That'd be my guess. The story is the story! Where'd it come from; who, what, why... The piece rings too true to have been cut from whole cloth, but I've been fooled a time or two. Motivation? Who stands to gain most from these apparent revelations? I don't know, but there's probably some conspiracy types that could come up with something.
FGS
This looks like a White House shot across the Rat's bow. Let's see if there is a diminuation of the Rat's smear campaigns.
The Oklahoma City bombing victims and their families.
The lies are getting thin and shaky and we all want to believe it was A-rab terrorists anyway. (Not to mention several ME groups tried to take credit for OKC but that info. was stifled at the time. Why?)
Motivation? Who stands to gain most from these apparent revelations?
Hmmmm, who indeed? It's interesting that the government prosecuters aren't interested in using this info. to tie Moussaoui to Atta. They have nothing else to directly link him to Atta and crew. Why are they taking a pass on a strong eyewitness? Why is Big Media taking a pass on breaking this story? (Surely they had this info. before the LA Weekly. No?)
Mr. Conspiracy Conjecturer here at your service. How about this? This bit about the hotel is a factoid which they can prove is untrue, or else prove true but still have nothing to do with the OKC bombing, and therefore there must be nothing to the Nichols / Philippine terrorists connection.
This is a proven strategy in the area of ufology. People DO see UFOs. The government doesn't want people blabbering on about what might be the newest toy in the black budget arsenal. Therefore they find one easy case which can be debunked and whose observers can be exposed as nuts or frauds. That way, any other legitimate observations by competent people can likewise be dismissed as just more tinfoil nutburgery.
Competent people are still seeing things that might be Aurora, stealth recon blimps, and Lord knows what else the ghost of Kelly's Lockheed Skunkworks left lying around, but they aren't going to risk the taint and ridicule by saying anything about it.