Posted on 04/19/2004 1:23:06 PM PDT by RippleFire
WASHINGTON - A Secret Service document written shortly after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing described security video footage of the attack and witness testimony that suggested Timothy McVeigh (news - web sites) may have had accomplices at the scene.
"Security video tapes from the area show the truck detonation 3 minutes and 6 seconds after the suspects exited the truck," the Secret Service reported six days after the attack on a log of agents' activities and evidence in the Oklahoma investigation.
The government has insisted McVeigh drove the truck himself and that it never had any video of the bombing or the scene of the Alfred P. Murrah building in the minutes before the April 19, 1995, explosion.
Several investigators and prosecutors who worked the case told The Associated Press they had never seen video footage like that described in the Secret Service log.
The document, if accurate, is either significant evidence kept secret for nine years or a misconstrued recounting of investigative leads that were often passed by word of mouth during the hectic early days of the case, they said.
"I did not see it," said Danny Defenbaugh, the retired FBI (news - web sites) agent who ran the Oklahoma City probe. "If it shows what it says, then it would be significant."
Secret Service spokesman Charles Bopp declined to discuss the video footage reference, saying it would be addressed by witnesses later this week at the capital murder trial of McVeigh co-defendant Terry Nichols. "It is anticipated Secret Service employees will testify in court concerning these matters," he said.
Other documents obtained by AP show the Secret Service in late 1995 gave prosecutors several computer disks of enhanced digital photographs of the Murrah building, intelligence files on several subjects in the investigation and a file detailing an internal affairs inquiry concerning an agent who reconstructed key phone evidence against McVeigh.
"These abstract sheets are sensitive documents which we have protected from disclosure in the past," said a Secret Service letter that recounted discussions in late 1995 with federal prosecutors on what evidence would be turned over to defense lawyers.
Lawyers for Nichols say they have never been given the security video, photo disks or internal investigative file referenced in the documents.
The trial judge has threatened to dismiss the death penalty case if evidence was withheld. McVeigh was executed in 2001 on a separate federal conviction. Nichols was sentenced to life in prison on federal charges before being tried by the state this year.
The government has maintained for years that McVeigh parked the Ryder rental truck carrying a massive fertilizer bomb outside the Murrah building and left alone in a getaway car he parked around the corner. The bombing killed more than 160 people.
The only video prosecutors introduced at trial showed the Ryder truck without any visible passengers as it passed a security camera inside a high-rise apartment building a block away from the Murrah building.
But the Secret Service log reported on April 24 and April 25, 1995, that there was security footage showing the Ryder truck pulling up to the Murrah building. The log does not say where such video came from or who possessed it.
A log entry on April 25 states that the security footage allowed agents to determine the time that elapsed between suspects leaving the truck and the explosion.
An entry a day earlier on the same log reported that the security video was consistent with a witness' account that he saw McVeigh's getaway car in the lead before a woman guided the truck to its final parking spot in front of the Murrah building.
"A witness to the explosion named Grossman claimed to have seen a pale yellow Mercury car with a Ryder truck behind it pulling up to the federal building," the log said. The witness "further claimed to have seen a woman on the corner waving to the truck."
A Secret Service agent named McNally "noted that this fact is significant due to the fact that the security video shows the Ryder truck pulling up to the Federal Building and then pausing (7 to 10 seconds) before resuming into the slot in front of the building," the log said. "It is speculated that the woman was signaling the truck when a slot became available."
Defenbaugh said the FBI had talked to several witnesses suggesting two people had left the truck, but prosecutors never introduced the scenario at trial because it couldn't be corroborated. That's why a new security video would be significant, he said.
"It would have taken the investigation in a very specific direction," Defenbaugh said. "Rather than having to go down an eight-lane highway during rush hour, we would have gone down a faster path with just two or four lanes."
Defenbaugh said the FBI kept a log similar to the Secret Service document inside the Oklahoma City investigation command center that might help solve the mystery of the video. Justice officials declined to discuss documents, citing the ongoing Nichols' trial.
In addition to the witness mentioned in the Secret Service document, a woman working in Murrah's Social Security (news - web sites) office who was rescued from the rubble and a driver outside the building both reported to the FBI seeing two men leave the truck, according to government documents.
The Secret Service (news - web sites) log contained other information about the case — including that McVeigh made 30 calls to an Illinois gun dealer in the months before the attacks to seek dynamite and that the gun dealer subsequently failed a lie detector test. The Secret Service lost six employees in McVeigh's bombing, the single largest loss in agency history.
Nichols' attorneys last week asked the judge to dismiss the case on grounds the government withheld evidence, including the security video footage.
New documents obtained by AP show the Secret Service provided prosecutors other evidence that may not have been provided to defense lawyers, including a file showing the Secret Service agent who reconstructed crucial phone evidence against McVeigh was subjected to an internal affairs investigation and eventually cleared for her conduct in the case.
FBI officials say that file details allegations the agent wrongly collected grand jury-subpoenaed phone information about McVeigh's calls without FBI knowledge, and kept it for weeks while she produced analysis that helped the investigation.
The internal investigation caused complications for prosecutors. They decided it tainted the agent as a witness and they chose instead to hire an outside expert to re-do the phone analysis for trial, officials said.
Bopp said the Secret Service did nothing wrong.
"The Secret Service worked cooperatively with the FBI and other federal state and local law enforcement throughout the investigation," Bopp said. "The expertise of the Secret Service on electronic crimes and telecommunications provided unique and timely information to the ongoing investigation."
On the Net:
The FBI: http://www.fbi.gov
The documents obtained by The Associated Press can be viewed at http://wid.ap.org/documents/okc/okcdoc2.pdf
Probably not; I was one of several. But Long Island was one of our regular stops up until the Summer of '83, as was Hancock Field at the Syracuse-Hancock International Airport until around 1988 or so.
We ALWAYS see videos from all kinds of places after a crime.
Does the FBI have a database that shows ALL business with these recorders, or do 'patriotic' owners volunteer these tapes without being asked???
This was a Clinton national security operation. I doubt, however, that it had anything to do with national security. It had to do with the Clintons.
I was hoping someone else would answer you by now because I don't really remember. I was thinking they ID'd the leg as belonging to someone, but not according to this guy:
The leg found was wearing a GI issue combat boot and bloused BDU [camoflage uniform] trousers, which investigators initially claimed came from a military recruiter inside the building, then from a black Air Force enlisted women with business inside the building that day, though the leg was from a white male.
Mystery leg in Oklahoma bombing belonged to woman, M.E. says
Here, let me give you a hand...
No, thank you. But we seem to have an extra left leg!
In the weeks after the Oklahoma City bombing, it was discovered that although only eight identified victims of the blast had traumatically amputated left legs, there were nine left legs recovered from the site. The extra leg was first identified in a press release as belonging to a white male, and was later announced to be that of a black female. The leg was wearing a combat boot, with a piece of fatigues at the ankle. It was eventually found to be the left leg of identified (and buried) victim Lakesha Levy, a member of the military who was in the recruiting offices housed at the Murrah building. She was exhumed, and the leg mistakenly buried with her was replaced with the correct one.
Of course, that still leaves the question of whose left leg Lakesha Levy was originally buried with...
The discrepancy has never been officially explained as of this writing (April 2000).
p 167-168 Jones, Stephen Others Unknown 1998 Public Affairs (Perseus Book Group)______________________________________________________
Here's what CNN had to say about the incident on their web page:
Mystery leg in Oklahoma bombing belonged to woman, M.E. says
August 30, 1995
OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (CNN) -- The left leg found in the bomb wreckage of the Murrah Federal Building probably belonged to a 5-foot 5-inch black woman, not a man, the Oklahoma state medical examiner said Wednesday.
The announcement, based on DNA analysis, follows speculation that the leg found in a military-style black leather boot, might belong to an accomplice in the April 19 bombing. The leg was found in the rubble May 30, but the discovery was not announced until August 7, when the medical examiner said there was a "75 percent probability" it belonged to a man.
Now, FBI analysis of DNA "has shown conclusively that the left leg is not male but female," Chief Medical Examiner Fred Jordan said in a statement released by his office. Hair analysis showed "Negroid characteristics," Jordan said. He said he believes the leg belongs to "an individual with some African ancestry."
The unidentified woman, estimated to be between 16 and 30 years old, was the 169th victim of the bombing. The toll includes 168 killed in the bombing and a nurse who died of injuries suffered in the recovery-rescue effort.
Jordan said the leg did not match any of seven victims who were missing a left leg.
Stephen Jones, attorney for bombing suspects Timothy McVeigh, has suggested that the mystery leg might belong to the "real bomber."
Investigators do not believe the other man facing trial in the case, Terry Nichols, was at the scene of the bombing.
I was listening to Glen Beck and he had Jeana Davis on. She said that the drawing of the John Doe #2 that everyone thought looked like Jose Padilla is actually Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini.
Do you know know if there is a picture of this Al Hussaini anywhere, because I say the drawing looks like Jose Padilla also? In fact somewhere there is a picture where it morphs from the drawing to Jose Padilla.
Hardly......the Sikhs hate the Islaminazis
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