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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Judgment Day Nears For Nichols Trial Kicks Off Monday For Mcveigh’s Friend; Prosecution Says Key Is Anti-Government Views

Maurice Possley Chicago Tribune

In August 1992, Terry Nichols sent a handwritten letter to a township clerk in Evergreen, Mich. renouncing his right to vote.

“There is total corruption in the entire political system from the local government on up through and including the President of the United States, George Bush.”

Eighteen months later, on March 16, 1994, just after moving to work on a farm near Marion, Kan., Nichols mailed an affidavit to county officials giving notification that he was not subject to the laws of the U.S. government, which he called a “fraudulent, usurping octopus.”

As jury selection begins Monday in the trial of Nichols on charges he conspired with Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, prosecutors hope to use these and other anti-government writings of Nichols in weaving the fabric of the man.

In obtaining the conviction and death sentence for McVeigh earlier this year, U.S. Justice Department prosecutors relied heavily on McVeigh’s anti-government views to establish a motive for the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people and injured more than 500 others.

But while McVeigh’s views appeared to be strongly influenced by his experiences in the military and the politics of survivalism, the evolution of Nichols’ hatred for government authority appears to stretch back to his days on the farm in Michigan.

“Mr. McVeigh and Nichols did not just wake up one morning and agree to bomb a federal building,” prosecutor Sean Connelly declared at a pretrial hearing last month. “We intend to show the background thinking of Mr. Nichols.”

While much of the evidence presented in the trial of McVeigh, which ended last June, will be similar, other evidence will be quite different in the trial of Nichols, who faces the death penalty if convicted.

Though charged in the same indictment, Nichols, a former Army buddy of McVeigh’s - they enlisted on the same day - has remained in the shadows of the more vitriolic McVeigh.

Michael Tigar, the University of Texas law professor who is Nichols’ lead defense lawyer, has hammered repeatedly at a major theme of his approach to the case: “Terry Nichols wasn’t there.”

As far as Nichols’ anti-government views, Tigar puts it bluntly, saying, “They don’t have any evidence that Terry Nichols ever threatened anybody with violence.”

Unlike McVeigh, Nichols will offer an alibi for the morning when the 2-ton truck bomb shattered the Alfred P. Murrah federal building: that he was home in Herington, Kan., where he, his second wife and young child had moved several months before the explosion.

Prosecutors, led by Justice Department lawyers Larry Mackey and Beth Wilkinson, are armed with statements made by Nichols to FBI agents before and after his arrest just two days after the bombing.

The prosecution contends that Nichols implicated himself during the interrogation carried out in the Herington police station.

The key statements, according to the prosecution, include Nichols’ claim that he and McVeigh were in Oklahoma City near the Murrah building before the bombing, that he lent his pickup to McVeigh the day before the blast and that he cleaned out a storage locker at McVeigh’s request the day after.

In a pre-trial hearing last month, prosecutor Sean Connelly gave a succinct summary of the government case, alleging Nichols: purchased 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer; assisted in the purchase of other bomb components; with McVeigh, burglarized a quarry to obtain explosives; robbed a gun dealer as a “fund-raiser” to finance the conspiracy; drove to Oklahoma City to help stash the get-away car; and helped construct the bomb.

Two incidents are likely to receive considerable focus in Nichols’ trial.

The first, according to prosecutors, occurred on Sept. 28, 1994, two days before Nichols moved out of the Marion, Kan., farmhouse where he had spent the previous six months working as a hired hand.

That was when thieves broke into a storage locker at the Martin Marietta Aggregates quarry in Marion and made off with several cases of explosives and hundreds of blasting caps. FBI agents found a Makita drill in Nichols’ home and say that tests show it was that drill that was used to destroy a brass padlock on the shed.

Tigar contends that the FBI testing of the tool marks on the drill was inconclusive and that shavings found in the drill do not match the lock.

The second incident occurred Nov. 5 when an Arkansas gun dealer, Bob Moore, reported that he was robbed of more than 60 rifles and pistols, gold coins, silver bars and nearly $10,000 in cash. The prosecution contends the robber was Nichols and that the valuables were used to finance the purchases of racing fuel and fertilizer to make the bomb, as well as to pay for motels and storage lockers.

Born in rural Michigan on April 1, 1955, Nichols was an average student whose classmates predicted he would be a lawyer. But after his parents divorced, he and his brother James stayed close to the 160-acre farm his mother bought in 1975 for $48,000.

They experimented with organic crops and exchanged pamphlets about the illegitimacy of the federal government. They married sisters.

But in 1988, with his marriage crumbling, Terry Nichols joined the Army. That’s where he met McVeigh, and though Nichols left the military less than a year later, they remained friends.

That friendship, according to the prosecution, evolved into a conspiracy that resulted in the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil.