Weeks Before 1995 Oklahoma Bombing, Government Warned of Possible Terror Attacks

WASHINGTON (AP) - Just weeks before Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, U.S. authorities received several warnings that Islamic terrorists were seeking to strike on American soil and that a likely target was government buildings, documents show.

The information, though it was never linked to McVeigh, was stark enough that the Clinton administration urged stepped-up security patrols and screening at federal buildings nationwide, including those in Oklahoma.

The government, however, didn't fortify buildings with concrete barriers like those hurriedly installed after McVeigh detonated his explosive-laden truck at the curb of the Murrah building on April 19, 1995, officials said.

Islamic extremists are determined to "strike inside the U.S. against objects symbolizing the American government in the near future," said one warning obtained by The Associated Press.

McVeigh's former trial attorney decried the disclosure Thursday, and accused the government of a cover-up.

"We specifically asked on the record for all evidence, documents and tangible objects to show whether the government had received a warning of acts of terror against federal buildings. We didn't receive this," attorney Stephen Jones said.

Some survivors and relatives of victims said they still don't think the intelligence would have led to McVeigh because it pointed to Islamic extremists.

"What bothers me is that people say the government was warned, but there was nothing specific. How can you lock down all federal buildings?" asked Dan McKinney, whose wife, a Secret Service employee, and niece perished in the attack.

The intelligence that prompted the warnings was gathered across the globe from Iran and Syria to the Philippines and became more specific as to the potential type attack (suicide bombing), target (government building) and likely date (after the third week in March 1995), the documents show.

The U.S. Marshals Service issued an alert on March 15, 1995, to federal courthouses it protects, including the one in Oklahoma City across the street from where McVeigh's truck bomb killed 168 people, the documents show.

"Iranian extremists want it made clear that steps are being taken to strike at the Great Satan," a term used frequently in the Mideast to describe the United States, the marshals memo said. It said a fatwa - a religious order - had been issued to attack marshals or their buildings.

"There is sufficient threat potential to request that a heightened level of security awareness and caution be implemented," the memo added.

Separately, the General Services Administration received a warning from the FBI and asked hundreds of federal buildings it operates to increase security details, including the Murrah building, officials said.

"We were told there was a fatwa threatening to target federal buildings," GSA spokeswoman Viki Reath said this week. "We increased our patrols to 12-hour shifts."

More than two dozen current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials interviewed by AP said the period of spring 1995 was a time of heightened "chatter" among terrorists seeking to strike the United States.

But the officials cautioned the FBI and CIA exhaustively investigated whether McVeigh could have been aided by Mideast terrorist and found no credible evidence linking him to any Islamic extremists, including those who prompted the 1995 warnings.

The information about 1995 emerges as a joint House-Senate panel examining the intelligence and law enforcement failures that preceded Sept. 11 has expanded its mission to look back at the late 1980s and 1990s.

John Gannon, former deputy CIA director for intelligence under President Clinton, said spring 1995 was one of a handful of periods in the 1990s when intelligence on terror threats peaked as the government increasingly turned its attention to Osama bin Laden and his emerging terrorist network.

Gannon said the 1995 warnings were plentiful enough that he initially assumed Islamic extremists had struck when the bomb exploded in Oklahoma City. Law enforcement too issued initial bulletins looking for Arab suspects and borrowed Arabic translators from the military.

"When I first heard about the Oklahoma bombing, the first reaction I had was I wonder if this were a foreign group that had done this or the Islamic extremists that had come up on our screen," Gannon said.

He said it was in 1998, after bin Laden issued a fatwa urging specific attacks on America and two U.S. embassies in Africa were bombed, that U.S. anti-terrorism efforts escalated markedly.

"If there was a watershed year, it was 1998. That significantly elevated our concern and resulted in a concerted effort, and a very strong program to go get Osama bin Laden," he said.

The 1995 intelligence was specific enough that "if that was today, you'd have (Bush Homeland Security Director) Tom Ridge going out and saying we have this threat," said former Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., who in 1995 was a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

McCollum formed a congressional task force in the late 1980s that began warning of the growing threat of terrorism, and which issued some of the 1995 alerts.

"For a good number of years, there was a failure to acknowledge the severity of the threat," he said. "There really had been this disbelief or unwillingness to scare people."

Former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said "protecting America against terrorists was a high priority" during the 1990s. "Threat information regularly came in and steps were taken to deal with it," he said.

"In general, the record is very clear that the Clinton administration increased counterterrorism funding and focus more than any other prior administration based on the emerging threats," Lockhart added.

"Iranian sources confirmed Tehran's desire and determination to strike inside the U.S. against objects symbolizing the American government in the near future," said a Feb. 27, 1995, terror warning by the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.

The warnings became increasingly specific as to the possible location, type of attack and likely dates.

"These strikes are most likely to occur either in the immediate future or in the new Iranian year - starting 21 March 1995," the congressional task force predicted.

U.S. intelligence monitored a series of meetings and conferences between senior officials of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and other terror organizations in mid-February 1995 in which the subject of killing Americans on U.S. soil came up, officials said.

Around the same time, the FBI received intelligence from the Philippines that two men later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had been arrested as they were plotting to blow up U.S. airliners. The men planned to hijack one airliner and crash it into the CIA, Pentagon or White House, documents show.

The marshals warning explained that Islamic extremists had issued a fatwa to kill marshals personnel because of an episode at the end of the World Trade Center bombing trial in which deputy marshals accidentally stepped on a copy of the Quran during a scuffle.

"Allegedly, the fatwa is being disseminated to persons in the United States who have the capability to carry it out," the memo said.

I have written extensively about many of the items in Solomans article on FR since June 2000 plus a whole lot more about prior warning, some of which I will repeat in this reply. Soloman was fed info for his story by Mike McNulty who did the documentaries on Waco and who I personally told about the forewarnings going back to 1995. McNulty has also been in contact with Jayna Davis to get additional details which I have provided Davis regularly since 1995.

I believe Soloman's story is vastly incomplete, does not adequately reflect the extent of detailed forewarning/foreknowledge by the FBI and USG. Soloman's story too easily gives the Feds an "out" for their corruption and coverup of their mishandling of the OKC bombing (which they do not deserve). I am concerned as to why Soloman's story was so incomplete in blaming the USG for knowing more than what SOloman knew to reveal in his story but did not reveal.

I found an article in the Newark Star Ledger in early May 1995 which quoted from the US Marshals memo put out by the head of the Marshals, Eduardo GOnzales. I gave a copy to ABC news who put it on the national news in May 1995. Defense attorney Stephen Jones also publicly brought up the memo and in a March 1996 pretrial hearing with Judge MAtsch and US prosecutor Beth Wilkinson. Thus in May 1995 in OKlahoma and across the nation it was made known that a warning had been issued for a possible ME assisted attack on Fed buildings including the OKC Murrah building in the US. I went to the Senate Judiciary and Senate intelligence committees with this info and they did nothing even though the Pentagon terrorism advisor went with me.

Wilkinson admitted in the pretrial hearing that the FBI deliberately had not done an FBI 302 report on the US Marshals warning. However, she represented to the court ( I have the court records) that the ENTIRE Federal family had been warned because of the memo. This included the BATF, CIA FBI, Federal judges and US MArshals.

THe US Marshals warning was used to specifically warn US Judge Wayne Ally in OKC in late March 1995. Ally told his hometown newspaper, the Oregonian, in May 1995 that Ally had used the warning to tell his children to take his grand children out of the Murrah building day care center where 16 children lost their lives on April 19, 1995. Ally stayed home to work at home after APril 4, 1995 and he was not on vacation either. When these facts became known, Ally was taken off the Nichols and McVeigh trials , the venue was changed to Denver and Ally was replaced by Matsch.

The FBI, not just the BATF, had prior warning and told their agents to stay out of the Murrah building on April 19, 1995. My wife was told this by prominent FBI agents wives, Dee Vogel and Christie Hersley at 9:30 am on APril 19, 1995 just 28 minutes after the Murrah building was bombed. The FBI wives also said that the FBI knew the bombing was coming as a result of "the BATF botching WACO".

The FBI did not have offices in the Murrah building but the FBI had 3-4 agents in the Murrah building everyday at 9am sharp (2 minutes before the Murrah bombing) and they often dropped children off at the day care center . The FBI went to court proceedings across the street at the Fed courthouse and met with agents of the DEA, BATF, secret Service and Defense investigative services all housed in the Murrah building. I found numerous witnesses wo worked at the Murrah building who confirmed the FBI presence in the MUrrah building every day at 9 am. No FBI agents were in the Murrah building on APril 19, 1995, The FBI wives expressed relief that their husbands and other FBI agents had been told not to go to the Murrah building that day.

My wife has been threatened more than once with loss of employment for telling her story publicly by one of the FBI agents wives and by an FBI agent since 1995. The FBI sent FBI agent James Carlisle to our home in Jan 1996 to threaten me and my wife over this and other evidence we had learned of USG foreknowledge or forewarning. I personally spoke with OK Senator James Inhofe and the Seante Intell legal counsel Joan Grimson about the FBI threats to me and my wife. The Pentagon terror advisor Jesse Clear also spoke to the same offices (Inhofe and Grimson)on my wife's behalf. Nothing was done adequate to protect me or my wife or rectify the situation with the FBI.

One reason may be is that Seantors Inhofe's chief of staff, Herb Johnson wrote a letter in 1998 sating that Johnson had been told by the head of the FBI command center in OKC the week after the OKC bombing that the DOJ did not want the public to learn of a middle eastern connection to the OKC bombing. I discussed Johnson's letter with Inhofe who has kept this information from the American people for over seven years (Inhofe was told by Johnson about it in 1995). I wrote an article condemning Inhofe about this for FR on 8/11/2000 and I also blamed him for the loss of life for any future attacks (which happened on 9/11/2001). Inhofe sits on the Senate Intelligence COmmittee. The article: "While America Burns, Senator Inhofe Fiddles"

The same FBI agent Carlisle threatened sheriff David Kochendorfer in 1998 over the Sheriff having a news conference stating that on the evening of APril 19, 1995 COngressman Ernest Istook of Oklahoma told him and another sheriff Don HAmmonds that the USG had detailed prior warning on APril 9, 1995 of a ME assisted attack by local ME extremeists in OKC (Hamas & Iraqis&Iranians)). Carlisle falsified his 302 interview report with Kochendorfer just before Kochendoerfer was to testify before the OKC county grand jury investigating the OKC bombing. My wife was also threatened again in 1998 just before Hersley testified before the COunty grand jury.

A federal informant Cary Gagan was given immunity by US attorneys in Denver in early 1995 for information he provided of a terror attack on a Federal building in the Midwest that included the Murrah building and buildings in Denver and Omaha. Gagan had infiltrated the group ( included drug traffickers, ME terrorists and domestic dissidents)who was planning the bombing, Gagan made a delivery of explosives and a mixer to Dwight Kansas a week or so before the OKC bombing he says for the group. Gagan wrote the US attorneys again on APril 3, 1995 specifically warning them of the attack again. Gagan went public with his information which was shown on local and national TV but was rewarded with having his immunity revoked. Gagan has sued in Federal court over the Fiasco. The court records of this entire story are available and I have seen them. William Jasper of the NEw AMerican travelled Gagan's route with Gagan and believes Gagn was reporting on the group who helped do the OKC bombing. Jasper wrote extensively about Gagan in the NEw AMerican in 1998.

Jasper once told me he was specifically threatened by the CIA for his coverage of the OKC bombing and the USG foreknowledge or forewarning.

THe FBI and USG excuse was that they did not know the exact day or hour of the bombing and that they got numerous threats which they could not distinguish between. I believe they are being deceitful because what counts is whether or not the FBI and USG took these threats seriously enough to warn themselves, which they did but did not warn others who were private citizens who went to the social security offices and HUD and day care center and who were killed.

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Weeks Before 1995 Oklahoma Bombing, Government Warned of Possible Terror Attacks on Federal Buildings