Thanks. What is with Arizona,anyway?
From an article titled “The Brother “Zacarias” & The Minnesota Terrorism Project”:
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. . .Multiple warnings about a looming domestic terrorist threat from Al Qaeda begins making the rounds in every major judicial and domestic agency. Richard Clarke, head of the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism, gave an urgent meeting thru email and memo to the leading representatives of the FBI, NSA, JTTF and elsewhere about a threat to the countries infrastructure and to be on heightened alert. On July 10, 2001…just a mere two days before Clarke’s urgent meeting, an internal FBI memo from the Phoenix field office, written by special agent Ken Williams to FBI headquarters. The memo was rather poignant:
“Advise the Bureau and New York of the possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama Bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation universities and colleges. Phoenix has observed an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest who are attending or who have attended civil aviation universities and colleges in the State of Arizona.”
Most of the information from Williams memo was based off of an informant who was closely associated with Williams over the years, Harry Ellen. Ellen, was a long time resident of Tucson, Arizona. A former businessman who converted to Islam, has “high credibility” with the Muslim populace in Arizona because of his work on behalf of the Palestinian cause. He had once even met with Palestinian Liberation Organization leader, Yasser Arafat. By 1994 however, Ellen become an official “CI-2” informant with the Arizona FBI. In 1996 Ellen warns Kenneth Williams about a very mysterious Algerian who was teaching Arab men how to fly small planes.
“My comment to Williams was that it would be pitiful if the bad guys were able to gain this kind of access to airplanes, flight training and crop dusters. I said, ‘You really ought to look at this, it’s an interesting mix of people.”
This would lead Williams to conduct surveillance on the Algerian known as Abu Sief. Sief had moved to Arizona from New Jersey. While he was living in New Jersey, Sief had been attending the Masjid Al Salaam in Jersey City, the same mosque where Omar Abdel Rahman had preached. Ellen would complain about the lack of response from the FBI about what was taking place, with many Arab students entering flight schools on Tucson. Ellen believed that the “Phoenix Memo’ should have been released back in 1997, instead of 4 and half years later. It would later come out, that future 9/11 hijacker and suspected pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 would be a student at the University of Arizona as far back as 1992. He would also be a flight student in Tucson.
Meanwhile Moussaoui would begin a short stint at a gym membership, to begin physically readying himself for his part in the operation. He would train at the Huston Huffman Physical Fitness Center. He would also receive money from a wire transfer from Germany. the funds were coming directly from a financier, who would become part of the 9/11 Plot, but couldn’t enter the U.S due to his dismissal of obtaining a U.S visa, Ramzi bin al-Shibh. al-Shibh would wire, $14,000 dollars to Moussaoui. Al Attas would begin telling other members of the mosque that “Shaqil” was very secretive and was also quite paranoid about federal agents following him, when there were none. This turned out to be untrue, the name of “Shaqil” was never mentioned before only until Gray found out later they all referred to Moussaoui by his actual name and never by any nickname.
He was also quite aggressive in conducting a jihad against the United States. Elhadje Nidaye, the imam at Mashid Al Salaam in Edmond, saw no reason to force Moussaoui out of the mosque, he just saw him as a brother who was helping the cause from Islamic prejudices. . .
Arizona’s connection to the Oklahoma City bombing
. . .Kimo McConkey, a one-time neighbor of Michael Fortier’s, remembers talking to Timothy McVeigh and Fortier in front of Fortier’s mobile home on the outskirts of Kingman. . .
Laird Hiestand retired as a special agent of the FBI in Kingman several months before Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City. He came out of retirement to help in the investigation, once it became known that McVeigh had lived and worked in Kingman. He stands inside his Kingman house in 2001. . .