FBI finds more McVeigh files

Attorney General John Ashcroft's statement

The FBI has found an additional 898 additional pages of Oklahoma City bombing documents nearly two weeks after the bureau uncovered more than 3,100 pages of documents that were not presented to the Timothy McVeigh defense team prior to his trial.

The documents were found in at least three FBI field offices — 103 pages from the Baltimore office, 327 from the Denver office, and 63 from the Oklahoma City office. An additional 405 pages came from various other offices.

During a press conference Thursday, Attorney General John Ashcroft sought to downplay the significance of the documents, saying that they did not contain any significant new information and that they "represent only a small fraction of 1 percent of the total number of produced documents in this case."

He said the documents contained items such as photographs, fingerprint cards and criminal history reports about people who ultimately turned out to have no connection with the case. The documents also include newspaper and magazine clippings, most of which are not about the bombing.

The FBI has been reeling from the discovery of the first round of documents. That failure has been blamed in part on the FBI's antiquated computer systems and the bureau's lack of adequate systems for managing the voluminous number of records created by investigations.

The Justice Department has completed a report detailing the FBI's efforts over the past 13 days to identify any remaining documents. That report, however, does not look at how the documents were lost in the first place, he said. The Justice Department inspector general is investigating that issue.