Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef
Lisa and Marife Torres had a Filipina friend and fellow "tour guide" in Shelton's mail order bride business named Vilma Elumbaring. Lisa claims that Vilma dated a man whose last name was "Khan" and that Marife, Vilma, and Khan were together on at least one occasion at a disco in Cebu one month before Terry Nichols first traveled there. This Khan could possibly be Yousef friend and fellow terrorist, Wali Khan, who trained aspiring terrorists in the Philippines and was later convicted of plotting to blow up U.S. airliners. According to one Abu Sayyaf (see below) member who trained with Khan, he was a master at making explosives. If the "Khan," identified by Vilma as part of the Cebu disco scene was convicted terrorist Wali Khan, that would place Terry Nichols and a Yousef ally in the same circles in Cebu City.
NOTE: The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee was unable to confirm the identity of Vilma's "Khan" because, even with the help of the Philippine National Police and the American Embassy in Manila, we could not locate Vilma Elumbaring or Tom Shelton. Additionally, the Subcommittee requested an interview with Wali Khan in Colorado’s Supermax prison, but Khan refused.
In addition to a "Khan" being with Marife's group in Cebu, a prominent member of the Philippine terrorist organization, Abu Sayyaf, made statements to investigators and police in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Edwin Angeles had trained at the terrorist camp in Mindanao around the time Wali Khan was there. Angeles told McVeigh defense team interviewers that Terry Nichols had met with Yousef, Khan, and Murad on at least one occasion in Mindanao in the early 1990s.
Angeles' credibility is another matter. Members of the Philippine National Police insisted to Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee staff that Angeles was unreliable. The authorities asserted that Angeles was a drug user, a likely double agent, and had made several conflicting statements. He was released from a Philippine jail in 1997 and was promptly murdered in broad daylight on a public street. His statements about an alleged terrorist meeting that included Nichols and Yousef should not be ignored, but cannot be relied upon without verification. The subcommittee was unable to find such verification.
There is no doubt, however, that Nichols and Yousef were both in Cebu City in December and January prior to the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Yousef, having successfully escaped America after exploding a bomb in the World Trade Center in February 1993, had been living in Manila with Murad and Khan. They were working on their next two part plan, Project Bojinka: a conspiracy to place bombs on twelve American airliners which would explode over the Pacific Ocean, potentially killing hundreds of Americans, and to overtake the cockpits of American airliners and crash them into buildings such as the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Yousef decided to do a test-run of his airline-bombing plot in December 1994. He took a Philippine Airline flight from Manila where, after placing his test bomb underneath a seat, he disembarked in Cebu City. The bomb exploded on its way to Tokyo, killing a Japanese businessman. Meanwhile, Terry Nichols and his wife were in Cebu City, where Marife was attending college at Southwestern University.
In the December 1994 and January 1995 time period when Yousef and Nichols were in Cebu City, it is not known where Yousef stayed; however, items found one month later by the Philippine National Police in his Manila apartment suggest that he had either stayed at or visited the Sundowner Hotel, where Marife and Terry had met years before and where Tom Shelton ran his "tour guide" business. The opportunity for a Yousef-Nichols link-up during this time is clear. The proof, however, has not been established.
Note: Nichols hastily departed the Philippines immediately after the Yousef bomb operation was discovered and Murad was arrested in Manila. Shortly before, Nichols had arranged his reservations to leave at a later date. Inexplicably, his plans changed the day the Manila bomb plot was broken up. All this justifiably leads to speculation that the Bojinka bombing plot may have been tied to a more grandiose scheme. Had the Bojinka plot and the Oklahoma City bombing occurred in the same time frame, it would have been a spectacular worldwide attack on the American people. Evidence is circumstantial but serious questions remains.
What is interesting as you research the literature on the Oklahoma City bombing is that Nichols and McVeigh had worked together trying to make bombs, but many reports indicated their bombs didn't quite meet up to their expectations -- until Nichols finally returned from the Philippines a few months before the April 19th, 1995, bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.
The possible connection between Nichols and Islamic extremist terrorist Ramzi Yousef could explain the effectiveness of the bombing in the Murrah Building quite well. Yousef was a very adept bomb-maker, and had trained many an Islamic terrorist in his craft. The obvious implication is that perhaps Yousef trained Nichols.
Of course, there are other possible explanations for the effectiveness of the blast, as well -- but was any of this seriously explored by the FBI during the investigation?
Terrorism just can't be separated from other criminal activities, and in particular, Islamic terrorism cannot be separated from narcotics trafficking.
The heroin that the Islamic extremists sell to fund their jihad destroys infidel societies, even as it provides evidence for the terrorist leaders to point to indicating how rotten infidel culture is and how infidel society must therefore be forced to submit or be destroyed.
In light of all this, I can't help but recall the following quote from 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:
SE: In some cases where the FBI stumbles upon evidence of high-level officials being involved in drug-smuggling, they're even prevented from sharing it with the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency]. The Department of State just comes in and says, "Leave it."
You know, it's funny, after 9/11, the common criticism was that there was "no information-sharing" between the FBI, CIA, and the like, and this is why the terrorists pulled it off -- as if we didn't want to cooperate. No information-sharing? That's the biggest BS I ever heard!
Stay tuned for Part 4!
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