While re-reading Oklahoma City by Roger Charles I came across the section discussing how the FBI was able to connect the axle of the Ryder Truck to Timothy McVeigh. This section of the book takes me back to 1995, when the news stations broadcast that McVeigh was caught and it all went back to that truck axle. There is one problem with that story, VIN numbers are not put on the axles of trucks.
There are three places that a VIN number is displayed on a vehicle, the engine block, on the dash behind the windshield on the driver’s side, and inside the driver’s side door frame. While other places are sometimes used the axle is not one of them. When this was questioned it has been suggested that it was actually the parts number, but that makes even less sense. The parts number is for connecting a specific part to a year, make, and model of a vehicle. One part can be connected to several vehicles, a universal part for an automotive manufacturer. For example, if you look up an oil filter for your car you will be given a part number for that filter. That filter will work for several years and models of vehicles besides yours. If you found an oil filter after a bombing you could read the parts number on it and find that it goes to a 2006 toyota corolla like the PH4967, but you will also learn that filter fits over fifty different vehicles.
https://www.partsource.ca/products/ph4967-fram-extra-guard-oil-filter
The odds that a VIN number would be on the axle of a ryder truck are 0. The ability to track a parts number to a truck, sold to a trucking company, and to McVeigh are 0. The story was so poorly thought out that even the departments could not agree as to who found the axle in the first place. Why they chose the axle of all things was a bigger mystery to me. The engine block would have had the VIN number, it was the heaviest part of the truck and yet they went with the axle instead. Perhaps, and this is speculation, because the axle was the only part found at that time and since they knew McVeigh was already in custody it had to be the excuse.
This leads us to other questions that had been brought to light due to Wendy Paintings book Aberrations in the Heartland of the Real. Was McVeigh being watched the whole time? Did the Feds know it was McVeigh because Roger Moore tried to have him bailed out of jail? I lean towards the first question due to Terrance Yeakey writing about an ATF agent giving a briefing at the scene on how the operation went down with the truck bomb. This was in a letter sent to Ramona McDonald regarding what Yeakey had seen that day. The Feds, ATF and FBI, had known what was going to happen that day to the point that the ATF didn’t show up for work that morning due to a message sent by pager “not to come in to work”.
The other thing that bugs me about the FBI investigation is, of course, John Doe #2 . The man that had been seen by 27 people, that we know of, on that day. Sketches were made and a man hunt was underway for someone that the FBI would later say did not exist. The fact that there were two men in the truck says a lot about the operation. We know that Terry Nichols had been in OKC the week prior with McVeigh to drop off the getaway car. Already we have a conspiracy of two, then there is John Doe #2. If this was a lone wolf operation there would be no need for a second person in the truck. If somebody else was running the operation you would have two people in the truck. You might have a guy that is capable of driving the vehicle to the spot but not have the balls to light the fuse. To make sure the mission goes as planned you send two men, lifting the burden of the entire mission off both of them. One drives, the other sets the device. If one decides not to go through with the mission the second can either take over or force the other man to do his job until it is completed. Let’s not forget that McVeigh was arrested for having a pistol on him at the traffic stop.
At this point we should admit to ourselves that McVeigh, while he did drive the truck, was the designated patsy for the operation, whether he lit the fuse or not. Like Lee Harvey Oswald he was in the place, around the time, and had a certain history, but for the evidence to say he did it… it’s just not there. The camera footage was not released in court. Witnesses were not brought in to verify he was behind the wheel. It was only his confession that sealed the case for the feds and that was also managed poorly. As for the videotapes of the truck, after years of FOIA request and lawsuits by Jesse Trentadue the FBI finally said the tapes were “lost”. Key evidence that placed McVeigh at the scene, in the truck, setting off the bomb, was lost.
Like most of the investigation into the OKC bombing it wasn’t a matter of collecting evidence to build a case, it was “make it up as we go along”. They had no way to connect McVeigh to the truck, so they made it up. They could not find John Doe #2 so they pretended he didn’t exist after beating a man to death that wasn’t him (look into Kenneth Trentadue). Bomb squads had been out the night before waiting for the truck. A bomb scare had been called in prior to the bombing. A trail had been kept on McVeigh the whole time but for some reason the bomb was allowed to go off. Either through incompetence or someone high up on the ladder needing a horrific event for some political gain, OKC was allowed to happen and afterwards it was a matter of cleaning up a mess. As for the reasons to allow it, I will save that for a different post. In the meantime, when you look into OKC and try to make sense of things just remember, they made it up as they went along.
To close I will leave you with this. On the Autozone website you can look up your vehicle by the VIN number. As defined it is “A Vehicle Identification Number or VIN is a 17-digit code of letters and numbers that identifies a car uniquely and is assigned at the time a vehicle is manufactured”. The so called VIN number on the axle is PVA26077, nowhere near the 17 digits needed for a VIN number. The lies keep stacking up.