The Oklahoma City Bombing And The Politics Of Terror Part 13

Former United States Representative Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma (former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee) told CBS News that there was "very clear evidence of the involvement of fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups."[483]

Former FBI counter-terrorism chief Oliver "Buck" Revell told CBS Evening News, "I think it's most likely a Middle East terrorist. I think the modus operandi is similar. They have used this approach."

Ex-CIA counter-terrorism director Vince Cannistraro told the Was.h.i.+ngton Times, "Right now, it looks professional, and it's got the marks of a Middle Eastern group."

Avi Lipkin, a former Israeli Defense Intelligence specialist on the Prime Minister's staff, in Oklahoma City at the time of the bombing, told investigator Craig Roberts, "this is a typical Arab Terrorist type attack."[484]

It was also reported the Israelis gave the Americans a "general warning" concerning the bombing.[485]

CBS News stated that the FBI had received claims of responsibility from at least eight different organizations. Seven of the claimants were thought to have Middle Eastern connections: An FBI communique that was circulated Wednesday suggested that the attack was carried out by the Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed Islamic militant group, said a security professional in California who declined to be named... the communique suggested the attack was made in retaliation for the prosecution of Muslim fundamentalists in the bombing of the World Trade Center in February, 1993, said the source, a non-government security professional.... 'We are currently inclined to suspect the Islamic Jihad as the likely group...'[486]

James Fox, former head of the New York FBI office, told CBS News, "We thought that we would hear from the religious zealots in the future, that they would be a thorn in our side for years to come."

On July 2nd, shortly after Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's surrender to U.S. Immigration authorities, the Egyptian Jama a' Islamiya (the group implicated in the World Trade Center bombing) issued a statement saying that if the Sheik was prosecuted or extradited to Egypt, they would begin a world-wide terror campaign against the United States.

On April 21, 1995, the London Telegraph reported: "Israeli anti-terror experts believe the Oklahoma bombing and the 1993 World Trade Center explosion are linked and that American investigators should focus on Islamic extremists."

The same day, the London Sunday Times carried a report that suggested President Saddam Hussein of Iraq may have been involved in both the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City bombings: Iraq was furious with America last week at its United Nations move to foil efforts to overturn Gulf war economic sanctions... Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the recently-captured alleged mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, was directly funded by Baghdad, according to CIA and FBI doc.u.ments - and evidence so far developed about the latest bomb indicates some similarities in the planning.[487]

If those in Baghdad were angry over the brutal and relentless attack on their country by U.S. forces during the Gulf War, they had additional reason for anger when President Clinton launched a retaliatory raid against Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. The June 26 Cruise Missile strike was directed against the complex after an alleged plot was uncovered to a.s.sa.s.sinate former president, crook, and ma.s.s murderer George Bush during his recent visit to Kuwait.[488] The raid merely destroyed some of the complex, and leveled about a dozen surrounding homes, killing approximately six civilians. Syndicated columnist Charlie Reese called it "high-tech terrorism."

The Net News Service reported the next day that the government-backed Al-Thawra newspaper charged that Clinton had carried out the attack only to bolster his "eroded popularity and credibility... domestically." Both Al-Thawra and General Saber Abdul-Aziz Douri, head of the Iraqi intelligence service, indicated that the Iraqi government had vowed vengeance against the United States.

Backing up Douri's claims was former head of Iraqi military intelligence, General Wafiq al-Sammara'i, who told the London Independent that the June, 1996 bombing of the U.S. military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 servicemen, "strongly resembled plans drawn up by a secret Iraqi committee on which he served after the invasion of Kuwait. He says operations considered by Iraq, but not carried out at that time due to shortage of reliable agents, included exploding large bombs near buildings where American soldiers were living."[489]

One month later, the Was.h.i.+ngton Post reported: Early on July 6, Col. Mohammar Qaddafi of Libya issued a warning that President Clinton and the United States had 'blundered' in the recent missile attack on Baghdad, and that the United States should expect 'a lot more terrorism' in the near future. Qaddafi spoke of increasingly violent and spectacular acts to be perpetrated expressly for broadcast on the national and international television.[490]

Shortly after the bombing, KFOR, Channel 4 in Oklahoma City received a call from the Nation of Islam, taking credit for the bombing. Interestingly, the NOI has been directly funded by Libya.

The Post's Jack Anderson added that a direct attack against the U.S. would be unlikely, and that counter-terrorist a.n.a.lysts feared that the only viable avenue for Hussein's revenge would be through the use of terrorism. "A preferable revenge for Iraq would involve having a 'surrogate terrorist' carry out a domestic attack that Hussein could privately take credit for...

According to Dr. Laurie Mylroie, Ph.D., a Middle East expert at the Center for Security Policy, and an authority on the World Trade Center bombing, Iraqi agents such as Ramzi Yousef had infiltrated the original World Trade Center cell, resulting in the construction of a more powerful, sophisticated bomb.

Dr. Mylroie noted that on September 27, 1994, as Iraqi troops tested American resolve by preparing a new a.s.sault against Kuwait, Saddam Hussein declared: "We will open the storehouses of the universe" against the United States. Two days later, Babil - a newspaper in Iraq owned by Saddam's son, Uday - amplified, saying: "Does the United States realize the meaning of opening the stores of the world with the will of Iraqi people?...Does it realize the meaning of every Iraqi becoming a missile that can cross to countries and cities?"[491]

Mylroie notes that there may be other Iraqi intelligence agents at large in this country, known as "sleepers," waiting to carry out far more deadly acts of revenge against the U.S. One such cell, planted by the Abu Nidal organization, was discovered in 1986. Four of their Palestinian members were arrested eight years later after one of them murdered the daughter of an FBI agent.[492]

On January 28, 1991, the Was.h.i.+ngton Post reported: If Saddam is serious about terrorizing Americans at home, there are several allies he could call on for help. The most dangerous terrorist Organization in the world, the Abu Nidal organization, now based in Baghdad, has a rudimentary infrastructure of about 50 people in the United States. All of them, according to FBI sources, are under surveillance....

"Among the terrorists who are taking or would take orders from Saddam," added the Post, "are Abu Ibrahim, a pioneer bomb maker who designed the barometric pressure bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103, and Ahmed Jibril, who masterminded the Pan Am bombing on a contract from Iran."[493]

Ironically, U.S. interventions abroad have permitted the entry into America of extremist and even terrorist organizations that have subsequently gained footholds in ethnic communities across the country. Texas and Oklahoma, in fact, are major centers of Islamic activities in the U.S.

Steven Emerson was quoted on CBS Evening News as saying, "Oklahoma City, I can tell you, is probably considered one of the largest centers of Islamic radical activity outside the Middle East."[494]

Emerson chronicled the rise of radical Islam in America in a 1994 PBS doc.u.mentary which showed how fundamentalists had launched a recruiting campaign across the mid- and southwest. An Oklahoma City meeting in 1988 was attended by members of Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), Islamic Jihad (Holy War) and the Muslim Brotherhood, each notorious for their sponsors.h.i.+p of terrorism. The meeting was held only blocks from the Federal Building.

As Stephen Jones stated in his March 25th Writ of Mandamus: The Murrah Building was chosen either because of lack of security (i.e. it was a "soft target"), or because of available resources such as Iraqi POWs who had been admitted into the United States were located in Oklahoma City, or possibly because the location of the building was important to American neo-n.a.z.is such as those individuals who supported Richard Snell who was executed in Arkansas on April 19, 1995....

Secret workshops have reportedly been held in the U.S., where HizbAllah and Hamas members have been taught bomb making techniques and small arms practice. HizbAllah, the Iranian-sponsored and Syrian-backed "Party of G.o.d," is believed to be behind a series of bombings in July of 1994 that took 117 lives in Argentina, Panama, and Britain. HizbAllah is the same Lebanon-based terrorist group that perpetrated the October 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.[495]

The most notorious U.S. terrorist cell was in Jersey City, led by Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the group responsible for plotting the destruction of the UN building and the Holland Tunnel. Three of Rahman's followers were convicted for bombing the World Trade Center. One of their leaders, El-Sayyid Nosair, spelled out his plans to terrorize the United States: "We have to thoroughly demoralize the enemies of G.o.d.... by means of destroying and blowing up the towers that const.i.tute the pillars of their civilization such as the tourist attractions they are so proud of and the high buildings they are so proud of."[496]

Another influential figure in Islamic radical circles - Sheik Mohammad al-Asi, the religious leader of the Islamic Education Center in Potomac, Maryland, was quoted on PBS as saying: "If the Americans are placing their forces in the Persian Gulf, we should be creating another war front for the Americans in the Muslim world - and specifically where American interests are concentrated. In Egypt, in Turkey, in the Indian subcontinent, just to mention a few. Strike against American interests there."

While the Arab underground structure in the U.S. is generally based on the PLO, not all of its members are Palestinian. Many may emigrate from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and Libya, the five nations most often connected with terrorism. According to former Israeli intelligence officer William Northrop, the original PLO structure s.h.i.+fted in 1991, after the PLO/Israeli peace process began. As Northrop writes: The Texas Cell is based in Houston and is supported by several sub-cells, one of which is based in Oklahoma City. This Texas Cell was tied into the World Trade Center bombing on 26 February 1993.

The Oklahoma City sub-cell originated with the Palestinian students who were sent from various Arab countries to study Petroleum Engineering at OU in Norman. (the current Deputy Petroleum Minister of Iran is an OU graduate.)[497]

Their members may also come from a broader philosophic milieu, and unlike the PLO, have a wider range of targets, including not only Israel, but secular regimes in Muslim countries and those states that support them.

Notes Middle East a.n.a.lyst James Phillips: "Because they are motivated by apocalyptic zeal, and not sober political calculations, their choice of possible targets is much wider and more indiscriminate than that of other terrorists."[498]

The goal of this new breed of terrorist was not aimed at influencing U.S. or world opinion over the Palestinian issue, but to prove the strength of the Muslim fundamentalist cause. As former Dallas Special Agent in Charge Oliver "Buck" Revell said: "...If you listen to what [the Islamic extremist terrorists] are really saying, they're not just aimed at the Israelis, they are not just aimed at the Jewish state. Their goals are completely and totally to eradicate any opposition to Hamas and to Islam and to move against the United States ultimately."[499]

Obviously, these journalists and experts hadn't developed their theories in a vacuum. The evidence was clear, and the warnings were imminent. Allan Denhan wrote in ASP Newsletter that a Jordanian Intelligence official had pa.s.sed a "target list" to an American businessman two months prior to the bombing, and the Murrah Building was on that list. Although this information is unconfirmed, it makes perfect sense, since Jordan has a long-standing intelligence relations.h.i.+p with the CIA.

In March of 1995, Israel's s.h.i.+n Bet (General Security Services, Israel's equivalent to the FBI), arrested approximately 10 Hamas terrorists in Jerusalem, some of whom had recently returned from a trip to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. According to Northrop, interrogation of those suspects was thought to have revealed information concerning the plot to bomb the Murrah Building. "The s.h.i.+n Bet filed a warning with the Legal Attache (FBI) at the American Emba.s.sy in Tel Aviv as a matter of course," wrote Northrop.[500]

On April 20, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Arhonot wrote: Yesterday, it was made known that over the last few days, U.S. law enforcement agencies had received intelligence information originating in the Middle East, warning of a large terrorist attack on U.S. soil. No alert was sounded as a result of this information.[501]

Northrop also said that the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, the equivalent of the American CIA), also sent a warning to the U.S. State Department. That was followed by a warning from the Saudis. "A Saudi Major General... informed former CIA Counterterrorism Chief Vince Cannistraro, who in turn informed the FBI. There is a 302 (FBI report) in existence."[502]

The agent Cannistraro pa.s.sed the information to was Kevin L. Foust, one of the FBI's leading counterterrorism agents. Ironically, the information was given to Foust on the same day as the bombing.

According to the information obtained by Stephen Jones, the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service reported that Iraq had hired seven Pakistani mercenaries - Afghani War veterans known as the Mujahadeen - to bomb targets in the U.S., one of which was the Alfred P. Murrah Building. They also advised the FBI that - as is often the case - the true ident.i.ty of the sponsor may not have been revealed to the bombers.[503]

Interestingly, Northrop stated that three Israelis were in Oklahoma before the April 19th attack to "keep an eye on things." Avi Lipkin and William Northrop were two such individuals.[504]

In addition to these warnings - as well as the mighty armada of U.S. intelligence agencies, a.n.a.lysts, and surveillance technology which would have undoubtedly been monitoring the situation - at least one local informant tried to warn authorities in advance. His warnings went unheeded.

The Drug Connection Informant After the bombing, Cary Gagan stepped forward to tell Jones that he had been present at a meeting of bombing conspirators including Middle-Easterners, Caucasians, and Hispanics which took place in Henderson, Nevada.[505]

In depositions and interviews with Jones and in numerous interviews with the author, the government informant and former drug courier described a number of meetings at the Soviet Emba.s.sy in Mexico City. In 1980, the Soviets asked Gagan to a.s.sist them in procuring military secrets from Dan Howard, a contact of Gagan's who worked at Martin Marietta, a large defense contractor in Waterton, Colorado. The Soviets had been watching Howard. Gagan was a friend. He informed the FBI.[506]

In June of 1986, the Soviets again asked Gagan's help - this time, to a.s.sist illegal Iranian immigrants needing false IDs. The small-time hustler and counterfeiter met his contact, a man named "Hamid" who worked at Stapleton International Airport in Denver, and secretly recorded the conversation. He turned the tapes over to FBI Agent Bill Maten, and Kenny Vasquez of the Denver Police Intelligence Bureau.[507]

The 51-year-old government informant supported himself by ferrying Cocaine between Mexico and Colorado for Colombians posing as Mexicans, living in Denver. It was through his a.s.sociation with these Colombians that Gagan met "Omar" and "Ahmed," in Las Vegas in March of '94.

"They tried to first play themselves off as Colombians, " said Gagan "but I knew they were Iranians... or Middle-Easterners. They were multi-lingual, with big-time funding.

It was at this meeting that the drug dealer learned he was to transport kilos of cocaine from Mexico to Denver. He informed DEA Agent Robert Todd Gregory. "I told Gregory this dude looked like a banker to me. They had heavy cash. They took care of me. They had all kinds of connections."

On May 16, 1994, Gagan met his new contacts at the Western Motel in Las Vegas, where his brother worked as a pit-boss. There were eight men at the meeting, five of whom were Middle Eastern, including Omar and Ahmed. "Two of them didn't say a word," recalled Gagan, "but they looked like Colombians to me - you know, Latin."

One of the Middle Easterners was from Oklahoma City. He appeared to be the leader. The Eighth man was Terry Nichols. In a sworn deposition, Gagan told McVeigh's attorney: Gagan: "I met with some Arabs, and in that group, and I did not know it at the time, but in that group was Nichols."

Jones: "Terry?"

Gagan: "Terry Nichols."[508]

Gagan first recalled seeing Nichols in the parking lot of a bingo parlor the men had stopped at. "He was wearing a plaid, short sleeve s.h.i.+rt and dockers.... I remember going, 'That's kind of a dirty lookin' dude.' That's all I said. I thought, you know, he didn't fit in the picture here. He looked like a scientist."[509]

The men snorted cocaine at the Western Motel and discussed their plans, then drove to an apartment complex in Henderson called the Player's Club. It is not known whom they met with. As far as Gagan knew, they were all there to discuss drug dealing. It wasn't exactly clear what the Colombians were doing with the Arabs.[510]*

Gagan would soon find out though. Omar and Ahmed, who had been paying Gagan with counterfeit money (mostly counterfeit Iranian $100 bills), wanted him to take part in a plot to blow up a federal building in Denver, using a mail truck packed with explosives.

"I was going to be part of it because I could move through... because I'm Anglo and I'm a U.S. citizen and, you know, I wouldn't draw attention.... I'm in and out of that federal building every day."

The truck, purchased from a government auction, was painted to resemble a working mail truck. On January 14, 1995, Gagan picked up the truck at the Metro Bar & Grill and drove it to the Mariott Hotel, just outside of Golden, Colorado.

"Omar came out with me, showed me where the truck was, and said, 'Just get in it and drive down I-70, and here's where you park it. And as soon as you make the delivery, make this call....' And I gave the FBI the pay phone number saying it was there. And I stayed in there and had a drink - in the bar, and came walking out, and the sucker was gone."

Gagan says he talked to the FBI duty agent from a pay phone at 9th and Logan for over 35 minutes. "I said 'Hey, I need you to tell what to do here.' And they never called back."

In the back of the truck were approximately thirty duffel bags of ammonium nitrate marked "U.S. mail," and boxes from Sandex Explosives [in Las Vegas] marked "High Explosives."

Gagan boarded a bus and went home. He said the agents never showed up.

"Can you imagine if I'm driving this truck and it blows up in the city of Denver?" said an incredulous Gagan.

Also in the back of the truck was a Lely farm mixer. Gagan recalls that it was approximately four feet high, two feet across, and "shaped like a diamond."

Interestingly, this was the same description given by witness David King. King, who was staying at the Dreamland Motel in Junction City - where McVeigh stayed - saw a Ryder truck with a trailer attached to it in the parking lot on April 17. Inside the trailer was an object secured by a canvas tarp. "It was a squarish shape, and it came to a point on top," said King. "It was about three or four feet high."

In June, Gagan discovered plastic explosives in an athletic bag packed with cocaine he was to deliver to Denver. The bag, Omar said, was to be left at the Postal Center, a s.h.i.+pping and receiving facility owned by George Colombo, who also operated a Ryder truck leasing center across the street. A friend of Gagan's, Colombo would occasionally let him stay at an apartment he maintained when things got too heavy.[511]

Things were definitely getting heavy for Gagan. When the casual cocaine user decided to open the bag and help himself to a little "blow," he discovered plastic explosives wrapped in brown paper. "And I'm thinking, 'Jesus, how the h.e.l.l did this get by the airport'? So I packed it up, and I'm thinking, 'I'm going to the feds,' because you know... I'm a felon, this is C-4... I'm going [down] forever."

Gagan asked Colombo to hold the bag for him. He then called the Denver Police Intelligence Bureau and met them at a Burger King in Aurora. Gagan sat in the unmarked car, as his friend Billy, a cab driver, watched from nearby.

"I said, 'Look, there's some C-4...' I'm feeling them out... I give them some names, you know, what the deal was in Las Vegas. I tell them I'm in contact with the DEA - Robert Gregory and all that. They don't say anything. This is June, mid-June of '94. They say they'll get back to me."

Three weeks later, after contacting the FBI, the police called Gagan back. "They tell me quote, 'Since you're the source of the information Gagan, we're not going to investigate.'"

Gagan then called Gregory at the DEA. Gregory told Gagan, "Hey, we can't take you on.'"

The informant claims he continually challenged the police and the FBI to charge him if his information was false. "If all this was a big lie, they could have charged me with lying, but they didn't."

While the FBI and the Denver Police were debating the merits of Gagan's credibility, Omar picked up the bag from Colombo and left.

Three months later, in September, Gagan was approached by Omar and Ahmed again. "They said 'It's going to involve terrorism, do you have a problem with that?' I said 'no.' I asked them, 'What kind of money are we looking at?' They said 'a quarter of a million dollars.' I said 'up front?' They said 'Yes.'

Gagan accepted the money, which he believes was paid out of the Cali Cartel. "The FBI knew it," said Gagan. "They never got back to me."

Were Latin American drug dealers conspiring with Arab terrorists to blow up the Federal Building? Said 25-year DEA veteran agent Mike Levine: "When you consider terrorist actions like TWA 800 (or Oklahoma City), and you omit any drug trafficking involvement, it's insane - it doesn't make any sense.... You know you take for example two years or three years ago the La Bianca plane that was blown out of the sky - it was attributed to drug traffickers. I can think right off the top of my head of another case in Colombia of a plane blown up with a lot of pa.s.sengers to kill one person, and probably many, many more."

Levine, a highly decorated DEA agent, and the DEA's former Argentine Station Chief, told me that countries such as Bolivia, Paraguay, and Colombia are full of Arabs doing business with Latinos, including drug dealing. "The first thing you have to keep in mind is that drug trafficking is now a half a trillion dollar business around the third-world," said Levine, "and it's mainly a third-world business. The top drug traffickers around the world have more power than presidents. The Mujahadeen for instance, which we supported, were always top heroin smugglers. They were rated one, two and three by DEA as a source, and they right now support every Muslim fundamentalist movement on the face of the earth...."[512]

The parallel may be more than speculative. Shortly after the bombing, on May 8, Tulsa police veteran Craig Roberts received information from a law enforcement source in Texas that "Juan Garcia Abrego was involved in the bombing as a 'cash provider' for the event. The source said that Abrego had sent two Mexican nationals to Oklahoma City with a satchel full of cash to finance the bombing."

Abrego was a Mexican Mafia chieftain 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.

This information was forwarded to both the FBI and the DEA who were asked for each to check their files and/or computers, using various spellings, to see if they had heard of such an individual. Neither replied back that they had knowledge and no further action was taken....[513]

Considering the FBI's apparent lack of knowledge, is curious that Abrego was at the top of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list since March, a month before the bombing and almost two months before Robert's original inquiry.

It seemed the FBI's lack of interest in Robert's information was suspiciously similar to their lack of interest in Gagan's.[514] What is also interesting is that their first effort to discredit Gagan - a drug runner on the periphery of the Iran-Contra drug network - coincided with the Iran-Contra affair becoming public.[515]*

"In my opinion, people were paid ma.s.sive amounts of dope to carry this thing out," said Gagan. The informant's belief that he was paid by the Cali Cartel may be significant in light of Robert's information that Abrego funneled money to the bombing conspirators.

Was the FBI's attempt to repudiate the Middle Eastern connection tied to their refusal to look at the Abrego lead?

As Levine said: "The minute you start taking about terrorist actions, and you eliminate drug trafficking, well, then... you're just not credible... It's just very unrealistic to look at a situation - any terrorist situation - and not look at a drug trafficking angle anymore. In my opinion, and I think there's plenty of substantiation eventhough the government won't talk about it, you can say, this vast ocean of money traveling around the world - illegal untapped money - pays for an enormous amount of terrorist activity."

If the Cali Cartel and Gagan's Arabs were connected, and in turn tied to a tentacle of the Iran-Contra Octopus through Abrego, it's only natural that the FBI - which played its own role in covering up Iran-Contra - would tend to look the other way.

In spite of the FBI's apparent refusal to act on Gagan's information, and their subsequent attempts to discredit him, on September 14, 1994, Gagan was granted a Letter of Immunity by the U.S. Attorneys Office in Denver. The immunity was arranged through Federal Public Defender Raymond Moore.[516] (See Appendix) The informant was told to stay with the group and report back to the Bureau. On March 17, Gagan met with his Arab friends at the Hilton Inn South in Greenwood Village, Colorado. On the table were the construction plans for the Alfred P. Murrah Building, bearing the name J.W. Bateson Company of Dallas, Texas.

Still, Gagan alleges that federal agents didn't follow up on any of his leads.

"I knew, when they did not contact me after the truck... when I was moving explosives, I knew something was up. I knew. I figured from that point on, without a doubt, they had a government agent in this ring. Because they cannot let me do that type of stuff.

"And then, after the March 17th meeting, I waited for them to contact me, because I just had a feeling that the dude that had come up [from Oklahoma City] - the new guy on the scene there - was an agent. The way he acted and talked... I just felt different than I did around the other dudes.... That's just my personal feeling."[517]

Did the feds ignore Gagan's warnings because they had their own agent in the bombing cell and wanted to obtain more information to "sting" the bombers later on? Gagan believes this is a possibility. Yet while Gagan had the option of pulling out, he realized it would be too risky to suddenly disappear from the scene. Omar and Ahmed were watching him.

On April 4, 1995, Omar pulled up at the Western Motel in Las Vegas, where Gagan's brother worked. "Come on," said Omar to a somewhat startled Gagan, "I want you to drive with me to Kingman."

The two men then drove to Arizona, where they delivered a package to a man waiting on the corner of Northern and Sierra, wearing a cowboy hat and driving a rusty brown pick-up. Could this mystery figure have been Steven Garrett Colbern, who owned the brown pick-up seen stopped ahead of McVeigh when he was pulled by Trooper Hanger over after the bombing? The description of the man matched Colbern's height and build. But Gagan did not know who he was at the time, or what was in the package.

On the way home, Gagan recalled Omar saying, "we're taking down a building in two weeks."[518]

On March 27 and 28, Gagan made over five calls to the U.S. Marshals Office. None were ever returned. Agent Mark Holtslaw of the FBI's Domestic Counter terrorism Squad, told me, "I can a.s.sure you that any info was thoroughly checked out.... There are things that go on in the background that the individual is not aware of." But, Holtslaw added, "there is no statutory obligation to get back to an individual regarding our investigation and its status."[519]

Gagan doesn't buy Holtslaw's explanation. The FBI's procedures regarding informants require that they be controlled and supervised. "How do you investigate a thing if you don't contact me?" asked Gagan. "So they either had another agent or another informant inside the group."

Gagan was getting nowhere with the Marshals, the U.S. Attorneys, and the FBI. It was now less than two weeks before the bombing. On April 6, Gagan drafted a letter and delivered it to Tina Rowe, head of the U.S. Marshals Office in Denver. While Gagan waited outside, his cab driver friend dropped it off. The letter read: Dear Ms. Rowe: After leaving Denver for what I thought would be for a long time, I returned here last night because I have specific information that within two weeks a federal building(s) is to be bombed in this area or nearby. The previous requests I made for you to contact me, 25th & 28th of March 1995 were ignored by you, Mr. Allison and my friends at the FBI. I would not ignore the specific request for you personally to contact me immediately regarding a plot to blow-up a federal bldg. If the information is false request Mr. Allison to charge me accordingly. If you and/or your office does not contact me as I so request herein, I will never again contact any law enforcement agency, federal or state, regarding those matters set out in the letter of immunity.[520]

Cary Gagan.

Call 832-4091 (Now) Rowe did not respond. When she was confronted by KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, she said that she had never received Gagan's letter. (See Appendix) Yet Gagan's friend gave New American editor Bill Jasper a signed affidavit showing that he personally delivered the warning to the U.S. Marshals.[521]

According to Rowe, the point is moot, because the college graduate and former public school teacher has a history of "psychological problems." It seems that Gagan was sent to the Colorado State Mental Hospital in September of 1986 by Dr. Erwin Levy, at the behest of the feds.[522]*

"That was because I wasn't cooperating with my attorney," he said, referring to a 1986 theft case in Arapahoe County. "You tell somebody you're involved in espionage with the Soviets, and that's what they do, send you down to the James Bond ward."[523]

According to Gagan, the Colorado State Mental Hospital's Dr. Green p.r.o.nounced Gagan sane, and he seemed level-headed when Representative Key and I interviewed him in March of '97.