Especially after reading this article.
Posted on 11/28/2004 8:15:21 PM PST by Former Military Chick
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 parole for separate convictions in state and federal courts for his role in the bombings. Juries in 1997's federal trial and the state trial this June deadlocked over whether he should be sentenced to death.
According to the statement, Nichols knew of no other conspirators in the attack and said he did not know which building McVeigh had chosen as a target until reading about it after the bombing.
Nichols' attorneys claimed in both trials that he had no part in the attack and suggested McVeigh had help from others and set up him up to take the blame.
Nichols' admission was made as his attorneys tried to persuade state prosecutors not to seek the death penalty. His statements are similar to what McVeigh told biographers before his June 2001 execution.
Negotiations for a plea deal fell through, however, because prosecutors believed Nichols was not forthcoming enough.
District Attorney Wes Lane said although the document underscores Nichols' involvement in the bombing, it also reveals how little Nichols was willing to tell prosecutors, including his refusal to "tell us where certain bomb-making materials are still hidden, even to this day."
Nichols' attorneys declined to comment for Sunday's story.
In the statement, Nichols admitted he helped McVeigh obtain the bomb's ingredients: ammonium nitrate fertilizer from a farmers co-op in Kansas and nitromethane racing fuel from a racetrack in Texas.
He also admitted picking McVeigh up in downtown Oklahoma City on Easter 1995 - three days before the April 19 attack. McVeigh had driven from Kansas to Oklahoma City to park the getaway car, according to evidence at the trials.
Nichols described in detail how he and McVeigh alone built the bomb in the back of a rented Ryder truck beside a Kansas fishing lake.
"The bomb was constructed at Geary Lake. The only people present were Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols," Nichols said in the statement.
Nichols denied knowing anyone else, including McVeigh's friend Michael Fortier, had a role in the bombing.
Fortier is serving a 12-year federal prison sentence for knowing about the bomb plot and not telling authorities, for helping McVeigh move and sell stolen guns and for lying to FBI agents after the bombing.
Especially after reading this article.
Next April 19th will be the 10th anniversary of the OKC bombing, Patriot's day, and my graduation from the police academy.
If he got life, the state trial was a waste. He should get the death penalty.
A: Finally getting around to telling the truth.
This guy should get what his buddy got! NO deals, NO bargains of ANY KIND! I guess it's too late for that. Not too late however to FIX THE JUSTICE SYSTEM. This SOB is JUST AS GUILTY as McVeigh!!!! May God have mercy (or not) on his soul.
Was it worth it to get the info as said in the article, by sparing his life.
I did not lose anyone in the bombing, but, like many others we saw it unfold on TV. It was one of the most hideous events in our history, frankly it might be the worst American against American Act in recorded history? That the act was done with bomb materials, easily accessed and if used right have a place.
Many will never see that differently either.
I say, put, Nichols in a cell, that was designed so that he is separated by glass and must look at the beautiful, innocent faces of the children (of course the adults to) and then the aftermath, I think that is some type of justice. Just upsetting is all.
Except didn't we REALLY already know the truth?--and now we have to spend big bucks keeping this killer in permanent custody!
bumpt for later
Congratualations on your graduation next year!
The thing about this Nichols situation is what all he hasn't told.
it also reveals how little Nichols was willing to tell prosecutors, including his refusal to "tell us where certain bomb-making materials are still hidden, even to this day."
Nichols denied knowing anyone else, including McVeigh's friend Michael Fortier, had a role in the bombing.
He won't tell anything more, and there's a whole lot let unexplained.
I suppose the jury just wasn't sure how heavily involved Nichols was.
What's he doing still alive?
FOUR TIMES the articles says he acted alone - no muslims.
That's what the government wanted.
That should be a clue.
Ignore that it was a signature AQ attack.
prisoner6
You’re going to take his word over the word of the several ordinary citizens who saw McVeigh with others that morning in April? None identified Nichols as one of the men with McVeigh.
The Denver Post published the names of two citizens who made contact with McVeigh and the others. The Post ran a series after a six months investigation. I believe it was published in late 1996 and is available on their web site.
No thanks. I’ll trust people who have nothing to gain and who are not serving life for mass MURDER!
It was part of a plea deal..
None of it is worth the paper it is written on..
The accused agrees to admit certain things, whether they are true or not, in order to recieve a reduced sentence..
Why did he/they do it?
John Doe 2 exists, and Nichols knows it. Why did he and McVeigh protect him, and who knows who else?
Yup.
This is a decent article from 2002 that hits the high points.
Jewish World Review June 28, 2002 / 18 Tamuz, 5762
Muslim link in Oklahoma City bombing revisited
Mounting evidence of Muslim involvement in the April, 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City suggests why it is important - and may be imperative - that the United States create a new intelligence agency.
In the month before the bombing of the Murrah building, U.S. intelligence agencies received considerable "chatter" that Muslim extremists were planning to attack federal buildings in the United States, intelligence officials told the joint House-Senate committee investigating the intelligence failure on Sept. 11, the Associated Press reported.
On April 19, the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, a source in Saudi Arabia's intelligence service told Vince Canastraro, then the chief of counter-terrorism for the CIA, that an Iraqi hit squad was scouting targets to attack in Oklahoma City, Houston and Los Angeles, said Mike Johnston, an attorney who represents relatives of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. Johnston said he got his information from official documents through discovery in a lawsuit his clients have filed against Iraq.
Timothy McVeigh was executed, and Terry Nichols sentenced to life in prison, for their roles in the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh insisted, and the government maintains, that these neo-Nazis acted alone. There is considerable evidence to the contrary.
When McVeigh was captured, he had on his person telephone numbers in Iraq.
Nichols is a man who held only minimum wage jobs, and not many of them. Yet between 1990 and 1994, Nichols spent between $80,000 and $100,000 on trips to the Philippines. On his last trip, Nichols was on Basilan island at the same time as Ramzi Youssef, an Iraqi intelligence operative currently serving a life sentence in a federal penitentiary in Colorado for masterminding the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Edwin Angeles, a former leader of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group, said Nichols met with Youssef, a statement confirmed separately by Angeles' wife.
Youssef was arrested after a plot he was hatching to hijack American airliners in the Pacific was uncovered by Philippine police. A confederate, Abdul Hakim Murrad, told authorities that Youssef had also masterminded the Oklahoma City attack, Johnston said.
Jayna Davis, an investigative reporter for the NBC TV affiliate in Oklahoma City, obtained affidavits from several witnesses claiming to have seen McVeigh in the company of a "Middle Eastern-looking person" who resembled the sketch of John Doe Number Two. Davis did not identify the individual, an employee of a man suspected by the FBI of involvement with the PLO, in her broadcasts. But Hussein al-Husseini, a former Iraqi soldier, sued her for libel. A federal judge threw out the suit, on the grounds that the facts in Davis' broadcasts were true.
The Oklahoma City bomb was identical to the 1993 World Trade Center bomb. Michael Fortier testified about how McVeigh and Nichols, in October of 1994, had been unable to blow up a metal milk jug with a small ammonium nitrate device. Their bomb-making expertise underwent a quantum leap after Nichols' last trip to the Philippines.
These are a lot of dots. The FBI says they don't connect. But as the investigation into Sept. 11 has shown, connecting the dots is not an FBI forte.
An alliance between Muslim terrorists and domestic neo-Nazis makes perfect sense. Both hate Jews and the U.S. government. The neo-Nazis need money and expertise. The Muslim terrorists need U.S. citizens who can "blend in" to disguise attacks.
The CIA followed two terrorists who became 9/11 hijackers from an al Qaeda summit in Malaysia to San Diego, where their trail was dropped, because the law forbids the CIA from operating in the United States. We need an intelligence service that can connect dots, whether they are gathered at home or abroad. It need not - ought not - to have powers of arrest.
But it must be freed of the legal constraints, the bureaucratic rivalries, and the lack of imagination which plague the FBI and the CIA
If you type "Canastraro" into the search engine you won't get much but if you spell it this way you will: "Cannistraro"
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