McVeigh "Confession" a Ruse (RMN)

[Lisa Arren]

Rocky Mountain News (Denver)
5 Mar 97

JONES HELPED CRAFT 'CONFESSION'
-McVeigh's top lawyer defends concocting document
in bid to get far-right radical to talk

By Kevin Flynn and Lou Kilzer
Rocky Mountain News Staff Writers

Timothy McVeigh's defense attorney said Tuesday that he helped
devise McVeigh's phony confession as part of a ruse to get a militant
racist to talk to a defense investigator.

Stephen Jones said he and his staff researched the legal ethics of using
a fabricated story with potential witnesses and concluded it was within
bounds.

Jones cited federal case law as justifying the use of a ruse to get a
witness to talk.

"This bombing isn't some white-collar criminal defense case involving
people at a country club,'' Jones told the Rocky Mountain News. He
said the attempt failed to produce useful information from the witness.
Jones wouldn't identify the person interviewed and declined to say
whether the phony confession actually was shown to the person.
But a source who helped Jones' emissary make the contact said it was
Louis Beam of Texas.

Beam is one of the nation's most prominent far-right radicals. He was
acquitted of sedition in a 1988 trial that resulted in part from the
show host Alan Berg. The News couldn't reach Beam for comment.
Beam is a leading writer on "leaderless resistance,'' a concept of
waging
war against a tyrannical federal government through small cells of
fighters without a formal organizational structure. That is to help
insulate
leaders when one cell is caught in illegal activity.

The FBI and Jones' own investigators have looked into whether McVeigh
may have been part of a leaderless cell.

Dennis Mahon, a leader of White Aryan Resistance, said he helped a
freelance journalist, J.D. Cash of Idabel, Okla., contact Beam. Cash
has published articles suggesting a wide conspiracy in the Oklahoma
bombing.

Cash traveled with Jones' investigator, Richard Reyna, to Lake Tahoe
last April to meet with Beam, Cash told the News. Cash said he and
Reyna met separately with Beam, but he doesn't know whether the
investigator showed Beam the "confession.''

"I wasn't involved when (Reyna) ran the scam with this particular
document,'' Cash said. "But I knew about the document and what its
purpose was.''

He said he doesn't know whether the confession was designed for Beam.

The defense first planned to have Reyna contact Beam through Jack
Oliphant, who had a ranch near Kingman, Ariz. McVeigh lived for a
time in Kingman. It is not known whether they met.

Oliphant's ranch was home to the survivalist Arizona Patriots, raided in
1986 by police in an investigation of a bombing conspiracy.
Before he could help Reyna meet Beam, Oliphant died on Nov. 25,
1995, and Cash stepped in.
---

Rocky Mountain News
6 Mar 97

RACIST FIGURE TARGETED BY PHONY McVEIGH CONFESSION TO PULL BACK
by Kevin Flynn


Louis Beam, the racist figure for whom the phony confession of
Timothy McVeigh was meant, says he is pulling back from the
movement because of health concerns and to spend more time with his
family.

In a recent posting on Beam's home page on the World Wide Web, the
outspoken advocate of "leaderless resistance'' against the federal
government said his health is declining because of exposure to Agent
Orange during his Vietnam service.

The Rocky Mountain News disclosed Wednesday that Beam was the
man the McVeigh defense team hoped to interview.

The News also reported that the purported confession of McVeigh first
disclosed last week was meant to make Beam think the defendant was
accepting all the blame for the Oklahoma City bombing.

Beam is the prime spokesman for "leaderless resistance,'' a concept of
civil struggle that calls on individuals to band together in small cells
that
carry out acts of terrorism outside a formal organization.

FBI and defense investigators have pursued the theory that the
Oklahoma bombing was the work of such a cell.

While the defense has declined to confirm that Beam was the man for
whom the McVeigh "confession'' was crafted, attorney Stephen Jones
acknowledged that the interview produced nothing useful to the
defense.

Beam hasn't responded to the News' requests for comment.

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