- Seeking disclosure: In a court filing, he wants the agency
to provide an unedited 1995 memo and a related report about his brother's
death in prison
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- The FBI "in all likelihood" had advance notice
of the Oklahoma City bombing plot but did nothing to prevent the attack,
a Salt Lake City lawyer claims.
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- Attorney Jesse Trentadue alleges an informant infiltrated
a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma and learned Timothy McVeigh was
trying to recruit accomplices there about two weeks before the April 19,
1995, bombing.
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- This information probably was relayed to the FBI before
the bombing, the lawyer contends in a document filed Tuesday in U.S. District
Court in Salt Lake City.
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- Trentadue has sued the FBI, alleging it is violating
the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by refusing to turn over
documents connected to the 1995 death of his brother in an Oklahoma prison.
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- As evidence that the agency has failed to do a proper
search for the records he wants, he points to a FBI memorandum sent to
members of a task force investigating the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah
Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people.
-
- Although he specifically requested that memo, the FBI
claimed it either did not exist or could not be located, Trentadue says
in court documents. Yet Trentadue - who does not say how he obtained a
copy - filed in court a print copy of a heavily edited electronic memo
dated Jan. 4, 1996.
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- The memo also has been mentioned in prior media reports
in Oklahoma. It is unclear who wrote the memo, which appears to have been
sent to FBI offices in several cities. It states someone affiliated with
the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights group, was
at a white supremacist compound in April 1995, when one of the Oklahoma
bombing suspects allegedly called looking for a co-conspirator.
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- The name of the caller is blacked out, but the person
is described as one of the two indicted defendants in the bombing. The
two defendants were McVeigh, who was executed in 2001 for the crime, and
Terry Nichols, who is serving a life sentence.
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- An employee at the Department of Justice, which represents
the FBI in the lawsuit, said Wednesday that no one was available for comment
on the memo. The department in the past has declined to talk about pending
legal actions.
-
- A call to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., was not
returned Wednesday. Trentadue is pursuing the document because he believes
the investigation of the bombing holds clues to his brother's death.
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- Kenneth Trentadue, 44, was being held on an alleged parole
violation in a federal prison in Oklahoma City when guards found him dead
on Aug. 21, 1995, hanging from a noose made of torn bed sheets. His family
insists he was killed and contend correctional officials destroyed evidence;
authorities have denied the allegations and contend he committed suicide.
Several investigations also ruled the death a suicide.
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- Trentadue believes the FBI mistakenly suspected his brother
was part of a gang that robbed banks to fund attacks on the government,
and that authorities killed him ìwhen things got out of handî
during an interrogation. Trentadue believes that at one time, the FBI was
investigating whether the bank robbers were connected to the bombing. FBI
agents have said there was no connection between the six bank robbery gang
suspects who were arrested and McVeigh and Nichols. One agent, testifying
in a state murder trial against Nichols last spring, said the only link
was that the robbers had connections to an Elohim City, Okla., supremacist
compound, and there was evidence McVeigh called there once.
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- As part of his own probe into Kenneth's death, Trentadue
had asked the FBI for records related to the robbers. According to his
suit, an anonymous caller told him a few months after his brother died
that his brother, a convicted bank robber, had been murdered because he
fit a profile of the gang members.
-
- The FBI responded it has followed FOIA procedures and
has asked U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball in Salt Lake City to dismiss
the suit.
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- In turn, Trentadue on Tuesday asked the judge to order
the agency to produce two specific documents: An unedited copy of the 1995
FBI memo and a report he believes was prepared after an FBI agent and two
assistant U.S. attorneys investigating his brother's death interviewed
him a year later.
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- http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2473280
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