Subscribe Mike Moroz a tyre shop manager also put Mr McVeigh in the company
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Mike Moroz, a tyre shop manager, also put Mr McVeigh in the company of another man, asking for directions - but this time in the truck rather than in a car following it."You want to hear it from the start? All right," said David Snider, a warehouse superintendent, before launching into a story he has told dozens of times "I'm going to start from A and we'll go all the way to Z I've put my neck on the line for everybody here. I was raised to tell the truth."In what seems an elaborate tale, Mr Snider tells of a "verbal confrontation" with Mr McVeigh after he commented on the stranger's haircut. He saw not just two but three vehicles - one speeding away after the blast. A defence investigator has told him, he said, that the FBI did not hand over his statement to them.One key figure that the government does intend to call worked in the Kansas body shop where Mr McVeigh allegedly rented the truck under a false name.
Tom Kessinger remembered "Mr Kling" as a man with "beady eyes" and a horizontal line that ran beneath his jaw. That description, hours after the bombing, was accurate enough to match Mr McVeigh to his real name at a nearby motel where he stayed. But Mr Kessinger will be undoubtedly be quizzed over his description of a second man, with dark eyebrows and a baseball cap.The lurking figure became the shadowy "John Doe No 2", for months the target of a huge FBI manhunt. But in an attempt to tie up another dangerously loose thread, the bureau finally announced that the description was actually of Todd David Bunting, a soldier who happened to rent a truck the next day."We will certainly contend that there is a John Doe 2 and maybe 3, 4 and 5", said Mr McVeigh's lawyer, Stephen Jones - thereby helping to spread the blame away from his client.It is in the interests of the defence to complicate the picture as much as possible, while the prosecution will be seeking to present as clear and simple a conclusion as it can: that Mr McVeigh is guilty of murder 168 times over, and should pay with his own life.
Somewhere between these two strategies the messy truth, as people like Mr Hunt see it, may get a little lost.. The UK pensions industry is still guilty of widespread "mis-selling", despite a three-year review to clean up the scandal that left millions of people with inadequate policies from the late 1980s. The revelations, in a Granada TV World in Action documentary tomorrow, will severely embarrass the Government, which only last month pledged to privatise the state pension and so leave provision wholly in the hands of the private sector. Barclays Life, Abbey Life and London & Manchester Assurance are among 10 firms, most of them household names, secretly filmed giving bad pensions advice.Owing to legal advice and time pressures, the film-makers have not named the other seven. But the Independent on Sunday has learnt that one is Allied Dunbar, the insurer owned by tobacco giant BAT Industries.Allied Dunbar became so concerned at the prospect of appearing on the programme that it hired a specialist media consultant, a former World in Action researcher, to mount a damage-limitation exercise.It escaped being exposed on film because Granada's lawyers felt that under guidelines laid down by the Independent Television Commission, the programming watchdog, it was not given enough time to answer the allegations.The revelations of continued abuse by commission-hungry salesmen come on top of disturbing new evidence of raw deals on pensions. Joint research by the Independent and World in Action shows that hundreds of thousands of pensions sold last year will be worth less when they are halted than the amount paid as contributions because of massive up-front charges.Those mostly at risk are people made redundant, women who take career breaks and those who find work in which they are able to join alternative company schemes.Hundreds of millions of pounds from tax and national insurance rebates are also subsidising high charges every year.The new evidence drew an angry response from Labour, which is due to unveil its alternative pensions proposals shortly "It is time the industry cleaned up its act for the future.
It is time that the personal pensions mis-selling scandal was cleared up. It is appalling that the Conservatives have allowed this to continue," Labour's City spokesman Mike O'Brien said.City regulators started their review of the 1980s scandal in 1994 after more than 1.5 million people were wrongly advised to switch from occupational pension schemes to private policies.So far, however, only 6,810 people have been compensated out of 558,370 cases identified for priority review. More than double the former number have died before receiving redress.In all, only pounds 61m compensation has been handed over by insurers out of a total estimated liability of up to pounds 3bn.In the documentary, a female World in Action researcher posed as a contract worker, with uncertain job prospects from September, and plans to start a family.In each case, salesmen from the 10 firms advised her to take out various types of personal pension, even though she may quickly have been unable to afford the contributions and would have lost her investment because of up-front charges.Barclays, Abbey Life and London & Manchester all declined to appear on the programme. In statements, both Barclays and L&M rejected the criticisms, while Abbey Life admitted "the recommendation made by the salesman may not have been best advice" Allied Dunbar did not return calls this weekend.. ED&F Man, the quoted commodities group, has secretly restructured its key sugar dealings with Cuba to avoid US "trading with the enemy" laws aimed at Fidel Castro's communist state, writes Paul Farrelly. Man has indicated to the City that it is no longer financing Cuba's sugar crop because of fears over the US Helms-Burton Act, introduced a year ago. Industry sources say, however, that Man has instead routed its Cuban business through a London-based firm, Pacol, run by its former top sugar trader, to disguise its involvement.Mystery surrounds Pacol's beneficial ownership, however, and the secrecy raises a number of corporate governance issues.Man has refused to answer any questions from the Independent on Sunday since its interim results last November.Last month, its public relations advisers Financial Dynamics, the City's biggest PR firm, resigned in frustration at the group's reluctance to communicate.Man came to the market in 1994, but the shares have been disappointing, largely because it remains poorly understood.