OPENING SHOTS

By JAMES COLLINS

Stephen Jones, the colorful, self-aggrandizing attorney for Timothy McVeigh, was feeling smug last week. With the Oklahoma City bombing case drawing to within two months of its trial date, he and the government were providing an advance look at their rival strategies. In a conversation with TIME, Jones savored disclosures that he believes will complicate the prosecution. "Our case is in better shape," he said. "Tim and I feel very good about the case."

What has made Jones and "Tim" feel very good, first of all, is a Justice Department report on the FBI crime lab in Washington that criticizes some of the handling of evidence from the Oklahoma City bombing. The other development is last week's filing of a brief that gives a new, comprehensive description of the witnesses the government plans to call. In much more detail than an account back in 1995, the brief describes the witnesses' confusion about the man they said accompanied McVeigh when he rented a Ryder truck--the infamous John Doe No. 2. The disclosure calls into question the reliability of these crucial witnesses.

FBI officials insist that nothing about the Oklahoma City investigation has been compromised and that none of the disclosures pose a real danger to prosecution of the case. Even so, the episodes show how the defense may be able to exploit flaws in the government's case against McVeigh, whose trial begins March 31 in Denver and will be followed by the trial of co-defendant Terry Nichols. Both could face the death penalty if convicted of carrying out the bombing, which killed 168 people.

The lapses in the FBI crime lab have triggered a staff shake-up. On Jan. 20 the Justice Department gave FBI officials a preliminary report that found errors, sloppiness and poor management in the agency's crime lab. The investigation had its origins in charges made since the mid-1980s by Frederic Whitehurst, a senior chemist. The report is still secret, but Justice and FBI officials say that while it found nothing illegal, it did identify some serious lapses. FBI Director Louis Freeh has already launched reforms. Meanwhile, the agency announced that three bomb investigators have been removed from their positions and that Whitehurst has been suspended with pay for his own serious errors.

One of the men transferred is David Williams, the senior explosives expert on the scene in Oklahoma City. Soon after the blast, Williams announced that the bomb had consisted of about 4,000 lbs. of ammonium nitrate and exploded at a velocity of about 13,000 ft. per sec. According to officials, the report severely criticizes Williams for basing his observations on his experience and instinct rather than precise measurements. In fact, his assessment was accurate. But FBI managers concur with the report that the lab's chief failing has been the practice of letting veteran explosives specialists--"the bomb guys"--write reports and give testimony that reflect their surmises rather than careful calculations.

To comply with a law that requires the government to share possible exculpatory evidence with defendants, the Justice Department has for months been providing the attorneys in various cases with the interviews it has conducted. Last week accusations based on these interviews were leaked to the press. Lab personnel were quoted as saying that McVeigh's black jeans were stuffed in a brown paper sack instead of a sealed, plastic evidence bag and that a shipment of bomb-truck fragments arrived in a "mess." But these raw interviews may not become part of the report, because some of the complaints have been refuted.

Justice Department prosecutors say they have known for months that Williams would receive harsh criticism, and had long since decided against having him testify. Instead they will call Steven Burmeister, a chemist praised in the report as meticulous, and Linda Jones, a British explosives expert. Burmeister performed the tests that showed traces of an explosive on McVeigh's clothing. He found no evidence that the clothes had been mishandled, the officials say. They acknowledge that some debris may have been contaminated, but they say that these were never intended to be used as evidence. All very reasonable, perhaps--but the report still gives Jones plenty of opportunity for outrage.

It is the hope of the prosecutors to construct a case that dashes the current good feelings of Jones and McVeigh. The brief the Justice Department filed laid out in detail some of the ways they intend to do that, but it raised a potential problem with regard to John Doe No. 2. Identification of that individual is crucial because it forecloses the possibility that the suspected McVeigh accomplice is still at large. That the Justice Department had dismissed John Doe No. 2 was not news; back in June 1995 it announced that it had called off its manhunt. The news detailed in the brief is the witnesses' confusion over who this man was.

Prosecutors say Eldon Elliott, owner of Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City, Kansas, will testify that a man calling himself Robert Kling and fitting the description of McVeigh came into his shop on April 15, 1995--four days before the bombing--to pay for a truck he reserved the day before. On April 17, "Kling" returned and spoke with Elliott, Tom Kessinger, a mechanic, and another employee, Vicki Beemer. Kessinger told the FBI "Kling" was accompanied by a heavyset, dark-haired, brown-eyed young man wearing a baseball cap with a blue-and-white zigzag pattern. Kessinger said the man had a tattoo below his left shirtsleeve. At first Elliott said he did not recall a second man, but a day later he agreed that this man was with "Kling." Beemer remembered two men, but could not describe them in any detail.

For weeks the FBI hunted John Doe No. 2. Then, in May, they interviewed Todd Bunting, an Army private whose name appeared on the agency's records of people who rented trucks in April. On April 18 Bunting went to Elliott's along with Army Sergeant Michael Hertig. When FBI agents located Bunting in Fort Riley, Kansas, they found he fit the description of John Doe No. 2. According to the brief, when he rented the truck he was wearing a Carolina Panthers hat with a blue-and-white pattern, and he even has a tattoo on his left arm.

Last November, agents and prosecutors showed Kessinger photos of Bunting in the hat and T shirt. According to the brief, Kessinger has concluded that he was thinking of Bunting when he described the man with McVeigh. Kessinger is "now unsure" whether he saw a second person; Elliott and Beemer "continue to believe that two men came in to rent the truck on April 17." The brief goes on to say both are certain Hertig was not "Kling" because they knew him and because he has a mustache, which Kling did not.

No one disputes that the Ryder truck rented by Robert Kling carried the explosives that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building (an axle with a vehicle identification number was found at the site). But was Timothy McVeigh in fact Robert Kling? Jones has argued that the testimony of Elliott and Kessinger is unreliable, since they have been so inconsistent on the question of John Doe No. 2. The government insists that conflating Bunting's visit with McVeigh's was a harmless, understandable mistake and that the identification of McVeigh remains airtight.

Elliott and Kessinger first spoke to the FBI on April 19, when McVeigh was still completely unknown. A composite sketch based on their description of "Kling" was shown to motel owners around Junction City. On April 20, Lea McGown, proprietor of the Dreamland Motel, recognized the man as a guest named Timothy McVeigh. The agents searched a database and discovered that someone of that name was arrested on April 19 for speeding 90 miles north of Oklahoma City; he looked almost exactly like the composite sketch. So, the government argues, Elliott and Kessinger described McVeigh before anyone knew of his possible involvement, and their description was so accurate that the motel owner recognized the man easily.

In the brief, the government adduces other evidence linking McVeigh to the truck-rental agency. Records show that on April 14, 1995, at 9:53 a.m., the agency received a call from a pay phone in a Junction City, Kansas, bus depot. Thomas Manning, who worked in a store across from the depot and sold McVeigh the car he was eventually arrested in, is prepared to testify that McVeigh was in the store but left briefly at about the time of the call. Also, a cabdriver will testify that he drove McVeigh to a McDonald's near the truck-rental shop at 3:29 p.m. on April 17. Videotape from a security camera at the McDonald's shows McVeigh there at that time. "Kling" rented the truck at about 4:15.

The government's star witness, McVeigh's friend Michael Fortier, is not discussed in the brief. But sources tell TIME he will say that he accompanied McVeigh to case the Murrah building and that McVeigh told him he wanted to blow it up. Fortier's wife Lori, these sources say, will admit she helped McVeigh make the phony "Robert Kling" driver's license that McVeigh used to rent the Ryder truck.

It may not look very good for McVeigh. But Jones has a plan. First, he will sow suspicion in the jury about the possibility that someone else committed the crime. Jones points out that in 1983 a white supremacist named Richard Snell killed a pawnbroker whom he mistakenly believed to be Jewish and was executed on April 19, 1995. "Snell had threatened to blow up the Murrah building back in the 1980s," Jones says. "One of the hypotheses is, Did a group of people decide to give the old man a going-away gift?"

The second prong of Jones' defense is the argument that only skilled terrorists could have made the bomb, not two drifters like McVeigh and Nichols. Jones and a team of investigators traveled to Belfast to speak with experts about ammonium nitrate bombs. Says Jones: "I talked to a bunch of them, and they said to me, 'I'm not saying your man couldn't have done it. What I'm saying to you is that no one else has ever done it.'"

So the elements of the Oklahoma City trial are coming into focus. As the bloody glove, the sock and O.J. Simpson's Rockingham estate finally pass from the scene, the American public will soon become immersed in fresh minutiae: Elliott's Body Shop, ammonium nitrate, the Panthers cap. In this case, as in O.J.'s, the defendant won't be the only one on trial. Citizens will be watching to see how well the government presents its case and how well the legal system serves justice.

--Reported by Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles and Elaine Shannon/Washington

With reporting by PATRICK E. COLE/LOS ANGELES AND ELAINE SHANNON/WASHINGTON