The Oklahoma City Bombing And The Politics Of Terror Part 48

968. (724) John Michael Johnston, interview with author.

969. (725) Al Martin on the Tom Valentine show, date unknown. The author has interviewed Martin extensively.

970. (726) Craig Roberts and John Armstrong, JFK: The Dead Witnesses (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Consolidated Press Int'l, 1995), pp. iii-vii, 173-76.

971. (727) D'Ferdinand Carone, interview with author. Carone was subsequently threatened by anonymous telegram after I interviewed her on my radio show, KHNC, Denver, American Freedom Network.

972. (*) The only mainstream media who have made some effort to report the truth have been CNN, the Dallas Morning News, the Denver Post, FOX News, and ABC 20/20. Unfortunately, the information 20/20 presented only covered limited aspects of prior knowledge by the government. KFOR, the only station that has covered the Middle Eastern connection, ceased their reporting when they were bought out by the New York Times Broadcasting Company.

973. (*) Potts was later taken off the case due to the heat from the Ruby Ridge incident.

974. (*) As a sideline, the FBI and DOJ occasionally arrest and prosecute real criminals.

975. (728) Rael Jean Isaac, "Abusive Justice: Janet Reno's Dirty Secret," National Review, 6/30/97.

976. (*) In 1984, Reno prosecuted Grant Snowden, Miami's 1983 Police Officer of the Year, whose wife ran a day-care center. Snowden had threatened to report a father whose son showed up with bruises. The man retaliated by accusing Snowden of the abuse. The case was finally dropped when the psychiatrist examining the boy revealed that the father had coerced the child into perjury. Reno pervservered, however, bringing in two self-styled child-abuse experts - Joseph and Laurie Braga - to elicit the required testimony from the latest victim that Reno's office had turned up. Snowden was acquitted. Making good on her promise to try Snowden one child at a time until there was a conviction, Reno pushed ahead. While the latest child was not even able to identify Snowden in court, the judge allowed the testimony from the previous two children (eventhough Snowden was found to be innocent), excluded testimony of Snowden's flawless record, and sentenced him to secure five consecutive life sentences.( These cases, although highly manipulated by government prosecutors, should not be taken as an inference that child-abuse, including ritual child abuse, does not occur, as some media pundits have tried to suggest.

977. (**) Reno had previously displayed her concern for children when several days earlier, two men who had driven all day and all night from Indiana to bring baby food to the children at Waco were arrested.

978. (729) Thompson, Op Cit.

979. (**) Letter from Rep. James Traficant to members of Congress, 4/15/97, copy in author's possession. Traficant introduced a bill (H.R. 692) that seeks the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate cases of DOJ misconduct. The bill is pending as of this writing.

980. (*) As the Congressional committee probing the Inslaw affair later wrote: "The enhanced PROMIS software was stolen by high level Justice officials and distributed internationally in order to provide financial gain to Dr. Brian and to further intelligence and foreign policy objectives of the United States."

981. (730) Ratiner was then paid $120,000 over the next five years on the condition that he not practice law during that time. Former Mossad agent Ari Ben-Menashe claimed he personally saw a cable from Israel's Joint Committee to the U.S., requesting that $600,000 be transferred from the CIA-Israeli slush fund to Hadron to pay Rariner. Former National Security Advisor Robert "Bud" McFarlane had sold PROMIS to the Israelis.

982. (731) Rodney Stich, Defrauding America (Alamo, CA: Diablo Western Press, 1994), pp. 371-97.

983. (732) Barron's, 3/21/88. As Judge Bason wrote, "I have come to believe that my non-reappointement as bankruptcy judge was the result of improper influence from within the Justice Department which the current appointment process failed to prevent."

984. (733) Stich, Op Cit., pp. 377-78.

985. (*) Ibid., pp. 394-95. Sherman Skolnick and Mark Sato of Chicago's Citizens Committee to Clean Up the Courts filed a lawsuit against Bua and Knight, charging them with obstruction of Justice. They informed Bua that they were going to circ.u.mvent the special prosecutor and present evidence to the grand jury themselves. Bua replied that he would hold them in contempt. "I do not intend to prosecute anyone," he told them.

986. (*) Those within the DOJ who had an interest in covering up Casolaro's death were quick to point out that the investigative reporter suffered from Multiple Sclerosis, and was therefore despondent. Interestingly, Hartzler also suffers from Multiple Sclerosis. In his letter to Dwire, he adds: "The more the implicit connection between Mr. Casolaro's Multiple Sclerosis and his suicide may create too dire a picture of Multiple Sclerosis. That linkage invites readers to cluck with pity and nod knowingly about the presumably devastating effect of Multiple Sclerosis.... I trust that if Ms. Reno, Ms. Gorlick and Mr. Smith are not already familiar with MS, you will offer them this note of balance and a.s.sure them that Multiple Sclerosis flourishes even in the Justice Department and expects no pity."

987. (734) Robert Schmidt, "Low Key, High Pressure," Legal Times, 9/2/96.

988. (*) Leighton was the secret attorney for Lee Harvey Oswald.

989. (735) "An Irrestibale Case," Newsweek, 8/14/95.

990. (736) Schmidt, Op Cit. Justice Department officials say Hartzler's disability played no role in his selection.

991. (737) Ibid.

992. (738) Sherman Skolnick, Conspiracy Nation, date unknown.

993. (*) It has also been speculated that Richardson was the a.s.sistant U.S. Attorney who was providing information to Tonia Rivera-Yeakey about the murder of her ex-husband, through an intermediary. According to Richardson's brother Dan, Ted had a stable, loving relations.h.i.+p with his wife, Julie, and adored his children. Dan told me his brother had no reason to commit suicide. He was allegedly suffering from "work pressure."

994. (739) The committee noted: "Riconosciuto stated that a tape recording of the telephone threat was confiscated by DEA agents at the time of Riconosciuto's arrest.... the timing of the arrest, coupled with Mr. Riconosciuto's allegations that tapes of a telephone conversation he had with Mr. Videnieks were confiscated by DEA agents, raises serious questions concerning whether the Department's prosecution of Mr. Riconosciuto was related to his cooperation with the committee.

995. (740) The government also attempted to destroy William Chasey, author of The Lockerbie Cover-Up.

996. (741) Ibid.

997. (742) John Ashton, "US Government Still on Ropes Over Lockerbie," The Mail on Sunday, 6/9/96.

998. (743) Kevin Flynn, "Testimony Blocked at Trial of McVeigh," Rocky Mountain News, 7/14/97.

999. (*) "My thought was that it was our government," said Carone. "I honestly believe that." According to one account of the conversation, Shackley was elated.

1000. (744) D'Ferdinand Carone, interview with author.

1001. (745) Paul Hudson, head of U.S. Pan Am survivors group, interview with author.

1002. (*) North contacted Meese through Admiral Poindexter. Meese informed Revell, who called Deputy a.s.sistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Mark Richard, and told him: "[p]lease get on top of this; Jensen is giving a heads up to the NSC. Deposition of Mark M. Richard before the Joint Congressional Committees, 8/19/87, quoted in Christic, Op Cit.; Jensen is Deputy Attorney General Lowell Jensen; Kellner is Attorney General Leon Kellner. The rest of the conversation went as follows: "Call Kellner, find out what is up, and advise him that decision should be run by you"; c.o.c.kburn, Op Cit., p. 136.

1003. (*) As investigative journalist Joel Bainerman writes: Officials said that Al-Ka.s.sar maintained offices in Warsaw and was a major broker of the Polish-owned weapons company, Cenzin. The first arms purchase by North from al-Ka.s.sar totaling $1 million was sent by boat to an unidentified Caribbean port in the Fall of l985 and was later distributed to the Contra fighters. In April of that year, a second s.h.i.+pment of Polish arms was sold to the CIA as part of this transaction. (Los Angeles Times, 7/17/87, quoted in Joel Bainerman, "Bush Administration's Involvement in Bombing Pan Am 103," Portland Free Press, May/June, 1997. See Bainerman's book, The Crimes of a President, SPI Books, 1992, regarding the illegal deals of George Bush). In another part of the deal, more than $42 million was laundered through BCCI accounts in the Cayman Islands. Al-Ka.s.sar earned more than $1 million. Private Eye, 10/25/9l, quoted in Ibid.) 1004. (746) Administration officials who discussed these deals said Al-Ka.s.sar had clear business links with Abu Nidal's organization, Los Angeles Times, 7/17/87.

1005. (**) These were the same hostages that sparked the Iran-Contra arms-for-drugs scandal.

1006. (747) Jim Berwick, a Pan Am security consultant in London, told Francovich, "An HM Customs officer involved in the investigation of narcotics, left a message for me. I subsequently contacted him and met with him and he advised me that he had been in Frankfort and had been at a meeting of drug enforcement agents in Germany, America and Britain, and that it was well known and discussed at that meeting that Pan Am was the airline that was being used as a drug conduit."

1007. ( As former Iranian president Abulha.s.san Bani Sadr observed, "The people of Iran saw this as a crime... shooting down an airplane, killing almost 300 people is a crime.... Had it involved another country, there would have been legal proceedings. A lot of fuss would have been made all around the world. But here they destroyed the aircraft, and then congratulated themselves."( (Allan Francovich, The Maltese Double-Cross, 1992) 1008. (*) U.S. investigators traced a wire transfer of several million dollars from Teheran to a bank account in Vienna controlled by the PFLP-GC. (U.S. News & World Report, 11/25/9l).

1009. (748) One interesting piece of evidence was a call to Damascus, Syria, intercepted by authorities, in which Khreesat stated: "I have made some changes to the medicine. It is better and stronger."

1010. (749) Pritchard, Op Cit.

1011. (*) This also raises the issue of whether Abraham Ahmed, who was released from custody after his mysteriously-timed departure from the U.S. after the Oklahoma City bombing, was an operative of the U.S. Government.

1012. (750) According to a special report in Time (April 27, 1992), COREA used the following front companies for its overseas operations: Sevens Mantra Corp., AMA Industries, Wilderwood Video and Condor Television Ltd. The report revealed that Condor did its banking through the First American Bank, a subsidiary of BCCI. (Bainerman, Op Cit. ) 1013. (751) Donald G.o.ddard and Lester Coleman, On the Trail of the Octopus (London, Bloomsbury Publis.h.i.+ng, LTD., 1993), pp. 143, 201.

1014. (*) PBS Frontline investigators believe that the intelligence officers were "a strong secondary target."

1015. (**) Aviv believes the original target of the attack was American Airlines. When a Mossad agent tipped off the airline, the target was switched to Pan Am.

1016. (*) Also aboard flight 103 was Bernt Carlsson, the Swedish UN diplomat who had just completed negotiating the Namibian independence agreement with South Africa. He was due in New York the next day to sign the agreement.

1017. (752) Two separate eyewitnesses remember General Crosby ordering the "immediate bulldozing of the crash site."

1018. (*) The pa.s.sengers were members of the 101st Airborne Division, part of a UN peacekeeping force (MFO) in the Egyptian Sinai. While officials sought to bamboozle the public with claims of "wing icing," four members of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board disagreed. The flight engineer and ground refueller saw no signs of ice on the wings moments before the plane took off and crashed. With the help of Oliver North, Vince Cannistraro, and CIA Deputy Director [for European Operations] Duane "Dewy" Clarridge (along with Bud McFarlane and Richard Secord) North had been negotiating with Iran for the release of the hostages. In exchange, North was selling the Iranians TOW anti-tank missiles and other equipment for use in its war with Iraq. Upon delivery and testing of one of the HAWKs, the Iranians realized they had received an older version, and felt double-crossed. North was told by one of his advisors that there was a "good chance of condemning some or all of the hostages to death in a renewed wave of Islamic Jihad." North's insouciant response: the deaths of the hostages would be our "minimum losses." Given what happened next, his words may have proved prophetic. While the plane was being loaded, the captain noticed that the Egyptian guard stationed on the ground outside the aircraft would "disappear from his post several times, sometimes for as long as an hour." The baggage handlers also got into a fist fight, which struck him as odd since Arabs rarely touch one another due to religious beliefs. Finally, someone pulled a power cord on the tarmac, cutting all light around the plane. Had someone used these diversions to plant a bomb? Given the suspicious train of events, it seems highly likely. Yet if the downing of the plane was a simple act of terrorism, why the elaborate cover-up? Another question that has never been satisfactorily answered is why there were approximately 20 members of an elite Special Forces unit known as Task Force 160 on the plane. This is significant, considering that the role of the MFO is peacekeeping. In contrast, Task Force 160's main objectives are covert missions and rescues. Had North, realizing his position after double-crossing the Iranians, planned a covert rescue? North reportedly knew the exact position of the hostages, down to the very room they were being held. If the rescue attempt failed, did the 20 mysterious coffin-sized boxes on the plane contain dead servicemen? Or did they contain the 18 rejected HAWKs? Despite attempts to identify the cargo through Army files, no records of the boxes has ever been found. Either way, the Iranians were sure to be angered. A bomb on board a military transport would send a message to the Americans that the arm of Islamic Jihad had a long reach.

1019. (*) This a.s.sertion was backed up by NBC News when it reported, on October 30, l990, that the DEA was investigating a Middle East based heroin operation to determine whether it was used by the terrorists to place a bomb on the flight 103. Naturally, the DEA denied any connection to the sting operation (Barron's, 12/17/90). Original quote, Francovich, Op Cit.

1020. (**) Polygraphs conducted on baggage handler Tiling Kuzcu by James Keefe, a polygraph examiner with 30 years experience with the Army's C.I.D., revealed that Kuzcu was not telling the truth when he stated that he did not know who switched the suitcase, and further when he stated that he did not switch the suitcases himself. He also lied when he said that Roland O'Neill, the loadmaster, had not told him to switch the bags. O'Neill also failed his polygraph. A second polygraph examiner brought in to review the results agreed with the findings concerning Kuzcu, but thought the results on O'Neill were inconclusive.

1021. (753) Interfor report, copy in author's possession; PBS Frontline believes the suitcase belonging to Gannon was switched in London. According to their investigators, Gannon's was the only piece of luggage not accounted for from the flight.

1022. ( The fact that the team was...o...b..ard made it, in the words of PBS Frontline, "a strong secondary target." The fact that the team was...o...b..ard made it, in the words of PBS Frontline, "a strong secondary target."

1023. (*) As British journalist David Ben-Aryeah reported: "Very strange people were at work very early on. Within a matter of three hours there were American accents heard in the town. Over that night there were large numbers, by which I mean twenty, twenty-five, thirty people arrived...." (Franckovich, Op Cit.) 1024. (**) As investigator and former law-enforcement officer Craig Roberts points out in The Medussa File: "The unusual activity of this alleged "FBI" agent is striking, but not quite as odd as the fact that Lockerbie is over 350 miles from London, which is the nearest point an American FBI agent might be. To reach Lockerbie that night from London, even if traveling by air, would have taken far more than one hour considering the sequence of events that would have had to occur. a.s.suming a timely notification, an American agent in London would have had to have been tracked down considering the late hour, notified to pack up for an investigation, rush to Heathrow, board a waiting airplane, fly immediately to the nearest airport that could land a jet transport, obtain ground transportation from there to Lockerbie, then locate the command center. An effort that would require four to six hours at the minimum."

1025. (754) Debra Burd.i.c.k, interview with author.

1026. (755) J.D. Reed, "Wednesday, April 19, 1995: A Black Day for All of Us," Workin' Interest, Vol. 96, Issue No. 3.

1027. (756) Ibid.

1028. (757) Ibid.

1029. (758) Ibid.

1030. (759) Allen, Op Cit.

1031. (760) The Jaffar clan had been at the center of the opium production in the Bekka Valley for years.

1032. (761) "Files Before Victims," New York Daily News, 5/1/95.

1033. (762) Tulsa Fire Captain, confidential interview with Craig Roberts.

1034. (*) While Sheriff Deputy Melvin Sumtner told me he had found the axle, an Oklahoma City Policeman, Mike McPherson, claimed that he had in fact discovered it, as did an FBI agent. These three accounts were contradicted by Governor Frank Keating, who claimed that he had actually found the axle.

1035. (*) Although Thatcher acknowledged the conversation took place, she denied that she and Bush sought to interfere with the investigation.

1036. (*) Interestingly, some of these same players worked with CIA Director Bill Casey and Vice President George Bush to build Iraq (whose president, Saddam Hussein, Bush called "worse than Hitler") into a major military power. This policy perfectly ill.u.s.trated the Reagan/Bush administration's propensity to cuddle up to whatever dictator or terrorist was in favor at the time.

1037. (*) Yet they were still left with the problem of proving how the microchip had been traced to Al-Megrahi and Fhima. The FBI claimed it had traced the chip to Mebo, a Swiss manufacturing firm in Zurich run by Edwin Bollier. Agents showed Bollier a photograph of the chip, and asked if it was from their MST-13 O-series. "I immediately recognized from the photo that the fragment found in Lockerbie was without a doubt from a timer that we ourselves had made," stated Bollier.Yet they still hadn't proven is how the timer had come to be in the possession of Fhima and al-Megrahi. Stasi (East German secret police) files showed that Bollier had not only sold timers to the Libyans, but to the Palestinians, the Red Army Faction, and Arabs in both Germanies. The Stasi concluded that Bollier was a triple agent, probably working for the CIA as well, since he seemed to easily be able to get very special American equipment for them.Yet when Bollier asked the FBI to see the actual fragment, they said they didn't have it; the Scottish police had it. When Bollier approached the Scottish police, they refused to show it to him. Nor was he was given a satisfactory explanation of how either the FBI or the Scotts managed to trace it to the Libyans.

1038. (*) Ollie North served on the planning committee that selected the targets for the Libyan raid.

1039. (*) When the new allegations were first made public, Libya formally offered to submit the matter to the International Court of Justice, or to an international arbitration tribunal. Their plea falling on deaf ears, Libya finally invoked Article 14 of the Montreal Sabotage Convention, which states that in the event of a dispute over the interpretation or application of the convention that cannot be resolved by means of negotiation, any party has the right to submit the matter to an international arbitration tribunal. All of the offers were just rejected unilaterally and summarily by the U.S. and the U.K., which subsequently rammed a UN Security Council resolution through that was highly critical of Libya.

1040. (*) U.S. officials also tried to blame the murder of three IBEX executives in August of 1976 on "Libyan-trained Islamic Marxist guerrillas."

1041. (763) Jeffrey Steinberg, "CIA Man: Iran, Syria Bombed Pan Am 103," The New Federalist, 7/2/93.

1042. (*) U.S. Attorney General Robert Mueller told the public, "We have no evidence to implicate another country (other than Libya) in this disaster." Gene Wheaton described it as "OPSEC" (operation security), providing layers of deniability and disinformation, false leads and stories.

1043. (764) In August l991, Larry Cohler, a writer for the Was.h.i.+ngton Jewish Week, reported on a set of secret negotiations which took place between Syria and the U.S. over the release of the hostages and which led to a number of covert trips by Bush to Damascus; Regarding the announcement of the Libyan theory, see: New York Times, 11/15/91; Time, 4/27/92.

1044. (765) Coleman/G.o.ddard, Op Cit., pp. 201, 256, 275; James Shaughnessy said that he "had also been advised separately by four investigative journalists" that they had "evidence" of these intercepts, one having claimed to have actually heard the tapes. "Finally, I was told that Mr. Lovejoy used a number of aliases, including Michael Franks."

1045. (766) This wasn't difficult, as the McKee team (via Gannon) had made its travel arrangements through the DEA's travel agent in Nicosia.

1046. (767) A May l989 report in the Arabic newspaper Al-Dustur reported on the situation involving Lovejoy/Franks/Schafer. Lester Coleman, a trained DIA agent, claims he warned Hurley repeatedly about the compromised situation. Hurley would later seek to dismiss Coleman's claims as unsubstantiated, and seek to discredit Coleman.

1047. (*) One person familiar with the case believes it was Shackley himself.

1048. (*) In 1984, Cannistraro, newly transferred to the NSC, oversaw covert a.s.sistance to the Mujahadeen.

1049. (768) Dave Emory, Pacifica Radio Network, WBAI-FM, date unknown.

1050. (769) Mike Levine, interview with author.

1051. (*) "NBC News on February 7 carried a somewhat different version of the revelations that later appeared in the McCurtain Daily Gazette, ambiguously suggesting that although Howe gave the government information regarding 'alleged threats' prior to the bombing, there is 'no evidence' that she reported 'specific threats' against the Murrah Building until two days after the bombing." (Edward Zehr, "Oklahoma City Cover-up Exposed: But the Mainstream Media are Still in Denial," Was.h.i.+ngton Weekly, 2/17/97.) 1052. (*) I managed to partially confirm this by speaking to Judge Babc.o.c.k, and his neighbor, both of whom said that extra security was provided the judge at that time.

1053. (770) Dave Hogan, "If He'd Been at Work... Former Portlander Says," Portland Oregonian, 4/20/95.

1054. (771) Glenn Wilburn, interview with author.

1055. (772) Press conference, 1/14/98.

1056. (773) J.D. Cash and Jeff Holladay, "Day of Blast 'an Amazing Coincidence,'" McCurtain Gazette, 12/1/95.

1057. (774) Tom Jarriel, ABC 20/20, 1/17/97.

1058. (775) Ian Williams G.o.ddard, "Federal Government Prior Knowledge of the Oklahoma City Bombing," 5/26/97, posted on Internet.

1059. (776) Sherry Koonce, Panola Watchman, 4/23/97.

1060. (777) Allen, Op Cit.

1061. (778) KFOR, Jayna Davis reporting, 11/21/96; WNBC Extra, Brad Goode reporting, 3/19/97.

1062. (779) J.D. Reed, "Wednesday, April 19, 1995: A Black Day for All of Us," Workin' Interest, Vol. 96, Issue No. 3.

1063. (780) Ibid.

1064. (781) ABC EXTRA: Prior Knowledge, 11/20/96.

1065. (782) "Indictment: Inside the Oklahoma City Grand Jury, The Hoppy Heidelberg Story," Equilibrium Entertainment, 1996.

1066. (*) As previously mentioned, Guy Rubsamen, the Federal Protective Services guard on duty that night, said that n.o.body had entered the building. Yet Rubsamen took off at 2:00 a.m., and claimed that n.o.body was guarding the building from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.

1067. (783) V.Z. Lawton, interview with author; "Diana Baldwin and Judy Kuhlman, "Elevator Accounts Questioned - Inspector Talks of Bomb's Effect," Daily Oklaho;man, 7/16/97.

1068. (784) William Jasper, "Prior Knowledge: Powerful Evidence Exists that Federal Agents were not Surprised by OKC Blast," New American, 12/11/95.

1069. (785) "Since his story was made public, Shaw said he and his wife have taken a lot of flak over it, and it has created a hards.h.i.+p for them. 'There's us that knows the truth and those who hate us. The ones that hate us are the ones trying to cover it up,' Shaw said." ("Some Witnesses Leery Of Bombing Grand Jury," Daily Oklahoman, 8/10/97.) 1070. (786) William Jasper, New American, date unknown.

1071. (787) J.D. Cash, "ATF's Explanation Disputed," McCurtain Sunday Gazette and Broken Bow News, 7/30/95. Schickedanz won the National Policeman of the Year Award for his "heroic" role.

1072. (*) The author confirmed the story with Oscar Johnson, owner of the elevator company. According to Johnson, the freight elevator's doors were blown outward. If the sole blast had come from outside the building, how could this be?

1073. (788) Ed G.o.dfrey and Diana Baldwin, "Bombing Grand Jury Calling 6 Witnesses This Week, " Daily Oklahoman, 7/13/97.