Posted on 10/07/2001 6:35:54 PM PDT by Wallaby
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
HEARTLAND CONSPIRACY JIM CROGAN LA Weekly; News; Pg. 15 September 28, 2001, Friday
It is obvious material for conspiracy buffs: Did Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols really act alone, or was some larger terrorist outfit behind the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building?
In Oklahoma City, an investigative reporter began asking the question long before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Jayna Davis, in a series that aired on KFOR-TV in 1995, examined the possible existence of John Doe No. 2, a man witnesses saw with McVeigh outside the federal building moments before the bomb went off, killing 168 people. Her reports also raised questions about the purpose of several trips Nichols made to the Philippines, into areas in which terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden were known to hide out. Davis herself no longer freely talks about her work. She has been sued by a subject of her reports and advised by her attorneys not to grant interviews. Earlier this year, however, she appeared on Fox Network's The O'Reilly Factor and spoke at length about her investigation: "And what we discovered, an intelligence source at one of the highest levels in the federal government later confirmed, was a Middle Eastern terrorist cell living and operating in the heart of Oklahoma City . . . We have (22) sworn witness affidavits that tie seven to eight Arab men to various stages of the bombing plot . . . It really is a foreign conspiracy masterminded and funded by Osama bin Laden, according to my intelligence sources."
According to a motion filed by McVeigh's defense team, an American fitting Nichols' description met with Yousef in 1992 or 1993 in the Philippines.
McVeigh went to his grave denying any foreign involvement in the bombing. His accomplice, Terry Nichols, swore they acted alone, and no proof of a wider plot ever surfaced.
The arrests of McVeigh and Nichols came quickly and closed the case for many. Less than two hours after the bombing, a state trooper stopped McVeigh's 1977 Mercury Marquis 80 miles from Oklahoma City because it was missing a license plate. Two days later, Nichols, who was at his Kansas farm on the day of the bombing, surrendered to police.
Minutes after the bombing, however, police radios carried a description of a brown Chevrolet pickup with "two Middle Eastern men" inside seen speeding away from the federal complex. A short time later and without explanation, police withdrew the all-points bulletin. The mystery over the truck became the starting point for Davis' investigation.
Davis found people in Oklahoma City who said they remembered seeing McVeigh meet with several men they describe as Middle Eastern in the months before the bombing. She also uncovered confidential warnings that a congressional task force issued about a possible Islamic-fundamentalist terror attack on "America's heartland" one month before the Oklahoma bombing.
Davis, in her early reports, makes it clear she is not certain of a connection between McVeigh and any terrorist group. And certainly witnesses were primed to view anyone who looked suspicious as "Middle Eastern" in the hours right after the bombing. What Davis wants, she said, is a full federal inquiry into the matter. One big-name lawyer trying to get such an investigation rolling is David Schippers, former chief counsel to the House of Representatives managers who conducted Bill Clinton's impeachment trial. "I've been practicing law for 40 years, and I know what bullshit is," said Schippers. "Jayna gave me a stack of affidavits, signed by credible witnesses, connecting McVeigh to Middle Easterners living in Oklahoma City. She also gave me a ton of supporting documents. I've reviewed this material, and I'm convinced there are solid leads here that need to be investigated."
Schippers said he is trying to get the material to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. "I made some calls, but no one would give me the time of day," he said. "I tried like hell to get to Ashcroft, but I just couldn't break through." He said he has not given up, but would not disclose his plans to get a full airing for Davis' findings.
The reports, which aired on KFOR in the months after the Oklahoma City bombing, are based on witness statements, court records, government documents and unnamed sources. A federal court order dismissing a lawsuit filed against Davis mentioned several of her findings, which include:
- A brown Chevrolet truck similar to one seen leaving the federal building had been parked a few weeks earlier -- twice, in fact -- at Samara Properties, according to two employees at the Oklahoma City property-management company owned by Dr. Samir Khalil. In 1991, Khalil pleaded guilty to insurance fraud and spent eight months in federal prison. According to court documents, Khalil denied FBI allegations that linked him to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Six months before the bombing, Khalil had hired a group of Iraqis for painting and construction work. On the day of the bombing, a former co-worker told Davis they reacted to the news with unrestrained joy. "They even praised Saddam Hussein, vowing to die in his service," a source stated in an affidavit. On April 27, police found a Chevrolet pickup abandoned at an apartment complex in Oklahoma City, stripped of its license plate, inspection tag and other identifying numbers. It had been painted yellow, though it was clear its original color was brown. One resident told Dallas FBI Agent Jim Ellis that the driver was "clean-shaven, with an olive complexion, dark wavy hair, and broad shoulders," in his late 20s or early 30s, and of Middle Eastern descent. The resident also identified him as a Samara employee from KFOR's pictures.
- An FBI sketch of John Doe No. 2 resembled a Samara employee who described himself as a political refugee who had served in the Iraqi army. The TV station did not name him and digitized his photos to hide his identity. Later, Hussain Al-Hussaini came forward and said he was the man identified by several witnesses as possibly being John Doe No. 2, and sued the station and Davis for defamation and libel, saying he could be easily recognized from their coverage. (Al-Hussaini withdrew the state case, and a federal judge dismissed a second case; Al-Hussaini has appealed.)
- In an affidavit, a waitress said McVeigh and someone resembling Al-Hussaini came into her bar on April 15. The waitress said the man she had identified from a KFOR photo lineup "asked me if I was married. He spoke with an accent . . . a Middle Eastern accent." She also said the FBI had interviewed her, and showed her photos and sketches of possible suspects. The photos were presumably taken from surveillance cameras near the Murrah Building. The FBI took possession of videos recorded by those cameras on April 19, and has refused to release them.
- In an affidavit, Mike Moroz, a worker at Johnny's Tire Service, a few blocks from the Murrah Building, said that at about 8:30 a.m. on April 19, the day of the bombing, McVeigh pulled up in his Ryder truck and asked for directions. He insisted there was another man sitting in the truck cab. Moroz told Davis he had picked McVeigh out of a live FBI lineup. He also said Al-Hussaini, as shown in one of KFOR's surveillance photos, could have been the man he saw.
- A patron at the Social Security office at the Murrah Building, who was wounded in the blast, told Davis she was standing 12 feet away when the Ryder truck pulled up. She said she saw McVeigh and a "foreign-looking man with an olive complexion and thick black curly hair poking out of a ball cap" get out of the truck. She also gave this information to the FBI, even describing the insignia on the cap of the person with McVeigh. She identified him as possibly being Al-Hussaini from KFOR's photos.
- Employees and guests at a motel near downtown Oklahoma City reported seeing McVeigh with several Middle Eastern men in the months before the bombing. One of those men was identified from KFOR's surveillance photos of Samara Properties as possibly being Al-Hussaini. The others were identified as fellow employees of Al-Hussaini. McVeigh reportedly stayed at the motel, under the name of Bob Kling, an alias he had used before, according to the FBI. The witnesses said they had often seen several of the men moving large barrels around in the back of an old white truck that frequently broke down on the lot. The barrels smelled of diesel, they said, an ingredient in the bomb that destroyed the federal building. According to an FBI report, an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent confiscated the motel's registration records and logs.
- In a hidden-camera interview, Terry Nichols' ex-wife told of his trips to the Philippines. "Tim bought Terry the first ticket for the Philippines" in 1989, she said. Nichols, who eventually married a woman from Cebu City, traveled, often without his new wife, back and forth to the Philippines, considered by some a hotbed for terrorist activity. His last visit came in November 1994. Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted of masterminding the 1993 Trade Center bombing and a plot to blow up U.S. airliners, operated out of Mindanao and Manila; Yousef received funding from Osama bin Laden; and, according to a motion filed by McVeigh's defense team, an American fitting Nichols' description met with Yousef in 1992 or 1993 in the Philippines.
- Yossef Bodansky, the executive director of the U.S. House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, told Davis that terrorist organizations linked to Iran and Syria had been talking about a U.S. terror campaign since late 1994. The task force issued the first of several confidential warnings to federal agencies on February 27, 1995. It said that "Striking inside the U.S. is presently a high priority of Tehran" and went on to warn of attacks on "airports, airlines, telephone systems etc." An update, issued on March 3, 1995, said there was a "greater likelihood that the terrorists would strike at the heart of the U.S." Israeli intelligence sources warned one month before the Oklahoma City bombing that an impending terrorist attack would use "lily whites," which, Bodansky explained, are "people without any distinct background, record of any kind . . . who will never be suspected members of a terrorist group."
It is not clear how or whether all of this adds up. Davis has struggled to get the results of her investigation to the public. Twice, she has been sued for libel and defamation, in state and federal courts, by Al-Hussaini, who stepped forward on June 15, 1995, and said that he was living in fear since KFOR and Davis fingered him. He said he was at work when the bombing occurred and denied knowing McVeigh. The federal judge who dismissed his lawsuit said Al-Hussaini's claim that he was at work at the time of the bombing was false.
Nineteen months after Al-Hussaini sued in state court, he dropped his lawsuit. Davis said the legal pressure led KFOR to halt airing new material from her bombing investigation. In 1996, Palmer Communications sold the station to the New York Times Co., which was not interested in pursuing the story, Davis said. On March 3, 1997, she resigned.
In September 1997, Davis was subpoenaed by the Oklahoma County grand jury, which was looking into the possibility of conspirators in the bombing. Davis gave the jury all of her witness statements. The next day, Al-Hussaini refiled his libel suit in federal court, and two months later, it was dismissed. U.S. District Judge Tim Leonard said that Davis' reports are either true or statements of opinion. Al-Hussaini appealed, and a hearing was held this month, but no ruling has been made.
For years, the FBI has refused to comment on Davis' report. This week, the response was no different when the agency was contacted by the L.A. Weekly. Davis has tried twice, with the permission of her sources, to deliver the 22 witness affidavits to the FBI office in Oklahoma City. In 1997, agents said her lawyers needed to first contact federal prosecutors. Her attorney, Tim McCoy, said federal prosecutors rejected the offer, saying they would have to release the documents to McVeigh's and Nichols' defense teams if they accepted them. In 1999, Davis and another attorney who represented her, Dan Nelson, met with Agent Dan Vogel and got him to accept the documents. He, in turn, gave them to the FBI task force investigating the bombing. "However, I was told we gave the affidavits back to her because there was some question of ownership -- whether she or KFOR had legal rights to the material," said Vogel, who has since retired. Asked whether he thought it was odd that the FBI would reject potential leads, Vogel would only say, "That was a decision made by people above me."
Davis can't figure out why the FBI refuses to examine her material. "They had hundreds of agents on this case," Davis told Bill O'Reilly. "Why wouldn't they want to take information from a reporter who had sworn witness statements implicating . . . others in the Oklahoma City bombing?"
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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