Posted on 12/03/2004 12:56:37 AM PST by kattracks
Even after the presidential election, America’s media solons and disgruntled former government officials—such as Richard Clarke—continue to get fawning coverage for every pronouncement on the basic harmlessness of Saddam’s Iraq. We’re supposed to accept the idea that Saddam was just a small-time monster, too weak and incompetent to harm a far-away America.But wouldn’t it be revealing if our intelligence community actually had to answer some hard questions about Ramzi Yousef and the annihilation of TWA Flight 800—the second-greatest mass-murder in American history. The public would then hear of how Yousef worked for Saddam Hussein, and how Iraq's dictator was ultimately responsible for the murders of 230 Americans on that dark night, long before the devastation of 9/11.
On July 16, 1996, Saddam and his lackeys were gearing up for a big celebration the following day: Liberation Day, which was Iraq’s national holiday—the day the Baath Party took power exactly 35 years earlier. Saddam’s portraits around the Republic of Fear were spruced up and the anniversary date was splashed everywhere.
That same day in New York City, the terrorist Ramzi Yousef was also celebrating—in his jail cell. He had a gigantic crime unfolding. Like nearly every malignant narcissist brought to trial, Yousef insisted on representing himself. Yousef fantasized that no lawyer was as intelligent and knowledgeable about American jurisprudence as he was.
The master terrorist mused that he alone knew how to get a mistrial, and he was going to get one the next day. A mistrial would force Judge Kevin Duffy to start all over, with a new jury. That could set the U.S. attorneys back months, and indeed a delay was what Yousef needed. He still had terrorists in the New York area working under him. He had a home country ready to receive him with open arms. Anything was possible, given time.
After all, Abdul Rahman Yasin, Yousef's co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, had flown in from Iraq only a few months before the blast to prepare and mix the chemicals for the giant bomb and had flown back to Baghdad. Saddam wasn’t upset with Yasin for killing only six people in the blast and failing to topple one tower onto the other. On the contrary, the Iraqi president gave Yasin a house and a stipend outside Baghdad: the prodigal son had returned, as a CBS 60 Minutes news crew revealed when it traveled to Baghdad in 2002 to interview him. Far from washing his hands of Yasin, Saddam had even pressured Jordan to release Yasin when Jordan had briefly detained the bomb-mixer.
So Ramzi Yousef knew that he had a place to go and friends in New York. Indeed, he even said as much. In an amazing admission to his fellow inmate, Gregory Scarpa Jr., on March 5, 1996, Yousef boasted that he had “four terrorists already here in the United States.”
In 1996, Scarpa was a mafia hoodlum looking at serious prison time for multiple murders committed as a “soldier” in the Colombo crime family. He was angling for a “downward departure” under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure before he went to sentencing. Yousef was his ticket to a time cut. Ratting out the arch-terrorist to the feds was the only way he could avoid spending his life in the Big House.
Amazingly, Yousef came to trust Scarpa, as journalist Peter Lance revealed in his recent book, Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding About the War on Terror. Yousef wrongly figured that Scarpa, as a Mafioso, hated America’s government and society as much as he did. In a series of FBI “302” memos obtained by Lance and published in Cover Up, Scarpa’s FBI handler recorded an astounding series of admissions by the terror mastermind about his plans and his backing.
According to the March 5, 1996, FBI memo, “Yousef told Scarpa that if he wanted, Scarpa’s family could be sent to an unknown country, and people there would take care of his family, treat him like royalty with the red carpet treatment. … Yousef implied that another government was involved/assisting Yousef. Yousef told Scarpa that if he went to this country no one could touch him.”
What country was aiding Yousef’s four terrorists and was willing to put him and Scarpa up in style? The same country that harbored Yousef’s bomb-mixer Yasin and Abu Nidal and his gang, that gave a house to Abu Abbas of Achille Lauro infamy, that trained foreign terrorists on Boeing airliners at Salman Pak and gave rivers of money to al-Qaeda and its affiliates: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Yousef got to make a lot of calls from jail, even to his terrorist “uncle” Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), future chief operating officer of al-Qaeda. FBI Special Agent in charge, James Kallstrom, was initially happy about Yousef’s calls because his men would be able to listen in. He brought in Arabic translators for the listening sessions.
The problem was, Yousef chose to talk in the Baluch language to “uncle” KSM and others, as Peter Lance revealed, so Kallstrom came up empty. KSM was keeping Yousef’s spirits up, possibly talking about springing him, despite the high security of Yousef’s current detention, and if that didn’t work, a trade could be arranged. Terrorists had been traded before, even by "the Great Satan." The American president, Bill Clinton, was coasting to re-election in the fall. The Republicans had nominated the old-time insider Bob Dole to run against him, and Dick Morris’ focus groups were looking positive on the head-to-head lineups. The U.S. military barracks at the Khobar Towers had just been destroyed by terrorists, but the media weren’t up in arms insisting on a messy military response against, say, Iran. Tough talk about “bringing those responsible to justice” would probably suffice.
Awaiting trial in his New York cell, Yousef had plenty of time to reflect on the previous four years. What a run it had been since he left Saddam International Airport in September, 1992, proudly carrying a printed business card that read “International Terrorist.” Flying into JFK airport with fellow terrorist Ahmad Ajaj, Yousef was stopped at the immigration desk. But Ajaj was the sacrificial lamb that day: he became irate when questioned by INS agents, who searched his bags and found fake passports, bomb recipes, six bomb-making manuals, and how-to videotapes on advanced weaponry. He shouted that he was from “Sweden” of all places.
Yousef, on the other hand, had been calm and collected. Although his papers were not in order, the INS supervisor quickly waved him through, no doubt distracted by the scene Ajaj was making. Yousef, as planned, immediately dived into the New York/New Jersey world of Islamic extremism, hanging out with the murderer of Rabbi Meier Kahane and plotting with the “Blind Sheik,” Omar Abdul al-Rahman. The sheik and his followers, according to the FBI agents who had the mosque under surveillance, always called Yousef “Rashid the Iraqi.” (Yousef’s fellow traveler, Ahmad Ajaj, was arrested and charged with a visa violation, not with being a terrorist. He served six months in jail and was released. Incredibly, Judge Reena Raggi ordered the feds to return Ajaj’s bomb recipes to him.)
After Yousef’s team detonated the World Trade Center bomb in February 1993, the “Mozart of Terror,” as author Lance dubbed him, flew to Pakistan to see uncle KSM, another Baluch ethnic who was already planning “Operation Bojinka.” (Bojinka was an insanely ambitious plan to blow up 11 commercial airliners simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean, kill the pope and poison President Clinton in a cloud of chlorine gas. It was foiled in 1995 during the last stages of planning by a chance kitchen fire in a dingy Manila apartment.)
But back in 1993, while the North Tower of the Trade Center was still smoking, Yousef’s co-conspirator Ahmad Yasin “boogies to Baghdad,” in the immortal words of Clinton’s terror czar Richard Clarke. Co-conspirator Mohammed Salameh, age 26, was hoping to make it back to Saddam’s tender mercies as well, but was arrested as he showed up at the rental car office to collect his deposit on the van he rented to blow up with the bomb.
For his part, Salameh’s phone records reveal him to have been the messenger to Saddam. At his trial much later, it emerged that Salameh had been calling Iraq one or two times a day between June 10 and July 9, running up enormous cell phone charges that he was unable to pay. Salameh was Palestinian; it isn’t as if he had a sick Iraqi mother to console long-distance. But his uncle, Kadri Abu Bakr, had worked in Baghdad since 1986 for a Palestinian terrorist unit funded by Saddam.
So Yousef, aka Rashid the Iraqi, joined his uncle KSM to work up the Bojinka plan, with assistance from Osama bin Laden’s organization. Far from being devout Muslims, Yousef and KSM enjoyed the high life in Manila. They went to karaoke bars and strip clubs, dated dancers, and stayed in four-star hotels. They had plenty of cash: KSM took scuba diving lessons and once rented a helicopter just to fly it past the window of a girlfriend’s office in an attempt to impress her, as the L.A. Times reported in June 2002.
In 1995, it was time for a “wet test” of Bojinka. Yousef needed to be sure his bombs would work correctly, so he tested one on an actual airliner filled with people. He planted a tiny Casio-watch-timed bomb with Nitro “gun cotton” chemical on a Philippine Airlines flight to Japan. As Peter Lance reports, Yousef’s bomb, unlike the Semtex bomb that brought down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was really only a trigger that was supposed to ignite the center wing tank of the Boeing, sending the plane down in flames.
Yousef put the Casio trigger too far away from the tank, however. The timer went off, killing a man and blowing a hole in the plane, but the Filipino captain heroically maneuvered to keep the jetliner stable enough to land safely. Watching the news of the crash-landing on CNN in a bar that day, Yousef figured he’d get it right the next time. He and KSM were now fixated on airliners.
But as Operation Bojinka was exposed by an observant Manila police officer responding to Yousef’s accidental kitchen fire, Yousef was arrested, while his uncle got away and wasn’t captured until March 2003.
So, as Yousef awaited trial in 1996, Bojinka’s failure was stinging Yousef’s ego. Talking to Gregory Scarpa in his cellblock at exercise time, Yousef was obsessing about airliners and blowing them up. He was calling KSM from jail and his uncle was working the problem. Yousef’s other cellmate, Abdul Hakin Murad, told Gregory Scarpa that KSM’s people were going to blow up a U.S. airliner, but that “Ramzi’s waiting to hear if Bojinka (Yousef’s new code name for Osama bin Laden) got the message.” Thirty-four days before the destruction of TWA Flight 800, Osama still needed to approve the attack first.
Eleven days later, Yousef had presumably been told by KSM that Osama had blessed the operation. Yousef was also feeling better about how his trial was going, and so wanted to hold the bombing in reserve. The latest FBI 302 memo had Scarpa reporting that Yousef “was not going to perform the operation for now because the trial is going well.”
But, as Peter Lance wrote, “three days after that, the mercurial Yousef told Scarpa that he thought the government want[ed] to sabotage his case.” Yousef told the court that he was going to have Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Garcia killed because he thought that Garcia had smirked at him, and Judge Kevin Duffy wasn’t amused. To make matters worse, Judge Duffy was looking as if he was going to let in the written confession of Abdul Murad, which talked about Yousef’s involvement in Operation Bojinka.
It was time to pull the trigger on America and Yousef, “Rashid the Iraqi,” was going to celebrate Saddam’s Liberation Day with a bang—and hopefully get his mistrial.
Saddam was celebrating too: as Dr. Laurie Mylroie recounted, this was the day that he gave “the most angry, vengeful speech of his entire life” against America, the Great Satan—no mean feat for the Great Uncle of terror.
At the time, Uncle KSM, in Doha, Qatar, was prepping the terrorist channels for the event. At noon Washington time on July 17, 1996, a fax came through at the London office of Al-Hayah, the most prestigious Arabic language newspaper. Purporting to be from the “Islamic Change Movement of Jihad,” which Dr. Laurie Mylroie describes as likely a “name given by Iraqi intelligence to threaten or claim credit for bombings,” it said:
“The mujahideen will give their harshest reply to the threats of the foolish U.S. President [Bill Clinton was again threatening Iraq over its noncompliance with UNSCOM]. Everybody will be surprised by the magnitude of the reply, the date and time of which will be determined by the mujahideen. The invaders must be prepared to leave [the Arabian peninsula], either dead or alive. Their time is at the morning-dawn. Is not the morning-dawn near?”
As the sun dawned on the Arabian peninsula, it was setting off New York harbor. At 8:31 p.m., more than 270 eyewitnesses saw streaks of light shooting toward TWA Flight 800. After a ghastly series of explosions, 230 innocent Americans careened into the Atlantic in a death plunge.
The next day, as terror expert Yousef Bodansky related, the Islamic Change Movement bragged in Beirut that it had “carried out [its] promise with the plane attack of yesterday.” In Qatar, KSM was delighted.
Yousef showed up in court with his standby counsel and asked Judge Duffy for a mistrial, citing the “unfortunate confluence of circumstances” in the downing of the jetliner and its similarity to the Bojinka charges. Judge Duffy, a tough Irishman, was in no mood to do Yousef any favors. He polled the jury, first saying: “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Last night near Moriches Inlet out in Long Island, an airplane blew up. TWA Flight 800. … All we know is that there was an explosion and the airplane went down. It’s a tragedy, there is no two ways about it, but that had nothing to do with this case.” Motion denied.
Enormous credit has to be given to Jack Cashill, co-author of First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America, for his dogged detective work in uncovering the Clinton White House’s outrageous corruption of the official investigation that followed.
As everyone knows, the official government position to this day is that the center wing tank of the jumbo jet mysteriously self-ignited shortly after takeoff, without any human cause. But in addition to all the hard physical evidence of a terrorist bomb or missile strike recounted in his book, including Yousef’s favorite explosive residues, RDX, PETN and Nitro on multiple seat cushions pulled from the ocean floor, Cashill’s later comment about the attack occurring on Iraq’s Liberation Day is shattering in its impact: “Were Mecca to be bombed on the 4th of July, the disinterested observer would logically conclude that either the USA was responsible or that some provocateur did it to implicate the US.”
As Dr. Laurie Mylroie first established, Ramzi Yousef was Saddam’s man. Yousef, with the assistance of his New York cell, KSM and Osama bin Laden abroad, and indeed Saddam himself, wanted to salvage something from the foiled Bojinka plot. They conceived to destroy a U.S. airliner from New York to get Yousef a mistrial and time to get sprung, acquitted or traded back to Iraq. To celebrate the Great Uncle of terror finance, Saddam Hussein, they set the day for July 17, 1996: Iraq’s 35th Liberation Day.
As Mylroie described in her book A Study in Revenge, Yousef was Saddam’s man; he was was not Kuwaiti; he was Baluch, from a wild area next to Iraq, where Saddam used to mine people for his wet work. We do the victims’ families no justice by telling them their loved ones died in terror because of a mysterious self-igniting fuel tank. And we ignore the fact that Saddam was part of engineering a 9/11 trial run, terrorizing the American skies in order to achieve one diabolical objective, brutal and unwarranted mass-murder. Christopher S. Carson, formerly of the American Enterprise Institute, is an attorney in private practice in Milwaukee.
I just got Jayna Davis' "Third Terrorist" at the library. A very quick skim shows several eyewitness accounts of McVeigh being seen with mid-Eastern types in the days and weeks before the bombing. The eyewitnesses were almost actively dismissed by the FBI.
Laurie Mylroie has written extensively about Ramsi Yousef's false identities and connections with Saddam.
Davis' and Mylroie's books have been recommended by James Woolsey, who was briefly CIA Director under Clinton (and who was rarely able to get a meeting with the POTUS).
I pray someday the truth comes out and Clinton will have another, among many untold stories told, for history to be able to judge this selfish trader.
I live on LI and know of a witness from a close friend. There's no way he imagined or misunderstood what he saw. It always amazes me, when I know it shouldn't, what they got away with during the Clinton Admin.
Compare the sketch of John Doe #2 who was seen with McVeigh, and a picture of the Hispanic "dirty-bomber" who was arrested in Chicago. They look very, very similar to me, and this guy was connected to al qaeda and iraq.
I would love for all of this information to come to light. I lost a high school classmate on that flight... his name was Patrick Bell. Many in this country don't realize the threat we now face on a daily basis.
That said, a Stinger could not have done it, period.
Second, there is a big difference between a bomb and a missile, and there is no evidence whatsoever of bomb-type damage. They reconstructed 90+% of the airplane, and what they reconstructed is simply too much for a bomb, especially in the sections in question.
Third, the "red residue" is not evidence of an explosive missile. It is consistent with seat glues and other superheated fabric residues----BUT say for a moment it WAS somehow related to the exhaust of a rocket motor, the only thing you could possibly have was a "pass through" missile or a "kinetic-kill" missile---not an explosive missile. This is a crucial distinction that the Cashills and Sanders types obscure.
No terrorist, EVER, has EVER used a "pass through" device as an anti-aircraft weapon: it would not occur to them it they were trying to blow up a plane, because aircraft can survive and even land with holes in them, even fairly large holes. The only way to ensure destruction is through an explosive device.
AQ was working on bombs. Get it? BOMBS, not missiles. There is no record in Lance's book, or Minitier's research, or Posner's research on AQ of them EVER, and I repeat, EVER obtaining a super-high-cost and high-technology "signature-seeking" (note, not HEAT SEAKING because it didn't go for the engines) missile. If you follow what type of weapon "could have" done this, you must rule out terrorists.
That leaves only an accidental/deliberate Navy launch. As DeMille concludes in his (fiction) book, it is simply impossible to keep hundreds, even thousands, of Navy personnel quiet on such an issue if such an accident occurred, and even more so if it was deliberate.
I highly recommend DeMille's book for the thought processes he goes through. He has done his research, even though it's "fiction."
Finally, the "streak of light" could not possibly have been a "particle beam" weapon (which DeMille SEEMS to be leaning to, even though . . . well, I won't give away the plot) because according to some witnesses it "maneuvered." So we are back to a very specific "pass-through" kinetic-energy missile that was NOT heat seeking, which AQ had no record of ever obtaining; which AQ had no history of ever using; which did NOT fit the AQ profile in ANY of their other operations; and which in NO WAY would have provided the warm up for the Bojinka or 9/11 plots.
We have 200+ eyewitnesses. What did they see? Something. I grant you, they weren't all wrong. I doubt it was falling debris. But the reconstructed aircraft doesn't lie: it rules out a bomb; it rules out a Stinger; it rules out any heat-seeker; it rules out any explosive missile. This is a classic case of the forensic evidence being directly contradictory to the eyewitness "evidence."
I take exception with this line. While the murder of 230 people is not insignificant by any means I would contend that the downing of flight 587 over Queens NY which killed 265 people takes second place in this tragic category.
Some are having a love affair with Bill Cosby. He is a democrat. He needs to examine the role of his party. Enough said.
How can he be so passionate about his issues, yet support the party that is responsible. Think about it Bill, you need to expose the failure of the education and wefare system. If he really does care, he should be supporting the voucher system. But he can't do that, after all, it is a Republican idea. I applaud the fact that he is speaking out. Yet, most of his listeners support the very party that should be held responsible.
After an election season of Michael Moore movie hype and its Bush family and Haliburton conspiracies, it is clear that the left has its share of conspiracy tinfoil theorists. But, I believe the Clinton material is far more compelling.
TWA Flt. 800 is one several events from the Clinton years that have never been adequately explained. Vince Foster's death, Ron Brown's, the OKC bombing are several others. There are many here who believe the official explanations for all of those incidents, but I'm not one of them. And as far as Flt 800 is concerned, random chance isn't what caused the crash.
"NightFall" by Nelson Demille was just released in November.
It is based on the TWA 800 crash.
With this book, DeMille may be able to bring July 17,1996 back into play.
Yours was a great post on DeMille's book !
Damn, this article pisses me off.
I worked with someone who was on the investigation and he swears that it was terrorism. But he believes that it was not something they wanted to get out because they were scared it would cause people to quit flying and thus impact the financial sector of the airlines.
I don't recall this sort of info coming out on FrontPageMag before. Usually WorldNetDaily (no disrespect intended) is the source, so I'll give this a bttt.
Ping
I agree and klintoon used his hatred for white americans who disagreed with his radical liberal mindset as scapegoats.(White Militia Groups) McVeigh and Nichol's were involved, but Reno, Freeh and the other klowns kept their code of silence for the klintoon pukes. Justice and truth were obstructed to wag the dog and keep a (POS) in the whitehouse. This was a terrorist victory aided and abetted by klintoon and krew.
>>So much shoddy journalism from the MSM back in the day is reason number one why these conspiracies can live on.
Worth saying again bump.
Let's say I concede to the fact that since AQ had never, ever obtained or used a signature seeking missile, they did not procure their first one for the downing of TWA800. Do you have any idea what Saddam's track record was with respect to this type of missile? I wonder who does have an inventory of signature seekers - could be an entity involved in the Oil for Food fiasco.
Great Point Ginifer. I knew this gentleman who had the same conclusion. Unfortunately the FBI and others in the klintoon(damage control machine) "CBA'd" Covered bill's ass on this terrorist attack. It is very sad to see a potus/federal agencies operating in such a un-american and clandestine manner. Your source was quite accurate in their summation as to terrorism in play.
bump
Not so incredible considering:
Freedom of the Press
Property Rights
The Rule of Law
I'll bet Marc Rich could connect some of the dots.
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