Posted on 02/11/2003 12:54:53 PM PST by aculeus
WASHINGTON (AP) - Two federal law enforcement agencies had information before the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing suggesting that white supremacists living nearby were considering an attack on government buildings, but the intelligence was never passed on to federal officials in the state, documents and interviews show.
FBI headquarters officials in Washington were so concerned that white separatists at the Elohim City compound in Muldrow, Okla., might lash out on April 19, 1995 - the day Timothy McVeigh did choose - that a month earlier they questioned a reformed white supremacist familiar with an earlier plot to bomb the same Alfred P. Murrah federal building McVeigh selected.
"I think their only real concern back then was Elohim City," said Kerry Noble, the witness questioned by the FBI on March 28, 1995 - just a few weeks before McVeigh detonated a truck bomb outside the building and killed more than 160 people.
Noble told The Associated Press that his FBI questioners appeared particularly concerned about what Elohim City members might do on April 19 because one of their heroes, Wayne Snell, was being executed that day and another, James Ellison, was returning to Oklahoma after ending parole in Florida.
FBI officials confirmed Noble's account, including concerns the group at Elohim City might strike on April 19.
Snell, Ellison and Noble had plotted to attack the Murrah building in 1983 with plastic explosives and rocket launchers, according to Noble and FBI officials. The plan never reached fruition before the group was arrested after a siege with law enforcement in 1985.
The FBI wasn't alone in its concerns, according to thousands of pages of federal investigative memos and handwritten notes obtained by AP, which portray government miscommunications that mirror the intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the days before he was executed for a 1980s murder of a pawn broker, Snell began making threats from his Arkansas prison that there would be a bombing or explosion on April 19 to avenge his death, according to prison and FBI officials. He also had contact in his last days with members of Elohim City, who later took his remains back to their compound.
"Some of the corrections officers heard (Snell) in a visitors room talking with people, saying there would be a large explosion or event of some type. He said the immediate reaction would be to blame it on Middle Eastern types. This was prior," said Alan Ables, a former Arkansas corrections official.
Separately, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had an informant inside Elohim City who had disclosed before the bombing that white supremacists were "preparing for a war against U.S. government." Other reports quoted members of the compound discussing plans for "assassinations, bombings and mass shootings."
The government also had information suggesting that compound members had detonated a 500-pound fertilizer bomb like the one McVeigh would use and had visited Oklahoma City several times. The FBI could never verify the detonation.
The ATF informant would tell the FBI shortly after McVeigh's bombing that Elohim City members had specifically discussed targeting federal buildings in Oklahoma for "destruction through bombings."
But when ATF considered raiding Elohim City two months before McVeigh struck, the then-FBI agent in charge in Oklahoma, Bob Ricks, stopped the plan.
"I do remember I told them I didn't want another Waco on our hands," Ricks said, comparing the danger of a raid on Elohim City to the ill-fated ATF action on David Koresh's compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993. "At the time, they hadn't told me everything they apparently knew."
Neither law enforcement agency passed on any information or concerns to the agency that managed the federal buildings in Oklahoma City.
"We never received any warning of a specific threat against the Murrah building or any other building in Oklahoma," said Viki Reath, a spokeswoman for the General Services Administration that manages federal buildings.
Federal investigators said that while they had concerns, they had no information before April 19 about a specific target and had not even heard of McVeigh until his arrest, making it impossible to issue a useful warning.
They said they had concerns about the credibility of the informant and afterward investigated whether McVeigh received help from Elohim City and concluded there were no additional accomplices.
"We believe we conducted an exhaustive investigation that pursued every possible lead and ran it to ground," FBI spokesman Mike Kortan said. "We are confident that those who committed the crime have been brought to justice."
Elohim City - which means "City of God" in Hebrew - is located about three hours east of Oklahoma City, and the compound is dotted with rudimentary buildings that were frequented by leaders of the white supremacist movement in the 1990s.
The ATF agent who supervised the key informant inside Elohim City, disclosed in sealed court testimony in 1997 that she in fact had received information before McVeigh struck that federal buildings might be at risk.
The informant, Carol Howe, mentioned "threats to blow up federal buildings, didn't she?" a lawyer asked ATF agent Angela Finley Gram in sealed testimony reviewed by AP.
"In general, yes," Gram answered.
"And that was before the Oklahoma City bombing?" the lawyer asked.
"Yes," Gram answered. She said she considered the threats "general militia rhetoric" used frequently by members of Elohim City.
ATF documents show the informant provided agents with fragments of practice explosives detonated by Elohim City members and had suspicions about a possible target. "It is understood that ATF is the main enemy of the people of EC," one report states. ATF offices were in the building McVeigh struck.
Gram also disclosed that Howe provided, before McVeigh's attack, a copy of "The Turner Diaries," a book about a plot to blow up a federal building with a truck bomb that was circulating around Elohim City. Prosecutors later would contend the book inspired McVeigh's attack.
A former top law enforcement official said the documents from the ATF informant - whom the government later turned against and tried to prosecute unsuccessfully - provided plenty of detail to warrant action.
"They certainly should have taken some action," said Robert Sanders, who served as the ATF's No. 2 official in the 1980s and later reviewed documents on behalf of the Oklahoma City informant. "You had reliable information from a reliable informant."
Sanders said the whole case suffered from the same miscommunications and missed signs seen before Sept. 11. "It is the lack of coordination - intelligence going one way, and then going into a black hole," he said.
Dan Defenbaugh, the retired FBI agent who supervised the Oklahoma City bombing investigation, agreed. He said he doesn't recall ever being told that his own Washington headquarters had debriefed Noble, the former white supremacist, about the earlier Murrah bombing plot or the suspicions of an attack on April 19.
"The biggest problem is we don't know what we know," Defenbaugh said. "I blame most of it on antiquated computers inside the bureau, which can't find information we need to have for investigations."
McVeigh's own trial attorney suspected McVeigh had received help from Elohim City, but the attorney failed to persuade a judge to allow the theory at trial - even after some of the ATF documents came to light.
The documents show evidence of miscommunications between the FBI and ATF, and within the agencies themselves.
For instance, ATF officials had evidence that the leader of the compound, Robert Millar, was among those inciting violence against the government in the weeks before McVeigh struck.
Millar "gave a sermon soliciting violence against the U.S. government" and "he brought forth his soldiers and instructed them to take whatever action necessary against the U.S. government," one ATF report from January 1995 said.
Millar made a trip to Oklahoma City about that time and on the day of McVeigh's bombing traveled to Arkansas to comfort Snell before his execution.
But ATF did not know that Millar was a "source" for the FBI - someone who provided occasional information about the compound without getting paid. That information came out two years later in court testimony by an FBI agent.
The ATF also didn't know the FBI had concerns about the compound until an Oklahoma state trooper tipped the ATF in late February 1995 that the FBI also had an investigation on Elohim City.
Ricks said his FBI office in Oklahoma didn't have an ongoing investigation and he was unaware of the Washington FBI debriefing of Noble, the reformed white supremacist familiar with the earlier plot to blow up the Murrah building.
Noble said as soon as McVeigh struck he became certain there was a connection with the earlier plot.
"I don't see any other possibility, honestly. It is not a coincidence that he picked April 19, and even if it was, to pick the same building that we had picked? There are only a handful of people who knew about that," Noble said.
FBI officials said they suspected Millar was initially involved, but he cooperated with the investigation and was eventually ruled out as a suspect.
Millar died in 2001. His former attorney, Kirk Lyons, said he doubts his client had anything to do with McVeigh's attack and that Millar's fiery rhetoric was aimed more at uniting members at his compound than inciting violence. "He was trying to keep his followers together," Lyons said.
Though ATF agents had reports of dramatic threats against the government, they focused their investigation on making a gun violation case against a German citizen there, documents show.
Howe's identity as an informant was compromised shortly after McVeigh's bombing. The ATF noted in late May 1995 that Millar suspected she was a government informant and she was pulled for fear of her safety. The government later tried to prosecute her on an unrelated charge, but a jury acquitted her.
This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAJQYA92CD.html
That the government failed to take the men seriously, after a decade's worth of knowledge, shows their lack of concern for basic human life.
Thus, by OKC, the FBI had agents and informants in every group in the country that could come close to being militia. They knew OKC was coming and, had an alert that morning with guard dogs, ect. But they screwed up Waco style and the bomb went off. Then it became a pure CYA operation and has been ever since.
My bet is that the retired Dallas agent has boxes of stuff in his garage that prove all of this. They executed McVeigh very quickly so he wouldn't realize that the people he was protecting like a good soldier were actually government agents. The real killer wasn't the rental truck but the stuff that ATF was storing that the FBI failed to build into its glory seeking equation.
I believe you've got it. In an attempt to contain an oncoming conflagration, somebody has started a backfire...
There is no mention of the known warnings coming thru international channels at the same time. Nor, while the article focusses on the date (April 19), it oddly manages to elude a mention of Waco.
An FBI or ATF plant, via AP...
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