"Another Conspiracy Theory intrigued me because I could never disprove it. The theory seemed unlikely on its face: Ramzi Yousef or Khalid Sheik Muhammad had taught Terry Nichols how to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building. The problem was that, upon investigation, we established that both Ramzi Yousef and Nichols had been in the city of Cebu on the same days. I had been to Cebu years earlier; it is on an island in the central Philippines. It was a town in which word could have spread that a local girl was bringing her American boy friend home and that the American hated the U.S. government.
Yousef and Khalid Sheik Muhammad had gone there to help create an al Qaeda spinoff, a Philippine affiliate chapter, named after a hero of the Afghan war against the Soviets, Abu Sayaff. Could the al Qaeda explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American who proclaimed his hatred for the U.S. Government? We do not know, despite some FBI investigation. We do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned. We also know that Nichols continued to call Cebu long after his wife returned to the United States. The final coincidence is that several al Qaeda operatives had attended a radical Islamic conference a few years earliler in, of all places, Oklahoma City.
Other interesting info:
Yes, Clinton and Gore did abandon airport security planning for sake of campaign cash. But worse, they concealed the real cause of the crash, in no small part to justify that abandonment.
In fact, on the same day in September of 1996 that Al Gore sent the airline's lobbyist a letter signaling his intent to roll over, the National Transportation Safety Board reversed its spin and all but ruled out a bomb or missile strike [on TWA 800].
In our book, "First Strike," James Sanders and I make this arguably prophetic comment:
John Kerry seemed to have his sights on Al Gore's Achilles' heel. After the events of Sept. 11, the story of how Al Gore helped subvert the investigation into TWA 800 and undermine airport security may yet prove to be a career-killer. Kerry's "slips" may have put Gore out of the race even before he got in.
Two weeks after advanced copies of "First Strike" started circulating around Washington, Gore withdrew from the presidential race. His withdrawal shocked Washington. It did not shock Sanders and me. We expected it. Kerry plays hardball, too.
While I have your attention, Chris, there is one other person you need to put on the spot. Her name is Jamie Gorelick, former deputy attorney general under the figurehead, Janet Reno. You probably know her. Last week, UPI reported that the high-level 9-11 panel on which she sits "was rocked Thursday by the bizarre revelation that two of its senior officials were so closely involved in the events they are investigating that they have had to be interviewed as part of the inquiry." One of the two was Gorelick.
See also:
Why John Kerry talks about TWA 800
On Aug. 22, 1996, just a few days before the start of the Democratic National Convention, Ms. Gorelick oversaw a critical Justice Department meeting with the FBI. Immediately after this meeting, as it happened, all serious inquiry into the fate of TWA 800 came to an end.
On the next day, for instance, the FAA began to inquire whether any dog-training exercises had ever taken place on the plane that would become TWA 800. On the same day, as CNN reported, the FBI now claimed publicly for the first time that the explosive residue found along the right wing "could have been brought on the plane by a passenger and was not part of a bomb." Likewise, after the meeting, the FBI would do no more eyewitness interviews, at least not for the next two months. The Bureau only did a handful after that – and all of those for the wrong reasons.
Intersting that Kerry once had this issue as a strong suit to whack Gore with. Not since the news that FAA agent Sullivan went to Kerry's office with warnings about Logan Airport security just months prior to 911.
Jack Cashill is an extremely respectable source. Thanks for the info. Do you know if he ever posts here?
"Yousef and Khalid Sheik Muhammad had gone there to help create an al Qaeda spinoff, a Philippine affiliate chapter, named after a hero of the Afghan war against the Soviets, Abu Sayaff. Could the al Qaeda explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American who proclaimed his hatred for the U.S. Government? We do not know, despite some FBI investigation. We do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned. We also know that Nichols continued to call Cebu long after his wife returned to the United States. The final coincidence is that several al Qaeda operatives had attended a radical Islamic conference a few years earliler in, of all places, Oklahoma City."
I haven't read Clarke's book, but if this is an example of his self-proclaimed expertise on terrorism, it's pathetic. The Nichols/Cebu connection, including the numerous phone calls to Cebu, was covered extensively by McViegh's attorney, Stephen Jones, in his book "Others Unknown." Much of Jones' info is the result of an independent investigation he conducted in McViegh's defense, (an investigation seriously and repeatedly obstructed by the government which then included Clarke and Gorelick) . Now Clarke claims insight into the connection through "some" FBI investigation. If Clarke and the FBI -- which is presumably what he means by "we" -- uncovered the link, why was it repeatedly suppressed by the government during McVeigh's and Nichols' trials? And if the link was proved, why is he referring to it as a "conspiracy theory?" Was he or was he not Clinton's supposed point man on terrorism?
The "final coincidence" Clarke mentions, the Islamic conference in OKC, was uncovered totally by accident by Steven Emerson, who stumbled onto it as a CNN reporter covering another unrelated story in OKC in 1992. The conference ignited Emerson's interest in Islamic terrorism in the USA, and launched his investigative reporting career, as explained in the very first chapter of "Jihad in America."
As I see it, Clarke had the best of both worlds: he could pretend to be saving America from Islamic terrorism, secure in the knowledge that no action would ever be taken by the Clinton administration -- which pretty much freed Clarke of any tough decision-making. The result of all these years of hard work is a book that apparently rehashes the first-hand findings of other authors, while blaming the Bush administration for Clarke's eight years of tilting at windmills under Clinton.