Oklahoma City Bombing Witness Fears for Life; Sues Government

• A former FBI informer, who told his bureau handlers that plans were underway to blow up federal building before the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing, has filed suit in Federal District court in Denver to protect his life from his former employers.

Cary James Gagan, who was recruited by the FBI as an informer on September 14, 1994, when he was issued a letter of immunity from prosecution by James Allison, the assistant U.S. attorney in Denver, claims his life is in danger. Gagan says he has already been attacked and sent to an emergency room in Denver with multiple injuries.

Gagan has filed a civil suit of more than 70 pages, with documentation. It is been filed in Denver as Case No. 97 S 308.

Gagan, who had been working as a courier to transport drugs from the Irainian Embassy in Mexico into the United states when he was recruited by the FBI, was brought to the attention of The SPOTLIGHT by former FBI chief, Ted L. Gunderson.

Gunderson was senior agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the bureau until his retirement in the late 1960s. Through his contacts in Denver, where the trial of Timothy J. McVeigh, one of two men accused of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal office building in Oklahoma city, is now underway. Gunderson has provided The SPOTLIGHT with copies of Gagan's emergency room records and the letter of immunity he was provided by the FBI.

When Gagan surfaced as a former informant, the FBI claimed that the letter of immunity was a forgery.

However, the explanation appears ludicrous since Gagan was subsequently provided a retraction of the letter a copy of which The SPOTLIGHT also has obtained.

Gagan claims to have reported to his bosses that he was asked by leaders of the drug operation he was connected with to drive a truck, transporting a detonator, to the now abandoned Stapleton Airport in Denver.

He reported to the FBI that a man within the drug operation told him that a federal building was going to be blown up.

Gagan asserts that the "Arab looking guy," referred to by McVeigh's defense team during pre-trial hearing last October and seen by witnesses at the bombing scene was in fact an Iranian from the drug operation gang.

Gagan's charge that the FBI was aware of the bombing plot before it happened has been confirmed in pretrial hearings.

As an example, in October 1996, at a motions hearing to compel evidence from the federal prosecution, McVeigh attorney, Stephen Jones, referred tot he fact that a member of the Oklahoma city Fire Department has stated that he was called about a week before the bombing and told to be in a state of extra "readiness" because there was a bomb threat tot he federal building.

KNEW OF PLOT

In his lawsuit, filed last January, Gagan asserts that he told the FBI in September 1994 that he had information on a plot to blow up a federal building, but that the FBI ignored his information.

The Denver Rocky Mountain News reported on August 11, 1995 that Jones said his team was contacted by a former FBI informant and told of the facts that Gagan provided to the bureau, specifically that a mid-West federal building was going to be bombed in April 1995 that the conspirators were Arabs, Latin Americans and Americans and that he was recruited to carry a detonator in a truck by these people.

Gagan claims that the FBI is covering up the bombing because highly-placed government officials and others are linked to the drug operation for which he worked.

He claims that the international drug operation is supervised by a "Jack DeVoe."

Gagan's story is similar to that of Carol Howe, who has claimed and provided compelling evidence and testimony that she, too, reported the bombing was to take place. Miss Howe was on the payroll as an informant for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) in return for payment of $120 per week.

She told the BATF case officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that a terrorist cell was planning to blow up a federal building and that the target date was April 19, 1995, the exact date of the Oklahoma city bombing.

Miss Howe named, among others, a mysterious German national, one Andreas Strasmeir, as having been one of those who were connected to the conspiracy. In fact, there are many who believe that Strassmeir himself may have been a government agent.

For her troubles, Howe, a former Tulsa beauty queen, is now charged with conspiring to make an unrelated bomb threat and possession of a "destructive device," a case described in one press report as "remarkably thin."