Posted on 09/13/2003 11:42:09 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
CONSPIRACY? Oklahoma City Cover-Up: The Iraq Connection
By Dale Hurd
CBN News Sr. Reporter
There are several possible explanations for what is either the government's lack of interest or a cover-up.
CBN.com – OKLAHOMA CITY — Before 9-11, it was the worst act of terrorism ever committed on American soil. The Oklahoma City bombing has been portrayed as an attack by Americans Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols against their fellow Americans. But that was never the whole story.
There is strong evidence that McVeigh and Nichols were only two members of a broad conspiracy, one that included other white supremacists and possibly Iraqi agents. But what has always been puzzling has been the government's lack of interest in pursuing other suspects.
The execution of Timothy McVeigh helped bring a feeling of closure to the family and friends of the 168 people killed in 1995 in the Oklahoma City bombing. But McVeigh's lawyer, Stephen Jones, cautions that if the government thinks it convicted the chief suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing, it got the wrong man.
"I believe Timothy McVeigh's role in the Oklahoma City bombing was a very minor one," Jones said. "A member of the conspiracy? Yes. The leader? No. The financier? No. The organizer? No. Timothy McVeigh saw his role as the cover for everybody else, to be the person to fall on the sword. It served deep-seated emotional needs that he had, and it furthered the role of the conspiracy."
Ever since the McVeigh trial, Jones has accused the federal government of a cover-up, and indeed, the government was found to have withheld 4,000 pages of evidence during the McVeigh trial.
Jones' book, Others Unknown refers to the other suspects the government stopped pursuing. Several witnesses saw McVeigh with other men up to and after the Oklahoma City bombing. John Doe #2 was described as dark complected. Some said he looked Hispanic. Some said Arab.
Rodney Johnson had to swerve his truck to avoid hitting McVeigh and John Doe #2 as they crossed the street right before the bombing. "Timothy McVeigh was in the lead, and John Doe #2 was right behind him — a dark skinned, possibly Mexican American, possibly native American, some people say, but dark skinned," Johnson recalled.
Shortly after the Murrah Federal Building was blown up, the FBI issued an all points bulletin for Middle Eastern suspects, but then within hours the manhunt was called off. The Justice Department was no longer interested in a Middle East connection. But it goes further than that.
In the months and years that followed, it certainly seemed as if the Justice Department did not want there to be any other suspects, Middle Eastern or otherwise. In the trial of Timothy McVeigh, the government did not call a single witness who could place McVeigh at the scene of the crime, presumably because each one of those witnesses would also testify that they saw McVeigh with other suspects. Eyewitnesses complained that in some cases, FBI agents were not interested in their accounts of John Doe #2.
Debbie Nakanashi, who is considered an important witness, said, "At first they were very excited with what we had to tell them. They brought in a sketch artist, Jeannie, I can't remember her last name, Boylan, who worked with me. And they were very excited with what I had to say. As the months went by, however, their attitude gradually changed to a point where I felt they were just kind of like, the last time I saw them it was like they were just cleaning up a little mess, there, you know."
Oklahoma police sergeant Don Browning said that on the day of the bombing, while rescue efforts were still going on, he saw FBI agents in blue raid jackets using tall ladders to remove all the surveillance cameras from the remains of the Murrah building. None of that video, which might reveal the identity of at least one of McVeigh's co-conspirators, has ever been released, except one tape showing only the Ryder truck.
Former Oklahoma State Representative Charles Key said, "There's at least a total of, according to a court document, 22 different surveillance videos. Why don't they release those videos and let the people see what those videos show? I mean they surely would clear up who and how many and what nationality some of these John Does are, and the Justice Department has continued to fight every effort to release those surveillance videos."
There are several possible explanations for what is either the government's lack of interest or a cover-up. One is that the Clinton administration wanted a simple open and shut case that would lead to a speedy execution.
Others believe the pursuit of other suspects would have revealed how badly the government bungled the investigation, or might have showed that the government could have prevented the bombing.
Federal informant Carol Howe had warned the government that a federal building would be bombed. And on the morning of the bombing, witnesses saw a bomb squad in the vicinity of the Murrah building.
And there are new questions about the government's failure or unwillingness to establish a Middle Eastern connection to the bombing, despite a sizeable amount of clues. An FBI report says that on the day of the bombing, then CIA counter-terrorism official Vincent Cannistraro took a call from Saudi Arabia.
Stephen Jones said, "He received a telephone call from a credible source, high up in Saudi intelligence. A person with some responsibility for protecting the Saudi royal family advised him that the work of the bombing was the work of four or five agents, recruited by Iraq, but who did not know they were working for Iraq, who were in this country."
Last October, Senator Arlen Spector sent FBI chief Robert Mueller a letter complaining that the FBI and the Justice Department were stonewalling his efforts to look into an Iraqi connection.
Congressman Dan Burton, chairman of the Government Reform Committee, has reportedly subpoenaed Naval intelligence for a photograph or video believed to show McVeigh and John Doe #2 getting out of the Ryder truck before the bombing.
Last year, a group of relatives of the victims filed suit against Iraq for involvement in the attack. They link Iraq through Muslim extremists in the Philippines.
In the time before the bombing, Terry Nichols made several trips and phone calls to Cebu City, the Philippines. The plaintiffs allege that Nichols met with members of the Abu Sayyaf terror group, but most importantly with Ramzi Youssef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, in which the bomb and the method used were almost identical to the Oklahoma City bombing.
"We have proof from a previous case that Ramzi Youssef was an agent of Iraq," said Mike Johnston, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the suit against Iraq.
And Johnston says the Iraq connection is solid. "I think the strongest piece of evidence is the absolute, incriminating pattern of telephone calls, made by Terry Nichols and others to the Philippines leading up to bombing. It is apparent that both Nichols and some other individual or individuals were checking on and receiving instructions from the Philippines via phone in the critical time leading up to the April 19th bombing."
Stephen Jones says there is no doubt Nichols, who was married to a Filipino, met with Youssef in the Philippines. "His own father in law, who is a Philippine policeman, said to us and to the Philippine police that he found books on explosives and bomb making in Terry Nichols' luggage at the house. Why would Terry Nichols carry books on and explosives and bomb making to the Philippines?"
The suit also alleges a name and a face for John Doe #2. The alleged name is Hussein Al-Husseini, a former Iraqi soldier who witnesses have sworn was with Timothy McVeigh. When Al-Husseini was first named by an Oklahoma City reporter, he sued for libel, and lost.
Johnston said, "Mr. Al-Husseini failed to provide any cognizable response or plausible explanation in opposition to the circumstantial evidence that he was John Doe #2. We think the circumstantial evidence, the physical similarities, the lack of an alibi, indicate to me that we can prove in a legal context, more probably true than not, that the individual we name in our complaint is John Doe #2."
Mr. Al-Husseini's whereabouts are not known, and his attorney did not return our call.
While Jones is unsure about an Iraqi connection to the Oklahoma City bombing, he says McVeigh was very sympathetic to Iraq.
"I can talk about it now, since he's waived attorney client privilege. He thought the United States policy against Saddam Hussein was wrong, that he'd been used, these were innocent people over there, it was a poor country and we were fighting the wrong enemy," Jones said.
It is still up to the United States government to tell what it knows. The FBI has said it is "unaware of any foreign terrorist connection."
Jones says that when he accepted Timothy McVeigh as his client, he received what would be a prophetic warning from McVeigh's first attorney.
"She said to me, when you know what I know, you will never think of the United States of America again in the same way. I learned that government law enforcement agents will do, at the direction of their political masters, whatever it takes to see that their instructions are followed...destroy evidence, withhold evidence, lie. They will do it. They did do it," Jones recalled.
The question remains...why would they do it?
Charles Key said, "You're trying to get your government to do the right thing, to just tell the truth. To just pursue those people who were involved and let the chips fall where they may."
The Oklahoma City bombing case is not closed. Suspects are still at large. The government may even know their identities. It may also know they have Middle East connections. But for whatever reason, the government is not interested.
No, because it doesn't help the prosecution or the defense.
The prosecutors do not like it because it complicates the question of mens rea. If it's introduced, and the jury doesn't accept this evidence as being valid, then it can be grounds for "reasonable doubt" and the accused beating the charge.
The defense isn't going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. If THEY introduce it, they will basically state that the defendant is guilty as sin. That's NOT how to win an acquittal.
I totally agree.
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