Posted on 06/25/2002 5:24:11 PM PDT by OKCSubmariner
Journalists and congressional investigators are beginning to trace the terror trail backward from 9-11 to Oklahoma City and the earlier World Trade Center bombing.
Ramzi Yousef, the reputed mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, sits in a federal maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, serving a life sentence. Terry Nichols, the convicted co-conspirator of Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing, is incarcerated in the Oklahoma County Jail. He faces a life sentence without parole for the deaths of eight federal law enforcement agents in that 1995 bombing, as well as an upcoming state trial for the deaths of the 161 men, women, children, and unborn baby not named in the federal indictment. Osama bin Laden, the alleged instigator of the September 11th holocaust, is on the run (if alive) with a $25 million bounty on his head.
This terrorist trio has more in common than shared infamy; evidence indicating that they are actual co-conspirators in a global terrorist network continues to mount. At long last, journalists and congressional investigators are beginning to connect the dots and trace the terror trail backward from last year’s 9-11 attack to Oklahoma City and the earlier World Trade Center bombing. The Dallas CBS television affiliate, Insight magazine, the Toronto Star, the Village Voice, FOX TV’s Bill O’Reilly, the Indianapolis Star, the Manila Times, and other media channels have begun to tread where previously only THE NEW AMERICAN had dared to go. Some even suggest that 9-11 might have been prevented if officials had fully investigated the Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy.
Even the Establishment press is coming close to breaking out of its self-imposed muzzle on this subject.
The lead story in the major broadcast and print media for June 4th announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, already one of the FBI’s 22 "Most Wanted" for earlier terrorist acts, is now also being sought by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials as a key operative in the Black Tuesday attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A federal jury has charged Mohammed, a 37-year-old Kuwaiti, for collaborating with Yousef on both the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a failed 1995 terror plot to bomb multiple airliners in a single day, or, as an alternative, to hijack and crash airliners into famous U.S. buildings. Both Yousef and Mohammed have long-established ties to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist organization.
According to the New York Times’ James Risen, a detailed financial investigation of the money trail from the 9-11 plot over the past few months has led officials to believe that Mohammed played a far more prominent role than they had earlier suspected. The developing evidence, said Risen, "could also help explain why Al Qaeda decided to attack the trade center again, to try to finish the job that Mr. Yousef started nearly nine years earlier."
The growing media acknowledgment that the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center (WTC) attacks are directly connected is a major development; the same trail of evidence will lead honest inquirers to realize that the OKC bombing and other major attacks are also part of an ongoing, coordinated terror offensive. All of which is immensely pertinent to the current hot debate over who knew what and when they knew it, concerning our incredible 9-11 intelligence failures. Answering these questions is essential not only for establishing accountability for these deadly failures, but, more importantly, for averting future terrorist events. They are crucial to fixing the policies allowing the terrorist networks to enjoy easy access to, and operational freedom within, the United States.
Bojinka: The Manila Connection
The trails of Yousef, Nichols, and bin Laden converge in the Philippines as early as 1991. Bin Laden and his brother-in-law, Mohammed Khalifa, set up al-Qaeda operations in the Philippines in the early 1990s, working closely with the terrorist Abu Sayyaf Group.
Intelligence experts believe Yousef, an Iraqi, is an operative for Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service. Yousef and his co-conspirators are not "Islamic fundamentalists"; they were known for being very secular: drinking alcohol, partying, frequenting night clubs, "shacking up" with women, and using profanity. Dr. Laurie Mylroie, perhaps the leading authority on Yousef, writes in her book, The War Against America, that "Yousef is definitely not a radical Muslim.... If Yousef ever spent any time [fighting] in Afghanistan, he would have been in Najibullah’s [Communist] camp rather than with the Islamic mujahedin."
According to the signed statement of confessed Abu Sayyaf terrorist Edwin Angeles, he met in Davao City on the Philippine island of Mindanao in 1991 with Nichols, Yousef and other co-conspirators in the 1993 WTC bombing. Angeles, aka Ibrahim Yakub, a co-founder and second-in-command of the Abu Sayyaf Group, said in his handwritten statement:
I certify that Terry Nichols was known to me personally during our meeting with Abdul Hakim Murad, Wali-Khan and Ahmed Youssef [Ramzi Yousef] in [unintelligible] Davao City on Nov. 1991; Aim to establish a group and organize a Muslim and non-Muslim youth for a cause; we will also to [sic] plan for following: bombing activities; providing firearms and ammo; training in bomb making and handling....
Abdul Hakin Murad and Wali-Khan Amin Shah were convicted along with Yousef on September 5, 1996 in the so-called Bojinka Plot, and presently reside in American prisons. Bojinka (Serbo-Croatian for "loud bang") was Yousef’s code name for his terror scheme to blow up 11 U.S. jetliners in a single day. A variation of the plan called for crashing or "dive-bombing" planes into U.S. buildings, as Yousef’s al-Qaeda comrades did last September 11th. The plot was foiled when the Manila apartment Yousef and Murad shared caught on fire from chemical bomb components they were mixing. Murad was captured in the Philippines following the apartment fire, but Yousef escaped, as he did following the 1993 WTC bombing. With cooperation from Murad and Shah, Yousef was later tracked down and captured in Pakistan, where he was hiding in a guest house rented by a bin Laden company.
Murad’s statements to Philippine police and to U.S. officials have been largely ignored, but have huge significance for the OKC and 9-11 attacks, as well as potential future attacks. Important information in Murad’s file statements include:
Suicide hijackings.
A January 20, 1995 Philippines police report tells of the Yousef/Murad plot presaging the 9-11 attack, in which Murad said he had planned to "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." Another hijacker was to fly a second plane into the Pentagon or the World Trade Center.
Hijacker pilot training.
Murad detailed his pilot training instruction at several flight academies in the United States. The importance of this could not have been lost on federal authorities. In 2001, in the months preceding the 9-11 attacks, U.S. prosecutors focused on al-Qaeda use of U.S. flight schools in their high-profile trial of four men charged in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Essam al-Ridi, an Egyptian trained at a Texas flight school, was one of their star witnesses. Ihab Ali Nawawi, identified by prosecutors as a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and a bin Laden confederate, had received pilot training at the same school in Norman, Oklahoma, near Oklahoma City, where some of al-Qaeda’s 9-11 hijackers were trained.
Shoe bombs.
The world was introduced to shoe explosives when passengers aboard American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami on December 22, 2001, subdued Richard Reid, a British al-Qaeda recruit, while he was attempting to ignite his shoe bomb. Abdul Hakim Murad’s Philippine police report for March 4, 1995 notes that Yousef "taught Murad how to smuggle chemicals and explosive devices inside the airport passing through several [of the] airport’s security arrangements," and that Yousef would hide detonators and timing devices inside his shoes. Yousef used these methods on December 11, 1994 to smuggle a bomb on board Philippines Airline Flight 434. On this practice run for the multiple-flight Bojinka plan, the bomb detonated, killing a Japanese passenger, but did not destroy the jetliner.
The Philippine police officials most closely involved in the Bojinka investigation have expressed shock at the failure of U.S. officials to apply the lessons of that case. "It’s so chilling," says Senior Inspector Aida D. Fariscal, the policewoman who uncovered the plot at Yousef’s smoking apartment. "Those kamikaze pilots trained in America, just like Murad." "The FBI knew all about Yousef’s plans," she said, in an interview with former Wall Street Journal reporter Matthew Brzezinski for the Toronto Star. "They’d seen the files, been inside 603 [the apartment bomb factory]. The CIA had access to everything, too.... This should have never, ever been allowed to happen. All those poor people dead."
General Avelino "Sonny" Razon, one of the lead investigators in the Bojinka case, was so shocked at what he saw on September 11th, reported Brzezinski, "that he jumped on a plane in Cebu, where he was now police chief, and flew to Manila to convene a hasty press conference." Razon stated that there was simply "too much coincidence" between 9-11 and Bojinka, particularly since the attacks had occurred within one week of the anniversary of Yousef’s conviction for the Bojinka plot on September 5, 1996.
"We told the Americans about the plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995," Razon complained to reporters. "Why didn’t they pay attention?"
There was much, much more that U.S. officials had not paid attention to. On April 19, 1995, Abdul Hakim Murad sat in jail in New York awaiting trial on the Bojinka plot when news of the Oklahoma City bombing reached him via radio. Murad reportedly told prison guard Lt. Philip Rojas that the bombing was the work of the "Liberation Army." Sufficiently concerned about this statement, prison officials notified the FBI, which sent two agents to investigate. The standard FBI report on the incident, known as a "302," states that "Murad responded to the guard’s question by stating that the Liberation Army was responsible for the bombing." The FBI 302 then notes: "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."
According to Edwin Angeles — who, remember, was a leader of the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines and a co-conspirator with Yousef, Nichols, Murad and Shah — the "Liberation Army" Murad referred to was the Palestine Liberation Army, working with Islamic Jihad. And according to the U.S. Justice Department, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda have virtually merged into one group. Adding to the significance of all this is Oklahoma bombing co-defendant Terry Nichols’ role.
Tying In Terry Nichols
In addition to the testimony of Edwin Angeles, considerable circumstantial evidence exists linking Nichols to the Bojinka plot. There is even more evidence tying the Oklahoma City bombing to Middle Eastern terrorist elements. Consider:
• Nichols made many trips to the Philippines, sometimes staying for weeks or months, without any known means of support. Some of these trips coincided with the period during which Yousef was operating out of the Philippines. Moreover, the areas in which Nichols chose to stay were remarkable for an American because they were areas of the Philippines known for strong Islamic activism and Abu Sayyaf activity.
• Nichols renounced his U.S. citizenship and married a Filipina whose family was known to have connections to Abu Sayyaf.
• Nichols’ Filipino father-in-law, Eduardo Torres, stated that he had seen a book in Nichols’ luggage on how to build bombs.
• The Justice Department’s star witness in the OKC bombing trial, Michael Fortier, testified that a few months before the Oklahoma bombing Nichols had been unable to detonate even a small milk carton of ANFO. Yet Nichols and McVeigh were credited with constructing and detonating an ANFO bomb, not only bigger than anything ever previously set off in the U.S. by terrorists, but one also nearly 100 percent efficient in burning all of its explosive components. A more likely explanation is that they had help from experts like Yousef.
• Nichols made many unexplained telephone calls to the Philippines, including some to untraceable numbers. This would seem to fit Yousef’s modus operandi of using rental cellular phones to avoid surveillance.
• Nichols was in the Philippines when the apartment fire foiled the Bojinka plot. Like Yousef, he fled, breaking the excursion ticket he had purchased earlier and booking a one-way ticket back to the United States.
• U.S. federal undercover informant Cary Gagan has stated that Nichols was present at a meeting in Henderson, Nevada, involving Iranian or other Middle Eastern individuals, where some of the plans for the OKC bombing were made.
There is also the matter of Nichols’ strange behavior, as reported by his ex-wife, Lana Padilla, in her book, By Blood Betrayed: My Life With Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh. Lana Padilla recounts an incident which occurred on November 22, 1994, before Nichols took off on his final trip to the Philippines. He had just spent two weeks at her home in Las Vegas visiting their son Josh. Padilla explains that she had allowed him to stay there because she believed him to be broke. She drove him to the airport for a flight going first to Los Angeles, and then on to Cebu City. Before he left, Nichols gave her a folded brown paper bag and told her, "If I’m not back in sixty days, open it and follow the instructions." Those ominous words, together with Nichols’ melancholic behavior and Josh’s reaction as they drove away from the airport, caused alarm. "I’m never going to see my dad again," Josh sobbed.
Figuring that her ex-husband might be contemplating suicide, she opened the package. It contained a sealed letter to Timothy McVeigh’s sister Jennifer, Nichols’ life insurance policy, a key chain with nearly a dozen keys, and two hand-written lists of things for Padilla to "Read and Do Immediately."
On the "Do" list were instructions to find a plastic bag hidden behind a drawer in Padilla’s kitchen. Following Nichols’ directions, she was astonished to find a plastic bag stuffed with $20,000 in twenties and hundreds. Nichols’ list also referred to a storage unit rented under the alias of Ted Parker which would yield even more surprises: "… wigs, masks, panty hose, freeze-dried food, and various gold coins … along with gold bars and silver bullion stacked neatly in boxes. There were also some small green stones that appeared to be jade. I estimated at least $60,000 street value in precious metals!"
Inside the letter to Jennifer McVeigh was another sealed and stamped envelope addressed to Timothy McVeigh containing two hand-printed notes. One read: "If you should receive this letter then clear everything out of CG 37 by 01 Feb 95 or pay to keep it longer, under Ted Parker.... Your [sic] on your own. Go for it!!" A postscript said, "Also liquidate 40," and, "This letter would be for purpose of my death."
Others Unknown
In the immediate aftermath of the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, THE NEW AMERICAN began reporting on the extensive eyewitness testimony and law enforcement documentation concerning the involvement of Middle Eastern individuals. Regular readers of THE NEW AMERICAN will recall that shortly after the explosion an "all points bulletin" went out over the Oklahoma City Police radio band. The APB told law enforcement officers to be on the lookout for a "late model, almost new, Chevrolet, full-size pickup. It will be brown in color with tinted windows, smoke-colored bug deflector on the front of the pickup." The APB also stated that the vehicle was occupied by "Two Mideastern males, 25 to 28 years of age, six feet tall, athletic build, dark hair and a beard...."
In its 11-count indictment handed down on August 10, 1995, the federal grand jury in Oklahoma City charged that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols "did knowingly, intentionally, willfully and maliciously conspire, combine and agree together and with others unknown to the Grand Jury to use a weapon of mass destruction … resulting in death, grievous bodily injury and the destruction of the building." (Emphasis added.) A multitude of credible witnesses had reported seeing Timothy McVeigh on the morning of the bombing or in the days immediately before it with individuals other than Terry Nichols. Some of those witnesses described the individuals as appearing to be of Middle Eastern or Arabic ethnicity.
One individual identified by witnesses as a suspect seen fleeing from the immediate vicinity of the Murrah building right after the blast was Hussain al-Hussaini, a former Iraqi soldier who had entered the U.S. after the Persian Gulf War as a refugee. Al-Hussaini was the subject of a series of investigative reports on the OKC bombing by KFOR-TV, the NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City. We do not know if al-Hussaini, or other former Iraqi soldiers with whom he associates, were involved in the bombing, but, as we have reported previously, strong evidence supports that conclusion. It is obvious that additional accomplices assisted McVeigh and Nichols. The extensive evidence reviewed and uncovered during our seven-year investigation of the bombing points to the involvement of a network of Middle Eastern terrorist cells. President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno, however, were determined to pin the blame on their political opposition, the "anti-government" forces of the "radical right." They went to extreme lengths to twist, cover up, and destroy any evidence and exclude all witnesses that might contradict this thesis. The OKC bombing terrorists they allowed to escape very likely played a role in the even more monstrous 9-11 attacks. And they will strike again, if they are not rooted out.
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But it is an amazing coincidence. And I have not ruled out the possibility yet that Padilla may have helped in OKC. I just do not know yet.
Incompetent. Dismissive. Two adjectives that have been widely used to described our former president. Right.
sarcasm/on, btw
I flew a lot as a helicopter passenger out to production platforms and drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico in the late 1970's, when Petroleum Helicopters, Inc., was employing numbers of former VNAF helicopter pilots on milk runs offshore. I didn't catch any rides with any of these guys until the 1990's, but in the 70's my colleagues reported that the Viets were still flying the way they had in 'Nam -- take off and climb, climb, climb to 3000+, fly out to the destination above 3000', then descend quickly and steeply to the landing pad. Even some ex-USAF/Army pilots commented on it. The more usual operating altitude for pilots who aren't habitually avoiding automatic weapons fire is 300-1100' depending on seasonal and weather factors.
You're a very long way from safe harbor in floating this accusation. Nobody dislikes DIRTXPOTUS more than I do (except maybe his ex-wife and people who knew him well), but even though Clinton was, in fact, desperate for a political fixer-upper after his shellacking by Newt and the Pubbies, and despite the fact that it is quite true that he seized on the Oklahoma City bombing for obscene demagoguing of Newt and Rush, literally blaming them for the explosion (something the Leftie Press would have had George H. W. Bush's head for saying, or Nixon's, or Dubya's), nevertheless it should be said that the "evidence" offered here of Iraqi "involvement" is very, very thin stuff.
The APB for the Arabs you describe was carried out, the guys and their pickup truck were found, I remember reading or hearing at the time, and the two men were exonerated of any responsibility for the explosion. Do you contradict that?
About all you've got to go on is some eyewitness descriptions and a police sketch of "John Doe 2", and a piece of camo cloth from the explosion crater. That guy could as easily have been Hispanic (after all, Spaniards are Mediterranean types just as much as North Africans -- their darker-skinned ancestors crossed the Gibraltar Strait 10,000 years ago from North Africa) as Middle Eastern. Terry Nichols's travels to Cebu and packages of money are interesting, but unless the coin rolls are stamped "Bank of Abu Dhabi", you've got a lot of 'splainin' to do, to tie him to Al-Q'aeda. Turning Nichols and Ramzi Yousef inside out on sodium pentothal would seem to be a good place to start, but until more evidence is forthcoming, what you mostly have is some arm-waving Filipino policemen and overtaxed, underinterested FBI men.
I doubt it. These guys are really allowed to make decisions like that on their own. Not only do the air-traffic controllers control their speed and altitude,but so do their accountants. These things burn a BUNCH of fuel with they kick in their afterburners. I went outside the terminal to smoke a cigarette several times,and the noise when they took off was actually painful. Painful enough it reminds me of federal and local noise-control laws around airports. These were obviously being violated.
And there was a ton of speculation back then. It doesn't reflect a briefed threat, does it? Just personal precaution.
I doubt there would ever be anything such as a formal briefing on a issue this sensitive. If word were to get out that terrorists were shooting down US passenger jets with Stinger-style missles,the whole US airline industry would collapse. A much better plan would be to whisper into the pilots ears something along the line of ,"we really ain't sure what happened,but it might be a good idea to gain altitude and distance as quickly as possible.".
SHOULD have read,"These guys are NOT really allowed....."
I just stumbled on this. Tell me what you think.
Actually, it has been reported on several occassions that the FBI confiscated video tapes from security cameras that were aimed at the front of the Murrough building. I have seen one person (former FBI) interviewed that saw PART of these tapes and confirmed that a middle-eastern man sat in the truck for, at least, a minute AFTER McVeigh got out and walked across the street. He said it difficult to tell exactly how long "john doe #2" stayed in the truck because the cameras recorded on time lapse and he was unsure of the exact lapse in seconds. He went on to say that witnesses' statements that theysaw John Doe exit the truck on the passenger side and then walk back to the passenger door before finally leaving the scene were confirmed by the tape he saw. Have you, perchance, seen any of the local news tapes from the day of and days following the bombing? They are quite telling.
Dick Morris has stated that Clinton didn't seem interested in terrorist activities and didn't even go to inspect the first WTC bombing. What's up with that?!?
How many more people have to die before we have a real investigation for the truth?? The last investigations seem to be just to make it look like it wasn't Clinton's problem.
Please. Allow me to speculate...
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
The Tampa Tribune
December 17, 1995
COMMENTARY, Pg. 2
Remaking of the president: Lucky Bill
by CHRISTOPHER MATTHEWS
As an early stocking-stuffer for President Clinton, I would like to suggest a new nickname: "Lucky Bill."
Check the guy's streak:(snip)
Give the president credit for making some of this luck happen.
The polls. Clinton was shocked by the 1994 election returns. So shocked that he did something about them.
A. He got the kids out of the living room. In the early months of this administration, you didn't see Clinton without his claque of young, leftish staffers. Now you don't. Out of sight, out of mind.
B. He dressed for success. We used to see Clinton sweating up to McDonald's at 6:30 a.m. for his black coffee. Now the shorts are gone, replaced by long pants. The overaged yuppie jogger has been replaced by the youthful middle-aged golfer. Instead of seeing Clinton's white legs gleaming in the morning sun, we see him with Vernon Jordan riding in a golf cart. Don't think it doesn't matter.
C. He acts like a president. Instead of pushing the agenda of his political clients, including wife Hillary, Clinton now seems most intent on protecting the average American from what the other side is up to. It started with his fine response to the Oklahoma City bombing and has carried through to his dealings with the budget. Instead of Clinton the innovator, we have seen Clinton the protector. That's the Clinton people seem to want.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
The Boston Globe
November 7, 1996
Thursday, City Edition
NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A1Clinton, GOP stake middle-ground claim
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff(snip)
Clinton, whose chances for reelection practically were written off two years ago when he was perceived as a liberal, said yesterday that he triumphed in large part because he embodied the nation's centrist mood.
"The American people began to sort of move back to the 'vital center' after Oklahoma City," Clinton said yesterday aboard Air Force One, referring to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma. The bombing "broke the spell in the country as people began searching for our common ground again," he said.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
The Boston Globe
November 7, 1996
Thursday, City Edition
NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A1
Christopher leads list of Cabinet resignations; Perry also quits; major shifts seen
By Brian McGrory, Globe Staff
(snip)Yesterday, Clinton flew back to Washington on Air Force One, replayed the high points of his campaign and victory for reporters and greeted his staff in a warm, sometimes giddy celebration on the South Lawn.
"Sometimes I don't say 'thank you' enough," Clinton told the group, which ranged from office secretaries to Cabinet secretaries, the latter wearing "Welcome Home" T-shirts under their suitcoats and over dresses. "Sometimes I'm too hard on myself and by omission, sometimes I'm too hard on the people who work here. You have accomplished an enormous amount over these past four years."
After a campaign in which Clinton often seemed to strive not to create news, the day exploded with developments, all of them tinged with Clinton's obvious joy at being the first Democratic president reelected since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Clinton, flying between Little Rock and Washington, visited reporters in the back of Air Force One, even donning a "funmeter" button given to him by one of the photographers.
Looking back over his campaign, Clinton attributed his success to a series of developments and strategy decisions in his first term. First, he said the roots of his political comeback dated to the decisions on the deficit reduction package and the crime bill that he made in 1993 and 1994. By 1996, he said, the results could be seen by the electorate, with the deficit down by more than 60 percent, and with most categories of violent crime down all over the country.
"We got interest rates down, we got the economy going and people finally started to feel it in 1996," Clinton said.
Second, he said the country began to shuck a strong antigovernment attitude and come together after the bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, in which 168 people were killed, many of them government workers.
"The American people began to sort of move back to the vital center after Oklahoma City," he said.
Although Clinton refrained from saying it yesterday, the explosion provided him his most successful opportunity to use his position to talk to the country, which he did frequently in the year and a half that followed.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
St. Petersburg Times
November 7, 1996
NATIONAL; ELECTION '96 RESULTS; Pg. 1ASecond-term shake-up
by DAVID DAHL
(snip)The step from campaigning to governing has proven especially difficult the past four years. In 1992, Clinton came into office with just 43 percent of the popular vote and proposed a restructuring of the nation's health-care system. In 1994, Republicans won control of Congress and boldly shut down the federal government to force their budget on Clinton.
The American people rejected both sides' dramatic blueprints. Clinton says the country has come to the center of the ideological spectrum now, and he is trying to place himself right there with the people.
"The American people began to sort of move back to the vital center after Oklahoma City," Clinton said. Coming after the "bitter, bitter rhetoric" of the Republican revolution, the 1995 bombing "broke the spell in the country as people began searching for our common ground again," he said.
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