FBI orders re-opening of Oklahoma City questions

Friday, February 27th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI on Friday ordered a formal review of some aspects of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing investigation, reopening the question of whether Timothy McVeigh may have had more accomplices in the worst domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history, The Associated Press has learned.

Reacting to an AP story earlier this week, the FBI ordered agents to determine why some documents did not properly reach the bureau's Oklahoma City task force during the original investigation or get turned over to McVeigh's lawyers before he was executed in 2001, officials said.

The review of evidence and documents will also try to determine whether FBI agents in a separate investigation of white supremacist bank robbers may have failed to alert the Oklahoma City investigation of a possible link between the robbers and McVeigh.

AP reported Wednesday that documents never introduced at McVeigh's trial showed FBI agents destroyed evidence and failed to share other information that raised the possibility that a gang of white supremacist bank robbers may have assisted McVeigh.

The April 19, 1995, bombing killed more than 160 people and McVeigh was put to death for it in 2001. His co-defendant, Terry Nichols, will stand trial in Oklahoma next week on state charges that could carry the death penalty.

Nichols' attorneys asked Thursday for the trial to be delayed in light of the AP story, but the judge refused.

The evidence includes documents showing the Aryan Republican Army bank robbers possessed explosive blasting caps similar to those McVeigh stole and a driver's license with the name of a central player who was robbed in the Oklahoma City plot.

The documents don't prove additional accomplices were involved -- blasting caps are plentiful and the gang was expert in document fraud. But the FBI agent who ran the investigation, Dan Defenbaugh, said his team never got the chance to investigate the evidence and he called for the probe to be reopened.

Government officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the review will be handled by the FBI's inspection division, a unit of senior agents that routinely conducts reviews to ensure the bureau follows its own rules and conducts investigations properly.