The Oklahoma City Bombing: A Fresh Look

On April 19, 1995, the Alfred E. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. The generally accepted account of the Oklahoma City bombing is that one man, with some assistance from an accomplice, pulled it off, using just one explosive device, a Ryder Truck full of a fertilizer- based explosive.

It was such a horrible event—costing 168 lives—that none of us at the time could bear to think that there could have been something wrong with official account. The evidence that we have about this terrible incident lends itself to several interpretations, none of which can be proven. Some have even connected strands to suggest that it was some sort of false flag operation gone-wrong that was intended to pin the blame on Saddah Hussein or Muslims. But there is not enough evidence to make that case. There is much more evidence for the view that the people who perpetrated this horror were closely watched by government agents, but that somehow they were able to bomb the building before government got its act together and arrested them.

Basic Information
Timothy McVeigh was quickly apprehended and labeled the main bomber. There was a brief search for the second man who was seen with McVeigh just before the explosion—John Doe #2, who could have been Michael Brescia, a German who roomed with one Andreas Strassmier, who lived in a white supremacist compound frequented by Mc Veigh. While still claiming to search for John Doe #2, the head of the investigations ordered other agents to cease looking for him. At one point there were five candidates as John Does, but the government lost interest in them.

McVeigh’s Army buddy Terry Nichols, who was far away in Herington, Kansas at the time, was arrested as an accomplice. Nichols admitted to helping to construct a bomb on April 18.

The prosecution’s supporting testimony came from Michael Fortier and his wife Lori after months of badgering and intimidation. It is also compromised by the effects of drug use on their memories. Lori Fortier rehearsed her testimony with the F.B.I. for 4 days before she went o the stand. She was granted immunity, and Michael was to serve less than 11 years for not warning authorities about a crime he knew was about to be committed.

Some of the witnesses described a man who did not look like McVeigh renting the Ryder truck. McVeigh’s fingerprints did not turn up on the truck or the counter of the body shop where he allegedly rented it. Some of the workers say that two men came in to rent the truck, and that one of looked a lot like Tod Bunting, who was with McVeigh at Fort Riley. Bunting later said he rented a truck at the same place a day later, but this was never pursued. Some experts think Bunting looked a lot like the John Doe- 2 composite. Some who believe there were two trucks, aside from the one Bunting said he rented, note that a second truck was rented a week before McVeigh allegedly rented one.

Some Doubts About the Official Story
Stephen Jones, attorney for Timothy Mc Veigh and a former Nixon aide, was certain that McVeigh exaggerated his own role in the bombing to protect others. The bomber repeatedly said he alone should suffer so that the “revolution” could go on. Sixteen times the prosecution told the court it was not withholding any evidence from the defense. Then three weeks before McVay’s execution, it turned over some additional material. Jones was ultimately able to prove that the F.B.I. withheld hundreds of pages of documents from the defense. Eventually the bureau admitted to withholding over 4,000 pages. The Associated Press reported that 75% of the files used in the McVeigh trial were at least partially sealed.

Jones suspected that McVeigh got some assistance from white supremacists and thought it possible that Nichols could have had a tie to Islamic extremists in the Philippines. Norm Olson, a Baptist preacher and then leader of the Michigan Militia, revealed that McVeigh attended one of his meetings. A number of witnesses saw McVeigh with men who looked like they came from the Middle East. Jayna Davis, a former KFOR- TV reporter, has amassed much evidence along these lines. Davis and her partner turned up the fact that McVeigh associated with a number of men from the Middle East. She also produced people from the motel on Route 50 who saw Iraqi Republican Guardsman Hussain Ali Hussaini in the company of McVeigh and exiting the Ryder truck before the explosion. The motel employees saw Mc Veigh with other Iraquis as well. He was never questioned. In 1997, she gave her files to the FBI. It is impossible to pass judgment on her arguments, but she was correct in noting that President George H.W. Bush relocated many Iraqi officers to Oklahoma City and Lincoln, Nebraska.

It cannot be established if John Doe #2 existed or if he was from the Middle East.
Some experts thought it would take from 4 to 8 men to pull off the Oklahoma City bombing. Immediately after the event, police circulated composites of two men seen together 15 minutes before the blast. The people who saw more than one suspect were never called before the grand jury.

Craig Roberts wrote that a federal law enforcement official told him that the bombing was about the records of Mountain Aviation, which had operated at the Mena, Arkansas Airport, and allegedly moved drugs. He has a fireman witness to support the report that records were removed from the building the next day. He had another law enforcement source that claimed money for the operation was provided by a Mexican national with previous C.I.A. ties, who might have been working then for the Columbian drug cartel. He, like this writer, found all of the pieces of the story difficult to fit together.

How Much Help?
McVeigh said he alone mixed all that fertilizer and diesel fuel oil. It is hard to believe one man could have done that. Charles Farley testified to seeing 4 men with McVeigh near Geary State Lake the day before the explosion. The accounts of the explosion raise a question about whether there was a second bomb in the building, and explosives experts, including Brigadier General Benton Partin, are on record that the fertilizer bomb was not powerful enough to do the damage attributed to it. It could not have been the only source of damage. It would have been impossible to destroy a large concrete pillar deep in the building. The general thought that demolition charges on some pillars would be necessary. The general is a self-described Christian who hates Communism and appeared before the National Press Club to insist that the explosions must havbe been the work of leftists. For four years, he was chairman of the Republican Party of Fairfax County, Virginia. The F.B.I. interviewed him but ignored his carefully framed comments. Sam Cohen, a physicist and inventor of the neutron bomb agreed that a truck bomb could not have done all that damage.

Dr. Roger Raubach, a physical chemist who worked at Stanford, agreed with Partin and said he didn’t care if there were a semi-trailer with 20 tons of ammonium nitrate, “it wouldn't do the damage we saw there." Testimony of people who were inside the building when the explosions occurred has recollections that seemed to support the general’s view.

The on-scene reporting by Oklahoma City TV stations leave the impression that two unexploded bombs were found there.

KFOR Channel 4: The FBI has confirmed there is another bomb in the Federal Building. It's in the East side of the building.
They've moved everybody back several blocks, obviously to, uh, unplug it so it wont go off. They're moving everybody back.
It's a… it's a weird scene because at first everybody was running when they gave the word to get everybody away from the scene, but now people are just standing around kind of staring. It's a very surreal, very strange scene.
Now, we want to get some information out to people, to people who are in the downtown area. You don't want to stand on the sidewalk, and the reason for that is there are gas mains underneath and if there's a second explosion, that those gas mains could blow. But, again, we do have confirmation. There is a second bomb in the Federal Building. We know it's on the east side. We're not sure what floor, what level, but there is definitely danger of a major second explosion. They're warning everybody to get as far back as they can. They're trying to get the bomb defused right now. They are in the process of doing it, but this could take some time. They're telling people that this is something to take very seriously, and not to slip forward to get a look at this, because this thing could definitely go off.
KWTV Channel 9: All right, we just saw, if you were watching, there, there was a white pickup truck backing a trailer into the scene here. They are trying to get people out of the way so that they can get it in. Appears to be the Oklahoma Bomb Squad. It's their Bomb Disposal Unit, is what it is, and it is what they would use if, if, the report that we gave you just a few minutes ago is correct, that a second explosive device of some kind is inside the building. They'll back that trailer in there, and the Bomb Squad folks will go in and they'll use that trailer. You see the bucket on the back? This is how they would transport the Explosive Device away from this populated area. They would try to do something.
Finally, KFOR announced:
The second explosive was found and defused. The third explosive was found — and they are working on it right now as we speak. I understand that both the second and the third explosives were larger than the first.[105]

No one ever explained how they got the storey so wrong, and some journalists claim they were threatened and told to change their stories. The media reported that two unexplained bombs were removed from the building. There is also a FEMA memo on this subject. CNN reporter Suzanne Sealy told viewers that one bomb was found on the east side of the building and that the F.B.I. sent people a few blocks away.
Films of the explosion showed two smoke plumes, one outside the building and one inside. Allegedly two tons of ammonium nitrate was used in the McVeigh bomb, but the smell of ammonia was not present at the scene. The truck was 30 or 40 feet away from the building. Witnesses testified to a tremendous flash and feeling great amounts of static electricity, all characteristics of nuclear and sub-nuclear blasts. The Feds demolished the building on May 23. Mc Veigh had military training and would have known that ANFO was not effective in destroying steel and concrete.
Terrance Yeakey
Terrance Yeakey, an Oklahoma Police Sergeant, was the first officer to get to the Murrah Building at the time of the explosion. He was certain he saw a flash within and that windows were blown out. He called his former wife to say, “it’s not what they are saying it was.” He also over heard ATF agents reveal something else that convinced him the official view of the explosion was very wrong. Three days before he was to receive the department’s Medal of Valor in 1996 his body was found in a field, half a mile from his car. His arms and wrists were slit as well as both jugular veins. There was a downward gunshot wound in the head. When the car door was opened, blood ran out. The death was declared a suicide. No autopsy was done, and the car was not dusted for prints. There was no investigation. But the Medical Examiner did find that there were no “stellat” wounds, meaning a silencer prevented the head from being marked by escaping gas. The mortician found multiple rope burns. Yeakey’s notes on the bombing were never found.

Yeakey’s former wife revealed that the sergeant shared a safe deposit box with Dr. Charles Chumley, with whom he worked during the rescue effort. After that they conferred several times about what had happened. Chumley and Yeakey had refused to turn in false reports as requested by federal officers. Chumley, a pilot, went down in a crash in August.
The Tapes
There is a dispute about the security tapes at the Murrah building. The F.B.I. says the tapes show nothing, but a Secret Service memo claims the tapes showed that McVeigh have had accomplices. There were four security cameras in the area. Eventually footage was released, but there was nothing for the minutes before the explosion. It was said that the tapes were being changed or the camera had run out of tape.
The Hammer Manuscript
David Paul Hammer, a death row inmate, has a manuscript allegedly containing things McVeigh told him. The F.B.I. tried to interview him before he was executed, but the interviews did not take place due to disagreements about who could be present. The manuscript said that McVeigh was contacted by a major at Fort Bragg before he left the army. McVeigh was being recruited to gather intelligence on right-wing groups like the Klan and the Aryan Nation. McVeigh was deeply disappointed at the time that he had not been taken into Special Forces. In mid-1991, Mc Veigh was ordered to attend Special Forces training. He had just returned from the Persian Gulf and found the training very taxing. Technically, people who complete that program are asked to evaluate themselves and determine if they should go into the Special Forces. He claimed that he dropped out and was not terrible disappointed. Whatever happened, this was a turning point. He became more and more disillusioned with government and the Army, read survivalist and anti-government literature, and started carfrying a weapon wherever he went.

He later claimed that he had been asked to join a secret assassins squad. While still a soldier, he wrote to his sister Jennifer that he had been asked to join “a Special Forces (Green Beret) Covert Tactical Unit (CTU) that was involved in illegal activities. These illegal activities included “protecting drug shipments, eliminating the competition, and population control.” He also mentioned assassinations and asked her to tell no one about this.
The Hammer manuscript further claims that McVeigh and Nichols were helped by people connected to Elohim City ( City of God in Hebrew), Christian enclave in northeastern Oklahoma where Andreas Strassmeir was in charge of security. Mc Veigh and Nichols drove from Fayette, Arkansas to Elohim City, on October 12, 1993.
The Far Right, White Supremacist Connection

Elohim City constituted 1,000 acres and was home to racists, Neo-Nazis, right-wingers, and just plain criminals. In 2004, the F.B.I. released a memo that indicated that the Southern Poverty Law Center had an informer planted in that small community.

Strassmeir was son of the head of the German Christian Democratic Party and most likely a member of the super-secret counter terrorism agency, GSG-9. That unit once rescued a Lufthansa flight in Mogadishu to rescue him. He was a former Bundeswehr officer and a graduate of the elite Hanover War College. It is likely that he was on loan to the CIA or some other agency to infiltrate these white supremacists and keep an eye on Aryan Republican Army, which robbed 22 banks. He told the Telegraph of London that he was briefly in the US in 1989, trying unsuccessfully to get a DEA job. Though denying he was an agent, he all but admitted it: "The Right-wing in the U.S. is incredibly easy to penetrate if you know how to talk to them," he told the Telegraph. “He added that the bombing was the result of a government sting plan gone wrong. He had been in the United States since May, 1991, and the AFT had put out a BOLO saying he was in violation of INS regulations, but that he should not be arrested.

Andreas met Timothy McVeigh at a Tulsa gun show April, 1993. They met again in April, 1994. It is estimated that McVeigh visited the town about 20 times. Strassmier claims McVeigh never visited the place, but an AFT informant placed Tim there in the winter of 1994. The Dublin Sunday Times (June 13, 1997) reported that Strassmier was the key link between the American Revolutionary Army and the IRA. An AFT informant reported that the IRA supplied the detonator used by McVeigh.

When Strassmier later fled the US he was found in Arkansas, but Governor Frank Keating two generals intervened to get him released. Mc Veigh called Andreas Strassmeir “Andy the Kraut.” His wife was an Israeli. It is believed that he was somehow tied to McVeigh through Kirk Lyons, who had been a Klan lawyer.

The enclave was run by a Reverend Robert Millar, 71, a Christian Identity minister. His church believes that white Anglo-Saxons are the chosen people and the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Three of the men there had ties to the military. Two of those men, Richard Guthrie and Pete Langan, and McVeigh robbed banks to raise money for the community and to arm it. ( The F.B.I. probably thought Guthrie and Kenney Trentadue were the same person.) Apparently the men McVeigh met at Elohim City went only by code names. One of them was “the major” who contacted him at Fort Bragg.
Differing Views on the Threat Posed by the Militias

Days before the explosion, former CIA director William Colby told John De Camp, his protégé, that the right wing militias must be discredited. He wrote: "I watched as the Anti-War Movement rendered it impossible for this country to conduct or win the Vietnam War. I tell you, dear friend, that this Militia and Patriot movement in which, as an attorney, you have become one of the centerpieces, is far more significant and far more dangerous for America than the Anti-War Movement ever was, if it is not intelligently dealt with. And I really mean this.” Colby understood how quickly the outlook of these right-wing fringe groups could spread, and he thought that far more people shared their views than most would suppose.
He must have realized that the bumbling and bloody assault at Waco strengthened the militias and their allies. De Camp, then an infantry captain, served Colby in 1969-1970 when he was deputy ambassador to south Vietnam. De Camp was a skilled linguist, having mastered six languages including Farsi. Much later in life, after having served in the Nebraska senate, he seemed sympathetic to the militias after had uncovered and written about a pedophile ring that rounded up children for the sexual pleasures of politicians. A British film on the ring called “Conspiracy of Silence” was supposed to have been shown on the Discovery channel but it was never aired. There re copies of it available on the internet. Later, De Camp became lawyer for a man who had been ejected from the McVeigh grand jury for asking too many difficult questions.

Two days after the event, F.B.I. director Louis Freeh told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Most of the militia organizations around the country are not, in our view, threatening or dangerous." Go figure!

Testimony of AFT Plant Ignored
Transcripts on a December 8, 1997 “in chambers” conference between Judge Richard P. Matsch, Nichols’ attorneys, and Justice Department lawyers reveals that the judge never read the file on what ATF informant Carol Elizabeth Howe, 26, once a Tulsa debutante, told here F.B.I. handler, Angela Finley. Howe was Confidential Informant 53270-183, and her code name was “Freya.” Judge Richard Matsch refused to let the defendant’s attorney introduce Howe’s information, dismissing it as “irrelevant.” She said that the Elohim City community were plotting against the US government. She described its inhabitants as racists and added that Andreas Strassmier, head of security at Elohim City, had threatened to blow up federal buildings. Finney’s reports show that Howe was being taught how to make explosives by “Andy” Strassmier.

A May report had Howe talking about “the bombing of the building in Oklahoma City.” Two days after the attack she talked to Finley about their plans to blow something up and mentioned Dennis Mahon, a member of White Aryan Resistance, as her source, and added that he talked about Andreas Strassmeir having made three trips to scout out the Murrah Building. She had also travelled with Reverend Millar. Howe was re-interviewed and confirmed that Finley’s written report. The records from McVeigh’s telephone rental card showed that the bomber called Strassmier two minutes before calling the Ryder Truck Rental agency.

At one point the prosecution denied that Howe was an informant. Later it denied that she provided any warnings before April 19, 1995, and it said she was dropped as an informant6 in June. However, government records demonstrate that both were lies. They also show that federal officers believed she was in physical danger because she talked to the defense, but they refused to provide protection. Howe was arrested for making a bomb threat when the prosecutors learned that Stephen Jones, Nichols’ attorney, was going to call her as a witness. She was acquitted in a Tuila trial that was not covered by the national press.

Agent Peter Rickel admitted in open court that Millar was a paid informant since 1994. When he spilled the beans, a senior agent bolted the room for some reason. This means there were 3 informants within the compound, including Howe and Strassmeir.’

Hoppy Heidelberg was a grand juror who made himself a real nuisance. He was troubled that no one who saw Mc Veigh with other people was permitted to testify. He quoted from the manual for grand jurors and asked why no one who saw John Doe #2 testified. He even asked questions about the prosecutor’s evidence, and Judge David Russell removed him from the grand jury. He had previously sent a letter to the judge suggesting that John Doe #2 might have been a government agent who was being protected.

Richard Wayne Snell, a neo Nazi leader was executed on the day the Murrah Building was attacked in 1995. He had been involved in an earlier plot to attack the building and told guards that Murrah would be attacked on the day of his execution. There were people at Elohim City who were sympathetic to Snell and knew about his prediction.

Involvement of Islamic Forces
On July 16, 2005, the McCurtain Daily Gazette reported that the Elohim City Christian fundamentalists were involved in the bombing. Mike German, a 17 year F.B.I. man who led the investigation, resigned when he learned that the Bush Justice Department would not follow this lead. There are several leads that could point to the involvement of Islamic forces, particularly the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, with the bombing of the Murrah Building. Should this be revealed, it would be clear that people we helped in Afghanistan repaid our support with this terrible deed. That was reason enough to ignore these leads.

Just as the far- right militant organizations are filled with government informers, it is likely that there are also informers within the Islamic groups. Gene Wheaton, a former C.I.A. agent, noted “Every major Middle-Eastern terrorist organization is under surveillance and control of the intelligence agencies in the U.S. None of these guys move around as freely as they'd like you to think." To explore the involvement of the white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and Islamists would eventually turn up information that federal agents knew about the planned attack and somehow failed to prevent it.

It should be noted that federal moles are not informed of one another’s presence. So they do not compare notes. It is possible that Hussain al-Hussaini of Oklahoma City was a federal mole and even now sees the tragedy simply as a sting gone wrong and something to keep quiet about so that other informants and operations can be protected. In the last analysis, these people probably had very little grasp of the big picture. People above them must digest their reports and make intelligent decisions. What they were thinking, we will never know.

Nichols and Al Qaeda
At his trial, Terry Nichols insisted there was no Philippine connection to the bombing. The 2006 report of the House International Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on Oklahoma City, headed by Dana Rohrbacker, made it clear that the momb required more expertise than either McVeigh or Nichols possessed. The travels of Nichols have received too little attention. On his first trip to the Philippines in 1990, he met his second wife, Marife, and was asking for assistance in bomb building. McVeigh probably had a two week affair with her while Terry was at work. Usually accompanied by his second wife, Nichols travelled to the Philippines about 16 times. F.B.I. 302 reports indicate and learned that Nichols met with Abu Sayyaf people, Philippine Muslim extremists in late1993 or early 1994. Jones hired investigators who confirmed this. Nichols is known to have made telephone calls to Cebu City when his wife was not home. The Nichols lived in Cebu City for a time in 1993. Also present were Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah. In 1996, Edwin Angeles, military strategist for Abu Sayyaf, surrendered to the Philippine government and said that the Oklahoma City bombing was discussed at that meeting. He was subsequently killed. According to his widow, Elmina -- his third Muslim wife—Edwin was a deep penetration agent for the Philippine government. She said the meeting took place every day for a week in a warehouse in 1994 and that there were two Americans present, Terry the Farmer and another unnamed person. They discussed blowing up buildings. The dying woman said the money came from Yousef. She claimed to hear Edwin discussing the role of Yousef as a representative of the Iraqis with a Philippine soldier.

In March, 2008, Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher became interested in the tie between Terry Nichols and Ramsay Yousef and complained that the Bush administration has obstructed his efforts. Richard Clarke, former NSC counterterrorism director, has said the Feds have not been able to disprove the Yousef-Nichols connection. Both Yousef and Nichols are now in federal prisons.

In late 1994, Nichols’ first wife discovered that he had $20,000 in stash and precious metals worth at least $60,000. Like McVeigh, Nichols came out of the army with a deep hatred of the U.S. government. Mc Veigh wanted to become an arms dealer but he told people his trips to the Philippines were to bring back little paper butterflies to sell in the US.

The late Sherman Skolnick maintained that two Muslim men were often with Mc Veigh. The late Chicago investigator believed they could have been among the hundreds of Iraqi army officers George H.W. Bush relocated in the United States after the First Gulf War. Most of them were settled in Nebraska and Oklahoma.
Cary Gagan, a government informant, attended a meeting at the Western Motel in Los Vegas on May, 1994 attended by 5 from the Middle East, two Columbians, and Terry Nichols. At the time he was moving drugs from Mexico to Denver for two Arabs, Omar and Ahmed, who were at the meeting. The men took some cocaine and then moved to the Players Club, an apartment complex, in Henderson, where they discussed drug dealing. They also discussed blowing up a federal building in Denver with a truck painted to look like a mail truck. On January 14, 1995, Gagan picked up the truck in Golden. It had about thirty duffel bags with ammonium nitrate. He took the truck to the location he was given and informed the F.B.I. where it was and asked for instructions. The F.B.I. did not re-contact him, and he went home via bus.

At a March 17, 1995 meeting with his employers in Greenwood Colorado, Gagan saw architectural drawings of the Alfred Murrah Building. There was a new figure at the meeting, whom Gagan suspected was an agent. He warned the F.B.I. about what he learned, and the Bureau seemed disinterested. On March 27 and 28 he called the US Marshall’s office in Denver, but his calls were not returned. Then he sent a short letter to Tina Rowe, the head of that office. After the bombing, Rowe told KFOR-TV (Oklahoma City) that the letter had not been received. The Feds said he had a history of mental illness, even though he had a letter of immunity on Justice Department letterhead. The effort to discredit him was led by Lawrence Myers, a journalist with likely ties to the government. He had previously succeeded in discrediting a federal grand juror who was view as a problem and played a major role in the conviction of a former C.I.A. agent for allegedly looking for someone to shoot his son.

Danny Coulson, director of the F.B.I.’s Anti-Terrorism Task Force checked into an Oklahoma City hotel on April 19, hours before the attack. Attorney General Janet Reno in 1994 established VAAPCON, an operation to learn if right-wing Christian groups and militias were capable of violence, and Coulson was part of that operation. However, the F.B.I. said it had no prior knowledge the Murrah Building would be attacked. .There is an Embassy Hotel receipt, but Coulson wrote 4 years later that he and his wife were house-hunting in Fort Worth that day.

McVeigh –A Government Tool???
Some think that Tim McVeigh was somehow working for a government operation, and that the explosion was permitted to happen as part of a plan to create enough of a crisis atmosphere to make possible the enactment of legislation giving government extensive powers to monitor the citizenry and restrict civil liberties. It is only a theory, one supported by very little evidence.
After Tim McVeigh returned from the Gulf War, he went to Camp McCall at Fort Bragg to train for the special forces. McVeigh decided not to enter the Special Forces. His reason was that he was not physically up to the training exercises. Whether someone helped him make this decision is unknown. Many thought he was the ideal soldier and was leadership material. After he left the Army, something seemed to have happened to him, he was cold and emotionally spent. While visiting a friend in Michigan, he said something strange. McVeigh said the Army implanted miniature subcutaneous transmitter on him to keep track of him. He said it hurt him when he sat down. It is known that the military had been experimenting with telemetrics from at least 1968, when they were mentioned in Dr. Stuart Mackay’s Bio-Medical Telemetry. Dr. Carl Sanders, who has developed military biochips, claims they were used in the first Iraq War. At Calspan Advanced Technology Center, where Tim worked as a Burns Security Agency guard, scientists were working on artificial intelligence and were engaged in microscopic electronic engineering that included tiny implants used to track people. There was also a drug interdiction program based there. Some of the people who worked with him as guards saw him as robotic and displaying two very different personalities. The sad fact is that the military has a history of using soldiers for mind control experiment.

After his arrest, Mc Veigh presented himself, according to an Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General, as “a polite young man who gave polite, cooperative answers to every question. It was like the dutiful soldier," Gibson said. "Emotions don't come into play, right and wrong don't come into play. What happens next doesn't come into play… his mood was so level, it was unnatural. I looked at him and realized I felt no repulsion or fear. It was like there was an absence of feeling. He exuded nothing. On the other hand, McVeigh was probably putting on the Michigan farmers he told about the chip. Before leaving for Iraq, soldiers were injected in the bottom and they joked about being given tiny biochips.

The government claimed that Nichols and McVeigh raised funds by robbing Roger Moore, a gun dealer who also owned a factory next to the Bahia Mar Marina. McVeigh planned the robbery and Nichols executed it, taking, cash, silver, gold, and guns from Moore’s farm/ranch. Nichols later claimed that Moore gave them some explosives and that he was in cahoots with MvVeigh in planning the heist. Moore manufactured high speed boats that were sold through Intercontinental Industries of Costa Rica. The firm was an Ollie North front in the 1980s, used to get boats to the Contras who used them to mine Nicaraguan harbors. North used nearby Pier 66 for his weapons-running operations. North’s boat, “The Enterprise” ,was often seen there. He tried to sell heavy weapons to the Militia of Montana, which suggests he may still have been working for some government agency. In early, 1995, he wrote to McVeigh about plans to disrupt the country. At the time, he was a confidential informant for two FBI agents in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

In a February 9, 2007 19 page affidavit, Nichols said Mc Veigh was “apparently” being directed by Larry Potts, the FBI’s assistant deputy director for criminal investigations, and he briefly ran the Oklahoma City investigation. Nichols said Potts manipulated McVeigh to change the bomb target. Potts had directed the siege at Ruby Ridge in 1992, where Vicky Weaver, wife of survivalist Randy Weaver was killed. He also had a role in the operation against the Branch Davidians in 1993, and it is said that he told officers to fire on anyone leaving the compound. He was eventually forced to retire. McVeigh allegedly told Nichols in January, 1995 that Potts was forcing him to “go off script” by selecting another target. Both men would have seen Potts as an evil person, and it is possible that this comment was just made to further damage Pott’s reputation. Documents to support his claims have been sealed. Nichols said he wrote, offering to help John Ashcroft, but received no reply. Nichols also claims that the bomb used was very different and much more sophisticated than the device he and McVeigh built.

Attorney Jesse Trentadue used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain FBI memos and 302 reports to show that the FBI was communicating with informers who were interacting with McVeigh. One was Dave Hallaway, the CIA pilot who brought Strassmier to Elohim City, and a second was Shawn Kenny. A third was the person the Southern Poverty Law Center planted there. It is also known that Reverend Milar sometimes sold informati9on to the FBI. There is a 302 report that showed that McVeigh attended a 1994 meeting of FBI informants at Elohim City, and there is also documentation that Louis Freeh , director of the FBI, knew that Hallaway helped Strassmier to escape. Hallaway later handled the standoff with the Montana Militia in 1997. In Missouri, McVeigh was seen with one Robert Jacques, whom the FBI briefly investigated until it learned he was one of their people. They also used three informers within the Arizona militia to keep tabs on McVeigh.

The claim that McVeigh was somehow connected to the government might have some merit. It is known that McVeigh claimed that he had done some special black missions for the Army, and there is much evidence that people like him are often recruited for intelligence work as soon as they leave the military. Before leaving Fort Bragg, McVeigh said a major contacted him about going under cover to do intelligence work for the government by infiltrating right-wing militias. Instead, he worked for Burns Security, guarding a facility where government sponsored mind-control experiments probably were conducted. Then he robbed a gun shop operated by a man who had been a C.I.A. contractor. It could all be coincidental.

David Hammer, a murderer on death row in Terra Haute, became McVeigh’s confidant and close friend. He insists that McVeigh thought he was working undercover for Special Forces and that he was controlled by “the major.” Andreas Strassmier worked closely with McVeigh but had another military control officer. McVeigh selected the Murrah Building as a target, but the major went along. The major thought the bombing would seriously damage the right-wing militia movement, with many of its members withdrawing because of the brutality of that action. One of the men who helped McVeigh was one “Poindexter” who had to be murdered. His body was placed inside the Ryder Van, and it was his foot that was found without a match at the site.


A person known as “D” with intelligence connections briefed the McVeigh defense team and said that Tim was recruited to infiltrate the white supremacists. There are internal defense memoes that indicate that his lawyers heard this from others. Terry Nichols, his old platoon leader, said in 2006 that McVeigh told him in November, 1992 that he was working for the government. McVeigh told the defense team that the DOD gave him a credit card.

Steward Webb claims that an unnamed intelligence source told him McVeigh did not die by lethal injection on June 11, 2001. The government, he says, wanted the building destroyed as a means of getting rid of some embarrassing documents. Webb, a former intelligence operative, has previously shed much light on hiw Iran/Contra was financed and other matters. FBI whistleblower John Peeler says McVeigh is in South America. This theory is based on what McVeigh told death row friend David Hammer. He believed that he was to be rewarded for his service in this way. But this makes little sense. No matter what McVeigh was promised, it made sense to silence him for good.
Lorraine Day, M.D. has raised points to refute my view:

The IV that was supposed to deliver the lethal injection dose to Tim McVeigh was placed, of all places, in his leg! I knew right then that they were NOT going to execute him. This was a fake execution, to pacify the families of the victims involved in the bombing disaster.
The public doesn’t understand what every surgeon and anesthesiologist knows very well. There is no large vein close enough to the skin surface in the leg to place a large enough needle or catheter to deliver the proper dose that would reach the vital organs fast enough to kill a person cleanly. It would be a mess.

He raised two other points. A journalist who witnessed the execution insisted McVeigh ‘s “shallow breathing” when it was over. The physician noted that Dr. Louis Jolly West, visited prisoner McVeigh 18 times. But that could have just been debriefing. This is the sort of argument this writer instinctively rejects, but in perhaps 10% of those cases the writer has had to change his opinion.
In 2006, a video surfaced that was supposed to shjow Timothy McVeigh at Camp Grafton in South Dakota on August 3, 1993. It was a camp that specialized in ballistics. Movie producer Bill Bean was there scouting scenes and taking footage. He shot inside a tank and expected friendly treatment, which he received from other Guardsman. He took pictures of a man who was unfriendly and offered curt answers. Years later, he decided that man looked a great deal like Timothy McVeigh, who would have been out of the army more than a year by then. He took the film to Professor Michael Blomgren at the University of Utah who did a voice forensics test, using a McVeigh 60 Minutes interview as a sample of McVeigh’s voice. Thate was an 86% match.
Loose Ends
Not long after the bombing, the F.B.I. arrested the “Midwestern Bank Robbers,” men Associated with the bank robberies—in all 22 heists. They were part of the Aryan Republican Army. Its headquarters was a safe house in eastern Kansas, and Elohim City was one of many outposts.

Prisoner Kenney Trentadue was found dead in his federal prison cell in Oklahoma City in August, 1995. He had been pulled over on June 10, 1995 and was held for a parole violation. The body was covered with bruises and blood. The Bureau of Prisons and F.B.I. prevented Medical Examiner Fred Jordan from conducting a complete examination and pressured him to drop the matter. Trentadue’s death was ruled a suicide, but his brother Jesse, an attorney, said he was beaten to death by the F.B.I. He claims they considered Kenney John Doe #2 in the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building because he had a tattoo on his left forearm. In 1997, Oklahoma Republican Senator Don Nikles said prison guards told him they were ordered not to talk about the death of Kenney Tretadue. In the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Orin Hatch said it looked like Kenny was murdered. Erie Holder was the Justice Department’s point man in persuading Congress not to investigate Mike Trentadue’s murder. Attorney Trentadue has leaked DOJ memos and e-mails documenting Holter’s role in putting a lid on the story.

Jesse thought McVeigh’s contact was Andreas Strassmeir. In 1992, he was arrested for driving without a license, but all sorts of pressure was brought to bear to get the charges dropped. He appears to have infiltrated a number of right-wing militias. Terry Nichols said McVeigh had been promised protection in a safe house. Strassmeir, from his home in Berlin, said he met McVeigh once and denied any connections with intelligence operations. F.B.I. teletypes verify that Timothy had connections with Strassmeir and Elohim City, where the German carried out military training for white supremacists.


There may be a parallel to the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. It is now clear that the F.B.I. was using an Egyptian double agent to teach followers of the Blind Shaik’s men how to make bombs. The agency actually provided the materials. When its agent warned that arrests should be made immediately, the F.B.I. hesitated, wanting to gather more information. Perhaps Oklahoma City is another example of bad timing—a sting gone terribly wrong. "

What Might Israel Have Known About 9/11?

There is strong evidence that the Israelis knew about the coming 9/11 attack and gathered information on it in advance. There is no evidence they were involved in in any way whatsoever.
F.B.I. special agent Michael Dick, who worked closely with John O’Neill, was concerned about a ring of Israeli movers who were following Al Qaeda people in New York and New Jersey. These Israeli agents communicated by prepaid Verizon cell phones, so their communic tions could not be monitored. Thes agents did not communicate with American authorities. Dick encountered all sorts of bureaucratic problems in pursing this investigation. Eventually, Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, ordered Dick off the case. One C.I.A. source with solid Republican credentials, told Wayne Madsen, that the movers were somehow arranging a cover for the future hihackers.

Before 9/11, the DEA discovered that Israeli “artists” were in the United States using efforts to sell art as a cover for other activities. At first, it was believed they were here in connection with an Israeli network that was marketing the mind-altering drug, Ecestacy. Then it was discovered that they were casing DEA personnel and facilities, mther kinds of federal facilities, and some F.B.I. agents. They were also following people who later turned out to be involved in the 9/11 attack on the United States. The DEA found that several of the so-called Israeli stuedents had links to Columbia and Columbians, and this supported the case that they were somehow tied to the drug trade.

Carl Cameron of FOX news did a series in 2002 on these Israeli artists. Cameron thought there were as many as 140 passing themselves off as art students. Brit Hume found that of the sixty were were eventually detained, twelve worked for one private Israeli communications firm. The artists had special cell phones that US investigative personnel could not intercept. What is interesting is that two of them came to Miami directly from Hamburg, a city where Mohammed Atta had been and where he retained many ties. Several were working for three Israeli corporations in the U.S. Some were active military and others had the skills one would expect spies to have. They knew how to run polygraph machines and were good with communications. One had been the bodyguard of the head of the Israeli army and the other was the son of a two star general. Another was a former military intelligence agent. Their cover story was that they were here to establish art studios. Some of them failed polygraph tests after 9/11. It is likely they were tracking would-be Arab terrorists. Cameron thought this was the case, but added that his sources told him they were not sharing what they knew. FOX is an odd place to find this kind of information, but the lead is worth pursuing.

There is clear evidence that high Mossadofficials came to Washington before 9/11 --some time between August 8 and 15-- to deliver a grave warning to the F.B.I. and C.I.A.. This was reported in a number of mainstream outlets after 9/11, but government sources either denied the Mossad visitors delivered a warning or said the warning was only of a very general sort. Eventually, some media outlets retracted the story. FOX News was told that pursuing it would be “career suicide.” The network dropped the matter but never offered a retraction.

Dr. Alan Aabrosky, a Jew and former director of studies at the Army War College, has hypothesized that 9/11 could not have been pulled off without the combined efforts of the C.I.A. and Mossad. He noted that the physics of the official story for the collapse of the World Trade Center towers was all wrong.

A November 23, 2001 New York Times story told about 60 Israelis being detained here after 9/11. However most were expelled months before 9/11, and those still detained had been picked up at that time. Le Monde reported on March 6, 2002 that they actually numbered more than a hundred. It added that about 120 were expelled. In June, 1999, Insight magazine reported that Division Five of the F.B.I. had found Israelis tapping White House lines. Apparently, the F.B.I. was also aware of this large spy ring before 9/11. In time, the story of the Israeli art student spy ring dropped in the American press. Jane’s Intelligence Digest noted this in March , 2003: “It is rather strange that the U.S. media seems to be ignoring what may well be the most explosive story since the 11 September attacks—the alleged breakup of a major Israeli espionage operation in the USA.”

The art student spy ring went from house to house selling art. They seemed to show an interest in visiting DEA offices and the homes of DEA personnel. There is no doubt that they targeted DEA in these ways, and one wonders if this confirms the many reports that the Mossad supports itself by moving drugs, especially Ecstasy, from Columbia into the United States.

The Israeli agents seemed to cluster where the terrorists were and in places where drug money was being laundered. The Israelis seemed to be organized into teams of 8 to 10 agents. Often the agents were found in federal buildings and top secret military bases.. The terrorists were probably using drug money as well as the funds that were wired in to them. It is interesting that it was the DEA that first became aware of the activities of the Israeli artists and began to track them. The report showed that the Israelis often were addresses very close to where the terrorists were staying. Coincidence?

The DEA report on their activities, what art they bought, etc. is incredibly detailed. It suggests that the Israeli artist spy ring was somehow involved in scouting out DEA investigations of the Ecstasy drug trade. The British and European press assumed the DEA started watching the Israelis, thinking they were peddling Ecstasy, as some claim that US authorities have farmed out this franchise in the US to Mossad. This cannot be proven, but it can be shown that Mossad has shared the drug trade in southern California with US agencies. Forward suggested the Israelis were here to spy on our common enemy, Al Qaeda. The interest in the DEA and certain military bases was probably a smoke screen. Those observing military facilities and the DEA were rounded up while others were left to complete surveillance of Al Qaeda.


The DEA and Justice Department actually started deporting the Israelis in April, 2001—before the 9/11 attack. The Israelis had a good handle on at lest four of the terrorists. When the Israelis caught up with two in Hollywood, Florida, the DEA nabbed them and they were deported. At one point the Justice Department threatened to hold “dozens” indefinitely, but in the end they were all released.

Those who deny that the Israelis were spies rely on the fact that the DEA report does not say they were spies. They also note that other Israelis were deported after 9/11 because they lacked proper papers. Finally, it is noted that the intelligence people who usually feed information to the mainstream press are denying there is any significance to the Israeli art students story.

Less than an hour after the first blast at the Trade Center, East Rutherford New Jersey police arrested five Israelis who had been in a white Chevrolet van described in an F.B.I. alert (BOLO) twenty-five minutes before. The Bergen Record offered a different time frame but the same essential information. The F.B.I. spotted them at Liberty State Park. Money, marked maps of the and multiple passports were found in the van. They were videotaping the collapse of the World Trade Center. They were seen giving themselves high fives when the first plane hit. One of them refused to take a lie detector test and subsequently failed when he did submit to one. The van belonged to Urban Moving Systems , whose owner fled to Israel two days later. In the company’s warehouse, investigators found traces of anthrax, fertilizer, and pipes. A number of computers were removed. Dominick Suter, owner of the firm, closed the business a few days after the attack and fled to Israel.

Much later, The Forward confirmed that two them were spies and that the moving company was a front. An ABC investigation revealed in 2002 that the F.B.I. assumed the agents were in the US to track terrorists. The F.B.I. quickly shut down its investigation, allegedly on orders from the White House.

There is good evidence that another Israeli surveillance team was attached to the World Trade Center plot. That might help explain why the movers were pleased with themselves. They had gotten the event on tape and may have beaten the other team. One of the movers assumed the Palestinians had done it. He told the police “We are Israelis” and that the police should be worrying about Palestinians. Maybe the observation and documentation force was separated from the agents who were tracking Al Qaeda.

In November, three of the five agents appeared on Israeli television and admitted they were there to film the attack. This makes clear that they Israelis knew the attack wass coming, and can be taken to confirm the report that Israel warn3ed the US.

Anti-Semites are quick to conclude that the Israel is behind the bombing or somehow in league with Al Qaeda. A New Jersey police official suggested the latter as did one DEA officer. A variant of this theme is that Mossad was somehow helping US intelligence stage the hit. After all, Mossad has been partner to many US black Ops in the past. But there is no evidence that Mossad took any steps to help the hijackers.

An F.B.I. special agent who suspected that the Israel art students were using and helping Al Qaeda was quickly transferred tyo the operation trying to rescue reporter Danny Pearle. When film surfaced showing one of the students using his lighter in a celebratory gesture, the F.B.I. said the person was a Palestinian. A year after the attack, DEA agents still wrote that the students may have had a connection to the terrorists. Some of the Israelis were dressed as Palestinians. The DEA investigation of the art students was tgerminated on the orders of Attorney General John Ashcroft and F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller

F.B.I. agent Michael Dick, who worked closely with John O Neill, was keeping track of employees of an Israeli moving company who were active in New York and New Jersey. These people had intelligence ties and were keeping track of Arabs. They used internet cafes and prepaid telephones, which made it difficult to monitor their communications. Cole also investigated the so-called Israeli art students before Michael Chernoff , head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, had him transferred to Pakitan.

On September 11, authorities picked up two white vans that were tied to the moving company. One appeared to be a car bomb because it was backed with explosives. It was stopped at the entrance to the George Washington Bridge. Another white van was stopped several miles north of the tunnel. It is likely that the people in the first van were to abandon it and be picked up by the people in the second while recrossing into New Jersey.

Another van with Israelis was stopped on a ramp near Route 3, which led to the Lincoln tunnel. A mystery caller had warned police about a van approaching the Holland Tunnel. There were no white vans there.

It has been confirmed that two employees of the Odigo Company , an Israeli firm near the WTC, received text messages hours before the attack warning of an “imminent attack on New York City.” The story appeared in Ha'aretz, an Israeli paper and was later confirmed by that source. This does not mean the hit was an Israeli plot; it probably means an Israeli agent was worried about some friends.

On September 4, 2001, Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co. moved from the WTC to Norfolk. But they had announced the move before and they had ten employees in the building on September 11. Fortunately they escaped. Daniel Lewin, a former Mosad agent and passenger on Flight 11, was reportedly killed on the plane but reports differ on how he was killed.

Similarly, it is difficult to believe that after all this surveillance of Al Qaeda suspects that Mossad confined itself to very general warnings. That probably could have been done by relying on a few agents in Hamburg, Greater New York, and Florida. Another possibility, though very remote, is that the Mossad agents were simply inept and turned up very little.

One could not be blamed for concluding that Mossad gave the US good leads on what Al Qaeda was up to and that for some reason or other, the US did not pursue the leads. Many times in the past, Mossad has possessed very damaging information about US operations, and it is likely that the existence of such information has given Israel great influence over some US administrations. Perhaps there was not enough time to debate whether the renewed “hold” on investigating suspicious Saudis should be lifted. Perhaps there was simply more ineptitude on the part of the F.B.I.. One cannot remove the possibility that some in government saw that a terrorist attack would have political benefits, including fueling a new and aggressive program to create a new American century. The trouble with accepting the last possibility is that it makes one a conspiracy theorist. It is far better to remain a respectable journalist or academi C.I.A.n and believe Condi Rice’s pronouncements.

Mohamed Atta and Ali Mohammed

The reason why the Bush Administration worked so bury information about Able Danger are not clear. It was a sophisticated data-mining project designed to gather information about Al Qaeda. Discussion of the findings of the Able Danger project lead to consideration of how much the US knew about Atta and other terrorists before 911. At the very least, it is a picture of incredible incompetence. But some of the evidence could be used to raise questions about what else was being hid. This piece will focus on what was known about Ali Mohamed, who was convicted for involvement with the 1998 embassy bombings and Mohamed Atta. Ali Mohammed is relevant because he was connected to the 1993 bombing and the embassy bombings of 1998. There is clear evidence that he was connected to the F.B.I., and at least briefly to the C.I.A..

Republicans spun the story as an illustration of the failures of the Clinton administration. They noted that the Clinton Pentagon failed to act on information about these terrorists. James Woolsey, former C.I.A. director and neocon who detested Clinton, worked closely with Pa. Republican Congressman Curt Weldon to give the story a strong anti-Clinton spin. Weldon claimed before the House that Shaffer and civilian contractor James D. Smith told him the Able Danger project had warned the Navy not to refuel the Cole in Yemen in 2000. Former F.B.I. director Louis Freeh has used Able Danger this to sell his book, claiming the Clintons kept him from hunting Al Qaeda. But the fact was that Able Danger was shut down under Bush, and no one has said that Able Danger had stopped tracking Al Qaeda cells outside the US before the project ceased operation. Freeh, has never explained why three good leads within his agency were quashed or why he did not stand by John O"Neill, the best terrorist hunter we have had to date Freeh’s greatest failure was not acting on information that it had about the Al Qaeda cell in Brooklyn.

The F.B.I. knew a great deal about the Brooklyn cell, which was involved in the 1993 bombing. It was led by the blind sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman. The cell’s chief trainer was Ali Mohamed, a former Egyptian army officer who had taught Green Berets at Fort Bragg.

Khalid al-Mihdar, mastermind of the attack on the Cole was protected by the C.I.A.. The agency did not provide the F.B.I. with the information it had about him or his travels. Nor did it tell the F.B.I. anti-terrorism unit what it knew about an Al Qaeda meeting in Malasia. It did give the director of the F.B.I. regular updates on the meeting. Great efforts were made to hide evidence of Saudi money getting to al Mihdar while he was in San Diego, and it is believed that that was contained in the 28 redacted pages of the Congressional Report on 9/11
Ali Mohammed

The strange relationship of the F.B.I. and Ali Mohammed raises many questions. The F.B.I. has a thick file on the target shooting activities of Ali Mohammed and other men from his mosque at Calverton. They apparently went shooting after mosque services in Brooklyn. According to Investigators Tom Hennigan and Peter Lance, he was a triple agent, loyal in the end to Al Qaeda. If they were wrong, the other reasonable conclusion was that the F.B.I. was somehow complicit in his dangerous activities. A somewhat similar situation existed in relationship to Mohammed Atta. Various government agencies knew quite a bit about Atta’s doings. It seems to come down to a matter of incredible incompetence or some degree of complicity.

Ali Mohamed had been the chief security advisor to Osama bin Laden and had trained the terrorist leaders’s security detail. He worked briefly for the C.I.A. in the early eighties. The agency claims it found him unreliable and placed him on a watch list to prevent entry to the United States. Yet he obtained a visa, according to one account through a secret C.I.A. program, and became a US citizen in 1986. At Fort Bragg, he was an instructor in Islamic culture. While there, he frequently traveled to New York, where he trained young Muslims in the use of explosive and fire arms. His student bled the head off Rabbi Meyer Kahane. The chief of NYPD detectives said it was a lone gunman even though some of his men had gathered enough evidence, including target practice photographs, to conclude otherwise. The F.B.I. quickly embraced the long gunman explanation.

Another became involved in a scheme to blow up the United Nations. A third student was convicted in the plot to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. He also spent time training Islamic fighters in Afghanistan and the C.I.A. has 1989 footage of him training terrorists. It is also known he taught them how to seize an airplane. Ali was detained in a Canadian airport in 1993 when he was found to be carrying two fake Saudi passports. He was released after Royal Canadian Mounted Police called his American handler, John Zent.(Toronto Globe and Mail, 11/22/01)]

In the 1990s, he did surveillance on the US consulate in Nairobi, Kenya and other places in north Africa. One wonders how he explained his frequent absences to his F.B.I. employers and whether they ever doubted his explanations. . In 1993 the Royal Canadian Police detained him, and the F.B.I. secured his release. He went on to Kenya to photograph the US embassy there. The 9/11 report ( page 68) bluntly states that he led those who plotted to attack the embassy in Kenya

In 1989, Ali Mohamed settled in California where he soon helped Ayman al-Zawahiri raise money. Again, in 1994 he helped al Zawahiri. His neighbors were certain he was an intermediary between the C.I.A. and the Afghan rebels , arranging for the movement of arms. By the 1990s, he infiltrated the F.B.I. and became involved in its super-secret Division Five. The agency admitted using him but claimed it was just to track down illegal immigrants, and it did not admit linking him with terrorists. At that time, he somehow obtained the complete list of unindicted coconspirators, which included himself, and faxed it to bin Laden. The F.B.I. held him on a John Doe warrant for 9 months to keep him away from the press and prevent his testimony in the trial of the 1993 bombers. His name came up frequently in the trial and defense lawyers demanded that he be produced as a witness because they knew he worked for the F.B.I. and perhaps also the C.I.A.. In 1996, he was helping Al Qaeda move from Sudan to Afghanistan. Yet, in the late 1990s, he was also in some kind of F.B.I. custody for considerable periods.

As late as 2000, he worked in the bureau’s Sacramento office, was briefly detained after that, and then released. Then he was indicted for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings and entered a guilty plea. The people who produced the National Geographic special on him claim that after 9/11 he was able to explain to federal interviewers all the ins and outs of the 9/11 plot CBS reported in October, 2001 that he was “awaiting sentencing,”
but he then disappeared from the federal criminal justice system.

The Ali Mohammed story becomes even more interesting when it is considered that the F.B.I. had an informer in that Brooklyn cell. Email Salem, a former Egyptian army major was the F.B.I. informer and had warned that some sort of attack was coming, but the F.B.I. claimed Salem was driven off July, 1992 because he refused to testify or wear a wire.

The F.B.I. had blind Shiekh Dr. Omar Abdel- Rahman in its sights, and Salem was a trusted member of his circle, known as al Gamma Isiamiya. Abdel-Rahman was a known enemy of the United States who was let into the country under the cover of national security. There was some unknown reason for him to be here, in Brooklyn. He was on the State Department’s watch list but was still given a tourist visa and green card.

Special agent Nancy Floyd recruited the former Salem and tried to protect him. His meetings with the F.B.I. began in November, 1991. A month later, he was urging the Brooklyn cell to become more militant. According to Peter Lance, who has provided much reliable evidence on 9/11, Carson Dunbar, her supervisor, did not trust her and he ordered her in August 1992 to have no more contact with him. She was subjected to an interminable internal investigation because she technically revealed a meaningless piece of information. All that time, she was shunned by many colleagues, denied promotion or transfer. At one point the agency planted stories that she was sleeping with her asset. With her out of t he way, and Salem being pretty muched shelved by the agency, the F.B.I. missed a golden opportunity to stop the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. This is pretty much the conventional account of what happened.

However, Salem’s many taped conversations with the F.B.I. show that his relationship with the agency deepened. With Floyd out of the way, her superiors took over dealings with Salem, who was a trusted member of the circle of the Abdel- Rahman. Although it is illegal, it appears that the F.B.I. recruited Salem as an agent provocateur. He became a key source of information in the investigtion of the men who were accused of bombing the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. He did not testify in the first trial but did in the second. The original plan was to involve the potential terrorists in building pipe bombs with fake gun powder, but an F.B.I. supervisor later had them use real gun powder. After the blast, Salem wanted to complain to F.B.I. headquarters about what had happen3ed but was dissuaded by his handler. Ralph Blumenthal wrote in the New York Times, “Law-enforcementofficials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer [Emad Salem, a former lieutenant colonel in the Egyptian Army] said after the blast,”

For a man reluctant to wear a wire, Salem soon learned to use the wire the agency gave him against the F.B.I. itself. The transcripts of the recordings make it unclear if the F.B.I. used him or if he used the F.B.I.. The problem is that the recordings are selective. They show that an F.B.I. supervisor told him to use real explosives. The taped conversation with handler John Anticev make it clear that Salem was using federal money to build the pipe bombs. When the bombs were built, Salem is on tape telling the F.B.I. that the time had come to arrest the Islamic extremists. Nothing was done. We don’t know what that meant. Was he to go along and carry real explosives or was he doing more than that? He is heard on the tape acknowledging that the F.B.I. helped him construct a bomb and that the DA was involved? Why did they go that far? The tapes also show that Floyd had more contact with Salem than once thought as they discussed their mutual anguish about failing to head off the bombing. The recordings also make it clear that he was coached as to what not to say in court as revelation of some matters would result in the case against the Islamic extremists being thrown out.

Salem revealed the existence of the tapes at a news conference and was subsequently paid $ 1 million for his cooperation and silence about some things. Andrew C. McCarthy, an assistant federal prosecutor, turned over some of the many tapes to Judge Michael B. Mukasey and judged that others were being retained until they could be screened for’security and other issues.”

William Kuntsler, attorney for the accused, argued that the whole conspiracy was originated by Salem, who was prompted by the agency. The government refused to acknowledge that Salem was a long term informant. It was acknowledged that the F.B.I. knew about his claims of a plot to blow up the WTC but was put off by his demands for money.

A little less is known about Mohammed Atta's activities than about those of Ali Mohamed, but it is clear that even without information from Able Danger, the government had enough information to keep tabs on him. Moreover, it is clear that the F.B.I. had knowledge of the movements of Atta and two others in Venice, Florida before 9-11. In addition, two Al Qaeda terrorists were tailed in San Diego by the F.B.I.. They resided there with a known F.B.I. asset, “Professor” Abdussattar Shaikh . The alleged professor had a bogus degree and taught at a mail order university that no longer existed. The bureau forbade agent Stephen Butler from telling t he 9/11 Commission of his frustration that his superiors would do nothing about these two subjects, Hazmi and Midhar.

The “professor” was really an Indian named Abdussattar Chhipa. He was asso C.I.A.ted with Sam Koutchesfahani, an Iran exile and arms dealer, who was busy illegally bringing people from the Middle East into the US. The Iranian was also an F.B.I. informant. The two helped the immigrants acquire false documents and diplomas from the mail-order universities in the area.

For almost four years, while he was in Germany, Atta was employed by a foundation run by the German and US governments - Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft. He was an instructor in an exchange program , and did some work for it in Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo. The US part of the program was overseen by the State Department but ranking private citizens such as David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger were also involved. He also attended the Technical University at Hamburg, and German federal police ( BKA) investigated him for minor drug crimes.

According to a September 24, 2001 article in the German intelligence magazine Focus, German security people were watching and listening to the Hamburg cell in 1998 and 1999, and it is not unreasonable to assume their information was shared with the C.I.A.. In 1999, the C.I.A. attempted to recruit one member of that cell, Mamoun Darhazanli. There is evidence that he visited the Philippines in 1999, but there is no clear evidence that the Germans knew this. The American agency started following Atta in January of 2000 and found that he was buying dangerous chemicals in Frankfurt. On May 18, 2000, he obtained a visa in Berlin and arrived in New Jersey on June 3, 2000. There is some evidence that he had been in the US before, and there is clear evidence that he and Marwan Alshehhi visited the Philippines in 1999. Several months later, while in Florida, he received $100,000 from an agent under the control of General Mahmoud Ahmad, head of the Pakistani intelligence service. This man was in Washington on September 10, 2001. Oddly, Dr. Rice denied seeing him while he was in the city, and the White House transcript of the press conference said the part of the question about him was inaudible. The Federal Press Service's transcript referred to him by his title as head of the ISI , Pakistan 's press service.

In all, they probably received $325,000 from Pakistani intelligence. About $175,000 more came from unknown sources. Atta was attending a flight school at Huffman Avaiation in Venice, but he had previously attend two others. He and Marwan each paid $28,000 for instruction, but there were many places where instruction would cost a great deal less. The school did not offer instructions in operating commer C.I.A.l jet liners.

He was a licensed pilot already and was given the privileges of an instructor. He may have even gone on some drug runs for them. It was known that he had business dealings with men who flew in from Germany to see him. It is also known that twelve other hijackers had lived somewhere near those two flight schools at one time or other. Atta lived across the street from the Venice Airport, sharing an apartment for two months with Amanda Keller. Later the tenants were told by the F.B.I. to say nothing about this. Told to keep quiet, Amanda disappeared for a time.

The DEA confiscated and auctioned a private jet owned by one of the owners of the school. The agency found 43 pounds of heroin. No action was ever taken against the owner Wally Hilliard, a 70 year old born-again retired Midwesterner health insurance executive whose firm's motto was “Fight Sin, Hate Communism, and Back the Pack.” The DEA did not arrest the pilot even though he had refused to give them his cell phone. The co-pilot, Michael Francis Bassington, was not arrested and and mayb have been a DEA agent. He was unnamed in court documents. Hilliard was a long time asso C.I.A.te of Adnan Khashoggi and was involved in Oryx Investments with him. However, the DEA also believed Bassington was somehow tied to the Alfonso Bowe Smuggling Group. Bassington was also involve ed in a military procurement scandal Guyana. Bassington was close to fellow pilot Wolfgang Bohringer, whom Mohammed Atta called “my brother.” Daniel Hopsicker, an investigative reporter who has revealed much about the C.I.A.’s uses of the Venice , Florida airstrip, claims that Bassington was involved in helping the Sinsaloa drug Cartel in Mexico acquire 100 planes, many of whuch had belonged to the C.I.A. and C.I.A. contractors.
Two of the planes thus acquired were involved in moving drugs. One, a DC 9 painted to resemble a Homeland Security plane was seized in a small Yucaqtan airport on September 30, 2008. On board were 5.5 tons of cocaine. The second was a Gulfstream ii, which had been used in rendition flights, crashed on September 24, 2007 and was carrying a little less than 4 tons of cocaine. Both flights originated in Saint Petersburg-Clearwater, and both were owed by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the Mexican drug lord.

Hilliard obtained the jet from the same people who provided Barry Seal with jets when he was working for the C.I.A., bringing drugs into Mena, Arkansas.( Richard Ben-Veniste of the 9/11 Commission had been Seal's lawyer.) The same jet had made 39 weekly milk runs to Venezuela before the DEA acted. It would appear that Hilliard was running a charter service for drug dealers. There is evidence that the Venice police and Sarasota County Drug Interdiction officers had been warned to leave Dekkers and Hilliard alone.

Several hours after the attack, the F.B.I. had employees of Huffman Aviation under surveillance. A former Huffman executive said that a car full of agents was parked outside his house by the middle of the afternoon. He said they bugged his telephone and pressured him to clam up, and not tell the press what he knew. His theory was that Atta and others were double agents. Without admitting to drug trafficking, he said “I gleaned early on that the operation I was working for had government protection.” Others made the same comment. He refused to say anymore adding “I've got a family to worry about.” Others who had some information were to say the same thing. Dekkers once sold a structurally damaged plane, and was turned in to the FAA by someone who wanted to prevent the sale. Some ribs were crushed and there were dents on the front of a wing. The FAA did nothing to prevent the sale, which some took to be a sign that Dekkers had government protection.

The unnamed executive could have been onto something. It was widely known that Osama bin Laden controlled the Afghanistan drug business and that he was looking into becoming involved in Latin American drug operations. It would make sense to place people in the Hilliard operation. Hilliard had been making illegal trips to Cuba and spreading around Presidential Rolex watches. He said he was doing church work. He could have been seeking Cuban help in the drug trade. Some of Mohammed Atta's German friends in Florida had criminal connection. One of his Florida friends was flying for an o0logarch tied to the Russian mob who had great wealth and power in Czechoslovakia. It all sounds a bit like the strange interrelationships Sibel Edmonds was prevented from discussing.

Some thought Hilliard was some sort of intelligence agent. His partner in a number of ventures was the shadowy Mark Shubin, who was said to have worked for both the KGB and C.I.A.. His father was a KGB colonel, and he spent some time in the Jamaican military and was said to have ties to the Russian mob. Shubin was in business with Kenneth Good who was largely responsible for the Silverado Savings and Loan collapse. Good was a Bush family retainer and close to Neil Bush, who was somehow connected to the Silverado collapse. Bush and Good were also involved in a Venezuelan oil deal, but Bush had neglected to tell Silverado investigators about this.

The school's operator and nominal co-owner was Rudi Dekkers, a native of Holland who owed his government $3,000,000. Dekker had been in Naples and built a record for not paying his bills, they he moved to Venice and bought Huffman Aviation on behalf of Hilliard. A former Huffman executive said it was clear their drug trade had government protection. Hilliard also operated an air carrier which was used and endorsed by Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush. For some reason Hilliard loaned Jerry Falwell $1 million.

There was a second flight school at that airport owned by another native of Holland, Arne Kruithof. The two Hollanders bought flight schools within months of one another. Altogether, eight terrorists trained at the two schools operated by the Hollanders. Other airlines operated out of that airport, including one known C.I.A. company, Caribe Air, and the little known, Bratannia Aviation which was to obtain a multi-million dollar contract to maintain the Lynchburg, Va. Airport. Lynchburg authorities were urged to do due dilligence before giving Hilliard the contract but they rushed ahead without doing so. No doubt Jerry Falwell, who owed Hilliard money, put in a good word. But some speculate that the C.I.A. intervened to help Dekkers and Hilliard. Hilliard tried to collect some of the money from Falwell's account, who tried to hide partial repayments. He said Falwell cleared the account every month, simply taking the cash and putting it somewhere else. Financier Jackson Stevens tired o Falwell's non payment and foreclosedd on the north campus of Falwell's Liberty University.

Pilots at Venice for the various firms moonlighted by doing missionary flights at night for religions groups like Pat Robertson's Operation Hope.. Mark Mikarts, Mohammed Atta’s flight instructor, flew for Agape Flights, a fundamentalist missionary outfit that sent supplies to a man in Haiti accused of plotting a coup against the Aristide regime. Agape in turn, was tied to the Summer Institute of Linguistics, which the Latin American press says is a C.I.A. financed organization designed to use fundamentalist Christianity to break down indigenous cultures and remove barriers to natural resource exploitation.

Dekkers claimed he did not know her, but they both used Pascal Schreier, a German, to recruit Arab students. From the time Dekkers came to Venice in 1999 Arab students were frequenting the school in significant numbers. Dekkers and Hilliard had been in business together before, paid too much for the flight school, and had apparently lost millions in their ventures. Money was not their problem. They had an odd habit of conducting private conversations inside a plane that was in a building.

At first, the F.B.I.'s biography of Atta did not mention his stay in Venice. Three of the four hijacker pilots trained at two Venice schools, and many other Arabs gravitated there for training. Venice authorities think there was a fifth terrorist studying at Huffman, but they cannot prove it. The day after the attack, the F.B.I. seized all the police records as well as the flight school records and put them aboard a C-130 at the Sarasota airport. Around 2 AM on September 12, according to Venice policemen, the flight school records were spirited away in two Ryder trucks that went to the Sarasota Airport, where Jeb Bush and a Florida Air National Guard C-130 were waiting.

Dekkers tried to minimize the time Atta was at the flight school and claim that he barely knew him. He swore before Congress that he never saw Atta again after December, 2002. For some reason, Dekkers tried to deny that Atta stayed in Venice after getting his multi-engine license in December, 2000, and a New York Times reporter tried to spike a story about the Atta's third residence there in the Sandpiper. Atta and Marwan trained at an airport in Charlotte County in January and February and then returned to Huffman for a third time. There were at least 17 Arabs being trained in that county, and the F.B.I. was to seize all records relating to their training. Five of the hijackers received training of one sort or other at US military installations in the 1990s, and three of them received pilots training at the Pensacola Naval Station.

On one occasion, Dekkers said Atta was a terrible person, an incompetent pilot who left school December 20, 2000 and did not return.. Others claim Atta was there in 2001 and that he and the operator were friendly. In August, two of the other hijackers were with Atta, and Atta's attorney father visited from Egypt. The three younger men were said to hire a Yellow Cab in the evenings which was driven by a retired Navy Seal, who left soon after they left Venice. Another driver reported that the two were on very friendly terms and that they shared a cab to a Sarasota night spot in August, 2001. Atta was apparently a hard drinker, did drugs, and he sometimes partied with pilots most probably tied to C.I.A. operations. He had an American girlfriend who was an exotic dancer, and he seems to have had a brief relationship with a stripper. This does not conform to the official story that he was a strict and observant Muslim fundamentalist. On September 8, 2001 he was two companions in a Ft. Lauderdale bar named Shuckums, where he got wasted and called out “F**k God.”Atta was also known to gamble and mix with ladies of the night, but he was not the only terrorist who was not a strict Muslim.

Atta developed ties with Makram Chams, a Lebanese who ran a convenience store and was a co-owner of a floating casino called Vegas-in-Venice. There are indications that th is casino was used for the laundering of drug money, and funds could have come through it for 9/11. After that terrible event, Chams simply disappeared.

Four terrorists lived above a strip club called “Lance” in Wayne, New Jersey. They were Lebanese pilot Ziad Jarrah and three Saudi musclemen, Ahmed al-Haznawi, Ahmed al-Nami, and Saeed al-Ghamdi Probably because the were portrayed as religious fanatics, the F.B.I. confiscated the security tapes showing them in the club. Videotapes of a nearby video store patronized b y the hijackers and the Mossad agents tailing them were also seized, and later telephone numbers of the store patrons disappeared in a strange robbery.

The F.B.I. showed up at Shuckums' bar in Venice eight hours after his plane hit the World Trade Center. For some reason, the F.B.I. asked all kinds of questions about him in places other than Venice, where he spent much of his time. The F.B.I. also asked a few questions in Venice, and agent talked to a flight school executive four hours after the planes struck. However, the bulk of the investigation there was left to the state Department of Law Enforcement.

On January 24, 2003 Ruddi Dekers had to splash down his helecopter into the Caloosahatchee River near downtown Fort Myers. Something had gone wrong, and before the flight he was worried that something bad could happen to him. Earlier, Arne Kruithof and two others barely survived a crash on 26, 2002. The plane nose dived after a diufficult take-off from the Venice airport. Deekkers was later arrested for fraud.

Mohammed el-Amir Atta insists his son was not involved in 9/11. Unable to accept what appears to have happened,has said that his son telephoned him on September 12, 2001. Almost a year later, he was sticking to his story, saying his son was in hiding.


``Following the lead of the F.B.I., the 9-11 commission did not discuss the schools. The F.B.I. has repeatedly said that Atta left the school in late 2000. At the Moussaoui trial, clear evidence was produced that Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi were still there and flying in February, 2001 and that the F.B.I. knew all about it. Moreover, they violated airpark rules by taking off at night and were observed by a watchman and the police, who conducted the flight school. The F.B.I. subsequently interviewed a Huffman administrator about the incident. Yet, another administrator told a Congressional panel under oath that the school had no knowledge of the two men after December 24, 2000.The Knight Rider papers, the Washington Post, and Newsweek reported a week after 9-11 that five of the hijackers had been trained at US military facilities at one time or another. This did not involve Atta's brief employment much earlier in Hamburg, before he experienced a religious conversion in Egypt. It was said that Atta was at the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Abdulaziz Alomari was at the Areospace Medical School in Texas .The Sarasota Herald-Times discovered that Atta lived for more than two months at the Sandpiper Apartments in Venice in March and April of 2001 with a part-time stripper and lingerie model. She reported that the F.B.I. urged her to keep quiet. Florida records show that Atta became a business partner of chief Morrocan military attache Colonel Ahmed Arara and another man in business venture of some sort. The attache could have been related to highjacker Mohammed Araras.

Soon after 9-11, F.B.I. agents were in Venice asking questions that made it clear they knew about Atta’s movements there. The nature mof their questioning activities strongly suggests they were very much aware of Atta’s presence there before 9-11. They questioned another cabbie about their nocturnal rides with the other driver. They seized a pharmacy’s security tape for the day Atta and his father were there and excised that part of the tape. It develops in an odd coincidence that the woman who helped one of the hijackers find an apartment was the wife of Michael Irish, the senior National Enquirer editor who received an anthrax letter. Irish also used that aifield.

There were rumors that the flight schools had a C.I.A. connection, and that their records were removed on September 12, 2001. The limited action taken after the biggest drug seizure in central Florida history led to speculation about some kind of a protected drug trade. For years there have been rumors about C.I.A. and DIA drug trading; and those who have written about this have had their careers ruined. There will probably never be enough evidence to prove why the Pentagon did not want to move against Atta and now claims it knew nothing about him. One employee said Atta and others moved on to a school in Pompano Beach to learn to fly big jets via simulator. He added that he did not think this approach could be successful. Fired F.B.I. translator Sibel Edmunds was asked if she came across evidence that there was any evidence of a connection between drug trading and 9-11. She said, "The 9/11 terror plot intersected with the activities of a drug trafficking network of international scope, in ways that form a "crystal clear" picture of what was going on.@ As she came to understand how tight federal gag order placed upon her was, she later answered this question with a "nondenial-denial." Don"t look for solid answers anytime soon. Daniel Hopsiocker, who has long investigated the Venice flight school attended by Atta, ties the seized a hereoin shipment found in the plane of one of the co-owners of the school. Puzzling over why the plane was seized but the politically connected owner was never touched, he concluded that someone with great influence in DC was buying drugs from Osama bin Laden. We know Al Qaeda sells drugs, but that connection is just a guess. It has also been suggested that he had been involved in a protected heroin smuggling operation and that this accounts for the Pentagon’s reluctance to pursue him earlier. Given the history of that airport, it is far more likely that the C.I.A. was moving drugs through it.

The Pentagon and 9/11

Government and Pentagon spokesmen repeatedly said that no one every considered the possibility that terrorists would crash planes into buildings. Air Force General Richard Myers said, "You hate to admit it, but we hadn't thought about this." On October 24-26, 2000 the Pentagon carried out a full scale exercise built around the idea that a plane was crashed into the building.

The Pentagon is only a few miles from Andrews Air Force Base and is one of the best defended buildings in the world. There were antimissile batteries that were supposed to take out any plane entering restricted air space. We think we know the path the plane must have taken to hit the Pentagon, but if the views of 13 eye-witnesses are accepted the official view was wrong and would not account for some things that were knocked down.

American Airlines Flight 77, carrying 59 people ( not counting the hijackers), disappeared from the radar screen somewhere over Ohio and Kentucky and did not reappear until it was very near the Pentagon.

Though the US has the best radar system in the world, the plane flew 40 minutes without detection. It was being flown by terrorist Hani Hanjour, whom the 911 commission said “was perhaps the most experienced and highly trained pilot among the 9/11 hijackers.” Oddly, there was no reference to a damning report written by a Jet Tech flight instructor who tought this very short man was an inept pilot. Oddly, the FBI report on him seemed an effort to inflate what training the man did have and even mischaracterizes an evaluation exercise as flight training. It is possible that he may have mastered the controls of a 737, but that would not equip him to fly a 757. There is no evidence he ever had training on one, and it seems impossible anyone could have executed the maneuvers he allegedly carried out that day without practice. This led one pilot/writer to speculate that maybe some rich Saudi arranged for secret training in Nevada or Arizona. But just weeks before 9/11, he could not pass a flight training evaluation test, so the secret training theory seems unsustainable.

People who knew him said he was a terrible pilot. If the official account is correct, he was to pull off extraordinary maneuvers in order to hit the recently reinforced West wing. The people who ran the flight school he attended lodged five reports with the FAA claiming the man was incapable of flying a plane safely. Three and a half weeks before the strike, a certified flight instructor refused to rent him a Cessna 172 because he had poor flight skills

Somehow this fellow was able to navigate from the Ohio/Kentucky border to the District of Columbia, pass over the White House, go to the front of the Pentagon, where the main officials’ offices were, and then go around to the building's most fortified wall. He even managed, as was necessary, to fly execute a 270 degree turn while sharply descending to perhaps 10 feet before dropping to a matter of inches before hitting the building. Some theorize that a human pilot could not have done this and speculate that the plane was flown by remote control, which is certainly technically possible.
Many have said that the remote pilot theory is ridiculous. The truth is that the Air Force has flown several 737s across the Atlantic by using Global Hawk remote control technology. This is feasible but would require elaborate preparations. The advantage of this theory is that it does not require proving that the hijackers were bent on suicide or religious fanatics.

Experienced pilots wonder why none of the pilots flipped on the transponder to the hikacker code. It would have only taken a second and should have been done as soon as they suspected something was wrong.

To confuse things a bit Barbara Honegger has carried out an investigation that she thinks shows that there was an explosion in the Pentagon 6 minutes before a plane hit. She was a Reagan aide who has written credibly about past black ops and now is now a senior military affairs journalist at the Naval Affairs Postgraduate School in California.


This inexperienced pilot makes this remarkable turn, descends and hits a lamp pole 1000 feet out; then there are other lamp poles bouncing off the wings. They were about 30 feet high. The toppling of the poles probably disproves the theory that it was not a plane that hit the building. He hit a generator trailer and bumped two big wire spools and went through a tree at 345 mph.

The 757 and 767 have sophisticated computers that are designed to limit pilot error. They are set to prevent maneuvers that exceed 1.5 g. There is supposed to be no way a pilot can override the mechanism. Some military experts figure the maneuvers of Flight 77 exceeded 1.5 gs by more than a multiple of three Some have said that the Pentagon was hit by a missile, but there is no evidence for that view. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that control of the plane was somehow taken away from Ham.jour at the last moment and that the plane behaved lile a missile. Technology does exist that makes this possible.
The media raised no tough questions about this or other odd aspects of the events of that tragic day. According the vice president of CNN International, “Anyone who claims the U.S. media didn’t censor itself is kidding you”

A plane of some sort did hit the Pentagon. There were people who had to duck and hit the ground when it came in. Moreover, there were parts of some bodies which have been adequately identified.

The Pentagon was struck at 9:32AM. We know that because so many clocks stopped then. Many thought it had been bombed, and they later smelled cordite, which was very different from burning gasoline. Bomb sniffing dogs and their handlers were seen at the Pentagon subway station from 7:30 AM on. Someone must have anticipated bombs.

Sometime around 9:25, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta heard a conversation in which an astonished younger man asked Cheney if his previous orders still stood. They had been tracking a blip heading toward the Pentagon. Cheney said they did. The orders must have been not to shoot, because no effort was made to shoot it down.

Something struck the building not long after that, and the round hope looks like it was too small for the fuselage of the Boeing 757. The Washington Post said the hole was 5 stories high and 200 feet wide, but a photograph taken by a Marine showed the entrance hole to be about 18 feet in diameter. It seems the Marine’s picture was taken after the strike, and that the almost the full facade did collapse thirty minutes later. If the Post were correct, the nose would have gone into the building and the rest would have been on the lawn. AP photographs show no parts on the lawn. Nor are there any skid marks.

The 16 X 20 initial hole was too small for a Boeing 757. There was a smaller hole in the inner ring of the Pentagon, but a Boeing 757 with a soft aluminum body would not have gotten that far anyhow. Donald Rumsfeld mistakenly talked about “the missile that struck this building.”

The first responders had to undergo decontamination before they were permitted to enter the building. But there are no nuclear parts on a Boeing 757. Perhaps the nose of the plane was made of dense or heavy metal.

Witnesses said they saw something looking like a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon. But there is very little physical evidence that this happened . There was a piece of fuselage with American Airlines markings. There was some airplane debris outside, some of which could be associated with a 757. There was probably too much for it to have been planted. There were no pieces of seats or luggage. Many bodies were removed by emergency personnel. For some reason, they did not incinerate as was the case at the World Trade Center.

Inside, there was much of an engine rotor. The trouble was it was not part of the Pratt and Whitney turbofan engine used on the 757. It was three feet in diameter, whereas the rotor for a 757 is nine feet in diameter, and there should have been two of them.

When the plane hit the Pentagon, it was flying at about an inch or two above the ground, and as it approached it obviously came low enough to damage some lines. A 757 is essentially a hollow tube, yet this one pierced six reinforced Pentagon walls. How?

A close examination of the photographs show three cable spools standing on end. They are at the place where the plane must have entered. Yet they are standing on end and were not knocked over. Their presence damages the assumption that the plane must have been a few inches off the ground when it hit the Pentagon wall. Right above the entry hole are unbroken glass windows. A 100 ton 757 hit the building and the glass did not break.

There was no damage to the lawn where Flight 77 allegedly struck the ground and then skidded into the building. According to the Pentagon, the plane struck the building at 9:37. It is assumed the plane must have hit the ground as no one could have followed the trajectory that has been reconstructed by physicists.

It is argued that the plane was flying at 400 miles per hour at 7000 feet. It then did a left hand turn, making almost a complete circle, descending to ground level in 2 and a half seconds. One experienced pilot claims that such a sharp maneuver executed that high could bring about aq fuel stall. Pilots claim the maneuver was almost impossible for a human to execute, yet it was done by a man with very little training. The man could barely operate a Cessna. Some claim that somehow the plane was under remote control. MITRE Corporation has developed UAVs ( unmanned aereal vehicles) but there is no way to know how far along this technology is.

Some have claimed that a small military plane, loaded with explosives, hit the Pentagon. Somehow, it released a small plasma jet that went into the building. That would explain the small hole and the official claim that missiles were not fired. Others, anyway, say the building was hit by a missile .If was a missile, it would have sought out the heat from an earlier explosion. In an interview published in Parade on October 12 with Wallwork Winick, Rumsfeld mistakenly referred to “the missile” that damaged the Pentagon. The trouble with both explanations is that the bodies of some people on Flight 77 were taken away from the Pentagon. Witnesses described a massive concussion followed by very bright light. Those outside described powerful shock waves, which suggest explosives rather than hydrocarbon fireballs. There was some aircraft debris, but no one has been able to prove it was 757 debris. A woman who worked for the airline told John Judge, a critic of the official 9/11 story, that she recognized debris from a 757. Others have disputed this.

If the 757 struck the Pentagon, there was no evidence that the tail, which stood 40 feet above the ground, scraped or marked the building. Some argue that the tail was not strong enough to mark the building, but there was enough of it that some pieces should have been found.

There were no marks where the wings should have hit. The façade was made of soft limestone and should have shown some marks. There were no big pieces of aircraft inside the Pentagon other than one engine, even though they had to be there as they were not on the lawn. There should have been traces of fire on the building’s roof adjacent to the portion that collapsed but there were none. Some engine parts and plane pieces were found . It is theorized that the explosion generated such intense heat that the rest, except the two engines, just vaporized. There is no record of any other plane just vaporizing. FEMA claimed the plane just plowed all large debris into the building, but the grass looks undamaged. One engine was found and a part that did not go with anything on a 757. An unsigned, scratched piece of the fuselage was also found.

The plane had a 120 foot wingspan. Some of the wings should have been in the yard. The tail was 40 feet high. Some of it should also have been in the yard.

The Pentagon’s report says almost all the interior damage was restricted to the first floor. The report said, The aircraft seems for the most part to have slipped between the first-floor slab on grade and the second floor."

The slipping under the slab separating the first and second floors seems an impossibility given the size of the plane and speed at which it traveled.

The point of entry was a refortified wall. The exterior columns were 21 inches square of reinforced steel covered with 6 inches of limestone façade. The same size columns were inside the E Ring of the building. The panels with windows had eight inches of brick; the panels without were 8 inches of brick and ten of concrete. The windows were an inch and a half thick and with mountings weighed 1600 pounds.

No one reported seeing any luggage, but it must have buried up. A 757 is not that much smaller than the 767s that hit the World Trade Center. The gasoline must have burned the same way at the Twin Towers, but the Pentagon did not collapse. The Pentagon crash tapes that have now been released did clearly not show a plane slamming into the Pentagon and two or three frames seemed to be missing.
It appears that the explosion occurred on an angle, going through E,D, and C Rings, with an exit hole in the C Ring. The hole is 310 feet from the entry point and abnsolutely round. Is one to suppose that the nose of the plane somehow punched out here? There was 40 feet between the C and B Rings. The B ring was not marked in any way. Purdue engineers suggest that it was a ball liquefied energy traveling through Rings E,D, And C. By then the engines did not exist; they simply vaporized, but the fuel had not vaporized in the explosion. There is no historical precedent for this theory. There is no explanation for the size and shape of the exit hold or the fact that no explosive energy jumped to Ring B.

Some eyewitnesses claimed that the plane exploded just before hitting the Pentagon, which would resolve all the riddles about the sequence and kinds of flame and smoke seen and when. On the other hand, the facts also fit the theory that an anti-aircraft missile hit the plane just before it struck. But no one saw the missile. Some thought they saw an American Airlines plane.

The witness testimony is consistent—a big plane hit the Pentagon. There was also a bright silvery flash, not seen at the Twin Towers. The flash and smell of cordite explains why some say there were explosive aboard the plane. Two people saw a C-130, an electronic warfare plane, over the Navy Annex.

After the attack, Rumsfeld gave an interview to Parade that would encourage the missile theory advocates: "Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center." He added, "There were lots of warnings," he says.

Reviewing all the evidence, it is possible to see how some jump to the “no Boeing” theory, even though t he bulk of the evidence is that the Pentagon was struck bay an airplane that most probably was a Boeing 757. Why the Pentagon has sat on so much evidence is anyone’s guess. It has fuelled the “No Boeing argument, “ which is clearly the weakest part of the case made by those who doubt the official story.

There were many videocameras in the vicinity of the Pentagon, and investigators have sought access to 85 different tapes. Within five minutes of the strike, the authorities were confiscating tapes. The Defense Department said its security cameras did not record the crash. At one point ehe government claimed it had no confiscated tape. So far, very little has been released.
As noted, human bodies were found but no one reported finding any luggage. Just another mystery--