McVeigh Reportedly Admits Guilt

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DALLAS: Defense notes obtained by the Dallas Morning News reportedly show that Timothy McVeigh told his attorneys that he alone drove the rental truck used in the Oklahoma City bombing, and that he choose to detonate the device in the morning in hopes of injuring and killing as many people as possible in order get his point across to the government. The documents, a compilation of interviews between McVeigh and his defense team, also reveal how McVeigh and Terry Nichols built the bomb and how they funded the operation with robberies. McVeigh's attorney, Stephen Jones, called the reports fakes and asked the newspaper not to publish them. "I don't presume to know everything everybody has said, but none of that sounds familiar to me," Jones told the paper. Ralph Langer, executive vice president and editor of The News, said the documents were real and were obtained legally. His decision to publish them late Friday on the newspaper's website (dallasnews.com) may have been an effort to prevent the defense from suppressing the documents. If the documents are real, the statements made by McVeigh could validate critical points in the prosecution's case and help prove him and Nichols guilty. In one revelation, McVeigh contradicted a witness claim that she knew the identity of the person who drove the rental truck. "Mr. McVeigh . . . insisted that he was the one who drove the Ryder truck," a defense interviewer wrote. McVeigh also described to interviewers in stark detail the make up of the bomb that blasted the Oklahoma federal building. According to the documents, he said the device was made with 5,400 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, six hundred pounds more than the government's estimate, and that it was mixed with $3000 worth of racing fuel to produce a bomb of exceptional power. McVeigh added that the scheme was financed at least partially by the 1994 robbery of a gun dealer in Arkansas, which was carried out by Terry Nichols. But that wasn't the end of the robberies. Additional statements revealed both McVeigh and Nichols stole explosives from a quarry in Kansas in 1994 to further their plan. It is unclear how damaging McVeigh's comments are to his defense. It is believed the reports may not be seen by the jury because they were based on a meeting with a defense team member. Under this particular legal proceeding, the defense does not have to provide evidence of this kind to the prosecution. McVeigh's trial on murder and conspiracy charges begins March 31 in Denver. Nichols will be tried separately. If convicted, they could get the death penalty for an attack which killed 168 people and injured more than 500.