2
"The Face of Terror"
"Before the Government tries to convict someone, they
try first to demonize him."
— Trial lawyer Gerry Spence
On May 1st, a stunned America was introduced to "The Face of Terror." The steely-eyed mug of Timothy James McVeigh, superimposed over the limp, bloody body of a tiny dead child, stared coldly out at us from the cover of Time magazine.
Suddenly, there was no longer any doubt who had bombed the Murrah Building. As John Doe No. 1 was led from the Noble County Courthouse in handcuffs and leg irons, the scene was something akin to a medieval script. "Baby Killer!" the crowd screamed. "Burn him! Burn him!"
In the pages that followed, Time and others would set out to "reveal the paranoid life and times of accused bomber Timothy McVeigh and his Right-wing associates."[129] With the ink barely dry on the indictments, the national news media quickly began pumping out story after story focusing on the trivial banalities of McVeigh's life, attempting to reinforce the official allegations of his guilt. While the New York Times set the overall tone based on "leaks" from federal law enforcement sources, self-styled experts came crawling out of the woodwork.
"In deeply disturbing ways, his is a portrait of his generation," quipped Dale Russak and Serge Kovaleski, two sociologists moonlighting for the Washington Post.[130]
"…his tortured path — is a psychological portrait of his deterioration…." John Kifner of the New York Times announced with the authority of a Freudian analyst. "First there was McVeigh's own stunted personality and immediate frustrations. He was never able to overcome a sense of abandonment by his mother…."[131]
"Not making the Special Forces was something that was very hard for him to deal with," said an FBI agent training for his Ph.D. in psychology. "In his mind, much of his life has been one of thinking that he is a kind of Special Forces of his own."[132]
Finally: "He was the quiet one," said McVeigh's former 10th grade English teacher Coleen Conner, throwing a bit of adolescent psychology on the situation. "A lot of the quiet ones are the ones who have ended up doing scary things…."[133]
There it was — trial by media. Timothy McVeigh must be guilty, after all, they put his face on the cover of Time magazine.[134]
[Time. As journalist Jon Rappaport put it, "the home of faintly patronizing stories that go nowhere." Like the carefully manufactured image of Lee Harvey Oswald, the media would construct a menagerie reality of Timothy James McVeigh, suitable for public consumption.]
Fortunately, in the avalanche of articles that would follow, small hints of reality would occasionally seep through the mire.
"That just doesn't ring true to me, as to the person I knew," said Sheffield Anderson, a correctional officer who had gone through basic training with McVeigh and served with him in the Gulf. "In that picture of him coming out of the courthouse, he looks like a real mean guy. But I didn't sense anything out of the ordinary. McVeigh was a rational type guy, a thinking type person. The bombing thing is totally contrary to the person I knew."[135]
"The Timothy McVeigh I talked with didn't seem like a baby killer," said former Army Colonel David Hackworth about his Newsweek interview with McVeigh.[136]
During an interview on Prime Time Live, Lana Padilla, Terry Nichols ex-wife, told Diane Sawyer, "It's not the same person. I mean, you know…"
Sawyer: "The stony face."
Padilla: "No." [137]
"It became obvious during the hour-long discussion that Timothy McVeigh is neither a monster nor a madman," wrote Lawrence Myers, who interviewed McVeigh for Media Bypass magazine. "He left the impression that he is a man with strong convictions and a sense of honor."[138]
So just who is Timothy James McVeigh? Is he a hardened killer as the press and federal authorities have made him out to be? Or is he an ordinary man who became caught up in a complicated web of intrigue and deception?
"Timmy"
Timothy James McVeigh was born in Pendelton, New York on April 23, 1968, a small working class town of 5,000 people just outside of Buffalo. Tim was the second child of Bill McVeigh, an auto worker, and Mildred, a travel agent. The elder McVeigh, 55, coached Little League and ran bingo night at the local catholic church, spending his free time golfing, or putzing in his garden. A heavily wooded rural area, young Tim spent his time hiking or playing sports with the neighborhood boys.
"He lived a few houses down from me, said boyhood friend Keith Maurer. "We played hockey, baseball and just about every other sport in the neighborhood. He wasn't the best athlete in the bunch, but he showed up to play every day and he always played hard."
The bright and inventive youngster also spent his time engaging in novel activities such as setting up a haunted house in his basement, where he charged admission, or holding weekend casino fairs, where he acted as the dealer.
"He was very advanced for our age, "Maurer said. "I remember saying to myself: I wouldn't have thought of that."
Pat Waugh, a neighbor, said "I used to think to myself, that kid is going to go somewhere just because he's such a mover and shaker. I pictured him growing up to be a salesman, sort of a shyster."
When Tim's mom moved out in June of 1984, the outgoing young McVeigh became more reserved, as he and his sisters, Patty and Jennifer, attempted to deal with the trauma of the breakup. Reverend Paul Belzer of the Good shepherd Roman Catholic Church in Pendelton knew the family for 20 years. "People asked me, wasn't Tim crushed? But he didn't seem to be. He lived in the same house, had the same friends. Yeah, he'd have to miss his mother, but so many of the anchors were there."
Yanya Panepento, a classmate of Tim's recalled, He was a quiet boy. He kept to himself. He didn't seem like he was a trouble maker or anything like that."
Yet, nine months after the bombing, the Times John Kifner would write, "As commonplace as this seems, criminologists say, these traits are often the stuff of serial killers, terrorists and other solitary murderers."
To the armchair psychoanalysts of the mainstream/tabloid media, the breakup would be the first of two major events — the second being his initial failure to make the Special Forces — that would profoundly and adversely affect the young McVeigh's personality. The first indications of this came when reporters discovered in his high school yearbook that Tim had been voted "most talkative" by his senior class.
"The only thing I can remember is that he was very quite and polite," recalled Cecelia Matyjas, who taught 10th grade geometry. "He didn't cause any problems in class. He seemed to be cooperative and attentive. He was on the track team and the cross-country team, so he was able to get along with others."
Brandon Stickney, a journalist contracted to produce an unauthorized biography of McVeigh for Prometheus Books, said "Tim was not the most talkative out of his class of 194 students, but he was by no means introverted. He was certainly an outgoing young man who had many friends and acquaintances."
Yet none of these easy to check facts were ever mentioned in the volumous articles which appeared in the Times. Kifner, the Times "resident analyst," proclaimed with surety, "He was never able to overcome a sense of abandonment by his mother, who left the family when he was a boy; nor could he find a home outside the Army."
Backing up Kifner was John Douglas of the FBI's Psychological Profile Unit, who claimed McVeigh was "asocial, asexual, a loner, withdrawn, from a family with problems, strong feelings of inadequacy from early in life, an underachiever."
"I think it's a bunch of psychobable if you ask me, if you want to know the truth," said Jennifer, Tim's younger sister. "We were free to live with who we wanted. We could visit the other parent whenever we wanted. There was no bitterness between my parents."
"There's nothing there, added McVeigh himself, responding to the media's analysis of him in a July 3rd interview with Newsweek.
Apparently, Douglas and the so-called journalists from the New York Times never bothered to check on the fact that Tim had many friends, including several girlfriends later in life, was close to his Father and his sister Jennifer, and was a Regents Scholar.
Not to be hamstrung by such minor details [as checking on facts], the Times and the Post quickly jumped on the idea that Tim was interested in firearms. "In a region of hunting enthusiasts, it caused little stir when Tim, at 10, became interested in guns. But a close relative said that the family saw this as a bid for attention by a boy who didn't know how else to ask for it."
"He had a semiautomatic BB gun that could fire 15 rounds with the pull of a trigger," added the Post. "Other boys had only single-shot varieties. Tim used to show them at school how he held it, posing police-style with hands clasped together. During boring classes, when other students doodled, he drew guns."
In fact, Tim's father did buy him a .22-caliber rifle, which the young McVeigh would use for target practice in the woods behind his home. Yet apparently Tim was not the young blood-thirsty adventurer the media made him out to be. "I remember starting to hunt at age 11," said his friend Keith Maurer, "and Tim never had any interest in this."
McVeigh was later able to indulge in his interests in firearms as a security guard for Burke Armored, where he worked for a year or so in 1987. Jeff Camp, McVeigh's co-worker, noted that he had a keen interest in guns, although he didn't find it unusual since most full-time security guards and law enforcement personnel owned an assortment of firearms, he said.
One story eagerly circulated amongst the press is that McVeigh showed up at Burke one day with a huge Desert Eagle pistol and bandoleers slung in an "X" across his chest. "He came to work looking like Rambo," recalled Camp. "It looked like World War III."
Yet McVeigh laughs off the tale, stating that he and some other employees were simply playing a joke on their supervisor, who was sending them on a high profile assignment for the day. Apparently, their supervisor was not amused.
According to the Post, McVeigh also worked as a gun salesman at a sporting goods store in Lockport.
"Guns were the entire focal point of the 27-year-old Mr. McVeigh's life," wrote the Times' Kifner.
"This obsession with weapons — a form of power — is an overcompensation for deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy," added the FBI's Douglas, attempting to drive another nail into McVeigh's coffin.
One must wonder if an interest in stamp collecting or bird watching — other legitimate hobbies — could be construed as a "bid for attention." The author — much more of a "trouble maker" in his formative years than Timothy McVeigh — personally remembers his own interest in guns, and even military armor. Like motorcycles, fast cars or other macho symbols, such interests pass as one matures. Yet federal authorities, with the backing of the corporate-owned media, attempted to make this a cornerstone of their psuedo-psychological case against McVeigh. He was "obsessed with guns," ergo, he is a mad bomber. I doubt if all the gun enthusiasts in the country would be pleased to know they are, by association, being implicated as mad bombers.
Not to be deterred, Post reporters discovered that young Tim had stockpiled food, camping equipment and weapons in case of a disaster "…in case of a nuclear attack or the Communists took over the country," said an anonymous neighbor in the Post. "Perhaps it made sense that a young boy often forced to fend for himself would fantasize about fighting the world all alone," mused the Post. Fighting the world? Or developing common sense at a young age? In his Media Bypass interview, McVeigh recalled that one of his most vivid memories was the winter blizzard of 1977, which dumped 15 feet of snow on Pendelton, stranding his mother miles away, and knocking out power and phone lines for days. The young, inventive McVeigh responded by helping his father store necessities, even recommending that the older McVeigh purchase a generator.
Apparently the armchair psychoanalysts of the mainstream press felt this indicative of early creeping paranoia, rather than the natural combination of the active imagination and common sense inherent in a remarkable nine-year old boy. If the youngster was concerned about Communists, one only need ask where such fears were incubated.
The Post, keeping with the propaganda of Timothy McVeigh as underachiever, was quoted as saying "Tim's high-school yearbook entry in 1986 listed no organized activities (he omitted the track team), rather: 'staying away from school, losing sleep, finding it in school.'"
Yet even the Post admitted that Tim's guidance counselor, Harold Smith, said that he had not missed a day of classes from seventh through twelfth grade. Far from being an underachiever, his record indicates a young man with remarkable discipline.
Justin Gertner, who knew McVeigh since second grade recalls, "he hung around with the intelligently elite at Starpoint. Tim was in the Regent's program in our school for advanced placement students who planned on attending college. He also created and ran our computer bulletin board system."
In fact, McVeigh excelled in computers, taking every available computer class in high school. He even designed his own computer program. "That was the age when there was no software to speak of, and it wasn't user friendly," said a teacher who asked to remain anonymous, "But Tim and some other kids went out and did this…. In a way, that was fairly advanced. This demonstrates his bright mind and his ability."
This bright mind and ability led McVeigh to Bryant & Stratton Business College in Williamsville, N.Y. to study advanced COBOL and FORTRAN programming languages. In spite of his abilities, opportunities for decent employment were uncertain in Buffalo in the mid-1980s. Buffalo, like the rest of the Rust Belt, was experiencing the worst of economic trends. Several steel and auto plants had shut down, and two major banks failed, throwing thousands of white-collar workers out of jobs and causing downturns in real-estate, advertising, law and other fields.[139]
"There are no jobs around here unless you want to work for $6 an hour or less at a McDonald's or Wendy's," said Bill McVeigh. "It's rough for anybody looking for work."
McVeigh apparently did not feel comfortable that his auto-worker father was paying for most of his college tuition. So in December 1987, he took a job with Burke Armored Truck (now known as Armored Services of America) in Cheektowaga, near Buffalo.
"He was a very alert guard." said Jeff Camp, McVeigh's co-worker. "He worked a lot of overtime and was polite with our customers." McVeigh was also moody, ranging from intense to quiet. "If someone was driving badly, cutting us off or interfering with our schedule, he could get pretty mad," added Camp. "His face would turn red and he would yell and scream inside the truck, although he calmed down pretty fast." (Similar to the way the author drives.) Camp also described an incident where a woman had hit their truck. Although the woman was upset, McVeigh calmed her down and told her not to worry, that there was no damage to the truck, and that he would even report it as their fault, which it wasn't.[140]
McVeigh worked at Burke from April of 1987 till May of 1988. By the time he was 19, McVeigh had built up a substantial savings account and he and a friend, David Darlak, acquired 10 acres of land for $7,000 at a hunting and camping retreat north of Olean, N.Y. The two young men bought the land as an investment, and to use for camping and for target practice.[141] Reported the Post:
"Robert Morgan, who lives nearby, said his father Charlie once called the state police to complain about all the gunfire. 'My dad turned him in," he said. "One day it sounded like a war out there. Sometimes he'd come down during the week, sometimes the weekend. He had on hunting clothes. Camouflage.'"[142]
While the press made much out of the fact that McVeigh and his friends used the land for target practice, it should be noted that McVeigh was law-abiding and did not have a criminal record.
By the Spring of 1988, the young security guard felt he was going nowhere. He was working in a relatively low-wage job while listening to the fate of those who had been laid-off while working other jobs. Tim's father listened with concern as Tim vented his frustration, complaining that he was unemployable except at jobs that paid "no money." One night Bill McVeigh and a friend from the auto plant suggested that the younger McVeigh enter the service.
"Bill and I had both been in the service," the friend said, "and one night we said to Tim, 'That's what you ought to do: go in the service.' A week later, he had joined."
"It happened in a split second," said Tim's co-worker Jeff Camp. "He didn't tell anyone he was joining. He just came to work one day and said he was going in the Army.[143] I never saw a guy who wanted to go in the Army that bad. I asked him why the Army, and he said 'You get to shoot.' He always wanted to carry an M-16."[144]
Keith Maurer said, "I couldn't see him joining the military. He had a lot of options. He was very smart. I didn't see the military as the one he needed to take."
[But to McVeigh, who saw his career options in economically depressed Upstate New York as bleak, the Army made perfect sense.] The Army held the possibility of travel and adventure for a boy from a small town. In the Army, he could choose his specialty, indulging his interest in firearms or computers.
On May 24, McVeigh drove the 25 miles to the Army recruiting office in Buffalo, and signed up for a three-year hitch. "In a couple of days he was gone," said Camp.
Sergeant Mac
McVeigh arrived at Fort Benning, Georgia on May 30, and was assigned to Echo Company, 4th Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Training Brigade. The unit was a COHORT unit, an acronym for "Cohesion Operational Readiness and Training." In a COHORT unit, soldiers were supposed to stay together for their entire three-year enlistment period. The COHORT concept originated in 1980, in an attempt to correct the problem of sending in raw green recruits for those who had been killed in battle. The Army discovered that many new replacements had difficulty adjusting to a new unit in the heat of battle, resulting in a higher number of casualties. Moreover, Pentagon studies from the Vietnam War era suggested that soldiers who had developed bonds of friendship were more likely to perform courageously. Unfortunately, the Army soon developed a new problem: many of the soldiers became sick of each other after three years, resulting in soldiers committing suicide or going AWOL.
Although McVeigh originally wanted to try out for Army Ranger School, he didn't want to wait for an available opening, and decided to join the infantry immediately. As he sound found out, he had been misled by the Army recruiter. Once in the COHORT unit, it was not possible for him to enter Army Ranger School. Yet the disappointed young recruit quickly made the best of the situation, scoring a high 126 points on his General Technical test score, putting him in the top 10 percentile among new recruits.
"McVeigh was really motivated to be a good soldier and performed well at everything expected of him," said assistant platoon leader Glen "Tex" Edwards. "You could load that boy up with 140 pounds of gear and he would carry it all day on the march without complaining. He was thin as a rail but he never fell out of formation," said Edwards, recalling the hot Georgia summer of 1988. " It was the worst time of the year to go through the course, but it did not seem to bother McVeigh one bit."
Although McVeigh didn't have many close friends during basic training, one person he would develop a close friendship with was Terry Nichols. Nichols, 13 years McVeigh's senior, was promoted to platoon leader due to his age and maturity. Despite their age difference however, the two men bonded, sharing similar interests. "Terry and Tim in boot camp went together like magnets," said Robin Littleton.
By the end of basic training, McVeigh was promoted to private E-2, having managed to score higher than anyone in his battalion on his mid-cycle and end-of-cycle testing. "Any test, he'd ace it," said David Dilly. "He knew exactly what the Army wanted. It was going to be an easy life for him."
On August 25, 1988, McVeigh was awarded a certificate by his commanding officer, then in September the unit was shipped out to Fort Riley, Kansas, where McVeigh was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, First Infantry Division, part of the "Dagger Brigade" of the famous "Big Red One" that made the assault on Normandy during WWII. While McVeigh was assigned to Charlie Company, Nichols went to Bravo Company.
A mechanized infantry unit, 2nd Battalion was equipped with M-2 Bradley Armored vehicles, a more sophisticated version of the famous M-113 Armored Personnel Carrier used during the Vietnam War. In addition to ferrying troops, the aluminum Bradley has a turret-mounted 25mm cannon, a 7.62mm machine gun and anti-tank missiles. McVeigh was the gunner on one of four Bradleys attached to Charlie Company's First Platoon. Naturally, he scored higher than anyone else in the battalion. In 1989, his commander selected him as gunner on the "Division Display Vehicle," used to demonstrate the M-2 system for Pentagon officials and visiting dignitaries.
"He was without a doubt the best soldier I have ever trained with," said Staff Sergeant Albert Warnement, McVeigh's supervisor at Fort Riley. He was motivated and very interested in learning everything he could about being a professional soldier."[145]
"As far as soldiering, he never did anything wrong," said Todd Reiger, assigned to McVeigh's Bradley. "He was always on time. He never got into trouble. He was perfect. I thought he would stay in the Army all his life. He was always volunteering for stuff that the rest of us wouldn't want to do, guard duties, classes on the weekend."[146]
McVeigh studied every conceivable Army manual, including the Ranger Handbook, the Special Forces Handbook, and the Improvised Munitions Handbook. But press reports [portrayed] McVeigh as a mad bomber:
McVeigh's love of guns and explosives stood out even in the Army, where gun lovers abound. In the first weeks of basic training, when soldiers learn to make explosives, recalled platoon mate Fritz Curnutte, McVeigh boasted to fellow soldiers that he already knew how to make a powerful bomb using a bottle, then told them how to make a Molotov cocktail.[147]
According to Warnement, such knowledge is not unusual for the more serious soldiers, who routinely studied manuals on survival, evasion, resistance and escape, and improvised munitions. "You have to remember," said Warnement, "at that time, we were training to fight the Russians in Western Europe and it was expected the Red Army would probably break through our lines almost immediately. We were encouraged to learn how to improvise. Our survivability on the battlefield would likely depend on our skills in unconventional warfare."[148]
Although McVeigh's military record makes no mention of formal demolitions training, in her book, By Blood Betrayed, Lana Padilla calls McVeigh a "former Army demolitions expert."[149] But Sheffield Anderson, who served with McVeigh since basic training said "He had the same training that the rest of the outfit had."[150]
The only thing that differentiated McVeigh from the rest of the outfit was his dedication and commitment to the military. "He played the military 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Curnutte. "All of us thought it was silly. When they'd call for down time, we'd rest, and he'd throw on a rucksack and walk around the post with it."
This "silliness" led to McVeigh making sergeant ahead of the rest of his unit. "It was unusual to have sergeant stripes so soon," said Reiger. "The rest of us in the Cohort [unit] were specialists," a non-supervisory rank similar to corporal.
In fact, after the bombing, when McVeigh's records and test scores were shown to a master sergeant without revealing his identity, he stated that the subject "would make a great infantry officer, tanker, artillery officer or combat engineer." His electronic aptitude, said another official, qualified him for "repairing satellite communications."[151] "He has a very high IQ," said a federal source familiar with the suspect's military record.[152] In fact, McVeigh was rated among the top 5 percent in combat arms.
McVeigh rented a three-bedroom house in the spring of 1991 in Herrington with Corporal John Kelso and Sergeant Rick Cerney. But the arrangement was not a comfortable one for McVeigh, and he soon moved into another house which he shared with Sgt. Royal Wilcher, who served with McVeigh in the Bradley.
The Times quoted members of the McVeigh's unit claiming that he had no close friends. "He kept to himself," said Robert Handa. "He was a dedicated soldier. He loved being a soldier. I didn't. So after duty hours he'd stay in the barracks while everybody else took off, go out to town. I never saw him go anywhere. He always had a highly pressed uniform." Reiger recalls that McVeigh had a TV and a VCR and stayed in and watched movies, or occasionally went bowling.
"The whole thing is," said John Kelso, who shared a house off-base with McVeigh and fellow soldier Richard Cerney, "he couldn't have a good time."
"He was very shy of women — almost embarrassed," said Anderson. "It didn't seem he was gay. He was just awkward." McVeigh disputed this analysis in his April 15th Time interview, stating:
"I don't think there is any way to narrow my personality down and label it as one thing or another. I'm just like anyone else. Movies I enjoy, comedies, sci fi. The big misconception is that I'm a loner. Well, I believe in having my own space. But that in no way means I'm a loner. I like women, social life…."
McVeigh became friends with bombing suspect Michael Fortier while stationed at Fort Riley. He and Fortier would occasionally go shooting together at a friend's farm near Tuttle Creek Lake, and stop by and visit Terry Nichols at his house near the base.
The press was quick to pick up on McVeigh owning lots of guns he kept hidden around his house. According to Wilcher, "He had a couple in the kitchen, a couple in the living room under the couch. I think there was one in the bathroom, behind the towels. As you go up the steps there was a little ledge and he kept one in there too, a .38 revolver." "I don't know if he was paranoid or what," added Wilcher. "Or maybe he had some friends that were after him. I don't know."[153]
According to an account in USA Today and the Times, McVeigh and Nichols, who by now were pretty far along in their "anti-government" beliefs, attempted to recruit other military personnel for a militia that Nichols was purportedly starting. Nichols reportedly told at least one fellow soldier that he'd be back to Fort Riley after his discharge to recruit new men, and McVeigh's co-worker at Burns Security, Carl Lebron, would later tell the FBI that McVeigh was always trying to "recruit him into an undescribed group.…"[154]
According to Dave Dilly, one of McVeigh's roommates, McVeigh rented a storage locker in Junction City, stocked with weapons, military meals (MREs), and a 100-gallon jug of water — in case of disaster or a Communist attack.[155]
"He was halfway there when I knew him," said Dilly, referring to McVeigh's Patriot beliefs. During McVeigh's tenure at Burns Security, McVeigh would inundate his co-workers with Patriot literature, such as the Spotlight, articles and videos on Ruby Ridge and Waco, and books such as Detaxing America.
For his part, McVeigh says, "If you had to label what I think, then I would say I am closest to the views of the Patriot movement," McVeigh told the London Sunday Times. "For a long time, I thought it was best not to talk about my political views, he added, "but millions share them, and I believe it is gravely wrong that I should allow the government to try and crucify me just for believing what I do."
Interestingly, McVeigh would tell his friend Carl Lebron, who shared some of McVeigh's beliefs, "All the reading you do is just a hobby. You stamp your feet, but you're not doing anything."
Another issue the media focused on were race problems in Charlie Company, and with McVeigh in particular. Regier told the Post that McVeigh was criticized for assigning undesirable work to black soldiers, making black specialists sweep out the motor pool, work that would have ordinarily gone to privates. Other soldiers said he made derogatory remarks about blacks. "It was pretty well known, pretty much throughout the platoon, that he was making the black specialists do that work," said Regier. "He was a racist. When he talked he'd mention those words, like nigger. You pretty much knew he was a racist." The black soldiers complained to a company commander and McVeigh was reprimanded, the only time he ever got into trouble according to Regier.[156]
Dilly said that "Race was an issue, like everywhere in America, but not one that affected anyone's promotion. McVeigh picked the best man for the job."
Yet the McCurtain Gazette discovered that McVeigh held membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Apparently, he boasted that it was personally approved by Thom Robb, the KKK's national chaplain. "He was a very racist person," said Wilcher.
"Charlie Company as a whole had a problem with race," said Captain Terry Guild, who served briefly as McVeigh's platoon commander after the Gulf War. "There was graffiti on the walls of the barracks' bathroom: 'Nigger' or 'Honky, Get Out.' They were mild incidents. If a problem was identified, a leader in Charlie Company wouldn't let it happen again if he saw it. But it was definitely a problem in the company. And his platoon had some of the most serious race problems. It was pretty bad."
In spite of such interpersonal or racial difficulties, most of the platoon held McVeigh in high esteem for his soldiering abilities. "He could command soldiers of his own rank and they respected him," said Barner. "When it came to soldiering, McVeigh knew what he was doing."
"If we ever went to war," said Edwards, "every one of us wanted to go to war with McVeigh." [157]
During the summer of 1989, after returning from a week-long orientation session in Heidelberg with the West German Army, or Bundeswehr, McVeigh decided to try out for the Army Special Forces. To the young sergeant who had long desired to be a member of the Army's elite, the Special Forces provided the chance. It also provided McVeigh an opportunity to graduate from the COHORT unit. Yet the physical requirements to even qualify for the Special Forces are among the toughest in the military. Requirements include swimming 50 meters with full gear; 42 push-ups in two minutes; 52 sit-ups in two minutes; and running two miles in less than 15 minutes 54 seconds. To pass the grueling tests, McVeigh began training vigorously in the summer of 1989, working out constantly, and forcing himself to march 10 miles with 100 pound packs. By the summer of 1990, he had passed the Special Forces physical fitness test, and was ordered to report to Fort Bragg, NC on November 17 to begin the Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course (SFAS). Towards the end of 1990, McVeigh reinlisted for another four years. [158]
Yet McVeigh's dream of becoming a Green Beret would have to wait. On November 8th, with the conflict in the Persian Gulf coming to a head, the Pentagon canceled all leaves and training assignments. McVeigh's unit was activated for deployment. Although he was the consummate military man, the gung-ho soldier, McVeigh was against the decision to go to war. "McVeigh did not think the United States had any business or interest in Kuwait," said Warnement, "but he was a good soldier. He knew it was his duty to go where he was told, and he went." He was promoted to sergeant on February 1, 1991.[159]
Unlike the steely-eyed killer the press have painted him to be, McVeigh was as scared as the rest of the platoon. "The night before the ground war kicked off, he was saying he was scared because we were going to be part of the first wave," Anderson recalled. "He was scared we weren't going to come out of it. Maybe we would get shot, blown up. It wasn't cowardly. He was just concerned. I was feeling the same way, but most people didn't express it."[160]
On February 24, 1990, the 2nd Battalion was ordered across the southern Iraqi desert to punch a hole in Iraqi defenses — a line of dug-in infantry supported by tanks and artillery. McVeigh's platoon was attached to the "Ironhorse" tank company, and McVeigh's Bradley was the lead track in the platoon. McVeigh, the "top gun," took out an enemy tank on the first day with a TOW missile.
The "Ironhorse" protected units clearing the trenches. Using tanks and trucks equipped with plows, the U.S. forces would follow behind the Bradleys, burying the Iraqis dead or alive, to create a smooth crossing point for the infantry and avoid having to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat.
McVeigh's moment of glory came when his platoon encountered a dug-in enemy machine-gun emplacement and came under fire. McVeigh brought his 25mm cannon to bear on the chest of an enemy soldier 1,000 yards away, and took his head off with one shot. He followed up with a similar shot, which was followed by the raising of a white flag and the raising of more than 60 hands into the air.
For his role in the battle, McVeigh was awarded an Army Commendation Medal which read in part: "He inspired other members of his squad and platoon by destroying an enemy machine-gun emplacement, killing two Iraqi soldiers and forcing the surrender of 30 others from dug-in positions." McVeigh also earned a Commendation medal with an upgrade for valor, two Army Achievement medals, and the Bronze Star "for flawless devotion to duty."
This "flawless devotion to duty" resulted in McVeigh's unit being invited to provide personal security for General "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf.
A much-hackneyed phrase attributed to Sergeant James Ives, which the media like to play over and over again was, "If he was given a mission and a target, it's gone." Yet Roger Barnett, who served in McVeigh's Bradley, told the Times that McVeigh never expressed any desire to kill troops who were surrendering and never seemed bloodthirsty in any way.[161]
[Yet the Times' preordained slant on McVeigh was clearly evident. While others in his outfit "served" during the Gulf War, McVeigh "killed Iraqis." [162]]
One story which appeared in Media Bypass [but predictably never made it into the mainstream press,] recounts how McVeigh saved an accident victim's life on a lonely stretch of highway. The man had been ejected from his overturned car and lay semi-conscious and bleeding. A passing semi had stopped but was unable to find him as he lay in the darkness 50 yards away. McVeigh, who was on his way to his home town of Pendelton, had recently finished a 46-hour medical aid course at Fort Riley. Against regulations, he had taken his Combat Lifesaver Pack with him on the 1200-mile drive. As he came upon the scene, McVeigh saw that an EMS (Emergency Medical Service) crew had not yet arrived. Trained in night vision techniques, McVeigh the soldier quickly spotted the injured motorist in the grass along the median strip. Following is an excerpt from the Media Bypass article:
The victim recalls that the soldier was confident, quiet and efficient. To centralize his circulation, he elevated the man's undamaged limbs and warned him to be calm to avoid going into shock. He checked his pulse and flashed a small penlight across his pupils. The man, who only moments earlier was convinced he was going to die, shivered in the dark and started laughing. He told the tall young stranger he was never going to buy another Chevy Blazer again.
The soldier smiled as he rolled up the victim's right sleeve and inserted the needle to start a saline IV into his veins. "You've lost a lot of blood and you risk going into shock. This is an IV to help stabilize you and keep your fluids going. Relax. You'll be fine," he told him. He placed the clear plastic IV bag under the man's hip and checked his pulse again.
In the distance, an ambulance siren screamed over the sound of the truck engines as Timothy James McVeigh quickly packed up his Army issue trauma kit and disappeared into the night. The responding EMS crew told the state police officer who arrived at the accident minutes later that they had never come upon such a potentially deadly crash to find a severely injured man relaxed and laughing, neatly bandaged with an IV dangling from his arm.[163]
In a flurry of articles, mainstream media painted McVeigh as a psychotic, attention-seeking loner with a grudge against the government and a hatred of humanity. A man with "a stunted personality," who led a "tortured path," "obsessed with weapons" and with "deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy." When the press couldn't find evidence of overt violence or hostility, his noted politeness and manners suddenly became evidence his of his psychosis. "It is a personality that a Seattle forensic psychiatrist, Kenneth Muscatel, has described as the "Smerdyakov Syndrome," announced the Times, "after the scorned half-brother in Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov who listens to the other brothers inveigh against their father until, finally, he commits patricide."[164]
McVeigh was painted as a sociopath when Lana Padilla, in her book, By Blood Betrayed, hinting that McVeigh may have been responsible for the death of 26-month-old Jason Torres Nichols — Terry and Marife's son — who accidentally suffocated to death in a plastic bag in November of 1993.[165] Yet Padilla included a photo in her book of McVeigh laughing and playing with the little boy. And according to Terry Nichols, McVeigh had tried to revive the infant for nearly half an hour, and had called the paramedics — a response apparently out-of-character with the actions of a deranged sociopathic killer.[166]
Captain Jesus Rodriguez, who commanded McVeigh during Desert Storm, described him as a friend who was "really compassionate" and "really cared" when Rodriguez's brother-in-law died in an accident.[167]
Further evidence of McVeigh's humanity can be found in a letter he wrote to the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal on March 10, 1992: (See appendix for full text)
To buy your meat in a store seems so innocent, but have you ever seen or thought how it comes to be wrapped up so neatly in cellophane?
First, cattle live their entire lives penned up in cramped quarters, never allowed to roam freely, bred for one purpose when their time has come.
The technique that I have personally seen is to take cattle, line them up side by side with their heads and necks protruding over a low fence, and walk from one end to the other, slitting their throats with either machete or power saw. Unable to run or move, they are left there until they bleed to death, standing up.
Would you rather die while living happily or die while leading a miserable life? You tell me which is more "humane."
Does a "growing percentage of the public" have any pity or respect for any of the animals which are butchered and then sold in the store? Or is it just so conveniently "clean" that a double standard is allowed?
The mainstream press twisted the context of McVeigh's letter. In his [book], A Force Upon the Plain, author Kenneth Stern writes: "McVeigh said he thought a human being was, by nature, 'a hunter, a predator.' He also asked: 'Is civil war imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system?'"[168] Stern takes two unrelated letters written by McVeigh, then craftily combines them to suggest that the humane killing of animals is actually part and parcel of McVeigh's bloodthirsty desire to kill human beings.[169]
Reality paints a much different picture of Timothy James McVeigh however. In February of 1996, Ron Rice and Carol Moore of the American Board of Forensic Examiners were asked to produce a profile of McVeigh's personality based on a handwriting analysis.[170] Both Rice and Moore characterized McVeigh as an introverted person — what they term an "Apollonian" personality — "a steady, unemotional, organized individual who [is] not devoid of emotion/passion, but more apt to value reason over passion." Like Sheffield Anderson, who described McVeigh as a "thinking type person," the examiners stated that McVeigh was "head-oriented." "They tend to be distrustful of feeling in the belief that following one's feelings can lead to trouble," the report stated. "Rarely, will he allow his emotional expressions to be directed at another person out of fear of hurting them…."
The report concluded with the observation that Timothy McVeigh "is a military man… his heart and soul belongs to the military of the U.S. Government. In a non-military environment, McVeigh will not undertake any form of overt hostility that will be harmful to others or dangerous to himself…. It is not logical that he would undertake any action against our government in which others would be hurt or killed. To do so would violate everything he stands for."[171]
In April of 1991, McVeigh put his heart and soul into his long-awaited dream of becoming a Green Beret. On March 28 he reported to Camp McCall, the Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) training facility west of Fort Bragg, for the grueling 21-day assessment course. But McVeigh, who had kept himself in top shape by doing 400 push-ups a day and marching around the post with a 100 pound pack was now out of shape and he knew it. The Bradley gunner who had served in the Persian Gulf for four months was also drained from the stress of combat.
As the recruits stood at attention, the instructor asked several of the recently returned war veterans if they wanted to return to their unit to get back in shape. One of the soldiers yelled that they were ready, so out of a sense of gung-ho pride, nobody backed out.
The first day of testing was devoted to psychological screening. McVeigh claims he had no problem with the psychological tests, which included the Adult Personality Inventory, the Minnesota Multiple Phase Personality Test, and a sentence completion exam designed by Army psychologists.
The second day of tests began with an obstacle course which McVeigh passed with ease. After lunch, the recruits were led on a high-speed march with 50 pound rucksacks. Yet new boots tore into McVeigh's feet during the five mile march, and with the worst yet to come, he and another recruit, David Whitmyer, decided to drop out. McVeigh signed a Voluntary/Involuntary Withdrawal from the SFAS school. His single sentence explanation read: "I am not physically ready, and the rucksack march hurt more than it should."[172]
The mainstream press jumped on his initial failure to make the Special Forces. He was "unable to face the failure" stated the New York Times. "He washed out on the second day."[173]
"There were no second chances," claimed the Washington Post. "His spirit was broken."[174]
These reports suggested that McVeigh had failed the psychological screening tests. "Military officials said that preliminary psychological screening had shown him to be unfit," lauded the ever-wise voice of the New York Times. "[He] saw his cherished hope of becoming a Green Beret shattered by psychological tests."[175] "It was apparently a blow so crushing that he quit the Army and went into a psychic tailspin."[176]
Media pundits quickly backed up their armchair analyses' with statements from several of McVeigh's former buddies.
"Anyone who puts all that effort into something and doesn't get it would be mentally crushed," said Roger Barnett, the driver of McVeigh's Bradley. "He wasn't the same McVeigh. He didn't go at things the way he normally did…. He didn't have the same drive. He didn't have his heart in the military anymore."[177]
"He always wanted to do better than everyone," said Captain Terry Guild, "and that (Green Berets) was his way of trying to do it. He took a lot of flak. He was really down on himself."[178]
McVeigh claimed "That's a bunch of bunk," in response to the allegations. "Any realist knows that if you develop blisters on the second day… you're not going to make it."[179] [Still, the self-styled psychoanalysts of the mainstream press made much of his disappointment, asserting knowingly that it was the crux of McVeigh's "burgeoning torment."]
[Apparently, the "psychojournalists" at the Times had never bothered to check with officials at the SFAS school. "McVeigh dropped out of the course on the second day," said Colonel Ken McGraw, Information Officer at the Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. "His psychological test work would not have even been graded yet."]
According to McVeigh's attorney Stephen Jones, his Army records indicate that his SFAS psychological tests weren't graded until April of 1995. The "military official" who leaked the story about McVeigh's "psychological test failure" turned out to be none other than FBI Agent John R. Hersley, who testified to this repeatedly during the Federal Grand Jury hearings. Apparently, Hersley never told the grand jurors that he was moonlighting as an Army psychologist.
Although McVeigh may have been genuinely disappointed by his initial failure, he added that the school's commander had invited the decorated war veteran to try out again whenever he felt he was ready. It seems McVeigh was not too disappointed to score a perfect 1,000 points during a Bradley gunner competition six months later at Fort Riley, earning him another Army commendation and the honor of the division's "Top Gun," a rare achievement. An Army evaluation also rated him "among the best" in leadership potential and an "inspiration to young soldiers."[180]
Yet in spite of McVeigh's achievements, "a bit of doubt started to surface" in his mind about a potential for a career in the military.[181] Although a friend said "I swear to God he could have been Sergeant Major of the Army — he was that good of a soldier," McVeigh apparently was having second thoughts. Most of these, his Army buddies said, stemmed from the military's downsizing then in progress. He also confided to his friend Dave Dilly that without being a Green Beret, the Army wouldn't be worth the effort. "I think he felt he got a raw deal, and wanted out," said Littleton.
Given McVeigh's achievements — his quick rise to sergeant, his medals of commendation, the distinction of being "Top Gun," and the extremely high praise of his superiors, one has to wonder what his real motives were. It seems highly unlikely that given the massive effort he put into his military career, he would take an early out on such presumptive pretenses. McVeigh was a spit and polish soldier with a top notch record. He was totally devoted to the military. He had served in combat, earning several medals. If anything he was due for his next promotion. The commander of the Special Forces school had even invited him to try out again in a few months. As Sheffield Anderson said, "He seemed destined for a brilliant career in the military."
These observations were backed up by McVeigh's sister Jennifer. "I thought it was going to be his career. He was definitely a career military type. That was his life, you know. His life revolved around that."
It hardly seems likely that the ambitious soldier who had recently signed on for another four year hitch would opt out so easily. Yet, on December 31, 1991, Sergeant McVeigh took an early discharge from the Army, and went back to his home town of Pendleton, NY.
The Manchurian Candidate
To fulfill his military obligation, McVeigh signed on with the Army National Guard in Buffalo, where he landed a job as a security guard with Burns International Security. McVeigh was assigned to the night shift, guarding the grounds of Calspan Research, a defense contractor that conducts classified research in advanced aerospace rocketry and electronic warfare.
In a manner mirroring his conduct in the service, McVeigh became the consummate security guard. Calspan spokesman Al Salandra told reporters that McVeigh was "a model employee." Yet according to media accounts, McVeigh had lost his confidence… and his cool.
"Timmy was a good guard," said former Burns supervisor Linda Haner-Mele. "He was "always there prompt, clean and neat. His only quirk," according to Mele, "was that he couldn't deal with people. If someone didn't cooperate with him, he would start yelling at them, become verbally aggressive. He could be set off easily.
According to an article in the Post, co-workers at a Niagara Falls convention center where he was assigned described him as "emotionally spent, veering from passivity to volcanic anger." An old friend said he looked "like things were really weighing on him."[182]
"Timmy just wasn't the type of person who could initiate action," said Mele. "He was very good if you said, 'Tim watch this door — don't let anyone through.' The Tim I knew couldn't have masterminded something like this and carried it out himself. It would have had to have been someone who said: 'Tim, this is what you do. You drive the truck….'"
Mele's account directly contradicts the testimony of Sergeant Chris Barner and former Private Ray Jimboy, both of whom served with McVeigh at Fort Riley, and claimed that he was a natural leader.[183] Backing up Jimboy was McVeigh's friend and Calspan co-worker, Carl Lebron, who described McVeigh as "intelligent and engaging — the sort of person who could be a leader."[184]
Mele's testimony also contradicts McVeigh's service record, which rated him "among the best" in leadership potential and an "inspiration to young soldiers."[185] "He had a lot of leadership ability inside himself," said Barner…. He had a lot of self confidence."
Apparently, "Something happened to Tim McVeigh between the time he left the Army and now," said Captain Terry Guild.
"He didn't really carry himself like he came out of the military," said Mele. "He didn't stand tall with his shoulders back. He kind of slumped over." She recalled him as silent, expressionless, with lightness eyes, but subject to explosive fits of temper. "That guy didn't have an expression 99 percent of the time," she added. "He was cold."[186]
Colonel David Hackworth, an Army veteran who interviewed McVeigh for Newsweek, concluded that McVeigh was suffering from a "postwar hangover." "I've seen countless veterans, including myself, stumble home after the high-noon excitement of the killing fields, missing their battle buddies and the unique dangers and sense of purpose," wrote Hackworth. "Many lose themselves forever."[187]
Although such symptoms may be seen as a delayed reaction syndrome resulting from the stress of battle, they are also common symptoms of mind-control. The subject of mind-control or hypnosis often seems emotionally spent, as though he had been through a harrowing ordeal.
While visiting friends in Decker, Michigan, McVeigh complained that the Army had implanted him with a miniature subcutaneous transmitter, so that they could keep track of him.[188] He complained that it left an unexplained scar on his buttocks and was painful to sit on.[189]
To the public, unfamiliar with the bewildering lexicon of government mind-control research, such a claim may appear as the obvious rantings of a paranoiac. But is it?
Miniaturized telemetrics have been part of an ongoing project by the military and various intelligence agencies to test the effectiveness of tracking soldiers on the battlefield. The miniature implantable telemetric device was declassified long ago. As far back as 1968, Dr. Stuart Mackay, in his textbook entitled Bio-Medical Telemetry, reported, "Among the many telemetry instruments being used today, are miniature radio transmitters that can be swallowed, carried externally, or surgically implanted in man or animal. They permit the simultaneous study of behavior and physiological functioning.…"[190]
Dr. Carl Sanders, one of the developers of the Intelligence Manned Interface (IMI) biochip, maintains, "We used this with military personnel in the Iraq War where they were actually tracked using this particular type of device."[191]
It is also interesting to note that the Calspan Advanced Technology Center in Buffalo (Calspan ATC), where McVeigh worked, is engaged in microscopic electronic engineering of the kind applicable to telemetrics.[192] Calspan was founded in 1946 as Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, which included the "Fund for the Study of Human Ecology," a CIA conduit for mind-control experiments by émigré Nazi scientists [and others under the direction of CIA Doctors Sidney Gottlieb, Ewen Cameron, and Louis Jolyn West].
According to mind-control researcher Alex Constantine, "Calspan places much research emphasis on bioengineering and artificial intelligence (Calspan pioneered in the field in the 1950s)." In his article, "The Good Soldier," Constantine states:
Human tracking and monitoring technology are well within Calspan's sphere of pursuits. The company is instrumental in REDCAP, an Air Force electronic warfare system that winds through every Department of Defense facility in the country. A Pentagon release explains that REDCAP "is used to evaluate the effectiveness of electronic-combat hardware, techniques, tactics and concepts." The system "includes closed-loop radar and data links at RF manned data fusion and weapons control posts." One Patriot computer news board reported that a disembodied, rumbling, low-frequency hum had been heard across the country the week of the bombing. Past hums in Taos, NM, Eugene and Medford, OR, Timmons, Ontario and Bristol, UK were most definitely (despite specious official denials) attuned to the brain's auditory pathways….
The Air Force is among Calspan's leading clients, and Eglin AFB has farmed key personnel to the company. The grating irony — recalling McVeigh's contention he'd been implanted with a telemetry chip — is that the Instrumentation Technology Branch of Eglin Air Force Base is currently engaged in the tracking of mammals with subminiature telemetry devices. According to an Air Force press release, the biotelemetry chip transmits on the upper S-band (2318 to 2398 MHz), with up to 120 digital channels.
There is nothing secret about the biotelemetry chip. Ads for commercial [albeit somewhat simpler] versions of the device have appeared in national publications. Time magazine ran an ad for an implantable pet transceiver in its June 26, 1995 issue — ironically enough — opposite an article about a militia leader who was warning about the coming New World Order. While monitoring animals has been an unclassified scientific pursuit for decades, the monitoring of humans has been a highly classified project which is but a subset of the Pentagon's "nonlethal" arsenal. As Constantine notes, "the dystopian implications were explored by Defense News for March 20, 1995:
Naval Research Lab Attempts To Meld Neurons And Chips: Studies May Produce Army of "Zombies."
Future battles could be waged with genetically engineered organisms, such as rodents, whose minds are controlled by computer chips engineered with living brain cells.... The research, called Hippocampal Neuron Patterning, grows live neurons on computer chips. "This technology that alters neurons could potentially be used on people to create zombie armies," Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said.
It's conceivable, given the current state of the electronic mind-control art, a biocybernetic Oz over the black budget rainbow, that McVeigh had been drawn into an experimental project, that the device was the real McCoy….[193]
The Defense Department newsletter may have been discussing is the successor to the "Stimoceiver," developed in the late 1950s by Dr. Joseph Delgado and funded by the CIA and the Office of Naval Research. The Stimoceiver is a tiny transceiver implanted in the head of a control subject, which can then be used to modify emotions and control behavior.
According to Delgado, "Radio Stimulation of different points in the amygdala and hippocampus [areas of the brain] in the four patients produced a variety of effects, including pleasant sensations, elation, deep, thoughtful concentration, odd feelings, super relaxation, colored visions, and other responses.... One of the possibilities with brain transmitters is to influence people so that they confirm with the political system. Autonomic and somatic functions, individual and social behavior, emotional and mental reactions may be invoked, maintained, modified, or inhibited, both in animals and in man, by stimulation of specific cerebral structures. Physical control of many brain functions is a demonstrated fact. It is even possible to follow intentions, the development of thought and visual experiences."[194]
As Constantine points out, the military has a long and sordid history of using enlisted men and unwitting civilians for its nefarious experiments, ranging from radiation, poison gas, drugs and mind-control, to spraying entire U.S. cities with bacteriological viruses to test their effectiveness. The most recent example involves the use of experimental vaccines tested on Gulf War veterans who are currently experiencing bizarre symptoms, not the least of which is death. When attorneys representing the former soldiers requested their military medical files, they discovered there was no record of the vaccines ever being administered.[195]
Timothy McVeigh may have unkowningly been an Army/CIA guinea pig involved in a classified telemetric/mind-control project — a "Manchurian Candidate."
Recent history is replete with cases of individuals who calmly walk into a restaurant, schoolyard, or post office and inexplicably begin shooting large numbers of people, as though they were in a trance. What appear like gruesome but happenstance events to the casual observer raises red flags to those familiar with CIA "sleeper" mind-control experiments. Such cases may be indicative of mind-control experiments gone horribly wrong.
A recent case occurred in Tasmania, where Martin Bryant calmly walked around a tourist site in May of 1996 methodically shooting and killing over 35 people. Interestingly, Bryant was in possession of an assault rifle that had been handed in to police in Victoria as part of a gun amnesty program, but mysteriously wound up in Bryant's hands before the massacre.[196]
[An anti-social loner, Bryant had also recently returned from a solitary two-week trip to the U.S., ostensibly to visit "Disneyland." Australian Customs agents noticed he carried no luggage, and was acting strangely. They took him to the hospital to be examined as a possible drug courier, but found nothing. Had Bryant actually visited Disneyland, or had he visited a different type of playground — one inhabited by the mind-control masters of the CIA?
In the wake of the massacre, Australia underwent wholesale gun confiscation of its citizenry. Not surprisingly, Australia and New Zealand have long served as a playground for the CIA, who reportedly played a major role in the overthrow of Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, directed from the CIA's super-secret Pine Gap facility. It has also been reported that the CIA has been testing subliminal TV transmissions to influence the outcome of elections.[197]]
As in Bryant's case, many of these bizarre killers meekly surrender to authorities after their sprees. When he was stopped by State Trooper Charles Hanger for a missing license plate, McVeigh was carrying a loaded Glock 9mm pistol. Although he could have easily shot and killed the officer, McVeigh informed him that he was carrying a concealed weapon, then meekly handed himself over for arrest. Why does a man who has just allegedly killed 169 innocent people, balk at killing a cop on a lonely stretch of highway? [This suggests that either McVeigh was innocent, was acting under orders by some branch of the government, or was under some form of mind-control.]
After McVeigh's arrest in Noble County, Assistant Attorney General Mark Gibson stated, "There stood a polite young man who gave polite, cooperative answers to every question. It was like the dutiful soldier," Gibson said. "Emotions don't come into play, right and wrong don't come into play. What happens next doesn't come into play… his mood was so level, it was unnatural. I looked at him and realized I felt no repulsion or fear. It was like there was an absence of feeling. He exuded nothing."
Charles Hanger, the officer who arrested McVeigh, related his account to Gibson, who told the Times, "And when he grabbed his gun and there was no reaction, no shock, that didn't seem right, either."[198]
This "absence of feeling" among a man who had just allegedly committed a heinous crime may well have been indicative of a psychologically controlled agent — or "sleeper" agent — a person trained to carry out a preconceived order upon command. Such an individual could conceivably carry out a horrendous crime, then have no recollection of the event. Far from the stuff of spy novels or conspiracy theories, sleeper agents have been developed and used by intelligence agencies for decades.
[The CIA's interest in mind control originally dates back to WWII when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), under Stanley Lovell, developed the idea of hypnotizing German prisoners to re-infiltrate the Third Reich and assassinate Adolph Hitler. After the war, the OSS, re-formed as the CIA, brought Nazi doctors and scientists to work for them under the cover of Operation PAPERCLIP. Some of these included war criminals spirited away through Nazi-Vatican "Ratlines" under the aegis of Operation OMEGA, conveniently missing their day in court at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Their colleagues wound up in Central and South America, drained from the best of Nazi blood under Operation VAMPIRE.]
The CIA's plunge into the netherworld of mind-control began in 1950 with Project BLUEBIRD, authorized by Allen Dulles after it was discovered that recently released Korean War prisoners had been subjected to hypnosis. In 1952, BLUEBIRD was re-named Operation ARTICHOKE, under the authority of Deputy CIA Director Richard Helms, and coordinated by CIA Security Officer Shefield Edwards.
[By the late 1950s, the military was well on its way to investigating the potential for "brainwashing," a term coined by the CIA's Edward Hunter to explain the experience of American POWs in Korea. In 1958 the Rand Corporation produced a report for the Air Force entitled "The Use of Hypnosis in Intelligence and Related Military Situations," stating that "In defense applications, subjects can ce specifically selected by a criterion of hypnotizability, and subsequently trained in accordance with their anticipated military function..."[199]]
Taking the Hippocratic Oath on behalf of the CIA for ARTICHOKE was Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, mind-control emeritus of the CIA's Technical Services Division (TSS), the real-life counterpart to the mythical "Q-Branch" of Ian Fleming fame. TSS was engaged developing the usual James Bond spy toys — miniature cameras, shooting fountain pens, and, under the tutelage of Dr. Gottlieb, poisons that could kill in seconds, leaving no trace. With Operation ARTICHOKE however, the CIA broadened its horizons into the realm of psychological warfare. ARTICHOKE was one of the CIA's later-day attempts to create an electronically-controlled Manchurian Candidate.
In the 1950s, under the code name MKULTRA, the CIA set up safe houses in San Francisco and other cities where they performed experiments on unwitting subjects using LSD and other drugs. In 1960, Edwards recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu, who approached Mob bosses Sam Giancana and John Rosselli to form CIA hit-teams to assassinate foreign leaders using the techniques acquired by Gottlieb's TSS. [The first on their list was Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who they planned to assassinate by poisoning his food and even his cigars. The work of Gottlieb and his CIA associates can be traced directly back to Nazi war criminals such as Dr. Joseph Mengele of Auschwitz.]
By 1963, reported the Senate Intelligence Committee, the number of operations and subjects had increased substantially. But as far back as 1960, TSS officials, working along with the Counterintelligence staff, had expanded their hypnosis programs to coincide with their MKULTRA experiments. According to John Marks in his book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, "the Counterintelligence program had three goals: (1) to induce hypnosis very rapidly in unwitting subjects; (2) to create durable amnesia; and (3) to implant durable and operationally useful posthypnotic suggestion."
By 1966, MKULTRA had spawned Operation MKSEARCH, the use of biological, chemical, and radiological substances to induce psychological and physiological changes in the CIA's victims. MKSEARCH spawned Operations OFTEN and CHICKWIT, using biological, chemical, and radiological substances to induce psychological and physiological changes. Operations THIRD CHANCE and DERBY HAT involved the Army's Military Intelligence Group's (M.I.G.) surreptitious dosing of victims in Europe and the Far East. MKDELTA, an offshoot of MKULTRA, involved spraying massive doses of LSD and other drugs by the Army over areas inhabited by Viet Cong.[200]
[The preeminent don of the CIA's psychological warfare program was Dr. Louis Jolyn West. As part of his MKULTRA experiments, West decided to send an elephant at the Oklahoma City Zoo on an LSD trip. Apparently, the poor creature did not appreciate the effects of Dr. West's Magical Mystery Tour. It died several hours later.
A close associate of Drs. Cameron and Gottlieb, West studied the use of drugs as "adjuncts to interpersonal manipulation or assault," and was among one of the pioneers of remote electronic brain experimentation, including telemetric brain implants on unwitting subjects.
West's good friend, Aldous Huxley, suggested that he hypnotize his subjects before administering LSD, in order to give them post-hypnotic suggestions which would orient the drug-induced experience in a "desired direction."
Interestingly, West was the psychiatrist who examined Jack Ruby, the assassin of Lee Harvey Oswald. Ruby's assertion that an ultra-Right-wing cabal was responsible for JFK's murder, and his refusal to admit insanity, led West to conclude that he was paranoid and mentally ill. West placed Ruby on anti-depressants, which did little to modify his claims of conspiracy. He died of cancer two years later, claiming to the end that he had been injected with cancerous biological material.
West also examined Sirhan Sirhan, a controlled hypo-patsy who allegedly killed Robert F. Kennedy. Currently chairman of UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Institute, West headed the American Psychological Association (APA) trauma response team that rushed to Oklahoma City in the wake of the disaster.
I interviewed Dr. West by phone. While confirming that he had indeed traveled to Oklahoma City with his team, the eminent psychiatrist made a curious "Freudian Slip." When asked if he had examined McVeigh, he said, "No, I haven't been asked to do that. I think his lawyer wouldn't want someone he didn't trus… pick."[201]
West nevertheless told me that someone from the FBI's Behavioral Sciences unit would have interviewed McVeigh. In fact the FBI's Behavioral Sciences unit did interview the prisoner. John Douglas of the FBI's Psychological Profile Unit was later quoted in the Times as saying, "This is an easily controlled and manipulated personality." What Douglas is unwittingly confirming is that McVeigh was perfect material for the CIA's psychological mind-control program.
By the late 1950s, many German or Eastern European émigrés brought to work in the U.S. had been farmed out to universities such as Cornell, UCLA, and Stanford… and to people like Dr. Ewen Cameron and Dr. Jolyn West.[202]
In the wake of the 1965 Watts riot, West proposed to then California Governor Ronald Reagan a "Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence," which was to have included a psychosurgery unit for performing lobotomies, and a seven-day-a-week, around-the-clock electro-shock room. Associates of Dr. Cameron's, employed at the time in Nazi-run detention centers in South America, would be called on to perform lobotomies on unsuspecting patients, with the full approval of Governor Reagan.[203]
One of the more brazen of the emerging coterie of brainwashing enthusiasts, Cameron received his funding through the Rockefeller and Gerschickter Foundations, which was channeled into the innocuous sounding Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology at Cornell. Cameron performed hundreds of lobotomies and electroshock treatments at the behest of the CIA on unwitting patients in prisons and mental hospitals, and at his beloved Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal.[204]
It is interesting to note that McVeigh claimed he was subjected to psychological torture while in prison.[205] He was placed in a cell with a guard watching him around the clock, who wasn't allowed to speak to him. The lights in his cell were kept on 24-hours-a-day, depriving him of sleep — a standard technique designed to break down a subject's psychological barriers. Eventually, McVeigh called in a psychiatrist to help treat his anxiety — a psychiatrist, perhaps, trained by Dr. Cameron.]
CIA psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron was also the progenitor of "psychic driving," a technique whereby the psychiatrist or controller repeatedly plays back selected words or phrases to break down a person's psychological barriers and open up his unconscious.[206] Such techniques would be eagerly incorporated into the CIA's program for creating Manchurian Candidates — programmed hypno-killers who could be unleashed at the behest of the Agency to kill upon command. An account of the discussion surrounding the creation of a Manchurian Candidate is revealed by JFK researcher Dick Russell in his book, The Man Who Knew Too Much:
In 1968, Dr. Joseph L. Bern of Virginia Polytechnic Institute questioned authorities on hypnosis about whether the creation of a "Manchurian Candidate" was really feasible. As Author Bowart recounted one expert's response to Dr. Bernd: "I would say that a highly skilled hypnotist, working with a highly susceptible subject, could possibly persuade the subject to kill another human…" Another believed it was even possible, through posthypnotic suggestion, to make a subject unable to recall such an act: "There could be a conspiracy, but a conspiracy of which the principal was unaware."[207]
This "psychic driving" appears to have impacted Sirhan Sirhan. Charles McQuiston, a former Army intelligence officer who did a Psychological Stress Evaluation of voice recordings of Sirhan, said, "I believe Sirhan was brainwashed under hypnosis by the constant repetition of words like, 'You are nobody, you're nothing, the American dream is gone'.… Somebody implanted an idea, kill RFK, and under hypnosis the brainwashed Sirhan accepted it."[208] The accused assassin insisted that he couldn't recall even the murder.
CIA contract agent Colonel William Bishop explained to Russell some of the rudiments of the CIA's mind-control operations:
"There were any number of psychological or emotional factors involved in peoples' selection. Antisocial behavior patterns, paranoia or the rudiments of paranoia, and so on. But when they are successful with this programming — or, for lack of a better term, indoctrination — they could take John Doe and get this man to kill George and Jane Smith. He will be given all the pertinent information as to their location, daily habits, etc. Then there is a mental block put on this mission in his mind. He remembers nothing about it."[209]
On March 3, 1964, CIA Director John McCone sent a memo to Secret Service chief James Rowley stating that after his surgery at the hospital in Minsk, [Russia], Oswald might have been "chemically or electronically 'controlled'… a sleeper agent. Subject spent 11 days hospitalized for a minor ailment which should have required no more than three days hospitalization at best."[210]
Even J. Edgar Hoover told the Warren Commission, "Information came to me indicating that there is an espionage training school outside of Minsk — I don't know whether it is true — that he [Oswald] was trained at that school to come back to this country to become what they call a 'sleeper,' that is, a man who will remain dormant for three or four years and in case of international hostilities rise up and be used."[211]
[According to JFK researchers Art Ford and Lincoln Lawrence in their book, Were We Controlled?, Lee Harvey Oswald was a programmed assassin with a malfunctioning electrical implant in his brain.[212] Herman Kimsey, A veteran Army counterintelligence operative and former CIA official, told JFK researcher Hugh MacDonald, "Oswald was programmed to kill…. Then the mechanism went on the blink and Oswald became a dangerous toy without direction."[213]]
The CIA's interest in producing the perfect programmed assassin took a new bent, when in 1965, the Agency, in cooperation with the DoD, set up a secret program for studying the effects of electromagnetic radiation, or microwave (EM) weapons at the Army's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. The project was inspired by the Soviets, who had been dousing the American Embassy in Moscow with a lethal dose of microwaves, causing many of its personnel to die from cancer.[214]
Yet causing degenerative diseases was not the main goal of the DoD/CIA EM weapons research, code named PANDORA. The spooks were interested in the effects of microwaves on controlling a person's behavior. By 1973, both the Americans and the Soviets were far along in their mind-control applications, using technology such as pulsed microwave audiograms and acoustical telemetry to create voices in a subject's mind, or erase his mind completely.[215]]
Causing degenerative diseases was not the main goal of the DoD/CIA EM weapons research, code named PANDORA. The spooks were interested in the effects of microwaves on controlling a person's behavior. By 1973, both the Americans and the Soviets were far along in their mind-control applications, using technology such as pulsed microwave audiograms and acoustical telemetry to create voices in a subject's mind, or erase his mind completely.[216] With the advent of EM technology, scientists could bypass the need for electrodes implanted in the brain, and control their subjects directly. Lawrence described a technology called RHIC-EDOM, or "Radio Hypnotic Intracerebral Control and Electronic Dissolution of Memory." According to Lawrence:
It is the ultra-sophisticated application of post-hypnotic suggestion triggered at will by radio transmission. It is a recurring state, re-induced automatically at intervals by the same radio control. An individual is brought under hypnosis. This can be done either with his knowledge — or without it — by use of narco-hypnosis, which can be brought into play under many guises. He is then programmed to perform certain actions and maintain certain attitudes upon radio signal.
Lawrence went on to state that "through the use of radio-waves and ultra-sonic signal tones… It in effect blocks memory of the moment."[217] "Such a device has obvious applications in covert operations designed to drive a target crazy with 'voices' or deliver undetected instructions to a programmed assassin," states Dr. Robert Becker.[218]
Thane Eugene Cesar, a reported accomplice in the murder of Robert Kennedy, held a vaguely-defined job at Lockheed, a CIA/PANDORA contractor. Retired Lockheed engineer Jim Yoder told former FBI agent William Turner that Cesar worked floating assignments in an "off-limits" area operated by the CIA.[219] The parallel is strikingly similar to that of Timothy McVeigh, who worked at Calspan, another high-tech military contractor engaged in top-secret telemetric work.
The preeminent don of CIA's psychological warfare program (MKULTRA), Dr. Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West, sent an Oklahoma City Zoo elephant careening on a massive LSD trip, triggering its death hours later. Studying the use of drugs as "adjuncts to interpersonal manipulation or assault," Jolly West was among the pioneers of remote electronic brain experimentation on unwitting subjects. Aldous Huxley passed on the idea to West that he hypnotize subjects before administering LSD, orienting drug-induced experience toward a "desired direction."
West was given the job of examining Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald's killer. Ruby's refusal to admit insanity, and his belief that a right-wing cabal was responsible for JFK's murder, led West to conclude Ruby was mentally ill, the proper candidate for anti-depressants. Ruby died of cancer two years after the exam, claiming to have been injected with malignant biological material. West also examined Sirhan Sirhan, [who may have been] a hypno-patsy jailed for murdering Robert Kennedy.
On March 31, less than three weeks before the bombing, McVeigh appeared at the Imperial Motel in Kingman. For the next 12 days, according to owner Helmut Hofer, he just sat there, emerging only for meals or to pay his bill. He had no visitors, made few phone calls, and barely disturbed the furnishings. No one ever heard his television, and his car never moved from its spot outside.[220]
"That's the funny thing," said Hofer. "He didn't go out. He didn't make phone calls. He didn't do anything. He just sat up there and brooded."
["He always had been a brooder…" added the Times, throwing a bit of instant psychoanalysis on the situation.[221]]
To Earline Roberts, the housekeeper at the Oak Cliff rooming house where Oswald stayed just prior to the assassination, "Mr. Lee" probably seemed like a brooder too, staying in his room, having no visitors and never socializing.[222]
Yet it is unlikely that McVeigh simply rented a room at the Imperial for 12 days to brood. Like Oswald, McVeigh was probably told to wait somewhere until he was contacted. Perhaps it was a pre-arranged date; perhaps he was waiting for a phone call; or perhaps McVeigh was simply put on ice, waiting to be activated by some sort of signal. It is possible McVeigh's anger at the Federal Government was stoked by a more mysterious enemy, one that he couldn't see or feel… but hear.
One of the most famous documented cases of "hearing voices" was that of Dennis Sweeny, the student activist who shot and killed his mentor Allard Lowenstein. Lowenstein, who marched in the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi, had campaigned for Robert Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson, and ran the National Student Association before the CIA took over. Lowenstein, who was also friends with CIA propagandist William F. Buckley, had attempted to prove that a great conspiracy was responsible for the deaths of Martin Luther King and the Kennedys. (At the time he was assassinated, he was helping Ted Kennedy win the 1980 presidential election.)[223]
One fine day, Sweeny calmly walked into the middle of Rockefeller Center and pumped seven bullets into his mentor. He then sat down, lit a cigarette, and waited for the police to arrive. "Sweeny claimed that the CIA, with Lowenstein's help, had implanted a telemetric chip in his head 15 years earlier, and had made his life an unbearable torment. Voices were transmitted through his dental work, he said, and he attempted to silence them by filing down his false teeth. Sweeny blamed CIA "controllers" for his uncle's heart attack and the assassination of San Francisco mayor George Moscone."[224]
Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk met their deaths at the hands the infamous "Twinkie" assassin — former City Supervisor Dan White. White earned the curious title due his attorney's novel defense — that his client was under the influence of a heavy dose of sugar at the time of the murders. More likely, White was under the influence of a heavy dose of hypnosis.
Like McVeigh, White had been in the military, serving a tour of duty in Vietnam. After leaving the police department in 1972, White took an extended vacation since known as White's "missing year."
"He broke all contact with friends and family. He kept no records of the trip, purchased no travel tickets, did not use a credit card. He later accounted for his mystery year by explaining that he'd worked a stint as a security guard in Alaska."
White subsequently moved back to San Francisco, where joined the Fire Department. Like McVeigh, White's work record was untarnished, though like the enigmatic soldier, he was known to erupt in embarrassing temper tantrums. As Constantine writes in The Good Soldier:
While campaigning for the Board of Supervisors, he spoke as if he was "programmed," according to local labor leader Stan Smith. During Board sessions, he was known to slip into spells of silence punctuated by goose-stepping walks around the Supervisors' chambers.[225]
One of the more recent cases of murder by suggestion was the assassination of Naval Commander Edward J. Higgins. Higgins was shot five times in the Pentagon parking lot by Carl Campbell, who claimed that the CIA had implanted a microchip in him that controlled his mind.[226]
To those who believe that such electronically-manipulated scenarios are the stuff of fantasy, they should take note that no less than three support groups currently exist in the U.S. to deal with the trauma of military and intelligence agency brainwashing.
Yet the hypnosis and drugging of adults is not by far the worst example of the CIA's nefarious efforts at developing programmed assassins. Other efforts involve the use of children, programmed while they are still young (See the "Finders" case), and the use of cults, often run by former military and intelligence officers. The use of cults provides a convenient cover for experiments that could not otherwise be conducted out in the open. Any resultant behavioral anomalies can then simply be attributed to the peculiarities of the "cult."[227]
One program for the recruitment of programmed operatives is called Operation OPEN EYES. According to a former Navy Intelligence officer and SEAL team leader attached to the CIA, "Clear Eyes" are the programmed victims of OPEN EYES. The operation involves canvassing the country for individuals who have few close friends or relatives. They are then put under a progressive series of gradually intensified hypnosis, where the subject's personality is "overwritten."
At level four, diverse programs can be written or overwritten into the brain. Any command is accepted at this level. At that level you can give the test subject a complete personality, history and make him/her believe anything the program requires for the accomplishment of any desired project. He is then given a new life in a new state and town. Driver's license, car, bank account, passport, credit cards, B.C., and all the small things, such as photos of his family (that don't really exist). Subject and patient (one and the same) has now an agenda (that he believes is his own) and is prepared for level five hypnosis. At this stage, very carefully a code work or sequence of numbers or a voice imprint is etched into his brain. That is commonly known and referred to as the trigger that will activate subject to action.
He then lives a very normal and sometimes useful life, until subject is required to perform the program implanted/written into level four hypnosis at the point of activating the trigger, subject is beyond recall. That's why a level five person can only be approached after his/her operation. There is no actual recall in the subconscious program of any of the hypnosis. If an act of violence had been perpetrated, subject will not be able to associate with the deed. Only shrinks trained in this particular form of sub mental behavior will find any tracks leading to post level one or two mind-control.
I have personally witnessed level one to five programming, and was myself subject of level three programming.
Due to the fact that subject has such high IQ (preferably around 130-140 subject is very quick to learn anything fed to him/her. All major patriot groups, and normal workers and workers in big [government contract] corporations have at least one or more "sleepers" attached to them.
Now it must be clear to you the various levels used by the intel community to get their job done. Remember Jonestown? It was one of ours that went sour because a Clear Eyes was in the group. When he began firing on the runway, it all self destructed. The man (Congressman Leo Ryan) who was killed, knew it was a government operation. Clear Eyes was accidentally — through a lone sequence — activated! There was no way to stop the killings. They were all programmed to at least level three, the culties themselves. There were only three deaths attributable to cyanide, the rest died of gunfire. Now you know a little more about our line of work. I am glad I am out of it.[228]
An ex-CIA agent interviewed by researcher Jim Keith claims to have knowledge of biological warfare testing and "special medical and Psy-ops (psychological operations) facilities at Fort Riley," where Timothy McVeigh was stationed. (Recall that McVeigh took a Psy-ops course at Ft. Riley) This agent stated that experimentation is conducted "in collaboration with the whole range of intelligence agencies, FBI, CIA, NSA, the works." The agent also told Keith that he had witnessed special psychological operations performed on the crew of the Pueblo naval vessel at Fort Riley, and at Fort Benning, Georgia (where did his basic training), prior to the ship's capture under mysterious circumstances by the North Koreans. Fort Benning is also home to the notorious School of the America's, where the CIA and the Special Forces have trained Latin American death squad leaders for over three decades. Fort Riley was also home to a mysterious plague of murders and shootings right around the time of the Oklahoma City bombing. On March 2, 1995, PFC Maurice Wilford shot three officers with a 12-gauge shotgun before turning the gun on himself. On April 6, Brian Soutenburg was found dead in his quarters after an apparent suicide.[229]
Is it possible these incidents were the result of some psychological testing or experiment gone awry? Given the Army's opprobrious history of psychological research and covert experiments on its own personnel, it is not inconceivable. The incidents seem indicative of the shooting death of Commander Edward J. Higgins by Carl Campbell, who claimed he was implanted with a microchip.
[It is interesting to note that] after his arrest, McVeigh was taken to Tinker Air Force Base. Why he would be taken to a military installation is unclear. Perhaps Dr. West was on hand, waiting to see whether McVeigh's microchip was still snug. Was Timothy McVeigh in fact manipulated through the use of a subcutaneous transceiver, implanted in him without his knowledge? Was he a "sleeper agent," programmed to do a dirty deed and have no memory of it afterwards? Interestingly, Richard Condon's classic play, The Manchurian Candidate made its debut in Oklahoma City exactly one year after the bombing. It is possible the real Manchurian candidate made his debut on April 19, 1995. Given the long and sordid history of Pentagon/CIA mind-control operations, such a scenario is certainly possible.[230]
What's also possible is that McVeigh was simply lied to. Someone — whom McVeigh thought was working for the government, gave him a cover story — convinced him that he was on an important, top secret mission. McVeigh's seeming indifference upon his arrest may simply have been indicative of his understanding that he was working for this agency, had simply delivered a truck as he was told, and had not, in fact, killed anyone.
[It is possible that] McVeigh was concerned about military cut-backs when he quit the Army in December of 1991. It is possible that his increased job duties were the reason he quit the National Guard in June of 1992. It is also possible, highly probable in fact, that he was secretly offered a more lucrative career — one that promised more excitement, adventure, and money… in the intelligence services.
To the intelligence community, Timothy McVeigh would have been exactly what they were looking for — a top-notch but impressionable young soldier who is patriotic and gung-ho to a fault. A taciturn individual who follows orders without hesitation, and who knows when to keep his mouth shut, a prerequisite of any good intelligence operative.
According to former CIA agent Victor Marchetti, the CIA currently does its most "fruitful" recruiting in the armed forces.[231] Intelligence agencies regularly recruit from the military, and military files are routinely reviewed for potential candidates — those who have proven their willingness and ability to kill on command and without hesitation — those whose combat training and proficiency with weapons make them excellent candidates for field operations. McVeigh had already taken the Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Course while he was at Fort Riley. Whether he knew it or not, McVeigh was well on his was way to a career in covert intelligence. An intelligence agency wouldn't have to search hard for a man like McVeigh. His above-average military record, and the fact that he was a candidate for the Special Forces, would have made him a natural choice. Especially his try-out for Special Forces. The Special Forces were created as the covert military arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. According to Lt. Colonel Daniel Marvin (Ret.), "almost all of the independent operations within the Green Berets were run by the CIA"[232]
Moreover, McVeigh was just beginning to espouse militia-type views. This observation, and the fact that he was racist, would have made him a perfect operative to infiltrate any far right-wing or white supremacist group. Likewise it would have made him the perfect patsy to implicate in connection with any right-wing group.
[As Dave Dilly told the Post, "The militias really recruit, and he's exactly what they're looking for.… They could catch him easy. He had all the same interests as them; they're just a little more fanatical."
What Dilly is describing to the letter, although he is unaware of it, is the modus operandi of the intelligence community. If McVeigh was recruited by one of the intelligence branches, it is possible that he was recruited by someone posing as a militia member. As far as fanatics go, there is no one group of people more fanatical than the "lunatic fringe" of the intelligence community. In short, McVeigh] possessed all the qualities that would have made him an excellent undercover operative… and a perfect fall-guy.
In May of 1992, McVeigh was promoted to lieutenant at Burns Security, and wrote his National Guard commander that his civilian job required his presence. "But the letter was real vague," said his commander. "It didn't say just what this new job was." Approximately nine months later, when McVeigh was going to be promoted to supervisor, he suddenly quit, saying that he had "more pressing matters to attend to."
Just what these "pressing matters" were is not exactly clear. According to co-worker Carl Lebron, McVeigh told him he was leaving to take a civilian position with the Army in Kentucky painting trucks. He later told Lebron that he became privy to a top-secret project at Calspan called "Project Norstar," which, according to McVeigh, involved bringing drugs into the country via miniature submarine. He told his friend that he was afraid that those responsible for Project Norstar were "coming after him," and he had to leave.
While this explanation may strike one as bizarre, McVeigh wrote his sister Jennifer while he was still in the Army telling her that he had been picked for a highly specialized Special Forces Covert Tactical Unit (CTU) that was involved in illegal activities. The letter was introduced to the Federal Grand Jury. According to former grand juror Hoppy Heidelberg, these illegal activities included "protecting drug shipments, eliminating the competition, and population control." While all the details of the letter aren't clear, Heidelberg said that there were five to six duties in all, and that the group was comprised of ten men.
Such units are nothing new. During the Vietnam War, CIA Director William Colby and Saigon Station Chief Ted Shackley (who also ran a massive heroin smuggling operation) created what they called Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs), which would capture, torture, and kill suspected Viet Cong leaders.[233]
Former Army CID investigator Gene Wheaton also described a covert unit created by the highly secretive NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), which used assassination and torture to eliminate so-called enemies of the state. In 1985, Wheaton was approached by "security consultants" to Vice President Bush's "Task Force on Combating Terrorism" who were working for USMC Lt. Colonel Oliver North (who served under Shackley in Vietnam) and Associate Deputy FBI Director Oliver "Buck" Revell. "They wanted me to help create a 'death squad' that would have White House deniability to assassinate people they would identify as 'terrorists,'" said Wheaton.
Code-named "Zeta Diogenes" in the USAF subset, this secret project, according to Wheaton, "was created in a rage by the covert intelligence leadership after the failed Bay-of-Pigs operation against Cuba in 1961." Wheaton claims the program continues to the present day.[234]
Anyone who prefers to think that agencies of the U.S. government are above assassinating U.S. citizens, not to mention senior U.S. officials where expedient, may wish to bear in mind the following testimony given by Colonel Daniel Marvin, a highly decorated Special Forces Vietnam veteran. While going through Special Forces training at Fort Bragg in 1964, Marvin's group was asked if any members would like to volunteer to take special assassination training on behalf of the CIA, eliminating Americans overseas who posed "national security risks." About six people, himself included, volunteered.
"The CIA had agents there all the time at Fort Bragg, in the Special Warfare Center Headquarters," said Marvin. "My commanding officer, Colonel C.W. Patton, called me up to his office one day in the first week… and he said, "Dan, go out and meet the 'Company' man standing there underneath the pine trees, waiting to talk to you."
Ironically, Marvin had been motivated to join the Special Forces by the death of President Kennedy, who had conferred upon the unit their distinctive and coveted green berets. Marvin began his assassination training in the Spring of 1964. "…during one of the coffee breaks, I overheard one of the [CIA] instructors say to the other one, 'Well, it went pretty well in Dallas. Didn't it?'"
Marvin said his group was shown "16 millimeter moving pictures that we assumed were taken by the CIA of the assassination, on the ground there at Dallas.… We were told that there were actually four shooters. There was one on the roof of the lower part of the Book Depository, and there was one shooter who was in front of and to the right of the vehicle. And I'm not sure whether it was on the Grassy Knoll area that they were speaking of, or, as some people have reported, [a shooter firing] out of a manhole to the right-front of the vehicle."
He also added that there were two additional snipers with spotters stationed on the routes that the motorcade would have used to travel to the hospital. If the spotter determined that Kennedy had survived, he was to finish him off.
["They used the assassination of President Kennedy as a prime example of how to develop the strategy for the assassination of a world leader as a conspiracy, while making it look like some 'lone nut' did it.…
"The stronger a patriot you are, the more important it is to you that you do whatever is necessary for your flag, for your country," he adds. "It makes you the most susceptible type of person for this kind of training. You are the ultimate warrior. You're out there to do for your country what nobody else is willing to do. I had no qualms about it at all."]
Marvin claimed his "assassination" training was reserved solely for citizens outside the United States, not on U.S. soil. "The Mafia lists were the ones being used [to kill Americans] in the continental United States," said Marvin. "We were being used overseas." That was, until he was asked to kill an American Naval officer — Lt. Commander William Bruce Pitzer, the X-ray technician who filmed the Kennedy autopsy, "as he was, supposedly, a traitor, about to give secrets to the enemy. It turned out that these 'secrets' were the photos of the real autopsy of President John F. Kennedy. And the 'enemy' was us!"[235]
When he found out that his assignment was to be conducted in the U.S., he refused. "…that wasn't my mission," said Marvin. "When I took my training, I volunteered to do this kind of thing overseas where it could be covered, as far as the family goes. I had a wife and three children. If I were to accept that mission to kill Commander Pitzer right here in the United States, I would have been dropped from the rolls immediately as a deserter so that it would cover me for taking off and taking care of that mission.…"[236][237]
Such a "cover" tactic appears to closely parallel that of Timothy McVeigh, who "dropped out" of Special Forces training before embarking on his bewildering and mysterious journey (ala: Dan White) prior to the bombing.
Still another, more well-documented reference to such illegal operations is made by Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny in his best-selling book, The Crimes of Patriots. Kwitny describes how rogue CIA agents Edwin Wilson (who reported to Shackley) and Frank Terpil were not only illegally selling huge quantities of C-4 plastic explosives and sophisticated assassination gear to the Libyans, but were actually hiring anti-Castro Cubans from Shackley's old JM/WAVE program, and U.S. Green Berets to assassinate Qaddafi's political opponents abroad. (See Chapter 14)
Some U.S. Army men were literally lured away from the doorway of Fort Bragg, their North Carolina training post. The GIs were given every reason to believe that the operation summoning them was being carried out with the full backing of the CIA.…[238]
Could this be the same group McVeigh claims he was recruited for? Considering the allegations of the Federal Government against McVeigh, the fact that he was chosen for such a clandestine and blatantly illegal government-sponsored operation is highly revealing.
According to Heidelberg's account of the letter, McVeigh turned them down. "They picked him because he was gung-ho," said Heidelberg. "But they misjudged him. He was gung-ho, but in a sincere way. He really loved his country."[239]
In another version of the story reported by Ted Gunderson, an intelligence informant indicated that McVeigh was "trained to work for the CIA in their illegal drug operations," then "became disenchanted with the government, and voiced his displeasure." At that point he was sent to Fort Riley for discharge, at which point John Doe 2 "was planted on him" and "orchestrated the bombing." According to Gundersen's informant, McVeigh was a victim of the CIA's mind-control project, Project MONARCH.[240]
Whether McVeigh turned down this illegal covert operations group, or worked for them for a short time, it is highly likely that he was working in some fashion for the government. There is simply no logical explanation for his giving up a hard-earned and brilliant military career, then subsequently quitting his security guard job on the eve of his promotion to take a job painting old army trucks, or go tooling around the country in a beat-up car hawking used firearms and militia paraphernalia.
If McVeigh was recruited, his "opting out" of the military was most likely a cover story for that recruitment. Former Pentagon counter-intelligence officer Robert Gambert told Kennedy assassination researcher Dick Russell of the mysterious activities of his cousin Richard Case Nagell, "Dick played the role of a disgruntled ex-Army officer…. he was really still operational, in an undercover capacity, for the Army Intelligence…. They're not gonna' trust anybody who's active military or a friendly retiree. They're gonna trust somebody who's going around griping against the military, against the intelligence operations, against the government…."[241]
After McVeigh's mysterious departure from the Army, his friend Robin Littleton received a strange letter from him. On it was illustrated a cartoon depicting a skull and crossbones with the caption "so many victims, so little time."[242] Whether he meant it as a joke, or whether it contained a hidden message, is unclear. But considering the letter he wrote to Jennifer regarding the CTU, its implications are unsettling.
A patriotic soldier like Timothy McVeigh didn't have a lot of reasons to gripe against the government. But, said the Post: "McVeigh was by now railing at virtually every aspect of American government, and at least beginning to consider a violent solution, as reflected in letters he wrote to the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal in February and March 1992, (entitled 'America Faces Problems.')"[243]
Crime is out of control. Criminals have no fear of punishment. Prisons are overcrowded so they know they will not be imprisoned long. This breeds more crime, in an escalating cyclic pattern.
Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up, we suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight.
The "American Dream" of the middle class has all but disappeared, substituted with people struggling just to buy next week's groceries. Heaven forbid the car breaks down!
Politicians are further eroding the "American Dream" by passing laws which are supposed to be a "quick fix," when all they are really designed for is to get the official re-elected. These laws tend to "dilute" a problem for a while, until the problem comes roaring back in a worsened form (much like a strain of bacteria will alter itself to defeat a known medication).
Politicians are out of control. Their yearly salaries are more than an average person will see in a lifetime. They have been entrusted with the power to regulate their own salaries and have grossly violated that trust to live in their own luxury.
Racism on the rise? You had better believe it! Is this America's frustrations venting themselves? Is it a valid frustration? Who is to blame for the mess? At a point when the world has seen Communism falter as an imperfect system to manage people; democracy seems to be headed down the same road. No one is seeing the "big" picture.
Maybe we have to combine ideologies to achieve the perfect utopian government. Remember, government-sponsored health care was a Communist idea. Should only the rich be allowed to live long? Does that say that because a person is poor, he is a lesser human being; and doesn't deserve to live as long, because he doesn't wear a tie to work?
What is it going to take to open up the eyes of our elected officials? America is in serious decline!
We have no proverbial tea to dump; should we instead sink a ship full of Japanese imports? Is a Civil War imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that! But it might.
Naturally, an ordinary gripe letter written by a person with above-average intelligence and political awareness was turned into a manifestation of suppressed frustrations with attendant violent overtones by the psychojournalists of the mainstream press. Yet, if McVeigh was under the influence of some form of mind-control, it is possible the letter, and the one to Littleton, might have been the beginnings of a plan to "sheep-dip" McVeigh as a disgruntled ex-military man.[244]
It is also possible that McVeigh, tasked with the responsibility of infiltrating the Militia Movement, became genuinely enamored with its ideals and precepts. Whether or not this is true, McVeigh's letter to the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal and to Robin Littleton were two more nails the government and the press would use to drive into McVeigh's coffin.
But the major nails in McVeigh's coffin were yet to come.
The Man Who Didn't Exist
In September of 1992 McVeigh sold his property in Olean, NY, and in early 1993 traveled to Kingman, Arizona to visit his old Army friend Michael Fortier. Apparently McVeigh's father didn't approve of Tim's letters in the local paper. A friend of McVeigh's father told the Post that one of the reasons McVeigh left was because "he wanted to be somewhere he could talk about what he really believed."
In Kingman, a rugged high-desert town where anti-government sentiments run strong, McVeigh would find like-minded souls. "Arizona is still gun-on-the-hip territory, rugged individuals who don't like the government in their business," said Marilyn Hart, manager of the Canyon West Mobile Park.
After spending a brief time living with Fortier at his trailer home on East McVicar Road, McVeigh rented a trailer at Canyon West where he lived from June to September of 1993, for $250-a-month.
The Times, the Post, Time and Newsweek all reported that McVeigh was a belligerent beer-drinking, loud music-playing slob who stayed at the Canyon West Mobile Park and was subsequently evicted. According to the Times:
Residents of the Canyon West Mobile Park drew a picture of an arrogant loner who worked as a security guard for a now-defunct trucking company, lived with his pregnant girlfriend, expressed deep anger against the Federal Government and often caused trouble for his neighbors. "He drank a lot of beer and threw out the cans, and I always had to pick them up," Bob Rangin, owner of the park, was quoted as saying. He said he had frequent fights with Mr. McVeigh, who often wore Army fatigues, over such things as loud rock music coming from his trailer and a dog he kept in violation of his lease.[245]
"Just about any free time, he'd be walking down there, or across the railroad tracks and firing his guns," said Marilyn Hart, nodding at the landscape of canyons and mesas around the Canyon West trailer park here that is one of the last known addresses of the man arrested for bombing the Oklahoma City Federal Building. "He just plain didn't care. Didn't matter the time of day or night, he'd be out there shooting."
"Basically he just had a poor attitude, a chip on the shoulder kind of thing," said Rob Rangin, the owner of the trailer park. "He was very cocky. He looked like he was ready to get in a fight pretty easy. I'll tell you, I was a little afraid of him and I'm not afraid of too many people.
Mr. McVeigh brought in a big brown dog in defiance of the camp regulations and left a wrecked car parked by his trailer, Mr. Rangin said, and even a nearly totally deaf neighbor, Clyde Smith, complained about the music. Finally, said Mr. Rangin, "he piled up so many violations, I asked him to leave."
"When he did, the trailer was a disaster," he said. "It was trashed."[246]
Yet these accounts of McVeigh in the Times' on April 23 and 24 are totally contrary to their accounts on May 4 and December 31, which describe him as a compulsive neat-freak, highly disciplined, respectful of his elders, and courteous to a fault. Friends and acquaintances interviewed also claimed that McVeigh was extremely quiet, never drank, and never had a date, much less a pregnant girlfriend.
Yet on April 23, the Post described how McVeigh played loud music, terrorized his neighbors, and was evicted from the park. Then on July 2, the Post wrote:
When he moved into the Canyon West trailer park outside Kingman in 1993, his first act was to wash the dirty curtains and dust, vacuum and scrub the entire trailer spotless, said owner Bob Rangin, who so liked McVeigh that he offered to lower the rent to keep the ex-soldier from moving.
The Post also ran an interview with neighbor Jack Gohn, who said McVeigh was so "quiet, polite and neat and clean" that "if I had a daughter in that age bracket, I would have introduced them."[247]
Said Marilyn Hart of Timothy McVeigh: "He was very quiet, very polite, very courteous, very neat, very clean, quiet, obeyed all the park rules. He worked on the trailer, did some painting, he did some cleaning on it, he bought new furniture, things like that."[248]
In fact, what the Times was reporting on was not Timothy McVeigh at all, but a completely different man! According to Hart, the mix-up came when reporters from the Times were given information about Dave Heiden, who also was just out of the service, and had lived in trailer #19 (McVeigh lived in trailer #11). "They thought it was the man who lived down below," said Hart. "He was a slob. But he was not Tim McVeigh. The other guy took his guns out across the way and fired them all the time, he got drunk and got up on top of the trailer and did all kinds of noisy things…."
According to Hart, after the man's girlfriend gave birth he sobered up. "Now they're married, the baby was born, he's straightened up his life," said Hart. "He straightened up his act, and he doesn't act that way any more at all."
Rangin called authors Kifner and McFadden of the Times to correct them. "I tried to tell them that wasn't McVeigh," said Rangin. "I called that fellow at the Times who came down here, and told him they got the wrong guy…"[249]
According to the Times, it was a "clearly embarrassed" Mr. Rangin who had made the mistake, wrote the Times on April 25: He added that the man he incorrectly recalled as Tim McVeigh "was like you would think" a suspect in a mass killing might be.[250]
This is clearly interesting considering that for days the Times had been painting McVeigh as a pathological, asexual neat freak who was extremely polite. These traits, the Times' psychobabblists claimed, were indicators of a mass killer.
The Times then claimed on the very next day that McVeigh was a belligerent slob with a pregnant girlfriend, and all of a sudden, these were the characteristics of a mass killer. Obviously, to a propaganda screed like the New York Times, it didn't matter what McVeigh's actual personality really was.
While in Kingman, McVeigh worked at different jobs through an agency called Allied Forces. "He did a number of jobs that way," said Hart. "He was a security guard, he did a number of different jobs. But he always went to his job, did them well… any of the people who worked with him said he didn't act odd, you know, it was totally out of character."[251]
McVeigh worked for a time at True Value Hardware, on Stockton Hill Road, a job that Fortier helped him get. Paul Shuffler, the store owner, said McVeigh "was a young and clean looking person so I gave him a job." According to Shuffler, "If he was a radical around here, I would have noticed it pretty quick and I would have fired him. Radicals don't last long around here because they just make a mess of things."[252]
McVeigh also worked for a spell at State Security. The Times interview with co-worker Fred Burkett took a slightly different slant, painting his co-worker McVeigh as an arrogant, gun-toting loner. "He had a very dry personality," Burkett told the Times. "He was not very outgoing, not talkative and not really that friendly. He wasn't a person that mingled. He was a kind of by yourself kind of person, a loner."
Once, Burkett went with McVeigh on a target-shooting course in the desert, where McVeigh "pretty much went crazy," Burkett said. After running through the course, picking off targets with a Glock .45, McVeigh began "emptying clips on pretty much anything — trees, rocks, whatever happened to be there."[253]
"Other than that, Mr. Burkett said, "he seemed pretty much normal." "The only thing he ever indicated was that he didn't care much for the United States Government and how they ran things," Mr. Burkett said. "He didn't care much for authority and especially when it concerned the government."
Yet authorities have speculated that McVeigh's interests went beyond mere dissatisfaction with the Federal Government. According to Carl Lebron, McVeigh once brought him a newsletter from the Ku Klux Klan.[254] McVeigh was also fond of a book called the Turner Diaries. Written by former physics professor and neo-Nazi William Pierce, the Turner Diaries was a fictionalized account of a white supremacist uprising against the ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government). The book, exceedingly violent and racist in tone, is a fictionalized account of the overthrow of the Federal Government — which by that time had become the "Jewish-liberal-democratic-equalitarian plague" — by a Right-wing paramilitary group called the "Organization," which then goes on to murder and segregate Jews and other "non-whites." The protagonists also blow up FBI headquarters with a truck-bomb. The Turner Diaries was found on Timothy McVeigh upon his arrest.
The book became the blueprint for a neo-Nazi group called The Order, which terrorized the Midwest in the early to mid '80s with a string of murders and bank robberies. Authorities have speculated that McVeigh, who carried the book with him constantly and sold it at gun shows, was inspired by its screed to commit his terrible act of violence. Yet McVeigh dismisses such suggestions as gibberish. "I bought the book out of the publication that advertised the book as a gun-rights book. That's why I bought it; that's why I read it."[255]
In Kingman, McVeigh made friends with an ex-marine named Walter "Mac" McCarty. McVeigh apparently sought out the 72-year-old McCarty for discussions in which he tried to make sense of the actions of the Federal Government at Ruby Ridge and Waco, and such issues as the United Nations, the Second Amendment, and the "New World Order."
"I gathered that he was following the Right-wing, survivalist, paramilitary-type philosophy," McCarty said. "I also got the sense that he was searching for meaning and acceptance."[256]
McVeigh and Fortier also took handgun classes from McCarty during the summer of 1994, which is odd considering that the two men, McVeigh especially, were extremely proficient in the use of firearms. "Believe me, the one thing he did not need was firearms training, "said Fred Burkett, McVeigh's co-worked at State Security. "He was very good and we were impressed with his actions."[257]
McCarty himself was apparently suspicious of McVeigh's motives. "They wanted to hear certain things from me to see if they could get me involved," said McCarty. "They definitely liked what they heard. We were on the same page about the problems of America."
Why would McVeigh, the consummate firearms expert, bother taking a course in handguns? Perhaps to be around like-minded individuals or as a harmless diversion. It is also possible, like the Lee Harvey Oswald impostor seen at the Texas rifle range, McVeigh was being sheep-dipped. "I know brainwashing when I see it, McCarty said. "Those two boys had really gotten a good case of it." Perhaps McCarty was being more literal than he realized.[258]
After the August 1994 passage of the Omnibus Crime Bill outlawing certain types of semi-automatic weapons, "McVeigh's demons finally became unbearable," claimed the Times. "What will it take?" wrote McVeigh to Fortier, expressing his exasperation.[259]
It is possible that McVeigh had some contact with a local militia while in Kingman. According to reporter Mark Schafer of the Arizona Republic, Fortier, who worked at True Value, knew Jack Oliphant, the elderly patron of the Arizona Patriots, an extreme Right-wing paramilitary group. Oliphant had been caught in 1986 planning to blow up the Hoover Dam, the IRS and a local Synagogue. After the FBI raid, Oliphant was sentenced to four years in jail, and the Arizona Patriots went underground. It is reported that Fortier, who sported a "Don't Tread on Me" flag outside his trailer-home, was friendly with some of the Arizona Patriots, including Oliphant.
According to federal authorities, McVeigh also left a note addressed to "S.C." on a utility pole near Kingman seeking "fighters not talkers." It has been speculated that "S.C." is actually Steven Colbern, who lived in the nearby town of Oatman, and was friends with McVeigh. (See Chapter 5)
But federal authorities became very interested when they learned that a small explosion, related to a home-made bomb, had slightly damaged a house down the road from the trailer park. That house was owned by Frosty McPeak, a friend of McVeigh's who had hired him in 1993 to do security work at a local shelter. When McPeak's girlfriend was arrested in Las Vegas on a bad credit charge, Clark Vollmer, a paraplegic drug dealer in Kingman, helped bail her out. In February of '95, Vollmer had asked McPeak to ferry some drugs. He refused. On February 21, a bomb exploded outside McPeak's home. When he went to Vollmer's house to confront him, he found Timothy McVeigh, along with another man he didn't recognize.[260]
According to Mohave County Sheriff Joe Cook, the explosion "wasn't really a big deal" and probably wasn't related to the explosion in Oklahoma City.[261]
What does Marilyn Hart think about McVeigh's connection to the local militias? "I probably do know several people who are militia," said Hart. "But they don't advertise it, and they're not kooks. To me, McVeigh didn't have the money. The two other guys, Rosencrans and Fortier, went to school with our children, and neither of them have money either. And it took a good amount of money to pull this off. "
"Obsessed With Waco"
Whether or not McVeigh's "demons" became "unbearable" after the passage of the Omnibus Crime Bill, his anger, along with that of millions of others, would be justified by the governments' massacre of 86 innocent men, women and children at the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventist Church near Waco the following April. The ostensible purpose of the ATF's raid was to inspect the premises for illegal weapons. Although the Davidians, who were licensed gun dealers, had invited the ATF to inspect their weapons, the agency declined; they were more interested in staging a show raid to impress the public and increase their budgetary allowance. In fact, the raid was code-named "Show Time."
On February 28, 1993, without a proper warrant and without identifying themselves, over 100 agents stormed the Church compound. Residents who answered the door were immediately fired upon. At least one ATF helicopter began strafing the building, firing into the roof. For the next hour, ATF agents fired thousands of rounds into the compound. Many church members, including women, children and the elderly, were killed by gunfire as they lay huddled in fear, the women attempting to cover the children with their bodies. Church members repeatedly begged the 911 operator to stop the raid. In the ensuing battle, four ATF agents were killed, although there is evidence that indicates they were killed by "friendly fire."
Several days later, the FBI took over. Almost immediately, they began psychologically harassing the Church members with loud noises. For over a month and a half, the Davidians were tormented by the sounds of dying animals, religious chants, loud music, and their own voices. Their electricity was cut off, and milk and other supplies necessary for young chidden was not allowed into the compound. Bright lights were shined on residents 24 hours-a-day, and armored vehicles began circling the compound, while flash-bang grenades were thrown into the courtyard.
The media was kept at bay, fed propagandizing stories by FBI spokesmen that painted the Davidians as crazed cultists with desires for apocalyptic self-destruction — dangerous wackos who stockpiled machine-guns and who abused their children. The mass media happily obliged, feeding these images to a gullible public.[262]
After a 51-day standoff, the newly appointed Attorney General, Janet Reno, approved an FBI plan to assault the compound with a highly volatile form of tear-gas, proven deadly to children, who she was ostensibly trying to protect from "abuse." On April 19, tanks from the Texas National Guard and the Army's Joint Task Force Six, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act forbidding the use of military force against private citizens, stormed the compound, firing hundreds of CS gas ferret rounds into the buildings. The tanks also rammed the buildings repeatedly, knocking holes in them, the official explanation being so that the residents could more easily escape. Instead, what it did was cause the buildings to collapse, killing dozens as they lay crouched in fear. Kerosene lanterns knocked over by the tank ramming ignited the highly flammable CS gas, and the holes created a flue effect through the buildings, caused by 30 mile and hour winds. Immediately the compound became a fiery inferno.
While some residents managed to escape, most were trapped inside, exphyxiated by the gas, crushed by falling debris, or burned alive. Some who tried to escape were shot by FBI snipers. One unarmed man who tried to enter the compound to be with his family was shot six times, then left lying in a field while prairie dogs picked at his bones. During the final siege, which lasted for six hours, firetrucks were purposefully kept away. Bradley M-2 armored vehicles fitted with plows pushed in the still standing walls, burying those still trapped inside. A concrete vault where approximately 30 people had sought refuge was blasted open with demolition charges, killing most of the people inside.
When it was all over, the fire department was allowed inside the compound to pump water on the smoldering debris. Out of approximately 100 Church members, 86 perished, including 27 children. No FBI agent was injured. The remaining 11 Church members were put on trial for attempted murder of federal agents. During the trial, government prosecutors repeatedly withheld, altered, and destroyed evidence. The government even cut off electricity to the morgue, preventing autopsies on the bodies.
The judge, recently under scrutiny by the "Justice" Department, also refused to allow the testimony of critical witnesses. Although the jury found all 11 innocent, the judge reversed the verdict. Nine Davidians were imprisoned for attempting to defend their families. Some received sentences up to 40 years.
While "General" Reno, in a symbolic gesture of public reconciliation, took "full responsibility" for the actions of the FBI, she never resigned or served time. In fact, Larry Potts, who led the raid on behalf of the FBI, was promoted.
The assault would be compared to the massacre of the Jews in Warsaw by the Nazis during WWII. A bunch of religious fanatics. Who'd complain? Who'd care? Yet the government didn't count on the fact that a lot of people would care. Millions in fact. The murder of the Branch Davidians would indeed become a wake-up call for a citizenry concerned about an increasingly tyrannical, lawless government. A government that would murder its own citizens with impunity, in fact with zeal. A government that would lie to its citizens, and be accountable to no one.[263]
In March of 1993, Timothy McVeigh traveled from Kingman to Waco to observe the 51-day standoff. He was photographed by the FBI along with others protesting the siege on the road outside the compound, selling bumper stickers out of his car. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, who was photographed at the Cuban embassy in Mexico (a claim made by the government, but never substantiated), the photo of McVeigh would be added proof of his far-Right-wing associations.
A day and a half later, McVeigh drove to Decker, Michigan to be with his old Army buddy, Terry Nichols. The Nichols family sat with McVeigh in their living room as they watched M-2 Bradley assault vehicles storm the compound. On April 19, they watched as the Branch Davidian Church burnt to the ground. "Tim did not say a word," said James Nichols, who watched the compound burn to the ground along with Tim and his brother. "We stood there and watched the live television footage as the church burned and crumbled… we couldn't believe it."[264]
McVeigh, who the Justice Department claimed was "particularly agitated about the conduct of the Federal Government in Waco," had a right to be. McVeigh had offered his life to serve in the military, and now had seen that very same military massacring its own citizens. He could see the Green Berets from the Army's Joint Task Force Six advising the FBI, and had watched while Bradley armored vehicles — the same vehicles he had served in — gassed and bulldozed the citizens of a country he had sworn to defend.
The Federal Building was blown up on April 19, the two year anniversary of the Waco conflagration. Like millions of other citizens, McVeigh was angry about the deadly raid. He was particularly incensed about the participation of the Army's Joint Task Force Six, and about the deployment of the Seventh Light Infantry during the Los Angeles riots in 1992, and the United Nations command over American soldiers in Somalia, his former Army friend Staff Sergeant Albert Warnement told the Times. "He thought the Federal Government was getting too much power. He thought the ATF was out of control."[265]
"I saw a localized police state," McVeigh told the London Sunday Times, "[and] was angry at how this had come about."[266]
"Their (the FBI's) actions in Waco, Texas were wrong. And I'm not fixated on it...." he told Newsweek.
"It disturbed him," said Burkett. "It was wrong, and he was mad about it. He was flat out mad. He said the government wasn't worth the powder to blow it to hell."[267]
Perhaps rather coincidentally, McVeigh's sister Jennifer said that during her brother's November '94 visit to the McVeigh family home in Lockport, he confided that he had been driving around with 1,000 pounds of explosives. During his trial Prosecutor Beth Wilkinson asked Jennifer if she had questioned her brother about why he was carrying so much. "I don't think I wanted to know," she said.[268]
Just what was McVeigh doing driving around with explosives, and where did he acquire them? Were these explosives part of the batch of ammonium nitrate Terry Nichols had allegedly purchased from the Mid-Kansas Co-op on October 20, or perhaps the Dynamite and Tovex the government alleged Nichols stole from the Martin Marietta rock quarry in September?
Obviously this, and McVeigh's expression of anger at the Federal Government, would become the foundation of their case against him. In a letter Tim wrote to Jennifer, he is highly critical of the ATF. The anonymous letter, which was sent to the federal agency, was accompanied by a note that read: "All you tyrannical motherfuckers will swing in the wind one day for your treasonous actions against the Constitution and the United States." It concluded with the words, "Die, you spineless cowardice bastards."[269]
"He was very angry," recalled Jennifer McVeigh during her brother's trial. "He thought the government gassed and murdered the people there."
Jennifer also claimed her brother also wrote a letter to the American Legion saying that ATF agents "are a bunch of fascist tyrants." He identified himself in the letter as a member of the "citizens' militia." He also sent his sister literature on the standoff at Ruby Ridge, the Constitution, and even a copy of the Turner Diaries. [270]
By the Spring of 1995, he told Jennifer not to send any more letters to him after May 1 because "G-men might get them." Then he sent her a letter saying, "Something big is going to happen in the month of the Bull." He did not explain what that meant, but Jennifer looked in her astrology book and saw that the "month of the Bull" was April. McVeigh also advised her to extend her Spring break — which began on April 8 — a bit longer than the planned two weeks, and instructed her to burn the letter.[271]
For McVeigh's part, he wrote that this "expression of rage" the government claimed was so key, was nothing more than "…part of my contribution to defense of freedom, this call to arms.… I intend to become more active in the future. I would rather fight with pencil lead than bullet lead. We can win this war in voting booth. If we have to fight in the streets, I would not be so sure…. All too often in the past, we gutsy gun owners have lost the battle because we have failed to fight. The Brady Bill could have been defeated in Congress if gun owners had become more involved in electing officials and communicating to those officials what was expected to them.… Start your defense today. Stamps are cheaper than bullets and can be more effective."
This letter, found by authorities in McVeigh's car, speaks of a man committed to fighting for freedom as many Americans have, in the "voting booth," and with pen and paper. Yet lead prosecutor Joseph Hartzler would read this letter, along with quotes such as this one: "My whole mindset has shifted… from the intellectual to the animal," into evidence at McVeigh's trial, in an attempt to prove that Timothy McVeigh was committed to violence.
Like Lee Harvey Oswald, who was upset about the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion and American foreign policy in general, a view he expressed to his friends in Dallas, McVeigh was upset about the government's foreign policy, a view he expressed to his friends here. "He wasn't happy about Somalia," that if we could put the United States under basically UN command and send them to Somalia to disarm their citizens, then why couldn't they come do the same thing in the United States?" Sergeant Warnement said.
McVeigh was also reportedly angry over the killings of Sammy and Vicki Weaver, who were killed by federal agents at their cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho in August of 1992. Randy Weaver had become a fugitive wanted on a minor weapons violation. During the stand-off, U.S. Marshals had shot 14-year-old Sammy Weaver in the back, and had shot Vicki Weaver, Randy's wife, in the face as she stood at the cabin door holding her infant daughter. McVeigh had traveled to Ruby Ridge and came back convinced that federal agents intentionally killed the Weavers.
Although his anger over Waco and Ruby Ridge hardly implicates McVeigh in the destruction of the Federal Building, the government would make this one of the cornerstones of it case. The press naturally jumped on the bandwagon. When Jane Pauley of NBC's Dateline interviewed Jennifer McVeigh about her thoughts on Waco, she said, "The way I saw it, the Davidians were just a group of people who had their own way of living, perhaps different from the mainstream. But they were never really harming anybody. And to bring in all those tanks and things like that to people who are just minding their own business, not harming anybody, I just — I don't think that's right."
But the dead, burned children at Waco were not what the producers at Dateline wanted the public to see. Immediately after Jennifer's statement, they cut to an image of the bombed-out day care center inside the Murrah Building. "We… We've been hoping this wouldn't be the case," said the live voice of an unidentified rescue worker, "but it is the case, there was a day-care inside the building."
Time ran a page dedicated to the Waco theory, stating, "The date of last week's bombing and the anniversary of the apocalyptic fire (notice they don't say government massacre) at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco — has only gained in infamy, intricately bound as it is to the mythologies of homegrown zealots like McVeigh."[272]
Sheep-Dipped
It would appear that the seed that gave root to McVeigh's "homegrown zeal" was incubated in a U.S. government hothouse and fertilized by a heaping dose of intelligence agency fanaticism.
After Waco, with the emergence of the Militia Movement, the stage would be set, the die would be cast — for Timothy McVeigh to be poured into like a miniature lead soldier. While the FBI and the press admitted that McVeigh didn't actually belong to any organized militia organization, "there was considerable evidence that he sympathized with and espoused their beliefs," wrote the Times.
He voiced their ideas in conversations, he wrote letters expressing them, he read their literature and attended their meetings. And he lived, worked and traded weapons in areas where the paramilitary groups enjoy considerable support…[273]
Like Lee Harvey Oswald, who appeared to be an avid Communist, distributing leaflets on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, McVeigh would play the part of an avowed Right-winger, distributing literature about taxes, the Second Amendment, Waco and Ruby Ridge. Like Oswald, who left behind a diary widely believed to be a CIA forgery, McVeigh was purported to have similarly documented his own extremist position. According to the Times:
Law enforcement officials say McVeigh left behind a large body of writings about his ideological leanings, including extensive tracts in letters to friends and relatives, that describe his belief in the constitutional principles that he adamantly maintained allowed him to carry firearms and live without any restraints from the government. Prosecutors are likely to use such documents to establish his motive at a trial.[274]
Like Oswald, McVeigh's departure from the military was under somewhat mysterious circumstances. And like Oswald, an ex-Marine with a top-secret security clearance who appeared to "defect" to the Soviet Union, McVeigh would appear to be a "disgruntled" ex-Army sergeant who happened to "drift" into the fringes of the far-Right.[275]
Yet, like Oswald, who lived and worked amongst the bastions of the far-Right in Dallas while purporting to be a Marxist, McVeigh would not seem to be the extreme Right-wing fanatic he's been made out to be. In a letter to his hometown newspaper in February, 1992, he wrote:
At a point when the world has seen Communism falter as an imperfect system to manage people; democracy seems to be headed down the same road…. Maybe we have to combine ideologies to achieve the perfect utopian government. Remember, government-sponsored health care was a Communist idea….
Obviously, such views are anathema to the far-Right, who see any attempt to socialize society as a major step towards the great one-world Communist conspiracy. It is possible that McVeigh was more progressive than his Right-wing associates. It is also possible that McVeigh was being sheep-dipped as a militant Right-winger.
After Waco, McVeigh traveled to Michigan, staying for a time with Terry Nichols. He worked on Nichols' farm, and went hunting and target practicing. Neighbors recall how McVeigh and Nichols made and detonated small homemade bombs. Paul Izydorek, a neighbor, recalls "When they were around, they'd get different guns and play and shoot and stuff." On at least one occasion, Izydorek heard blasts at the farm and noticed Terry Nichols and a man he thought was McVeigh. "I'd seen them playing around with different household items that you can make blow up. Just small stuff. Just outside in the yard, blowing away."[276]
Nichols' brother James also admitted to the FBI that McVeigh and Terry made and exploded "bottle bombs" at his farm, using brake fluid, gasoline, and diesel fuel, and that he sometimes participated.[277]
In his interview with Newsweek, McVeigh dispelled the myth that his bomb making was a precursor to more deadly acts. "It would amount to firecrackers. It was like popping a paper bag," said McVeigh, who had also experimented with small explosives on his land in Olean, NY prior to entering the Army.
Yet a relative also told the FBI that James Nichols kept a large supply of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on the farm — the very substance federal authorities accused the suspects of using to manufacture their alleged truck-bomb, a fact that would become yet another linchpin in the government's case against the two men.
While in Michigan, McVeigh also started working the gun shows. From April of 1993 to March of 1995, McVeigh would travel from Kingman, Arizona to Decker, Michigan, and across the U.S., attending militia meetings and working the gun show circuit. A gun collector interviewed by the Times said that he had encountered McVeigh in gun shows ranging from Florida to Oklahoma to Nevada. "At the S.O.F. (Soldier of Fortune) convention he was kind of wandering around," said the gun collector, who requested anonymity, "like he was trying to meet people, maybe make converts. He could make ten friends at a show, just by his manner and demeanor. He's polite, he doesn't interrupt."
"McVeigh traveled around the country in a rattletrap car," wrote the Times' Kifner, "his camouflage fatigues clean and pressed, his only companion a well-thumbed copy of the venomous apocalyptic novel, The Turner Diaries."
Yet it would seem McVeigh is not the asexual, sociopathic loner that the press — the New York Times in particular — has made him out to be.
Had Kifner read the May 5th edition of Newsweek, he would have discovered that McVeigh had more than an old book for a companion. Newsweek reported that a Kansas private investigator had tracked down an old [platonic] girlfriend of McVeigh's — most likely Catina Lawson of Herrington, Kansas — attempting to convince her to sell her story to a news agency.[278]
Robert Jerlow, an Oklahoma City private investigator, was also tracking down a girlfriend of McVeigh's in Las Vegas.[279] And CNN indicated that authorities had discovered a letter in the glove compartment to an old girlfriend.[280]
Yet McVeigh's gypsy-like travels across the country in an old beat-up car were slightly more then unusual. He traveled widely with no visible means of support, other than trading and selling guns and military paraphernalia. Yet acquaintances and other witnesses recall he always had wads of cash on him. Upon his arrest, McVeigh had $2,000 on him. He reportedly had thousands more stashed away. He also traveled without luggage, making his car and occasional cheap motels his only home.
"He lived in his car," said the gun dealer quoted in the Times. "Whatever he owned it was in that car."[281]
According to his sister Jennifer, his closest confidant, "…half the time we didn't know where he was. Half the time he wouldn't even tell us where he was living."[282]
Again, one has to ask why McVeigh would voluntarily give up a promising military career to go careening around the country hawking used military surplus in an old car.
McVeigh used the name "Tim Tuttle" while working the gun shows, claiming that the alias was necessary to protect him from people who didn't share his political views.[283] There is another possible reason McVeigh may have used an alias however.
At one gun show in Phoenix, an undercover detective reported that McVeigh had been attempting to sell a flare gun which he claimed could be converted into a rocket launcher. According to Bill Fitzgerald of the Maricopa County Attorney's office in Phoenix, McVeigh "took a shell apart and showed that the interior could be removed and another package put in that could shoot down an ATF helicopter." He also was reportedly handing out copies of the name and address of Lon Horiuchi, the FBI sniper who shot and killed Vicki Weaver, and selling caps with the letters 'ATF' surrounded by bullet holes.[284]
"He had come to see himself as a soldier in his own strange war against the United States," wrote the Times. McVeigh's mother told an acquaintance after visiting with him in her home state of Florida that he was "totally changed," and observed, "it was like he traded one Army for another one."[285]
While it is highly possible that McVeigh, like many people, genuinely disliked the ATF and FBI, it is also possible he used such high-profile anti-government tactics as a ruse while working undercover. While such behavior might appear extreme, it is a classic agent provocateur technique. The ATF routinely works undercover at gun shows, searching for people selling illegal firearms. Who better to lure and entrap unwary victims than a gun dealer claiming to be virulently anti-ATF. It is also possible that McVeigh was working undercover for another agency.
In an illuminating series of phone calls to Representative Charles Key, an anonymous source stated that McVeigh was present at several meetings with ATF and DEA agents in the days immediately preceding the bombing. The meetings took place in Oklahoma City at different locations. The ostensible purpose of the meetings were to provide McVeigh with further instructions, and to facilitate a payoff.
David Hall of KPOC-TV uncovered information that McVeigh had met with local ATF agent Alex McCauley in a McDonalds the night before the bombing. The ATF agent was seen handing McVeigh an envelope. (See Chapter 9)
CNN would cast a pale over this [largely unknown] information by reporting in June of 1995 that McVeigh had been under surveillance by an undercover operative at an Arizona gun show two years prior to the bombing.
This fact was reinforced when the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai B'Rith (ADL) reported that McVeigh ran an ad for a "rocket launcher" (actually a flare gun) in the far-Right Spotlight newspaper on August 9, 1993. In fact, the ad didn't appear until the next week, August 16. McVeigh had originally paid to have the advertisement run on the 9th. Not being aware of the Spotlight's impending scheduling conflict, however, the ADL reported that the ad had run one week before it actually did. This subsumes that the ADL, long known for its spying and intelligence-gathering activities, had McVeigh under surveillance as well.[286]
Interestingly, McVeigh's young friend, Catina Lawson, recalled a strange man who often showed up at summer parties the high-schoolers threw. The soldiers from nearby Ft. Riley would attend the gatherings looking to meet girls, and McVeigh and his friends Michael Brescia and Andy Strassmeir (who lived at the white separatist compound in Southeast Oklahoma known as Elohim City), would often attend.[287]
Yet the man Catina described was neither a high-schooler nor a soldier. This mysterious character in his late 30s to mid-40s, who often wore a suit and a tie and drove a red sports car, was was apparently not there to pick up girls. As Connie Smith, Catina's mother told me, "The man did not interact with anyone else… he stayed off… he never interacted with anybody else," only McVeigh.
Barbara Whittenberg, who owned the Sante Fe Trail Diner in Herrington, Kansas, also remembered the man. The restaurant owner recalled that he would come in with McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who lived nearby. She didn't know where he was from, and had never seen him before.
Was McVeigh an informant? Was he working for two different agencies? Numerous Kennedy researchers have uncovered evidence that Oswald was an FBI informant at the same time he was being sheep-dipped by the CIA for his role in the JFK assassination. According to former District Attorney (later federal judge) Jim Garrison:
Oswald appears to have been extensively manipulated by the CIA for a long time prior to the assassination and may well have believed he was working for the government. Oswald was also a confidential informant, a job that provided additional control over him and may have given him a reason to believe he was actually penetrating a plot to assassinate the president.[288]
Situations where a person is working for two law-enforcement or intelligence agencies at the same time are not uncommon.
What is uncommon is for a man like McVeigh to give up a promising military career to hawk used duffel bags from an old car. But then again, in the twilight netherworld of intelligence operations, things aren't always what they appear.[289]
While in Michigan, McVeigh also began tuning in to the Voice of America and Radio Free America on his shortwave. He was drawn to personalities like Chuck Harder, Jack McLamb, and Mark Koernke, all conveying an anti-federalist, anti-New World Order message. "He sent me a lot of newsletters and stuff from those groups he was involved in," said Warnement, then stationed in Germany. "There were newsletters from Bo Gritz's group, some other odd newsletters, some from the Patriots; then he sent that videotape 'The Big Lie' about Waco."[290]
McVeigh also began attending militia meetings. According to Michigan Militia member Eric Maloney, McVeigh was present at a truck-stop near Detroit for a January 25, 1995 meeting of approximately 70 members of the Oakland County Six Brigade. Members had obtained photographs of T-72 tanks and other Russian vehicles en route via railway flatcars to Camp Grayling, an Air National Guard base in northern Michigan. Although the captured Iraqi tanks were for target practice, the militiamen interpreted the equipment as proof positive of a UN plan to disarm American citizens and declare martial law.
According to Maloney and militia member Joseph Ditzhazy, a plot was hatched to attack the base by Mark Koernke, a high-profile militia spokesman known to his radio listeners as "Mark from Michigan." According to Maloney, Koernke said, "We can either take them out now while we're still able to, or wait until the sons of bitches are rolling down the street…" Three days later, about 20 members met at a farm near Leonard to discuss plans for the attack. According to Maloney, McVeigh was one of 13 who volunteered for the assault. "McVeigh was there," recalled Maloney on ABC's Prime Time Live. "My wife sat next to him. He was very attentive, very interested in being involved in that operation, volunteered his services."
The plan never came off. Ditzhazy and Maloney alerted State Police, who then contacted federal authorities. When the plot was made public, the Michigan Militia issued a press release stating that the plan was the brainchild of Koernke, working alongside a group of renegade members. Others who attended the meetings said that it was actually Maloney who pushed the plan, and had to be dissuaded from going through with it. Interestingly, Maloney was to provide weapons training for several of the attackers, and Ditzhazy, who made audio-tapes of the meetings, is a former military intelligence officer. When the FBI was contacted about Ditzhazy's claim that the plot was hatched by McVeigh and others, the FBI refused comment.[291]
What is also interesting is that Koernke himself is a former Army intelligence officer. Koernke, a veteran of the 70th Army Reserve Division in Livonia, Michigan, refers to himself as an "intelligence analyst" and "counterintelligence coordinator" with a "top-secret clearance." He also purports to have trained two "special-warfare" brigades that trained Army personnel in "foreign warfare and tactics." While his claims may be exaggerated, Koernke did attend the Army's intelligence school at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He returned to Michigan an E-5 specialist with a G-2 (security) section of a peacetime Reserve unit.[292]
Koernke quickly rose to become one of the most sought after speakers on the Patriot circuit, leading off seminars in over 40 states. His video, America in Peril, sounds apocalyptic warnings of the coming New World Order, including plans by the Council of Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderbergers to dominate and enslave America — with of course, a little help from Russian troops, Nepalese Gurkhas, and L.A. street gangs.[293] It would seem that Koernke is employing a time-tested technique of intelligence PSYOP disinformation. While purporting to rail against what may be genuine plans of a New World Order cabal, Koernke slips in just enough ridiculous disinformation to discredit his thesis, and by association, anyone who supports it.
After the bombing, the media put Koernke in its spotlight. Koernke has boasted freely to friends that he was once employed as a "provocateur." He didn't say exactly for whom. In his tape, Koernke is shown holding an AK-47 and a cord of rope, stating: "Now, I did some basic math the other day, not New World Order math, and I found that using the old-style math you can get about four politicians for about 120 foot of rope. And, by the way, DuPont made this. It is very fitting that one of the New World Order crowd should provide us with the resources to liberate our nation.…"
While the author personally has no qualms about stringing up the DuPonts, the Rockefellers and many other icons of the military-industrial-establishment, Koernke's rant smacks of the classic art of propaganda — that of the agent provocateur. Many in the Militia movement have accused him of just that.[294]*
On September 8, 1994, Fowerville, Michigan police stopped a car that contained three men in camouflage and black face paint, armed with three 9mm semiautomatics, a .357 Magnum, an assortment of assault rifles, and 7,000 rounds of ammunition. The men claimed to be Koernke's bodyguards.
Ken Kirkland, an official of the St. Lucia County, Florida Militia said that McVeigh was acting as Koernke's bodyguard at a March 1994 meeting. Kirkland recalled a bodyguard in Army camouflage clothes resembling McVeigh who introduced himself as "Tim" and was "really upset about Waco."[295]
Koernke and McVeigh both deny this. As McVeigh told Newsweek "…I was never to one of their meetings, either."[296]
Was Koernke's "bodyguard" actually Tim McVeigh? In the September, 1995 issue of Soldier of Fortune, an ATF agent — the spitting image of Tim McVeigh — is seen accompanying ATF Agent Robert Rodriquez to the trial of the Branch Davidians. Was this in fact the "McVeigh" who accompanied Koernke?
Given both mens' mysterious backgrounds, their curious intersections in Florida and Michigan, and the Camp Grayling and Fowerville incidents, it is highly likely that we are looking at two agent provocateurs.
Other evidence of McVeigh's apparent employment as an agent provocateur would surface later. In a statement he made to Newsweek in response to a question about Reno and Clinton asking for the death penalty, McVeigh said: "I thought it was awfully hypocritical, especially because in some ways the government was responsible for doing it. I thought she was playing both sides of the fence." One must wonder just how McVeigh knows that "in some ways" the government was "responsible for doing it."
McVeigh's own insurrectionist tendencies began coming to fruition towards the end of 1993, according to authorities, when McVeigh informed his sister that he was part of an anti-government group that was robbing banks. This startling revelation came in the form of three $100 bills he sent to Jennifer in a letter dated December 24, 1993. The money was part of the proceeds from a bank heist. As Jennifer told the FBI on May 2, 1995:
"He had been involved in a bank robbery but did not provide any further details concerning the robbery. He advised me that he had not actually participated in the robbery itself, but was somehow involved in the planning or setting up of this robbery. Although he did not identify the participants by name, he stated that 'they' had committed the robbery. His purpose for relating this information to me was to request that I exchange some of my own money for what I recall to be approximately three (3) $100.00 bills.
"He explained that this money was from the bank robbery and he wished to circulate this money through me. To the best of my recollection, I then gave my brother what I recall to be approximately $300.00 of my personal cash, in exchange for 3 $100.00 bills, which I deposited within the next several days in an account at the Unit No. 1 Federal credit Union, Lockport, New York."
Jennifer also recalled Tim stating, "Persons who rob banks may not be criminals at all. He implied Jews are running the country and a large degree of control is exercised by the Free Masons. Banks are the real thieves and the income tax is illegal."[297]
Was Timothy McVeigh in fact a bank robber? If so, it is possible he was inspired by the Turner Diaries. The protagonists in that novel finance their overthrow of the "Zionist Occupational Government" by robbing banks and armored cars. As previously discussed, the book became a real life inspiration for Robert Matthew's Order, also known as "The Silent Brotherhood," which was engaged in heists of banks and armored cars throughout the Midwest during the 1980s. The Order was part of the white Aryan supremacist community that sought to establish an all-white homeland in the Northwest.
In December of 1984, Mathews was killed in a shoot-out with the FBI and police, and the Order disintegrated. Yet the white supremacist movement lived on, in such guises as the Aryan Nations, White Aryan Resistance (WAR), and a new, as yet unheard of group — the Aryan Republican Army, whose members are believed to be direct descendants of the Order.
It was to this last group that Timothy McVeigh would be drawn, at a rural white separatist religious community in southeast Oklahoma called Elohim City. It was there that McVeigh would meet such self-styled revolutionaries as Peter "Commander Pedro" Langan, who, along with Scott Stedeford, Kevin McCarthy, and the late Richard Guthrie, would go on to rob over 22 banks across the Midwest, collecting a total of $250,000.
In a recruitment video obtained by the McCurtain Gazette, Langan appears in a disguise, explaining the goals of the ARA — the overthrow of the Federal Government, and the subsequent execution of all Jews and the deportation of all non-whites from the U.S.
In the tape, made only a few months before the Oklahoma City bombing, Langan says, "Federal buildings may have to be bombed and civilian loss of life is regrettable but expected."[298]
According to ATF informant Carol Howe, interviewed by Gazette reporter J.D. Cash, both McVeigh and Fortier had visited Elohim City, as had Langan, Guthrie, Stedeford and McCarthy. A secret recording made by the informant apparently reveals discussions between Andreas Strassmeir, Elohim City's chief of security (also suspected of being an informant), and various ARA members, discussing plans to blow up federal buildings. While it is not known if McVeigh was intimately involved with the ARA bank robbers, he was seen with Strassmeir and ARA associate Michael Brescia at parties in Kansas, and at a bar in Tulsa shortly before the bombing. McVeigh had also called Elohim City looking for Strassmeir the day after he reserved the Ryder truck allegedly used in the bombing.
In the Fall on 1994, McVeigh and Terry Nichols allegedly began hoarding ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel. By mid-October, the pair had, according to official accounts, managed to stockpile approximately 4,000 pounds of fertilizer, which they stashed in storage lockers from Kansas to Arizona.[299]
Like Mohammed Salemeh, a World Trade Center bombing suspect arrested when he attempted to retrieve his truck rental deposit, McVeigh would be linked to the bombing by the first in a chain of damning evidence — his thumbprint on a fertilizer receipt found in Terry Nichols' home; inquires about bomb-making materials made on his calling-card; and the paperwork used to rent the Ryder truck itself.
Like Salemeh's rental receipt which had traces of ANFO on it, McVeigh's clothes would allegedly contain traces of a detonator cord known as PDTN.[300] Like the World Trade Center bombers who stockpiled bomb-making equipment in rented storage lockers in New Jersey, McVeigh and Nichols would store their ammonium nitrate in rented lockers in Kansas and Arizona. And like the World Trade Center bombers who called commercial chemical companies requesting bomb-making materials, McVeigh would implicate himself by using a traceable phone card to make his purchases.
The most damming evidence linking McVeigh to the crime would be the witness sightings placing him at the Murrah Building just before the bombing, following the Ryder truck, then speeding away in his yellow Mercury several minutes before the blast.
Yet the most curious evidence implicating McVeigh in the bombing came from witnesses who say he cased the building on December 16, when he and Michael Fortier drove through Oklahoma City en route to Kansas, then again approximately one and a half weeks before the bombing.
Danielle Wise Hunt, who operated the Stars and Stripes Child Development Center in the Murrah Building, told the FBI that on December 16, a clean-cut man wearing camouflage fatigues approached her, seeking to place his two children in the day care center. Hunt told agents that the man didn't ask typical parent-type questions, but instead wanted to know about the day-care center's security. Hunt thought he might be a potential kidnapper. Later, after seeing his face on TV, she recognized the man as Timothy McVeigh.[301]
If the man was indeed Timothy McVeigh, it is curious why he would later claim he was unaware of the day-care center in the building. If McVeigh was so upset about the deaths of innocent children at Waco, why would he knowingly bomb a building containing innocent children as an act of revenge?
Yet this "act of revenge" is precisely what the government claims motived him. Such an act could only be the result of a deranged man. Yet McVeigh is anything but deranged. In his July 3rd Newsweek interview, he said, "For two days, in the cell, we could hear news reports; and of course everyone, including myself, was horrified at the deaths of the children. And you know, that was the No. 1 focal point of the media at the time, too, obviously — the deaths of the children. It's a very tragic thing."
Perhaps "deranged" isn't the proper word; perhaps "controlled" would be more appropriate. After his arrest, McVeigh was shown photographs of the dead children. He claimed to have no emotional reaction. Again, this could very well be indicative of a psychologically-controlled individual.
There is another strong possibility. The man whom witnesses say is Timothy McVeigh may not have been Timothy McVeigh at all.
"Lee Harvey" McVeigh
As previously discussed, McVeigh, along with his friends Andreas Strassmeir, Mike Fortier, and Michael Brescia attended parties in Herrington, Kansas in the Summer of '92. Catina Lawson was actually good friends with McVeigh, and her roommate, Lindsey Johnson, dated Michael Brescia. Lawson's accounts are well documented.[302]
Yet calling card records obtained by the Rocky Mountain News indicate that each call charged to the card during 1992 originated within western New York, where McVeigh was working as a security guard for Burns International Security. There appears to be little time he could have gone to Kansas to party with teen-agers.
Dr. Paul Heath, the VA psychologist who worked in the Murrah Building and survived the blast, spoke to an individual named "McVeigh" late one Friday afternoon, a week and a half before the bombing. In an interview with the author, he described in vivid detail his encounter with "McVeigh" and two other men, one of whom appears to be one of the elusive John Doe 2s.
"I've narrowed this to probably a Friday [April 7], at around three o'clock," recalls Heath. "A bell rang in the outer office of room 522. No one answered, so I went out to the waiting room…. A man came in with two others to apply for a job. One other was American-Indian looking, the other was Caucasian. A male individual was standing there, and I introduced myself as Dr. Heath, 'how can I help you?' and this individual said 'my name is something' and I don't remember what his first name was, but he told me his last name was McVeigh.
"So I said 'can I help you?' and he said 'well, we're here looking for work.' and I said 'what kind of work are we looking for?' He said 'we are looking for construction work.' And I said, 'well Mr. Birmbaum, the gentleman who is the job counselor for the state jobs office, is not here.' And this individual — I asked him if I could go back and get the job openings from the job counselor's desk — and he said 'no, that won't be necessary.' So I said, 'well, I'm very familiar with the area, and I could give you some job leads,' and I began to tell him about job leads, and began to give him some names and some different projects, and I said 'would you like me to get you the phone book; I could get you the state jobs offices.' He said, 'no, that won't be necessary.'
"And about somewhere along in this conversation, the man who was sitting on the east wall, directly behind the man who named himself as McVeigh, came up behind the man, and said 'can I use your phone?' I would describe him as vanilla, 5'7" or 5'9", mid-30's. [Then] the third party who was in the office, looked directly at me, made eye contact with me, and… I got the impression that this individual's nationality was Native American, or half-Native American or half-Mexican American or a foreign national. He was handsome — at one time my mind said maybe he was from South America.
"I… continued to talk to Mr. McVeigh and I said, 'Mr. McVeigh, did you take anything in high school that would be beneficial for me to know about so I could refer you to a different type of job?' And he said, 'well, probably not.' And I said, 'well, where did you go to high school?' And he either said up north or New York. And then I said, 'Where are you living?' And he said, 'Well, I've been living in Kansas.' So then I said, 'Do you happen to be a member of the McVay family from Cussing, Oklahoma?' …he said, 'Well Dr. Heath, how do they spell their name?' 'Well I assume, M-c-V-a-y.' And he took his finger, and he kind of put it in my face and said, 'Well Dr. Heath,' in kind of a boisterous way, 'Dr. Heath, you remember this. My name is McVeigh, but you don't spell it M-c-V-a-y….'"[303]
What Dr. Heath was describing appears to have been Timothy McVeigh and his co-conspirators casing the Murrah Building. As the press reported, the men went floor-to-floor, asking job-related questions and picking up applications. Yet if McVeigh had already cased the building on December 16, as reported by Danielle Hunt, why would he need to case it again?
Moreover, if McVeigh wanted to case the building, why would he do it in such a conspicuous manner? Why would he go from floor-to-floor asking about job openings, then pretend not to be interested in following them up? And… if McVeigh was planning on committing such a horrific crime, why would he make it a point to tell people his name, saying to Dr. Heath, "You remember this… My name is McVeigh."
Former Federal Grand Juror Hoppy Heidelberg concurs. "Why would McVeigh walk around the building before the blast telling people his name?"[304]
If McVeigh was keen on informing people of his identity before committing the crime, he apparently was on a roll. On Saturday, April 8, McVeigh and friends Andreas Strassmeir and Michael Brescia — both living at Elohim City at the time — were seen at Lady Godiva's topless bar in Tulsa, Oklahoma. According to a security camera videotape obtained by J.D. Cash of the McCurtain Gazette, and Trish Wood of CBC, McVeigh's boasts were the topic of discussion among the dancers that night. In the tape, one of the girls named Tara is overheard relating the conversation to another girl in the dressing room:
"...he goes, 'I'm a very smart man.' I said, you are? And he goes, 'Yes, you're going to find an (inaudible) and they're going to hurt you real bad.' I was, like, 'Oh really?' And he goes, 'Yes, and you're going to remember me on April 19, 1995. You're going to remember me for the rest of your life.'
Laughing, she replies, "Oh, really?"
"Yes you will," McVeigh says.[305]
The sighting of McVeigh in Tulsa on April 8, along with an older, pale yellow Ryder truck that appeared to be privately-owned, directly contradicts the testimony of the maid at the Imperial Motel who says McVeigh was there each day.
However, phone records indicate that McVeigh made a steady series of calls up until April 7, which suddenly resumed again on the 11th. Could McVeigh have flown to Oklahoma to pick up the old Ryder truck, then have flown back to Kingman several days later? As J.D. Cash notes in the September 25, 1996 McCurtain Gazette:
It is not merely idle speculation that McVeigh flew to eastern Oklahoma or western Arkansas to pick up the second truck. Records subpoenaed by the government indicate McVeigh may have made such a trip to Fort Smith, Ark., between March 31 and April 14, 1995. Curiously, an employee of the airport taxi service in Fort Smith could not elaborate on why the taxi firm's records for that period were seized by federal agents working on what the government calls the "OKBOMB" case.
If McVeigh actually did fly from Arizona to Arkansas, then drive the truck to Kansas, then fly back to Arizona again, he apparently was a very busy man. Witness accounts and phone records put him in Oklahoma City on the 7th, in Tulsa on the 8th, in Kansas from the 10th to the 14th (although he's supposed to be in Kingman on the 11th and 12th), then back in Oklahoma City on the 14th, 15th and 16th (when he's supposedly in Kansas) then in Kansas on the 17th and 18th (when he's also seen in Oklahoma City), and finally in Oklahoma City on the 19th, the day of the bombing.
While McVeigh was supposedly seen at Terry Nichols' house in Herrington, Kansas on the 13th, witness David Snider saw his car in Oklahoma City. A Bricktown warehouse worker, Snider remembers seeing McVeigh's distinctive yellow Mercury whiz past around 2:30 p.m., not far from downtown. Snider is certain it was the same battered yellow Mercury driven by McVeigh. "I was standing there with my friend, who does auto bodywork," said Snider, "when the car went past. I turned to him and said, 'My Mom used to have a car just like that… It looks like homeboy needs a primer job.'" Snider said the car had an Oklahoma tag, as witness Gary Lewis later reported, not an Arizona tag as the FBI claims.
On Thursday, April 13, a federal employee in the Murrah Building saw two men, one of whom she later identified as McVeigh. She was riding the elevator when it stopped at the second floor. When the doors opened, there were two men in janitorial smocks waiting to get on. She didn't recognize the men as any of the regular janitors, and thought it odd that they turned away when she looked in their direction.
On Monday, April 17, janitors Katherine Woodly and Martin Johnson, who were working the 5-9 p.m. shift, saw McVeigh and his companion again. Martin said McVeigh spoke to him about a job, and the man who resembled John Doe 2 nodded to Woodly.[306]
That same day, or possibly the following day, Debbie Nakanashi, an employee at the Post Office across from the Murrah Building, saw the pair when they stopped by and asked where they might find federal job applications. It was Nakanashi who provided the description for the well-known profile sketch of John Doe 2 in the baseball cap.
Craig Freeman, a retired Air Force master sergeant who works in the same office as Dr. Heath, was one of the people who saw McVeigh in Oklahoma when he was supposedly in Kansas. Freeman recalls sharing the elevator with a man who resembled McVeigh on Friday, April 14. "The guy was tall… What struck me is his hair was cut real low. I thought he was a skinhead." Freeman, who is black, said 'Hey man, how's it going?' "And he looked at me like he was just disgusted with me being there. Most people in the building speak to each other, you know, so I spoke to this guy, and he looked at me like… pure hate."
About a week and a half before the bombing, a HUD employee named Joan was riding the elevator with a man she described as Timothy McVeigh. What struck her was the man's strict military demeanor. He stared straight ahead making no eye-contact or conversation. "He won't last long in this building," Joan thought to herself.[307]
The Friday before the bombing, when Craig Freeman walked out of the building to mail his taxes, he saw an individual he believes to have been Terry Nichols, "because he looked just like the picture of him," said Freeman. "He was standing there, he had a blue plaid shirt on. He was standing in the front of the building — he was just standing there, looking kind of confused. You know, how somebody looks when they're nervous."
Was the man in the elevator Freeman was describing actually Timothy McVeigh? According to phone records obtained from the Dreamland Motel, McVeigh made several phone calls from his room on the morning of Friday, April 14. Is it still possible that McVeigh drove down to Oklahoma City in the afternoon?
If he did, he would had to have been back in Kansas by early next morning. Barbara Whittenberg, owner of the Santa Fe Trail Diner in Herrington, remembers serving breakfast to Nichols, McVeigh, and John Doe 2 around 6:00 a.m. on Saturday.
"I asked them why they had a Ryder truck outside," said Whittenberg. "I wasn't being nosy, I just wondered if Terry Nichols was moving. My sister was moving here, and she needed to find a place. Well, the guy who they haven't arrested yet — John Doe #2 — he blurted out that they were going to Oklahoma. When that happened, it was like someone threw ice water on the conversation… McVeigh and Nichols just stared at the guy"[308]
A dancer in Junction City, Kansas had the same experience as Whittenberg, when four of the suspects stopped by the Hollywood Supper Club around 10:30 that evening. The dancer, who we'll call Sherrie, definitely recognized two of the men as McVeigh and Nichols.
"The only reason I really remember it," said Sherrie, "is just because I had a conversation with one of them about Oklahoma, and my husband's family is from Oklahoma. He said they were planing a trip down there, and he said — I think it was for hunting or something.… then one of them kind of gave him a look, and they changed the subject.…"
Sherrie also said one of the men, who was quiet and sat in the corner, appeared to be Middle-Eastern. The other was Hispanic or part Hispanic, and was friendly. When he mentioned Oklahoma, Nichols shot him a hard look.[309]
Additionally, while the records at Elliott's Body Shop indicate that "Bob Kling" rented his truck on April 17, Barbara Whittenberg saw the truck outside her restaurant on the 15th. Later that day she saw it at Geary State Fishing Lake, along with three people and a light-colored car, possibly a Thunderbird, with Arizona tags.[310]
Backing up Whittenberg is Lee McGowan, owner of the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, where McVeigh stayed from April 14 to April 17. McGowan told the FBI that McVeigh was in possession of his truck the day before "Kling" allegedly rented his. She remembered the day clearly because it was Easter Sunday.
McGowan's son, Eric, as well as motel resident David King and his mother, also stated that they saw McVeigh driving an older faded yellow Ryder truck at the motel around 4 p.m. on April 16.[311]
Yet McGowan's testimony contradicts that of Phyliss Kingsley and Linda Kuhlman, who worked at the Hi-Way Grill in Newcastle, just south of Oklahoma City. The two women saw McVeigh and three companions around 6:00 p.m. on April 16, when they stopped in the restaurant and ordered hamburgers and fries to go. The two women distinctly recall the Ryder truck pulling into the restaurant at SW 104th and Portland, accompanied by a white Chevy long-bed pick-up, and an older, darker, possibly blue pick-up, which may have belonged to Terry Nichols. Accompanying McVeigh was a short, stocky, handsome man, of either Mexican or American Indian descent. The man closely resembled the FBI sketch of John Doe 2, they said.[312]
According to the FBI, this was the same day that McVeigh called Nichols from a pay phone at Tim's Amoco in Herrington, Kansas at 3:08 p.m., and asked him to drive him to Oklahoma City. It would have been impossible for McVeigh and Nichols to drive from Junction City to Oklahoma City in less than four hours.
Reports soon surfaced that "McVeigh" had stayed at a motel south of downtown Oklahoma City on the night of the 18th. Witnesses recall seeing a yellow Ryder truck, and two companions. They recall that "McVeigh" gave them a "go to hell look" as he pulled away.
Later that morning, at 8:35 a.m., Tulsa banker Kyle Hunt was driving to an appointment when he came upon the Ryder truck at Main and Broadway, trailed by a yellow Mercury. "…for some reason I thought they were out of state, moving and lost in downtown Oklahoma City," said Hunt. "I felt sorry for them and then when I pulled up beside them, I got that cold icy stare from a guy that had a real short GI haircut…."[313]
Hunt described the driver of the Mercury as Timothy McVeigh. "He gave me that icy, go-to-hell look," said Hunt. "It kind of unnerved me." While Hunt didn't see the occupants of the truck, he did recall two passengers in the Mercury. The rear occupant, said Hunt, had long hair, similar to the suspect Phyliss Kingsley and Linda Kuhlman saw on Sunday at the Hi-Way Grill south of the city.
Around the same time as Hunt saw this convoy, David Snider, a warehouse worker in Bricktown, a few blocks southeast of downtown, saw a heavily loaded Ryder truck with two men inside, slowly making its way towards him. Snider had been expecting a delivery that morning, and explained that people sometimes get lost because the loading dock is on a different street than the warehouse. The time was 8:35 a.m. Thinking the truck was his delivery, Snider waved them down. Snider, who by now was gesticulating wildly, became frustrated as the two men, staring at him, continued on their way.
While he never received his delivery, Snider did get a good look at the truck, and the two men. The truck appeared to be an older model with a cab overhang, not the newer version the FBI claimed was destroyed in the bombing.
Snider described the driver as a barrel-chested, dark-skinned male with long, straight black hair, parted in the middle, wearing a thin small mustache. The man, who was also wearing tear-drop style sunglasses and a dark shirt, was of American Indian or Hispanic decent. (See sketch) "I lived in New Mexico for years," said Snider; "I know the look." The passenger, wearing a white T-shirt, Snider said, was Timothy McVeigh.
"He looked at me like 'who the hell are you?' — real attitude," recalls Snider, and began yelling profanities at the loading-dock worker. Snider, who was not in a great mood that morning to begin with, yelled back, "Fuck you, you skin-head motherfucker!"
Snider and Hunt weren't the only individuals who saw McVeigh and the Ryder truck that morning. At 8:40 a.m., Mike Moroz and Brian Marshall were busy at work at Johnny's Tire Store on 10th and Hudson, when a yellow Ryder truck pulled in looking for directions to the Murrah Building. The driver, who Moroz later identified as Timothy McVeigh, was wearing a white T-shirt and a black ball cap on backwards. Moroz caught a glimpse of the passenger — a stocky man with dark curly hair, a tattoo on his upper left arm, and a ball cap worn similar to McVeigh's. The passenger, said Moroz, stared straight ahead, never turning to look in his direction.[314]
Moroz then proceeded to give directions to McVeigh, whom he described as polite, friendly, and relaxed — quite interesting considering that McVeigh is supposedly minutes away from murdering 169 people. After thanking Moroz, McVeigh got back in the truck, sat there for a few minutes, then took off in the direction of the Federal Building.
At approximately the same time as McVeigh was seen driving the Mercury by Kyle Hunt, and seen as a passenger in the Ryder truck by David Snider, and seen driving the Ryder truck by Mike Moroz, he was then seen driving the Mercury by attorney James Linehan.
As previously discussed, Linehan, a Midwest City attorney, was stopped at a red light at the northwest corner of 4th and Robinson, one block from the Murrah Building. Late for an appointment, Linehan looked at his watch. It read 8:38 a.m. When he looked back up, he noticed a pale yellow Mercury stopped beside him. While he could not positively I.D. the driver, he described him as having sharp, pointed features, and smooth pale skin.
A second later, the Mercury driver gunned his engine, ran the red light, and disappeared into the underground parking garage of the Murrah Building.
Is it possible these witnesses are describing are two different people? In Snider's account, the driver is an American Indian or Hispanic man with long, straight black hair, wearing sunglasses. The passenger is McVeigh. Neither one is wearing a ball cap. The time is 8:35 a.m. In Moroz's account, the driver is McVeigh, while the passenger is a stocky man with short curly hair. Both men are wearing ball caps on backwards. The time is 8:40 a.m.
Snider and Moroz both saw a Ryder truck containing Timothy McVeigh, yet with completely different companions. While Snider was yelling at McVeigh in the Ryder truck in Bricktown, Hunt was watching the truck being trailed by McVeigh in the Mercury several blocks away. A few minutes later, Linehan watched as the Mercury drove into the Murrah Building garage.
Moreover, each witness saw these convoys at approximately the same time. It is possible that the heavily loaded truck seen by Snider could have made it from 25 East California in Bricktown to 10th and Hudson in five minutes. But in order to do so, they would have had to drop off one man, pick up another, exchange places in the truck, and put on ball caps. Then they would have to drive a distance of approximately 25 blocks — during morning rush hour traffic. Possible, but not too likely.
Is it possible one of these witnesses has his story wrong? Well, if he does, he has it really wrong. How could an apparently credible witnesses mistake a short-curly-haired man with a black ball cap for a long-straight-haired man with tear-drop sunglasses? One who is clearly the passenger, the other who is clearly the driver? In numerous interviews with the author and other journalists, Snider went into great detail about his encounter, and never wavered.
In a taped interview with Mike Moroz, he struck me as a sincere, sober, young man. Both Linehan and Hunt are solid, professional people. It is not likely that these witnesses are relaying inaccurate information.
"Their stories really seem to check out," said video producer Chuck Allen, who interviewed many witnesses. "They go into great depth and detail about all this. If you ever meet these guys, you'll know their stories are very strong — very believable."[315]
Researchers have also questioned why McVeigh, who had supposedly been to the Murrah Building at least three times — once on December 16, again a week and a half before the bombing, then again on April 14 — would need to ask directions to it when he was only six blocks away. But according to Moroz, who has helped more than a few lost travelers, the number of one-way streets in the downtown area often confuses people. "A lot of people get lost down here, even people who live here, he said"[316]
Finally, HUD employee Germaine Johnston was walking through an alley approximately two blocks from the Murrah Building about 15 minutes after the blast, when she ran into McVeigh and another man. "They were just standing there watching," said Johnston.
McVeigh then asked the dazed passerby "Was anyone killed?" When Johnston answered that numerous people had been killed, including many children, McVeigh's expression suddenly turned sad. He and his companion then got up and left.[317][318]
Mike Moroz was eventually called in to identify McVeigh in a photo line-up. Yet he was never called to testify before the Federal Grand Jury. Snider was initially interviewed by two FBI agents, including Weldon Kennedy and Rob Ricks [of Waco fame], but was never brought in to a line-up or called to testify before the Federal Grand Jury.
Considering he had close and sustained contact with "McVeigh" and several of his associates, Dr. Heath should have been a key prosecution witness. Yet the FBI never called Dr. Heath in to identify McVeigh in a line-up. Nor was Dr. Heath ever called before the Federal Grand Jury. Nor was Freeman ever called in to see a line-up, or before the grand jury. Linehan, Hunt, Johnston, and numerous other witnesses were likewise never called.
On May 10, the Los Angeles Times reported, "Investigators said authorities theorize that John Doe 2 could be two people, and that McVeigh and his alleged conspirators could have used different men to accompany him in order to serve as 'decoys' and confuse investigators trying to trace his movements."[319]
The Los Angeles Times report, which would tend to account for the two different trucks, only gives half the story. What they aren't saying is that not only were there at least two John Doe 2s — there apparently were two "Timothy McVeighs." One was probably a double.
The use of doubles in espionage work is not new. In fact, the use of impostors, look-alikes and doubles was well-documented in the JFK and Martin Luther King assassinations.
Like the "Lee Harvey Oswald" who was seen filing out numerous job applications in New Orleans, "McVeigh" was seen going floor-to-floor in the Federal Building in Oklahoma. Except that the "Oswald" who filled out job applications listed his height as 5' 9", while the real Oswald's height was 5' 11."
According to employees at Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City, the "McVeigh" (alias "Kling") who rented the truck on April 17 was of medium build, 5' 10" to 5' 11" and weighed 180-185 pounds. Elliott's employee Tom Kessinger stated on his FBI FD-383 report that the man had a "rough" complexion with "acne."[320] (See Appendix)
The only problem is, Timothy McVeigh is 6' 2," weighs 160 pounds, and has a totally clear complexion. Another shop employee, Vicki Beemer, said the man had a deformed chin, unlike the real McVeigh.[321]
Nevertheless, federal prosecutors would claim that a "little curlicue" on the "K" in "Kling's" signature was indicative of McVeigh's handwriting. Yet if McVeigh was the same person who rented the truck at Elliott's on the 17th, why didn't he also use an alias while signing the motel register? While the "McVeigh" who rented the truck listed his name as "Bob Kling," 428 Malt Drive, Redfield, SD, the "McVeigh" who checked into the Dreamland, right down the street, signed his name as "Tim McVeigh," and listed his address as 3616 North Van Dyke Road, Decker, Michigan, the home of James Nichols.[322]
If McVeigh was planning on committing such a heinous crime, certainly he would not leave such a blatantly incriminating trail of evidence. This makes about as much sense as McVeigh going from floor-to-floor in the Murrah Building filling out job applications and announcing his name. Or telling a dancer in Tulsa, "You're going to remember me on April 19th."
These preposterous scenes were practically identical to those of all-time patsy Lee Harvey Oswald. In early November of 1963, a "Lee Harvey Oswald" applied for a job as a parking lot attendant at the Southland Hotel. During his interview with the manager, he asked if there was a good view of downtown Dallas from the hotel.[323]
On January 20, 1961, two men, one representing himself as "Lee Harvey Oswald," walked into the Bolton Ford dealership in New Orleans and requested a bid for 10 pick-up trucks, ostensibly for the Friends of Democratic Cuba Committee. The only problem was, Lee Harvey Oswald was in Russia at the time.[324]
Then in September of 1963, a man purporting to be "Lee Harvey Oswald" showed up at the Mexican Consulate in New Orleans. According to Mrs. Fenella Farrington, "Oswald" said, "What do you have to do to take firearms or a gun into Mexico?"
A "Lee Harvey Oswald" subsequently phoned, then showed up at the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, speaking with a trade consultant who was allegedly a member of the KGB's "liquid affairs" bureau (hit squad). The CIA later turned over to the Warren Commission a surveillance snapshot of a man they claimed was Oswald at the Soviet embassy. The man looked nothing like Oswald.
On April 17, 1995, a "Bob Kling" showed up at Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City, Kansas and rented a Ryder truck. Yet according to surveillance footage taken from a nearby McDonalds, McVeigh was sitting in the restaurant eating a hamburger at the time. He was wearing completely different clothes than those ascribed to "Kling."
Yet the FBI contends that McVeigh left the restaurant 20 minutes before the truck was rented, walked the 1.3 miles to Elliott's — a fifteen-minute walk — in a light rain, then showed up at Elliott's nice and dry, wearing completely different clothes.
In November of 1963, a "Lee Oswald" walked into the downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership in Dallas announcing his intention to buy a Mercury Comet. According to the salesman, Albert Bogard, "Mr. Oswald" took him on a wild test drive, speeding along at 60 to 70 miles an hour. After he was told the amount of the down payment, another salesman, Eugene Wilson, heard "Oswald" say, "Maybe I'm going to have to go back to Russia to buy a car."
During the Warren Commission hearings, salesman Frank Pizzo described the customer as 5' 8" tall. When the Warren Commission showed Pizzo a photo of Oswald taken after his arrest, he said, "I have to say that he is not the one…"[325]
After the bombing in Oklahoma City, ATF informant Carol Howe told the FBI that she recognized the two men on the FBI's original wanted posters as Peter Ward and Michael Brescia — two Elohim City residents. She said that neither man was Tim McVeigh.[326]
In early November of 1963, Mrs. Lovell Penn of Dallas found three men firing a rifle on her property. After they left, she found a spent cartridge bearing the name "Mannlicher-Carcanno," the rifle that the Warren Commission claimed Oswald used to perform his historic feat of marksmanship in Dealy Plaza.
As District Attorney Jim Garrison later noted, "These scenes were about as subtle as roaches trying to sneak across a white rug."
No less subtle were the scenes and events leading up to the Oklahoma City bombing. It is highly possible that the man Dr. Heath saw in the Murrah Building a week and-a-half before the bombing was not Timothy McVeigh at all, but a double. The scenario of Timothy McVeigh — the alleged "lone nut" bomber — going from floor-to-floor in the target building announcing his name while leaving a paper trail is beyond credulity.
Like Oswald, who repeatedly telephoned, then appeared at the Soviet embassy in Mexico, McVeigh would telephone Elohim City — a white separatist compound — just before the bombing, asking to speak to Andy Strassmeir.
Like Oswald, who left behind a diary of his "Left-leaning" writings, McVeigh purportedly left intentions of his plans to bomb other targets in the glove compartment of his car — a car which could be easily recognized and traced to him.
Like Oswald who, after purportedly killing the president of the United States, walked into a movie house without paying, purposely attracting the attention of the police, McVeigh would speed down the highway at 80 miles an hour without a license plate, purposefully attracting the attention of the Highway Patrol. He would then meekly hand himself over for arrest, not even attempting to draw his Glock 9mm pistol on the approaching cop, whom he could have easily shot and killed.
Like the Mannlicher-Carcanno rifle which Oswald purportedly bought from a mail-order supply house, and the Mannlicher-Carcanno cartridge found by Mrs. Penn, McVeigh would leave a business card from Paulsen's Military Surplus with a notation to pick up more TNT in the police cruiser after his arrest.[327]
As Jim Garrison noted, "Some of these scenes were so preposterous only the most gullible could swallow them."
Like Oswald, who was led out of the Dallas Police Department and immediately shot by Jack Ruby, McVeigh would be led out of the Noble County Courthouse in a bright orange jumpsuit, without a bullet-proof vest, paraded before an angry crowd on the verge of violence.
Finally, like James Earl Ray, who was accused of killing Martin Luther King, Jr., we are left pondering the significance of two similar vehicles, both apparently tied to the crime. Ray had owned a white Ford Mustang, which was seen speeding away after the assassination. Yet another white Mustang was seen parked in front of Jim's Grill in Memphis, near where Ray had his car parked. The two cars were almost identical, except for two things: While Ray was wearing a suit on April 4, 1968, the driver of the other Mustang was wearing a dark blue windbreaker; while Ray's car had Alabama plates, the other car had Arkansas plates.[328]
One is reminded of the contradictory testimony of David Snider and Mike Moroz, who saw two Ryder trucks on the morning of April 19, but with different occupants. Another interesting parallel is that while McVeigh's Mercury reportedly had Arizona tags, a white Oklahoma tag was seen by Gary Lewis dangling from one bolt as the car sped away from the scene.
In spite of the numerous discrepancies, it seemed that by a convenient string of associations, a carefully placed trail of evidence, and a carefully planned and executed operation, Timothy McVeigh was implicated as prime suspect number one in the plot to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Building.
Like Lee Harvey Oswald, who was declared the "lone assassin" within weeks, Timothy McVeigh would be declared — along with Terry Nichols — the "lone bomber" within days. On the indictments, the Justice Department would gratuitously add, "with others unknown." Yet these "others unknown" would fade from official memory as the so-called "Justice" Department withdrew the John Doe 2 sketch and the subsequent reward offer.
After his arrest, Lee Harvey Oswald announced to the television cameras, "I'm a patsy!"
After his arrest, Timothy McVeigh told the London Sunday Times he was "set up" for the bombing by the FBI because of his extreme political views.[329]
Never since the frame-up of Lee Harvey Oswald has the media gone out of its way to portray a suspect as dangerous and malignant. While the mainstream press took their cues from the FBI, they contradicted their own journalistic common sense. The government and their mainstream media lap dogs have based their theories of Timothy McVeigh upon the flimsiest of pretenses, while ignoring the more obvious facts. The mainstream press, willing to take the Federal Government's word as gospel, has succumbed, and perpetrated, the most obvious propaganda. In so doing, they have violated every principal of thorough and honest journalism, and have become nothing but a willing tool of the corporate/intelligence establishment.
As Stephen Jones said, "Before this investigation is all over with, the government will have Tim McVeigh standing next to Lee Harvey Oswald."[330]
Yet unlike Oswald, who was summarily executed by mob-connected police officer Jack Ruby, McVeigh has quietly and safely settled into his newfound circumstances. As the drama of his trial(s) unfold in a daily display of evidence and witnesses, Timothy McVeigh may truly believe that justice will prevail.
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