Blowback: The Untold Story of the FBI and the Oklahoma City Bombing

An investigative journalist reopens the unsolved mystery of John Doe 2, the Oklahoma City bombing suspect who evaded a global FBI manhunt.

What if everything we know about one of America's darkest days is wrong?

Tragedy unfolded on April 19, 1995, when a massive bomb exploded in America's Heartland, killing 168 people, including 15 children in their daycare center. History says the Oklahoma City bombing was lone wolf terrorism. But haunting fresh evidence points instead to a neo-Nazi plot in which the FBI played a hidden role, allowing suspects to walk free, denying justice to the victims, and hiding the truth from all of us.

The FBI launched the biggest manhunt in its history for two suspected bombers and quickly arrested Timothy McVeigh, a twenty-six-year-old Gulf War Army veteran. Yet they never captured the other suspect, known only as John Doe 2, who rode next to McVeigh in the bomb truck. Soon the FBI canceled the search, saying eyewitnesses who saw John Doe 2 were mistaken.

None of this rings true to award-winning journalist Margaret Roberts. As former news director of America's Most Wanted, she worked high-profile manhunts alongside the FBI. How could twenty witnesses be wrong?

More troubling clues lead Roberts to reopen the mystery of John Doe 2 before the 30th anniversary of America's deadliest domestic terror attack. Blowback chronicles her shocking discoveries, including journalism's only face-to-face prison interviews with McVeigh co-conspirator Terry Nichols. Roberts puts the puzzle together after a whistleblower steps forward, though one burning mystery remains: The FBI has kept surveillance video of McVeigh's accomplice locked away all these years. Is John Doe 2 the FBI's guilty secret?

Author: Margaret Roberts
Publisher: Bombardier Books
Published: 07/22/2025
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.30w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9798888458426

About the Author
Margaret Roberts is a prize-winning investigative journalist and television producer. She graduated from Northwestern University and earned a master's degree with honors in English literature at the University of Chicago.

As managing editor of Chicago Lawyer newspaper in the 1980s, Roberts conducted a death-row investigation that led to the exoneration of an innocent man. The story won Chicago's Jacob Scher and Stick 'O Type awards. Newsweek called it "investigative journalism at its best."

In Washington, DC, Roberts was a top editor at National Journal and Congressional Quarterly before moving into television as news director of America's Most Wanted.

In 2010, Roberts edited the prison memoir Deadly Secrets, Timothy McVeigh's account of the Oklahoma City bomb plot as told to fellow death-row inmate David Hammer, an exclusive source for Blowback.

Roberts owns Rio Sierra River Resort, a hotel and writer's retreat near California's Sequoia National Park, where she wrote her book.