J.D. Cash, an investigative reporter for the McCurtain Gazette, discusses his investigation and recent developments into the story of the “Aryan Republican Army” neo-Nazi bank robbery ring (many of whom were undercover cops and informants) and their collaboration with Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, resulting in the deaths of 168 people and one of the largest cover-ups in American history. My previous interviews of Cash here.
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For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 959 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton, and this is Antiwar Radio.
Antiwar history was for John Doe, number two, who they later said did not exist.
There are a lot of unanswered questions in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, and the man with the most answers is J.D.
Cash from the McCurtain County Gazette in eastern Oklahoma.
Welcome to the show, J.D.
Well, I wish I could say I knew what exactly did happen, but we're always finding more details and more trails to go down that may eventually lead us to all the answers.
Well, J.D.
Cash has been writing this story since the beginning of 1996.
He's been following it really since the story happened.
You had friends and loved ones who died in the Oklahoma City bombing, isn't that right?
That's correct.
I had many, many friends that worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and so that was, of course, the initial interest that I had.
Plus, being a lifelong Oklahoman, I was very interested in recording some of the events that happened for history.
And I remember in one of these stories, maybe it wasn't until later, you found out that your cousin actually had prior knowledge of the attack working for the local fire department, is that right?
Well, it was interesting that I was sitting here having lunch with this guy on a regular basis, whose great uncle was very well connected to the Oklahoma City Police Department, and in fact, he used to be the head of it.
And I found out later that his son, my cousin, was actually one of the dispatchers who had received notice on the Friday before the bombing that the fire department should be put on notice that there would be terrorists coming into the Oklahoma City area the following week.
And that's a very, very, very unusual notice.
And then, of course, that went through the dispatchers' office there at the Oklahoma City Fire Department.
We've since found evidence that there was an enormous amount of information being circulated on a need-to-know basis within the local police department, the fire department, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, the highway patrol, the FBI.It was not a well-kept secret that there was going to be trouble in Oklahoma City that week.
Well, now, how could all those police agencies have known that there was going to be an attack?
Well, you have to go back to the evidence we've since discovered that really was fleshed out with the ATF that they had their informant inside there that had been warning them of a very specific attack that was coming for that day in downtown Oklahoma City to the Oklahoma City federal building.
And that was the ATF informant, Carol Howe, right?
That's correct.
And then, of course, we've since found out that Morris D. has had people in there.
He denies it.
That's fine.
But we can only go by what the FBI has turned over to us very reluctantly and very relatedly, which memos from Louis Freeh, you know, who's then director, a number of his memos talking about information that his organization received as recently as April 17th from informing the FBI.
And that was the performance working for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Morris D.'s, that were inside of Elohim City when Dick McVeigh was calling.
So, I mean, you know, you've got all this stuff coming in now.
Okay.
Now, before we get too far into Morris D.'s and the Southern Poverty Law Center, what the heck is an Elohim City, J.D.?
Well, it is then, and for all I know, could still well be the largest terrorist training center in the United States for domestics.
Simply put, that's just that simple.
All right.
Now, there's a special coming out on the BBC tonight.
And including in their previews on the website, they show a clip of their interview.
Somebody finally got an interview with Andre Karl Strassmeier, the German army intelligence officer.
And not only does he deny any involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing, whatever, but he also, I think, basically denies what's been the common description of Elohim City as this neo-Nazi compound.
He says, yeah, there were Aryan Republican Army guys there, but there were also Southern Baptists and all kinds of people from all different descriptions at Elohim City.
Isn't that interesting?
Well, you know, let's look at his roommates.
Look at Strassmeier's roommates.
All right.
Who are they?
Let's look at people like Michael Brescia.
Went to prison, three years, bank robbery.
He admitted to being part of a plot to overthrow the federal government.
We have a guy by the name of Stedeford, a guy by the name of McCarthy.
They, too, went to prison for numerous bank robberies and a plot to overthrow the federal government.
Now, these are not people who were just there at Elohim City, this little neo-Nazi compound.
They were people who actually lived with and under the same roof with Mr. Strassmeier, people that Mr. Strassmeier trained.
Follow me?
These are people that are involved in this Aryan Republican Army, which is all the evidence points to, were the financial wing, the bank robbery ring of this whole project to raise money to overthrow the federal government and do so in the name of the Aryan nations.
All right.
Well, I think, J.D., we might have just hit on something here that our audience is going to be able to connect to things that they already know, such as the bank robbery ring, the Aryan Republican Army bank robbery ring that terrorized the Midwest in the early 90s.
You're saying that's how this Oklahoma City bombing was financed.
Right.
If you go back, that's what Roger Charles and I did.
Roger Charles has been an outstanding investigative reporter who works out of Washington with me on some of these projects.
He has many of his own.
But on the bombing, he has been an integral force in running down government documents and things like that.
But when you start doing research on Mr. McVeigh and on Terry Nichols, you realize that there was no real gun showbiz.
You know, the government said, you know, people, reporters ask after the bombing, well, how did these two people that you're saying did all of this, how did they support themselves leading up to the Oklahoma City bombing?
And they said, well, they had a gun show business.
Well, if you start doing research, you'll find that they didn't.
They did not have a gun show business.
And what they were doing, they were involved in this bank robbery group.
Now, to this day, Mr. Nichols denies that he ever physically robbed a bank.
But we do have the affidavit, certainly from Jennifer McVeigh, that she gave the FBI where she admits to a felony.
In her plea negotiations, she admits to the fact that she laundered bank robbery proceeds for her brother, washed them at a bank.
This is all part of how she said he was able to support himself.
That's Timothy McVeigh's sister.
That's correct.
And now, didn't the FBI themselves, didn't they tie Timothy McVeigh to at least one of these robberies in Ohio?
They've got pictures of him, which they've since admit they've destroyed.
They've got all sorts of evidence.
In the very, very first days after the Oklahoma City bombing, they were asking their various departments to compare the evidence from the Aryan Republican Army Midwest Bank Robbery Group to the evidence that they were coming across in the Oklahoma City case.
So they knew early on what they were dealing with.
But here's the problem.
It goes back to L.A.
City, Morris D's, prior knowledge.
It goes back to the fact that they did not protect the building.
The judges across the street were all given notice to stay away from the building that day.
But we wrote that story right after the bombing.
Yeah, Judge Wayne Alley admitted to the Portland Oregonian that he'd been warned, right?
Yeah, he was warned.
We started doing other searches.
So what we found is that the important people in Oklahoma City were very quietly and one-on-one tipped off.
The regular people that had their kids in that daycare center did not receive the same warnings.
The idea being that the feds would do their job, the police would do their job, and that they would make the arrest of these guys before they got there.
It didn't work.
Well, and there are numerous reports, aren't there, of the local Oklahoma City police there searching people as they come into the building and that kind of thing that morning, right?
Well, none that I found.
I haven't found any legitimate eyewitness accounts of that.
Oh, I'd always heard that they were there but then left before the truck pulled up.
I've heard that there was evidence that there was a police present there during the night and waiting and watching.
And then when these guys didn't show up, when they expected them, which was during the night, they backed off and let the employees go in that day with the idea that they'd heard that police had been informed that the bombing would either be the 19th, which was the anniversary of Waco, or the 20th, which was Hitler's birthday.
Fitting.
And now let's get back to this guy, Andre Strassmeier.
His name's been thrown around a lot and as I just said, he's going to be on the BBC tonight saying, Man, I didn't have anything to do with this bombing.
Sure he will.
What else is he going to say?
Oh, I don't know.
Maybe, okay, I did it, but give me a plea deal.
I don't know, but so who is this guy?
Nobody's pressured him, Scott.
See, we're not pressuring him.
He's under no pressure to make a deal.
The federal government, our government, is very satisfied that nobody here in this country is going to do anything to pressure them.
So there's no reason for him to make an offer.
He can sit there all day long.
But go ahead.
Well, in any case, so who is this guy that you're so sure was involved in this bombing?
Who is he and why are you so sure he was involved?
Well, I think that Mr. Strassmeier is a person of great interest who should have been much more closely looked into.
Now, I mean, when you start looking at his background, his father's former Secretary of State to Berlin, and he has a remarkable background as far as his family, the idea that this guy would be living and training Nazis at a terrorist training camp in eastern Oklahoma is just ludicrous.
I mean, that they would allow him to do this is ludicrous.
His family would not allow this to be done.
In Germany, this would have been a huge embarrassment to their family for having their kid out there doing this stuff.
So this is completely off limits, this type of conduct.
So he wasn't a real Nazi then?
Is that what you're saying?
I doubt he was.
I'm sure that he must have been providing information back to his country as far as information about our neo-Nazi involvement in transmitting information to Europe.
He was involved with this guy by the name of Dennis Mahon, who had been barred from Germany, from England, and Canada for activities that he had been involved in, and travels involving instituting acts of illegal conduct involving the neo-Nazi movement, both here and abroad.
He was providing information, the internet was just firing up, and they were recruiting people overseas to do various acts that were considered to be illegal, certainly in Germany.
And so we found evidence where Lee Freed even traveled and had a sit-down meeting about these acts of disorder involving our neo-Nazis with the Germans.
And I assume that there are files involving Mr. Strassmeier that would show that he was acting as a spy for the German government and getting that information.
Now, as part of this film that's going to be airing tonight in Europe by the BBC, they're going to interview some FBI agents who share that same feeling that Roger Charles and I do, where we believe that much more effort should have been made to go into Mr. Strassmeier's background, and had we done that, we would have had the opportunity to learn what really did happen in Oklahoma City.
Right, and now that includes Danny Coleson, who is one of the top FBI agents on the case, calling for a new grand jury, right?
Right, I think Danny Coleson is a perfect example of a top FBI agent who should have been allowed to continue his work on the case but was removed from it shortly after the bomb.
Now, I've also interviewed an FBI agent named Rick Ojeda.
Some may remember that he was interviewed by Dan Rather right before McVeigh was executed, when McVeigh's execution had to be delayed because the prosecutors had withheld so much evidence from the defense.
Right.
And when I interviewed Rick Ojeda, he said absolutely.
He investigated the Elohim City angle on this case, and his bosses refused to allow him to continue pursuing his leads.
And he was far from done investigating at the time, and they told him, forget it.
So this guy, you've told me...
This is 168 people murdered.
Yeah, 168 people dead.
And now you've told me before that you have evidence that Andre Strassmeier was still working for the German government, that he was still on their payroll, et cetera, all throughout this time, right?
Well, that's what the evidence shows.
Okay, and now this is the guy that Timothy McVeigh called three or four seconds after successfully making arrangements to rent the Ryder truck.
He immediately called for Andy the German at Elohim City, right?
Right, and according to other memos that we have, was in contact with Elohim City and wanting additional support from Strassmeier and others at Elohim City as near as the 17th of April.
And now, isn't there...
I was going back through my old files, and I found this AP report from, I believe, early 2003 that mentioned another informant, an FBI informant named John Schultz, who said that he was there while McVeigh and Strassmeier and others were planning the Oklahoma bombing.
Yes, he was there on two different occasions.
Certainly one that was very important, and the feds apparently had a high degree of confidence in his honesty because they later used him in a capital case, a federal capital case, both, right?
So, yes.
They used him in a different trial.
You're saying this same informant was useful in other trials?
Other federal trials, yes.
Before or after the Oklahoma case?
After the Oklahoma case.
Okay, very good.
Okay, now, we already mentioned Carol Howe.
She was the ATF informant inside this ring.
Now, how come she didn't testify at Timothy McVeigh's trial?
Well, they brought her out there, the McVeigh people, and then, of course, what happened was the prosecutors threw a fit, and Judge Major would not allow it.
Yeah, well, didn't they trump up a bunch of terrorism charges against her?
Right, they indicted her and things like that.
And kept her indicted just long enough to keep her off the stand?
To keep her off the stand, and then what happened was she was found innocent of all charges, and so when the trial came up for Terry Nichols, they put her on, but they greatly limited what areas she could discuss.
I mean, it was just like castrating a dog.
It was amazing, amazing the lengths the government has kept, has gone through to keep her quiet.
Okay, now, let's cut right to the heart of the chase here.
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, both, Terry Nichols and his latest court filing in the Jesse Trinity lawsuit, both of them say that they built this bomb at Geary State Lake in Missouri a few days before the bombing, and that McVeigh then drove it to Oklahoma City and blew it up.
Do you believe that?
No.
And why not?
No, because these two guys couldn't build anything.
And I think Terry Nichols will tell you that he did not, he doesn't believe that that bomb that went off in Oklahoma City, that he helped build that bomb.
Do you think it's possible he did help build some sort of bomb at Geary State Lake?
He may have assisted them in loading some materials, but I believe that the bomb that went off in Oklahoma City was built by very experienced bomb builders who put the finishing touches on it in downtown Oklahoma City in a warehouse, in a vacant warehouse that morning.
And you know who these men are?
I believe that I know who some of them are.
And you've told me before, two of them are Arizona gold miners, is that right?
There's a couple of them out there who with experience in working those gold mines out there.
But you still won't name them?
Not yet, no.
Okay, now are these two guys undercover cops as well?
One was, one had some relationship to the ATF, but he was certainly not a cop.
Okay, and well now this brings up to me the possibility about two trucks, I remember during McVeigh's trial.
There's no question there's two trucks.
No question there's two trucks?
No, absolutely no question there are two trucks involved in this project.
Okay, so maybe one had the bomb that Terry Nichols says he helped McVeigh build at Geary State Lake and the other was the bomb that was made that morning in Oklahoma City that actually did the damage?
You know, one of the things that we hope to do is when this book is complete, have a lot more answers than we have questions.
Oh man, wouldn't that be nice?
Wouldn't that be?
Oh my goodness.
I don't know how to be more honest with you than that, Scott.
I mean, but we were the first one to break the story that there was two trucks involved, there's no question about that.
We're just still working our way through.
Yeah, I remember during the trial J.D. that a defense witness on the stand said that, listen, the Ryder truck was at the motel on Sunday.
And the prosecutor said, no, no, you're confused, he didn't rent the truck until Monday, so you must have saw it Monday.
And she said, no, don't tell me it was Monday, it was Easter Sunday.
And I had to walk around the truck to get to my granddaughter, she said.
Yeah.
So there was no question in her mind about what day of the week it was.
The remains of the truck that were found in Oklahoma City came from a rental that occurred about 4.22 p.m. on Monday, the 17th of April.
The truck that people saw Mr. McVeigh in many times in Kansas around the Dreamland Motel was seen on that previous Sunday.
And so it was a completely different truck.
And, of course, that was Easter Sunday, and people remember being in their Easter clothes and this, that, and the other.
There's a whole long, long series of articles that we have written about the second truck establishing its legitimacy.
Which, of course, raises the issue, what did they use to, you know, what was going on, what was the purpose of it.
How could Mr. McVeigh have this other truck physically and not have other assistance when Terry Nichols has alibis for that day.
I mean, it's just a long, it raises a whole series of other questions we can't really get into on this one little radio interview.
Right, that's true.
Yeah, one of them would be why did the government try to deny it during the current trials?
Yeah, why did the government try to deny it?
That's a good point, excellent point.
Okay, now, there's so much to get to, and clearly not enough time, but we have to talk about Jesse Trinidad.
That's what's going on here.
I spoke with this man the other day, and very briefly, J.D., you can help me out if I go off the story, but basically, this guy Jesse Trinidad, his brother, Kenneth, was murdered by cops in jail in a case of mistaken identity.
They thought he was Richard Guthrie, who some are saying now, they think, may have been John Doe number two.
Right, I think that there is a link here.
I think the police believe that there was a link from Jesse Trinidad's brother, Kenneth, to this here Republican army, and what's happened is they have tortured this guy for information in August of 1995 and murdered him and covered it up.
Jesse Trinidad has fought a long, long battle to get evidence of what really did happen, and the evidence continues to come back in that area.
And he only stumbled backwards into the Oklahoma City bombing, right?
He was trying to find out what happened to his brother.
Yeah.
And now he's got all these documents coming forward, because my understanding is the judge out there in Utah isn't too impressed with the DOJ.
That's correct.
He has not caught up in this the way that they are in Denver, and he's been a very fair judge in what he has been willing to offer Mr. Trinidad as far as helping him get the evidence that he needs.
Yeah, now tell me, if this is shocking to you, this kind of blew me away.
Jesse told me the other day, in a not official interview, but we spoke on the phone, and he told me that they don't even deny it.
He said they don't even deny it.
All this time, all they've said to the judge is, Judge, we've promised these people that we'll keep it a secret, so please don't make us break our promise.
Please don't make us give this guy the documents.
It's pretty wild, isn't it?
Yeah, well, it's 2007.
It's a little bit late, but I guess better late than never.
You're right, it is pretty wild.
And now, that Terry Nichols affidavit that came out last week, I had quite a few problems with that.
Firstly, he claims in there that the only reason that he robbed Roger Moore, the gun dealer, was because McVeigh had threatened his family and he was forced to do it.
And secondly, pointing the finger at Larry Potts at the FBI as being Timothy McVeigh's handler.
And my gut tells me that Larry Potts would not be involved in something like this, that it would be a blacker operation than the deputy director running it.
But what do you think about that?
I don't know.
I just don't know what to think, Scott.
I'm ruminating on that one.
On the Roger Moore gun robbery there, Nichols says that he was put up to it and such, but you've told me before that that was supposed to be a hit.
I suspect that there's much more to this old Roger Moore thing than what we've ever, ever, ever considered.
And now he's a government informant too, right?
Well, here again, much more to consider.
That's a whole mystery right there.
I wish I could be more specific, but I'm just not sure about some of this stuff, you know?
Right, well, and I don't want you to say that you're sure about things.
You're not sure either.
I don't have all the answers.
Well, this is why you're denounced roundly by conspiracy theorists for being one of them is because you're not willing to jump to the same conclusions as they are.
I'm just not going to jump on stuff and say I've got all the answers.
You know, we get this stuff, we look at it, compare it and think about it.
Right.
Now, how many people, I know you can report to me this, how many different individuals saw McVeigh with other people that morning?
A couple of dozen.
A couple of dozen, so 24 or more?
Yeah, I mean, there's clearly McVeigh's not by himself that morning.
And now, all this talk now about Richard Guthrie being John Doe number two, I was under the impression that the best evidence said that John Doe number two was this Nazi you mentioned previously, Michael Brescia.
Do you know or do you lean one way or the other?
Well, I think one of the big mistakes is that who is John Doe number two?
Well, John Doe number two, according to the government, is a young man who appears in that side sketch up there in Junction City with McVeigh when the truck is rented.
And I still believe that that's Michael Brescia.
But I think there's a lot of discussion, a lot of loose, a lot of people, especially in the media, get mixed up about all these other people being called John Doe number two.
And what they really mean, these are John Does, other people, associates of McVeigh's.
Right, but when we're talking number two, we're talking about the guy who was with him when he rented the truck.
Yeah, when he rented the truck, that's Michael Brescia, in my opinion.
And there is another figure who does closely resemble Mr. Guthrie, who is often seen with Mr. McVeigh.
Now, could that also be Ken Trinity?
Don't know.
Ken Trinity does favor Mr. Guthrie, but that's a whole other show.
Yeah, it is.
And here we are almost all out of time.
And in fact, I might as well just let you go there.
There's so much more to talk about, and I know you have to go.
Everybody, please check out J.D.
Cash's archives at the McCurtain Gazette.
The website is McCurtain.
There's a couple stories there that hardly represents all the work, but there's a couple stories there.
Sure, and I bet a lot of them have been reprinted here and there, too.
So if you just Google for J.D.
Cash, I'm sure you can find the treasure trove.
And Dan Scott, we appreciate your interest in this.
Well, I don't think that the government ought to be able to get away with lying about things like this, so I'll do my best and do it.
No.
All right, well, I sure appreciate your time, J.D., and hopefully we'll talk again soon.
You betcha.
All right, take care.
