Trader’s Tale Led To Bombing Suspects Informant Told Lawyer About Men With Weapons, Suspicious Plans

On a mid-August day last year, one of attorney Norm Gissel’s favorite clients telephoned, begging to see him right away.

Concerned, Gissel went to nearby Henry’s restaurant, where the nervous client told his attorney he knew the Spokane Valley’s elusive bombers.

Over a 90-minute lunch, the 40-year-old military surplus trader described repeated business dealings with three North Idaho men. The men had unusual right-wing religious beliefs, were amassing weapons and had shared suspicious plans with Gissel’s client.

“It was one of the most intriguing conversations of my life,” Gissel said.

That lunch forever altered several lives.

Today, the three men - Charles H. Barbee, Verne Jay Merrell and Robert S. Berry - are in jail, charged with doing exactly what Gissel’s client suspected. In separate incidents last year, bombs exploded at The Spokesman-Review’s Valley office and a Planned Parenthood clinic minutes before a U.S. Bank branch was robbed.

The three also are being investigated for possible links to the July 27 Olympics bombing in Atlanta. Gissel’s client told the FBI he sold one of the men a backpack resembling one used in that explosion.

The client is gone, vanished into a federal witness-protection program after cooperating with the FBI. Now he must find new friends, a new job, a new identity. His whereabouts are a mystery - even to Gissel.

“He said it was like winning the lottery in reverse,” Gissel said. “Everybody won but him.”

Gissel, who also leads North Idaho’s oldest civil rights group, talked Tuesday about his dual role as a spokesman against terrorism and a lawyer protecting a friend.

As president of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, Gissel has spoken against hate for years and tracked violent groups, like The Order and Phineas Priesthood.

“There’s definite irony there,” Gissel said. “There’s a sense of history and understanding.”

Gissel met his client nine years ago. The lawyer was hired to represent him in a real estate deal.

The two hit it off so well, Gissel joined his client a few times at surplus auctions at Fairchild Air Force Base.

“I’m a book fanatic and he told me there were lots of them there,” Gissel said. “He was right.”

According to federal court documents, Gissel’s client first met Berry at a Spokane gun show in 1992. Berry later introduced him to the other two bombing suspects.

Gissel’s client told the FBI that over the next four years he sold the suspects military fatigues, body armor, rolls of Kevlar, ponchos and night-vision goggles.

He also claimed to have sold the men parkas similar to the ones worn by robbers in video surveillance footage from the April 1 U.S. Bank robbery.

The three suspects also shared odd details of the Valley bombings with Gissel’s client, according to court documents. The robbers claimed to have put things in their hats to appear taller, burned their parkas in a yard after the July 12 Planned Parenthood bombing. One of them even told the client he painted a handgun black before the bank robbery that followed.

By midsummer - acknowledging interest in a $130,000 reward - the client was ready to pass those details on to authorities. He called Gissel, who informed the FBI.

Gissel’s client knew of the attorney’s role in fighting human rights abuses, but came to him merely because they’d had a professional and personal relationship.

“I can’t remember that we ever had a conversation about civil rights,” Gissel said. “It was just another odd coincidence.”

The FBI promised immunity, but Gissel maintains his client was not involved in the crimes. He also said the man did not share the suspects’ white separatist beliefs.

“I think it quickly became apparent to the FBI that this person didn’t do anything, that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Gissel said. “He acted against his own financial and personal best interest in coming forward.”

The reward money is “peanuts compared to what he’s lost,” Gissel said.

Gissel said his client knew almost immediately that he’d have to leave North Idaho. He even fretted about it before coming forward.

“I don’t know exactly when the epiphany hit,” Gissel said. “But we both foresaw what his future might be like, that it would be reasonable to expect he would have to uproot.”

Gissel said he won’t see his client again until the man testifies at the Valley bombing suspects’ trial. Afterward, he might never see him again.

“As an attorney helping a client through the most dramatic period of his life, it was a highly interesting experience,” Gissel said. “But for him, it’s very traumatic.”

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