Bin Laden-McVeigh link: Compelling, but still lacks evidence
Bill Nalty
WorldNetDaily
Friday, May 25, 2001
Bin Laden-McVeigh link: Another crackpot theory?
Ex-TV reporter's claim of Islamic plot, though compelling, still lacks
evidence
By Paul Sperry
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
Jayna Davis probably wishes she never heard of "John Doe No. 2," the
term the FBI originally used to describe a second suspect in the 1995
Oklahoma City bombing.
For the past six years, the former TV reporter has fought a lonely
battle to identify John Doe No. 2, even as the FBI has abandoned the
idea of a second bomber. She insists he's an Iraqi refugee who's tied to
an Islamic terrorist cell funded by Osama bin Laden, U.S. enemy No. 1.
Her controversial stories about John Doe No. 2 eventually cost Davis her
job at KFOR-TV, an NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City, Okla., where she was
an award-winning investigative reporter and a rising star.
She said the station's new owner, the New York Times Co., "shut down"
her investigation. After she left in 1997, the station sued her for
removing videotapes – without permission and wrongfully, it claimed – of
confidential witnesses she'd interviewed.
Davis also was sued by the Iraqi she accused of being convicted bomber
Timothy McVeigh's partner. The defamation case is now being heard, on
appeal, in federal court.
Some local media, including other TV stations, came to the man's
defense. And one weekly newspaper said Davis, who still lives in
Oklahoma City, embellished the story.
The Oklahoma Gazette's reports citing Davis – including one titled
"Liar, Liar," – damaged her reputation, she said, and compelled her to
file her own libel suit (though she recently dropped it).
The FBI, which now says that McVeigh acted alone and that John Doe No. 2
was the product of bum witness information, has largely snubbed Davis.
And a grand jury impaneled to hear wider conspiracy theories in the case
ruled that her theory linking McVeigh to Islamic terrorists lacked
"credible evidence."
Frustrated, Davis has offered her information to the legal teams
defending McVeigh and convicted co-conspirator Terry Nichols, even
though she's convinced both are guilty.
In fact, Davis struck a deal with McVeigh's team to work as a paid
consultant. She said that lasted one day, however, after lawyers failed
to pay her "even a dollar." She still shares information with Nichols'
lawyers.
But with the recent revelation that the FBI withheld more than 3,100
pages of evidence from lawyers for McVeigh and Nichols, her story is
gaining some currency.
For the first time, Davis has been able to lay out her case on national
TV.
On Fox News Channel's top-rated show, "The O'Reilly Factor," she claimed
the attack was masterminded and funded by bin Laden.
She said the Iraqi, who she says was a former member of Saddam Hussein's
Republican Guard, jumped out of the Ryder truck used in the
federal-building bombing just moments before the blast that killed 168
people, including 19 children. She said he was with McVeigh at the time.
Davis said the Iraqi was part of a bin Laden terrorist cell that
operated out of Oklahoma City.
She also claimed that Nichols had met with bin Laden militants operating
out of a safehouse in the Philippines, including Ramzi Yousef, the
ringleader of the World Trade Center bombing. In one meeting sometime
before the Oklahoma City bombing, they discussed bombing techniques, she
further claimed.
Separately, she claims the U.S. intelligence community had issued a
general warning prior to the bombing that Islamic terrorists planned an
attack on America's "heartland."
Davis claims to have evidence to back her sensational charges.
Only, she won't show it. Even her lawyer, Tim McCoy, admits he hasn't
seen "specifics."
Davis says her findings are based on "hundreds of documents" – almost
all of which, it turns out, she gleaned from public records, such as
court documents and media reports.
But she says her key evidence is 24 "sworn" statements she took from
local witnesses, who she says have never been interviewed by other media
(although several have been questioned by the FBI).
Davis declined a request by WorldNetDaily to see the affidavits – even
with the names blacked out – arguing that she must protect her
confidential sources, many of whom are "scared" of retaliation, she
said, either from Arabs living in Oklahoma City, which has two mosques
and a relatively large Middle-Eastern community, or from the federal
government.
"I can't give the affidavits out right now," Davis said. "I'm not trying
to be coy."
She said, however, that she has shared them with a well-known former
federal prosecutor who she hopes can spark a Justice Department
investigation.
Davis says that all of her witnesses are credible.
"I've got blue collar; I've got white collar," she said. "Some are very
educated, and some just salt of the earth."
She said many of the witnesses tie "seven to eight Arab men to various
stages of the bombing plot, from the beginning all the way to the day in
which the plot was executed."
Three of the 24 witnesses – "A," "B" and "C," as Davis calls them –
worked with the Iraqi she fingered as McVeigh's bombing partner. They
worked for a property management company owned by an Arab-American whose
ex-wife, a U.S. Agriculture Department worker, died in the bombing. The
Iraqi did maintenance work during the day and worked as a restaurant
janitor at night.
Davis' assertion of an Arab bomber is largely based on their accounts.
However, she says she also took statements from two local officials,
both joggers, who swore they saw an Arab man with a backpack running
from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building while looking at his watch on
the morning before and the morning of the blast.
Davis said another witness identified a man, who fit the description of
the Iraqi, "speeding away from downtown shortly after the blast in a
brown Chevy truck that matched the description of a getaway vehicle
immediately targeted by the FBI in an all-points bulletin."
Asked how the witness could get a good look at the man when he was
speeding away in a truck, Davis replied, "They locked eyes."
She pointed out that another witness, a bartender, recalls seeing the
same Iraqi drinking beer with McVeigh in a local bar just days before
the bombing.
The Iraqi, Al-Hussaini Hussain, who no longer lives in Oklahoma City,
has sued KFOR, Davis and former news director Melissa Klinzing, arguing
he was falsely identified as the John Doe No. 2 suspect. (Even though
Davis didn't name him and had his face digitally blurred, Al-Hussaini
says the newscast ID'd him through "innuendo.") He said he was painting
a garage at the time of the bombing.
His lawyers have slammed Davis' reporting as "tabloid journalism."
KFOR Executive Producer Natalie Hughes did not respond to a request for
an interview.
The Oklahoma Gazette sided with Al-Hussaini, saying Davis' stories were
a product of "fakery and embellishment." In a July 1998 piece, "Liar,
Liar," it lumped her in with other journalists who have made up sources
and quotes.
"I didn't make these people up," asserted Davis, who says she dropped
her libel suit against the Gazette only because she couldn't prove
damages. She says she plans to refile.
Gazette Editor Mike Easterling did not return phone calls seeking
comment.
Davis contends Al-Hussaini matches a later composite drawing of John Doe
No. 2's profile circulated by the FBI.
In fact, she says she laid the FBI's profile sketch over a profile shot
of Al-Hussaini's face that she and a private investigator, who was
employed by the TV station at the time, had captured on surveillance
video.
"The similarities between the profile sketch and Al-Hussaini were
uncanny," she concluded.
But federal prosecutors said the FBI sketch of the dark-haired, muscular
suspect, John Doe No. 2, was a case of mistaken identity. It actually
depicted an innocent Army private, Todd Bunting, and was drawn from
information provided by a mechanic at a Kansas body shop where the Ryder
truck was rented.
Bunting went to the shop a day after McVeigh. Prosecutors say the
mechanic, Eldon Elliott, confused the two dates and the people who were
there on those days when agents questioned him.
Undeterred, Davis says her surveillance of Al-Hussaini revealed a tattoo
on his upper left arm matching the location of a tattoo worn by John Doe
No. 2, as first described by the FBI.
Of course, tattoos are common among Army privates like Bunting.
Al-Hussaini's attorneys have claimed the FBI never considered him a
suspect.
In fact, an FBI agent, speaking at a 1995 newspaper publishers
conference, said Davis' report was untrue, according to The Daily
Oklahoman.
Bin Laden connection?
Davis told Fox's Bill O'Reilly that the Oklahoma City bombing "really is
a foreign conspiracy masterminded and funded by Osama bin Laden,
according to my intelligence sources."
Who are her intelligence sources? She won't name them.
But she allowed that one is "an intelligence source on Capitol Hill."
Through this source she was able to "personally read" a general
government advisory issued in the months before the bombing that warned
of a possible "Iran-sponsored Islamic attack" targeting Washington, D.C,
she said.
An updated warning issued on March 3, 1995, shifted the focus "from
Washington to the heartland," Davis said – as in, Oklahoma. The Murrah
Building was blown up April 19, 1995.
Pressed, Davis said that "heartland" was her word. The actual wording in
the document she saw said that terrorists were expected to "strike at
the heart of the U.S."
The heart of the U.S. could also mean Washington, she admits.
Asked to see the document, Davis could not confirm that she had a copy.
The federal government, of course, routinely monitors threats from
Islamic terrorist groups. That the Oklahoma City bombing occurred after
a general warning about Islamic threats may have been only coincidence.
Another "intelligence source," whom Davis calls "Witness D," is a former
foreign service officer from the State Department. He gave her the
Nichols-Philippines lead.
A third unnamed source, Witness I, is a Harvard University government
professor. She gave Davis the Yousef-Philippines connection.
To be sure, Davis connects a lot of nebulous dots.
But several things lend some credence to her allegation of an Arab
connection to the bombing.
For one, British investigative reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard quotes
several witnesses in his book, "The Secret Life of Bill Clinton," who
insist they saw a "dark-complected" or "olive-skinned" man with McVeigh
in Kansas motels before the bombing, and in the Ryder truck in Oklahoma
City just before the bombing. (Davis says she hasn't read the book,
which opens with seven straight chapters on the Oklahoma bombing.)
The day of the bombing, moreover, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol warned law
enforcement in a bulletin to be on the lookout for a rental car
"occupied by Middle-Eastern male subject or subjects" who are "possible
suspects in bombing Oklahoma City."
And the Fort Worth Star-Telegram recently reported that the 3,100-plus
missing FBI pages of evidence include Dallas FBI documents that are
thought to contain details about the arrest of at least two people of
Arab descent – possibly Iranians or Iraqis – after the Oklahoma City
bombing.
Davis says the grand jury that interviewed her three times never ruled
out a John Doe No. 2.
"They were very interested," she said. "They wouldn't have called me
back if they weren't."
As for Al-Hussaini's alibi, she claims she and her lawyers "destroyed"
it when they deposed him in the defamation case.
"I got to put John Doe No. 2 under oath," Davis said, "and watched him
squirm for six days."
She declined to go into details about his alibi, adding that the
deposition transcripts are "sealed" until the case is settled.
'What's the motive?'
Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a Republican and former FBI agent, rejects
Davis' allegations that the government is hiding a Middle East
connection, calling it "wishful thinking."
"What's the motive?" he asked recently on Fox. "If Nichols and McVeigh
did it, if some other people were associated with them, why cover that
up?"
"If there was, in fact, a Middle East connection, we could bomb Osama
bin Laden again," Keating added.
Davis posits, though she admits she can't prove it, that the Clinton
administration may have wanted to hide the connection for political
reasons.
She claims that news of Iraqi POWs being involved in the deadliest
terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil would have been a political nightmare
for the administration, which continued the previous administration's
policy of welcoming thousands of Iraqi refugees here after the Gulf war.
Davis is married to a Gulf war veteran.
Evans-Pritchard has broached a more sinister political motive.
He suggests that McVeigh and Nichols, who were tied to anti-government
militia groups, provided former President Clinton with a convenient way
to discredit the anti-big-government Republican revolution in 1995,
which cost his party long-held power and threatened his own chances at
re-election in 1996.
If Clinton could connect the militia movement (melding the bombing in
with it) to Republicans – who won Congress just months earlier in a
landslide election that Democratic officials and their friends in the
media blamed on "angry white males" – he could scare voters into
thinking "right-wing extremism" would lead to more hate and violence.
Or, more specifically, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh would lead to
more Timothy McVeighs.
The introduction of a foreign element in the bombing, of course, would
only have muddied the political picture he was trying to paint.
After his 1996 re-election, "Clinton told a pool of reporters that he
owed his political revival to the Oklahoma bombing," Evans-Pritchard
said.
He quoted Clinton saying, "It broke a spell in the country as people
began searching for our common ground again."
Why? Because the conspiracy was home-grown.
"Had it been carried out by foreign radicals," Evans-Pritchard wrote,
"the impact on the national psyche would have been far less."
But what would McVeigh, in league with white supremacists, have in
common with Islamic fundamentalists? Hatred of American government.
Trouble is, McVeigh, just weeks before he was scheduled to die,
ridiculed any idea he teamed up with bin Laden. He couldn't even spell
bin Laden's name correctly in a letter to Fox News.
And earlier this month, McVeigh sent a letter to the Houston Chronicle
saying there is no John Doe No. 2.
But Davis doesn't buy it. Dogged as ever, she says she won't rest until
John Doe No. 2 is behind bars.
The talk of a conspiracy nut? Political luminaries in Oklahoma's capital
city don't think so.
Said one: "Certainly no one considered her nutty before April 19," when
she won several news broadcasting awards, including ones from the
Associated Press. "And my impression is that fair-minded people don't
consider her nutty now."
Another, however, cautioned that Davis' station, Channel 4, was the most
sensationalistic of the three channels covering the bombing back then
and that Davis "was doing her part to participate in that."
Davis says she's no conspiracy crank. And to prove it, she says she does
not buy into other Oklahoma conspiracy theories, such as the one
alleging the explosion was caused by multiple bombs.
Nor does she think the government, including ATF officials who allegedly
pulled their kids from day care in the building, had specific prior
warning that "a Ryder truck loaded with explosives was headed to the
Alfred P. Murrah Building at 9 a.m. on April 19, 1995."
"The bombing could not be stopped," Davis said.
-------------------------------------------------
Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
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rose...@rapidnet.com
>WorldNetDaily
that should be your first clue, Naltyloon
>Bin Laden-McVeigh link: Another crackpot theory?
Coming from the above and YOU?
Funny it should cross your mind ! !
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