Witness Sticks To Story Says She Lied About Mcveigh Out Of Fear

Lori Fortier, a principal witness for the prosecution in the Oklahoma City bombing trial, stood her ground Wednesday during four hours of cross-examination by Stephen Jones, the lead defense lawyer for Timothy McVeigh.

Through his questions, Jones sought to portray Fortier, 24, as a drug user and a liar who once hoped she and her husband could make big money by selling book and movie rights to their version of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.

In her answers Wednesday, Fortier admitted taking drugs. She admitted lying about McVeigh soon after the attack, out of fear, she said, that she and her husband would be implicated. But “I never had any interest in selling my story,” she said.

Fortier is testifying under a grant of immunity in the trial of McVeigh, who is charged with murder and conspiracy. His co-defendant, Terry Nichols, will be tried later.

Fortier’s husband, Michael Fortier, was an Army buddy of McVeigh’s and one of his closest friends. Starting at the end of 1993, McVeigh was a guest in the spare room in the Fortiers’ trailer in Kingman, Ariz., for weeks at a time.

Fortier testified Tuesday that on a visit in October 1994, McVeigh told the Fortiers he planned to destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City with a truck bomb made from fertilizer and racing fuel. The next day, she said, he piled soup cans on the floor to show how he would stack the barrels to make the bomb.

As time passed, Fortier told the lead prosecutor, Joseph Hartzler, McVeigh also told the Fortiers how he had stolen and bought components for the bomb. And he took Michael Fortier to look at the targeted building.

“Did you ever consider saying, ‘Get this man out of our house. I don’t want to see him again’?” Jones asked Fortier Wednesday.

When she answered “Yes,” he asked, “Did you?”

This time, her answer was “No.”

Fortier calmly answered Jones’ questions about the box of explosives her husband cleared out of the spare bedroom after the bombing. She acknowledged that there were dozens of blasting caps, fuses, binary explosives, electric matches and detonators. She and her husband, she said, asked Fortier’s brother Rick to keep the box because “they were explosives Mr. McVeigh gave us.”

Did she know why her husband had kept them, Jones asked.

She said she did not.

When the Fortier trailer was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation two weeks after the bombing, Fortier said, the couple still had five guns that had been stolen from an Arkansas gun dealer known to her only as Bob, who is actually Roger Moore of Royal, Ark. McVeigh, she said on Tuesday, was angry that the robber had not killed Bob.

Their own friendship with McVeigh went sour a few weeks before the bombing, Fortier said Tuesday, when Nichols wanted no more part in the plot and her husband refused to help McVeigh with his getaway. McVeigh, she said, had asked to be picked up at the airport in Las Vegas, and driven to a place in the Arizona desert. Her husband said no, she testified, and after that they were both afraid of McVeigh.

What about her insistence to her family, her friends, the media and the FBI in the weeks after the bombing that McVeigh was innocent, Jones asked Fortier again and again Wednesday.

“I lied,” she said.