In search of John Doe No. 2

  OGDEN — Pat Livingston doesn’t consider himself a conspiracy theorist. He doesn’t spout off about Elvis or aliens at Roswell, and he doesn’t rant and rave about Waco. Yes, he has some questions about Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone, but he’s basically a straight-ahead businessman, an Army veteran, a husband and father.
  But he is one of a group of increasingly visible people who think there is something left unanswered in the matter of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City — something that may even tie that tragedy to foreign agents.

Pat Livingston: With a handgun similar to the one he sold McVeigh.

  “It bugs me to think that there’s a scoundrel out there that got away with it,” he says.
  The scoundrel, in the view of Livingston and others, is the infamous John Doe No. 2, a man represented in composite drawings whom law enforcement officials said accompanied Timothy McVeigh in the bombing. McVeigh, who was initially identified as John Doe No. 1, was tried and executed. But shortly after McVeigh’s arrest, the Justice Department flip-flopped and said there was no John Doe No. 2, and that witnesses simply had been confused.
  Livingston wasn’t a witness of the bombing scene itself, but he was central to the effort to catch the bad guys. As the owner of Pat’s Pawn and Gun here on Ogden’s main street, he sold McVeigh the Glock 45-caliber handgun that federal law enforcement agents used to identify and hold him in an Oklahoma jail. If it weren’t for that gun, Livingston points out, McVeigh might have been set loose after having been stopped for a traffic infraction.
  Livingston also recalls several business dealings and interactions with Terry Nichols, who is in federal prison for his role in the bombing.
  What sticks in Livingston’s craw, he said, is that the investigators came around with two drawings — one of McVeigh, and one of John Doe No. 2. He remembered both of them — the John Doe No. 2 shown in the drawings had been in his store; Livingston said he also remembered seeing the man at military surplus auctions.
  “I saw the guy,” he insists, standing behind the glass counter in his shop, the wall behind him lined with pistols. “He’s not a ghost.”
  Livingston had no direct transaction or conversation with the man, so he can’t find his name in his records; he has only his memory of the encounter. He describes the man as stocky, about 5-foot-9, with a thick neck, dark hair, wearing a hat. He was a “foreign-looking, odd-looking guy,” Livingston said. He initially told law-enforcement people that John Doe No. 2 was Hispanic, but he said he recognized even then that he wasn’t sure. “I said Hispanic, but that’s because I couldn’t think what else to say. Portuguese? I don’t know.”
  Livingston also sold two pistols to Nichols in the days prior to the bombing. He said nobody carries two, so he assumes the second gun was for John Doe No. 2.
  The theory gaining more visibility these days is that John Doe No. 2 was Iraqi — which could, of course, tie Iraq to the death of 168 people and the injury of more than 500 in what was at the time the worst act of terrorism ever on American soil.
  That theory was given prominent play in a long Sept. 5 editorial-page piece in the Wall Street Journal, which described the effort of Oklahoma City investigator Jayna Davis. Davis, a former television news reporter, cites 20 witnesses that place Hussain al-Hussaini — an Iraqi and a former member of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard — at the site of the bombing, and tie him to a terrorist cell operating in Oklahoma City. Davis’ research is supported by former State Department and Defense Intelligence agency officials. Since that Wall Street Journal piece, House investigators have been pursuing the issue with an eye toward possible hearings. Davis last week also briefed U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, who promised to pursue the matter further.
  Livingston can’t identify the man he saw as Middle Eastern, and couldn’t positively identify al-Hussaini when The Mercury showed him a collection of photos. He said the man could have been Iraqi; he couldn’t be sure.
  “I haven’t seen enough Iraqis to know,” he said.
  Davis also says there was a network of Hispanics that helped shuttle the bombing conspirators — not including McVeigh and Nichols — to and from Mexico. They did that to enable communications through embassies with Iraq and Iran, Davis argues. So the man Livingston saw could have been one of those.
  Livingston’s main beef is simply that the government has never said why they were hunting for John Doe No. 2 and then quickly dropped the matter.
  “If he was just a friend (of McVeigh’s) who had nothing to do with it, then why don’t they just tell us that?” he said. “I don’t like the government lying to us.”
  McVeigh wrote a letter to the Houston Chronicle while he was awaiting execution that said there was no John Doe No. 2. But lawyers for McVeigh and Nichols have continued to say that there was, and have said that McVeigh denied it so as to exaggerate his own importance.
  Livingston recently brought a four-page, handwritten letter to The Mercury to document his thoughts, along with his records of his own interviews with the FBI.
  So why now come out with these statements? Livingston said it’s because he was threatened repeatedly in the aftermath of the bombing, when it became publicly known that he had fingered McVeigh. He said he got regular phone calls, he presumes from members of anti-government militia groups, saying he was “gonna pay for it,” that they “were going to blow up my truck ... or shoot me in the back.”
  Militia activity has cooled significantly since then, he said, and he feels the time has come to raise the issue again.
  He dismisses other conspiracy theories — such as the notion that John Doe No. 2 was actually a federal agent and that the government was complicit in the bombing — and doesn’t really want to get further into the Iraq issue. “If there was foreign involvement, then it gets really sticky. Politics gets involved,” he said.
  Sticky or not, that appears to be what’s raising the issue at the national level again.
  You can reach Ned Seaton by phone at 776-2300, ext. 255, or by e-mail at nseaton@themercury.com