Posted on 12/27/2004 5:07:06 PM PST by softengine
Jayna Davis was among the first at the scene of the most brutal and bloody attack on the American homeland in the Twentieth century, the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, on April 19, 1995.
She was among the first at the scene of the most brutal and bloody attack on the American homeland in the Twentieth century, the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, on April 19, 1995. Jayna Davis’s story of what, really, happened that day has resulted in a well written, necessary, but sad book, The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing.
Sad not only because of the human suffering, and death that occurred, but sad because the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, no doubt under political pressure, chose to look away from Ms. Davis’s mountain of evidence. Their malfeasance may have directly contributed to the massacre of 9/11.
RC: How did you become directly involved in the Murrah bombing?
JD: At the time I was an investigative reporter for the NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City, KFOR-TV, and I arrived at the scene within minutes of the bombing. The effects of the blast on the lives of innocent Americans, my neighbors, stay with me to this day.
RC: You were immediately involved in the investigation?
JD: Yes, the next day my news director assigned me to cover the search for suspects and for the next two days everyone was focused on a Middle East connection. Experts immediately began to detail the similarities of the Murrah bombing with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other Middle Eastern truck bombings throughout the world. Searching for sources, I worked the newsroom phones and, eventually, got a hot tip that opened the doors to a Middle East connection to the Murrah building bombing.
RC: The government has tried, convicted, and executed Timothy McVeigh, after finding him and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, guilty of bombing the Murrah Federal building. Yet, in your book you build the case that they were only secondary characters in the plot. That they were used as “lily whites,” to gather materials, rent the truck, etc. Who, then, was responsible for the bombing?
JD: My investigation, which lasted nearly ten years, resulted in twenty-two credible eyewitness testimonies, which did not conflict with the government’s case against McVeigh and Nichols. My investigation revealed that eight men of Middle Eastern origin, most of whom had been former Iraqi soldiers who’d fought in the first Gulf War and sought political asylum in the United States, and were in fact false defectors, had all moved to Oklahoma City in the fall of 1994 and began working for a Palestinian expatriate who operated a real estate business. This Palestinian used eight known alias', had pleaded guilty to federal insurance fraud in the early 1990’s, and served time in a federal penitentiary. Also, I uncovered court records that indicated the FBI had suspected him of having connections to the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
The Palestinian expatriate hired this group of Iraqi army “defectors” six months before the bombing to work on his low-income rental properties.
On the day of the bombing several witnesses provided statements that these men, who said they had defected from the Iraqi army in fear of the Hussein regime, cheered when they heard the first radio broadcasts of the Murrah bombing. They were overheard saying they would “die for Saddam.”
RC: You identified Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini as the possible “John Doe 2;” was he one of the Iraqi army “defectors?”
JD: Yes, and he not only fit the description in the FBI arrest warrant, he closely resembled the government’s profile sketch. This suspect was seen drinking with Timothy McVeigh at an Oklahoma City nightclub before the bombing. An Oklahoma City gas station attendant identified Al-Hussaini as the man who paid one hundred dollars to fill up a Ryder truck with diesel fuel -- an ingredient used in AMFO bombs -- on April 18, 1995, the day before the Murrah bombing. Two witnesses identified him as the man who appeared to be timing his run from the Murrah building early on the morning of April 19. Also, several witnesses claimed to have seen Al-Hussaini get into the cab of a Ryder truck that smelled of diesel fuel at a nearby motel a short time before the bombing; these witnesses also said that Timothy McVeigh was driving the truck, and that it was seen headed in the direction of Oklahoma City. Al-Hussaini was positively identified as the man (John Doe 2) who was sitting beside McVeigh just north of the Murrah building at 8:30 am, getting out of the truck in front of the building, and escaping from the downtown area in a brown Chevrolet pickup that was identified by the FBI in an official teletype. Also, Al-Hussaini was identified by witnesses at a nearby motel as one of several Middle Eastern men who were seen in the company of Timothy McVeigh. An exhaustive investigation uncovered key witnesses who indicated that Al-Hussaini had no alibi for his whereabouts during the bombing.
RC: Have you uncovered additional evidence regarding this former Iraqi soldier?
JD: Yes, I spoke with a number of intelligence experts, including Colonel Patrick Lang, who was chief of human intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Colonel Lang stated that the military tattoo on Hussaini’s left arm and his immigration file indicated he may have been a member of the Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, and may have joined the elite Unit 999 of the Estikhabarat (Iraqi Military Intelligence Service). Unit 999 was based at Salmon Pak and was responsible for intelligence gathering both nationally and internationally. I also consulted with additional international intelligence experts who agreed with Colonel Lang’s assessments.
RC: What was the al-Qaeda connection to the Murrah bombing?
JD: That evidence originated with McVeigh’s defense team and indicated that Terry Nichols may have been taught how to construct bombs during his frequent trips to the Philippines. His first trip occurred in 1989 and there may have been dozens of such trips. It should be noted that on many occasions he was not accompanied by his second wife, a Filipino mail order bride, who’d been impregnated by another man.
The court records show that Nichols was at Cebu City the same time (December, 1994) as al-Qaeda warlord Ramzi Yousef. Yousef was the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Also, Edwin Angeles, the co-founder of the terrorist group, Abu Sayyaf, a Filipino separatist movement, stated that Nichols and Yousef did meet to discuss bomb making.
McVeigh’s defense team uncovered phone records that Nichols both made and received phone calls from a boarding house in Cebu City and also documented that both he and Nichols made two hundred calls from Kansas to unknown numbers in the Philippines.
RC: Yossef Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, has corroborated your witness testimony. What can you tell us of his involvement in the investigation?
JD: In 1993, Bodansky wrote that Islamic militants, under the headship of the “Armed Islamic Movement,” and supported by a partnership between Iraq and Iran would strike in the United States.
Several weeks before the Murrah bombing, on February 27, 1995 his congressional task force issued a prior warning alert indicating that they’d received credible intelligence that there would be an “Iran sponsored Islamic attack” on U.S. soil with Washington D.C., Congress, and the White House as primary targets. On March 3, a few days later, they updated the warning, now predicting that the terrorist planned to strike at “the heart of America.” This was just six weeks before the Oklahoma City bombing.
It should be noted that at no time did I or Bodansky have any knowledge that a Ryder truck filled with an AMFO bomb would be detonated in front of the Murrah Federal Building the morning of April 19, 1995.
Also, Bodansky had intelligence that the men carrying out the mission would be “lily whites” (“lily whites,” in the lexicon of the intelligence community, refers to operatives who have no criminal history and no ties to the terrorists). In a letter to me he outlined the intelligence he had collected before the Murrah bombing:
“As for the warnings:
RC: While Youssef Bodansky’s service to his country is commendable it appears the Department of Justice and the FBI have failed miserably. Why?
JD: I really don’t know. In 1997 I offered to turn over to the FBI twenty-two witness statements and reams of corroborating evidence that detailed the involvement of ex-Iraqi soldiers in the Murrah bombing. Later, FBI officials said they “did not want any more documents for discovery” that they would be required to turn over to McVeigh and Nichols’ defense lawyers. In 1999 a very courageous FBI agent, Dan Vogel, took my witness affidavits and passed them on to the legal department of the Oklahoma City field office. The affidavits were never seen again. The McVeigh and Nichols defense lawyers never got access to them, none of my witnesses were questioned by the bureau….nothing but silence.
If the DOJ and the FBI had done their jobs, examined my witness testimony, vetted al-Hussaini and his associates, it's possible they may have been able to avert the 9/11 massacre. The question is what did this terrorist cell know, or later learn, of the 9/11 operation? We do know that Al-Hussaini went to work at Boston Logan International Airport. In November 1997, four years before two planes were hijacked from that very airport on a deadly trek to incinerate the World Trade Center, the Iraqi national began suffering panic attacks about his airport job and sought psychiatric hospitalization. When his therapist asked why he was experiencing sudden and intense trepidation about working at Boston Logan, the patient replied, “If something happens there, I will be a suspect.”
I later learned that during this same time frame, Al-Hussaini was residing with two former Iraqi Gulf War veterans who provided food-catering services to the commercial airlines at the Boston airport. In the wake of the suicide hijackings of 2001, law enforcement speculated that food services workers might have planted box cutters aboard the doomed flights. Hussain Al-Hussaini’s uncanny foreknowledge of a possible event slated to take place at Boston Logan Airport, the point of origin for al-Qaeda’s murderous rampage of 2001, just grazes the surface of the disturbing nexus I have uncovered between 4-19 and 9-11.
RC: The Murrah bombing occurred during the Clinton Administration, and numerous aspects of the investigation have been severely criticized by a number of law enforcement and intelligence experts. Do you know of any reason why the Janet Reno Justice Department might have wanted to blame a rogue element of the right wing militia movement, regardless of the evidence?
JD: This is just one reporter’s opinion, but I believe the suppression of evidence centers around political cowardice. Commander-in-Chief Bill Clinton did not want to jeopardize his presidential legacy as the negotiator of Middle East peace to declare war on the foreign states (Iran, Iraq, and Syria) that sponsored an attack on American soil that resulted in 171 deaths.
RC: You submitted your twenty-two affidavits and corroborating evidence to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in 1997. They too have ignored your findings. Why would the Republicans join with the Clinton Administration in thwarting justice?
JD: Obviously, I do not expect the powers that be in Washington to re-open the Oklahoma City case for several reasons -- disturbing lessons I have learned regarding the precedence of national politics over national security. I, too, was befuddled by the Bush Administration’s apparent reluctance to seize a legitimate reason for war, but the story is much deeper, and far more complex.
No doubt the suppression of evidence involving foreign suspects occurred under the Clinton Administration; however, to unearth such a scandal for the sake of initiating an already hotly contested pre-emptive strike against Saddam, would have precipitated an unwanted political firestorm. I believe that the Justice Department’s refusal to receive and investigate my evidence could constitute obstruction of justice -- a crime, which could send high ranking officials in the Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno to jail, not to mention former members of the Clinton Administration. Such an allegation was a hot potato no one desired to handle.
Moreover, if the full story were told, the Republicans would have possibly suffered repercussions in the 2002 and 2004 elections. After all, several prominent GOP lawmakers have been quite familiar with my findings since 1996. Such prior knowledge, viewed through the lens of 9-11, and the indisputable fact that the man identified by a plethora of witnesses as John Doe 2 went on to work at Boston Logan International Airport (point of origin for two of the 9-11 suicide hijackings), constitutes a recipe for scandal and finger pointing on both sides of the political aisle. Moreover, in June 2001, former impeachment lawyer David Schippers requested to hand deliver my voluminous investigative dossier to Attorney General John Ashcroft, which contained specific information regarding Al-Hussaini’s deep trepidation about a dire event that was to occur at his place of employment at Boston Logan. Al-Hussaini suffered anxiety so acute he was forced to check into a psychiatric hospital in November of 1997 to cope with recurring panic attacks. Was his confession of sorts the “silver bullet” that National Security Advisor Condi Rice told the 9-11 Commission did not exist prior to the aerial raids of Black Tuesday?
These are just a few of the multi-faceted reasons for not digging up the past. I explore this question in greater detail in my book, The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing.
RC: Jayna, thank you for your taking the time to talk with us.
JD: You’re welcome.
there's a lot i don't understand.
why, for instance, doesn't the bush administration educate the public better?
I recall the same thing, but it seems to me that within a very short time this was buried and the hunt focused on 2 accomplices.
Another thing that struck me as odd was that McVeigh was executed relatively quickly. You had no ACLU left wing types fighting for him to be spared, no endless appeals and no anti-death penalty demonstrations. Usually these creeps are sitting on death row at taxpayers expense until their grandkids are collecting social security, not so with McVeigh. Not that I'm complaining mind you but it does make you wonder.
IMO theres a lot to this case that we're not being told and that we'll never know, but if it later comes out that McVeigh was dispatched in a hurry to somehow save Clinton's sorry excuse for a presidency it wouldn't suprise me in the least
HEY YOU, This is FR, none of that conspiracy stuff here. (and don't ask about those other two bombs either.)
I'm not?!?? *checks ID* DANG! You're right!
Dead men tell no tales...
This subject and the Cashill series, have been posted and discussed here extensively. It occurs to me that Bush is aware of our discussions on this subject but does nothing.
But since watching all of Washington allow the Sandy "I stuff my pants" Berger episode to drift away into nothingness without a hint of even indignance, then there's probably little hope that anyone Repub or Dem who will drag Janya's story out into the light.
thatta boy, null....good job.
Ok, I'll just go back to being a good little sitting duck. Quack quack..
it's time to come clean with the American public. It's not as if this were the secrets of Fatima or something...it's WAR. We are willing to place out trust in this president, and willing to send our soldiers off to danger, but we have the right to be informed of the truth about OK, Flight 800, and Sandy Berglar, etc. What are we paying those Washington lawyers big bucks for, anyway/
thanks - looks like my kind of spooky and scary stuff...will try and find it ...
It was an excellent book, wasn't it? Really surprisingly well researched and fascinating to read. I couldn't put it down and finished it in 24 hours. LOL
Mr. Peach didn't have dinner that night, as I recall.
I was on that thread with you and thanks for finding it for others to read, Doug.
you got that right.
i've wondered if someone didn't threaten mcveigh to do something to his sister or family. you'll remember his sister was partially involved.
(Once you acquiesce, its all downhill from there.)
Like Jayna says, there are people on both sides of the aisle who would be outted if this were made public. For that reason we will not see this investigated by government officials in this generation. For one thing, Republicans have always considered anything Clinton did or did not do as a hot potato. They are wusses and are afraid of the MSM who would side with the Clintonistas.
Great interview. Thanks for posting. I'll be getting the book this week.
And also, Merry Christmas and all the blessings in the New Year, Race.
I hope things are going well for you.
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