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Oklahoma City, TWA Flight 800, and the Gorelick connection
World Net Daily ^ | 4-16-04 | Jack Cashill

Posted on 04/16/2004 2:29:43 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer

As a last question to former FBI head Louis Freeh, 9-11 Commissioner John Lehman asked whether Freeh was familiar with the information Jayna Davis has gathered for her new book, "The Third Terrorist." Davis, a former Oklahoma City newswoman, makes a powerful case that Terry Nichols had conspired with convicted World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef in the Philippines and that Timothy McVeigh had received direct aid in the construction and delivery of the bomb from, among others, likely Iraqi agent, Hussain Al-Hussaini, the alleged John Doe #2.

This was an excellent question. Lehman, however, addressed it to the wrong person. He should have turned to his fellow commissioner, Jamie Gorelick, the deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997. The Landmark Legal Foundation has now formally requested that Gorelick step down because she is "hopelessly conflicted." But truth would be served if instead of stepping down Gorelick were forced to open up.

Evidence strongly suggests it was Gorelick – not the ineffectual Freeh – who not only misdirected the FBI's investigation into Oklahoma City, but also the FBI investigation into TWA Flight 800. The parallels between the two cases are shocking. And in each case, the Clinton administration constrained the FBI for the same reason: to advance the re-election chances of its standard bearer.

This story rightfully begins on Election Day, Nov. 8, 1994. In a time of peace and economic growth, Democrats lost an incredible 52 seats in the House and eight in the Senate. "The election itself is being described as a total repudiation of Bill Clinton and the Democrats," Labor Secretary Robert Reich observed at the time, a "fundamental realignment."

After days of anger and self-pity, Bill Clinton began to focus again on the one organizing principle that had directed his life to date. "All that mattered was his survival," Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos would write of his former boss. "Everyone else had to fall in line: his staff, his cabinet, the country, even his wife."

Stephanopoulos speaks here of another circumstance, but the principle was eternal. In the next two years, the Clintons would sacrifice the nation's very security to secure another four years in office. As I report in "Ron Brown's Body," Islamic terrorism was just the half of it, but it was the urgent half.

Five days before the election, in an unrelated event, Ramzi Yousef had applied for a visa to the Philippines. On the next day, Terry Nichols received a visa for the Philippines and left for Cebu City two weeks later. On the way to the airport, he unnerved his ex-wife, Lana Padilla, when he handed her a sealed package and told her, "If I'm not back in 60 days, open it and follow the instructions." Curious, Padilla opened the package only to find a will, Nichol's life insurance policy, and instructions that led her to $20,000 in cash.

Two weeks after Nichols' arrival, Ramzi Yousef boarded a Philippines Airline flight in Manila and planted a small bomb. The bomb killed the Japanese tourist who took his seat after Yousef had disembarked in Cebu City.

A month later, January 1995, Yousef had to flee his Manila apartment after setting it on fire while building bombs. When his roommate, a Pakistani pilot, returned to the apartment to retrieve Yousef's laptop, he was arrested. Yousef immediately fled to Pakistan where he would be seized weeks later. Terry Nichols hastily returned to the United States. When Padilla asked Nichols why he had come back so soon, he told her cryptically, "Somebody could get killed down there." Perhaps more than coincidentally, the logbook in Yousef's Manila apartment bore the signature of an occasional visitor named "Nick."

In "Against All Enemies," Richard Clarke casually addresses the simultaneous visits of these two terrorists to the Philippines in general, and Cebu City in particular. "We do know that Nichols' bombs did not work before his Philippine stay," writes Clarke, "and were deadly when he returned." Nichols continued to call the Philippines frequently and surreptitiously after his return.

On April 19, 1995, I was co-hosting a point-counter point radio show on Kansas City's leading AM station, KMBZ. The show aired just before Rush Limbaugh, who once worked at the station. The Oklahoma bomb detonated just as we were going on the air.

My partner and I followed developments closely. Early police reports and intelligence briefings led us all to believe that the bomb was the work of Islamic terrorists. When, however, the police identified McVeigh as a suspect a day later, my partner was absolutely gleeful. A wily and well-connected Democrat strategist, he went on the air and issued an All Points Bulletin for McVeigh's "co-conspirators – Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich." He claimed their hate speech and talk of revolution had inflamed the allegedly right-wing McVeigh.

My partner was simply following the Democratic National Committee's talking points. Democrats, the president included, were spreading this same message all across America. Clinton, more subtle than his supporters, assigned responsibility for the bombing to the "purveyors of hate and division." His supporters filled in the blanks. A master of strategic grief counseling, Clinton descended on Oklahoma City with an approval rating in the low 40s and left town with a rating well above 50. Late in the 1996 campaign, he would confide to reporters that his road back to the White House began in Oklahoma City.

The president, however, was more interested in the points he could score off Oklahoma City than in the truth. In her stunning book, Jayna Davis documents beyond all doubt what that truth was: McVeigh and Nichols had help from Islamic terrorists – not only in the Philippines, but also in Oklahoma City. In her role as a reporter for KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, Davis interviewed more than 20 reliable eyewitnesses who identified the crew of Iraqi nationals who had helped McVeigh assemble and deliver the bomb, among them, John Doe #2, Hussain Al-Hussaini.

Much as with TWA 800, however, the FBI lost all interest in the eyewitnesses as soon as the White House had established its talking points. The details of this abandonment appall the reader. "Could the al-Qaida explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American who proclaimed his hatred for America?" writes Richard Clarke of Nichols' visit to the Philippines. "We do not know, despite some FBI investigation."

"Some FBI investigation"? Why was there not a massive FBI investigation? On Yousef's laptop seized from that burning Manila apartment were plans for Operation Bojinka. The following excerpt from a classified Republic of the Philippines intelligence report speaks to the nature of those plans:

 

The document [from Yousef's computer] specifically cited the charter service of a commercial type aircraft loaded with powerful bombs to be dive-crashed by SAEED AKMAN. This is apparently intended to demonstrate to the whole world that a Muslim martyr is ready and determined to die for the glorification of Islam.

 

Richard Clarke was well aware of these plans. In response to a question by Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste at a 9-11 hearing, Clarke admitted that the "knowledge about al-Qaida having thought of using aircraft as weapons" was relatively old – "five years, six years old." He asked that intelligence analysts "be forgiven for not thinking about it given the fact that they hadn't seen a lot in the five or six years intervening about it." He admittedly did not share these plans with the Bush administration.

The reason Islamic terrorist links were ignored has more to do with politics than with security. Once arrested, McVeigh and Nichols served as poster boys for the natural progression of the "Republican revolution." If, however, they proved to be mere "lily whites" – i.e., stooges recruited by Islamic terrorists to take the fall – they would lose their political value. Moreover, liberal scolds could no longer hector those who had publicly presumed that Islamic terrorists were behind the bombing.

This included not only the political right but also non-partisan terrorist experts like Steven Emerson, who had already been upbraided for "bigotry and misrepresentations" and "creating mass hysteria against American Arabs." Indeed, to the detriment of our national security, the orchestrated Democratic reaction to Oklahoma City shamed reporters and investigators from pursuing Islamic terrorism aggressively. This, Davis documents all too painfully from her personal experience.

This pattern of denial climaxed in the days following July 17, 1996, the day that TWA Flight 800 exploded off the coast of Long Island. In this case, too, the FBI ignored – among other evidence – hundreds of eyewitnesses, the damning FAA radar tape and the scores of positive hits for explosive residue on the plane. And although Ramzi Yousef was on trial that very day in New York for his role in Operation Bojinka, there was no connection made between those plans and the destruction of the plane. Just the opposite. Richard Clarke, in fact, takes credit for suppressing the real evidence and discovering the preposterous "mechanical failure" thesis that the administration eventually made stick.

Although it is easy to blame the FBI for the shameful investigative breakdowns both in Oklahoma City and on Long Island, its agents did not subvert the investigations of their own accord. Their orders came from Washington. The responsibility for enforcing these orders fell to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, who served as the Soviet equivalent of the "political officer" within the Justice Department.

On Aug. 22, 1996 – five weeks after the crash of TWA 800 – Gorelick summoned the FBI's Jim Kallstrom to Washington to be served up a dose of survival reality. Kallstrom had been a good soldier. He had kept all talk of eyewitnesses and satellites and radar and missiles out the news. But the evidence had led him far away from mechanical failure, and there was no easy way to turn back.

To be sure, no account of the meeting provides any more than routine detail, but behaviors began to change immediately afterward, especially after the New York Times broke a headline story the next day, top right: "Prime Evidence Found That Device Exploded in Cabin of Flight 800." This article stole the thunder from Clinton's election-driven approval of welfare reform in that same day's paper and threatened to undermine the peace and prosperity message of next week's Democratic convention.

On that same Aug. 23, the Federal Aviation Administration began to inquire whether any explosives-training exercises had ever taken place on the plane that would become TWA 800. From that day forward, the FBI would do no more serious eyewitness interviews. On that same day, Kallstrom was now saying for the first time, "It was possible that the PETN could have been brought on the plane by a passenger and was not part of a bomb."

Jim Kallstrom was not the only one who had learned the hard way that there could be no terrorism in the summer of 1996. At the "feel good" Atlanta Olympics, the beleaguered security guard Richard Jewell, the poor soul who first spotted the Centennial Park bomb, was learning a harder lesson still.

Although Davis does not document Gorelick's role in Oklahoma City, media accounts routinely describe her as the director of the Oklahoma City task force, the so-called "field commander." As Davis has told me, someone in Washington called the FBI in Oklahoma City and issued a two-word directive on its investigation into Islamic terrorism: "Kill it."

If that person is not Jamie Gorelick, perhaps she could tell the 9-11 Commission who it is. By suppressing the truth in Oklahoma City, Long Island and Atlanta – and then burying it – the Clinton administration left America wide open on Sept. 11. Apologies are in order, but they will not be enough.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Oklahoma; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 911; 911commission; clintonfailure; clintonfailures; clintonlegacy; commission; conspiracy; farahnoid; fredthompson; gorelick; gorelickmemo; jackcashill; jaynadavis; murrahbuilding; okc; okcbombing; ramziyousef; sept11; terrynichols; twa800
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To: Vigilantcitizen
Found the whole collection of Hoffman's"The Oklahoma City Bombing and The Politics of Terror". Great details on the ME connection, especially in Section 5.
61 posted on 04/16/2004 7:05:05 AM PDT by ravingnutter
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To: ravingnutter
bttt
62 posted on 04/16/2004 7:09:20 AM PDT by Guenevere (..., .Press on toward the goal!)
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To: backhoe
Forget the apologies, this just pisses me off!!! We were set-up as fools during that administration and now during the 911 Warren Commission hearings!! I want the truth about TWA 800 and Oklahoma City, NOW!!! Reno-Lick deserves some jailtime!!

Pray for W and The Truth

63 posted on 04/16/2004 7:18:40 AM PDT by bray (Hey Yaaaawn, why don't YOU give $750,000,000 to the gummit!)
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To: ravingnutter
Wow. Thanks.
64 posted on 04/16/2004 7:23:56 AM PDT by Vigilantcitizen
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To: Just mythoughts
I have wondered about WACO being the trigger, however, this wall was not limited to US intel gathering, rather all INTEL gathering.

Just think of all the things that might have gotten rather dicey to handle if more INTEL Ops had put their heads together. Vince Foster. Ron Brown. Chinagate. ad infinitum

It's like computer security, you put different data bases in their own little boxes with limited access to the outside. Only the owner has a pass key to it all.

"One ring to rule them all, One ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them!"

65 posted on 04/16/2004 7:29:47 AM PDT by TigersEye (One nation under God ....... or war.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
BTTT!
66 posted on 04/16/2004 7:35:07 AM PDT by CarryaBigStick
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To: devolve

Clinton: I Did Not Have Sex With These Women



67 posted on 04/16/2004 7:40:02 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP (Become a monthly donor on FR. No amount is too small and monthly giving is the way to go !)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
Bill Clinton's legacy:

1993 First World Trade Center bombing
1994 Waco tragedy
1995 Oklahoma City bombing
1996 TWA Flight 800
1998 Monica Lewinsky
1999 Impeachment hearings
2000 USS Cole bombing
2001 9/11

68 posted on 04/16/2004 7:41:51 AM PDT by wai-ming
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To: Final Authority
It would be fun to pin the past on Clinton people but it doesn't solve the problem. They couldn't stop it in advance and that is where we need to concentrate, on preemption.

You don't think this continuing coverup of corruption under the Clinton's direction is still harmful? One of them is a sitting Senator. Numerous appointees still reside in our government ... with their secrets to hide and their connections to China and who knows who else. Their continuing denial and coverup fuels doubt and confusion that keeps a huge base of useful idiots on their side promoting a constant erosion of the truth and the reputations of those who serve the truth. All of this is a continuing threat to our national security both foreign and domestic.

69 posted on 04/16/2004 7:43:16 AM PDT by TigersEye (One nation under God ....... or war.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
..for the Vets out there, check out this thread:
Stranded Marines Fight To Last Bullets
London Times ^ | April 16, 2004 | James Hider


...and Kerry gets a medal for a scratch on his arm

Doogle
70 posted on 04/16/2004 8:40:35 AM PDT by Doogle (....and the truth will set you free....depends on what you mean by truth)
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To: gunnedah
You are so right....we need to clean out the crooks in BOTH parties, because that is definitely why Clinton has gotten away with all of his crimes and cover-ups.......Mutually assured destruction aka "scorched earth".











































71 posted on 04/16/2004 9:07:41 AM PDT by MamaLucci (Libs, want answers on 911? Ask Clinton why he met with Monica more than with his CIA director.)
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To: MamaLucci
Whoa.....what the heck is that all about?
72 posted on 04/16/2004 9:09:31 AM PDT by MamaLucci (Libs, want answers on 911? Ask Clinton why he met with Monica more than with his CIA director.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
Bump.
73 posted on 04/16/2004 9:12:29 AM PDT by Fester Chugabrew
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To: aruanan
It really is obvious that the Clinton administration was nothing less than a global criminal syndicate. I have been wondering about the date of the Gorelick memo that was declassified. I couldn't find a date on the document that was posted.
74 posted on 04/16/2004 9:15:36 AM PDT by Eva
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
FWIW, a little factoid from this link. From the link:

Ms. Wilkinson's legal career began in the office of the Army General Counsel where, as a Captain, she worked on the prosecution of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. She then spent four years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, where she was responsible for the prosecution of fraud, RICO and narcotics cases. In 1995, she returned to Washington as Counsel to then Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. At the Department of Justice, Ms. Wilkinson also advised the Attorney General and other Administration officials on criminal matters. Within three months of being promoted to the position of Principal Deputy for the Terrorism and Violent Crime Section of the Criminal Division, Ms. Wilkinson was hand picked to serve on the Oklahoma City prosecution team.

Interesting co-incidence.

75 posted on 04/16/2004 9:15:51 AM PDT by mewzilla
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To: XBob
I didn't gather much on Oklahoma City because OKCSubmariner and others were all over it, but there is a lot on TWA800 on the DSL.

One important fact is that Samir Ferrat was supposed to be on Ron Brown's plane but didn't go and instead died in TWA800. The FBI immediately identified him and then just as immediately stopped investigating him.

The other major thing going on at this time was the foreign campaign financing which may have been a factor in raising the "wall".

Downside Legacy


76 posted on 04/16/2004 9:24:05 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl
Bump for reading later.
77 posted on 04/16/2004 9:25:50 AM PDT by Amntn
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To: Alamo-Girl
One important fact is that Samir Ferrat was supposed to be on Ron Brown's plane but didn't go and instead died in TWA800.

I hadn't heard that before. So many dots, so much connecting to do.

78 posted on 04/16/2004 9:26:29 AM PDT by TigersEye (One nation under God ....... or war.)
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To: TigersEye; Amntn
A few tidbits on Samir Ferrat:

5/27/98 AP Zurich The Guardian (London) pg 19 Freepers Wallaby & icwhatudo ".POLICE are investigating the possibility that insurance fraud by a Swiss resident listed among the 230 people killed in the TWA Flight 800 explosion might have been behind the disaster, Swiss television reported last night. Swiss authorities have been investigating Algerian-born Mohammmed Samir Ferrat, for 18 months, the report said. ..A Geneva lawyer, Gerald Page, alleged in an interview for the Swiss television report that Ferrat took out life insurance policies worth several million Swiss francs in the weeks before the plane crashed in July 1996, half an hour after taking off from New York…. On August 19, a month after the crash, the local medical examiner in Suffolk County - in whose jurisdiction the disaster occurred - declared that Mohammed Ferrat had been positively identified as a dead passenger from TWA Flight 800. US investigators counted him out as a suspect early.. The report showed footage of the late US commerce secretary, Ron Brown, at the Washington signing with Ferrat of a pounds 62.5 million contract between Sofin and the US construction firm Chatwick Inc, which was to build residences in the Ivory Coast. Chatwick spent pounds 2.5 million on the project before halting it, the television said.." Background from icwhatudo ".According to a CNN international report, Mohamed Samir Ferrat, an Algerian business associate of Secretary Brown, who was scheduled to accompany Brown on the Bosnian trip but withdrew at the last moment for reasons still unclear, died July 17, on the ill fated TWA Flight 800. Ferrat was initially treated by the FBI as a suspected terrorist in the TWA Flight 800 explosion because he was the sole passenger on the flight roster listed only by last name. The FBI, within hours of beginning their investigation of Ferrat, oddly withdrew, telling the New York Times that "Ferrat was not at all the kind of person to take a bomb on a plane. Nor was he a likely target of a bomb plot."

BROWN'S ASSOCIATE DIED ON TWA 800 http://www.usvetdsp.com/usvet/story23.htm According to a CNN international report, Mohamed Samir Ferrat, an Algerian business associate of Secretary Brown, who was scheduled to accompany Brown on the Bosnian trip but withdrew at the last moment for reasons still unclear, died July 17, on the ill fated TWA Flight 800. Ferrat was initially treated by the FBI as a suspected terrorist in the TWA Flight 800 explosion because he was the sole passenger on the flight roster listed only by last name. The FBI, within hours of beginning their investigation of Ferrat, oddly withdrew, telling the New York Times that "Ferrat was not at all the kind of person to take a bomb on a plane. Nor was he a likely target of a bomb plot. U.S. government investigators have yet to determine whether missile, bomb or mechanical failure brought TWA 800 down, killing all 230 passengers and crew. "Ferrat, it turned out," the New York Times said, "was a wealthy and highly respected businessman, money manager and investor with offices and residences in the Ivory Coast, France and Switzerland . . . FBI agents learned all this without questioning Ferrat's family, friends or business associates, many of whom were gathered in their grief at the family hotel in Virginia." One source, who asked not to be identified, suggested the FBI cleared Ferrat quickly because they either learned of his connection to Secretary Brown or Ferrat may have been on the payroll of U.S. intelligence, possibly the CIA. Ferrat was also involved with Chadwick International Inc., a northern Virginia company that exports modular homes. Chadwick, Inc., founded in 1991, got its start, according to its chairman Ronald M. Nocera, by Ferrat arranging meetings with real estate contacts in Algeria. Nocera said Chadwick, Inc. currently holds or is negotiating deals worth $560 million with developers from Argentina to Vietnam.


79 posted on 04/16/2004 9:35:51 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl
I think that the wall was strengthened in an effort to reign in multiple investigations into the global crime syndicate that defined the Clinton administration, including both the commerce dept and the Chinese campaign donations, which were actually intertwined.

Intelligence Coup By Red China (from Ted Sampley's web site)

London's Sunday Times reported November 10, 1996, that the fund raising scandal "appears to have been a stunning intelligence coup by China."

The Sunday Times said Chinese agents were able to "take advantage of lax security procedures and a pattern of corruption in the Clinton administration" to gain "advanced knowledge of America's negotiating positions in trade and economic talks as well as access trade deals subsidized by America."

Chinese born John Huang, who became a naturalized American citizen after coming to the U.S. in 1969, was given a July 1994 appointment to a U.S. Commerce Department post with direct access to President Bill Clinton and a "Top Secret" clearance.

The Sunday Times reported that on the personal instructions of Sec. Brown, "Huang was given topsecret security clearance without background checks by the FBI or the state department's Office of Security a strict requirement for somebody born in a foreign country."

Sixteen months later, Huang left Commerce to become the Democratic National Committee's fundraising vice chairman.


80 posted on 04/16/2004 9:53:49 AM PDT by Eva
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