A TWO-BIT CONSPIRACY

No wide-ranging conspiracy. No criminal masterminds. Not even any hardened zealots dedicating their life to the disciplined terrorist pursuit of an ideological cause. Just two drifters and misfits with a rented truck and a homemade bomb. That is the story behind the killing of 168 people in Oklahoma City last April, so far as it can be drawn from a federal grand jury indictment of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The indictment, issued last week, contains only a bare-bones description of how they allegedly built the bomb that blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19; six of its 15 pages are devoted to naming the victims.

That very sparseness, however, indicates that the alleged conspiracy was a small-time affair in everything except the horror of its results. Only one alleged helper is named: Michael Fortier, who according to the indictment helped McVeigh case the Murrah building. Fortier pleaded guilty to a separate indictment charging him with transporting stolen property (guns sold to raise money to buy explosives) and perjury; he is committed to testifying against McVeigh and Nichols. Meanwhile, in an exclusive interview with TIME, McVeigh’s father and sister detailed the FBI’s intense, successful campaign to persuade her to cooperate with its investigation.

The indictment does speak of “others unknown to the Grand Jury” who may have been in on the plot. But that language seems intended at least in part to counter defense arguments that the government chose McVeigh and Nichols as scapegoats without exhausting the possibility of finding a broader conspiracy–a contention that McVeigh’s lawyer, Stephen Jones, is already pressing. The government is continuing to look for possible accomplices, but, said Attorney General Janet Reno, “most of these leads have been pursued and exhausted.” Investigators generally think that if any additional plotters do turn up, there will be only a few and they will prove to be mere “facilitators.” In particular, some investigators have come to doubt that the far-famed John Doe No. 2 actually exists; others think that even if he does, he is only a minor figure in the plot.

All of which makes the horror that much more chilling. FBI officials say even if they had had the legal authority and had hired enough agents to infiltrate every extremist group in the country, they could not have prevented the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh and Nichols may have shared the government-hating ideology of many armed militias, but they were such fringe figures that even intense surveillance of organized militia groups would probably have failed to identify them as potential terrorists.

The government, of course, must still prove that they committed the terrorist acts charged in the indictment, and it will be at least six months (one prosecution estimate) before the start of a trial gives it a chance–more likely nine months to a year. Jones estimates that the defense’s demands to hold the trial someplace other than Oklahoma City will take three or four months to settle. Then come discovery proceedings, which involve each side disclosing what witnesses will be called and what evidence may be presented.

Meanwhile, a judge will have to rule on whether McVeigh and Nichols should be tried together, as the government wants, or separately, as lawyers for both men urge. Jones acknowledges that he and Michael Tigar, Nichols’ attorney, are not working together but are following different strategies. In itself that is not surprising, since the accusations against the two are also somewhat different. The indictment asserts that the two worked together to buy explosives and then assemble the bomb, but that it was McVeigh who parked a van loaded with explosives outside the Murrah building and then detonated the bomb by remote control.

There are hints, however, that Jones and Tigar may be working at cross purposes. In a press conference at which he waved hand-lettered posters to make a striking picture for the TV cameras, Tigar sought mainly to disconnect Nichols from many of the events in the indictment. One sign proclaimed TERRY NICHOLS WASN’T THERE–“there” being the scene of the bombing. Another sign insisted that Nichols was out of the country when McVeigh and Fortier allegedly cased the Murrah building in December. That strategy, whatever it does for Nichols, will not be any great help to Jones in convincing a jury that McVeigh is innocent.

Fortier’s role in the eventual trial or trials is another large question mark. Press accounts have touted him as the prosecution’s “star witness,” but he could also be a risky one, since the defense may allege that he is lying to save his skin. Reno and lead prosecutor Joseph Hartzler insist that Fortier was indicted on every count on which they had enough evidence to convict. He could get a maximum sentence of 23 years, though that might be reduced because of his cooperation.

Nonetheless, the defense is certain to raise sharp questions. Couldn’t Fortier have been indicted as a full participant in the conspiracy, and so face the death penalty, as McVeigh and Nichols will? In order to save his life, did Fortier agree to say whatever the government wanted him to say? Jones has pledged a blistering attack on Fortier’s credibility, focusing on his statements on TV shortly after the bombing that he didn’t think McVeigh had anything to do with it. Fortier has pleaded guilty to perjury for telling investigators roughly the same thing at about the same time.

Exactly how the government got Fortier to agree to testify is not clear. But TIME has obtained a vivid account of how investigators persuaded McVeigh’s sister Jennifer to provide the prosecution with two typewritten statements, even though she is fiercely loyal to her elder brother (she is 21, Timothy 27). Jennifer and her father William McVeigh agreed to the TIME interview under terms negotiated with Timothy McVeigh’s lawyers that tightly restricted what could be asked. Thus Jennifer would not discuss what she had told the grand jury. But as to how FBI and other federal investigators had treated her, the words came out in a torrent:

“They played a lot of games with me, a lot of things to get me talking. They flew my mother up here [to Buffalo, New York, from Florida] for the weekend to stay with me to get me to talk to them. They showed me pictures of burned, dead kids. They used a lot of fear tactics. They put me and my mother in this room with all these huge posters with my name and a picture all blown up with all these possible charges against me…like life imprisonment, death penalty and this and that. My mother was in tears when we walked away; they just crushed her. They played with my mind a lot. They wanted to give me a lie-detector test first [and] I refused, but then when I was willing to take one, they didn’t want to give it to me anymore.”

Investigators, said Jennifer, took many items from her apartment in her father’s New York home–“a lot of personal things, like some of my books. They even took books that I had taken out from the school library that I was using to write reports [in May she received an associate degree from Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York]. Pictures, any pictures with me or Tim. They took my word processor…” Her father breaks in to say “they won’t give it back to her either. They got the tape [a memory tape that records data], and they said they gotta have the processor to run the tape.”

Jennifer resumes: “They totally broke me down. I thought I could handle it on my own. I guess I just couldn’t. I mean they had me there day and night. I told them, ‘I need a day off to think things over before I talk to you.’ Then they would say, ‘No, no, you have to talk to us eventually.’ They would come pick me up [at the family home in Pendleton, a Buffalo suburb] at 10 in the morning and keep me there [in a hotel room in Buffalo] until 8 at night. I mean, I didn’t have time to think things out. It was constant pressure altogether.”

This account leaves several mysteries unexplained. If she had not agreed to testify, for what crimes could the government have sought an indictment against her? There have been published rumors that she has told the government two things that Timothy allegedly confided to her: that he had participated in a robbery and that he had driven around the Midwest in a van filled with explosives. Even if so, that would seem to subject her at most to a charge of misprision of felony (knowing about a crime and failing to report it). No one has alleged that she knew anything about the bombing, let alone participated in the plot; if FBI agents really did threaten her with the death penalty, it would appear to have been sheer bluff.

Otherwise, the interview, conducted in the tiny law offices of Condon & Taheri in Williamsville, a town near Buffalo, mainly offered glimpses into what seemed like a thoroughly normal, very unremarkable family life. If anything, it deepened another mystery: What on earth happened to change Timothy from the normal, outgoing youngster described by the two people who knew him best into the gun-obsessed drifter and loner who came out of Army service after the Persian Gulf War? The interview almost ended before it began; William and Jennifer had just sat down when a lawyer arrived with news that Timothy had expressed some qualms about having them go through with it. Only after they were assured that Timothy had been persuaded he had no reason to worry did the two begin talking–Bill tall and rugged looking but ill at ease; Jennifer perky and articulate but taking a long drag on a cigarette before beginning to chat.

The family life they described was thoroughly rooted. William has lived in the Buffalo area all his life; he is an avid gardener and parishioner who runs the bingo games at Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Church (he is not sure but thinks he was on the way to a game when he heard the news of the bombing). Timothy, according to both William and Jennifer, was a fan of comic books and later an enthusiastic dabbler in computers. William quit hunting in 1962 and does not know when his son started taking an interest in guns, perhaps “late in high school…It started somewhere.”

Jennifer recalls that “Tim was always making up new things to do–like flashlight games.” Her father reminisces that “every year he would invite every kid in the neighborhood over and make a haunted house in the cellar.” He adds that Timothy was athletic but did not like staying after school to play on organized-sports teams; he preferred pickup games of football and hockey in his backyard. That hardly seems compatible with later descriptions of Tim as a perfect soldier who thrived on the rigid discipline of Army life, but, under the terms of the interview, any questions about McVeigh in the Army or afterward were out of bounds.

Neither father nor daughter would discuss William’s divorce from Mildred, Tim and Jennifer’s mother, who is remarried and lives in Florida. About the only hint of discord came from Jennifer, who told her father, “You guys would force us [herself and Timothy] to go to church. None of us ever wanted to go!” Still, both laughed at the memory. How Timothy McVeigh, coming from this background, could have evolved into an embittered right-wing loner, drifter and government hater is not easy to imagine, but there is not much question that he did. The question posed by the indictment, and that only a jury can eventually answer, is whether he became a terrorist bomber as well.

–Reported by Patrick E. Cole/Williamsville and Elaine Shannon/Washington