No foreign ties found in Murrah blast
Oklahoma City bombing: FBI disagrees with congressional panel's report

By Nolan Clay

Published: December 27, 2006

A congressional inquiry into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing found "no conclusive evidence of a foreign connection” but decided the FBI did "not thoroughly investigate” the potential involvement of other suspects.

"Questions remain unanswered and mysteries remain unresolved,” according to a 14-page report.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, outgoing chairman of a U.S. House International Relations subcommittee, released the report Tuesday.

The FBI disagreed with the report, saying again its agents "worked tirelessly to cover all of the leads and conducted a thorough and complete investigation.”

The congressional inquiry covered much of the same ground brought up in the bombing trials and before an Oklahoma County grand jury years ago.

The subcommittee complained bomber Tim McVeigh was executed too soon after his 1997 conviction. He was put to death in 2001.

"Perhaps McVeigh would have continued to adamantly deny anyone else's involvement, but simply keeping him alive closer to the typical death row stay would have allowed more opportunity for determining the truth,” the subcommittee reported.

It also complained the FBI should not have called off the hunt for John Doe No. 2.

Agents searched for weeks for John Doe No. 2 and released sketches worldwide. Witnesses said he was with McVeigh when McVeigh picked up the bomb truck. The FBI eventually concluded the witnesses were confused.

The subcommittee said Eldon Elliott, the Kansas truck rental store's owner, still is adamant McVeigh was with someone else. Elliott also said the FBI aggressively pressured him to change his story. "He ... is a credible witness,” the subcommittee reported.

As part of the inquiry, Rohrabacher, R-Calif., interviewed bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols in prison last year for two hours. Nichols admitted participation in the attack. The report, however, called Nichols manipulative and self serving. It suggested Nichols played a bigger role than he admitted.

"To this day, he repeatedly promises to disclose more information about the case, only to blame it on Arkansas gun dealer Roger Moore, or hint of a sinister government conspiracy,” the subcommittee reported. "At the same time, he has convinced his friends and family that he was a virtual patsy. Contrary to this passive image, McVeigh told his defense team that Nichols had actually threatened to kill him if he caught McVeigh sleeping with his wife.”

The subcommittee focused on some of the theories of a wider conspiracy that have persisted for years, including whether Nichols met with Middle Eastern terrorist Ramzi Yousef in the Philippines. Nichols met and eventually married his second wife on trips there.

"Terry Nichols brought a book entitled ‘The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives' with him to the Philippines. This clearly suggests that sensual indulgence was not the only reason Nichols visited the Philippines,” the subcommittee reported.

The subcommittee also looked into reports McVeigh was seen with an Iraqi immigrant in Oklahoma City before the bombing and that McVeigh visited Elohim City and was seen there with a German citizen, Andreas Strassmeir. It said Nichols claimed McVeigh "often talked of his good friend, ‘Andy the German.'”

The FBI discovered McVeigh met Strassmeir at a Tulsa gun show in 1993 and that McVeigh called Elohim City, a white separatist community in eastern Oklahoma, two weeks before the bombing asking to speak to Strassmeir. The FBI, however, concluded McVeigh never visited there and Strassmeir was not involved in the bombing.

The subcommittee also looked into a theory a group of white supremacist bank robbers helped finance McVeigh's activities. It said three were interviewed by the subcommittee and denied knowing McVeigh. Another robber had died, and another could not be found.

The subcommittee reported some of those leads "needed more investigatory attention.”

In a 2004 book, "Simple Truths,” the two top FBI bombing case agents wrote about many of the theories explored by the subcommittee that someone besides McVeigh and Nichols were involved. "All other theories proved implausible,” the agents wrote.