WASHINGTON FBI suspected McVeigh link with Aryan bank robbers

Potential evidence found at the robbers' Ohio hideout was destroyed.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI believed Timothy McVeigh tried to recruit additional help in the days before the deadly 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and gathered evidence that white supremacist bank robbers may have become involved, according to government documents never introduced at McVeigh's trial.
The retired FBI chief of the Oklahoma City investigation, Dan Defenbaugh, said he was unaware of some evidence obtained by The Associated Press and that the investigation should be reopened to determine whether the robbery gang was linked to McVeigh.
The evidence never shared with Defenbaugh's investigators or defense lawyers includes documents showing the Aryan Republican Army bank robbers possessed explosive blasting caps similar to those McVeigh stole and a driver's license with the name of a central player who was robbed in the Oklahoma City plot.
"If the evidence is still there, then it should be checked out," said Defenbaugh, who reviewed the documents at the request of the AP. "If I were still in the bureau, the investigation would be reopened."
The bombing killed more than 160 people, and McVeigh was put to death for it in 2001. His co-defendant, Terry Nichols, will stand trial in Oklahoma next week on state charges that carry the death penalty.
What robber said
Peter Langan, one member of the robbery gang, told the AP he plans to testify at Nichols' trial and that federal prosecutors several years ago offered and then withdrew a plea deal for information he had about the Oklahoma City bombing.
Langan said at least three fellow gang members were in Oklahoma around the time of the bombing and one later confided to him that they had become involved.
The gang "had some liability problems as it related to Oklahoma City," Langan alleged in a phone interview from federal prison where he is serving life sentences for the robbery spree involving nearly two dozen Midwest banks in the 1990s.
McVeigh's ex-lawyer said the evidence obtained by the AP is the strongest to date to show what he has argued for years -- that the bombing conspiracy may have involved more people than McVeigh and Nichols.
"I think these pieces close the circle, and they clearly show the bombing conspiracy consisted probably of 10 conspirators," attorney Stephen Jones said. "They [government officials] simply turned their backs on a group of people for which there is credible evidence suggesting they were involved in the murder of 160 people."
FBI and Justice Department officials declined comment, citing the upcoming trial.
What agents said
Agents who worked both the McVeigh bombing and the bank robbery spree -- two of the FBI's highest priority cases of the 1990s -- said they suspected a link between the two because of physical evidence as well as statements made by the robbers and a girlfriend.
The agents said they ruled out a connection when the bank robbers denied their involvement and provided an alibi showing they left Oklahoma three days before McVeigh's bomb detonated outside the Alfred P. Murrah federal building April 19, 1995.
That alibi, however, was contradicted by information Langan offered prosecutors and by car sales records showing the bank robbers were still in the Oklahoma area after they claimed to have left, FBI documents show.
Defenbaugh said his investigators never were told about the license, the blasting caps or problems with the robbers' alibi, and he first learned of them from the AP this year.
He and other agents said there could be plausible explanations for each -- blasting caps are plentiful and the bank robbers were experts in identification fraud -- but those questions needed to be answered.
FBI officials couldn't explain why certain information from the robbery investigation wasn't shared with Defenbaugh's team, even though the two teams worked together closely.
McVeigh in 1994 stole from a quarry hundreds of construction blasting caps, some which he used to explode the Oklahoma City bomb. The FBI spent months unsuccessfully trying to locate many of the other stolen caps.
Agents collected witness testimony that McVeigh had placed some of the extra caps in two boxes wrapped in Christmas paper in the back of his car along with mercury switches and duffel bags.
One electric and five nonelectric blasting caps were found in the Aryan Republican Army robbers' Ohio hideout in January 1996, along with mercury switches, a duffel bag and two items described as a "Christmas package," FBI records show.
Rather than analyze the caps as evidence, the FBI allowed firefighters to destroy them at the scene.
The destruction "in itself was in total violation of the FBI's regulations and the rules of evidence," Defenbaugh said.
"If there was Christmas wrapping paper, that should really have been a key to people. That should have keyed interest, and caused them to be compared by the laboratory to see if these were from McVeigh."