LA Weekly

After weeks of cancellations and rescheduling, a much-anticipated meeting between convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols and Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) finally took place last week.

Early Monday morning, Rohrabacher, accompanied by two staff aides, traveled from Orange County to Florence, Colorado, for his interview with Nichols at Florence ADMAX, a small federal super-maximum-security prison. Nichols’ court-appointed attorney for his 2004 trial on Oklahoma state murder charges, Brian Hermanson, was scheduled to be there as well, but he didn’t make the trip.

The prison is located on a desolate stretch near the mountains, about 45 miles from Colorado Springs. Nichols is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for his role in the April 19, 1995, bombing.

The meeting lasted two hours, and produced some intriguing new information about the bombing plot, Nichols’ relationship with Timothy McVeigh, and his involvement with Roger Moore, a gun dealer Nichols had claimed was a co-conspirator.

Rohrabacher, as chairman of the congressional Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, has vowed to examine whether there was a wider conspiracy and Middle East connection to the bombing. The congressman says he was led to believe that Nichols would identify other co-conspirators, but that didn’t happen. “I went there expecting that I would come away with four or five specific names of people, who Nichols claimed were involved in the bombing. But he wouldn’t give me any. I got no names. It was disappointing.”

Nichols, Rohrabacher says, appeared calm throughout the interview and willing to answer his questions. “Of course, that doesn’t mean he answered a lot of my questions with any substance.”

Spurring Rohrabacher’s interest in the Oklahoma City bombing is The Third Terrorist, a book written by Jayna Davis, a former KFOR-TV reporter in Oklahoma City who investigated the bombing. Davis, who turned up possible witnesses and evidence of a Middle East and Philippines connection to McVeigh and Nichols, as well as the potential identity of the elusive John Doe No. 2, has provided information to Rohrabacher for his investigation.

Rohrabacher said Nichols recalled hearing McVeigh talk about “Arabs or Middle Eastern people,” he was supposedly dealing with in Oklahoma City. “But he said he didn’t remember the context in which McVeigh mentioned them. He said that McVeigh used to talk about his connections when they were driving. That’s when he mostly heard McVeigh talk about the Middle Easterners,” he says. “But he also said he was kind of sleepy and not paying real close attention,” adds Rohrabacher. “He also says he never met any of those Arabs or Middle Easterners and he didn’t know their names.”

Nichols said nothing to “discredit” the information and theory developed by Davis that Middle Eastern individuals in Oklahoma City were involved in the bombing. “He could have done that but he didn’t,” said Rohrabacher. At one point Nichols even said, “[Davis’] theory could be correct. But he offered no specifics.”

Rohrabacher says that he knows Nichols might be hiding the truth. “I just don’t know what is true and what is a lie with him.”

In the coming weeks, Rohrabacher will evaluate his information to see if he has enough to warrant convening a congressional hearing on the bombing. To do so, he’ll need the support of U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), the chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, to which Rohrabacher’s subcommittee reports. “He has to give hearings his OK,” adds Rohrabacher. “If my subcommittee has hearings, we will need evidence of foreign involvement like the material assembled by Davis.”

During his interview, Rohrabacher said that Nichols admitted robbing Arkansas gun dealer Roger Moore of explosives. According to Rohrabacher, Nichols said he “stole the explosives from Roger Moore and put it there [the house he was renting in Kansas].” Press accounts of the March 31, 2005, FBI raid on Nichols’ former residence reported the explosives were found in a crawlspace of the house. Rohrabacher said Nichols said he was “sorry” he robbed Moore.

The FBI recovered the explosives after being tipped off by Gregory Scarpa, a convicted Columbo family gangster, housed at the same prison as Nichols. Scarpa also reportedly claimed that Nichols wanted the explosives found because he feared another bombing.

Nichols’ admission to Rohrabacher of stealing the explosives contradicts Nichols’ earlier claims that Moore, a friend of McVeigh’s, freely gave explosives to the executed killer for use in the Oklahoma City bombing. Nichols had included that charge in a letter he wrote to Kathy Sanders, who lost two grandchildren in the Oklahoma City attack. Previously, Nichols had also publicly claimed that Moore was a co-conspirator in the bombing, a charge Moore vehemently denied in a number of recent interviews. Moore told reporters he answered all the FBI’s questions and even passed two polygraph tests to prove his innocence.

The FBI supports Moore’s denial. After Sanders released Nichols’ letter, an FBI press spokesperson told the media they had no information tying Moore to the bombing. Moore also testified against Nichols at his trial.

Some of Davis’ witnesses, who were also interviewed by the Weekly, alleged that McVeigh had stayed at a motel near Oklahoma City the night before the bombing. They also said that McVeigh was accompanied by a number of Middle Eastern–looking men who left with him the morning of the bombing. Those people included one man who rode with McVeigh in the Ryder truck out of the motel’s parking lot.

This allegedly was the elusive John Doe No. 2, who the FBI has since claimed never existed. Davis later zeroed in on Hussain Al-Hussaini, an Iraqi national living in Oklahoma City, who matched one of the FBI drawings of John Doe No. 2. These witnesses later identified Al-Hussaini’s picture as the man they saw with McVeigh.

Rohrabacher said Nichols wouldn’t “speculate” about John Doe No. 2. But he added that Nichols did say, “He thought other people were involved. There’s at least somebody involved.” The congressman also said that Nichols claimed he didn’t know McVeigh was going to blow up a building and kill people. “He thought McVeigh might blow up an empty building to make a statement but not kill people.”