SADDAM'S FINGERPRINTS ON 1993 N.Y. BOMBINGS
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMB - Who Is Ramzi Yousef? And Why It Matters 
The Oklahoma City Bombing - Glenn and Kathy Wilburn - Links
Frank Keating - Crimes Committed By FBI Officials and Agents During National Security Operations
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"When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers. I believe in killing people who try to hurt you."
BILL CLINTON - George Stephanopoulos book All Too Human.
"I’d like to kill all of these sons of bitches and just be done with it!"
BILL CLINTON - White House staff meeting during impeachment.
"Write down the name of that motherfuc*er. When I’m back in office, he’s a dead man."
BILL CLINTON - Arkansas second campaign for governor to a campaign aide.
"I can do any Godda*ned thing I want. I’m President of the United States. I take care of my friends and I fu*k with my enemies. That’s the way it is. Anybody who doesn’t like it can take a hike."
BILL CLINTON - White House staff meeting regarding the IRS going after Kenneth Starr.
Source
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
The tapes offer a rare glimpse into the sensitive relationship between the confidential informer and the law-enforcement officals with whom he worked. They also reveal for the first time how Federal and police agents instructed him to "pump up" a suspect for information and negotiate a $1 million fee from the Government for his services. Scattered through the hundreds of pages of transcripts are many instances in which the Government agents appear to encourage Mr. Salem to lead the suspects to incriminate themselves. Defense lawyers have long contended that the Government crossed a legal line, instructing Mr. Salem in a fishing expedition that became entrapment. Although the bulk of the transcripts does not appear to show the agents steering Mr. Salem toward improper or illegal conduct, whether they did so finally will be resolved in court. Many New Details Among the details included in the transcripts are the following: *A reference by Mr. Salem to 12 possible bombs and hitherto unmentioned targets, including Grand Central Terminal, the Empire State Building and Times Square. *A New York City police detective working with the F.B.I. told Mr. Salem, who was getting $500 a week from the Government, that if he wanted a $1 million informer's fee, he should press for $1.5 million and then negotiate. *An unusual suggestion that some of the money sought by Mr. Salem was going to be put up by private individuals. *A reference from Mr. Salem, in a conversation with an F.B.I. agent, to an argument between F.B.I. officials over whether Mr. Salem should remain an unidentified informer or surface as a witness to testify at trial. *A major defendant in the World Trade Center trial was tipped off by a neighbor to an elaborate F.B.I. ruse to search the Brooklyn apartment of another suspect, Mahmud Abouhalima, and replace explosives in his apartment with false explosives supplied by the F.B.I. *Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a defendant in the second bombing case, was using a fax machine to command anti-Communist Muslim rebels, moving forces from Pakistan to Afghanistan and dealing with a code-named agent from Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, Mr. Salem told the F.B.I. The transcripts cover Mr. Salem's dealings with the suspects and his work for the Government over a period of at least two years, going back to the trial in the killing of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Mr. Salem recorded the conversations with Government agents on his own, without the knowledge or consent of his contacts in the F.B.I., apparently to use as an insurance policy to hold the Government to its promises of money and protection. Some of the most striking passages in the transcripts show Mr. Salem agonizing over what he suggests was the failure of the F.B.I., despite his information, to halt the Feb. 26 bombing of the trade center, in which six people were killed. Although Mr. Salem is not a witness in that case, he was working with the Government at that time. "They told me that 'we want to set this,' " Mr. Salem said, referring to the bomb in a conversation on April 1 with John Anticev, one of the F.B.I. agents he reported to, and sometimes complained to others about. " 'What's the right place to put this?' " Then he added, still speaking to the agent: "You were informed. Everything is ready. The day and the time. Boom. Lock them up and that's that. That's why I feel so bad." Federal officials have acknowledged in the past that they dropped Mr. Salem as an informer sometime before the trade center bombing over what they said was his reluctance to wear a body recorder, as well as other disagreements. They said he never provided detailed information of the attack in advance but that they began using his services again after the bombing and credited him with foiling the related but separate plot to bomb the United Nations, Holland and Lincoln tunnels and the Federal building housing the F.B.I. in Manhattan. The case is expected to come to trial next year, perhaps shortly after the end of the related trial of four men charged with bombing the World Trade Center. As the most important witness, Mr. Salem is expected to be called upon to verify tapes he made of conversations with suspects and testify on his dealings with them. |
In several instances, the transcripts show Mr. Salem lecturing Federal agents on how to do their jobs, criticizing their surveillance and interview techniques. In one instance, he suggests that they tell a possible source that his phone was tapped, when in fact it was not, and that they confront the man and push him hard for information. "Don't give him a chance to think," Mr. Salem is quoted as saying. "If he will think it's, 'I want my lawyer.' Then bingo, you are gone." Aid for Defense? By creating the so-called bootleg tapes, Mr. Salem has given ammunition to defense lawyers who argue that he entrapped the 15 defendants charged with conspiring to bomb New York City landmarks. In one instance that shows how Mr. Salem was prompted by Federal agents, Mr. Anticev is quoted as saying, "You know, pump, maybe kind of pump him up a little bit." The agent tells Mr. Salem to stress "the loyalty to his cousin." The target in that instance, Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny, is a cousin of the man who was charged with shooting Mr. Kahane and now a defendant in a plot to bomb New York City targets. In another instance, Mr. Anticev is quoted as instructing Mr. Salem to press to learn whether Mr. Elgabrowny or his associates were hiding explosives. He is quoted as telling Mr. Salem not to worry about being exposed as the source of the information. "We'll just know where stuff exists and where it is," Mr. Anticev is quoted as saying. "And then we'll make our move." "There's no danger, you know," he says later. "We can be sneaky and take our time." Mr. Salem has dropped from sight since the June arrests, and an effort to get in touch with him through the witness protection program of the Federal Marshals Service was rejected. But a member of the defense team said he was spotted within the last month in Manhattan. Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian Army officer and confidant of the radical Egyptian cleric, Mr. Abdel Rahman, surfaced as the Government's mole after a June 24 F.B.I. raid on a Queens garage that the Government said smashed an extremist Muslim plot to blow up the United Nations, Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the Manhattan Federal building housing the F.B.I., and to assassinate Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato and State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, among other targets. The unauthorized tapes came to light immediately after the raid as Mr. Salem hurriedly evacuated his West Side Manhattan apartment and was quickly identified by associates of the sheik and by law-enforcement authorities as the "confidential informant" who had secretly gathered evidence, including many tape-recorded conversations, against those later charged as conspirators in the case. Tapes Left Behind In the belongings Mr. Salem left behind either carelessly or by design were cassettes of the tapes he had secretly recorded with the F.B.I. Because these could shed light on the prosecution's evidence-gathering methods to the point of possible entrapment, defense lawyers convinced Judge Mukasey that they should gain access to this material as well as to Mr. Salem's authorized recordings, turned over earlier. Even before he came in from the cold of his undercover role in June, the burly, bearded Mr. Salem was an enigmatic figure, a private investigator who supported himself as a jewelry designer, a security guard for the sheik who freely gave interviews to news reporters. Officials in Cairo say he entered the Egyptian Army as a private and during an 18-year career fought in the 1973 war with Israel and was "pensioned out" as a senior officer while continuing a relationship with Egyptian military intelligence. His American wife, from whom he was divorced this year but to whom he is still close, told New York Newsday last week that he had recently sent a set of the bootleg tapes home to Egyptian authorities with a visiting relative. In the United States for about six years, he lived most recently in a fifth-floor suite at the Bretton Hall residence hotel at 2350 Broadway. A news reporter invited to interview him there shortly after the World Trade Center bombing found herself on camera as Mr. Salem insisted videotaping the encounter. He showed her photographs of what he said was his sandbagged bunker in the 1973 war, the reviewing stand where former President Anwar el-Sadat was assassinated in 1981 and his grave site. He also showed pictures of people who had apparently been tortured: a woman with cigarette burns and a man confined in a cage. He said that he prayed at the Abu Bakr mosque in Brooklyn and the al-Salaam mosque in Jersey City, where Sheik Omar often preached, and that he had known the cleric from Egypt. He said he was attracted by Mr. Rahman's aura of power and fearlessness. Remembered as Benefactor Associates in Jersey City said they remembered Mr. Salem as a generous benefactor of the mosques and of the sheik himself. He also collected money for the defense of El Sayyid A. Nosair, an Egyptian contractor charged in the 1990 assassination of the militant Jewish leader, Rabbi Meir Kahane. Mr. Nosair was acquitted of that killing but convicted of related assault and weapons charges. He is also one of the 15 defendants in the bombing conspiracy case. Mr. Salem also had dealings with Mr.. Elgabrowny, a relative of Mr. Nosair for whom Mr. Salem said he helped obtain a pistol permit from the New York City Police Department. Associates and lawyers of some of the defendants said that Mr. Salem appeared rather abruptly on the scene around the time of the Kahane killing and that they now suspect he was sent to infiltrate the circle around Mr. Nosair. |
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City's tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars. Four men are now on trial in Manhattan Federal Court in that attack. Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian army officer, was used by the Government to penetrate a circle of Muslim extremists now charged in two bombing cases: the World Trade Center attack and a foiled plot to destroy the United Nations, the Hudson River tunnels and other New York City landmarks. He is the crucial witness in the second bombing case, but his work for the Government was erratic, and for months before the trade center blast, he was feuding with the F.B.I. Supervisor 'Messed It Up' After the bombing, he resumed his undercover work. In an undated transcript of a conversation from that period, Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier with an agent about an unnamed F.B.I. supervisor who, he said, "came and messed it up." "He requested to meet me in the hotel," Mr. Salem says of the supervisor. "He requested to make me to testify and if he didn't push for that, we'll be going building the bomb with a phony powder and grabbing the people who was involved in it. But since you, we didn't do that." The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. headquarters in Washington about the bureau's failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent identified as John Anticev. "He said, I don't think that the New York people would like the things out of the New York office to go to Washington, D.C.," Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had told him. Another agent, identified as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute Mr. Salem's account, but rather, appears to agree with it, saying of the New York people: "Well, of course not, because they don't want to get their butts chewed." Mary Jo White, who, as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York is prosecuting defendants in two related bombing cases, declined yesterday to comment on the Salem allegations or any other aspect of the cases. An investigator close to the case who refused to be identified further said, "We wish he would have saved the world," but called Mr. Salem's claims "figments of his imagination." The transcripts, which are stamped "draft" and compiled from 70 tapes recorded secretly during the last two years by Mr. Salem, were turned over to defense lawyers in the second bombing case by the Government on Tuesday under a judge's order barring lawyers from disseminating them. A large portion of the material was made available to The New York Times. In a letter to Federal Judge Michael B. Mukasey, Andrew C. McCarthy, an assistant United States attorney, said that he had learned of the tapes while debriefing Mr. Salem and that the informer had then voluntarily turned them over. Other Salem tapes and transcripts were being withheld pending Government review, of "security and other issues," Mr. McCarthy said. William M. Kunstler, a defense lawyer in the case, accused the Government this week of improper delay in handing over all the material. The transcripts he had seen, he said, "were filled with all sorts of Government misconduct." But citing the judge's order, he said he could not provide any details. |
The transcripts do not make clear the extent to which Federal authorities knew that there was a plan to bomb the World Trade Center, merely that they knew that a bombing of some sort was being discussed. But Mr. Salem's evident anguish at not being able to thwart the trade center blast is a recurrent theme in the transcripts. In one of the first numbered tapes, Mr. Salem is quoted as telling agent Floyd: "Since the bomb went off I feel terrible. I feel bad. I feel here is people who don't listen." Ms. Floyd seems to commiserate, saying, "hey, I mean it wasn't like you didn't try and I didn't try." In an apparent reference to Mr. Salem's complaints about the supervisor, Agent Floyd adds, "You can't force people to do the right thing." The investigator involved in the case who would not be quoted by name said that Mr. Salem may have been led to believe by the agents that they were blameless for any mistakes. It was a classic agent's tactic, he said, to "blame the boss for all that's bad and take credit for all the good things." In another point in the transcripts, Mr. Salem recounts a conversation he said he had with Mr. Anticev, saying, "I said, 'Guys, now you saw this bomb went off and you both know that we could avoid that.' " At another point, Mr. Salem says, "You get paid, guys, to prevent problems like this from happening." Mr. Salem talks of the plan to substitute harmless powder for explosives during another conversation with agent Floyd. In that conversation, he recalls a previous discussion with Mr. Anticev. "Do you deny," Mr. Salem says he told the other agent, "your supervisor is the main reason of bombing the World Trade Center?" Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev did not deny it. "We was handling the case perfectly well until the supervisor came and messed it up, upside down." The transcripts reflect an effort to keep Mr. Salem as an intelligence asset who would not have to go public or testify. A police detective working with the F.B.I., Louis Napoli, assures Mr. Salem in one conversation, "We can give you total immunity towards prosecution, towards, ah, ah, testifying." But he adds: "I still have to tell you that if you're the only game in town in regards to the information," then, he says, "you'll have to testify." Studied for Signs of Illegality The transcripts are being closely studied by lawyers looking for signs that Mr. Salem and the law enforcement officials, in their zeal to gather evidence, may have crossed the legal line into entrapment, a charge that defense counsel have already raised. But the transcripts show that the officials were concerned that by associating with bombing defendants awaiting trial in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Mr. Salem might have been accused of spying on the defense. In an undated conversation, Mr. Anticev tries to explain the perils. "We're not allowed to have any information regarding that," he tells Mr. Salem. "That could jeopardize, you know, if you go see a lawyer, ah, you know, with the defendant's friend or whatever like that, and you're talking about things we're not suppose to, ah, condone that. We're not supposed to make people do that for us. That's like sacred ground. You can't be privileged, ah, you can't know what's being talked about at all." Mr. Salem seems to bridle. "I, I, I don't think that's right," he says. The agent insists: "Yeah, but that's just a guideline. If that ever happened, ah, you can back and reported on the meeting between, ah, you know, Kunstler and Mohammad A. Elgabrown. Forget about it. I mean a lot of people ah the case can get thrown out. You understand?" The references were to the defense lawyer, Mr. Kunstler, and his client in the second bomb case, Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny. Mr. Salem seems to reluctantly agree. "They want you to have a hand in it," Mr. Anticev goes on, "but they're afraid that when you get that kind of, ah, too deep, like me, it's almost like, especially with all this legal stuff going on right now." If it were just intelligence gathering, the agent says, "You can do anything you want. You could go crazy over there and have a good time. Do you know what I mean?" The agent goes on: "But now that everything is going to court and there is legal stuff and it's just, it's just too hard. It's just too tricky, if, this, you know. And then there's the fact if you come by with the big information, he did this, ah, let me talk about this with the other people again." "O.K.," Mr. Salem says. "All right. O.K." CORRECTION-DATE: October 29, 1993, Friday CORRECTION: An article yesterday about accounts of a plot to build a bomb that was eventually exploded at the World Trade Center referred imprecisely in some copies to what Federal officials knew about the plan before the blast. Transcripts of tapes made secretly by an informant, Emad A. Salem, quote him as saying he warned the Government that a bomb was being built. But the transcripts do not make clear the extent to which the Federal authorities knew that the target was the World Trade Center. |
GSA Warned of Bomb Threats To Murrah Building Day Care Center?
McVeigh Attorneys Say Government Still Witholding Evidence (Prior Govt' Knowledge & Co-Conspirators)
OKC investigating committee concludes U.S. 'had prior knowledge of the bombing'
'We knew this was going to happen' (World Net Daily)
Is This Evidence of a Practice Run for the OKC Bombing
ATF EXPERIMENTING WITH TRUCK BOMBS IN 1994!
Bomb squad seen before blast - Federal judge said many were warned of danger
OKC BOMBING FALLOUT Feds canceled pre-blast raid (Committee head: If government had acted)
Plans to raid conspirators dropped: ATF, FBI both had informants inside white-supremacist compound
Firm Ran Security at OK Bomb Site - Part 6
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- Firm Ran Security at OK Bomb Site - Part 6
-
Crime/Corruption Front Page News Keywords: OKC BOMBING, SECURITY FIRM FOR MURRAH BLDG
Source: Associated Press, CNN, various
Published: April 1995 Author: wire services
Posted on 08/08/2001 14:41:31 PDT by Wallaby
Executive Summary:
In the preceding five threads of "Firm Ran Security At OK Bomb Site" we learned:
- A private security services company named "Teg" was responsible for security at the Murrah Building prior to the bombing of said building.
- Security at the Murrah Building was, for all practical purposes, non-existent.
- "Teg" promptly disappeared as an entity, if it indeed ever existed, after the OKC bombing.
- A private security services company named "Akal" appears to have been in control of "Teg," even sharing a home office address in New Mexico at the time of the OKC bombing.
- Akal, a company politically connected to the democrats via one attorney and Clinton fundraiser named Earl Potter, and having never been required to answer for its failings in OKC, is still in the private security services business and raking in some of the biggest security services contracts that the US dept. of Justice has to offer - to the point that duties previously performed by the US Marshall Service are privatized and in Akal's hands.
(summary points 1-5 are from a reply written by Harrison Bergeron here
We also learned that both Akal and Teg were run by the same Sikh community of Espanola, New Mexico, near Santa Fe.
On at least one of the five threads, mention was made of the possibility of a connection to "Middle Eastern" suspects we heard spoken of in the days just after the bombing. A little more digging in the news articles appearing right after the blast turned up some rather interesting details that may be of interest. (The articles are reprinted below.)
- CNN and Associated Press reported the arrest of a suspect in the bombing, Assad R. Siddiqy, a cabdriver from New York, in Oklahoma City. His brother was arrested in Dallas, along with Mohammed Chafi.
- FBI special agent Weldon Kennedy denied the report.
- Scripps Howard reported that the men were seeking documents for an emergency return to their Middle Eastern homeland.
- According to the San Francisco Examiner, Asad's brother, Anis, said that the documents were needed because of a family matter and that he refused to be more specific about his Mideast homeland.
- According to the Examiner, the two men in Dallas (Anis Siddiqy and Chafi) had items that a sniffing dog indicated may have been exposed to chemicals used in explosives.
- The Examiner also reported that the two men who were arrested in Dallas were picked up soon after they had asked an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer for directions.
- Chicago Sun-Times: "CNN said the three men suspects had stopped to ask an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer for directions Wednesday, and the officer was suspicious enough to write down their car's license plate number. The license number was registered to a rental car -- a car other than what the men were driving, the network said. "
- Atlanta Journal reported that Asad R. Siddiqy had arrived in Oklahoma City about an hour before the blast.
- Newsday reported that sources said Asad Rahman Siddiqy's name "came up" in the investigation of the World Trade Center, but added that he never was connected to the explosion.
- Newsday quoted a law-enforcement source as saying that Siddiqy represented a "significant part" of the bombing investigation but that the FBI and Attorney General Janet Reno had said on April 20 that they were unaware the three men had been detained.
- Newsday identified Asad Siddiqy as having come to the United States from Lahore, Pakistan, in 1990.
- Sikhism in Pakistan: Guru Nanak the founder of the Sikh religion was born near Lahore, Pakistan in 1469 and died in 1538. The Sikhs developed into a strong military brotherhood, reaching the height of their power under Ranjit Singh at the beginning of the 19th century. By this time they controlled the Punjab. Lahore was their political capital. Amritsar (now in India) their religious centre. At Partition the Sikhs migrated to India. The Sikh shrines in Pakistan are maintained by the government and are visited by Sikh pilgrims during their annual festivals.
Nankana Sahib near Sheikhupura, approximately 50 miles from Lahore, is an important place of pilgrimage with many Sikh gurduwaras here.
OKLAHOMA CITY
FBI special agent Weldon Kennedy said they should be considered ''armed and extremely dangerous.'' The were under suspicion because they were associated with a vehicle linked to the bombings. The third man, described as a witness, was being returned from Britain, where he had flown Wednesday. Kennedy denied a report by CNN that three people had been arrested in Dallas and Oklahoma. British immigration officials stopped a man on a flight from Chicago today and returned him to the United States for questioning. Sources said he was returning on a flight from London to Chicago. His bags, seized in Rome, reportedly contained material that could link him to the attack. In Washington, Justice Department spokesman Carl Stern called the man being returned from London ''a possible witness who was refused admittance to Britain.'' Asked if he was a suspect, Stern replied: ''You never know what's down the road.'' |
A full day after a car bomb caused horrific destruction to the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, the confirmed death toll stood at 36, including 12 children, Fire Chief Gary Marrs said late this morning. More than 400 people were injured. CNN said the three men suspects had stopped to ask an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer for directions Wednesday, and the officer was suspicious enough to write down their car's license plate number. The license number was registered to a rental car -- a car other than what the men were driving, the network said. In New York, a law enforcement source told The Associated Press that one of the three, Asad R. Siddiqy of New York, was a suspect in the bombing. Siddiqy is a cab driver in the borough of Queens. CNN said Siddiqy was arrested in Dallas, along with Mohammed Chafi. The network said a brother of Siddiqy was arrested in Oklahoma. ''There are a number of good solid leads being pursued,'' Stern said in Washington. He added, ''We may have more to say later.'' There seemed no doubt that the death toll at the federal building would rise, although no one could say by how much. Marrs said he didn't know how many people remained unaccounted for, and that it might take six days to find all the bodies. He said more than 700 people have called special telephone numbers to notify authorities that they were safe. Marrs' assistant, Jon Hansen, said structural engineers have identified sections of the building most likely to shelter survivors, and rescuers had refocused their search on those areas. No one had emerged alive from the federal building since 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, and Mayor Ron Norick said at midmorning that rescuers had stopped hearing any sounds of life. No one knows precisely how many people were in the building at the time of the blast. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) estimated that there were about 810 people -- 560 employees and 250 non-employees. Dr. David Tuggle, a pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital of Oklahoma, said he believed there was only a remote chance anyone else would be found alive. Children's Hospital was among several public institutions nationwide to be evacuated today after bomb threats, presumed to be the work of ''copycats.'' GRAPHIC: A soldier and search dog examine cars at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City one day after the federal building was bombed. ; ASSOCIATED PRESS |
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
OKLAHOMA CITY ''We are positive this vehicle was associated with the bombing,'' said Weldon Kennedy, FBI special agent in charge. ''We are positive these two people were associated with this vehicle.'' Sources said there was ''a possibility'' the suspects were motivated by anger at a federal agency. A likely target is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms - the object of considerable animosity from extremist groups, including the Branch Davidians. Their compound in Waco, Texas, was burned to the ground two years ago after ATF agents tried to serve a federal search warrant for firearms violations. Other suspects emerged Thursday. A Jordanian-American man described as a ''possible witness'' to the bombing arrived back in the United States from Britain late Thursday and was questioned in a secret location by law enforcement officials, FBI officials said. |
Authorities also questioned three other men, one of the men said Thursday. The man said his brother, Asad R. Siddiqy, 27, a New York cab driver, and an acquaintance, Mohammed Chafi, had driven to Oklahoma City seeking documents for an emergency return to their Middle Eastern homeland when they were arrested.
INFOBOX FBI HOTLINE Anyone with information about the suspects is asked to call the FBI hotline for the case (800) 9xx-xxxx. |
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
DALLAS
That theory seemed to be falling apart Friday. A Jordanian American citizen who returned to the United States from Britain as either a "suspect" or a "witness," was "free to go" after being interrogated, U.S. Justice Department spokesman John Russell said. "We let him go. He's not in custody," Russell said. "He's free to go wherever he wants and I understand he's going back to Oklahoma City." Russell said the man was cooperative and may be questioned sometime again. Federal law enforcement officials said Friday that three suitcases reportedly linked to the Jordanian American do not, as was initially reported, contain bomb-related material. Italian authorities had turned over the bags to U.S. officials amid reports that they contained electrical tape, silicon, a hammer, aluminum foil and tweezers, as well as a videocassette recorder and pictures of missiles. Three men of Middle Eastern extraction were detained and questioned by authorities in Dallas and Oklahoma City Thursday after media reports said the license plates of the car they were driving may be linked to a truck associated with the bombing. But by day's end, officials discounted their significance to the Oklahoma City case. "It's not as strong as we initially thought it was," one said. One of the three detained men, since released, told his story to the Associated Press.
|
Anis Siddiqy, 24, a cab driver from New York City, said his brother, Asad R. Siddiqy, 27, and an acquaintance, Mohammed Chafi, were in Oklahoma City seeking immigration documents for an emergency return to their Mideast homeland when they were arrested Wednesday. Siddiqy said he needed the documents to get home because of a family matter. He refused to be more specific or identify his Mideast homeland. Siddiqy said he was arrested Wednesday at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport while trying to rent a car so he could join the others in Oklahoma City. Earlier that day, police raided an apartment in Dallas that was being rented by two of the men. A copy of a search warrant left in the apartment showed that a black bag, containing clothing, a calendar and an address book was seized. The items were sent to a federal lab for testing after a bomb -sniffing dog indicated they may have been exposed to chemicals used in explosives, officials said. The man's two acquaintances were picked up Wednesday night soon after they had asked an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer for directions. The tag number recorded from their vehicle by the trooper was allegedly traced to a blue Chevrolet Cavalier rented by one of the men from National Car Rental at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, a law enforcement official said. The Cavalier was found with one of the men Thursday morning at an Oklahoma City motel, the official said. The man said he was questioned for 16 hours and given a lie-detector test before being released Thursday. Chafi was also released Thursday, but his older brother remained in custody. Federal officials have denied that suspects were taken into custody in Dallas. Dallas police spokesman Jim Spencer referred requests for comment to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. |
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Washington The men who put down an $ 80 deposit at a Ryder truck rental outlet to rent the vehicle Monday were not asked to provide a driver's license as usually is required because they looked much like soldiers from nearby Fort Riley, the local sheriff said. People at the rental outlet "just trusted these people," Geary County Sheriff Bill Deppish said, adding they looked "like other young GIs in their 20s" who regularly rent vehicles there. Authorities said the two men did not appear to be Middle Eastern nor did they speak with any discernible accent - hints that the speculation that Islamic militants were responsible might be premature or incorrect. But authorities said they did not rule out any group or motive. Investigators are considering the possibility that the two may not have been the primary perpetrators in the bombing plot but rented the truck for others, The Washington Post reported today. |
And in a sign that a foreign connection had not been ruled out, the FBI asked the CIA counterterrorism center for information on the organization of foreign terrorist groups and their patterns of operations.
Among the suspects being questioned, the Associated Press and CNN reported, was Asad R. Siddiqy, a New York cabdriver who arrived in Oklahoma City about an hour before the blast. A Jordanian-American described by U.S. officials as a possible witness in the bombing was flown from London to Washington for questioning. Italian officials said his bags, seized in Rome, contained possible bomb-making tools that had escaped detection at the Chicago airport. "Upwards of 50" more bodies were found in just one area of the bombed-out building, the governor said today, a number that would double the death toll to more than 100. "And this is not an area that they anticipated finding this number of individuals," Gov. Frank Keating told ABC's "Good Morning America." Earlier, Jon Hansen, assistant fire chief, had said rescuers were "working in areas now where we've got a significant amount of fatalities." GRAPHIC: Color Photo: Crews climb over debris Thursday at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City as they search for victims of Wednesday's bombing / Associated Press Illustration: drawing of Suspect 1: White, medium build, about 5'10", 180 pounds, brown hair, tattoo on left arm. Illustration: drawing of Suspect 2: White, medium build, about 5'11", 185 pounds, light brown crewcut. |
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
New York --
Siddiqy, 27, who came to the United States from Lahore, Pakistan, in 1990, represents "a significant part" of the bombing investigation, a law-enforcement source said last night. The FBI and Attorney General Janet Reno yesterday said they were unaware the men had been detained. Sources stressed, however, that there is no evidence linking Siddiqy or Siddiqy's brother, Anis, 24, a Queens College student and part-time cabbie - to the blast. Another man, identified as Mohammed Chafi, also was detained in Oklahoma Wednesday and questioned in the explosion, law-enforcement sources said. A fourth man, Abraham Ahmed, was returned to the United States from London yesterday, said officials, who added that Ahmed had three duffle bags containing material useful in making bombs. He was being called a "witness" in the case as of last night. |
Sources said Asad Siddiqy's name "came up" in the investigation of the February, 1993, explosion at the World Trade Center but added he never was connected to the explosion. Asad and Anis Siddiqy lived in a two-story brick Elmhurst home as recently as one month ago, according to Amir Mufti, a 22-year-old man who lived next door to the brothers. He said he didn't know where they moved. Anis Siddiqy also had an Astoria address where he was living until a week ago. The Siddiqys' mother lived with her unmarried sons in the same house until she returned to Pakistan two or three months ago, Mufti said. Taxi and Limousine Commission records show Asad Siddiqy received summonses in June, 1992, for speeding and operating a dirty taxi, for which he was found guilty at TLC hearings, spokesman Eugene Rodriguez said yesterday. "He had a pretty abysmal record, pretty lousy," Rodriguez said. Asad Siddiqy, who has not driven a cab in months, was most recently driving a limousine, Mufti said. When he first came to the United States four or five years ago, Asad Siddiqy worked at a carpet company in Manhattan, according to a former roommate who did not want his identity revealed. Afterward, he became a cabbie, but he'd always hoped to start his own carpet business someday, the roommate said. During his free time, Asad Siddiqy liked to stay home and watch movies on TV. Acquaintances didn't consider him very religious, but he went to Friday prayers every week at a Queens mosque. "It's impossible" that the brothers could be involved in any religious or political violence, Mufti said. "This has to be some kind of mistake." GRAPHIC: Photo-A 1994 photo of Asad Siddiqy from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. |
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WASHINGTON, April 21 The man, who had been described as a Jordanian-American, was later identified as Ibrahim Abdullah Hassan Ahmad, a naturalized American citizen of Palestinian origin. He left Oklahoma City shortly after the bombing and flew from Chicago to London, where he was detained after a search of his luggage. He had been returned to Washington, where he was released after being questioned by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "We let him go," said a Justice Department spokesman, John Russell. "We may want to talk to him again and he has said he's happy to cooperate." Mr. Russell said he understood the man was returning to Oklahoma. |
Three other men who had been questioned about the case were released. In Dallas, Anis Siddiqy, 24, and Mohammed Chafi were released on Thursday morning. Mr. Siddiqy said that he had been questioned for 16 hours by agents from the F.B.I. and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and that Mr. Chafi's apartment, where he was staying, had been searched.
There were reports that the men were suspects in the case, but they had denied involvement. Anis Siddiqy, who said he was a business student from Queens, said he and his brother had gone to Dallas on Tuesday to deal with an immigration problem, and that his brother had driven to Oklahoma City to visit the Immigration and Naturalization Service office there. |
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Asad Rahman Siddiqy and his brother Anis, two Pakistani men who said they went to Texas to sort out an immigration problem, were detained Wednesday night and questioned for 24 hours and 16 hours, respectively. Yesterday, as the bomb investigation appeared to be centering on militants in the nation's heartland, the brothers were at a North Dallas apartment. The pair had been taken in for questioning after their car was spotted, with license plates from another car, traveling from Oklahoma into Texas hours after the bombing Wednesday. |
"It was nobody's fault," Asad Siddiqy told The Associated Press. "They were just doing their jobs. I'm OK, and everything's fine." The Justice Department said yesterday the FBI had released Ibrahim Abdullah Hassan Ahmad, an American citizen of Middle East origin, who was detained in London and then returned to the United States on Thursday. Ahmad, an electrical engineer who recently worked as a court interpreter in a double-murder case in Oklahoma City, was caught in the spreading dragnet after the disastrous explosion in his adopted city. He was briefly detained in Chicago, then in London as a possible suspect or witness after he left Oklahoma City on Wednesday night to fly to Jordan to visit his father. John Russell, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said investigators may want to talk again to Ahmad, initially described by the Justice Department as a "possible witness" in the blast probe. But he said investigators had no reason to believe there was any danger Ahmad would flee the country. Russell was unable to say if Ahmad had any knowledge about the bombing. One FBI official said Ahmad could have fit the profile of suspected perpetrators and he simply may have been "in the wrong place at the wrong time." In Oklahoma City, investigators also released Mohammed Chafi after questioning. Top federal officials, including Attorney General Janet Reno, had repeatedly stressed the men were not suspects. GRAPHIC: AP Photo-Oklahoma State Trooper Terry Morris looks around a building yesterday that had been boarded up after being damaged by the bombing and spray-painted with a verse from the book of Psalms. |
1 Posted on 08/08/2001 14:41:31 PDT by Wallaby
THE FAILURE OF U.S. INTELLIGENCE AND THE ROAD AHEAD FOR AMERICA