Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510090074
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: HERINGTON, KAN. LENGTH: Medium
To his new neighbors - the local real estate agent, the bank, the military surplus store - his arrival out of the blue last winter seemed odd but not so bizarre that they wanted to pry into his business. Now that he is in prison and awaiting trial as a co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing case, it has slowly begun to make sense.
Nichols came here to get lost.
``We're a very small town, and we're centrally located in the country,'' said Georgia Rucker, a local real estate agent who put together a cash contract for Nichols' new home. ``And here comes this man trying to get away from his past.''
What Nichols' neighbors did not know, however, is that what they were seeing was only the surface wrinkles in a secret life. It was a life apparently designed to leave no footprints - more sophisticated and ingenious than the simple, drifting existence that Nichols and his former Army friend Timothy J. McVeigh seemed to have been living at the time they were arrested.
In the six months since a massive truck bomb blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 169 people and injuring 600 more, a small army of federal investigators has been tracing the origins of the attack and the men accused as its perpetrators.
Slowly and methodically, in trips to small towns like Herington, to courthouses, to banks, pawnshops and other business ventures, they have discovered a murky, limbo-like world in normal Middle America.
For Nichols and McVeigh, it was a life of travel, sometimes overseas, a life of multiple names and addresses, often fabricated, a life allegedly dedicated to the steady accumulation of guns, vehicles and supplies that could be used in a blow against the government.
For investigators, it has been a difficult mystery to unravel. They are still piecing together how Nichols and McVeigh could have subsisted in this nether world, theorizing at times about a possible hidden benefactor.
But now, the discovery of a twisted trail of financial transactions has begun to tell a larger story.
By cleverly manipulating applications for credit cards and checking accounts, Nichols and McVeigh allegedly managed to exploit an assortment of fiscal institutions, including giant Chase Manhattan Bank, and to keep thousands of dollars coming in while they were both mostly unemployed.
In late 1992, McVeigh applied for a Signet Bank credit card. He listed his employer as the ``U.S. Army,'' although he had left the service more than a year earlier.
The following month, Nichols attempted to settle an $18,000 claim by Chase Manhattan for two delinquent credit cards. In state court in Michigan, where Nichols was then living, he submitted a check for the amount on a note of his own design and called it a ``Certified Fractional Reserve Check.''
Nichols told the court that he had ``the right to issue this money under the 9th, 10th and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.'' He challenged a legal form submitted by Chase Manhattan, asking him to divulge some of his trial strategy if he planned to fight the lawsuit.
In June 1993, McVeigh moved to Kingman, Ariz. He began paying rent for a trailer home in cash, mostly in $100 bills. He showed up wearing a uniform from the local State Security company, a job he quit within two months.
Also that June, he applied for a pre-approved credit line of $2,500 for a Visa card. He listed his employment with a different company, Sentry Security.
Taking a cue from Nichols, McVeigh wrote his own fractional reserve check for $2,730.58 in September of that year, in an apparent attempt to deposit the money in his Army credit union account. He then wrote an insufficient-funds check for $291.22 for a TEC-9 assault pistol at Pat's Pawn and Gun Shop in Ogden, Kan., just outside the Army's Fort Riley base where he and Nichols had served together.
Gun shop proprietor Pat Livingston said that two years earlier, McVeigh paid him about $600 in cash for a .45-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol - the same weapon he was carrying when he was arrested 90 minutes after the Oklahoma City bombing.
by CNB