There are a lot of accusations floating around.......
1993
On February 26, 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed. Strangely, few cared to notice that this was near the second anniversary of the beginning of the ground war in the Gulf War, which began February 23. Logically, that day is a Sunday, so moving the attack ahead up by two days to cause maximum casualties and damage, can explain the inaccurate timing.
Laurie Mylroie, a former advisor to Clinton on Iraq, and author of “Study of Revenge”, needs to be praised for her expert research about the attack. I encourage readers to purchase her book. She believes Iraq got involved in radical Islamic terror plots in New York after the regime learned of the activity from a terrorist they harbored who was uncle to one of the Muslim ringleaders.
The ringleader of the bombers, Ramzi Yousef, arrived in America on an Iraqi passport, and was nicknamed “Rashid the Iraqi” by the radical terrorists he joined in New York. The moment Yousef arrived; he directed the group to target the World Trade Center and how to do it. After the bombing, the second ringleader, an Iraqi, Abdul Rahman Yasin (whose expertise was essential for mixing the sophisticated chemicals we discussed) fled to, and was protected by, Saddam’s regime in Iraq. ABC News spotted him in Baghdad in 1994 and learned he was being paid by the regime.
Mylroie shows compelling evidence that Iraq provided the intelligence and false passports for Ramzi Yousef and the terrorists, and possibly funding. The hydrogen-cyanide gas that was planned to be spread by the explosion is remarkably similar to the hydrogen-cyanide gas technology Iraq had perfected. After the bombing Yousef fled the country under a false identity, Abdul Basit Karim, a Pakistani national originally born in Kuwait. Upon investigation of the name, Mylroie learned that the real Abdul Basit Karim has been missing since the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. During this time, Iraq seized Kuwait’s files from the Interior Ministry, allowing Iraq to steal hundreds or possibly thousands of identities. Karim is one such identity that has been stolen.
How do we know that Abdul Basit and Ramzi Yousef are the same person? Mylroie shows the obvious signs that the passport of Abdul Basit was tampered and explains that fingerprints matching Yousef’s was found in Abdul Basit’s police file. The altered passport was used by Yousef in 1992 to receive another passport to Pakistan in Abdul Basit’s name. The differences between the real Abdul Basit and Ramzi Yousef are also obvious physically and personality-wise, as explained in Mylroie’s book.
Also convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel al-Rahman, believed to be the spiritual mentor for Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden. It is suspicious that such a figure would work with an alleged Iraqi intelligence agent, although al-Rahman himself may not have known the fact. Another conspirator, Mohammed Salameh is suspected of working alongside Iraqi intelligence—in fact, the brother of Abu Halima, another conspirator, confirmed this. Salameh is known to have made nearly fifty phone calls to Iraq between June 10th and the day of the bombing attack. His uncle, Kadri Abu Bakr, is known to have worked in Baghdad since 1986 for a Palestinian terrorist unit.
After the bombing, Ramzi Yousef fled to Manila, harbored by Mohamed Jamal Khalifia, the brother-in-law of Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden, through Khalifia, paid Yousef to train members of Abu Sayyaf, an Al-Qaeda branch in the Philippines, about bomb production. [7]
Mylroie says that many senior US government officials believe Iraq was involved in the bombing, as well as those involved in the investigation. She quotes Jim Fox, the leader of the FBI investigation as saying, “The majority of senior law-enforcement officers in New York believe that Iraq was involved.” She also claims that Egyptian and Saudi intelligence sources concurred with the view.
Later on, as evidence came out that Iraq was linked to the World Trade Center bombing, newspapers would express denial, alarm or others, dire warning. As the Boston Globe wrote: “If Saddam’s operatives manipulated simple-minded Islamic zealots to bomb the World Trade Center, it is only prudent to assume his agents are capable of striking again.” [8]
Another highlight of 1993 was the attack on American soldiers in Somalia, and the following retreat out of the country. This was the first time that Bin Laden’s forces would loosely work with Iraqi intelligence, which had been recruiting militants in Sudan and Somalia. Bin Laden’s militants in Somalia would fight alongside these recruits and even members of Iraq’s special forces. It is unknown the level of direct contact Iraq and Bin Laden had in coordinating the events. [9]
Of course, also in 1993, was Iraqi intelligence’s attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait. The attack to be carried out with a truck bomb and armed assassins was foiled, but this was significant as the first proven Iraqi-sponsored attack. I also suggest reading Laurie Mylroie’s book, “Study of Revenge”, which has evidence that Iraq was also involved in a plot to be carried out in late 1993 to destroy the United Nations building in New York, the federal building, and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels.
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1995
1995 was highlighted by the attack on the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, led by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, anti-government, right-wing terrorists. But should this mean a link to Middle Eastern terrorists should be ruled out? In the minds of most investigators, yes. But they are wrong.
The reporting of Jayna Davis (investigative reporter); Larry Johnson (former deputy director of the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism); and Patricia Long (former Middle East expert for the DIA) is sure to one day prove them all wrong. As former CIA director James Woolsey said, one day we will be indebted to Davis and her coworkers. [13] Apparently, the evidence of a connection to the Middle East was at one point in the mind of the police. Immediately after the attack, the FBI launched an intense search for men of Middle Eastern origin that reportedly fled the building after the explosion. Later, the search was cancelled.
Davis’ research shows that there a multiple people who saw Middle Easterners with Timothy McVeigh, and the descriptions were so clear that a government sketch was produced. 24 witnesses say they saw about eight Middle Easterners with Nichols and McVeigh during the attack. She records that several employees at the Oklahoma City Property-Management Company claim to have seen a brown Chevy truck being chased by the police outside the office just days prior to the terrorist attack. The owner of the company is Palestinian, with suspected ties to the Palestinian Authority.
Approximately six months prior to the attack, the Palestinian had hired a group of former Iraqi soldiers from the Republican Guard to work at the rental houses. Eyewitnesses reported that on the day of the attack, they were seen in a disturbingly good mood. On April 17th, 1995, the day McVeigh rented the Ryder truck, all the employees were absent from work. In Davis’ investigation, the Iraqi with the most focus is a man named Amad Hussain Hashem al-Hussaini, one of the former Republican Guard members, whose picture is nearly identical to the police sketch made from eyewitness reports of one of the Middle Easterners at the attack. Al-Hussaini has attempted to sue Davis for these allegations, but the case was dismissed.
Al-Hussaini’s left arm has a traditional Republican Guard tattoo symbolizing service during the Gulf War, when Iraq began sponsoring anti-American terrorism. Five witnesses report seeing several of al-Hussaini’s Iraqi workers frequently visiting a motel in Oklahoma City in the months, days and hours before the attack. During the visits, they were often seen with either Nichols or McVeigh. Four days before the attack, two eyewitnesses say they saw McVeigh drinking with al-Hussaini.
On the day of the attack, just hours before the incident, two witnesses say they saw al-Hussaini one block from the Murrah building. Around the same time in the hours up to the attack, one of al-Hussaini’s co-workers was seen in the driver’s seat of a Chevy pickup at an apartment complex near the Murrah building. When police officers found the abandoned truck, it was tripped of identification numbers and body molding used for identification purposes. The owner of the motel frequently visited and an employee both confirm seeing Middle Easterners on the day of the attack, within feet of a large Ryder truck in the parking lot, just hours before the explosion. They described the truck as having an unusual odor of diesel fuel coming from the rear. Minutes after the odor came about, McVeigh returned the room key and drove off with a man—apparently al-Hussaini.
Seven witnesses reported to Jayna Davis that they saw a man similar to al-Hussaini riding with Timothy McVeigh in the Ryder truck directly in front of the Murrah building, just minutes before the fertilizer bomb went off. Al-Hussaini then sped away in a brown Chevrolet pickup truck; precisely matching the FBI’s description of a vehicle that wanted Middle Easterners may be using that day.
After the attack, Al-Hussaini moved from Oklahoma City to work at Boston’s Logan International Airport, where several 9/11 hijackers would meet to seize airliners, including Mohammed Atta.
During the follow-up investigation, it was discovered that Timothy McVeigh had a large collection of phone numbers of Iraqis that he hid. Jayna Davis’ follow-up investigation reveals that 22 witnesses saw an Arab-looking man alongside Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh in the minutes and seconds before the bomb detonated. There has been no testimony by a witness that contradicts these claims—the people that saw McVeigh and Nichols alone either had a view that would not allow the viewing of the Iraqi—or they saw the Americans after the bomb detonated. By that time, al-Hussaini had driven off in a different truck. Two local officials say they saw an Arab with a backpack running from the Murrah building as fast as they could, while looking at a watch, in the seconds before the blast.
Davis also says that a source on Capitol Hill gave her a copy of a government warning that a terrorist attack sponsored by either Iran or Iraq was imminent against the mainland, but the warning listed government facilities in Washington DC as the primary target. Although the warning was incorrect in that detail, it does appear that there is classified intelligence linking the Oklahoma City bombing to Middle Eastern terrorists. [14]
Terry Nichols also had a suspicious connection to international terrorists besides his meetings with the Iraqis led by al-Hussaini. Davis is now claiming to have irrefutable evidence that Nichols got the bomb-making expertise from Iraqi intelligence officers in the Philippines, when he met Ramzi Yousef, the suspected Iraqi intelligence agent whom led the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Both lived amongst Al-Qaeda-associated operatives while they were in the Philippines.
Insight Magazine had a great interview with the widow of Edwin Angeles, a co-founder of the Abu Sayyaf group and agent of the Philippines’ Defense Intelligence Group. Elimina Abdul in the March 10, 2002 interview said that her husband finally told her all he knew, because he knew he would soon be killed. Since talking, she claims, several shots have been fired at her.
Beginning in 1994, her husband met with Ramzi Yousef, Ahmad Hassim, an American whose first name is Terry—known as “The Farmer”, and another American whose name she does not know. Everyday for one full week, they talked about bombing US government buildings in Oklahoma City, St. Louis and San Francisco. The Americans were also taught how to make the bombs needed for the operations. Ramzi Yousef also contributed funding to the Americans for the attacks. Elimina Abdul confirms that Yousef was an Iraqi agent, and she says that her husband had a private meeting with a Filipino soldier who said that the Iraqi role could never be exposed.
According to Insight’s investigation, Edwin Angeles had a videotaped interrogation with the Filipino police. He confirmed that an American named “John Lepney” was involved, as was another American named Terry. The first meeting, he said occurred just prior to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and meetings continued later in 1994. At the meetings was Ramzi Yousef’s half-brother, Ahmad Hassim. Angeles says that he first met Yousef in July, 1989 as a “personal envoy” of Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Muhammed Khalifia, was at the time establishing the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines using front companies. However, Yousef is suspected of being paid by Iraq to carry out the June 20, 1994 bombing of a Muslim shrine in Iran. Yousef’s father and brother also worked with Iraqi intelligence in the Iranian dissident terrorist group, the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran. [15] In another testimony, that of Abdul Hakim Murrad, arrested for working with Yousef in the first World Trade Center bombing, also says that Ramzi Yousef and his co-workers in the Philippines were responsible for the attack in Oklahoma City. Yousef’s role throughout the years as an Iraqi-sponsored terrorist may be the key to understanding the role of Saddam Hussein in terrorism.
1995 brought Iraqi assistance to Al-Qaeda as well. Saddam Hussein sent Farouq Hijaz, a former Iraqi intelligence general, and Habib Ma’muri, chief of special operations, to meet with Bin Laden representatives at Salman Pak, Iraq’s top terrorist training camp. [16] According to Iraqi defectors, these meetings resulted in the revival of the plot to hijack airliners in the US to attack prominent US buildings including the World Trade Center, which had already survived the first Iraqi attack. Al-Qaeda was also disappointed by similar airliner plots foiled by the seizure of documents by Filipino police. Al-Qaeda forces were eager to succeed in their plans. |
