In 1986, Jayna Davis graduated at the top of her class
from the University of Texas at Austin with
a BA in Broadcast Journalism. During her 12-year
career as a television reporter, Jayna worked
as a videotape editor, producer, news anchor,
general assignments and investigative reporter.
She entered the broadcast industry at KXII-TV
in Sherman, Texas, then moved eastward to
KLTV in Tyler, where she was recognized statewide
for her achievements in general assignments
and medical reporting.
In 1991, Jayna reached a top 20 broadcast
market when she joined the news team at KCRA-TV
in Sacramento, California, the third largest
NBC affiliate in the country. In 1993, Jayna
found her niche in Oklahoma City when KFOR-TV
hired her as an investigative reporter. During
her four years at KFOR, Jayna received several
awards for investigative journalism.
Shortly after 9:02 AM on April 19, 1995, Jayna
was present and at the Alfred P. Murrah Building
to report on the bombing that was deemed America's
deadliest terrorist attack of the 20th century.
Within twenty-four hours, Channel 4's news
director tapped Jayna to cover the FBI's international
manhunt for the perpetrators and the infamous
John Doe 2. On June 7, 1995, KFOR-TV broadcast
its first story in which the disgruntled Gulf
War veteran, Timothy McVeigh, was identified
drinking beer with a former Iraqi soldier
in an Oklahoma City tavern. During the past
nine years, Jayna has compiled an investigative
dossier which raises the question: did 4-19
sound the alarm of Middle East terrorism that
went unheeded?
Jayna has dedicated years of research into
the Middle Eastern connection to the 1995
terrorist strike on the Murrah Building. In
2001, she founded a non-profit corporation,
Journalists' Committee for Justice, Inc, which
has carried on the mission to seek justice
for those who perished in America's heartland.
On April 15, 2004, WND Books/Thomas Nelson
Publishers released her new book, The Third
Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the
Oklahoma City Bombing.
[Have an opinion on this column? Sound off in the Discussion
Forums.]
Was the Oklahoma City bombing the silver bullet that could have
prevented 9-11?
Was the April 19, 1995 strike on America's heartland the greatest
law enforcement failure of the 20th century that led, in part, to
the terrorist holocaust of the young 21st century? I believe a compelling
body of evidence illustrates how Iraqi
intelligence agents infiltrated the United States in order to recruit
and assist Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the bombing of the
Alfred P. Murrah Building.
My tumultuous journey began nine years ago, amidst the widespread
death and destruction on a scale Americans had never before seen.
As an investigative reporter for the NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City,
KFOR-TV, I was among the first correspondents on the scene of the
bombing.
Within twenty-four hours, my news director, Melissa Klinzing, assigned
me to cover the international manhunt for suspects. That assignment
soon became a personal quest to seek the untold story behind the murderous
rage and fury that left our country forever changed. The Third
Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing
is the culmination of nearly a decade of exhaustive research to wrench
out the truth, however ugly, in an age of political "spin" and massaging
facts to suit agendas.
The evening of June 7, 1995, seemed almost surreal when KFOR-TV led
the 6:00 pm newscast with a ground breaking story of Middle East complicity
in the Oklahoma City bombing. The broadcast challenged the FBI's publicly
espoused theory that two right-wing fanatics, Timothy McVeigh and
Terry Nichols, single-handedly pulled off the crime of the century.
Our story featured the steadfast testimonies of witnesses who placed
an Iraqi soldier in the company of McVeigh at a local tavern a few
days prior to the strike on America's heartland.
Forty-eight hours later, KFOR-TV rocked the airwaves once more. A
downtown witness who stepped directly into the path of a speeding
brown Chevrolet pickup just sixty seconds after the blast, picked
the same Iraqi national from a photo lineup as the driver of that
truck. The brown pickup matched the FBI's official all-points-bulletin
for a getaway vehicle that was issued in the wake of the explosion
for foreign suspects.
Eyewitness Testimony
Throughout the course of my investigation, I interviewed 80 potential
witnesses - 22 of whom I deemed credible because their testimonies
could be independently corroborated, and their stories did not conflict
with the government's case against McVeigh and Nichols. In detailed
affidavits, these eyewitnesses positively identified eight Middle
Eastern men, the majority of whom are former Iraqi soldiers, colluding
with Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols during
various stages of the bombing plot.
All of these suspects immigrated to the U.S. following the Persian
Gulf War, ostensibly seeking political asylum from the tyranny
of Saddam
Hussein. However, my investigation revealed they were false defectors
-not outspoken dissidents as they had professed.
This cadre of former Iraqi servicemen moved to Oklahoma City in the
fall of 1994 and began performing handiwork for a property management
company that was owned and operated by a Palestinian ex-patriate.
This affluent real estate mogul, who operated under eight known aliases,
funded his vast, multi-million dollar housing empire from monies contributed
by siblings living in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and
Amman, Jordan.
In the early 1990's, the Palestinian property owner pled guilty to
federal insurance fraud and spent time in the penitentiary. Court
records revealed the FBI once suspected this ex-convict of ties to
the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Six months prior to the bombing, the Palestinian businessman turned
federal felon hired a handful of Iraqi soldiers to do maintenance
work at his low-income rental houses. On April 19, several witnesses
watched in stunned amazement as their Middle Eastern co-workers expressed
prideful excitement upon hearing the first radio broadcasts that Islamic
extremists had claimed responsibility for the attack on the Murrah
Building. The men exuberantly pledged their allegiance to Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein, vowing they would "die for Saddam."
The majority of these Iraqi soldiers were identified colluding with
McVeigh and Nichols in the months, weeks, days, and final hours leading
up to 9:02 am on April 19, 1995. The most incriminating testimony
centered around one man who not only fit the FBI's physical description
in the official arrest warrant for John Doe 2, but according to veteran
law enforcement officials, was a dead ringer for the profile sketch
of the elusive suspect.
Witnesses identified this Iraqi immigrant in the company of McVeigh
prior to the bombing, seated in the passenger seat of the Ryder truck
the morning of April 19, stepping out of that truck at ground zero,
and speeding away from downtown seconds after the blast in a brown
Chevrolet pickup which was aggressively pursued by law enforcement.
Civil Weapon
Who is the man identified by a plethora of witnesses as the infamous
third terrorist? I sat across the table from this individual for eight
days of intense interrogation. I peered inside his psychiatric file
in which he confessed to having hallucinations and trepidation about
being arrested for complicity in the Oklahoma bombing. His name is
Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini.
I was able to learn intimate secrets about Al-Hussaini because he
granted me an investigative tool to which few journalists have access
- discovery. On August 24, 1995, weeks after the FBI announced it
had abandoned the international manhunt for John Doe 2, Hussain Al-Hussaini
filed a libel lawsuit against KFOR-TV.
Eyewitnesses had identified this Iraqi soldier drinking beer with
McVeigh prior to the heartland massacre, seated in the explosives-laden
Ryder truck the morning of April 19, descending from that truck in
front of the ill-fated Murrah Building, and peeling away from the
shattered and burning remains of the federal complex in a brown pickup
targeted by federal authorities. Yet for some inexplicable reason,
the FBI never questioned Hussaini Al-Hussaini. But more significantly,
the Bureau refused my repeated requests to officially clear him as
a suspect.
The Department of Justice did not hesitate to grant absolution to
several men who were identified by the media as having been questioned
as John Doe 2 look-alikes. Yet when Hussain Al-Hussaini issued a public
plea through the Oklahoma City press for exoneration, the FBI refused
to deliver.
But the inexplicable silence from federal law enforcement did not
deter the Iraqi soldier from pursuing his litigation against me and
KFOR-TV. I viewed that litigation as an offensive weapon which enabled
me to subpoena Al-Hussaini's immigration file - that information,
coupled with a photograph of a military tattoo on his upper left arm,
provided a rare opportunity to deconstruct the Iraqi soldier's murky
past.
Colonel Patrick Lang, the former chief of human intelligence for the
Defense Intelligence Agency who served as a consultant to the U.S.
military during Operation Desert Storm, evaluated Al-Hussaini's immigration
records and emblematic tattoo. The conclusion - this man most likely
served in Saddam Hussein's elite fighting forces - the Republican
Guard, and from there was promoted up the ranks to Unit 999 of the
Iraq Intelligence Service.
The lawsuit also ushered in a once-in-a-lifetime moment. In the fall
of 1998, I sat face-to-face with a man I knew had been positively
identified as a perpetrator of mass murder in the very city where
the deposition would take place.
Much to everyone's surprise, Al-Hussaini broke down under questioning
and unwittingly confessed to self-incriminating details - details
known only to the dark-haired stranger seen socializing with a very
boisterous Timothy McVeigh and the bar tender who served beer to the
two men in an Oklahoma City nightclub.
Legal Vindication
On November 17, 1999, Federal Judge Timothy Leonard dismissed the
libel lawsuit in a sweeping ruling that upheld as "undisputed" all
fifty statements of fact and opinion that implicated Hussain Al-Hussaini
as the third terrorist in the Oklahoma City bombing. More significantly,
the evidence irrefutably discredited his alibi.
Al-Hussaini could never establish for the court his whereabouts for
the critical hours of April 19. Nonetheless, he appealed his case
to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. On March 26, 2003, the three-judge
panel issued a unanimous ruling to dismiss the case and affirmed the
trial court's decision.
Nexus: 4-19 and 9-11
Soon after that fateful day in April of 1995, Al-Hussaini moved to
Boston and sought employment at the Boston Logan International Airport.
In November 1997, four years before two planes were hijacked from
that very airport on a murderous trek to the World Trade Center, Al-Hussaini
confided to his psychiatrist he was apprehensive about his airport
job stating "If something happens there. I'll be a suspect."
During his deposition one year later in 1998, Al-Hussaini disclosed
that during the time he was experiencing panic attacks about his airport
employment, he was residing with two Iraqi Gulf War veterans who served
in Saddam's army. The Iraqi veterans owned a business that provided
food-catering services to the commercial airlines at Boston Logan.
In the wake of the suicide hijackings of 2001, law enforcement speculated
that food service workers might have planted the box cutters aboard
those doomed flights. Hussain Al-Hussaini's bizarre prediction and
expressed fear about an event that might occur at Boston Logan just
grazes the surface of the disturbing connections I have discovered
between 4-19 and 9-11.
9-11 Commission and FBI Director Louis Freeh
The 9-11 commission recently discussed my book when commissioner John
Lehman asked former FBI Director Louis Freeh about the possible Iraqi/Al
Qaeda connection to the Oklahoma City bombing. Lehman boldly asserted
that the startling new information contained in The Third Terrorist
"begs for further investigation." Director Freeh declined to dismiss
the notion of foreign complicity in the 1995 terrorist massacre.
Philippine/Al-Qaeda Connection
The evidence that I have outlined, thus far, deals solely with the
collusion of Iraqi nationals with Timothy McVeigh. However, I have
also uncovered strong indicators of an Al-Qaeda connection to this
terrorist operation. The McVeigh defense team uncovered evidence that
indicated Terry Nichols might have received bomb making expertise
from Al Qaeda explosives experts based in the Philippines.
We know that this small-time Kansas farmer of modest means took expensive
and unexplained trips to the Philippines, many times without his Filipino
mail order bride. The court record reveals the Oklahoma City bomber
was in Cebu City in December 1994 at the same time as the mastermind
of the first World Trade Center attack, Ramzi Yousef.
Did these two men cross paths? According to the sworn statement of
the co-founder of the Muslim terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, which is
a spin-off organization of Al Qaeda, Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef
met personally to discuss bomb making in the early 1990's.
Richard Clarke, President Clinton's former chief terrorist advisor,
disclosed in his new book that the FBI "could never disprove" the
theory that the Kansas farmer learned the macabre genius of terrorist
bomb making under the training of Philippines-based Al-Qaeda general,
Ramzi Yousef. Clarke stated, "We do know that Nichols' bombs did not
work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned."
Phone records revealed that Nichols received and made a slew of calls
to a boarding house in Cebu City, which according to McVeigh's defense
lawyers, sheltered students from a university well known for Islamic
militancy. Nichols and McVeigh also made a series of cryptic calls
on a phone debit card to untraceable numbers and public pay phones
in the Philippines from public pay phones in Kansas in order to cover
their trail. Why? That question has never been addressed or answered
by the Department of Justice.
Prior Warning and Two "Lily White" Recruits
Attorney General John Ashcroft recently warned the nation to brace
for a possible Al-Qaeda attack in which the Islamic militants might
recruit people who appear "European"- operatives who could easily
slip below the law enforcement radar screen. I have learned first
hand that terrorism makes for strange bedfellows and unforeseen alliances
between seemingly polar-opposite groups. As the old saying goes, "An
enemy of an enemy is a temporary friend." Such was the case in the
1995 strike on the Oklahoma federal complex.
On February 27, 1995 the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional Warfare issued a prior warning that stated there would
be an "Iran-sponsored Islamic attack" on U.S. soil. Washington D.C.
topped the hit list. The primary targets were Congress and the White
House, a prescient insight into the events of 9-11.
The warning was distributed to the FBI and other federal intelligence
agencies. In response, security was beefed up in the capitol city,
so the focus then shifted from Washington, D.C. to the American Midwest.
On March 3, 1995 the director of the Congressional Task Force, Yossef
Bodansky, issued an updated alert stating the terrorists planned to
strike at "the heart of the U.S."
Twelve cities were placed on the potential target list because of
the radical Islamic groups and terrorist networks already operating
within those metropolitan areas. As a result, Oklahoma City made the
list.
More importantly, the Task Force learned that the Middle Eastern terrorists
had recruited two "lily whites" to carry out the bombing of an American
federal building. In the lexicon of the intelligence community, the
term lily white refers to individuals who have no criminal history
and no obvious ties to Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. McVeigh,
a decorated Gulf War veteran and Nichols, a farmer and former soldier,
both fit that criterion.
The 1995 Task Force warnings were generated from multiple intelligence
sources in several Middle Eastern countries over a period of eighteen
months prior to Oklahoma City bombing. Information was also gleaned
from terrorist conferences which took place in the fall of 1994 and
early 1995 in which Tehran's overriding desire to strike inside the
"Great Satan" was unveiled. Osama bin Laden attended several of those
conferences.
There was ample evidence that an international terrorism offensive,
sponsored by Iran and Syria, was about to be launched inside the United
States sometime after the start of the Iranian New Year on March 21,
1995.
However, at no time did I uncover any evidence that would indicate
that law enforcement had enough information to stop the bomb. They
had no idea that the plan involved a Ryder truck and the Murrah Building
at 9:00 AM on April 19. They only knew a general time frame and that
a United States federal installation was the likely target. The lily
whites were simply impossible to isolate and track in time to prevent
the impending tragedy.
FBI's Refusal to Investigate
By now, many of you are asking, if the case I have presented in The
Third Terrorist is indeed true, then why hasn't the FBI arrested
these Middle Eastern suspects? One possibility is that this information
innocently slipped through the cracks of a massive federal investigation.
However, I cannot explain why the FBI flatly refused to take receipt
of this information in 1997 when I offered twenty-two witness statements
and hundreds of pages of corroborative documentation implicating Iraqi
nationals in the Murrah Building bombing.
Officials with the DOJ told my lawyer, and later confirmed to Fox
News, that they did not did not want any more "documents for discovery"
that they would be compelled by law to surrender to the defense teams
for McVeigh and Nichols.
In 1999, I returned to the Bureau, and a very courageous FBI agent,
Dan Vogel, took custody of the 22 witness affidavits, and passed them
up the chain of command to the legal department at the Oklahoma City
field office.
From there - the documents simply vanished.
They were never turned over to the defense teams, and there was no
attempt to prove or disprove veracity of the witnesses' testimonies.
Not witness was called or questioned.
To this day the Department of Justice and FBI refuse to clear the
man identified as the third terrorist of suspicion in deadliest terrorist
attack in 20th century America. My meticulous research into the Iraqi
soldier's whereabouts for the morning of April 19 proves beyond a
reasonable doubt that he has no alibi.
Why has the FBI never even questioned Hussain Al-Hussaini and his
Middle Eastern cohorts? I am at a loss to explain.
That is a question that should be posed to the former administration
and the handful of people who were responsible for investigating and
prosecuting the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building.
The Iraq War
The Oklahoma City bombing, if orchestrated by an Iraqi hit squad operating
under state sponsorship by Iran and Syria, would undoubtedly constitute
an act of war against the United States. Given what I have discovered
about the Iraqi/Al Qaeda links to the April 19, 1995 bombing, I applaud
and salute the United States military for its tremendous courage and
sacrifice in ousting Saddam Hussein.
How many more Americans would have been marked for death had the U.S.
military not invaded Iraq and overthrown such a bloodthirsty broker
of terror? I believe that our fallen soldiers have not died in vain
to end the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction that have
not yet been found, but to save Americans from another widespread
slaughter of innocents like April 19.
