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Iraqis linked to Oklahoma atrocity

By James Langton in New York, for the Evening Standard


The FBI is under pressure from the highest political levels in Washington to investigate suspected links between Iraq and the Oklahoma bombing.

Senior aides to US Attorney-General John Ashcroft have been given compelling evidence that former Iraqi soldiers were directly involved in the 1995 bombing that killed 185 people.

The methodically assembled dossier from Jayna Davis, a former investigative TV reporter, could destroy the official version that white supremacists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were solely responsible for what, at the time, was the worst act of terrorism on American soil.

Instead, there are serious concerns that a group of Arab men with links to Iraqi intelligence, Palestinian extremists and possibly al Qaeda, used McVeigh and Nichols as front men to blow up the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Davis, who was one of the first reporters on the scene after the blast, has spent seven years gathering evidence of a wider conspiracy. But it is only as America prepares to wage war on Iraq and Saddam Hussein that her conclusions are being taken seriously at the highest level. Finally, she says, the authorities are examining the idea "that the Oklahoma bombing might not simply be the work of two angry white men".

After hearing her evidence, several senior members of Congress have called for a new probe.

What triggered Davis's investigation was a report immediately after the Oklahoma explosion of Middle-Eastern looking men fleeing in a brown Chevrolet truck only minutes earlier. The FBI launched an international hunt for the men but later cancelled the search.

Within days McVeigh and Nichols were arrested, and the case seemed to be one of home-grown terrorists, motivated by a hatred for authority. But the case has always had loose ends. In particular, several witnesses in Oklahoma City that April morning saw a third conspirator with McVeigh. The elusive dark-haired suspect became known as "John Doe 2".

Terry Nichols, now serving life for conspiracy in the bombing and involuntary manslaughter, was the original "John Doe 1" but, with his arrest, the FBI claimed that the case had been wrapped up. They eventually concluded that "John Doe 2" was Nichols all along.

Davis thought otherwise. Early on, she found that a brown Chevrolet truck almost identical to that once hunted by the FBI had been seen parked outside the offices of a local property management company several days before the bombing.

The owner was a Palestinian with a criminal record and suspected ties to the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Later she found that the man had hired a number of former Iraqi soldiers.

He had recruited them to carry out maintenance on his rental properties, but several were later discovered to be missing from work on the day of the bombing. Eyewitnesses have told Davis that they saw several of them celebrating later that day.

But what increasingly drew her attention was another Iraqi living in Oklahoma City, a restaurant worker called Hussain Hashem Al Hussaini, whose photograph was almost a perfect match to the official sketch of "John Doe 2".

Al Hussaini has a tattoo on his upper left arm, indicating he was once a member of Saddam's elite Republican Guard.

Since then, Davis has gathered hundreds of court records and the sworn testimony of two dozen witnesses. Several claimed to have seen a man fitting Al Hussaini's description drinking with McVeigh in a motel bar four days before the bombing.

Others positively identified former Iraqi soldiers in the company of McVeigh and Nichols. Two swore that they had seen Al Hussaini only a block from the Murrah building in the hours before the bombing. With the case against McVeigh and Nichols seemingly watertight, the FBI has until now consistently refused to reopen it. McVeigh went to his death in the execution chamber two years ago, insisting he alone was responsible.

Davis thinks he may have done so out of loyalty to his family, not wishing to go down in history as a traitor to his country.

But she has evidence that up to 12,000 Iraqis were allowed into America after the Gulf war. Some of these, she suspects, are using their status as refugees for cover. "They are here," she said. "And they are highly trained and motivated."

The renewed interest in Washington is clearly linked to America's case against Saddam as broker of world terror.

And there is more. Al Hussaini, who entered the US from a Saudi refugee camp, worked after the Oklahoma bomb as a cook at Boston's Logan Airport - from where the two hijacked aircraft that hit the World Trade Center took off.

There is another confirmed incident that suggests something more sinister. Two of the 11 September conspirators held a crucial meeting at a motel in Oklahoma City in August 2001. The motel's owner has since identified them as ringleader Mohammed Atta and Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, who has known links with shoebomber Richard Reid.

The motel is unremarkable - except for one thing. It is where a number of Davis's witnesses are sure they saw McVeigh drinking and perhaps plotting with his Iraqi friends.

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