Posted on 12/24/2006 12:21:44 PM PST by LurkedLongEnough
WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI failed to fully investigate information suggesting other suspects may have helped Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, allowing questions to linger more than a decade after the deadly attack, a congressional inquiry concludes.
The House International Relations investigative subcommittee will release the findings of its two-year-review as early as Wednesday, declaring there is no conclusive evidence of a foreign connection to the attack but that far too many unanswered questions remain.
The subcommittee's report will conclude there is no doubt McVeigh and Nichols were the main perpetrators, and it discloses for the first time that Nichols confirmed to House investigators he participated in the robbery of an Arkansas gun dealer that provided the proceeds for the attack.
There have long been questions about that robbery because the FBI concluded McVeigh was in another state at the time it occurred.
The report also sharply criticizes the FBI for failing to be curious enough to pursue credible information that foreign or U.S. citizens may have had contact with Nichols or McVeigh and could have assisted their plot.
"We did our best with limited resources, and I think we moved the understanding of this issue forward a couple of notches even though important questions remain unanswered," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the subcommittee chairman, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Rohrabacher's subcommittee saved its sharpest words for the Justice Department, saying officials there exhibited a mind-set of thwarting congressional oversight and did not assist the investigation fully.
The report rebukes the FBI for not fully pursuing leads suggesting other suspects may have provided support to McVeigh and Nichols before their truck bomb killed 168 people in the main federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
The report says the inadequacy of the bureau's work was exposed two years ago when some bombing evidence overlooked for 10 years was discovered in a home linked to Nichols that had been searched repeatedly by agents.
Officials at the FBI press office had no immediate comment Sunday but were looking into the details of the report.
Previously, the bureau has said it believes its investigation of the bombing was exhaustive and that there is no credible evidence that other people were involved.
The subcommittee concludes the Justice Department should not have rushed to execute McVeigh in 2001 after he dropped his court appeals, and that officials should have made more efforts to interview and question him about evidence suggesting he might have gotten help from other people who remain unpunished.
The former lead FBI agent in the case, Dan Defenbaugh, told AP a few years ago he was trying to get one last interview with McVeigh to go over unanswered questions in the case but could not get it arranged before McVeigh was executed.
Rohrabacher's report cites several leads the subcommittee believes were not fully investigated, including:
_information that McVeigh called a German citizen living at a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma two weeks before the bombing and that two witnesses saw the men together before the bombing.
_witness accounts that another man was seen with McVeigh around the time of the bombing. The FBI originally looked for another suspect it named John Doe 2, even providing a sketch, but abruptly dropped that line of inquiry. The subcommittee concludes that decision was a mistake.
_findings in AP articles in 2003 and 2004 that indicated the FBI had gathered some evidence suggesting a group of neo-Nazi bank robbers may have been tied to McVeigh. The subcommittee interviewed three of those robbers, and all denied a connection. A fourth member of the gang died and a fifth member could not be located by Congress.
_phone record and witness testimony that persons associated with Middle Eastern terrorism in the Philippines may have had contact with Nichols, and that Nichols took a book about explosives to the Philippines. The FBI and Filipino police spent months investigating such a connection, but ruled it out.
_information from a former TV reporter concerning an Iraqi national who was in Oklahoma around the time of the bombing.
Did the Committee review any of the 20-some security videos that the FBI took from cameras in the vicinity of the Murrah Building?
Most of those videos have never been shown. Why not? Do they show more than the 'official' story?
When the Murrah bombing first hit the news, most of the networks were specualating foreign terrorism. Within an hour, that story changed to speculation of home-grown terrorists. (Was that when Jamie Gorelick put out the word to drop references to foreign terrorists?) President Clinton could not allow that foreign terrorists attacked mid-America on his watch (he already had WTC 1 attack on his watch), so he had to make sure that the attackers were ONLY home-grown white boys and that Rush Limbaugh was the cause of public anxiety. If the Murrah bombing reports implicated foreigner terrorists attacking America's heartland unabated, Clinton's presidency would have been over. He had to cover it up and Jamie Gorelick was the one charged with the task.
Now you know that the whole OKC bombing thing was 2 things...a photo op for Pres. Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain" look...
And, too big of a "mess" for the Clinton Administration to want to deal with.
Interesting that this comes out on Sunday, Christmas Eve.
Hmm, you don't suppose someone was afraid Timothy might start running his mouth so it was shut permanently?
Amazing, huh.
Another article about this:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53485
And the corresponding FR thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1757721/posts
Both of these from Dec 23, 2006.
I'm still trying to find the names "Clinton" and/or "Reno" in this article. Doesn't the buck stop at the top? I guess only when it's a Republican.
Wasn't the "main" person convicted of the OKC bombing put to death so much faster than usual for a capital crime.
Didn't the bulldozers show up at OKC and Waco awfully soon.
What the really big mystery to me is that, GWB and the GOP have not called the Dims on this and have allowed the coverup to proceed.
Is it possible that the GOP elite and the Dems are not on opposing sides?
I do not live there but I knew that from the beginning.
Why, just this morning FoxNews announced that the good ole US of A is going to contribute to the renovation costs of the UN building ($1.9Billion). Our contribution is going to be 22% (around $418Million).
We should just give the building to Walmart. They would cover the renovation costs themselves.
The shift of FBI and White House (Clinton) attention away from searching for the swarthy-complexioned man that accompanied McVeigh in parking the Ryder truck bomb was so abrupt and logically unjustified that it took my breath away, figuratively speaking. But it allowed B. J. Clinton to avoid having to take punitive action, possibly even military action against the perpetrators or their (in my mind Islamic terrorist) backers. It is evident to me that he was determined that on his watch no U.S. military person would be sent into harms way and potential KIA status in defense of the vital security interests or survival of the U. S. (In this I believe he succeeded). The citizen militias provided a ready-made target for vilification and suspicion, a group of citizens that had failed to vote for Clinton, precisely as the Columbine high school shooting gave him an opportunity to demonize members of the Nat'l Rifle Association and lawful citizen gun owners generally, another group that had declined to vote for him but had no culpablity whatsoever in the Columbine tragedy.
It's been obvious for years that all of the politicians are doing the bidding of other forces normally thought to be outside government, such as international bankin interests. That's why all of the sound and fury over who "controls" the political offices doesn't amount to much - there will be some slight differences in tactics, but they are all steering us in the same general direction. Politicians who step out of line (like Curt Weldon) are quickly whistled for a foul and removed from the game. ;)
It's been obvious for years that all of the politicians are doing the bidding of other forces normally thought to be outside government, such as international bankin interests. That's why all of the sound and fury over who "controls" the political offices doesn't amount to much - there will be some slight differences in tactics, but they are all steering us in the same general direction. Politicians who step out of line (like Curt Weldon) are quickly whistled for a foul and removed from the game. ;)
I wish you were wrong because that means the only solution requires working out side the political system.
I cite the Important Person Rule: "Important people don't call other important people to account."
Given the escalation of terror in the Mideast, all that crap about blaming Rush Limbaugh and others. From this distance, it does not compute.
Rohrbacher doesn't want to know; neither does he want to look like a fool if new evidence comes out in the near future.
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