TRENTADUE'S FOIA LAWSUIT

 The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK)

September 27, 2009 Sunday

City Edition

BOMBING TAPES ;

Secret footage reveals chaos

BYLINE: NOLAN CLAY, Staff Writer <br> nclay@opubco.com

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A

LENGTH: 460 words

The FBI has released long-secret security tapes that give new glimpses into the chaos during the minutes after the Oklahoma City bombing. None show the actual explosion outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995.

The soundless recordings do show people rushing from nearby buildings in the minutes after the fertilizer bomb went off. In some, people flee their buildings through corridors cluttered with fallen debris.

The FBI this summer released more than 20 recordings made from surveillance camera tapes recovered in downtown Oklahoma City. A Utah attorney, Jesse Trentadue, obtained the recordings through the federal Freedom of Information Act. He is performing his own inquiry into the bombing.

Trentadue gave them to The Oklahoman because of their historical value. The Oklahoman agreed to provide copies to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.

Many of the released recordings are identified as coming from Southwestern Bell, which had security cameras in buildings both north and south of the Murrah Building. Others are from the Regency Tower, an apartment building west

of the Murrah Building; the downtown public library, then southeast of it; and the Journal Record Building, directly north.

Some images from those recordings have become public before. Prosecutors in 1997 introduced pictures of the bomb truck - seen from a Regency Tower camera - as evidence at bomber Timothy McVeigh's trial. The Regency Tower tape turns to static at the moment of the explosion.

Also, The Oklahoman in 2006 published images from inside the damaged Journal Record Building. The Oklahoman obtained the Journal Record Building videotapes from a source.

FBI agents did not report finding any security tapes from the Murrah Building itself. Agents reported a cleaner, a loan company and another business in nearby buildings had surveillance cameras, but the buildings' owner said "all ... are 'dummy' cameras and nothing is videotaped."

Agents also reported that security cameras at the federal courthouse directly south of the Murrah Building were connected to monitors only and had no tape backup. McVeigh was executed in 2001. Co-conspirator Terry Nichols is serving life in prison for his role.

The FBI in the past refused to release the security camera recordings. Their refusal led some - including a U.S. congressman - to contend the government was hiding evidence that others were involved in the attack.

Trentadue began a personal inquiry into the bombing after his brother died at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center in August 1995. He contends guards mistook his brother for a bombing suspect and killed his brother during an interrogation. The official cause of his brother's death is listed as suicide.

Coroner agrees to no autopsy following McVeigh's execution

Coroner agrees to no autopsy following McVeigh's execution

March 9, 2001, Friday, BC cycle

Copyright 2001 Associated Press All Rights Reserved The Associated Press

Section: Domestic News

Length: 365 words

Byline: By P. SOLOMON BANDA, Associated Press Writer

Dateline: DENVER

Body

The body of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh will not be autopsied after his scheduled execution May 16, his attorneys and an Indiana coroner agreed Friday. McVeigh's lawyers filed an agreement in U.S. District Court, signed by Coroner Susan Amos of Indiana's Vigo County, which calls for a physical examination of McVeigh before the execution and a noninvasive examination after his death at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.

Judge Richard Matsch, who presided over McVeigh's case in Denver, must approve the agreement. There was no indication when he might rule. The agreement calls for a member of the defense team to accompany McVeigh's body after his execution to ensure his request is granted. "Mr. McVeigh has religious, ethical and philosophical objections to an autopsy being performed upon his body after the execution," his lawyers wrote in the agreement.

McVeigh has said he opposes the "planned mutilation of my corpse." McVeigh was convicted of murder, conspiracy and weapons-related charges and sentenced to die for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The explosion killed 168 people. McVeigh ended all appeals in December.

A telephone message left after hours Friday for McVeigh's lawyer, Nathan Chambers, was not immediately returned. Federal prison officials in Terre Haute do not allow inmates to receive telephone calls. According to the agreement, the examination before the execution will look for signs of physical abuse. The coroner has said autopsy results could be used to defend lawsuits filed by death-row inmates who allege mistreatment or abuse.

McVeigh has agreed to sign a statement that says he has not been abused while in custody. If he refuses to sign, an autopsy will be conducted, according to the agreement. After the execution, the coroner will examine McVeigh's body and take photographs and X-rays if necessary. The coroner will be able to perform an autopsy if she sees evidence of abuse and if McVeigh's attorney approves. The agreement says pictures, X-rays and other medical information gathered by the coroner's office will remain confidential.

OKC 95 BOMBING TAPES WERE EDITED NO VIDEO OF THE TRUCK EXPLODING

 The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK)

September 28, 2009 Monday

City Edition

Lawyer says bombing tapes edited

BYLINE: NOLAN CLAY, Staff Writer <br> nclay@opubco.com

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 2A

LENGTH: 317 words

A Utah attorney claims the FBI edited some security camera videotapes from the morning of the Oklahoma City bombing before releasing the recordings to him. "Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995.

There ain't no such thing as a coincidence," Jesse Trentadue told The Associated Press Sunday. "The interesting thing is they spring back on after 9:02," he said. "The absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI doesn't want anybody to see."

Trentadue is conducting a personal inquiry into the attack. Trentadue made similar statements to The Oklahoman in the weeks before giving the newspaper copies of the security camera recordings. He provided them because of their historical value. The recordings cover hours. The Oklahoman Sunday put online excerpts from the recordings from cameras at Southwestern Bell and the public library.

None of the recordings show the bomb truck exploding outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building at 9:02 a.m.

A review of the tapes by The Oklahoman shows some cameras, like the one at the library, clearly record the moment of the explosion. Some do not. A tape from the Regency Tower, an apartment building west of the Murrah Building, turns to static. The time on the Regency Tower tape is 9 a.m. A Southwestern Bell tape skips a few seconds and also goes black briefly. The time on that tape is 8:59 a.m. and 9 a.m. However, many clocks on the tapes are slower than the actual time and the glitches could be from the explosion itself.

Trentadue began looking into the bombing after his brother, Kenneth Trentadue, died at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center in August 1995. The brother was never a bombing suspect, but Jesse Trentadue alleges guards mistook his brother for one and beat him to death during an interrogation.

NYT ARTICLE SPECULATING WHAT IF OKC HAD BEEN NUCLEAR?

 The New York Times

April 10, 1996, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Preventing Portable Nukes

BYLINE: By Jessica Stern; Jessica Stern, who is writing a book on terrorism, is a fellow at Stanford University's

Hoover Institution.

SECTION: Section A; Page 19; Column 2; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 593 words

DATELINE: ALO ALTO, Calif.

What if the bomb that killed 168 people and blasted the Federal building in Oklahoma City a year ago this month had been nuclear?

It's not a far-fetched scenario. Nuclear materials -- once extremely difficult to find outside of controlled, government facilities -- are increasingly making their way to the international black market.

Theoretically, it is possible to make a well-designed nuclear bomb from a lump of plutonium the size of a soda can. A crude nuclear bomb -- which requires less expertise but more fissile material -- would be deliverable by van.

Even a crude one-kiloton atomic explosion -- tiny by nuclear standards -- would be hundreds of times more powerful than the Oklahoma blast. (In America, it might also permanently alter the balance between security and civil liberties:

There would be much more support for widespread domestic F.B.I. and C.I.A. surveillance and for chips that monitor electronic conversations.)

Next week in Moscow, President Clinton and the heads of the other Group of Seven industrial nations will meet with President Boris Yeltsin at a nuclear summit meeting to discuss such worries.

The chaotic breakup of the Soviet Union has increased the risk of nuclear terrorism. Cash-strapped Russian Army troops are selling their weapons abroad, often through Russian mafia middlemen. Hardware from missiles designed to

carry nuclear warheads has made its way from the former Soviet Union to Iraq. And in November, Chechen terrorists placed a container of radioactive material in a Moscow park. (Officials removed it after the perpetrators told reporters where it was.)

Despite these problems, the Russian Government has found 80 percent of its nuclear facilities to have no "portal monitors" -- exit doors with built-in radiation detectors -- to prevent insider theft.

Russian officials have repeatedly denied that any nuclear smuggling has involved weapons-grade material. But terrorists

and would-be nuclear nations aren't that picky. They would probably be satisfied with lower-grade uranium or the kind

of plutonium found in spent nuclear reactor fuel rods.

Seven confirmed cases of theft from the former Soviet Union involve such "weapons-usable" materials -- ingredients

that could make a nuclear device capable of killing hundreds of thousands.

Since 1991 -- under legislation proposed by Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, and Senator Richard Lugar,

Republican of Indiana -- Congress has appropriated a total of $1.5 billion to help former Soviet states protect and dismantle nuclear warheads and create safe storage for weapons-grade nuclear materials.

But the program applies only to Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan -- even though other former Soviet republics also possess nuclear materials and expertise.

And the $1.5 billion total -- an appropriation that barely squeaked through Congress -- isn't much. (Compare it to the $346 billion America spends annually on other forms of national defense.)

To protect ourselves, we should urge President Clinton and Congress to take the following action:

* Expand Nunn-Lugar to embrace all former Soviet states.

* Regularize meetings with the Group of Seven nations and Russia on nuclear smuggling.

* Intensify intelligence efforts in all former Soviet countries, especially in Central Asia and the Caucasus, which are likely export routes for illicit nuclear components.

* Expand training in the former Soviet Union in law enforcement, customs and forensics.

These steps carry a low cost. And anything less is irresponsible.

07 OCTOBER 1998 BIN LADEN NOW HAS NUCLEAR ARSENAL

 The Times (London)

October 7, 1998, Wednesday

Bin Laden now has nuclear arsenal'

BYLINE: Michael Binyon, Diplomatic Editor

SECTION: Overseas news

LENGTH: 233 words

OSAMA BIN LADEN, the exiled millionaire Saudi terrorist leader, has acquired tactical nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Central Asian states, according to a leading Arabic newspaper.

Bin Laden, accused by America of masterminding the attacks on the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, has established a network of influential friends in Central Asia and Ukraine, according to the London-based al-Hayat.

Citing reliable diplomatic sources in Central Asia, the paper says that the Afghan-based terrorist has used this network to get hold of weapons from the former Soviet republics. It did not say how many weapons he had obtained or if he had paid for them.

The Foreign Office said yesterday that it had no information about the reports, but added that bin Laden was a dangerous terrorist and all his threats were treated seriously.

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies expressed scepticism, saying that it would be impossible to deliver such a weapon to a target without missiles, launchers and sites, as well as access to the codes and procedures needed to activate a nuclear device.

A spokesman said it was likely that criminals in the cash-strapped former Soviet republics had agreed to sell weapons, but these could be used only as radiological bombs scattering radiation if exploded conventionally in a suicide car or lorry attack.

Official Kremlin Int'l News Broadcast September 21, 2000, Thursday REMARKS BY FIRST DEPUTY CHIEF OF THE GENERAL STAFF OF THE RUSSIAN ARMED FORCES VALERY MANILOV AT STATE DUMA HEARINGS

Unfortunately of late -- and I am very keenly aware of it -- when the question, who is to blame? (2) is asked people tend to blame the Russian leadership, the army, the power ministries, everyone. Yes, everyone is to blame except those who have brought about this situation. Let us look back a little. It was just said here that -- how many people lived on the territory of Checheno-Ingushetia 10 years ago? 1.2 million. How many are there today? No more than 500,000. How many people had to leave when the Dudayev regime and then the Maskhadov regime were established? Not just Chechens, 200,000-odd Russians had to flee leaving all their possessions behind. nationalities lived side by side in Chechnya.

I will tell you that the remains of bands which have not been destroyed but will certainly be destroyed exist in Chechnya and cause trouble to Chechen people because they get massive support from abroad. Massive support. They get $10 million to $30 million a month on average. About a hundred of different extremist organization abroad pay mercenaries.

You may say that this is not true, but three-fourths of those who are actively fighting now are foreign mercenaries. They are not Chechens. And those who say that this is a guerrilla war are wrong. Chechen people do not support these bastards and bandits.

I will disagree with honorable deputy from Chechnya Aslambek Akhmedovich who says that no one believes. This is not true. Yes, many do not believe, unfortunately, because life is very difficult and terrible disasters have come down on the people and there have been irreplaceable losses among people. And yet most people in Chechnya believe that they have their own life to lead side-by-side with other peoples of Russia, just like they have always lived, shoulder to shoulder.

So only outside support in the form of mercenaries, money, weapons, ammunition, hardware, space communications systems and other things that comes in from abroad as humanitarian aid goes to bandits rather than to Chechen people.

NOTE:

(1) This is the reason why Fred Cuny was kidnapped and killed. 

(2) 1996 The Chechen Tragedy: Who is to Blame? is published. The book accuses the United States of using Chechnya to destabilize what was left of Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book was published around the time CIA employee Harold James Nicholson was arrested for espionage. He had passed along information about CIA plans for Chechnya to the Russians. The book also lays out the stakes in Chechnya for Russia. The Russians feared that the Chechen Insurgency would further disintegrate country. The Chechen insurgency had the potential to cut the country in half. 

Page 15
“A 1979 CIA report, which leaked to the press, described the Chechen-Ingush Republic as a most promising territory with regard to the efforts to destabilize the USSR.”

Source:
Nikolaev, Yu. V. The Chechen Tragedy. Nova Science, 1996.

ORT NEWS PROGRAM INTERVIEW WITH ACTING PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN Official Kremlin Int'l News Broadcast February 8, 2000, Tuesday

PUTIN: We have the 201st Division there. And if we pull it out, we will face tragic events there within a month. We are very well aware of this. Do our partners in the West understand this? Well, Tajikistan is just one area. And there is also Uzbekistan and Kirghizia, whose territory was invaded by large bands last year and these bands seized large areas in the mountains. And there are other danger points, in terms of aggressive designs of some extremist forces. And these extremist forces are obviously trying to make this territory their haven. In this context, Chechnya is just one element of the overall struggle for the recarving of the world.

It is not accidental that the people who have taken control of the Chechen territory are not content with the struggle for the independence of Chechnya and went further. They crossed the borders of Chechnya with the aim of separating more territory from Russia to create a state from the Black to the Caspian Sea.

Apparently, there is the impression that this region of the former Soviet Union is so weak that it can become easy prey. But judging from what happened in Kirghizia, for example, they have grounds for thinking so. They went in and nobody stopped them. They seized a large area and took hostages, including foreign ones, they were Japanese if you remember.

And there is yet another danger. We all speak about a possible disintegration of Russia. If these extremist forces manage to gain a bridgehead in the Caucasus, not only in Chechnya, but also to tear away other territories. That contagion may go up the Volga and spread to other republics. And then we would face either total Yugoslavization of Russia or one would have to agree that this territory will be divided up into several independent states.

Did anyone give thought to the political and geopolitical consequences of such development in the world. And when I talked with my partners I told many of them that we were not only disappointed with the Western position, we think that it is in the national interests of the overwhelming majority of Western countries to give direct political and economic support to Russia in its struggle against international extremism.

Q: Are there any countries, perhaps not great powers, but our neighbors, which are thinking along these lines and with which we have a meeting of minds -- other than Byelorussia?

A: I think that especially after the events of summer of last year the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union and the Transcaucasian republics have been giving thought to it. Why don't we ever say -- that is, they just mentioned it in the press in passing and that was all. But the Western countries now actively support Georgia, and that is a good thing. Georgia is a friendly state. But it was on the territory of Chechnya that terrorists were trained who made an attempt on Shevardnadze's life. And the Georgia side is aware of this. The Federal Security Service caught these people and has already extradited some of them to the Georgian security service. This is a proven fact. These terrorists were trained on the territory of Chechnya.

In the same way terrorists were trained in Chechnya who tried to assassinate President Karimov of Uzbekistan. In other words, an enclave of bandits was created in Chechnya where terrorists were trained to stage assassination attempts on the leaders of other states. It obviously went beyond the territory of the Chechen Republic itself. But people try not to recall this. Why?

Q: One gets the impression that Russia constantly presents to the International Monetary Fund some kind of documents and reports to prove that we have fulfilled and overfulfilled agreed programs, but we are not given any credits, we are treated badly. We say that the IMF --

A: Those who treat us badly won't stay alive for three days. Let's leave aside the question of treating us badly.

NOTE : The IMF is controlled by the USA. 

Project Pluto