Washington ? Two federal law enforcement agencies had information before the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing suggesting that white supremacists living nearby were considering an attack on government buildings, but the intelligence was never passed on to federal officials in the state, documents and interviews show.

FBI headquarters officials in Washington were so concerned that white separatists at the Elohim City compound in Muldrow, Okla., might lash out on April 19, 1995 — the day Timothy McVeigh did choose — that a month earlier they questioned a reformed white supremacist familiar with an earlier plot to bomb the same Alfred P. Murrah federal building McVeigh selected.

“I think their only real concern back then was Elohim City,” said Kerry Noble, the witness questioned by the FBI on March 28, 1995 — just a few weeks before McVeigh detonated a truck bomb outside the building and killed more than 160 people.

Noble said that his FBI questioners appeared particularly concerned about what Elohim City members might do on April 19 because one of their heroes, Wayne Snell, was being executed that day and another, James Ellison, was returning to Oklahoma after ending parole in Florida.

FBI officials confirmed Noble’s account, including concerns the group at Elohim City might strike on April 19.

Snell, Ellison and Noble had plotted to attack the Murrah building in 1983 with plastic explosives and rocket launchers, according to Noble and FBI officials. The plan never reached fruition, and the group was arrested after a siege in 1985.

The FBI wasn’t alone in its concerns, according to thousands of pages of federal investigative memos and handwritten notes obtained by AP, which portray government miscommunications that mirror the intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the days before he was executed for a 1980s murder of a pawn broker, Snell began making threats from his Arkansas prison that there would be a bombing or explosion on April 19 to avenge his death, according to prison and FBI officials. He also had contact in his last days with members of Elohim City, who later took his remains back to their compound.

An Oklahoma City firefighter walks near the explosion-damaged Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City after a car bomb blast in this April 19, 1995, file photo. Two federal law enforcement agencies had information before the bombing suggesting that white supremacists living nearby were considering an attack on government buildings, but the intelligence was never passed on to intelligence agencies, documents and interviews show.

“Some of the corrections officers heard (Snell) in a visitors room talking with people, saying there would be a large explosion or event of some type. He said the immediate reaction would be to blame it on Middle Eastern types. This was prior,” said Alan Ables, a former Arkansas corrections official.

Separately, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had an informant inside Elohim City who had disclosed before the bombing that white supremacists were “preparing for a war against U.S. government.” Other reports quoted members of the compound discussing plans for “assassinations, bombings and mass shootings.”

The government also had information suggesting that compound members had detonated a 500-pound fertilizer bomb like the one McVeigh would use and had visited Oklahoma City several times. The FBI could never verify the detonation.

The ATF informant would tell the FBI shortly after McVeigh’s bombing that Elohim City members had specifically discussed targeting federal buildings in Oklahoma for “destruction through bombings.”

But when ATF considered raiding Elohim City two months before McVeigh struck, the then-FBI agent in charge in Oklahoma, Bob Ricks, stopped the plan.

“I do remember I told them I didn’t want another Waco on our hands,” Ricks said, comparing the danger of a raid on Elohim City to the ill-fated ATF action on David Koresh’s compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993. “At the time, they hadn’t told me everything they apparently knew.”