[Blowback: The Untold Story of the FBI and the Oklahoma City Bombing by Margaret Roberts. (Bombardier Books, 2025; 399 pp.)]
On the morning of April 19, 1995, a truck bomb exploded exterior the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Constructing in Oklahoma Metropolis, killing 168 folks, together with 19 youngsters at a day care middle within the constructing, and injuring a whole lot extra. Because the FBI web site tells readers, a single ex-soldier named Timothy McVeigh acted alone, being motivated by anti-government sentiment that got here within the aftermath of the Waco bloodbath two years earlier.
The FBI model, after all, is the official model and the one repeated in historical past books and within the New York Occasions. McVeigh was aided by Terry Nichols, who helped him construct a big fertilizer bomb that they positioned in a rented Ryder truck that was destroyed within the explosion. Michael Fortier gave McVeigh some logistic assist, however nobody else was concerned, simply the “lone wolf” McVeigh and a few buddies.
Utilizing the group’s huge investigative assets, the FBI rapidly solved the case within the type of a Dick Wolf manufacturing. McVeigh had already been arrested when an alert policeman 90 miles away from Oklahoma Metropolis noticed his getaway automotive had no license plate, so the FBI was in a position to get their man in custody. The unique investigation additionally had McVeigh accompanied by a person referred to as John Doe #2 when he rented the Ryder truck in Kansas, however quickly afterward, the FBI insisted there had been no JD2, that he was a figment of the imaginations of everybody who stated they noticed him with McVeigh.
We all know the remainder of the story. McVeigh was convicted in federal court docket and executed on the federal jail in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 2001. Nichols was convicted each in federal court docket and Oklahoma state court docket, however juries deadlocked on the loss of life penalty, so he’s serving a life sentence on the fed’s so-called supermax jail in Florence, Colorado. Fortier, who supplied precious info to the FBI, pleaded to lesser fees and served a brief jail sentence earlier than he and his spouse have been whisked away within the authorities’s witness safety program. Case closed.
The FBI’s narrative was helpful on two fronts. First, the group was in a position to regain status after the catastrophe at Waco by supposedly fixing this horrendous crime rapidly. Second, by having the ability to body this as the results of anti-government rhetoric that had unfold following Waco and the 1992 FBI killings at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, the Invoice Clinton administration, the Democratic Occasion, and their allies within the legacy media used the bombing to assert that Republicans and different critics of the administration have been accountable for the mayhem.
However what if the FBI’s narrative is unfaithful and that a number of folks have been concerned within the bombing, a few of whom being both authorities informers or FBI brokers who infiltrated right-wing paramilitary teams? Moreover, what if federal brokers lied concerning the existence of the so-called John Doe #2, and what in the event that they lied about many different issues tied to the bombing and subsequent investigation?
Margaret Roberts—the previous information director of “America’s Most Needed” and a celebrated journalist—has printed a brand new guide, Blowback, which efficiently challenges the FBI and institution media narratives concerning the case. By way of interviews with folks concerned within the case and dealing with citizen journalists that didn’t purchase the official line, Roberts has efficiently offered different storylines that, frankly, are far more plausible than what the FBI has given us, and presents her case in a guide that’s logical and simple to observe—no imply feat, given simply how sophisticated the story actually is.
Blowback entails two associated occasions. The primary, after all, is the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing. The second is the homicide of Kenneth Trentadue in his cell on the Oklahoma Metropolis Federal Switch Heart August 21, 1995—a loss of life the FBI to today insists was a suicide. Because of a dogged investigation by Kenneth’s brother, Jesse—a former collegiate monitor star and revered lawyer dwelling in Salt Lake Metropolis—the FBI’s narratives on Kenneth’s loss of life and the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing have been uncovered as lies, though that investigation got here at nice price to Jesse.
(I’ve corresponded with Jesse Trentadue for a few years and was acquainted with his investigation, however till I learn Blowback, I had not realized simply how in depth that investigation has been.)
Within the FBI’s account of the bombing, the company claims:
The bombing was rapidly solved, however the investigation turned out to be probably the most exhaustive in FBI historical past.
No stone was left unturned to ensure each clue was discovered and all of the culprits recognized.
The primary assertion is partially unfaithful and the second is an outright falsehood. Not solely did the FBI refuse to observe leads supplied by eyewitness testimony, however the company threatened law-abiding residents with jail when their very own investigations started to show that the FBI was mendacity. Sadly, as a result of federal prosecutors, federal judges, and FBI brokers have labored collectively to rig the outcomes, many of the principals within the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing won’t ever have to fret about being dropped at justice.
As identified earlier, the guide offers each with the bombing and the Trentadue homicide after which ties them collectively. We start with the Trentadue case.
Kenneth Trentadue—a navy veteran who in earlier years robbed banks to assist pay for a drug behavior—was picked up close to the Mexican border in August 1995, on a parole violation and despatched to Oklahoma Metropolis. In calls to his spouse and household, Trentadue appeared hopeful and informed them he can be launched quickly. Nonetheless, on August 21, officers referred to as the household to inform them that Kenneth had hanged himself in his cell, and that the jail officers needed to cremate his physique.
Kenneth’s mom and brother, Jesse, insisted on the feds transport the physique to them so they might have a correct burial. When the physique was examined on the funeral house in Southern California, nonetheless, they have been shocked. Roberts writes:
…Kenneth’s spouse, mom, and sister had the employees take away heavy make-up utilized by the jail to Kenneth’s physique. Beneath, they found bruises, his cracked cranium, potential stun gun burns, and an incision indicating that somebody had minimize Kenneth’s throat. (p. 12)
None of this made sense at first to the Trentadues. Kenneth was scheduled to be launched quickly and his calls to relations had been upbeat. Moreover, the sheer logistics of how he may have hung himself with the bedsheet defied legal guidelines of physics. Moreover, why did he have accidents and an incision in his neck, and why (as they came upon later) was his jail cell splattered in blood?
Solely later—because of a tip from journalist J.D. Money of the McCurtain Each day Gazette in Idabel, Oklahoma—have been they led to a potential clarification. Kenneth was seen as a near-dead ringer for the elusive JD2 proper all the way down to a tattoo that matched what the opposite alleged bomber had on his forearm. Had FBI investigators believed he was the second bomber, they actually would have tried to get that info out of him via an “enhanced” interrogation at Oklahoma Metropolis. As a substitute, they allegedly killed him after which staged a pretend suicide.
No matter occurred, Jesse Trentadue discovered that the FBI stonewalled him, after which FBI brokers even met with federal prosecutors and different US Division of Justice officers to see if they might convey legal fees of “obstruction of justice” in opposition to him, with a type of officers being then Deputy Lawyer Common Eric Holder, who was in control of the duvet up of Kenneth Trentadue’s homicide that was referred to as the “Trentadue Mission” by the Division of Justice, and later would function President Barack Obama’s US Lawyer Common. The DOJ below Janet Reno wouldn’t solely ignore (after which harass) Trentadue; it additionally gave related therapy to Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, who had seen the photographs of Kenneth’s physique and was demanding solutions.
At the very least Hatch and Trentadue have been in a position to create sufficient noise to have the DOJ undergo the motions of an investigation of Kenneth’s loss of life, however in the end Holder made positive that there can be no indictment—and no US Senate investigation of the affair. Regardless of the bodily impossibility that Kenneth managed to hold himself in a “suicide proof” cell after inflicting in depth bodily trauma on himself, together with slashing his personal throat, the Holder directed grand jury conclusion was suicide.
(The Trentadue household later gained a civil lawsuit in 2001 in opposition to the DOJ concerning Kenneth’s loss of life, however the DOJ already has declared it by no means can pay a judgment to the household it doesn’t matter what the courts have dominated.)
As Jesse investigated his brother’s loss of life, he joined with others comparable to Money to look intently into the FBI’s account of the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing and located that the federal government’s narrative was unfaithful. Whereas the federal government and the legacy media insisted that their Timothy McVeigh “lone wolf” account was right, Jesse and others discovered that the Clinton White Home had been operating a shadowy operation named PATCON (for “Patriot Conspiracy) to infiltrate the teams tied to the Christian Id motion. Their investigation into PATCON would in the end make them the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing itself.
Begun by the George H.W. Bush administration in 1991, PATCON supposedly was created to guard Individuals from right-wing violence. Nonetheless, PATCON quickly would tackle the traits of the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO program of the Nineteen Sixties and 70s to take care of threats from violent left-wing teams just like the Weathermen, in addition to the home spying packages in opposition to alleged Muslim extremists after the 9/11 assaults. As writers like James Bovard have famous, these infiltration packages have taken on a lifetime of their very own as these tied to the FBI would search to reinforce their significance by plotting many violent occasions that the packages allegedly have been supposed to stop.
Removed from the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing being the work of the amateurish McVeigh and Nichols, Roberts describes in Blowback how she and others have been in a position to hint McVeigh and his associates to the FBI-infiltrated teams that would offer assist to him whereas he drifted into locations like Elohim Metropolis in Oklahoma—a gathering place for disaffected individuals who had come to imagine the US Authorities was corrupt and wanted to be overthrown. Actually, as Roberts and others have documented, a number of FBI and ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) informants warned their handlers of the bombing plot or one thing related, but the feds didn’t act.
Not surprisingly, plainly the FBI virtually welcomed such assaults, as they legitimized the unique goal of PATCON and different packages. Writing about FBI informant John Matthews—who himself had contact with individuals who allegedly knew concerning the plans for the bombing—Roberts says:
As he [Matthews] and Jesse talked, Matthews revealed his disillusionment about PATCON. “It looks as if the FBI was extra all in favour of inciting violence than stopping it,” Matthews stated. He had signed on believing his mission was to observe the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi teams on the far-right fringe. Nonetheless, Matthews got here to imagine that inciting violence was the basic mission of PATCON. (p. 322)
Roberts—following the lead of Trentadue and others—has raised an necessary query: If the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing was not a “lone wolf” operation however relatively was tied to shadowy figures, together with embedded FBI brokers and confidential informers, was it merely a case of a plot that bought out of hand? Had been folks on the within supposed to place the brakes on the entire operation, however one thing went improper?
These questions are usually not simply answered, and Roberts doesn’t take the conspiratorial plunge to assert that Oklahoma Metropolis was someway a neatly-packaged FBI inside operation. Certainly, there isn’t any method to show such an allegation and Roberts, Trentadue, and others who’ve investigated the bombing haven’t taken that step into the abyss.
Nonetheless, one can in truth say that no particular person benefitted extra from the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing than President Clinton. Simply 5 months earlier than, he and the Democratic Occasion had suffered big setbacks because the Republicans had captured the US Home of Representatives for the primary time in 40 years and took the Senate, as voters have been pushed partially by anger at well-publicized abuses by the federal authorities and particularly the Clinton White Home.
By tying the bombing to any criticism of the federal authorities and of Clinton himself, the president was ready channel public anger concerning the blast towards conservative authorities critics typically and elected Republicans particularly, and Clinton and the Democrats have been in a position to reverse a few of their political losses the following 12 months, as voters returned Clinton to the White Home. Because the San Francisco Examiner reported:
…below the heading “The right way to use extremism as subject in opposition to Republicans,” [Clinton adviser Dick] Morris informed Clinton that “direct accusations” of extremism wouldn’t work as a result of the Republicans weren’t, the truth is, extremists. Relatively, Morris really useful what he referred to as the “ricochet concept.” Clinton would “stimulate nationwide concern over extremism and terror,” after which, “when subject is at prime of nationwide agenda, suspicion naturally gravitates to Republicans.”
James Bovard additionally wrote that, following the bombing, his books on authorities spending and abuses of residents have been interpreted as welcoming issues like Oklahoma Metropolis, together with a hostile assessment of Freedom in Chains by the Los Angeles Occasions, with the reviewer declaring:
In Bovard’s defensive and disingenuous dialogue of the bombing of the Oklahoma Metropolis federal constructing, he reveals that he’s conscious of the potential penalties of his phrases.
Blowback is not going to be reviewed in publications like The New York Occasions E-book Evaluate or the New York Evaluate of (Every Different’s) Books (or if they’re reviewed in these publications, the opinions will probably be hostile), however it’s a guide that one ought to learn if solely to rediscover the arduous fact that authorities brokers in any respect ranges will lie and doubtless get away with it. Whereas one imagines that the standard suspects will dismiss this guide as a set of falsehoods and wild conspiracies, the reality is that Roberts has managed to chronicle not solely a sorry chapter within the trendy historical past of US governance, but in addition has highlighted the truth that there are nonetheless heroic residents amongst us doing their responsibility even when these charged with defending residents and implementing the rule of legislation refuse to take action.
