Barry Black retired from the FBI after thirty-one years as a master bomb technician and master instructor. On April 19, 1995, he was one of only two FBI bomb technicians in the state of Oklahoma. Part 2 is about everything that came after the blast.

The break was a confidential serial number, stamped on a 300-pound axle thrown into the street by the blast. It came back to Ryder, and Ryder to Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City, Kansas, where a man calling himself Robert Kling had rented a truck. There was no digital imagery in 1995, so a sketch artist produced the faces the country came to know as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2. Fifteen thousand leads followed. A clerk at the Dreamland Motel recognized one of the sketches and remembered the guest in room 25 signing another name: Timothy McVeigh.

What closed the loop was a records search. An offline NCIC query showed that a state trooper named Charlie Hanger had already arrested McVeigh — ninety minutes after the bombing, ninety miles north of town, for driving an old yellow Mercury with no license plate. He was hours from bonding out when the federal hold landed. Barry flew up by helicopter overnight and seized the car himself. Terry Nichols, who had seen the arrest, surrendered the following afternoon.

Barry is precise about what conviction required: phone records, fingerprints, witness identifications, and a business card wedged between the seats of a patrol car reading "need more TNT at $5 a stick." He explains why three men received three very different sentences, and why that decision belonged to a jury rather than to the agents who built the case.

The last third is about cost. Funerals attended while the investigation was still running. Seven-day weeks for two years. A room at the National Bombing Memorial he will not walk into. A rare cancer diagnosed eight years after his deployment to Ground Zero. And a blunt account of what passed for mental health support in 1995, when a team leader told his people that needing a counselor meant they were in the wrong line of work. He now teaches, and tells his students the same thing every time: friends, faith, family — because you are not going to forget it.

New episodes drop every other Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more at https://citizensbehindthebadge.org.

Trooper Charlie Hanger had stopped and arrested McVeigh

about 90 minutes after the

bombing about 90 miles north of town.

A truck axle gave them a serial number.

The serial number gave them a rental counter in

Junction City, Kansas and a name

that turned out to be an alias.

What it did not give them was a case.

That took nearly 900

investigators and more than 15,000 leads.

I understand from my research that there were 28,000

interviews that you uncovered a billion pieces of

information related to this case.

There were literally hundreds of

FBI agents assigned to the case.

And yet, McVeigh and Nichols, you had pretty much solved

the case within a couple days.

McVeigh's arrested 90 minutes

after the bombing for other reasons.

And I'd like you to describe his arrest and how all that

came about, how you ended up tying him into the bombing,

and then how you ended up finding Nichols.

And there were some other accomplices.

But I'm pretty amazed that you all were able to pretty

much solve the case within a couple days.

Well, as you know, Craig, having somebody arrested is one

thing and then proving it beyond the reasonable doubt in

federal court is a pretty high bar.

But the way everybody worked together

here is known as the Oklahoma Standard.

There weren't really any jurisdictional issues.

As you said, 168 of our people had been killed.

Everybody was here to help.

And we had that CVIN, that rear end differential housing

I mentioned earlier, came back to Ryder Rental.

Well, Ryder said that that was supposed to belong to a

place in Junction City, Kansas called Elliott's Body Shop.

So we flooded Elliott's Body

Shop, interviewed Eldon Elliott.

And of course, the first

question is who rented this truck?

He said it was a guy named

Robert Kling, K-L-I-N-G, Robert Kling.

Okay, well, what does he look like?

Well, we didn't have digital imagery

then, so we had a sketch artist brought in.

And that's where you end up with the

sketches of John Doe 1 and John Doe 2.

We published those with our friends

in the media, got over 15,000 leads.

Which lead do you cover?

Well, you have to cover them all.

So during the course, we're using those sketches,

saturated this little town in Junction City.

And a lady named Leah McGowan at the Dreamland Motel, she

said, "Hey, I recognize John Doe number one."

He rented room number 25 and signed

in under the name of Timothy McVeigh.

Well, he gave an address in Michigan.

So a lot of things have to happen at once, right?

It's getting information, sorting information,

but you have to pursue it all.

That's why these are manpower intensive.

We expended a million, 8,000 man hours in this case.

This was an unbelievable investigation.

But

what we found when we had the name McVeigh, we also

interviewed all of the restaurants and hotels, motels.

There was a Chinese restaurant that said, "Yep, we

delivered Moo Goo Guy Pan to room number 25."

And there was only one person

there and his name was Robert Kling.

Well, now we had McVeigh and

Kling ostensibly as the same person.

But didn't know if either of those

names were accurate or both aliases.

So we did an offline NCIC search, which you guys are

familiar with and found that Trooper Charlie Hanger had

stopped and arrested McVeigh about 90 minutes after the

bombing, about 90 miles north of town, for not having a

license plate on an old yellow Mercury.

Well, that old yellow Mercury was the getaway car that

they had delivered on Easter Sunday.

I mentioned previously.

He was also carrying a concealed weapon, which at that

time in Oklahoma was illegal.

So Charlie Hanger, the trooper, puts him in the jail up

in Perry County and he's about to bond out because these

are relatively minor charges.

Excuse me.

But when we found that Charlie had arrested Timothy

McVeigh, we put a federal hold on him.

It was the overnight hours, April 20, April 21.

I had the air assets at the time.

We jumped on the helicopter, flew up to the highway where

the car still was, landed there.

I seized the car.

My partner, Jim Norman and others seized McVeigh.

He still gets an initial appearance.

This is America.

You're entitled to an initial

appearance and an arraignment.

But the courthouse had been damaged.

So I was still on the SWAT team.

We took him down to Tinker Air Force Base where a

magistrate judge, Ronald Hallen, great guy.

He's since passed away.

Decided we had enough evidence to hold McVeigh.

So Jim and I and others escorted

him down to federal prison in El Reno.

We had already interviewed other people at that Decker,

Michigan address that was on the driver's license.

It turned out to be the farm of Terry and James Nichols.

Terry Nichols had seen the arrest of McVeigh, surrendered

himself at three o'clock the next day.

So that's how we came to have them

both in federal custody so quickly.

But then all the case has to start.

We have the suspects.

Now you have to prove it.

And that's where these million man hours comes in.

I seem to recall that

when Charlie Hanger arrested McVeigh for not having the

license plate on his car, that

was the reason for the initial stop.

And then finding the concealed weapon, which brought the

charges, that during that arrest, McVeigh secreted a

business card in the backseat of that

patrol vehicle that eventually was discovered.

And that was a key piece of evidence.

Do you recall that?

Sure.

Yeah, one of many key pieces of evidence.

So in the Mercury itself, when our ERT search did, were

just a plethora of documents related to the Turner

Diaries and some other documents with McVeigh's handwritten

notes that really showed intent.

But the business card you're describing was tucked down

between the seats of Charlie Hanger's unit.

It was a business card that

said, "Need more TNT at $5 a stick."

As I recall it had McVeigh's fingerprint on it.

That's incredible.

And to talk about the relationship between McVeigh and

Nichols, and then there was

another accomplice, Michael Fortier.

Yeah.

Did these guys know each other?

What was their background?

Right.

So each was in the Army.

They served at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Pardon me.

Then their unit was moved to Fort Riley, Kansas.

So they all went up there together.

McVeigh had a penchant for this

book called the Turner Diaries.

It's a screed about overthrowing the government that

starts with a large vehicle born IED destroying FBI

headquarters to start this revolution.

But

Fortier was actually recruited to help in this attack,

but kind of changed his mind.

Nichols was a little more of a passive personality.

He was one of the oldest ones in that unit.

But when they got out, McVeigh tried to make his way to the

Special Forces, could not make the cut

there, and then was just really itinerant.

He would live between

Nichols' home and the Fortier's home.

They would follow the gun show circuits, just sort of a

different type of existence.

But

the plan for the bombing really

emerged very shortly after the fire at Waco.

By

the summer of 94, they were beginning to accumulate the

materials needed for the bomb.

Right.

And the date, I think you just discussed it earlier, but

I just wanted to emphasize that April 19th, that was an

important date for McVeigh and

Nichols to actually do the bombing.

Well, yes.

April 19th was the anniversary, the second anniversary of

the fire at Waco, which, as I mentioned earlier, was sort

of the final straw for McVeigh.

It was also the 220th anniversary of the shot heard

around the world, the

beginning of the American Revolution.

And that date was important enough to McVeigh where he used

that as his false date of birth on that Robert Kling ID

that was used to rent the truck.

I'm curious.

168 people died, all these

others injured, 19 children killed.

Did McVeigh, Nichols, Fortier, ever express any sense of

remorse, any sense of regret?

No.

Now, when I was sitting with him at Judge Howland's

initial appearance, yeah, it was a very small room.

It was a makeshift courtroom.

And he just sat there, emotionless, said nothing.

When my partner, Jim Norman, first spoke with him while

he was still at the Perry County Jail,

Jim said, "I guess you know why we're here."

And he said, "I guess it's about the bombing."

And that's really about all he said.

Really?

So you never had any personal

interactions with him at all or any

time when you were with him to

get to know him a little bit?

Oh, no.

We never, no, I wouldn't say I got to know him.

Right.

I was, well, we were, you know, I was on the SWAT team.

We took him into the courtroom, was with him there in the

courtroom, and then part of this

escort to take him down to prison.

Nichols, on the other hand,

as Craig mentioned, there were eight deaths accounted for

in the federal indictment, but 168 people had died.

So even after the federal conviction, which landed Terry

Nichols in a prison for the rest of his life, the state

of Oklahoma tried him for murder, which is a state crime.

I did testify in some of those proceedings and had more

interaction with Terry Nichols.

All right.

I did, okay, so McVeigh gets the death penalty, and he's

ultimately executed several years later.

Nichols gets life in prison

without the possibility of parole.

I'm confused as to why he

didn't also get the death penalty.

And then Michael Fortier, the other co-conspirator, gets

12 years prison sentence, seemingly very lenient sentence

given the gravity of the crime.

Why the discrepancy in the sentencing?

Well, Craig, as you know, our job in law enforcement is

to gather the evidence, right?

So we gathered the evidence, presented it.

DOJ, the Department of Justice brought in special

prosecutors to augment the US Attorney's Office here in

Oklahoma City, and there were some decisions made.

So the case we made against

Nichols and McVeigh was very strong.

We had

phone records, the financial

records, prints, witness IDs.

It was a very strong case, but

Fortier sort of tied it all together.

As I mentioned, McVeigh lived

with Fortier and his wife, Lori.

Lori said she saw him

basically create that Robert Kling ID.

They said he sat in their kitchen and used soup cans to

show how he was going to array the

barrels of explosives in the back of the truck.

They had done that recon, explained how they had acquired

the funds to buy the ammonium nitrate.

So they were offered

a deal, basically, that Lori would not be prosecuted.

Michael Fortier would have to plead to a series of

felonies, resulting in 12 years.

He did 10 of those, as I recall, and now he's basically

in the federal protection, witness protection program.

Nichols and McVeigh were tried separately.

McVeigh was the driver, literally, of this case.

But we go with what the jury says.

The jury found Terry Nichols to

be less culpable than McVeigh.

Because of that decision, you see

the disparity in the sentencing.

Well, I read somewhere where McVeigh at one point, not

only did he look at different options for buildings to

bomb, but he thought about maybe

a personal assassination campaign.

And some of his targets that he was considering anyway

was the attorney general in the United States at the

time, Janet Reno, and others.

Why did he go from that

assassination campaign to the bombing?

I'm probably not the best person to ask

about that avenue of the investigation.

Mine was more of the IED, the explosive part.

I recall that as having being a potential option, but I

really don't have any details on that of it.

And that was curious to me.

I'd never really heard that before.

Really, the last question I had on my mind was,

how

much more difficult would it be today to do an act of

terrorism of the magnitude that they did?

Let me give you an example.

I had an office for many years directly across the street

from FBI headquarters in Washington, DC.

There was really very little separating the roadway to

the FBI headquarters building.

In the back of my mind, I'm always thinking, what are the

odds of somebody like Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols,

pulling a Ryder truck illegally for a few moments,

getting out, and all of a sudden a

bomb goes off at FBI headquarters?

I'm just wondering, how easy is it to do that today

versus in 1995 when they did it in Oklahoma City?

Well, a great question.

Access is an issue.

People like to be able to park

and walk right into the building.

Now, we learn from these things.

So one thing we learned from the

Oklahoma City bombing is standoff.

Distance is your friend when it comes down to explosives.

That's why you have the large

parking bollards around the capital region.

They're the giant concrete flower planters.

They're going to be exceptionally

difficult to move, even with a heavy vehicle.

So distance has been implemented as a security measure,

and technology helps us as well.

Digital imagery.

There's some other technical innovations where we can

detect explosives, different

types of threats a little farther out.

So the threats evolve, the countermeasures evolve, but

the targets have been hardened.

We had another case here in Oklahoma City using an odd

type of rucksod-based explosive.

Because our intelligence had said, since transportation

nodes were now hardened, terrorists were going to shift

to shopping malls and concerts and ball games.

Well, this event happened at a ball

game, so it kind of fit our intel model.

It's a cat and mouse game.

We adapt to the threat.

The bad guys see what our countermeasures are and then

change their game plan, and we have to catch up.

So that's the eternal part of this.

So Barry, I want to go back to you,

kind of more on a personal level.

So earlier you mentioned this was during the time of the

pager and the beepers, right?

There were no cell phones.

And you mentioned that your wife worked in that building,

and you responded and arrived.

So it was difficult to communicate.

It wasn't like today.

And you didn't know that she had

left the building, fortunately.

How long did it take before you really knew that?

It was about 10:30.

So almost 90 minutes.

The few cell phones that did exist, they were all jammed,

obviously, because everybody

was using the entire bandwidth.

But she had the foresight to

page me back into my own voicemail.

Our office was at a different building.

And so eventually my pager went off, said to call my own

voicemail call, they got the message from her.

She said that she and her officers had been relocated to

their secondary safety location.

She was okay.

But yeah, that was a pretty long ninety minutes.

Now you mentioned that you had the 30

people that worked for you, you were handing out

paychecks to them on a regular basis.

And they all died.

And then we had the eight

federal agents that died as well.

And maybe many of those other

folks you might have known as well.

How many of those funerals did you have to go to?

Well, the funerals were contemporaneous with the case,

you know, I was working seven days a week, 12, 14 hours a

day, that that was my life for about two years.

And as you know, you guys have been in this business.

The job itself is difficult on a family.

But when you have a major event like this, as I said,

there were only two FBI bomb

technicians in the case or in the state.

And this was a FBI case.

Other resources were brought in.

But this was an attack in our backyard.

It's not like you could say, I'm going on vacation, I'm

going to take some time off.

That since over time, begin to

diminish as additional resources came.

But

yeah, it was almost all consuming that this about all I

did for a significant period of time.

And I did nothing special. Everybody was that way.

It was all hands on deck.

And everybody was totally dedicated to seeing justice.

You know that that degree of death, destruction and

despair, all at the same time on

that level, and those many numbers,

you know, and I asked you about the

funerals, I just remember going to funerals.

And that oftentimes that just sucks life out of you.

And, you know, this was this was a pretty emotionally

tragic time for a lot of people.

Talk to us about how that's more

than likely forever changed your life.

Well, it less than more than

likely, it definitely has, you know,

it's a seminal event in American history.

And I still give presentations

down at the National Bombing Memorial.

And there's one room that I don't even go in.

It's just it's too emotional.

You know, the tour groups, the military sends officer

candidates there, the Thunder

sends new players, NBA players there,

both colleges send their new

football recruits there, it's history.

And I'm honored to be a small

part of ushering people through.

But yeah, there's some parts of that I don't go to still.

I've been to the 9-11 Memorial a

couple of times and it's very reminiscent.

You know, we lost Lenny Hatton, the bureau did.

And I'll say to more people have died from 9-11 related

illnesses than were killed in the day of the attack.

It was about eight years after my 9-11 deployment to

Ground Zero, I was diagnosed with an

exceptionally rare form of cancer.

I thank God they got it all out.

It was like a six hour surgery.

But I have friends that didn't survive that.

So these events take a toll.

Our military partners, law enforcement partners see

things that most people don't.

And I teach at a university now.

And I tell my students, you have to have some way to deal

with that because you're not

you're not going to forget it.

It's just how you deal with it.

So Barry highlights and lowlights of your career, what

would you say is the top and the bottom?

Well, highlight would have to

be the people I got to work with.

You asked about that strange path I had, I ended up being

a master instructor and a

master bomb tech for the bureau.

So I was a trainer for NATO.

I got to travel the world working with our special

forces, friendly nations, special forces, kind of quasi

commandos as terrorism became more prevalent.

I worked on every continent, but Antarctica

interacted with ambassadors and some pretty high level

country leaders in different parts of the world.

Loved every second of that.

And everybody in this job is sort of similar.

So when we had downtime, if whatever country we were in,

they would try to showcase their highlights.

So I would dive with the

Australian Navy in the Great Barrier Reef.

We chartered a plane to go

see the Mount Everest in Nepal.

So I got to see and do things

I never would have imagined.

But I would say the highlight is the people downside are

the loss of life,

the magnitude, particularly when it's just so many people

lost at once, 9-11, the bombing here.

Yeah, and the impact it has on

the survivors and their families.

We have a memorial here on the

anniversary of every bombing and people get together.

It's still just a very sad event.

No, Barry, we talk a lot on this show about the mental

health of our officers and the fact that the average law

enforcement officer deals with maybe 400

to 600 traumatic events in their career.

The average person may be two to

three traumatic events in their lifetime.

You've just described what you've

been through two years of nonstop work.

You were there within minutes after the bombing.

You saw the destruction.

You saw the bodies and then

the people that died, et cetera.

I'm just curious what kind of counseling, what kind of

mental health support and wellness support did you

receive and all the other people that were working that

site immediately after and

during the months that followed?

That's a great question.

I think

the realization that that's a critical part of things

really hadn't taken hold in 1995.

I remember there being counselors, but I remember

thinking, who's got time for that?

There's stuff to do.

I don't recall, even after

Waco, one of the team leaders came in

and said, "Hey, there's counselors."

Now, this is 93.

He said, "Hey, there are counselors, but if you need a

counselor after something like this,

you're in the wrong kind of business."

The

perception of counseling has changed a lot.

You have to have somebody to talk to.

Your family has to be supportive.

I tell my students now, it's friends, faith, family.

As you all know, suicide is high in

this line of work and our military.

The stress and pressure, you

have to have some kind of relief.

I say faith, family, friends,

something that's not detrimental.

Alcohol doesn't work.

Drugs don't work.

Domestic violence goes up.

That doesn't work.

You have to have more positive way.

For sure.

I'm glad you're doing well today because you're right.

Back in 1995, we didn't appreciate the value of mandatory

counseling after traumatic

events like this for law enforcement.

We've come a long way, thankfully.

Most importantly, I think this interview has shown a

spotlight on what our officers are willing to do to solve

cases, to bring justice, to try to make amends for

tragedies that have occurred on our streets of America.

You're quite the hero behind the badge, Barry.

I'm glad we were able to feature you and talk about what

you went through at Oklahoma City.

As Bill's pointed out, your entire career.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate what you've done for us.

Oh, Craig, I appreciate your kind words, but I can

honestly say I didn't do anything special.

There were nearly 900 people working this investigation.

Things like this occur every day throughout this country.

The men and women who do this job are the heroes for sure.

In closing, Barry, I've got one last question.

What do you want Americans to remember about that day?

It is one of the most momentous, one of the biggest

catastrophes in the history of the United States.

You were there.

What would you like for

Americans to remember about that day?

Dennis, I would say that violence doesn't work.

That this idea to violently overthrow the government

because you don't like what it does just doesn't work.

And in this environment we have now, this divisive

environment, there are ways to bring about change that

don't involve building a 5,000

pound bomb and killing 168 people.

For sure.

So, yeah, this just doesn't it's immediately effective

perhaps, but it doesn't bring about the change.

It won't. If anything, it strengthens the resolve of

people that are moving the other direction.

A good message.

And thank

you, Barry Black, for your service.

I mean, again, as Craig said, one of the purposes of

Heroes Behind the Badge, this

podcast, is to highlight people like you.

You were instrumental in solving one of

the biggest cases in the history of the U.S.

And I know you say you were just

doing your job, but you know what?

Thank God you were doing your job.

Well, thank you very much.

Doing your job is what made things happen.

So thanks for being our guest today.

So, Barry, there is so much to talk about when we talk

about the Oklahoma City bombing.

And we've only touched the tip of the

iceberg today during this interview.

But I know you've written a book about

this whole case and your involvement.

I'd love for you to tell our audience what the title of

the book is, where they can get it.

And if you have a copy, hold it up.

Great, Craig.

Well, yeah, this is the book.

It's called Hazardous Devices, Memoir of an FBI Bomb

Technician, Accountant, and Sniper.

It's sort of the entire career of, as we were discussing

earlier, how an accountant ends up as a master bomb

technician in Nepal or some of these crazy places.

It's available on Amazon or Barnes

& Noble or wherever you buy books.

Thank you very much.

In closing, I want to remind our audience, Heroes Behind

the Badge is sponsored by Citizens Behind the Badge.

Citizens Behind the Badge is the leading organization in

support of the men and women of law enforcement.

You can get involved at citizensbehindthebadge.org.

Citizens Behind the Badge.org.

Not only can you get on our website, and we have all

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This podcast, there's a button

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You'll know exactly when you

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This was a very deep insight into one of the most

catastrophic situations we have ever had.

So hope you enjoyed listening to it.

Hope you learned as well.

So this is all for this

episode of Heroes Behind the Badge.

We will see you next time.

Tune in to Heroes Behind the Badge.

(Music)