Congressman calls off bombing hearing

[estranged4life]

Californian says witnesses are unwilling

The Oklahoman/NewsOK.com

By Nolan Clay
Staff Writer

A California congressman said Tuesday he called off plans to have a subcommittee hearing on the Oklahoma City bombing because of problems getting witnesses to appear.

U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said the subcommittee will issue a report in December instead.

"We have had an extensive investigation," he said. "We are still following through on a few leads right now, trying to track certain people down."

The Republican is chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the U.S. House International Relations Committee. He will lose that position when Democrats take over Congress in January.

Rohrabacher and two subcommittee investigators have been looking into whether there was a foreign connection to the 1995 bombing. Rohrabacher met last year with convicted bombing conspirator Terry Nichols in prison. The congressman also traveled to the Philippines as part of the investigation.

Nichols was in the Philippines a few months before the bombing. Nichols' second wife is from there.


Talk of Nov. 15
The congressman announced in June he wanted to have a hearing in the fall. Aides at one point talked of holding the hearing Nov. 15.
"There are a significant number of witnesses that we would like to have been able to convince to ... testify," Rohrabacher said from California. "But we have been unable to, in some cases, locate them. In other cases, some of them are afraid to step forward. ... There are a number of them that would be crucial to ... at least a thorough examination of the issue of a foreign involvement."

In a March memo about his plans for a hearing, Rohrabacher wrote of a possible al-Qaida connection to the bombing. He also wrote of the possibility of the involvement of a German national who once stayed in Elohim City in eastern Oklahoma.

"There is ample reason to disbelieve the official version of this horrific crime," Rohrabacher wrote then. "It is up to us to begin setting the record straight."

Rohrabacher said Tuesday, "We talked to hundreds of people and have reached some conclusions that ... will be shared with a report."

Bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed in 2001 and always insisted only Nichols helped him.

Nichols denied publicly for years that he participated in the bombing but admitted his involvement last year to the FBI, his family and Rohrabacher.

Nichols, 51, was convicted at federal and state trials for his role and is serving life in prison at a maximum-security penitentiary in Colorado.

Nichols recently complained that prison officials have blocked his attempts to speak on CBS' "60 Minutes" and MSNBC.

"I do have substantial evidence and information that clearly reveals the involvement of ‘others unknown' and federal government cover-up," Nichols wrote Nov. 8 in an affidavit,

The affidavit was made public by a Utah attorney, Jesse Trentadue, who is doing his own review of the bombing case.