No New Bombing Arrests Expected Any Time Soon : Oklahoma City: Investigation is still at early stage, official stresses. Prosecutors strongly urge court to keep Terry Nichols behind bars.

Government officials indicated Thursday that no new arrests are likely soon in the Oklahoma City bombing case and prosecutors argued strenuously to keep alleged bomber Terry L. Nichols in jail because his release “would create an unwarranted risk of danger to the community.”

Deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie Gorelick, the second-ranking Justice Department official, told reporters in Washington that the investigation is still in its infancy--even though the FBI is pursuing 16,000 active leads.

Her comments came after weeks of public expectations that half a dozen or more conspirators would be arrested swiftly after the April 19 bombing, which killed 168 people and injured 500 others. Only Nichols and an Army buddy, Timothy J. McVeigh, have been charged in the case, a reality that has raised questions about the government’s basic theory of the nature of the conspiracy and the number of people involved.

Gorelick maintained that the quick arrests of McVeigh and Nichols had triggered unwarranted high hopes. “The expectations for the production of many, many defendants in a short period of time were fueled by lots of speculation that didn’t have a great deal of basis in fact at the outset of the investigation and, frankly, by the magnitude of the offense,” she said.

“We are what in any other investigation would be a very early stage,” she said.

She expressed optimism that “we will know who John Doe No. 2 is [and] whether he was a participant in this event.” (A man believed to have helped rent the truck used to carry the bomb to Oklahoma City and to have been seen there was designated by investigators as John Doe No. 2.)

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“We have plenty of leads,” she added. “I would not foreclose the possibility of additional defendants at some time in the future.”

But she said that she “would not predict when that might be or with any certainty whether that will occur.”

As Gorelick spoke, prosecutors were filing a motion in federal court here arguing that Nichols should remain in custody because he is a threat to the public and is likely to flee if released.

They are especially determined to keep him locked up because John Doe No. 2 has not been found; investigations into McVeigh’s friend, Michael Fortier, and sister, Jennifer McVeigh, have not produced arrests and Nichols’ brother, James D. Nichols, has been released on bail after his arrest on minor charges in Michigan.

“There has, perhaps, never been a crime more devastating to a community than the one for which [Terry] Nichols remains charged,” the motion says. Releasing Nichols would raise “concern for the safety and indeed the lives of American citizens.”

Prosecutors noted that in a similar case defendants in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were denied bail after the government argued that they posed a “high degree of dangerousness” to the community.

In this case, they said, authorities have “clear and convincing evidence that Nichols’ release would create an unwarranted risk of danger to the community.”

Nichols, 40, surrendered to authorities two days after the bombing, after he learned that officials had charged his Army friend, McVeigh. Both men are being held at the El Reno, Okla., Federal Correctional Center. They are the only persons directly charged in the Oklahoma City bombing.

McVeigh already has been denied bail. Nichols is to appear at a bail detention hearing in the prison today. His lawyers will again argue that he should be allowed to go home to Herington, Kan., to await trial.

Lead defense attorney Michael Tigar of Austin, Tex., said that Nichols could be given an electronic monitor to wear that would allow the government to track his movements while free on bail. A similar arrangement already has been made for his brother.

James Nichols’ release stunned authorities and convinced prosecutors that they needed to press for continued imprisonment of Terry Nichols. Their 17-page legal brief sharply attacked Tigar’s contentions last week that Nichols was a law-abiding citizen and has “a reputation for peaceableness.”

Prosecutors provided two letters that Terry Nichols had written over the last three years to authorities in Michigan and the U.S. government disavowing any allegiance to America and denouncing his citizenship.

“I no longer am a citizen of the corrupt political corporate State of Michigan and the United States of America,” he wrote a Michigan licensing agency in 1992.

“I am a ‘Non-Resident Alien’ to the State of Michigan and the United States of America. I am a natural born human being born in the area you call Michigan [and] not the corporate State of Michigan.”

Furthermore, the government said, Nichols has had no community roots and would be a dangerous flight risk if set free.

“Nichols has no demonstrated roots in a job or community, but instead has traveled around the country to gun shows while residing intermittently since 1993 in Michigan, Nevada, Kansas and the Philippines,” prosecutors said.

“Nichols has also used aliases in renting storage lockers.”

And, the government said, “even the most stellar background could not justify release given [that] Nichols bears legal responsibility for a crime of this unprecedented horror.”

Although just two men have been charged in the case, some federal sources, as well as some defense attorneys, continue to believe that there will be more arrests this summer. They insisted that a large amount of money, manpower and planning had to have gone into the conspiracy.

But one government source said a realization has set in that, unless Nichols or McVeigh cooperate by implicating others, which authorities at this point believe is unlikely, “we may only have sufficient evidence against those two.”

Other sources suggested that passing days mean only that the government is slowly, meticulously amassing its evidence in the worst domestic terrorism case in U.S. history.

“The longer it goes, the more evidence they obviously have,” said retired FBI Agent William F. Roemer, who built a 30-year career investigating organized crime cases and other complex criminal conspiracies.

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“A month without an indictment yet is long,” Roemer said. “It’s very long. It’s very, very long.

“And since this has gone on a month already, it indicates to me that they have a lot more people involved than we know about.”

But other sources said that suspicions that the conspiracy involved numerous members of anti-government militias may not hold true. These sources are beginning to think that just Nichols and McVeigh engineered and carried out the crime.

Ed Hackleman, a spokesman at the Mid-Kan Co-Op in McPherson, Kan., where ingredients for the bomb allegedly were purchased, said that the 4,800 pounds believed used in the explosion would have cost just a little more than $2,000. And he said it could have been loaded up by as few as one or two men.

“We do it all day,” he said. “It’s not that difficult to do. It takes only a few minutes.”

In addition, Stephen Jones, McVeigh’s attorney, questioned why the government has acted so sure that as many as six people may have participated in the conspiracy.

“If they’re so certain, what’s taking so long?” he asked. “My guess is they don’t have it together. What we have here is an elaborate artifice to make you believe they’re further along than they are.”

Times staff writer Robert L. Jackson in Washington contributed to this story.