OKLAHOMA CITY: AFTER THE BOMB : FBI Director Playing Key Role in Oklahoma Probe

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh is playing a central role in legal decisions in the Oklahoma bombing case--beyond that traditionally done by the bureau’s director--as Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and Deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie S. Gorelick turn to him for advice.

Gorelick, in an interview Monday, said that she and Reno “respect the full range of his views and want to hear what he has to say--not just on investigative questions.”

In the most notable example, which Gorelick would not discuss but which other sources detailed, Freeh prevailed in the decision last week to seek criminal charges against both James D. and Terry Lynn Nichols in an explosives device conspiracy.

The brothers were being held as material witnesses in the bombing case because of their ties to Timothy J. McVeigh, the only defendant charged so far in the worst terrorist act on U.S. soil, but the criminal charges are expected to increase pressure on them to cooperate, one official said.

The problem was that Gorelick, Justice Department attorneys and even Freeh’s own general counsel, Howard Shapiro, concluded that the evidence was strong enough against only James Nichols. But in a dramatic late-afternoon session in the strategic information operations center on the 5th floor of FBI headquarters, Freeh listed on a yellow legal pad the facts supporting charges against both brothers and what was still needed.

By the next day, the FBI had the information, and Gorelick was convinced. The decision was made so late that the criminal complaint initially distributed to reporters in Michigan listed James Nichols as the sole defendant in the conspiracy and destructive device charges. Justice Department officials quickly corrected that slip, issuing the complaint that listed both brothers as defendants and accused them of conspiring with McVeigh to make and possess destructive devices.

Gorelick said that she and the attorney general turn to Freeh both because of his experience as a federal judge and because he successfully directed the investigation and prosecuted the 1991 trial of the mail-bomb killing of federal appellate Judge Robert Vance and Savannah civil rights lawyer Robert Robinson.

That case was a multi-jurisdictional investigation, hampered by competing U.S. attorneys, until Freeh, then a federal prosecutor in New York, and Shapiro took command.

Showing his penchant for investigative breakthroughs, Freeh used court-authorized listening devices in the jail cell of the suspect, Walter Leroy Moody, after learning that he had the habit of talking to himself.