Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols says a high-ranking FBI official "apparently" was directing Timothy McVeigh in the plot to blow up a government building and might have changed the original target of the attack, according to a new affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Utah.My first response: Obviously, Terry Nichols is no-one's idea of an unimpeachable source. He may well be lying to draw attention to himself, or to pursue his continuing political agenda.
The official and other conspirators are being protected by the federal government "in a cover-up to escape its responsibility for the loss of life in Oklahoma," Nichols claims in a Feb. 9 affidavit.
Documents that supposedly help back up his allegations have been sealed to protect information in them, such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth.
On the other hand, the reference to possible confirmatory evidence must give us pause. After the jump, I will present the reasons why we should take Terry Nichols' allegations seriously, and I will offer one suggestion as to just who this hidden "FBI guy" might be. (Please don't comment until you've at least skimmed the material to come.)
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
Conspiracy buffs of a certain stripe will no doubt seize upon this latest claim as "evidence" that Clinton ordered the blast -- a notion I consider ridiculous. Nichols points the finger at the FBI, which had an adversarial relationship with the Clinton administration. Former FBI head Louis Freeh has made clear that he despised the President he worked for -- and I imagine that Freeh had people working beneath him whose feelings ran even deeper.
I well recall the 1994-95 period -- the Winter of Hate, as I call it. By comparison, the much-discussed 1967 Summer of Love had far less impact on society.
During that winter, I was in a position to read many publications from both the left and (especially) the far right. One could smell trouble brewing. Oliver Stone's JFK still had people talking. Satanic Ritual Abuse allegations were everywhere. Roswell and the MJ-12 documents had not yet been exposed as frauds. Danny Casolaro was murdered. The Polly Klaas kidnapping gave birth to a hundred different conspiratorial scenarios. Thousands of right-wingers -- the type of people who had once applauded the MOVE bombings and the Greensboro massacre -- were incensed by the Waco disaster. Whitewater had yet to be exposed as a right-wing put-up job. The militias openly talked treason while waving the flag. Race riots were still a recent memory. The Turner Diaries received a wide readership. A rumor spread that Soviet SPETZNAZ troops had massed at the Mexico-US border, poised for a takeover -- yes, in 1994!
When the federal building in Oklahoma City exploded, my first reaction was not total shock. On a gut level, I somehow knew some ultra-paranoid creep would try a stunt like that, although the scale of the attack certainly came as a horrible surprise.
The original bombs-in-da-building theorists made their appearance in the aftermath of that ghastly event. Right-wingers loved that particular conspiracy theory, just as they've always loved to babble about radionics and Soviet "Scalar" technology and mind-reading helmets and other examples of pseudoscience .
(Ah hell. Might as well get these unpleasant duties out of the way here and now: PLEASE do not presume that I have never laid eyes on the "evidence" offered by Brigadier General Partin and his ultra-reactionary brethren. I'm older and more widely-read than most of you are, and I've been around the block so many times I'm starting to get dizzy. That level of experience doesn't make me right, necessarily, but it does mean that you probably have nothing to say to me that I haven't already heard. I familiarized myself with the "CD in OKC" scenario years ago, and I rejected it. So take it elsewhere. Sorry to be rude, but people ignore polite words these days.)
What really attracted my respectful attention was the sudden appearance of obviously bogus scenarios. A creature named Deborah Von Trapp offered up a particularly wild yarn: According to her, the Japanese engineered the OKC blast in retaliation for the (allegedly) American-sponsored Tokyo subway attacks. She passed this absurd story to a zany conspiracy promoter named Sherman Skolnick, who spread the word throughout the militia community.
The rapid diffusion of this inane "blame Japan" scenario proved that the American fringe no longer needed to season their conspiracy theories with even the subtlest sprinkling of evidence. It also indicated -- to me, at least -- that someone may have intentionally hoped to hide the truth about McVeigh behind a screen of disinformation.
Which meant, of course, that there was a truth to hide.
Eventually, we learned more about McVeigh's time in Elohim City, and of his interactions with the mysterious Andreas Strassmeir. I refer readers to this piece on FBI agent Danny Coulson:
Central to his call for additional investigation are FBI teletypes that were heavily redacted by the agency before their release some weeks ago. Although some sentences and many names are redacted, there was enough information contained in those documents to impress the former OKBOMB commander that more persons were involved in the attack.The following (from 2005) demands careful attention, since it places the latest revelations in proper context:
Referring to a January 4, 1996 teletype from former director Freeh to a select group of FBI offices, Coulson said that he believes a man he has long suspected should have been more thoroughly investigated in the crime, German National Andreas Strassmeir, is one of the names the bureau has blacked out of those documents.
The plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act case against the FBI – and making use of the teletypes – is Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue. He believes the FBI is hiding evidence that his brother was tortured and murdered in August 1995 during an interrogation at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center.As we've long known, Strassmeir -- connected to McVeigh in a number of journalistic accounts -- is a former German intelligence officer. Strassmeir is no ordinary right-wing extremist (if ever we could use the words "ordinary" and "extremist" in the same sentence): He is the son of Gunther Strassmeir, the chief of staff for Helmut Kohl, Germany's right-wing chancellor from 1982 to 1998. In other words, he is an extremely well-connected individual.
For years, the FBI has said Kenneth Trentadue hanged himself, but his older brother believes FBI agents killed his ex-convict brother while seeking information about a group of bank bandits associated with McVeigh, Strassmeir and the bombing.
Before McVeigh was executed, Trentadue says he was contacted by an intermediary at the prison where McVeigh was incarcerated and told that McVeigh believed the FBI mistakenly thought Kenneth Trentadue was a man associated with a bank robbery gang linked to the bombing conspiracy.
The younger Strassmeir was (according to various news accounts) associated with former Green Beret Dave Hollaway:
And then there is Hollaway's alleged role as a pilot for the CIA and his well-established relationship with the FBI. However, the most remarkable allegations contained in the Feb. 25, 1997, FBI report, are those regarding Hollaway's eerie admissions that McVeigh failed to park the bomb truck in the best location in front of the Oklahoma City federal building that fateful April morning in 1995.Although Dave Hollaway hardly can be described as a "high-ranking FBI official," he has been accused of being an undercover agent within the radical right, working for the Bureau. I don't know if that accusation is true, but I do know that it has been made.
Did Terry Nichols, in his affidavit, make a garbled reference to Hollaway?
Let us now return to the afore-cited 2005 piece on FBI agent Danny Coulson -- who seems to be one individual in the Bureau determined to uncover the truth:
McVeigh’s phone records, discovered by the FBI after the bombing, indicate a call was placed to Elohim City on April 5, 1995 – just seconds after a call was made with the same calling card to a Ryder Truck establishment. People the FBI interviewed at the compound said McVeigh was seeking Strassmeir.Why would they do that?
A judge in the Salt Lake City federal court has ordered the FBI to turn over to Trentadue documents showing there were informants at Elohim City at the time of the bombing that worked for a private charity – the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
According to those teletypes, SPLC informants were present at Elohim City on April 17 when McVeigh contacted the compound, looking for additional help in the bomb plot.
According to then-director Freeh, McVeigh was looking for extra help with his plans when he called the compound. However, the FBI blacked out much of the person’s name with whom Freeh said McVeigh was closely associated.
The Terry Nichols affidavit arose from the above-cited case of Kenneth Trentadue, the poor fellow who allegedly was mistaken for a conspirator and killed in an interrogation that got "out of hand."
McVeigh told him he was recruited for undercover missions while serving in the military, according to Nichols. He says he learned sometime in 1995 that there had been a change in bombing target and that McVeigh was upset by that.McVeigh had tried to join the Special Forces but did not qualify. This attempt may have brought him into the orbit of Hollaway, a Special Forces operative with alleged ties to American intelligence.
"There, in what I believe was an accidental slip of the tongue, McVeigh revealed the identity of a high-ranking FBI official who was apparently directing McVeigh in the bomb plot," Nichols says in the affidavit.
I am not accusing Hollaway or Strassmeir of any illegal activities. I would be delighted to print their sides of the story, should they care to present their responses in this forum.
All I am trying to do here is to establish reasons why we should not dismiss the Nichols affidavit out of hand. I am arguing that one cannot hope to get at the real truth until one has pushed aside the disinformation. In the aftermath of the OKC tragedy, pseudoscientific nonsense and simplistic "blame the prez-dent" scenarios deflected attention away from the real lingering mysteries.
And not for the last time.
A final note: Over the past decade or so, I've heard the persistent rumor -- and it is just a rumor -- that McVeigh's ties to the deceased Arizona militia leader (and flamboyant crackpot) Milton William Cooper ran much deeper than published accounts would have us believe. Again, I know of no evidence to back that claim. I pass it along only because it might spur some researcher in the audience to dig deeper into that territory. Who knows what might turn up?
3 comments:
"He says he learned sometime in 1995 that there had been a change in bombing target and that McVeigh was upset by that."
What was the original target? If he let slip the name of his contact it seems unlikely he wouldn't have let slip what the original target was supposed to have been.
But, I have to say, even after reading all that, that the impression I am left with is that this is Nichols rationalizing why he is where he is within the terms of the religious aesthetic he adheres to --it's a government conspiracy and they're just patsies.
sofla said...
Listening to the snoid* last night on the George Nouri program, a couple of additional allegations are in the mix:
One is that a very senior, or even topmost, FBI anti-terrorism or bombing official arrived in OKC some 9 hours prior to the event, and was seen on site within 30 minutes of the event. This appears not a recent allegation (references were made to alternative press coverage of FBI officials there so early back at least to '02), nor one that is denied by the FBI (allegedly, they dithered awhile in the face of the claim, and then admitted their presence at OKC, as 'following the terrorists').
Secondly, there is the suggestive coincidence of the Army's experimentation with ANFO bombs' exploding just in the very weeks prior to this event (iirc). And, I think, evidence stating those working on these ANFO bomb experiments were in OKC that day as well.
What were described in media accounts as 'bombs' or 'additional bombs' were said to have been taken away from the building. The pattern of the destruction seemed not well matched to the alleged ANFO design cause, both in severity and the details of how far it penetrated, causing the estimate of the tonnage of the ANFO material to be upped a considerable degree, I think an order of magnitude larger from what was first claimed. This led to questions as to whether the alleged mixing of the ANFO ingredients was possible by the supposed two co-conspirators (omiting consideration of John Doe 3).
As to Clinton's involvement, I wouldn't suppose that to be the case, because I think it is useful for the PTB/controlling elements to have private agendas and agents to perform them, not traceable to the figurehead leader of the country, whom they ensconced in that position. However, it must be said that Clinton's skillful use of this incident was the predicate for his eventual return to political relevance, and his party's renaissance of winning additional Congressional seats in '96 and '98.
I suspect that Gore Vidal was correct in believing that McVeigh did not plan the bombing by himself, or with Nichols's help. Vidal, if you recall, engaged in some written correspondence with McVeigh before his execution. Law enforcement and Justice Department authorities were
uncharacteristically speedy and efficient bringing McVeigh to execution, it has always seemed to me.
I believe that I read Louis Freeh is an Opus Dei adherent, which automatically raises a red flag with me. The FBI #2 man McLaughlin was charged by John O'Neill, the former FBI agent counter-terrorist expert who died in the WTC 9/11 attack, as hindering his investigation into the Bin Laden terrorist network. Both men are suspect, IMHO.
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