Mueller orders review of bombing investigation 2004-02-27 -- OKC Bombing

You know _Jim I guess it is a DAMN good thing you are on FR. I mean, I just looked at your name-page and it is apparent that you are an expert on EVERYTHING!

Damn, I am impressed (/sarcasm)

Semper Disgusted

while coincidence is not causality, that *is* an interesting coincidence - though perhaps not directly related to each other it does point out the twilight zone atmosphere of that place, doesn't it?

Ron Brown ping

I came back after working on something. That guy gives me the creeps the way he shows up everytime there is something posted that heads right at the Clintons. At least I am not the only one that thinks that.

The news coverage in OKC about the fact that Director Mueller wants a lot of information to review was just odd -- very odd. I taped one of the reports on the satellite receiver and watched another station -- it was like they could not believe this was happening. Got the feeling there is more to this then meets the eye.

I have no basis for this except a feeling based on what I am watching and hearing, but I think the local DA wants everything to come out. He turned down the Nichols pleading no contest which would have essentially close the case. Instead, he didn't even fight very hard to keep defense witnesses from testifying. Don't know how many times today I have heard reminders that Nichols is in State custody now.

Something set this investigation off. They never did explain away to most people's satisfaction that second hit on the seismograph at OU. Since the anomoly has never happened again, I doubt it just happened at that time. Just found the following on an email link from a story about the Motel:

THE IMPORTANCE OF JANE GRAHAM

MY FELLOW CITIZENS

By Michael A. O'Camb

Anyone who saw the televised coverage of the bombed-out Murrah
Building didn't need to be a rocket scientist to realize that the tremendous destruction done didn't come from a single bomb in a vehicle `outside' the building. But, rather, it should have been obvious to any fourteen-year-old boy of average intelligence that the Murrah Building was literally "dropped" by blowing several of the reinforced concrete supporting columns and part of the massive reinforced concrete header supporting the building out from under it. This occurred as Gen. Partin said, "at critical structural points at the third floor level."

Did the bombers plant explosives in other parts of the building as well? Eyewitness accounts `before' the bombing strongly suggest that demolition charges were placed elsewhere. On
the Friday before the bombing several persons at the Murrah building saw three men (they took for maintenance or utility workers) "working" in a reserved area of the underground parking structure.

These men had what appeared to be a set of plans or "blue prints," telephone wire and a large block of "clay." When the three men noticed they were being observed by one of the employees, JANE GRAHAM, a federal government employee of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (H.U.D), situated in the Murrah building, they themselves began to act somewhat suspiciously.

And this is where we get into the importance of Jane Graham. It was nearly a year later, while watching a video about the bombing at a friends' house, Jane was taken aback by two men in the video she'd seen on the afternoon before the bombing and `the very morning of the bombing' inside the Murrah Federal Building each wearing the
blue uniform (shirt and pants) of General Services Administration (G.S.A.) employees. Jane had never seen these two men before or after this two day period, and at the time, had thought it strange that two of the regular G.S.A. employees would have been off on the same day, replaced by two temporaries.

After viewing the video, she began to re-think several incidences she had heard or seen in the two weeks leading up to the morning of the bombing that at the time they occurred didn't seem all that unusual. But, as she began to put them in order, a definite pattern of importance began to emerge. The first incident was a conversation between two women she'd overheard in a coffee shop/snack bar in the Murrah Building about two weeks before the bombing. In this conversation one woman told another that a friend of her's in the F.B.I. had mentioned there was going to be a bombing. Concerned because Jane thought the woman was talking about the F.B.I. building, and she had a relative working nearby, she told her husband that evening what she'd overheard.

Then the three utility workers in the underground parking structure she and others had seen "working" the Friday before the bombing, now began to appear much more significant to her than they had at the time she'd seen them. The thing that really bothered her were these two men - the two she'd seen the previous afternoon and the morning of the bombing - "working" inside the Murrah Building wearing their blue G.S.A. uniforms.

The video Jane was watching had been shot shortly after the bombing and here they were outside the building `in street clothes' accidentally caught on videotape! Why had they changed? The last time she distinctly remembered seeing them it was 8:15 A.M. on April 19th (approximately forty-seven minutes before the bombing). They had just exited a stairwell that comes directly from the ninth floor down to the hallway they now briskly passed her in.

As she turned to watch them they continued down the hallway and exited the building at a fast pace. Jane remembers that one of them was carrying something in his hand but she doesn't remember what it was. It should be noted that neither of these individuals were any one of the three men that she and others had seen "working" in the underground parking structure on the previous Friday. These were two different individuals from the three. Jane had told the F.B.I. about the two men in the G.S.A. uniforms and when she was asked by an agent was either of them Timothy McVeigh or Terry [Nichols], and she told them "No," the F.B.I. wasn't really interested in talking to her further.

The question now becomes: Who is Jane Graham and is she a credible witness? Jane and her family moved from Boston to Oklahoma in 1984. She is a wife, mother and grandmother. After moving to Oklahoma, Jane went to work for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (H.U.D.) [in Murrah building], where she had been employed for 10 years. Active in union affairs for much of her life, at the time of the bombing, Jane was (and still is) president of the American Federation of Government Employees (A.F.G.E.) Union Local Number 3138, in Oklahoma City.

In short, Jane Graham is a very credible witness and deserves to be heard. What Jane Graham felt, heard and experienced, during the bombing also debunks the single bomb nonsense as well. At the time of the bombing, Jane and others were attending a "Windows" software workshop on the ninth floor of the building. As she sat down in the chair and turned on a computer, Jane remembers that the entire building began to shake. Her first thought was that she'd done something wrong with the computer. She remembers the floor "rolling" from east to west.

After the shaking began, the women in charge of the computer workshop exclaimed that it must be an earthquake and for everyone to get under their desks. Jane remembers that at this point she just sat there frozen and stunned for a few seconds. Then she recalls, ...seven...eight...nine seconds later...hearing a very large explosion and feeling it coming "up" toward them on the ninth floor from below, within the building. The last thing she remembers before she was knocked unconscious by debris was part of the roof hanging over and seeing blue sky. Her estimation of a 7-9 second interval between explosions is very close to the 10-second interval recorded by the Oklahoma Geological Survey seismograph at Norman, and should be taken very seriously.

The initial shaking of the building was probably caused by the series of explosive charges placed at critical structural areas (such as those General Partin has spoken of) beginning to collapse much of the east end of the building. What Jane Graham and others experienced during the bombing lends powerful credence to the multiple-bomb analysis of General Partin. Retired F.B.I. bureau chief Ted L. Gunderson and many others also believe there was more than one bomb. Yet the multiple-bomb theory in both trials wasn't even brought up, and when Stephen Jones [McVeigh's attorney] tried to introduce the possibility of a much larger bombing conspiracy, it was barred by the judge!

With the hasty passage by congress of the anti- and counter- terrorism legislation, which would have otherwise gone nowhere, many equate what happened in Oklahoma City with Hitler's burning of the Reichstag in 1933. With much of the evidence being what it is who can legitimately argue against this point? Jane Graham is a courageous lady for coming forward. And other bombing survivors will do the same. This is where each of you who reads this article can help. Jane Graham has given an extensive videotaped interview of what I have written about here. The interview is in a new video titled "Oklahoma Atrocity." Get a copy and show it to your family and friends.

with Congress still refusing to act, it will only be in this way, with many of you helping that the real truth of this terrible atrocity will see the light of day. With thousands or tens of thousands of American's working together--one of the greatest cover-ups of the century can be broken and the truth presented to a jury in Oklahoma City. I cannot emphasize to you, the reader, strongly enough how important the following information is, and how critical it is for as many of you as possible to act on it. A concerted effort (which this article is a part of) is currently underway in various parts of the country to get Jane Graham's videotaped testimony to as many of the bombing survivors and county and city officials as possible in Oklahoma City.

A county grand jury was impaneled last [summer], in Oklahoma City, and is currently looking into the bombing.

BACKGROUND
DELTA - On April 19, 1995, at approximately 9:02 A.M. (local time) a series of explosions devastated the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City in what was by far the deadliest terrorist bombing in U.S. history. Since then, Timothy McVeigh has been convicted on all counts against him in the bombing and has
been sentenced to death. His alleged accomplice in this horrific act, Terry Nichols, has been convicted of conspiracy and awaits sentencing. Among the various charges; both men were accused of making and delivering a single 4800 lb. ammonium nitrate and fuel oil (ANFO) bomb to the front of the Murrah Building in a Ryder truck, which caused the terrible destruction and carnage, the aftermath of which was later witnessed by tens of millions on network television. During both trials, the prosecution maintained that the devastation to the building and the tremendous injury and loss of life to those inside was caused solely by this single truck bomb.

However, other things which occurred in the two weeks leading up to the bombing, as well as other events seen and recorded that morning, completely contradict this single truck-bomb theory. To begin with, the seismic equipment at the Oklahoma Geological Survey at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, more than twenty miles away, registered "two" distinct ground motions some ten seconds apart at 9:02 A.M. on the morning of April 19th. And the seismometer at the Omniplex Science Museum much closer to the federal building, registered what many experts believe were as many as "six separate air blasts and shock waves," in rapid succession at the same time! Yet the government and the major-media have steadfastly reported only a single explosion!

And some of the most preeminent explosives' experts on the face of the earth have been totally ignored so far. One of these experts is Benton K. Partin, brigadier General U.S.A.F. (Retired), who did extensive analysis and study of the "pattern of damage" to the Murrah Building, and concluded that it "could not" have been caused solely by a truck bomb, parked outside the building, regardless of how much explosives it contained! Because the "asymmetrical" damage pattern to the building was not consistent with a single point of detonation. Who is Benton K. Partin, and what qualifications does he possess to make such critical analysis?

To begin with, General Partin could rightfully be called the "expert's expert," when it comes to high-explosives and bomb-damage analysis for the following reasons: In addition to spending 31 years active duty in the U.S. Air Force, 25 of those years were spent in research, design, development, test and management, of nearly every non-nuclear weapons-device in the Air Force. This included "hands-on work" at the Ballistic Research Laboratories, and Commander of the Air Force Armament Technology Laboratory. His military and professional accomplishments would literally take two or three more paragraphs to list (including: Air Force Systems command, Air Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). He has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, an M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering and is a Ph.D. Candidate (academics completed) in Operations Research & Statistics. So, when one refers to General Partin as the expert's expert, concerning high-explosives and bomb-damage analysis, it is done so for a very good reason.

After extensive analysis of hundreds of photographs and much videotaped footage, he released an extensive forensic report on July 30, 1995, entitled: Bomb Damage Analysis Of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It is an incredibly detailed scientific analysis and includes five color photographs (or Tabs). Preceding his analysis, he has a two-page "info copy" of a letter of the same date (July 30, 1995), which he sent to U.S. Senator Trent Lott of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In addition to Senator Lott's letter, General Partin sent "info copies" of this letter to all 535 members of Congress! Due to space limitations here, I will now quote just the first paragraph of this most important letter:

"The attached report contains conclusive proof that the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was not caused solely by the truck bomb. Evidence shows that the massive destruction was primarily the result of four explosive charges placed at critical structural points at the third floor level."

A man of General Partin's military and educational background most certainly doesn't use such terms as "conclusive proof" and "evidence shows" lightly, especially when writing about high-explosives and bomb analysis. As truly incredible as it is, he has been ignored by most of our "representatives," both Democrats and Republicans in Congress!! And the media has continued to tell the American people it was all the result of a single ANFO bomb in the back of a Ryder truck.

General Partin has done extensive investigation and analysis into the World Trade Center bombing, the missile shoot-down of TWA FLIGHT 800, and several other cover-ups in recent years. Each of these, including the Oklahoma City bombing, are available on a 2 1/2 hour video for $29.00 (including shipping). General Partin's, published analysis which I have written about here is only $10.00.

Write to: Benton K. Partin, 8908 Captains Row, Alexandria, Virginia 22308. And the video "Oklahoma Atrocity," with Jane Graham's recorded deposition, is available for $13.00 from Harvestor Tapes, 11668 #244 Gateway Blvd, Los Angeles, California 90064.

The profits from the tapes put out by Harvester will go to provide more tapes which will be hand-carried to those in Oklahoma City. That is why Harvester Tapes is making this special offer to you. For only $25.00 (plus sh&h), you will be sent the video "Reichstag '95" featuring retired F.B.I. bureau chief Ted L. Gunderson and Anthony J. Hilder, discussing the Oklahoma City bombing and "Oklahoma Atrocity" (Jane Graham's recorded testimony). Your purchase of these tapes will help finance the Oklahoma city project. Harvester tapes: (310) 288-6656

This reporter talked to Mrs. Jane Graham this morning. The following are her statements: Congressman James A. Traficant Jr., Chairman--Committee Science, Transportation and Infrastructure, will meet Mrs. Graham when the Committee meets. She will giver her testimony at that time. She does not know when this event will take place. She has not been called to testify to the Oklahoma City County Grand Jury. Representative Charles Key did confirm that Mrs. Graham is on the list of witnesses to testify for the Grand Jury. Furthermore, Mrs. Graham has written to the Foreman of the Grand Jury, in care of District Attorney, Bob Macy, stating that she has important data to impart.

Mr. Macy's office wrote back stating that the letter from the Foreman showed no interest in her testimony at this time, and that those concerned would get back to her "if" they become interested.

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/fed.htm

The Terrorist Motel
The I-40 connection between Zacarias Moussaoui and Mohamed Atta
by Jim Crogan

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE NONDESCRIPT ROADSIDE motel outside Oklahoma City was just a fleeting encounter during the twisted cross-country odyssey of the terrorists who would carry out the September 11 attacks. Mohamed Atta, alleged leader of the plot, and two companions wanted to rent a room, but couldn't get the deal they wanted, so they left.

It was an incident of no particular importance, except for one thing. The owner of the motel remembers Atta being in the company of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker," who was arrested prior to September 11 and now faces conspiracy charges in connection with the terror assaults.

If this recollection is correct, the entire incident, and its absence from the public record, raises new questions about the FBI investigation of Moussaoui and even the 1995 destruction of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Already the FBI has endured a withering political and media critique for failing to aggressively investigate Moussaoui and his contacts during his four weeks in custody prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Some FBI officials have responded by characterizing Moussaoui as only a minor player. But the report from the motel owner, if proven, could change that. And it also could force the FBI to reopen its investigation of Middle Eastern connections to the 1995 Oklahoma City blast, because convicted bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols reportedly stayed at the same motel, interacting with a group of Iraqis during the weeks before the bombing.

AT PRESS TIME, THE ERRATIC MOUSSAOUI, WHO IS representing himself, was attempting to plead guilty and bring his trial to a close. The 34-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent had previously filed some 94 hand-scrawled, rambling motions attacking the government's case and its right to prosecute him.

But that circus obscures a conundrum of a different sort. The government's case, as outlined in its new six-count conspiracy indictment, is largely circumstantial, lacking any definitive link between Moussaoui and the 19 hijackers identified by federal authorities. All of which makes the apparent shelving of the Moussaoui-Atta sighting all the stranger. In fact, even though multiple sources contend that the FBI interviewed the motel owner, there's no indication that prosecutors were told. It's possible that the FBI found the motel owner's identifications wrong or his story unreliable. But it's still odd that, in interviews with the Weekly, Justice Department prosecutors seemed to know nothing about the motel encounter, especially because agents reportedly told the motel owner they would pass the information on to Moussaoui's defense team.

The motel co-owner, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the incident occurred around August 1, 2001, just six weeks before 9/11.

"They came in around 10 or 11 a.m. and started talking to my desk clerk," he said. Even though he was working about 10 feet away from the trio, the owner didn't really pay any attention at first. "They were asking my clerk, who no longer works here, about a weekly rate for our rooms." (The former clerk could not be reached for comment.)

The motel, explained the owner, sets aside some rooms with small kitchenettes to rent on a weekly basis. "But they were all taken." He said the clerk explained the situation, but the visitors were persistent. "Finally, my clerk asked me to talk to them."

The motel owner said that Moussaoui and a man who appeared to be Marwan al-Shehhi -- who helped crash a jetliner into the south tower of the World Trade Center -- were friendly and said a few things, but Atta was clearly the leader. "He did most of the talking and seemed very serious," said the owner, adding, "I was standing face to face, about two feet away from Atta, and talked to the three of them for about 10 minutes. Atta asked if he could rent one of the other rooms at a weekly rate, and I told him no.

"I asked him what they were doing here in the area. And Atta told me they were going to flight school. I thought he meant [Federal Aviation Administration] training in Oklahoma City. But Atta told me no, they were taking flight training in Norman.

"I said I didn't understand why they wanted to rent one of my rooms, since we were about 28 miles from Norman and there are a lot of reasonably priced motels a lot closer. But he said they had heard good things about my place
and wanted to stay there. I told them I was sorry, but we couldn't accommodate them. Atta finally said okay. Then they all thanked me for my time and left."

After the attacks, said the motel owner, he recognized his visitors in photos from television reports. "I was really stunned," he said. Then he decided to call the FBI hot line. The motel owner said he didn't hear right back from the FBI. In the interim, he also spoke to a former law-enforcement officer who was investigating reported sightings of Mujahid Abdulquaadir Menepta at the same motel during the mid-1990s. Menepta, reportedly a friend of Moussaoui's, was arrested 30 years ago in Colorado for aggravated robbery and served more than three years in prison.

After September 11, Menepta publicly defended Moussaoui, calling him a "scapegoat." The FBI arrested him as a material witness and subsequently charged Menepta with a federal gun violation. He pleaded guilty and in April 2002 was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison. He was never charged with any terrorism-related crime. But during the preliminary hearing on the gun charge, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agent Jeffrey Whitney testified that a confidential source placed Menepta at a meeting of a radical Islamic group in St. Louis where he allegedly threatened to shoot any police officer who entered the mosque. Menepta's attorney challenged the credibility of this report in court.

A former desk clerk at the motel -- a different clerk from the one who purportedly dealt with Atta and Moussaoui -- told the Weekly that he remembered Menepta because in 1994 and 1995 -- prior to the Oklahoma City attack -- Menepta frequently visited the motel office. There, he bought coffee and talked for hours to this clerk.

The clerk and his wife, who both formerly worked at the motel, said they picked Menepta's picture out of a photo lineup prepared by a law-enforcement officer who had interviewed the motel owner.

This officer, who also spoke to the Weekly on condition of anonymity, said that after the motel owner told him about the Moussaoui sighting, he contacted a member of Oklahoma's Joint Terrorism Task Force, which includes the FBI.

The FBI finally acted on the tip. The motel owner said that on December 19, 2001, he went to FBI offices in

Oklahoma City for a formal interview, where he was debriefed by an FBI agent and by Oklahoma City Police Sergeant Jerry Flowers. "We talked for several hours, and I told them everything I knew." The motel owner said he would have taken a polygraph exam but was not asked to do so. The Weekly's law-enforcement source corroborates the December 19
interview.

The motel owner never heard from prosecutors in Moussaoui's case but got one more call from the FBI several weeks later. "The agent told me they had passed on a copy of my statement to Moussaoui's defense team, and I might be getting a call from them. But I was under no obligation to talk to them. However, I don't know if that was the truth. Since then, I have never heard from anyone connected to Moussaoui's case."

ONE REASON FOR THE FBI'S APPARent lack of interest might be this motel's alleged connection to Timothy McVeigh and a group of Iraqis who worked in Oklahoma City. According to the motel owner and other witnesses and investigators interviewed by the Weekly, McVeigh and several of these Iraqis were motel guests in the months preceding the 1995 bombing. Witnesses also claimed they saw several of the Iraqis moving barrels of material around on the bed of a truck. The motel owner said the material smelled of diesel fuel and he had to clean up a spill. Diesel fuel was a key component of the truck bomb that blew up the Federal Building.

The motel owner said he and his staff reported this information to the FBI in 1995. "We did have an ATF agent come out and collect the originals of the room registrations for that period, but we never heard back from them. And I never could get the registrations returned." He added that his previous experience with the FBI made him reluctant to contact them about Moussaoui. "But I decided it was my duty to tell them what had happened. So I did."

Former Oklahoma City TV reporter Jayna Davis also interviewed motel staff and former guests. In the process, she collected signed affidavits about their contacts with McVeigh and the Iraqis. She tried twice to give the Bureau this information, but the FBI refused to accept her materials. (The Weekly first reported on her investigation in an article published in September 2001.)

The Weekly's law-enforcement source said he has reviewed Davis' material and considers it credible. "Last December I personally took the documents to the Joint Terrorism Task Force," he said. "I told them they should do their own investigation." The response was not encouraging. He said he was later informed that the Bureau brought in an analyst, "but I was told it would probably go nowhere. They were afraid the whole Oklahoma City bombing can of worms would be opened up and the FBI would have to explain why they didn't investigate this material before."

The Weekly contacted numerous local and federal investigators and agencies, including the Oklahoma task force, the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI and the Justice Department. All declined to comment. Prosecutors on the Moussaoui case also declined official comment, but their reactions suggested they knew nothing of the motel encounter.

After being told about the motel owner's interview and allegations, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Spencer responded with a one-word question about the sighting: "When?" Spencer then declined further comment. Another Moussaoui prosecutor, David Novak, also declined comment. But Novak wanted to know the name of the motel owner.

Other substantial connections already tie the Sooner state to Moussaoui and, separately, several 9/11 hijackers.

According to the Moussaoui indictment, on September 29, 2000, Moussaoui made
e-mail contact with Airman Flight School in Norman. Then, on February 23, 2001, he flew from London to Chicago and then to Oklahoma City. What he did in the next few days is unknown or at least not accounted for in the indictment. But on February 26, Moussaoui opened a bank account in Norman, depositing $32,000. From February 26 to May 29, he attended flight school in Norman. Then he suddenly quit the school. Between July 29 and August 4, Moussaoui made calls from public pay phones in Norman to Germany. On August 1 and 3, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh wired Moussaoui a total of about $14,000 from two train stops in Germany to somewhere in Oklahoma. This wire transfer does imply a connection to terrorist plotters because al-Shibh, an alleged al Qaeda member, wired money to other hijackers. On August 3, Moussaoui purchased two knives in Oklahoma City. And on August 10 or 11, an acquaintance drove Moussaoui from Oklahoma to Minnesota for enrollment in a new flight school. Authorities arrested Moussaoui in Minnesota on August 17 on an immigration violation. As has been widely reported, Moussaoui attracted attention because he said he was interested in flying a plane but not learning how to take off or land. He was in federal custody when the 9/11 attacks occurred.

As for the terrorists who took part in 9/11, Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi visited the Airman Flight School in Norman in July 2000, according to the Moussaoui indictment. (The motel owner identifies al-Shehhi as the third person with Atta and Moussaoui when they allegedly inquired about a room.) And on April 1, 2001, Nawaf al-Hazmi, who helped hijack American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, was stopped for speeding in Oklahoma and given two tickets. The Oklahoma state trooper found no outstanding warrants and turned al-Hazmi loose. The media has since reported that the CIA had been tracking al-Hazmi, but never told the immigration service or the FBI that he was a suspected terrorist during his 21-month U.S. stay. Authorities have never publicly accounted for Atta and al-Shehhi's whereabouts during the time of the alleged motel encounter.

The Moussaoui indictment lays out a tantalizing possible association between Atta and Moussaoui, but never puts the two in the same place at the same time. The link could exist, however, along a dusty Oklahoma roadside, off Interstate 40, at a small motel that is indistinguishable from hundreds of others, except for its possible connection to terrorists.

Gets even stranger with the Ron Brown reference -- he was totestify about his dealings here in OK with Oklahoma Natural Gas after he came back from his trip to Europe where he was "killed" -- was involved with the Lum Family that got caught making illegal campaign contributions. Also the ONG deal involved Clintonites from AR and a murder of a Norman man named Miller. They think now his death could have been biological in nature because they could never pinpoint exactly what was wrong with him before he was "murdered" -- I refuse to say it was anything but murder from all I have read. Figure I might as well throw this on the thread since you mentioned Ron Brown -- the story from Newsmax has also been well documented here in OK:

Witness in Brown Case May Have Been Murdered

Oklahoma's chief medical examiner is exploring the possibility that a key government witness in the Independent Counsel's investigation of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown may have been murdered.

In 1997, Oklahoma businessman Ron Miller provided the government key evidence -- including audio tapes -- against Eugene and Nora Lum, two fund-raisers with close ties to Brown and the Clinton White House.

For more than two years Miller's death has been officially classified as "natural." But, last week, legal consultant Stephen Dresch persuaded the Oklahoma state medical examiner to reclassify Miller's cause of death as "unknown," saying that the available medical evidence was also "consistent with homicide."

Dresch is currently involved in a lawsuit stemming from the 1996 plane crash death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.

Evidence provided by Miller to the independent counsel then probing Secretary Brown's business dealings helped prosecutors build a case against fund-raisers Eugene and Nora Lum. The Lums had given Brown's son Michael gifts of stock in their company, Dynamic Energy Resources, made him a board member and lavished him with six-figure consulting fees.

The Lums' daughter Trisha won a slot in the Commerce Department and even accompanied Brown on his 1994 trade mission to China. Suspicions that the Lums used Michael Brown to funnel money to his father were never proven.

Nora Lum made at least thirteen visits to the Clinton White House between 1993 and 1995.

Miller had owned Gage Corp., a company that was sold in 1993 to Dynamic Energy. Miller also audiotaped his telephone conversations with the Lums and provided federal probers with 165 cassette recordings believed to be crucial to their prosecution.

Dresch told NewsMax.com on Tuesday that Miller had taken elaborate steps to document his dealing with the Lums, bugging his own office and even his briefcase. "He realized he was in the middle of something big," Dresch explained.

Anticipating the Lums' indictment in May of 1997, Miller was elated that his evidence gathering had resulted in the first real prosecution of the 1996 campaign finance scandal. "I'm really glad to see it," the Oklahoma businessman told American Lawyer News Service. "It needs to be exposed to the light of day. It could focus light on a portion of the Lums' activities, and that would expand to shed light on the rest."

However, the Clinton Justice Department, which had taken over Independent Counsel Daniel Pearson's probe of Commerce Secretary Brown's activities after Brown's April 1996 death, brought no action against the Lums related to their ties to Brown, his son or the Commerce Department. The Oklahoma couple were instead charged only with making illegal campaign contributions to Senator Edward Kennedy and an Oklahoma Democratic House candidate.

Less than four months after the Lums pled guilty, Ron Miller was rushed to a Norman, Oklahoma hospital after becoming ill at home. Doctors were never able to determine the cause of his affliction. Miller died days later.

"He went from being healthy to dying in a week," J. Dell Gordon told the Associated Press at the time, explaining that Miller had just turned over "boxes of material" to congressional investigators.

Integris Baptist Medical Center, where Miller died in early October, 1997, turned the case over to the state medical examiner because hospital officials said the witness' death "was not fully explainable."

Dr. James Marvel, a local physician who has studied the evidence in Miller's death, told NewsMax.com on Wednesday that he suspected the Oklahoma businessman may have been poisioned.

"From the outside it certainly looks that way," Marvel said, adding, "I'd have to investigate further to see if this pattern fits into anything."

After examining Miller's autopsy report, Dr. Marvel noted that several of his vital organs, particularly his lungs, were much heavier than normal. "It tells me that he sustained serious physical insult to his lungs."

Marvel suggested that such an injury would be consistent with someone gradually overcome by an airborne toxin. "Whatever it was that killed Ron Miller entered through his lungs," said the Oklahoma doctor.

Revealing a new and disturbing aspect of the case, Dresch said that Miller had been the subject of death threats in the months before he died. NewsMax.com has obtained a copy of a Norman Police report that backs up this claim. Dated 1/14/97, the "Offense Report" reads in part:

"....suspect told Miller, 'You hadn't been shot at yet.' Mr. Miller said that the subjects he is dealing with have made a number of references to certain people wanting Mr. Miller dead. Mr. Miller said he recorded this telephone conversation."

The police report names Dallas businessman Donald Sweatman as the source of the most recent threats. Though Dresch said that local police took Miller's complaint seriously at the time, a criminal investigation was never opened.

The Miller tapes, which are still in the possession of the FBI, could have far reaching consequences if they ever see the light of day. It is believed that on one recording, Sweatman even implicates First Lady Hillary Clinton in the Lums' financial scheme:

"Apparently the assertion that Sweatman made (on tape) was that Hillary had been instrumental in arranging a $4.5 million loan to Dynamic Energy back in 1993, so (the Lums) could purchase Miller's Gage Corporation," Dresch told NewsMax.com.

Whether the new questions swirling around Ron Miller's mysterious death prompt congressional probers to act on the evidence he turned over remains to be seen.

For now, Norman, Oklahoma police are reviewing the case of the key fundraising witness' death with an eye towards opening a new investigation.

I am EXTREMELY gratified that someone thought my message from four years ago was worth keeping and reprinting. I can add a few items;

Gen. Partin's theory about multiple bombs rests on his calculations about the explosive power needed to bring down a number of the Murrah Bldg's internal support pillars. Partin's calculation with a very crude diagram has been posted on various internet websites. Partin's entire theory and his simplistic calculations treat the Murrah Bldg's pillars as if they were bowling pins -- standing entirely alone so each one can only be broken or knocked down by the force coming straight from the explosion. Architects and structural engineers (such as those who contributed to the FEMA study of the bombing) point out that modern American office buildings have the pillars firmly fastened to floors and ceilings and, by extension, effected by shifts in the floors, walls, etc. The explosion hit the Murrah Bldg broadside, coming at the midpoint of a long side of the rectangle, causing the entire building to be momentarily twisted, a momentary force that ripped loose and cracked virtually every wall, floor, joist, and pillar. It was much like one of those plastic ice cube trays -- when you grab both ends and give a momentary twist every ice cube comes loose. Calculating all this was evidently too daunting for Partin, so he treated the pillars as if floors and joists didn't convey vibrations and torque among them, a serious defect.

One of the most telling demonstrations that Partin, et al., are wrong was in a lawsuit that was brought by a bunch of Murrah Bldg survivors and families, suing the chemical company that made the ammonium nitrate fertilizer used by McVeign. The case is Gaines-Tabb v. ICI Explosives USA, Inc. (W.D. Okl. July 2, 1996) 995 F.Supp 1304 affirmed (10th Cir. Nov. 9, 1998) 160 F.3d 613. The plaintiffs sued the chemical company for selling the fertilizer that McVeigh used in making the bomb. The defendant company was certainly (with a name like ICI Explosives) expert on explosives and on their own product's value as an explosive. Now, it would have been an extremely useful and effective defense if the company could say "it wasn't our product at all, our product couldn't done this much damage, and we can prove it", and brought out Partin and his theory. But the company didn't do that at all. The company readily admitted that McVeigh's bomb had been built with their fertilizer and that it had caused all the damage. Instead, the company defended on the chancier argument of foreseeability and McVeigh's malicious off-label use of what should have been a benign product. And the company won. I would think that the deliberate decision by the chemical company, which was certainly expert enough to know if Partin's theory was plausible, not to use Partin is very telling.

It appears that Nichols is trying to defend on the argument that there may have been other conspirators who are getting away -- although the existence and identity of those other conspirators seems to be pure conjecture. Even if true, this would be unavailing to save the conspirators who were caught from being punished.

Not only is there nothing interesting in _Jim cut & paste flood attacks on threads, all here should be reminded he is the defender on the murderer Lon Horiouchi, and defends him still.

This puts _Jim in the same category as Holocaust denying "historians" and the neo-Nazis that took part in the OKC bombing.

There were a lot of eyewitnesses who saw Middle Eastern men in a brown van speeding away from the Murrah building. I read about this in Gerald Posner's excellent book, "Why America Slept."

possibility that a gang of white supremacist bank robbers may have assisted McVeigh

"NEOFACISTS!"

How pathetic.

WOW

Mind numbing idiocy ...

You make some eloquent arguments for your opinion, but then have to ruin your post with attacks like this. More people would take your arguments seriously if you were to tone down the vitriol.

Who is Andi Strassmeir and what was he doing a Elohim City?

In Germany the Strassmeir name is well known. Andreas Strassmeir's father, Gunther Strassmeir, has served in various government offices, and - as Helmut Kohl's Secretary of State - is known as the "architect of German reunification."

Strassmeir received military intelligence training at the Bundeswehr Academy in Hanover, Germany, and was a member of GSG-9, Germany's elite counter-terrorism unit.

Strassmeir was associated with Vincent A. Petruskie of Petruskie Associates in Manassas, Virginia. Strassmeir identified Petruskie as "a former CIA guy who my father had known since he [Petruskie] was stationed in Berlin during the Cold War."

Clearly Strassmeir is not your common, run-of-the-mill German ex-soldier. So what is the son of one Germany's most prominent politicians doing living in poverty in a ramshackle redoubt in Oklahoma's backwoods? Was he, perhaps, operating as a "shared asset" of the German and American governments to penetrate targeted militias and racist, neo-Nazi groups? That is altogether plausible.

Over the past decade, the rise of neo-Nazi and violent "skinhead" groups in Germany and the support these groups were receiving from extremist elements in the U.S. had been a major subject of concern for authorities in both Washington, DC and Bonn. Joint U.S.-German intelligence-gathering operations against these groups were announced by FBI Director Louis Freeh in 1993. But "unofficial" operations of a similar nature may have been underway long before that public announcement.

Agent or "True Believer"?

During the interview in Berlin, Michael Johnston asked Strassmeir: "At the time of the bombing, or immediately prior thereto, were you acting as an informant or undercover operative for any governmental entity?" To which Strassmeir responded: "Not at that time. I had formerly done that kind of work while in the German army." However, Strassmeir's further admissions in a recent interview with The Sunday Telegraph of London do little to allay suspicions of his possible role as an undercover operative. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported in the Telegraph for May 19th that Strassmeir "said that he first lived in the U.S. in 1989 because he was planning to work on a special assignment for the U.S. Justice Department." Evans-Pritchard quotes Strassmeir as saying: "I discussed the job when I was in Washington. I was hoping to work for the operations section of the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration]. It never worked out."

Throw in the TWA 800 cover-up to be re-opened, and I'll get excited, too.

Thanks for all that, Nita, I'm anxious to read it all again. Keeping this bombing "home grown" also was the guiding factor in more gun control. Regarding the recent news that the Arian's were involved and the information not explored..Why? WHY would the feds want to give cover to them? It makes no sense. There is much to learn here, IMHO.

BUMP to index

Regarding the recent news that the Arian's were involved and the information not explored..Why? WHY would the feds want to give cover to them? It makes no sense.

I saw someone on another thread speculate that it may be to distract from the release of Jayna's book. (An appeasement strategy, much like Specter's "investigation" was.)

I wouldn't doubt it one bit. And frankly, I think the likelihood of that theory being correct is much higher than the previously-mentioned theory on this thread of this being a warning shot to Hillary.

Sheesh. I just realized I misread your question. I was answering the question of "Why this investigation now?"

Something set this investigation off. They never did explain away to most people's satisfaction that second hit on the seismograph at OU. Since the anomoly has never happened again, I doubt it just happened at that time.

See what I posted in reply #116 about Jayna's upcoming book. Considering the results of Specter's so-called "investigation," this sounds feasible to me, unfortunately.

Thanks for posting those two articles about the motel connections. There's just so much detail to the OKC bombing and so many shady characters in the puzzle that I often find myself trying to remember all the details!

Regarding Michael O'Camb, the author of the first piece... You may or may not be interested in this: Around mid-2002 I was doing some research on O'Camb and discovered a serious discrepancy in one of the few articles he's written -- an article about a Clinton death list. One of the alleged Arkancide victims was a "Dr. Chumley," a man who O'Camb claimed was on his way to give someone some Clinton dirt when his plane crashed. All the 1995 articles I dug up said Dr. Chumley was returning from Colorado from a hunting trip with friends. That's a huge leap, IMO, and at least for me, it discredits anything else that O'Camb writes.

Jim Crogan, OTOH, is an entirely different story. He seems like a reputable, capable guy who pays attention to details and ensures accuracy in what he's writing. His article you posted -- The Terrorist Motel -- is excellent, isn't it? That's an article you have to read 2 or 3 times just to get a handle on all the rich detail! Thanks for bringing it out again!

Thanks for the insightful debate. You would like tie a red ribbon on the story and move on.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Untold Stories, Regnery, 1997, page 92:

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: "There comes a time in every botched operation when the informant has to speak out to save his own skin, and that's now, Andreas."

Andreas Carl Strassmeir: "How can he?" he shouted into the telephone. "What happens if it was a sting operation from the very beginning? What happens if it comes out that the plant was a provocateur?"

~~~

The FBI's sticky fingers will never release the I-40 motel records.

FBI informant Dennis Mahon is credited for teaching McVeigh and Nichols to build an ANFO bomb which was effective.

It was the FBI which refused BATF agent Angela Finney and BATF informant Carol Howe's urgent request to raid Elohim City without delay.

And it was to FBI Director Mueller that agent Colleen Rowley addressed her lengthy letter, reprinted in its entirety in the appendix to Bill Gertz, Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11, Regnery, 2002.

The FBI has been so helpful--take the investigation into the cause of the downing of TWA Flight 800.

So many eyewitnesses reporting a missile streaking upwards--discounted, ignored, impugned.

The reports of distinct tremors nine to ten seconds apart in Oklahoma City, the guilty fandango done by the feebs around John Doe #2--

We've got a retarded Communist janitor who set the Reichstag fire--now, let's move on.

As for "another investigation into OKCBomb"--

We are repeatedly led down the path of "it's old news, already been investigated" so many times.

We've been told a half-dozen investigations into Vince Foster's death proved nothing--

In that case, Miquel Rodriguez would beg to differ--in this one, Jayna Davis.