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Salon: The Mystery of John Doe No. 2
News/Current Events Front Page News
Source: Salon
Published: June 9, 2001 Author: David Neiwert
Posted on 06/09/2001 15:00:47 PDT by stevem99
By David Neiwert
June 9, 2001 | The main thing Joann Van Buren says she remembers about Timothy McVeigh is the $50 bill he wanted her to break. That, and the two men who accompanied him.
One day before he tore a hole in the nation's psyche with the bomb that destroyed Oklahoma City's Murrah Federal Building, McVeigh, Van Buren says, pulled up to the little Subway sandwich shop where she worked in Junction City, Kansas, driving the yellow Ryder truck that would contain the bomb.
Van Buren didn't pay any particular attention to them at first. Another clerk waited on the men, but when they tried to pay for their meal with a large bill, she took notice.
"As soon as the $50 bill came up, I had to go to the safe to get the change," says Van Buren today. "And when I gave them the change and they got their sandwiches, I remember them going back over to the corner, sitting down. And when they left, I remember three people getting into the truck. There were three people at the table."
The clerks she worked with later told FBI agents that two of the men matched the descriptions of McVeigh and his cohort, Terry Nichols. The third was a shorter, dark-haired and muscular man with an olive complexion: a perfect fit for the figure destined to be known as John Doe 2.
Luckily, the Subway shop actually had a video camera recording that day's events. When Van Buren contacted the FBI, agents interviewed everyone working in the shop on April 18. And when they were done, they confiscated the video recorded that day.
But if that tape showed a third co-conspirator with McVeigh and Nichols, no one outside the FBI can say. No one beyond the agency ever saw it. In the waning days of Nichols' trial, his defense attorneys discovered the details of Van Buren's story -- which had only been described in generic terms in the FBI's report, omitting her contention that two men accompanied McVeigh -- along with information contained in some 43,000 other "lead sheets" that the FBI until then had failed to turn over to them.
Michael Tigar, who led the Nichols defense, tried in 1999 to use the FBI's failures to produce all relevant documents to gain a new trial for his client. But U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch refused, saying the withheld material would not have altered the trial's outcome.
He likely was right. In fact, Nichols' jury had already refused to give him the death penalty largely because of some jurors' belief that more people were involved in the bombing than merely McVeigh, Nichols and Michael and Lori Fortier, the Arizona couple who were acquaintances with the two men and who were the prosecution's chief witnesses. That belief is also shared by thousands of conspiracy theorists who remain convinced the whole truth about the Oklahoma City bombing has not been told. Nichols' verdict stands as nearly the sole validation that the bombing may not have been the product of two lone bombers.
And when the FBI admitted it had failed to turn over another 3,100 documents to defense attorneys, fresh fuel was thrown onto those fires. McVeigh's execution was delayed a month as lawyers for both men started combing through the withheld information to see if it might give them an opportunity to overturn at least their sentences, if not their convictions. His execution is now scheduled for Monday.
But just as he hovered in the background of numerous eyewitness accounts like Joann Van Buren's, the figure of John Doe No. 2 almost certainly lurks within those withheld documents -- and he will continue to haunt the Oklahoma City case after McVeigh is executed. And, in an era that has seen more FBI foul-ups than any other time in history, the bureau's inability to explain away the repeated accounts of additional participants in the bombings has raised legitimate questions about the quality of its own investigation -- as well as fueled thoughts of larger conspiracies that will live beyond McVeigh.
Excellent article. Rest of it is at: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/06/09/john_doe/index.html {inactive link}
1 Posted on 06/09/2001 15:00:47 PDT by stevem99
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http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b08cdffxxxx.htm {inactive link}
Found this in the archives
"August 5, 1995 OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (CNN) -- Federal law enforcement officials may be ready to charge more people in the Oklahoma City bombing. The director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms told the "Daily Oklahoman" newspaper there will be more than two, but less than five indictments by next Friday's deadline.
The 'deadline' they are referring to is the August 11 cutoff to indict McVeigh.
I know we shouldn't get our hopes up, but is anyone else starting to wonder if the house of cards is beginning to collapse?
Atticus
33 Posted on 05/21/2001 05:37:48 PDT by Atticus318
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