The Oklahoma City Bombing And The Politics Of Terror Part 33

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 a.s.sociated 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 a.s.set."[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 n.a.z.is, 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 partic.i.p.ated 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 n.a.z.i Party goons - led by FBI operative Edward Dawson and ATF informant Bernard Butkovich. Both the Was.h.i.+ngton 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 a.s.signed 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 fact.i.tious 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 n.a.z.is 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 Ha.s.san Salameh, the leader of the PLO splinter group Black September, which carried out the 1972 Munich Olympics ma.s.sacre, 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 a.s.set," Mir Aimal Kansi, had been recruited by the CIA to a.s.sist 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 Stra.s.smeir, 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 pus.h.i.+ng the lobby b.u.t.ton, 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 a.n.a.lysis. 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-n.a.z.i 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.

The Motive "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 a.n.a.lysts and scholars to evaluate the problems inherent in a post-Cold War society. Ent.i.tled 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 doc.u.ment 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 doc.u.ment, 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 doc.u.ment 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 fas.h.i.+on, initiating "ritual blood games," renewing "slavery," and creating an "omnipotent" international police force as mitigating subst.i.tutes 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 const.i.tuency 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 subst.i.tute 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 ma.s.s-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 ma.s.sive 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 subst.i.tuting what it terms a "fictive model" for war, the Plutocracy engages the false sentiments of the ma.s.ses, 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 ma.s.s-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 establis.h.i.+ng precedents for their own governance, with names like Sovereign Citizens.h.i.+p, States' Rights and County Rule.

Some are relinquis.h.i.+ng their Social Security cards. Others refuse to pay income taxes, which they insist are in direct contravention of the Const.i.tution, 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 ma.s.s rebellion, decentralization, a power s.h.i.+ft 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 subst.i.tute. 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 j.a.panese 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. Rea.s.sured 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]