The case against Nichols is closed. The case against McVeigh is closed.
Then the government maintains there were no other co-conspirators.
No one questioned the obvious contradiction.
McCurtain Daily Gazette (Idabel, Oklahoma)
1 July 1997
THE REV. ROBERT MILLAR IDENTIFIED AS FBI INFORMANT
By J.D. Cash
Tulsa-- Near pandemonium broke out in a federal courtroom here Monday when a senior agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shocked observers by telling the court that the spiritual leader of Elohim City, the Rev. Robert Millar, was a confidential informant for the FBI.
The McCurtain Daily Gazette has long been reporting that Elohim City is a religious and paramilitary compound in east-central Oklahoma that is frequented by some of the most dangerous members of the neo-Nazi iunderground in the United States and Canada.
Although residents of the cult have continued to deny it publicly, the Gazette has reported that its sources believe one of those shadowy figures was Timothy McVeigh.
Stories published in this newspaper have also exposed Elohim City as the center of a wide-ranging conspiracy to overthrow the federal government by members of a group called the Aryan Republican Army.
Several of those members have since been arrested on charges related to a string of bank robberies across the midwestern United States.
The incredible revelation that the leader of Elohim City himself was part of a government intelligence operation came during a pre-trial hearing associated with the upcoming trial of another confidential informant and frequenter of the compound, Carol E. Howe.
Howe, a former Tulsa beauty queen, debutante and one-time paid undercover informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, is scheduled to stand trial later this month for conspiracy charges associated with making bomb threats and possession of bomb-making components.
Howe was indicted shortly after the Gazette reported that she intended to be a key witness in the trial of Timothy McVeigh.
U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, who presided over the McVeigh trial, refused to let Howe testify in Denver-- ruling that her information that Elohim City was the center of the bombing conspiracy "might confuse the jury."
Under questioning Monday by Howe attorney Clark Brewster of Tulsa, Special Agent Peter Rickel stunned everyone when he reluctantly admitted that the man Elohim City cult members call "Grandpa" is really a cooperating source for the FBI.
Millar's status as a confidential informant began in the fall of 1994. The FBI admitted in court that Millar was a paid confidential informant, although the amount of his paycheck was not revealed.
When Rickel disclosed this startling information, a senior FBI agent and several U.S. attorneys bolted from the courtroom in an agitated state.
Millar's encampment was heretofore considered by experts in domestic terrorism to be the "Switzerland" of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States.
"No one questioned the obvious contradiction."
Or asked the obvious: Is the case still open? If yes, why?