-Caveat Lector- To: (Recipient list suppressed) Source: Joplin Globe http://www.joplinglobe.com/ Protester held in Joplin Ex-informant, in psychiatric ward, claims conspiracy in McVeigh case http://www.joplinglobe.com/010511/headline/sto ry1.html A former federal informant who says the public will never know the full extent of the conspiracy behind the Oklahoma City bombing if Timothy McVeigh is executed next week is being held in a Joplin mental ward. Joe Hurley, 50, was transported late Tuesday to the Stephens Behavioral Unit at Freeman Hospital East. He was arrested earlier in the day outside the federal courthouse in Springfield. A supervisor at the behavioral unit hung up when asked Thursday night about Hurley. A Springfield police dispatcher said the department’s public information officer had gone home, and that nobody else was authorized to comment. While Hurley’s claims might seem outlandish, his attorney, Mel Gilbert of Buffalo, said there is enough solid information to warrant further investigation. Hurley, of Urbana, about 45 miles north of Springfield, had planned to protest McVeigh’s impending execution by performing some “performance art” that included the use of mock bombs, according to Gilbert. But, Hurley was arrested by Springfield police as his truck pulled into the courthouse parking lot. He had alerted police to his plans. Hurley had been arrested two weeks earlier for a similar attempt at the courthouse, when he was stopped from burning an effigy labeled “DOJ,” for Department of Justice, but no charges were filed by Greene County Prosecutor Darrell Moore. But Hurley’s protests did catch the attention of Mike Schilling of Springfield, a former state legislator. “I saw (Hurley’s case) on the news, and I’ve always had a strong interest in civil liberties and the abuse of power,” said Schilling, a Democrat who served in the Missouri House from 1993 to 2000. “I made some inquiries, and it appears to me that this guy is being silenced through the use of the mental-health system. “He’s basically a political prisoner.” Gilbert, Hurley’s attorney, said he has known his client for years and described him as a peaceful man. Gilbert said Hurley was sent to Joplin on Tuesday under a 96-hour emergency commitment, but that now a 21-day evaluation is planned — well past Wednesday’s scheduled execution of McVeigh for the April 19, 1995, bombing. Gilbert said Hurley was a federal informant in a 1994 Osceola case that involved explosives and firearms. Much of what Hurley cites as evidence for a widespread conspiracy surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing is available in the form of tape recordings and transcripts from that case, he said. When asked if he thought Hurley’s story was credible, Gilbert said: “He was credible enough before to get somebody convicted of attempting to blow something up. And, I haven’t had anybody come back at me to dispute anything he says. So, I would say there is at least a lot of circumstantial evidence in his favor.” Gilbert said he was puzzled at Hurley’s treatment by authorities because he was not doing anything illegal and posed no danger to anyone. Although hospital officials would neither confirm nor deny that Hurley was in their care, he was reached Thursday via the pay telephone at the behavioral unit. “I’m being held here, I hate to say as a prisoner, but that’s what it amounts to,” Hurley said. Hurley said in the phone interview that he met McVeigh in 1993 or 1994 at a militia compound called “Little Waco” located outside of Appleton City, in St. Clair County. Hurley said he spent several hours firing automatic weapons with McVeigh and other compound members. Hurley said he infiltrated a group of mercenaries who were willing, for a price, to carry out the orders of several radical right-wing groups. McVeigh and alleged Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph were both “soldiers” in the same terror-for-hire organization, he alleged. Hurley said he was recruited by the Secret Service as an informant when one of the group’s leaders tried to repay a loan with counterfeit bills. Although the counterfeiting investigation was a dead end, Hurley said, he later was used by the FBI to gather evidence on a plan to blow up the town of Osceola using “a fertilizer bomb and a rental truck.” The plan was designed to kill a key witness in a double- murder trial who was being held at the time in the St. Clair County Jail, he said. Gilbert said the man convicted as part of this undercover work was Wyatt Waggoner, then of Appleton City. Wyatt Duane Waggoner was arrested Sept. 1, 1994, on six counts of explosives and weapons violations, according to docket information from U.S. District Court at Springfield. In a plea bargain, he was sentenced in 1995 to 70 months in prison. Waggoner has been released from prison, according to the docket file, and is serving a three-year supervised probation. Few other details were available, a court clerk said, as the bulk of the case had been archived and sent to federal court at Kansas City for storage. No plans to destroy the county courthouse at Osceola were hinted at in the docket entries, and a dispatcher at the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department said she could remember no such case. Hurley said he suffers from panic attacks and has “mild brain damage” from a beating in the early 1980s, but claims he’s not psychotic. He said he worked as a bartender in Kansas City before becoming disabled by the beating. He also admits that he’s had a hard time finding the paperwork to prove that he once was an informant for the FBI. State and federal officials, he said, now “stonewall” him when he tries to tell his story. “They’re holding me because I tried to protest,” he said. “Timothy McVeigh needs to die, but we shouldn't execute him until we know the full truth.” Gilbert said Hurley also had worked as an informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and for the Missouri State Highway Patrol, and had gathered information on a man trying to sell a missile launcher in 1994. “The only trouble Joe’s been in was a couple of DUIs about 10 years ago, and a disorderly conduct about 20 years before that,” Gilbert said. “The question is: Do you have to have a particular color of sign to engage in a protest now?” Schilling, the former state lawmaker, said he thought the conspiracy information was irrelevant. As an advocate of mental-health reform during his tenure in the Legislature, Schilling said, he knew the capacity for abuse that was built into the system. “It’s very spooky what’s going on with this man,” Schilling said. “And, there’s been no really good explanation why he’s being handled in such a draconian way.” -- Best Wishes We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. ~~John Stuart Mill <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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