Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/25/24 Richard Booth on HBO’s New OKC Bombing Documentary

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Scott interviews journalist and researcher Richard Booth about HBO’s new documentary An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th. Booth served as a research consultant on the film. He talks with Scott about his experience working with the producers, what the finished film got right and why it’s important. Discussed on the show: Oklahoma City Bombing Archive An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th (IMDb) Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed--and Why It Still Matters by Andrew Gumbel and Roger G. Charles  The Secret Life of Bill Clinton by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard  Richard Booth is the Glenn D. Wilburn Fellow at the Libertarian Institute and an independent citizen journalist and member of the Constitution First Amendment Press Association (CFAPA). You can find Richard’s journalism at The Libertarian Institute, and on his Substack. Follow him on Twitter @booth_okc This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already, time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more the 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys introducing richardt booth he is our glend d wilburn fellow at the libertarian institute and the keeper of our ultimate oklahoma city bombing archive at libertarian institute

dot org slash okayc welcome back to the show how you doing richard i'm doing great it's great to be back thank you scott absolutely happy to have you here and happy to have some good news on this story this is something that for those of us interested in the story behind the story of the oklahoma city bombing we've always really hoped for would be a documentary basically i guess was always the hope something that would be big enough on a mainstream enough channel with enough reach to basically shatter the ceiling on the thing and get the story out into the mainstream. It's not a conspiracy theory.

McVeigh had help and the government let them get away. And now I think we got what we came for, what we always wanted here. I know you had something to do with helping advise the producers of this movie that just came out on HBO, an American bombing, which I saw and which is perhaps a partial, but still a great vindication of the work of J.D. Cash and Roger Charles and yourself and all of the rest of the people who work so hard to bring this story to people after all these years. And they really do a great job and get some great admissions by some powerful people involved in the rest. So, I guess, first of all, congratulations and thank you for your effort in helping them

get it right in there. And then, so secondly, I guess, tell us everything about this documentary and your involvement in it, and then we can get into what we learned in the thing. Sure. Okay. Yeah. So the documentary is called an American bombing, the road to April 19th. And basically the producers to this documentary, they reached out to me in January of 22. They reached out to, I know, me, Jesse, I think they did try to reach out to Roger, Charles. Jesse Trinidadoo. That's right. And I'm pretty sure they also reached out to Wendy Painting.

And all of us basically talked to them. And when they reached out to me, initially they had said, you know, they just wanted to ask some. questions and so they're making this documentary and I thought you know that whoever does a documentary on this chances are they're going to get it way wrong but I've got nothing to lose so let's hear what they have to say so when I had my first conference call with them what initially really struck me that I was very surprised is they're talking about this other suspect Robert Jacks who has a very similar description to John Doe 2 and they know the guy's name they know some details about the FBI investigation of him. And they know the names of some of the witnesses there. And so I was

very impressed by that. Typically, you don't expect that kind of sort of the thing, especially in like a first meeting to hear them reciting the facts, you know, basically. And so that was impressive to me. And they kind of really had me with that. And I thought, well, the best I can do is just to give them the evidence, let them know what they need to look at. And that's ultimately the role I served basically was providing them with like FBI 302 reports telling him you should probably talk to these witnesses or look at this or look at that and they now and then would ask me a question about something or about just something in the case or about a transcript and I you know I'd go and get it for them so ultimately it was kind of a yeah a research consultant they asked

me how I wanted to be credited and that's what I told them is I think that probably best fits what I did for them was just kind of a research consultant And I was just very pleasantly surprised to see that they did tell the right story in terms of John Doe number two. And they got the right witness and they had all the right points. And they didn't pollute that with any of the kind of BS we've seen from a lot of mainstream sources. So I was very proud of them for having done that right. Yeah, absolutely. Do you know, I don't, well, I didn't look at the credits that carefully.

I saw y'all's names, you and Wendy and others, but did they happen to mention the Libertarian Institute archive, or was that helpful to them? Do you know if they used that in the production of the thing? Oh, yeah, yeah, man, they didn't mention it, but for sure they used it because what would happen is I would be asked about a particular, like, news report or document, and I would typically forward over to the producer a link to the copy that's hosted on the end. institute or I'd do that sometimes I'd attach it but so they certainly knew about it and they were just kind of relying on me to like okay he'll go pull it for or provide us with insight about whatever it is you know that they're looking for and they just had a lot of questions and it was pleasing to see that they were asking a lot of times the right questions and that they were treating the subject with the kind of seriousness that I hope that it would be treated with so I was

I wasn't 100% satisfied with like everything, you know, of course, in the documentaries and parts of it I don't like all that much, but I felt they treated the bombing with accuracy and fairness, and I just can't say enough how important it is. This is the first documentary or piece we have on the Oklahoma City bombing, where when they talk about John Doe number two, you get the names of the witnesses, you get video of them talking about what they saw, you do not have them repeating any. of this BS about, oh, it's just some misidentification and all the witnesses were confused. You don't see any of that excuse making in this. And so it was just important that they stuck to the facts. And that's admirable for, I mean, it should be something we all do. But, you know, for an organization like HBO, it was surprising. I expected perhaps there might be stuff in it that would be a lot worse than, you know, what it turned out to be.

all right now so let me ask you something here because this is something that i'm sure is true to degree i think it must be the preponderance of what's going on here because i keep hearing this come up it's in a gumble and charles book oklahoma city it's something that the one of the fbi agents in charge of the case danny colson says in here and is described i guess by multiple people in the documentary as being, you know, in fact, they directly, they directly attribute it to Merrick Garland at the Department of Justice, our current Attorney General, for making the decision that essentially they really wanted to nail McVeigh and they wanted to give him the death penalty. I don't know if anybody says that in the documentary, but that's

from the book. But same difference. They really wanted to get him. and they knew that if they broaden the investigation to find everyone who might have been involved that would raise reasonable doubt as to his real role in the thing and so in the structure of the investigation as they describe it it was never to go after anyone who might have been involved it was always to go after mcvay and nichols and keep it narrowed down to that they pressured 48 to flip so he wasn't one of the prosecuted, but instead, or I guess he was pleaded guilty to certain things and whatever and testified. But other than that, they said there is no John Doe, too, forget about that, and narrowed the

thing down. And it's funny because, especially like the way it comes across in here, the way Colton says it, they're just like, yep, that's the decision that was made. I mean, but what they're really saying is that they were accessories to this. thing and they let guys get away with it but that raised the question that I'm trying to get to here with all my talking and that is in the real reason because at least some of these guys were undercover FBI informants or flip states witnesses and that that was the real problem was that they had enough prior

knowledge that they could have stopped this thing or certainly if it's guys that worked for them as flip states witnesses and informants then it happened right under their nose at the very least. And that was the real reason that they wanted to cover the thing up and narrow it down. So it seems like even the limited hangout is probably partially true and also to me is just as damning. But then the real truth is that they could have stopped it and it was some of their own guys who had done it in a sense, right? Well, yes. My contention is that John Doe number two and some of these other people like this Robert Jack's figure and at least two or three other suspects, but John Doe 2 in particular is a guy who obviously was a liability to the FBI. Very clearly you can see that in the investigation and they're scrambling. And from the documents in the investigation, it looks like someone very high up in the chain of command probably did. identify or know who John Do2 was because the manhunt for him was abruptly modified just

less than three weeks after the bombing. And then a month later, they say, oh, he doesn't exist. So I don't believe the FBI is going to be doing this sort of backpedaling and covering up and all this sort of stuff over just some neo-Nazi guy that they can't catch or something like this. It just, that's not how they operate, you know. And it only seems like that the only thing I can think of that would call for or show this kind of behavior from the FBI would be if his identity was such a liability that he was in some way an embarrassment to the Bureau. And it's sad that that's kind of the measure, but that that's really the conclusion. And that's not, it's not just me, You know, people on the grand jury, that Hoppy Heidelberg on the grand jury. He was on the grand jury.

And he said very early on that he felt that John Do 2 had to have been a Fed or an informant of some sort. And we know they had all these informants around it. And so in the documentary, though, a major step is taken because you have something that before was mainly argued by researchers like in the Gumbull and Charles book, whereas now in the documentary, you have Danny. Colson, the former deputy director of the FBI, just saying right then and there that they're not pursuing this other suspect because it could potentially be exculpatory to McVeigh. And it's huge in and of itself when you have that side of the investigation or that, you know, that type of person articulating that very much the same thing that the researchers have been saying for a long time. Yeah.

No, in fact, just to refresh your memory here, Richard, it's on page 328 of Gumbull and Charles, where Larry Mackey, who is one of the federal prosecutors, says the same thing. And it's the one where he has this funny, quadruple negative thing. You have to work out where he says, if you had said to us, anybody in the room 100% confident that McVeigh was alone raise your hand we would have kept all our hands in our laps exactly right yes they they all knew essentially that you know that there were others and it's just incrementally it we're seeing that admitted over the years so whereas now we've got this documentary from HBO where you've got this high figure at the FBI who is saying that and they have Merrick Garland on there and they

show him, you know, being asked whether he's going to be seeking identification of the other suspects and so forth. And his answer very clearly shows that he's limiting himself only to McVeigh at that point. And so he's clearly very risk-averse and calculated in his answers and how he handled the investigation. All right. Now, so is there anything that you learned from them in this documentary? I know that you helped with it, but then again, they were taking a fresh look and traveling around with whatever expense accounts and interviewing people and all these kinds of things. Sure.

So, yeah, they were interviewing a number of people. A lot of that based on recommendations from myself or Wendy or Jesse Trinidadoo. And I can't say that there wasn't really anything new that I learned from it. It was instructive, though. And some of the people they interviewed, my hope is to be able to connect up with them and maybe talk to some of them and seek,

you know, potential other avenues that way. So yeah, not a whole lot there, you know, because I don't have full access, you know, like everything that they do. I'm just, you know, as a consultant or some things I can do. But, you know, I personally would have loved to have heard the full Danny Colson interview or, for example, the interview with Richard Raina. I'm sure that that would have been just incredibly illuminating. And remind us who that is? Yeah, Richard Rayno, he was a chief investigator on the Jones team for Stephen Jones. And why he's so interesting is he actually was a very good seasoned investigator.

And he went out on the road and was able to interview people like, you know, Andy Strasmeyer, Louis Beam. He met and interviewed Jack Oliphant, just all these figures, just all the right people, the people you would want to be interviewing, he was doing it. And this is a guy who was out there before the investigative reporters or at the same time. So he was beating down the right pass. So just to show that how dedicated they were to the subject, you could see that by them interviewing people like Raina, you know, and people who really were deeply involved in the investigation. And I also think, I just have to say here that they really treated Kathy Sanders right in this because her, and Glenn D. Wilburn were the

originals on this, who really were the trailblazers in investigating the case. And so it was very, it made me proud that, you know, that the way that they handled it and told this story kind of through their lens, at least in part of it.

Yeah, I agree with that. And of course, like you were saying in the beginning there, you're kind of taking a risk with something like this, that it's going to end up being, oh, conspiracy theorists, believe a thing and whatever, like on the you know yeah um and that they would mistreat her but they don't at all they're great to her um and so speaking of which uh there's one thing that she says that i wanted to clarify with you it's

just a small thing but um i believe she says that there were 22 witnesses that saw mcvay that morning and they all saw them with somebody else but i thought the number was 24 and i just want to make sure. No, I noticed the same thing you did. And what we know from that is that when Danny Colson was on the BBC 2007 special, the number he did use was 24. And when Kathy was talking about it, she did say 22. Now, I know from just looking at the 302s that I have and laying out the witness accounts, I had on my witness accounts chronology upwards 50 people. Okay. And not all of these are people who saw McVeigh and John Doe, too, but a good majority of them are. So I'm going to say it's at least 24.

And we're just talking then 302s that we know exist, or that Danny Colson admits to having seen. But there were so many between people in Kansas at the Dreamland Motel and those other areas. And also in Oklahoma City, you have a... I think that must be in Pritchard's book, because I knew that talking point, at least, before that BBC documentary the BBC thing was more recent yeah that was 2007 was BBC but certainly Pritchard in his 97 book would have argued about how there were so many witnesses at the dreamland yeah you know you should you should take the time if you can if you have it to parse through those 302s and see what is the exact number by your own count yeah for clarity

there you know not to debunk Kathy Wilburn but just to see if that was just a verbal typo or if we know you know if there's another source for that or what but yeah because it's so important that you know they even show in the documentary the still frame from the surveillance camera that shows the rider truck but the outrage there is that that still frame is from the same side of the street as the murr building but a block or two down when the rider truck is stopped at a red light presumably or is driving by slowly yeah i think I think it's on like a bank ATM and it can see out the window and you see the rider truck driving by. But really, if they had delved it all into the surveillance tapes, and I did send them all the material.

Yeah, that's the only one they used at the trial, for sure. Yeah, yeah. And we know, though, from that evidence, as I've reviewed on other broadcasts, that it's all there to show they had everything up to it, including the bomb detonating. And I remember at the trial, I mean, I would read the daily coverage of the McVeigh trial at the time. Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post had the best coverage but AP and a lot of others

did a pretty good job covering the trial and you know they didn't get the irony in it they would just report that yeah the testimony today was a young girl whose family was killed and she testified about how sad she was and that took

six hours and then the jury went back to their hotel you know but there was no evidence presented the whole thing was like the prosecutor then clucked their tongues and then look at the jury like you're not going to let this guy get away with this are you but they would never present any evidence that he did it because they couldn't or at least you know direct evidence about him that morning you know they had all this other circumstantial stuff of course and i'm not saying he's innocent but i'm just

saying they didn't want to put him at the scene of the crime because they had all these witnesses and all these camera angles that all included other people who they wanted to pretend didn't exist. Right. It's the most absurd thing in the world, you know, especially if you already are hit to what's going on and to watch all that play out in real time is crazy. Oh, absolutely. And I think that's actually the key thing about this documentary that I think it will be important in the long run is that it acknowledges that there were these others. And it's a huge, huge thing for us to have a mainstream documentary that could be viewed. I mean, it was like number one the week it came out on HBO or on Max.

Well, and it's all headlines, too. I mean, if you Google the name of the thing, there's a bunch of news stories about it. And I don't know how many of them are really picking up on the important parts, but some of them are, you know? Sure. And eventually, you know, they will. And people who watch it, you know, I think we'll walk away knowing they'll say, well, who is this other guy in the truck?

Because they didn't try to, like, debunk that or spin it or anything like that, which you would expect even nowadays, if people. TBS Frontline did something that they would like try to spin it or just because of how investigative reporting has become. And so it's a testament, though, that they didn't do that. And they went the right course and admitted, hey, this guy was there. And here's some people talking about why maybe they didn't go after him. Hey, you guys, did you know that I don't just write books?

I publish them. Well, the Institute does, and I'm the director. So, yeah. 13 of them now, including my four. We published five more in 2023. Lori Calhoun and Tom Woods books about the COVID regime, Joe Solis Mullen on the fake China threat, Jim Bovard's latest, last rights,

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liberal media in a way or progressive media that's interested enough in real white supremacist stuff to want to dive in and do real investigative journalism about it and not just go with the nightly news kind of thing so that was their hook was what's going on with these Nazis and of course Ridgeway did a great job writing about this and there's that other guy i'm sorry i can picture his face but i forget his name he's a

i think he worked for sanders for a while uh who's you know pretty prominent progressive activist and he had told the truth about this stuff too because you know they have ax to grind rightly so with people that far to the right and and so but they were willing to kind of break mainstream convention and go ahead and dive into the reality behind this story and it's one thing I thought was lacking in the documentary that I always thought was an important point and maybe would help people, especially if they were alive back then and paying attention to the news back then, kind of remind them and get some clarity about how they really conflated these neo-Nazi groups, which were, of course, very small, with the whole post-Waco

militia movement, which you could say is sort of the right wing of the Republican Party or whatever, or the more conservative wing, but by and large, was not anti-Semitic and racist and, you know, all of that stuff that comes with the, you know, the Aryan Republican, this or that. They were just no more Waco's. And I remember Bill Curtis from investigative reports on A&E went and toured around. He met with a lot of these militia guys. And they're just good old boys. They were not, you know, and so, but what happened at the time was they crucified all those. militias with McVeigh's crime and his friend's crime and said this is, you know, everybody

to the right of Rush Limbaugh and maybe even including him is responsible for this. And especially all the militias, all the militia movement. And it really just shamed them right out of existence when the reality was McVeigh had gotten kicked out of, I think the first Michigan militia meeting he went to. They said, get out of here, fed boy or something, you know, or, you know, whatever. it was that he did called for direct violence and action right there and they booted him right out of there and then meanwhile he was actually a Nazi which is a thing and they let the neo-Nazis get away while painting people who weren't Nazis as Nazis basically is how that played out and

yes they could have said that much more succinctly than I did but that was an important part of this was that they blamed your average Joe's militia when it really was this small group of not just Hitler lovers, but as we'd already discussed, a bunch of them are undercover cops. They're closer to the FBI than they are to the neighboring militia. Right. Well, I'm glad you mentioned this because actually one of the points of contention I had with it, and I thought, well, maybe am I splitting hairs here, but I don't think so. And that's that they did kind of conflate white supremacist with militia movement.

As an example, they had someone on there saying that the authorities were trying to recruit Randy Weaver to be an informant on the militia movement. And I said, no, no, that's not right. They were trying to recruit him to be an informant against Aryan nations at Hayden Lake Idaho. And I think you're talking about two distinct, very different groups when you're talking about white supremacists and, you know, like the militia guys up in like Michigan, you know, or wherever.

And it works, too, Richard. You know, there's a clip in the documentary from Katie Couric. And I'm forgetting his name. I'm sorry, her partner there. Okay. Go ahead. Say it. No, I'm just thinking of someone else.

Oh, I'm sorry. But it's like the Good Morning America, and they interview Kathy Wilburne. And I have a clip from that show where the guy's name is Charles, something or something, Charles. I'm sorry. I keep wanting to say Roger Charles, but that's obviously not right. But the guy, the host from ABC News asks her, so now that we're killing McVeigh today, Are you going to be satisfied? Because he knows that she believes others were involved.

And she says, no, of course not. The others involved are still got away and whatever. And I have that clip. But there's another clip, which I forget now, if this is only in my brain or if I have this MP3, Richard. But Katie Couric, I think, says, oh, who by the way is the executive producer of this, which is so interesting.

Katie Couric says, well, that's funny. So when they brought him at Bay this morning, he had his head shaved all the way down to the skin right i wonder what's up with that you know so in other words the wool had been pulled over her eyes this was a weird surprise to her um and that that's so mystifying because to any of us who state we're like we know exactly what he's doing there you know yeah absolutely he's yeah he was broadcasting to his in group you know it was all part of his his Christian identity or his white supremacist belief system, no doubt about it. Yeah. And by the way, for people listening, that's, you know, Christian identity with a capital

C and I that is a very specific thing. That doesn't mean anyone who identifies as a Christian. It's a very particular sect of white supremacists. People sometimes misunderstand that. So Richard wasn't painting with a broad brush there. He was talking about a very small sect of wackos. Yes. I don't want to impugn anybody's religious beliefs. for sure, you know, Christian myself. But yeah, when I say Christian identity, definitely referring to a very specific, particularly American 20th century religious sect that's really a basis is white supremacy. But you do find it among the adherents.

And they covered it very well in the documentary covering the 1983 farm crisis and the people in that community who were stirred up by that. you know, where you had the CSA and the order carrying out their bank robberies and were on this trajectory towards committing acts of terrorism. And it did murder a guy, a radio host. You know, so they did well in covering how the guys who were doing this before McVeigh were these white supremacist types. And I think that a finer line could have been made or a distinction could have been made between them and the militias is, I think the militias are just unfairly maligned throughout all of this. They, they're not the, you know, McVeigh was not one of them.

And I don't think that the militia people had any involvement or connection at all to McVe where on the other hand, he had a great deal of connections to white supremacist figures who are definitely criminals and unsavory elements, murderers, you know. Yeah. By the way, so we should also mention this comes across in the documentary and it's important, right, is that where the Department of Justice wanted to narrow it down to these two guys for all their various reasons, that Timothy McVeigh's defense had the same, you know, in the end, the same kind of thing going on under a different incentive. because if they went into who all had done it other than McVeigh, they were implicitly admitting that he had done it. And they're completely just enjoined as his defense from saying,

yeah, he did it, but these other guys did it too. That's just not going to work. And so they then had their own huge disincentive for going down that trail. But they did show Nikki Deutchman who had been the chair or the, the four woman of the Nichols trial. And I have a clip of her, too, that I think I got live off the TV from when that thing was over that she said, we know there was so much going on, so much more going on here. And they did not do a very good job of proving that he had anything to do with this.

And we want to know the rest of the story that they're not telling it and that kind of thing. I think it speaks to the strength of our case, the citizens case, the citizen journalist case, that, you know, people like the four. person on this jury, the Nichols trial, who is able to see a great deal of the evidence far more than average citizen reaches the same conclusions that we do. And that, you know, is that there obviously were others involved. You know, and that that is my hope, is my takeaway that people will get from this, is if they, there are other parts that I totally disagree. I think the last five minutes, the January 6th stuff I thought was just rubbish and, you know, but what can you do? there's nothing I can do about that other than to say, well, they got the Oklahoma City stuff, right?

Man, I guess that part was so stupid. I forgot all about it. Well, it's the last five minutes, and it really was stupid, man. They just try to, what they try to do is, like Jeff Toobin's central thesis of his book, where he argues, essentially, that Tim McVeigh was just a regular old run-of-the-mill conservative, just a Republican, in other words. and so at the very end they have Bill Clinton on there and they have him he says this quote where he says that the words he used and he is McVeigh he says the words he used the arguments he made literally sound like the mainstream conservatives today like he won right and my immediate thoughts

were okay what words what arguments what examples because I'm not seeing that at all from any mainstream conservatives and that's an attempt to link you know conservatives to the terrorist. Which is exactly what he did then. Yeah. And in fact, he bragged, of course, as I know you know, he bragged that the Oklahoma City bombing saved my presidency. He said that on Air Force One right after the re-election in 1996. And he absolutely, I was going to say earlier, but it sounded

too kooky, but I don't even mean to stand by the kookiness, but I'm just saying, they exploited the thing to demonize the militia and demonized the right to such a degree that a lot of people who, who, for example, knew about the FBI informants being involved in Andre Straussmeyer and stuff, concluded that the government did it deliberately, and that was why, was to frame the militia for it, to destroy the militia movement and the arming up of the populist right in the face of Clinton tyranny. Well, sure, sure. Which, you know, in the scheme of things, the militia movement was small and marginal,

and they all had day jobs, and they weren't really going to do anything. They were just saying, don't do any more Waco's, and we won't do any more. thing was all it was really about. They were not a real challenge to the power of the governor of your state. You know what I mean? Right. They were no challenge there. The main threat they posed, though, is you've got a group that's largely consists of responsible citizens who are not criminals, who in large part, you know, are families and they're successful and they're strong members of their community. And if you have people like that, of that kind of caliber, just good salt of the earth people who are really dissatisfied you know that's a potential

powerful block you know and they were just neutralized overnight you know no one ever wants to hit any you see militia you immediately think you know something illegal's going on right that's a direct result of what we've seen in the media yeah and of course this goes to my other complaint about bill clinton and i guess about these producers too they just let bill clinton and bob ricks tell their version of what happened at waco and that's all we get to hear about that and um you know especially clinton in a very self-serving way goes look i told them to just wait him out but uh yeah i also told them go ahead and do it everyone yeah well which is the same as admitting that he ordered that attack which is actually what he has admitted in a deposition before that he

ordered the go ahead of the thing they brought the final plan to him that day so there you go i mean if the source was a deposition that you know they can take that to the bank you know yeah and that was as far as he was willing to ever admit responsibility but in this case it was not it was just the FBI that did it and he was only the president of the time so you know yeah so there was spin going on with with clinton the whole time he was on there and so that's a common criticism of the doc as you have him, which I can understand, including the president, the Times thoughts on things that were happening. But on the other hand, that opportunity was used, I think, to inject that bit at the end so they can link conservatives to the terrorist. And then they try to link it, the people,

I think these were just like malcontents, these people in January 6th. I don't think any of them presented any real structural threat to our government. These people were not. like Richard Lee Guthrie. They didn't have cells and future plans and things like that for terrorism and all this and that. It should just upset people and behaving very badly because they're in a large group environment of people behaving badly. But I don't see that it's any kind of actual existential threat to our country. But they try to link, you know, OJ6 to McVeigh. And so that I think is shameful and but what can you do you know i learned that the executive producer was uh katie currick it was like two weeks before it came out and so as you can imagine how i must have felt i thought oh my god

this is going to be really really mainstream it's probably going to be terrible they're going to do this or going to do that so i was very on edge and nervous and when i saw in the documentary how even-handed and fair they were about john do two and these witnesses it was a testament i think to the producer that I was working with, that I mean, I just inundated her with the evidence, the facts, the 302s. She was sold. She was convinced. And I know she would have put up any, you know, a fight if there were any problems getting that story told fairly. Well, I got to admit, I don't watch the morning network news that much or whatever, but I can't remember specific examples.

But I remember her having a little bit of an honest curiosity before. I remember her complaining about the pressure on them to. stick with the Iraq as a threat to us lie in the run-up to the war and that kind of thing so that's admirable yeah I didn't know about that I'm just my thoughts were not that she didn't go along with it at the time but just she complained about it later yeah yeah but you know also you talked about how yeah just the word militia became completely tainted the whole thing was just completely you know destroyed there this I guess wouldn't have fit in the documentary but I'll say it because I think it's important that Oklahoma City

Unlike what McVeigh was going for there with the, I guess, revenge and we'll see what happens after that or whatever, that what he really did was he legitimized the Waco massacre after the fact in the minds of so many people. Not that anyone really, you know, explain this in English in a way that makes any sense because it doesn't. But the idea basically is that the Davidians did the Oklahoma bombing and so screw them. when actually no it was just revenge in part it was revenge for what had happened to them and they didn't have anything to do with it at all because they were all dead they had all been killed and but the problem was it just became if mcvay cared about what happened to the branch dividians then anybody who cares about what happened to the branch dividians is like mcvay and it was that kind of simple in people's simple minds and i know from being a radio host

and especially from being a cab driver, that that's just exactly how it was, probably still is to this day. That you say Waco, and they say, what about Oklahoma City? That's right. It's a Pavlov's dog response, a conditioned response,

that you're just not allowed to care about what happened to the Branch Divideans. Otherwise, you're the kind of guy who would have done Oklahoma, you know? Right. And even when, I remember a guy in my cab, Richard, sorry, I'm just complaining,

but I remember a guy in my cab, I was just saying it was all feds that did Oklahoma City. And he's like, you got a bomb in your truck. And I'm like, dude, you're not even paying attention. I'm blaming it on the government. I'm not the government. I'm a cab driver. You're getting your metaphor all mixed up here, you know?

But they just can't even listen. They didn't want to listen at all. Well, this is just how people are. And you're absolutely right that the psychology behind it that's dead on accurate. And, yeah, that's just how people view things and stories are always going to be spun. know, in a manner like that. You see, like, clips of Joe Biden when he was during the Waco hearings, when he said, he just repeatedly said that the Branch Davidians, they killed themselves.

They committed suicide. The government was not involved in this. And he's just saying it as if it's fact, you know, and people will just go along with that. And their supporters, you know, and his supporters will too. And they'll, the same thing. They think, well, ask them about Waco and their immediate thoughts are, well, they're the bad guys. They obviously did something wrong. It's a sad testament to thinking populace or non-thinking populace, as it were.

But that's where we're at, you know. Yeah. Hold on just one sec. We've got to make some money here. Man, Starbucks support for Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign is almost disgusting as their coffee. Don't you just hate them? You, me, and a lot of other people, too. It's time to boycott and divest

from those genocidal blood-drinking traitors at Starbucks, but you're still going to need your caffeine in the morning. Well, you guys are going to love Moondos coffee. It's so good, and the price is right. Check out a massive variety of awesome tasting coffees at Moondoseartisancoffee.com. You'll be glad you did.

That's Moondoseartisan coffee.com. Hey, guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0. model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety. I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug of salt or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at Scott Horton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war.

all of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scotthorton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. it was interesting seeing bill clinton talk about waco at one point i forgot which sentence it was but he kind of looks down into the left which is a tell of some kind you know i don't know exactly but back into the left no he looks down as kind of you could tell something that he's thinking there that he's like barring um interesting but you know i'm not trying to read his mind it's just something going on there well no sure he talks about and and you know i think this is probably the clearest explanation i've had of what went on on the government side of the CSA siege there, where he was the governor, and he told the cops, wait them out.

Don't go in there. There's too many civilians. I don't know if that was, you know, someone else's advice to him or whatever, but that was apparently his order was to not raid him. Then later, we did see he became president, and the raid, the ATF screwed the whole thing up a month and a week into his presidency and then apparently it was his order to wait him out because it was six weeks before the FBI finally went in and again he admitted before that he finally gave them permission to do that but it just goes to show that he knew better

otherwise he would have told the FBI to just raid the place on the third day right well that's right he knew from his experience as being governor that when the CSA rate happened that was April 19th, 1985, but when that happened, there were, you know, no casualties at all. And the person who was in charge of that was Danny Colson, who's the FBI agent appearing in the American bombing documentary. So he was really the right person to have there. And basically, I think that it probably would have ended up different with Waco if you had different people kind of in charge of that whole thing. Yeah, it was just terrible. You're right. He knew from CSA that, well, if we waited out, we negotiate successfully, there can be an end of this. And with the negotiations with

CSA, Danny Colson brought in Robert Millar from Elohim City to serve as a mediator. And he did talking to, he talked to James Ellison, the leader at CSA and Carrie Noble. And I think also a small part of what maybe convinced them is Colson told them. If you guys open fire on us, I'm going to send that Huey helicopter up there. It's got a 50-Cal on it. And within 60 seconds, all of the children and your community will be dead. You know, and he told Carrie Noble that. Carrie Noble has said that and Danny Colson has said that.

So I think it was made abundantly clear that what the FBI was willing to do. And then they found what they needed to do to de-escalate it. you know yeah well um anyway i'm sorry i got waco tangents but let's go back to the nazis what did this attack with mcvay yeah so what all do we learn about them in here and what all can be said definitively about them beyond that well we don't hear a whole lot about the actual the names of the the neo-nazi figures in the hbo doc but they do um talk about, they have Mike Betcher from NBC. He investigated the Lady Godiva's and Strasmeier and Carol Howe and this guy's with NBC and he totally was, he was like Roger Charles's competitor.

They knew one another. They were peers and they both investigated this and considered it to be, you know, factual. And so Betcher says, you know, where did they get the money or where did McVeigh get the money for all of, you know, travel, you know, law. All that stuff when he has no source of income and it cuts to a clip, you know, of the ARA recruiting video. It shows him dumping and money, you know, but they don't go into detail like naming all of the individuals. Who we're talking about here is Peter Langan, Richard Lee Guthrie, Kevin McCarthy, Scott Stedford, and Mike Brescia. And these guys called themselves the Aryan Republican Army. They robbed a series of like 22 banks in the Midwest from 94 through 96.

and these are guys who a number of them would live at Elohim City. Mike Brescia, for example, was roommates there with Andy Strassmeyer. And what researchers believe and what the evidence tends to indicate is we believe that the Oklahoma City bombing was planned in the fall of 1994 at Elohim City. And the kind of people present who would be willing to engage in activities like this are going to be the ARA members who are down there at the time. and we believe that those are, it's going to be, you know, Langan, Guthrie, McCarthy, Stedford. And so we think these guys were the two to three other additional men who were seen with McVeigh on the morning of the bombing by so many of the eyewitnesses downtown and also the eyewitnesses in Kansas. And we know through informants within the group that one or more members have accused others of direct involvement in the bombing plot. Kevin Peter Langan put out there is an affidavit that came out through Jesse Trinidad where he talks

about on April 20th the day after the bombing Scott Steadaford and Kevin McCarthy show up the ARA safe house and they have just got back from on they're on the road they've been on the road the whole day prior they're coming there from Oklahoma City and they are not convincing to Peter Langan that they don't know anything about the bombing and Langan has suspicion he thinks they're lying and that that's exactly where they're coming from

and so it's interesting though to see that the whole gang flees Oklahoma and Elohim City on April 19th Brescia Stedford McCarthy are out of there Langen was already at the safe house so yeah that's basically in a nutshell the group that we think was involved and we just have circumstantial evidence

on it but sometimes that's all you have to go off of and we just have to continue investigating well they show danny colson again the fbi agent citing carol how the at ff informant and that's a hell of a story so i want to ask you to tell it um but he cites her colson cites her saying that she saw mcvay there and that's right and colson definitely said that he thought that that was believable. And he also, I thought this was interesting that Colson didn't mind to say whatsoever. And they didn't have a problem putting in the documentary a clip of him saying, yeah, people argue whether Strassmeier was working for Germany or working for Israel. That's right. I mean, it's huge. I mean, have him saying something like that. At least, you know,

the researchers of all have said he was obviously working for somebody in some type of Fed. But, you know, we hear if you had the former deputy director of the FBI saying that that holds a different level of weight with some members of the viewing audience. So that's important. Yeah. And look, I'm not saying that even implies that Tel Aviv ordered the bombing or something. But the idea would be that he was an informant working for them. I think it's pretty clear he was working for the U.S. government, if not the FBI, while he was out at Elohim City. But, I mean, I think Pritchard proved that. most reasonable, and that is what Pritchard's investigation was pointing towards and other others as well, even stuff in the documents where it says an SPLC informant has revealed the following and there's stuff redacted, but you can tell what's talking about Andy Strassmeyer at Elohim City. So yeah, to your question, in the documentary, Danny Colson does say, yeah, we know that Tim McVay was at Elham City. They had an informant there, Carolyn Howe. Of course, he fully endorses

He has no reason to not believe her. And basically what he's saying there is we know that McVeigh was at Elohim City, and it's not just through Carol and Howe that we know that. We know that McVeigh was there through other informants who were at Elohim City. Specifically, we know that SPLC had more than one informant at EC, and that's confirmed in the FBI Teletypes documents. It says they've got information coming from their SPLC source. Also, we have that from Morris Dees, the now disgraced former head of the SPLC, who journalist J.D. Cash interviewed when he was giving a, he was at a public event, and he asked him some questions, you know, and he asked him about, you know, McVeigh visiting Elohim City. And he had told J.D. Cash that McVeigh had visited something like 10, 11 times, you know, and he couldn't go into, oh, I'm sorry, can't, you know, if I told you I'd have to kill you.

making a joke with J.D. and kind of playing off the question. But we know from him and from these other informants, such as FBI informant John Schultz, that McVeigh was at LOMCity. So I think there's no doubt about it. He was there. He knew the people. He would know the chief of security. He would know the guys that Strasmeyers hanging around with, which is all the ARA guys. So they were all in the same nexus. It defies belief to think that they would not have known one another given they're all in the same place at the same time yeah and going back to ambrose seven's pritchard again uh well i don't know again for people who don't know he's a writer for the telegraph there reporter for the telegraph and uh in his book which is easily titled the secret

life of bill clinton but is really not about that at all uh it's about the secret government of bill clinton is what it's really about um and in that book he reproduces a document there The interview with Carol Howe's handler, Angela Finley, and I guess later she was married and became Angela Finley Graham. Right. She admits there in the deposition that Carol Howe was with them when they went and drove around and cased downtown Oklahoma City and specifically the mirror building and not just cased it, what, for a robbery? They cased it as a bombing target. That's right. And under cross-examination and, I mean, they kind of had to press her.

She admits that that's true, not just that, oh, somebody talked about this one time or somebody was in downtown Oklahoma City one time. But this extremely, you know, explicit. Very specific example. Yeah. So, I mean, there you go. And then, and this was, I think, well, you correct me if you know off the top of your head, but it was Strassmeyer and others, you know, previously mentioned here who were in the car. Mahon was with him. Strassmeyer.

Mayhan and Carol Howell. Okay. They might have had an, if there was another, I don't remember. But I know specifically that Strasmeier and Mayhan were both together. And they, all three of them at least, and they are making a trip specifically just for the purpose of casing bombing targets. And they're looking at the Murrah building and they're interested in if there are any IRS buildings down there. But the Murrah building was their primary target. And of course, yeah, she told her ATF handler. about casing it. Now, bear in mind, this is at the very same time that Andy Strassmeyer, when he's at

Elohim City, and he's doing his training as he's training these large groups of young neo-Nazis who come in, he's spouting a great deal of rhetoric, and he's saying that we need to see assassinations, bombings, and mass shootings, and that that was reported by Carol Howe as well. So he's indoctrinating these guys and actually hyping them up and pushing them and talking about, bombing specifically yeah well and also in pritchard's book he at least the way you know i'd like to hear the audio but in the transcription he essentially you know admits that he was involved in the thing it's a little bit hypothetical but he says you know and what if that informant was scared because what if it wasn't supposed to go this far something close to that right that's right what it

seems like is Ambrose Evans Pritchard got a hold of Andy Strassmeyer when he was still kind of young and inexperienced and he really earned his confidence. And now that Ambrose Evans Pritchard got to understand. He's a guy that he's a top guy over at BBC. He's still like manager of their international business section. So yeah, he's not this is not some obscure fringe writer. He's a respected journalist, does his work. And he, yeah, absolutely this is something something that Andy was talking to him about and he got him to be very frank with him and so what he would do is he would say

the informant this or the informant that and well obviously when he says the informant he's talking about himself you know and he very very much basically admits that he was a law

enforcement source reporting back about a bombing operation he does say some interesting things about that operation he says that they changed the time of where the truck bomb was going to be delivered, which might explain why if there were a sting operation and the feds are out there waiting for it in the middle of the night and doesn't show up, they all leave, and then the bombing is successful the next day because the time has been changed. And so Strasmeyer speaks about that a little bit.

And all, it's just one of many little pieces of evidence, a thousand, you know, pieces you all put together that kind of paint this picture. Yeah. All right. Now, I wanted to mention some of the people whose great work has been vindicated by this documentary. I really hope people will watch. But, of course, it really begins with Glenn and Kathy Wilburn. Yeah. Glenn, whose fellowship, yours is named after or what your fellowship is named after him. Yep. And then, of course, J.D. Cash, who is a friend of mine and a great guy, and a reporter for the McCurtain Gazette there in, Oklahoma. And then, of course, his friend Roger Charles, who we mentioned here, who was an investigative reporter for ABC News and a good friend who recently died. And our current friend, Jesse Trinandu,

the heroic lawyer whose brother was murdered in a side story of this case, which we've covered in the past, and who has done so much to get the truth out. And of course, yourself and Wendy Painting, who wrote her PhD thesis on this story. And then, of course, William James Jasper. I know J.D. always was mad and just said J.D. just said that William Jasper just copied him, but from the New American Magazine, he did a lot to get the truth of this story out. And to my recollection, didn't get caught up in a bunch of goofy stuff either, but did a good job on it. And also Charles Key, I don't know. I guess he's not around anymore, but he was a state representative in Oklahoma back in the day who did a documentary about this, which I think I have on VHS somewhere if you need it. Do you have that? yeah yeah yeah yeah i've got that okay sure and then mark ham who wrote this book which i still haven't read yet but i know he was the one who really connected mcfay with the bank robbers all across the midwest there and i don't know if you want to mention anybody else but you know pat on the back to all those people for now you know going on three decades who've been working

to get the truth about this out it's an unforgivable cover up and i can't imagine for the people who actually lost family in this thing that they have to suffer through this level of government, as they call it now, gaslighting them about the truth of this story. It's just horrible that that has gone on. And I think what people can see when they look at the facts of this case, any reasonable person will conclude that other people were involved. And I think that most fair-minded people would like to see these others identified and apprehended

or at least explained or, you know, something. because of how many people who died. And that, I think, is what's going to keep this story going. As long as people continue focusing on that, that's only going to get more people interested in the case. And my whole goal and talking to them at HBO is, well, I can point them at the right evidence. I can point them who to talk to, who to look at, what to look at. And I'm just glad that they did, that they were serious and they were persuaded by it, you know. and stuck to their guns.

Absolutely. And also, I just think it's great that the Libertarian Institute was able to be a resource for them and, you know, for you and educating them in that way. And, of course, you get 99% of the credit for those documents, but a few of them were mine. Yeah, yeah. But, hey, we made a kind of an impact there. Yeah. That's the whole purpose of the archive is we want everyone from people like HBO level, if you're doing a doctor, to them all the way on down to independent

feeling, anybody, anybody you're a student of the case, whatever, you want to jumpstart your investigation, well, how about a material that it would take you three or four years to gather, it's all right there, and that's the goal, you know, is to get eyes on the material. Yeah, absolutely.

And again, that's at libertarian institute.org slash okayc, and it's the mother load there and all the finest of materials. There's some secondary sources like articles, and things like that, but all of them worth your time in there for a specific reason. So please everybody check that out.

And again, congratulations to you. And thank you for your time and for your effort in getting this thing out there. And everyone can check it out. You'll see our friend Richard and Wendy both in the Wendy painting as well in the credits there at the end for their research assistance there. and the documentary is on HBO and American bombing the road to April 19th. Thank you again. Thank you, Scott.

The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.