Search in Bomb Case Called Broad

A federal judge ordered authorities Thursday to return nine computers and hundreds of disks confiscated from a consultant thought to have images relevant to the trial of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said he was satisfied that consultant John Culbertson would cooperate in the investigation and that police should not have executed a search warrant to seize material they probably could have gotten with a subpoena.

“The search appears to be excessively broad,” he said. “This was a howitzer [doing] what a BB gun could have accomplished.”

Culbertson was a consultant in the investigation of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and told the court he was a journalist. Investigators thought he had images of the building before, during and after the explosion.

But Culbertson said he turned over relevant images to the House Judiciary Committee several years ago and did not have what authorities were looking for.

He agreed to help them find material on his computers when he got them back. He said he had eight frames, but they did not show what investigators were seeking.

Fairfax County police seized the computers and disks Friday from Culbertson’s home in Centreville, Va., and sent them to Oklahoma City, where authorities were preparing for the state trial of Nichols, charged with 161 counts of murder.

He has already been convicted of federal charges in the deaths of eight federal law enforcement agents in the April 19, 1995, bombing, and is serving a life sentence. Authorities said Nichols helped Timothy McVeigh pack the bomb inside a truck the day before the attack. McVeigh was executed in 2001.

Police searched Culbertson’s home last week in hopes of finding video containing footage of a truck exploding near the Murrah building, but they found no such tape, Culbertson said.

Culbertson, a former congressional aide, said his correspondence, sources, work information and student records went out the door with the officers.

Culbertson lectures at Oral Roberts University.