Bombing suspect Terry Nichols and his brother James may have learned about explosives on the family farm, but they did not learn radical right-wing politics at home, their father says.
Terry Nichols, 40, and Timothy McVeigh, 27, are the only two people charged in the April 19 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people and injured more than 500.Nichols' brother James was arrested as a material witness. He was later indicted on unrelated explosives charges and released on bail.
"They're not right-wing, they're not radical, they weren't brought up that way," Robert Nichols told The Associated Press on Tuesday in a telephone interview from his Imlay City, Mich., farm.
Federal officials have said the bombing was motivated by extreme anti-government sentiment. The FBI found anti-government literature at Terry Nichols' Herington, Kan., home and James Nichols' farm in Decker, Mich.
Searches of Terry Nichols' farm also yielded fertilizer, fuel oil and detonator cord, materials like those that officials say were used to build the 4,800-pound bomb.
Terry Nichols has said he had no part in the attack, Robert Nichols said.
The elder Nichols said his sons learned the basics of such explosives by watching him blow up stumps on the family farm.
"I don't specifically remember instructing them how to do it, but then I don't know that anyone ever specifically instructed me how to do it," he said.
Robert Nichols speaks with his son in prison occasionally, most recently last weekend, he said.
Terry Nichols said he is strip-searched at least once a day and moved each day to a different cell in an otherwise empty wing of the Federal Correctional Institute in El Reno, Robert Nichols said.
"I don't understand how that judge could feel that a person who could voluntarily surrender and tell what he knew could be a flight risk," he said.
Robert Nichols said he had met McVeigh before but had no opinion on whether he was involved in the bombing.
"When I saw him, he was a clean-cut young man," he said.
In other developments:
- A senior federal official said the Justice Department is looking into allegations grand jury information has been leaked to reporters. Attorneys for McVeigh and Nichols have said government officials are leaking information damaging to their clients.
- James Nichols is asking that the conditions of his release from federal custody be lifted. His attorney filed motions Monday in Detroit asking that Nichols no longer be required to wear an electronic tether and to live with friends in Snover, Mich.