Sunday Telegraph (London, England) February 2, 1997:
THE government case in the Oklahoma bombing trial, due to open next month,is disintegrating. It is now quite possible that Tim McVeigh, the mainsuspect, will be acquitted.
The latest blow to the prosecution is a report that the FBI crime labaltered forensic conclusions to accommodate government claims that theblast, which killed 168 people in the spring of 1995, was caused by a4,000 lb ammonium nitrate bomb.
The report, by the Justice Department's Inspector General, found that somelab officials have been pressed to falsify evidence and commit perjury tosupport prosecutions. With the FBI crime lab going through the worstcrisis in the history of the Bureau, everything it touches is now tainted.
But there are deeper problems with the case, the deadliest act ofterrorism ever committed on American soil, one that precipitated a witchhunt against the militia movement and, by raising the spectre ofRight-wing extremism, arguably helped President Clinton's re-election.
The prosecution has been tying itself in knots from the beginning. This ischiefly because it insists on a 'lone bomber theory'- - with another man,Terry Nichols, helping in the background - when the evidence clearlyindicates a more complex conspiracy involving a terrorist cell.
Last week it became clear that the Justice Department is willing to letthe case collapse rather than risk collateral revelations. On Thursday theFBI arrested Michael Brescia, the man alleged to be the mysterious 'JohnDoe II' seen with McVeigh in the days before the bombing. Brescia has beennamed in a private lawsuit by victims of the blast as a co-conspirator ofMcVeigh.
But in keeping with the "Alice in Wonderland" character of thisinvestigation, Brescia was arrested for his alleged role in a series ofbank robberies carried out by a neo-Nazi group called the Aryan RepublicanArmy. McVeigh is also tied into this ARA cell, and his sister told the FBIin May 1995 that her brother had been involved in bank robberies. But theJustice Department does not want to know.
Indeed, it has gone to hazardous lengths to stamp out talk of a broaderbombing conspiracy involving the Aryan Republican Army. On Wednesday, theday before Brescia's arrest, it announced that John Doe II - the subjectof the massive FBI manhunt in the weeks after the bombing - had neverexisted.
The Justice Department stated that Tom Kessinger, a clerk at the Ryderrental agency where McVeigh allegedly rented the bombing vehicle, wasconfused when he helped to produce a artist's sketch of a second man withMcVeigh. This is highly contentious. Mr Kessinger provided the famous JohnDoe II sketch immediately after the blast. Almost two years later heabruptly changes tack and asserts that he muddled John Doe II with asoldier named Tod Bunting who came into the office on a different day.
Unfortunately for the prosecution, Mr Kessinger has already given too manyinterviews ridiculing the Bunting canard. "He was laughing about it andsaid 'I don't know how they came up with that one'," said Glenn Wilburn, abombing victim, when he visited Mr Kessinger last year. The JusticeDepartment has now destroyed Mr Kessinger's credibility, so it can nolonger put him on the stand to identify McVeigh as the man who rented theRyder truck. But the prosecution does not have much else to rely on.
accommodation in NaplesThe original FBI statements by the employees at the Ryder rental agencydescribe the man supposed to be McVeigh - who used the alias of RobertKling - as heavy-set, 5ft 11in, stocky, with a pock-marked face. Thisbears no resemblance to the lanky, 6ft 3in, baby-faced McVeigh. Theprosecution, of course, can draw on an army of witnesses who saw McVeighwith a Ryder truck shortly before the bomb went off at 9am on April 191995. But they all saw him with other suspects, making a mockery of theclaim that McVeigh acted alone.
So it appears that none of these witnesses is going to be called totestify. Instead, the prosecution is relying on a single man who thoughthe might have seen McVeigh getting out of a Ryder truck. Why is theJustice Department destroying its own case? A clue came last Tuesday in anOklahoma newspaper, the McCurtain Daily Gazette, which has gatheredevidence that the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) wasmonitoring the bombing conspiracy from the very start.
According to the Gazettehoteles en Siena, a paid informant working for the Tulsa office ofthe ATF has come forward to admit that she used hidden cameras to filmthree members of a neo-Nazi group in Oklahoma discussing plans to blow upa federal building.
One was Andreas Strassmeir, a former German army officer with ties toMcVeigh. Strassmeir shared a house at the time with Michael Brescia of theAryan Republican Army underground. The story helps to explain how bombsquads could have been seen in downtown Oklahoma hours before theexplosion. It also buttresses testimony that McVeigh appeared to beoperating as part of a team on the day of the crime in Oklahoma City.
tariffe albergo HusavikThe only conclusion that one can draw is that the Justice Department isprotecting a federal informant who had penetrated the bombing conspiracy -probably Strassmeir, but possibly also Brescia - and is trying to cover upa bungled sting. McVeigh's defence lawyer, Stephen Jones, says that theAmerican people will never be able to think of their government in thesame way once they learn the full truth about the Oklahoma bombing. Is hejust bluffing?
Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1997.
Posted here February 3, 1997
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