Bombing Suspect in Custody : FBI Questions 2 Others as Death Toll Hits 65 : Terrorism: Officials theorize that attack on federal building may have been aimed at agent who led raid on Branch Davidians in Waco, Tex.

OKLAHOMA CITY — FBI agents arrested a 26-year-old gun enthusiast Friday and accused him of taking part in the worst terrorist attack in American history, an apparent act of revenge against the U.S. government for its deadly raid against the Branch Davidian religious cult two years ago. A second man surrendered but was not placed under arrest.

The death toll in the terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building here rose to 65, including at least 13 children. Another 150 people are missing.

The suspect, Timothy McVeigh, was put under federal arrest at a jail in the small town of Perry, Okla., where he had spent the two days since the bombing in custody on minor traffic and weapons charges. His arrest, the surrender of Terry Nichols, 40, in the town of Herington, Kan., and the questioning of Nichols’ brother, James Nichols, 41, made it clear that the bombing was domestic terrorism.

McVeigh was flown under heavy guard to Tinker Air Force Base near Oklahoma City and formally charged with the bombing. In an affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint, the FBI said that one of McVeigh’s former co-workers reported that McVeigh was “particularly agitated” about the federal raid and standoff at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., in which 86 people died.

“He had personally visited the site,” the affidavit said, and afterward expressed “extreme anger” at the government.

The affidavit said that a relative of Terry Nichols “reports that she had heard that (his brother), James Nichols, had been involved in constructing bombs in approximately November, 1994, and that he possessed large quantities of fuel oil and fertilizer.” The document also said that three witnesses saw a man matching McVeigh’s description in front of the Murrah building nine minutes before it was blown up.

Authorities said they found strong ties between McVeigh and the Michigan Militia, a paramilitary group that believes the federal government’s raid near Waco was tyrannical. The authorities theorized that the bombers may have been out to kill the FBI agent who had been in charge of the Texas operation, which ended in a fiery confrontation two years to the day before the Oklahoma City bombing.

There were these additional developments:

* Hope waned that any survivors remained inside the partially collapsed, nine-story federal building. The identities of only 13 victims have been confirmed. More than 200 people were injured in the explosion.

* Federal authorities said their fast-moving investigation involved searches and witness interviews in states across the country. One search was of the Nichols’ Michigan farm, from which fertilizer used in the bomb may have come. That search was expected to continue today.

* McVeigh and Terry Nichols apparently served together in the military. McVeigh was armed when he was first arrested heading north away from Oklahoma City only 90 minutes after the bombing. One of Nichols’ Michigan neighbors said Nichols, his brother and McVeigh used to invite him over to watch them set off homemade bombs.

* President Clinton told reporters in Washington that he and the First Lady would fly to Oklahoma City on Sunday to attend services for victims of the atrocity. Clinton said Americans should no longer “assume that any people from beyond our borders are involved” in the bombing.

Federal and state authorities in Oklahoma City theorize that the bombing may have been meant to kill Bob Ricks, who as special agent in charge of the FBI office in Oklahoma City, led the federal standoff against the Branch Davidians near Waco.

They also noted that many agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who were sent to Waco were from Oklahoma City.

“The only motive we can suggest is that this was to get even with Bob Ricks,” one source said. “Ricks was the head FBI guy and he was the focal point of the Branch Davidian assault. And ATF agents here participated in significant numbers in that assault.

“But other than that, maybe they were just driving through Oklahoma City and decided this was a good enough place to hit.”

Ricks was not injured in the blast. The local FBI offices are not even situated in that federal office building, although ATF, drug enforcement and Secret Service offices were.

“The individual arrested by the Highway Patrol in Perry (Okla.) is tied into the Michigan Militia by family and other social relationships,” said Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, who as a former federal law enforcement official in Washington is being briefed by federal authorities on the case.

“The relationships are strong, and that’s the way it all pieced together.”

Another investigator close to the case, who asked not to be identified, said the connection runs from the suspect and his activities--allegedly leasing a truck that was used in bombing the building--all the way back to activities by the Michigan Militia.

“There’s no question about the lease, the bomb, Perry and Michigan,” the investigator said. “It was revenge for the Branch Davidians. They (the Michigan Militia) are anti-tax, anti-gun (control) and anti-federal government.”

According to sources in Michigan, Terry Nichols has been seen at Michigan Militia meetings. An unnamed militia member told WXYZ-TV in Southfield, Mich., that McVeigh attended a Michigan Militia meeting in Jackson in mid-January. Speakers there urged their listeners to take action against the ATF, the station said.

At least one neighbor in Michigan said that James Nichols belonged to a national paramilitary group called the Patriots, which has links to a variety of racist and anti-Semitic organizations.

The Investigation

Officials said McVeigh was first stopped just 90 minutes after the bombing on Wednesday morning going north on Interstate 35 in Perry, where a Highway Patrol officer pulled him over for not having a license plate on his vehicle.

As it later turned out, they said, the vehicle was last registered in Arizona last year.

The governor said the state trooper found a loaded semiautomatic Glock military-style pistol inside the car, along with a knife.

Authorities said McVeigh was arrested for carrying a non-registered firearm and driving an unlicensed vehicle.

But according to authorities, the connection with the bombing did not crystallize until Friday morning. Just 30 minutes before McVeigh was to be taken to a Noble County courtroom in Perry for a bond hearing, authorities matched up McVeigh’s Social Security number with one listed by the FBI as belonging to a suspect in the bombing.

A federal hold was then placed on McVeigh, canceling the bond hearing. But Noble County officials said that without that connection, McVeigh probably would have been released on the $500 bond on the weapons and license charges.

Officials said McVeigh was arrested with slightly more than $200 in cash in his possession, which probably would have been enough of a deposit to secure his release on bond.

“This all came out of the blue,” said Noble County Sheriff Jerry Cook.

McVeigh and Terry Nichols initially were described by law enforcement officials as fitting the descriptions of “John Doe 1 and John Doe 2”--the names in federal arrest warrants and attached to composite drawings released Thursday by the FBI.

Later, however, Justice Department officials backtracked, saying that Nichols was not under arrest and was no longer considered to be John Doe 2. He was being questioned by FBI agents as a possible witness, and officials said they were uncertain whether his status would change and result in arrest later.

In addition, officials said that James Nichols was not under arrest and also was not considered to be John Doe 2. “We do not now have anyone we consider to be John Doe 2,” a Justice official said late Friday.

At a Washington press conference Friday afternoon, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno announced that the FBI had arrested McVeigh. FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said that federal officials matched up McVeigh to “John Doe 1”--a man with light brown crew-cut hair--after local officials in Perry received the composite drawing issued by the bureau.

The Justice Department was notified that he was in custody on Friday, officials said, and federal agents then descended on the tiny town 60 miles north of Oklahoma City. McVeigh was moved to Oklahoma City on Friday afternoon for an arraignment before a federal magistrate.

Soon after Reno’s press conference, Justice Department officials announced that Terry Nichols--then thought to be John Doe 2--originally of Decker, Mich., surrendered to local police in Herington, not far from Junction City, Kan.

Meanwhile, Justice Department officials said late Friday that their investigation was continuing, echoing Reno’s statement that the FBI was pursuing other suspects in the case besides the two men in the composite drawings.

“There is a strong likelihood that other persons are involved in this tragedy as well,” Reno said.

But Justice Department officials refused to comment on their search operation at the Nichols’ Decker, Mich., home, where James Nichols was said to be cooperating with authorities. “Searches are being planned and executed at several locations around the country this afternoon,” Reno said.

The rapid arrests of at least one of the men whose faces have been splashed across the nation’s media since Thursday culminated a day of quickly shifting developments.

Early Friday, Justice officials appeared confident that a break in the case was imminent, dismissing earlier speculation that the bombing was the work either of Middle Eastern terrorists or vengeful drug dealers.

That confidence was apparently based on the fact that Justice officials were told early Friday morning that McVeigh was in custody in Perry.

The man who arrested McVeigh was Oklahoma Highway Patrol Officer Charlie Hanger, 42, a 22-year veteran of the force. He stopped the suspect 20 miles north of Perry. Hanger’s wife, Nancy, said “he told me Wednesday night he was on his way into the city (Perry), and he made the arrest of a guy with a loaded gun.”

She said the arrest went without incident. “My husband was curious about him. Anybody he arrests gets him interested.”

Friday afternoon, agents from the FBI, ATF and state police descended on McVeigh’s battered yellow Mercury, which had been left parked near a wheat field and a line of Chinaberry trees.

After FBI officials arrived in Perry and put McVeigh under arrest in the bombing case, Reno and Freeh telephoned President Clinton at 3:10 p.m. to formally tell him about the arrest.

“This investigation has been fast-moving,” Reno said. “Although the investigation is in the preliminary stage, this announcement shows the substantial progress made by very dedicated law enforcement agents and officers in a very short period of time. But we will continue to pursue absolutely every lead. We are determined that we will not rest until the people who perpetrated this terrible act are brought to justice and convicted.”

Meanwhile in Michigan, federal officials served a search warrant at the Nichols farm about 90 miles north of Detroit. The farm is an organic farming operation in a region that has a large Amish population.

Sanilac County Sheriff Virgil Stricker said James Nichols was not a suspect but that authorities were looking into the possibility that fertilizer from his farm may have been used in the bombing.

McVeigh and Nichols

Little by little, information began to emerge about Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

McVeigh told authorities he was born in New York state and had a mailing address in Michigan. But apparently he had no recent place he could call home.

“He said he was living on the road,” said Noble County Assistant Dist. Atty. Mark Gibson. “He told us he didn’t really have a residence. He just kept on moving.”

McVeigh grew up in Pendleton, a rural town about 15 miles north of Buffalo, N.Y. He attended Star Point High School there, and Father Paul Belzer, a Catholic priest, said that at one point McVeigh worked as a Brinks security guard.

The picture of McVeigh in his high school yearbook bears the caption, “People are able because they believe they are able.”

At one point, McVeigh was in the Army, according to military officials. His military records were taken from the Army’s Personnel Center, a records archive in St. Louis, by the FBI, a spokesperson for the records center said.

Senior Pentagon officials, who requested anonymity, said McVeigh left the service around 1990, apparently with an honorable discharge. There was no indication that he have been trained as a demolition expert, the officials said, although they did not rule out the possibility.

The Army’s top public information officer, Maj. Gen. Charles McClain, said that McVeigh was not in the service when he was arrested.

In Michigan, where McVeigh stayed at the Nichols farm on occasion, he was known as someone who might have served in the Army with Nichols--and who was interested in guns.

McVeigh and the Nichols brothers also apparently shared an interest in bomb-making.

Dan Stomber, who farms the adjoining property, told the Washington Post that the three men would sometimes invite him over to watch them set off explosives they had made from “household chemicals and plastic jugs, mostly.”

They would do it “now and again,” Stomber said. “But when they picked a day, it would go on for a while.”

Another neighbor, Randy Izydorek, told the Post that James Nichols was connected to the Patriots. “He’s told me it’s nationwide, and they have plans to eliminate the government.”

In August, 1992, the Port Huron (Mich.) Times Herald reported that Terry Nichols sent a letter to the Decker township clerk renouncing his right to vote because “there is total corruption in the entire political system from the local government on up through and including the President of the United States, George Bush.”

A salesman at Fatigues and Things, an Army-Navy store in Junction City, said that two men--including one with a crew cut whom he said he recognized from the FBI composite sketch of the suspects--came into the store about two weeks ago.

They looked around, the salesman said, saw a book about bomb-making, bought it and left.

“I’m afraid I’m the one who sold them the book on how to make bombs,” said the salesman, who asked to remain anonymous. He said the book was Army-issue and called the “Improvised Munitions Handbook.”

It sells for $3.99.

“It’s one of three or four books we sell,” the salesman noted, “on how to make bombs out of things like fertilizer and gasoline.”

The salesman said the FBI asked him Wednesday if he recognized a photo of a hat that one of the men might have been wearing. He said it was a Dallas Cowboys cap with blue flames depicted on the front.

He said he did not recognize the hat.

Junction City was where the FBI said two men rented a Ryder truck used in the bombing.

David Russell, vice president of operations at Elliott’s Body Shop--which is the Ryder rental office--said the FBI asked him not to talk to reporters.

But Sylvia Niemczyk, 36, manager of a Texaco mini-mart in Junction City, said a man who looked like McVeigh and another man were regular customers for the past four months.

She described the two men as casually dressed, usually in blue jeans and T-shirts. They visited the mini-mart twice a week, Niemczyk said, to purchase gasoline, Coke by the bottle, chips and cigarettes--Kool Filter Kings and Marlboros by the carton.

They were “very nice and very polite,” she said, “but not very talkative.”

She could not recall whether they had a Ryder truck.

Clearly, McVeigh and Nichols were friends. A bartender at the Silverado Bar and Grill in Herington, where Nichols surrendered Friday, said the two men had been regular weekend customers for about a month.

They were in the Silverado last Sunday night, the bartender said, shooting pool and drinking Budweiser and Coors Lite beer and “not botherin’ nobody.”

Jeff Hallam, an agent for American Family Insurance in Herington, said he sold Nichols a policy a month ago on a house that he was buying on contract as well as on a 1984 GMC Sierra pickup truck.

Based on information he supplied to the agent, Nichols once lived in Manhattan, Kan., about 45 miles to the west. He told Hallam that he sold surplus government items that he bought at an auction regularly held at Ft. Riley, a nearby Army base.

Nichols gave his age as 40 and said that he was married to a woman named Marife, whom he identified as a Filipina. He said they had a 1 1/2-year-old baby whose name was Nicole.

“Part of our requirement is a Social Security number,” Hallam said, “but he said he did not have one.” His application for the insurance was accepted nonetheless, and Hallam said Nichols paid $220 in cash.

The house he was buying is small and light blue with asbestos siding. It has a wrought-iron trellis and a weedy front lawn. A neighbor, Marla Jarvis, said she noticed Nichols and another man changing locks on the screen door a few nights ago.

The house was under guard Friday by three FBI agents.

Two blocks away, cashier Billi Jo Sorenson, 20, said Nichols and McVeigh were at her gasoline station and mini-mart on Monday evening.

“The guy with the crew cut bought a pack of Camel filters,” Sorenson recalled. “He asked for Pall Malls, and we did not have them.”

Both men were “grungy,” she said. “They had a strong odor, like they worked at a pig farm.” Fertilizer is thought to be one of the components of the bomb. She said that Nichols wore blue jeans and a dirty denim shirt and that McVeigh wore a flannel shirt, blue jeans and boots.

Lingering Anger

Keating said it did not matter what the motive was for the bombing. He said the people of his state will not forget what happened, regardless of whether the deaths were caused by foreign terrorists or fellow Americans.

“It’s irrelevant to me whether it was international or domestic,” he said. “What’s relevant is that evil people did an evil thing in my town. And that we are, as a people, outraged and justifiably angry about this.

“Whether the motive was a protest against the ATF or the FBI or the tax laws, it’s irrelevant. What is relevant is that a lot of innocent children and adults were savaged and the people responsible should be brought to justice.”

Serrano reported from Oklahoma City and Risen from Washington. Times staff writers Louis Sahagun in Herington, Stephen Braun in Perry, Donald Nauss in Decker, and J. Michael Kennedy, Tim Rutten and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles also contributed to this story.

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Where Events Occurred

Suspect Timothy McVeigh was arrested in Perry, Okla., about an hour outside Oklahoma City, just 90 minutes after the bombing Wednesday. On Friday, the farm of James Douglas Nichols was searched but no arrests were made. His brother, Terry, turned himself in to federal officers but was not considered a suspect.

Decker (Michigan): James Nichols farm searched

Herington (Kansas): Terry Nichols surrendered to authorities

Perry (Oklahoma): Timothy McVeigh arrested

Oklahoma City: Site of bombing