McVEIGH'S SECOND TRIAL
(Part I)
[This material is copyrighted]
Devvy Kidd June 25, 2001
"Tim who?"
This is the mantra coming
from Oklahoma City and widely hawked by the compromised
media. Unfortunately,
it isn't so simple. I won't even insult the families and survivors of the
Oklahoma
City bombing by saying
how much I feel their pain. I can imagine what it's been like having worked
this
story for the past six
years. However, because my daughter, mother, sisters, brothers, husband,
cousins
are all still alive,
no, I don't really know what it's like.
The survivors and families
say that too much time and attention has been given to McVeigh, we should
think about the victims.
I have, each and every time I work this cover-up. It is because 168 Americans
were slaughtered, because
so many survivors are forever scarred or disabled, because so many families
have suffered so much,
that we must find everyone who was responsible and see that they are prosecuted
to the fullest extent
of the law. Additionally, we should all be concerned that justice has been
fairly and
honestly administered.
I am sorry that I have
to do one final piece on this mass murder. However, I decided I would make
one
more attempt to bring
forth the problem with the "McVeigh lone bomber/mastermind" theory. Again,
this is not a defense
of the now deceased Timothy James McVeigh. This is not an attempt to prove
him
innocent of any wrong
doing. He was supposed to be presumed innocent when his trial started.
That was
an impossibility from
the beginning and anyone who thinks unconstitutionally moving the trial
to Denver,
CO., would make any
difference, does so because it makes them feel "the system worked."
On April 24, 1997, after
the legal dance rules were set forth for McVeigh's trial, federal prosecutor
Joseph H. Hartzler,
stating the following:
"Charge 1 -- or Count
1 charges that Timothy James McVeigh and Terry Lynn Nichols conspired together
and with others not
named in the indictment to use a truck bomb to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah
Building
in Oklahoma City and
to kill and injure the persons in it."
Hartzler was right, there
were others - others the government has never made any attempt to find.
Unfortunately, as much
as the people in OKC wish they would never have to hear "Tim McVeigh" again,
I'm afraid that's not
going to be possible for awhile. The truth must be uncovered and even though
Tim
McVeigh has now been
silenced by execution, he was only a part of the puzzle, not the whole
story. I doubt
many of the survivors
and family members of victims read my web site, but they will probably
hear
McVeigh's name for some
time to come. Terry Lynn Nichols will be tried on state murder charges
down
in OKC and inevitably,
McVeigh's name will surface.
We all wish these good,
decent people didn't have to endure this any longer, but I'm afraid it
will be that
way out of necessity
in the search for the guilty.
Having said all that,
I decided to do this final piece in a different format. I've already posted
four pieces
over the past five weeks.
It is clear that the government has documents and video material being
suppressed. That there
is a cover-up, there can be no doubt. Is there any way to get questions
answered? Yes, there
are still a few avenues left.
This final in-depth piece
is going to be what I will call "McVeigh's Second Trial." I would ask you
to bear
with me through this
whole process. I'm doing this in a rather unorthodox manner, but there
is a reason.
We will begin with the
crime scene right up to McVeigh's execution. I will also address our "soldier's
confession," as it begs
for comment. It may not seem important to many, but it is very important
and I'm
going to give you my
opinion as to why. You can make up your own mind.
There are a million looney,
conspiracy theories about this bombing and Tim McVeigh. I sincerely hope
this final piece in
my series helps to sort out the serious questions from the silliness floating
around
cyber-space by people
who think nothing of copying material they never bother to verify or check
in any
way and then send around
the world. I see this every day of the week on the Internet and all it
does is
take away people's credibility.
If you don't have time to check facts, don't hit the send button. If you're
speculating, theorizing
or just giving your opinion, make that clear at the beginning.
I have said it before
and I'll say it again: I don't know all there is to know about this bombing,
no one
does at this point except
the guilty. But, we have to try to get to the truth. I have added italics
to words
or phrases because of
their importance in analyzing. I did not note any italics or words singled
out in
"bold" in the trial
transcripts.
McVeigh was tried, unlawfully,
in the State of Colorado. Let me quote an outstanding researcher who is
thorough and has a concise
understanding of the U.S. Constitution, Jon Roland:
"McVeigh was prosecuted,
for the deaths of eight federal agents, under a statute that cites as its
authority
the Commerce Clause.
Essentially, McVeigh was tried and executed for "having a substantial effect
on
interstate commerce".
The Founders never intended the federal government to have such authority.
Too
many people today don't
seem to care, but none of our rights are secure if government is not held
to the
strict limits of the
Constitution." (June 12, 2001)
Would someone please
explain to me how these illiterate buffoons and corrupt scavengers in the
U.S.
Congress could pass
yet another law that gives them the jurisdiction to try any sovereign citizen
of any
sovereign state for
murder under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution? What
does
the bombing of a federal
building have to do with "having a substantial effect on interstate commerce?"
Why, it's simply insane
and yet, the cattle and goats grazing out there in America not only pay
no
attention to what this
government is doing, they're too dumbed down to even understand simple
concepts such as freedom,
liberty and constitutional constraints.
McVeigh is going to get
a second trial of sorts. I'm going to use the transcripts from his trial,
both from
the prosecution and
McVeigh's first trial counsel, Stephen Jones. References to the actual
trial transcripts
will be used throughout
this piece so that you, the juror, may check the accuracy of excerpts from
the
trial I use. Part V
is a list of more links to more pictures I have found that I think you
will find interesting.
I have found more photos
of the crime scene that tell a great deal. There are also photos of McVeigh
going to and at Tinker
AFB. At the conclusion of my "closing remarks" I will be asking questions
of you,
the jury.
I am not a lawyer. I
have no formal legal training. However, just because someone doesn't have
all the
legal training in procedures
for the courtroom and filing of motions, etc., doesn't mean an average,
ordinary person like
myself can't read, understand and attempt to evaluate a problem using common
sense. Even if I were
a lawyer, the government is still hiding facts and evidence, so I doubt
it would make
much difference for
the sake of this exercise. Besides, isn't this what juries all across America
are asked
to do every day when
called up for jury duty? Read, understand and attempt to evaluate the witnesses
and evidence?
I have worked this murder
for over six years now and have followed every bit of information and legal
proceeding very carefully.
Everything in my "closing argument" phase of this trial #2 was known to
the
defense at the time
of McVeigh's real trial. I say that without reservation since I am one
of so many (I lived
in the Denver area during
the first trial) who provided Stephen Jones' office with raw video material
and
documents.
The opening statements
(prosecution and defense) from McVeigh's first trial are important and
therefore
are reproduced here
in their entirety.
Opening Statement of
Joseph P. Hartzler for the government is below. It's long, but you will
see how the
government deliberately
set about to fabricate a mountain of emotion and backed it up with such
a flimsy
case, one wonders how
Jones (the defense) could screw up so bad. Again, please don't misconstrue
my
statement as a defense
of McVeigh of any crimes he may or may not have committed. I want you to
decide the extent of
McVeigh's culpability based on the facts entered in evidence (and not entered),
not
wishful or prejudiced
thinking.
For those of you who
feel the truth was printed in the book, American Terrorist, which conveniently
came
out right before McVeigh's
first scheduled execution, May 16, 2001, let me give you a little reality
check
about the author Dan
Herbeck. He called Gen. Ben Partin after the book had obviously gone to
press
and asked Ben some questions.
When Ben began explaining the scientific impossibility of a "crude truck
bomb" destroying the
Murrah Building, Herbeck became testy on the phone and said he didn't want
to
discuss that.
He also admitted to Ben
that he never personally interviewed McVeigh. Folks will remember seeing
both
Herbeck and his sidekick,
Lou Michel, all over the talk show circuit state that they had spent 75
hours
with McVeigh at the
prison in Terra Haute. It appears this is a bald faced lie, so how much
credence can
you put in their book?
I place none. Herbeck and Michel claim in their book that the "truck bomb"
was
7,000#. Really? The
FBI's OIG (Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of the Inspector General)
can't
even tell you the correct
amount, where did these two "journalists" come up with that figure? From
McVeigh? Sure and they
should be kissing the blarney stone sometime soon.
Our legal process is
precious, but it has also been distorted and corrupted for political expediency.
One
must understand this
and understand that any one of us could end up like Tim McVeigh or Mrs.
Stella
Nickell. See:
http://www.devvy.com/lappin_20010607.html).
As for McVeigh's guilt,
a friend of mine believes without reservation that "McVeigh was physically
there,
but not criminally there."
I suggest, if anyone can actually put McVeigh in front of the Murrah Building
that
morning, that it's very
possible the yellow Ryder truck had no explosives in it. Or, even if anyone
can
actually put McVeigh
in front of the Murrah Building that morning and if a truck bomb was used,
McVeigh
was executed for killing
a dead building or a building that would be dead within ten seconds. I'm
afraid
people are going to
be horrified by what they read in this piece.
* * *
Ladies and Gentlemen
of the jury. My name is Devvy Kidd and I wish to present to you my closing
arguments in the case
of United States vs. Timothy James McVeigh. I would like you to consider
the
opening statements of
both the prosecution and defense during McVeigh's first trial. I warn you
ahead of
time: Only a brick or
piece of stone won't cry their eyes out over what you will read during
this trial.
You will be deeply touched
at the pain and understand the anger and hatred towards the defendant.
But, you are here to
judge the facts and evidence, not the emotion. If that sounds cold, it
surely is not
meant to be, for my
heart has bled each and every time I have seen all the photos you have
not, and read
the pain of the victim's
families and survivors. I am a mother, a wife, a sister, an aunt. But for
the grace of
God, I could be one
of the witnesses you will read about or one of the victims had I been in
the wrong
place at the wrong time.
I can only ask you give this your most earnest consideration for the sake
of truth
and justice. This is
all one can ask of a jury: please judge the facts and the evidence, not
the emotion,
difficult though that
may be.
In the United States District Court for the District of Colorado
Criminal Action No. 96-CR-68
United States of America, Plaintiff, vs
Timothy James McVeigh, Defendant
Hartzler's opening statement:
(http://www.cnn.com/US/9703/okc.trial/transcripts/April/042497.txt)
OPENING STATEMENT
MR. HARTZLER: Thank you, your Honor.
May it please the Court . . .
THE COURT: Counsel.
MR. HARTZLER: Ladies
and gentlemen of the jury, April 19, 1995, was a beautiful day in Oklahoma
City
-- at least it started
out as a beautiful day. The sun was shining. Flowers were blooming. It
was springtime
in Oklahoma City. Sometime
after six o'clock that morning, Tevin Garrett's mother woke him up to get
him ready for the day.
He was only 16 months old. He was a toddler; and as some of you know that
have
experience with toddlers,
he had a keen eye for mischief. He would often pull on the cord of her
curling
iron in the morning,
pull it off the counter top until it fell down, often till it fell down
on him.
That morning, she picked
him up and wrestled with him on her bed before she got him dressed. She
remembers this morning
because that was the last morning of his life.
That morning, Mrs. Garrett
got Tevin and her daughter ready for school and they left the house at
about
7:15 to go downtown
to Oklahoma City. She had to be at work at eight o'clock. Tevin's sister
went to
kindergarten, and they
dropped the little girl off at kindergarten first; and Helena Garrett and
Tevin
proceeded to downtown
Oklahoma City.
Usually she parked a
little bit distant from her building; but this day, she was running a little
bit late, so
she decided that she
would park in the Murrah Federal Building. She did not work in the Murrah
Building. She wasn't
even a federal employee. She worked across the street in the General Records
Building.
She pulled into the lot,
the parking lot of the federal building, in order to make it into work
on time; and
she went upstairs to
the second floor with Tevin, because Tevin attended the day-care center
on the
second floor of the
federal building. When she went in, she saw that Chase and Colton Smith
were
already there, two year
old and three year old. Dominique London was there already. He was just
shy of
his third birthday.
So was Zack Chavez. He had already turned three.
When she turned to leave
to go to her work, Tevin, as so often, often happens with small children,
cried
and clung to her; and
then, as you see with children so frequently, they try to help each other.
Little --
one of the little Coverdale
boys -- there were two of them, Elijah and Aaron. The youngest one was
two
and a half. Elijah came
up to Tevin and patted him on the back and comforted him as his mother
left.
As Helena Garrett left
the Murrah Federal Building to go to work across the street, she could
look back
up at the building;
and there was a wall of plate glass windows on the second floor. You can
look
through those windows
and see into the day-care center; and the children would run up to those
windows and press their
hands and faces to those windows to say goodbye to their parents. And standing
on the sidewalk, it
was almost as though you can reach up and touch the children there on the
second
floor. But none of the
parents of any of the children that I just mentioned ever touched those
children
again while they were
still alive.
At nine o'clock that
morning, two things happened almost simultaneously. In the Water Resources
Building -- that's another
building to the west of the Murrah Building across the street -- an ordinary
legal
proceeding began in
one of the hearing rooms; and at the same time, in front of the Murrah
Building, a
large Ryder truck pulled
up into a vacant parking space in front of the building and parked right
beneath
those plate glass windows
from the day-care center.
What these two separate
but almost simultaneous events have in common is that they -- they both
involved grievances
of some sort. The legal proceeding had to do with water rights. It wasn't
a legal
proceeding as we are
having here, because there was no court reporter. It was a tape-recorded
proceeding, and you
will hear the tape recording of that proceeding. It was an ordinary,
everyday-across-America,
typical legal proceeding in which one party has a grievance and brings
it into
court or into a hearing
to resolve it, to resolve it not by violence and terror but to resolve
it in the same
way we are resolving
matters here, by constitutional due process.
And across the street,
the Ryder truck was there also to resolve a grievance; but the truck wasn't
there
to resolve the grievance
by means of due process or by any other democratic means. The truck was
there to impose the
will of Timothy McVeigh on the rest of America and to do so by premeditated
violence and terror,
by murdering innocent men, women and children, in hopes of seeing blood
flow in
the streets of America.
At 9:02 that morning,
two minutes after the water rights proceeding began, a catastrophic explosion
ripped the air in downtown
Oklahoma City. It instantaneously demolished the entire front of the Murrah
Building, brought down
tons and tons of concrete and metal, dismembered people inside, and it
destroyed, forever,
scores and scores and scores of lives, lives of innocent Americans: clerks,
secretaries, law enforcement
officers, credit union employees, citizens applying for Social Security,
and
little kids.
All the children I mentioned
earlier, all of them died, and more; dozens and dozens of other men,
women, children, cousins,
loved ones, grandparents, grandchildren, ordinary Americans going about
their business. And
the only reason they died, the only reason that they are no longer with
us, no longer
with their loved ones,
is that they were in a building owned by a government that Timothy McVeigh
so
hated that with premeditated
intent and a well-designed plan that he had developed over months and
months before the bombing,
he chose to take their innocent lives to serve his twisted purpose.
In plain, simple language,
it was an act of terror, violence, intend -- intended to serve selfish
political
purpose.
The man who committed
this act is sitting in this courtroom behind me, and he's the one that
committed
those murders.
After he did so, he fled
the scene; and he avoided even damaging his eardrums, because he had earplugs
with him.
Approximately 75 minutes
later, about 75 miles north of Oklahoma City, the exact distance from
Oklahoma City that you
could drive in that time if you had been at the scene of the crime, the
exact
distance -- he was at
the mile marker that you would reach between the time of the bombing and
the
time he was arrested
if you were driving at normal speed limit. He was arrested driving toward
Oklahoma City, leaving
-- I'm sorry, driving towards Kansas, leaving Oklahoma City. And in his
pocket at
that time were a set
of earplugs, the type that would be worn to protect your ears from a loud
noise.
And on his clothing,
an FBI chemist later found residue of explosives, undetonated explosives,
not the
kind of residue that
would detonate in the course of the explosion but the kind of explosives
you would
have on your clothing
if you had made the bomb, which is what he did.
And the T-shirt he was
wearing virtually broadcast his intention. On its front was the image of
Abraham
Lincoln; and beneath
the image was a phrase about tyrants, which is a phrase that John Wilkes
Booth
shouted in Ford's Theater
to the audience when he murdered President Lincoln. And on the back of
T-shirt that McVeigh
was wearing on that morning, the morning of bombing, the morning that he
was
arrested, was this phrase:
It said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with
the blood
of patriots and tyrants."
And above those words was the image of a tree. You'll see that T-shirt;
you'll see
the tree; you'll see
the words beneath the tree, and you'll notice that instead of fruit, the
T-shirt -- the
tree on the T-shirt
bears a depiction of droplets of scarlet-red blood.
Found in the police car
after McVeigh's arrest was a crumpled-up business card from a military
supply
company. McVeigh had
written a note on that card, and the card had McVeigh's fingerprint on
it. And in
McVeigh's handwriting,
or hand-printing, really, on this card from the military supply company
said, "TNT
at $5 a stick. Need
more. Call after May 1."
Inside McVeigh's car,
law enforcement agents later found a large sealed envelope. It contained
writings
and magazines from --
photocopies from magazines and from newspapers. You'll see all those documents
in evidence, and they
will give you a window into McVeigh's mind. And they'll enable you to see
his
intention, to know his
premeditation, and to understand the twisted motive behind this deadly
offense.
To give you just two
examples of the material you will see, enclosed in that envelope were slips
of paper
bearing statements that
McVeigh had clipped from books and newspapers. And one of them was a
quotation that -- from
a book that McVeigh had copied. And it was a book that he had read and
believed
in like the Bible. The
book is entitled The Turner Diaries. It's a fictional account of an attack
on the federal
government which is
carried out with a truck bomb blowing up a federal building and killing
hundreds of
people. And the clipping
that McVeigh had with him on this day of the bombing talks about the value
of
killing innocent people
for a cause. It reads -- and he highlighted this -- "The real value of
our attacks
today lies in the psychological
impact, not in the immediate casualties."
Another slip of paper
that he had in that envelope in his car bears a quotation from one of our
founding
fathers, one of the
founding fathers who fought the British to establish democracy in America.
The
printed portion on that
piece of paper reads, in part, "When the government fears the people, there
is
liberty." "When the
Government fears the people, there is liberty." And hand-printed beneath
those
printed words, in McVeigh's
handwriting, are the words -- it's printed above, and he had it like a
bumper
sticker, almost. He
had printed beneath, "Maybe now there will be liberty."
These documents are virtually a manifesto declaring McVeigh's intention.
Everyone in this great
nation has a right to think and believe, speak whatever they want. We are
not
prosecuting McVeigh
because we don't like his thoughts or his beliefs or even his speech; we're
prosecuting him because
his hatred boiled into violence, and his violence took the lives of innocent
men
and women and children.
And the reason we'll introduce evidence of his thoughts, as disclosed by
those
writings and others,
is because they reveal his premeditation and his intent, and intent is
an element of
the crime that we must
prove.
As McVeigh was leaving
the scene moments before the explosion, a maintenance man from an
Apartment building in
downtown Oklahoma City near the Murrah Building, about a block or so away,
walked out the front
door of the building to meet his wife and nephew. His nephew was a sixth
grader
sitting in the back
seat of the man's red Ford Fiesta out in front of the apartment building
where he
worked. His wife had
gone inside to get him, tell him that they were there. She walked back
outside with
her husband and he was
standing at the side of his car, holding the door for his wife, when the
force of
the bomb nearly knocked
him off his feet.
At that moment, he was
about at least more than a city block from the front door of the Murrah
Building;
and he heard a whirring
sound, like the propeller of a helicopter, coming toward him. He pushed
his wife
quickly under the car
to protect her as more than 250 pounds of twisted metal came crashing down
onto
his car. Fortunately,
it landed on the hood of his car. It crushed the car, but his wife and
his nephew
survived.
That huge piece of twisted
metal had been at the center of the bomb. The force of the explosion had
sent it whirling through
the air for about 200 yards or more. That piece of twisted metal was the
rear
axle of a Ryder truck.
It was a Ryder truck that Timothy McVeigh had rented two days before in
Kansas.
As his Honor told you,
my name is Joe Hartzler. My colleagues and I represent the United States
of
America. In this case,
we'll work together as a team. I'm not going to reintroduce everyone. Over
the
course of the next few
weeks, you'll get to know us, I believe.
As you see -- as you'll
see, there was a lot of evidence against McVeigh. We'll present a lot of
evidence
against McVeigh. We'll
try to make your decision ultimately easy. That's our goal.
There are a number of
us, but we won't stumble over each other. You'll see that each of us has
a
different role, presenting
different segments and different types of evidence. We intend to do so
fairly.
When we're finished,
we will have proven -- we will have proven to you beyond any reasonable
doubt
that Timothy McVeigh
destroyed the Murrah Building and killed people inside by means of a huge
fertilizer bomb built
inside a Ryder truck.
As it -- as it's turned
out, the bombing in Oklahoma City was the first event in a series of events
that
would lead each of you
to be in this courtroom today as jurors; but you'll learn as jurors that
the
bombing was a premeditated
act. It was part of a plan that McVeigh set in action long, long before
April
19th , 1995. And that's
why the evidence will take so much time, because we will go back, not from
the
beginning of time, but
from a certain stage in McVeigh's life and walk through the various details
of what
he was doing and how
it all fit into his plan to kill people in the Murrah Building.
Timothy McVeigh grew
up in upstate New York; and after high school, he joined the Army. He first
went to Fort Benning
in Georgia, and that's where he met Terry Nichols. They served in Fort
Benning in
the same platoon.
After he and Nichols
completed their basic training at Fort Benning, they were both sent to
Fort Riley, in
Kansas. They became
friends, in part because they both shared a distaste for the federal government.
McVeigh's dislike for
the federal government was revealed while he was still in the Army. Even
at that
early time in his life,
he expressed an enthusiasm for this book The Turner Diaries. And you will
hear
more about that book
during this trial. It's a work of fiction, like I said. It follows the
exploits of a group
of well-armed men and
women who call themselves "patriots," and they seek to overthrow the federal
government by use of
force and violence.
In the book they make
a fertilizer bomb in the back of a truck and they detonate it in front
of a federal
building in downtown
Washington, D.C., during business hours and they kill hundreds of people.
Friends, acquaintances,
and family members of McVeigh will testify that he carried the book with
him,
gave copies to them,
urged them to read this book.
We will show you passages
from the book, and you'll see how the bombing in the book served as a
blueprint for McVeigh
and for his planning and execution of the bombing in Oklahoma City.
On April 19, 1993, that's
four years ago, not -- the Oklahoma City bombing was two years ago -- but
four
years ago on the same
day, April 19, 1993, there was another great tragedy in American history.
It
occurred at Waco, Texas.
That's the day that many lives were lost when the Branch Davidian compound
burned down. But it
was more than just a tragedy to McVeigh. You'll hear testimony from McVeigh's
friends that he visited
Waco during the siege and that he went back after the fire and that he
had already
harbored a great dislike
and distaste for the federal government. They imposed taxes and the Brady
Bill,
and there were various
other reasons that he had disliked the federal government.
But the tragedy at Waco
really sparked his anger; and as time passed, he became more and more and
more outraged at the
government, which he held responsible for the deaths at Waco. And he told
people that the federal
government had intentionally murdered people at Waco, they murdered the
Davidians at Waco. He
described the incident as the government's declaration of war against the
American people. He
wrote letters declaring that the government had drawn, quote, "first blood,"
unquote, at Waco; and
he predicted there would be a violent revolution against the American
government. As he put
it, blood would flow in the streets.
He expected and hoped
that his bombing of the Murrah Building would be the first shot in a violent,
bloody revolution in
this country. As his hatred of the government grew, so did his interest
in a
knowledge of explosives.
You'll hear that he and
Terry Nichols had experimented with small explosives on Nichols' farm in
Michigan. Later our
evidence will prove that McVeigh graduated to larger bombs, and you'll
hear about
an incident that occurred
just one year before the bombing in a desert in Arizona where he made and
detonated a pipe bomb.
He placed it near a large boulder in the desert, and he ran away as the
pipe
bomb exploded and cracked
the boulder.
You will see that he
also educated himself about how to build bombs, particularly truck bombs,
using
ammonium nitrate fertilizer
and some sort of fuel oil. And we'll explain to you how you can make a
bomb from fertilizer
and fuel oil, and of course that's consistent with the type of destructive
device that
was used in Oklahoma
City.
So The Turner Diaries
was one of his favorite books where the heroes blow up the federal building
with a
homemade truck bomb,
but he also obtained what was really a cookbook on how to make bombs. He
order the book through
the mail, we will show you; and the book is called Home Made C4. C4 is
a type
explosive. Some of you
with military background know that.
This book provides essentially
a step-by-step recipe as to how to put together your own fertilizer
fuel-based bomb. And
the book even provides helpful hints as to where to acquire the various
ingredients, the components.
It describes how to build a powerful bomb, and it does so in simple,
understandable terms.
In fact, it shows how unbelievably simple it is to make a hugely, hugely
powerful
bomb.
McVeigh ordered and received the book from Paladin Press in the spring of 1993.
Over time McVeigh's anger
and hatred of the government kept growing; and in the late summer of 1994
-- and this is nine
months before the bombing -- he decided that he had had enough. He told
friends that
he was done distributing
anti-government propaganda and talking about the coming revolution. He
said it
was time to take action,
and the action he wanted to take was something dramatic, something that
would
shake up America, he
said, and would cause ordinary citizens, he thought, to engage in a violent
revolution against their
democratically elected government, just like The Turner Diaries; and of
course,
just like the main character
in the book, he would become the hero.
The action he selected
was the bombing, and the building he selected was the federal building
in
Oklahoma City. We'll
provide you with testimony on this. And he offered two reasons for bombing
-- or
for selecting that particular
building; first he thought that the ATF agents, whom he blamed for the
Waco
tragedy, had their offices
in that building. As it turns out, he was wrong; but that's what he thought.
That
was one of his motivations;
and second, he described that building as, quote, "an easy target."
It was conveniently located
just south of Kansas and it had easy access. It was just a matter of blocks
off
of an interstate highway,
Interstate 35 through Oklahoma City traveling north; and the building is
designed is such that
you can drive a truck up, there is an indentation at the sidewalk in front
of the
building. You can drive
a truck right up and park a truck right there in front of the building,
right there in
front of the plate glass
windows that I described in front of the day-care center.
The day that he selected
for the bombing also has significance. He selected April 19th. Of course,
first,
that was the anniversary
of Waco, and he wanted to, as he said, avenge death that occurred at Waco;
and second, April 19th
a couple of centuries ago, in 1775, that's the day that the American Revolution
is
reported to have begun.
That's the day that the opening shot was fired in Concord/Lexington. The
day is
known as Liberty Day.
So as indicated by the
materials that McVeigh carried with him -- you'll see the stuff that he
got from his
car -- he envisioned
that by bombing the building in Oklahoma City he would bring what he thought
would be liberty to
this nation.
Well, this was not just
talk from McVeigh. He was ready for action. He knew from the literature
he had
how to make the bomb
and he knew how to get the ingredients. Both The Turner Diaries and this
book
Homemade C4, the bomb-making
cookbook, told him to where to look. The best place to get
ammonium nitrate fertilizer,
the book said, was at a farm supply store, and the best place to get
nitromethane racing
fuel, which you would mix with the fertilizer, was at a raceway.
So McVeigh engaged his
friend, his Army buddy, Terry Nichols, in the project. Nichols, of course,
shared
the hatred for the federal
government, and they worked together in a conspiracy. As his Honor just
told
you, the first count
is conspiracy. That's an agreement to commit a criminal act.
They reached this working
arrangement whereby they would, together, acquire the ingredients to
manufacture the bomb.
And a fair amount of our evidence will be about their acquisition of the
various
components that were
used to make the bomb that blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City.
They got 4,000 pounds
-- that's 2 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. They bought it at a farm
supply
store in central Kansas
where Nichols was living at the time and where McVeigh visited him. This
was in
the fall of 1994, at
least six months before the bombing, giving you some indication of the
planning that
went into this process
and the premeditation.
They made two purchases
of 1 ton each. The first one was made at the end of September, 1994, and
the
second one was made
the middle of October; and both purchases were made in phony names. The
phony name they used
was Mike Havens. We'll provide you with evidence showing that Terry Nichols
used that name Havens
as an alias.
We will also show you
that one of the receipts, the receipt for the first purchase, September
30th, was
found in Nichols' home
after the bombing. Agents conducted a search of Nichols' home several days
after the bombing and
they found the receipt for that first purchase of 1 ton of ammonium nitrate
fertilizer; and on that
receipt, when it was sent back to the FBI lab, were two latent fingerprints
of
Timothy McVeigh.
To get some of the other
chemicals they needed for the bomb, McVeigh and Nichols picked up the
phone book and let their
fingers do the walking. They called dozens and dozens of companies and
individuals in search
of ingredients that they needed for the bomb. And the reason we can trace
and
show you so many of
these calls is in part because they used a calling card to make the calls.
They had
obtained a calling card
from a magazine called Spotlight magazine; and in an unsuccessful effort
to avoid
having the calls traced
back to them, they again used a fake name. They didn't get the calling
card in their
own names. They used
this time the name Darrell Bridges, but we'll prove to you that it was
they that
got, ordered, obtained
and paid for this calling card.
The calling card was
the type of phone card that requires you to pay in advance. It's called
a debit card.
The balance on the card
is debited each time you make a call; and then when you're down to a zero
balance, you have to
send in more money to the company to make more calls; and that's precisely
what
McVeigh and Nichols
did, and we'll show you money orders that they sent in, and we'll prove
to you that
the money orders were
obtained by McVeigh and Nichols; and that's why we can trace so much of
their
activity, at least so
much of their phone call activity, because they used the same debt card
in the name of
Darrell Bridges to do
a lot of their business, and even though they didn't get a phone bill,
as you or I
would get for our home
phone, they didn't get the phone bill of course because they were paying
for
these calls in advance;
and even though they may have believed that by doing it that way the calls
wouldn't be traceable,
well, the phone company still needed to keep track of the calls and how
much
was charged so they
could debit down the card.
So the phone company
had records of the calls that were being made, from where to where and
how
long it was and how
much it cost; and those are the records that we have that we'll present
to you to
prove the calls that
McVeigh and Nichols were making.
The debt card records
reveals dozens and dozens of calls in the fall of 1994. That's when they're
trying to
acquire the components,
the ingredients for the bomb. The calls were made to various companies
and
individuals that sold
or possibly could obtain the ingredients, the components that would be
used for an
ammonium nitrate fertilizer
bomb.
The mixture would be
made and held in barrels. They called barrel companies. The mixture would
use
racing fuel as a most
likely fuel source to mix with the ammonium nitrate. They called fuel racing
raceways. And there
are various other companies -- or chemicals, pardon me, including anhydrous
hydrazine. They called
various chemical companies.
For example, we will
show you a copy of the yellow pages taken from the area in Kansas where
McVeigh and Nichols
were during the fall of 1994. We can compare the yellow pages with those
records
from the calling card.
Going down the yellow pages -- the yellow pages, if you look at a page
for
chemical companies,
you see a number of chemical companies, you see the numbers listed, and
you see
the number that they
called on their calling card. They went down the yellow pages and called
the
companies that were
on those yellow pages.
So you can match up what
they're doing; and you'll notice -- it wasn't just chemical companies.
You'll
notice that all the
companies they called during that period of time, in the fall of 1994 when
they were
using this call -- this
calling card to seek ingredients -- all of them have one thing in common:
They all sell
something you could
use to make a bomb, a large ammonium nitrate fertilizer bomb.
But we're not going to
prove up, simply by circumstantial evidence, by asking you to compare the
yellow
pages to these phone
records to show that they were obtaining these ingredients, because as
further
evidence we'll call
people who actually received the calls and in some cases, they weren't
strangers on
the other end of the
phone. They were friends of -- or acquaintances of McVeigh.
For example, we'll call
a man by the name of David Darlak. He's an old acquaintance McVeigh. They
grew up together and
they've known each other for years.
Darlak received calls
from McVeigh and he remembers him. He'll tell you what he remembers. Darlak
recalls that McVeigh
called him trying to get racing fuel.
Well, Darlak didn't ever
know McVeigh to be interested in racing, and McVeigh, of course, didn't
reveal
that he wanted the racing
fuel for something other than racing, to build a bomb, he didn't say that.
He
didn't reveal why he
wanted the racing fuel. But Darlak will come in and explain. He's one of
the people
that calls from McVeigh
during this period of time.
Greg Pfaff is another person that received a call.
Greg Pfaff is a guy that
McVeigh ran into and met when they did the various gun shows, met at gun
shows. Pfaff recalls
getting calls from McVeigh, and he will come in and tell you that McVeigh
asked him if
Pfaff could get any
det cord.
Now, det cord is a nickname,
an abbreviation for detonation cord, and that's what you'll use, as you'll
hear the ammonium nitrate
and fuel oil doesn't blow up by itself, you don't light a match and throw
it on
it and it explodes.
You need some kind of detonation. Det cord would be used to facilitate
the
detonation of the explosion.
According to Pfaff McVeigh
was so eager to get this det cord that McVeigh offered to drive across
the
country. Pfaff was on
the East Coast. He offered to drive across the country to Pfaff. Pfaff
could get any
det cord.
You will also hear from a man named Glynn Tipton.
Tipton works for a company
that goes to drag races and he was on a drag race on October 1, 1994, in
central Kansas. He recalls
a man that he's almost certain as McVeigh coming up to him and trying to
buy
large quantities of
nitromethane and anhydrous hydrazine; and the books I've told you about
describe
those two chemicals
as being part of the shopping list for making an ammonium nitrate fertilizer
bomb.
All these calls are reflected
on the debt card that McVeigh used and so is a call to Mid-American
Chemical Company, that's
one of the companies actually that's listed in the yellow pages you'll
see.
Linda Juhl is an employee
of Mid-Americal Chemical Company and she remembers getting a call in the
fall of 1994 at the
same time. She recalls it was from a young man in Kansas who wanted to
obtain
anhydrous hydrazine,
one of the chemicals you can use to make ammonium nitrate fertilizer bombs.
Anhydrous hydrazine
is usually used as a rocket fuel and it can seriously boost the explosion.
You'll also hear a number
of calls to companies such as CP Racing and other companies that sold
nitromethane. Nitromethane
is a racing fuel. It too can be used as one of the ingredients in ammonium
nitrate fuel -- fuel
oil explosive devices.
Well those are the calls
they made during this period of time in search of some of the various
components for an explosive
device, but we'll prove that they obtained -- they actually acquired large
quantities of explosives,
as I said just, getting the mixture, the fertilizer with the chemicals
of
nitromethane or anhydrous
hydrazine or racing fuel doesn't itself cause an explosion unless you have
something to detonate
it with.
We'll prove to you where
McVeigh and Nichols got the detonation -- detonators that they needed.
In
short, they stole them.
During the period of the Fall of 1994, Nichols was living in central Kansas
in a
community and city called
Marion, Kansas, he was working on a cattle farm there and nearby there
was a
rock quarry. Now some
of you probably know rock quarries use explosives to blast the rock and
they
typically store the
explosive they have on site in what are referred to as magazines or secure
storage
lockers.
The quarry that was near
Nichols' home in Marion, Kansas, kept a quantity of explosive, primarily
blasting caps, in locked
storage facilities right there on site.
As I already said, McVeigh
came to visit Nichols during late September of 1994 and stayed through
that
first weekend, first
weekend of October 1994, that's the weekend when Glynn Tipton saw him at
the
raceway or saw somebody
he believes is McVeigh at the raceway looking for the two chemicals I just
described. That's also
the same weekend, on the Friday of that weekend, September 30th, that they
made
their first purchase
of 1 ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from the supply store in central
Kansas.
Well, it's the very same
weekend that they broke into the magazine at the rock quarry and stole
hundreds of blasting
caps and sticks of an explosive that's known as -- it's a sausage-type
of explosive
known as Tovex.
The reason that we can
prove that it was McVeigh and Nichols that broke into these storage units
and
stole the explosives
is because they made essentially two mistakes: First of all, they left
evidence behind
at the scene of the
crime; and secondly, they didn't get rid of all the loot. They left some
of it in Nichols'
house.
The evidence that they
left behind at the scene of the crime was one of the padlocks that they
had drilled
open. There were five
padlocks that had to be drilled open to get in. Four of them was missing
but one
of them was left behind.
The county sheriff that
came out to investigate that break-in kept that padlock. You remember this
is
months before the Oklahoma
City bombing, but he kept it in his evidence and provided it to the FBI
after
the bombing when the
connection was made between that theft and the bombing. Federal agents
later
searched Nichols' house
after the bombing and they found in Nichols' basement a battery-powered
Makita drill and with
the drill were some drill bits and they matched the padlock that has a
hole drilled in
it to open up the lock,
and you'll see this.
They went inside that
hole and lock and figured out the drill bit impressions, the toolmark impressions
and they made toolmark
impressions also from the drill that was found -- the drill bit that was
found in
Nichols' basement and
they matched the two; and that toolmark expert will come in and show you
that
the impressions inside
the lock matched the impressions made by the drill bit from Nichols' basement
so
that you can conclude
that drill bit drilled that lock.
The other mistake they
made was that Nichols kept some of the explosives. They were found after
the
bombing in his basement.
He had some of the blasting caps. Now blasting caps come in a wide variety
of
sizes. There are different
brands and there are different delays. I think they come in delays from
something like from
1 to 20 and all the blasting caps that were stolen from the quarry were
60-foot No.
8 delay Primadet blasting
caps.
Found in Nichols' basement
after the bombing when the agents searched his basement were five blasting
caps, Primadet 60-foot
No. 8 delay.
Well, with this quantity
of explosives or components for making a bomb, McVeigh and Nichols of course
needed someplace to
keep all of this stuff. McVeigh, during this period of time, really didn't
have any
home. He would stay
with friends and various other places. He was just traveling around and
it would
have been foolish, of
course, for Nichols to have kept the stuff in his home for two reasons:
first of all,
it's dangerous; secondly,
if anybody found it in his home. So it's obviously traceable for him. So
their
solution to this is
to rent private storage lockers, and that's exactly what they did.
They rented private storage
lockers, but to prevent anyone who would break in and getting into these
storage lockers to easily
trace these components to them, they again used false names. They rented
three lockers in the
central Kansas area near where Nichols was living at the time. And they
rented all
three lockers in phony
names, different phony names: This time they're Shawn Rivers, Ted Parker
and
Joe Kyle. I'm not expecting
you to remember the various aliases and phony names they used. You'll hear
evidence and we will
provide you with documents that will show you these various names.
They were all paid, the
storage lockers were paid for, with cash, which is, of course, is the least
traceable means of payment.
But we will prove through eyewitness testimony, through fingerprints, and
through handwriting
analysis that it was McVeigh and Nichols who rented these storage lockers
in false
names.
The leases on the three
storage lockers began in the fall of 1994, right at the very time that
they were
acquiring components
for the bombs; but they continued to pay the rent on these storage lockers
up
through the date of
the bombing. When FBI agents searched the storage lockers soon after the
bombings, they were
all empty. Rent was paid up till then, but there was nothing in them. Of
course, the
components were used
in Oklahoma City.
During this period when
McVeigh and Nichols were acquiring the components for the bomb, McVeigh
periodically drove to
Arizona and visited two friends of his, Michael and Lori Fortier. He had
met
Michael in the Army,
and they had shared the same anti- government ideas; and McVeigh had come
to
trust not only Michael
but he also came to trust Michael's wife, Lori.
So in the fall of 1994,
he confided his plan to the Fortiers. Sitting in their living room in Kingman,
Arizona, he actually
drew a diagram of the bomb that he intended to build. And you'll hear that
evidence
from the witness stand.
He outlined the box of the truck, and he drew circles for the barrels inside
the
truck, the barrels of
fertilizer and fuel oil that he would place strategically in the truck
to cause maximum
damage, as he described
it.
Later during that same
period of time, one of times when he was in Arizona, again, fall of 1994,
months
ahead of bombing, he
demonstrated his design to Lori Fortier by borrowing from her Campbell
soup
cans out of her cupboard
and placed them on the floor and showed her the shape in which he would
design the bomb inside
the box of the truck. And he described it as a shape charge and explained
that by
putting in that -- putting
the barrels of explosives in a particular shape it would increase the charge
in a
particular direction,
the direction toward the building and the plate glass windows that I've
previously
described.
By the end of October
1994, McVeigh had most of ingredients he needed to build the bomb; so he
was
able at that time to
carry out his plan. But this was still the fall of 1994. Remember, he was
determined to
take action when he
thought it would have maximum impact; and he thought the anniversary of
the
tragedy at Waco would
provide that kind of maximum impact. He thought that others were as angered
at
Waco as he was and that
he could get tremendous impact, shake up the nation, by delaying his violent
terrorist action until
the anniversary of Waco, April 19th; so he left the bomb components in
the various
storage lockers, and
he waited. He waited till the spring.
And in late January,
he returned to Arizona. Again, he stayed with his friends, the Fortiers.
He stayed
there through February
and March. He was really most of the time just hanging out, not doing anything.
He wasn't employed.
Periodically he would go to gun shows during that time. Periodically he
would try
to recruit Michael Fortier
to participate in the bombing. And as April approached, it became clear
to him
that Fortier was not
going to participate. That spring, McVeigh was ready to put his action
-- to put his
plan into action.
He had been regularly
corresponding with his sister, Jennifer, who was then living in upstate
New York.
And he had revealed
to her his distrust and his distaste for the federal government. In fact,
in the fall of
1994, he had visited
her in New York. He created a file in her computer. He had marked the file
"ATF
read," "ATF read," as
though he wanted them to discover this file and read it after his dramatic
action.
You'll see the chilling
words in that computer file. I'm going to delete the expletive. It said,
"All you
tyrannical M.F.ers will
swing in the wind one day for your treasonous actions against the Constitution
and the United States."
And it concluded with these words: "Die, you spineless cowardice bastards."
That was written in
the fall of 1994.
By the spring of 1995,
he had moved beyond words. He was ready for action. In a letter dated March
25th, just three weeks
before the bombing, he told his sister Jennifer not to send any more letter
after
May 1st because, quote,
"G men might get them."
You'll see a copy of
that letter. About the same time, he sent another letter to his sister
Jennifer -- this
was before the bombing
-- in which he said, "Something big is about to happen." You'll hear from
Jennifer
McVeigh. She'll testify.
You won't see that letter, because after the bombing, as she will explain,
she
destroyed that letter.
During this period of
time in the spring of 1994, before the bombing, while McVeigh was hanging
out in
Arizona, he asked Lori
Fortier if he could borrow her typewriter. She let him take it for a day
or so; and
when he returned it
he had a phony driver's license. It was on one of the blank driver's license
forms. It
had been obtained through
the -- or ordered through one of those ads at the back of Soldier of Fortune
magazine, one of the
ads that sells phony identification kits. And McVeigh had typed on the
blank form.
He had made it look
like it was a driver's license from North or South Dakota. He had typed
in those
words, the name of state.
And the phony name he had selected -- I'm going to give you another alias
name -- was Robert Kling.
He liked that name, he
told Lori Fortier -- and you'll be able to remember it -- because it reminded
him
of the race of characters
on that TV show "Star Trek," the Klingons. And you'll hear that name a
lot in
this trial, because
that's the name that McVeigh used to rent the Ryder truck that he used
to blow up the
federal building, "Robert
Kling."
To finish the phony drivers's
license, McVeigh asked to borrow Lori Fortier's iron, so he could iron
on
plastic lamentation
-- lamination that came with the blank form. And she was afraid he would
ruin his
(sic) iron, and she
offered to iron it on for him. That's how it is she can tell you she saw
the drivers's
license she remembered
the name.
He handed her the Robert
Kling driver's license. She ironed on the lamination. It had on it a small
photo
that McVeigh attached
up in the corner in the box where the photo for a driver's license would
fit. It was
McVeigh's photo, of
course. She ironed -- the lamentation -- lamination and gave it back to
McVeigh.
During these months in
early 1995, when McVeigh stayed with the Fortiers, he became more and more
withdrawn and more and
more unpleasant as April 19th approached. And in early April, he moved
out of
the Fortiers' house
into a local motel in Kingman Arizona. He stayed there until April 12th,
1995. You'll
see those motel records.
He checked out April 12th, 1995, exactly one week before the bombing. He
was in Arizona.
He checked out, and he
was next seen in Kansas on Friday before the bombing. The bombing was on
the
following Wednesday.
Friday before the bombing, McVeigh arrived in Kansas. Kansas, of course,
is
where Terry Nichols
was then living; and that's where he and McVeigh and Nichols had stored
this stuff,
the bomb components,
in the storage lockers. The day that McVeigh arrived in Kansas was a Friday,
April 14th, five days
before the bombing. He stopped at a Firestone service station in Junction
City,
Kansas.
He knew that Firestone
station because when he was in the service in Fort Riley, which is not
far from
Junction City, he had
had his car serviced there before. The manager of the place, a man by the
name of
Tom Manning, remembered
McVeigh.
McVeigh was there at
that Firestone station, as Manning will tell you, because McVeigh said
his car was
burning oil. The car
was in bad shape; so the manager, Manning, said he had a used car out back
that he
was willing to sell
to McVeigh. McVeigh checked out the car and decided that he would go ahead
and
buy it; so he paid $250
in cash for the car and signed over the title to his car, which he had
with him.
While Manning was getting
the used car ready to turn over to McVeigh, he recalls that McVeigh left
the
Firestone station for
about 10 or 15 minutes on this Friday morning. Manning provided this information
the very first time
he was asked whether McVeigh was there the entire time, and he remembered
McVeigh left for a period
of time when Manning went to get the car ready for McVeigh.
During that interval
of time, on Friday morning, five days before the bombing, when McVeigh
left the
Firestone station, a
call was placed to a Ryder truck rental agency in Junction City, Kansas.
The Ryder
agency in Junction City
is called Elliott's Body Shop. It's listed in the yellow pages.
Just so you know what's
coming, I've already told you the twisted rear axle that seemed to fall
out of the
air onto the red Fiesta
of the maintenance man in the apartment building in downtown Oklahoma City
--
that axle traced back
to a Ryder truck that had been rented two days before the bombing from
Elliott's
Body Shop in Junction
City, Kansas. That was the truck that became the bomb.
The call I'm talking
about now was made to reserve the truck. The caller said his name was Robert
Kling,
the same name that McVeigh
had used on the phony driver's license. And the caller asked to reserve
a
large truck for pickup
the following Monday. That would be two days before the bombing.
We've traced that call,
and it traces back to a pay phone located at a bus station in Junction
City, Kansas;
and that bus station
pay phone is less than a half a block from the Firestone station where
McVeigh had
been. You can see it.
We'll show you there's a photo from the pay phone. You can see the Firestone
station. I mean, it's
virtually across the street, just down the alley a piece.
Although McVeigh had
all the ingredients to manufacture, to build a bomb, he didn't yet have
a truck.
Now, in The Turner Diaries,
the bomber steals a delivery truck in which to make their bomb; but McVeigh
decided to rent his.
And that's, of course, why he had the phony driver's license; and that's
why he made
the call to Elliott's
Body Shop to reserve a truck five days before the bombing.
Now, there's another
detail about that bus station pay phone call that we will prove to you.
Actually,
there were two calls
made back to back that morning from that outdoor pay phone. The first call
went to
the home of McVeigh's
Army buddy, Terry Nichols, who was living at that time now in nearby
Herington, Kansas. The
next call, which started within seconds of the completion of the first
call, was
the one that went to
Elliott's Body Shop to reserve the Ryder truck. Both calls were made on
a Spotlight
debit card.
For reasons that we will
explain, the computer failed to record the actual customer account for
the call
to the Ryder truck rental
agency; but the call to Nichols' house, the first call, was charged to
the calling
card that McVeigh and
Nichols were using. And of course, it was McVeigh who was near that pay
phone
that morning, having
entered into the car transaction with Manning.
Later that day, McVeigh
registered at a small motel in Junction City Kansas, which is known as
the
Dreamland Motel. It's
located about four miles up the road from the Ryder truck rental agency.
He
registered there in
his own name, Timothy McVeigh; and he stayed in Room 25 at the Dreamland
Motel
through that weekend
up until Tuesday. Tuesday is now the morning of the day before the bombing.
And
as a result of a telephone
call, of a telephone call from the pay phone, Elliott's Body Shop the Ryder
rental place, actually
reserved a large truck for Robert Kling. But they were willing to do so
only if
someone came in and
put a deposit down on the truck the following day.
The following day, of
course, was a Saturday, four days before the bombing. The only person who
was
working that day at
the Elliott's Body Shop was the owner, Eldon Elliott. Mr. Elliott will
testify; and he
will tell you what he
remembers about that Saturday morning. He was there by himself when a young
man with a military
demeanor came in and said he was Robert Kling. The lighting was good. The
two
men stood facing each
other for several minutes. There were no interruptions. The shop was not
busy.
They transacted business.
And instead of simply making a deposit, a cash deposit, to reserve the
truck in
the name Kling, the
man wanted to pay for the truck in full. He counted out several hundred
dollars in
cash and gave it to
Elliott. It was a memorable transaction. There was some paperwork involved,
and the
man left.
Mr. Elliott remembers this transaction and he can identify the man. It was Timothy McVeigh.
I've already summarized
ample evidence to convince you that Kling was really McVeigh; but there's
still
more. Although McVeigh
had paid for the truck, he didn't take it with him. He said he would pick
it up
on Monday, April 17th,
two days before the bombing, after four o'clock. He was still staying at
the
Dreamland Motel in the
same city; and that night, Saturday night, a carry-out order for Chinese
food from
a local Chinese restaurant
was made from McVeigh's room at the Dreamland Motel, a telephone call to
the local Chinese restaurant
ordering Chinese food; and the name used to place the order was Kling.
Now, the delivery man
who actually delivered the order had only a brief encounter with the customer.
He can't identify who
he gave the food to; but again, the significance for us is a further association
of the
name Kling with McVeigh.
This time, independent of anything coming from Elliott's Body Shop,
independent of call
that reserved the truck, this is simply through a Kling order being delivered
to
McVeigh's room.
The following day was
Easter Sunday. The bombing was on Wednesday following Easter in 1995. There
will be no witnesses
who saw McVeigh's car in Oklahoma City on Easter or thereafter. But we
will
provide sufficient evidence
for you to conclude that McVeigh drove his car down to Oklahoma City on
Easter Sunday and left
it there as a getaway car for use after the bombing. For example, we will
show you
that McVeigh made a
call that afternoon, Sunday afternoon, at about 3:00 to the home of his
Army buddy,
coconspirator Terry
Nichols. He made the call from a pay phone in Herington Kansas just blocks
away
from Nichols' home.
You will see the evidence
-- you will see from our evidence that it's about four and a half hours
from
Herington, Kansas, driving
to Oklahoma City. We'll show you evidence of the videotape from a
surveillance camera.
It actually happens to be a surveillance camera in the very same apartment
building
where the maintenance
man came out and the truck axle fell on the front of his car. It's call
the Regency
Towers. They have a
surveillance camera in the inside lobby. And it shoots through the inside
lobby, so
that you can pick up
some of activity in the street in front of the building.
From that camera, we
will show you five hours after McVeigh -- a little more than five hours
-- after
McVeigh made the call
to Nichols' house -- you can see a truck of the same features as Nichols'
truck
passing downtown Oklahoma
City twice -- passes that camera -- on Sunday before the bombing.
And you'll see that when
McVeigh was stopped after the bombing in Oklahoma City, he had a handmade,
hand-printed sign in
his car. It was in his own handwriting. It said, "Please do not tow. Needs
batteries
and cable. Will move
by April 23rd." There was nothing wrong with the batteries and cable when
the car
was stopped that day
April 19th, the day of the bombing; and there was nothing wrong with the
batteries
and cables when Thomas
Manning sold the car to McVeigh on Friday before.
As further evidence that
McVeigh left his car in Oklahoma City on Easter Sunday so it would be there
as
a getaway car, we will
prove that he needed a taxi on Monday afternoon in order to pick up the
Ryder
truck. Remember, when
he went in on Saturday and paid the money, he didn't take the Ryder truck
with
him. He said he would
be back after 4 on Monday, two days before the bombing.
Well, shortly before
he was scheduled to pick up the truck, shortly before four o'clock on Monday
afternoon, a call was
placed from the pay phone near the Dreamland Motel, the call that McVeigh
was
registered at the Dreamland
in his own name. So this call was not placed from his room phone, it wasn't
placed from the motel
phone. This call was placed from a public phone; but the public phone is
just
walking distance from
the Dreamland Motel in the direction of Elliott's Body Shop.
We'll prove to you that
it was McVeigh who made the call. The call was charged to that calling
card that
they had in the phony
name; and it was place today a taxicab company in Junction City. The cab
company
is listed in the Junction
City yellow pages. And his call was placed on Monday after Easter. McVeigh
stayed at the Dreamland
Motel until Tuesday. He didn't have his car, so he needed a taxi to go
to Elliott's
Body Shop.
The taxi cab company
dispatched a cab to the location where McVeigh was by the pay phone near
the
Dreamland. The cab picked
up one passenger, it's records will show; and it drove that passenger in
the
direction of Elliott's
Body Shop and dropped the passenger off at a McDonald's restaurant which
is
located about one mile
from Elliott's Body Shop. The fare was $3.65; and we will prove to you
that that
passenger was Timothy
McVeigh.
The only road or walkway
between the McDonald's and Elliott's Body Shop is a two-lane access road;
and the only thing on
that road are a couple of apartment complexes and a couple of other buildings,
not
a busy, busy road. It's
about a mile from the McDonald's to Elliott's Body Shop.
In fact, the McDonald's
is on the nearest intersection. If you walk from Elliott's -- if you walk
from
Elliott's and hit the
intersection, that's where the McDonald's is. That McDonald's restaurant
has a
surveillance system
that consists of a series of cameras inside. We will show some of the photos
from
those cameras on that
Monday afternoon, the same Monday as the cab ride and shortly before the
Ryder
truck was picked. What
you will see is Timothy McVeigh on the photos taken inside the McDonald's
restaurant. He was captured
by the surveillance cameras.
You will first see him
as he approaches the counter and later as he leaves the restaurant. He
spent only
about 8 minutes in the
restaurant, and he apparently ate a McDonald's hot apple pie.
Now, McVeigh, of course,
did not spend $3.65 on a taxi simply to have an apple pie at McDonald's.
He
took a taxi because
his car was in Oklahoma City, waiting to serve as a getaway car. And that
afternoon,
Monday afternoon, he
needed to get up to Elliott's to pick up the truck; so he took a cab and
he stopped
at McDonald's because
it was at the intersection on the way. It's just a stopover spot.
McDonald's -- I'm sorry.
McVeigh left McDonald's, you'll see on the video footage, at approximately
4:00.
As I said, Elliott's
Body Shop is about a mile away. It's about a 15-minute walk.
15 minutes after McVeigh
left McDonald's, he walked into Elliott's Body Shop and picked up the truck
that he used to destroy
the Murrah Building. The owner, Eldon Elliott, was again there. He recalls
the
transaction. Again,
this was not a fleeting encounter with a complete stranger. This is not
like asking the
cab driver or the man
who delivered the Chinese food to remember their customer, to identify
the
customer. Mr. Elliott
had seen McVeigh two days before, and he was seeing him again on this Monday.
On this occasion, he
wasn't simply handing over a box of Chinese food. He was giving McVeigh
a
valuable piece of equipment,
a large Ryder truck.
He spent some time on
the transaction. He walked around the truck, inspected it for damage. He
filled
out a damage form. And
he recalls the person that he released the truck to. It was the same person
who
had come in on the preceding
Saturday morning, the same person that paid cash on the truck. This was
the second time Mr.
Elliott had an opportunity to observe that man. Again, the lighting was
good. The
two stood nearly face
to face. The man was Timothy McVeigh.
Your Honor, can you tell me if you want me to continue, or take a break?
THE COURT: Well, if this would be a convenient place for you, we could do it now.
MR. HARTZLER: Sure.
THE COURT: All right.
I'm sure we can use a little rest stop, and we'll do that. So members of
the jury,
we're going to take
about a 20-minute recess now, it being about mid-morning; and of course,
just like I
said in the preliminary
instructions, please do not discuss anything about the case during this
recess.
You're excused now.
(Recess at 10:30 a.m.)
(Reconvened at 10:50 a.m.)
THE COURT: Be seated, please.
MR. HARTZLER: Your Honor, should I resume the podium?
THE COURT: Yes, please.
(Jury in at 10:51 a.m.)
THE COURT: Mr. Hartzler, you may resume.
MR. HARTZLER: Thank you, your Honor.
Okay. I've brought you
up to Monday afternoon, Monday before the bombing. McVeigh was at Elliott's
Body Shop. He picked
up the truck. He's still in Junction City. It's two days before the bombing.
There is another face
that Mr. Elliott does not remember as well as he remembers McVeigh's face.
It's
the face of a second
man that Mr. Elliott believes he saw with McVeigh on that Monday afternoon,
only
once, not on the first
occasion. The man -- nobody was with McVeigh that time. This is when McVeigh
came to pick up the
truck.
He saw that person just
for a moment, glanced at him. His business, of course, was with McVeigh.
That's
who he was concentrating
on.
Now, whether Mr. Elliott
was mistaken about the existence of another person and who that other
person might possibly
be, if there is such a person, doesn't change the fact that Mr. Elliott
will say that
this defendant rented
the truck that blew up the Murrah Building.
As you already know and
as his Honor instructed you again this morning, our burden in this case
is to
prove the guilt of Timothy
McVeigh beyond a reasonable doubt. We welcome that burden. We will
meet it.
The indictment charges
that McVeigh committed the crimes with others. It refers specifically to
Terry
Nichols by name. It
charges him as a co-conspirator. It also mentioned others unknown or unnamed.
We
do not bear the burden
at this trial to prove the guilt of Terry Nichols. You'll hear evidence
about
Nichols -- and I've
mentioned some of that, summarized some of the testimony about Nichols;
but we'll
present that evidence
because it incriminates McVeigh. We're not trying Terry Nichols in this
case. The
same is true of the
other person who might have been with McVeigh at Elliott's Body Shop.
You also may hear from
the man that delivered the Chinese food. Remember, he delivered it -- the
Kling
order -- in Room 25.
He believes the person he delivered it to was not McVeigh.
So this other person
-- this other possible person with McVeigh has come to be known as John
Doe 2,
but we don't bear the
burden in this trial of proving whether there is or is not another person
with
McVeigh. We don't bear
any burden of proving who else is guilty.
So we'll keep our focus
on the burden we bear. We will maintain our focus on the evidence against
McVeigh. We'll prove
what the Court will allow us to prove; that is, evidence against McVeigh.
And I
hope that you'll be
able to keep your focus on that as well.
At Elliott's Body Shop,
McVeigh presented his phony driver's license in the name Robert Kling to
rent the
truck. And the birthday
that McVeigh put on the driver's license is telling: McVeigh's real birthday
is April
23, yesterday. But the
birthday he gave Kling was his special day, April 19, the anniversary of
the fire at
Waco and the date that
McVeigh selected for the bombing in Oklahoma City.
McVeigh also signed the
rental agreement in the name Robert Kling. You will see the actual rental
agreement documents
from the rental of the Ryder truck that blew up the building, and you will
see
down at the bottom of
those documents the signature "Robert Kling."
Now, everyone's handwriting
has certain distinctive features. That's why you can identify or recognize
the handwriting of loved
ones and old friends, even though sometimes you don't know why you can
recognize it. And that's
also why documents examiners who spend their careers examining and
comparing handwriting
can notice little distinctive idiosyncrasies of particular handwriting,
little
distinctive features,
and they can compare one document to another.
Well, with the assistance
of a documents examiner who will testify for us, you will look closely
at those
Ryder rental documents;
and together in the courtroom, we will compare the documents, the other
documents that we can
prove McVeigh wrote, letters to friends, things of that sort. And you,
yourself,
will see the similarities.
For example, on the Kling
signature, you'll see that there is a little curlicue that he used to make
the K;
and you'll see a similar
curlicue in other writing that we will prove was written by McVeigh.
You'll notice on the
Kling documents, in the name Robert Kling, the cross stroke for the T is
done
backwards. You can tell
it's done backwards because there is a blot of ink that starts on the back
side of
the T and tapers off
on the front side of the T. And we'll show you other documents written
by McVeigh
which have that same
backward cross stroke on the T. Those are just two examples. There are
other
similar features that
we'll present to you; and when you see these documents and when you listen
to the
examiner and when you
compare these documents yourself, you'll conclude that Timothy McVeigh
stood
in Elliott's Body Shop
and signed the name Robert Kling.
That Monday afternoon,
McVeigh drove the Ryder truck back to Dreamland Motel. You'll hear details
about where he parked
it, when he was seen in it at the Dreamland, things of that sort. Now,
there may
be discrepancies in
memories of witnesses as to the precise time and date that he was at the
motel with
the Ryder truck; but
completely independent of evidence from Elliott's Body Shop, there will
be no
doubt that McVeigh had
a Ryder truck in those days before the bombing.
And our evidence will
establish that the truck McVeigh had at the Dreamland was the truck that
he
rented at Elliott's
Body Shop, because employees of Ryder Corporation searched all of their
records
nationwide, all of their
rentals during this period of time, and there is no rental in the name
Timothy
McVeigh. Now, if he
had rented a truck for some legitimate purpose, you would think it would
be in his
name. There is no rental
in the name Timothy McVeigh for that period of time. That's because he
rented
the name -- he rented
the truck in the name Robert Kling; so my point is there are at least --
there are
overlapping ways, independent
ways, in which he we will demonstrate that Robert Kling is really
Timothy McVeigh.
There is the circumstances
of the telephone call from the bus station across from the Firestone where
he
bought his used car.
There are the circumstances of him being at the McDonald's 20 minutes and
leaving
20 minutes before the
truck was picked up at Elliott's Body Shop. There is the eyewitness testimony
of
Eldon Elliott. Here
is the documentary and handwriting evidence. You'll see and compare the
documents.
And there is the fact
that there was no McVeigh rental of any Ryder truck during this period
of time.
Between the time that
McVeigh picked up the Ryder truck, that Monday afternoon, and the time
that the
bomb was detonated early
on Wednesday morning, he had plenty of time, you will learn from our
explosives expert, to
build a bomb in the back of a truck and drive it to Oklahoma City; and
that is
precisely what he did.
The Turner Diaries taught
him how to mix the different ingredients, how to set up the bomb, right
down
to how to drill a hole
between the cargo box and the cab of the truck so that he could detonate
it, so
that the fuse could
run into the cab of the truck and he could fuse it from where he was sitting
in the
front of the cab. You'll
hear from witness testimony that's what he said he would do.
So he conferred -- converted
the Ryder truck from a cargo vehicle into a gigantic deadly bomb, and he
drove it to Oklahoma
City; and he detonated it on one of the -- at one of the busiest times
of the day.
Bear in mind this was
not 3 or 4 in the morning, when he could conceivably have detonated the
bomb
and possibly not have
killed anyone. It was at 9:00 -- 9:02 in the morning, when everyone was
in their
office, business was
being conducted, and the children were in the day-care center.
The sound and the concussion
of the blast rocked downtown Oklahoma City. It was as though it had
been struck by an earthquake;
and as McVeigh sped away from the scene of the crime, word quickly
spread as to the location
of the blast. No one in downtown Oklahoma City could have missed the sound.
It ripped the air, shattered
windows. It was a terrifying explosion.
People who heard it because
of the noise couldn't help but be concerned. Just like the shock waves
of
the bomb, the word spread
through the city as to where it had been located. The word was, of course,
it
was at the federal building.
That morning, Mike Weaver
had driven his wife's car down to work. It had needed service, and the
service station was
closer to his office than to his wife's; so as a favor, he drove her car
and she drove
his. He dropped their
son off at junior high on his way to work; and after dropping his son off,
Mike
drove downtown to the
service station with his wife's car.
Mike's workday started
at 9:00; and when his wife, Donna, heard the blast and then got the news
that it
was the Murrah Building,
which was Mike's building, she rushed from her office, made her way quickly,
as
quickly as she could,
to the Murrah Building. And on her way, she hoped against hope that maybe
Mike
had gotten delayed,
maybe he had gotten delayed in dropping their son off, maybe he had gotten
delayed
at the service station,
maybe he hadn't made it to work at 9:00. And she stopped in front of the
Murrah
Building and looked
up. His office was gone, and she knew so was he.
She was right: He was killed.
She didn't have earplugs in her pocket. None of our witnesses had earplugs in their pockets that day.
The Noise from the concussion
from the bomb was felt throughout the city; and Helena Garrett, whose
son, Tevin, was in the
day-care center. She, of course, was across the street in her building.
By pure
coincidence, she was
on her way to the Murrah Building, still in her building, but she was going
to move
her car from the Murrah
Building to her regular parking lot. When she heard the blast, she rushed
outside and saw that
the entire front face of the Murrah Building was missing. The plate glass
windows
that the children pressed
their hands and faces against were gone. The entire side of the building
was
gone.
She ran to the scene
and frantically searched the area for her son. She watched as rescue workers
arrived
and carried bodies of
small children from the building, and she looked to see if any of them
were Tevin.
At one point, she climbed
on a pile of debris in front of the building until the rescue workers begged
her
to leave; and then she
went home and waited. She waited for days; and when Tevin's body was found,
it
was taken to a funeral
home. And at the funeral home, she asked to see her son; but the funeral
director
persuaded her not to:
The body was too badly mangled. So she never saw her son again.
As she searched for her
son that morning of the bombing, rescue workers searched for survivors
and the
bodies. And law enforcement
agents arrived to search the debris for clues as to the cause of the blast;
and what they found
were various parts of the Ryder truck that had been -- that had blown up.
The truck
had blown to smithereens.
And one of the pieces they found was a small piece of plywood from the
side
of the truck. It had
yellow and red Ryder truck markings on one side of the plywood. On the
other side
was just plain plywood.
And the piece, when it was found, was sealed in a plastic bag and shipped
back to
the FBI laboratory,
along with all the other truck parts, pieces of debris that were found,
and were being
sent back for examination;
and the purpose of sending them back to the lab was to examine them for
chemical residue, try
to figure out the cause of this blast.
And the chemist who examined
most of these pieces is a man by the name of Steven Burmeister. He's
been with the FBI for
years, and he's one of the most qualified forensic chemists in the area
of explosives
residue. He's spent
many years studying and examining explosive residue, both -- pardon me.
He's
worked both at the FBI
laboratory and in the private sector, and he's testified both for defendants
and for
the Government.
And when he examined
these pieces of evidence that came back to the FBI lab, he was looking
for clues
as to the type of explosive
that might be used and might have been used in the bomb. He used a
microscope to examine
the truck parts, and he didn't find much.
An explosion is a dynamic
reaction; and Burmeister will tell you that the chemicals used in an explosive
are often destroyed
as part of the explosion, so you don't necessarily find bomb residue after
an
explosion. But Burmeister
did find something: When he looked at that little piece of plywood from
the
side of the truck, he
saw little specs under the microscope; and when he had tested those little
specs, he
determined their chemical
makeup. The specs were crystals of ammonium nitrate, the very same
chemical that McVeigh
and Nichols had obtained in 50-pound bags in the form of the fertilizer
they had
purchased in central
Kansas months before.
You'll also hear from
a chemist from Great Britain. Her name is Linda Jones, and she's also an
explosives
expert. She's worked
numerous cases involving IRA bombs, and she has over 20 years of experience
in
the explosives field.
She'll explain the different types of damage that can be caused by different
types of
bombs. She's had ample
experience with ammonium-nitrate-type bombs, and she knows what kind of
damage they can cause.
She will also explain
to you why a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil or racing fuel can
be
detonated to create
an explosion; and she'll explain it's not a complicated task. She analyzed
the damage
to the Murrah Building
and the surrounding area, and she'll explain to you why that damage is
consistent
with damage caused by
an ammonium-nitrate-based truck bomb. She'll also explain how easy and
cheap it
is to make just such
a bomb -- so easy, in fact, it could be built by one or two people.
Now, you undoubtedly
will hear criticism of the FBI laboratory, especially the explosives unit
at the lab;
but Agent Burmeister
is not from the explosives unit. He's a chemist, and his work is unassailable.
And
Linda Jones is not from
the explosives unit. She's not even with the FBI. She's from Great Britain.
Also, none of the people
who have been criticized for their work at the FBI laboratory will be witnesses
in this case. Linda
Jones has done her work independent. She's done an independent analysis
of the bomb
crime scene, and her
evaluation and analysis of the bomb and crime scene are consistent with
the most
demanding scientific
standards in the business.
I've already described
for you the huge twisted axle that fell on the red Ford Fiesta that seemed
to fly and
fall out of the sky.
It had been at the -- it had been at the center of the explosion; and the
force of the
explosion propelled
it more than 200 yards in the air. Law enforcement agents found it there
beside the
Ford Fiesta, and they
traced its vehicle identification number.
Now, many of you know
that every vehicle carries a unique number stamped on various parts of
the
vehicle. It's referred
to as the "VIN" or vehicle identification number. The agency saw the axle,
located
the VIN, vehicle identification
number, and called it in to find out what vehicle the axle came from and
where the vehicle came
from.
They learned that the
axle came from a large Ryder truck; and by contacting Ryder, they learned
that the
truck had been rented
two days before, two days before the bombing, from a rental agency in Junction
City, Kansas. You already
know the rental agency. They discovered it then: Elliott's Body Shop.
That information, of
course, led them to Elliott's, where they learned what I've already told
you: The
truck had been rented
by a young man who used the name Robert Kling. Kling's address in South
Dakota,
of course, proved to
be false. Not only was there no house at that address, the address in the
city -- the
listed city -- there
is not even an address of that sort.
The agents surveyed the
area for anyone who had seen -- who had been seen driving a Ryder truck;
and
as you know from my
description of testimony related to the Dreamland Motel, they discovered
that a
guest at that motel
had been seen days before the bombing riding in a Ryder truck, and that
guest was
registered in his name.
It was Timothy McVeigh. That information led them to a search for McVeigh,
and
I've already told you
much of the rest of the story.
McVeigh had been dropped
in Oklahoma City -- I'm sorry -- McVeigh had been stopped and arrested
in
Oklahoma City on the
morning of the bombing, traveling away from the city. He was arrested that
morning because he didn't
have a license on his car and because when he was stopped, he had an obvious
concealed weapon underneath
his jacket.
He was still in custody
two days later, when the federal agents tracked the VIN number, went to
Elliott's,
found it was Kling,
went to Dreamland, discovered that Kling was McVeigh.
They went to the county
jail where he was being held. They took possession of the clothing he had,
same clothing that he
had the day of the bombing, because they had been removed, put into storage;
and
he was in an orange
prison jump suit, not wearing clothing he had on the day of the bombing.
They took those (sic)
clothing and sent them to the FBI laboratory. I'm referring, of course,
to the T-shirt
with the image of Lincoln
and the tree dripping blood on the back. And again, it was Stephen Burmeister
who did the examination.
He conducted a chemical analysis of the clothing, and he found explosives
residue on the shirt
and the pants pockets and on the earplugs in the pockets or that had been
in the
pockets.
This residue was not
ammonium nitrate. The ammonium nitrate was found at the scene of the bombing.
That was on the plywood.
That was explosive residue that's referred to as PETN. PETN is found in
det
cord, and it's a very
fine powder. Det cord is sort of a narrow, hollow tubing; and when you
use det
cord, you often cut
it. And in cutting it, cutting it open, the fine powder sifts out from
inside the det cord.
And it's sticky and
gets all over everything. You can't really cut it without getting it on
your hands and
clothing. And that's
the explosives residue that was found on the shirt McVeigh was wearing
and on the
pockets and on the earplugs
that had been in his pockets.
The agents, of course,
located his car. They found inside his car that manila envelope that he
previously
described. The papers
inside there were practically a manifesto. They're almost a declaration
of his
terrorist intent. Some
were passages in his own handwriting. Some were photocopies that he had
highlighted. Many of
the documents bear his fingerprints. All of them were about the right and
the need
to kill people who work
for the federal government.
There was a passage from
The Turner Diaries, the one I referred to earlier, that said, "The real
value of
our attacks today .
. ." There was the quote from one of the founding fathers about how, when
the
government fears the
people, there is liberty; and that's the one that had McVeigh's handwriting
beneath
it that said, "Maybe
now there will be liberty." And there was much, much more. We will show
you all
those documents. There
were passages declaring war against the American government. There were
passages calling for
violence against the government because of Waco.
The agents continued
their investigation and uncovered all of the evidence that I've previously
summarized, all of the
evidence that we will present to you. They found the evidence of the phone
calls
to the chemical companies,
phone calls to the barrel companies and to the raceways. They got the letters
that McVeigh wrote to
his sister. They got -- they found all the evidence about McVeigh and Nichols'
acquisition of the bomb
components. They found out about the storage lockers and got the storage
locker documentation,
determined it was McVeigh and Nichols that rented them in false names.
They
got the information
from Elliott's Body Shop. They collected all of that information, all of
the evidence
that we'll be presenting
to you.
As you can probably tell
from what I've said, there is no single witness who is going to come in
here and
tell the whole sad story.
Our case consists of dozens of pieces of evidence put together. His Honor
referred to that earlier
this morning, when he was speaking with you. And those pieces will come
in like
bricks building a brick
wall.
Now, some of the bricks
won't fit tightly together, because memories will be slightly different;
and as I
think we spoke to some
of you in jury selection, there will undoubtedly be some unanswered questions.
There always are in
a case of its complexity.
But in the end, we will
build a solid wall of evidence against McVeigh, making your job of determining
his
guilt easy, I believe.
You'll get a clear picture of what happened, and it won't depend on any
one witness.
There will be overlapping
proof, and you'll be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he's
responsible for the
bombing in Oklahoma City.
But there is one witness
who is very close to McVeigh and who knows a lot. I haven't mentioned him
yet. Our case does not
depend on him. We could prove the case without him, but he was very close
to
McVeigh. I'm referring,
of course, to Michael Fortier, his other Army buddy. We will call him as
a
witness because he provides
insight into McVeigh's thinking, his intent, and his premeditation; and
he
knows a few details
that other witnesses do not know.
A couple of years after
the Army, McVeigh came to visit Fortier in Fortier's hometown in Kingman,
Arizona. I already talked
about one of those trips. McVeigh had changed since the Army, Fortier noticed.
Although McVeigh had
always been suspicious of the government, even during the Army, when he
was
trying to get people
to read The Turner Diaries, his feelings had deepened into a burning hatred.
He
accused the government
of murdering the Branch Davidians at Waco, and he brought Fortier videotapes
and propaganda and other
anti-government literature and other conspiracy theories; and he spent
a lot of
time in Kingman in the
two years before the bombing. And Fortier watched and will tell you how
McVeigh grew more and
more extreme, grew from words to action or wanting action.
In the spring of 1994,
McVeigh told Fortier that the American government had, quote, "declared
war,"
unquote, on the American
people. And that fall, the fall of 1994, months before the bombing still,
McVeigh told Fortier
that he had decided to strike back on the government.
When McVeigh came up
with his plan to blow up the Murrah Building, he recruited people to help
him.
You already know that
he recruited Terry Nichols, and he tried to recruit Michael Fortier. He
told
Fortier and Fortier's
wife about his plan. I already described how he diagramed the bomb in the
living
room of the Fortiers'
house in Arizona; and he told Fortier that the time had come for him to
take action
against the government
and that he would blow up the building, and he identified the building
as the
federal building in
Oklahoma City.
But McVeigh didn't just
give a broad outline of his plan to Fortier. He told him the ingredients
he would
use. He diagramed, as
I said, the bomb that he would build inside a truck. He told Fortier how
he would
arrange the barrels
inside the truck. He told Fortier how he acquired some of the ingredients.
He told
Fortier that he and
Nichols had purchased the ammonium nitrate from a farm supply store, which
is of
course confirmed by
the evidence we have independently. He told Fortier about their going to
the
quarry at night, which
I already told you about, which is confirmed by the other evidence; where
they got
the explosives, the
blasting caps and the sausage Tovex. He told him how they had stolen it
using the
Makita drill that the
agents later found in the basement of Nichols' house, and he showed Fortier
some of
the stolen explosives
he and Nichols had stolen from the quarry.
In fact, he gave Fortier
some of the blasting caps, and Fortier turned them over to the FBI. They're
the
same types of blasting
caps that were found in Nichols' basement, the same brand, the same length,
the
same delay as the stuff
that was stolen from the quarry.
We're not going to bring
the blasting caps into the courtroom, but we'll show you photographs of
those
blasting caps.
Now, in addition to what
McVeigh told Fortier, he also took him to Oklahoma City and showed him
the
building months before
the bombing. And Fortier will -- pardon me -- Fortier will describe that
trip that
they took. It was a
stopover on their way to Kansas.
He told Fortier during
the trip that Nichols would help McVeigh mix the bomb and would help McVeigh
get away after the bombing.
And when McVeigh and Fortier were in downtown Oklahoma City, they
drove around the Murrah
Building; and McVeigh showed Fortier the alley where he planned on parking
his car. And he explained
to Fortier that he would park there because he wanted to have a tall building
between himself and
the blast; and indeed, you will see -- we have a model of downtown Oklahoma
City
-- you'll see a tall
building next to the -- kitty-corner from the Murrah Building -- it's a
YMCA building --
exactly where Fortier
pointed out McVeigh said he would park his car. It's a tall building that
would
shield McVeigh, unlike
it shielded the innocent people in the building.
McVeigh told Fortier
that he wanted to bring the building down. And Fortier asked him, "Well,
what
about all the innocent
people? What about the secretaries and people like that in the building?"
McVeigh compared them
to the storm troopers in the "Star Wars" movies. He said, "Well, even if
they
as individuals are innocent,
they work for an evil system and have to be killed."
McVeigh also told Fortier
about how he and Nichols planned to raise money to finance their illegal
activities. They were
going to do it by robbing a man by the name of Bob who was a gun dealer
that
McVeigh knew from Arkansas.
Since Bob knew McVeigh, Nichols was going to do the actual robbery;
but McVeigh told Fortier
that he had scouted out Bob's remote Arkansas home. And in November of
1994 -- this is during
the period of time when they were acquiring the ingredients and the components
for the bomb -- Fortier
received a call from McVeigh who told him that it was a, quote, "code red."
He
had explained this code
system he had. "Code red" meant an alarm. And he told Fortier to go to
a pay
phone and call him back
at another number.
When Fortier called back,
McVeigh told him that Nichols, quote, "did Bob"; warned Fortier that Bob
might send private eyes
out to Kingman to try to investigate McVeigh so that Fortier should be
on the
lookout, to let him
know if he saw any private investigators.
Much of what Fortier
will testify to is corroborated, as I've indicated, by other independent
evidence.
McVeigh told Fortier
about dressing up like a biker and purchasing nitromethane at a raceway.
Well, Glynn Tipton, who
I mentioned earlier, will tell you that someone who he's almost certain
was
McVeigh approached him
at a raceway about buying nitromethane and anhydrous hydrazine; and Tipton
will tell that you the
man was dressed up in dark jeans and black T-shirt, which is exactly what
Rick
Fortier, how he liked
to dress -- and Rick Fortier, Michael's brother, is a biker.
In December of 1994,
McVeigh showed Fortier some electric blasting caps that he and Nichols
had
stolen from the quarry;
and he asked Michael Fortier's wife, Lori, to wrap the blasting caps up
using
Christmas wrapping so
that they would look like Christmas packages, to disguise them in case
he got
stopped, because he
was traveling from Arizona back to Michigan and he wanted to take the blasting
caps with him. And Lori
did that.
And a couple of days
later, to corroborate the story, McVeigh got to Michigan and met with another
friend of his named
Kevin Nicholas. Kevin Nicholas will testify and he'll tell you that he
helped McVeigh
unload his car when
McVeigh got to Michigan and McVeigh warned him to be careful with these
two
Christmas presents.
And he later told Nicholas that the boxes contained blasting caps, corroborating
exactly what Lori and
Michael Fortier will tell you.
There are a number of
witnesses like the Fortiers, who were friends and acquaintances of McVeigh;
and
these various witnesses
have widely varying degrees of knowledge of what McVeigh was doing or
involvement with him.
David Darlak is the friend that McVeigh called to request the racing fuel.
Greg
Pfaff is the acquaintance
that McVeigh called for the detonation cord, said he would drive across
country
to get it. Kevin Nicholas
is the friend I just mentioned. He's the guy that took the blasting --
the
Christmas presents out
of the car that McVeigh later said were blasting caps.
Each of these witnesses
had some knowledge of what McVeigh was doing, some knowledge of McVeigh's
activities; but not
all of them had incriminating knowledge, not all of them are culpable or
could be
charged criminally.
So when they testify, not all of them are testifying pursuant to plea agreement
or
immunity order. Certainly
not Darlak and Pfaff and Nicholas. There is no deal that they have with
the
Government.
But one step up the ladder
from those three are Lori Fortier and Jennifer McVeigh. Both of them had
some knowledge of McVeigh's
plans. Both of them probably could have stopped this terrible crime, had
they chosen to do so.
Both of them were concerned about their criminal culpability when federal
agents
came to talk to them,
so both of them at some point refused to talk or to testify here without
some sort
of protection from being
prosecuted. The protection that they sought through their separate, different
attorneys is that what
we refer to as "use immunity." It's an arrangement in which the court orders
them
to give up their constitutional
right to refuse to testify, to give up their right to refuse to incriminate
themselves, and to come
in and testify.
And we, as a result of
that court order, cannot use the information they provide to prosecute
them. We
cannot use that information
against them. We can use their testimony -- we will use their testimony
against McVeigh; but
we can't use it against them. There is one circumstance in which we can
use it
against them: If they
lie, they can be charged with perjury; and we can use their testimony from
the witness
stand against them.
Another step up the ladder
of culpability, involvement with McVeigh, from Jennifer and Lori is Michael
Fortier, of course.
Although he did not join the conspiracy and he didn't participate in the
bombing -- in
fact, he rejected McVeigh's
proposal. He did have knowledge of McVeigh's plans. He knew about
McVeigh's criminal activity.
He didn't report it. He didn't report it to anyone who could have stopped
it.
He made no effort to
stop it.
In addition, he actually
participated with McVeigh in transporting stolen guns. These were guns
that were
stolen from Bob, the
gun dealer in Arkansas. I told you about the trip the two of them made
up to
Kansas. Well, the purpose
of the trip was to go up and get some of the stolen guns. Fortier participated
in transporting them
back to Arizona; so he transported stolen guns, which is a federal violation.
So while he will not
plead guilty to the bombing, he won't plead guilty to the conspiracy that
he was not
involved in, he will
plead guilty to some of the crimes. He'll plead guilty to transporting
the guns and to
conspiring with McVeigh
to transport the guns; and there are two other violations he'll plead guilty
to --
he's already pled guilty
to.
You'll hear that he and
his wife were also involved in drug use. They used marijuana and speed.
And
immediately following
the bombing, when Fortier could have been remorseful and could have reported
what he knew, he lied.
He lied to the FBI, he lied to news reporters, he lied to his friends,
he lied to his
parents, he lied to
his family; and Lori Fortier, his wife, lied, too. They lied because they
were scared.
They were afraid of
what could happen to them. They had known about McVeigh's plans. hey had
done
nothing to stop it.
Scores of people had died, and they were afraid that they could be prosecuted.
They
were afraid they could
be subjected to the death penalty, and they lied.
And the lies were bad.
You'll hear from Fortier -- he will admit that he lied, told reporters,
told others
that he thought McVeigh
was innocent and that he had no reason to believe McVeigh was involved.
Law enforcement agents
obtained a wiretap on McVeigh's house -- on Fortier's house, on his telephone.
The effort proved totally
unfruitful in part because Fortier and his wife, as they will say, suspected
that
their house was being
tapped.
The agents then obtained
subpoenas to bring the Fortiers before the grand jury in Oklahoma City;
and
before they appeared
before the grand jury, they had lawyers appointed for them. And when they
got
their attorneys, they
admitted they had been lying and they told us what they know; and they
will tell you
what they know.
Michael Fortier is now
in prison awaiting sentence. He pled guilty to lying to the FBI, to concealing
his
knowledge of this bombing,
to transporting guns; and he will testify pursuant to a plea agreement
with
the Government. He faces
a maximum of 23 years in prison, but he's hoping to get a much, much shorter
sentence than that.
At the conclusion of
the case, the Judge will instruct you must consider Michael Fortier's testimony
with
care and caution; and
we encourage you to do that and to consider his testimony in the context
of all the
other evidence we will
present. And much of what he tells you will be corroborated independently.
As I've said, our evidence
is not dependent on any one witness. It's certainly not dependent on Michael
Fortier, but he will
provide you some understanding of McVeigh's thinking, especially during
the last few
months and up until
the time the bombing actually occurred.
I'm not going to again
detail the charges. The Judge has already explained them to you; but in
presenting
all of this evidence
to you, we obviously are going to be able to prove the eleven counts against
McVeigh.
The Judge has explained
to you one of the counts is a conspiracy. That's an agreement between two
people to commit a crime,
two others involved blowing up the building. And then there are eight counts
involved of murder,
involving eight different law enforcement agents. And I want you to understand
that
those eight counts are
not there because we value the lives of law enforcement agents any more
than
lives of any of the
other people who were lost in that building. There is a specific federal
statute that
subjects the defendant
to the death penalty for murdering a law enforcement agent in the line
of duty,
and that's why those
eight counts are charged.
Each of the crimes has
various elements. The Judge at the end of the case will instruct you on
those
elements. It's our burden
to prove each of the elements for each of the counts.
We will meet that burden.
We will make your job easy. We will present ample evidence to convince
you beyond any reasonable
doubt that Timothy McVeigh is responsible for this terrible crime.
You will hear evidence
in this case that McVeigh liked to consider himself a patriot, someone
who could
start the second American
Revolution. The literature that was in his car when he was arrested included
some that quoted statements
from the founding fathers and other people who played a part in the
American Revolution,
people like Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams. McVeigh isolated and took these
statements out of context,
and he did that to justify his anti-government violence.
Well, ladies and gentlemen,
the statements of our forefathers can never be televised to justify warfare
against innocent children.
Our forefathers didn't fight British women and children. They fought other
soldiers. They fought
them face to face, hand to hand. They didn't plant bombs and run away wearing
earplugs.
Thank you, your Honor.
THE COURT: Mr. Hartzler.
Members of the jury,
as I already explained, opening statement is not evidence in the case.
Mr. Hartzler
has outlined what the
Government intends to prove; and of course, the Government has the burden
of
proof. It is not up
to the defendant to -- in the case to offer any evidence or to prove anything,
and
neither is it required
of counsel for the defendant to make any opening statement.
Mr. Jones, you are going to make an opening statement, as I understand it.
MR. JONES: I am, your Honor.
THE COURT: And given
the hour, I'll give you the choice of whether you want to stop or start
and then
tell us a convenient
place to break or whether you want to take the recess now.
MR. JONES: If the Court please, I'm prepared to start now.
THE COURT: All right.
If you'll tell us when is a convenient place to interrupt for the recess,
that's what
we'll do.
MR. JONES: Thank you, your Honor.
THE COURT: Do you want
to stand up and take a little stretch, members of the jury, while we're
adjusting the lectern?
We'll let you do it.
OPENING STATEMENT
MR. JONES: May it please the Court . . .
THE COURT: Mr. Jones.
MR. JONES: Special attorney
to the United States Attorney General, Mr. Hartzler, and to Mr. Ryan, the
United States Attorney
for the Western Judicial District of Oklahoma and to Mr. Timothy McVeigh,
my
client, I have waited
two years for this moment to outline the evidence to you that the Government
will
produce, that I will
produce, both by direct and cross-examination, by exhibits, photographs,
transcripts
of telephone conversations,
transcripts of conversations inside houses, videotapes, that will establish
not
a reasonable doubt but
that my client is innocent of the crime that Mr. Hartzler has outlined
to you.
And like Mr. Hartzler,
I begin where he began. As he said, it was a spring day in Oklahoma City.
And
inside the office of
the Social Security Administration located in the Alfred P. Murrah Building,
named
after a distinguished
chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit,
a young
black woman named Daina
Bradley was feeling the atmosphere a little stuffy and warm; so she left
her
mother, her two children,
and her sister in line and she wandered out into the lobby of the Alfred
P.
Murrah Building. And
as she was looking out the plate glass window, a Ryder truck slowly pulled
into a
parking place and stopped.
She didn't give it any particular attention until the door opened on the
passenger side, and
she saw a man get out.
Approximately three weeks
later, she described the man to the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents,
as
indeed she did to us
and to others, as short, stocky, olive-complected, wearing a puffy jacket,
with black
hair, a description
that does not match my client. She did not see anyone else.
She saw this individual
pause briefly, walk to what she thought might be the back of the truck,
and walk
away.
She turned around and
went back in the Social Security office; and then in just a matter of moments,
the
explosion occurred.
It took the life of her mother and her two children and horribly burned
her sister.
She is not a witness
for the defense.
And that night, approximately
12 hours later, almost to the minute, somewhere between 50 and 100
million people throughout
the world, courtesy of CNN, watched physicians crawl through the rubble
of
the Murrah Building
and amputate this woman's life -- this woman's leg in order that her life
might be
saved and she could
be extricated from the rubble.
In addition to the members
of her family who died that morning, the bomb claimed Charles E. Hurlburt;
John Karl Vaness, III;
Anna Jean Hurlburt; Donald Lee Fritzler; Eula Leigh Mitchell; Donald Earl
Burns,
Sr.; Norma Jean Johnson;
Calvin C. Battle; Laura Jane Garrison; Burl Bloomer; Luther Treanor; Rheta
Long; Juretta Colleen
Guiles; Robert Glen Westberry; Carolyn Ann Kreymborg; Leora Lee Sells;
Mary
Anne Fritzler; Virginia
Mae Thompson; Peola Y. Battle; Peter Robert Avillanoza; Richard Leroy
Cummins; Ronald Vernon
Harding; LaRue Ann Treanor; Ethel Louise Griffin; Antonio C. Reyes;
Thompson Eugene Hodges,
Jr.; Junior Justes; Margaret Goodson; Oleta Christine Biddy; David Jack
Walker; James Anthony
McCarthy; Carol L. Bowers; Linda Coleen Housley; John Albert Youngblood;
Robert Nolan Walker,
Jr.; Thomas Lynn Hawthorne, Sr.; Dolores Marie Stratton; Jules Valdez;
John
Thomas Stewart; Mickey
Bryant Maroney of the Secret Service, who had guarded presidents; John
Clayton Moss, III; Carole
Sue Khalil; Emilio Rangel; James Everette Boles; Donald R. Leonard of the
Secret Service; Castine
Deveroux; Clarence Eugene Wilson; Wanda Jean -- Wanda Lee Watkins;
Michael Lee Loudenslager;
Carrol June Fields; Frances Ann Williams; Claudine Ritter; Ted Allen; Linda
McKinney; Trish Nix;
Betsy McGonnell; David Burkett; Michael George Thompson; Catherine Mary
Leinen; Sharon Louise
Wood Chesnut; Ricky Lee Tomlin, from my hometown of Enid; Larry James Jones;
Richard Arthur Allen;
Harley Richard Cottingham; Lanny Lee David Scroggins; George Michael Howard;
Jerry Lee Parker; Judy
Joann Fisher; Diane Althouse; Mike Weaver; Robert Lee Luster, Jr.; Peter
DeMaster; Katherine
Ann Finley; Doris Adele Higginbottom; Steven Douglas Curry; Michael Joe
Carrillo; Cheryl Hammon,
Aurelia Luster and Linda Florence of the credit union; Claudette Meek;
William Williams; Johnny
Wade; Larry Turner; Brenda Daniels; Margaret Spencer; Paul Broxterman;
Paul
Ice; Woody Brady; Claude
Medearis; Teresa Lauderdale; Terry Rees; Alan Whicher; Lola Bolden; Kathy
Seidl; Kimberly Clark;
Mary Rentie; Diana Day; Robin Huff; Peggy Holland; Victoria Texter and
Susan
Jane Ferrell of Chandler,
Oklahoma; Kenneth Glenn McCullough; Victoria Sohn; Pamela Argo; Rona
Chafey; Jo Ann Whittenberg;
Gilbert Martinez; Wanda Howell; Sandy Avery; James Kenneth Martin;
Lucio Aleman, Jr.; Valerie
Koelsch; Teresa Alexander; Kim Cousins; Michelle Reeder; Andrea Blanton;
Karen Carr; Christi
Jenkins; Jamie Genzer; Ronota Ann Woodbridge; Benjamin Davis; Kimberly
Burgess;
Tresia Jo Mathes-Worton;
Mark Allen Bolte; Randolph Guzman; Sheila Driver; Karan Shepherd; Sonja
Sanders; Derwin Miller;
Jill Randolph; Carrie Lenz; Cynthia Lynn Campbell Brown; Cassandra Booker;
Shelly Bland; Scott
Williams; Dana Cooper; Julie Marie Welch; Frankie Ann Merrell; Christine
Nicole
Rosas; Lakisha Levy;
Cartney McRaven; Aaron Coverdale; Ashley Megan Eckles; Zackary Taylor Chavez;
Kayla Marie Haddock;
Peachlyn Bradley; Chase Dalton Smith; Anthony Christopher Cooper, II; Colton
Smith; Elijah Coverdale;
Dominique R. London; Baylee Almon; Jaci Rae Coyne; Blake Ryan Kennedy;
Tevin Garrett; Danielle
Nicole Bell; Tylor Eaves; Antonio Cooper, Jr.; Kevin Lee Gottshall, II,
and
Gabreon Bruce.
For those of us from
Oklahoma, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building is the event by
which we
measure time. It is
to my generation in Oklahoma what Pearl Harbor was to my mother and father's
generation.
And on the morning that
Mr. Hartzler described, the proof will show that when the fire department
arrived, the smoke was
so black that at first they thought it was the Walter -- the Water Resources
Board across the street
that had been destroyed, because the smoke hid the fact that the entire
front and
the roof of the Murrah
Building was gone. And it was three or four minutes before the captain
on duty
realized as the smoke
began to clear that the real catastrophic event was behind him. And the
Oklahoma
City fire department
moved to a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth alarm.
That is the Oklahoma
City bombing. You have been empowered to determine whether the allegations
made by the Government
against my client are true; that is to say, whether he is guilty or not
guilty.
Mr. Hartzler has outlined
to you this morning the Government's case, the evidence, or at least some
of
it, which he hopes to
prove. The Judge has told you that is not evidence itself, what he says;
and certainly
what I say is not evidence.
Rather, he and I are trying to put together pieces of a puzzle so that
you may
look at the puzzle and
see whether, in fact, the pieces justify the way that we say they come
together.
In reviewing the evidence
in this case and in the proof that will come, you know, and certainly it
will be
in evidence, that this
was the largest domestic terrorism act in the history of this country.
The president
of the United States
and the Attorney General of the United States went on nationwide television
within
hours after the bombing.
The president came to Oklahoma City for the memorial funeral service at
which 12,000 people
attended. The federal government offered a $2 million reward for information
leading to the arrest
and conviction of those involved.
And I think it fair to
say that this was the largest criminal investigation in the history of
this country. The
question is did they
get the right man.
Many of the witnesses
that Mr. Hartzler said would testify will tell you that though they have
spent many,
many -- in some cases
dozens of hours -- talking with the ladies and gentlemen at the prosecution
table
and with the FBI and
with newspapers from around the world and television networks, they have
never
talked to us. So in
some cases, we will be asking them questions to find out for the first
time; and we will
ask them about these
conversations that occurred over so many hours and so many days with the
prosecution.
I believe that when you
see the evidence in this case, you will conclude that the investigation
of the
Alfred P. Murrah Building
lasted about two weeks. The investigation to build the case against Timothy
McVeigh lasted about
two years. But within 72 hours after suspicion first centered on Mr. McVeigh,
we
will prove to you that
even then, the Government knew, the FBI agents in the case, that the pieces
of the
puzzle were not coming
together; that there was something terribly wrong, something missing. And
as
Paul Harvey says, our
evidence will be the rest of the story.
So let me begin first
with Timothy McVeigh. The evidence in this case, probably from the Government
as
well as from the defense,
will show that yesterday, he turned 29 years old, as I think Mr. Hartzler
has
already made some reference
to; for he was born on April 23, 1968 in Lockport, New York, son of
William and Mildred
McVeigh; and as Mr. Hartzler has indicated to you, he has a sister, Jennifer,
younger
by six years, and an
older sister, Patricia, older by two years. Tim's dad, Bill McVeigh, had
been an auto
worker since 1963 and
his mother, Micki, worked at various jobs, including most frequently as
a travel
agent.
Their (sic) parents were
separated in June of 1984, when Tim was 16 years old, and they were divorced
in March of 1986. Tim
continued to live in the family home with his father, Bill. He grew up
in upstate
New York. Witnesses
will tell you that he started the first grade in September of 1974 in Lockport,
New
York, a small town just
outside of Buffalo.
He continued through
all of his schooling at Lockport. He made good grades except perhaps in
his senior
year -- in fact, well
above average grades. He got a honor pass award, which is reserved for
students who
exhibited above average
academic performance and initiative, in his senior year; and when he graduated
from the Star Point
High School in Lockport in June of 1986, he had a small regents' scholarship
to a state
university in New York;
but he didn't go to college.
He first started working
at Burger King in the fall of 1986, until the spring of 1987. Then he switched
jobs
and went to work as
an armored car driver for Burke's Security in Buffalo from the spring of
1987 to the
spring of 1988. It was
during that period of time that he knew and was well acquainted with some
of the
people that Mr. Hartzler
mentioned to you, friends of his, like Mr. Darlak that he grew up with
in upstate
New York.
Then he went to work
at the Burns International Security Service, March of 1992. He had a supervisory
position there, and
he left it in January of 1993. He came to Arizona, where his friends Mike
and Lori
Fortier lived; and Tim
worked at the TruValue Hardware store in Kingman beginning in 1993 and
again
as a security guard
at State Security during the same period of time. And then he went to work,
so to
speak, on his own, buying
and selling and trading weapons at the numerous gun shows held throughout
the country, of which
there are probably anywhere from 2- to 3,000 a year.
But in May of 1988, he
entered the armed services and stayed there until December of 1991, in
the
United States Army.
After Fort Benning, his permanent station duty was Fort Riley, Kansas.
And there he
became a gunner for
a Bradley fighting vehicle and repeatedly throughout his Army service,
as his friends
will testify here, he
achieved a top gun ranking. In fact, first among 93 other Bradley gunners.
He achieved extraordinary
advancement in the enlisted ranks from a private E1 to a sergeant E5 in
less
than three years. And
then when the Operation Desert Shield, which became Operation Desert Storm,
started, he served in
the front line assault, in the Kuwait/Iraq operations. He was literally
on the front
line and made one of
the first invasions into the enemy area.
During this service in
the military, he earned one of our highest awards, the Bronze Star. He
also earned
the Army Commendation
medal with an upgrade for valor. He received the Army Commendation medal,
two Army Achievement
medals, and several others. In fact, his unit was chosen to be the inner
perimeter
guard at the site where
General Schwarzkopf and his opposite number in the Iraqi army arranged
the
terms of the armistice
that ended the war.
After the war, he returned
to the United States. He came back initially to go into the special forces.
He
had been accepted into
it, but he had been in the desert for several months, had lost a considerable
amount of weight and
frankly physically wasn't up to it; so he and a friend of his who came
back with him
and joined on the same
day dropped out the second day, because they knew they weren't cut out
for his
physically. He went
back to Fort Riley, stayed in the service and then eventually got out,
went into the
reserves in New York,
and then went to work at some of the places that I have suggested to you
here.
That's basically his
background, where he grew up, who his parents were, where he worked, and
what
his position was.
Mr. McVeigh's motives
as described by the Government in Mr. Hartzler's opening address are that
he is
anti-government; that
he has a hatred for the United States, and that he conspired with others
to build a
terrible explosive device
which he initiated because he was angry at the government of the United
States.
Mr. Hartzler has told
you that the Government's evidence will consist of, among other things,
a shirt that
Mr. McVeigh was wearing
when he was arrested and that in his car he had all this patriot literature
-- it
was, after all, incidentally,
Patriots' Day, as Mr. Hartzler said -- quotations from John Locke, Patrick
Henry; but on this shirt,
he had sic semper tyrannis, the words spoken by John Wilkes Booth when
he
assassinated Abraham
Lincoln in Ford's theater. And the Government suggests to you that as an
expression of his motive.
Well, sic semper tyrannis
is also the official slogan of the state of Virginia and had been for almost
100
years before John Wilkes
Booth appropriated it. And it was chosen by three men: George Mason, a
member of the Virginia
House of Delegates, a member of the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia.
He authored several
amendments to the Constitution which were later adopted.
Another person who designed
that slogan and adopted it was the famous general Richard Henry Lee of
the American Revolutionary
Army, who signed the Declaration of Independence and was a delegate to
the First Continental
Congress in Philadelphia and introduced the famous resolution of June 7,
1776,
which called for the
disillusionment (sic) of ties between the United States and Great Britain;
and he
proposed the Tenth Amendment
to the Constitution, which was adopted, and later served as a United
States senator from
Virginia.
The third person who
participated in the selection was George Wythe, who signed the Declaration
of
Independence and was
a delegate to the continental Congress.
So sic semper tyrannis
is not the exclusive property of John Wilkes Booth. It has a meaning in
the
historical conservative
community of people who follow the revolutionary rule and its antecedents,
has
really nothing to do
only with John Wilkes Booth; likewise with the statement that Mr. McVeigh
made to
his sister that something
big is going to happen. Well, we will give you proof that in the last of
March and
the first part of April
of 1995, the something big that was going to happen didn't have anything
to do with
the bombing in Oklahoma
City. Those words and expressions and communications and conversations
were all over the Internet,
in which thousands of people exchanged communication back and forth
because they believed
that the federal government was about to initiate another Waco raid, except
this
time on a different
group.
Now, we're not concerned
with whether the federal government was going to do that. The point is
that
Mr. McVeigh was just
one of tens of thousands of people of his political persuasion who believed
that
something big was going
to happen in April of 1995.
There is no question
that the evidence will show that Mr. McVeigh was a political animal. He
studied
history, the Constitution,
the amendments to the Constitution. He carried them on his person. He
carried them in his
car, he carried them in his briefcase, and they were stacked in his house
and he laid
them out on tables at
gun shows. There isn't any dispute about that.
Likewise, he was extremely
upset with the subject of government abuse. Among the collection of
literature, including
that found in his car at the time of his arrest on Patriots' Day were John
Locke's
Second Treatise of Government,
quotations from Thomas Jefferson, quotations from Winston Churchill
and the Declaration
of Independence.
Tim McVeigh, along with
his sister and his friends, wrote letters to newspapers. They voted. His
politics
were open and known
to everyone that spent any time with him. There was no secret about the
politics
that Tim McVeigh had.
And part of those politics
had to do with the events, as Mr. Hartzler has described them, at Waco
and
Ruby Ridge.
Our proof will be that
Tim McVeigh believed that the federal government executed 76 people at
Waco,
including 30 women and
25 children. That was his political belief. He was not alone in that opinion.
He believed that the
federal law enforcement at Waco deployed in a military fashion against
American
citizens and children
who had committed no crime and that the Branch Davidians were not a cult
who
lived in a compound.
He believed that they were what they were, a break off of the Seventh Day
Adventist church who
had lived at Mount Carmel since the 1930's.
He believed that the
federal government undertook a course of action including the use of tanks
and CS
gas and other military
weapons against the Branch Davidians which was certain to result in their
death.
He believed that federal
agents fired upon the Davidians as they attempted to escape the fire. He
believed that these
actions and cover-up of these actions, as he saw it, pointed to a federal
government
out of control; and
he made no secret about it. He was at Waco. There is a videotape of Tim
McVeigh
which you will see in
evidence in a flannel shirt sitting on top of his car, talking to a television
reporter.
And on the top of the
car are bumper stickers that he is selling or giving away which describe
his political
beliefs.
He believed that the
government manipulated the press at Waco and that the words "cult" and
"compound" were used
to hide what was really going on.
He was not alone in those
beliefs. When the federal jury at San Antonio acquitted the Branch Davidians
of murder, he saw that
as validation; and when the Congress of the United States last year issued
its
report on Waco, he saw
that as validation.
He was also concerned
about Ruby Ridge, where Marshal Deacon, much celebrated member of the
United States Marshal's
Service, was killed. He believed there that the ATF had entrapped Randy
Weaver into committing
a crime by sawing off a small portion of a shotgun just below the line
to make it
illegal so that they
could then pressure Weaver into being an informant for the ATF in the community
in
northern Idaho 20 miles
from the Canadian border that Weaver had moved his family to, to live life
as he
wanted.
And he believed that
an FBI sniper, who was also at Waco, shot and killed Randy Weaver's wife
as she
was holding her daughter
and that they shot and killed a ten-year-old boy, Sammy, as he was running
towards the house. And
the jury on Ruby Ridge acquitted Randy Weaver of murder.
So his views weren't alone, and they certainly were not secret.
He had another belief:
He was strongly concerned about the Brady Bill, wrote angry letters about
it,
talked about it, didn't
like it. In his mind -- and the evidence will show -- the Brady Bill was
just the first
step to effectively
repeal the Second Amendment by taking away from people their right to own
guns and
to protect themselves
against abuses of the federal government.
Those were his beliefs.
Much of the rhetoric and writing that the Government will introduce and
call to
your attention was virulent
and caustic. It was extreme in some cases.
But there are many examples
of material -- and some of them, we will introduce -- possessed and studied
by Tim McVeigh which
were not. Among the items found in Mr. McVeigh's car at the time of his
arrest
was a statement in reference
to gun control. And along with the items that Mr. Hartzler said was found
and read from, this
was found: "Well, that's part of my contribution to defense of freedom,
this call to
arms. In the past, I
put to use the above points. I intend to become more active in the future.
I would
rather fight with pencil
lead than bullet lead. We can win this war in voting booth. If we have
to fight in
the streets, I would
not be so sure. Those guys have helicopters and tanks. Assault rifles and
223s are
ineffective against
an Abram tank or an Apache helicopter. All too often in the past, we gutsy
gun owners
have lost the battle
because we have failed to fight. The Brady Bill could have been defeated
in Congress
if gun owners had become
more involved in electing officials and communicating to those officials
what
was expected to them.
The Brady Bill will pass by the thinnest of margins. The next bills will
make Brady
look mild. Start your
defense today. Stamps are cheaper than bullets and can be more effective."
This was
also in Tim McVeigh's
car.
And among the others
was one by Abraham Lincoln: "To sin by silence when they should protest
makes
cowards of men."
We will prove to you
that the evidence that the Government brings to you which they call the
motive
for blowing up the building
proves nothing; that millions of innocent people fear and distrust the
federal
government and were
outraged and that being outraged is no more an excuse for blowing up a
federal
building than being
against the government means that you did it.
The federal government's
actions in reference to gun control and Waco trigger emotional responses
from people like Tim
McVeigh; but they are within the political and social mainstream. And among
those
people who held the
same views were Michael and Lori Fortier. Each of them expressed frequently
the
same views ascribed
to Tim McVeigh.
We will show you evidence
that Michael Fortier himself believed that the Government had murdered
innocent children at
Waco and had used excessive force at Ruby Ridge. The evidence of Michael
and
Lori Fortier will show
that people can have deep-seated convictions about these matters without
being
prompted to action.
Mr. Hartzler has also
discussed with you and the Government will introduce into evidence The
Turner
Diaries. The Turner
Diaries, we will show, has sold about 200,000 copies in this country. In
fact, you can
buy it down at the Tattered
Cover book store right here in Denver; and it is no more a blueprint, much
less a reason, to blow
up a federal building than Frederick Foresyth's novel The Day of the Jackal
is a
blueprint to assassinate
the president of France, or William Falkner's novel Sanctuary is a graphic
description of how men
can rape women by instrumentation, or that Lady Chatterly's Lover can teach
you how to make love.
The Government has argued,
Mr. Hartzler will tell you, and proved under their theory, that The Turner
Diaries was a blueprint
for the Oklahoma City bombing. The Government's evidence will say that
the
bombing of the FBI headquarters
in Washington -- and incidentally, that was the building, not a federal
building in the middle
of the country, but the offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
in
Washington. They have
argued that their evidence will be that Mr. McVeigh thought it was necessary
to
wake up America because
that was the theme of The Turner Diaries. And the prosecution's evidence,
as
Mr. Hartzler has told
you, will be that passages from The Turner Diaries demonstrate the motive
and the
purpose of the bombing.
I believe this is a convenient place to stop, your Honor.
THE COURT: All right. Thank you.
Well, members of the
jury, we will recess at this time We're going to recess for an hour and
a half,
which may seem like
a long time to you, but you have to realize that during these recesses,
particularly in
the noon recess, the
lawyers have things to do in organizing what's going to be presented to
you,
contacting witnesses
and the like; so that's why it seems, you know, for those who are not engaged
in all
of that an excessive
amount of time, but scheduling as matter that is my responsibility and
I believe the
time is well spent.
So, of course, during
this time, you'll be out of the courtroom, in your own area; but, of course,
my
instruction to you,
you must obey, which is don't talk about this now. We're just getting started.
You just
are hearing opening
statements, which are not evidence in the case; and there will be a lot
of witnesses
and a lot of exhibits;
so please don't talk about anything connected with this case. Everything
else is up to
you.
So you're excused now, an hour and a half.
(Jury out at 12:11 p.m.)
So I guess that's about 1:42. We'll be in recess.
(Recess at 12:12 p.m.)
* * * * *
THE COURT: Mr. Jones, you may resume.
OPENING STATEMENT CONTINUED
MR. JONES: Ladies and
gentlemen, this morning Mr. Hartzler outlined for you the Government's
evidence and proof as
he saw it concerning the role of a fictional account, The Turner Diaries,
would play
in this case. I want
to take now the opportunity to tell you what our evidence will be and the
interpretation that
we think is drawn from that proof and evidence.
The Government's argument
and proof is that The Turner Diaries was a blueprint for the Oklahoma City
bombing in two ways.
It was first an intellectual blueprint in the sense that Mr. McVeigh read
it and
believed in it and passed
it on to his friends, because the bombing of the building in The Turner
Diaries,
which is analogous to
the bombing of the building in Oklahoma City under the Government's proof,
was
done to wake up America;
and that, the Government contends, is what Mr. McVeigh was attempting to
do in bombing the building.
And the second way The
Turner Diaries is a blueprint is that the actual mechanical and technical
means to
blow up the building
in Oklahoma City are found in The Turner Diaries, that it is, if you will,
a cookbook,
a recipe, on how to
do in Oklahoma City what Earl Turner did in Washington, D.C.
The proof however that
we will offer is that the narrator -- that is, the first-person account
in The Turner
Diaries -- never indicated
that the bombing of the FBI headquarters was done to, quote, "wake up
America," close quote,
or, quote, "to send a message to the government," close quote, or for that
matter
to the American people.
The Turner Diaries will
be in evidence, and the proof will show that the expressly stated purpose
for the
fictional bombing to
destroy the FBI headquarters and the sub- basement was that it had a bank
of
computers which were
to be used for implementing what the author described as an Orwellian Big
Brother style of an
internal passport system which would enable the FBI to keep a record of
whereabouts of the citizens
at all times, a fictional account clearly distinguishable from the Government's
proof.
The second reason for
the fictional bombing in the book was to hamper the FBI's campaign of rounding
up members of the organization
to which the first-person narrator, Earl Turner, belonged.
At page 30 in the book
-- and you will be -- have it into evidence and you can read it for yourself
-- the
author states, "Apparently
revolutionary command has decided to take the offensive against the political
police before they arrest
too many more of our legals or finish up setting their computerized passport
system."
At page 36 a few pages
later, the author states, "The third reason for the bombing of the FBI
building is
the revolutionary command
feels that it is essential to strike the system immediately with a blow
which
will not only interrupt
the FBI roundup of our legals, at least temporarily, but will also raise
morale
throughout the organization
by embarrassing the system and demonstrating our ability to act."
From what Williams said,
I gather that these two goals have become even more pressing than the
original objective of
knocking out the computer bank.
Well, the evidence will
show the FBI isn't even in the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. Its
headquarters were at
50 Penn Place, some 4 or 5 miles away. The proof is that in The Turner
Diaries, the
motive for bombing of
the FBI headquarters was not the motive of the Government's proof ascribed
to
Mr. McVeigh. It was
the need to destroy a specific military target in an ongoing war that was
already in
place between the government
and the revolutionary organization. In short, it's a work of fiction.
Now, the second part
of the Government's proof, as Mr. Hartzler outlined it, is to say that
The Turner
Diary bomb is the blueprint
in composition, design and delivery of the so-called Ryder truck bomb
allegedly driven by
Mr. McVeigh.
Well, in the fictional
account in the book of the bombing of the FBI headquarters in Washington,
D.C.,
the explosive was ammonium
nitrate mixed with fuel. The detonator was homemade lead azide, and the
booster was commercially
manufactured dynamite.
The composition and construction
of the bomb, while you will receive it into evidence in this book, are
found on pages 32, 35,
36 and 38; and they are not, the proof will show, the composition, design
and
delivery of the Government's
theory of the bomb in this case.
The Government's proof
may be that something else was added: Anhydrous hydrazine and nitromethane.
Nitromethane is not
mentioned anywhere in The Turner Diaries as a component of the bomb. If
the
person that detonated
or manufactured the bomb for Oklahoma City had a blueprint for the bombing,
it
came from something
other than The Turner Diaries.
In the fictional FBI
bombing in The Turner Diaries, a key element was to deliver the bomb into
the
basement headquarters
where it would be confined and could do the maximum structural damage.
The
FBI bombing in The Turner
Diaries is much closer to the World Trade Center where a truck was driven
into the basement than
it is to the Oklahoma City bombing, which was a truck bomb outside the
building.
The Turner Diaries is
a novel, the proof will show. Tim McVeigh possessed it and praised some
aspects of
it, particularly its
message on gun control. It is 19 years old. That's how long its been available.
We
submit the evidence
will show it is not the blueprint for anything.
Now, if I could, I would like to turn my attention to the proof concerning the evidence in the case.
Mr. Hartzler told you
that he would call as witnesses to offer evidence Michael and Lori Fortier.
He told
you, "We could prove
the case without them," that they are certainly not dependent upon them.
Here is
what the proof will
show: They cannot prove the case without Michael Fortier; for under the
evidence
we will present, if
they could, they would have charged Michael Fortier.
The proof will also show
-- and Mr. Hartzler alluded to it -- that Mr. Fortier has pled guilty but
he has not
yet been sentenced.
His wife received a form of immunity, which he described for you, so she
cannot be
prosecuted at all. The
proof is that under the Government's theory, either one of these individuals,
if
what they say is true,
could have stopped this bombing. They did not.
The proof will also show
that at the conclusion of this case, Mr. Fortier at some time will be sentenced;
and part of his plea
bargain is that the Government may move for a downward departure of his
sentencing guidelines.
What those are will be explained by witnesses, but basically they will
show that
Mr. Fortier could face
up to 23 years in prison or he could be sentenced to as little as two years
in
prison. But the proof
will certainly indicate that whatever it is, I don't have any influence
on it. I don't
move for a downward
departure. I can't move for an upward departure. The only people that can
assist
Mr. Fortier when his
sentence day comes is the Government, not Mr. McVeigh's counsel.
Mr. Fortier will admit
to you that I cannot grant him immunity. I don't even have the power to
ask for it. I
don't have the power
or authority to seek the death penalty of him. I don't have the power or
authority
to seek the death penalty
for his wife. I don't have the authority to present evidence concerning
them to
the grand jury. I haven't
even talked with the gentleman. All of that he will admit.
The Government has the
power to arrest him; to indict him; to charge him with an offense that
carries
the death penalty; to
arrest, indict and charge his wife and expose her to the death penalty;
to determine
what charges will be
filed. More importantly the evidence will show what charges will not be
filed and,
as I've already indicated,
what sentence he will receive.
He will admit to you
that he has spent more time with Government prosecutors going over his
testimony
than has been spent
with any other witness in this case. I have yet to see the man, and he
will
acknowledge that.
Michael Fortier was born
in Maine. He moved to Kingman, where he lived at the time of the events
described in the indictment,
when he was in elementary school and he grew up there, out on old U.S.
66,
now Interstate 40 to
Los Angeles. He attended school there and then after high school completed
two
years in a community
college, known as the Mojave Community College; and he entered the military,
he
will admit, and the
Army from May of 1988 until May of 1991. And it was while he was in the
Army that
he met Tim McVeigh and
Terry Nichols and, of course, others.
He will tell you that
he had basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he met Terry Nichols,
who
was his platoon guide.
He also met Tim McVeigh in basic training, and they became friends and
roommates. His permanent
base, like Mr. Nichols and Mr. McVeigh, was at Fort Riley, Kansas.
When operation Desert
Storm came along, I believe Mr. Nichols was already out of the Army. Mr.
McVeigh went to Saudi
Arabia. Mr. Fortier did not. He was discharged in May of 1991 where he
will tell
you he returned to Kingman,
Arizona.
He had known the lady
that became his wife, Lori Hart, from high school. They lived together
in
Manhattan when he was
at Fort Riley. She came out, was with him. They had a child, and then he
married
her in July of 1994
at Treasure Island resort hotel in Las Vegas, and Tim McVeigh was his best
man. The
Fortiers have a daughter;
and at the time of this event and his questioning by the Government, he
was
expecting their second
child.
After being discharged
-- and he received an honorable discharge from the military -- he worked
at the
TruValue hardware store
in Kingman and attended community college. He quit his job at the store
in
December 1994 over some
disagreement. That's irrelevant to these proceedings.
He claimed to have had
a crushed disk from which he received medical treatment from the Veteran's
Administration Hospital
in Prescott, Arizona; and he complained that he had back problems which
made
it difficult for him
to sit at a desk. In fact he gave back problems as the reason for wanting
to rent a large
car from the rental
agency in Manhattan, Kansas, at the airport in December 1994 in the incident
that Mr.
Hartzler described to
you.
He was out of work during
much of the time that we're talking about here, supposedly because of these
medical problems. He
and his wife lived in a trailer house in Kingman; and during part of the
time, Mr.
McVeigh lived there
with him. But Mr. McVeigh also at different times had a different place
that he lived
there in Kingman away
from them.
Michael and Lori Fortier's
political beliefs were very similar to Tim McVeigh's. That's one of reasons
for
their friendship. They
were completely aware of Mr. McVeigh's government theories, and they were
also
completely aware --
and we will introduce evidence to that effect -- of the Government's theory
in this
case about Tim McVeigh
long before they made any statements to the FBI concerning that theory.
In
other words, the proof
will show that what they told the Government they had already read about
in the
Kingman Daily Miner
and the Arizona Republic and seen on television and probably heard on the
radio
what the Government's
theory was.
Beginning on April the
19, 1995, and continuing for almost a full month until May 17, 1995, the
Fortiers
read countless newspaper
articles, watched constant television coverage concerning the Government's
investigation of the
Oklahoma City bombing. They will admit to you that they studied these news
accounts before making
any statements which would tend to support the Government's theory.
Aspects of the Government's
case which we will introduce which appeared prominently in the
newspapers and media
sources directly available to the Fortiers include the following: That
the
Government believed
that the bomb was carried in a Ryder truck; that the Government believed
the
truck was rented at
Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City, Kansas; that the person that rented
the truck had
used the alias Robert
Kling; that the Government believed the bomb was constructed at Geary Lake
State Park; that the
Government believed Tim McVeigh left a getaway car in Oklahoma City on
April 16,
1995; that the Government
believed that Terry Nichols and Tim McVeigh had constructed the bomb and
that Tim McVeigh had
driven the truck which carried the bomb; that the Government believed that
storage sheds were used
to conceal the components of the bomb; and that the Government believed
the
bomb was constructed
of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil contained within plastic barrels.
All of that Michael Fortier
knew was the Government's theory before he began cooperating with the
Government.
Not only did they read
these accounts in the Arizona Republic newspaper, they had access to the
Kingman
Daily Miner, their hometown
newspaper, which was full of details concerning it because the FBI was
conducting a wide-ranging
investigation in Kingman.
The proof will show that
Michael and Lori Fortier's subsequent statements were designed to support
the
reports that they had
read about that was the Government's theory before they decided to cooperate.
In fact, Michael Fortier
would admit to you that he went so far as to confront the FBI with a copy
of the
Arizona Republicnewspaper
of Sunday, April 23, 1995, concerning what he said were false reports.
Notations and highlights
that Mr. Fortier set forth in the newspaper itself, include "never knew
him to
shoot illegally," "not
true to my knowledge,""anyone charged not convicted should fear for their
lives,"
"guilty until proven
innocent."
In reference to Mr. Nichols
frequenting Mr. Fortier's home, Mr. Fortier wrote, "Never, ever, pure
fabrication, which will
be taken as true," and, quote, "Never heard of this story," close quote.
So the evidence will
clearly show that he followed the Government's investigation and knew what
they
were doing from the
newspaper. The evidence will show that these reports that he read, which
he now
supports, before he
began to cooperate with the Government, he vehemently denied to the FBI,
to
friends, to CNN, Los
Angeles Times and anybody else that talked with him.
The Government will offer
evidence and proof, we believe, that Mr. Fortier visited various sites
associated with this
case under the Government's theory. But our evidence is that Michael Fortier
knew
these sites. He had
lived in Junction City, Kansas. He had been at Fort Riley. He had been
through
Herington. He knew where
Geary State Lake was. He knew all of this area because he and Lori had
lived
there during the time
that he was in the military. He had been stationed at Fort Riley for three
years and
lived in Manhattan,
Kansas, right in the center of this area, for two of those years. He had
also traveled
through Oklahoma City
with Tim McVeigh when both of them were in the service in 1988.
But in addition to his
military service, the evidence will show that both Michael and Lori Fortier
had the
same political philosophy
attributed to Tim McVeigh and, incidentally, Terry Nichols. Both Michael
and
Lori were outraged over
the Government's actions at Waco, and Michael Fortier told the FBI as much.
Both possessed and used
firearms, and Michael Fortier possessed explosives; and they possessed
all of
same literature or certainly
much of it that was found in a box that one of Jennifer's friends was keeping
of Tim McVeigh's belongings.
Michael Fortier possessed a copy of what's called The Citizens' Rule Book.
He was a subscriber
to the Spotlight newsletter just like my client and a subscriber to the
Patriot
Reports, and he possessed
his own copy of The Turner Diaries.
Michael and Lori Fortier,
we will prove, proclaimed Tim McVeigh's innocence to the world repeatedly.
They even prepared a
written press release that Lori Fortier wrote out which Michael Fortier
delivered
in an interview with
Sean Calebs of CNN on April the 26th, 1995.
Beginning on April the
21st, the proof will show, Mr. Fortier made seven separate detailed statements
to
the FBI in which he
denied knowledge of the bombing and proclaimed Tim's innocence. Lori Fortier
was
present for most if
not all of these statements.
Even after Mr. Fortier
began cooperating with the FBI on May 17, 1995, he claimed that he did
not know
the guns provided by
McVeigh had been stolen in this robbery that the Government will introduce
evidence concerning;
and Mr. Fortier at that time made no mention of the Marion County quarry
burglary that Mr. Hartzler
mentioned to you. But after he had numerous contacts -- and there will
be
proof of those -- with
agents, then Mr. Fortier remembered those details and added to them.
The Government obtained
court-ordered surveillance by electronic means of Mr. and Mrs. Fortier.
They
followed them when they
left their apartment. They made their presence well known. They kept
surveillance logs --
you'll see them -- and were following them almost heel to toe. But they
followed
them in a way that the
Fortiers did not know because they had made, as the law permits, an application
to the district court
out there to obtain what we call a bug, placing it inside the Fortiers'
house so that
every word Michael and
Lori said was secretly recorded without their knowledge. And in addition,
they
had a tap on the telephone
so that whoever called -- and most of the phone calls were from media
sources seeking interviews
-- but whoever called, their father, their mother, their friends, their
brother,
those conversations,
unbeknownst to the Fortiers, were secretly tape-recorded; and you will
hear some
of them.
On April the 21st, Mr.
Fortier was questioned by the FBI; and he stated to them that he knew that
Mr.
McVeigh had been charged
because of TV coverage, but he told the FBI that he did not think Tim
McVeigh was capable
of participation in the Oklahoma City bombing.
He was interviewed a
second time on the same day by the FBI, and this time he told the FBI that
he had
not seen or had contact
with Terry Nichols since Mr. Fortier was discharged from the Army. He also
told them that he had
no knowledge of or complicity in the bombing.
The next day, April 22nd,
Mr. Fortier told FBI agents that the Oklahoma City investigation was a
witch
hunt, and he stated
unequivocally that he did not believe McVeigh did it.
The following day he
was reinterviewed, and Mr. Fortier told the FBI that Mr. McVeigh had never
spoken generally or
specifically about any bombs; and it was Mr. Fortier that said that he
had not cried
over the children killed
in Oklahoma City because children are being killed all over the world.
In a second interview
on April the 23rd, 1985 (sic), Mr. Fortier told agents that he had never
been
involved with explosives
and only discussed guns with the Government -- and the Government with
Tim
McVeigh. He again told
the FBI that he picked up no indication whatsoever from Tim McVeigh that
Mr.
McVeigh would commit
the Oklahoma City bombing. The next day he was again interviewed; and on
April 24th, he again
told the FBI, "I have no knowledge of the bombing."
On May the 1st, the FBI
warned Mr. Fortier they were going to search his house, they had obtained
a
search warrant. The
evidence will show that ordinarily search warrants are executed and carried
out
without calling somebody
on the phone or telling them they're going to be searched, because of course
they might hide or destroy
evidence. You get the search warrant, you go out and search somebody's
house.
Our proof is this: The
Government knew that Mr. Fortier had drugs, he used them, maybe distributed
them, possessed them.
They didn't want to find drugs in his house, so they told him they were
going to
search it. Mr. Fortier
took the drugs out, gave them to his next-door neighbor, and there were
no drugs
there when the FBI arrived
a few minutes later.
On May the 6th, Mr. Fortier
was served with a grand jury subpoena, and he told the agents he didn't
think
he could be of any additional
help because he didn't know anything; and then a few days later -- and
there
will be evidence on
this -- something happened. On Wednesday, May 10th, an article appeared
in the
Phoenix Gazette which
indicated that Terry Nichols had now been charged as a direct participant
in the
Oklahoma City bombing.
Mr. Fortier read this article, and he now understood that Mr. Nichols as
well
as Mr. McVeigh could
face the death penalty if convicted. He also understood from the article
that Mr.
Nichols was being charged
not only as a direct participant but as an aider and abettor of the crime.
The article he read indicated
that Mr. Nichols and Mr. McVeigh had a long association, just like Mr.
Fortier and Mr. McVeigh
had; that Mr. Nichols and Mr. McVeigh had been through basic training
together. And Mr. Fortier
will tell you he had been through basic training with them; that they had
sometimes shared a house
together. Mr. Fortier will tell you that he and Mr. McVeigh had shared
a
house together.
The article indicated
that the FBI and authorities had found guns, ammunition, anti- government
literature
and other material at
Terry Nichols' house.
Mr. Fortier will tell
you that he had guns and ammunition, explosives and anti- government literature
at
his house. He perceived
he would be next, our proof is. He had a long association with Tim just
like
Terry. Like Mr. Nichols,
Mr. McVeigh and Fortier had gone through basic training together, they
both
shared a house together,
they both had fertilizer at their houses; and like Nichols, Mr. Fortier
had guns,
ammunition and anti-government
literature.
Two days after Terry
Nichols had been charged as a participant in the Oklahoma City bombing,
on May
12, 1995, Michael Fortier
contacted the FBI and told them he wanted to cooperate. Prior to this meeting
with the FBI at which
he had wanted to cooperate, in the sanctity of his own home, Mr. Fortier
told,
through these wiretaps
and bugs, his closest friends and his family that he had no knowledge of
the
bombing and that Tim
McVeigh was innocent.
In the privacy of his
home and on the privacy of his telephone away from the television and newspaper
and FBI agents outside,
he specifically stated the following: He told his brother John that the
FBI played
games, lied to him and
used intimidation against him and his wife. He told his brother John that
the FBI
implied that they were
going to change the sketch of John Doe 2 to make it look like Fortier,
and he
repeated those concerns
in a nationwide interview on CNN.
He told his brother John
that the FBI had planted earplugs in his Jeep. He told his friend Lonnie
Hubbard
that "The FBI harassed
the fuck out of me." He told Lonnie Hubbard that, quote, "I don't know
jack,"
close quote, about the
Oklahoma City bombing.
He told his father that
he had been truthful to the FBI when he said he had no knowledge, and he
told his
father that he didn't
believe Tim would ever do anything like the Oklahoma City bombing. He told
his
mother and his brother,
Irene Fortier and Paul Fortier, that the FBI had been lying to his family;
and he
then said, "All I know
is they don't tell you the truth."
But he didn't just make
these statements to his family in the privacy of his home. He repeated
them
publicly. I've already
mentioned the handwritten press release. And in the statement, Michael
and Lori
Fortier say the following:
"I would also like to say to everyone that Timothy McVeigh is a close friend
of
my family and mine.
He stands accused of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building; but
from
knowing him, I believe
in no way he was responsible for this crime. This country has been a witness
to
how the alleged suspect,
Timothy McVeigh, has already been crucified by all the lies put forth by
the
media.
We have all seen how
the alleged suspect, Timothy McVeigh, has been portrayed in the media;
and it
truly sickens me when
I see my friend's -- yes, my friend's -- face portrayed on the front of
Time magazine
as the face of terror.
All of this for what reason? Premise was he was arrested and charged in
connection
with the bombing of
the Alfred P. Murrah Building. It was only because he fit the description
of a
composite sketch. In
this country there are probably a half a million people that could fit
that sketch.
Hell, for that matter,
there are probably a lot of people who fit it better than Tim. What I mean
by this is
Tim's actual physical
description is 6' 2" to 6' 3", 160 to 165 pounds, male, far from the composite
sketch
of John Doe 1's description
of a 5' 8" to 5' 11", 180- to 185-pound male. They better have more than
this
to arrest the man; but
then again, they needed somebody to arrest for this crime." That's what
he said.
The proof will show that
on April the 27, 1995, Mr. and Mrs. Fortier at their own initiative traveled
to a
park near their home
for the purpose of an interview with CNN. He gave a detailed interview
to the
reporter, and he said
the following, in part: "I have spoken with the FBI, and I get the impression
that
sketch is being modify
to fit my face. I mean that I know my friend Tim McVeigh is not the face
of terror
reported on Time magazine.
I cannot say that. See, everybody just assumes that he did it automatically,
and everybody wants
to know why he did it or, you know, what he was thinking and stuff like
that. The
only fact is that this
man was caught speeding on a highway in Oklahoma, and that is his only
crime; and
that why he speeds,
I don't know. I'm not sure what you're insinuating what Nichols said; but
no, no, I
don't believe that Tim
blew up any building in Oklahoma. There is nothing for me to look back
upon and
say, ah, yeah, that
might have been. I should have seen it back then. There was nothing like
that, you
know; and everybody
should be supportive of him because he's an innocent man."
From time to time, the
proof will show, Michael and Lori Fortier checked and double-checked to
be
sure that their statements
were consistent before they made their first joint statement to the FBI.
On May the 17th, 1995,
in a Motel 6 room in Oklahoma City, Michael and Lori Fortier had a one-hour,
private meeting to discuss
what they would say to the FBI.
We will offer evidence that they have been in constant communication ever since then.