Federal Goverment Prior Knowledge of the OKC Bombing
by Ian Williams Goddard
Evidence is overwhelming that federal authorities were aware that a
terrorist event was going to take place in Oklahoma City before the
bombing of the Murrah Building took place. In fact, two law suits
have been filed against the federal government on the behalf of
bombing victims for failing to give warning to victims of the
bombing.
In the first suit, attorney Richard Bieder will represent at least 44
victims. [1] In the second suit, filed in the District Court of
Oklahoma County (4/18/97), O.J. Simpson's defence lawyer
Johnnie Cochran will represent over 300 people who suffered
losses in the bombing. About that suit the Associated Press
reported [2]:
More than 300 people joined the lawsuit against the government. They claim the
[ATF] had prior warning of the April 19, 1995 bombing and that officials of the
day care center in the federal building knew or should have known about the attack.
Indeed, the shocking claim by victims and family members that the federal government had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing is supported by an overwhelming body of evidence.
EVIDENCE OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
The ABC program 20/20 recently reported (1/17/97) on its
investigation into the claim that the federal government had prior
knowledge of the Murrah Building bombing. [3] The 20/20
program opened with the question asked by anchor Tom Jarriel:
"What did authorities know or expect before the explosion that
federal workers and the children arriving at the Murrah Building
did not know or were not told?" Jarriel continued, stating that:
For seven months 20/20 has looked into just that question and we have found
solid facts which tend to support... suspicions [of prior knowledge]. Our
investigation uncovered eyewitnesses and government documents which show
a lot of unusual activity was going on behind the scene shortly before
the explosion occurred.
20/20 interviewed several eyewitnesses who saw the Oklahoma
County Bomb Squad truck across the street from the Murrah
Building shortly before the blast. The 20/20 investigation even
discovered and displayed several local publications in which
witnesses reported having seen the Bomb Squad before the blast.
These publications include:
WORKIN' INTEREST, Parker & Rassley Petroleum USA Inc.
THE PANOLA WATCHMAN, a local newspaper
MASS MEDIA, an interoffice newsletter that reads:
M A S S M E D I A
Special Edition of the Oklahoma County Assessors Newsletter
By J.D. Reed
As usual, I pulled into the parking garage about 7:30 and made my way into
our office building. Although it was unusual to see the Oklahoma County Bomb
Disposal Unit parked outside the court-house, I assumed it was routine business and thought no more about it.
The Oklahoma County Sheriff's Department claims that the large
Bomb Squad truck with trailer, which was used later that day to
remove the unexploded bombs found inside the Murrah Building
[4], was outside prior to the bombing because a deputy was using it
for "routine errands."
One eyewitness, Claude Fritz, told 20/20 that he saw paramilitary
Bomb Squad personnel searching the outside of the courthouse
across the street; he said that prior to the blast "the presence of law
enforcement was in the air, it was everywhere downtown that
morning."
In fact Fritz witnessed several fire trucks speeding toward the
Murrah Building with sirens blazing moments before the blast.
When another ABC program, EXTRA, con- tacted the Oklahoma
City Fire Department to ask them about Fritz's claim, the Fire
Department told EXTRA: "We can't really confirm or deny that
claim." [5]
20/20 established, contrary to official denials, that the Oklahoma
City Fire Department received a call from the FBI five days before
the bombing (04/14/95) warning them that "there were some people
coming through town they should be on the look out for."
Perhaps most shocking, the 20/20 investigation discovered that
someone had called the Executive Secretariat's Office at the Justice
Department in Washington D.C. to report the Murrah Building
bombing 24 minutes before the blast. 20/20 quoted on screen the
official government document reading:
The Department of Justice...received a telephone call...twenty-four minutes
prior to the bombing... The caller said, "The federal building in Oklahoma City
has just been bombed."
20/20 anchor Tom Jarrel then noted that "no action was apparently
taken" by the Justice Department in response to that strange
emergency call minutes before the blast.
With early warnings and with the heavy law-enforcement presence
around the Murrah Building that morning, it's surprising that the
vehicles seen by witnesses speeding away from the Murrah
Building seconds before the blast were not noticed by the law-
enforcement officers. [6][7]
THE JUDGE WHO KNEW
U.S. District Judge Wayne Alley, whose office was in the federal
courthouse across the street from the Murrah Building, told
Oregon's largest daily newspaper, The Oregonian, that he had been
warned to take "extra precautions" several days before the April
19th blast.
Judge Alley told The Oregonian (04/20/97): "Let me just say that
within the past two or three weeks, information has been
disseminated... that indicated concerns on the part of people who
ought to know that we ought to be a little bit more careful." He said
that he was told to keep an eye out for "people... wandering about
in the courthouse who aren't supposed to be there, [and] letter
bombs. There has been an increased vigilance." By an amazing
stroke of good luck, Alley did not show up for work on April 19th.
The forewarnings that Judge Alley received were reserved for only a select few. And indeed, Alley was an important official, so much so that on August 10, 1995 he was assigned to be the judge in the Oklahoma City bombing case.
The defense tried for months to have Alley removed from the case, but to no avail. Then the defense discovered Alley's statements in The Oregonian and submitted them to the court on November 30, 1995. Within 48 hours, on December 1st, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals removed Alley from the case, ruling that because his office was across the street from, and damaged by, the blast, he could not be considered an impartial party in the case. [8] Yet no mention was made by the federal court of Judge Alley's forewarnings. [9]
ATF CLEARED OUT OF BUILDING?
While at least 10 ATF agents were at the Murrah Building
moments after the blast [10], it seems that the ATF office inside the
building was empty at the time of the blast. The ABC program
20/20 (01/17/97) interviewed a man who, while looking for his
wife at the Murrah Building, ran into an ATF agent who said that
he had survived the blast because "We were tipped by our pagers
not to come into work today."
That same individual, whose wife was injured in the blast, had been
interviewed previously along with two other witnesses by NBC's
affiliate in Oklahoma City, KFOR television (09/12/95). The
second witness, the boss of the first, told KFOR viewers that he
had overheard the account of the first witness just cited. The third
witness, a rescue worker, had also been informed that there were no
ATF agents in the building that day. All three witnesses spoke to
KFOR, just as the first of the three spoke to 20/20, in shadow for
fear of ATF reprisal. [9]
Their fear of the ATF was well-founded: just ask former ATF
agents Diane Kipel and Mike Casali, who were targeted for
harassment and intimidation by the ATF after blowing the whistle
on theft by ATF agents during raids in Chicago. As a result, they
lived in constant terror for months, even keeping their children and
themselves away from windows in their home through which they
feared they would be shot by ATF snipers. [11]
ATF COVERS-UP PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
In response to charges that the ATF had prior knowledge and had
cleared its agents out of the Murrah Building before the blast, the
ATF scrambled to cook up a cover- story: the ATF claimed that its
agent Alex McCauley along with DEA agent David Chickendance,
had survived the blast while inside an elevator that fell five stories.
After the free-fall, the two forced the elevator doors open and
proceeded heroically to rescue many other survivors -- or so the
ATF story went.
Not taking the ATF story at face value, 20/20 interviewed elevator
maintenance crewmen Oscar Johnson and Duane James of Midwest
Elevator, who said that the ATF's story was "pure fantasy." The
crew had inspected the Murrah Building elevators shortly after the
blast on April 19 and found that all the elevators were in perfect
condition and could not possibly have fallen as the ATF claimed.
Furthermore, according the Midwest Elevator, not only could the
two federal agents not have fallen or have opened the elevator
doors, but they also could not have survived a five-story fall
without sustaining traumatic injuries, and subsequently they could
not have proceeded to rescue other people.[9] The ATF must have
been pretty desperate to have fabricated such a fantastically false
fable. By the way, according to 20/20, DEA agent David
Chickendance won the National Policeman of the Year Award for
his "heroic" part in that fraudulent federal fable.
PRIOR WARNING FROM ATF AGENT
The following evidence of prior knowledge by the federal
government to the Oklahoma City bombing, perhaps the most
important in this case, revolves around two undercover operatives,
Carol Howe and Andreas Strassmeir. While there are several
possible suspects, some investigators believe that Strassmeir is the
elusive John Doe 2.
ANDREAS STRASSMEIR is the son of the German politician
Gunther Strassmeir, often referred to as the "architect of German
reunification." According to his lawyer Kirk Lyons, Andreas
Strassmeir was trained in military intelligence operations at the
Bundeswehr Academy in Hanover, Germany. His close friend
Dennis Mahon, leader of the militant racist-group White Aryan
Resistance (WAR) in the U.S., says Strassmeir was a member of
Germany's elite counterterrorism unit, GSG-9. [12]
Strassmeir told Oklahoma City attorney John Michael Johnston
that he did undercover counterterrorism work while in
Germany.[12] Strassmeir later told London's SUNDAY
TELEGRAPH reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard that he came to
the U.S. looking to do undercover work for the Department of
Justice or DEA, but he said such top- secret employment was not
acquired.[13] Private investigators Glenn and Kathy Wilburn,
whose daughter Edye Smith lost her two children in the bombing,
believe Strassmeir was an undercover operative whom they identify
in their law suit as a "U.S. federal informant with material
knowledge of the bombing." [13]
CAROL M. HOWE, a 26-year-old resident of Tulsa, OK, was a
Miss Teenage America semi-finalist and honors student who
became active in the militant racist group WAR. In 1994 Howe
became an undercover agent for the ATF. She had infiltrated the
Christian Identity white-separatist commune "Elohim City" in
eastern Oklahoma and made more than 70 reports during 1994-95.
According to NBC News: "The government acknowledges in
federal documents that she [Carol Howe] was their informant." [14]
Howe's reports, which she submitted to her ATF boss, Angela
Finley, exposed detailed plans by some Elohim City residents, such
as Andreas Strassmeir, to blow up federal targets including the
Murrah Building. [15]
During Howe's infiltration of Elohim City, she also saw Timothy
McVeigh and the governments's star witness and long-time
McVeigh friend, Michael Fortier. At Elohim City, McVeigh was
known as "Tim Tuttle," an alias he frequently used. Yet after
gathering such explosive intelligence, according to the Associated
Press, the ATF then fired Howe just days before the bombing
because her reports had suddenly become "unreliable." [14]
Howe's "unreliable" reports focused on Andreas Strassmeir. Howe
was not aware that Strassmeir was apparently also a federal
operative, which would explain why the FBI, even with Howe's
reports in hand, did not pursue the John Doe 2 look-alike
Strassmeir after the blast. The FBI merely noted in a summary of
Carol Howe's reports:
Strassmeir has talked frequently about direct action against the U.S. government. He is trained in weaponry and has discussed assassination, bombings, and mass shootings. Strassmeir and Mahon [leader of WAR] have taken three trips to Oklahoma City. [16]
This evidence not only proves (a) that the ATF and FBI had prior
warning of an action against the Murrah Building by a group of
people associated with Timothy McVeigh, and yet did nothing to
stop it, but (b) after the bombing the FBI did not pursue Strassmeir,
a prime suspect fitting the John Doe 2 profile down to the scar on
his face.
At the request of the ATF, the Oklahoma State Patrol did put out a
"be on the lookout for" alert for Strassmeir after the blast.[17] But
Strassmeir was never apprehended, and the alert was quickly
suppressed and denied. [18] Strassmeir, who had been in the U.S.
with a passport that had expired in 1991, was allowed to return to
Germany many months after the bombing in early 1996 [14] in an
apparent effort not to avoid authorities but private investigators.
Furthermore, after first calling John Doe 2 "the most wanted man in
America," the FBI acted to suppress all official investigations of
JD2. As an internal FBI memo now proves [19], the FBI suspended
their search for JD2 very early in the investigation -- contrary to
their claims that they were still looking for JD2 at the time. [20]
The FBI went so far in their effort to suppress information about
JD2 that they even censured grand jurors who asked questions
about JD2, such as former Oklahoma City bombing grand juror
Hoppy Heidelburgh, who headed the grand jury's investigation
before being thrown off the jury for his persistent investigation into
JD2. Heidelburgh had reached the conclusion that JD2 was an
undercover federal agent. [21]
In an effort to fabricate the facade of investigation, the FBI finally
contacted JD2 suspect Strassmeir by phone in Germany but only
after McVeigh's attorney Stephen Jones condemned the FBI for not
following up on leads. When Strassmeir was interviewed by the
German publication Report Baden-Baden, he said that when the
FBI called him by phone they assured him that "They would cover
for me." [22]
IN CONCLUSION
This extensive body of evidence indicates not only that the ATF
and the FBI had prior knowledge of an impending terrorist act on
the Murrah Building, but that the FBI is guilty of the obstruction of
justice by aiding and abetting the escape from justice of a prime
suspect, John Doe 2, who may have been a federal operative
involved in the worst act of mass murder in U.S. history.
This evidence further suggests that some element within the federal
government may have actively participated in the mass murder in
Oklahoma City, which resulted in massive new powers being given
to the federal government through "anti-terrorist legislation"
spurred on by the bombing of the Murrah Building.
© 1997 Ian Williams Goddard - (*) free to copy nonprofit w/attribute.
REFERENCES
[1] REUTERS: Families of Oklahoma City Victims
to Sue U.S.. March 19, 1997. Also see:
http://www.cnn.com/US/9703/19/okc.bomb/index.html
[2] ASSOCIATED PRESS: 300 Families Sue Government,
Day Care and Chemical Company. April 19, 1997.
http://xenocide.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/top/041997/topstory_17914_S1.html
[3] ABC's 20/20, 01/17/97. http://jbs.org/okc/mretruth.htm
[4] CNN reports videotaped, April 19, 1995.
[5] EXTRA: Prior Knowledge. 11/20/96. ABC program.
[6] THE WASHINGTON TIMES: U.S. Experts Begin Search
for Killers. by Micheal Hedges, April 20, 1995, A1.
Reports that a van with 3 men was seen speeding away.
[7] OKBOMB! By Jim Keith. IllumiNet Press, 1996, p.11 & 19.
Reports van and McVeigh's car w/ two inside were seen.
[8] ASSOCIATED PRESS: Appeals Court Removes Oklahoma
Bombing Judge. by Paul Queary, 12/01/97.
http://www.arlington.net/archives/12011995.arc/news/daily/topstory.htm
[9] THE NEW AMERICAN: Evidence of Prior Knowledge.
by William F. Jasper, May 13, 1996, pp. 31-35.
http://jbs.org/okc/priorevd.htm
[10] OKBOMB! By Jim Keith. IllumiNet Press, 1996, p.71.
[11] TIME MAGAZINE: ATF Under Siege. by Erik Larson, 07/24/95, pp.26-7.
[12] THE NEW AMERICAN: More Pieces to the OKC Puzzle.
by William F. Jasper, June 24, 1996, pp. 4-8.
http://jbs.org/okc/mrepiece.htm
[13] THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Did agents bungle US terror
bomb? by A.Evans-Pritchard & A.Gimson, 5/20/96.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000111151604876&rtmo=33
07311a&atmo=3307311a&pg=/et/96/5/20/wbungl19.html
[14] DIGITAL CITY DENVER: Federal Agent Knew of Bombing
Figure. by Ryan Ross, March 26, 1997.
http://denver.digitalcity.com/bombing/pages/art0021.htm
[15] McCURTAIN DAILY GAZETTE. J.D. Cash. February 11,1997.
[16] THE NEW AMERICAN: ATF Informant Says Cover-Up.
by W.F.Jasper, March 17, 1997, pp. 17-18.
http://www.jbs.org/okc/atfinfrm.htm
[17] GERMANY ALERT: ATF Sought Son of Top Kohl
Aide After Oklahoma Bombing. April 7, 1997.
http://chantry.com/ga/970407.htm#ATF
[18] DIGITAL CITY DENVER: Federal Agent Knew of
Bombing Figure. By Ryan Ross, March 26, 1997
http://denver.digitalcity.com/bombing/pages/art0021.htm
[19] FBI memo calling off all inquiry into John Doe 2:
http://denver.digitalcity.com/bombing/pages/doc0001.htm
[20] DIGITAL CITY DENVER: FBI Memo: Bomb Suspect
Search Suspended. By Ryan Ross.
http://denver.digitalcity.com/bombing/pages/art0009.htm
[21] MEDIA BYPASS: OKC Grand Jurors Claim `Cover-up.'
Nov.95. & http://home.earthlink.net/~alto/hoppy.html
[22] REPORT BADEN-BADEN: Another Trial of The Century.
by Klaus Weidmann and Thilo Brethauer, 04/14/97.
Posted by David Hoffman
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