FBI Chief of Counterterrorism at FBI HQ Knew Tim McVeigh's Name Immediately After Bombing

Little-Known 'Memento' from O'Neill's Office Brings Serious Questions

In April of 1995, FBI agent John O'Neill served as the Chief of the Counterterrorism Section at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

As a section chief, he was a top dog—in counterterrorism. He was also considered to be a maverick agent of sorts, one who would go out of his way to bend the rules if it meant advancing an investigation, and one not afraid to piss off supervisory agents or peers who were higher on the social ladder than he was in the pecking order.

O’Neill is most well known for having perished inside the WTC on the September 11, 2001, terror attacks—John was there because he had left the FBI and taken on the position of Chief of Security at the twin towers, which he firmly believed would be attacked again.

John O’Neill’s FBI portrait

But this Substack isn’t about John’s time after the FBI, or his death on 9/11. Instead, we focus on a little-known detail (what my mentor Roger Charles and I called ‘a nugget’) found within investigative journalist Murray Weiss’s little-known 2003 book on O’Neill, “The Man Who Warned America.”

That book recounts a story, excerpted below from a review of the Weiss book on FindLaw. Bold and italic emphasis is my own:

John decorated his FBI office in New York with numerous colorful memorabilia from his meetings abroad with foreign law enforcement and counterterrorist officials. On a visit there, I noticed a simple block of Lucite on a table with a scrap of paper embedded in it. John said it was a gift that an agent working the Oklahoma City bombing case had sent to him after the case was solved.

The scrap of paper was part of the agent's notes of a conversation he had had with John right after the bombing. John had been asked by the agent who he thought might have been involved. I looked more closely at the scrap of paper. On it the agent had written the name John had given him: Tim McVeigh.¹

If this is accurate — and we have no reason to believe it is not — it tells us that on the morning of the bombing, right afterward, John O’Neill received a call from an FBI agent who asked him who he thought did it, and John O’Neill told him “Tim McVeigh.”

Now, we know from the FBI’s first On-Scene Commander overseeing the crime scene, Danny Coulson, via his memoir, that John O’Neill spoke to Coulson that morning around the same time the bombing hit the news, less than half an hour after.

We also know via Roger Charles, a one-time Stephen Jones Defense team investigator and investigative reporter, that Tim McVeigh told Stephen Jones he was aware that Danny Coulson and his team of FBI agents were “waiting for him [McVeigh] inside the building that night"—perhaps that’s why McVeigh delivered the bomb at 9:02 AM during the day instead of in the middle of the night?

I wonder, then, whether Coulson informed O’Neill during that morning’s call that the perpetrator was most certainly Tim McVeigh—someone the FBI had expected to arrest in the middle of the night just hours before nine but who did not show up until the surveillance team had already left.

O’Neill’s call with Coulson is where I believe O’Neill learned of McVeigh’s name; if not that, he could have already been aware of the name if 1) O’Neill was privy to details of the FBI’s PATCON operation 2) familiar with the activities of the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Operations Unit (the team that would have handled an overnight sting operation) or 3) if he had been on the FBI’s Undercover Review Committee, where such operations were both discussed in detail and reviewed. (Coulson was on that committee.)

Whatever the case may be, what we know from the Weiss book is that O’Neill received a call from an [unnamed] FBI agent the morning of the bombing—right after—with the agent asking O’Neill whom he thought did it, and O’Neill informed the agent: Tim McVeigh.

When Was McVeigh Officially ID’d?

Now, we must examine how and when Tim McVeigh was identified. McVeigh was officially identified as the perpetrator on Friday, April 21. From the morning of the 20th until the 21st, U.S. Army CID investigators and FBI agents canvassed Ft. Riley, Kansas, showing the John Doe #1 and #2 sketches to business owners and potential witnesses.

The sketches were presented to two crucial witnesses for identification in the early hours after their production: First, Pat Livingston from Pat’s Gun and Pawn at Ft. Riley, who recognized JD1 as looking like the person who had defrauded him with a bad check for a Tec-9 and a Glock pistol. Livingston provided documentation for that transaction, including McVeigh’s full name, date of birth, address, SSN, and other relevant information.

The second key witness was Leah McGown, the owner of the Dreamland Motel. While FBI and Army CID investigators conversed with Livingston, FBI agent Mark Bouton began his assigned task of interviewing motel employees at those properties located near the I-40 expressway in Junction City, Kansas.

As luck would have it, the first motel Bouton visited was The Dreamland Motel. Upon his arrival, the proprietor, Leah McGown, said that the John Doe #1 sketch resembled a recent guest who had stayed in room #25 and parked a Ryder truck at that motel for several days before and on Easter Sunday.

McGown also provided Tim McVeigh’s name, license plate number (for the Mercury Marquis), and all details she had obtained when McVeigh checked in at the Dreamland using his real name.

So, it was well into April 21st before the FBI investigation identified Tim McVeigh through Livingston and McGown.

Yet somehow, John O’Neill knew this name on the 19th— “right after,” and he told another FBI agent that name when he was asked, ‘who do you think did it?'— where one agent asked O’Neill to predict who he thought was responsible. The important point is that O’Neill was asked whom he thought did this before any investigative efforts had been made to reach any conclusion, and somehow he knew the exact correct name.

Then, after the bombing investigation was ‘closed,’ the agent to whom O’Neill shared the name took his handwritten note reading “Tim McVeigh,” encased it in Lucite, and sent it to O’Neill as a memento to illustrate his somehow miraculous foresight.

O’Neill’s early knowledge of McVeigh’s name is memorialized in that block of lucite.

But as outlined here, many questions arise. How did O’Neill know the name immediately after the bombing, while everyone else involved in the investigation—according to what we’ve been told—didn’t know it until days later?

This writer believes that the answer to this question relates to a sting operation, a failed FBI investigation that was part of a joint task force which, among other things, conducted all-night surveillance outside the Murrah building the night before the bombing, where agents lay in wait for a truck—equipped with a transmitter—that never showed up.

The sting went sideways. And the truth of it has been buried for 30 years.

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Notes:

^{1 - Alan I. Baron, “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye,” Findlaw, Nov. 7 2003. <https://supreme.findlaw.com/legal-commentary/johnny-we-hardly-knew-ye.html>}

^{2 - Interview with Roger Charles by Ken Silva, February 9, 2022. See YT timestamp 18:20 for story on J.D. Cash interviewing Tim McVeigh and the relevant portion about McVeigh supposedly telling Stephen Jones he “knew Danny Coulson” and the FBI were waiting for him in the middle of the night on 4/19/95/.}

^{Relevant portion from interview starting at 18:20:}

RGC: Now, Cash had an off the record interview with McVeigh in February of ’96. And John told me “first question I asked,” he said, “Tim, how’d you get by all that security that was looking for you? Waiting on you?” he said “McVeigh just rocked back in the chair, crossed his arms, and gave me a big shit eating grin like ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’”

KS: [Laughs]

RGC: I just got back through some notes--just found a thing, that I’d just forgotten it--I got like 43 of these notebooks--but uh, Stephen Jones told somebody that Tim told him that he knew, Tim knew, that Danny Coulson and the FBI was inside the building waiting on him. That night.