TERRY NICHOLS IMPLICATES FBI INFORMANT IN BOMBING
By Pat Shannan
A recent raid on the one-time home of Terry Nichols has
uncovered more evidence implicating federal agents in the bombing of Oklahoma
City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building on April 19, 1995.
A source has told AFP that bomb components discovered at the
former home of the OKC bombing accomplice have been linked to a federal
informant who investigators believe
lied during the trial of Timothy McVeigh, who was executed after his conviction in the bombing.
There are now serious allegations that the FBI, using an
informer as a conduit, supplied McVeigh and Nichols with the blasting
components the two used to construct explosive devices, one of which may have
been employed in the tragic Oklahoma City bombing.
Although there was much recent media hoopla surrounding the
March 31 FBI raid on Nichols’s vacant home in Herington, Kan., the entire
story, which is not being told by the mainstream media, suggests evidence of
federal government complicity in events leading up to the OKC tragedy.
While the media reported that previously undiscovered explosives
were found on the raid at Nichols’s home, adding further fuel to widespread
public belief that Nichols—and McVeigh—were solely responsible for the OKC
bombing, there’s much more to the story than meets the eye.
In fact, AFP has learned that Nichols himself apparently leaked
the information about the previously undiscovered cache in his Kansas home.
Why Nichols did so is the real story behind the story that
the media seems to be keeping under wraps. Nichols’s apparent goal in sharing
this information was to provide information not only to bust the man who
allegedly supplied the material, an FBI informant named Roger Moore—Nichols
being certain that Moore’s fingerprints would be on the material—but also to expose
the FBI’s role in supplying Moore the material in
the first place.
Those familiar with the details of the case say Nichols has
evidently come to conclude—as have many independent investigators—that he
(Nichols) and McVeigh were being manipulated prior to the bombing by federal authorities
in what was intended to be a “sting” the feds would use as “proof” of their
skill in tackling domestic “terrorist threats” from “radical right wing
extremists.”
However, it is believed, the sting went awry, possibly manipulated
by others outside the loop, and the bombing occurred.
Now, in prison for life, Nichols evidently hopes to expose the role that Moore and his live-in girlfriend, Karen Anderson, played in the events.
Moore and Anderson gave testimony in the federal trial,
helping to convict Nichols. But independent investigators have said all
along—contradicting the FBI’s reliance on Moore and Anderson—that their
testimony was obviously perjured.
The problem for Nichols, though, is that the record has
shown that Moore was an admitted FBI informant as long as a decade ago and may
be still protected.
Moore, a Royal, Ark. gun dealer, claimed to have been robbed
by McVeigh and Nichols of some 66 guns, cash and gold coins in November 1994.
The FBI and federal
prosecutors claimed that the proceeds were used to finance
the OKC operation.
However, the defense team undermined that theory by producing
a signed motel receipt proving McVeigh was in Akron, Ohio, on the date in
question. This did not keep
either the prosecutors or the news media from repeating the
robbery story. It is still widely believed.
Moore, who used the alias “Bob Miller,” according to Nichols,
later changed his story and said that it definitely was not McVeigh and Nichols
who had robbed him, but
he apparently was attempting to plant the opposite impression
at the time. Townspeople remembered Moore going from barroom to barbershop the
week of the alleged robbery, describing McVeigh and asking if anyone had seen
him in the area.
At the time, Moore was a confidential informant for two FBI
agents named Ross and Hayes, out of the Hot Springs office. The two were the
same agents who discovered
the “stolen” guns in a sack behind the house trailer of
Michael Fortier in Kingman, Ariz., a few days after the bombing.
Fortier was later implicated in the conspiracy and is serving
a 20-year sentence.
AFP has learned that the FBI had the information as early as
March 1. Agents had received this information purportedly from the mouth of
Nichols through an oftused
informant named Gregory Scarpa, who is a convicted mobster serving a long stretch with Nichols in Florence, Colo.
At first, FBI officials scoffed at the idea, but then sent a
polygraph expert to the prison on March 4. He concluded that Scarpa was lying.
Scarpa then called private investigators he had worked with
in the past and, during a seven-hour meeting on March 10, showed a letter in
Nichols’s handwriting attesting
to his claim.
Not trusting the FBI, the investigators worked through a
contact, who had high-level Homeland Security connections.
Then, on March 11, Scarpa provided the authorities with the
address of the house and detailed descriptions of the location of the
explosives.
Nichols had allegedly told Scarpa that he hid this second cache
10 years ago to be used as a follow-up to the Oklahoma City blast.
On March 31, the FBI finally made its move—calling in the
Topeka bomb squad, evacuating the immediate neighborhood, and cordoning off a
three-block area.
They worked through the night and into the next day.
The FBI would not confirm that its agents found anything, but
mainstream news organizations were told by Oklahoma City’s FBI office that
explosive devices were
found. What little surfaced in a period of predictable news frenzy, was that the FBI was embarrassed for not having found this material 10 years ago.