10/21/10 – Roger Charles – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
Let me tell you a little bit about Roger Charles.
He's an award-winning investigative journalist, consultant, and confidential advisor with unique experience in a broad range of national security affairs.
Demonstrated areas of achievement are investigating military intelligence and law enforcement activities at the national level when congressional oversight and media coverage had failed to get the story right.
Uncovering human interest stories where the system dealt in a grossly unfair and too often deadly manner with American citizens, both civilians and service members, and their families.
Advising journalists and attorneys on sources and methods of investigating national security issues and incidents, especially those considered sensitive by the military and by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Right now, he is a journalist and investigator on the subject of the Oklahoma City bombing.
But he's worked for ABC News.
BBC News and assistant producer of The Other Lockerbie.
All right.
Welcome to the show, Roger.
How are you doing?
I'm Scott.
I'm good, Scott.
How are you doing?
I'm sorry.
I'm doing good.
Now, yeah, I'm Scott.
You're Roger.
And I'm Roger.
I got to get my head straight here for a second, if that's possible.
Yeah.
Yeah, me too.
It's third hour.
It's late and I'm still working on my first cup of coffee.
I keep forgetting to drink it.
Hey, listen.
So I promised the people earlier in the show that I was going to show them that Timothy McVeigh had help with that Oklahoma City bombing and that you were going to help me explain it.
But I guess let's just start with that.
How sure are you that there were more people involved with the Oklahoma bombing and do you know who they are and how come they're not in prison?
Well, that's a, that's a hell of an opening question as you and your listeners can well appreciate.
Well, because it's been quite a few years and I think, you know, we sort of have to start from scratch with this thing.
Yeah.
Well, let me just say that at the time, and I did not get into the story until the following summer of August of 96.
So I did not actively investigate for about 16 months.
I was like a lot of people.
I read the news articles, magazines and watch TV.
And then the summer of 96, I'm hired by ABC to be an associate producer, a consulting associate producer for ABC's 2020 news magazine.
And that's when I started looking at it and it very quickly became apparent, Scott, that a lot of people inside the government law enforcement thought it was ludicrous to claim that McVeigh and Nichols and whatever a contribution Michael Fortier had made were the total members of this conspiracy, of this plot.
It just didn't meet any of the smell test.
And you remember what it was, what it was at the beginning?
Was it the John Doe too issue?
Cause they made a really big deal.
I remember, I still remember talking with the guy in line at the gas station about, boy, whoever John Doe number one and two are, they're going to get it, you know, like the next morning getting coffee or something.
And, and then the biggest manhunt in the history of the FBI since, uh, you know, they went after the, whoever kidnapped the Lindbergh baby or whatever it was.
Uh, turned out John Doe too never existed.
There never was a John Doe too.
And those witnesses were mistaken.
Was that the thing?
Cause that sure bothered me.
I happened to attend a, uh, a luncheon here in Washington, DC some years later.
Where a senior FBI agent named I.C. Smith, who a retired guy who's written a book in his own right.
He's one of the FBI's real experts, uh, uh, that they had on, uh, counter espionage, uh, um, against, uh, that we need to protect herself against Chinese, uh, communism, uh, agents of China, the Chinese communist government.
And anyhow, he said, give you one quick example.
John Doe one and John Doe to popped into the public consciousness when the FBI released composite sketches on the afternoon of, uh, the day after the bombing at a press conference in Oklahoma city, Weldon Kennedy released these sketches, these sketches came from the same people at, uh, the writer rental franchise office in Junction city, Kansas elder Eldon Elliott's office there.
And at that point, this is some years after the bombing, uh, the conventional wisdom in the mainstream media was to accept the government's claim that John Doe too was just a mistaken identity.
And John Doe one though was Tim McVeigh and that's 24 karat gold.
And I see Smith said to this luncheon group, I tell you folks, it doesn't work that way.
You don't get the same quality.
That's considered 24 karat gold from one group of witnesses and then turn around and say, Oh, but on this other issue, the very same witnesses are giving you fool's gold Pyra.
It's not gold.
Well, come on.
At this point, what there's what two dozen sworn statements of people who saw or more with me who saw McVeigh with two dozen or with other people, two dozen times or whatever.
Right.
I mean, this is, yeah, here's the puzzle puzzle of there.
The government had people that could put Tim McVeigh in a Ryder truck at the scene of the crime.
All right.
Downtown Oklahoma city before the bombing that morning, it had other people that could put him with in other vehicles in the company of the Ryder truck, but in different vehicles.
Rather than call a single one of these witnesses, and there were about two dozen of them at least.
Rather than call a single one of these witnesses, putting McVeigh at the scene of the crime, the government.
Chose not to call them, and that's because every sighting had Tim McVeigh with somebody.
All right.
Now, who were these guys?
Because it is 2010 now.
Well, it's, I mean, it's, uh, there's a banker from Tulsa named, I think he's from Tulsa named Kyle.
Um, Hunt, I believe his name was, uh, there, uh, Mike Morose, the, uh, the guy at the tire shop that gives directions.
And, and I've just learned.
And I just seen a government document recently because I was not aware of this before that when McVeigh and John Doe to pull into this tire shop about three blocks north of the mural building sometime around eight, uh, 28, 40, uh, about half an hour or so before the bombing, uh, maybe a little less than that, but anyhow, they, uh, make, they asked for directions.
Well, that much I knew, but what I did not know until recently was that they actually got out of the truck and stood next to this Mike Morose and talked to him for five to 10 minutes about one way streets and how to not get on the wrong Oklahoma city.
If you're not familiar with it is a maze of one way streets.
And they changed names every two blocks to some of the streets because two blocks have been changed, uh, to, uh, honor some former politician or this kind of stuff.
So anyhow, the point being that this John Doe one who I've referred to as McVeigh might actually not have been McVeigh because what Mike Morose says after by the guy, not just talking to him through the window rose on the pavement, talking up to a guy in the cab of a writer truck, but standing next to him for five to 10 minutes and talking to him is what he gives the same physical description that the witnesses in junction city at Eldon Elliott's writer rental franchise office gave that he's not six, two or six, three.
They say he's five, 10, one 80, one 85.
Now, I don't know how tall you are, Scott.
I'm five, six, maybe shrinking a little bit through the osteoporosis.
But anyhow, um, if you see somebody that's five, eight, five, 10, um, you can usually tell that that's not somebody that's six, three, six, four, particularly, uh, McVeigh was five.
I'm sorry.
Six, uh, three.
And the guys at Elliott's body shop say that they're not so sure it's McVeigh.
Well, the physical description they came up with does not meet McVeigh.
Absolutely does not.
The sketch somewhat resembles McVeigh.
I've never thought it was McVeigh because of the shape of the top of the head.
Yeah.
But you know, it's just a police sketch.
Sure.
It looks a lot like him.
And here's something else, Scott.
There's no fingerprint evidence that was ever found or introduced into trial, putting McVeigh in an office.
There's no handwriting evidence, putting McVeigh as signing the contract for the Ryder rental truck.
McVeigh was seen on a videotape at a McDonald's a little over a mile away from the Ryder rental office.
Um, and like you just said, though, they had all these other witnesses who could put him there, but they weren't called the trial because they had him with John Doe number two.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and there's a lot of other evidence of his involvement in there.
Besides that, hold it, hold it right there.
We got to take this break here.
We'll be back.
It's Roger Charles.
All right.
So we're going back to show it's in our radio talking with Roger Charles.
Now, Charles, uh, Lord knows at the bogus federal trials in Denver, the national government failed miserably to prove beyond any sort of doubt that McVeigh and Nichols were the two that did this thing, uh, their narrative.
Their narrative is obviously a giant pile of lies from beginning to end.
I mean, it's a joke, but, uh, now you got me wondering whether you've gone off the deep end or whether I have, or maybe this story is a hell of a lot crazier than I ever thought.
If you're telling me that you don't even think McVeigh was the one at all.
Well, no, no, McVeigh was involved.
No doubt about it.
I'm just saying that the question is, did McVeigh rent the riddle rider truck at Eldon Elliott's?
Oh, well, no, but you're saying, was he the guy who asked Mike Meraz for directions that morning?
Well, uh, you know, I'm just saying what Meroz, so the FBI, the physical description does not anywhere close to come, come anywhere close to resembling Tim McVeigh, you know, height and weight.
Um, you know, so I'm just, it's a puzzle and I'm working on the puzzle, Scott, but you know, when John Cash and I got into this thing together, uh, we agreed that, um, there was no single John Doe one, everybody's kind of, you know, accepted what's Tim McVeigh.
Well, I'm not sure that's the case.
And increasingly I become questioning about that.
Well, look, it's true that that sketch is a little bit different, but it is just a sketch.
Yeah.
And, you know, I remember in that book, the politics of terror, they had a picture of an ATF agent that looked a hell of a lot like that sketch too.
And we know that there were two Ryder trucks, but you know, I've never seen the mugshots of the Kehoe brothers.
I'll tell you this, as long as we're on craziness, I think that guy, uh, Paul Hammer is a liar.
In fact, somebody, I interviewed him and, uh, uh, somebody left in the comment section on there, man, I was a prison guard there and McVeigh hated that guy and he's, he admits in the preface to the thing, he's a lifelong con artists and criminal.
He's got a lot of people on the outside doing a lot of research for him and he has nothing to do all day, but piece this together and try to make himself part of it, but he doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
I don't think Roger.
Well, uh, I feel sorry for Amherst life.
Uh, you know, some of the things that have happened to him are not of his doing and some are, but, uh, I think there are issues of credibility.
Uh, and you know, um, it's, uh, the story is not told and I doubt we'll ever know the complete story, Scott.
That's going to be one of the other frustrating things.
What we can try to do is, is fill in more of the gaps, but, uh, if anybody thinks this is a 15,000 piece puzzle and we're going in our lifetime, see all 15,000 pieces, uh, and I don't think that's the case.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I don't know, man.
There's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of different things, um, you know, that are known, but you're right.
It's hard to, you know, uh, come to conclusions when there's so much that you know, for a fact that you don't know.
But, um, you know, like for example, why torture Kenny Trinidad to death.
If it wasn't cause he wouldn't admit he was Richard Guthrie cause he wasn't and they had the wrong guy, but why would they be torturing Richard Guthrie?
You know, why would they want Richard Guthrie so bad?
He, he was one of these guys, the, uh, the neo-Nazi army, the, the white supremacist group, the bank robbery guys.
And why would they go to such lengths to cover it up?
Uh, I mean, if it was just a couple of bureau prison thugs that, uh, uh, got out of control and, and, uh, beaten up an inmate, they'd hang them up and let them let the justice department prosecute them, you know, easily that wouldn't, that would not be a question.
But why have they gone to such lengths to conceal the truth of what happened to Kenny Trinidad?
I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's an incredible question and still a puzzle.
And, uh, I mean, when you've got guys like, uh, Eric Holder, who was the deputy attorney general back in 97, 98, and is on the record as, uh, being the key guy for the justice department that was going to keep the U S senators.
Uh, from holding hearings on Kenny Trinidad's case, right?
Yeah.
We have those PDF files or posts up at antiwar.com/radio in the archives of previous interviews, the latest Jesse Trinidad interview.
Uh, so I mean, certainly, and you know, there's no question that in the justice department, they now realize, uh, I have on my iTunes here, I have a list of soundbites, Roger of Danny Colson, the FBI agent, one of the five FBI agents under the top FBI agent on the case.
And, uh, he did interviews for, uh, BBC show, uh, where he says, yeah, Andre Strassmeier was working for somebody and we ought to have a grand jury and we weren't allowed to follow the trails where all they led.
I interviewed an FBI agent named Rick Ojeda.
He, he had come out to, uh, uh, was a source for Dan Rather right before McVeigh's execution in the spring of 2001, uh, saying that, you know, there's a lot of evidence that was never turned over to the defense and they came up with, I think, three big boxes of more evidence causing a delay in the execution.
And I interviewed that same FBI agent and he was one of three.
I think that Rather talked to, um, on my show back, uh, what in 2003 or four.
And, uh, he said that he had come on all these leads about the neo-Nazis involvement and how, of course, a lot of them, uh, were flip States witnesses or rats of one kind or another working with the government one way or another, either directly for them.
Or, you know, uh, like Strassmeier probably, um, or just as a snitches and all that, and he said that, you know, he just wasn't allowed to follow those angles.
He said that was typical that, but if it was good information, important information, they should have assigned somebody else to follow it up.
But he knew for a fact that the stuff that he had reported about the neo-Nazis and their possible involvement in the bombing, uh, was still not ever turned over to the defense, even after those three big boxes.
So, uh, there's from the mouth of a FBI agent on my show that they're still covering up information about this thing.
And imagine seriously, 168 people killed in broad daylight.
And then they, they say two guys did it, but one of them wasn't even there.
Uh, it was States away at the time.
And then they got away with that.
They, you know, nevermind whether, uh, you know, whichever particular questions people might have about it.
We all know they're lying their asses off about what happened there.
There's just no doubt about that.
And anyone who goes back and looks at those trials, just from the AP news version of what happened there will, you know, laugh till you cry.
Yeah, it's, uh, yeah, I mean, it, it's really, uh, in, in 15 years retrospective, uh, it's just amazing how it's held together.
The coverup is, is held.
And, uh, but it's because, um, um, a lot of people just don't want to get into it.
You know, it's, they took a chance, a conscious chance on let McVeigh walk out of that courthouse, uh, by not tying him directly to the scene of the crime.
And that was a hell of a risk, but, uh, you know, they didn't dare bring in the other witnesses that would have placed him downtown Oklahoma city before the bombing, because he was with other people and they didn't want to get into that.
Who are these other people?
Which one is a government informant?
Which ones of them were government informants?
Yeah.
And how was it that the ATF, um, as they admitted, were warned not to go to their offices at that building that day and then showed up what, you know, within half an hour in full battle gear.
Yeah.
No, it's, uh, I mean, it's lied.
And then later try to make up stories like, uh, Oh yeah, I was in the elevator rescuing people when it free fell.
And then I rescued more people and stuff, which never happened.
And climb in one version was that, uh, they climbed out, they got out of the elevator somewhere on the third or fourth floor and used sheets.
Now I don't have any federal buildings.
All right, Roger.
We're out of time, man.
I'm sorry.
The thing's running, but anyway, it's true that they're lying.
People can read, uh, the secret life of bill Clinton.
You can read Steven Jones book, others unknown and on and on and check out the James Madison project.
Okay, Scott.
Good to talk to you, buddy.
You too, man.
Thanks.