OKLAHOMA CITY ? Bombing conspirator Terry Nichols has told the FBI and his family that he was involved in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, according to a published report.

Nichols, serving life prison sentences on federal and state convictions for the bombing that killed 168 people, started speaking to the FBI about his role in April at a federal prison in Florence, Colo., The Oklahoman reported in a copyright story in today’s editions.

Nichols, 50, made similar disclosures to his mother, sister and first ex-wife last month.

“I didn’t like it. Oh, God, I said, ‘No way,'” said his mother, Joyce Wilt of Lapeer, Mich. “I told him, ‘You tell me the truth. I want the truth and I don’t want anything else.'”

Funding the attack

Nichols told the FBI he first thought bomber Timothy McVeigh was going to blow up a monument to get back at the federal government for the deaths of about 80 people during the government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, exactly two years before the bombing.

Nichols said he reluctantly robbed gun collector Roger Moore in Arkansas in November 1994 at McVeigh’s urging. Prosecutors alleged that weapons, coins and other valuables taken in the robbery were used to finance the bomb plot.

Based on Nichols’ statement, the FBI this spring recovered a .50-caliber sniper rifle taken in the robbery, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources. The gun was found near a Kansas creek where Nichols said he hid it.

Sources said Nichols told the FBI he helped McVeigh steal explosives from a Kansas rock quarry in 1994, buy fertilizer for the bomb from a Kansas farm store and purchase nitro-methane racing fuel from a Texas racetrack.

‘Reluctant’ role

He also admitted picking up McVeigh in Oklahoma City three days before the April 19, 1995, bombing. McVeigh drove from Kansas to Oklahoma City to park a getaway car, while Nichols followed in a truck.

Sources also said Nichols admitted helping McVeigh build the bomb in the back of a rented Ryder truck next to a Kansas lake the day before the attack. He said they kept the fertilizer and racing fuel in a storage shed in Herington, Kan.

Nichols told the FBI and his family that his role in the bomb plot was uninformed and reluctant. His mother said McVeigh threatened Nichols with a gun “all the time.”

Nichols’ family contends he has Asperger Syndrome, a developmental disorder that can make a sufferer especially vulnerable to manipulation and peer pressure.

Nichols indicated he suspected McVeigh, who was very secretive, had accomplices. Nichols’ mother said she still thinks others were involved in the bombing and the FBI is covering it up.

Prosecutors at Nichols’ federal and state trials portrayed him as an active and willing participant in the bomb plot. Nichols once wrote to McVeigh “Go For IT!!” and “As Far As Heat – None That I Know.”

The FBI declined comment on Nichols’ statement. Danny Defenbaugh, the retired FBI agent who oversaw the bombing investigation, said he has heard that Nichols spoke to the FBI.

“The statement was relatively self-serving …. There were some admissions, yes,” Defenbaugh said.

Nichols spoke to FBI agents after the FBI discovered hundreds of blasting caps and other explosives buried beneath his former house in Herington.

Defense attorneys at Nichols’ state bombing trial confirmed that he has talked to the FBI.

“This is the first time he’s not facing the death penalty and he can say things without fear of someone killing him,” lead defense attorney Brian Hermanson said.

Life in prison

In 1997, Nichols was convicted of federal conspiracy and manslaughter charges for the deaths of eight law enforcement agents in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Last year, he was convicted of arson, conspiracy to commit arson and 161 counts of first-degree murder in Oklahoma. The state case focused on the bombing’s 160 other deaths as well as the death of a fetus.

Nichols was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole in both cases. He avoided the death penalty because jurors at both his federal and state trials could not agree on the punishment.

Nichols never testified but apologized at his sentencing in the state case.

McVeigh was convicted of federal murder for the bombing and was executed in 2001.