Murrah bombing survivor says feds involved in blast that killed 168 in '95

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RDR: Murrah bombing survivor says feds involved in blast that killed 168 in '95
By Andrew W. Griffin - April 19, 2010 11:37 AM

Red Dirt Report, editor

Posted: April 19, 2010
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OKLAHOMA CITY – While Oklahoma and the rest of the world respectfully remember the 168 people who died in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building here in Oklahoma City, one survivor of the April 19, 1995 blast, Jane Graham, wants her questions about what really happened that day answered once and for all.

Graham, a native of Chicago who was working for the HUD office on the ninth floor of the Murrah building that morning told Red Dirt Report that there were a lot of strange things going on in the weeks leading up to the bombing, things that she shared numerous times with federal agents, things she felt were ignored. This included the presence of maintenance workers she did not recognize, military people in the parking garage and more unusual activity.

But one of the key figures – the bomber himself – Timothy McVeigh, was spotted in the federal building on a number of occasions.

“It was a couple of weeks before the bombing. I had seen McVeigh in the building prior to the bombing, around the first week of April.”

McVeigh, Graham said, rode up in an elevator with her while she was heading to her office one morning.

“He was in military fatigues,” Graham told Red Dirt Report. “I looked at him and said ‘hi’ and he simply looked straight ahead. He got off on the sixth floor. I turned to someone else on the elevator and said, ‘Well, he’s certainly not very friendly.”

Another time, Graham said, he was in the elevator again and got off on the ninth floor, where the Secret Service and BATF offices were located.

Another unusual event, Graham recalled, was on Friday April 14, 1995. She said she parked in the Murrah parking garage and she noticed three men standing together on the south side of the parking area. One of the men was holding what looked like floor plans. She said at first she thought about the recent phone problems that had been plaguing the building and problems with gas fumes in the area.

“I watched them carefully,” Graham said. “They were standing behind a light green station wagon, like an old Country Squire wagon. It was filthy and I couldn’t see the plate on it.”

As she watched the three men, one of whom was wearing dark clothing and two wearing short sleeves and jeans, one of the men held a sack and “a roll of what appeared to be telephone wire.”

“They were watching me and I was watching them,” she said, noting that the tall man – “a good looking man,” as Graham described him – walked to the north side of the lot. She said she thought this man was Andreas Strassmeir, known as “Andy the German,” a German white supremacist linked with the bombing and the racist Elohim City compound out in Adair County.

Graham said the other two men “looked like military.” They had that military bearing, she said.

Fast-forward to the day before the bombing, Graham said she was running late to work and as she came downstairs she ran into two men in General Services Administration uniforms, one of whom was older and was asking the other man “how does this work?”

She did not recognize these men and thought their presence curious.

She also said she was approached by a man who identified himself as an "FBI agent”* who wanted to know about the men. She also said Trish Nix, one of the 168 victims, had allegedly asked Graham if she had “seen the bomb squad” outside, noting they were in the parking lot of the nearby Catholic Church.

“No, I haven’t seen them,” Graham said she responded. Graham said Nix then said, “I think they’re in the building.”

Graham said she went on to a Windows ’95 computer training meeting and that once she got settled is when all hell broke loose.

“Everybody beneath your desk, it’s an earthquake,” Graham said the class was told.

“I thought, ‘this is not an earthquake,’ Graham recalls thinking. “The next thing I knew, was a huge explosion. I felt the floor rise up underneath me. I looked up in the air and could see the roof suspended in the sky. Then there was black dust and it smelled like sulfur … a lady next to men and another men said ‘we’ve got to get out of here.’”

Disoriented, Graham said the smoke was thick and black. She managed to make her way out of the building, all the while thinking of the children in the day care center located in the building.

“I told someone, ‘The children in the day care, we’ve got to get them out.’” But Graham was told to keep on moving on out of the building and told to go to Robinson street.

Graham said the rest of the day she was in a daze. She was trying to get help and later get cleaned up because she felt as if she had fiberglass all over her body.

Graham said a post office employee, who worked at the post office across the street from the Murrah building, told her that “the bomb detail with dogs” had been patrolling the area near the building. However, this worker, Graham said, was warned not to talk about what she sad or she would lose her post office job.

One thing the postal worker told Graham is that McVeigh and “John Doe 2” had been in the post office.

Graham said that as a survivor and one with information, she wanted to help the investigators have as much information as possible. But as she shared her story, about the fatigue-wearing McVeigh figure, the mysterious men inside the Murrah building and in the parking garage, she was largely ignored if it did not follow the official story involving McVeigh and the Ryder truck bomb.

“I was stonewalled,” Graham said. “No one wanted me to draw a picture, take a look at a picture or describe him.”

Added a clearly frustrated Graham: “Never to this day did I hear from anyone.”

Graham said her co-workers who survived largely don’t want to believe the government was involved in the bombing.

Graham, meanwhile, has her strong suspicions about the government and their complicity. She said her father was the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO labor organization in Chicago and when he was asked if he wanted to lead the group, he said he would have more influence controlling the funds.

“It’s all about power and control,” Graham said, adding, “This has nothing to do with a foreign government. I am utterly convinced the ATF and the FBI are involved in the bombing of that building.”

She said they will not admit complicity mainly because “they don’t want to open themselves up to a liability suit.”

*Correction: This originally read "CIA agent." The interview subject said it was a man who was an "FBI agent." Red Dirt Report regrets the error.

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