A Utah man whose brother died in federal prison ten years ago has been trying to find out why ever since. A federal judge ruled Wednesday on his latest attempt to get information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding his brother’s death. As it turns out, the FBI does have information, and it’s closely tied to the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla.

Last August I reported to you that based in part on the lawsuit filed by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, the FBI has reopened its investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing.

At the time, the judge had ordered the FBI to turn over unredacted copies of documents Trentadue sought under the Freedom of Information Act. The judge has finally reviewed those documents and issued a decision.

Remember, this all started with a man trying to find out what happened to his brother.

The federal government maintains that Kenneth Trentadue killed himself in a suicide-proof cell at the Oklahoma City federal installation, where he was being held on a purported parole violation for failing to report to his parole officer.

In the course of this investigation, Trentadue received “tips” from various sources, including one allegedly from a source close to McVeigh, before McVeigh’s execution.

That source said that McVeigh told him that Kenneth Trentadue was beaten, tortured and murdered because the FBI mistakenly believed he was linked to a group of bank bandits that considerable evidence now suggests, assisted McVeigh in the plot to bomb the Oklahoma federal building.

The FOIA suit began after heavily redacted documents obtained by this newspaper, from an FBI whistleblower, confirmed McVeigh’s links to Elohim City and informants working for the Southern Poverty Law Center who were present at the paramilitary compound on April 17, 1995, when McVeigh called the camp looking for German-national Andreas Strassmeir and additional help in the bombing.

While heavily redacted, that Jan. 4, 1996, teletype from then-FBI director Louis Freeh to a select group of FBI offices contained information appearing to link Strassmeir to McVeigh and the FBI’s knowledge that Strassmeir was planning to flee the country soon.

Inexplicably, the FBI did not go to the residence where the memo said Strassmeir was living in Black Mountain, N.C., and detain the individual for questioning about the bombing. Instead, Strassmeir — with the help on his Black Mountain, N.C. attorney, Kirk Lyons, and former CIA pilot Dave Holloway — was able to slip across the Mexican border a few days after the teletype was issued. — McCurtain Daily Gazette

While the judge agreed with the government not to release the unredacted documents, citing an FOIA exemption, he did note in his order that the documents indicate that Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for his role in the bombing, may have had assistance from others, including a white supremacist group which was operating in eastern Oklahoma at the time.

Considering Trentadue’s allegations about his brother’s mysterious and violent death, the judge early in his opinion observed: “While officials ruled the death a suicide, the Plaintiff unearthed significant evidence of foul play. Plaintiff’s theory is that his brother apparently looked very similar to Richard Lee Guthrie, who allegedly was one of Timothy McVeigh’s accomplices in the Oklahoma City bombing and a member of the Mid-West Bank Robbery Gang. Plaintiff believes that his brother was killed during an overly aggressive interrogation by federal agents – who believed Kenneth Trentadue was Richard Lee Guthrie.

Later in his summary of the facts, Judge Dale Kimball also noted that Guthrie was later apprehended by authorities and he, too, is said to have committed suicide his jail cell while in federal custody.

After reviewing the unredacted documents provided by the FBI, Kimball singled out a teletype issued by the FBI, only six days after the blast.

“Plaintiff points out the fact that this document indicates there was an undercover operative in with Timothy McVeigh and members of the various militia groups who aided and supported McVeigh, but plaintiff wonders why, given the subject matter, there are no earlier records produced by the FBI.”

Contacted after the ruling was issued, Trentadue told this newspaper that he is heartened by the language the judged used here, which clearly indicates the unredacted documents convinced the court that McVeigh had accomplices that have not been charged and the government had at least one informant within the cabal. — Ibid.

So this guy’s brother gets mistaken for one of the white supremacists believed to be involved in the Oklahoma City bombing, and the FBI manages to kill him in jail. Sounds like your typical incompetence to me.

The judge also blasted the FBI for failing to follow up leads in the investigation, and failing to turn over all of the documents referenced in the case.

Regarding the FBI’s reluctance to provide the information sought by Trentadue, Kimball wrote, “It is troubling that so many of the documents produced by the FBI refer to FD-302s (investigation leads) that were or should have been prepared, and the disclosed documents also refer to other attachments that at one time appear to have accompanied the document, yet these documents have not been produced. While the FBI’s failure to discover documents is not necessarily and indication of bad faith, it is puzzling that so many documents could be referenced but not produced.” — Ibid.

So he also ordered the FBI to produce these additional documents and perform further searches for Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center, among others. This is far from over, and by the end of it, we might actually find out some more of the truth behind the 1995 bombing, and perhaps bring its perpetrators to justice. All this because of one man’s decade-long struggle to find out what really happened to his brother in a federal lockup.