Showing posts with label Waco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Waco. Show all posts

Friday 19 July 2013

OKC / 2/26 : Terry the Farmer




Late 1992-Early 1993 and Late 1994:
Future Oklahoma City Bomber Said to Meet with Ramzi Yousef in Philippines


Terry Nichols makes a number of trips to the Phillippines, apparently to meet with al-Qaeda bomber Ramzi Yousef and other radical Islamists. Nichols will later help plan and execute the Oklahoma City bombing

Nichols’s wife is a mail-order bride from Cebu City; Nichols spends an extensive amount of time on the island of Mindanao, where many Islamist terror cells operate. This information comes from a Philippine undercover operative, Edwin Angeles, and one of his wives. Angeles is the second in command in the militant group Abu Sayyaf from 1991 to 1995 while secretly working for Philippine intelligence at the same time

After the Oklahoma City bombing, Angeles will claim in a videotaped interrogation that in late 1992 and early 1993 Nichols meets with Yousef and a second would-be American terrorist, John Lepney. In 1994, Nichols meets with Yousef, Lepney, and others. For about a week, Angeles, Yousef, Nichols, and Lepney are joined by Abdurajak Janjalani, the leader of Abu Sayyaf; two members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF); Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah, both of whom are working with Yousef on the Bojinka plot ; and a half-brother of Yousef known only by the alias Ahmad Hassim (this is a probable reference to Yousef’s brother Abd al-Karim Yousef, who is living in the Philippines at this time).

Elmina Abdul, Angeles’s third wife, will add additional details about these 1994 meetings in a taped 2002 hospital confession to a Philippines reporter days before her death. She only remembers Nichols as “Terry” or “The Farmer,” and doesn’t remember the name of the other American.

She says: “They talked about bombings. They mentioned bombing government buildings in San Francisco, St. Louis, and in Oklahoma. The Americans wanted instructions on how to make and to explode bombs. [Angeles] told me that Janjalani was very interested in paying them much money to explode the buildings. The money was coming from Yousef and the other Arab.”
[GULF NEWS, 4/3/2002; INSIGHT, 4/19/2002; MANILA TIMES, 4/26/2002; INSIGHT, 6/22/2002; NICOLE NICHOLS, 2003]

(“The other Arab” may be a reference to the Arab Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, because Janjalani’s younger brother later claims Abu Sayyaf was funded in its early years by Yousef and Khalifa.) [CNN, 1/31/2007]

Abdul claims Nichols and Lepney are sent to an unnamed place for more instructions on bomb-making to destroy a building in the US. She also says that Angeles and others in Abu Sayyaf believe Yousef works for the Iraqi government. [INSIGHT, 6/22/2002]

The Manila Times later reports that “Lepney did indeed reside and do business in Davao City [in the Southern Philippines] during 1990 to 1996.” One bar owner recalls that when Lepney got drunk he liked to brag about his adventures with local rebel groups. [MANILA TIMES, 4/26/2002]

In 2003, Nicole Nichols (no relation to Terry Nichols), the director of the watchdog organization Citizens against Hate, will explain why an American white supremacist would make common cause with Islamist terrorists. Two unifying factors exist, she writes: an overarching hatred of Jews and Israel, and a similarly deep-seated hatred of the US government. [NICOLE NICHOLS, 2003]

After Nichols takes part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Wali Khan Amin Shah will attempt to take the credit for plotting the bombing for himself and Yousef, a claim federal authorities will not accept.


April 19, 1995:
Bojinka Plotter Takes Credit for Oklahoma City Bombing;
Claim Later Discredited


Abdul Hakim Murad is in a US prison awaiting trial for his alleged role in the Bojinka plot. 


Told about the Oklahoma City bombing that took place earlier in the day, he immediately takes credit for the bombing on behalf of his associate Ramzi Yousef. However, Yousef, also in US custody at the time, makes no such claim. 

An FBI report detailing Murad’s claim will be submitted to FBI headquarters the next day. [LANCE, 2006, PP. 163-164] 

A Philippine undercover operative will later claim that Terry Nichols, who will be convicted for a major role in the Oklahoma City bombing, met with Murad, Yousef, and others in the Philippines in 1994, and discussed blowing up a building in Oklahoma and several other locations.

Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will later comment: “Could [Yousef] have been introduced to [Nichols]? We do not know, despite some FBI investigation. We do know that Nichols’s bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned.” 
[CLARKE, 2004, PP. 127] 

Mike Johnston, a lawyer representing the Oklahoma City bombing victims’ families, will later comment: “Why should Murad be believed? For one thing, Murad made his ‘confession’ voluntarily and spontaneously. Most important, Murad tied Ramzi Yousef to the Oklahoma City bombing long before Terry Nichols was publicly identified as a suspect.” 
[INSIGHT, 6/22/2002] 

Also on this day, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, an associate of Yousef and Murad who is being held in the US, is moved from a low security prison to a maximum security prison. 
[LANCE, 2006, PP. 164] 

But despite these potential links to Muslim militants, only five days after the Oklahoma City bombing the New York Times will report, “Federal officials said today that there was no evidence linking people of the Muslim faith or of Arab descent to the bombing here.” 
[NEW YORK TIMES, 4/24/1995] 

Murad’s claim apparently will not be reported in any newspaper until two years later [ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS, 6/17/1995] , when lawyers for Nichols’s bombing partner, Timothy McVeigh, tell reporters that their defense strategy will be to claim that the bombing was the work of “foreign terrorists” led by “a Middle Eastern bombing engineer.” 

The lawyers will claim that the bombing was “contracted out” through an Iraqi intelligence base in the Philippines, and it is “possible that those who carried out the bombing were unaware of the true sponsor.” 

The lawyers also say it is possible, though less likely, that the bombing was carried out by right-wing white supremacists, perhaps from the Elohim City compound.
[NEW YORK TIMES, 3/26/1997] 

The claims of foreign involvement will be discredited.

OKC: Seditious Conspiracy and the Aryan Nations




Late 1987 - April 8, 1998: White Separatists Tried, Acquitted of Sedition 
 
Richard Butler, the head of the white separatist and neo-Nazi organization Aryan Nations, is indicted, along with 12 of his followers and fellow racists, by a federal grand jury for seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government by violence, conspiring to kill federal officials, and transporting stolen money across state lines. The sedition was allegedly developed at a 1983 Aryan Nations Congress meeting.

The case is tried in Fort Smith, Arkansas, before an all-white jury.

The goverment is unable to prove the case, and Butler and his fellow defendants are all acquitted.

 The judge refuses to accept the jury’s statement that it is deadlocked on two counts, a ruling that leads to the blanket acquittals. Other white supremacists acquitted in the trial are Louis Beam, Richard Wayne Snell (see 9:00 p.m. April 19, 1995), and Robert Miles. US Attorney J. Michael Fitzhugh says he believes the prosecution proved its case, but “we accept the verdict of the jury.” 

Six of the defendants are serving prison terms for other crimes. 

The prosecution says Butler, Beam, Miles, and the other 10 defendants had robbed banks and armored trucks of $4.1 million, including about $1 million that still is missing. 

The defense countered that the prosecution’s case was based on conspiracy theories given by the prosecution’s chief witness, James Ellison, an Arkansas white supremacist serving 20 years for racketeering. 

During the proceedings, Butler undergoes quadruple bypass surgery and a second surgery to unblock his carotid artery, all at government expense. 

[ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/8/1998; 
SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER, 2010; 
SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER, 2010] 

Some time after the trial, one of the jurors marries one of the defendants, David McGuire. 
[KAPLAN, 2000, PP. 19]

Wednesday 17 April 2013

Spot the Odd One Out









Texas Attorney General, Gregg Abbott: Waving the Bloody Shirt in Waco,2 Days Before People Began Blowing up (In Waco)


In Waco on Monday, Abbott sounded the alarm: “One thing that requires ongoing vigilance is the reality that the state of Texas is coming under a new 
assault, an assault far more dangerous than what the leader of North Korea threatened when he said he was going to add Austin, Texas, as one of the recipients of his nuclear weapons,”

Abbott said. “The threat that we’re getting is the threat from the Obama administration and his political machine.”

Attorney General Greg Abbott says there’s something “far more dangerous” than nuclear-armed North Korea – Democrats who want to register and motivate voters.

The Republican attorney general, who is looking at a race for governor next year, told a group in Waco that an organization formed by former Obama campaign operatives called Battleground Texas is a threat that Texans must resist. He said North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is less dangerous than the Democrats.

Battleground Texas organizers say they hope to identify and register new voters to turn the solidly Republican state blue in the next few years.

The group says Texas is ripe for change, in part because of a growing Hispanic population that historically votes disproportionately for Democrats.

The last time a Democrat won statewide office in Texas was 1994.

With its 38 electoral votes, Texas is the biggest electoral prize now held by Republicans. Abbott said that makes the state “the last line of defense” in protecting the country’s future. A Waco Tribune reporter asked Abbott following the speech why he had compared Democrats to North Korea. Said Abbott: “Republicans who are complacent are kidding themselves if they think Battleground Texas is not a threat.”

If Abbott runs for governor next year, he would face former GOP Chairman Tom Pauken in the primary. Pauken, who lacks Abbott’s campaign war chest and officeholder platform, is traveling the state talking to small groups about education, taxes and a state government in which he says political cronyism has taken root.

Abbott is wooing the party’s right wing by attacking Obama and promising to fight the U.N. He told the Waco group that he would sue the Obama administration to protect individual gun rights if the U.S. joins a United Nations global arms treaty.

Experts say a United Nations treaty would not supersede the Second Amendment. Article VI of the Constitution lists three things as supreme, in this order: 1) the Constitution, 2) federal law and 3) treaties.

In 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that treaties cannot supersede the Constitution. (Reid v. Covert). The proposed UN treaty would tighten controls over the flow of conventional arms across international lines to keep them out of the hands of terrorists, drug traffickers and criminal cartels. But Abbott warned the a U.N. pact presented an “incredible danger” to gun-owning Texans.


On March 2, 2005, Abbott appeared before the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., where he defended a Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds.

Dozens of similar monuments were donated to cities and towns across the nation throughout the 1960s by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, who were inspired by the 1956 epic The Ten Commandments; in doing so, they gained the support of the film's director Cecil B. DeMille.

The Supreme Court held in a 5-4 majority opinion, found the Texas display did not violate the Establishment Clause and was constitutional.

Hailing the Supreme Court's decision, Abbott said: "This is a great victory not just for Texans, but for all Americans. With this ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has delivered a clear message that the Texas Ten Commandments can be displayed on public grounds in recognition of the historical role they have played in the foundation of this country and its laws."

The Ten Commandments monument still stands just to the northwest of the Capitol in Austin.





Bill Hicks - Waco from Paul Coker on Vimeo.

"Seriously, David - turn yourself in....

This is HORRIBLE..."