Botching The Big Case

Sunday, May. 13, 2001 By NANCY GIBBS
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Last December FBI headquarters, for the fifth time, ordered that all the Oklahoma-bombing documents be permanently archived. As material flowed in from the field offices, the archivist realized some of it had never been put in the main case file and shared with defense lawyers. Not until Tuesday were McVeigh's lawyers notified--and even then FBI officials waited two more days to analyze the documents before telling Freeh; they were ashen as they left his office. He was, says one insider, "absolutely tear-ass." Bush and Ashcroft learned Thursday as well, and immediately after Ashcroft's Friday press conference, officials from the Justice Department Inspector General's office descended on the bureau to investigate what had gone wrong.

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FBI officials blamed an antiquated computer-database system: "Our technology is so old and unreliable, we don't know what we know," said one. Yet a former senior Justice official called it "beyond amazing" that the FBI would commit such a blunder in its most high-profile case in years--especially after similar charges of mishandling evidence were leveled during the investigation of Clinton's campaign-finance scandals and led to a sweeping internal probe. "It's a problem the bureau has had for a long time," the official noted. "Agents are great at acquiring information; they're not great at cataloging it or knowing what they have." What was especially troubling was that the mistakes were so widespread. Fully 46 of 56 FBI field offices, from Houston to Honolulu and Atlanta to Anchorage, failed to turn over everything they had on the case--in some instances it appears that the Special Agents in Charge decided on their own that some dutiful reports were unimportant. "The thing that flabbergasts me--and makes me think that more inquiry is required here--is that this was not just one office," says a Justice veteran. "This was the whole damn bureau. I can't figure out how so many people ignored the rules."

No one suggests that the retrieved documents would have changed the outcome of the case. But the confusion still had its costs because the public, even in its angriest moments, wanted this all handled fairly. "It's heartbreaking," says the Justice veteran. "The country needs for this to be over. We tried to put the very best people on this case, the best prosecutors. We really tried hard. The main thing we wanted was an error-free environment."

In any capital case, the stakes are by definition as high as they can be. With this latest misstep, the doubts about the process are threatening to help reshape the whole death-penalty debate. The prospect of McVeigh's execution had already made every argument get up and dance. Just as capital punishment was losing support with each new innocent man freed by DNA evidence, along came the perfect villain: so clearly guilty, unrepentant and pitiless that at least 75% of Americans agreed with his sentence, including 22% who say they oppose the death penalty but would make an exception for him. The Pope had asked for mercy; most Americans didn't think McVeigh deserved any.

But last week the debate, with its sudden plot twist, turned inside out once again. Death-penalty opponents seized on the FBI's embarrassing revelation to argue that when the stakes are this high, justice must be perfect. The moment Ashcroft announced the delay, questions flew. What if these documents had turned up six days after his execution, rather than six days before? McVeigh admitted his guilt, but death row is full of inmates who have not. How much doubt can the criminal justice system withstand? "The events of the past three days demonstrate that even in Mr. McVeigh's case, the government is not capable of carrying out the death penalty in a fair and just manner," said McVeigh lawyer Robert Nigh.

McVeigh's execution had all along promised to rattle our thoughts about justice, simply by virtue of being the most closely watched, widely discussed, endlessly publicized execution in a generation. We are already involved: we "know" McVeigh. However mysterious his motives, he is still far more familiar than anyone America has executed in decades. We know that we were all his targets--that's how terrorism is supposed to work. In return, we were going to hear all about his last meal, his last words, at last.

That sense of closeness was affecting even the bombing survivors. Randy Ledger was a maintenance man on the first floor of the Murrah building. His views on the death penalty have been challenged by this process. "Six months ago, I would have said it was fine. But the more personal this becomes, the closer it becomes, the more moderate I become. It's very easy to say, 'Just put to death another murderer' when you have no personal feeling involved; but the closer this gets, the more introspective I get--morally and spiritually--and it's very difficult."