Army Of Agents Trying To Find ‘John Doe No. 2’ Fugitive Believed To Be Second Man Who Rented Van For Bombing

As the nation joined President Clinton on Sunday in mourning the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI pressed a widening but often frustrating investigation that carried it deeper into the shadowy world of ultra-right-wing paramilitary organizations.

The president, addressing not just those at the memorial service in Oklahoma City but also a national television audience, urged Americans to recognize the “duty to purge ourselves of the dark forces which give rise to this evil.”

“Justice will prevail,” he promised.

In a day of hopes raised and dashed in the search for those responsible, a small army of federal and other law enforcement agents continued its still-unsuccessful search for “John Doe No. 2.”

He is suspected of being one of the two men who rented the 1993 Ford van that became the instrument of the worst incident of domestic terrorism in U.S. history - the destruction last Wednesday of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

What appeared briefly to have been a major break in the case, the arrest of a soldier believed to be absent without leave from Fort Riley, Kan., turned cold by day’s end. The soldier, identified as David Iniguez, was seized at a home in Muscoy, Calif., and briefly was believed to have been John Doe No. 2.

The one suspect under arrest, Timothy J. McVeigh, had served at Fort Riley, but officials later said they had been unable to connect Iniguez to the case.

At the same time, federal agents were seeking a 38-year-old janitor in Michigan, Mark Koernke, for questioning. They have been told that Koernke, leader of a small paramilitary splinter group, and McVeigh once plotted to use explosives to sabotage a National Guard camp in Michigan. They also want to question Koernke about a fax he may have sent to a Texas congressman shortly before the Oklahoma blast. The memo contains what investigators think may be oblique references to the Murrah building.

Officials said that at this point, they want only to talk to Koernke and cautioned that this lead - like others - could come to nothing significant.

While the focus of the day was on the memorial service, investigators, working in Oklahoma City, Washington and such corners of small-town America as Herington, Kan., tried to piece together the shards of evidence which will tell them not only who was involved in the blast but also whether they were just the more visible elements of a broad attack on the federal government.

By Sunday evening, four days after a combination of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil exploded Wednesday morning, the FBI had arrested McVeigh, suspected of having rented the Ryder van with the so-far unidentified second suspect, while two men, Terry Lynn Nichols and James Douglas Nichols, brothers with whom McVeigh has been linked, were being held as material witnesses.

On Friday, Terry Nichols drove up to the tiny police department in Herington, Kan., approached Police Chief Dale Kuhn and said, according to Kuhn, “My name is Terry Lynn Nichols and my name is on the TV. I want to find out what’s going on.”

Nichols and his brother, who are in federal custody, were wanted for questioning because of their close links with McVeigh, who had served in the Army with one and worked for the other.