The author of the following letter wrote a book that Salon writer David Neiwert criticized in his story.

I request a right of reply, since David Neiwert carried out a hit-and-run on a book I wrote four years ago about the corruption of the Clinton administration, and more importantly because he traduced those who have done the best work to get to the truth about the Oklahoma bombing,

Neiwert seems to want to have it both ways. He seems to fuel suspicion that the FBI has not come entirely clean about the Oklahoma bombing. In doing so he borrows heavily from the magisterium of documents and witness testimony collected by Oklahoma journalist John Cash and bombing victim Glenn Wilburn, whose two grandchildren died in the day-care center. He borrows, but he defaults on payment of the debt. Instead he pirouettes to kick them in the groin.

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None of us who have delved far into this case claim to know exactly who carried out the bombing, or why. We have merely present -- or rather presented -- evidence that the FBI did not tell the truth. I left America four years ago and have not followed the ins and outs of the Oklahoma story, but I must protest at the cavalier assertion that Carol Howe -- the ATF's undercover informant -- has been discredited. I know that a huge effort was made to discredit her after she emerged as the prospective star witness in the McVeigh trial. (Ultimately, Judge Matsch, who I regard as one of the central villains of this saga, refused to let her testify.) She was prosecuted on trumped-up explosives charges by the U.S. Justice Department, though the prosecutors knew perfectly well that the explosives in question had been given to her by the ATF in the first place as part of her federal government cover.

Fortunately, she was acquitted. It strikes me that she held up very well under the attack. As for her allegations, they are contained in official ATF and FBI documents that came to light as a result of legal discovery in the course of her trial. The documents speak for themselves. They reveal that she had penetrated a group of violent neo-Nazis bent on blowing up federal buildings in Oklahoma.

Neiwert says the FBI conducted 35,000 interviews. Perhaps he could explain why they did not interview a group of people with ties to McVeigh who were overheard by a paid [government] informant planning to blow up federal buildings, and who were already listed in FBI archive documents as having the technical capability of detonating large ANFO bombs.

And perhaps he could explain why the FBI intervened in February 1995 to stop these individuals being arrested by the ATF, when the ATF quite rightly decided it was time to stop them? It is not Carol Howe who has some explaining to do; it is the FBI. As a liberal magazine, I should have thought Salon would agree.

-- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

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