FRIENDLY FIRE - THE 1993 WTC BOMBING - ALLIED SIGNAL, EGYPTIAN INTELLIGENCE, ABDUL RAHMAN YASSIN, NIDAL AYYAD, AND STATE-SPONSORED TERRORISMBy Alex Constantine
(Originally posted in 2004)
§ Abdul Rahman Yasin and Nidal Ayyad were co-defendents in the 1993 bombing of the World Trace Center. When he met Ramzi Yousef - who has in common with 911 terrorist Mohammed Atta ties to Pakistan's ISI and, as we shall see, they all have a significant German connection - Ayyad was employed by Allied Signal, Inc. in New Jersey - an intelligence front.
The following excerpts relate the story of their involvement in the plot and necessary background indicating state sponsorship of ("friendly fire") terrorism:
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§ THE 1993 WTC BOMBERS & ALLIED SIGNAL
http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/investigative/2002/fancher-trials.asp
... A few days after arriving at JFK with Ajaj, Yousef made contact with Sheik Rahman's followers. He met up with two men who had trained at the rifle range on Long Island in 1989, Abouhalima and Salameh. [Ramzi] Yousef moved into a Jersey City apartment with Salameh.... Abdul Yasin, an American-born engineering student of Iraqi descent, and Nidal Ayyad, a Kuwaiti-born naturalized American citizen, who had studied chemical engineering and worked at ALLIED SIGNAL in Morristown, N.J. In addition to opening bank accounts with more than $16,000, the men began trying to order chemicals, with varying success. By early February, Yousef asked Eyad Ismoil, a childhood friend who lived in Dallas, to fly to New York to help, prosecutors claimed in the trial.
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§ THE COMPONENTS FOR THE BOMB CAME FROM ALLIED SIGNAL, INC.:
http://www.mipt.org/usvsalameh2cirapp081997.asp
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
August Term, 1997
(Argued: December 18 & 19, 1997 Decided: August 04, 1998 )
Docket Nos. 94-1312, -1313, -1314, -1315
-----------x
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
MOHAMMED A. SALAMEH, NIDAL AYYAD, MAHMOUD ABOUHALIMA, also known as Mahmoud Abu Halima, AHMAD MOHAMMAD AJAJ, also known as Khurram Khan, Defendants-Appellants,
RAMZI AHMED YOUSEF, BILAL ALKAISI, also known as Bilal Elqisi, ABDUL RAHMAN YASIN, also known as Aboud, Defendants.
... Once in New York, Yousef assembled a team of trusted criminal associates, including Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmoud Abouhalima and Abdul Rahman Yasin. Together, the conspirators implemented the bombing plot that Ajaj and Yousef had hatched overseas. Ayyad and Salameh opened a joint bank account into which they deposited funds to finance the bombing plot.
Some of that money was later used by Salameh to rent a storage shed in
Jersey City, New Jersey, where the conspirators stored chemicals for making
explosives. Yousef also drew on that account to pay for materials described
in Ajaj's manuals as ingredients for bomb making.
The first target of the conspirators' plot was the World Trade Center. Ayyad
used his position as an engineer at ALLIED SIGNAL, a large New Jersey
chemical company, to order the necessary chemical ingredients for bomb
making, and to order hydrogen tanks from ALG Welding Company that would enhance the bomb's destructive force. Abouhalima obtained "smokeless powder," which the conspirators used to make explosives. Smokeless powder, and all the other chemicals procured by the conspirators for the bomb, were stored in the shed rented by Salameh....
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§ ALLIED SIGNAL IS A CIA FRONT. CAST: EDWIN PAULEY (see ALEX CONSTANTINE, "Khashoggi & 911 Terrorists," part II) WAS IN BUSINESS WITH G.H.W. BUSH. SAM MOSHER IS SEEN TO BE IN CAHOOTS WITH EDWIN PAULEY.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0204/S00105.htm
What was so special about 1974?
Thursday, 18 April 2002, 10:44 am
Article: Linda Minor
The pilot who flew Ambassador Joseph Davies to Moscow was a Californian
named Robert W. Prescott, who founded the Flying Tiger Line in 1945.... In
November, 1944 Prescott had met with a group of Los Angeles businessmen in Acapulco, including one of [Edwin] Pauley's fellow UC Berkeley regents,
Samuel B. Mosher, who wanted to establish an air freight line along the U.S.
and Mexican west coast, to be called Aero-Azteca. The investors included
Signal Oil Company [predecessor of Allied Signal]. They agreed to form a
syndicate, with Mosher's group matching whatever Prescott could raise.
Prescott found 14 Navy surplus cargo aircraft from the War Assets Administration and collected cash from friends from the American Volunteer
Pilots unit (AVP) who had flown with him in China. This group of American
civilians who fought with Chiang Kai-Shek in China before the U.S. entered
the war (all of whom received the same commendation Cloud and Banner award given to Pug Winokur's father during his war service) had an important role in the setting up what William Casey would later call an "off-the-shelf" method of financing covert operations for the CIA and other black operations not disclosed to Congress.
The airline was initially called National Skyways Freight Corporation and
included General Claire Chennault and others. In 1946 Chennault invited the
men to go back to China to work for him at Civil Air Transport, which he was
in the process of founding. By 1970 Nixon's attorney Herbert Kalmbach
claimed to be representing the Flying Tiger Line, which merged with Seaboard World Airlines in 1980 and into Federal Express in 1989. In the beginning the California airline transported mostly foodstuffs but in late 1946 was awarded its first military contract with Army Air Transport Command--two flights daily to Tokyo and to Honolulu for a total of 1.2 million miles per month. The flights were to leave from San Francisco Fairfield Air Base, but the company remained based at Lockheed in Burbank.
In Mosher's 1954 Who's Who listing his home address was given as 10401
Wilshire, located just west of the Los Angeles country club and one mile
east of the office building David Murdock constructed across the street from
the Occidental Petroleum Co. The close proximity is very intriguing, considering the fact that in 1966, the year George Bush left Zapata,
Mosher's Signal Oil sold its European refining and marketing arms to
Occidental, after Armand Hammer obtained a concession from Libya's King
Idris, who would later be replaced by Quaddafi. Mosher's office address in
1954 was given as 811 W. 7th in Los Angeles. This is just over five miles
from Pauley's Bandini office. AtlanticRichfield's 12-story office building
in Los Angeles was at the corner of 6th and Flower, a mere two blocks from
Mosher's location. In 1954 Mosher was also serving as vice president and
director for American Independent Oil Co. (whose president was Ralph K.
Davies), and as director of the Southwest Exploration Co. and the American
President Lines, as well as numerous oil and gas associations.
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§ FINANCING FOR THE 1993 BOMBING WAS WIRED FROM GERMANY...
Blast Suspects Got German Cash
By Sara Fritz and Robert L. Jackson
Los Angeles Times
NEW YORK - The men suspected of exploding a bomb underneath the World Trade Center received tens of thousands of dollars from a bank account in Germany, giving credence to the theory that it may have been the act of a
sophisticated international terrorist organization, authorities said Thursday.
Officials still have not determined the precise amount of money transferred
to the suspects or the identity of the benefactors. Furthermore, they said
they believed that the total amounted to less than $100,000 -- a relatively
small sum in comparison to the money a well-funded international terrorist
group could afford to spend. And they acknowledged they had no proof the
money was spent in connection with the bombing.
Nonetheless, as authorities followed the widening money trail, sources said
they were more inclined to suport the view publicly expressed by FBI
Assistant Director James Fox that the Feb. 26 bombing was "organized by a
large, well-know terrorist group."
Although the money received by the suspects was wired from a bank in
Germany, investigators said they suspect the funds actually originated
elsewhere -- possibly Iran or Iraq. In Egypt, according to a knowledgeable
source, followers of an Egyptian cleric whose New Jersey mosque has figured
in the bombing case are known to be funded with Iranian money funneled
through Sudan....
The money was wired to accounts at the National Westminister Bank branch in
Jersey City, N.J., just a few blocks from the mosque where Omar's followers
-- including at least two of the men arrested in the case -- worshipped.
The two principle suspects, Mohammed A. Salameh and Nidal A. Ayyad, held a joint account at the Jersey City bank that received some of the money from
Germany. In addition, money from the same foreign source also was placed in individual accounts belonging to the men.
On Wednesday, investigators underestimated how much money the suspects had received from abroad because they were only aware of only the single joint account at the time.
Even though the suspects received tens of thousands of dollars, each individual deposit was less than $10,000, sources said. Under federal law,
American banks handling transactions of $10,000 or more must report them to the Treasury Department, often prompting money launderers and criminals to break large transfers into smaller amounts.
The transactions provide the first publicly available evidence that those
responsible for the bombing may not have been hapless amateurs, as they have sometimes been portrayed...
Ayyad, who was arrested Wednesday, holds a college degree in chemical
engineering and was employed as a research engineer at the AlliedSignal
Corp. in Morristown, N.J. Authorities said Salameh telephone Ayyad at least
four times at his office on the day before the bombing, apparently seeking
advice on how to mix the chemicals.
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http://www.janrainwater.com/htdocs/3.htm
§ RAMZI YOUSEF AND PAKISTAN'S INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, THE ISI - INDIVIDUALS FROM THE ISI WILL ALSO HAVE A CENTRAL ROLE IN 911 ...
Yousef's terrorist motivations were not those of a militant Muslim
fundamentalist, according to Reeve, who describes him as an "evil genius."
He seems to have been a playboy, a sadist and someone with a mammoth ego (which proved to be his undoing, as he could have hidden out in the tribal areas of Pakistan undiscovered by the authorities.) Reeve alleges that
individuals within Pakistan's ISI may have provided him with the documents that enabled him to enter the United States....
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§ "BLOWBACK"
"Terrorism" and Blowback
Part Three: "Terrorism," Blowback
and US Foreign Policy during the Clinton Years
... Information gleaned from Salameh's pockets, his residence, and the
storage facility where the bomb had been prepared led to the arrests of
Ahmad Ajaj, Palestinian chemist Nidal Ayyad and Mahmud Abouhalima. (The
latter was extradited from Egypt where he had been viciously tortured
because of his connections with militants who were attacking Egyptian
installations.) Their trial began in September and on May 24, 1994 the four
were convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorism and sentenced to 240 years in prison and sent to the top-security US penitentiary in Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania.
Missing from the courtroom were ABDUL YASIN who had fled to Iraq...
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FBI Let Suspected Terrorist Get Away
By JOSH MEYER and ERIC LICHTBLAU, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON -- A suspected bomber on President Bush's new list of "most
wanted" terrorists was in the FBI's grasp eight years ago for allegedly
playing a role in the first attack on the World Trade Center, but he was
released and then allowed to leave the country, authorities acknowledged
Thursday.
Abdul Rahman Yasin, 41, is one of the 22 accused terrorists identified by
Bush on Wednesday as murderous extremists wanted by the U.S., whom
authorities will aggressively pursue to bring to justice.
The FBI questioned Yasin at length soon after the February 1993 bomb blast
at the trade center, which killed six people and injured 1,000. They asked
about his sharing of apartments in Jersey City, N.J., with others who were
later indicted and convicted in the bombing, and about how explosive
chemicals got on one apartment's walls and may have caused a burn mark found on his thigh.
FBI agents also questioned Yasin about his association with Ramzi Ahmed
Yousef, the man later convicted of masterminding the plot, according to law
enforcement authorities and Stephen Somerstein, Yasin's lawyer.
"He . . . went in quite voluntarily, spoke at length to the FBI and went
home," Somerstein said Thursday. "And the FBI appeared to be satisfied with
that. They let him walk out the door."
A week after the bombing, on March 5, 1993, Yasin flew to Amman, Jordan,
while other co-conspirators flew to Jordan, Saudia Arabia and Pakistan. He
was indicted that August for his role in the bombing.
Officials at the Justice Department and the FBI declined comment.
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Saddam's desperate offers to stave off war
ulian Borger in Washington, Brian Whitaker and Vikram Dodd
Friday November 7, 2003
The Guardian
§ A MYSTERIOUS MEETING WITH RICHARD PERLE, EL HAGE AT THE MARLBOROUGH HOTEL IN BLOOMSBURY CONCERNING YOSIN ... THE CIA REFUSES AN OFFER FROM IRAQ TO TURN OVER A WTC BOMBER:
... According to the Knight-Ridder news agency, the Iraqis sought a direct
route to the Washington hawks in February. They found a Lebanese-American businessman, IMAD ED-HAGE, who boasted he had a direct line to the Pentagon.
Mr Hage told yesterday's New York Times that he was initially approached by
General Habbush's chief of foreign intelligence operations, who turned up in
Mr Hage's Beirut office and promptly collapsed, apparently from stress.
When Mr Obeidi recovered, he urged Mr Hage to tell his Washington contacts Iraq was ready to talk about anything, including oil concessions, the Middle East peace process, and banned weapons. The Iraqi official said the "Americans could send 2,000 FBI agents to look wherever they wanted",
according to Mr Hage.
A week later Mr Hage travelled to Baghdad and talked to Gen Habbush himself.
The general repeated the invitation to allow Americans to search for weapons and added an offer to hand over a suspected terrorist, ABDUL RAHMAN YASIN, who had been convicted in the US for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre. The regime would hold elections within two years, and the intelligence chief even offered to fly to London to discuss the issue in person.
Mr Hage relayed these offers via an intermediary to the Pentagon, but there
was NO OFFICIAL RESPONSE. The Lebanese-American businessman persisted, and arranged a meeting with Mr Perle, a member of the Pentagon's advisory board.
It is understood that Mr Hage and Mr Perle met on March 7 in the lobby of
the Marlborough hotel in Bloomsbury. They then went to an office nearby
where over two hours Mr Hage outlined the Iraqi offer to Mr Perle...
A US intelligence source insisted that the decision not to negotiate came
from the White House ... Mr Perle was travelling in Europe yesterday and
unavailable for comment. However, he told the New York Times he had been
TOLD BY THE CIA not to pursue contacts with the Iraqis....
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§ IRAQ, IN A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO MAKE PEACE WITH THE U.S. BEFORE THE INVASION, OFFERED ONCE AGAIN TO TURN YASIN OVER. THE OFFER WAS REBUFFED.
IRAQ CONTENDS THAT YASIN FLED TO THE NORTHERN PROVICE ... HOME OF THE CIA-BACKED KURDS, ARCH ENEMIES OF SADDAM HUSSEIN.
Sabri, in a 13-page letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to rebut US
Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the Security Council earlier this month, also said Baghdad is offering to hand over to Washington Abdul-Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who is on the FBI's most-wanted list. Sabri's letter, which was posted on the Iraqi Foreign Ministry's web site Thursday, denied any link between Iraq and Zarqawi or Ansar, saying both operated in NOTHERN IRAQI areas under the
control of Kurdish groups allied to Washington and beyond Baghdad's reach.
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