Strike One - Khobar Towers
Strike Two - TWA 800
Strike Three ......
The Khobar Towers Bombing
You have three people in charge:
You have Khamenei - he is in charge of religion and terrorism,
You have Rafsanjani - he is in charge of business and terrorism.
You have Khatami - he is in charge of internal politics, moderation and
terrorism.
Crown Prince Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of
Bahrain
Click to go to homepage of "The Hull Thread" for further details on the TWA 800 downing
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On June 25, 1996 nineteen Americans were killed by a truck bomb at the Khobar Towers in the Dhahran military base in Saudi Arabia. Within two days suspicions focused on Saudi dissidents funded by Iran ....
June 27, 1996 International News The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic
Edition) Issue 415
Suspicion for the bombing outside Dhahran was pointing towards internal
enemies of the Saudi monarchy. Middle East experts were last night
discounting the most immediate theory that groups connected with Iran's
fundamentalist regime were involved in the blast.
Prior to the downing of TWA 800 this bombing had created worries about attacks on airliners .....
July 18, 1996 NY Times
Airline security has been higher than usual for several reasons including
the bombings in Saudi Arabia. The meeting emphasized the seriousness with
which the intelligence community viewed the current dangers of terrorism
against airplanes.
Within one day of the TWA 800 downing suspicions mounted that it was linked to the Dhahran bombing ....
July 18, 1996 EmergencyNet NEWS Service Vol.
2 - 200 ENN 7/18/96 10:36CDT
Terrorists in late June attacked a U.S. military facility in Saudi
Arabia; and the Summer Olympic Games are starting this week in Atlanta. Kupperman
said, "The potential, especially with the interest
in disruption of the peace process in the Mideast, plus normal stability
problems, makes me quite suspicious. There's motivation, wherewithal and
technical means to carry out an attack."
The suspicions were confirmed by the head of the FBI .....
August 1, 1996 CNN
FBI chief says U.S. is 'under attack'
by terrorists. In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Freeh
pointed to a series of arrests and convictions since four Islamic fundamalists
were found guilty in the February 1993 bombing that killed six people at
New York's World Trade Center. He referred to two fatal
bombings in Saudi Arabia and the still unexplained crash of TWA Flight
800.
The U.S. intelligence agencies were apparently thinking along the same lines.....
August 3, 1996 EmergencyNet NEWS Service Daily Report Vol. 2 -
216
According to the documents, that the bombers who conducted the attacks
on the U.S. military sites in Saudi Arabia in November of 1995 and on 25
June 1996 were trained at Iranian terror camps. U.S. Secretary of Defense
William Perry warned that "strong action" will be
taken against any nation that is linked to the bombing of U.S. troops in
Saudi Arabia. The Secretary was asked if that there may be a connection to
Iran and he replied, "Possibly ... we know that
Iran is very active in international terrorism, some of it linked against
the United States. It's no secret, they have announced that themselves. The
Saudis, I think, are close to completing their investigation on that case
and will be announcing that soon. I anticipate that we will find, when they
announce it there will be an international connection, yes." The
SecDef said that he, himself, has not yet come to a final conclusion about
who was responsible for the bombing attack on 25 June 1996, but he called
Iran "the leading
candidate" for international terrorism
that is directed against the United States. He said,
"If we have compelling evidence of international sponsorship of that bombing,
we will take strong action." .According to the Defense Secretary,
the U.S. is watching several different groups in the Gulf region very closely,
including militant groups in the Saudi kingdom. He said,
"There is direct evidence that some
of these groups are internationally supported. They have support in training,
in the funding, in providing materials to them, maybe even in planning and
directing their operations."
By early August the U.S. was drawing up plans to punish Iran .....
August 5 1996 International News The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic
Edition) Issue 442
There will be no shortage of targets if the United States goes ahead
with its plans to retaliate against Iran for continuing to support international
terrorist organisations. The Iranians provide practical
and financial support to two dissident Saudi groups - the Organisation of
Islamic Revolution and Hizbollah of the Hejaz. Both groups, linked to Saudi
terrorist Osama bin Laden, the Afghan veteran who has threatened to
wage an international terrorist war against the US, have been linked to June's
lorry bomb against the American military base at Dhahran. Members of the
two groups have been trained at the Imam Ali camp on Teheran's
outskirts.
Yet, amazingly after the downing of TWA 800 Iran was still threatening US airliners. But the gentleman who was leading the threats was 'an elected government official' and thus Clinton could not get rid of him ....
August 5 1996 International News The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic
Edition) Issue 442
Iran has embarked on the most far-reaching campaign of state-sponsored
terrorism ever conducted against the United States, threatening US airliners,
public buildings with a wave of destructive attacks. US officials are convinced
that the clerical regime in Teheran has made a strategic decision to escalate
its permanent war against the "Great Satan",
striking US targets on American soil for the first time in a systematic way.
Coming just weeks after the Iranian-backed bombing
of the US barracks in Dhahran, which killed 19 American servicemen, it is
now widely suspected that the TWA tragedy is part of Iran's ugly new
campaign. "This is just the
beginning," said Kenneth Timmerman, publisher
of the Iran Brief in Washington. "More aircraft
are going to fall out of the sky." "For 10 years, the attacks against Americans
always took place outside the US - either in Europe or in the Middle East.
Now it's moving here," said Daniel Pipes, author of a book on
the Iranian terror machine. He argued that the mullahs were enraged when
the speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, threw down
the gauntlet last December, after calling Iran "a permanent, long-term threat
to civilised life on this planet". Gingrich pushed through legislation
forcing the CIA to spend $20 million on a covert operation targeting the
Iranian government. Teheran retaliated immediately, announcing that it would
match the funding dollar for dollar with its own undercover operation against
Washington. US intelligence sources believe that Iran's
president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, made his strategic decision at the beginning
of this year to strike on American soil.
September 26, 1998 The New York
Times
Federal authorities charged Friday that a person described as a senior
deputy to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile suspected in last month's bombings
of two U.S. embassies in Africa, made significant efforts on behalf of the
bin Laden group in 1993 to develop nuclear weapons. The allegations, concerning
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, also assert that
bin Laden had an official agreement with the Iranian
government and with Sudan's ruling party to oppose the United States, and
suggested that the United States had penetrated the bin Laden organization
and learned detailed information in 1996. The
government also asserted for the first time in court papers that the Iranian
government had entered into a formal three-way "working agreement" with bin
Laden and the National Islamic Front of the Sudan to "work together against
the United States, Israel and the West." The front is the ruling party in
Sudan. Members of bin Laden's organization, al Qaeda, sent emissaries to
Iran and some of its members received explosives training in Lebanon from
Hezbollah, the terrorist group backed by the Iranian government, prosecutors
said in court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The government
also said that during the time when the working agreement was being negotiated,
Salim met with an Iranian religious official stationed in Khartoum and also
traveled with al Qaeda members to Tehran to arrange for training by Iran
in the use of explosives. The allegations against
Iran come at a sensitive time, since Tehran is currently trying to improve
its relations with the West and is also at odds with the Taliban, the dominant
group in Afghanistan, which is protecting bin Laden. The authorities also
acknowledged for the first time that the FBI had won the secret cooperation
of an admitted terrorist in al Qaeda as early as 1996, and obtained extensive
information about the group from the asset, who was not identified. The document
does say that the information from the source was provided to the
FBI in the late summer and fall of 1996, raising questions about how much
the government knew about the bin Laden group in the months leading up to
the bombings.
Intelligence reports continued to indicate that Iran was connected to the TWA 800 crash and to the Dhahran bombing .....
August 12, 1996 TIME Magazine
A well-placed U.S. intelligence source has
told TIME that calls and transmissions tracked by the CIA out of Tehran "have
raised suspicions" that there is an Iranian connection to the crash.
The CIA is also looking at intelligence on a meeting of terrorist leaders
in Iran the month before the crash to see if any green light was given for
the attack. "There is a hard look being taken at
the Iran possibility," says a senior U.S. intelligence official.
However, he adds. the intelligence gathered so far is
"vague, nothing solid." Even so, he says,
it is "tantalizing". the Iranian links to terrorism
were further highlighted last week when Defense Secretary William Perry,
in a National Public Radio interview, hinted that an
ongoing Saudi investigation of the June 25 bombing of a U.S. military complex
in Dhahran may "possibly" point to Iran's involvement. He suggested
that the U.S. might have to consider "strong
action".
September 22, 1996 The New York
Post
Investigators are reviewing an anonymous threat received after the
October 1, 1995 conviction of radical sheik Omar
Abdel Rahman .... the threat was that a New York airport or jetliner
would be attacked in retaliation.
August 25, 1996 Times of
London
U.S. officials are investigating reports that Islamic terrorists
have smuggled Stinger ground-to-air missiles into the United States from
Pakistan. Senior Iranian sources close to the
fundamentalist regime in Tehran claimed this weekend that TWA flight 800
was shot down last month by one of three shoulder-fired Stingers of the type
used by Islamic guerrillas during the Afghanistan war. The
sources said the missiles arrived in America seven months ago after being
shipped from Karachi via Rotterdam and on to the Canadian port of Halifax.
They claimed an Egyptian fundamentalist group backed by Iran was responsible
for smuggling the weapons across the Canadian border into the United States.
The group, the Gama'a al-Islamiya, comprises followers of
Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian
cleric jailed in the United States over the 1993 New York World Trade Center
bombing. A senior White House official responsible for counter-terrorism
told The Sunday Times this weekend that he had seen a report that a Stinger
missile had been smuggled into the United States from Pakistan. The official,
who is involved in collating intelligence relating to the TWA inquiry for
the White House, said investigators were aware of reports that Stingers may
have been smuggled into the country. If a Stinger was the cause of this,
our first theory would be that it came from Afghanistan." The official
was commenting on reports from Tehran that claimed several groups funded
by the religious authorities in Iran are active in the United States. The
reports claim one previously unknown underground group called Falakh may
have as many as 50 highly trained terrorists in the country.
Yossef Bodansky was the Director of the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare and in this capacity was a key advisor to the highest echelons of the U.S. Government. In his book "bin Laden - The Man who Declared War on America" Bodansky writes that there were two key events "on the eve" of the TWA 800 downing.
First he describes an editorial in the London Islamist paper 'al-Quds al-Arabi' that spelled out the reasons behind the escalating terrorist attacks on the United States which concluded by mentioning the bombings in Riyadh and Khobar as the beginning of these attacks. The editor of al-Quds al-Arabi, Abdul-Bari Atwan, is personally close to Osama bin Laden.
Bodansky indicates that the second key event was a fax received by al-Hayah in London through al-Safir in Beirut in which on July 16 the Islamic Change Movement - the Jihad Wing in the Arabian Peninsula took credit for both the Riyadh and Khobar Towers bombings . A warning was then issued by the same group on July 17 stating that "the mujahideen will give their harshest reply to the threats of the foolish U.S. President. Everybody will be surprised by the magnitude of the reply. The invaders must be prepared to leave, either dead or alive. Their time is at the morning-dawn. Is not the morning-dawn near?". TWA 800 exploded in the early morning in the United Kingdom. On July 18, this group issued a statement accepting responsibility for the TWA 800 downing. The leaders the Islamic Change Movement had participated in a June 1996 terrorist planning meeting held in Tehran and on July 20, 1996 it attended a follow-up conference in Tehran in which the Islamic Change Movement was singled out for "recent achievements".
Three weeks to the day before TWA 800 was shot down, in approximately the same location as the TWA 800 downing, within hours of the Khobar Towers bombing, the Coast Guard received a report of "three red flares" launched 25 miles south of Shinnicock Inlet. An air and surface search was carried out which found nothing out of ordinary. There were no boats in distress. However, TWA Flight 848 (New York to Rome) blocked out of JFK at exactly 10:00 pm on June 26, 1996 and assuming normal handling, it would have passed about 11 NM South of Shinnecock Inlet at 10:29 p.m. EDT. TWA Flight 884 (New York to Tel Aviv) was scheduled to depart before FL 848 but blocked out late at 10:19 p.m. EDT. Four months after TWA 800 was shot down TWA Flight 884 was again under missile attack (For further details see The Tale of The Tapes ).
We do not need to guess what "recent achievements" were being celebrated in Iran!
Meanwhile the Saudis having caught some of the culprits involved in the Khobar Towers bombing became strangely reticent .....
November 10, 1996 International News The Telegraph Issue
536
According to American intelligence reports, Islamic militants are
planning a new round of bomb attacks against US targets to show that their
terrorist capability has not been affected by the Saudi crackdown. The militants
also want to put pressure on Washington to abandon its long-standing support
for the Saudi royal family. The Saudis now believe
that they have detained the ringleaders of the Dhahran attack, including
the man who drove the explosive-laden vehicle that was detonated just outside
the military complex. Despite mounting speculation that the group responsible
for the bombing had been trained and equipped by Iran, the Saudis are refusing
to provide any details of the evidence they have acquired from confessions
and other sources.
Were they worried about the Syrians? Perhaps not - the FBI was involved and it had become reticent too ...
January 19, 1997 International News The Telegraph Issue
604
Syrian intelligence officers played a key role in last year's bombing
of the American military base in Saudi Arabia in which 19 US servicemen died.
This is one of the central conclusions that has been reached by two inquiries
into the bombing conducted by American and Saudi officials. After the bombing,
a key Saudi dissident suspect fled to Syria to seek sanctuary. But when Saudi
investigators asked Syria to hand him over, the suspect was killed by Syrian
intelligence to prevent him from disclosing details of Syria's involvement
in the attack. News of Syria's involvement has caused alarm in Washington.
It is one reason why details of the lengthy inquiry by the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, which sent a team of specialists to Dhahran, have not been
made public. Iran provides training and support for numerous Arab terrorists,
including two groups of Saudi dissidents which have been involved in previous
attacks within the kingdom: the Organisation of Islamic Revolution of Jezier
al-Arab, and the Hizbollah of the Hejez, both outlawed in Saudi Arabia.
.The Saudis were put in contact with Osama bin Laden,
a 40-year-old Islamic fundamentalist terrorist. bin Laden, who works for
Iranian intelligence, is a fierce opponent of both the Saudi regime and America's
presence in the Gulf. Any doubts about bin Laden's involvement in the Dhahran
attack were removed by an interview he gave in Peshawar shortly afterwards.
The Saudi bombing, he said,
"marked the beginning of war
between Muslims and the United States".
So if Osama bin Laden said that he did it, why were the Saudis and the FBI keeping things under wraps?
February 21, 1997 ENN Daily Intelligence Report Vol. 3,
No.052
According to reports from the British television documentary show,
"Dispatches", and the Reuter's News Service,
Osama bin Laden, Saudi dissident exile and alleged Islamic Fundamentalist
terror financier, has again threatened United States forces in Saudi Arabia.
In a television interview from Afghanistan, Bin Laden
said that 1996 attacks on the Khobar Towers housing complex in Dhahran and
a November, 1995 military assistance unit in Riyadh were carried out as "a
warning to Washington." Bin Laden went on to threaten additional attacks
on U.S. personnel, unless all American and allied military forces are immediately
withdrawn from Saudi Arabia.
Didn't they know that Canadian intelligence had the same information?
March 29, 1997 The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic Edition)
Issue 673
A Saudi dissident with links to Iran took part in the Dhahran bombing
that killed 19 US airmen and injured 500 others last summer, according to
Canadian intelligence authorities. Hani al-Sayegh,
28, was arrested while working at a grocery in Ottawa. They claim
he is a member of a terrorist organization called
Saudi Hizbollah and that
he spoke about the bombing in phone calls to Iran tapped
by the intelligence services. The details match the Saudi version
of the blast. If proved conclusive, they would force President Clinton to
act against Teheran, either through a military strike or sanctions. Sayegh
arrived in Canada last August, carrying an international driving permit issued
by Syria in 1994. On it, he gave his permanent address as Damascus.
April 5, 1997 EmergencyNet NEWS Service Vol. 3, No.
095
The Los Angeles Times reported on Friday that the arrest of a Saudi
Arabian suspect in Canada in March may have done more harm than good to the
U.S. investigation into the terrorist truck bombing in Dhahran that killed
19 U.S. airmen on 25 June. The Canadian decision may have thwarted U.S. hopes
that the suspect could prove to be more valuable as an intelligence asset
that would tell U.S. authorities about individuals, groups and countries
that may have played a role in the terrorist attack last June. Federal law
enforcement officials think that the suspect does have information that they
want, but don't think that they will get it now. The Washington Post was
reporting that months before the 25 June terrorist truck bombing in Dhahran,
Syria reportedly refuse to assist Saudi authorities in apprehending the
individual who has now been identified as the leader of the Saudi branch
of the Hezbollah terrorist group..
So rather than attack Iran, the U.S. government figured it could use sabotage ....
April 17, 1997 International News Electronic Telegraph
Issue 692
American intelligence officials tried to sabotage a Russian weapons
deal with Iran yesterday by leaking details of two meetings monitored in
Moscow in which arms shipments were agreed. These included
the transfer to Teheran of 500 advanced shoulder-launched
"Igla" anti-aircraft missiles. The US is indicating that the shipments
are being organised by Russian brokers acting separately from Rosvooruzheniye,
the state arms exporter, and offering discount prices. Other older surface-to-air
systems were also discussed, as well as the transfer of T-72 tanks and Mi-17
transport helicopters. Washington fears that the missiles
are destined for use by Hizbollah, the Teheran-backed terrorist group. With
a range of 10,500 feet, they could be used in Lebanon against Israeli
aircraft. Any new arming of Hizbollah is alarming to Washington because
of the growing suspicion that it provided the logistics for last summer's
bombing in Dharhan, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 US airmen and injuring 500.
A group opposed to the Iranian regime, the National
Council of Resistance of Iran, gave reporters in Washington what they called
conclusive evidence yesterday that the bombing was directed by Iranian
intelligence. The attack, it was claimed, was masterminded by Brig Gen Ahmad
Sharifi, a commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
'Cool heads' pressed for a 'moderate' approach ....
April 20, 1997 The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic Edition) Issue
695
Hard-liners at the US Defense Department are
pushing for a massive strike against Iran to punish the mullahs for their
alleged role in the bombing of a US barracks in Saudi Arabia last year.
There is also strong pressure within the Pentagon for a broader attack
to cripple the growing military power of the Islamic regime. Sources say
that this would include a Pearl Harbor-style strike to annihilate the Iranian
navy before it can become a threat to US naval operations in the Gulf, and
heavy bombing raids to set back Iran's nuclear weapons programme. The Clinton
administration has been weighing its options for several months, waiting
to see whether there is conclusive evidence of Iranian involvement in the
Khobar Towers bombing. But US intelligence has now linked a top official
in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Brigadier Ahmad Sherifi, to a bombing suspect
arrested in Canada last month. "Iran was the organizing
force behind the attack," said a senior US official.
Analysts argue that US policy provoked fury in Teheran
and prompted a strategic decision by the Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani
to launch a campaign of terrorism against the Great Satan. Bill Clinton
now has to decide how far to ratchet up the cycle of escalation in the most
dangerous and volatile region in the world. "The
worst possible response would be a silly missile attack in the middle of
the night that stirs up a hornet's nest without doing any real damage,"
says Ken Timmerman, editor of the Iran Brief in Washington.
"If you are going to hit them, you've got to do
it so hard they spend the next 10 years recovering." This view
is widely shared at the Pentagon, which has watched with alarm as the Iranians
acquired three Russian Kilo-class submarines with quiet diesel engines that
are hard to detect. Iran has also been buying advanced C-802 cruise missiles
from China which could pose a serious danger to US warships in the Gulf.
Hard-liners see retaliation for the Khobar Towers bombing as an opportunity
to deal with the Iranian military before it has the means to choke the Straits
of Hormuz, the source of 12 million barrels of oil a day, a third of the
industrial world's oil supply. Military analysts are
afraid that the Clinton policy of "dual containment" of both Iran and Iraq
is becoming a dangerous fiction. Herb Meyer, former vice-chairman of the
CIA's National Intelligence Council, warns that Iran and Iraq may join forces
to drive the US out of the Gulf and seize the Saudi oil fields, with consequences
that are almost unthinkable. It is a nightmare waiting to
happen.
May 8, 1997 ENN Daily Intelligence Report Vol. 3 -
128
Officials say that the recent arrest of a Saudi Arabian national
believed to be connected to a deadly terrorist attack in the Middle East
in 1996 has given authorities a glimpse of what is said to be a largely hidden
network of terrorists that use Canada to raise money, recruit members, provide
a safe haven and plan additional terrorist attacks. Officials believe the
pro-Iranian Hezbollah has established a presence in Canada. Canada's open
borders and its refugee policies make it easy for suspected terrorists to
enter the country to hide or to find an easy way to get into the United States.
The Saudi national, Hani Abdel Rahim
al-Sayegh, is accused of belonging to Hezbollah and taking part
in the 25 June 1996 terrorist bombing of a military complex in Dhahran According
to al-Husseini, Hezbollah is made up as "a military
organizational and popular apparatus." He also said that
"orders for these three units come from
Iran".
June 18, 1997 The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic Edition) Issue
754
A Saudi dissident was being deported to the United States by Canada
last night for FBI questioning about his role as a "look-out" in the bombing
that killed 19 Americans in Dhahran last year. CIA sources say that, two
years before the blast, Hani al-Sayegh,
secretly met Brig Ahmad Sherifi, the
top official in Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Sherifi's duties include organising
Hizbollah cells in Arab countries around the Gulf. If Sayegh provides conclusive
evidence of Iranian involvement in the attack, President Clinton will come
under heavy pressure to retaliate against Teheran with a military strike.
Canadian intelligence sources said he spoke about the
bombing in tapped phone calls to Teheran.
But did President Clinton really want to know that Iran was behind the Dhahran attack? How much more did he need? The guy that knows said he would tell all, so the Canadians sent him off to do so....
June 19, 1997 NY Times
A Saudi dissident who says he will cooperate in the investigation
of the bombing that killed 19 Americans in Dhahran last year will plead guilty
in an earlier plot to kill Americans. The first plot was never carried out.
This brought him one step closer to a deal under which he would provide evidence
about the June 1996 truck bombing in Dhahran in return for not being extradited
to Saudi Arabia. The federal grand jury indictment says Sayegh was paid by
an unnamed terrorist organization as part of a plot to "kill nationals of
the United States residing and working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" in
1994 and 1995. Sayegh says he is a member of Saudi
Hezbollah, the Party of God, a branch of a terrorist organization based in
Lebanon and backed by Iran. He was deported on Tuesday from Canada,
where he had arrived last August, about six weeks after the Dhahran
bombing.
June 24, 1997 Reuter
Defense Secretary William Cohen on Tuesday reminded military forces
to be alert for possible terrorist attack one year after a truck bomb killed
19 American Air Force troops in Saudi Arabia. Officials for months have been
seeking independent verification of allegations by Saudi Arabia that Iran
was behind the attack. A Saudi dissident who has agreed to cooperate with
the U.S. investigation into the truck bombing was charged last week in Washington
with conspiracy to commit murder and ''international terrorism.'' Sayegh,
28, a Shiite Moslem, has been identified as a member of the radical Saudi
Hizbollah (Party of God). They said he may have valuable information about
those responsible for the massive bombing that killed 19 U.S. airmen and
injured 500 others.
When al-Sayegh arrived in the United States he talked ... and talked .... and talked .....
June 29, 1997 NY Times
A Saudi fugitive deported from Canada to the United States has told
investigators that an Iranian intelligence official helped direct a plot
to attack American installations in Saudi Arabia, officials
familiar with the investigation said Saturday. The plot was never carried
out. Investigators said they had no conclusive evidence linking Iran or the
Iranian officer, Brig. Ahmad Sherifi, to the later bombing in Dhahran, Saudi
Arabia, that killed 19 U.S. servicemen and wounded about 500 people last
year. U.S. intelligence officials say they believe that the Iranian officer
serves as a liaison to the Party of God, a Shiite Muslim terrorist group
based in Lebanon and financed by Iran. Canadian court documents say that
he was a member of the Saudi branch of the Party of God and that he had contacts
with Iranian intelligence officials in the decade he spent as a student in
Iran.
He kept talking --- the U.S. kept trying not to hear. Meanwhile the Iranians got nervous and issued more threats .....
June 30,1997 AP
Iran's top military commander has said his country does not intend
to start a war with the United States, but promised to turn the Persian Gulf
into a slaughterhouse if attacked. "If the Americans
one day decide to attack Iran, then they will have committed suicide because
the Iranians will turn the region into a slaughterhouse for them,'' said
Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezaie, commander of the 120,000-strong Islamic Revolution
Guards Corps, Iran's main fighting force. His comments, published Sunday
in the English-language Kayhan International daily, coincided with the start
of four days of Iranian amphibious military exercises in the Persian Gulf.
The United States has about 22,000 troops in the area, a region Iran long
has considered in its sphere of influence. 'The Persian Gulf belongs to the
regional countries and the Americans should leave it,'' Rezaie said. 'Iran
has vital interests in the region and is going to defend its interests.''
Iranian officials say they are concerned over U.S. warships in the gulf,
particularly in the wake of American threats to retaliate if Iran is found
to be behind a June 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen.
Iran has denied any role.
Then bin Laden popped up again and the United States got really nervous - the country had been infiltrated! ....
July 15, 1997 CNN Web posted at: 6:05 p.m. EDT (2205
GMT)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating connections
between a maverick Saudi Arabian multimillionaire and his followers in the
United States, who may be planning terrorist attacks on U.S. targets. Federal
agents have identified followers of Osama bin
Ladin in Brooklyn, New York;
Jersey City, New Jersey; and Detroit, Michigan, to determine whether they
are preparing to carry out attacks, CNN has learned. Bin
Ladin, has been linked to the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia
.Now living among followers in Afghanistan, bin Ladin has gone on record
as being a bitter enemy of the United States. In an interview with CNN last
month for the TV newsmagazine "Impact," bin Ladin said,
"We declared a Jihad -- a holy war -- against
the United States government because it is unjust, criminal and
tyrannical.". Federal sources say a grand
jury is investigating bin Ladin. According to federal sources, agents
investigating Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center in New York began looking into the activities of bin Ladin's followers
in this country. In particular, agents have been tracing money transfers
from Afghanistan and Pakistan -- bin Ladin's power base -- through London
to his followers in the United States. Bin Ladin communicates with his adherents
though audiotapes, but he also spreads his fundamentalist beliefs through
Web sites on the Internet. The FBI wants to know if bin Ladin is financing
any religious or political activities in the United States. So far, sources
say, bin Ladin has not been linked to any illegal activities in this country,
but the investigation continues.
And so we blamed a 'good guy' for the Khobar Towers terrorism and President Clinton got rid of him ......
July 24, 1997 Reuters
The U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff, General
Ronald Fogleman, has submitted his resignation. Pentagon officials
say Fogleman is retiring amid differences over responsibility for security
lapses that led to the death of 19 U.S. airmen last year in a guerrilla bombing
in Saudi Arabia. Air Force officials say Fogleman, one of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, has asked for early retirement, to take effect no later than September
1. Fogleman, 55, reportedly told associates he would step down if Air Force
generals were punished for failing to prevent last year's bombing of Khobar
Towers, the Saudi barracks in which 19 U.S. airmen were killed.
Osama continued to threaten ....
July 25, 1997 ERRI Risk Assessment Services - Intelligence Report
Vol. 3 - 206
Exiled Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden remains hidden somewhere
in the mountains of Afghanistan. He has set his sights on and has sworn to
bring an end of U.S. influence in his native Saudi Arabia and the Islamic
world. Counterterrorism analysts say that bin Laden is working with terrorist
organizations such as Hezbollah and its patron Iran. Kenneth Katzman, the
terrorism analyst for the U.S. Congress, said, "I
think you have an 'atomic bomb' brewing between bin Laden, Hezbollah and
the Iranians. .... Just like the old E.F. Hutton ads, when bin Laden speaks,
people listen. This past February, bin Laden renewed his
threat of a "jihad" or holy war against U.S. soldiers and civilians in Saudi
Arabia. This led the U.S. State Department to issue a warning. In speaking
to an Arabic newspaper, bin Laden said, "We had
thought that the Riyadh and al-Khobar blasts were a sufficient signal to
sensible U.S. decision-makers to avert a real battle between the Islamic
nation and U.S. forces, but it seems that they did not understand the
signal." Bin Laden reportedly made his militant contacts during
the Afghan war. He then set up terrorist training camps in Sudan and financed
attacks against the moderate governments of Algeria, Egypt, his native Saudi
Arabia and Yemen.His apparent partner, Hezbollah, has a history of terror
against the United States and its allies. They are
believed responsible for the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut
that killed 241 Americans and more recently the 1994 bombing of a Jewish
cultural center in Argentina that killed 95 people. There is growing
evidence that bin Laden has struck the United States with Hezbollah's help.
The evidence is said to be strong that his followers were responsible for
the November 1995 terrorist bombing in Riyadh that killed five U.S. service
personnel and two Indians. It is said to be still unclear
if bin Laden had any involvement in the 25 June 1996 terrorist truck bombing
in Dhahran that killed 19 U.S. airmen.There is also evidence that bin Laden
may had been connected to the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Ramzi Yousef, who is currently on trial for being involved in the World Trade
Center bombing, is said to have received money from bin Laden's brother-in-law.
According to a top State Department official, "Bin
Laden's activities were run through Islamic charities that we think extended
as far as the Philippines and that is where Yousef planned out his attacks
on U.S. planes." Yousef was captured in Pakistan at a guesthouse that
was set up for Afghan war veterans by Osama bin Laden.
And so believe it or not, the man who said he would talk was persuaded not to talk and the FBI retreated under the umbrella of a "setback" .....
July 31, 1997 New York Times
In a setback to FBI efforts to solve a 1996 bombing that killed 19
American servicemen in Saudi Arabia, a Saudi man pleaded not guilty here
Wednesday in a separate plot to scout out American targets in the kingdom
for terrorist attacks. The not guilty plea unhinged a deal in which the Saudi
man, Hani Abdel Rahim Hussein al-Sayegh, who was deported here in June from
Canada. Under the arrangement, law-enforcement officials say, he had agreed
to provide information about the deadly bombing at the Khobar Towers, a military
housing complex in Dhahran used by American Air Force personnel. Law-enforcement
officials said Wednesday that while the not-guilty plea did not represent
a fatal blow to their efforts, it did provide yet another disappointment
in the Khobar Towers case, which has seen little progress. Sayegh was the
first witness whom federal agents considered able to shed light on one of
the core questions in the bombing -- whether Iran played a role in underwriting
the attack. Saudi intelligence officials have said
that Sayegh met with Iranian intelligence officials and later acted
as a lookout in the attack, on June 25, 1996, in which a truck bomb ripped
the face off an apartment building.
What a relief! Now the government could drop the charges and send him home ....
September 9, 1997 NY Times
The Justice Department said Monday that it would drop criminal charges
against a Saudi dissident who has been a central figure in the government's
efforts to investigate the truck bombing that killed 19 American airmen in
Saudi Arabia last year. The department, in effect, acknowledged the collapse
of its effort to obtain the cooperation of Hani Abdel Rahim al-Sayegh. Government
officials said they might try to deport Sayegh, who remains in custody. Officials
said they would oppose any application for asylum. When he was deported to
the United States in June, officials expressed hope that he could answer
some of the most puzzling questions in the Khobar Towers case, among them
whether Iran had played a role in the attack. Saudi intelligence officials
had identified Sayegh as a driver of a scout car that signaled the driver
of an explosives-laden truck to the site of the blast.
But despite three trips to Saudi Arabia by the FBI
director, Louis Freeh, U.S. efforts have been stymied by Saudi resistance
and refusal to allow access to suspects in custody there.
Our Saudi 'friends' told us to get lost so the FBI came home and told the relatives of the Khobar Towers bombing what they were also telling the relatives of those killed in TWA 800.....
December 13, 1997 New York Times
A year and a half after 19 U.S. airmen were killed in Saudi Arabia,
officials have told their relatives they still do not know who carried out
the truck bombing of their barracks. Attorney General Janet Reno, FBI Director
Louis Freeh and other officials met privately with families of the victims
of the Khobar Towers bombing at a daylong counseling session and dinner Thursday
at which they promised to press on with the stalled investigation.
"There was great respect for us, but little information,"
Fran Heiser, the mother of Master Sgt. Michael G. Heiser, said Friday. "They
don't have anything concrete." The meeting, which was closed to the press
and not announced beforehand, was held at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va.
Mrs. Heiser, who has been active in the efforts of the families to learn
more about what happened, said that members of 18 families attended. The
airmen were killed, and 500 other people wounded, when a large truck
bomb exploded at the housing complex near Dhahran for Air Force personnel
mounting patrols over the no-flight zone in southern Iraq declared after
the Persian Gulf War. Investigators had hoped for a break when a Saudi dissident,
Hani Abdul Rahim Sayegh, was arrested in Canada on information from Saudi
intelligence that he drove a scout car in the bombing. But Sayegh later reneged
on a plea-bargain agreement with U.S. officials to provide information, saying
he only made it because he feared execution if he was deported to Saudi Arabia.
The Justice Department case against him collapsed for lack of evidence. He
is now in custody of the immigration authorities, awaiting deportation
hearings.
Our ally in the Middle East announced that the case was solved .....
March 31, 1998 New York
Times
The Saudi Arabian government said on Monday that it had completed
its investigation into the June 1996 terrorist bombing there that left 19
American airmen dead but would not release the results of the inquiry.
There was concern, officials said, that the Saudis
failed to conduct an adequate inquiry because it might produce evidence of
a link between the bombers and Iran, embarrassing the Saudi government.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have warmed dramatically in
recent months. The relationship between the Justice Department, which is
overseeing the investigation for the United States, and the Saudis remains
"chilly," the official noted. The 19 American airmen were killed on June
25, 1996, when terrorists drove a large truck filled with explosives up to
the perimeter of an apartment complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
There was widespread suspicion in Saudi Arabia and
the United States that the bombing might have been directed by Iran, which
has long protested the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia and has
been accused of involvement in other terrorist attacks against the United
States. The Saudi announcement Monday was made by the interior minister,
Prince Nayef ibn Abdul Aziz, who said in a news conference in Mecca, the
Saudi holy city, that "all the facts concerning the
crime are in our hands" and that Saudi investigators had "exerted great efforts
to learn all the facts and each detail about this incident." He said the
findings "will be released in due course." The United States announced that
it would drop criminal charges against a Saudi dissident who was once described
as a central figure in the bombing and who is still in custody here,
awaiting deportation hearings. The dissident, Hani Abdel Rahim al-Sayegh,
who once lived in Iran, fled to Canada after the bombing and was arrested
there. Saudi intelligence officials identified al-Sayegh as the driver of
a scout car that signaled the driver of the explosives-laden truck to the
site of the blast. Al-Sayegh was deported to the United States from Canada
as part of a plea agreement in which he initially agreed to provide the Justice
Department with information about the bombing in exchange for a promise that
he would not be returned to Saudi Arabia, where he almost certainly face
execution by beheading. But on arrival in the United States, al-Sayegh reneged
on the agreement with the Justice Department, claiming he was not involved
in the bombing and had no information to provide to American prosecutors.
He has recently insisted that he was not in Saudi Arabia when the bombing
occurred.
And that they had found a new friend in Iran ....
April 12, 1998 The New York Times
For half a century, the Persian Gulf has held a crucial place in
U.S. policy-making. Repeatedly, its oil and its leaders have drawn the United
States into its sometimes deadly games, even as its rivalries and intrigues
have confounded U.S. strategy. So the United States can end up preoccupied
with the smallest events, on the assumption that they may be the prelude
to something big. This is one of those times. Saudi Arabia, America's closest
ally in the Persian Gulf, and Iran, one of Washington's most bitter foes,
have been busy trying to charm each other. In the two decades since Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini fomented Iran's revolution, the Saudis and Iranians have
never been particularly close. Since then, Saudi Arabia
and Iran have moved slowly -- very slowly -- to shape a more normal relationship.
That effort accelerated late last year, when Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah
met Iranian President Mohammed Khatami in Tehran at the summit of Islamic
countries. After two meetings, the Iranian cleric and the Saudi prince gave
signals that they had, in a manner of speaking, bonded. These days,
there are no more rumblings from the kingdom that Iran might have been involved
in the terrorist bombing of an apartment building in Saudi Arabia in 1996
that left 19 U.S. servicemen dead. In fact, Saudi Arabia announced last month
that it would allow its national airline to fly in and out of Tehran for
the first time since shortly after the revolution. So the question in Washington
is: What's up? The stability of the Saudi kingdom is of so much concern to
the United States that since the bombing of the military housing, a special
task force of analysts has been studying the kingdom under the same rigorous
process used to assess the most serious potential threats to U.S. national
security. The Saudis who hold power now are not about to walk away from the
United States, of course. It's just that the relationship is a lot more difficult
than when King Fahd was in good health, in charge and eager to please the
United States. Crown Prince Abdullah, who is running the country on a day-to-day
basis, simply isn't as likely as his brother the king to say yes every time
the United States asks for something. When Defense Secretary William Cohen
visited in February in a vain effort to win support for possible military
action against Iraq, Crown Prince Abdullah simply made himself unavailable.
Prince Sultan, the defense minister, stood in. A week later, the crown prince
did turn up for a meeting with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Ever-protective of his boss, State Department spokesman James Rubin said
she found the encounter "fascinating"; other officials described it as a
stern lecture by Abdullah on the failings of U.S. policy in the Middle East,
followed by an equally stern defense by Ms. Albright. The Iranians, meanwhile,
are not about to embrace the United States. They have been demanding for
two decades that the U.S. military leave the gulf, and that is not likely
to change. But already the Saudis have urged the Clinton administration to
help along Iran's new president and have offered to mediate. One thought
remains profoundly comforting to the policy planners in Washington. Whatever
else is going on between Saudi Arabia and Iran, trust is not part of the
equation. Crown Prince Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain, one of Saudi
Arabia's close neighbors, shared a joke recently with a senior U.S. official
visiting the sheikdom. In Iran, he said,
"You have three people in charge:
You have Khamenei, and he is in charge of religion and terrorism," referring
to Iran's ruling spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "You have Rafsanjani,
and he is in charge of business and terrorism. And you have Khatami, and
he is in charge of internal politics, moderation and
terrorism."
But the joke was on the U.S. government. Now that the Saudi prince and the Iranian cleric had "bonded" the maxim to "follow the money" could be applied.....
April 12 1998 The Times
Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist group, has received $25m (£15m)
from a senior member of the Saudi royal family, raising
fears that the enormous influx of money could be used to fuel a devastating
bombing campaign. Saudi sources said the contribution was the first sent
directly to Hamas, which has killed scores of Israelis in a series of suicide
bombings since 1996. A substantial portion of the $25m
was destined for Izzedine al-Qassem, Hamas's military wing. The revelation
of the Saudi contribution came as Hamas leaders from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon
and Sudan held an emergency session this weekend in Saudi Arabia with Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin, the frail founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. Hamas calls
for war against Israel until it has been completely destroyed and considers
the West, particularly the United States, an enemy because of its support
for the Jewish state.
The Iranians praised Saudi "objectivity".....
May 22, 1998 The New York Times
A Saudi official has been quoted as saying that citizens of Saudi
Arabia were behind the bombing that killed 19 United States airmen near Dhahran
in June 1996 - the first time that a Saudi official has so clearly ruled
out any foreign participation in the attack. The suggestion that Saudi citizens
alone are responsible for the attack is a significant admission for the
Government because it raises the possibility that it was carried out by Sunni
Muslim fundamentalists. Last year, the Saudis requested the extradition from
the United States of a Saudi national, Hani Abdel Rahim al-Sayegh who was
extradited to the United States in June 1997 from Canada. Canadian and American
authorities say that Mr. Sayegh helped plan the attack and admitted belonging
to a Saudi group that used the name Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia has enjoyed a
recent reconciliation with the Government of President Mohammad Khatami,
the moderate cleric who came to power a year ago. In
November 1996 the Iranian Ambassador in Riyadh congratulated the Saudi
authorities on the objectivity of their inquiries into the
bombing.
While the U.S. left the families of those killed with an investigation that had "collapsed" .....
June 21, 1996 The New York
Times
The government's investigation of a 1996 terrorist bombing that killed
19 U.S. airmen in Saudi Arabia has collapsed over
disagreements with the Saudis, and Clinton administration officials now say
they may never be able to determine who carried out the attack. In frustration,
FBI Director Louis Freeh has quietly pulled out the dozens of investigators
initially rushed to the scene of the bombing at the Khobar Towers apartment
complex in eastern Saudi Arabia, leaving behind only a single agent as a
legal attache and liaison to the Saudis. The Clinton administration's insistence
that it remains committed to the case is at odds with other signs that the
investigation has dissolved into a muddle of inconclusive evidence and
ill-feeling between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Evidence suggesting that Iran sponsored the attack
has further complicated the investigation, since the United States and Saudi
Arabia have recently sought to improve relations with a new, relatively moderate
government in Tehran. As the case languishes, families of the
American victims are, for the first time, complaining openly about the slow
pace of the investigation. They also assert that the case is not being pursued
aggressively because of U.S. fears of offending Saudi Arabia.
"Ignoring us doesn't make us go away,"
said Fran Heiser of Palm Coast, Fla., mother of an Air Force master sergeant
who was killed in the explosion. "Everybody is
forgetting about this case. These guys didn't die so much for their country
as they died because of their country." What may have been the
FBI's best hope of cracking the case -- the arrest of a Saudi dissident opposed
to the royal family who initially suggested that he was involved in the attack
-- evaporated last year when he reneged on a plea-bargain agreement and changed
his testimony. He insisted that he had no information on the bombing. The
Saudi, Hani Abdel Rahim Sayegh, is now in the
custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service at an undisclosed location,
awaiting deportation to Saudi Arabia, where he is likely to be beheaded.
Even if he reversed himself again and agreed to testify, U.S. officials say,
his credibility is now so tainted that his account might be of little use.
U.S. officials acknowledge that the FBI is stymied. They say there is no
reason to believe that they will ever obtain the Saudi cooperation necessary
to determine who carried out the attack. "By ourselves, there's not much
we can do," one U.S. official said. Attorney General Janet Reno and Freeh
have publicly criticized the Saudis for a lack of cooperation. Federal officials
say the Saudis have refused to allow them to interrogate dozens of suspects
arrested by the Saudis and to review critical evidence. It took months, they
said, for the Saudis to agree to allow the FBI to inspect the getaway car
used by the terrorists. The Saudi Embassy in Washington said it had no comment
on the investigation, but American business executives and others close to
the Saudi government said that the Saudis were equally frustrated by the
FBI. They said the Saudis described the bureau as
high-handed in its dealings with the kingdom and reluctant to accept the
validity of evidence gathered by the Saudis suggesting that the attack was
carried out by Saudi dissidents with the help of Iran. The evidence,
they said, included videotapes of confessions by some of the suspects and
wiretaps of their conversations with other terrorists. .While U.S. officials
do not deny that the Saudi government's theory about an Iranian tie may be
correct, they say that the evidence that the Saudis have shared with them
has been inconclusive and would be of little value in a U.S. court. Freeh
once described the Saudi evidence as little more than
"hearsay." Families of the American victims of the
bombing are, for the first time, complaining openly about the slow pace of
the investigation. They say they fear that the Clinton administration has
allowed justice for their loved ones to be sacrificed to the complexities
of the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. "They let
the Saudis get away with a lot of things because of the oil," she said. "They
need to go to the Saudis and say, 'Look, we lost a lot of people, we need
your help.' But the Pentagon won't do that. They're weak." While the Defense
Department insists that it is closely monitoring the FBI investigation, it
insists that it cannot interfere in the work of criminal investigators. "We've
been very clear from the beginning: This is the FBI's job," said Ken Bacon,
the Pentagon's chief spokesman. "We don't ask the FBI to fly F-16s over Iraq
and they don't ask us to take over their investigations." The families of
the victims say the Pentagon's attitude smacks of callousness. U.S. and Saudi
investigators have attempted to maintain a facade of mutual assistance,
with periodic pledges of cooperation and occasional discussions of the case.
But Clinton administration officials say that whatever substantive cooperation
did exist between the FBI and its counterpart in Saudi Arabia is largely
over. "In the end of the day, there is a big cultural
gulf here," said a senior administration official. "Neither side has a great
deal of experience in dealing with each other in these matters. The FBI has
no history of involvement in the kingdom." The
question of Iranian involvement has greatly complicated the investigation,
especially since the United States had at one time threatened a military
strike against any foreign government involved in the 1996 attack. The Saudis
insisted early on in the case that there was an Iranian connection to the
blast and arrested dozens of Saudi dissidents, including several who had
been educated in Iran and had ties to the Lebanese militants Hezbollah, the
Iranian-backed terrorist group. Any conclusive finding that Tehran was involved
in the bombing could undermine the recent foreign-policy goals of the United
States and Saudi Arabia. Both countries have sought to improve ties to Iran
as a result of last year's election of President Mohammad Khatami, a moderate
who was spoken of his desire to end years of hostility with the United States
and Saudi Arabia. Thursday, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
said in a speech in New York that the United States hoped to establish a
framework for improved relations with Iran. "As the
wall of mistrust comes down, we can develop with the Islamic republic, when
it is ready, a road map leading to normal
relations," she said. President Clinton
called for "a genuine reconciliation" between the two countries. The Saudis
have gone much further recently in seeking an improvement in its relations
with Tehran. Last year Crown Prince Abdullah traveled to a summit meeting
of Islamic countries held in Iran, where he met with Khatami and praised
the new Iranian leader. Commercial ties between the two nations have been
restored. Yet despite the recent good will, people close to the Saudi government
say that the Saudis continue to believe that the Iranian government sponsored
Saudi dissidents who carried out the bombing. While he did not single out
Iran for blame, the Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef ibn Abdul Aziz,
said last month that "Saudi hands" had carried
out the bombing "with the support of others." People
close to the Saudi government say that the Saudis have been perplexed by
the reluctance of the FBI to accept the validity of evidence showing an Iranian
link. "You'd think that maybe this is an
investigation that the United States doesn't want
concluded," said Nathaniel Kern, an American
oil-industry consultant who is close to senior Saudi officials.
"My suspicion is that it would
be terribly difficult for the United States if the investigation concluded
that Iran was responsible for the deaths of 19 Americans. What practical
steps do you take? Do you put new sanctions on Iran? Do you bomb it?"
Maybe the U.S. Government might should ask the Taliban for some help ......
October 8, 1998 The New York
Times
The Taliban movement in Afghanistan might consider putting
Osama bin Laden on trial for a 1996 bomb attack that killed 19 American airmen
in Saudi Arabia, a leading Saudi-owned newspaper reported Wednesday. The
London-based newspaper Al Hayat - generally a reliable source on matters
involving the Saudi government - reported that the Taliban had communicated
the offer to Saudi Arabia as a good-will gesture. Saudi Arabia has never
charged bin Laden or anyone else in the 1996 bombing, and any specific American
accusations linking bin Laden to that attack have been spelled out only in
a sealed indictment. But U.S. officials have said they have learned enough
about the bombing, of an American military compound in the eastern Saudi
city of Dhahran, to regard bin Laden as a prime suspect.
But if the U.S. government doesn't want to find "concrete evidence" and it wants to have better relations with a "great civilization" that sponsors terrorism, then all bets are off .......
September 29, 1999 The Washington
Post
President Clinton last month sent a secret letter to Iranian President
Mohammed Khatemi in which he held out the prospect of better relations between
the two countries if Iran helps U.S. investigators find the culprits behind
the 1996 bombing of a U.S. military facility in Saudi Arabia, administration
officials said. ..... U.S. investigators have long suspected that Iran was
linked to the June 25, 1996, truck bombing of the Khobar Towers military
housing complex in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, which killed 19 U.S.
servicemen and wounded more than 500 other people.
At the same time, the Clinton administration is eager to explore the
possibilities for dialogue with Khatemi, a moderate cleric who was elected
in May 1997--nearly a year after the bombing took place--and has called for
better relations with the West. The request from Clinton was based in part
on intelligence reports linking the bombing to three Saudi men who have taken
refuge in Iran, a senior official said. The three men are thought to be
affiliated with a Shiite Muslim extremist group known as Saudi Hezbollah.
Shiite Muslims constitute a minority in Saudi Arabia, which is predominantly
Sunni Muslim, and many Shiites feel at least a spiritual kinship with the
Shiite clerics who rule Iran. Clinton's request to Khatemi for help on the
investigation was first reported Sept. 10 by Kuwait's al-Watan newspaper.
At the time, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin confirmed that Clinton
had indeed passed a message to Khatemi, but he declined to say how the letter
was transmitted or provide any details of its contents. Clinton's letter--his
first direct message to the Iranian government--also repeated language from
his previous public statements to the effect that Iran
and the United States are "great civilizations" that should have a natural
affinity for one another. Administration officials believe that most
Iranians have tired of the virulent anti-Western views that have characterized
Iran's foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution that deposed the
American-backed shah. They have called on Iran to begin a
government-to-government dialogue aimed at addressing, among other things,
Iran's support for Islamic fundamentalist groups opposed to the
American-sponsored Middle East peace process. Khatemi, however, is under
intense pressure from religious hard-liners and has yet to respond to
Washington's offer. U.S. officials fear that anything they say in support
of the Iranian president will be used by the conservatives to undermine his
authority in advance of crucial parliamentary elections in
February. "At least until the elections, relations
with the United States are going to be held hostage to the internal struggle,"
a U.S. official said, adding that if Khatemi's supporters do well at the
polls, he may "feel more confident to engage in a dialogue." Suspicion fell
on Saudi Shiite extremists almost immediately after the Khobar bombing.
But the FBI quickly ran into roadblocks when Saudi authorities refused to
let U.S. investigators interrogate witnesses and potential suspects; FBI
agents had to make do with the accounts of interrogations conducted by Saudi
authorities. The only break in the case came in 1997 when Canadian officials
turned over Hani Abdel Rahim Sayegh,
a Saudi dissident who fled to Canada seeking asylum.
Sayegh initially claimed to have information pointing
directly to the involvement of Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Khobar
bombing, but he later reneged on a plea agreement with the Justice Department.
He is now in deportation proceedings. After more than a year of U.S. diplomatic
protests, the Saudis relented last spring and allowed U.S. investigators
to witness interrogations of people held in relation to the Khobar bombings.
These sessions produced further indications of an Iranian role in the terrorist
attack but no concrete evidence.
The U.S. government decided to send Sayegh back to Saudi Arabia where his head could be removed while refusing to reach any "conclusions" about the Government of Iran ....
October 5, 1999 The NY Times
The Clinton Administration announced Monday that it was deporting
to Saudi Arabia a suspect in the terrorist bombing there that killed 19 American
airmen three years ago. It also said it had information concerning the possible
involvement of Iranian officials in the attack. The deportation of
Hani el-Sayegh, a Saudi Arabian dissident
who once lived in Iran, came after the Administration disclosed last week
that President Clinton had sent a letter to President Mohammad Khatami of
Iran, asking for help in finding those responsible for the bombing.
"We do have information about the involvement of Iranian
officials but have not reached the conclusion that this was directed by the
Government of Iran," a senior State Department official said Monday.
The Administration has "made it clear to Iran we want and expect its
cooperation," the official said, referring to Clinton's message to Khatami.
Until now, according to officials, the Administration
has been reluctant to acknowledge possible Iranian involvement in the attack,
in part because shortly after the bombing at the Khobar Towers apartments,
the Administration threatened to retaliate with a military attack against
any foreign government found to be responsible. A retaliatory attack against
Iran, the officials said, would not be in the interests of neighboring Saudi
Arabia, which is Washington's closest ally in the region and has markedly
improved its relations with Iran. Such retaliation is not in the interests
of the Clinton Administration, either, officials said, since Washington has
been exploring ways of trying to improve relations with Iran and the relatively
moderate Khatami. The one-page letter from Clinton, delivered through
an Omani intermediary in August, appeared to be an effort to solve the Khobar
Towers case, a move that could then help clear the way for warmer relations
with Teheran, officials said. The Iranian Government responded to Clinton
with a letter in which it denied any involvement in the Khobar bombing, an
Administration official said. In their letter, the Iranians noted that the
American Government had never brought to justice the captain of the Vincennes,
the American warship that shot down an Iranian passenger airliner by mistake
in the 1980's, the Administration official said. Law enforcement officers
have long known that several Saudi men, believed to have been trained and
possibly financed by the Iranians, fled to Iran after the bombing.
The suspects in Iran are believed to have been members
of the Saudi branch of Hezbollah, or Party of God, a terrorist group with
strong ties to Iran. In the decision to deport Sayegh back to Saudi
Arabia, Administration officials said that they did not have sufficient evidence
to prosecute him in the American court system for the attack but that the
Saudi Government believed that it had the basis for proceeding against him.
Early on, Saudi intelligence officials identified Sayegh as the driver of
a car that signaled the driver of the explosive-laden truck to the site of
the blast. The Justice Department said Sayegh, who fled to Canada after the
bombing and was arrested there, had failed to abide by an initial plea agreement
with the Justice Department. The department then terminated his parole in
October 1997 and placed him in removal proceedings. After initially suggesting
that he was involved in the case, Sayegh -- who has been described by officials
as being an opponent of the Saudi royal family -- changed his testimony.
He then insisted that he had no information on the bombing, officials said.
Sayegh has been fighting the proceedings to send him back to Saudi Arabia
on the grounds that he is in severe danger for his life if he returns to
his homeland. An Administration official said Washington had received assurances
from the Saudi Government that Sayegh would not be tortured on his return.
But there were no assurances about what would happen if he was convicted,
the official said. In its announcement of the deportation
of Sayegh, the Justice Department said the Saudi Government had several
individuals awaiting trial in the case and has "in the past demonstrated
resolve in the prosecution of terrorists."
October 12, 1999 NY Times
A Saudi who reneged on a deal to cooperate with American investigators
was deported on Sunday to Saudi Arabia to face charges of helping in an attack
that killed 19 American airmen. The Saudis suspect Mr.
Al-Sayegh of having driven a car in June
1996 that signaled an explosives-filled truck when to pull up beside the
Khobar Towers complex near Dhahran In 1996, al-Sayegh,
who had been living in Iran, moved to
Kuwait. He later went to Canada, where he cut a deal with American officials
that called for him to plead guilty in an unrelated plot against Americans
in Saudi Arabia. ... Reno allowed him into the United States solely for
prosecution under the pact. But after arriving, he said he had not understood
the accord, knew nothing about the Khobar attack and was out of Saudi Arabia
when the bombing occurred.
The CIA had reached its' own conclusions long ago ...
November 15, 1999 NEWSWEEK
As Iran's islamic leader rallied demonstrators last week against
reformist rapprochement with the United States, new
evidence emerged tying Iranian officials to the truck bomb that killed 241
U.S. marines in Beirut 16 years ago, as well as to the 1996 bombing of the
Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Assistant Secretary of State Martin
Indyk told Congress last month that while there is "information about the
involvement of some Iranian officials" in the Khobar bombing, none of it
would hold up in court. But an official with access to the material says,
"We have hard evidence on the Iranian government's
role." CIA sources say terrorists received money and passports from
Iran and that Iranian agents were casing American Facilities in 1995. Despite
the evidence, lawmakers are concerned that Iran will go
unpunished. "My big fear," says Kansas Sen. Dam Brownback,
"is we won't pursue it because of some rapprochement with
Iran."
But shortly after the Bush administration came to power the finger of blame was pointed directly at the Iranian culprit ....
February 23, 2001 Reuters
U.S. investigators have identified a senior Iranian official as one
of some two dozen suspects responsible for the 1996 bombing at the Khobar
Towers military complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen, CBS
News reported on Friday. Citing unnamed sources, CBS
said federal investigators had identified Ahmad Sherifi, a senior member
of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, as one of those responsible for planning
and carrying out the attack in Dhahran. CBS said several of the suspects
linked to the attack were believed to be in Iran. The White House
and Pentagon have been briefed on the case and when the final elements of
the investigation are complete, Attorney General John Ashcroft is expected
to present the findings to President George W. Bush, CBS reported. In January,
Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said "a handful" of Saudi nationals
had been detained for links to the bombing but that the main suspects were
still at large. "There will come a day not far away when we will say who
is behind Khobar," Nayef told a Saudi newspaper. "For the interests of the
case and the investigation there is a delay due to the presence of some strong
and important elements abroad. But we cannot specify or say who is the person
or the side behind the incident until we have all the information," he said.
The prince confirmed suspected links between Saudi dissident Hani al-Sayegh
-- extradited from the United States -- and the bombing. "He is detained
and if he was not involved he would not have been detained," Nayef
said.
June 12, 2001 CBS News
Nearly five years to the day after terrorists blew up an American
military barracks in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 servicemen, the federal government
is finally preparing to hold someone accountable. Meanwhile, accusations
are already flying that the true culprits may be getting a free ride. The
evidence Iran was behind the deaths of 19 American servicemen and the wounding
of 500 others is compelling enough to justify military retaliation —
or at least some form of diplomatic or legal action against Iran. And that
evidence has been in hand for two years, according to Pentagon officials.
Just before the five-year statue of limitations for attempted murder charges
in the Khobar Towers bombing expires, a federal grand jury in the eastern
district of Virginia next week is expected to charge 13 men, mostly Saudi
citizens, with carrying out the attack. A Lebanese chemist who allegedly
built the bomb will also be charged and sources say the indictment will be
made public, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart. And although
it will contain numerous references to Iran and its radical Revolutionary
Guard, it will not name any Iranian official as either an indicted or unindicted
co-conspirator to the attack. Such a finding appears to directly contradict
previous conclusions reached by the FBI's own investigation of the attack
and comes at a time when the U.S. is eager to improve relations with oil-rich
Iran following the re-election there last week of President Muhammed Khatami,
a political moderate. Despite statements by suspects
in Saudi Arabia that they were recruited and trained by Iran, plus substantial
physical evidence, sources say prosecutors have backed away from accusing
anyone in Tehran for planning the attack and the reason is not
clear. Law enforcement sources hint at State Department and White
House second-guessing. Others suggest the FBI's case was never strong enough.
Meanwhile, family members remain frustrated. "Every country here is dancing.
No one wants to really find out who exactly was to blame for this bombing,"
said Catherine Adams, mother of a slain service member. This would appear
to be a less-than-perfect ending for a case that has tormented the FBI. They
got little help from Saudi Arabia in the case and distrusted the Clinton
administration, which was also pursuing better relations with Iran at the
time.
Now it appears that under the Bush administration, too, Iran will escape the ultimate blame.
June 23, 2001 NY Times
The United States has never known quite what to do about Iran's role in
anti-American terrorism. From the embassy bombings and hostage taking in
Lebanon during the early 1980's to the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia
in 1996, Washington's response to evidence that Tehran was sponsoring violence
against American interests has been marked by deep ambivalence and contorted
internal debates among several generations of policy makers. To critics who
advocate a harder line toward Iran, the government's indictment of 13 Saudis
and a Lebanese in the Khobar Towers bombing, handed down Thursday, just short
of Monday's five-year anniversary of the attack, once again revealed an
American reluctance to tackle Tehran head-on on
state-sponsored terrorism. United States officials have said they
have evidence of Iranian involvement, and at a news conference announcing
the indictment, Attorney General John Ashcroft charged that Iranian officials
"inspired, supported and supervised members of Saudi Hezbollah" in the attack.
But prosecutors stopped short of bringing charges against any individual
Iranian officials. "Why haven't we been more forward leaning on Iran?"
asked one former United States official familiar with the long debate in
the government over the Khobar Towers case. "The intelligence on Iran is
pretty strong, and they could have named names of Iranian officials."
The Clinton administration was widely criticized
for its failure to pursue evidence that Iran was behind the bombing, but
now, the Bush administration has shown that same reluctance.
Prosecutors did not cite Iranian officials by name despite what
some officials said was the hope of Louis J. Freeh, the director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, that Iranian officials would be charged. Mr. Freeh,
who had taken a personal interest in the case, said on Thursday that it would
remain open, and Mr. Ashcroft made it clear that the United States would
be willing to pursue charges against Iranian officials if more evidence emerged.
The United States has often been willing to
punish lesser nations when they step over the line into support for terrorist
acts, often with less evidence of their involvement in specific acts than
was the case with the Khobar Towers bombing. The United States
bombed Libya in 1986 after it linked it to the bombing of a Berlin nightclub
that killed American soldiers. The Clinton administration launched missile
strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 after the embassy bombings
in East Africa. Yet, several administrations have hesitated to retaliate
against Iran. By 1999, the evidence linking Iran to the bombing was strong
enough so that President Clinton sent a secret letter to Iran's president,
Mohammad Khatami, asking for help in solving the Khobar case. The letter
was sent after the United States obtained convincing information that Iranian
officials were behind the attack. The letter came in the midst of Mr. Clinton's
broader efforts to reach out to Mr. Khatami and engage the reformist forces
in Iran. But the Iranians refused to help on the case. Mr. Freeh reportedly
concluded that the Clinton administration was not serious about solving the
case, and he is said to have waited until Mr. Clinton left office in order
to try to bring charges in the matter.
And so it goes .....
Strike One, Khobar Towers;
Strike Two, TWA 800;
Strike Three ......
-----------------------------------------------
Note to the reader: By November 1998 the United States had received Strike Three in Africa which finally forced it to act, though it did so without admitting the evidence surrounding Strike Two .....
November 5, 1998 The New York
Times
The following is an excerpt from the indictment returned Wednesday
in a Federal District Court in Manhattan against the Saudi exile, Osama
bin-Laden:
At all relevant times from, in or about 1989 until the date of the filing of this indictment, an international terrorist group existed which was dedicated to opposing non-Islamic governments with force and violence. This organization grew out of the "mekhtab al khidemat" (the "Services Office") organization which had maintained offices in various parts of the world, including Afghanistan, Pakistan (particularly in Peshawar) and the United States, particularly at the Alkifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. The group was founded by defendants Osama bin Laden and Muhammad Atef, a.k.a "Abu Hafs al-Masry," together with "Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri" and others. From in or about 1989 until the present, the group called itself "Al Qaeda"' ("the Base"). From 1989 until in or about 1991, the group (hereafter referred to as "Al Qaeda") was headquartered in Afghanistan and Peshawar, Pakistan. In or about 1991, the leadership of Al Qaeda, including its "emir" (or prince) defendant Osama bin Laden, relocated to Sudan. Al Qaeda was headquartered in the Sudan from approximately 1991 until approximately 1996 but still maintained offices in various parts of the world. In 1996, defendants Osama bin Laden and Muhammad Atef and other members of Al Qaeda relocated to Afghanistan. At all relevant times, Al Qaeda was led by its emir, defendant Osama bin Laden. Members of Al Qaeda pledged an oath of allegiance (called a "bayat") to defendant Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda opposed the United States for several reasons. First, the United States was regarded as an 'infidel" because it was not governed in a manner consistent with the group's extremist interpretation of Islam. Second, the United States was viewed as providing essential support for other "infidel" governments and institutions, particularly the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the nation of Israel and the United Nations organization, which were regarded as enemies of the group. Third, Al Qaeda opposed the involvement of the United States armed forces in the [Persian] gulf war in 1991 and in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1992 and 1993, which were viewed by Al Qaeda as pretextual preparations for an American occupation of Islamic countries. In particular, Al Qaeda opposes the continued presence of American military forces in Saudi Arabia (and elsewhere on the Saudi Arabian peninsula) following the gulf war. Fourth, Al Qaeda opposed the United States Government because of the arrest, conviction and imprisonment of persons belonging to Al Qaeda or its affiliated terrorist groups or with whom it worked, including Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.
One of the principal goals of Al Qaeda was to drive the United States armed forces out of Saudi Arabia (and elsewhere on the Saudi Arabian peninsula) and Somalia by violence. Members of Al Qaeda issued fatwahs (rulings of Islamic law) indicating that such attacks were both proper and necessary.
Al Qaeda functioned both on its own and through some of the terrorist organizations that operated under its umbrella, including: the Al Jihad group based in Egypt, led by, among others, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, named as a co-conspirator but not as a defendant herein; the Islamic Group (also known as "El Gamaa Islamia" or simply "Gamaa't"), led by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and later by Ahmed Refai Taha, a.k.a. "Abu Yasser al-Masri," named as co-conspirators but not as defendants herein; and a number of jihad groups.
Osama bin Laden, the defendant, and Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with representatives of the Government of Iran, and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah, for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. .
On Oct. 3 and 4, 1993, in Mogadishu, Somalia, persons who had been trained by Al Qaeda (and by trainers trained by Al Qaeda) participated in an attack on United States military personnel serving in Somalia as part of Operation Restore Hope, which resulted in the killing of 18 United States Army personnel. . . .
On at least two occasions in the period from, in or about 1992 until in or about 1995, members of Al Qaeda transported weapons and explosives from Khartoum in the Sudan to the coastal city of Port Sudan for transshipment to the Saudi Arabian peninsula. .
At various times from at least as early as 1993, Osama bin Laden, the defendant, and others known and unknown, made efforts to obtain the components of nuclear weapons. . . .
At various times from at least as early as 1993, Osama bin Laden, the defendant, and others know and unknown, made efforts to obtain the components of chemical weapons. . . .
On or about Aug. 7, 1998, in Nairobi, Kenya, and outside the jurisdiction of any particular state of district, Osama bin Laden . . . and others known and unknown . . . together with other members of Al Qaeda . . . detonated an explosive device that damaged and destroyed the United States Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and as a result of such conduct directly and proximately caused the deaths of at least 213 persons. . . .
On or about Aug. 7, 1998, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and outside the jurisdiction of any particular state of district, Osama bin Laden . . . and others known and unknown . . . together with other members of Al Qaeda . . . detonated an explosive device that damaged and destroyed the United States Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and as a result of such conduct directly and proximately caused the deaths of at least 11 persons.