DATE: Sunday, May 18, 1997                  TAG: 9705160879

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: DAVE ADDIS

                                            LENGTH:   67 lines

EVIDENCE SO STRONG IT'S SPOOKY

It's been heartening to watch a first-class team of prosecutors stitch together a net of evidence against Timothy McVeigh, the man who probably blew up 168 innocent people in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

At times, in fact, it's been downright creepy.

From a farm supply store, investigators dug out a receipt for a ton of fertilizer that had McVeigh's fingerprints on it.

From the hard disk of his sister's computer, they extracted electronic copies of damning letters McVeigh had written.

From a Chinese restaurant, they ferreted out a receipt for a takeout tub of moo goo gai pan that had the same name on it as a fake driver's license traceable to McVeigh. And the moo-goo was delivered to a motel where receipts show McVeigh was registered under his own name.

From a McDonald's in Kansas, they dug up a surveillance videotape of McVeigh buying a fried pie less than an hour before the truck that carried the bomb was hired from a Ryder rental outlet a mile or so down the street.

From an apartment complex a block from the federal building came more security-camera footage, purportedly showing Terry Nichols cruising down the street in a 1984 GMC pickup truck three days before the explosion. DMV records show he owned such a truck at that time.

The videotape, of course, is time-coded: 8:17 p.m. on April 16, 1995. And that, the prosecutors say, dovetails with a phone call Nichols got earlier that day from McVeigh, asking for a ride after dropping off a getaway car.

Beyond hoping that all this is enough to someday get McVeigh turned into something of a fried pie himself, you can only gasp at how our innocent comings and goings leave a trail all over the place.

Like the other day, when my wife was out of town. From the time I left the office until I returned the next morning, I didn't talk to another human face-to-face. Yet if I needed an alibi - and, for once, I don't - I could account for just about every moment.

Credit card receipts would confirm my route home: where, and at what time, I stopped at a Texaco for gas; that at exactly 4:56 p.m. I bought a cold six-pack and a bag of peanuts at a Hannaford's just down the road. Electronic records would show that I answered a couple of computer e-mail messages at about 6:15. Cox Cable could confirm that I ordered a pay-per-view movie (PG-13, if you must know) at 8 p.m. AT&T could confirm that when my wife called from Minneapolis at about 10:30, somebody at my house answered and chatted for 14 minutes and 53 seconds.

And, if the gumshoes really wanted to get fancy, they could analyze my utility records to prove that at roughly 3 a.m. a 60-watt bulb kicked in and a couple of gallons of water were pumped into a tank in an upstairs bathroom - evidence that is irrefutably linked to the beers that were purchased at Hannaford's at 4:56 p.m.

And there's no knowing how many hidden security cameras I passed in the process.

Tim McVeigh is one of a growing number of paranoids who believe that the CIA and the United Nations fly around in black helicopters at night carrying out the Trilateral Commission's orders to confiscate shotguns and hunting dogs so that the Brownshirts won't be able to defend themselves against the Red Menace, the Yellow Peril, the Black Nationalists or the Little Green Men.

In short, he's a fruitcake. Let's hope he gets every ounce of justice that's coming to him. But I have to confess that the efficiency with which the investigators have pegged his every movement chills my spine.

In a wired world, you don't have to be paranoid to realize that the word ``privacy'' has come to have a whole new meaning. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

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