Man Says He Had No Role in Oklahoma Plot

The man who Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry L. Nichols said provided explosives used in the blast denied Wednesday that he had any role, and said the attempt to link him to the plot fit Nichols’ demeanor as someone who “hated everybody.”

Roger Moore, a longtime gun collector who was considered a possible suspect in the early days of the FBI’s investigation, said he had never seen or heard of the explosives Nichols claimed Moore provided for the bombing. Nichols made the assertions in a letter from prison disclosed Wednesday by the Los Angeles Times.

“I don’t know what it looks like or what it does,” Moore said of the explosives in a lengthy telephone interview. “But Nichols had that stuff. He was an angry man and broke all of his life. He has denied his U.S. citizenship. He hated everybody. And he hated the government something fierce.” Moore added, “He’s a total nut case.”

Often cursing, Moore, 70, criticized Nichols and the FBI. He said that enduring 10 years of suspicion that he might be a third member of the bombing conspiracy, along with Nichols and Timothy J. McVeigh, had taken a heavy toll.

He said he had dropped out of the gun business. He suffers from Parkinson’s disease and is awaiting colon surgery. He prefers to be left alone at his ranch in Roseland, Fla., where he raises horses, ducks, “miniature goats and fancy chickens.”

Moore was never charged in the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

“I’ve answered all the FBI’s questions for hours,” he said, adding that he had passed two polygraph tests.

The day before the bombing’s 10-year anniversary, Nichols wrote a letter to the grandmother of two boys killed in the blast. In it, he alleged that Moore had given McVeigh some of the explosive material to build the bomb that Nichols and McVeigh assembled in the back of a rental truck.

Nichols said that some of the explosives recently found in his former home in Herington, Kan., had come from Moore.

Nichols described the materials as Kinestik, an explosive made from ammonium nitrate and nitromethane.

“Moore provided McVeigh with the binary explosives,” Nichols wrote. He said the Kinestik “that McVeigh got from Moore was used in the OKC bombing!”

Jeff Lanza, an FBI spokesman in Kansas City, Mo., said Wednesday that agents were testing some of the material found at Nichols’ home to determine what it was and where it came from. He said 300 blasting caps found at the home appeared to be consistent with other materials that McVeigh and Nichols had stolen from a Kansas quarry in preparation for the bombing.

Nichols has been convicted twice -- in federal and state courts -- in the bombing and is serving multiple life sentences at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo. McVeigh, convicted of being the mastermind who carried out the bombing, was executed in June 2001.

Conspiracy theories continue to swirl around the Oklahoma City bombing, which at the time was the worst act of terrorism in the United States.

Some people have said they saw McVeigh with others constructing and delivering the bomb. Some have said that another man accompanied McVeigh to rent the truck, although the FBI has discounted the existence of a John Doe No. 2.

Moore thinks others might have been involved. But he said the chance of learning the full story died with McVeigh.

“Once you kill them, they don’t talk,” he said.

Moore met McVeigh at a gun show, and they later exchanged letters. McVeigh sometimes stayed at Moore’s home in Arkansas.

“McVeigh had absolutely no compunction about killing people,” Moore said of the former Army sharpshooter. “He was one of the best gunners in [Operation] Desert Storm. He loved killing people.”

Moore said he had never met Nichols. But he is convinced that it was Nichols who donned a mask and robbed him of about $70,000 worth of firearms and gold coins -- loot used by McVeigh and Nichols to help finance the bombing.

The former gun dealer said he had no desire to testify if Congress held hearings this year into lingering questions about the bombing.

“I don’t know what they’re thinking about in Washington,” Moore said. “They ought to worry about Medicare and Mexicans coming over the border. Those are the real problems.”