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Terry Nichols Refuses to Testify Before New Grand Jury

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols refused to testify last week before a federal grand jury in Denver investigating explosives recently found under his old house. He said the grand jury is not the right forum.

Nichols, 50, has said he would cooperate with a congressional investigation. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., is considering a probe into the bombing and is seeking to meet with Nichols in prison.

McDonnell said her brother does not feel safe at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo. "He feels his life is very threatened," she said. Other inmates "have told him he has been marked as a snitch and marked for murder, and so he's very fearful for his life."

She blamed FBI misconduct for the problem but would not elaborate. His life has been put in danger, and we don't appreciate it," she said. ....In late March, agents discovered explosives under Nichols' old house, acting on information that came indirectly from another inmate, mobster Gregory Scarpa Jr. Nichols later complained in letters to victims that Scarpa had mixed the truth about the explosives with lies in an effort to get a reduced prison sentence.

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    Re: Terry Nichols Refuses to Testify Before New Gr (none / 0) (#1)
    by mattd on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:00:05 PM EST
    In other Murrah building news, a federal judge has extended a deadline for the FBI to provide documents related to the bombing to Jesse Trentadue, the lawyer brother of former federal inmate Kenneth Trentadue. K. Trentadue died in Oklahoma City's Federal Transfer Center (for inmates) in August 1995 under extremely mysterious circumstances, last chronicled by TalkLeft here. Federal prison officials said Trentadue committed suicide, but the injuries on his body say otherwise, and the entire treatment of the alleged suicide location screams "cover-up." Jesse Trentadue has uncovered evidence that FBI officials mistook his brother for someone wanted for questioning in the Murrah building bombing, and believes that he may have died when an interrogation "got out of hand."

    Jesse Trentadue has amassed evidence that his brother was mistaken for Tim McVeigh’s alleged accomplice in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Federal agents, believing that they had Richard Lee Guthrie in their hands, went too far in attempting to force him to talk. Jesse Trentadue learned that the FBI had informants planted with two groups on which McVeigh may have relied: a white supremacist paramilitary training compound at Elohim City and the Mid-West Bank Robbery Gang. The implication is that the FBI had advance notice of McVeigh’s plans and may have been conducting a sting operation that went awry. The FBI has documents that name the informants. Teletypes from then FBI director Louis Freeh dated January 4, 1996, and August 23, 1996, confirm that the FBI had informants imbedded with the Mid-West Bank Robbery Gang and in Elohim City. In these documents, Freeh reports to various FBI field offices that the Elohim City informant (possibly explosives expert and German national Andreas Carl Strassmeir) "allegedly has had a lengthy relationship with Timothy McVeigh" and "that McVeigh had placed a telephone call to Elohim City on 4/5/95, a day that he was believed to have been attempting to recruit a second conspirator to assist in the OKBOMB attack." The FBI denied to federal judge Dale Kimball that any such documents existed. But someone had leaked the teletypes to Trentadue, and he put them before the judge along with an affidavit of their genuineness. Caught red-handed lying to a federal judge, the FBI was ordered to produce all documents Trentadue demanded. Judge Kimball gave the FBI until June 15, 2005, to deliver the incriminating records. Needless to say, the FBI doesn’t want to deliver and is attempting every possible dodge to escape obeying the judge’s order.

    The FBI had to backtrack and tell the court that 340 such documents existed, but now says that only 17 of them aren't duplicates of each other, and are still fighting against turning any of them over to Jesse Trentadue. I don't know if I believe any of this, but you have to wonder why the FBI is still stalling the Trentadue case. It's not related to Terry Nichols at all, except that maybe the FBI thought it was.

    Re: Terry Nichols Refuses to Testify Before New Gr (none / 0) (#2)
    by mattd on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:00:05 PM EST
    Oops, I forgot to provide the source for the quoted material. My bad.

    Re: Terry Nichols Refuses to Testify Before New Gr (none / 0) (#3)
    by Sailor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:00:05 PM EST
    I don't blame nichols for not testifying before a grand jury, but isn't supermax by definition 23 hour lockup/1 hour alone in the yard?