McVeigh’s Lawyers Demand U.S. Files

Defendant Timothy J. McVeigh’s attorneys, hoping to show that last year’s Oklahoma City bombing was part of an international terrorist conspiracy, asked the government Friday to turn over the extensive and classified intelligence data that it obtained in the days and weeks after the tragedy.

While government prosecutors insisted that the bombing was carried out by two disgruntled U.S. army veterans, McVeigh’s lawyers are pushing a defense which suggests that the blast at the Oklahoma City federal building could have been the work of international terrorists.

So exhaustive was the U.S. intelligence-gathering operation after the bombing, the defense lawyers said, that Army officials at Ft. Riley, Kan., obtained global satellite photographs of a public telephone booth, a McDonald’s restaurant, a Wal-Mart store and individual gas stations in central Kansas in their pursuit of possible suspects.

But the lawyers suggested that the government also developed--and later ignored--leads in the bombing that pointed to a neo-Nazi sympathizer in Germany, a Ku Klux Klan leader from Tulsa and a Cuban army officer.

To persuade the federal judge in the bombing case to open up the secret intelligence files, the defense noted that “Michael Fortier was asked specifically about his knowledge of these individuals in an interview with the FBI in September.”

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Fortier, an army friend of McVeigh’s and co-defendant Terry L. Nichols, pleaded guilty in August to hiding his prior knowledge of the bombing and to transporting stolen weapons that were sold to help finance the blast.

Stephen Jones, the lawyer for McVeigh, said that a “massive amount of relevant information concerning the bombing” was collected by U.S. intelligence operatives. He complained that none of it has been released to the defense so that it can determine whether it exonerates McVeigh.

“Personnel at all levels, suspecting the bombing to be a large-scale terrorist attack resulting in numerous deaths, immediately mobilized all resources at the government’s disposal,” Jones said. “The result was a mammoth investigation without political or geographic limits.”

Officials in Washington said that they will respond later to Jones’ contentions in Denver, where the federal criminal case against McVeigh and Nichols has been moved from Oklahoma City.

The April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building took the lives of 169 people. Another 600 were injured.

In the first two days after the bombing, until McVeigh and Nichols were taken into custody, many U.S. law enforcement officials thought that it was an attack by international terrorists.

Jones said that multiple federal resources were immediately enlisted to search for suspects. Among those helping were the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the FBI Command Center and the White House Situation Room.

He said that the CIA searched its databases for suspects who “might have the means and motive” to carry out the bombing. He said that CIA stations and bases throughout the world submitted “trace names” of potential bombers. And he said that the agency’s “global, regional and local communication intercepts and reconnaissance satellites” were deployed to hunt for suspects.

In addition, he said, the NSA supplemented its existing “watch list” for domestic terrorist threats and listened in on private communications around the globe to see if any word about the bombing turned up.

Jones specifically wants the government to turn over its classified data on several individuals, including Andreas Strassmeir, a German neo-Nazi activist who reportedly was in a secluded white separatist camp in Oklahoma on the day of the bombing, and Dennis Mahon, a former Ku Klux Klan leader in Oklahoma.

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Strassmeir was reportedly acquainted with McVeigh, even to the point where McVeigh may have attempted to telephone him before the bombing.

Jones also wants classified information on the Cuban officer, known as “Samson” or “Hector.” The Cuban reportedly was sighted before the bombing in the Kingman, Ariz., area, where McVeigh and Fortier had lived.

According to sources, the Cuban bears a resemblance to “John Doe No. 2,” the figure who was reportedly seen renting the Ryder truck with McVeigh in Kansas who has never been located.