A newly released book and an upcoming documentary are reviving attention on one of the FBI’s most secretive and controversial domestic spy programs known as “PATCON,” which was unmasked after a 30-year FOIA fight by Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue to prove his brother was murdered while in custody by federal agents in 1995.
Trentadue has uncovered, and is litigating to uncover, a total 2 million pages of documents so far. Two of his seven federal FOIA suits are still ongoing.
Trentadue is still litigating the release of government records from 1995, where his current case involves a request made in 2015 that the FBI sat on for 8 years and refused to respond to, involving records related to federal sting operations involving Timothy McVeigh from before the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Yet his revealations to date has shown not just government lies about the Oklahoma City bombing, but also a domestic spying and criminal operations that extends into the nation’s newsrooms, courtrooms, centers of power, and more.
Despite new attention on the case and a wave of public interest in PATCON caused by the release of Margaret Roberts’ book “Blowback: The Untold Story of the FBI and the Oklahoma City Bombing” two weeks ago, Trentadue says he does not expect any federal agent or informant to face prosecution for his brother’s killing or for related crimes.
He’s hopeful, rather, that the documented evidence he has uncovered about FBI spying on the political right can be stopped, and that will be the most justice his family will ever find.
‘Government Actor Defense’ Makes Prosecutions, even of Murders, Unlikely even with Disclosures
“My family is doubtful that anyone will ever be prosecuted for my brother’s murder, Oklahoma City, Waco, or the other crimes committed by the FBI as part of PATCON,” Trentadue told The Gateway Pundit.
Trentadue points to two reasons for that conclusion. The first is the “government actor defense,” a little-known but powerful legal doctrine that shields federal agents and informants from criminal liability if they can claim they were acting within the scope of their government duties, even when the claims involve murder. In practice, legal experts say, it is nearly impossible to overcome.
The second is that the United States would have to prosecute itself. “The United States is ultimately responsible for these crimes,” Trentadue said. “Asking the United States to prosecute itself is like asking Al Capone or the cartel leaders to prosecute themselves. It is not likely to happen.”
Even if a PATCON operative were indicted, Trentadue argues that the case would collapse once that person began talking. “Any PATCON operative prosecuted is not going to remain silent. He or she is going to open the entire PATCON can of worms, which the government cannot allow to happen.”
PATCON and what Trentadue has Revealed about Federal Domestic Spying and Criminality
The government has been repeatedly caught lying about video footage of the truck and bombing, which many believe shows a second conspirator exiting the truck with Timothy McVeigh.
Trentadue also uncovered memos related to an FBI Agent who tried to sell a copy of this footage to Dateline NBC in 1995 for $1 million, but who was caught when a compromised Producer at NBC revealed the information to the FBI.
PATCON, short for “Patriot Conspiracy,” was a covert FBI program in the 1990s that inserted undercover agents and informants into the American militia movement. According to records obtained through lawsuits and FOIA requests, those assets did more than gather intelligence. In some instances, they allegedly encouraged or facilitated criminal acts in order to justify federal crackdowns. Critics have compared PATCON to the FBI’s earlier COINTELPRO operation against political groups in the 1960s and 1970s, except this time the targets were constitutionalist and patriot organizations.
Recently, the existence of this operation has become more mainstream. A documentary set to release this fall, “Kidnap and Kill: The FBI Terror Plot” is set to explain how feds used PATCON to entrap the Whitmer kidnappers.
Trentadue clarified the scope of the government’s PATCON operations: “Margaret Roberts’ characterization of PATCON as government “manufactured terrorism” is spot-on, but it is also important to note that Margaret’s book Blowback is focused on the Oklahoma City bombing part of PATCON, whereas, as Ken Silva and others note, PATCON is far bigger: Waco, Lone Wolf Gun Store, Fast and Furious, Gunrunning, Bank Robberies, Drug Trafficking, a plot to damage the cooling system at the Brown’s Ferry Alabama Nuclear Facility, and also the Sensitive Informant Program, which the FBI uses to embed informants within the mainstream media, on the staffs of federal judges, inside other federal agencies and the White House, within the clergy and even within defense teams on high-profile criminal cases.”
Document Disclosures and Bondi’s Refusal to Respond so far
Trentadue believes the real path to justice lies in forcing full public disclosure of what PATCON was and how it operated.
“Justice is coming in the form of exposing PATCON, which I recognized long ago is ultimately more important than seeing my brother’s murderers prosecuted. By exposing PATCON, we are saving our Country and defending the Constitution.”
The Bondi DOJ has, so far, refused to release public documents related to Trentadue’s requests, and has opposed releasing the deposition transcript from an FBI Informant John Matthews who may have information critical to solving the unanswered questions from the 1995 bombing, including the extent to which federal authorities were involved in the planning and execution of the bombing.
Matthews claimed in 2014 that he was being threatened by the FBI not to cooperate with Trentadue’s investigation and lawful subpoenas to testify.
The involved federal operations involving McVeigh prior to the bombing also, oddly, involve intelligence agents from Germany.
Trentadue sent a letter to Attorney General Bondi this past March asking her to release the relevant files, a request that went unanswered.
Documents Show FBI, Feds, Compromising Mainstream Media, Judges, Defense Attorneys, White House
Part of PATCON, Trentadue claims he has discovered through 30 years of FOIA litigation against the government, is a “Sensitive Informant Project” which compromises key people in major mainstream media outlets, and also attorneys involved in key lawsuits. Trentadue says the documents show operatives working at the direction of the FBI who prevent mainstream media coverage of key stories, and also steers attorneys involved in key cases to maliciously betray their clients in the course of their legal representation.
The scope and scale of PATCON’s operations, Trentadue says, is pervasive and systemic through the nation’s federal law enforcement operations.
Trentadue believes that PATCON was involved in even recent political controversies, including the Whitmer Kidnapping Hoax in Michigan and the federal undercover agents at the January 6th protest at the U.S. Capitol. PATCON, he says, is ongoing and unlikely to be stopped without public outrage.
Trentadue has pursued this case, utilizing the Freedom of Information Act and litigating against the government when they failed to turn over public documents, since his brother’s death in custody, where the official story did not match facts he knew to be true.
He’s guardedly optimistic that Trump may finally declassify or disclose the documents to show what happened to his brother, but the past three decades have given him reasons to doubt the deep state operatives involved would allow that to happen.
But documents continue to be released, which keep revealing major challenges to the mainstream narrative about the Oklahoma City bombing, many of which are featured at the OKCFacts Substack.
The operations that Trentadue’s litigation have revealed, including “BOMBROB” which involves white supremacist bank robbers, some of whom may have been undercover federal agents, and the funds from the bank robberies were allegedly used to fund the Oklahoma City bombing.
The FBI tried to produce just 2 documents a month to Trentadue in response to a court order to produce 70,000 documents. Currently the court is only requiring the FBI to produce 1,000 pages a month, a rate that they are currently failing to meet.
The Suspicious 1995 Death of Kenneth Trentadue
His brother Kenneth Michael Trentadue was transferred from California to Oklahoma City in August 1995 for an alleged parole violation. Jesse spoke to his brother and he anticipated being released soon, and they spoke about Kenneth’s young son. The parole violation was not, Kenneth told Jesse, anything serious.
So when Jesse learned three days later that his brother was dead, found hanging in his cell, it did not match his brother’s demeanor on his phone call. In addition, federal authorities were urgently trying to declare the death a suicide and prevent an autopsy and wanted to cremate the body, raising suspicion. When Jesse finally was able to view his brother’s body, his face was caked in make-up put on by prison authorities.
The family intervened to stop the cremation.
When the make-up was removed from Kenneth’s face, it was clear what they were trying to hide: bruising and cuts all over his face consistent with being tortured. Federal authorities have since claimed that Kenneth hit his head several times when attempting a suicide by hanging.
Kenneth’s face had multiple cuts and bruises, and his arms and legs were also covered in recent bruises.
Jesse believes that his brother was mistaken for “John Doe number 2” in the Oklahoma City bombing, whom he now believes was a federal agent or informant, Richard Lee Guthrie, working within the PATCON operation. Both Kenneth Trentadue and Richard Guthrie had the same physique, stature, height, and both had a similar tattoo on the same arm.
Jesse believes federal agents beat his brother to death in Oklahoma City and have tried to cover it up ever since.
Kenneth’s cell was immediately cleaned and wiped down with bleach. Evidence in the case has disappeared.
Every federal investigation into the death of Kenneth Trentadue has cleared the government of any wrongdoing, and has claimed that the death was simply a jailhouse suicide.
Since then, Jesse Trentadue has used his expertise as an Attorney to request public documents, and when refused, demanded through through litigation to uncover the people and programs behind his brother’s murder. That effort has revealed ongoing domestic surveillance greater and more substantial than ever before in U.S. history. So far, Trentadue has spent 30 years litigating, and has uncovered the most extensive federal system of domestic surveillance and political disruption in the nation’s history.
But he has not yet found the names of his brother’s killers.
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