County grand jury gets to hear OKC bomb facts feds hid

On August 10, Oklahoma state Rep. Charles Key (R) visited Tom Valentine on Radio Free America. They discussed the Oklahoma County grand jury that was about to oen hearings on the Oklahoma city bombing. Carol Howe has since been cleared of federal charges against her. Tom's comments begin with a "Q" and Rep. Key's replies start with an "R".

Q. I understand that things are going along rather well. I had a report that you were on an Oklahoma city talk show and callers were asking questions about Carol Howe and how it might relate to the Oklahoma city grand jury which you naturally are responsible for. What are you expecting?

R. Well, there are going to be quite a few witnesses that will go before them, and I think they are going to learn a lot, and we are going to see a lot of eyebrows raised again.

It is interesting, if we go back a year or more, you've still got these federal officials denying they had any kind of prior knowledge, and it's interesting how fast a year has gone by and how much difference that has made.
Q. You do not get any special privileges on this, even though you were the leader of the petition drive to seat the grand jury, but are you satisfied with the way it is being handled so far?

R. Almost completely. There are a couple of things that happened that we are not too crazy about, actually we are very upset about, but those are just very recent. Oklahoma state law does not allow us to do certain things, so even though we would have liked to have had more of a role in choosing the jurors no one else had the legal right to be a part of that.

Now we could observe it, just like the press, the general public did, it was a public meeting, observable by the press and others like ourselves. But as far as interjecting anything, objecting to anything, we didn't have the legal right to do that.

Q. The way I understand, it, the grand jury's foreman has a great deal of power, and if the foreman is an aggressive person, they can get a lot done that the prosecutors may not like. Do we have someone who can be approached to be an aggressive grand jury foreman?

R. That's one of the questions, many of the questions that we are all very interested in regarding the personalities of these various jurors, the grand jury foreman is a woman in this case; she's hired just like anyone else is.

Q. Isn't there also an ambulance drover who may be willing to come forth and talk about what they knew because there were people that were in the bomb squad that were at the building before the bomb went off and then they had left?

R. that's what I understand, and we're waiting to see how that develops also, to see if that person will come forward, but there are a lot of people like that ambulance driver who know very, very damaging information to the government's position, and I expect we'll see more of those people come forward, and I hope that we do.

Q. You know the district attorney, Bill Macy, personally. Is he just very skeptical or is he really trying to protect the government?

R. Macy has been around a long time, and the more you have been in any kind of position, the more you know how to do that job well. I think Macy is a very good politician, and I don not necessarily mean that in a negative way, but in the negative sense I think he knows how to tell people what they want to hear.

So we'll have to just keep watching him and be very cautions, and be ready to act if they do something to try to control or manipulate this grand jury proceeding.

Q. You are the only politician in the Oklahoma state Legislature I know of to take the Oklahoma City bombing to heart and try to do something. Does that leave you out dangling?

R. It really hasn't. It was thought to have been such at the very beginning, and frankly I did not size it up in my own mind to see if it was going to be political suicide or if it was going to be beneficial. I just did it because I thought it was the right thing to do. I had a lot of colleagues who told me they thought I really had shot myself in the foot.

Q. Those of us who don't live in Oklahoma city get the impression that Oklahoma city folds want to put this behind them and not deal with it. But I think it's jut the opposite. I think the city wants to know what's really happened.

R. That is the case, Tom, and it reflects what we are up against. We're up against the "powers that be,' the Establishment media, politicians who have access to that media and politicians who have a lot of power and by the grace of God we've gotten this far with the help of many people around this country.

As you know we've tried to raise money to hire people. No. 1, investigators to try to go out and gather the information as it needs to be gathered so it can be presented to a legal body like this grand jury. We've done a pretty good job but we need more people like that. This is a fight not just for Oklahomans. This is a fight for things we all hold dear and believe in which is freedom and justice and our Constitution and our form of government.

Q. How do people send in contributions for this effort?

R. We've got a toll-free number set up which they can call and get information including the address where they can send a donation. It's one of these new toll-free numbers, not 800 but 888, and it's 1-888-465-5278.