William F. Jasper, Senior Editor of The New American, interviews attorney Jesse Trentadue, Kenny Trentadue’s brother. In this interview Jesse reveals how he was led reluctantly to the conclusion that his brother’s death in jail was part of a government coverup of the truth about the OKC Bombing.
In an effort to get to the truth of the death of his brother, Jesse has filed a lawsuit against the FBI which lead to the shocking revelation that the CIA was also involved in the cover-up.
The lawsuit can be reviewed in the PDF located beneath the interview. It includes startling testimonies and evidence suggesting a government cover-up. The case remains sealed, which restricts Jesse from providing additional comments. The FBI is actively contesting this lawsuit and is taking extensive measures to obstruct the revelation of the truth.
This podcast is part of a collection of podcasts that have been taken down from their original platforms and are currently inaccessible. We believe that these interviews and presentations hold significant value and should be accessible for listening by a wider audience.
Transcript of this interview is at the bottom of the page.
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TRANSCRIPT
On April 19 1995, the Oklahoma City Bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah building killed covered 168 people and left hundreds of others injured. The New American Magazine has covered the OKC Bombing since day one. Publishing dozens of articles on the subject, most of which on our website, TheNewAmerican.com.
Mary Benoit: In our ongoing investigation into this horrific event, William F. Jasper, Senior Editor for The New American Magazine, has uncovered many pieces of evidence demonstrating that there is much more to this event than what Americans have been told by the mainstream media. For the past 10 years, many Americans have been looking for a resolution in order to see justice served.
One of the unresolved issues and one of the burning questions that we have been pursuing has been the others unknown, the term used when Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and their confederate Mr. Fortier, were indicted. They said that others unknown had worked with them to pull off this terrorist attack. But All of a sudden, shortly after the indictment, Americans were told by Attorney General Janet Reno and by Director of the FBI, Louis Freeh, that there were no others unknown, that there were no other John Doe’s, and that it was simply Timothy McVeigh and
Terry Nichols who were responsible for this murderous act. The new Americans investigation has shown otherwise, that there were indeed multiple credible witnesses, demonstrating that others worked with McVeigh and Nichols. In this podcast segment, Mr. Jasper interviews Jesse Trentadue as part of our ongoing investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing cover -up.
William F. Jasper: Recently, evidence has surfaced to show that indeed there has been a massive cover-up low all these years as we have reported in the New American. The Justice Department and the FBI and other agencies have knowingly withheld vital information that would have led to the others who were involved with McVeigh and Nichols in this terrorist act. Quite interestingly, the evidence that has recently come forward has come as a result of the work of an attorney in Salt Lake City. His name is Jesse Trentadue, and the story of how this has come about is quite
amazing in itself. The Trentadue story intersects with the Oklahoma City bombing with the death of Jesse Trentadue’s brother, Kenny Trentadue, who was killed, who supposedly died of suicide in prison several months after the Oklahoma City bombing. We’re fortunate to have Jesse Trentadue with us today in this podcast, but we’re going to going to look at the death of his brother, Kenny Trentadue, the recent court rulings regarding that and how this relates to the Oklahoma City bombing. Where is the connection? What does this tell us and how does this help us resolve this? First of all, we’re going to ask Mr. Trentadue to give us a background on his brother and his brother’s death. According to the official, a U .S. prison and U .S. government
releases on his death, Kenny Trentadue died of suicide in prison.
However, the evidence seems to show otherwise very conclusively so let us go to Jesse trying to do first of all Jesse you’re an attorney in a trial attorney in Salt Lake City is that correct?
Jesse Trentadue: I am Mr. Jasper thanks for having me on.
Jasper: well it’s my pleasure. give us a thumbnail sketch of your brother he was in prison at the time how did he get there and what were the most conclusive points that led you to believe that when you first heard that he had died in prison, that this was not a suicide.
Trentadue: Well, my brother was a good man. He wasn’t perfect, and we’ve never said he was perfect. He came out of the military during the Vietnam War with a heroin addiction, which, for those of us old enough to remember, that wasn’t uncommon at that time. To support his habit, he robbed a bank. He got caught, and he plead guilty and served his time. He was discharged or released from prison in 1988, ’87 I think, and at that time he had a parole officer who put a no -beer drinking condition on his parole. He wasn’t allowed to drink beer, so we challenged that and the appeal didn’t last. He simply went into his parole officer and said, “Look, I’m going to drink beer. You know where I am. Come and get me if you think it’s worth it.” They never bothered to come and arrest him for that. Meanwhile, he married and in June of 1995, he and his wife had their first child, a little boy. He was coming across the border from Mexico in San Diego and he was stopped at the border, arrested allegedly for a parole violation, sent by the federal government to Oklahoma City and was dead two days later. You asked how we knew it wasn’t a suicide.
One, I knew my brother was not the kind of person to — he had no history of suicide or wanted to hurt himself or depressions. And when we got his body home, it was pretty obvious it wasn’t a suicide. He was beaten, head to toe, front to back.
Even the soles of his feet had been beaten and his throat was slashed. And the government said he had hanged himself in a suicide -proof cell. The government tried to, FBI tried to cremate his body before we received him home. But at the time, we never knew, at the beginning, we never had a motive for why this was done to him. It didn’t make any sense that, for one thing, he had no connection with Oklahoma. His crime was committed in San Diego. His probation officer is in San Diego. The judge who would have to find him in violation of his probation was in San Diego. It made no sense to send him to Oklahoma for hearing on a parole violation, but that’s why we were told he was sent to Oklahoma City.
It wasn’t until sometime later about four months after his death and I think it was January of 1996 I received an anonymous call and the caller said that my brother had been killed by the FBI. They said it was an interrogation that went terribly wrong. You got out of hand I think the callers I recall said and the caller said that my brother had fit the profile of a Member of a bank robbery gang that was robbing banks to fund attacks upon the federal government. Well, I dismissed that as a crank call. And then it was in June or July of 1996 that I read a Los Angeles Times article about a man named Richard Lee Guthrie, who was a member of a Midwest bank robbery gang, which the article said, “Rob banks to fund the attacks upon the federal government”, and Guthrie supposedly was found hanging in his cell while in federal custody.
That raised my curiosity, but still I had no connection with my brother at Oklahoma City Bombing. And then shortly before he was executed, I received a message from Timothy McVeigh, who said that when he had seen my brother’s photograph and learned what happened to my brother, that he knew the government had killed my brother because they thought it was Richard League Guthrie, and Guthrie, I think, was John Doe 2.
I now know that at the time my brother was picked up shortly after the bombing, the largest manhunt in American history was on for John Doe 2. The description being circulated for this person was white male, dark complected, 5′ 9″, powerful upper body build, believed to be in Canada or Mexico driving mid 1980s Chevrolet pickup and a dragon tattoo on his left forearm. My brother came across the border in San Diego and his friends 1986 Chevrolet pickup when he was arrested. He was 5′ 9″, powerful upper body build, dark complected dragon tattoo left forearm. The only other person I know of who met that description was Richard Lee Guthrie.
Jasper: Well, we’re going to come back to Richard Lee Guthrie and the Aryan Republican Army and the Midwest Bank robbers and how that connects in our next podcast. And also, I want to drop back again and look at, again, the evidence which points toward homicide rather than suicide of your brother, because that’s critically important when we look at this case and why federal
government officials were so intent on covering up this Murder inside the US prison system. So we’ll come back to that in part two
Jasper: In our last podcast, we left off with your brother’s alleged suicide in prison. This was at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, and you pointed out that when you received his body from the prison, that it was covered with evidence of trauma from head to toe, front to back. It would have been very difficult for an individual to abuse himself in that kind of way. That is, throat had been slashed.
We covered this extensively in the New American Magazine in the November 28, 2005 issue (no longer available on their website. If you know of a PDF version of the issue, please contact us), a two -part article, which is available at thenewamerican.com. What are some of the other indications that are quite conclusive that this was indeed a homicide, not a suicide?
Trentadue: He had stun gun burns all over his body. The ligature mark around his neck has the impressions from plastic ties which were used as handcuffs. He was strangled with plastic handcuffs. His caffeine level. He had a caffeine level, the equivalent of 30 bottles of Coca -Cola, I think the autopsy report said, and he consumed this within an hour of his death when he had no access to caffeine. We found out later that caffeine is used to enhance pain under torture.
Jasper: So all of the evidence, and we’ve only touched on a bit of it here, indicated that he had been systematically tortured and abused, then finally strangled. There was also a chief medical examiner who weighed in on this opinion. Who is that?
Trentadue: It was Dr. Fred Jordan. He was the Oklahoma State medical examiner. At first, Jordan was on record saying my brother had been abused and tortured, murdered. He himself was harassed and threatened by the Department of Justice, so much so that the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office had to intervene and Complain to the Department of Justice about the threats Jordan was receiving. Jordan suddenly switched on us, declared my brother’s death a suicide, and then shortly after he retired and moved out of Oklahoma, he went back on the record and said he’d been harassed and threatened by the FBI that my brother had in fact been beaten and tortured and that had an old likelihood my brother had been triangle with plastic ties or handcuffs.
Jasper: Now you, representing your family, the Trenadu family, brought lawsuit against the federal government on this. And during the course of this, you were yourself made a target. By the FBI and DOJ, or one or both of them, is that not correct?
Trentadue: Both of them. They tried to indict me to silence me, and not that I’d done anything wrong. It was a fabricated case.
Jasper: If memory serves, they found an inmate in the prison who
was a proven liar by his polygraph to claim that you had tried to bribe witnesses.
Trentadue: That’s true. This fellow turned out to be an FBI operative.
Jasper: James Hauser?
Trentadue: Yes.
Jasper: And yet when the FBI did their own polygraph on him, it turned out that he was lying, correct?
Trentadue: He failed the polygraph.
Jasper: He failed the polygraph and yet they still used his testimony before a grand jury.
Trentadue: That’s my understanding is what they did. The others, but I wasn’t the only target. The Dr. Jordan, the medical examiner, wasn’t the only target. Every witness I had was threatened or harassed in some way. I had an eyewitness to my brother’s murder. This man was found hanging in his cell by a bed sheet a month before our trial was to start.
Jasper: Your brother died in August of ’95. the Oklahoma City bombing took place in April of ’95, April 19th. At the time you didn’t know that there was any connection and I was investigating
the Oklahoma City bombing for The New American at the time. Very early on we received information, some of our investigators down there, that there was some kind of connection between this death that had taken place in the Federal Transfer Center with our line of investigation that we were carrying on, particularly as it related to Elohim City, which was a rural readout in eastern Oklahoma where a number of Aryan nations and other related groups had been centered. There seemed to be some connecting dots, but nothing solid that we could put our fingers on. And so we were forced to just drop it, leave it as a pending file for many years until your recent revelations. Take us from that point. You mentioned in our first podcast if you’d recapitulate something about Richard Lee Guthrie and what’s the connection there.
Trentadue: As I said, I received a call about four or five months after my brother’s death, an anonymous caller who said my brother had been murdered by the FBI. It was an interrogation that went terribly wrong, that my brother was mistakenly thought to be a member of a gang of bank robbers who were robbing banks to get the money to attack the federal government. And then about six months after that in June or July of 1996, I read a newspaper story about Richard Lee Guthrie who was a member of the Midwest bank robbery gang who were robbing banks to fund attacks on the federal government. And then as I told your audience earlier that just before his execution, I received a message from Tim McVeigh who said that when he saw my brother’s photograph and heard what happened to him, that he knew my brother had been murdered by the government because they thought he was Richard Lee Guthrie. My brother and Guthrie had a perfect match for each other in terms of a description, and I think Guthrie was most likely John Doe 2, or at least closely associated with the bombing.
Jasper: It’s important to note that your line of investigation here was not just based upon something that Timothy McVeigh, who is a confessed terrorist mass murderer, had said. Of course, he could have any number of motives for doing that.
But what he says corroborates closely what has come through other independent means, including directly from the federal government, from memoranda or teletypes, from Louis Freeh himself, who is then director of the FBI. We reproduced some of those in our articles in the New American Magazine and reproduced pertinent excerpts from there, but tell us briefly about the FBI teletypes and their significance.
Trentadue: I think the place to start is the FBI’s public statement that Timothy McVeigh did not know Richard Lee Guthrie or with one else associated with Midwest bankruptcy gang.
As it turns out, we now have teletypes from the FBI director Louis Freeh where McVeigh not only knew them, he was robbing banks with them to get the money to fund the attack on the federal building. And among those he was robbing banks with was Richard Lee Guthrie. And these folks were all operating out of a, out of the Elohim city compound that you mentioned.
Jasper: In our last podcast, you were just getting into the fact that FBI documents show that FBI director Louis Freeh was not telling the truth when he in earlier years said that Timothy McVeigh had no connection to knew nothing of the Midwest bank robbers or the Aryan Republican Army.
Trentadue: Not telling the truth is being kind. He was lying. It’s obvious from these memos that the FBI had an informant, at least one in with the bank robbers who were robbing banks to get
the money to build the bomb to blow up the Murrow Building, and that these bank robbers were robbing banks with Tim McVeigh, and it’s clear from these memorandum, these teletypes, that the FBI also had an informant at Elohim City, who may have been the weapons and explosives instructor Andreas Carl Strassmeir a German National.
Jasper: Regular readers of The New American are very familiar with that name, Carl Andreas Strassmeir. We wrote quite a number of stories about him over the years, featured him on the cover of the magazine years ago, and again the establishment press went along with the government statements, completely contrary to all of the evidence and the facts that were available that there was no connection between Mr. Strassmeir and Mr. McVeigh other than a chance meeting once upon a time. You’ve made reference to FBI memoranda and documents. What kinds of documents and how many are we talking about that you have been able to obtain so far?
Trentadue: Well I’ve been able to obtain 96 pages of documents about 26/27 separate documents. The names of the informants, however, have been blacked out. And I’m currently involved in a lawsuit here in Salt Lake City before the federal court, seeking an order that the FBI turn those documents over with nothing blacked out. The judge heard — originally the judge ruled for me in May, said the government had to do it. The FBI came back and asked him to reconsider and rescind his order. The judge heard that argument on the motion to reconsider on November 10th. I don’t expect him to reconsider and withdraw that order. I think he will rule to, it’s also my opinion that he’ll issue a decision before Christmas.
Jasper: Now, we’re talking about documents that are most of them 10 years old. A lot of case which has already been adjudicated. Timothy McVeigh has been executed, Terry Nichols is in jail on 168 or I think 171 life sentences. So he’s not going to get out. What is the federal government’s argument for holding onto these documents and not releasing the unredacted versions?
Trentadue: Well, first of all, there’s more than these because these documents refer to still other documents that they have not given me.
But my accusations against them were very straightforward, very powerful. I said that the FBI had informants in with the bank robbery gang and at Elohim City that their informants actually helped carry out the bombing of the Murrah Building, that the FBI had prior knowledge of this attack, but did nothing to stop it. The FBI has never denied those allegations. They’ve just simply pleaded with the judge not to turn those documents over to me because it would expose their agents and informants to some risk, they claim. And I admitted that it does expose them to
risk. It exposes them to the risk of being prosecuted, the risk of being sued by the families of the victims, the risk of losing their jobs and losing the pensions, but that’s not a reason to deny me or the American people the truth about that bombing.
Jasper: It’s very interesting that in 2001, when we had a change from the Clinton administration, this is the original Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 took place during the Clinton administration. Janet Reno was Attorney General, Louis Freeh was Director of the FBI. and as our multiple reports showed they were constantly involved in suppressing evidence, destroying evidence, tampering with evidence, intimidating witnesses, harassing witnesses, and victims. And this had come out not just in evidence that we’d brought forward but the Attorney General’s Office of Inspector
General, the OIG, had repeatedly made reports showing that the FBI was indeed doing these things with the knowledge of and presumably with the direction of the Attorney General. Now we had reason to believe that when we saw a change from the Clinton, Reno, Freeh reign, to the new Bush/Ashcroft administration, that we might see this evidence come out. In July of 2001, I did a story for the New American, entitled “OKC, Legacy of Lies Lives On.” And this was very discouraging because it reported on Attorney General Ashcroft coming forward at the end of June of that year, stating that he had first of all admitted what the New American had been saying for years, that indeed thousands of pages of documents that should have been turned over during the investigation were not that the FBI had withheld thousands of pages documents. First it was said to be 4 ,000 pages but he said he had reviewed all of those and after temporarily staying McVeigh’s execution
he said go ahead with it because there was nothing in these documents, and let me just read for the listeners here. He said this was on June 11. Attorney General says On Friday, May 11, I directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to issue a worldwide alert to all their offices. This worldwide alert ordered every FBI office to identify and produce any and all documents required under the broad discovery agreement in the McVeigh case. Today, the Department of Justice has completed a report, Ashcroft said, documenting the FBI’s comprehensive efforts over the last 13 days to identify any remaining documents. So then he goes on to say that this has been done and he said that FBI Director, I’m quoting now, “FBI Director Louis Freeh has certified to me that the FBI has completed its search and produced every relevant document in its possession.” End quote. Well, we were on record back there as saying, yes, Louis Freeh did certify it. that does not mean that it was done.
In fact, he had issued four previous certifications that this had been done, and thousands more documents were brought forward. This was reported in the press as if these documents had been lost or misplaced all of this time, when in fact the evidence shows that they were withheld. So now after all those thousands of documents were produced, you’re still saying there are many more documents that are still hidden.
Trentadue: I’m saying that because it’s my understanding from discussions with both the attorneys for Terry Nichols and the attorneys for Timothy McVeigh, that these teletypes we’ve been discussing with your audiences were never shown to them. And I think it’s crucial because on one of those teletypes, the informants reporting that two days before the bombing, Timothy McVeigh is calling Elohim City asking for help to carry out the attack.
Jasper: That’s on April 17, two days before he’s calling to carry
out the attack, and then he had made an earlier call. Is that not correct?
Trentadue: Yes, earlier in the month.
Jasper: On April 5th.
Trentadue: He even visited there.
Jasper: Yes. And again,
this completely contradicts all of the earlier statements by the government that there was absolutely no connection whatsoever by Timothy McVeigh With Elohim City
Trentadue: Or the bank robbers.
Jasper: Or the bank robbers. The documents themselves which you do have in your possession, to be thoroughly honest, we have to say that Louis Freeh and many other officials absolutely lied the documents prove that correct? tell us what?, what some of the documents actually show
Trentadue: They they actually show that as I said they had informants the FBI did in with the bank robbers informants in the Elohim city. They knew about the robberies to get the money to attack the Murrah building. Their informant, if it’s Strassmeir, actually taught them how to make the bomb. They knew of Strassmeir’s plans, how he planned to get out of the country after the bombing.
They never stopped him. All these things were known. And they even had one of the informants was wearing a recorder, a transmitter in his conversations with the other bank robbery gang members. This they all knew and they’ve kept it silent tonight I want to thank you Mr. Jasper for not only your story But for putting those articles in the story I mean those teletypes in the story so that your readers and listeners can read them for themselves They don’t have to take my word for what they say they can actually see them.
Jasper: But now we have to see if we can actually get those documents least so that all of those parts that are blanked out, all of the names including not just informants but other people who may be involved that have been blanked out are shown to the public. We’ll come back in our next podcast and continue with more of this.
Jasper: In our last podcast with Jesse Trentadue, the brother of Kenny Trentadue who was slain in the Federal Transfer Facility in Oklahoma City after the Oklahoma City bombing. We covered a number of important issues related to cover-up of his brother’s murder in prison and its relationship to the Oklahoma City bombing and the cover -up there of massive cover -up of evidence showing connections to other co -conspirators in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Mr. Trentadue, when we left off last time we were talking about the evidence that is
plainly obvious in the FBI documents themselves, the FBI teletypes that we have so far. Now you’re trying to obtain with your lawsuit all additional related documents from the FBI as well as unredacted copies of the ones that you already have. Unredacted means that they’re not going to have portions of it blacked out as we currently have now with the documents released. What is it that you hope to find or be able to prove from those documents?
Trentadue: Well, my ultimate goal is to prove why my brother was murdered and who did it. To do that, I have to, in essence, solve the Oklahoma City bombing. I have to establish the motive. And the motive for killing my brother was that the FBI thought he was Richard Lee Guthrie or John Doe 2 not necessarily Guthrie and the irony of this, Mr. Jasper is I’m on the verge
of I think I have already proven that the FBI was involved in the bombing and contributed significantly to the bombing through the work of its informants. Unfortunately, I may never be able to prove that they murdered my brother, although I know that to be so.
Jasper: Now you say murdered your brother. Do You think it was federal prison officials who carried this out, or FBI personnel who carried it out, or did the FBI merely cover up afterwards? They would have had to have known from all the evidence that is available, at the very least that this was indeed a murder, not a suicide.
Trentadue: I think it was carried out by the FBI. I think the orders were from a very high level within the Department of Justice. And let me share with you why I believe that to be so. It would take someone very high up within the Department of Justice to orchestrate this cover -up. I mean, the records that would have shown what happened to my brother were scattered throughout the Department of Justice system. Not only in Oklahoma City, but in Dallas, and in Washington, DC, all of those records disappear. The photographs, the video cameras in the cell, the tape is erased, the log books that would record who came and went from that institution, who had access to my brother, have all disappeared.
Jasper: Right. There would be no motive to go to this kind of extravagant lengths to protect somebody if it were merely some overzealous prison guards who had carried this out.
Trentadue: They would give them up even if they were innocent.
Jasper: Sure.
Trentadue: And the effort they’ve put into this, they have spent by my calculation in excess of $10 million dollars fighting me, at one time they had 12 law firms hired plus an army of Department of Justice lawyers.
Jasper: Correct me if I’m wrong, but there was a Department of Justice Office of Inspector General report that was issued on your brother’s case, correct, and this was a very extensive report.
Trentadue: It was, it was part of the cover -up. It was also sealed. It’s my understanding that it’s the only inspector general report That not involving national security that has been sealed.
Jasper: That is very significant the whole purpose of an inspector generals report is same as an internal affairs division in a police department to make Sure that those entrusted with the special powers and privileges of guns and badges and enforcing our laws do not abuse that authority. This is a tremendous public trust that we are giving to those who supposedly enforce the law.
And the temptation to abuse that power is very great. And so that’s why we have Inspector General’s reports and internal affairs type of reports. So they have defeated a large part of that purpose by sealing this Inspector General’s report.
Trentadue: Exactly. You want that on that. It brings sunlight to the problem and have the public know exactly what happened. In this instance, it’s been placed under seal and never released. It’s also, it’s my understanding, one of the longest reports ever written. Just the text alone is in the excess of 200 pages.
Jasper: Which is, again, a very telling piece of evidence. How many suicides are there in prisons and jails? Quite a you, why the secrecy involving this particular one, where we’ve had Inspector General’s reports on much more sensitive materials than a minor parole violation. So this in itself is a very troubling piece of evidence, isn’t it?
Trentadue: You’ve brought up a very good point. I don’t know of any. This is the Inspector General for the United States Department of Justice. He doesn’t investigate prison deaths.
Jasper: Except in this case.
Trentadue: Except in this case, this is a fellow who investigates the spying with for China, the FBI crime lab. I mean, he’s, he handles the national security level, national level problems with the
Department of Justice. He’s just not down on the street handling the day to day events in government.
Jasper: Okay. So now all of Uh, quite a bit of this has come out. This is all very troubling. One of the checks and balances that we have here in our government, in our republic is that Congress, both Senate and the house have the ability to investigate the executive branch in this case, the department of justice, which obviously is covering up serious crimes. And we were talking about a number of murders or, uh, alleged murders in this case, tampering with witnesses, intimidation, destruction of jail, all of which are felony offenses. Many government officials could go to jail for this. So when we see this happening, one of the avenues for redress is for members of Congress to hold hearings to subpoena witnesses, subpoena documents, subpoena files. Why isn’t that happening?
Trentadue: There are several teletypes that I believe I’ve shared with you that where the FBI director Freeh sent a delegation of agents to visit then Senator Don Nichols from Oklahoma, they went twice to see Nichols, to get Nichols assurances that there would be no congressional oversight of their actions in my brother’s case.
Jasper: And Senator Nichols acquiesced?
Trentadue: Yes. He told him it would be his decision, there would be no hearings.
Jasper: And did he say this in memoranda or how do we know that he said this?
Trentadue: We have the report back to Louis Freeh from the agents who were part of that delegation to went to see Nichols.
Jasper: So Senator Nichols for whatever reasons decided that no, he wasn’t going to look into this. What about your own senator there? Recently a report that appeared in one of the Utah area papers reported on your case and it reported that Senator Orrin Hatch was supporting you. Is this the case?
Trentadue: That’s not true. Snore’n Orrin has been, I say that because he was asleep at the wheel when it comes to oversight of the Department of Justice, especially the FBI. Publicly, he’s vowed to have hearings. Privately, he’s not going anywhere near that situation. In fact, I’ll share with you an example. From the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room, from the bench, the senator presented FBI Director Robert Mueller, who replaced Louis Free, with five questions he said he would have answered on behalf of my family as to my brother’s death.
That was real. We were pleased with that. I asked the senator for those questions he wouldn’t give them to me. I asked Robert Mueller for those questions he wouldn’t give them to me. I had to file a FOIA request to get the questions.
Jasper: That’s a freedom of information.
Trentadue: Freedom of information request. Then Mueller answered the questions and then they wouldn’t give me the answers. So I had to bring another FOIA request to get those. And they were softball questions such as, “What did the FBI do to investigate the death of Kenneth Trentadue. And of course they say we interviewed 2000 witnesses. We looked at a million documents. Uh, we did this, we did that.
Jasper: The very same thing that we saw in the Oklahoma city bombing, when they want to show a justification for their claim that this was a thorough investigation, they cite the number of pieces of evidence, the number of people they interviewed. Uh, I’ve likened it many times to Casablanca where the captain of the police says round up the usual suspects and it’s a show of supposedly complying with their obligation of law enforcement investigation. But in fact, it’s really a massive part of the coverup because if you don’t interview the right people or round up the
right suspects, then you’re really covering up.
Trentadue: It’s exactly right. And your point being, and it’s an excellent one, is they didn’t have to interview twenty thousand people for the FBI bombing, they just had to drive 120 miles away and talk to a handful of them in Elohim City.
Jasper: All of whom were very conspicuously ignored.
Trentadue: Yes. And the same in my brother’s case, they only had a handful of people to focus on and they did not do that. They did not, they never interrogated anybody. Their examinations were interviewed. What do you know about the death of Kenneth Trinidad? Nothing. Thank you very much. Goodbye. I mean, That’s the extent of the efforts to get information. And I’ve seen their attempts on Strassmeir, which were even more obviously part of a cover -up.
Jasper: And that’s one of the important things that the Louis Freeh teletype shows, that he himself is saying that he knows about Strassmeir, connection to McVeigh, connection to the bank robbers, and he knows that Strassmeir has already gone to North Carolina and is planning to leave the country. He’s a German national. Obviously, if someone’s going to flee the country, they
should be a primary suspect. Interest should be focused on them, on arresting them so they don’t leave the country. So he says we know he’s going to leave the country via Mexico. And yet nothing is done.
Trentadue: And one of the teletypes says that Strassmeir left Oklahoma because things were getting too hot after the bombing.
Jasper: So, what about the reports that we’ve heard that Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California is going to be looking into this?
Trentadue: I’ve not heard a confirmation from the Congressman that that is in fact so. I know that he’s investigating it. I would not be surprised if he does hold hearings, but I can’t say and he’s never said anything to me that he’s going to do it.
Jasper: So if any of our listeners want to contact their Congressman and urge them to look into this, it would help advance this. And how does that help us today to resolve this problem in terms of our concerns over terrorism and national security?
Trentadue: Well, I think it’s significant that the largest act of domestic terrorism in the history of our country may have been carried out by the Department of Justice and the FBI.
We have to do some serious house cleaning and that’s the place to start you don’t hide these kind of failures
Jasper: If the people that we have entrusted to protect us against terrorism cannot be Trusted to do that then We’re in very serious trouble
Trentadue: Exactly, and I think that to me anyway, and I try to be objective about it. These documents are conclusive proof of the government’s involvement and both in the bombing and the cover -up.
Jasper: Now you are expecting that the judge, this is a U .S. federal judge, correct?
Trentadue: Correct.
Jasper: In Salt Lake City?
Trentadue: Yes.
Jasper: Which circuit court is that?
Trentadue: It’ll be, it’s the district of Utah and it’s part of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Jasper: And there is supposed to be a ruling on whether or not the government does indeed have to turn over these documents before Christmas?
Trentadue: I have no reason to know for sure or any reason to suspect, but I just have a
feeling he will rule before Christmas.
Jasper: Okay. There’s no date certain.
Trentadue: No. But the order is, the order that will come down is, be simple, whether the judge will leave his order in place that they have to turn them over to me or will he withdraw it? And I don’t, for one, believe that he will draw it.
Jasper: Yeah. Is there an option for a, if he rules in your favor for, uh, the department of justice to appeal to a higher court?
Trentadue: I’m sure they will. But I hope that he has the option to write an opinion in which he said, while he may not say the names of the informants or choose not to, he can write an opinion telling what the government did.
Jasper: which would help. Now, if he fails or if they appeal it to a higher court, then the judicial option will be extended further. We don’t know how long those appeals will go. This has already been dragged out 10 years. So again, then that leaves the important congressional option. Congress can subpoena these records as part of their oversight responsibility to make sure that the executive branch agencies that they have created and that they fund each year with their appropriations, abide by our law and our constitution. Isn’t that correct?
Trentadue: That’s correct.
Jasper: So it, again, comes down to our representatives and our senators. And they are the ones who hold the key to this vital oversight of these very powerful and important police state powers.
Trentadue: And to keep something in mind in that look at all the things Congress has hearings over the most insignificant trivial matters and there’s never been a hearing into the Oklahoma City bombing.
Jasper: Every day of the week you can see the
different committees that are having hearings on milk price supports or tea imports
or any number of hundreds of different items that that our Congress deals with. You can watch them on C -SPAN, the house and Senate hearings. But you make a
very important point. Here we are over 10 years after this most important incident
of domestic terrorism that is carried out largely by domestic terrorists, those who
are American citizens who grew up here. Our investigation shows that in addition to
the Oklahoma city, Elohim city connection that there were Middle East elements
involved with this also, but that’s another, that’s another podcast we’ll be going
into. Mr. Trentadue, we thank you very much for being with us. This was Jesse
Trentadue, the brother of Kenny Trentadue, who was killed in Oklahoma City in the
federal transfer facility in 1995. He’s an attorney now in Salt Lake City.
He was the subject of our report in the New American Magazine, November 28 2005
Terror lies and memos thank you again Jesse
Trentadue: Thank you very much Mr. Jasper
