Terrorist Attack _______________ Information Only : 1993 WTC Iraq connection, terrorist body count, Dec 20, 2001

» Steven_Russell - 1993 WTC Iraq connection, terrorist body count, Dec 20, 2001

This is an update of an approximation of the body-count summary of the top enemy operatives and leaders, who are being tracked daily by US War Planners in Florida. Their information on the number and status of individuals of top interest is drawn from various sources of Intelligence and news media reports.

as of December 20, 2001
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FBI Top Wanted terrorists: .. 22 on list - 1 KIA, 1 prisoner, 0 wounded/in peril, 20 at large
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Other Top al Qaeda: ........... 54 on list - 3 KIA, 37 prisoners, 1 wounded/in peril, 13 at large
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Taliban & Afghan rogues ..... 62 on list - 12 KIA, 2 prisoners, 22 defector/surrender, 26 at large
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1993 WTC agents & Iraq ... 12 on list - 9 prisoners, 3 at large
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1993 WTC agents, and Iraqi connection

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This list contains key conspirators associated most closely with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who do not also appear on any other lists. A major focus here is the presentation of extensive evidence of Iraqi state sponsorship in the bombing.

Information has been derived mostly from:

http://www.fas.org/irp/world/iraq/956-tn...

The National Interest, Winter, 1995/96

THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMB:
Who is Ramzi Yousef? And Why It Matters
by Laurie Mylroie
Laurie Mylroie, formerly of Harvard University and the U.S. Naval War College. is currently with the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia. She was co-author of the bestseller, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (Random House 1990), and has just completed a sequel, 'Study of Revenge': Saddam's Terror Against America, January 1993-??

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Late in 2000, AEI Press published the finalized "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America", a careful book about the 1993 WTC bombing, by AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie, and reviewed by R James Woolsey, former Director of US Central Intelligence Agency.

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1 El Sayid Nosair------------------------- in US prison at Attica, convicted with Ramzi Yousef November 12, 1997 of conspiracy in February 26, 1993 WTC bombing; 1992 pipe bomb plot initiator from Attica; convicted in 1991 of lesser charges in the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane
Egyptian fundamentalist. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the publicly released evidence, following the conclusion of a 1995 conspiracy trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The story of Iraqi state sponsorship in the plot begins in November 1990 when an Egyptian fundamentalist, El Sayid Nosair, shot and killed Meir Kahane, an extreme right-wing Israeli-American, in Manhattan. A year later, in November 1991, Nosair's trial became a cause celebre among local fundamentalists, who turned out in force to support their "martyr."

Planted among them was another Egyptian, Emad Salem, working as an FBI informant, even as he maintained ties to Egyptian intelligence. In December 1991, the jury returned a bizarre verdict, acquitting Nosair of murder and finding him guilty on lesser charges. An outraged judge gave Nosair a maximum sentence on those lesser charges, and sent him to Attica. The fundamentalists continued to support Nosair, arranging bus trips from their mosques to visit him in prison. Salem, the FBI plant, remained among them. In early June 1992, with the informant Salem acting as an agent provocateur, Nosair convinced his friends to execute a bomb plot. He wanted them to make twelve pipe bombs, to be used for assassinating his judge and a Brooklyn assemblyman, the others to be used against Jewish targets. A cousin was to organize the plot, and Salem was to build the bombs. Mohammed Salameh, a Palestinian fundamentalist with relatives in Iraq, was then also recruited into the early 1992 pipe bomb plot.

Beginning on June 10 1992, Salameh made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his Palestinian terrorist uncle, living in Baghdad. Thus started a chain of events that likely first drew Iraqi intelligence, and then Iraqi agents, into the Manhattan plot. The Iraqi agents appear to have then taken overt control from the Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists in Manhattan, and managed to transform the relatively minor pipe bomb plot into the devastating 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

In late 1992, another Egyptian friend of El Sayid Nosair, Mahmud Abu Halima, a thirty-four year old cab driver in Manhattan, and some others from around the country, joined the growing plot, which by then was being controlled by a likely secret Iraqi agent, the mastermind Ramzi Yousef, with the probable intent of bringing down the World Trade Center in early 1993.

On November 12, 1997, El Sayid Nosair, still in Attica prison, was convicted along with Ramzi Yousef of conspiracy in the February 26, 1993 WTC bombing.

2 Emad Salem --------------------------------- in US prison for 1993 WTC bombing conspiracy; Agent provocateur and bomb builder in June 1992 pipe bomb plot; FBI informant against Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair, with ties to Egyptian intelligence.
An Egyptian, with ties to Egyptian intelligence, and FBI informant among Manhattan fundamentalists. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the publicly released evidence, following a 1995 conspiracy trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. In 1991, Egyptian fundamentalist El Sayid Nosair was convicted in the trial for the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in Manhattan, which became a cause celebre among local fundamentalists, who turned out in force to support their "martyr." Planted among them was another Egyptian, Emad Salem, working as an FBI informant, even as he maintained ties to Egyptian intelligence. The fundamentalists continued to support Nosair in Attica prison, arranging bus trips from their mosques to visit him in prison. Emad Salem, the FBI plant, remained among them. In early June 1992, with Salem acting as an agent provocateur, Nosair convinced his friends to execute a bomb plot to assassinate his prosecuting judge and others with twelve pipe bombs. A cousin was to organize the plot, and Emad Salem was to build the bombs. Mohammed Salameh, a Palestinian fundamentalist with relatives in Iraq, was then also recruited into the early 1992 pipe bomb plot.

Beginning on June 10 1992, Salameh made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his Palestinian terrorist uncle, living in Baghdad. Thus started a chain of events that likely first drew Iraqi intelligence, and then Iraqi agents, into the Manhattan plot. On June 21, 1992 an American-born Iraqi government employee from Bloomington, Indiana, living in Baghdad, Abdul Rahman Yasin, appeared at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan asking for a U.S. passport, on which he travelled to the US several months later. Then unfortunately, the FBI lost track of the Nosair-Salameh pipe bomb conspiracy.

The FBI did not fully trust its informant, Emad Salem, and Salem's ties to Egyptian intelligence; so the Bureau severed relations with Salem in early July 1992 when he refused to follow its procedures relating to criminal investigations. But other evidence shows that the Iraqi agents appear to have then taken overt control of the plot from the Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists in Manhattan, and managed to transform the relatively minor pipe bomb plot into the devastating 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Emad Salem taped most of his own phone conversations, including those with the FBI. As U.S. authorities later searched for the American Iraqi agent Abdul Rahman Yasin in March 1993, an FBI agent, John Anticev, who had worked with Emad Salem in June 1992 speculated to the FBI plant Salem: "Do you ever think that Iraqi intelligence might have known of these people who were willing to do something crazy, and that Iraqi intelligence found them out and encouraged them to do this as a retaliation for the bombing of Iraq. . . . So the people who are left holding the bag here in America are Egyptian. . . or Palestinian. . . . But the other people we are looking for, Abdul Rahman, he is gone. . I hate to think what's going to happen if this guy turns out to be. . an Iraqi intelligence operative...and these people were used."

3 Mohammed Salameh--------------------------- in US prison, rented the van used in the 1993 WTC bombing; lived with Ramzi Yousef in the apartment where the bomb was built; left an early trail of phone calls to Iraq; early accomplice in June 1992 Nosair pipe bomb plot
Born in 1966, a Palestinian fundamentalist with relatives in Iraq. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the publicly released evidence, following a 1995 conspiracy trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. In 1991, El Sayid Nosair was convicted in the trial for the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in Manhattan. Planted among his supporters was an Egyptian, Emad Salem, working as an FBI informant. In early June 1992, Salem acted as an agent provocateur, in a Nosair pipe bomb plot from Attica prison, to murder 12 people. Palestinian fundamentalist Mohammed Salameh was then recruited into the early 1992 New York pipe bomb plot.

Salameh comes from a long line of terrorists on his mother's side. His maternal grandfather fought in the 1936 Arab revolt against British rule in Palestine, and joined the PLO and was jailed by the Israelis. A maternal uncle became number two in the "Western Sector", a PLO terrorist unit under Iraqi influence in Baghdad. Salameh's involvement begins when he was twenty-six years old, recruited into the June 1992 El Sayid Nosair plot.

Despite his terrorist pedigree, Mohammed Salameh himself is naive and manipulable. When one considers that he was arrested in the process of returning to collect the deposit on the van he had rented to carry the 1993 Trade Center bomb, it is not so surprising that on June 10 1992, soon after being recruited into Nosair's plot, Salameh made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his PLO terrorist uncle in Baghdad. We can only speculate about what Salameh told his uncle, but it seems very likely that he spoke about the bold new project Nosair was organizing, perhaps seeking his help and advice. Salameh's telephone bills suggest that the pipe bombing plot was one of the most exciting events in his life: In six weeks he ran up a bill of over four thousand dollars and lost his phone service.

Thus started a chain of events that likely first drew Iraqi intelligence, and then Iraqi agents, into the Manhattan plot. On June 21, 1992 an American-born Iraqi government employee from Bloomington, Indiana, living in Baghdad, Abdul Rahman Yasin, appeared at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan asking for a U.S. passport. Other evidence then shows that Yasin and the Iraqi agents appear to have then taken overt control of the plot from the Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists in Manhattan, and managed to transform the relatively minor pipe bomb plot into the devastating 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

In late 1992, Iraqi employee Abdul Rahman Yasin travelled to the United States and stayed at the Jersey City apartment of the Iraqi Musab Yasin, his older brother. Musab Yasin lived in the same Jersey City building as the Palestinian, Mohammad Salameh, whose phone calls to Iraq had initiated the Iraqi connection in the plot. Other young Arab men also lived in the same building. Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 bombing plot, had also recently moved into the Yasin apartment. Musab Yasin and Mohammed Salameh became friends and soon left to share an apartment elsewhere in Jersey City. On November 3, 1992 Ramzi Yousef began to prepare the World Trade Center bomb.

Another local fundamentalist recruited into the plot then was Nidal Ayyad, a fellow Palestinian, the same age as Mohammad Salameh. In January 1993, Ramzi Yousef and Mohammad Salameh moved into another Jersey City apartment where the bomb was actually built. Set well back from the street, the building provided seclusion. On February 23, Salameh went to a Ryder rental agency to rent the van to carry the bomb. On the morning of February 26, 1993 the conspirators gathered at a local Shell gas station where they topped up the tank--one last explosive touch--before driving to Manhattan. Shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War. That evening Salameh drove another Palestinian named Eyyad Ismail Ismail, the van driver, and Ramzi Yousef to JFK airport; Yousef escaped to Pakistan, and Ismail to Jordan. But Salameh looks to have been deliberately left behind by Yousef, not provided with money he needed for a plane ticket.

Salameh had a ticket to Amsterdam on Royal Jordanian fight 262, which continues on to Amman, Jordan dated for March 5, 1993, but it was an infant ticket that had cost him only $65. While Salameh had been able to use this ticket to get himself a Dutch visa, he could not actually travel on it. Needing more money for an adult fare, he tried to get his van deposit back by telling the rental agency that the van had been stolen. With either desperate or inane persistence, he returned three times before he was finally arrested on March 4, 1993. Salameh had used Musab Yasin's phone number when renting the van, and Abdul Rahman Yasin was picked up the same day in a sweep of sites associated with Salameh. Abdul Rahman Yasin told the FBI the location of the apartment that was used to make the bomb, a key bit of information. They released Yasin and the very next day, he fled to Amman, Jordan on Flight 262, the same plane Salameh had hoped to catch. From Amman Yasin went on to Baghdad.

4 A maternal uncle of Mohammed Salameh ---------------------------- at large in Iraq as of 1996, key Iraqi connection to the 1993 WTC plot, received 46 phone calls in June 1992 from original pipe bomb plotter Salameh; living in Baghdad in 1992; #2 man in "Western Sector", a PLO terrorist unit under Iraqi influence; served eighteen years in an Israeli prison before he was released and deported in 1986
The first Iraqi connection to the 1993 WTC plot. Palestinian PLO terrorist in Iraq, maternal uncle of 1993 WTC bombing conspirator Mohammed Salameh. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the publicly released evidence, following a 1995 conspiracy trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship.

In early 1992, Palestinian fundamentalist Mohammed Salameh was recruited into a New York pipe bomb plot of El Sayid Nosair. Planted among the plotters was an Egyptian, Emad Salem, working as an FBI informant, but also an active plotter and agitator. Salameh comes from a long line of terrorists on his mother's side, including this maternal uncle of Salameh, who was arrested in 1968 for terrorism and served eighteen years in an Israeli prison before he was released and deported in 1986, making his way to Baghdad where he became number two in the "Western Sector", a PLO terrorist unit under Iraqi influence. On June 10 1992, Mohammed Salameh made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his terrorist uncle in Baghdad. We can only speculate about what Salameh told his uncle, but it seems very likely that he spoke about the bold new project Nosair was organizing from Attica prison, perhaps seeking his help and advice. In six weeks Salameh ran up a bill of over four thousand dollars and lost his phone service.

In Iraq, the more significant the person, the greater the likelihood his activities are monitored--at least that is what Baghdadis assume. It is thus more than likely that Iraqi intelligence learned of Nosair's bombing plot and Salameh's participation in it through Salameh's phone calls to his uncle. In any event, key preparatory steps to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were taken within days of Salameh's first call-including steps taken in Baghdad. On June 21, 1992 an American-born Iraqi government employee from Bloomington, Indiana, living in Baghdad, Abdul Rahman Yasin (subsequently an indicted fugitive in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and still one of the FBI's top Most Wanted Terrorists as of December 2001) appeared at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan asking for a U.S. passport.

Just at this crucial point, unfortunately, the FBI lost track of the Nosair-Salameh conspiracy, because it had severed relations with its informant in Manhattan, Emad Salem, in early July 1992. But other evidence then shows that Yasin and the Iraqi agents appear to have then taken overt control of the plot from the Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists in New York, and managed to transform the relatively minor pipe bomb plot into the devastating 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

5 Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim [Iraqi agent?] -------------------- in US prison, convicted November 12, 1997 of planning and execution of the 1993 WTC bombing, the mastermind behind the bombing, who went by the alias Ramzi Yousef; Basit may be a stolen Pakistani identity in Kuwait, and Yousef an Iraqi agent
aka Ramzi Yousef. Born in 1966, a Baluch Pakistani born and reared in Kuwait. At the time a 27-year-old, mastermind behind the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the released evidence, following the 1995 trial in the 1993 World Trade Center and New York landmarks bombing conspiracy, to first piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. Her conclusion was that Abdul Basit Karim was in fact a stolen Kuwaiti identy, assumed by an Iraqi agent, who masterminded the 1993 WTC bombing under the pseudonym Ramzi Yousef.

R. James Woolsey, now a partner at Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C., who also served as US Director of Central Intelligence from February 1993 to January 1995 under President Clinton, supports the theory, as more recently detailed in the following book: Late in 2000, AEI Press published "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America", a careful book about the bombing, by AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie. The book's startling thesis is that the original theory of the attack, advanced by James Fox (the FBI's chief investigator into the 1993 bombing until his replacement in 1994) was correct: that Ramzi Yousef was not Abdul Basit but rather an Iraqi agent who had assumed the latter's identity when police files in Kuwait (where the real Abdul Basit lived in 1990) were doctored by Iraqi intelligence during the occupation of Kuwait. If Mylroie and Fox (who died in 1997) are right, then it was Iraq that went after the World Trade Center last time.

Following is the detailed chronological explanation of these events in the life of Ramzi Yousef, taken mostly from the original 1995 Mylroie article [credited at top], and also from the Woolsey review of the 2000 Mylroie book. According to the popular theory of the 1993 bombing embraced by federal prosecutors and the Clinton administration, Ramzi Yousef/Abdul Basit was just another Middle Eastern student who became radicalized in his early twenties. But the real truth behind that bomb plot is increasingly appearing to be much more ominous, as the investigation of the trail of evidence is meticulously followed. Yousef's nationality and ethnicity have become known: He is a Pakistani Baluch. The Baluch are a distinct ethnic group, speaking their own language, one of several Middle Eastern peoples without their own homeland. They live in eastern Iran and western Pakistan in inhospitable desert terrain over which neither Tehran nor Islamabad exercises much control. Baluchistan is a haven for smuggling, both of drugs and of arms. The Baluch are Sunni and are at sharp odds with Tehran's Shia clerical regime. Through Iraq's many years of conflict with Iran, first in the early 1970s and then during the Iran-Iraq war a decade later, Iraqi intelligence developed close ties with the Baluch on both sides of the Iranian-Pakistani border. Above all, it used them to carry out terrorism against Iran. Yousef's associates in Pakistan, too, were anti-Shia. This fact, taken together with his Baluch ethnicity, make it nearly impossible that Iran could be behind Yousef.

But why Abdul Basit Karim? Here we come to one of the most intriguing and vital aspects of the case. Because there really was an Abdul Basit Karim, a Pakistani born in Kuwait, who later attended Swansea Institute, a technical school in Wales. After graduating in 1989 with a two-year degree in computer-aided electronic engineering, he returned to a job in Kuwait's planning ministry. As Abdul Basit and his family were permanent residents of Kuwait, Kuwait's Interior Ministry maintained files on them. But the files for Abdul Basit and his parents in Kuwait's Interior Ministry have been tampered with. Key documents from the Kuwaiti files on Abdul Basit and his parents are missing. There should be copies of the front pages of the passports, including a picture, a notation of height, and so forth, but that material is gone. There is also information in the file that should not be there, especially a notation stating that Abdul Basit and his family left Kuwait for Iraq on August 26, 1990, transiting to Iran at Salamchah (a crossing point near Basra) on their way to Pakistani Baluchistan, where, according to the file, they now live.

Who put that notation into Abdul Basit's file and why? Consider the circumstances of the moment. The Kuwaiti government had ceased to exist, and Iraq was an occupation authority; bent on establishing control over a hostile population amid near-universal condemnation, as an American-led coalition threatened war. The situation was chaotic as hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing for their lives. While the citizens of Western countries were pawns in a high stakes game, held hostage by Iraq, little attention was paid to the multitude of Third World nationals bent on escape. It truly boggles the imagination to believe that under such circumstances an Iraqi bureaucrat was sitting calmly in Kuwait's Interior Ministry taking down the flight plans--including the itinerary and final destination--of otherwise non-descript Baluchis fleeing Kuwait. Rather, it looks as if Iraqi intelligence put that information into Abdul Basit's file to make it appear that he left Kuwait rather than died there, and that, like Ramzi Yousef, he too was Baluch. Moreover, Iraqi intelligence apparently switched fingerprint cards, removing the original with Abdul Basit's fingerprints and replacing it with one bearing those of Yousef. [the identity switch seems farfetched at first glance, until you read further on, about Yousef's later blatant attempts to establish his passport identity with New York officials under his "own" full name, as "Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim" - while living in Jersey City secretly as Ramzi Yousef!]

Pakistan also maintains files on those of its citizens permanently resident abroad, at the embassy in the country in which they live. On August 9, 1990 Baghdad had ordered all embassies in Iraq's "nineteenth province" [Kuwait] to close. Most did, including the Pakistani embassy. The files on Abdul Basit and his family that should be in the Pakistani embassy in Kuwait are missing. The Pakistani government now has no record of the family. What does all this suggest? That Abdul Basit and his family were in Kuwait when Iraq invaded in August 1990; that they probably died then; and that Iraqi intelligence then tampered with their files to create an alternative identity for Ramzi Yousef. Clearly, only Iraq could reasonably have: 1) known of, or caused, the death of Abdul Basit and his family; 2) tampered with Kuwait's Interior Ministry files, above all switching the fingerprint cards; and 3) filched the files on Abdul Basit and his family from the Pakistani embassy in Kuwait. Is it likely to be mere coincidence, after all, that during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait key documents were removed from Abdul Basit's and his parents files, while the same files were filched in their entirety from the Pakistani embassy? Moreover, Abdul Basit had no criminal record in Britain, nor did he or his parents have any security record in Kuwait. And where are Abdul Basit's parents? They never returned to Kuwait after its liberation, nor have they appeared anywhere else. Did they too take up a life of crime after decades of abiding by the law?

The first concrete knowledge we have of Ramzi Yousef/Abdul Basit comes in early 1991, around the end of the Gulf war when he showed up in the Philippines seeking contact with a Muslim group there. Introduced as "the chemist", he proposed to collaborate in bombing conspiracies. Now, how did a young man who had led a seemingly normal life up until August 1990 suddenly become a world class terrorist six months after Iraq invaded his country of residence? Where did he get such sophisticated explosives training in just six months? (The real Abdul Basit's degree, remember, was in electronic engineering, not chemistry, which Swansea Institute does not even teach.)

In June 1992, it is more than likely that Iraqi intelligence learned of Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair's plans to murder 12 people in Manhattan, from Palestinian Mohammed Salameh's 46 phone calls to his PLO terrorist uncle in Baghdad beginning on June 10 1992, and that Baghdad decided to help out in the process, thus transforming the Attica prison pipe bomb plot into the much more insidious 1993 World Trade Center bombing. On June 21, 1992 the now fugitive American-born Iraqi government employee living in Baghdad, Abdul Rahman Yasin appeared at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan asking for a U.S. passport. Here probably lies the source of 1993 WTC bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef's exploits in America.

The man later identified as Abdul Basit Karim, travelling under the name of Ramzi Yousef, entered the United Stares on September 1, 1992, arriving at JFK airport. Yousef presented an Iraqi passport without a U.S. visa, was briefly detained (and fingerprinted) for illegal entry, and was granted asylum pending a hearing. Yousef went to stay at the apartment of Musab Yasin, an Iraqi living in Jersey City, the older brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, the American-born Iraqi government employee. Abdul Rahman Yasin himself then arrived in America from Iraq soon after Ramzi Yousef, in September 1992. Abdul Rahman Yasin then joined his brother and Ramzi Yousef in the same Jersey City apartment. Also living in the same building was Palestinian Mohammed Salameh, whose 46 phone calls to his PLO terrorist uncle in Baghdad had first initiated the Iraqi connection.

The Fox/Mylroie theory--that Ramzi Yousef, via Iraqi intelligence, stole Abdul Basit's identity--would explain a number of troubling differences between Abdul Basit in the summer of 1989 (when he left the United Kingdom after three years of study) and Yousef in September 1992 (when he arrived in New York). If the two are indeed the same man, then, over the course of three years, he would have: (a) grown four inches (from five foot eight inches to six feet) in his twenties; (b) put on between 35 and 40 pounds; (c) developed a deformed eye; (d) developed smaller ears and a smaller mouth; (e) gone from being an innovative computer programmer to being computer-challenged; (f) aged substantially more than three years in appearance; and (g) changed from being a quiet, smiling young man respectful to women to a rather different one (a sound file in Yousef's computer, for example, includes his voice saying "Fuck, fuck, fuck" and "Shut up, you bitch"). Also, Ramzi Yousef was known among the New York fundamentalists as "Rashid, the Iraqi". Of course, the best way to verify or falsify this stolen identity theory would be to check with people who knew Abdul Basit before August 1990. To this end, Brad White, a former Senate Judiciary Committee investigator and CBS newsman, contacted an overseas source he knew in the United Kingdom who had looked into the matter. Two people had a good memory of Abdul Basit but, shown photos of Yousef, were unable to make a positive identification. They both felt that while there was some similarity in looks, it was not the same person. "Our feeling is that Ramzi Yousef is probably not Basit", White was told.

In 1992, Iraqi Musab Yasin, who lived in the same Jersey City building as Palestinian Mohammad Salameh, had close contact with him and other young Arab men. Ramzi Yousef, living with the Yasin brothers, and Mohammed Salameh became friends and soon left to share an apartment elsewhere in Jersey City. Although the principal conspirators had been in place since September 1992, it was not until after the U.S. elections on November 3, 1992 that Yousef began to prepare the World Trade Center bomb. In mid-November the first of many calls to chemical companies appears on his phone bills. At the same time, Yousef also began calling surgical supply companies for the gloves, masks, and rubber tubing he needed to make the bomb.

The single most important piece of evidence pointing to Iraq is the passport on which Yousef later fled America. It was no ordinary passport. On November 9,1992, just after the final green light for the bombing had been given, Yousef reported to Jersey City police that he had lost his passport. He claimed to be Abdul Basit Mahmud Abdul Karim, a Pakistani born and reared in Kuwait. Then, between December 3 and December 27, 1993 Yousef made a number of calls to Baluchistan. Several of them were conference calls to a few key numbers, a geographical plotting of which suggests that they were related to Yousef's probable escape route--through Pakistani and Iranian Baluchistan--across the Arabian Sea to Oman, after which the "telephone trail" ends.

On December 31, 1992, Yousef went to the Pakistani consulate in New York with photocopies of Abdul Basit's current and previous passports. Consistent with his story to police in Jersey City, he claimed to have lost his passport and asked for a new one. The consulate suspected his non-original documentation enough to deny him a new passport. But it did provide him a six-month, temporary passport and told him to straighten things out when he returned "home." This turned out to be good enough for the purpose at hand. By now it should be clear that the World Trade Center bomber's real name is probably neither Ramzi Yousef nor Abdul Basit. After all, would someone intending to blow up New York's tallest tower go to such trouble to get a passport under his own name? Yousef was a man of many passports; he had three on his person when he was arrested later in Pakistan. Rather, it seems that Ramzi Yousef risked going to the Pakistani consulate with such flimsy documents because he wanted investigators to conclude that he was in fact Abdul Basit, and so would stop trying to determine his real identity. And that is pretty much what later happened.

In January 1993, Ramzi Yousef and Salameh moved into another Jersey City apartment where the bomb was actually built. Set well back from the street, the building provided seclusion. On February 21, 1993 a twenty-one year old Palestinian named Eyyad Ismail arrived from Dallas. Ismail is charged with having driven the bomb-laden van. On February 23, Salameh went to a Ryder rental agency to rent the van to carry the bomb. On the morning of February 26, 1993 the conspirators gathered at a local Shell gas station where they topped up the tank--one last explosive touch--before driving to Manhattan. Shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War. That evening Salameh drove Ramzi Yousef and Ismail to JFK airport; Yousef escaped to Pakistan on falsified travel documents, and Ismail to Jordan. After Ramzi Yousef's later arrest, a National Security Council staffer confirmed that Yousef had indeed fled from the United States through Baluchistan. But Salameh looks to have been deliberately left behind by Ramzi Yousef, not provided with money he needed for a plane ticket. So Salameh tried to get his van deposit back by telling the rental agency that the van had been stolen, and was finally arrested on March 4, 1993.

The most straightforward explanation of the World Trade Center bombing is that it was an Iraqi intelligence operation, led by Ramzi Yousef, with the local fundamentalists serving first as aides and then as diversionary dupes. Fingerprints are decisive for investigators because no two people's match. But the very fact that fingerprints are so decisive makes them the perfect candidate for careful manipulation. Thus, after U.S. authorities learned that Yousef had fled as Abdul Basit, they sent his fingerprints (taken by the Immigration and Naturalization Service at JFK airport when he was briefly detained for illegal entry) to Kuwait, asking if they matched those of Abdul Basit. When the Kuwaitis said that they did, everyone assumed the question settled--forgetting that Kuwait's files were not secure during the Iraqi occupation.

Five weeks after the World Trade Center bombing, four Arabs were under arrest. The mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, had fled. At that point in early April 1993, the FBI proclaimed that it had captured most of those involved. The bombing, it claimed, was the work of a loose group of fundamentalists with no ties to any state. In short, the Justice Department determined that the bombing had no state sponsorship even before it decided definitively who had been involved. But there was no intelligence investigation of the World Trade Center bombing. The CIA is, after all, prohibited from operating in America. Such an investigation required, at a minimum, a meticulous examination of all records associated with the defendants to insure that they had had no contact with foreign intelligence agencies--or at least that none could be found. That process simply could not have been accomplished in five weeks. And it must be kept in mind that, at the time, the mastermind of the bomb, Ramzi Yousef, was still a fugitive about whom almost nothing was known.

In 1994, four fundamentalists stood trial for being actually responsible for putting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing into effect. The government contended that these were followers of Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman. The lead prosecutor in that 1994 trial would later also prosecute Ramzi Yousef. When AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie later put it to them that Iraq was probably behind the Trade Center bombing, the prosecutors replied, "You may be right, but we don't do state sponsorship. We prosecute individuals." Asked who does "do" state sponsorship, they answered, "Washington." "Who in Washington?" No one seemed to know.

But then, the fugitive Ramzi Yousef was involved in yet another stupendous bombing conspiracy. In January 1995, Yousef and his associates plotted to blow up eleven U.S. commercial aircraft in one spectacular day of terrorist rage. The bombs were to be made of a liquid explosive designed to pass through airport metal detectors. But while mixing his chemical brew in a Manila apartment, Yousef started a fire. He was forced to flee to Pakistan in January, leaving behind in the Phillipines a computer that contained the information that led to his arrest a month later in Islamabad, Pakistan. Among the items found in his possession was a letter threatening Filipino interests if a comrade held in custody were not released. It claimed the "ability to make and use chemicals and poisonous gas... for use against vital institutions and residential populations and the sources of drinking water." Yousef's apparent use of chemical agents in New York and his threat to use them in the Philippines deserve special attention.

Ramzi Yousef's plots were the most ambitious terrorist conspiracies ever attempted against the United States, at the time. Arrested in February 1995, and quickly extradited, Yousef was in U.S. custody awaiting trial in spring 1995. Since Yousef's arrest and extradition to the United States, the evidence for the explanation that he is an Iraqi agent has, if anything, grown stronger. First of all, he is clearly no fundamentalist. According to neighbors, he had a Filipina girlfriend and enjoyed Manila's raucous night life. The most recent inquiries, made since Yousef's arrest, have reduced the question to two possibilities: He is a free-lancer connected to a loose network of fundamentalists; or he worked for Iraq. Ramzi Yousef's arrest made it easy enough to resolve a key question and perhaps produce important evidence implicating Iraq in the World Trade Center bombing: Is "Ramzi Yousef" really Abdul Basit or not? Let those who remember Abdul Basit from before August 1990 meet Yousef in person and tell us. It sounds simple and logical, but strangely, the Justice Department showed no interest in arranging such a meeting. Moreover, it decided to try the bomber as Ramzi Yousef even though no one, including Yousef by late 1995, maintained that that is his real name. If the government believed that Yousef is really Abdul Basit, why didn't it try him as Abdul Basit? Why is the Justice Department uninterested even in definitively determining his identity, even though doing so might help get to the bottom of the matter. A Justice Department official, who maintained his confident view that Yousef is indeed Abdul Basit, was asked "Why don't you bring the people who knew Abdul Basit to the prison to meet Yousef, so they can say for sure if they are the same?" "But you", he replied, "are interested in an intelligence question."

The Justice Department had passed on very little information to other bureaucracies. The FBI's typical response to to the State Department to any question about Yousef is: "We can't tell you much because of the trial." Sources in the State Department, CIA, and Pentagon all said that those at the working level were not getting information from the FBI on Ramzi Yousef, and were all very unhappy about it. As a result, the State Department, which is responsible for determining whether a terrorist act had state sponsorship, lacks the most basic information-- even, for example, a point as simple as what passport Yousef was traveling on when he was arrested in Islamabad in January 1995. The details of the World Trade Center case are chilling. From the outset, the Justice Department refused to share key information with the national security agencies. The government had two sets of relevant information--foreign intelligence, gathered by the CIA from watching terrorist states such as Iran and Iraq, and evidence gathered by the FBI largely within the United Stares for use in the trial. The FBI flatly told the national security bureaucracies that there was "no evidence" of state sponsorship in the World Trade Center bombing. When the national security agencies asked to see the evidence themselves, the FBI replied, "No, this is a criminal matter. We're handling it." Thus, all that the national security agencies had available to decide the question of state sponsorship was foreign intelligence they themselves had collected. After the World Trade Center bombing, the FBI was the only bureaucracy with both the intelligence and the evidence. But the more fundamental problem is that the Justice Department in Washington seems not to have been interested in pursuing the question of state sponsorship. In September 1995, the State Department forwarded to Congress the report of an independent panel, established to examine whether mistakes in security training had contributed to the March 8, 1995 assassination of two U.S. consular officials in Karachi--apparent retaliation for Ramzi Yousef's extradition. The report expressed concern about the FBI's lack of cooperation with the national security agencies.

Ramzi Yousef was convicted November 12, 1997 of planning and execution of the 1993 WTC bombing. Now a new [Bush] administration, a new attorney general [Ashcroft], and a new FBI director should investigate the materials that Abdul Basit handled while in the United Kingdom in 1988 and 1989, which were taken into custody by Scotland Yard. If those materials have Yousef's fingerprints on them, then the Fox/Mylroie theory is likely wrong. But if they don't, then Ramzi Yousef was probably a creature of Iraqi intelligence.

6 Musab Yasin ------------------------------------- in US prison; Iraqi with Jersey City apartment where 1993 WTC bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef first arrived in US in 1992. Brother and 1992 roomate of Abdul Rahman Yasin, the Oct. 10, 2001 FBI Top Most Wanted Terrorist #15
An Iraqi living in Jersey City in 1992. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the released evidence, following the 1995 trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. Beginning on June 10 1992, Mohammed Salameh, soon after being recruited into Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair's pipe bomb plot made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his terrorist uncle in Baghdad, over the next six weeks. On June 21, 1992 the now fugitive American-born Iraqi government employee living in Baghdad, Abdul Rahman Yasin (subsequently an indicted fugitive in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) appeared at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan asking for a U.S. passport. 1993 WTC bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef entered the United States on September 1, 1992, arriving at JFK airport. Yousef went to stay at the apartment of Musab Yasin, an Iraqi living in Jersey City. So too did Abdul Rahman Yasin, Musab Yasin's younger brother, who arrived in America from Iraq in September 1992, soon after Yousef. (Musab had an unlisted telephone number under an Israeli-sounding alias, Josie Hadas.)

Musab Yasin lived in the same Jersey City building as Mohammad Salameh. Many young Arab men used the two Yasin and Salameh apartments, praying and eating together; relations were so close that the apartments were connected by an intercom.

On the morning of February 26, 1993 shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War. Mohammad Salameh was arrested on March 4, 1993. Salameh had used Musab Yasin's phone number when renting the van.

7 Nidal Ayyad--------------------------------- in US prison, Palestinian fundamentalist convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
Palestinian fundamentalist. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the released evidence, following the 1995 trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. Beginning on June 10 1992, Palestinian Mohammed Salameh, soon after being recruited into Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair's pipe bomb plot, made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his terrorist uncle in Baghdad, over the next six weeks. Thus started a chain of events that likely first drew Iraqi intelligence, and then Iraqi agents, into the Manhattan plot. On November 3, 1992 Ramzi Yousef began to prepare the World Trade Center bomb. In the meantime, two other local fundamentalists were recruited into the plot, Nidal Ayyad and Mahmud Abu Halima. Ayyad, a Palestinian, was the same age as Mohammad Salameh and Salameh's friend, Ramzi Yousef. Egyptian Abu Halima was older and generally savvier than the two Palestinians, Ayyad and Salameh. On the morning of February 26, 1993 shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War.

8 Mahmud Abu Halima------------------------------- in US prison, Egyptian fundamentalist cab driver convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
Born in 1958, Egyptian fundamentalist Manhattan cab driver. AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie meticulously examined the released evidence, following the 1995 trial in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to piece together the story of Iraqi state sponsorship. Beginning on June 10 1992, Palestinian Mohammed Salameh, soon after being recruited into Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair's pipe bomb plot, made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his terrorist uncle in Baghdad, over the next six weeks. Thus started a chain of events that likely first drew Iraqi intelligence, and then Iraqi agents, into the Manhattan plot.

On November 3, 1992 Ramzi Yousef began to prepare the World Trade Center bomb. In the meantime, two other local fundamentalists were recruited into the plot, Nidal Ayyad and Mahmud Abu Halima. Abu Halima, a thirty-four year old Egyptian cab driver in Manhattan, was a friend of Meir Kahane's killer El Sayid Nosair. Abu Halima was older and generally savvier than the two Palestinians, Ayyad and Salameh. On the morning of February 26, 1993 shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War. In March 1993, an FBI agent speculated that the local Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists had been used by an Iraqi intelligence operative. Mahmud Abu Halima had similar thoughts. As he told a prison companion who later turned state's evidence: "The planned act was not as big as what subsequently occurred. . . Yousef showed up on the scene. and escalated the initial plot. . . . Yousef used [them]. . .as pawns and then immediately after the blast left the country." That, indeed, is the most straightforward explanation of the World Trade Center bombing: that it was an Iraqi intelligence operation, led by Ramzi Yousef, with the local fundamentalists serving first as aides and then as diversionary dupes.

9 Eyyad Ismail --------------------------------- in US prison, convicted November 12, 1997 as the van driver in the WTC bombing on February 26, 1993, along with Ramzi Yousef
aka Eyad Ismoil, Born in 1971, Palestinian from Jordan charged with having driven the van.
In January 1993, Ramzi Yousef and Mohammad Salameh moved into another Jersey City apartment where the 1993 World Trade Center bomb was actually built. Set well back from the street, the building provided seclusion. On February 21, 1993 a twenty-one year old Palestinian named Eyyad Ismail arrived in Jersey City from Dallas. Ismail is charged with having driven the bomb-laden van, which Salameh rented from a Ryder rental agency to rent the van to carry the bomb. On the morning of February 26, 1993 the conspirators gathered at a local Shell gas station where they topped up the tank--one last explosive touch--before driving to Manhattan. Shortly after noon, the bomb went off, on--let it be well noted--the second anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War. That evening Salameh drove Yousef and Ismail to JFK airport; Yousef escaped to Pakistan, and Ismail flew home to Jordan. Salameh was arrested on March 4, 1993. lsmail was indicted in September 1994 and arrested in August 1995 at his family home in Jordan. He was identified by comparing Yousef's telephone records to the passenger manifests of planes leaving JFK the night of the bombing. Ismail was probably an unwitting participant and meant to be caught. After Yousef was arrested in February 1995, he mentioned the existence of another conspirator and expressed surprise that he had not yet been arrested. Eyyad Ismail was convicted November 12, 1997 of execution of the 1993 WTC bombing..

10 Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman ---------------------- in US prison for life, 1995, for plotting to blow up New York landmarks in 1993; one of his al Qaeda sons in custody in Afghanistan November 2001, another at large
An Egyptian cleric and spiritual leader of Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt and the United States. Blind cleric. Jailed for life in a U.S. prison for plotting to blow up New York landmarks in 1993. One of 14 convictions in the plots to blow up the World Trade Center, New York landmarks, and the United Nations. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was followed by another operation, in which Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman led a handful of local Muslims in a new bombing conspiracy, aimed at the United Nations and other New York landmarks. No one other than the prosecutors, the Clinton Justice Department, and the FBI had access to the materials surrounding that case until they were presented in court, because they were virtually all obtained by a federal grand jury and hence kept not only from the public but from the rest of the government under the extreme secrecy requirements of Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. For this conspiracy Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and nine others were found guilty in early October 1995. Yet none of those in the trial of Sheikh Omar et al., as it is formally called, was accused of actually participating in the World Trade Center bombing. They were only charged with conspiracy regarding it.

The government contended that other followers of Sheikh Omar--four fundamentalists who stood trial in 1994--were actually responsible for putting it into effect. From a legal perspective--as the judge in the 1995 Sheik Omar trial advised the defense team--whether state sponsorship played a role in the World Trade Center bombing was irrelevant to the guilt or innocence of Sheikh Omar et al. And indeed, the prosecution did not need to address the question of whether the World Trade Center bombing had state sponsorship in order to obtain the convictions sought against Sheikh Omar and the others. That state sponsorship can be irrelevant to a criminal prosecution was explained most clearly by the federal prosecutors in the New York bombing conspiracies, the lead prosecutor in the trial of Sheikh Omar et al., and the lead prosecutor in the 1994 Trade Center bombing trial, who would later also prosecute Ramzi Yousef. When AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie put it to them that Iraq was probably behind the Trade Center bombing, they replied, "You may be right, but we don't do state sponsorship. We prosecute individuals." Asked who does "do" state sponsorship, they answered, "Washington." "Who in Washington?" No one seemed to know. The prosecution also did not need to address the question of whether the World Trade Center bombing had state sponsorship in order to obtain the convictions sought against Sheikh Omar and the others.

11 Unknown assassin -------------------------------- at large, murdered 2 US consular officials in Karachi, March 8, 1995, retaliation for Ramzi Yousef extradition
In September 1995, the State Department forwarded to Congress the report of an independent panel, established to examine whether mistakes in security training had contributed to the March 8 1995 assassination of two U.S. consular officials in Karachi, Pakistan--apparent retaliation for Ramzi Yousef's extradition, for the masterminding of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The report expressed concern about the FBI's lack of cooperation with the national security agencies.

12 Islamic Revolutionary Council operative ------------------------------- at large as of 1997, shot to death 4 American businessmen in Karachi, November 12, 1997, retaliation for conviction that same day of Ramzi Yousef and Eyyad Ismail in 1993 WTC bombing
Four American businessmen were shot and killed in Karachi, Pakistan on November 12, 1997, the same day as conviction of Ramzi Yousef and Eyad Ismoil in the 1993 WTC bombing. A team of four FBI experts arrived in Karachi and were given access to the scene of the shooting, the car in which the men were shot and the hospital which received the bodies. NBC was reporting that the U.S. Consulate in Karachi received a call before the shooting, warning of an impending attack. There are also reports a group called the Islamic Revolutionary Council has claimed responsibility for the attack.

-- posted by Steven_Russell