May 12-13, 1997: Prosecution’s ‘Star Witness’ Testifies in Oklahoma City Bombing Trial, Says McVeigh Intended to Trigger ‘General Uprising’ in America

One of the star witnesses for the prosecution in the trial of Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, August 10, 1995, and April 24, 1997), McVeigh’s close friend Michael Fortier (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990), testifies. Fortier’s wife Lori has testified previously (see April 29-30, 1997). She received a grant of immunity, and Fortier himself pled guilty to reduced charges in return for his cooperation (see May 19, 1995). Far from being boisterous and disrespectful during the trial as he once claimed he would be (see April 23 - May 6, 1995), Fortier is somber and repentant. Fortier testifies that he and McVeigh “cased” the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City several months before McVeigh bombed it (see December 16, 1994 and After), and says that McVeigh bombed the building “to cause a general uprising in America.” McVeigh originally planned to bomb the building around 11 a.m. because, Fortier testifies, “everybody would be getting ready for lunch.” Fortier says he expressed his concern that the bombing would kill many people, and McVeigh replied that he “considered all those people to be as if they were storm troopers in the movie Star Wars. They may be individually innocent, but because they are part of the evil empire they were guilty by association.” Fortier says that he sent off for a mail-order identification kit that McVeigh used to make a false driver’s license for himself. Fortier admits that he knew for months of McVeigh’s plans (see September 13, 1994 and After and September 13, 1994), and that he could have prevented the bombing with a single telephone call to law enforcement authorities: “I live with that knowledge every day,” he says. Lead prosecutor Joseph Hartzler asks Fortier why he did not make the call. Fortier replies that he has no excuse except his friendship with McVeigh, saying: “I’d known Tim for quite a while. If you don’t consider what happened in Oklahoma, Tim is a good person.” Fortier recalls going with McVeigh to Oklahoma City, where they examined the Murrah Building, and McVeigh considered a number of alternatives for delivering the bomb (see December 16, 1994 and After). Fortier testifies as to the location of the alley that McVeigh said he would use to stash his getaway car; investigators found the key to McVeigh’s rented Ryder truck (see April 15, 1995) in that alley. The trip also involved going to Junction City, Kansas, where McVeigh sold a number of stolen weapons (see November 5, 1994) in what prosecutors say was an effort to finance the bombing. Fortier testifies, “He told me they picked that building because that was where the orders for the attack on Waco came from,” referring to the Branch Davidian debacle (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). “He told me—he also told me that he was wanting to blow up a building to cause a general uprising in America hopefully that would knock some people off the fence into—and urge them into taking action against the federal government.” At one point, testifying about his involvement in the case driving his father into having a nervous breakdown, Fortier weeps on the stand. McVeigh lived with the Fortiers several times in the years leading up to the bombing (see May-September 1993 and February - July 1994), he testifies. He recalls receiving a letter from McVeigh (see September 13, 1994) in which, he says: “Tim told me that him and Terry Nichols had decided to take some type of positive offensive action. He wanted to know if I wanted to partake of it.” A week later, McVeigh came back to Kingman and, Fortier recalls, “we had a conversation near my fence in my front yard. Tim was telling me what he meant by taking action. He told me that he—him and Terry were thinking of blowing up a building. He asked me to help them. I turned him down.” Later in 1994, Fortier testifies, McVeigh asked him to rent a storage locker for him somewhere outside Kingman, but Fortier told McVeigh he could not find one. A few days after that, Fortier testifies, McVeigh and Nichols came to Kingman and rented a storage locker themselves (see October 4 - Late October, 1994). Soon after, McVeigh and Nichols showed Fortier the contents of the locker—about a dozen boxes of explosives that McVeigh said they had stolen from a quarry in Kansas (see October 3, 1994). Just before October 31, 1994, Fortier testifies, “Tim said that him and Terry had chosen a federal building in Oklahoma City” and showed him how he could “make a truck into a bomb.” Under cross-examination, McVeigh’s lead lawyer, Stephen Jones, lambasts Fortier as a liar, a thief, a drug addict, and an opportunist who had initially tried to profit from his knowledge of the bombing, playing the audiotapes of Fortier’s bluster and bragging as captured on government wiretaps (see After May 6, 1995). Fortier admits to lying to the FBI in his initial interviews. Jones does not shake Fortier from his statements about McVeigh, though he does elicit a statement from Fortier that Nichols had withdrawn from the bomb plot in the final days of preparation (see March 1995). [New York Times, 5/13/1997; New York Times, 5/14/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 286-287]