David Andrews Wrote: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 is a FOIA request for O'Neill documents that I've crafted from one of my existing requests. The fourth paragraph indicates 'I am a member of the Constitution First Amendment Press Assocation', which I am, but if you were going to file this you'd want to remove that and just say you are a 'citizen journalist' or simply 'a historian.'
I doubt it would produce anything, the FBI is notoriously bad in fulfilling FOIA requirements for OKBOMB with one judge referring to the FBI's behavior in an OKBOMB FOIA lawsuit as 'shoddy conduct.'
Possibly worth sending though:
------------------------------------------------
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Attn: FOIPA Request
Record/Information Dissemination Section
170 Marcel Drive
Winchester, VA 22602-4843 foiparequest@ic.fbi.gov
Dear FOIA officer,
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S. C. § § 552 et seq, I am requesting the following:
All documents/records[1] from the FBI's OKBOMB investigation in which the relevant documents/records were produced by, signed by, or contain the name of FBI Special Agent John O'Neill.
To clarify this request, when I say OKBOMB,' I am referring to documents contained in FBI File No. 174A-OC-56120 specifically.
In order to help to determine my status to assess fees, you should know that I am a reporter and member in good standing with the Constitution First Amendment Press Association, and the material requested is part of an educational and information-gathering research endeavor that is not intended for commercial purposes. I request a waiver of all fees for this request.
Finally, please confirm receipt of this request.
Thank you,
[1] As used in this request, the term "documents/ records" means written, printed, typed, graphic or photographic matter of any kind or natureincluding but not limited to FD-302' reports, Inserts', Teletypes' and 1A's. Also included within the term "documents/records" is electronically stored informationsuch as writings, notes, drawings, graphs, charts, photographs, video recordings, sound recordings, images, and other data or data compilations-stored in any medium from which information can be obtained either directly or, if necessary, after translation by the FBI into a reasonably usable form.
Maybe the lies have an element of truth: maybe O'Neill sent Coulson to OKC ahead of the bombing/failed controlled demolition.
It's like why FEMA scheduled a disaster exercise in New York in the week of 9/11: because the real thing was on the agenda.
Once upon a time, before I knew I was going to be writing about this, I saw on the internet pictures of FEMA men in the North Tower after the plane hit, with rifles strapped on, barrels down, under their yellow FEMA-marked ponchos. The site suggested they were Army disguised as FEMA. I wonder if those pix are still kicking around, maybe on one of the more extreme 9/11 sites like Killtown or Let's Roll.
Thanks for the continued info. O'Neill is almost everybody's saint of choice now that he can't be questioned.
You know the FOIA releases on O'Neill available on Black Vault, right?
It's personnel records, heavily sanitized, no disciplinary records related to his lost briefcase, no mention of the July 2001 New York Times story on the incident and the threatened future stories questioning his personal finances.
I don't think "Somebody had it in for him" as much as "He overplayed his role and now under the new administration's agenda he has to go." So in that sense, he was perhaps seen as a loose cannon and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Why else couldn't they kick him upstairs or trust him in the same cooperative role for a couple more years? Possibly he too much wanted to build an executive career on shouting, "It's UBL!" when he could do the same thing better disgraced and dead.
David Andrews Wrote:Maybe the lies have an element of truth: maybe O'Neill sent Coulson to OKC ahead of the bombing/failed controlled demolition.
It's like why FEMA scheduled a disaster exercise in New York in the week of 9/11: because the real thing was on the agenda.
Once upon a time, before I knew I was going to be writing about this, I saw on the internet pictures of FEMA men in the North Tower after the plane hit, with rifles strapped on, barrels down, under their yellow FEMA-marked ponchos. The site suggested they were Army disguised as FEMA. I wonder if those pix are still kicking around, maybe on one of the more extreme 9/11 sites like Killtown or Let's Roll.
Thanks for the continued info. O'Neill is almost everybody's saint of choice now that he can't be questioned.
Well, to my thinking, I believe that Coulson was there for PATCON and that PATCON is linked, in some way, to the Oklahoma City bombing. I believe McVeigh was in contact with one or more PATCON assets and one of them may have served a role as a provocateur, encouraging him. John Doe #2 disappeared real quick. Because John Doe #2 was probably an informant.
At the time Coulson wrote his book (1999), O'Neill was still alive. So presumably Coulson probably asked him if it was okay to "say you called me" when O'Neill probably knew full well Coulson was in OKC that morning and might well have been there himself if there was a major PATCON meeting going on. If O'Neill was connected to VAAPCON he could have been connected to PATCON as the two were related. VAAPCON was started primarily because of how successful PATCON was at the time. It was a spin-off of PATCON.
David Andrews Wrote:Maybe the lies have an element of truth: maybe O'Neill sent Coulson to OKC ahead of the bombing/failed controlled demolition.
It's like why FEMA scheduled a disaster exercise in New York in the week of 9/11: because the real thing was on the agenda.
Once upon a time, before I knew I was going to be writing about this, I saw on the internet pictures of FEMA men in the North Tower after the plane hit, with rifles strapped on, barrels down, under their yellow FEMA-marked ponchos. The site suggested they were Army disguised as FEMA. I wonder if those pix are still kicking around, maybe on one of the more extreme 9/11 sites like Killtown or Let's Roll.
Thanks for the continued info. O'Neill is almost everybody's saint of choice now that he can't be questioned.
Well, to my thinking, I believe that Coulson was there for PATCON and that PATCON is linked, in some way, to the Oklahoma City bombing. I believe McVeigh was in contact with one or more PATCON assets and one of them may have served a role as a provocateur, encouraging him. John Doe #2 disappeared real quick. Because John Doe #2 was probably an informant.
At the time Coulson wrote his book (1999), O'Neill was still alive. So presumably Coulson probably asked him if it was okay to "say you called me" when O'Neill probably knew full well Coulson was in OKC that morning and might well have been there himself if there was a major PATCON meeting going on. If O'Neill was connected to VAAPCON he could have been connected to PATCON as the two were related. VAAPCON was started primarily because of how successful PATCON was at the time. It was a spin-off of PATCON.
I added some stuff up above on O'Neill FOIA releases already available online.
Another version of the Coulson lie: John O'Neill is the guy to which every virtue can be attributed, because he's the hard-charging dead hero whose records are never released, on the grounds of sparing him and the Bureau embarrassment.
David Andrews Wrote:Maybe the lies have an element of truth: maybe O'Neill sent Coulson to OKC ahead of the bombing/failed controlled demolition.
Possibly. I believe that Danny Coulson is one of the good guys. He, unlike any other FBI agent, has been outspoken on the Oklahoma City Bombing stating that John Doe #2 exists, and that 24 witnesses saw him. He also said some things happened in OKBOMB that were 'improper.' I don't believe that Coulson would have gone to OKC ahead of the bombing if he knew a building was going to be bombed.
However, he might be in town if there was a scheduled sting operation that went sideways. It's entirely possible that there was a sting operation going on, or there were informants inside the OKC bombing plot, and some darker forces hijacked that sting operation and made it 'go big.'
Just speculating here, but let's just say that the OKC bombing involved a truck bomb outside and Semtex or C4 planted on columns inside. Let's say that the C4 was put there to 'make sure' the thing was big, but many involved in the sting operation had no idea there were explosives in the building.
Following the 9:02 AM detonation, the FBI would be forced into cover-up mode to cover-up their sting, to cover-up PATCON, because if it got out people would all blame the FBI for the bombing.
I'm not able to come to a solid conclusion on John O'Neill. To me, he seemed like a guy who was really dedicated to finding actual terrorists like Ramzi Yousef. Also, O'Neill made enemies among 'bad guys'. SA Pickard was a bad guy and he had it in for O'Neill. You seem to think he might have been a bad actor, a bad guy here? I don't know enough about him to comment on that.
This is my opinion on some of the FBI guys involved in OKBOMB:
Larry Potts - A 'bad actor'. See Ruby Ridge, Waco
Bob Ricks - A 'bad actor'. See Ruby Ridge, Waco
Danny Coulson - Good guy. See the April 19th, 1983 raid on the Covenant, Sword, arm of the Lord. He got them all to surrender, no deaths. Also see: Ruby Ridge. Coulson stated that the 'charges against Weaver are B.S.' and that it was wrong to have shot his son and wife, on Ruby Ridge Coulson is 100% right
John Hersley - Hatchet man, cover-up artist. Lies to protect other agents, lies to cover-up John Doe #2
Danny Defenbaugh - A 'paper pusher' and a bureaucrat 'cover-your-ass' management type. Ineffective, sycophant to HQ
Then you have a ton of street level agents who were good agents just doing their job interviewing people. e.g. SA John Elvig, SA Mark Bouton
But the fact that the top 2 guys (Potts, Ricks) are really really dirty makes me suspicious as hell. And how John O'Neill fits into this I'd definitely like to know more about. You raised a question no one in the OKC bombing research community has ever talked about before.
David Andrews Wrote:Another version of the Coulson lie: John O'Neill is the guy to which every virtue can be attributed, because he's the hard-charging dead hero whose records are never released, on the grounds of sparing him and the Bureau embarrassment.
Coulson's lie was 1998 though -- before O'Neill died and became this 'truther martyr' type. So I think there is more to it. I think that Coulson had to have asked John O'Neill "hey, can I say this about you in my book?" and that the two probably knew each other, and O'Neill let him use his name in order to cover up PATCON or VAAPCON.
Coulson may have known John from the Baltimore office and he certainly would have known him if O'Neill was assigned to VAAPCON, Coulson would have read his reports or reviewed VAAPCON material as chair of the undercover review committee.
I think it was a friend helping a friend hide something that both had a hand in.
I find it rather suspicious that there would be no documents in the FOIA release on Black Vault that are from the OKBOMB investigation if O'Neill was a part of it. It's possible that 174A-OC-56120 wasn't searched in Greenwald's search. As I understand it the OKC bombing has a specific separate file and is stored in a separate location from standard FBI cases. It would not automatically be searched in an open search asking for anything about O'Neill unless specified, probably.
Still might be worth filing a request for anything from 174A-OC-56120 (okbomb) with O'Neill's name on it.
I also wonder how much O'Neill was involved in the Richard Jewell thing. I don't know much about that investigation other than whomever the hell wanted to blame this guy was really off-base and it's an outrage. Also, if O'Neill worked VAAPCON, the Atlanta Park bombings fall right under that because the actual perp, Eric Rudolph, was in fact an abortion clinic bomber. Would be interesting to know if O'Neill was a part of the Richard Jewell investigation and if so, what position he took.
Sorry -- didn't notice the pre-2001 pub date on the Coulson book. Don't know what to tell you on the lie.
The Richard Jewell thing was one of their stupidest moves. If they didn't have some unfathomable tactical reason for making that accusation, I don't know how they thought they were going to make that stick against that poor guy, based on the evidence reported.
