A new book about Timothy McVeigh claims to be the definitive study of the Oklahoma City bombing. In reality, it is merely a rehash of the old Justice Department “lone wolf” scenario.
American Terrorist : Timothy McVeigh & the Oklahoma City Bombing, by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, New York, N.Y.: Regan Books, 2001, 426 pages, hardback.
With the execution of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh looming, a “definitive” report was needed to settle the many troubling, unanswered questions surrounding the case. Now, according to the Establishment media consensus, we have that definitive report, in the form of American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the Oklahoma City Bombing, the new book by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck.
Finally, all the wild speculation and “conspiracy theories” can be put to rest. So say the media mavens hyping the sensational new tell-all. Michel and Herbeck, reporters for The Buffalo News, spent thousands of hours, over the past five years, we are told, piecing together the puzzling case. But the coup for these journalist sleuths was scoring “more than 75 hours of jailhouse interviews” with McVeigh. Toward the end of those interviews, McVeigh revealed that he was indeed the “lone bomber,” just as the federal government has claimed. He alone was the mastermind of the plot to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. And McVeigh alone devised and built (with minor help from pal Terry Nichols, whom McVeigh says he had to threaten in order to obtain assistance) the Ryder truck bomb that authorities credit with destroying the Murrah Building and murdering 168 men, women, and children.
“I bombed the Murrah Building,” McVeigh reportedly told the authors. And his reason? “I did it for the larger good.” McVeigh had given previous interviews to broadcast and print media but had avoided answering questions concerning his guilt in the heinous terrorist act. According to Michel and Herbeck, “his silence had left room for wild speculation about the true story of the bombing, from incidental rumors about a second bomber to broader conspiracy theories involving foreign terrorists and militia groups.”
However, McVeigh’s “confession” from the federal death row facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, is supposed to silence all those wild ravings. Why should we believe McVeigh’s confession? The authors answer: “The depth of detail, the way his answers often perfectly fit the scenario raised by FBI investigators and prosecutors, and jibed with witness testimony, convinced Dan and me that McVeigh was telling the truth.”
But it is precisely this “perfect fit” between the McVeigh confession and the demonstrable lies, deceptions, cover-ups, and obfuscations of the federal investigators and prosecutors that discredits McVeigh’s boastful “lone wolf” claim. One would think that the award-winning Buffalo reporters would have recognized this fact. The average citizen who followed the OKC “investigation” and trials through the deceiving prism offered by the press may be forgiven for not being familiar with the Titanic-sized holes and discrepancies in the government’s presentation, but seasoned journalists who have spent “thousands of hours” on the case cannot claim the same immunity. Tim McVeigh, by all indications, is a reasonably intelligent fellow who has had nothing but time on his hands for the past several years. He has been immersed in (perhaps obsessed with) his case and his “place in history.” Of course he would have “depth of detail,” but, as we will point out, the authors provide little in the way of answers to the most troubling aspects and contradictions of this case.
Pre-setting the Hate Dial
The media hype attending the release of the Michel-Herbeck book has been carefully calculated to marginalize critics who point out that the government has allowed McVeigh’s co-conspirators to get off scot-free. Typical of this campaign was an April 5th Reuters news story sporting this none-too-subtle headline: “Right-Wing Groups View Bomber McVeigh As a ‘Patsy.’”
“As Timothy McVeigh awaits execution,” said the Reuters piece, “anti-government groups suspect the Oklahoma City bomber of being a brainwashed ‘patsy.’” Predictably, the story put heavy weight on the “expert” opinion of “Mark Pitcavage, who tracks right-wing hate groups.” Mr. Pitcavage, a professional left-wing hired gun for the Clinton-Reno Justice Department, has made a lucrative career of tagging virtually anyone to the right of Fidel Castro as a member of some “right-wing hate group.”
According to the thesis propounded by Pitcavage and other media-anointed experts, only McVeigh sympathizers, neo-Nazis, and other nasty folk will now continue to cling to discredited conspiracy theories that try to show others involved with McVeigh in the bombing. To make sure of this, these stories have poured on the hate fuel, associating doubters of the “lone bomber” verdict with the usual epithets: “anti-government,” “extremist,” “right-wing,” and, of course, “hate groups.” Nothing like inciting hate to (supposedly) fight “hate,” eh?
One of the most astounding statements made by Michel and Herbeck comes in the book’s opening pages: “To McVeigh, we would learn, telling the truth — even if it meant saying brutal and hurtful things that put him in the worst possible light — is a matter of both honor and calculated purpose.” Incredible! McVeigh, the object of this compliment, is not only a convicted mass murderer but, by the authors’ own account, a pathological liar. Yes, the authors provide dozens of examples throughout their book of McVeigh lying — to his family, friends, strangers, Army superiors, business associates, and law enforcement. With such a history of deception, why should they (or anyone) believe his story now, especially when it flies in the face of mountains of evidence and eyewitness testimony?
And what of McVeigh’s supposed “honor”? According to the authors, McVeigh is remorseless and defiant and only regrets that the death of the children in the Murrah Building has detracted from the message of his terrorist act. What soldier could find even a twisted sense of “honor” in such a wanton, despicable, and evil deed? Michel and Herbeck were willing to let McVeigh soften his baby-killer image somewhat, buying his line that, “had I known there was an entire day-care center, it might have given me pause to switch targets.”
“Despite persistent rumors that would later have McVeigh walking the halls of the Murrah Building,” the authors write, “McVeigh never had any intention of crossing its threshold.” They somehow found him totally credible when he told them, “I’ve never been in the Murrah Building in my life.” This is one of the book’s points that has touched a major nerve in Oklahoma City. It is seen, and rightfully so, as an attempt partially to absolve McVeigh of the egregiousness of his crime.
To its credit, Newsweek, in its April 9th issue, allowed a brief challenge to this thesis by bombing survivor Dennis Purifoy. “There’s evidence that he [McVeigh] cased the building as many as four times,” Purifoy was quoted as saying. Indeed there is, but Newsweek didn’t bother to present any of it. Neither did Michel and Herbeck. In taking McVeigh’s side on this matter, they had to overlook abundant evidence to the contrary. And we’re not talking mere “rumors,” as the authors suggest. One of those who has given detailed eyewitness testimony on McVeigh’s presence in the Murrah Building is Dr. Paul Heath. Hardly a “right-wing extremist,” Heath has been the Clintonites’ prize point man among the survivors, always supporting every move of the Justice Department. However, on this one important matter he has dramatically contradicted their story. Of course, he was not called to testify on this at the trial. Neither was the former head of the Murrah day-care center, who reportedly told investigators that McVeigh had actually come into the day-care center and inquired about enrolling a child in the program. Other survivors, including HUD personnel and a member of the Army recruitment office, also reported specifically seeing McVeigh inside the building.
Fallacy of the Lone Wolf
Aside from the obvious internal contradictions in American Terrorist, there is an even larger, fatal problem that the book shares with the Clinton-Reno Justice Department — the obsession with closing this case as a “lone wolf” operation, in spite of massive evidence to the contrary. Remember, it was the federal government’s own indictment of McVeigh that cited evidence of “others unknown” who conspired and worked with McVeigh to carry out the bombing. Besides the still-missing “John Doe No. 2,” there is much evidence that several additional co-conspirators remain at large. We have reported extensively on this in the past. An abbreviated survey of the evidence includes:
- The fact that Reno Justice dropped all of its eyewitnesses placing McVeigh in Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing because every one of them saw him with one or more John Does. Many of these witnesses were otherwise “model” witnesses.
- The prosecution’s key eyewitnesses in Junction City, Kansas, including the three eyewitnesses at the Ryder truck agency, saw McVeigh with one or more John Does.
- Even Establishment media organs such as the New York Times, the Dallas Morning News, and NBC Dateline have done major pieces on the compelling, credible testimony of eyewitnesses from Junction City to Oklahoma City concerning McVeigh with multiple co-conspirators.
- The prosecution admitted at trial that over 1,000 fingerprints taken from McVeigh’s motel room, his getaway car, and the Ryder truck agency had purposely not been checked.
“This conscious decision not to investigate these other fingerprints, when [the FBI] admitted it would only have taken a matter of hours, is incredible,” Kathy Wilburn told The New American. “They have spent tens of millions of dollars … investigating this crime, but have repeatedly refused to do some of the most obvious things that might lead to others involved in the bombing besides McVeigh and Nichols.” Mrs. Wilburn, whose two young grandsons were killed in the bombing, said, “Why, even to this day, have those unidentified prints not been checked? Why have some of the most obvious suspects never been questioned and the most solid evidence ignored?”
One of the suspects she pointed to was Andreas Strassmeir, the mysterious German illegal alien who was living at the “Christian Identity” outpost known as “Elohim City” in rural eastern Oklahoma. McVeigh placed a call for Strassmeir to Elohim City two weeks before the bombing — immediately after calling the Ryder truck rental agency. According to official records, McVeigh had received a traffic ticket less than five miles from the backwoods redoubt, indicating he had been to Elohim City, since there was no other reason to be in that vicinity. According to official ATF records and the testimony of Carol Howe, an undercover ATF/FBI operative, federal officials knew months in advance of the bombing that Strassmeir, a reputed explosives expert, was advocating bombings and other terrorist acts. Government records and court evidence indicate that Strassmeir and other Elohim suspects were actually government “assets.”
The Single-Bomb Absurdity
Like the rest of the media pack, Michel and Herbeck parrot the discredited Reno Justice single-bomb scenario. Hard science and experts with impeccable credentials have completely demolished that farce. The New American has led a comprehensive investigation of this aspect of the bombing, revealing the following:
- At the McVeigh trial, the prosecutors were forced to pull their top FBI experts as witnesses because a devastating report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General on abuses and fraudulent practices at the FBI crime lab specifically discredited the FBI’s Oklahoma City investigation.
- Dave Williams, the FBI agent in charge of the OKC crime scene, egregiously violated all of the basic protocols for crime scene security and evidence collection, preservation, labeling, and transference.
- Agent Williams was forced to admit that his claim that the Murrah Building had been destroyed by an ANFO (ammonium nitrate-fuel oil) bomb — a central thesis of the government’s case — had not been based on any science and that he had grossly fudged the evidence to fit his theory on all of the major points concerning the truck bomb: the size and composition; the velocity of the explosives; the type of detonator used; and the containers that supposedly were used.
- Preeminent explosives experts such as General Benton K. Partin (USAF, Ret.), neutron bomb inventor Sam Cohen, and NASA physicist Frederick Hansen have asserted that it would be physically impossible for the blast from the truck bomb outside the building to have caused the destruction of the massive, steel-reinforced concrete columns of the Murrah Building, without supplementary demolition charges inside the building.
- The asymmetrical pattern of the bomb damage — in which columns nearer the truck bomb were spared while those farther away from the blast collapsed — is totally incompatible with physics and explosives experience.
- In addition to photographic evidence of demolition charge effects to the bases of the collapsed columns, there are sworn eyewitness affidavits, as well as official radio logs and communiqués from police, the fire department, and the U.S. Defense Department testifying that undetonated demolition charges were removed from the Murrah Building during the first several hours after the blast.
- The prosecution’s star witness, Michael Fortier, testified that shortly before the Oklahoma bombing, McVeigh and Nichols had been unable to successfully detonate even a small milk carton of ANFO, yet now they are credited with hurriedly constructing a crude bomb that was 100 percent efficient in burning all of its explosive components, something not even attained by scientists in lab settings with high-grade materials.
- Even if McVeigh had somehow managed to develop his ANFO truck bomb expertise to such unparalleled levels, there is no evidence that he possessed the explosive materials or the knowledge required to also place the charges on the building columns. Moreover, he did not have the time to do so. More hands and more brains (i.e., additional co-conspirators) were essential.
Contrary to the claims and hoopla of its media cheerleaders, American Terrorist does not provide the final verdict on the Oklahoma bombing.
For in-depth coverage of the OKC bombing visit our website at www.thenewamerican.com/focus/okc.