Michael Fortier Today: Plea Deal, Twelve-Year Sentence, and Early Release

Michael Fortier today lives under a new identity in the federal Witness Security Program, and his location has not been publicly reported since he walked out of prison on January 20, 2006. He served roughly ten and a half years of a twelve-year federal sentence for his role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, then disappeared into the program with his wife Lori and their two children. No credible reporting has tracked him since.¹

Where Michael Fortier Is Now

Fortier was released from federal custody on January 20, 2006. The Bureau of Prisons declined to say when he actually left or where he was going, and his attorney, Michael McGuire, refused to identify who met him or where he would live. The secrecy pointed immediately to witness protection.²

Later reporting confirmed it. According to the Dallas Morning News, Fortier, Lori, and their two children entered the federal Witness Security Program and received new identities and government-provided housing.¹ NPR confirmed in 2013 that Fortier “assumed a new identity upon his release in 2006.”³

The Witness Security Program is run by the U.S. Marshals Service under the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. Since 1971 it has protected more than 19,250 witnesses and family members, typically providing new identities with supporting documentation, housing, basic living expenses, and job training. The Marshals Service maintains that no participant who followed program guidelines has been harmed or killed while under active protection.⁴

No reporting has surfaced identifying what name Fortier now uses, what state he lives in, or what he does for work. For practical purposes, the public record on him ends at the prison gate in 2006.

What He Did to Get Twelve Years

On April 19, 1995, a truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children, and injuring hundreds more.⁵ Fortier did not build the bomb, drive the truck, or go to Oklahoma City that day. He knew it was coming and said nothing.

Fortier met Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols during basic training at Fort Benning in 1988. All three were later stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. After leaving the Army, Fortier returned to Kingman, Arizona, where McVeigh visited repeatedly in 1993 and 1994. The two shared anger at the federal government over the 1993 Waco siege. McVeigh was best man at Fortier’s wedding to Lori Hart in July 1994.⁶⁷

McVeigh told Fortier about the plot roughly nine months before the attack.¹ In the Fortiers’ kitchen, McVeigh used soup cans to demonstrate how barrels of ammonium nitrate and racing fuel would be arranged inside a truck to direct the blast. He later showed Fortier a diagram of a “shape charge” built from 55-gallon drums with a cannon fuse running from the cab.⁷

Fortier did more than listen. He drove with McVeigh to Oklahoma City and scouted the Murrah Building.¹⁷⁸

Fortier later testified that he refused to take part in the bombing itself and told McVeigh he would only act if “a UN tank” appeared in his front yard. When he asked about the people inside the building, McVeigh compared them to “storm troopers” from Star Wars, “guilty by association” with the “evil empire.”⁷ He never contacted law enforcement.

The Plea Deal and the Charges

Fortier was indicted separately from McVeigh and Nichols. He pleaded guilty to four federal felonies:

Conspiring to transport stolen firearms (18 U.S.C. § 371)
Transporting stolen firearms (18 U.S.C. §§ 922(i), 924(a)(2))
Making a false statement to the FBI (18 U.S.C. § 1001)
Misprision of a felony (18 U.S.C. § 4), the crime of knowing about a serious offense and failing to report it

He was not charged with conspiracy to bomb the Murrah Building or with any count tied to the 168 deaths.⁸ In exchange, he agreed to cooperate and testify, and his wife Lori received complete immunity.

Lori Fortier’s involvement had been substantial. She watched the soup-can demonstration, heard McVeigh talk about the plan, and used her household iron to laminate the fake driver’s license McVeigh used to rent the Ryder truck that carried the bomb. McVeigh’s defense attorney Stephen Jones said she knew “the date, time and place of the bombing.”⁹ She served no prison time and testified against both McVeigh and Nichols.¹⁰

Fortier was the prosecution’s central cooperating witness. He testified in Denver on May 12, 1997, in the McVeigh trial, describing the bomb design, the choice of target, and McVeigh’s stated goal of causing “a general uprising in America” against the federal government. According to Fortier, McVeigh chose the Murrah Building because he believed it was the source of the orders for Waco and timed the attack for 11:00 a.m. because “everybody would be getting ready for lunch.”⁷

In May 1998, the district court sentenced Fortier to 144 months in prison and a $200,000 fine. On appeal, the Tenth Circuit vacated the sentence in 1999 for applying first-degree murder guidelines, but at resentencing the court again imposed 144 months, lowering only the fine, to $75,000. The Tenth Circuit affirmed the resentence in March 2001, finding the harms of the bombing were “reasonably foreseeable” consequences of Fortier’s conduct.¹¹¹²

Why He Served Only Ten and a Half Years

Fortier was released after about ten years and five months of a twelve-year sentence. The federal prison system does not have parole; his early release was credited to good behavior. He was placed on three years of supervised probation.¹³ By 2006, with the supervised-release term now presumably long complete, his status in the public record is simply that of a free person living under a protected identity.

How Victims and Lawyers Reacted

The plea deal and the length of the sentence drew sharp criticism from families of the dead. Jannie Coverdale, who lost her grandsons Aaron and Elijah, said Fortier’s role was “as significant as that of Nichols” and should have carried a life sentence. On his release she said, “Michael Fortier being out of prison? There’s no way I can forget that. He helped murder my grandsons.”¹⁴ Tina Tomlin, who lost her husband Rick, called the prospect of early release “just like slapping his hand.”¹⁵

Legal figures split. Oklahoma County District Attorney Wes Lane said Fortier “may have outlived his prison sentence, but he will never outlive his responsibility.” McVeigh’s defense attorney Stephen Jones said, “One of them got away and the other received a much lighter sentence.” Nichols defense attorney Brian Hermanson noted that the government’s allegations against Fortier and Nichols were not significantly different, yet Fortier pleaded to lesser charges while Nichols faced the death penalty.¹⁴

Aitan Goelman, a former member of the prosecution team, defended the outcome: “He has paid his debt to society. Knowing about a horrible crime and doing nothing to prevent it is on one side, and on the other side of the scale is the tremendous assistance he provided to the government in order to prosecute the guys who actually did the bombing.”¹⁴

McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001. Nichols is serving life without parole, convicted in federal court in 1997 and in an Oklahoma state trial in 2004 on 161 counts of first-degree murder.¹⁶ Michael Fortier, nearly two decades after walking out of prison, remains the one figure from the plot whose present-day life the public knows nothing about.

1
Southern Poverty Law Center. 10 Years Later: OKC Bombing Figure Walks Free
2
Lawrence Journal-World. Oklahoma City Bombing Witness Released From Prison
3
NPR. Who Are the Terrorism Informants in Witness Protection
4
U.S. Marshals Service. Witness Security
5
FBI. Oklahoma City Bombing
6
Los Angeles Times. Profile of Michael Joseph Fortier
7
Famous Trials. Michael Fortier Testimony
8
University of Texas School of Law. Fortier Cross-Examination Transcript
9
CBS News. Oklahoma Bomb Conspirator to Be Freed
10
Denver Post. Lori Fortier Trial Testimony Coverage
11
Justia. United States v. Fortier, 242 F.3d 1224
12
CBS News. Fortier’s Sentence Thrown Out
13
The Oklahoman. Fortier to Be Freed
14
NBC News. Fortier Released From Prison
15
Denver Post. Victims React to Fortier’s Possible Early Release
16
Britannica. Terry Nichols