Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (1968-2001?) and David Paul Hammer (b. 1958) were among the first group of inmates to be housed in the newly refurbished death row wing of Indiana’s Terre Haute maximum security penitentiary, where they were eventually placed in adjacent cells. The two men spent 23 months as neighbors and spoke to one another on almost a daily basis.

During Hammer’s time on death row at Terre Haute, he wrote two books on the Oklahoma City (OKC) bombing that killed 168: autobiography “The Final Escape, Secrets Worth Dying For” (2004) and “Deadly Secrets: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing” (2010) co-authored with Jeffery William Paul. The books are based on first-hand knowledge gleaned in conversations from Timothy McVeigh right up to McVeigh’s execution.

“Deadly Secrets” is an incredible, insightful and I believe credible read. For those who actually do read it, you will see that it’s detailed and accurate to such an extent that it seems unlikely to have been written by someone sitting in a maximum security prison without considerable insider input.

Best truther documentary on the Oklahoma City bombing: “The Noble Lie”

Hammer writes, “With assistance from attorneys and their investigators, and from journalists, I have tried to verify the information McVeigh provided. We have obtained thousands of documents and exhibits via Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation. My attorney or his investigator has interviewed some of the individuals mentioned by McVeigh.”

“Timothy McVeigh was no mastermind,” Hammer writes. “Tim had some fine qualities. He was able to follow instructions to the tee. But his intelligence was average at best. His communication skills were limited, and he definitely was not a leader.”

Besides reading the book, I listened to the entire Horton Hammer interview below and cross checked it with other clues. In the interview below, Hammer provides the caveat that his information is based upon what McVeigh told him over time. He feels it’s a solid version of the truth with some inconsistencies.

McVeigh stated he was recruited while in the Army by “The Major” and was sheep dipped to infiltrate patriot militia groups. He never disclosed the mysterious Major by name. His unit was attached to the Defense Department. According to the Major, the unit was so secret that even the U.S. Secretary of Defense was unaware of its existence.

The Major further explained that the agenda for this secret unit was primarily domestic intelligence gathering and internal threat evaluations with an emphasis on direct counter-action operations. Funding and support for the operations would be provided through sources unconnected to the U.S. government. McVeigh was to familiarize himself with the rhetoric of the extreme right-wing ideology and create the plausible aura of a disgruntled soldier.

McVeigh’s sidekick, Terry Nichols, said, “In December of 1992, Timothy McVeigh told me that while he was serving in the U.S. Army, he had been recruited to carry out undercover missions.”

Hammer suggests McVeigh was a gung-ho, military, authoritarian follower and had little political affinity toward the militia group he was infiltrating.

McVeigh was “discharged” from the military in May 1992; but on Aug. 3, 1993, someone who looked and sounded just like him was filmed in uniform at Camp Grafton, North Dakota. Watch minutes 00:19:00 to 00:21:15 in the video below. In his book, Hammer specifically mentions this camp as a facility McVeigh scouted for explosives. His records states he was discharged from National Guard duty early, and before the Camp Grafton cameo. According to a U.S. Defense Department record, McVeigh held a DOD Secret Clearance that did not expire until May 11, 1995. The OKC bombing was on April 19,1995.

The FBI’s PATCON plan was to infiltrate and discredit right-wing militia movements in the 1990s. In fact, a four-page teletype letter written by FBI Director Louis Freeh (1993-2001) — a federal document obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request — contained several references to an FBI undercover operation at Elohim City before the bombing. With this teletype and for the first time, there clear evidence that an informant operation was conducted by attorney Morris Dees’ organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The teletype repeatedly refers to “OKBOMB subject Timothy McVeigh” as well as “BOMBROB subjects.”

When the “militia” undertook bank robberies, McVeigh proclaimed, “Everyone was impressed when I was able to secure the radio frequencies for the FBI and ATF.” The Major provided these to him, he said.

Several individuals besides McVeigh were involved in the bombing. In fact, McVeigh’s truck bomb was deemed ineffectual for the type of blast rendered. This is well covered in “The Noble Lie” -view minutes 01:04:00 to 01:22:00.” McVeigh states that John Does Nos. 2 and 3 were Michael Brescia and Richard Guthrie, along with a German, one Andreas Strassmeir, heading the so-called Aryan Republican Army’s (ARA) military wing.

McVeigh’s defense attorney Stephen Jones stated that there were six to eight core individuals involved in the plot.

Par for the course and shades of the Pentagon on 9/11, CCTV video footage of McVeigh’s truck in front of the Murrah Building “is missing.” The public was told that four cameras in four locations went blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995. The FBI claims the security cameras did not record just prior to the blast or during the blast, because “they had run out of tape” or “the tape was being replaced.”

One interesting aspect of all the tapes is that they suddenly begin recording again right after the 9:02 a.m. blast. Yet, there is no footage of the truck pulling up to the building, parking or of the multiple passengers exiting the truck, as seen and attested to by a number of eyewitnesses, who can be viewed in the “Noble Lie” documentary.

Hammer’s book discusses a huge trail back to others, but the government never pursued them for the OKC bombing. Therefore, one could conclude that most of this “violent lethal militia” story was facade of co-intel agents and “criminal informants.” They were taken down for bank robberies and other crimes.

One of the John Does, Guthrie, was found dead in a Kenton County, Kentucky, jail cell on July 12, 1996. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging, but the circumstances were suspicious. The other Doe, Brescia, who was 25 years old at the time of his sentencing, received a term of five years for bank robbery.

Hammer offers his own theory: “These weren’t just informants. They were criminals, committing criminal acts, sometimes, apparently, while in their capacity as informants.”

Members of the ARA, working in groups, were responsible for robbing at least 22 banks in seven different states from January 1994 to December 1995. They stole at least $250,000 during their robberies.

The FBI began investigated links between the ARA and the OKC bombing. But FBI records demonstrating this fact were hidden and not discovered until years later, when attorney Jesse Trentadue uncovered them.

Hammer writes that whenever he suggested to McVeigh that he may have been set up as a patsy, McVeigh would get very angry (at Hammer).

McVeigh revealed he was handled $50,000 to begin his mission of hobnobbing with other agents and informants at militia meetings and gun shows. When he penetrated the Elohim City group, the joke was that there were more co-intel agents than real militia, so much so that it was known as “Alphabet City”. Was Elohim City little more than a deep state creation?

In the lead up to the April 19, 1995, OKC bombing, federal law enforcement was receiving ample intel about what was being planned.

McVeigh commented to Hammer on his bomb assembling, drug dealing and bank robberies: “The feds are like Keystone cops. They can’t do shit unless they have some informant doing their job for them. I was all across the country doing these jobs.”

McVeigh thought Andreas Strassmeir was working for some “other entity.” Stassmeir was a very unusual character. He was the son of Günter Strassmeir who was Chief of Staff to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Strassmeir joined the German army and, after 7 years, became a lieutenant in the Panzer Grenadiers. He left the German Army in 1988. He was a member of an evangelical Christian church. By his own account, he lived for a time in a kibbutz in Israel.

Mainstream media had little to say about him, which is unusual given the multiple claims that he worked for the FBI. He returned to Germany soon after the OKC bombing. J.D. Cash wrote in the McCurtain Gazette that a highly placed FBI official had confirmed that Andreas Strassmeir was a paid government informant and agent provocateur sent to infiltrate Elohim City.

In 2009 in response to a FOIA on Strassmeir, the CIA reported that it had found 26 documents. The CIA refused to turn the documents over, however. Here’s why: The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which reviewed the documents at CIA request, advised that releasing them “could cause grave damage to our national security.”

McVeigh purchased a “bulk load of meth” from Strassmeir in Elohim City. He distributed it to expand his criminal network and used some personally. A number were speed freaks. The people McVeigh tried to recruit were little more than a criminal gang posing as a militia patriot group.

“These guys were, for the most part, lifetime fuck ups, not trained and disciplined soldiers ready for action anytime or anywhere.” McVeigh said. “They seemed to be a lot of talkers.”

McVeigh’s evaluation of ARA members was very different. “Those guys, even Langan, were well disciplined. Ask yourself this: How did they get that way? Fuckin’ practice,” he told Hammer.

Subsequent research by Hammer and his people on the outside revealed that many of the fuck ups McVeigh tried to ensnare in the bomb plot thought McVeigh was a government agent, which he was.

At a March 17, 1995, meeting in Las Vegas, The Major introduced McVeigh to a man he referred to as “Poindexter.” According to McVeigh, Poindexter was The Major’s choice for building the bombs. Bombs plural. There would be more than one. McVeigh told Hammer he selected Brescia as the main person to assist him in delivering the truck bomb to the target.

Reporter J.D. Cash verified McVeigh’s claims that he met with Strassmeir and Brescia on April 8. Cash was the first reporter to discover the existence of at least five dancers at Lady Godiva’s strip club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who identified all three men as being in the club that night.

According to McVeigh, the Ryder moving truck seen by eyewitnesses parked at Geary State Park in Kansas (near Junction City) for a few days was a decoy. The truck was purposely placed there in plain sight. McVeigh said that Brescia drove the newly painted decoy from Tulsa to Junction City.

The Daily Telegraph also ran an interview with an eyewitness named Connie Smith, who said, “I kept telling them that the man in the (John Doe II) sketch was that Mike guy, a nice-looking guy, dark-skinned. But the FBI made me feel guilty, then ignorant, as if I didn’t know what I was saying. Then, later, I tried to call in with more information, and they wouldn’t even talk to me.”

What Actually Happened at OKC

After the bomb was assembled by Poindexter at the warehouse in OKC, The Major, along with his associate, Roberto, who McVeigh had met two years earlier in New Jersey, arrived. As McVeigh and The Major talked, Roberto walked up behind Poindexter, who stood admiring his work, and, in one swift motion, “cut his throat from ear to ear.”

McVeigh recalled, “I jumped, but The Major placed his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Soldier, he was only hired help, not one of us.'”

McVeigh and Roberto loaded the body into the Ryder truck with the bomb. After the bombing an unmatched lower left leg was found in the rubble. McVeigh placed a padlock on the door of the truck’s cargo bay and they all left the warehouse.

Note: Hammer in the interview said he had some doubts about the Poindexter part of the story.

McVeigh learned from The Major that other members of the elite unit had installed C-4 explosives inside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in order to insure maximum damage from the explosion.

When McVeigh was arrested on the highway while driving back to Kansas, his act was in full gear. He was wearing a T-shirt bearing a picture of Abraham Lincoln on the front and with presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth’s words “sic, semper, tyrannis” printed on it. The back of the T-shirt featured a picture of a tree with red blood droplets, along with this Thomas Jefferson quotation: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

McVeigh went on to say, “I was never trying to escape capture. My arrest was all a part of the mission. The bombing had to land squarely at the feet of someone involved in the anti-government movement. I left a paper trail that even a blind man could follow.

Was McVeigh Really Executed?

McVeigh told Hammer and Paul that he believed that his execution would be faked. He even went so far as to say his handlers had a drug that closely simulated death, and that he would be revived. Hammer has no idea if “the Major” threw McVeigh under the bus when the time came. If so, McVeigh wouldn’t be the first patsy to face such a fate, nor the last.

The execution did have some dicey aspects. Several eyewitnesses said they saw no signs of actual death, and that he was covered from chin to toe with a sheet. He didn’t want an autopsy, and his ashes were reportedly turned over to his lawyers after a quick cremation.

﻿

If Timmy was revived, would he have been recycled for other in-your-face black-ops assignments?