Strange Links Between the Downing of TWA
Flight 800, the Bombing of The World Trade Center,
the Bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, and Osama bin
Laden
Yousef's lawyer, Bernard V. Kleinman, said by phone that his client has had conversations with McVeigh through the fence and also as they have been moved from their cells to the recreation area. "They talk about innocuous things like the movies," Kleinman said. "They don't talk about anything that they shouldn't be talking about".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Philippines is the basis an interesting link between Ramsey Yousef and the bombing of the World Trade Center, Terry Nichols and the bombing of the Murrah Building, Osama bin Laden and the downing of TWA Flight 800.
April 25, 1997 Electronic Telegraph Issue 700
A prosecutor in Denver said yesterday that the "hate-filled" mastermind of
the bombing in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people was involved in a Right-wing
plot ...... McVeigh's lawyer, Stephen Jones, is expected to suggest that
a foreign government, "probably Iraq" hired
"a Middle Eastern bombing engineer" to detonate the explosion with the help
of neo-Nazis. In a court petition, lawyers say the attack was
"contracted out" through an Iraqi base in the
Philippines and it was "possible that those who carried out the
bombing were unaware of the true sponsor".
Was Stephen Jones on the right track and what was behind the evidence he wanted to introduce into the McVeigh trial but could not? Some clues may lie in another link with the Phillipines that involved McVeigh's co-conspirator Terry Nichols .....
November 22, 1994 (See NY Times December 24, 1997)
Terry Nichols left for a 59 day stay in the Phillipines. He left letters,
with his ex-wife, Lana Padilla, explaining what to do in case he died. Three
days after he returned on January 16, 1995, he was sharing a motel room in
Kansas with Mr. Mc.Veigh.
What was the purpose of this visit? Why was he so concerned that he might die? Did he meet with Ramsey Yousef, who at the same time was testing a plan to blow up airliners in the Philippines and who was later convicted in the bombing of the World Trade Center? Did Nichols receive training there on how to construct and detonate large bombs? Was he fearful that there could be an accident during his training?
December, 1994 (See TIME magazine July 29, 1996)
Ramsey Yousef tests his plan for attacking U.S. carriers by boarding a Philippine
Airlines flight on the first leg from the Philippines to Japan. He carried
with him the components of a bomb, unassembled in his carry-on bag. On board
he assembled the bomb, which was made of gun cotton, a nitroglycerine solution
packed into a contact-lens bottle. He tucked the bomb under a cushion and
left the plane after its first stop in the Philippine city of Cebu. Two hours
later the device exploded killing a passenger.
Cebu is the city where in July 1990 Nichols travelled to find a mail-order bride and met Marife Torres. He was 35, she was 17 and they were married there on November 20, 1990. (NY Times December 24, 1997)
An associate of Ramsey Yousef, Edwin Angeles, had been arrested in the Phillipines where he was contacted by McVeigh's attorney, Stephen Jones. Angeles linked Nichols (a.k.a. 'the farmer') to Yousef in a meeting on the island of Mindanao. In his book 'Others Unknown', Jones describes that at a meeting in Davao, Angeles met an American who introduced himself as 'the farmer'. Among those present at the meeting were Ramsey Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah. The meeting was to discuss terrorism and Murad, Khan and Yousef would later be defendants in the plot to blow up twelve U.S. airliners. All were convicted on September 5, 1996 and are in American prisons. On April 19, 1995, Murad told his guard in his New York cell that the Oklahoma city bombing was the work of Islamic Jihad.
But back to Yousef and the World Trade Center bombing where we find a link also between him and Iraq .....
September 15, 1996 The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic Edition)
Issue 480
According to Dr Mylroie, the attempt to blow up the twin towers of the World
Trade Centre in New York on February 26, 1993 .... was an act of
Iraqi state- sponsored terrorism conducted by
proxies. After studying the telephone records and document archives
from the trial, she has concluded that the mastermind said to be behind the
bombing, a shadowy figure called Ramsi Yousef, was
working for Iraqi intelligence. The Justice Department did not
address this issue in the official investigation. It concluded that the bombing
was the work of Islamic fundamentalists loyal to a blind Egyptian cleric.
Jim Fox, then head of the New York FBI office, suspected
Iraqi involvement but says that the Washington headquarters refused to look
at the evidence.
The use of proxies seems to be a common trait among terrorist organizations and Nichols acting as a proxy for the Iraqis would parallel a similar proxy situation in France involving French citizens ......
November 27, 1997 The New York Times
Forty people accused of helping Algerian Islamic militants plant bombs that
killed eight people and wounded more than 170 in Paris in 1995 went on trial
this week. They are charged with conspiracy to support a terrorist campaign
to get the French government to drop support for the Algerian government.........
The defendants .... were arrested two years ago, after French commandos and
the police killed one of the suspected ringleaders of the bombings, Khalid
Kelkal, near Lyons and arrested hundreds of Algerians or people of Algerian
origin suspected of being part of an underground support network for the
Algerian Armed Islamic Group in France. ...... Three
of the defendants in this trial -- identified as Joseph Jaime, David Vallat
and Alain Celle -- are French citizens who converted to Islam and underwent
military training in Afghanistan, prosecutors said.
And British Nationals have been directly linked to Osama bin Laden acting as proxies to attack targets in Aden. In the British case, however, they were apparently attracted by the excellent beaches .....
January 5, 1999 The Electronic Telegraph Issue
1320
Evidence was mounting yesterday that the three British tourists killed in
Yemen last week were the first casualties of Operation Desert Fox. As fear
grew of more revenge attacks, it emerged that the "jihadists", holy warriors
who seized the 16 Westerners, had apparently done so after failing to blow
up the British consul in the port of Aden in southern Yemen. That plan was
thought to have been a direct reprisal for the air strikes - making the three
Britons the unwitting casualties of Tony Blair's inseparable alliance with
Bill Clinton. Last night, British diplomats were trying to establish details
about links between the Westerners' kidnappers and about five Islamic
fundamentalists caught in Aden on Dec 23. They were carrying bombs and automatic
weapons. The diplomats will want to focus in particular on suggestions by
the Yemeni authorities that some of the bombers
were travelling on British passports. All five bombers allegedly admitted
they were under the command of Abu Hassan, the leader of the kidnapping team.
..... At the forefront of demands for revenge against Britain and America
is the exiled Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, who reportedly trained the
Yemeni kidnappers. He called on Islamic fighters to drive both
powers from the Middle East, claiming that the air strikes were undertaken
at the behest of Israel.
January 8, 1999 The Electronic Telegraph Issue 1323
The fallout from the hostage crisis in Yemen took a dramatic turn yesterday
when it was claimed that the kidnappers were trying to secure the release
of British nationals arrested for their alleged involvement in a plot to
bomb British targets in Aden. The terrorist suspects
are alleged by the Yemeni authorities to have been recruited in Britain before
travelling to Yemen for training by the militant Al Jihad group. The men
were said to have been recruited by Al Jihad's leader, Abu Hassan, to attack
the British consulate, the Christchurch Anglican church and two hotels used
by westerners in retaliation for air strikes on Iraq. Yemeni
authorities claim they raided the suspects' rooms at the two hotels on Dec
23, five days before the kidnappers struck. A Frenchman
was also arrested and explosives and automatic weapons allegedly
seized. The Yemeni authorities claim to have acquired enough information
after the arrests to begin looking for Abu Hassan. ... On Dec 28, Abu Hassan
and other members of Al Jihad took 16 western tourists hostage near Mudiyah.
The kidnappers demanded the release of the alleged plotters arrested on Dec
23. In a rescue attempt 24 hours later, three Britons and an Australian were
killed. Three terrorists were killed and three, including Abu Hassan, captured.
.... In a separate development, the families of five British nationals who
went to Yemen said yesterday that they were under arrest. They named them
as Mohsin Ghalain, 18, Shahid Butt, 33, Malik Nassar Harhra, 26, Samad Ahmeed,
21 and Ghulam Hussein, 25, but did not specify why they had been held. Three
are from Birmingham, one from Luton and the fifth has addresses in Birmingham
and London.
January 9, 1999 The Electronic Telegraph Issue
1324
Five British men allegedly involved in a terrorist bombing campaign in Yemen
were also connected with the Muslim fundamentalist behind the kidnapping
of tourists, the Yemeni interior minister claimed yesterday. .... It was
the first official word from the Yemeni authorities about the alleged terrorists.
Relatives in Britain denied they were terrorists and said the men did not
know each other before going to Yemen on holiday to learn Arabic. .... Mr
Arab claimed the five men arrested were connected with Abu Hassan, the
28-year-old fundamentalist who led the kidnap operation of 16 Western tourists
on Dec 28. Three Britons and an Australian died when Yemeni troops mounted
a rescue operation. Earlier, a Yemeni security source in Aden claimed the
kidnap operation had been organised to secure the release of the five Britons
..... Relatives said the men were not travelling as a group and, while some
were friends, not all of them knew each other. They repeated their claims
that the men were in Yemen on holiday. The 24-year-old wife of Mr Hussain,
Monica Davis, said: "My husband is a quiet family
man who is not even active in the community, let alone in politics. "We have
saved up for two years to go on a family holiday during Ramadan and he had
gone out before me. When he telephoned I was to join him. We chose Yemen
because it has a nice seaside."
French proxies? Yes. British proxies? Yes. So let us return to the American proxies ......
June 3, 1997 Electronic Telegraph Issue 739
Painted by prosecutors as a fanatical bomber obsessed with a warped sense
of patriotism, Timothy McVeigh, convicted of the Oklahoma bombing, gave his
attorneys no help in establishing an alibi.... Judge Richard Matsch kept
a tight hold on the trial, ....the judge refused to allow Stephen Jones,
McVeigh's lawyer, to present an alternative theory, gathered after spending
$10 million travelling the world, that an international conspiracy was
responsible. Many of the victim's relatives are
so concerned at evidence of this aspect that they are suing the government,
insisting that the FBI had prior knowledge of the blast.
March 30, 1997 Electronic Telegraph Issue 674
Dennis Mahon must lead a charmed life.
The FBI has pursued endless leads into the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, collecting
more than 26,000 witness statements. But it has never been to visit him at
his bungalow in Tulsa. The omission is curious. Mahon, 47, is an associate
of the government's chief suspect, Tim McVeigh. Indeed, McVeigh's defence
team says Mahon sent a tape to their client in prison urging him to accept
his "sacrifice" and reminding him in a subtle way that members of his family
were vulnerable. Before the bombing on April
19, 1995, he was the subject of a terrorism investigation which generated
allegations that he was plotting to blow up a federal building in
Oklahoma. In case the authorities had overlooked this,
an undercover informant reminded the FBI two days
after the bombing that she had told them that Mahon had made three trips
to Oklahoma City. On one visit in 1994, the informant said he "cased" the
building that was attacked. A former Imperial Wizard of the Ku
Klux Klan and now a leader of the more militant White Aryan Resistance, Mahon
has never made a secret of his extremism. He has called for the overthrow
of the United States government by "any means" and regards it as an honour
to have been barred from Britain and Canada. "I
always deliver my bombs in person, in disguise," he said
mischievously. "I can look like a hispanic or even
a Negro. I'm the master of disguise." He has kept his sense of
humour, despite being the chief target of McVeigh's defence team in the trial
that starts tomorrow. McVeigh's lawyers have introduced documents in court
asserting a "high probability" that Mahon and his friend Andreas Strassmeir,
a former German army officer, were behind the Oklahoma bombing.
"This is where I make my bombs," he said,
giving me a tour of a workshop attached to his house.
"Just kidding. Everybody seems to think I did the
bombing. Even the Iraqis
think I did it," he explained, saying
he had been on the Iraqi payroll as a propagandist
for more than three years. "They paid me $100 a month."
And of course the loop through Yousef can be closed back to TWA 800. As just one example I will leave you with an article from the American Spectator .....
September 1997 The American Spectator
Letter from John B. Roberts II in reply to an earlier one from James
Hall - Chairman of the NTSB ..
Early this summer Hall testified before Congress that a meteorite may have
blown up TWA, an event about as likely as an attack by a UFO. Apparently,
Mr. Hall is prepared to got to any length to avoid confronting evidence of
terrorism in the crash of TWA 800..... minute traces of PETN and RDX were
found in TWA 800. Hall would have us believe they came from a bomb-sniffing
dog test. But the St. Louis Police Department test record says only that
a "wide-bodied jet" was used in the test, and provides no serial number for
the aircraft......As TWA's 800's debris was being hauled ashore, it was being
tested by the EGIS high-tech explosives detection system operated by FBI
technicians and BATF bomb experts. Within five days of the crash, EGIS registered
the first of more than a dozen "hits" for PETN on the aircraft. The FBI
laboratory--whose work, even before it was subsequently criticized by the
Justice Departments's inspector general, was questioned by FBI agents working
on EGIS--confirmed only two findings. Do the EGIS findings mean that there
was once much more explosive residue .... Whether there were two positive
findings or a dozen, the dog-test explanation is almost as zany as Hall's
meteorite theory..... Hall states that the U.S. lacks intelligence leads,
but at least one terorist has claimed credit for
the TWA 800 bombing. World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Ahmed Yousef told
authorities his group is responsible. Yousef's claim has not been made public,
but it is in the FBI file.
Yousef's sponsor, Osama bin Laden, continues to build his base in the Phillipines.
December 3, 1998 Global Intelligence Update
(T)he terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, linked to Saudi
terrorist Osama Bin Laden, has increased its activities in the
southern Philippines, and a new Bin Laden linked
group, the Salafiya Fighters, has reportedly surfaced near Zamboanga
on Mindanao.
While Yousef and Nichol's partner, McVeigh, chat in a Federal prison.
March 11, 1999 The New York Times
When the nation's most infamous terrorists -- the Oklahoma City bomber,
the Unabomer, and the World Trade Center bomber -- are allowed out of solitary
confinement so that they can have one hour of exercise in the nation's most
secure Federal prison, what do they do? Apparently, they just
chat. .... Timothy J. McVeigh
is a right-wing extremist convicted of carrying out the Oklahoma City bombing,
while Ramzi Ahmed Yousef is a Muslim
terrorist who masterminded the World Trade Center attack. .... The prison,
the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence,
Colo., is so secure that it is known as Super Max. McVeigh, Kaczynski and
Yousef, who are otherwise allowed no contact with each other, are permitted
to spend their one-hour exercise period in separate cages in the prison yard,
speaking to each other through mesh fences. Because of their distance from
each other, they must speak loudly, so guards can hear what they say. ...
Lawrence K. Feitell, wrote to the judge that he had seen on a television
news program that McVeigh, Kaczynski and Yousef were allowed to have their
daily exercise chats in the prison yard. He asked that Felipe be allowed
"to share" with the three "in their outdoor mutual recreation." .....
Precisely what the inmates discuss through the prison
fence is not known. Yousef's lawyer, Bernard V. Kleinman, said
by phone that his client has had conversations with McVeigh through the fence
and also as they have been moved from their cells to the recreation area.
"They talk about innocuous things like the
movies," Kleinman said.
"They don't talk about anything that they shouldn't
be talking about."
The FBI refuses to accept the evidence
March 21, 2001 WorldNet
Daily
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22122
A former investigative reporter for the NBC
affiliate in Oklahoma City last night told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly
she has gathered massive evidence of a foreign conspiracy involving Saudi
terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in the 1995 bombing of the federal building
that killed 168 people. Jayna Davis, former reporter for KFOR-TV in
Oklahoma City, says she took her evidence -- including hundreds of court
records, 24 sworn witness statements and reports from law enforcement,
intelligence and terror experts -- to the FBI, which refused even to accept
the material. Two men were convicted of murder and conspiracy charges in
the bombing -- Timothy McVeigh, who faces execution May 16, and Terry Nichols,
who yesterday asked that Oklahoma charges against him be dismissed as he
has already been convicted in federal court. Nichols, 45, is serving
a life prison sentence for his federal conviction on eight involuntary
manslaughter counts and conspiracy for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. State prosecutors are seeking the death
penalty against Nichols. But defense attorneys said yesterday constitutional
protection against double jeopardy bars the state from seeking the death
penalty. Davis said federal authorities investigating the bombing decided
early on in the probe that the blast was the result of a domestic conspiracy,
not a foreign one, ignoring all evidence to the contrary. She said
a Middle East terrorist cell was in operation only blocks from the federal
building, and that an Iraqi national who formerly served in Saddam Hussein's
Republican Guard was in contact with McVeigh the day of the bombing. She
said this suspect arrived at the crime scene in a Ryder truck moments before
the blast and sped away in a brown Chevrolet pickup truck immediately after.
An all-points bulletin was issued for this suspect, but was later withdrawn
inexplicably. Davis said her evidence indicates a conspiracy involving
McVeigh, Nichols and at least seven men of Middle Eastern ethnic background.
She called bin Laden the mastermind of the
conspiracy. "The evidence we have
gathered definitely implicates McVeigh and Nichols," she said. "I want to
make that very clear. They were in it up to their eyeballs."
Davis also points to court records
offered in the Nichols defense that suggest he had contacts with a member
of bin Laden's terrorist organization in the Philippines prior to the bombing.
When she
took her hundreds of pages of documentation of conspiracy in the bombing
to the FBI, Davis said agents "turned me away and refused to take my
statements." "I was flabbergasted,"
she told O'Reilly. "I am unable to imagine any reason they would not accept
it."
But McVeigh supplied strange hints of links to both Osama bin Laden and Ramsey Yousef
Friday, April 27, 2001 1:41 a.m. EDT NewsMax.com
A month after a former NBC News reporter went public with evidence of links
between Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Middle Eastern terrorist
Osama bin Laden, McVeigh himself has cited bin Laden in a letter to the Fox
News Channel. Responding to questions from FNC's Rita Cosby, McVeigh rejected
some of the labels that have been applied to him, then tossed in the chilling
reference to the notorious Muslim terrorist.
"Most of the insults are meritless and quite often absurd, so I don't pay them much attention," wrote McVeigh. "Hitler? Absurd. (Geraldo Rivera uses this same analogy, so Keating and Ashcroft are in good company!) Coward? This label would make Orwell proud – it is double think at its finest. Collateral Damage? As an American news junkie; a military man; and a Gulf War veteran, where do they think I learned that? (It sure as hell wasn't Osama Bin Laden!)"
In the next sentence, McVeigh mentioned convicted World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef, in perhaps another indication of a Middle Eastern connection to his own crime. "For all else, I would refer you to my enclosed paper 'Hypocrisy,' and to Ramzi Yousef's statement to the court just prior to his sentencing. I filter all labels and insults thusly." In the Jan. 8, 1998, court statement to which McVeigh referred, Yousef proclaimed, "Yes, I am a terrorist and proud of it as long as it is against the U.S. government," before being sentenced to 240 years in jail.
Last month former NBC reporter Jayna Davis told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly that compelling evidence links McVeigh to a Middle Eastern terrorist cell ultimately controlled by bin Laden. "What we discovered, an intelligence source at one of the highest levels in the federal government later confirmed, was a Middle Eastern terrorist cell living and operating in the heart of Oklahoma City just a few miles from the Alfred P. Murrah building," Davis said. Her NBC affiliate had located several witnesses who claimed that an Iraqi national with ties to Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard was seen in the company of McVeigh just prior to the bombing, Davis said. The Iraqi was also seen driving away from the bomb scene in a car identified by the FBI as a possible getaway vehicle.
"We have 24 sworn witness affidavits that tie seven to eight Arab men to various stages of the bombing plot from the beginning all the way to the day in which the plot was executed," the former NBC reporter told O'Reilly.
"It really is a foreign conspiracy masterminded and funded by Osama bin Laden, according to my intelligence sources," she asserted.
Davis is not alone in that belief. In his 1999 book on the Oklahoma City tragedy, "Others Unknown," McVeigh's lawyer Stephen Jones made similar claims, citing a meeting in the early 1990s between World Trade Center bomber Yousef and McVeigh's partner, Terry Nichols, in the Philippines, which he called a "hotbed of fundamentalist Muslim activity." Jones said his research shows that bin Laden was in the Philippines at the same time as Yousef and Nichols. Both Jones and Davis said federal investigators were uninterested in exploring any possible Middle Eastern connection to the crime.
Links which were further verified by a dying widow.
April 5 - 11, 2002 LA Weekly by Jim Crogan
In response to articles published in the L.A. Weekly and Indianapolis Star,
U.S. Representative Dan Burton, (R-Indiana) is planning to hold congressional
hearings into whether a conspiracy, with Middle East connections, was behind
the 1995 truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma
City. Burton, the chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, is "hot
to move on this," said David Schippers, a high-powered Chicago attorney and
lifelong Democrat, who ran the House impeachment inquiry into former President
Clinton. Schippers said he found the evidence put together by former Oklahoma
City TV reporter Jayna Davis compelling. For the past year, he unsuccessfully
pushed the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to reopen the case. "I've tried
to reach [U.S. Attorney General] John Ashcroft a number of times. But I've
never heard back from the DOJ," said Schippers. Last month, Burton called
and asked him to head up the Oklahoma inquiry for his committee. Burton had
already met with Davis. But Schippers told the congressman that his law practice
had gotten too busy, and he couldn't take on the assignment. Instead Schippers
suggested hiring Jeff Pavletic, another Illinois lawyer, who served with
him during the impeachment hearings. Recently, Schippers and Pavletic flew
to Washington, D.C., to meet with Burton and his staffers. Pavletic could
not be reached for comment. "We were supposed to meet with the congressman,
but he had a family emergency. So we met with five staffers." They questioned
Schippers closely. "For instance, they asked me how Davis' witnesses, who
said they saw McVeigh in the company of Middle Easternlooking men,
could remember details seven years later. Schippers reminded them those witnesses
were interviewed on tape by Davis seven years ago, when their memories were
fresh. Since Schippers returned from D.C., he's had another call from Burton
reaffirming his intention to hold hearings. "He said the American people
deserve the truth, and he intends to discover whether the investigation was
botched. He also wants to know if there is an active terror cell operating
in Oklahoma City that might have links to the bombing and the 9-11 terror
attacks," emphasized the attorney. Burton's interest in the alleged conspiracy
was heightened by a series of Indianapolis Star articles that appeared in
February. The L.A. Weekly story, "Heartland Conspiracy," was published on
September 28, 2001. Those stories focused on the bombing investigation done
by Davis, a former KFOR-TV reporter. "I was called by Burton's office on
February 23. They asked me if I would come to Washington and meet with them,"
explained Davis. "I told them I would." Armed with 2,000 pages of documentation
and tapes of her KFOR-TV stories, Davis and her husband met with Burton,
his staffers and committee staffers for an hour on February 28 and again
with staffers, the next day. "Burton stayed in the first meeting about 15
minutes, and asked very pointed questions. He was intensely interested,"
she said. "And he seemed committed to getting the truth." Davis told the
Weekly she explained to the congressman and his people how she got into the
investigation and reviewed her findings' most sensitive points. "They seemed
especially interested in the Philippines connection to Terry Nichols." Davis
said she found her congressional audience "receptive and open-minded." She
also gave Burton's staffers the names and numbers of her witnesses, and said
they would participate in hearings. Since she's returned to Oklahoma, Davis
received several follow-up calls from a committee staffer. Davis, who's
investigated the bombing for the past seven years, obtained 22 signed affidavits
from witnesses putting McVeigh in the company of a group of Iraqis working
for a local property-management company, in the weeks before the bombing.
Davis turned those affidavits over to a 1997 Oklahoma County grand jury.
Davis focused her attention and stories on one Iraqi, who appeared to match
the third FBI sketch of John Doe No. 2, a man noted in police-radio traffic
moments after the explosion. Some of Davis' witnesses said they had seen
a man who resembled John Doe No. 2 riding with McVeigh in the bomb-laden
truck. This person, Hussain Al-Hussaini, later came forward and publicly
demanded an apology and retraction. Davis and KFOR management refused.
Al-Hussaini then sued them twice, first dropping his state suit and then
refiling it in federal court. A federal judge dismissed the action as baseless.
Al-Hussaini appealed, and a decision is pending. Davis, who's since left
KFOR, has tried twice to give her material to the FBI. In 1997, DOJ attorneys
rejected it, allegedly claiming they didn't want more material to turn over
to McVeigh's and Nichols' defense attorneys. In 1999 she gave the material
to FBI agent Dan Vogel, who unsuccessfully tried to get the Oklahoma Bombing
Task Force to accept it. Vogel, now retired, was subpoenaed to testify about
Davis' material at a recent pretrial hearing for Nichols' upcoming state
murder trial. But the DOJ refused to let him take the stand.
April 19, 2002 Insight Online World Exclusive by Kenneth
R. Timmerman (Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight
magazine.)
The retirement of career FBI Special Agent Danny Defenbaugh, accused by defense
attorneys and plaintiffs in the Oklahoma City bombing case of withholding
key evidence, wasn't the only dramatic development in the continuing
controversies surrounding the April 19, 1995, attack that killed 168 people.
Insight has learned that the widow of Philippine-government intelligence
agent Edwin Angeles has provided audiotaped testimony to an investigator
working for the American victims' families that directly ties Iraqi intelligence
agents to Terry Nichols, the man sentenced in 1998 to life in prison for
his role in bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Building seven years ago. Elmina
Abdul is the 27-year-old widow of Angeles, one of the cofounders of the Abu
Sayyaf group, a Muslim separatist terrorist organization in the Philippines
whose members trained in Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. Her astonishing
story, revealed in this exclusive story for the first time, could blow the
lid off what a growing number of people believe is a U.S. government cover-up
of vital evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing case.
With the knowledge that she was dying of liver disease, Elmina agreed to meet with Dorian Zumel Sicat, a Manila Times correspondent serving as an investigative liaison in the Philippines and the Pacific Rim for Oklahoma City lawyer Mike Johnston, who represents the victims' families. "I want to tell the truth of what I know of my late husband," she said in a taped audio statement. Angeles was "what they call a 'deep-penetration agent'" who was working for "some very powerful men in the DND," the Philippine national defense-intelligence agency, Elmina said. Angeles was arrested in 1995 after he had negotiated a deal to turn himself in to the Philippine authorities. By that point, the Abu Sayyaf he had helped create in 1991 with bin Laden protégé Abdurajjak Abu Bakr Janjalani had carried out a series of terrorist attacks. These included a failed assault on a U.S. Information Agency library in Manila in January 1991 that was part of a worldwide terrorist campaign against U.S. interests orchestrated by Iraq during the Persian Gulf War. "Does the name 'Ramzi Yousef' mean something to you, Mr. Sicat?" Elmina asked. Angeles had extensive meetings with Yousef and two Americans, including one whom he called "Terry" or "The Farmer," she said.
Angeles ultimately was cleared of terrorism charges at trial, when documents proving he was working as a government agent were produced. He was released from prison in 1996 - but not before he provided astonishing details during a videotaped interrogation by Philippine police authorities of his activities with Abu Sayyaf, including the secret meetings with Iraqi intelligence agent Yousef, Nichols and the second American identified in the document as John Lepney. The earliest meetings took place at a Del Monte canning plant in Davao in late 1992 and early 1993 - just prior to the first World Trade Center bombing. Later meetings with Nichols, Yousef and the second American - whose name has never been revealed until now - took place at Angeles' house in late 1994, according to a report on that interrogation which has been obtained by investigators working for attorney Johnston, who has been joined by Judicial Watch in representing families of those murdered in the Oklahoma City bombing. Angeles also revealed the meetings to Elmina, who became his third wife in 1997, "because he knew that he would soon be killed," she said in her audiotaped statement with Sicat, which was witnessed by a Philippine-government official. "He wanted me to know everything so that if anything happened to him I could tell others." Also present at those meetings was a half-brother of Yousef, who was using the pseudonym Ahmad Hassim, she said. "They met almost every day for one week. They met in an empty bodega [warehouse]. They talked about bombings. They mentioned bombing government buildings in San Francisco, St. Louis and in Oklahoma. The Americans wanted instructions on how to make and to explode bombs. He [Edwin] told me that Janjalani was very interested in paying them much money to explode the buildings. The money was coming from Yousef and the other Arab." When asked if Angeles had told her the results of those conversations, Elmina replied: "He told me that the Americans exploded one bomb in Oklahoma in 1995, after he was arrested and after we first met."
Later in the interview, she chided Sicat for not knowing that Yousef was "representing Iraq and Saddam Hussein." "Did Edwin tell you that?" Sicat asked. "Not only Edwin, but others that were close to us, before he was killed," Elmina said. "One time, a [Philippine-army] soldier and Edwin were talking secretly. I was there because Edwin demanded [it]. The soldier ordered Edwin never to tell anybody about the Iraqis." On Jan. 14, 1999, Elmina was waiting for her husband in an open-air market in Isabela, the provincial capital of Basilan province. Suddenly, as he emerged from a nearby mosque, she watched as two of his former associates walked up behind him and, with .45-caliber automatics, pumped six bullets into him. He staggered toward her and died in her arms.
The video interrogation linking Nichols to Yousef, bin Laden and Iraq initially was obtained by Stephen Jones, the defense attorney who represented convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. But at the insistence of federal prosecutors, trial judge Richard P. Matsch refused to admit it into evidence. The judge also refused to admit into evidence the testimony of Yousef coconspirator Abdul Hakim Murad, who was a federal prisoner at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. Murad was awaiting trial for his part in Project Bojinka, a plot hatched up by Yousef to blow up 11 U.S. 747 jetliners over the Pacific Ocean in 1995. On the day of the Oklahoma City bombing he told his jailers that Yousef had orchestrated the plot. "Why should Murad be believed?" Johnston asks rhetorically. "For one thing, Murad made his 'confession' voluntarily and spontaneously. Most important, Murad tied Ramzi Yousef to the Oklahoma City bombing long before Terry Nichols was publicly identified as a suspect." Johnston informed Jones last week he would be serving him with a desk subpoena to obtain this and other materials that were either sealed by the court or not admitted as evidence in the McVeigh trial. Shortly after Johnston got off the phone with him, Jones received threatening calls from federal prosecutors in Denver and Oklahoma City, warning him not to release the materials, Insight is told by a close associate of the lawyer. Jones did not return several calls by press time.
FBI spokesman Bill Carter tells Insight the FBI was unaware of a "foreign terrorist connection" to the Oklahoma City bombing. "There is no evidence of a foreign connection in our files," he says. "The Oklahoma City bombing was investigated thoroughly by the FBI; no evidence was found that would tie it to any foreign terrorist group. If we had found any evidence, it would have been presented." That statement, like so many others from the government in this murky case, appears to be extraordinarily misleading to the families of victims still not convinced that they or the American public know the full story of what happened seven years ago.
In the Philippines, the real story of the Abu Sayyaf and its ties to Iraq, bin Laden and to former president Ramos - who is planning a comeback into Philippine politics - is a dangerous topic. In his videotaped interrogation, Angeles says Yousef first approached him in July 1989 as the "personal envoy" of bin Laden to set up a new base for regional Islamic expansion on the Muslim island of Mindanao. At the time, bin Laden's brother-in-law, Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, was operating commercial front companies in the Philippines for bin Laden. This apparently led to the creation of the Abu Sayyaf. A former CIA station chief in Manila confirms to Insight that bin Laden came to the Philippines personally in 1992 and was flown down to Mindanao in a government C-130 aircraft by then-president Ramos. "Bin Laden presented himself as a wealthy Saudi who wanted to invest in Muslim areas and donate money to charity," the former CIA officer says. While Yousef was collecting money from bin Laden, he was taking orders from Iraq and is believed by U.S. intelligence officials to have carried out the June 20, 1994, bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine in Mashad, Iran, on orders from Iraq. Yousef reportedly carried out that attack with help from his own father and a younger brother, Abdul Muneem, in conjunction with an Iraqi front group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization, also known as the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran.
Angeles "knew he was going to be killed by his own people once he was released from jail," Sicat tells Insight in a telephone interview from Davao, a city on Mindanao. "The question is, who were his own people? Abu Sayyaf, or the cabal who had Angeles help set them up?" Angeles' second wife, who had prepared the meals for Nichols and Yousef, was gunned down during a government raid on an Abu Sayyaf safe house in 1996. Elmina died last month just days after giving her taped audio statements to Sicat, who tells Insight that he has received death threats and been shot at in recent weeks by unknown assailants. He recently has been given round-the- clock police protection by the government, which is investigating the attacks. If the remaining witnesses live long enough, the only question left is whether the Bush administration will order the FBI to reopen its files. Or, as some of the lawyers in the case and their clients fear, the administration will endorse what they believe - and testimony now in hand suggests - was a wider conspiracy that was hidden by the Clinton administration and Janet Reno's Justice Department. It may require full and open congressional hearings if the current administration refuses to help or otherwise blocks the federal courts from re-examining the case to find out why the U.S. government shut down preliminary investigations into possible overseas links to the murder of Americans in downtown Oklahoma City.
It took six months after the "September 11" attacks on the World Trade Center and the pentagon for another link between the OKC bombing and the World Trade Center to be exposed. The mainstream national press remain silent that three of the September 11, 2002 hijackers attempted to stay in the same motel where McVeigh plottted with others to blow up the Murrah Building.
May 7, 2002 Fox News O'Reilly Factor - Interview with Larry Johnson,
Terrorism Expert
The O'Reilly factor interviewed Larry Johnson, formerly of the CIA, who revealed
that the identity of John Doe #2 in the Oklahoma City bombing to be
Hussain
Al-Hussaini, a former member of the Iraqi
Republican Guard Guard. He worked for
Samir Khalil
who was linked to the "charitable" organization
"The Holy Land Foundation"
which was declared by the Bush administration
to be sending funds to terrorists. John
Doe # 2 was seen with Timothy McVeigh three days before the OKC bombing,
the morning of the bombing, getting out of the Ryder truck after it pulled
up in front of the Murrah building, and he was seen driving away from the
building. In 1996/1997 when he left Oklahoma City Al-Hussaini went to work
at Logan airport in Boston from which several of the September 11, 2001 hijackers
left. McVeigh's accomplice, Terry Nichols, an unemployed guy, made several
trips to the Phillipines with unexplained sources of cash (See the book 'Others
Unknown' by Stephen Jones, McVeigh's original attorney) where he was associated
with Osama bin Laden's Al Quaeda organization, Abu Sayyaf.
Additionally,
the owner of the motel in which McVeigh stayed
prior to the bombing of the Murrah building reported to the FBI that three
of the September 11, 2001 hijackers attempted to book rooms at the motel
in late July or early August 2001 telling him they were taking flight training.
These were Mohammed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Zacarias Moussaoui, who is
presently in Federal Custody as the possible 20th hijacker.
July 26 - August 1, 2002 LA Weekly The I-40 connection
between Zacarias Moussaoui and Mohamed Atta by Jim Crogan
What happened at the nondescript motel outside Oklahoma City was just a fleeting
encounter during the twisted cross-country odyssey of the terrorists who
would carry out the September 11 attacks. Mohamed
Atta, alleged leader of the plot, and two companions wanted to rent a room,
but couldn't get the deal they wanted, so they left. It
was an incident of no particular importance, except for one thing. The owner
of the motel remembers Atta being in the company of Zacarias Moussaoui, the
so-called "20th hijacker," who was arrested prior to September 11 and now
faces conspiracy charges in connection with the terror assaults. If
this recollection is correct, the entire incident, and its absence from the
public record, raises new questions about the FBI investigation of Moussaoui
and even the 1995 destruction of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Already
the FBI has endured a withering political and media critique for failing
to aggressively investigate Moussaoui and his contacts during his four weeks
in custody prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Some FBI officials have responded by characterizing Moussaoui as only a minor
player. But the report from the motel owner, if proven, could change that.
And it also could force the FBI to reopen its investigation of Middle Eastern
connections to the 1995 Oklahoma City blast, because convicted bombers Timothy
McVeigh and Terry Nichols reportedly stayed at the same motel, interacting
with a group of Iraqis during the weeks before the bombing.
At press time, the erratic Moussaoui, who is representing himself, was attempting to plead guilty and bring his trial to a close. The 34-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent had previously filed some 94 hand-scrawled, rambling motions attacking the government's case and its right to prosecute him. But that circus obscures a conundrum of a different sort. The government's case, as outlined in its new six-count conspiracy indictment, is largely circumstantial, lacking any definitive link between Moussaoui and the 19 hijackers identified by federal authorities. All of which makes the apparent shelving of the Moussaoui-Atta sighting all the stranger. In fact, even though multiple sources contend that the FBI interviewed the motel owner, there's no indication that prosecutors were told. It's possible that the FBI found the motel owner's identifications wrong or his story unreliable. But it's still odd that, in interviews with the Weekly, Justice Department prosecutors seemed to know nothing about the motel encounter, especially because agents reportedly told the motel owner they would pass the information on to Moussaoui's defense team. The motel co-owner, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the incident occurred around August 1, 2001, just six weeks before 9/11. "They came in around 10 or 11 a.m. and started talking to my desk clerk," he said. Even though he was working about 10 feet away from the trio, the owner didn't really pay any attention at first. "They were asking my clerk, who no longer works here, about a weekly rate for our rooms." (The former clerk could not be reached for comment.) The motel, explained the owner, sets aside some rooms with small kitchenettes to rent on a weekly basis. "But they were all taken." He said the clerk explained the situation, but the visitors were persistent. "Finally, my clerk asked me to talk to them." The motel owner said that Moussaoui and a man who appeared to be Marwan al-Shehhi -- who helped crash a jetliner into the south tower of the World Trade Center -- were friendly and said a few things, but Atta was clearly the leader. "He did most of the talking and seemed very serious," said the owner, adding, "I was standing face to face, about two feet away from Atta, and talked to the three of them for about 10 minutes. Atta asked if he could rent one of the other rooms at a weekly rate, and I told him no. "I asked him what they were doing here in the area. And Atta told me they were going to flight school. I thought he meant [Federal Aviation Administration] training in Oklahoma City. But Atta told me no, they were taking flight training in Norman. "I said I didn't understand why they wanted to rent one of my rooms, since we were about 28 miles from Norman and there are a lot of reasonably priced motels a lot closer. But he said they had heard good things about my place and wanted to stay there. I told them I was sorry, but we couldn't accommodate them. Atta finally said okay. Then they all thanked me for my time and left." After the attacks, said the motel owner, he recognized his visitors in photos from television reports. "I was really stunned," he said. Then he decided to call the FBI hot line. The motel owner said he didn't hear right back from the FBI. In the interim, he also spoke to a former law-enforcement officer who was investigating reported sightings of Mujahid Abdulquaadir Menepta at the same motel during the mid-1990s. Menepta, reportedly a friend of Moussaoui's, was arrested 30 years ago in Colorado for aggravated robbery and served more than three years in prison. After September 11, Menepta publicly defended Moussaoui, calling him a "scapegoat." The FBI arrested him as a material witness and subsequently charged Menepta with a federal gun violation. He pleaded guilty and in April 2002 was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison. He was never charged with any terrorism-related crime. But during the preliminary hearing on the gun charge, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agent Jeffrey Whitney testified that a confidential source placed Menepta at a meeting of a radical Islamic group in St. Louis where he allegedly threatened to shoot any police officer who entered the mosque. Menepta's attorney challenged the credibility of this report in court. A former desk clerk at the motel -- a different clerk from the one who purportedly dealt with Atta and Moussaoui -- told the Weekly that he remembered Menepta because in 1994 and 1995 -- prior to the Oklahoma City attack -- Menepta frequently visited the motel office. There, he bought coffee and talked for hours to this clerk. The clerk and his wife, who both formerly worked at the motel, said they picked Menepta's picture out of a photo lineup prepared by a law-enforcement officer who had interviewed the motel owner. This officer, who also spoke to the Weekly on condition of anonymity, said that after the motel owner told him about the Moussaoui sighting, he contacted a member of Oklahoma's Joint Terrorism Task Force, which includes the FBI. The FBI finally acted on the tip. The motel owner said that on December 19, 2001, he went to FBI offices in Oklahoma City for a formal interview, where he was debriefed by an FBI agent and by Oklahoma City Police Sergeant Jerry Flowers. "We talked for several hours, and I told them everything I knew." The motel owner said he would have taken a polygraph exam but was not asked to do so. The Weekly's law-enforcement source corroborates the December 19 interview. The motel owner never heard from prosecutors in Moussaoui's case but got one more call from the FBI several weeks later. "The agent told me they had passed on a copy of my statement to Moussaoui's defense team, and I might be getting a call from them. But I was under no obligation to talk to them. However, I don't know if that was the truth. Since then, I have never heard from anyone connected to Moussaoui's case."
One reason for the FBI's apparent lack of interest might be this motel's alleged connection to Timothy McVeigh and a group of Iraqis who worked in Oklahoma City. According to the motel owner and other witnesses and investigators interviewed by the Weekly, McVeigh and several of these Iraqis were motel guests in the months preceding the 1995 bombing. Witnesses also claimed they saw several of the Iraqis moving barrels of material around on the bed of a truck. The motel owner said the material smelled of diesel fuel and he had to clean up a spill. Diesel fuel was a key component of the truck bomb that blew up the Federal Building. The motel owner said he and his staff reported this information to the FBI in 1995. "We did have an ATF agent come out and collect the originals of the room registrations for that period, but we never heard back from them. And I never could get the registrations returned." He added that his previous experience with the FBI made him reluctant to contact them about Moussaoui. "But I decided it was my duty to tell them what had happened. So I did." Former Oklahoma City TV reporter Jayna Davis also interviewed motel staff and former guests. In the process, she collected signed affidavits about their contacts with McVeigh and the Iraqis. She tried twice to give the Bureau this information, but the FBI refused to accept her materials. (The Weekly first reported on her investigation in an article published in September 2001.) The Weekly's law-enforcement source said he has reviewed Davis' material and considers it credible. "Last December I personally took the documents to the Joint Terrorism Task Force," he said. "I told them they should do their own investigation." The response was not encouraging. He said he was later informed that the Bureau brought in an analyst, "but I was told it would probably go nowhere. They were afraid the whole Oklahoma City bombing can of worms would be opened up and the FBI would have to explain why they didn't investigate this material before." The Weekly contacted numerous local and federal investigators and agencies, including the Oklahoma task force, the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI and the Justice Department. All declined to comment. Prosecutors on the Moussaoui case also declined official comment, but their reactions suggested they knew nothing of the motel encounter. After being told about the motel owner's interview and allegations, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Spencer responded with a one-word question about the sighting: "When?" Spencer then declined further comment. Another Moussaoui prosecutor, David Novak, also declined comment. But Novak wanted to know the name of the motel owner.
Other substantial connections already tie the Sooner state to Moussaoui and, separately, several 9/11 hijackers. According to the Moussaoui indictment, on September 29, 2000, Moussaoui made e-mail contact with Airman Flight School in Norman. Then, on February 23, 2001, he flew from London to Chicago and then to Oklahoma City. What he did in the next few days is unknown or at least not accounted for in the indictment. But on February 26, Moussaoui opened a bank account in Norman, depositing $32,000. From February 26 to May 29, he attended flight school in Norman. Then he suddenly quit the school. Between July 29 and August 4, Moussaoui made calls from public pay phones in Norman to Germany. On August 1 and 3, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh wired Moussaoui a total of about $14,000 from two train stops in Germany to somewhere in Oklahoma. This wire transfer does imply a connection to terrorist plotters because al-Shibh, an alleged al Qaeda member, wired money to other hijackers. On August 3, Moussaoui purchased two knives in Oklahoma City. And on August 10 or 11, an acquaintance drove Moussaoui from Oklahoma to Minnesota for enrollment in a new flight school. Authorities arrested Moussaoui in Minnesota on August 17 on an immigration violation. As has been widely reported, Moussaoui attracted attention because he said he was interested in flying a plane but not learning how to take off or land. He was in federal custody when the 9/11 attacks occurred.
As for the terrorists who took part in 9/11, Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi visited the Airman Flight School in Norman in July 2000, according to the Moussaoui indictment. (The motel owner identifies al-Shehhi as the third person with Atta and Moussaoui when they allegedly inquired about a room.) And on April 1, 2001, Nawaf al-Hazmi, who helped hijack American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, was stopped for speeding in Oklahoma and given two tickets. The Oklahoma state trooper found no outstanding warrants and turned al-Hazmi loose. The media has since reported that the CIA had been tracking al-Hazmi, but never told the immigration service or the FBI that he was a suspected terrorist during his 21-month U.S. stay. Authorities have never publicly accounted for Atta and al-Shehhi's whereabouts during the time of the alleged motel encounter. The Moussaoui indictment lays out a tantalizing possible association between Atta and Moussaoui, but never puts the two in the same place at the same time. The link could exist, however, along a dusty Oklahoma roadside, off Interstate 40, at a small motel that is indistinguishable from hundreds of others, except for its possible connection to terrorists.
And so the story continues from an Algerian terrorist and a "charitable" organization known as "Mercy" to an Iraqi Republican Guard member and a "charitable" organization known as "The Holy Land Foundation" and on to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed – a top al-Qaida lieutenant whom federal authorities believe may have masterminded the Sept. 11, 2002 attacks – who trained Nichols for the OKC bombing in the Philippines.
June 22, 2002 WorldNetDaily.com By Jon Dougherty Saudis warned
FBI about OKC bombing? Evidence suggests possible Iraq link to terror
attack on Murrah building
Saudi Arabian intelligence officials warned the FBI about an Iraqi plot to
attack federal facilities in 1995, including the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City, according to an Oklahoma lawyer teaming up with
a noted Washington, D.C., public-interest law firm. Mike Johnston, co-counsel
for Judicial Watch, said Thursday that on April 19, 1995 – the day of
the Oklahoma City bombing – Saudi intelligence alerted CIA officials
in Washington, who in turn advised FBI agents at the Washington Metropolitan
Field Office. "Vincent Canastraro, who is the former chief of counter-terrorism
for the CIA
called Special Agent Kevin L. Foust and informed him that one
of his best sources from Saudi Arabian intelligence specifically advised
him that there was a squad of people currently in the United States, very
possibly Iraqi, who, and I'm quoting, 'have been tasked with carrying out
terrorist acts against the United States,'" Johnston said during an interview
on the "Judicial Watch Report" radio program. "The Saudi informant,
who's part of the Saudi counter-terrorism service, told [federal officials]
that he had seen the list and that 'first on the list was the federal building
in Oklahoma City, Okla.'" Johnston continued. Johnston said the Saudi agent
reported that an Internal Revenue Service building in Houston, Texas, was
"second on the list," followed by the FBI's field office in Los Angeles.
The FBI facility was targeted because, according to Johnston, it was the
bureau's main counterintelligence operation at that time. Johnston also said
that documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that about a year later, on
April 16, 1996, the FBI filed a follow-up report claiming the initial information
gleaned from Saudi sources was most likely accurate. "Even though the government
has consistently maintained that no credible evidence exists linking McVeigh
to international terrorists," Johnston said, "the FBI generated a follow-up
302 report one year later
where a supervisory special agent, name blacked
out, contacted another source regarding the original information from
Canastraro." The special agent "was told that the information was confirmed
as generated from a general within the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service,"
said Johnston. "The FBI 302 memo went on to conclude that this information
appears to have validity, citing Canastraro's former position within the
CIA." An FBI spokeswoman told WorldNetDaily the bureau had no comment
on Johnston's allegations. CIA officials could not be reached for comment
prior to press time. When asked why the government did not do more
to press McVeigh before his death if he was working for another government,
Johnston said such a strategy" was apparently not in the game plan for the
Justice Department
" Johnston says some of his information came from documents
ordered sealed by U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, the presiding judge
in McVeigh's initial trial, which took place in Denver, Colo. He went on
to note that Matsch has never lifted the order, though "its kind of hard
to see how it would affect Tim McVeigh now." "The federal government continues
to seek the maintenance of that sealing order on the basis of privacy concerns,"
he said. Johnston's disclosure comes on the heels of a report Wednesday that
said the U.S. government was warned before the bombing that Islamic extremists
were planning attacks. Islamic terrorists were planning to "strike inside
the U.S. against objects symbolizing the American government in the near
future," said one warning memo, according to The Associated Press. That report
did not mention Saudi Arabia, but said only that U.S. officials were tipped
by evidence "gathered across the globe from Iran and Syria to the Philippines."
AP said documents show the warnings became progressively more specific as
to the time, place and type of attack. Stephen Jones, McVeigh's attorney,
was reportedly upset by the disclosure. "We specifically asked on the record
for all evidence, documents and tangible objects to show whether the government
had received a warning of acts of terror against federal buildings. We didn't
receive this," he told AP. As WorldNetDaily reported in March, Johnston and
Judicial Watch have filed suit against Iraq, charging that Baghdad masterminded
and financed "in whole or in part" the OKC bombing. Chris Farrell,
investigative director for Judicial Watch, told WorldNetDaily that the suit
has yet to be served on the Iraqi government, but that it is "trudging along"
in its process. He said the suit is being handled "through diplomatic channels"
in the State Department, which will hand it off to the Polish government.
The U.S. maintains a section in the Polish Embassy in Baghdad, and will serve
the Iraqi government through it, with Polish assistance, Farrell said. As
to whether the U.S. government has responded to reports of the suit, Farrell
said, "We haven't heard anything." McVeigh and accomplice Terry Nichols
were eventually charged and convicted for differing roles in connection with
the OKC bombing. McVeigh was executed June 11, 2001; Nichols has been sentenced
to life in prison, but could face state death penalty charges in Oklahoma.
Johnston, in his radio interview, also said there was
some evidence suggesting that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
– a top al-Qaida lieutenant whom federal authorities believe may have
masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks – trained Nichols for the OKC bombing
in the Philippines. Mohammed "was not only involved in the Sept. 11
attacks, he was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center attack" as well,
Johnston charged. "He was in the Philippines at the same time as Terry Nichols,
by the way, in the last trip that he made down there before the Murrah building
bombing." U.S. officials believe Mohammed was also in charge of
transferring the funds used by the Sept. 11 hijackers. "There's lots of links
that tie him to 9-11," one government official told AP June 5. "He was
intricately involved." Mohammed is also believed to be an accomplice
of Ramzi Yousef, who is currently serving a life sentence in the U.S. for
his alleged role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Upon his arrest,
Yousef was found in possession of plans to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners.
Prosecutors also believe he had planned to crash a plane into the Pentagon.
[For further details see 'From Dublin to Oklahoma City'. Also recommended is the book 'Others Unknown' by Stephen Jones.]