New America Foundation: Surveillance and Infiltration

I will be appearing at this event to discuss PATCON and to mark the release of a new and much more detailed report on the undercover operation and its implications for U.S. law enforcement policy. Please come! I will post a link to the extended report once it become available.

The New York City Police Department's surveillance of Muslim communities in New York has been widely debated since being publicly revealed in a Pulitzer Prize winning series of Associated Press reports. Defenders argue such techniques are crucial tools in an era of homegrown terrorism. Critics allege that the NYPD's techniques amount to blanket surveillance and alienate the very communities that government needs to work with against extremists. Please join us for a discussion about these techniques with two of the Pulitzer Prize winning reporters that broke the NYPD surveillance story and the author of a New America Foundation report revealing the FBI's efforts to infiltrate anti-government extremist networks in the early 1990s.

Sign up for the event On an unrelated note, if you haven't taken the "One Year After Bin Laden" survey sponsored by Selected Wisdom, please take a few minutes to do so. It's an important snapshot of our current view of Al Qaeda. Clint Watts also has an interesting post today on the fact that Al Qaeda, like most Western stakeholders in the war on terrorism, may not really know what it means to be in Al Qaeda. Check out J.M. Berger's new book, Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam, on sale everywhere.

Labels: FBI, Infiltration, Informants, Oklahoma-City-Bombing, PATCON, Patriot-Movement, Surveillance, Timothy-McVeigh, Undercover

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

OKC Anniversary: A New Investigative Report by J.M. Berger

An FBI undercover program known as PATCON spent more than two years collecting intelligence on the Patriot movement, without producing a single conviction. Timothy McVeigh was in contact with members of the targeted groups at the time of the investigation, but those links escaped notice, even after the Oklahoma City bombing.

The program and its connections to the bombing are the subject of a major new investigative report by J.M. Berger for Foreign Policy.

Read the full story

PATCON will be examined in more detail in a forthcoming report by J.M. Berger for the New America Foundation, which looks at the double-edged sword of infiltration techniques and raises questions about how undercover agents and informants should be used in light of current controversies.

Documents related to the case will be published on INTELWIRE in the weeks to come.

For more investigating reporting on terrorism, check out J.M. Berger's new book, Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam, on sale everywhere.

Labels: American-Pistol-and-Rifle-Association, Andreas-Strassmeir, Civilian-Materiel-Assistance, Louis-Beam, OKBOMB, Oklahoma-City-Bombing, PATCON, Roger-Moore, Texas-Light-Infantry, Timothy-McVeigh

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

Witness: Dennis Mahon claimed he was third man in Oklahoma City bombing

The trial opened today for Arizona white supremacists Dennis and Daniel Mahon, who are accused of bombing the office of a state diversity official in 2004.

Much of the case hinges on information collected by informants, including a woman who sent the brothers racy photos. A defense attorney dismissed statements made by Dennis Mahon to the informant, saying he was an alcoholic with a tendency toward self-aggrandizement.

Alcohol, at least, was likely not a factor in Dennis Mahon's conversations with his cellmate after he was arrested in 2009. One of those statements was particularly interesting according to a recent filing in the case:

Mr. Scott [the cellmate] stated that he and Dennis Mahon found they had an interest in military history in common, and that is how they began talking about bombs. Ms. Scott said that Dennis told him he had known Tim McVeigh and that he (Dennis) was the number three anonymous person in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.

Read the full document

Mahon has spoken of knowing McVeigh in the past. Based on those comments and other information, it is at least plausible that Mahon was involved in the bombing. I'll have more on this over time.

Labels: Dennis-Mahon, OKBOMB, Oklahoma-City-Bombing, Timothy-McVeigh

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

Oklahoma City Bombing: FBI Informants Reported on ABC News, McVeigh Defense Team

FBI informants reporting on the Oklahoma City bombing provided the bureau with leads taken from ABC News and Timothy McVeigh's defense team, according to documents filed in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.


A confidential informant in the St. Louis, Missiouri, area "learned of the following information as a result of interviews and contacts made by the ABC News team covering OKBOMB," the FBI's code name for the investigation, according to an FBI FD-302 record dated April 3, 1996.

The informant said government documents including "telephone records and grand jury information" had been "leaked" to attorneys for both Timothy McVeigh and his co-conspirator, Terry Nichols.

The informant said the information was "being used to fuel belief that a government conspiracy exists to 'cover up' government mistakes," the document states, including information indicating that the goverment was warned of the April 19, 1995 attack ten days in advance. The material was being used to bolster claims that "the government had a confidential informant next to McVeigh."

The informant also provided information on reporting by the late J.D. Cash regarding the bombing and the possibility of additional conspirators.

According to the document, the informant also provided information on gun dealer Roger Moore and German neo-Nazi Andreas Strassmeier, both of whom have been the subject of scrutiny for their relationships to McVeigh and possible roles in the bombing plot. According to the informant, "some right-wing group supporters believe [Strassmeier] is an FBI informant."

A second document from the same informant again provided information learned "as a result of interviews and contacts made by the ABC News Team covering OKBOMB" related to Elohim City, a white supremacist compound in rural Oklahoma where Strassmeier lived and worked as security director.

A third document identifies a numbered informant in Oklahoma who claimed to be alerting the FBI to a planned ABC expose concerning the bombing. This informant was relaying information from "a confidential source who works for a news agency."

A fourth document from April 16, 1996, was previously released and identifies a numbered FBI informant based in New York who was "a senior official employed by ABC News for over fifteen years." This informant was pressured into revealing the name of a ABC News source -- Vincent Cannistraro -- who had provided information pointing to overseas involvement in the attack. This informant was later allegedly identified as Christopher Isham, who denied providing information to the FBI.

The complete set of new Oklahoma City bombing documents were filed as support for a sweeping motion that details the FBI's noncompliance with previous court orders regarding disclosure of documents related to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue sued the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act for documents related to the Oklahoma City bombing after his brother, Kenneth, was found dead in a federal prison cell soon after the bombing. Trentadue won a wrongful death suit against the Bureau of Prisons for covering up key details of his brother's death, which the Bureau claimed was a suicide.

Documents previously disclosed as part of the lawsuit can be found here, here and here.

Labels: Andreas-Strassmeir, Informants, Jesse-Trentadue, OKBOMB, Oklahoma-City-Bombing, Roger-Moore, Terry-Nichols, Timothy-McVeigh

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

Just Days After OKC Bombing, Informant Named Two Key Suspects

Just days after the Oklahoma City bombing, an informant told the FBI that white supremacists Dennis Mahon and Andreas Strassmeier had been actively discussing plans to bomb the Alfred E. Murrah federal building for months prior to the attack.

A record of an FBI interview with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms informant Carol Howe, dated April 21, 1995, was provided to INTELWIRE by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue and investigative journalist Roger Charles. Trentadue is engaged in a lawsuit to compel the FBI to release documents pertaining to the bombing under the Freedom of Information Act. Charles, a retired Marine Corps officer, worked with J.D. Cash of the McCurtain Gazette investigating the bombing.

Mahon and Strassmeier both have ties to a large number of white supremacist and anti-government movements, and both have been linked to a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma known as Elohim City. Both men separately claimed to have met convicted OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh at gun shows prior to the attack. McVeigh placed a call to the Elohim City compound, where Strassmeier was living, shortly before the bombing.

According to the document (click here to read), Mahon told Howe he wanted to target federal facilities for bombings, including specifically federal buildings in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

Howe told the FBI that Mahon and Strassmeier took three trips to Oklahoma City, in November 1994, December 1994 and February 1995. According to a chronology of McVeigh's travels compiled by his defense team (link), McVeigh was also in Oklahoma City in December 1994 and cased the Murrah building during that trip. However, Howe said she accompanied Mahon and Strassmeier on the trip and did not report any meeting with McVeigh.

It's not clear how much the FBI did to attempt to follow up on this information. The FBI has consistently refused to disclose the bulk of its investigative file related to the Oklahoma City bombing.

What records have been released through Trentadue's lawsuit and other sources do not detail any substantial investigation of Mahon and only relate a belated interview of Strassmeier by phone after he had left the United States. Strassmeier left the U.S. soon after the bombing and now lives in his native Germany.

Dennis Mahon is currently facing trial, along with his twin brother Daniel, for a 2004 bombing that targeted Don Logan, a black official working for the Scottsdale, Arizona, city diversity office. Logan was injured in the attack.

According to the Associated Press, the Mahon brothers' trial was scheduled to start this month but has been delayed until early 2012 because of "a 'substantial' amount of information disclosed by the government" during discovery. The nature of the disclosures is currently unknown.

Previously released documents (click to read) indicated that Howe had related the possible threats described above to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms prior to the April 1995 bombing (for specific testimony, click here).

Labels: Andreas-Strassmeir, Dennis-Mahon, Elohim-City, Jesse-Trentadue, OKBOMB, Oklahoma-City-Bombing, Timothy-McVeigh

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

FBI Lab Took Nearly Three Years To Analyze Terry Nichols Bomb Cache

The FBI Laboratory took 34 months to check for fingerprints on a cache of explosives hidden by Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, according to new documents released by the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act.

The cache of explosives was discovered in 2005 in connection with a threat that they would be used in an act of domestic terrorism and a claim that the fingerprints might point to an unindicted co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing.

The documents were obtained by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue.

On March 5, 2005, the FBI received information from an asset concerning explosives that had been hidden in Terry Nichols' home in Herington, Kansas, since the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, without being discovered by investigators (click here for more on how the tip came about).

The tip, which was received by the Kansas City FBI field office, indicated that the material was slated for use in an "impending act of domestic violence." The tip was specific about the type of explosives stored at the house and their location.

According to the report, Nichols told fellow prisoners that the material also bore the fingerprints of Roger Moore, an Arkansas gun dealer and friend of Timothy McVeigh whom investigators had previously discounted as a suspect. Moore's name is redacted from the document, but Nichols previously confirmed this detail in a letter.

Moore, who testified against McVeigh and Nichols, claimed that Nichols had robbed his home prior to the bombing. According to the FBI report, Nichols claimed Moore had provided explosives for use in the bombing. According to the report, Nichols also claimed to believe Moore was an FBI informant who had forewarned the FBI about the bombing.

Read the March 14, 2005 report about the tip

It took more than two weeks from the report being filed for the FBI to investigate whether live explosives were hidden on the site for use in a domestic terrorism attack. On April 2, 2005, agents from the Kansas City field office discovered that there was in fact a substantial cache of explosives still hidden in Nichols' former home, which had somehow been missed during the original investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Items found in the house included almost 70 Kinestik explosives (used in the design of the Oklahoma City bomb), hundreds of detonators of various types, detonator components and accessories, flares, bomb fuses, tear gas grenades, and books on improvised explosives and manufacturing poison.

April 8, 2005, inventory of Nichols house search

April 2005, photos of items retrieved in Nichols search

April 2005, sketch of former Nichols home

Nichols had claimed that Moore's fingerprints would be found on the explosives. It took almost three years for the FBI lab to report on whether it found any fingerprints.

In a report dated Feb. 21, 2008, the FBI Laboratory stated that it had not found useful prints on the explosives. However, it did find fingerprints that did not belong to Terry Nichols on one of the books. The name of the person to whom the fingerprints belonged has been redacted from the lab report.

Request to FBI Lab for fingerprint analysis, May 5, 2005

FBI Lab Receipt of Evidence, May 13, 2005

FBI Lab Receipt of Evidence, July 1, 2005

On April 24, 2008, the FBI Lab destroyed the explosives which Nichols had hoped would yield the fingerprints of Roger Moore. The FBI Lab confirmed the destruction of the evidence months later. Explosives are routinely disposed of after they are no longer required for evidentiary purposes.

FBI Lab Report on Disposition of Evidence, October 10, 2008

Jesse Trentadue sued the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act for documents related to the Oklahoma City bombing after his brother, Kenneth, was found dead in a federal prison cell soon after the bombing. Trentadue won a wrongful death suit against the Bureau of Prisons for covering up key details of his brother's death, which the Bureau claimed was a suicide.

Trentadue believes his brother was murdered in prison in a case of mistaken identity due to his resemblance to a suspected accomplice in the bombing, Richard Guthrie, who was also found dead in prison under similar circumstances in 1996.

Labels: Jesse-Trentadue, OKBOMB, Oklahoma-City-Bombing, Terry-Nichols, Timothy-McVeigh

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink