Merrick Garland Should Start Crusade Against White Supremacists By Re-Opening 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing Case

DOJ Should Identify and Locate Additional Suspects, to Include Elusive John Doe #2

Merrick Garland. April 27, 1995. Image courtesy Rick Bowmer / AP

Merrick Garland’s experience helming the Oklahoma City bombing prosecution should give us insight into how we can perceive his comments concerning prosecuting white supremacists after he is made Attorney General.

Based on this history and Garland’s comments, I have some questions concerning Garland’s handling of the OKC bombing case:

My questions:

• At an April 27, 1995 Preliminary Hearing, why did Merrick Garland “object” when defense attorneys noted that Merrick Garland’s witness, FBI agent Jon Hersley, testified that the Ryder truck carried “occupants” — plural?
  
  Garland’s objection was overruled, and the witness confirmed that Timothy McVeigh was seated in the Ryder truck with a passenger. Who is that individual?

  MR. COYLE: Did you tell me he saw occupants of a Ryder Truck and there were more than one?

  MR. GARLAND: Objection. The only person on trial at this hearing is Mr. McVeigh. It doesn’t matter whether there were two or a hundred people in that truck as long as there was somebody representing Mr. McVeigh there. It is discovery and totally outside the scope of this hearing.

  MR. COYLE: May I respond? I think it is important to see if we distinguish it as the same truck or not. I think it is very important to the credibility of the witnesses and credibility of the evidence and what they saw as to whether or not the next person saw three or five or six or —

  THE COURT: Objection overruled. Go ahead.

  MR. HERSLEY: This witness advised that there were two individuals in the truck. The individual resembling Mr. McVeigh was the driver.

• At the April 27, 1995 Preliminary Hearing, why Merrick Garland “object” when attorneys asked SA Jon Hersley the names of those FBI agents tasked with reviewing the surveillance camera footage of the bombing?

Garland once said “we did everything we could to find every person who was involved.” If that’s true, then how does Garland explain the fact that every eyewitness he touted at the April 27th 1995 preliminary hearing never testified at the federal trials about the other suspects they observed? Why didn’t these witnesses get to tell a jury what they saw?

Why is it that the man seen with Timothy McVeigh in the Ryder truck has never been identified?

If Merrick Garland is truly dedicated to prosecuting dangerous white supremacists now, as Attorney General, then he can show it by reopening the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing case and identifying and prosecuting Timothy McVeigh’s accomplices.

Danny Coulson, former Deputy Asst. Director & On Scene Commander for FBI’s OKBOMB investigation. Image courtesy FOX News.

I would not be alone in calling for the case to be re-opened. Danny Coulson, the FBI’s on-scene commander for the Oklahoma bombing crime scene, agrees. In 2004, Coulson told John Solomon of the Associated Press that there are “some unanswered questions here. A lot of things happened that were inappropriate,” Coulson said. “I think it needs to be reopened, but I don’t think it should be reopened by the FBI. It needs to be a special investigator, a lawyer, totally independent. He needs to have subpoena power and the ability to use a grand jury.”

Danny Defenbaugh, former FBI Special Agent in Charge, Dallas & Inspector in Charge for FBI’s OKBOMB investigation. Image courtesy FOX News.

Danny Defenbaugh, then the retired chief of the FBI’s OKBOMB investigation agreed: “If I were still in the bureau, the investigation would be reopened” said Defenbaugh, commenting on new evidence that came to light almost a decade after the bombing. ”If the evidence is still there, then it should be checked out.”

Merrick Garland should kick off the DOJ’s prosecution of white supremacists by compelling the FBI to produce the surveillance camera footage that shows two men exiting the Ryder truck on April 19th, 1995 and fully identifying and prosecuting the additional suspects in the 1995 OKC bombing plot. Garland can then finish by apologizing for letting dangerous white supremacists get away with it for the last almost thirty years.