Witness says McVeigh, Nichols worked with bomb ingredients in Arizona desert

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Timothy McVeigh and bombing conspirator Terry Nichols detonated explosives in the Arizona desert and experimented with ingredients that were later used in the Oklahoma City bombing, McVeigh’s close friend testified.

Michael Fortier, testifying at a preliminary hearing for Terry Nichols, also said McVeigh had worked out plans for the Oklahoma City bombing six months before a bomb ripped through the federal building, killing 168 people.

Fortier began his second day of testimony Tuesday, saying that in the weeks before the bombing, he became increasingly frightened of McVeigh and carried a pistol whenever he was near.

“He just made me nervous,” Fortier said. “I was scared of him.” Fortier said McVeigh told him in October 1994 that he and Nichols planned to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

“He discussed how he would take ammonium nitrate and fuel and mix it up and put it in 55-gallon drums,” Fortier testified Monday.

Fortier said that although McVeigh and Nichols worked together on the bomb plot, Nichols did not use the same anti-government rhetoric as McVeigh or repeat McVeigh’s fear that the United States would lose its sovereignty to a new world order.

“You never heard Terry Nichols talk about the new world order?” asked Nichols’ attorney, Brian Hermanson.

Fortier, the government’s star witness at the federal bombing trials of McVeigh and Nichols, is testifying under a grant of immunity for state prosecutors who have charged Nichols with 160 counts of first-degree murder for the bombing. They are seeking the death penalty.

McVeigh was convicted of federal murder charges for the bombing. He was executed in June 2001.

Fortier said he and McVeigh stopped in Oklahoma City on a trip to Kansas and drove around the federal building. Fortier said McVeigh targeted the building because he believed “that’s the building where the orders came out of for Waco.”

McVeigh was a guest at Fortier’s home outside Kingman, on and off for two years after the April 19, 1993, siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. Prosecutors say the bombing was a twisted effort to punish the government for the siege in which 80 people died.

Fortier said McVeigh knew people would be hurt or killed in the bombing, but compared it with the loss of storm troopers in the movie “Star Wars.”

“All of the people may not be individually guilty,” he testified McVeigh said. “But because they work for the evil empire, their deaths would be justified.”

Fortier said McVeigh asked him to help assemble the bomb’s components because Nichols had decided not to go through with it.

McVeigh replied that Nichols would have to help him make the bomb because Nichols was already too deeply involved.

Nichols is serving a life prison sentence on federal conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter convictions for the deaths of eight law enforcement officers in the bombing. The state charges involve victims who were not part of Nichols’ federal trial.

Fortier, who met McVeigh in the Army and became a close friend, pleaded guilty to bombing-related charges in August 1995 and has served about eight years of a 12-year sentence. He admitted to knowing about the plot to bomb the federal building but doing nothing to stop it.

He helped McVeigh move and sell stolen weapons and lied to the FBI after the April 19, 1995, bombing.

Prosecutors allege that Nichols and McVeigh, who also became friends while serving in the Army, took part in a series of robberies and thefts to raise money and assembled components of the bomb that was detonated outside the federal building.

Nichols was at home in Kansas the day the bomb exploded. But prosecutors said he helped McVeigh deliver a getaway car to Oklahoma City and worked with McVeigh to pack the 4,000-pound bomb inside the truck the day before the bombing.

June 4, 2001

The Honorable John Ashcroft

Attorney General of the United States

Dear Sir:

We do not believe the FBI agents who interviewed the staff and myself have made a good faith effort to identify and question three males who accompanied Tim McVeigh to where I work in Oklahoma City on the day before the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.

We question the FBI agents efforts in completing adequate or thorough reports on our information. We base our belief on the lack of follow up as to identify the three males that were seen with Tim McVeigh.

We doubt that the FBI gave information of our story to prosecuting or defense attorneys. We believe this to be because US prosecutors have never contacted us nor has the defense attorneys associated with the McVeigh and Nichols trials.

FACTS:

On April 18, 1995 at 2:30 p.m., Tim McVeigh and three males came to where I work at Travelers Aid, one block to the West of the Murrah Building on NW 5th Street. An argument occurred between these males, myself and some of my co-workers. At the conclusion of the conversation the males abruptly left with McVeigh in a light yellow Mercury Marquis that was rusty and had no license plate.

The three males were of moderate build and wore t-shirts, jeans and boots, and were about the same height of five feet ten inches. One was a black man with very black skin. Another man had long, blonde, stringy hair. The third man had very dark hair and blue eyes. The blonde haired man was the most vocally abusive of the group.

Up to five FBI agents came to visit me and three of my co-workers during an eight-month period after the bombing, starting on April 24th or 25th, 1995. These agents did not do a photo lineup with us and they did not make a sketch artist available to us. We had the opportunity to see these three males at close proximity for several minutes while they were at Travelers Aid. We believed that we could have helped make reliable sketches with a FBI sketch artist.

The FBI agents took few notes. Each time we were visited, a different FBI agent came and we were ask(ed) to repeat our story. We became frustrated at having to repeat ourselves so many different times to so many different FBI agents. When we asked the FBI agents about this, they claimed that this was the way the FBI agents did things to check for consistency in our story.

We were never asked to sign witness statements and in the end felt our story was discounted when it should not have been. The interviews were very fragmented with the different FBI agents and the FBI agents did not seem to know enough of the details of our story from previous interviews. We doubt that the FBI agents were really making a sincere effort to take our information seriously and to do a thorough and proper evaluation and investigation.

REQUEST FOR ACTION:

Please have your investigators contact me to obtain further details from my co-workers and myself.

I would like the Department of Justice, the FBI and others in the United States government to still try to identify and apprehend the three males that came to where I work, in the car that Tim McVeigh was driving when apprehended. I did not see Tim McVeigh that Tuesday, April 18, 1995 at approx. 2:30 p.m., others spoke of a person answering his description in another area of our office. It is a question of how these people could have been in Kansas and Oklahoma at about the same time. I would like you to take steps to insure that FBI agents pursue facts with eyewitnesses like myself and my co-workers in terrorist cases as important as the Oklahoma City Bombing.

I can be contacted at my residence after normal business hours at XXXXXXXXXX. My home phone number is 405-XXXXXXX. You can also contact me at work with the information provided below my signature.

Respectfully,

Gloria Smith, BA

Program Director

Travelers Aid of Oklahoma City

Mr. Ashcroft, if you are interested in looking for "One was a black man with very black skin", I would suggest asking the 20th hijacker's Oklahoma roommate,Mujahid Abdulqaadir Menepta some questions. Since he has previously been connected to the Oklahoma City bombing, according to court testimony, I would start here.

Mujahid(jihad maker) a.k.a. Melvin Lattimore was connected to 9-11,WTC 1993, and the OKC bombing. If you hurry you may get to speak with him before his next "big thing", since he recently completed his 15 months on the federal weapons charge.

http://college4.nytimes.com/guests/articles/2001/11/10/883493.xml

November 10, 2001

No Bail for Friend of Man Suspected of Preparing for Sept. 11 Hijackings

By JO THOMAS

An Oklahoma friend of Zacarias Moussaoui, the man the authorities suspect was meant to be the 20th suicide hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks, has been ordered held without bail on weapons charges by a federal magistrate in Oklahoma City.

The Oklahoma man, Mujahid Abdulqaadir Menepta, 51, who was arrested on Oct. 11 and taken to New York as a material witness in the World Trade Center investigation, is dangerous and poses a flight risk, Jeffrey Whitney, an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, testified at a hearing on Wednesday. He made no specific reference to Mr. Moussaoui.

Without offering many details, Mr. Whitney told the court that some telephone numbers connected with cellphones seized in a search of Mr. Menepta's home in Norman were associated with continuing criminal investigations in Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Detroit, El Paso and Kansas City, Mo. These involve organized crime, drugs and money laundering, he said.

Mr. Whitney told the court that Mr. Menepta, who was born Melvin Lattimore in St. Louis, and changed his name in 1989 after converting to Islam, came to the attention of the authorities the day after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. He testified that an informer told federal agents that Mr. Menepta had belonged to an Islamic group in Norman and St. Louis, whose leaders advocated terrorist acts and killing law enforcement agents

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/842182/posts

FBI Destroyed Possible McVeigh Evidence

WASHINGTON, Feb 13, 2003 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- The FBI and prosecutors ordered the destruction in 1999 of evidence from a bank robbery they once suspected linked Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to white supremacists who were threatening before McVeigh's bombing to attack the government, documents show.

The evidence included a surveillance videotape of a bank robbery by some of the supremacists that occurred in Ohio five months before the bombing. The FBI lab compared the tape to pictures of McVeigh, but concluded a match was "inconclusive," internal memos show.

The 1999 destruction order, obtained by The Associated Press, was unusual because at the time McVeigh and one of the bank robbers had legal appeals pending.

And the government knew, but had turned aside, an offer from one of the bank robbers, Peter Kevin Langan, to provide information about possible other conspirators in the McVeigh case. Langan and his lawyer claim he still possesses Oklahoma City information the government hasn't heard.

not really, fred. what do you make it out to be? buick? ford? I cain't really tell.

also what is the white car directly behind rosencrans?

re: vehicles reportedly involved in the event......

remember talk about the yellow mercury timmy was in when he was arrested.

the pickup they were seen riding around in in OKC. I think it was reported that this was painted by the ME crew immediately after the bombing.

robert jacks was seen around joplin, MO. in a white T'Bird, iirc. there are pix of this somewhere on the net.

the ME rented a blue corsica in dallas.

cain't remember the car that was seen on OK state trooper's video of mcveigh's arrest.

timmy did have an old heap of some kind that he drove from Kingman to Kansas that he traded for the yellow merc, iirc.

there was also a civilian auto shown along w/ the Ryder truck in the series of pix from Camp Gruber.

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