The Oklahoma City Bombing
and the
Politics of Terror
by David Hoffman
Web Page III
Chapters:
10. The Octopus
12. The Motive
15. Epilogue: Let Them Eat O.J.
10
[E: This chapter was omitted from the printed edition.]
"This underground empire is controlled
by a handful of people for money — that's the only secret of the temple."
— Investigative reporter Danny Casolaro, prior to his murder by the Octopus
The nomenclature of the Lockerbie and World Trade Center bombings provide a unique and unparalleled insight into the dynamics of the Oklahoma City bombing. Each event gives the reader a glimpse of how the Shadow Government operates, utilizing drug dealers, criminals, and terrorists to do its bidding.
All three bombings were sting operations that utilized, and were utilized by, terrorists bent on causing destruction.
But the question still remained: who was controlling the terrorists? To understand that, one must peer through the doorway of time stretching from WWII to the present.
To prepare for the invasion of Sicily during WWII, the OSS (which later became the CIA) collaborated with the Corsican Mafia. The arrangement permitted the Mafia use the port of Marseilles for heroin smuggling in exchange for its assistance in defeating the Nazis.[1117]
After WWII, the heroin operation moved to Vietnam and Laos, then to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as the CIA embroiled itself in a covert war against the Soviets. Assistant Secretary of Defense for National Security Affairs Richard Armitage sat on the "208 Committee," which oversaw military aid to the Mujahadeen. Fazoe Haq, the governor of the Northwest Frontier Province (the largest heroin growing province in Afghanistan), who was originally worth $100,000, was suddenly was worth $200 million after the war. Armitage was his main contact.[1118]
Vince Cannistraro (Mr. "Libya done it") also sat on the 208 Committee, representing National Security Advisor Robert "Bud" McFarlane, Oliver North's supervisor.[1119]
Shortly after the start of the Afghani operation, the CIA began arming the Contras in Nicaragua. Cannistraro himself [along with Duane "Dewy" Clarridge, then Chief of the CIA's Latin American Division] headed Casey's original operation to arm the Contras, based on Reagan's March, 1981 decision. As former Green Beret Andrew Eiva said, "Cannistraro was up to his ears by 1985." This is significant, considering the Boland Amendment, prohibiting aid to the Contras, was passed in 1984.[1120]
Some of these are the same players who moved into other Central American countries, setting up security services (death squads) for U.S.-backed dictators, and profiting handsomely from the cocaine trade.
If anyone thinks these are outrageous allegations, consider the statements of Mike Levine, one of the DEA's most highly decorated veterans: "For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug dealers," including the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, the Contras in Central America, the DFS in Mexico, the Shan United Army in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, and "any of a score of other groups and/or individuals like Manuel Noriega. Support of these people has been secretly deemed more important than getting drugs off our streets."[1121]
Or consider the words of Lt. Col. Bo Gritz, former commander of the Special Forces in Latin America and the most decorated soldier in Vietnam. Gritz made a trip to the Golden Triangle in 1983 to search for American POWs, a mission that was ultimately stonewalled. Gritz believes the POWs are being used as drug mules, and the government doesn't want them returned alive, for fear they would expose the Octopus. As Gritz said: "[They] would not want the American POWs to come home. Because when they do, there will be an investigation as to why they were abandoned. At that time we will uncover this secret organization and its illicit drug money and financing. The Secret Team would then be exposed."[1122]
As Gritz later wrote in Called to Serve:
If Richard Armitage was, as Khun Sa avowed, a major participant in parallel government drug trafficking, then it explained why our efforts to rescue POWs had been inexplicably foiled, time after time... If it was true, Richard Armitage would be the last man in the world who would desire to see prisoners of war come home alive.[1123]
As "Special Consultant to the Pentagon on the MIAs," in Bangkok in 1975, Armitage reportedly spent more time repatriating opium profits then recovering POWs. In 1976, when Khun Sa was still selling heroin to CIA officials, the head of the CIA was none other than George Bush.[1124]
Former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, who was appointed presidential investigator for POW/MIA affairs, came upon the same information, and was warned by former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci to stop pursuing the connections to Armitage. As he sadly explained to a group of POW/MIA families in 1987: "I have been instructed to cease and desist."[1125]
Ironically, between 1987 and 1991, Vice-President Bush served as head of the South Florida Drug Task Force, and later as chair of the National Narcotics Interdiction System, both set up to "stem" the flow of drugs into the U.S. While Bush was drug czar, the volume of cocaine smuggled into the U.S. tripled.[1126]
Celerino "Cele" Castillo, the DEA's head agent in El Salvador and Guatemala from 1985 to 1991, told reporters and Senate investigators of numerous known drug traffickers who used hangers controlled by Oliver North and the CIA in El Salvador's Ilopango military airbase. When Castillo naively tried to warn Bush at a U.S. embassy party in Guatemala, Bush "just shook my hand, smiled and walked away…"[1127]
"By the end of 1988," added Castillo, "I realized how hopelessly tangled the DEA, the CIA, and every other U.S. entity in Central America had become with the criminals. The connections boggled my mind."[1128]
"The CIA — they're making deals with the Devil," adds Mike Levine. "Unfortunately, the Devil is smarter than they are."[1129]
Some of those devils, like Monzer al-Kassar — "business partner" of Richard Secord and Oliver North — would be utilized to do the Octopus's dirty work.
Another name Khun Sa mentioned repeatedly was Ted Shackley.[1130] A long-time CIA player, Theodore G. Shackley (known as "The Blond Ghost") began his Agency career as CIA Station Chief in Miami, where he directed the CIA's JM/WAVE Operation, a post-Bay of Pigs attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro and wreck havoc within that sovereign nation. Utilizing Cuban expatriates, the CIA conducted hundreds of sabotage raids against Cuba in direct violation of the U.S. Neutrality Act. Shackley also worked in close partnership with Mob figures John Roselli, Sam Giancana, and Santos Trafficante.[1131]
While the operation was shut down in 1965, due mainly to revelations of organized crime connections and drug smuggling, many of the participants remained in Miami, continuing their illegal activities.
Later, as Station Chief of Laos, Shackley directed Major General Richard Secord's air wing in tactical raids against the Communist Pathet Lao, who happened to be General Vang Pao's main competition in the opium trade. By keeping the Pathet Lao busy with the help of the CIA and the American military, Pao's Hmong tribesmen were able to become the region's largest heroin producers.[1132]
Of course, Shackley, his deputy Tom Clines (who supervised the air base in Long Tieng), and their colleagues in CIA front companies like Air America were only too happy to help, smuggling heroin to the U.S. in the gutted bodies of dead GIs (with the assistance of their old Mob buddy Santos Trafficante, who had helped form their ZR/RIFLE assassination team, and Vietnamese Air Force General Nguyen Cao Ky), and laundering the profits in the Nugan-Hand bank. As a 1983 Wall Street Journal article stated:
Investigations following Mr. Nugan's death and the failure of the bank revealed widespread dealings by Nugan-Hand with international heroin syndicates, and evidence of massive fraud against U.S. and foreign citizens. Many retired high-ranking Pentagon and CIA officials were executives of or consultants to Nugan-Hand.[1133][1134]*
Shackley, along with Nugan-Hand's attorney — former CIA Director William Colby — directed the infamous "Phoenix Program," a largely successful attempt to "neutralize" by torture and murder approximately 40,000 Vietnamese civilians suspected of being Viet Cong sympathizers. One Phoenix operative, testifying before Congress, stated that Phoenix was "a sterile, depersonalized murder program… it was completely indiscriminate." The assassinations would continue in Nicaragua under the code-name "Operation Pegasus."[1135][1136]
After becoming the head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere operations (Latin American Division) in 1972, Shackley supervised the overthrow of the Chilean government ("Operation Track II") by murdering democratically elected President Salvador Allende. With the backing of the CIA under Shackley, the military led a violent coup by Right-wing General Augusto Pinochet, which resulted in the abolishment of the Constitution, the closing of all newspapers save for two Right-wing dailies, the outlawing of trade unions, the suppression of all political parties, and the arrest, torture, and execution of thousands.[1137]
After a brief stint as Director of the Far East Division, Shackley directed CIA agent Edwin Wilson in training the Shah of Iran's notorious secret police, the Savak, who routinely tortured and murdered the Shah's opponents. Later Shackley would assist more directly in these efforts.[1138]
In 1975, Shackley became Associate Director in the Directorate of Operations, which put him in charge of Covert-Operations, Counter-Intelligence, and ironically, Counter-Narcotics, all under the command of George Herbert Walker Bush.
These associations naturally led to Shackley playing a role in the formation of the "Secret Team," (to coin a phrase invented by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty) the covert and illegal enterprise that was the driving force behind the Iran-Contra operation. Donald Gregg, one of Shackley's subordinates during his Saigon tenure, would later become Assistant National Security Advisor during Iran-Contra, reporting directly to Vice-President Bush.
It was against this backdrop that Shackley served as a "consultant" to players such as Bush, Secord, North, and Casey in their illegal and bloody guns-for-drugs network that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the flooding of our streets with tons of drugs.
As Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny writes about Ted Shackley in his book, The Crimes of Patriots:
Looking at the list of disasters Shackley has presided over during his career, one might even conclude that on the day the CIA hired Shackley it might have done better hiring a KGB agent; a Soviet mole probably could not have done as much damage to the national security of the United States with all his wile as Shackley did with the most patriotic of intentions.
Between Shackely's Cuban and Indochinese campaigns, more dope dealers were probably put onto the payroll of the United States Government, and protected and encouraged in their activities, than if the government had simply gone out and hired the Mafia — which, in the case of the Cuban campaign, it did.
CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner forced Shackley to resign from the Agency in 1979, due to his "unauthorized" dealings with rogue agent Edwin Wilson, who was selling plastic explosives to Libya (with Shackley's approval). Had he not left, Shackley would likely have become head of the Agency.[1139]
George Bush, who headed the Agency in 1976, strongly desired to continue in that post. He was not reappointed when Jimmy Carter took office.[1140]*
Moreover, Turner, who had little faith in HUMNIT (Human Intelligence) sources, decided to reshape the CIA along more advanced technological lines. As a result of Turner's infamous "Halloween Massacre," the CIA cut its field agents from several thousand to just over 300. As President Jimmy Carter would later state, "We were aware that some of the unqualified and incompetent personnel whom he discharged were deeply resentful."[1141]
The old hands of the Agency, who formerly had at their disposal almost unlimited "Black Budget" funds for covert operations, were suddenly forced into retirement, or forced into lockstep with Turner's new guidelines.
Although CIA Director William Casey hired 2,000 new covert operators in 1980, many CIA critics felt Turner's actions had already caused the secret cells of the good-old-boy networks to bury themselves — and their illegal activities — even deeper.
It is this element, birthed in the hysteria of the Cold War, legitimized by the paranoia of the National Security state, and nurtured by the politics of greed, that has buried itself in the core of American politics.
As long-time Army Criminal Investigator Gene Wheaton defines it: "An elite, very clandestine, very covert group within the intelligence community…. The CIA and DIA is just the lightening rod for the people who really control things."
Those who could accept the idea of government foreknowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing would be hard-pressed to accept the notion that certain factions within the government might have orchestrated the bombing itself. Those who have a difficult time accepting this are stymied by what they perceive as "government."
As Wheaton explains, "The government is just a bunch of monuments, office buildings, computers, and desks. They don't see the crazies in the government — the little conspiratorial cliques within the government."[1142]
These little conspiratorial cliques — the same players that Shackley intersects with, going back to Cuba, Laos, Afghanistan and Nicaragua — have been involved for decades in everything from drug and gun-running, to assassinations, covert warfare, and outright terrorism. It is a terrorism that increasingly has no particular face, no ideological credo, no political goal. It is a terrorism motivated by power and greed.[1143]
By no means the lone man behind the curtain, Ted Shackley represents one of the more visible of this lexicon of covert operators upon whom the powers that be depend on for their endless supply of "black ops" and dirty tricks. Perhaps this is how Shackley knows, or seems to know, the complex truth behind Oklahoma City. It is a truth that remains hidden behind a sophisticated labyrinth of covert operatives, all of whom converge at similar times and places. They are, as David Corn writes, "the little faceless gray men we never see and seldom hear about." Those we call the "Shadow Government," the "Parallel Government," the "Enterprise," the "Octopus," or a half-a-dozen other names, are carefully hidden behind an endless roster of official titles and duties, and a plethora of familiar-sounding organizations and institutions.
These same faceless little gray men would pop up in the Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy like interminable weeds between the cracks of the pavement. From the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra to Oklahoma City, the names, faces, and players would coalesce for a brief moment in time into an indistinguishable menagerie of politicos and spooks, terrorists and assassins — to commit their terrible deed, then fade into the seamless world were little distinction is made between assets and criminals.[1144]
Ted Shackley was officially forced to resign from the CIA due to his dealings with friend and renegade agent Edwin Wilson. Wilson and former CIA employee Frank Terpil had smuggled two tons of C-4 to Libya, and at the behest of Shackley, had set up terrorist training camps there utilizing Green Berets led to believe they were working for the Agency. The ostensible purpose of this maneuver was to permit the CIA to gather information on Soviet and Libyan weapons and defense capabilities, and to learn the identities of foreign nationals being trained for guerrilla warfare. Upon obtaining their passports and travel plans, Shackley would alert their home country's secret police, who would then assassinate them upon their return.[1145]
While Wilson was sentenced to a long prison term, Terpil fled to Cuba, and has since been involved in numerous dealings with the PLO and other terrorists, supplying them with sophisticated assassination weapons, detonators, and communication systems.[1146]
Terpil also supplied torture devices to Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin, who used a bomb supplied by Terpil to assassinate Kenyan cabinet member Bruce McKenzie.[1147]*
One month later, Terpil was implicated in the murder of three executives of the IBEX corporation — a high-technology company that was doing business with the Savak. John Harper, IBEX's former director of security, said that while in Tripoli, he saw a mock-up of the ambush site at the training facility that Terpil and Wilson had set up.[1148]†
Readers will recall this is the same Frank Terpil that was seen by Cary Gagan in Mexico City with Omar (Sam Khalid?), six months before the Oklahoma City bombing. "I saw him down in Mexico," recalled Gagan, "in November of '94, in Mexico City… with Omar."
Gagan said he and Omar met Terpil at the Hotel Maria Isabelle in the Zona Rosa district. Gagan didn't know who Terpil was at the time, but described him as a fat, balding, 60ish fellow, who was "terribly dressed." In other words — Frank Terpil.
"I heard the name because I knew Wilson's name from the Florence Federal Penitentiary in Colorado." Gagan said that one of his intelligence contacts, a man named Daniel, told him about Terpil. "The conversation came up in reference to the Gander, Newfoundland crash," said Gagan.
Was Terpil in Mexico to supply explosives to Omar? While Gagan wasn't privy to the conversation, he believes that was the purpose of the meeting.
When Wilson and Terpil were selling arms and explosives to Libya, they were reporting to none other than Ted Shackley. Kwitny notes that Wilson and Terpil were hiring anti-Castro Cubans from Shackley's old JM/WAVE program [and Green Berets] to assassinate President Qaddafi's political opponents abroad:
Some U.S. Army men were literally lured away from the doorway of Fort Bragg, their North Carolina training post. The GIs were given every reason to believe that the operation summoning them was being carried out with the full backing of the CIA.…[1149]
Readers will also recall that while Timothy McVeigh was still in the Army, he wrote his sister a letter telling her that he had been picked for a Special Forces (Green Beret) Covert Tactical Unit (CTU) that was involved in illegal activities. These illegal activities included "protecting drug shipments, eliminating the [Octopus's drug] competition, and population control."
This is exactly what Shackley, Clines, and Secord did in Laos — assassinating and bombing Vang Pao's opium competition out of existence.
Could this CTU McVeigh claims he was recruited for be a latter-day version of Shackley's assassins? Former federal grand juror Hoppy Heidelberg said McVeigh's letter indicates that he turned them down, while former FBI SAC Ted Gundersen claims McVeigh actually worked for the group for a while, then became disenchanted.[1150]
If McVeigh had actually been recruited for such a group, the question arises of what cover-story he was given. As discussed, it is highly likely he was told that he was on an important mission — to infiltrate a terrorist organization and prevent a bombing. Considering McVeigh's background and character, it is unlikely he is a terrorist who set out to murder 169 innocent people.
Also recall that McVeigh was seen with Hussain al-Hussaini. The Iraqis would provide a convincing and plausible excuse if McVeigh was led to believe he was part of a sting operation: "Son, you were a hero in the Gulf War. Your country needs you now in the fight against terrorism." It is a story a young, impressionable man like McVeigh would fall for.
It is also possible that McVeigh was sheep-dipped as disgruntled ex-GI for infiltration into the neo-Nazi community, which would provide a doorway into the bombing conspiracy through places like Elohim City.
Or perhaps, as a result of his becoming "disenchanted" and "leaving" the CTU, he became targeted for "termination," and was set up as a fall-guy. Such is standard operating procedure for those who attempt to leave the world of covert operations.
Either way, the fact that there appeared to be two "Timothy McVeighs," just as there were two Oswalds, would suggest a sophisticated intelligence operation, one that was designed to put McVeigh in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Like Oswald, McVeigh probably believed himself to be a government agent, part of a secret project. Like Oswald, McVeigh was not told what the plan really involved, and was trapped, framed, and made a patsy.
This goes a long way towards explaining why an armed McVeigh didn't shoot and kill Officer Charles Hanger when he was stopped on the Interstate after the bombing. Why would a man who had just killed 169 men, women, and children balk at killing a cop (a member of the system that McVeigh allegedly hated) on a lonely stretch of highway? The only possible answer is that McVeigh believed he was part of a sting operation — a government asset — and would be protected.
Whatever McVeigh's actual purpose and intent, it is curious, to say the least, that Ted Shackley would tell D'Ferdinand Carone that the perpetrator of the bombing was somebody from here.
How did he know?
Roger Moore, the mysterious gun dealer whom the government claimed McVeigh and Nichols robbed to "finance" the bombing, ran a company next to Bahia Mar Marina in South Florida (a popular hang-out for the Iran-Contra crowd), which manufactured high-speed boats. The boats — sold through Intercontinental Industries of Costa Rica (an Ollie North "cut-out") — were used to mine Nicaragua's harbors in "Operation Cordova Harbor."[1151]
One source I spoke to said Moore had direct contact with Oliver North. "I don't know who his [Moore's] contact was on Iran-Contra beyond Don Aranow. I know he had access and would talk directly to Oliver North. He knew Felix Rodriquez pretty well, he knew Nester Sanchez, Manny Diaz, all those guys around Jeb [Bush] pretty well."
This source also claimed that Moore was a "paymaster" for Tom Posey's Civilian Military Assistance (CMA) — the covert paramilitary operation that served as the primary nexus for arming the Contras.
A retired CIA/DIA agent I spoke to in Arkansas, said "[Moore] was an Agency contractor."
Other sources say Moore was an informant for the FBI. He allegedly tried to sell heavy weapons to the Militia of Montana (MOM) as part of an FBI sting operation. A call to MOM indicated that Moore had indeed stopped by for a friendly chat. He told Randy Trochmann, one of MOM's leaders, that he was traveling the country meeting with militia groups in an attempt to verify black helicopter sightings and rumors of UN troop movements. This seems a peculiar pastime for a man who worked for a network of spooks devoted to bypassing and subverting the Constitution.[1152]*
What is also peculiar is a letter written by Moore to McVeigh in early 1995. Introduced at the trial of Terry Nichols, the letter, speaks of "a plan… to bring the country down and have a few more things happen."[1153]
Robert "Bud" McFarlane went on to form his own consulting firm, and joined the board of American Equity Investors (AEI), founded by Prescott Bush. AEI's board of directors reads like a Who's Who of the spook world, including former CIA officials George Clairmont and Howard Hebert, and CIA lawyer Mitch Rogovin, who was George Bush's legal counsel when he was Director of the Agency.[1154]
AEI invested in a Tulsa, Oklahoma company: Hawkins Oil and Gas, from 1988 to 1991. McFarlane was a "consultant" for Hawkins and several other companies on the Ech power project in Pakistan, which required frequent trips to that country.[1155] This was during the tail end of the largest covert operation the U.S. ever conducted — the arming of the Mujahadeen, who trained in Pakistan. McFarlane sat on the "208 Committee," who's job it was to procure weapons for the Mujahadeen, and arms contracts for the Pakistani government.
Recall that Richard Armitage, who was the contact for Fazoe Haq, governor of the Northwest Frontier Province, also sat on the "208 Committee." As Alfred A. McCoy writes in The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia:
It's known that the CIA paid the Afghan guerrillas, who were based in Pakistan, through BCCI.… That the Pakistan military were in fact banking their drug profits, moving their drug profits from the consuming country back to Pakistan though BCCI. In fact the boom in the Pakistan drug trade was financed by BCCI.…
BCCI also served as a conduit for the Iran-Contra operation, largely through Gaith Pharon, former head of Saudi Intelligence, who operated out of Islamabad, Pakistan. The Saudis played a major role in funding the Mujahadeen and [via the request of Secord and McFarlane] the Contras.
McFarlane — who former Mossad official Ari Ben Menashe claims is a Mossad asset — worked with the president of Hawkins' International Division, Mujeeb Rehman Cheema, on the Ech project. Was Hani Kamal's supposed statement that Khalid was connected to the Mossad accurate? A prominent Muslim community leader, Cheema claims he does not know Sam Khalid.[1156]
Interestingly, Gagan said that at one point, Terry Nichols rendezvoused with his Middle Eastern friends at the Islamic society of Nevada. Cheema is chairman of the Islamic Society of Tulsa. Is there a connection? And what of Cheema's links to McFarlane? Was McFarlane using Hawkins as a front for CIA activities in Pakistan?
It is perhaps prophetic that many of the terrorists implicated in the major bombings of the last decade attended the terrorist conference held in the Northwest Frontier Province town of Konli, Pakistan in July of 1996. As noted, Osama bin Ladin, a Saudi who funded the Mujahadeen and was implicated in the Riyadh and Dhahran bombings, (a close associate of Sheik Abdel Omar Rahman, implicated in the World Trade Center bombing), Ahmed Jibril (who bombed Pan Am 103), and senior representatives of Iranian and Pakistani intelligence, and Hamas, HizbAllah, and other groups attended the conference.[1157]
Stephen Jones claimed he had learned through the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service that Iraq had hired seven Pakistani mercenaries — Mujahadeen veterans — to bomb targets in the U.S., one of which was the Alfred P. Murrah Building.[1158]
Just who were these "Pakistani mercenaries," and were they really working for Iraq?
11
The use of former enemy soldiers, criminals, and terrorists for their dirty work is also a time-honored tradition among intelligence agencies, who stand to gain the "plausible deniability" so coveted in the world of covert operations.[1159]
At the close of WWII, the U.S. Government helped thousands of Nazi war criminals escape justice, integrating them into its scientific/military/intelligence establishment. Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's senior intelligence officer on the Eastern Front, and other high-ranking Nazis, were spirited out of Germany with the aid of the OSS and the Vatican, then installed in top-secret, sensitive posts in the U.S. and abroad.
Gehlen's SS officers had been instrumental in the mass extermination of Gypsies and Jews, and Gehlen was personally responsible for the torture, interrogation, and murder by starvation of some 4 million Soviet prisoners of war.
Gehlen later boasted of teaching the newly formed CIA everything it knew.
Many of the world's deadliest terrorists were in fact trained by agencies such as the CIA and KGB, who went on to commit mayhem and murder on an unprecedented scale. A prime example is Shackley's JM/WAVE anti-Casto campaign of the mid-1960s, which trained Cuban exiles in techniques of assassination and terror, then unleashed them on their native country. The most infamous of these "Cuban Cowboys," Luis Posada Carriles (AKA: Ramon Medina), a member of the anti-Casto group CORU (also a member of the CIA's ZR/RIFLE assassination team under the command of E. Howard Hunt), killed 78 people in October of 1976 by bombing a Cuban airliner.[1160]*
Carriles said he planned the bombing at the CIA's instigation.
As one of CORU's members explained in a CBS interview, "We use the tactics that we learned from the CIA because we — we were trained to do everything. We are trained to set off a bomb, we were trained to kill… we were trained to do everything."[1161]
The mastermind of the bombing, Orlando Bosch, responsible for more than 50 anti-Castro bombings in Cuba and elsewhere, was released from prison at the behest of George Bush's son Jeb, who has strong ties to both the Cuban expatriate community and the Contras.
As Vice-President, Bush also headed the Task Force on Combating Terrorism. Proudly displaying his condemnation of terrorism, Bush pardoned Bosch, giving him special permission to live in Miami.[1162][1163]
The CIA's support of the Afghani Mujahadeen between 1979 and 1989 resulted in a huge wave of well-armed and trained Muslim extremists bent on venting their political and ideological rage against the U.S. At the same time, the overflow from the Afghani operation resulted in one of the largest pools of potential recruits for covert operations.
One of the main operatives the CIA had utilized in its war against the Soviets was Sheik Abdel Omar Rahman. The CIA utilized Rahman because of his influence over the Mujahadeen, then brought him into the U.S. on a CIA-sponsored visa. While the Sheik was eventually convicted for conspiracy to bomb targets in the U.S., prosecutors encountered resistance in pursuing him and other World Trade Center bombing suspects because of their ties to the Mujahadeen, and their ties to U.S. intelligence.
As Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, put it: "One of the big problems here is that many suspects in the World Trade Center bombing were associated with the Mujahadeen. And there are components of our government that are absolutely disinterested in following that path because it leads back to people we supported in the Afghan war."[1164]
A staunch anti-Western crusader, Rahman became a shining light for thousands of Muslim extremists after the war in their crusade for the holy Jihad. Nearby Peshawar, Pakistan became the staging area for tens of thousands of radicals, many of whom went on to form smaller cells around the world, including the U.S. The groups that flocked to Pakistan's terrorist training centers included the Egyptian Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya, the Palestinian Hammers, the Algerian Al-Jihad, and the Filipino Moro Liberation Front.
World Trade Center mastermind Ramzi Yousef also spent considerable time in Pakistan. As one Western diplomat noted: "The United States created a Moscow Central in Peshawar for these groups, and the consequences for all of us are astronomical."[1165]
As Mary Ann Weaver writes in the May, 1996 issue of The Atlantic Monthly: "…the CIA helped to train and fund what eventually became an international network of highly disciplined and effective Islamic militants — and a new breed of terrorist as well."
To the CIA, which pumped more than $2 billion into the fourteen-year Afghani resistance effort, Sheik Omar was what intelligence officials call "a valuable asset."[1166][1167]
El Sayyid Nosair, a core member of the Al Salaam Mosque run by Rahman, shot and killed the radical Right-wing Rabbi Meir Kahane in November of 1990. During a conversation between a 20-year veteran FBI agent and one of his top undercover operatives, the operative asked:
"Why aren't we going after the Sheik [Adbel Rahman]?" demanded the undercover man.
"It's hands off," answered the agent.
"Why?" asked the operative.
"It was no accident that the Sheik got a visa and that he's still in the country," replied the agent, visibly upset. "He's here under the banner of national security, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA."
The agent pointed out that the Sheik had been granted a tourist visa, and later a green card, despite the fact that he was on a State Department terrorist watch-list that should have barred him from the country. He's an untouchable, concluded the agent.…"[1168][1169]
It was also revealed during the Sheik's conspiracy trial that in 1989 the U.S. Army had sent Special Forces Sergeant Ali A. Mohammed to Jersey City to provide training for Mujahadeen recruits, including Nosair and Mahmud Abouhalima, a convicted World Trade Center bomber. Interestingly, this was at the same time the pair were under surveillance by the FBI as suspected terrorists.[1170][1171]*
The experiences of the CIA's expatriated Nazis, Anti-Castro Cubans, and Mujahadeen veterans were strikingly similar to that of the Ku Klux Klan, which for decades remained on the end of a long leash controlled by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
One of the most infamous examples of FBI-orchestrated terror-murder were the brutal 1963 KKK attacks on civil rights workers in Birmingham, Alabama, led by FBI informant Gary Rowe.
It seems that Rowe was no mere informant. As Curt Gentry writes in J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets: "Klan members stated he had veto power over any violent activity contemplated by the Eastview 13 Klavern."[1172][1173]
Rowe also participated in the 1965 murder of civil rights marcher Viola Liuzzo. As the National Review reported, "The 1978 investigation implicated [Rowe] as an agent provocateur.… Three other Klansmen testified that it was Rowe who had actually shot Viola." While Rowe was indicted on first degree murder, a federal judge blocked Rowe's extradition, claiming that a federal agent has rights that protect him when "placed in a compromising position because of his undercover work." A Federal Appeals Court upheld the ruling.
The FBI informant was also accused of helping plant the bomb that killed four black girls in a Birmingham church. Although Rowe failed lie-detector tests regarding his complicity in that and the Viola murder, he was never prosecuted, and instead was given a $20,000 "reward" by the FBI.
A similar case of government-orchestrated terror-murder would come about in 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina with the murder of five Communist Workers Party members by KKK and Nazi Party goons — led by FBI operative Edward Dawson and ATF informant Bernard Butkovich. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times reported that Butkovich "offered to procure explosives," and "offered to train them in activities such as making pipe bombs and fire bombs."[1174]
Even more suspiciously, the tactical squad assigned to monitor the march was reportedly "out to lunch" at the time, and a patrol car that happened to be in the area, was told to "clear the area as soon as possible."[1175]
The incident is suspiciously similar to the ATF agents in Oklahoma who were paged not to come into work on the morning of the blast.
Echoing the factitious rants of ATF chief Lester Matz, Governor Frank Keating, and other federal officials in Oklahoma, FBI Director William Webster called the charges of federal complicity "utterly absurd." Although the killers had been recruited, organized and led on their murderous rampage by ATF and FBI operatives, none ever served a day of jail-time.[1176]
Like the FBI's KKK mules, or the ATF's pet Nazis at Elohim City, the Pakistani/Afghani Mujahadeen and Iraqi veterans resettled into the U.S. represent the next wave of "covert cowboys" — ready and willing to do the CIA/FBI's dirty work.
As Gene Wheaton observes: "Every major Middle-Eastern terrorist organization is under surveillance and control of the intelligence agencies in the U.S. None of these guys move around as freely as they'd like you to think."[1177][1178]
Ali Hassan Salameh, the leader of the PLO splinter group Black September, which carried out the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, was put on the CIA's payroll. That is, until the Mossad caught up with him in 1979. Even so, the Israelis checked with the CIA before killing him.
A Pakistani named Ali Ahmand was standing directly behind Senator Robert Kennedy when he was shot. Former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow saw Ahmand holding a Nikon camera, and recalled seeing Nikon cameras that fired bullets while at the CIA.
Another "valuable asset," Mir Aimal Kansi, had been recruited by the CIA to assist in the smuggling of weapons to the Mujahadeen. Kansi, who had a "financial misunderstanding" with the Agency, resolved the issue by opening fire with an AK-47 outside of CIA headquarters in January of 1993, killing two Agency employees. Like World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef, he fled to Pakistan.[1179][1180]
Curiously, Hussain al-Hussaini — who had been seen speeding away from the bombing in a brown pick-up — would make no similar attempt to flee. Was he part of a government-sanctioned operation? As Professor Bruce Hoffman at the Center fo the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrew's University in England noted, there have been various attempts to infiltrate Islamic terrorist teams in Oklahoma.[1181]
Could this be why FBI Agent Jeffrey Jenkins "cringed" when he saw KFOR's televised report on Hussaini?[1182]*
Did Hussaini and Khalid, like Timothy McVeigh casually pulling over for Patrolman Hanger, believe they were protected?
The FBI's refusal to look at Khalid strongly points to such a possibility. Khalid's ability to monitor the activities of a group of Middle Eastern immigrants (through giving them jobs and renting them homes), and his status as a former felon, make him a likely candidate as an operative or informant.
And why had McVeigh met with Hussaini in the first place? Like Carol Howe and Andreas Strassmeir, were they both acting as undercover operatives, without each other's knowledge?[1183]*
Like McVeigh, Hussaini was most likely recruited into a covert intelligence unit after his resettlement into the U.S. Believing he was working for the government, he was given a cover story that he was preventing a bombing.
It is likely, given the necessary compartmentalization of covert operations, that each was on a "need-to-know" basis. While McVeigh, Hussaini, and their pals parked the Ryder truck in front of the Murrah Building, the real bombers were the third component of the compartmentalized operation.
Recall that five days before the bombing, HUD worker Jane Graham saw three men in the garage who she thought were telephone repairmen. They had plans of the building, and were holding what appeared to be C-4 plastic explosive. "It was a putty color," said Graham, "a solid piece of block.… they had that and they had this wiring.
"The man in the brown shirt obviously knew what he was doing and was in charge…" said Graham. "He reminded me of a surveyor or construction foreman except that I doubt that they would have been in that good of shape. These men were definitely physically well trained."[1184]
Physically well-trained does not sound like McVeigh or Nichols.
The men looked "uncomfortable" when they saw Graham, and quickly put the items into a paper bag and hid it in their car — which was clearly not a utility company vehicle.[1185][1186]
Another witness saw several men working on the pillars in the garage, in the dark, without lights. When they were questioned by this visitor, they said, "We're just putting things right again."
Were they, or were they placing explosive charges to be activated later?
This bizarre activity was seen by at least two other witnesses — IRS worker Kathy Wilburn, and a HUD worker named Joan. None of the "repairmen" matched the description of Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, or Hussain al-Hussaini.[1187]*
Then, on the day of the bombing, twenty minutes before the blast, Michael Linehan saw McVeigh's yellow Mercury run a red light and slip quickly into the building's garage. Why did "McVeigh" need to enter the building moments before the blast? To place secondary charges or activate remote detonators, perhaps?[1188]†
Several minutes later, a woman riding the elevator saw a young Arab man with a backpack frantically pushing the lobby button, as though trying to exit the building.
After the blast, Kay H. was almost run over by a brown pick-up driven by Hussain al-Hussaini. There were three suspects in the truck. At least two of them were Arabs.
Seconds later, Gary Lewis ran outside to see a Middle Eastern man grinning from ear to ear.
Approximately 15 minutes later, HUD employee Germaine Johnston came across McVeigh and John Doe 2 in an alley near the Murrah Building. "They were just standing there watching," she said. McVeigh then asked Johnston if anyone had been killed, and both men looked sad when she told them that children had died.[1189][1190]
If McVeigh had blown up the building — a building he knew to contain a day-care center — as an act of revenge, why would he appear sad? And if Hussain al-Hussaini had conspired with McVeigh for similar motives, why did he cry upon learning that children had been killed?
Moreover, why would he be casually hanging around near the scene of the crime? "…I ask you, does that sound like a man who was running?" said Johnston's friend and co-worker Jane Graham. "I don't think so. It sounds like a plan that went awry or something he did not know was going to happen."[1191]
And those federal agents who had been surveilling the building all night long… why did they appear so shocked when the bomb(s) went off? Because they didn't expect them to go off. As Representative Istook said, John Doe 2, [one of] the government's undercover agents, did not know how to disarm the truck-bomb, which contained a redundant timing device. They didn't know about the charges inside the building.
And the Army leg who helped place the shaped C-4 charges on the building's columns was not advised that he had a zero-time-delay detonator and was going to be vaporized. The leg was on the wrong side of the column when the detonator was activated.[1192]*
Fortunately for the conspirators, the crime scene was leveled to preclude any independent forensic analysis. Federal agents and local officials quickly scrambled to initiate their damage-control operation.[1193]
Those who threatened to reveal the "sting gone bad" were told to keep quiet for "the good of the country." Yes, it was a terrible tragedy. But brave undercover agents like John Doe 2 were safely on the job, just waiting to prevent more "militiamen" like Timothy James McVeigh from blowing up more babies.
Honest law-enforcement personnel like Sergeant Terrance Yeakey, who didn't go along with the cover-up… "committed suicide."
And the American public, was fed a completely different lie. A disgruntled racist and latent neo-Nazi and his anti-government friend, angry over Waco, using a homemade bomb, had vented their rage in a brutal and vicious act of revenge.
12
"Governments, in order to perpetuate
themselves, will sacrifice 400-500 people without a second thought."
— 14-year DEA veteran Basil Abbott
To understand the motive behind the Oklahoma City bombing, one must understand the political situation in the country at the time.
In 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War was officially over. The intelligence community was in danger of losing its appropriations; it needed a new mission.[1194][1195]
In 1963, the Kennedy administration was said to have commissioned a select group of analysts and scholars to evaluate the problems inherent in a post-Cold War society. Entitled Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace, its conclusions and validity have been hotly debated since its "unauthorized" publication in 1967.
Although featured on the front page of the New York Times and subsequently translated into 15 different languages, many establishment icons and media pundits would only acknowledge the work as a "clever satire."
The Times, which received a "no comment" response from the LBJ White House while attempting to verify its authenticity, wrote that the possible hoax was a possibly suppressed report.[1196]
Others, such as Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty (Ret.), former Chief of the Special Operations Division for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, quoted from the document in his book, The Secret Team. And renowned economist, author, and professor John Kenneth Galbraith wrote "As I would put my personal repute behind the authenticity of this document, so I would testify to the validity of its conclusions. My reservations relate only to the wisdom of releasing it to an obviously unconditioned public."
As late as 1995, The Nation was still denigrating the report as a "hoax," while the Wall Street Journal was seriously debating its merits. As Robert Tomsho wrote in the May 9, 1995 edition of the Journal:
Given the tumultuous times when the document surfaced and the air of respectability surrounding those involved with it, few readers were willing to dismiss the mysterious headline-grabbing book as a hoax.[1197]
Whether or not Report from Iron Mountain was in fact a hoax, the report's conclusions, even its detractors will admit, lend a somewhat prescient and frightening measure of truth to contemporary 20th century reality.[1198]*
Written in cold, empirical think-tank language, the report postulates that war is the fundamental basis for all political, social, and economic unity.
The report also suggests, in somewhat Machiavellian fashion, initiating "ritual blood games," renewing "slavery," and creating an "omnipotent" international police force as mitigating substitutes for the alleged socio-economic void created by a post-Cold War society. The report defined the sociological implications thusly:
War, through the medium of military institutions, has uniquely served societies, throughout the course of known history, as an indispensable controller of dangerous social dissidence and destructive antisocial tendencies…. No modern political ruling group has successfully controlled its constituency after failing to sustain the continuing credibility of an external threat of war.
The war system makes the stable government of societies possible. It does this essentially by providing an external necessity for a society to accept political rule.… An effective substitute for war would require "alternate enemies".…[1199]
A paranoid and fascistic national security establishment, no longer primarily focused on the "external necessity" of an outward military threat (e.g: the Soviet Union), must inevitably turn its attention towards the ever-present specter of an internal threat — the "alternate enemy." As the report states:
…the motivational function of war requires the existence of a genuinely menacing social enemy.… The "alternate enemy" must imply a more immediate, tangible, and directly felt threat of destruction.…[1200]
The Oklahoma City bombing, occurring as it did in the "heartland" of America, served as no other "terrorist" act has in the history of the United States in channeling the attention of the American people towards the "immediate, tangible, and directly felt threat of destruction."
More significantly, it did so by directing the attention of the public towards an "alternate enemy" — in this case — an "internal" one.
Such mass-psychological manipulation by the ruling elite is simply the war spirit refocused. This ubiquitously American quality, so effectively used against the Germans in the 1940s, the Communists in the 1950s, and the Iraqis in the 1990s, would now be directed inward — against the Patriot/Militia movement.
By linking Timothy McVeigh to the Militia movement through a massive media propaganda campaign, the Militia movement is seen as the primary motivational force behind the bombing. The movement, becomes, by proxy, the new "alternate enemy."
By substituting what it terms a "fictive model" for war, the Plutocracy engages the false sentiments of the masses, creating, as it states, "a sociomoral conflict of equally compelling force and scope." From the perspective of the ruling elite, this sociomoral conflict must:
… justify the need for taking and paying a "blood price" in wide areas of human concern.… The fictive models would have to carry the weight of extraordinary conviction, underscored with a not inconsiderable actual sacrifice of life.[1201]
That shocking revelation was written in 1963. Thirty-two years later, former presidential advisor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. would write in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, that mouthpiece of the plutocratic establishment:
We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money.[1202]
Quite a profound statement, coming as it did less than two months after the Oklahoma City bombing.
Was this "blood price" carried out on April 19, 1995?
As will be explored in Chapter ?, the utilization of barbaric acts of mass-terror-murder by governments in order to manipulate political objectives is hardly new. Deliberately manipulated outrage-incidents such as the sinking of the Lusitania, the burning of the Reischtag, and the attack on Pearl Harbor, as precursors to elite-planned military campaigns has historically held several functions: it triggers the built-in nationalistic war spirit, channels the resulting righteous wrath toward the nominated enemy, and concentrates power in the executive branch, where elite control is unhampered by popular influence.
As President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who allowed 2,403 servicemen to be slaughtered at Pearl Harbor to initiate America's entry into WWII, said: "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."
The American public, brainwashed by the conventional wisdom of history, with an attention span as long as the latest TV sitcom, is oblivious to this fact. A public consumed by materialism and stultified by television poses no serious threat to the ruling plutocracy. A savvy populace, intimately aware of the corruption in government, and threatening to expose or even depose the powers behind it, poses a very serious threat to the ruling elite.
The primary group which stands in the way of plans of the transnational corporate fascist cabal today is a group of Americans who call themselves Patriots. These Patriots — numbering roughly five million men and women — are comprised of approximately 400,000 individuals who belong to the militant arm: the militia.
These individuals are increasingly opting out of the federal system. They are establishing precedents for their own governance, with names like Sovereign Citizenship, States' Rights and County Rule.
Some are relinquishing their Social Security cards. Others refuse to pay income taxes, which they insist are in direct contravention of the Constitution, and an illegal outgrowth of the privately-owned Federal Reserve. Many are buying gold and silver. Some are even issuing their own currencies.
They point out the importance our founding fathers attributed to the Second Amendment — the right to bear arms — as the first and final bastion against a tyrannical government. Ultimately, they are willing to defend themselves against a increasingly oppressive federal system.
To the government, such a movement must not be allowed to grow teeth, as did the Anti-War movement of the 1960s, or the anti-corporate labor movement of the 1930s. Distrusting the Federal Reserve, believed by some to have engineered the Great Depression, many of these communities began issuing their own money — as many as 1,500 different currencies. As journalist Jon Rappaport notes:
These events created anxiety for the wealthy one percent of the country. Things might have gotten out of hand. There was a danger of mass rebellion, decentralization, a power shift downward, and so on. World War Two not only solved a job crises, it reunified the nation around an external threat. It temporarily eliminated the possibility of the disintegration of the body politic.[1203]
Like the aforementioned outrage-incidents, the Plutocracy required a tragedy to manipulate public opinion. The Oklahoma City bombing served this purpose in the most sublime fashion. In the aftermath of that tragedy, the ruling elite sought to unify the nation around an internal threat — dressed up and repackaged in the form of the Patriot/Militia Movement.
Many liberal and Left-wing intellectuals and media pundits have dismissed the notion of the Oklahoma City bombing as a deliberately engineered act to discredit the militia as preposterous, self-deluded paranoia. Yet as former CIA Director William Colby stated to his friend, Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp, literally days before the bombing:
"I watched as the Anti-War Movement rendered it impossible for this country to conduct or win the Vietnam War. I tell you, dear friend, that this Militia and Patriot movement in which, as an attorney, you have become one of the centerpieces, is far more significant and far more dangerous for America than the Anti-War Movement ever was, if it is not intelligently dealt with. And I really mean this."[1204]
In the absence of war, with the "motivational forces governing human behavior" no longer "translated into binding social allegiance," the ruling elite required a substitute. By demonizing the Patriot/Militia Movement, the Plutocracy seeks, both to divide and conquer, and to distract, the population.[1205] As professor and dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky writes:
Over the last ten years, every year or two, some major monster is constructed that we have to defend ourselves against. There used to be one that was always available: the Russians. But they're losing their attractiveness as an enemy, and it's getting harder and harder to use that one, so some new ones have to be conjured up… They've got to keep coming up, one after another. You frighten the population, terrorize them, intimidate them.… That's one of the ways in which you can keep the bewildered herd from paying attention to what's really going on around them, keep them diverted and controlled....[1206]
There is yet still another dimension to the situation largely unrealized. The U.S. banking system is home to trillions of dollars in foreign investment capital, resident in buildings, real estate, and industry (The Japanese government currently holds roughly $200 billion in U.S. Treasury securities). The ruling elite must keep these foreign investors happy. Should one of them decide to withdraw their funds, it would be "inconvenient."[1207]
But were there a rumor of civil war, all foreign investors might decide to withdraw their investments. The resulting collapse would make the crash of 1929 look like a summer picnic.
Like U.S. industrialists' investments in places such as El Salvador and Guatemala, foreign investors realize that their money is safest in countries with a happy, or at least docile and subservient work force. A population threatening to withdraw from the system and talking of revolution, represents a risk many foreign investors would prefer not take. As William Colby pointed out, such events have important people worried.
Another financial collapse such as the Great Depression, always looming over the horizon, or the threat of civil war, requires that the ruling elite have in place a system that allows them to maintain order. The Anti-Terrorism Bill, the Domestic Insurgency Act, the militarization of our police forces, operations like Garden Plot and Rex-84-Alpha, and the murderous violations of the Posse Comitatus Act in places such as Waco and Ruby Ridge, are all test runs preparing for this eventuality.
A dramatic event like Oklahoma City, used to crush the political life out of the militias, would go a long way towards calming the ruling elite and their foreign investors. Reassured that the Federal Government is still in control of the population, these investors would hopefully leave their investment capital in place.
Interestingly, FBI Director Louis Freeh stated before the Senate Judiciary Committee two days after McVeigh's conviction: "Most of the militia organizations around the country are not, in our view, threatening or dangerous."[1208]
Yet on May 13, Freeh stated before the Senate Appropriations Committee that the focus of the government's domestic anti-terrorism efforts are "various individuals, as well as organizations, some having an ideology which suspects government of world-order conspiracies — individuals who, for various reasons, have organized themselves against the United States." The chief domestic "enemy," said Freeh, consists of "individuals who espouse ideologies inconsistent with principles of Federal Government."[1209]
Freeh's alarmist comments impart the genuine concern which the ruling elite have for the growth of the Patriot/Militia Movement. As Colby told DeCamp:
"It is not because these people are armed, that America need be concerned," Bill explained to my surprise. "It is not that these people stockpile weapons and have para-military training sessions, that they are dangerous" Colby continued.…
"They are dangerous, John, because there are so many of them. It is one thing to have a few nuts or dissidents. They can be dealt with, justly or otherwise, so that they do not pose a danger to the system. It is quite another situation when you have a true movement — millions of citizens — believing something, particularly when the movement is made up of society's average, successful citizens."[1210]
Further evidence of the concern that the ruling elite have for this popular and growing phenomenon lie in the slanderous comments of President Clinton, the huge wave of media propaganda, and the increase in undercover sting operations aimed at destroying this largely popular movement.
While the so-called Justice Department was busy covering up evidence of the bombing, Clinton ardently sought to smear those on the far-Right — the "purveyors of hatred and division, the promoters of paranoia," as he put it. "They do practice and they do preach violence against those who are of a different color, a different background, or who worship a different God. They do feed on fear and uncertainty. They do promote paranoia...."
Challenging the American people to follow him in a campaign of divide and conquer, Clinton charged: "These people attack our government and the citizens who work for it who actually guarantee the freedoms they abuse.... They can certainly snuff out innocent lives and sow fear in our hearts. They are indifferent to the slaughter of children. They threaten our freedoms and our way of life, and we must stop them."[1211]
Echoing and amplifying Clinton's defamations were the mainstream media, which, all but ignoring the relevant evidence, launched unceasing, vitriolic attacks against the Patriot/Militia community. Leading the charge were the ADL and the SPLC, whose connections to the Mossad, U.S. law-enforcement, and infiltration of the Patriot/Militia community have been well documented. The ADL's ties to the FBI, in fact, had been forged long ago.[1212]*
At the same time, all legitimate expressions and concerns are ignored. Militia members are portrayed as mostly gun-crazed racists with overly conspiratorial views. As Relevance magazine notes:
If anyone dares to make a suggestion that serious crimes by high-ranking federal officials or an agency of government have been committed, that suggestion instantly becomes, almost by definition, a conspiracy theory, which is itself (almost by definition) beyond the pale of responsible discussion.[1213]
Any attempts by the Left and Right to join together are explained away by establishment intellectuals as a sort of strange symbiotic aberration. In a June 19, 1995 New Yorker article entitled "The Road to Paranoia," author Michael Kelly describes "views that have long been shared by both the far Right and the far Left, and that in recent years have come together, in a weird meeting of the minds, to become one, and to permeate the mainstream of American politics and popular culture. You could call it fusion paranoia."[1214]
Yet in spite of the continual barrage of government and media-orchestrated propaganda, the movement has grown. This is because the actions of the Plutocracy and its intelligence/law-enforcement minions have become so bold, so brazen, so outrageous in recent years that it is hard for the average person not to take notice. Increasing political scandals, one following on the heals of the other, catastrophic financial debacles, and the murderous actions of the Federal Government in places such as Waco and Ruby Ridge, have pushed the average American out of the sonombulic comfort of their easy chair.
Now the average citizen watches the FBI march into Waco with tanks and burn women and children, while President Clinton and the mass-media dismiss them as "just a bunch of whackos." At the same time he turns around and watches his neighbor's door kicked in by goon squads to seize piddling amounts of contraband, while his home and assets are seized without ever being charged with a crime, then given to law-enforcement agencies who divide up the bounty amongst themselves.
Compelled to take a closer look at the Patriot/Militia movement, he begins to understand that the Federal Reserve is a sham. He realizes that the politics of the nation were corporatized long ago, that his vote has no meaning.
He begins to understand that the country is actually controlled by corporate concerns who use the military and intelligence apparatus to do its bidding.
He learns how the CIA has illegally intervened and destroyed the sovereignty of dozens of nations around the world, and assisted in the murder of countless millions.
He watches with alarm as new laws are being added every day to restrict his Constitutional rights.
While his pay check is no longer enough to support his family, he wonders what happened to the Savings and Loans, and to those wealthy few who were never prosecuted.
While he sees his job being sent overseas to take advantage of some poor peasant who slaves for pennies a day, his own country is slowly being sold off piecemeal.
Unlike the mass of dumbed-down, TVed-out, passive citizens, he finally decides to join a group of people who are willing to do something about it.
Contrary to popular opinion, the Patriot/Militia Movement is more than just a fringe element of Right-wing conspiracy nuts. While it still contains individuals who are somewhat myopic concerning social welfare issues and environmental concerns, younger people are coming into the movement every day.
Increasingly, this group represents a broad spectrum of Americans concerned about governmental corruption and the loss of their Constitutional rights. Far from being impotent, as Louis Freeh asserts, the Patriot/Militia Movement represents a threat to an establishment seeking to maintain corrupt control over its citizenry at all costs.[1215]
While it cannot be said for certain that the Alfred P. Murrah Building was destroyed as part of a preconceived plan to create the illusion of a domestic terrorist threat within America — as a foundation for destroying political dissent — it is clear that the investigation was politically crafted for just that purpose.
In March of 1994, there began an extensive media campaign to portray the militias as Right-wing terrorists. Numerous sensationalistic stories appeared in the media, largely orchestrated by the ADL, Political Research Associates (PRA), and the SPLC.
Then in March of 1995, Congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX) learned that a nation-wide, early-morning paramilitary raid against militia groups was planned for March 25. It seemed that a couple of concerned ATF agents had informed the National Rifle Association (NRA) about the plan, code-named Operation ROLLING THUNDER. Stockman immediately fired off a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno:
It has come to my attention through a number of reliable sources that an impending raid, by several Federal agencies, against the "citizen's militias" groups, is scheduled for March 25 or 26 at 4:00 a.m. A paramilitary style attack against Americans who pose no risk to others, even if violations of criminal law might be imputed to them, would run the risk of an irreparable breach between the Federal Government and the public, especially if it turned out to be an ill considered, poorly planned, but bloody fiasco like Waco.…[1216]
Stockman's letter went unanswered, and two Senators who confronted the Assistant Secretary of Defense were thrown out of his office.
What is interesting to note, however, is that the raid was scheduled just one month prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, that launched the largest anti-militia media campaign ever witnessed.[1217]
Yet the tension surrounding the Militia Movement wasn't the only pressure beginning to boil the political pot. Even more interesting events were to occur just prior to the bombing.
On Monday, April 17, a Special Federal Grand Jury in Little Rock, AK handed down a sealed indictment charging Hillary Clinton with bank fraud — misappropriating or embezzling some $47 million dollars from a federally insured S&L, and benefiting from secret offshore accounts payable to Vincent Foster, Jr., her former law partner, as purported payment for "handling" Jonathan Pollard.[1218]
That same evening, April 17, a military C-21 Lear Jet carrying several high-ranking military officials, including a supervisor to the NSA, crashed near Alexander City, Alabama. The disaster, which occured on a clear day, appeared to be more than a simple accident. The highly experienced crew reported "fuel management" problems, a classic sabatogue technique. Witnesses Miranda Wyckoff and Jimmy Keel claim they heard multiple explosions while the plane was airborne.[1219]
One story has the passengers as part of a military coup, to arrest, under the military code, their Commander-in-Chief, William Jefferson Clinton, for various acts of treason, including the cover-up of Foster's murder. Another story has an American POW from Laos onboard. Like Major Charles McKee, they planned to bring him to the attention of the public.
The plane crashed not far from a secret Delta Force base in Alabama. It has been rumored that elements of the 20th Special Operations Group (SOG) guarded Mena airport during the Iran-Contra drug-running. A Special Federal Grand Jury in Alabama was blocked from investigating the crash.[1220]*
The Mena drug-running, intimately connected with the activities of the Iran-Contra Octopus, was also on the Congressional investigative agenda, as were the activities of the ATF and FBI at Waco. The investigations were scheduled to start in May.
Yet on April 19, two days after the crash, the Oklahoma City Federal Building was bombed. The bombing conveniently shifted the attention from Clinton's activities at Whitewater, the ATF and FBI's murderous actions at Waco, and the Octopus' drug-running at Mena… onto Oklahoma City, and "the new enemy in our midst."
Were these occurrances coincidences? And was it a coincidence that two weeks after the bombing, a group of anonymous, black-hooded, machinegun-toting federal agents began loading files removed from the Murrah Building onto two unmarked trucks?
What were in the files that a over dozen heavily-armed agents were so anxious to hide? Given the timing of the aforementioned events, it is likely the files were either records incriminating the Octopus for its drug-running at Mena, or records incriminating the ATF for their actions at Waco.
It may be more than a coincidence that the ATF agents who raided Waco… wore black uniforms with no identifying badges.[1221]
Interestingly, on the May 14, 1995 edition of "Face the Nation," White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta denounced those chairing the Waco hearings, claiming that they "wanted to take attention away from the tragedy of Oklahoma City."
Panetta also called them "despicable." Curiously, Republican legislators complained bitterly about the Executive Branch's tardy and disorganized production of documents. For instance, Representatives could not find in their 48,000 documents a copy of any April 19 Waco operation plan.[1222] [1223]*
It has also been suggested that the files removed were records implicating George Bush and company for their role in selling Iraq biological weapons that have infected large numbers of American troops and their families. Peter Kawaja, who served as Louis Champon's chief of security at his Product Ingredient Technologies in Boca Raton, FL — which was secretly being used by his business partner Ishan Barbouti, an Iraqi arms dealer, to produce Cyanide shipped to Iraq — claims that documents implicating Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, and others involved in the "Iraqgate" scandal were moved to the Alfred P. Murrah Building.[1224]
Whatever the case, someone was obviously very uptight about some files in the Federal Building — uptight enough to send a team of hooded, heavily-armed agents to wisk them away.
Several days after the bombing, President Clinton sent his much fabled Anti-Terrorism Bill to Congress. The legislation, originally introduced after the World Trade Center bombing, had been languishing on the Congressional shelf. On June 7, the Senate passed the sweeping measure by a vote of 91 to 8.[1225]†
Concurrent with the new legislation was a massive smear campaign against the militias, trumpeted by President Clinton. As the Sunday Telegraph's Washington correspondent, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, noted:
The momentum of Republican "revolution" drained away overnight, as people drew back from the anti-government rhetoric of the Right, unleashing the startling decline in its fortunes. President Clinton told reporters that he owed his political comeback to that bomb. "It broke the spell," he said.[1226]
13
"Power concedes nothing without a
demand… it never did, and it never will. Find out just what the people will
submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which
will be imposed upon them.…"
— Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857
[Yet the FBI wasn't [and isn't] the only agency practicing counter-insurgency techniques to discredit and eliminate its political opponents.] Ten years after Report from Iron Mountain was published, Theodore Shackley published The Third Option: An Expert's Provocative Report on an American View of Counterinsurgency Operations.
Shackley was one of the original proponents of "low intensity conflict," which manifested itself as the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, and as death squads in South and Central America. Shackley euphemistically describes this concept as "the third option."
Senior intelligence officers like myself, who had experience in paramilitary operations, have always insisted that the United States should also consider the third option: the use of guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency techniques and covert action to achieve policy goals.… Political warfare is very often the stitch in time that eliminates bloodier and more costly alternatives. [1227]
Gene Wheaton calls Shackley's Third Option the "operational manual" for the covert intelligence "lunatic fringe." This same lunatic intelligence crowd, states Wheaton, "as far back as the early 1980s, wanted to create a domestic terrorist threat in America so the people would become so frightened that they would give up some civil liberties and Constitutional rights, and give the CIA and Pentagon covert operators major domestic counter-terrorism powers."
As Wheaton writes:
The Third Option is not to have peace in the world, and not to have a full-scale world war. Instead, they wanted to cause worldwide instability, chaos and civil unrest in order to manipulate and control people and governments, including the United States; thus the creation of the domestic terrorist threat.[1228]
Notice that Wheaton calls this the creation of the domestic terrorist threat. Wheaton states what has been known for centuries by the so-called "enlightened ones" — the Illuminati, the Masons, the Rhodes Round Table, and their successors: the CFR, the Bilderbergers, and the Trilateral Commission — that out of chaos will come order (Ordo Ab Chao. )[1229]
Otherwise known as the "Hegelian Principle," this is the technique by which a normally repugnant idea (in this case a totalitarian police-state) is offered as the only viable solution to a intractable problem (in this case domestic terrorism), deliberately engineered by the state itself. As New American editor William Jasper notes:
…history is replete with examples of ruthless and corrupt politicians who have shamelessly exploited and manipulated tragic events and the criminal acts of a few to advance their own lust for power. In cases too numerous to mention, tyrants and aspiring despots have gone even further, engaging agents provocateurs to carry out assassinations, foment riots and rebellion, precipitate financial panics, attempt palace coups, feign foreign invasion, initiate acts of terrorism, and perform other infamous acts — all for the purpose of establishing a mass psychology of fear, a sense of "crisis," of imminent danger requiring the government to suspend normal liberties and seize vast new powers to deal with the "emergency."
Hitler came to power in precisely this manner, by burning down the German Parliament, the Reichstag, then blaming it on his enemies — in this case, the Communists. He then passed the Enabling Act (a form of anti-terrorism bill) for the "protection of the people and the state."
History is now repeating itself. As Adam Parfrey writes in Cult Rapture:
By definition, a terrorist must take credit for his violence, or else there is no compelling reason to commit a crime. The specific purpose of terrorism is gaining leverage on a specific political objective through the ability of threatening future terrorist acts. No one has claimed credit for the Oklahoma City bombing. Militia groups produced particularly vehement public statements condemning the crime.
"If the bombing was not terrorism," asks Portland Free Press editor Ace Hayes, "then what was it? It was pseudo-terrorism, perpetrated by compartmentalized covert operators for the purposes of state police power."[1230]
The Portland Free Press editor has studied the secret state for decades and can say that the OKC crime has all the characteristics of state-planned and-executed propaganda. It is not different from the bogus Viet Cong units that were sent out to rape and murder Vietnamese to discredit the National Liberation Front. It is not different from the bogus "finds" of Commie weapons in El Salvador. It is not different from the bogus Symbionese Liberation Army created by the CIA/FBI to discredit the real revolutionaries.
Probably the most well-known case was the Reichstag fire, which led to the rise of Nazi Germany through the implementation of sweeping legislative powers. On February 27, 1933, a fire tore through the German parliament building, the Reichstag. The Nazis immediately accused a Dutch Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe of the crime, and subsequently executed him.
The parallels between the Reichstag fire and the Oklahoma City bombing are eerily similar, both in the likeness of the crime, and in their political ramifications. As author William Shirer writes in his epic, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:
The idea for the fire almost certainly originated with Goebbels and Göering. Hans Gisevius, an official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior at the time, testified at Nuremberg that "it was Goebbels who first thought of setting the Reichstag on fire," and Rudolf Diels, the Gestapo chief, added in an affidavit that "Göering knew exactly how the fire was to be started" and had ordered him "to prepare, prior to the fire, a list of people who were to be arrested immediately after it." General Franz Haider, Chief of the German General Staff during the early part of World War II, recalled at Nuremberg how on one occasion Göering had boasted of his deed:
"At a luncheon on the birthday of the Fuehrer in 1942 the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears when Göering interrupted the conversation and shouted: 'The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!' With that he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand."
[Marinus] Van der Lubbe, it seems clear, was a dupe of the Nazis. He was encouraged to try to set the Reichstag on fire. But the main job was to be done — without his knowledge, of course — by the storm troopers. Indeed, it was established at the subsequent trial at Leipzig that the Dutch half-wit did not possess the means to set so vast a building on fire so quickly. Two and a half minutes after he entered, the great central hall was fiercely burning. He had only his shirt for tinder.
The main fires, according to the testimony of experts at the trial, had been set with considerable quantities of chemicals and gasoline. It was obvious that one man could not have carried them into the building, nor would it have been possible for him to start so many fires in so many scattered places in so short a time. Van der Lubbe was arrested on the spot and Göering, as he afterward told the court, wanted to hang him at once.[1231]
Shirer may just as well have been describing the bombing in Oklahoma City. Timothy McVeigh appears as a modern-day Van der Lubbe — a dupe who could have not possibly destroyed the Murrah Building with his crude homemade fertilizer bomb. Yet he was set up in exactly the same manner as the Dutch Communist, arrested instantly, and proclaimed the ultimate societal enemy — representing a group that threatened the continuity of the state — just as Clinton did with the militias in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Although Göering didn't admit at Nuremberg that his agents set the fire, the Nazis seized on the event, claiming Lubbe's act was the precursor of a Communist invasion. Chancellor Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree — Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, "for the Protection of the People and the State" — which immediately abrogated most of the German peoples' constitutional protections.
A supplemental decree created the SA (Storm Troops) and SS (Special Security) federal police agencies. These decrees (similar to executive orders of the President of the United States), gave Hitler and his goons the ability to ruthlessly suppress all opposition in the upcoming elections. As a result, the Nazis gained a 44 percent plurality in the Parliament, and [soon-to-be] Luftwaffe General Herman Göering declared that there was no further need for state governments.
The Nazis were successful in eliminating the states' authority in the same manner — instigating disorder, then quelling it by replacing local governments with Nazi-appointed Reich Commissioners.
This precedent was officially established on March 23 when the "Enabling Act" transferred the power of the states to the central Nazi-run government — making the federal government responsible for all law-enforcement, and conferring on Hitler the legal status of dictator.
Hitler immediately appointed Joseph Goebbels as Minster of Propaganda, and as Interior Minister — the top police post — Hitler appointed Herman Göering. Göering immediately filled the ranks of the Prussian police with loyal SA and SS members. As Suzanne Harris of the The Law Loft notes:
All of the key strategic moves were made by Göering in setting the stage for a take-over. Why? Because in order to take over a government, you have to eliminate your political enemies before they strike, not after. This means that you have to transform the police from a crime-detecting and punishing apparatus to a crime preventing apparatus. You have to expand the definition of key crimes so that you can identify and incarcerate your enemies before they strike. You have to transform the attitudes of the police so that they view the public as the enemy and not as citizens with rights. You have to have tactical police units in place that will execute your orders rapidly without question.[1232]
Soon Nazi storm troopers were roaring through the streets at all hours, rounding up suspected dissidents, including politicians, who were then hauled off to makeshift concentration camps and tortured or killed. As William Shirer writes:
Just to make sure the job would be ruthlessly done, Göering on February 22 established an auxiliary police force of 50,000 men, of whom 40,000 were drawn from the ranks of the S.A. and the S.S.… Police power in Prussia was thus largely carried out by Nazi thugs. It was a rash German who appealed to such a "police" for protection against the Nazi terrorists.[1233]
Hitler's promises that "the government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures" were belied by the ruthless tally of history.[1234]
In a manner faintly reminiscent of Hitler's assurances concerning the 1933 "Enabling laws," FBI Director Louis Freeh recently sought, and won, tentative agreement on a package of anti-terrorism measures that would expand wiretapping authority. Freeh assured legislators that the proposals would not give the government "expansive powers."[1235]
Like the CIA's announcement to investigate itself for it's own drug-running, the wolf now seeks to reassure the public that it has no intention of invading the hen house.
One year to the day after the Oklahoma City bombing, President [K]linton signed the Anti-Terrorism Bill, "for the protection of the people and the state." Clinton railroaded Congress into passing the draconian legislation in the same manner that Hitler stampeded the German people into passing the Enabling Act.
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans," Clinton was quoted in USA TODAY in March of 1993.[1236]
"…a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom," Clinton stated on MTV in March of 1994. "When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it."[1237]
Clinton's Anti-Terrorism Bill includes plans to establish a new FBI counterterrorism center with 1,000 new "anti-terrorist" agents. One proposal, harking back to the days of COINTELPRO, would add 25 intelligence analysts, 190 surveillance specialists with 143 support personnel, 31 engineers and mathematicians for intercepting digital communications, and various other experts and analysts. The Bill also includes a $66 million windfall for the ATF for "anti-terrorism" efforts.[1238]
Now the FBI has now unveiled its "Critical Incident Response Group." Divided into five units, the "Undercover Safeguard Unit" selects recruits for [even more] undercover agents to be sent amongst the American people; the "Aviation and Special Operations Unit" which creates an FBI Air Force for both logistics and spying; the "Investigative Support Unit," which permits the FBI's flawless crime lab to become available for every law-enforcement agency in the country; and the "Crisis Management Unit" which helps the Bureau cover up such incidents as Ruby Ridge and Waco while lying to the press.
Then there is the "SWAT Training Unit," and the "Tactical Support" Division, which includes the infamous "Hostage Rescue Team," which "rescued" a nursing mother by shooting her in the face, and "rescued" 86 men, women, and children by gassing, shooting, and burning them alive.
Finally, there is the "Abducted Children and Serial Killers Unit," which should provide a measure of relief to those concerned about out-of-control criminals who gas and incinerate children while committing mass-murder.[1239]
One recent manifestation of America's drift toward a national police force is the final report of the National Performance Review (NPR) headed by Vice President Al Gore. Said to be a blueprint for "reinventing government," this report recommends "the designation of the Attorney General as the Director of Law Enforcement to coordinate federal law enforcement efforts."
This was the same Attorney General who, along with Deputy Attorney General Webster Hubbell and President Bill Clinton, gave the "final solution" order at Waco. The FBI was the agency that carried it out, gassing and incinerating 86 men, women and children.
Now, under H.R. 97 (the "Rapid Deployment Strike Force Act"), Clinton, Reno and Freeh are calling for a 2,500-man "Rapid-Deployment" force composed of FBI and other federal agents, all under the supervision of the Attorney General.[1240] The bill states:
On application of the Governor of a State and the chief executive officer of the affected local government or governments...and upon finding that the occurrence of criminal activity in a particular jurisdiction is being exacerbated by the interstate flow of drugs, guns, and criminals, the Deputy Assistant Director may deploy on a temporary basis a unit of the Rapid Deployment Force.
Judiciary Committee spokesmen interviewed by Relevance Magazine said the Rapid-Deployment Strike Force "would also serve as a model unit for local officers to emulate." A comforting thought, considering the "exemplary" actions of federal "law enforcement" at Ruby Ridge and Waco. Such a Göering-inspired national police force has the potential to become an American Gestapo.
Joe Hendricks, Chief of Police of Windsor, Missouri, expressed his concern over this trend in the June, 1997 issue of the Idaho Observer:
Unfortunately, at the present time, an agent of the FBI could walk into my office and commandeer this police department. If you don't believe that, read the Crime Bill that Clinton signed into law in 1995. There is talk of the feds taking over the Washington, D.C. Police Department. To me this sets a dangerous precedent.[1241][1242]
Said Joseph McNamara, former police chief in San Jose and Kansas City, now at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University: "Despite the conventional wisdom that community policing is sweeping the nation, the exact opposite is happening,"[1243]
Charles "Bud" Meeks, executive director of the National Sheriff's Association, adds, "By passing statutes in an effort to make [the crime situation] better," he observed, "we're getting closer to a federal police state."[1244]
"In SWAT units formed since 1980, their use has increased by 538 percent," said police researcher Peter Kraska. Originally designed to control armed, barricaded suspects, SWAT teams are now being routinely used in the so-called "War on Drugs," and in places like Fresno, are being deployed full-time as roaming patrols.
"The drug war created the atmosphere for this kind of pro-active policing," Kraska said. "We have never seen this kind of policing, where SWAT teams routinely break through a door, subdue all the occupants and search the premises for drugs, cash and weapons."
While the average citizen has to pay a several hundred dollar fine or serve jail time for possessing a small amount of marijuana, the biggest drug dealers in the country — the CIA — have been pumping tons of heroin and cocaine into this country for decades. Now the "War on Drugs," which even many in the law-enforcement community admit is a sham, is being used to wage war on the American people.
"It's a very dangerous thing, when you're telling cops they're soldiers and there's an enemy out there," adds McNamara. "I don't like it all."[1245]
Yet maybe the cops won't have to worry about looking like soldiers. On October 5th, 1994, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice held hearings on the Justice Department's proposed "Use of the National Guard in Domestic Law Enforcement."[1246]
One increasing manifestation of this trend are Multi-Jurisdictional Task Forces (MJTF) training for urban guerrilla warfare (UGW). As numerous newspaper articles have noted over the past few years, sweeps by Army helicopters in towns and cities across America in conjunction with paramilitary police raids and training exercises have been increasing. The following incident was reported by Jim Keith and verified by the author:
During the Summer of 1993, residents of Midtown, Atlanta, Georgia were shocked in the early hours of the morning as three military helicopters came churning through their high-rise condo canyons as part of military Special Operations Command practice raids. In the same area in July of 1994, automatic weapons fire and explosions echoed off an abandoned state office building on Peachtree Street. Employees of a Kinko's copy center at 793 Peachtree Street saw men in battle gear atop the building. An employees remember a bullet shattering the store's window during the exercise.
During January of 1994, troops from the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which includes the Green Berets, Rangers, and psychological warfare specialists, were seen rappelling off the empty 11-story St Moritz Hotel in Miami, firing paint pellets in mock assault exercises.[1247] In Fort Lauderdale during November of 1996, troops from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, along with Special Forces, Rangers, Navy SEALSs, and psychological warfare specialists, practiced "night urban navigation training."
In Houston, the crash of an Army helicopter alerted citizens to troops practicing UGW exercises with helicopters, small arms fire and explosives in vacant buildings.[1248]
Similar exercises were practiced near Detroit during the Summer of 1994. In Van Buren township, citizens were treated to the sound of explosions and automatic gunfire. When residents complained, they were told by police, "Don't worry about it. The MJTF and Van Buren PD SWAT teams were practicing."
Resident Bridget Tuohey wasn't reassured. "I have two little kids here who are semi-hysterical," Tuohey told the Detroit News. When Van Buren resident Mark Spencer went to investigate, he saw men in Ninja-style black uniforms with no markings practicing mock assaults on abandoned houses.
Although the live ordnance found at the scene had already been photographed by local Detroit television crews, Wayne County Police spokesman claimed that it did not exist.[1249]
As Spencer recalls, "Never in 25 years of living in this area have I ever heard automatic weapons fire. Never have I heard explosives training being done here. Never have I seen men dressed in black battle dress roaming the wooded areas of my home."[1250]
On June 6, 1996, the Washington Times<