Word: mcveigh
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Meanwhile, a judge will have to rule on whether McVeigh and Nichols should be tried together, as the government wants, or separately, as lawyers for both men urge. Jones acknowledges that he and Michael Tigar, Nichols' attorney, are not working together but are following different strategies. In itself that is not surprising, since the accusations against the two are also somewhat different. The indictment asserts that the two worked together to buy explosives and then assemble the bomb, but that it was McVeigh who parked a van loaded with explosives outside the Murrah building and then detonated the bomb...
...which makes the horror that much more chilling. FBI officials say even if they had had the legal authority and had hired enough agents to infiltrate every extremist group in the country, they could not have prevented the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh and Nichols may have shared the government-hating ideology of many armed militias, but they were such fringe figures that even intense surveillance of organized militia groups would probably have failed to identify them as potential terrorists...
...make a striking picture for the TV cameras, Tigar sought mainly to disconnect Nichols from many of the events in the indictment. One sign proclaimed TERRY NICHOLS WASN'T THERE--"there" being the scene of the bombing. Another sign insisted that Nichols was out of the country when McVeigh and Fortier allegedly cased the Murrah building in December. That strategy, whatever it does for Nichols, will not be any great help to Jones in convincing a jury that McVeigh is innocent...
Nonetheless, the defense is certain to raise sharp questions. Couldn't Fortier have been indicted as a full participant in the conspiracy, and so face the death penalty, as McVeigh and Nichols will? In order to save his life, did Fortier agree to say whatever the government wanted him to say? Jones has pledged a blistering attack on Fortier's credibility, focusing on his statements on TV shortly after the bombing that he didn't think McVeigh had anything to do with it. Fortier has pleaded guilty to perjury for telling investigators roughly the same thing at about the same...
Exactly how the government got Fortier to agree to testify is not clear. But TIME has obtained a vivid account of how investigators persuaded McVeigh's sister Jennifer to provide the prosecution with two typewritten statements, even though she is fiercely loyal to her elder brother (she is 21, Timothy 27). Jennifer and her father William McVeigh agreed to the TIME interview under terms negotiated with Timothy McVeigh's lawyers that tightly restricted what could be asked. Thus Jennifer would not discuss what she had told the grand jury. But as to how FBI and other federal investigators had treated...