The Oklahoma City Bombing
and the
Politics of Terror
by David Hoffman
Web Page II
Chapters:
9. The Sting
5
In the wake of the bombing, the media was abuzz with reports of a Middle-Eastern connection. Reporters were reporting claims of Muslim extremists, and talking heads were talking about a familiar modus operandi. Then on April 21, less than 48 hours after the bombing, the FBI announced that they had snared their elusive quarry, an angry white guy named Timothy James McVeigh. The following day, the Bureau announced that they had captured angry white guy number two: Terry Lynn Nichols.
The mainstream media, having their information spoon-fed to them by the FBI, quickly launched into in-depth analysis of the two "prime suspects." All other information quickly became buried in the great collective memory sink hole. It was as if, with the "capture" of McVeigh and Nichols, all other information became suddenly irrelevant and obsolete. The Justice Department waved their magic wand, President Clinton winked at the Middle-Eastern community, and all the world was set right again.
What remained hidden behind the official curtain of deceit however, were scores of witness accounts, official statements, and expert opinions regarding a Middle-Eastern connection. For 48 hours after the bombing, FBI officials and terrorism experts poured forth their opinions and analyses:
Robert Heibel, a former FBI counter-terrorism expert, said the bombing looked like the work of Middle East terrorists, possibly those connected with the World Trade Center bombing.[482]
Speaking on CNN, ATF director John Magaw said: "I think any time you have this kind of damage, this kind of explosion, you have to look there (Middle East terrorists) first."
"This was done with the attempt to inflict as many casualties as possible," said terrorism expert Steven Emerson on CBS Evening News. "That is a Middle Eastern trait and something that has been, generally, not carried out on this soil until we were rudely awakened to it in 1993."
Former United States Representative Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma (former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee) told CBS News that there was "very clear evidence of the involvement of fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups."[483]
Former FBI counter-terrorism chief Oliver "Buck" Revell told CBS Evening News, "I think it's most likely a Middle East terrorist. I think the modus operandi is similar. They have used this approach."
Ex-CIA counter-terrorism director Vince Cannistraro told the Washington Times, "Right now, it looks professional, and it's got the marks of a Middle Eastern group."
Avi Lipkin, a former Israeli Defense Intelligence specialist on the Prime Minister's staff, in Oklahoma City at the time of the bombing, told investigator Craig Roberts, "this is a typical Arab Terrorist type attack."[484]
It was also reported the Israelis gave the Americans a "general warning" concerning the bombing.[485]
CBS News stated that the FBI had received claims of responsibility from at least eight different organizations. Seven of the claimants were thought to have Middle Eastern connections:
An FBI communiqué that was circulated Wednesday suggested that the attack was carried out by the Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed Islamic militant group, said a security professional in California who declined to be named… the communiqué suggested the attack was made in retaliation for the prosecution of Muslim fundamentalists in the bombing of the World Trade Center in February, 1993, said the source, a non-government security professional.… 'We are currently inclined to suspect the Islamic Jihad as the likely group…'[486]
James Fox, former head of the New York FBI office, told CBS News, "We thought that we would hear from the religious zealots in the future, that they would be a thorn in our side for years to come."
On July 2nd, shortly after Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's surrender to U.S. Immigration authorities, the Egyptian Jama a' Islamiya (the group implicated in the World Trade Center bombing) issued a statement saying that if the Sheik was prosecuted or extradited to Egypt, they would begin a world-wide terror campaign against the United States.
On April 21, 1995, the London Telegraph reported: "Israeli anti-terror experts believe the Oklahoma bombing and the 1993 World Trade Center explosion are linked and that American investigators should focus on Islamic extremists."
The same day, the London Sunday Times carried a report that suggested President Saddam Hussein of Iraq may have been involved in both the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City bombings:
Iraq was furious with America last week at its United Nations move to foil efforts to overturn Gulf war economic sanctions… Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the recently-captured alleged mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, was directly funded by Baghdad, according to CIA and FBI documents — and evidence so far developed about the latest bomb indicates some similarities in the planning.[487]
If those in Baghdad were angry over the brutal and relentless attack on their country by U.S. forces during the Gulf War, they had additional reason for anger when President Clinton launched a retaliatory raid against Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. The June 26 Cruise Missile strike was directed against the complex after an alleged plot was uncovered to assassinate former president, crook, and mass murderer George Bush during his recent visit to Kuwait.[488] The raid merely destroyed some of the complex, and leveled about a dozen surrounding homes, killing approximately six civilians. Syndicated columnist Charlie Reese called it "high-tech terrorism."
The Net News Service reported the next day that the government-backed Al-Thawra newspaper charged that Clinton had carried out the attack only to bolster his "eroded popularity and credibility... domestically." Both Al-Thawra and General Saber Abdul-Aziz Douri, head of the Iraqi intelligence service, indicated that the Iraqi government had vowed vengeance against the United States.
Backing up Douri's claims was former head of Iraqi military intelligence, General Wafiq al-Sammara'i, who told the London Independent that the June, 1996 bombing of the U.S. military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 servicemen, "strongly resembled plans drawn up by a secret Iraqi committee on which he served after the invasion of Kuwait. He says operations considered by Iraq, but not carried out at that time due to shortage of reliable agents, included exploding large bombs near buildings where American soldiers were living."[489]
One month later, the Washington Post reported:
Early on July 6, Col. Mohammar Qaddafi of Libya issued a warning that President Clinton and the United States had 'blundered' in the recent missile attack on Baghdad, and that the United States should expect 'a lot more terrorism' in the near future. Qaddafi spoke of increasingly violent and spectacular acts to be perpetrated expressly for broadcast on the national and international television.[490]
Shortly after the bombing, KFOR, Channel 4 in Oklahoma City received a call from the Nation of Islam, taking credit for the bombing. Interestingly, the NOI has been directly funded by Libya.
The Post's Jack Anderson added that a direct attack against the U.S. would be unlikely, and that counter-terrorist analysts feared that the only viable avenue for Hussein's revenge would be through the use of terrorism. "A preferable revenge for Iraq would involve having a 'surrogate terrorist' carry out a domestic attack that Hussein could privately take credit for…
According to Dr. Laurie Mylroie, Ph.D., a Middle East expert at the Center for Security Policy, and an authority on the World Trade Center bombing, Iraqi agents such as Ramzi Yousef had infiltrated the original World Trade Center cell, resulting in the construction of a more powerful, sophisticated bomb.
Dr. Mylroie noted that on September 27, 1994, as Iraqi troops tested American resolve by preparing a new assault against Kuwait, Saddam Hussein declared: "We will open the storehouses of the universe" against the United States. Two days later, Babil — a newspaper in Iraq owned by Saddam's son, Uday — amplified, saying: "Does the United States realize the meaning of opening the stores of the world with the will of Iraqi people?...Does it realize the meaning of every Iraqi becoming a missile that can cross to countries and cities?"[491]
Mylroie notes that there may be other Iraqi intelligence agents at large in this country, known as "sleepers," waiting to carry out far more deadly acts of revenge against the U.S. One such cell, planted by the Abu Nidal organization, was discovered in 1986. Four of their Palestinian members were arrested eight years later after one of them murdered the daughter of an FBI agent.[492]
On January 28, 1991, the Washington Post reported:
If Saddam is serious about terrorizing Americans at home, there are several allies he could call on for help. The most dangerous terrorist Organization in the world, the Abu Nidal organization, now based in Baghdad, has a rudimentary infrastructure of about 50 people in the United States. All of them, according to FBI sources, are under surveillance.…
"Among the terrorists who are taking or would take orders from Saddam," added the Post, "are Abu Ibrahim, a pioneer bomb maker who designed the barometric pressure bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103, and Ahmed Jibril, who masterminded the Pan Am bombing on a contract from Iran."[493]
Ironically, U.S. interventions abroad have permitted the entry into America of extremist and even terrorist organizations that have subsequently gained footholds in ethnic communities across the country. Texas and Oklahoma, in fact, are major centers of Islamic activities in the U.S.
Steven Emerson was quoted on CBS Evening News as saying, "Oklahoma City, I can tell you, is probably considered one of the largest centers of Islamic radical activity outside the Middle East."[494]
Emerson chronicled the rise of radical Islam in America in a 1994 PBS documentary which showed how fundamentalists had launched a recruiting campaign across the mid- and southwest. An Oklahoma City meeting in 1988 was attended by members of Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), Islamic Jihad (Holy War) and the Muslim Brotherhood, each notorious for their sponsorship of terrorism. The meeting was held only blocks from the Federal Building.
As Stephen Jones stated in his March 25th Writ of Mandamus:
The Murrah Building was chosen either because of lack of security (i.e. it was a "soft target"), or because of available resources such as Iraqi POWs who had been admitted into the United States were located in Oklahoma City, or possibly because the location of the building was important to American neo-Nazis such as those individuals who supported Richard Snell who was executed in Arkansas on April 19, 1995.…
Secret workshops have reportedly been held in the U.S., where HizbAllah and Hamas members have been taught bomb making techniques and small arms practice. HizbAllah, the Iranian-sponsored and Syrian-backed "Party of God," is believed to be behind a series of bombings in July of 1994 that took 117 lives in Argentina, Panama, and Britain. HizbAllah is the same Lebanon-based terrorist group that perpetrated the October 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.[495]
The most notorious U.S. terrorist cell was in Jersey City, led by Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the group responsible for plotting the destruction of the UN building and the Holland Tunnel. Three of Rahman's followers were convicted for bombing the World Trade Center. One of their leaders, El-Sayyid Nosair, spelled out his plans to terrorize the United States: "We have to thoroughly demoralize the enemies of God…. by means of destroying and blowing up the towers that constitute the pillars of their civilization such as the tourist attractions they are so proud of and the high buildings they are so proud of."[496]
Another influential figure in Islamic radical circles — Sheik Mohammad al-Asi, the religious leader of the Islamic Education Center in Potomac, Maryland, was quoted on PBS as saying:
"If the Americans are placing their forces in the Persian Gulf, we should be creating another war front for the Americans in the Muslim world — and specifically where American interests are concentrated. In Egypt, in Turkey, in the Indian subcontinent, just to mention a few. Strike against American interests there."
While the Arab underground structure in the U.S. is generally based on the PLO, not all of its members are Palestinian. Many may emigrate from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and Libya, the five nations most often connected with terrorism. According to former Israeli intelligence officer William Northrop, the original PLO structure shifted in 1991, after the PLO/Israeli peace process began. As Northrop writes:
The Texas Cell is based in Houston and is supported by several sub-cells, one of which is based in Oklahoma City. This Texas Cell was tied into the World Trade Center bombing on 26 February 1993.
The Oklahoma City sub-cell originated with the Palestinian students who were sent from various Arab countries to study Petroleum Engineering at OU in Norman. (the current Deputy Petroleum Minister of Iran is an OU graduate.)[497]
Their members may also come from a broader philosophic milieu, and unlike the PLO, have a wider range of targets, including not only Israel, but secular regimes in Muslim countries and those states that support them.
Notes Middle East analyst James Phillips: "Because they are motivated by apocalyptic zeal, and not sober political calculations, their choice of possible targets is much wider and more indiscriminate than that of other terrorists."[498]
The goal of this new breed of terrorist was not aimed at influencing U.S. or world opinion over the Palestinian issue, but to prove the strength of the Muslim fundamentalist cause. As former Dallas Special Agent in Charge Oliver "Buck" Revell said:
"...If you listen to what [the Islamic extremist terrorists] are really saying, they're not just aimed at the Israelis, they are not just aimed at the Jewish state. Their goals are completely and totally to eradicate any opposition to Hamas and to Islam and to move against the United States ultimately."[499]
Obviously, these journalists and experts hadn't developed their theories in a vacuum. The evidence was clear, and the warnings were imminent. Allan Denhan wrote in ASP Newsletter that a Jordanian Intelligence official had passed a "target list" to an American businessman two months prior to the bombing, and the Murrah Building was on that list. Although this information is unconfirmed, it makes perfect sense, since Jordan has a long-standing intelligence relationship with the CIA.
In March of 1995, Israel's Shin Bet (General Security Services, Israel's equivalent to the FBI), arrested approximately 10 Hamas terrorists in Jerusalem, some of whom had recently returned from a trip to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. According to Northrop, interrogation of those suspects was thought to have revealed information concerning the plot to bomb the Murrah Building. "The Shin Bet filed a warning with the Legal Attaché (FBI) at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv as a matter of course," wrote Northrop.[500]
On April 20, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Arhonot wrote:
Yesterday, it was made known that over the last few days, U.S. law enforcement agencies had received intelligence information originating in the Middle East, warning of a large terrorist attack on U.S. soil. No alert was sounded as a result of this information.[501]
Northrop also said that the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, the equivalent of the American CIA), also sent a warning to the U.S. State Department. That was followed by a warning from the Saudis. "A Saudi Major General… informed former CIA Counterterrorism Chief Vince Cannistraro, who in turn informed the FBI. There is a 302 (FBI report) in existence."[502]
The agent Cannistraro passed the information to was Kevin L. Foust, one of the FBI's leading counterterrorism agents. Ironically, the information was given to Foust on the same day as the bombing.
According to the information obtained by Stephen Jones, the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service reported that Iraq had hired seven Pakistani mercenaries — Afghani War veterans known as the Mujahadeen — to bomb targets in the U.S., one of which was the Alfred P. Murrah Building. They also advised the FBI that — as is often the case — the true identity of the sponsor may not have been revealed to the bombers.[503]
Interestingly, Northrop stated that three Israelis were in Oklahoma before the April 19th attack to "keep an eye on things." Avi Lipkin and William Northrop were two such individuals.[504]
In addition to these warnings — as well as the mighty armada of U.S. intelligence agencies, analysts, and surveillance technology which would have undoubtedly been monitoring the situation — at least one local informant tried to warn authorities in advance. His warnings went unheeded.
The Drug Connection Informant
After the bombing, Cary Gagan stepped forward to tell Jones that he had been present at a meeting of bombing conspirators including Middle-Easterners, Caucasians, and Hispanics which took place in Henderson, Nevada.[505]
In depositions and interviews with Jones and in numerous interviews with the author, the government informant and former drug courier described a number of meetings at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. In 1980, the Soviets asked Gagan to assist them in procuring military secrets from Dan Howard, a contact of Gagan's who worked at Martin Marietta, a large defense contractor in Waterton, Colorado. The Soviets had been watching Howard. Gagan was a friend. He informed the FBI.[506]
In June of 1986, the Soviets again asked Gagan's help — this time, to assist illegal Iranian immigrants needing false IDs. The small-time hustler and counterfeiter met his contact, a man named "Hamid" who worked at Stapleton International Airport in Denver, and secretly recorded the conversation. He turned the tapes over to FBI Agent Bill Maten, and Kenny Vasquez of the Denver Police Intelligence Bureau.[507]
The 51-year-old government informant supported himself by ferrying Cocaine between Mexico and Colorado for Colombians posing as Mexicans, living in Denver. It was through his association with these Colombians that Gagan met "Omar" and "Ahmed," in Las Vegas in March of '94.
"They tried to first play themselves off as Colombians, " said Gagan "but I knew they were Iranians… or Middle-Easterners. They were multi-lingual, with big-time funding.
It was at this meeting that the drug dealer learned he was to transport kilos of cocaine from Mexico to Denver. He informed DEA Agent Robert Todd Gregory. "I told Gregory this dude looked like a banker to me. They had heavy cash. They took care of me. They had all kinds of connections."
On May 16, 1994, Gagan met his new contacts at the Western Motel in Las Vegas, where his brother worked as a pit-boss. There were eight men at the meeting, five of whom were Middle Eastern, including Omar and Ahmed. "Two of them didn't say a word," recalled Gagan, "but they looked like Colombians to me — you know, Latin."
One of the Middle Easterners was from Oklahoma City. He appeared to be the leader. The Eighth man was Terry Nichols. In a sworn deposition, Gagan told McVeigh's attorney:
Gagan: "I met with some Arabs, and in that group, and I did not know it at the time, but in that group was Nichols."
Jones: "Terry?"
Gagan: "Terry Nichols."[508]
Gagan first recalled seeing Nichols in the parking lot of a bingo parlor the men had stopped at. "He was wearing a plaid, short sleeve shirt and dockers.… I remember going, 'That's kind of a dirty lookin' dude.' That's all I said. I thought, you know, he didn't fit in the picture here. He looked like a scientist."[509]
The men snorted cocaine at the Western Motel and discussed their plans, then drove to an apartment complex in Henderson called the Player's Club. It is not known whom they met with. As far as Gagan knew, they were all there to discuss drug dealing. It wasn't exactly clear what the Colombians were doing with the Arabs.[510]*
Gagan would soon find out though. Omar and Ahmed, who had been paying Gagan with counterfeit money (mostly counterfeit Iranian $100 bills), wanted him to take part in a plot to blow up a federal building in Denver, using a mail truck packed with explosives.
"I was going to be part of it because I could move through… because I'm Anglo and I'm a U.S. citizen and, you know, I wouldn't draw attention.… I'm in and out of that federal building every day."
The truck, purchased from a government auction, was painted to resemble a working mail truck. On January 14, 1995, Gagan picked up the truck at the Metro Bar & Grill and drove it to the Mariott Hotel, just outside of Golden, Colorado.
"Omar came out with me, showed me where the truck was, and said, 'Just get in it and drive down I-70, and here's where you park it. And as soon as you make the delivery, make this call….' And I gave the FBI the pay phone number saying it was there. And I stayed in there and had a drink — in the bar, and came walking out, and the sucker was gone."
Gagan says he talked to the FBI duty agent from a pay phone at 9th and Logan for over 35 minutes. "I said 'Hey, I need you to tell what to do here.' And they never called back."
In the back of the truck were approximately thirty duffel bags of ammonium nitrate marked "U.S. mail," and boxes from Sandex Explosives [in Las Vegas] marked "High Explosives."
Gagan boarded a bus and went home. He said the agents never showed up.
"Can you imagine if I'm driving this truck and it blows up in the city of Denver?" said an incredulous Gagan.
Also in the back of the truck was a Lely farm mixer. Gagan recalls that it was approximately four feet high, two feet across, and "shaped like a diamond."
Interestingly, this was the same description given by witness David King. King, who was staying at the Dreamland Motel in Junction City — where McVeigh stayed — saw a Ryder truck with a trailer attached to it in the parking lot on April 17. Inside the trailer was an object secured by a canvas tarp. "It was a squarish shape, and it came to a point on top," said King. "It was about three or four feet high."
In June, Gagan discovered plastic explosives in an athletic bag packed with cocaine he was to deliver to Denver. The bag, Omar said, was to be left at the Postal Center, a shipping and receiving facility owned by George Colombo, who also operated a Ryder truck leasing center across the street. A friend of Gagan's, Colombo would occasionally let him stay at an apartment he maintained when things got too heavy.[511]
Things were definitely getting heavy for Gagan. When the casual cocaine user decided to open the bag and help himself to a little "blow," he discovered plastic explosives wrapped in brown paper. "And I'm thinking, 'Jesus, how the hell did this get by the airport'? So I packed it up, and I'm thinking, 'I'm going to the feds,' because you know… I'm a felon, this is C-4… I'm going [down] forever."
Gagan asked Colombo to hold the bag for him. He then called the Denver Police Intelligence Bureau and met them at a Burger King in Aurora. Gagan sat in the unmarked car, as his friend Billy, a cab driver, watched from nearby.
"I said, 'Look, there's some C-4…' I'm feeling them out… I give them some names, you know, what the deal was in Las Vegas. I tell them I'm in contact with the DEA — Robert Gregory and all that. They don't say anything. This is June, mid-June of '94. They say they'll get back to me."
Three weeks later, after contacting the FBI, the police called Gagan back. "They tell me quote, 'Since you're the source of the information Gagan, we're not going to investigate.'"
Gagan then called Gregory at the DEA. Gregory told Gagan, "Hey, we can't take you on.'"
The informant claims he continually challenged the police and the FBI to charge him if his information was false. "If all this was a big lie, they could have charged me with lying, but they didn't."
While the FBI and the Denver Police were debating the merits of Gagan's credibility, Omar picked up the bag from Colombo and left.
Three months later, in September, Gagan was approached by Omar and Ahmed again. "They said 'It's going to involve terrorism, do you have a problem with that?' I said 'no.' I asked them, 'What kind of money are we looking at?' They said 'a quarter of a million dollars.' I said 'up front?' They said 'Yes.'
Gagan accepted the money, which he believes was paid out of the Cali Cartel. "The FBI knew it," said Gagan. "They never got back to me."
Were Latin American drug dealers conspiring with Arab terrorists to blow up the Federal Building? Said 25-year DEA veteran agent Mike Levine: "When you consider terrorist actions like TWA 800 (or Oklahoma City), and you omit any drug trafficking involvement, it's insane — it doesn't make any sense…. You know you take for example two years or three years ago the La Bianca plane that was blown out of the sky — it was attributed to drug traffickers. I can think right off the top of my head of another case in Colombia of a plane blown up with a lot of passengers to kill one person, and probably many, many more."
Levine, a highly decorated DEA agent, and the DEA's former Argentine Station Chief, told me that countries such as Bolivia, Paraguay, and Colombia are full of Arabs doing business with Latinos, including drug dealing. "The first thing you have to keep in mind is that drug trafficking is now a half a trillion dollar business around the third-world," said Levine, "and it's mainly a third-world business. The top drug traffickers around the world have more power than presidents. The Mujahadeen for instance, which we supported, were always top heroin smugglers. They were rated one, two and three by DEA as a source, and they right now support every Muslim fundamentalist movement on the face of the earth…."[512]
The parallel may be more than speculative. Shortly after the bombing, on May 8, Tulsa police veteran Craig Roberts received information from a law enforcement source in Texas that "Juan Garcia Abrego was involved in the bombing as a 'cash provider' for the event. The source said that Abrego had sent two Mexican nationals to Oklahoma City with a satchel full of cash to finance the bombing."
Abrego was a Mexican Mafia chieftain involved in the cocaine and heroin trafficking through Mexico from Guadalajara to Texas. He allegedly was the ground transportation link during the Iran-Contra/Mena affair.
This information was forwarded to both the FBI and the DEA who were asked for each to check their files and/or computers, using various spellings, to see if they had heard of such an individual. Neither replied back that they had knowledge and no further action was taken.…[513]
Considering the FBI's apparent lack of knowledge, is curious that Abrego was at the top of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list since March, a month before the bombing and almost two months before Robert's original inquiry.
It seemed the FBI's lack of interest in Robert's information was suspiciously similar to their lack of interest in Gagan's.[514] What is also interesting is that their first effort to discredit Gagan — a drug runner on the periphery of the Iran-Contra drug network — coincided with the Iran-Contra affair becoming public.[515]*
"In my opinion, people were paid massive amounts of dope to carry this thing out," said Gagan. The informant's belief that he was paid by the Cali Cartel may be significant in light of Robert's information that Abrego funneled money to the bombing conspirators.
Was the FBI's attempt to repudiate the Middle Eastern connection tied to their refusal to look at the Abrego lead?
As Levine said: "The minute you start taking about terrorist actions, and you eliminate drug trafficking, well, then… you're just not credible… It's just very unrealistic to look at a situation — any terrorist situation — and not look at a drug trafficking angle anymore. In my opinion, and I think there's plenty of substantiation eventhough the government won't talk about it, you can say, this vast ocean of money traveling around the world — illegal untapped money — pays for an enormous amount of terrorist activity."
If the Cali Cartel and Gagan's Arabs were connected, and in turn tied to a tentacle of the Iran-Contra Octopus through Abrego, it's only natural that the FBI — which played its own role in covering up Iran-Contra — would tend to look the other way.
In spite of the FBI's apparent refusal to act on Gagan's information, and their subsequent attempts to discredit him, on September 14, 1994, Gagan was granted a Letter of Immunity by the U.S. Attorneys Office in Denver. The immunity was arranged through Federal Public Defender Raymond Moore.[516] (See Appendix)
The informant was told to stay with the group and report back to the Bureau. On March 17, Gagan met with his Arab friends at the Hilton Inn South in Greenwood Village, Colorado. On the table were the construction plans for the Alfred P. Murrah Building, bearing the name J.W. Bateson Company of Dallas, Texas.
Still, Gagan alleges that federal agents didn't follow up on any of his leads.
"I knew, when they did not contact me after the truck… when I was moving explosives, I knew something was up. I knew. I figured from that point on, without a doubt, they had a government agent in this ring. Because they cannot let me do that type of stuff.
"And then, after the March 17th meeting, I waited for them to contact me, because I just had a feeling that the dude that had come up [from Oklahoma City] — the new guy on the scene there — was an agent. The way he acted and talked… I just felt different than I did around the other dudes.… That's just my personal feeling."[517]
Did the feds ignore Gagan's warnings because they had their own agent in the bombing cell and wanted to obtain more information to "sting" the bombers later on? Gagan believes this is a possibility. Yet while Gagan had the option of pulling out, he realized it would be too risky to suddenly disappear from the scene. Omar and Ahmed were watching him.
On April 4, 1995, Omar pulled up at the Western Motel in Las Vegas, where Gagan's brother worked. "Come on," said Omar to a somewhat startled Gagan, "I want you to drive with me to Kingman."
The two men then drove to Arizona, where they delivered a package to a man waiting on the corner of Northern and Sierra, wearing a cowboy hat and driving a rusty brown pick-up. Could this mystery figure have been Steven Garrett Colbern, who owned the brown pick-up seen stopped ahead of McVeigh when he was pulled by Trooper Hanger over after the bombing? The description of the man matched Colbern's height and build. But Gagan did not know who he was at the time, or what was in the package.
On the way home, Gagan recalled Omar saying, "we're taking down a building in two weeks."[518]
On March 27 and 28, Gagan made over five calls to the U.S. Marshals Office. None were ever returned. Agent Mark Holtslaw of the FBI's Domestic Counter terrorism Squad, told me, "I can assure you that any info was thoroughly checked out.… There are things that go on in the background that the individual is not aware of." But, Holtslaw added, "there is no statutory obligation to get back to an individual regarding our investigation and its status."[519]
Gagan doesn't buy Holtslaw's explanation. The FBI's procedures regarding informants require that they be controlled and supervised. "How do you investigate a thing if you don't contact me?" asked Gagan. "So they either had another agent or another informant inside the group."
Gagan was getting nowhere with the Marshals, the U.S. Attorneys, and the FBI. It was now less than two weeks before the bombing. On April 6, Gagan drafted a letter and delivered it to Tina Rowe, head of the U.S. Marshals Office in Denver. While Gagan waited outside, his cab driver friend dropped it off. The letter read:
Dear Ms. Rowe:
After leaving Denver for what I thought would be for a long time, I returned here last night because I have specific information that within two weeks a federal building(s) is to be bombed in this area or nearby. The previous requests I made for you to contact me, 25th & 28th of March 1995 were ignored by you, Mr. Allison and my friends at the FBI. I would not ignore the specific request for you personally to contact me immediately regarding a plot to blow-up a federal bldg. If the information is false request Mr. Allison to charge me accordingly. If you and/or your office does not contact me as I so request herein, I will never again contact any law enforcement agency, federal or state, regarding those matters set out in the letter of immunity.[520]
Cary Gagan.
Call 832-4091 (Now)
Rowe did not respond. When she was confronted by KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, she said that she had never received Gagan's letter. (See Appendix)
Yet Gagan's friend gave New American editor Bill Jasper a signed affidavit showing that he personally delivered the warning to the U.S. Marshals.[521]
According to Rowe, the point is moot, because the college graduate and former public school teacher has a history of "psychological problems." It seems that Gagan was sent to the Colorado State Mental Hospital in September of 1986 by Dr. Erwin Levy, at the behest of the feds.[522]*
"That was because I wasn't cooperating with my attorney," he said, referring to a 1986 theft case in Arapahoe County. "You tell somebody you're involved in espionage with the Soviets, and that's what they do, send you down to the James Bond ward."[523]
According to Gagan, the Colorado State Mental Hospital's Dr. Green pronounced Gagan sane, and he seemed level-headed when Representative Key and I interviewed him in March of '97.
Others think the informant isn't reliable. A friend of Gagan's who's known him for 30 years told me he thinks Gagan's "full of shit," and "not in touch with reality."
Another, a Federal Public Defender who represented Gagan, told me, "Cary has an encyclopedic memory, of events, places and times." She said that Gagan was "bright [and] well-intentioned," although she added, "My gut sense is that the pure facts may be right, but I sometimes questioned the legal significance of some of it." Overall, she said she "liked" the informant.[524][525]
Moreover, if Rowe's allegations regarding Gagan's credibility are valid, why then did U.S. Attorney Henry Solano grant him a Letter of Immunity? If the feds thought Gagan was incompetent, they had a full decade of experience with him [as did the Denver Police] from which to establish his credibility or lack thereof.
"If I had a history of mental illness," explained Gagan, "they couldn't take me on as an informant."
The feds' opinions may have stemmed from a 1983 incident where the informant was blacklisted by the DEA due to allegations he provided false information to the benefit of several drug dealers. Yet Gagan claims he redeemed himself by obtaining sensitive DEA-6 files that had been stolen from their office. Gagan said the DEA noted the informant's assistance on his record.[526]*
Then in 1986, while Gagan was in jail for insurance fraud, he was visited by Kenny Vasquez, Bill Maten, and two FBI agents: Phillip Mann and Stanley Miller. They offered to get him early release if he would work again as an informant. Gagan declined. "They wanted to take me out of jail, and bring me back at night," said Gagan. "I Didn't want any part of it."
In January of 1989, Agents Miller and Mann again asked Gagan to assist them in a joint FBI/Customs counterintelligence sting operation known as Operation Aspen Leaf. Their interest centered on one Edward Bodenzayer, a Soviet spy whom Gagan had met in Puerto Vallerta in 1982. Bodenzayer had been exporting classified technology to Russia through his import/export company.
Finally, on September 14, 1994, the Justice Department granted Gagan his immunity. The agreement, printed on an official U.S. Justice Department letterhead, read [in part]:
This letter is to memorialize the agreement between you and the United States of America, by the undersigned Assistant United States Attorney. The terms of this agreement are as follows:
1. You have contacted the U.S. Marshals Service on today's date indicating that you have information concerning a conspiracy and/or attempt to destroy United States court facilities in [redacted] and possibly other cities.
2. The United States agrees that any statement and/or information that you provide relevant to this conspiracy/conspiracies or attempts will not be used against you in any criminal proceeding. Further, the United States agrees that no evidence derived from the information or statements provided by you will be used in any way against you....[527]
In spite of the sensitive nature of Gagan's information, and the Letter of Immunity, "In the period of one year, from September 14, 1994, to the first week of September, 1995," said Gagan, "not one agent recontacted me, not one U.S. official of any kind recontacted me except [FBI SAC] Dave Shepard in Vegas."
Naturally, the FBI denied any wrongdoing.
Assistant U.S. Attorney James Allison was quoted in the August 12, 1995 issue of the Rocky Mountain News as saying, "Why would I grant somebody immunity and then not speak with him?"
When this author contacted Allison, he said, "I'm not going to discuss who is or who isn't a federal informant."
Yet U.S. Attorney Henry Solano, Allison's boss, granted an interview with Lawrence Myers of Media Bypass magazine, violating the informant's confidentiality agreement, placing Gagan in danger. In the October, 1995 issue, Myers printed Gagan's letter which had been hand delivered to U.S. Marshall Tina Rowe. When Myers reprinted the letter — which was faxed to him by Solano — "April 6" was changed to "April 1," a weekend, in an attempt to show that Gagan couldn't possibly have delivered the warning. It is not clear whether Solano or Myers changed the date.
Discharged from a mental hospital in 1980 with a personality disorder, Myers was convicted of extortion in 1985 and was later asked by FBI Agent Steve Brannon to work as an informant. Myers denied working for the FBI.
Yet in 1991 he showed up at the trial of Leroy Moody, working as an "explosives expert" on behalf of the defense. Curiously, he then turned around and fed confidential information to the FBI and the state prosecutor.[528]
Interestingly, Myers claimed to have worked for the CIA in Central America, apparently at the behest of Wackenhut, a CIA proprietary infamous for gathering intelligence on U.S. citizens. Even more interestingly, he wrote several books on explosives for Palladin Press, another CIA proprietary, including Counterbomb, Smart Bombs, and Improved Radio Detonation Techniques. One Myers title, called Spycomm, instructs readers on the "dirty tricks of the trade" regarding "covert communication techniques."
Myers also showed up at ex-spook Charles Hayes' home in London, Kentucky on the premise of writing a flattering story on the CIA agent turned whistle-blower. Hayes subsequently wound up in jail on a murder conspiracy charge — a charge he adamantly denies.
Hayes says he thinks that Myers was working for the government when he came to Kentucky to write a flattering profile of Hayes for the magazine Media Bypass, then privately told FBI agents that Hayes was looking for someone to kill his son.[529]
Were Solano and Myers part of a coordinated effort to discredit Gagan? Said a private investigator and retired Army CID officer regarding Myers: "I got the impression he was probably Counterintelligence… just by knowing these parts. The people he mentioned — the people he knew — told me that he was probably in the C.I.C. (Counterintelligence Corps) at one time."[530]
Conetta Williamson, an investigator for the Tennessee Attorney General's office, described Myers in court testimony as "a professional and pathological liar."[531]
Myers also wrote a piece about Federal Grand Juror Hoppy Heidelberg, the only grand juror who dared question the government's line. In fact, Heidelberg never consented to be interviewed by Myers, who had obtained the content of a privileged attorney/client interview of Heidelberg surreptitiously. The information was then crafted into an "interview" and published in Media Bypass, ultimately resulting in Heidelberg's dismissal from the grand jury.
It seemed that Myers, using Media Bypass as a cover, had managed to put a government whistle-blower in jail, discredit a federal informant who had embarrassing information implicating the government in the bombing, and cause the dismissal of a troublesome grand juror.
If the feds were so intent on discrediting their own informant, why had they granted him a Letter of Immunity? Not only did Solano grant Gagan immunity, but the informant had retained it for a full 17 months. If Gagan was actually incompetent, why didn't Solano revoke the immunity instead of letting Gagan continue working with terrorists?
"It doesn't make much sense does it?" said Gagan.[532]
It appears that the Justice Department had granted Cary Gagan immunity so they wouldn't look bad. After all, Gagan had already informed Dave Floyd at the U.S. Marshals office in September about the meeting with Omar and Ahmed.
The cat was out of the bag.
Gagan believes he was granted the Letter of Immunity as part of a more sinister scheme — a plan to allow him to proceed with the bombing plot unhindered — at which point the Letter of Immunity was revoked.
"What if at that time I was told to go in and get immunity by the terrorists, and somebody working with the terrorists… like the U.S. Government?" said Gagan. "I can't get prosecuted, can I? [The terrorists] knew that they would give me a Letter of Immunity and they knew that the FBI would cut me loose. So what's that enable them to do? If there needs to be something moved, and I'm the one that's moving it, I can't be prosecuted. I can haul as much shit as I want, and I have immunity, as long as I call the FBI, and let them know."
As a Florida police detective who's investigated connections between Arab-Americans, the PLO, and the Cali Cartel told me, "Who has the best route for getting something across? Drug dealers."[533]
Was Cary Gagan part of some sinister plot by the feds? Or was he merely used as a "mule," allowing the terrorists to move money, drugs, and explosives while another government agent monitored the situation from within? Perhaps the new man from Oklahoma City who appeared on the scene in March?
Was Cary Gagan a "throwaway?"
Recall that Gagan had transported a duffel-bag filled with C-4 and cocaine, and had driven a truck laden with explosives across the state at the behest of his terrorist friends. He claims the FBI did nothing to stop him.
"You got to understand something here," said Gagan. "Federal law prohibits me from doing what I was doing. You cannot go out as an informant — I'm not an agent — I cannot take drugs and explosives from point A to point B…."
Yet it seems that permitting the informant to commit such illegal acts would focus more light on the government's role — whether it involved foreknowledge or an actual conspiracy — as Gagan began to go public with his story. But Gagan, who believes he was scheduled to be "terminated" after the bombing, disagrees. The informant displayed medical records showing that he was badly beaten, and claims to have been the victim of a drive-by shooting.[534]
Whatever the case, it is interesting to note that authorities alleged that the bombing conspiracy began in September of 1994, the same month that Gagan received his Letter of Immunity and began informing the FBI.
On April 10, four days after he delivered the warning letter to Tina Rowe, Gagan received a note instructing him to appear at the law library of the U.S. Courthouse.
"I just gave the U.S. Marshals a bombing warning," said Gagan. "They didn't call me back. I had to go somewhere to cover my ass. I came back, I got a note saying, 'We need to see you; come to the U.S. Law Library.' I thought it was the U.S. Marshals or the FBI."
When Gagan arrived at the law library, he met his contact: an "athletic looking dude, 40s, short hair," dressed in a blue Nike cap and jumpsuit. "I get there and say, 'Hey, you got the shit?' He said, 'Hey, we've got everything taken care of. We need you to do this….'"
The man was not one of Gagan's Arab friends. "He was government," said Gagan. "He was probably CIA."
The mysterious figure asked Gagan to drive a trailer to Junction City, Kansas. In the trailer was the same Lely mixer that Gagan had driven to Golden on January 14. This mixer — the one that was driven to the Mariott at the behest of an Arab terrorist — was now on its way to Junction City at the request of a government agent!
The date was now April 11, three days before Timothy McVeigh checked into the Dreamland Motel in Junction City. As previously mentioned, David King, who was staying at the Dreamland, recalled seeing a Ryder truck with a trailer attached to it in the parking lot on April 17. The trailer contained a "squarish object about three or four feet high that came to a point on top," secured by a canvas tarp. This was the exact description Gagan gave of the Lely mixer.[535]
On April 13 Gagan drove to Oklahoma City, he said, to case the Murrah Building.
Three days later, Gagan says he drove a van from Denver to Trinidad, Colorado, that was picked up by Omar and Ahmed.
According to Gagan, it wasn't until three months after the bombing, in July of '95, that Las Vegas FBI Agent Dave Shepard agreed to meet him. "We're sitting in the car behind the Sahara, and Shepard tells me we're not interested in pursuing the lead."[536]*
That lead — was the two Arab suspects seen running from the Murrah Building towards a late model brown Chevy pick-up minutes before the blast — the same suspects that the FBI had issued an All Points Bulletin (APB) for on April 19:
"…Middle-Eastern males 25-28 years of age, six feet tall, athletic build, Dark hair and a beard — dark hair and a beard. Break."[537]
"And these two Middle Eastern dudes that were seen running from the scene — that's the same description I had given," said Gagan. "Gray in the beard, you know — Omar and Ahmed — to the FBI… on September 14."
Gagan had provided that information to the FBI six months before the bombing. After the bombing, Gagan contacted Solano and said, "Isn't that amazing. You know, these are the [same] two dudes.…"
In a letter to Gagan dated February 1, 1996, Solano and Allison wrote:
Attempts by federal law enforcement officers to meaningfully corroborate information you have alleged to be true have been unsuccessful.... Therefore, the immunity granted by the letter of September 14, 1994 is hereby revoked.…
You are warned that any statement you make which would incriminate you in illegal conduct, past, present or future can be used against you. You are no longer protected by the immunity granted by letter on September 14, 1994.
Recall that after ATF informant Carol Howe had revealed that her knowledge of the bombing plot was reported to federal authorities before April 19, they tried to discredit her, claiming that she was "unstable," just as they had done with Gagan. While they revoked Gagan's Letter of Immunity, they indicted Howe on spurious charges.
Howe also reported a subsequent bombing plot by neo-Nazi activists, but, like Gagan's warnings both before and after the bombing, she claimed her calls weren't returned.[538]
Interestingly, Howe was also told by her ATF handler, Angela Finley-Graham, not to report her informant payments, and was led to believe that her debriefings were not being taped when they were. Both are a violation of C.I. (Confidential Informant) procedures. Was this a way to discredit Howe in case they needed to distance themselves from her later, as they attempted to do with Gagan?
One year later, Gagan filed a lawsuit alleging that numerous federal officials had failed to uphold their agreement with him; failed to exercise proper procedures in regards to the handling of an informant; failed to investigate a terrorist conspiracy against the American people; failed to warn the public; and failed to properly investigate the crime after it occurred.
It is not surprising that officials wouldn't take Gagan's warning seriously. On December 5, 1988, a Palestinian named Samra Mahayoun warned authorities in Helsinki that a Pan Am 747 leaving Frankfort was to bombed within two weeks.[539]
Two weeks later, on December 21, Pan Am flight 103 was blown out of the skies by a terrorist's bomb. Two hundred and fifty-nine people plunged to their deaths over Lockerbie, Scotland, and 11 more died on the ground.
State Department official Frank Moss later called Mahayoun's warning a "goulish coincidence." Mahayoun, they claimed, was just not credible.[540]*
Demonstrating the limits of absurdity the government will go to in order to cover up its complicity and negligence, the U.S. Marshals Service was still insisting — after 169 people lay dead in Oklahoma — that Cary Gagan was still not credible.[541]*
Yet this is not the first time the government has ignored viable warnings. Prior to the World Trade Center bombing, the FBI's paid informant, Emad Eli Salem, had penetrated Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman's Jama a Islamiya and had warned the FBI of their plans. The agent in charge of the case, John Anticev, dismissed the former Egyptian Army Colonel's warnings, calling him "unreliable." On February 26, 1993, a large bomb detonated underneath the twin towers, killing six people and injuring 1,000 more.
At the same time as "unreliable" people like Cary Gagan were warning federal authorities in Denver about the pending attack, The Star Ledger, a Newark, New Jersey newspaper, was reporting:
U.S. law enforcement authorities have obtained information that Islamic terrorists may be planning suicide attacks against federal courthouses and government installations in the United States.
The attacks, it is feared, would be designed to attract worldwide press attention through the murder of innocent victims. The Star Ledger has learned that U.S. law enforcement officials have received a warning that a "fatwa," a religious ruling similar to the death sentence targeting author Salman Rushdie, has been issued against federal authorities as a result of an incident during the trial last year of four persons in the bombing on the World Trade Center in New York.
The disclosure was made in a confidential memorandum issued by the U.S. Marshals Service in Washington calling for stepped-up security at federal facilities throughout the nation….
According to the source, Iranian-supported extremists have made it clear that steps are being taken to strike at the "Great Satan," a phrase that has been used to describe the United States…
Even more strenuous security precautions are being taken in New York, where 12 persons, including the blind fundamentalist Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, are currently on trial on charges of conspiring to wage a war of urban terrorism against the United States by blowing up the United Nations, FBI headquarters and the tunnels between New York and New Jersey…
The memo, issued by Eduardo Gonzales, director of the U.S. Marshals Service, warns that attacks may be designed to "target as many victims as possible and draw as much media coverage as possible" to the fundamentalist cause…
The terrorists, possible suicide bombers, will not engage in negotiations," the memo warned, and said "once the press is on the scene, the new plans call for blowing everyone up.[542]
If that last statement is true, it could explain the presence of a box of explosives found in the Murrah Building with a timer on it set for ten minutes after nine. The initial bomb(s) blew up at two minutes after nine.
The U.S. Marshal's Service — the federal agency charged with the task of protecting federal facilities — had clear warning from at least two different undercover informants. Why then was there no security at the Murrah Building on April 19?
It was also reported that the Israelis, the Saudis, and the Kuwaitis all warned the U.S. about an impending attack. Whatever the U.S. Marshals Service felt about Cary Gagan's warning, Gonzales apparently felt his other sources were reliable enough to issue a nation-wide alert. Perhaps that memo, like the one issued by the FBI in 1963 to its field offices warning of an attempt on the life of President Kennedy, just "disappeared."
A Trail of Witnesses
On April 19, Abraham Ahmed, a Jordanian, was detained by authorities as a possible bombing suspect as he attempted to fly from Oklahoma City to Amman, Jordan. American Airlines personnel observed Ahmed "acting nervous," prior to his flight, and notified security personnel, who in turn notified the FBI.
Agents detained Ahmed in Chicago, where the Oklahoma City resident explained that he was on his way to his father's wedding, and was scheduled to return to the U.S. in July.
Yet Ahmed's story changes. He told reporters alternately that he had gone back to Jordan: a) for a wedding, b) to build a house, c) to replace the youngest son who had moved out, and d) to attend to a family emergency.
After being questioned for six hours, the FBI allowed Ahmed to continue on his way. Yet he was detained in London the following day, where he was questioned for another five hours, then handcuffed and put on the next plane back to the U.S.
In the meantime, Ahmed's luggage continued on to Rome, where authorities discovered a suitcase full of electronic equipment, including two car radios, silicon, solder, shielded and unshielded wire, a small tool kit, and, incredibly enough, a photo album with pictures of weapons and missiles! Security sources at London's Heathrow Airport also said that a pair of blue jogging suits and a timing device was found in one of his bags.[543]
When asked what he was doing with these items, Ahmed explained that they were for his relatives in Jordan, who could not obtain good-quality electrical components. Ahmed also had a blue jogging suit similar to what a Middle-Eastern suspect was wearing at the Murrah Building on the morning of the blast. According to an account in the London Telegraph, Ahmed was reportedly in Oklahoma City on Wednesday — the day of the bombing.[544]
If Ahmed had been cleared by U.S. authorities for the worst domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history, why did British authorities refuse to allow him into the country? Did they know something the U.S. did not?
The Justice Department's Carl Stern downplayed the breakthrough saying only, "There are a number of good, solid leads in this investigation."[545]
Yet in FBI agent Henry Gibbons' affidavit, special mention was made of the items in Ahmed's suitcase, and his coincidental April 19, 10:43 a.m. departure time, and Gibbons stated he considered Ahmed's testimony in front of the Federal Grand Jury vital.
One FBI source interviewed by KFOR's Jayna Davis admitted that he didn't think Ahmed was telling the truth on a polygraph test. Yet Ahmed was simply allowed to go on his way, and like so many other suspects and witnesses, was never called before the grand jury.
Interestingly, the Middle Eastern community was apologized to by President Clinton. This is very interesting coming from a president that failed to apologize to Randy Weaver, the Branch Davidians, and the thousands of people wrongly accused, imprisoned and murdered each year by U.S. law-enforcement personnel.
A possible explanation may be found in the bombing of Pan Am 103. In February of 1989, a prime suspect in the case, Jordanian bomb maker Marwan Kreeshat, admitted in a statement provided by Jordanian intelligence that he had manufactured at least five highly sophisticated, powerful bombs for PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command) leader Ahmed Jibril, by cleverly concealing them in portable radios — the same type which destroyed flight 103. Jordanian intelligence officials, who have maintained a close, long-standing relationship with the CIA, admitted that the Jordanian national was actually an undercover agent, and was also an asset of U.S. intelligence.[546]
Could this explain why the FBI released Ahmed?[547]
Taylor Jesse Clear, a retired State Department Counter-Terrorism expert who has studied the case, disagrees with this analysis. Clear believes that Ahmed's conspicuously timed departure, complete with nervous act and a suitcase full of electronic gear, was a diversion. "They wanted to inoculate the media to the Arab connection," explained Clear. Letting Ahmed get caught with a suitcase full of that stuff, then discovering he was innocent, inoculated everybody to the Middle Eastern connection. Then they could come back, beat their chests, and say, 'look what you did to the Arab community.'"[548]*
Yet the brown Chevy pick-up seen speeding away from the Murrah Building was traced to an Oklahoma City business run by a Palestinian, with possible PLO ties. That man… is a good friend of Abraham Ahmed's. According to a witness who worked for the Palestinian, Ahmed was seen driving the pick-up in the weeks before the bombing.
Numerous witnesses also place McVeigh in Oklahoma City in the days before the bombing with a friend of Ahmed's — an Iraqi — a man who bares a strong resemblance to the mysterious, stoic passenger seen in the Ryder truck by Mike Moroz on the morning of April 19 at Johnny's Tire Store.
KFOR reporters Brad Edwards and Jayna Davis broke the story on June 7, 1995 with a series of interviews with witnesses who saw McVeigh with the Iraqi, first in a bar, then in a restaurant, then in a pawn shop.
One of the witnesses, a barmaid at the Roadrunner Tavern on South May Avenue, saw McVeigh buying beer for the man on Saturday, April 15. "He was dark, kind of muscular, he had on a ball cap," said the barmaid. "He talked like they do over in Iran or Iraq, or whatever during Desert Storm, when you would hear the way they talked on TV."
When Davis asked her how sure she was that the man they had been tracking was the man she saw with McVeigh, she replied, "I'm sure."
The tavern owner also saw the Iraqi a few days after the bombing. He picked him out from a group of photos. While the Iraqi claimed he was never in any bar on NW 10th Street, a co-worker interviewed by KFOR said he had drank with him at a bar on NW 10th and Indiana, and in fact he was arrested for driving under the influence around the corner, at NW 8th and Blackwielder in early June.[549]
In another interview, three women who worked at a pawnshop stated that McVeigh and two other men came into their shop twice: "…on April 14 and again on April 17, just two days before the bombing."
"It had to have been McVeigh," said the pawn shop owner. "If it was not McVeigh, it was his twin brother."
"They spoke in a foreign language," said one of the pawn shop employees. "They huddled together and they all three spoke secretively to one another, and it was a foreign language."
A restaurant owner down the street also remembered McVeigh and the Iraqi. "[McVeigh acted] like a contractor coming in and buying his hand lunch, that was the impression I had," recalled the proprietor.
As previously mentioned, restaurant worker Phyliss Kingsley recalled a Ryder truck pulling into the Hi Way Grill at SW 104 and Portland on April 16. Accompanying the truck was a white long-bed Chevy pick-up, and a darker pick-up, possibly blue or brown. She recalls Timothy McVeigh strolling in and ordering two "trucker burgers" and fries to go. Accompanying McVeigh was a short, stocky man of about 5'2", either Mexican or American Indian (or Arabic) descent, with black, curly hair. She said the man closely resembled the FBI sketch of John Doe 2, but with slightly thinner features. Kingsley recalled that the man spoke briefly with McVeigh.[550]
Waitress Linda Kuhlman described him as having straighter hair and being slightly taller. She described him as wearing green army fatigue pants and a white t-shirt.
Kuhlman, who grew up around trucks and hot-rods, is positive that one of the trucks was a Chevy long-bed, most likely an '87 model. When shown photos, including the Iraqi and Michael Brescia, they came close to picking out the Iraqi, but could not positively identify either man. The passenger in the Ryder truck, they said, a man with longish wavy, permed-out brown or dirty blond hair and glasses, never got out.[551]
Dennis Jackson, a VA worker, recalled seeing two or three Arabic men in the Murrah Building the following day, April 17. "There was a distinct air about them," recalls Jackson. "We were working late that day, the office had closed, and they were just kind of hanging around the Social Security office. I thought that was kind of unusual… They might have been there for Social Security, but I hardly think so."
Jackson's co-worker Craig Freeman recalled one of the men as a short, stocky Arabic man, about 5' 2'', 150 pounds, wearing khaki military style pants, combat boots and a white T-shirt — the same combination seen on the Middle Eastern suspect described by Linda Kuhlman.
In a bizarre twist, a white Chevy pick-up showed up a Freeman's house several days after the bombing. Freeman recalls a Caucasian looking man in the truck, which was parked near his house on two consecutive days. "It was right before and right after the FBI and OSBI (Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation) came and interviewed me," recalls Freeman. "I could tell this guy was watching me because when I walked by, he sort of turned away and hid his face. I'm a former Air Force Master Sergeant and a third degree black belt, and I'm trained to be observant."[552]
Could the man Freeman saw have been there to intimidate him?
The barmaid at the Road Runner Tavern also told KFOR's Brad Edwards that after her interview aired, the Iraqi pulled up by the open back door of the tavern and stared menacingly at her. What is interesting is that the Iraqi's Palestinian boss owns a white pick up truck — a Nissan, however, not a Chevy. Freeman and Linda Kuhlman are positive the truck they saw was a Chevy.
Yet another witness to a post-bombing incident involving the Palestinian claimed that he also was followed by the man, who was driving a white pick-up.
Back in Junction City, the manager of the Great Western Inn was watching TV with two reporters when the sketch of John Doe 2 flashed on the screen. The manager immediately recognized the man as the person who had stayed in room 107 on April 17. "He spoke broken English," said the manager. "[He] gave a foreign name and was driving a Ryder truck."
The man's name would never be revealed, however, because the FBI confiscated the hotel's log book.[553]
Several months later, Newsweek reporter Leslie Jorgensen uncovered information that several men had stayed at the Radisson Inn in Oklahoma City the day before the bombing. The men were dressed in Arab garb, but according to an employee, were not Arabs. At the same time, phone calls were placed from the Radisson to one of Timothy McVeigh's friends — a man in Idaho associated with the Aryan Republican Army.
A few days earlier, across town, two men had checked into the Plaza Inn. They told desk clerk Tiffany Harper they were Spanish visitors from Mexico. But Harper thought they were Arabs because of the way they talked.
According to employee Ruby Foos, another man checked into the motel a day or two later, went to his room, then emerged wearing flowing Arab robes. As far as Foos could tell, the man was not connected with the other two men.[554]
While it may not be unusual for Arab-garbed individuals to be in Oklahoma due to its connection with the oil industry, Douglas Boyer, the security guard at the Plaza, said a yellow Ryder truck was parked out front. All of the men checked out a day or two before the bombing.
Interestingly, two Middle Eastern men were spotted driving from Oklahoma City to Dallas immediately after the bombing. The men stopped to ask directions from an Oklahoma Highway Patrolman. When the officer ran their plate, he discovered that it didn't match the vehicle. The plate belonged to a rented blue Chevy Cavalier, which was later found at a motel in Oklahoma City. The driver of that vehicle, Asad R. Siddiqy, a cab driver from Queens, along with the other two men, Anis Siddiqy and Mohammed Chafi, were taken into custody.[555]
While the men were ultimately questioned and released, a blue Chevy Cavalier would be spotted by a witness in downtown Oklahoma City — along with a Ryder truck, a yellow Mercury, and a brown Chevy pick-up — the other vehicles in the bombing convoy.
On the morning of the blast, a woman was riding the elevator in the Murrah building, when she noticed a young Arab man wearing a backpack, hurriedly pushing the buttons as if trying to get off. As previously mentioned, she followed him outside, not suspecting anything was amiss. Moments later, she was sent sprawling to the sidewalk as the building blew up behind her.
Gary Lewis, a pressman for the Journal Record newspaper, had just stepped outside to smoke his pipe when he remembered he had left something in his car. As he walked down the alley, a yellow Mercury peeled away from its spot near the Murrah Building, jumped a concrete barricade, swerved to avoid hitting a dumpster, then bore down on him, forcing him up onto the curb. Lewis got a good look at the driver, describing him as one Timothy James McVeigh, and his passenger as resembling the sketch of John Doe 2. He said the car had an Oklahoma tag which was dangling by one bolt.
Several minutes later, Lewis was thrown to the floor as the Journal Record building rocked with the impact of the blast. As he picked himself up, another, more powerful explosion sent him sprawling again. As he and his fellow workers rushed outside, he noticed a peculiar sight: an Arab man standing nearby, staring at the Federal Building, grinning from ear to ear.
"It unnerved me," said Lewis, who described how the man seemed out of place among the throng of battered and bloody people. He seemed "enraptured."
As discussed earlier, another witness saw two men running from the area of the Federal Building toward a brown Chevy truck just prior to the blast. The witness described the two men as "males, of possible Middle-Eastern descent, approximately six feet tall, with athletic builds." One of the men was described as approximately 25-28 years old, having dark hair and a beard. The second person was described as 35-38 years old, with dark hair and a dark beard with gray in it — the same description Cary Gagan gave. He was described as wearing blue jogging pants, a black shirt, and a black jogging jacket. The witness also described a third person in the pick-up.[556]
Was this the same pick-up seen by Leonard Long and his daughter? Long was driving east on 5th Street at approximately 8:00 a.m. when he was forced to swerve out of the way by a erratically-driven brown pick-up with tinted windows. As the truck pulled up alongside, the passenger, a stocky, dark-skinned, dark-haired man began hurling racial epithets at the black couple. Long said the driver was a tall, thin white man with sharp features, a description not unsimilar to that given by James Linehan. The truck took the I-35 exit and headed south.[557]
Approximately 50 minutes later, as Margaret Hohmann and her friend Ann Domin were pulling into a parking spot in front of the Murrah Building, a brown pick-up peeled away from its parking spot, burning rubber as it tore down 5th Street. "Where's the cops when you need them?" Hohmann thought to herself.[558]
A few blocks away from the Murrah Building, Debra Burdick and her daughter were on the way to the doctor's office. As she stopped for a light at 10th and Robinson, she noticed three vehicles parked on the north side of the street between a church and a garage. One was a brown pick-up, one was a blue Chevy Cavalier, and the other was a yellow Mercury.
"I looked across," said Burdick, "and there was that light blue car, it had a white interior, and there were three men in it. They were dark, but they were not black… I would say they were Middle Easterners. There was a brown pick-up, but I couldn't see in (because of the tinted windows), and behind it was the yellow car with the cream top.
"Now, I noticed the three men in the car, that guy sitting in the middle was kind of staring out…. I said 'Huh, I wonder what they're looking at?' and as I turned around, I said 'there's nothing there but buildings.'"[559]
A few moments later, the bomb(s) went off. Hohmann and Domin, who were inside one of the Murrah Building's restrooms, were sent crashing to the floor. At the same moment, Debra Burdick and her daughter went skidding to the side of the road. When she looked back, the three vehicles were gone.
Five blocks south of the Murrah Building, at Robinson and Main, Kay H. had just raced out of her office. As she stepped on to the meridian, she was nearly run over as the brown pick-up came careening around the corner. The near miss gave her an opportunity to get a good look at the occupants.
"The driver — I made eye contact with him," recalled Kay. "He looked like he was in his twenties — late twenties. [He] had an angry look on his face. I'll never forget the look on his face. It just was full of hate and anger. It really struck me, because everyone else — people were coming out and they looked scared and confused, and he just looked full of anger."[560]
Kay recalled that two of the three people in the truck were Middle-Easterners. When she was shown photos, she picked out the Iraqi — the same one seen with McVeigh — as the driver.
David Snider, the Bricktown worker who had spotted one of the Ryder trucks that morning, ran outside after the bomb went off, and saw the brown pick-up as it flew past. "They were doing about 60 mph," recalled Snider. "They turned north and headed over the Walnut Street Bridge."[561]
An all-points-bulletin (APB) was quickly put out on the pick-up:
Dispatcher: "Be on the lookout for a late model almost new Chevrolet full-size pick-up — full size pickup brown pick-up. Will be brown in color with tinted windows — brown in color with tinted windows. Smoke colored bug deflector on the front of pick-up."
"…Middle-Eastern males 25-28 years of age, six feet tall, athletic build, Dark hair and a beard — dark hair and a beard. Break."
Officer: "Ok, Is this good information, or do we not really know?"
Dispatcher: "Authorization FBI."[562]
Strangely, the FBI canceled the APB several hours later, refusing to say why and demanding that it not be rebroadcast. When KPOC's David Hall asked the FBI why they canceled it, they denied ever putting it out. But when Hall played back his copy for the FBI man, he suddenly had "no comment."[563][564]
Soon after, Brad Edwards received a tip that the pick-up had been seen several times before the bombing at Sahara Properties (not its real name), a real-estate business in northwest Oklahoma City. The owner of Sahara Properties, an Israeli-born Palestinian named Sam Khalid (not his real name), was the Iraqi's employer.[565]*
Not long after KFOR's reports began airing, the Iraqi sued the station, then held a press conference claiming that he was not a suspect in the bombing, and that he had a solid alibi for the morning of April 19. His name was Hussain al-Hussaini, and he was at work, he said, painting a garage on NW 31 Street. Yet Alvin Devers, a neighbor interviewed by Davis, claimed no one was working on the house that day. "I didn't see anybody," said Devers. "I'd remember…."
In addition, Hussaini's co-worker, Ernie Cranfield, said Hussaini's alibi for the morning of April 19 — a time sheet stating he was at work at 8:08 a.m. — was patently false. Cranfield told Davis that Hussaini was working at a different house by 10:00 a.m., six blocks away, but wasn't there at 8:30 a.m.
"They was out there acting like they was painting on that garage all morning," Cranfield told me. "They didn't know I was already there before.…"[566]
Moreover, according to Cranfield, Sahara Properties doesn't use time sheets: "They use a time clock. They started about five months ago — five, six months ago… I've seem them clocking in every morning." Davis later learned that Khalid's daughter Heather had concocted Hussaini's "time sheet" at the request of her father.[567]
Hussaini also claimed that he worked a second job as at the Western Sizzlin restaurant — as a janitor, three days a week, from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. — which would have kept him too busy to be at the Murrah Building on April 19. Yet when Davis checked with Jeff Johnston, the assistant manager, she was told Hussaini hadn't worked from April 17 through April 20.
According to Khalid's secretary, none of Hussaini's Iraqi co-workers, who started working for Khalid in November, showed up on the 17th. Was it merely coincidental that Craig Freeman and Dennis Jackson saw a suspicious group of Arab men in the Murrah Building on the afternoon of the 17th?
Interestingly, Hussain al-Hussaini reapplied for his job at the Western Sizzlin in May, then quit in June, saying that he didn't need a job. Khalid's secretary said that Hussaini also purchased a Cadillac after the bombing. Had he suddenly come into a large amount of money?
When KFOR shared their evidence with the FBI, they downplayed their findings. FBI spokesman Dan Vogel said that eyewitness accounts are "notoriously inaccurate. Their credibility must be checked out, their stories corroborated."
Yet KFOR was able to corroborate their story with at least eight different witnesses. They not only placed McVeigh with Hussaini in at least three different locations in Oklahoma City, they were able to trace the brown pick-up to the business where Hussaini worked — to a businessman that had been investigated by the FBI for PLO ties. They determined that Hussaini had a tattoo exactly as described by the FBI, and that his alibi for the morning of April 19 was patently false.
Strangely, the FBI decided to back up Hussaini's story, telling KFOR that it might be difficult to place Hussaini near the Murrah Building on the morning of the 19th. Apparently the government had not counted on a local TV station stumbling onto Hussaini. After KFOR's story broke, a major damage control apparatus went into motion. KWTV, KOCO, the Daily Oklahoman, and the Oklahoma Gazette all ridiculed KFOR's reporting.[568]
Interestingly, when Hussaini appeared before TV cameras on June 15 to dispel the "rumors" about him, it was Abraham Ahmed who appeared as his interpreter!
The Gazette and KOCO also both claimed that Hussaini couldn't speak English, implying that he couldn't have been talking with McVeigh. Yet KFOR learned that he spoke broken English, and a police D.U.I. report indicated that he replied in English when questioned.[569]
"The information quoted on Channel Four is not true," FBI Agent Jeffrey Jenkins told the Daily Oklahoman. Though Jenkins later denied saying that, he admits that "he cringed when he saw the KFOR report."
Perhaps Jenkins cringed when he saw Hussaini on TV because the news station had, quite accidentally, uncovered the FBI's confidential informant. Why else would the FBI act so patronizing towards KFOR, who had clearly established a link between Hussaini and McVeigh?
The FBI wouldn't say if they had checked out Hussaini. Nor would they clear him. They told KFOR that they were "not in the business of clearing suspects." Yet, as Jayna Davis pointed out, they did clear numerous other John Doe 2 suspects, including Robert Jacks, Gary Land, and Todd Bunting, the Army private seen at Elliott's Body Shop. Interestingly, they then used the Bunting incident to say that John Doe 2 had been a red herring all along. John Doe 2, the FBI claimed, had never existed.[570]
Just why would the FBI issue a blanket "no comment" on a suspect who was seen by numerous witnesses with Timothy McVeigh, and was seen speeding away from the bombing?
For his part, Hussaini claims he was an officer in Iraq's elite Republican Guard, and was imprisoned for distributing anti-Saddam literature. According to the Gazette's account, he was released after serving eight years of a 13-year sentence.[571]
But the story changes. According to KWTV, he escaped during a prison uprising at the end of the war, and after searching for his family, he "ran to American soldiers and asked for help." He was then interned in a Saudi refugee camp, where he spent the next four years, until he was relocated to the U.S. in 1995.[572]
The problem with this story is that U.S. forces didn't get within 200 miles of Baghdad, which means that if Hussaini "ran to American soldiers," he would have had to run across several hundred miles of open dessert.
Yet according to his boss, Sam Khalid, Hussaini was never in the Republican Guard at all. A Shíite Muslim, he was imprisoned for his anti-Saddam beliefs, and forced to serve as cannon fodder on the front lines, as the Republican Guard withdrew.[573]
Yet the story changes once again. According to William Northrop, Hussaini served in the Hammurabi Division of the Republican Guard, and "was captured by the American 24th Mechanized Infantry Division in a fight on Highway 8, west of Basra, a few days after the war ended." Northrop stated that the Iraqis encountered the U.S. force, and, thinking it was merely a probe, opened fire. The Iraqis were badly beaten in the ensuing firefight, and Hussaini was wounded. He claims Hussaini was never in an Iraqi prison.[574]
If Hussaini was trying to concoct a cover-story, he apparently wasn't doing a very good job.[575] According to Northrop:
This lad was no ordinary soldier. [He] came to the United States around November of 1991. He triggered a "watch" on the Iraqi community in Boston and shortly thereafter, moved to Oklahoma City. I understand that he is currently residing in Houston.
Northrop also states that "Ramzi Ahmed Yousef (The 'mastermind' behind the World Trade Center bombing) served in the Hammurabi Division of the Republican Guard during the Gulf War.…"[576]
While it is not known how accurate this information is, there is evidence tying Yousef — a Pakistani Baluchi born in Kuwait — to Iraqi intelligence. The Baluch, who are Sunni Moslems, oppose the clerical Shia regime of Tehran, and had forged close links with Iraqi intelligence during that country's 10-year war with Iran. According to Dr. Mylroie, Iraq used the Baluch to carry out acts of terrorism against Iran.[577]
Alias Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim, Yousef arrived in the United States carrying an Iraqi passport.
Both Yousef and his partner in the World Trade Center bombing, Ahmed Ajaj, worked for Edwards Pipeline Testing and Technical Welding Laboratories in Houston, whose CEO is Maunal Bhajat, a close associate of Ishan Barbouti — an international Iraqi arms dealer who built Libya's chemical weapons plant at Ràbta. Barbouti's son Haidar (like Hussaini) also lives in Houston. According to Louis Champon, who went into business with Haidar, "Haidar Barbouti is an Iraqi agent."[578]
It was Barbouti who financed Champon's Product Ingredient Technology through his son Haidar. Wackenhut (a company with long-standing ties to the FBI and CIA) provided the security. According to Champon, Barbouti (with perhaps a little help from the secretive and mysterious Wackenhut) secretly drained thousands of gallons of ferrocyanide — a naturally occurring Cherry extract used to make cyanide gas — from Champon's plant.
Barbouti's ability to procure U.S. weapons technology for sale to Libya and Iraq wasn't exactly hindered by U.S. officials. While the Bush administration was publicly decrying Hussein's use of chemical weapons on the Kurds, the potassium ferrocyanide was shipped to Iraq to manufacture chemical weapons for Iraq's army, with the full knowledge and complicity of the Bush administration.
Said Champon, "Not one U.S. agent — not one official, ever questioned Haidar Barbouti — for evasion of taxes, where he got his money from, his involvement… in shipping cyanide outside the P.I.T. plant… nothing. I was told — and this is a quote from U.S. Customs [agent Martin Schram] — "This matter is highly political. Haidar Barbouti cannot be indicted, and if he were, he would never be convicted."[579]
The key that allowed the Iraqi "businessman" (Barbouti doesn't like to be called an arms dealer) to interface with the CIA was one Richard V. Secord, an integral player in the Iran-Contra arms-for-drugs network. Secord, it should be noted, was also a business partner of Vang Pao, the Laotian General who ran a heroin smugging ring out of Long Tien Airbase during the Vietnam War, and Monzer al-Kassar, the Syrian arms and drugs dealer who was involved in the Pan Am 103 bombing — another crime that was successfully covered up by the CIA and the FBI. According to Richard Babayan, a former CIA contract employee, "Barbouti was placed in the hands of Secord by the CIA, and Secord called in Wackenhut to handle security and travel for Barbouti and his export plans."[580]
Mike Johnston, the attorney who sued Barbouti on behalf of TK-7, an Oklahoma City company, ran into the same sort of stonewalling by the Justice Department. As Johnston was told by the federal team investigating this little corner of Iraqgate, "Mr. Johnston, you don't understand, we have to limit the objective of the investigation so we can get on with the business of running the government."
"Going into the investigation… was a disguised whitewash," Johnston later told me, echoing what U.S. Customs agent Martin Schram told Louis Champon.
Former CIA asset Charles Hayes said the CIA-connected Wackenhut was helping Barbouti ship chemicals to Iraq, "Supplying Iraq was originally a good idea," he maintains, "but then it got out of hand."[581]
Said Champon, "I can assure you, that if drums of cyanide left our plant, Dr. Barbouti had his reasons, either to be used against American troops or terrorist acts against the United States at home."[582] Cyanide is a necessary ingredient in the development of nerve gas. One thousand grams of cyanide later wound up in the World Trade Center bomb, constructed by Iraqi agent Ramzi Yousef.
Yousef's partner, Ahmed Ajaj, a member of the Egyptian-based Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya, lived in Texas. A Texas hamburger stand was reportedly used to relay telephone calls between the World Trade Center bombers as a means of avoiding detection. It was owned by some Palestinian friends of Ajaj, and Yousef and Ajaj used the number for conference calls while Ajaj was in prison.
The records may also indicate a tie between Ajaj and Hussaini's boss, Sam Khalid. Records obtained during TK-7's civil suit against Ishan Barbouti show a phone call to one of Khalid's properties in Houston. The person who made call was Ahmed Ajaj.[583]
Yet Barbouti wasn't just trying to procure material and technology from U.S. companies on behalf of Iraq. Barbouti also built the bunkers used to house Saddam Hussein's Mig jet fighters during Desert Storm. It was during TK-7's suit against Barbouti that the Americans learned of these bunkers. Barbouti's London head of Security, Tony Davisson, decided to sell the Americans the blueprints. It isn't clear whether Davisson had a falling out with Barbouti, or was simply being patriotic. The point may be moot, as Barbouti was apparently dead. The Iraqi arms dealer died (or faked his death) around the same time the Israeli Mossad knocked off his contemporary, Gerald Bull, the developer of the ill-fated Iraqi "Super-Gun."[584]
Davisson called TK-7's attorney, Mike Johnston, who flew to London, where he purchased the plans for $2,700, and promptly turned them over to the CIA. With the plans for Saddam's underground bunkers, the U.S. Airforce was able to practically wipe out Iraq's entire fleet of Mig fighter jets at the start of the war.
This didn't exactly make Saddam happy. In the parlance of the Arab world, this equated to pay-back time. If Hussein thought Barbouti was responsible for the destruction of his air force, he may have insisted the arms dealer cooperate in an act of revenge against the United States.
Yet the destruction of the Hussein's air force wasn't the only motive Iraq had for seeking revenge against the U.S. While Americans were busy tying yellow ribbons on their front porches for our boys in the Gulf, these same brave boys were slaughtering enemy soldiers and helpless civilians by the thousands. As reported by Mike Erlich of the Military Counseling Network at the March-April, 1991 European Parliament hearings on the Gulf War:
…hundreds, possibly thousands, of Iraqi soldiers began walking toward the U.S. position unarmed, with their arms raised in an attempt to surrender. However, the orders for this unit were not to take any prisoners…
The commander of the unit began the firing by shooting an anti-tank missile through one of the Iraqi soldiers. This is a missile designed to destroy tanks, but it was used against one man.
At that point, everybody in the unit began shooting. Quite simply, it was a slaughter.[585]
The government-controlled sanitized media campaign beamed into our living rooms, replete with scenes of high-tech "smart-bombs" whistling through the windows of enemy command centers, merely belied the terrible and deliberate carnage inflicted upon thousands of helpless civilians.
On February 13, 1991, a U.S. Air Force Stealth Bomber dropped two 1,000-pound, laser-guided bombs onto the roof of the Al-Amira air raid shelter in Baghdad. Two hundred and ninety four people — mostly women and children — died in what the U.S. military called a "military surgical strike."
According to William Blum, author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, the bombing of the Al-Amira air raid shelter wasn't accidental, it was deliberate:
The United States said it thought that the shelter was for VIPs, which it had been at one time, and claimed that it was also being used as a military communications center, but neighborhood residents insisted that the constant aerial surveillance overhead had to observe the daily flow of women and children into the shelter. Western reporters said they could find no signs of military use.[586]
An American journalist in Jordan who viewed unedited videotape footage of the disaster, which the American public never saw, wrote:
They showed scenes of incredible carnage. Nearly all the bodies were charred into blackness; in some cases the heat had been so great that entire limbs were burned off.… Rescue workers collapsed in grief, dropping corpses; some rescuers vomited from the stench of the still-smoldering bodies.[587]
Said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater after the bombing of the shelter: It was "a military target… We don't know why civilians were at this location, but we do know that Saddam Hussein does not share our value for the sanctity of life."[588]
This so-called "value for the sanctity for life" shown by American forces and lauded by the Bush administration, included not only attacks such as the one at Al-Amira, but the bombing and strafing of unarmed civilians who tried to flee to the Jordanian border.
Buses, taxis, and private cars were repeatedly assaulted, literally without mercy, by rockets, cluster bombs and machine guns; usually in broad daylight, the targets clearly civilian, with luggage piled on top, with no military vehicles or structures anywhere to be seen, surrounded by open desert, the attacking planes flying extremely close to the ground… busloads of passengers incinerated, and when people left the vehicles and fled for their lives, planes often swooped down upon them firing away.…
"You're killing us!" cried a Jordanian taxi driver to an American reporter. "You're shooting us everywhere we move! Whenever they see a car or truck, the planes dive out of the sky and chase us. They don't care who we are or what we are. They just shoot." His cry was repeated by hundreds of others.….[589]
Mike Ange, a GI from North Carolina, described the carnage:
I actually went up close and examined two of the vehicles that basically looked like refugees maybe trying to get out of the area. You know, you had like a little Toyota pick-up truck that was loaded down with the furniture and the suitcases and rugs and the pet cat and that type of thing, all over the back of the this truck, and those trucks were taken out just like the military vehicles.[590]
"The U.S. military considers the murdering of our children nothing more than 'collateral damage," said Al Kaissy, an information officer at the Iraqi Interests section of the Algerian Embassy in Washington. "They have never apologized or even admitted their mistake."[591]
At the same time, the American public, fed a daily dose of propaganda generated in Pentagon media briefing rooms, could not understand how terrorists could bomb a civilian building in the heartland of America.
While the estimate of Iraqi forces killed runs as high as 250,000, the actual number of Iraqis killed, including civilians, runs much higher. American planes deliberately destroyed Iraq's power plants, its sewage systems, and its hospitals. The economic embargo severely compounded the situation, forcing an entire population to struggle amidst massive epidemics of starvation and disease. Their infrastructure decimated, without sanitation, food and medical supplies, hundreds of thousands of civilians suffered horrible, lingering deaths — all caused by the U.S. military, the greed of Big Oil, and their life-long friend, George Herbert Walker Bush.
The people of Baghdad have turned the rubble of the Al-Amira air raid shelter into a shrine, complete with mementos and pictures of the children who perished.
In Oklahoma City, victims placed mementos of their dead relatives on a chain-link fence surrounding the remains of the Alfred P. Murrah Building and asked, "Who could do such a thing? Who could kill innocent civilians?"
While the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings may have been the result of Iraqi revenge, what ultimately lay behind the New York and Daharan bombings appeared to stem from a broader-based alliance of Islamic militants from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other countries committed to the expulsion of U.S. troops from the region and an all-out attack on the "Great Satan."[592]
It has been reported that groups ranging from the Palestinian-based Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Sudanese National Islamic Front, the Pakistan-based al-Fuqra, and groups funded by Saudi Arabian Osama bin-Laden were involved in the World Trade Center bombing and related plots.
In fact, as early as 1990, World Trade Center conspirators El-Sayyid Nossair, Mahmud Abouhalima, and al-Fuqra member Clement Rodney Hampton-El (an American Black Muslim) had met in New York City with Sheik Abd-al-Aziz Awadah, who is alleged to have been a senior commander engaged in the coordination of terrorist operations with Iranian, Palestanian, and Hizbollah leaders.[593]
Such alliances were also reflected in a major terrorist conference held in Tehran in 1993, where it was decided the terrorists' war against the U.S. would include "targeting buildings for bomb spectaculars."[594]
Another major terrorist conference was held in Tehran on June 20-23, 1996, during which it was announced that there would be increased attacks against U.S. interests. Two days later, on June 25, the military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, was bombed, claiming the lives of 19 servicemen. The Movement for Islamic Change, which had already claimed credit for the Riyadh bombing, took credit.
This was followed by another terrorist conference at the Northwest Frontier Province town of Konli, near the Afghani border in Pakistan on July 10-15, 1996. The meeting saw some of the most important militant Islamic leaders come together under one tent. They included Osama bin Ladin, a Saudi Arabian who funded the Mujahadeen, was implicated in the Riyadh and Dhahran bombings, and was a close associate of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, Ahmed Jibril of the PFLP-GC (who carried out the Pan Am 103 bombing on orders from Teheran), Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a senior representative of Iranian intelligence, senior Pakistani intelligence officers, and senior commanders of Hamas, HizbAllah, and other groups. All resolved to use whatever force was