Soft Underbelly, Part 1

The Oklahoma City bombing (OKBOMB) was not unlike the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, or the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, or the bombing of the US embassies in Africa. For that matter, it was not unlike the bombing of the USS Cole, except for the rental truck carrying the OKBOMB versus a boat carrying the Cole bomb.

Yet, we are assured by our government that there was no Middle Eastern connection with the OKBOMB.

From testimony in the US Senate in late 2001, THE GLOBAL REACH OF AL–QAEDA:

STATEMENT OF MR. LARRY C. JOHNSON, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR (1989–1993) OFFICE OF COUNTERTERRORISM, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC:

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you for having me today, Senator Boxer, and I submitted my statement, and presumably it will be included in the record. I can tell you a first-hand story of an experience that I had in Panama in the Colon Free Zone to illustrate some of the issues that were brought up.

I agree with everything that the FBI colleagues expressed beforehand. The al-Qaeda network exists. They have sympathizers around the world, but they are not these Islamic supermen that can go anywhere, do anything, anytime that they want. They are human beings. They face the same kind of limitations that every other human being does, and as someone who has been involved with scripting counterterrorism exercises for the U.S. military forces that have that mission, I know what it takes to put those folks in motion and to get them from point A to point B, and it is not easy. It is not something you do at a snap of the fingers. They can do it fairly quickly, but you have an enormous amount of resources dedicated to that task. These terrorists fortunately do not have those kinds of resources. They do not have their own military airlift command. They do not have their own logistics support agency.

Twelve years ago, I was involved in Central America, doing an investigation into product counterfeiting that was taking place against a U.S. company, and one of the individuals that we discovered—he is not an al-Qaeda member, but he is involved with radical Palestinian groups that are involved with terrorism. The person we found selling the stuff was named Waleed Sayeed Mazees, and he was out in San Francisco at one point, I think you will be happy to know.

When we busted him for selling these counterfeit products, the local Panamians working with me said this guy is a terrorist, did you know that? I said, no. They said, and he also went to jail for money-laundering, and in this book that he wrote — it is in Spanish — Palestine, the "Burning Silence," he details his secret entries into Palestine to meet with members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and some other groups.

The reason I raise him is, you find right now throughout Latin America, particularly in the Colon Free Zone of Panama, in a little town up in the Guajira Peninsula of Colombia called Maicao and down on the triborder area, in the Cuidad Del Este, which is on the border of Paraguay and Brazil, with Argentina close, there are networks of good Muslims and there are also networks of people affiliated with radical Islamic groups such as Hezbollah, some Hamas ties, and people with sympathies with al-Qaeda.

What makes these potentially of concern, and I can cite the case of Argentina in particular, you have radical groups that sympathize with the Muslims that also have some ties with neo-Nazi groups and that have ties with right-wing groups up here in the United States. Now, fortunately, none of those groups have been willing to carry out attacks against the United States, but these groups exist, they are there, they are operating, and when you look at the case of Argentina, I led a U.S. team when I was with the State Department to Buenos Aires in the aftermath of the bombing of the Israeli Embassy back in 1992, and to this day there is some suspicion that elements of Argentinian intelligence were involved, or at least were sympathetic in helping facilitate the activities of groups like Hezbollah.

Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups are active in Latin America, and have ties to neo-Nazi and right-wing groups here in the U.S.; furthermore, these groups have the sympathies of elements of the intelligence services of some Latin American nations -- you know if Argentine intelligence personnel are sympathetic, some Venezuelan personnel are, as well.



From An Investigation of the Belated Production of Documents in the Oklahoma City Bombing Case, Chapter 1, dated March 19, 2002, by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General:

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, exploded on April 19, 1995, following the detonation of a bomb. One hundred and sixty-eight individuals died and several hundred more were injured in the explosion. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began an international investigation to identify and capture the perpetrators.

Just 77 minutes after the explosion at the Murrah Building, an Oklahoma State Trooper stopped Timothy McVeigh for a traffic offense less than 80 miles from the bombing site and subsequently arrested him for unlawfully carrying a handgun. Within 48 hours, the FBI identified McVeigh as a prime suspect in the attack on the Murrah Building. Federal officials charged McVeigh with unlawful destruction by explosives.

Over the course of the next several months, the FBI dedicated enormous resources to identifying the perpetrators of the bombing and obtaining the necessary evidence to indict and convict them. The FBI's 56 domestic field offices, as well as its foreign offices, were involved in the investigation. A task force coordinated the efforts of the FBI, prosecutors, and agents from other law enforcement agencies. The investigation, known as OKBOMB, led to the arrests of two additional suspects: Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier. McVeigh and Nichols were indicted on August 10, 1995, for 11 counts of violating Title 18 of the United States Code relating to unlawful use of explosives and weapons of mass destruction as well as first degree murder. Fortier was indicted for conspiracy, false statements, and other crimes.1

In criminal trials, the government must provide to the defense some of the information contained within its files. This is known as the discovery process. The discovery rules that govern all federal trials require that statements of witnesses testifying at trial, evidentiary items to be used at trial, and information exculpatory to the defendants be disclosed. See Rule 16, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure; Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963); Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3500. Early in the OKBOMB discovery process, however, the United States agreed to go beyond these requirements and disclose all investigative reports. Over 27,000 investigative reports, 13,000 items of physical evidence, and millions of pages of hotel, motel, and telephone records were produced or made available to the defense before or during the trials.

McVeigh's and Nichols' trials were severed. McVeigh was convicted on all 11 counts on June 2, 1997. On August 14, 1997, following a sentencing hearing, McVeigh was sentenced to death. On December 23, 1997, Nichols was convicted of eight counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of conspiracy. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Both McVeigh and Nichols appealed their convictions, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld the convictions and sentences. In December 2000, McVeigh ended his appeals, and his execution was set for May 16, 2001.

Independent of the trial and appellate process, in February 2000, personnel in the FBI's Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Field Office recognized that the warehouse being used to store the OKBOMB investigative materials was probably inadequate for long-term storage. They sought advice from the FBI's archivist on February 18, 2000. After viewing the warehouse storage facility in May 2000, the archivist agreed that the storage facility was inadequate, and he initiated an archival process to preserve the OKBOMB documents. As part of that process, on December 20, 2000, the archivist sent a memorandum to all FBI field offices instructing them to identify their OKBOMB files, permitting them to destroy copies of certain documents previously sent to the OKBOMB Task Force, and requiring them to send a list of the items that had not been destroyed to the Oklahoma City Field Office.

In January 2001, several field offices responded to the archivist's memorandum by destroying some of their OKBOMB documents as they had been authorized to do. Two field offices sent their entire OKBOMB files to Oklahoma City. When Oklahoma City Field Office personnel examined the material sent by the two field offices, they observed documents that they suspected had not been sent previously to the OKBOMB Task Force and that might not have been disclosed to the OKBOMB defendants as part of the discovery process. The Oklahoma City Field Office personnel notified three FBI supervisors about the potential problem: OKBOMB Inspector in Charge Danny Defenbaugh, who was then the Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas, Texas, Field Office; OKBOMB Supervisory Special Agent Mark White, who was then a Supervisory Special Agent in the Dallas Field Office; and Oklahoma City Field Office Supervisory Special Agent William Teater. After consulting with the archivist, the Oklahoma City personnel sent a memorandum on January 30, 2001, to the field offices instructing them not to destroy any material and to send all OKBOMB materials to Oklahoma City.

Over the course of the next several months, FBI personnel in Oklahoma City received OKBOMB files from FBI field offices and foreign offices. Personnel carefully compared the incoming material to OKBOMB records to determine whether the material had been disclosed to defense counsel. By March 2001, FBI personnel determined that a significant number of items sent in by the field offices likely had not been disclosed to defense counsel even though they were within the categories of items that should have been disclosed pursuant to the discovery agreement. By the end of April 2001, when the review process was completed, the number of suspected undisclosed items was over 700.

On May 7, 2001, nine days before McVeigh's scheduled execution, OKBOMB Inspector in Charge Defenbaugh first notified FBI Headquarters about problems with the discovery in the case, and on May 8 he notified the OKBOMB prosecutor. On the same day, the prosecutor contacted the defense attorneys to notify them of the issue. By the next day, May 9, 2001, the OKBOMB prosecutor provided 715 documents, consisting of approximately 3,100 pages, to the defense attorneys.

The problem with the documents in the McVeigh case was immediately disclosed to the press, and on May 10, 2001, the media reported that the FBI had failed to disclose thousands of pages of documents to the defense. On May 11, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft postponed McVeigh's execution until June 11, 2001. The Attorney General stated that he was taking the extraordinary action to allow defense attorneys adequate time to review the documents and to "protect the integrity of our system of justice." Also on May 11, the Attorney General requested that the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigate the circumstances surrounding the FBI's belated production of OKBOMB documents.

Within a few days following the initial disclosure, over a hundred more documents that had not been disclosed previously were found in two FBI field offices. As a result, concerns arose as to whether the field offices possessed still more OKBOMB material that needed to be reviewed to determine whether the items had been properly disclosed. During the week following the public disclosure of the problem, FBI Headquarters on several occasions instructed all FBI field offices to send OKBOMB material to Oklahoma City for review. The field offices sent in boxes of additional material, which the FBI also reviewed to determine if any discoverable items had not been disclosed properly. As a result, the FBI determined that a "second wave" of discoverable items, consisting of almost 200 documents, likely had not been disclosed to the defense before the trials. By the end of May, a total of 1,033 items were provided to the defense.

A total of 1033 items that had not been provided to the defense...

Did the truth really come out...?

The whole truth?

Or, might certain aspects of this affair not have, uh, "surfaced", due to concerns about who might be involved, and in what?

From my earlier post, Out of Context, Part 1:

In the context of the Oklahoma City bombing:

According to Keating, President Clinton's first comment to him after the bombing was "God, I hope there's no Middle Eastern connection to this."

In the context of the Sibel Edmonds case:

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!

See also:

Out of Context, Part 2

Out of Context, Part 3

Out of Context, Part 4

Out of Context, Part 5

Out of Context, Part 6

Out of Context, Part 7

Out of Context, Part 8

Meanwhile, as this series continues, we will examine security issues related to our our border. We will examine drug-, human- and arms-trafficking; we will see how terrorists interact with drug cartels and with Latin American governments and authorities. And, we will see how that impacts us in the United States.

Stay tuned!

Out of Context, Part 8

We continue from Part 7, reviewing a September, 2004, interview entitled The Third Terrorist, where FrontPageMag.com talks with journalist and author Jayna Davis about the Middle Eastern connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.

FP: Why has this story been untold up till now? Why did the FBI not pursue the Islamic/Iraqi connection?

Davis: The answer has haunted and mystified me for nearly a decade. I am a journalist who prefers to connect the dots with facts. However, in order to address your query, I must offer conjecture and leave it to your readers to decide the motivations behind the FBI's failure and/or refusal to investigate the dossier of evidence I have compiled exposing Middle Eastern complicity behind the brutal slaughter of 171 Americans, including women and children.

One possibility to which I attribute little plausibility is that this information innocently slipped through the cracks of a massive federal investigation due to gross incompetence. However, I cannot explain why the FBI flatly refused to take receipt of this information in 1997 when I offered twenty-two witness statements and hundreds of pages of corroborative documentation implicating Iraqi nationals in the Murrah Building bombing.

Officials with the Justice Department informed my lawyer, Tim McCoy, and later confirmed to Bill O'Reilly of Fox News that prosecutors "did not want any more documents for discovery" that they would be compelled by law to surrender to the defense teams for McVeigh and Nichols.

Well, I am going to have to stick up for convicted mass-murdering terrorists here.

Whoever they are, whatever they did, whatever they were accused of, they deserve fair and impartial treatment by the judicial system. Perhaps more than anyone else, federal law enforcement authorities have the responsibility of protecting the civil rights of accused criminals.

In this case, by discouraging more documents for discovery, federal law enforcement authorities not only denied a degree of justice to McVeigh and Nichols, but they also denied full justice to the families of the victims by leaving the crime less than fully investigated, and thus by possibly letting some of the conspirators go free -- and this endangers society, as these free conspirators might strike again.

Perhaps they already have struck again.

In 1999, I returned to the Bureau, and a very courageous FBI agent, Dan Vogel, took custody of the twenty-two witness affidavits. In compliance with official protocol, Agent Vogel passed the evidence up the chain of command to be reviewed by the legal department at the Oklahoma City FBI field office.

From there, the documents inexplicably vanished. The evidence was ultimately withheld from the defense teams for McVeigh and Nichols. More egregious was the undisputed fact that the FBI made no attempt to prove or disprove the veracity of the witnesses' testimonies. None was called. None was questioned.

To this day, the Justice Department has refused my requests to officially clear the man identified by witnesses as the mysterious third terrorist who delivered the weapon of mass destruction to the intersection of 5th and Harvey Streets on that dreadful spring morning. Yet the Bureau did not hesitate to exonerate several innocent men who were named in the media as having been collared and questioned simply because they bore a slight resemblance to the sketch of John Doe 2.

My meticulous research into the Iraqi soldier's whereabouts for the morning of April 19 roundly discredits his publicly espoused alibi. Why the FBI has never questioned Hussain Al-Hussaini or his Middle Eastern cohorts, I am at a loss to explain. That question should be posed to the former administration and the handful of officials who were charged with investigating and prosecuting the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building.

The survivors and slain of April 19 deserve justice and our country deserves the truth. Was Oklahoma City the silver bullet that could have prevented 9-11?

To be clear about this, had federal authorities competently handled the Oklahoma City bombing, they might have brought to justice some of the people who later were involved in orchestrating 9/11.

FP: So how will justice be achieved? Howe will the rest of the perpetrators be punished?

Davis: I leave the outcome and pursuit of justice to the American people. If my readers believe that I have presented evidence beyond a reasonable doubt for foreign complicity in the Oklahoma City bombing, then I implore concerned citizens to start a grass roots campaign to demand the arrest, interrogation, and criminal prosecution of the Iraqi suspects identified in my book.

After all, if the man whom multiple eyewitnesses positively pegged as the third terrorist had foreknowledge of the 9-11 plot, then what do he and his Iraqi cohorts know about the next strike Al-Qaeda is planning to execute within our borders? American lives hang in the balance. We cannot afford to speculate that these men will not be re-activated to construct more truck bombs like the one that levelled a nine-story building in 1995.

FP: Jayna Davis, thank you. It was a pleasure to speak with you.

Davis: Thank you Jamie.

Back to FrontPageMag.com's first question in this segment: "Why has this story been untold up till now? Why did the FBI not pursue the Islamic/Iraqi connection?"

As I commented previously, who knows why President Clinton might have swept that connection under the rug, but certainly this would have been a much meatier reason for Bush to go to war with Iraq, rather than the questionable stories about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and so on. Why didn't Bush pursue this?

Sibel Edmonds has made several comments in the context of her case, but let me take some of those comments out of context to shed some possible light on the Oklahoma City bombing.

From Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate by Jim Hogue, May 07, 2004:

JH: Can you explain more about what money you are talking about?

SE: The most significant information that we were receiving did not come from counter-terrorism investigations, and I want to emphasize this. It came from counter-intelligence, and certain criminal investigations, and issues that have to do with money laundering operations.

You get to a point where it gets very complex, where you have money laundering activities, drug related activities, and terrorist support activities converging at certain points and becoming one. In certain points -- and they [the intelligence community] are separating those portions from just the terrorist activities. And, as I said, they are citing "foreign relations" which is not the case, because we are not talking about only governmental levels. And I keep underlining semi-legit organizations and following the money. When you do that the picture gets grim. It gets really ugly.

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!

From Cracking the Case: An Interview With Sibel Edmonds by Scott Horton, August 22, 2005:

SH: And as you pointed [out], some of this information has been confirmed in the public. I know when you speak about the Iranian informant...

SE: Correct.

SH: ...who warned in April of 2001 -- that was even confirmed by Mueller, the director of the FBI.

SE: Absolutely there was actually an article in the Chicago Tribune in July 2004 saying that even Mueller expressed surprise that during the hearings, the commissioners didn't ask about this. And guess what, nobody reported all these omissions. What would happen if you hit them with 20 cases? And I'm talking about 20 affidavits from experts and veteran agents.

SH: This is all about the question of prior knowledge and who knew what, when before the attack.

SE: And also what happened afterward. I started working three days after Sept. 11 with a lot of documents and wiretaps that I was translating. Some of them dated back to 1997, 1998. Even after Sept. 11, covering up these investigations and not pursuing some of these investigations because the Department of State says, "You know what, you can't pursue this because that may deal with this particular country. If this country that the investigation deals with are not one of the Axis of Evil, we don't want to pursue them." The American people have the right to know this. They are giving this grand illusion that there are some investigations, but there are none. You know, they are coming down on these charities as the finance of al-Qaeda. Well, if you were to talk about the financing of al-Qaeda, a very small percentage comes from these charity foundations. The vast majority of their financing comes from narcotics. Look, we had 4 to 6 percent of the narcotics coming from the East, coming from Pakistan, coming from Afghanistan via the Balkans to the United States. Today, three or four years after Sept. 11, that has reached over 15 percent. How is it getting here? Who are getting the proceedings from those big narcotics?

Perhaps the connections that Jayna Davis made didn't stop with Iraq.

Perhaps the connections led to other countries, as well....

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:

CD: Can you elaborate here on what countries you mean?

SE: It's interesting, in one of my interviews, they say "Turkish countries," but I believe they meant Turkic countries – that is, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and all the 'Stans, including Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and [non-Turkic countries like] Afghanistan and Pakistan. All of these countries play a big part in the sort of things I have been talking about.

CD: What, you mean drug-smuggling?

SE: Among other things. Yes, that is a major part of it. It's amazing that in this whole "war on terror" thing, no one ever talks about these issues. No one asks questions about these countries – questions like, "OK, how much of their GDP depends on drugs?"

CD: But of course, you're not implying...

SE: And then to compare that little survey with what countries we've been putting military bases in --

Perhaps those in power know that the people named in Davis' book are connected to others, who in turn have connections that lead back to Washington?

From Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate by Jim Hogue, May 07, 2004:

JH: And there were four major FBI investigations, not counting yours, that were squelched in Phoenix, Minneapolis, Chicago and New York.

SE: Correct.

JH: And yours was even outside of that.

SE: Correct.

JH: So, obviously, we have mid-level FBI people who have been told something. It was the mid-level FBI people who knew enough to squelch many of these investigations before they went further. So how did they know to do that? Can all of them have been incompetent?

SE: No. Absolutely not.

JH: So they got the word down from Mueller, probably.

SE: I cannot confirm that for sure, but I can tell you that there is so much involvement, that if they did let this information out, and if they were to hold real investigations--I'm not talking about this semi-investigation they're holding under this "Joint Inquiry"--the pure show of the 9/11 Commission that has been getting the mass media's attention. If they were to do real investigations we would see several significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country.

This post concludes this series, but this post does not conclude our look at the OKBOMB!

Out of Context, Part 7

We continue from Part 6, reviewing a September, 2004, interview entitled The Third Terrorist, where FrontPageMag.com talks with journalist and author Jayna Davis about the Middle Eastern connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Specifically, Davis had just named an Iraqi "defector" -- in reality a likely member of an elite Iraqi military intelligence clandestine operations unit sent by Hussein for Trojan Horse operations in the US -- as a very probably candidate for John Doe Two.

Soon after that fateful day in 1995, Al-Hussaini moved to Massachusetts and sought employment at the Boston Logan International Airport. In November 1997, four years before two planes were hijacked from that very airport on a deadly trek to incinerate the World Trade Center, the Iraqi national began suffering panic attacks about his airport job and sought psychiatric hospitalization. When his therapist asked why he was experiencing sudden and intense trepidation about working at Boston Logan, the patient replied, "If something happens there, I will be a suspect."

I later learned that during this same time frame, Al-Hussaini was residing with two former Iraqi Gulf War veterans who provided food-catering services to the commercial airlines at the Boston airport. In the wake of the suicide hijackings of 2001, law enforcement speculated that food services workers might have planted box cutters aboard the doomed flights. Hussain Al-Hussaini's uncanny foreknowledge of a possible event slated to take place at Boston Logan Airport, the point of origin for Al-Qaeda's murderous rampage of 2001, just grazes the surface of the disturbing nexus I have uncovered between 4-19 and 9-11.

The case for Middle Eastern complicity that I have outlined, thus far, centers primarily upon Timothy McVeigh's collaboration with men whom witnesses described as Iraqi intelligence agents. However, I have also uncovered strong indicators of an Al-Qaeda component to the Oklahoma bombing. I outline in my book, The Third Terrorist, compelling evidence that McVeigh's defense team developed which suggested Terry Nichols might have received bomb making expertise from Al-Qaeda operatives based in the Philippines.

We know that the small-time Kansas farmer of modest means took frequent and unexplained trips to the South Pacific islands, many times without his Filipino mail order bride. The court record revealed that the Oklahoma City bomber was in Cebu City in December 1994 at the same time as the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, Ramzi Yousef. Did these two men cross paths? According to the sworn statement of the co-founder of the Muslim terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, a spin-off chapter of Al-Qaeda, Nichols and Yousef did, indeed, meet in the early 1990's to discuss bomb making.

Richard Clarke, President Bill Clinton's former terrorism czar, disclosed in his book, Against All Enemies, that the FBI "could never disprove" the theory that Terry Nichols learned the macabre genius of terrorist bomb construction under the tutelage of the Al-Qaeda lieutenant, Ramzi Yousef. Clarke writes, "We do know that Nichols' bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned."

Phone records reveal that Nichols received and placed a slew of calls to a boarding house in Cebu City, which according to McVeigh's defense lawyers, sheltered students from a local university known for Islamic militancy. Additionally, Nichols and McVeigh used a phone debit card to make a series of cryptic calls to untraceable numbers and pay phones in the Philippines from pay phones in Kansas in an apparent effort to cover their tracks. Why? That question has never been addressed or answered by the Department of Justice.

This connection was addressed in this series going all the way back to Part 1. It should be noted that Congressman Rohrabacher's report, which we reviewed beginning in Part 1, mentioned Jayna Davis' work -- Davis did the original digging on this one.

So the issue is before us -- indeed, quite a case is made -- that there may well have been both an Iraqi connection and an Al Qaeda connection to the Oklahoma City bombing, even though our government has us believe it was a case of domestic terrorism.

Is there any government documentation that could substantiate the idea that the plot was larger than our government has led us to believe?

Well, to some extent, we may never know the answer to that. However, shortly before McVeigh was to be executed, news broke that a great many documents pertinent to his case had never been turned over to his defense. This resulted in a Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General (DOJ/OIG) investigation. In the report, An Investigation of the Belated Production of Documents in the Oklahoma City Bombing Case, Chapter 3: Analysis of the Causes for the Belated Production of Discoverable Items, is found the following (see original regarding footnotes):

2. Defense Exhibit 10

Defense Exhibit 10 is a 2-paragraph insert dated April 24, 1995, from the Colorado Springs Resident Agency relaying information from a confidential informant that a prison inmate had information that someone other than McVeigh and Nichols was involved in the bombing. The former agent who drafted the insert told the OIG that he believed he would have followed normal procedure, which was to send the original to the confidential source file in Denver, the Headquarters City for the Denver Division, and a copy to the OKBOMB Auxiliary Office file, also located in Denver. He could not recall who in the office was responsible for sending information to the OKBOMB Task Force. He stated that he knew that "everything" was supposed to be sent to the OKBOMB Task Force, and he had no explanation for why this particular insert had not been sent.

3. Defense Exhibit 11

Defense Exhibit 11 is a 1-page insert provided by the Kansas City Field Office. In the insert, a confidential informant provided information on October 10, 1997, about individuals other than McVeigh and Nichols who the informant described "as persons behind the scenes of the Oklahoma City bombing." The defense stated that it never received this information during the trial.⁵³ Kansas City located this document as part of the second wave after receiving a telephone call from FBI Headquarters on May 16, 2001, directing Kansas City to provide all informant serials bearing the Oklahoma City case number. The FD-209 contains the OKBOMB case number and a 266G-0 number, which is Kansas City's domestic terrorism miscellaneous file.⁵⁴

How many more such leads did the government investigators have?

Regardless, why was this information not passed to McVeigh's defense?

From An Investigation of the Belated Production of Documents in the Oklahoma City Bombing Case, Chapter 8: Conclusion:

The disclosure of hundreds of OKBOMB documents one week before the scheduled execution of McVeigh raised questions as to whether the FBI had intentionally failed to disclose the documents and how the belated disclosures could have occurred. Because of the importance of these issues, the OIG expended significant resources to investigate the circumstances surrounding the belated production of documents. These issues have critical implications not only for the Oklahoma City bombing case, but also for how the FBI handles documents in its other investigations.

Based on our investigation, we concluded that the FBI had not intentionally withheld discoverable documents. Rather, the evidence showed that the FBI’s failure to disclose these documents resulted primarily from individual errors in document handling, failures to follow FBI policies, failures to fully comply with directives from the OKBOMB Task Force, and cumbersome and complex document handling procedures. The failures were widespread and not confined to one office or a few individuals. Nor was the fault confined to either the FBI field offices or the Task Force; both share responsibility for the problems.

We are most critical of the way certain senior FBI managers responded when they became aware of the belated documents problem. In January 2001, the belated documents were initially identified as a potential problem by two conscientious employees in the FBI’s Oklahoma City field office. Yet, the managers to whom they reported the problem failed to address the issue in a timely way, or notify FBI Headquarters or the prosecutors in the case until the beginning of May, one week before McVeigh’s scheduled execution. We believe these delays were a significant neglect of their duties. We therefore recommend that the FBI consider disciplinary action for these managers’ failure to resolve and disclose the problem in a timely way.

They sat on it. And when it began to leak out, they tried harder to sit on it, then, when it could no longer be contained, FBI leadership played the blame game.

Why?

Was McVeigh guilty? I think he was. Did he and Nichols act alone? Definitely not, and that is what the government is trying to cover up.

The criminal conspiracy (oops -- there's the "c-word") loops in both Hussein's regime in Iraq, a secular Arab government, and Al Qaeda, who long ago made takfir out of anyone like Saddam Hussein.

Who else is involved?



From Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate by Jim Hogue, May 07, 2004:

JH: Here's a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?

SE: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap -- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money.

"And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money."

Is it not interesting that Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, whose report has been featured in this series, is one of the politicians who have been "traced back to this money" (see The Heroin Lobby, Part 6)?

In fact, as Aurora commented on that post, "Whoever played a role in this, I hope they are fully exposed."



As I said to Aurora, "Stick around."

Out of Context, Part 6

In Part 5, we were reviewing a FrontPageMag.com interview with journalist and author Jayna Davis entitled The Third Terrorist, dated September, 2004.

When we left off, Davis had just explained that some "defectors" from the Iraqi Army were living in Oklahoma City, and that when they heard of the Oklahoma City bombing, they "cheered deliriously, exuberantly pledging their allegiance to the now deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, vowing they would 'die for Saddam.'"

We then recapped how President Clinton had stated in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, "God, I hope there's no Middle Eastern connection to this."

We now continue with the Davis interview:

Nearly two dozen Oklahomans have signed sworn affidavits in which they accuse these ardent Saddam supporters and ex-enemy combatants of aiding and abetting McVeigh and Nichols.

The most incriminating testimony centered around one man – Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini. Al-Hussaini not only fit the FBI's physical description in the official arrest warrant for John Doe 2, but according to veteran law enforcement officials, was a dead ringer for the government's profile sketch of the elusive suspect.

Witnesses identified this Iraqi immigrant socializing with McVeigh at an Oklahoma City nightclub prior to the bombing. An Oklahoma City gas station attendant also fingered Al-Hussaini as the customer who paid one hundred dollars cash to fill up a large Ryder truck with diesel fuel (key chemical component used in Ryder truck bomb) on eve of the bombing - April 18, 1995. The next morning, a maintenance working at the motel located adjacent to the service station observed what was very likely the same Ryder truck emanating an odorous stench of diesel, yet according to the witness, the gas cap bore a warning sticker which read: "Unleaded Fuel Only."

Two witnesses named the Iraqi soldier as the dark-haired, olive-skinned male they observed timing his run at a breathless pace from the Murrah Building one block east shortly before daybreak on April 19. Moreover, several Oklahoma City residents claimed to have seen Al-Hussaini climbing into the cab of a Ryder truck that reeked of diesel fuel at a local motel an hour before the explosion. The witnesses indicated that Timothy McVeigh was seated behind the wheel of that moving van as it pulled off the lot and headed toward downtown.

Furthermore, the Iraqi soldier was positively identified sitting in the passenger seat of the Ryder truck next to McVeigh a few blocks north of the Murrah Building at 8:30 a.m., stepping out of that truck at ground zero directly in front of the ill-fated federal complex moments before the massive fertilizer/fuel oil bomb detonated, and speeding away from downtown in the driver's seat of a brown Chevrolet pickup targeted by the FBI in an official teletype for foreign suspects.

Five witnesses independently fingered Al-Hussaini and several of his Middle Eastern associates as frequent visitors at an Oklahoma City motel in the months, weeks, days, and hours leading up to 9:02 a.m. on April 19. On numerous occasions the Arab subjects were seen in the company of Timothy McVeigh, and during a few rare instances, associating with Terry Nichols. More significantly, detailed interviews with key witnesses proved conclusively that the man whom witnesses named as the nefarious "third terrorist" had no provable alibi for the critical hours of April 19.

Colonel Patrick Lang, a Middle East expert who formerly served as the chief of human intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency, determined that the Iraqi soldier’s military tattoo and immigration file indicated that he was likely a trusted member of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard before being recruited into the elite Unit 999 of the Estikhabarat, more commonly known as the Iraqi Military Intelligence Service. Before the 2003 Iraq War, Unit 999 was headquartered in Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad, and was tasked with clandestine operations at home and overseas. Several defense and intelligence analysts, with whom I consulted, concurred with Colonel Lang's conclusions.

Basically, it sounds like these guys were sent out on a Trojan Horse-type operation.

How, though, do we reconcile this with President Clinton's comment ("God, I hope there's no Middle Eastern connection to this.")?

Why would President Clinton have said something like that?

And then, the federal investigation narrows its focus on McVeigh and Nichols, with no foreign involvement.

Why was this information, easily obtainable by the FBI, not used to indict these Iraqi "defectors"?

Indeed, if the FBI had done a marginally competent investigation, they already had this information, n'est-ce pas?

But, why would we want to cover up Saddam Hussein's involvement in a terrorist act?

Okay, so President Clinton wanted to protect Hussein (why is anybody's guess), but why would President Bush, spoiling for war with Iraq, have continued the cover-up? Why could Bush not simply have re-opened the case, prosecuted these Iraqi defectors, then used that as ample justification for war to topple Hussein's regime?

Perhaps this didn't stop with Iraq.

From Cracking the Case: An Interview With Sibel Edmonds by Scott Horton, August 22, 2005:

SE: [snip] The most important issue is: What were these criminal activities, and why instead of pursuing these our government chooses to cover it up and actually issue classification and gag orders so the American public will not know about what is going on within these agencies within their government -- and even within the Congress? [snip] I'm saying, "I came forward because criminal activities are taking place -- have been taking place -- some of them since 1997." Some of these activities are 100 percent related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, and they are giving this illusion that they are pursuing these cases, but they are not. If the case touches upon certain countries or certain high level people, certain sensitive relations, then they don't. But, on the other hand, they go and talk about lower-level criminal activity that boils down to people like Atta and Hamdi.

Sibel Edmonds is aware of information showing that these connections go back to 1997.

Do you suppose such corruption might go back a little farther -- say, to the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, and perhaps before?

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:

CD: So you're saying that the whole process of sorting through the intelligence you received, executing investigations, and getting information where it needed to go was prevented by the State Department?

SE: Several times, yes.

CD: And again, because of the "sensitive foreign relations" excuse?

SE: Well, yes, obviously all of these high-level criminal operations involve working with foreign people, foreign countries, the outside world -- and to a certain extent these relations do depend on the continuation of criminal activities.

Do you suppose we couldn't get these Iraqi "defectors" indicted for the same reason we can't get straight answers about 9/11?

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: The fact that there are no investigations -- I will give you an analogy, okay? Say if we decided to have a "war on drugs," but said in the beginning, "right, we're only going to go after the young black guys on the street level." Hey, we already have tens of thousands of them in our jails anyway, why not a few more? But we decided never to go after the middle levels, let alone the top levels...

It's like this with the so-called war on terror. We go for the Attas and Hamdis -- but never touch the guys on the top.

CD: You think they [the government] know who they are, the top guys, and where?

SE: Oh yeah, they know.

CD: So why don't they get them?

SE: It's like I told you before -- this would upset "certain foreign relations." But it would also expose certain of our elected officials, who have significant connections with high-level drugs- and weapons-smuggling -- and thus with the criminal underground, even with the terrorists themselves.

From An Interview with Sibel Edmonds, Page Three by Chris Deliso, July 1, 2004:

CD: What are they so afraid of?

SE: They're afraid of information, of the truth coming out, and accountability -- the whole accountability issue that will arise. But it's not as complicated as it might seem. If they were to allow the whole picture to emerge, it would just boil down to a whole lot of money and illegal activities.

CD: Hmm, well I know you can't name names, but can you tell me if any specific officials will suffer if your testimony comes out?

SE: Yes. Certain elected officials will stand trial and go to prison.

Perhaps Presidents Clinton and Bush among them?

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as Out of Context continues.

Out of Context, Part 5

In Part 4, we were looking at a report from Congressman Rohrabacher, entitled Chairman’s Report Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, subtitled The Oklahoma City Bombing: Was There A Foreign Connection?

Now, we pick up this story by reviewing an interview with Jayna Davis, whose work was mentioned in the Rohrabacher report. Davis was interviewed by FrontPageMag.com in September, 2004. We now begin to look at that interview, entitled The Third Terrorist:

FP: Jayna Davis, welcome to Frontpage Interview. It's a pleasure to have you here.

Davis: I'm delighted that Frontpage considers my investigative work worthy of an interview. It's a pleasure to join you in this discussion.

FP: First and foremost, what motivated you to write this book? How did you become interested in the topic?

Davis: My tumultuous journey began nine years ago amidst widespread death and destruction on a scale Americans had never before seen. As an investigative reporter for the NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City, KFOR-TV, I was among the first correspondents on the scene of the bombing of the Alfred. P. Murrah Building.

The concussive wave of fury had blown out windows in every office building and high-rise within my immediate range of sight and beyond. My eyes drank in the staggering devastation and the surreal panorama of human slaughter, but my mind could not comprehend the possibility of terrorism. Not in my hometown.

On April 20, 1995, my news director assigned me to cover the international manhunt for suspects. During the first forty-eight hours, all eyes were trained exclusively on the Middle East. Pundits and terrorism experts, including retired officials from the CIA and FBI, opined that the destruction to the federal complex shared striking parallels with the 1993 World Trade Center attack and the modus operandi of Middle Eastern truck bombings.

As a reporter from a Midwestern television station, I obviously did not have access to sources inside the intelligence corridors of the Washington beltway. Therefore, I did what any enterprising journalist would do – start manning the newsroom telephones hoping to develop eyewitness testimony near the crime scene.

I soon found myself swimming in a sea of conspiracy theories espoused by people seeking their proverbial fifteen minutes of fame. That is, until, one groundbreaking tip led me directly to the doorstep of what several esteemed intelligence experts, including the former Director of the CIA Jim Woolsey, later determined to be a Middle Eastern terrorist cell living and operating in the heart of Oklahoma City.

Outside a dilapidated business office located thirty blocks north of the burned out Murrah Building, under the very nose of FBI investigators, I began my nine-year quest to expose the greatest law enforcement failure of the 20^th century, a legal breakdown that I firmly believe might have led, in part, to the terrorism holocaust of the young 21^st century.

A Middle East terrorist cell in the heart of Oklahoma City!

Why, a Middle East terrorist cell in the heart of a Western city is unheard-of and unimaginable!

FP: Many individuals probably find the theme of your book quite far-fetched at first glance: that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were not the lone conspirators in the Oklahoma City bombing. You argue that they were part of a larger scheme which involved Islamic/Iraqi terrorists. Can you give us a few of the facts?

Davis: The Third Terrorist is the culmination of nearly a decade of exhaustive research. Throughout the course of my investigation, I interviewed eighty potential witnesses, twenty-two of whom I deemed credible because their testimonies could be independently corroborated, and more importantly, their stories did not conflict with the government's case against McVeigh and Nichols.

Davis' research was meticulous and well-documented. She focused on the documented and documentable facts; the information she "deemed credible" was "corroborated", and "did not conflict with the government's case".

In detailed affidavits, these witnesses confidently identified eight specific Middle Eastern men, the majority of whom were former Iraqi soldiers, colluding with the Oklahoma City bombers, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, during various stages of the bombing plot.

All of these suspects immigrated to the United States following the Persian Gulf War, ostensibly seeking political asylum from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. However, my investigation revealed they were, in fact, false defectors – not outspoken dissidents as they had claimed.

This cadre of Iraqi servicemen moved to Oklahoma City in the fall of 1994 and began performing handiwork for a property management company that was owned and operated by a Palestinian expatriate. The affluent real estate mogul, who operated under eight known aliases, funded his vast, multi-million dollar housing empire from monies contributed by siblings living in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and Amman, Jordan.

In the early 1990's, the Palestinian property owner pleaded guilty to federal insurance fraud and served time in the penitentiary. Court records revealed that the FBI once suspected the ex-convict of having ties to the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Six months prior to the bombing, the Palestinian felon hired a group of self-professed "defectors" from the Iraqi army to do maintenance work on his low-income rental houses. On April 19, several witnesses watched in stunned amazement as their Middle Eastern co-workers expressed prideful excitement upon hearing the first radio broadcasts that Islamic extremists had claimed responsibility for the attack on the Murrah Building. The men cheered deliriously, exuberantly pledging their allegiance to the now deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, vowing they would "die for Saddam."

Keep in mind what we learned in Part 1 from Chairman’s Report Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, subtitled The Oklahoma City Bombing: Was There A Foreign Connection?

Note: at the outset of the subcommittee's investigation, former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating personally requested that the investigation be called off. During his meeting with the subcommittee chairman, Governor Keating mentioned that then-President Bill Clinton had called him only hours after the bombing. According to Keating, President Clinton's first comment to him after the bombing was "God, I hope there's no Middle Eastern connection to this."

But, McVeigh and Nichols were convicted, no Middle Eastern connection to the OKBOMB, case closed -- looks like President Bill Clinton, a President known for telling lies and obstructing justice, got what he wanted.

What I don't understand is why this connection, which was being revealed publicly at the beginning of the Bush-43 Administration, wasn't officially acknowledged by "Dubya". After all, here's a nice, meaty reason for regime change in Iraq, as well as a chance to slam the Democrats not just for lies, but for jeopardizing national security as well.

So why was this not capitalized upon?

From An Interview with Sibel Edmonds, Page Three by Chris Deliso, July 1, 2004:

CD: If your full testimony is heard by the public, who or what agencies are going to be in the biggest trouble?

SE: Well, as for agencies I guess the DOJ, FBI, State Department. But in a way these agencies get some kind of immunity when you charge them like this ... I hate to see how a lot of agents get stigmatized in this. Most of the field agents I met in the FBI were good, honest and hardworking individuals. They were trying to do their best, but up against this ingrown bureaucracy -- this is where you have the problem, as will as with certain elected officials.

CD: What are they so afraid of?

SE: They're afraid of information, of the truth coming out, and accountability -- the whole accountability issue that will arise. But it's not as complicated as it might seem. If they were to allow the whole picture to emerge, it would just boil down to a whole lot of money and illegal activities.

CD: Hmm, well I know you can't name names, but can you tell me if any specific officials will suffer if your testimony comes out?

SE: Yes. Certain elected officials will stand trial and go to prison.

Out of Context, Part 4

We continue from Part 3 reviewing the Chairman’s Report Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, subtitled The Oklahoma City Bombing: Was There A Foreign Connection?

Phone Records Possibly Linking Yousef to Nichols

Ramzi Yousef was in the United States for about five months prior to his attack on the World Trade Center in February 1993. His cell phone records from that time period show that he placed three phone calls to the residence of a Filipina in Queens, New York named Mila Densing, with one call lasting approximately 30 minutes. At the time of the phone calls, Densing was living in the same row-house apartment building as Adora and Ernesto Malaluan, close friends and neighbors, who were also from Cebu City. Ernesto Malaluan is the cousin of Marife Nichols and owned the boarding house in Cebu City where Terry and Marife lived during their last trip to the Philippines.

The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee interviewed Ernesto and Adora Malaluan, who said they knew nothing about Ramzi Yousef or any of the aliases he used while in the United States. Mila Densing denied speaking to Yousef according to a source of the subcommittee, but she was unresponsive to official efforts to reach her, including certified mail sent by the subcommittee and numerous phone calls.

As Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee in October 2005, I provided the FBI with the evidence showing Yousef’s phone calls to the close friends and neighbors of Terry Nichols' in-laws in Queens, but have not received a response that addressed these facts. To date, the FBI has not responded to my request for their assessment. Additionally, I asked the FBI for information from their Yousef investigation concerning Mila Densing. Inexplicably, they do not seem to have interviewed her.
As one would expect of someone willing to plot the death of fellow Americans, Nichols' own veracity is far from clear. His initial interview with police was replete with lies and half-truths. To this day, he repeatedly promises to disclose more information about the case, only to blame it on Arkansas gun dealer Roger Moore, or hint of a sinister government conspiracy. At the same time, he has convinced his friends and family that he was a virtual patsy. Contrary to this passive image, McVeigh told his defense team that Nichols had actually threatened to kill him if he caught McVeigh sleeping with his wife. Furthermore, Nichols was on his own in the Philippines where he obviously believed his life was in danger.

Nichols has gotten something of a pass on the culpability of his participation in this horrific act of violence. His complicated attempts to manipulate those investigating OKBOMB, including the subcommittee, suggest capabilities that belie his image as subservient to McVeigh. To this day, Nichols does not fully acknowledge his complicity in this monstrous crime, seeking instead to draw attention to others, some of whom he self-servingly hints have yet to be exposed.

Nichols is obviously a liar and a manipulator -- he seems to have set up McVeigh to take most of the heat for the OKBOMB and, indeed, McVeigh was convicted and executed.

Just because Nichols is a liar, does that mean that everything he says is a lie?

Or, might there be some half-truths mixed in his stories, half-truths which, if properly sifted and analyzed, might yield valuable insights.

"To this day, he repeatedly promises to disclose more information about the case, only to blame it on Arkansas gun dealer Roger Moore, or hint of a sinister government conspiracy."

What if Nichols -- a criminal conspirator -- was aware of other conspiratorial activities, perhaps involving government officials?

Here are some more quotes from the Sibel Edmonds case -- specifically from Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate by Jim Hogue, May 07, 2004, which I am taking out of context (in case you hadn't figured it out, that is where the name for this series came from):

JH: Can you explain more about what money you are talking about?

SE: The most significant information that we were receiving did not come from counter-terrorism investigations, and I want to emphasize this. It came from counter-intelligence, and certain criminal investigations, and issues that have to do with money laundering operations.

You get to a point where it gets very complex, where you have money laundering activities, drug related activities, and terrorist support activities converging at certain points and becoming one. In certain points -- and they [the intelligence community] are separating those portions from just the terrorist activities. And, as I said, they are citing "foreign relations" which is not the case, because we are not talking about only governmental levels. And I keep underlining semi-legit organizations and following the money. When you do that the picture gets grim. It gets really ugly.

JH: Here's a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?

SE: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap -- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money.

Finally, this quote comes first in Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate, but I put it here last:

JH: Are you allowed to say that it's the Saudis?

SE: I cannot name any country. And I would emphasize that it's plural. I understand the Saudis have been named because fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. However, the names of people from other countries, and semi-legit organizations from other countries, to this day, have not been made public.

With these thoughts in mind, is it not interesting to consider the Ehrenfeld / Lappen article we are reviewing, beginning in my last post, Financial Onslaught, Part 1?

Stay tuned for Out of Context, Part 5 and Financial Onslaught, Part 2 !

Pride of Lions, Part 6

Part 5 ended with this:

Keep in mind that when hostilities began in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the lawful authorities were compelled by the international community to not intervene.

The story was repeated in Kosovo.

The precedent has been set.

Now France, a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council... how far from civil war?

To consider this question, we now review excerpts from French trial opens into suspected recruiting ring for Iraqi insurgency from March 19, 2008, which was linked via a recent post at Islam in Europe, entitled Paris: al-Qaeda Iraq recruiting network trial:

PARIS: Seven men went on trial Wednesday in Paris for suspected involvement in an al-Qaida-linked network that recruited young French men on the streets of Paris and sent them to fight in Iraq's insurgency.

The men have been accused of "criminal conspiracy with a terrorist organization," a broad charge often used in terror-related cases in France, and they face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. Three are still in custody; the other four were offered freedom while the probe continued.

The trial dealt with mostly procedural issues as it opened. It is scheduled to end March 28.

The network, one of several that recruited in France by targeting Muslim youths, was dismantled in 2005. Judicial officials believe this particular network sent about 10 people to Iraq, at least three of whom died there.

The case has added resonance because authorities fear extremists from Europe could return from Iraq with deadly skills that could be used to sow terror on the continent.

Part 5 addressed civil unrest in France from late last year. French police faced rioters who opened fire on them and attacked them, inflicting serious injuries on French police officers. One of them was quoted making the following statement:

"It felt like they were out to kill us," said one of the officers in Villiers-le-Bel last week. "We knew that there were weapons in the suburbs, but they have never been turned against us like that. The kids were shooting at us at close range, loading and reloading their weapons. I've never seen anything like it."

Perhaps we can now understand what may be happening in France; as we understand from the current article, it is possible at least some of the rioters had combat experience from Iraq. If so, then French police face not merely rioting immigrant youth, but an actual militarized terrorist threat - one with combat experience!

Skipping down two paragraphs in French trial opens into suspected recruiting ring for Iraqi insurgency, the article continues:

Authorities believe the group's ringleader was Farid Benyettou, a 26-year-old described by officials as a Salafist, holding to a strict interpretation of Islam, who preached extremist views to youths in his neighborhood in the 19th district of Paris.

Benyettou apparently gained credibility as a Muslim radical through his brother-in-law, Youcef Zemmouri, a convicted member of an Algerian insurgency movement who was arrested before the 1998 World Cup in France.

France has had extensive ties with former colony Algeria, which is just across the Mediterranean. Furthermore, unrest in Algeria with an Islamic extremist flavor has certainly been an issue, to say the least.

We now review other material to gain some historical perspective on the situation in France. We begin with Al Qaeda Builds a Euro Army February 25, 2004:

Warnings of al Qaeda's continuing threat came Tuesday, February 24, from Washington and London as well as one of its top leaders. Addressing the Senate intelligence committee, CIA director George Tenet spoke of the spread of al Qaeda's radical agenda to local groups who now threaten the United States and are capable of 9/11 scale attacks.

British interior secretary David Blunkett, announcing new stringent measures to combat terror, said a terrorist attack on Britain was "inevitable."

Pointing up these statements, Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri gave not one but two signs that his group was still after "Crusader" blood. Two recorded audiotapes reached the rival Arab TV stations, al Jazeera and al Arabiya. In one he threatened the United States with fresh attacks; the other condemned the French for banning the headscarf for Muslim schoolgirls. The Egyptian terrorist chief declared that the claim by US president George W. Bush that two-thirds of al Qaeda’s leadership has been crushed was untrue.

His assertion had been confirmed previously by the preliminary findings of a joint defense department-CIA inquiry ordered by the US President.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources in Washington, al Qaeda's backbone and that of its partner, al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad are intact and fully operational. The Egyptian half of al Qaeda in particular has led a charmed existence. Since America's 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, only two senior Jihad operatives have been killed and not a single active member captured. The team found this discovery alarming enough to rush to Bush and warn him: "We have a gap in our intelligence the size of a big black hole."

Of course, readers of my blog would immediately and correctly surmise that I suspect not incompetence or "a gap in intelligence" but deliberate treason in Washington; this, after all, is what the Sibel Edmonds case is about.

Even more disquietingly, al Qaeda is discovered to be recruiting manpower in Europe at a brisk pace in a push into the continent personally advocated by Osama bin Laden. The Saudi-born terrorist has thus gained the upper hand in a debate within his organization's top leadership over its next focal arena. Bin Laden urged fostering the war on the "far enemy" (Europe) as against concentrating the movement's fury on the "near enemy" (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, South Asia).

Might this by why so many Saudis support Al Qaeda? Perhaps they are paying protection money, hoping that in view of their generous donations to terrorists, they will be last on the list of takfir to be wiped out?

The European arena, often neglected by American counter-terrorism agencies, is showing a dangerous dynamism. Data assembled for a preliminary assessment show al Qaeda in the process of evolving from terrorist networks and cells into a professional fighting force with military features.

According to French counter-intelligence, al Qaeda has recruited in France alone between 35,000 and 45,000 men and is organizing them into military-style units. They meet regularly for training in the use of weapons and explosives, combat tactics and indoctrination and are controlled from local and district command centers under the organization’s national French command.

Maybe that French judge, Jean de Maillard, that we quoted in Part 5 was right when he warned that France should prepare for civil war.

Maybe it's not just France?

In Germany, Al Qaeda has recruited 25,000 to 30,000 men. The British domestic intelligence agency MI5 estimates 10,000 faithful have joined up in Britain, providing Blunkett with more than ample cause for concern.

Al Qaeda is a lot less active in Italy where counter-terrorist agencies hunt its cells to earth relentlessly. Moreover, al Qaeda does not need an important foothold in Italy because it already maintains a thriving presence next door in the Balkan countries of Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, from which weapons, money and false documents are easily secreted to its European bases.

It was our leader in the War on Terror, President George W. "Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists" Bush who gave the terrorists those bases in the Balkans - building on the work of the Clinton Administration, which was, according to ethnic Albanian sources previously quoted, the instigation of the then-First Lady.

And let's not forget the role of Senator John McCain - who was playing from the same sheet of music in this orchestra.

Why?

Rather than provide links, I will let you research Clinton's and McCain's role in the situation in the Balkans.

Concluding Al Qaeda Builds a Euro Army:

But unknown numbers are enlisting in Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden and Norway.

Recruitment across Europe continues apace and in greater secrecy than ever as a result of a switch to new recruiting techniques and appeal to fresh target-populations for building the Euro army. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources, the authors of the interim report found that al Qaeda, intent on beating surveillance and penetration by intelligence services, no longer selects combatants at its usual hunting grounds in mosques, Islamic culture centers and Muslim immigrant neighborhoods. Instead, native Europeans freshly converted to Islam are targeted.

The new campaign is styled "the white recruitment drive" or "coffee shop conscription". Operational cells and recruiting agents patronize ordinary cafes on the high streets of Europe's major cities where they blend into the crowds. The new conscripts defy identification by European intelligence services because their Islamic lives are lived completely underground. There is therefore no way of finding their addresses telephone numbers. Unit-level meetings or training sessions, attended by 30 or 40 men, may take place under cover of social activity such as a holiday camp in a remote part of Europe. Tracking them down is getting harder as bin Laden’s new Euro army expands at the rate of tens of thousands and when "white" recruits may already form some 25 percent of the total.

The use of "lily whites" - people that the authorities wouldn't think might be tied to Islamic terrorism until the terrorist attack actually occurs.

Sort of makes you wonder....

In the most recent of another as-yet unfinished series I am working on - in a post entitled Out of Context, Part 3 - we learn of Terry Nichols' links with Ramzi Yousef, Islamic terrorist bomb-maker-extraordinaire. It was shortly after returning from the Philippines - specifically from the same town that Ramzi Yousef was in - that Nichols, together with Timothy McVeigh, was able to make such a devastating (?) bomb:

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.

(Out of Context, Part 1, Out of Context, Part 2.)

In fact, the Oklahoma City attack resembled the World Trade Center attacks in a myriad of ways, but that's another story - or is it the same story?

And now Al Qaeda is raising armies in Europe, including young jihadis from ethnic groups, many of whom have combat experience in Iraq (and presumably in Afghanistan, too?), and including "lily whites".

Makes you wonder what might be up in France... Report: 'Lily Whites' Recruited to Carry Out OKC Bombing, or the French version thereof, n'est-ce pas?

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as Pride of Lions continues and Out of Context resumes.

Out of Context, Part 3

We continue from Part 2 looking at the Chairman’s Report Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, subtitled The Oklahoma City Bombing: Was There A Foreign Connection?

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!

Out of Context, Part 2

First, we continue reviewing from Part 1 the Chairman's Report Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, subtitled The Oklahoma City Bombing: Was There A Foreign Connection?

Terry Nichols in the Philippines

Terry Nichols began traveling to the Philippines in August 1990. He traveled to Cebu City with Shelton Paradise Tours, a business run by Tom Shelton and his son, Earl, who were allegedly involved in several disreputable ventures. Shelton Paradise Tours touted itself as a "mail order bride business," but apparently was also a prostitution ring. Shelton ran ads in fringe publications in the United States targeted at men who wanted to travel to the Philippines to find women for pleasure or marriage. He also ran ads in the Cebu City daily newspaper for young women who wanted to escape a life of poverty by becoming mail order brides. His Cebu City ad was answered by a young woman named Flordaliza "Lisa" Torres, who later brought her sister, Marife, into the business.

Marife met Terry Nichols on his first trip to the Philippines in August 1990 and the couple married in November of the same year. When Marife joined him in the United States a short time later, she was pregnant with another man's child. When interviewing Marife’s friends and family in the Philippines, the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee discovered that Nichols may have promised the Torres family land and U.S. citizenship, even though he lacked regular employment and had no means of support other than occasional odd jobs. Terry and his Filipina bride moved to his family's farm in Michigan, where her child was born, before eventually moving to Herington, Kansas.

Terry Nichols' Activities in the Philippines

On his first trip to Cebu with Shelton Paradise Tours, Terry Nichols was initially introduced to "tour guide" Daisy Gelaspi. They spent about four days together and, in a sworn signed statement to police and investigators, Gelaspi claimed that Nichols asked her if she knew anyone in the military or anyone else who could help him make a bomb. Additionally, on his final trip to the Philippines just months before the Oklahoma City bombing, Nichols had with him a bomb-making book entitled The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives. Nichols' interest in bomb making during his trips to the Philippines raises some doubt about whether he was genuinely there for a wife, or whether he was there to network with underground criminals and terrorists.

Terry Nichols' behavior prior to his last trip to the Philippines in November 1994 also raises questions. He left a sealed note for his ex-wife that instructed her to open it in case he did not return. She opened it almost immediately and found a letter from Nichols telling her where he had hidden $20,000 for her and their son. When asked directly about this by the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, his answers were not credible; Nichols suggested the $20,000 came from babysitting money. Nichols had also written a note to McVeigh saying "Your [sic] on your own, go for it." The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee inquired into why Nichols would have feared for his life on his last trip to the Philippines as well as where he got $20,000. Our answers are speculative at best. The money could have come from his robbery of Arkansas gun dealer Roger Moore, but this could not be confirmed. Additionally, it has not been ascertained as to why Nichols feared for his life.

Nichols' skill as a terrorist seems to have grown while in the Philippines. Initially he was an unsuccessful bomb-maker. According to Michael Fortier's testimony, Nichols and McVeigh failed miserably when they tested an explosive device in the Arizona desert just six months before they bombed the Murrah building. After Nichols' final trip to the Philippines, he and McVeigh were fully capable of manufacturing the crude but deadly bomb that was used to bring down the Murrah federal building.

This connection to the Philippines is significant. An excerpt from Islamic Terrorism in the Philippines -- an Updated Perspective helps us understand why (see original for footnotes):

The Worldwide Islamic Jihad Arrives in the Philippines

During the 1980s, Hashim Salamat joined the Arab and non-Arab Muslim volunteers fighting in Afghanistan, where he first met 'Abdullah 'Azzam and Usama bin Ladin. During that same time period MILF [Moro Islamic Liberation Front] continued to manage a guerilla and terrorist campaign against the Philippine regime. Throughout the 1990s the MILF forged ties with the Philippine organization Abu Sayyaf and with bin Ladin's al-Qa'ida, using the latter's training camps in Afghanistan and advisors that were sent to the Philippines in order to train members of the Front. In terms of numbers, it is estimated that MILF is comprised of anywhere between 8,000 and 15,000 fighters, some of which are Afghan Alumni. ⁴

In 1991, another split occurred within MNLF [Moro National Liberation Front] when 'Abd al-Raziq Abu Bakr Janjalaani-an Afghan Veteran who opposed Miswaari's moderate stance-quit the Front and founded the Abu Sayyaf Group. The group is named after Janjalaani's alias during the war in Afghanistan - "Bearer of the Sword". The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) sought to create an independent religious Islamic state in the southern Philippines, and argued that this objective can only be obtained through the use of force. Since the 1990s, the organization has directed terrorist attacks against Christian institutions and leaders in addition to kidnappings and murders, especially of foreign nationals. ASG is considered the smallest yet most radical of the Islamic organizations operating in the Philippines, and its forces stand at approximately 200 Mujahideen, some of them Afghan Veterans and Afghan Alumni, andh an additional 2,000 supporters.⁵

Since its inception ASG has maintained strong links with other Afghan Alumni. The Group used their experiences in guerilla warfare and terror in order to intensify the struggle against the regime and to heighten its reputation among competing Islamic organizations. It also aided those Afghan Alumni that needed a base of operations to launch terrorist acts under the framework of the worldwide Islamic Jihad. The most famous example of these instances was the tie between ASG and Ramzi Yusuf, an Afghan Veteran of Iraqi origin who is considered the mastermind behind the first World Trade Center attack in New York on February 26, 1993. Yusuf, who met Janjalaani some time in the 1980s during the war in Afghanistan, used ASG's infrastructure in the Philippines in 1994 for an attempt to simultaneously bring down two American passenger airlines in the Far East using explosive devices hidden in the planes. He also planned to attack Pope John Paul II during his visit to the Philippines in the beginning of 1995. Yusuf's plans were never fulfilled, however, as a result of a fire that broke out in his hiding place, which led to the capture of an accomplice and the revelation of the plots. Yusuf escaped to Pakistan, where he was arrested in February 1995 and extradited to the United States.⁶

Usama bin Ladin intently followed the events taking place in the Philippines. Pakistani and Philippine intelligence sources believe that bin Ladin, who knew Janjalaani from Afghanistan, directed Jamaal Khalifah, another Afghan Veteran and bin Ladin's brother-in-law, to offer financial aid to Janjalaani in the summer of 1991 in order to expand his organization. According to these sources, bin Ladin later ordered Khalifah to convince Ramzi Yusuf and Wali Khan Amin Shah to go to the Philippines and train members of ASG. Yossef Bodansky and 'Abd al-Rahim 'Ali noted that bin Ladin even visited the Philippines in the winter of 1993 and introduced himself to the regime as a Saudi investor seeking to aid the Muslims in the south. As a result, he gained increased cooperation in achieving these goals. Later bin Ladin appointed Jamaal Khalifah as the man in charge of transferring the aid.⁷

It is safe to assume that bin Ladin opposed both the formal negotiations held in November 1993 between government representatives and Nur Miswaari, who agreed to abandon his demands to secede the Muslim south from the Philippines Republic, and the peace treaty signed between Miswaari and the Philippine government in September 1996, which resulted in Miswaari's appointment to governor of the south.⁸

As time passed, Janjalaani strengthened his ties with al-Qa'ida. In February 1998, he joined bin Ladin's Worldwide Islamic Front for Holy War against the Jews and the Crusaders. He was aided by the training camps of al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan and by the al-Qa'ida advisors sent to the Philippines in order to train his fighters. As such, Janjalaani held ties with Salamat's Islamic Front and continued to forge ties with radical Islamic leaders throughout the world who fought alongside him in Afghanistan.⁹

[snip]

A Hotbed for the Recruitment and Perpetration of Terrorism

The United States has called Mindanao Island and the Sulu archipelago in the southern Philippines a sanctuary, training and recruiting ground for terrorist organizations. According to Navy Adm. William J. Fallon, chief of the US Pacific Command, the Philippines, along with Indonesia and Malaysia, has served as a center for the activities of terrorists and their supporters in Southeast Asia. He added that the governments of these countries are cooperating with Washington in the war against global terror. Fallon did not say what terrorist groups were operating in the southern Philippines, but Manila previously admitted that dozens of members of the Southeast Asian terror group JI, including Dulmatin-who is linked to the deadly 2002 Bali bombings-were hiding in Mindanao.²⁴

Local military estimates placed the number of ASG terrorists operating in Mindanao at about 510 active members, with 30 JI extremists. Led by Al-Qadhafi Janjalaani, most of them are holding out in the dense jungles of Central Mindanao, offering refuge to JI leaders Umar Patek and Dulmatin who are both wanted for the Bali attacks.25 The most recent reports indicate that Dulmatin is living under ASG's protection in exchange for providing bomb-making expertise.²⁶

In the middle of March 2006 local troops captured alleged ASG weapons courier Julkaram Hadjail in Jolo and in a separate incident security forces killed several militants on the island. Security forces also recovered in early March 2006 a cache of explosives and homemade bombs near a highway in Jolo's Indanan town where troops regularly pass.²⁷

So, Congressman Rohrabacher addresses ties between the Oklahoma City bombing and a place now known as "A Hotbed for the Recruitment and Perpetration of Terrorism" -- a place now complete with someone who has a reputation for "providing bomb-making expertise."

Just like back in the 1990's, when the Philippines had someone else with a reputation for "providing bomb-making expertise."

From Cracking the Case: An Interview With Sibel Edmonds by Scott Horton, August 22, 2005:

SE: And the main media is treating it as if "here's one piece of information the 9/11 Commission didn't include." I had this press conference last summer and together with 25 national security experts. These sort of people from NSA, CIA, FBI. And we provided the public during this press conference with a list of witnesses that had provided direct information, direct information. Some had to do with finance of al-Qaeda. These are people from NSA, CIA, and FBI to the 9/11 Commission, and the 9/11 Commission omitted all of this information, even though some of this information had been established as fact. One of them had to do with certain informants in April 2001. This informant provided very specific information about the attacks. The other had to do with certain information the FBI had in July and August 2001, where blueprints and building composites of certain skyscrapers were being sent to certain Middle Eastern countries, and many more information was just omitted.

Information that just gets omitted....

Stay tuned for Part 3!

(Meanwhile, you can read what my esteemed cohort wrote about the Philippines last year: Islamic terrorism problem in Philippines by Nora, July 11, 2007.)