So what, and why, are they still hiding about Oklahoma City? Eric Holder knows. I think I'll ask him.

Clinton's Cover-Up Man at Justice is Still On the Job.

Folks,

I knew that something like this was coming. Jesse Trentadue -- and my old friend Roger Charles, LTC, USMC (Ret'd) -- have been doing the Lord's work on the OKC case, carrying on where our late friend J.D. Cash left off with his untimely death.

Actually, I've been holding off on my second letter to my bud Eric H. waiting on this. I guess it's time to talk to him about the subject, "No More Free OKC's, Either." Maybe tomorrow.

Mike
III

http://news.aol.com/article/tapes-of-bombing-aftermath-in-oklahoma/689142

FBI Releases Tapes of Bombing Aftermath

Attorney Questions 'What's Missing' From Recordings

By TIM TALLEY,

AP

OKLAHOMA CITY (Sept. 27) - Long-secret security tapes showing the chaos immediately after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building are blank in the minutes before the blast and appear to have been edited, an attorney who obtained the recordings said Sunday.

"The real story is what's missing," said Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City attorney who obtained the recordings through the federal Freedom of Information Act as part of an unofficial inquiry he is conducting into the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.

Trentadue gave copies of the tapes to The Oklahoman newspaper, which posted them online and provided copies to The Associated Press.

The tapes turned over by the FBI came from security cameras various companies had mounted outside office buildings near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. They are blank at points before 9:02 a.m., when a truck bomb carrying a 4,000 pound fertilizer-and-fuel-oil bomb detonated in front of the building, Trentadue said.

"Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995. There ain't no such thing as a coincidence," Trentadue said.

He said government officials claim the security cameras did not record the minutes before the bombing because "they had run out of tape" or "the tape was being replaced."

"The interesting thing is they spring back on after 9:02," he said. "The absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI doesn't want anybody to see."

A spokesman for the FBI in Oklahoma City, Gary Johnson, declined to comment and referred inquiries about the tapes to FBI officials in Washington, who were not immediately available for comment Sunday.

The soundless recordings show people rushing from nearby buildings after the bomb went off. Some show people fleeing through corridors cluttered with debris. None show the actual explosion that ripped through the federal building.

FBI agents did not report finding any security tapes from the federal building itself.

The FBI in the past refused to release the security camera recordings, leading Trentadue and others to contend the government was hiding evidence that others were involved in the attack.

"It's taken a lawsuit and years to get the tapes," Trentadue said.

He received the latest batch of tapes over the summer in response to an April request for video from security cameras in 11 different locations. Nothing on the tapes was unexpected.

"The more important thing they show is what they don't show," Trentadue said. "These cameras would have shown the various roads and approaches to the Murrah Building."

Trentadue began looking into the bombing after his brother, Kenneth Trentadue, died at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center in August 1995. Kenneth Trentadue was a convicted bank robber who was held at the federal prison after being picked up as a parole violator at his home in San Diego in June 1995.

He was never a bombing suspect, but Jesse Trentadue alleges guards mistook his brother for one and beat him to death during an interrogation. The official cause of Kenneth Trentadue's death is listed as suicide, but his body had 41 wounds and bruises that Jesse Trentadue believes could have come only from a beating.

A judge in 2001 awarded Kenneth Trentadue's family $1.1 million for extreme emotional distress in the government's handling of his death.

Jesse Trentadue said he has received about 30 security tapes, including some images that were used as evidence at bomber Timothy McVeigh's trial. McVeigh was convicted on federal murder and conspiracy charges and executed in 2001. Coconspirator Terry Nichols is serving life in prison on federal and state bombing convictions.

Trentadue said he is seeking more tapes along with a variety of bombing-related documents from the FBI and the CIA. An FOIA request by Trentadue for 26 CIA documents was rejected in June. A letter from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which reviewed the documents, said their release "could cause grave damage to our national security."

Trentadue said he gave the latest set of tapes to The Oklahoman because of their historical value. The newspaper has agreed to provide copies to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.

Personnel IS Policy: Put a Hold on Eric Holder

Folks,

They say that personnel is policy. If so, and I believe it to be true, then we Three Percenters are really not going to like the Obama administration. Of course this comes as no surprise to anyone, but of all the people BHO seeks to surround himself with in DC, Eric Holder as the nominee for Attorney General has to be the most offensive stench in the nostrils of free men and women.

Now everyone knows about Holder's assistance to Clinton in the pardon of Marc Rich. Likewise they are well aware of his "service" to the Clintonista regime in the Elian Gonzalez federal kidnapping, where he famously denied taking the little boy at the point of a gun. See here.

We are also well aware of how consistently anti-firearm freedom he's been. Less well known is his work on the post-OKC Counter Terrorism Bill, which strengthened the federal suite of proto-tyranny tools.

But I would like to draw your attention to two other items from Holder's record that cause me more concern than all of the above.

The first dates from September 1999. Read this:

Prosecutor Who Raised Questions About Waco Cover-Up Removed

By Michelle Mittelstadt
September 14, 1999

Associated Press
WASHINGTON--The federal prosecutor who raised questions about a possible Justice Department cover-up in the Waco standoff was abruptly removed from the case along with his boss, according to a court filing made public Tuesday.

Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder recused U.S. Attorney James W. Blagg in San Antonio and assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Johnston in Waco, Texas, from any further dealings in criminal or civil proceedings related to the siege.

Holder appointed the U.S. attorney in a neighboring district as a "special attorney to the U.S. attorney general."

The court filing in Waco provides no explanation for the decision to recuse the U.S. attorneys' office for the Western District of Texas, to which Blagg and Johnston are assigned, but said the action took effect last Friday.

Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott told reporters Tuesday that the Senate investigation should go beyond Waco to the Justice Department's forthrightness on other matters, such as allegations of campaign finance violations by the 1996 Clinton campaign.

"I think it's going to have to be broader than just Waco itself," said Lott, R-Miss. "I think we have a bigger focus here. ... There are a number of investigations that they are basically either not doing or they have stiffed us on. So we need to find out what's going on."

The recusal of the U.S. attorney's office isn't the first in the Waco case. Attorney General Janet Reno last week recused herself, saying she will be a witness in the independent inquiry she ordered into the fiery end of the 1993 siege.

Johnston, in a letter made public Monday, wrote Reno recently warning that aides within her own department were misleading her about federal agents' roles.

"I have formed the belief that facts may have been kept from you and quite possibly are being kept from you even now by components of the department," Johnston wrote in an Aug. 30 letter.

Johnston also has been at odds with Blagg, his superior, and other Justice officials over the investigation of the government's actions during the standoff with the Davidians at their compound outside Waco. It was Johnston who pressed Justice Department officials to allow independent filmmakers to review evidence sifted from the charred ruins of the Davidians' compound--evidence that led to the FBI's recent admission that potentially incendiary tear gas canisters were fired on April 19, 1993.

That disclosure, after six years of denials, sparked a furor on Capitol Hill and has led to congressional inquiries and Reno's appointment of an independent investigator.

Blagg, Johnston and the Justice Department provided no immediate comment. . .

Burton, who chairs the committee, said the Justice Department buried the panel in an avalanche of documents shortly before the 1995 hearings began, and congressional investigators depended on a Justice summary to guide them.

"The Justice Department dumped 100,000 documents on the committee three days before the hearings, knowing that they couldn't possibly go through them," the Indiana Republican said in an interview. Although Burton was on the Government Reform Committee in 1995, he was not on the subcommittee that led the investigation.

Burton also noted that the Justice Department was forced to acknowledge last week that it failed in 1995 to give Congress the key page from a 1993 FBI lab report mentioning the use of military tear gas. The final page of that 49-page report, with the key tear gas mention, was missing, he noted.

"I don't think that's a coincidence," he said.

Almost six out of 10 Americans believe the FBI has been intentionally trying to cover up its actions at Waco, an ABC News poll released Monday indicated. . .

The records Waxman cited, discovered among more than 40 boxes of material compiled during the earlier House hearings, include an FBI pilot's 1993 statement recalling a radio transmission in which agents had a conversation "relative to the utilization of some sort of military round ... on a concrete bunker." And post-raid interview summaries include an unnamed FBI agent's explanation that smoke captured on film "came from (an) attempt to penetrate bunker with one military and two (non-incendiary) rounds."


So Holder helped cover up the details of federal misconduct in the Waco massacre. But a fellow who is good at covering up one federal conspiracy is useful in covering up others.

Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City attorney, has been independently investigating the circumstances of his brother Kenny's strange death while in federal custody at the time of the OKC bombing. Go here to see some graphic pictures of what Kenny Trentadue looked like after he was received from the tender mercies of the Bureau of Prisons after what the Clintonistas claimed was a suicide hanging.

The particulars of Kenneth Trentadue's murder at the hands of federal authorities are hazy. This is partly because Eric Holder managed to short circuit a Senate investigation.

DOJ memos leaked to Jesse Trentadue by an FBI agent indicate just how important Holder was in the cover-up.

Jesse Trentadue said recently,

“They’re Department of Justice memos, they’re actually e mails, and they’re talking about Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and what he has to do to keep the lid on this story,” said Trentadue, adding that the memos make it clear than an attempt to deflect press attention is the goal, along with claiming that the investigation is ongoing in order to keep everything secret.

“This was a coordinated cover-up run at the highest levels of justice and out of the White House,” said Trentadue, noting that the memos refer to the cover-up as “The Trentadue Mission” and use terms like “The Invasion of Normandy” to illustrate the scale of the operation.

“You have to ask yourself, why would the death of one little person, which they claim was a suicide by hanging, generate this kind of activity at the highest levels of the Clinton/Reno Justice Department, the answer is….they knew this murder, if investigated, would lead to the Oklahoma City Bombing and lead to the fact that the Department of Justice, through the FBI and ATF informants, was involved and this occurred just before the re-election of Bill Clinton in 1996,” said Trentadue.

“Mr. Holder’s job was to cover-up my brother’s murder, basically to stop all inquiry,” said Trentadue, saying the e mails were “inflammatory,” referring as they do to “Trentadue’s and Trentadon’ts”.

“Holder’s job was to stop the Democrats and Republicans from looking into this….you have to ask yourself why the Deputy Attorney General of the United States in involved in covering up the death of an inmate and the answer’s simple, they knew that death if investigated would lead back to the bombing, it would lead back to the government’s knowledge and involvement,” said Trentadue, adding that the release of the information would have been a disaster for the re-election hopes of Bill Clinton in 1996.

The leaked memos themselves are posted here.


So why do I think these actions are more compelling than the issues currently being discussed? Simple. In all the others you could argue that Holder was merely doing his job, or holding opinions, about firearms for example, that are controversial. Even in the Marc Rich pardon, he was in the grey zone somewhere between impropriety and illegality.

But in the Waco and Trentadue coverups, Holder was slap in the middle of criminal conspiracies to evade prosecution for federal misdeeds.

As Foghorn T. Leghorn would say, the fox has done been appointed to rule the chicken coop.

Now Jeff Knox, writing here, has called for all gunnies to answer the call to bring pressure on their Senators to stop the Holder nomination. David Codrea, using both his War on Guns and Cleveland Gun Rights Examiner blogs (example here), has seconded this call. Peter at Western Rifle Shooters Association has also.

In fact, Pete says this:

Remember -- this guy is the planned boss of the FBI and BATFE thugs who will be coming to kill you. Get it?

EXACTLY.

I realize that this may endanger the "pragmatists'" characterization of me as "insane," but I call on all Three Percenters to contact their Senators on this one. We won't be able to win the vote, but using the arcane rules of the Senate, we only need one Senator to put a hold on him to slow this outrage down down, and maybe, stop it.

I have no illusions. Even if we do manage to get him to withdraw his nomination, they'll probably appoint someone equally objectionable. However, this falls under the heading of "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." The one thing we must not allow to happen is to give the impression that we agree by acquiescence.

I'm with Knox on this one. Fight the Holder nomination with everything you've got.

Judge orders trial in allegedly missing Oklahoma City bombing video case

Pantheon (pan·the·on) -- A public building commemorating and dedicated to the heroes and heroines of a nation.

Jesse Trentadue is one of my personal pantheon of genuine American heroes and you can see why by going here. His dogged determination to get to the truth of why his brother was killed by the feds is all the more impressive because the FBI is far more dangerous than the ATF when it comes to dealing with threats to their bureaucratic reputation. They will certainly blackmail to protect it (just ask John Boehner) and they have been reliably rumored to kill in defense of it as well.

A Salt Lake attorney who contends the FBI is hiding surveillance video associated with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing might see his case go trial.

U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups denied the government's motion to dismiss the case Monday and ordered both sides to prepare for a bench trial. He scheduled a status hearing for Nov. 21, at which a trial date will be set.

"This is a significant ruling," said Jesse Trentadue, who has spent years trying to get the tapes. "There's no doubt that evidence exists. The question then becomes why can't you find it. The obvious answer is you don't want to find it."

At issue is whether the FBI adequately responded to Trentadue's Freedom of Information Act request for footage of Timothy McVeigh parking a truckload of explosives at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.

Specifically, he is after surveillance tape of the federal building and neighboring buildings as well as dashcam video from the Oklahoma state trooper who stopped McVeigh 90 minutes after the explosion that killed 168 people.

The FBI has released 30 videotapes and 200 documents in response to Trentadue's FOIA request.

Trentadue began looking into the bombing after his brother died in a federal detention center in Oklahoma. He believes federal agents mistook Kenneth Trentadue, a convicted bank robber, for a bombing suspect and beat him to death during an August 1995 interrogation. His official cause of death was listed as suicide.

Trenatdue claims the video will reveal a second bombing suspect who resembles but is not his brother.

Waddoups has chastised U.S. Department of Justice several times for not producing the tapes since Trentadue sued in 2008.

The FBI has submitted several declarations from its top records manager to show the agency has searched electronic databases and evidence warehouses without success. But Waddoups said the declarations lack credibility because they do not include firsthand knowledge or details about who, when, where or how the searches were done.

In his ruling, Waddoups wrote that he finds "genuine" dispute as to whether the FBI has adequately looked for the tapes, even according to its own ethical standards.

"This is even more pronounced given the public importance of the videotapes and related documentation," he wrote.

SSI EXCLUSIVE: The "Patriot Conspiracy" fix at Newsweak. Tina Brown guts a story to protect Democrats & the FBI. "PATCON will get you killed."

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence. Newsweek is published in four English language editions and 12 global editions written in the language of the circulation region.

Since 2008, Newsweek has undergone a series of internal and external contractions designed to shift the magazine's focus and audience while shoring up the title's finances. Instead, losses at the newsweekly accelerated: revenue dropped 38 percent from 2007 to 2009. The revenue freefall prompted an August 2010 sale by owner The Washington Post Company to 92-year-old audio pioneer Sidney Harman — reportedly for a purchase price of $1.00 and an assumption of the magazine's liabilities. . .

In November 2010 Newsweek merged with the news and opinion website The Daily Beast after extensive negotiations between the proprietors of the respective publications. Tina Brown, The Daily Beast's editor-in-chief was expected to serve as the editor of both publications. Newsweek is jointly owned by Harman and IAC. -- Wikipedia.

"Can we write this story without even mentioning FBI complicity, PATCON, the Clinton Administration, Waco and Oklahoma City?" The answer, it seems, was 'yes.'

Going into this weekend, I knew these three things to be certain.

1. Newsweek had a story about a paid confidential informant enlisted under PATCON, an FBI program that spanned many years, including the years that Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Oklahoma City Bombing happened. PATCON is shorthand for "Patriot Conspiracy."

2. I also knew from sources, living and dead, that PATCON was the worst scandal that the FBI ever perpetrated. PATCON could sink the FBI, perhaps permanently, and along with the Gunwalker Scandal, totally discredit the teflon coating that the Bureau has excreted around its corrupt core and thoroughly debunk the myth that the FBI is anything but an agency of arsonists posing as firemen.

3. Finally, I knew that Newsweek would run the story tomorrow. I have been hinting about this story for weeks, and now it was about to happen.

The only thing was, I heard yesterday, that there was a better than even chance that as a result of intervention by Tina Brown, Newsweek's editor, there might not even be any mention of PATCON, Waco or Oklahoma City -- no mention, in fact, of a lot of things.

Of course I also knew that it didn't mean that the PATCON story would end there. It won't. It will come out whether Tina Brown's troubled and cash-strapped magazine benefits from it or not. (Interesting, isn't it, how corrupt politics trumps fiduciary responsibility to the owners of Newsweek, Jane Harmon and the stockholders of IAC, and the public's right to know?

Staff members at Newsweek and The Daily Beast said the environment there had become difficult in recent weeks. People who work there, who did not want to publicly criticize their bosses, say morale in the newsroom has sunk as Ms. Brown has had more frequent outbursts in front of her employees. “It’s all hell, it’s agony,” she has been overheard telling staff members about the quality of their work, according to one of them.

Executives at the magazine are extremely sensitive to perceptions that Newsweek is performing poorly and point to metrics like a 20 percent rise in newsstand sales and a 2.6 percent increase in subscription renewals (they had been in decline for five years) as proof that the turnaround efforts are gaining steam.

“We don’t face financial difficulties,” said Barry Diller, whose IAC/InterActiveCorp owns The Daily Beast. “The attempt has been to take The Beast and revive Newsweek, which we said at the beginning was going to be a two-year effort. We are actually ahead of schedule.” -- New York Times, 14 November 2011.

So there, Diller explained, they don't need a blockbuster issue -- or even a stunning series of articles that everyone would be drawn to read -- because they are "ahead of schedule." Were they to take this monetarily self-destructive decision, I thought, it would certainly illustrate the political preferences of Tina Brown, Lady Evans, CBE, nee Christina Hambley Brown and the power of FBI blackmail to get what it wants.

Well, it is Monday and the article is out.

And now we know what a cabal of New York editors under pressure from a frightened FBI and nervous White House can do to the story of the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- they can gut it, reducing it almost to innocuousness, all to protect criminals who hide behind federal badges and to shield the politicians who sent them.

For you see, you may scan this article, you may study it, you may even read it backwards, but you will find no mention of PATCON. Nor will you find any mention of how PATCON touched upon, shaped the lives of and ultimately decided the fate of the dead at Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City. For PATCON has been excised by the editorship of Tina Brown and sent down the memory hole as if it never existed.

Sources in advance of the story said that FBI was very afraid of this article. "They don't want PATCON mentioned," said one source. "Not ever, by anybody. Because it leads to OKBOMB (the FBI name for the Oklahoma City bombing case), Elohim City (Oklahoma, a Christian Identity community), (German undercover agent Andreas Carl) Strassmeier, the McVeigh-Strassmeier connection, the Aryan Republican Army, the whole shebang." A source out west told me that when he mentioned the name to a retired FBI agent, he was told to "stay away from that shit" for "PATCON will get you killed -- it's national security."

There are many rumors and individual bits of fact that have drifted out about PATCON over the years -- Stories of FBI informants and undercover assets giving taxpayer-funded operational assistance -- including weapons, explosives and money -- to neoNazi and racist terrorists to cement their relationships with the criminals; Reports that an operation that began with real concerns about racist terrorist groups like The Order was expanded to include mere political opponents of the Clinton administration and the defensive-oriented constitutional militias; Reports of a similar operation called VAAPCON, "Violence Against Abortion Providers," using the same tactics; Reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center was hip-deep as a partner to the FBI in PATCON; Reports of FBI penetration of the news media, religious institutions and the ranks of politicians of both parties, who very usefully expanded the FBI's power and reach and who provided political cover when the curtain slipped. Oklahoma lawyer and journalist J.D. Cash once told me that "there isn't a neoNazi or racist group in the country that isn't operationally controlled by the FBI." Did that include the Aryan Republican Army and the Oklahoma City bombing? I asked. "Certainly," he replied. So, the prospect of a story in a major news magazine about PATCON must have given the FBI a severe case of the old rectal looseness.

Now, however, "the Fibbies in the Hoover Building, (Eric) Holder and (Janet) Napolitano must feel like dancing" said another source. "They got what they wanted out of Newsweek. Jesse Trentadue must feel like puking."

I have not interviewed Mr. Trentadue for this article, but I rather suspect the source is right. For this was an article crafted out of documents, now part of the public record, that Trentadue -- a Salt Lake City lawyer who has been trying for 17 years to find out the true circumstances of the murder of his brother Kenney at the hands of government agents in an isolation cell at the federal lockup in El Reno Oklahoma a few months after the OKC bombing -- provided Newsweek. He even led them to the former PATCON confidential informant, John Matthews.

And what did Trentadue get for all his troubles, for putting his faith in Newsweek, for literally giving them the story on platter?

Here's what he got:

Trentadue believed that the FBI had confused Kenney for a member of a gang of white supremacist bank robbers called the Aryan Republican Army; though for years the FBI has claimed that McVeigh largely acted alone, Trentadue has uncovered evidence allegedly linking him to the ARA and the group to the bombing.

You will note that there is no mention of PATCON and so many modifiers that it merely makes Trentadue look like a conspiracy theorist loon.

Nice.

Well, that's all very well and good, Vanderboegh, you may say, but where's the proof that this CI was even involved in PATCON?

Take a look at this and you tell me.

Compare it to the Newsweek story.

The subject is John Matthews.

The heading is "PATCON" -- Patriot Conspiracy.

This will be the first document of many posted in these pages as we gradually explore the records related to PATCON and confidential sources who will explain its outline, scope and bloody consequences.

If the FBI thought they dodged a bullet by persuading Tina Brown to expunge PATCON and its details from this article they reckoned without the Sipsey Street Irregulars and the Coalition of Willing Lilliputians.

There are many more dark corners of PATCON that have yet to be explored and Mr. Matthews will certainly be an excellent tour guide for some enterprising reporter who doesn't work for Tina Brown and who is willing to get to the truth.

There are even links from PATCON to the Gunwalker Scandal.

After all, personnel, as I was taught in Business 101, is policy.

Future articles here at Sipsey Street will explore the details of the murder of Kenney Trentadue and Eric Holder's role in covering them up. It will also deal with the tale of how a U.S. Attorney in Arizona made the proffer to McVeigh associate Michael Fortier in order to flesh out the "lone bomber theory" and divert attention away from Elohim City, the Aryan Republican Army and federal undercover informant Andreas Carl Strassmeier.

The name of that United States Attorney was Janet Napolitano.

"A mere wisp of wind." -- David Gregory pimps possibility of new Oklahoma City bombing. What does he know that you don't? Plenty. Just ask his wife.

Reichstag Fire, 1933.

DAVID GREGORY: In that vein, House Speaker Pelosi worried about the opposition, the tone of it, perhaps, leading to violence as it did in the 70s. There's more recent examples of antigovernment violence— occurring even in the mid 90s. Do you worry about that?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, look— I think that we have an obligation in Washington, as leaders, to make sure that we are sending a strong message. That we can disagree without being disagreeable. Without— you know, questioning each other's motives. When we start caricaturing the other side— I think that's a problem. -- Meet the Press, 20 September 2009.

Later in the show, he asked the GOP the same question:

MR. GREGORY: This question about the role of the government, and, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying this week what she worries about in terms of the tone of debate is that it could lead to violence, as it did in the ‘70s; you know, there was anti-government violence in the ‘90s in Oklahoma City, as well. How much of a concern is that? Do you share it, or do you think that that was an overstatement on her part?

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, quite frankly, I mean, the whole idea of the role of government needs to be debated. . . But I’m not so worried about—you know, her criticism about the opponents of the plan don’t bother me. The fact that we’re broke...

MR. GREGORY: She’s talking about violence, though.

SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah. I don’t...

MR. GREGORY: I mean, we’ll get to the health care. You don’t buy that.

SEN. GRAHAM: I don’t think any responsible person is asking for a violent response.

MR. GREGORY: Do you—is that hyperbole?

REP. BOEHNER: David, I’m, I’m not concerned about violence.

SEN. GRAHAM: No.

REP. BOEHNER: I mean, I’m sure Speaker Pelosi was sincere in her concern. But let’s remember something. The debate that we’re in here is not just about health care, it’s about the, the trillion-dollar stimulus that was suppose to be about jobs and turned into nothing more spending—than spending and more spending. . . You add to that this whole question of health care and the government option, the government involvement, and Americans today are getting more news about what’s happening in their government than they have ever gotten before, and Americans are genuinely scared to death. Scared to death...

Now here's something some of you may remember. Gregory covered the Oklahoma City bombing trials for NBC. There, he met and later married Beth Ann Wilkinson, Assistant U.S. Prosecutor in the case. Of course, I'm certain that dating the fed's cover-up queen there in Denver didn't bias his coverage one bit. Journalistic ethics being what they are, and all.

David Gregory and Beth Ann Wilkinson. She wears the pants in the family.

Now Beth Ann is a piece of work. From Wikipedia:

Beth A. Wilkinson is a prominent Washington, D.C. lawyer, and partner in the New York City-based law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. She works in the firm's Washington, D.C. office focusing on white collar criminal defense. Wilkinson is well-known for successfully arguing for the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. She has also been a critic of unfair administration of the death penalty.

Wilkinson graduated with a B.A. from Princeton University in 1984,and from the University of Virginia Law School with a J.D. She joined the United States Army's Honors Program and served as a captain and assistant for intelligence and special operations in the office of the Army's general counsel. That office detailed her as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida to assist with the use of classified information in the prosecution of Panamanian military leader Manuel Noriega. After completing her four-year obligation to the Army, Wilkinson became a full-time Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in 1991, prosecuting various kinds of cases including narcotics, white collar offenses, and violent crimes. Among her cases was the first United States prosecution of a bombing of an airliner—the 1994 case against Colombian narcoterrorist Dandeny Muñoz Mosquera, whom she successfully prosecuted for the bombing of an Avianca civilian airliner as well as murder of U.S. citizens and other drug-related crimes.

Wilkinson won the Justice Department's highest honor, The Attorney General's Exceptional Service Award, for her work on the Mosquera case. She then became special counsel to the deputy attorney general, advising the top management of the Department on criminal policy and investigations. She was promoted to principal deputy of the Department's Terrorism and Violent Crime Section, and it was in that capacity that she participated in the trial team in U.S. vs. McVeigh and Terry Nichols. She won the Attorney General's Exceptional Service Award an unprecedented second time. . .

In 2006, Fannie Mae recruited Wilkinson as parts of its effort to rebuild its relationship with regulators after accounting scandals and complaints about its corporate culture. Her compensation at Fannie Mae was not disclosed when she was hired. She served as Fannie Mae's executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary from February 2006 until September 2008. She resigned her position at Fannie Mae along with three other senior executives on September 19, 2008, after the troubled mortgage giant was taken over by the government.

In 2009, Wilkinson was elected to partnership in the prominent New York City law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. According to the firm's website, Wilkinson's practice will focus on general litigation. She is married to David Gregory, the moderator of NBC News' Meet the Press. They have three children.

Described by even her friends as "tough as nails," Wilkinson was entrusted with keeping the secrets of the OKC Bombing conspiracy that the Clintonistas wanted kept out of the courtroom. Those secrets included anyone who had evidence of a wider conspiracy, but especially Carol Howe, paid confidential informant for the ATF who warned them about another federal informant and provocateur, the German national, Andreas Carl Strassmeier. After the ATF began to act on her information and planned a raid of Elohim City, the FBI and the US Attorney's office for Oklahoma City had a meeting with the ATF in Tulsa at the end of February, 1995. The ATF was told to "back off, Elohim City is our operation." So they did. Eventually, a federal building with a lot of innocents in it blew up. (This is one you can't blame the BATFags for. The FBI owned this one from the beginning.)


"Andy the German," Security Chief at "Elohim City," an Indentity compound in eastern Oklahoma, and base of the Aryan Republican Army.

To see how this fits together with Wilkinson, Gregory and Company, read this story from years back by my friends J.D. Cash and Roger Charles. It is long, certainly, but worth the read. I'll have comments on the other side.

Southern Poverty Law Center tracked bomb plot around the globe

By J.D. Cash and Lt. Colonel Roger Charles (U.S.M.C. retired)

Newly released documents received by a Salt Lake City attorney in his suit against the Oklahoma City FBI office provide the strongest evidence yet that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has been conducting a well-orchestrated cover-up of evidence linking Timothy McVeigh to subjects that frequented, and in some cases resided, at an eastern Oklahoma paramilitary compound called Elohim City.

At the center of this cabal were numerous informants. At least two of those providing critical information about the Elohim City conspiracy reported to a tax-exempt civil rights group, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), headed by Morris Dees.

Perhaps even more surprising is evidence in these 87 pages released by DOJ on behalf of the FBI and the Oklahoma City FBI office, is documentation showing that top FBI agents assigned the bombing case lacked authority to conduct interviews at Elohim City or to go after a leading suspect in the case, Andreas Carl Strassmeir, also known as "Andy the German."

While the state's media ignored (and some even attacked) evidence this newspaper presented nine years ago linking McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Mike Fortier to Strassmeir and other radicals at Elohim City, these new but heavily redacted documents should provide a starting point for a real investigation into the horrific crime and apparent government sponsored cover-up.

Morris Dees, malignant Federal running dog whose informants knew about OKC conspiracy. Morris did nothing with the information, before or after the slaughter. (My apologies to honest Oompa Loompas everywhere.)


Trentadue suit

After months of legal wrangling in a Salt Lake City courtroom, the DOJ reluctantly turned over 17 FBI-generated documents Friday, to the plaintiff in a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit n Jesse C. Trentadue.

Trentadue, a well-respected Salt Lake City lawyer whose client list is made up of members of the insurance industry, became embroiled in the Oklahoma City bombing case after his brother was found beaten to death in his jail cell at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center in August 1995.

Initially, the federal government ruled Kenny Trentadue's death a suicide, in spite of many indications that pointed to his having been beaten to death. The Trentadue family and local investigators tried to obtain definitive proof of his murder, but were thwarted by actions of FBI and Bureau of Prison employees who allegedly destroyed evidence in the case.



After information was passed to him from an intermediary serving time at a Terre Haute, Ind., federal prison with McVeigh, Jesse Trentadue sought evidence of his brother's death inside the OKBOMB investigation files.

McVeigh's message offered an explanation as to why such extreme measures had been undertaken by federal officials: Kenny Trentadue was tortured by federal agents who may have mistakenly thought he was a member of the bombing conspiracy.

With this tenuous lead from McVeigh, the dead man's brother filed a FOIA request for documents that could shed light on his brother's brutal murder and the OKBOMB case.

In the course of his investigation, evidence emerged in documents Trentadue received that the FBI was using the SPLC to gather information on Elohim City n both before and after the bombing.

After months of legal maneuvering by the DOJ and the FBI, U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball ruled on May 5, 2005, that the Oklahoma City FBI office had to search for documents linking the SPLC to Elohim City and/or specific individuals connected to the April 19, 1995, bombing.

With national attention on the case provided by several news agencies, the FBI released a small portion of what may prove to be a large reservoir of hidden documents that could reveal more sensational details about a widespread cover-up.

The DOJ cover letter accompanying the newly released documents claimed the release to Trentadue was done as "a matter of discretion, in the interest of resolving the litigation in good faith." The earliest date on these documents is a teletype transmitted on April 24, 1995 n only three days after McVeigh was first publicly identified as a prime suspect in the bombing of the A.P. Murrah federal building.

While each of the 17 reports is heavily redacted, central to these-never-before-reported-on documents is evidence that the Southern Poverty Law Center headquartered in Montgomery, Ala., was monitoring neo-Nazi radicals closely associated with McVeigh, if not McVeigh himself, shortly before McVeigh's deadly attack.

Leaked teletype first disclosed SPLC connection

What started this latest litigation was an article first reported by this newspaper on Dec. 14, 2003. The copyrighted article provided details of a teletype sent by the director of the FBI to a select few FBI offices, disclosing that Morris Dees' SPLC had at least one informant at Elohim City on April 17, 1995, when McVeigh called the camp.

The name of the individual to whom McVeigh placed this call is redacted in the FBI teletype, but a phone card shows at another time McVeigh called Elohim City to speak to Strassmeir.

Strassmeir was providing paramilitary training to the neo-Nazis who frequently cycled through Elohim City. This January 4, 1996, FBI teletype also documents an April 5, 1995, telephone call from McVeigh to Elohim City, characterizing this call as an attempt by McVeigh "to recruit a second conspirator to assist in the OKBOMB attack.

One of the newly released FBI documents, dated January 26, 1996, provides support for the accuracy of the SPLC informant's characterization of McVeigh's April 5 telephone call as a "recruiting" call.

In this newly disclosed report, the FBI notes that Fortier, identified as "the OKBOMB cooperating subject" (but with his name redacted), as having said that, "April 5, 1995, was around the time that he backed out of the plans to bomb the federal building. McVeigh may have been trying to recruit other individuals to assist him."

This new evidence from the top echelons of the FBI directly contradicts many statements made in federal court by top DOJ officials, who told federal judges they were not aware of any government information about any informants operating inside Elohim City before the bombing.

In closed chambers, DOJ lawyers told U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch that they had no evidence linking anyone at Elohim City to McVeigh, or the bombing, other than a calling card record showing McVeigh had called the camp a single time on April 5, 1995.

Furthermore, these same DOJ attorneys said absolutely nothing about an April 17, 1995 call by McVeigh, while at least one operative from the SPLC was present at Elohim City, monitoring the compound, when McVeigh called.

Stephen Jones, McVeigh's attorney at that trial, indicated that the new documents show prosecutors violated ethical standards.

"These hand-picked DOJ lawyers were obligated by law and by their professional code of ethics to provide this information to Judge Matsch in order for him to determine if the material should be turned over to the McVeigh and Nichols defense teams. They did not do so," he said.

Conspiracy closely monitored

Taken in their entirety, Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue's latest documents clearly place the role of the SPLC and its own undercover operatives at the center of unresolved issues about federal law enforcement's prior knowledge of the conspiracy to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

In addition, the documents also show that members of the DOJ prosecution team misrepresented to U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch the true extent of government files about McVeigh's ties to Elohim City, potentially opening them up to criminal prosecution and disbarment for these misrepresentations.

One of those documents indicates that on April 24, 1995, a top DOJ lawyer in the civil rights division, Barry Kowalski, reported that he was seeking an interview with a key undercover SPLC source about relations the source had developed regarding, "relationships, activities, and/or associates of subject number one, Timothy J. McVeigh."

Indeed, the FBI was using a spy network operated by the SPLC to do what many in the FBI were afraid to do because of guidelines in place during the Clinton administration.

According to a highly placed confidential source in the DOJ at the time of the bombing, Attorney General Janet Reno would not allow the FBI much latitude in developing intelligence inside the far-right due to concerns that such activities might violate existing departmental guidelines on "domestic spying."

To skirt Reno's policies, the FBI developed a relationship with cutouts such as the SPLC that could use their own spies to do what the FBI could not. These non-government agents then passed their intelligence products back to the bureau.

Dees confirms relationship

In December 2003 this newspaper presented SPLC co-founder Morris Dees with information that linked his organization to the FBI and to McVeigh's conspiracy in the months before the Ryder truck exploded.

Dees confirmed to the Gazette a role in the surveillance operation at Elohim City (and other places) when reporters interviewed him at a press conference in Durant.

Dees was initially taken aback when he learned that the newspaper had obtained an officially released FBI teletype from director Louis Freeh, including information attributed to an SPLC informant who was present Elohim City on April 17, 1995, when McVeigh called him to seek help in the bombing.



Dees admitted that he had an informant at Elohim City as the teletype said. However, the coy attorney refused to elaborate on the situation, except to say he had warned then-attorney general Reno, six months before the attack, that, "(A)n attack on the government is planned by members of the far right."

Dees went on to say that after the attack he immediately called Reno to say the media had it wrong.

"I told her the attack was domestic, not foreign," Dees said.

The co-founder of the SPLC also said that he did not know McVeigh by name before the blast. However, Dees did become visibly shaken when asked what he thought of German-national Andreas Strassmeir.

"I won't ever discuss that man," Dees said as he spun away from the interview and left the press conference with his armed bodyguards in tow.

Book discloses informant

In the newly released April 24, 1995, teletype, the FBI and DOJ redacted the name of the SPLC agent, but described him as "acting in various undercover capacities for the purposes of gathering intelligence for that organization [the SPLC]."

Dees, on the other hand, had no such concerns about identifying this operative in his 1996 book, "Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat." There he described Mike Reynolds as "one of our [SPLC] Militia Task Force investigators." Dees' description of Reynolds' itinerary for the period in question perfectly fits the description in the April 24 teletype.

The EC connection

An appraisal of the new documents shows that almost immediately after the bombing, elements within the FBI sought information about Strassmeir, the paramilitary leader at Elohim City. And the information was sourced through Dees' information network at Elohim City, according to these same FBI documents.

The first report provided by the Oklahoma City FBI office concerning the SPLC's intelligence operation was prepared on April 24, 1995, and discusses McVeigh's links to the Michigan Militia and to the Arizona Patriots militia group n a group that the SPLC informant stated had evolved into the Constitution Ranger's militia group.

The informant cited this latter group's involvement in white supremacist activities in the Kingman, Ariz., area and claimed to be knowledgeable "of the identities of various members who had association with Timothy Jack (sic) McVeigh."

The FBI document said this SPLC informant had just attended an neo-Nazi movement rally and as of April 24 was staying at the Hilton Inn in Little Rock when the FBI attempted to make contact, but had departed for the Montgomery, Ala., area "within the past one hour."

But the initial report from the Oklahoma City FBI office does not mention the fact that at least one, and very likely two informants for the SPLC were at Elohim City on April 17, 1995, when McVeigh made the call never disclosed by the DOJ to Judge Matsch.

Those details would not come out for many months, and then only after the FBI learned that one of the reporters for this story (J.D. Cash) and an investigator for McVeigh's defense team were making regular visits to Elohim City.

In January 1996, this newspaper began preparing a series of articles about Elohim City. Those articles were based upon multiple trips to the compound in late 1995.

According to people at the compound, McVeigh had visited the camp several times. The leaders of the camp, though, would make that information only on a non-attribution basis n out of fear, they said, that they would be linked to the bombing and arrested for conspiracy.

At one point in the questioning of Rev. Robert Millar, the aging patriarch of the Christian Identity community of about 80 persons, he admitted to McVeigh defense investigator Richard Reyna in the presence of a reporter for this newspaper that McVeigh's initial visit to Elohim City had been with former KKK leader Dennis Mahon of Tulsa.

Before long, several others provided the same details. McVeigh had traveled to Elohim City for meetings inside and outside the compound well over a dozen times, beginning in the fall of 1993.

One of the sources, an Oklahoma state trooper, had informants inside the neo-Nazi compound. A second source is none other than Morris Dees himself.

Reported by veteran reporter Howard Pankratz in the Denver Post, on May 16, 1996, Dees was quoted as saying that McVeigh has visited Elohim City,"…. on a number of occasions."

Sometime after that article appeared, Dees attempted to recant his declaration, claiming he had been misquoted, but the reporter who wrote the article was adamant that Dees had spoken as quoted in the article.

Contacted this week, Pankratz said he recalls attending the press luncheon and may even have Dees' comments on a tape.

"I kept all my Oklahoma City interview material," Pankratz noted. "Dees certainly never asked us to print a retraction of our story."

Suspects flee Elohim City

By the late summer of 1995, because of increasing media interest and law enforcement attention on Elohim City, several young men, including German National Andreas "Andy the German" Strassmeir, fled Elohim City n a neo-Nazi paramilitary camp in eastern Oklahoma.

Three of these men n Scott Stedford, Kevin McCarthy and Michael Brescia n were subsequently arrested for participating in a series of bank robberies in the Midwest and attempting to overthrow the government. The gang called itself the Aryan Republic Army (ARA). All three of these men shared living quarters at Elohim City with Strassmeir.

While the FBI for years told the media that the agency had no interest in Strassmeir and any alleged connections to Tim McVeigh and the OKC bombing, these new documents establish that some key officials inside the FBI were monitoring Strassmeir's escape from the U.S. n but were doing nothing to stop him from leaving.

Contained in an unclassified teletype marked "Priority" from the London FBI office to the director of the FBI on Jan. 4, 1996, the OKBOMB case number is referenced and the following information is provided:

"Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, Alabama who had received the following information from various confidential sources: [redacted name] white male, date of birth [information redacted] he was helped with [information redacted] also defends [information redacted]. Additionally in November of 1993, [name redacted] met subject Tim McVeigh (and) [name redacted] and thereafter, became associates with McVeigh because of their common background [information redacted] in the military. [name and information redacted] for the past few years at Elohim City, Oklahoma (a religious white supremacist community in a remote area) McVeigh attempted to call [name redacted] in April of 1995 prior to the bombing, according to this source. [name redacted] went on to provide additional information from his sources regarding [names and information redacted. Name redacted] concluded by advising that he has provided this information to the FBI because he has heard that LEGAT [legal attaché], London (FBI London) is doing background investigation on [name redacted]. "

LEGAT is the short name for the office of the FBI's Legal Attache at the specified U.S. embassy. The LEGAT is an FBI agent assigned to the staff of the U.S. ambassador for liaison duties with law enforcement officials in that foreign country.

The DOJ acknowledged that McVeigh called Elohim City on April 5, 1995, asking for Strassmeir. Both Strassmeir and McVeigh had common military experiences. Other sources confirm that LEGAT London was tasked to do a background investigation on Strassmeir. Given these facts, and the limited pool of "players," it is clear that the teletype mentioned above can only refer to Strassmeir, who was expected to flee the U.S. shortly, and did.

The document goes on to say: "Will advise Oklahoma City command post whether LEGAT is aware of any investigation [name and information redacted] by LEGAT, London, Scotland Yard, Interpol, or any similar agency in your jurisdiction."

Referring to the November 1993 trip McVeigh made to Elohim City, this newspaper broke a story on July 1 about an interview Terry Nichols gave Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif.

That jailhouse interview included Nichols' admissions for the first time that in the fall of 1993 he and McVeigh traveled to Elohim City. During the course of the Rohrabacher interview, Nichols also told the congressman that it was clear to him that McVeigh had been to the compound before and knew Strassmeir and others there "very well."

DOJ officials hamper probe

Many of those new unclassified documents also establish that the OKBOMB task force was unable to interview subjects connected with Elohim City, because of conditions set forth by FBI director Louis Freeh and possibly other high ranking DOJ officials.

As an example: In a very unusual teletype, Jan. 29, 1996, marked "Priority" from the OKBOMB command post, which was headed at the time by Supervisory Special Agent Danny Defenbaugh, the commander of the massive investigation asked Freeh to locate Strassmeir in Germany and have someone question him about the numerous details set forth in newspaper articles detailing Strassmeir's connections to the bombing conspirators.

Not only were many of the names redacted from this priority teletype to Freeh; even the name of the newspaper breaking the Strassmeir/McVeigh/EC connections was withheld by the Oklahoma City FBI office.

However, based on the teletype's description of one of the informants providing information to the bureau, it is likely that Dennis Mahon is one of the sources referred to. The memo notes that Mahon (whose name was redacted) had a long history of contacts with members of radical rightwing and the skinheads. It also notes that the informant was recently barred from a particular foreign country he visited and stirred up trouble.

Indeed, Mahon had been barred from Germany for participating in Ku Klux Klan activities there during the timeframe mentioned in the teletype.

The FBI's Oklahoma City Command Post also said its informant provided information that Strassmeir had left Elohim City in the past few months and moved to Black Mountain, N.C.

The information was further verified by a "CW" n a Cooperating Witness n informant from the FBI's Cincinnati division n a man closely allied with the Aryan Republican Army (ARA) and a longtime source of information to the FBI.

That man's name is also known to this newspaper. He is Shawn Kenny, the former head of an Aryan Nations chapter in Ohio and a close associate of ARA bank bandits Peter Langan and Richard Guthrie (deceased). In fact, Kenny's work for the authorities in the OKBOMB investigation is mentioned several times in the new documents.

Referring to a number of newspaper articles linking Strassmeir to others, (whose names and locations at the time were redacted by the FBI) the Oklahoma City Command Post also lists a number of reasons why Strassmeir should be located by the FBI and questioned about the bombing and his alleged long association with McVeigh. Central to this plea by the OKBOMB case FBI commander is the evidence presented by this newspaper about Strassmeir and his associates, at Elohim City and elsewhere.

It is clear in January 1996 that members of the OKBOMB task force were very agitated about Strassmeir's flight from justice after they learned the news from an SPLC source.

Dated Jan. 26, 1996, the command post told Freeh and a select group of other FBI agents the following:

"As Charlotte [FBI office in North Carolina] is aware [name redacted] is of particular interest to this investigation because of his association to Elohim City (EC), a paramilitary survivalist compound located in eastern Oklahoma. McVeigh called the compound on April 5, 1995. As indicated in referenced teletype, information has been received from sources of [name redacted] indicating that [name redacted] met McVeigh [information redacted] and that McVeigh called the compound prior to the bombing asking for [name redacted].

"On January 26, 1996, Special Agent SA [name redacted] Mobile division, Montgomery resident agent advised she had received additional information from [name redacted] Southern Poverty Law Center, who advised the following: "He had just obtained information from a highly reliable source that [name redacted] had fled [location redacted] about seven days ago. The same source also said that [information and names redacted].

"Quoting another confidential informant [Kenny] based in Cincinnati, Ohio said he/she saw [name redacted] at [information redacted] in [location redacted]. At that time [name redacted (Strassmeir) said he left Oklahoma because, "things were too hot out there." Confidential informant clearly understood that [name withheld (Strassmeir) was referring to the bombing.

Defenbaugh's teletype next set forth a series of questions that Strassmeir should have to answer, if anyone could find him.

Regardless of the situation and Defenbaugh's pleas for assistance in the investigation, the Oklahoma City FBI documents do not provide any evidence that any FBI agent ever went to Berlin to do a face-to-face interview with the subject of so much pre- and post-bombing attention by federal agents and informants.

Instead, on April 30 and May 1, 1996, DOJ lawyers Aitman Goelman and Beth Wilkinson made two conference telephone calls from Denver to Berlin to interview Strassmeir. An FBI 302 obtained by this newspaper quite some time ago reveals only the most cursory interview of the subject, a conversation that Strassmeir later told a media source "lasted all of about five minutes."

According to the FBI 302, a single FBI agent was allowed to monitor the call and take notes. What few questions were asked of Strassmeir were very general in nature and asked only by Wilkinson and Goelman.

Wilkinson would later make light of Strassmeir's purported importance to the OKBOMB case by telling Judge Matsch that Strassmeir was "a mere wisp of wind." She promised the court that the German was never any interest to OKBOMB investigators.

"We never investigated Strassmeir," she told Matsch during a pre-trial evidentiary hearing Denver, "so we have nothing to turn over to Mr. McVeigh's lawyers about him."

Trentadue says he now intends to go back to court for additional information concerning files the FBI has not yet turned over.

"If the Southern Poverty Law Center was providing information about Elohim City after the bombing to the FBI, they must have been providing it before April 19th, Trentadue noted. Asking further: "So where are those reports?"

Trentadue also says there is considerable information redacted in these latest reports that clearly should not have been withheld.

"The names of certain newspapers were even withheld," Trentadue quipped. "Hell, where does the FBI get the right to withhold the names of the papers it reads?"

Collectivist tyrannies have a play book. One of the plays used by truly bestial governments is the Reichstag Fire scenario. The Russians have recently experienced this with the Beslan school massacre. Putin's poll numbers were failing. His Chechen war was unpopular. Presto! Some Muslim fanatics take over a school, the government's response guarantees a high death toll of children, and Putin's reputation is restored, with the nation demanding vengeance. Pictures of dead babies do it every time. The parents of the dead Beslan children suspect the Putin regime of orchestrating it. A reporer that got too close to the truth ended up dead. This is how tyrannies work.



For his part, Bill Clinton told reporters after his re-election that "Oklahoma City broke the spell."

Now David Gregory, whose wife was deep into the OKC cover-up, predicts another Oklahoma City?

We should take him seriously.

More on this subject later this week.

Mike
III

Another headache for Eric Holder. If there's no tapes, what is the FBI so afraid of in the Trentadue case that they're threatening witnesses?

Lawyer says FBI threatened witness in OKC bombing records trial

Attorney Jesse Trentadue said the Salt Lake City-based FBI agent had contacted John Matthews, who he described as a former undercover operative for the government, and suggested that it would be “best for everyone if [Matthews] didn’t show up to testify.”

The agent also suggested that Matthews take a vacation and said that if he did testify, “he should have a case of the ‘I-don’t-remembers,’ ” Trentadue told U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups.

See also: Waddoups ordered the federal attorneys to look into it. On Thursday, Department of Justice attorney Kathryn Wyer said the FBI in Utah told her that Matthews reached out to the agency to ask how he could get out of testifying. Wyer called Trentadue's version of events "another wild theory" that is inaccurate. But Waddoups said the allegation merits more attention, and he set a court date of Aug. 25 for the agent to testify. "We can't just leave this where it is," Waddoups said. "It's too serious of an allegation. We need to get to the bottom of this."

Humble Pie: I was wrong about the Isham story and owe John Solomon an apology -- again.

Earlier today, I posted what is now in retrospect a jump-to-conclusions piece on John Solomon's piece "Memo suggests FBI had mole inside ABC News in 1990s." My screed was entitled "The Gunwalker coverup artists begin to smear. Remember, nothing happens in Washington, D.C. without a reason. 'Outrageous and untrue.'" It has since been deleted.

This was almost entirely based on the fact that I missed these crucial paragraphs (don't ask me how I missed 'em):

The memo was recently discovered by Utah lawyer Jesse Trentadue, who has spent years researching the Oklahoma City case trying to prove a connection between the terrorist bombing and the death of his brother in an Oklahoma prison in the summer of 1995.

The root of the memo lies in Trentadue’s relationship with Terry Nichols, one of the defendants convicted in the 1995 terror attack, who is serving life in prison. Trentadue recently found the document — unredacted and still marked secret — in a box of documents gathered by Nichols’ defense attorneys.

The FBI 302, which I thought had been leaked by the FBI to discredit Isham, turns out to have come from Jesse Trentadue, one of the persistent fighters for truth about the Oklahoma City bombing.

Having missed that crucial fact, I was ready to react to John Cook at The Gawker who named Isham, reporting that "CBS News Washington Bureau Chief Was an FBI Snitch."

A good friend first emailed me, then called me, to set me straight. I hate to be wrong, but I'm learning -- perhaps too slowly -- what "due diligence" means.

I was suckered the other day on some skillful disinformation fed to me about the relationship between Cerberus Corporation and George Soros and I pulled that as soon as I found out. Earlier in this scandal, I reacted wrongly to another old article presented as new, which also caused me to rage at John Solomon unjustly. This humble pie is getting old, but I promise to do better.

Once again, my sincere apologies to John Solomon for jumping to wrong conclusions.

Isham, it seems, has some real serious questions to answer.

Mike Vanderboegh

SSI Exclusive: Hiding mass murder behind "national security." What Newsweak & the FBI didn't want you to know about PATCON and the OKC Bombing.

And now we know what a cabal of New York editors under pressure from a frightened FBI and nervous White House can do to the story of the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- they can gut it, reducing it almost to innocuousness, all to protect criminals who hide behind federal badges and to shield the politicians who sent them.

For you see, you may scan this article, you may study it, you may even read it backwards, but you will find no mention of PATCON. Nor will you find any mention of how PATCON touched upon, shaped the lives of and ultimately decided the fate of the dead at Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City. For PATCON has been excised by the editorship of Tina Brown and sent down the memory hole as if it never existed.

Sources in advance of the story said that FBI was very afraid of this article. "They don't want PATCON mentioned," said one source. "Not ever, by anybody. Because it leads to OKBOMB (the FBI name for the Oklahoma City bombing case), Elohim City (Oklahoma, a Christian Identity community), (German undercover agent Andreas Carl) Strassmeier, the McVeigh-Strassmeier connection, the Aryan Republican Army, the whole shebang." A source out west told me that when he mentioned the name to a retired FBI agent, he was told to "stay away from that shit" for "PATCON will get you killed -- it's national security."

There are many rumors and individual bits of fact that have drifted out about PATCON over the years -- Stories of FBI informants and undercover assets giving taxpayer-funded operational assistance -- including weapons, explosives and money -- to neoNazi and racist terrorists to cement their relationships with the criminals; Reports that an operation that began with real concerns about racist terrorist groups like The Order was expanded to include mere political opponents of the Clinton administration and the defensive-oriented constitutional militias; Reports of a similar operation called VAAPCON, "Violence Against Abortion Providers," using the same tactics; Reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center was hip-deep as a partner to the FBI in PATCON; Reports of FBI penetration of the news media, religious institutions and the ranks of politicians of both parties, who very usefully expanded the FBI's power and reach and who provided political cover when the curtain slipped. Oklahoma lawyer and journalist J.D. Cash once told me that "there isn't a neoNazi or racist group in the country that isn't operationally controlled by the FBI." Did that include the Aryan Republican Army and the Oklahoma City bombing? I asked. "Certainly," he replied. So, the prospect of a story in a major news magazine about PATCON must have given the FBI a severe case of the old rectal looseness.

Now, however, "the Fibbies in the Hoover Building, (Eric) Holder and (Janet) Napolitano must feel like dancing" said another source. "They got what they wanted out of Newsweek. . ."

So I wrote on Monday in this article which linked to a
published but gutted version of the original Newsweek story about the patriotic volunteer confidential informant John Matthews, who was recruited by the FBI under the secret program known as PATCON (Patriot Conspiracy).

"What was it, specifically," I was asked later in numerous emails and phone calls, "that Tina Brown cut out?" From sources I had a pretty good idea, not all of which I put in the first article. But that was only based on trusted but secondhand sources.

Well, now I can answer that question. Sipsey Street has obtained a copy of the unedited article written by R.M. Schneiderman.

It was -- as originally written -- a great story, an important, game-changing story, a story that couold have made the career and reputation of Ross Schneiderman for the rest of his life. It had been several months in the making, sources say, as Schneiderman and his immediate editor John Solomon put it together and almost instantly ran into resistance from editors higher up the Newsweek food chain including, ultimately, Tina Brown.

When the editors were finished, most of the startling revelations of what John Matthews and Jesse Trentadue had to say were in Tina Brown's waste basket. Nestled beside them, amid waste paper and used Starbucks' latte cups, was the golden opportunity of Ross Schneiderman's career.

However, sources tell Sipsey Street, that the FBI, the Obama DOJ and the White House were all reportedly quite happy -- as well they should be.

Until now.

(NOTE: The excerpts below contain typographical errors found in the original and I have left them as is.)

Among the items expunged from the story:

1. The missing paragraphs that presented evidence that Tom Posey, the supposed chief conspirator whose crazy talk about using weapons of mass destruction first prompted Matthews to go to the FBI, may himself have been a government asset. From the original story as written, before Tina Brown's felt tip marker excised it:

After Posey’s arrest, the FBI had Matthews Social Security number changed, and paid for him and his family to move to Stockton , California . Yet the trial in Alabama proved frustrating for him. Despite hundreds of hours of recorded conversations, as well as video and personal surveillance, the Justice Department only chose to prosecute Posey and his cohorts for buying and selling the stolen night vision goggles. And in the end, Posey was sentenced to just two years in prison.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Birmingham said there simply wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute Posey for the Brown’s Ferry plot. Yet curiously, the TVA denied that the plot or the weapons cache even existed. Meanwhile, several of the men involved in the planned robbery were never arrested. At the time, two of the men, Matthews says, were planning to blow up a federal building in Birmingham .

“They were gonna take a truck filled with fertilizer,” says Matthews. “You look at what Timothy McVeigh done, it’s basically the same thing. “What happened in Oklahoma could have happened a couple of years earlier.”

One possible explanation for how Posey’s trial played out: In 1996, the year he was released from prison, Posey appears to have been issued a new Social Security number, according to a Lexis-Nexus search conducted by Newsweek. Tony Gooch, a friend and Posey’s and a former CMA member, said that Posey was innocent of any wrongdoing, and that the whole Brown’s Ferry plot had been cooked up by Matthews. “Tom was a good man,” he says. “John did not endear himself to us with that story.” Yet Gooch said that Posey may have felt forced to cut a deal with the Justice Department, and provide them with information on other groups in the movement, or agreed not to reveal what he knew about Iran Contra.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Gooch said. “Tom knew some people who were real hardcore.”

Andreas Carl Strassmeier. John Matthews encountered him in company with Timothy McVeigh in San Saba, Texas. Sources say that Strassmeier was a joint operative of the German and U.S. governments.

2. There is mention that Matthews had encountered both Timothy McVeigh and Andreas Carl Strassmeier, widely thought to have been involved in the planning of the bombing, in Texas. From the original version of the story:

In the spring of 1995, Matthews was sitting on the couch with his father at his house in Stockton California when he heard the news: A truck bomb had exploded in front of a federal building in Oklahoma . Dozens had been killed, hundreds had been injured and the face of the building looked like it had been chewed off by an animal with a giant maw.

Matthews watched the coverage of the bombing with rapt attention. After all, this was the same sort of attack he had spent years trying to prevent. Days later, when McVeigh became the prime suspect and his photo flashed across the screen, Matthews realized he had seen him before. His mind drifted back to a weekend several years prior at a ranch in San Saba , Texas , where once a month, the TRM held paramilitary training.

It was a relatively warm Saturday morning. Matthews, who had spent the night on the ranch, was walking back from the woods where he had been setting up the evening’s exercise, when he spotted a group of men in fatigues hanging around a shed where the TRM stored explosives. Some of them, Matthews could tell by their haircuts and bearing, were ex-military.

Matthews and a few of his cohorts walked over to the men and introduced themselves. One man had dark hair, slightly buck teeth and a foreign accent. His name was “Andy,” and Matthews later learned that he was from Germany . Another man was tall and lanky, with short, buzzed hair. He said his name was “Tim.”

“He [Tim] was a nobody,” Matthews says. “Just another ex-soldier, but I remember his face. He was at one of the meetings, where a bunch of [stolen] ammunition was brought in from Fort Hood .”

Sitting in father’s living room in California , watching the television, Matthews decided he should call Jarrett. He told them about “Tim” and “Andy the German.” Yet Jarrett seemed blasé about the matter. “He said, ‘We know, John. Don’t worry about it. We got it covered.”

Instead, he was more interested in whether Matthews had seen McVeigh in Arizona . At the time, Matthews was working for the bureau there, infiltrating militias and separatists, along with meth-cooking gangs of bikers. Apparently, Jarrett said, McVeigh had spent time with similar groups. But Matthews never ran across him in Arizona , he said. Only in Texas . Jarrett thanked him and said he’d keep him updated. But as Matthews recalls it, that was the last time they ever spoke about the bombing.

When the FBI and the Justice Department eventually determined that McVeigh had largely acted alone in the bombing, with minimal assistance from two men who eventually back out of the attack, Matthews was skeptical. He began to wonder if it wasn’t a repeat of the Brown’s Ferry incident all over again.

“I felt Don knew more about this, but he could never say something to me,” Matthews says.

Jarrett passed away in 2009. . .

3. The story published also excised any mention of the Texas Light Infantry, a militia unit in the Lone Star State which contained constitutional militia, racist right and non-political elements. The racists and neoNazis, says one source who was familiar with TLI at the time, "kept a very low profile. Think of them as infiltrators that most TLI members knew nothing about."

Exactly why Newsweek found it necessary to delete mention of the TLI get-together in San Saba, and instead ascribe it to the Texas Reserve Militia, is curious. It was the TLI which is mentioned in FBI reports (called 302s) of this meeting where Matthews met men who he later discovered to be McVeigh and Strassmeier, sources say. Why, sources ask, is Newsweek (and presumably the FBI) allergic to mention of TLI?

4. The published story also expunged mention of an FBI undercover operative named Dave Rossi.

In January 1992, Matthews and Posey traveled to Austin Texas to meet with Neal Payne, a member of the Texas Reserve Militia, an Austin-based paramilitary group. Years earlier, Payne, a chiropractor who had been married in a church in which swastikas were frequently displayed, had been arrested for harboring Louis Beam, then a fugitive former Klan leader, who was indicted on charges of trying to overthrow the government. (He was later acquitted). Now, the FBI was investigating Payne, Beam and the TRM for allegedly laundering money through a Texas gun shop, paying off local law enforcement, purchasing stolen weapons from a Texas military base, smuggling arms from Central America, attempting to blow up a National Guard convoy in Alabama and threatening to kill two FBI agents in response to Beam’s arrest.

It was evening when they met at a small hotel room, on the outskirts of the city. The weather was cold and the sky was darkening. It had rained earlier that day, and inside the hotel room, the smell of must lingered in the air. Portraits of cowboys hung on the walls, as did old photos of the Alamo . Payne had wanted Matthews and Posey to meet a friend of his, an Austin-based Vietnam veteran named Dave Rossi. Rossi was about average height and build. He sported a shock of silver hair, a gray moustache and a green bomber jacket, which was fashionable among skinheads at the time.

For the next few hours, they kicked back on the beds and in the chairs and talked about the movement, how if they were ever going to stop the Jewish-led New World Order, they would have to band together, trading knowledge and weapons and making sure the government didn’t infiltrate them in the process. Fashioning his group after the Order, an infamous white supremacist gang of bank robbers from the 1980s, Rossi told Matthews and Posey that he and his cohorts were robbing armored cars, and using the proceeds to fund the movement. “He let us know that there was money available,” says Matthews. “We were feeling each other out.”

Posey, on his part, touted his access to weapons, and his history with the Contras. And as they left the hotel and drove to a local restaurant for dinner, Posey said could supply Rossi with C-4, a military grade explosive, as well as Stinger missiles, deadly heat-seeking devices, which when strapped to your shoulder, can bring down an aircraft with one shot.

Matthews recalls Posey leaving the meeting and feeling good about the future of the movement. “We really didn’t know where we were going with it at the time,” Matthews says. “But if they showed up with money then we could believe what they were telling us.”

In September of 1992, on a brisk morning in Benton , Tennessee , Matthews met Rossi and Posey at the annual convention of the American Pistol and Rifle Association, a gun rights group to the right of the NRA. Guards dressed in a camouflage uniforms, and armed with semi-automatic pistols patrolled the compound. Children and adults fired pistols and rifles at targets shaped like police cars a nearby range, and later, the group’s head of security, a police officer, taught a class on how to disarm law enforcement officials and kill them with their own guns.

As the day progressed, Matthews did his best to keep his distance from the undercover agent. For months, he and Posey had been travelling across the country, meeting a who’s who in the movement—from the Klan to the Aryan Nations--and linking them up with Rossi. Each time, Rossi introduced himself as a leader of a gang of armored car robbers with lots of money on his hands and a desire to fund the movement.

Eventually, however, Matthews began to wonder: If this guy has all this cash at his disposal, and he’s robbing all these banks, why haven’t I heard about the robberies? Matthews asked Jarrett and several of his other handlers at the bureau and they demurred. But eventually, after Matthews continued harping on the issue, Jarrett admitted what Matthews had begun to suspect: That Rossi was an undercover agent, posing as the leader of a white supremacist group. And the hotel they had initially met at in Texas had been bugged.

At first, Matthews felt betrayed; it was as if the bureau didn’t trust him. But then the knowledge that Rossi had been with him along the way was validating; Jarrett told him that he had earned their trust, and so Matthews continued his work, knowing that his handlers were behind him. Now, when they arrived on a scene, they often split up and had separate targets.

Matthews’ job for the weekend was to film. And that evening, as roughly 150 men and women—many of them in flannel shirts and baseball caps--gathered into an old barn to listen various speakers, Matthews sat in the back with the video camera rolling, while Posey and Rossi sat nearby, chatting amicably.

One speaker, a burly man with silver hair and a commanding Southern drawl drew considerable applause as he excoriated then President George H.W. Bush, and his opponent, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.

“It is no longer the lesser of two evils, but the evil of two lesser that threatens the United States of America today!” the man said. “We have more of a good reason for a second American revolution than ever before.”

The speaker, James Gordon “Bo” Gritz, was the leading candidate for the extreme right wing Populist Party in the 1992 election. Four years earlier he had been on the party’s ticket as the running mate of former Klan leader David Duke. In recent months, Gritz had been in the headlines for his role in trying to negotiate an 18-month standoff between federal agents and Randy Weaver, a right-wing Christian fundamentalist and former ATF informant, who had links to the Aryan Nation. The standoff ended after an FBI sniper, who was authorized to use lethal force, shot and kicked Weaver’s wife Vicki, who was holding her new-born child.

The news quickly galvanized the radical right like never before. Men like Posey—who already worried that their right to bear arms was eroding--suddenly feared that the government would soon come for them, too. And while months prior, various white supremacists, Neo-Nazis and anti-government groups had talked about joining forces, after the Weaver shooting, that talk quickly turned to action.

The audience stood and applauded as Gritz decried the bureau’s handling of the Weaver standoff. And after Gritz’s speech ended, Matthews, Rossi and Posey slipped out of the back of the barn and walked through the grass over to where Posey had parked his blue Ford Bronco. For months they had been trying to hash out a weapons deal. Posey had told Rossi that he could get him as many as six Stinger missiles, priced at $40,000 a piece. The FBI had allocated the money for the purchase, apparently not to bust Posey, but to further embed the undercover into the world of hate and extremism. Days before the sale was to take place, however, Posey said he had sold the missiles to a group in Minnesota for $45,000 a piece, though it’s not clear if he was telling the truth.

That evening in Tennessee , however, Posey had several pairs of military night-vision goggles in his SUV. All were in green canvas cases and the serial numbers had been removed. Rossi tried out several pairs of goggles, and they worked. He then pulled out $7,500 in cash and handed it to Posey. Before they parted that evening, Rossi asked Posey when he could get more goggles, and where they came from. Posey said he’d have them in about a week along with some TNT and C-4 explosives. The goggles, he said, came from “the black market.”

Rossi, my sources say, may have been the ultimate PATCON operative, serving the FBI in a number of operations. If true, it is understandable that the FBI would be happy that Rossi's role ended up in Tina Brown's waste basket.


The body of Baylee Almon is carried from the wreckage of the Murrah Federal Building.

5. Also excised was mention that Jesse Trentadue had more than just a suspicion that his brother Kenney had been beaten to death as part of the OKBOMB investigation:

After his latest stint in the emergency room this year, Matthews says he kept thinking more and more about what his family knew about him and what he sacrificed over the years. Wondering if anyone had ever tied his name to the FBI, at a whim that morning this past summer, he began searching around online.

What he found was an article about Trentadue, the Salt Lake City attorney. For the past 15 years, the West Virginia-born lawyer has been shuffling across the street from his office in downtown Salt Lake City , and filing profanity-laced letters and Freedom of Information Act Requests to various federal agencies.

His goal? To prove that the agency killed his brother, Kenney, during a botched interrogation at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center in 1995, shortly after McVeigh’s attack. The bureau claims Kenney hung himself in his cell, but Trentadue says--and provided pictures indicating—that Kenney’s throat was slit and his body was covered in bruises.

Trentadue and his family were awarded $1.1 million for emotional distress after a federal judge found that the FBI and Bureau of Prisons had lied in court and destroyed evidence during the investigation. But Trentadue wasn’t satisfied. And not long after, he received an anonymous phone call from someone who said that his brother had been killed in a case of mistaken identity. The FBI, the caller said, believed that Kenney was actually a member of the Aryan Republican Army, a notorious gang of white supremacist bandits who robbed 22 banks across the Midwest in the early to mid ‘90s.

6. Gone, too, were the links between McVeigh and Strassmeier:

For years the FBI has insisted that McVeigh was essentially a lone wolf terrorist. Yet through his FOIA requests, Trentadue learned that the bureau had long possessed evidence linking McVeigh to the ARA, and several of the gang’s members to the bombing in Oklahoma City .

As Matthews read on he ran across a name that stopped him cold: Andy Strassmeir. A mysterious German national, a member of the country’s army and son of an advisor to Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor, Strassmeir moved to the U.S. in the late 1980s. Over the next few years, he began palling around with ARA members and other white supremacists in Oklahoma . But according to the FBI files released by Trentadue, Strassmeir also conducted paramilitary training with the TRM in Texas . And Matthews believes he is the same man that he encountered, along with McVeigh, in San Saba.

In an interview with Newsweek, Strassmeir said he had indeed trained with the TRM, but he did not recall training with McVeigh. Instead, he said that he and McVeigh had only met once at a gun show in Tulsa , Oklahoma in the spring of 1993—a meeting that McVeigh confirmed before he was put to death roughly a decade ago.

In an interview with Newsweek, Strassmeir said that he and McVeigh had never been friends. Phone records discovered by the FBI show that McVeigh called Strassmeir two weeks before the bombing. The German-native says he wasn’t home, and has no idea why McVeigh was calling. Roughly a year later, he slipped out of the country through Mexico , after a private investigator working for McVeigh’s defense attorney attempted to have him summoned to court. He had never been interviewed by the FBI until he was already safe and sound in Germany .

Speaking by way of phone from Berlin , Strassmeir told Newsweek that he was neither an informant nor a conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing. A FOIA by Trentadue sent to the CIA about Strassmeir came up with 26 documents. Yet the National Geospatial Agency, part of the Department of Defense, would not allow Langley to release the documents, citing national security concerns.

Chase and Colton Smith. Collateral damage to the unintended consequences of PATCON, 19 April 1995. They would be young men now if not for McVeigh and Strassmeier. They never got the chance.

There is one thing that the heavily-edited article did, however, which makes these edits so much more important now that we know about them.

Both the FBI and Newsweek have validated Mr. Matthews service, his accounts and the quality of his memory. From the FBI plaque given to John Matthews:

“John W. Matthews: In appreciation and recognition for your outstanding efforts in assisting the FBI to combat domestic terrorism throughout the United States : March 28, 1991 – May 30, 1998.”

And Newsweek added this paragraph:

Matthews' story, which Newsweek verified through hundreds of FBI documents and several dozen interviews, including conversations with current and former FBI officials, offers a rare glimpse into the murky world of domestic intelligence, and the bureau's struggles to combat right-wing extremism.

When you take the gutted version of the story and combine it with the critical information Tina Brown cut out and then compare it to these glowing character references, there is one thing that leaps out at any independent observer -- the full truth about the FBI's involvement in, and prior knowledge of, the Oklahoma City bombing has yet to be even scratched.

John Matthews, a dying man, a patriotic man, a man who tried above all to do right and protect the country that he swore an oath to protect against enemies foreign and domestic, has come forward to tell his story.

Then let him tell the WHOLE story about PATCON.

The cause of simple justice for the victims of Oklahoma City demands it.

Newsweek is evidently so compromised by political considerations that it cannot tell these truths.

It remains to be seen if there are any other "mainstream media" outlets who can, or will.

But at least, gentle readers, you know now the extent of Newsweek's perfidy in hiding the truth that threatens both the comfortable bureaucratic existence of the FBI and the reputations of people such as Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano -- both of whom were knee deep in PATCON and the cover-up of the true circumstances behind the deaths of 176 men, women and children in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995.


Blows of truth against the Empire.