The Oklahoma City Bombing And The Politics Of Terror Part 27

Yet while attending a social function, Rivera claims her sister had a chance encounter with the mortician who worked on Yeakey's body. She was discussing the strange inconsistencies of his death with someone at the party, when the mortician, not knowing the woman was Rivera's sister, spoke up. "That sounds just like a police officer we worked on in Oklahoma City," he said. When asked if that man happened to be Terrance Yeakey, the mortician "freaked."

When pressed, he told the shocked relative that the dead man's wrists contained rope burns and handcuff marks. A former FBI agent and police officer, the mortician said that Yeakey's lacerations were already sewn up when the body arrived from the Medical Examiner's office. Dr. Balding's response to this was that the marks were merely "skin slippage," resulting from the natural decomposition of the body.

Yet stranger still, the body was not supposed to go to this particular funeral home at all, but to one in Watonga. While the OCPD was supposed to pay the expenses of the funeral, no funds were ever allocated, according to Rivera. "Vicki had to pay off the burial to Russ Worm [Funeral Home]. So I wonder if we paid somebody off to do the job."[955]

Was that job to clean up Yeakey so that his manner of death wouldn't appear suspicious?

This incident is similar to the murder of President Kennedy, whose body was taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital instead of being examined by the Dallas Medical Examiner as is standard procedure. Once there, military pathologists and those controlling them were able to skew their findings to the satisfaction of the murderers. The chief pathologist burned his notes, and years later, when researchers went to examine Kennedy's brain, it was found missing from the National Archives.

Apparently, Terrance Yeakey's murderers and those covering up his death had not counted on this particular mortician's testimony.

Was Terrance Yeakey tortured? Was he murdered, then made to look like a suicide? Did he know something he wasn't supposed to know, or was he simply despondent over life's circ.u.mstances?

Said friend Kimberly Cruz, "I don't believe he would have done something like that. He was always happy and joking a lot."

Another friend, Karen Von Tungeln, said, "[Terry and I] talked about a friend in high school... who had committed suicide, and how stupid and selfish he was for having done so.... 'I just can't understand it man,' said Terry. 'It makes no sense to me.'"[956]

If the officer was bent on taking his life, it would appear strange, since he had spent most of the previous month taking entrance exams for the FBI. Yeakey and best friend Barry McCrary were looking forward to becoming FBI agents. Perhaps if he had known the role that the FBI played in the bombing, perhaps even in his own death, he would have changed careers.

Like Dr. Don Chumley, Terrance Yeakey was one of the first rescuers in the Murrah Building on April 19. Had he seen something he wasn't supposed to see? Had he heard something he wasn't supposed to hear?

One afternoon, while the family was at Police Headquarters, an officer who Rivera described as Yeakey's "only true friend," pulled them off to the side, and whispered "They killed him."[957]

Like Terrance Yeakey, the press claimed that Dr. Don Chumley was saddened and disturbed that he hadn't helped more people that terrible day. Chumley, who ran the Broadway Medical Clinic about half a mile from the Federal Building, was one of the first to arrive at the bombing site on April 19. Shaun Jones, Chumley's step-son, was a.s.sisting him. Jones recalled the scene: "They had sent us around to the underground parking garage, where some people were trapped. Suddenly, three guys come running out of the bas.e.m.e.nt yelling, 'There's a bomb! A bomb! It's gonna' blow!' Everybody panicked and ran screaming away from the building as fast as they could."

Chumley, who was working with Dr. Ross Harris, was one of the few doctors who actually went into the Federal Building, while the others waited outside. He had helped many people, including seven babies, whom he later p.r.o.nounced dead.

Chumley was killed five months later when his Cessna 210 crashed near Amarillo, Texas in what Jones calls "mysterious circ.u.mstances."

"It's a pretty mysterious circ.u.mstance," said Jones. "There's no apparent reason - there's nothing we can think of."

Jones added that Chumley had been in a minor wreck during a landing a year earlier when his plane became trapped in a vortex caused by a large jet landing nearby. The small plane was forced into a snow bank causing some damage to its left wing tip. The damage had been repaired.

Would this contradict Jones' hypothesis?

"Well, from talking to pilots I that know, they say that can't cause a plane to crash. I mean, as good a pilot as he is, that's not going to cause his plane to go straight down into the ground.

Another pilot said, 'that's just like a car that's out of alignment - it happens all the time - it's just something you learn to fly with.' The plane had been flown several times since that."

According to reports in The Daily Oklahoman, Chumley, who was on a hunting trip that weekend, had twice landed earlier - on Friday, due to bad weather conditions. The crash occurred three days later, on a Monday.

"The thing that's odd to me is that Don was perfectly healthy," said Jones. "He was talking to the tower, and from one minute to the next he just went straight smack down into the ground."[958]

Investigators said they could find no evidence of an explosion at the macabre scene. Chumley's throttle was still set at cruise, and his gear and flaps were up. The FAA inspector stated there were "no anomalies with the engine or the airframe," and "pathological examination of the pilot did not show any preexisting condition that could have contributed to the accident."[959]

"To me it's unusual because I know he was a good pilot," added Jones. "Everything was fine, he was in the air for 15 minutes, he was climbing, he had just asked permission to go from six to seven thousand feet. They tracked him on the screen at 6,900 feet, and the radar technician said he saw him on the radar, then he looked back and he was gone, and the plane came straight, straight down. I mean, no attempt to land... nothing, just straight down."

Chumley's hunting partner Joey Chief said in an interview in The Daily Oklahoman: "He was the kind of guy who did everything right, always. He was very cautious, very professional," Chief said, adding [that] Chumley's plane was equipped with extra safety instruments.

Mike Evett, a Federal Public Defender, had known Don Chumley for over twenty years. "I would never get into an airplane with anybody I didn't know," said Evett, "and I would never be afraid to fly with Don. For the life of me, this doesn't sit right with me."[960]

Yet Clint Boehler, a former FAA inspector, discounts that notion. "That was an accident waiting to happen," said Boehler. "He didn't have an instrument rating, and he went out into adverse conditions. One of the cla.s.sic symptoms of what's called stall-spin accidents, is people who are in limited visibility or full IFR, meaning they can't see the propeller in front of their face. And, they're not current or trained or in some way up to speed on their operation. And they'll get into some particular mode of flight, particularly a climb, and their body and mind tells them their not doing what their instruments say they're doing, and they tend to react to that. And the results is sometime they stall the airplane, and not necessarily spin it, but what it then does is it rolls over to one side and begins a very tight, steep spiral that is gaining speed all the way down. And if they ever do come out of the clouds or obscuration or whatever it is, often they see the ground at low alt.i.tude and they pull back on the wheel and overstress the airplane as it hits the ground. And this is not an uncommon thing. Its called spatial disorientation followed by the graveyard spiral. And I can cite numerous examples of that. There was a local doc here went out west some time ago - went out in a 210 - and had the same scenario exactly."[961]

Yet Boehler is incorrect. The doctor did in fact have an instrument rating, and was an experienced pilot, having logged over 600 hours of flying time.

Did Dr. Don Chumley crash on the evening of September 25th due to bad weather? Did he commit suicide due to his grief over what he saw on the morning of April 19th. Or was Don Chumley murdered?

The Daily Oklahoman article described how he had cried in front of his friend Jim Taylor on the day of the bombing, after tagging seven babies, and was not satisfied he had done all he could, even after helping to organize a fund-raiser for the victims.

It was also rumored that Chumley was about to go public with some d.a.m.ning information. According to a local journalist who has investigated the bombing, Chumley was asked to bandage two federal agents who falsely claimed to have been trapped in the building morning. Since the pair was obviously not hurt, Chumley refused. When the agents pet.i.tioned another doctor at the scene, Chumley intervened, threatening to report them.

Chumley's crash is reminiscent of that of Dr. Ronald Rogers, whose plane went down on March 3, 1994 near Lawson, Oklahoma in good weather. Clinton's former dentist, Rogers was on his way to be interviewed by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Sunday Telegraph, where he intended to reveal evidence of Clinton's alleged cocaine use.

He never made it.

Like Rogers, Hershel Friday, a "top-notch pilot," died in the crash of his small plane only two days earlier during a light drizzle at his private airstrip. Friday had been a member of Clinton's presidential campaign finance committee, and was a close a.s.sociate of C. Victor Raiser, another member of Clinton's presidential campaign, who died in a suspicious plane crash two years earlier.[962]

In fact, the list of those who had potentially d.a.m.ning evidence on everything from the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination to Clinton's improprieties is a long one and sordid one, stretching to hundreds of names and spanning at least three decades.

A few years after the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination, a disgruntled CIA official was on his way to Chicago to inform a journalist of the CIA's complicity in the murder. His plane exploded and fell into Lake Michigan.

Another well-known crash was that of Gary Caradori, a private investigator who was hot on the trail of a pediophile ring being run by Larry King and other prominent businessmen and politicians in Omaha, Nebraska.

Caradori and his eight-year-old son Andrew died when their plane crashed in July of 1990. Caradori radioed that his compa.s.s was swinging wildly just before he went down. Moments later, the plane went into a steep dive from which it never recovered.[963]

What is interesting is that only several days earlier, the courageous investigator had informed a friend that he had obtained evidence which threatened to break the case wide open. Among those implicated in the child p.o.r.nography ring was none other than George Bush.

Like Caradori, Rogers, and numerous other whistle-blowers, Don Chumley had evidently learned of the government's hastily planned cover-up surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing.

Had he, like so many others, made the fateful decision to go public?

Glenn Wilburn, who lost his grandsons Chase and Colton in the bombing, was one of the very first to go public. A staunch opponent of the government's case, Wilburn had teamed up with reporter J.D. Cash and State Representative Charles Key to investigate the crime.

Key and Wilburn pet.i.tioned for the County Grand Jury investigation. Wilburn worked tirelessly to investigate the truth about what really happened that fateful morning, and his evidence was proving more and more embarra.s.sing to authorities.

About a year after he began his investigation, Wilburn, 46, came down with a sudden case of pancreatic cancer. Initially recovering after surgery, he died on July 15, 1997, the day after the County Grand Jury which he convened began hearing evidence.

Three weeks later, on August 5, a.s.sistant U.S. Attorney Ted Richardson was found in a church parking lot with a shotgun wound to the chest. The Medical Examiner's report stated: "No powder residue is apparent, either on the external aspect of the wound or in the s.h.i.+rt." An interesting observation considering Richardson had allegedly pushed a shotgun up to his chest and pulled the trigger.[964]

The death was ruled a "suicide."[965]

Yet the circ.u.mstances seemed to concur. Richardson had been depressed. He had been seeing a psychiatrist and was on Prozac. He once told a hunting buddy he "felt like ending it all."[966]

One sunny morning, Richardson rose, fed his two dogs, got in his car, drove to a church near his house, pulled out a shotgun and shot himself through the heart.

He left no note.

Was Ted Richardson depressed enough to kill himself? And if so, why? The 49-year-old father of two had a happy marriage, and adored his 8-year-old son.

The two weeks he took off of work due to unexplained "pressures" may provide a clue. Richardson was the bombing and arson specialist for the Western District of Oklahoma. He was inexplicably transferred to the bank robbery detail after the bombing - an area in which he had no expertise. As his brother Dan explained, "Ted should have gotten the bombing case."[967]*

Instead, the case was given to Joseph Hartzler.

Friends described Richardson as "one of the few good guys," and a man with a "strong sense of conscious."[968] It is uncertain if the same can be said of Hartzler. Given the Federal Government's conduct in this case, such labels might tend to render a man such as Richardson a piranha.

Interestingly, Richardson was the U.S. Attorney who prosecuted Sam Khalid in 1990 for insurance fraud. It was rumored that he was looking into Khalid's suspicious activities subsequent to the bombing, and was about to bring charges.

He decided to kill himself instead.

Is it a coincidence these individuals, who had witnessed events on April 19, or had been vocal opponents of the government's case, had died?

"Out of roughly 5,000 of us who were originally involved in Iran-Contra," said Al Martin, "approximately 400, since 1986, have committed suicide, died accidentally or died of natural causes. In over half those deaths, official death certificates were never issued. In 187 circ.u.mstances, the bodies were cremated before the families were notified."[969]

Craig Roberts and John Armstrong, who investigated a similar spate of suspicious deaths for their book, JFK: The Dead Witnesses, revealed that most of the deaths peaked in the months leading up to one of the investigations, with the deaths often coming days or even hours before the person was supposed to testify.

In the three years following the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination, 18 material witnesses perished. In the time period leading up to 1979, when the last of the Kennedy investigations ended, over 100 witnesses had died. Interestingly, most of the deaths coincided with one of the four main investigations: The Warren Commission (1964-65); the Jim Garrison investigation (1965-69); the Senate Committee investigation (1974-76); and the House Committee on a.s.sa.s.sinations investigation (1976-79).

Naturally, the CIA had an answer for these mysterious deaths. In a 1967 departmental memo, a CIA officer wrote: Such vague accusations as that more than 10 people have died mysteriously can always be explained in some rational way: e.g., the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the [Warren] Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses - the FBI interviewed far more people, conducting 25,000 interviews and re interviews - and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected.

Yet Roberts and Armstrong correctly note that if the CIA were not involved in any of the deaths, why was such a memo disseminated?

Then, to add further fuel to the fire, CIA technicians testified before the Senate Committee (Church Committee) in 1975 that a variety of Termination with Extreme Prejudice [TWEP] weapons had been used throughout the years, and many were chosen because they left no postmortem residue.

In one particular memo, the author states: You will recall that I mentioned that the local circ.u.mstances under which a given means might be used might suggest the technique to be used in that case. I think the gross divisions in presenting this subject might be: (1) bodies left with no hope of the cause of death being determined by the most complete autopsy and chemical examination; (2) bodies left in such circ.u.mstances as to simulate accidental death; (3) bodies left in such circ.u.mstances as to simulate accidental death; (4) bodies left with residue that simulate those caused by natural death...

Regarding deaths that could be simulated to appear as "natural causes," the various a.s.sa.s.sination experts within the intelligence communities of the world knew quite well of the effects of such chemical agents as sodium morphate, which caused heart attacks; thyon phosphate, which is a solution that can suspend sodium morphate and provide a vehicle to penetrate the surface of the skin with the chemical (which is used to coat something the victim might touch); and beryllium, which is an extremely toxic element that causes cancer and fibrotic tumors.[970]

As the daughter of a CIA contract agent who worked with Oliver North told me: "They eliminated my father, and I know what they do in the Agency. I know how they work as far as the Mafia goes.... They have no scruples. And they don't go by any law but their own. There is no conscious to these people; the end justifies the means.... They will shut anybody up that they possibly can. They're amazing. And they will go through anything to make you look crazy, to make you appear to be a liar....

"And they go into these operations, and they run amok. They run amok. And then when it gets carried away or there's a leak, here comes the damage control, and you have to make everybody else appear like they're crazy. I mean people out there drop like flies. How many people can commit suicide for G.o.d's sake. How many people can be handcuffed behind their back, and they can call it suicide because they were shot in the head?"[971]

Tip of the Iceberg "Justice can kill or thwart any investigation at will, and it does so on a regular basis." - Former U.S. Senate investigator "[Justice] has been engaged in sharp practices since the earliest days and remains a fecund source of oppression and corruption today. It is hard to recall an administration in which it was not the center of grave scandal.

- Publisher and scholar H.L. Mencken As an experienced investigator once said, "A cover-up often proves the crime, and lifts the ident.i.ties of the perpetrators into relief."

In this case, those covering up the Oklahoma City bombing appeared to be the Federal Government itself. Law-enforcement officials, including those at the local level, lied about their foreknowledge of the attack. They rushed to destroy all forensic evidence of the site. They ignored dozens of credible witnesses and intimidated others. They organized a media smear campaign against anyone who threatened to reveal the truth. And they murdered those with critical knowledge of the facts who had tried to come forward.[972]

Ironically, the letters "FBI" stand for "Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity." A more appropriate definition might be "Federal Bureau of Intimidation." As will be outlined in Volume Two, the FBI is guilty of an whole litany of crimes, ranging from obstruction of justice to outright murder.

It might be interesting to note that the FBI's current director, Louis Freeh, rose to his position on the victory of the Leroy Moody case. Freeh's chief witness, Ted Banks, later told an appeals court that Freeh threatened him into testifying against Moody. Banks was subsequently sentenced to 44 months in prison for "perjury."

For his part, Freeh was promoted to FBI Director, where he drew around him such figures as Tom Thurman, Roger Martz, and Larry Potts, who led the murderous debacles at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Freeh placed Potts in charge of the "investigation" in Oklahoma City.[973]

Overseeing the FBI is the Department of Justice (DoJ), undoubtedly the most misnamed federal agency ever created. While purporting to be a law-enforcement body independent of the legislative and executive branches, in reality it is little more than a political tool utilized by corrupt leaders to cover up high crimes and intimidate and imprison whistle-blowers.[974]

Janet Reno, the current Attorney General, rose to her position on a wave of highly dubious child abuse cases, where the only abuse, it appeared, was fostered by Reno herself.

In 1984, Reno, then Dade County District Attorney, prosecuted Ileana Fuster, a 17-year-old newlywed who helped her husband Frank by operating a day-care out of their home. To illicit the required confession from Ileana, Reno had her locked away in a solitary confinment. Stephen Dinerstein, a private investigator employed by the Fuster's attorneys wrote in his report that the formerly bright, attractive 17-year-old: ...appeared as if she was 50 years old. Her skin was drawn from a large loss of weight.... She had sores and infections on her skin and states that no sanitary conditions exist or are provided, that the shower, when received, is a hosing down in the cell. That she is in a cell with nothing in it but a light in the ceiling and that she is often kept nude and in view of everybody and anybody." [Dinerstein also noted that Ileana had become] a constantly crying, shaking, tormented person who understands little if anything about the whole process and is now being threatened and promised and is totally in a state of confusion to the point of not having the slightest idea as to month and date.... Mrs. Fuster's condition has deteriorated so badly she could hardly move and was very slow to respond to any questions. When asked if Mr. Van Zamft (her attorney) was present, she could not even recall, but said simply that the woman State Attorney (Reno) was very big and very scary and made suggestions as to problems that would arise if she didn't cooperate.

After almost a year kept in this deplorable condition, including visits by Reno to coerce her, and visits by psychiatrists to get her to confess, Ileana cracked, "confessing" to a whole legion of imaginary acts.

After serving three out of a ten year sentence, she was deported to Honduras, where her mind now clear, she immediately recanted her confession.

Only days before she was scheduled to retestify via satellite (the DA's office threatened to charge her with "perjury" if she returned), she retracted her retraction in a letter to the Miami Herald. Rosenthal believes she was threatened.[975][976]

Several weeks after Janet Reno was sworn in as Attorney General, she authorized a plan to flood the church at Waco (containing women and children) with tear gas and ram it with battle tanks, based on allegations of "child abuse."

A 1988 Amnesty International report claimed that "CS gas contributed to or caused the deaths of more than 40 Palestinians - including 18 babies under 6 months of age - who had been exposed to tear gas in enclosed s.p.a.ces."[977]* Reno's latest attempt to "save the children" resulted in the deaths of 86 people, including 25 children.

As for the allegations of child abuse, both the County Sheriff and the Texas Welfare Department, who were two of the first to interview Davidian children, indicated that there was no signs of abuse. The FBI later acknowledged their own reports to be false.[978]

Representative James Traficant (D-OH) summed up the situation at "Justice" when he wrote to members of Congress on April 15, 1997: There have been numerous case of prosecutorial misconduct, fraud and outright murder on the part of Justice Department personnel that have gone largely unpunished. The American people expect the Justice Department, more than any other federal agency, to be beyond reproach when it comes to ethics and responsible behavior. Something is seriously wrong in our democracy if criminal and unethical behavior at the nation's top law enforcement agency goes unpunished.[979]*

The crimes Traficant's speaking of are legion. The scandals covered up by corrupt DoJ officials are endless. The cases of individuals who have been singled out for prosecution by the so-called "Justice" Department would fill volumes.

Probably the most infamous case of DoJ corruption in modern history is the Inslaw affair, where DoJ officials conspired to steal software from the small computer company, defraud them out of payments, then force them into bankruptcy. The Inslaw case provides a perfect example of how the DoJ regularly lies, destroys evidence, selectively prosecutes people, obstructs Congressional investigations, and murders those who threaten to reveal their wrongdoing.

In 1982, the DoJ signed a $10 million contract with Inslaw to install an enhanced version of their PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information System) software in 42 U.S. Attorneys offices. Inslaw completed the project, but was never paid for their services. Heavily in debt, they had no choice but to file for bankruptcy.

It seemed that a rival firm named Hadron, had attempted to purchase PROMIS from Inslaw. "We have ways of making you sell," said CEO Dominic Laiti, who warned Inslaw owner Bill Hamilton that Hadron was connected to Attorney General Edwin Meese. Both Meese and his close friend, Earl Brian, had financial interests in Hadron.

After the DoJ refused to pay Inslaw, Meese handed the software over to his crony Brian, who had CIA contract agent Michael Riconosciuto reconfigure the program with a special "trap door," allowing U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor and manipulate accounts of banks and intelligence agencies who subsequently purchased the program. The profits, of course, went to Brian and his cronies at the DoJ.[980]

When Inslaw attempted to sue the DoJ, their attorney was threatened and dismissed from his firm.[981] In spite of the stonewalling and hara.s.sment, Inslaw eventually won their case. Judge George Bason, ruling in favor of the company, wrote: [DoJ officials] took, converted, stole, [the plaintiff's property] by trickery, fraud and deceit. [They made] an inst.i.tutional decision... at the highest level simply to ignore serious questions of ethical impropriety, made repeatedly by persons of unquestioned probity and integrity, and this failure const.i.tutes bad faith, vexatiosness, [a] fraudulent game of cat and mouse, demonstrating contempt for both the law and any principle of fair dealing.[982]

After Judge Bason ordered the DoJ to pay Inslaw $6.8 million in licensing fees and roughly another $1 million in legal fees, he suddenly discovered that he was not being reappointed to the bench.[983]

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Sam Nunn, agreed wholeheartedly with Judge Bason. Yet the committee's efforts to probe the Inslaw scandal were blocked by the DoJ, who refused to allow their personnel to testify under oath. The Senate report stated that it had found employees "who desired to speak to the subcommittee, but who chose not to, out of fear for their jobs."[984]

Said a former Congressional investigator who dealt with the Justice Department for 15 years, "I've got to tell you, the bottom line is that the DoJ as presently const.i.tuted is a totally dishonest organization, riddled with political fixes. They know how to write the memo, how to make the phone call, how to deny access to Congress. The game over there is fixed."

The stonewalling by the DoJ during the Inslaw investigations paralleled that of the Oklahoma City bombing, where defense attorneys encountered continuous denials in their requests for discovery. The stonewalling of the Inslaw investigation, stated the Congressional report, included, "restrictions, delays, and outright denials to requests for information... obstructed access to records and witnesses, [and] the "illegal shredding of doc.u.ments."

Yet the committee did nothing to punish those responsible, merely recommending that the DoJ request the Court of Appeals to appoint an "independent" prosecutor. While Attorney General William Barr initially refused, he eventually succ.u.mbed to media pressure, appointing one of his old DoJ cronies, Nicholas Bua, to "investigate" the matter. Bua impaneled a Federal Grand Jury. But, as in the Oklahoma City case, the prosecuting attorney, Bua's law partner Charles Knight, manipulated and controlled the witnesses. When the jury began giving credence to the allegations against DoJ, Bua quickly dismissed the jury and impaneled another one.[985]

Not surprisingly, one of Bua's chief investigators was none other than Joseph Hartzler. In a letter Hartzler wrote to a.s.sistant a.s.sociate Attorney General John Dwire in October of 1994, the n.o.ble government prosecutor states: I applaud your efforts and especially your conclusions. To paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, we spent ourselves on a worthy cause....[986]

Hartzler's next "worthy cause" would be to serve as lead prosecutor in the Oklahoma City bombing case, a.s.sisting the DoJ in one of the largest cover-ups of the 20th Century.

"I don't understand where they found him or why they chose him," says Michael Deutsch, who as an attorney in Chicago defended a Puerto Rican terrorist in a 1985 bombing case prosecuted by Hartzler, a successful prosecution that is often cited as one of the reasons Hartzler got the Oklahoma City job....[987]

Deutsch is referring to the prosecution of four Las Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion National Puertorriqueo (FALN) members, a Puerto Rican nationalist group which the government claimed was responsible for more than 100 bombings or attempted bombings since 1970. The defense of the FALN paralleled that of the Oklahoma City bombing defendants, with crucial evidence being withheld - evidence that would have implicated the FBI and ATF in COINTELPRO-style illegal activites directed against the Chicano and Puerto Rican Movements. The judge in the FALN case, Federal District Judge George Leighton, has reported connections to the CIA.[988]

Yet Hartzler claimed he volunteered for the role of lead prosecutor. Whether or not that is true, Hartzler, a wheelchair-bound multiple sclerosis victim, is the perfect choice - a man able to pander to the sympathies of a jury already overwhelmed by images of dead and handicapped victims. This astute observation was made obvious by none other than Newsweek, which wrote: "Some suggested that a wheelchair-bound prosecutor would appeal to a jury in a case with so many maimed victims...."[989]

As the Legal Times observed: Having a lead prosecutor who maneuvers around the courtroom in a motorized scooter, some say, is a good tactic for gaining sympathy with a jury - especially in a case where more than 500 people were injured.[990]