From 2024 into 2025, over roughly 9-10 months, I worked with journalist Margaret Roberts on her upcoming book, titled Blowback: The Untold Story of the FBI and the Oklahoma City Bombing. My role was that of a research consultant—a friendly resource available to help with a project that I viewed as significant and a righteous undertaking. It was both a pleasure and an honor to collaborate on this project.
Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue connected me with Roberts, whom he knew for years (read all about that in the book), to help with the book: reading, fact-checking, providing sources and documents, answering questions—I’d be her “foxhole buddy” in what we saw as a mammoth battle not unlike David versus Goliath: after all, the full power of the federal government has been used, over the years, to stop and silence investigation into Kenneth Trentadue’s murder and any probing of America’s deadliest domestic terror attack.
Over the years, investigations that were supposed to be conducted went by the wayside—the Senate Judiciary Committee’s proposed hearings on Kenneth’s murder were sabotaged; Bombing-related stories set to air on ABC News 20/20 were canceled after DOJ pressure, and witnesses in the case suddenly went missing or became reluctant to speak after visits from the FBI.
We knew it would be an uphill battle. Knowing this to be true, I had no reservations: from the moment Jesse called me in February 2024 and told me about the project, I said “count me in.”
After that phone call, I was introduced to the author, and we started having weekly discussions. I went into it excited, having just finished serving in a similar capacity for HBO/Max’s Emmy-nominated documentary film “An American Bombing: the Road to April 19th” where I was a research consultant—providing documents, questions to ask witnesses, and detailed information that the documentary filmmakers needed to tell the story right.
I was eager to jump right into the fray and do it again, because if anything, I’m all about collaboration and sharing material if it will advance the mutual struggle to bring truth to the forefront.
America’s Most Wanted Alumnus Tackles The Story
Margaret Roberts is an award-winning journalist. One of her early stories for the Chicago Lawyer detailed the case of a man wrongly convicted of abducting and murdering a couple, along with three other men. They were called the ‘Ford Heights Four,’ and Roberts’ initial story focused on one of them, Dennis Williams, who was sentenced to death.
Roberts and editor Rob Warden’s reporting on the case uncovered the truth and helped ensure justice was achieved — a challenging feat, especially after a man is condemned to death by the justice system. With the stakes as high as they were—a man’s life in the balance—the man’s only recourse turned out to be not our judicial system, but the combined efforts of dedicated investigative journalists.
Roberts’ story, co-bylined with editor Rob Warden, “Will We Execute an Innocent Man?” won journalism awards in Chicago, and later Newsweek featured it as a cover story on the death penalty. Thanks to Margaret Roberts’s reporting, an innocent man was exonerated along with his three co-defendants. Cook County, Illinois, ended up paying $36 million to the four wrongfully imprisoned men, the highest settlement ever paid at that time for such a case.
Following her time in print media, Roberts went on to become News Director for America’s Most Wanted — a TV show all about capturing the bad guys. As a reporter, and a news junkie, it was a perfect fit for Roberts. The very first episode of the show led to the apprehension of a violent criminal, and she knew a thing or two about broadcasting leads to the public—and covering the facts to help pursue the guilty.
By 1995, Roberts had moved on from America’s Most Wanted and was working on other projects, but the bombing story caught her attention as an avid news junkie—especially the unknown and unidentified suspect “John Doe #2,” something that she and I both shared a fascination with. We had both independently investigated this case for over 15 years when we were introduced, diligently following it with determination.
Working on The Book
I would like to share some of my thoughts about the process of writing the book, working with Margaret Roberts, and how our successful partnership was personally fulfilling for me. I did not see it as ‘work’—to me, it was ‘fun’!
Like the fictional characters from TV’s ‘The X-Files’ called “The Lone Gunmen” (pictured below), I saw this as an opportunity to bring a really “out there” truth into the mainstream, even though the odds were against us, just like the fictional muckrakers. Margaret Roberts was exactly what we needed to bring the truth to a new audience.
One of my tasks during the writing process was to keep track of the endnotes for the book. Margaret (or ‘Mars’ as I’d call her) would identify passages she wanted citations for, and I would add and keep track of our sources. Many times, she knew the source for the citation, and other times, I would go look it up in my archive (consisting of thousands of news clippings, magazine articles, transcripts, FBI documents, etc.) The Archive proved to be useful when working on the book both by making it easy to locate source materials, but also in allowing us to incorporate previously unknown (or forgotten) details found in related clippings.
As we worked on the book, I came across instances where I believed we could document a little-known or underreported fact that was directly related to the text. To that end, some items in the book are there because I brought them to Mars’s attention, and we worked together to capture the essence: after informing Mars of one thing or another, I would explain why I thought certain details were relevant and essential—and, doing her due diligence, Roberts required me to prove the authenticity of whatever I was saying.
I’d provide the background documentation and my overview, but basically, I needed to ‘prove’ my case to her, which shows just how careful and analytical she was being. Everything I introduced had to be solid and provable—no theories. As Roberts wrote on X, our collaboration involved “the careful process of weighing the evidence” — and getting it right.
Additionally, I also learned many new facts from Roberts’ investigation—in no small part because she is the only journalist to have ever interviewed Terry Nichols—one of McVeigh’s co-conspirators in the bombing—and possessed many letters, writings, and documents given to her by Terry Nichols’s attorney, Jesse Trentadue.
I had not seen this material before, and reviewing it added significant context to information that was, in some cases, entirely new for me. We called this material “The Nichols Dossier.” It was a sizable collection of Terry Nichols’s writings, where he details various aspects of the bombing plot, and the material is central to one of the book’s chapters.
Through Terry Nichols’s writings, Roberts uncovered a wealth of material that sheds new light on the case — at least to the public — and for the first time in print.
Roberts also interviewed Aryan Republican Army founder Peter Langan in prison, as well as McVeigh’s death row cellmate, David Paul Hammer.
This collection of exclusive prison interviews is just one component among several compelling pieces that are woven together to reveal a bigger picture, one that has largely remained untold until now.
