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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 7 Num. 08
======================================
("Quid coniuratio est?")
-----------------------------------------------------------------
JON RAPPOPORT INTERVIEWS HOPPY HEIDELBERG
=========================================
I received the following from a CN reader. Note that it is quite
a bit longer than the normal CN which I try to keep at 10K or
less. I am making an exception in this case and am sending it
out.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Dear Mr. Redman:
I'm submitting to you a 6,000-word interview that Jon Rappoport
conducted with former OKC Bombing Grand Jury member Hoppy
Heidelberg a month or so ago. I help Jon with stuff on the
Internet from time to time. He's asked that this interview be
distributed as widely as possible because of the nature of the
federal coverup.
Jon is somewhat computer literate but doesn't want to get directly
on the Internet because he sells his writing for a living and fears
that if he got on the 'Net, he'd just blab everything out and have
nothing to sell. With that said, what follows is Jon's interview.
The only change I made was to indicate Jon with "R:" and Heidelberg
with "H:". I extracted ASCII text from Jon's WP 6.0 file, which
used bolding of his questions with Heidelberg's responses in plain
text.
INTERVIEW WITH THE GRAND JUROR WHO WOULDN'T SHUT UP:
THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING CASE
BY JON RAPPOPORT
Author of Oklahoma City Bombing -
The Suppressed Truth
In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing tragedy on
April 19, 1995, independent researchers have begun to lift the lid
on very troubling details of the crime. As in the JFK
assassination, disturbing evidence of a different sort of murder
scenario from the official version has emerged; and typically it
has been relegated to the "conspiracy file" by the mainstream
press. Very serious questions about bombs other than the ammonium
nitrate truck bomb have surfaced. McVeigh himself in some eyes
begins to appear as the dupe, the patsy left holding the bag. Key
stories about federal law enforcement agencies having advance
warning of a bombing in Oklahoma City are gaining credibility.
Researchers on the scene in Oklahoma City are talking about the FBI
intimidating witnesses and thereby shaping a false version of
events. The Grand Jury itself which has brought indictments against
Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols has come under fire for ignoring
other potential suspects.
Are we being treated to what is basically a gigantic
government press release, a foreshortening and distorting of the
case?
On December 14, 1995, I interviewed Hoppy Heidelberg, a grand
juror in the Oklahoma City case. Several months earlier Heidelberg
had, off the record, engaged in a conversation with Lawrence Myers
of Media Bypass magazine. Subsequently thrown off the Grand Jury
by Judge David Russell for allegedly going public in the subsequent
Media Bypass article, Heidelberg is very critical of the
government's refusal to pursue murder suspects beyond Tim McVeigh
and Terry Nichols. Which suspects? Start especially with the
notorious John Doe 2.
Grand jurors are not permitted to reveal details of legal
proceedings on pain of contempt-of-court citation and imprisonment.
Heidelberg has now risked being accused of this, because he feels
his Grand Jury was steered away from evidence that could implicate
the government itself in the bombing.
Has such a straightforward rebellion by a grand juror ever
taken place before in a high profile American trial? After the
Media Bypass article appeared, the major media gave the Heidelberg
story one or two days and passed on to more routine matters: car
accidents, murders, storms and potential medical breakthroughs.
Meanwhile Heidelberg has wrestled with his discovery that
grand juries are basically run by the prosecuting attorneys who
herd jurors like sheep in bringing indictments. (Indictment being
the end product of a grand jury, the defendant is then bound over
for trial.)
However, with a little research Heidelberg has also discovered
that grand juries are potentially vital bodies in which jurors are
legally permitted to actually bypass prosecutors and question
witnesses directly, find and call witnesses and in general
investigate the crime at hand.
Such a citizen-body, if honored -- not sidetracked and
intimidated by prosecutors and judges -- would, of course, add a
whole new dimension to the American legal scene. In practice
though, these grand juries are never allowed to exercise their
legally endowed powers. This was the very personal discovery of
Heidelberg and it has obviously made him more determined to expose
what he considers gross shortcomings in the legal system.
Across the U.S., several million, yes million, people are
plugging into very active underground networks of news composed of
faxes, videos, internet groups, alternative newspapers and
magazines and self-published literature -- all of which present
challenging and unofficial scenarios of the federal building
bombing.
Heidelberg has formed his own unofficial perceptions close up
to the action in the Oklahoma case and that is what we discussed in
our interview.
RAPPOPORT: How many John Does are there?
HEIDELBERG: There were at least five men ID'ed by witnesses
as being on the scene the morning of the bombing. Actually, more
than five.
R: People who were with McVeigh?
H: Yes, or in the key vehicles everybody's pointed to as
probably involved in the bomb plot. The yellow Mercury Marquis.
The brown Chevy pickup and the Ryder truck. Actually there may
have been two Ryder trucks.
R: These witnesses who saw the other John Does -- were any of
them brought forward to testify in the Grand Jury?
H: No.
R: Were any of the John Does brought forward?
H: No.
R: None?
H: None.
R: So all these suspects are left completely alone by law
enforcement.
H: Ignored.
R: My understanding is you feel that John Doe 2 was not
pursued by the prosecution because he could well turn out to be a
government informant or agent. That would link the government to
the bombing.
H: Right.
R: Did you think you'd get what you wanted in the Grand Jury?
The presentation of evidence you felt was vital?
H: They kept promising and promising to answer all my
questions, but ultimately they stalled me. I was had.
R: You had some kind of book on jurors' duties with you in
the Grand Jury room.
H: It was a green government-issued handbook. It said a
grand juror could cross-examine witnesses directly. But they
wouldn't let me do that. They said I'd have to get the prosecuting
attorney's okay for each question I wanted to ask. But you know,
in dialog one question leads to another right away, so you can't
cross-examine that way. But I did get to ask some questions of
witnesses.
R: Did you think the government knows who John Doe 2 is?
H: I began to feel that way, yes. But, of course, all
through the trial the prosecution insisted that John Doe 2 was the
Ft. Riley soldier Todd Bunting who served in the Army with McVeigh.
R: But they also said Bunting wasn't guilty of any crime.
H: That's right. And he didn't really look like the FBI
artist's sketch of John Doe 2 and he wasn't with McVeigh when
McVeigh rented the Ryder truck. The actual John Doe 2 did rent the
Ryder truck with McVeigh. The whole thing was ridiculous.
R: When did you decide to go public with your dissatisfaction
with the Grand Jury?
H: A couple of weeks after the indictments of McVeigh and
Nichols were brought in. I couldn't shut up. I didn't want other
suspects to walk and kill more people.
R: You eventually hired an attorney, didn't you?
H: Yes. John De Camp, for First Amendment purposes, to
advise me on what I could and couldn't say.
R: In a letter you wrote to the judge, David Russell, you
said bomb experts and geologists and engineers should be called as
witnesses. Why?
H: Well, can an ammonium nitrate bomb cause the pattern of
destruction that occurred in the federal building? I looked at
that building and the idea of one explosive charge coming from one
location doesn't fit. Pillars closer to the truck bomb survived
the blast and columns further away went down. That's impossible
unless the building was constructed very inconsistently with some
pillars and sections put up quite well and others very poorly.
Let's get the answer . . . Let's get the architects and engineers
who built the building in there and question them.
R: Did you request that?
H: Of course! I demanded bomb experts all along. And
engineers and geologists. They said -- do you want to know what
they said? They didn't have the money! I said I'd go down to the
University of Oklahoma and bring some geologists back myself for
free. They wouldn't let me.
R: The bomb is the key to the whole case.
H: ANFO (Ammonium nitrate plus fuel oil) is very symmetrical
in the damage it does. You look at what happened to the federal
building. That isn't symmetrical. You can judge the power of the
explosion from the crater left under the Ryder truck. The crater
tells you everything you need to know. The truck bomb explosion
wasn't powerful enough to take out 25% of the building. That's why
they covered up the crater, filled it in so quickly. ANFO is great
for moving dirt in mining, but it's no good for knocking down
buildings.
R: Was any of this discussed in the Grand Jury?
H: No!
R: It's clear that if the truck bomb couldn't and didn't
cause the major damage to the federal building, then other
explosives were used, charges placed on the pillars inside the
building. Then we have a whole new situation -- obviously an
operation that is highly professional involving other people. None
of this was brought up in the Grand Jury?
H: No.
R: Some people think the trial itself will be a forum, an
opportunity to bring forward these ignored witnesses as well as air
a great deal of information about the truck bomb fallacy and other
bombs set inside the building. I think Jones, McVeigh's attorney,
will try to bring this up one time and the judge will call him to
the bench and say, "Mr. Jones, these other possible shadowy
perpetrators are not on trial here. Only Mr. McVeigh, your client,
is. So I'm ruling out all this wider conspiracy' business. I
don't want to hear it again." And Jones will say, "Yessir," and go
sit down and that will be the end of that.
H: I think you're right. Yes.
R: Of course, just to get an initial indictment on McVeigh,
all they needed --
H: They didn't need anything! People down in Oklahoma City
say, "I know McVeigh and Nichols did it alone because I've seen the
building." Building blew up therefore McVeigh and Nichols acted
alone. You don't need a jury for that kind of non-logic.
R: Let's talk about Michael Fortier, McVeigh's friend. At
first when the FBI questioned him he said McVeigh would never have
blown up the federal building and killed all those people. He said
all the FBI had on McVeigh was his arrest for a traffic violation
and a concealed weapons charge. Then a couple of months later he's
saying that he and McVeigh actually went to Oklahoma City and cased
the federal building with an eye to bombing it. What's going on
there?
H: No. You're off base on that.
R: You mean on Fortier's confession? He's confessed to being
a participant in the bombing.
H: That's not it.
R: I don't understand.
H: Let me put it this way. If I had been Fortier's attorney,
he would have walked. He wouldn't have given a statement and he
would have walked.
R: That's pretty strong.
H: There's a lot you need to know about Fortier.
R: In the Media Bypass article, you said he was just a kid
and the FBI put a big scare into him.
H: Tremendous pressure. They brought 24-hour-a-day pressure
on him for several months at great expense. They were on him at
his job in Kingman, Arizona, and because of that he was fired. They
were on him at home at his trailer, too.
R: That much?
H: Do you see?
R: Well, I know there was a weapons charge they were
threatening Fortier with, and I believe they also said they'd put
his wife in jail if he didn't cooperate.
H: It has to do with the sheer amount of pressure over that
period of time.
R: Wearing him down.
H: He had no attorney.
R: What?
H: He had no attorney.
R: Are you serious?
H: For that whole period. And he wasn't under arrest either.
R: That's --
H: He was pressured for 24 hours a day and he had no
attorney. He's a kid. He's not smart enough to understand what's
going on.
R: Not smart enough --
H: To realize the FBI had nothing on him. He had no one to
advise him.
R: The FBI couldn't arrest him?
H: They didn't want to arrest him.
R: Why not?
H: Because if they did, they'd have to appoint a lawyer for
him. It was months before he was arrested.
R: I'm digesting this. It's very bizarre.
H: He got conned.
R: But eventually he did give them what they wanted. He
confessed to being involved in the crime with McVeigh.
H: You're missing it.
R: He confessed to planning the bombing with McVeigh.
H: You're missing it.
R: Well, if he hasn't made an outright confession --
H: Let me ask you something. What's the fastest way to get
from Kingman, Arizona, to Southern Kansas?
R: I have no idea. If Fortier and McVeigh were traveling
from Kingman to Southern Kansas . . .
H: They'd go through Oklahoma City.
R: Oh. Fortier just told the FBI they had been in Oklahoma
City on their way to Kansas? That's all? He didn't say they were
casing the federal building?
H: You're warmer.
R: Well, all right. If Fortier never told the FBI they cased
the building . . .
H: It's somewhere in between.
R: In between? You mean, it's between they were just passing
through Oklahoma City and they were casing the building?
H: You're warmer.
R: Fortier told the FBI they were in Oklahoma City on the way
to Kansas and they went by the federal building and they looked at
it. Something like that.
H: Something like that.
R: And there was never a real admission about planning to
blow up the building.
H: You need to read Fortier's confession. It was printed in
the Daily Oklahoman.
R: Fortier, the prosection's big witness, never confessed.
Is that what you're saying? Not even close?
H: Not even close.
R: But the prosecution didn't need him to gain an indictment
against McVeigh. They want Fortier as a witness in the actual
trial. Big time. But if his statement is so far south of being a
confession, then they can't really use him at the trial.
H: No, they can use him. What he has to say won't make an
impression on some jurors, but it could tip the scales for other
more gullible jurors.
R: The FBI spent all this time pressuring the hell out of
Fortier --
H: That's very important because you see, obviously that was
the best they could do. They stayed with him so long because they
had nothing better. Fortier's involvement in the bombing was so
minimal it was a waste of time. If I was the FBI man in charge, I
would have made one run at Fortier and then forgotten all about
him.
R: So in other words, he never confessed to casing the
building with McVeigh. The media has completely exaggerated it.
Fortier and McVeigh were driving through Oklahoma City on the way
to Kansas and they passed by the federal building. Something like
that. And the media stretched that.
H: Something like that.
R: And the FBI spent so much time pressuring Fortier to link
McVeigh to the bombing because they had nothing better.
H: They had nothing better.
R: But you feel McVeigh is linked to the bombing.
H: Yes, I do. But the FBI relied on a man, Fortier, who
really couldn't provide anything important to them. You need to
remember that. That's important. There's more to this.
R: As I say, I know you can't be very specific about exactly
what happened inside the Grand Jury, but you seem to be saying that
the FBI used very poor sources to gain an indictment against
McVeigh.
H: Yes.
R: This seems to be part of a pattern.
H: Damn right.
R: For example, judging from the arrest warrant on McVeigh
issued by the FBI on April 21, they rely on unnamed witnesses who
saw McVeigh at the scene of the bombing. Witnesses who were found
miraculously before McVeigh's arrest on the 21st. That's extremely
quick work. There's one guy who saw the police artist's sketch of
McVeigh on TV and came forward.
H: What guy?
R: That's what I'm saying. None of these witnesses' names
have been released. I'll read you the piece from my book. "On
April 21st, a man who used to work with McVeigh called the FBI. He
had just seen the artist's . . . sketch on TV. He said McVeigh was
a right-winger. Had been in the Army and had at one point gone to
Waco to look at the ruins of the Branch Davidian compound. McVeigh
was very upset about what had happened there, what the federal
agents had done. This man gave the FBI an address, 1711 Stockton
Hill Road, Kingman, Arizona."
H: (Laughs) All this from an artist's sketch before they
even arrest McVeigh?
R: Must be a psychic.
H: Yes. A psychic.
R: That's what I mean. It's probable that the FBI is using
extremely thin pretexts in accusing McVeigh.
H: Definitely.
R: But yet McVeigh is involved.
H: That's right and that's the whole point. For example, the
various surveillance videotapes of the bombing, tapes from, say,
Southwestern Bell and the Journal Record Building across the
street, we don't know that they showed all the details of the
bombing, including the perpetrators, but it's possible. None of
this material was shown to us in the Grand Jury.
R: None of it?
H: Zero.
R: There is the possibility that some of that tape showed the
federal building collapsing. The shape of that collapse could make
it clear that the truck bomb was not the real device that caused
the major damage to the building. That instead, interior charges
placed on the columns did the job, because that's very easy to see.
It looks like a demolition. The building collapsing in on itself.
We've all seen that a hundred times on television.
H: Yes.
R: So the Grand Jury indicts McVeigh. But the evidence
brought forward by the FBI for that indictment is extremely thin.
They do this on purpose. You feel that McVeigh was definitely
involved in the bombing, but the FBI held back. They didn't
provide any real evidence to the Grand Jury.
H: That's what I'm saying.
R: You know there was a witness to the building collapsing on
April 19?
H: Who.
R: A man named Peter Schaffer. Not long after the bombing I
spoke with a reporter on the Daily Oklahoman newspaper, Ann
Defrange. She said that a man named Peter Schaffer told her he had
seen the building collapse in on itself from the top down. That
would be a classic implosion signifying charges placed inside the
building on the columns. When I spoke with Schaffer he denied
seeing the building fall down at all. I got back to Defrange. She
remained very definite about what Schaffer had told her. She
didn't budge at all.
H: The FBI must have gotten to him. You know, the FBI has
been able to get witnesses to shut up about important things they
know. We've talked to some of these people. In certain instances
the witnesses believe that concealing evidence is the right thing
to do. They really believe it. The FBI has sold them a bill of
goods about national security or something like that. In other
cases the FBI has used straight-out intimidation on witnesses. They
size up people. On one witness they'll use something like national
security. On another, they'll go for intimidation.
R: So what we've got here is an attempt by the FBI and the
prosecution to indict McVeigh in the Grand Jury without introducing
other evidence that could be somehow damaging to the prosecution's
case.
H: Exactly.
R: The FBI sticks to very thin evidence and ignores the more
solid evidence because the solid evidence contains uncomfortable
information that could somehow link the government to the bombing.
H: Sure.
R: The truck bomb couldn't have caused the major damage to
the federal building. That indicates the presence of other
professional participants who planted charges inside the building.
The FBI and the prosecution and the Grand Jury ignore all this.
They don't want to bring this up, so they simply focus on McVeigh
and Nichols and no one else. They concentrate on Fortier, browbeat
him, and still they get nothing of substance from him.
H: That's right.
Before my second conversation with Heidelberg on December 16,
1995, I reviewed material on Michael Fortier's indictment. Fortier
will apparently be the state's star witness against McVeigh. He's
a very shaky star.
Reading through the plea-bargained charges finally drawn
against Fortier which were formally filed on August 11, 1995, it's
clear that he never told the FBI he and McVeigh "cased the federal
building" just prior to the April 19 bombing. Fortier said that he
and McVeigh simply drove through Oklahoma City on their way to
Kansas and passed the federal building. The Daily Oklahoman states
that McVeigh at this point "pointed to the . . . building as the
bombing target." That remains to be seen. At any rate, this car
trip to Kansas actually took place on December 16, 1994, four
months before the bombing.
Federal prosecutor Joseph Hartzler, according to the Daily
Oklahoman (August 11, 1995) "noted that Fortier was not charged as
a conspirator in the bombing and said the government has no
evidence that he participated in that conspiracy."
So what was Fortier charged with? Having knowledge of the
McVeigh-Nichols bomb plot before and after the fact. He was also
charged with keeping that knowledge from the FBI. He was also
charged with helping to transport stolen firearms (not bombs)
across state lines.
Heidelberg had said that in arriving at a plea bargain FBI
investigators had put "huge 24-hour-a-day pressure on Fortier for
several months, during which time Fortier had no attorney and no
one to advise him. Fortier could absolutely have walked if he were
more experienced," said Heidelberg.
It does appear possible that Fortier's admission of the
charges finally filed against him by the government was not a
compromise downward in his favor, but instead the result of
pressure exerted upward, so to speak, toward more culpability on
his part.
If Mr. Jones, McVeigh's attorney, has a real desire to
represent his client, Fortier looks like he could come apart under
cross-examination. Why? Because if these charges filed against
Fortier are made out of scare tactics and forced exaggerations by
the FBI, that can be dissected on the stand. Fortier, the so-
called star witness, could admit that his "prior knowledge of the
bombing plot" was really non-existent. That, for example, in
reality he had only heard conversation from McVeigh about
"possibilities," not a definite plot.
If Fortier does come apart under cross-examination, that could
create a psychological window of opportunity for the in-court or
even out-of-court introduction of evidence showing a wider
conspiracy in which McVeigh is the patsy, the dupe.
But Mr. Jones does not seem like the lawyer to risk his career
on a fully armed defense of his client, McVeigh. As usual, that
leaves outmoded objectives, like honesty, questioning authority and
digging for the truth up to private citizens. Welcome to America,
1996.
Obviously, Heidelberg was leading me to a conclusion about
what kind of evidence the FBI was using in this case and what kind
they were ignoring. He seemed to be saying that the FBI used the
thinnest of pretexts to get an indictment on McVeigh and Nichols
while holding back other kinds of evidence which could implicate
the government in the bomb plot. I had some of that nailed down
from the first interview, but I felt there was more to grasp here.
Maybe it was just too simple and I wasn't seeing it. We started
off the second conversation talking about McVeigh's sister,
Jennifer, and I hoped that we would get to a more stark
understanding of what the FBI and the prosecution were really up to
with their manipulation of evidence. Eventually, we did. And as
simple as the truth was, it was quite a shock.
R: The Media Bypass article said the FBI put a lot of
pressure on McVeigh's sister. Like Fortier, she started out
strongly defending her brother, and ended up being a witness
against him. I mean, a sister testifying against her
brother . . .
H: The FBI sat on both McVeigh's sister and his mother. My
impression is the FBI took them somewhere to pressure them.
McVeigh's sister is a nice person. So FBI pressure was effective.
She has a conscience. You can turn around a person with a
conscience.
R: Did McVeigh's sister say McVeigh told her he had worked
for a special operations Army group that was engaged in criminal
activity?
H: Not exactly. She said something like that.
R: That her brother told her such a special operations group
existed?
H: Yes. But more than that.
R: That they had recruited him and he turned them down.
H: Yes.
R: He didn't testify at the Grand Jury?
H: He won't talk. I don't know if he's happy to be a martyr
or he's confident he won't get convicted. He doesn't seem to be
terribly worried. Seems possible he thinks he was working for the
government and that therefore he won't be convicted. That's a
speculation.
R: McVeigh's behavior is so inconsistent. His combat scores
as a soldier are in the top 5 percent. He's said to be obvious
officer material. He's smart. But then they say he purchased
4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate and left his fingerprint on the
receipt. A few days before the bombing he registered at the
Dreamland Motel in Kansas under his real name. He drives away from
the federal building on April 19 in a Mercury Marquis with no
license plate and gets stopped by a state trooper outside town and
arrested ninety minutes after the bombing.
H: Yes.
R: Unless he's a drug addict or drunk.
H: He does have druggy-type friends but there's no particular
evidence that he's an addict. He does have a lot of druggy
friends, though.
R: One was possibly Steve Colbern who has been in police
custody since last May. They reportedly found a speed lab in back
of Colbern's trailer.
H: Even if all McVeigh did was deliver the Ryder truck and if
he didn't think the destruction to the building would be
significant -- if he was conned -- still it's enough to convict
him. There was a chance while the remainder of the building was
still standing after the bombing that you could prove it was really
destroyed by demolition charges placed on the interior columns
. . . but now there's no forensic evidence left. [The government
demolished the rest of the federal building on May 23, 1995.] Now
it would be a big job to sell the multiple bomb theory to the jury.
The public aren't bomb experts. If they were, they'd understand
the pattern of damage couldn't fit with one bomb.
R: If McVeigh didn't really understand that this was a
parallel operation, with secret interior charges placed inside the
building and planned to go off simultaneously with the truck bomb
. . .
H: If McVeigh didn't know the extent of the damage that was
to be done and he's taking all the heat, you'd think they would
have killed him by now because he's too dangerous to them, because
of possible revelations at the trial.
R: The they that you mention, would then be some part of the
government. Let's get back to John Doe 2. Here the prosecution
manipulates the evidence by completely excluding the whole idea of
John Doe 2 from the Grand Jury, isn't that right?
H: Yes. And this exclusion was pointed out to them!
R: You mean, you pointed it out.
H: [laughs]
R: Didn't you ask for a bomb expert?
H: Eventually, they brought one in. They didn't count on the
fact that anyone on the Grand Jury could spot this guy as a CIA
type operator. I found out later he was CIA although he had lots
of impressive credentials. His testimony was very effective, but
the whole thing was bogus. A dog and pony show. Now this is
hypothetical. If you want to convince someone that ANFO [ammonium
nitrate plus fuel oil] is powerful, show a film of a truck and blow
the hell out of it and then say you used only five pounds of ANFO
to do it. But how could the grand jurors be sure that it was only
five pounds? All the demonstrations the prosecution used were like
that. Obviously to dupe an unsophisticated audience [the Grand
Jury]. But it's easy to see through this.
R: How did you feel when you first got on to the Grand Jury?
H: I didn't go in trying to cause trouble. I tried to get
along. I wasn't wanting to be kicked off the Grand Jury. I wanted
to hang in there longer. As it turns out I wouldn't have heard
more about Oklahoma City, anyway. They were done with that.
R: You've had attention from the mainstream press. You were
on Good Morning America and The Today Show.
H: Everybody's interviewed me. But they want me to turn out
to be a nut. When I don't come off that way, they don't print the
interview, they don't do the story.
R: Who doesn't do the story, for example?
H: The New York Times. I've had contacts with them. And
with Time, Newsweek, CBS. They don't want to give me any stature.
I was supposed to do 20/20, Dateline, a whole bunch of them. But
after my appearance on Good Morning America and The Today Show,
they ignored me. Even my own governor in Oklahoma [Frank Keating]
was calling me a nut for a while. Then that didn't work because
people know me. So he invited me to his mansion, but I didn't go.
R: There are so many uninterviewed people in this story.
H: It would seem to me that those rescue workers who found
unexploded bombs in the federal building . . . there's got to be
somebody who knows that -- it wasn't a hoax. They found two more
bombs that didn't explode in there. Somebody somewhere can verify
this. "Yeah, we found those bombs and reported it and gave them
to whoever."
R: Unless they have been told to shut up about it. Unless
this is more manipulation of evidence.
H: Yeah. Even with the Grand Jury witnesses, you could see
they didn't remember everything they remembered. Their memories
had deteriorated. (laughs) The FBI does this to people. "Your
remembering would be counter-productive to the investigation. It's
your patriotic duty to forget." I got to hear tape interviews with
secret witnesses occasionally [witnesses already influenced by the
FBI]. It takes a tremendous amount to get them to tell what they
really know because they think that they'll screw up the
government's investigation. But when some real witnesses the media
found who had ID'ed McVeigh at the bombing scene didn't show up at
the Grand Jury . . . How do you explain their absence? It was a
dog and pony show. The prosecution spent a lot of money bringing
in witnesses who knew nothing about the bombing. How many
witnesses do you need to bring in to say that McVeigh was at gun
shows. Not ten witnesses! That's irrelevant! Many people go to
gun shows and don't blow up buildings. They [the prosecution] had
this Grand Jury to the point where jurors were asking "How can gun
shows be legal in the U.S.?" These witnesses were used to get
across the idea that McVeigh, because he went to gun shows, was a
bad guy. But we heard nothing from real witnesses who saw McVeigh
at the crime scene. Isn't that amazing? You can get most people
to buy a story without one bit of evidence. Just on association
alone. You can get them to believe what you said he did. The
witness testimony we got was pretty much all baloney. Why didn't
they give us the real stuff they had, the real witnesses?
R: Now, we're getting back to what you were implying in the
first interview. Are you telling me that no witnesses who saw
McVeigh driving a truck in the vicinity of the federal building on
the morning of the bombing testified at the grand jury?
H: That's right! And why do you think that was. Because
those witnesses saw other people with McVeigh and those other
people might have been able to tie the crime to the government
because some of those other people were --
R: Government informants or agents.
H: Yeah.
R: Well, that's what you're saying then. The FBI uses
incredibly thin evidence and keeps back the real witnesses because
they could tie some fraction or faction of the government to the
bombing itself.
H: You know, there's a saying among lawyers, "You can get a
ham sandwich indicted." The ham was probably a little sour, so the
guy in the restaurant died. He must have eaten the sandwich and
been poisoned. You never tell the Grand Jury he died in a car
accident after he left the restaurant. You just bring in lots and
lots of witnesses who saw the ham, tasted the ham and say the ham
was a little bit funny. The color wasn't quite right. It tasted
a little weird.
R: All right. Now I see what you're getting to. This is
staggering to me. I mean we have a bunch of witnesses, real
witnesses, who saw McVeigh at the scene of the bombing with other
people, other John Does. The Grand Jury doesn't call any of them.
They show you no surveillance videotape. Instead they browbeat
Fortier, someone you say could have walked completely, had
absolutely minimal involvement with any of this. I mean a Grand
Jury is supposed to be a place where the crime is looked into.
H: But it isn't. They had to keep some evidence out of it.
That's what you have to understand. And you have to ask yourself
why. Why would they present the most stupid form of non-evidence
to gain an indictment against McVeigh and keep the good stuff out?
You have to ask yourself that over and over, and then you'll see
what's going on here.
R: Concealment of evidence so that John Doe 2 is kept out of
it, and other suspects, other John Does are kept out of it, because
somehow these other perpetrators would make it very uncomfortable
for the government. They would open up the case into other areas.
Areas showing government involvement.
H: Can you think of another reason why the prosecution would
withhold the most persuasive witnesses? People who were really on
the scene at the bombing?
R: No, I can't.
H: McVeigh is not cooperating with his lawyer.
R: What do you mean?
H: He's not saying who the other people are who were involved
with him.
R: From what you tell me, we're talking about a fair number
of involved people.
H: Well, I think it's more than five, actually. From
witnesses' reports, we can count two men in the pickup, three men
in McVeigh's car and maybe even two more in the Ryder truck. And
then there's the possibility there were two Ryder trucks.
R: McVeigh won't say who they are?
H: He's the good soldier. I think he's willing to take the
fall.
R: Because he's the good soldier?
H: I think they're holding his sister Jennifer over him. If
he talks something bad will happen to her. I also suspect he
thinks he's working for the government.
R: After possibly being recruited by people who said they
were Patriots.
H: Yeah.
R: These "Patriots" could have told him, "We're connected to
a few good people inside this corrupt government in Washington.
People who still want to save this country. They're our ultimate
employer in this."
H: Yeah, that would work on McVeigh. The flag and apple pie
business.
R: Do you think, sitting in jail, McVeigh hasn't figured out
these recruiters set him up as the patsy?
H: I don't know. That license plate on his Mercury Marquis
-- the car he was arrested in. The license had fallen off. He has
to wonder about that, about someone loosening the nuts on those
bolts. That's why the Oklahoma highway trooper stopped his car in
the first place. That's how it all unraveled. McVeigh has to be
wondering about that.
Jon Rappoport is the author of Oklahoma City Bombing - The
Suppressed Truth. A candidate for U.S. Congress in 1994, he hosts
the weekly Free Form Radio on KPFK in Los Angeles. An
investigative reporter for fifteen years, he has written articles
on politics, health, and media for newspapers and magazines in the
U.S. and Europe. His book on the Oklahoma City bombing can be
ordered by phoning (213) 243-9005.
[CN -- I recommend Rappoport's book. *caveat emptor* ]
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