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In editor role, Bolt testified about OKC bombing photos

Images said to be of blast led to case on journalists' rights

03:27 AM CDT on Sunday, March 11, 2007

By PAUL FOUTCH / The Dallas Morning News
[e-mail]

Calling himself managing editor of the Arkansas Chronicle, Jim Bolt testified in a bizarre sideshow leading up to the 2004 state murder trial of Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma City bombing case.

Strange as it was, the case led to a federal appeals court ruling that clarified protections journalists have against search and seizure. It also resulted in a $60,000 settlement for a Virginia man and the Arkansas Chronicle, Mr. Bolt's online publication that often attacks those who investigate his business dealings.

At issue was the existence of images purporting to show the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building being blown up on the morning of April 19, 1995.

Criminal defense lawyer Thomas Mills Jr., twice named by D magazine as one of Dallas' best lawyers, says he was shown a computer slide show of the images in 1998 by John Culbertson, an aide to then-U.S. Rep. James Traficant, who is now serving time for a bribery conviction.

"I 100 percent believe they were real," Mr. Mills said recently. "It looked 100 percent realistic."

He said Mr. Culbertson, whom he had met on an unrelated case, told him the images were given to him by an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which had been tracking bomber Timothy McVeigh.

"Culbertson told me that it was shot by the ATF," Mr. Mills said, "that the ATF had McVeigh and an ATF agent in the van, and at the last minute, or the last few seconds, it was supposed to be stopped, and it wasn't stopped, and the bomb went off, and so somehow the ATF was responsible for not stopping it before it blew up. Now, I don't know if that's true. I'm just a lawyer from Texas. I don't know what he was trying to impress me for."

Mr. Mills said Mr. Culbertson clicked through the slide show on a laptop, showing the Murrah building, then an orange glow rising and the building collapsing.

Mr. Mills mentioned the images to a lawyer for Mr. Nichols and swore to their existence in an affidavit. That affidavit was used to justify a January 2004 raid on Mr. Culbertson's home in Centreville, Va., and the seizure of Mr. Culbertson's computers.

Mr. Culbertson objected to the raid, arguing he had journalistic protections as the Washington bureau chief of the Arkansas Chronicle .

On Feb. 10, 2004, three weeks before Mr. Nichols' trial was to begin, Mr. Bolt testified at a hearing sought by the Arkansas Chronicle and Mr. Culbertson to force authorities to return the computers.

According to a transcript of the testimony, Mr. Bolt said he had been managing editor since the publication's launch in 1996 through 2000 or so, and had rejoined the publication the morning of the raid on Mr. Culbertson's home. The publication was transitioning to an Internet-only publication, he said, and had about 3,000 subscribers.

Under questioning by a state prosecutor, Mr. Bolt acknowledged that he and Mr. Culbertson were the publication's only employees, and he gave conflicting answers as to whether he was Mr. Culbertson's boss or vice versa.

In winding and often contentious testimony, Mr. Bolt said Mr. Culbertson had described to him an image he'd seen of the Murrah building exploding, but that neither he nor Mr. Culbertson had the image, that it might have been faked, and that Mr. Culbertson said he had never shown it to Mr. Mills.

'Cat-and-mouse game'

Steven Taylor, now an Oklahoma Supreme Court justice, was the trial judge in the Nichols case. He interrupted the questioning to express frustration.

"If you have such a photograph, you are, in fact, sitting on evidence of a crime," Justice Taylor told Mr. Bolt. "This is serious business. And I'm not going to sit here with some kind of cat-and-mouse game going on back and forth about this."

After a break in testimony, Mr. Bolt said he had chest pains and had to go to a hospital. Justice Taylor ordered him to return the next day, but Mr. Bolt didn't. The judge found him in contempt and issued an arrest warrant, which Mr. Bolt avoided by remaining in Arkansas.

The next day, Mr. Culbertson arrived at the hearing and produced some images of an explosion. But Justice Taylor said, "They were basically just pictures you could get anywhere."

"It could have been some generic photographs of a military bombing range. They were just generic, plain-vanilla pictures of an explosion," he said in a recent interview. "There was absolutely no indication of a city or a street or a building. There was just an orange glow of an explosion."

Justice Taylor said the hearing was a waste of time.

"There was absolutely, unequivocally no evidence whatsoever of photographs of the Murrah building blowing up. It was almost laughable. But it's not laughable that we had this serious trial going on and we had these characters diverting our attention."

Brian Hermanson, one of Terry Nichols' lawyers, said the hearing was one of a number of distractions in the trial. "This case was a lightning rod for crazies," he said.

Mr. Hermanson said he still believes that authorities didn't turn over all video and images of the bombing they should have. But he's not sure the images that Mr. Bolt testified about were relevant to the case.

"When all was said and done, we didn't believe the guy. After we questioned him, after he faked the heart attack, it just seemed a little contrived."

Filing suit

The Arkansas Chronicle and Mr. Culbertson sued authorities in Oklahoma City and Fairfax County, Va., over the raid on Mr. Culbertson's home, seeking $15 million in damages.

The Oklahoma City Council voted in 2004 to pay Mr. Culbertson and the Arkansas Chronicle $60,000 to settle the case.

But in Virginia, Fairfax County officials continued to defend their part of the lawsuit. Assistant county attorney Bob Ross said he was aware the Arkansas Chronicle was not a legitimate publication.

"The research we did back then indicated that it was a sham," he said. "The judge knew the Chronicle had been inactive. We made various allegations in our pleadings that the Chronicle was just a shell."

But in the lawsuit, the judge focused simply on whether the raid was legal, and found that the search warrant lacked probable cause and that Mr. Culbertson's Fourth Amendment rights had been violated.

Last May, however, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond reversed the judge's ruling and dismissed the lawsuit.

Mr. Culbertson says he runs a consulting firm named Culbertson & Co. and a "nonprofit humanitarian organization" called the Center for Reform. In an interview from his Washington, D.C., office, he said he would not appeal the dismissal of the lawsuit and that the case is over.

The Oklahoma City settlement all went to legal fees, he said, "to keep the fight going." His Washington lawyer, Benjamin Chew of Patton Boggs, didn't return phone calls seeking comment.

Mr. Culbertson said Mr. Bolt "did a little contract work a couple of years ago" for Culbertson & Co. but that he hasn't spoken to him in a while. "I'm out of the picture down there and have been for quite some time."

Mr. Culbertson wouldn't comment on the Oklahoma City images or any work he'd done as a journalist. He said he couldn't provide any articles he'd written for the Arkansas Chronicle.

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