From: rlawler@dfw.net (Rick Lawler)
Subject: SNET: IRA Supplied Detonator For OKC Bombing
To: snetnews@world.std.com
Date sent: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 01:05:07 -0600 (CST)

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International News Electronic Telegraph
Sunday 30 March 1997 Issue 674

IRA 'supplied detonator for Oklahoma terror bomb'

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Washington

THE Provisional IRA supplied the detonator used in the Oklahoma bombing two years ago, the worst terrorist attack on American soil, defence lawyers for the chief suspect, Timothy McVeigh, have claimed.

Documents submitted to the court in Denver where McVeigh's trial will begin tomorrow allege that a neo-nazi cell had been conspiring to blow up a US federal building in early 1995 and had received assistance from "Sinn Fein", described as "the Irish terrorist group". The source of the allegations is Carol Howe, an American government informer. If proved, the claim of IRA involvement in the Oklahoma bombing would mark the most disastrous setback to the republicans' cause in decades.

Any IRA link to mass murder in America would destroy the fruits of years of lobbying by Sinn Fein in Washington and devastate republican fund-raising. A US president would never again shake hands with a Sinn Fein leader such as Gerry Adams. Rumours of an Irish connection to the bombing have surfaced repeatedly in the case for McVeigh's defence. Stephen Jones, his lawyer, has visited Northern Ireland and interviewed a member of the IRA and officials from MI5 and Belfast counter-terrorism specialists.

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

McVeigh's defence says that it was the neo-Nazi group, based at Elohim City, Oklahoma, and which called itself the Aryan Republican Army, which was responsible for the terrorist attack, in which 168 people died.

The defence team is accusing the government of withholding documents critical to the trial's conduct and is demanding the release of all reports that Ms Howe gave to her case officer. The government counters that McVeigh's defence team is using "smoke and mirrors" to undermine the prosecution case by sowing confusion.

Ms Howe alleges that the link with the IRA was Andreas Strassmeir. A former officer in the German army, he became chief of paramilitary operations at Elohim City and trained large numbers of zealots who passed through the camp. McVeigh tried to telephone Strassmeir at Elohim City shortly before the bombing and left a message saying: "Tell Andy I'll be coming through."

There appears to be a bizarre link between the IRA and the US neo-Nazi movement. Dennis Mahon, a leader of the White Aryan Resistance and a friend of Strassmeir, claims that he has given advice to the IRA, encouraging the terrorists to murder "top British officers and police officials" but to avoid indiscriminate attacks that kill civilians.

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