The IRA and Oklahoma City

'There comes a time in every botched operation when the informant has to speak out to save his skin, and that's now, Andreas'. 'How can he?' Strassmeir shouted into the telephone. "What happens if it was a sting operation from the very beginning? What happens if it comes out that the plant was a provocateur?' 'A provocateur?' 'What happens if he talked and manipulated the others into it? What then? The country couldn't handle it. The relatives of the victims are going to go crazy. He's going to be held responsible for the murder of 168 people.' 'That is true.' 'Of course the informant can't come forward. He's scared shitless right now.' 'It sounds to me as if you've got a problem, Andreas.' 'Schiesse'.

Evans-Pritchard - The Secret Life Of Bill Clinton

May 20, 1996
Electronic Telegraph Issue 387

Andreas Strassmeir lives quietly with his parents in a well-to-do area of West Berlin. His father was once a top aide to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. His brother is a city councillor. For seven years he served in the German army, at one point doing a tour of duty as a liaison officer with the Welsh Guards. It is hard to imagine a more unlikely figure to surface in the drama of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the worst act of terrorism ever committed on US soil. But last week an Oklahoma couple, Glenn and Kathy Wilburn, announced that they were going to name Strassmeir, 36, in a lawsuit as a "US federal informant with material knowledge of the bombing". They say that Strassmeir became involved with the far-Right underworld when he lived with the Elohim City "Christian Identity" sect on the Arkansas- Oklahoma border from 1991 to 1995.

The Wilburns lost two grandchildren in the attack on the Alfred Murrah federal building, which killed 168 people including 19 children. After taping more than 300 hours of testimony in their own investigation, they have concluded that the government had prior knowledge of the blast. They say that the FBI has refused to pursue and arrest a number of suspects seen near the crime scene with Timothy McVeigh, who is said to have been in contact with paramilitary groups in the area and has been charged with the bombing. The Wilburns say the refusal is presumably because the FBI is afraid of exposing the government's negligence. "This was a sting operation that went berserk," said Glenn Wilburn.

The family has accumulated evidence which they claim indicates Strassmeir was an undercover US agent who, while based at Elohim City, penetrated the white separatist movement and alerted the authorities about the impending attack. "Andy did his best, he tried to stop this thing, we're not blaming him for what happened," said Wilburn. "But we're going to sue the US government to break this wide open."

The Wilburns now believe that they have evidence from witnesses that five to seven men were involved in the bombing, and indications that several of these had connections with Elohim City. So far only two people have been charged: McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The FBI now says that nobody else was involved. Strassmeir denies that he was an informant. "I've never worked for any US government agency, and I've not been involved in any intelligence operation since my discharge from the German army in 1988," he said. "This family [the Wilburns] is on a fishing expedition." "The FBI asked where I was on the day of the bombing."

The decision to name him in the lawsuit comes after witnesses allegedly identified him at the end of April as one of a number of men seen in Junction City, Kansas, when McVeigh was also there during the days leading up to the bombing. One of the witnesses said she contacted the FBI as soon as she was shown a photograph of Strassmeir by a US news organisation investigating the Oklahoma affair. Within days, a US Justice Department team questioned Strassmeir, calling him in Berlin on April 30 and again on May 1 to ask about his alleged ties to McVeigh. "The FBI asked where I was on the day of the bombing," he said. "They wanted to help debunk the rumours spread about me." Strassmeir said he was at work near Elohim City at the time of the blast.

In a series of five interviews with The Telegraph he said that he first lived in the US in 1989 because he was planning to work on a special assignment for the US Justice Department. "I discussed the job when I was in Washington. I was hoping to work for the operations section of the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency]," he explained. "It never worked out."

Vincent Petruskie, a retired US Air Force colonel, said that he helped Strassmeir try to get a job in the DEA and the US Treasury. "We took him under our wing when he first came to the United States, and to be quite honest he's a little immature," he said. "I mean he's a good kid, but he fantasises." In the end, Strassmeir says that he went to Texas and started working as a salesman for a computer company. From there he seemingly drifted into the sub- culture of the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and the extreme fringes of the Christian Right. In 1991 he went to live in Elohim City, a primitive community of huts, guns and impenetrable theology. He established himself as chief of security and weapons training, he said.

On April 5 1995 McVeigh - or somebody using his telephone billing card - telephoned Elohim City. It was minutes after McVeigh had reserved the Ryder rental van that was allegedly used to blow up the Oklahoma City building. According to Joan Millar, who answered the telephone, the caller asked to speak to "Andy". "I don't know why McVeigh was trying to contact me," said Strassmeir. "I met the guy once at a gun show. We spoke for five minutes, that's all. I sold him a US Navy combat knife."

Without identifying himself, McVeigh also called the offices of Strassmeir's American lawyer, Kirk Lyons, for 15 minutes on April 18, 1995, the day before the bombing. He apparently talked about the controversial raid by federal agents on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, which resulted in more than 80 deaths, and the need to "send a message to the government". Strassmeir says that McVeigh never visited Elohim City. But McVeigh was stopped for speeding on October 12 1993, 10 miles from Elohim City, on the road to the compound. Strassmeir says that his four years at Elohim were among the happiest of his life. But it was a curious existence for a man who had once been a lieutenant in the Panzer Grenadiers. He told The Sunday Telegraph that he had received military intelligence training. Part of his work was to detect infiltration by Warsaw Pact agents, he explained, and then feed them disinformation.

He is scathing in his criticism of the ATF - the US Treasury's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms - saying that it did not have the anthropological skills to infiltrate the Christian militias. "The Right-wing in the US is incredibly easy to penetrate if you know how to talk to them," he said. "Of course it's easier for a foreigner with an accent; nobody would ever suspect a German of working for the federal government."

In February 1992 Strassmeir's maroon station wagon was impounded by the Oklahoma highway patrol for a traffic violation. The police found in his briefcase a collection of documents, some of them in German. According to the tow-truck driver, Kenny Pence, Strassmeir soon brought heavy pressure to bear. "Boy, we caught hell over that one," he said. "The phone calls came in from the State Department, the Governor's office, and someone called and said he had diplomatic immunity. He was just a weird cookie." Strassmeir said the man must have been confused about some of the details. "Some calls did come in to rattle their cage," he said. "Something may have been said about my father's position."

In hours of conversations with The Sunday Telegraph, over several days, Strassmeir remained adamant that he had met McVeigh only once. He also claimed that he had copper-bottomed information about the bombing, but seemed torn over how much he felt able to impart. "The ATF had an informant inside this operation. They had advance warning and they bungled it," he said. "What they should have done is make an arrest while the bomb was still being made instead of waiting till the last moment for a publicity stunt." Asked if he thought the alleged informant would ever speak out, he replied with passion: "How can he? What happens if it was a sting operation from the very beginning? What happens if it comes out that the plant was a provocateur? What then? The relatives of the victims are going to go crazy, and he's going to be held responsible for the murder of 168 people? Of course the informant can't come forward. He's scared stiff right now." Before and after this outburst he kept repeating that he was not making veiled references to himself.

Lyons, Strassmeir's lawyer, says that his client has been dragged into the Oklahoma bombing story by McVeigh's defence team. He says the defence tactic is to muddy the waters by sketching a vast conspiracy involving neo-Nazis in Europe and even Middle Eastern terrorists. "I call it the Space Alien Elvis Presley theory, and it's been fuelled by nutcases and conspiracy theorists," he said.

December 8 1996
Electronic Telegraph Issue 564

A new and alarming terrorist movement has emerged in the United States. It is inspired by the Provisional IRA and is adopting the Provos' structure of impenetrable underground cells. Calling itself the Aryan Republican Army, the group appears to be the secret military arm of the American neo-Nazi movement. It is committed to the overthrow of the US government, the extermination of America's Jews, and the establishment of an "Aryan Republic" on the North American continent. "We call ourselves the Aryan Republican Army because in some of our tactics, and some of our goals, we have modelled the organisation after the successful and yet undefeated Irish Republican Army," said Commander Pedro, a self-styled member of the Aryan high command, on a recruitment video tape obtained by The Sunday Telegraph. "The Irish, another tribe of the Aryan people, have fought off the Jewish-inspired elite of the English."

The FBI discovered the terrorist cell by accident earlier this year while investigating a string of 18 bank robberies in the Mid West. The armed assaults were allegedly carried out by members of the Aryan Army - wearing Ronald Reagan and Count Dracula masks - to fund their revolutionary activities. Three men are being prosecuted for the robberies and possession of explosives. The leader of the group, Richard Guthrie, was found dead in his prison cell, apparently after hanging himself from an air vent with a sheet. Among items seized from a storage locker belonging to the group was the Irish Republican Army handbook, a terrorist manual known in Ireland as the Green Book, along with an assortment of books on the Irish struggle including A Little History of Ireland by Seamus MacCall and cassette tapes of a Gaelic language course.

The Aryan recruitment video, filmed at a "safe house" in Kansas around New Year 1995, features armed men in ski masks. It starts with an IRA song, The Patriot Game, then moves on to a theatrical discourse on knee-capping. "We will deal with informers ruthlessly and permanently. For actively working with our enemies, you'll be terminated. If you just like to run your mouth, you'll be knee- capped," explained Commander Pedro, holding up an automatic pistol, and then an electric drill. "Either one, I can guarantee you, are extremely painful." The tape also singles out the Serbs for praise as role models in ethnic cleansing. Commander Pedro warned that all blacks would be deported from the "Aryan Republic". The pro-IRA sympathies of these neo-Nazis are a new twist in the story of the American racist Right. The Ku Klux Klan used to be virulently anti-Catholic, but many of the members of the Aryan Republican Army are from middle-class Catholic backgrounds.

Mark Thomas, allegedly the intellectual mentor of the Aryan Republican Army, says that he identifies with the "anti-colonial" struggle of the IRA. "I am no Catholic, but my prayers are with the IRA," he wrote in his publication, The Watchman. "The Hard Men who lead them are the mighty of our race . . . May God bless them and keep them. Sinn Fein. Hail the IRA!" It is an astonishing position for a man who was once a "state chaplain" of the Ku Klux Klan. (He is now Pennsylvania director of the Aryan Nations, a successor to the fascist "Silver Shirts" of the 1930s that looks down on the KKK as "do-nothing belly-achers".)

Thomas is a follower of Nietzsche and the "ancestral memory" theories of Carl Jung. He has become a priest in the growing religion of "Christian Identity". The sect believes that the European peoples are the lost tribes of Israel. He told The Telegraph that the Celtic outposts of Scotland and Ireland are the most pure of the Aryan peoples, as the last to succumb to Judaic influences.

Commander Pedro is in fact Peter Langan, 38, a high-school drop- out from suburban Washington, whose father worked for the CIA. He and his friends are clownish figures in many ways, but the Aryan Army cell was well-equipped for terrorism. The FBI captured a shoulder-fired rocket launcher, Semtex explosives, hand-grenade canisters, 11 pipe-bombs, and an arsenal of guns. "These people had a support system. They had safe-houses and very good false documents," said Mike Reynolds, senior intelligence analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors Right-wing violence across the country. "They were clearly preparing for something beyond bank robberies."

What makes this Aryan Army cell so menacing is the growing body of evidence that its members were in contact with Tim McVeigh, the prime suspect in the bombing of the Oklahoma federal building in April last year. Two of the bank robbers were residents of a Christian Identity compound in Oklahoma named Elohim City. McVeigh telephoned Elohim minutes after reserving the truck allegedly used in the bombing. Michael Brescia is believed to be a fifth member of the Aryan Army cell. He also lived at Elohim City. Five women at a night club in Tulsa have identified Brescia as the man they saw sitting with Tim McVeigh - and paying for the drinks - on April 8, 1995, 11 days before the bombing. A mother and daughter in Kansas have told the FBI that they met Brescia in the company of McVeigh several times.

January 26, 1997
Electronic Telegraph Issue 611

The patriot militia movement in the United States has launched a campaign to hunt down neo-Nazis and bring them to justice for alleged acts of terrorism. The militias claim that they have been falsely linked to the wave of bombings in the US over the past two years, especially the Oklahoma blast that killed 168 people in April 1995. A number of their leaders have set out to prove that the real culprits are members of the white supremacist underground - a network of fascist cells committed to the overthrow of the constitutional order. ....

The FBI conducted a massive manhunt for John Doe II in 1995. Then, the Justice Department suddenly announced that there was no John Doe II after all. It had all been a big mistake. McVeigh acted alone on the day of the crime. The problem is that a large number of witnesses saw other men with McVeigh on the morning of the crime in Oklahoma City, and at critical times before that in Junction City, Kansas, and Tulsa. Several have identified one man as Michael Brescia, a neo-Nazi with ties to a paramilitary cell called the Aryan Republican Army that has boasted of its plan to kill Jews and deport blacks. The militia believe that Brescia is being shielded from prosecution, possibly because he knows things about the bombing that could cause acute embarrassment to the federal authorities - for example, whether or not the conspiracy was penetrated by an informant. Brescia now lives at his parents' house in Philadelphia. Last weekend, on a freezing winter's day, the militia mounted an operation to expose him and to rebuke the Justice Department. "Someone's got to do this," said the commander, Arlin Adams. "If nobody makes the effort, the system will fail." The team darted from one telegraph post to another fixing posters of Michael Brescia outside his house, at his family's church, and at the University of La Salle, where he is finishing a degree in finance. The posters bore the message, "Unwanted by the FBI" and showed Brescia's picture next to a police sketch of John Doe II

February 2, 1997
Electronic Telegraph Issue 618

The government case in the Oklahoma bombing trial, due to open next month, is disintegrating. .... The latest blow to the prosecution is a report that the FBI crime lab altered forensic conclusions to accommodate government claims that the blast, which killed 168 people in the spring of 1995, was caused by a 4,000lb ammonium nitrate bomb. The report, by the Justice Department's Inspector General, found that some lab officials have been pressed to falsify evidence and commit perjury to support prosecutions. With the FBI crime lab going through the worst crisis in the history of the Bureau, everything it touches is now tainted. .... The prosecution has been tying itself in knots from the beginning. This is chiefly because it insists on a 'lone bomber theory' - with another man, Terry Nichols, helping in the background - when the evidence clearly indicates a more complex conspiracy involving a terrorist cell. Last week it became clear that the Justice Department is willing to let the case collapse rather than risk collateral revelations. On Thursday the FBI arrested Michael Brescia, the man alleged to be the mysterious 'John Doe II' seen with McVeigh in the days before the bombing. Brescia has been named in a private lawsuit by victims of the blast as a co-conspirator of McVeigh. But in keeping with the "Alice in Wonderland" character of this investigation, Brescia was arrested for his alleged role in a series of bank robberies carried out by a neo-Nazi group called the Aryan Republican Army. McVeigh is also tied into this ARA cell, and his sister told the FBI in May 1995 that her brother had been involved in bank robberies. But the Justice Department does not want to know. Indeed, it has gone to hazardous lengths to stamp out talk of a broader bombing conspiracy involving the Aryan Republican Army. On Wednesday, the day before Brescia's arrest, it announced that John Doe II - the subject of the massive FBI manhunt in the weeks after the bombing - had never existed.

The Justice Department stated that Tom Kessinger, a clerk at the Ryder rental agency where McVeigh allegedly rented the bombing vehicle, was confused when he helped to produce a artist's sketch of a second man with McVeigh. This is highly contentious. Mr Kessinger provided the famous John Doe II sketch immediately after the blast. Almost two years later he abruptly changes tack and asserts that he muddled John Doe II with a soldier named Tod Bunting who came into the office on a different day. Unfortunately for the prosecution, Mr Kessinger has already given too many interviews ridiculing the Bunting canard. "He was laughing about it and said 'I don't know how they came up with that one'," said Glenn Wilburn, a bombing victim, when he visited Mr Kessinger last year. The Justice Department has now destroyed Mr Kessinger's credibility, so it can no longer put him on the stand to identify McVeigh as the man who rented the Ryder truck. But the prosecution does not have much else to rely on.

The original FBI statements by the employees at the Ryder rental agency describe the man supposed to be McVeigh - who used the alias of Robert Kling - as 13 stone, 5ft 11in, stocky, with a pock- marked face. This bears no resemblance to the lanky, 11 stone, 6ft 3in, baby-faced McVeigh. The prosecution, of course, can draw on an army of witnesses who saw McVeigh with a Ryder truck shortly before the bomb went off at 9am on April 19 1995. But they all saw him with other suspects, making a mockery of the claim that McVeigh acted alone.

So it appears that none of these witnesses is going to be called to testify. Instead, the prosecution is relying on a single man who thought he might have seen McVeigh getting out of a Ryder truck. Why is the Justice Department destroying its own case? A clue came last Tuesday in an Oklahoma newspaper, the McCurtain Daily Gazette, which has gathered evidence that the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) was monitoring the bombing conspiracy from the very start. According to the Gazette, a paid informant working for the Tulsa office of the ATF has come forward to admit that she used hidden cameras to film three members of a neo-Nazi group in Oklahoma discussing plans to blow up a federal building.

One was Andreas Strassmeir, a former German army officer with ties to McVeigh. Strassmeir shared a house at the time with Michael Brescia of the Aryan Republican Army underground. The story helps to explain how bomb squads could have been seen in downtown Oklahoma hours before the explosion. It also buttresses testimony that McVeigh appeared to be operating as part of a team on the day of the crime in Oklahoma City. The only conclusion that one can draw is that the Justice Department is protecting a federal informant who had penetrated the bombing conspiracy - probably Strassmeir, but possibly also Brescia - and is trying to cover up a bungled sting. McVeigh's defence lawyer, Stephen Jones, says that the American people will never be able to think of their government in the same way once they learn the full truth about the Oklahoma bombing. Is he just bluffing?

February 9, 1997
Electronic Telegraph Issue 625

An Oklahoma newspaper has convincing evidence that the US Government was warned about the bombing of the Oklahoma federal building in 1995, the most deadly act of terrorism in US history. Next Tuesday the McCurtain Daily Gazette is scheduled to publish how an informant for the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was paid $120 a week to monitor a neo-Nazi compound in eastern Oklahoma, called Elohim City. The informant, Carol Howe, wrote monthly reports for her ATF case officer in Tulsa, warning that the group was planning to blow up a federal building, with a probable target date of April 19, 1995. She told the ATF that the terrorist cell, sometimes known as the Aryan Republican Army, had narrowed down the list of targets to three buildings: one in Oklahoma City and two in Tulsa.

The ATF has confirmed that Howe was a source. After repeating for two years that allegations of prior knowledge were a crazy "conspiracy theory", the US authorities now admit that they received warning, but insist the information was too vague to prompt action. Ms Howe said that the prime instigator of the conspiracy was Andreas Strassmeir, a former German army officer from a prominent political family in Berlin. Strassmeir told The Telegraph last year that he moved to the United States in 1989 to work as an undercover agent for the US Justice Department, but says that the job fell through. Instead, he went to live at Elohim City, where he took charge of paramilitary training.

Two days after the bombing, which killed 168 people, Ms Howe was taken to an underground command centre in downtown Oklahoma City for an extensive debriefing. In her official statement to investigators, she identified sketches of suspects "John Doe I" and "John Doe II" as two members of Elohim City's terrorist underground, both housemates of Andreas Strassmeir. According to the Gazette, one of them was called Michael Brescia, a member of the Aryan Republican Army underground. Other witnesses also raised concerns about Brescia within days of the bombing, but there was no follow-up. The FBI did not question Brescia until his name started surfacing in the press last year. Two weeks ago the FBI arrested him in Philadelphia - for bank robberies carried out by the Aryan Army, not for questioning about the bombing. Glenn and Cathy Wilburn, an Oklahoma couple who lost two grandchildren in the blast, have named Brescia and Strassmeir as co-conspirators in a civil lawsuit against the chief suspect, Tim McVeigh. Carol Howe has revealed that Tim McVeigh used to visit Elohim City, using the alias of Tim Tuttle. He would frequent the house of Strassmeir, who had an extraordinary influence over him.

March 23, 1997
Electronic Telegraph Issue 667

The US government has brought criminal charges against a key witness who gave advance warning of a bombing conspiracy in Oklahoma in what looks like a flagrant attempt to cover its own tracks. Carol Howe, a former Tulsa beauty queen, has been indicted for allegedly conspiring to make an unrelated bomb threat and possession of a "destructive device". It is a remarkably thin case stemming from an inflammatory anti-government message that her boyfriend recorded on an answering machine. The indictment followed interviews that she gave to an Oklahoma newspaper, the McCurtain Daily Gazette. She revealed she had been recruited by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) as an undercover informant, at $120 a week, to spy on the activities of a neo-nazi group at Elohim City in Oklahoma. From June 1994 until March 1995 she filed more than 70 reports on her activities to her ATF case officer in Tulsa, Angela Finley. At Elohim City she learned that a group called the Aryan Republican Army was discussing a terrorist attack on buildings in Oklahoma. According to Howe, the prime instigators included a former German army officer named Andreas Strassmeir. Strassmeir, the son of a prominent politician in Berlin, is widely suspected of being an undercover agent. In a series of interviews with The Telegraph last year he admitted that he engaged in undercover intelligence work in the German military. He said that he had first come to the United States in 1989 with the intention of working for the US Justice Department.

According to Howe, the group targeted three buildings, including the Murrah building. She said that they "cased" the Oklahoma building three times, in November and December 1994, and February 1995, once in her presence. It was blown up on April 19, 1995. Whether or not she filed ATF reports detailing specific threats is now a subject of great contention. The documents were turned over to the defence team of Tim McVeigh, whose trial for his role in the bombing opens next week, after their existence was revealed in the press. The critical material dates from December 1994 when Carol Howe moved into Elohim City for five weeks and collected sensitive intelligence. The December documents have vanished. However, a debriefing report filed two days after the bombing quotes Howe reminding her ATF handlers that she had told them of the group's interest in the Murrah building. She also identified an artist's sketch of suspect John Doe II as Strassmeir's housemate, Michael Brescia.

The FBI, which has conducted more than 23,000 witness interviews, did not question either Strassmeir or Brescia after the bombing. Fifteen months later, when Strassmeir's name surfaced in the press, the FBI telephoned him in Berlin, but only to reassure him that he was not a suspect. The Justice Department is now claiming that Carol Howe was unreliable and had to be dropped as an informant. But the documents show that she was given 17 polygraph tests to check whether she was telling the truth: she passed every one.

Immediately after the bombing the ATF, then in a panic, recalled her at a much higher pay of $400 a day and sent her back into Elohim City to find out what had happened to Strassmeir, Brescia and other members of the Aryan Republic Army. Carol Howe is likely to be the star witness in the trial of Tim McVeigh, which starts on March 31. Is that why the Justice Department decided to indict her?

March 25, 1997

From Stephen Jones' petition for a writ of mandamus to Federal judge Richard P. Matsch on behalf of Timothy James McVeigh that he should issue more discovery orders for material to be turned over:

An official in the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service reported < reference 17> on April 19, 1995, and possibly earlier, that Iraq had hired seven Pakistani mercenaries, all veterans of the Afghanistan War, to bomb targets in the United States, one of which was the Alfred P. Murrah Building. D.E. 2191 at 3 (Exhibit "A"). A former Chief of Counterterrorism Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency provided this information to the United States government and described his source as "responsible for developing intelligence to help prevent the (Saudi) Royal Family from becoming victims of a terrorist attack." Id.>>> Footnote 17: Significant portions of this material are in the public record either through media account or court proceedings. ...... The Saudi Arabian official reported that the bombing of the Murrah Building was sponsored by the Iraqi Special Services, who "contracted" the mission to seven (7) former Afghani freedom fighters currently living in Pakistan. The official also advised that the identity of the true sponsor of the bombing was concealed from the Pakistanis and the Afghan mercenaries may not have knowledge of Iraqi involvement or sponsorship. This is not unusual..... Despite repeated requests, the defense has been provided the sum total of three pages of information concerning this aspect of the case. See D.E. 2191 Exhibit "A." The defense requested assistance from the United States State Department, via letter to the Secretary of State, to assist in defense investigation and travel to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has very stringent entry requirements and the defense was unable to facilitate investigation there. The State Department declined politely to assist the defense's travel to Saudi Arabia and attempt to interview the Saudi Arabian official. However, the State Department sent a list of law firms practicing in Saudi Arabia to the defense; ...... the State Department had no difficulty in facilitating entry into Saudi Arabia of American FBI agents traveling there to investigate the death of Americans in Saudi Arabia.

March 30 1997
Electronic Telegraph Issue 674

The Provisional IRA supplied the detonator used in the Oklahoma bombing two years ago, the worst terrorist attack on American soil, defence lawyers for the chief suspect, Timothy McVeigh, have claimed. Documents submitted to the court in Denver where McVeigh's trial will begin tomorrow allege that a neo-nazi cell had been conspiring to blow up a US federal building in early 1995 and had received assistance from "Sinn Fein", described as "the Irish terrorist group". The source of the allegations is Carol Howe, an American government informer. If proved, the claim of IRA involvement in the Oklahoma bombing would mark the most disastrous setback to the republicans' cause in decades. Any IRA link to mass murder in America would destroy the fruits of years of lobbying by Sinn Fein in Washington and devastate republican fund-raising. A US president would never again shake hands with a Sinn Fein leader such as Gerry Adams. Rumours of an Irish connection to the bombing have surfaced repeatedly in the case for McVeigh's defence. Stephen Jones, his lawyer, has visited Northern Ireland and interviewed a member of the IRA and officials from MI5 and Belfast counter-terrorism specialists.

Mr Jones has also been relying on British forensic scientists with detailed knowledge of IRA bombing techniques to help prepare his defence. "The greatest concentration of expertise in the world on this kind of explosion is sitting in London and Belfast," he told The Telegraph. One of them, Dr John Lloyd, an expert on explosives based in Birmingham who has handled several cases of miscarriage of justice, is expected to appear as a witness in the trial. Another, Professor Brian Caddy of Strathclyde University, has worked with Mr Jones on the defence case.

McVeigh's defence says that it was the neo-Nazi group, based at Elohim City, Oklahoma, and which called itself the Aryan Republican Army, which was responsible for the terrorist attack, in which 168 people died. The defence team is accusing the government of withholding documents critical to the trial's conduct and is demanding the release of all reports that Ms Howe gave to her case officer. The government counters that McVeigh's defence team is using "smoke and mirrors" to undermine the prosecution case by sowing confusion.

Ms Howe alleges that the link with the IRA was Andreas Strassmeir. A former officer in the German army, he became chief of paramilitary operations at Elohim City and trained large numbers of zealots who passed through the camp. McVeigh tried to telephone Strassmeir at Elohim City shortly before the bombing and left a message saying: "Tell Andy I'll be coming through." There appears to be a bizarre link between the IRA and the US neo- Nazi movement. Dennis Mahon, a leader of the White Aryan Resistance and a friend of Strassmeir, claims that he has given advice to the IRA, encouraging the terrorists to murder "top British officers and police officials" but to avoid indiscriminate attacks that kill civilians.

A recruitment tape made by a group of graduates from Elohim City makes continual references to the IRA. The tape was discovered by the FBI last year when it was investigating 18 bank robberies in the Mid-West. Among the items seized from a storage locker belonging to the group was the IRA's terrorist handbook, known as the "Green Book", along with books on Ireland and Gaelic language tapes. The FBI also found Semtex explosives, a shoulder-fired rocket launcher, and 11 pipe bombs. The intellectual mentor of the Aryan Republican Army, Mark Thomas, told The Telegraph that he identified with the IRA's "anti-colonial" struggle.

March 30, 1997
Electronic Telegraph Issue 674

Dennis Mahon must lead a charmed life. The FBI has pursued endless leads into the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, collecting more than 26,000 witness statements. But it has never been to visit him at his bungalow in Tulsa. The omission is curious. Mahon, 47, is an associate of the government's chief suspect, Tim McVeigh. Indeed, McVeigh's defence team says Mahon sent a tape to their client in prison urging him to accept his "sacrifice" and reminding him in a subtle way that members of his family were vulnerable. Before the bombing on April 19, 1995, he was the subject of a terrorism investigation which generated allegations that he was plotting to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma.

In case the authorities had overlooked this, an undercover informant reminded the FBI two days after the bombing that she had told them that Mahon had made three trips to Oklahoma City. On one visit in 1994, the informant said he "cased" the building that was attacked. A former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and now a leader of the more militant White Aryan Resistance, Mahon has never made a secret of his extremism. He has called for the overthrow of the United States government by "any means" and regards it as an honour to have been barred from Britain and Canada. "I always deliver my bombs in person, in disguise," he said mischievously. "I can look like a hispanic or even a Negro. I'm the master of disguise." He has kept his sense of humour, despite being the chief target of McVeigh's defence team in the trial that starts tomorrow. McVeigh's lawyers have introduced documents in court asserting a "high probability" that Mahon and his friend Andreas Strassmeir, a former German army officer, were behind the Oklahoma bombing.

"This is where I make my bombs," he said, giving me a tour of a workshop attached to his house. "Just kidding. Everybody seems to think I did the bombing. Even the Iraqis think I did it," he explained, saying he had been on the Iraqi payroll as a propagandist for more than three years. "They paid me $100 a month. Not much, but it all helps. . . Then they cut me off, a month after the bombing - bastards!"

Mahon is now in some difficulty. An Oklahoma newspaper, the McCurtain Daily Gazette, is set to publish a story today revealing the existence of a sealed deposition in the McVeigh trial, implicating Mahon in the bombing. The testimony was given by an investigative reporter, John D. Cash, on March 26, 1996, after he tricked Mahon into thinking that he was an emissary from a neo- nazi group. Cash says Mahon took credit for helping to build the bomb. "Dennis is really a very nice man, for a terrorist," said Cash with characteristic dry wit.

Mahon insists he had nothing to do with the bombing. "I'm a terrorist with words. I terrorise with the truth," he said. "Look, it was a justifiable act to blow up that federal building, but if I'd been involved I wouldn't have done it at nine in the morning with all those children in there. Anyway, I've got an alibi, I was up at the family farm in Illinois from April 16 to April 23." He said that it was a "bald-faced evil lie" that he had cased the building with an undercover informant, Carol Howe. "That girl was out of her mind. She was always talking about violence and killing. . . You know, she watched Natural Born Killers nine times," he added. "She was always popping these pills, I never could reach her soul."

Mahon also has problems with his friend Strassmeir, who has returned to Germany and now admits to having ties to the US Justice Department. Preparing for trouble, Mahon is having his cat put down and is disposing of his property. "I've got to get out of this country, soon," he said. "I think I'll go to Argentina."

March 31, 1997
Electronic Telegraph Issue 675

In a heavily-guarded courthouse in Denver, the long-awaited test of FBI evidence against Timothy McVeigh, prime suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing, begins today ...... But, as has happened throughout the nearly two years since the blast, yet another attempt was made by the defence yesterday to float the idea that the plot was not totally home-grown. After efforts to pin the blame on Middle East terrorists appear to have got nowhere, documents have been submitted in the case alleging that "Sinn Fein, the Irish terrorist group" supplied the "real" perpetrators, a neo-nazi group, with the detonator.

The claim is said to have come from a former Tulsa beauty queen, Carol Howe, recruited as an undercover agent by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who infiltrated a white supremacist organisation at Elohim City in eastern Oklahoma. ....Several doubts about the case have emerged, with the suspicion that federal agents knew the explosion was coming but failed to react to a tip-off. Six witnesses have emerged to say they spotted a bomb squad inspecting the nearby court building about an hour before the blast.

McVeigh's alleged associate, Terry Nichols, is to be tried separately, but there are indications that a third man has avoided capture. The idea has surfaced that he was a government informer within an Aryan Republican Army organisation behind the bombing....

June 3, 1997
Electronic Telegraph Issue 739

Painted by prosecutors as a fanatical bomber obsessed with a warped sense of patriotism, Timothy McVeigh, convicted of the Oklahoma bombing, gave his attorneys no help in establishing an alibi to counter the fact that he was caught driving at speed on a highway north of the city 75 minutes after the blast wearing a T- shirt soaked in explosives. ............ Mr Macey said: "From the beginning I've said this was an Oklahoma case." He spoke of anxiety that an appeal tribunal might rule that McVeigh was prevented from presenting his full defence.

Judge Richard Matsch kept a tight hold on the trial, doing much to erase the impression that the US justice system is going haywire after the O J Simpson trial lasted nine months. The Denver trial was over in five weeks. Witnesses testified at lightning speed, sometimes as many as 13 a day. But the judge refused to allow Stephen Jones, McVeigh's lawyer, to present an alternative theory, gathered after spending $10 million (œ6.25 million) travelling the world, that an international conspiracy was responsible. Many of the victim's relatives are so concerned at evidence of this aspect that they are suing the government, insisting that the FBI had prior knowledge of the blast. Chris Cregan, whose mother died in the blast, said he was certain that others were involved beyond McVeigh and his former army friend, Terry Nichols, 41, who is to be tried next on similar charges. ......

Suspicion that much more expert terrorists were behind the explosion is based partly on the way it was set up. The explosives were so efficient that they took away a third of the building and left behind only microscopic crystals. Judge Matsch could have cleared up the mystery by allowing McVeigh to call his key witness, Carol Howe, a paid informant from Tulsa, Oklahoma, hired by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. For an undisclosed reason he ruled that her evidence was not relevant to the trial, even though she virtually acted as a federal agent in infiltrating a heavily-armed white supremacist compound at Elohim City in eastern Oklahoma that McVeigh telephoned a fortnight before the bombing.

Ms Howe was also supposed to have met McVeigh at the compound run by the Aryan Republican Army about four months before the bombing. She said that people at the compound had been talking about taking action against the government, fearful they would be targeted in siege like the one at Waco, Texas, where Branch Davidian cult members were burned to death. Ms Howe singled out in her statement a Tulsa racist group leader at the compound, Dennis Mahon, saying he talked about "targeting federal installation for destruction through bombings", including the Murrah building. She also said that a German, Andreas Strassmeir, who returned to Berlin a year ago without being questioned, had "discussed assassinations, bombings and mass shootings". Both men vehemently deny any links to the bombing.

What has raised interest in the German is that McVeigh, in his call to the compound, asked for him. He has said he had no idea why he made the call. Mr Strassmeir's name came up briefly in the trial as a defence attorney asked a state trooper: "Have you in the performance of your duties ever arrested an Andreas Strassmeir?" Prosecutor Beth Wilkinson instantly objected, and the judge sustained her protest. The trooper actually impounded Mr Strassmeir's car after a traffic incident in 1992 near Elohim City. All that Mr Strassmeir, a former German army lieutenant, has acknowledged is that he once met McVeigh at a Tulsa gun shop, and that they discussed the Waco siege, which, witnesses said, was the prime reason for the Oklahoma attack.

Glen Wilburn, 45, whose grandsons were killed by the bomb, is so convinced that Mr Strassmeir was somehow linked to the conspiracy that he helped his daughter file a wrongful death suit, naming him as "a US federal informant with material knowledge of the bombing". He thinks that, like Howe, the German worked undercover for the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Mr Strassmeir insists that he has not been involved in any intelligence work since his discharge from the German army in 1988.

McVeigh's calm demeanor was such that he spent hours chatting with his sister Jennifer in a cell below the court before she gave damning evidence against him. It was a dramatic moment, as she had once screamed at FBI agents that she was not going "to help you kill my brother". However, after being threatened with prosecution herself, she gave exact details of how her brother gathered explosives to avenge the 1993 FBI attack on Waco, Texas. She said: "He was very angry." He boasted to friends that his intention was start a popular uprising. He singled out the Oklahoma building full of children and office workers, because it was "an easy target". His aim was to kill what he called agents of "the evil empire", federal officials working on the upper floors.

July 20, 1997
Electronic Telegraph Issue 786

Gaping cracks are opening in the US Justice Department's claim that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was the exclusive work of the convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh and his alleged co- conspirator, Terry Nichols, who is still awaiting trial. A month after McVeigh, a 29-year-old former soldier, was unanimously sentenced to die by a Denver jury, most Americans would prefer to forget the horrendous deaths of 168 men, women and children in what was the worst act of domestic terrorism in the country's history.

However, in Oklahoma itself, especially among many of the victims' families, the clamour is growing for further inquiries into a wider conspiracy. Many believe that the authorities are suppressing the truth. In a case due to open next week in Tulsa, jurors will hear fresh evidence that US security agencies had ample forewarning of an attack on a federal target, possibly Oklahoma City's Murrah building. The testimony will come from Carol Howe, 28, daughter of a wealthy Tulsan, who acted for two-and-a-half years as an undercover informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). In the McVeigh trial it was disallowed as irrelevant by Judge Richard Matsch. Now Howe, an avowed white separatist, is facing charges, including conspiracy to make threats and possession of a bomb, that her defenders claim were brought to intimidate her.

Those who believe her claims had expected that the charges might subsequently be dropped in return for her silence. However, Howe's version of events - while still all but unreported in the mainstream media - is now on the public record in appeal documents submitted by McVeigh's lawyer, Stephen Jones. Her story, backed up by plentiful documentary evidence, is simple. A victim of an assault by three black youths, she drifted towards the white racist movement where she met Denis Mahon, a leader of the so-called White Aryan Resistance group, linked to an Oklahoma commune of extremists called Elohim City. After allegedly being sexually assaulted by Mahon, she filed an Emergency Protective Order against him, thereby alerting the interest of the ATF. Approached by ATF agent Angela Finley, she agreed to act as an informant. Her numerous reports included warnings that some at the commune planned to bomb a federal building.

According to Mr Jones's appeal submission, Agent Finley's handwritten notes confirm a report from Howe that Mahon had bomb-making expertise. He had told her he had exploded a 500lb ammonium nitrate bomb in Michigan five years earlier. Howe also reported that Mahon, together with another Elohim resident, the German-born "head of security" Andreas Strassmeir, had taken three trips to "case" Oklahoma City. Prosecution attorneys have cast doubt on Howe's credibility. They point to her undisputed white separatist sympathies and that she once sought psychiatric help. Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence that Howe's reports were taken extremely seriously by the ATF. Mr Jones's defence appeal also points out that she was immediately rehired by the ATF in the wake of the Oklahoma bomb and sent back to Elohim City to gather more information. She continued to be on the payroll until December last year.

Charges were brought against her last March after she and her fiance, Jim Viefhaus, were said to have recorded an alleged bomb threat on a telephone "newsline" and to have been in possession of a bomb. Her defence is expected to claim that the taped threat was the work of Viefhaus, which she had opposed, and that the bomb equipment was part of her "cover". What is most worrying for prosecuting attorneys is that Howe claims little knowledge of Tim McVeigh. Instead she identified from descriptions several other Elohim figures, including Mahon, Strassmeir and a bank robber, Michael Brescia, as likely bombers. But to date, although the FBI is said to have spoken to more than 20,000 individuals in America's most extensive criminal inquiry, Mahon has yet to be interviewed. Strassmeir, another suspect named by Howe, has been only cursorily interviewed in Germany by telephone.

That has prompted further speculation that the murky world of Elohim City was a nest of undercover agents and agents provocateurs, many of whom were working for the authorities - possibly on different inquiries. A theory shared by believers in a wider conspiracy is that the government is covering up a bungled "sting" operation that may have involved a squabble over jurisdiction between the FBI and the ATF. At least one civil suit brought by victims' families centres on claims that it was a failure by federal agencies to act swiftly that led to the bombing. Evidence to support that case emerged at pre-trial hearings into the Howe case on June 30. Local reporters claimed "near pandemonium" in the Tulsa courtroom when an FBI agent revealed that a leading figure in Elohim City was an FBI informant. The revelation, made under cross-examination, was that "the Reverend" Robert Millar, the community's rabble-rousing spiritual leader, had collaborated closely with federal agents.

Meanwhile last week new hearings by a grand jury in Oklahoma City convened to look into the possibility of a wider conspiracy, heard damaging testimony from two eyewitnesses. They claimed to have seen McVeigh on the morning of the bombing accompanied by as many as three other possible suspects. Their evidence was not heard in the McVeigh trial as they were not called by either the prosecution or the defence. That Stephen Jones failed to call them is understandable as they would have implicated his client in the crime. That the prosecution failed to do so only reinforces the view that there was an as yet unexplained desire on the part of the US attorneys' office to keep the number of suspects to a minimum.

September 28, 1997
Electronic Telegraph Issue 857

The most disputed claim in the whole Oklahoma bombing case comes under sceptical scrutiny this week when the trial of Terry Nichols opens in Denver. On the surface the question at issue is whether Nichols, an old army buddy of the convicted bomber Tim McVeigh, helped plan and execute the April 1995 bombing that left 168 men, women and children dead.

But for many, the trial is an opportunity to put the entire investigation in the dock. It will test once again the widely disbelieved claim by government prosecutors and FBI agents that McVeigh and Nichols alone were responsible for the worst act of domestic terrorism in US history. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, prosecutors still insist that only McVeigh and Nichols merited prosecution. ... Whatever the outcome, Nichols's trial will not achieve the government's aim of closing the Oklahoma file. Already two other rigorous inquiries are under way, while Congress will weigh in with its own investigation soon after the Nichols trial is over. The case against Nichols is a lot weaker than that made against McVeigh .... Nichols was 240 miles away from Oklahoma City the day the bomb went off. When he heard he was wanted, he voluntarily turned himself over to the police and subjected himself to nine hours of interrogation. He always denied being behind the bomb.

...Tigar's defence strategy is also expected to mobilise the argument that McVeigh's defence lawyer was not allowed to bring: that there is plenty of evidence of a much wider conspiracy. A civil suit brought by some 160 families of victims, suing the authorities for as much as $3.2 billion, will want to explore the abundant evidence that the conspiracy may have been hatched in a white-supremacist commune called Elohim City - which was under the close scrutiny of government agents. The FBI is charged with not only mishandling the bomb investigation, but also ignoring prior warning that an attack was imminent. For most Americans, the fate of Nichols is of little consequence. The good name of its premier law enforcement agency, however, is an altogether different matter.

October 21, 1997
Electronic Telegraph Issue 880

The trial of Timothy McVeigh for the 1995 Oklahoma bomb was a government cover-up to shield FBI agents who knew about the plot but failed to stop it, according to a book by Ambrose Evans- Pritchard alleging massive corruption under President Clinton. With McVeigh already sentenced to death for the blast which killed 168 people, and Terry Nichols, an alleged accomplice, standing trial, the book's claim will spark anger, particularly in Oklahoma City where witnesses saw bomb squad officers before the explosion, and 70 per cent of citizens believe that the government is lying about it.

'The Secret Life of Bill Clinton' includes a transcript of an official debriefing of Carol Howe, an undercover informant for the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Howe warned that the Oklahoma federal building had been a target and said: "Strassmeir has talked frequently about direct action against the US government. He is trained in weaponry and has discussed assassinations, bombings and mass shootings . . ."

Andreas Strassmeir, a former German army officer, had penetrated a neo-Nazi commune called Elohim City (God's City), from which, the book says, the terrorist attack may have been planned and executed. Despite this and despite interviewing more than 20,000 witnesses, the government has interviewed Strassmeir only on the telephone a year after the bombing when he had fled to Germany. The author, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who worked as The Sunday Telegraph correspondent in Washington until the summer and who now works for The Daily Telegraph, recounts a remarkable interview of his own with Strassmeir. They discuss an "informant". Strassmeir has denied that he was referring to himself during the conversation.

Mr Evans-Pritchard writes:

" 'There comes a time in every botched operation when the informant has to speak out to save his skin, and that's now, Andreas'. " " 'How can he?' Strassmeir shouted into the telephone. "What happens if it was a sting operation from the very beginning? What happens if it comes out that the plant was a provocateur?' 'A provocateur?' 'What happens if he talked and manipulated the others into it? What then? The country couldn't handle it. The relatives of the victims are going to go crazy. He's going to be held responsible for the murder of 168 people.' 'That is true.' 'Of course the informant can't come forward. He's scared shitless right now.' 'It sounds to me as if you've got a problem, Andreas.' 'Schiesse'. "

Some 300 members of the victims' families are suing the government claiming that the bombing was a "government sting" designed to trap neo-Nazis but which went horribly wrong. There is no doubt that McVeigh was guilty, says the author, but the whole truth has been concealed because none of the witnesses who saw McVeigh with accomplices was called to testify by the prosecution. That would have led back to Elohim City and the culpable incompetence of the FBI and ATF, the book argues. These conclusions may gain credence even among the sceptical American press following comment yesterday by Robert Novak, a respected columnist, in the Washington Post. Dismissing previous smears of the author, Mr Novak writes, he "is no conspiracy theory lunatic (and) is known for accuracy, industry and courage".