Yet the brown Chevy pick-up seen speeding away from the Murrah Building was traced to an Oklahoma City business run by a Palestinian, with possible PLO ties. That man
is a good friend of Abraham Ahmed's. According to a witness who worked for the Palestinian, Ahmed was seen driving the pick-up in the weeks before the bombing.
Numerous witnesses also place McVeigh in Oklahoma City in the days before the bombing with a friend of Ahmed's an Iraqi a man who bares a strong resemblance to the mysterious, stoic passenger seen in the Ryder truck by Mike Moroz on the morning of April 19 at Johnny's Tire Store.
KFOR reporters Brad Edwards and Jayna Davis broke the story on June 7, 1995 with a series of interviews with witnesses who saw McVeigh with the Iraqi, first in a bar, then in a restaurant, then in a pawn shop.
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Back in Junction City, the manager of the Great Western Inn was watching TV with two reporters when the sketch of John Doe 2 flashed on the screen. The manager immediately recognized the man as the person who had stayed in room 107 on April 17. "He spoke broken English," said the manager. "[He] gave a foreign name and was driving a Ryder truck."
The man's name would never be revealed, however, because the FBI confiscated the hotel's log book.[553]
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A few days earlier, across town, two men had checked into the Plaza Inn. They told desk clerk Tiffany Harper they were Spanish visitors from Mexico. But Harper thought they were Arabs because of the way they talked.
According to employee Ruby Foos, another man checked into the motel a day or two later, went to his room, then emerged wearing flowing Arab robes. As far as Foos could tell, the man was not connected with the other two men.[554]
While it may not be unusual for Arab-garbed individuals to be in Oklahoma due to its connection with the oil industry, Douglas Boyer, the security guard at the Plaza, said a yellow Ryder truck was parked out front. All of the men checked out a day or two before the bombing.
Interestingly, two Middle Eastern men were spotted driving from Oklahoma City to Dallas immediately after the bombing. The men stopped to ask directions from an Oklahoma Highway Patrolman. When the officer ran their plate, he discovered that it didn't match the vehicle. The plate belonged to a rented blue Chevy Cavalier, which was later found at a motel in Oklahoma City. The driver of that vehicle, Asad R. Siddiqy, a cab driver from Queens, along with the other two men, Anis Siddiqy and Mohammed Chafi, were taken into custody.[555]
While the men were ultimately questioned and released, a blue Chevy Cavalier would be spotted by a witness in downtown Oklahoma City along with a Ryder truck, a yellow Mercury, and a brown Chevy pick-up the other vehicles in the bombing convoy.
On the morning of the blast, a woman was riding the elevator in the Murrah building, when she noticed a young Arab man wearing a backpack, hurriedly pushing the buttons as if trying to get off. As previously mentioned, she followed him outside, not suspecting anything was amiss. Moments later, she was sent sprawling to the sidewalk as the building blew up behind her.
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As discussed earlier, another witness saw two men running from the area of the Federal Building toward a brown Chevy truck just prior to the blast. The witness described the two men as "males, of possible Middle-Eastern descent, approximately six feet tall, with athletic builds." One of the men was described as approximately 25-28 years old, having dark hair and a beard. The second person was described as 35-38 years old, with dark hair and a dark beard with gray in it the same description Cary Gagan gave.
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Kay recalled that two of the three people in the truck were Middle-Easterners. When she was shown photos, she picked out the Iraqi the same one seen with McVeigh as the driver.
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Not long after KFOR's reports began airing, the Iraqi sued the station, then held a press conference claiming that he was not a suspect in the bombing, and that he had a solid alibi for the morning of April 19. His name was Hussain al-Hussaini, and he was at work, he said, painting a garage on NW 31 Street. Yet Alvin Devers, a neighbor interviewed by Davis, claimed no one was working on the house that day. "I didn't see anybody," said Devers. "I'd remember
."
In addition, Hussaini's co-worker, Ernie Cranfield, said Hussaini's alibi for the morning of April 19 a time sheet stating he was at work at 8:08 a.m. was patently false. Cranfield told Davis that Hussaini was working at a different house by 10:00 a.m., six blocks away, but wasn't there at 8:30 a.m.
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Hussaini also claimed that he worked a second job as at the Western Sizzlin restaurant as a janitor, three days a week, from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. which would have kept him too busy to be at the Murrah Building on April 19. Yet when Davis checked with Jeff Johnston, the assistant manager, she was told Hussaini hadn't worked from April 17 through April 20.
According to Khalid's secretary, none of Hussaini's Iraqi co-workers, who started working for Khalid in November, showed up on the 17th. Was it merely coincidental that Craig Freeman and Dennis Jackson saw a suspicious group of Arab men in the Murrah Building on the afternoon of the 17th?
Interestingly, Hussain al-Hussaini reapplied for his job at the Western Sizzlin in May, then quit in June, saying that he didn't need a job. Khalid's secretary said that Hussaini also purchased a Cadillac after the bombing. Had he suddenly come into a large amount of money?
When KFOR shared their evidence with the FBI, they downplayed their findings. FBI spokesman Dan Vogel said that eyewitness accounts are "notoriously inaccurate. Their credibility must be checked out, their stories corroborated."
Yet KFOR was able to corroborate their story with at least eight different witnesses. They not only placed McVeigh with Hussaini in at least three different locations in Oklahoma City, they were able to trace the brown pick-up to the business where Hussaini worked to a businessman that had been investigated by the FBI for PLO ties. They determined that Hussaini had a tattoo exactly as described by the FBI, and that his alibi for the morning of April 19 was patently false.
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Interestingly, when Hussaini appeared before TV cameras on June 15 to dispel the "rumors" about him, it was Abraham Ahmed who appeared as his interpreter!
The Gazette and KOCO also both claimed that Hussaini couldn't speak English, implying that he couldn't have been talking with McVeigh. Yet KFOR learned that he spoke broken English, and a police D.U.I. report indicated that he replied in English when questioned.[569]
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While the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings may have been the result of Iraqi revenge, what ultimately lay behind the New York and Daharan bombings appeared to stem from a broader-based alliance of Islamic militants from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other countries committed to the expulsion of U.S. troops from the region and an all-out attack on the "Great Satan."[592]
It has been reported that groups ranging from the Palestinian-based Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Sudanese National Islamic Front, the Pakistan-based al-Fuqra, and groups funded by Saudi Arabian Osama bin-Laden were involved in the World Trade Center bombing and related plots.
In fact, as early as 1990, World Trade Center conspirators El-Sayyid Nossair, Mahmud Abouhalima, and al-Fuqra member Clement Rodney Hampton-El (an American Black Muslim) had met in New York City with Sheik Abd-al-Aziz Awadah, who is alleged to have been a senior commander engaged in the coordination of terrorist operations with Iranian, Palestanian, and Hizbollah leaders.[593]
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Before his capture however, Yousef, an engineering graduate of Britain's Swansea University, had time to try out his new bomb an experimental form of nitroglycerin. The small test-bomb, taped under a seat on Philippine Air flight 434, killed one Japanese tourist and injured 10 others. Before the explosion, Yousef had safely departed the plane in Cebu City.
Another temporary resident of Cebu City was Terry Nichols. As discussed, Nichols had moved to Cebu City with his new wife, Marife Torres, a mail-order bride whom he met there in November of 1989. After trying life in Michigan and Nevada, the couple moved back to Cebu City in early 1993, where they lived for a short time.
According to Nichols' ex-wife Lana Padilla, her former husband had traveled to the Philippines about four times a year since meeting Marife. Although some of the visits were to see his new bride and make arrangements for her entry into the U.S., he occasionally traveled alone.[609]*
"Sometimes he went when Marife was in Kansas," wrote Padilla. "It didn't make sense, but I never asked why."[610]
Nichols told Padilla he was traveling to Cebu City to meet "potential business partners." The Michigan farmer was making the multi-thousand dollar trips, he said, to bring back little paper "butterflies" curious merchandise for a man intent on setting himself up in the military surplus business.[611]
It is also curious why Nichols carried two stun-guns on his last trip, why he left $20,000 taped behind a drawer for his son, and a note to McVeigh telling him "You're on your own," and "go for it!" in case he didn't come back, and why his son cried, "I'm never going to see my Dad again
."
Perhaps Nichols had reason to worry. According to FBI 302 reports and investigations conducted by McVeigh's defense team, Abu Sayyaf leader Edwin Angeles spoke of a terrorist meeting in the vicinity of the Del Monte labeling factory in Davao, on the Island of Mindanao, in late 1992 or early '93. It was there, Angeles said, that Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, Wali Khan Amin Shah, and several others discussed the Oklahoma City bombing plot.[612]*
One of the men at the meeting, recalled Angeles, introduced himself as "a farmer."[613]
When the "farmer" returned home from his last visit to the Philippines on January 16, 1995, and discovered that Padilla had opened the mysterious package and read the contents, he turned "white as a ghost."[614]
On April 19, 1995, Abdul Hakim Murad was sitting in his New York jail cell when the word went out that the Oklahoma City Federal Building had been bombed. Murad casually admitted to a prison guard that the Liberation Army of the Philippines a group connected to Abu Sayyaf was responsible.
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The sighting of Terry Nichols with Islamic terrorists in the Philippines dovetails with Cary Gagan's sighting of Nichols with his "Iranian" friends Omar and Ahmed in Henderson, Nevada.
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Had the Arab cell involved in the bombing reinlisted the aid of expert bomb maker Ramzi Yousef for the Oklahoma City attack? A U.S. Marshall told Jayna Davis that he believed the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings were linked. Other sources expressed similar opinions.
Finally, the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General report on the Oklahoma City bombing indicates that nitroglycerin was was found at the scene. As previously stated, Yousef had been experimenting with a new form of nitroglycerin.
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The plan was arranged for a Middle Eastern bombing engineer to engineer the bomb in such a way that it could be carefully transported and successfully detonated. There is no reported incident of neo-Nazis or extreme Right-wing militants in this country exploding any bomb of any significant size, let alone one to bring down a nine (9) story federal building and kill 168 persons.
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Finally, Timothy McVeigh, an alleged white supremacist, was seen with Hussain al-Hussaini, an Iraqi.[692]
Interestingly, within hours of the blast in Oklahoma City, Radio Tehran in Iraq had the answer. "
the perpetrators were Christian extremist militias from Montana and Oklahoma observing the two-year anniversary of the U.S. government killing of 86 men, women, and children in the Branch Davidian Waco massacre."[693]
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Certainly the capture of McVeigh and Nichols did not repudiate the still-standing Middle Eastern connection. Nor could the sudden change have been the result of information from low-level agents in the field. No. It could have only been the result of one thing a strategic decision from the Justice Department, which had as its basis, a political directive from the White House.
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Whatever the reason, certainly the public wasn't being told the full truth about the Oklahoma City bombing. They would never be allowed to glimpse any evidence of the Middle Eastern connection.
