Nichols’ Letter Reportedly Shows Bomb Plot Strategy

The full text of a letter that Terry L. Nichols wrote before the bomb attack on the federal building here provides explicit details on matters ranging from the storage lockers allegedly used to house the bomb ingredients to the alias he reportedly adopted to hide his role.

The November, 1994, letter to Timothy J. McVeigh, now Nichols’ co-defendant in the bombing case, appears to support the government’s argument that it was intended as a message that McVeigh should go ahead with plans for the attack. Nichols’ attorneys have insisted that it does not implicate him in the blast.

A copy of the entire letter, which prosecutors have talked about but not released publicly, is contained in “By Blood Betrayed,” a book by Nichols’ ex-wife, Lana Padilla. The book is to be released later this month, but an advance copy was obtained Saturday by The Times.

In the letter, Nichols advises McVeigh that storage lockers he rented--allegedly to hold bomb ingredients--had not been discovered by police. If police linked them to the lockers, Nichols warned, McVeigh must assume that he is dead and “liquidate” the lockers. “As far as heat--none that I know,” Nichols told McVeigh. “This letter would be for the purpose of my death.”

If that happens, Nichols added, “Your [sic] on your own. Go for it!!”

The letter is expected to be a central piece of evidence against the pair, particularly Nichols, because it allegedly reveals their preparations for the April 19 attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The blast claimed the lives of 169 people and injured 600.

Padilla’s book goes on to address other aspects of the case. It reports, for instance, that after McVeigh’s arrest, federal agents found on the front seat of his car “correspondence vowing revenge against federal authorities” for the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex.

Padilla also described her grand jury testimony, including questions she was asked about her ex-husband’s seemingly unexplainable access to large sums of cash and whether he dyed his hair to hide involvement in a string of robberies.

And she asserted that the FBI realized within a week of the explosion that there was no John Doe No. 2, the mysterious figure originally thought to be an accomplice in the bombing.

“John Doe No. 2 was a ghost,” Padilla wrote. “A figment of an overzealous agent’s imagination.”

Padilla plans a six-city book tour beginning Oct. 23. But she will not come to Oklahoma City, where the enormous loss of life has left passions still running high against Nichols and McVeigh and their circle of family members and acquaintances.

For Padilla, a Las Vegas real estate agent, the book appears to be at least her second attempt to make money since the tragedy upset her life and that of her then-12-year-old son, Josh. She and her son were paid for an interview on a tabloid TV show in the weeks after the bombing--an act that was “not a difficult decision,” she wrote.

In the book, she defends her actions by describing how she deflected her father’s criticism.

“Why did you have to do that?” her father asks.

“Because I can’t just sit by and say nothing, and because they agreed to pay me,” she told him. “We need the money too, Daddy. I have to support me and Josh. Who’s going to pay our bills?”

The greatest revelation in the book, subtitled “My Life With Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh, the Untold Truth About the Oklahoma City Bombing Suspects,” lies in the appendix, where Padilla reproduces her ex-husband’s letter.

According to the FBI, Nichols gave Padilla the letter on Nov. 21 as he was leaving for the Philippines to visit his new wife. She was supposed to give it to McVeigh if Nichols did not return.

Addressed simply to “Tim,” it begins with instructions for opening a storage locker in Las Vegas, where authorities said they later found silver and gold bullion. It tells him to empty other storage lockers in Kansas or extend the leases under the fictitious name of “Ted Parker of Decker.”

That is the alias the government says Nichols used to rent the lockers. Decker appears to mean Decker, Mich., where Nichols and McVeigh once lived together.

Nichols also left a letter for Padilla, in which he told her about $20,000 in cash he hid under her kitchen drawer.

“There is no need to tell anyone about the items in storage and at home,” he told her in the letter. “Again, only the three (3) of us will know. I have the most trust in you here in the U.S. to do as I have written.”

Government sources have indicated that the “Go for it!!” phrase in the letter was intended to urge McVeigh to carry out the bombing. But Michael E. Tigar, the attorney representing Nichols, has repeatedly insisted that the message is nothing more than a common phrase his client and Padilla used since learning it as a sales pitch some years earlier.

Padilla also wrote that McVeigh constantly called for Nichols at her house before he left for the Philippines. At one point, Nichols borrowed $2,000 from her for McVeigh.

“Lana,” she said Nichols told her, “I gotta have that money. Tim needs to borrow it.”

She said McVeigh telephoned her the following month, before Nichols returned to the United States. She said he was upset that Nichols was not back.

“That’s too bad,” he told her. “I really need to talk to him.” He then said he would write a letter to Nichols. “But I guess I’d better do it in code,” he said, “because there are a lot of nosy people.”

Padilla wrote that as far as Nichols was concerned, “Tim became his closest friend.” Both men, she says, became disillusioned with the government after they served together in the Army.

She also wrote that Nichols once told her: “People are getting fed up with everything from welfare to the government. There’s some big changes coming in this country.”

She said she told him that violence was wrong and cited the man who fired shots from an automatic weapon at the White House a year ago. Nichols responded: “That guy wasn’t all wrong, Lana. The government is the problem. You’ve got to see that.”

Padilla described Nichols today as lonely and scared, a man who often cries in prison because he rarely gets to see their son.

“The government isn’t going to give any special benefits to someone accused of a major crime,” she said he once told Josh during a prison visit. Another time, he told Padilla that all he does is read the Bible. “All twelve hundred pages,” he said.