‘Something Big’ Warned of by McVeigh, U.S. Says : Bombing: Prediction was made to his friend Terry Nichols three days before blast, prosecutor alleges.

Timothy J. McVeigh, accused of taking part in the the Oklahoma City bombing, told his friend Terry Lynn Nichols three days before the blast that “something big is going to happen,” a federal prosecutor said Wednesday.

The conversation allegedly occurred after Nichols picked up McVeigh in Oklahoma City on the night of April 16 and the two drove back to Herington, Kan., where Nichols has a home, U.S. Atty. Randy Rathbun said at a hearing in U.S. District Court here. The account, which offers some of the greatest detail yet of McVeigh’s activities before the blast, is based on Nichols’ comments to an FBI agent and appear to be uncorroborated.

Rathbun also said that investigators had discovered and seized an antitank rocket and 33 firearms in Nichols’ basement. The details were presented at a hearing in the Sedgwick County courthouse. Nichols, 40, was ordered to remain in custody as a material witness, with no bond set.

In their painstaking attempt to sift every piece of evidence, federal investigators in Oklahoma City have found about two-thirds of the 24-foot Ryder rental truck, a Ford, that they believe was used to deliver the massive bomb to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, a source familiar with the investigation said. But, the source said, they have yet to find any evidence of blood or body parts on what remains of the vehicle. The absence of blood, if verified, could indicate that a second suspect did not die in the truck.

Law enforcement authorities have been unsuccessful in determining the identity of the second suspect, listed only as John Doe No. 2. He is believed to have rented the truck with McVeigh in Junction City, Kan. Nor have authorities succeeded in establishing his trail after the explosion. But Rathbun said that two men, resembling John Doe No. 2 and John Doe No. 1, who has been identified as McVeigh, were staying at Nichols’ home a few days before the explosion.

Bomb experts, increasing their estimate of the explosive power of the bomb, now believe that it contained more than 4,000 pounds of a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. And they have advanced by two minutes, to 9:02 a.m. CDT, the moment at which it was exploded at the front of the nine-story federal building on April 19.

On Wednesday, one week after the explosion, Oklahoma City observed a moment of silence at 9:02, with traffic coming to a halt, pedestrians stopping in their tracks, and searchers pausing in their painstaking task of sifting the rubble to reach the more than 100 victims still believed to be in the wreckage. By the end of the day, 98 bodies had been retrieved and workers said that the number of children believed to have died in a day-care center on the second floor is 19, substantially fewer than originally thought to have perished.

New Developments

In other developments:

* It has been determined that TNT was used to ignite the explosive, one source said, and traces of it reportedly were found in the 1977 Mercury Marquis that McVeigh was driving when stopped by an Oklahoma highway patrolman less than 90 minutes after the bombing.

* Officials said that the FBI is preparing a third composite sketch of John Doe No. 2. The artist working on the project is understood to have visited at least one of those injured in the blast who may have seen the man. More than 20 FBI agents showed the second composite drawing Tuesday and Wednesday to possible witnesses.

* A special federal grand jury has been empaneled at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City and began work there Tuesday. The speed with which it was put together--a matter of days, rather than the two weeks it would ordinarily take to draw up the 23-member panel--is yet another indication of the priority that Justice Department lawyers are giving to the investigation.

* U.S. Magistrate Ronald L. Howland denied requests made by McVeigh’s two defense attorneys that they be removed from the case, and he rejected their arguments that the trial be transferred from Oklahoma.

* FBI Director Louis J. Freeh made an angry vow to the team working on the case in Oklahoma City, claiming that those who planned the bombing, carried it out, or helped them hide, will never escape “the most powerful forces of justice.”

The hearing in Wichita offered the government its first opportunity in open court to begin to outline connections between Nichols and McVeigh.

After McVeigh said that “something big” was about to occur, Nichols was said to have asked: “Are you going to rob a bank?”

According to the prosecutor, McVeigh repeated his initial statement, responding: “Something big is going to happen.”

The prosecutor said that the account came from an interview of Nichols by FBI Agent R. Scott Crabtree.

Nichols and his brother, James Douglas Nichols, 41, were taken into custody over the weekend as material witnesses. Since then, investigators have pieced together their relationship with McVeigh, who was arrested Friday and charged in connection with the explosion. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors charged the brothers with conspiring to build explosive devices in a case so far unrelated to the Oklahoma bombing.

McVeigh and the Nichols brothers have been linked to paramilitary activities and anti-government causes.

McVeigh, who is being held in the El Reno Federal Correctional Center near Oklahoma City, is said by his attorneys to be declining to speak with investigators. He is also said to be presenting himself as either a political prisoner or a prisoner of war, providing little more information than his name.

FBI agents, U.S. marshals and courthouse employees filled most of the seats in the first-floor, oak-paneled courtroom of the limestone building in Wichita. There was no sign of members of Nichols’ family.

The Timeline

Rathbun, saying that he was establishing a timeline in Nichols’ “own words and actions . . . that relates to (the) crime,” said that Nichols had told the FBI he had had numerous conversations with McVeigh about building bombs and that co-workers reported that Nichols had bragged about his bomb-making skills.

The prosecutor said that on Sunday, April 16, Nichols received a telephone call from McVeigh at 3 p.m., during which the bomb suspect asked him to pick him up in Oklahoma City.

The U.S. attorney said that Nichols brought McVeigh to Herington, arriving at 1:30 a.m. Monday, April 17. McVeigh was said to have predicted during that drive that “something big” would occur.

Rathbun continued the account:

Tuesday, the day before the attack, McVeigh, who was believed to have been staying at the Dreamland Inn in Junction City 30 miles from Herington, called Nichols at 6 a.m.; they met in Junction City at 7:30 a.m. and McVeigh borrowed Nichols’ pickup truck, returning it at 2 p.m.

Together, they visited a storage shed that investigators have traced to Nichols.

McVeigh, according to the prosecutor, said: “If I don’t come back in a while, you’ll clean out the storage shed.”

When investigators entered the site on Sunday, they found it empty.

But among the items FBI agents found at Nichols’ home, in addition to the weapons, were three empty 50-pound bags of ammonium nitrate. Rathbun also said Nichols told the FBI that he “admits buying 100 pounds of fertilizer at a Manhattan (Kan.) grain elevator in March.”

By the U.S. attorney’s account, investigators also found non-electric detonators, a type of blasting cap that can be used as an explosives detonator, as well as four empty 55-gallon plastic drums and a fuel meter, which Rathbun described as a sophisticated device that measures fuel oil when precise amounts are needed for a chemical mixture.

They also found brochures and other literature about tax protests and other anti-government activities and about the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., in which more than 80 members of the cult were killed, he said. The raid has become a focal point for a number of paramilitary groups angered by what they consider government encroachment on individual liberties.

Steve Gradert, Nichols’ lawyer, said that the antitank rocket was an unarmed tube in which the rocket would be launched, and not the rocket itself.

“He deals in military surplus. Many of the items found in his home are found at military surplus stores, military surplus shows,” Gradert said, conceding only that Nichols may have committed a misdemeanor violation of laws regulating possession of blasting caps.

“There’s no evidence Mr. Nichols ever committed a crime,” Gradert said.

Nichols, who wore a brown, suede-like long-sleeved shirt, blue jeans without a belt, and tennis shoes, spent most of the 2 1/2-hour hearing looking down at the defense table through his metal-frame glasses, glancing occasionally at Rathbun. He did not speak during the proceedings.

Military Supplies

Tracing Nichols’ connection to military equipment, Rathbun said that Nichols “makes a living selling army surplus. It’s a cash business. He pays no taxes.” The prosecutor also said that Nichols had admitted selling Meals Ready to Eat, the prepackaged, dehydrated military field ration, to the paramilitary Michigan Militia and other similar groups around the country. James Nichols has been linked to past activities of the Michigan Militia.

In his successful effort to win an order from U.S. District Judge Monti Belot to keep Terry Nichols in jail, Rathbun said that Nichols’ “ties to this community are almost nonexistent.”

He said that Nichols had moved to Marion, Kan., about 25 miles south of Herington early in 1994, and then lived for a period in a Junction City motel outside of Ft. Riley, where Nichols and McVeigh met during basic training in 1988.

“Since 1993 he’s been all over the country,” Rathbun said, listing Nichols’ residences as Las Vegas, for six months to a year and, for one recent month, the Philippines. He also said that Nichols had used several aliases, including “Ken Parker” and “Jim Kyle,” and had rented the storage shed and a post office box under aliases.

According to Rathbun, Nichols and McVeigh lived together at various times, operated a business together, and traveled the country selling Army surplus.

Arguing that Nichols would not flee, his lawyer said: “Granted he has not lived long in the community of Herington, Kan., but he has been a resident of the United States all his life.”

“Mr. Nichols may have had a friend, and I don’t want to take anything from the presumption of innocence of Mr. McVeigh, who may possibly have committed one of the most heinous crimes in the history of mankind . . . but that’s not enough to detain somebody,” Gradert said.

In accepting the government’s request to continue holding Nichols, the judge said: “There’s been more than sufficient showing that there could be a risk or potential damage to a person or the community in general if Mr. Nichols is released.”

But Belot put off moving Nichols from the Sedgwick County Jail to Oklahoma City until noon on May 5 to allow for an appeal.

Gradert said that Nichols was not made fully aware of his rights at the time he gave his statement to the FBI and had refused to sign a document stating that he had been made aware of those rights.

Referring to the word “interrogation” in the document, the lawyer said Nichols had said “that was a word that reminded him of Nazi Gemany.”

In Oklahoma City, investigators paused briefly to meet with Freeh, who took the extraordinary step of visiting FBI agents in the midst of their investigation. In his remarks, Freeh said: “To those who planned, assisted and committed this outrageously brutal crime, or those who would now aid and abet it, we will search and find you.

“There is no place on Earth where you will be safe from the most powerful forces of justice.”

“You are what the law condemns as Hostes Humani Generis-- enemies of all mankind! You cannot slaughter innocent men, women, and America’s kids and get away with it,” he said. “We will not rest or have peace until this crime against humanity is adjudged and punished.”

Aides said that Freeh wrote the short speech himself.

“He feels this very strongly,” an official noted.

Also Wednesday, investigators searched for, among other pieces of evidence, the remaining parts of the truck.

“It’s a tedious process, but it’s being done,” said one source close to the investigation. “It’s like working a jigsaw puzzle where you are missing some of the pieces and you know you’re never going to find them.”

The discovery of an axle two blocks from the explosion site led investigators to the Ryder franchise in Junction City where it had been rented.

Braun reported from Wichita and Serrano from Oklahoma City. Times staff writers James Gerstenzang and Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story from Washington.

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