(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The FBI disclosed a batch of records to Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue earlier this month as part of his ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for documents about undercover federal informants linked to the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing.
However, at least eight of the records Trentadue seeks remain sealed by a federal judge. The bureau also withheld 30 documents for privacy reasons, even though the main subjects of Trentadue’s request—OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh and FBI informant Roger Edwin Moore—are both dead.
Additionally, only two of the 355 pages the FBI provided to Trentadue this month have anything to do with his original FOIA requests, he said in a March 20 court filing—one that seeks a judge to intervene and force the FBI to produce records more quickly.
“To date, the FBI has produced to Plaintiff 2,626 pages of documents of which just 17 pages were responsive to his FOIA Requests. The FBI has also withheld from Plaintiff another 627 pages of purportedly responsive documents under vague claims of privilege,” Trentadue said in his filing.
“The FBI has obviously done so in an effort to conceal from the American public the role that it played in the Oklahoma City Bombing, which is the very kind of government wrongdoing that FOIA was intended to expose.”
Update in Jesse Trentadue's lawsuit for records on FBI informants' involvement in the OKC bombing.
He received another batch of records earlier this month — but some are still sealed pursuant to a court order! Are these records related to Shawn Kenny, Peter Langan, Roger Moore… https://t.co/57fzruE6Vd pic.twitter.com/lEpXwfbuZJ— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) March 25, 2025
The FBI has yet to respond to Trentadue’s latest filing.
It’s unclear which court sealed the records that are subject to Trentadue’s FOIA actions. According to Trentadue, the fact that some records are sealed is an implicit admission of “the FBI’s involvement in the Oklahoma City Bombing.”
Trentadue’s Quest for Justice
Trentadue has been suing the U.S. government for OKC bomb-related records for nearly 30 years, ever since his brother was murdered in a federal penitentiary. The complex story of how the death of Trentadue’s brother relates to the OKC bombing can be read in Mother Jones.
One of the key players Trentadue seeks info about is a man named Roger Edwin Moore (not the James Bond actor), who was an FBI informant as part of the bureau’s 1980s- and early 90s-era Operation Punchout. In the early 90s, Moore met McVeigh. The two would become business partners, embarking on the national gun show circuit in 1993.
“According to Terry Nichols, one of McVeigh’s accomplices, not only did Moore provide them with the Kinestik explosives used to detonate the bomb that destroyed the Murrah Federal Building, but Moore also told McVeigh that he knew McVeigh ‘would put them [the Kinesteik] to good use,’” Trentadue said in his Wednesday court filing.
Along with Moore, Trentadue also continues to seek info on the ARA.
In 2001, then-Indiana State University criminologist Mark Hamm published a book making the case that the ARA helped carry out the bombing. Hamm’s In Bad Company: America’s Terrorist Underground detailed the movements of McVeigh and the ARA throughout 1993 and ’94, showing that the bomber was often in Arizona, Kansas and Oklahoma at the same time as several other ARA members. McVeigh and ARA members were also both spotted by witnesses at Elohim City, a white nationalist compound in the Ozarks.
Even more shocking, Trentadue later uncovered evidence that the ARA may even have been an FBI front group. Trentadue obtained an email from former FBI agent Don Jarrett—who investigated right-wing terrorism in the 1990s—saying that the Aryan robbers were thoroughly infiltrated by FBI informants.
In his current lawsuit, Trentadue expressed his belief that the ARA was indeed an FBI front group.
“Timothy McVeigh participated in some of those robberies and is reported to have used money obtained from these crimes to help fund the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. Members of the ARA also assisted McVeigh in carrying out the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building,” he said in his complaint last February.
“The ARA was actually a front group created by the FBI in which the Bureau had embedded at least one informant.”
Meanwhile, Trentadue still has another lawsuit against the FBI for records about the OKC bombing.
That lawsuit, which has been ongoing for decades, seeks surveillance footage of the blast. The FBI has denied that such footage exists, but Trentadue has evidence to the contrary—including a Secret Service investigative memo that describes the surveillance footage.
Trentadue’s lawsuit went to trial in 2014.
There, he was to have FBI informant-turned-whistleblower John Matthews testify on his behalf about how the bureau was monitoring McVeigh in the lead-up to the attack. However, Matthews changed his mind about testifying the night before he was supposed to take the stand, leading to Trentadue alleging that the FBI engaged in witness tampering and threatened Matthews.
Trentadue’s allegations have been subject of a court-appointed investigation for the last nearly eight years. The investigation has been conducted behind closed doors, with gag orders on all parties.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
