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Alhussaini's alibi discredited
Confident that John Doe 2 had been eliminated from the cross hairs of the FBI in June of 1995, Alhussaini contacted local reporters claiming to be a victim of false accusation by KFOR. A sympathetic press touted his tale of persecution and relayed his public plea for federal authorities to officially clear him of suspicion, but the FBI refused.
After watching Alhussaini on the competing television stations, I asked his interpreter if he would be willing to publicly explain discrepancies concerning his alibi, but as before, my requests for an interview were ignored. By that time, I had already obtained a hidden camera interview with the company secretary where Hussain Alhussaini worked who claimed she fabricated a handwritten time sheet to give to the press because she could not find his machine-stamped time card for April 19. More importantly, taped interviews with key witnesses proved conclusively that Alhussaini was not on the job site during the critical hours of April 19.
An investigative dossier implicating Alhussaini and his Middle Eastern cohorts
From that point onward, the investigation moved at a breathless pace. During the months that followed, I interviewed nearly eighty potential witnesses, but I deemed only two dozen to be credible because the veracity of their testimonies could be independently corroborated, and their stories did not conflict with the government's timeline of the movements of the Oklahoma City bombers.
Screening the authentic witnesses from the overzealous ones who were seeking publicity, those who were sincere but sincerely wrong, and those whose testimony could not be verified through independent sources, was an arduous and exhausting undertaking. However, eventually the heart-wrenching truth of April 19 came into sharp focus through the convincing testimony of a cadre of average Oklahomans. All confidently identified eight specific Middle Eastern men, the majority of whom are former Iraqi soldiers, collaborating with McVeigh and Nichols during various stages of the bombing plot.
Many of the witnesses were strangers to one another, yet critical details of their stories overlapped with inexplicable accuracy. They recounted the final deadly moments as the clock ticked closer to 9:02 AM. Their statements are contained in more than twenty affidavits which are corroborated by more than a dozen tape-recorded interviews with the suspects' relatives, law enforcement officials, and intelligence sources, coupled with hundreds of pages of police records, court documents, press accounts, law enforcement statements, and classified intelligence reports.
Here is an abbreviated glimpse of the 1995 bombing through the eyes of unsuspecting bystanders who found themselves witnesses to various stages of an Islamic terrorist plot to murder more Americans in a single explosion than the total number of U.S. soldiers who died on the battlefields of the Persian Gulf War. Several of their names have been withheld due to security concerns.
A patron and a bartender at an Oklahoma City tavern both placed McVeigh in the company of Khalil's Iraqi employee, Hussain Hashem Alhussaini, drinking beer in the establishment the evening of April 15. The bartender recalled the man, whom she identified from a KFOR-TV photo line-up, asked if she was married. "He spoke with an accent, a Middle Eastern accent," the witness recalled. The FBI reportedly interviewed the tavern employee and showed her photos and sketches of possible suspects. But her statement was never disclosed to the bombing defendants' legal teams.
An Oklahoma City gas station attendant fingered Hussain Alhussaini as the customer who paid $100 dollars cash for diesel fuel on April 18, 1995. The witness recounted how Alhussaini disappeared from his view behind the rear carriage of a large Ryder truck while pumping the gas. Most notable was the fact that the foreign looking customer was driving a truck that required unleaded fuel only.
Shortly before daybreak on April 19, three joggers stopped to discuss their curiosity about a Middle Eastern man wearing blue jeans and a backpack running at a breathless pace from the Murrah Building one block east to the intersections of 5th and Broadway Streets. The group noticed the man glancing at his wristwatch as though he were timing his pace. Two of the joggers independently pegged Alhussaini from a photo lineup as the peculiar foreigner they encountered before morning light dawned over Oklahoma City that fateful day.
Mike Moroz, a worker at Johnny's Tire Service, located at 10th and Hudson Streets, said that about 8:30 a.m. on the morning of the bombing, McVeigh pulled up in a Ryder truck. Moroz walked out to the large moving van because it appeared it might strike an aluminum roof on the business parking lot. When Moroz approached the cab, the driver asked for directions to the federal building. The witness observed a second individual with McVeigh sitting in the cab of the Ryder truck. Moroz remembered the stocky, dark-haired man sat quietly, staring straight forward, never glancing his direction as he spoke to McVeigh through the driver's side window. Moroz named Alhussaini as McVeigh's "Middle Eastern" looking passenger after examining Channel 4's surveillance photographs.
I later examined FBI documents that validated Moroz's claim that he picked McVeigh from a live lineup of similar looking soldiers from Fort Sill on April 22, 1995, without the benefit of having viewed the prime suspect as law enforcement escorted him from the Perry, Oklahoma jail. The FBI quoted Moroz' positive identification of McVeigh in downtown Oklahoma City during the prime suspect's detention hearing on April 27, 1995.
At 8:45 a.m., a man named "Leroy" was sitting in his pickup outside the post office located just one block west of the Murrah Building. He observed a yellow Ryder truck parked across the street. Two men, one of whom he identified as McVeigh, were conversing together behind the truck. Leroy recalled a third man who resembled the profile sketch of John Doe 2 sat motionless in the truck cab. He noticed a yellow Mercury Marquis parked several spaces in front of the truck. He then entered the Post Office, emerging five minutes later to find the Ryder truck was parked in front of the federal building and McVeigh was crossing 5th Street.
An employee who worked in the office building directly north of the federal complex, "Gary", walked outside for his morning work break. He observed a yellow Mercury Marquis parked in the lot adjacent to 5th Street. Minutes later, the witness was startled by the Marquis speeding directly toward him. Suddenly, the driver turned east and shot up the alley. Gary said the man behind the wheel was Timothy McVeigh, noting that he was not alone. He observed a dark-haired passenger donning a ball cap sitting in the front seat.
For more than a week following the bombing, the FBI stated at press conferences its belief that McVeigh dropped off his mysterious passenger at an unknown location between downtown Oklahoma City and Perry, Oklahoma, where the American terrorist was arrested the morning of April 19. Around 10:30 a.m., an Oklahoma Highway patrolman stopped him for driving without a license plate.
A customer at the Social Security office on the north side of the Murrah Building, who was critically wounded in the blast, was standing twelve feet away when the Ryder truck pulled up. She observed a "foreign looking man with an olive complexion and thick black curly hair poking out of a ball cap" exit the passenger side of the truck. According to FBI records, she shared her testimony with federal agents from her hospital bed, including her description of the insignia on John Doe 2's ball cap. After reviewing KFOR's photo spread, the witness positively identified Alhussaini as the man she observed getting out of the explosives-laden truck as he made a swift getaway from ground zero.
At 9:03 a.m., a woman named Kay was nearly run over by a brown Chevrolet pickup which matched the getaway vehicle sought by the FBI. She could not escape the disturbing mental image of the driver's menacing, angry stare as the truck careened around the corner, coming dangerously close to where she was stepping off the curb. A few blocks north, thick black plumes of smoke and fire billowed from the Murrah Building, mesmerizing motorists and pedestrians. Traffic had come to a standstill. Only one vehicle was moving, a brown pickup. As it whizzed within six feet of Kay, she locked eyes with the driver. She picked Alhussaini's photograph from a series of pictures which featured several Middle Eastern men, confidently proclaiming she would testify before a federal grand jury he was the same individual she saw speeding away from downtown seconds after the blast.
Kay told the FBI about her encounter, but her statement was never turned over to McVeigh's and Nichols' defense teams before trial. In March 2001, Kay testified at the preliminary hearing for Nichols' state murder trial as one of several witnesses whose statements were allegedly withheld by the FBI.
The most profound discovery of this investigation came when I found myself standing on the staging ground where, according to several witnesses, McVeigh and his Middle Eastern conspirators used an obscure, low rent motel for not-so-clandestine encounters in order to collaborate in their hellish scheme. The motel was conveniently situated off a major interstate with easy access to downtown. Residents and staff recounted numerous sightings of Alhussaini and his Arab confederates with McVeigh, and during a few rare instances Nichols, on the motel grounds in the months, weeks, days, and hours leading up to the terrorist strike on America's heartland.
The most intriguing testimony involved a close encounter with a large Ryder truck which emanated a pungent stench of diesel fuel. The malodorous moving van was parked on the west side of the motel the morning of April 19. The motel owner instructed the maintenance man to inspect the vehicle to determine the source of what they suspected was a fuel leak. Surprisingly, the gas cap was marked "Unleaded Fuel Only."
A few minutes later, at approximately 7:50 a.m., the owner stood behind the desk of the office as the same Ryder truck pulled up and McVeigh stepped out to return the room key. A Middle Eastern man, whom the witness identified as Alhussaini, climbed into the passenger seat of the truck and flashed an angry stare at the motel owner. Shortly thereafter, the maintenance man, manager, and owner observed the Ryder truck exit the property trailed by a caravan of vehicles that included McVeigh's Mercury Marquis and a brown Chevy Blazer. The motel witnesses testified they recognized Alhussaini's Iraqi associates as the occupants of those vehicles. The truck was dusted for fingerprints. The findings remain undisclosed.
According to an FBI report, an Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agent confiscated the motel's registration logs for several months preceding the blast and turned them over to the Bureau. To this day, the United States Department of Justice has been unwilling to return the original registration logs for the motel where five witnesses testified McVeigh collaborated with Middle Eastern men. After two federal trials and the most exhaustive criminal investigation of the 20th Century, which included 700 field agents, the FBI has failed to produce confirmation of McVeigh's whereabouts for the night of April 18 or the early morning hours of April 19.
...
Published: March 23, 2002
The Indianapolis Star
Though the U.S. government clings to the notion that Timothy McVeigh, acting alone, set off the horrendous explosion on April 19, 1995, that pancaked the nine-story Oklahoma City federal building, a former high-ranking CIA official says there's solid evidence to indicate he worked with an Iraqi John Doe No. 2.
Larry Johnson, former CIA officer and deputy director of the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism, told a network news show this week the FBI had failed to properly investigate significant eyewitness accounts of McVeigh meeting with the man believed to be a former Iraqi soldier.
Johnson made those comments on The Big Story with John Gibson, a Fox news program airing nightly at 5 p.m., which delved into an extensive dossier on the case compiled by former Oklahoma TV reporter Jayna Davis. The program aired just days after a lawsuit filed by the watchdog organization Judicial Watch that alleges Iraqi involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing and seeks compensation for victims from frozen Iraqi assets.
Davis, who reported from Ground Zero in Oklahoma City for NBC-affiliate KFOR, broadcast a series suggesting a possible accomplice to the bombing who had been seen with McVeigh on the days leading up to and the day of the bombing. Gibson unabashedly reported Davis' work to a national TV audience on three consecutive days this week.
On Monday, Gibson relayed that Davis' evidence is based "on the simple proposition that Tim McVeigh's John Doe 2 was an Iraqi, a former Iraqi soldier from the Gulf War, paroled into the U.S. under a claim of political asylum, known to be in Oklahoma City as of November of '94 almost a year before the Murrah bombing, spotted with McVeigh by multiple witnesses, and who in recent years was working at (Boston) Logan airport," where the Sept. 11 hijackings originated.
On Tuesday, Gibson posed the question to Johnson about a possible link between Iraq and Oklahoma City.
"I think this woman (Davis) has done a remarkable job of finding a link that was overlooked," Johnson said. Johnson also commented on a Justice Department review of the thousands of documents that resurfaced or were destroyed, delaying McVeigh's execution for a month.
"The FBI . . ., they still have not turned over all of the documents to the defense teams that came out of Oklahoma," he said. "In particular, the information that links, shows possible links to Middle Eastern subjects."
KFOR's reports distorted the face of one of those suspects and did not name him. However, on his own volition, a former Iraqi soldier who claims he surrendered to the U.S. in the Gulf War and who was brought to the United States from a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, stepped forward and identified himself to two other Oklahoma City TV stations and The Associated Press as the man that KFOR had implicated as John Doe No. 2.
Hussain Hashem Alhussaini sued KFOR and Davis for defamation, saying the reports falsely identified him as John Doe No. 2. But a U.S. District Court disagreed. In ruling for KFOR, U.S. District Judge Timothy Leonard found in November 1999 that the station had taken extraordinary measures to hide Alhussaini's identity.
Leonard added that KFOR's reports were either "based on fact or a matter of opinion," and not negligence or reckless disregard for the truth. Alhussaini, who went to work at Boston's Logan International Airport after leaving Oklahoma City, continues to deny any involvement in the bombing. Former CIA Agent Johnson is unconvinced.
"I compared it to all the human intelligence I've looked at," he said. "And comparing it to classified material, this is not from just one witness, this is not from two witnesses; you're talking 23 people, you're talking at least 10 people who put Tim McVeigh with Hussain Alhussaini before the Oklahoma City bombing.
"Two people who identified Hussain Alhussaini and Tim McVeigh in a bar on April 15; three people who identified Hussain Alhussaini running from the federal building early in the morning at 5:30 as if he is practicing timing himself. You have two witnesses that put Tim McVeigh with Hussain Alhussaini in the Ryder truck; you have one witness inside the Murrah Building who sees Hussain Alhussaini eating out of the truck . . .
"The point is the FBI has not thoroughly, fully investigated this. It is an outrage. I went along for many years thinking they have covered the bases. They have not, John."
You can't say Davis didn't try. She tried to give the witness statements to the FBI in the fall of '97, but it wouldn't take them.
Patterson is a Star editorial writer. Contact him at 1-317-444-6174 or by e-mail at james.patterson@indystar.com
The New Jersey Star-Ledger
Date: 1995/03/22 Wednesday
Page: Section: NEWS Edition:
LAWMEN GET WARNING OF PLOT ON U.S. TARGETS
ROBERT RUDOLPH
U.S. law enforcement authorities have obtained information that Islamic terrorists may be planning suicide attacks against federal courthouses and government installations in the United States.
The attacks, it is feared, would be designed to attract worldwide press attention through the murder of innocent victims.
The Star-Ledger has learned that U.S. law enforcement officials have received a warning that a ''fatwa,'' a religious ruling similar to the death sentence targeting author Salman Rushdie, has been issued against federal authorities as a result of an incident during the trial last year of four persons in the bombing on the World Trade Center in New York.
The disclosure was made in a confidential memorandum issued by the U.S. Marshals Service in Washington calling for stepped-up security at federal facilities throughout the nation.
The ''fatwa'' was allegedly sanctioned by an unidentified Islamic Iman, or holy man, in retaliation for what was perceived as a religious ''insult'' against Islamic fundamentalists by federal law enforcement officers. According to the memo, the information about the threat was obtained from an unidentified ''informed source'' who said the death sentence was specifically directed against U.S. Marshals Service personnel.
The informant reported that the threat was issued because deputy U.S. Marshals allegedly ''insulted'' Islam ''by stepping on a copy of the Koran,'' the Islamic holy book, during a scuffle with several prisoners convicted in the World Trade Center bombing.
The Marshals Service memo said the agency believes that ''there is sufficient threat potential to request that a heightened level of security awareness and caution be implemented at all Marshals Service-protected facilities nationwide.''
Government sources say authorities in New Jersey are taking the danger seriously and have increased security at key federal facilities in the state, including all federal courthouses.
The memo, issued by Eduardo Gonzalez, director of the U.S. Marshals Service, warns that attacks may be designed to ''target as many victims as possible and draw as much media coverage as possible'' to the fundamentalist cause
No. 131, production of the memorandum warning identified in the New Jersey Star Ledger. The Government's response was it will submit in camera, and I don't know whether they have done that or not. That is one that is still to be resolved.
MS. WILKINSON: Your Honor, we need to discuss that, I believe. I, I think, disclosed the basic material that's in that threat; that it was specific to the conviction of the sheik in New York and the other -- his co-conspirators and that any information tending to indicate there was any threat said Washington, D.C. could be the -- would be the target.
THE COURT: Well, is this a marshal service communication that was sent to like chief judges? Or is this something different?
MS. WILKINSON: It's addressed -- can I get my copy?
THE COURT: You may. I don't think you've submitted it in camera.
MS. WILKINSON: No, I haven't.
THE COURT: Maybe we won't have to.
MS. WILKINSON: It is addressed to all the marshals across the country, your Honor, and it says at the bottom, This information should not be disclosed outside the marshal service and the court family. I believe that's their normal warning where it goes down through the marshal's service to the chief judge. Obviously, you're in a better position to know whether that's the procedure than I am, but --
THE COURT: Sometimes chief judges are in the court family. I --
MS. WILKINSON: It's my understanding that's how it works and that, often, it is also disseminated to local law enforcement, as I said yesterday.
MR. JONES: Well, your Honor, we asked for production of that under protective order to the defense. That memorandum was sent out within 30 days before the Oklahoma City bombing. It describes a threat to federal property. Talks about --
THE COURT: Well, why don't you go ahead with your plan to submit it to me and I'll decide it.
MS. WILKINSON: Sure.
MR. JONES: That's fair.
..........................................................
THE COURT: I'll -- my ruling is that the request is overbroad, just as the Government has responded.
137, list of ATF employees absent from the Murrah Building on April 19, 1995, before 9:00 a.m. The Government's response was it does not negate guilt or mitigation, but in a response the Government filed Friday, it addressed that issue.
And the Government's response resolves the issue, although we dispute that the resident agent fell eight floors in the elevator. We don't believe that's true.
But that -- nevertheless, he was in the building which is what the request --
THE COURT: That's the only thing that's relevant.
MR. JONES: 139, evidence of prior warning referenced in the Oregonian - - that's been resolved by the Government's announcement of the submission for 131 and the two letters concerning threats which previously have been furnished. The Government represents that's all it has.
MS. WILKINSON: Excuse me, your Honor, just to correct that. To be clear, we have made those two disclosures of threats, but we continue to review our files and obviously, if we discover other threats or new information comes, we'll continue to disclose that. I just wanted to make that clear that we're continuing with our obligations.
THE COURT: All right.
MR. JONES: One thing we do not have is a 302 of any interview with Judge Alley so I assume there wasn't one.
THE COURT: You don't have a 302?
MR. JONES: Correct.
THE COURT: Was --
MR. JONES: I don't know that he was interviewed.
THE COURT: Was the judge interviewed by an FBI agent and a 302 produced?
MS. WILKINSON: I don't know, your Honor. I have to go back to the index. I assume Mr. Jones has looked at the index, and if he says he didn't receive the - -
THE COURT: This is all about something that appeared in a newspaper?
MS. WILKINSON: Yes, Judge. What it is, it's the same story, I believe, as I told you this threat was -- the threat warning from the marshal service on March 15 was given to the -- the court family; and I believe after the bombing, Judge Alley made mention of the fact that he had received a general warning, you know, prior to the bombing.
MR. JONES: Well, I don't know that they are the same.
THE COURT: I see. But I mean, this is generated by the fact that there was some -- something in this newspaper in Oregon?
MR. JONES: He was interviewed by the Oregonian on the day of the bombing. He grew up in Oregon, and they called him because of the connection.
THE COURT: I see.
MS. WILKINSON: Your Honor, could I ask if Mr. Jones has interviewed Judge Alley?
THE COURT: Do you want to answer that, Mr. Jones?
MR. JONES: Well, if you'll consult your index of people I've interviewed, no, I haven't interviewed Judge Alley. He's interviewed me on a few occasions.
173 and 174 --
THE COURT: Well, have we left that open here? I'm not sure what the resolution of this has been. You don't have an interview report of anybody interviewing Judge Alley about this public statement? Is that the response?
MS. WILKINSON: I don't believe we do, your Honor, but I'd have to go back and check our index. As I said, we're working from the same index that we provided to Mr. Jones.
THE COURT: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure Judge Alley is equally available to the defense counsel as he is to the Government's counsel.
MS. WILKINSON: That was my point.
THE COURT: Yes. Well, I'll make it explicitly for you.
MS. WILKINSON: Thank you.
The one thing I don't understand about all this -- if Al Qaeda and/or Iraq are behind the OKC bombing, how could GW Bush NOT know this by now? And if he knows it, why hasn't he told us? What the heck is he waiting for??
Seattle terror cell & Jafar a.k.a. "Jeff" Siddiqui bump.
Cheers,
knews hound