Terry Nichols Will Testify On OKC Bombing

A federal judge will allow Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue to interview Terry Nichols and another federal prison inmate about the possibility of additional conspirators in the Oklahoma City bombing. The ruling by Judge Dale Kimball orders that Nichols and prisoner David Paul Hammer (who spoke with Timothy McVeigh before his execution) be permitted but not compelled to testify about the possibility of a wider conspiracy and allegations of federal government misconduct related to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Documents obtained by Trentadue as part of his lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act show that federal government learned from informants that right-wing extremists were considering bombing federal buildings, including the Alfred E. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, prior to McVeigh's April 1995 attack. In an affidavit earlier this year, Nichols additionally alleged that high-ranking FBI officials were complicit in the bombing plot.

Read the court order

Read Terry Nichols' affidavit

Read David Paul Hammer's affidavit

The lawsuit sought to force the FBI to comply with Trentadue's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents pertaining to the Oklahoma City bombing. For a history of that case and copies of all documents released thus far, click here and here.

According to this week's order, the FBI claimed "there no longer existed any 'case or controversy' sufficient to confer subject matter jurisdiction" to the court after the agency's previous document disclosures. The court disagreed, noting that the FBI's responses were marked by a "troubling absence of documents to which other documents referred."

The deposition order is intended to assist Trentadue in identifying additional documents which may have been improperly withheld.

Related: PATCON: How The FBI Infiltrated The Militia Movement

Labels: Jesse-Trentadue, Weblog

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