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On Sunday, September 8, 2002, at 12:34 AM, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Sat, 7 Sep 2002 Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> The WSJ site is available only for subscribers. You might copy out a
>> few
>> paragraphs.
>
> Really? Did you try the link? In the past, although the WSJ only
> allows
> subscribers in from the home page, its allowed us to email the links to
> non-subscribers and have them work.
>
> Here's the article. It's more interesting as a cultural fact than as a
> mine of information.
>
> http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1031184073773956835.djm,00.html
>
> The Wall Street Journal
>
> September 5, 2002
>
> COMMENTARY
>
> The Iraq Connection
>
> By MICAH MORRISON
> Senior Editorial Page Writer
>
> OKLAHOMA CITY -- With the Sept. 11 anniversary upon us and President
> Bush
> talking about a "regime change" in Iraq, it's an apt time to look at
> two
> investigators who connect Baghdad to two notorious incidents of
> domestic
> terrorism. Jayna Davis, a former television reporter in Oklahoma City,
> believes an Iraqi cell was involved in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred
> P.
> Murrah Federal Building here. Middle East expert Laurie Mylroie links
> Iraq
> to the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, and has
> published
> a book on the subject.
>
> Both cases are closed, of course -- in the public mind if not quite
> officially. Timothy McVeigh was convicted of murder in the Oklahoma
> City
> bombing and executed in June 2001; Terry Nichols was sentenced to life
> in
> prison for conspiracy and manslaughter, and faces a further trial on
> murder charges. In the World Trade Center bombing, prosecutors
> convicted
> six men of Middle Eastern origin on the theory that they operated in a
> "loose network." One suspect remains at large, but the apparent
> ringleader, known as Ramzi Yousef, was captured in Pakistan and is now
> in
> federal prison in the U.S.
>
> The prosecutors in both episodes believe they got their men, and of
> course
> conspiracy theories have shadowed many prominent cases. Still, the long
> investigative work by Ms. Davis and Ms. Mylroie, coming to parallel
> conclusions though working largely independently of each other, has
> gained
> some prominent supporters. Former CIA Director James Woolsey, for
> example,
> recently told the Journal that "when the full stories of these two
> incidents are finally told, those who permitted the investigations to
> stop
> short will owe big explanations to these two brave women. And the
> nation
> will owe them a debt of gratitude."
>
> The Vanishing John Doe No. 2
>
> Ms. Davis, for example, has a copy of a bulletin put out by the
> Oklahoma
> Highway Patrol immediately after the Murrah bombing. It specifies a
> blue
> car occupied by "Middle Eastern male subject or subjects." According to
> police radio traffic at the time, also obtained by Ms. Davis, a search
> was
> on as well for a brown Chevrolet pickup "occupied by Middle Eastern
> subjects." When an officer radioed in asking if "this is good
> information
> or do we really not know," a dispatcher responded "authorization FBI."
> Law-enforcement sources tell Ms. Davis that the FBI bulletin was
> quickly
> and mysteriously withdrawn.
>
> The next day, the federal government issued arrest warrants and
> sketches
> of two men seen together, John Doe No. 1 and No. 2. John Doe 1 turned
> out
> to be McVeigh, who was quickly picked up on an unrelated charge.
> Following
> the arrest of McVeigh and Nichols, the Justice Department changed
> course,
> saying the witnesses were confused and there was no John Doe 2 with
> McVeigh.
>
> But Ms. Davis, who was covering the case at the time for KFOR-TV in
> Oklahoma City, says in fact there was a John Doe No. 2, and that she
> has
> identified him. The original warrant for John Doe No. 2 described a man
> about 5 feet 10 inches, average weight, with brown hair and a tattoo on
> his left arm. She says the man matching this description is an Iraqi
> political refugee named Hussain al-Hussaini, an itinerant restaurant
> worker who entered the country in 1994 from a Saudi Arabian refugee
> camp
> and soon found his way to Oklahoma City. She says she has more than 20
> witnesses who can place him near the Murrah Building on the day of the
> bombing or finger him in parts of the conspiracy.
>
> Seven weeks after the bombing, Ms. Davis's KFOR television station
> began
> broadcasting a series of reports on a possible Middle East connection.
> It
> did not name Mr. al-Hussaini, but did include photographs of him that
> digitally obscured his face. Mr. al-Hussaini sued for libel and
> defamation, denying any association with the bombing. In November 1999,
> U.S. District Court Judge Tim Leonard dismissed the lawsuit.
>
> Citing defense contentions Mr. al-Hussaini's counsel failed to dispute,
> the judge ruled that Ms. Davis had proved that Mr. al-Hussaini "bears a
> strong resemblance to the composite sketch of John Doe #2," including a
> tattoo on his left arm, that he was born and raised in Iraq, that he
> had
> served in the Iraqi army, and that his Oklahoma City employer had once
> been suspected by the federal government of having "connections with
> the
> Palestine Liberation Organization."
>
> Mr. al-Hussaini appealed Judge Leonard's decision to the 10th Circuit
> Court, where a ruling is pending. He is represented by Gary
> Richardson, a
> well-known Oklahoma lawyer who currently is an independent candidate
> for
> governor. In an interview, Mr. Richardson denounced the treatment of
> Mr.
> al-Hussaini as anathema to American values, saying he had been singled
> out
> because he was an Arab. "There is no evidence that Hussain al-Hussaini
> is
> John Doe No. 2," Mr. Richardson said. "He was grossly mistreated by the
> media in Oklahoma."
>
> In 1996, Mr. al-Hussaini returned to Boston, where he had first entered
> the U.S. He found work as a cook at Logan Airport. According to his
> medical records, he was haunted by the Oklahoma City episode and the
> publicity surrounding his libel suit. He began drinking heavily and in
> 1997 was admitted to a psychiatric clinic for a depressive disorder and
> suicidal thoughts. Mr. al-Hussaini's lawyer says his client has since
> moved to another part of the country and is "trying to put his life
> back
> together."
>
> According to notes taken by a nurse at the psychiatric clinic, Mr.
> al-Hussaini quit his job at Logan Airport in November 1997, nearly four
> years before planes from there were hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Her
> notes
> say he stated, "If anything happens there, I'll be a suspect."
>
> Evidence supporting Ms. Davis's suspicions surfaced during discovery
> for
> the McVeigh trial. An FBI report, for example, records a call a few
> hours
> after the bombing from Vincent Cannistraro, a retired CIA official who
> had
> once been chief of operations for the agency's counter-terrorism
> center.
> He told Kevin Foust, a FBI counter-terror investigator, that he'd been
> called by a top counter-terror adviser to the Saudi royal family. Mr.
> Foust reported that the Saudi told Mr. Cannistraro about "information
> that
> there was a 'squad' of people currently in the United States, very
> possibly Iraqis, who have been tasked with carrying out terrorist
> attacks
> against the United States. The Saudi claimed that he had seen a list of
> 'targets,' and that the first on the list was the federal building in
> Oklahoma City, Oklahoma."
>
> Stephen Jones, McVeigh's lead lawyer, discusses the FBI report in his
> book, "Others Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing
> Conspiracy." Mr. Cannistraro later told Mr. Jones that he didn't know
> if
> the caller "was credible or not." But Mr. Foust's memo says Mr.
> Cannistraro described the Saudi official as "responsible for developing
> intelligence to help prevent the royal family from becoming victims of
> terrorist attacks," and someone he'd known "for the past 10 or 15
> years."
>
> Ms. Davis's evidence was examined by Patrick Lang, a Middle East expert
> and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency's human
> intelligence collection section. In a memo to Ms. Davis, Mr. Lang
> concluded that Mr. al-Hussaini likely is a member of Unit 999 of the
> Iraqi
> Military Intelligence Service, or Estikhabarat. He wrote that this
> unit is
> headquartered at Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad, and "deals with
> clandestine operations at home and abroad."
>
> Larry Johnson, a former deputy director of the State Department's
> Office
> of Counter Terrorism, also has examined Ms. Davis's voluminous
> research.
> "Looking at the Jayna Davis material," Mr. Johnson says, "what's clear
> is
> that more than Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols were involved. Without a
> doubt, there's a Middle Eastern tie to the Oklahoma City bombing."
>
> Mr. al-Hussaini and other former Iraqi soldiers colluded with McVeigh
> and
> Nichols in the attack, Ms. Davis charges. "There is a Middle Eastern
> terrorist cell operating in Oklahoma City. They were operating prior to
> the Oklahoma City bombing and they are still operating today."
>
> The popular stereotype of McVeigh is of a twisted "patriot" out to
> avenge
> government actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge. But in March 1998 he penned
> a
> prison-cell "Essay on Hypocrisy" obsessed with Iraq. "We've all seen
> pictures that show a Kurdish woman and child frozen in death from the
> use
> of chemical weapons. But have you ever seen these pictures juxtaposed
> next
> to pictures from Hiroshima or Nagasaki?" With calls for war crimes
> trials
> of Saddam Hussein, "why do we not hear the same cry for blood directed
> at
> those responsible for even greater amounts of 'mass destruction?'"
>
> In dismissing the al-Hussaini libel suit, Judge Leonard pointedly noted
> the indictment of McVeigh and Nichols included a charge of conspiracy
> "with others unknown." In sentencing Nichols, U.S. District Judge
> Richard
> Matsch remarked, "It would be disappointing to me if the law
> enforcement
> agencies of the United States government have quit looking for
> answers."
>
> World Trade Center
>
> The Sept. 11 airline crashes were not the first attempt to topple the
> World Trade Center towers. In February 1993, a bomb blast in a public
> parking garage below the North Tower of the World Trade Center killed
> six
> people and left a crater six stories deep. It could have been much
> worse.
> In her book, "The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World
> Trade
> Center Attacks," Laurie Mylroie says that the bomb was designed to
> topple
> the North Tower into the South Tower and envelop the scene in a cloud
> of
> cyanide gas. Hearing the case, Judge Kevin Duffy agreed, saying that if
> the plan had worked, "we would have been dealing with tens of
> thousands of
> deaths." After the bombing, the FBI rounded up four Muslims who moved
> in
> extremist circles in the New York area. Three others escaped overseas:
> a
> Palestinian, an Iraqi named Abdul Yasin, and Ramzi Yousef.
>
> Ms. Mylroie's book argues that Iraq was complicit in this attack. At
> the
> very least, she notes, Saddam Hussein is harboring a wanted terrorist:
> Abdul Yasin. He came to the U.S. six months before the Trade Center
> attack
> and is charged with helping mix chemicals for the bomb. Picked up in an
> early sweep after the bombing, he talked his way out of an FBI
> interrogation and turned up back in Baghdad.
>
> Beyond this, Ms. Mylroie contends that the bombing was "an Iraqi
> intelligence operation with the Moslem extremists as dupes." She says
> that
> the original lead FBI official on the case, Jim Fox, concluded that
> "Iraq
> was behind the World Trade Center bombing." In late 1993, shortly
> before
> his retirement, Mr. Fox was suspended by FBI Director Louis Freeh for
> speaking to the media about the case; he died in 1997. Ms. Mylroie says
> that Mr. Fox indicated to her that he did not continue to pursue the
> Iraq
> connection because Justice Department officials "did not want state
> sponsorship addressed."
>
> According to phone records analyzed by Ms. Mylroie, Abdul Yasin
> appeared
> in the orbit of one of U.S. conspirators, Muhammed Salameh, some weeks
> after Mr. Salameh made a series of phone calls to relatives in Iraq,
> including to his uncle, Kadri Abu Bakr. Mr. Bakr is a senior figure in
> the
> PLO's "Western Sector" terrorist unit; at the very least, his phone
> calls
> would be monitored by Iraqi intelligence.
>
> Ramzi Yousef also showed up after the calls to Mr. Bakr, according to
> Ms.
> Mylroie's analysis. His arrival "transformed the conspiracy from a pipe
> bombing plot to an audacious attack on the World Trade Center." Yousef
> was
> "the individual most responsible for building the World Trade Center
> bomb"
> -- 1,200 pounds of urea nitrate with a nitroglycerine trigger, booster
> chemicals, sulfuric acid and sodium cyanide.
>
> After the bombing, Yousef vanished; he had entered with an Iraqi
> passport,
> and exited with a Pakistani passport. Yousef's Pakistani passport was
> in
> the name of Abdul Basit. He obtained it from the Pakistani consulate in
> New York shortly before the bombing, saying he had lost his passport
> and
> presenting photocopied pages from Abdul Basit's 1984 and 1988
> passports.
>
> Ms. Mylroie says her evidence suggests that Abdul Basit and his family
> were among two dozen Pakistani nationals working in Kuwait who
> vanished at
> the time of the Iraqi invasion. Law enforcement authorities believe she
> overplays this possibility, that Yousef is indeed Basit, and that the
> original Iraqi passport is the only firm link to Iraq.
>
> After fleeing in the wake of the 1993 bombing, Yousef/Basit made his
> way
> to the Philippines, where he planted a bomb that killed the passenger
> taking his seat after he disembarked from a plane on the island of
> Cebu.
> Police investigating a fire in a Manila apartment he occupied found a
> laptop computer with plans to bomb 12 U.S. jets simultaneously. Yousef
> escaped but was later apprehended in Pakistan and turned over to U.S.
> authorities. He was convicted in both the Trade Center attack and the
> plane-bombing plot.
>
> One of Yousef's confederates, Abdul Hakin Murad, was arrested at the
> Manila apartment and later convicted in the U.S. in the plane plot.
> While
> in custody in the Philippines, he told investigators that he and Yousef
> had discussed hijacking a jet and crashing it into CIA headquarters.
> According to a January 1995 Manila police report, Murad said "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."
>
> The Philippine Connection
>
> Astonishingly, the Murrah bombing and the first WTC attack share a
> connection. Yousef and Terry Nichols were in the Philippines
> simultaneously. Nichols's trips there are undisputed; his wife's
> relatives
> lived in Cebu City. Cebu is also the territory of the Islamic terrorist
> group Abu Sayyaf. McVeigh lawyers sought to substantiate an "others
> unknown" defense theory, and made extensive filings concerning
> Nichols's
> activities there.
>
> These filings show that he was often in Cebu without his wife, and
> that he
> was in frequent contact with Ernesto Malaluan, a relative of his wife
> who
> had once lived in Saudi Arabia and owned a boarding house in Cebu City.
> The filing asserted that his boarding house "shelters students from a
> university well known for its Islamic militancy."
>
> A defense examination of phone records found that Nichols had
> repeatedly
> called the Cebu boarding house in the weeks preceding the bombing.
> Some of
> the calls were billed to a prepaid phone card to which McVeigh also had
> access. The calls were often made from pay phones at truck stops and
> the
> like, and sometimes followed mysterious patterns. In one instance, for
> example, the same number was dialed nine times in nine minutes before
> someone answered and spoke for 14 minutes.
>
> The McVeigh defense also produced two witnesses, Nichols's
> father-in-law
> and a resort worker, who said that while in the Philippines, Nichols
> had
> asked them if they knew anyone who knew "how to make bombs."
>
> The defense team also obtained a statement from Philippines
> law-enforcement officials about a meeting of Nichols and Yousef. The
> statement was given by a putative Abu Sayyaf leader, Edward Angeles.
> Angeles is a murky figure. Born Ibrahim Yakub and said to be one of the
> founders of Abu Sayyaf, he surrendered to the Philippine Army in 1995,
> claiming he had been all the time a deep penetration agent for the
> government. Angeles was assassinated in 1999 by unknown gunmen.
>
> The McVeigh defense filings portray the Nichols link to the Cebu City
> boarding house, Ramzi Yousef and Abu Sayyaf as grounds for believing
> that
> bomb-making expertise may have been passed to Nichols through "Iraqi
> intelligence based in the Philippines." McVeigh attorney Stephen Jones
> told Insight magazine recently that six months before the Oklahoma City
> bombing, "Tim couldn't blow up a rock. Then Terry goes to the
> Philippines," and their bomb-making skills take a great leap forward.
> The
> court did not grant Mr. Jones's request to comb through U.S.
> intelligence
> files in search of an Iraq connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.
>
> Sept. 11 Footnotes
>
> The principal reason for suspecting an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11
> attacks
> is of course the much-discussed report of a meeting in Prague on April
> 8,
> 2001, between apparent hijacking leader Mohamed Atta and Ahmed Khalil
> Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat expelled as a spy shortly
> thereafter. Press reports have repeatedly cast doubt on these reports,
> apparently because the FBI located Atta in Virginia and Florida shortly
> before and after the meeting and found no record of his leaving the
> U.S.
> But the latest report, in the Aug. 2 edition of the Los Angeles Times,
> quotes a high Bush administration official as saying evidence of the
> meeting "holds up." In the face of doubts and denials, Czech officials
> have repeatedly maintained that they're sure the meeting took place.
> Atta
> also passed through Prague on his way to the U.S. in June of 2000,
> returning a second time after being refused entry for lack of a visa.
>
> There are also reports of various contacts between Iraqis and the al
> Qaeda
> terrorist network, notably a 1998 visit to Osama bin Laden in
> Afghanistan
> by Saddam Hussein's deputy head of military intelligence at the time,
> Faruq al-Hijazi. In congressional testimony in March, CIA Director
> George
> Tenet noted that Iraq has "had contacts with al Qaeda," adding that
> "the
> two sides mutual antipathy toward the United States and the Saudi royal
> family suggest that tactical cooperation between them is possible."
>
> Espionage writer Edward Jay Epstein has pointed out that of the eight
> pilots and co-pilots of hijacked planes on Sept. 11, none got off a
> distress call. What we know of the incidents came from stewardesses and
> flyers with cell phones. Commercial satellite photos show the body of
> an
> airliner at Salman Pak, where the Iraqis are thought to maintain
> terrorist
> training camps. One Iraqi defector, Sabah Khalifa Alami, has stated
> that
> Iraqi intelligence trained groups at Salman Pak on how to hijack planes
> without weapons. Mr. Epstein details these connections at his Web site,
> www.edwardjayepstein.com.
>
> None of this is "hard evidence," let alone "conclusive evidence," that
> Saddam Hussein was complicit in Sept. 11 or any of the other domestic
> terrorist attacks. But there is quite a bit of smoke curling up from
> various routes to Baghdad, and it's not clear that anyone except Jayna
> Davis and Laurie Mylroie has looked very hard for fire. We do know that
> Saddam Hussein plotted to assassinate former President George Bush
> during
> a visit to Kuwait in April 1993. Could he have been waging a terror
> offensive against the U.S. ever since the end of the Gulf War? This
> remains a speculative possibility, but a possibility that needs to be
> put
> on the table in a serious way.
>
> Mr. Morrison is a senior editorial page writer at the Journal.
>