Informant Accuses FBI Over Oklahoma Bomb

Sunday Telegraph 20/July/1997 International

By Ivo Dawnay in Washington

GAPING cracks are opening in the US Justice Department's claim that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was the exclusive work of the convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh and his alleged co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, who is still awaiting trial.

A month after McVeigh, a 29-year-old former soldier, was unanimously sentenced to die by a Denver jury</a>, most Americans would prefer to forget the horrendous deaths of 168 men, women and children in what was the worst act of domestic terrorism in the country's history.

However, in Oklahoma itself, especially among many of the victims' families, the clamour is growing for further inquiries into a wider conspiracy. Many believe that the authorities are suppressing the truth.

In a case due to open next week in Tulsa, jurors will hear fresh evidence that US security agencies had ample forewarning of an attack on a federal target, possibly Oklahoma City's Murrah building. The testimony will come from Carol Howe, 28, daughter of a wealthy Tulsan, who acted for two-and-a-half years as an undercover informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). In the McVeigh trial it was disallowed as irrelevant by Judge Richard Matsch.

Now Howe, an avowed white separatist, is facing charges, including conspiracy to make threats and possession of a bomb, that her defenders claim were brought to intimidate her.

Those who believe her claims had expected that the charges might subsequently be dropped in return for her silence. However, Howe's version of events - while still all but unreported in the mainstream media - is now on the public record in appeal documents submitted by McVeigh's lawyer, Stephen Jones.

Her story, backed up by plentiful documentary evidence, is simple. A victim of an assault by three black youths, she drifted towards the white racist movement where she met Denis Mahon, a leader of the so-called White Aryan Resistance group, linked to an Oklahoma commune of extremists called Elohim City.

After allegedly being sexually assaulted by Mahon, she filed an Emergency Protective Order against him, thereby alerting the interest of the ATF. Approached by ATF agent Angela Finley, she agreed to act as an informant. Her numerous reports included warnings that some at the commune planned to bomb a federal building.

According to Mr Jones's appeal submission, Agent Finley's handwritten notes confirm a report from Howe that Mahon had bomb-making expertise. He had told her he had exploded a 500lb ammonium nitrate bomb in Michigan five years earlier.

Howe also reported that Mahon, together with another Elohim resident, the German-born "head of security" Andreas Strassmeir, had taken three trips to "case" Oklahoma City.

Prosecution attorneys have cast doubt on Howe's credibility. They point to her undisputed white separatist sympathies and that she once sought psychiatric help.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence that Howe's reports were taken extremely seriously by the ATF. Mr Jones's defence appeal also points out that she was immediately rehired by the ATF in the wake of the Oklahoma bomb and sent back to Elohim City to gather more information. She continued to be on the payroll until December last year.

Charges were brought against her last March after she and her fiance, Jim Viefhaus, were said to have recorded an alleged bomb threat on a telephone "newsline" and to have been in possession of a bomb. Her defence is expected to claim that the taped threat was the work of Viefhaus, which she had opposed, and that the bomb equipment was part of her "cover".

What is most worrying for prosecuting attorneys is that Howe claims little knowledge of Tim McVeigh. Instead she identified from descriptions several other Elohim figures, including Mahon, Strassmeir and a bank robber, Michael Brescia, as likely bombers. But to date, although the FBI is said to have spoken to more than 20,000 individuals in America's most extensive criminal inquiry, Mahon has yet to be interviewed. Strassmeir, another suspect named by Howe, has been only cursorily interviewed in Germany by telephone.

That has prompted further speculation that the murky world of Elohim City was a nest of undercover agents and agents provocateurs, many of whom were working for the authorities - possibly on different inquiries.

A theory shared by believers in a wider conspiracy is that the government is covering up a bungled "sting" operation that may have involved a squabble over jurisdiction between the FBI and the ATF.

At least one civil suit brought by victims' families centres on claims that it was a failure by federal agencies to act swiftly that led to the bombing. Evidence to support that case emerged at pre-trial hearings into the Howe case on June 30. Local reporters claimed "near pandemonium" in the Tulsa courtroom when an FBI agent revealed that a leading figure in Elohim City was an FBI informant.

The revelation, made under cross-examination, was that "the Reverend" Robert Millar, the community's rabble-rousing spiritual leader, had collaborated closely with federal agents.

Meanwhile last week new hearings by a grand jury in Oklahoma City convened to look into the possibility of a wider conspiracy, heard damaging testimony from two eyewitnesses.

They claimed to have seen McVeigh on the morning of the bombing accompanied by as many as three other possible suspects. Their evidence was not heard in the McVeigh trial as they were not called by either the prosecution or the defence.

That Stephen Jones failed to call them is understandable as they would have implicated his client in the crime. That the prosecution failed to do so only reinforces the view that there was an as yet unexplained desire on the part of the US attorneys' office to keep the number of suspects to a minimum.