Patrick B. Briley
Did Federal Prosecutors Risk Overturning of McVeigh
Mon Apr 19, 2004 03:12
63.228.145.202


UPDATE:Did Federal Prosecutors Risk Overturning of McVeigh and Nichols Convictions?
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3afc79c82a94.htm

Crime/Corruption Front Page News Keywords: FBI,OKC BOMBING, MCVEIGH, BUCELLA, STEPHEN JONES, US ATTORNEYS
Source: OKCSubmariner
Published: April 1, 2001 Author: Patrick B. Briley
Posted on 05/11/2001 16:46:16 PDT by OKCSubmariner

On page 241 of his book, “Others Unknown“, McVeigh defense attorney Stephen Jones wrote:

”According to some of our friends in media, the government’s lawyers were at each others throats …..Meanwhile, some FBI agents had had enough of being jerked around by the prosecutors….and were openly showing their disdain, and ATF people were just as openly enraged with the FBI, saying its theory of the case was all wrong. Finally, each of the leading government lawyers had begun leaking stories to favored media sources---stories that pointed the fingers at the others.”

The Jones description of the prosecution team and the interactions with the FBI and ATF may have well been an accurate assessment of the behavior of US prosecutors and FBI agents working for them. Jones gives numerous examples of questionable conduct by the US prosecutors throughout his book. Jones’ writings have now been bolstered by recently reported information about the woman who was in charge of the US Attorney prosecutors for the OKC bombing case.

US Attorney Donna Bucella announced her resignation under fire from the 11th US Circuit of Appeals on Friday, March 23, 2001 according to an article in the Naples Daily News “Central Florida’s top prosecutor quits under fire” on March 24, 2001. The article was written by Pat Leisner of the Associated Press.

Bucella headed the executive office in charge of all 94 US attorneys including the US prosecutors who handled the OKC bombing case. In fact Bucella was sent by Reno and the DOJ to OKC the day after the Murrah Building was bombed to “initiate the nationwide investigation” that was conducted by US attorneys and the FBI. She was an associate of Janet Reno from the Southern District of Florida. In 1993 she went to work at DOJ for Reno and was responsible for the training of US attorneys and how they are to conduct Federal grand juries.

On March 16, 2001 the 11th Circuit cited prosecutorial misconduct by US prosecuting attorneys under Bucella and overturned a conviction won earlier by the prosecuting attorneys. The court criticized Bucella’s Assistant US Attorney Rubinstein “ for reportedly lying to a grand jury, rushing the panel and pressuring it to ‘rubber stamp’ indictments.” In another case, the Naples Daily article reported that the Court also called into question the behavior of prosecutors under Bucella for their backing in court an investigation by detectives the Court said had been built “by lying, distortion and omitting facts.”

The recent findings and criticism against the US attorneys in Bucella’s Florida office by the 11th Circuit Court of appeals are remarkably similar to allegations that have been made against US Attorneys (prosecutors) handling the OKC bombing case for Bucella. And the findings against detectives in the Florida cases under Bucella are also very similar to allegations that have been made against FBI investigators working for the US Attorneys in the OKC case.

For the OKC bombing trials, serious allegations have been made that US prosecutors and the FBI agents working with them were guilty of “lying, distortion and omitting facts.” Nichols’ defense attorney Michael Tigar made strong assertions of deliberate hiding, distortion and omitting trial evidence of FBI 302 interview reports by FBI agents conspiring with US prosecutors. Tigar’s allegations were made at an appeals hearing with Federal Judge Matsch in July 1999. It was alleged that many of the accounts of John Does with McVeigh given by witnesses to the FBI were never adequately made available to the court at the trials by the US prosecutors or the FBI, in fact that they had been suppressed.

In fact two FBI agents working for the US prosecutors in Denver, Zimms and Odom, have been identified as suppressing witnesses and their testimony in the OKC bombing case.

Witness Debbie Burdick was called by Odom during the McVeigh trial and told not to talk to defense attorneys or news media even though she was never called to testify at the trial. Burdick saw McVeigh and Middle Eastern males in a brown Chevy truck ,McVeigh’s Mercury Marquis and a blue vehicle moments before the bombing. Burdick’s story of being called and suppressed by Odom was reported on KTOK radio in OKC by news director Jerry Bohnen.

A key witness of a Middle Eastern man seen with McVeigh was brow beaten at the OKC FBI office and when he would not change his story, informed journalists close to the case report that Zimms falsified the FBI 302 interview reports with the witness. These FBI 302 reports are used as evidence by US Attorneys in trials. FBI agent Zimms was a key liason between Federal prosecutors and the FBI in Denver starting in 1996 and throughout 1997. Zimms had previously worked closely with US Attorneys when he had worked for the FBI on mob cases in Chicago in the 1970’s.

Jones and Tigar complained bitterly about the US prosecutors and FBI agents working for them by accusing them of deliberately misspelling many names of key witnesses and suspects in indices and on important government documents during the exploratory phase of the case. The misspellings were done in contrived ways that Jones and Tigar claimed delayed the defense and in some cases kept important information from being found or known.

Was the Federal grand jury convened for the OKC bombing conducted in an illegal and improper way that resulted in “lying to a grand jury, rushing the panel and pressuring it to ‘rubber stamp’ indictments” as the 11th Circuit says was done by other US Attorneys also under Donna Bucella in Florida cases?

Federal Grand Juror Hoppi Heidelberg believed the answer is yes. Heidelberg complained of illegal conduct of US Attorneys during the Federal grand jury proceedings in OKC and was removed because of his complaints. Heidelberg claimed that he was not permitted to have the witnesses called he felt were important and that he was not properly permitted by the US Attorney prosecutors to ask questions of witnesses.

The day Heidelberg was removed, the lead US Attorney prosecutor Joseph Hartzler called Heidelberg and told him not to talk at all to a KFORTV reporter on the way to his house that had just spoken to Heidelberg on the phone a very few minutes earlier. There is considerable evidence which suggest that FBI agents deliberately conspired with FBI informant Larry Meyers to help the US prosecutors remove Heidelberg from the grand jury because of his complaints.

Jones writes on page 190 of his book that another US prosecutor, Larry Mackey , admitted deliberately lying to Jones and claiming that others in the prosecution team had made Mackey lie to Jones. It is suspected that Bucella could have had a hand in Mackey’s lying to Jones. Jones also writes on page 128 of his book that he believes Mackey went to the Philippines and deliberately blocked Jones efforts to obtain information about Nichols’ involvement with terrorists groups. Jones’s story about this was confirmed to me by the former Pentagon terrorism advisor. Jesse Clear, who assisted Jones at one time and had been working with Philippine contacts for Jones.

OKC Attorney Tim McCoy recently testified at a pretrial hearing for the state trial of Nichols that another US prosecutor, Sean Connelly, on the OKC case refused around the time of the McVeigh and Nichols trials to accept evidence that had been collected about Middle Eastern John Does assisting McVeigh.

McCoy testified that Connelly told him that Connelly did not want to accept the evidence because Connelly thought doing so would be harmful to the prosecution’s case. FBI agent Danny Coulson similarly stated to FBI sketch artist Jeanne Boylin that she should not do a certain sketch in the OKC case because doing so might harm the prosecution’s case and this was told to her in 1995 at a time when Bucella was closely involved with the US prosecutors and the FBI.

Jones complained bitterly about US prosecutor Beth Wilkinson on KTOK radio in November 1998 for withholding evidence from Jones about German national Andres Strassmeir’s involvement with McVeigh , the FBI and FBI director Louis Freeh.

Wilkinson visited General Benton Partin in June 1996 with the FBI’s OKC Bomb Task Force inspector Danny Defenbaugh to discuss Partin’s analysis of the cause of damage to the Murrah Building. During the interview with Wilkinson, which was taped by Partin, Defenbaugh pointed to the location of what had been publicly shown as the truck bomb crater and said words to the effect : Suppose I were to tell you that is not the location of the crater from the source that did the most damage to the Murrah Building? Wilkinson tried to belittle and disparage Partin’s credentials during the interview, actions which were extremely insulting and suggested intimidation and Federal cover-up to discourage Partin should he have been called as a witness at the McVeigh or Nichols trials.

Another US Attorney on the prosecution team was Patrick Ryan. I believe Ryan was in a position to mislead, intimidate, or suppress a number of material witnesses in the case including former day care center director Danielle Hunt, Journal Record building employee Gary Lewis, the Murrah Building engineers Don Rogers and Randy Ledger as well as a member of the OKC police K9 unit Don Browning. Ryan fell out of a tree and broke his hip so he was assigned by the prosecution team to handle the victims who had also been witnesses during his hip recovery.

Browning has told me that Ryan interviewed him twice in OKC and told Browning he was not interested in much of the information that Browning knew including police dispatch instructions to Browning at 10:30 am on April 19, 1995 to go after two Iranians in blue jogging suits believed to have helped McVeigh do the OKC bombing.

Danielle Hunt told me that she believed Ryan dropped her from being a witness at the McVeigh trial when she started pointing out that 3-4 FBI agents normally dropped off children at the day care center and were in the Murrah Building by 9 am sharp on almost every day except the day of the bombing. Hunt was visited by McVeigh in December 1994 at the day care center and asked detailed question about security, fire escapes, elevators, etc.

Randy Ledger told me and Don Browning that he and Don Rogers were told to search the Murrah Building for explosive devices the evening of April 18, 1995. Ledger also told me that prosecutors and FBI agents had told him that his rescuer, OKC police officer, Terry Yeaky, should not be excused for committing suicide (he may have been murdered). Did this story about Yeakey come from Ryan? Ledger and Rogers were discouraged from talking at the trials and to the public. Did Ryan discourage them?

Gary Lewis saw McVeigh with a John Doe in the Mercury Marquis close to the Murrah Building moments before the explosion at the same time and place shown on FBI obtained surveillance tape photos as testified to by FBI agent John Hersly at the preliminary hearing on April 27, 1995. Lewis now has changed his story and does not want to talk to anyone after meeting further with the FBI and US prosecutors. Lewis’ original story was taped during a phone conversation with Glen Wilburn in 1995. I heard the tape.

I witnessed Ryan giving false statements to reporters at an Oklahoma Geophysical Society meeting in November 1995 about the Ryder truck bomb. Ryan told reporters that Dr. Ray Brown and Tom Holzer had concluded that only a truck bomb was recorded on a seismograph at the time of the explosion. Ryan made his false statement before the meeting had even started and later repeated his claim after the meeting when in fact Dr. Brown had stated in the meeting that demolition charges could have been used and that he believed there were two strong explosions with the second stronger than the first. I was at the meeting and Ryan tried to slander me there by angrily and very loudly and publicly accusing me of working for the defense team when I had asked Brown some questions designed to understand his analysis. I never worked for the defense team.

If US prosecutors Hartzler, Connelly, Ryan, Mackey and Wilkinson took and knowingly carried out unlawful orders from Donna Bucella to engage in unethical and illegal conduct before and during the grand jury and trials, they cannot plead the Nuremberg defense. The same goes for FBI agents Odom and Zimms who worked closely with the prosecutors. What is extremely troubling about the US Attorneys and prosecutors and FBI agents in this case, is that their alleged conduct could have become legal grounds for getting two convicted bombers off. They may have risked the overturning of the convictions of Nichols and McVeigh, who now has confessed.

I urge all reading this article to ask for a Congressional investigation of the US prosecutors and FBI agents in the OKC bombing case by contacting Kolan Davis, the legal counsel for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee for Administration of the Federal Courts and which also has oversight of the FBI and DOJ. Please also contact AG AShcroft and the Inspector General for the DOJ and the two Offices of Professional Responsibility for the FBI and the DOJ.

UPDATE:

At a Federal appeals hearing on July 7, 1999, the Nichols' defense attorney Michael Tigar presented evidence that the FBI and US prosecutors falsified FBI 302 reports and deliberately did not create 302 reports in many cases as well as withheld the reports from the court and the defense. Many of these 302s pertained to John Does in the case. Judge Matsch ruled that the Tigar arguments would not have changed the outcome of the case. Tigar did not appeal any further.

Two men mentioned in the appeal as mishandling the 302s were FBI agent Mark White who worked closely with FBI agent Carlysle who generated hundred of 302s and also US prosecutor Sean Connelly who refused to receive much of the evidence from KFORTV reporters on the ME connection. I believe Connelly's actions were taken to avoid having 302s generated which would become part of the court record and have to be presented to the defense also. Another man not directly mentioned, but had a role in the mishandling of the 302s was FBI agent Floyd Zimms, who was the liason bewtween the US Prosecutors and the FBI for handling witnesses and 302s. I contend Zimms and FBI agent Odom tried to keep keep witnesses from being presented such as Debbie Burdick. Zimms is also believed to have lied to OKC police officers and to have falsified the 302s he generated.

The recent revelation that the FBI just found over 3000 pages of FBI interviews concerning John Does is not a surprise. I do not believe they were lost, I believe they were withheld to protect the USG from liability over the bombing. But even if they were lost, many, many other 302s were deliberately withheld, not generated and/or falsified as indicated in the July 1999 appeals transcript and based on my personl research. I have many examples of this which I could write about in another article.

And remember, the FBI did not show key John DOe witnesses in OKC photos or try to have them do sketches with the FBI sketch artist. And these witnesses were not asked to sign witness statements. The sketch artist Jean Boylin wrote in her book that the FBI commnad cneter agent Danny Coulson told her not to make a key sketch of John DOe #2 because he did not want to hurt the prosecutions case. I doubt in these instances accurate 302s were prepared if ever.

Many witneeses were threatend by the FBI for the sightings of John Does with McVeigh in OKC. I have serious doubts that 302s were ever written up for the court and defense with these threatened witnesses and if they were, I believe it is likely they were falsified as we believe they were in many other cases.

By withholding and supressing evidence about Joh