The John Doe Times
Vol. III, No. 13
8 February 1997
IN THIS ISSUE:
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The John Doe Times is an on-line, electronic newsletter which, today, is in one heck of a hurry to get the news out, so, without further ado....Sic Semper Rodentia.
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NBC NIGHTLY NEWS, 7 FEBRUARY 1997
Tom Brokaw Speaking:
On NBC news In Depth tonight: a special investigation that has centered on a simple chilling question, "Did federal officials have any sort of advanced knowledge, a warning, that someone might be plotting to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City,
NBC news has learned that an undercover informer, for the FBI, a woman who was a part of a white supremacist group, provided information about bomb threat. But was it enough to prevent this tragedy?
Voice of Mike Boetcher: April 19th, 1995, the largest investigation in US history was launched. But NBC News has learned that, in the months before the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, federal investigators had been told bombings were being discussed, only three hours away.
Elohim City.... A rag-tag community of huts and trailers, is also home for what, federal investigators say, is a collection of white supremacists. NBC News has learned, the community was penetrated by this woman, Carol Howe (image of her), a paid government informer, who was gathering information on possible threats of the U.S. government. In this photograph, dressed in a Russian general's uniform, a joke. But her business was deadly serious.
Howe, from Tulsa, was once a debutante. But she traded this life for fatigues, and the underground . Starting in June of 1994, Howe began telling the BATF, and later the FBI, that Dennis Mahon, a leader in the Neo-Nazi movement, often spoke with others at the compound about building a bomb, and often about specific targets.
Two days after the OKC bombing, according to FBI documents Howe reported that Mahon had talked of targeting federal installations for destruction through bombing, such as the IRS building, Tulsa Federal building, and the Oklahoma City federal building. Federal officials say these specific threats were never relayed to them before the bombing. And Dennis Mahon, who now lives in Tulsa, denies any connections to any threats or bombing.
"I never said anything like that, that is a lie", (voice of Dennis Mahon).
Remarkably, Howe and Mahon, appear in a 1994 German television interview. Mahon, the supremacist, and Howe the informer, are asked if their movement, had been infiltrated.
"I know for a fact, infiltrated by the FBI, they are trying to get involved......" ( her voice trails off. During response to this question, she is stuttering and stammering.)
Howe gave the government information before the bombing on alleged threats by others in Elohim City, including this man, Andreas Strassmier. According to federal documents, Strassmier was the military training officer for Mahons organization, called the White Aryan Resistance. The FBI summary of informant Carol Howe's reports, states, "Strassmier has talked frequently about direct action against the United States government. He is trained in weaponry and has discussed assassinations, bombing, and mass shooting. Strassmier and Mahon have taken three 3 trips to Oklahoma City."
Strassmier's whereabouts are unknown, he was last seen in in Germany. As for the informant Carol Howe, she is now in hiding. She refuses requests for interviews. But the government acknowledged in federal documents, that she was their informant.
While Carol Howe reported on white supremacists, their talk about bombing, and anti- government threats, there is no evidence she reported specific treats to the Murrah Federal building before the bombing.
END OF STORY.
(Transcribed by Bob Hall and the Staff of The John Doe Times.)
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JDT Commentary: This piece is not as complete, nor as hard-hitting, as the spiked ABC piece was. Still, a true story broadcast, however incomplete, is better than one still in the can, hidden from the public for political purposes.
I have it on extremely good authority that the government tried it's damnedest to spike the NBC story too. NBC, to its credit, resisted.
Just as we asked our readers to mobilize against Disney and ABC and demand that they show their story, we urge you to call up NBC Nightly News and Dateline and praise them for having the courage to defy Slick Willie and his OKC coverup.
-- Mike Vanderboegh, Editor. Attached you will find another piece of government perifdy versus the media, as well as Dennis Mahon's reaction to the NBC story.
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The John Doe Times --Attachment
Volume III, No. 13
8 February 1997
FBI DISINFORMATION VS. NBC AFFILIATE: RETRIBUTION FOR NETWORK RUNNING CAROL HOWE STORY?
The following story originally ran under the headline "White Supremacist Tipped to FBI raid by TV News Crew". If I had the time to carefully disassemble this canard, I would cite who told what to whom, and when. As I don't have that kind of time, let's just roll thru the story with a truth detector......
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- White-supremacist leader Mark William Thomas, accused of conspiring to rob Midwestern banks, was tipped that FBI agents were about to arrest him last week, according to federal authorities.
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JDT Commentary: THOMAS HAD ALREADY BEEN "TIPPED" TO THAT FACT BY THE U.S. ATTORNEY, WHO HAD SENT HIM A LETTER SOME TIME AGO INFORMING HIM THAT HE WAS UNDER INVESTIGATION!!!! Thomas, whatever his political evils, is not stupid. He knew they were coming, it was just a matter of when.
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FBI agents arriving at Thomas' Berks County farm early on Jan. 30 were surprised to find a Channel 10 news crew on the premises. Fearing that Thomas might take hostages, the agents scrapped their plan to search the house and arrest him, officials said.
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JDT Commentary: My, my, how melodramatic! "We've learned from Waco," they seem to be saying, "we didn't want to endanger the news crew who were endangering themselves." Rumors have been flying for months that Brescia and Thomas were going to be arrested-- most of them generated by leaks out of the Philadelphia FBI and U.S. Attorney's offices to reporters from all over the country when those reporters would ask the perenniel and (for the FBI) very uncomfortable question: "How come you haven't arrested these guys yet?. The militia's even putting posters up taunting you guys to arrest them. How come?" the reporters would ask. And the answer would always come, "Oh well, we're going to get him this week (next week, tomorrow, after Christmas, before New Years, on St. Crispin's Day, you name it)" Readers of the JDT will recall how many times we passed on one of these FBI leaks to you and how many times they proved false. They were lying, buying time. Literally, lying for time.
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Instead, they entered into telephone negotiations with Thomas's attorney, Peter David Maynard. Thomas surrendered about seven hours later at the FBI office in Allentown and is being held without bail.
It appeared that Thomas was tipped by the arrival of the Channel 10 news team, compromising agents' opportunity to make a surprise search and arrest, according to Michael L. Levy, first assistant U.S. attorney here. Station officials, however, said Thomas already knew the FBI was coming.
``If we're going to execute a search warrant, we prefer the subject not know we're going to arrive,'' Levy said Thursday.
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JDT Commentary: Then why send him a letter? More to the point, why delay for months when Thomas KNEW he was about to be busted on one of any number of possible charges. Whose fault is this, anyway?
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WCAU officials said they had been alerted that FBI agents had planned to arrest Thomas but that the news crew didn't tell the suspect.
Maynard could not be reached for comment Thursday.
WCAU news director Steve Doerr said the station had gotten a tip the night of Jan. 29 that Thomas would be arrested the next morning. He would not identify the tipster.
Doerr said the source told the station that Thomas was afraid he might be harmed by the FBI. ``He had some safety concerns,'' he said.
Matt Stevens, the reporter who interviewed Thomas on Jan. 30, said he had not known an arrest was planned. He said Doerr had told him to be at the farm early that morning because ``something could happen.'' Thomas knew FBI agents were on their way and said so, the reporter said.
``We certainly didn't tell him anything he didn't already know'' Stevens said.
Levy said he was trying to find out who had alerted the Philadelphia news crew that Thomas' arrest was imminent. He also was trying to determine whether evidence had been destroyed.
Stevens, however, said it was ``absurd'' to think that the news crew's visit gave Thomas the chance to destroy evidence. From 6 a.m. that day until 12:30 p.m., when Thomas drove to Allentown to surrender, the white supremacist leader never left his kitchen and was in the presence of the Channel 10 crew or other journalists. A reporter and a photographer from a local newspaper also were on the farm and a news helicopter was flying overhead, he said.
Thomas's toddler and pregnant wife were in the kitchen, too, according to Stevens, who said he did not feel in danger at the farm. ``I don't think the guy even owns a pop gun,'' he said.
A federal grand jury last week indicted Thomas, 47, and four other men on charges of planning seven Midwest bank robberies in 1994 and 1995 to help fund white-separatist activities, including the purchase of guns, nationwide. Authorities say the robberies were among 22 Midwest bank heists committed by white separatists from November 1993 to the end of 1995.
Thomas has ties to white-supremacist groups around the country and is known for using his farm as a haven for Nazis, skinheads and other members of the extreme right.
Doerr said WCAU had been working on the Thomas story since June, and had never heard a word from the FBI.
``This is the first I've heard of any concerns from the FBI, or anyone else. Clearly, if we thought we were treading on an investigation in any way, we wouldn't have done it, or we would have done it differently,'' Doerr said. ``If the FBI had concerns about our reporting, I'm concerned.''
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JDT Commentary: The fact is that when Jamie Gorelick, Justice Department Coverup Queen, announced there was no John Doe #2, serious money was offered among the band of reporters that have been following this story that Brescia and Thomas were soon to be arrested. There were no takers. An eight-year intelligence analyst for the Cub Scouts could figure it out. Shame on the FBI for blaming it's own bungling (intential and otherwise) on NBC.
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THE JOHN DOE TIMES
Vol. III, No. 13, Attachment #2
8 February 1997
MAHON SEZ: "WHAT, ME BOMBER?"
The John Doe Times-- Attachment
Vol.III, No. 13, Attachment #2
8 February 1997
DENNIS MAHON DENOUNCES CAROL HOWE-- "WHAT, ME BOMBER?"
White Supremacist Disputes Informant's Story
By STEVEN K. PAULSON
Associated Press Writer
DENVER (AP) -- A White Aryan Resistance leader on Friday denied a government informant's claim that he had talked of bombing the Oklahoma City federal building in the months before the fatal attack.
Dennis Mahon, leader of the extremist group in Oklahoma, accused Carole Howe of lying to help the government convict Timothy McVeigh.
Howe reportedly told FBI agents two days after the April 19, 1995, bombing that Mahon and a German citizen named Andreas Strassmeir had discussed bombing federal installations in November or December 1994.
But federal officials have said they never received specific threats about the Alfred P. Murrah building before the bombing, which killed 168 people and injured 500 others.
In a telephone interview Friday, Mahon said he specifically rejected the idea of blowing up federal buildings when Howe, who was being paid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, brought up the possibility.
``I told her it was probably going to happen in the future because people were fed up with the government, but I told her that I was an above-ground activist and I wasn't going to do anything illegal,'' Mahon said.
McVeigh and Terry Nichols could be sentenced to death if convicted of federal murder and conspiracy charges in the bombing. McVeigh is being tried first.
The only apparent public link between McVeigh and Mahon's white-supremacist group is a telephone call made by someone using McVeigh's long-distance calling card two weeks before the bombing.
The call was to the Muldrow, Okla., camp of Elohim City, a white separatist religious commune where Strassmeir lived.
Elohim City leaders said the caller, believed to have been McVeigh, asked to speak to Strassmeir, but was told he was not there.
Strassmeir, who was investigated but dismissed as a suspect in the bombing, acknowledged meeting McVeigh at a gun show in Tulsa in 1993 but said he has not seen him since.
As for Howe, Mahon said he had warned others at Elohim City that she might be a government informant. And he said she's lying if she claims he talked about targeting the Oklahoma federal building.
`She is going to break McVeigh's trial wide open if she says Strassmeir and I talked about blowing up the building, because that's a big lie,'' Mahon told the Rocky Mountain News.
Howe and her attorney could not be reached for comment.
According to documents obtained by station KTVT in Fort Worth, Texas, McVeigh ``selected Oklahoma City for the fact that the agents and the orders that came out of that building were responsible for the tragedy at Waco, Texas,'' Michael Fortier, the government's star witness, told FBI agents.
But if McVeigh wanted to strike back at agents involved in the deadly raid on the Branch Davidian compound, he chose the wrong structure. ATF agents were present during the long siege at Waco, but none were involved in the deadly FBI raid two years before the bombing, said Les Martz, the Dallas-based special agent in charge of the agency's Oklahoma operation.
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JDT Commentary: Anything broadcast by CBS, the Clinton Broadcasting System, can be guaranteed to be government propaganda, if not disinformation. Fortier is so compromised that he's never going to be allowed to testify at the trial. When it gets right down to it, the Feds will watch McVeigh walk rather than compromise their coverup. As for CBS, they still haven't figured out how to find Oklahoma without the U.S. prosecution team pointing them in the right direction. They had Brescia's place staked out prior to his arrest. Did they use any of the footage? Have they given us a better photo of Brescia? Were they just there to give the FBI surveillance team a break from the rigors of the Philadelphia winter? Ask Dan Rather.
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