The Oklahoma City Bombing And The Politics Of Terror Part 7

But the dead, burned children at Waco were not what the producers at Dateline wanted the public to see. Immediately after Jennifer's statement, they cut to an image of the bombed-out day care center inside the Murrah Building. "We... We've been hoping this wouldn't be the case," said the live voice of an unidentified rescue worker, "but it is the case, there was a day-care inside the building."

Time ran a page dedicated to the Waco theory, stating, "The date of last week's bombing and the anniversary of the apocalyptic fire (notice they don't say government ma.s.sacre) at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco - has only gained in infamy, intricately bound as it is to the mythologies of homegrown zealots like McVeigh."[272]

Sheep-Dipped It would appear that the seed that gave root to McVeigh's "homegrown zeal" was incubated in a U.S. government hothouse and fertilized by a heaping dose of intelligence agency fanaticism.

After Waco, with the emergence of the Militia Movement, the stage would be set, the die would be cast - for Timothy McVeigh to be poured into like a miniature lead soldier. While the FBI and the press admitted that McVeigh didn't actually belong to any organized militia organization, "there was considerable evidence that he sympathized with and espoused their beliefs," wrote the Times.

He voiced their ideas in conversations, he wrote letters expressing them, he read their literature and attended their meetings. And he lived, worked and traded weapons in areas where the paramilitary groups enjoy considerable support...[273]

Like Lee Harvey Oswald, who appeared to be an avid Communist, distributing leaflets on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, McVeigh would play the part of an avowed Right-winger, distributing literature about taxes, the Second Amendment, Waco and Ruby Ridge. Like Oswald, who left behind a diary widely believed to be a CIA forgery, McVeigh was purported to have similarly doc.u.mented his own extremist position. According to the Times: Law enforcement officials say McVeigh left behind a large body of writings about his ideological leanings, including extensive tracts in letters to friends and relatives, that describe his belief in the const.i.tutional principles that he adamantly maintained allowed him to carry firearms and live without any restraints from the government. Prosecutors are likely to use such doc.u.ments to establish his motive at a trial.[274]

Like Oswald, McVeigh's departure from the military was under somewhat mysterious circ.u.mstances. And like Oswald, an ex-Marine with a top-secret security clearance who appeared to "defect" to the Soviet Union, McVeigh would appear to be a "disgruntled" ex-Army sergeant who happened to "drift" into the fringes of the far-Right.[275]

Yet, like Oswald, who lived and worked amongst the bastions of the far-Right in Dallas while purporting to be a Marxist, McVeigh would not seem to be the extreme Right-wing fanatic he's been made out to be. In a letter to his hometown newspaper in February, 1992, he wrote: At a point when the world has seen Communism falter as an imperfect system to manage people; democracy seems to be headed down the same road.... Maybe we have to combine ideologies to achieve the perfect utopian government. Remember, government-sponsored health care was a Communist idea....

Obviously, such views are anathema to the far-Right, who see any attempt to socialize society as a major step towards the great one-world Communist conspiracy. It is possible that McVeigh was more progressive than his Right-wing a.s.sociates. It is also possible that McVeigh was being sheep-dipped as a militant Right-winger.

After Waco, McVeigh traveled to Michigan, staying for a time with Terry Nichols. He worked on Nichols' farm, and went hunting and target practicing. Neighbors recall how McVeigh and Nichols made and detonated small homemade bombs. Paul Izydorek, a neighbor, recalls "When they were around, they'd get different guns and play and shoot and stuff." On at least one occasion, Izydorek heard blasts at the farm and noticed Terry Nichols and a man he thought was McVeigh. "I'd seen them playing around with different household items that you can make blow up. Just small stuff. Just outside in the yard, blowing away."[276]

Nichols' brother James also admitted to the FBI that McVeigh and Terry made and exploded "bottle bombs" at his farm, using brake fluid, gasoline, and diesel fuel, and that he sometimes partic.i.p.ated.[277]

In his interview with Newsweek, McVeigh dispelled the myth that his bomb making was a precursor to more deadly acts. "It would amount to firecrackers. It was like popping a paper bag," said McVeigh, who had also experimented with small explosives on his land in Olean, NY prior to entering the Army.

Yet a relative also told the FBI that James Nichols kept a large supply of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on the farm - the very substance federal authorities accused the suspects of using to manufacture their alleged truck-bomb, a fact that would become yet another linchpin in the government's case against the two men.

While in Michigan, McVeigh also started working the gun shows. From April of 1993 to March of 1995, McVeigh would travel from Kingman, Arizona to Decker, Michigan, and across the U.S., attending militia meetings and working the gun show circuit. A gun collector interviewed by the Times said that he had encountered McVeigh in gun shows ranging from Florida to Oklahoma to Nevada. "At the S.O.F. (Soldier of Fortune) convention he was kind of wandering around," said the gun collector, who requested anonymity, "like he was trying to meet people, maybe make converts. He could make ten friends at a show, just by his manner and demeanor. He's polite, he doesn't interrupt."

"McVeigh traveled around the country in a rattletrap car," wrote the Times' Kifner, "his camouflage fatigues clean and pressed, his only companion a well-thumbed copy of the venomous apocalyptic novel, The Turner Diaries."

Yet it would seem McVeigh is not the as.e.xual, sociopathic loner that the press - the New York Times in particular - has made him out to be.

Had Kifner read the May 5th edition of Newsweek, he would have discovered that McVeigh had more than an old book for a companion. Newsweek reported that a Kansas private investigator had tracked down an old [platonic] girlfriend of McVeigh's - most likely Catina Lawson of Herrington, Kansas - attempting to convince her to sell her story to a news agency.[278]

Robert Jerlow, an Oklahoma City private investigator, was also tracking down a girlfriend of McVeigh's in Las Vegas.[279] And CNN indicated that authorities had discovered a letter in the glove compartment to an old girlfriend.[280]

Yet McVeigh's gypsy-like travels across the country in an old beat-up car were slightly more then unusual. He traveled widely with no visible means of support, other than trading and selling guns and military paraphernalia. Yet acquaintances and other witnesses recall he always had wads of cash on him. Upon his arrest, McVeigh had $2,000 on him. He reportedly had thousands more stashed away. He also traveled without luggage, making his car and occasional cheap motels his only home.

"He lived in his car," said the gun dealer quoted in the Times. "Whatever he owned it was in that car."[281]

According to his sister Jennifer, his closest confidant, "...half the time we didn't know where he was. Half the time he wouldn't even tell us where he was living."[282]

Again, one has to ask why McVeigh would voluntarily give up a promising military career to go careening around the country hawking used military surplus in an old car.

McVeigh used the name "Tim Tuttle" while working the gun shows, claiming that the alias was necessary to protect him from people who didn't share his political views.[283] There is another possible reason McVeigh may have used an alias however.

At one gun show in Phoenix, an undercover detective reported that McVeigh had been attempting to sell a flare gun which he claimed could be converted into a rocket launcher. According to Bill Fitzgerald of the Maricopa County Attorney's office in Phoenix, McVeigh "took a sh.e.l.l apart and showed that the interior could be removed and another package put in that could shoot down an ATF helicopter." He also was reportedly handing out copies of the name and address of Lon Horiuchi, the FBI sniper who shot and killed Vicki Weaver, and selling caps with the letters 'ATF' surrounded by bullet holes.[284]

"He had come to see himself as a soldier in his own strange war against the United States," wrote the Times. McVeigh's mother told an acquaintance after visiting with him in her home state of Florida that he was "totally changed," and observed, "it was like he traded one Army for another one."[285]

While it is highly possible that McVeigh, like many people, genuinely disliked the ATF and FBI, it is also possible he used such high-profile anti-government tactics as a ruse while working undercover. While such behavior might appear extreme, it is a cla.s.sic agent provocateur technique. The ATF routinely works undercover at gun shows, searching for people selling illegal firearms. Who better to lure and entrap unwary victims than a gun dealer claiming to be virulently anti-ATF. It is also possible that McVeigh was working undercover for another agency.

In an illuminating series of phone calls to Representative Charles Key, an anonymous source stated that McVeigh was present at several meetings with ATF and DEA agents in the days immediately preceding the bombing. The meetings took place in Oklahoma City at different locations. The ostensible purpose of the meetings were to provide McVeigh with further instructions, and to facilitate a payoff.

David Hall of KPOC-TV uncovered information that McVeigh had met with local ATF agent Alex McCauley in a McDonalds the night before the bombing. The ATF agent was seen handing McVeigh an envelope. (See Chapter 9) CNN would cast a pale over this [largely unknown] information by reporting in June of 1995 that McVeigh had been under surveillance by an undercover operative at an Arizona gun show two years prior to the bombing.

This fact was reinforced when the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai B'Rith (ADL) reported that McVeigh ran an ad for a "rocket launcher" (actually a flare gun) in the far-Right Spotlight newspaper on August 9, 1993. In fact, the ad didn't appear until the next week, August 16. McVeigh had originally paid to have the advertis.e.m.e.nt run on the 9th. Not being aware of the Spotlight's impending scheduling conflict, however, the ADL reported that the ad had run one week before it actually did. This subsumes that the ADL, long known for its spying and intelligence-gathering activities, had McVeigh under surveillance as well.[286]

Interestingly, McVeigh's young friend, Catina Lawson, recalled a strange man who often showed up at summer parties the high-schoolers threw. The soldiers from nearby Ft. Riley would attend the gatherings looking to meet girls, and McVeigh and his friends Michael Brescia and Andy Stra.s.smeir (who lived at the white separatist compound in Southeast Oklahoma known as Elohim City), would often attend.[287]

Yet the man Catina described was neither a high-schooler nor a soldier. This mysterious character in his late 30s to mid-40s, who often wore a suit and a tie and drove a red sports car, was was apparently not there to pick up girls. As Connie Smith, Catina's mother told me, "The man did not interact with anyone else... he stayed off... he never interacted with anybody else," only McVeigh.

Barbara Whittenberg, who owned the Sante Fe Trail Diner in Herrington, Kansas, also remembered the man. The restaurant owner recalled that he would come in with McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who lived nearby. She didn't know where he was from, and had never seen him before.

Was McVeigh an informant? Was he working for two different agencies? Numerous Kennedy researchers have uncovered evidence that Oswald was an FBI informant at the same time he was being sheep-dipped by the CIA for his role in the JFK a.s.sa.s.sination. According to former District Attorney (later federal judge) Jim Garrison: Oswald appears to have been extensively manipulated by the CIA for a long time prior to the a.s.sa.s.sination and may well have believed he was working for the government. Oswald was also a confidential informant, a job that provided additional control over him and may have given him a reason to believe he was actually penetrating a plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate the president.[288]

Situations where a person is working for two law-enforcement or intelligence agencies at the same time are not uncommon.

What is uncommon is for a man like McVeigh to give up a promising military career to hawk used duffel bags from an old car. But then again, in the twilight netherworld of intelligence operations, things aren't always what they appear.[289]

While in Michigan, McVeigh also began tuning in to the Voice of America and Radio Free America on his shortwave. He was drawn to personalities like Chuck Harder, Jack McLamb, and Mark Koernke, all conveying an anti-federalist, anti-New World Order message. "He sent me a lot of newsletters and stuff from those groups he was involved in," said Warnement, then stationed in Germany. "There were newsletters from Bo Gritz's group, some other odd newsletters, some from the Patriots; then he sent that videotape 'The Big Lie' about Waco."[290]

McVeigh also began attending militia meetings. According to Michigan Militia member Eric Maloney, McVeigh was present at a truck-stop near Detroit for a January 25, 1995 meeting of approximately 70 members of the Oakland County Six Brigade. Members had obtained photographs of T-72 tanks and other Russian vehicles en route via railway flatcars to Camp Grayling, an Air National Guard base in northern Michigan. Although the captured Iraqi tanks were for target practice, the militiamen interpreted the equipment as proof positive of a UN plan to disarm American citizens and declare martial law.

According to Maloney and militia member Joseph Ditzhazy, a plot was hatched to attack the base by Mark Koernke, a high-profile militia spokesman known to his radio listeners as "Mark from Michigan." According to Maloney, Koernke said, "We can either take them out now while we're still able to, or wait until the sons of b.i.t.c.hes are rolling down the street..." Three days later, about 20 members met at a farm near Leonard to discuss plans for the attack. According to Maloney, McVeigh was one of 13 who volunteered for the a.s.sault. "McVeigh was there," recalled Maloney on ABC's Prime Time Live. "My wife sat next to him. He was very attentive, very interested in being involved in that operation, volunteered his services."

The plan never came off. Ditzhazy and Maloney alerted State Police, who then contacted federal authorities. When the plot was made public, the Michigan Militia issued a press release stating that the plan was the brainchild of Koernke, working alongside a group of renegade members. Others who attended the meetings said that it was actually Maloney who pushed the plan, and had to be dissuaded from going through with it. Interestingly, Maloney was to provide weapons training for several of the attackers, and Ditzhazy, who made audio-tapes of the meetings, is a former military intelligence officer. When the FBI was contacted about Ditzhazy's claim that the plot was hatched by McVeigh and others, the FBI refused comment.[291]

What is also interesting is that Koernke himself is a former Army intelligence officer. Koernke, a veteran of the 70th Army Reserve Division in Livonia, Michigan, refers to himself as an "intelligence a.n.a.lyst" and "counterintelligence coordinator" with a "top-secret clearance." He also purports to have trained two "special-warfare" brigades that trained Army personnel in "foreign warfare and tactics." While his claims may be exaggerated, Koernke did attend the Army's intelligence school at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He returned to Michigan an E-5 specialist with a G-2 (security) section of a peacetime Reserve unit.[292]

Koernke quickly rose to become one of the most sought after speakers on the Patriot circuit, leading off seminars in over 40 states. His video, America in Peril, sounds apocalyptic warnings of the coming New World Order, including plans by the Council of Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderbergers to dominate and enslave America - with of course, a little help from Russian troops, Nepalese Gurkhas, and L.A. street gangs.[293] It would seem that Koernke is employing a time-tested technique of intelligence PSYOP disinformation. While purporting to rail against what may be genuine plans of a New World Order cabal, Koernke slips in just enough ridiculous disinformation to discredit his thesis, and by a.s.sociation, anyone who supports it.

After the bombing, the media put Koernke in its spotlight. Koernke has boasted freely to friends that he was once employed as a "provocateur." He didn't say exactly for whom. In his tape, Koernke is shown holding an AK-47 and a cord of rope, stating: "Now, I did some basic math the other day, not New World Order math, and I found that using the old-style math you can get about four politicians for about 120 foot of rope. And, by the way, DuPont made this. It is very fitting that one of the New World Order crowd should provide us with the resources to liberate our nation...."

While the author personally has no qualms about stringing up the DuPonts, the Rockefellers and many other icons of the military-industrial-establishment, Koernke's rant smacks of the cla.s.sic art of propaganda - that of the agent provocateur. Many in the Militia movement have accused him of just that.[294]*

On September 8, 1994, Fowerville, Michigan police stopped a car that contained three men in camouflage and black face paint, armed with three 9mm semiautomatics, a .357 Magnum, an a.s.sortment of a.s.sault rifles, and 7,000 rounds of ammunition. The men claimed to be Koernke's bodyguards.

Ken Kirkland, an official of the St. Lucia County, Florida Militia said that McVeigh was acting as Koernke's bodyguard at a March 1994 meeting. Kirkland recalled a bodyguard in Army camouflage clothes resembling McVeigh who introduced himself as "Tim" and was "really upset about Waco."[295]

Koernke and McVeigh both deny this. As McVeigh told Newsweek "...I was never to one of their meetings, either."[296]

Was Koernke's "bodyguard" actually Tim McVeigh? In the September, 1995 issue of Soldier of Fortune, an ATF agent - the spitting image of Tim McVeigh - is seen accompanying ATF Agent Robert Rodriquez to the trial of the Branch Davidians. Was this in fact the "McVeigh" who accompanied Koernke?

Given both mens' mysterious backgrounds, their curious intersections in Florida and Michigan, and the Camp Grayling and Fowerville incidents, it is highly likely that we are looking at two agent provocateurs.

Other evidence of McVeigh's apparent employment as an agent provocateur would surface later. In a statement he made to Newsweek in response to a question about Reno and Clinton asking for the death penalty, McVeigh said: "I thought it was awfully hypocritical, especially because in some ways the government was responsible for doing it. I thought she was playing both sides of the fence." One must wonder just how McVeigh knows that "in some ways" the government was "responsible for doing it."

McVeigh's own insurrectionist tendencies began coming to fruition towards the end of 1993, according to authorities, when McVeigh informed his sister that he was part of an anti-government group that was robbing banks. This startling revelation came in the form of three $100 bills he sent to Jennifer in a letter dated December 24, 1993. The money was part of the proceeds from a bank heist. As Jennifer told the FBI on May 2, 1995: "He had been involved in a bank robbery but did not provide any further details concerning the robbery. He advised me that he had not actually partic.i.p.ated in the robbery itself, but was somehow involved in the planning or setting up of this robbery. Although he did not identify the partic.i.p.ants by name, he stated that 'they' had committed the robbery. His purpose for relating this information to me was to request that I exchange some of my own money for what I recall to be approximately three (3) $100.00 bills.

"He explained that this money was from the bank robbery and he wished to circulate this money through me. To the best of my recollection, I then gave my brother what I recall to be approximately $300.00 of my personal cash, in exchange for 3 $100.00 bills, which I deposited within the next several days in an account at the Unit No. 1 Federal credit Union, Lockport, New York."

Jennifer also recalled Tim stating, "Persons who rob banks may not be criminals at all. He implied Jews are running the country and a large degree of control is exercised by the Free Masons. Banks are the real thieves and the income tax is illegal."[297]

Was Timothy McVeigh in fact a bank robber? If so, it is possible he was inspired by the Turner Diaries. The protagonists in that novel finance their overthrow of the "Zionist Occupational Government" by robbing banks and armored cars. As previously discussed, the book became a real life inspiration for Robert Matthew's Order, also known as "The Silent Brotherhood," which was engaged in heists of banks and armored cars throughout the Midwest during the 1980s. The Order was part of the white Aryan supremacist community that sought to establish an all-white homeland in the Northwest.

In December of 1984, Mathews was killed in a shoot-out with the FBI and police, and the Order disintegrated. Yet the white supremacist movement lived on, in such guises as the Aryan Nations, White Aryan Resistance (WAR), and a new, as yet unheard of group - the Aryan Republican Army, whose members are believed to be direct descendants of the Order.

It was to this last group that Timothy McVeigh would be drawn, at a rural white separatist religious community in southeast Oklahoma called Elohim City. It was there that McVeigh would meet such self-styled revolutionaries as Peter "Commander Pedro" Langan, who, along with Scott Stedeford, Kevin McCarthy, and the late Richard Guthrie, would go on to rob over 22 banks across the Midwest, collecting a total of $250,000.

In a recruitment video obtained by the McCurtain Gazette, Langan appears in a disguise, explaining the goals of the ARA - the overthrow of the Federal Government, and the subsequent execution of all Jews and the deportation of all non-whites from the U.S.

In the tape, made only a few months before the Oklahoma City bombing, Langan says, "Federal buildings may have to be bombed and civilian loss of life is regrettable but expected."[298]

According to ATF informant Carol Howe, interviewed by Gazette reporter J.D. Cash, both McVeigh and Fortier had visited Elohim City, as had Langan, Guthrie, Stedeford and McCarthy. A secret recording made by the informant apparently reveals discussions between Andreas Stra.s.smeir, Elohim City's chief of security (also suspected of being an informant), and various ARA members, discussing plans to blow up federal buildings. While it is not known if McVeigh was intimately involved with the ARA bank robbers, he was seen with Stra.s.smeir and ARA a.s.sociate Michael Brescia at parties in Kansas, and at a bar in Tulsa shortly before the bombing. McVeigh had also called Elohim City looking for Stra.s.smeir the day after he reserved the Ryder truck allegedly used in the bombing.

In the Fall on 1994, McVeigh and Terry Nichols allegedly began h.o.a.rding ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel. By mid-October, the pair had, according to official accounts, managed to stockpile approximately 4,000 pounds of fertilizer, which they stashed in storage lockers from Kansas to Arizona.[299]

Like Mohammed Salemeh, a World Trade Center bombing suspect arrested when he attempted to retrieve his truck rental deposit, McVeigh would be linked to the bombing by the first in a chain of d.a.m.ning evidence - his thumbprint on a fertilizer receipt found in Terry Nichols' home; inquires about bomb-making materials made on his calling-card; and the paperwork used to rent the Ryder truck itself.

Like Salemeh's rental receipt which had traces of ANFO on it, McVeigh's clothes would allegedly contain traces of a detonator cord known as PDTN.[300] Like the World Trade Center bombers who stockpiled bomb-making equipment in rented storage lockers in New Jersey, McVeigh and Nichols would store their ammonium nitrate in rented lockers in Kansas and Arizona. And like the World Trade Center bombers who called commercial chemical companies requesting bomb-making materials, McVeigh would implicate himself by using a traceable phone card to make his purchases.

The most damming evidence linking McVeigh to the crime would be the witness sightings placing him at the Murrah Building just before the bombing, following the Ryder truck, then speeding away in his yellow Mercury several minutes before the blast.

Yet the most curious evidence implicating McVeigh in the bombing came from witnesses who say he cased the building on December 16, when he and Michael Fortier drove through Oklahoma City en route to Kansas, then again approximately one and a half weeks before the bombing.

Danielle Wise Hunt, who operated the Stars and Stripes Child Development Center in the Murrah Building, told the FBI that on December 16, a clean-cut man wearing camouflage fatigues approached her, seeking to place his two children in the day care center. Hunt told agents that the man didn't ask typical parent-type questions, but instead wanted to know about the day-care center's security. Hunt thought he might be a potential kidnapper. Later, after seeing his face on TV, she recognized the man as Timothy McVeigh.[301]

If the man was indeed Timothy McVeigh, it is curious why he would later claim he was unaware of the day-care center in the building. If McVeigh was so upset about the deaths of innocent children at Waco, why would he knowingly bomb a building containing innocent children as an act of revenge?

Yet this "act of revenge" is precisely what the government claims motived him. Such an act could only be the result of a deranged man. Yet McVeigh is anything but deranged. In his July 3rd Newsweek interview, he said, "For two days, in the cell, we could hear news reports; and of course everyone, including myself, was horrified at the deaths of the children. And you know, that was the No. 1 focal point of the media at the time, too, obviously - the deaths of the children. It's a very tragic thing."

Perhaps "deranged" isn't the proper word; perhaps "controlled" would be more appropriate. After his arrest, McVeigh was shown photographs of the dead children. He claimed to have no emotional reaction. Again, this could very well be indicative of a psychologically-controlled individual.

There is another strong possibility. The man whom witnesses say is Timothy McVeigh may not have been Timothy McVeigh at all.

"Lee Harvey" McVeigh As previously discussed, McVeigh, along with his friends Andreas Stra.s.smeir, Mike Fortier, and Michael Brescia attended parties in Herrington, Kansas in the Summer of '92. Catina Lawson was actually good friends with McVeigh, and her roommate, Lindsey Johnson, dated Michael Brescia. Lawson's accounts are well doc.u.mented.[302]

Yet calling card records obtained by the Rocky Mountain News indicate that each call charged to the card during 1992 originated within western New York, where McVeigh was working as a security guard for Burns International Security. There appears to be little time he could have gone to Kansas to party with teen-agers.

Dr. Paul Heath, the VA psychologist who worked in the Murrah Building and survived the blast, spoke to an individual named "McVeigh" late one Friday afternoon, a week and a half before the bombing. In an interview with the author, he described in vivid detail his encounter with "McVeigh" and two other men, one of whom appears to be one of the elusive John Doe 2s.

"I've narrowed this to probably a Friday [April 7], at around three o'clock," recalls Heath. "A bell rang in the outer office of room 522. No one answered, so I went out to the waiting room.... A man came in with two others to apply for a job. One other was American-Indian looking, the other was Caucasian. A male individual was standing there, and I introduced myself as Dr. Heath, 'how can I help you?' and this individual said 'my name is something' and I don't remember what his first name was, but he told me his last name was McVeigh.

"So I said 'can I help you?' and he said 'well, we're here looking for work.' and I said 'what kind of work are we looking for?' He said 'we are looking for construction work.' And I said, 'well Mr. Birmbaum, the gentleman who is the job counselor for the state jobs office, is not here.' And this individual - I asked him if I could go back and get the job openings from the job counselor's desk - and he said 'no, that won't be necessary.' So I said, 'well, I'm very familiar with the area, and I could give you some job leads,' and I began to tell him about job leads, and began to give him some names and some different projects, and I said 'would you like me to get you the phone book; I could get you the state jobs offices.' He said, 'no, that won't be necessary.'

"And about somewhere along in this conversation, the man who was sitting on the east wall, directly behind the man who named himself as McVeigh, came up behind the man, and said 'can I use your phone?' I would describe him as vanilla, 5'7" or 5'9", mid-30's. [Then] the third party who was in the office, looked directly at me, made eye contact with me, and... I got the impression that this individual's nationality was Native American, or half-Native American or half-Mexican American or a foreign national. He was handsome - at one time my mind said maybe he was from South America.

"I... continued to talk to Mr. McVeigh and I said, 'Mr. McVeigh, did you take anything in high school that would be beneficial for me to know about so I could refer you to a different type of job?' And he said, 'well, probably not.' And I said, 'well, where did you go to high school?' And he either said up north or New York. And then I said, 'Where are you living?' And he said, 'Well, I've been living in Kansas.' So then I said, 'Do you happen to be a member of the McVay family from Cussing, Oklahoma?' ...he said, 'Well Dr. Heath, how do they spell their name?' 'Well I a.s.sume, M-c-V-a-y.' And he took his finger, and he kind of put it in my face and said, 'Well Dr. Heath,' in kind of a boisterous way, 'Dr. Heath, you remember this. My name is McVeigh, but you don't spell it M-c-V-a-y....'"[303]

What Dr. Heath was describing appears to have been Timothy McVeigh and his co-conspirators casing the Murrah Building. As the press reported, the men went floor-to-floor, asking job-related questions and picking up applications. Yet if McVeigh had already cased the building on December 16, as reported by Danielle Hunt, why would he need to case it again?

Moreover, if McVeigh wanted to case the building, why would he do it in such a conspicuous manner? Why would he go from floor-to-floor asking about job openings, then pretend not to be interested in following them up? And... if McVeigh was planning on committing such a horrific crime, why would he make it a point to tell people his name, saying to Dr. Heath, "You remember this... My name is McVeigh."

Former Federal Grand Juror Hoppy Heidelberg concurs. "Why would McVeigh walk around the building before the blast telling people his name?"[304]

If McVeigh was keen on informing people of his ident.i.ty before committing the crime, he apparently was on a roll. On Sat.u.r.day, April 8, McVeigh and friends Andreas Stra.s.smeir and Michael Brescia - both living at Elohim City at the time - were seen at Lady G.o.diva's topless bar in Tulsa, Oklahoma. According to a security camera videotape obtained by J.D. Cash of the McCurtain Gazette, and Trish Wood of CBC, McVeigh's boasts were the topic of discussion among the dancers that night. In the tape, one of the girls named Tara is overheard relating the conversation to another girl in the dressing room: "...he goes, 'I'm a very smart man.' I said, you are? And he goes, 'Yes, you're going to find an (inaudible) and they're going to hurt you real bad.' I was, like, 'Oh really?' And he goes, 'Yes, and you're going to remember me on April 19, 1995. You're going to remember me for the rest of your life.'

Laughing, she replies, "Oh, really?"

"Yes you will," McVeigh says.[305]

The sighting of McVeigh in Tulsa on April 8, along with an older, pale yellow Ryder truck that appeared to be privately-owned, directly contradicts the testimony of the maid at the Imperial Motel who says McVeigh was there each day.

However, phone records indicate that McVeigh made a steady series of calls up until April 7, which suddenly resumed again on the 11th. Could McVeigh have flown to Oklahoma to pick up the old Ryder truck, then have flown back to Kingman several days later? As J.D. Cash notes in the September 25, 1996 McCurtain Gazette: It is not merely idle speculation that McVeigh flew to eastern Oklahoma or western Arkansas to pick up the second truck. Records subpoenaed by the government indicate McVeigh may have made such a trip to Fort Smith, Ark., between March 31 and April 14, 1995. Curiously, an employee of the airport taxi service in Fort Smith could not elaborate on why the taxi firm's records for that period were seized by federal agents working on what the government calls the "OKBOMB" case.

If McVeigh actually did fly from Arizona to Arkansas, then drive the truck to Kansas, then fly back to Arizona again, he apparently was a very busy man. Witness accounts and phone records put him in Oklahoma City on the 7th, in Tulsa on the 8th, in Kansas from the 10th to the 14th (although he's supposed to be in Kingman on the 11th and 12th), then back in Oklahoma City on the 14th, 15th and 16th (when he's supposedly in Kansas) then in Kansas on the 17th and 18th (when he's also seen in Oklahoma City), and finally in Oklahoma City on the 19th, the day of the bombing.

While McVeigh was supposedly seen at Terry Nichols' house in Herrington, Kansas on the 13th, witness David Snider saw his car in Oklahoma City. A Bricktown warehouse worker, Snider remembers seeing McVeigh's distinctive yellow Mercury whiz past around 2:30 p.m., not far from downtown. Snider is certain it was the same battered yellow Mercury driven by McVeigh. "I was standing there with my friend, who does auto bodywork," said Snider, "when the car went past. I turned to him and said, 'My Mom used to have a car just like that... It looks like homeboy needs a primer job.'" Snider said the car had an Oklahoma tag, as witness Gary Lewis later reported, not an Arizona tag as the FBI claims.

On Thursday, April 13, a federal employee in the Murrah Building saw two men, one of whom she later identified as McVeigh. She was riding the elevator when it stopped at the second floor. When the doors opened, there were two men in janitorial smocks waiting to get on. She didn't recognize the men as any of the regular janitors, and thought it odd that they turned away when she looked in their direction.

On Monday, April 17, janitors Katherine Woodly and Martin Johnson, who were working the 5-9 p.m. s.h.i.+ft, saw McVeigh and his companion again. Martin said McVeigh spoke to him about a job, and the man who resembled John Doe 2 nodded to Woodly.[306]

That same day, or possibly the following day, Debbie Nakanas.h.i.+, an employee at the Post Office across from the Murrah Building, saw the pair when they stopped by and asked where they might find federal job applications. It was Nakanas.h.i.+ who provided the description for the well-known profile sketch of John Doe 2 in the baseball cap.

Craig Freeman, a retired Air Force master sergeant who works in the same office as Dr. Heath, was one of the people who saw McVeigh in Oklahoma when he was supposedly in Kansas. Freeman recalls sharing the elevator with a man who resembled McVeigh on Friday, April 14. "The guy was tall... What struck me is his hair was cut real low. I thought he was a skinhead." Freeman, who is black, said 'Hey man, how's it going?' "And he looked at me like he was just disgusted with me being there. Most people in the building speak to each other, you know, so I spoke to this guy, and he looked at me like... pure hate."

About a week and a half before the bombing, a HUD employee named Joan was riding the elevator with a man she described as Timothy McVeigh. What struck her was the man's strict military demeanor. He stared straight ahead making no eye-contact or conversation. "He won't last long in this building," Joan thought to herself.[307]

The Friday before the bombing, when Craig Freeman walked out of the building to mail his taxes, he saw an individual he believes to have been Terry Nichols, "because he looked just like the picture of him," said Freeman. "He was standing there, he had a blue plaid s.h.i.+rt on. He was standing in the front of the building - he was just standing there, looking kind of confused. You know, how somebody looks when they're nervous."

Was the man in the elevator Freeman was describing actually Timothy McVeigh? According to phone records obtained from the Dreamland Motel, McVeigh made several phone calls from his room on the morning of Friday, April 14. Is it still possible that McVeigh drove down to Oklahoma City in the afternoon?

If he did, he would had to have been back in Kansas by early next morning. Barbara Whittenberg, owner of the Santa Fe Trail Diner in Herrington, remembers serving breakfast to Nichols, McVeigh, and John Doe 2 around 6:00 a.m. on Sat.u.r.day.

"I asked them why they had a Ryder truck outside," said Whittenberg. "I wasn't being nosy, I just wondered if Terry Nichols was moving. My sister was moving here, and she needed to find a place. Well, the guy who they haven't arrested yet - John Doe #2 - he blurted out that they were going to Oklahoma. When that happened, it was like someone threw ice water on the conversation... McVeigh and Nichols just stared at the guy"[308]

A dancer in Junction City, Kansas had the same experience as Whittenberg, when four of the suspects stopped by the Hollywood Supper Club around 10:30 that evening. The dancer, who we'll call Sherrie, definitely recognized two of the men as McVeigh and Nichols.

"The only reason I really remember it," said Sherrie, "is just because I had a conversation with one of them about Oklahoma, and my husband's family is from Oklahoma. He said they were planing a trip down there, and he said - I think it was for hunting or something.... then one of them kind of gave him a look, and they changed the subject...."

Sherrie also said one of the men, who was quiet and sat in the corner, appeared to be Middle-Eastern. The other was Hispanic or part Hispanic, and was friendly. When he mentioned Oklahoma, Nichols shot him a hard look.[309]

Additionally, while the records at Elliott's Body Shop indicate that "Bob Kling" rented his truck on April 17, Barbara Whittenberg saw the truck outside her restaurant on the 15th. Later that day she saw it at Geary State Fis.h.i.+ng Lake, along with three people and a light-colored car, possibly a Thunderbird, with Arizona tags.[310]

Backing up Whittenberg is Lee McGowan, owner of the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, where McVeigh stayed from April 14 to April 17. McGowan told the FBI that McVeigh was in possession of his truck the day before "Kling" allegedly rented his. She remembered the day clearly because it was Easter Sunday.

McGowan's son, Eric, as well as motel resident David King and his mother, also stated that they saw McVeigh driving an older faded yellow Ryder truck at the motel around 4 p.m. on April 16.[311]