Oklahoma City bombing plot thwarted
Suspect tried to blow up bank using vehicle, echoing 1995
A 23-year-old Oklahoma man has been arrested after he tried to blow up a bank in downtown Oklahoma City using a vehicle bomb similar to the one that destroyed the federal building there in 1995, federalofficials said Monday.
The man, Jerry Drake Varnell, had been plotting the attack for months, the authorities said, but was thwarted by along-running undercover investigation led by an FBI joint terrorismtask force.
Mr. Varnell was arrested early Saturday after he parked a van loaded with what he believed to be a working explosive device in analley next to the bank, and then dialed a number on a cell phone that he thought would set it off, federal officials said. The device was inert and could not explode, theofficials said.
According to court documents, Mr. Varnell had espoused an anti-government ideology and had expressed an interest in carrying out an attack that would echo the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, whichkilled 168 people.
The bank Mr. Varnell was said to target — the downtown branch of BancFirst, Oklahoma’s largest statechartered bank — is about a half-mile from the site of that attack.
During a meeting in June with an undercover FBI agent posing as someone who could help him, Mr. Varnell said that he wanted to start the next revolution and that he identified with whatis known as 3 percenter ideology, according to an affidavit filed in support of the federal criminal complaint against him. Mr. Varnell sought to form and arm a small militia group, inspired in part by the movie “Fight Club,”the authorities said.
“I’m out for blood,” Mr. Varnellwrote in one text message to a confidential informant who cooperated with the authorities, according to the affidavit, which was written by an FBI special agent. “When militias start getting formed I’m going after governmentofficials when I have ateam,” he wrote.
In another text message, Mr. Varnell wrote: “I think I’m going to go with what the okc bomber used. Diesel and anhydrous ammonia.” He was referring to Timothy McVeigh, who was executed forthe Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh and a co-conspirator,Terry Nichols, built a giant fertilizer bomb using ammonium nitrate and racing fuel as their primary ingredients. Mr. Varnell later told the informant to get him ammonium nitrate, adding, “That’sall I need,” according tocourt documents.
Federal law enforcement officials said the public was not in danger at any time.
“There was never a concern that our community’s safety or security was at risk during this investigation,” Kathryn Peterson, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Oklahoma, said in a statement.