Withheld Evidence Fuels Conspiracy Theories

May 11, 2001 -- The revelation that thousands of pages of evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation were withheld has revived the question of whether there was a broader terrorist conspiracy involved in the attack that killed 168 people.

And it has raised the specter in some people's minds of a government conspiracy to railroad Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols and to silence any suspicion that anyone else besides those two could have been involved.

"There could be a benign interpretation and it could all be irrelevant," said Stephen Jones, McVeigh's former attorney. "On the other hand, it could be a malignant failure to turn over [evidence]."

Justice Department officials maintain that there is nothing in the 200 or so documents, comprising more than 3,000 pages, that would indicate either McVeigh or Nichols was innocent. But Jones and others wonder whether it wasn't more than oversight that kept the evidence from being brought to light before the trials of the two men.

The FBI said the documents were scattered throughout 46 offices, and said they were not intentionally withheld from the defense. Most of the evidence was gathered within the first few days of the investigation, and was not discovered until an archivist in Oklahoma City requested that all documents related to the bombing be forwarded to that office, officials said.

Jones tried to build his case on the contention that McVeigh was just a foot soldier in a broader scheme, and said he believes the withheld documents could have helped him do that.

‘I Know the FBI Did It’

Nichols' attorney, Michael Tigar, expressed no doubts about the FBI's role in the matter.

"I'm not sure the prosecutors intentionally did it. I know the FBI intentionally did it," he said.

The two attorneys are not alone in their belief that the government should have looked more closely at the possibility that there was a broader conspiracy involved.

Some of the survivors and family members of the victims of the bombing have never accepted that McVeigh and Nichols acted alone, and the fact that so much evidence was overlooked — or even suppressed, as some suggest — disturbed them.

"I think the FBI has something to hide and I think there are people that are worried and they think they better start covering their butts, because if they let McVeigh go to his death and they've withheld evidence, some people could be in some really hot water," Kathy Wilpon, whose two grandchildren died in the April 1995 bombing, told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.

Among the details that conspiracy theorists point to are witness accounts of a second man around the rental truck that McVeigh turned into a rolling bomb to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the inability of the man who ran the rental agency where McVeigh got the truck to identify the convicted bomber, and testimony from a Chinese restaurant delivery man that when he delivered food to McVeigh's hotel room the night before the bombing, it was not McVeigh who answered the door.

The FBI said it identified the second man and concluded he was not involved.

A Possible Impact on Sentence?

Critics of the government's handling of the case have also claimed reports from federal informants about conspiracies involving foreigners to bomb U.S. buildings that were received in the months before the Oklahoma City tragedy were ignored.

"The FBI went out of their way in this particular case to make the crime fit their theory, as opposed to making the evidence fit the crime," said Jason Vanvleet, a filmmaker who has interviewed FBI agents, witnesses and survivors of the bombing for a documentary.

"I just think they chose not to pursue other avenues and that's unclear to me as to why that's the case," he added.

Jones said he would have wanted to see that material, to help make his case that McVeigh was not the principal figure in the bombing. He said even if the material does not indicate McVeigh was innocent, it could show he played a lesser role.

"What it might have is an impact on what sentence he should receive, because after all, one of the things the judge told the jury they could consider is their perception of McVeigh's role, was he a private or was he a general," Jones said. "Well, if it turns out that he should be demoted because there are other officers, then it might have an impact."