Oklahoma Notebook

IRA connection?

LONDON

The IRA supplied the detonator used in the bombing of the U.S. federal building in Oklahoma City, The Sunday Telegraph reported, quoting documents filed by lawyers for chief suspect Timothy McVeigh.

The Sunday Telegraph said defense documents submitted to U.S. District Court in Denver, where McVeigh will be tried, allege that a neo-Nazi cell had been conspiring to blow up a U.S. federal building in early 1995 and had received assistance from Sinn Fein, described as “the Irish terrorist group.”

Sinn Fein is a legal political party allied with the outlawed Irish Republican Army, which has been fighting for more than 25 years to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, speaking in Belfast, said claims that the IRA supplied the detonator were “preposterous rubbish.”

The Sunday Telegraph, a respected conservative weekly, said the source of the allegations about Sinn Fein-IRA involvement in the Oklahoma bombing is Carol Howe, a white-separatist insider turned government informant who federal officials privately dismiss as unstable. Howe was indicted on March 12 in Tulsa, Okla., on unrelated bomb-threat conspiracy charges.

Wedding bells drown blast

OKLAHOMA CITY

Aren Almon cannot completely ignore the beginning of McVeigh’s trial, since the federal building blast killed the most important person in her life - daughter Baylee, whose little body appeared in photographs published around the world. The images of her 1-year-old body cradled in the arms of a firefighter became tragic symbols of the explosion that killed her and 167 others.

This spring holds more promise for Almon, 25, as she prepares for her marriage to Stan Kok, 26. There have been dresses to buy, invitations to order, a cake to order and 230 invitations to mail.

Yet inside her home, her loss is still evident with pictures of Baylee hanging on the wall next to a metallic angel.

Saying a mouthful

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.

Media analysts and news directors are calling the Oklahoma City bombing trial the most significant trial of the century.

But some network officials acknowledge privately that their McVeigh coverage won’t be as extensive as their O.J. coverage, although most are uncomfortable making the comparison.

“We won’t be providing wall-to-wall coverage,” said CNN spokesman David Talley. “This is an important case, and we will certainly provide coverage. But you can’t compare this to O.J. … With O.J., you had glitz and glamour and Hollywood and mystery and murder. And this is about domestic terrorism.”