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Saturday, April 2, 2005

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  "The information so far indicates the items have been there since prior to the Oklahoma City bombing," Agent Gary Johnson said in a telephone interview from Oklahoma City.

Nichols, who is serving multiple life prison sentences on federal and state charges, hasn't lived at the property for years, and FBI officials said the tipster provided information that Nichols had buried the evidence.

One of Nichols' attorneys said Friday the discovery was either a hoax or a major failure by the FBI to find all evidence after searching the home numerous times.

"They were there often," said attorney Brian Hermanson, who represented Nichols in last year's Oklahoma state murder trial that ended with Nichols' conviction. "It's surprising. I would think they would have done their job and found everything that was there."

"But I'm still suspicious that it could be something planted there. The house was empty for several years and if somebody wanted to put something there to incriminate Terry they had plenty of time to have done it," Hermanson said.

Johnson said the FBI was still searching the property and trying to determine whether the explosive materials might be connected to the bombing.

He said FBI officials received recent information that led to the search but that the source and origins of the information were still being investigated.

FBI agents went to the property Thursday night and then summoned a bomb squad after finding the potentially dangerous materials, spokesman Jeff Lanza said in Kansas.

Lanza said the material was buried in a crawl space under about a foot of rock, dirt and gravel and the area hadn't been searched during the original investigation.

"Depending on the situation, that's something that may not necessarily be searched, especially given the fact that there was no information there was anything in there, and even if you searched the crawl space at that time and dug through the rock and rubble you wouldn't find anything until you went at least a foot down," he said.

Lanza said the tip indicated that "Nichols was responsible for hiding these devices" and "we are operating under the assumption that Terry Nichols put them there."

Nichols and McVeigh, who was put to death for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing, had used blasting caps, fertilizer and fuel to make the bomb that killed 168 people at the federal building in that city on April 19, 1995.

The search and discovery came less than three weeks from the 10th anniversary of the bombing, which was the deadliest terror attack in American history before Sept. 11, 2001.

Georgia Rucker has owned the home since 1997 and rented it several times. She said Thursday the last tenant was evicted in October and she had been preparing the home for sale.

Rucker said she was contacted by two FBI agents Thursday and gave permission for authorities to search the premises. She said she was told they had information that explosive material was in a crawl space of the house, which has a half-basement.

She said she had noticed a small door to the crawl space was ajar in recent days but wasn't concerned because someone had been working on the furnace system.

Last year, the FBI ordered a review of some aspects of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing investigation after a series of Associated Press stories identified evidence that the lead investigator in the case said had never been shown to his team.

The evidence raised questions about whether a group of white supremacist bank robbers might have had some connection to the attack.

© 2005 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Editor's note: