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Al-Qaeda’s OKC-9/11 Ties
New American ^ | July 26, 2004 | William F. Jasper

Posted on 08/30/2004 10:04:11 AM PDT by robowombat

Vol. 20, No. 15 July 26, 2004 Table of Contents More on Terrorism More on the Oklahoma City Bombing

Al-Qaeda’s OKC-9/11 Ties by William F. Jasper

Al-Qaeda ties to the OKC bombing were not mentioned in the state trial of Terry Nichols, yet evidence used by federal prosecutors in recent cases makes the ties obvious.

Zacarias Moussaoui, dubbed the "20th hijacker" by federal prosecutors, would have been released from federal custody before the 9-11 attacks if not for the heroic persistence of field agents in the FBI’s Minneapolis office. Agent Coleen Rowley and members of her FBI team carried on a running fight with top FBI and Justice Department officials who tried to stop the Minnesota investigation and prevented a search of his laptop computer until after his fellow conspirators crashed their hijacked planes on September 11.

Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was arrested by the local FBI agents after investigating a tip from Minnesota flight school operators who were suspicious over the nature of his requests for training on a 747 simulator. He has admitted to being a member of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist group, but denies that he was part of the 9-11 conspiracy. His trial has been delayed by his erratic behavior and numerous appeals.

There are many important, unanswered questions concerning Moussaoui. For instance: Why have federal officials pointedly ignored publicly available facts showing that most of the $64,000 he received from al-Qaeda sources was spent in the Oklahoma City area, where he attended the Airman Flight School in nearby Norman and had ties to a top suspect in the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City’s Murrah Building? The largest chunk of Moussaoui’s funds, $35,000, was provided by al-Qaeda paymaster Yazid Sufaat, one of the principal hosts of the secret al-Qaeda planning meeting for 9-11 in Malaysia. Moussaoui, according to federal authorities, was operating under the direction of al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who met in the Philippines with his nephew, World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef, during the same time period that Yousef was meeting with Terry Nichols.

September 11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s ticket (United Airlines Flight 93) was purchased from a computer terminal at Oklahoma University in Norman. Moussaoui was a frequent visitor to the OU campus, worked out at the OU gym and recruited OU student Hussain Al-Attas. September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, a member of al-Qaeda’s cell in Hamburg, Germany, visited the same Norman, Oklahoma, flight school that Moussaoui attended.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20th hijacker,” is shown (in green prison uniform) in a courtroom drawing of his arraignment on July 25, 2002 in U.S. District Court. Moussaoui, an admitted al-Qaeda member, is a friend and former roommate of OKC bombing suspect Majahid Abdulquaadir Menepta.

Fellow Hamburg Cell hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi also came to the Oklahoma City area, where he got a speeding ticket in 2001. According to the testimony of the owner of a small motel in Oklahoma City, Moussaoui, Atta and Al-Shehhi all came to his motel together to rent a room about six weeks prior to the 9-11 attacks. Six years earlier, Oklahoma City bombing conspirators Timothy McVeigh and Nichols also were guests at the same motel, along with several Middle Eastern men, weeks prior to the OKC bombing.

Terrorist, Informant or Agent Provocateur?

Perhaps the most important and purposely neglected "coincidence" concerning Moussaoui is his connection to convicted felon Melvin Lattimore, a convert to Islam who now goes by the name Majahid Abdulquaadir Menepta. The unwillingness of federal authorities to hold Lattimore/Menepta as a 9-11 suspect in the case is stunning. Equally stunning is the fact that he was never arrested as a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing. Here are some key facts concerning Menepta tying him to the biggest terrorist events in U.S. history:

• Lattimore/Menepta’s credit card was used to help finance the 1993 World Trade Center bombing directed by Ramzi Yousef.

• Federal ATF Agent Jeffrey Whitney has testified in court that one day after the Oklahoma City bombing, an FBI informant told FBI superiors that Menepta should be considered a top suspect in the Oklahoma attack.

• Several employees at Travelers Aid, one block from the Murrah Building, identified Menepta as entering the Travelers Aid office with three other men the day before the Oklahoma City bombing. Two of the men accompanying Menepta were identified as closely resembling associates of McVeigh, and one of the witnesses positively identified the vehicle that the group drove away in as McVeigh’s beat-up Mercury Marquis.

• Menepta was a member of a militant mosque in St. Louis and is now a member of a radical mosque in Norman, where he says he saw Moussaoui on a daily basis. According to Oklahoma news accounts, Menepta and Moussaoui were roommates in Norman, while Moussaoui attended flight school.

• Menepta’s roommate, Al-Attas, drove Moussaoui from Oklahoma to Minnesota to begin flight school there. When Al-Attas was arrested, Menepta drove to Minnesota and posted $5,000 bail for his release.

• When Menepta and Al-Attas returned to Norman on August 21, 2001, more than three weeks before 9-11, agents from the Oklahoma City FBI office knocked on their apartment door. According to the agents, several men fled the apartment and exited the building before the agents could react. Also, according to FBI documents, 9-11 hijacker Salem Al-Hazmi was seen in Menepta’s Norman apartment in April 2001.

• Menepta was arrested one month after the 9-11 attacks as a material witness and possible co-conspirator. Menepta vigorously defended Moussaoui as a "scapegoat."

• Menepta was prosecuted for illegally possessing weapons as a convicted felon. (He had been convicted of robbery in 1971 and served four years in prison.) He was sentenced in 2002 to 15 months in prison and is now back on the street.

Steadfast witness: Gloria Smith, who managed the office of a charitable organization one block from the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, told FBI agents that Melvin Lattimore/Menepta came to her office with other men in McVeigh’s car. A federal ATF agent has testified in court that one day after the bombing an undercover informant fingered Menepta as the top suspect.

The New American interviewed Gloria Smith, a manager at Travelers Aid in Oklahoma City, who is positive that Menepta/Lattimore is one of the men who came into her office the day before the Oklahoma City bombing. The men had asked for gasoline money or vouchers and had become loud and argumentative when the receptionist explained that they would have to first provide a valid driver’s license. Mrs. Smith stepped out of her office to reinforce her besieged receptionist and to emphasize the company policy requiring photo I.D. before aid could be given. The men left in a huff, and Mrs. Smith watched them through the office window as they got into the car and drove off.

She told The New American that the man who had done most of the talking, and who had long, reddish-blonde hair, "flipped me ‘the finger’" as he got into the car. He had also cursed her in the office, just a few feet from her face, so she had good reason to remember him. She is fairly certain, she says, that the man is James Rosencrans, based on photos she has examined of Rosencrans. Mr. Rosencrans is a former associate of Timothy McVeigh and the Kingman, Arizona, neighbor of Michael Fortier, McVeigh’s fellow bombing conspirator who turned witness for the government in exchange for leniency for himself and his wife, Lori Fortier.

Of two things Mrs. Smith is "very certain": The black man in the group who came to her office is Menepta, and the car they drove was McVeigh’s Mercury Marquis. She says she got a good look at Menepta. And, she notes, as soon as McVeigh’s car appeared on television news broadcasts, she knew instantly it was the one that had been in her parking lot. She recalls: "I said to the receptionist when they pulled out, ‘No wonder they didn’t give I.D., there’s not even a tag on the car.’" When McVeigh was arrested the next day, shortly after the bombing, there was no license plate on the vehicle.

Mrs. Smith and other employees at Travelers Aid were interviewed several times by the FBI, in Mrs. Smith’s case about 10 times. One of the things that she says has troubled her most about the investigation is that rather than simply asking her and the other witnesses what and who they saw, on several occasions the agents were very insistent on convincing the witnesses that they could not have seen a black man (Menepta) with the suspects.

Still at large: Witnesses and government documents connect Melvin Lattimore aka Majahid Abdulquaadir Menepta (left) to at least three of the largest terrorist attacks in U.S. history. Witnesses place Lattimore/Menepta and Timothy McVeigh’s friend James Rosencrans (right) next door to the Murrah Building one day before the OKC bombing — in Timothy McVeigh’s car.

At any rate, the FBI Travelers Aid interviews, recorded in written form on the FBI’s "302s," should have shown up in the documents that the government was required to turn over to the defense teams in the McVeigh and Nichols trials. They never were turned over, and now they seem to have disappeared.

It’s understandable that Nichols’ defense team would not want to open up the Oklahoma City-Middle East connection, since so much of it leads to their client. But why have federal officials gone to such extraordinary lengths to obstruct every effort to expose these connections? And why are they protecting Lattimore/Menepta? Is he a terrorist, a federal informant, an agent provocateur — or all of the above?


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy; US: Oklahoma
KEYWORDS: alqaeda; jihadinamerica; menepta; moussaoui; okc; okcbombing; okccell; okcitycell
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This article does ask some interesting questions.
1 posted on 08/30/2004 10:04:11 AM PDT by robowombat
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To: robowombat

bookmark


2 posted on 08/30/2004 10:07:06 AM PDT by stockpirate (Real issue is Kerry attended meeting where VVAW discussed killing 7 US Senators! 11/71)
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To: robowombat

The book The Third Terrorist is absolutely a must read for all Americans. James Woolsey said that when the truth is known the world will owe a debt of gratitude to Jayna Davis.


3 posted on 08/30/2004 10:09:30 AM PDT by Peach (The Clinton's pardoned more terrorists than they ever captured or killed.)
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To: Peach
There was a lady at a local ok city t.v. station that has done extensive work on this, I hope the truth eventually is brought out.
4 posted on 08/30/2004 10:20:21 AM PDT by keysguy (Trust the media as far as you can throw them)
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To: robowombat

BTTT


5 posted on 08/30/2004 10:21:56 AM PDT by freeperfromnj
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To: robowombat
If you haven't yet gotten this book, get it.

Read it.

This was not an operation done solely by McVeigh and Nichols!


6 posted on 08/30/2004 10:26:21 AM PDT by Gritty ("The Left failed to Vietnamese the WOT, but succeeded in the Vietnamization of the Election-Mk Steyn)
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To: robowombat
Interesting questions yes. Answers no.

How come McVeigh or Nichols never spilled the beans on these supposed middle east accomplices? I have a feeling this conspiracy will live on despite no concrete proof of a linkage.

7 posted on 08/30/2004 10:29:14 AM PDT by Sir_Humphrey
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To: Sir_Humphrey
How come McVeigh or Nichols never spilled the beans on these supposed middle east accomplices?

Family threats?

8 posted on 08/30/2004 10:31:53 AM PDT by bankwalker (We are having a cultural civil war and our side had better win it.)
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To: Peach

Few revelations could make me happier, than an indisputable connection of the OKC bombing with Al Qeada and/or Iraq. Even if true, we will wait a long time. The DOJ under Bush?Ashcroft have "juiced" McVeigh. There is no going back, unfortunately and officially for the government.


9 posted on 08/30/2004 10:35:18 AM PDT by elbucko (A Feral Republican)
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To: Sir_Humphrey

The links used to put Moussaoui in prison are as concrete as those showing links between Al Quaida terrorists and the OKC bombing, no more no less. If you believe one, you should believe the other.

And, like other famous incidences of terrorism that are covered up, there is a phsyical impossibility in the cover-up: No one man could mix that much ANFO in one night. If you have ever mixed a wheelbarrow load - a fraction of one 55 gallon drum - of cement with a shovel, you know why the suggestion that McVeigh mixed the whole bomb himself is impossible by an order of magnitude at least.


10 posted on 08/30/2004 10:41:01 AM PDT by eno_ (Freedom Lite, it's almost worth defending.)
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To: ovrtaxt; backhoe

PING!


11 posted on 08/30/2004 10:42:16 AM PDT by ScaniaBoy (Part of the Right Wing Research & Attack Machine)
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To: elbucko

maybe when Chelsea Clinton is running against one of Bush Daughters for president in 20 years they will bring this all out and then the media will declare - do we have to refight the war on terror (clinton's legacy) again in the 2020's?


12 posted on 08/30/2004 10:56:33 AM PDT by epluribus_2
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To: ScaniaBoy; Cooter; eyespysomething; B4Ranch; Alamo-Girl; Triple; MJY1288; potlatch; Shermy; ...
OKC-911 CONNECTION ALERT. Please let me know by freepmail if you want to be put on or taken off this list. Thanks.
13 posted on 08/30/2004 11:02:22 AM PDT by ovrtaxt (Remember: the Lord loves a workin' man, don't trust whitey, see a doctor and get rid of it.)
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To: bankwalker; Sir_Humphrey
I've always thought that the Feds threatened to go after his [McVeigh's] sister unless he kept his mouth shut.

They really hammered on her.

14 posted on 08/30/2004 11:21:53 AM PDT by happygrl
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To: eno_

But that isn't a problem for Super Terrorist and his Invisible Helpers.


15 posted on 08/30/2004 11:42:39 AM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (My Father was 10x the hero John Fraud Kerry is.)
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To: robowombat

Yet another great klinton cover-up and he said thank God this happened cause it got him re-elected.


16 posted on 08/30/2004 11:48:34 AM PDT by longfellow (You're either with US or from Hollywood! Ultimateamerican.com)
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To: robowombat

Interesting questions....like the one about Nick Berg's close encounter with an associate of moussaoui (unamed but was it Menepta?) on a bus in Oklahoma...


17 posted on 08/30/2004 12:13:02 PM PDT by wtc911 (I have half a Snickers...it was given to me by a CIA guy as we went into Cambodia)
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To: Calpernia; StillProud2BeFree; lacylu; Velveeta; Revel; SevenofNine

here is Marwan again.

ping


18 posted on 08/30/2004 12:43:51 PM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (You could do a general Google search for: nazi muslim russia connection)
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To: nw_arizona_granny

Fellow Hamburg Cell hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi also came to the Oklahoma City area, where he got a speeding ticket in 2001. According to the testimony of the owner of a small motel in Oklahoma City, Moussaoui, Atta and Al-Shehhi all came to his motel together to rent a room about six weeks prior to the 9-11 attacks. Six years earlier, Oklahoma City bombing conspirators Timothy McVeigh and Nichols also were guests at the same motel, along with several Middle Eastern men, weeks prior to the OKC bombing.



McVeigh also worked as a security guard in upstate NY. Sahim Alwan of the Lack 6 was also a security guard in upstate NY.


19 posted on 08/30/2004 1:26:39 PM PDT by Calpernia ("People never like what they don't understand")
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To: epluribus_2
the war on terror (clinton's legacy)

Goes back futher than X42.
If Carter had done the right thing on Nov 5th, 1979 the follow on crap wouldn't have happened.

20 posted on 08/30/2004 1:34:55 PM PDT by ASA Vet (Tourette's syndrome is just a $&#$*!% excuse for poor *%$#** language skills.)
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