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Just a few days before the Oklahoma City bombing, Kathy Wilburn and her daughter, as well as Jane Graham, witnessed three men who seemed out of place in the buildings parking garage. On the Friday before the bombing, Graham saw three men in the
underground parking garage looking at plans of the building, none of which
fit Timothy McVeigh's description.
"When I first saw them, I thought they were phone people, because they had
some wiring," she remembers. "Of course, the more I watched them, then they
started watching me. They had a paper sack, and they put back into that sack
the wiring. They had a block -- I don't know what it was -- putty-colored.
Upon the man in charge's direction, the second man put it back into the car."
Kathy Wilburn and her daughter saw the same three men. "You didn't see many
people in the parking garage, but these guys, when we pulled up, I mean their
demeanor changed, they stopped talking -- they didn't say another word, and
one of them kind of looked over his shoulder like this to see what we were
doing. When we got into the building, we commented to each other, 'Well,
they're up to no good.'"
Columnist John Dougherty of World Net Daily provides us with the following insight:
"Norma," a witness who worked in an office building just down the street from the Federal building, told reporter Sherry Koonce what she saw prior to the explosion: "The day was fine, everything was normal when I arrived for work at about 7:45 a.m. There was some talk about the bomb squad among the employees at our office. We wondered what it was doing in our parking lot. Around nine I heard and felt a huge explosion. Then someone said it had to be a bomb, and we all knew. I remembered the bomb squad in our parking lot and knew what had happened."
"Norma" has since quit her job, gone into hiding and refused to speak again to any reporters or investigators. So have a number of other people who saw the heavily armed and equipped bomb squad in the area up to three hours before the blast. Why?
Randy Yount, a park ranger for the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department, said in a sworn affidavit that he saw a friend of his -- a member of the local sheriff's department bomb squad -- within minutes after the bombing.
Yount, the commission reported, said he learned of the bombing after feeling the explosion in his west Oklahoma City suburb and turning on local TV. He then headed downtown after putting on his uniform to see if he could help.
After a state trooper dropped him off at the Murrah Building, he saw his bomb squad friend and went over to speak to him.
Yount told the commission his friend said: "Yeah, we've been down here since early this morning looking. We got word that there was going to be a bomb, and we thought it was going to be the courthouse. We went over everything and couldn't find anything."
Renee Cooper, who lost her infant son who was in the daycare center of the Murrah Building the day of the bombing, told the commission she saw "several men in dark jackets with the words 'Bomb Squad' written on them standing in front of the Federal Courthouse, across the street south of the Murrah Building, at 8:05 a.m.," said the report.
According to the Key commission's report, several witnesses reported that ATF agents were not in the Murrah Building the morning of the bombing because, as some alleged, agents had been warned ahead of time to stay out.
Tiffany Bible, a paramedic with OKC's Emergency Medical Services Authority -- the city's ambulance service -- arrived four to five minutes after the bombing, she told the commission.
"She recalls having thought that there must have been a natural gas line explosion," the report said. "She approached an entrance to the building where an ATF agent was standing and asked how a gas line explosion could do that much damage. The agent replied that it was the result of a car bomb."
Bible "expressed concern" to the agent, the report said, "because there were fellow agents of his in the building. The agent responded by saying, 'No, we weren't in there today.'"
Another witness, Bruce Shaw -- whose wife worked in the Murrah Building at the Federal Credit Union -- testified that another ATF agent said "agents were tipped on their pagers not to come into the office that morning," the report said.
And Katherine E. Mallette, an Emergency Medical Technician-Intermediate -- also with EMSA -- said in a sworn affidavit to the commission that, as her ambulance was waiting to transport victims to area hospitals, "two ATF agents walked by … and she heard one of the agents say to the other, 'Is that why we got the page not to come in today?'" the report said.
A female Army captain who was stationed at Walter Reed Medical Center at the time of the bombing said her office had "received two phone calls" from "a person [who] identified himself as 'Pentagon' or 'congressional liaison to the governor of Oklahoma's office,'" the report said.
The officer said the man on the phone had asked to speak to a doctor about medical protocols, and "specifically about 'triage for victims of blast overpressure.'"
Also, in a sworn affidavit to the commission dated Dec. 10, 1997, Jeffrey H. Broyles, who was an inmate in the custody of United States deputy marshals, was being transported from the Oklahoma County Jail in OKC to the McCloud [Okla.] Correctional Facility, said the report.
"Sometime between 8:30 and 8:40 a.m." the morning of the bombing, the report said, quoting Broyles' affidavit, "a radio dispatch came in. At the end of it, a female officer made a statement to a male officer, 'I wonder why they're going to evacuate the federal building.'"
About ten minutes later, "another dispatch came in," the report said. "The male officer made the comment, 'Well, now they're not going to evacuate it.'"
Harvey Weathers, then a deputy fire chief for the Oklahoma City Fire Department, told the commission that the FBI "issued a warning the week prior to the bombing for them [the fire department] to be on alert."
In a later interview with USA Today, Weathers elaborated, saying the OKCFD "did receive a report on Friday, April 14, about 'some possibilities of some people entering the city over the weekend,'" the commission's report noted.
Calena Flo Groves, an OKC Police Department dispatcher, contacted Key personally to "volunteer information concerning a call she had taken on approximately April 12, 1995," the report said.
"The caller told Groves that he had overheard two men discussing a bomb plot," said the report. "The man also said he had heard the name 'Nichols' mentioned by the two men" who were discussing it.
Randy Yount, a park ranger for the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department, said in a sworn affidavit that he saw a friend of his -- a member of the local sheriff's department bomb squad -- within minutes after the bombing.
Yount, the commission reported, said he learned of the bombing after feeling the explosion in his west Oklahoma City suburb and turning on local TV. He then headed downtown after putting on his uniform to see if he could help.
After a state trooper dropped him off at the Murrah Building, he saw his bomb squad friend and went over to speak to him.
Yount told the commission his friend said: "Yeah, we've been down here since early this morning looking. We got word that there was going to be a bomb, and we thought it was going to be the courthouse. We went over everything and couldn't find anything."
Renee Cooper, who lost her infant son who was in the daycare center of the Murrah Building the day of the bombing, told the commission she saw "several men in dark jackets with the words 'Bomb Squad' written on them standing in front of the Federal Courthouse, across the street south of the Murrah Building, at 8:05 a.m.," said the report.
Multiple witnesses reported hearing more than one explosion the day the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was bombed, while other explosives experts contend that the damage done to the building could not have been caused by a single bomb placed outside in a truck.
A Housing and Urban Development employee reported feeling an "initial shock" while she was on the ninth floor, which "she assumed was an earthquake." A "massive explosion then followed" that sensation, she said.
Dr. Raymon Brown, a seismologist with the Oklahoma Geological Survey, "explained how two explosions" could be heard or felt by witnesses.
"He stated that the ground wave [from a single explosion -- outside, in front of the building] was probably heard first, with an air wave following, giving the impression of two explosions," the report said. "Because the speed of sound is faster in the earth, the ground wave arrives early. The air wave follows, which allows the explosion to be heard." Other experts refuted that explanation.
Five witnesses who spoke to Charles Key, head of the OKC Bombing Committee, said they talked to federal officials who in turn claimed that no Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents were in the building at the time of the bombing.
And another five witnesses said they saw bomb-squad vehicles in downtown Oklahoma City shortly before the blast went off at just after 9 a.m.
Key said his committee found "over 70 witnesses" who said they saw McVeigh "and one or more 'John Does'" in the days before -- and on the day of -- the bombing.
After the blast, said the committee in its report, about 40 witnesses came forward in response to FBI composite drawings of "John Doe 1" and "John Doe 2," thought to be of Middle Eastern descent.
Many of these witnesses notified federal authorities "about seeing McVeigh with one or more John Does," the report said.
Jayna Davis -- a former investigative reporter for Oklahoma City television station KFOR -- told Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" on March 20 that Nichols may have been in contact with associates of Saudi billionaire terrorist Osama bin Laden in the Philippines. "Davis also points to court records offered in the Nichols defense that suggest he had contacts with a member of bin Laden's terrorist organization in the Philippines prior to the bombing,"
McVeigh, she said, was also in the company of Mideastern men shortly before the bombing, one of whom was a former member of Iraq's elite Republican Guard army corps.
Davis showed that a Middle East terrorist cell was in operation only blocks from the federal building, and that an Iraqi national who formerly served in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard was in contact with McVeigh the day of the bombing. She said this suspect arrived at the crime scene in a Ryder truck moments before the blast and sped away in a brown Chevrolet pickup truck immediately after.
An all-points bulletin was issued for this suspect, but was later withdrawn inexplicably.
Davis said her evidence indicates a conspiracy involving McVeigh, Nichols and at least seven men of Middle Eastern ethnic background. She called bin Laden the mastermind of the conspiracy.
David Kochendorfer and Don Hammons, two reserve officers on the scene, say Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., made the statement about advance knowledge of the bombing.
"We got word through our sources that there is a radical fundamental Islamic group in Oklahoma City and that they were going to bomb the federal building," Kulkendorfer recalled Istook saying.
Hammonds said a photographer with Istook, Lana Tyree, confirmed to him that Istook was aware of a bomb threat against the federal building since April 9.
Early in the Oklahoma bombing investigation, The New American obtained a copy of the sworn affidavit of FBI Special Agent Henry C. Gibbons (dated April 20, 1995) relaying the testimony of an eyewitness near the scene of the explosion who "saw two individuals running from the area of the Federal Building toward a brown Chevrolet truck prior to the explosion." "The individuals," says the FBI affidavit, "were described as males, of possible Middle Eastern descent, approximately 6 feet tall, with athletic builds. One of the persons was further described as approximately 25-26 years old, having dark hair and a beard. The second person was described as approximately 35-38 years old, with dark hair and a dark beard with gray in it. The second person was further described as wearing blue jogging pants, a black shirt and a black jogging jacket. A third person, not further identified, was believed to be in the brown Chevrolet truck."
In addition to the eyewitness cited by Agent Gibbons’ affidavit, there were others who apparently saw the same "Middle East" individuals. One of those is Daina Bradley, a survivor of the blast. At 8:55 a.m., seven minutes before the detonation, she was on the ground floor of the Murrah Building with her mother, two children and sister, waiting for the Social Security office to open. In an interview with Oklahoma City’s NBC-TV affiliate, KFOR, she said she saw, through the window, a man who resembled the famous John Doe No. 2 sketch get out of the Ryder truck and walk just 10 to 12 feet from her, headed hurriedly toward the northeast side of the Murrah Building, where two more witnesses say a brown pickup was parked — a pickup which matches the description of the FBI-police APB issued after the explosion. Bradley described the man as "olive complected" with "black curly hair." "He was wearing the baseball cap but his curls were sticking out of his head," she said. "It was short in the back but you could still see the curls in his hair. He was foreign. You can tell by his skin, his face, the way his face was."
But there are additional witnesses. Not more than a minute after the explosion, another witness was nearly run over by a brown pickup truck speeding away from the vicinity of the Murrah Building. The witness, who gives every indication of being reliable, told The New American (and the FBI) that she was just six feet away from the truck when she and the driver made eye contact: "The driver — I made eye contact with him; he looked like he was in his late 20s, [he] had an angry look on his face. I’ll never forget the look on his face. It was full of hate and anger...."
In a shadow interview with reporter Jayna Davis of KFOR, and in a separate interview with this reporter, the witness positively identified the driver of the brown pickup as the same Iraqi whom the television station had been surveilling as a "possible John Doe No. 2 suspect."
At least four witnesses have attested to seeing young men of apparent Middle Eastern appearance in front of, or in the immediate vicinity of, the Murrah Building before and right after the explosion acting in a suspicious manner.
Many other important eyewitnesses saw McVeigh in or near the Murrah Building with one or more John Does, including:
Kyle Hunt, a Tulsa banker;
Morris John Kuper, an employee of the nearby Kerr-McGee Oil Company;
Debbie Nakanashi, a U.S. Postal Service employee;
Dr. Paul Heath, a public affairs officer with the Veterans Administration;
Danielle Hunt, the former operator of the Murrah Building daycare center;
Priscilla Salyer, an employee of the U.S. Customs Service;
Germaine Johnson, a HUD branch chief; and
Mike Morose, employee of Johnny's Tire Store.
Other eyewitnesses who saw Timothy McVeigh with John Does in the Junction City, Kansas area, where he stayed before driving to Oklahoma City, or who saw John Does in McVeigh’s motel room, include:
Jeff Davis, who delivered Chinese food to McVeigh’s motel room;
Hilda Sostre, a maid at the Dreamland Motel where McVeigh stayed;
Joan Van Buren, a Subway sandwich clerk;
Donald and Connie Hood, visitors at the Dreamland Motel; and
Barbara Whittenberg, owner of the Santa Fe Trail Diner.
None of these witnesses were asked to testify. In many instances witnesses report that the authorities tried to intimidate into changing their stories.
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