Posted 4/2/2004 by Pierre Legrand
LA Weekly: News: Secrets of Timothy McVeigh
This story has everything you need for a conspiracy, White Supremacists, trips to the Philippines, reports of Iraqi agents, a foreign dictator comfortable with terror tactics, cover up by the FBI, a President unwilling to face reality, I mean sheesh if someone wrote a book with this many twists and turns who would believe it? Now with the Terry Nichols trial about to start we will be revisiting all of these twists and turns, should be interesting to see what comes out. A long time ago, the Clinton/Reno Justice Department declared that there was no state sponsorship of the attack on the Murray Building; indeed, they believed that small-unconnected groups now committed all terror, notwithstanding the Iraqis State Sponsored Terrorist plot to murder hundreds in the attempt to assassinate Former President Bush.

Some of the interesting bits from this LA Weekly Article.
LA Weekly: News: Secrets of Timothy McVeigh: "April 28, 1995" One of the more provocative lines of inquiry over the past decade has been whether the plot included Middle Eastern terrorists. In the hours immediately after the blast, law enforcement publicly focused on that possibility. But the arrest of McVeigh, within hours of the bombing, and Nichols, who turned himself in two days later, wiped that theory from the national consciousness. Over the years, the possibility of a larger conspiracy has piqued the interest of only a handful of people with the power to pursue the questions, including a member or two of Congress. Suspicion that the bombing involves a Middle Eastern connection begins with an all-points bulletin issued by the FBI three hours after the explosion for a truck like one stolen from the blue-collar Oklahoman. It was a brown Chevy pickup, with tinted windows, seen speeding away from the area, with two Middle Eastern–looking men inside. Later that day, the FBI canceled the alert, and has never said why. When Timothy McVeigh, a disillusioned Gulf War vet, was arrested and charged on April 21, questions about that mysterious brown truck and its Arab-looking occupants faded away.

As was seen in the WTC 93 investigation the Clinton Administration was unwilling to face the horrible possibility of our being the victims of State Sponsored Terrorism. How else could you explain that an act of war, the attempted murder of up to 200,000 people (WTC93) as declared by Ramsey Yousef, resulted in a criminal investigation? A criminal investigation is what the state uses when you are prosecuting an individual or a small group of individuals not what you use when you may be chasing a state. A state has the sort of resources that will specifically defeat a criminal investigation. Worse, in the Clinton Era, laws denied the sort of crosstalk between the CIA and FBI that might enable the FBI to alert the Executive Branch that there was State involvement in a terror attack and Nation-to-Nation action was required. That the FBI might not want to transfer the case to the CIA is a question for another article on the motivations of a Bureaucracy. A criminal investigation is quite different from an intelligence operation. One depends on finding evidence sufficient to prosecute the other is interested in trying to determine, often with only scraps of contradictory information what has happened and what will happen. The Clinton administration had an aversion to using its intelligence apparatus; witness James Woolsey CIA Director for the critical period of 1993-95 not having access to Clinton, it was joked that the small plane that crashed into the Whitehouse lawn was Woolsey trying to see President Clinton, and this was to have enormous implications for our nation’s safety.

Its possible that the reason the Clinton Administration had an aversion to using its intelligence assets is the very nature of the world of espionage. Using the Justice department to pursue a criminal investigation allowed the President to appear to be doing something about a problem while not exposing the President to decisions based on the vagaries of the intelligence services. In a criminal investigation no decisions were required of the President aside from deciding to move the case to the criminal side; the system would take over from that point on and generally would shield the administration from the sorts of decisions that are demanded when an intelligence operation is conducted to determine intent and responsibility. Certainly getting a conviction was required or there would be hell to pay politically but in general, the Terrorists were very accommodating in always planning to leave behind a few lower level soldiers who took the fall allowing the rest of the most important of the cell to escape. Criminal investigations shielded almost all involved except the American public. The state sponsoring the terrorist act hid behind strict rules of evidence that they were expert in manipulating, the administration hid behind the fact that their hands were tied by observing the rule of law.

I’m sure by now we all understand the difficulties involved in making a case for war based on intelligence sources. The very nature of intelligence will cause its findings to be a matter of opinions based on examination of the very same evidence by different sources. James Woolsey gives a good look into the problems when he discusses the “evidence” pointing towards Saddams complicity in 9/11.
Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein’s War against America." Welcome.
James Woolsey, let me ask you first. Is there any direct evidence of a connection between the September Eleventh hijackers and Iraq?
Woolsey: It depends on what you mean by direct. Much of intelligence is hearsay, and would not be admissible for example in a court. There’s some very suggestive evidence. For example, there are at least five individual witnesses -- two American inspectors and three Iraqi defectors -- who tell us about Iraqi government training of non-Iraqi Arabs at Salman Pak, on the southern edge of Baghdad, on an old Boeing 707 [aircraft], in hijacking techniques, including hijacking with knives. Now is that direct evidence? It strikes me that it’s pretty darn suggestive evidence. Would it alone convict Saddam in a court before a jury beyond a reasonable doubt? Probably not. But there’s more.

The Clinton Administration probably didn’t want to face making a case for war based on such shaky ground. But that does not forgive it from at least attempting to find State involvement in the major terror attacks by involving the CIA and changing the rules to allow the sort of crosstalk that might have saved lives.

By the time of the April 28, 1995 OKC Terror Attack, the administration should have understood there were people out there who, even if we didn’t acknowledge it, were at war with us. It bears repeating; the 93 World Trade Towers terror attack was intended to topple one tower into the other murdering up to 200,000 innocent citizens. The attempted assassination of Former President Bush using classic terror tactics gave us a big lead into one of the players in this war on America as it was tied by the FBI and CIA to Saddam. The Bomb was a classic Iraqis design and the agents captured were Iraqis.

Pieces of the puzzle
It was obvious early on, that Saddam Hussein, to achieve his ends, was quite comfortable using terrorist tactics against the United States. Witness the attempted assassination of Former President Bush by the use of an enormous car bomb as his motorcade traveled through Kuwait. This evidence alone is enough to move him right up the scale on possible suspects for any future attacks. The Car Bomb was reputed to have been big enough to have killed not only everyone in the Bush Entourage including the Former President, Former First Lady, Current First Lady and Jeb Bush but at least 200 more people in the crowds that were to be surrounding the route. Nevertheless, the Clinton Administration did not abandon its convenient belief that States no longer supported terrorism.

Timothy McVeigh was the perfect sort of person for the Clinton Administration to pin the blast in Oklahoma on. He was a former Desert Storm soldier, a committed gun rights defender, who read works by Nazi sympathizers and who distrusted his government. That he was guilty is beyond dispute, what some very smart people dispute is that he worked alone with Terry Nichols. Timothy McVeigh was the perfect sort of enemy for the Clinton Administration, not ethnic and someone who could be portrayed as a right wing fanatic by the liberal press in other words a great fall guy.

Terry Nichols who reputedly was unable to put together a bomb that worked prior to his visit to the Philippines, all of a sudden upon returning from the Philippines is a master bomb maker. Was his mail order Pilipino wife a cover to allow him to go back and forth between the two countries without raising suspicion? The Philippines, remember, is one of the centers of operation of Al Queda. Ramsey Yousef caught there when his bomb-making laboratory caught fire while he was designing the component bombs designed to for use in the simultaneous attack on 12 US Airliners flying over the Pacific.

The Alliance between unlikely allies as exhibited by the dealings of White Supremacists and radical Muslims united by a hatred of the Jews and the religious belief that the US is the worst enemy the world has seen.

Witness the Iraqis, former members of the Iraqis army who kept showing up in the most incriminating spots at the worst moments doing the most suspicious things. Witness the FBI’s complete lack of desire in tracking these thugs down.

This trial might be a very uncomfortable event for those who still are trying to explain the Clinton Administrations philosophy in dealing with Terror. Hindsight is twenty-twenty and those who wish to absolve the Clinton Administration of responsibility might have a point were it not for knowledge that the Clinton Administration had to know that these terrorists were attempting to kill as many people as possible. This is in direct contravention of typical terrorist doctrine up to that point. Kill as many people as will force attention but not so many that demands a declaration of War. The WTC bombing was intended to topple one Tower into the other crushing up to 200,000 that it did not does not have any bearing on the intention to murder many thousands of innocents. Many questions remain of that attack and the Clinton Administrations response, to fight this war we need to know all the facts on how our government reacted and why. The trial of Terry Nichols will provide more pieces to the puzzle and perhaps we might understand better the reasons for the apparent lack of urgency on the behalf of successive administrations on the problem of terrorism.

More references: Wild theories spun in book
Is al Qaeda recruitment of U.S. soldiers linked to OKC Bombing?
The Swastika and the Crescent