Time: Sat Mar 29 20:02:03 1997
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Date: Sat, 29 Mar 1997 20:01:34 -0800
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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: L&J: FBI Case Crumbles at Oklahoma Bomb Trial (fwd)
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<snip>
>
>The Times of London
>March 30, 1997
>
>FBI case crumbles at Oklahoma bomb trial
>
>By Christopher Goodwin in Denver
>
>
>For the relatives of those who died in the Oklahoma
>City bombing of 1995, it is a horrific prospect. On the
>eve of the trial of a man America has held responsible
>for the worst act of terrorism in the country's history, the
>case for the prosecution is in danger of unravelling.
>
>Until recently the government was quietly confident that
>its case against Timothy McVeigh, 26, who goes on trial
>tomorrow, was flawless. Yet despite the mountain of
>evidence against the former Gulf war veteran, the trial
>could degenerate into a farce.
>
>America initially assumed the blast at the Oklahoma City
>federal building was the work of Middle Eastern
>terrorists. The truth was more shocking: investigators
>said two white Christian Americans, one of whom had
>won a medal for service in the Gulf, were to blame for
>the atrocity.
>
>The United States has yet to recover from the blast in
>which 168 people died, including 19 children. About
>800 people were injured.
>
>Prosecutors have been under enormous pressure to
>bring the alleged perpetrators to justice. Yet increasingly
>there are concerns that their case is not watertight.
>Investigating the crime which shattered America's
>long-cherished illusion that it could remain free of
>terrorism, the government unleashed resources
>unmatched since the assassination of John F Kennedy.
>
>Thousands of agents fanned out across the country,
>collecting 25,000 witness statements, assembling more
>than 30,000 photographs, 500 videos and 350 audio
>tapes.
>
>There was supposed to be sound scientific evidence
>linking McVeigh and his alleged accomplice to the
>bombing. He was also alleged to have had a motive: he
>was said to be a white supremacist opposed to big
>government in Washington who wanted revenge for the
>government's raid exactly two years before the
>Oklahoma blast on the Branch Davidian sect in Texas
>in 1993, where 80 people were killed.
>
>But last week the prosecution was rocked by a
>devastating report leaked from the Justice Department,
>which has undermined the bedrock of its case the
>scientific evidence.
>
>The report concluded that key personnel in charge of
>the Oklahoma investigation cooked their results to
>implicate McVeigh. The FBI lab's conclusions,
>according to the report, were "scientifically unsound",
>supervisors made reports they "cannot support",
>analyses were "biased in favour of the prosecution", and
>key pieces of evidence, including debris found on
>McVeigh's clothes, may have been contaminated.
>
>The report was compiled following criticism of the lab
>by Frederick Whitehurst, one of its technicians. He is
>now likely to appear as a defence witness. Although the
>FBI quickly removed three senior lab officials who had
>key roles in the investigation, the damage may be
>impossible to repair.
>
>The trial was supposed to help heal wounds caused by
>the devastating blast at 9.02am on Wednesday, April
>19, 1995, when a yellow rental truck carrying roughly
>5,000lb of explosives blew up in front of the nine-storey
>Alfred P Murrah federal building.
>
>Two hours later McVeigh was stopped by an
>Oklahoma highway patrol officer who noticed that his
>car did not have a licence plate and then discovered he
>had a pistol. Taken to the tiny Noble County jail in
>Perry, Oklahoma, it took two days for the FBI to link
>him to the bombing.
>
>From records of more than 2,000 phone calls,
>fingerprints, invoices and witnesses, the prosecution will
>attempt to show that over a period of months before the
>bombing McVeigh and Terry Nichols, his alleged
>accomplice, bought thousands of pounds of ammonium
>nitrate fertiliser, remote control switches, detonation
>cord and racing car fuel to make the bomb.
>
>The government contends that McVeigh conspired with
>Nichols, his old army friend and fellow right-wing
>extremist, who is due to be tried later. If convicted they
>could both be executed.
>
>The government will present what should have been
>telling scientific evidence showing that two shirts
>McVeigh wore on the day of the bombing, his jeans
>pockets, his knife and a pair of earplugs found in his car
>had traces of different chemicals including PETN (which
>is used in detonation cord), nitroglycerin and EGDN,
>which is also used in high explosives.
>
>The prosecution will rely heavily on the testimony of
>their star witness, Michael Fortier, McVeigh's former
>friend who has turned state's evidence. Fortier was in
>the army with McVeigh and Nichols, and McVeigh later
>lived with him in the small desert town of Kingman,
>Arizona.
>
>Fortier will outline how McVeigh turned from a loyal
>sergeant in the army into a violent anti-government
>extremist. He will also tell how the plot to blow up the
>Murrah building was first hatched with McVeigh and
>Nichols in his desert trailer.
>
>"If he did blow up the federal building," Fortier told the
>FBI in a statement they hope he will repeat in court,
>"Tim would consider it to be a rational act on his part."
>Fortier, 27, told the FBI that McVeigh wanted to "wake
>up America" with the bomb.
>
>But Fortier is not a "clean" witness for the government,
>and the defence will have a field day attacking him. For
>weeks after the bombing Fortier denied any knowledge
>of it. Then, under intense FBI pressure, he changed his
>tune.
>
>The defence will argue that he has every reason to lie:
>having pleaded guilty to four felony counts, including
>failure to warn the government of the bomb plot,
>Fortier's prison sentence will depend on how well the
>government feels he performs in court.
>
>"The prosecution has an extremely persuasive and
>powerful case," said Laurie Levenson, law professor at
>Loyola law school in Los Angeles.
>
>"But if Fortier doesn't come through for them, they won't
>get a conviction."
>
>Stephen Jones, McVeigh's leading defence lawyer,
>admits McVeigh was involved in some way and will
>claim that there was a far wider conspiracy in which he
>was an unwitting dupe. Under this argument there was a
>conspiracy which the government knew about and
>which may have involved a German neo-Nazi, American
>white supremacists, the Iraqis and the IRA.
>
>"A foreign power, probably Iraq, planned a terrorist
>attack in the United States and one of those targets was
>the Alfred P Murrah Building in Oklahoma City," Jones
>said last week. "Information came to the government
>through foreign intelligence services in the Middle East
>that an attack was being planned on the 'heartland' of
>America."
>
>One person who appears to need no convincing of
>McVeigh's guilt is Mildred Fraser, his mother, who left
>the family when McVeigh was a boy. Neither she nor
>McVeigh's father have visited their son in prison.
>Writing to a local newspaper in Florida where she now
>lives, Fraser said: "Sounds like he could be any of our
>children, right?
>
>"People who live in glass houses should not throw
>stones. It could happen to your family just as it has to
>this one." That is what most troubles America as
>McVeigh's trial begins.
>
>
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========================================================================
Paul Andrew, Mitchell, B.A., M.S. : Counselor at Law, federal witness
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