Why Defenbaugh Did It

A top FBI agent says he kept quiet for months about the mishandling of files in the Oklahoma City bombing case because he wasn’t sure at first there was a real problem and didn’t want to “cry wolf.” The document blunder last year led to a delay in bomber Timothy McVeigh’s execution.

Agent Danny Defenbaugh is criticized in an internal report for not notifying prosecutors and FBI headquarters of the problem sooner.

In the 192-page report — released Tuesday — the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general recommends Defenbaugh be disciplined.

“Yeah, I should have sped it up, no question about it,” Defenbaugh said in interviews for the report.

“However, I wasn’t gonna let him get executed, either. ... I wanted to make sure that we were right. If I was gonna blow the whistle and stop the juice from flowing, I was gonna make sure that we were right and we were thorough.”

McVeigh was executed June 11 by lethal injection at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

His execution was delayed after the FBI admitted finding hundreds of documents that should have been turned over to defense attorneys years before.

Defenbaugh was first told of mistakes in January 2001 but waited until May 7 to notify prosecutors and FBI headquarters.

“We believe the failure of senior FBI managers to take timely action to resolve or report the problem of the belated documents was a significant neglect of their duties,” the inspector general said.

Defenbaugh spearheaded the bombing investigation and now is in charge of the FBI field office in Dallas.

He told investigators he thought researchers would eventually find that questioned documents had been given to defense attorneys.

Defenbaugh also argued “that supervision of the project was Oklahoma City’s responsibility,” according to the report.

The inspector general disagreed, saying, “As a former head of the FBI team, Defenbaugh had an obligation to ensure that a problem of that magnitude was being resolved timely and adequately.”

In a statement Tuesday, Defenbaugh said he accepts the criticism of his actions, but he made decisions “based on my honest evaluation of the situation.”

Discipline also was recommended against agent Mark White, an FBI supervisor in Dallas, and, to a lesser extent, against agent William Teater, an FBI supervisor in Oklahoma City.

The inspector general said Teater “in many ways ... performed appropriately” but should have done more “to ensure that someone was making the necessary decisions.” Teater declined comment Tuesday.

The inspector general also questioned whether administrative action was warranted against FBI agent Richard Marquise, who took over the field office in Oklahoma City in 1999.

“We had difficulty determining whether or how much criticism should be directed at Marquise,” the inspector general wrote.

Marquise was faulted for not asking questions after reading e-mails about the problem. Marquise told investigators he thought the e-mails dealt with documents being sent to state prosecutors.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said Tuesday, “We are reviewing these criticisms and will quickly move to take any appropriate disciplinary actions.”

The director also said major changes in the management of records are already under way.

The inspector general found human error — not the computer system — was to blame for the mistake.

“The FBI has not spent enough time, money and attention on document management,” Inspector General Glenn Fine said. “It is not the glamorous part of the agency’s mission.”

An FBI critic, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the FBI can no longer use the excuse that “the computer ate my homework.

Two FBI employees in Oklahoma City, Peggy Richmond and Linda Vernon, were praised by the inspector general for helping to uncover the problem.

“We believe the FBI would do well to use this as an opportunity to help remedy a long-standing FBI problem — the belief among FBI employees that bringing problems to management’s attention only results in problems for the employee,” the inspector general wrote.

The inspector general’s report reveals the FBI destroyed some bombing documents, but defense attorneys were never told.

The inspector general also found a significant number of the documents concerned “utterly useless information.”

One example, according to the report, was an interview of someone who suggested that a sketch of a bombing suspect resembled singer Garth Brooks.

Just another lying corrupt FBI puke. Maybe Mueller will make him bring his own lunch to work for two weeks, and make him sew diversity quilts with leftover material from the CIA.

Report Faults FBI's Dallas Chief

Defenbaugh defends handling of evidence in McVeigh case

The Dallas Morning News
By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT
March 20, 2002

WASHINGTON – The head of the FBI's Dallas office and two other supervisors should be disciplined for failing to speedily disclose that thousands of pages of evidence had been withheld from Timothy McVeigh's lawyers, the Justice Department inspector general said in a report issued Tuesday.

Despite learning of possible document production problems in January 2001, the FBI's Dallas chief, Danny Defenbaugh, and others in the Dallas and Oklahoma City field offices waited until May 7 – just days before Mr. McVeigh's scheduled execution – before alerting their superiors, said Inspector General Glenn Fine.

"We believe these delays by the FBI supervisors were a significant neglect of their duties," Mr. Fine stated in his 192-page report. "They could have, and should have, notified FBI headquarters and the prosecutors much earlier about the potential problem, not wait until one week before the scheduled execution date."

Special Agent Defenbaugh defended his handling of the matter, saying he wanted to assess the scope of the problem before notifying FBI headquarters.

While concluding that there was no deliberate effort to conceal evidence from lawyers for Mr. McVeigh or accomplice Terry Nichols, the inspector general was sharply critical of the conduct of Special Agent Defenbaugh, who headed the investigation into the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, and his deputy, Mark White, a Dallas supervisory special agent. Mr. Fine also recommended that Oklahoma City supervisory Special Agent William Teater be disciplined.

Praising the inquiry as "thorough, objective and independent," FBI Director Robert Mueller said, "We are reviewing these criticisms and will quickly move to take any appropriate disciplinary actions."

Now that the inspector general's inquiry is complete, the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility will examine the findings and evaluate the agents' conduct to determine whether to take disciplinary action. A decision is expected in a matter of weeks, "not months," one FBI official said, declining to discuss the range of possible sanctions.

"We have a process in place to quickly consider the issue and make the appropriate recommendations and the appropriate decision, while at the same time ensuring [that] employees' due-process rights are protected," said FBI Assistant Director John Collingwood.

Appearing before TV cameras in Dallas to read a brief statement, Special Agent Defenbaugh pointed to the inspector general's finding that there was no deliberate effort to conceal evidence.

"I accept this criticism as it has been presented and respect the diligence which was exhibited in the investigation," he said. Decisions about the documents were "based on my honest evaluation of the situation, my many years of experience, and out of my desire to do the right thing."

Echoing Mr. Mueller's statement, he also noted that the FBI already has undertaken a series of reforms – including retraining all employees in document handling and moving to replace the bureau's legendarily antiquated paper-based case management system with a computerized version.

Special Agent Defenbaugh, 51, who joined the bureau in 1969, said he has no intention of resigning.

Gary Johnson, an FBI spokesman in Oklahoma City, declined to comment on the report, referring a reporter to Mr. Mueller's statement. In addition to proposing disciplinary action against the three men, the inspector general said sanctions should be weighed against Oklahoma City chief Richard Marquise for his "inaction" during the document incident.

The inspector general singled out for praise the two Oklahoma City FBI analysts, Linda Vernon and Peggy Richmond, who warned Special Agents Defenbaugh, White and Teater about their fear that documents had been mislaid.

The pair became concerned after an examination of bombing investigation documents, shipped to Oklahoma City in January 2001 by field offices in Miami and Birmingham, Ala., suggested that some original documents had not been given to the defense. They alerted Special Agent White on Jan. 29, 2001, with Ms. Vernon stating in an e-mail: "My concern is this is a big discovery problem since we told the defense they have seen everything."

The analysts were directed to continue their review, sending out an FBI-wide directive again reminding field offices that all bombing investigation documents had to be turned over to the Oklahoma City office. The inspector general faulted Special Agent Defenbaugh for not setting deadlines for the review, even though the execution date was drawing near. It wasn't until May 7, when the review was completed and more than 700 mislaid documents had been shipped to Dallas, that Special Agent Defenbaugh notified headquarters.

Mr. McVeigh was scheduled to be executed on May 16, 2001. But confronted with the document disclosure, Attorney General John Ashcroft intervened to delay the execution until June 11. He also ordered the inspector general to investigate how the failure occurred.

"The American people have a right to have confidence in our justice system," Mr. Ashcroft said Tuesday. "The Department of Justice is committed to implementing necessary reforms at the FBI."

A leading FBI critic on Capitol Hill, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the findings indicate the need for "swift and sure action that holds accountable the people who are responsible."

Special Agent Defenbaugh defended his conduct during interviews with investigators from the inspector general's office, saying it was up to Oklahoma City officials to supervise the laborious process of examining whether any of the millions of pages of interviews, photographs and other evidence compiled by FBI offices around the nation had not been given to lawyers.

He told investigators that he did not notify FBI higher-ups earlier because he wanted to ascertain the scope of the problem and feared that word would quickly leak to reporters if the Justice Department was notified.

"Yeah, I should have sped it up, no question about that," he said during one interview excerpt included in the report. "However, I wasn't going to let [McVeigh] get executed either. ... If I was going to blow the whistle and stop the juice from flowing, I was going to make sure that we were right and I was thorough."

An attorney for Mr. Nichols, Michael Tigar, rejected the inspector general's conclusion that the documents were of little value to the defense.

"I read the documents. I identified a very large number of them that I thought were material to Terry Nichols' defense," he said, adding that he could not discuss specifics because the documents remain under seal.

"The American people have a right to have confidence in our justice system," Mr. Ashcroft said Tuesday. "The Department of Justice is committed to implementing necessary reforms at the FBI."

Thanks for the laugh John.

WIN AT ALL COSTS - The Rule of Law is Dead

Attorney General John Ashcroft Picks Arthur Andersen For FBI Review

Counter Terrorism Failures and Cover-Ups by the FBI and Danny Defenbaugh (OKC, 9/11)

This should tell you something.

"Mr. Defenbaugh, a 30-year FBI veteran and bomb expert, received the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service for his work on the Oklahoma City bombing."

A COLLECTION OF PUBLIC RECORDS CONFIRMING THE PRESENCE OF ADDITIONAL BOMBS IN THE MURRAH BUILDING!

The Secret Life of Bill Clinton
Ambrose Evans Pritchard
Chapter One - (Pages 5,6,7,8)
Regnery Publishing, Inc., Wasgington D.C. -1997

"But the trial did not bring out the full story. Indeed, it was skillfully managed to ensure that collateral revelations were kept to a minimum.

This was a terrible mistake. The Oklahoma bombing was the most deadly act of terrorism ever committed on U.S. soil. It was no time for a sloppy investigation or a trial that could be considered as expedited, abridged, or rigged in any way. Jurists concurred that it was imperative that the Justice Department conduct itself beyond reproach if this tragedy was to attain closure. It would be profoundly injurious to the republic if it were ever felt that the proceedings were manipulated for the benefit of the executive branch. Retribution was important, of course, but it was even more important to sustain confidence in the American democratic system for decades to come. The President professed agreement. The Attorney General promised to make this an exhibit of American excellence.

It did not happen. In violation of its "Brady" responsibilities, the prosecution withheld material from the defense that was exculpatory or impeached the credibility of government witnesses. It delayed a year in handing over FD-302 witness statements that were critical to the defense. It stonewalled, obstructed, and dragged its feet at every turn. It also told a series of demonstrable lies that will be enumerated in this book. If this is how the Justice Department behaves in a high profile case after the President and the Attorney General have both made explicit promises of transparency, I dread to think how it conducts itself when nobody is paying attention.

As for the FBI, the proven malfeasance of the crime labs in the handling of scientific evidence from the crime scene makes it clear that the "OKBOMB" investigation was rotten from the foundations up. Far from taking extra precautions to uphold the highest standards of forensic evidence, the FBI resorted to methods that cannot be tolerated in a democratic society. The report of the Justice Department's Inspector General lists the Oklahoma bombing case as one of the worst examples of "de facto" evidence tampering by the crime labs.

It is worth dwelling on this point because the FBI has been patting itself on the back for "solving" the Oklahoma bombing, as if it had cause for self-congratulation. In the first place, the FBI had no scientific basis for concluding that the Murrah Building was blown up by an ammonium nitrate fertilizer bomb. The FBI did not know in 1995, and does not know to this day, what actually caused the explosion. The Justice Department report concluded that the explosives unit simply "guessed" that the bomb was made of 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate after "recovery of receipts showing that defendant Nichols purchased 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate."

The labs guessed that the explosive charge was placed in 50 gallon white plastic barrels, without conducting the requisite tests, after the discovery of 50-gallon plastic containers at the house of Terry Nichols. They said that the detonator appeared to be a Primadet Delay system, but no trace of this was found at the crime scene. Primadet was, however, found at the house of Terry Nichols....You get the picture.

The FBI crime labs sculpted a theory of the bombing that would help the prosecution secure convictions against Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols--and science be damned. Once it is understood that the FBI behaved this way in handling empirical evidence--where malfeasance is susceptible to exposure--it becomes easier to discern the attitudes that informed the rest of the OKBOMB investigation. It is my contention that the crime labs were no worse than other divisions of the FBI. The only difference is that the technicians were caught red-handed, while certain corrupt field agents and their superiors have yet to be exposed.

In summing up, the Inspector General's report found that the FBI crime labs had "repeatedly reached conclusions that incriminated the defendants without scientific basis" in the Oklahoma bombing case. I find this quite staggering. In Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, shared by Britain and America, it is not acceptable to shape the crime to fit the suspect. It is a practice we condemn as "framing." I do not understand why the current director of the FBI is still drawing a paycheck from the U.S. taxpayer after a scandal of this magnitude, especially since he permitted the retaliatory harassment of Dr. Frederick Whitehurst, the chief whistle-blower.

It was the duty of Judge Richard Matsch to prevent the executive branch from conducting a politicized trial that obscured the facts. Instead he went with the flow, acceding to the prosecution's request that the Inspector General's report be barred as evidence. It was never made clear to the jury that the FBI did not know what kind of bomb really caused the blast, nor that the FBI had forfeited its magisterial authority.

But most serious of all, the judge refused to allow the testimony of an ATF informant with very relevant information indicating that the Oklahoma bombing was a broad conspiracy....
THE SECRET LIFE OF BILL CLINTON - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

John Ashcroft is full of crap!

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