Army of Agents Scour the Trail of Blast Suspects

Slowly, methodically, the FBI marched up Main Street.

At the Prairie Gold jewelry shop, they asked Kris Swanson about a series of telephone calls to her number. At the Mid-Kansas Co-op, they asked manager Ed Hackleman to fish out hundreds of records on single bags of fertilizer and bulk quantities of ammonium nitrate sold over the counter in the past six months.

They stopped at the local Conoco station and checked for sightings of a yellow Ryder rental truck. They interviewed John Fulcher at the oil refinery, grilling him for five hours about his days in an Army company fighting alongside fellow soldier Timothy J. McVeigh in the Persian Gulf War.

In the space of two weeks, federal agents questioned almost every truck stop waitress, gas station attendant and motel clerk along the 270-mile stretch of highway from Oklahoma City to Ft. Riley, Kan.

Not since G-Men scoured Kansas and Oklahoma for the likes of Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde has the heartland seen such an investigation. By some reckonings, only the assassination of President John F. Kennedy summoned up a more sweeping mobilization of the nation’s investigative resources.

From the moment a truck bomb shattered the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on the morning of April 19, it was clear that this must be an investigation like no other. It could not be allowed to fail. Acts of random terror aim at eroding public confidence in society’s basic institutions, at spreading fear that government cannot meet its most basic obligation--the protection of its citizens.

Beyond the demands of an outraged nation, officials reasoned that only the delivery of swift, sure justice for those responsible could keep the Oklahoma City bombers from achieving their ultimate goal. Officials directing the manhunt reacted accordingly.

Figuring It Out

In a normal criminal case, investigators lean heavily on their experience with particular types of crimes and criminals to narrow the focus of their efforts. Working with limited resources, they concentrate on the most promising leads, confine the hunt to places most likely to yield the quarry they seek.

In the Oklahoma case, officials also have tried to profit from experience with past acts of terrorism--but with an important difference: The bombing itself was so far outside the bounds of ordinary American crime. And--initially at least--it was impossible to know what might or might not be worth pursuing.

On this case, there was almost no limit to the available resources.

As a result, the search for those responsible for the worst act of terrorism ever committed on American soil has been as wide as a census and as narrow as the reconstruction of a plane crash. It has stretched from one end of the country to the other--from San Bernardino, Calif., to Richmond, Va.--yet has focused so close to the ground that it makes the eyes ache.

To date, the FBI has involved fully half its 10,000 special agents in at least some small aspect of the hunt, with thousands of additional man-hours contributed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, state and local police and others.

“The Oklahoma City bombing already has cost the FBI about $12.6 million,” FBI Director Louis J. Freeh told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday. This compares with $9.9 million for the full World Trade Center investigation, Freeh said.

The final bill is sure to be several times that amount.

The leave-no-stone-unturned nature of this investigation is illustrated by what is being done with telephone records. The extent to which investigators can reconstruct an individual’s use of the telephone is not widely understood. But in the Oklahoma case, it is being pushed to the fullest.

“Phone work is the most important thing we’re doing,” said one official close to the shoe-leather investigation. “It’s producing.”

What federal agents are doing is meticulously scouring mountains of telephone records for evidence of every phone call made by the bombing suspects and others associated with them. Detectives are trying to match up the phone calls with the activities of the two defendants, McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols, hoping to learn more about such things as the places they frequented and where they paid their bills.

They are also using telephone records to compile lists of everyone with whom the suspects may have talked for any reason. Then, agents are visiting those on the lists, including the Prairie Gold jewelers. Often, these interviews yield still more names to be tracked down and questioned.

Investigators are conducting an equally comprehensive examination of everyone who may have associated with Nichols or McVeigh during their service in the Army--men such as refinery worker John Fulcher here in McPherson.

By the beginning of this week, one source said, agents had knocked on the doors of about 65% of the thousands of soldiers who served in the same units as the defendants during the Gulf War or their postings to Ft. Riley.

In addition to seeking direct evidence on the bombing, agents are trying to construct timelines, attempting to account for every day over the last six months in the lives of all those believed associated with the bombing.

As one official said of McVeigh: “People think we know everything about him. We don’t. We’re still missing big pieces on all of them.”

The effort to “nail down the movements” of McVeigh and Nichols and others has meant, in the words of FBI Special Agent in Charge Weldon Kennedy, covering every diner, strip motel and gas station along the Interstate 35 corridor between Ft. Riley and Oklahoma City.

Which took them to the McPherson Conoco, where agents asked about the yellow Ryder rental truck used in the bombing. Hadn’t been seen, they were told. They moved on.

“It’s pretty slow and grinding,” said a federal source. “But you learn important things.”

Even in senior FBI management levels, resources have been thrown into the hunt on an almost unprecedented scale. The special agent in charge in San Diego was temporarily assigned to Kingman, Ariz., where--among other things--he helped organize teams of agents in blue jackets as they raided a trailer park and a storage bin, looking for signs of McVeigh’s and Nichols’ activities there.

The San Diego official was needed in Kingman because the special agent in charge in Phoenix, who normally oversees the Kingman field office, is Weldon Kennedy--who was dispatched shortly after the bombing to run the federal command post in Oklahoma City.

Some Wrong Turns

To be sure, not all the efforts have been rewarding. A dramatic interstate chase for a pair of drifters ended in a dead end at a motel tucked alongside the Missouri Ozarks.

At one point, some investigators also pushed hard on a wave of bank robberies that some thought might have been staged to finance the bombing. But an FBI source said that only three of the 13 robberies could be clearly connected to one another and none have been definitely linked to the alleged bomb plotters.

Then there were the reported sightings of “John Doe No. 2” as far away as Montana and Georgia. In each case, individuals were stopped and questioned--often in the full glare of the news media. All were let go.

But agents remain undaunted.

They have talked to gun show dealers and pawnshop operators at every establishment that McVeigh might have visited to purchase weapons. They have checked out jewelry stores and precious-metal dealers where Nichols may have bartered to build his collection of rare coins and gemstones--again seeking evidence of how the bomb plot could have been financed.

“We won’t be done until we have turned over every rock,” Kennedy vowed in the early stages of the investigation.

In Kansas towns such as Marion and Herington, at the tollgate along the Kansas-Oklahoma border, at the service plazas on Interstate 35, and here in McPherson, agents in suits and ties or polo shirts have been flashing their composite drawings and opening their notebooks. They are looking for that one more lead that could bring another break in the case.

What happened in McPherson--as well as countless other towns along the FBI’s endless trail--demonstrates the government’s resolve and tenacity. Some of their stops here on Main Street were dead ends. Others apparently were well worth the visit.

Kris Swanson, the Prairie Gold jewelry dealer, said that agents wanted to know about three phone calls Nichols made to the shop in March and September of last year.

It turned out two of the calls were placed when the shop was closed. She could not remember the third. She could not remember his voice. They showed her photographs of McVeigh and Nichols. She could not place them. They showed drawings of Doe No. 2. She had not seen him either.

“They were all over town,” she said of the agents. “It was unnerving. This is a nice calm town to live in.”

Fertilizer for Bomb

But where the jewelry store was a bust, the stop at the Mid-Kansas Co-op paid off. Agents learned that two tons of the ammonium nitrate believed used in the bomb was purchased at the co-op’s branch in McPherson, according to an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Henry C. Gibbons unsealed in Oklahoma City on Thursday.

Hackleman, a co-op manager, said that he has been advised by the FBI to say nothing about what the agents found after poring over six months of receipts. He said that the investigators also interviewed all of the co-op’s employees at all of its 17 branches. It was a tedious search, considering that the co-op sold more than 25,000 tons of the material last year alone.

“They came and they took copies of tickets at all of our locations,” Hackleman said. “They took copies of single-bag purchases of fertilizer and larger ones too. It was like they wanted to check on even the people who were just putting it on their lawns.”

One agent visited Fulcher, the ex-Army buddy of McVeigh, at the local oil refinery.

Fulcher said that the FBI wanted to know about McVeigh, asking about their time at Ft. Riley and about McVeigh’s service in the Persian Gulf War. He told the agent that he thought McVeigh was an extremist, a gun-lover, a loner--but not someone capable of of killing children. Then out came the pictures and drawings and Fulcher was asked to identify other potential leads.

“I’ve talked to guys in my old Army units that I haven’t talked to in four years,” Fulcher said. “They’re all getting calls from the FBI.”

Serrano reported from McPherson and Ostrow from Washington. Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Sara Fritz in Oklahoma City.

* RELATED STORIES, PHOTOS, GRAPHIC: A16, A17

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Probe’s Focal Point

To trace the movements of two of the suspects, FBI agents say they have covered every diner, strip motel and gas station along the interstate between Ft. Riley and Oklahoma City. Terry L. Nichols and Timothy J. McVeigh were stationed together at Ft. Riley.

FBI Cost

Investigation spending, in millions:

Oklahoma City: $12.6

Trade Center: $9.9

Herington: Nichols surrendered to authorities

Perry: McVeigh arrested

Oklahoma City: Site of bombing

McPherson: Bomb ingredients believed purchased