A former investigative reporter for the NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City last night told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly she has gathered massive evidence of a foreign conspiracy involving Saudi terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in the 1995 bombing of the federal building that killed 168 people.
Jayna Davis, former reporter for KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, says she took her evidence -- including hundreds of court records, 24 sworn witness statements and reports from law enforcement, intelligence and terror experts -- to the FBI, which refused even to accept the material.
Two men were convicted of murder and conspiracy charges in the bombing -- Timothy McVeigh, who faces execution May 16, and Terry Nichols, who yesterday asked that Oklahoma charges against him be dismissed as he has already been convicted in federal court.
Nichols, 45, is serving a life prison sentence for his federal conviction on eight involuntary manslaughter counts and conspiracy for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. State prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Nichols. But defense attorneys said yesterday constitutional protection against double jeopardy bars the state from seeking the death penalty.
Davis said federal authorities investigating the bombing decided early on in the probe that the blast was the result of a domestic conspiracy, not a foreign one, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
She said a Middle East terrorist cell was in operation only blocks from the federal building, and that an Iraqi national who formerly served in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard was in contact with McVeigh the day of the bombing. She said this suspect arrived at the crime scene in a Ryder truck moments before the blast and sped away in a brown Chevrolet pickup truck immediately after.
An all-points bulletin was issued for this suspect, but was later withdrawn inexplicably.
Davis said her evidence indicates a conspiracy involving McVeigh, Nichols and at least seven men of Middle Eastern ethnic background. She called bin Laden the mastermind of the conspiracy.
"The evidence we have gathered definitely implicates McVeigh and Nichols," she said. "I want to make that very clear. They were in it up to their eyeballs."
Davis also points to court records offered in the Nichols defense that suggest he had contacts with a member of bin Laden's terrorist organization in the Philippines prior to the bombing.
When she took her hundreds of pages of documentation of conspiracy in the bombing to the FBI, Davis said agents "turned me away and refused to take my statements."
"I was flabbergasted," she told O'Reilly. "I am unable to imagine any reason they would not accept it."