Thanks very much for the post in reply #428.
I guarantee I will use it.
Friday, April 27, 2001 1:41 a.m. EDT
McVeigh Cites Osama Bin Laden in Letter to Fox News
A month after a former NBC News reporter went public with evidence of links between Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Middle Eastern terrorist Osama bin Laden, McVeigh himself has cited bin Laden in a letter to the Fox News Channel.
Responding to questions from FNC's Rita Cosby, McVeigh rejected some of the labels that have been applied to him, then tossed in the chilling reference to the notorious Muslim terrorist.
"Most of the insults are meritless and quite often absurd, so I don't pay them much attention," wrote McVeigh. "Hitler? Absurd. (Geraldo Rivera uses this same analogy, so Keating and Ashcroft are in good company!) Coward? This label would make Orwell proud – it is double think at its finest. Collateral Damage? As an American news junkie; a military man; and a Gulf War veteran, where do they think I learned that? (It sure as hell wasn't Osama Bin Laden!)"
In the next sentence, McVeigh mentioned convicted World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef, in perhaps another indication of a Middle Eastern connection to his own crime.
"For all else, I would refer you to my enclosed paper 'Hypocrisy,' and to Ramzi Yousef's statement to the court just prior to his sentencing. I filter all labels and insults thusly."
In the Jan. 8, 1998, court statement to which McVeigh referred, Yousef proclaimed, "Yes, I am a terrorist and proud of it as long as it is against the U.S. government," before being sentenced to 240 years in jail.
Last month former NBC reporter Jayna Davis told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly that compelling evidence links McVeigh to a Middle Eastern terrorist cell ultimately controlled by bin Laden.
"What we discovered, an intelligence source at one of the highest levels in the federal government later confirmed, was a Middle Eastern terrorist cell living and operating in the heart of Oklahoma City just a few miles from the Alfred P. Murrah building," Davis said.
Her NBC affiliate had located several witnesses who claimed that an Iraqi national with ties to Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard was seen in the company of McVeigh just prior to the bombing, Davis said. The Iraqi was also seen driving away from the bomb scene in a car identified by the FBI as a possible getaway vehicle.
"We have 24 sworn witness affidavits that tie seven to eight Arab men to various stages of the bombing plot from the beginning all the way to the day in which the plot was executed," the former NBC reporter told O'Reilly.
"It really is a foreign conspiracy masterminded and funded by Osama bin Laden, according to my intelligence sources," she asserted.
Davis is not alone in that belief.
In his 1999 book on the Oklahoma City tragedy, "Others Unknown," McVeigh's lawyer Stephen Jones made similar claims, citing a meeting in the early 1990s between World Trade Center bomber Yousef and McVeigh's partner, Terry Nichols, in the Philippines, which he called a "hotbed of fundamentalist Muslim activity."
Jones said his research shows that bin Laden was in the Philippines at the same time as Yousef and Nichols.
Both Jones and Davis said federal investigators were uninterested in exploring any possible Middle Eastern connection to the crime.
In his letter to Cosby, McVeigh said he decided to bomb Oklahoma City's Murrah Federal Building only after rejecting the idea of assassinating former attorney general Janet Reno and others associated with the federal government's 1993 assault on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas.
NewsMax.com
Tuesday, March 20, 2001 8:42 p.m. EST
FBI Ignored Evidence Linking Bin Laden to Oklahoma Bombing
The FBI refused to consider evidence showing Saudi terrorism mastermind Osama bin Laden assisted Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor" reported tonight.
Investigative journalist Jayna Davis, formerly of KFOR in Oklahoma City, told host Bill O'Reilly that she had gathered information showing that bin Laden funded the bombing conspiracy, that Nichols had terrorist ties in the Philippines, and that an Iraqi Republican Guard member accompanied McVeigh and Nichols on the day of the bombing.
When she tried to present her information, an FBI agent in Oklahoma City seemed ready to accept it - but refused after calling a superior in Denver, Davis said.
Why would the FBI refuse even to consider such evidence - or any evidence - in this top-priority case?
"Their reasons, their motivations, that's a matter for the Department of Justice and the former attorney general," Davis said.
But that former attorney general is ... Janet Reno, noted O'Reilly. So much for finding out the truth.