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The FBI knew in '95,
why didn't we?
May 25, 2002
Eleven months after Timothy McVeigh was put to death for the
Oklahoma City bombing, a startling revelation has come to
light.
Specific information has surfaced that the FBI and other
intelligence agencies were told in early 1995, shortly before
the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, that
Islamic terrorists were about to strike government
institutions in Washington, D.C.
Less than a week later, a federal task force updated its
warning. The target focus had shifted from the East Coast to
"government installations" located "at the heart of the U.S.,"
which would include Oklahoma City.
Shortly after the bombing of the Murrah building, Yossef
Bodansky, executive director of the Congressional Task Force
on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, pieced together
intelligence data strongly indicating that Islamic veterans of
the 1979-89 Afghan war with the Soviet Union, who trained
under Osama bin Laden, were responsible for the 1993 bombing
of the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma federal building.
Sandra Howell-Elliot, assistant district attorney in Oklahoma
County, asserted in a Jan. 18, 2000, affidavit, that there are
"intra-agency memoranda between the FBI and a host of other
agencies that were not provided to either Nichols' or
McVeigh's lawyers or the State of Oklahoma." She didn't know
it then, but she was on to something. But what?
Most likely prior warnings, the same type of information that
bothers the nation today about Sept. 11. A CBS News poll out
this week found that two-thirds of those surveyed don't think
the Bush administration is "telling the entire truth" about
what it knew before Sept. 11.
The Congressional Task Force's warning revealed that Hezbollah
and other terrorist organizations sponsored by Iran and Syria
had been discussing since late 1994 a campaign of attacks
beginning in 1995. That document boils down to ideological
differences between radical Muslims, peace-loving Muslims and
the rest of the world.
"In a series of gatherings and conferences in mid-February
1995, senior officials of the Hizballah (Hezbollah) and other
terrorist organizations, as well as senior officials of Iran
and Syria, made specific threats against the U.S. Congress and
the White House," the warning states.
"These threats were made during conferences devoted to
declaring the forthcoming phase in Islamist 'Jihad' against
the West, and particularly the U.S. Congress and the president
of the United States as institutions that are great enemies of
the Islamist movement and especially Iran. This is a deviation
from past discussion of the subject of struggle against the
U.S. in that the Islamist leaders went beyond referring to the
U.S. as a single entity to pointing to specific branches of
government as their true enemies."
So American intelligence agencies had knowledge nearly two
months before the Oklahoma bombing that an Islamic terrorist
campaign was about to begin against the United States. But
they failed to tell that to the McVeigh and Terry Nichols
defense teams, who were looking for any shred of evidence
connecting Middle Eastern terrorists to the bombing.
On March 3, 1995, the threat to U.S. targets became even
clearer. The task force built a stronger case that something
big was in the offing by issuing an update of the Feb. 27
warning to intelligence agencies.
"It was based on very special material I received and verified
after the first warning had already been issued," Bodansky
wrote in 1996. "The key message of this 'update' was that
there was greater likelihood that the terrorists would strike
in the heartland. The language that should be of interest is
that the terrorists were expected to 'strike at the heart of
the U.S.' We also put 'government installations' on the list
of possible objectives ahead of the communication and
transportation objectives (as in the Feb. 27 warning)."
The Oklahoma bomb exploded 47 days after the task force issued
its March 3 update. Bodansky later indicated that intelligence
showed Oklahoma City had been at the top of the terrorists'
list.
"I did get, and later confirmed by numerous sources, certain
criteria on how to better identify possible terrorist
targets," he wrote in 1996. "By the time I mastered this
'method,' it was too late for Oklahoma City. However, going
over and reconstructing relevant data (some of which arrived
only after the bombing but had originated prior to it),
Oklahoma City was on the list of potential targets."
The American people have a right to see any warnings about
terrorism issued in the months preceding Sept. 11 and the
Oklahoma bombing. Isn't it time to release those documents
now?
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Patterson is a Star editorial writer. Contact him at
1-317-444-6174 or via e-mail at
james.patterson@indystar.com
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