The Oklahoma City Bombing And The Politics Of Terror Part 15

The barmaid at the Road Runner Tavern also told KFOR's Brad Edwards that after her interview aired, the Iraqi pulled up by the open back door of the tavern and stared menacingly at her. What is interesting is that the Iraqi's Palestinian boss owns a white pick up truck - a Nissan, however, not a Chevy. Freeman and Linda Kuhlman are positive the truck they saw was a Chevy.

Yet another witness to a post-bombing incident involving the Palestinian claimed that he also was followed by the man, who was driving a white pick-up.

Back in Junction City, the manager of the Great Western Inn was watching TV with two reporters when the sketch of John Doe 2 flashed on the screen. The manager immediately recognized the man as the person who had stayed in room 107 on April 17. "He spoke broken English," said the manager. "[He] gave a foreign name and was driving a Ryder truck."

The man's name would never be revealed, however, because the FBI confiscated the hotel's log book.[553]

Several months later, Newsweek reporter Leslie Jorgensen uncovered information that several men had stayed at the Radisson Inn in Oklahoma City the day before the bombing. The men were dressed in Arab garb, but according to an employee, were not Arabs. At the same time, phone calls were placed from the Radisson to one of Timothy McVeigh's friends - a man in Idaho a.s.sociated with the Aryan Republican Army.

A few days earlier, across town, two men had checked into the Plaza Inn. They told desk clerk Tiffany Harper they were Spanish visitors from Mexico. But Harper thought they were Arabs because of the way they talked.

According to employee Ruby Foos, another man checked into the motel a day or two later, went to his room, then emerged wearing flowing Arab robes. As far as Foos could tell, the man was not connected with the other two men.[554]

While it may not be unusual for Arab-garbed individuals to be in Oklahoma due to its connection with the oil industry, Douglas Boyer, the security guard at the Plaza, said a yellow Ryder truck was parked out front. All of the men checked out a day or two before the bombing.

Interestingly, two Middle Eastern men were spotted driving from Oklahoma City to Dallas immediately after the bombing. The men stopped to ask directions from an Oklahoma Highway Patrolman. When the officer ran their plate, he discovered that it didn't match the vehicle. The plate belonged to a rented blue Chevy Cavalier, which was later found at a motel in Oklahoma City. The driver of that vehicle, Asad R. Siddiqy, a cab driver from Queens, along with the other two men, Anis Siddiqy and Mohammed Chafi, were taken into custody.[555]

While the men were ultimately questioned and released, a blue Chevy Cavalier would be spotted by a witness in downtown Oklahoma City - along with a Ryder truck, a yellow Mercury, and a brown Chevy pick-up - the other vehicles in the bombing convoy.

On the morning of the blast, a woman was riding the elevator in the Murrah building, when she noticed a young Arab man wearing a backpack, hurriedly pus.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.tons as if trying to get off. As previously mentioned, she followed him outside, not suspecting anything was amiss. Moments later, she was sent sprawling to the sidewalk as the building blew up behind her.

Gary Lewis, a pressman for the Journal Record newspaper, had just stepped outside to smoke his pipe when he remembered he had left something in his car. As he walked down the alley, a yellow Mercury peeled away from its spot near the Murrah Building, jumped a concrete barricade, swerved to avoid hitting a dumpster, then bore down on him, forcing him up onto the curb. Lewis got a good look at the driver, describing him as one Timothy James McVeigh, and his pa.s.senger as resembling the sketch of John Doe 2. He said the car had an Oklahoma tag which was dangling by one bolt.

Several minutes later, Lewis was thrown to the floor as the Journal Record building rocked with the impact of the blast. As he picked himself up, another, more powerful explosion sent him sprawling again. As he and his fellow workers rushed outside, he noticed a peculiar sight: an Arab man standing nearby, staring at the Federal Building, grinning from ear to ear.

"It unnerved me," said Lewis, who described how the man seemed out of place among the throng of battered and b.l.o.o.d.y people. He seemed "enraptured."

As discussed earlier, another witness saw two men running from the area of the Federal Building toward a brown Chevy truck just prior to the blast. The witness described the two men as "males, of possible Middle-Eastern descent, approximately six feet tall, with athletic builds." One of the men was described as approximately 25-28 years old, having dark hair and a beard. The second person was described as 35-38 years old, with dark hair and a dark beard with gray in it - the same description Cary Gagan gave. He was described as wearing blue jogging pants, a black s.h.i.+rt, and a black jogging jacket. The witness also described a third person in the pick-up.[556]

Was this the same pick-up seen by Leonard Long and his daughter? Long was driving east on 5th Street at approximately 8:00 a.m. when he was forced to swerve out of the way by a erratically-driven brown pick-up with tinted windows. As the truck pulled up alongside, the pa.s.senger, a stocky, dark-skinned, dark-haired man began hurling racial epithets at the black couple. Long said the driver was a tall, thin white man with sharp features, a description not unsimilar to that given by James Linehan. The truck took the I-35 exit and headed south.[557]

Approximately 50 minutes later, as Margaret Hohmann and her friend Ann Domin were pulling into a parking spot in front of the Murrah Building, a brown pick-up peeled away from its parking spot, burning rubber as it tore down 5th Street. "Where's the cops when you need them?" Hohmann thought to herself.[558]

A few blocks away from the Murrah Building, Debra Burd.i.c.k and her daughter were on the way to the doctor's office. As she stopped for a light at 10th and Robinson, she noticed three vehicles parked on the north side of the street between a church and a garage. One was a brown pick-up, one was a blue Chevy Cavalier, and the other was a yellow Mercury.

"I looked across," said Burd.i.c.k, "and there was that light blue car, it had a white interior, and there were three men in it. They were dark, but they were not black... I would say they were Middle Easterners. There was a brown pick-up, but I couldn't see in (because of the tinted windows), and behind it was the yellow car with the cream top.

"Now, I noticed the three men in the car, that guy sitting in the middle was kind of staring out.... I said 'Huh, I wonder what they're looking at?' and as I turned around, I said 'there's nothing there but buildings.'"[559]

A few moments later, the bomb(s) went off. Hohmann and Domin, who were inside one of the Murrah Building's restrooms, were sent cras.h.i.+ng to the floor. At the same moment, Debra Burd.i.c.k and her daughter went skidding to the side of the road. When she looked back, the three vehicles were gone.

Five blocks south of the Murrah Building, at Robinson and Main, Kay H. had just raced out of her office. As she stepped on to the meridian, she was nearly run over as the brown pick-up came careening around the corner. The near miss gave her an opportunity to get a good look at the occupants.

"The driver - I made eye contact with him," recalled Kay. "He looked like he was in his twenties - late twenties. [He] had an angry look on his face. I'll never forget the look on his face. It just was full of hate and anger. It really struck me, because everyone else - people were coming out and they looked scared and confused, and he just looked full of anger."[560]

Kay recalled that two of the three people in the truck were Middle-Easterners. When she was shown photos, she picked out the Iraqi - the same one seen with McVeigh - as the driver.

David Snider, the Bricktown worker who had spotted one of the Ryder trucks that morning, ran outside after the bomb went off, and saw the brown pick-up as it flew past. "They were doing about 60 mph," recalled Snider. "They turned north and headed over the Walnut Street Bridge."[561]

An all-points-bulletin (APB) was quickly put out on the pick-up: Dispatcher: "Be on the lookout for a late model almost new Chevrolet full-size pick-up - full size pickup brown pick-up. Will be brown in color with tinted windows - brown in color with tinted windows. Smoke colored bug deflector on the front of pick-up."

"...Middle-Eastern males 25-28 years of age, six feet tall, athletic build, Dark hair and a beard - dark hair and a beard. Break."

Officer: "Ok, Is this good information, or do we not really know?"

Dispatcher: "Authorization FBI."[562]

Strangely, the FBI canceled the APB several hours later, refusing to say why and demanding that it not be rebroadcast. When KPOC's David Hall asked the FBI why they canceled it, they denied ever putting it out. But when Hall played back his copy for the FBI man, he suddenly had "no comment."[563][564]

Soon after, Brad Edwards received a tip that the pick-up had been seen several times before the bombing at Sahara Properties (not its real name), a real-estate business in northwest Oklahoma City. The owner of Sahara Properties, an Israeli-born Palestinian named Sam Khalid (not his real name), was the Iraqi's employer.[565]*

Not long after KFOR's reports began airing, the Iraqi sued the station, then held a press conference claiming that he was not a suspect in the bombing, and that he had a solid alibi for the morning of April 19. His name was Hussain al-Hussaini, and he was at work, he said, painting a garage on NW 31 Street. Yet Alvin Devers, a neighbor interviewed by Davis, claimed no one was working on the house that day. "I didn't see anybody," said Devers. "I'd remember...."

In addition, Hussaini's co-worker, Ernie Cranfield, said Hussaini's alibi for the morning of April 19 - a time sheet stating he was at work at 8:08 a.m. - was patently false. Cranfield told Davis that Hussaini was working at a different house by 10:00 a.m., six blocks away, but wasn't there at 8:30 a.m.

"They was out there acting like they was painting on that garage all morning," Cranfield told me. "They didn't know I was already there before...."[566]

Moreover, according to Cranfield, Sahara Properties doesn't use time sheets: "They use a time clock. They started about five months ago - five, six months ago... I've seem them clocking in every morning." Davis later learned that Khalid's daughter Heather had concocted Hussaini's "time sheet" at the request of her father.[567]

Hussaini also claimed that he worked a second job as at the Western Sizzlin restaurant - as a janitor, three days a week, from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. - which would have kept him too busy to be at the Murrah Building on April 19. Yet when Davis checked with Jeff Johnston, the a.s.sistant manager, she was told Hussaini hadn't worked from April 17 through April 20.

According to Khalid's secretary, none of Hussaini's Iraqi co-workers, who started working for Khalid in November, showed up on the 17th. Was it merely coincidental that Craig Freeman and Dennis Jackson saw a suspicious group of Arab men in the Murrah Building on the afternoon of the 17th?

Interestingly, Hussain al-Hussaini reapplied for his job at the Western Sizzlin in May, then quit in June, saying that he didn't need a job. Khalid's secretary said that Hussaini also purchased a Cadillac after the bombing. Had he suddenly come into a large amount of money?

When KFOR shared their evidence with the FBI, they downplayed their findings. FBI spokesman Dan Vogel said that eyewitness accounts are "notoriously inaccurate. Their credibility must be checked out, their stories corroborated."

Yet KFOR was able to corroborate their story with at least eight different witnesses. They not only placed McVeigh with Hussaini in at least three different locations in Oklahoma City, they were able to trace the brown pick-up to the business where Hussaini worked - to a businessman that had been investigated by the FBI for PLO ties. They determined that Hussaini had a tattoo exactly as described by the FBI, and that his alibi for the morning of April 19 was patently false.

Strangely, the FBI decided to back up Hussaini's story, telling KFOR that it might be difficult to place Hussaini near the Murrah Building on the morning of the 19th. Apparently the government had not counted on a local TV station stumbling onto Hussaini. After KFOR's story broke, a major damage control apparatus went into motion. KWTV, KOCO, the Daily Oklahoman, and the Oklahoma Gazette all ridiculed KFOR's reporting.[568]

Interestingly, when Hussaini appeared before TV cameras on June 15 to dispel the "rumors" about him, it was Abraham Ahmed who appeared as his interpreter!

The Gazette and KOCO also both claimed that Hussaini couldn't speak English, implying that he couldn't have been talking with McVeigh. Yet KFOR learned that he spoke broken English, and a police D.U.I. report indicated that he replied in English when questioned.[569]

"The information quoted on Channel Four is not true," FBI Agent Jeffrey Jenkins told the Daily Oklahoman. Though Jenkins later denied saying that, he admits that "he cringed when he saw the KFOR report."

Perhaps Jenkins cringed when he saw Hussaini on TV because the news station had, quite accidentally, uncovered the FBI's confidential informant. Why else would the FBI act so patronizing towards KFOR, who had clearly established a link between Hussaini and McVeigh?

The FBI wouldn't say if they had checked out Hussaini. Nor would they clear him. They told KFOR that they were "not in the business of clearing suspects." Yet, as Jayna Davis pointed out, they did clear numerous other John Doe 2 suspects, including Robert Jacks, Gary Land, and Todd Bunting, the Army private seen at Elliott's Body Shop. Interestingly, they then used the Bunting incident to say that John Doe 2 had been a red herring all along. John Doe 2, the FBI claimed, had never existed.[570]

Just why would the FBI issue a blanket "no comment" on a suspect who was seen by numerous witnesses with Timothy McVeigh, and was seen speeding away from the bombing?

For his part, Hussaini claims he was an officer in Iraq's elite Republican Guard, and was imprisoned for distributing anti-Saddam literature. According to the Gazette's account, he was released after serving eight years of a 13-year sentence.[571]

But the story changes. According to KWTV, he escaped during a prison uprising at the end of the war, and after searching for his family, he "ran to American soldiers and asked for help." He was then interned in a Saudi refugee camp, where he spent the next four years, until he was relocated to the U.S. in 1995.[572]

The problem with this story is that U.S. forces didn't get within 200 miles of Baghdad, which means that if Hussaini "ran to American soldiers," he would have had to run across several hundred miles of open dessert.

Yet according to his boss, Sam Khalid, Hussaini was never in the Republican Guard at all. A s.h.i.+te Muslim, he was imprisoned for his anti-Saddam beliefs, and forced to serve as cannon fodder on the front lines, as the Republican Guard withdrew.[573]

Yet the story changes once again. According to William Northrop, Hussaini served in the Hammurabi Division of the Republican Guard, and "was captured by the American 24th Mechanized Infantry Division in a fight on Highway 8, west of Basra, a few days after the war ended." Northrop stated that the Iraqis encountered the U.S. force, and, thinking it was merely a probe, opened fire. The Iraqis were badly beaten in the ensuing firefight, and Hussaini was wounded. He claims Hussaini was never in an Iraqi prison.[574]

If Hussaini was trying to concoct a cover-story, he apparently wasn't doing a very good job.[575] According to Northrop: This lad was no ordinary soldier. [He] came to the United States around November of 1991. He triggered a "watch" on the Iraqi community in Boston and shortly thereafter, moved to Oklahoma City. I understand that he is currently residing in Houston.

Northrop also states that "Ramzi Ahmed Yousef (The 'mastermind' behind the World Trade Center bombing) served in the Hammurabi Division of the Republican Guard during the Gulf War...."[576]

While it is not known how accurate this information is, there is evidence tying Yousef - a Pakistani Baluchi born in Kuwait - to Iraqi intelligence. The Baluch, who are Sunni Moslems, oppose the clerical s.h.i.+a regime of Tehran, and had forged close links with Iraqi intelligence during that country's 10-year war with Iran. According to Dr. Mylroie, Iraq used the Baluch to carry out acts of terrorism against Iran.[577]

Alias Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim, Yousef arrived in the United States carrying an Iraqi pa.s.sport.

Both Yousef and his partner in the World Trade Center bombing, Ahmed Ajaj, worked for Edwards Pipeline Testing and Technical Welding Laboratories in Houston, whose CEO is Maunal Bhajat, a close a.s.sociate of Ishan Barbouti - an international Iraqi arms dealer who built Libya's chemical weapons plant at Rabta. Barbouti's son Haidar (like Hussaini) also lives in Houston. According to Louis Champon, who went into business with Haidar, "Haidar Barbouti is an Iraqi agent."[578]

It was Barbouti who financed Champon's Product Ingredient Technology through his son Haidar. Wackenhut (a company with long-standing ties to the FBI and CIA) provided the security. According to Champon, Barbouti (with perhaps a little help from the secretive and mysterious Wackenhut) secretly drained thousands of gallons of ferrocyanide - a naturally occurring Cherry extract used to make cyanide gas - from Champon's plant.

Barbouti's ability to procure U.S. weapons technology for sale to Libya and Iraq wasn't exactly hindered by U.S. officials. While the Bush administration was publicly decrying Hussein's use of chemical weapons on the Kurds, the pota.s.sium ferrocyanide was s.h.i.+pped to Iraq to manufacture chemical weapons for Iraq's army, with the full knowledge and complicity of the Bush administration.

Said Champon, "Not one U.S. agent - not one official, ever questioned Haidar Barbouti - for evasion of taxes, where he got his money from, his involvement... in s.h.i.+pping cyanide outside the P.I.T. plant... nothing. I was told - and this is a quote from U.S. Customs [agent Martin Schram] - "This matter is highly political. Haidar Barbouti cannot be indicted, and if he were, he would never be convicted."[579]

The key that allowed the Iraqi "businessman" (Barbouti doesn't like to be called an arms dealer) to interface with the CIA was one Richard V. Secord, an integral player in the Iran-Contra arms-for-drugs network. Secord, it should be noted, was also a business partner of Vang Pao, the Laotian General who ran a heroin smugging ring out of Long Tien Airbase during the Vietnam War, and Monzer al-Ka.s.sar, the Syrian arms and drugs dealer who was involved in the Pan Am 103 bombing - another crime that was successfully covered up by the CIA and the FBI. According to Richard Babayan, a former CIA contract employee, "Barbouti was placed in the hands of Secord by the CIA, and Secord called in Wackenhut to handle security and travel for Barbouti and his export plans."[580]

Mike Johnston, the attorney who sued Barbouti on behalf of TK-7, an Oklahoma City company, ran into the same sort of stonewalling by the Justice Department. As Johnston was told by the federal team investigating this little corner of Iraqgate, "Mr. Johnston, you don't understand, we have to limit the objective of the investigation so we can get on with the business of running the government."

"Going into the investigation... was a disguised whitewash," Johnston later told me, echoing what U.S. Customs agent Martin Schram told Louis Champon.

Former CIA a.s.set Charles Hayes said the CIA-connected Wackenhut was helping Barbouti s.h.i.+p chemicals to Iraq, "Supplying Iraq was originally a good idea," he maintains, "but then it got out of hand."[581]

Said Champon, "I can a.s.sure you, that if drums of cyanide left our plant, Dr. Barbouti had his reasons, either to be used against American troops or terrorist acts against the United States at home."[582] Cyanide is a necessary ingredient in the development of nerve gas. One thousand grams of cyanide later wound up in the World Trade Center bomb, constructed by Iraqi agent Ramzi Yousef.

Yousef's partner, Ahmed Ajaj, a member of the Egyptian-based Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya, lived in Texas. A Texas hamburger stand was reportedly used to relay telephone calls between the World Trade Center bombers as a means of avoiding detection. It was owned by some Palestinian friends of Ajaj, and Yousef and Ajaj used the number for conference calls while Ajaj was in prison.

The records may also indicate a tie between Ajaj and Hussaini's boss, Sam Khalid. Records obtained during TK-7's civil suit against Ishan Barbouti show a phone call to one of Khalid's properties in Houston. The person who made call was Ahmed Ajaj.[583]

Yet Barbouti wasn't just trying to procure material and technology from U.S. companies on behalf of Iraq. Barbouti also built the bunkers used to house Saddam Hussein's Mig jet fighters during Desert Storm. It was during TK-7's suit against Barbouti that the Americans learned of these bunkers. Barbouti's London head of Security, Tony Davisson, decided to sell the Americans the blueprints. It isn't clear whether Davisson had a falling out with Barbouti, or was simply being patriotic. The point may be moot, as Barbouti was apparently dead. The Iraqi arms dealer died (or faked his death) around the same time the Israeli Mossad knocked off his contemporary, Gerald Bull, the developer of the ill-fated Iraqi "Super-Gun."[584]

Davisson called TK-7's attorney, Mike Johnston, who flew to London, where he purchased the plans for $2,700, and promptly turned them over to the CIA. With the plans for Saddam's underground bunkers, the U.S. Airforce was able to practically wipe out Iraq's entire fleet of Mig fighter jets at the start of the war.

This didn't exactly make Saddam happy. In the parlance of the Arab world, this equated to pay-back time. If Hussein thought Barbouti was responsible for the destruction of his air force, he may have insisted the arms dealer cooperate in an act of revenge against the United States.

Yet the destruction of the Hussein's air force wasn't the only motive Iraq had for seeking revenge against the U.S. While Americans were busy tying yellow ribbons on their front porches for our boys in the Gulf, these same brave boys were slaughtering enemy soldiers and helpless civilians by the thousands. As reported by Mike Erlich of the Military Counseling Network at the March-April, 1991 European Parliament hearings on the Gulf War: ...hundreds, possibly thousands, of Iraqi soldiers began walking toward the U.S. position unarmed, with their arms raised in an attempt to surrender. However, the orders for this unit were not to take any prisoners...

The commander of the unit began the firing by shooting an anti-tank missile through one of the Iraqi soldiers. This is a missile designed to destroy tanks, but it was used against one man.

At that point, everybody in the unit began shooting. Quite simply, it was a slaughter.[585]

The government-controlled sanitized media campaign beamed into our living rooms, replete with scenes of high-tech "smart-bombs" whistling through the windows of enemy command centers, merely belied the terrible and deliberate carnage inflicted upon thousands of helpless civilians.

On February 13, 1991, a U.S. Air Force Stealth Bomber dropped two 1,000-pound, laser-guided bombs onto the roof of the Al-Amira air raid shelter in Baghdad. Two hundred and ninety four people - mostly women and children - died in what the U.S. military called a "military surgical strike."

According to William Blum, author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, the bombing of the Al-Amira air raid shelter wasn't accidental, it was deliberate: The United States said it thought that the shelter was for VIPs, which it had been at one time, and claimed that it was also being used as a military communications center, but neighborhood residents insisted that the constant aerial surveillance overhead had to observe the daily flow of women and children into the shelter. Western reporters said they could find no signs of military use.[586]

An American journalist in Jordan who viewed unedited videotape footage of the disaster, which the American public never saw, wrote: They showed scenes of incredible carnage. Nearly all the bodies were charred into blackness; in some cases the heat had been so great that entire limbs were burned off.... Rescue workers collapsed in grief, dropping corpses; some rescuers vomited from the stench of the still-smoldering bodies.[587]

Said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater after the bombing of the shelter: It was "a military target... We don't know why civilians were at this location, but we do know that Saddam Hussein does not share our value for the sanct.i.ty of life."[588]

This so-called "value for the sanct.i.ty for life" shown by American forces and lauded by the Bush administration, included not only attacks such as the one at Al-Amira, but the bombing and strafing of unarmed civilians who tried to flee to the Jordanian border.

Buses, taxis, and private cars were repeatedly a.s.saulted, literally without mercy, by rockets, cl.u.s.ter bombs and machine guns; usually in broad daylight, the targets clearly civilian, with luggage piled on top, with no military vehicles or structures anywhere to be seen, surrounded by open desert, the attacking planes flying extremely close to the ground... busloads of pa.s.sengers incinerated, and when people left the vehicles and fled for their lives, planes often swooped down upon them firing away....

"You're killing us!" cried a Jordanian taxi driver to an American reporter. "You're shooting us everywhere we move! Whenever they see a car or truck, the planes dive out of the sky and chase us. They don't care who we are or what we are. They just shoot." His cry was repeated by hundreds of others.....[589]

Mike Ange, a GI from North Carolina, described the carnage: I actually went up close and examined two of the vehicles that basically looked like refugees maybe trying to get out of the area. You know, you had like a little Toyota pick-up truck that was loaded down with the furniture and the suitcases and rugs and the pet cat and that type of thing, all over the back of the this truck, and those trucks were taken out just like the military vehicles.[590]

"The U.S. military considers the murdering of our children nothing more than 'collateral damage," said Al Kaissy, an information officer at the Iraqi Interests section of the Algerian Emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton. "They have never apologized or even admitted their mistake."[591]

At the same time, the American public, fed a daily dose of propaganda generated in Pentagon media briefing rooms, could not understand how terrorists could bomb a civilian building in the heartland of America.

While the estimate of Iraqi forces killed runs as high as 250,000, the actual number of Iraqis killed, including civilians, runs much higher. American planes deliberately destroyed Iraq's power plants, its sewage systems, and its hospitals. The economic embargo severely compounded the situation, forcing an entire population to struggle amidst ma.s.sive epidemics of starvation and disease. Their infrastructure decimated, without sanitation, food and medical supplies, hundreds of thousands of civilians suffered horrible, lingering deaths - all caused by the U.S. military, the greed of Big Oil, and their life-long friend, George Herbert Walker Bush.

The people of Baghdad have turned the rubble of the Al-Amira air raid shelter into a shrine, complete with mementos and pictures of the children who perished.

In Oklahoma City, victims placed mementos of their dead relatives on a chain-link fence surrounding the remains of the Alfred P. Murrah Building and asked, "Who could do such a thing? Who could kill innocent civilians?"

While the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings may have been the result of Iraqi revenge, what ultimately lay behind the New York and Daharan bombings appeared to stem from a broader-based alliance of Islamic militants from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other countries committed to the expulsion of U.S. troops from the region and an all-out attack on the "Great Satan."[592]

It has been reported that groups ranging from the Palestinian-based Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Sudanese National Islamic Front, the Pakistan-based al-Fuqra, and groups funded by Saudi Arabian Osama bin-Laden were involved in the World Trade Center bombing and related plots.

In fact, as early as 1990, World Trade Center conspirators El-Sayyid Nossair, Mahmud Abouhalima, and al-Fuqra member Clement Rodney Hampton-El (an American Black Muslim) had met in New York City with Sheik Abd-al-Aziz Awadah, who is alleged to have been a senior commander engaged in the coordination of terrorist operations with Iranian, Palestanian, and Hizbollah leaders.[593]

Such alliances were also reflected in a major terrorist conference held in Tehran in 1993, where it was decided the terrorists' war against the U.S. would include "targeting buildings for bomb spectaculars."[594]

Another major terrorist conference was held in Tehran on June 20-23, 1996, during which it was announced that there would be increased attacks against U.S. interests. Two days later, on June 25, the military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, was bombed, claiming the lives of 19 servicemen. The Movement for Islamic Change, which had already claimed credit for the Riyadh bombing, took credit.

This was followed by another terrorist conference at the Northwest Frontier Province town of Konli, near the Afghani border in Pakistan on July 10-15, 1996. The meeting saw some of the most important militant Islamic leaders come together under one tent. They included Osama bin Ladin, a Saudi Arabian who funded the Mujahadeen, was implicated in the Riyadh and Dhahran bombings, and was a close a.s.sociate of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, Ahmed Jibril of the PFLP-GC (who carried out the Pan Am 103 bombing on orders from Teheran), Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a senior representative of Iranian intelligence, senior Pakistani intelligence officers, and senior commanders of Hamas, HizbAllah, and other groups. All resolved to use whatever force was necessary to oust all foreign forces stationed on Islamic holy land.[595]

One Arab observer with direct knowledge of the conference said the partic.i.p.ants' resolution was "a virtual declaration of relentless war" on the U.S.-led West.[596] A glimpse of that conference can be seen in Defense and Foreign Affairs: Rasul Sayyaf stated that "the time to settle accounts has arrived." The senior representative of Iranian intelligence declared that "attack is the best means of defense." He urged a combined offensive, both in the Muslim world, particularly the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, and at the heart of the West. He repeated Iran's commitment to the cause and reiterated Tehran's willingness to provide the Islamists with all possible aid.

Another commander concurred, adding that "there is an imperative need for an integrated plan to deal a fatal blow to the international forces of arrogance." A UK-based commander from a Persian Gulf state stressed that given the immense strategic importance of the Persian Gulf to the U.S. and its allies, the only way to compel the West to withdraw was through the infliction of so much pain on these countries, that their governments would find it impossible to tolerate the public outcry and be compelled to withdraw as the only way to stop the Islamist terrorism at home.[597]

On July 16, one day after the Konli conference, the U.S. Senate pa.s.sed sanctions against Iran and Libya. With their continued sanctions against the innocent civilians of Iraq, and now Iran, the U.S. was building to a confrontation with the militant Islamic community. As Ronald W. Lewis wrote in the November, 1996 edition of Air Forces Monthly: On the following day (after the Konli conference), July 17, the Movement for Islamic Change sent a chilling fax to the London-based Arab newspaper al-Hayat, warning: "The world will be astonished and amazed at the time and place chosen by the Mujahadeen. The Mujahadeen will deliver the harshest reply to the threats of the foolish American president. Everyone will be surprised by the volume, choice of place and timing of the Mujahadeen's answer, and invaders must prepare to depart alive or dead, for their time is morning and morning is near." That fax, and a warning by Israeli intelligence that Iran was likely to launch an attack against a U.S. aircraft, were ignored.

At 8:31:10 p.m. (0031:10 GMT) that evening, n.o.body could dismiss the horrendous explosion of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, New York. Attack number three had just been carried out.[598]

That excerpt appeared in a U.S. military newspaper. But Lewis wasn't the only observer cognizant of these facts. As Dr. Laurie Mylroie noted regarding the July 17 attack on TWA flight 800, it occurred precisely on Iraqi national day. The day of the bombing, Saddam Hussein had made his own threats, telling the U.S. that they would be unable to avoid "the sweeping flood and flaming fire that is burning under their feet...."[599]

The bombing of the World Trade Center occurred on the second anniversary of Iraq's surrender to coalition forces in the Gulf.

While reports from the State Department and such inst.i.tutions as the Heritage Foundation decry the use of Arab state-sponsored terrorism against the West, the truth is that the West - and especially the U.S. - has been exporting terrorism in the form of economic sanctions, a.s.sa.s.sinations, coups, death-squads, and covert/overt wars in almost every part of the world since the beginning of the century.[600]