(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In the wake of the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI launched a massive manhunt for a mystery accomplice to Timothy McVeigh known as “John Doe 2”—only to later claim that he never existed, and that McVeigh acted largely alone.
Nearly 30 years later, an attorney in Utah named Jesse Trentadue is still working to unearth the truth of the matter through his ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for surveillance footage of the blast—footage that, according to FBI and Secret Service records, shows McVeigh with another unidentified subject. Since McVeigh’s other accomplice, Terry Nichols, was confirmed to have been in Kansas on April 19, John Doe 2’s identify remains a subject of debate. Credible researchers have made the case that he may have been an undercover informant, or even an agent.
Trentadue’s nearly 17-year-old FOIA lawsuit hasn’t received much attention over the last decade, largely because it’s been litigated behind closed doors, with gag orders on all parties. That’s because a special master is continuing to investigate stunning allegations that the FBI intimidated an undercover informant involved in the case.
With the OKC bombing anniversary next week, Trentadue recently moved to unseal the deposition he took of the FBI informant—a retired Marine named John Matthews, who purportedly saw McVeigh months before the bombing. However, one of the top officials in the Justice Department, Principal Acting Assistant Attorney General Yaakov Roth, is opposing his motion, according to a letter Trentadue wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi—a copy of which was obtained by this reporter.
“Mr. Roth appeared in that case in his official capacity and heads the Department of Justice’s vehement opposition to unsealing Matthews’ deposition,” Trentadue told Bondi in his March 26 letter.
“Why is the Department of Justice fighting so hard to prevent the unsealing of that deposition when it is contrary to everything the current administration has publicly stated about exposing and cleaning up the FBI lawlessness?”
It’s unclear what the contents of Matthews’ deposition are. Trentadue said he wasn’t allowed to comment on the matter due to the court-imposed gag order.
🚨NEW: A Utah attorney suing for surveillance footage of the OKC bombing recently moved to unseal an FBI informant's deposition about the matter.
HOWEVER, the motion is opposed by Trump's DOJ — specifically one of the top officials, Principal Acting Assistant Attorney General… pic.twitter.com/lSUABGVE7h
— Headline USA (@HeadlineUSA) April 10, 2025
Judging by Matthews’ past public disclosures, his testimony likely reveals new information about some of the darkest scandals in the FBI’s history—including its coverup of the others involved in the OKC bombing, which killed at least 168 people, including 19 children, in what remains the deadliest domestic terrorism attack in American history.
Bondi’s office did not respond to messages seeking comment on the matter. Roth also did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Who is John Matthews, and What Does He Know?
Matthews, a retired Marine who infiltrated the right-wing underground in the 1990s as a paid operative, never intended to become a whistleblower. He had been out of the game for over a decade, and only went public after he saw that the bureau burned him by not redacting his name in documents that were being released.
“All those years I’ve been a good boy and kept my mouth shut,” Matthews told Newsweek in 2011. “Then you release my name? What kind of shit is that?”
Initially, Matthews attempted to tell his story through the press.
Buttressed by his credibility—the FBI gave him a plaque for his service, and documents corroborated much of what he said—Matthews told a Newsweek all about an undercover operation to infiltrate right-wing groups called “Patriot Conspiracy,” or PATCON for short.
According to Matthews, PATCON entailed numerous undercover FBI agents and informants posing as neo-Nazis. Those undercover operatives fomented numerous crimes, including illegal gunwalking to plotting an attack on a nuclear plant in Alabama, according to Matthews. Perhaps Matthews’ most jolting claim was that he saw McVeigh in 1994 with a German national named Andy Strassmeir—who an ATF informant later saw casing the Murrah Building in early 1995.
But when Newsweek published its article about Matthews on Nov. 11, 2011, he was dismayed to find his most damning disclosures unreported.
That’s when Matthews turned to Trentadue, who was preparing for his upcoming trial in his FOIA lawsuit for the OKC bombing surveillance footage—the only FOIA case, to this writer’s knowledge, that’s ever gone to trial.
Trentadue’s Trial
Trentadue had filed his lawsuit in 2008, and the FBI swore to a judge that footage never existed. Typically, such a declaration is all it takes for a judge to dismiss a FOIA lawsuit. But in Trentadue’s case, the Utah attorney had already separately obtained investigatory records from the Secret Service, which conducted its own investigation into the bombing.
The Secret Service documents showed that the John Doe 2 surveillance footage indeed exists.
“Security videotapes from the area [around the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building] show the truck detonation three minutes and six seconds after the suspects exited the truck,” the Secret Service document states.
Trentadue also showed the judge FBI records and contemporaneous news reports about an agent who allegedly tried selling the surveillance footage to NBC News. According to the leaked October 1995 FBI memo, an attorney representing an FBI agent in Los Angeles had contacted the NBC show “Dateline,” offering to sell surveillance footage for more than $1 million.
“It was represented that the video tape would contain lapse photography of the arrival and then departure of a UPS truck. Then a Ryder truck pulls up and a male resembling Timothy McVey [sic] is seen exiting the driver’s side of the Ryder truck and then walking away,” the FBI memo says. “Next, a second male is seen exiting the passenger side of the Ryder truck and walking to the back of the truck. The second male then walks away in the same direction as the first male.”
Having been caught in an apparent lie about the surveillance footage and the existence of John Doe 2, the FBI was forced to go to trial. Trentadue’s trial happened in Utah over a four-day period from July 28 to July 31, 2014.
Wanting to show that the FBI was hiding records about others involved in the bombing, Trentadue was going to have Matthews testify about his encounters with known associates of McVeigh. Trentadue also wanted to press Matthews on his inside knowledge of scandals ranging from the 1993 Waco massacre all the way to the Obama-era Fast & Furious gun-walking disaster.
Matthews’ testimony was supposed to put the finishing touches of Trentadue’s case that other unidentified accomplices indeed were involved in the bombing, and that the FBI was hiding records about them. Specifically, Matthews was going to talk about his time with Andreas Strassmeir, an infamous figure from the 1990s militia scene who was accused by an ATF informant of casing federal buildings in late 1994 and early 1995.
“Prior to the Oklahoma City Bombing [Matthews] had seen Timothy McVeigh and a German National by the name of Andreas Strassmeir at a militia training facility near San Saba, Texas,” Trentadue later said in a sworn declaration.
“According to Mr. Matthews, he had reported the McVeigh–Strassmeir [sighting] to the FBI, and was told by the FBI that the Bureau was already aware of that fact, which indicated to Mr. Matthews that others within the FBI were monitoring McVeigh on the [run-up] to the attack on the Murrah Building.”
Matthews Goes Missing
The reason Matthews’ purported sighting was recounted in a sworn declaration, and not from his trial testimony, is because he changed his mind about taking the stand. On day three of the trial, Roger Charles—a private investigator who worked on McVeigh’s defense team before helping Trentadue with his litigation—said he received a phone call from Matthews, who relayed to him that he had been threatened by the bureau.
“John Matthews said that he had been told by the FBI to ‘stand down.’ John Matthews also said that he had been told by the FBI to take a vacation so that he could not be subpoenaed,” Charles said in his Aug. 7, 2014, sworn declaration to the court. “He likewise said that the ‘Bureau’ had made it very clear to him that if he did testify, it could result in the loss of his Veteran’s health coverage, and Veteran’s disability pension.”
Trentadue filed a similar declaration.
“During that conversation, Mr. Matthews related to me the events leading up to his refusal to testify, including the name of the FBI agent who had contacted him, Adam Quirk,” Trentadue said in his declaration.
The FBI denied Charles’s and Trentadue’s allegations of witness tampering. The bureau showed Judge Waddoups an Aug. 2, 2014, email from Matthews to both parties in the FOIA dispute. In there, Matthews said he declined to testify based on the advice of his former handler, retired FBI agent Don Jarrett.
“Like we both agree, I had nothing to do with the Oklahoma City bombing or the tapes. I did not want to testify and I did not want to get caught in a crossfire with both sides,” Matthews wrote. “If I took a trip, no one could find me to give a subpoena to. Don told me we should inform the FBI in Salt Lake City and let them know what I was going to do.”
In his email, Matthews confirmed that he spoke with Trentadue and Charles.
“I told them that I was not going to testify. That Agent Adam Quirk was supposed to [have] told the court,” he wrote, emphasizing in all capital letters: “NO ONE FROM THE FBI OR DOJ HAS MADE ANY THREATS TO ME OR MY FAMILY.”
Matthews’ assurances did not convince Judge Waddoups, who launched an investigation into the matter.
“The current record at least permits a reasonable inference of wrongdoing by Defendant or its agents in influencing Mr. Matthews not to testify,” Judge Waddoups said in an April 2015 decision, ordering a separate magistrate judge—a “special master”—to investigate the witness tampering allegations.
Almost exactly a decade later, and the special master has yet to issue his report and recommendations.
Meanwhile, Matthews is nowhere to be found. Trentadue said he doesn’t even know if Matthews, a Vietnam veteran who suffered from the effects of Agent Orange, is still alive.
While declining to comment on the proceedings, Trentadue did say the DOJ and FBI have fought him “tooth and nail” every step of the way.
Trentadue said he expected a coverup from previous administrations. After all, former Attorney General Merrick Garland helped prosecute McVeigh, and was involved in suppressing info about John Doe 2—Garland argued during McVeigh’s April 27, 1995, preliminary hearing that “it doesn’t matter whether there were two or 100 people in that truck, as long as there was somebody representing Mr. McVeigh there.”
“The only person on trial at this hearing is Mr. McVeigh. It doesn’t matter whether there were two or 100 people in that truck, as long as there was somebody representing Mr. McVeigh there."
— Merrick Garland https://t.co/y7r2fgeNm6 pic.twitter.com/GSB9nMDvJa
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) November 14, 2024
Even though the Trump administration promised more transparency, Deputy AG Roth’s move to keep Matthews’ declaration sealed is just the latest move by the U.S. government to keep the truth hidden, Trentadue said.
Sean Dunagan, a senior investigator for transparency group Judicial Watch, has told this reporter that he’s surprised the case has even gotten this far.
“We’re one of the largest FOIA litigants in this country, and we’ve never been involved in anything that involves that degree of alleged misconduct by the [FBI]. It’s astounding,” Dunagan told this reporter in 2022.
“It’s very good for Jesse that his case is not being litigated in D.C. If this case were litigated in D.C., it would have been closed years ago. Judges in D.C. have a lot more deference to agencies, particularly when it comes to classification of law enforcement records.”
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
NOTE: This story was also published by The Federalist.
