Islamic-Extremist Terrorists and the Oklahoma City Bombing

In mid-morning of April 19, 1995, an ammonium nitrate and nitromethane bomb weighing an incredible 5,600 pounds exploded inside a yellow Ryder truck that was parked outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The bomb killed 168 people. The bombing had eerie similarities to the 1993 terror attack on the World Trade Center that killed six people and nearly toppled one of the towers.

The 1993 World Trade Center bomb, like the Oklahoma City bomb, had been hidden in a rental truck. After a search of the vehicle's identification number within the National Crime Information Center database, investigators were able to link the World Trade Center rental truck to a group of Islamic extremists led by Egyptian Islamic cleric Omar Abdel Rahman and Kuwait-born Ramzi Yousef, who lived in both Kuwait and Pakistan with family ties to Pakistan.[1] Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef's three-year-older uncle, was the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 attacks against the U.S.

A similar search on the truck involved in the Oklahoma City bombing led investigators to a rental agency in Junction City, Kansas, a lead that eventually provided much information in understanding how the truck got to the Murrah Building. Though it appeared that America had once again been the victim of another Islamic terror act, two Americans, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, were charged, and eventually convicted of the crime. Upon further examination of the backgrounds of McVeigh and Nichols, investigators began to wonder how the two acquired the funds and knowledge to create such a colossal bomb.[2]

On the morning of the Oklahoma City bombing Abdul Hakim Murad told a prison guard that Islamic extremists were responsible for the bombing. Murad had just been linked to Ramzi Yousef and his plot to destroy twelve airliners with bombs, a scheme called the Bojinka Plot. Yousef supposedly got the name "bojinka" while working with Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the Serbs in the early 1990s ("bojinka" is a Serbo-Croatian word for "loud bang"). Whether Murad was making a vacant boast or really knew that Islamic extremists could be linked to the bombing was another puzzle for the FBI. Murad had been captured in the Philippines in January of 1995 and directly linked to Yousef and his Bojinka Plot, which was designed with the aid of Yousef's seemingly ubiquitous uncle Mohammed. A fire broke out in an apartment where Yousef and Murad were working on bombs to down the airliners. A laptop was left in the building with incriminating evidence. Murad was ordered by Yousef to retrieve the laptop but both he and the computer were confiscated.

When investigators looked into Terry Nichols's past they found a seemingly unremarkable life. He had been unemployed for many years, had little or no funds, divorced his first wife, but he traveled four times to the Philippines where he married a Filipino woman, Marife Torres. Further investigation by the FBI found that Nichols's trips to the Philippines were full of odd behavior and strange coincidences.

On his last trip to the Philippines in November of 1994, Nichols passed a note to his ex-wife that led her to $20,000 in cash that was found in her house and a storage locker that contained, among other things, $60,000 of gold. The cash and gold may have come from a robbery or an unknown terrorist source. While Nichols was in the Philippines in 1994 and early 1995, investigators found that Yousef and his confederates were in Manila plotting terror acts that included the Bojinka Plot, the assassination of the pope, and suicide hijackings. At this time Nichols's father-in-law found a book on the making of explosives in Nichols's personal effects.

British and Israeli intelligence services confirmed the fact that the OKC bomb had similar construction as the Yousef bomb at the World Trade Center and other similar bombs detonated in Africa by Islamic extremists. At least one source, an Edwin Angeles who was linked to the Philippine national defense-intelligence agency, has confirmed Murad's contention that Islamic extremists, and specifically Yousef, were in contact with Nichols.[3] It seems clear that neither McVeigh nor Nichols knew how to create a super explosive but where they received the knowledge has been hotly debated.[4]

Sources:

Davis, Jayna. The Third Terrorist, WND Books, Nashville, Tennessee, 2004.

Lance, Peter. 1000 Years for Revenge - International Terrorism and the FBI, The Untold Story, Regan Books, New York, 2003.

William, Paul. Al Qaeda - Brotherhood of Terror, Alpha Books, United States, 2002.

[1] Yousef's background and motives have continued to be a mystery. Mistakenly identified many times as an Iraqi, Yousef, whose real name is Abdul Basit Karim, is a Baluch Pakistani with deep sympathies for the Palestinians' plight and an avowed hatred for Israel and the United States. He was eventually apprehended and convicted of involvement in the World Trade Center bombing.

[2] McVeigh told his attorney he learned how to build the bomb from a book in a Kingman, Arizona library. No book in a Kingman library was ever found that instructed a person on how to make an ammonium nitrate and nitro methane bomb.

[3] Edwin Angeles established the Abu Sayyaf group, a Muslim separatist terrorist organization in the Philippines allegedly dedicated to terror acts under the guiding hand of Osama bin Laden. Yousef allegedly gave bomb making lessons to Abu Sayyaf members.

[4] Lance, Peter. 1000 Years for Revenge - International Terrorism and the FBI, The Untold Story, Regan Books, New York, 2003, pp. 308-318. Timmerman, Kenneth R. Insight, "Insight on the News, Daily Insight," Issue 2/17/04. McCauley, Cate. Fair, "Extra! The Thrill of a Good Conspiracy," July/August 2002. William, Paul. Al Qaeda - Brotherhood of Terror, Alpha Books, United States, 2002. Davis, Jayna. The Third Terrorist, WND Books, Nashville, Tennessee, 2004.