Posted on 11/14/2002 6:26:13 AM PST by sam101
Police officer misled investigators, House committee chairman says
2002-11-13 By Larry Margasak Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - A House committee has asked the Justice Department to investigate a police officer it alleges misled congressional investigators by claiming he saw a videotape of a Middle Eastern man leaving the truck used to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995. J.W. Reser, the policeman, told investigators he viewed the surveillance tape while working as a contract employee for the government, including Army and Navy intelligence, but officials from both services said they knew nothing about Reser or the tape, the committee said.
The House Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., provided The Associated Press with the lawmaker's criminal referral to the Justice Department and other documents, including a sworn statement that Reser provided to the committee.
Reser is a one-time Oklahoma City police officer who left the force more than a decade before the April 19, 1995, bombing, and now works as a Tulsa International Airport policeman.
He did not return a telephone message left with the Tulsa airport police, who confirmed he worked there. Committee officials said Reser has not responded to recent attempts to contact him. Reser's home number is unlisted.
Burton, in a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, said that in addition to Reser's statements about viewing the surveillance tape, he made false statements to the committee about his personal background.
"I write to bring these false statements to the attention of the Department of Justice for investigation and, if warranted, prosecution," Burton wrote. While the bombing took place seven years ago, committee officials said Reser and others had contacted the panel this year seeking a fresh look at any possible conspiracy.
Reser exaggerated his length of service with the Oklahoma City Police Department, falsely said he served with a special projects unit on the force and described government connections that federal officials said did not exist.
Burton wrote Ashcroft that the allegations about the videotape and his employment caused the committee and the Navy to waste considerable resources in an attempt to verify the statements.
"Mr. Reser's statements have had the potential to cause serious pain and anxiety for the families and victims of the Oklahoma City bombing," which killed 168 people, Burton wrote.
Timothy McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001, for planting the bomb in a truck outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The only other person charged, Terry Nichols, is serving a life sentence following federal convictions for conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of eight U.S. law enforcement officers.
Nichols also is charged in Oklahoma with 160 counts of first-degree murder.
Kathy Wilburn of Oklahoma City, who lost two grandsons in the bombing, said she believes others besides McVeigh and Nichols were involved, but didn't know Reser and could not verify his assertions.
But speaking generally, she said, "These folks who are opportunists, they're hurting us. A lot of investigators make up theories and try to make the pieces stick. That doesn't work for me but I need to know the truth."
In a sworn statement to the Government Reform Committee, Reser said he saw a videotape while attending a meeting in Washington with military and civilian intelligence officials as a government contract employee.
He said the two-minute tape "captured the arrival of the explosives-laden Ryder truck as it parked on the north side of the federal complex shortly before 9 a.m. on April 19. Moments later, I observed an individual descend from the passenger side of the truck. He appeared to be of Middle Eastern extraction with dark hair, olive complexion and a ball cap," Reser said.
Rear Adm. R.B. Porterfield, director of naval intelligence, wrote Burton that a Navy search found "no records of any contract employment of Mr. Reser" by the service and "no records of any video or still photographic surveillance cameras in or around the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City ... on April 19, 1995."
too bad for reser he wasnt' a member of the Xlinton regime.
none of them were ever prosecuted for making false statements to congress, lying to grand juries, making false testimony under oath......
of course the catch 22 to this "prosecution" will be that reser should be able to subpeana the tapes for his own defense.
For Burton to suggest that the only basis for a congressional investigation into the Middle Eastern participation in the OKC bombing was the testimony of a single individual is simply not believable. Burton was pursuing a congressional investigation before Jayna Davis and her crowd ever introduced him to James Reser. So why then would he end an investigation because one witness was discredited? Simple. Smoke screen.
This little development is very reminiscent of activities outside the Oklahoma Grand Jury:
________________________________________________________________
U.S. Postal Employee Testifies for Grand Jury - TV Reporter Disavows Conspiracy
Judy Kuhlman, Diana Baldwin
09/20/1997
NOTE: Staff writer Ed Godfrey contributed to this report.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Through her attorney, Tim McCoy, former KFOR reporter Davis disavowed some of the bombing conspiracy theories that have been reported.
"She also wants to make it perfectly clear that after her two-year exhaustive investigation, she has turned up no credible evidence that supports the theory that the federal government had sufficient prior warnings to prevent the bombing," McCoy said.
I am not absolutely sure of the reason he was banned.
Jayna Davis may be the most brilliant woman I have ever read about, or either she surrounds herself with very bright associates.
Any hope for a congressional investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing is over.Absolutely brilliant.
"She also wants to make it perfectly clear that after her two-year exhaustive investigation, she has turned up no credible evidence that supports the theory that the federal government had sufficient prior warnings to prevent the bombing," McCoy said.
I don't remember Davis (at least in recent memory) making statements that the government knew about the bombing in advance. I DO remember David Shippers taking that position, though. From what I have heard and read, Davis was making the case for middle-east involvement with McVeigh and Nichols and that it was being ignored by law enforcement and the feds.
I know I'm getting into tin-foil territory on this one, but it seemed a little odd to me when the remains of the building were cleared out way too soon for any serious structual survey to take place. Since the bobming was treated as a criminal act, the wreckage was a crime scene and should have been preserved once the rescue operations concluded.
Also, the "speed" in which McVeigh was executed was very uncommon in this day and age. Murderers on death row usually wait at least a decade to be executed, even when they don't want to appeal their sentance.
I don't think that the feds had anything to do with the bombing, but from appearances, they didn't seem to want anything to do with handling the ivestigation properly either.
Hold on, and don't give up so easily! Just because a rear admiral said they couldn't find anything in Naval Intelligence records, doesn't mean the tapes do not exist!
Someone in the earlier thread observed that the DC Navy Yard was a "strange repository for" OKC records. Now it is claimed that it was Reser who steered Burton toward Naval Intelligence in the first place.
Heck, even Judge Matsch in Denver acknowledges the tapes exist -- he just refuses to allow them to be released.
Even worse: the building was the main murder weapon. Medical reports state that 90% of the MFB deaths were caused by the building itself falling on the victims. The building was just as much a murder weapon as is a bullet fired from a gun.
Think "Bomb = gun" & "building = bullet" in this case.
In 1995, the worst act of terrorism on American soil, prior to the 9/11 disaster, was committed in Oklahoma City. On April 19, terrorists blew up the Murrah Federal Building and killed 168 Americans and wounded scores more. Not long after the bombing, Timothy McVeigh was arrested about 60 miles east of Oklahoma City and a few days later Terry Nichols surrendered to police in Herrington, Kansas. With those arrests, the Justice Department shut down any further investigation into who had committed this awful crime.
But like the Kennedy assassination, many Americans remained deeply skeptical about the government’s assurances that McVeigh and Nichols acted alone in this horrible crime. And for good reason, as it seems that the FBI ignored important investigative leads, failed to interview potentially significant witnesses, and destroyed the Murrah building before experts could examine the crime scene. The involvement of a John Doe Number Two in the bombing has remained a simmering controversy. Skeptics ask why the FBI canceled an all-points-bulletin for a Middle Eastern male subject or subjects fleeing the scene issued in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. Numerous eyewitness accounts have identified Middle Eastern males in the company of McVeigh in the days and weeks before the bombing.
Dr. Frederic Whitehurst’s allegations against the FBI crime lab sparked a Justice Department investigation that found the lab had provided "inaccurate pro-prosecution testimony in major cases including Oklahoma City." Retired Air Force General Benton K. Partin, an explosive expert, disputed the FBI’s theory that the damage to the Murrah Building was caused by a single truck-bomb. His analyses were later endorsed by numerous physicists, physical chemists, and experts in structural mechanics as well as a series of live tests conducted at Eglin Air Force Base. These are just some of the lingering questions about the 1995 bombing.
Beyond covering McVeigh’s execution and the FBI foul-ups that delayed it, the mainstream media have devoted little effort to digging into any of these questions. Concerned citizens have had to go to Internet media outlets like World Net Daily and Newsmax or be on the lookout for the occasional investigative report in obscure outlets like the Los Angeles Weekly or the London Evening Standard. In early September, the Wall Street Journal did one column on its editorial page about possible Iraqi involvement in Oklahoma City and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, but seemed to lose interest after that.
One columnist who has refused to let the story die is James Patterson, an editorial writer at the Indianapolis Star. Patterson was one of the first to report a potential crack in the wall of silence erected around the Oklahoma City bombing by the government and the elite media. Twice in recent months, Patterson has reported that Chairman Dan Burton’s House Government Reform Committee investigators have uncovered the possible whereabouts of videotapes and photographs of the Murrah Federal Building from the day of the bombing. The Final Report of the Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee (OKBIC) noted the existence of such tapes, but the Justice Department has adamantly refused to release them, even in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. Burton believes that the tapes and photographs may be held in the archives of Naval Intelligence at the Washington Navy Yard and he has issued a subpoena to the Secretary of the Navy to obtain them. The tapes are said to contain video of a John Doe Number Two getting out on the passenger side of the Ryder truck just prior to the explosion.
Former FBI Deputy Director Weldon Kennedy told the Philadelphia Inquirer that talk of withheld videotapes is "ludicrous and insulting." Kennedy says that agents nailed down "98 to 99 percent" of McVeigh and Nichols’ movements in the months before the bombing and he is absolutely convinced they acted alone. Cate McCauley, who worked on McVeigh’s appeal, goes beyond Kennedy and charges that talk of Middle Eastern men helping McVeigh is "perhaps the worse case of misinformation and pandering" she has come across. The allegations, she says, are easily refutable and those who promote them are "standing on the graves of thousands of people."
A quick, easy way to resolve the controversy over John Doe Number 2 would be to simply release the videotapes and photographs and let the American public judge for itself. Release the tapes and bring this case to closure. The victims of the Oklahoma City bombing deserve nothing less.
Notra Trulock is Associate Editor of the AIM Report
A reading of Moscow Station would lead one to believe Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) could not find its rump with GPS and a three-day head-start.
The Soviets penetrated the bubble there, and vacuumed top secret cables--the ONI performance was Amateur Night in hyperventilating rage.
Clinton said the OKCBomb was the act of Rush Limbaugh.
Richard Jewell did the Olympic Park thing.
TWA Flight 800 had a methane explosion caused by smoking in the heads.
John Muhammad and his faithful punk Malvo were driving a white pickup with NRA bumper stickers.
James Zogby's CAIR forced the removal of Islamist bombers from the film version of Clancy's The Sum of All Fears.
If Democrats had the P.R. serving Islamist terrorists, they'd have swept into power last week.
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