Communications breakdown

Hints not shared in Oklahoma City bombing?

John Solomon
Associated Press

Two federal law enforcement agencies had information before the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing suggesting that white supremacists living nearby were considering an attack on government buildings. However, the intelligence was never passed on to other federal officials in the state, documents and interviews show.

[...] But federal investigators said that they had no information about a specific target and had not even heard of McVeigh until his arrest, making it impossible to issue a useful warning.

It turns out that the FBI had been concerned that white supremacists associated with Elohim City in Oklahoma might make some kind of terrorist attack on April 19, 1995, as one of their "heroes", Wayne Snell, was being executed that day.  Snell, along with two others, had been planning an attack (which was never launched) on the Alfred P. Murrah building - using plastique explosives and rocket launchers - in 1983, and were arrested 2 years later for the murder of a pawn broker.

Official reports indicate that no connection was ever found between Timothy McVeigh - who used a fuel and fertilizer bomb to destroy the Murrah building on April 19, 1995 - and Elohim City, but it seems more than a bit coincidental that he would choose to destroy the same target Snell has planned to attack on the day of Snell's execution.  In addition, this page from the ADL, indicates that McVeigh had contacted someone within Elohim City, and that

Prior to the attack, at least one corrections official claims that he heard Snell bragging that an attack would take place on the day of his execution, and even correctly predicted that the initial response would be for people to assume that it had to be Middle Eastern terrorists who had caused the explosion.  In addition, the ATF had received reports that people within Elohim City were discussing attacks including assassinations and bombings.

ATF documents show the informant provided agents with fragments of practice explosives detonated by Elohim City members and had suspicions about a possible target. "It is understood that ATF is the main enemy of the people of EC," one report states. ATF offices were in the building McVeigh struck with a truck bomb.

Despite the warnings and concerns, however, very little information was shared between the agencies, or with the local agencies in Oklahoma City.  At one point, the ATF had planned a raid on Elohim City, but the FBI called it off.  Later, the FBI agent in charge at that point stated that "At the time, they hadn't told me everything they apparently knew."

However, the thousands of pages of federal investigative memos and handwritten notes obtained by the Associated Press portray government miscommunications that mirror the intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Sadly, even though there was evidence following the OKC bombing that a lack of interagency cooperation and miscommunications may have prevented law enforcement from detecting and potentially stopping the plot to bomb the Murrah building, it's apparently little was done in the seven years between that tragedy and the WTC and Pentagon attacks to improve communication or cooperation. 

One would think that shouldn't be a lesson we would have to be taught twice.