The OKC Bombing thread: Surveillance Camera Footage

[Richard Booth]

I will keep my eyes open for anything from the Atlanta field office if that's where O'Neill worked.

I'm just interested in O'Neill's possible involvement in the OKC investigation since Murray Weiss refers to it but does not reveal anything. The obvious initial connection would be O'Neill's pre-1995 domestic terrorism investigations...but if there's more than that to discover....

Before you asked about that I had never thought about it, but it makes sense given his expertise in terrorism. So it was a really thought provoking question and made me wonder exactly what O'Neill might have done in OKBOMB. Then you read the stuff that exists that attributes involvement in OKBOMB to O'Neill and it's really sparse, really vague. We have an obit that says he "helped coordinate information" and then that story about the trinket he was given.

Another place John O'Neill is mentioned is in the opening pages of Danny Coulson's book 'NO HEROES'. Coulson writes that early Wednesday morning April 19th, 1995, he received a phone call at home from John O'Neill in D.C., telling him about the bombing, and saying he needs to get to Oklahoma City. (This is important--first, it's a lie. Second, discerning WHY he lied about this I think is very important, and why he used John O'Neill's name is also probably important)

The problem with Coulson's story about getting a phone call from John O'Neill to tell him to get to OKC is that it's entirely made-up: Danny Coulson was in Oklahoma City the morning of the bombing. He checked into his hotel at 12:20 A.M. -- 20 minutes after midnight. He probably was out of bed by 7:00 AM, maybe earlier. So Coulson was in OKC for a highly sensitive subject---why else lie about it? And why inject a lie that O'Neill called him at home? What is the truth?

We know that Coulson's story about the O'Neill phone call is a lie because journalists obtained Danny Coulson's motel receipt dated April 19th for an Embassy Suites in Oklahoma City dated 4/19 time stamped 12:20 A.M. I'm sure that a lot of conspiracy theorists would look at that and say "ah-ha! look! he was there because OKC bombing was a false flag" but I think that things are more complex than that, many shades of grey--honestly that conclusion isn't supported by the facts. So I'm skeptical of that conclusion. However, there must be a conclusion -- why was Danny Coulson in Oklahoma City 9 hours before the bombing? Why did he subsequently LIE about this, inventing a story, for his book?

According to J.D. Cash (now deceased), a journalist with the Oklahoma newspaper 'The McCurtain Gazette', Coulson was in Oklahoma City in relation to VAAPCON.

Cash wrote that FBI documents indicate that Coulson was there for 'major case 111' which was a part of VAAPCON. Accordingly, a May 16th, 1995 document written by Coulson states that he was in Oklahoma City for MC-111, and uses the bureau's official case number for the VAAPCON associated case.

Interestingly, journalists attempted to get the travel vouchers from the FBI for agents Coulson and Larry Potts and the FBI claimed that they were "missing." Willing to bet that if the SAIC of Dallas and chairman of the undercover committee were in Oklahoma City there would be other agents of his level there too, for the same purpose. That's why journalists wanted to find out if Larry Potts was there too.

Now, put this in your pipe and smoke it:

What if Larry Potts and Danny Coulson were both in Oklahoma City on April 19th, 1995 not for VAAPCON, but for PATCON? PATCON was designed to investigate people identical to Timothy McVeigh---they were infiltrating organizations and attempting to buy explosives, to buy stolen night vision goggles, attempted to purchase a STINGER missile, trying to incite people, trying to infiltrate militias. They gathered intelligence and they also provoked people into illegal activities. In that respect PATCON was very, very sensitive. It still is, today. The PATCON documents I have show that in 1992 at least, this operation was highly dangerous involving undercover assets, pretending to belong to FBI-created front organization called 'the Veterans Aryan Movement', and these undercover assets were trying to get in good with the white supremacists. Sort of like FBI SA Joe Pistone and how he infiltrated organized crime, but on a much larger scale using multiple assets and informants.

What are the odds that Coulson and Potts would be in Oklahoma City on April 19th, 1995 nine hours before the OKC bombing, and were there for a program that targets specifically the very people McVeigh associated himself with?

Now, that's speculation, so let's just look at the things we know are facts:

• Danny Coulson lied about April 19th, 1995 in his book. Made-up story about how he heard about the bombing, received a call from John O'Neill, then drove in a rainstorm from Dallas to OKC.
  
• Journalists later uncovered Coulson's April 19th, 1995 12:20 A.M. hotel receipt showing he was in OKC 9 hours before the bombing
  
• Journalists attempted to obtain Coulson and Larry Potts' travel vouchers from 4/19, FBI said most of them are 'missing'
  
• One travel voucher was located -- for Coulson, which bills $1313.80 to Coulson dated 4/19. NOTE: If Coulson did drive his vehicle from Dallas to Oklahoma City on 4/19, that's a 5 hour drive. He would arrive in OKC sometime around 3:00 PM. So his hotel check in should be time stamped sometime after 3:00 PM. Logically, he'd probably go check into his hotel room after going by the command post, at the end of his working day, right as he's headed to grab a shower and go to bed. So, probably sometime after midnight on 4/20
  
• Danny Coulson, as Special-Agent-in-Charge of the Dallas Office, would have received orders to go to Oklahoma City from Larry Potts, the man that Louis Freeh put in charge of the investigation. He wouldn't be ordered there by O'Neill. So why did Coulson lie and say it was John O'Neill who called him? Because he had to have an excuse for how he first heard about the bombing. He was there, I'm sure that within 15 minutes of the bombing happening he would have been aware of it, and he's already there, on-site.
  

So something secret was going on, on April 19th, 1995, in Oklahoma City nine hours before the bombing.

According to journalist J.D. Cash, he says Coulson was there for VAAPCON.

I believe that Danny Coulson was more likely in OKC on 4/19/95 for PATCON. If it was merely for VAAPCON, which has been disclosed and is public information, Coulson would have said more about it rather than writing up some totally contrived lie. VAAPCON isn't scandalous or in any way untoward so he could easily just say "yeah, we had a meeting scheduled for VAAPCON at the OKC office that day". But he doesn't do that. He crafts and elaborate lie that involves a phone call from John O'Neill rather than a phone call from who should have been contacting him that day, Larry Potts. Of course, had Couson and Potts both been in OKC that morning there was no phone call from anyone. They would both know what happened within about 15 minutes of it---you could hear it and see the smoke from the FBI building at 50 Penn Place and SA Hersley said that within 10-15 minutes they knew something had happened.

There are other reasons I suspect PATCON was why Coulson was there--you've got a probable PATCON asset working at Elohim City in Oklahoma who has made threats to bomb federal buildings, a german named Andreas Strassmeir. He and a white supremacist, Dennis Mahon, had 'cased' the Murrah building in late 1994 and the ATF's informant told the ATF this. So, the ATF has Strassmeir under an open investigation and was going to raid Elohim City and arrest this guy in the fall of 1994.

At that time, the ATF had a meeting with the FBI and OKC SAIC Bob Ricks advised the ATF that they need to call off their investigation and their raid. I believe that Ricks quashed the planned ATF raid because, unknown to the ATF, the FBI also had an ongoing undercover operation at Elohim City and the ATF's actions there were screwing with their operation: the ATF's target for their investigation, Strassmeir, is an FBI asset. So of course they don't want him arrested, or any sort of raid. He's collecting intelligence and it's valuable intelligence. So Bob Ricks quashes the ATF's planned raid at Elohim City because it was interfering with PATCON.

I wonder how John O'Neill fits into all of this, because Coulson chose to use his name in his fabricated story about how he heard about the OKC bombing. He claims O'Neill called him at home from D.C. So I wonder what the truth was. Was O'Neill also in Oklahoma City nine hours before the bombing? We know that O'Neill worked VAAPCON, and Coulson is supposedly in OKC 4/19 for VAAPCON. We also have journalists who are suspicious of Larry Potts and think that he might have been there too--that's why they were seeking his travel vouchers which came up 'missing'.

Were Coulson, O'Neill, and Potts in OKC on 4/19 for a PATCON operation in which an existing PATCON informant, Strassmeir, had advised them that something was going to happen on April 19th?

Was the PATCON team gearing up for a raid on 4/19/95 that had to be called off at 9:02 AM when the federal building was bombed? Bombed by a guy (McVeigh) who placed a phone call to the FBI's PATCON informant, Andreas Strassmeir, on April 6th 1995, McVeigh was then spotted with FBI's PATCON informant, Strassmeir, in Tulsa on April 8th. What was going on here? Did Strassmeir anytime after April 8th produce an intelligence report referring to McVeigh's upcoming plan? We know that on the night of April 8th, 1995, when McVeigh was spotted with Andreas Strassmeir at Lady Godiva's (strip club) in Tulsa, OK, McVeigh bragged to a stripper that 'on April 19th 1995 you'll remember me for the rest of your life'. If he spoke about the upcoming bombing to a total stranger, a stripper, would he have also spoken about it with FBI PATCON asset Andreas Strassmeir? You bet he would have.

Just some speculation here. However, it's warranted, because Danny Coulson lied about where he was on April 19th and he interjected John
O'Neill's name into that lie, which just makes me far more curious about when O'Neill spoke to any of the OKBOMB investigators and what about.

Your mentioning that O'Neill worked VAAPCON (I did not know that before you said it) also raises an eyebrow, given that was Coulson's excuse for being in Oklahoma City when he was confronted with the hotel receipt by journalist J.D. Cash. Cash did not attribute any quotes to Coulson in the story he wrote about how he was in OKC 9 hours early, rather, he cites an FBI document that Coulson wrote in May and a travel voucher dated 4/19 that both indicate Coulson was there for VAAPCON. Without context though I find it very suspicious and I find it suspicious that Coulson lied in his book

Here are two reports about Coulson having been in OKC nine hours before the bombing:
http://www.entrefilets.com/oklahom_fbi.htm

Here is Coulson's hotel receipt: