WASHINGTON — Carl Lebron is the man who turned in Timothy J. McVeigh.
He was the first to recognize the FBI's composite drawing of McVeigh, the first to tell authorities that his former co-worker has strong anti-government views, the first to claim that McVeigh holds far-out beliefs in flying saucers and miniature submarines that sneak illegal drugs into this country.
But in the year and a half since the truck-bomb attack on the Oklahoma City federal building, the identity of Carl Edward Lebron Jr. has been kept confidential. He has steadfastly refused to talk publicly about the man who worked alongside him at an upstate New York security company and who stands accused of the bombing.
Now, in FBI interview transcripts unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court in Denver, where McVeigh goes on trial this year, the 30-year-old Lebron lays out in graphic, emotional detail his recollection of McVeigh's distrust of liberals, his quirky turns of behavior and his growing hatred of the national government.
Lebron was crucial to the FBI in its initial investigation of the bombing. He was one of their first chief witnesses. And he provided instant insight into the central figure in the investigation of the worst terrorist attack in the United States.
Lebron, for example, told the FBI that one of the last times he talked to his friend, McVeigh told him, in effect: "I can't stay out of trouble," or "Trouble will find me."
He said McVeigh bragged that he wasn't anti-government, he was "anti-big government."
And McVeigh sometimes would criticize Lebron for not completely embracing the anti-Washington vitriol found in books, magazines and other correspondence he passed around at work.
"This is just a hobby for you, reading these books," McVeigh once challenged him, Lebron said. "You're stomping your feet and not doing anything about it."
Lebron's statements are part of nearly 100 pages of new material made public Friday by Judge Richard P. Matsch. The documents were unsealed after media attorneys argued that too much material in the case against McVeigh and his former Army buddy and co-defendant Terry L. Nichols is hidden under seal.
With McVeigh to be tried beginning March 31, and with Nichols' trial to follow, prosecutors and defense attorneys have filed tens of thousands of pages of documents regarding the April 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The blast killed 168 people and injured 850 others.
