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--- Begin Message ---
-Caveat Lector-
http://www.msnbc.com/news/769827.asp?0si=-
WASHINGTON, June 20 — Just weeks before Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma
City federal building in 1995, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement
received several warnings that Islamic terrorists were seeking to strike on
American soil and that a likely target was government buildings, documents
show.
Gannon said the 1995 warnings were plentiful enough that he initially
assumed Islamic extremists had struck when the bomb exploded in Oklahoma
City. Law enforcement too issued initial bulletins looking for Arab suspects
and borrowed Arabic translators from the military.
“When I first heard about the Oklahoma bombing, the first reaction I
had was I wonder if this were a foreign group that had done this or the
Islamic extremists that had come up on our screen,” Gannon said.
He said it was in 1998, after bin Laden issued a fatwa urging
specific attacks on America and two U.S. embassies in Africa were bombed,
that U.S. anti-terrorism efforts escalated markedly.
“If there was a watershed year, it was 1998. That significantly
elevated our concern and resulted in a concerted effort, and a very strong
program to go get Osama bin Laden,” he said.
The 1995 intelligence was specific enough that “if that was today,
you’d have (Bush Homeland Security Director) Tom Ridge going out and saying
we have this threat,” said former Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., who in 1995
was a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
TERRORISM TASK FORCE
McCollum formed a congressional task force in the late 1980s that
began warning of the growing threat of terrorism, and which issued some of
the 1995 alerts.
“For a good number of years, there was a failure to acknowledge the
severity of the threat,” he said. “There really had been this disbelief or
unwillingness to scare people.”
Former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said
“protecting America against terrorists was a high priority” during the
1990s. “Threat information regularly came in and steps were taken to deal
with it,” he said.
“In general, the record is very clear that the Clinton administration
increased counterterrorism funding and focus more than any other prior
administration based on the emerging threats,” Lockhart added.
Some of the 1995 warnings were pointed.
“Iranian sources confirmed Tehran’s desire and determination to
strike inside the U.S. against objects symbolizing the American government
in the near future,” said a Feb. 27, 1995, terror warning by the House Task
Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.
INCREASINGLY SPECIFIC WARNINGS
The warnings became increasingly specific as to the possible
location, type of attack and likely dates.
“These strikes are most likely to occur either in the immediate
future or in the new Iranian year - starting 21 March 1995,” the
congressional task force predicted.
U.S. intelligence monitored a series of meetings and conferences
between senior officials of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and other terror
organizations in mid-February 1995 in which the subject of killing Americans
on U.S. soil came up, officials said.
During these conferences, known terrorists made specific mention of
Congress and the White House as “institutions that are great enemies of the
Islamist movement,” according to a congressional warning.
“This is a deviation from past discussions beyond referring to the
U.S. as a single entity to pointing to specific branches of government as
their true enemies,” it added.
Around the same time, the FBI received intelligence from the
Philippines that two men later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing had been arrested as they were plotting to blow up U.S. airliners.
The men planned to hijack one airliner and crash it into the CIA, Pentagon
or White House, documents show.
The marshal’s warning explained that Islamic extremists had issued a
fatwa to kill marshals personnel or strike their buildings because of an
episode at the end of the World Trade Center bombing trial in which deputy
marshals accidentally stepped on a copy of the Koran during a scuffle.
“Allegedly, the fatwa is being disseminated to persons in the United
States who have the capability to carry it out,” the memo said.
The terrorists could be suicide bombers who may “target as many
victims as possible and draw as much media coverage as possible,” it added.
“Once the press is on the scene the new plans call for blowing up everyone.”
THE INFORMATION, though it was never linked to McVeigh, was stark enough
that the Clinton administration urged stepped up security patrols and
screening at federal buildings nationwide, including those in Oklahoma.
The government, however, didn’t fortify buildings with cement
barriers like those hurriedly installed after McVeigh detonated his
explosive-laden truck at the curb of the Murrah building on April 19, 1995,
officials said.
Islamic extremists are determined to “strike inside the U.S. against
objects symbolizing the American government in the near future,” said one
warning obtained by The Associated Press.
The intelligence that prompted the warnings was gathered across the
globe from Iran and Syria to the Philippines and became more specific as to
the potential type attack (suicide bombing), target (government building)
and likely date (after the third week in March 1995), the documents show.
IRANIAN EXTREMISTS SUSPECTED
The U.S. Marshals Service issued an alert on March 15, 1995, to
federal courthouses it protects, including the one in Oklahoma City across
the street from where McVeigh’s truck bomb killed 168 people, the documents
show.
“Iranian extremists want it made clear that steps are being taken to
strike at the Great Satan,” a term used frequently in the Mideast to
describe the United States, the marshal’s memo said. It said a fatwa - a
religious order - had been issued to attack marshals or their buildings.
Advertisement
“There is sufficient threat potential to request that a heightened
level of security awareness and caution be implemented,” the memo added.
Separately, the General Services Administration received a warning
from the FBI and asked hundreds of federal buildings it operates to increase
security details, including the Murrah building, officials said.
“We were told there was a fatwa threatening to target federal
buildings,” GSA spokeswoman Viki Reath said this week. “We increased our
patrols to 12-hour shifts.”
More than two dozen current and former intelligence and law
enforcement officials interviewed by AP said the period of spring 1995 was a
time of heightened “chatter” among terrorists seeking to strike the United
States.
But the officials cautioned the FBI and CIA exhaustively investigated
whether McVeigh could have been aided by Mideast terrorist and found no
credible evidence linking him to any Islamic extremists, including those who
prompted the 1995 warnings.
AL-QAIDA’S EMERGENCE
The information about 1995 emerges as a joint House-Senate panel
examining the intelligence and law enforcement failures that preceded Sept.
11 has expanded its mission to look back at the late 1980s and 1990s.
John Gannon, former deputy CIA director for intelligence under
President Clinton, said the spring of 1995 was one of a handful of periods
in the 1990s when intelligence on terror threats peaked as the government
increasingly turned its attention to Osama bin Laden and his emerging
terrorist network.
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CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
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