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OKLAHOMA CITY - Oklahoma taxpayers spent almost $4.2 million to provide a defense for bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, paying for such things as books, seminars, lawn care, coffee sweetener and an alarm system. Expenses filed by court-appointed defense attorney Brian Hermanson included $28.05 so Nichols could read the book, "The American Terrorist," an account of the life of Oklahoma City bombing mastermind Timothy McVeigh. A $300 claim was filed for lawn care costs for one of the defense attorneys, whose $750-a-month rental house in McAlester was paid for by taxpayers during Nichols' trial. Coffee sweetener that cost $3.99 was among...

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Terry Nichols admitted during plea negotiations in his state trial last year that he played a major role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, a newspaper reported Sunday. Nichols admitted to prosecutors in a signed statement that he helped Timothy McVeigh make the bomb that killed 168 people in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995, The Oklahoman reported. McVeigh was put to death for masterminding the attack. "McVeigh told me what to do," Nichols said in the statement, which was prepared with the aid of his attorneys. Nichols, 49, is serving life sentences without...

Terry Nichols confessed during secret plea negotiations last year that he had a major role in the deadly 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. He also stated that he knew of no other conspirators in the attack that left 168 dead, including 19 children. "I am unaware as to who was involved in the planning besides McVeigh,'' he stated. However, Nichols refused to disclose where he hid stolen blasting caps left over from the making of the bomb. Nichols, 49, never testified at his 1997 federal trial or this year's state trial. His attorneys claimed he had no part in the attack...

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Already serving life in federal prison, Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols is set to be sentenced to life in state prison Monday, and his attorneys say he may use the occasion to speak publicly for the first time since he went on trial. The possibility of a statement gives new hope to victims' families who question whether the bombing conspiracy was limited to Nichols and bomber Timothy McVeigh.

MCALESTER, Okla. (Reuters) - The state jury that convicted Terry Nichols of murder for the Oklahoma City bombing heard opening statements on Tuesday in a penalty phase during which they will decide whether Nichols should be executed. Last Wednesday, the jury found Nichols guilty of 161 counts of murder in the 1995 bombing of a federal building in a crime that rocked America's sense of domestic security. The penalty phase is expected to include testimony from Nichols' mother, who will plead for her son's life, and family members of the victims who died when the blast detonated by executed bomber...

McALESTER, Okla. - Two members of the jury considering sentencing for Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols were dismissed by the judge Wednesday and were replaced by the last two remaining alternate jurors. Judge Steven Taylor did not explain what the two jurors did wrong, but he strongly told the rest of the panel not to discuss the case outside of regular jury deliberations. "Do not discuss sentencing," Taylor said following a one-hour closed meeting with prosecution and defense attorneys. "Do not allow anyone to discuss it with you." One of the jurors dismissed Wednesday was the jury foreman. Nichols...

Recently translated documents captured by U.S. forces provide new evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Rosters of officers in Saddam's Fedayeen list Lt. Col. Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, who was present at the January 2000 al-Qaida "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9-11 attacks were planned, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Fedayeen was the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday, which was deployed to do much of the regime's dirty work. The U.S. has never been sure Shakir was at the Kuala...

<p>McALESTER, Okla. (AP) - Nearly a decade after the Oklahoma City bombing, Terry Nichols was convicted of 161 state murder charges Wednesday for helping carry out what was then the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. He could get the death sentence he escaped when he was convicted in federal court in the 1990s.</p>

A government scientist lied when he claimed that ammonium nitrate crystals found on Oklahoma City bombing debris had been embedded by the force of the blast, an FBI whistleblower testified Wednesday at bombing conspirator Terry Nichols' state murder trial. Frederic Whitehurst, testifying for the defense, said an FBI forensic scientist he trained himself, Steven Burmeister, also lied when he testified that the crystals came from the kind of fertilizer believed to have been used in the bombing. Whitehurst said there was not enough evidence to support either of Burmeister's conclusions. "He is my student. And I trust him like a...

It is obvious material for conspiracy buffs: Did Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols really act alone, or was some larger terrorist outfit behind the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building? In Oklahoma City, an investigative reporter began asking the question long before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Jayna Davis, in a series that aired on KFOR-TV in 1995, examined the possible existence of John Doe No. 2, a man witnesses saw with McVeigh outside the federal building moments before the bomb went off, killing 168 people. Her ...

The Enemy Withinby William F. Jasper The terrorist threat comes from a long list of dangerous organizations, many of which may have extensive operations inside the United States. The current U.S. administration has sent American military forces to the other side of the world to capture Osama bin Laden. The real, imminent threat, however, is here at home. The horrendous attacks of September 11th involved only a small number of the Trojan Horse terrorist troops still within our gates. It is this legion of terror that must be rooted out before it can launch even more cataclysmic attacks of death ...

<p>The FBI doesn't want to talk about it, but the evidence keeps mounting.</p> <p>Critical evidence that several Middle Eastern men may have been connected to the Oklahoma City bombing appears to have been kept from the public by the FBI.</p>

Abu Sayyaf bandits were involved in international terrorist operations that targeted American facilities long before the Sept. 11 attacks that sparked US President George W. Bush’s global campaign against the al-Qaida and its allies. Philippine defense and police intelligence sources told THE MANILA TIMES that Abu Sayyaf leaders had met with terrorist masterminds of several atrocities just before US targets were hit. Although Philippine authorities advised American authorities of the alliance between the Abu Sayyaf, Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida, and American neo-nazis, the US appeared to ignore the warnings; until Sept. 11. Strange bedfellows But according to the sources, ...

A daylong legal drama over records hit a fever pitch in the newsroom of this newspaper Monday afternoon. An Oklahoma police investigator said he had been ordered by the Oklahoma County district attorney's office to remove 40 boxes of records from the newspaper, while local attorney Jerry McCombs and an Oklahoma City attorney, Gazette publisher Bruce Willingham and reporter J.D. Cash all told him no, he was not taking them. Meanwhile, a National Public Radio reporter who had come to Idabel to interview Cash and knew nothing of the controversy, got a firsthand look at how the Oklahoma City bombing...

As a last question to former FBI head Louis Freeh, 9-11 Commissioner John Lehman asked whether Freeh was familiar with the information Jayna Davis has gathered for her new book, "The Third Terrorist." Davis, a former Oklahoma City newswoman, makes a powerful case that Terry Nichols had conspired with convicted World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef in the Philippines and that Timothy McVeigh had received direct aid in the construction and delivery of the bomb from, among others, likely Iraqi agent, Hussain Al-Hussaini, the alleged John Doe #2. This was an excellent question. Lehman, however, addressed it to the wrong...

The national trauma caused by the Oklahoma City bombing was only 9 days old when an affable, soft-spoken furnace builder got the surprise of his life. Standing outside his suburban Oklahoma City home, he suddenly came face to face with FBI Special Agent Jim Ellis. “He asked me my name, and then he said, ‘We have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is, we found your truck. The bad news is, it was used in the Murrah bombing.’” Ellis’ words left him feeling elated that his truck was recovered, but stunned by its implications....

McALESTER, Okla. -- Terry Nichols went on trial for his life Monday in the Oklahoma City bombing and was alternately portrayed as an eager participant in the attack and a fall guy in a conspiracy wider than the government has acknowledged. Nichols hated the U.S. government and worked hand-in-hand with Timothy McVeigh in assembling and detonating the ''huge, monstrous bomb,'' prosecutor Lou Keel said during opening statements in the state murder trial. ''These two were partners, and their business was terrorism,'' Keel said. Nichols, wearing a gray sport jacket over a white, buttoned-down collar shirt, occasionally whispered to his attorneys...

The always fascinating Dan Drezner has a bunch of good posts up.. sorry, we are going to skip to the red meat: On Page 127 [of his new "Against All Enemies"], Clarke notes that it's possible that al-Qaida operatives in the Philippines "taught Terry Nichols how to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building." Intelligence places Nichols there on the same days as Ramzi Yousef, and "we do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippines stay and were deadly when he returned." This ties in to the theory that Clinton quashed investigations into a foreign connection to Terry...

McALESTER, Okla. - Terry Nichols' state trial is to get under way Monday with opening statements and a defendant already serving a life sentence on federal changes. The trial is estimated to last four to six months. Prosecutors have lined up more than 400 witnesses to testify against Nichols, who is charged in Oklahoma with 161 counts of first-degree murder. Defense attorneys claim that Nichols was set up. Nichols, 48, was already convicted for the deaths of eight federal law enforcement officers in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people. The state charges are...

Withheld evidence to sink case against Nichols? Massive FBI intel failure, wider conspiracy in 1995 terror expected to emerge Posted: March 20, 20047:05 p.m. Eastern By J.D. Cash © 2004 McCurtain Daily Gazette In a phone call from a federal prison yesterday, convicted bank bandit and former Aryan Republican Army leader Peter Kevin Langan Jr. made a startling revelation to the McCurtain Daily Gazette – that former associate Richard Lee Guthrie Jr. robbed a Hot Springs, Ark., gun dealer in November 1994, not accused Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols. That revelation from Langan is expected to be one of a number coming...