Time: Sun Jul 20 03:01:13 1997
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Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 02:55:54 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Howe Accuses FBI in OKC Bombing (fwd)

<snip>
>
>International News
>Electronic Telegraph 
>Sunday 20 July 1997
>Issue 786
>
>Informant accuses FBI over Oklahoma bomb
>
>By Ivo Dawnay in Washington 
>
>GAPING cracks are opening in the US Justice Department's claim that the
>1995 Oklahoma City bombing was the exclusive work of the convicted bomber
>Timothy McVeigh and his alleged co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, who is still
>awaiting trial.
>
>A month after McVeigh, a 29-year-old former soldier, was unanimously
>sentenced to die by a Denver jury, most Americans would prefer to forget
>the horrendous deaths of 168 men, women and children in what was the worst
>act of domestic terrorism in the country's history.
>
>However, in Oklahoma itself, especially among many of the victims'
>families, the clamour is growing for further inquiries into a wider
>conspiracy. Many believe that the authorities are suppressing the truth.
>
>In a case due to open next week in Tulsa, jurors will hear fresh evidence
>that US security agencies had ample forewarning of an attack on a federal
>target, possibly Oklahoma City's Murrah building. The testimony will come
>from Carol Howe, 28, daughter of a wealthy Tulsan, who acted for
>two-and-a-half years as an undercover informant for the Bureau of Alcohol,
>Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). In the McVeigh trial it was disallowed as
>irrelevant by Judge Richard Matsch.
>
>Now Howe, an avowed white separatist, is facing charges, including
>conspiracy to make threats and possession of a bomb, that her defenders
>claim were brought to intimidate her.
>
>Those who believe her claims had expected that the charges might
>subsequently be dropped in return for her silence. However, Howe's version
>of events - while still all but unreported in the mainstream media - is now
>on the public record in appeal documents submitted by McVeigh's lawyer,
>Stephen Jones.
>
>Her story, backed up by plentiful documentary evidence, is simple. A victim
>of an assault by three black youths, she drifted towards the white racist
>movement where she met Denis Mahon, a leader of the so-called White Aryan
>Resistance group, linked to an Oklahoma commune of extremists called Elohim
>City.
>
>After allegedly being sexually assaulted by Mahon, she filed an Emergency
>Protective Order against him, thereby alerting the interest of the ATF.
>Approached by ATF agent Angela Finley, she agreed to act as an informant.
>Her numerous reports included warnings that some at the commune planned to
>bomb a federal building.
>
>According to Mr Jones's appeal submission, Agent Finley's handwritten notes
>confirm a report from Howe that Mahon had bomb-making expertise. He had
>told her he had exploded a 500lb ammonium nitrate bomb in Michigan five
>years earlier.
>
>Howe also reported that Mahon, together with another Elohim resident, the
>German-born "head of security" Andreas Strassmeir, had taken three trips to
>"case" Oklahoma City.
>
>Prosecution attorneys have cast doubt on Howe's credibility. They point to
>her undisputed white separatist sympathies and that she once sought
>psychiatric help.
>
>Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence that Howe's reports were taken
>extremely seriously by the ATF. Mr Jones's defence appeal also points out
>that she was immediately rehired by the ATF in the wake of the Oklahoma
>bomb and sent back to Elohim City to gather more information. She continued
>to be on the payroll until December last year.
>
>Charges were brought against her last March after she and her fiance, Jim
>Viefhaus, were said to have recorded an alleged bomb threat on a telephone
>"newsline" and to have been in possession of a bomb. Her defence is
>expected to claim that the taped threat was the work of Viefhaus, which she
>had opposed, and that the bomb equipment was part of her "cover".
>
>What is most worrying for prosecuting attorneys is that Howe claims little
>knowledge of Tim McVeigh. Instead she identified from descriptions several
>other Elohim figures, including Mahon, Strassmeir and a bank robber,
>Michael Brescia, as likely bombers. But to date, although the FBI is said
>to have spoken to more than 20,000 individuals in America's most extensive
>criminal inquiry, Mahon has yet to be interviewed. Strassmeir, another
>suspect named by Howe, has been only cursorily interviewed in Germany by
>telephone.
>
>That has prompted further speculation that the murky world of Elohim City
>was a nest of undercover agents and agents provocateurs, many of whom were
>working for the authorities - possibly on different inquiries.
>
>A theory shared by believers in a wider conspiracy is that the government
>is covering up a bungled "sting" operation that may have involved a
>squabble over jurisdiction between the FBI and the ATF.
>
>At least one civil suit brought by victims' families centres on claims that
>it was a failure by federal agencies to act swiftly that led to the
>bombing. Evidence to support that case emerged at pre-trial hearings into
>the Howe case on June 30. Local reporters claimed "near pandemonium" in the
>Tulsa courtroom when an FBI agent revealed that a leading figure in Elohim
>City was an FBI informant.
>
>The revelation, made under cross-examination, was that "the Reverend"
>Robert Millar, the community's rabble-rousing spiritual leader, had
>collaborated closely with federal agents. 
>
>Meanwhile last week new hearings by a grand jury in Oklahoma City convened
>to look into the possibility of a wider conspiracy, heard damaging
>testimony from two eyewitnesses.
>
>They claimed to have seen McVeigh on the morning of the bombing accompanied
>by as many as three other possible suspects. Their evidence was not heard
>in the McVeigh trial as they were not called by either the prosecution or
>the defence.
>
>That Stephen Jones failed to call them is understandable as they would have
>implicated his client in the crime. That the prosecution failed to do so
>only reinforces the view that there was an as yet unexplained desire on the
>part of the US attorneys' office to keep the number of suspects to a
>minimum.
>
<snip>

========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell                 : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA;  M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine

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