I *really* do not understand why this whole subject has not drawn more scrutiny on this board, goodness knows I've tried before. Here's hoping some of these things can be explored at trial...
The mystery of John Doe No. 2
McVeigh may die, but the FBI's shoddy case means suspicions that he had at least one other accomplice will live on.
By David Neiwert
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June 09, 2001 | The main thing Joann Van Buren says she remembers about Timothy McVeigh is the $50 bill he wanted her to break. That, and the two men who accompanied him.
One day before he tore a hole in the nation's psyche with the bomb that destroyed Oklahoma City's Murrah Federal Building, McVeigh, Van Buren says, pulled up to the little Subway sandwich shop where she worked in Junction City, Kansas, driving the yellow Ryder truck that would contain the bomb.
Van Buren didn't pay any particular attention to them at first. Another clerk waited on the men, but when they tried to pay for their meal with a large bill, she took notice.
"As soon as the $50 bill came up, I had to go to the safe to get the change," says Van Buren today. "And when I gave them the change and they got their sandwiches, I remember them going back over to the corner, sitting down. And when they left, I remember three people getting into the truck. There were three people at the table."
The clerks she worked with later told FBI agents that two of the men matched the descriptions of McVeigh and his cohort, Terry Nichols. The third was a shorter, dark-haired and muscular man with an olive complexion: a perfect fit for the figure destined to be known as John Doe 2.
Luckily, the Subway shop actually had a video camera recording that day's events. When Van Buren contacted the FBI, agents interviewed everyone working in the shop on April 18. And when they were done, they confiscated the video recorded that day.
But if that tape showed a third co-conspirator with McVeigh and Nichols, no one outside the FBI can say. No one beyond the agency ever saw it. In the waning days of Nichols' trial, his defense attorneys discovered the details of Van Buren's story -- which had only been described in generic terms in the FBI's report, omitting her contention that two men accompanied McVeigh -- along with information contained in some 43,000 other "lead sheets" that the FBI until then had failed to turn over to them.
Michael Tigar, who led the Nichols defense, tried in 1999 to use the FBI's failures to produce all relevant documents to gain a new trial for his client. But U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch refused, saying the withheld material would not have altered the trial's outcome.
He likely was right. In fact, Nichols' jury had already refused to give him the death penalty largely because of some jurors' belief that more people were involved in the bombing than merely McVeigh, Nichols and Michael and Lori Fortier, the Arizona couple who were acquaintances with the two men and who were the prosecution's chief witnesses. That belief is also shared by thousands of conspiracy theorists who remain convinced the whole truth about the Oklahoma City bombing has not been told. Nichols' verdict stands as nearly the sole validation that the bombing may not have been the product of two lone bombers.
And when the FBI admitted it had failed to turn over another 3,100 documents to defense attorneys, fresh fuel was thrown onto those fires. McVeigh's execution was delayed a month as lawyers for both men started combing through the withheld information to see if it might give them an opportunity to overturn at least their sentences, if not their convictions. His execution is now scheduled for Monday.
But just as he hovered in the background of numerous eyewitness accounts like Joann Van Buren's, the figure of John Doe No. 2 almost certainly lurks within those withheld documents -- and he will continue to haunt the Oklahoma City case after McVeigh is executed. And, in an era that has seen more FBI foul-ups than any other time in history, the bureau's inability to explain away the repeated accounts of additional participants in the bombings has raised legitimate questions about the quality of its own investigation -- as well as fueled thoughts of larger conspiracies that will live beyond McVeigh.
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Jose Padilla and John Doe No. 2
By J.M. BERGER
INTELWIRE.com
Shortly after the announcement of alleged al Qaeda dirty bomber Jose Padilla's arrest in June 2002, a number of Internet sites posted a comparison of Padilla's 1991 mug shot to a police sketch of John Doe No. 2, a never-apprehended suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing. Stories on the comparison appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Herald, as well as on the Web site of the Village Voice, NBC's "Today Show," and NPR's "Here and Now" radio news program, among others.
INTELWIRE has extensively investigated Padilla in an effort to confirm or refute such a connection. As of this writing, no conclusive evidence exists on either side of the debate. While some misconceptions about possible links have been disproven, there is a surprising amount of circumstantial support for the premise.
However, it should be stressed that no case for an Islamic extremist connection to Oklahoma City has yet achieved the highest standards of physical evidence. Although some credible independent investigations of the case continue, as of this writing such links must continue to be categorized as unproven.
John Doe 2
John Doe No. 2 was suspected of being an accomplice who assisted Timothy McVeigh in assembling and possibly deploying the ammonium nitrate-nitromethane bomb that destroyed the Alfred E. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
There were several credible sightings of a man seen with McVeigh in Kansas in the days preceding the Oklahoma City bombing, as well as a large number of largely inconsistent reports concerning the day of the bombing.
John Doe 2, as described by various witnesses quoted in media reports and McVeigh defense team notes, was five-foot-nine to five-foot-ten, about 180 pounds, with a dark complexion, dark hair and a tattoo on his left arm. Witnesses who saw John Doe 2 in Kansas in the days preceding the bombing almost universally described his as Hispanic. Although later media reports and speculation among conspiracy theorists cast the suspect as being of Middle Eastern descent, the original reports do not reflect that characterization. The vast majority of John Doe 2 sightings took place between April 14, 1995 and April 19, 1995.
The FBI distributed two composite sketches of John Doe 2, as well as a sketch later determined to be Timothy McVeigh and another later determined to be Terry Nichols.
Jose Padilla, an ethnic Puerto Rican, is five-foot-10 and weighed 170 pounds at the time of his arrest in 1991, according to Florida criminal records. A mid-1990s driver's license photo and a 1991 mug shot of Padilla closely resemble the composite sketch. Padilla was a chronic traffic offender with frequent citations for driving violations. Florida state DMV records obtained by INTELWIRE indicate that Padilla had no documented violations in the state from January 1995 through June 1995.
After an extensive manhunt, the FBI declared there had never been a John Doe 2, and said the hunt had been based on a mistaken identification by the owner of the store where Timothy McVeigh rented the Ryder truck used in the attack.
However, there is substantial reason for even a "conspiracy skeptic" to question the FBI's conclusions in the case, as reflected in several mainstream news media reports and the public results of the FBI's internal investigations into the handling of the OKCBOMB investigation:
# Testimony relating to John Doe 2 came from several individuals in the same time frame, most of whom were unconnected to the truck rental store.
# Several investigative stories by Associated Press reporter John Solomon in 2002 have cast significant doubt on the FBI's handling of OKCBOMB and the agency's conclusions that McVeigh acted alone.
# At least two internal FBI investigations of the OKCBOMB investigation have uncovered substantial irregularities, in the areas of forensics and document production.
Close Encounter: McVeigh, Hassoun and Padilla in Florida
Timothy McVeigh quit his job at the end of 1992 and traveled to Plantation, FL, in early 1993, where he attended gun shows while visiting with his sister.
During the same period, Jose Padilla first began reaching out to make contacts in the local Islamic community, according to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Around the same time, Padilla met a representative of the Benevolence International Foundation, which had an office in Plantation, FL, about five minutes away from Padilla's workplace and about 20 minutes from the home where McVeigh was living, according to evidence and testimony presented in several criminal cases.
According to the New York Times and a 2002 FBI affidavit, al Qaeda was actively recruiting American citizens during this period. The Times quoted Padilla's manager at the Taco Bell during this period as saying that terrorist recruiters were known to be circulating in the community.
The founder of the Benevolence office was Adham Hassoun, a local Palestinian activist. According to a indictment unsealed in January 2004, Hassoun illegally possessed a firearm. The alleged date and place of purchase was not immediately known. McVeigh sold at gun shows on at least two separate occasions in early 1993, according to trial testimony.
According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, in a separate proceeding "Immigration Judge Neale Foster found Hassoun participated in an assassination plot, recruited a "jihad fighter," donated money to charities under investigation for possible links to terrorism and belonged to an international terrorist organization called Al-Gama Al-Islamiyya, according to Hassoun's petition for release to a federal district judge. That petition was denied."
Al-Gama Al-Islamiyya, also known as the Islamic Group, is tied to a New York City al Qaeda cell whose spiritual leader was Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. One member of that cell, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, recruited U.S. military veterans for al Qaeda, as reported in an INTELWIRE exclusive investigative report. The al Qaeda recruitment plot corresponds closely to the movements of McVeigh and Terry Nichols in key time frames.
During the planning and execution of the OKCBOMB plot, McVeigh and Terry Nichols both traveled in and around Chicago, where the Benevolence International Foundation was based in from mid-1993 on. Padilla had a son in Chicago, where he had been raised. Nichols traveled through Illinois on the way to a gun show just days before the first sightings of John Doe 2, according to testimony and evidence at his and McVeigh's trial.
No Relation to Nichols Ex-Wife
One misconception fueling the initial interest in Padilla as a candidate for John Doe 2 was his surname. Terry Nichols, McVeigh's accomplice in the OKC plot, had an ex-wife named Lana Padilla, a resident of Las Vegas, NV. Nichols and Padilla had an amicable relationship and shared a son, Josh.
Interviewed in 2002, Lana Padilla said she was not aware of any relation to Jose Padilla. Lana Padilla's surname came from a former marriage. There is no evidence to suggest that Leonard Padilla, Lana's ex-husband, is related to Jose Padilla in any way. Lana Padilla continues to aver that she believes there was a John Doe 2 (an argument which supports the legal position of her ex-husband, currently facing a potential death sentence in an Oklahoma trial).
(C) 2004, J.M. Berger, All Rights Reserved.
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Ex-CIA agent believes in a John Doe 2
Published: March 23, 2002
The Indianapolis Star
Though the U.S. government clings to the notion that Timothy McVeigh, acting alone, set off the horrendous explosion on April 19, 1995, that pancaked the nine-story Oklahoma City federal building, a former high-ranking CIA official says there's solid evidence to indicate he worked with an Iraqi John Doe No. 2.
Larry Johnson, former CIA officer and deputy director of the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism, told a network news show this week the FBI had failed to properly investigate significant eyewitness accounts of McVeigh meeting with the man believed to be a former Iraqi soldier.
Johnson made those comments on The Big Story with John Gibson, a Fox news program airing nightly at 5 p.m., which delved into an extensive dossier on the case compiled by former Oklahoma TV reporter Jayna Davis. The program aired just days after a lawsuit filed by the watchdog organization Judicial Watch that alleges Iraqi involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing and seeks compensation for victims from frozen Iraqi assets.
Davis, who reported from Ground Zero in Oklahoma City for NBC-affiliate KFOR, broadcast a series suggesting a possible accomplice to the bombing who had been seen with McVeigh on the days leading up to and the day of the bombing. Gibson unabashedly reported Davis' work to a national TV audience on three consecutive days this week.
On Monday, Gibson relayed that Davis' evidence is based "on the simple proposition that Tim McVeigh's John Doe 2 was an Iraqi, a former Iraqi soldier from the Gulf War, paroled into the U.S. under a claim of political asylum, known to be in Oklahoma City as of November of '94 almost a year before the Murrah bombing, spotted with McVeigh by multiple witnesses, and who in recent years was working at (Boston) Logan airport," where the Sept. 11 hijackings originated.
On Tuesday, Gibson posed the question to Johnson about a possible link between Iraq and Oklahoma City.
"I think this woman (Davis) has done a remarkable job of finding a link that was overlooked," Johnson said. Johnson also commented on a Justice Department review of the thousands of documents that resurfaced or were destroyed, delaying McVeigh's execution for a month.
"The FBI . . ., they still have not turned over all of the documents to the defense teams that came out of Oklahoma," he said. "In particular, the information that links, shows possible links to Middle Eastern subjects."
KFOR's reports distorted the face of one of those suspects and did not name him. However, on his own volition, a former Iraqi soldier who claims he surrendered to the U.S. in the Gulf War and who was brought to the United States from a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, stepped forward and identified himself to two other Oklahoma City TV stations and The Associated Press as the man that KFOR had implicated as John Doe No. 2.
Hussain Hashem Alhussaini sued KFOR and Davis for defamation, saying the reports falsely identified him as John Doe No. 2. But a U.S. District Court disagreed. In ruling for KFOR, U.S. District Judge Timothy Leonard found in November 1999 that the station had taken extraordinary measures to hide Alhussaini's identity.
Leonard added that KFOR's reports were either "based on fact or a matter of opinion," and not negligence or reckless disregard for the truth. Alhussaini, who went to work at Boston's Logan International Airport after leaving Oklahoma City, continues to deny any involvement in the bombing. Former CIA Agent Johnson is unconvinced.
"I compared it to all the human intelligence I've looked at," he said. "And comparing it to classified material, this is not from just one witness, this is not from two witnesses; you're talking 23 people, you're talking at least 10 people who put Tim McVeigh with Hussain Alhussaini before the Oklahoma City bombing.
"Two people who identified Hussain Alhussaini and Tim McVeigh in a bar on April 15; three people who identified Hussain Alhussaini running from the federal building early in the morning at 5:30 as if he is practicing timing himself. You have two witnesses that put Tim McVeigh with Hussain Alhussaini in the Ryder truck; you have one witness inside the Murrah Building who sees Hussain Alhussaini eating out of the truck . . .
"The point is the FBI has not thoroughly, fully investigated this. It is an outrage. I went along for many years thinking they have covered the bases. They have not, John."
You can't say Davis didn't try. She tried to give the witness statements to the FBI in the fall of '97, but it wouldn't take them.
Copyright 2003 IndyStar.com. All rights reserved
These are just randomly selected examples, peeps. Put Elohim City (the white supremecist compund in Oklahoma that was infiltrated by the FBI and McVeigh visited in the months before the bombing), on search, and you'll find tons more.
OTOH, there are certainly plenty of webpages that look over the same evidence and come to what are essentially the government's conclusuion's. I'm not saying these people aren't all whack, by any means...
But, c'mon, +/- 300 posts to 'Was The Moon Landing Hoaxed?', and we can't generate some good conspiracy on the OKC bombing?
Other than the bit about politics... who is the arbiter of right and wrong in what is effecitively an act of faith akin to religious belief. High ground is a wonderful place to be... I'd like to visit it one day...