by a rocky road and a yellow steel bridge, Elohim City has been a base of operations for right wing terrorists for the last thirty years. Inhabited by anywhere from seventy to one-hundred people the guest list of Elohim City is a veritable "Who's Who" in the annals of hate, white supremacy and neo-Nazism.
and engaged in at this compound by some of the most notorious of all domestic terrorists, and some who have yet to be officially labeled. In 1983, while The Order was robbing banks and armored cars and murdering their own as well as Jewish talk show host Alan Berg, there was something even bigger being planned at Elohim City - a plot to blow up the Afred P. Murrah Federal Building - the same building that was bombed by Timothy McVeigh in 1995.
anti-government. The agendas of the white supremacists and neo-Nazis are specific in that they do not wish to bring about changes in government - they want an overthrow. They want to relplace the American government with one that is "racially aware" and, of course, white.Mahon, a "lone wolf" advocate and sometime resident of Elohim City, knew what he was talking about. A new "Order" had, in fact, emerged. Calling itself the "Aryan Republican Army," the new group carved a trail of robbery and mayhem across America's heartland. It represented the most radical of those in the Aryan Movement. The leaders of the "Army" claimed to be dedicated to
the "overthrow of the US government, the extermination of American Jews, and the establishment of an Aryan Republic" on the North American continent. Peter Langan, on of the Army's leaders, called himself "Commander Pedro" on a two-hour video that was made to promote the ARA called, "The Aryan Republican Army Presents: The Armed Struggle Underground." Throughout the video, one will see Langan in a ski mask and others in fatigues brandishing guns, rifles and knives along with wads of money. At one point Langan rasps, "Our basic goal is to set up an Aryan republic. ... Don't mistake us for cultists. We, ladies and gentlemen, are YOUR neighbors." The video continues vowing war on the Federal government and promising a "courthouse massacre." Sharon Cohen, in an article for the Associated Press, had this account of the group after their arrest:In the beginning, it was just a curious string of bank robberies.
About one a month in a Midwestern state. In Iowa. Wisconsin. Missouri. Ohio. Nebraska. Kansas. Kentucky.
A pattern began emerging. The robbers, at times dressed like construction workers, zipped in and out of the banks within five minutes. They sometimes yelled Spanish words. They'd snatch the cash themselves (so tellers couldn't rig the bags with dye bombs), then dash off in junk cars they had purchased with bogus IDs in the previous week or so.
They'd also leave smoke grenades and pipe bombs -- usually inert -- in lunch boxes or other containers in the bank and in getaway cars to slow their pursuers. No one was injured in the holdups.
The robbers had a whimsical side, too. In a December heist, one suspect wore a Santa Claus suit, shouted "Ho, ho, ho!" to customers and left a bomb tucked in a Santa hat. In a March robbery, an 8- to 9-inch, gold-color pipe bomb was nestled in an Easter basket.
It was their political message, though, that intrigued authorities. The robbers stuffed a copy of the Declaration of Independence in the ashtray of one getaway car. They donned caps or bandanas bearing logos of the FBI or the ATF, the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the agency that led the fiery raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.
And in 1995, they bought a Ford Fairmont for a getaway car in the name of a retired FBI agent who had worked white supremacist cases in the Northwest. They abandoned it, leaving on the front seat an article about Timothy McVeigh, charged in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing.
Piece by piece -- the anti-government rhetoric, explosives, imitating the feds -- the puzzle began to take shape for FBI Special Agent Jim Nelson in St. Louis. It reminded him of The Order, a white supremacist organization that pulled off a $3.6 million armored car robbery in California in 1984.
It also was clear to Agent Nelson, who has since retired from the FBI, that the bank robbers had political motivations: "There's plenty of reason to believe they were very serious about their anarchist views," he said.
So he went public with his speculation. And there was a response -- from the robbers themselves.
Several Midwest newspapers received letters ridiculing one Nebraska FBI agent as a "loudmouth" and nominating Agent Nelson for an award for "honesty and demonstrating patriotism." The self-proclaimed "Mid-Western Bank Bandits" said they were "proud to appoint Jim Nelson as our new spokesman for 1996."
"They knew I had hit the nail on the head," Agent Nelson recalled.
As the Aryan Republican Army cut a trail across the country, their base of operations remained - Elohim City. During that time, at least five (perhaps more) members of the ARA lived and operated out of the compound. Also during that time, the Chief of Security was one Andreas Strassmeir who figures prominently into the Oklahoma City bombing.
That Elohim City is a hot-bed for domestic terrorist is no longer in question. What is, however, is why they have been
allowed to continue unfettered for so long. Andreas Strassmeir, who will be discussed at length in another article, was well known to the FBI. On May 10, 1991, and FBI investigative report states:"Strassmeir is alleged to train platoon-sized groups consisting of approximately 30-40 individuals approximately every three months at the Elohim City facility. These individuals are comprised of members of various militia groups throughout the United States."
It is evident that Federal Law Enforcement were not only aware of happenings and events at the Elohim City compound, but that they had detailed information of the daily occurrences - and they should have given the fact that prior to the OKC bombing and during the ARA string of robberies they had a confidential informant on the inside of the compound. That informant, along with a host of other witnesses, place Timothy McVeigh at Elohim City. They also place Timothy McVeigh in the company of ARA members and Andreas Strassmeir shortly before the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building. In an article dated February 12, 2003, Associated Press writer, John Solomon, reports that the connection between McVeigh, Elohim City and the ARA was, in fact, relayed to the proper law-enforcement agencies, but in a SNAFU that has become all familiar to the American people, the information was "mishandled" and the investigation was never completed. The AP report claims the following:
"It is suspected that members of Elohim City are involved either directly or indirectly through conspiracy," federal agents wrote in one memo just days after McVeigh detonated a truck bomb April 19, 1995, outside the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City and killed more than 160 people.
The documents also include a teletype from FBI headquarters in August 1996 that reported McVeigh called Elohim City two weeks before his bombing, a call to a home where members of a violent Aryan Nation bank robbery gang were present.
McVeigh made the call April 5, 1995, moments after calling the Ryder truck company where he rented the truck that carried his deadly bomb. The government had known from an informant weeks before McVeigh's call that members of Elohim City were threatening an attack, the documents show.
The FBI teletype revealed that the gang members who were present when McVeigh called were familiar with explosives and had made a videotape three months before McVeigh struck vowing a war against the federal government and promising a "courthouse massacre."
Defenbaugh said he also was surprised to learn, from AP interviews and documents, that prosecutors in 1996 made and then withdrew a plea bargain offer to one of the imprisoned bank robbers, Kevin Peter Langan, who claimed he had information about the Oklahoma City bombing.
"The Justice Department came to us through the assistant U.S. attorney and said, 'We believe your client knows about Oklahoma City and we want to talk to him. We want to work out a deal,'" Langan's lawyer Kevin Durkin told AP.
Langan made several demands the government wasn't willing to meet, and prosecutors dropped the request, Durkin said.
Durkin said his client has information about the Oklahoma City bombing, and had planned to tell prosecutors that he could disprove the April 19 alibis for two of the bank robbers mentioned in the FBI teletype.
Langan recently asked a court to stop the government from destroying evidence he claims may be relevant to the Oklahoma City case.
FBI officials acknowledged some of the documents were not provided to McVeigh's defense team before his trial. For instance, they said FBI teletypes were not covered by the agreement governing documents to be given to McVeigh's defense.
They also acknowledged that agents suspected at one point that the bomber was linked to Elohim City and the Aryan Nation bank robbers.
The documents show the FBI suspected McVeigh participated in a December 1994 Ohio bank robbery with the Aryan Nation robbers, but lab analyses that attempted to match him to a videotape from the bank's security camera were inconclusive.
FBI officials had several reasons to suspect a connection:
_McVeigh's sister told them her brother gave her money from a bank robbery and asked her to launder it in December 1994. Also, they had evidence McVeigh was in Ohio at the time, FBI officials said.
_The leader of the robbery gang, Mark Thomas, initially told agents after his arrest that he suspected some of his members were involved in McVeigh's plot. He later recanted.
_A girlfriend of one of the bank robbers told the FBI her boyfriend had told her beforehand of a plan to bomb a federal building, and that he left days before the bombing for a trip to Elohim City. "We are going to get them. We are going to hit one of their buildings during the middle of the day. It is going to be a federal building," n FBI report quoted the bank robber as telling the girlfriend.
FBI agents stopped pursuing possible connections between McVeigh and the robbers when the suspects all denied assisting the Oklahoma bomber. Most weren't given lie detector tests, officials said.
And there's more - lots more - that really stinks about this whole "investigation" or lack thereof. Far too many people have been labeled "conspiracy theorists" because they followed and they tracked and they KNEW that the connection was there. In
the world of right-wing racists, supremacists, separatists and neo-Nazi's it has long been said that "all roads lead to Elohim City." How unfortunate that our law-enforcement people didn't know that. One-hundred and sixty-eight people died on April 19, 1995. Nineteen of them were babies. In addition to the deaths over 500 were injured and maimed. Families and friends mourned the losses of those human beings. The nation was in shock to believe that an American could engage in such an act. Words and acts of kindness were sent to the residents of Oklahoma City from around the world. Yet, the one thing that that was wished for most fervently was justice.
As we continue to unfold the truth about Timothy McVeigh, Elohim City and the racist right, we ask you to join us in our fight to demand that the government of the United States of America reopen the case of the Oklahoma City travesty and that they pursue those involved with the same amount of vigor and perserverence that is being afforded the War on Terrorism in the rest of the world. The time has come for our homeland to be secure, and it must be secure from those who would destroy it from within..jpg)
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