Trial Going Forward Over FOIA Requests Concerning Oklahoma City Bombing

July 28, 2014 Houston Chronicle reports that a case is going forward concerning whether the FBI is withholding evidence:

He says the FBI won't release videos that show a second person was with Timothy McVeigh when he parked a truck outside the Oklahoma City federal building and detonated a bomb that killed 168 people.

The government says McVeigh was alone.

U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups sent the case to trial after remaining unsatisfied with the FBI's responses in the five years since the lawsuit was filed.

This is a very interesting case.  I was glad that McVeigh admitted his guilt in this matter because from reading the transcripts of his trial, it is pretty clear that the federal prosecutor failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that McVeigh did it.  There was certainly evidence that supported that claim, but it is was not spectacularly impressive, and McVeigh's defense attorney Stephen Jones did a spectacular job of poking big gaping holes in the government's claims.  Perhaps the most important is the questions raised about the leftover leg.  (Did 168 people die in this tragedy, or 169?  The leftover leg raised some serious questions.)

The claim that a second person was involved was based on eyewitness reports (which are often unreliable) and the FBI's initial attempts to locate a second person of interest (of Middle Eastern appearance).   There have long been questions about whether there might have been Iraqi involvement in this bombing.  McVeigh's partner, Terry Nichols was in a Philippines hotel at the same time as some of the people involved in the first World Trade Center bombing, such as Ramzi Youssef, and by some accounts, actually met with him.

I would love to know if there really was a second person with McVeigh when the bomb was delivered.  The spare leg might be all that was left of the guy.  One of those who testified at McVeigh's trial was the former medical examiner for Northern Ireland, who described a paper that he had published about a premature bomb explosion by the IRA that left eight bodies, and nine penises.  The owner of number nine was apparently blown to smithereens, leaving only one body part intact.