Posted on 01/06/2007 3:30:50 PM PST by haole
The House International Relations committee issued a report last week criticizing the FBI's investigation of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. The FBI failed to pursue credible information that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had help, the committee said. The FBI shouldn't have abandoned its search for John Doe No. 2, the committee said. Jayna Davis, then a reporter for a television station in Oklahoma City, said she found at least 20 witnesses who identified Hussain al-Hussaini, a former Iraqi soldier, as the man they saw with Timothy McVeigh. And the FBI should have investigated more thoroughly contacts between Mr. McVeigh and Andreas Strassmeir, a German national who was a paramilitary instructor at Elo him City, a neo-Nazi compound near the Arkansas border, the committee said. The FBI says its investigation was exhaustive, but the discovery just two years ago of a large cache of explosives in a house in which Mr. Nichols lived (and which the FBI had searched) casts some doubt on that claim. Investigative reporter Peter Lance has just completed his third book describing FBI blunders (or worse) in the war on terror. In his first, "A Thousand Years for Revenge," Mr. Lance showed how the 1993 World Trade Center bombing could have been prevented were it not for negligence by senior FBI officials in New York, and how the FBI had been informed in 1995 of al-Qaida's plans to use airplanes to attack American landmarks.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Mr. Lance, who has won five Emmys, is a better reporter than he is a writer. Reading one of his books is like panning for gold: You've got to sift through a lot of silt to get to the nuggets. For me, the most valuable nuggets in "Triple Cross" are the additional details Mr. Lance provides on the scoops in his earlier books. On July 17, 1996, TWA 800 disintegrated over Long Island Sound. The FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the crash was caused by the accidental explosion of the center wing fuel tank. What the 270 witnesses who thought they saw a surface-to-air missile streaking toward the aircraft before the explosion actually saw was a "zoom climb" by the damaged aircraft after its nose had been blown off, the FBI and NTSB said. Former airline pilot Ray Lahr considers this improbable: "Such a steep climb is much beyond the capabilities of the engines alone on a large transport aircraft," he said. Last month a federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the FBI and the NTSB to turn over to Mr. Lahr documents they'd been trying to keep from him. The case Mr. Lahr presented was sufficiently strong "to proceed based on his claim the government acted improperly," the judge said. The most startling thing reported by Mr. Scarpa was that al-Qaida operative Ramzi Yousef, who was in a cell next to him in prison, claimed that he had arranged to have TWA 800 destroyed. Mr. Yousef was about to go on trial for plotting to blow up a dozen airliners in Asia and wanted a mistrial declared. Minutes after TWA 800's destruction, Mr. Yousef made a brief telephone call in his native language of Baluch, according to Mr. Lance and Jack Cashill, who wrote a book about TWA 800. It was translated by the National Security Agency: "What had to be done has been done. TWA 800 (last two words unintelligible)." If what Mr. Lance says is true — if only a small fraction of what Mr. Lance says is true — the best that can be said of the FBI is that it has been grossly negligent. A story in the New York Sun Wednesday also does not inspire confidence in the bureau. According to an FBI court filing, the files in 22 of 94 investigations into leaks of classified information are missing. "Knowing what I know, I can confidently say that until the investigative responsibilities for terrorism are removed from the FBI, I won't feel safe," said former FBI agent Robert Wright in June 2001. Reading Mr. Lance's book won't make him feel any safer. To those who never believed the coverup of what really happened to TWA800, the many article in Free Republic which dissed the "lone bomber" theory of OK city, etc. http://jewishworldreview.com/0107/jkelly010207.php3
The neutered and sanitized FBI of the middle 1990's was not an effective fact-finding agency, and what few leads they had at the time could not be adequately pursued, as they led to persons and organizations beyond the assigned duties and jurisdiction of the FBI as it then existed.
And it all keeps on circling back to the same set of circumstances.
--they have purportedly been investigating election irregularities in Nye County, Nevada for at least six years now--must have the same crack team on the case as the one that "got" Richard Jewell ---
I did not read "Against All Enemies" Mr. Richard Clarke's book but I swear that I believe the people who did read it and report that he boasted of the "exit strategy" from TWA 800. He boasted of creating the exploding-fuel-tank theory and he tells of efforts to convince the NTSB of the theory.
Why all this? Some say that "the political people did not want to face the consequences of terrorism." That could have been war with Iran.
Was Clarke alone?
Some, including Mr. Lance, report that in an August meeting Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick got the "word" to key TWA 800 investigator, the FBI's Jim Kallstrom. Kallstrom apparently changed his focus from explosive device to accident. The mainstream media followed close behind. Thus, all in the Clinton administration and the MSM were singing that nasty ol' center fuel tank done it.
I don't think that Mr. Lance included the Clarke information in his book.
Mr. Lance has done a hell of a job and is a brave patriot. He has ventured into some really dangerous territory and America benefits.
However had TWA 800 happened during a "Bush nn" term, I've heard too many of his interviews and really believe that if Clarke was a "Bush nn" man Lance would have included Clarke's role. Also, Gorelick would be mentioned by name but Lance would have made sure that she was associated to "Bush nn;" "President Clinton" on the other hand routinely gets a pass during his interviews. "Bush 41" and "Bush 43" catch hell.
The OKC bombing and TWA 800 didn't involve FBI bumbling, they both involved deliberate FBI coverups.
I remember the news conference where Kallstrom "changed" his opinion. In my estimation, it was not his opinion that changed...it was only what he told the press that changed.
Kallstrom was clearly under trememdous pressure to cover up the truth of TWA 800....you didn't have to be a Psych major to read it in his face!!! It was all but patently obvious that he had been ordered what to say.
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