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Glynn Tipton, for example, is expected to testify that he talked with McVeigh at a drag race in Topeka, Kansas, and that McVeigh was seeking two bombmaking chemicals. Frederick Alan Schlender, the manager of the Mid-Kansas Coop in McPherson, Kansas, will testify that on Sept. 30, 1994, someone closely resembling Nichols bought 40 bags of ammonium nitrate, weighing 50 lbs. apiece. On Oct. 18, Schlender has said, he bought another 50 lbs. During a pretrial hearing in February, Schlender testified that the man "said he was a wheat farmer. It was an unusual transaction. It wasn't common for someone to buy a ton of ammonium nitrate." When FBI agents searched Nichols' home in Herington, they found a receipt for one of the purchases; it had McVeigh's fingerprint on it.
Phone records will show that McVeigh, Nichols and Fortier made hundreds of calls around the country to various establishments that sold fertilizer, chemicals, explosives, remote-control switches, racing fuel and 55-gal. plastic drums. Many of these calls were charged to a prepaid phone card issued in the name of Daryl Bridges by the Spotlight, a far-right publication. The FBI maintains this card was actually used by McVeigh and Nichols. McVeigh allegedly used the card to call Nichols to pick him up in Oklahoma City. Agents have documented McVeigh's and Nichols' travels, and many of the calls charged to the phone card were placed from hotels and motels where they were staying. Thirty or more experts from telephone companies are likely to testify.
Michael Fortier, prosecutors hope, will fill in the colors of the picture they have drawn. He will provide the vivid, firsthand account of McVeigh, the friend he asked to be best man at his wedding. He can describe McVeigh's visits to Kingman, Arizona, where Fortier lived and where McVeigh spent the weeks before the bombing. Most crucially, Fortier can say that on Dec. 15 and 16, 1994, he and McVeigh were in Oklahoma City, where they walked around inside the Murrah building (in which Christmas decorations adorned the day-care center). According to Fortier, McVeigh said this was the building he was going to bomb. Sources tell TIME that the government has proof that Fortier was not at the scene of the bombing, as some have theorized.
THE DEFENSE
How will Stephen Jones, McVeigh's lead attorney, counterattack? First of all, he will use any evidence pointing to unidentified accomplices to argue that the real culprits are still at large. He will also try to suggest the bombing was the result of a worldwide conspiracy to which McVeigh was only tangentially associated, if at all. Jones has sent investigators to Europe, the Middle East and Asia. For months, he has talked about a German named Andreas Strassmeir, who met McVeigh in 1993; about Richard Snell, a white supremacist who was executed April 19, 1995; and about Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the man accused of organizing the World Trade Center bombing, who was in the Philippines at the same time as Nichols (Nichols' second wife is a Philippine mail-order bride).