Same politics behind the new Clancy movie alterations
My recollection is that he was described (at the time of the OKC bombing) as a darker skinned, swarthy individual of either hispanic or middle eastern appearance.
Not making any bets as to which of us is right on this one - but my recollection is pretty strong.
Anyone else out there remember how it came down then?
Good point, but somehow I don't think the OK bombing conspiracy theorists are gonna let this little 'ol detail get in the way of a favored theory. Now if they could just find a way to convert McVeigh from an agnostic to a Muslim post mortem...
"That same day, or possibly the following day, Debbie Nakanashi, an employee at the Post Office across from the Murrah Building, saw the pair when they stopped by and asked where they might find federal job applications. It was Nakanashi who provided the description for the well-known profile sketch of John Doe 2 in the baseball cap."
"Accompanying McVeigh was a short, stocky, handsome man, of either Mexican or American Indian descent. The man closely resembled the FBI sketch of John Doe 2, they said."
"The passenger in the pick-up was dark skinned with black hair, average height, and had a "real muscular build," she said. He was wearing a t-shirt and sun-glasses, and "looked just like the John Doe 2 sketch."
"Neighbors recalled seeing men who fit the general description of McVeigh and John Doe 2 at Nichols' Herrington home."
"It is Brescia, some investigators claim, who is the mysterious John Doe 2 originally sought by the FBI. Bombing victim Glenn Wilburn, along with investigator J.D. Cash, learned of Brescia's relationship to Strassmeir and McVeigh after talking to people at Elohim City and others in the white supremacist underground. The family filed a $30 million lawsuit against McVeigh, which includes Strassmeir, and named Brescia as John Doe 2."
"Robert Millar insists that Brescia, who is engaged to Millar's granddaughter, is not John Doe 2, but simply a "cleancut, college type boy."
"Yet several witnesses in Kansas claimed that Brescia closely matches the FBI's wanted sketch. Like John Doe 2, Brescia has a tattoo on his left arm. Curiously though, Brescia's tattoo is circular — a cross inside a wheel — the emblem of the Aryan Nations. The tattoo seen by Mike Moroz and other witnesses on John Doe 2 more closely resembled a dragon, an anchor, or a snake. But then again, according to numerous witnesses, there is more than one John Doe 2."
"Referring to the sting, he said, "What kind of gives me a bad taste, is that all the ATF agents were apparently not in the office during the blast, all of them." As to just what the sting involved, Strassmeir claimed he didn't know. But regarding John Doe 2, he said, "For some reason they don't look for this guy anymore. That, for some reason, I think is very strange."
"Back in Junction City, the manager of the Great Western Inn was watching TV with two reporters when the sketch of John Doe 2 flashed on the screen. The manager immediately recognized the man as the person who had stayed in room 107 on April 17. "He spoke broken English," said the manager. "[He] gave a foreign name and was driving a Ryder truck."
"Gary Lewis, a pressman for the Journal Record newspaper, had just stepped outside to smoke his pipe when he remembered he had left something in his car. As he walked down the alley, a yellow Mercury peeled away from its spot near the Murrah Building, jumped a concrete barricade, swerved to avoid hitting a dumpster, then bore down on him, forcing him up onto the curb. Lewis got a good look at the driver, describing him as one Timothy James McVeigh, and his passenger as resembling the sketch of John Doe 2. He said the car had an Oklahoma tag which was dangling by one bolt."
"The FBI wouldn't say if they had checked out Hussaini. Nor would they clear him. They told KFOR that they were "not in the business of clearing suspects." Yet, as Jayna Davis pointed out, they did clear numerous other John Doe 2 suspects, including Robert Jacks, Gary Land, and Todd Bunting, the Army private seen at Elliott's Body Shop. Interestingly, they then used the Bunting incident to say that John Doe 2 had been a red herring all along. John Doe 2, the FBI claimed, had never existed."
"When the news reports first came about some Islamic group being responsible, well Haider kind of laughed about that," recalled Cranfield. "I heard they found three babies that was dead from the blast, and I went and told the guys… and John Doe 2 (Cranfield's reference to Hussaini) started crying. He went out on the porch to cover his face and he stood by the wall crying. He was upset that children got hurt. He was really upset. And Haider was laughing because he was crying."
"The date November, 1994 may be prophetic. Three witnesses in Stillwater, about an hour's drive north of Oklahoma City, saw a man who closely resembles Ramzi Yousef in late October, early November, 1994. The man, who called himself Y.T., was managing Boomer's Used Auto Sales in Stillwater, along with a man who resembled John Doe 2. He drove a yellow Mercury Marquis similar to Timothy McVeigh's, albeit with a vinyl roof."
"Could the unidentified leg have actually belonged to the real bomber — a black Muslim prepared to sacrifice himself or herself for the cause? Perhaps this explains why authorities allegedly recovered no bodies that matched this leg. It is possible the leg belonged to an additional bomber who was disintegrated by the blast. This could also explain the confused look Daina Bradley witnessed on John Doe 2's face after he walked to the back of the Ryder truck. Perhaps upon opening the door, he was confronted with a comrade who ordered him away, then set off the device, neatly severing himself or herself in the process. "
"Barbara Whittenberg, owner of the Sante Fe Trail Diner in Herrington, recalled seeing a Ryder truck, along with McVeigh, Nichols, and John Doe 2, on Saturday, April 15. The men had stopped by the restaurant for breakfast at 6:00 a.m., and Whittenberg reported seeing a large Ryder truck at Geary State Fishing Lake later that afternoon."
"The reader will recall that this is the exact same day that Phyliss Kingsley and Linda Kuhlman saw the convoy, including "McVeigh," John Doe 2 and 3, and the Ryder truck at the Hi Way Grill just south of Oklahoma City. It was approximately 6:00 p.m."
"McVeigh picked his truck up on Monday. John Doe 2 had his truck the weekend before. The fact that there were two trucks I'm very comfortable with."
"Another incident not made public until the County Grand Jury investigation was the recollection of Gary Antene, who saw McVeigh and John Doe 2 at Danny's Hobby Shop in Oklahoma City the Saturday before the bombing. The two men asked him if Danny's carried 100 percent nitromethane fuel."
"While the Justice Department (DoJ) focused its efforts on McVeigh and Nichols, scant attention was focused on other suspects — John Doe 2, the mysterious entity who was seen with McVeigh, and had accompanied him the morning of the bombing. Witnesses also saw him with McVeigh in the Murrah Building, in stores, at restaurants, at a bar, and at the truck rental shop before the bombing. Still others claim to have seen him speeding away from the scene. All in all, there are almost two-dozen witnesses who reported seeing John Doe 2."
"The search for John Doe 2 quickly became the biggest man-hunt in FBI history. What authorities weren't saying however, was that not only was there a John Doe 2, there were least four John Does! Yet the issue was quickly and quietly narrowed down to just one John Doe 2."
"Then on June 15, the FBI backtracked again. "Periodically you just get something in an investigation that goes nowhere. John Doe 2 goes nowhere. It doesn't show up in associations, it doesn't show up in phone calls. It doesn't show up among the Army buddies of McVeigh…"
"The previous day, the FBI put out a story that John Doe 2 may have actually been Todd Bunting, a soldier at Fort Riley, Kansas who had rented a truck at the same dealer McVeigh had. The FBI stated that Bunting wore clothing similar to that ascribed to John Doe 2, that he had a tattoo in the same place, and that he wore a hat similar to John Doe 2's."
Then, on January 28, 1996, the prosecution switched tracks again, officially resurrecting the Todd Bunting story. In a long brief, the government disclosed that Elliott's employee Tom Kessinger was the only one who could recall John Doe 2 well enough to describe him.
Now, after a November interview with a prosecutor and two FBI agents, Kessinger was "confident that he had Todd Bunting in mind when he provided the description for the John Doe 2 composite." Kessinger, the brief continued, is "now unsure" whether anyone accompanied McVeigh. But his two co-workers "continue to believe that two men came in to rent the truck."
In that brief, the prosecution speculated that the defense might use "Kessinger's admitted confusion" to challenge his identification of McVeigh.
It seemed it was less "Kessinger's admitted confusion" than a deliberate fabrication by prosecutors and the FBI to cover up the existence of John Doe 2. As Kessinger told bombing victim Glenn Wilburn, who conducted his own investigation, "I don't know how they came up with that one."
Kessinger later changed his story at the urging of federal prosecutors Patrick Ryan and Joseph Hartzler. During a pretrial conference, Jones challenged Kessinger:
"How can you be so wrong 60 hours after the event and so right a year and a half later?" Jones asked him. "Could you be changing your mind because the government wants you to?"
"No," Kessinger replied.[774]
Yet on March 25 and April 5, Hartzler had written Jones that "The existence and identity of this John Doe 2, whom we are confident is not Mr. Bunting, is the subject of a continuing investigation."
And in a May 1, 1996 letter written by Hartzler, the government prosecutor informed Jones that Kessinger and Beemer had been shown a picture of the cap Bunting wore when he picked up a truck on April 18. "They both stated that the cap was not the same one they saw on John Doe II," Hartzler wrote, "and they reaffirmed that this second individual accompanied 'Kling' when he rented the truck."[775]
Yet at a hearing on April 9, federal prosecutor Beth Wilkinson stated that the government "has no information showing anyone but Mr. Nichols and Mr. McVeigh were the masterminds of this bombing."[776]
"They keep telling us they're looking for John Doe No. 2, but then they turn around and give statements indicating that they don't believe there is a John Doe No. 2," said a woman whose husband was killed in the bombing.
"I think they (the government) knows who John Doe 2 is, and they are protecting him," said Heidelberg in an interview in Jubilee Magazine. "This is because John Doe 2 is either a government agent or informant and they can't afford for that to get out."[785]
Eventually, the FBI dropped the John Doe 2 lead altogether. John Doe 2 had been a red herring, a false lead, the Justice Department claimed. John Doe 2 had never really existed.
[That's as far as I've gone in Hoffman's book, Chapeter 6, footnote 785]
Some folks have variable skintones.