Lawyer believes conspirators hold key to brother's death
The Salt Lake Tribune | December 5, 2007
By Pamela Manson
Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols says in a new declaration that a lawyer claiming to represent the U.S. Department of Justice offered to stop his trial on state murder charges if he admitted to alerting the FBI in a telephone call to the planned attack the day before it was carried out in 1995.
Nichols writes in his declaration - submitted Monday in a Utah lawsuit by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue concerning the death of his brother - that he never made such a call.
He also says he refused to meet the second condition of the "plea deal," which required him to implicate his brother in criminal activity, because that also was false.
The third alleged condition was to reveal the location of a box of tubes of nitromethane, which form part of the binary explosive Kinestik, that Nichols had taken from the home of Arkansas gun dealer Roger Moore.
That was the same type of explosive that bomber Timothy McVeigh said Moore had obtained for him, according to Nichols.
Nichols said he assumed the Justice Department wanted evidence to prosecute Moore and told the lawyer "that I could give him Roger Moore." The lawyer, however, essentially said "no deal" and told him that Moore was "untouchable," Nichols claims.
The "untouchable" statement is evidence that Moore was a government informant, Trentadue said, and that turning over requested documents could implicate the FBI in the bombing.
"Given this inherent conflict, it is hard to believe that any of these documents that most certainly exist will ever be produced," Trentadue wrote.
The declaration is the second by Nichols that Trentadue has filed to support his request for a court order allowing him to conduct videotaped depositions of Nichols and David Paul Hammer, who now is on death row at the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind.
The attorney believes the two men can provide valuable information about the death of his brother Kenneth Trentadue, who he believes was killed during an interrogation by prison guards who mistook him for a bombing conspirator. Trentadue claims that their testimony will show the FBI is withholding documents he requested under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
The FBI says it has made appropriate searches for the documents and that judges in FOIA cases lack the authority to order depositions.
U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball issued an order in September allowing the depositions, saying information from the two inmates might help Trentadue better identify the existence of other records pertaining to his FOIA request.
The government then asked the judge to reconsider. On Monday, Trentadue filed Nichols' declaration, dated Nov. 21, along with a brief opposing the request that Kimball reverse his order.
In another declaration, filed earlier this year, Nichols said a high-ranking FBI official "apparently" was directing McVeigh in a plot to blow up government buildings.
Both Nichols and Hammer - who submitted an affidavit earlier this year saying he had lengthy conversations with McVeigh during the 11 months the two were housed on the same tier at the Terre Haute facility say McVeigh claimed to be an undercover operative for the military.
The FBI has denied participating in the bombing or having any advance warning of it.
Melodie Rydalch, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Salt Lake City, said the government will respond in court to Trentadue's latest filing. Moore could not be reached for comment Monday night.
Nichols is serving a life sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo., for his part in the attack.
McVeigh, who carried out the bombing, was executed in 2001. Hammer was sentenced to death for the 1996 slaying of a fellow inmate at the U.S. Penitentiary in Allenwood, Pa.
Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue believes his brother was killed in a federal prison by guards who mistakenly thought he was connected to the Oklahoma City bombing.
Kenneth Trentadue, who had served time for bank robbery, was arrested on an alleged parole violation two months after the April 1995 attack that killed 168 people. He later was sent to a prison in Oklahoma City.
Guards found Trentadue's body in his cell on Aug. 21, 1995, hanging from a noose. Prison officials say the 44-year-old inmate committed suicide and have adamantly denied any wrongdoing in his death.
