The OKC Bombing thread: Surveillance Camera Footage

[Richard Booth]

FYI, Clint Eastwood has a Richard Jewell movie coming out. Just don't expect revelations:

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/10/clint-...202180000/

John O'Neill is mentioned just once in On Scene Commander by Weldon Kennedy. Not really any information worth anything, but here it is, page 222. Looks like O'Neill was working under ADIC Bear Bryant as a Deputy Assistant Director over counter-terrorism and participated in regular conference calls with the principals. I find it interesting that Weldon Kennedy does not mention Bob Ricks in this part, given Ricks was the Assistant Director (Larry Potts)'s man in OKC at the command post. If I were to guess I would suggest that Weldon Kennedy, like Danny Coulson, didn't have a very high opinion of Ricks. While Weldon Kennedy and Coulson were known as self-made street agents who worked hard, Ricks was a bureaucrat and apparatchik at the FBI who threw people under the bus and managed to bungle his way out of the FBI via Ruby Ridge and Waco, and probably, too, improper activity in the OKBOMB investigation which Danny Coulson alludes to having happened. Anyway, here is the excerpt from Weldon Kennedy's book:

I had learned through experience that in any major case there are bound to be leaks, and Oklahoma City was no exception. There's not much one can do about it. We could only warn people and plead with them to hold the information close, not to disseminate it. But after all was said and done, when a case is this intense, there are going to be people who will leak information. Purposefully.

Leakers think, "Hey, I'm on the inside and I really, really know what's going on! Boy, I attended a meeting! Let me tell you what they were talking about." That's really juicy stuff: inside information from someone who participated in the discussion. Even though the journalist doesn't quote the source, the leaker stills feels important, I suppose, though of course I can't say for sure what their motivations are. There are some instances when leakers have had a long-time association with a particular newsperson or feel comfortable discussing things with that newsperson, and believe that they won't be betrayed or double-crossed.

In these conference calls Louie, Janet Reno, the director of the U.S. Marshals, the DEA administrator, the head of the Secret Service, and the heads of the relevant agencies had people from their staffs who would be in attendance and be free to participate. It was also assumed that they would report back to their bosses about what happened. I certainly knew a lot about reporting back to headquarters. I was having several conference calls a day with Washington, giving a briefing of what was taking place. On the other end of the line were: the director; the assistant director in charge of counterterrorism, Robert Bryant; his deputy assistant director, John O'Neill, who perished on 9/11 in the World Trade Center; the deputy director at the time, Larry Potts; and the general counsel, Howard Shapiro. And these were just the principals. There were a lot of other people on the line, too. However, it was not assumed that the contents of our briefings would be on CNN or the networks an hour later, as was sometimes the case.

The leaking became a constant nuisance, as you can imagine, but it came to a head when I made trip to Kingman, Arizona, where a major part of the investigation was being conducted, only to come across something very disturbing. A Phoenix FBI agent approached me and asked, "Boss, have you seen this?" No, I certainly had not. In my hands, though, I was now looking at the source of many of these tremendous leaks. Without my knowledge, ATF reps in Oklahoma City were sending a summary document to their headquarters about each of our meetings. And without the reps' knowledge, ATF headquarters was disseminating the document daily to all ATF offices across the United States.


Kennedy, Weldon L.. On-Scene Commander: From Street Agent to Deputy Director of the FBI (pp. 221-223). Potomac Books. Kindle Edition.

Here is a photograph of Weldon Kennedy holding the FBI sketch of 'John Doe #2'