A lawyer alleging the FBI likely had advance warning of the Oklahoma City bombing has sued the bureau, claiming the agency is withholding information about his brother's death — which he claims is tied to the bombing investigation.
Attorney Jesse Trentadue claims the FBI has violated the federal Freedom of Information Act by refusing to turn over documents related to his brother's death in an Oklahoma prison in 1995.
The FBI responded to Trentadue's lawsuit by saying it has followed FOIA procedures and has asked U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball in Salt Lake City to dismiss the suit.
But to show that the federal agency has failed to do a proper search for the records he wants, Trentadue alluded to a FBI memorandum sent to members of a task force investigating the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, when 168 people died.
Although he specifically requested that memo, the FBI claimed it either did not exist or could not be located, Trentadue says in court documents.
Yet Trentadue, who does not say how he obtained a copy, filed with the court what he says is a print copy of a heavily edited electronic memo dated Jan. 4, 1996.
It is unclear who wrote the memo, which appears to have been sent to FBI offices in several cities. It states someone affiliated with the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights group, was at a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma about two weeks before the bombing, when one of the Oklahoma bombing suspects allegedly called looking for a co-conspirator.
The name of the caller is blacked out, but the person is described as one of the two indicted defendants in the bombing. The two defendants were Timothy McVeigh, who was executed in 2001, and Terry Nichols, who is serving a life sentence.
This information probably was relayed to the FBI before the bombing, the lawyer contends in a document filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court.
The FBI "in all likelihood" had advance notice of the Oklahoma City bombing plot but did nothing to prevent the attack, he claims.
The Department of Justice, which represents the FBI in the lawsuit, and the FBI declined comment on the memo.
Trentadue also believes the bombing investigation contains clues about his brother's death.
Former drug offender Kenneth Trentadue, 44, was being held on an alleged parole violation in a federal prison in Oklahoma City when guards found him dead Aug. 21, 1995, hanging from a noose made of torn bed sheets.
His bloodied and battered body raised questions about whether he was murdered or committed suicide.
Prison officials told the family he suffered several injuries when his first hanging attempt failed, then gouged his neck with a toothpaste tube before succeeding on a second hanging attempt.
His family insists he was killed and contend correctional officials destroyed evidence; authorities have denied the allegations. Several investigations also ruled the death a suicide.
Jesse Trentadue believes the FBI mistakenly suspected his brother was part of a gang that robbed banks to fund attacks on the government, and that authorities killed him "when things got out of hand" during an interrogation.
Trentadue also said he believes the FBI at one time was investigating whether the bank robbers were connected to the bombing.
FBI agents have said there was no connection between the six bank robbery gang suspects who were arrested and McVeigh and Nichols.
One agent, testifying in a state murder trial against Nichols last spring, said the only link was that the robbers had connections to an Elohim City, Okla., supremacist compound, and there was evidence McVeigh called there once.