McVEIGH execution delayed for month after document foul-up

<br>WASHINGTON (AP) _ President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft are meeting over the weekend, certain to discuss the FBI's bungling of records in the Oklahoma City bombing, while Timothy McVeigh

Saturday, May 12th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) _ President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft are meeting over the weekend, certain to discuss the FBI's bungling of records in the Oklahoma City bombing, while Timothy McVeigh considers whether to appeal his conviction.

Ashcroft is joining Bush at Camp David Saturday. He had been invited to the presidential retreat in rural Maryland earlier this week, aides said.

Ashcroft put McVeigh's execution, scheduled for Wednesday, on hold for a month to give lawyers time to examine thousands of pages of evidence and investigative materials that should have been turned over to them when they were preparing for McVeigh's trial.

Bush said he was sure of McVeigh's guilt but did not want the government ``rushing his fate.''

McVeigh, on death row in Terre Haute, Ind., is now scheduled to die by lethal injection on June 11.

Attorney Rob Nigh described his client as frustrated and possibly reconsidering his earlier decision against challenging the execution order.

``He's distressed about this in that he knows the impact that it has upon his family and those who care about him,'' Nigh said after consulting with McVeigh.

Some victims said they were sickened, others resigned, after the dramatic turn of events in what is to be the first federal execution since 1963.

``It's like a big old clamp squeezing my gut,'' said Dan McKinney, whose wife was among the 168 people killed in the 1995 bombing, to which McVeigh has confessed. ``We have to wait 30 more days for something we have waited six years.''

McVeigh's defense team was handed 3,135 pages that the FBI should have provided more than three years ago during trial.

Retired FBI agent Danny Coulson, who worked on the case, told The Associated Press that many of the documents involved were generated from interviews on the day of the explosion and the day after _ when field offices were chasing leads all over the world about a possible ``John Doe No. 2'' suspect.

McVeigh lawyer Nathan Chambers said he was informed by a U.S. attorney of the documents' existence on Tuesday. Bush and Ashcroft both said they were not told of the problem until Thursday.

Complaining that 30 days was not enough time to study the mountain of paper, Nigh said McVeigh was now ``keeping all of his options open.''

Separately, Michael Tigar, lawyer for convicted conspirator Terry Nichols, who is serving a life sentence, told CNN he would file a new appeal for Nichols with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ashcroft, his back to the ticking mantle clock in a Justice Department conference room, said government attorneys studied the newly disclosed documents and concluded they did not contradict the 11 guilty verdicts returned against McVeigh for murder, conspiracy and using a weapon of mass destruction.

The attorney general, who decided last month to let victims and relatives of the bombing see McVeigh's execution on closed-circuit television, said he was now postponing the date ``in order to assure the American people that they have a right to have confidence in our processes.''

``If any questions or doubts remain about this case, it would cast a permanent cloud over justice,'' Ashcroft said.

During a news conference he sidestepped a question about whether the bungle had shaken confidence in the FBI.

``I regret that these steps which I have taken were necessary,'' said Ashcroft.

Chambers called Ashcroft's decision a public-relations attempt to restore public trust in the federal justice system.

``Regardless of the content of materials recently released, the most recent episode demonstrates in dramatic fashion why trust and confidence should be reserved,'' Chambers said.

McVeigh has said he bombed the Oklahoma City federal building to avenge the deadly FBI standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.

Bush, in a White House news conference, dismissed the notion that McVeigh might take the FBI foul-up in his case as justification for his anti-government rage.

``He should say he's lucky to be in America; that's what he ought to say,'' Bush said. ``This is a country that will bend over backward to make sure that his constitutional rights are guaranteed as opposed to rushing his fate.''

In Pendleton, N.Y., Bill McVeigh watched Ashcroft's announcement with a local television crew and confessed mixed emotions, saying he had been bracing all week for his son's execution on Wednesday.

``Now this,'' Bill McVeigh said. ``It's like starting over.''

FBI special agent Danny Defenbaugh, who led the Oklahoma City investigation, said that 28,000 interviews were conducted, and 23,290 pieces of evidence and 238,000 photos were gathered over the course of the inquiry. Defenbaugh said the problem came to light when the documents _ drawn from 45 FBI offices in the United States and one in Paris _ were being archived in December.

Ashcroft said he was instructing the inspector general of the Justice Department to conduct ``a careful study'' into what went wrong.

Coulson blamed a computer-filing glitch, saying the documents were keyed into FBI computers by field offices but not flagged or cross-referenced to the bombing case. ``I'm sure there's nothing there that changes the outcome of the case, but it makes the FBI look bad,'' Coulson said.

Nigh urged a moratorium on all federal executions, but Bush, who was governor of Texas while 152 inmates were put to death, reaffirmed his faith in the death penalty.

``Today is an example of the system being fair,'' Bush said.

``There is never going to be an end to the twists and turns,'' sighed Jim Denny, whose two children were injured in the 1995 blast. ``As long as justice comes in the end.''