Agent: Feds told of threats to blow buildings

Judge had sealed woman's testimony regarding Oklahoma City blast

Unearthed by a Salt Lake City, Utah, attorney, statements made by a Tulsa Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agent in a federal courtroom confirm that a confidential informant did warn the agency of plans to bomb federal buildings before the attack in Oklahoma City that left 168 dead and hundreds more injured.

Moreover, a federal judge in Oklahoma ordered that the information be kept sealed because of its potential impact on the trial of bomber Timothy McVeigh, records show.

Civil attorney Jesse Trentadue submitted as an exhibit a transcript from a 1997 federal court proceeding in Tulsa that contains admissions by a BATF agent that she had prior warning of a bomb plot being discussed inside a right-wing paramilitary compound in eastern Oklahoma called Elohim City.

The information emerges now because in May of this year a federal judge in a Utah Freedom of Information case ordered the Oklahoma City FBI office to surrender all responsive documents requested by Trentadue � without redactions. The FBI has been fighting the order ever since.

As part of that suit, Trentadue on Friday responded to the FBI's delivery to the judge of just under 100 pages of documents related to a little-known undercover operation involving the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC; the FBI; and the $85 million OKBOMB investigation.

presenting the documents under seal to the court, lawyers for the Department of Justice once again argued that the identity of certain SPLC informants and others � along with important details of the undercover operation involving McVeigh and the far right � should be kept secret from the public.

Almost since the day of the bombing, there has been considerable information emerging that various law enforcement agencies had intelligence pointing to a bomb plot by McVeigh and others well ahead of the attack.

Trentadue has obtained a 1997 transcript from a Tulsa federal court case that casts doubt on BATF claims that the agency had no advance warning of an Oklahoma City bombing.

The 1997 case involved a Tulsa BATF contract informant who stood accused, along with a boyfriend, of making bomb threats in 1996.

With no media present, Carol E. Howe's BATF handler, Angela Finley-Graham, responded to questions from Howe's attorney, Clark Brewster, about her work for the agency.

In particular, Finley-Graham was asked whether Howe had warned the BATF in 1994 and 1995 that Andreas Strassmeir and others at Elohim City were plotting to bomb an Oklahoma federal building in the spring of 1995.

The transcript of Graham's testimony includes this exchange:


Brewster: And Ms. Howe told you about Mr. Strassmeir's threats to blow up federal buildings, didn't she?
Graham: In general, yes.

Brewster: And that was before the Oklahoma City bombing?

Graham: Yes.

During the proceeding, Graham also acknowledged that she was aware Howe traveled to Oklahoma City with members of the radical group before the attack and had later reported the incident. Upon her return to Tulsa, Howe was debriefed and then taken to Oklahoma City to show Graham the areas she visited with the individuals who were part of a wide-ranging terrorist investigation that was receiving substantial funding and attention in Washington, D.C.

In a closed-door, "in camera" hearing on April 24, 1997, U.S. District Judge Michael Burrage commented on the BATF records involving Howe's undercover file and referred to a mass-murder case that was not before him.


Burrage: With that McVeigh trial going on, I don't want anything getting out of here that would compromise that trial in any way.
Brewster: What do you mean by "compromise"? Do you mean shared with McVeigh's lawyers?

Burrage: Yes, or something that would come up � you know, we have got evidence that the ATF took a trip with somebody that said buildings were going to be blown up in Oklahoma City before it was blown up or something of that nature, and try to connect it to McVeigh in some way or something.

Brewster: That would be up to their representation of the client in some regard, Your Honor. If you are asking me not to share any documentation from these files with those lawyers, then I won't.

Howe was not allowed to testify in the McVeigh trial. However, after she was acquitted of all charges brought by the DOJ against her in Tulsa, the former beauty queen and debutante was allowed to testify in a very limited manner in the Terry Nichols trial in Denver.

Under strict orders by U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, Howe was not allowed to tell Nichols' jurors that she was under contract for the BATF when she visited Elohim City in the months before the bombing.