Iraq and Oklahoma City connection? [Archive] - Marine Corps

wrbones

04-13-03, 03:24 AM

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/9/10/213551.shtml

House Probe of 'Iraq Connection?'
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2002
This is the second part of our investigation of a possible link between the Oklahoma City bombing and Iraq.

WASHINGTON- House investigators this week were tied up in meetings examining recently uncovered evidence suggesting an Iraqi link to the Oklahoma City bombing and other terror attacks.

The House Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., sent staff investigators to Oklahoma City during the August congressional recess. In "sniffing around” (to use the words of the Indianapolis Star), committee counsel Marc Chretien found six witnesses who place executed bomber Timothy McVeigh with "foreign-looking men” shortly before the blast at the Alfred P. Murrah federal building on April 19, 1995. As of Tuesday evening, there was no word on whether or when the committee will hold hearings on the new information.

In an exclusive interview with NewsMax.com, TV investigative reporter Jayna Davis who has gathered enough information to write ten books, described McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols as "the perfect lily-white recruits” in what she said has all the appearances of an Iraqi-Iranian plot, with Iran acting as "paymaster.”

Her evidence is so strong that even the cautious Wall Street Journal has taken notice and, in a Sept. 5 article by its senior editorial writer Micah Morrison, has said the possibility of a trail leading to Baghdad "needs to be put on the table in a serious way.”

Millions of Americans recall that in the early hours after the bombing, law enforcement produced photos of a "John Doe 1” (which turned out to be McVeigh) and "John Doe 2,” which was quickly withdrawn as a "mistake.”

Davis says there was in fact a "John Doe 2” at Oklahoma City. Her investigations have produced over 20 witnesses who place him near the Murrah building or who link him to the plot in other ways. An Iraqi native and former member of the Iraqi army, Hussain al-Hussaini "bears a strong resemblance” to the description of the mysterious "John Doe 2” right down to a tattoo on his left arm. A judge has ruled that Davis proved the resemblance.

According to the Journal, the court case had resulted from a libel suit al-Hussaini had filed against Davis after her station, in late spring of 1995, while not naming him, ran a series of stories that included photographs of him that digitally obscured his face. The stories by the Oklahoma City station, KFOR-TV, were part of a series exploring a Middle East connection. His lawsuit was filed in August, 1995.

As Davis recounts to NewsMax:

"He [al-Hussaini] dismissed it twenty-four hours before the judge was scheduled to rule on our motion for summary judgment.

"It’s real important that I clarify to you how much evidence there is against him,” the investigative reporter stressed.

"In a libel case, your basic defense is truth. So when the judge was set to rule on this case on April 17 of ’97 whether or not to dismiss it or to go to jury trial, he [al-Hussaini] voluntarily withdrew the case without prejudice.” He re-filed September 19, 1997 in federal court. The judge in that court dismissed the case.

"Not only did Judge Timothy Leonard [in the federal case] rule in November of ’99 that I didn’t libel Hussain-al Hussaini,” investigator Davis said in her NewsMax interview, "he ruled that all fifty statements of fact and opinion that implicated the man in the bombing that had been set forth on the record were undisputed.

"Four years of litigation,” she added, "and two separate lawsuits, and Hussain al-Hussaini cannot even produce one witness’s affidavit to establish his whereabouts in the critical hours of April 19, 1995.”

Al-Hussaini’s lawyer, Gary Richardson, is running as an independent candidate for governor of Oklahoma. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he described the treatment accorded his client as "anathema to American values,” adding the itinerant restaurant worker had been singled out "because he was an Arab.” The attorney maintains there is "no evidence that Hussain al-Hussaini is John Doe 2.”

The Iraqi native refused Davis’s requests for an interview, but did talk to rival stations in Oklahoma City. That in turn led to a report that FBI "bosses in Washington” would not "allow” the agency to "officially clear him.”

Here’s what the Wall Street Journal adds to this aspect of the story:

"Ms. Davis’s evidence was examined by Patrick Lang, a Middle East expert and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s human intelligence collection section. In a memo to Ms. Davis, Mr. Lang concluded Mr. al-Hussaini likely is a member of Unit 999 of the Iraqi Military Intelligence Service, or Estikhabarat. He wrote that this unit is headquartered in Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad, and ‘deals with clandestine operations at home and abroad.’”

Burton’s committee staff interviewed Davis during the August visit to Oklahoma City. The Wall Street Journal article makes a connection between Oklahoma City and the first World Trade Center bombing. Ramzi Yousef, one of those implicated in the 1993 WTC blast, and Terry Nichols (McVeigh’s accomplice in Oklahoma city) were in the Philippines simultaneously.

"Nichols’s trips there were undisputed: His wife’s relatives lived in Cebu City. Cebu City is also the territory of the Islamic terrorist group Abu Sayyaf.”

Nichols had repeatedly called a boarding house there which, Davis told NewsMax.com, is "known to shelter students from a local university that’s known for Islamic militancy.” Davis told us phone records have shown Nichols repeatedly called the boarding house when his wife was not there. He received phone calls "at his home in Kansas” from that same boarding house at all hours of the day and night. Nichols went to pay phones "all over Junction City” making calls to the boarding house in the Philippines.

There are many other "strange coincidences” noted in the Journal, the Indianapolis Star and others. Space precludes recounting all of them here at this time.

The nagging question raised by NewsMax.com was why would someone like McVeigh, who knows he’s going to be executed, be willing to go to his grave without perhaps doing a plea bargain for a lighter sentence by sharing his information on "others unknown” (to quote the jury verdict)?

Davis cites some probabilities: 1. In McVeigh’s mind, he was being "the perfect soldier. As he saw it, he was an American hero.” 2. He was protecting his sister Jennifer whom he loved dearly, and didn’t want to put her in danger of retaliation.

Again, the evidence of a direct Iraqi connection is circumstantial, and "inconclusive,” as Morrison’s Wall Street Journal piece puts it. But the string of "coincidences” strikes some investigators in Washington as too numerous to ignore.

One veteran observer of investigations in this town opined that it would be astonishing if all of these "coincidences” were to stop short of a smoking gun after a thorough official probe. Such a probe has yet to take place. Those who have followed the "Iraq connection” anxiously await the decision of the Burton committee on whether to provide the inquiry and answer all relevant questions.