To this day the Federal Bureau of Investigation claims to have discovered not a single Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator in league with Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Yet overwhelming evidence shows that McVeigh and Nichols did not act alone in the 1995 scheme, which killed 168 individuals and injured hundreds more; they likely had help from the FBI itself.

In 2004, Terry Lynn Nichols wrote to Attorney General John Ashcroft from his prison cell in Florence, Colorado, offering to provide a complete account of his knowledge of and participation in the Oklahoma City bombing while revealing the names and roles of individuals never pursued by the American justice system.

If Ashcroft did not believe Nichols was capable of telling the truth, or if he did not want to spend his own time on a potentially fruitless trip to Colorado, one would think the attorney general at least would have been interested enough to send a representative to find out what the convicted killer of 168 people had to say.

But Ashcroft did not respond to Nichols’ letter, addressing only an order to the Bureau of Prisons forbidding Nichols from speaking with members of the media.