FBI Agent Testifies in Nichols Hearing

" ...The search for John Doe No. 2 began when the FBI released sketches of two men it believed had rented the truck that blew up outside the federal building, based on descriptions from a worker in the rental shop.

John Doe No. 1 was Timothy McVeigh, investigators said. John Doe No. 2 was a heavyset man who didn't resemble Nichols. The man in the sketch was eventually identified by authorities as an Army private who had been in the rental shop the day after McVeigh. The man was later cleared by the FBI..."

I read about it here:

(and no I am not telling you "already posted!") :)

Eldon Elliot: FBI pressured me to drop John Doe 2 claim

(snip...)"The drawings were based on the recollection of a body-shop mechanic. The FBI and federal prosecutors later concluded the mechanic had described instead an innocent Army private who was helping a friend move.

The Army private, Todd Bunting, had gone to the shop a day after McVeigh. Bunting wore a blue-and-white Carolina Panthers hat."

This link INTERVIEW WITH THE GRAND JUROR WHO WOULDN'T SHUT UP, which I do not know either way to be factual, has the following claims by this Grand Juror:

Q: Did you think the government knows who John Doe 2 Is?

A: I began to feel that way, yes. But, of course, all through the trial the prosecution insisted that John Doe 2 was the Ft. Riley soldier Todd Bunting who served in the Army with McVeigh.

Q: But they also said Bunting wasn't guilty of any crime.

A: That's right. And he didn't really look like the FBI artist's sketch of John Doe 2 and he wasn't with McVeigh when McVeigh rented the Ryder truck. The actual John Doe 2 did rent the Ryder truck with McVeigh. The whole thing was ridiculous.

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CNN says Here that Heidelberg was kicked off the Grand Jury after complaining about the suppression on the search for John Doe No. 2.

The "John Doe Number Two" business may be one of the FBI's more embarrassing glitches. The car rental clerk said he saw a second man - who might have come in with McVeigh, or, equally, might have been completely unconnected to McV and was just browsing in the shop - and he only saw him in profile (the man's left side, I think).

Whereupon the FBI sketch artist, who was so accustomed to working up the standard FBI sketches of fugitives in full face, puffed that profile description into a full face - with the purported suspect's right side, the spacing of the eyes, the width of the face and the mouth, etc. - invented out of thin air. No wonder nobody could find him! It took the FBI about a week to admit to its mistake and by that time the bogus sketch had appeared everywhere and hardly anyone paid attention to the "corrected" sketch.

However, a McDonald's restaurant security camera caught McV on his way to the car rental place and he was alone at that time.

I have no doubt that, at various times, McV was able to strike up conversations with innocent strangers, and this John Doe nr.2 may be that sort of random innocent stranger.

This is news to me. Do you have any links to source material?

America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
Download 8Mb File Here (Requires RealPlayer)

Who is Steve Emerson?

This is news to me ....

From the Washington Post Magazine, Sunday, March 23, 1997:

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Kessinger told her the whole story, she says. He'd been sitting behind the counter at Elliott's, watching Kling [Tim McVeigh's phony identity] -- the man who rented the truck -- chat with Vicki Beemer while she typed out the rental form. Kessinger's attention was focused on Kling [Tim McVeigh], who was prattling nervously, but he recalled seeing another man lurking in the background. That man never talked to Kling, or even looked at him. He simply drifted in, stood staring at posters on the wall, and drifted out. Kessinger recalled the man's baseball hat and his black T-shirt, but not much about his face, which he'd seen only in profile.
"He never saw this man from the front view," Boylan says. That fact stunned her. The John Doe 2 sketch was, after all, a front view.
It had been created using a method Boylan considers dangerously manipulative: The sketch artist had shown Kessinger the FBI Facial Identification Catalogue -- a book of 960 photographs of faces, all of them front views -- and asked him to point out the pictures that showed the correct nose and eyes and chin. The artist then used Kessinger's choices to create the sketches. In the case of John Doe 1, this method yielded a sketch that looked remarkably like McVeigh. In the case of John Doe 2, however, it produced a front-view sketch of a man never seen from the front, a bare-headed sketch of a man never seen without a hat.
Boylan concluded that the sketch was useless.
Gently questioning Kessinger about exactly what he'd seen, Boylan created her own sketch, this one a profile. She showed it to Kessinger, who suggested a few small changes and then approved it. "He was very relieved that we finally got it right," she says.

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