FBI falsified reports, ignored evidence, won't release Murrah Building surveillance tapes

Former Oklahoma State Rep. Charles Key (R), who spearheaded a major independent inquiry into the Oklahoma City bombing, was the guest on the April 15 broadcast of The SPOTLIGHT's weekly call-in talk forum, Radio Free America, with host Tom Valentine.

Key and his Oklahoma Bombing Investigating Committee are preparing to release a 500-page report explaining their findings which point clearly toward the fact that neither convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh nor the federal authorities who built the legal case against McVeigh are telling the truth about what really happened.

What follows is the second part of an edited transcript of the interview with Key. Valentine's questions start with a "Q". Key's responses start with an "R". The first part of the transcription was published last week in The SPOTLIGHT.

Q. There is evidence that the government had advance knowledge about a possible bomb attack on the Murrah building. There is also evidence about other unexploded bombs being taken out of the Murrah building. Is any of this perhaps related to the strange death (after the bombing) -- supposedly a suicide -- of Oklahoma City Police Officer Terrence Yeakey?

R. We don't know whether Yeakey's death is connected to this, but his story is interesting in itself.

Yeakey was one of the very first rescue workers on the scene. He knew a lot about the bombing, according to his wife, and was very concerned about things that he knew. He expressed this to his wife and mother, and his sisters and brother-in-law.

The Oklahoma City Fire Department got a call from the FBI the weekend before the bombing to tell them to be on readied alert for something that could be taking place in the next few days. The Police Department also had some information that came through to them. While they've been very "mum" about that, we've got bits and pieces from some police dispatchers and others.

Q. Evidently Officer Yeakey didn't feel right about keeping his mouth shut about things that he saw that just didn't look right to him.

R. The evidence itself shows that he obviously was murdered, even though they say he committed suicide. Yeakey was found in the outskirts of the city. He allegedly walked out into a fenced area off the road after having cut both wrists twice and then made another cut on his elbow and then cut both areas of the jugular vein on his neck.

Having lost tremendous amounts of blood in his car and elsewhere, he supposedly then walked all of this distance and then decided to shoot himself. He didn't shoot himself with his service revolver. When a law enforcement officer dies, there is almost always an ausy. They did not do an ausy in this case. They proclaimed it a suicide. His family is not satisfied and his wife is not satisfied.

Q. Officer Yeakey, who was a black man, by the way, was very widely liked and respected in Oklahoma City. Was he about to blow the whistle on what he knew about the bombing?

R. Yes, according to his wife, he was ready to talk. Whoever killed him took his briefcase out of his car. The family finally got the briefcase after some time, but it had been in the custody of the police, who didn't want to give it up to the family. It's also believed by the wife and family that he not only had evidence in that briefcase, but that he may have also stashed other evidence somewhere else, at a storage unit. But that's never been found.

Q. That's a shocking story. What about Jayna Davis, the reporter from Chan nel 4 television (an NBC affiliate) in Oklahoma City? She uncovered some amazing evidence of Tim McVeigh having been involved with Iraqis in Oklahoma City.

R. Miss Davis and some other reporters, including, primarily, Brad Edwards, had done some really great investigative work in the early days after the bombing.

Because of their work, a lot of people in Oklahoma City do know that there's much more to the story and were not willing to buy the government's version early on.

Miss Davis and her colleagues did a lot of work on the other "John Doe" figures in the case and the Middle East connection. There were so many witnesses who de scribed a John Doe or John Does who were on the scene with McVeigh and others right in front of the Murrah building on the day of the bombing and on the days before the bombing that it seems clear that there must have been a Middle Eastern connection of some type.

Q. Miss Davis pinpointed an Iraqi immigrant as one of the John Does.

R. What a lot of people around the country don't know, and what even a lot of reporters in Oklahoma City didn't know at first, was that right after the Persian Gulf war there were just under 5,000 Iraqi soldiers who had deserted Saddam Hussein's army who were looking for asylum in another country. No country would take them so the United States let them come here. They were dispersed throughout the country and a group of them were placed in Oklahoma City.

One of these Iraqis was one of these John Does identified by several people, as having been in McVeigh's company, including being in a Ryder truck the day of the bombing. He and others who were either former Iraqi soldiers or other Middle Easterners became the subject of the investigation by Jayna Davis who has put together some real blockbuster information about this.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is some kind of Middle Eastern connection to this. And this is in our report.

Q. This Iraqi sued Jayna Davis, but she won.

R. It was a federal lawsuit. What happened was that Channel 4 talked about this individual, but not by name. When they showed some surveillance video that they used to investigate him, they never showed his face or used his name. Then other television stations criticized Channel 4. However, this Iraqi came to another station and revealed himself and then turned around and sued Channel 4 for allegedly revealing his identity. Then the federal case ensued. It sped everything for about two years. However, Miss Davis and Channel 4 had to show their evidence and the judge ruled in their favor, saying it was all reasonable evidence, including many witnesses.

Q. Yet, the rest of the media in the United States did not report any of this.

R. In addition to most of what we call the "mainstream" media being controlled, they will also lose credibility by this story finally coming out. They totally just blew it. With this case coming out, it will show what a terrible job the media (both local and national) did in covering the story. There's both an ego factor and a credibility factor.

Q. Surveillance tapes from outside the Murrah building are being kept under wraps by the FBI. You would think that if these tapes backed up their story that McVeigh was traveling alone that they would be glad to release those tapes to the public.

R. There are at least 22 surveillance tapes. There were two functioning tapes from the front of the Murrah Building that would have shown close-up views of the truck and the occupants of that truck. It would have shown who got out of it and exactly what they looked like. In addition, there were tapes from the nearby Regency Towers apartments, the Journal-Record building, Southwestern Bell and others.

There is -- right now -- a freedom of information act lawsuit filed by independent investigator David Hoffman. His lawsuit started out as a simple freedom of information request. However the FBI, to this day, refuses to release any of those surveillance videotapes.

At this point, there are no outstanding trials to be conducted. They already got their convictions. They shouldn't have anything to hide, but obviously they've got a lot to hide.

Q. Didn't you have witnesses who said that they told the FBI that they saw an Arab-looking guy and McVeigh parting company near the Murrah building but then the FBI turned around and told these witnesses, "No, you didn't see that," and then recorded the witness interviews on the FBI 302 forms incorrectly?

R. That's correct. There are at least two times I know for certain that this happened and we believe it happened at least another three times. We've got documented two times where the FBI agents did as you described (or something close to that), where a witness said, "Here's my testimony as to what happened."

In another case, two deputy reserve sheriffs had a conversation with U.S. Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) where Istook said that the government had "blown it" and that they knew about this impending bombing since about April 9 and that they had information about a radical Islamic extremist terrorist organization.

The deputy said to Istook, "Excuse me, sir?" Then the congressman repeated it all back to him again. When the deputy reserve officer gave his testimony to the FBI, the FBI agent said that he (the agent) was going to put it down [in a different way].

Q. It must have been tough for you to put Istook on the spot in this way, since he had been a longtime personal friend and fellow Republican political colleague.

R. Yes, it was difficult.

Q. How would Istook have known about government foreknowledge of a possible attack on the building?

R. He obviously had some information that was imparted to him. It's reasonable to speculate that since he was the congressman from that particular area he would have been told. In addition, it was known that Oklahoma City had the second largest population of Middle Eastern Islamic immigrants and that there was a mosque that was under surveillance by law enforcement several weeks before the bombing. Also, consider Jayna Davis's information about these Iraqi immigrants. Who knows what else? It's reasonable to speculate that a congressman from the area had been told something either officially or unofficially.

Q. Radio Free America used to be carried locally in Lawton, Okla., and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) was on the program several times. I have visited with him in his office in Washington for several years.

Once when I visited him and asked him questions about the Oklahoma City bombing, I could see in his face that it was really painful and he didn't want to talk about it. I'm sure he knows a lot more than he will say and it's bothering him very much.

R. Oh yes. We've got a lot of information that suggests that he definitely knows a whole lot. Inhofe is a good guy, though.

Q. We can hope that some day Jim Inhofe will tell us what he knows. I doubt that Governor Frank Keating will ever do so.

R. I'd put my money on Inhofe, more so than the other guys. I'll only believe it when I see it when an elected official finally speaks out.

Q. McVeigh's attorney and others have alleged that the FBI falsified hundreds of their 302 witness report forms.

R. We need to get the word out to enough people for them to become aware of how corrupt our federal government has become. It's not like we are indicting all federal employees. Far from it. It's simply that there's a high level of people inside some of these agencies who will do anything and they control the reins of power.

Q. You have to wonder what their motivation is in keeping all of this under wraps. Even if it were a sting operation by the FBI or BATF that went bad, it wouldn't be so bad for them to admit it as it is for them to not tell us the truth. So for that very reason, I don't think it was simply a sting gone bad.

R. We keep getting a lot of new information as time goes by. I will tell you that we think we have found this Robert Jacques who has been the subject of a lot of government investigation. If our information is true and we believe that it is, the government may not have wanted to find that guy, just as they didn't want to find the other John Does.

Q. What about this group at Elohim City?

R. I don't know really how much the people there were involved in this, except for Andreas Strassmeir, the West German. I'm convinced that this guy was a government agent. He was either working for our government or with the knowledge of our government.

Q. Is it possible that Strassmeir was somehow McVeigh's "handler," on behalf of the government or somebody?

R. There's such a large body of information that we have received which indicates that Strassmeir was in direct contact with McVeigh up until the day of the bombing, at least the night before the bombing, and it would appear that yes, Strassmeir, was a "handler" of McVeigh. It would seem from this information that McVeigh didn't realize that until after the bombing.

Q. Is there any other information we should hear about at this point?

R. Well, I must be very circumspect, at this juncture, but I was able to talk to a federal government official who told me how this whole Oklahoma City affair evolved. They told me that it was planned right after the Waco event as a sting operation by the BATF for publicity's sake -- to make the BATF look good. So the genesis of it all was a sting. The person wasn't suggesting that it was a sting operation that went wrong.

Based on what I've learned, there appears to be a whole lot more at work. It was originally a sting, but there were two over-lapping operations. There was a group of other people, whatever their plan was, and they turned the tables on the folks who thought there was just a sting going on.

We have information that shows that there were efforts, in the early morning hours before the explosion, by bomb squads who came down, trying to locate the truck or the informant or someone. It appears they lost track of them as they were surveilling them, expecting them to come into the city.

The official report of the Oklahoma City Bombing Investigating Committee has not been released. Mr. Key, president of the committee, will give a comprehensive review of the report at The Barnes Review Second International Conference on Authentic History and the First Amendment in Washington, June 15. Copies of the report will be available at the conference.