The Rohrabacher Test
Congressman questions Terry Nichols about Oklahoma City bombing
by Jim Crogan - July 1, 2005 

After weeks of cancellations and rescheduling, a much-anticipated meeting between convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols and Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) finally took place last week.

Early Monday morning, Rohrabacher, accompanied by two staff aides, traveled from Orange County to Florence, Colorado, for his interview with Nichols at Florence ADMAX, a small federal super-maximum-security prison. Nichols’ court-appointed attorney for his 2004 trial on Oklahoma state murder charges, Brian Hermanson, was scheduled to be there as well, but he didn’t make the trip.

Nichols is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for his role in the April 19, 1995, bombing.

Nichols, Rohrabacher says, appeared calm throughout the interview and willing to answer his questions. “Of course, that doesn’t mean he answered a lot of my questions with any substance.”

Spurring Rohrabacher’s interest in the Oklahoma City bombing is The Third Terrorist, a book written by Jayna Davis, a former KFOR-TV reporter in Oklahoma City who investigated the bombing. Davis, who turned up possible witnesses and evidence of a Middle East and Philippines connection to McVeigh and Nichols, as well as the potential identity of the elusive John Doe No. 2, has provided information to Rohrabacher for his investigation.

Rohrabacher said Nichols recalled hearing McVeigh talk about “Arabs or Middle Eastern people,” he was supposedly dealing with in Oklahoma City. “But he said he didn’t remember the context in which McVeigh mentioned them. He said that McVeigh used to talk about his connections when they were driving. That’s when he mostly heard McVeigh talk about the Middle Easterners,” he says. “But he also said he was kind of sleepy and not paying real close attention,” adds Rohrabacher. “He also says he never met any of those Arabs or Middle Easterners and he didn’t know their names.”

Nichols said nothing to “discredit” the information and theory developed by Davis that Middle Eastern individuals in Oklahoma City were involved in the bombing. “He could have done that but he didn’t,” said Rohrabacher. At one point Nichols even said, “[Davis’] theory could be correct. But he offered no specifics.”

An Oklahoma Mystery
New hints of links between Timothy McVeigh and Middle Eastern terrorists
by Jim Crogan - July 19, 2002 

In February 1995 -- months before the Oklahoma City blast -- the House Task Force on Terrorism issued a warning that Middle Eastern Islamists, under the leadership of Iran, were preparing a series of terrorist attacks against the U.S. An update, issued in March 1995 -- just a month before the bombing -- stated the target list had shifted from Washington, D.C., to government installations and buildings in America's heartland. The task force distributed these alerts to federal intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. In 1996, terrorism-task-force director Bodansky gave a copy of the original warning and update to reporter Jayna Davis. 
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The Terrorist Motel
The I-40 connection between Zacarias Moussaoui and Mohamed Atta 
by Jim Crogan - July 26, 2002

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE NONDESCRIPT ROADSIDE motel outside Oklahoma City was just a fleeting encounter during the twisted cross-country odyssey of the terrorists who would carry out the September 11 attacks. Mohamed Atta, alleged leader of the plot, and two companions wanted to rent a room, but couldn't get the deal they wanted, so they left. 
It was an incident of no particular importance, except for one thing. The owner of the motel remembers Atta being in the company of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker," who was arrested prior to September 11 and now faces conspiracy charges in connection with the terror assaults. 

The motel owner never heard from prosecutors in Moussaoui's case but got one more call from the FBI several weeks later. "The agent told me they had passed on a copy of my statement to Moussaoui's defense team, and I might be getting a call from them. But I was under no obligation to talk to them. However, I don't know if that was the truth. Since then, I have never heard from anyone connected to Moussaoui's case." 

ONE REASON FOR THE FBI'S APPARent lack of interest might be this motel's alleged connection to Timothy McVeigh and a group of Iraqis who worked in Oklahoma City. According to the motel owner and other witnesses and investigators interviewed by the Weekly, McVeigh and several of these Iraqis were motel guests in the months preceding the 1995 bombing. Witnesses also claimed they saw several of the Iraqis moving barrels of material around on the bed of a truck. The motel owner said the material smelled of diesel fuel and he had to clean up a spill. Diesel fuel was a key component of the truck bomb that blew up the Federal Building. 

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Another FBI Agent Blows the Whistle
New evidence that the Bureau quashed another terror probe before 9/11
by Jim Crogan - August 2, 2002 

The Weekly has learned that Chicago-based special agent Robert Wright has accused the agency of shutting down his 1998 criminal probe into alleged terrorist-training camps in Chicago and Kansas City. The apparent goal of the training camps, according to confidential documents obtained by the Weekly, was to recruit and train Palestinian-American youths, who would then slip into Israel. Recruits at these camps reportedly received weapons training and instruction in bomb-making techniques in the early 1990s. The bomb-making curriculum included the sort of explosives later used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. And government documents state that two trainees came from the Oklahoma City area. 

One alleged trainer at the terror camps is now fending off a government lawsuit to seize his bank accounts, car and property for alleged money laundering on behalf of the militant group Hamas. So far, no one has been prosecuted for these alleged terrorism-related activities. 

The official government position is that Middle Eastern groups had no involvement in the 1995 bombing carried out by Timothy McVeigh, and that conclusion may stand the test of time. The FBI, however, never fully investigated leads suggesting a different verdict, according to law-enforcement and government sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Congressional investigators are starting to re-examine the entire matter. There's also another troubling question: Why has the FBI dismissed or ignored evidence linking the Oklahoma City bombing to the Middle East? Is it because these leads are unlikely to pan out or because the agency still has something to hide regarding its own intelligence-gathering lapses?

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9-11: New World Disorder / Heartland Conspiracy
Unanswered questions about Timothy McVeigh’s and Terry Nichols’ possible links to the Middle East 
by Jim Crogan - Sept. 28, 2002

It is obvious material for conspiracy buffs: Did Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols really act alone, or was some larger terrorist outfit behind the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building? 

In Oklahoma City, an investigative reporter began asking the question long before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Jayna Davis, in a series that aired on KFOR-TV in 1995, examined the possible existence of John Doe No. 2, a man witnesses saw with McVeigh outside the federal building moments before the bomb went off, killing 168 people. Her reports also raised questions about the purpose of several trips Nichols made to the Philippines, into areas in which terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden were known to hide out.

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