Oklahoma City Bombing Redeux
The House International Relations investigative subcommittee is about to release a report its been working on for two years concerning questions left unanswered after the investigation into the 1995 Oaklahoma City bombing: Congress rebukes FBI’s Okla. City probe
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.
I wonder if this had anything to do with it… funny, 4 months to the day after the bombing.
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.
Here’s some background links:
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. (SEE JOHN DOE 2 LINK)