Investigative Report: What They Knew; When They Knew It

Insight Magazine ^ | May 27, 2002 | Kenneth R. Timmerman

[xsysmgr]

Media Credit: Larry Downing/Reuters

Democrats Daschle and Gephardt complained about Bush but not Clinton. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) revealed U.S. Special Forces identified the al-Qaeda network and had a plan to wipe out the cells two years ago. But DoD brass shied from implementing the project. Weldon calls for investigating all early warnings.

A fountainhead of new clues to the Sept. 11 attacks and the far-flung international network that spawned them is becoming public, apparently fed by heavily partisan cries of a massive intelligence failure on the part of the Bush administration. Democrats on Capitol Hill, led by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), are demanding creation of a special investigation to determine possible Bush-administration misfeasance.

The alleged smoking gun was a July 10 memo from FBI Special Agent Kenneth Williams in Phoenix to FBI headquarters in Washington urging the bureau to launch a nationwide investigation after he had identified Middle Eastern men he believed might be tied to a terrorist group undergoing training at a local flight school. A congressional source who has seen the memo tells Insight: "This was as actionable a memo as could have been written by anyone." It required action.

But the FBI admitted last week that the Williams memo never made it past midlevel managers, who claimed they lacked the resources to implement the agent's far-reaching recommendations. It was not passed on to the National Security Council, the CIA or even top FBI officials. Robert Mueller, President George W. Bush's pick to succeed outgoing FBI Director Louis Freeh, had only taken the reins of the bureau a week before the attacks.

In fact, the White House now has revealed that its Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG), which brought together White House officials with those from all relevant federal agencies, began meeting several times a week within months after Bush took office and issued no fewer than five separate Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Information Circulars to alert private air carriers to various potential terrorist threats:

• On June 22, 2001, the FAA alerted carriers to a possible hijacking aimed at pressuring the government to free terrorists then sitting in U.S. jails.
  
  
• On July 2, the FAA warned of a possible attempt to place a bomb at a major airport terminal, based on the testimony of millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam. His plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport was foiled in December 1999 by an alert U.S. Customs official who arrested Ressam at the Canadian border as he tried to enter the United States (see "Canadian Border Open to Terrorists," Dec. 17, 2001).
  
  
• On July 18, the FAA issued a "general alert" urging all carriers to maintain a high degree of alertness, but disclaiming knowledge of any specific threat. At that time, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters in a televised briefing, "Contingency planning was done on how to deal with multiple, simultaneous attacks around the world," because that's where the intelligence suggested the attacks would occur, not in the United States. Buttressing that impression, Rice revealed that "the CIA ... managed through these intelligence activities and liaison activities to disrupt attacks in Paris, Turkey and Rome."
  
  
• On July 31, the FAA warned that intelligence reports suggested that known (but unnamed) terrorist groups were actively training to conduct hijacking operations.
  
  
• On Aug. 16, the FAA warned air carriers to be on the alert for passengers attempting to board with disguised weapons in support of a hijacking attempt. The concern, Rice said, was "that the terrorists had made breakthroughs in cell phones, key chains and pens as weapons."

Furthermore, we now know that when the president was given a detailed intelligence briefing on potential terrorist threats on Aug. 6, the analysts mentioned that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was believed to be considering a possible hijacking operation. Rice and other White House officials say the analysts ran through the scenario of a hijacking in which passengers would be held hostage to force the release of terrorist operatives and their "spiritual leader," blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was convicted in 1994 of plotting to blow up the Lincoln and Holland tunnels in New York City. Intelligence on the blind sheik's ties to bin Laden also was becoming more solid, law-enforcement sources tell Insight, making such a scenario all the more likely.

And yet, reporters and Democrats from House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri to Daschle and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York continued to claim there had been an intelligence failure and a lack of judgment on the part of the administration because "clear warnings" of suicide hijackings had gone unheeded.

Any such warnings, while fascinating in hindsight, were dismissed by U.S. and foreign-intelligence agencies as far-fetched and improbable. As Rice put it, "There was no time, there was no place, there was no method of attack" contained in any of the specific recent intelligence. "It simply said, 'These are people who train and seem to talk possibly about hijackings.' That you would have risked shutting down the American civil-aviation system with such generalized information — I think you would have had to think five, six, seven times about that very, very hard."

As a congressional source with access to the intelligence briefings tells Insight, anyone suggesting such a dramatic response to a nonspecific threat "would have been carted off in a straitjacket."

The raw data pouring into the system from local law enforcement, federal criminal investigations, overseas intelligence probes, satellite surveillance and communications intercepts in half a dozen foreign languages became an information overload, not an intelligence gold mine. "There was so much of it," noted one informed observer, "it was like trying to sip from a fire hose."

Nowhere has there been more tantalizing details of missed investigative leads than in the Philippines. In early January 1995, the Philippines police captured Abdul Hakim Murad after a fire in a Manila apartment he shared with wanted terrorist Ramzi Yousef —the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — attracted the attention of neighbors and local police.

Police also seized Yousef's laptop computer, which contained an encrypted address book and detailed plans of a plot to hijack 12 U.S. jetliners over the Pacific Ocean and crash them into U.S. airports. Yousef fled after the fire to Pakistan, where he was arrested in February 1995 by U.S. and Pakistani law-enforcement officials and flown back to this country to face trial.

The plot, known as "Project Bojinka" (bojinka is Serbo-Croat for "big bang"), was an elaborate scheme involving only a handful of bombers who were supposed to place explosives onboard the aircraft then change planes and do it again. On Yousef's white Toshiba laptop were delayed-timer settings for each flight, varying from 13 to 25 hours, depending on the flight time and destination. Prosecutors alleged that Yousef and his coconspirators, Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah, "would have killed 4,000 in planes flying to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and New York" had they succeeded.

Just two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Philippines Chief Police Superintendent Avelino Razon told reporters there was "too much coincidence" between Sept. 11 and Bojinka, especially since the attacks came just one week after the anniversary of Yousef's conviction for the Bojinka plot on Sept. 5, 1996.

But what caught Razon's attention — and has fired up "gotcha" journalists — was the fact that Bojinka included a second, much less publicized phase to hijack an airliner and crash it into a large U.S. government building, such as CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.

Insight has obtained copies of the original Philippines-police interrogation of Murad (a report code-named Blue Marlin) in which he detailed his own training as a pilot at more than a half-dozen U.S. flight schools, along with other Middle Eastern and Pakistani men. He began at the Alfa-Tango Flying School in San Antonio in 1990, then transferred to Richmore Aviation in Schenectady, N.Y., and subsequently to Coast Aviation Flying School in New Bern, N.C. Ultimately, he was certified by the FAA to fly small propeller aircraft.

As Murad's interrogation continued into February and early March 1995, he began telling police more about Project Bojinka. "With regards in [sic] their plan to dive-crash a commercial aircraft at the CIA headquarters in Virginia, subject alleged that the idea of doing more came out during his casual conversation with Abdul Basit [Yousef] and there is no specific plan yet for its execution," according to Blue Marlin. "What the subject have [sic] in his mind is that he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters. There will be no bomb or any explosive that he will use in its execution. It is simply a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute. That all he need is to be able to board the aircraft with a pistol so that he could execute the hijacking."

There in a nutshell was the Sept. 11 plot, laid out in detail in the Blue Marlin file fully seven years earlier.

So, was the U.S. intelligence community asleep? Not entirely. As Fox News and the Associated Press reported in March, FBI officials took Blue Marlin and ran with it, visiting each of the flight schools Murad had mentioned and interrogating all the Middle Eastern men he had named, "but did not find evidence that any Middle Easterners other than Murad were plotting anything. With no other evidence to go on, they took no further action," officials said.

The potential intelligence failure lies elsewhere. Once the Philippines police had finished with him at the end of March 1995, Murad was brought to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York to await trial on the Bojinka plot. A scant two weeks after his arrival in the United States, Murad was listening to the radio when a news report came on the air announcing that the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City had been bombed. Lt. Philip Rojas, a prison guard, asked Murad what he thought and found his response so startling that he informed his superiors. They, in turn, called the FBI.

Special Agents Francis J. Pellegrino and Brian G. Parr arrived later that morning, within hours after the Oklahoma City blast. "Murad responded to the guard's question by stating that the Liberation Army was responsible for the bombing," they reported in a witness report (No. 302). "A short time later, Murad passed a note to the guard, again claiming that the Liberation Army was responsible for the bombing in Oklahoma City."

What was the mysterious Liberation Army? A Philippines government agent, Edwin Angeles, who came in from the cold in 1995 and turned state's evidence against Yousef and the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group, told his police handlers that it was the "Palestine Liberation Army and/or the Islamic Jihad" (see "Iraqi Connection to Oklahoma Bombing," April 29). But in the Blue Marlin file Murad calls it a "fictitious organization" used as a code by Yousef and his terrorist colleagues "whenever they are making announcements" of responsibility for terrorist attacks.

In late 1994, Murad claimed that Yousef gave him a text he was to phone into the U.S. Embassy in Oman once the planned bombing in New York City was announced. "This is A1168 of the Liberation Army. We are claiming responsibility over the bombing of the underground railroad in New York," the text read, a reference to the plot to bomb the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, which led to the conviction of Sheik Omar.

Additional circumstantial evidence linking Yousef to the Oklahoma City bombing — which occurred two months after he was arrested in Pakistan and brought to the United States for trial — is beginning to emerge as well.

FBI forensic experts found that the huge Oklahoma City bomb, which was made from fertilizer and diesel fuel, was distinctive. In the FBI database that contains the profile and composition of some 73,000 explosions, they found only two other bombs of the same type. Both had been made by Yousef.

The first was the bomb that killed six people at the World Trade Center in February 1993. The second was discovered by police on March 11, 1994, after an aborted effort to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand.

Angeles and his widow both have stated that Yousef met in the Philippines with convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols prior to the bombing. In fact, Insight now has learned Yousef may have had additional contacts with Nichols after placing a bomb onboard Philippines Airline Flight 434 that killed a Japanese passenger on Dec. 11, 1994 — an attack federal prosecutors in Chicago are calling a "test run" for Project Bojinka. After placing the bomb, Yousef disembarked at Cebu City, where Terry Nichols then was residing.

Nichols had left an unusual sealed letter in the United States with his former wife before traveling to the Philippines (which he did regularly), to be opened in the event of his death. Investigators working with Oklahoma City attorney Mike Johnston, who is suing the government of Iraq for alleged involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing, believe Yousef had recruited Nichols to take part in the Bojinka plot. Once Yousef fled the Philippines after setting fire to his apartment while mixing explosives, Nichols broke his excursion ticket and booked a one-way return flight to the United States on Jan. 17, 1995.

Federal prosecutors in Chicago have tied Yousef to al-Qaeda through his contacts with bin Laden's brother-in-law, Mohammad Khalifa. In an affidavit filed with federal Magistrate Ian Levin in the Eastern District of Illinois on April 29, the FBI links Khalifa, Yousef and the Bojinka plot to a series of U.S.-based Islamic charities tied to the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), whose premises were raided and whose assets were seized by federal authorities in April.

As prosecutors trace these links further, they are stumbling onto a web of U.S.-based Islamic "charities" that not only raised money for bin Laden and his terrorist operations, but have provided money to terrorist activities in the West Bank, Gaza, Israel, Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere (see "Documents Detail Saudi Terror Links," June 10).

Steve Pomerantz, a former assistant FBI director who retired in 1995, tells Insight that terrorist sympathizers hiding behind a veil of "civil liberties" severely have hampered the ability of law enforcement to investigate Muslim charities and others suspected of operating as front groups for terrorist organizations. "An aura of extreme caution has influenced the FBI in recent years in the collection of intelligence for fear of being accused of bigotry and violating people's legitimate rights," says Pomerantz. "These foreign-born organizations have covered themselves in a mantle of religion and legitimate civil rights. And they have gained significant political support."

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight magazine.

[codebreaker]

The problem is once this FBI forensics stuff goes public at Dan Burtons hearings in Congress, (regarding the OKC connection that he has 5 investigators on right now) the Iraq situation will probably go red hot.

Because you can't go to the Al Qaeda link with Nichols in the Phillipines without mentioning that McVeigh had a 'black book' with Iraqi telephone numbers in it when he was arrested, and the second car caught on tape by the trooper waiting for McVeigh on the traffic stop when he lost his license plate.

Then you start bringing up questions that no one wants answered, except possibly Dan Burton.

[Mia T]

Clinton's Failure to Confront Iraq

Allan J. Favish

 

 

Iraqi Complicity in the World Trade Center Bombing and

Beyond by Laurie Mylroie, which was published in June of this year and discusses the 1993 bombing of the WTC.

 

She explains how Bill Clinton intentionally failed to confront Iraq over its complicity in the bombing and other attacks.

 

She supported Clinton in 1992 having been an advisor on Iraq policy to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign, as you can see at

http://admissions.geneseo.edu/cgi-bin/nrap?Roemer98.html

 

Her September 13, 2001 article in the Wall Street Journal on the recent attack is at

http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=95001120

 

In a live interview on Los Angeles radio station KPFK, broadcast around noon today, PST, she stated that Clinton lied about more than sex; he lied about national security.

 

I wish somebody would ask her about whether she thinks the Clinton administration covered up Iraqi involvement in the murder of those aboard TWA 800 and ordered the military not to pursue the attackers.

 

 

 

Bill Clinton may not be the worst president America has had, but surely he is the worst person to be president.*

---GEORGE WILL, Sleaze, the sequel

 

^{Q ERTY6}

Had George Will written Sleaze, the sequel (the "sequel" is, of course, hillary) after 9-11-01, I suspect that he would have had to forgo the above conceit, as the doubt expressed in the setup phrase was, from that day forward, no longer operational. 

clinton-was-an- utter-failure

REALITY-CHECK bump!

Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history

Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize

 

 

Bill Clinton may not be the worst president America has had, but surely he is the worst person to be president.*

---GEORGE WILL, Sleaze, the sequel

 

Had George Will written Sleaze, the sequel (the "sequel" is, of course, hillary) after 9-11-01, I suspect that he would have had to forgo the above conceit, as the doubt expressed in the setup phrase was, from that day forward, no longer operational.

Indeed, assessing the clinton presidency an abject failure is not inconsistent with commentary coming from the left, most recently the LA Times: "Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize."

When the clintons left office, I predicted that the country would eventually learn--sadly, the hard way--that this depraved, self-absorbed and inept pair had placed America (and the world) in mortal danger. But I was thinking years, not months.

It is very significant that hillary clinton didn't deny clinton culpability for the terrorism. (Meet the Press, 12-09-01), notwithstanding tired tactics (if you can't pass the buck, spread the blame) and chronic "KnowNothing Victim Clinton" self-exclusion.

If leftist pandering keeps the disenfranchized down in perpetuity, clinton pandering,("it's the economy, stupid"), kept the middle and upper classes wilfully ignorant for eight years.

And ironically, both results (leftist social policy and the clinton economy) are equally illusory, fraudulent. It is becoming increasingly clear that clinton assiduously avoided essential actions that would have negatively impacted the economy--the ultimate source of his continued power--actions like, say, going after the terrorists.

It is critically important that hillary clinton fail in her grasp for power; read Peggy Noonan's little book, 'The Case Against Hillary Clinton' and Barbara Olson's two books; it is critical that the West de-clintonize, but that will be automatic once it is understood that the clintons risked civilization itself in order to gain and retain power.

It shouldn't take books, however, to see that a leader is a dangerous, self-absorbed sicko. People should be able to figure that out for themselves. The electorate must be taught to think, to reason. It must be able to spot spin, especially in this age of the electronic demagogue.

I am not hopeful. As Bertrand Russell noted, "Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. "

Mia T, hillary clinton blames hubby for terrorism

(SHE knew nuttin')

Meet the Press, 12-09-01

 

 

*George Will continues: There is reason to believe that he is a rapist ("You better get some ice on that," Juanita Broaddrick says he told her concerning her bit lip), and that he bombed a country to distract attention from legal difficulties arising from his glandular life, and that. ... Furthermore, the bargain that he and his wife call a marriage refutes the axiom that opposites attract. Rather, she, as much as he, perhaps even more so, incarnates Clintonism

Q ERTY3 co-rapist  bump!

[codebreaker]

I think you nailed it, the theory is now that OKC was payback for the Gulf War (after McVeigh was found with the Iraqi phone numbers) and Al Qaeda and Saddam did a double team and found 2 'patsies' Nichols and McVeigh with anti- government leanings to do the job.

Couple that with the tape of the 2nd car pulled over at the scene as McVeigh was arrested that came up missing. (John Doe #2 who according to reports went east to get a job at Boston's Airport and set up meetings with the 9/11 conspirators in the same OKC motel room as before)

The same could go for the WTC Towers collapse with the Prague meetings by Atta with the Iraq source,

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

With Dashole well in front of the other two, the low camera angle puts the top of his head higher in the image than the top of the heads of the other two.

Yep, it's a common technique. That's why so many people think that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone are 6'6".

[The Great Satan]

I don't believe Mylroie has ever endorsed the notion of an Iraqi link to OKC. She has argued since the mid nineties that Saddam was behind the original, 1993 attempt to topple the WTC. I'm not ruling out a link to OKC, but I'm going to wait for somebody more credible than Newsmax to make the case.

[reagan_fanatic]

"Remember the Ashcroft "cover up the statue's bare breasts" story that turned out to be completely false,
a planted lie by the treasurer of the DNC? Press photographers routinely laid on the floor and contorted
themselves in order to get shots of Ashcroft speaking with the breasts perfectly positioned behind his head.
They also did this during the Ed Meese days.

But good luck finding a single example of such a photo from the Janet Reno era.

No, you would have seen Reno with her back to the cameras slobbering all over the statue...

[glorygirl]

Fyi, btt, and can we get this thread indexed? Thanks.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[glorygirl]

Thanks again.

[BlackVeil]

'Remember the Ashcroft "cover up the statue's bare breasts" story that turned out to be completely false, a planted lie'. I did not know that story had been shown to be a lie, but I am not surprised. It had a contrived note to it. Such a lot of the stuff which is pushed at us is pure invention.

[dalebert]

A congressional source who has seen the memo? Leaker?

[goody2shooz]

The Democrats make up their scripts as they go along. Since they're liars it doesn't much matter what they say.

The press, with its liberal bias, will get sucked in and spin accusations that are so blistering the Bush administration will be too busy dealing with all the lies flung at it to run the country.

[CyberAnt]

And ... what about all the Marines that were killed, and the USS Cole. I think the Clintons have a lot to answer for.

[CyberAnt]

And ... I agree with the President's assessment that it would be a circus.

But ... people must understand - most of this is just a get even scheme from the dems. They have never gotten over impeachment. Even though they know we were right, they are still holding a grudge.

Winning big for the repubs in November is crucial!!

[glorygirl]

Judge for yourself.

Here is a link to an AP story that includes quotes from a DOJ spokesman. He says Ashcroft had no role in the "decision" to purchase the drapes, but does not deny Ashcroft was bothered by them.

[Mitchell]

Thanks for the ping.

what do you think of this?

I think that the Democrats' motivation (for their recent criticism of Pres. Bush) is shamelessly political, and that Pres. Bush did everything that could have been done prior to 9/11. But this line of attack is unwittingly opening up things that go back farther, apparently to the FBI under the Clinton administration. (Is it possible that the FBI has been infiltrated?)

[Mitchell]

Here's something I've mentioned before, but it is especially appropriate here, in relation to the possible link between Iraq and the Oklahoma City bombing.

When Timothy McVeigh was given the chance to write an essay from prison, he chose to write about the unfairness of U.S. policy toward Iraq. I'll include the text of McVeigh's essay below. Look how he starts the whole thing. Why is this what he wrote about? He didn't expound on Waco, or the income tax, or 2nd amendment rights, or any of the sorts of things one would expect a "right-wing militia-type" to write about. He wrote instead about Iraq, biological weapons, etc. Why?

Here is McVeigh's essay, written in March, 1998, and published in Media Bypass magazine, in June, 1998. I'd really like to know why this is the one thing he felt compelled to write about from his prison cell.

ESSAY BY TIMOTHY MCVEIGH

The administration has said that Iraq has no right to stockpile chemical or biological weapons ("weapons of mass destruction") - mainly because they have used them in the past. Well, if that's the standard by which these matters are decided, then the U.S. is the nation that set the precedent. The U.S . has stockpiled these same weapons (and more) for over 40 years. The U.S. claim s that this was done for deterrent purposes during its "Cold War" with the Soviet Union. Why, then, is it invalid for Iraq to claim the same reason (deterrence) - with respect to Iraq's (real) war with, and the continued threat of , its neighbor Iran?

The administration claims that Iraq has used these weapons in the past. We've all seen the pictures that show a Kurdish woman and child frozen in death from the use of chemical weapons. But, have you ever seen these photos juxtaposed next to pictures from Hiroshima or Nagasaki? I suggest that one study the histories of World War I, World War II and other "regional conflicts" that the U.S. has been involved in to familiarize themselves with the use of "weapons of mass destruction." Remember Dresden? How about Hanoi? Tripoli? Baghdad? What about the big ones - Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (At these two locations, the U.S. killed at least 150,000 non-combatants - mostly women and children - in the blink of an eye. Thousands more took hours, days, weeks, or months to die.)

If Saddam is such a demon, and people are calling for war crimes charges against him and his nation, whey do we not hear the same cry for blood directed at those responsible for even greater amounts of "mass destruction" - like those responsible and involved in dropping bombs on the cities mentioned above? The truth is, the U.S. has set the standard when it comes to the stockpiling and use of weapons of mass destruction. Hypocrisy when it comes to the death of children?

In Oklahoma City, it was family convenience that explained the presence of a day-care center placed between street level and the law enforcement agencies which occupied the upper floors of the building. Yet when discussion shifts to Iraq, any day-care center in a government building instantly becomes "a shield." Think about that. (Actually, there is a difference here. The administration has admitted to knowledge of the presence of children in or near Iraqi government buildings, yet they still proceed with their plans to bomb - saying that they cannot be held responsible if children die. There is no such proof, however, that knowledge of the presence of children existed in relation to the Oklahoma City bombing.)

When considering morality and "mens rea" (criminal intent) in light of these facts, I ask: Who are the true barbarians? Yet another example of this nation's blatant hypocrisy is revealed by the polls which suggest that this nation is greatly in favor of bombing Iraq. In this instance, the people of the nation approve of bombing government employees because they are "guilty by association" - they are Iraqi government employees. In regard to the bombing in Oklahoma City, however, such logic is condemned. What motivates these seemingly contradictory positions? Do people think that government workers in Iraq are any less human than those in Oklahoma City? Do they think that Iraqis don't have families who will grieve and mourn the loss of their loved ones? In this context, do people come to believe that the killing of foreigners is somehow different than the killing of Americans?

I recently read of an arrest in New York City where possession of a mere pipe bomb was charged as possession of a "weapon of mass destruction." If a two-pound pipe bomb is a "weapon of mass destruction," then what do people think that a 2,000-pound steel-encased bomb is? I find it ironic, to say the least, that one of the aircraft that could be used to drop such a bomb on Iraq is dubbed "The Spirit of Oklahoma." This leads me to a final, and unspoken, moral hypocrisy regarding the use of weapons of mass destruction. When a U.S. plane or cruise missile is used to bring destruction to a foreign people, this nation rewards the bombers with applause and praise. What a convenient way to absolve these killers of any responsibility for the destruction they leave in their wake. Unfortunately, the morality of killing is not so superficial. The truth is, the use of a truck, a plane, or a missile for the delivery of a weapon of mass destruction does not alter the nature of the act itself. These are weapons of mass destruction - and the method of delivery matters little to those on the receiving end of such weapons.

Whether you wish to admit it or not, when you approve, morally, of the bombing of foreign targets by the U.S. military, you are approving of acts morally equivalent to the bombing in Oklahoma City. The only difference is that this nation is not going to see any foreign casualties appear on the cover of Newsweek magazine. It seems ironic and hypocritical that an act as viciously condemned in Oklahoma City is now a "justified" response to a problem in a foreign land. Then again, the history of United States policy over the last century, when examined fully, tends to exemplify hypocrisy.

When considering the use of weapons of mass destruction against Iraq as a means to an end, it would be wise to reflect on the words of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. His words are as true in the context of Olmstead as they are when they stand alone: "Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example."

Sincerely, Timothy J. McVeigh

[philman_36]

...it has now been shown that the Islamic terrorists have access to other blue eyed recruits. Johhny Walker comes to mind.
Another line of BS from you!
It has been known, not now been shown, that the Islamic terrorists have access to other blue eyed recruits.
You still don't know what you're talking about and you prove it even further with stupid statements like the one you just made!
Do you wish a link to an article showing just how "full of it" you are? I'll gladly provide one.

There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue eyed blonds to black skin Africans. But we were all participating in the same rituals, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had lead me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white.
Note the time, place, receiver and sender!
"The following letter was sent from Malcolm to his assistants, new Muslim Mosque, press and his wife, during the conclusion of his pilgrimage to Mecca. The content is reproduced from The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley".

You're stinking up the place!

[The Great Satan]

That is indeed suspicious, and one reason why I'm certainly not discounting a link, although I still find it a stretch.