Word: fortier
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...joined the Army, serving as a tank gunner. He became close friends with Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, but otherwise kept to himself. Comrades remember that he talked paranoically about the Federal Government and the threat that it would take guns away from American citizens. In the Gulf War he made two clean kills, once knocking an enemy soldier's head off his shoulders like a cue ball. McVeigh bragged often about that shot. Then, on the second day of a 21-day tryout for the Green Berets, McVeigh quit, and soon left the Army altogether...
...drifted, living in motels, visiting Fortier and Nichols. According to Stickney, McVeigh took methamphetamines, and he began to frequent gun shows. The prosecution hopes to show that during that period he became more and more bitter about the Federal Government. When the FBI raided the Branch Davidian compound on April 19, 1993, precisely two years before the Oklahoma bombing, McVeigh was outraged. In March of 1993, he made a pilgrimage to Waco that, by chance, another visitor recorded on video. Sources tell TIME that photographs show McVeigh near Waco handing out bumper stickers that asked, IS YOUR CHURCH ATF APPROVED...
...government's star witness, McVeigh's friend Michael Fortier, is not discussed in the brief. But sources tell TIME he will say that he accompanied McVeigh to case the Murrah building and that McVeigh told him he wanted to blow it up. Fortier's wife Lori, these sources say, will admit she helped McVeigh make the phony "Robert Kling" driver's license that McVeigh used to rent the Ryder truck...
...explosives were detected on his clothing and in his car. Prosecutors will argue that McVeigh and Nichols stashed the fertilizer in rented storage facilities, then mixed and assembled their bomb in a park near Nichols' farm. To clinch its case, the prosecution does have one star witness: Michael Fortier, another Army buddy of McVeigh's arrested in connection with the case. Last summer Fortier cut a deal to testify against his friend in return for lesser charges. He says he and McVeigh cased the Murrah building several months before the bombing...
...conduct his case in a less grandiose fashion, playing down Nichols' involvement in the plot without constructing a worldwide conspiracy. After hearing on the radio that he was sought for the crime, Nichols turned himself in and allowed agents to search his farm, a fairly grave mistake. But Fortier told investigators that McVeigh asked him to join the plot after Nichols got cold feet. And while prosecutors have significant evidence that he took part in the planning stages, no witness has so far placed Nichols at the scene...