EFTA01769176.pdf

From: Ed Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2012 12:18 AM To: Epstein, Jeff Subject: My piece in today's Wall Street Journal ( embedded in tmy uthor's ID is announcement of my DSK book) Investigating the Investigation By Edward Jay Epstein, Wall Street Journal ( April 14) rttp://on.wsj.com/HIEFFI At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a huge truck bomb destroyed a large =art of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, =amaging more than 300 other buildings and killing 168 people, =ncluding 19 children at a day-care center. The bombing was the =eadliest terror attack America had experienced before the 9/11 assault =nd, understandably, caused a public outcry for justice In a matter of days the FBI established that the bombing was the work =f a conspiracy. While that word may not always sit well with =ournalists, conspiracies are the rule, not the exception, when it =omes to perpetrating such crimes. According to the Center on Law and =ecurity at Fordham University, which tracks federal terrorism cases, =2% of all federal indictments for such cases since 2001 contained a =onspiracy charge. The first conspirator arrested was Timothy McVeigh, a 27-year-old Army =eteran, who had been awarded the Bronze Star during the first Gulf =ar. As the evidence clearly showed, McVeigh had driven the truck bomb =o Oklahoma City and detonated it. The second conspirator arrested was =erry Nichols, a 40-year-old farmer who had befriended McVeigh in the =rmy and who had helped him prepare and arm the truck bomb. Both =cVeigh and Mr. Nichols were found guilty of a conspiracy to use a =eapon of mass destruction. McVeigh was sentenced to death and executed =n June 11, 2001. Mr. Nichols was sentenced to life imprisonment with =o possibility of parole. The only other person charged in the =onspiracy was Michael Fortier, who pleaded guilty to not warning =uthorities of the attack; he was sentenced to 12 years and is now in =he witness-protection program, having testified for the prosecution in =he McVeigh and Nichols cases. "Oklahoma City," an extraordinarily well-researched book, asserts that =he FBI investigation of the bombing was badly flawed and missed, or =isregarded, evidence of a larger conspiracy. The authors, Andrew =umbel and Roger Charles, are both highly regarded investigative reporters who have been immersed in this case for more than a decade. =Mr. Charles also worked as an investigator for the legal team =efending McVeigh.) They were given access to vast amounts of material =ssembled by the defense teams, including 18,000 FBI witness =nterviews; and the authors extensively corresponded with Mr. Nichols =n the supermax prison where he is held in Florence, Colo. Messrs. =umbel and Charles have no doubt that McVeigh and Mr. Nichols were =uilty as charged in the conspiracy, but the authors raise the =uestion: "How far did the conspiracy go?" The book brilliantly deconstructs the investigation with the benefit of =indsight. It describes, most tellingly, a turf war among the raw-enforcement agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and =irearms hoarding information and keeping it from the FBI. Danny =efenbaugh, who led the FBI investigation and is now a private security =onsultant, told the authors: "When you get agencies working together =n a joint Task Force, they should be holding hands, not keeping ringers crossed behind their backs." The book also outlines how federal =rosecutors, eager to wrap up the McVeigh and Nichols cases, avoided =aising questions about possible co-conspirators that the defense could =se to confound a jury. Among the glaring gaps in the investigation was the failure of the FBI =o attempt to match the more than 1,000 unidentified latent =ingerprints found in the investigation—taken from McVeigh's car and =otel room, as well as from the office where he had rented the =ruck —to the FBI's computerized database or even to perform a =omparison among them to see how many belonged to the same people. This =ailure proved important because, as the authors demonstrate, almost =11 the eyewitnesses to the crime claimed that McVeigh was not alone. No fewer than 24 witnesses said that they saw McVeigh, just before and =fter the crime, with a man who could not have been either Mr. Nichols =r Mr. Fortier. The FBI concluded that these witnesses had all been =onfused. Certainly eyewitness testimony can be unreliable, but 24 =istaken witnesses—and no accurate ones? The authors suggest that the EFTA_R1_00079579 EFTA01769176 =BI missed the chance to track down a third conspirator. "One of the =rickliest problems with the government's case," they write, "was its =ailure to explain how McVeigh and Nichols could build a huge =estructive device without advanced explosives training and be =onfident it would go off." Searching for candidates for this "unknown John Doe," Messrs. Gumbel =nd Charles investigate right-wing militias, paranoid religious sects =nd others with whom McVeigh and Mr. Nichols might have associated. =here is no shortage of suspects in this bizarre universe, including =un-show scamsters, bank robbers, drug addicts and neo-Nazis. All that =he authors are able to show is that the most likely suspects were not =dequately investigated by the FBI. If there were other conspirators, =e do not know who they are. The great value of "Oklahoma City" is not that it solves a mystery but =hat it reveals the limits, and vulnerabilities, of a no-expense-barred =overnment investigation. Yes, the FBI investigation was quantitatively =assive—it collected a vast amount of data, including 13 million =otel and motel records—but it may have missed the bigger picture by =ot pursuing, or dismissing, evidence that went counter to the =rosecution's "two man alone" theory. —Mr. Epstein's latest book is "Three Days in May: The DSK Thriller," =o be published on April29th by Melville House. The electronic =ersion for Kindle, Nook, and Ipad will contain embedded videos . Cheers Ed Epstein ebooks at http://amzn.to/ndfiNf <?xml version=.0" encoding=TF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/Propertylist-1.0.dtd"> <plist version=.0"> <dict> <key>date-last-viewed</key> <integer>0</integer> <key>date-received</key> <integer>1334449069</integer> <key>flags</key> <integer>8590195713</integer> <key>gmail-label-ids</key> <array> <integer>22</integer> <integer>2</integer> </array> <key>remote-id</key> <string>217368</string> </dict> </plist> 2 EFTA_R1_00079580 EFTA01769177