It has always been hard to believe that the truck-bombing of the A.P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, which killed 168 people, including 19 children at a daycare center, was planned by just one or two perpetrators acting alone. However, the official story states that the mastermind was Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh, and that the two others sentenced with him only helped him in various ways.
Right from the start, warning signs indicated that the investigation was being misled. The FBI developed a story claiming that a group called the Patriots Movement, which included anti-government extremists and white supremacists, was responsible for the attack. However, the agency also appeared to be trying hard to hide something. Consider these facts:
Twenty-four eyewitnesses saw a man with McVeigh just before the bombing. The FBI referred to him as John Doe 2 but later dismissed the idea that such a person existed. None of the witnesses who saw John Doe 2 were called to testify.
At least eight people connected to the investigation — including a brave police officer who was a first responder — died under mysterious circumstances, five of them reportedly by suicide.
Local reporters who looked beyond the storyline mainstream newspapers presented that the FBI had received a warning call about a bomb attack.
The sheriff’s bomb squad had even been patrolling the city before the explosion. An official of the Bureau from Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) said agents had been asked not to come in to work on the day of the attack.
In a new book called Blowback: The Untold Story of the FBI and the Oklahoma City Bombing, Margaret Roberts, former news director of America’s Most Wanted, presents shocking evidence suggesting that FBI agents might have been involved, acting as agent provocateurs in an operation gone wrong. The book suggests that the bombing was the result of a sting or deep-cover operation meant to trap white supremacists likely to carry out attacks such as the one that, tragically, could not be — or was deliberately not — prevented.
Much of the material comes from investigations conducted by Jesse Trentadue, a persistent attorney who believes his brother Kenneth was killed during an interrogation in jail because he was mistaken for Robert Guthrie, a bank robber and a probable John Doe 2. In his efforts to seek justice for his brother, Trentadue occasionally teamed up with experienced investigative reporters like Mary A. Fischer and Roberts. His legal battle resulted in the family being awarded a million dollars for Kenneth’s “wrongful death.” However, so much evidence had been tampered with or was impossible to obtain that the court refused to rule that Kenneth’s death, declared a “suicide” by prison authorities, was actually a murder.
One of the major questions is how McVeigh obtained the funds to buy the ammonium nitrate and fuel oil used in the bomb. The FBI theory suggests that a group of white supremacists calling themselves the Aryan Republican Army (ARA) funded the bombing through bank robberies across the country. Another question is whether the truck bomb alone could have caused the building to collapse. An investigation by a citizens’ group found that it could not; additional explosives might have been skillfully planted in the building to cause the cave-in.
Equally intriguing is how the prosecution handled Michael Fortier, one of the two others sentenced alongside McVeigh. Through a plea deal, Fortier testified against McVeigh. In return, lesser charges were brought against him and none against his wife. After serving 10 years of a 12-year sentence for failing to inform authorities about the bomb plot, he was released for good behavior and given a new identity under the witness protection program. Terry Nichols, the third person sentenced in the case, is serving multiple life sentences, while McVeigh was executed.
The book argues that the Oklahoma bombing originated from a federal effort to stop anti-government, white supremacist, and Christian extremist groups from gaining power. In 1985, authorities besieged and arrested leaders of one such heavily armed group, the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA), from a compound in northern Arkansas. In 1991, the FBI began long-term surveillance of a similar group called the Patriots Movement, which they codenamed Patcon (Patriot Conspiracy). For context, the Ruby Ridge standoff occurred in 1992, and the Waco siege in 1993. During Patcon, the FBI used undercover agents and informants posing as members of fake groups, aiming to attract individuals or groups planning anti-government attacks and disrupt their plans.
The ARA, which operated a 400-acre private community called Elohim City in Adair County, Oklahoma, was either a front established by the FBI or had been infiltrated by FBI agents. So, if the ARA funded the attack, the FBI would have to cover its tracks or admit it could not prevent the Oklahoma bombing despite knowing about the plan. To avoid this, the bureau allowed suspects to escape and undermined a thorough investigation.
The web of connections, coincidences, and “suicides” is far too broad to ignore. Trentadue interviewed John Matthews, an undercover operative for Patcon, who said he knew McVeigh, and during the trial, an FBI agent told him it would be best if he did not testify. Matthews described illegal weapons and ammo sales to extremist groups with the approval of the FBI and ATF.
J.D. Cash, a reporter for the McCurtain Daily Gazette, relentlessly pursued leads and uncovered a link between McVeigh and Andreas Strassmeir, a white supremacist, grandson of a Nazi party founder, and security chief at Elohim City. McVeigh had attempted to contact Strassmeir the day before he rented the truck used in the bombing, as well as several times in the weeks prior. Strangely, Strassmeir was never questioned by the FBI. Cash also met Carol Howe, a neo-Nazi trainee turned ATF informant, who said she knew McVeigh and Strassmeir from Elohim City and that McVeigh received instructions from Strassmeir. Both, she told him, were angry about the Ruby Ridge and Waco raids. She claimed that the government ignored her warnings even though it was paying her to spy on the ARA and the neo-Nazis of Elohim City. Her testimony was not presented in court; it was apparently “not sufficiently relevant.”
Cash found out that McVeigh was at Lady Godiva, a nightclub in Tulsa, 11 days before the blast, along with some others. The house security video had captured a stripper telling colleagues in the dressing room that a “weirdo” had told her “I’m a very smart man, and on April 19, 1995, you’re going to remember me for the rest of your life.” Another stripper, Shawn-Tea Farrens, spent some time with McVeigh and his companions. But the day Cash reached Tulsa to meet her, she had apparently committed suicide or died by overdosing.
The book quotes Craig Roberts, former Tulsa police chief and author of The Medusa File II: The Politics of Terror and the Oklahoma City Bombing. He says there was a bloody handprint on the wall of the Farrens’s home, and it was clear the crime scene was staged. “She knew too much…who she saw and talked to, and what she told the other girls in the dressing room got her killed,” he is quoted as saying.
Other deaths or suicides linked to the case raise more suspicions. Terry Yeakey, the Oklahoma cop and first responder, had told his ex-wife that something was wrong with the bombing investigation and that he was working on an independent report. He was found dead in an open area with an “execution style” gunshot to his head, a few miles from his abandoned car. His death was ruled a suicide, but his family and his ex-wife—who was on good terms with him and considering remarriage—said he was in good spirits and wouldn’t be the type to take his own life.
The most notable suspicious death described in the book is that of Trentadue’s brother Kenneth, a Vietnam veteran. As a young man traumatized by the war, he had robbed banks with a fake gun to feed a heroin habit, served time for his crimes, and made the mistake of skipping parole. But by 1995, at age 44, he had completely turned his life around, was working in construction in California, happily married, and expecting his first child.
Two months after the bombing, on his return from visiting his wife’s family in Mexico, he was detained at the border for the old parole violation—plus a strong resemblance to Guthrie. In reality, he was held under the name Vance Paul Brockway, an alias he had used long ago. He didn’t think much of it, expecting at most a few months in prison. Strangely, he was transferred to Oklahoma, and on August 21, 1995, prison officials contacted his family to report that he had committed suicide at the Federal Transfer Center.
Trentadue’s investigations reveal that Kenneth was probably beaten to death in his cell by men in riot gear, and his death was staged as a suicide. The state medical examiner was furious because his team had not been allowed to inspect the cell, and he had never officially declared the death a suicide. Months later, when he finally visited the cell, he found it lit up “like a Christmas tree” under luminol, indicating heavy bloodstains.
There are two more “suicides,” both connected to Kenneth’s death. The first was Guthrie, the bank robber Kenneth was suspected of resembling. Captured early in 1996, he planned to write a tell-all book but died by hanging himself in his cell. The second was Alden Baker, a prisoner who gave a sworn deposition stating he witnessed Kenneth’s murder. Months before he could testify in court regarding Kenneth’s wrongful death, Baker was found dead, again by hanging in a prison cell. There was no autopsy.
The well-researched book offers many additional details, constructs a plausible scenario, and delivers a gripping yet unsettling read, highlighting what Vice President J.D. Vance stated in January: “The bureaucrats at our intelligence services have gotten completely out of control. They’ve been part of the weaponization of the political system, the weaponization of our justice system.”
Did the FBI orchestrate the country’s worst domestic terror attack? The truth, it appears, may never be fully uncovered.
Image from Grok.