Framed: America's Patsy Tradition    

The Politics of Terror 5:

"The Face of Terror"- Part 2

 


The Man Who Didn't Exist

      In September of 1992 McVeigh sold his property in Olean, NY, and in early 1993
      traveled to Kingman, Arizona to visit his old Army friend Michael Fortier.
      Apparently McVeigh's father didn't approve of Tim's letters in the local paper.
      A friend of McVeigh's father told the Post that one of the reasons McVeigh left
      was because "he wanted to be somewhere he could talk about what he really
      believed."

      In Kingman, a rugged high-desert town where anti-government sentiments run
      strong, McVeigh would find like-minded souls. "Arizona is still gun-on-the-hip
      territory, rugged individuals who don't like the government in their business,"
      said Marilyn Hart, manager of the Canyon West Mobile Park.

      After spending a brief time living with Fortier at his trailer home on East
      McVicar Road, McVeigh rented a trailer at Canyon West where he lived from June
      to September of 1993, for $250-a-month.

      The Times, the Post, Time and Newsweek all reported that McVeigh was a
      belligerent beer-drinking, loud music-playing slob who stayed at the Canyon West
      Mobile Park and was subsequently evicted. According to the Times:

      Residents of the Canyon West Mobile Park drew a picture of an arrogant loner who
      worked as a security guard for a now-defunct trucking company, lived with his
      pregnant girlfriend, expressed deep anger against the Federal Government and
      often caused trouble for his neighbors. "He drank a lot of beer and threw out
      the cans, and I always had to pick them up," Bob Rangin, owner of the park, was
      quoted as saying. He said he had frequent fights with Mr. McVeigh, who often
      wore Army fatigues, over such things as loud rock music coming from his trailer
      and a dog he kept in violation of his lease.(245)

      "Just about any free time, he'd be walking down there, or across the railroad
      tracks and firing his guns," said Marilyn Hart, nodding at the landscape of
      canyons and mesas around the Canyon West trailer park here that is one of the
      last known addresses of the man arrested for bombing the Oklahoma City Federal
      Building. "He just plain didn't care. Didn't matter the time of day or night,
      he'd be out there shooting."

      "Basically he just had a poor attitude, a chip on the shoulder kind of thing,"
      said Rob Rangin, the owner of the trailer park. "He was very cocky. He looked
      like he was ready to get in a fight pretty easy. I'll tell you, I was a little
      afraid of him and I'm not afraid of too many people.

      Mr. McVeigh brought in a big brown dog in defiance of the camp regulations and
      left a wrecked car parked by his trailer, Mr. Rangin said, and even a nearly
      totally deaf neighbor, Clyde Smith, complained about the music. Finally, said
      Mr. Rangin, "he piled up so many violations, I asked him to leave."
      "When he did, the trailer was a disaster," he said. "It was trashed."(246)

      Yet these accounts of McVeigh in the Times' on April 23 and 24 are totally
      contrary to their accounts on May 4 and December 31, which describe him as a
      compulsive neat-freak, highly disciplined, respectful of his elders, and
      courteous to a fault. Friends and acquaintances interviewed also claimed that
      McVeigh was extremely quiet, never drank, and never had a date, much less a
      pregnant girlfriend.

      Yet on April 23, the Post described how McVeigh played loud music, terrorized
      his neighbors, and was evicted from the park. Then on July 2, the Post wrote:
      When he moved into the Canyon West trailer park outside Kingman in 1993, his
      first act was to wash the dirty curtains and dust, vacuum and scrub the entire
      trailer spotless, said owner Bob Rangin, who so liked McVeigh that he offered to
      lower the rent to keep the ex-soldier from moving.

      The Post also ran an interview with neighbor Jack Gohn, who said McVeigh was so
      "quiet, polite and neat and clean" that "if I had a daughter in that age
      bracket, I would have introduced them."(247)

      Said Marilyn Hart of Timothy McVeigh: "He was very quiet, very polite, very
      courteous, very neat, very clean, quiet, obeyed all the park rules. He worked on
      the trailer, did some painting, he did some cleaning on it, he bought new
      furniture, things like that."(248)

      In fact, what the Times was reporting on was not Timothy McVeigh at all, but a
      completely different man! According to Hart, the mix-up came when reporters from
      the Times were given information about Dave Heiden, who also was just out of the
      service, and had lived in trailer #19 (McVeigh lived in trailer #11). "They
      thought it was the man who lived down below," said Hart. "He was a slob. But he
      was not Tim McVeigh. The other guy took his guns out across the way and fired
      them all the time, he got drunk and got up on top of the trailer and did all
      kinds of noisy things."

      According to Hart, after the man's girlfriend gave birth he sobered up. "Now
      they're married, the baby was born, he's straightened up his life," said Hart.
      "He straightened up his act, and he doesn't act that way any more at all."
      Rangin called authors Kifner and McFadden of the Times to correct them. "I tried
      to tell them that wasn't McVeigh," said Rangin. "I called that fellow at the
      Times who came down here, and told him they got the wrong guy."(249)

      According to the Times, it was a "clearly embarrassed" Mr. Rangin who had made
      the mistake, wrote the Times on April 25: He added that the man he incorrectly
      recalled as Tim McVeigh "was like you would think" a suspect in a mass killing
      might be.(250)

      This is clearly interesting considering that for days the Times had been
      painting McVeigh as a pathological, asexual neat freak who was extremely polite.
      These traits, the Times' psychobabblists claimed, were indicators of a mass
      killer.

      The Times then claimed on the very next day that McVeigh was a belligerent slob
      with a pregnant girlfriend, and all of a sudden, these were the characteristics
      of a mass killer. Obviously, to a propaganda screed like the New York Times, it
      didn't matter what McVeigh's actual personality really was.

      While in Kingman, McVeigh worked at different jobs through an agency called
      Allied Forces. "He did a number of jobs that way," said Hart. "He was a security
      guard, he did a number of different jobs. But he always went to his job, did
      them well, any of the people who worked with him said he didn't act odd, you
      know, it was totally out of character."(251)

      McVeigh worked for a time at True Value Hardware, on Stockton Hill Road, a job
      that Fortier helped him get. Paul Shuffler, the store owner, said McVeigh "was a
      young and clean looking person so I gave him a job." According to Shuffler, "If
      he was a radical around here, I would have noticed it pretty quick and I would
      have fired him. Radicals don't last long around here because they just make a
      mess of things."(252)

      McVeigh also worked for a spell at State Security. The Times interview with
      co-worker Fred Burkett took a slightly different slant, painting his co-worker
      McVeigh as an arrogant, gun-toting loner. "He had a very dry personality,"
      Burkett told the Times. "He was not very outgoing, not talkative and not really
      that friendly. He wasn't a person that mingled. He was a kind of by yourself
      kind of person, a loner."

      Once, Burkett went with McVeigh on a target-shooting course in the desert, where
      McVeigh "pretty much went crazy," Burkett said. After running through the
      course, picking off targets with a Glock .45, McVeigh began "emptying clips on
      pretty much anything--trees, rocks, whatever happened to be there."(253)

      "Other than that, Mr. Burkett said, "he seemed pretty much normal." "The only
      thing he ever indicated was that he didn't care much for the United States
      Government and how they ran things," Mr. Burkett said. "He didn't care much for
      authority and especially when it concerned the government."

      Yet authorities have speculated that McVeigh's interests went beyond mere
      dissatisfaction with the Federal Government. According to Carl Lebron, McVeigh
      once brought him a newsletter from the Ku Klux Klan.(254) McVeigh was also fond
      of a book called the Turner Diaries. Written by former physics professor and
      neo-Nazi William Pierce, the Turner Diaries was a fictionalized account of a
      white supremacist uprising against the ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government).
      The book, exceedingly violent and racist in tone, is a fictionalized account of
      the overthrow of the Federal Government--which by that time had become the
      "Jewish-liberal-democratic-equalitarian plague"--by a Right-wing paramilitary
      group called the "Organization," which then goes on to murder and segregate Jews
      and other "non-whites." The protagonists also blow up FBI headquarters with a
      truck-bomb. The Turner Diaries was found on Timothy McVeigh upon his arrest.

      The book became the blueprint for a neo-Nazi group called The Order, which
      terrorized the Midwest in the early to mid '80s with a string of murders and
      bank robberies. Authorities have speculated that McVeigh, who carried the book
      with him constantly and sold it at gun shows, was inspired by its creed to
      commit his terrible act of violence. Yet McVeigh dismisses such suggestions as
      gibberish. "I bought the book out of the publication that advertised the book as
      a gun-rights book. That's why I bought it; that's why I read it."(255)

      In Kingman, McVeigh made friends with an ex-marine named Walter "Mac" McCarty.
      McVeigh apparently sought out the 72-year-old McCarty for discussions in which
      he tried to make sense of the actions of the Federal Government at Ruby Ridge
      and Waco, and such issues as the United Nations, the Second Amendment, and the
      "New World Order."

      "I gathered that he was following the Right-wing, survivalist, paramilitary-type
      philosophy," McCarty said. "I also got the sense that he was searching for
      meaning and acceptance."(256)

      McVeigh and Fortier also took handgun classes from McCarty during the summer of
      , which is odd considering that the two men, McVeigh especially, were
      extremely proficient in the use of firearms. "Believe me, the one thing he did
      not need was firearms training, "said Fred Burkett, McVeigh's co-worked at State
      Security. "He was very good and we were impressed with his actions."(257)

      McCarty himself was apparently suspicious of McVeigh's motives. "They wanted to
      hear certain things from me to see if they could get me involved," said McCarty.
      "They definitely liked what they heard. We were on the same page about the
      problems of America."

      Why would McVeigh, the consummate firearms expert, bother taking a course in
      handguns? Perhaps to be around like-minded individuals or as a harmless
      diversion. It is also possible, like the Lee Harvey Oswald impostor seen at the
      Texas rifle range, McVeigh was being sheep-dipped. "I know brainwashing when I
      see it, McCarty said. "Those two boys had really gotten a good case of it."
      Perhaps McCarty was being more literal than he realized.(258)

      After the August 1994 passage of the Omnibus Crime Bill outlawing certain types
      of semi-automatic weapons, "McVeigh's demons finally became unbearable," claimed
      the Times. "What will it take?" wrote McVeigh to Fortier, expressing his
      exasperation.(259)

      It is possible that McVeigh had some contact with a local militia while in
      Kingman. According to reporter Mark Schafer of the Arizona Republic, Fortier,
      who worked at True Value, knew Jack Oliphant, the elderly patron of the Arizona
      Patriots, an extreme Right-wing paramilitary group. Oliphant had been caught in
      planning to blow up the Hoover Dam, the IRS and a local Synagogue. After
      the FBI raid, Oliphant was sentenced to four years in jail, and the Arizona
      Patriots went underground. It is reported that Fortier, who sported a "Don't
      Tread on Me" flag outside his trailer-home, was friendly with some of the
      Arizona Patriots, including Oliphant.

      According to federal authorities, McVeigh also left a note addressed to "S.C."
      on a utility pole near Kingman seeking "fighters not talkers." It has been
      speculated that "S.C." is actually Steven Colbern, who lived in the nearby town
      of Oatman, and was friends with McVeigh. (See Chapter 5)

      But federal authorities became very interested when they learned that a small
      explosion, related to a home-made bomb, had slightly damaged a house down the
      road from the trailer park. That house was owned by Frosty McPeak, a friend of
      McVeigh's who had hired him in 1993 to do security work at a local shelter. When
      McPeak's girlfriend was arrested in Las Vegas on a bad credit charge, Clark
      Vollmer, a paraplegic drug dealer in Kingman, helped bail her out. In February
      of '95, Vollmer had asked McPeak to ferry some drugs. He refused. On February
      , a bomb exploded outside McPeak's home. When he went to Vollmer's house to
      confront him, he found Timothy McVeigh, along with another man he didn't
      recognize.(260)

      According to Mohave County Sheriff Joe Cook, the explosion "wasn't really a big
      deal" and probably wasn't related to the explosion in Oklahoma City.(261)

      What does Marilyn Hart think about McVeigh's connection to the local militias?
      "I probably do know several people who are militia," said Hart. "But they don't
      advertise it, and they're not kooks. To me, McVeigh didn't have the money. The
      two other guys, Rosencrans and Fortier, went to school with our children, and
      neither of them have money either. And it took a good amount of money to pull
      this off. "

"Obsessed With Waco"

Whether or not McVeigh's "demons" became "unbearable" after the passage of the
Omnibus Crime Bill, his anger, along with that of millions of others, would be
justified by the governments' massacre of 86 innocent men, women and children at
the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventist Church near Waco the following April.
The ostensible purpose of the ATF's raid was to inspect the premises for illegal
weapons. Although the Davidians, who were licensed gun dealers, had invited the
ATF to inspect their weapons, the agency declined; they were more interested in
staging a show raid to impress the public and increase their budgetary
allowance. In fact, the raid was code-named "Show Time."

On February 28, 1993, without a proper warrant and without identifying
themselves, over 100 agents stormed the Church compound. Residents who answered
the door were immediately fired upon. At least one ATF helicopter began strafing
the building, firing into the roof. For the next hour, ATF agents fired
thousands of rounds into the compound. Many church members, including women,
children and the elderly, were killed by gunfire as they lay huddled in fear,
the women attempting to cover the children with their bodies. Church members
repeatedly begged the 911 operator to stop the raid. In the ensuing battle, four
ATF agents were killed, although there is evidence that indicates they were
killed by "friendly fire."

Several days later, the FBI took over. Almost immediately, they began
psychologically harassing the Church members with loud noises. For over a month
and a half, the Davidians were tormented by the sounds of dying animals,
religious chants, loud music, and their own voices. Their electricity was cut
off, and milk and other supplies necessary for young chidden was not allowed
into the compound. Bright lights were shined on residents 24 hours-a-day, and
armored vehicles began circling the compound, while flash-bang grenades were
thrown into the courtyard.

The media was kept at bay, fed propagandizing stories by FBI spokesmen that
painted the Davidians as crazed cultists with desires for apocalyptic
self-destruction--dangerous wackos who stockpiled machine-guns and who abused
their children. The mass media happily obliged, feeding these images to a
gullible public.(262)

After a 51-day standoff, the newly appointed Attorney General, Janet Reno,
approved an FBI plan to assault the compound with a highly volatile form of
tear-gas, proven deadly to children, who she was ostensibly trying to protect
from "abuse." On April 19, tanks from the Texas National Guard and the Army's
Joint Task Force Six, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act forbidding the use
of military force against private citizens, stormed the compound, firing
hundreds of CS gas ferret rounds into the buildings. The tanks also rammed the
buildings repeatedly, knocking holes in them, the official explanation being so
that the residents could more easily escape. Instead, what it did was cause the
buildings to collapse, killing dozens as they lay crouched in fear. Kerosene
lanterns knocked over by the tank ramming ignited the highly flammable CS gas,
and the holes created a flue effect through the buildings, caused by 30 mile and
hour winds. Immediately the compound became a fiery inferno.

While some residents managed to escape, most were trapped inside, exphyxiated by
the gas, crushed by falling debris, or burned alive. Some who tried to escape
were shot by FBI snipers. One unarmed man who tried to enter the compound to be
with his family was shot six times, then left lying in a field while prairie
dogs picked at his bones. During the final siege, which lasted for six hours,
firetrucks were purposefully kept away. Bradley M-2 armored vehicles fitted with
plows pushed in the still standing walls, burying those still trapped inside. A
concrete vault where approximately 30 people had sought refuge was blasted open
with demolition charges, killing most of the people inside.

When it was all over, the fire department was allowed inside the compound to
pump water on the smoldering debris. Out of approximately 100 Church members, 86
perished, including 27 children. No FBI agent was injured. The remaining 11
Church members were put on trial for attempted murder of federal agents. During
the trial, government prosecutors repeatedly withheld, altered, and destroyed
evidence. The government even cut off electricity to the morgue, preventing
autopsies on the bodies.

The judge, recently under scrutiny by the "Justice" Department, also refused to
allow the testimony of critical witnesses. Although the jury found all 11
innocent, the judge reversed the verdict. Nine Davidians were imprisoned for
attempting to defend their families. Some received sentences up to 40 years.
While "General" Reno, in a symbolic gesture of public reconciliation, took "full
responsibility" for the actions of the FBI, she never resigned or served time.
In fact, Larry Potts, who led the raid on behalf of the FBI, was promoted.
The assault would be compared to the massacre of the Jews in Warsaw by the Nazis
during WWII. A bunch of religious fanatics. Who'd complain? Who'd care? Yet the
government didn't count on the fact that a lot of people would care. Millions in
fact. The murder of the Branch Davidians would indeed become a wake-up call for
a citizenry concerned about an increasingly tyrannical, lawless government. A
government that would murder its own citizens with impunity, in fact with zeal.
A government that would lie to its citizens, and be accountable to no one.(263)

In March of 1993, Timothy McVeigh traveled from Kingman to Waco to observe the
-day standoff. He was photographed by the FBI along with others protesting the
siege on the road outside the compound, selling bumper stickers out of his car.
Like Lee Harvey Oswald, who was photographed at the Cuban embassy in Mexico (a
claim made by the government, but never substantiated), the photo of McVeigh
would be added proof of his far-Right-wing associations.

A day and a half later, McVeigh drove to Decker, Michigan to be with his old
Army buddy, Terry Nichols. The Nichols family sat with McVeigh in their living
room as they watched M-2 Bradley assault vehicles storm the compound. On April
, they watched as the Branch Davidian Church burnt to the ground. "Tim did not
say a word," said James Nichols, who watched the compound burn to the ground
along with Tim and his brother. "We stood there and watched the live television
footage as the church burned and crumbled. We couldn't believe it."(264)

McVeigh, who the Justice Department claimed was "particularly agitated about the
conduct of the Federal Government in Waco," had a right to be. McVeigh had
offered his life to serve in the military, and now had seen that very same
military massacring its own citizens. He could see the Green Berets from the
Army's Joint Task Force Six advising the FBI, and had watched while Bradley
armored vehicles--the same vehicles he had served in--gassed and bulldozed the
citizens of a country he had sworn to defend.

The Federal Building was blown up on April 19, the two year anniversary of the
Waco conflagration. Like millions of other citizens, McVeigh was angry about the
deadly raid. He was particularly incensed about the participation of the Army's
Joint Task Force Six, and about the deployment of the Seventh Light Infantry
during the Los Angeles riots in 1992, and the United Nations command over
American soldiers in Somalia, his former Army friend Staff Sergeant Albert
Warnement told the Times. "He thought the Federal Government was getting too
much power. He thought the ATF was out of control."(265)

"I saw a localized police state," McVeigh told the London Sunday Times, "[and]
was angry at how this had come about."(266)

"Their (the FBI's) actions in Waco, Texas were wrong. And I'm not fixated on
it...." he told Newsweek.

"It disturbed him," said Burkett. "It was wrong, and he was mad about it. He was
flat out mad. He said the government wasn't worth the powder to blow it to
hell."(267)

Perhaps rather coincidentally, McVeigh's sister Jennifer said that during her
brother's November '94 visit to the McVeigh family home in Lockport, he confided
that he had been driving around with 1,000 pounds of explosives. During his
trial Prosecutor Beth Wilkinson asked Jennifer if she had questioned her brother
about why he was carrying so much. "I don't think I wanted to know," she
said.(268)

Just what was McVeigh doing driving around with explosives, and where did he
acquire them? Were these explosives part of the batch of ammonium-nitrate Terry
Nichols had allegedly purchased from the Mid-Kansas Co-op on October 20, or
perhaps the Dynamite and Tovex the government alleged Nichols stole from the
Martin Marietta rock quarry in September?

Obviously this, and McVeigh's expression of anger at the Federal Government,
would become the foundation of their case against him. In a letter Tim wrote to
Jennifer, he is highly critical of the ATF. The anonymous letter, which was sent
to the federal agency, was accompanied by a note that read: "All you tyrannical
motherfuckers will swing in the wind one day for your treasonous actions against
the Constitution and the United States." It concluded with the words, "Die, you
spineless cowardice bastards."(269)

"He was very angry," recalled Jennifer McVeigh during her brother's trial. "He
thought the government gassed and murdered the people there."

Jennifer also claimed her brother also wrote a letter to the American Legion
saying that ATF agents "are a bunch of fascist tyrants." He identified himself
in the letter as a member of the "citizens' militia." He also sent his sister
literature on the standoff at Ruby Ridge, the Constitution, and even a copy of
the Turner Diaries. (270)

By the Spring of 1995, he told Jennifer not to send any more letters to him
after May 1 because "G-men might get them." Then he sent her a letter saying,
"Something big is going to happen in the month of the Bull." He did not explain
what that meant, but Jennifer looked in her astrology book and saw that the
"month of the Bull" was April. McVeigh also advised her to extend her Spring
break--which began on April 8--a bit longer than the planned two weeks, and
instructed her to burn the letter.(271)

For McVeigh's part, he wrote that this "expression of rage" the government
claimed was so key, was nothing more than "part of my contribution to defense
of freedom, this call to arms. I intend to become more active in the future. I
would rather fight with pencil lead than bullet lead. We can win this war in
voting booth. If we have to fight in the streets, I would not be so sure. All
too often in the past, we gutsy gun owners have lost the battle because we have
failed to fight. The Brady Bill could have been defeated in Congress if gun
owners had become more involved in electing officials and communicating to those
officials what was expected to them. Start your defense today. Stamps are
cheaper than bullets and can be more effective."

This letter, found by authorities in McVeigh's car, speaks of a man committed to
fighting for freedom as many Americans have, in the "voting booth," and with pen
and paper. Yet lead prosecutor Joseph Hartzler would read this letter, along
with quotes such as this one: "My whole mindset has shifted from the
intellectual to the animal," into evidence at McVeigh's trial, in an attempt to
prove that Timothy McVeigh was committed to violence.

Like Lee Harvey Oswald, who was upset about the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion and
American foreign policy in general, a view he expressed to his friends in
Dallas, McVeigh was upset about the government's foreign policy, a view he
expressed to his friends here. "He wasn't happy about Somalia," that if we could
put the United States under basically UN command and send them to Somalia to
disarm their citizens, then why couldn't they come do the same thing in the
United States?" Sergeant Warnement said.

McVeigh was also reportedly angry over the killings of Sammy and Vicki Weaver,
who were killed by federal agents at their cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho in August
of 1992. Randy Weaver had become a fugitive wanted on a minor weapons violation.
During the stand-off, U.S. Marshals had shot 14-year-old Sammy Weaver in the
back, and had shot Vicki Weaver, Randy's wife, in the face as she stood at the
cabin door holding her infant daughter. McVeigh had traveled to Ruby Ridge and
came back convinced that federal agents intentionally killed the Weavers.
Although his anger over Waco and Ruby Ridge hardly implicates McVeigh in the
destruction of the Federal Building, the government would make this one of the
cornerstones of its case. The press naturally jumped on the bandwagon. When Jane
Pauley of NBC's Dateline interviewed Jennifer McVeigh about her thoughts on
Waco, she said, "The way I saw it, the Davidians were just a group of people who
had their own way of living, perhaps different from the mainstream. But they
were never really harming anybody. And to bring in all those tanks and things
like that to people who are just minding their own business, not harming
anybody, I just--I don't think that's right."

But the dead, burned children at Waco were not what the producers at Dateline
wanted the public to see. Immediately after Jennifer's statement, they cut to an
image of the bombed-out day care center inside the Murrah Building. " We've
been hoping this wouldn't be the case," said the live voice of an unidentified
rescue worker, "but it is the case, there was a day-care inside the building."
Time ran a page dedicated to the Waco theory, stating, "The date of last week's
bombing and the anniversary of the apocalyptic fire (notice they don't say
government massacre) at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco--has only gained in
infamy, intricately bound as it is to the mythologies of homegrown zealots like
McVeigh."(272)

Sheep-Dipped

It would appear that the seed that gave root to McVeigh's "homegrown zeal" was
incubated in a U.S. government hothouse and fertilized by a heaping dose of
intelligence agency fanaticism.

After Waco, with the emergence of the Militia Movement, the stage would be set,
the die would be cast--for Timothy McVeigh to be poured into like a miniature
lead soldier. While the FBI and the press admitted that McVeigh didn't actually
belong to any organized militia organization, "there was considerable evidence
that he sympathized with and espoused their beliefs," wrote the Times.

He voiced their ideas in conversations, he wrote letters expressing them, he
read their literature and attended their meetings. And he lived, worked and
traded weapons in areas where the paramilitary groups enjoy considerable
support.(273)

Like Lee Harvey Oswald, who appeared to be an avid Communist, distributing
leaflets on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, McVeigh would play the
part of an avowed Right-winger, distributing literature about taxes, the Second
Amendment, Waco and Ruby Ridge. Like Oswald, who left behind a diary widely
believed to be a CIA forgery, McVeigh was purported to have similarly documented
his own extremist position. According to the Times:

Law enforcement officials say McVeigh left behind a large body of writings about
his ideological leanings, including extensive tracts in letters to friends and
relatives, that describe his belief in the constitutional principles that he
adamantly maintained allowed him to carry firearms and live without any
restraints from the government. Prosecutors are likely to use such documents to
establish his motive at a trial.(274)

Like Oswald, McVeigh's departure from the military was under somewhat mysterious
circumstances. And like Oswald, an ex-Marine with a top-secret security
clearance who appeared to "defect" to the Soviet Union, McVeigh would appear to
be a "disgruntled" ex-Army sergeant who happened to "drift" into the fringes of
the far-Right.(275)

Yet, like Oswald, who lived and worked amongst the bastions of the far-Right in
Dallas while purporting to be a Marxist, McVeigh would not seem to be the
extreme Right-wing fanatic he's been made out to be. In a letter to his hometown
newspaper in February, 1992, he wrote:

At a point when the world has seen Communism falter as an imperfect system to
manage people; democracy seems to be headed down the same road. Maybe we have to combine ideologies to achieve the perfect utopian government. Remember,
government-sponsored health care was a Communist idea.

Obviously, such views are anathema to the far-Right, who see any attempt to
socialize society as a major step towards the great one-world Communist
conspiracy. It is possible that McVeigh was more progressive than his Right-wing
associates. It is also possible that McVeigh was being sheep-dipped as a
militant Right-winger.

After Waco, McVeigh traveled to Michigan, staying for a time with Terry Nichols.
He worked on Nichols' farm, and went hunting and target practicing. Neighbors
recall how McVeigh and Nichols made and detonated small homemade bombs. Paul
Izydorek, a neighbor, recalls "When they were around, they'd get different guns
and play and shoot and stuff." On at least one occasion, Izydorek heard blasts
at the farm and noticed Terry Nichols and a man he thought was McVeigh. "I'd
seen them playing around with different household items that you can make blow
up. Just small stuff. Just outside in the yard, blowing away."(276)

Nichols' brother James also admitted to the FBI that McVeigh and Terry made and
exploded "bottle bombs" at his farm, using brake fluid, gasoline, and diesel
fuel, and that he sometimes participated.(277)

In his interview with Newsweek, McVeigh dispelled the myth that his bomb making
was a precursor to more deadly acts. "It would amount to firecrackers. It was
like popping a paper bag," said McVeigh, who had also experimented with small
explosives on his land in Olean, NY prior to entering the Army.

Yet a relative also told the FBI that James Nichols kept a large supply of
ammonium-nitrate fertilizer on the farm--the very substance federal authorities
accused the suspects of using to manufacture their alleged truck-bomb, a fact
that would become yet another linchpin in the government's case against the two
men.

While in Michigan, McVeigh also started working the gun shows. From April of
to March of 1995, McVeigh would travel from Kingman, Arizona to Decker,
Michigan, and across the U.S., attending militia meetings and working the gun
show circuit. A gun collector interviewed by the Times said that he had
encountered McVeigh in gun shows ranging from Florida to Oklahoma to Nevada. "At
the S.O.F. (Soldier of Fortune) convention he was kind of wandering around,"
said the gun collector, who requested anonymity, "like he was trying to meet
people, maybe make converts. He could make ten friends at a show, just by his
manner and demeanor. He's polite, he doesn't interrupt."

"McVeigh traveled around the country in a rattletrap car," wrote the Times'
Kifner, "his camouflage fatigues clean and pressed, his only companion a
well-thumbed copy of the venomous apocalyptic novel, The Turner Diaries."
Yet it would seem McVeigh is not the asexual, sociopathic loner that the
press--the New York Times in particular--has made him out to be.

Had Kifner read the May 5th edition of Newsweek, he would have discovered that
McVeigh had more than an old book for a companion. Newsweek reported that a
Kansas private investigator had tracked down an old [platonic] girlfriend of
McVeigh's--most likely Catina Lawson of Herrington, Kansas--attempting to
convince her to sell her story to a news agency.(278)

Robert Jerlow, an Oklahoma City private investigator, was also tracking down a
girlfriend of McVeigh's in Las Vegas.(279) And CNN indicated that authorities
had discovered a letter in the glove compartment to an old girlfriend.(280)
Yet McVeigh's gypsy-like travels across the country in an old beat-up car were
slightly more then unusual. He traveled widely with no visible means of support,
other than trading and selling guns and military paraphernalia. Yet
acquaintances and other witnesses recall he always had wads of cash on him. Upon
his arrest, McVeigh had $2,000 on him. He reportedly had thousands more stashed
away. He also traveled without luggage, making his car and occasional cheap
motels his only home.

"He lived in his car," said the gun dealer quoted in the Times. "Whatever he
owned it was in that car."(281)

According to his sister Jennifer, his closest confidant, "half the time we
didn't know where he was. Half the time he wouldn't even tell us where he was
living."(282)

Again, one has to ask why McVeigh would voluntarily give up a promising military
career to go careening around the country hawking used military surplus in an
old car.

McVeigh used the name "Tim Tuttle" while working the gun shows, claiming that
the alias was necessary to protect him from people who didn't share his
political views.(283) There is another possible reason McVeigh may have used an
alias however.

At one gun show in Phoenix, an undercover detective reported that McVeigh had
been attempting to sell a flare gun which he claimed could be converted into a
rocket launcher. According to Bill Fitzgerald of the Maricopa County Attorney's
office in Phoenix, McVeigh "took a shell apart and showed that the interior
could be removed and another package put in that could shoot down an ATF
helicopter." He also was reportedly handing out copies of the name and address
of Lon Horiuchi, the FBI sniper who shot and killed Vicki Weaver, and selling
caps with the letters 'ATF' surrounded by bullet holes.(284)

"He had come to see himself as a soldier in his own strange war against the
United States," wrote the Times. McVeigh's mother told an acquaintance after
visiting with him in her home state of Florida that he was "totally changed,"
and observed, "it was like he traded one Army for another one."(285)

While it is highly possible that McVeigh, like many people, genuinely disliked
the ATF and FBI, it is also possible he used such high-profile anti-government
tactics as a ruse while working undercover. While such behavior might appear
extreme, it is a classic agent provocateur technique. The ATF routinely works
undercover at gun shows, searching for people selling illegal firearms. Who
better to lure and entrap unwary victims than a gun dealer claiming to be
virulently anti-ATF. It is also possible that McVeigh was working undercover for
another agency.

In an illuminating series of phone calls to Representative Charles Key, an
anonymous source stated that McVeigh was present at several meetings with ATF
and DEA agents in the days immediately preceding the bombing. The meetings took
place in Oklahoma City at different locations. The ostensible purpose of the
meetings were to provide McVeigh with further instructions, and to facilitate a
payoff.

David Hall of KPOC-TV uncovered information that McVeigh had met with local ATF agent Alex McCauley in a McDonalds the night before the bombing. The ATF agent was seen handing McVeigh an envelope. (See Chapter 9)

CNN would cast a pale over this [largely unknown] information by reporting in
June of 1995 that McVeigh had been under surveillance by an undercover operative
at an Arizona gun show two years prior to the bombing.

This fact was reinforced when the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai B'Rith (ADL)
reported that McVeigh ran an ad for a "rocket launcher" (actually a flare gun)
in the far-Right Spotlight newspaper on August 9, 1993. In fact, the ad didn't
appear until the next week, August 16. McVeigh had originally paid to have the
advertisement run on the 9th. Not being aware of the Spotlight's impending
scheduling conflict, however, the ADL reported that the ad had run one week
before it actually did. This subsumes that the ADL, long known for its spying
and intelligence-gathering activities, had McVeigh under surveillance as
well.(286)

Interestingly, McVeigh's young friend, Catina Lawson, recalled a strange man who
often showed up at summer parties the high-schoolers threw. The soldiers from
nearby Ft. Riley would attend the gatherings looking to meet girls, and McVeigh
and his friends Michael Brescia and Andy Strassmeir (who lived at the white
separatist compound in Southeast Oklahoma known as Elohim City), would often
attend.(287)

Yet the man Catina described was neither a high-schooler nor a soldier. This
mysterious character in his late 30s to mid-40s, who often wore a suit and a tie
and drove a red sports car, was apparently not there to pick up girls. As
Connie Smith, Catina's mother told me, "The man did not interact with anyone
else- he stayed off- he never interacted with anybody else, only McVeigh."

Barbara Whittenberg, who owned the Sante Fe Trail Diner in Herrington, Kansas,
also remembered the man. The restaurant owner recalled that he would come in
with McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who lived nearby. She didn't know where he was
from, and had never seen him before.

Was McVeigh an informant? Was he working for two different agencies? Numerous
Kennedy researchers have uncovered evidence that Oswald was an FBI informant at
the same time he was being sheep-dipped by the CIA for his role in the JFK
assassination. According to former District Attorney (later federal judge) Jim
Garrison:

Oswald appears to have been extensively manipulated by the CIA for a long time
prior to the assassination and may well have believed he was working for the
government. Oswald was also a confidential informant, a job that provided
additional control over him and may have given him a reason to believe he was
actually penetrating a plot to assassinate the president.(288) Situations where a person is working for two law-enforcement or intelligence agencies at the same time are not uncommon.

What is uncommon is for a man like McVeigh to give up a promising military
career to hawk used duffel bags from an old car. But then again, in the twilight
netherworld of intelligence operations, things aren't always what they
appear.(289)

While in Michigan, McVeigh also began tuning in to the Voice of America and
Radio Free America on his shortwave. He was drawn to personalities like Chuck
Harder, Jack McLamb, and Mark Koernke, all conveying an anti-federalist,
anti-New World Order message. "He sent me a lot of newsletters and stuff from
those groups he was involved in," said Warnement, then stationed in Germany.
"There were newsletters from Bo Gritz's group, some other odd newsletters, some
from the Patriots; then he sent that videotape 'The Big Lie' about Waco."(290)

McVeigh also began attending militia meetings. According to Michigan Militia
member Eric Maloney, McVeigh was present at a truck-stop near Detroit for a
January 25, 1995 meeting of approximately 70 members of the Oakland County Six
Brigade. Members had obtained photographs of T-72 tanks and other Russian
vehicles en route via railway flatcars to Camp Grayling, an Air National Guard
base in northern Michigan. Although the captured Iraqi tanks were for target
practice, the militiamen interpreted the equipment as proof positive of a UN
plan to disarm American citizens and declare martial law.

According to Maloney and militia member Joseph Ditzhazy, a plot was hatched to
attack the base by Mark Koernke, a high-profile militia spokesman known to his
radio listeners as "Mark from Michigan." According to Maloney, Koernke said, "We
can either take them out now while we're still able to, or wait until the sons
of bitches are rolling down the street." Three days later, about 20 members met
at a farm near Leonard to discuss plans for the attack. According to Maloney,
McVeigh was one of 13 who volunteered for the assault. "McVeigh was there,"
recalled Maloney on ABC's Prime Time Live. "My wife sat next to him. He was very
attentive, very interested in being involved in that operation, volunteered his
services."

The plan never came off. Ditzhazy and Maloney alerted State Police, who then
contacted federal authorities. When the plot was made public, the Michigan
Militia issued a press release stating that the plan was the brainchild of
Koernke, working alongside a group of renegade members. Others who attended the
meetings said that it was actually Maloney who pushed the plan, and had to be
dissuaded from going through with it. Interestingly, Maloney was to provide
weapons training for several of the attackers, and Ditzhazy, who made
audio-tapes of the meetings, is a former military intelligence officer. When the
FBI was contacted about Ditzhazy's claim that the plot was hatched by McVeigh
and others, the FBI refused comment.(291)

What is also interesting is that Koernke himself is a former Army intelligence
officer. Koernke, a veteran of the 70th Army Reserve Division in Livonia,
Michigan, refers to himself as an "intelligence analyst" and
"counterintelligence coordinator" with a "top-secret clearance." He also
purports to have trained two "special-warfare" brigades that trained Army
personnel in "foreign warfare and tactics." While his claims may be exaggerated,
Koernke did attend the Army's intelligence school at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He
returned to Michigan an E-5 specialist with a G-2 (security) section of a
peacetime Reserve unit.(292)

Koernke quickly rose to become one of the most sought after speakers on the
Patriot circuit, leading off seminars in over 40 states. His video, America in
Peril, sounds apocalyptic warnings of the coming New World Order, including
plans by the Council of Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the
Bilderbergers to dominate and enslave America--with of course, a little help
from Russian troops, Nepalese Gurkhas, and L.A. street gangs.(293) It would seem
that Koernke is employing a time-tested technique of intelligence PSYOP
disinformation. While purporting to rail against what may be genuine plans of a
New World Order cabal, Koernke slips in just enough ridiculous disinformation to
discredit his thesis, and by association, anyone who supports it.

After the bombing, the media put Koernke in its spotlight. Koernke has boasted
freely to friends that he was once employed as a "provocateur." He didn't say
exactly for whom. In his tape, Koernke is shown holding an AK-47 and a cord of
rope, stating: "Now, I did some basic math the other day, not New World Order
math, and I found that using the old-style math you can get about four
politicians for about 120 foot of rope. And, by the way, DuPont made this. It is
very fitting that one of the New World Order crowd should provide us with the
resources to liberate our nation."

While the author personally has no qualms about stringing up the DuPonts, the
Rockefellers and many other icons of the military-industrial-establishment,
Koernke's rant smacks of the classic art of propaganda--that of the agent
provocateur. Many in the Militia movement have accused him of just that.(294)*

On September 8, 1994, Fowerville, Michigan police stopped a car that contained
three men in camouflage and black face paint, armed with three 9mm
semiautomatics, a .357 Magnum, an assortment of assault rifles, and 7,000 rounds
of ammunition. The men claimed to be Koernke's bodyguards.

Ken Kirkland, an official of the St. Lucia County, Florida Militia said that
McVeigh was acting as Koernke's bodyguard at a March 1994 meeting. Kirkland
recalled a bodyguard in Army camouflage clothes resembling McVeigh who
introduced himself as "Tim" and was "really upset about Waco."(295)
Koernke and McVeigh both deny this. As McVeigh told Newsweek "I was never to
one of their meetings, either."(296)

Was Koernke's "bodyguard" actually Tim McVeigh? In the September, 1995 issue of
Soldier of Fortune, an ATF agent--the spitting image of Tim McVeigh--is seen
accompanying ATF Agent Robert Rodriquez to the trial of the Branch Davidians.
Was this in fact the "McVeigh" who accompanied Koernke?

Given both mens' mysterious backgrounds, their curious intersections in Florida
and Michigan, and the Camp Grayling and Fowerville incidents, it is highly
likely that we are looking at two agent provocateurs.

Other evidence of McVeigh's apparent employment as an agent provocateur would
surface later. In a statement he made to Newsweek in response to a question
about Reno and Clinton asking for the death penalty, McVeigh said: "I thought it
was awfully hypocritical, especially because in some ways the government was
responsible for doing it. I thought she was playing both sides of the fence."

One must wonder just how McVeigh knows that "in some ways" the government was
"responsible for doing it."

McVeigh's own insurrectionist tendencies began coming to fruition towards the
end of 1993, according to authorities, when McVeigh informed his sister that he
was part of an anti-government group that was robbing banks. This startling
revelation came in the form of three $100 bills he sent to Jennifer in a letter
dated December 24, 1993. The money was part of the proceeds from a bank heist.
As Jennifer told the FBI on May 2, 1995:

"He had been involved in a bank robbery but did not provide any further details
concerning the robbery. He advised me that he had not actually participated in
the robbery itself, but was somehow involved in the planning or setting up of
this robbery. Although he did not identify the participants by name, he stated
that 'they' had committed the robbery. His purpose for relating this information
to me was to request that I exchange some of my own money for what I recall to
be approximately three (3) $100.00 bills.

"He explained that this money was from the bank robbery and he wished to
circulate this money through me. To the best of my recollection, I then gave my
brother what I recall to be approximately $300.00 of my personal cash, in
exchange for 3 $100.00 bills, which I deposited within the next several days in
an account at the Unit No. 1 Federal credit Union, Lockport, New York."
Jennifer also recalled Tim stating, "Persons who rob banks may not be criminals
at all. He implied Jews are running the country and a large degree of control is
exercised by the Free Masons. Banks are the real thieves and the income tax is
illegal."(297)

Was Timothy McVeigh in fact a bank robber? If so, it is possible he was inspired
by the Turner Diaries. The protagonists in that novel finance their overthrow of
the "Zionist Occupational Government" by robbing banks and armored cars. As
previously discussed, the book became a real life inspiration for Robert
Matthew's Order, also known as "The Silent Brotherhood," which was engaged in
heists of banks and armored cars throughout the Midwest during the 1980s. The
Order was part of the white Aryan supremacist community that sought to establish
an all-white homeland in the Northwest.

In December of 1984, Mathews was killed in a shoot-out with the FBI and police,
and the Order disintegrated. Yet the white supremacist movement lived on, in
such guises as the Aryan Nations, White Aryan Resistance (WAR), and a new, as
yet unheard of group--the Aryan Republican Army, whose members are believed to
be direct descendants of the Order.

It was to this last group that Timothy McVeigh would be drawn, at a rural white
separatist religious community in southeast Oklahoma called Elohim City. It was
there that McVeigh would meet such self-styled revolutionaries as Peter
"Commander Pedro" Langan, who, along with Scott Stedeford, Kevin McCarthy, and
the late Richard Guthrie, would go on to rob over 22 banks across the Midwest,
collecting a total of $250,000.

In a recruitment video obtained by the McCurtain Gazette, Langan appears in a
disguise, explaining the goals of the ARA--the overthrow of the Federal
Government, and the subsequent execution of all Jews and the deportation of all
non-whites from the U.S.

In the tape, made only a few months before the Oklahoma City bombing, Langan
says, "Federal buildings may have to be bombed and civilian loss of life is
regrettable but expected."(298)

According to ATF informant Carol Howe, interviewed by Gazette reporter J.D.
Cash, both McVeigh and Fortier had visited Elohim City, as had Langan, Guthrie,
Stedeford and McCarthy. A secret recording made by the informant apparently
reveals discussions between Andreas Strassmeir, Elohim City's chief of security
(also suspected of being an informant), and various ARA members, discussing
plans to blow up federal buildings. While it is not known if McVeigh was
intimately involved with the ARA bank robbers, he was seen with Strassmeir and
ARA associate Michael Brescia at parties in Kansas, and at a bar in Tulsa
shortly before the bombing. McVeigh had also called Elohim City looking for
Strassmeir the day after he reserved the Ryder truck allegedly used in the
bombing.

In the Fall on 1994, McVeigh and Terry Nichols allegedly began hoarding
ammonium-nitrate and diesel fuel. By mid-October, the pair had, according to
official accounts, managed to stockpile approximately 4,000 pounds of
fertilizer, which they stashed in storage lockers from Kansas to Arizona.(299)
Like Mohammed Salemeh, a World Trade Center bombing suspect arrested when he
attempted to retrieve his truck rental deposit, McVeigh would be linked to the
bombing by the first in a chain of damning evidence--his thumbprint on a
fertilizer receipt found in Terry Nichols' home; inquires about bomb-making
materials made on his calling-card; and the paperwork used to rent the Ryder
truck itself.

Like Salemeh's rental receipt which had traces of ANFO on it, McVeigh's clothes
would allegedly contain traces of a detonator cord known as PDTN.(300) Like the
World Trade Center bombers who stockpiled bomb-making equipment in rented
storage lockers in New Jersey, McVeigh and Nichols would store their
ammonium-nitrate in rented lockers in Kansas and Arizona. And like the World
Trade Center bombers who called commercial chemical companies requesting
bomb-making materials, McVeigh would implicate himself by using a traceable
phone card to make his purchases.

The most damming evidence linking McVeigh to the crime would be the witness
sightings placing him at the Murrah Building just before the bombing, following
the Ryder truck, then speeding away in his yellow Mercury several minutes before
the blast.

Yet the most curious evidence implicating McVeigh in the bombing came from
witnesses who say he cased the building on December 16, when he and Michael
Fortier drove through Oklahoma City en route to Kansas, then again approximately
one and a half weeks before the bombing.

Danielle Wise Hunt, who operated the Stars and Stripes Child Development Center
in the Murrah Building, told the FBI that on December 16, a clean-cut man
wearing camouflage fatigues approached her, seeking to place his two children in
the day care center. Hunt told agents that the man didn't ask typical
parent-type questions, but instead wanted to know about the day-care center's
security. Hunt thought he might be a potential kidnapper. Later, after seeing
his face on TV, she recognized the man as Timothy McVeigh.(301)

If the man was indeed Timothy McVeigh, it is curious why he would later claim he
was unaware of the day-care center in the building. If McVeigh was so upset
about the deaths of innocent children at Waco, why would he knowingly bomb a
building containing innocent children as an act of revenge?

Yet this "act of revenge" is precisely what the government claims motived him.
Such an act could only be the result of a deranged man. Yet McVeigh is anything
but deranged. In his July 3rd Newsweek interview, he said, "For two days, in the
cell, we could hear news reports; and of course everyone, including myself, was
horrified at the deaths of the children. And you know, that was the No. 1 focal
point of the media at the time, too, obviously--the deaths of the children. It's
a very tragic thing."

Perhaps "deranged" isn't the proper word; perhaps "controlled" would be more
appropriate. After his arrest, McVeigh was shown photographs of the dead
children. He claimed to have no emotional reaction. Again, this could very well
be indicative of a psychologically-controlled individual.

There is another strong possibility. The man whom witnesses say is Timothy
McVeigh may not have been Timothy McVeigh at all.

"Lee Harvey" McVeigh

As previously discussed, McVeigh, along with his friends Andreas Strassmeir,
Mike Fortier, and Michael Brescia attended parties in Herrington, Kansas in the
Summer of '92. Catina Lawson was actually good friends with McVeigh, and her
roommate, Lindsey Johnson, dated Michael Brescia. Lawson's accounts are well
documented.(302)

Yet calling card records obtained by the Rocky Mountain News indicate that each
call charged to the card during 1992 originated within western New York, where
McVeigh was working as a security guard for Burns International Security. There
appears to be little time he could have gone to Kansas to party with teen-agers.
Dr. Paul Heath, the VA psychologist who worked in the Murrah Building and
survived the blast, spoke to an individual named "McVeigh" late one Friday
afternoon, a week and a half before the bombing. In an interview with the
author, he described in vivid detail his encounter with "McVeigh" and two other
men, one of whom appears to be one of the elusive John Doe 2s.

"I've narrowed this to probably a Friday [April 7], at around three o'clock,"
recalls Heath. "A bell rang in the outer office of room 522. No one answered, so
I went out to the waiting room. A man came in with two others to apply for a
job. One other was American-Indian looking, the other was Caucasian. A male
individual was standing there, and I introduced myself as Dr. Heath, 'how can I
help you?' and this individual said 'my name is something' and I don't remember
what his first name was, but he told me his last name was McVeigh.

"So I said 'can I help you?' and he said 'well, we're here looking for work.'
and I said 'what kind of work are we looking for?' He said 'we are looking for
construction work.' And I said, 'well Mr. Birmbaum, the gentleman who is the job
counselor for the state jobs office, is not here.' And this individual--I asked
him if I could go back and get the job openings from the job counselor's
desk--and he said 'no, that won't be necessary.' So I said, 'well, I'm very
familiar with the area, and I could give you some job leads,' and I began to
tell him about job leads, and began to give him some names and some different
projects, and I said 'would you like me to get you the phone book; I could get
you the state jobs offices.' He said, 'no, that won't be necessary.'

"And about somewhere along in this conversation, the man who was sitting on the
east wall, directly behind the man who named himself as McVeigh, came up behind
the man, and said 'can I use your phone?' I would describe him as vanilla, 5'7"
or 5'9", mid-30's. [Then] the third party who was in the office, looked directly
at me, made eye contact with me, and I got the impression that this
individual's nationality was Native American, or half-Native American or
half-Mexican American or a foreign national. He was handsome--at one time my
mind said maybe he was from South America.

"I continued to talk to Mr. McVeigh and I said, 'Mr. McVeigh, did you take
anything in high school that would be beneficial for me to know about so I could
refer you to a different type of job?' And he said, 'well, probably not.' And I
said, 'well, where did you go to high school?' And he either said up north or
New York. And then I said, 'Where are you living?' And he said, 'Well, I've been
living in Kansas.' So then I said, 'Do you happen to be a member of the McVay
family from Cussing, Oklahoma?' he said, 'Well Dr. Heath, how do they spell
their name?' 'Well I assume, M-c-V-a-y.' And he took his finger, and he kind of
put it in my face and said, 'Well Dr. Heath,' in kind of a boisterous way, 'Dr.
Heath, you remember this. My name is McVeigh, but you don't spell it
M-c-V-a-y.'"(303)

What Dr. Heath was describing appears to have been Timothy McVeigh and his
co-conspirators casing the Murrah Building. As the press reported, the men went
floor-to-floor, asking job-related questions and picking up applications. Yet if
McVeigh had already cased the building on December 16, as reported by Danielle
Hunt, why would he need to case it again?

Moreover, if McVeigh wanted to case the building, why would he do it in such a
conspicuous manner? Why would he go from floor-to-floor asking about job
openings, then pretend not to be interested in following them up? And if
McVeigh was planning on committing such a horrific crime, why would he make it a
point to tell people his name, saying to Dr. Heath, "You remember this: My name
is McVeigh."

Former Federal Grand Juror Hoppy Heidelberg concurs. "Why would McVeigh walk
around the building before the blast telling people his name?"(304)

If McVeigh was keen on informing people of his identity before committing the
crime, he apparently was on a roll. On Saturday, April 8, McVeigh and friends
Andreas Strassmeir and Michael Brescia--both living at Elohim City at the
time--were seen at Lady Godiva's topless bar in Tulsa, Oklahoma. According to a
security camera videotape obtained by J.D. Cash of the McCurtain Gazette, and
Trish Wood of CBC, McVeigh's boasts were the topic of discussion among the
dancers that night. In the tape, one of the girls named Tara is overheard
relating the conversation to another girl in the dressing room:

"...he goes, 'I'm a very smart man.' I said, you are? And he goes, 'Yes, you're
going to find an (inaudible) and they're going to hurt you real bad.' I was,
like, 'Oh really?' And he goes, 'Yes, and you're going to remember me on April
, 1995. You're going to remember me for the rest of your life.'
Laughing, she replies, "Oh, really?"

"Yes you will," McVeigh says.(305)

The sighting of McVeigh in Tulsa on April 8, along with an older, pale yellow
Ryder truck that appeared to be privately-owned, directly contradicts the
testimony of the maid at the Imperial Motel who says McVeigh was there each day.
However, phone records indicate that McVeigh made a steady series of calls up
until April 7, which suddenly resumed again on the 11th. Could McVeigh have
flown to Oklahoma to pick up the old Ryder truck, then have flown back to
Kingman several days later? As J.D. Cash notes in the September 25, 1996
McCurtain Gazette:

It is not merely idle speculation that McVeigh flew to eastern Oklahoma or
western Arkansas to pick up the second truck. Records subpoenaed by the
government indicate McVeigh may have made such a trip to Fort Smith, Ark.,
between March 31 and April 14, 1995. Curiously, an employee of the airport taxi
service in Fort Smith could not elaborate on why the taxi firm's records for
that period were seized by federal agents working on what the government calls
the "OKBOMB" case.

If McVeigh actually did fly from Arizona to Arkansas, then drive the truck to
Kansas, then fly back to Arizona again, he apparently was a very busy man.
Witness accounts and phone records put him in Oklahoma City on the 7th, in Tulsa
on the 8th, in Kansas from the 10th to the 14th (although he's supposed to be in
Kingman on the 11th and 12th), then back in Oklahoma City on the 14th, 15th and
th (when he's supposedly in Kansas) then in Kansas on the 17th and 18th (when
he's also seen in Oklahoma City), and finally in Oklahoma City on the 19th, the
day of the bombing.

While McVeigh was supposedly seen at Terry Nichols' house in Herrington, Kansas
on the 13th, witness David Snider saw his car in Oklahoma City. A Bricktown
warehouse worker, Snider remembers seeing McVeigh's distinctive yellow Mercury
whiz past around 2:30 p.m., not far from downtown. Snider is certain it was the
same battered yellow Mercury driven by McVeigh. "I was standing there with my
friend, who does auto bodywork," said Snider, "when the car went past. I turned
to him and said, 'My Mom used to have a car just like that. It looks like
homeboy needs a primer job.'" Snider said the car had an Oklahoma tag, as
witness Gary Lewis later reported, not an Arizona tag as the FBI claims.
On Thursday, April 13, a federal employee in the Murrah Building saw two men,
one of whom she later identified as McVeigh. She was riding the elevator when it
stopped at the second floor. When the doors opened, there were two men in
janitorial smocks waiting to get on. She didn't recognize the men as any of the
regular janitors, and thought it odd that they turned away when she looked in
their direction.

On Monday, April 17, janitors Katherine Woodly and Martin Johnson, who were
working the 5-9 p.m. shift, saw McVeigh and his companion again. Martin said
McVeigh spoke to him about a job, and the man who resembled John Doe 2 nodded to Woodly.(306)

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.

Craig Freeman, a retired Air Force master sergeant who works in the same office
as Dr. Heath, was one of the people who saw McVeigh in Oklahoma when he was
supposedly in Kansas. Freeman recalls sharing the elevator with a man who
resembled McVeigh on Friday, April 14. "The guy was tall. What struck me is his
hair was cut real low. I thought he was a skinhead." Freeman, who is black, said
'Hey man, how's it going?' "And he looked at me like he was just disgusted with
me being there. Most people in the building speak to each other, you know, so I
spoke to this guy, and he looked at me like pure hate."

About a week and a half before the bombing, a HUD employee named Joan was riding the elevator with a man she described as Timothy McVeigh. What struck her was the man's strict military demeanor. He stared straight ahead making no
eye-contact or conversation. "He won't last long in this building," Joan thought
to herself.(307)

The Friday before the bombing, when Craig Freeman walked out of the building to
mail his taxes, he saw an individual he believes to have been Terry Nichols,
"because he looked just like the picture of him," said Freeman. "He was standing
there, he had a blue plaid shirt on. He was standing in the front of the
building--he was just standing there, looking kind of confused. You know, how
somebody looks when they're nervous."

Was the man in the elevator Freeman was describing actually Timothy McVeigh?
According to phone records obtained from the Dreamland Motel, McVeigh made
several phone calls from his room on the morning of Friday, April 14. Is it
still possible that McVeigh drove down to Oklahoma City in the afternoon?
If he did, he would had to have been back in Kansas by early next morning.
Barbara Whittenberg, owner of the Santa Fe Trail Diner in Herrington, remembers
serving breakfast to Nichols, McVeigh, and John Doe 2 around 6:00 a.m. on
Saturday.

"I asked them why they had a Ryder truck outside," said Whittenberg. "I wasn't
being nosy, I just wondered if Terry Nichols was moving. My sister was moving
here, and she needed to find a place. Well, the guy who they haven't arrested
yet--John Doe #2--he blurted out that they were going to Oklahoma. When that
happened, it was like someone threw ice water on the conversation. McVeigh and
Nichols just stared at the guy"(308)

A dancer in Junction City, Kansas had the same experience as Whittenberg, when
four of the suspects stopped by the Hollywood Supper Club around 10:30 that
evening. The dancer, who we'll call Sherrie, definitely recognized two of the
men as McVeigh and Nichols.

"The only reason I really remember it," said Sherrie, "is just because I had a
conversation with one of them about Oklahoma, and my husband's family is from
Oklahoma. He said they were planning a trip down there, and he said--I think it
was for hunting or something.Then one of them kind of gave him a look, and
they changed the subject."

Sherrie also said one of the men, who was quiet and sat in the corner, appeared
to be Middle-Eastern. The other was Hispanic or part Hispanic, and was friendly.
When he mentioned Oklahoma, Nichols shot him a hard look.(309)

Additionally, while the records at Elliott's Body Shop indicate that "Bob Kling"
rented his truck on April 17, Barbara Whittenberg saw the truck outside her
restaurant on the 15th. Later that day she saw it at Geary State Fishing Lake,
along with three people and a light-colored car, possibly a Thunderbird, with
Arizona tags.(310)

Backing up Whittenberg is Lee McGowan, owner of the Dreamland Motel in Junction
City, where McVeigh stayed from April 14 to April 17. McGowan told the FBI that
McVeigh was in possession of his truck the day before "Kling" allegedly rented
his. She remembered the day clearly because it was Easter Sunday.
McGowan's son, Eric, as well as motel resident David King and his mother, also
stated that they saw McVeigh driving an older faded yellow Ryder truck at the
motel around 4 p.m. on April 16.(311)

Yet McGowan's testimony contradicts that of Phyliss Kingsley and Linda Kuhlman,
who worked at the Hi-Way Grill in Newcastle, just south of Oklahoma City. The
two women saw McVeigh and three companions around 6:00 p.m. on April 16, when
they stopped in the restaurant and ordered hamburgers and fries to go. The two
women distinctly recall the Ryder truck pulling into the restaurant at SW 104th
and Portland, accompanied by a white Chevy long-bed pick-up, and an older,
darker, possibly blue pick-up, which may have belonged to Terry Nichols.
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.(312)

According to the FBI, this was the same day that McVeigh called Nichols from a
pay phone at Tim's Amoco in Herrington, Kansas at 3:08 p.m., and asked him to
drive him to Oklahoma City. It would have been impossible for McVeigh and
Nichols to drive from Junction City to Oklahoma City in less than four hours.
Reports soon surfaced that "McVeigh" had stayed at a motel south of downtown
Oklahoma City on the night of the 18th. Witnesses recall seeing a yellow Ryder
truck, and two companions. They recall that "McVeigh" gave them a "go to hell
look" as he pulled away.

Later that morning, at 8:35 a.m., Tulsa banker Kyle Hunt was driving to an
appointment when he came upon the Ryder truck at Main and Broadway, trailed by a
yellow Mercury. "for some reason I thought they were out of state, moving and
lost in downtown Oklahoma City," said Hunt. "I felt sorry for them and then when
I pulled up beside them, I got that cold icy stare from a guy that had a real
short GI haircut."(313)

Hunt described the driver of the Mercury as Timothy McVeigh. "He gave me that
icy, go-to-hell look," said Hunt. "It kind of unnerved me." While Hunt didn't
see the occupants of the truck, he did recall two passengers in the Mercury. The
rear occupant, said Hunt, had long hair, similar to the suspect Phyliss Kingsley
and Linda Kuhlman saw on Sunday at the Hi-Way Grill south of the city.

Around the same time as Hunt saw this convoy, David Snider, a warehouse worker
in Bricktown, a few blocks southeast of downtown, saw a heavily loaded Ryder
truck with two men inside, slowly making its way towards him. Snider had been
expecting a delivery that morning, and explained that people sometimes get lost
because the loading dock is on a different street than the warehouse. The time
was 8:35 a.m. Thinking the truck was his delivery, Snider waved them down.
Snider, who by now was gesticulating wildly, became frustrated as the two men,
staring at him, continued on their way.

While he never received his delivery, Snider did get a good look at the truck,
and the two men. The truck appeared to be an older model with a cab overhang,
not the newer version the FBI claimed was destroyed in the bombing.
Snider described the driver as a barrel-chested, dark-skinned male with long,
straight black hair, parted in the middle, wearing a thin small mustache. The
man, who was also wearing tear-drop style sunglasses and a dark shirt, was of
American Indian or Hispanic decent. (See sketch) "I lived in New Mexico for
years," said Snider; "I know the look." The passenger, wearing a white T-shirt,
Snider said, was Timothy McVeigh.

"He looked at me like 'who the hell are you?'--real attitude," recalls Snider,
and began yelling profanities at the loading-dock worker. Snider, who was not in
a great mood that morning to begin with, yelled back, "Fuck you, you skin-head
motherfucker!"

Snider and Hunt weren't the only individuals who saw McVeigh and the Ryder truck
that morning. At 8:40 a.m., Mike Moroz and Brian Marshall were busy at work at
Johnny's Tire Store on 10th and Hudson, when a yellow Ryder truck pulled in
looking for directions to the Murrah Building. The driver, who Moroz later
identified as Timothy McVeigh, was wearing a white T-shirt and a black ball cap
on backwards. Moroz caught a glimpse of the passenger--a stocky man with dark
curly hair, a tattoo on his upper left arm, and a ball cap worn similar to
McVeigh's. The passenger, said Moroz, stared straight ahead, never turning to
look in his direction.(314)

Moroz then proceeded to give directions to McVeigh, whom he described as polite,
friendly, and relaxed--quite interesting considering that McVeigh is supposedly
minutes away from murdering 169 people. After thanking Moroz, McVeigh got back
in the truck, sat there for a few minutes, then took off in the direction of the
Federal Building.

At approximately the same time as McVeigh was seen driving the Mercury by Kyle
Hunt, and seen as a passenger in the Ryder truck by David Snider, and seen
driving the Ryder truck by Mike Moroz, he was then seen driving the Mercury by
attorney James Linehan.

As previously discussed, Linehan, a Midwest City attorney, was stopped at a red
light at the northwest corner of 4th and Robinson, one block from the Murrah
Building. Late for an appointment, Linehan looked at his watch. It read 8:38
a.m. When he looked back up, he noticed a pale yellow Mercury stopped beside
him. While he could not positively I.D. the driver, he described him as having
sharp, pointed features, and smooth pale skin.

A second later, the Mercury driver gunned his engine, ran the red light, and
disappeared into the underground parking garage of the Murrah Building.
Is it possible these witnesses are describing are two different people? In
Snider's account, the driver is an American Indian or Hispanic man with long,
straight black hair, wearing sunglasses. The passenger is McVeigh. Neither one
is wearing a ball cap. The time is 8:35 a.m. In Moroz's account, the driver is
McVeigh, while the passenger is a stocky man with short curly hair. Both men are
wearing ball caps on backwards. The time is 8:40 a.m.

Snider and Moroz both saw a Ryder truck containing Timothy McVeigh, yet with
completely different companions. While Snider was yelling at McVeigh in the
Ryder truck in Bricktown, Hunt was watching the truck being trailed by McVeigh
in the Mercury several blocks away. A few minutes later, Linehan watched as the
Mercury drove into the Murrah Building garage.

Moreover, each witness saw these convoys at approximately the same time. It is
possible that the heavily loaded truck seen by Snider could have made it from 25
East California in Bricktown to 10th and Hudson in five minutes. But in order to
do so, they would have had to drop off one man, pick up another, exchange places
in the truck, and put on ball caps. Then they would have to drive a distance of
approximately 25 blocks--during morning rush hour traffic. Possible, but not too
likely.

Is it possible one of these witnesses has his story wrong? Well, if he does, he
has it really wrong. How could an apparently credible witnesses mistake a
short-curly-haired man with a black ball cap for a long-straight-haired man with
tear-drop sunglasses? One who is clearly the passenger, the other who is clearly
the driver? In numerous interviews with the author and other journalists, Snider
went into great detail about his encounter, and never wavered.

In a taped interview with Mike Moroz, he struck me as a sincere, sober, young
man. Both Linehan and Hunt are solid, professional people. It is not likely that
these witnesses are relaying inaccurate information.

"Their stories really seem to check out," said video producer Chuck Allen, who
interviewed many witnesses. "They go into great depth and detail about all this.
If you ever meet these guys, you'll know their stories are very strong--very
believable."(315)

Researchers have also questioned why McVeigh, who had supposedly been to the
Murrah Building at least three times--once on December 16, again a week and a
half before the bombing, then again on April 14--would need to ask directions to
it when he was only six blocks away. But according to Moroz, who has helped more
than a few lost travelers, the number of one-way streets in the downtown area
often confuses people. "A lot of people get lost down here, even people who live
here, he said"(316)

Finally, HUD employee Germaine Johnston was walking through an alley
approximately two blocks from the Murrah Building about 15 minutes after the
blast, when she ran into McVeigh and another man. "They were just standing there
watching," said Johnston.

McVeigh then asked the dazed passerby "Was anyone killed?" When Johnston
answered that numerous people had been killed, including many children,
McVeigh's expression suddenly turned sad. He and his companion then got up and
left.(317)(318)

Mike Moroz was eventually called in to identify McVeigh in a photo line-up. Yet
he was never called to testify before the Federal Grand Jury. Snider was
initially interviewed by two FBI agents, including Weldon Kennedy and Rob Ricks
[of Waco fame], but was never brought in to a line-up or called to testify
before the Federal Grand Jury.

Considering he had close and sustained contact with "McVeigh" and several of his
associates, Dr. Heath should have been a key prosecution witness. Yet the FBI
never called Dr. Heath in to identify McVeigh in a line-up. Nor was Dr. Heath
ever called before the Federal Grand Jury. Nor was Freeman ever called in to see
a line-up, or before the grand jury. Linehan, Hunt, Johnston, and numerous other
witnesses were likewise never called.

On May 10, the Los Angeles Times reported, "Investigators said authorities
theorize that John Doe 2 could be two people, and that McVeigh and his alleged
conspirators could have used different men to accompany him in order to serve as
'decoys' and confuse investigators trying to trace his movements."(319)

The Los Angeles Times report, which would tend to account for the two different
trucks, only gives half the story. What they aren't saying is that not only were
there at least two John Doe 2s--there apparently were two "Timothy McVeighs."
One was probably a double.

The use of doubles in espionage work is not new. In fact, the use of impostors,
look-alikes and doubles was well-documented in the JFK and Martin Luther King
assassinations.

Like the "Lee Harvey Oswald" who was seen filing out numerous job applications
in New Orleans, "McVeigh" was seen going floor-to-floor in the Federal Building
in Oklahoma. Except that the "Oswald" who filled out job applications listed his
height as 5' 9", while the real Oswald's height was 5' 11."

According to employees at Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City, the "McVeigh"
(alias "Kling") who rented the truck on April 17 was of medium build, 5' 10" to
' 11" and weighed 180-185 pounds. Elliott's employee Tom Kessinger stated on
his FBI FD-383 report that the man had a "rough" complexion with "acne."(320)
(See Appendix)

The only problem is, Timothy McVeigh is 6' 2," weighs 160 pounds, and has a
totally clear complexion. Another shop employee, Vicki Beemer, said the man had
a deformed chin, unlike the real McVeigh.(321)

Nevertheless, federal prosecutors would claim that a "little curlicue" on the
"K" in "Kling's" signature was indicative of McVeigh's handwriting. Yet if
McVeigh was the same person who rented the truck at Elliott's on the 17th, why
didn't he also use an alias while signing the motel register? While the
"McVeigh" who rented the truck listed his name as "Bob Kling," 428 Malt Drive,
Redfield, SD, the "McVeigh" who checked into the Dreamland, right down the
street, signed his name as "Tim McVeigh," and listed his address as 3616 North
Van Dyke Road, Decker, Michigan, the home of James Nichols.(322)

If McVeigh was planning on committing such a heinous crime, certainly he would
not leave such a blatantly incriminating trail of evidence. This makes about as
much sense as McVeigh going from floor-to-floor in the Murrah Building filling
out job applications and announcing his name. Or telling a dancer in Tulsa,
"You're going to remember me on April 19th."

These preposterous scenes were practically identical to those of all-time patsy
Lee Harvey Oswald. In early November of 1963, a "Lee Harvey Oswald" applied for
a job as a parking lot attendant at the Southland Hotel. During his interview
with the manager, he asked if there was a good view of downtown Dallas from the
hotel.(323)

On January 20, 1961, two men, one representing himself as "Lee Harvey Oswald,"
walked into the Bolton Ford dealership in New Orleans and requested a bid for 10
pick-up trucks, ostensibly for the Friends of Democratic Cuba Committee. The
only problem was, Lee Harvey Oswald was in Russia at the time.(324)

Then in September of 1963, a man purporting to be "Lee Harvey Oswald" showed up
at the Mexican Consulate in New Orleans. According to Mrs. Fenella Farrington,
"Oswald" said, "What do you have to do to take firearms or a gun into Mexico?"
A "Lee Harvey Oswald" subsequently phoned, then showed up at the Soviet embassy
in Mexico City, speaking with a trade consultant who was allegedly a member of
the KGB's "liquid affairs" bureau (hit squad). The CIA later turned over to the
Warren Commission a surveillance snapshot of a man they claimed was Oswald at
the Soviet embassy. The man looked nothing like Oswald.

On April 17, 1995, a "Bob Kling" showed up at Elliott's Body Shop in Junction
City, Kansas and rented a Ryder truck. Yet according to surveillance footage
taken from a nearby McDonalds, McVeigh was sitting in the restaurant eating a
hamburger at the time. He was wearing completely different clothes than those
ascribed to "Kling."

Yet the FBI contends that McVeigh left the restaurant 20 minutes before the
truck was rented, walked the 1.3 miles to Elliott's--a fifteen-minute walk--in a
light rain, then showed up at Elliott's nice and dry, wearing completely
different clothes.

In November of 1963, a "Lee Oswald" walked into the downtown Lincoln Mercury
dealership in Dallas announcing his intention to buy a Mercury Comet. According
to the salesman, Albert Bogard, "Mr. Oswald" took him on a wild test drive,
speeding along at 60 to 70 miles an hour. After he was told the amount of the
down payment, another salesman, Eugene Wilson, heard "Oswald" say, "Maybe I'm
going to have to go back to Russia to buy a car."

During the Warren Commission hearings, salesman Frank Pizzo described the
customer as 5' 8" tall. When the Warren Commission showed Pizzo a photo of
Oswald taken after his arrest, he said, "I have to say that he is not the
one."(325)

After the bombing in Oklahoma City, ATF informant Carol Howe told the FBI that
she recognized the two men on the FBI's original wanted posters as Peter Ward
and Michael Brescia--two Elohim City residents. She said that neither man was
Tim McVeigh.(326)

In early November of 1963, Mrs. Lovell Penn of Dallas found three men firing a
rifle on her property. After they left, she found a spent cartridge bearing the
name "Mannlicher-Carcanno," the rifle that the Warren Commission claimed Oswald
used to perform his historic feat of marksmanship in Dealy Plaza.

As District Attorney Jim Garrison later noted, "These scenes were about as
subtle as roaches trying to sneak across a white rug."

No less subtle were the scenes and events leading up to the Oklahoma City
bombing. It is highly possible that the man Dr. Heath saw in the Murrah Building
a week and-a-half before the bombing was not Timothy McVeigh at all, but a
double. The scenario of Timothy McVeigh--the alleged "lone nut" bomber--going
from floor-to-floor in the target building announcing his name while leaving a
paper trail is beyond credulity.

Like Oswald, who repeatedly telephoned, then appeared at the Soviet embassy in
Mexico, McVeigh would telephone Elohim City--a white separatist compound--just
before the bombing, asking to speak to Andy Strassmeir.

Like Oswald, who left behind a diary of his "Left-leaning" writings, McVeigh
purportedly left intentions of his plans to bomb other targets in the glove
compartment of his car--a car which could be easily recognized and traced to
him.

Like Oswald who, after purportedly killing the president of the United States,
walked into a movie house without paying, purposely attracting the attention of
the police, McVeigh would speed down the highway at 80 miles an hour without a
license plate, purposefully attracting the attention of the Highway Patrol. He
would then meekly hand himself over for arrest, not even attempting to draw his
Glock 9mm pistol on the approaching cop, whom he could have easily shot and
killed.

Like the Mannlicher-Carcanno rifle which Oswald purportedly bought from a
mail-order supply house, and the Mannlicher-Carcanno cartridge found by Mrs.
Penn, McVeigh would leave a business card from Paulsen's Military Surplus with a
notation to pick up more TNT in the police cruiser after his arrest.(327)
As Jim Garrison noted, "Some of these scenes were so preposterous only the most
gullible could swallow them."

Like Oswald, who was led out of the Dallas Police Department and immediately
shot by Jack Ruby, McVeigh would be led out of the Noble County Courthouse in a
bright orange jumpsuit, without a bullet-proof vest, paraded before an angry
crowd on the verge of violence.

Finally, like James Earl Ray, who was accused of killing Martin Luther King,
Jr., we are left pondering the significance of two similar vehicles, both
apparently tied to the crime. Ray had owned a white Ford Mustang, which was seen
speeding away after the assassination. Yet another white Mustang was seen parked
in front of Jim's Grill in Memphis, near where Ray had his car parked. The two
cars were almost identical, except for two things: While Ray was wearing a suit
on April 4, 1968, the driver of the other Mustang was wearing a dark blue
windbreaker; while Ray's car had Alabama plates, the other car had Arkansas
plates.(328)

One is reminded of the contradictory testimony of David Snider and Mike Moroz,
who saw two Ryder trucks on the morning of April 19, but with different
occupants. Another interesting parallel is that while McVeigh's Mercury
reportedly had Arizona tags, a white Oklahoma tag was seen by Gary Lewis
dangling from one bolt as the car sped away from the scene.

In spite of the numerous discrepancies, it seemed that by a convenient string of
associations, a carefully placed trail of evidence, and a carefully planned and
executed operation, Timothy McVeigh was implicated as prime suspect number one
in the plot to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Building.

Like Lee Harvey Oswald, who was declared the "lone assassin" within weeks,
Timothy McVeigh would be declared--along with Terry Nichols--the "lone bomber"
within days. On the indictments, the Justice Department would gratuitously add,
"with others unknown." Yet these "others unknown" would fade from official
memory as the so-called "Justice" Department withdrew the John Doe 2 sketch and
the subsequent reward offer.

After his arrest, Lee Harvey Oswald announced to the television cameras, "I'm a
patsy!"

After his arrest, Timothy McVeigh told the London Sunday Times he was "set up"
for the bombing by the FBI because of his extreme political views.(329)

Never since the frame-up of Lee Harvey Oswald has the media gone out of its way
to portray a suspect as dangerous and malignant. While the mainstream press took
their cues from the FBI, they contradicted their own journalistic common sense.
The government and their mainstream media lap dogs have based their theories of
Timothy McVeigh upon the flimsiest of pretenses, while ignoring the more obvious
facts. The mainstream press, willing to take the Federal Government's word as
gospel, has succumbed, and perpetrated, the most obvious propaganda. In so
doing, they have violated every principal of thorough and honest journalism, and
have become nothing but a willing tool of the corporate/intelligence
establishment.

As Stephen Jones said, "Before this investigation is all over with, the
government will have Tim McVeigh standing next to Lee Harvey Oswald."(330)

Yet unlike Oswald, who was summarily executed by mob-connected police officer
Jack Ruby, McVeigh has quietly and safely settled into his newfound
circumstances. As the drama of his trial(s) unfold in a daily display of
evidence and witnesses, Timothy McVeigh may truly believe that justice will
prevail.