Posted on 11/14/2002 5:49:00 PM PST by sjersey
DALLAS - (KRT) - A Tulsa, Okla., airport police officer who has helped perpetuate persistent claims of Middle Eastern involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing has been accused of lying to Congress.
Rep. Dan Burton, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, asked Attorney General John Ashcroft late last week to prosecute J.W. Reser for lying in a sworn affidavit and interviews with congressional investigators.
Reser, who works a night shift at the Tulsa International Airport police department, could not be reached for comment.
A Justice Department spokesman said Wednesday that agency officials had not seen Burton's letter but added that it would be reviewed "as with all congressional requests."
Burton, R-Ind., opened an investigation last spring to examine claims long promoted by a former Oklahoma City television reporter, Jayna Davis, about foreign involvement in the April 19, 1995, blast.
Davis has complained that federal officials have ignored research that she says supports the Middle Eastern theory, including 23 sworn statements she presented in February to Burton's committee.
Davis' materials included an affidavit in which Reser claimed to have seen a surveillance video depicting a Middle Eastern man leaving a bomb-laden Ryder truck just before it shredded the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Reser also claimed that he was working as a Navy contract employee to help investigate the bombing when he viewed the tape at an intelligence briefing at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.
But U.S. Navy officials told committee investigators that the Navy never employed Reser, and they could find no record of the briefing or video.
Congressional investigators also determined that Reser had lied about many other aspects of his background, falsely claiming to have U.S. government intelligence experience. They learned that he lied about being a retired Oklahoma City narcotics investigator. He was actually fired from that department after filing a false report claiming to have been shot at, Burton's letter to the Justice Department indicated.
Burton wrote that Reser's false statements were of particular concern because of the seriousness of his claims and their "potential to cause serious pain and anxiety for the families and victims of the Oklahoma City bombing."
The blast killed 168 people and injured hundreds. Timothy McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001, for driving the bomb-laden truck to the federal building.
A massive dragnet led to the arrest of only one other person, Terry Nichols. A former Army buddy of McVeigh, Nichols is serving a life sentence following federal convictions for conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of eight U.S. law enforcement officers killed in the blast. He still faces state murder charges.
Federal investigators have long said they had no evidence that anyone else helped plan or carry out the attack. But some survivors and others have embraced theories promoted by Davis and others that Arab terrorists were involved.
Davis first began reporting that theory, fingering a former Iraqi soldier as McVeigh's accomplice, while working for an Oklahoma City television station. She fended off a defamation lawsuit by the former soldier, and eventually began working full time to research and promote her belief that the Oklahoma bombing was the work of Middle Eastern terrorists.
Davis said she helped fund her work with a $57,000 donation from the same Chicago-area real estate magnate who gave large donations to other conspiracy theorists and causes before his death in August. The Chicago man, Alexander Magnus, also funded attempts by a physician active in the anti-abortion movement to autopsy bodies of Branch Davidians killed in a 1993 standoff with federal authorities near Waco, Texas.
Officials at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks white supremacists and other extremist and fringe groups, said Magnus also helped fund efforts to prove government involvement in the crash of TWA Flight 800 and the 1993 World Trade Center attack, as well as a successful campaign by former Oklahoma state Rep. Charles Key to convene a state grand jury to probe his conspiracy theories surrounding the 1995 bombing.
Davis acknowledged that she used some of Magnus' donation to pay Reser to work as an investigator late last year. She said she then asked Reser in January to write the three-page affidavit in which he praised her work and detailed his claims about seeing a dramatic videotape proving Middle Eastern involvement.
Davis said Tuesday that she was concerned by the allegation that Reser had lied, but she added that she had no idea until she was told by congressional investigators that they were having difficulty verifying many of his claims.
"I don't think it reflects upon this investigation, my research," she said, adding that she was involved with Reser only briefly and relied little on his work.
But others who embrace her belief that the Iraqi government was somehow involved in the 1995 attack say they fear that it could harm efforts to prove their case.
"It's unfortunate because it's going to diminish the value of the good work she did, and it's going to hurt our side of the question as to whether or not there was more to the Oklahoma City bombing," said Mike Johnston, a lawyer who filed a wrongful death lawsuit in March against the government of Iraq on behalf of a survivors' group.
Johnston said his concerns about Reser led him to warn Davis last fall that the officer was lying about some aspects of his background and couldn't be trusted. But he said Davis responded by telling him in writing that he was fired from her effort to develop a lawsuit against Iraq, a letter that was among materials on Reser sent to the Justice Department.
"She took the position that he had better contacts than me, he had better information, and he was in a better position to talk with people in the government," Johnston said. "It's just unfortunate that she was so gullible."
The question should be:
Did you provide a copy of the private email threatening legal action you sent to the manager of Libertypost.org to members of the Consolidated Antifreeping site?
A sense of humor and a deep breath will help here.
I think the Reser business is a booby trap planted to discredit an entire investigation carefully pursued by serious people.
TXnMA, you are seriously engaged producing documents, and that is essential:
Howard Weisberg died this year after thirty-nine years of the most serious scholarship on that business in Dealey Plaza.
Notra Trulock's "Release the Videotapes" on AIM's site establishes that tapes exist which are substantive and are being suppressed.
The Reser land mine is reminiscent of the use of Charles Spiesel to discredit the Garrison trial of Clay Shaw.
It would be over twenty years before Mark Lane beat E. Howard Hunt in court posting a single legal victory in a long battle.
I think we've seen attempts of late to discredit Jayna Davis, a slander from Cate McCauley comes to mind.
That an Alex McCauley was the ATF agent who broke out of the elevator in the Murrah Building to refute charges that the agency had prior warning is nice.
That nobody broke out of any elevators makes him the "little man who wasn't there".
I had read several things by OKCSubmariner and after he was banned I wrote Jim Robinson and asked why.
His freepmail is in my archives, something to the effect of "he was resorting to the Democrat line of Gonzalez".
I found a statement verging on calling for removal of George W. Bush and felt that was jamming too much into the bag.
It's clear that McVeigh reconnoitered targets with Carl Andreas Strassmeier, a panzer lieutenant trained in intelligence, whose father was a German federal minister. That Strassmeier left the country and is at large is huge.
That Carol Howe warned something was brewing at Elohim City but the FBI refused to raid and the ATF did a retaliatory strike on her shows the federals are not innocent.
Nichols met with Islamist terrorists in the Philippines, while Nichols and McVeigh were tutored in ANFO by FBI informant Dennis Mahon--at large.
The squelching of the search for John Doe No. 2 is suspicious.
The suppression of evidence that McVeigh associated with Middle Eastern males is heavy-handed.
Seeing the appearance of Reser is reminiscent of Pierre Salinger's embarrassing splash concerning TWA Flight 800.
Sewing seeds of divisiveness among investigators is provocateur tradecraft.
And dagnabit it ain't gonna work.
There is absolutely NO evidence that would indicate law enforcement had enough information to stop the bomb. But they tried. I was the reporter who broke the story in November 1995 about the presence of the bomb truck downtown per the testimony of a local attorney and other elements that indicated everyone was desperately scrambling to prevent a tragedy.
1. eventhough there is absolutely NO evidence that would indicate law enforcement had enough information to stop the bomb
they admittedly had ENOUGH evidence to send the bomb truck to the murrah building in down town Oklahoma City on the morning of April 19th.
2. the testimony of a local attorney and other elements that indicated everyone was desperately scrambling to prevent a tragedy.
implies that there was a co-ordinated effort of more than one LE agency that had ENOUGH evidence to know when and where this tragic event would take place.
how could various LE elements know when and where without knowing whom?
For all we know, the hijackers listed in 9/11 are just stolen identities.
Andrew Strassmeir? Doesn't the shadow government's version of AlQueda have a little nest in Hamburg?
It takes time and money to train these Manchurian candidates. They are on the payroll of the NWO...and since they are all run by cheap, rich bahztards..I wouldn't be surprised if McVeigh were still alive.
Excellent observation.
I was so surprised by the statement: "cooperated with law enforcement" , the importance of the information you highlighted went right by me.
I wonder if when "law enforcement" broke the law and provided false testimony to the Grand Jury about the bomb truck Jayna Davis ever had second thoughts about cooperating with law enforcement. It's one thing to lie to the public, but for "law enforcement" to lie to a Grand Jury about the bomb truck ups the stakes.
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.
Public statement posted on FR:
I was the reporter who broke the story in November 1995 about the presence of the bomb truck downtown per the testimony of a local attorney and other elements that indicated everyone was desperately scrambling to prevent a tragedy.
Is it just me or was it unfair to the citizens who worked so hard against substantial government opposition to call a Grand Jury for Jayna Davis to make the first statement outside the Grand Jury, but edit information about the bomb truck?
I personnally believe if they had time to dispatch a bomb truck, they had time to call for an evacuation.
Isn't it standard police procedure to evacuate a building if there is sufficient warning to dispatch a bomb truck?
This is troubling. The documentation I requested from the affidavits was about falsified FBI 302's,specifically wrong doing by FBI Agents.
How could this "imperil innocent,decent witnesses."
Is she saying citizens that expose FBI falsified 302's are in peril? In peril from whom?
If this is the case, why has she "cooperated with law enforcement" if exposing law enforcement wrong doing could imperil her witnesses?
Reser is another internet whack-job who got too caught up in his wanna-be fantasy world.
Reser was a plant to sidestep Jayna's persistent research efforts. His job was to sidetrack the investigation, with or without Burton's help.
Reser is everything he said he was and he's been had, with or without Burton's help.
I go with #1.
This is too significant to be a sloppy attempt at "blackballing". The smear and bogus prosecution are red flags of a much larger more sinister agenda.
Did I believe it then? No and I wouldn't believe it today.
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