FBI and DOJ Connivance Permeates, Interconnects Terror Attacks

The conclusions and findings in this long summary are based on interviews with private attorneys, law enforcement, Pentagon and Congressional officials, journalists and witnesses as well as analysis of news articles from major media over the last seven years. I am summarizing very important new material as well as old material previously reported in replies and articles I have written and posted on FreeRepublic.com since June 2000. Important supporting evidence for the conclusions in this editorial has been provided to attorneys, Congressional officials and to the DOJ since 2000

So as to more efficiently focus on and emphasize my findings and conclusions at this critical time of the terror threat to America, it was deemed more important to present my findings and conclusions on this forum in a lengthy summary form rather than in a much longer and fully documented article, report or book. It is hoped that all the supporting details and documentation can one day be published.

This summary was primarily written to provide my friends and likeminded concerned citizens with a historical perspective (and record) of government connivance in the terror attacks against America during the past eight years. I hope concerned citizens will be able to use and distribute this summary to educate and inform the public that the connivance policies of Federal government and law enforcement officials have harmed and not adequately helped protect the lives of American citizens from terrorists.

The beginning pages of the summary present overall conclusions and findings. The remaining and extensive part of the summary discusses numerous examples that support and explain the basis for the conclusions and findings presented at the beginning.

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FBI connivance permeated and interconnected the 1993 World Trade Center (WTC) attack, the Oklahoma City (OKC) bombing and the 9/11 attacks. The FBI had foreknowledge of these attacks but refused to stop the attacks beforehand even though the FBI participated in their planning with the use of FBI informants and provocateurs. Some of the same participants are known to the FBI to have been involved in all three of these terror attacks. By deliberately not moving against these participants even to this day and by deliberately failing to try and stop the attacks in advance and warn and adequately protect innocent victims, the FBI gave active and passive consent to the criminal acts of terrorists known to the FBI and to the criminal acts of FBI informants and FBI provocateurs.

The FBI’s and DOJ’s continued cover up, obstruction of justice, falsification of evidence, intimidation of key witnesses, pretended ignorance of the John Doe participants, informants and provocateurs and refusal to take action against known perpetrators is further evidence of the FBI and DOJ connivance and complicity. The FBI and DOJ actions are particularly egregious because the FBI and DOJ is supposed to protect the public from terror attacks, not expose the public to greater risk of attack and not intimidate witnesses or withhold critical evidence that may also be incriminating to the FBI and DOJ.

After the 9/11 attacks, former President GHW Bush make public statements urging the public to be more accepting of US agents committing crimes (in violation of laws and the Constitution) inside the US in order for the agents to earn the trust of the terror groups they were trying to infiltrate and collect intelligence about. This philosophy has already been used badly in the past by the FBI in Boston organized crime cases and in the 9/11 attacks, the OKC bombing and the 1993 WTC attack. In these instances, the FBI allowed murders and crimes to be committed to protect FBI operations. And these operations often did not succeed in stopping the groups involved but did succeed in keeping the public from knowing of the FBI connivance and failures.

Attorney General (AG) Ashcroft and FBI director Mueller have blocked the Congress, courts and the public from knowing about these FBI failed operations by refusing to honor subpoenas, ordering FBI agents not to testify and by refusing to turning over ALL incriminating evidence such as ALL withheld FBI 302 interview reports and ALL surveillance tapes relating to major attacks in the US. And President GW Bush personally ordered that the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on the FBI failures be seriously curtailed and that the House Government Reform Committee’s 13 subpoenas (to have been responded to on 9/11/02!) against AG Ashcroft on these matters not be honored. FBI agent Kelly was put in charge of controlling and manipulating the flow of information to the Intelligence Committee hearings even though Senator Grassley bitterly complained that FBI agent Kelly was the man who Senator Danforth had publicly charged with obstructing Danforth’s investigation of the FBI cover up of Waco.

Yet Ashcroft and Mueller and CIA director George Tenet have also publicly urged, like former President HW Bush, that Federal agents be allowed to commit illegal acts inside the US in order to provide what they term better human intelligence. These illegal acts would violate local, state and Federal laws as well as rights of citizens under the Constitution. Tenet and Mueller are holdovers from the Clinton administration that appear to be continuing to try to justify their using agents in both the Clinton and Bush administrations to commit crimes inside the US for intelligence purposes.

But there is other evidence of this wayward and lawless mentality of trying to justify criminal actions of Federal agents being continued from the Clinton administration to the Bush administrations. FBI agent Rogoskey filed a Federal lawsuit against FBI Direct Louis Freeh and AG Janet Reno in 2000 after Rogoskey was blocked from telling Congress about laws being broken inside the US by the FBI during national security operations.

The same conniving, reckless and poisonous philosophy and policy of allowing agents to break the law inside the US for national security operations as advocated by GHW Bush, Ashcroft, Reno, Mueller and Freeh was used by an FBI undercover agent to deliberately encourage the OKC bombing. This is according to what Congressman Ernest Istook of Oklahoma told an OKC bombing victim in a taped conversation. Istook told the victim that the FBI had used an undercover agent to help build the bomb in an effort to establish the agent’s credibility with other groups the FBI hoped to later arrest and discredit. Istook told the victim that the victim had no right to question the operation since it was a national security operation.

The tape of the Istook conversation was transcribed by the former Pentagon terror advisor Jesse Clear and played by Clear to Istook’s staff. The tape has been authenticated by experts associated with the Secret Service and court approved experts from a prestigious university in California. Istook had his staff threaten the New American reporter William Jasper over reporting of the taped conversation and transcript.

But Istook also told two deputy sheriffs on the night of the bombing that the FBI knew in advance of the OKC bombing. After the sheriffs held a news conference in 1997 about what Istook told them, the sheriffs were threatened by FBI agent James Carlisle who falsified his interviews with the sheriffs. A review of Carlisle’s interviews shows that Carlisle was trying to protect Istook and keep the public from knowing of the FBI’s complicity and connivance in the OKC bombing.

Istook was in a position to make claims to the victim of a national security operation and to know of the FBI foreknowledge and forewarnings because he served on the National Security subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee at the time of the OKC bombing. Istook was very close to the FBI and once told me in August of 1995 that there was nothing that I or the late Glen Wilburn (lost both of his grandsons in the bombing) could tell him about the OKC bombing that ”he (Istook) and the FBI did not already know.” But as will be further demonstrated in this summary, Istook would have also been in a position to know because of specific, detailed and official warnings to select House members and law enforcement prior to the bombing.

As in the Rogoskey case, the tendency has been for the FBI and DOJ to use Congressmen like Istook to improperly invoke, hide behind and use national security as a pretext and an excuse for committing and then covering up criminal operations inside the US in violation of laws and the Constitution. A similar line of reasoning and propaganda invoking false claims of national security was used by the FBI and Danforth to justify the illegal use of the US military in the Waco siege by the FBI. And when that was not accepted, then the FBI and DOJ made false claims of child, gun and drug abuse to justify their improper use of the military at Waco.

And the FBI agent James Carlisle was involved with the FBI public information officer, Mr. Collingwood to smear, intimidate and falsely attempt to discredit my efforts that uncovered FBI wrongdoing. Carlisle came to my house to threaten and intimidate me just as he did to the deputy sheriffs over their account of what Congressman Istook told them. Collingwood wrote a letter to my Senator James Inhofe stating that the FBI had sent Carlisle to my house to admonish me not to “further” repeat committing a felony of impersonating the FBI. Collingwood’s letter falsely indicated that I had impersonated the FBI. I have never impersonated the FBI and the FBI knows that. I have shown a copy of the Collingwood letter to an attorney experienced with FBI matters. The attorney’s opinion is that the FBI clearly was deliberately trying to smear me with Inhofe to discredit my information about FBI criminal conduct.

The FBI was particularly concerned about Inhofe believing my allegations since Inhofe is on the Senate Intelligence committee and is from Oklahoma. But the FBI concern over Inhofe does not end there. Herb Johnson, Inhofe’s chief of staff, wrote a letter in September 1998 describing that the DOJ had ordered the FBI about 72 hours after the OKC bombing to cover up and keep the Middle Eastern involvement from the public, press and others in government. Johnson had been told this by Johnson’s close friend who served at the FBI command post in OKC. Johnson gave his letter to attorney Dan Nelson of OKC who is married to a relative of Inhofe. I discussed the Johnson letter personally with Nelson in 1998 and personally with Inhofe in 1999. Kenneth Timmerman who writes for Insight magazine and is close to Inhofe and his staff told me earlier this year that the FBI had tried to intimidate Senator Inhofe over the OKC bombing case.

James Carlisle’s efforts for the FBI cover up also included hundreds of questionable and likely falsified FBI interview302 reports he did for the OKC bombing that were questioned in the Nichols trial and hearings by Judge Matsch himself. The FBI deliberately misspelled names so reports could not be found, wrote several 302 interview reports about the same information (including defense attorney Stephen Jones) to confuse or discredit witnesses and sources and their information, and withheld (did not lose them as they falsely claimed in several instances) reports from the courts.

But the FBI’s attempts to keep the public from knowing of FBI connivance and corruption in the OKC bombing did not just end with Istook , the sheriffs, Inhofe and myself. It extended to FBI threats 72 –74 hours after the bombing against Army recruiters who saw McVeigh with John Does in the Murrah building. Recall that 72 hours is the same period that Herb Johnson’s letter says that the DOJ ordered the FBI to cover up the Middle Eastern involvement. The FBI’s illegal attempts also included FBI threats and intimidation against multiple witnesses trying to get them to change their stories (to protect the FBI from being accused of crimes), to keep them from being known to the press and from being brought before the trials. I have written on FreeRepublic.com about some of these crucial witnesses such as Debbie Burdick, Leah Moore, Danny Wilkerson and other witnesses of Middle Eastern participants (informants?) who FBI agent Floyd Zimms brow beat and falsified his 302 interview reports about according to what the witnesses and other investigators claim.

The FBI has been since at least 1993 and is still today following a connivance policy of allowing known terrorists to enter the US and roam with impunity (no deportation or arrest) for years in the US while the terrorists set up terror cells, recruit more terrorists, set up training camps and commit terrorist acts. When one of these terrorists should happen to get publicly exposed or commit publicized terror acts, such as in the case of FBI informant Ali Mohammed, the FBI claims that the FBI just lost track of the terrorists. And the FBI defends moving against these terrorist (as the FBI has done many times in the OKC bombing case) by claiming to do so would harm the FBI undercover agents who have infiltrated the terror cells and deprive the FBI of important human intelligence. What good has the FBI intelligence been when the FBI has been unwilling to pull their undercover agents out periodically and move against the terrorists before they commit more terror acts and recruit more terrorists?

A notable example of the FBI connivance policy with known terrorists is the case of the Egyptian and security officer for Egypt Air, US Army Sergeant Ali Mohammed. Ali Mohammed served as an instructor for US Special Forces, then for the CIA and then as an informant for the FBI out of Sacramento from 1992 to 1998. While Ali was working to “help” the FBI he moved Bin Laden from Sudan to Pakistan, wrote Bin Laden’s terrorist training manual, set up terror cells and training camps in the US, squired Bin Laden’s top lieutenant and head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Al Zawahiri, around Califiornia twice, taught AlQaeda operatives to thwart airline security like in the 9/11 attacks, and helped another Bin Laden lieutenant, Khalid Mohammed, mastermind and carry out the 1993 WTC attack and the OKC bombing. It has been recently revealed that the recent attack at the LAX ticket counter for el Al airlines was known to and encouraged by Ali Mohammed and Al Zawahiri. How many more AlQaeda sleepers Ali Mohammed trained that are in side the US and who could strike again is not known.

When Ali Mohammed was arrested in 1998, he was carrying documents showing how to plant and hide explosives in public buildings like what is suspected was done in the OKC bombing. Ali Mohammed was convicted in 1999 for his role in the 1993 WTC and Tanzanian and Kenyan bombings. But Ali Mohammed signed a special plea bargain agreement with Janet Reno and has yet to be sentenced. Anrea Mitchell reported for MSNBC that the Egypt Air flight was deliberately crashed was as a result of the imprisonment of Ali Mohammed who had once worked for Egypt Air security. As in the case with the FBI informant Salem for the 1993 WTC bombing, the FBI knew for over six months in advance the details of the attack on the Tanzanian and Kenyan embassies from reading computer hard drives of terrorists who worked with Ali Mohammed.

Unfortunately, the 1993 WTC and Tanzanian and Kenyan bombings are superlative examples of extreme FBI connivance for failure to stop theses attacks when the FBI knew to do so and had the means to at least try to stop the attacks. Yet last year Congress was told that the FBI and CIA lost track of and was double crossed by Ali Mohammed for all these years during all these attacks while he was an FBI informant and was allowed to roam inside the US setting up more cells. The FBI still defends bring in known terrorists and allowing them to roam in the US for years. The FBI connivance with Ali Mohammed is another proof that the continuing FBI policy is a spectacular failure which should be terminated and that these terrorists should be arrested and deported as soon as possible. And this same type of FBI connivance also was practiced by the FBI in the OKC bombing and 9/11 attacks as will be described later in this editorial.

I have been complaining strongly to legal counsels for the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees and the Pentagon terror advisor Jesse Clear for over four years (years before the 9/11/2001 attacks) about the FBI connivance policy of allowing terrorists like Ali Mohammed into the US, to roam with impunity and to commit terror acts. To prove that this is an ongoing problem which has not been corrected and can lead to more terror attacks, I cite the fact that I received a call in May 2001 assuring me that Congress was now reviewing this failed FBI policy. The call came from Chad Groover, a legal counsel for Senator Grassley, on the Senate Judiciary Committee. I told Groover that Congressional review of the failed FBI policy was not enough and that change of the policy was required to save lives and our country.

I am not overly optimistic that Congress will adequately change or debate the failed FBI connivance policies since Congress has known about and has been ratifying the FBI policies for years. In May 1995 FBI Director Louis Freeh testified before Congress about the FBI policy of deliberately helping known Middle Eastern terrorists come into the US on student visas (by taking advantage of weaknesses in INS laws) for years to populate Abu Nidal cells (closely aligned with Iraq) in LA, Dallas and in Virginia. The FBI has been monitoring but not moving against Hamas terror cells in Oklahoma, Chicago and Dallas (Holy Land Foundation) who aided the OKC bombing and the 9/11 attacks for over ten years without arrests even to this day.

Bob Woodward of the Washington Post reported in October 2001 that senior FBI officials told Woodward that the FBI was continuing to deliberately allow five known AlQaeda cells to operate inside the US including near DC and in Dallas. The FBI used Dallas police officers to track known AlQaeda terrorists inside the US and overseas since at least 1995. The Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Dallas, Danny Defenbaugh, got into trouble with the Dallas police chief in 1998 for not telling the chief about the FBI operation and for not compensating Dallas taxpayers. El Hage, Bin Laden’s secretary for AlQaeda, was allowed to live in and operate out of Dallas for years while he was being monitored by the FBI.

If Congress were to publicly debate and possibly change the failed FBI connivance policies, it might cause the public to learn of the policies and cause the public to believe that the Congress has not only been wrong to support the FBI connivance policies but also is guilty of improper connivance itself by, in effect, aiding and covering up (keeping the details of the Congressional role from the public) terror operations and attacks like 9/11 and the OKC bombing. In spite of Congressional failures to properly oversee the FBI and DOJ, the public should still hold Congress accountable and should still not allow FBI and DOJ officials and agents to get away with falsely claiming the Nuremberg defense of carrying out orders inside the US under the pretense of name of national security when the orders were in fact unlawful and in violation of the Constitution.

The 1993 bombing of the WTC and subsequent attacks on the WTC such as the 9/11 attacks was carried out by Ramzi Yousef after the bombing and attacks were discussed, planned in part and ratified at a Hamas sponsored conference in Oklahoma City in December 1991. One of the masterminds of the 1993 WTC bombing, the OKC bombing and the 9/11 attacks has been identified by the FBI and DOJ as Bin Laden lieutenant Khalid Mohammed, the nephew of Ramzi Yousef. The advisor and consultant for the 1993 WTC attack was the FBI informant and Egyptian Ali Mohammed who was described earlier in this editorial as also being a Bin Laden lieutenant and author of AlQaeda’s terrorist training manual.

The FBI knew of the 1993 WTC attack by Yousef a year in advance from the FBI informant and Egyptian Salem. Two of Salem’s FBI agent handlers admitted publicly that FBI supervisors refused to stop the 1993 WTC attack or render the truck bomb inert. The FBI may also have learned of the bombing in advance from the FBI informant Ali Mohammed who was Egyptian just as Salem.

Yousef had the support of other participants who would later be involved in the OKC bombing and who helped Yousef obtain explosive materials and rent a truck. to deliver the bomb for the 1993 WTC attack. Recall that the 1993 WTC bombing was originally planned in OKC by a local Hamas group protected by the FBI. The Sidiqqy brothers, Asad and Anis, from Brooklyn New York, have been identified as suspects in the 1993 WTC and 1995 OKC bombings. Even the black American citizen and Muslim convert, Melvin Latimore, had his credit card used to pay for expenses of the 1993 WTC attack. Court documents show that Lattimore was also identified as a participant in the OKC bombing by an FBI informant one day after the OKC bombing.

Since Lattimore is a black man, Lattimore’s involvement with McVeigh would show that the FBI portrayal of McVeigh as a racist was deliberately false. This explains in part why six FBI agents tried to have the Travelers Aid witnesses change their stories for over nine months, took few notes, never adequately reported the witnesses in FBI 302 interview reports or had sketches done with sketch artists. The other reason for the FBI agents corrupt performance with the Travelers Aid witnesses is because the FBI did not want the public or courts to know that FBI informants and provocateurs were involved with McVeigh namely James Rosencrans and Peter Ward.

Lattimore was also seen with other FBI informants James Rosencrans and Peter Ward driving McVeigh’s car on the day before the OKC bombing when they visited the Travelers Aid in OKC. The FBI, DOJ, Freeh, Reno, Mueller and AG Ashcroft have covered up this fact and obstructed justice for years. Lattimore was also the roommate of the 9/11 hijacker pilot trainee, Zacharias Moussaoui, while he lived in Norman Oklahoma and attended the Airman flight school. The FBI also told the owners of the Norman flight school in 1999 that the FBI knew then of other pilots who had visited the Norman flight school that the FBI also knew were training for airplane attacks on public buildings including Mohammed Atta as well as Bin Laden’s own personal pilot.

Lattimore was even seen prominently involved at an OKC motel in 1995 at the same time as meetings took place between McVeigh and other Middle Eastern participants and FBI informants such as the Iraqi Al Hussaini and employees of Hamas terrorist operative Samir Khalil to plan and construct the truck bomb for the OKC bombing. But this same motel also was used in OKC in August 2001 by Atta and Moussaoui to discuss the 9/11 attacks. The FBI has refused to take action as a result of the witness accounts at this motel and it is very plausible that the meetings were being monitored at various times by the FBI either by electronic means and/or by FBI informants in the meetings.

So like Khalid Mohammed, Lattimore was involved in all three terror attacks (OKC, 1993 WTC and 9/11) and known to the FBI either as an informant or from FBI informants or likely both. The FBI has chosen to put Lattimore out of reach with a conviction of carrying a firearm while being a felon to keep the press and public from knowing of the FBI connivance in these attacks with Lattimore, Khalid Mohammed and the FBI informants. In fact it is likely that Lattimore was an FBI informant and certainly was known to an FBI informant who reported him to the FBI as being involved in the attacks. FBI failure to take action against Lattimore for the attacks for so many years and to put him out of reach on a minor charge is further evidence of FBI connivance, that Lattimore was an FBI informant and that the FBI was complicit for failing to take action against Lattimore for the OKC and the 1993 WTC attacks when the FBI had enough time and knew to do so.

But FBI foreknowledge from February 1995 of the Khalid Mohammed plot to fly airplanes in to US skyscrapers was not just supplemented by what the FBI learned in 1999 from the Norman, Oklahoma Airman flight school. The FBI also learned of the plans for the 9/11 attacks three years before 2001 by hijacker pilot Hanny Hanjour (who also traveled through Oklahoma-given a speeding ticket) from Phoenix FBI informant Adjae Collins . Collins told his story to ABC Pentagon reporter John McWethey a few months ago. Collins was one of the sources of information for the memo that FBI agent Kenneth Williams sent to the FBI in DC last summer warning the FBI of Bin Laden sponsored attacks in the US on US skyscrapers and government buildings. Kenneth Williams also sent his memo to the CIA and spoke to the CIA directly after the FBI in DC failed to act on his information.

A CIA memo containing the William’s info reached President GW Bush’s desk in a National Security Council briefing August 6, 2001. The White House originally tried to claim the memo only talked about attacks overseas, but quickly clammed up when Adjae Collins interview was broadcast. It seems that connivance with Middle Eastern terrorists and failure to act on forewarnings and foreknowledge does not just reside with the DOJ and FBI, it emanates from the White House who gives the DOJ and FBI their marching orders. No President should be immune from removal from office and prosecution for issuing to the FBI, DOJ and CIA unlawful orders that violate the Constitution or that could also be considered acts of treason.

Khalid Mohammed and his nephew Ramzi Yousef moved to the Philippines in 1994 where they shared an apartment to plot terror attacks against American targets for Bin Laden, ALQaeda and Abu Sayeff. These men’s efforts were aided and funded in the Philippines by AlQaeda and Abu Sayeff initiator Wali Khan and by Abu Omar, a name used by several of Bin Laden’s lieutenants including the Egyptian and FBI informant Ali Mohammed. Yousef kept their terror plans on his computer hard drive in their apartment. The plans included chemical formulas and details of remote controlled bomb devices very similar to those suspected as being planted in the OKC Murrah Federal building using techniques developed by Ali Mohammed. And later reported as being found in a Taliban notebook in Afghanistan in 2001.

But Yousef’s and Khalid Mohammed’s computerized plots contained much more which were later to be carried out such as flying airplanes loaded with explosives into the White House, Congress, the Pentagon and tall skyscrapers like the WTC as was done during the 9/11 attacks.

By January 1995 Yousef had met with Terry Nichols in the Philippines to plot the OKC bombing along With another American John Lebney, a Philippine government undercover agent Edqwin Angeles and Murad, a member of Abu Sayeff and AlQaeda. Khalid Mohammed very likely masterminded the meetings of his nephew Yousef with Nichols to plot the OKC bombing for Bin Laden especially since Khalid also masterminded the 1993 WTC and 9/11 attacks and worked closely with top Bin Laden lieutenants Al- Zawahiri and Ali Mohammed.

On the same day as a fire in Yousef’s apartment in January 1995, Yousef fled to Pakistan where he was later arrested, Nichols returned to the US, and Khalid Mohammed may have gone to OKC to oversee preparations for the OKC bombing in April 1995. By February 1995 the FBI had arrested and thoroughly interrogated Murad to learn in detail about the Yousef and Khalid Mohammed plots and the meetings to plan the OKC bombing and plan crashes into skyscrapers inside the US. The FBI also later arrested Wali Khan and learned similar details the FBI had learned from Murad. The FBI would have learned of the Nichols meetings plotting the OKC bombing from the Philippine undercover agent for Abu Sayeff, Edwin Angeles.

Also by the end of February 1995 the FBI had seized, analyzed and learned of the explosives and same plots (as revealed by Murad and Edwin Angeles) from Yousef’s computer hard drive. The FBI also may have learned of the plots from the FBI informant Ali Mohammed known as Abu Omar, the name of the man who funded Khalid Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef. Furthermore these details reached the upper levels of FBI decision makers in DC after going through the FBI legal attaché and station chief in the Philippines in February 1995.

McVeigh’s attorney Stephen Jones and former Pentagon terror advisor Jesse Clear both were blocked by the US prosecutor Larry Mackey and by the FBI legal attaché in 1996 from learning the details of what the FBI already learned and knew for certain by February 1995 about the OKC bombing and 9/11 style plots with Khalid Mohammed and Yousef from Murad, from Wali Khan , from Edwin Angeles, from Yousef’s computer and perhaps from the FBI informant Ali Mohammed.

The tenth circuit court of appeals in Denver further rejected Jones attempts to expose to the court and in the trials what the FBI had learned and knew in advance about the OKC bombing plot. The tenth circuit court rejected Jones’ Writ of Mandamus filed on March 25, 1996 on the false grounds and false pretense of the need to protect national security. The court may have rationalized that the court was protecting the country and hence national security from internal dissent toward certain members of the FBI and government should the public have been allowed to learn of FBI criminal connivance in the OKC bombing during open court proceedings.

By March 3, 1995 enough of the details of the Philippine plot for OKC by Yousef, Nichols and Khalid Mohammed had reached DC for an official warning notice to be issued to select members of the House and intelligence and law enforcement agencies by the Director of the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Youseff Bodansky. Bodansky’s official warning also went to his boss, the chairman of the House task force, Republican Congressman James Saxton from New Jersey.

Bodansky’s and Saxton’s official warning included the Murrah building in OKC as a likely target of a Middle Eastern sponsored attack around April 1995 using “lily whites”, a reference to men with no criminal records, perhaps Caucasian and not fully aware of all the details. The memo also mentioned the use of Hamas terrorist training camps in the US. Some of these Hamas camps were in the Chicago area and in Oklahoma where Hamas demolition experts resided according to a letter published in a May 1995 OKC newspaper from the former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Dave McCurdy. The Bodansky and Saxton warning memo was deliberately kept from the OKC bombing trials, from the public, from the Oklahoma County grand jury investigating the bombing in order to protect he FBI and the members of the House Task force from public outrage of FBI and Congressional connivance and foreknowledge of the OKC bombing. Bodansky himself called and told a reporter not to make the memo available to the public (and to the courts) because it was “too hot (politically?) to handle”.

The entire Federal family in OKC was warned in March 1995 of a pending Middle Eastern sponsored attack on a Federal building in OKC around April 1995 as revealed by US prosecutor Beth Wilkinson in a pretrial hearing with Judge Matsch and Jones in Denver in early 1996. The head of the US Marshals, Edwardo Gonzales, in charge of protecting the Federal family of judges and Federal buildings put out a memo in March 1995 giving a similar warning of a pending attack on a Federal building in the US as reported by the Newark Star Ledger in March 1995. The US Marshals memo and the warning to the Federal family testified to by Beth Wilkinson likely originated with the official memo issued by Saxton and Bodansky and the intelligence learned from Yousef’s computer and the interrogations of Murad, Angeles and Wali Kahn.

Proof that the warnings reached the Federal family came from OKC Federal Judge Wayne Ally who told his hometown newspaper the Oregonian in May 1995 that Ally was tipped (by the US Marshals) of a possible attack on an OKC Federal building. As a result, Ally stayed at home to work after April 4, 1995 and told his children to take his grandchildren out of the Murrah building day care center. Other proofs that the official warnings were taken seriously is that the BATF agents were told they did not have to report to work in the Murrah building on the morning of the OKC bombing. FBI agents were also told not to go to the Murrah building that morning even though the FBI had 3-4 agents inside the Murrah building everyday very punctually by 9 am and sometimes dropped off children at the day care center.

Al Hussaini , an Iraqi Gulf War veteran living in OKC, assisted McVeigh before and at the scene of the OKC bombing. Hussaini was brought to OKC after serving in the Iraqi Army for possible clandestine operations in the US and later in Iraq by the US if Sadam Hussein should be toppled from power. Hussaini and another OKC bombing suspect Abraham Ahmad were employees of an FBI protected Hamas cell operative in OKC, Samir Khalil who provided Hussaini with a false alibi for the day of the bombing. As mentioned earlier Hussaini was seen with McVeigh at a meeting at an OKC motel before the OKC bombing with Melvin Lattimore and other Khalil employees. Abraham Ahmad was brought back to the US the day after the bombing when blue jogging suits seen at the bomb scene and bomb making materials were found in his luggage in London after he left OKC. Inexplicably, the FBI later released Abraham Ahmad.

Hussaini was known to the FBI as a participant in the OKC bombing from many witnesses on the day of the bombing including Kay Heron. Heron was almost run over by Hussaini and another individual, perhaps Ahmad, in a late model brown Chevy truck that was the subject of an FBI APB issued with the knowledge of OKC FBI agent Dan Vogel the first week of the bombing.

Samir Khalil is known to have traveled to Las Vegas and is believed to have met an Iraqi recruiter and intelligence officer and McVeigh at O’Bannion’s Horseshoe near the MGM Grand Hotel. I drove a reporter to Khalis’s home in 1995 for an interview. The reporter said that Khalil was wearing a hat from O”Bannion’s Horsehoe. A man identified as an Iraqi intelligence officer by Iraqi expert Lorie Mylroie was photographed with Khalil and Hussaini in OKC shortly after the bombing near the body shop where it is believed that the brown Chevy get away truck was repainted yellow. The FBI impounded the repainted truck at an apartment complex in OKC where a group of Middle Eastern men had abruptly left not paying their rent on the day of the OKC bombing. The truck was seen being brought into the apartment complex by a resident named Olie Ahmad, a possible relative of Samir Khalil’s employee, Abraham Ahmad.

It is suspected that Samir Khalil is an FBI protected Hamas operative in part because he has never been known to be adequately questioned by the FBI AND especially because a Federal Grand Jury investigation against him by the assistant US attorney Ted Richardson was abruptly dropped after the OKC bombing. The grand jury was investigating Khalil for HUD property scams and for income tax evasion believed to have raised funds for Hamas terror operations in the US and against Israel. Richardson was found dead from a shotgun blast near his church and near Khalil’s house in May 1997.

Samir Khalil’s secretary, Sharon Twilley, identified Khalid Mohammed as being in OKC in 1995 where he was paid three checks written on behalf of Samir Khalil and handed to Khalil by Twilley. Recall that Khalid Mohammed has been identified as the mastermind of the 1993 WTC and 9/11 attacks and behind the OKC bombing planning meetings with Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef in the Philippines in January 1995. If the story about Twilley is true, it would further substantiate that Bin Laden and Khalid Mohammed were involved if not masterminds of the OKC bombing.

The information about Twilley’s identification came from James Reeser in a public reply he posted November 3, 2001on FreeRepublic.com under BlueDogDemo. I was asked to contact Reeser in October 2001 by phone to request that he obtain protection for Twilley. I later asked the person requesting the protection if Reeser’s story was true and if Twilley had received protection. The person replied in the affirmative to both questions. I sent this information publicly posted by Reeser to William Dunke, an aide for Senator Shelby on the Senate intelligence committee over a month ago after first describing the info about Khalid Mohammed to Dunke on the phone. I have received no response from Dunke as of yet.

And Al Hussaini appears to have been protected for a time in Houston after the OKC bombing by CIA asset, Heider Barbouti, whose father Ishan assisted President GHW Bush transfer technology for weapons of mass destruction (biological, chemical and nuclear) to Sadam Hussein and Iraq before the Gulf War (see the Congressional Record and statements by Congressman Henry B. Gonzales). Ishan Barbouti assisted Iraq in OKC to try to acquire a rocket fuel booster (and bomb accelerant) TK7 from Israeli investor Moshe Tal.

Hussaini and McVeigh called the same phone number in Iraq according to what sources in the Pentagon told US News and World Report in October 2001. The Pentagon sources complained of FBI connivance to withhold the Iraqi involvement from the Pentagon. This may be another proof that Senator Inhofe’s chief of staff was correct went he wrote that the FBI was ordered to cover up involvement of Middle East participants in the OKC bombing. But was it done to cover up corruption and foreknowledge with Middle East terrorists or was it done to protect a State Department peace initiative? Either way the American public was not protected or well served by the cover up.

Terry Nichols was seen with a man resembling Hussaini one day before the OKC bombing in Newkirk, Oklahoma by the wife of a police officer and two other witnesses. Nichols and the Hussaini looking suspect were with a convoy of men driving Nichol’s blue pickup truck and a short Ryder truck with an overhang. The FBI showed sketches to the witnesses in Newkirk of a man resembling Hussaini within a few weeks of the OKC bombing after the BATF showed up in town to canvass for witnesses and dust for fingerprints. A man resembling Hussaini was also seen with McVeigh in Ogden, Kansas before the OKC bombing at Pat’s Pawn shop and FBI sketches were shown by the FBI to verify this. The Hussaini visits to Newkirk, Oklahoma and Ogden, Kansas with McVeigh and Nichols were withheld from the courts and not adequately documented in FBI 302 interview reports.

The FBI has yet to interview Al Hussaini even though many witnesses place him with McVeigh and Nichols. Since the FBI refuses to follow up on witness reports that Hussaini was seen at a motel in OKC meeting with McVeigh and possible FBI informant Melvin Lattimore (who himself was known to other FBI informants), it is very plausible that Hussaini may be a protected FBI or CIA informant and provocateur. Hussaini was known by the FBI for several years to have become a baggage handler at Boston’s Logan Airport including on the day of the 9/11 attack flights leaving from Boston. Was Husssain allowed to help terrorists on 9/11 or was Hussaini trying to help the FBI catch terrorists at Boston’s airport? Continued failure of the FBI to pursue Hussaini for what ever reason is indefensible and is another proof of FBI connivance in the OKC bombing and 9/11 attacks that puts the public at risk from more terror attacks.

As mentioned earlier, two of three Pakistanis, Anis and Asad Sidiqqy, were seen by witness Debbie Burdick with McVeigh near the Murrah building just prior to the Murrah building explosion after their arrival from Brooklyn New York. The Sidiqqy brothers were also suspects in the 1993 WTC attacks. The Pakistanis were arrested on the day of the OKC bombing, with one arrest made in Dallas and the other in OKC. Janet Reno and Deputy FBI Director Weldon Kennedy lied to the public about these arrests at the time. Bomb sniffing dogs found traces of explosives in the Pakistani’s luggage. The Pakistanis were inexplicably released after false information was given to local police authorities by FBI agent Floyd Zimms concerning their get away car. FBI 302 interview reports of the Pakistani’s arrests were withheld from the courts until early 2001 when they were found in FBI OKC Bomb Task Force Inspector Danny Defenbaugh’s Dallas office.

FBI agent Odom called witness Debbie Burdick from Denver before and after the McVeigh and Nichols trials to admonish her not to talk to the press or defense attorneys about her seeing McVeigh with the Pakistanis. The FBI treatment of witness Debbie Burdick is another example of extreme FBI criminal connivance.

FBI agents wrote multiple 302 interview reports to confuse the story of Pakistani involvement in the OKC bombing as reported originally to the FBI by former CIA Middle Eastern operations chief Vincent Cannistraro. Cannistraro had told the FBI that he was told by the head of Saudi intelligence a few hours after the OKC bombing that Sadam Hussein had hired seven Pakistanis to assist in the OKC bombing. This would be consistent with the arrests of the Pakistanis and what the Pentagon told US News World Report about McVeigh and Al Hussaini calls to Iraq. It also is consistent with what FBI agent Dan Vogel revealed in OKC in January 1999 to an OKC reporter, namely that the FBI had been tracking some of the seven Middle Eastern men in Dallas that had been identified as possible suspects in the OKC bombing.

Yet FBI agent Floyd Zimms who had been involved in the cover story for the arrest of the Pakistanis was seen meeting in an upscale OKC bar frequented by suspects of the OKC bombing as late as 1997 during the McVeigh trials. Zimms had brow beaten a key witness of Middle Eastern John Does or FBI informants seen with McVeigh. Zimms had also allegedly falsified his FBI 302 report with the witness after refusing to give the witness a lie detector test.

Was Zimms acting on orders to cover up the FBI connivance with Middle Eastern provocateurs and informants such as Hussaini and the Pakistanis involved with McVeigh? A close friend of Zimms came to my house in 1999 to tell me I should not be so critical of Zimms, that Zimms was only carrying out orders and doing what he was told to do. My response to Zimms friend was that the Nuremberg defense of FBI agents knowingly carrying out unlawful orders does not apply and does not justify Zimms actions.

The FBI even knew of a government helicopter used to track the delivery of the Ryder truck in front of the Murrah building. This helicopter was seen by more than three witnesses above the Murrah building moments before it was bombed. FBI agent Dan Vogel personally refused to investigate the witness sightings of the helicopter called into him at the FBI on April 21, 1995. OKC police officer Don Browning investigated and confirmed the helicopter movements that were known to the FAA in OKC. Browning’s supervisors told him that a reporter called the police and tried to have Browning sanctioned by the police internal affairs department over his efforts to investigate the helicopter incident.

The FBI learned of and tracked the OKC bombing plot in advance not only from the Philippine meetings with Nichols, but also from FBI informants and provocateurs operating with domestic terror individuals working with McVeigh.

Cary Gagan was given a grant of Federal immunity by the US attorney in Denver after working with the FBI agents to inform them of a plot against a Federal building in OKC. Gagan delivered to Dwight, Kansas bomb making materials and equipment believed to be used in the OKC bombing. Gagan’s grant of immunity was rescinded when Gagan publicly complained after the bombing that the FBI deliberately had not tried to stop the OKC bombing based on his information. Gagan’s complaints should remind us of similar complaints made by the FBI informant Salem for not stopping the 1993 WTC attack when Salem was involved with bomb making materials for the 1993 WTC bombing. The FBI refused Salem’s pleas to stop the 1993 WTC bombing just like the FBI refused to stop the OKC bombing based on Gagan’s information.

New American magazine reporter William Jasper traveled with Gagan to retrace Gagan’s steps and confirmed Gagan’s story. Jasper reported his findings in the New American magazine about Gagan and approache Judicial Watch and Congressman Bob Barr in an attempt to get them to do something about about Gagan’s story. Also, attorney Stephen Jones met with Gagen but did not use Gagan’s story in the McVeigh trial.

McVeigh is known to have traveled in Kansas with German national and FBI provocateur Andreas Strassmeyer who was the military training officer hat the FBI infiltrated radical compound Eloheim City in Oklahoma near Arkansas. McVeigh attended a meeting at Eloheim City shortly before the OKC bombing and also called Strassmeyer at the compound. The McVeigh meeting was described in court documents for the Washington state trial of Chevy Kehoe who knew of the OKC bomb plot. A witness living near Eloheim City gave McVeigh directions to Eloheim City. McVeigh was also known to have been associated with other FBI informants living at the compound including Peter Ward and the compound’s spiritual leader, Reverend John Milar.

FBI director Louis Freeh is known to have discussed Strassmeyer’s undercover operations at Eloheim City with German authorities in Germany in 1993. Strassmeyer was protected from arrest for a traffic violation near Eloheim City by the US State Department. After the OKC bombing the FBI agent John Hippard of OKC assisted Strassmeyer in leaving the US across the Mexican border to avoid questioning by the INS.

FBI informant Peter Ward was with three other men using McVeigh’s car at the Travelers Aid in OKC the day before the OKC bombing. One of these men was James Rosencrans, an FBI informant and prosecution witness against McVeigh for the Federal Grand Jury in OKC in the summer of 1995. Another of these men was a man looking like Melvin Lattimore, the black man seen at an OKC motel meeting with McVeigh and the Iraqi Al Hussaini. Lattimore was also named to the FBI by an FBI informant the day after the OKC bombing as a participant in the OKC bombing but the FBI ignored their own informant.

Peter Ward was also the man in McVeigh’s Kansas motel room identified by Jeff Davis who delivered Chinese food a few days before the OKC bombing. The FBI refused to check the identification of fingerprints collected in the motel room perhaps fearing the identification would reveal the presence of the FBI informant Peter Ward.

James Rosencrans was a drug dealer and Michael Fortier’s neighbor in Kingman, Arizona. Fortier was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for knowing of the bombing plot but not telling authorities. FBI informants like Ward and Rosencrans were not sentenced for knowing about and helping encourage the OKC bombing. Rosencrans was allowed by the FBI to keep the proceeds from the sale of guns stolen from Arkansas gun dealer Roger Moore that the FBI had claimed in court were used to finance the OKC bombing. Less than a week after the OKC bombing, ammonium nitrate like that used in the OKC truck bomb was found dumped next to Rosencran’s trailer according to press reports in the Arizona Republic newspaper.

The mother loade!:

Read the article below very carefully along with my article for More Hard Proof of FBI/DOJ foreknowledge and connivance of 9/11 and OKC BOmbing in 1995 from the FBI analyzing Yousef's computer hard drive in February 1995 and interviews with Murad (2 months before OKC bobming).

I sent the info in the TOronto Star and discussed it with William Jasper in January 2002 which he used to write his article for the New American. I have worked closely with and in person with Jasper on all of his OKC bombing stories providing him witness, articles, documents and evidence for more than seven years since 1995.

Operation Bojinka's bombshell

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/600300/posts

Toronto Star | January 2, 2002 | Matthew Brzezinski

Posted on 01/02/2002 8:19 AM Pacific by Wallaby

Operation Bojinka's bombshell

Matthew Brzezinski, SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Toronto Star

January 2, 2002 Wednesday Ontario Edition

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Six years before Sept. 11, Philippine policewoman helped crack a terrorist cell linked to Osama bin Laden

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It was already evening, here on the other side of the international date line, when the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Aida Fariscal had gone to bed early on Sept. 11, only to be awakened by a frantic colleague. "Quick," he instructed, "turn on your television."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "We told the Americans about the plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995," he complained to reporters. "Why didn't they pay attention?" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The footage of the hijacked airliner bursting into flame made Fariscal bolt upright. "Oh my God," she gasped. "Bojinka."

For the retired Philippine police officer, that word and the nightmare scenario it evoked had receded into distant memory these past six years. Sometimes weeks went by without her even thinking about the terrorist plot she had foiled so long ago. But there it was, after all this time, unfolding live on her television. "I thought, at first," she tells me, "that I was having a bad dream, or that I was watching a movie." But as the burning towers came crashing down under their own weight, disbelief turned to anger. "I still don't understand," she says, "how it could have been allowed to happen." We are having lunch in a busy Manila shopping centre, not far from the Dona Josefa Apartments, where it all started, where she - and the CIA and the FBI - first heard the words "Operation Bojinka." Fariscal has insisted on a corner table, so she can keep an eye on the other patrons and the shoppers beyond the restaurant's greasy glass partition. Old habits, she explains, die hard, and, after a life of fighting crime, she always takes precautions, especially now that she is off the force, a widowed grandmother living on a pension in a small one-bedroom apartment.

She seems bitter, and surprisingly fragile in her hoop earrings and pink lipstick. She is bitter that the generals in the Philippine high command hogged all the credit for Bojinka (which means loud bang in Serbo-Croatian), while all she received was $700 (U.S.) and a trip to Taiwan. She is bitter that the Americans apparently didn't take the foiled plot seriously enough. But most of all, she is angry that, in the end, her hunch didn't save thousands of lives. "I can't get those images," she says of the World Trade Center wreckage, "out of my mind."

The call came in shortly after 11 on a Friday night back in January, 1995: a routine fire alarm, some smoke spotted on the top floor of a six-storey building just down the street from Manila Police Station No. 9. Fariscal, the watch commander, peered out of the precinct house window, but couldn't see any sign of a blaze on Quirino Ave. Still, she dispatched Patrolman Ariel Fernandez to check it out. "Nothing to worry about," he reported when he returned a few minutes later. "Just some Pakistanis playing with firecrackers."

Fariscal wasn't so sure. She hadn't earned her senior inspector stripes by sitting down on the job, and had risen in the male-dominated ranks of the Manila police force by trusting her "female intuition." And her instinct that night told her something was wrong.

"The Pope was coming to the Philippines, we were worried about security, and on top of that we had just had a big typhoon," she recalls. The senior inspector decided to walk the 500 metres to the Dona Josefa Apartments to see for herself. She barely had time to change out of her civilian clothes, a flower-patterned dress and sandals, and she didn't think she needed her gun. But just in case, she ordered Patrolman Fernandez and another officer to tag along as backup while she picked her way past the uprooted palm trees.

The Dona Josefa apartment building was a well-kept but not luxurious residence, with an open lobby and an airy feel. It was often used for short-term rentals by Middle Eastern tourists, who came to Manila's neon-lit Malate nightclub district to get away from the strict mores back home. It was also a block away from the papal nunciature, where John Paul II would be staying.

"What's happening here, boss?" Fariscal asked the Dona Josefa doorman in Tagalog, a native tongue of the Philippines. Two men, he said, had fled their sixth-floor apartment, pulling on their pants as they ran in the smoky corridor. "They told me everything was under control; just some fireworks that accidentally went off."

Fariscal faced a quandary. She couldn't legally enter the apartment without a search warrant, now that there was no longer an imminent danger of fire. But she couldn't simply walk away, either. She was stubborn that way. It was one reason why in 1977, after 17 years as a homemaker raising four children, she had decided to enrol in the police academy. "Open it up," she instructed.

Suite 603 was a cluttered one-bedroom bachelor pad. The first thing Fariscal noticed was four hot plates, still in their packing crates. Bundles of cotton lay scattered around the room, soaked in some sort of pungent beige solution, next to clear plastic containers of various sizes and shapes bearing the stamp of German and Pakistani chemical manufacturers. And loops of electrical wiring: green, yellow, blue and red.

Just then, the phone rang, causing Fariscal to jump with fright. "I'd just seen a movie with Sylvester Stallone where the telephone was booby-trapped," she recalls now. "Everybody out," she ordered. They scrambled back downstairs, where the doorman appeared to be in a high state of agitation. "That's one of them," he whispered. "He's coming back."

Patrolman Fernandez grabbed the suspect. He was young, in his twenties, Fariscal guessed, and handsome in a rakish sort of way. He said his name was Ahmed Saeed, that he was a commercial pilot, and that he was just on his way to the precinct house to explain any misunderstanding over the firecracker smoke.

"There's the other one," interrupted the doorman, pointing to a thin, bearded individual standing outside. Fariscal set off in his direction. He was calmly talking on his cell phone, smoking a pipe and watching her. For a brief instant their eyes met. Fariscal had no idea she was looking at Ramzi Yousef, the man who had tried to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993.

The sound of gunfire froze Fariscal in her tracks. She had been wounded a few years back when a bullet ripped through her left arm and torso to lodge four centimetres from her spine, and the memory left her skittish. But she whirled around just in time to see Patrolman Fernandez aiming his service revolver at Saeed's fleeing back. As the cops gave chase, the fugitive suddenly lurched forward, sprawling on the pavement; he had tripped over the exposed roots of a tree toppled by the typhoon. Saeed was back in custody. But his accomplice had taken advantage of the confusion to melt into the gathering crowd of street peddlers and gawkers.

Neither Fariscal nor the two officers with her had any handcuffs, so they improvised with rope from a clothesline and hauled Saeed to his feet. "I'll give you $2,000 to let me go," he pleaded. Most Manila police officers don't make that in a year. But Fariscal refused. Concerned that the suspect would try to bolt again, she radioed the precinct for a squad car. As usual, none was available. One of the cops tried to hail down a passing "jeepney," the converted World War II-vintage U.S. Army Jeeps pressed into service as cheap - if not always reliable - public transportation in Manila. Finally, Fariscal commandeered a minivan taxi and conscripted two burly pedestrians to help watch Saeed during the short ride to the precinct station.

By now, Fariscal had an inkling she had stumbled onto something big. She couldn't know, however, just how big her discovery would turn out to be; that amid the clutter of the chemicals and cotton at the Dona Josefa apartment, investigators would unearth a plan that, with the benefit of hindsight, career CIA officers today admit looks alarmingly like an early blueprint for the Sept. 11 attack on America.

All Fariscal knew for the moment was that she had just nabbed some sort of a terrorist - and, in the Philippines, that could mean anything.

At the precinct, Saeed signed a statement, in which he proclaimed his innocence and claimed to be a simple tourist visiting a friend in the chemicals import-export business. But, perhaps sensing the game was up, he complained to Fariscal that there are "two Satans that must be destroyed: the Pope and America."

The senior inspector had already surmised that the Pope was a target of assassination, a suspicion borne out when she returned with the bomb squad to Suite 603 at 2: 30 a.m. and found a photograph of the pontiff tucked into the corner of a bedside mirror, near a new crucifix, rosary and Bible. There were street maps of Manila, plotting the papal motorcade's route; two remote-control pipe bombs; and a phone message from a tailor saying the cassock Saeed had ordered was ready for a final fitting.

By 4 a.m. the situation was deemed serious enough that the first generals had started showing up on the scene, and a judge was soon rousted out of bed to sign a belated search warrant.

"It was obvious they had planned to dress someone up as a priest, and smuggle the bomb past the Holy Father's security detail," Fariscal recalls. But the sheer magnitude of the chemical arsenal Fariscal found in Suite 603 also made it clear the conspirators had other targets. The four new hot plates needed to cook the concoctions indicated the extremists were gearing up for mass production.

It took days for the bomb squad to draw up a complete inventory of the apartment's contents, which included a cornucopia of explosive ingredients - sulphuric, picric and nitric acid, pure glycerin, acetone, sodium trichlorate, nitrobenzoyl, ammonia, silver nitrates, methanamine and ANFO binary explosive, among others. Funnels, thermometers, graduated cylinders and beakers, mortars and pestles, various electronic fusing systems, timers, circuit breakers, batteries and a box of Rough Rider lubricated condoms rounded out the home laboratory, which included chemistry reference manuals and a recipe written in Arabic on how to build powerful liquid bombs.

"The guys in the bomb squad had never seen an explosive like this before," says Fariscal. Neither had many U.S. investigators. "The particularly evil genius of this device was that it was virtually undetectable by airport security measures," says Vincent Cannistraro, the former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre.

But what were the targets? And who were the conspirators? A clue to the identity of the suspects emerged when Fariscal found dozens of passports in different names hidden in a wall divider. Saeed, apparently, had many aliases, including Abdul Hakim, student, age 26, Pakistani passport No. C665334, issued in Kuwait. His real name, investigators would eventually discover, was Abdul Hakim Murad. According to transcripts from his interrogation, he was the Pakistani-born son of a crane operator for a Kuwait petroleum company. He had graduated from high school in Al-Jery, Kuwait, before attending the Emirates Flying School in Dubai and moving on to flight schools in Texas, Upstate New York and North Carolina, where after completing the required 275 hours of flight time, he received a commercial pilot's licence from Coastal Aviation Inc. on June 8, 1992.

Philippine investigators called in their U.S. counterparts for help. According to U.S. and Philippine officials, both the CIA Manila station chief and the resident FBI legal attache were notified. A team of intelligence agents flew in from Washington.

Murad, as Fariscal now thought of Saeed, was a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. So, it turned out, was his accomplice at the Dona Josefa Apartments, the thin, bearded man who had given Fariscal the slip. He had registered under the name Najy Awaita Haddad, purporting to be a Moroccan national. But the United States already had a thick file on him, and that was just one of his 21 known aliases. Sometimes he passed himself off as Paul Vijay, or Adam Sali or even Dr. Richard Smith. He was in fact Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a fugitive with a $2 million bounty placed on his head by the U.S. government.

Fingerprints lifted at the apartment helped give Yousef away; a life spent assembling bombs had left his fingers burnt and distinctively deformed from mishaps mixing tricky chemical concoctions. He had learned his deadly skills, Philippine officials said, in Afghanistan, at a training camp for Osama bin Laden's followers, and in turn had taught Murad the art of bomb making in Lahore, Pakistan.

But Murad had not learned his lessons well, for it was his mistake that set off the fire in the kitchen sink that alerted Manila police. In his haste to flee Suite 603, Yousef left behind many clues. Some, like contact lens solution and a receipt from a pharmacy, seemed innocuous. But others would give the FBI and the CIA a chilling preview of what the terrorists had in store for the United States.

The most damning information was gleaned from Yousef's computer, and four accompanying diskettes. The data were encrypted and in Arabic, but Philippine technicians eventually deciphered the code and translated the texts. One of Yousef's translated documents - stamped SECRET by Philippine intelligence - spells out the terrorist cell's broad objectives. "All people who support the U.S. government are our targets in our future plans and that is because all those people are responsible for their government's actions and they support the U.S. foreign policy and are satisfied with it," it declared.

"We will hit all U.S. nuclear targets," the manifesto continued. "If the U.S. government keeps supporting Israel, then we will continue to carry out operations inside and outside the United States to include ..." Here the text terminates ominously.

Already, intelligence officials had gleaned a treasure-trove of information on the inner workings of bin Laden's terrorist network. Cell members did not appear to even know one another's real names. Duties were divided and none of the conspirators stayed in the same place for any length of time. But there were still more frightening revelations to come.

Another file found on Yousef's computer consisted of a printout of U.S. airline schedules, which initially baffled investigators. The file, named Bojinka, listed the travel itineraries of 11 long-haul flights between Asia and the United States, mostly on United and American airlines. All the flights had several legs, and were grouped under five headings bearing code names of accomplices such as Zyed, Majbos or Obaid. Each accomplice would leave the bombs on the first leg of the flight, and then eventually return to locations like Lahore, Pakistan. Obaid, for instance, would fly from Singapore to Hong Kong on United Flight 80, which continued as United Flight 806 to San Francisco. Under the flight plan, Yousef had written: "SETTING: 9: 30 PM to 10: 30 PM. TIMER: 23HR. BOJINKA: 20: 30-21: 30 NRT Date 5."

Zyed, on the other hand, would take Northwest Airlines Flight 30 from Manila to Seoul, with continued service to Los Angeles. "SETTING: 8: 30-9: 00. TIMER: 10HR. BOJINKA: 19: 30-20: 00 NRT Date 4," the accompanying instruction read.

The repeated use of the word "TIMER" concerned investigators, who by then had made the connection between the dozens of Casio wristwatches found in Suite 603 and one discovered a few weeks earlier on a Philippine Airlines flight from the Philippine town of Cebu to Tokyo's Narita International Airport. The watch had served to detonate a blast that ripped through the Boeing 747, killing a Japanese passenger and forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.

Philippine intelligence put the screws to Murad. In Camp Crame, a military installation on the outskirts of Manila, he was subjected for 67 days to what Philippine intelligence reports delicately refer to as TI, or tactical interrogation. By the time he was handed over to the Americans, interrogators had extracted everything they thought they needed to know.

Yousef, Murad confessed, had indeed been responsible for the blast aboard the Philippine airliner, which was actually a dry run to test the terrorists' new generation of nitroglycerin explosive, known as a "Mark II" bomb. Yousef had deposited his device - lethal liquid concealed in a contact lens solution bottle with cotton-ball stabilizing agents and a harmless-looking wristwatch wrapped around it - under seat 27F on the Manila-to-Cebu leg of the flight to Tokyo. He had gotten off in Cebu after setting the watch's timer for four hours later. The same plan was to be repeated on the 11 U.S. commercial jetliners. U.S. federal prosecutors later estimated that 4,000 passengers would have died had the plot been successful.

The enormity of Bojinka also frightened U.S. officials. "We had never seen anything that complicated or ambitious before. It was unparalleled," recalls Cannistraro, the former CIA counter-terrorism head.

But, Philippine and U.S intelligence officials said, the Bojinka operation called for a second, perhaps even more ambitious phase, as interrogators discovered when they pressed Murad about his pilot's licence. All those years in flight school, he confessed, had been in preparation for a suicide mission. He was to buy, rent, or steal a small plane, fill it with explosives and crash it into CIA headquarters.

There were secondary targets the terrorists wanted hit: U.S. Congress, the White House, the Pentagon and possibly some skyscrapers. The only problem, Murad complained, was that they needed more trained pilots to carry out the plot.

"It's so chilling," says Fariscal. "Those kamikaze pilots trained in America, just like Murad.

"The FBI knew all about Yousef's plans," she says. "They'd seen the files, been inside 603. The CIA had access to everything, too. Look," she adds, fishing in a plastic shopping bag for one of her most prized possessions, a laminated certificate of merit bearing the seal of the CIA. "Awarded to Senior Inspector Aida D. Fariscal," it reads. "In recognition of your personal outstanding efforts and co-operation." "This should have never, ever been allowed to happen," she repeats angrily. "All those poor people dead."

In her outrage at the biggest U.S. intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor, Fariscal is not alone in the Manila law enforcement community. Gen. Avelino "Sonny" Razon, one of the lead investigators in the Bojinka case, was so shocked at what he saw on Sept. 11 that he jumped on a plane in Cebu, where he was now police chief, and flew to Manila to convene a hasty press conference. "We told the Americans about the plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995," he complained to reporters. "Why didn't they pay attention?"

U.S. officials counter that they did pay attention. FBI spokesperson John E. Collingwood denies that the bureau had advance knowledge of a plot to turn airliners into flying bombs. "The FBI had no warnings about any hijack plots. There was a widely publicized 1995 conspiracy in Manila to remotely blow up 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific," Collingwood said in a letter to the Washington Post in October, "but that was disrupted. And, as is the practice, what was learned in that investigation was widely disseminated, even internationally, and thoroughly analyzed by multiple agencies. It does not connect to the current case."

Not everyone in the U.S. intelligence community, however, is of the same mind. "There certainly were enough precursors that should have led analysts to suspect that the U.S could come under domestic attack," says Cannistraro, a 27-year intelligence veteran who ran the CIA's counter-terrorism division until 1990. "There's no question about it. We knew about the pilots and suicide plots. Just didn't put two and two together."

That failure to connect the dots lies at the heart of the intelligence breakdown, says Cannistraro.

"It's the imagination that failed us," says a former senior CIA agent, "not the system." He dismissed the connection to Bojinka as a "hindsight is cheap" theory.

Yet it is precisely the responsibility of the agency's thousands of planners and analysts to dream up what may appear as crazy scenarios in order to find ways to thwart them. And it is unclear what became of the information gleaned from Operation Bojinka.

"We didn't file it and forget about it," a CIA spokeswoman insists. Indeed, shortly after Yousef's liquid bombs were discovered, the Federal Aviation Administration did begin installing "sniffer" devices, which can detect explosive chemicals, at major airports throughout the United States. But beyond that, there is no evidence of any other clear response by the intelligence community to the information gleaned from the foiled plot in the Philippines.

The terrorists, on the other hand, appear to have drawn a number of invaluable conclusions from their 1995 setback. "Under interrogation Murad told us several things that should have been of interest to analysts on the deterrence side," recalls retired Gen. Renato De Villa, who served as Philippines defence minister at the time of the raid on Suite 603. First, the extremists saw the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a failure and still considered the twin towers a viable target. And more importantly, the cell seemed to be growing frustrated with explosives. They were too expensive, unstable and could give them away.

Though nothing in Murad's confession gave investigators any warning of hijackings, somewhere along the line, his brothers at arms in bin Laden's Al Qaeda network did make the leap from explosives to jet fuel and box cutters.

One reason U.S counter-terrorism officials may not have been able to outwit the terrorists, critics charged, is because the entire intelligence community has become too reliant on technology rather than human resources. "Where the system breaks down," says a former staff member of the National Security Council who regularly attended briefings on bin Laden, "is not at the hunting and gathering stage" - the ability to electronically intercept information. "We are probably tapped into every hotel room in Pakistan. We can listen in to just about every phone call in Afghanistan," explains the former NSC staffer. "Where the rubber hits the pavement is with the analysts. They are a bunch of 24-year-old recent grads from Middlebury or Dartmouth who have never been to Pakistan or Afghanistan, don't speak any of the relevant languages, and seem more knowledgeable about the bar scene in Georgetown. They just don't compare to the Soviet specialists we used to have. I'm not surprised they missed it."

With the benefit of hindsight, Murad's confession today sounds almost prophetic, and as U.S investigators backtrack, piecing together bits of the puzzle left behind by the hijackers, the spectre of Bojinka looms large. As in the case of the Sept. 11 attacks, authorities in Manila following Suite 603's money trail found the deeper they dug, the closer they came to bin Laden. The critical clue was in Ramzi Yousef's computer. A list of cell phone numbers on its hard drive led authorities to stake out another apartment in Manila, this one on Singalong St. There they apprehended a third conspirator in Yousef's terrorist cell, a stocky Afghan by the name of Wali Khan Amin Shah.

Like Yousef, Shah carried many passports under various aliases - Norwegian, Saudi, Afghan and four Pakistani, all filled with travel visas and entry stamps from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Shah also had mangled hands, and was missing two fingers. Both his legs were heavily scarred with shrapnel, and he had a large surgical scar on his stomach.

Shah turned out to be Bojinka's unlikely finance officer. To launder incoming funds, Shah used bank accounts belonging to his live-in Filipino girlfriend and a number of other Manila women, one of whom was an employee at a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, and others who were described as bar hostesses. Most of the transfers were surprisingly small - $500 or $1,000 handed over at a Wendy's or a karaoke bar late at night. Under "tactical interrogation" at Camp Crame, Shah admitted that most of the funds were channelled to Adam Sali, an alias used by Ramzi Yousef, through a Philippine bank account belonging to Omar Abu Omar, a Syrian-born man working at a local Islamic organization known as the International Relations and Information Centre - run by one Mohammed Jalal Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law.

Shah's and Murad's confessions led to Yousef's arrest in Pakistan, and the three suspects were extradited to New York to stand trial. All three were sentenced to life in prison at a maximum-security facility in Colorado, and Bojinka was filed in the "win" column, even as Mohamed Atta and fellow Sept. 11 hijackers were hatching plans to enrol in flight schools around the United States. That no one seemed to notice the connection, says Cannistraro, is the great failure.

In 1998, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the first World Trade Center bombing, Dale Watson, the FBI's top expert on international terror, reported to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that "although we should not allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security ... I believe it is important to note that in the five years since the Trade Center bombing, no significant act of foreign-directed terrorism has occurred on American soil."

Three years later, Sept. 11, 2001, the suicide attacks coincided almost to the day, with another fifth anniversary: the 1996 conviction, in a Manhattan court, of Bojinka's original plotters.

'There certainly were enough precursors that should have led analysts to suspect the U.S could come under domestic attack. We knew about the pilots and suicide plots. Just didn't put two and two together.'

Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA official

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