Another chance at OKC justice? The upcoming state trial of convicted OKC bomber Terry Nichols offers another chance to expose any co-conspirators -- and any officials who have covered up crucial evidence. (Terrorism).

On May 30th, Oklahoma State District Judge Steven Taylor scheduled a state murder trial for convicted Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols. The long-awaited trial is set to begin March 1, 2004. Nichols, age 48, could face the death penalty if convicted for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that took the lives of 170 people and injured hundreds of others. In 1997, Nichols was convicted in federal court and sentenced to life in prison on charges of conspiracy and manslaughter in the deaths of the eight federal law enforcement officers killed in the blast. The state of Oklahoma has now charged him with 162 counts of murder for the other bombing victims, including two unborn babies whose pregnant mothers were killed in the blast.

Terry Nichols' Army buddy Timothy McVeigh was convicted in a 1997 federal trial of carrying out the bombing attack and was executed in 2001. The Clinton/Reno Justice Department insisted that McVeigh had acted alone, except for Nichols' assistance in constructing the truck bomb detonated outside the Murrah Building. However, in its 11-count indictment handed down on August 10, 1995, the federal grand jury in Oklahoma City charged that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols "did knowingly, intentionally, willfully and maliciously conspire, combine and agree together and with others unknown to the Grand Jury to use a weapon of mass destruction...." Among the "others unknown" was the infamous suspect that FBI sketches, based on eyewitness testimony, identified to television viewers and newspaper readers worldwide as "John Doe No. 2."

Literally dozens of reliable eyewitnesses placed McVeigh (known from FBI sketches as John Doe No. 1, before his capture) with John Doe No. 2 as well as additional John Does in the weeks, days, hours, and minutes leading up to the April 19, 1995 bombing. Attorney General Janet Reno promised to "leave no stone unturned" in tracking down McVeigh's accomplices. By mid-June of 1995, however, it became obvious that the Clinton White House had ordered the Justice Department and FBI to make all the John Does disappear, along with eyewitness reports and evidence supporting a larger conspiracy. Federal prosecutors began presenting Timothy McVeigh as a lone bomber, an "angry white male" motivated by extreme anti-government and racist sentiments, and obsessed with the federal government's deadly siege against the Branch Davidian Church followers in Waco, Texas.

The Clinton administration, with help from its allies in the major media, turned McVeigh and the 0KG bombing into symbols used as powerful political weapons to smear and discredit its opposition: conservatives, Republicans, gun owners, the military, the religious right, and people incensed over Waco and many other Clinton outrages, crimes, and policies. All of these elements suddenly became McVeigh accomplices. Anyone who had ever enunciated a principled stand against the abuses and unconstitutional activities of Big Government was transformed into an "anti-government extremist," and (as Time magazine put it) an "ideational conspirator" with the Oklahoma City bomber.

Meanwhile, McVeigh's actual accomplices were allowed to go free -- with some of them remaining free to this day. THE NEW AMERICAN'S extensive investigation of the OKC bombing over the past eight years indicates that individuals associated with two notorious terrorist cohorts assisted McVeigh and Nichols in the deadly terrorist attack. Those two cohorts were the Aryan Nations/Aryan Republican Army and an Iraqi network led by master-bomber Ramzi Yousef. *

Middle Eastern Connections

As early as December 25, 1995, we reported ("A Tale of Intrigue") on mounting evidence pointing toward the possible connection between Terry Nichols and Middle Eastern terrorists, including Ramzi Yousef, operating through the Philippines. Nichols made many mysterious trips to the Philippines, renounced his U.S. citizenship, married a Filipina "mail-order bride," and moved to the Philippines -- then moved back to the United States before the bombing.

Edwin Angeles, a cofounder and second-in-command of Abu Sayyaf, the notorious Filipino terrorist group, has identified Nichols as a member of Ramzi Yousef's network. Angeles, according to his signed statement, met in Davao City on the Philippine island of Mindanao in 1991 with Nichols, Yousef, and other co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Angeles, aka Ibrahim Yakub, said in a handwritten statement:

I certify that Terry Nichols was known to me personally during our meeting with Abdul Hakim Murad, Wali-Khan and Ahmed Youssef [Ramzi Yousef] in [unintelligible] Davao City on Nov. 1991; Aim to establish a group and organize a Muslim and non-Muslim youth for a cause; we will also to [sic] plan for following: bombing activities; providing firearms and ammo; training in bomb making and handling....

On September 5, 1996, Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali-Khan Amin Shah were convicted in federal court in the so-called Bojinka Plot, and presently reside in American prisons. Bojinka (Serbo-Croatian for "loud bang") was Yousef's code name for his terror scheme to blow up a dozen U.S. jetliners in a single day. Another terror plan called for crashing planes into U.S. buildings, including the World Trade Center, as Yousef's al-Qaeda comrades later implemented in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Bojinka plot was foiled when the Manila apartment Yousef and Murad shared caught on fire from chemical bomb components they were mixing. Murad was captured in the Philippines following the apartment fire, but Yousef escaped, as he did following the 1993 WTC bombing. With cooperation from Murad and Shah, Yousef was later tracked down and captured in Pakistan, where he was hiding in a guest house rented by a bin Laden-owned company.

For several years, Oklahoma City attorney Michael Johnston has been tracking Terry Nichols' activities in the Philippines and his connections to the Bojinka terrorist conspiracy. Mr. Johnston is convinced that Nichols was indeed a conspirator in the Yousef group, and he has assembled a convincing array of circumstantial evidence supporting that view. Johnston is representing 24 survivors and family members of victims of the OKC bombing who filed suit in March 2002 seeking damages against Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government. The suit contends that Ramzi Yousef was acting on Hussein's behalf.

"Parallel examination of the transcripts of the Bojinka trial in New York in 1996 and the Terry Nichols case reveals a very high probability of parallel or concerted [terrorist] action between the parties in both cases," Johnston told THE NEW AMERICAN in a recent telephone interview. Johnston cites an impressive litany of evidence -- including Nichols and Bojinka trial testimony, Philippine government and law enforcement documents, and published reports -- supporting Edwin Angeles' claim that Nichols was tied to Yousef and the Bojinka plot. A timeline of Nichols' travels and telephone calls to and from the Philippines and his travels, activities, and associations in the islands matches up with the Yousef group to a degree that defies coincidence.

The government's star witness in the federal OKC trials, Michael Fortier, testified that a few months before the Oklahoma bombing, McVeigh and Nichols had failed in attempting to detonate even a small milk carton of ANFO explosive. So, who provided the expertise that allowed the successful detonation of the Ryder truck bomb? Ramzi Yousef or members of his network, perhaps? That is a very reasonable and convincing hypothesis, based on the available evidence. It is a vitally important area of investigation that the Clinton administration choked off, and that state prosecutors should be pursuing vigorously.

Charmed Lives

Oklahoma's prosecutors should also be looking closely at a man scheduled to be released from an Oklahoma prison soon. Mujahid Abdulqaadir Menepta was arrested at his home in Norman, Oklahoma, on October 11, 2001. An African-American known formerly as Melvin Lattimore, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, changed his name to Menepta after becoming a Black Muslim in 1989. Lattimore/Menepta was a close friend and roommate of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker," while Moussaoui was attending flight school in Norman. Moussaoui, a French citizen from Morocco, was arrested after he aroused the suspicions of Minnesota flight school instructors by informing them that he only wanted to learn how to steer a Boeing 747, not how to take off and land. He has admitted to being a member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror organization.

Menepta publicly defended Moussaoui. When federal agents raided Menepta's home on October 11, 2001, they arrested him for firearms violations. As a convicted felon (robbery), Menepta is prohibited from possessing firearms. He was charged with possession of a shotgun, a Red Chinese SKS rifle, and a .380-caliber semi-automatic pistol (which turned out to have been stolen). In April 2002, Menepta was sentenced to serve 15 months in prison for the weapons violations, but he was not charged with any connection to the 9-11 attacks.

Mr. Menepta leads a very charmed life. Evidence connects him to the three biggest U.S. terrorist attacks -- the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 OKC bombing, and the 9-11 attacks. But he has managed to skate free each time. The 1993 WTC bombers used Menepta's credit card number to help pay for their terrorist attack.

Jeffrey Whitney, an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, testified in court on November 10, 2001 that Menepta had been brought to the attention of federal law enforcement as a possible bombing suspect one day after the 1995 OKC attack. According to Agent Whitney, a federal informant told agents that Menepta belonged to an Islamic group in Norman and St. Louis, whose leaders advocated terrorist acts and killing law enforcement agents.

Reliable witnesses in Oklahoma City have identified Lattimore/Menepta as being at a facility only two blocks from the Murrah Building the day before the bombing. Even more notable is the report by the same eyewitnesses that he was accompanied by Peter Langan and James Rosencrans -- two other OKC suspects with equally charmed lives. Langan, a member of the Aryan Republican Army that carried out bank robberies across 13 states, was sprung from jail by federal authorities to act as a federal informant. A July 4, 1995 CNN report cited federal law enforcement sources as stating that Rosencrans accompanied McVeigh from Arizona to Oklahoma City in December 1994 to case the Murrah Building.

The overwhelming evidence conclusively indicates that federal authorities have been protecting these and other top suspects in the OKC bombing. Will Oklahoma's officials break through the federal cover-up that has thwarted justice in this case and allowed terrorists to roam free? That remains to be seen.

* Many of THE NEW AMERICAN'S articles on the OKC bombing are accessible at:

www.thenewamerican.com/focus/okc/