former desk clerk at the motel — a different clerk from the one who purportedly dealt with Atta and Moussaoui — told the Weekly that he remembered Menepta because in 1994 and 1995 — prior to the Oklahoma City attack — Menepta frequently visited the motel office. There, he bought coffee and talked for hours to this clerk. [...] One reason for the FBI‘s apparent lack of interest might be this motel’s alleged connection to Timothy McVeigh and a group of Iraqis who worked in Oklahoma City. According to the motel owner and other witnesses and investigators interviewed by the Weekly, McVeigh and several of these Iraqis were motel guests in the months preceding the 1995 bombing. Witnesses also claimed they saw several of the Iraqis moving barrels of material around on the bed of a truck. [...] Former Oklahoma City TV reporter Jayna Davis also interviewed motel staff and former guests. In the process, she collected signed affidavits about their contacts with McVeigh and the Iraqis. She tried twice to give the Bureau this information, but the FBI refused to accept her materials."
    • LA Weekly, "An Oklahoma Mystery" by Jim Crogan, 2002/07/24: "[JAYNA] DAVIS, THE FORMER TV REPORTER FOR KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, began investigating the bombing the day after the attack. In seven years, she's accumulated 26 affidavits and more than 100 hours of taped interviews. In particular, she zeroed in on a group of Iraqis who worked for Samir Khalil, a Palestinian-born businessman and owner of a property-management company in Oklahoma City. Davis also did pieces on John Doe No. 2, the mysterious figure identified in initial police bulletins as having been seen fleeing the federal building after the bombing. The FBI later announced that John Doe No. 2 never existed. One of the Iraqis, Hussain Alhussaini, later came forward and identified himself as the person being fingered in Davis' television reports as John Doe No. 2. He sued the reporter for defamation. A federal judge dismissed the suit; Alhussaini has appealed. [...] Davis also turned up material that appeared to connect Nichols to Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Hakim Murad. Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is now serving a life sentence in federal prison. He also had hatched unrealized plans to blow up 12 airliners and to assassinate Pope John Paul II. Murad, a confederate of Yousef, is also in federal custody. He told Philippine police about a plot to hijack an airliner and crash it into CIA headquarters. Murad also claimed in 1996 that a large number of Middle Eastern men were being trained at U.S. flight schools in connection with these plots. This information was passed on to the FBI. [...] An analysis of raw news footage and reports in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, Okla., shows local television reporters stating repeatedly that two additional, sophisticated, undetonated explosive devices were found by investigators on the scene."
    • Jewish Press, "Al Qaeda’s Neo-Nazi Connections", 2004/03/24 (pages 1, 2, 3, 4): "But the reality is that there has been close cooperation between Muslim extremists and Fascists ever since the founding of the Nazi movement in the 1920’s. [...] It should be pointed out that National Socialism had a profound impact on the political philosophies of many radical Islamic political organization, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in Egypt in 1928), Nasser’s Young Egypt movement, the Social Nationalist Party of Syria founded by Anton Sa’ada, and the Ba’ath Party of Iraq. [...] Domestic terrorism in the United States also rose greatly in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Timothy McVeigh, himself a veteran of that conflict, stunned the world by his bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in 1995 in Oklahoma City. But the evidence suggests that the neo-Nazi/Islamic terrorist network played a significant role in this act of terrorism."
    • Patrick Briley, "Did HW Bush, Clinton Officials Orchestrate OKC Bombing?", 2005/09/30: "Melvin Lattimore was with McVeigh’s car and two other FBI provocateurs, James Rosencrans and Sean Kenny, at the OKC Travelers Aid adjacent to the bombed Murrah federal building one day before the OKC bombing. 6 FBI agents spent 9 months browbeating 4 witnesses at the Travelers Aid trying to make them change their story about seeing Lattimore at the Travelers Aid. Lattimore was also seen in OKC with the provocateur Al Hussain Hussaini. Retired Air Force General Benton K. Partin informed AG Ashcroft in August 2001 of the Travelers Aid story in writing and in person. Yet intentionally nothing was done by Ashcroft about Lattimore. Lattimore was the roommate of the 20th 9/11 hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui while he attended the Airman flight school in Norman Oklahoma in 2000 and 2001."
    • Peter Lance, "Vindication on the Ramzi Yousef-Terry Nichols connection" (Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, "The Oklahoma City Bombing: Was There A Foreign Connection" by Dana Rohrabacher; FD-302 report interviewing Lieutenant Philip Rojas of the Metropolitan Correctional Center about Abdul Hakim Murad claiming responsibility for the OKC bombing; Terry Nichols phone call records; list of unindicted co-conspirators in the "Day of Terror" case): "• A tour guide named Daisy Gelaspie, had told police that on trip to the Philippines in 1990, Nichols asked if she knew anyone who could build bombs. [...] • Nichols made additional trips to the Philippines during the early 90’s and was even in Cebu at the same time as Ramzi Yousef in December, 1994.

• Within days of Yousef’s Manila bomb factory being raided by police, on January 6th, 1995, Nichols beat a hasty retreat from the Philippines. [...] • Ramzi Yousef, the Wales educated engineer responsible for both attacks on the World Trade Center, had begun training members of the Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda splinter group in the early 90′s near the Southern Philippines town of Davao City. • In a sworn deposition, Edwin Angeles, a top Abu Sayyaf turncoat, stated that in the early 90′s in Davao City, he’d been in a room with Nichols (aka “The Farmer”) along with Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah; an Uzbeki beloved of Osama bin Laden whom the Saudi billionaire called “the lion.” During the meeting Angeles swore that they’d discussed bomb making and handling. [...] On the day of the OK City blast Murad, Yousef’s oldest friend, a pilot trained in four U.S. flight schools, took credit for the blast while in a cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (M.C.C.) the federal jail in lower Manhattan. [...] In its Report, the House Subcommittee came up with compelling new evidence that: as early in 1992 and 1993 in the months prior to his placement of a 1,500 pound ammonium-nitrate fuel oil bomb, similar to the O.K. City device beneath the towers of the World Trade Center, Ramzi Yousef called a Filipina in Queens, New York, who lived in the same building as Marife Nichols’ relatives. [...] The Report discusses one Samir Khalil, a Palestinian who had hired a number of Middle Eastern men to work on his properties in O.K. City prior to the bombing. [...] According to his former bookkeeper, Khalil was at the Circus Circus hotel in Las Vegas two days later at a time Terry Nichols phone records show that two calls came to his home in Herrington, Kansas from the Circus Circus. [...] The name Samir Khalil is on a list of 172 unindicted co-conspirators in the “Day of Terror” case co-prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Patrick Fitzgerald and Andrew C. McCarthy."
  • Alleged Gulf Cartel financing
    • Craig Roberts, "THE BOMBING OF THE ALFRED P. MURRAH FEDERAL BUILDING", 1996/09/04
      • "Shortly after the Murrah bombing, I received information (May 8, 1995) from sources in Texas that a subject named "Arbego Garcia or Garcia Arbego" (spelling unknown at the time) was involved in the bombing as a "cash provider" for the event. The source said that "Arbego" sent two Mexican nationals to Oklahoma City with a satchel full of cash to help finance the bombing. "Arbego" was allegedly a Mexican Mafia chieftan involved in the cocaine and heroin trafficking through Mexico from Guadalajara to Texas. He allegedly was the ground transportation link during the Iran/Contra Mena affair. He was still involved and allegedly had inside sources with the Governor's office (Ann Richardson, who served from 1/15/91 to 1/17/95), including contacts within the Texas National Guard senior staff who provided information on where the border was not guarded by JTF-6)."
      • "Later information arrived, with the source now using proper spelling, that (quoting): "Abrego's contact in Texas was a former Colonel...There are three brothers in this particular family. All three had special ops training, were involved in Project Phoenix...one or more involved with the 'Company.' One or more were on a Wet Team...One is or was a professor at Rice University. Two are, or were, fugitives. These boys are the link to Abrego and Texas. Very bad. Abrego probably set up to silence him like Noriega. He was part of same drug importation ring during Iran/Contra and after. Clinton's boys and committee followers have got to get rid of the main contacts to the Mena mess and anyone so associated." I gave this information to the Tulsa FBI office and did not hear anything more regarding the report."
      • "On Tuesday, January 17th, 1996, Juan Garcia Abrego, 51, was extradited from Mexico, where he was arrested in Monterrey on Sunday, January 15th, to Houston to face federal charges of smuggling billions of dollars worth of cocaine into the U.S. Facing a 20 count indictment, he was arraigned on February 2nd. During the arraignment testimony indicated that Abrego's network smuggled $20 billion worth of cocaine into the U.S. every year, and budgeted $50 million to bribe U.S. officials. The source indicated that even the Texas governor's office was involved in taking bribe money.

        Abrego was involved in the Iran/Contra drug smuggling operation that had entry points in Los Angeles (via CIA-sponsored Contra officers to LA street gangs for further dispersal); Mena, Arkansas; Omaha, Nebraska; and other cities in the midwest (via the Abrego land route) such as Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma City, etc" - TODO: how was the cocaine distributed in Omaha?
  • Alleged involvement of McVeigh, Nichols, and Fortier with Sammy Gravano
    • Douglas Linder, "Were There More OKC Conspirators?: The Elohim City Connection": "An Interesting Post (Democratic Forum, 4/20/2013) Timothy McVeigh, army buddy Terry Nichols, Jose "Joey" Leon, and Leon's uncle, Mr. Kintop, banded together to test the directional blast of bombs. [...] These terrorists were drawn together when they joined Sammy Gravano's (Mafia hit man's) neo-Nazi narcotics cartel in Arizona. It put together like minded, drug addict, nuts. [...] The court ignored all dozen witnesses (all with the same info--recognizing Leon's white hat with it's purple flame pattern) and made up a fairy tale that McVeigh was the lone bomber."
    • 2013/08/19 comment on Mark Maynard, "Seeing in the Boston bombing though the filter of preexisting prejudice", 2013/04/16: "Jose “Joey” Leon, formerly of 11501 Moen St., Anaheim, California, is John Doe II of the Murrah bombing. He had been best friends with Timothy McVeigh. He gave his hat (white with a purple flame pattern, manufactured by Mopar) to Ramon, son of Margaret (elderly girlfriend of Joey’s uncle, Christopher Kintop), claiming that the FBI was looking for the hat. He removed his dragon tattoo. Joey was a serial child rapist, drug pusher, and neo-Nazi when he moved to Kingman for more money and prestige and to be among other Nazis. There, he attended a lecture by McVeigh on the Turner Diaries at Michael Fortier’s trailer home. Fortier was the capo of Mafia hit man, Sammy (the Bull) Gravano, handling his neo-Nazi narcotics cartel business in Las Vegas. Apparently McVeigh also worked for Gravano, recruiting other neo-Nazi gangs around the country by giving speeches.

      Joey told me that he drove the bomb to the Murrah building, lit the fuse, but it doused going to the bomb from the cab, so he opened the back of the truck and relit the fuse. Joey had a lot of details about building the bomb at Geary Lake–he shoveled all of the manure for the bomb, and showed me his blisters.

      Six months after Murrah, Joey carried out the Hyder derailing to divert 100 FBI agents from Kingman and attempt to pin guilt on other neo-Nazi gangs in the area. This also got Gravano off Joey’s back for fear that the FBI could be directed near Gravano’s operations."
    • Gravano's drug operation in Arizona
      • Dave McGowan, "Death, Taxes, and Education", 2000/11/04: "Following that, Gravano quickly busied himself with setting up a massive drug trafficking ring. According to the charges filed against him, Gravano controlled all the Ecstasy traffic in the state of Arizona, a multi-million dollar operation run through Gravano’s construction company. Some of the money was allegedly laundered through his ex-wife’s Italian restaurant, just like in the movies. (6)

        Gravano was also allegedly the head of a white supremacist cult composed primarily of local high school athletes. Calling themselves the ‘Devil Dogs,’ the group reportedly had a fondness for brutally beating random victims who didn’t meet their high Aryan standards. The teenagers also functioned as Gravano’s muscle, and as his street level drug distribution network. (6)"
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