FBI Memos Suggest Agency Had Moles in Media

Investigator Roger Charles was combing through records of the FBI’s Oklahoma City bombing investigation more than a decade ago, when he discovered a memo suggesting that someone working at ABC News provided a tip to the bureau a day after the deadly April 19, 1995, domestic terrorist attack.

It appeared that a senior ABC News journalist had been doubling as an FBI informant. The memo made a few headlines in 2011, but quickly passed through the news cycle with little impact and hardly any coverage by major outlets.

According to Utah attorney [Jesse] Trentadue, the redacted FBI audit only begins to scratch the surface of the bureau’s purported wrongdoing.

Documents Trentadue provided to The Epoch Times included the initial FBI memo Charles discovered about the informant within ABC, as well as previously unpublicized memos written by special agents receiving information from ABC and NBC.

[OCS: I am not surprised that the FBI has contacts in the mainstream media, just as I am not surprised that the FBI has contacts within the major communications, technology, and other industries who employ former FBI agents as security executives and officers.] 

Among those is a September 1996 FBI memo, reporting that a “confidential source who works for a news agency [learned] that ABC News was going to air an expose in the next few days concerning the OKC bombing.”

“ABC will be interviewing a rescue worker who is going to state that ATF had stored a large amount of explosives in the MURRAH BUILDING, which contributed to the explosion. The rescue worker is also going to advise that evidence of these explosives was found by rescue workers, and this particular rescue worker had contacted the FBI with this information, and was told by the FBI to keep quiet,” the FBI memo says.  “This rescue worker is currently upset because nothing has been done with this information and he feels the FBI has attempted to cover up the information.”

[OCS: Some individuals, labeled by the government and the media as conspiracy theorists, have noted that the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building was in retaliation for the FBI’s corrupt behavior.

“Motivated by his dislike for the U.S. federal government and unhappy about its handling of the Ruby Ridge incident in 1992 and the Waco siege in 1993, McVeigh timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the fire that ended the siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.” <Source>

Both the Branch Davidian and Ruby Ridge incidents could have been solved peaceably, except that the DOJ and FBI wanted to create a “media event.” Both resulted in the loss of life and involved an FBI sharpshooter, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi, who is believed to have precipitated both events.

Now, I wonder how much actual death and damage could be attributed to the ATF’s illegal storage of a large amount of explosives in a federal building?

Remember, Eric Holder and the ATF illegally provided guns to the Mexican drug cartels in the “Fast and Furious” scandal to justify Obama’s gun-grabbing program?]

Then, there’s a series of FBI memos that also serve as the subject of controversy in another Trentadue lawsuit. These memos describe FBI agents who were allegedly trying to sell surveillance footage of the Oklahoma City bombing to NBC.

No arrests resulted from the matter, and the U.S. government says the surveillance footage discussed in the memos does not exist. Trentadue is seeking to prove the existence of the footage in a separate, ongoing lawsuit against the FBI that has been sealed for the past seven years.

Putting aside the surveillance footage controversy, the memos show that the FBI was receiving information from within NBC.

The first tip from NBC came on Oct. 27, 1995, when a confidential source, whose identity is redacted, said the NBC show Dateline had been contacted by an attorney. According to the FBI memo, the attorney represented an FBI agent in Los Angeles who was seeking to sell surveillance footage for more than $1 million.

“It was represented that the video tape would contain lapse photography of the arrival and then departure of a UPS truck. Then a Ryder truck pulls up and a male resembling Timothy McVeigh [sic] is seen exiting the driver’s side of the Ryder truck and then walking away,” the FBI memo says. “Next, a second male is seen exiting the passenger side of the Ryder truck and walking to the back of the truck. The second male then walks away in the same direction as the first male.” The FBI received five more tips through Nov. 7 about the matter—including someone offering to provide a prepublication copy of a story about “negotiations between an unknown Los Angeles Agent of the FBI and ‘Dateline,’” the memo said. <Source>