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Two people voluntarily leave the Freemen ranch near Jordan, Montana, currently surrounded by FBI and law enforcement agents (see March 25, 1996). Val Stanton and her young daughter Mariah leave. Stanton is not wanted on any charges. Some believe that their departures trigger the departure of Ebert and Agnes Stanton; they leave three days later, and are taken into custody. Agnes Stanton is released from jail, ordered to remain in “house arrest” at the residence of her son in Billings, Montana, and given an electronic ankle monitor. Ebert Stanton is denied bail. [Associated Press, 4/6/1996; Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996]
Ted Kaczynski’s mug shot. [Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation]Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996), is charged with a federal weapons violation as a result of his possession of unlawful bomb parts. [Washington Post, 1998] Kaczynski is charged with the violation in a Helena, Montana, court; he was captured in a small rural cabin in nearby Lincoln, Montana. [Washington Post, 4/5/1996] A New York Times reporter describes Kaczynski as “dressed in orange jail-house overalls,” and with a “confident” appearance, even wearing “a bit of a smirk on his face as he glanced around the courtroom.” Kaczynski ignores shouted questions from reporters asking if he is responsible for the bombings; his responses to Judge Charles C. Lovell as to his mental competence and understanding of the charge against him are clear and rational. Lovell assigns public defender Michael Donahoe as his lawyer. FBI investigators tell reporters they are confident that Kaczynski is indeed responsible for the bombings. They add that it is likely Kaczynski will soon be moved to California, either to San Francisco, home base of the federal task force that has searched for the Unabomber for years, or to Sacramento, where the latest attack occurred last April (see April 24, 1995). [New York Times, 4/5/1996]
Four Montana legislators meet with four Freemen in “Justus Township,” currently besieged by FBI agents (see March 25, 1996), to discuss ending the standoff. The four are Democrats Joe Quilici and John Johnson, and Republicans Karl Ohs and Dick Knox. The eight meet in a mobile home near the main ranch house for several meetings over two days. The negotiations produce no tangible results. Two days later, Quilici characterizes the situation as “very, very volatile,” and says, “Right now, I can’t be optimistic.” The Freemen continue to insist on their own government and their own grand jury. Garfield County prosecutor Nick Murnion, who has dealt extensively with the Freemen (see 1993-1994 and November 1995), advocates a firmer approach, saying, “The only way negotiating works is if you apply pressure from a position of strength, and they are not doing that.” Instead, the FBI allows Ohs to promise the Freemen a “mechanism whereby their story could be heard.” Jim Pate, a Soldier of Fortune magazine reporter who has managed to visit the Freemen in their compound during the siege, reports that negotiations have failed, that the Freemen are unwilling to meet with any federal government officials, and that they are content to wait for a long time. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006]
“Patriot Movement” and other anti-government activists join Klansmen and neo-Nazis at “Jubilation ‘96,” a gathering at Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The affair is hosted by leaders of the racist, anti-Semitic “Christian Identity” movement (see 1960s and After) and attended by over 500 people. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]
Republican state senator Casey Emerson of Bozeman, Montana, who has ties to the state’s militia movement, recommends that the government give serious concessions to the Freemen who are engaged in a standoff with FBI and law enforcement authorities (see March 25, 1996). Emerson says the government should give the Freemen money, dismiss many of the charges against them, allow them to make their case on national television, and even be tried in a “common law” courtroom “so they can get their b_tching done.” [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996]
The Montana Freemen, engaged in a standoff with federal and state authorities (see March 25, 1996), post a press release on the gate of their compound for authorities and media members to read. It declares the “independence” of “Justus Township” (see September 28, 1995 and After) and reads in part, “It should be further made known to all Men that this republic, Justus Township, Montana state, united States of America, so affirmed in Law is NOT that de facto fiction, the corporation, incorporated in London, England in the year of Yeshua, the Christ, eighteen hundred seventy-one, A.D., the United States, a corporation, so defined as their own Title 28 U.S.C. 3005 (A)(15).” [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996]
The public defender for Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996), files a court order seeking to stop other lawyers from trying to take over Kaczynski’s defense. Michael Donahoe, a public defender, cites Montana state rules forbidding lawyers from asking a defendant to hire them if they know the defendant already has a lawyer, and prohibiting requests involving coercion. “This case has drawn substantial media attention, and that attention has caused people from a variety of disciplines to offer services to Mr. Kaczynski,” Donahoe says in his motion. Some lawyers have, Donahoe says, “taken it upon themselves to contact Mr. Kaczynski directly,” including a California lawyer, Warren Wilson. Reuters observes, “Lawyers frequently offer their services free in highly visible cases because of the publicity they generate.” [Reuters, 4/8/1996]
Michael Barkun, a Syracuse University professor and expert on the “Christian Identity” ideology (see 1960s and After) espoused by the Montana Freemen (see 1993-1994), says the low-key methodologies the FBI is using in its standoff with the Freemen (see March 25, 1996) is the proper approach. Barkun says: “They’ve done precisely what they should be doing with a group of this kind, namely being very careful not to act in a way that confirms the group’s beliefs. That suggests that some very important lessons have been learned.” Barkun is referencing the aggressive methods used by the FBI during its siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, that ended in a fiery conflagration that killed most of the Davidians (see April 19, 1993). [Washington Post, 4/9/1996]
The New York Times reveals that Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996), has engaged in a seven-year “pen pal” correspondance with an elderly Mexican farmhand he has never personally met. The farmhand, Juan Sanchez Arreola, a 68-year-old farm worker from Chihuahua, Mexico, is not suspected to have any connection with Kaczynski’s alleged bombing spree. Kaczynski began writing to Sanchez in 1988 after learning of his existence through his brother, David Kaczynski; Sanchez had done some work for David Kaczynski as a handyman on some West Texas property David Kaczynski owned. The letters shed little direct light on Kaczynski’s suspected career as the “Unabomber,” but they do give details of his life as a recluse in the Montana woods. Sanchez shows three of the letters he received from Kaczynski to a Times reporter, and says he threw some of the letters away. Kaczynski wrote of his fascination with the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, and described in detail his life in his mountain cabin with little money or food. In November 1995, Kaczynski wrote: “I am fine here. I am poorer than ever, but I am in very good health, and that is more important than anything. As to my poverty, I have $53.01 exactly, barely enough to stave off hunger this winter without hunting rabbits for their meat. But with the rabbit meat and a little flour and other things that I have put away, also a few dried vegetables from my little garden, I will get through the winter very well. And when the spring comes, perhaps I will have better luck with work and money, so that I can go to visit you. We will see.” Kaczynski also sent Sanchez at least one Christmas present, a brightly painted wooden cylinder bearing the motto “Montani Semper Liberi,” Latin for “Mountain Men are Always Free.” Sanchez says Kaczynski had twice asked his brother for money in 1995. “We only knew each other through letters,” says Sanchez, who says he was stunned to learn that his pen pal was suspected of a spree of lethal bombings. They did not discuss the bombings, Sanchez says, nor did they talk about politics, aside from their discussions of Villa and Mexican history. [New York Times, 4/9/1996; New York Times, 4/10/1996; New York Times, 4/11/1996]
Stephen Jones, the lead defense lawyer for indicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995), asks the court to provide him with classified documents from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Security Agency. The documents concern terrorist groups in Iraq, Iran, the Sudan, Great Britain, and Germany. In a sealed document not given to the prosecution, Jones tells Judge Richard P. Matsch that he has evidence from several confidential sources that the bombing was financed and carried out by a foreign terrorist group, and he wants the documents to prove that allegation. Prosecution member Beth Wilkinson calls the defense request “speculative and over-broad.” Federal officials say they do not believe the files will help the defense exonerate either McVeigh or his co-conspirator Terry Nichols, Wilkinson says, and adds that after April 21, 1995, when McVeigh was arrested (see April 21, 1995), the intelligence agencies had no role in the criminal investigation. “It is the government’s position that the bomb cost the defendants less than $1,000 to put together,” Wilkinson says. “They didn’t need a foreign government to finance the bombing.” Wilkinson says that the prosecution has already given Jones and Nichols’s lawyers an enormous amount of documents, including videotapes, photographs, laboratory reports, telephone and hotel records, and witness statements. Wilkinson says Jones’s attempts to get classified information are “effort[s] to investigate where the government stopped its investigation” of a possible overseas connection to the bombing. If the government were to allow Jones to review all its unrelated files, she says, “we would be here for years.” Matsch says he will read the request, but gives no indication as to how he will rule. Jones has also asked for documentation of accusations made by FBI forensic specialist Frederic Whitehurst, who has said that FBI scientists have not always handled evidence properly (see January 27, 1997). A Justice Department memo indicates that one of the FBI explosive experts who handled evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing case has been criticized by Whitehurst. Wilkinson says the government will turn over all pertinent information about Whitehurst’s complaints to the defense. [New York Times, 4/10/1996] Matsch will rule against the request. [Reuters, 4/30/1996]
Anti-government activist Ray Hamblin is charged with illegal possession of explosives after authorities find 460 pounds of the high explosive Tovex, 746 pounds of ANFO blasting agent, and 15 homemade hand grenades on his property in Hood River, Oregon. Hamblin will be sentenced to almost four years in federal prison. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]
Federal prosecutor Robert J. Cleary, an assistant US attorney based in Newark, New Jersey, is named the lead prosecutor in the Unabomber case (see April 3, 1996). Justice Department officials say that the government has not yet decided what charges to file against suspected bomber Theodore J. Kaczynski, though experts believe that he will be charged with the murder of advertising executive Thomas J. Mosser, killed by a mail bomb almost two years ago (see December 10, 1994). The Mosser murder, along with a second Unabomb-connected murder (see April 24, 1995), are important, legal observers say, because they are the only two cases punishable by the death penalty. Currently, Kaczynski is being held in Helena, Montana, on charges of possession of illegal explosives. He is being held without bail. Officials say they doubt that Kaczynski will be prosecuted for all 16 of the bombings he is suspected of committing, but only those that caused serious injury or death. Cleary’s prosecution team is made up of himself, Stephen P. Freccero of San Francisco, Robert Steven Lapham of Sacramento, Bernard F. Hubley of Montana, and two Justice Department lawyers, E. Thomas Roberts and J. Douglas Wilson. [New York Times, 4/12/1996] Cleary has been the US Attorney’s liaison to the Unabom task force, based in San Francisco, since Mosser’s death. [Washington Post, 4/13/1996]
ABC News airs a documentary on the accused Oklahoma City bombers (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995), entitled Rage and Betrayal: The Lives of Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols. McVeigh, who is accused of actually detonating the bomb, gets the larger share of time. The documentary traces the family lives of both men, portraying them as unsuccessful products of broken homes and terming them “losers.” The documentary is a bit superficial and “glib,” says New York Times reviewer Walter Goodman. Another documentary, on Dateline NBC, is perhaps less superficial, Goodman writes, but host Bill Moyers presents a stronger point of view, arguing that the bombing was a political act fueled by extremists who hate the federal government. The NBC documentary spends less time on reviewing the facts of the case and more on Moyers’s position, and on the victims’ feelings, Goodman observes. [New York Times, 4/11/1996]
Larry Shoemake as a young man. [Source: Jackson Clarion-Ledger]Larry Shoemake, an Army veteran who has become a drifter, loner, and anti-government white supremacist, guns down eight African-Americans in a Jackson, Mississippi, restaurant before committing suicide. Shoemake will be compared to another ex-Army loner, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Like McVeigh, Shoemake is enamored of The Turner Diaries (see 1978), a novel depicting a white supremacist US revolution that ends in genocide against minority Americans.
Blaming the Government, Minorities for His Failures - A 1961 high school graduate, Shoemake is a Vietnam veteran who had trouble adjusting to life after combat. He is well educated and once worked as a camera operator for the educational television station in Jackson. His father committed suicide in 1986. He repeatedly abused his first wife until she left him, and his next two marriages ended in divorce. He has trouble gaining and keeping employment; he did manage to secure a small role in the 1988 film Mississippi Burning, where he was shown carrying the bodies of three slain civil rights workers. Shoemake lived with his mother until she died in 1994. After her death, he began talking of suicide, telling relatives, “Unless I get killed by an automobile, I’ll choose my way out.” Friends and relatives will later say that after reading The Turner Diaries, he began blaming his failures on the federal government, African-Americans, and Jews. “It was like an eye-opener for him,” his third wife will later recall. “There was a distinct difference in him.” He began talking of moving to a white supremacist compound in the Ozarks. Instead, he remains in Jackson, stockpiling weapons and ammunition.
One Dead, Eight Wounded - On the afternoon of April 12, Shoemake pulls his pickup truck behind an abandoned Po’Folks restaurant in Jackson. He pries open the door of the restaurant and unloads two assault rifles, a pump shotgun, a pistol, a .357 Ruger, over 20,000 rounds of ammunition, a gas mask, and a jug full of gasoline. He pours the gasoline in a perimeter around the building. Then he sets up a firing “nest,” and, using his AR-15 assault rifle, begins shooting into a predominantly African-American neighborhood. His first victim is D.Q. Holifield, who has come to Jackson to buy clothes for his son’s birthday party. Shoemake kills him in a barrage of gunfire. Shoemake then shoots his son Johnny in the arm and thigh. When paramedics respond, Shoemake rakes the ambulance with gunfire, forcing it to flee. Onlooker Cherie McElroy, attempting to flee, is shot in the shoulder; her mother is shot in the hip. The wounded McElroy manages to drive away. Pamela Berry, a reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, is shot in the neck; the bullet barely misses two arteries that, had either been nicked, would have ensured her death. Onlooker James Lawson is shot in the leg, as is Lawson’s cousin Darrien Jackson and another onlooker, Dorothy Grayson. All but Holifield survive the rampage. Shoemake continues his onslaught for 40 minutes, in the process setting the gasoline ablaze. As the flames begin to engulf the restaurant, Shoemake places the Ruger’s barrel against his temple and kills himself. Investigators later remove Shoemake’s charred body from the debris. Police later determine he fires at least 100 rounds before killing himself
Police Find Arsenal, Clues - Police find 15 different makes of rifles in Shoemake’s home, along with two shotguns, military manuals, and another 20,000 rounds of ammunition; in all, Shoemake owns some $50,000 worth of weapons and materiel. No one is able to determine how he could afford such an arsenal. Police also find clues that indicate Shoemake may not have been operating on his own. A neighbor tells police of “funny looking fellows” coming and going from Shoemake’s house. “He’s a very weird neighbor,” says Dorothy Simpson, who lives near Shoemake. “He never spoke to anyone. He wasn’t very neighborly.” They find two walkie-talkies in the house. Inside, Shoemake has draped a Nazi flag across his bed, along with his mother’s Bible and a copy of Adolf Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf. A Confederate flag, a skull-and-crossbones flag, and a “shrine” to the Branch Davidians who died in Texas (see April 19, 1993) adorn the house. The house is full of scrawled notes, one reading: “I say: Annihilation or separation! Who is crazy, me or you? We will see.” Nearby lies a publication titled, “Separation or Annihilation,” written by William Pierce, the author of The Turner Diaries.
Letter to a Friend - Authorities also find a letter written to a friend a month earlier, but never mailed. It reads as follows: “Hi, Kay. I’m baaaccck! Got my coffee and ready to ramble. We could call this, ‘The Final Ramblings of a Mad Man.‘… I’m sliding down and the farther I slide the faster I slide, and there’s no brush or tree limbs or rocks or anything I can grab and stop the slide and hold on to. I’ve been sliding for a long time and I’m getting close to the bottom and when I hit it will be a great relief to me. The sudden stop won’t hurt. [W]e have to act insanely to bring back sanity. I’m talking getting our guns and start pulling trigger on our enemies. Kill hundreds of thousands or more.… They deserve to die. Now.… Blacks is the problem. Its in their genes.… The bottom line is: Separation or annihilation. I think I’m about to run out of ink. That’s not the only thing that’s running out.… I must go now and explore another planet, because I don’t like this one anymore. Love, Larry.” [Los Angeles Daily News, 4/14/1996; Associated Press, 4/14/1996; Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/1999; Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 3/19/2010] Police spokesman Lee Vance says, “It appeared that he sort of expected that his house would be searched by authorities in the aftermath.” [Los Angeles Daily News, 4/14/1996]
Healing - On April 19, after being released from the hospital, Pam Berry sits in a chair in front of the Southside Assembly of God Church auditorium, and briefly speaks to an assemblage consisting of the mayor of Jackson, police officers, paramedics, her parents, and others. The church, only a block from the Po’Folks restaurant, has bullet holes in its walls from Shoemake’s shooting spree. Berry’s father has told her that he worked with Shoemake and found him to be a nice person, “certainly no racist.” Berry tells the audience: “Don’t hate, and don’t take what happened to me and make it worse. Hate poisons everyone.… I’m glad that race wasn’t a consideration with the white nurse, the white paramedics, and the white doctors [who treated her wounds]. We shouldn’t let sicknesses like Shoemake spread to the rest of us. We can heal a city and we can heal each other. There are far more of us than there are of them.” [Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 3/19/2010]
Federal agents announce that they have recovered what they believe is the master copy of the Unabomber “manifesto” from the Montana cabin of accused serial bomber Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski. Agents say that the 35,000-word manifesto, titled “Industrial Society and Its Future,” and whose publication in the Washington Post led to Kaczynski’s discovery and arrest (see September 19, 1995 and April 3, 1996), should conclusively prove that Kaczynski is in fact the Unabomber. One law enforcement official says that the evidence is so strong against Kaczynski with the discovery of the manuscript that “[i]f we lose this one, we’d better close up and go home.” Federal agents have been carefully combing every inch of Kaczynski’s cabin, X-raying boxes and meticulously examining items to ensure none of them are booby-trapped. Authorities have already found one live bomb; a senior official says, “They found a bomb, that’s a good reason to go slow.” They believe that Kaczynski laboriously typed out copy after copy of the document for the Post and the New York Times. Other documents in Kaczynski’s cabin name some of his bombing victims, as well as an apparent list of future intended targets, including a number of West Coast forestry officials. Notes found in the cabin also name a number of current and retired University of California-Berkeley professors and a department at the school. Kaczynski was once a professor at the school. They have also found chemicals and other materials used to make bombs similar to those Kaczynski is accused of sending to a number of targets over his 17-year run, and a partially constructed bomb in addition to the live device. They have found three manual typewriters in the cabin; one of them matches a letter sent to the Times threatening further bombings if the manifesto was not published (see April 24, 1995). [Washington Post, 4/13/1996; New York Times, 4/13/1996]
The New York Times publishes an op-ed commending the FBI on its restraint in handling the standoff with the Montana Freemen (see March 25, 1996). The FBI is using what the Times calls a “creative, restrained strategy for dealing with” extremists such as the Freemen, whom the Times calls a “strange, sometimes threatening band of religious bigots and tax scofflaws… hunkered down in farmhouses they have commandeered in rural Montana.” The Times notes the FBI’s “notoriously impulsive confrontations in years past,” an obvious reference to the Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992) and Waco (see April 19, 1993) debacles (which the editorial references later in the piece). “[T]his is a downright boring operation, with no forceful showdowns or violent deaths after nearly three weeks,” the Times states. “The bureau should keep it that way even if, as may happen, pressures for dramatic action mount.” The Times concludes: “The FBI deserves no special commendation for behaving in a rational manner. It should have done that before. What deserves praise is the bureau’s imaginative deployment of agents and local law enforcement officers around the farmhouses, at distances that give the Freemen no cause to fear imminent attack. This firm but unthreatening attitude sends a message that peaceful surrender is the inevitable end.… Local resentment could easily rise in the days to come, testing the FBI’s new patience. But time is on the bureau’s side. Having squandered that advantage at Ruby Ridge and Waco, the bureau should stick to its present civilized course.” [New York Times, 4/14/1996]
Federal Judge Charles Lovell releases an inventory of the contents of the remote Montana cabin belonging to the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996). The inventory of the cabin’s contents, mostly the belongings of Unabomber suspect Theodore J. Kaczynski, was compiled by the FBI. The 600-item inventory shows that Kaczynski had the addresses and other information of corporate executives, presumably for future bombing targets, along with a plethora of explosive devices and components, five guns, street maps of San Francisco, and hundreds of books. The books include a Bible, volumes on Eastern mysticism, and a book by social critic Paul Goodman. The FBI also lists medications such as trazodone hydrochloride, leading investigators to believe that Kaczynski may suffer from insomnia or another malady. The inventory also lists a hooded jacket, a blue zippered sweatshirt with a hood, and two pairs of plastic glasses, similar to the clothing and sunglasses described by a 1987 witness to a Salt Lake City bombing (see February 20, 1987). The inventory includes hundreds of mundane items such as a yellow plastic bucket, hiking boots, a bag of fishhooks, matches, a pocket knife, a metal pot, and a backpack. Lovell also releases the original search warrant, which told what agents believed they might find, including explosives and books on Chinese philosophy as cited in Kaczynski’s manifesto (see September 19, 1995). Three typewriters, apparently used to type the manifesto, are also listed. [New York Times, 4/16/1996]
The FBI arrests Scott Roeder, a member of the anti-government Freemen militia group, after deputies find a bomb-triggering device in his car, along with fuse cord, a pound of gunpowder, ammunition, a blasting cap, and two nine-volt batteries, one of which is wired to the bomb trigger. Roeder, a Kansas resident, is charged with criminal use of explosives, driving with a suspended license, and failure to carry registration and insurance. His car does not have a legitimate license plate; instead, it has a tag identifying him as a “sovereign” citizen and immune from state law. Many Freemen members use similar plates. [Associated Press, 4/17/1996] In 2009, Roeder will murder an abortion provider (see May 31, 2009, May 31, 2009, and January 29, 2010).
A 2009 photo of Ray Southwell and Norm Olsen. Both are wearing Alaska militia emblems. [Source: Redoubt Reporter]Former Michigan Militia leader Norm Olson (see March 25 - April 1, 1996) appears at the Freemen compound outside Jordan, Montana, currently surrounded by federal authorities (see March 25, 1996). Olson is wearing military fatigues and accompanied by two others, colleague Ray Southwell and attorney Scott Bowman. In recent days, Olson has issued a number of inflammatory statements, saying Jordan will be the site of a “second American revolution” led by Olson as “battlefield commander,” and promising “the loosing of the dogs of war.” He informs the FBI that he intends to breach its perimeter and go inside the compound, and issues a number of vague threats. “We will discuss either the terms of the FBI’s surrender,” he will later report that he tells the FBI, “or… the order of battle.” He also distributes fliers to agents which read, “FBI-ATF, are you ready to die because of the corruption within?” referring to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Agents refuse to talk to Olson, and stop him several miles from the compound. The next day, Olson again attempts to enter the compound and is again foiled. He then begins shouting at the officers and the reporters who have followed him. It does not take long for Olson to become a figure of fun among the reporters and citizens of the area. He will spend a lot of time in a Jordan restaurant, and an agent dubs him and Southwell “Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo.” Olson tells one amused FBI agent, “You come up to Northern Michigan, mister, and I’ll see you in my crosshairs.” [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996]
Five of the Freemen currently besieged in “Justus Township” by federal officials (see March 25, 1996) meet with Montana State Representative Karl Ohs (see April 4-7, 1996) and Montana Assistant Attorney General John Connor Jr. for almost two hours on a road outside the Freemen compound. After the meeting, the Freemen issue another statement claiming the government has no legitimacy, and saying they consider themselves above federal and state law. Ohs says some progress is made during the discussions, but refuses to elaborate. He will meet with Freemen several more times during the standoff. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006]
Mourners gather at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) on the first anniversary of the bombing and pause for 168 seconds of silence—one second for each victim. A trumpeter plays “Amazing Grace,” “America the Beautiful,” and “Taps” during the brief memorial service. Accountant Joanne Rosenkilde says: “It was overwhelming. I couldn’t believe it happened. This terrorism… I thought we were sort of immune from all of it. I once worked in the commissioner’s office, and we had to be aware of irate people. There were threats we were aware of, but it never came to be.” [Washington Post, 4/20/1996; Fox News, 4/13/2005]
President Clinton signs the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which the New York Times calls “broad legislation that provides new tools and penalties for federal law-enforcement officials to use in fighting terrorism.” The Clinton administration proposed the bill in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). In many ways, the original bill will be mirrored by the USA Patriot Act six years later (see October 26, 2001). Civil libertarians on both the left and right opposed the legislation. Political analyst Michael Freeman called the proposal one of the “worst assaults on civil liberties in decades,” and the Houston Chronicle called it a “frightening” and “grievous” assault on domestic freedoms. Many Republicans opposed the bill, and forced a compromise that removed increased wiretap authority and lower standards for lawsuits against sellers of guns used in crimes. CNN called the version that finally passed the Republican-controlled Congress a “watered-down version of the White House’s proposal. The Clinton administration has been critical of the bill, calling it too weak. The original House bill, passed last month, had deleted many of the Senate’s anti-terrorism provisions because of lawmakers’ concerns about increasing federal law enforcement powers. Some of those provisions were restored in the compromise bill.” [CNN, 4/18/1996; New York Times, 4/25/1996; Roberts, 2008, pp. 35] An unusual coalition of gun rights groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) and civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) led the opposition to the law. [New York Times, 4/17/1996] By the time Congress passed the bill, it had been, in the words of FBI Director Louis Freeh, “stripped… of just about every meaningful provision.” [Roberts, 2008, pp. 35] The law makes it illegal in the US to provide “material support” to any organization banned by the State Department. [Guardian, 9/10/2001]
Jack McLamb during his days as a Phoenix, Arizona, police officer. [Source: Jack McLamb]The FBI refuses to allow three “celebrity” would-be negotiators to enter the Montana Freemen compound, currently surrounded by federal and local authorities (see March 25, 1996). Famed “Patriot” leader James “Bo” Gritz (see March 25 - April 1, 1996), Gritz’s associate Jack McLamb, and Ruby Ridge survivor Randy Weaver (see August 31, 1992) offer their services as negotiators, but are not allowed to go through the perimeter. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996] The FBI will eventually allow Gritz and McLamb to attempt to negotiate with the Freemen (see April 27, 1996).
Federal attorneys in California charge M. Elizabeth Broderick, who used Freemen teachings to defraud dozens of banks and businesses of millions of dollars (see October 1995 - March 1997 and March 27, 1996), and four assistants with 30 counts of fraud, counterfeiting, and conspiracy. Along with Broderick, authorities charge Adolph Hoch, his daughter Laura Marie Hoey, Barry Switzer, and Julian Cheney. All four are arrested and taken into custody. Broderick is denied bail after officials show that she is planning to flee the country; Switzer and Hoch are also denied bail. Broderick, as she has done before, claims the court has no jurisdiction on the floor; this time, to demonstrate her contempt for the proceedings, she throws the indictment on the floor. She refuses to enter a plea, so the presiding judge enters a plea of “not guilty” on her behalf. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996] Broderick will be convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison (see March 1997).
Two leaders of the Militia-at-Large of the Republic of Georgia, Robert Edward Starr III and William James McCranie Jr., are charged with manufacturing shrapnel bombs for distribution to militia members. Later in the year, they will be sentenced on explosive charges to terms of up to eight years. Another Militia-at-Large member, accused of training a team to assassinate politicians, will be convicted of conspiracy. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]
The FBI allows “Patriot” militia leader James “Bo” Gritz and his partner, former police officer Jack McLamb, to take part in negotiations to end the siege of the Freemen compound outside Jordan, Montana (see March 25, 1996 and April 25, 1996). The two men helped end the Ruby Ridge siege in Idaho (see August 31, 1992). Most law enforcement officials do not like either Gritz or McLamb, but they hope that with the two’s established credibility in the militia movement and their success in Idaho, they may be able to negotiate a successful surrender. Garfield County prosecutor Nick Murnion says: “There’s some hope. I think [Gritz] is of the right political persuasion, and certainly probably has more credibility with these folks than a lot of potential negotiators. So he does seem to offer them the possibility to come out in a more dignified manner.” After seven hours of negotiations with the Freemen, militiaman Stewart Waterhouse, who joined the besieged Freemen weeks before (see March 25 - April 1, 1996), leaves the compound, and authorities begin to hope that Gritz and McLamb are making headway. But Gritz gives mixed impressions in his initial reports to the press. He says the situation is “bridgeable,” but seems to fundamentally misunderstand the Freemen, saying that they “have no white supremacy, separatist tendencies that I saw. None at all.… They brought up the fact and said, ‘Where is the media getting the idea we have any prejudice or bias?’” Many of the Freemen, including leader Rodney Skurdal, have produced inordinate reams of court documents and other statements laced with virulently racist and anti-Semitic diatribes. Author Mark Pitcavage will later write, “In any event, there was something that Gritz was not ‘getting.’” [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006] Gritz and McLamb will give up after four days (see May 1, 1996).
Militia leader James “Bo” Gritz, brought in four days earlier to help negotiate an end to the Freemen standoff in Montana (see March 25, 1996 and April 27, 1996), quits. On the third day of negotiations, the Freemen told Gritz and his partner, Jack McLamb, that they would surrender if they could speak before the Montana legislature—which is not due to convene until 1997. No one was sure if the offer was a sincere one. Gritz relayed offers of reduced or even dropped charges for some of the Freemen. He and McLamb, along with Soldier of Fortune reporter Jim Pate, believe that the Freemen are divided into two groups: one willing to negotiate a deal, and one controlling the group and entirely unwilling to make any deal. Despite the hopes of the negotiators, no one else leaves the compound. Instead, the Freemen tell Gritz that all of them have made an “affirmation” to God not to surrender, and even say that God has placed an invisible barrier around the farm that protects the Freemen from outsiders. They restate their demands for a common law court of male, “non-14th Amendment” citizens, not government employees or in debt to anyone (see Fall 2010). [Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006] In his newsletter, Gritz will say that the Freemen are ruled by a small “hard core” of leaders—Edwin Clark, Dale Jacobi, Russell Landers, and Rodney Skurdal—who are holding others hostage, including three young girls. Gritz will write that he had implored Clark to let the nonmembers go, to no avail. “I beseeched Edwin to release the non-Freemen,” he will write. “His pained reply made it clear that they knew the value of placing children between themselves and the FBI.” Gritz will write that Clark replied, “But, Bo, if the others left, what would happen to the Freemen?” Gritz says his time with the Freemen was marked by dwindling food stores, a large weapons arsenal, and incessant rants about the “Zionist Occupational Government” the Freemen say is manipulating the United States. According to Gritz, the oldest of the three girls, 14-year-old Ashley Taylor, tells him: “I am only here because of my mom. This is not something I am willing to die for. I haven’t even started to live.” Her mother is Dana Dudley Landers. [New York Times, 5/18/1996] Gritz calls the Freemen a “potpourri circus of over-the-hill outlaws, people with no past or future.” According to Gritz, the Freemen’s grip on reality is sometimes tenuous. He will say that Dudley Landers told him her father had been a great physicist murdered in Europe because he knew the truth about flying saucers; recalling that tale, Gritz will say, “I expected to see Alice and the Mad Hatter appear.” [New York Times, 6/15/1996]
The FBI offers the Montana Freemen, currently imprisoned by law enforcement authorities inside their compound near Jordan, Montana (see March 25, 1996), a meeting under a “flag of truce” to end the standoff. The FBI proposes a meeting at a local community hall between two FBI agents and two Freemen. The bureau promises to work for a “mechanism leading to a legislative forum following your court arraignment.” The offer comes with a veiled threat: “Failure to pursue meaningful dialogue through this meeting will indicate your lack of genuine interest in seeking a peaceful and equitable solution. In this case, the FBI will reserve the right to take whatever action it deems necessary to resolve the situation.” The Freemen respond by claiming the bureau “does not exist as a government agency.” They also issue a videotape and a 13-page document explaining their position to the press; the videotape contains 45 minutes of a speech by Freeman leader Russell Landers calling the FBI unconstitutional and illegal in Montana, calling the “United States” a corporation while the “United States of America” is a republic, and daring the authorities and the press to prove them wrong. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996]
Lawyers for the accused Oklahoma City bombers (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995) assail the prosecution’s decision to seek the death penalty against their clients. They say that Attorney General Janet Reno, who made the final decision to seek the execution of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols if they are convicted (see October 20, 1995), ignored Justice Department procedures in making that decision. “The government cannot simply ignore its own rules when it decides who lives or dies,” says McVeigh’s lead lawyer, Stephen Jones. Jones accuses Reno of “categorical prejudgment” of the death penalty. Nichols’s lead lawyer, Michael Tigar, calls Reno’s decision “two-faced.” Both note that within hours of the bombing, Reno announced the government would seek to execute whoever carried out the attack (see 4:00 p.m., April 19, 1995 and April 22, 1995); rules adopted in February 1996 allow the attorney general to seek the death penalty in federal cases only after informing defense lawyers and going through a review by an in-house Death Penalty Committee. US Attorney Sean Connelly counters that when Reno announced that “she would prosecute [the bombing] to the fullest extent possible, she was not acting as a judge, she was acting as a law enforcement officer.” Defense lawyers also argue that the 1994 federal death penalty statutes are unconstitutional. Connelly retorts, “If the death penalty is not appropriate in this case, it would be hard to imagine any case where it would be.” [New York Times, 5/2/1996]
Charles Duke. [Source: Crooks and Liars]At the FBI’s request, Colorado Republican State Senator Charles Duke, a respected figure in militia circles, arrives in Jordan, Montana, to negotiate with the besieged Montana Freemen (see March 25, 1996). Duke and FBI negotiators spend six days in fruitless negotiations culminating in an argument between Duke and Freemen leader Rodney Skurdal. Duke says only half of those in the compound are real Freemen, with the rest “nothing but criminals trying to escape prosecution.” The Freemen promise to allow Duke and an FBI team to interview everyone in the compound, and to release two young girls among their number, but fail to deliver on either promise. [Chicago Tribune`, 5/24/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006] Gloria Ward and her two daughters, aged 8 and 10, appear at one negotiating session with their luggage packed as if readying to leave, but instead of exiting the compound, they go back inside when the talks end. [Reuters, 5/20/1996]
Talks End in Angry Shouts; No Support from Militias - Duke is blazingly angry at the Freemen’s refusal to honor their promises. As Skurdal climbs into an automobile to go back to the ranch house, he shouts, “You aren’t enough of a man to come face me, get out of that car!” Afterwards, Duke says: “I told him, ‘I’m going to go out of here and I’m going to tell the American people what you’re doing here. You will not get support from the patriot community, you will not get support from the militia community, and if you die, nobody’s going to avenge you.’” Many in the militia community have similar feelings as Duke’s. Montana Militia leader Randy Trochmann says: “People in contact with them understand now that what they were doing was fraud. With the public, a good percentage of them want the FBI just to leave, put a berm around the house, and let the state police patrol it. And another percentage just want them [the FBI] to go in and finish them off.” [Los Angeles Times, 6/5/1996] Duke adds: “The FBI has now pursued each and every avenue to a peaceful solution. If it should come to a less than peaceful solution, I can tell you for sure the FBI has bent over backwards to avoid it.… One can only conclude the adults inside care only for their safety and care not one whit for the safety of their children, because they’re willing to sacrifice them and use them as a shield (see May 1, 1996). I think it’s unconscionable.” After Duke leaves, the Freemen begin rotating armed foot patrols, something they have not yet done during the duration of the standoff. [Associated Press, 5/21/1996] After leaving the Freemen ranch, Duke says he sees little hope of resolving the standoff by peaceful means. “I realized this is going nowhere,” he says. It is time for the FBI to make the Freemen “feel some pain.” [Chicago Tribune`, 5/24/1996] “This is not a battle for the militias,” Duke later adds. “The Freemen are using the Constitution as a facade to prevent their incarceration for illegal activity.” Militia leader James “Bo” Gritz, who himself attempted to negotiate an end to the standoff (see May 1, 1996), says the standoff is not a cause for any militia groups or their supporters. “There isn’t anyone in the legitimate patriot movement who doesn’t want to see the Freemen out and before the bar of justice,” he says. “The FBI are wrong in their fears.” Gritz is referring to fears that if the FBI moves on the Freemen, the right-wing militia groups will condemn the bureau for its actions, and perhaps launch counterattacks. [New York Times, 5/24/1996]
Fear of Cancer, 'No Brains' Drugs - At least one of the Freemen expresses his fear of being injected with cancer cells and “no brains” drugs if he were to go to jail, and several of the Freemen say they are ready to shoot it out with the FBI. The information comes from audiotapes Duke makes of his conversations with the Freemen; he will publicly air some of the tapes on the June 17, 1996 broadcast of Dateline NBC. Freeman Edwin Clark says: “When [LeRoy Schweitzer, the Freeman in federal custody] went to Missouri (see March 30-31, 1996), a man, a doctor from New York City, come in and told Leroy, he says, ‘You’ll never see the light of day.’ And he says, ‘I’ll guarantee you before you leave here I’m gonna inject you with a, with a deadly ah… dose of cancer.” Clark says that government officials have tried to kill other jailed Freemen: “I know of two of them, one of them at least, he was as healthy as a [expletive] horse when he went in there, and he came back… there was another one, I can’t remember his name, they, they give him a lethal dose of ‘no brains’ when he come back.” [Associated Press, 6/17/1996]
The FBI orders reporters and photographers to leave a hill overlooking the Montana Freemen compound, currently surrounded by law enforcement authorities (see March 25, 1996), but deny that the move is a prelude to a raid against the group. “We’re trying to do everything we can to peacefully resolve the situation,” Attorney General Janet Reno says, “and we will continue those efforts.” FBI officials say they decided to evict the news media after a Fox Television news crew went to a fence around the compound the night of May 28, and attempted to negotiate for interviews without FBI knowledge. “The negotiators have their own strategy for contacting the Freemen and don’t want this kind of disruption,” says a senior official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity. Fox News chairman Roger Ailes complains that his journalists are being used as scapegoats, and alleges that the FBI had planned on moving the news media from the hill well before they made contact with the Freemen. [Associated Press, 5/30/1996]
The FBI, attempting to escalate pressure on the besieged Montana Freemen (see March 25, 1996) to surrender and exit their compound, brings three armored vehicles and a helicopter to a staging area outside Jordan, Montana. Officials say they may be needed to make rescues or to occupy part of the Freemen compound, and insist they have no plans to raid the compound. The three armored vehicles are stationed anywhere from two to four miles away from the compound. The helicopter is positioned for takeoff 35 miles away. Indications are that the Freemen are keeping three young girls inside the compound as “insurance” that the FBI does not raid the compound. [Los Angeles Times, 6/3/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006]
Former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, speaking at an awards ceremony for the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, tells listeners that he intends to do whatever he can to “restore” the power of the presidency. If he ever returns to Washington, he says he will roll back what he calls “unwise” limits on the presidency imposed after the Vietnam War and Watergate. “I clearly do believe, and have spoken directly about the importance of a strong president,” he says. “I think there have been times in the past, oftentimes in response to events such as Watergate or the war in Vietnam, where Congress has begun to encroach upon the powers and responsibilities of the president: that it was important to try to go back and restore that balance.” [Savage, 2007, pp. 9]
Norm Olson. Olson is wearing an ‘Alaska Citizens’ Militia’ shoulder patch as part of his pseudo-military garb. [Source: Political Carnival]Former Michigan Militia members Norm Olson and Ray Southwell concoct the idea of holding a “Third Continental Congress” to redress the problems they see plaguing the nation—problems they believe stem primarily from a conspiracy of Jews, liberals, and minorities to repress white Christians. Olson and Southwell were thrown out of the Michigan Militia after Olson told media representatives that the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) was engineered by the Japanese government in retaliation for the CIA’s supposed involvement in the Tokyo subway gas attack. Southwell envisions the Third Continental Congress, or TCC, to operate as a directing body for all the nation’s various militia groups, working together under the TCC rubric to “reestablish justice in America for all the people, whatever color they may be, or whatever faith system they may observe.” Southwell calls the envisioned dominance of the TCC “God’s will.” Olson says: “My goal is not to plan a revolution, for revolution will come. My goal is not to point fingers, lay blame, or find fault, for few doubt the crimes of the present de facto government. My goal is not to cast support to politicians or to shore up the broken machine that the federal government has become. Rather, my goal is to establish the Republican Provisional Government.” The first official TCC meeting, held in October 1996 in a Kansas City, Missouri, Holiday Inn, only attracts about a dozen delegates due to bad weather, though a few more arrive as the meeting wears on. Attendees include Sarah Lowe, whose husband currently heads the white separatist “Republic of Texas,” and Texas conspiracist James Vallaster. Southwell issues a manifesto calling for a Continental Defense Force, a repackaging of his original Third Continental Congress idea. The next meeting of the TCC occurs in January 1997 in Independence, Missouri, with nothing concrete being determined. Some TCC delegates, impatient with the inaction, decide among themselves to take some sort of decisive action. Several delegates, including Ronald Griesacker (a corrections officer, a well-known figure among militias, and a former Republic of Texas member), Kevin and Terry Hobeck (owners of an Ohio trucking firm), and Dennis and Ardith Fick, decide to form their own Continental Congress, which reportedly meets in Silver Lake, Indiana, in February 1997. One of this splinter group’s first members is Bradley Glover (see October 1995 and After), a Kansas militia member looking for extremist groups with an eye to violence. Other members include Thomas and Kimberly Newman, Michael Dorsett (a tax dodger and “common law” advocate), Merlon “Butch” Lingenfelter Jr. (a Wisconsin dairy farmer whose family believes a vast Jewish conspiracy runs most of Western civilization—see 1986), and, unbeknownst to the other members, several undercover officers of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who were at the January 1997 TCC meeting and were concerned about the radical statements of some of the splinter group’s members. In April 1997, the splinter members meet in Towanda, Kansas. Glover and Dorsett make increasingly fiery statements, impelling some of the other members to leave. The focus of the meeting turns to the idea of foreign, United Nations-led troops being housed at US military bases, presumably to help the US government crush the “patriot” militia movement and impose martial law. Later that year, Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League will write: “Allegations of such troops had been made so often and with such confidence in the patriot community that their presence was taken for granted by many patriots. Radio broadcaster Mark Koernke regularly spoke of hundreds of thousands of UN soldiers hiding in the United States, at military installations, in the national parks, and elsewhere. Indeed, the New World Order (see September 11, 1990) hardly seemed to bother with the effort of hiding them any longer.” The members that remain decide to take action. They determine to develop an arsenal of weapons and military equipment with which to attack government installations that are presumed to house foreign troops. They will hide in safe locations. The Hobecks sell their trucking firm to provide cash for the group, and travel to Colorado to establish a “base” at the Thirty Mile Resort in the Rio Grande National Forest. Others stage reconnaissance missions on military bases, including Holloman Air Force Base at Alamagordo, New Mexico. They station guards during the April and May 1997 meetings in Towanda, and even arm their children, who help patrol Glover’s farm. In June, Glover moves into Dorsett’s home in Arlington, Texas, in preparation for a strike on Fort Hood (see July 4-11, 1997). [Mark Pitcavage, 1997]
Entity Tags: Third Continental Congress, Ronald Griesacker, Sarah Lowe, Terry Hobeck, Thomas Newman, Ray Southwell, Republic of Texas, Missouri State Highway Patrol, James Vallaster, Kevin Hobeck, Dennis Fick, Ardith Fick, Bradley Glover, Kimberly Newman, Michael Dorsett, Merlon (“Butch”) Lingenfelter, Jr., Norman (“Norm”) Olson, Mark Pitcavage, Mark Koernke, Michigan Militia
Timeline Tags: US Domestic Terrorism
In its escalating pressure against the besieged Montana Freemen (see March 25, 1996), the FBI shuts off the electricity to the Freemen’s compound. [Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006] The Freemen have at least one generator, so they are not entirely without electricity; it is possible that they could go for months without outside power. If the power shutdown elicts no response, the FBI has other options it can implement, including moving agents incrementally closer to the main buildings, disrupting the Freemen’s satellite feeds and other communications, and even blocking their access to outside food sources such as fish ponds and storage buildings. “In effect, we could shut them off from the world,” says one official, who adds that the steps would be put into effect gradually in the hope that any one of them might lead to negotiations. Officials say any escalation would have to be gradual to ensure that the situation does not escalate out of control. They say they have no plans to raid the compound at this time. FBI Director Louis Freeh is monitoring the standoff very closely, officials say, and has mediated discussions and disputes between his aides and his field commanders. [New York Times, 6/5/1996; Associated Press, 6/10/1996]
Dissenting Viewpoints on Efficacy of Power Shutdown - The next day, retired FBI agent Joe Conley tells PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer that he thinks the power shutdown is “basically going to send a signal. In and of itself, turning off the electricity isn’t going to prompt these people to come directly to the negotiating table, but it is telling them that the FBI is there, law enforcement is there, and law enforcement is not going to go away.” Freelance writer and reporter Lawrence Myers disagrees with Conley about the efficacy of shutting down the Freemen’s power, saying: “They, first of all, don’t recognize the jurisdictional authority of the people who have them surrounded. Second of all, as I recall looking into this, I flew up there last year to talk with these people and look into it, and the fact is that in the late 1980s, the electricity was shut off on the Clark ranch (see September 28, 1995 and After) for three years. Nobody came out. Nobody moved away.” State Senator Charles Duke (R-CO), who has come off a series of frustrating negotiations with the Freemen (see May 15-21, 1996), says while he believes the electricity shutdown will have a “helpful long-term” effect, the Freemen are not a unified whole: “Had it just been up to the Clarks, this would have been over sometime ago, I believe. But what you’ve got there are some destabilizing factors, such as Russ Landers, Dale Jacobi, and Rod Skurdal,” he says, and those men are influencing the others to stay put in defiance of the FBI. “[T]hose are the three main destabilizing factors, and my recommendation to the FBI when I left is that those three somehow be isolated from the remainder of the farm, if necessary by force. And I think the rest of the farm would capitulate. I have seen people who are prepared to die for their beliefs, and these people don’t strike me as that type of person.”
Senator: FBI Showing Admirable Restraint - In a sidebar to the conversation about the power shutdown, Duke tells Lehrer that he admires the FBI’s restraint in handling the Freemen. “I think they have been lenient deliberately,” he says. “That’s really to the FBI’s credit—not to say they will always do this, but they’re at least doing that in this case. I think it’s more going out of their way, even over-correcting, if necessary, in order to make sure that the constitutional rights of these people is observed, and an example of how far the FBI was willing to go is they were willing to step aside if these people on the Clark ranch would simply walk across the cattle guard, the FBI would step aside and let the county sheriff process this, these people or the Montana State Police, or the Montana state legislature.” Myers agrees, noting that Attorney General Janet Reno said if given the chance to redo the FBI siege in Waco, Texas, which resulted in the deaths of almost 80 Branch Davidians (see April 19, 1993), “she’d do a lot of things differently. Well, this is the opportunity to demonstrate what type of patience they’re willing to show with American citizens. I think they’re doing fine so far and I know it’s problematic.… I think [Duke] and I and Mr. Conley can agree, this is a very unique, very difficult, and incredibly complicated negotiating situation here.” [PBS, 6/4/1996]
Entity Tags: Louis J. Freeh, Montana Freemen, Russell Dean Landers, Rodney Owen Skurdal, Lawrence Myers, Jim Lehrer, Dale Jacobi, Charles Duke, Janet Reno, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Joe Conley
Timeline Tags: US Domestic Terrorism
Two adults and two children leave the Montana Freemen compound, which has been surrounded by federal and local law enforcement officials for 74 days (see March 25, 1996). Gloria Ward, her common-law husband Elwin Ward, and her two preteen daughters, Courtnie Joy Christensen and Jaylynn Joy Mangum, leave voluntarily. Gloria Ward faced charges in Utah for felony custodial interference for taking the girls out of state in defiance of a court order; Utah agreed to drop the charges as part of the deal that persuaded the Wards to leave the compound. “The love of family played a significant part in this result,” says US Attorney Sherry Matteucci. “This is a positive indication we’re moving forward. It was a very important accomplishment to get those kids out of there.” Courtnie Joy Christensen’s biological father, Robert Gunn, who has custody of his daughter but has not seen her for 18 months, hopes to take her home soon. Garfield County prosecutor Nick Murnion says: “When a mother with two children sees armored vehicles, helicopters, and SWAT teams come into position with her power cut off (see May 31, 1996 and June 3, 1996), she’s going to realize it’s getting dangerous.… I don’t see this as a green light for the FBI’s tanks to roll in tomorrow. But this is a relief to everybody in this community.” [New York Times, 6/6/1996; Los Angeles Times, 6/7/1996]
The FBI brings a Montana Freemen member (see March 25, 1996), Edwin Clark, to Billings, Montana, to discuss terms of the Freemen’s surrender with jailed Freemen leader LeRoy Schweitzer, who gives his “blessing” for a surrender. Clark will emerge as the Freemen’s primary negotiator, and will be credited by federal officials with helping bring the standoff to a peaceful end (see June 13, 1996). A source tells the Associated Press: “Edwin had to become at peace with LeRoy about it [a surrender]. He didn’t want to go forward without checking with LeRoy first.” The source adds: “They’ve pretty much agreed it won’t be a gun battle. I’m extremely hopeful at this point. It’s an extremely positive sign.” The deal is conceived of and brokered by Kirk Lyons, an attorney famous for representing Aryan Nations members (see Early 1970s and 1981 and After) and other right-wing extremists in court. The FBI was not sanguine about letting Clark meet with Schweitzer in the Billings prison. Neill Payne, who works with Lyons in the CAUSE Foundation, a white supremacist legal organization, will later recall that an FBI agent initially responded to the plan by saying: “Let me get this straight. You want us to take a man who is technically under arrest, fly him in an FBI plane to a jail we hope to see him incarcerated in, bring him home, and then put him under siege again? Is that what you’re asking?” The FBI eventually agreed to the plan, though it was worried that Schweitzer might advise his colleagues to continue the standoff. The deal almost backfires when, after bringing Clark back to the ranch, the Freemen spot large tractors in neighboring fields and become instantly suspicious of an FBI trick. “Seeing those tractors was like waving a red flag at a bull,” Payne will later say. “Our guys were incredulous, and the Freemen were acting like an ants’ nest that got kicked over. They got their guns and they manned their sentry posts.” But Lyons and the FBI manage to calm the Freemen’s fears. [Associated Press, 6/12/1996; Associated Press, 6/13/1996; Los Angeles Times, 6/15/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006]
A flurry of talks between FBI negotiators, outside parties, and the holed-up Montana Freemen (see March 25, 1996) signals that the 80-day standoff is about to conclude. Yesterday, LeRoy Schweitzer, the jailed leader of the Freemen, gave his blessing for a surrender (see June 11, 1996). A 16-year-old girl, Ashley Landers (whom federal authorities say is legally named Amanda Michele Kendricks), voluntarily leaves the compound; a local prosecutor says she will be taken into state custody. She was the last child left inside the compound. Karl Ohs, a Montana legislator acting as a mediator between the FBI and the Freemen (see April 17, 1996), arrives in nearby Jordan, Montana, to help conclude the final surrender negotiations. Agents in flak jackets dismantle the tent-like shelter at the compound’s entrance, used for meetings between Freemen and negotiators, and other agents drive three passenger vans to a nearby church, apparently in preparation for the Freemen’s surrender and departure. The FBI wins the cooperation of neighboring farmer Dean Clark, who tries to begin planting on 2,300 acres adjacent to the Freemen ranch; he agrees to delay planting for a day. [Associated Press, 6/13/1996; New York Times, 6/13/1996] The next day, the Freemen surrender peacefully (see June 13, 1996).
A distant shot of the Freemen compound. Reporters were not given much access to the area, and photographs of the area and the participants in the standoff are limited. [Source: CNN]The besieged Montana Freemen (see March 25, 1996) surrender peacefully to federal authorities. Officials credit Freemen leader Edwin Clark (see June 11, 1996) with playing a key role in negotiating the surrender. [Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006] The New York Times writes that the siege ends “so peacefully that the surrender [does] not even disturb the cows grazing at the group’s remote Montana ranch.” Local postal carrier and rancher Ruth Coulter exclaims after the surrender: “My God, it’s finally over! And nobody got killed! Wonderful. Wonderful!” [New York Times, 6/14/1996]
16 Freemen Surrender - CNN identifies 16 people still inside the compound: Ralph Clark (see 1980s-1994), the elderly leader of the Clark family and one of the group’s leaders; Clark’s wife Kay; Clark’s brother Emmett Clark, the actual former owner of the 960-acre wheat farm occupied by the Freemen and dubbed “Justus Township” (see September 28, 1995 and After); Emmett Clark’s wife Rosie; Ralph Clark’s son Edwin; Edwin Clark’s son Casey Clark; Rodney Skurdal, a founder of the group (see 1983-1995); Russell Dean Landers, one of the leaders of the group and a member of a North Carolina anti-government, anti-tax group called “Civil Rights Task Force”; Dana Dudley Landers, Landers’s common-law wife, a fugitive from federal and state charges, and a member of the “Civil Rights Task Force”; Dale Jacobi, a former Canadian policemen; Steven Hance, who faces state charges from North Carolina; Hance’s sons John Hance and James Hance; Cherlyn Petersen, the wife of arrested Freemen member Daniel Petersen; Casey Valheimer; and Barry Nelson, who with another man entered the ranch after eluding blockades (see March 25 - April 1, 1996). [CNN, 6/12/1996] The surrender is peaceful; the Freemen drive to the ranch gates in cars, trucks, and a Winnebago motor home. They gather in a quiet circle for a final prayer. Then Edwin Clark approaches an agent and shakes hands. Finally, in pairs escorted by Clark, they surrender to waiting agents, who ease them into passenger vans. Clark is the last one to enter custody. Fourteen of the Freemen are taken to the Yellowstone County jail in Billings, 175 miles away from Jordan. Two, Kay Clark and Rosie Clark, face no charges and are not jailed, though the FBI says they will not be allowed to return to the compound. After hearing of the surrender, President Clinton tells guests at a state dinner, “We will all say a little prayer tonight for this peaceful settlement.” [Los Angeles Times, 6/14/1996]
FBI Director 'Obviously Relieved' - FBI Director Louis Freeh, described by the Los Angeles Times as “obviously relieved,” says the FBI “put patience above the risk of bloodshed” to end the standoff. He says the bureau “made no deals to drop or lessen the federal charges” against any of the Freemen in order to precipitate the surrender. Of critics who called for quicker and perhaps more “tactical” solutions, Freeh says: “I understand their impatience. But it was essential that we followed our established crisis management procedures.” He says the standoff proves the worth of the new crisis response plans implemented after the tragedies in Ruby Ridge, Idaho (see August 31, 1992), and Waco, Texas (see April 19, 1993). This time, the bureau used “a fundamentally different approach” that “may not always work, but it worked here.” Giving negotiators more influence during the standoff did cause some “disagreements” and “friction” within the FBI, Freeh acknowledges, but it was the right decision to make. Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick says “[t]he tactical option was always on the table.” Freeh notes that as the standoff wore on, the Freemen gained a certain level of reluctant trust in the bureau. “We never broke a promise to them,” he says, and “we told them before things happened,” such as cutting off electrical power (see June 3, 1996). [Los Angeles Times, 6/15/1996]
Outreach to Rightist Figures, Low-Key Techniques Brought Successful Resolution - FBI agents credit help they received from militia members in helping to resolve the standoff, along with the new, more low-key techniques of handling such confrontations now being used by the bureau. “Overall, our approach was to find a balance between negotiations and other lawful means,” says FBI agent Ron VanVranken, who took part in the final settlement negotiations. “We recognized it would be prudent and beneficial to use the services of third-party intermediaries and to be constantly soliciting the advice of outside experts.” Freeh says he was supportive of the decision to use third-party negotiators who hold similar anti-government views to those of the Freemen: “I think that, given all the other cumulative steps over the last 81 days, that that helped persuade the remaining subjects to finally come out of the compound.” The Los Angeles Times says that the FBI’s strategy of reaching out to far-right figures may have had an added benefit of creating dissension among rightist groups (see March 25 - April 1, 1996) and avoiding a “united front” of opposition that might have helped strengthen the Freemen’s resolve to continue holding out. “It was probably a wise move that the Freemen came out, as opposed to being burned out or shot,” says Clay Douglas, publisher of the far-right Free American newspaper and a leading member of the “Patriot” movement. “And it’s an election year, so the FBI had to be good.” However, the FBI’s decision to use “Patriot” negotiators “was pretty smart on their part. It has divided a lot of patriots. A lot of people thought they were being traitors for going in and trying to talk them out. Some people side with the Freemen. Some people side with the ‘Patriot’ leaders. So it’s just another small part of how the government keeps America divided. It’s called gradualism. They keep gradually encroaching on our freedoms.” The FBI brought in militia leaders James “Bo” Gritz and Jack McLamb (see April 27, 1996), Colorado State Senator Charles Duke, a rightist sympathizer (see May 15-21, 1996), and white supremacist lawyer Kirk Lyons (see June 11, 1996); even though most of their attempts at negotiations failed, it served to build a “bridge” between the FBI and the Freemen. Another technique was to promote Edwin Clark, the Freeman the FBI considered the most likely to leave the compound, as a leader in the absence of arrested Freemen LeRoy Schweitzer and Daniel Petersen (see March 25, 1996). The final element was the introduction of Lyons, who was contacted three weeks ago by FBI agents and asked for a plan to negotiate with the Freemen. Lyons’s colleague Neill Payne says somewhat incredulously, “It is to Director Freeh’s credit that he was broad-minded enough to go along with a crazy scheme like ours.” [Los Angeles Times, 6/15/1996]
Entity Tags: Cherlyn Bronson Petersen, Ralph Clark, New York Times, Neill Payne, Montana Freemen, Charles Duke, Ron VanVranken, Rosie Clark, Russell Dean Landers, Barry Nelson, Louis J. Freeh, Casey Clark, Ruth Coulter, Steven Hance, Casey Valheimer, Rodney Owen Skurdal, Kay Clark, Dana Dudley Landers, Kirk Lyons, Dale Jacobi, Clay Douglas, Civil Rights Task Force, Daniel Petersen, Edwin Clark, LeRoy Schweitzer, Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Hance, Jamie Gorelick, James (“Bo”) Gritz, Emmett Clark, Jack McLamb, John Hance
Timeline Tags: US Domestic Terrorism
The Yellowstone County Courthouse in Billings, Montana, where the 14 Freemen are arraigned. [Source: Civic Images (.com)]A group of 14 Montana Freemen make their first court appearance after surrending to federal authorities (see June 13, 1996). The 14 Freemen being processed are: Casey Clark, Edwin Clark, Emmett Clark, Ralph Clark, James Hance, John Hance, Steven Hance, Dale Jacobi, Dana Dudley Landers, Russell Dean Landers, Barry Nelson, Cherlyn Petersen, Rodney Skurdal, and Casey Valheimer. The elderly wives of two of the Freemen, Kay Clark and Rosie Clark, face no criminal charges. The Freemen in court are defiant and disruptive. Most of them object to the proceedings and refuse to acknowledge the charges being brought against them. Some of them refuse to acknowledge their names; when Magistrate Robert Holter asks Skurdal his name and explains that he wants to ensure that he is the right person, Skurdal retorts, “I object to your calling me a person, your honor.” Dana Landers responds to a similar question by reciting: “I am a Christian. My flag is red, white, and blue; it’s an American flag. The Holy Scriptures are my law. I’m not familiar with your tribunals.” Each demands their right to “effective counsel,” meaning that they should be able to choose their own lawyers but the court must pay for them. Many object to their names being spelled with all capital letters, as is common in legal briefs. One male Freeman requires physical restraint. Holter refuses to hear their arguments that their own alternative government’s rules must apply over those of the federal legal system. Working through a barrage of shouts, imprecations, and recitations, Holter assigns them lawyers over their objections, and sets arraignment and bond hearings. [CNN, 6/12/1996; New York Times, 6/14/1996; Los Angeles Times, 6/15/1996] New York Times reporter Carey Goldberg writes: “When they appeared in court on Friday, and rejected everything from the American flag to the capital letters in their names, the 14 newly surrendered Freemen laid bare, in word and posture, the central spirit of the anti-government group that held off federal agents for 81 days. It was a culture of collective denial. Each member came from a different set of circumstances, but the freedom they sought was freedom from American reality.… [W]hat united them was the ideological structure they built, in which the debts they owed were nullified, the criminal charges against them were invalid, and their position in society was considered supreme.” [New York Times, 6/15/1996]
Entity Tags: Dale Jacobi, Cherlyn Bronson Petersen, Steven Hance, Casey Clark, Carey Goldberg, Barry Nelson, Rosie Clark, Rodney Owen Skurdal, Russell Dean Landers, Ralph Clark, Emmett Clark, Edwin Clark, Dana Dudley Landers, James Hance, Robert Holter, Montana Freemen, John Hance, Casey Valheimer, Kay Clark
Timeline Tags: US Domestic Terrorism
As a federal court in Billings, Montana, formally charges nine Montana Freemen with a variety of crimes (see 1993-1994, March 25, 1996, June 13, 1996, and June 14, 1996), the defendants repeatedly interrupt the proceedings with shouts, curses, and threats. They challenge everything from the flag displayed behind the judge to his jurisdiction over the case, refuse to answer questions from the bench and their own lawyers (one demands that his lawyer be jailed), shout a variety of curses and garbled Latin phrases, and denounce “this kangaroo court.” Before the hearing, defendant Dale Jacobi sprained his thumb resisting fingerprinting. Another defendant, Steven Hance, shouts at US Magistrate Richard Anderson after being ejected from the courtroom, “You’re going down, son.” Prosecutor James Seykora asks the court to hold Hance in contempt, and Hance shouts: “Contempt? That’s not a strong enough word.” The Freemen refuse to participate in the hearing; Anderson denies bail for the nine and enters pleas of “not guilty” on their behalf. [Los Angeles Times, 6/26/1996; New York Times, 7/27/1996]
The Supreme Court rules in the case of Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. Federal Election Committee. The case originated with advertisements run by the Colorado Republican Party (CRP) in 1986 attacking the Colorado Democratic Party’s likely US Senate candidate. Neither party had yet selected its candidate for that position. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) sued the CRP’s Federal Campaign Committee, saying that its actions violated the “party expenditure provision” of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA—see February 7, 1972, 1974, and May 11, 1976) by spending more than the law allows. The CRP in turn claimed that FECA violated its freedom of speech, and filed a counterclaim. A Colorado court ruled in favor of the CRP, dismissing the counterclaim as moot, but an appeals court overturned the lower court’s decision. The Supreme Court rules 7-2 in favor of the FEC. The decision is unusual, lacking a clear majority, but being comprised of a “plurality” of concurrences. The majority opinion, such as it is, is authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the Court liberals, and is joined by fellow liberal David Souter and conservative Sandra Day O’Connor. Conservatives Anthony Kennedy, William Rehnquist, and Antonin Scalia go farther than Breyer’s majority decision, writing that the provision violates the First Amendment when it restricts as a “contribution” a political party’s spending “in cooperation, consultation, or concert, with a candidate.” In yet another concurrence, conservative Clarence Thomas argues that the entire provision is flatly unconstitutional. Liberals John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissent, agreeing with the appeals court. [Oyez (.org), 2011; Moneyocracy, 2/2012] In 2001, the Court will revisit the case and find its initial ruling generally sound, though the later decision will find that some spending restrictions are constitutional. In the revisiting, four of the Court’s five conservatives will dissent, with the liberals joined by O’Connor. [Oyez (.org), 2011; Moneyocracy, 2/2012]
Entity Tags: Colorado Republican Party, Colorado Democratic Party, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, US Supreme Court, Stephen Breyer, William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, Federal Election Campaign Act of 1972, David Souter, Colorado Republican Party Federal Campaign Committee, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Federal Election Commission, John Paul Stevens
Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties
Lawyers for accused Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995) reveal that a family member who cooperated with the government’s investigation (see April 20-21, 1995) is the ex-wife of Nichols’s brother James (see May 22, 1995). Kelly Langenburg is also the sister of Terry Nichols’s ex-wife Lana Padilla. This information is disclosed during the course of a hearing that reviews a defense request to throw out evidence against Nichols and accused co-conspirator Timothy McVeigh. The news of Langenburg’s cooperation answers a question observers have long asked as to how the FBI knew to search James Nichols’s farm even before Terry Nichols was taken into custody (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995). [New York Times, 6/27/1996]
Lawyers for accused Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995) ask the court to throw out evidence garnered against their client. Their reason: his wife, Marife Nichols, now claims she did not understand her legal rights at the time she let federal agents search her family’s home and car in Herington, Kansas. Investigators found a receipt for 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, the fertilizer used in the bomb, bearing the fingerprints of Nichols’s co-conspirator Timothy McVeigh (see May 1, 1995), guns stolen in a robbery investigators believed was carried out to finance the bombing (see Before July 3, 1995), and other evidence. Nichols’s lawyer Michael Tigar says, “All consents obtained from Mrs. Nichols were tainted by oppression, coercion, intimidation, and duress.” Marife Nichols now says she spoke with FBI agents for about six hours once she and her husband went to the police station. She says she tried to cooperate with the agents because she wanted to end the questioning and go home. One of the agents, Eugene N. Thomeczek, “told me I had to tell the truth,” she says, and the other told her that if she answered, “Mr. Thomeczek will not ask questions again and again.” She says she could not go home, in part because her house was being searched, and later because she feared being harassed by reporters. She says she also wanted to retrieve $5,000 in currency, and nine gold and three silver coins she had hidden in the box springs of her mattress. All were kept in evidence and later returned to her. She and her daughter Nicole were taken to a hotel, and over the next 37 days they were moved from one hotel to another. During that time, she learned she was pregnant with her son Christian. “I felt confused,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do.” She says she did not realize that wives do not have to testify against their husbands and that she had the right to a lawyer. The lawyers also want to throw out Terry Nichols’s statements he made to the FBI during nine hours of questioning after he took his wife and young daughter to the Herington Public Safety Building (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995). Nichols was not adequately appraised of his rights, Tigar argues, and says that the information gleaned from Nichols during the interview was obtained through illegal coercion. All information obtained from Terry Nichols, Tigar argues, is “fruit of a poisoned tree” and must be thrown out. Nichols had agreed from the outset to speak to FBI agents without a lawyer present. [New York Times, 6/29/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 256-257] Judge Richard P. Matsch will not throw out the evidence (see August 14, 1996), saying that defense allegations of “coercion” and duplicity are false. [New York Times, 8/15/1996]
An Argentine congressional commission issues a report accusing Aguas Argentinas, a consortium of private water companies that took over management of the city’s water and sewer system in 1993 (see April 28, 1993), of “serious and grave” breaches of contract, failing to meet goals regarding infrastructure development, and failing to inform its regulatory body, ETOSS, of its operations. It orders the company to suspend new connection fees for 800,000 new users in Buenos Aires. [Santoro, 2/6/2003; CBC News, 3/31/2004; Public Citizen, 6/14/2007]
Twelve members of an Arizona militia group called the Viper Team are arrested on federal conspiracy, weapons, and explosive charges after allegedly surveiling government buildings as potential targets. Ten members will plead guilty to various charges, drawing sentences of up to nine years in prison. One is ultimately acquitted of explosives charges while a mistrial will be declared on conspiracy charges against him. The last defendant will be convicted for conspiracy and sentenced to almost six years. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]
Judge Richard Matsch, presiding over the upcoming trials of accused Oklahoma City bombing suspects Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995), rules that a law establishing the closed-circuit telecast of the trial is constitutional, overruling objections from defense lawyers. He later orders the telecast to be shown in a government auditorium near the Oklahoma City airport. However, in January 1997, Matsch will ban the media from covering the closed-circuit telecast. [New York Times, 7/16/1996; Fox News, 4/13/2005]
An FBI photo of Eric Rudolph, illustrating his Ten Most Wanted inclusion. [Source: FBI / Public domain]Three pipe bombs, planted by anti-abortion activist and domestic terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph (see 1982 and January 29, 1998), go off in the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, killing two and wounding 111. The park is the central hub of the 1996 Summer Olympics, currently taking place, and is a hive of activity. Thousands of spectators are gathered to watch a late-evening rock concert; sometime after midnight, Rudolph plants a US military field pack containing three pipe bombs surrounded by five pounds of nails (which function as shrapnel) underneath a bench near the base of a concert sound tower, and flees the scene. The bomb, a 40-pound construction considered to be the largest pipe bomb in US history, has a directed charge and could have done even more damage, but is knocked over sideways sometime between its planting and its detonation; FBI agent Jack Killorin will later say it is a “fluke” that the bomb did not kill dozens of people. “He’s one of the most successful serial bombers in history,” Killorin will say. “I do not respect Eric Robert Rudolph. But I do respect his capability as an opponent.” The bomb, like Rudolph’s earlier bombs (see January 16, 1997 and February 21, 1997), is propelled by nitroglycerin dynamite, uses an alarm clock and Rubbermaid containers, and contains steel plates. Security guard Richard Jewell discovers the field pack and alerts Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) officers; two bomb experts confirm that the backpack does, indeed, carry a “big” bomb. Shortly thereafter, Rudolph calls 911 to deliver a warning, but, Rudolph will later claim, the operator inexplicably hangs up on him in mid-statement. (Telephone records show an anonymous 911 call received at 12:57 a.m.; the operator could not find Centennial Park in her computer.) With no knowledge of the abortive 911 warning, Jewell, GBI agent Tom Davis, and others begin clearing the area, removing between 75 and 100 people from harm’s way. At 1:20 a.m. the bomb, controlled by an alarm clock “timer,” explodes. Georgia resident Alice Hawthorne dies from a nail striking her in the head, and Turkish cameraman Melih Uzunyol dies of a heart attack suffered while he runs to cover the explosion. Davis is among the 111 people injured in the blast. Eyewitness Desmond Edwards of Atlanta tells the press: “Some people looked really messed up. There were rivers of blood.” The FBI quickly rules the explosion a terrorist incident. The International Olympic Committee says the games will go on despite the bombing. [CNN, 7/27/1996; CNN, 6/15/2002; Orlando Weekly, 8/24/2006] Within days, authorities will speculate that the bombing was carried out either by a lone “nutjob” or by someone with ties to the right-wing militia movement. [CNN, 7/27/1996] GBI investigator Charles Stone will later tell the press: “It [the bomb] was put together in a meticulous fashion, and we believed we had somebody who wanted to kill a lot of people. Nobody took credit, which indicates that it might have been an individual, as opposed to an organized group, probably somebody who had military experience, somebody who was proficient with bombs.” A pair of eyewitnesses realize that they have inadvertently videotaped the explosion. They try to give their film to the police, but when they are turned away, they give it to CNN. Later, investigators turn up a blurry photo of someone sitting on the bench near where the bomb was planted, and believe it may be the bomber, but the photo is useless for identification purposes. [CNN, 6/15/2002]
Original Plan Far More Extensive - Rudolph’s original plan involved five pipe bombs, all to be detonated on different days, and primarily targeting law enforcement officials and not civilians. When the first bomb explodes, Rudolph loses his nerve, retrieves the other four bombs from where he has hidden them, and flees to western North Carolina, to plot further bombings. [Orlando Weekly, 8/24/2006]
Denounced by President - President Clinton denounces the bombing the following morning, calling it an “evil act of terror” and promising to turn all federal resources towards finding the bomber. “We will spare no effort to find out who was responsible for this murderous act,” he tells the public. “We will track them down. We will bring them to justice.” [CNN, 7/27/1996]
Jewell Falsely Implicated - Jewell, initially hailed by the press as a hero for his role in finding the bomb and clearing the area, is soon targeted by FBI investigators. He is never identified as anything other than a “person of interest” in the bombing, but is swarmed by media representatives. Jewell will later sue NBC, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and other media outlets for libel. He will say, “For 88 days, I lived a nightmare.” Investigators later learn that two drunken young men rousted by Jewell had intended to steal the backpack containing the bomb and carry it with them into a nearby nightclub. Stone later says if the young men had succeeded, “We would have had hundreds of fatalities. It would have been a disaster of just an unknown magnitude.” Instead, the would-be thieves tip over the pack, causing much of the blast to be directed straight up instead of into the crowd, as Rudolph intended. [CNN, 6/15/2002]
Rationale - In 2005, Rudolph will explain why he bombed the Olympics, saying that he wanted to shut down the Olympics because of its espousal of what he calls “global socialism” and the US government’s support for abortion (see April 14, 2005). Killorin has a simpler explanation: “The Olympic temptation, he could not resist it. It was too big a stage.” [Orlando Weekly, 8/24/2006]
Later Bombings Point to Rudolph - In early 1997, after an Atlanta-area abortion clinic and lesbian nightclub are bombed (see January 16, 1997 and February 21, 1997), FBI investigators determine that the bombs used at those venues are similar to the Centennial Park bomb. The 1998 bombing of an Alabama abortion clinic (see January 29, 1998) leads the FBI to determine that Rudolph is the bomber. Rudolph becomes a fugitive (see July 1998) and successfully hides for over five years (see May 31, 2003). He will plead guilty to all four bombings in return for the prosecution agreeing not to seek the death penalty (see April 14, 2005).
Entity Tags: Centennial Olympic Park, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Charles Stone, Eric Robert Rudolph, Desmond Edwards, International Olympic Committee, Federal Bureau of Investigation, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Alice Hawthorne, Melih Uzunyol, Jack Killorin, Tom Davis, Richard Jewell
Timeline Tags: US Domestic Terrorism
Washington State Militia leader John Pitner and seven others are arrested on weapons and explosives charges in connection with a plot to build pipe bombs for a confrontation with the federal government. Pitner and four others will be convicted on weapons charges, while conspiracy charges against all eight will end in a mistrial. Pitner will later be retried on that charge, convicted, and sentenced to four years in prison. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]
A federal appeals court upholds the convictions of six Branch Davidians (see January-February 1994), saying federal agents did not use excessive force in trying to arrest Davidian leader David Koresh, who perished along with nearly 80 of his followers after a 51-day standoff with federal authorities (see April 19, 1993). [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 7/21/2000]
House Oversight Committee holds public hearings on the Waco debacle. [Source: C-SPAN]The House Oversight Committee releases its report on the FBI’s siege and final assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993, March 1, 1993, and April 19, 1993). The report was prepared in conjunction with the House Judiciary Committee. The report spans investigative activities undertaken on behalf of the committees by Congressional investigators from April 1995 through May 1996; the committees took almost three months to write the final report. As part of that investigation, the Oversight Committee held 10 days of public hearings (see August 4, 1995). [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996]
Findings - The report makes the following conclusions:
Branch Davidians Responsible for Situation, Deaths - “But for the criminal conduct and aberrational behavior of David Koresh and other Branch Davidians, the tragedies that occurred in Waco would not have occurred,” the report finds. “The ultimate responsibility for the deaths of the Davidians and the four federal law enforcement agents [referring to the federal agents slain in the February 1993 raid] lies with Koresh.” The Davidians set the fires themselves, the report finds. Moreover, the Davidians had time to leave the premises after their cohorts set the fires, and most either chose to stay or were prevented from leaving by their fellows. The 19 Davidians killed by gunfire either shot themselves, the report finds, were shot by their fellows, or were killed by “the remote possibility of accidental discharge from rounds exploding in the fire.”
Treasury Department 'Derelict' in Duties - Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen and Deputy Secretary Roger Altman were “irresponsible” and “derelict in their duties” refusing to meet with the director of the BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, sometimes abbreviated ATF] in the month before the February raid, and failing to ask for briefings. Senior Treasury officials “routinely failed” to monitor BATF officials, knew little to nothing of the plans for the raid, and therefore failed to uncover the significant flaws in the plan. When the raid failed, Assistant Treasury Secretary Ronald Noble tried to blame the BATF for the failure, even though Noble and his fellow Treasury officials failed to supervise the BATF’s plans and activities.
BATF 'Grossly Incompetent' - Some of the worst criticism of the report are leveled at the BATF. The report calls the agency’s investigation of the Davidians (see June-July 1992, November 1992 - January 1993, and January 11, 1993 and After) “grossly incompetent” and lacking in “the minimum professionalism expected of a major federal law enforcement agency.” The agents in charge of planning decided to use a “military-style raid” two months before beginning surveillance, undercover, and infiltration efforts. The agency did have probable cause for a search warrant against Koresh and the Davidians (see February 25, 1993), but the affidavit applying for the warrant “contained an incredible number of false statements.” The BATF agents responsible for the affidavit either knew, or should have known, the affidavit was so inaccurate and false. Koresh could easily have been arrested outside the compound, the report finds; the BATF planners “were determined to use a dynamic entry approach,” and thusly “exercised extremely poor judgment, made erroneous assumptions, and ignored the foreseeable perils of their course of action.” BATF agents lied to Defense Department officials about the Davidians’ supposed involvement in drug manufacturing, and by those lies secured Defense Department training without having to reimburse the department, as they should have. The raid plan itself “was poorly conceived, utilized a high risk tactical approach when other tactics could have been successfully used, was drafted and commanded by ATF agents who were less qualified than other available agents, and used agents who were not sufficiently trained for the operation.” Plan security was lax, making it easy for the Davidians to learn about the plan and take precautions. The report singles out BATF raid commanders Philip Chojnacki and Chuck Sarabyn for criticism, noting that they endangered BATF agents’ lives by choosing to go ahead with the raid even though they knew, or should have known, the Davidians had found out about it and were taking defensive action. “This, more than any other factor, led to the deaths of the four ATF agents killed on February 28.” The report is highly critical of Chojnacki’s and Sarabyn’s rehiring after they were fired (see December 23, 1994). The report also cites former BATF Director Stephen Higgins (see July 2, 1995) and former Deputy Director Daniel Hartnett for failing to become involved in the planning.
Justice Department Decision to Approve Final Assault 'Highly Irresponsible' - The report charactizes Attorney General Janet Reno’s approval of the FBI’s plan to end the standoff “premature, wrong… highly irresponsible… [and] seriously negligent” (see April 17-18, 1993). Reno should have known that the plan would put the Davidians’s lives at extreme risk, especially the children inside, and should have been doubly reluctant because of the lack of a serious threat posed by the Davidians to the FBI or to the surrounding community. Reno should have been skeptical of the FBI’s reasons for ending the standoff: negotiations were continuing, the Davidians were not threatening to break out in force, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) could have gone longer without mandatory rest and retraining, the Davidians’ living conditions had not significantly deteriorated, and there was no reason to believe that children were being abused or mistreated any more than they may have been before the February raid. “The final assault put the children at the greatest risk.” The report calls the plan to use CS riot control gas “fatally flawed.” CS gas is a dangerous substance, and particularly threatening to children, pregnant women, elderly people, and those with respiratory conditions, all of which were represented in the compound. Some of those who died in the fires may have died from exposure to CS gas before the fires consumed them, the report speculates. The Davidians were likely to react violently and not submissively, as the FBI insisted, and the likelihood of armed resistance and mass suicide in response to the CS gas insertion was high. Moreover, the plan had no contingency provisions in case the initial insertion did not provide the desired result. Reno offered her resignation after the April 19 assault; the report says that President Clinton “should have accepted it.” [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996; House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996]
FBI Pushed for Violent Confrontation Instead of Allowing Negotiations to Continue - The FBI was riven by the conflict between two teams with “incompatible methodologies,” the report finds: the HRT, which ultimately controlled the situation, and the negotiators. Senior FBI agent Jeffrey Jamar almost always sided with the HRT’s aggressive approach, but often “allowed the proposals of each team to be implemented simultaneously, working against each other.” The FBI’s chief negotiator on-site, Gary Noesner, told the committee that the dichotomy between the “action-oriented” HRT and the “nonviolent” negotiators is a problem that the FBI routinely experiences; it was not unique to the Davidian standoff. The two teams battled with increasing hostility and anger towards one another as the siege progressed, with the negotiators becoming less and less influential. The negotiators later testified that the pressure tactics used by the HRT against the Davidians undermined their efforts at winning the Davidians’ trust and rendered their efforts ineffective. FBI profiler Peter Smerick (see March 3-4, 1993, March 7-8, 1993, March 9, 1993, March 9, 1993, March 17-18, 1993, August 1993, and 1995) was particularly harsh in his assessment of the tactics of the HRT during the siege; during his interviews with investigators, Smerick said “the FBI commanders were moving too rapidly toward a tactical solution and were not allowing adequate time for negotiations to work.” Smerick told investigators that while the “negotiators were building bonds… the tactical group was undermining everything.… Every time the negotiators were making progress the tactical people would undo it.” The report concludes, “FBI leadership engaged these two strategies in a way that bonded the Davidians together and perpetuated the standoff.” [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996] After March 2, when Koresh and the Davidians broke what some considered to be a promise to come out (see March 2, 1993), Jamar believed nothing Koresh or the others said, and essentially gave up on the idea of a negotiated surrender. Chief negotiator Byron Sage did not share that view, but Jamar and the HRT officials began thinking, and planning, exclusively on a forced end to the standoff, even ignoring evidence that Koresh intended to lead his people out after completing his work on an interpretation of the Biblical Seven Seals (see April 14-15, 1993). Many FBI officials, particularly Jamar, Noesner, and the HRT leadership, became frustrated and impatient with what the report calls “endless dissertations of Branch Davidian beliefs” (see March 15, 1993), to the point where they ignored the assertions from religious experts that the Davidians could be productively negotiated with on a religiously theoretical level (see March 16, 1993). The FBI, the report says, “should have sought and accepted more expert advice on the Branch Davidians and their religious views and been more open-minded to the advice of the FBI’s own experts.” Jamar and the senior FBI officials advising Reno should have known that the reasons they gave to end negotiations and force an ending were groundless; their advice to Reno was, the report says, “wrong and highly irresponsible.” [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996; House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996] However, some charges against the FBI are baseless, the report finds. CS gas would not have built up in any areas of the residence to anything approaching lethal levels. No FBI agents shot at the Davidians or the compound. No agent set any fires, either deliberately or inadvertently. [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996]
Defense Department Bears No Responsibility - The report finds no reason to fault the Defense Department or National Guard, as no DoD nor Guard personnel took an active part in the assault; the Posse Comitatus Act was therefore not violated. No foreign military personnel or foreign nationals took any part in the assault, though “[s]ome foreign military personnel were present near the Davidian residence as observers at the invitation of the FBI.”
Recommendations - The report recommends that:
the Justice Department consider assuming control of the BATF from the Treasury Department;
Waco residents who made the false statements to law enforcement officials included in the original search warrants should be charged with crimes;
federal agents should use caution in using such statements to obtain warrants; the BATF should review and revise its planning to ensure that “its best qualified agents are placed in command and control positions in all operations”;
senior BATF officials “should assert greater command and control over significant operations”;
the BATF should no longer have sole jurisdiction over any drug-related crimes;
Congress should consider enhancing the Posse Comitatus Act to restrain the National Guard from being involved with federal law enforcement actions;
the Defense Department should clarify the grounds upon which law enforcement agencies can apply for its assistance;
the General Accounting Office (GAO) should ensure that the BATF reimburses the Defense Department for the training and assistance it improperly received;
the GAO should investigate Operation Alliance, the organization that acts as a liaison between the military and other federal agencies;
the FBI should revamp its negotiation policies and training to minimize the effects of physical and emotional fatigue on negotiators;
the FBI should take steps to ensure greater understanding of the targets under investigation (the report notes that had the FBI and BATF agents understood more about the Davidians’ religious philosophies, they “could have made better choices in planning to deal with the Branch Davidians” (see March 15, 1993);
the FBI should ensure better training for its lead negotiators;
FBI agents should rely more on outside experts (the reports notes that several religious experts offered their services in helping the agents understand the Davidians, but were either rebuffed or ignored—see March 3, 1993, March 7, 1993, and March 16, 1993);
federal law enforcement agencies should welcome the assistance of other law enforcement agencies, particularly state and local agencies;
the FBI should expand the size of the Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) “so that there are sufficient numbers of team members to participate in an operation and to relieve those involved when necessary”;
the FBI should conduct further examinations on the use of CS gas against children, those with respiratory problems, pregnant women, and the elderly. [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996]
'Perhaps the Greatest Law Enforcement Tragedy in American History' - In a statement appended to the final report, Representative Steven Schiff (R-NM) calls the Davidian raid, standoff, and final assault “perhaps the greatest law enforcement tragedy in American history.” He writes: “It would not be a significant overstatement to describe the Waco operation from the government’s standpoint, as one in which if something could go wrong, it did. The true tragedy is, virtually all of those mistakes could have been avoided.” His statement decries what he calls the increasing “militarization of law enforcement,” recommends that the HRT be scaled back instead of expanded, expresses little confidence in the FLIR (forward-looking infrared radar) videotapes used to determine when and how the fires were started, calls for stringent limitations on the use of CS gas, and blames the FBI for not allowing many of the residents to escape. He accuses the Justice Department of a “breach of ethics” in what he says were its attempts to conceal and withhold evidence from the committee, and to shape its findings. [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996]
Dissenting Views - The investigating committees’ 17 Democrats issue a “dissenting views” addendum that is highly critical of what it calls the Republican majority’s use of “false assumptions and unfounded allegations” to besmirch the reputations of Reno and Bentsen, and the use of those “assumptions and allegations” to press for Reno’s resignation. [House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 8/2/1996]
Entity Tags: Gary Noesner, US Department of the Treasury, US Department of Defense, Branch Davidians, Clinton administration, Dan Hartnett, Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Hostage Rescue Team, David Koresh, US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Steven Schiff, Charles Sarabyn, Ronald Noble, Janet Reno, Stephen Higgins, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, General Accounting Office, Lloyd Bentsen, Jeffrey Jamar, Operation Alliance, Peter Smerick, Roger Altman, Philip Chojnacki
Timeline Tags: 1993 Branch Davidian Crisis
Judge Richard P. Matsch, presiding over the trials of the accused Oklahoma City bombers (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995), rules that statements made by Terry Nichols against co-defendant Timothy McVeigh cannot be used against McVeigh at trial. Matsch also refuses defense requests to suppress a wide array of evidence against both Nichols and McVeigh (see June 28, 1996). Prosecutor Joseph Hartzler says Matsch’s decision to retain the evidence “affirms that the federal government conducted its investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing with great care, as well as speed and skill.… The court ruled today that the government did not violate anyone’s constitutional rights, and it rejected all of the defense motions to surpress evidence. In short, every piece of evidence will be admissible.” Hartzler is not entirely accurate in his statement; Nichols’s statements against McVeigh given during Nichols’s nine-hour interrogation by FBI agents (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995) are not admissible, and the agents who interrogated Nichols cannot testify about what Nichols told them. That evidence includes Nichols’s assertion that met McVeigh in Oklahoma City on April 16, 1995, three days before the bombing, and drove McVeigh back to Kansas (see April 16-17, 1995). Nor will a jury learn that Nichols told agents he lent McVeigh his pickup truck on April 18, the day prosecutors say the two assembled the bomb (see 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995 and 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995). [New York Times, 8/15/1996]
The War Crimes Act (HR 3680) becomes Public Law No: 104-192. It prohibits Americans—top officials and soldiers alike—from committing “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions. It states: “Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions,” provided that the perpetrator or the victim is a member of the US military or a national of the US, “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.” [Newsweek, 11/5/2001]
Gary Lauck leaves a Danish courtroom in August 1995. [Source: Bjarke Oersted/Lincoln Journal-Star]American white supremacist Gary Lauck is convicted in Germany of smuggling illegal neo-Nazi materials into the country. Lauck has said he became a “Hitler fan” at age 11. He affects a fake German accent and has had his first name changed to “Gerhard.” Formerly a member of the National Socialist White People’s Party (the successor organization to the American Nazi Party), in 1974 Lauck founded the National Socialist German Workers Party/Overseas Organization (NSDAP/AO) after the NSWPP disintegrated. The NSDAP/AO is officially dedicated to promoting “a worldwide National Socialist-led White Revolution for the restoration of White Power in all White nations.” Lauck has attempted to bring such materials—including pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic propaganda, swastika armbands, pins, and other items—into Germany and other European countries since well before the reunification of East and West Germany (see November 9, 1989 and After). In the 1980s, Lauck succeeded in bringing almost 8 million pieces of German-language propaganda into Germany, including a German-language newspaper, Nazi Battle Cry, and an old Nazi propaganda film depicting Jews as rats. Lauck became a revered figure among Germany’s small but vocal neo-Nazi population, and had some success in bringing together a number of disparate neo-Nazi groups under his umbrella organization NS Kampfruf. In 1974 and 1975, Lauck was arrested by German officials and deported; in 1976, after being arrested with 20,000 Nazi posters in his possession, he served four months in a German prison and was banned from Germany for life. In 1995, he was arrested in Denmark on international warrants for disseminating illegal propaganda in Germany and handed over to the German courts. (Four days after his arrest, German authorities raided the homes of some 80 Lauck followers, and seized weapons, ammunition, and illegal literature.) He is sentenced to four years in prison and will be released in March 1999. After his release, he will return to the United States and begin disseminating Nazi propaganda via the Internet. [New York Times, 8/23/1996; Lincoln Journal-Star, 12/16/2007; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 11/29/2011]
Stuart Adelmann, using the alias Brian Stuart Von Adelmann, Ph.D., uses a counterfeit Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) license to order three different types of radioactive materials. Adelmann is arrested and charged with engaging in prohibited transactions involving nuclear materials. He will plead guilty and will be sentenced to five years in federal prison. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2009]
Prosecutors in the Oklahoma City bombing trial (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995) ask Judge Richard P. Matsch to prevent defendant Timothy McVeigh from giving a series of television and newspaper interviews. McVeigh’s lawyer has scheduled an interview with a documentary crew from the BBC in October, and says his client wants to do an interview with any of a number of leading television news anchors and newspaper reporters. Jones has repeatedly attempted to “soften” his client’s image as presented in the media. Prosecutor Joseph Hartzler calls the requests “an extraordinary attempt to manipulate the news media to produce a favorable impact on the potential jury pool.” Matsch has ordered all parties involved in the case to “limit” their public comments. Jones argues that McVeigh has been “demonized” in the press, and deserves an opportunity to give a different view of himself to the world. “Mr. McVeigh, at the minimum, is entitled to be seen as a human being and to the extent that any interview or meeting halts the rush to judgment in advance of trial, the interests of justice are served,” Jones argues. As things stand, he continues, “the abuse, distortion, calumny heaped upon our client from the very front steps of the courthouse will ultimately influence the reporting and the jury unless there is some modicum of balance.” [New York Times, 8/30/1996] Matsch will refuse to allow the television interviews, calling them “an inappropriate pretrial dissemination of evidence.” He says he will allow telephone interviews, but according to Jones, he and McVeigh want only face-to-face, filmed interviews that will present McVeigh’s face, voice, and personality on television broadcasts. [New York Times, 10/5/1996]
Over 300 people attend what is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “the largest Patriot gathering ever held in Washington, DC.” The meeting, far from the rural areas where the Patriot movement (see February 1992) is strongest, is billed as a “Rally for the Bill of Rights.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]
Author Brandon M. Stickney, a reporter for the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal in upstate New York, catalogs a number of unproven and sometimes extremist conspiracy theories that have sprouted in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Stickney includes his findings in his “unauthorized biography” of accused bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, July 11-13, 1995, and August 10, 1995), All-American Monster. Among the theories Stickney presents:
The bombing was carried out by the Japanese. This theory was promulgated by Michigan Militia leaders Norm Olson and Ray Southwell (see April 1994), and proved so embarrassing for the two that they resigned their posts.
Both the Oklahoma City bombing and the Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After) were engineered by Clinton administration personnel in order to kill two former bodyguards of President Clinton who were preparing to go public with lurid tales of Clinton’s sexual transgressions. Secret Service agent Alan Wicher was killed in Oklahoma, and BATF agent Robert William was killed at Waco. Clinton attended Wicher’s funeral, and William had worked for the BATF in Little Rock while Clinton was governor of Arkansas. Idaho resident Bill Trowbridge told an Associated Press reporter after a militia meeting: “[T]hat makes four different bodyguards killed. Three in Waco, and this one. Sure did benefit Bill Clinton, didn’t it? Check that out.”
The UN participated in the bombing plot. This theory has been promoted by the John Birch Society (see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), the editors of the white-separatist magazine The Spotlight, and other organizations and groups that have warned about a partnership between the UN and the US government to impose tyranny and martial law on American citizens, as part of the imposition of what they call the “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990). Gate Keepers information service representative Pam Beesley told an AP reporter that “this is what the UN does when they go in and overthrow a country. They produce unrest in the country first.”
The bomb was an “electrodynamic gaseous fuel device” impossible for amateurs like McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols to have made. Instead, it must have been made by US officials possessed of “high-level, top-secret” information. This theory came from former FBI agent Ted Gunderson, who makes regular appearances in The Spotlight. According to Gunderson, “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995) was “vaporized by design” in the blast, and McVeigh was a “throwaway” or an “expendable asset.”
Two bombs, not one, destroyed the Murrah Federal Building. It is true that two “incidents” were recorded at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, 11.9 seconds apart, but, according to Oklahoma chief geophysicist James Lawson, the second tremor was not caused by a second bomb, but by the building collapsing (see After 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Lawson told the AP he still gets calls from people demanding to know about the “second explosion.” “A lot of them are anxious to explain to me that our government committed mass murder,” he said. “They are disappointed that I’m not saying it was two blasts.”
Stickney writes that many people have told him flatly that “they know” the government caused the bombing, and writes: “No matter what I told them, or for how long I tried to tell it, they would not change their minds that the government was involved. Distrust in public officials has reached the point of delusion, where Americans create their own explanations they cannot understand. One of the people who spoke with me went so far as to say he’d obtained a photograph of the bombed-out Murrah (ordered through a late-night AM radio show) that ‘proves two bombs were set off. McVeigh was led to Oklahoma by his nose, by the government.’” A video titled Oklahoma City: What Really Happened sells well at gun shows and through militia magazines and Web sites. On the box, it poses the questions: “Was there more than one bomb?” “What happened to John Doe No. 2?” “Was there a Middle Eastern connection?” and “Did some occupants of the building have prior warning?” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 265-267]
Entity Tags: United Nations, Timothy James McVeigh, Ted Gunderson, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Ray Southwell, Clinton administration, James Lawson, Brandon M. Stickney, Alan Wicher, Bill Trowbridge, Robert William, Terry Lynn Nichols, Pam Beesley, Norman (“Norm”) Olson, John Birch Society
Timeline Tags: US Domestic Terrorism
Ramzi Yousef and two other defendants, Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah, are convicted of crimes relating to Operation Bojinka (see January 6, 1995). [CNN, 9/5/1996] In the nearly 6,000-page transcript of the three-month Bojinka trial, there is not a single mention of the “second wave” of Bojinka that closely paralleled the 9/11 plot. Interrogations by Philippine investigator Colonel Rodolfo Mendoza had exposed the details of this plot quite clearly (see January 20, 1995 and February-Early May 1995). However, not only does the FBI not call Mendoza to testify, but his name is not even mentioned in the trial, not even by his assistant, who does testify. “The FBI seemed to be going out of its way to avoid even a hint of the plot that was ultimately carried out on 9/11,” author Peter Lance will later note. [Lance, 2003, pp. 350-51] Murad was extensively tortured during his imprisonment in the Philippines (see After January 6, 1995), and some observers such as law professor Alan Dershowitz will assert that Murad’s case proves the reliability of torture, claiming that Murad’s torture prevented a major disaster. However, others disagree. Law professor Stephanie Athey, in her examination of the case, will write in 2007 that Murad’s torture actually produced little useful information. A computer found in Murad’s apartment held key details of the plot (see January 7-11, 1995 and Spring 1995). CIA agent Michael Scheuer will later say that the information collected from Murad’s apartment, not the information gleaned from Murad’s torture, provided actual useful intelligence. [Vanity Fair, 12/16/2008]
The press learns that FBI agents found a hand-drawn map of Oklahoma City’s Murrah Federal Building during a search of accused co-conspirator Terry Nichols’s Herington, Kansas, property (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995). Nichols is accused of conspiring with Timothy McVeigh to bomb the building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995). On the map, reports say, is one street labeled as an escape route from the bomb site to a point north of a nearby YMCA, where McVeigh’s getaway car is believed to have been parked (see April 13, 1995). Nichols’s lawyers, under instructions from the judge not to discuss details of evidence not disclosed in court, refuse to confirm or deny the existence of such a document. A source close to the investigation confirms the map’s existence. [New York Times, 9/10/1996]
Judge Richard P. Matsch, presiding over the upcoming trials of accused Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995), upholds the charges against the two men. Defense lawyers had asked that the indictments against their clients be set aside because, they argued, federal laws making it a crime to use a weapon like a truck bomb to kill people and damage US property are unconstitutional. Such laws exceed Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce, they argued, using as precedent a 1995 Supreme Court decision that invalidated the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1990, a law that would have made it a federal crime to possess a gun within 1,000 feet of of a school’s grounds. The Court found that the gun law, based on the concept of regulating interstate commerce, infringed on state and local control of schools. Matsch refuses to apply this reasoning to the Oklahoma City case; the charges McVeigh and Nichols face center on the deaths of eight federal workers in the blast. (They will face some 160 counts of murder and related charges from Oklahoma after their federal trials conclude.) Matsch rules that “the impact on interstate commerce is both obvious and substantial” if the evidence in the indictment is proved at trial. “The use of a truck bomb of sufficient explosive power to destroy an office building, killing and injuring hundreds of its occupants, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. That effect is even more apparent and substantial when the building is owned by the national Government and houses the employees of many of its agencies. An attack on such a building and the people in it by placement of a bomb in a truck in front of it produces consequences ranging far beyond state or local interests.” It is up to the prosecution to prove a willful participation in an agreement to use a bomb in a truck as a weapon to attack the federal building and the people in it. [New York Times, 9/10/1996]
Judge Richard P. Matsch, presiding over the upcoming trials of accused Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995), refuses to allow prosecutors to use the results of a bomb test using a device similar to the one McVeigh is accused of using to destroy the Murrah Federal Building and kill 168 people. Prosecutors signed a written agreement with the defense in September 1995 assuring defense counsel that they would receive written notice of tests of explosive devices containing ammonium nitrate. In June 1996, the British government conducted a test explosion of a 5,000-pound ammonium nitrate bomb in Soccoro, New Mexico. FBI agents had free access to the site, but experts for the defense were kept more than a mile away, “so far it took eight seconds for the sound of the blast to get there,” according to a complaint from Nichols’s legal team. “That is not meaningful observation.” Prosecutors say the test bombing was not intended to be a replica of the Oklahoma City blast, and that lawyers for the defense had been provided with photographs, videotapes, and all data from the tests, in which the impact of the bomb on vehicles, street signs, and other items was tested. However, Matsch says that is not enough. “I’m going to enforce the agreement,” he rules. The defense was not given equal access, so prosecution experts cannot use the test results at trial. [New York Times, 10/5/1996]
Charles Barbee, Robert Berry, and Jay Merrell are charged with robbing and bombing banks, a newspaper office, and a Planned Parenthood clinic in the Spokane, Washington, area. The three are self-described “Phineas Priests,” members of the Christian Identity movement (see 1960s and After and 1990) who claim to have been called by God to launch violent attacks. The three will be convicted and sentenced to life in prison. A fourth “priest,” Brian Ratigan, will be arrested separately and sentenced to 55 years in jail. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]
Seven members of the West Virginia Mountaineer Militia are arrested in a plot to blow up the FBI’s national fingerprint records center in that state. In 1998, leader Floyd “Ray” Looker will be sentenced to 18 years in prison. Two other defendants are later sentenced on explosives charges and a third will draw a year in prison for providing blueprints of the FBI facility to Looker, who then sold them to a government informant. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]
Accused Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh, left, and Terry Nichols look on as Judge Richard Matsch orders their trials to be severed. [Source: The Oklahoman]Judge Richard Matsch orders separate trials for accused Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995), in a ruling considered a victory for the defense. McVeigh will be tried first. Both defendants’ lawyers argued that to try the two men together would irreparably harm their right to receive fair trials. McVeigh’s lawyers, Stephen Jones and Robert Nigh Jr., wrote in a filing, “The government envisions a trial in which the actions and statements of Terry Nichols become indistinguishable from the actions of Timothy McVeigh.” And Nichols’s lead lawyer Michael Tigar argued that Nichols “stands in serious risk of being found guilty by ‘mass application’ if he was tried jointly with Mr. McVeigh.” Matsch rules that McVeigh could be harmed by introduction of statements made by Nichols implicating him in the bombing, and the defense’s inability to cross-examine Nichols if Nichols were to exercise his right to avoid self-incrimination. “The court cannot save a joint trial by sacrificing the interests of one defendant to protect the other,” Matsch rules. “Timothy McVeigh will be profoundly prejudiced by a joint trial in this case. His lawyers cannot question Terry Nichols or cross-examine the FBI agents on what they say Terry Nichols said. In short, Timothy McVeigh may be caught in cross-fire.” Tigar says after the ruling, “A separate trial will force the government to prove its case against Mr. Nichols, rather than merely rely on guilt by association and spillover prejudice from the case against Mr. McVeigh.” [New York Times, 9/8/1996; New York Times, 10/26/1996; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] Prosecutor Sean Connelly, presenting the government’s desire for a single joint trial, has told Matsch: “The proof will be unified: McVeigh and Nichols, Nichols and McVeigh, every step of the way.” [New York Times, 10/4/1996] Joseph Hartzler leads the team of attorneys prosecuting McVeigh (see May 22, 1995). [TruTV, 2/2009]
Dr. Jack Fainman, a Vancouver physician and abortion provider, is shot in the right shoulder while at his home. The bullet comes through his back window. [Washington Post, 1998] Anti-abortion advocate James Kopp will later be named as a suspect in Fainman’s shooting (see March 29, 2001).
The US government once again considers going after the Holy Land Foundation for its ties to Hamas. Israel freezes the foundation’s assets this year, and the Treasury Department proposes making a similar asset freeze in the US as well. [Wall Street Journal, 2/27/2002] In 2000, the New York Times will report, “Some government officials recommended that the group be prosecuted in 1997 for supporting Hamas, the militant Islamic group. But others opposed the effort, fearing that it would expose intelligence sources and spur public criticism of the administration as anti-Muslim.” [New York Times, 2/19/2000] Those pushing to prosecute the group would certainly include Vulgar Betrayal investigation FBI agents like Robert Wright. Wright had been aware of Holy Land’s ties to Hamas since 1993 (see After January 1993 and October 1993). However, Attorney General Janet Reno blocks the proposal and no action is taken. [Wall Street Journal, 2/27/2002] Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke claims that in 1995 he pushed for something to be done to Holy Land, but higher-ups overruled him (see January 1995-April 1996).
The original Earth Liberation First logo. [Source: Original ELF (.com)]The Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an extremist offshoot of Earth First! (see 1980 and After) founded in Britain in 1992, steps up the vandalism and violence of its parent organization. It consciously models itself after the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976) in having little to no hierarchical organization, and consists of what it calls “autonomous groups of people” who are “anonymous not only to the public but also to one another.” The ELF writes that it exists to “inflict economic damage on those profiting from the destruction and exploitation of the natural environment,” and “to reveal and educate the public on the atrocities committed against the earth and all species that populate it.” In a promotional video, “Igniting the Revolution,” ELF says it now knows “that to be successful in the struggle to protect the Earth, more extreme tactics must be utilized. Thus the Earth Liberation Front was born.” It first garners major US public attention in 1997, when ELF activists burn down a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) horse corral in Oregon (see 1997). [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/2002; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997) claims sole responsibility for burning down an unoccupied Bureau of Land Management (BLM) horse corral in Oregon; previous attacks had been performed in conjuction with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976). [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Cover of ‘ARSON-Around with Auntie ALF’. [Source: Resource Clearinghouse (.com)]Activists with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976) use the step-by-step instructions provided by an ALF manual, “ARSON-Around with Auntie ALF,” to make and use homemade napalm to burn down an Oregon slaughterhouse. The manual states, “Arson is not always used by ALF in the course of an action, but when it is, it can be devastatingly effective.” The activists drill holes in the walls, pour in 35 gallons of homemade napalm, and use three electronically timed incendiary devices to, in the words of an ALF statement, “halt what countless protests and letter-writing campaigns could never stop.” [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Lynne Stewart. [Source: Robert Livingston/ public domain]The ‘Blind Sheikh,’ Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, who has been in a maximum security facility since his conviction on terrorism charges in the mid 1990s, communicates with his supporters through his legal team, radical attorney Lynne Stewart, paralegal Ahmed Abdel Sattar, and interpreter Mohamed Yousry. Abdul-Rahman, who is held at the Supermax prison in Colorado and then at a medical facility in Minnesota, has no access to the outside world except through the team and he uses them to pass on advice. Author Peter Bergen will comment: “Sheikh Abdul-Rahman’s incarceration has not prevented him from communicating important messages to his followers through his family or lawyers; for instance, in 1997 he endorsed a ceasefire between the Egyptian government and the terrorist Islamic Group. Then in 2000 Sheikh Abdul-Rahman publicly withdrew his support from that ceasefire.” In addition, his will, which appears in 1998 and urges attacks against the US, may also be smuggled out by his legal team (see May 1998). However, passing on such information during the thrice-yearly visits is against the rules agreed for the visits. Stewart, who attempts to distract the prison guards while Abdul-Rahman passes on the messages, will be indicted in 2002 and found guilty on several charges, including conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists. She will be sentenced to 28 months in jail. [CounterPunch, 10/12/2002; Fox News, 2/11/2005; CNN, 2/14/2005; Bergen, 2006, pp. 208-9; National Review, 10/17/2006] In 2001, one of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohand Alshehri, is reportedly seen near the Minnesota facility where Abdul-Rahman is being held (see August 2001).
A screenshot of Neal Horsley’s ‘Nuremberg Files’ Web site, showing murdered doctors with their names lined out. [Source: MSNBC / Christian Gallery (.com)]Anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley posts a Web site he calls “The Nuremberg Files,” which lists the names, addresses, and phone numbers of some 200 abortion providers and clinic staff members. The site, sponsored by the American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA—see 1995 and After), lists each person with one of three statuses: still working, wounded, or dead. Many observers and pro-choice activists will call the site a “hit list” targeting abortion providers for assassination (see October 23, 1998). [Kushner, 2003, pp. 40] Government documents also identify Horsley as a white supremacist and separatist, and the “webmaster” for the secessionist organization “Republic of Texas.” [Extremist Groups: Information for Students, 1/1/2006] In a 2001 documentary on the “Army of God,” an organization to which Horsley belongs (see 1982 and March 30, 2001), Horsley discusses his site’s treatment of murdered abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian (see October 23, 1998). Horsley will explain why, within hours of Slepian’s murder, the site depicts Slepian’s name with a line drawn through it: “Names in black are people who are working. The grayed-out names are people who have been wounded. And the strike-throughs, like Dr. Slepian, are people who have been killed. When I drew a line through his name, I said: ‘See, I told ya. There’s another one. How many more is it gonna take?’ The evidence is at hand. There are people out there who [will] go out and blow their brains out.” [Womens eNews, 3/30/2001]
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) forces broadband Internet service providers such as Vonage to retrofit their networks for government surveillance purposes. The prime beneficiary of that retrofitting is the FBI’s cutting-edge electronic surveillance system known as DCSNet (see 1997-August 2007 and After), which can now monitor those networks. DCSNet also seems capable of handling other cutting-edge technologies such as push-to-talk, peer-to-peer telephony systems such as Skype, caller-ID spoofing, and phone-number portability. [Wired News, 8/29/2007]
Starting in 1997, the FBI constructs a sophisticated surveillance system that can perform near-instantaneous wiretaps on almost any telephone, cell phone, and Internet communications device, according to documents declassified in August 2007. The system is called the Digital Collection System Network, or DCSNet. It connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by land-line operators, Internet-telephony companies, and cellular providers. The documents show that DCSNet is, in reporter Ryan Singel’s words, “far more intricately woven into the nation’s telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.” Steven Bellovin, a computer science professor and surveillance expert, calls DCSNet a “comprehensive wiretap system that intercepts wire-line phones, cellular phones, SMS [short message service, a protocol allowing mobile devices to exchange text messages], and push-to-talk systems.” The system is an entire suite of software that together collects, sifts, and stores phone numbers, phone calls, and text messages. The system directly connects FBI wiretapping offices around the country to a sprawling private communications network. DCSNet is composed of three main clients:
The DCS-3000, also called “Red Hook,” handles pen-registers and trap-and-traces, a type of surveillance that collects signaling information but not communications content.
The DCS-6000, or “Digital Storm,” captures and collects the content—the spoken or written communications—of phone calls and text messages.
The most classified system of the three, the DCS-5000, is used for wiretaps targeting spies or terrorists.
Between the three, the system can allow FBI agents to monitor recorded phone calls and messages in real time, create master wiretap files, send digital recordings to translators, track the location of targets in real time using cell-tower information, and stream intercepts to mobile surveillance vans. The entire system is operated through a private, secure and self-contained backbone that is run for the government by Sprint. Singel gives the following example: “The network allows an FBI agent in New York, for example, to remotely set up a wiretap on a cell phone based in Sacramento, California, and immediately learn the phone’s location, then begin receiving conversations, text messages and voicemail pass codes in New York. With a few keystrokes, the agent can route the recordings to language specialists for translation.” Dialed numbers are subjected to data mining, including so-called “link analysis.” The precise number of US phones being monitored and recorded in this way is classified.
Genesis of DCSNet - The system was made possible by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) (see January 1, 1995), which mandated that telecom providers must build “backdoors” in US telephone switches to be used by government wiretappers. CALEA also ordered telecom firms to install only switching equipment that met detailed wiretapping standards. Before CALEA, the FBI would bring a wiretap warrant to a particular telecom, and that firm would itself create a tap. Now, the FBI logs in directly to the telecom networks and monitors a surveillance target itself through DCSNet. FBI special agent Anthony DiClemente, chief of the Data Acquisition and Intercept Section of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division, says the DCS was originally intended in 1997 to be a temporary solution, but has grown into a full-featured CALEA-collection software suite. “CALEA revolutionizes how law enforcement gets intercept information,” he says. “Before CALEA, it was a rudimentary system that mimicked Ma Bell.” Now, under CALEA, phone systems and Internet service providers have been forced to allow DCSNet to access almost all of its data (see 1997-August 2007 and After).
Security Breaches - The system is vulnerable to hacking and security breaches (see 2003). [Wired News, 8/29/2007]
Abortion providers and women’s clinics around the country receive over 550 mailings of suspicious white powder, accompanied by letters claiming the powder is laced with anthrax (see November 2001). All the anthrax mailings are determined to be hoaxes. Many of the accompanying letters are signed “Army of God, Virginia Dare Chapter” (see 1982, Early 1980s, and August 1982) or “Virginia Dare Cell.” The sender is determined to be anti-abortion activist Clayton Waagner. Arrested by authorities in 2000, Waagner escapes prison and remains at large for a year before being recaptured in December 2001; during his time as a fugitive, Waagner robs banks, buys weapons and surveillance equipment, steals cars, and stalks abortion clinics and clinic personnel. When he is arrested, Waagner has $10,000 in cash, as well as computer components and a loaded handgun in his stolen Mercedes-Benz. He soon confesses to sending the fake anthrax mailings. Waagner admits to signing many of the letters “Army of God,” referring to a violent anti-abortion group to which he belongs (see 1982). He will serve as his own attorney at trial, and be convicted on 51 of 53 federal charges. [Salon, 2/19/2002; Kushner, 2003, pp. 40; Extremist Groups: Information for Students, 1/1/2006]
Defense lawyers in the Oklahoma City bombing case (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995) accuse prosecutors of misconduct in their handling of witness Thomas Manning, a Firestone tire store manager in Junction City, Kansas, who sold a car to accused bomber Timothy McVeigh days before the bombing (see April 13, 1995). Newly unsealed court documents reveal that Manning’s testimony has been a point of contention since November 1996. Manning has heart problems that might preclude his journeying to Denver to testify in McVeigh’s trial. A deposition was videotaped in Topeka on November 7. Manning had been interviewed eight times by government investigators and three times by defense investigators. His story remained essentially consistent regarding McVeigh’s arrival at his store at 9 a.m. with white smoke billowing from his Pontiac station wagon (see January 1 - January 8, 1995) and $300 in his pocket. But in the deposition, Manning added a detail: McVeigh left the store for 10 to 15 minutes and then returned. This absence could have given him time to make telephone calls that could connect him to the bombing, which killed 168 people. McVeigh’s lawyers say in a filing unsealed today: “If Timothy McVeigh had stayed at the Firestone dealership, as each of Mr. Manning’s previous statements suggest, he could not have placed the telephone calls that the government alleges were in furtherance of the conspiracy. This indicates that someone else placed the calls and that someone else committed the overt acts alleged in the indictment.” The defense is referring to calls found on McVeigh’s telephone credit card, issued under an alias, Darryl (or Daryl or Darrell) Bridges (see August 1994). The credit card record shows that someone made a 54-second call from the J & K Bus Depot, a block from the Firestone tire dealership, to co-conspirator Terry Nichols’s Herington, Kansas, home at 9:51 a.m. Two minutes later, a caller using the same credit card from the same telephone called the Ryder rental office in Junction City and talked for 7 minutes and 36 seconds. Prosecutors believe that during the second telephone call, McVeigh rented the Ryder truck used to deliver the bomb (see April 15, 1995). Defense lawyers now say that prosecutors concocted the detail about McVeigh leaving the Firestone store and returning. Michael Tigar, the lawyer for Nichols, says: “The government has a room at the Marriott Hotel in which witnesses are transmogrified. I wish I had a room where I could do that to people.” Lead prosecutor Joseph Hartzler says Manning never mentioned McVeigh’s departure to defense lawyers because they had never asked him about it. In papers filed by the prosecution, the defense is accused of not asking Manning about McVeigh’s departure because it was hoping Manning would not mention it. The defense’s decision to avoid the question, the prosecutors say, does not require government lawyers to disclose that they had asked the question in at least one of their interviews and had received an answer that tended to incriminate McVeigh. Other papers unsealed today reveal that defense lawyers have accused prosecutors of obstructing the defense’s investigation, and of destroying exculpatory evidence surrounding the still-unidentified “John Doe No. 2,” a person some suspect of being McVeigh’s accomplice on the day of the bombing (see April 20, 1995). Prosecutors have said they doubt “John Doe No. 2” has any connection to the bombing. The prosecution interviewed David Shafer, an Indiana seed company salesman, about Nichols and his brother James (see May 22, 1995), and decided not to use his testimony. Defense lawyers say Shafer “has been directed by the FBI to destroy notes concerning his recollection of these events.” [New York Times, 1/4/1997] Judge Richard P. Matsch refuses to bar the testimony of any witnesses challenged by the defense, and says there is no evidence that the FBI destroyed information or attempted to influence anyone’s recollections or testimonies. [New York Times, 2/21/1997]
Defense lawyers in the Oklahoma City bombing case (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995) seek to suppress the testimony of nine prosecution witnesses. Some of these witnesses are publicly identified for the first time, disclosed in court papers filed by the lawyers for defendants Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. McVeigh’s trial is slated to begin in March. Some of the newly identified witnesses are:
Fred Skrdla, who worked at a gasoline station in Billings, Oklahoma, some 80 miles north of Oklahoma City, on the day of the bombing. Skrdla remembers a man driving a large Ryder truck (see April 15, 1995) buying gasoline between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m (see (1:00 a.m.) April 19, 1995). The man paid cash. Skrdla says he was busy and does not remember if the man was alone or had company. When he saw composite drawings of “John Doe No. 1” and “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995), he recognized one of them as the man who bought the gasoline. When he saw television coverage of McVeigh being “perp walked” out of the Noble County Courthouse in Perry, Oklahoma (see April 21, 1995), he became sure that the man he saw paying for the gasoline was McVeigh.
William Dunlap, who took his wife to work in Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing. Minutes before the bomb detonated in front of the Murrah Federal Building, Dunlap told FBI investigators, he drove past the building and noticed a Ryder truck parked in front of it. Dunlap said he saw a white man get out of the truck and walk to the rear of it. Dunlap said the man wore jeans, was in his mid- to late 20s, had “clean-cut” hair, a “medium” complexion, a slight build, and was between 5’8” and 5’9” tall. McVeigh is 6’2”. Dunlap told investigators he thought the man might have been McVeigh, but he was not certain.
Stephen Jones, McVeigh’s lead lawyer, says the “saturation” news coverage of the crime and the arrests has “tainted” the ability of Skrdla, Dunlap, and the other witnesses to make accurate identifications of the person or persons they believe they saw. Jones cites information given to the FBI by David Ferris, a Junction City, Kansas, taxi driver who talked about a passenger he had on April 17, two days before the bombing. In early interviews, Ferris did not say that any of the passengers he had looked like McVeigh, and denied taking any passengers to the McDonald’s restaurant on South Washington Boulevard that day, where the investigators are sure McVeigh went (see May 9, 1997). Interviewers’ notes show that Ferris became emotional during the questioning, and tearfully said he “never picked up McVeigh.” The next day, however, Ferris changed his story, saying he took a man resembling McVeigh to the McDonald’s in question between 3:30 and 4:00 p.m. on April 17. Ferris told agents that he had seen McVeigh’s picture on television and was “scared and panicked” after realizing who he was. Jones also contends that identifications of McVeigh by Eldon Elliott and Tom Kessinger, who rented the truck to McVeigh, were tainted by television news coverage of McVeigh; by the time Elliott and Kessinger made their identifications, Jones says, McVeigh’s face was so familiar “monks living on the mountainside in Tibet could have made the same identification.” Nichols’s lead lawyer, Michael Tigar, is attempting to suppress identification by an unnamed witness or witnesses who worked at the Mid-Kansas Cooperative in McPherson and, prosecutors say, sold fertilizer to McVeigh and Nichols (see September 23, 1994, September 30, 1994, and October 18, 1994). [New York Times, 1/13/1997] Judge Richard P. Matsch refuses to bar the witnesses’ testimonies. [New York Times, 2/21/1997]
Entity Tags: Fred Skrdla, Federal Bureau of Investigation, David Ferris, William Dunlap, Tom Kessinger, Timothy James McVeigh, Terry Lynn Nichols, Richard P. Matsch, Stephen Jones, Michael E. Tigar, Eldon Elliott
Timeline Tags: US Domestic Terrorism
Two bomb blasts, one an hour after the first, destroy the Sandy Springs Professional Building in Atlanta, Georgia, containing the Atlanta Northside Family Planning Service. The second blast is apparently designed to injure or kill responders such as firemen, paramedics, and others responding to the first blast. “This bomber placed secondary bombs designed to kill and maim rescuers, paramedics, firefighters, and police officers who rushed to the scene to help,” John Magaw of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) will later say. “He didn’t care who they were.” Seven people are injured in the blast. Anti-abortion activist Eric Rudolph (see October 14, 1998 and January 29, 1998) will later be convicted of the bombings. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/14/1998; CBS News, 4/19/2007; Associated Press, 5/31/2009] The second bomb could have had a far more devastating effect, but, according to FBI agent Jack Killorin, a couple visiting a nearby substance abuse treatment center inadvertently parked their car directly in front of Rudolph’s bomb. “It absorbed huge amounts of the explosive,” Killorin will say. [Orlando Weekly, 8/24/2006]
Federal authorities raid the Illinois home of Ricky Salyers, a former Marine and current white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan member. They find 35,000 rounds of heavy ammunition, armor piercing shells, smoke and tear gas grenades, live shells for grenade launchers, artillery shells, and other military gear. Salyers is allegedly a member of the underground Black Dawn group of extremists in the military; he will be sentenced later in the year to serve three years for weapons violations. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]
Four FBI workers who evaluated evidence surrounding the Oklahoma City bombings (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995) are transferred after a Justice Department report criticizes the FBI’s crime lab procedures. One of those suspended is forensic scientist Frederic Whitehurst, whose long-standing complaints triggered the Justice Department investigation. That investigation found that evidence in about two dozen cases had been mishandled. Whitehurst is placed on administrative leave with pay just days after the report is received by FBI HQ. The Justice Department report does not allege that evidence had been manipulated to benefit prosecutors. Some evidence was possibly contaminated, and in some instances, the FBI laboratory exercised lax control over evidence. Three of the 23 units in the laboratory were found to have substandard procedures. [Washington Post, 1/28/1997; Indianapolis Star, 2003] According to a technician (not Whitehurst), the black denim jeans that accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995) wore on the day of the bombing were shipped to the forensics lab in a brown paper bag, and not a sealed plastic evidence bag as procedure dictates. A gun and a knife purportedly taken from McVeigh during his arrest (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995) were sent to the lab in a manila envelope. According to an FBI summary of interviews conducted with lab technicians, an employee in the explosives unit, LaToya Gadson, told investigators that “the evidence was a ‘mess’ when it came in because it had not been collected in an ‘orderly fashion.’ Additionally, most of the debris was not properly bagged, some was not bagged at all, and many of the bags were not closed tightly, allowing debris to fall out.” Travel cases potentially contaminated with explosive residue from the bomb were placed in an area where bomb debris had been stored awaiting testing, rendering the cases impossible to accurately test. And a technician obtained a false reading of cocaine in McVeigh’s car, possibly from using improperly cleaned equipment. The sample was discarded, a worker says. Three technicians who examined evidence from the bombing case were reassigned: David Williams, who supervised evidence collection; Roger Martz, head of the laboratory’s chemistry unit; and James T. Thurman, chief of the laboratory’s explosives unit. Lab workers say Williams changed his dictated reports in violation of laboratory policy. Martz examined explosive evidence even though he lacked the proper training to do so. [New York Times, 1/31/1997]
Federal officials state that the circulation of a sketch identified as “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995), a man once believed to have had some connection with accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995), was a mistake. The person, described as short, stocky, thick-necked, and olive-skinned, was misidentified by a witness who gave an incorrect recollection to federal investigators. Prosecutors say that while the possibility exists that others besides McVeigh and Terry Nichols were involved in the bombing, they have no physical descriptions to give to the public. Prosecutors identify the man in the “John Doe No. 2” sketch as Private Todd Bunting, an Army soldier stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, near Junction City, Kansas, where McVeigh rented a Ryder truck used in the bombing (see April 15, 1995). Bunting entered the same Ryder rental office on April 18, a day after McVeigh entered the office. The sketch is based on the recollections of Tom Kessinger, a mechanic in the truck rental office. He and two other employees identified McVeigh from the sketch, but Kessinger’s recollection of “John Doe No. 2” as a man accompanying McVeigh was not supported by the others. McVeigh’s lawyer Stephen Jones says that because of the misidentification of Bunting, all the identifications of all the Ryder clerks must be thrown out. “I don’t think any of those identifications are now safe,” Jones says. Bunting is 5’11”, 200 pounds, muscular and stocky, with dark brown hair, a wide, square chin, and relatively dark skin. On April 18, he accompanied Sergeant Michael Hertig, another Fort Riley soldier, to pick up a truck that Hertig had reserved five days before. Prosecutors believe Kessinger, pressured by investigators, became confused in his recollections and mistakenly identified Bunting as accompanying McVeigh and not Hertig. On November 22, 1996, Kessinger positively identified Bunting as “John Doe No. 2.” He also says he is now unsure that McVeigh was with anyone when he came to rent the Ryder truck. The other Ryder clerks, Vicki Beemer and Eldon Elliott (see 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. April 17, 1995), have said that they believe McVeigh was with another man, but cannot recall what that man looks like. [New York Times, 1/30/1997]
The White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, led by Vice President Al Gore, issues its final report, which highlights the risk of terrorist attacks in the US. The report references Operation Bojinka, the failed plot to bomb twelve American airliners out of the sky over the Pacific Ocean, and calls for increased aviation security. The commission reports that [it] “believes that terrorist attacks on civil aviation are directed at the United States, and that there should be an ongoing federal commitment to reducing the threats that they pose.” [Gore Commission, 2/12/1997] However, the report has little practical effect: “Federal bureaucracy and airline lobbying [slow] and [weaken] a set of safety improvements recommended by a presidential commission—including one that a top airline industry official now says might have prevented the September 11 terror attacks.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/6/2001]
Two prosecution witnesses in the Oklahoma City bombing trial (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995) testify under oath that the person who rented the Ryder truck used to carry the bomb was accused bomber Timothy McVeigh. Eldon Elliott, the owner of Elliott’s Body Shop, the Ryder rental outlet in Junction City, Kansas, and body shop employee Tom Kessinger both say that “Robert Kling,” who paid $280 cash and said he did not need insurance because he was a careful driver, was, in fact, McVeigh (see Mid-March, 1995 and April 15, 1995). Defense lawyer Stephen Jones questions their credibility, saying that because of Kessinger’s misidentification of another person as having accompanied McVeigh to the store to rent the truck (see January 29, 1997), both Elliott’s and Kessinger’s identifications must be thrown out. The defense is expected to argue that “Kling” was someone else and not McVeigh. Kessinger admits that he misidentified Army Private Todd Bunting as “John Doe No. 2,” whom federal investigators have considered a likely accomplice until recently. Kessinger stands by his identification of McVeigh. In court, Kessinger says he was sitting in the back of the truck rental office, taking a break at about 4:15 p.m. on Monday, April 17, 1995, when he saw two men come into the shop. They stood at the counter and began speaking with Vicki Beemer, who handled the paperwork that day. Kessinger remembers McVeigh because of something McVeigh said, which is not disclosed in court. He watched McVeigh and the second man—not Bunting—for about 10 minutes. He met with FBI agent Scott Crabtree at 4:45 p.m. on April 19, the day of the bombing, and met with an FBI sketch artist at 3:30 the next morning, he says, to start work on the composite sketches of the bombing suspects. He was then asked not to watch television news accounts of the bombing or to read the press coverage. “They told me to rely only on my own memory,” he says. Jones elicits that Kessinger watches “a lot of MTV, a lot of Discovery Channel,” but does not watch network television news or local news. He says he never saw a photograph of McVeigh until FBI agents showed him a group of photographs on April 30, 1995. Kessinger identified McVeigh as the man he saw in the body shop. Asked by Jones if McVeigh was accompanied by someone else, Kessinger responds: “I don’t know. I want to say yes, but I don’t know who that individual was.” The transaction with McVeigh was short and businesslike, Kessinger recalls, noting that McVeigh turned down the offer to purchase insurance because, Kessinger recalls, “he said ‘I’m not going very far, I’m used to driving trucks out of Fort Riley [an Army base near Junction City], and I’m a careful driver.’” [New York Times, 2/19/1997]
In an 8-1 decision, the US Supreme Court rules that anti-abortion demonstrators have the right under the First Amendment to confront pregnant women outside health clinics and “strongly urge” them not to have abortions. The decision casts doubt on an array of city ordinances and judicial orders barring protesters from confronting doctors, nurses, and patients outside clinics. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the majority, rules that there is no “generalized right to be left alone on a public street or sidewalk.” Rather, picketing, leafleting, and loud protesting “are classic forms of speech that lie at the heart of the First Amendment.” The Court affirms that protesters have no right to physically accost or interfere with clients or providers, nor may they trespass on clinic property. They do have the right to shout and chant on public property such as sidewalks. The ruling also reaffirms a 1994 decision that created protest-free zones, sometimes called “fixed bufffer zones,” at the doors and driveways of health clinics. [Los Angeles Times, 2/20/1997]
A gay and lesbian nightclub in Atlanta, The Otherside Lounge, is bombed, injuring five people. A second explosive is found on the side of the building, apparently set to go off after first responders such as police, firemen, and paramedics respond to the first explosion; that bomb is safely detonated with no injuries or damage suffered. After the bombing, a handwritten, unsigned letter is sent to the Reuters news agency, claiming that this and a January 1997 bombing of an abortion clinic (see January 16, 1997) are the work of what the letter claims to be “units of the Army of God.” The Army of God (AOG—see 1982) is a violent anti-abortion organization. The letter also warns that anyone involved with the performance of abortions “may become victims of retribution.” Regarding the bombing of the gay and lesbian nightclub, the letter states, “We will target sodomites, their organizations, and all those who push their agenda.” The bombings will later be tied to anti-abortion extremist and AOG member Eric Rudolph (see October 14, 1998 and January 29, 1998). [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/14/1998; Extremist Groups: Information for Students, 1/1/2006] A task force assembled to investigate the Sandy Springs bombing (see January 16, 1997) quickly realizes that the bomb and the methodology used in the nightclub bombing are similar to the earlier attack. Both bombings were in locations with easy access to an interstate for a quick escape; both bombings featured two bombs, one to cause large-scale damage and a second “sucker bomb” to kill and injure first responders. The letter Rudolph sent to Reuters and other news agencies references the siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and contains a code that Rudolph says will identify him as the Sandy Springs and Otherside bomber in future mailings. The code is the date 4-19-93, the anniversary of the fire in Waco and a reference to the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). FBI agent Jack Killorin says, “We held that back from the public.” The FBI will use evidence from the Otherside bombing to identify Rudolph as the Olympic bomber (see July 27, 1996 and After). [Orlando Weekly, 8/24/2006]
According to reports by the Dallas Morning News, indicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995) has confessed to planning the bombing and detonating a bomb in front of the Murrah Federal Building. [Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Indianapolis Star, 2003] Reporter Pete Slover cites as his source “summaries of several 1995 interviews with a defense team member” [New York Times, 3/1/1997] , though he later admits in a court filing that he could not be sure the story was true before filing it. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 271] Researchers will later learn that McVeigh suspects his lead attorney Stephen Jones of leaking his purported confession to the press. The leak is later shown to be from a member of Jones’s staff, who gave a computer disk containing FBI reports to Slover, apparently unaware that the McVeigh “confession” was also on the disk. [Douglas O. Linder, 2006] However, this reported speculation is countered by an opinion advanced in 1998 by author Richard A. Serrano, who will write that the defense’s work to humanize McVeigh and “soften” his image (see June 26, 1995) “was blown apart” by the leaked information. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 271] The Morning News prints the article on its Web site seven hours before its next print edition can be published, and later cites a desire to match the immediacy of television and to ensure its exclusive isn’t “scooped” by a competitor. Editors worried before publication that McVeigh’s lawyers might leak the story in one fashion or another to another media outlet. [New York Times, 3/3/1997]
Details of Bombing Plot, Involvement by Co-Conspirator Nichols, Denials of Wider Conspiracy - According to documents obtained by the Morning News, McVeigh’s defense lawyers wrote that McVeigh told one of them that his bombing of the Murrah Federal Building during working hours would leave a “body count” that would make a statement to the federal government. McVeigh also named his friend, alleged co-conspirator Terry Nichols, as being intimately involved with the bomb plot (see August 10, 1995), but insisted he alone drove the Ryder truck containing the bomb that destroyed the Murrah Building. McVeigh also denied any involvement by Terry Nichols’s brother James Nichols (see December 22 or 23, 1988, May 11, 1995, and April 25, 1995). The Morning News describes the source of its reporting as summaries of several 1995 interviews with a member of the defense team’s staff, conducted between July and December 1995 at the El Reno Federal Corrections Center in Oklahoma, where McVeigh was held before his transfer to the Denver area in March 1996. The summaries, the Morning News says, validate much of the prosecution’s contention that McVeigh and Nichols committed robberies and burglary in the course of assembling money and materials for the bombing, even as it acknowledges that they could not be used by prosecutors in either man’s trial. One summary of a July 1995 interview has a staffer asking McVeigh if it would have been better to bomb the building at night when relatively few people would have been present. According to the staffer: “Mr. McVeigh looked directly into my eyes and told me: ‘That would not have gotten the point across to the government. We needed a body count to make our point.’” According to the documents, McVeigh and Nichols used significantly more ammonium nitrate than federal investigators have estimated—some 5,400 pounds as compared to federal estimates of 4,800 pounds—and about $3,000 worth of high-powered racing fuel to make a lethal explosive combination. “Mr. McVeigh states that 108 50-pound bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer were mixed with the nitro fuel purchased by Terry Nichols,” one summary reads. The summaries also have McVeigh admitting to his involvement in a 1994 robbery carried out by Nichols and himself to fund the bombing plot (see November 5, 1994 and Before July 3, 1995). “Mr. McVeigh stated that he laid out the plan and that Terry Nichols alone broke into [gun dealer Roger] Moore’s house and stole the weapons,” one summary reads. The summary tallies closely with recent statements by McVeigh’s friend Michael Fortier, who pled guilty to helping transport the stolen weapons and is now helping the prosecution (see May 19, 1995 and August 8, 1995). Fortier has testified that he and McVeigh sold the weapons stolen from Moore in Arizona. McVeigh also detailed a burglary committed by himself and Nichols at a Kansas rock quarry (see October 3, 1994). He also gave information about a third burglary carried out by himself and Fortier of a National Guard armory (see February - July 1994), where they attempted to steal welding tools but only made off with hand tools. According to the summaries, McVeigh denied being part of a larger conspiracy, and said the bomb plot was conceived and executed by himself and Nichols. He called a witness who claimed knowledge of a Middle Eastern or Islamist connection (see February - July 1994) a “bullsh_t artist.” He also said that another conspiracy theory centered around right-wing activist Andreas Strassmeir is groundless (see January 23, 1993 - Early 1994 and April 20, 1995). [Dallas Morning News, 3/1/1997; Washington Post, 3/1/1997] Initially, McVeigh’s lead defense attorney Stephen Jones calls the documents “a hoax” and denies that McVeigh made any of those statements. The Dallas Morning News is trying to garner attention and subscriptions, Jones says, and implies that the Morning News’s source is “setting up” the paper: “They just bought the Brooklyn Bridge,” he says. The Morning News has informed Jones of the identity of the source that provided it with the documents. [Washington Post, 3/1/1997] “This is about the most irresponsible form of journalism,” Jones says. He says that after McVeigh learned of the story, his client said, “There’s a practical joker every week.” [New York Times, 3/1/1997]
Defense Alleges Press Stole Documents - The Morning News denies a subsequent defense allegation that Slover stole thousands of computerized documents belonging to McVeigh’s defense lawyers, documents Jones says were used in the Morning News’s reporting. Jones says the documents acknowledge McVeigh’s responsibility for the bombing, but do not constitute a confession. The Morning News, Jones says, got the documents “by fraud, deception, misrepresentation, and theft” involving the defense’s computer files. Attorney Paul Watler, speaking for the Morning News, “categorically denies it committed any crime,” and says the documents were obtained through “routine news-gathering techniques.” The Morning News “did not hack into Mr. Jones’ computer system, and it did not assist anyone else in doing so,” Watler says. Jones says the documents are not, as some reports say, notes of a defense staffer’s conversations with McVeigh; defense lawyers have previously alleged that they produced a “fake confession” designed to persuade a witness to talk to defense investigators. Jones says any such false confessions, if they exist, would not be used during McVeigh’s trial. Jones says he may ask Judge Richard Matsch to delay the trial for 90 days to allow for a “cooling-off period” and allow “people to move on.” Watler says Jones is using the allegations to cloud the trial proceedings. [Dallas Morning News, 3/4/1997; New York Times, 3/4/1997] Freelance journalist J.D. Cash, who writes for a far-right publication called The Jubilee and a small Oklahoma newspaper, the McCurtain Daily Gazette, denies reports that he is the source of the article. Cash says he is not “the intermediary who set up The Dallas Morning News,” but says he is familiar with the documents described in the newspaper’s accounts. The confession, Cash says, is “a mixture of fact and fantasy.”
Possible Negative Impact on Jury - Observers worry that the story may prejudice a potential jury. “It’s a worst-case scenario,” says legal studies professor Jeffrey Abramson. “At the witching hour, but before people have been isolated from pretrial publicity, you get explosive evidence, exactly the kind of thing that makes it very difficult for a defendant to think he hasn’t already been tried in the press.” Law professor Rita J. Simon says the article could make a fair trial very difficult. “The jurors will know there was some report about a confession,” she says. “I can’t imagine, no matter where you hold the trial, that the jurors will not hear about it. As soon as the trial gets under way, the story will come out afresh.” [New York Times, 3/2/1997]
Second Purported Confession - Days later, a second confession from McVeigh is reported, this time published by Playboy magazine. The article containing the purported confession is written by freelance reporter Ben Fenwick, and is apparently based on an internal summary of the case compiled by the McVeigh defense team (see Early 2005). Fenwick had obtained the document in 1996, he later says, and had kept it under wraps in the hopes of eventually writing a book about the case. He quickly wrote an article based on the document and sold it to Playboy after Slover’s article hit the press. According to Fenwick’s article, McVeigh says he detonated the bomb when he was a block away from the Murrah Building, and admitted to the bombing during a lie detector test administered by his lawyers. Other details in the article contradict physical evidence already presented in open court. Jones says: “These escalating reports of alleged statements by Mr. McVeigh are corrupting the heart of the jury system. The American ideals of justice are being held hostage to sensationalism.” Fenwick is soon hired by ABC News as a legal consultant, an arrangement that allows ABC to quote extensively from the article in a special broadcast aired shortly before the trial begins. Fenwick will later admit that he did not authenticate the document before using it. The document and the article will lead the FBI to discover McVeigh’s purchase of racing fuel from an Ennis, Texas, dealer (see October 21 or 22, 1994). [New York Times, 3/14/1997; New York Times, 3/18/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 271]
Entity Tags: Jeffrey Abramson, James Nichols, Terry Lynn Nichols, Andreas Strassmeir, Dallas Morning News, J.D. Cash, Ben Fenwick, Stephen Jones, Timothy James McVeigh, Rita J. Simon, Roger E. (“Bob”) Moore, Murrah Federal Building, Michael Joseph Fortier, Paul Watler, Playboy, Pete Slover, Richard P. Matsch, Richard A. Serrano
Timeline Tags: US Domestic Terrorism
Anti-abortion activist Peter Howard puts 13 gas cans and three propane tanks in his truck, and drives it through the door of a California women’s clinic. He is arrested on the scene, and will plead guilty to multiple felony charges. [National Abortion Federation, 2010]
M. Elizabeth Broderick, who used Freemen teachings to defraud dozens of banks and businesses of millions of dollars (see October 1995 - March 1997 and April 25, 1996), and has been convicted of a number of fraud-related charges, is sentenced to 16 years in prison. After Broderick’s conviction, prosecutor Nora Manella says of her: “Behind Ms. Broderick’s anti-government rhetoric was a classic con artist. She appealed principally to financially strapped people who wanted something for nothing. They wound up further in debt and she wound up a convicted felon.” Federal judge Dickran M. Tevrizian says Broderick did more damage to the banking system “than most bank robbers,” and says, “You dropped an atomic bomb on the banking system with this bogus scheme.” Broderick attempted to claim that she was a patriot battling the tyranny of the US government, and claims that the government went bankrupt in 1932 and had been issuing worthless paper money ever since. Tevrizian retorts: “You’re not a patriot.… You defrauded thousands of people… people who were desperate.” Broderick, who represented herself during the trial, claimed the government had no jurisdiction over her, and called herself a political prisoner, is defiant during sentencing, saying: “I was here to give damages to the American people. You can lock me up, but you can’t lock up my knowledge.” Three other Californians, Barry Switzer, Julian Cheney, and Adolf Karl Hoch, are convicted as her accomplices. Broderick garnered some $1.2 million during her scheme. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996; Los Angeles Times, 10/5/1996; Los Angeles Times, 3/11/1997]
The FBI is now seeking Robert Jacques, whom it believes sought a remote hideout in the Ozark mountains of Missouri with the two Oklahoma City bombing suspects, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995). The FBI wants to question Jacques to help agents reconstruct McVeigh’s and Nichols’s activities before the bombing. Missouri real estate broker William Maloney tells CNN that in the fall of 1994, Jacques visited his office with Nichols and a man named Tim. Maloney says that several months earlier he got a phone inquiry about land and asked the caller’s name. According to Maloney, “He says ‘McVeigh,’ and I said, ‘M-C-V-E-Y’ and he said, ‘That’s close enough.’” [New York Times, 3/10/1997]
Stephen Jones, the lead lawyer for accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995), demands that the charges against his client be dismissed “with prejudice,” citing what Jones calls “paralyzing pretrial publicity.” Jones is specifically referring to news articles that report McVeigh has confessed to the bombing (see February 28 - March 4, 1997). As an alternative, Jones asks Judge Richard P. Matsch to delay the trial for a year and change the venue to either Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont, Puerto Rico, or the Virgin Islands. Jones says the purported confessions are fabrications, but also says that the confessions used materials whose publication breaches the attorney-client privilege. Prosecutors object to Jones’s requests, and say that a delay would offer “no guarantee that equally bizarre events would not recur as a new trial date approached.” [New York Times, 3/15/1997] Matsch rejects the motion to dismiss the charges, and the motions to delay and change the venue of the trial. [New York Times, 3/18/1997]
The New York Times publishes an overview of the ongoing criminal trials of the Montana Freemen (see 1993-1994, March 25, 1996, June 13, 1996, and March 16, 1998 and After), and calls the proceedings “an absurdist drama that could be called Alice in Wonderland on the Yellowstone River.” Freemen leader LeRoy Schweitzer, indicted for multiple counts of civil fraud and threatening federal officials (see March 26, 1996), recently announced himself as “Supreme Court Justice LeRoy Michael” in a court hearing, and told the judge: “Supreme court is in session. You are removed from the bench under impeachment.” Most of the Freemen are refusing to cooperate with either the court officials or their own defense lawyers; some of them had to be compelled to give fingerprints and be photographed for booking. Defendant Daniel Petersen, indicted along with Schweitzer and a third Freeman, Rodney Skurdal, disrupted a recent proceeding by shouting that the “Supreme Court of Yellowstone County” was now in session, and yelled at the judge and prosecution, “I’m charging all of you with misprison of treason and misprison of felony.” Defendant Steven Hance (see June 14, 1996) told one judge, “I am above the Constitution,” called the judge “an outlaw,” and informed him, “You are out of order.” Hance’s two sons, James Hance and John Hance, answered their indictments by belching at the judge; James Hance told the judge: “You’re going to be impeached. How are you going to feel about that?” and his brother added: “You’d better start obeying the law, sir. You’re incompetent.” Another defendant, Dale Jacobi, accused the judge of holding “blood sacrifices.” During a North Carolina trial of one Freeman, Russell Landers, the judge at that trial ordered Landers—defending himself—to cease his rambling opening statement, threw him out of the courtroom, and had him watch his trial by closed-circuit television; in his turn, Landers claimed he was being held hostage by a foreign power and accused the judge of wearing a black robe to disguise his real identity as “a Roman tribunal.” One judge, Charles Lovell, recently said that Schweitzer has “no business in the courtroom unless he is chained and taped,” and banned him from the courtroom. The defendants are routinely expelled from the courtroom for their antics. They call themselves “white Christian men” who are, by definition, “sovereign American naturals” and therefore not subject to United States laws and courts. They hold that their system of “common law” (see Fall 2010) places them above the “ordinary” American judicial system. The judges have uniformly ignored the Freemen’s arcane legal claims, which the New York Times calls “a salad of the Uniform Commercial Code, the Magna Carta, biblical admonitions, and meaningless Latin phrases.” Lovell called Schweitzer’s legal defense “nonsensical” and added, “This is preposterous, absolutely preposterous—it has no more bearing in law than an ounce of sand.” The Montana Supreme Court threw out 37 pages of Freemen court documents as “nonsensical filings,” and another judge called a Freeman’s legal arguments “bunkum.” While similar trials of right-wing militia figures have drawn numerous protesters agitating on behalf of the defendants, the Freemen are drawing a vanishingly small number of supporters; “sympathizers are rare, and protest placards have not been seen in more than nine months,” the Times observes. [New York Times, 3/25/1997]
Entity Tags: Montana Freemen, Dale Jacobi, Charles C. Lovell, James Hance, LeRoy Schweitzer, Montana Supreme Court, New York Times, Steven Hance, Rodney Owen Skurdal, Russell Dean Landers, John Hance
Timeline Tags: US Domestic Terrorism
Militia activist Brendon Blasz is arrested in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and charged with making pipe bombs and other illegal explosives. Blasz allegedly plotted to bomb the federal building in Battle Creek, the IRS building in Portage, a Kalamazoo television station, and federal armories. Prosecutors will recommend leniency on his explosives conviction after Blasz renounces his antigovernment beliefs and cooperates with them. In the end, he is sentenced to more than three years in federal prison. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]
District Court Judge David Coar rules that NOW v. Scheidler, a lawsuit brought by the National Organization of Women (NOW) against anti-abortion advocates (see June 1986 and September 22, 1995), can be designated as a “class-action” lawsuit. Coar certifies NOW as the class representative of not only all NOW members but all women “whose rights to the services of women’s health centers in the United States at which abortions are performed have been or will be interfered with by defendants’ unlawful activities.” Coar later rules that if NOW proves its case, then defendant Randall Terry and his Operation Rescue organization (see 1986) will be held responsible for all acts of terrorism and violence perpetuated by the Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN—see 1980 and 1986). Coar rejects the defendants’ argument that their “moral imperative” to stop abortion justifies their violent acts. [National Organization for Women, 9/2002]
Jury selection begins in the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995). Judge Richard Matsch has denied defense attempts to delay the trial after a brief controversy erupted over media reports using defense documents (see February 28 - March 4, 1997). “I have full confidence that a fair-minded jury can and will be impaneled and that those selected will return a just verdict based on the law and evidence presented to them,” Matsch wrote on March 17. Jurors’ identities are kept hidden from the press. One potential juror, asked by US Attorney Patrick Ryan, “Did you watch a lot of the coverage?” answers: “It was unavoidable. In Oklahoma, it was wall to wall and floor to ceiling.” Another potential juror says he worries about his safety in regards to what he will learn in the course of the trial: “It would seem this case goes further, wider, and deeper in many ways. A juror is going to be an insider on information he might just as soon not know.” [Washington Post, 3/18/1997; New York Times, 4/1/1997; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] The pressure of this being a death-penalty trial, and the prospect of potentially confusing forensic evidence countered by the raw emotions of the bombing itself and of the conspiracy theories surrounding the proceedings, raises oft-asked questions about the competence of 12 jurors to find the truth in such a complex situation. The difference between an open-minded juror and one who is ignorant or intellectually challenged is difficult for lawyers and observers to assess. New York Times reporter Laura Mansnerus reflects on the trial of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, charged with crimes relating to the Iran-Contra scandal (see July 7-10, 1987 and May-June, 1989), in which, she writes: “When the jury was selected for the 1989 trial of Oliver North, a search went out for 12 people who knew nothing about Oliver North, which produced, well, 12 people who knew nothing about Oliver North. One person who qualified for service said she had seen him on television, but added, ‘It was just like I was focusing on the Three Stooges or something.’” That ill-informed jury proved remarkably pliable to North’s theatrics, Mansnerus writes, and many believe McVeigh’s defense team hopes for a similar jury pool that may be willing to set aside scientific evidence in favor of conspiracy theories and emotional pleas. Jury expert Jeffrey Abramson of Brandeis University tells Mansnerus: “In a case that’s heavy on scientific, forensic evidence, the defense is going to favor people who are less sophisticated about scientific matters and who are prone to conspiracy theories. That’s the classic defense approach.” Philadelphia prosecutor Jack McMahon warned in a well-known 1986 instructional video of the pitfalls that can result in letting “smart people” on the jury, saying: “Smart people will analyze the hell out of your case. They have a higher standard. They take those words ‘reasonable doubt’ and they actually try to think about them. You don’t want those people.” Moreover, people with jobs requiring any real level of responsibility are routinely excused from jury service; this case is no exception, leaving a pool of jurors with little or no steady employment, spotty educational status, and somtimes limited intellectual capabilities to judge McVeigh’s innocence or guilt. [New York Times, 4/6/1997]
The Oklahoma Gazette publishes a November 1996 letter written by accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995). The newspaper does not explain why it waited until now to publish the letter, which was addressed to Gazette reporter Phil Bacharach. Bacharach interviewed McVeigh in prison shortly after his incarceration. In the letter, McVeigh lambasts the FBI for the fire that destroyed the Branch Davidian compound outside of Waco (see April 19, 1993), writing: “The public never saw the Davidians’ home video of their cute babies, adorable children, loving mothers, or protective fathers. Nor did they see pictures of the charred remains of childrens’ bodies. Therefore, they didn’t care when these families died a slow, tortuous death as they were gassed and burned alive at the hands of the FBI.” It is well documented that McVeigh was enraged about the Davidian tragedy (see March 1993), blaming the government for setting the fires that killed 78 people (see April 19, 1993 and After), and many speculate that part of McVeigh’s motivation to blow up the Murrah Building may have been due to the Davidian incident (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994, September 13, 1994 and After, and March 1995). McVeigh’s attorney Stephen Jones confirms that the letter is authentic, saying, “I don’t think there’s anything in the letter that hasn’t been said before.” FBI agents ask Bacharach for the original letter, and the reporter, after making copies, complies. He says that McVeigh told him nothing of substance about the bombing, and that McVeigh wrote the letter to clarify a quote attributed to him in the November 1995 article by Bacharach. [CNN, 4/8/1997; CNN, 4/9/1997]
The Justice Department inspector general releases a report criticizing the FBI’s practices at its crime laboratory that may cast doubts on evidence to be presented in the trial of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995). The report, issued after an 18-month investigation of the laboratory, includes questions about the handling of evidence relating to the Oklahoma City bombing, including the size and composition of the bomb, and of chemical residues found on McVeigh’s clothing and on a knife he was carrying when apprehended. McVeigh’s lead lawyer, Stephen Jones, says he has always intended to challenge the integrity of the physical evidence against McVeigh. The report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael R. Bromwich, finds that FBI examiner David R. Williams prepared his September 5, 1995, report on the explosives used in the Oklahoma City bombing “in a way most incriminating to the defendants” (McVeigh and co-conspirator Terry Nichols). Williams, his supervisor, and two other agents were transferred in January in response to Bromwich’s preliminary findings (see January 27, 1997). Williams has been dropped from the government’s witness list. [New York Times, 4/17/1997]
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domain: law