Posted on 10/07/2001 6:35:54 PM PDT by Wallaby
If it was so important, and the FBI refused, why didn't she just give the statements to the defense teams?
Their own files would indict them for killing McVeigh too early and failing to act on substantive leads in the "anti-terrorism" campaign they elected to shunt instead toward measures as included in the omnibus Package for the People?
In bin Laden, President Bush and his military strategists face a foe whose stated goal is to establish a Muslim-ruled society in the Middle East. The society that bin Laden hopes to create, by eradicating current national boundaries and expelling Jews and westerners,would be a stateless theocracy ruled by a caliph, or direct successor to Muhammad as the earthly and spiritual head of Islam. Bin Laden, who is in his mid-40s, is one of 50 children of a Saudi billionaire. He has used his wealth to train and deploy a shadowy network of Islamic militants in his war against America. And he has spread destruction throughout the world, from the streets of Mogodishu to a harbor in Yemen to a U.S. base in Riyadh. Bin Laden declared his war against Jews and westerners in 1996. Two years later, he broadened his declaration - or fatwa - to include a call for Islamic faithful to kill all Americans, military or civilian. Bin Laden wasn't always at war with America. At one point, he was on the same side. Americans in the military and intelligence communities are widely thought to have helped bin Laden during the Afghani struggle against the Soviet Union from 1979 to 1989. But bin Laden - protected by a cadre of bodyguards armed with U.S.-made Stinger shoulder-fired missiles - now taunts the United States to try to stop him. From one of his hideouts in Afghanistan, bin Laden told a reporter that members of his group "have seen in the past decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier." Among the cadre of Muslim terrorists coming under the umbrella of the bin Laden organization are several people incarcerated in Colorado's federal prison complex in Florence. Ramzi Yousef, 32, the convicted mastermind of the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center, a February 1993 truck bombing that killed six and injured more than 1,000, is serving his sentence in the federal Supermax prison. Yousef was captured in 1995 in Pakistan in a safehouse linked to bin Laden. He had received money from a bin Laden relative. Prison officials denied the Rocky Mountain News' request to visit Yousef. Federal investigators interviewed Yousef this week about the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., but apparently learned nothing useful. Bin Laden, who the state department says was born sometime near 1955, heads a terrorism network called al-Qaida, Arabic for "The Base." Al-Qaida serves as a clearinghouse of sorts for a broad range of terrorism cells, all Islamic, in as many as 34 countries, according to terrorism researchers. Up to 24 separate terrorist organizations are associated with al-Qaida, all operating in their own strictly secret environment and isolated from each other. Even cells within the organizations operate without direct contact with the others in order to cut down the chances for infiltration. Al-Qaida in turn is part of a larger group in which bin Laden shares leadership. That group - The World Islamic Front for the Struggle Against the Jews and the Crusaders - serves as an umbrella organization covering several radical Islamic movements. Said to control $300 million from family businesses, bin Laden's biography is shot through with holes and contradictions. |
This much is clear: He was one of dozens of children of Saudi construction billionare Muhannad bin Laden. Some accounts have him living an ordinary life until the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Other accounts have him partying hard in Beirut until that city was engulfed in civil war in the mid-1970s. Whatever the case, the Afghan war with the USSR turned bin Laden into a hard and dangerous man. He established a recruiting outfit called Maktab al-Khidamat, or Services Office. It helped to build infrastructure in Afghani-held areas, and brought the Islamic faithful from many lands - including the U.S. - to be fighters against the Soviets. And that might not have been his only connection to the U.S. Bin Laden received training and resources from the CIA, which poured more than $3 billion into the effort to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan, according to the New York Times and the BBC. The Soviet Union broke apart later, a process bin Laden believes will happen to U.S. global interests as well. Bin Laden formed al-Qaida in 1988 from the remnants of the Afghani resistance fighters. He also ran the Jihad Committee, a body that the state department says includes the Egyptian Islamic Group, the Jihad Organization in Yemen, the Pakistani al-Hadith group, the Lebanese Partisans League, the Libyan Islamic Group, Bayt al-Imam Group in Jordan and the Islamic Group in Algeria. Returning to Saudi Arabia following the Afghan war, bin Laden was outraged because the regime had hosted U.S. troops during the war. Under western pressure, bin Laden was forced out, disowned by many in his large extended family, and relocated to the Sudan in 1991. The Saudi government stripped him of citizenship in 1994, accusing him of supporting terrorists. Taking his wives and a band of about 200 followers, bin Laden set up companies and agricultural businesses in Khartoum, Afghanistan. Some of the bin Laden factories helped provide work for the unemployed from the Afghan war. He imported heavy equipment to build infrastructure for Sudan as well as training camps for Afghan vets. In the Sudan, bin Laden owned a sunflower plantation, a bank, a goat skin factory, a construction company and an international trading business. His construction company helped to build an airport at Port Sudan and a 750-mile highway from Khartoum to Port Sudan. In 1996, under increasing U.S. pressure on the Sudanese government, bin Laden moved to Afghanistan with his organization. Despite his wealth, bin Laden sometimes lives in an Afghani cave and eats gritty bread, cheese and tea. Even so, visitors report that he directs al-Qaida's activities through laptop computers, e-mail, satellite telephones and other modern technologies. The coordination extends from attacks in New York to Mindanao Island in the Philippines, where Muslim fighters in groups such as the Abu Sayyaf Group seek independence from Manila. It was in Davao, Mindanao, in 1992 that an Abu Sayyaf infiltrator for the Filipino government claimed that an "American farmer" met with Abu Sayyaf and Ramzi Yousef to discuss terrorism against the U.S. The infiltrator, a Filipino agent named Edwin Angeles, later said he believed it was Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, who visited the Philippines several times and married a Filipina. Nichols' attorneys called the report worthless, dredged up by bomber Timothy McVeigh's defense team to deflect blame. Nevertheless, it is known that Nichols was in his wife's hometown of Cebu City in late 1992 when Yousef flew there from Manila and planted a liquid chemical bomb under a passenger seat in a Philippines Airlines 747 bound for Tokyo. The bomb went off enroute to Japan and killed a Japanese man seated there. The plane landed safely. U.S. authorities claimed during Yousef's trial that it was part of the planning for an ambitious conspiracy to blow a dozen American jumbo jets out of the skies on the same day. |
The clinton years were unspeakably horrible--not just for what clinton did, but for what the media and the politicians were willing to defend, and the voters to vote for.
Pray God it never happens again.
TERROR LINKED TO BIN LADEN
1992: Three bombings in Yemen targeting U.S. troops.
1993: World Trade Center truck bombing, killing six and injuring 1,000.
1993: 18 U.S. soldiers killed, their bodies dragged through the streets.* Mogadishu, Somalia.
1994: Plot to kill Pope John Paul II in the Philippines.
1994: Conspiracy to bomb 12 U.S. jets simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean.
1995: Bombing of U.S. training mission in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five Americans.
1995: Attempted assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
1995: Plot to kill President Clinton during his visit to Phillipines.
1996: Truck bombing at U.S. base in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia kills 19 soldiers.
1998: Attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania kill at least 301 and injure more than 5,000.
1999: Plot to attack U.S. and Israeli tourists in Jordan for millennium celebrations.
2000: Suicide bomb attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39.
INFOBOX (2)
What drives terrorists?
A fundamental belief that the Muslim world is being desecrated by governments of the U.S. and Israel, and even Muslim states such as Egypt and Jordan. While the roots can be traced to perceived slights dating to the 12th century, resolve was solidified by events of the 1970s: growing Western economic influence in the Mideast; Israeli military triumphs, and U.S. pro-Israeli support; and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
Terrorist leader Osama bin Laden is particularly incensed by the presence of American troops in Saudia Arabia, a Muslim holy place and the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad.
An all-consuming goal to establish a pan-Islamic religious movement and to expel from Muslim areas Westerners, non-Muslims and Muslim leaders believed to have deviated from fundamental Muslim beliefs.
A religious fervor that supercedes all concerns, including political. Many terrorists come from villages torn by religious violence. Retribution provides a cause that gives clarity and purpose, according to international experts.
That suggestion by Timothy McVeigh's defense team could be raised in the weeks leading up to Nichols trial, expected to begin in Denver after Labor Day. McVeigh's defense tried to build a case that he was a fall guy for international terrorists. But Denver U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch barred such testimony from his trial, which ended Friday in a death sentence for the convicted Oklahoma City bomber. The murky questions of Nichols' travels to the Philippines - and whom he met with there - are not expected to become a major part of his trial.
|
For prosecutors, it opens a dark area in which the answers aren't yet clear. For the defense, it would drag Nichols deeper into allegations of a broad conspiracy. Nichols' attorneys have said their client's only overseas link is his search for a mail-order bride in the Philippines. But McVeigh investigators turned up an alleged statement from Edwin Angeles, a jailed Filipino terrorist, that he met Nichols in 1992 or early 1993 at a meeting on the island of Mindanao. Also at the meeting, Angeles said, was Ramzi Yousef, the accused mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing. Angeles claimed the meeting centered on bombing activities, providing firearms and ammunition and training in bomb making, McVeigh's lawyers told the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in March. Abdul Hakim Murad, Yousef's co-defendant in an airline bombing conspiracy trial in New York last year, allegedly told a jail guard on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing that the ''Liberation Army'' was responsible for it. Investigators for McVeigh also claimed to have information that an arms dealer for the Moro National Liberation Front had visited Nichols in the Philippines. The Moro front is seeking autonomy for Mindanao under an Islamic government. McVeigh's defense also noted that Nichols telephoned two members of the anti-government group Posse Comitatus in Kansas in 1994. Members of that group had traveled to New York and met with an Iraqi diplomat around the time of the Gulf War in 1991. The McVeigh defense wanted to build a case that the bombing could have been sponsored by a foreign state, possibly Iraq. Dennis Mahon, an Oklahoma racist named by an informant as having discussed blowing up federal buildings before the bombing, admitted receiving regular payments from Iraqi sources for about four years. The payments ended a month after the bombing. Nichols' attorney, Michael Tigar, has scoffed at any attempts to tie his client to the shadowy underground of terrorists hinted at by McVeigh's team. |
But McVeigh investigators turned up an alleged statement from Edwin Angeles, a jailed Filipino terrorist, that he met Nichols in 1992 or early 1993 at a meeting on the island of Mindanao. Also at the meeting, Angeles said, was Ramzi Yousef, the accused mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing.Angeles claimed the meeting centered on bombing activities, providing firearms and ammunition and training in bomb making, McVeigh's lawyers told the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in March.
PHILIPPINES
ZAMBOANGA -- Edwin Angeles, a former leader of the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf who later became a government spy, was killed by a lone gunman in the southern Philippines, police said.
The Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT)
January 15, 1999, Friday
WIRE; Pg. A04
We'll do the Bloodhound thing again once we can rustle up a link to Osama, I guess.
I've got news for you. We now live in the post-September 11 world. Now the nuts are the ones who deny there are conspiracies.
LOL!
In virtually every case, the real truth is distinguished by two common themes...
1) It usually occupies a middle ground, somewhere between the most outrageous conspiracy theories and the moronic drivel that's spoon-fed to the public by the various powers that be.
And,
2) It seldom sees the light of day before decades have passed.
Hey A5. I was just going to check how I did text boxes on "Is the Blood Trade Responsible for the Origin of Aids?" and it is 404'd again. What gives?
7 Posted on 10/07/2001 18:48:56 PDT by Wallaby
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