May 5-6, 1997: Sister of Accused Oklahoma Bomber Testifies that He Intended to Move from ‘Propaganda’ to ‘Action Stage’

The sister of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, August 10, 1995, and April 24, 1997), Jennifer McVeigh, reluctantly testifies for the prosecution under a grant of immunity. Her brother nods at her when she enters the courtroom. She tells jurors that her brother ranted against federal agents as “fascist tyrants,” and told her he intended to move from “the propaganda stage” to “the action stage” in the months before the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building (see Mid-December 1994). She describes a November 1994 visit from her brother (see November 1994), in which he showed her a videotape about the Branch Davidian debacle (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). “He was very angry,” she testifies. “He thought the government murdered the people there, basically, gassed and burned them.” Her brother held the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) and the FBI responsible: “I think he felt someone should be held accountable,” she says. During his visit, she says McVeigh told her he felt it necessary to do more than hand out pamphlets attacking the government. “He was not in the propaganda stage,” she says he told her. “He was now in the action stage.” He never explained what he meant by this, she says. She also reads aloud a letter he wrote to the American Legion on her word processor, in which he accused the government of drawing “first blood” in its “war” against its citizens, and said only militia groups could protect the citizenry from the government. And, after being prompted by prosecutors, she recalls driving with her brother when “Tim brought up a time when he was traveling with explosives and nearly got into an accident” (see December 18, 1994). They had been “talking about traffic jokes, accident jokes.” She recalls him talking about driving in another car with “up to 1,000 pounds” of explosives. “They were going down a hill. There was a traffic light. They couldn’t stop in time.” Her brother did not run into another car. Asked why she had not pressed her brother for more details, she replies, “I don’t think I wanted to know.” She did not see her brother again after that visit, but kept in touch with him by letters and telephone calls. He told her he had a network of friends around the country, whom she only knows by their first names: Terry (Nichols), Mike (Michael Fortier—see May 12-13, 1997), and Lori (Fortier—see April 29-30, 1997). Her brother wrote her a letter in early 1995 telling her to get in touch with the Fortiers “in case of alert.… Lori is trustworthy. Let them know who you are and why you called.” He told her not to use their home phone, as it was likely the government would be surveilling it. She testifies that after her brother left, she found another document on her computer entitled “ATF—Read,” which prosecutor Joseph Hartzler says reads as if it were meant for the BATF (see November 1994). Jennifer McVeigh testifies that she called her brother and asked him what to do with the file, and he advised her to “just leave it there.” Prosecution lawyer Beth Wilkinson reads the letter aloud. It told the BATF that its agents “will swing in the wind one day for your treasonous acts against the Constitution and the United States,” and ended: “Remember the Nuremberg trials, war trials.… Die, you spineless cowardice [sic] b_stards!” In March and April 1995, she says her brother sent her two letters, the first of which she later burned as he instructed her to in the letter. The first letter told her, “Something big is going to happen in the month of the bull,” indicating April, and advised her to stay on her “vacation longer” (Jennifer planned to go to Pensacola, Florida, for a two-week vacation beginning April 8). The second letter, dated March 25, 1995, told her not to write him after April 1, “even if it’s an emergency,” and advised her to “watch what you say.” He then sent her a third mailing with a short note and three short clippings from the racist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978 and April 15, 1995). On April 7, the day before she went on vacation, she says she divided her brother’s belongings into two boxes, putting one into her closet and giving the other to a friend for safekeeping. After hearing of his arrest on August 21 (see April 21, 1995), she burned the Turner clippings. “I was scared,” she explains. “I heard Tim’s name announced, and I figured [the FBI would] come around sooner or later.” The FBI searched her truck and the house in Florida where she vacationed, and were waiting for her when she flew into the Buffalo, New York, airport (see April 21-23, 1995). She says she was questioned eight to nine hours a day for “eight days straight.” Agents showed her a timeline of events culminating in the Oklahoma City bombing, and threatened to charge her with an array of crimes related to her brother’s actions and her own in concealing or destroying evidence. She identifies her brother’s handwriting on an order for a book on how to make explosives, and on a business card for Paulsen’s Military Supplies where he apparently had made notations about buying TNT (see April 21, 1995). She also identifies his handwriting on the back of a copy of the Declaration of Independence found in his car after the bombing (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995). It read, “Obey the Constitution of the United States, and we won’t shoot you.” Under cross-examination by her brother’s lawyers, she breaks down in tears, explaining that she agreed to testify because FBI agents “told me he was guilty [and] was going to fry.” She admits to destroying papers she thought might incriminate him, lying to FBI investigators in her first sworn statement, and resisting her parents’ claims to cooperate with the government. She says she began cooperating truthfully after FBI agents threatened to charge her with treason and other crimes that carry the death penalty. [University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, 5/5/1997; New York Times, 5/6/1997; New York Times, 5/7/1997; New York Times, 6/3/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 284-]