Posted on 11/23/2002 12:09:30 AM PST by flamefront
FBI manhunt for foreign terrorists
On April 19, 1995, I was working as an investigative reporter for the NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City, KFOR-TV and was one of the first journalists to broadcast to an international audience what Americans never expected to hear: an enormous truck bomb rocked the heartland.
The FBI immediately launched an international pursuit of several Middle Eastern looking males who were seen fleeing the Murrah Building in a brown Chevy pickup just moments before the blast. Within hours and without explanation, federal agents instructed Oklahoma County law enforcement officials to cancel the all-points-bulletin issued that morning for foreign terrorists.
However, the FBI apparently continued to aggressively seek Middle Eastern suspects. Agents detained and interrogated several Pakistanis nationals, originally from Dallas and New York, whom were spotted by an Oklahoma Highway Patrolman in Oklahoma City one hour before the bombing. The license plate on their GM Blazer had been switched from a rental car they leased at Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport the day before.
On the afternoon of April 19, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol issued an all-points-bulletin for three Middle Eastern subjects in the GM Blazer. Shortly thereafter, the men were caught and questioned, then subsequently released. Their presence in Oklahoma City and the reason for the switched plate on their vehicle were never satisfactorily explained.
Within 48 hours, the focus of the investigation shifted from the Middle East to homegrown terrorism. The FBI had two suspects in custody, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Both were publicly labeled as disgruntled army veterans who were motivated by anti-government views.
However, the arrests of American citizens did not dissuade the federal government from employing precautionary measures to guard against further strikes by Middle Eastern terrorists. According to a Department of Defense memorandum, the FBI director contacted the defense secretary and requested that the Army Arabic linguists monitor live wiretaps in real time of "radical fundamentalist Islamic organizations" operating in several major U.S. cities. This unique correspondence was initiated in an effort to "protect the President from possible attack during his attendance of the memorial service in Oklahoma City on Sunday, April 23."
The specter of "others unknown"
When the federal grand jury issued the official indictment of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, it concluded they acted with "others unknown." Several members of the Denver juries who convicted the two Oklahoma City bombers candidly expressed their strongly held belief that after months of examining every facet of the government's evidence, they determined the April 19 bombing involved more than those who had been arrested and charged.
Lead defense counsel for McVeigh's federal trial, Stephen Jones, disclosed the American terrorist failed a polygraph examination when he denied that several unidentified conspirators aided and abetted in the construction of the truck bomb. "I believe Timothy McVeigh's role in the Oklahoma City bombing was a very minor one," Jones postulated in a nationally televised interview. "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."
When sentencing Terry Nichols to life behind bars, U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch remarked, "It would be disappointing for me if the law enforcement agencies of the United States government have quit looking for answers."
Driven by a belief that federal prosecutors presented only a partial picture of the events of April 19, an Oklahoma state legislator spearheaded a citizens' petition drive to seat a grand jury to probe further into the looming presence of un-indicted conspirators. In December 1998, after eighteen months of research and examination of 117 witnesses, the Oklahoma County grand jury making inquiry into "conspiracy theories" swirling around the bombing returned no indictments; yet the panel carefully worded this telling statement in its final report: "However, in spite of all the evidence before us, we cannot put full closure to the question of the existence of a John Doe II."
Middle Eastern terrorist cell operating in the heart of Oklahoma City
On April 20, KFOR-TV's news director assigned me to track local leads regarding possible suspects. The assignment amounted to nothing more than monitoring satellite feeds of FBI press conferences - that is until one telephone call to the newsroom led me directly to the doorstep of what several esteemed intelligence experts later determined to be a Middle Eastern terrorist cell operating in the heart of Oklahoma City.
Several American employees at a local property management company that we were investigating claimed they saw a brown Chevy truck, which matched the getaway vehicle aggressively pursued by law enforcement, parked outside the business office in the days before the bombing.
The PLO/Iraqi connection
The company owner was a Palestinian immigrant from Tel Aviv who had pleaded guilty to federal insurance fraud in the early 1990's and served time in the penitentiary. Court records revealed that the FBI suspected the Palestinian businessman, who operated under eight known aliases, of having connections with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. This man, a psychologist from the Oklahoma State Department of Human Services, funded his vast, four million dollar rental housing empire through money he received from siblings living in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and Amman, Jordan.
Six months prior to the bombing, the Palestinian property owner hired a handful of Iraqi soldiers to do maintenance work at his low-income rental houses. On April 19, several witnesses watched in stunned amazement as their Middle Eastern co-workers expressed prideful excitement upon hearing the first radio broadcasts that Islamic extremists had claimed responsibility for the attack on the Murrah Building. The men exuberantly pledged their allegiance to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein vowing they would "die for Saddam." My research showed these same Middle Eastern men were absent from work on April 17, 1995, the day McVeigh rented the Ryder truck that carried the bomb. Furthermore, two of these men had just completed lengthy trips to the Middle East.
The company secretary told the FBI she became suspicious of her employer because she saw the owner's Jordanian business associate at the office before the bombing in a large yellow car similar to the now infamous Mercury Marquis that was driven by Timothy McVeigh. The witness also observed this same man in the driver's seat of a brown Chevy pickup.
The Las Vegas crossroads
Staff members related details about the Palestinian property owner's travel habits, including his frequent trips to Las Vegas where prime suspects McVeigh and Nichols were known to spend one weekend a month. Had the three men crossed paths? Terry Nichols' son Josh identified the Palestinian ex-felon from a photo lineup as a man he had seen in Las Vegas. When asked if the Middle Eastern subject met with his father, Josh refused to answer.
Lana Padilla said her ex-husband Terry Nichols and Tim McVeigh would visit Josh in her home city of Las Vegas monthly and were often accompanied by unidentified men of Middle Eastern origin. She recalled the two Oklahoma City bombers frequented a bar known as Glitter Gulch, a strip club/casino located adjacent to Binion's Horseshoe, a casino/hotel where the security staff described the Palestinian ex-patriate from Oklahoma City as a "VIP" customer and "high roller at the poker tables." According to the man's secretary, he routinely traveled to Las Vegas and returned with large amounts of cash.
On April 20, 1995, less than 24 hours after the bombing, the Palestinian businessman boarded a plane in Oklahoma City bound for Las Vegas. The next day, Terry Nichols surrendered to federal authorities at the Herington, Kansas police department. News of the interrogation of the "material witness" flooded the television airwaves. Phone records reveal that just hours later, an unknown party called Nichols' Kansas home twice from a payphone at the Las Vegas casino Circus Circus. At the time, the Palestinian businessman was registered at Binion's Horseshoe and was within walking distance of the pay phones where the calls to Nichols' residence originated.
Palestinian real estate mogul's ex-wife dies in blast
The immigrant with alleged ties to the PLO exhibited peculiar behavior in the wake of the bombing, outraging several of his longtime employees. They were baffled when he departed for Las Vegas the day after the bombing, leaving behind his 18-year-old daughter to grieve the loss of her American mother. The Palestinian immigrant divorced his American wife in 1994, reaching a settlement in which she was awarded ownership of a large number of his rental properties. This woman perished on the fifth floor of the federal complex where she worked for a government agency housed in the ill-fated Murrah Building.
The daughter reluctantly admitted that her Palestinian father discouraged her from reporting her mother missing for several weeks, instructing her not to turn over dental records which were essential for medical examiners to identify the victim's remains. The woman's name did not appear on the official list of dead and missing until forty-eight hours after I turned my evidence over to the FBI field office in Oklahoma City.
FBI halts search for John Doe 2
On May 4, 1995, two FBI agents interviewed me for several hours regarding the evidence Channel 4 had uncovered. They took receipt of KFOR-TV's surveillance tape of the Palestinian real estate mogul and the Iraqi soldiers who worked at his company. In short order, the Bureau distributed a memorandum to field offices throughout the country ordering federal agents to "hold in abeyance all leads" on John Doe 2. Just four days later, on May 8, the FBI officially pulled the plug on the tip line for leads regarding McVeigh's elusive accomplice John Doe 2.
However, the most gripping evidence was displayed on the television monitor at KFOR-TV's studio. This shocking discovery was made while shuttling through surveillance videotape of the Iraqi soldiers. One frame of video captured the side view of a former Iraqi soldier known as Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini. Alhussaini's picture, when overlaid with the government's profile sketch of John Doe 2, was arguably a perfect match. Alhussaini also fit the general physical description of the government's arrest warrant for the Oklahoma City bomber, including a tattoo on his upper left arm.
Hussain Alhussaini is likely an Iraqi Republican Guardsman
Colonel Patrick Lang, the former Chief of Human Intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency, determined Hussain Alhussaini's military tattoo indicated he likely served in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard and was recruited into the elite Unit 999 of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Unit 999 is based in Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad and has been tasked with clandestine operations at home and overseas.
But the most incriminating evidence against the Iraqi soldier was the simple fact that his alleged alibi crumbled under scrutiny. Yet the critical link was still missing. There was no established connection between McVeigh, Nichols, Alhussaini, and his Iraqi cohorts.
Witnesses observe Alhussaini and McVeigh socializing in an Oklahoma City tavern
Then came the watershed breakthrough. On June 7, 1995, KFOR's private investigator and another reporter from the station located two eyewitnesses who independently identified the former Iraqi soldier, Hussain Alhussaini, from a photo lineup. Both were convinced he was the Middle Eastern individual they observed drinking beer with a very boisterous Timothy McVeigh in an Oklahoma City nightclub just four days before the bombing. This was no fleeting encounter. The witnesses were exposed to McVeigh and his soft-spoken friend, with distinct Middle Eastern accent, for at least three full hours.
KFOR management and legal counsel decided we had a moral obligation to report the story. At 6:00 PM that evening, the investigative report led the newscast. We carefully disguised the identities of the witnesses and the location of the establishment where the sighting occurred.
Four days later, on June 11, the tavern witness was stunned and terrified when Hussain Alhussaini returned to the nightclub. In 1998, during his civil deposition, Alhussaini volunteered he had, in fact, visited the bar after KFOR's story aired. He explained that a friend drove him to the rear entrance of the club and parked. At that moment, Alhussaini leaned forward in the passenger seat and peered inside the establishment through an open door. His testimony mirrored the story the witness told me in strict confidence regarding the encounter. She recalled how Alhussaini flashed her a threatening stare as he made eye contact with her. Most incriminating was the undisputed fact that KFOR-TV never publicly disclosed those details. The station's lawyers were the only parties who were given the information.
Three years later in a deposition, my lawyers showed our June 7, 1995 broadcast in its entirety on videotape in front of Hussain Alhussaini. At the end of the story, Channel 4's attorneys asked Alhussaini to point out how he knew the location of the bar where he had been identified socializing with Timothy McVeigh. Alhussaini was unable to provide an answer. KFOR chose not to disclose the name and address of the business in the report. Therefore, there was no reasonable explanation as to how Alhussaini could have returned to that location unless he was, in fact, the man with McVeigh on April 15, 1995.
The FBI interviewed a Chinese food deliveryman who brought an order to Timothy McVeigh's room at the Dreamland motel in Junction City, Kansas on the same day. However, the deliveryman testified during the bomber's federal trial that McVeigh was not in the room and did not receive the order. Therefore, there was no evidence that conflicted with the eyewitness accounts who placed McVeigh in Oklahoma City on the evening of April 15 with Hussain Alhussaini.
John Doe 2: a case of mistaken identity?
In mid-June of 1995, a week after KFOR unveiled the compelling testimony that McVeigh's mysterious co-conspirator could be an Iraqi national, the Department of Justice announced that John Doe 2 was a case of mistaken identity. Tom Kessinger, the mechanic at the Kansas body shop where McVeigh rented the bomb truck, admitted he was wrong about the bombing suspect. Kessinger confessed that he inadvertently described an innocent army private who visited the Ryder rental business the day after McVeigh.
The first two drawings of John Doe 2 were based upon the disavowed testimony of the body shop mechanic. However, according to published accounts, the FBI's third rendition of the suspect, which Hussain Alhussaini strongly resembled, was drafted from additional witness interviews. A downtown employee who worked near the federal complex signed an affidavit stating she spent eight hours with the FBI sketch artist who drew the man in profile. Therefore, the final illustration of John Doe 2 that was released on May 1, 1995 was not convincingly discredited.
Most significantly, the federal court record offered undeniable proof that the FBI did not rely solely upon the faulty recollection of the rental shop employee in Junction City, Kansas. The sketch artist's notes revealed that Tom Kessinger described McVeigh's alleged co-conspirator as a "heavy built" man of no less than "200 pounds." However, just hours later, when the FBI filed the official arrest warrant for the Oklahoma City bomber known only as John Doe 2, authorities dramatically departed from that description. Instead, the man who was now the target of the greatest international manhunt of the 20th Century was depicted as "175 to 180 pounds with a medium frame."
Twenty-five pounds lighter is a far cry from the original description of the suspect. The FBI obviously considered the testimonies of eyewitnesses in Oklahoma City near the crime scene more reliable. The FBI described the stories shared by those same people as credible during Timothy McVeigh's detention hearing just one week after the bombing.
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Suspect Said Went to School in U.S.
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Associated Press Writer
June 7, 2002, 2:19 AM EDT
WASHINGTON –
The man suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 terror attacks was well-traveled: Born in Kuwait, he went to college in North Carolina, fought Soviets in Afghanistan, plotted attacks against Americans from the Philippines.
He also repeatedly visited the German city where chief hijacker Mohammed Atta lived, U.S. officials said Thursday.
Officials suspect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a top lieutenant of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, met with Atta or members of his cell in Hamburg, Germany, but they have not received direct evidence of any contacts between them, one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Since Sept. 11, evidence has mounted that Mohammed was chief among the bin Laden lieutenants organizing the attacks, counterterrorism officials said. Abu Zubaydah -- another of the alleged organizers and now in U.S. custody -- has identified Mohammed as the organizer, and investigators have learned he transferred money used in the attacks.
Investigators also have uncovered more of his history. They believe Mohammed attended Chowan College in northeastern North Carolina before transferring to another American university, where he obtained an engineering degree, a second U.S. official said Thursday, declining to provide further details.
A spokeswoman at Chowan said a Khaled Al-Shaikh Mohammad attended the school in the spring of 1984, when it was a two-year institution.
Mohammed, who is 37, according to Interpol, would have been of college age in the mid-1980s.
Chowan spokeswoman Melanie Edwards declined to provide further information about the student, including whether he transferred to another school in the state.
Chowan College, which became a four-year college in 1992, is in Murfreesboro, N.C., near the Virginia border and about 100 miles northeast of Raleigh.
Officials at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro and UNC-Charlotte said they had no records of a student by that name -- or any of the aliases listed for Mohammed on the FBI's Web site -- attending in the 1980s.
Officials at North Carolina State University in Raleigh were unable to say immediately Thursday whether they had had a student by any of those names.
U.S. counterterrorism officials believe Mohammed went to Afghanistan to join the mujahedeen fighters opposing the Soviet occupation in the late 1980s. He now has Pakistani citizenship, according to Kuwaiti officials and Interpol.
The independent Al-Qabas newspaper in Kuwait reported that Mohammed worked for Abdul-Rab Rasool Sayyaf, an anti-American Afghan warlord who goes by the name "Professor." During the war against the Soviets and the Najibullah government, Sayyaf was chief of the Ittehad-e-Islami group, which had the largest number of Arab fighters in its ranks.
Interpol describes Mohammed as 5-foot-5, weighing 160 pounds, sometimes wearing beard and glasses.
Mohammed surfaced again the mid-1990s, as an associate -- and possibly a relative -- of Ramzi Yousef, working with him on the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot and a 1995 plan to bomb or hijack trans-Pacific airliners heading for the United States, according to U.S. officials.
Mohammed has been charged for his role in the 1995 airline plot, and remains one of the FBI's most-wanted terrorists. The U.S. government is offering a reward of up to $25 million for information leading to his capture -- the same reward offered for bin Laden.
He has not been charged in the Sept. 11 attacks.
He is believed to be in Afghanistan or nearby. Officials say he remains in bin Laden's inner circle and continues to plot terrorist attacks.
Bin Laden lieutenants Tawfiq Attash Khallad and finance chief Shaikh Saiid al-Sharif also have been linked to the hijackers.
Associated Press writer William L. Holmes in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this story.
FBI most wanted:
http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/terrorists/terkmohammed.htm
Interpol most wanted:
http://www.interpol.int/public/wanted/notices/data/1999/80/1999_380.asp
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Officials at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro and UNC-Charlotte said they had no records of a student by that name -- or any of the aliases listed for Mohammed on the FBI's Web site -- attending in the 1980s.
I guess there is some more digging to do here, but at least we have narrowed down the years of attendance.
A spokeswoman at Chowan said a Khaled Al-Shaikh Mohammad attended the school in the spring of 1984, when it was a two-year institution.
Why is Chowan evasive about the University he transfered to? We are talking about the mastermind of 9-11.Any leads would be helpful .
Maybe someone could appeal to the patriotism of the folks in Murfreesboro. I see Murfreesboro as a hotbed of patriotism, why cover for an individual who has been involved with the murder of over 3,000 Americans ?
According to the article he received an engineering degree. If so that narrows down the dates of attendance and limits the options to Universities with engineering programs.
(off topic but.....what about the saudi princess depositing $3500 every month in checking account that then went to help terrorists)
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A full day after a car bomb caused horrific destruction to the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, the confirmed death toll stood at 36, including 12 children, Fire Chief Gary Marrs said late this morning. More than 400 people were injured. CNN said the three men suspects had stopped to ask an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer for directions Wednesday, and the officer was suspicious enough to write down their car's license plate number. The license number was registered to a rental car -- a car other than what the men were driving, the network said. In New York, a law enforcement source told The Associated Press that one of the three, Asad R. Siddiqy of New York, was a suspect in the bombing. Siddiqy is a cab driver in the borough of Queens. CNN said Siddiqy was arrested in Dallas, along with Mohammed Chafi. The network said a brother of Siddiqy was arrested in Oklahoma. ''There are a number of good solid leads being pursued,'' Stern said in Washington. He added, ''We may have more to say later.'' There seemed no doubt that the death toll at the federal building would rise, although no one could say by how much. Marrs said he didn't know how many people remained unaccounted for, and that it might take six days to find all the bodies. He said more than 700 people have called special telephone numbers to notify authorities that they were safe. Marrs' assistant, Jon Hansen, said structural engineers have identified sections of the building most likely to shelter survivors, and rescuers had refocused their search on those areas. No one had emerged alive from the federal building since 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, and Mayor Ron Norick said at midmorning that rescuers had stopped hearing any sounds of life. No one knows precisely how many people were in the building at the time of the blast. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) estimated that there were about 810 people -- 560 employees and 250 non-employees. Dr. David Tuggle, a pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital of Oklahoma, said he believed there was only a remote chance anyone else would be found alive. Children's Hospital was among several public institutions nationwide to be evacuated today after bomb threats, presumed to be the work of ''copycats.'' GRAPHIC: A soldier and search dog examine cars at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City one day after the federal building was bombed. ; ASSOCIATED PRESS |
Authorities also questioned three other men, one of the men said Thursday. The man said his brother, Asad R. Siddiqy, 27, a New York cab driver, and an acquaintance, Mohammed Chafi, had driven to Oklahoma City seeking documents for an emergency return to their Middle Eastern homeland when they were arrested.
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Anis Siddiqy, 24, a cab driver from New York City, said his brother, Asad R. Siddiqy, 27, and an acquaintance, Mohammed Chafi, were in Oklahoma City seeking immigration documents for an emergency return to their Mideast homeland when they were arrested Wednesday. Siddiqy said he needed the documents to get home because of a family matter. He refused to be more specific or identify his Mideast homeland. Siddiqy said he was arrested Wednesday at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport while trying to rent a car so he could join the others in Oklahoma City. Earlier that day, police raided an apartment in Dallas that was being rented by two of the men. A copy of a search warrant left in the apartment showed that a black bag, containing clothing, a calendar and an address book was seized. The items were sent to a federal lab for testing after a bomb -sniffing dog indicated they may have been exposed to chemicals used in explosives, officials said. The man's two acquaintances were picked up Wednesday night soon after they had asked an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer for directions. The tag number recorded from their vehicle by the trooper was allegedly traced to a blue Chevrolet Cavalier rented by one of the men from National Car Rental at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, a law enforcement official said. The Cavalier was found with one of the men Thursday morning at an Oklahoma City motel, the official said. The man said he was questioned for 16 hours and given a lie-detector test before being released Thursday. Chafi was also released Thursday, but his older brother remained in custody. Federal officials have denied that suspects were taken into custody in Dallas. Dallas police spokesman Jim Spencer referred requests for comment to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. |
And in a sign that a foreign connection had not been ruled out, the FBI asked the CIA counterterrorism center for information on the organization of foreign terrorist groups and their patterns of operations.
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Sources said Asad Siddiqy's name "came up" in the investigation of the February, 1993, explosion at the World Trade Center but added he never was connected to the explosion. Asad and Anis Siddiqy lived in a two-story brick Elmhurst home as recently as one month ago, according to Amir Mufti, a 22-year-old man who lived next door to the brothers. He said he didn't know where they moved. Anis Siddiqy also had an Astoria address where he was living until a week ago. The Siddiqys' mother lived with her unmarried sons in the same house until she returned to Pakistan two or three months ago, Mufti said. Taxi and Limousine Commission records show Asad Siddiqy received summonses in June, 1992, for speeding and operating a dirty taxi, for which he was found guilty at TLC hearings, spokesman Eugene Rodriguez said yesterday. "He had a pretty abysmal record, pretty lousy," Rodriguez said. Asad Siddiqy, who has not driven a cab in months, was most recently driving a limousine, Mufti said. When he first came to the United States four or five years ago, Asad Siddiqy worked at a carpet company in Manhattan, according to a former roommate who did not want his identity revealed. Afterward, he became a cabbie, but he'd always hoped to start his own carpet business someday, the roommate said. During his free time, Asad Siddiqy liked to stay home and watch movies on TV. Acquaintances didn't consider him very religious, but he went to Friday prayers every week at a Queens mosque. "It's impossible" that the brothers could be involved in any religious or political violence, Mufti said. "This has to be some kind of mistake." GRAPHIC: Photo-A 1994 photo of Asad Siddiqy from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. |
Three other men who had been questioned about the case were released. In Dallas, Anis Siddiqy, 24, and Mohammed Chafi were released on Thursday morning. Mr. Siddiqy said that he had been questioned for 16 hours by agents from the F.B.I. and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and that Mr. Chafi's apartment, where he was staying, had been searched.
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"It was nobody's fault," Asad Siddiqy told The Associated Press. "They were just doing their jobs. I'm OK, and everything's fine." The Justice Department said yesterday the FBI had released Ibrahim Abdullah Hassan Ahmad, an American citizen of Middle East origin, who was detained in London and then returned to the United States on Thursday. Ahmad, an electrical engineer who recently worked as a court interpreter in a double-murder case in Oklahoma City, was caught in the spreading dragnet after the disastrous explosion in his adopted city. He was briefly detained in Chicago, then in London as a possible suspect or witness after he left Oklahoma City on Wednesday night to fly to Jordan to visit his father. John Russell, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said investigators may want to talk again to Ahmad, initially described by the Justice Department as a "possible witness" in the blast probe. But he said investigators had no reason to believe there was any danger Ahmad would flee the country. Russell was unable to say if Ahmad had any knowledge about the bombing. One FBI official said Ahmad could have fit the profile of suspected perpetrators and he simply may have been "in the wrong place at the wrong time." In Oklahoma City, investigators also released Mohammed Chafi after questioning. Top federal officials, including Attorney General Janet Reno, had repeatedly stressed the men were not suspects. GRAPHIC: AP Photo-Oklahoma State Trooper Terry Morris looks around a building yesterday that had been boarded up after being damaged by the bombing and spray-painted with a verse from the book of Psalms. |
By Jeff Wong
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, June 12, 1999; 6:07 a.m. EDT
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Five former Iraqi military officers who claimed they fought Saddam Hussein and then spent 2 1/2 years in custody fighting deportation from the United States are happy to finally be getting out of jail.
``The system here is good, but the people who represent (the government) have brought shame to this country,'' said Mohammed Jwer Abboud Al-Ammary, a former military cargo plane pilot.
The Iraqis may stay in Nebraska until a friendly country agrees to accept them, a judge ruled Friday. A sixth Iraqi refused the agreement, the end to a saga that began in 1996 when the U.S. airlifted 6,500 Iraqis from Turkey following a failed coup in Iraq.
The men's families were granted asylum, but immigration authorities sought deportation and claimed they were spies for Hussein.
The men said they were grateful for the efforts to free them, especially those of former CIA Director James Woolsey, now a private lawyer. But they also feel betrayed by the U.S. government, which they say promised asylum.
Immigration Judge D.D. Sitgraves denied the men asylum in March 1998 and ordered them deported, saying they could be double agents. The men claimed they would be executed if sent home.
U.S. authorities justified their imprisonment largely on secret evidence, a practice in immigration cases that has come under fire from federal lawmakers and activists.
Last year, the INS unsealed some of the evidence -- testimony about the six Iraqis from FBI agents who discussed hunches, distaste for the detainees and their feelings about Arab culture. Woolsey called the detention ``a stain on the honor of the United States.''
The sixth Iraqi, Ali Yasim Mohammed Karim, said he will never sign the freedom deal. Authorities have given him until July 9 to change his mind. He could eventually be deported to Iraq.
The remaining five will be released within two weeks to Lincoln, Neb., where their families were resettled.
Under the deal, the men must abandon any claims for asylum here but may remain in Nebraska until they are deported to a friendly country. They must report to the INS daily, stay at home at night, accept wire taps on their telephones and stay in the country.
Iraqi Refugees In the aftermath of the Gulf War, 37,768 Iraqi refugees fled to Saudi Arabia and were housed in two camps, Rafha, for families, and Artewiyah, for single men.
The original group of refugees included roughly 10,000 Shi'ite rebel fighters who rose in rebellion against Saddam Hussein and another 4,000 or so former soldiers who defected, deserted, or were captured during Operation Desert Storm, and who refused to repatriate at the end of the war based on a fear of persecution if returned.
By the end of 1996, 19,797 refugees had been resettled in third countries. The United States had resettled about half of the total, admitting 10,046 between June 1991 and the end of 1996
But congressional critics have challenged the notion of charging taxpayers to resettle former enemies, particularly at a time of national budget-cutting. Rep. Clifford B. Stearns (R-Fla.) accused the administration of a "bizarre set of priorities" for going to great length to accommodate combatants who participated in the "rape of Kuwait," while 8.9 million jobless Americans cannot afford the basic necessities of life.
"When we dropped those leaflets on the [Iraqi] Republican Guard, we did not include a plane ticket to Middle America and welfare entitlement benefits. When those guys realized the war was lost, they changed into civilian clothes and surrendered, and now we're rolling out the red carpet," Stearns added in a telephone interview from Ocala, Fla.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE NONDESCRIPT ROADSIDE motel outside Oklahoma City was just a fleeting encounter during the twisted cross-country odyssey of the terrorists who would carry out the September 11 attacks. Mohamed Atta, alleged leader of the plot, and two companions wanted to rent a room, but couldn't get the deal they wanted, so they left.
It was an incident of no particular importance, except for one thing. The owner of the motel remembers Atta being in the company of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so- called "20th hijacker," who was arrested prior to September 11 and now faces conspiracy charges in connection with the terror assaults.
If this recollection is correct, the entire incident, and its absence from the public record, raises new questions about the FBI investigation of Moussaoui and even the 1995 destruction of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Already the FBI has endured a withering political and media critique for failing to aggressively investigate Moussaoui and his contacts during his four weeks in custody prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Some FBI officials have responded by characterizing Moussaoui as only a minor player. But the report from the motel owner, if proven, could change that. And it also could force the FBI to reopen its investigation of Middle Eastern connections to the 1995 Oklahoma City blast, because convicted bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols reportedly stayed at the same motel, interacting with a group of Iraqis during the weeks before the bombing.
AT PRESS TIME, THE ERRATIC MOUSSAOUI, WHO IS representing himself, was attempting to plead guilty and bring his trial to a close. The 34-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent had previously filed some 94 hand-scrawled, rambling motions attacking the government's case and its right to prosecute him.
But that circus obscures a conundrum of a different sort. The government's case, as outlined in its new six-count conspiracy indictment, is largely circumstantial, lacking any definitive link between Moussaoui and the 19 hijackers identified by federal authorities. All of which makes the apparent shelving of the Moussaoui-Atta sighting all the stranger. In fact, even though multiple sources contend that the FBI interviewed the motel owner, there's no indication that prosecutors were told. It's possible that the FBI found the motel owner's identifications wrong or his story unreliable. But it's still odd that, in interviews with the Weekly, Justice Department prosecutors seemed to know nothing about the motel encounter, especially because agents reportedly told the motel owner they would pass the information on to Moussaoui's defense team.
The motel co-owner, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the incident occurred around August 1, 2001, just six weeks before 9/11.
"They came in around 10 or 11 a.m. and started talking to my desk clerk," he said. Even though he was working about 10 feet away from the trio, the owner didn't really pay any attention at first. "They were asking my clerk, who no longer works here, about a weekly rate for our rooms." (The former clerk could not be reached for comment.)
The motel, explained the owner, sets aside some rooms with small kitchenettes to rent on a weekly basis. "But they were all taken." He said the clerk explained the situation, but the visitors were persistent. "Finally, my clerk asked me to talk to them."
The motel owner said that Moussaoui and a man who appeared to be Marwan al- Shehhi -- who helped crash a jetliner into the south tower of the World Trade Center -- were friendly and said a few things, but Atta was clearly the leader. "He did most of the talking and seemed very serious," said the owner, adding, "I was standing face to face, about two feet away from Atta, and talked to the three of them for about 10 minutes. Atta asked if he could rent one of the other rooms at a weekly rate, and I told him no.
"I asked him what they were doing here in the area. And Atta told me they were going to flight school. I thought he meant [Federal Aviation Administration] training in Oklahoma City. But Atta told me no, they were taking flight training in Norman.
"I said I didn't understand why they wanted to rent one of my rooms, since we were about 28 miles from Norman and there are a lot of reasonably priced motels a lot closer. But he said they had heard good things about my place and wanted to stay there. I told them I was sorry, but we couldn't accommodate them. Atta finally said okay. Then they all thanked me for my time and left."
After the attacks, said the motel owner, he recognized his visitors in photos from television reports. "I was really stunned," he said. Then he decided to call the FBI hot line. The motel owner said he didn't hear right back from the FBI. In the interim, he also spoke to a former law-enforcement officer who was investigating reported sightings of Mujahid Abdulquaadir Menepta at the same motel during the mid-1990s. Menepta, reportedly a friend of Moussaoui's, was arrested 30 years ago in Colorado for aggravated robbery and served more than three years in prison.
After September 11, Menepta publicly defended Moussaoui, calling him a "scapegoat." The FBI arrested him as a material witness and subsequently charged Menepta with a federal gun violation. He pleaded guilty and in April 2002 was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison. He was never charged with any terrorism-related crime. But during the preliminary hearing on the gun charge, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agent Jeffrey Whitney testified that a confidential source placed Menepta at a meeting of a radical Islamic group in St. Louis where he allegedly threatened to shoot any police officer who entered the mosque. Menepta's attorney challenged the credibility of this report in court.
A former desk clerk at the motel -- a different clerk from the one who purportedly dealt with Atta and Moussaoui -- told the Weekly that he remembered Menepta because in 1994 and 1995 -- prior to the Oklahoma City attack -- Menepta frequently visited the motel office. There, he bought coffee and talked for hours to this clerk.
The clerk and his wife, who both formerly worked at the motel, said they picked Menepta's picture out of a photo lineup prepared by a law-enforcement officer who had interviewed the motel owner.
This officer, who also spoke to the Weekly on condition of anonymity, said that after the motel owner told him about the Moussaoui sighting, he contacted a member of Oklahoma's Joint Terrorism Task Force, which includes the FBI.
The FBI finally acted on the tip. The motel owner said that on December 19, 2001, he went to FBI offices in
Oklahoma City for a formal interview, where he was debriefed by an FBI agent and by Oklahoma City Police Sergeant Jerry Flowers. "We talked for several hours, and I told them everything I knew." The motel owner said he would have taken a polygraph exam but was not asked to do so. The Weekly's law-enforcement source corroborates the December 19 interview.
The motel owner never heard from prosecutors in Moussaoui's case but got one more call from the FBI several weeks later. "The agent told me they had passed on a copy of my statement to Moussaoui's defense team, and I might be getting a call from them. But I was under no obligation to talk to them. However, I don't know if that was the truth. Since then, I have never heard from anyone connected to Moussaoui's case."
ONE REASON FOR THE FBI'S APPARent lack of interest might be this motel's alleged connection to Timothy McVeigh and a group of Iraqis who worked in Oklahoma City. According to the motel owner and other witnesses and investigators interviewed by the Weekly, McVeigh and several of these Iraqis were motel guests in the months preceding the 1995 bombing. Witnesses also claimed they saw several of the Iraqis moving barrels of material around on the bed of a truck. The motel owner said the material smelled of diesel fuel and he had to clean up a spill. Diesel fuel was a key component of the truck bomb that blew up the Federal Building.
The motel owner said he and his staff reported this information to the FBI in 1995. "We did have an ATF agent come out and collect the originals of the room registrations for that period, but we never heard back from them. And I never could get the registrations returned." He added that his previous experience with the FBI made him reluctant to contact them about Moussaoui. "But I decided it was my duty to tell them what had happened. So I did."
Former Oklahoma City TV reporter Jayna Davis also interviewed motel staff and former guests. In the process, she collected signed affidavits about their contacts with McVeigh and the Iraqis. She tried twice to give the Bureau this information, but the FBI refused to accept her materials. (The Weekly first reported on her investigation in an article published in September 2001.)
The Weekly's law-enforcement source said he has reviewed Davis' material and considers it credible. "Last December I personally took the documents to the Joint Terrorism Task Force," he said. "I told them they should do their own investigation." The response was not encouraging. He said he was later informed that the Bureau brought in an analyst, "but I was told it would probably go nowhere. They were afraid the whole Oklahoma City bombing can of worms would be opened up and the FBI would have to explain why they didn't investigate this material before."
The Weekly contacted numerous local and federal investigators and agencies, including the Oklahoma task force, the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI and the Justice Department. All declined to comment. Prosecutors on the Moussaoui case also declined official comment, but their reactions suggested they knew nothing of the motel encounter.
After being told about the motel owner's interview and allegations, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Spencer responded with a one-word question about the sighting: "When?" Spencer then declined further comment. Another Moussaoui prosecutor, David Novak, also declined comment. But Novak wanted to know the name of the motel owner.
Other substantial connections already tie the Sooner state to Moussaoui and, separately, several 9/11 hijackers.
According to the Moussaoui indictment, on September 29, 2000, Moussaoui made e- mail contact with Airman Flight School in Norman. Then, on February 23, 2001, he flew from London to Chicago and then to Oklahoma City. What he did in the next few days is unknown or at least not accounted for in the indictment. But on February 26, Moussaoui opened a bank account in Norman, depositing $32,000. From February 26 to May 29, he attended flight school in Norman. Then he suddenly quit the school. Between July 29 and August 4, Moussaoui made calls from public pay phones in Norman to Germany. On August 1 and 3, Ramzi Bin al- Shibh wired Moussaoui a total of about $14,000 from two train stops in Germany to somewhere in Oklahoma. This wire transfer does imply a connection to terrorist plotters because al-Shibh, an alleged al Qaeda member, wired money to other hijackers. On August 3, Moussaoui purchased two knives in Oklahoma City. And on August 10 or 11, an acquaintance drove Moussaoui from Oklahoma to Minnesota for enrollment in a new flight school. Authorities arrested Moussaoui in Minnesota on August 17 on an immigration violation. As has been widely reported, Moussaoui attracted attention because he said he was interested in flying a plane but not learning how to take off or land. He was in federal custody when the 9/11 attacks occurred.
As for the terrorists who took part in 9/11, Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi visited the Airman Flight School in Norman in July 2000, according to the Moussaoui indictment. (The motel owner identifies al-Shehhi as the third person with Atta and Moussaoui when they allegedly inquired about a room.) And on April 1, 2001, Nawaf al-Hazmi, who helped hijack American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, was stopped for speeding in Oklahoma and given two tickets. The Oklahoma state trooper found no outstanding warrants and turned al-Hazmi loose. The media has since reported that the CIA had been tracking al-Hazmi, but never told the immigration service or the FBI that he was a suspected terrorist during his 21-month U.S. stay. Authorities have never publicly accounted for Atta and al-Shehhi's whereabouts during the time of the alleged motel encounter.
The Moussaoui indictment lays out a tantalizing possible association between Atta and Moussaoui, but never puts the two in the same place at the same time. The link could exist, however, along a dusty Oklahoma roadside, off Interstate 40, at a small motel that is indistinguishable from hundreds of others, except for its possible connection to terrorists.
Mr. Whitney told the court that Mr. Menepta, who was born Melvin Lattimore in St. Louis, and changed his name in 1989 after converting to Islam, came to the attention of the authorities the day after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
Mr. Whitney also told the court that Mr. Menepta had said the Secret Service told him that one of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 had used his visa number. Mr. Whitney said he could not confirm Mr. Menepta's account.
He has the full support of local socialist politicians and the local Goebbelian press.
He counts among his supporters Traitor Congressman Jim McDermott and is constantly associated with the hard left anti-war, marxist, hate-America, hate-Bush crowd.
It's more than a little interesting to note that he is also from Pakistan and is in the realty/mortgage-broker business. Siddiqui's muslim 'partner' Tariq Panni is also a mortgage broker in Bellevue.
Panni also organized and spoke on a hate-Israel, pro-islam, anti-American forum I attended. This forum had keffiyah-wearing muslim/palestinan terrorists openly calling for jihad and death to America - much like the earlier Daniel Pipes' lecture at the UW.
This forum was promoted and attended by, among others, the Seattle terrorist front group voicesofpalestine.org
They can be seen raising cash for 'back home' at local anti-war and 'peace' rallies - for humanitarian purposes of course.
Voicesofpalestine.org is registered to the Mansour family of the American Mortgage Group in Bellevue.
It's a very small world.
From #73
Mr. Whitney also told the court that Mr. Menepta had said the Secret Service told him that one of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 had used his visa number. Mr. Whitney said he could not confirm Mr. Menepta's account.
It appears to me the same terrorist network has been waging war on us since the 1993 WTC bombing, and the common link is the mastermind Khalid Mohammed. I wonder why we are not permitted to know what university in the U.S. Khalid Mohammed received his engineering degree from?
I suppose if the mastermind of 9-11 had been an angry, white male who listened to talk radio we would have seen interviews with his classmates and instructors by now, since the mastermind is Khalid Mohammed, we are not allowed to know where in the U.S he received his degree. Curious.
Investigators also have uncovered more of his history. They believe Mohammed attended Chowan College in northeastern North Carolina before transferring to another American university, where he obtained an engineering degree, a second U.S. official said Thursday, declining to provide further details.
Chowan spokeswoman Melanie Edwards declined to provide further information about the student, including whether he transferred to another school in the state.
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At least everyone is working from the same page,
the American people do not have a "need to know" where in the U.S. the mastermind of 9-11 received his engineering degree
Los Angeles Times
August 24, 1993
By Richard A. Serrano
The United States has begun resettling in this country up to 4,000 Iraqi soldiers who surrendered during the Persian Gulf War, an effort that has drawn criticism from a coalition of congressmen who believe the prisoners are receiving special treatment never awarded returning American soldiers.
The U.S. government is paying between $4,000 and $7,000 to relocate each of the enemy prisoners -- and in some cases their family members. They have been classified as refugees who would be harmed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein if returned home.
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