Posted on 02/21/2007 1:10:07 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols says a high-ranking FBI official "apparently" was directing Timothy McVeigh in the plot to blow up a government building and might have changed the original target of the attack, according to a new affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Utah.
The official and other conspirators are being protected by the federal government "in a cover-up to escape its responsibility for the loss of life in Oklahoma," Nichols claims in a Feb. 9 affidavit.
Documents that supposedly help back up his allegations have been sealed to protect information in them, such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah had no comment on the allegations. The FBI and Justice Department in Washington, D.C., also declined comment.
Nichols does not say what motive the government would have to be involved in the bombing.
The affidavit was filed in a lawsuit brought by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, who believes his brother's death in a federal prison was linked to the Oklahoma City bombing. The suit, which seeks documents from the FBI under the federal Freedom of Information Act, alleges that authorities mistook Kenneth Trentadue for a bombing conspirator and that guards killed him in an interrogation that got out of hand.
Trentadue's death a few months after the April 19, 1995, bombing was ruled a suicide after several investigations. The government has adamantly denied any wrongdoing in the death.
In his affidavit, Nichols says he wants to bring closure to the survivors and families of the attack on the Alfred B. Murrah Federal Building, which took 168 lives. He alleges he wrote then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004, offering to help identify all parties who played a role in the bombing but never got a reply.
Nichols is serving a life sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo. McVeigh, who carried out the bombing, was executed in 2001.
McVeigh and Nichols were the only defendants indicted in the bombing. However, Nichols alleges others were involved.
McVeigh told him he was recruited for undercover missions while serving in the military, according to Nichols. He says he learned sometime in 1995 that there had been a change in bombing target and that McVeigh was upset by that.
"There, in what I believe was an accidental slip of the tongue, McVeigh revealed the identity of a high-ranking FBI official who was apparently directing McVeigh in the bomb plot," Nichols says in the affidavit.
Nichols also says that McVeigh threatened him and his family to force him to rob Roger Moore, an Arkansas gun dealer, of weapons and explosives. He later learned the robbery was staged so Moore, who was in on the phony heist, could deny any knowledge of the bombing plot if the stolen items were traced back to him, Nichols claims.
He adds that Moore allegedly told his attorney that he would not be prosecuted in connection with the bombing because he was a "protected witness."
Moore could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
In addition, Nichols says McVeigh must have had help building the bomb. The device he and McVeigh built the day before the bombing did not resemble the one that ultimately was used, Nichols says, and "displayed a level of expertise and sophistication" that neither man had.
pmanson@sltrib.com
This grand jury's report says that there is no credible evidence that anyone other than McVeigh and Nichols was involved, that there is no credible evidence that the government or the ATF or any government agencies had prior knowledge that a bombing would occur; that was one of the popular conspiracy theories. And finally they said that there is no evidence that this white supremacist compound in Eastern Oklahoma called Elohim City was the place where the bomb conspiracy was hatched. And that was something that defense teams for both McVeigh and Nichols tried to show at their trials in Denver.
ping.
Kind of like when he was talking to Larry King when Foster's body was discovered in Marcy Park. Remember how he had to leave the show early?
Why is this a story
New movie coming out
The Shooter
About a guy set up by the Govt.......
OKC lost all his luster when people stole his idea about the bombs in the supports and used them on the WTC.
Tell you what. Let us release Terry Nichols at ground zero in
Oklahoma City with prior notice and let the people beat the truth out of him.
If I was in his shoes then I would come up with stories like this too, in hopes of somehow getting a deal to eventually get released. He's got nothing to lose and everything to gain if some fool actually believes him.
Fine by me.
Think about this: the Iraqi secret police were very adept at forgeries and had many agents living in the US; forged identities for presenting themselves as FBI agents of deep cover would be too easily accepted by persons already planning to revenge the fire bombing in Waco if the 'agents' were presenting themselves as plannign to revenge missteps by the current administration and particularly Reno; Iraqi explosives experts would be very capable of building on frist try a waepon like the one detonated at the Murrah building. I'm not ready to poopoo Nichols' claims since he might be very mistaken because of Iraqi deception.
I think that was a South Park episode.
Sit down and figure out how many "government people" would have had to be aware of this operation and coverup to make it work.
None of these people talked? It's said three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. This of course being the same government that has such great difficulty doing some of the simplest things. They couldn't even burgle the Watergate hotel efficiently.
How many cold murderous bastards do these conspiracy folks think work for the government? I can envision a small rogue group taking out those they see as enemies of the government, or the environment, or some other great threat to a great cause. But blowing up random office workers and children? I don't buy it.
Occam's Razor leans toward one or two evil nuts being responsible rather than hundreds or thousands of evil nuts working directly for the government and willing to plan, carry out and cover up mass murder of innocents. Is it really logical to imagine a GS employee willing to perpetrate such things, making himself highly eligible to receive the death penalty, for a government salary and good health care benefits?
Go ask Sandy Burglar after he's been tortured.
BS from a conspiracy theorist. Hasn't he ever heard of redaction?
Sounds like the plot from a Freeper's novel ... guy is an ex-Seal and knows his stuff.
Did you see a few months back where Keating said he asked the FBI to continue looking for some more people that were involved? First time I had ever heard that. There is more to this story then meetings the eye IMHO.
I am not attending Keating's speech the night before the Convention after he endorsed McCain.
While not directly related to the OKC bombing, this is evidence of a high-level government cover-up of the mass murder of American citizens at Waco:
House of Representatives Report 104-749 8/2/96 Committee of Government Reform & Oversight "..."The staff also had an opportunity to inspect the physical evidence taken from the ruins of the residence after the fire, much of which had been used in the criminal trial of surviving Davidians. By prior agreement with the Justice Department, a potential witness at the hearings, Failure Analysis Associates, Inc., was to inspect some of the physical evidence in order to respond to tampering allegations. It was believed that the views of scientists from Failure Analysis, who had often performed scientific evaluations for the Federal Government, including the Justice Department and NASA after the Challenger explosion, would be beneficial given public suspicions about the firearms recovered from the site of the Davidian residence. The inspection would not have damaged the weapons and was to have been conducted in the presence of all parties. It was hoped that the inspection would determine whether the Davidians had attempted to alter legal, semi-automatic weapons by converting them into illegal, automatic weapons as the ATF had alleged, and whether any of this evidence had been altered after it was gathered from the destroyed Davidian residence. When the scientists arrived in Austin, the Department declined to make the firearms available to them. The Department agreed instead to conduct the tests itself and present its findings to the subcommittees. A short time later, the Department urged, for cost considerations, that the tests not be performed. As a result, no tests were performed on the firearms." ....."
Is this evidence that the government is responsible for what happened at OKC? No.
Is this evidence that supports the notion that high-level cover-ups for the murder of American citizens? IMO, Yes.
That's the argument I tend to use. It's just too hard to keep hundreds and thousands of people quiet.
On the other hand I think islamic terrorist involvement is entirely plausible.
You're kidding, I hope...you forgot the /sarc tag.
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