© 2006
Thursday, October 5, 2006
An eye-opening article in the October American Spectator by Harvard
Ph.D. and former Clinton adviser on Iraq Laurie Mylroie sheds some new
light on the issue. Although she does not talk about TWA Flight 800 in
this article, Mylroie has in the past. In this article, she focuses on the
extraordinary KSM "family," the most likely operatives behind the plane's
destruction.
KSM is government shorthand for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the acknowledged
mastermind behind the 9-11 plot. KSM comes from the land of the Baluch, a
stateless Sunni Muslim people who inhabit the Pakistani-Iranian border.
KSM's "nephew" Ramzi Yousef is now serving a life term in a federal prison
for his role as mastermind of the first WTC bombing in 1993 as well as for
his role in the Bojinka plot, a plan to blow up a dozen planes over the
Pacific and also to use planes as bombs to attack American targets.
Authorities have also identified four other KSM "nephews" as terrorists, at
least one of whom, Ammar al-Baluchi, served a key middleman role in 9-11.
As Mylroie convincingly argues, Saddam used the Baluch, his fellow
Sunnis, extensively during his war with Iran in the 1980s. Before the news
became politicized, mainstream journalists routinely reported how Iraq had
armed and financed at least 4,000 Baluch to run operations into Iran.
Mylroie makes the case that the KSM "family" is most likely an elite hard
core of Baluch operatives who serve as international mercenaries. KSM
alone had some 60 aliases. Arrested in 2003, this John Belushi look-alike
does not appear to be appreciably older than "nephew" Ramzi Yousef.
In 1995, upon Yousef's arrest in the Bojinka plot, the New York Times
commented on his role as a Baluch operative. Said the Times, this "could
explain how Mr. Yousef came into possession of the Iraqi passport that he
used when he arrived in New York in September 1992, six months before the
World Trade Center bombing." Yousef's co-conspirator in the WTC bombing,
Abdul Rahman Yasin, also traveled on an Iraqi passport, which made sense in
that he was an Iraqi native. Yasin returned to Baghdad after the bombing,
where he lived under Saddam's protection until Iraq's liberation in 2003.
Yousef and Yasin, neither of them suicidal, bombed the World Trade
Center Feb. 26, 1993. Although the blast killed only six people, Yousef's
goal was much more ambitious. He had planned to topple one tower into the
other and kill 250,000 people. In the way of motive, on Feb. 26, 1991,
Saddam had acknowledged defeat in the Gulf War and began pulling his troops
out of Kuwait. No one has ever accused al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden of
involvement in that first bombing. As a people, the Baluch had had no
previous involvement with the United States and no motive for attacking.
Nor are they a particularly religious people. Yousef much preferred
Karaoke bars to mosques.
On July 16, 1996, the Islamic Change Movement issued a communiqué that
read in part, "The mujahedeen [holy warriors] will deliver the ultimate
response to the threats of the foolish American president. Everyone will
be amazed at the size of that response." Mylroie believes the Islamic
Change Movement to be the name used by Iraqi intelligence to take credit
for terrorist acts.
On July 17, 1996, National Liberation Day in Saddam's Iraq, the most
important day on Iraq's revolutionary calendar, Saddam gave what Mylroie
calls the "most angry, vengeful speech of his entire life." He condemned
the U.S. for its troops on Saudi and Kuwaiti soil and demanded the lifting
of sanctions.
On July 17, 1996, at 8:31 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, at least 270
people – FBI figures – watched streaks of light ascend from the horizon
with burning tips and white contrails, arc over, and explode. At least 750
people then saw the flaming wreck of TWA Flight 800 fall from the sky.
Within minutes of the blast, Ramzi Yousef, in jail in New York City for
the Bojinka plot, sent out a message to his external contacts through what
he thought was a secure line. The FBI, however, had been using a mob
informant to get Yousef's confidence and was listening in on Yousef's
communications, which were typically in Arabic.
The FBI interpreters, however, could not understand the message. They
sent it to the NSA, which in turn sent it to the Defense Language
Institute. I have had two independent sources within the NSA confirm this.
The message read: "What had to be done, has been done, TWA 800" (last two
words unintelligible). It was in Baluchi.
"I KNOW THE F***ING TRUTH," the one confirming source e-mailed me, using
caps and self-edited profanity to express her outrage. "I WAS THERE. I
SAW THE REAL-TIME, INTELLIGENCE, DISTRIBUTED TO SELECT PERSONNEL WITHIN THE
AGENCY, AND DISCUSSED IT WITH A LINGUIST/ANALYST WHO ALSO SAW IT." She
added in lower case, "The '800' victims' families and the public deserve
to know the truth."
If Yousef were, in fact, part of a larger cadre of trained Baluch
operatives employed by Iraq, several pieces of the puzzle begin to fall
into place. For one, the scale of the operation no longer seems beyond
Yousef's reach. For another, Osama bin Laden's failure to take credit for
it becomes understandable. Saddam would not have publicly done so either –
at least not in Iraq's name – knowing the hell that such a boast would have
provoked.
On July 18, 1996, Yousef, representing himself, argued before a federal
judge that a terrorist attack on an airliner in New York would surely
prejudice a New York jury against a man accused of plotting to blow up
American airliners. He asked for a mistrial. Happily, the judge denied
his request.
On July 18, 1996, the Islamic Change Movement released still another
communiqué, this one through well-established Islamist terrorist channels
in Beirut. It read: "We carried out our promise with the plane attack of
yesterday."
The question needs to be asked: Was it Iraqi intelligence that
introduced these Baluch hard guys to al-Qaida? Before hooking up with KSM
and crew, Osama bin Laden was scarcely more threatening than Terry Nichols
had been before he almost assuredly fell in with Ramzi Yousef and
company in the Philippines.
As they say, my enemy's enemy is my friend.
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Get Cashill's groundbreaking exposé, "First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America"
Jack Cashill is an Emmy-award winning independent writer and producer with a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue.
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Did Iraqi ops take out TWA 800 jetliner?
Posted: October 5, 2006
By Jack Cashill
Let me start with a confession. After five years of research, I still do
not know for sure who fired the missiles that resulted in the destruction
of TWA Flight 800 off the cost of Long Island July 17, 1996. Whatever the
exact scenario, I do believe, however, that there was terrorist
involvement. And the more evidence I see, the more I believe that Iraq was
among those involved.
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