The Oklahoma City Bombing And The Politics Of Terror Part 49

1074. (789) "Diana Baldwin and Judy Kuhlman, "Elevator Accounts Questioned - Inspector Talks of Bomb's Effect," Daily Oklaho;man, 7/16/97.

1075. (790) Rick Sherrow, interview with author.

1076. (791) David Hall, interview with author.

1077. (792) Gordon would not return the author's calls. The interview conducted by the other reporter was early on, before the cover-up got into high gear.

1078. (793) Ames Yates, interview with author.

1079. (794) Rick Sherrow, interview with author; Don Webb, interview with author.

1080. (795) Letter of Terrance Yeakey to Ramona McDonald, copy in author's possession.

1081. (796) Federal agent, confidential interview with author.

1082. (797) List of attendees of Sheriff's golf tournament, copy in author's possession.

1083. (*) In kind of a bizarre twist to the story, they said that at one point one of the men rolled a hoop across the road to the team on the other side. A witness who saw the black-garbed team operating hoops by the Murrah building called the FBI's special 800 number to report what he saw. Afterwards he began noticing that his phone clicked constantly, and a mysterious black car began appearing outside his house. By the time State Representative Key and I drove to Dallas to interview him, he was too afraid to talk, and we had to get the information through a friend.

1084. (798) Pritchard, Op Cit., p. 90.

1085. (*) Stra.s.smeir told the author in an interview from his home in Berlin that Pritchard misquoted him - that Stra.s.smeir relayed the preceding statement from another BATF agent. Pritchard disagrees, and stands by his story.

1086. (799) Edward Zehr, "Turning Point: Resolving The Enigma of Oklahoma City," Was.h.i.+ngton Weekly, 11/18/96.

1087. (800) J.D. Cash, "Agents Probe OKC Bombing Links To Bank Robberies," McCurtain Daily Gazette, 7/16/96.

1088. (801) Pritchard, Op Cit., p. 90.

1089. (802) Harry Eberhart interviewed by Tom Jarriel, ABC 20/20, 1/18/97.

1090. (803) Dewy Webb, interview with author.

1091. (*) As for Eberhardt, his name showed up on an ATF report concerning Carol Howe's activities at Elohim City. The report indicated that an "irate" Eberhardt expressed his concern that Howe's cover had been "severely compromised" due to the release of a report by FBI agent James R. Blanchard II. Although the report was prepared almost a year after the bombing, the fact that Eberhardt's name appeared prominently on the report suggests that his office was involved, along with the Tulsa office, on the Elohim City investigation.

1092. (804) Richard Sherrow, interview with author.

1093. (805) Charles, Op Cit.; William F. Jasper, "Undercover: The Howe Revelations," The New American, 9/15/97.

1094. (806) David Hall, interview with author; Rick Sherrow, interview with author.

1095. (*) Luke Franey claimed at McVeigh's trial that the only sting they were working on involved a narcotics case with the Norman Police Department. Yet Norman Police Chief Phil Cotten could give me no details of that operation, nor could anyone there remember any specifics as to which ATF agents were working on that case. Cotten said most of the officers had retired.

1096. (807) David Hall, interview with Tom Valentine.

1097. (*) Franey claims that agent Darrell Edwards was at home, talking on the phone to Franey. Bruce Anderson was on his way to a compliance inspection, and agent Mark Michalic, who had worked late with Franey the night before, was on his way to the office.

1098. (808) David Hall, interview with author.

1099. (809) David Hall, interview with author.

1100. (810) Jon Rappoport, Oklahoma City Bombing: The Supressed Truth (Santa Monica, CA: Blue Press, 1995), pp. 75-76.

1101. (811) Conversation between informant and Rep. Charles Key, copy in author's possession. A voice stress a.n.a.lysis we ran on this individual's interview tape indicated he was being truthful.

1102. (812) David Hall, interview with author.

1103. (813) Pritchard, Op Cit, p.90.

1104. (*) Notice how the caller depicts McVeigh as the sole target of the sting, and attempts to distance himself from the operation by talking of it in the third tense.

1105. (814) Statement of Jane Graham, 11/15/96.

1106. (*) Recall that Sheriff's Deputies Don Hammons and David Kachendofer signed sworn affidavits that Rep. Istook told them of the government's prior knowledge of the attack. Istook told bombing investigator Pat Briley that he was very close to the FBI's investigation of the bombing, and made it his business to know the details. "There is nothing you can tell me and the FBI about the bombing that we don't already know," Istook said.

1107. (815) Bill Jasper, The New American; The author also heard one of the Cancemi tapes, but with a slightly different account.

1108. (816) Lana Padilla, interview with author.

1109. (*) According to former C.I.D. investigator Gene Wheaton, Salem worked for the TRD - Egypt's version of the CIA, controlled by the CIA. Salem admitted to being a double-agent for the U.S. and Egypt.

1110. (817) Ralph Blumenthal, "Tapes Depict Proposal to Thrawr Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast," New York Times, 10/28/93. The transcripts, which are stamped "draft" and compiled from 70 tapes recorded secretly during the last two years by Salem, were turned over to defense lawyers, in the second bombing case, by the government under a judge's order barring lawyers from disseminating them. A large portion of the material was made available to the New York Times.

1111. (818) Waldman and McMorris, Op Cit.

1112. (819) Jim Dwyer, David Kocieniews.h.i.+, Deidre Murphy, and Peg Tyre, Two Seconds Under the World, 1994, quoted in William Jasper, "Evidence of Prior Knowledge," New American, 5/13/96.

1113. (820) J.D. Cash, "The Rev. Robert Millar Identified As FBI Informant," McCurtain Daily Gazette, 7/1/97.

1114. (*) Craig Roberts, a 20-year Tulsa police officer, concurrs: "[The Tulsa ATF office] did surveillance, took photos, used informants (Howe) and yet no matter what they did, they couldn't get any cooperation out of D.C. They knew something was wrong, but couldn't get a handle on it. I think it's because Stra.s.smeir was working as an infiltrator at the D.C. level, and they were protecting him without tipping off the local office - which they obviously didn't trust to keep a secret from the local police. This in not unusual. In fact, the field agents with the ATF and FBI often do not get along well with the D.C. officials - and vice/versa."

1115. (821) Citizens Research and Investigations Committee and Louis Tackwood, The Gla.s.s House Tapes (New York, NY: Avon Press, 1973), p. 5, quoted in Alex Constantine, Blood, Carnage, and the Agent Provacateur, 1993, p. 13; "King Aftermath Rekindles Police Spying Controversy, Los Angeles Times, 6/18/91, quoted in Ibid., pp. 16-18.

1116. (822) Ibid.

1117. (823) In fact, the Pepsi bottling plant in Ma.r.s.eilles was used as a cover for heroin production.

1118. (*) General John Singlaub, a former OSS agent, has the distinction of being the first U.S. officer to pay his indigenous personnel at Kinming, China with five pound bags of opium. Ray Cline (Iran-Contra) was a member of Singlaub's team at the time. (Wall Street Journal, 4/18/80) 1119. (*) After the Contra torture manual scandal, McFarlane was fired, then kicked upstairs to the NSC to become Armitage's Deputy. Among those who partic.i.p.ated in the original to plan "privatize" the Contra operation were: Gen. John Singlaub (Ret.), Andrew Messing, then of the Conservative Caucus, Ted Shackley, Harry (Heinie) Aderholt, Edward Luttwak, Gen. Edward Lansdale (Ret.), Seal Doss, and Col. John Waghelstein, former head of the U.S. military groups in El Salvador.

1120. (824) Andrew Eiva, former Green Beret, part of lobby effort for Mujahadeen, interview with author; Christic, Op Cit. Reagan's March, 1981 decision was formalized in November as National Security Decision Directive 17, and hidden from Congress.

1121. (825) Levine, Op Cit.

1122. (826) Roberts, Op Cit.

1123. (827) Bo Gritz, Called to Serve, 1991.

1124. (*) The real reason that Britain went to war against the Chinese (The Boxer Rebellion) was to prevent the emperor of China - concerned about the spread of drug use among his people - from destroying China's opium crop. The British, who were making huge profits from the opium trade, had Parliament declare war against the Chinese for interfering with their profitable "commerce." One of the spoils of that war was that Hong Kong became British territory, resulting in a port controlled by England for the transs.h.i.+pment of drugs.

1125. (828) Speech given to the Arizona Breakfast Club in Phoenix in 1989, quoted in Craig Roberts, The Medussa File: Crimes and Cover-Ups of the U.S. Government (Tulsa, OK: Consolidated Press, 1996), p. 200.

1126. (829) Jack Colhoun, "The Family That Preys Together," Covert Action Quarterly, date unknown. President Bush later appointed former Florida Governor Bob Martinez as head of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. Martinez had accepted campaign donations from drug trafficker Leonel Martinez (no relation). Bush's son Jeb also had links with the Contra drug supply line through Leonel Martinez; In November 1984, two years after Reagan announced his "bold, confident plan" promising to "be on the tail" of drug traffickers, cocaine imports had jumped 50 percent and heroin was more plentiful than at any other time since the late 1970s. An estimated 63 tons of cocaine glutted the U.S. market in 1984. (James Mills, The Underground Empire, p.1125.) 1127. (830) Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight, "DEA Agent's Decade Long Battle To Expose CIA-Contra-Crack Story," Pacific News Service, 10/96; "Will Whitewash Of CIA-Cocaine Connection Continue? Revelations Of CIA's Connection To Crack Shouldn't Come As A Surprise," The Birmingham News, 9/29/96. "Richard Gregorie, one of the country's top narcotics prosecutors in Miami... had aggressively pursued big-time cocaine bosses and drug-corrupted officials in and out of the United States. But as he began going up the drug-business chain of command, he targeted foreign officials friendly with the U.S. government, and the State Department started interfering with his investigations, telling him to stay away from certain sensitive areas. Gregorie's operations were subsequently stopped at the request of the State Department and he quit in protest." -Project Censored, 1989. NSC memos discovered during the Iran-Contra investigation revealed that Bush's NSC advisor Donald Gregg was aware early on of Contra involvement in the drug trade. Could ex-CIA chief George Bush, at that point Vice President and Drug Czar, be unaware of such goings-on when his reporting subordinate was quite aware of Contra involvement in the drug trade?

1128. (831) Celerino Castillo III and Dave Harmon, Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War (Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press), 1988. As ex-CIA field officer John Stockwell noted: "We cannot forget the Senate Kerry Committee findings of cocaine smuggling on CIA/Contra aircraft, the DEA reports on the number of prosecutions in which the CIA has intervened to block prosecution of drug smugglers, the note that escaped Lt. Col. Oliver North's shredder that $14 million of drug money had gone to the Contras, or the CIA's 20-odd year relations.h.i.+p with Manuel Noriega."( (Austin American-Statesman, op-ed editorial) 1129. (832) Mike Levine, interview with author.

1130. (*) Shackley's main contact was Richard Armitage.

1131. (*) Edward G. Lansdale, working with Shackley, headed a subset of JM/WAVE called "Operation Moongoose." The a.s.sa.s.sination team was called "Operation 40." Shackley's later partners in the "Enterprise," Tom Clines and Edwin P. Wilson, also worked on JM/WAVE and Operation 40. Roselli and Giancana were murdered only days before they were to testify before Congress regarding their alleged roles in the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination.

1132. (*) Shackley and Clines also directed an a.s.sa.s.sination program to eliminate Vang Pao's heroin compet.i.tion. A CIA officer addressing a group of Green Berets in Vietnam claimed that Shackley had been responsible for 250 political murders in Laos. Shackley would later become CIA Station Chief of Saigon.

1133. (833) Wall Street Journal, March, 1983; quoted in c.o.c.kburn, p. 103. Michael Jon Hand was a U.S. Green Beret who served under Shackley in Laos.

1134. (**) In fact, Nugan Hand rented adjoining offices with the DEA in its Chiang Mai, Thailand branch, even sharing the same secretary! The overall operation resulted in the huge heroin epidemic that swept the country in the late 1960s and '70s, not to mention the U.S. troops in Vietnam who became addicts.

1135. (834) Although Congress declared Phoenix unlawful in 1971, and ordered the military to prosecute the guilty parties, the a.s.sa.s.sinations continued until 1975. One operative - a Mr. Reaux - was ultimately arrested and hung out to dry.

1136. (*) As Marchetti stated regarding William Colby, "Colby is a very dangerous man. I think he's got the mentality of a Heinrich Himmler. He would have made - and might still from the way he's going - a very good Communist. I mean that he's the kind of guy who is best qualified to run a concentration camp, not an agency like the CIA."

1137. (835) Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Ma.s.s Media (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1986), p. 178. Also responsible for the squelching of trade unions in Chile was the American Inst.i.tute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), a CIA front, supported by corporations like W.R. Grace and ITT.

1138. (*) Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr., the father of 'Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf, was an intelligence operative in Iran in the 1940s and 50s, and helped set up the dreaded Savak.

1139. (*) It is rumored that he was looking forward to inheriting the Italian Fascist P2 account.

1140. (**) It is interesting to note that Bush had been implicated in "October Surprise," the backdoor deal with Iranian terrorists to hold the 66 American hostages seized by pro-Khomeini forces until after Carter's defeat. It is therefore not surprising that Shackley and Bush - both groomed for CIA directors.h.i.+ps, but forced to resign - would work together on covert and illegal deals such as October Surprise and Iran-Contra.

1141. (836) Weiner, Op Cit.

1142. (837) Gene Wheaton, interview with author.

1143. (*) Victor Marchetti aptly summed up this philosophy by examining former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: "He's power-mad, a manipulator of events. I don't think he does it for any ideological reason, just out of instinct. I don't think he understands what this country is all about. To him, everything is a deal..."

1144. (*) As Al Martin, an Iran-Contra player, said, "Oklahoma City begins with Iran-Contra. If you want to understand Oklahoma, start with Iran-Contra."

1145. (838) Affidavit of Colonel Edward P. Cutolo, commander of the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, 3/11/80, copy in author's possession.

1146. (839) Maas, p. 286. The C-4 came from J.S. Brower & a.s.sociates.

1147. (**) On July 3, 1976, Israeli commandos raided the Ugandan airport at Entebbe after one of their airliners had been hijacked by the PLO. McKenzie was instrumental in helping the Israelis, who had used Kenya as a staging area. In his book, Manhunt, Peter Maas describes what McKenzie got for his efforts: "Although he had been counseled not to, McKenzie went to Uganda as part of a Kenya trade mission to patch up relations with Idi Amin. The warnings seemed unnecessary. Amin himself was on hand to bid McKenzie good-bye, presenting him with the traditional Ugandan friends.h.i.+p gift, an African Antelope's head. Soon after McKenzie's plane took off, it blew up. Inside the Antelope head was a bomb, placed there by Frank Terpil."

1148. ( Gene Wheaton, IBEX;s subsequent director of security who investigated the murders, claims Shackley, Clines, Hakim, Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero, and Secord are all linked to the murders. John Harper would later show up in Honduras training the Contras in the use of explosives.

1149. (840) Kwitny, Op Cit., p. 103.

1150. (841) Hoppy Heidelberg and Ted Gundersen, interviews with author. Recall that Heidelberg heard McVeigh's sister Jennifer read the letter into testimony.

1151. (*) Dewy Clarridge and Oliver North were in charge of the harbor mining operation. Moore's friend Don Aranow, owner of Magnum Marina, which had the original contract to build the boats, gave the contract to Moore. Aranow was killed one day before he was to testify at the Iran-Contra hearings.

1152. (**) My source told me that Moore's FBI contact was Tom Ross out of Hot Springs, Arkansas, one of Ollie North's "damage control" men. "

1153. (842) Nolan Clay, "Robbery Victim's Alliances Promise Drama in Nichols' Trial," Daily Oklahoman, 11/9/97.

1154. (843) AEI articles of incorporation. The president of AEI, Harry Huge, was a partner in the law firm of Rogovin, Huge, and Schiller.

1155. (844) Cliff Lewis, interview with author. Mujeeb Cheema, interview with author.

1156. (*) Interestingly, some of Khalid's workers were spotted in a Tulsa nightclub, The Ocean Club, which is curious, since Tulsa is 100 miles from Oklahoma City. McFarlane would not return repeated calls.

1157. (845) Indeed, a major terrorism summit sponsored by Tehran in June of 1996 saw delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other Mid-East and African states, as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Germany, France, Britain, Canada, and the U.S. come together to form a joint working committee under the command of the new HizbAllah International - transforming that group into "the vanguard of the revolution" of the Muslim world.

1158. (846) Timothy McVeigh's Pet.i.tion for Writ of Mandamus, 3/25/97, p. 81. Jones points out, given the issue of the credibility of the information, that the head of Saudi Intelligence is the King's own son.

1159. (*) As former high-ranking CIA official Victor Marchetti explained, "They're smart enough always to work through other parties. Generally, the dirtier the work is, the more likely it is to be farmed out."

1160. (**) Some of the members of ZR/RIFLE, such as Felix Rodriguez (AKA: Max Gomez), and the leader of CORU, Frank Castro, would go on to form the nucleus of the Contra drugs-for-guns operation.

1161. (847) Scott and Marshall, Op Cit., p. 16.

1162. (848) Deirdre Griswold "Cuba Defended Itself, Was.h.i.+ngton Is The Terrorist," Workers World, 3/7/96; Jack Calhoun, "The Family that Prays Together," Covert Action Quarterly, Summer, 1992; also see Thomas & Keith.

1163. (*) This is not surprising, as it has been alleged by former CIA agents that Bush allowed the Agency to use his off-sh.o.r.e oil drilling company, Zapata Oil, as a front for numerous CIA operations, including the Bay of Pigs invasion.

1164. (849) Friedman, Op Cit.

1165. (850) Ibid.

1166. (851) Mary Ann Weaver, "Blowback," The Atlantic Monthly, May, 1996.

1167. (*) Recall that another one of the CIA's "valuable a.s.sets," Mir Aimal Kansi, opened fire with an AK-47 outside of CIA headquarters in January, 1993, killing two Agency employees. Like World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef, he fled to Pakistan.

1168. (852) Friedman, Op Cit.

1169. (*) Egyptian President Hosani Mubarak claimed that Sheik Rahman was connected to the CIA. (Las Vegas Sun, 8/1/93) 1170. (853) Peter Waldman and Frances A. McMorris, "The Other Trial: As Sheik Omar Case Nears End, Neither Side Looks Like a Winner," Wall Street Journal, 9/22/95.

1171. (**) As William Norman Grigg, writing in the New American points out, "The FBI engaged in a curiously timed fit of incompetence when the opportunity arose for a preemptive strike against Sheik Omar's network. Following the shooting of Rabbi Meir Kahane in November 1990, the FBI seized and impounded 49 boxes of doc.u.ments from Nosair's New Jersey apartment; the cache included bomb-making instructions, a hit list of public figures (including Kahane), paramilitary training materials, detailed pictures of famous buildings (including the World Trade Center), and sermons by Sheik Omar urging his followers to 'destroy the edifices of capitalism."'

1172. (854) National Review, 7/10/95, quoted in Ibid.; Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1991), p. 484.

1173. (*) Not only was Rowe never prosecuted, the FBI paid his medical bills and gave him a $125 bonus for "services rendered."

1174. (855) Donner, Op Cit., p. 365 1175. (856) Frank Donner, Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in America, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, University of California Press: 1990), p. 360 1176. (857) Ward and Churchill, Op Cit., p. 181; Was.h.i.+ngton Post, 7/15/80; New York Times' 5/15/80, quoted in Ibid.

1177. (858) Gene Wheaton, interview with author.

1178. (*) Using such individuals would also prove far easier than attempting to recruit American operatives, even hardened killers. The potential recruits willing to kill American men, women and children would be far more numerous among foreigners with a vendetta against the U.S.

1179. (859) Intelligence Newsletter (France), April 1993; Uncla.s.sfied, National a.s.sociation of Security Alumni, date unknown.