JOHN DOE #2 IDENTIFIED: BUT CAN WE GET THE FBI TO ARREST HIM?
THE STORY OF THE EVENTS THAT WILL EXPOSE THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING TRUTH
BY
MIKE VANDERBOEGH
COMMANDER
THE FIRST ALABAMA CAVALRY REGIMENT CONSTITUTIONAL MILITIA
JOHN DOE #2 IDENTIFIED; BUT CAN WE GET THE FBI TO ARREST HIM?
NOTE: 1ACR has been assisting Glenn & Kathy Wilburn with their private investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing and the search for ALL of the killers of their two grandchildren and 166 other Americans. The analysis below is my own, and it should be made clear that I do not presume to speak for the Wilburns. The Wilburns are two very courageous Americans who have suffered much in their search for the truth. Other Oklahoma City victims have criticized the Wilburns for seeking to get McVeigh off the hook. Nothing could be further from the truth. None of the information that they or their many volunteer helpers have discovered (of which I am but one) exculpates Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was the truck driver, and a key player in the plot. What we are after is the rest of the bombers and the murdering bastards that sent them and sheltered them after the fact.
JOHN DOE TIMES
Vol. II, No. 6
15 November 1996
"THE FIFTH SUSPECT"
Wherein we ask the unseemly question-- What Else (in addition to mass murder and robbing banks) Does Michael-John-Doe-#-2-Brescia Have To Do To Get Arrested by the FBI?:
Our Motto: "Sic Semper Rodentia"
In This Issue:
** Rush Limbaugh Teases His Listeners With Ambrose's Question....
** The broadcast NBC was too chicken to do: CBC's Fifth Estate program
entitled "The Company They Keep" (and yes, Virginia, they name
Mikey
** The Fifth Suspect (the Nineties' remake of "The Man Who Wasn't There")-- how Mikey Brescia was talked about but never mentioned (by Federal request) at the Des Moines' trial of "Lost Planet Aryan" Scott Stedeford....
** As a result, I call the FBI names....
** And last but never least, J.D. Cash's latest story on The Fifth Suspect....
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**RUSH PUTS A TOE IN THE OKC CONSPIRACY POND (AND JERKS IT BACK OUT AGAIN...)
Millions of Rush Limbaugh's listeners were riveted (including your's truly) by the mention of "Ambrose Evans-Pritchard", "Clinton" and "Oklahoma City bombing" in the same sentence just before his 1:00 p.m. EST break.
Paraphrasing AEP's LST story of last Sunday (complete transcript below), Limbaugh commented on how Clinton had let slip that he dated his political resurrection to the OKC bombing. Then, Limbaugh actually said "What if they knew what was going to happen, and did nothing?" Which of course was Ambrose's question. The music swelled, the segway cut to the news at the top of the hour and though I listened for more after the break, it was in vain.
Limbaugh had said all he was going to say....still, it was better than nothing. In case you're wondering what he was referring to, here's AEP's story in full. I am indebted to Ada Coddington for being the first to forward this story to me.
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 10 NOV 96
BOMB THAT GAVE CLINTON VICTORY COULD STILL RETURN TO HAUNT HIM
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Relaxing on Air Force One after the election, Bill Clinton told reporters it was the Oklahoma bombing that proved the turning point in his political fortunes.
It was the moment when the militias, the Christian Right and the Gingrich onslaught against government, all melded together in the public mind as one rampant movement of extremism. "It broke a spell in the country as people began searching for our common ground again," said Clinton.
I was struck by the observation, because I have long believed that the Oklahoma bombing was the spring-board for the remarkable comeback of Clinton.
The lorry bomb that blew up the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people, was a traumatic event. Had it been carried out by foreign radicals, the impact on the national psyche would have been far less.
But this was a home-grown conspiracy. Americans were committing mass murder against other Americans. A class full of infants in a day-care centre massacred in cold blood-- by Americans.
Clinton siezed the moment. He blamed Right-wing radio talk shows for sowing distrust of government institutions and for creating a climate of "hate" that fostered recourse to violence. He did not name the Republicans as co-conspirators; he did not have to. The U.S. media made the connection for him.
Tim McVeigh was the military expression of the Gingrich agenda, opined the commentators. Republicans had failed to understand that rhetoric has consequences, and now look what had happened.
A few Republicans dared to reply that it was the deployment of tanks and CS by a militarised FBI against women and children in Waco that had set off the deadly spiral. But most of them were too intimidated, or horrified, to articulate a defence. It worked like magic for Clinton. With control over the Justice Department and the FBI-- which he has politicised to an extraordinary degree-- he has been able to shape perception of the bombing.
But what if the government has suppressed the full truth? What if the most important investigation in modern history has been compromised to ensure the re-election of the President?
These are not idle questions. A family that lost two children in the day-care centre has accused the Justice Department of a cover-up. After conducting their own private investigation for the past 18 months Glenn and Cathy Wilburn have amassed evidence suggesting that the government had prior knowledge of the bombing-- and negligently failed to stop it.
They have demolished the prosecution claim that McVeigh acted alone at the crime scene. The Wilburns have over 300 hours of taped testimony from witnesses who spotted McVeigh with other men in Oklahoma City between 8am and 9am on April 19. The last witness to see the Ryder lorry as it pulled up in front of the Murrah building, said that the stocky man who got out of the driver's side looked nothing like the tall, gangly McVeigh.
The Wilburns, and their daughter Eyde Smith, have now taken their case to the Oklahoma courts. In a civil lawsuit they have named two men-- Michael Brescia and a former German army officer, Andreas Strassmeir-- as alleged accomplices of McVeigh. They have accused the Justice Department of failing to pursue all the conspirators because one or more of them were federal informants who had penetrated the bombing ring.
Fortunately for Clinton this story did not break in the mainstream media before the election. But it has been percolating gradually for several months. A number of newspapers in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Tennessee have reported the Wilburn allegations, and the Canadian Broadcasting Company recently ran a documentary.
The Justice Department has immense power, of course. But I doubt that it can keep the lid on this case for much longer. The truth will out, and if it is shown that the Oklahoma bombing was a federal sting that went wrong, and was then covered up under pressure from the White House, Clinton will have a lot of explaining to do.
END OF STORY.
** And now, the broadcast the No Balls Company (NBC) was too chicken to do...
Regular readers of JDT will recall that NBC was going to run with a piece that mentioned the April 8 "Lady Godiva Incident", whose witnesses placed McVeigh, Strassmeir and Brescia at the Tulsa strip Club, with the second van parked out front. You will also recall that NBC ultimately elected not to run the piece out of "legal" (read political) considerations. The White House breathed a huge sigh of relief when informed the story would be spiked for now.
The Canadian Broadcasting Company came in right behind NBC, and having the same "legal considerations" but no political ones, went ahead and ran the story. The transcript of "The Company They Keep" is attached to this JDT and we are grateful to the CBC for providing it. Editorial comment is unnecessary. You may proceed to the end of this issue and read it now or save it for later, as you wish. In any case, you'll find the next item of extreme interest.....
** THE FIFTH SUSPECT (OR, "THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE").
Regular readers of JDT will remember Bob Ruth, the enterprising reporter for the Columbus Dispatch who has been doing yeoman work covering the careers, trials, tribulations and occasional "Arkancides" of "Commander Pedro and the Lost Planet Aryans" (AKA "the Midwest Bank Bandits"). Regular readers will also recall that it was the John Doe Times who first reported that Michael Brescia had been linked to these "Aryan Republican Army" pukes by an item discovered by the FBI in the Shawnee, Kansas storage locker searched the day of Langan's arrest (or his "attempted assassination at the hands of the Feds", if you believe his defense attorney).
While Langan's trial in Columbus has been postponed until January, that of his "Kamerad" Scott Stedeford has just started in Des Moines, Iowa.
Stedeford, you will recall, played in the same band with Michael Brescia back in the City of "Brotherly Love." (Arlin Adams, staunch constitutional militia advocate who holds forth against the "NetNazis" daily on the Misc.Activism.Militia newsgroup has dubbed John Doe #2-- "Michael 'can't-sing-can't-play-gotta-kill-to-pay-the-rent' Brescia".)
It is to the credit of his editors that Bob Ruth has been given the assignment of covering the Stedeford trial in out-of-the-Buckeye-orbit Des Moines. What is so important about these cases that the Dispatch editors think it worthwhile to send one of their best far away to cover? Read Bob's story below and take a wild guess.
THE COLUMBUS (OHIO) DISPATCH, 14 NOVEMBER 1996
BANK BANDITS HAD A 5TH MAN, MEMBER SAYS
Possible Ties To White Supremacists Uncovered
By Bob Ruth, Dispatch Staff reporter.
Des Moines, Iowa-- A fifth member of the so-called Midwestern Bank Bandits who has not been charged participated in at least one of the gang's robberies last year, testimony yesterday claimed.
Kevin Mccarthy, 19, a former member of the gang, did not mention the name of the fifth suspect on instructions from U.S. Assistnat Attorney Robert Dopf. McCarthy was testifying during a bank robbery trial in U.S. District Court in Des Moines.
But the Dispatch has learned that the fifth suspect is a neo-Nazi activist living in the Philadelphia area who had stayed for many months at a white supremacist compound in eastern Oklahoma.
The FBI office in Philadelphia has been investigating the fifth suspect's possible links to the gang for months but has not compiled enough evidence to indict him, the Dispatch has learned.
Dopf refused to comment after yesterday's testimony.
Authorities had discussed only four men as being members of the gang--- McCarthy; Peter "Commander Pedro" Langan, 38; Scott A. Stedeford, 27; and the late Richard Lee Guthrie, Jr., 38.
Langan is scheduled to stand trial Jan. 8 in U.S. District Court in Columbus in connection with 1994 bank robberies in Columbus and Springdale, Ohio. He was arrested Jan. 18 behind 585 Reinhard Avenue on Columbus' South Side after a brief shootout with law officers.
Stedeford is on trial in Des Moines in connection with the March 29, 1995, robbery of the Boatman's Bank of West Des Moines. Guthrie was found hanging in his Kentucky jail cell July 12, an apparent suicide after pleading guilty to 19 bank heists.
During 5-1/2 hours of testimony yesterday, McCarthy said the fifth suspect participated in a bank robbery in Madison, Wisconsin, on August 30, 1995.
After the robbery, Stedeford drove that man to a "farm compound" in Oklahoma, McCarthy added.
**********************************
Transcriber's note: It was days after Mikey returned to the bosom of Elohim (or was it Esther?) that he was unceremoniously booted from the "farm compound". He moved down the road to George Eaton's place. George, you may recall, has recently flown the coop from the Elohim area and has been traveling to cosmopolitan places like Idaho, Spokane, WA and Little Rock. If anybody sees George, would they ask him this question: "Did the FBI ask you if Mikey paid his rent money with dye-stained bills?"
***********************************
Story resumes......
U.S. District Judge Charles R. Wolle has banned the prosecution from presenting evidence in the Stedeford trial about the gang's alleged ties to white supremacist organizations.
Because of that decision, Mccarthy was not permitted to identify the Oklahoma compound. However the Dispatch has learned it is Elohim City, a 1,00-acre compound in eastern Oklahoma.
Timothy McVeigh, the accused Oklahoma City bomber, phoned someone in Elohim City two weeks before the April 19, 1995, explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
The fifth suspect has not been charged in either the Wisconsin robbery or connected by authorities to the bombing.
The West Des Moines, Columbus and Springdale robberies were among 22 bank heists the gang is suspected of pulling off in 1994 and 1995 in Ohio and six other states.
In testimony yesterday, McCarthy also recounted his relationship with Mark Thomas, a 44-year-old neo-Nazi leader who lives near Allentown, Pa. He had lived off and on with Thomas for the past six years, McCarthy said.
Thomas at one point supplied him with fake identification, McCarthy said. Thomas also attended a meeting around November, 1994, near Van Buren, Ark., where McCarthy was introduced to Langan and Guthrie, McCarthy testified.
Thomas also taught him how to fire and clean shotguns, rifles and pistols, McCarthy said.
**************************************
Transcriber's Note: All talents the brave Mark Thomas no doubt picked up in Canada while he was hiding out as a draft dodger from the Vietnam War before Jimmy Carter pardoned him.
***************************************
The story continues....
Gang members went about their bank robbery business cautiously, McCarthy said. They would sometimes stake out many banks before choosing one to hit. They carried police radios during all their robberies, McCarthy said.
This precaution paid off when the gang was about to rob a bank in Pheonix, he told jurors. Moments before they were to enter the bank, gang members heard police talking about a customer there.
The customer had mistakenly handed a teller a bag of marijuana-- instead of money-- to deposit, McCarthy said. The gang called off their robbery when they suspected police would arrive for the marijuana situation.
McCarthy earlier this year testified in a hearing in Columbus in the Langan case. He is expected to testify again during Langan's January trial.
END OF STORY.
**I INSULT THE FBI VIA FAX.....
Well, folks, I gotta tell you that the previous story got my dander up just a little bit about the lengths to which the FBI and the Justice Department are apparently going to protect Brescia and the OKC coverup. As a result, I faxed the following missive (along with a transcript and the original of Bob Ruth's article) to a couple-three FBI offices that I've had occasion to deal with over the past year, including the Birmingham office. I present the text below unaltered,
VIA FAX, 14 NOV 96
"To My FBI Friends"---
Michael Brescia (John Doe #2) must be laughing his ass off, sitting on his front porch in Philadelphia while the FBI gives him a pass not only on Oklahoma City but on a bank robbery they've got him COLD on --------
The SPECTACLE of an Assistant U.S. Attorney preventing his name from even being uttered in testimony----- WHO does he think he's fooling?!? Even the timid press are wondering out loud to each other why Brescia hasn't been busted. Like Al Capone getting busted for tax evasion, we always figured you guys would bust Brescia for the bank jobs while ignoring his role in the OKC mass murder.
Now we see you lack the cojones even to do that. Brescia must be dying laughing.
-- Mike Vanderboegh, John Doe Times & Militia News Network.
**************************
Well, nobody ever told me I was subtle.
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J.D. CASH WRITES ABOUT "THE FIFTH SUSPECT" IN TODAY'S McCURTAIN (OKLAHOMA) GAZETTE........
15 NOVEMBER 1996
The McCurtain (Oklahoma) Gazette
ELOHIM CITY LINKED
By J.D. Cash with Jeff Holladay
A former Elohim City resident was implicated as the alleged fifth member of an extremist white racist group dubbed "The Midwest Bank Bandits" during a trial this week in Des Moines, Iowa.
Elohim City, a white separatist compound in eastern Oklahoma, has previously been linked to various criminal activities and to the Oklahoma City bombing by the McCurtain Gazette.
The existence of the mysterious fifth man-- who has not been arrested or charged-- emerged during testimony provided by one of the gang members, also a former Elohim City resident.
Kevin McCarthy, 19, agreed to testify against his ex-comrades in exchange for a plea bargain. He provided riveting courtroom testimony this week about how the bandits traveled around the United States robbing banks.
Prosecutors had warned McCarthy not to mention the name of the "fifth man" and to avoid mentioning the name of the "farm compound" where the suspect was dropped off, the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reported Thursday.
The government believes the robbers held up a total of 22 banks in seven states from January 1994 to December 1995.
FBI officials say the modern-day "James Gang" took in more than $200,000 -- none of which has been recovered but which they allege was distributed to various white separatist groups.
Until Tuesday, government prosecutors had only publicly mentioned four men as members of the gang-- McCarthy, Peter Langan, 38; Scott A. Stedeford, 27; and the late Richard Lee Guthrie Jr., 38.
The trial in Des Moines, Iowa, is the first in connection with the skein of bank robberies. Focus of the trial is former Elohim City resident Scott Stedeford, charged for his alleged role in the March 29, 1995 robbery of the Boatman's Bank in Des Moines.
One of the high points of McCarthy's testimony was his disclosure that Stedeford transported a fifth member of the group-- the first public revelation of another member of the gang-- to what he referred to as "a farm compound in Oklahoma".
And that fifth member, McCarthy testified, had just participated in the August 30, 1995 robbery of a bank in Madison, Wisconsin.
While the prosecutors warned McCarthy not to mention the name of the "fifth man", nor to identify the "farm compound," the Columbus Dispatch said it learned independently that the mystery man was "a neo-Nazi activist presently living in the Philadelphia (Penn.) area and was a former resident of the eastern Oklahoma white separatist colony, Elohim City."
SOURCES NAME MYSTERY MAN
According to McCurtain Gazette law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation, the mystery man under intense investigation is Michael Brescia.
Brescia left Elohim City shortly after the Madison, Wisconsin, bank robbery and eventually made his way to his parents' home in Philadelphia, where he currently lives.
Brescia has also been named as a co-defendant in a wrongful death civil lawsuit filed by Oklahoma City bombing victim Edye Smith, who lost two small children in the April 19, 1995 blast that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building.
Brescia was recently named a co-defendant with German national Andreas Strassmeir and Michael Fortier in the lawsuit originally filed last January against Timothy McVeigh.
BRESCIA LINKS OUTLINED
As previously reported in the Gazette, Brescia lived at Elohim City for at least two years-- sharing a house with German national Andreas Strassmeir.
It was Strassmeir, Elohim City residents said, whom bombing defendant Timothy McVeigh placed telephone calls to at Elohim City on April 5 and April 17.
Much attention has been focused on the April 5, 1995 telephone call, since it occured only seconds after McVeigh allegedly called a Ryder rental truck outlet in Arizona.
It was a Ryder truck rented in Kansas that authorities say McVeigh used in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Strassmeir claims he did not take McVeigh's calls and says he doesn't know why McVeigh called him since he'd only met him once before at a gun show in 1993 in Tulsa.
Other interesting connections to the Oklahoma City bombing emerged when witnesses in Kansas told the FBI and the McCurtain Gazette that they believe Michael Brescia is the elusive subject of the FBI's once-heralded worldwide manhunt for "John Doe #2."
Inexplicably, authorities have dismissed eyewitness reports concerning Brescia, Strassmeir and "John Doe #2." Only McVeigh and his former Army buddy, Terry Nichols, have been charged in connection with the Oklahoma City bombing.
Strassmeir left Elohim City about the same time as Brescia, returning eventually to his native Berlin.
Unnamed FBI sources, however, had earlier confirmed to the Gazette that Strassmeir was an ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau) intelligence operative sent to Elohim City to gather information on the neo-Nazi movement.
The ATF, though, has skirted answering questions about the undercover role, and Strassmeir has vehemently denied the allegation.
This week in Denver, however, attorneys for McVeigh are arguing for release of the government's classified records on Strassmeir and his role as a possible undercover operative in this country.
As for Brescia, the Columbus Dispatch reported that the FBI told them that, despite McCarthy's information, they still do not have the necessary evidence to indict him for the Madison, Wisconsin, bank heist.
END OF STORY.
AFTERWORD: JOHN DOE TIMES WILL BE CHANGING CHANNELS.
Friends, the time has come for me to make some much-needed changes in my life that will impact upon John Doe Times, although not cause its demise.
You may have noticed that publication has been spotty at best these past couple of months. For one thing, I have been fighting (and still am feeling the residual effects of) a six-week battle with walking pneumonia. I'm getting back in the swing of things, but my brush with serious illness forced me to confront some hard truths. The truth is I can no longer afford, in time or money, the hours required on AOL to answer, save or dump my email, check the news, kibitz with green-teethed nazis on M.A.M., etc. My last month's AOL bill was $205.00. I owe the account a total of $550.00.
Despite the slanders (public and private) of everybody from the netNazis to George Eaton to (I am told) a whispering campaign by the Militia of Montana, I don't get paid for this. Never have, never will. When I talk to the FBI, I buy my own coffee. And I don't even talk to the ATF. I don't get $1775.00 per month or any other amount from the FBI or any other alphabet soup agency. If I wish to continue assisting the Wilburn private investigation via the JDT, I'm going to have to do something about the all the other electronic demands on my time and money. The easiest way to do this is to cancel my AOL account, unsubscribe from PIML and other mailing lists, M.A.M. and continue to provide JDT updates via another email address (one not my own).
Apart from the expense, I have in this struggle neglected my family and my job for some time now. With the Congress remaining (somewhat) safely in Republican control, Clinton is now likely to be impeached within a year. I hope to assist in this process with my work on the OKC Wilburn investigation. But I will no longer ignore my family responsibilities to answer puerile, neo-Nazi hate mail. Nor will I stay up late into the night debunking the latest Chicken Little militia rumor. I can't afford the phone bill, and I'm sick to death of trying to herd cats and chickens simultaneously. I remain a firm believer in the Constitutional militia movement, as long as most of the public "media star militia leaders" can get the counseling and therapy they so desperately need.
My friends already know how to contact me off-line. Prospective new friends may use snail mail to the P.O. Box address to contact me from hereon. I thank you for your kind attention, and I thank you all, gentle readers, for your assistance and encouragement over the past months.
-- Mike Vanderboegh, 1 ACR.
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JOHN DOE TIMES, VOL. II, NO. 6
ADDENDUM
THE STORY NBC WAS AFRAID TO AIR-- "THE COMPANY THEY KEEP"
(Transcript of the Canadian Broadcasting Company "Fifth Estate" piece on Oklahoma City, originally broadcast on 22 October 1996.)
SOUTHAM FIFTH ESTATE
221096
ON THE HOOK
**START-STORY**
FIFTH ESTATE
CBC
961022
20:00:00 ET
21:00:00 ET
GUEST - ROBERT MILLAR, leader, Elohim City; KERRY NOBLE, formerly of CSA; STEVEN JONES, Timothy McVeigh's lawyer; JOE ADAMS, bailiff; ROSS MCLEOD, security agency owner.
INTRO
HOST - BOB OXLEY, voice-over announcer; TRISH WOOD; FRANCINE PELLETIER
BOB OXLEY (voice-over announcer): Tonight: it was the explosion that shook America.
TRISH WOOD: Were you surprised when the Murrah Building was blown up?
KERRY NOBLE (formerly of CSA): No, not a bit.
WOOD: Why?
NOBLE: It was one of the targets that we had talked about at CSA in '83 The day it happened, as soon as I heard it on the news, I said, The right wing's done it, they finally took that step.
OXLEY: But did the alleged Oklahoma City bombers have a connection with this secretive radical right-wing community led by Canadian preacher Robert Millar.
STEVEN JONES (Timothy McVeigh's lawyer): We are investigating it and we've said so publicly. There are too many neat coincidences to exclude them.
OXLEY: Trish Wood and The Company They Keep, a report on Elohim City and the man who rules it.
WOOD: Are these God's children, these people who come through here?
ROBERT MILLAR (leader, Elohim City): Oh, I think so. I think even TV reporters are God's children.
**************************
BOB OXLEY: The fifth estate, with Linden MacIntyre, Victor Malarek, Francine Pelletier, and tonight, Trish Wood.
**START-STORY**
FIFTH ESTATE
CBC
961022
20:00:00 ET
21:00:00 ET
GUEST-ROBERT MILLAR, leader, Elohim City; KERRY NOBLE formerly of CSA; JIM ELLISON, former leader of CSA; RICHARD SNELL, executed for murder (clip); ALAN ABLES, Arkansas prison official associated with Snell case; STEVEN JONES, Timothy McVeigh's lawyer; ANDY STRASSMEIR, Elohim City's security advisor; UNIDENTIFIED cocktail waitresses
THE COMPANY THEY KEEP
TRISH WOOD
TRISH WOOD: Welcome to the fifth estate. It seems hardly a day goes by without headlines about some new and extreme right militia group, full of race hatred and resentful of organized government in the United States. But there's one such group led by a Canadian that's kept very quiet, hidden, almost unknown, right in the heartland of America. Yet the private place called Elohim City appears to have sinister connections to some very public outrages, including the Oklahoma City bombing.
The company they keep includes some of the United States' most virulent and violent white supremacists and Washington haters, and because of that, more and more people are starting to ask questions about Elohim City.
They call their retreat Elohim City, but you won't find it on any map. Deep in the Ozark Mountains, up an isolated dirt road in the American heartland of eastern Oklahoma is the heavily guarded community. Outsiders are unwelcome. At first glance it looks like a down-on-its-luck hippie commune. The spiritual leader is a grandfatherly Canadian, Robert Millar. But to his 100 followers he preaches not about peace, but war.
ROBERT MILLAR (leader, Elohim City): We face trouble, sickness, disease, racial violence....
WOOD: Their religion is Christian Identity. The faithful believe Scots and other white northern Europeans are God's chosen people, ethnic purity is divine. But Millar denies their beliefs are racist.
(to Mr. Millar) I didn't see a black person in your community.
MILLAR: No, you didn't.
WOOD: How come?
MILLAR: Well, there's a lot of other people you didn't see either.
WOOD: Any Jews here?
MILLAR: No.
WOOD: How come?
MILLAR: We call ourselves racialists, not racists. We've also been called purists. We encourage them not to mix with other races.
WOOD: Millar's flock also hate government. They remember how at Waco, Texas, another far right religious community, dozens died after a botched federal raid in 1993. Elohim City is taking no chances. Local law enforcement officers say when they approached the grounds several years ago to serve legal papers, they were met by teenagers with guns.
(to Mr. Millar) Do you train your people in weaponry?
MILLAR: Yes, we have several people. We have one person here that's ex-Marine, he's very good at weaponry. We advise our parents not to let their children to have toy guns, but when they get 13 or 14 and are responsible, then they've given safety training and trained to hunt. And most of our young people are dead shots.
WOOD: Dead shots and ethnically pure. One third of the people who live here are Millar's offspring - so many, in fact, the whole community calls him grandfather. Millar himself was raised in Kitchener, Ontario, by a pacifist Mennonite father. Millar rejected those teachings and left Canada 45 years ago, after he had an apocalyptic vision.
MILLAR: It was about future events in the western world primarily, and on this continent. I saw a time of terrible wartime destruction. Whitby, on the east side of Toronto, for instance, I saw it in flames. I saw the West Coast devastated, Cape Canaveral, Houston - it was just like a movie screen going. You see these terrible things, and reluctant to see it, sort of aghast at it. That was about 1948, I think.
WOOD: But these things were blowing up? Is that what you were seeing, or were they...
MILLAR: Yes.
WOOD: But today some suggest Elohim City may be connected to a very real apocalypse. On April 19, 1995, it was the blast heard round the world. The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was blown apart, 168 people killed, 19 of them young children. Within days of the bombing the FBI arrested 27year-old Timothy McVeigh and an army buddy of his, Terry Nichols. But the indictment said the two men had conspired together and with other unknown. A year and a half after the bombing the other unknown remain unknown, but a series of unexplained coincidences and events raise questions about several men connected in one way or another either to Elohim City, to April 19 or to a failed 13- year-old plot to blow up the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
The coincidences start with this man, Richard Wayne Snell, a convicted murderer executed on the same day as the Oklahoma bombing. With him the day he died was his old friend and the patriarch of Elohim City, Robert Millar. In the early 1980s Snell as an influential player in an Arkansas militia shown here in training. The CSA - or The Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord - was dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government. Its members made regular pilgrimages to Elohim City. Millar taught them about God, they taught Millar about guns.
Kerry Noble was second in command in the CSA.
KERRY NOBLE: I loved Millar from the time I first met him. I highly respected him for years. When he first met us, the paramilitary was like a new revelation to him. They hadn't had any kind of paramilitary at Elohim City at that point, but it was something that he grabbed on to right off the bat.
WOOD: Millar also befriended the leader of the CSA, Jim Ellison, who rallied his troops with anti-government speeches.
JIM ELLISON (CSA, clip): If God does not judge this nation and put the rod of correction on this nation, then he's going to have to resurrect Sodom and Gomorrah and apologize, because this nation is guilty before God.
WOOD: To punish the guilty nation Ellison and Snell came up with several plots in 1983. One was to bomb a federal government building. Today there's nothing left of that target, only a memorial fence honouring the dead. This CSA plot had been to blow up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, the same building that would be destroyed 13 years later.
NOBLE: I still look at things like this and realize how close we were, and, you know, that this could have been me having done this.
WOOD: Kerry Noble, now reformed and a critic of the extreme right, speaks openly about the 1983 plot.
(to Mr. Noble) Were you surprised when the Murrah building was blown up?
NOBLE: No, not a bit.
WOOD: Why?
NOBLE: It was one of the targets that we had talked about at CSA in '83. The day it happened, as soon as I heard it on the news, I said, the right wing's done, they finally took that step.
WOOD: What did Ellison and Snell say about the Murrah Building?
NOBLE: It was, to them and to all of us, it was the perfect building: so many government agencies in one building, and very low security in an area that nobody would suspect it, and that would have more effect on the country than if you did a building, say, in New York City or something.
WOOD: Jim Ellison, later in a sedition trial, would testify he scoped out the Murrah Building and others for Snell and an associate.
ELLISON (clip): ...Wayne Snell had been...had made a trip to Oklahoma City, and Wayne came back and told me about different buildings that he had seen, wanted to know if I would look at them with him sometime. And Steve talked to me and gave me a description of these buildings and asked me to design a rocket launcher that could be used to destroy these buildings from a distance ...(inaudible) heavy, large buildings.
WOOD: Ellison and Snell never got their chance. On April 19, 1985 the CSA encampment was surrounded by federal agents. Millar travelled to Arkansas to support his besieged friends; they surrendered. It would not be the last time April 19 would be embraced as an historical milestone by the extreme right.
Jim Ellison and the other CSA leaders were arrested. Kerry Noble served 26 months on weapons charges.
(to Mr. Noble) Do you think - and I know this is a guess - that Snell or Ellison told Mr. Millar about the early plans to blow up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City?
NOBLE: Yeah, I think Ellison has confided everything to Millar, so Millar would have known.
WOOD: In fact, Jim Ellison became part of Millar's family. Shortly after the Oklahoma bombing he moved from Florida to Elohim City and married one of Millar's granddaughters. We were able to get these pictures of Ellison while he was rebuilding Elohim City's church. Millar insisted we not speak to Ellison.
(to Mr. Millar) Mr. Ellison, who was here and does not want to be filmed, plotted with Mr. Snell in 1983 to blow up the Murrah Building. Do you know that to be true?
MILLAR: No, I don't know that to be true.
WOOD: You never knew that?
MILLAR: I don't think it is true. Now, I know about this story....
WOOD: Mr. Ellison admitted it under oath.
MILLAR: I don't think your statement, Patricia, is accurate.
WOOD: And what is the inaccuracy then?
MILLAR: He didn't say they plotted to blow up a building. They discussed possible methodologies - sort of makes me think of a bunch of men gathered around having beer and saying, Hey, this is how you can rob a bank.
WOOD: Millar developed an even closer relationship with the other bombing conspirator, Richard Snell. Snell's plans for the Murrah Building were foiled by his arrest for the murder of a pawnbroker he thought was Jewish and a black state trooper.
RICHARD SNELL (clip): Got out of my van and I shot Officer Bryan twice from the hip.
WOOD: In Arkansas Snell was found guilty and condemned to death. On death row, Richard Wayne Snell was more influential than ever. He became a symbol, a kind of political prisoner to fellow extremists. From prison he continued his campaign against the federal government, writing a newsletter, and articles for militia papers. Then in early March 1995 the state of Arkansas set Snell's execution date. Incredibly, it was April 19th, a date that would inflame both Snell and his supporters. Militia newsletters whipped up fury about Snell's execution date, connecting it to far right flashpoints such as the Waco disaster. It was also around this time, police say, that Tim McVeigh obtained a falsified driver's license, choosing as his birthdate April 19th.
Former CSA leader Kerry Noble thinks McVeigh was in some way inspired by the condemned Richard Snell.
(to Mr. Noble) Did you ever think that it was a coincidence that Tim McVeigh - if, in fact, he did it - chose that building?
NOBLE: No, I don't think it's any coincidence. When you bring that into account with the declaration of war that we made, the pressure that the older leaders of the groups are putting on the younger followers to do something in a major way before they die - no, it's no coincidence.
WOOD: No coincidence.
NOBLE: Not in my book.
WOOD: How would McVeigh have known about the earlier plans for the Murrah Building?
NOBLE: It's very feasible and likely that he would have kept in communication with certain people and said...you know, then if somebody said, well, what would you recommend as a starting place - it's very likely he could have said, well, this is what we had picked out.
WOOD: Alan Ables was a senior Arkansas prison official closely associated with the Snell case.
(to Mr. Ables) If you're on death row, are you allowed to send mail out to whomever you choose?
ALAN ABLES (Arkansas prison official associated with Snell case): Absolutely.
WOOD: Is it monitored? Is it read by anybody?
ABLES: No, no. We don't censor the mail at all.
WOOD: Is it possible, in your view, that a conspiracy could have been plotted through the mail between Mr. Snell and someone else?
ABLES: Oh, I think so.
WOOD: Elohim City's Robert Millar visited Snell frequently in prison - Millar's name is on the approved visitors list as Snell's spiritual advisor. But if Millar knows or suspects about any connections between Snell and McVeigh, he isn't saying.
(to Mr. Millar) Is it possible that Timothy McVeigh was inspired to blow up the Murrah Building by Mr. Snell's execution?
MILLAR: I don't know if that's possible.
WOOD: It is a coincidence that boggles the imagination if, in fact, that's all it is.
MILLAR: Yes, yes, yes. I hope that will come out in this trial, I hope we have a good trial, a clear trial, and I hope those things will come out into the open.
WOOD: The lawyer in charge of assuring his client, Timothy McVeigh, gets a good trial, is Steven Jones.
STEVEN JONES (Timothy McVeigh's lawyer): We have suggested in court that the thought occurred to us...two things: first, that there were some people very angry at the government for executing Mr. Snell on what is, to them, an important day, April the 19th; and that number two, the building destroyed was the very same building that Mr. Snell, according to sworn testimony, had wanted to destroy - raising the possibility in our mind, well, did somebody decide to give the old man a going away gift?
WOOD: Do you think that Elohim City is any way either directly or indirectly involved in this case?
JONES: I don't know that I would say that Elohim City is. I think it is possible that people who may have been in and out of Elohim City may be involved. Certainly we are investigating that, but I'm not making any allegation at this time. But we are investigating it and we've said so publicly. There are too many neat coincidences to exclude them.
WOOD: The coincidences continue with evidence that Timothy McVeigh had been in the vicinity of Millar's remote community. In 1993 McVeigh got a traffic ticket on a small country road about 30 kilometres east of Elohim City. McVeigh also stayed at a motel about a half hour's drive west of Elohim City in the fall of 1994, when the FBI alleges the bombing the conspiracy began.
(to Mr. Millar) I have to ask. Has Timothy McVeigh ever been here?
MILLAR: As far as I know, he's never been here, and I very much doubt he's been here without my knowledge.
WOOD: Could he have been here but you missed him?
MILLAR: It's possible.
WOOD: It's possible.
Whether or not McVeigh ever set foot in the 1,000 acres owned by Elohim City, he appears to have connections to some people who live there. Just two weeks before the blast in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh - or somebody using his credit card - made a phone call that, so far, no one can explain. The call was to Elohim City and the caller asked to speak to Andy. The man the caller was apparently trying to reach was Andy Strassmeir, Elohim City's security advisor. Strassmeir is the son of a prominent German politician and a former German army officer. He insists he met McVeigh only once in his life, at a Tulsa gun show in 1993. The fifth estate tracked Strassmeir down in Berlin.
ANDY STRASSMEIR (Elohim City's security advisor): ...(inaudible) that we exchanged business cards. I don't think I got his. As I said, I forgot about this person when I walked out of the show in Tulsa, you know, because it was just one of many people I met there. But it's possible that he remembered me and that he had a card from our church.
WOOD: And embarrassed Millar first told the media no such phone call had been made.
MILLAR (clip): Nobody here has any knowledge of ever talking him.
WOOD: But the phone records clearly show the call to Elohim City was made just shortly after a call to reserve the Ryder truck that was used in the Oklahoma blast. When presented with the evidence from the records, Millar changed his story.
MILLAR: We spent a lot of serious time saying, Can anybody remember this phone call? And eventually someone said, well, I could have got a phone call where somebody asked for Andy - I don't remember just what day, but that might have been it. So we have very vague, indefinite information from our side to either disprove or prove it.
WOOD: But it is a link that's worrisome.
MILLAR: Yeah, sure.
WOOD: Why did McVeigh call a man here that he claims to have met two years ago for five minutes?
MILLAR: That's a legitimate question, open to great speculation.
STRASSMEIR: I don't know, you know. I heard he made a lot of phone calls, you know, and was telling people that something's going to happen. And yeah, it's possible that he was calling up people where he thought they were sympathetic.
WOOD: There are other things Strassmeir can't explain. He insists he was never in Kansas where McVeigh lived for a time, and met McVeigh only the once. But Strassmeir and his roommate, Mike Brescia from Elohim City, may have been seen far away in the small Kansas towns where McVeigh used to hang out. We spoke to several people who say they saw Strassmeir and Brescia there. Two women who were friends with McVeigh say they saw Strassmeir and Brescia in McVeigh's company as far back as 1992.
Even more curious, just 11 days before the Oklahoma bombing, some say they spotted the three men at a strip club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, called Lady Godiva's. It was Saturday night, April 8th. We showed photographs of Andreas Strassmeir and his roommate, Mike Brescia, to five women on shift that night. They were all so frightened, they wanted to protect their identities.
(to unidentified women) OK, so what I'm asking is if any of you people who were here April 8 - and you were all here - can identify this man as being in the club on that night.
UNIDENTIFIED: Yes.
WOOD: And why do you remember him specifically?
UNIDENTIFIED: Face.
WOOD: And you?
UNIDENTIFIED: Yes, I did.
WOOD: You do remember him?
UNIDENTIFIED: Yes, I do.
WOOD: And you remember him for what reason?
UNIDENTIFIED: His buck teeth.
WOOD: His buck teeth.
UNIDENTIFIED: Yes.
WOOD: What about this man? Was he in here that night?
UNIDENTIFIED: Yes.
WOOD: How sure are you that he was in here that night?
UNIDENTIFIED: Positive.
WOOD: And why are you positive?
UNIDENTIFIED: Because I recognize him and I remember him sitting back in a booth.
WOOD: Brescia wouldn't talk to us and Strassmeir denies he was ever at Godiva's, but a cocktail waitress claims she remembers seeing Strassmeir sitting next to Timothy McVeigh. One of the dancers also recognized McVeigh's photo.
(to unidentified cocktail waitress) You saw this man in here.
UNIDENTIFIED: Yes.
WOOD: And how do you remember? What makes you remember seeing him in here that night?
UNIDENTIFIED: From one of the girls. I just heard her say something about a couple of guys, there were a couple of weird guys, she wanted somebody to go sit with them.
WOOD: A couple of weird guys.
UNIDENTIFIED: Yes, uh huh.
WOOD: And did she point this man out as one of the weird guys?
UNIDENTIFIED: She said something about some guy named Terry(sic) McVeigh - that's all I heard.
WOOD: So she mentioned his name to you?
UNIDENTIFIED: Yes.
WOOD: Eyewitness identification can be unreliable and it's not illegal to be in a bar with someone who's later accused in a bombing. What makes this encounter so important is that someone in Godiva's that night was boasting about an event that hadn't happened yet, an event that would make him famous on April 19, 1995.
That boast was caught on this videotape obtained by the fifth estate. It's from the security camera in the club's dressing room. One of the dancers walks in to tell her friends about a customer she's been sitting with. Remember: what you're seeing was recorded 11 days before the Oklahoma blast.
UNIDENTIFIED: ...he goes, I'm a very smart man. I said, you are? And he goes, yes, you're going to find a (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, '95, you're going to remember me for the rest of your life.
WOOD: Two weeks ago the FBI interviewed the women from Godiva's, and one of them says she may have to testify at Timothy McVeigh's trial. In the days after the strip club boast, the FBI says Timothy McVeigh was planning his plans. In Kansas, they allege, he picked up the Ryder truck that would carry the explosives. The bomber headed towards Oklahoma City, where on April 19th he would meet his destiny.
Meanwhile, on death row in Arkansas, Richard Snell, the man who had plans to blow up the Murrah Building 13 years before, was awaiting his destiny, also on April 19th: death by lethal injection. The governor had been receiving warnings to delay, but he refused. April 19th would stand.
About two weeks before the execution, Robert Millar warned the government about the significance of April 19th for the extreme right. Then the condemned man began issuing warnings of his own.
Prison official Alan Ables: A few days before the execution I began to hear things from the director, the wardens, just talk in the office, that strange things were going on, Snell was talking strangely, he was, you know, making statements that were a little scary catastrophic events, things were going to happen. This date, April 19th, was going to be something that the governor would regret perhaps.
WOOD: The fifth estate has obtained the prison record which gives a minute-by-minute account of Snell's final days. Snell warned April 19th would be a bad day to kill him, he even warned of a bomb. Snell's former comrade in arms, Kerry Noble:
(to Mr. Noble) Are those the ravings of a man about to be executed or are they the comments of a man with a plan?
NOBLE: I think a man with a plan, I think a man who is taking the satisfaction that his death may mean something after all and that it may be the catalyst that puts somebody over the line to do what he himself didn't get the chance to do.
WOOD: What kind of precautions did you take?
ABLES: I moved my wife, I moved her aboard of a federal installation to spend the day and possibly the next night, if she need be, because I didn't feel safe with her being home.
WOOD: You were that worried.
ABLES: Oh, absolutely.
WOOD: The Arkansas prison was on alert. For the first time in the state's history a condemned man was moved to the execution chamber 50 kilometres away by helicopter. But the increased security precautions were in the wrong place. When the terror struck, it struck in Oklahoma City at 9:02 a.m. On April 19th a Ryder truck parked in front of the Alfred Murrah Building exploded. The building that Richard Snell had targeted back in 1983 was finally destroyed.
The Snell death-watch log notes that at 12:20 p.m., the day Snell was to die by lethal injection, the prisoner requested the TV be turned on. It records that what he watched was coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing. At 12:30, the log notes, Richard Wayne Snell smiled and chuckled.
Robert Millar was with Snell later during his final hours.
MILLAR: He had the same kind of feelings of empathy for the occupants of that building that I had.
WOOD: Which was what on his part?
MILLAR: Well, what a terrible thing to have innocent men, women and children killed.
WOOD: Did he say that to you?
MILLAR: Yes, indeed.
WOOD: When?
MILLAR: On the day of his execution.
WOOD: He did.
MILLAR: He's the one that raised the subject. He said, You heard about the bombing?
WOOD: He told you he was upset, thought it was terrible.
MILLAR: Yes.
WOOD: It's interesting. We have the death-watch log, minute by minute...
MILLAR: Yes.
WOOD: ...which does record his reaction upon seeing the Oklahoma bombing on television in his cell. "News 4 special on the situation in Oklahoma. Inmate Snell watching newscast, smiling and chuckling", says the death-watch log.
MILLAR: Now, that could be, but....
WOOD: Why would he laugh at the Oklahoma bombing?
MILLAR: I can't answer that.
WOOD: And it doesn't bother you to know now that he did chuckle when he saw it on TV? That doesn't in any way change your view of the man?
MILLAR: That's the way that guard recorded it. I have limited respect for some of those guards.
WOOD: So he's wrong.
MILLAR: He may be.
WOOD: But he may be right.
MILLAR: He may be.
WOOD: Just past 9 p.m. prison spokesman Alan Ables got the call confirming Snell was dead.
ABLES (reading Snell's final words): "Look over your shoulder, justice is on the way. I wouldn't trade places with you...
WOOD: He read Richard Wayne Snell's final words.
ABLES: ...hell has victory. I am at peace."
WOOD: Richard Snell asked to be buried in a place where he might find peace, and it was Robert Millar who drove him there, carrying Snell's body away to lay his old friend to rest in a simple grave at Elohim City.
(to Mr. Millar) Why would you bury such a man on this property?
MILLAR: We don't think that any of us are too good to accept the remains of any person, criminal or otherwise.
WOOD: This guy was a bad man.
MILLAR: Well, I don't know how much you know about him.
WOOD: Some people suggest that there has to be some connection between the Oklahoma City bombing and Elohim City when you look at the fact that Jim Ellison, who is living here now, did plot to blow up the Murrah Building in 1983; you visited Mr. Snell, who was also involved in that plot; Tim McVeigh called here; and Mr. McVeigh and Mike Brescia were allegedly hanging around in a bar together. Is this all coincidence?
MILLAR: Well, the Unabomber spent...took his training in Harvard University. I think we would do our country an injustice to start a terrible investigation, of implying that Harvard University is a seedbed of destroying the government.
WOOD: But this is not Harvard. This is a small community where people hold like-minded views.
MILLAR: Yet here are some people that came through, that we tried to help, and if they were involved, good heavens, obviously we didn't help them as much as we could have or should have or would have.
WOOD: Obviously you didn't.
MILLAR: Yes. If they were involved. So it's not obvious until you prove they were involved.
NOBLE: I think that probably Millar knew that something major was going to happen. Now, whether he knew the exact details, chances are he probably did not, because he would not want to know specific details at first. But I think he knew something major was going to happen.
WOOD: Reverend Millar, your critics suggest that you sit back, you don't get involved, that you're too darned cagey to get your hands dirty.
MILLAR: Let me tell you something. If I knew something like that was taking place then or today, I'd do everything I could do to prevent it and, if necessary, call in government agents to help stop it.
WOOD: About three months after the bombing Millar asked both Andy Strassmeir and Mike Brescia to leave. Still, embarrassing coincidences continued to dog Elohim City. November 1995: Ray Lampley and his wife were arrested for plotting to bomb Jewish and anti-Klan groups. FBI affidavits said they planned to test their bombs at Elohim City. Two months later a gang called the Aryan Republican Army was busted, charged with robbing a dozen banks to finance white supremacist activity - two gang members had been residents of Elohim City.
(to Mr. Millar) Did you also not have a connection to...there were some Aryan robbers who stayed here as well, weren't there?
MILLAR: That's what I heard.
WOOD: That's what you heard. The Lampleys wanted to test a bomb here, they testified?
MILLAR: Well, that idea was pretty well exploded in court.
WOOD: Yeah. Are these God's children, these people who come through here?
MILLAR: Oh, I think so. I think even TV reporters are God's children.
WOOD: Stick with us, won't you? When we return Francine Pelletier goes on the trail of some guys who may be on your trail.
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TRISH WOOD: That's our program for tonight. I'm Trish Wood. For Francine Pelletier and all of us at the Fifth Estate, good night.
