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Context of '(1995-1996): Hijacker Associate Bin Al-Shibh Fights in Bosnia'
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1940 and After: Koch Industries Founder Becomes Influential Right-Wing Backer, Shapes Political Vision of Sons
Koch Industries logo. [Source: Koch Industries / Wikipedia]Oil magnate Fred Koch co-founds Wood River Oil and Refining Company, later renamed Koch Industries. The firm will grow to become one of the largest energy conglomerates in the US, and Koch will become an influential backer of right-wing politics. Koch is a virulent anti-Communist who will be one of the first members of the John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), a far-right organization that reflects his hatred of Communism (he believes both the Republican and Democratic parties are irretrievably infilitrated by Communists) and opposes almost every aspect of governance in general. Koch will write glowingly of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's murderous suppression of Communists during World War II. Both Koch and the JBS have little use for minorities; of African-Americans, Koch will write, "The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America," and he will say that government welfare programs were designed to attract large numbers of blacks to the cities, where they would foment "a vicious race war." In 1963, using language that reporter Jane Mayer will later say "prefigures the Tea Party's talk of a secret socialist plot," Koch will warn that Communists would "infiltrate the highest offices of government in the US until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us." Koch's two sons, David and Charles, will have their father's political views deeply ingrained into them (see August 30, 2010). In 2007, David Koch will tell a reporter: "He was constantly speaking to us children about what was wrong with government.… It's something I grew up with—a fundamental point of view that big government was bad, and imposition of government controls on our lives and economic fortunes was not good." Gus diZerega, once a close friend of Charles's, will later say that the brothers transfer their father's hatred of Communism to the US government, which they will come to view as a tyranny. DiZerega will write that the Kochs, like many other hard-right conservatives, redefine "socialism" as almost any form of government which taxes citizens and regulates businesses. [New Yorker, 8/30/2010]
Entity Tags: Jane Mayer, Fred Koch, Koch Industries, David Koch, Gus diZerega, John Birch Society, Charles Koch
1945 and After: US Water Fluoridation Program Spurs Backlash from John Birch Society; Group Claims Program Evidence of 'Creeping Socialism' in America
Portion of a 1955 cartoon warning against the evils of three government health programs, including water fluoridation. [Source: Spectator]As World War II is coming to a close, the US Public Health Service (USPHS) begins a pilot program in Michigan to add fluoride to selected cities' water supply, as a tooth-decay preventative. By 1950, 87 American towns and cities volunteer to have the agency fluoridate their water supply. By the early 1950s, water fluoridation is compulsory. Studies show that children between the ages of 5 and 9 show significantly smaller rates of cavities and tooth decay when they regularly drink fluoridated water, though studies of older children and adults are less clear. As the federal government begins rolling out its mandatory fluoridation program, far-right organizations such as the John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011) and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) begin taking rigid stances against it. The JBS, a staunchly anti-Communist organization, accuses the federal government of imposing "creeping socialism" and "Soviet Communism" on the nation by making fluoridated water mandatory, and warns Americans against the government "polluting our precious bodily fluids." (In 1993, JBS member Murray N. Rothbard differentiates between the brands of communism at work, saying, "[N]o, not Bolsheviks, guys: but a Menshevik-State Capitalist alliance.") The JBS, in accusations later echoed by Rothbard, accuses the government of working with aluminum manufacturer Alcoa to dump sodium fluoride, a byproduct of aluminum manufacturing, into the nation's water supply and rid Alcoa of the cost of disposing of the substance. The 1964 satirical film Dr. Strangelove features a character, General Jack D. Ripper, shouting, "Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?" [New American, 1/1993; Reason, 12/5/2001; Hileman, 5/2008] In 1988, the Fluoride Action Network notes that the two opposing camps—fluoridation is beneficial and has no side effects vs. fluoridation is useless and harmful—have fought to an argumentative standstill, with no middle ground between the two. Jacqueline Warren, an attorney with the National Resources Defense Council, says, "Neither side has given the other one rational moment." [Hileman, 5/2008] In the early 1990s, environmentalist and public health safety groups begin calling for new examinations of the impact of fluoride on the human body, pointing to "valid concerns" about fluoride having a toxic impact on the human body and on the environment. In 2008, one JBS member warns, perhaps sardonically, "Don't be surprised if we learn soon that the fluoride in Chinese toothpaste is nuclear waste from North Korea." [Reason, 12/5/2001; Mother Jones, 5/2008]
Entity Tags: Murray Rothbard, Jacqueline Warren, John Birch Society, Fluoride Action Network, Ku Klux Klan, US Public Health Service
September 4, 1949, and After: Second Peekskill Riots Ensue, over 100 Injured
Eugene Bullard being beaten by police officers and rioters. [Source: Howard Fast]The second Peekskill concert, organized by left-wing activists and featuring African-American singer Paul Robeson (see September 4, 1949), takes place successfully after the first was disrupted by a large, angry mob (see August 27, 1949). But another mob has gathered, and though they are unsuccessful in stopping the concert from taking place, they are ready for the audience and participants at the concert's end.
Rock Attacks, Roadblocks - The audience members, with many women and children in their ranks, attempt to leave, mostly by car, and are told by security guards to roll up their windows as they are driving out, as the mob is apparently throwing rocks and other missiles. (A New York Times reporter later writes of the large piles of stones piled up about every 20 feet down one road, apparently placed their ahead of time for use as missiles.) However, the long, slow procession of cars attempting to leave the venue is halted when a small group of police officers attack the cars, including the vehicle bearing Robeson. None of the cars' occupants are injured, though many windshields are smashed and fenders beaten in. Novelist and concert organizer Howard Fast, driving his own car, turns onto a secondary road to attempt to leave the venue, but his car is assaulted by a knot of six or seven rock throwers, accompanied by two police officers who do not throw rocks. Fast believes the police officers are there to protect the assailants if any of the cars stops to launch a counterattack. Fast will later learn that all of the secondary roads have similar knots of rock-throwing people in place to inflict damage on cars; some are blocked by piles of logs and boulders. He drives through several such ambushes, but he and the people with him escape injury.
145 Reported Injuries - Others are not so lucky; many people, including women and children, are seriously injured by rocks and broken glass. One concert goer, Eugene Bullard, is spat upon by a veteran and spits back; he is thrown to the ground and badly beaten by a group of police officers. Afterwards, Fast will report, the area hospitals quickly fill up with victims of the barrages, "the blinded, the bleeding and the wounded, the cut, lacerated faces, the fractured skulls, the infants with glass in their eyes, the men and women trampled and beaten, the Negroes beaten and mutilated, all the terribly hurt who had come to listen to music." A union trademan, Sidney Marcus, is wounded so badly by a rock to the face that he requires weeks of reconstructive surgery. Fast later learns that approximately a thousand union workers had chosen to stay behind as something of a "rear guard" to protect the last of the audience members; they were assaulted by a combination of mob members and police officers, badly beaten, and threatened with incarceration. (Twenty-five were indeed arrested and taken away.) For Fast, the night ends when he returns to the area to look for a group of stranded audience members, and is shot at. He does not find the stranded people. The final tally is 145 concert-goers injured. [Fast, 1951; White Plains Reporter Dispatch, 9/5/1982; National Public Radio, 9/5/1999]
Arrests and Lawsuits - Twelve protesters are arrested; five later plead guilty to minor offenses. No one among the concert-goers and "Robesonites" is arrested. Author Roger Williams will later write: "As the victims of the violence they were hardly subject to arrest, except that the prevailing local attitude held them guilty of provoking the attacks made upon them. As the Peekskill mayor, John N. Schneider, put it, the responsibility 'rests solely on the Robesonites, as they insisted on coming to a community where they weren't wanted.'" Numerous civil lawsuits will be filed on behalf of groups of victims; none will be successful.
History Professor: Peekskill Becomes an 'Endorsement of ... Persecution' - Much later, history professor James Shenton will say, "Peekskill opened up what was to become extensive public endorsement of the prosecution and persecution of so-called Communists."
Trying to Forget - Years later, the memory of the riots still haunts the area and intimidates many residents, according to Williams's 1976 report. Residents refuse to discuss the riots, some for fear of reprisals even decades later. Williams will recount the story of one high school teacher, Anne Plunkett, who was amazed that her children knew nothing of the riots, even though some of them were the children of participants. But when she assigns her students the riots as an optional class project, as Plunkett will recall: "The first time, librarians wouldn't give the kids access to the back newspapers. The next time, I was called to the principal's office and told that parents had been telephoning to complain about my 'upsetting and exciting the children unnecessarily.'" [American Heritage, 3/1976]
Entity Tags: Roger Williams, Sidney Marcus, John N. Schneider, James Shenton, Howard Fast, Eugene Bullard, Anne Plunkett, Paul Robeson
Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, US Domestic Terrorism
March 9, 1953: Supreme Court Creates 'State Secrets' Privilege in Ruling
Chief Justice Fred Vinson. [Source: Kansas State Historical Society]The US Supreme Court upholds the power of the federal government's executive branch to withhold documents from a civil suit on the basis of executive privilege and national security (see October 25, 1952). The case, US v Reynolds, overturns an appellate court decision that found against the government (see December 11, 1951). Originally split 5-4 on the decision, the Court goes to 6-3 when Justice William O. Douglas joins the majority. The three dissenters, Justices Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert Jackson, refuse to write a dissenting opinion, instead adopting the decision of the appellate court as their dissent.
'State Secrets' a Valid Reason for Keeping Documents out of Judicial, Public Eye - Chief Justice Fred Vinson writes the majority opinion. Vinson refuses to grant the executive branch the near-unlimited power to withhold documents from judicial review, as the government's arguments before the court implied (see October 21, 1952), but instead finds what he calls a "narrower ground for defense" in the Tort Claims Act, which compels the production of documents before a court only if they are designated "not privileged." The government's claim of privilege in the Reynolds case was valid, Vinson writes. But the ruling goes farther; Vinson upholds the claim of "state secrets" as a reason for withholding documents from judicial review or public scrutiny. In 2008, author Barry Siegel will write: "In truth, only now was the Supreme Court formally recognizing the privilege, giving the government the precedent it sought, a precedent binding on all courts throughout the nation. Most important, the Court was also—for the first time—spelling out how the privilege should be applied." Siegel will call the Reynolds ruling "an effort to weigh competing legitimate interests," but the ruling does not allow judges to see the documents in order to make a decision about their applicability in a court case: "By instructing judges not to insist upon examining documents if the government can satisfy that 'a reasonable danger' to national security exists, Vinson was asking jurists to fly blind." Siegel will mark the decision as "an act of faith. We must believe the government," he will write, "when it claims [the accident] would reveal state secrets. We must trust that the government is telling the truth."
Time of Heightened Tensions Drives Need for Secrecy - Vinson goes on to note, "[W]e cannot escape judicial notice that this is a time of vigorous preparation for the national defense." Locked in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and fighting a war in Korea, the US is, Vinson writes, in a time of crisis, and one where military secrets must be kept and even encouraged. [U. S. v. Reynolds, 3/9/1953; Siegel, 2008, pp. 171-176]
Future Ramifications - Reflecting on the decision in 2008, Siegel will write that while the case will not become as well known as many other Court decisions, it will wield significant influence. The ruling "formally recognized and established the framework for the government's 'state secrets' privilege—a privilege that for decades had enabled federal agencies to conceal conduct, withhold documents, and block civil litigation, all in the name of national secrecy.… By encouraging judicial deference when the government claimed national security secrets, Reynolds had empowered the Executive Branch in myriad ways. Among other things, it had provided a fundamental legal argument for much of the Bush administration's response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Enemy combatants such as Yaser Esam Hamdi (see December 2001) and Jose Padilla (see June 10, 2002), for many months confined without access to lawyers, had felt the breath of Reynolds. So had the accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui when federal prosecutors defied a court order allowing him access to other accused terrorists (see March 22, 2005). So had the Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar (see September 26, 2002), like dozens of others the subject of a CIA extraordinary rendition to a secret foreign prison (see After September 11, 2001). So had hundreds of detainees at the US Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, held without charges or judicial review (see September 27, 2001). So had millions of American citizens, when President Bush, without judicial knowledge or approval, authorized domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency (see Early 2002). US v. Reynolds made all this possible. The bedrock of national security law, it had provided a way for the Executive Branch to formalize an unprecedented power and immunity, to pull a veil of secrecy over its actions." [Siegel, 2008, pp. ix-x]
Entity Tags: William O. Douglas, Zacarias Moussaoui, US Supreme Court, Yaser Esam Hamdi, Robert Jackson, Jose Padilla, Felix Frankfurter, Bush administration (43), Fred Vinson, Barry Siegel, George W. Bush, Hugo Black, Maher Arar
March 12, 1956 and After: 101 Southern Congressmen Sign Document Declaring States Must Defy 'Brown v. Board' Court Decision, Says States Can Ignore Federal Law
Senator Strom Thurmond (right) supervises the typing of an early draft of the document that will come to be known as the 'Southern Manifesto.' [Source: Strom Thurmond Institute]A hundred and one congressmen, mostly conservative Southern Democrats, sign a document forwarded to President Eisenhower that becomes known as the "Southern Manifesto." The document, formally entitled "The Declaration of Constitutional Principles," is prompted by the recent Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision mandating the desegregation of American public schools, and is designed to pressure wavering Southern lawmakers into defying the Court's decision as part of what researcher Tony Badger will later call "the massive resistance strategy so passionately advocated by the conservatives." It is read aloud on the floor of the Senate by Walter George (D-GA), and was originally conceived by Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC) with the assistance of his colleague Harry Byrd (D-VA), though the final version was tempered by a rewrite overseen by Senator Richard Russell (D-GA). The "Manifesto" declares that in certain instances, states are free to ignore federal laws and court decisions such as Brown v. Board. The document declares the Court decision an attempt to "substitute naked power for established law," calls it "a clear abuse of judicial power," and says that the states can and must defy the Court's decision in the interest of establishing the rights of the states against the federal government. The principle of "separate but equal" treatment of white and black Americans, codified in an 1849 case and upheld by the 1896 Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, is, the signers state, "the established law of the land" and cannot be overturned by the current Court. It is up to the states, not the federal government, to determine if and when they will desegregate their separate school systems. Far from mandating equal treatment, the signers state, the Brown decision "destroys the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races," and "has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding." The "judicial encroachment" of the decision must be resisted by "any lawful means," they write. The signers conclude, "Even though we constitute a minority in the present Congress, we have full faith that a majority of the American people believe in the dual system of government which has enabled us to achieve our greatness and will in time demand that the reserved rights of the States and of the people be made secure against judicial usurpation," and ask their supporters not to give in to the "agitators" determined to sow chaos and disorder in the name of desegregation. [US Senate, 3/12/1956; Time, 3/26/1956; Badger, 4/1997]
Disparate Group of Non-Signers - Cambridge University scholar Tony Badger will later write of the Southern lawmakers who refuse to sign the document, "The evidence from Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and North Carolina highlights the diversity of political opinion among the non-signers—from New Deal liberal to right-wing Republican ideologue—and the disparate sources for their racial moderation—national political ambitions, party loyalty, experience in the Second World War, Cold War fears, religious belief, and an urban political base." [Badger, 4/1997]
Thurmond Calls NAACP 'Professional Racist Agitators,' Says Southern Whites Are Nation's 'Greatest Minority' - After the reading, Thurmond delivers a far less measured television address, calling the organization that brought the original lawsuit, the NAACP, a group of "professional racist agitators" and saying: "All of us have heard a great deal of talk about the persecution of minority groups. The white people of the South are the greatest minority in this nation. They deserve consideration and understanding instead of the persecution of twisted propaganda." After his speech, one Georgia woman praises Thurmond's "courage and wisdom," and asks: "Wouldn't it be possible to remove much of the Negro population from the South? I sincerely wish that this might be done, and would be glad to even contribute personally to the expense of such a plan." [Cohodas, 1993, pp. 284-300]
Counterattack in Congress - In the following days, a succession of Northern Democrats lambast the manifesto on the Senate and House floor, and none of the signatories rise to speak in its defense. Wayne Morse (D-OR) says the document advocates nothing less than the "nullification" of the federal government, and if taken to its logical conclusion, the dissolution of the United States into 50 disparate entities. "If the gentlemen from the South really want to take such action," he says, "let them propose a constitutional amendment that will deny to the colored people of the country equality of rights under the Constitution, and see how far they will get with the American people." [Time, 3/26/1956; Cohodas, 1993, pp. 284-300] One Southern senator says shortly after its reading, "Now, if these Northerners won't attack us and get mad and force us to close ranks, most of us will forget the whole thing and maybe we can pretty soon pretend it never happened." [Time, 3/26/1956] The "Manifesto" heralds a split in the Democratic Party, between conservative, segregationist "Dixiecrat" Southerners and the moderate-to-liberal remainder of the party's lawmakers. Thurmond will lead an exodus of the segregationists from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party shortly thereafter. [Cohodas, 1993, pp. 284-300]
Entity Tags: Richard Russell, Jr, Walter George, Tony Badger, Harry Byrd, Dwight Eisenhower, Strom Thurmond, Wayne Morse
1960s and After: Racist, Separatist 'Christian Identity' Theology Spreads across US
One of a number of semi-official 'Christian Identity' logos. [Source: KingIdentity (.com)]The "Christian Identity" theology, formerly a fairly benign expression of what is known as "British-Israelism" or "Anglo-Israelism," begins to spread throughout the US and Canada, particularly on the west coasts of these nations. This belief holds that white Americans and Canadians are the real descendants of the Biblical tribes of Israel. In 2003, author Nicole Nichols, an expert on far-right racist and religious groups in America, will define the concept of "Christian Identity" as practiced by many white supremacist and separatist groups. Christian Identity is not an organization, she will write, but an ideology that many organizations have adopted in some form or fashion. Christian Identity "elevates white supremacy and separatism to a Godly ideal," she will write, calling it "the ideological fuel that fires much of the activity of the racist far right." According to Christian Identity theology, Jews are neither the "true Israelites" nor the true "chosen people" of God; instead, Christian Identity proponents claim, Jews are descended from an Asiatic people known as the Khazars, who settled near the Black Sea during the Middle Ages. [Nicole Nichols, 2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005; Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 5/30/2006] In 2005, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance will write, "Followers tend to be involved in political movements opposing gun control, equal rights to gays and lesbians, and militia movements," and quote Michael Barkun, an expert on radical-right groups, as saying, "This virulent racist and anti-Semitic theology… is prevalent among many right-wing extremist groups and has been called the 'glue' of the racist right." [Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 5/30/2006]
Beginnings; 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' - In the 1920s, William J. Cameron, editor of the Dearborn Independent weekly newspaper, popularized the anti-Semitic hoax manuscript called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which purported to detail the "secret teachings" of Judaism, including the planned takeover of the world's governments, the subjugation of non-Semitic races, and the bizarre, cannibalistic rituals supposedly practiced by Jews. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Wesley Swift and 'Mud People' - In the 1940s, a former Methodist minister, Wesley Swift, started his own church, later known as the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. Swift had deep ties to a number of radical right-wing groups including the Ku Klux Klan; Swift and his associates set the stage for the mutation of the Christian Identity into a loosely organized set of virulently anti-Semitic, racist belief systems that will come to be grouped together under the "Christian Identity" rubric. Swift himself taught that only the white race was created in the form of God, while Asian and African races were created from the "beasts of the fields," and thusly are subhuman creations. In Swift's version of Genesis, Eve, the wife of the first "true" man Adam, was seduced by The Serpent, who masqeueraded as a white man. Eve bore a son, Cain, who is the actual father of the Jewish people. This reinterpretation, sometimes called the "two-seed" or "seedliner" theory, supports the Christian Identity propensity to demonize Jews, whom Swift and others labeled the "spawn of Satan." Today's white Europeans and their American and Canadian descendants, Swift taught, are descended from the "true son" of Adam and Eve, Abel, and are the actual "chosen people" of God. Some Christian Identity adherents go even farther, claiming that subhuman "pre-Adamic" races existed and "spawned" the non-white races of the world, which they label "mud people." [Nicole Nichols, 2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Permeates Racist, Far-Right Groups - By the 1960s, a new group of Christian Identity leaders emerges to spread the Identity theology through the radical, racist right in America and Canada, popularizing the once-obscure ideology. Most prominent among them are three disciples of Swift: James K. Warner, William Potter Gale, and Richard Butler. Warner, who will move to Louisiana and play a leading role in the fight against civil rights, founds the Christian Defense League and the New Christian Crusade Church. Gale, an early leader of the Christian Defense League and its paramilitary arm, the California Rangers, goes on to found the Posse Comitatus (see 1969), the group that will help bring about the sovereign citizen movement. Gale will later found the Committee of the States and serve as the "chief of staff" of its "unorganized militia." Butler moves Swift's Church of Jesus Christ Christian to Idaho and recasts it as the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations (see Early 1970s). Under the leadership of Butler, Gale, Warner, and others, Christian Identity soon permeates most of the major far-right movements, including the Klan and a racist "skinhead" organization known as the Hammerskins. It also penetrates many extreme anti-government activist groups. The Anti-Defamation League will write, "The resurgence of right-wing extremism in the 1990s following the Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992) and Waco standoffs (see April 19, 1993) further spread Identity beliefs." [Anti-Defamation League, 2005] Nichols will write: "Christian Identity enclaves provide a trail of safe havens for movement activists, stretching from Hayden Lake in northern Idaho (the Aryan Nations stronghold) to Elohim City on the Oklahoma/Arkansas border (see 1973 and After). Many white supremacists on the run from federal authorities have found shelter and support from Christian Identity followers." Some organizations such as the Montana Militia are headed by Identity adherents, but do not as a group promote the theology. [Nicole Nichols, 2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Bringing Forth the Apocalypse - Many Christian Identity adherents believe that the Biblical Apocalypse—the end of the world as it is currently known and the final ascendancy of select Christians over all others—is coming soon. Unlike some Christians, Identity adherents do not generally believe in the "rapture," or the ascendancy of "saved" Christians to Heaven before the Apocalypse ensues; instead, Identity followers believe Jesus Christ will return to Earth only after the time of the "Tribulation," a great battle between good and evil, which will set the stage for the return of Christ and the final transformation of the world. Identity followers believe it is their duty to prepare for the Apocalypse, and some believe it is their duty to help bring it about. They tend to cast the Apocalypse in racial terms—whites vs. nonwhites. Identity adherents believe that worldly institutions will collapse during the "end times," and therefore tend to distrust such institutions, making Identity theology appealing to anti-government ideologies of groups such as militia, "Patriot," and sovereign citizens groups. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
21st Century Identity - In the 21st century, Christian Identity groups are strongest in the Pacific Northwest of America and Canada, and the US Midwest, though Identity churches can be found throughout the US and in other parts of Canada. Identity churches also exist in, among other nations, Ireland, Great Britain, Australia, and South Africa (see June 25, 2003). The Anti-Defamation League will write: "Yet while spread far it is also spread thin. Estimates of the total number of believers in North America vary from a low of 25,000 to a high of 50,000; the true number is probably closer to the low end of the scale. Given this relatively small following, its extensive penetration of the far right is all the more remarkable." [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Identity Violence - Identity adherents commit a number of violent acts, often against government and/or financial institutions, in an outsized proportion to their small numbers. In 1983, Identity adherent Gordon Kahl kills two US Marshals who attempt to arrest him on a parole violation, and kills an Arkansas sheriff before finally being gunned down by authorities (see February 13, 1983 and After). The white supremacist terrorist group The Order (see Late September 1983) contains a number of Identity members, including David Tate, who kills a Missouri Highway Patrol officer while attempting to flee to an Identity survivalist compound (see April 15, 1985). During the 1980s, small Identity groups such as The New Order (or The Order II) and the Arizona Patriots commit bombings and armored car robberies. After the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), Identity minister Willie Ray Lampley attempts a number of bombings (see November 9, 1995). In 1996, the Montana Freeman, led by Identity members, "stands off" federal authorities for 81 days (see March 25, 1996). Between 1996 and 1998, Eric Robert Rudolph, who has connections to Identity ministers such as Nord Davis and Dan Gayman, bombs an Atlanta gay bar (see February 21, 1997), several abortion clinics (see October 14, 1998), and the Atlanta Summer Olympics (see July 27, 1996 and After). In 1999, Identity member and former Aryan Nations security guard Buford Furrow goes on a shooting spree at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles (see August 10, 1999). [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Entity Tags: Eric Robert Rudolph, David Charles Tate, Willie Ray Lampley, William Potter Gale, Committee of the States, Church of Jesus Christ Christian, Christian Defense League, California Rangers, Anti-Defamation League, William J. Cameron, Arizona Patriots, Buford Furrow, Aryan Nations, Wesley Swift, New Christian Crusade Church, The New Order, Nord Davis, Nicole Nichols, Ku Klux Klan, The Order, Michael Barkun, Montana Militia, James K. Warner, Hammerskins, Richard Girnt Butler, Posse Comitatus, Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, Gordon Kahl, Dan Gayman, Freemen
March 10, 1961: Time Magazine Profiles John Birch Society, Calls Organization 'Tiresome'
A Time magazine profile lambasts the racist, anti-Communist John Birch Society (JBS—see December 2011), in what is many Americans' first exposure to the group. It delineates the organization's penchant for secrecy, its domination by its "dictatorial" leader, Robert Welch, and its hardline battle against almost every element of the federal government as "agents of Communism." Forty to 60 percent of the federal government is controlled by Communism, the JBS believes. Time calls the organization "a tiresome, comic-opera joke" that nonetheless has cells in 35 states and an ever-widening influence. In Wichita, Kansas, JBS student members are trained to inform their cell leaders of "Communist" influences they may detect in their classroom lectures, and the offending teacher is berated by parents. A Wichita businessman who wanted to give a donation to the University of Wichita decided not to donate after being hounded by local JBS members, who wanted the university to fire professors and remove selected books from its library. "My business would be wrecked," the businessman explains, "if those people got on the phone and kept on yelling that I am a Communist because I give money to the school." Nashville, Tennessee, JBS members organize community members to verbally attack neighbors whom they suspect of Communist affiliations. JBS's current priority, Time writes, is to bring about the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Welch, who obtained his wealth from his brother's candymaking business, believes that Social Security and the federal income tax are all part of the "creeping socialism" that is taking over the federal government. He retired from the business in 1957 and founded the JBS shortly thereafter, naming it for a US Navy captain killed by Chinese Communist guerrillas after the end of World War II. Welch's seminal tract, "The Politician," accuses President Eisenhower and his brother Milton Eisenhower of being Communist plants, and accuses both men of treason against the nation. [Time, 3/10/1961]
Entity Tags: Milton Eisenhower, John Birch Society, Time magazine, Dwight Eisenhower, Robert Welch, Earl Warren
1963: JBS Supporter Accuses Time Magazine of Being Part of Communist Conspiracy to Destroy John Birch Society
W. Cleon Skousen. [Source: Skousen2000 (.com)]Author W. Cleon Skousen, a supporter of the John Birch Society (JBS—see December 2011), writes an article attacking the Time profile of the JBS (see March 10, 1961) as being part of an orchestrated Communist attack on the organization. The article came about after the international Communist Party "ordered" the "annihilation" of the JBS, Skousen says. Skousen denies the group's penchant for secrecy, saying that it was openly set up in 1958 as a network of "study groups" examining the threat of Communism to American society. The organization, he writes, is nothing more than "a study group program with a strong bias in favor of traditional American constitutionalism." By 1960, the JBS earned the enmity of competing conservative groups, Skousen says, because the organization "had rallied together most of the best informed and hardest working patriots in many cities." However, he writes, JBS members tend to be part of other conservative movements as well. The JBS worked to defeat a bill, slated to be introduced in January 1961, that would largely defund the House Committee on Un-American Activities "so it could not investigate the Communist Party." Skousen says that JBS efforts derailed the bill, handing the American Communist Party "an overwhelming defeat." After the bill was defeated, Skousen says, "a manifesto… from Moscow" ordered the destruction of the JBS, as it posed the primary danger to "Communist progress" in the US. The Time magazine profile of the JBS was part of that effort, Skousen says, after the organization was attacked in the pages of the Daily People's World, a West Coast publication that Skousen says was "the official Communist newspaper" of that area. Within days, the information in the article was reprinted in Time's own article, which reached far more people than the People's World. "[T]he thing which astonished me," Skousen writes, "was the rapidity with which the transmission belt began to function so that this story was planted in one major news medium after another until finally even some of the more conservative papers had taken up the hue and cry." Skousen calls the article a Communist plant filled with fabrications and lies. He says that JBS leader Robert Welch's accusations that President Eisenhower and other pro-American world leaders are Communists were made in "private communication[s] to his friends" and were never part of official JBS principles, and took place well before Welch founded the JBS in 1957; therefore, Skousen writes, to report Welch's characterizations is to smear the JBS. Skousen also denies any racism or anti-Semitism on the JBS's part, and uses a sympathetic 1963 report by the California Senate Factfinding Committee to "prove" his claims. The report concluded that Welch and the JBS have "stirred the slumbering spirit of patriotism in thousands of Americans, roused them from lethargy, and changed their apathy into a deep desire to first learn the facts about communism and then implement that knowledge with effective and responsible action." Skousen concludes that while Americans are free to disagree with JBS principles and actions, any criticism of the organization should be considered potential Communist propaganda designed to smear the organization and reduce its effectiveness. If the criticism does not come from Communists themselves, it plays into Communist hands. As he claims to have been told by "[a] former member of the Communist Party National Committee," "The Communist leaders look upon the stamping out of the John Birch Society as a matter of life and death for the Party." [Our Republic, 1963]
Entity Tags: W. Cleon Skousen, Robert Welch, Daily People's World, Dwight Eisenhower, John Birch Society, Time magazine
November 1963: Racist Anti-Communist Organization Distributes Posters Accusing President Kennedy of Treason
Part of a poster distributed by the John Birch Society in Dallas in the days before President Kennedy's motorcade travels through that city. Kennedy will be assassinated while in the motorcade. [Source: Spartacus Schoolnet (.com)]The John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), an anti-Communist organization that embraces racist and white supremacist ideologies, distrubutes posters throughout Dallas accusing President Kennedy of committing treason against the United States. The poster distribution is timed to coincide with Kennedy's visit to Dallas, where he is scheduled to drive through the city in a motorcade on November 22. Kennedy will be assassinated during that motorcade. The poster, designed to appear as a "Wanted" notice, enumerates the following "charges" against Kennedy:
"Betraying the Constitution (which he swore to uphold). He is turning the sovereignty of the US over to the Communist controlled United Nations. He is betraying our friends (Cuba, Katanga, Portugal) and befriending our enemies (Russia, Yugoslavia, Poland)."
"He has been WRONG on innumerable issues affecting the security of the US (United Nations, Berlin Wall, Missile Removal, Cuba, Wheat deals, Test Ban Treaty, etc.)."
"He has been lax in enforcing the Communist Registration laws."
"He has given support and encouragement to the Communist-inspired racial riots."
"He has illegally invaded a sovereign State with federal troops."
"He has consistently appointed Anti-Christians to Federal office. Upholds the Supreme Court in Anti-Christian rulings. Aliens and known Communists abound in Federal offices."
"He has been caught in fantastic LIES to the American people (including personal ones like his previous marriage and divorce)." [Spartacus Schoolnet, 2008]
Entity Tags: John F. Kennedy, United Nations, John Birch Society
1965: Former RAND Analyst Gathers Young, Nascent Neoconservatives
Albert Wohlstetter in 1969. [Source: Bettmann / Corbis]Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, gathers a cadre of fiery young intellectuals around him, many of whom are working and associating with the magazine publisher Irving Kristol (see 1965). Wohlstetter's group includes Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Paul Wolfowitz. Wohlstetter, himself a protege of the Machiavellian academic Leo Strauss, is often considered the "intellectual godfather" of modern neoconservatism. Formerly an analyst at the RAND Corporation, Wohlstetter wielded a powerful influence on the US's foreign policy during the heyday of the Cold War. Wohlstetter, who is believed to be one of several analysts who became a model for director Stanley Kubrick's title character in the 1968 film Dr. Strangelove, added dramatic phrases like "fail-safe" and "second strike" capability to the US nuclear lexicon, and pushed to increase the US's military might over what he saw as the imminent and lethal threat of Soviet nuclear strikes and the Soviet Union's plans for global hegemony. He was such a powerful figure in his hundreds of briefings that he projected far more certainty than his facts actually supported. Though his facts and statistics were often completely wrong, he was so relentless and strident that his ideas gained more credence than they may have warranted. By 1965, he is known in some circles as a "mad genius" who is now collecting and molding young minds to follow in his footsteps. Author Craig Unger writes in 2007, "To join Team Wohlstetter, apparently, one had to embrace unquestioningly his worldviews, which eschewed old-fashioned intelligence as a basis for assessing the enemy's intentions and military capabilities in favor of elaborate statistical models, probabilities, reasoning, systems analysis, and game theory developed at RAND." An analyst with the Federation of Atomic Scientists will write in November 2003: "This methodology exploited to the hilt the iron law of zero margin for error.… Even a small probability of vulnerability, or a potential future vulnerability, could be presented as a virtual state of emergency." Or as one-time Wohlstetter acolyte Jude Wanninski will later put it, "[I]f you look down the road and see a war with, say, China, twenty years off, go to war now." Unger will observe, "It was a principle his acolytes would pursue for decades to come—with disastrous results." [Unger, 2007, pp. 42-46]
Entity Tags: University of Chicago, Stanley Kubrick, Richard Perle, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, RAND Corporation, Leo Strauss, Albert Wohlstetter, Paul Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol, Federation of Atomic Scientists, Craig Unger, Jude Wanninski
1969: Anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus Gains Following among Michigan Farmers
The logo of the Posse Comitatus. [Source: Underground News Network]The Posse Comitatus, an anti-Semitic, right-wing "Christian Identity" organization (see 1960s and After), is founded by retired dry-cleaning executive Henry L. Beach in Portland, Oregon, who calls his organization the Sherriff's Posse Comitatus (SPC) or Citizen's Law Enforcement Research Committee (CLERC). Beach has supported Nazism since the 1930s, and formerly led a neo-Nazi organization called the Silver Shirts (see January 31, 1933). The Posse Comitatus is quickly taken over by William Potter Gale, a retired Army colonel who founded a similar organization called the US Christian Posse Association in Glendale, California, and manages to roll the two groups, and a few other loosely organized entities, into one. The Posse Comitatus dedicates itself to survivalism, vigilantism, and anti-government activities; its bylaws state that no federal or state governmental entity has any legal standing, and only county and town governments are legitimate. Furthermore, the organization believes that the entire federal government is controlled by Jews, and as such has no authority over whites. Beach's original Posse manual states, "[O]fficials of government who commit criminal acts or who violate their oath of office… shall be removed by the posse to the most populated intersection of streets in the township and, at high noon, be hung by the neck, the body remaining until sundown as an example to those who would subvert the law." According to a 1986 advisory published by the IRS, "members associated with some of the Posse groups wear tiny gold hangmen's nooses on their lapels." Posse members refuse to pay taxes whenever they can get away with it, and ignore laws that they feel cannot be enforced by "the enemy." Instead, they claim to abide by a "common law," defined as a set of principles that they themselves create and change at will. The organization begins making inroads into the farm communities of the Northwest and Upper Midwest after federal mismanagement of agricultural policies threatens the livelihood of many area farmers; the Posse tells them, "Farmers are victims of a Jewish-controlled government and banking system, federal taxes are illegal and loans need not be repaid." Some area farmers embrace the message, and the Posse begins heavily recruiting in Michigan. [Ian Geldard, 2/19/1995; Nicole Nichols, 2003]
Anti-Government, Anti-Tax Ideology - The Posse Comitatus believes that the federal and state governments are inherently illegal and have no authority whatsoever; the highest elected official of the land, it says, is the county sheriff, who can form juries and call out "posses" of citizens to enforce the law as necessary. The movement strongly opposes paying taxes, particularly to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and considers money issued by the Federal Reserve System as illegal. It says that the Constitution's 16th Amendment, which gave Congress the right to tax citizens' incomes, was illegally ratified and therefore unconstitutional; moreover, it says, careful examination of federal law tells it that income taxes are entirely voluntary. The Federal Reserve System is, as one Posse publication puts it, "a private monopoly which neither the people nor the states authorized in the Constitution." The Federal Reserve's printed money violates the Constitution. Some, but not all, Posse Comitatus members also express racist and separatist views similar to those of Christian Identity believers (see 1960s and After); these members say that the Federal Reserve is controlled by a small cabal of international Jewish bankers who intend to destroy the American economy. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996; US Constitution: Sixteenth Amendment, 2011; Anti-Defamation League, 2011] Posse Comitatus members use the threat of violence, and sometimes actual violence, to express their anti-tax and anti-government ideologies (see 1972 and 1974).
Township Movement - The Posse spawns a directly related ideology, the "township movement," led in part by Utah resident Walt P. Mann. Township advocates advocate setting up small sovereign communities that are answerable only to themselves. The Posse will set up a "constitutional township" on a 1,400-acre plot in Wisconsin and name it "Tigerton Dells," posting signs that say, "Federal Agents Keep out; Survivors will be Prosecuted." Tigerton Dells will appoint its own judges and foreign ambassadors before federal authorities seize the property (see 1984).
Movement Spreads throughout Northwest, Plains States - By 1976, an FBI report says that the Posse Comitatus movement will consist of up to 50,000 adherents throughout the Northwest and Great Plains states. The center of the movement is at Tigerton Dells; Posse members there will disrupt local government meetings and assault public officials. The farm crisis of the early 1980s will allow the Posse to begin converting angry, frightened farmers throughout the region. In 1996, the Anti-Defamation League's Mark Pitcavage will write, "The Posse offered up targets for people to blame: the courts, the money system, the federal government, the Jews."
Waging Legal Battles - While some Posse members offer violence to law enforcement and public officials (see February 13, 1983 and After), most of their battles with the government take place in court. Posse members most frequently use two common legal strategems: filing frivolous liens on the properties of public officials who oppose or anger them, particularly IRS agents, and flooding the courts with a barrage of legal documents, filings, motions, and appeals. The liens carry no legal weight but sometimes damage the recipients' credit scores and interfere with the recipients' ability to buy or sell property. The court documents, often written in arcane, archaic, and contradictory legal language, clog the court system and frustate judges and prosecutors. A related tactic is the establishment of "common law courts," vigilante courts that often threaten public officials. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996]
Inspiration to Other Groups - The Posse Comitatus's ideology will inspire other anti-government groups, such as the Montana Freemen (see 1993-1994).
Entity Tags: US Federal Reserve, William Potter Gale, Walt P. Mann, Internal Revenue Service, Posse Comitatus, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Henry L. Beach, Mark Pitcavage, Sherriff's Posse Comitatus, US Christian Posse Association
(Between December 1969 and January 1970): Trainee Army Officer Imagines Scenario of Suicide Pilot Crashing Plane into US Capitol
Dan Hill. [Source: Amanda Gordon / Bloomberg]Dan Hill, a US Army Ranger who is undergoing officer training, comes up with a hypothetical plan by which the Soviet Union could start a nuclear war with the United States, which involves a suicide pilot crashing a military transport plane into the US Capitol building in Washington, DC.
Trainees Tasked with Imagining How to Start a World War - After his tour in Vietnam came to an end in mid-1969, Hill was chosen for the career officer training program at Fort Benning, Georgia. He is currently taking a course in nuclear weapons deployment. Toward the end of the semester, he is given the assignment of imagining he is a Soviet premier who wants to start World War III against the US. Hill and his fellow trainees are told to prepare a written plan, describing how they would initiate the war.
Plan Involves Crashing Plane into Capitol Building - Hill comes up with a plan, which he gives the code name "State of the Union." It involves recruiting and training a suicide pilot, obtaining a C-47 transport plane, and filling it with explosives. Then, as journalist and author James B. Stewart will describe: "On the night of the State of the Union, the pilot would fly the plane straight into the Capitol building, through the rotunda, and into the House of Representatives, where the bombs on the plane would be set to explode. He'd take out the president, his cabinet, the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and most senators and representatives. At that moment, the Soviet Union would unleash its nuclear missiles." According to Hill, everyone in the US would be "watching TV, there's no air defense around the Capitol; by the time anyone realized an aircraft was near, it would be too late."
Commander Questions Hill about His Plan - On the Monday after Hill submits his plan, a lieutenant colonel in intelligence stops him on his way to class and says, "I've got some people who would like to talk to you." Hill is taken to a room where Major General John Carley, the assistant commander of the infantry school, is waiting, along with six men in uniform and several other men who are dressed in dark suits, all of them looking serious. Carley is holding Hill's paper and asks, "How did you come up with this?" Hill replies, "This is my area of expertise," and explains that he has been trained in unconventional warfare, counterterrorism, the use of explosives, and demolition. He is then questioned for almost an hour about his plan. Finally, Carley says, "We'd prefer you forget you ever did this." Hill agrees to do so and is then dismissed.
Hill Informs Friend about His Plan - Hill writes to his friend Rick Rescorla, who has also served in the Army, about the incident. In his reply, Rescorla writes: "You evil-minded b_stard! When you have these thoughts, don't publicize them to anyone. The plan is tactically and technically proficient; it makes sense, but only to people like you and me. To the rest of the world, it looks like the workings of a deviant mind. This kind of thing terrifies people." [Stewart, 2002, pp. 152-153] Rescorla will subsequently work as the head of security for a company at the World Trade Center. [New Yorker, 2/11/2002] While he is in that position, he will be drawing from Hill's plan when, after the 1993 bombing, he determines that terrorists will likely target the WTC again by crashing a cargo plane into it (see Shortly After February 26, 1993). [Stewart, 2002, pp. 193-194] Hill will learn that, shortly after his meeting with Carley, enhanced air defenses were installed for Washington. He will therefore think that some good may have come from the meeting. [Stewart, 2002, pp. 153]
Entity Tags: Rick Rescorla, John Carley, Daniel J. Hill
Early 1970s: Idaho Racist Founds Aryan Nations
The Aryan Nations logo. [Source: Southern Poverty Law Center]Aerospace engineer and white racist Richard Butler, who departed California in the early 1970s and moved into a rural farmhouse in Hayden Lake, Idaho, founds and develops one of the nation's most notorious and violent white separatist groups, the Aryan Nations. Butler's 20-acre farmhouse becomes the compound for the group and its affiliated church, the Church of Jesus Christ Christian; Butler and his nascent organization envision a "whites-only" "homeland" in the Pacific Northwest. At age 11, Butler read a serialized novel in Liberty Magazine, depicting the takeover of the US by "race-mixing Bolsheviks" that deeply impressed him. As a young man, he worked as an aeronautical engineer in India, where he was fascinated by the Indian caste structure and the concept of racial purity. In 1941 he left a Los Angeles church after concluding that the preacher was spreading Communist doctrine. During World War II, as an Army engineer, he became fascinated by the German military, and later recalls that he "was thrilled to see the movies of the marching Germans.… In those days, all we knew was that Hitler hated communists, and so did my folks—as we did as teenagers." In the 1950s, Butler was enthralled by radio broadcasts of then-Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and his "Red scare" accusations, and sent money to support McCarthy's political campaigns. During that time, Butler met William Potter Gale, another white supremacist who went on to found the Posse Comitatus (see 1969). Butler held a high position in the Christian Defense League, an organization founded by the Reverend Wesley Swift and described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as "virulently anti-Semitic," until 1965, and shortly thereafter became a mail-order "ordained minister" of Christian Identity, a white supremacist offshoot of the Christian church (see 1960s and After). Butler buys the farmhouse in Hayden Lake and founds his own "Christian Posse Comitatus," and thereafter founds the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. The two groups merge into what later becomes known as Aryan Nations. [Washington Post, 6/2/2003; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]
Entity Tags: William Potter Gale, Wesley Swift, Joseph McCarthy, Richard Girnt Butler, Church of Jesus Christ Christian, Posse Comitatus, Christian Defense League, Aryan Nations, Southern Poverty Law Center
Summer 1972 and After: Neoconservatives Work to Toughen US Policy towards Soviet Union
Neoconservatives see Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's floundering campaign and eventual landslide defeat (see November 7, 1972) as emblematic of, in author Craig Unger's words, everything that is wrong with the "defeatist, isolationist policies of the liberals who had captured the Democratic Party." If the neoconservatives had had their way, their favorite senator, Henry "Scoop" Jackson (see Early 1970s), would have won the nomination. But the Vietnam War has put hawkish Cold Warriors like Jackson in disfavor in the party, and Jackson was set aside for the disastrous McGovern candidacy. The Republicans offer little interest themselves for the neoconservatives. Richard Nixon is enamored of one of their most hated nemeses, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, whose "realpolitik" did nothing to excite their ideological impulses. And under Nixon, the icy Cold War is slowly thawing, with summit meetings, bilateral commissions, and arms limitations agreements continually bridging the gap between the US and the neoconservatives' implacable foe, the Soviet Union. In Nixon's second term, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM)—populated by Democratic neoconservatives like Jackson, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Nixon's domestic adviser), Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ben Wattenberg, and James Woolsey, and joined by 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey, will pressure Nixon to adopt a tough "peace through strength" policy towards the Soviet Union. Although it will take time, and the formation of countless other organizations with similar memberships and goals, this group of neoconservatives and hawkish hardliners will succeed in marginalizing Congress, demonizing their enemies, and taking over the entire foreign policy apparatus of the US government. [Unger, 2007, pp. 47-48]
Entity Tags: Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard M. Nixon, James Woolsey, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Ben Wattenberg, Coalition for a Democratic Majority, Irving Kristol, George S. McGovern, Craig Unger, Henry A. Kissinger, Daniel Patrick Moynihan
1973 and After: White Supremacist Compound 'Elohim City' Founded; Becomes Center of Plotting, Violence
Andreas Strassmeir, a frequent Elohim City resident and arms expert. [Source: Eye on Hate (.com)]Robert Millar, a former Mennonite who left Canada for the US in the early 1950s, moves to the Ozark Mountain region of eastern Oklahoma and founds what he calls "Elohim City," a small compound populated by his four sons and 12 other followers. Elohim City grows to become a 400-acre compound populated with 70 to 100 "Christian Identity" white supremacists and religious extremists, who believe that whites are the only true people and all others are subhuman "mud people" (see 1960s and After). Elohim is a Hebrew word for God. Elohim City, accessible only via a rocky road and a single steel bridge, soon becomes a haven for violent right-wing extremists, including Timothy McVeigh, who will call the compound two weeks before bombing a federal building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), and Andreas "Andy the German" Strassmeir, a German weapons buff with ties to neo-Nazi groups and an alleged co-conspirator of McVeigh's (see August 1994 - March 1995). The residents receive intensive paramilitary training, often led by Strassmeir, and the compound contains a large arsenal of weapons. Elohim City becomes the headquarters of the Aryan Republican Army (see 1992 - 1995), an organization that has Strassmeir as its "chief of security." Some of the Elohim City residents such as ARA member Dennis Mahon come to believe that Strassmeir is a government informant. Author Nicole Nichols, an expert on right-wing hate groups, will later say she believes Strassmeir is the infamous "John Doe #2" of the Oklahoma City bombing (see April 20, 1995). [Associated Press, 2/23/1997; Time, 2/24/1997; Nicole Nichols, 2003; Nicole Nichols, 2003; Nicole Nichols, 2003] A 2002 report by the Anti-Defamation League says that after the Oklahoma City bombing, Elohim City changes to become a less militant settlement, populated largely by white separatists and religious fundamentalists seeking to withdraw from the world. Before his death in 2001, Millar says: "Somebody said, 'You're not a racist, you're a purist.' I sort of liked that." John Millar, who becomes the community leader after his father's death, says: "[W]e consider ourselves survivalists in the sense that we want to survive the best way we can.… We have weapons, but any person within 15 miles of us has more weapons per household than we do. We don't make a big thing about weapons. We don't think we can keep the National Guard away with a few weapons." An unnamed government informer tells a New York Post reporter in June 2001: "McVeigh is a hero inside Elohim City. They look upon him 'as a martyr to their cause.'" [Anti-Defamation League, 8/9/2002]
Entity Tags: Nicole Nichols, Dennis Mahon, Aryan Republican Army, Anti-Defamation League, Andreas Strassmeir, Elohim City, John Millar, Timothy James McVeigh, Robert Millar
August 15, 1974: Neoconservatives Begin Moving to Influence US Foreign Policies
Conservative Democratic senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA) meets with President Ford as part of a discussion about the standoff with the Soviet Union over trade and emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. Jackson—hawkish, defense-minded, and solidly pro-Israel—sees the standoff as an opportunity to undercut Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Jackson is a forerunner of what in later years will be called "neoconservatism" (see 1965), an ideology mostly espoused by a group of Democratic lawmakers and intellectuals who have abandoned their support for Rooseveltian New Deal economics and multilateralist foreign policies (see Early 1970s). Jackson and his outspoken pro-Israel aide, Richard Perle, view Kissinger as far too conciliatory and willing to negotiate with the Communist bloc. Jackson and Perle see the Soviet Union, not the Israeli-Palestine conflict, as the chief threat to US interests in the Middle East and the control of that region's oil fields. They see a strong, powerful Israel as essential to their plans for US domination of the region. Jackson resists a proposed compromise on the number of Soviet Jews the USSR will allow to emigrate to Israel—the Soviets offer 55,000 and Jackson insists on 75,000—and many in the meeting feel that Jackson is being deliberately recalcitrant. "It made mo sense to me because it was sure to be counterproductive," Ford later writes, "but he would not bend, and the only reason is politics." For his part, Kissinger respects Jackson's political abilities, but to his mind, Perle is a "ruthless… little b_stard." Kissinger knows that Republican hawks as well as the burgeoning neoconservative movement will pressure Ford to abandon Richard Nixon's policies of moderating relations with the Soviet Union and Communist China. But, author Barry Werth writes in 2006: "what Kissinger and now Ford would chronically underestimate was the neoconservatives' argument that the United States should not so much seek to coexist with the Soviet system as to overthrow it through direct confrontation. Or the extent to which the neoconservatives would go to exaggerate a foreign threat and stir up fear." [Werth, 2006, pp. 77-79]
Entity Tags: Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Richard M. Nixon, Barry Werth, Richard Perle, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Henry A. Kissinger
Early 1976: Neoconservative 'Team B' of Outside Intelligence Analysts Created
Richard Pipes. [Source: Mariusz Kubik]After George H. W. Bush becomes the head of the CIA (see November 4, 1975 and After), he decides to break with previous decisions and allow a coterie of neoconservative outsiders to pursue the allegations of Albert Wohlstetter that the CIA is seriously underestimating the threat the USSR poses to the US (see 1965), allegations pushed by hardliners on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Internal Opposition - Bush's predecessor, William Colby, had steadfastly refused to countenance such a project, saying, "It is hard for me to envisage how an ad hoc 'independent' group of government and non-government analysts could prepare a more thorough, comprehensive assessment of Soviet strategic capabilities—even in two specific areas—than the intelligence community can prepare." (Bush approves the experiment by notating on the authorization memo, "Let 'er fly!") The national intelligence officer in charge of the National Intelligence Estimate on the USSR, Howard Stoertz, will later recall: "Most of us were opposed to it because we saw it as an ideological, political foray, not an intelligence exercise. We knew the people who were pleading for it." But Bush, on the advice of deputy national security adviser William Hyland, agrees to the exercise. Hyland says the CIA had been getting "too much flak for being too peacenik and detentish…. I encouraged [Bush] to undertake the experiment, largely because I thought a new director ought to be receptive to new views." The neocon team of "analysts" becomes known as "Team B," with "Team A" being the CIA's own analytical team. It is unprecedented to allow outsiders to have so much access to highly classified CIA intelligence as Bush is granting the Team B neocons, so the entire project is conducted in secret. CIA analyst Melvin Goodman later says that President Ford's chief of staff, Dick Cheney, is one of the driving forces behind Team B. The outside analysts "wanted to toughen up the agency's estimates," Goodman will say, but "Cheney wanted to drive [the CIA] so far to the right it would never say no to the generals." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 208; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-55]
Political Pressure - Ford's political fortunes help push forward the Team B experiment. Ford has been a strong proponent of detente with the Soviet Union, but his poll numbers are sagging and he is facing a strong presidential primary challenger in Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA), an avowed hardliner. Reagan is making hay challenging Ford's foreign policy, claiming that the so-called "Ford-Kissinger" policies have allowed the Soviet Union to leap ahead of the US both militarily and geopolitically. In response, Ford has lurched to the right, banning the word "detente" from speeches and statements by White House officials, and has been responsive to calls for action from the newly reforming Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976). In combination, these political concerns give Bush the justification he wants to push forward with the Team B experiment.
Three B Teams - According to Carter administration arms control official Anne Cahn, there are actually three "B" teams. One studies Soviet low-altitude air defense capabilities, one examines Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) accuracy, and the third, chaired by Harvard Sovietologist Richard Pipes, examines Soviet strategic policy and objectives. It is Pipes's team that becomes publicly known as "Team B." [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993]
Assembling the Team - Pipes fits in well with his small group of ideological hardliners. He believes that the USSR is determined to fight and win a nuclear war with the US, and he is bent on putting together an analysis that proves his contention. He asks Cold War icon Paul Nitze, the former Secretary of the Navy, to join the team. Richard Perle, a core member, has Pipes bring in Paul Wolfowitz, one of Wohlstetter's most devout disciples. Wolfowitz immediately begins arguing for the need to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. The "incestuous closeness" of the members, as Cahn later calls it, ensures that the entire group is focused on the same goals as Wohlstetter and Pipes, with no dissension or counterarguments. Other key members include William von Cleave and Daniel Graham. The entire experiment, Cahn will write, "was concocted by conservative cold warriors determined to bury détente and the SALT process. Panel members were all hard-liners," and many are members of the newly reconstituted "Committee on the Present Danger" (see 1976). The experiment is "leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an 'October surprise' [an attempt to damage the presidential hopes of Democrat Jimmy Carter—see Late November, 1976]. But most important, the Team B reports became the intellectual foundation of 'the window of vulnerability' and of the massive arms buildup that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated under President Reagan." Team B will formally debate its CIA adversaries, "Team A," towards the end of the year (see November 1976). [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ; Unger, 2007, pp. 53-55]
'Designed to be Prejudiced' - In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will note, "Team B was designed to be prejudiced." Pipes, the Soviet experts, holds a corrosive hatred of the Soviet Union, in part stemming from his personal experiences as a young Jew in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, and his belief that the Soviet system is little different from the Nazis. When asked why his team is stacked with hardline opponents of arms negotiations and diplomacy of any kind with the USSR, Pipes replies, "There is no point in another, what you might call, optimistic view." Scoblic will write, "Team B, in short, begged the question. Its members saw the Soviet threat not as an empirical problem but as a matter of faith." He will add, "For three months, the members of Team B pored over the CIA's raw intelligence data—and used them to reaffirm their beliefs." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 93-94]
Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Richard Pipes, William Hyland, Paul Nitze, William Colby, J. Peter Scoblic, Paul Wolfowitz, George Herbert Walker Bush, 'Team A', 'Team B', Anne Cahn, Albert Wohlstetter, Issuetsdeah, Central Intelligence Agency, Howard Stoertz
Late November, 1976: Team B Breaches Security to Successfully Whip up Fears of Soviet Threat
Although the entire "Team B" intelligence analysis experiment (see Early 1976, November 1976, and November 1976) is supposed to be classified and secret, the team's neoconservatives launch what author Craig Unger will call "a massive campaign to inflame fears of the red menace in both the general population and throughout the [foreign] policy community—thanks to strategically placed leaks to the Boston Globe and later to the New York Times." Times reporter David Binder later says that Team B leader Richard Pipes is "jubilant" over "pok[ing] holes at the [CIA]'s analysis" of the Soviet threat. Team B member John Vogt calls the exercise "an opportunity to even up some scores with the CIA." [Unger, 2007, pp. 57] Team member George Keegan tells reporters, "I am unaware of a single important category in which the Soviets have not established a significant lead over the United States… [This] grave imbalance in favor of Soviet military capability had developed out of a failure over the last 15 years to adjust American strategic thinking to Soviet strategic thinking, and out of the failure of the leadership of the American intelligence community to 'perceive the reality' of the Soviet military buildup." Keegan's colleague William van Cleave agrees, saying that "overall strategic superiority exists today for the Soviet Union," and adds, "I think it's getting to the point that, if we can make a trade with the Soviet Union of defense establishments, I'd be heartily in favor of it." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 95]
Used to Escalate Defense Spending - The experiment is far more than a dry, intellectual exercise or a chance for academics to score points against the CIA. Melvin Goodman, who heads the CIA's Office of Soviet Affairs, will observe in 2004: "[Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war." Even though Wolfowitz's and Rumsfeld's assertions of powerful new Soviet WMD programs are completely wrong, they use the charges to successfully push for huge escalations in military spending, a process that continues through the Ford and Reagan administrations (see 1976) [Common Dreams (.org), 12/7/2004; BBC, 1/14/2005] , and resurface in the two Bush administrations. "Finally," Unger will write, "a band of Cold Warriors and neocon ideologues had successfully insinuated themselves in the nation's multibillion-dollar intelligence apparatus and had managed to politicize intelligence in an effort to implement new foreign policy." [Unger, 2007, pp. 57-58]
Kicking Over the Chessboard - Former senior CIA official Richard Lehman later says that Team B members "were leaking all over the place… putting together this inflammatory document." Author and university professor Gordon R. Mitchell will write that B's practice of "strategically leaking incendiary bits of intelligence to journalists, before final judgments were reached in the competitive intelligence exercise," was another method for Team B members to promulgate their arguments without actually proving any of their points. Instead of participating in the debate, they abandoned the strictures of the exercise and leaked their unsubstantiated findings to the press to "win" the argument. [Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5/2006 ]
'One Long Air Raid Siren' - In 2002, defense policy reporter Fred Kaplan will sardonically label Team B the "Rumsfeld Intelligence Agency," and write: "It was sold as an 'exercise' in intelligence analysis, an interesting competition—Team A (the CIA) and Team B (the critics). Yet once allowed the institutional footing, the Team B players presented their conclusions—and leaked them to friendly reporters—as the truth," a truth, Team B alleges, the pro-detente Ford administration intends to conceal. Kaplan will continue, "The Team B report read like one long air-raid siren: The Soviets were spending practically all their GNP on the military; they were perfecting charged particle beams that could knock our warheads out of the sky; their express policy and practical goal was to fight and win a nuclear war." Team B is flatly wrong across the board, but it still has a powerful impact on the foreign policy of the Ford administration, and gives the neoconservatives and hardliners who oppose arms control and detente a rallying point. Author Barry Werth will observe that Rumsfeld and his ideological and bureaucratic ally, White House chief of staff Dick Cheney "drove the SALT II negotiations into the sand at the Pentagon and the White House." Ford's primary opponent, Ronald Reagan, and the neocons' public spokesman, Senator Henry Jackson, pillory Ford for being soft on Communism and the Soviet Union. Ford stops talking about detente with the Soviets, and breaks off discussions with the Soviets over limiting nuclear weapons. Through Team B, Rumsfeld and the neocons succeed in stalling the incipient thaw in US-Soviet relations and in weakening Ford as a presidential candidate. [Werth, 2006, pp. 341]
Entity Tags: Melvin A. Goodman, New York Times, Paul Wolfowitz, Reagan administration, Ronald Reagan, Richard Lehman, William van Cleave, John Vogt, Richard Pipes, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Gordon R. Mitchell, Bush administration (43), Boston Globe, Barry Werth, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Bush administration (41), Central Intelligence Agency, 'Team B', David Binder, Fred Kaplan, Craig Unger, Ford administration, George Keegan, Donald Rumsfeld
1977-Present: Koch Billionaires Fund Libertarian Think Tank
Cato Institute logo. [Source: Cato Institute]The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, launch the libertarian Cato Institute, one of the first of many think tanks and advocacy organizations they will fund (see August 30, 2010). While records of the Koch funding of the institute are not fully available, the Center for Public Integrity learns that between 1986 and 1993 the Koch family gives $11 million to the institute. By 2010, Cato has over 100 full-time employees, and often succeeds in getting its experts and policy papers quoted by mainstream media figures. While the institute describes itself as nonpartisan, and is at times critical of both Republicans and Democrats, it consistently advocates for corporate tax cuts, reductions in social services, and laissez-faire environmental policies. One of its most successful advocacy projects is to oppose government initiatives to curb global warming. When asked why Cato opposes such federal and state initiatives, founder and president Ed Crane explains that "global warming theories give the government more control of the economy." [New Yorker, 8/30/2010]
Entity Tags: Center for Public Integrity, Cato Institute, Ed Crane, Charles Koch, David Koch
May 25-26, 1978: Northwestern Security Guard Injured by 'Unabomber' Exploding Package
A photograph of Theodore 'Ted' Kaczynski, taken in 1968 while Kaczynski was a young faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley. [Source: George M. Bergman / Wikimedia]An unmailed package is found in a car park at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and brought to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, because of its return address; the addressee now teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Buckley Crist, the material sciences professor named in the return address on the package cannot identify it, and turns it over to campus security. When Northwestern police officer Terry Marker opens it, it explodes, injuring him slightly. The package contains a pipe bomb packed in a carved wooden box. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 4/14/1996; Washington Post, 1998] The bomb is made of a nine-inch pipe filled with explosive powders and triggered by a nail held by rubber bands that strikes and ignites match heads when the box is opened. [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] The package contains 10 $1 commemorative Eugene O'Neill stamps on its outer wrapper. Authorities will later speculate that the bomber may have chosen the O'Neill stamps because the playwright was an ardent supporter of anarchists. [Knight Ridder, 5/28/1995] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). It is believed to be Kaczynski's first bomb. [New York Times, 4/7/1996]
Entity Tags: Terry Marker, Northwestern University, Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, Buckley Crist
1979-February 22, 2003: Al-Qaeda Affiliate in Southeast Asia Deeply Penetrated by Indonesian Government Mole
A young Fauzi Hasbi. [Source: SBS Dateline]Fauzi Hasbi, the son of a separatist leader in the Indonesian province of Aceh, is captured by an Indonesian military special forces unit in 1979 and soon becomes a mole for the Indonesian government. Hasbi becomes a leader in the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), and he also plays a long-time role in Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaeda affiliate. For many years, he literally lives next door to Jemaah Islamiyah leaders Abu Bakar Bashir and Hambali (see April 1991-Late 2000). In 2005, the Australian television program SBS Dateline will present documents that it claims "prove beyond doubt that Fauzi Hasbi had a long association with the [Indonesian] military." For instance, military documents dating from 1990 and 1995 give him specific spying tasks. [SBS Dateline, 10/12/2005] In February 2001, the Indonesian magazine Tempo documents some of Hasbi's links to the Indonesian military, after he has been linked to a major role the Christmas bombings in Indonesia two months earlier (see December 24-30, 2000 and February 20, 2001). He admits to having some ties to certain high-ranking military figures and says he has had a falling out with GAM, but denies being a traitor to any militant group. [Tempo, 2/20/2001; Tempo, 2/27/2001] Yet even after this partial exposure, he continues to pose as an Islamist militant for the military. A 2002 document shows that he is even assigned the job of special agent for BIN, Indonesia's intelligence agency. [SBS Dateline, 10/12/2005] A December 2002 report by a US think tank, the International Crisis Group, details his role as a government mole. He and two of his associates are abducted and killed in mysterious circumstances in the Indonesian city of Ambon on February 22, 2003. Seven suspects, including an Indonesian policeman, later admit to the killings but their motive for doing so remains murky. [Agence France-Presse, 5/22/2003]
Entity Tags: Tentara Nasional Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiyah, Free Aceh Movement, Badan Intelijen Negara, Fauzi Hasbi
May 9, 1979: 'Unabomber' Targets Northwestern University with Second Bombing
A graduate student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, John Harris, is injured when he opens a box left at the University's Technological Institute. The box contains a bomb that explodes when opened. Harris suffers minor cuts and burns. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] Authorities recognize fundamental similarities between this and a previous Northwestern University bombing (see May 25-26, 1978). This bomb is quite similar in construction to that one, though more sophisticated in construction and design. It consists of a cigar box and a pipe bomb, triggered by a battery-operated filament that ignites explosive powders. [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] However, the package contains a number of small, finger-sized pieces of wood glued to its outer container. [Knight Ridder, 5/28/1995] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see May 25-26, 1978 and April 3, 1996).
Entity Tags: Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, Northwestern University, John Harris
November 15, 1979: 'Unabomber' Explosive on Plane Fails to Detonate, Catches Fire Instead
A parcel mailed from Chicago catches fire in a mailbag aboard American Airlines Flight 444 from Chicago to Washington, DC. The package contains a bomb which was apparently constructed to explode inside the cargo hold. Twelve passengers are treated for smoke inhalation; the flight conducts an emergency landing at Dulles Airport near Washington. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] The bomb does not ignite because instead of explosive powder, it contains barium nitrate, a powder often used to create green smoke in fireworks. [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] The bombing is later shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). After the airline bombing and the subsequent bombing of a United Airlines executive (see June 10, 1980), the FBI ties the previous bombings (see May 25-26, 1978 and May 9, 1979) to this one and code-names the file UNABOM, for "UNiversity and Airline BOMber." The media will soon dub the unknown assailant the "Unabomber." [Washington Post, 4/4/1996; World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] Kaczynski will later express regret for trying to bomb the plane (see April 24, 1995).
Entity Tags: Washington Dulles International Airport, Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Early 1980s: FBI Encounters Problems Passing Intelligence Information to Criminal Prosecutors, 'Wall' Arises
Due to apparent problems with the use of intelligence information in criminal proceedings, a set of procedures that later becomes known as the "wall" begins to take shape. The FBI, which performs both criminal and counterintelligence functions, normally obtains two types of warrants: criminal warrants and warrants under the recently passed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA warrants are thought to be easier to obtain, as the FBI only has to show that there is probable cause to believe the subject is a foreign power or an agent of one. Sometimes a case begins as an intelligence investigation, but results in a criminal prosecution. In court the defense can then argue that the government has abused FISA and obtained evidence by improperly using the lower standard, so any evidence obtained under FISA should not be allowed in court. Although the government can use information it happens to obtain under a FISA warrant for a criminal prosecution, if the purpose of obtaining information under a FISA warrant is for a criminal prosecution, this is in violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against warrantless searches. To combat this apparent problem, the special FISA Court decides that for a warrant under FISA to be granted, collecting intelligence information must be the primary purpose, although such information can be used in a criminal investigation provided the criminal investigation does not become the primary purpose of the surveillance or search. As a result of these procedures, when the FBI is conducting an intelligence investigation and uncovers evidence of criminal activity, it no longer consults local United States Attorneys' Offices, but prosecutors within the Justice Department's Criminal Division. The prosecutors then decide when the local attorney's office should become involved. [US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 21-24 ] The wall will be extended in the 1990s (see July 19, 1995) and will be much criticized before and after 9/11 (see July 1999 and April 13, 2004).
Entity Tags: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
June 10, 1980: 'Unabomber' Package Injures United Airlines President
In his Lake Forest, Illinois, home, United Airlines president Percy Wood opens a package that apparently contains a book. It contains both a book and a bomb in the book's hollowed-out pages. It explodes, causing Wood to suffer cuts and bruises. The initials "FC" are found etched on, or punched into, a piece of pipe from the bomb. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998; World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). "FC" will later be found to stand for "Freedom Club." [Washington Post, 1/23/1998; World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] Authorities will later speculate that Wood may have been targeted in part because of Kaczynski's strange fascination with wood; he often uses wood in the construction of his bombs. The hollowed-out book, Ice Brothers, is published by Arbor House, whose symbol is a tree leaf. [Associated Press, 4/25/1995] The package contains a note asking Wood to read the enclosed book, and noting, "You will find it of great social significance." The author of Ice Brothers, Sloan Wilson, also wrote The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which, according to a 1959 biography of Wilson, "was the definitive epithet for the commuting suburbanite, the status-hungry conformist from Madison Avenue." Like an earlier bomb (see May 25-26, 1978), this bomb's package is mailed using postage stamps commemorating the playwright Eugene O'Neill; authorities will speculate that Kaczynski may have chosen the stamps because of O'Neill's ardent support of anarchists. [Knight Ridder, 5/28/1995]
Entity Tags: Percy Wood, Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski
1981-2010: Oil Billionaires Spend 'Staggering' Amounts of Money Financing Right-Wing Organizations
KochPAC logo. [Source: KochPAC (.com)]After their stinging loss during the November 1980 presidential campaign, the billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, decide that they need to work to inculcate their brand of hard-right libertarianism into the electorate through indirect means (see 1979-1980). Therefore, they begin spending vast amounts of their personal fortunes on what purport to be independent think tanks and other political or ideological organizations. At the same time, the brothers become political recluses, rarely speaking in public and rarely acknowledging the breadth or the direction of their donations. It is hard to know exactly how much the Kochs spend and where they spend it, though public records give some of the picture. Between 1998 and 2008, Charles Koch's foundation spends over $48 million on political funding. The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, controlled by Charles and his wife, spends over $28 million. David Koch's foundation spends over $120 million. Koch Industries, controlled primarily by Charles, spends over $50 million on lobbying efforts. Their political action committee, KochPAC, donates around $8 million, almost all of it going to Republicans. In 2010, as in other years, Koch Industries leads all other energy companies in political donations. The brothers spend over $2 million of their personal fortunes on political donations, almost all of it going to Republicans. Ari Rabin-Havt of the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters will say that the Kochs' effort is unusual in its marshalling of corporate and personal funds: "Their role, in terms of financial commitments, is staggering." Lee Fang, writing for the liberal blog ThinkProgress (an arm of the Center for American Progress), calls the Kochs "the billionaires behind the hate." Some believe that the Kochs have either skirted, or outright broken, laws controlling tax-exempt giving. Charitable foundations must conduct exclusively nonpartisan activities that promote the public welfare. But in 2004, a report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, describes the Kochs' foundations as being self-serving, and concludes, "These foundations give money to nonprofit organizations that do research and advocacy on issues that impact the profit margin of Koch Industries." The Kochs also use their charitable foundations to fund hard-right political organizations that, according to reporter Jane Mayer, "aim to push the country in a libertarian direction," including: the Institute for Justice, which files lawsuits opposing state and federal regulations; the Institute for Humane Studies, which underwrites libertarian academics; and the Bill of Rights Institute, which promotes a conservative interpretation of the Constitution. David Koch acknowledges that the family exerts tight ideological control. "If we're going to give a lot of money, we'll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent," he tells a reporter. "And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don't agree with, we withdraw funding." [New Yorker, 8/30/2010]
Entity Tags: Institute for Justice, Charles Koch, Bill of Rights Institute, Ari Rabin-Havt, Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, Institute for Humane Studies, Koch Industries, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, Jane Mayer, David Koch, Lee Fang, KochPAC
Early 1981 and After: Reagan Categorically Opposed to Arms Control Agreements with Soviet Union; Advisers Reflect Oppositional Agenda
In conjunction with his huge peacetime military buildup (see Early 1981 and After), President Reagan strongly opposes any sort of arms control or limitation discussions with the Soviet Union.
Rostow to ACDA - As a member of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD—see 1976), Reagan had spoken out against the SALT II arms control treaty with the USSR (see June 18, 1979-Winter 1979), calling it "fatally flawed." He has opposed every significant arms limitation agreement since 1963, no matter whether it was negotiated by Republican or Democratic administrations. To continue his opposition, Reagan appoints Eugene Rostow to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). Rostow, a fellow CPD member, is flatly opposed to any sort of arms control or disarmament agreement with the Soviet Union, and had led the CPD fight against the SALT II agreement. "Arms control thinking drives out sound thinking," he told the Senate. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120] During his confirmation hearings, Rostow tells Senate questioners that the US could certainly survive a nuclear war, and gives World War II-era Japan as an example—that nation "not only survived but flourished after a nuclear attack." When asked if the world could survive a full nuclear attack of thousands of nuclear warheads instead of the two that Japan had weathered, Rostow says that even though the casualties might be between "ten million… and one hundred million… [t]he human race is very resilient." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 126] Rostow's aide at the ACDA, Colin Gray, says that "victory is possible" in a nuclear war provided the US is prepared to fight. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 127]
Burt to State Department - Reagan names Richard Burt to head the State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs, the State Department's primary liaison with the Defense Department. Burt, a former New York Times reporter, is one of the few journalists synpathetic to the CPD, and recently called the SALT agreement "a favor to the Russians." Just before joining the Reagan administration, Burt called for reductions in nuclear arms controls: "Arms control has developed the same kind of mindless momentum associated with other large-scale government pursuits. Conceptual notions of limited durability, such as the doctrine of mutual assured destruction [MAD], have gained bureaucratic constituencies and have thus been prolonged beyond their usefulness. There are strong reasons for believing that arms control is unlikely to possess much utility in the coming decade." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120; US Department of State, 2008]
Perle to Defense Department - Perhaps the most outspoken opponent of arms control is neoconservative Richard Perle, named as assistant defense secretary for international security affairs. Perle, until recently the national security adviser to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s), will quickly become, in author J. Peter Scoblic's words, "the administration's chief arms control obstructionist, dubbed 'the Prince of Darkness' by his enemies." Perle once said: "The sense that we and the Russians could compose our differences, reduce them to treaty constraints… and then rely on compliance to produce a safer world. I don't agree with any of that." Now Perle is poised to act on his beliefs. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120]
Vice President Bush - Although seen as a pragmatist and not a hardline conservative (see January 1981 and After), Vice President George H. W. Bush is also optimistic about the chances of the US coming out on top after a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. During the 1980 campaign, he told a reporter: "You have a survivability of command and control, survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have a capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition tham it inflicts on you. That's the way you can have a winner." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 126-127]
Other Appointees - Perle's immediate supervisor in Defense is Fred Ikle, who headed ACDA in 1973 and helped battle back part of the original SALT agreement. Ikle will be primarily responsible for the Pentagon's "five-year plan" that envisions a "protracted nuclear war" as a viable option (see March 1982). Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger considers the standoff between the US and the Soviet Union akin to the situation between Britain and Nazi Germany in 1938, with himself and his ideological confreres as Britain's Winston Churchill and any attempt at arms control as nothing but appeasement. Energy Secretary James B. Edwards says of a hypothetical nuclear war, "I want to come out of it number one, not number two." Pentagon official Thomas Jones tells a reporter that the US could handily survive a nuclear exchange, and fully recover within two to four years, if the populace digs plenty of holes, cover them with wooden doors, and bury the structures under three feet of dirt. "If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody's going to make it," he says. Reagan's second National Security Adviser, William Clark, will, according to Reagan official and future Secretary of State George Shultz, "categorically oppos[e] US-Soviet contacts" of any kind. Some of the administration's more pragmatic members, such as Reagan's first Secretary of State Alexander Haig, will have limited access to Reagan and be cut off from many policy-making processes by Reagan's more hardline senior officials and staffers. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 118-120, 127; Air Force Magazine, 3/2008]
Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Fred C. Ikle, Committee on the Present Danger, Colin Gray, Caspar Weinberger, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Eugene V. Rostow, US Department of State, William Clark, Thomas Jones, Richard Burt, Richard Perle, Reagan administration, James B. Edwards, Ronald Reagan, J. Peter Scoblic, US Department of Defense, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, George Shultz
February 20, 1981: Boeing 707 Nearly Hits Television Mast atop World Trade Center
A Boeing 707 belonging to an Argentine airline comes close to hitting the television mast atop the World Trade Center's North Tower. The plane is flying in clouds at 1,500 feet, instead of at its assigned altitude of 3,000 feet, and descending toward Kennedy Airport. About four miles, or less than 90 seconds, from the WTC, the Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) in Hempstead, Long Island, becomes aware of the situation thanks to a new automated alarm system and is able to radio the pilot with the order to climb. The alarm system that sounds, called Minimum Safe Altitude Warning, has been in operation for about a year. When radar shows a plane at an altitude within 500 feet of the highest obstruction in a particular area and 30 seconds away, a buzzer sounds repeatedly at the TRACON. At the same time, the letters LA (for low altitude) flash on the radar scope next to the plane's blip. [New York Times, 2/26/1981]
Entity Tags: New York Terminal Radar Approach Control, World Trade Center
September 1981 through November 1983: Hardliners Block INF Arms Agreement
Reagan officials reopen the stalled Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union, against the advice of President Reagan's more hardline officials (see January 1981 and After). The talks center on the Soviets' SS-20 missile, designed to strike European targets. In return, then-President Carter had agreed to deploy US intermediate-range nuclear missiles—Pershing II's and Tomahawks—in West Germany and Italy by 1983. According to author J. Peter Scoblic, the missiles have little real military value, as American ICBMs, submarine-based nuclear missiles, and long-range bombers could destroy Soviet targets with near-impunity. They do, however, have some political significance, mostly in helping tie European security to US security. Carter had agreed to open talks with the Soviets to get rid of the SS-20s entirely.
Hardliners Sabotage Talks - The more pragmatic Reagan officials succeed in reopening the talks; Reagan hardliners, thwarted in stopping the talks, set about sabotaging them in any way available. When arguments in favor of delays and "further study" finally fail, they pressure Reagan to offer an agreement they know the Soviets will refuse: the so-called "zero option," which originates with Defense Department official Richard Perle (see Early 1981 and After). Perle says that the Soviets should remove all of the SS-20s, and in return, the US will not deploy its Pershings and Tomahawks—in essence, having the Soviets concede something for essentially nothing. State Department officials suggest a fallback position in case the Soviets reject Perle's offering; in his turn, Perle appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee and compares anyone who opposes his zero-sum offering to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1938.
'Walk in the Woods' - When the Soviets reject Perle's option, Reagan hardliners argue that the government should accept no compromise. The head of the INF negotiation team, Paul Nitze—a Cold War figure who has come out against arms control (see January 1976) but is not fully trusted by the hardline ideologues because of his history as an arms negotiator—wants a compromise. In official negotiations, he sticks to the all-or-nothing position of Perle, but opens private, informal negotiations with his Soviet counterpart, Yuli Kvitsinsky. One afternoon in 1982, Nitze and Kvitsinsky go for what later becomes known as their "walk in the woods." Sitting together on a log during an afternoon rainstorm, the two hammer out an agreement that greatly favors the US—mandating a 67 percent reduction in Soviet SS-20s and allowing the US to deploy an equal number of Tomahawks. Not only would the Soviets have to reduce their already-deployed contingent of missiles and the US be allowed to deploy missiles, because the Tomahawks carry more independent warheads than the SS-20s, the US would have a significant advantage in firepower. The deal also sets limits on SS-20 deployments in Asia, and forbids the Soviets from developing ground-launched cruise missiles. In return, the US would agree not to deploy its Pershing missiles.
Hardliners Block Agreement - Perle and his hardline allies in the Reagan administration succeed in blocking acceptance of the Nitze-Kvitsinsky agreement. As author J. Peter Scoblic later writes, "Perle's ideological obstructionism—concisely conveyed in his disparagement of Nitze as 'an inverterate problem-solver'—reached fantastic heights." Perle first tried to block Reagan from even learning the details of the agreement, and lied to Reagan, asserting falsely that the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed the agreement. Perle, in conjunction with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, eventually convinces Reagan to stick to the "zero option." Perle argues against pressure from key US allies such as Britain's Margaret Thatcher, telling Reagan, "We can't just do something; we've got to stand there—and stand firm." In 1983, Perle tells Weinberger that it would be better for the US to deploy no missiles at all than to accept the agreement. Scoblic will write: "In other words, he argued that foregoing deployment in return for nothing was better than foregoing deployment in exchange for something. The position made no sense, but the Reagan team held firm to it, once again preventing the adoption of a viable arms control deal." When the US deploys Pershing missiles in Europe in November 1983, the Soviets walk out of the talks. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 120-123]
Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Margaret Thatcher, Joint Chiefs of Staff, J. Peter Scoblic, Caspar Weinberger, Paul Nitze, Ronald Reagan, Reagan administration, Senate Armed Services Committee, US Department of State, Yuli Kvitsinsky
October 8, 1981: 'Unabomber' Device Found in Utah Classroom
A maintenance worker at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City finds a bomb in a business classroom. The device is defused by the local bomb squad and no one is injured. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] The bomb will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996).
Entity Tags: Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, University of Utah
March 15, 1982: Conservative Student Newspaper Publishes Racially Charged Article, Republican Board Member Resigns in Protest
The Dartmouth Review, a conservative weekly student newspaper funded by off-campus right-wing sources (see 1980), runs an article opposing affirmative action that many feel is blatantly racist. The article is titled "Dis Sho' Ain't No Jive, Bro," written by former Review chairman Keeney Jones. The article is the third in a series of attacks on affirmative action by Jones; the earlier articles featured Jones wishing he could medically darken his skin so he could get into medical school, and his claim that he was taking speech lessons to learn how to speak "black." This article is written entirely in Jones's version of "black dialect," and features the following selection: "Dese boys be sayin' dat we be comin' to Dartmut'and not takin' the classics. You know, Homa, Shakesphere; but I hes' dey all be co'd in da gound, six feet unda, and whatcha be askin' us to learn from dem? We culturally 'lightened, too. We be takin' hard courses in many subjects, like Afro-Am studies, women's studies, and policy studies. And who be mouthin' 'bout us not bein' good road? I be practicly knowin' 'Roots' cova to cova, 'til my mine be boogying to da words! And I be watchin' the Jeffersons on TV 'til I be blue in da face." Upon receiving the article, Review board member Jack Kemp (R-NY), a Republican congressman, resigns from the board, saying Kenney's article "relied on racial stereotypes" and undoubtedly offended many readers. "I am even more concerned that others found in it some support for racist viewpoints," Kemp continues, and concludes: "I do not want my name to appear in your paper. I am concerned that the association of my name with the Dartmouth Review is interpreted as an endorsement and I emphatically do not endorse the kind of antics displayed in your article." The Review appears unmoved by Kemp's resignation, with editors saying they hope to replace him with televangelist Jerry Falwell. Editor Dinesh D'Souza says the paper bears no responsibility for any allegations of racism, and tells a New Hampshire reporter, "It is not the Dartmouth Review but the Afro-American Society which is the primary cause of racial tension on campus." The undergraduate council and the faculty later votes to condemn the Review for creating a racially divisive atmosphere; Dartmouth's president will write a letter saying the Review performs "offensive practices," but that the issue cannot be solved by "violence or intolerance." [Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006]
Entity Tags: Dartmouth Review, Dartmouth Afro-American Society, Dartmouth College, Jack Kemp, Jerry Falwell, Keeney Jones, Dinesh D'Souza
May 1982 and After: START Talks Supplant SALT Negotiations, Make No Progress
President Reagan, giving a speech at his alma mater, Eureka College, renames the US-USSR SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) negotiations START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks). The renamed negotiations reflect profound dissension within the administration for and against arms limitation talks (see January 1981 and After and Early 1981 and After). State Department official Richard Burt, formerly opposed to arms negotiations, wants to ramp up the SALT talks and seek reductions in warheads and launchers. Defense Department official Richard Perle, the neoconservative who is working to block another arms limitation with the Soviet Union (see September 1981 through November 1983), wants to focus on payloads and "throw weight." The administration's compromise between the two positions—START—"ma[kes] no sense whatsoever," according to author J. Peter Scoblic.
Initial Proposal Unacceptable to Soviets - START's initial position—reducing each side's deployment to 850 nuclear missiles and 5,000 warheads, of which no more than 2,500 can be on ICBMs—sounds like a significant reduction on paper, but many experts on all sides of the nuclear arms issue worry that such an agreement, putting so many warheads on so few missiles, would actually encourage each side to consider a first strike in a crisis. Arms control proponent Paul Warnke says, "If the Russians accept Mr. Reagan's proposal, he'll be forced to reject it himself." But because of the disparity in missile configurations between the US and the Soviets, such an agreement would require the Soviets to drastically reduce their nuclear arsenal by 60 percent, while the US would lose almost nothing; therefore, the Soviets would never agree to such a proposal. Scoblic will note that as an opening gambit this proposal might be successful, if the Americans were prepared to back down somewhat and give the Soviets something. But the US negotiators have no intention of backing down. The Soviets are keenly interested in the US agreeing to reduce the number of cruise missiles it has deployed, but Reagan signs a National Security Directive forbidding US negotiators from even discussing the idea until the Soviets made significant concessions on "throw weight," essentially tying his negotiators' hands.
Chief US Negotiator Insults Soviets - The negotiations are made more difficult by the US team's chief negotiator, Edward Rowny. Rowny, a former national security adviser to hardline Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), does not believe in diplomacy with anyone, particularly the Soviets. According to Scoblic, Rowny believes in "telling it like it is" to his Soviet counterparts, which Scoblic calls "insulting one's negotiating opponents." As he has no real negotiating latitude, Rowny's diplomacy consists of little more than insults towards his Soviet counterparts. He tells them they do not understand the issues, boasts of his own Polish (i.e. anti-Russian) heritage, even stages walkouts over the seating arrangements. Rowny feels that he is opening a new era in negotiations, but in reality, the START talks are making no progress. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 123-124]
Entity Tags: Paul Warnke, Edward Rowny, J. Peter Scoblic, Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan, Richard Burt, Richard Perle
May 5, 1982: Unabomber Package Explodes, Injuring Vanderbilt University Official
A parcel addressed to the head of the Vanderbilt University computer science department, Patrick Fischer, explodes, injuring Fischer's secretary, Janet Smith. The package was originally sent to Fischer at Pennsylvania State University but was later forwarded to Nashville, Tennessee, where Vanderbilt University is located and where Fischer now teaches. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] Fischer will later describe Smith's injuries as "nasty lacerations," and will say, "She made a full recovery, but it was very traumatic for her." The bomb itself consists of smokeless powder and a large number of match heads. The package has a false return address, stating it comes from LeRoy Bearnson, a professor of electrical engineering at Utah's Brigham Young University. Bearnson will later say, "I suppose the guy didn't care which way it went or who got blown up." FBI agent Oliver "Buck" Revell, who takes part in early phases of the bomb investigation, will later say: "He might pick out an individual, but the person was still a symbolic target to him. I suspect that once he targeted the university research system, it didn't matter that much who received it. I suspect he felt the country would pick up the symbolism." The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). When Fischer, along with the rest of the country, learns of Kaczynski's identity, he will try to find connections between himself and Kaczynski, and come up with only the most tenuous of relationships: Fischer studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) while Kaczynski studied at nearby Harvard, and Fischer may have shared a Harvard math class with Kaczynski. He also spent time in Salt Lake City, a city with which Kaczynski is familiar. "The agents made it very clear that I was the target," Fischer will later say. "I still have no idea why, except my feeling is that he chose names at random with certain associations." [Washington Post, 4/14/1996]
Entity Tags: Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, Janet Smith, LeRoy Bearnson, Patrick Fischer, Vanderbilt University, Oliver ("Buck") Revell
July 2, 1982: 'Unabomber' Device Seriously Injures Berkeley Professor
An electrical engineering and computer science professor with the University of California at Berkeley, Diogenes Angelakos, picks up what he believes is a turpentine can, left in a common room in the computer science building during construction work. The can, a green, gallon-sized container, has wires dangling from it and a clock-dial attached to the wires. The device is a pipe bomb. It explodes, temporarily blinding Angelakos and severely burning his right hand. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 11/27/1993; Washington Post, 4/14/1996; Washington Post, 1998] The injuries to his hand and arm prevent him from effectively caring for his wife Helen in her final days; she will die a month later of terminal cancer. "I went to her funeral with my arm in a sling," Angelakos will later recall. [Washington Post, 11/27/1993] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). Kaczynski once worked as a professor at UC-Berkeley.
Entity Tags: Diogenes Angelakos, Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, University of California at Berkeley, Helen Angelakos
November 7, 1982: Port Authority Practices for Plane Crashing into the WTC
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey holds a drill at the World Trade Center based on the scenario of a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers. Numerous agencies participate in the drill, which is held on a Sunday. As well as the Port Authority, these include the New York City Fire Department, the New York City Police Department, and the Emergency Medical Services. Guy Tozzoli, the director of the Port Authority's World Trade Department, will describe the drill during a legislative hearing in 1993 (see (March 29, 1993)). He will recall that the Port Authority simulates the "total disaster" of "the airplane hitting the building" and participants simulate "blood coming out of people." He will add that the drill is "a real preparation for a disaster." [Newsday, 11/12/2001; Dwyer and Flynn, 2005, pp. 58-59] (During the hearing, Tozzoli will mistakenly recall the drill being conducted in the late 1970s, but it is in fact held in November 1982. [Dwyer and Flynn, 2005, pp. 274] ) The drill follows an incident in 1981, when an Argentine aircraft came within 90 seconds of crashing into the WTC's North Tower as a result of having problems communicating with air traffic controllers (see February 20, 1981). Asked about the drill shortly after 9/11, Tozzoli will say it was held "just to have people trained within the city for that particular scenario [of a plane hitting the WTC]." The 1982 exercise appears to be the last "joint drill involving all the emergency responders" held at the WTC prior to the 9/11 attacks, 19 years later, according to New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn. [Newsday, 11/12/2001; Dwyer and Flynn, 2005, pp. 59]
Entity Tags: Guy Tozzoli, New York City Police Department, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, New York City Fire Department
December 1982: Muslim Brotherhood Project to Infiltrate and Defeat the West
Youssef Nada. [Source: Zuma Press/ NewsCom]In November 2001, Swiss investigators will search the home of Youssef Nada, the leader of Al Taqwa Bank, a Swiss bank that had just been shut down by the US and the UN for alleged ties to al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other radical militant groups (see November 7, 2001). Nada and other Al Taqwa directors are prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Newsweek will say, "The Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928 as a religious and quasi-political counterweight to the corrupt and increasingly decadent royalist and colonial governments dominating the Islamic world, always has had two faces: one a peaceful public, proselytizing and social-welfare oriented wing; the other a clandestine, paramilitary wing.… Intelligence and law-enforcement officials say that while some branches and elements of the Brotherhood, such as the offshoots now operating in Egypt and Syria, have pledged to work for their goal of a worldwide Islamic caliphate using peaceful means and electoral politics, the Brotherhood has also spun off many—if not most—of the more violent local and international groups devoted to the cause of Islamic holy war." Such offshoots will include al-Qaeda and Hamas. [Newsweek, 12/24/2004] Swiss investigators discover a 14-page document from December 1982 entitled "The Project." Nada claims not to know who wrote the document or how he came to have it, and he says he disagrees with most of the contents. The document details a strategic plan whose ultimate goal is "the establishment of the reign of God over the entire world." The document begins, "This report presents a global vision of an international strategy of Islamic policy." It recommends to "study of the centers of power locally and worldwide, and the possibilities of placing them under influence," to contact and support new holy war movements anywhere in the world, to support holy war in Palestine, and "nurtur[e] the sentiment of rancor with regard to Jews." Swiss investigators who analyze the document will later write that the strategy aims to achieve "a growing influence over the Muslim world. It is pointed out that the [Muslim Brotherhood] doesn't have to act in the name of the Brotherhood, but can infiltrate existing entities. They can thus avoid being located and neutralized." The document also advocates creating a network of religious, educational, and charitable institutions in Europe and the US to increase influence there. [Unknown, 12/1982; Le Temps (Geneva), 10/6/2005]
Entity Tags: Muslim Brotherhood
1983: White Supremacists Plot to Blow Up Oklahoma City Federal Building
CSA members outside their Arkansas compound. Some CSA members also belong to the Elohim City community. [Source: GifS (.com)]Three white supremacists living in the Elohim City, Oklahoma, compound (see 1973 and After) visit Oklahoma City and make plans to blow up the Murrah Federal Building there. The three are: James Ellison, the leader of the Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord (CSA) who will be arrested in 1985 after a four-day standoff with federal authorities; Kerry Noble; and Richard Wayne Snell, who will be executed for murdering a black police officer and a businessman he erroneously believed to be Jewish (see 9:00 p.m. April 19, 1995). All three men have close ties to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations (see Early 1970s). The evidence of their plan is released during the investigation of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), and is collated by former US prosecutor Steven N. Snyder, who once worked out of the Fort Smith, Arkansas District Attorney's office. The plan involves parking a van or trailer in front of the building and exploding it with rockets detonated by a timer. Snyder will come across the information on the bombing plot while preparing for the trial of a sedition case against a 14-man group of white supremacists, 10 of whom are charged with planning to overthrow the government. (All 14 will be acquitted in a 1988 trial—see Late 1987 - April 8, 1998.) Snyder will get the information from Ellison, who provides information to him as part of his role as chief witness for the prosecution. The other defendants in the trial, many of whom are believed to have had some connection to the bombing plot, will be Richard Butler, the head of Aryan Nations; Robert E. Miles, a former Klansman who heads the Mountain Church of Jesus Christ the Saviour in Cohoctah, Michigan; and Louis R. Beam Jr., a former grand dragon of the Texas Ku Klux Klan and "ambassador at large" of the Aryan Nations. Ellison will tell Snyder that in July 1983, he attends a meeting of extremist groups in Hayden Lake, Idaho, the location of the Aryan Nations headquarters, where he informs them of the death of fellow white supremacist Gordon Kahl in a gun battle with law enforcement agents in Arkansas (see March 13 - June 3, 1983). Snyder's notes of Ellison's statement read, "Kahl was the catalyst that made everyone come forth and change the organizations from thinkers to doers." According to Ellison, the leaders of the various supremacist groups discuss how to overthrow the federal government, using as a sourcebook the novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978), which tells of a successful move by white supremacists to overthrow the government and then commit genocide against Jews and blacks. Ellison will tell Snyder that he volunteers to assassinate federal officials in Arkansas as part of the plot. The leaders discuss blowing up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, other federal buildings, and the Dallas office of a Jewish organization. According to Ellison's trial testimony, in October 1983 Snell and another participant, Steve Scott, "asked me to design a rocket launcher that could be used to destroy these buildings from a distance." Of Snell, Ellison will testify: "On one of the trips when I was with Wayne, he took me to some of the buildings and asked me to go in the building and check the building out. This kind of thing." Ellison will tell Snyder that at Snell's request, he surveills the Murrah Building to assess what it would take to damage and destroy it. He makes preliminary sketches and drawings. According to the preliminary plans, rocket launchers are to be "placed in a trailer or a van so that it could be driven up to a given spot, parked there, and a timed detonating device could be triggered so that the driver could walk away and leave the vehicle set in position, and he would have time to clear the area before any of the rockets launched.… And I was asked to make it so it would fit in either a trailer or a van or a panel truck." Synder will later say that Snell is embittered towards the government because of the IRS, which took him to court and seized property from him for failure to pay taxes. But, Snyder will add, "you can't be sure about any of this, because a federal raid, to a lot of these people, is any time the postman brings the mail." Ellison will be taken into custody after a four-day standoff with state and federal authorities in 1985, only convinced to surrender after white supremacist Robert Millar talks him into giving up (see 1973 and After). Ellison will be convicted of racketeering charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He will enter the federal witness protection program until completing his parole and leaving the program on April 21, 1995, two days after the Oklahoma City bombing. [New York Times, 5/20/1995; Anti-Defamation League, 8/9/2002; Nicole Nichols, 2003]
Entity Tags: Louis R. Beam, Jr, James Ellison, Gordon Kahl, Elohim City, Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord, Aryan Nations, Kerry Noble, Murrah Federal Building, Richard Girnt Butler, Robert Millar, Steve Scott, Steven N. Snyder, Richard Wayne Snell, Robert E. Miles
March 13 - June 3, 1983: Anti-Tax Activist Kills Sheriff, Is Killed in Fatal Shootout in Arkansas
Gordon Kahl, an anti-tax protester, Posse Comitatus member (see 1967 - 1973 and 1975 - 1981), and federal fugitive who killed two US Marshals in a February shootout in North Dakota (see February 13, 1983 and After), arrives at a farm in Mountain Home, Arkansas. The farm owner, Arthur Russell, is a member of another white supremacist organization, the Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord (CSA), and willingly hides Kahl, who is facing a second warrant for his arrest issued March 11. Kahl spends two months hiding at Russell's farmhouse, studying the Bible, watching television, and spending time with Russell's daughter Karen. While Kahl is in hiding, his family and colleagues in the Posse who were involved in the shootout are tried in May 1983; his son Yorie Kahl and colleague Scott Faul are convicted of second-degree murder and six other related charges; David Broer is convicted of conspiracy and of harboring a fugitive; and his wife Joan Kahl is acquitted of conspiracy and harboring a fugitive.
FBI Learns of Kahl's Whereabouts - In late May, after the convictions, Kahl leaves the Russell farm with his CSA friend Leonard Ginter and Ginter's wife Norma. Ginter, an unemployed carpenter, belongs to a small anti-government group called Americans for Constitutional Enforcement, but is not too ideologically rigid not to accept food stamps for himself and his wife. Kahl and the Ginters drive to Smithville, Arkansas, a tiny Ozark town where the Ginters have a concrete house with a vegetable patch and a chicken pen. After Kahl leaves, Karen Russell calls the FBI and informs them of his whereabouts.
Final Confrontation - On June 3, FBI agent James Blasingame organizes a group of US Marshals and local lawmen at the Lawrence County courthouse to plan how best to apprehend Kahl and the Ginters. Twenty-eight law enforcement officials, including 15 US Marshals, six FBI agents, three state police officers, and four county lawmen descend on the Ginter home. While en route, they encounter Ginter, driving away from the house in a car with a rifle in the backseat; he has a cocked and loaded pistol in his lap. Ginter is apprehended without incident, but lies to the police, saying Kahl is not at the house. Unfortunately, the officials believe his story. At the officials' request, Ginter drives back to the house, with five officials behind. Ginter parks his car, as do the officials; Ginter gets out and shouts: "Norma, come out. The FBI wants to talk to you." He emphasizes the word "FBI" as loudly as possible, alerting Kahl to their presence. Norma Ginter comes out and is escorted away. Lawrence County Sheriff Gene Matthews, departing from the plan, enters the house through a utility room off the garage, with US Marshal James Hall and Arkansas State Police investigator Ed Fitzpatrick following him. Kahl is waiting in the kitchen, armed with a formidable Ruger Mini-14 assault rifle. When Matthews enters the kitchen, the two men see each other and open fire simultaneously; Kahl wounds Matthews fatally with two shots to the chest and Matthews kills Kahl with a bullet to the head. Hall and Fitzpatrick, unsure of what has happened, begin firing wildly, striking Matthews with buckshot. Matthews manages to get to a police cruiser before collapsing, and gasps, "I got him." But the other officials are unsure if Kahl is actually dead, and if others may be in the house as well. They open fire on the house and let loose a barrage of tear gas. They then set the house afire with a can of diesel fuel; the fire ignites several thousand rounds of ammunition stored inside the house and the house is all but gutted by the conflagration. Eventually, officials are able to enter the house and find what remains of Kahl's body in the kitchen. Posse Comitatus leader William Potter Gale, asked by a reporter about Kahl's death, says that Kahl was murdered for helping farmers and belonging to the group. Another Posse member, Richard Wayne Snell, will later claim that Matthews had been killed by FBI agents after interrupting them during their torture of Kahl. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2001; Levitas, 2002, pp. 217-220; Anti-Defamation League, 2011]
Episode Destabilizes Posse Comitatus - The Kahl episode receives national attention and helps destabilize the Posse Comitatus (see 1984). The media quickly learns of Kahl's racist and anti-Semitic past, and reprints a letter he wrote the same night he killed the marshals and later sent to reporters. In his letter, Kahl announced that it was time to begin killing Jews: "We are engaged in a struggle to the death between the people of the Kingdom of God, and the Kingdom of Satan. We are a conquered and occupied nation; conquered and occupied by the Jews, and their hundreds or maybe thousands of front organizations doing their un-Godly work. They have two objectives in their goal of ruling the world. Destroy Christianity and the White race. Neither can be accomplished by itself, they stand or fall together." In an attempt to exonerate his son and Faul, Kahl took credit for all the fatal shots. Kahl's espousal of violence and anti-Semitism causes a backlash when some Posse Comitatus members attempt to portray him as a martyr. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2001; Levitas, 2002, pp. 217-220]
Entity Tags: Ed Fitzpatrick, Scott Faul, William Potter Gale, David Broer, Arthur Russell, Americans for Constitutional Enforcement, Richard Wayne Snell, Posse Comitatus, Yorie Kahl, Leonard Ginter, James Blasingame, Gordon Kahl, Gene Matthews, Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord, Norma Ginter, James Hall, Karen Russell, Joan Kahl
July 29, 1983: SAAR Network Is Founded
555 Grove Street, Herndon, Virginia. This is the location of the SAAR Foundation/Safa Group and many related businesses. [Source: Paul Sperry]The SAAR Foundation is incorporated in Herndon, Virginia, just outside Washington. It will become an umbrella organization for a cluster of over 100 charities, think tanks, and businesses known as the SAAR network. In 2002, the US government will raid the SAAR network looking for ties to the Al Taqwa Bank and the Muslim Brotherhood (see March 20, 2002). [Farah, 2004, pp. 153]
Entity Tags: SAAR Foundation
1984: Bin Laden Develops Ties with Pakistani ISI and Afghan Warlord
Bin Laden first works for Maktab al-Khidamat from this building in Peshawar, a former British government guesthouse. [Source: PBS]Bin Laden moves to Peshawar, a Pakistani town bordering Afghanistan, and helps run a front organization for the mujaheddin known as Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), which funnels money, arms, and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war. [New Yorker, 1/24/2000] "MAK [is] nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation." [MSNBC, 8/24/1998] Bin Laden becomes closely tied to the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and greatly strengthens Hekmatyar's opium smuggling operations. [Le Monde (Paris), 9/14/2001] Hekmatyar, who also has ties with bin Laden, the CIA, and drug running, has been called "an ISI stooge and creation." [Asia Times, 11/15/2001] MAK is also known as Al-Kifah and its branch in New York is called the Al-Kifah Refugee Center. This branch will play a pivotal role in the 1993 WTC bombing and also has CIA ties (see January 24, 1994).
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Central Intelligence Agency, Maktab al-Khidamat, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, War in Afghanistan
January 17, 1984: Port Authority Terrorist Intelligence Unit Issues Report on WTC Security
Detective Sergeant Peter Caram, the head of the New York Port Authority's Terrorist Intelligence Unit, has been directed by the assistant superintendent of the Port Authority Police Department to compile a report on the vulnerability of the WTC to a terrorist attack. Having previously worked at the WTC Command, Caram has exclusive knowledge of some of the center's security weaknesses. On this day he issues his four-page report, titled "Terrorist Threat and Targeting Assessment: World Trade Center." It looks at the reasoning behind why the WTC might be singled out for attack, and identifies three areas of particular vulnerability: the perimeter of the WTC complex, the truck dock entrance, and the subgrade area (the lower floors below ground level). Caram specifically mentions that terrorists could use a car bomb in the subgrade area—a situation similar to what occurs in the 1993 bombing (see February 26, 1993). [Caram, 2001, pp. 5, 84-85; New York County Supreme Court, 1/20/2004] This is the first of several reports during the 1980s, identifying the WTC as a potential terrorist target.
Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Peter Caram
Early 1984: Port Authority Establishes Office of Special Planning
Peter Goldmark. [Source: Environmental Defense Fund]Peter Goldmark, the executive director of the New York Port Authority, is concerned that, in light of terrorist attacks occurring around the world (see April 18-October 23, 1983), Port Authority facilities, including the World Trade Center, could become terrorist targets. [Associated Press, 9/28/2005; New York Times, 10/27/2005] He therefore creates a unit called the Office of Special Planning (OSP) to evaluate the vulnerabilities of all Port Authority facilities and present recommendations to minimize the risks of attack. The OSP is staffed by Port Authority police and civilian workers, and is headed by Edward O'Sullivan, who has experience in counterterrorism from earlier careers in the Navy and Marine Corps. In carrying out its work, the OSP will consult with such US agencies as the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, NSA, and Defense Department. It will also consult with security officials from other countries that have gained expertise in combating terrorism, such as England, France, Italy, and Israel. [Glanz and Lipton, 2004, pp. 226; New York County Supreme Court, 1/20/2004] According to Peter Caram, head of the Port Authority's Terrorist Intelligence Unit, the OSP will develop "an expertise unmatched in the United States." [Caram, 2001, pp. 12] In 1985 it will issue a report called "Counter-Terrorism Perspectives: The World Trade Center" (see November 1985). [New York Court of Appeals, 2/16/1999] It will exist until 1987. [Village Voice, 1/5/2000]
Entity Tags: Office of Special Planning, Peter Goldmark, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
(Between Early 1984 and October 1985): Office of Special Planning Studies Vulnerability of WTC to Terrorist Attack
The Office of Special Planning (OSP), a unit set up by the New York Port Authority to assess the security of its facilities against terrorist attacks (see Early 1984), spends four to six months studying the World Trade Center. It examines the center's design through looking at photographs, blueprints, and plans. It brings in experts such as the builders of the center, plus experts in sabotage and explosives, and has them walk through the WTC to identify any areas of vulnerability. According to New York Times reporters James Glanz and Eric Lipton, when Edward O'Sullivan, head of the OSP, looks at WTC security, he finds "one vulnerability after another. Explosive charges could be placed at key locations in the power system. Chemical or biological agents could be dropped into the coolant system. The Hudson River water intake could be blown up. Someone might even try to infiltrate the large and vulnerable subterranean realms of the World Trade Center site." In particular, "There was no control at all over access to the underground, two-thousand-car parking garage." However, O'Sullivan consults "one of the trade center's original structural engineers, Les Robertson, on whether the towers would collapse because of a bomb or a collision with a slow-moving airplane." He is told there is "little likelihood of a collapse no matter how the building was attacked." [Glanz and Lipton, 2004, pp. 227; New York County Supreme Court, 1/20/2004] The OSP will issue its report called "Counter-Terrorism Perspectives: The World Trade Center" late in 1985 (see November 1985).
Entity Tags: Office of Special Planning, Leslie Robertson, Edward O'Sullivan, World Trade Center
June 18, 1984 and After: Jewish Radio Host Murdered by Neo-Nazis
Alan Berg. [Source: Denver Post]Alan Berg, a Jewish, progressive talk show host for Denver's KOA 850 AM Radio, is gunned down in his driveway as he is stepping out of his car. The murder is carried out by members of the violent white-supremacist group The Order (see Late September 1983), a splinter group of the Aryan Nations white nationalist movement. Berg, who was described as often harsh and abrasive, regularly confronted right-wing and militia members on his show. Federal investigators learn that The Order's "hit list" includes Berg, television producer Norman Lear, a Kansas federal judge, and Morris Dees, a civil rights lawyer and co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Radio producer Anath White later says that some of Berg's last shows were particularly rancorous, involving confrontational exchanges with anti-Semitic members of the Christian Identity movement (see 1960s and After). "That got him on the list and got him moved up the list to be assassinated," White will say. [HistoryLink, 12/6/2006; Rocky Mountain News, 5/1/2007; Denver Post, 6/18/2009]
Preparing for the Murder - Order leader Robert Jay Mathews had already sent a colleague to Denver to determine if Berg was a viable target (see May 17, 1984). The four members of the assassination team—Mathews, Bruce Pierce, David Lane, and Richard Scutari—assemble at a local Motel 6 to review their plans. Pierce, the assassin, has brought a .45 caliber Ingram MAC-10 submachine gun for the job. All four men begin to surveill Berg's townhouse.
Gunned Down - At 9:21 p.m., Berg drives his Volkswagen Beetle into his driveway. Lane, the driver, pulls up behind him. Mathews leaps out of the car and opens the rear door for Pierce, who jumps out and runs up the driveway. Berg exits his vehicle with a bag of groceries. Pierce immediately opens fire with his submachine gun, pumping either 12 or 13 bullets into Berg's face and body before the gun jams. (Sources claim both figures of bullet wounds in Berg as accurate.) Pierce and Mathews get back into their car, rush back to the Motel 6, gather their belongings, and leave town. Three of the four members of the "hit squad" will soon be apprehended, charged, and convicted. Pierce is sentenced to 252 years in prison, including time for non-related robberies, and will die in prison in 2010; Lane is given 150 years, and will die in prison in 2007. Neither man is prosecuted for murder, as the evidence will be determined to be inconclusive; rather, they will be charged with violating Berg's civil rights. Scutari, accused of serving as a lookout for Pierce, and Jean Craig, accused of collecting information on Berg for the murder, will both be acquitted of culpability in the case, but will be convicted of other unrelated crimes. Mathews will not be charged due to lack of evidence of his participation; months later, he will die in a confrontation with law enforcement officials (see December 8, 1984). [Rocky Mountain News, 5/1/2007; Denver Post, 6/18/2009; Denver Post, 8/17/2010] In sentencing Pierce to prison, Judge Richard Matsch will say of the murder, "The man [Berg] was killed for who he was, what he believed in, and what he said and did, and that crime strikes at the very core of the Constitution." [Denver Post, 8/17/2010]
Re-Enacting a Fictional Murder? - Some will come to believe that the assassins may have attempted to re-enact the fictional murder of a Jewish talk-show host depicted in The Turner Diaries (see 1978). [Rocky Mountain News, 5/1/2007; The Moderate Voice, 11/30/2007]
'Opening Shot ... of a Truly Revolutionary Radical Right' - Mark Potok of the SPLC will characterize Berg's murder as an early event leading to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). "In a sense, it was one of the opening shots of a truly revolutionary radical right," Potok will say, "perfectly willing to countenance the mass murder of American civilians for their cause." [Denver Post, 6/18/2009] Berg's ex-wife, Judith Berg, will travel around the country in the years after her ex-husband's murder, speaking about what she calls the "disease and anatomy of hate," a sickness that can infect people so strongly that they commit horrible crimes. In 2007, she will tell a reporter that Berg's murder was a watershed event that inspired more hate-movement violence. "What happened to Alan in the grown-up world has reached into the youth culture," she will say. "It opened the door to an acceptance of violence as a means of acting on hate.… While our backs are turned toward overseas, hate groups are having a heyday. People are very unhappy; they're out of work and jobs are scarce. They're ripe for joining extremist groups. We need to understand what happened to make sure it doesn't happen again." [Rocky Mountain News, 5/1/2007] White later says of Pierce, Lane, and their fellows: "It's left me to wonder what makes somebody like this. I think these people didn't have much opportunity in their lives and scapegoat. They blame others for not making it." [Denver Post, 8/17/2010]
Entity Tags: Norman Lear, Robert Jay Mathews, Richard Scutari, Morris Dees, Richard P. Matsch, Mark Potok, Jean Margaret Craig, Judith Berg, Alan Berg, Anath White, Aryan Nations, Bruce Carroll Pierce, David Edan Lane, KOA 850 AM Radio, The Order
Late 1984: Bin Laden and His Mentor Azzam Set Up Precursor Organization to Al-Qaeda
Sheikh Abdullah Azzam and his son-in-law Abdullah Anas in Afghanistan during the 1980s. [Source: History Channel]Osama bin Laden, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden's mentor, and Abdullah Anas, Azzam's son-in-law, create an organization called Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), known in English as the Services Office. It is also known as Al-Kifah. This organization will become a key node in the private funding network for the Afghan war. [Bergen, 2006, pp. 28-30] The US government will later call it the "precursor organization to al-Qaeda." [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 89 ] Initially, Azzam runs it while bin Laden funds it. They create a guesthouse in Peshawar, Pakistan, to help foreign volunteers connect with rebel forces in Afghanistan. Prior to this time, the number of such volunteers is very small, perhaps only several dozen. But the number begins to dramatically expand. [New York Times, 1/14/2001; Bergen, 2006, pp. 28-30] Donors will include the Saudi intelligence agency, the Saudi Red Crescent, the Muslim World League, and private donors, including Saudi princes. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/23/2001] MAK/Al-Kifah begins fundraising in the US one year later (see 1985-1989).
Entity Tags: Maktab al-Khidamat, Abdullah Anas, Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden
1985-1989: Precursor to Al-Qaeda Puts Down US Roots
Makhtab al-Khidamat offices in the US in the late 1980s. Some of the offices in fact were represented by single individuals. [Source: National Geographic] (click image to enlarge)Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden's mentor, makes repeated trips to the US and other countries, building up his Pakistan-based organization, Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), or "Services Office" in English. It is also known as Al-Kifah, which means "struggle." Azzam founded the Al-Kifah/MAK in 1984 (see Late 1984). Branches open in over 30 US cities, as Muslim-Americans donate millions of dollars to support the Afghan war against the Soviet Union. The most important branch, called the Al-Kifah Refugee Center, opens in Brooklyn, New York (see 1986-1993). Azzam is assassinated in a car bomb attack in late 1989 (see November 24, 1989). Bin Laden soon takes over the organization, which effectively morphs into al-Qaeda. His followers take over the US offices and they become financial conduits for al-Qaeda operations. [Lance, 2003, pp. 40-41]
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Al-Kifah Refugee Center, Maktab al-Khidamat, Al-Qaeda, Abdullah Azzam
April 15, 1985: Former 'Order' Member Kills Missouri Trooper
David Tate, one of two members of the now-defunct white supremacist group The Order to escape the government's massive prosecution of its members (see Late December 1984 - April 1985), is stopped by two Missouri state troopers conducting random vehicle and license checks. He is trying to flee to a Christian Identity (see 1960s and After) survivalist compound called the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA). Tate opens fire on the two officers with a MAC-10 submachine gun, killing one and critically wounding the other. He is captured five days later hiding in a city park in Arkansas. He will be convicted of assault and murder, and sentenced to life without parole. Federal authorities will use the Tate incident to arrest the CSA leadership (see 1983); the organization will soon fold. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005; HistoryLink, 12/6/2006]
Entity Tags: David Charles Tate, The Order
May 15, 1985: Second 'Unabomber' Package Detonates at California University, Injuring Graduate Student
A University of California, Berkeley graduate student, John E. Hauser, picks up a package in the university's computer science lab. The package is a bomb made up of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder. It explodes, costing Hauser four fingers from his right hand and severing arteries. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 4/14/1996; Washington Post, 1998] The bomb has apparently been in the lab for two or three days, left on top of a stack of three-ring binders. Hauser thought it was a file box for another student's computer cards, and picked it up intending to identify its owner. Upon opening it, he hears an odd buzzing sound, then the bomb detonates. Ironically, the victim of a previous bombing, Professor Diogenes Angelakos (see July 2, 1982), hears the explosion, rushes to offer assistance, and ties a tourniquet around Hauser's arm. Hauser will lose much of the use of his right arm, and will be forced to abandon his dreams of becoming an Air Force fighter pilot and perhaps an astronaut. He will later say, "There is not a day that goes by when I'm not reminded that I don't have full use of my right hand… from trying to play racquetball to trying to pick up my daughter." Of the bombing, Hauser will say, "This was as much a target of opportunity as anything else." The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). Kaczynski once worked as a professor at UC-Berkeley. Both this bombing and the previous one are in Cory Hall, a building close to where Kaczynski once taught. Captain Bill Foley of the Berkeley campus police will later say: "He taught in Campbell Hall and had offices in one of our temporary buildings. If you did a triangle between Campbell and that temporary building you would hit Cory Hall at peak of the triangle." Cory Hall also houses the engineering and computer science departments, known to be favorite targets of the Unabomber. [Washington Post, 11/27/1993; Washington Post, 4/14/1996] This bomb is more powerful than earlier Unabomber constructions, using a mix of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder to cause the explosion. The bomb's shrapnel consists of tacks, nails, and bits of lead. Stamped on the end seal of the bomb's pipe are the initials "FC," which will later be found to stand for "Freedom Club." [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005]
Entity Tags: Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, University of California at Berkeley, John E. Hauser, Diogenes Angelakos
June 13, 1985: 'Unabomber' Package Mailed to Boeing Disarmed, No One Injured
A suspicious package mailed to the Auburn, Washington, headquarters of the Boeing Aircraft Company is opened and safely disarmed by the local bomb squad. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] The package containing a pipe bomb gets lost in Boeing's internal mail system; the package is in the process of being returned to the apparent sender before it draws the attention of Boeing employees, who call the bomb squad. [Washington Post, 4/14/1996] The bomb will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). Kaczynski tried to destroy a Boeing aircraft with another bomb six years ago (see November 15, 1979). Like earlier bombs, this bomb contains the initials "FC" engraved on a metal component; authorities will later learn that "FC" stands for "Freedom Club." [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005]
Entity Tags: Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, Boeing Company
July 1985: Report Outlines Terrorism Threat to WTC
Charles Schnabolk. [Source: Institute for Design Professionals]While the Office of Special Planning is still working on its report about the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to terrorist attack, the New York Port Authority hired security consultant Charles Schnabolk to also review the center's security systems. [UExpress (.com), 10/12/2001; New York County Supreme Court, 1/20/2004] Schnabolk was involved in designing the original security system when the WTC complex was built. [Institue for Design Professionals, 2009; The Security Design Group, 2010] This month his secret report, titled "Terrorism Threat Perspective and Proposed Response for the World Trade Center" is released. It sets out four levels of possible terrorism against the center, and gives examples of each: "(1) PREDICTABLE—Bomb threats; (2) PROBABLE—Bombing attempts, computer crime; (3) POSSIBLE—Hostage taking; (4) CATASTROPHIC—Aerial bombing, chemical agents in water supply or air conditioning (caused by agents of a foreign government or a programmed suicide)." Similar to other reports in the mid-1980s, it also warns that the WTC "is highly vulnerable through the parking lot." [UExpress (.com), 10/12/2001; New York County Supreme Court, 1/20/2004]
Entity Tags: Charles Schnabolk, World Trade Center
November 1985: Office of Special Planning Report Calls WTC a 'Most Attractive Terrorist Target'
After assessing the security of New York Port Authority facilities, the Office of Special Planning (OSP), the Port Authority's own antiterrorist task force, releases a report called "Counter-Terrorism Perspectives: The World Trade Center." For security purposes, only seven copies are made, being hand-delivered and signed for by its various recipients, including the executive director of the Port Authority, the superintendent of the Port Authority Police, and the director of the World Trade Department. [New York Court of Appeals, 2/16/1999; Village Voice, 1/5/2000] Because of the WTC's visibility, symbolic value, and it being immediately recognizable to people from around the world, the report concludes that the center is a "most attractive terrorist target." [New York County Supreme Court, 1/20/2004] The report, which is 120 pages long, lists various possible methods of attacking the center. [New York Court of Appeals, 2/16/1999; Caram, 2001, pp. 103; Barrett and Collins, 2006, pp. 87] One of these is that a "time bomb-laden vehicle could be driven into the WTC and parked in the public parking area.… At a predetermined time, the bomb could be exploded in the basement." [Glanz and Lipton, 2004, pp. 227] As a Senate Committee Report will find in August 1993, "The specifics of the February 26, 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center garage were almost identical to those envisioned in the [OSP] report." [New York Court of Appeals, 2/16/1999] Due to the Port Authority's failure to adequately implement the OSP's recommendations, the report will be crucial evidence in a successful civil trial against it in October 2005, charging negligence in failing to prevent the 1993 bombing. [Bloomberg, 10/26/2005; New York Times, 10/27/2005; New York Times, 2/18/2006] As of mid-2006, the other possible methods of attacking the WTC listed in the report remain undisclosed.
Entity Tags: Office of Special Planning, World Trade Center, World Trade Department, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
November 15, 1985: Michigan Graduate Student Injured by 'Unabomber' Exploding Package
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, research assistant Nicklaus Suino of the University of Michigan suffers burns and shrapnel wounds when he opens a package bomb at the home of psychology professor James V. McConnell. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). McConnell may be one of Kaczynski's most personal targets. McConnell is a rich, flamboyant, and somewhat eccentric professor who espouses controversial theories about human behavior modification based on his research with flatworms. McConnell taught at the University of Michigan when Kaczynski was taking graduate courses in mathematics there. The package mailed to McConnell's house comes with a one-page letter taped to the top, bearing a Salt Lake City postmark and reading in part: "I'd like you to read this book. Everybody in your position should read this book." McConnell asks Suino to open it. The resulting explosion injures Suino; McConnell escapes with slight, temporary hearing loss but is profoundly shaken by the incident. [Washington Post, 4/14/1996]
Entity Tags: Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, James V. McConnell, Nicklaus Suino, University of Michigan
December 11, 1985: Shop Owner Killed by 'Unabomber' Device Disguised as Road Hazard
Hugh C. Scrutton. [Source: Washington Post]In Sacramento, California, Hugh C. Scrutton is killed when he tries to remove what looks to be a road hazard from the parking lot—a block of wood with nails protruding from it inside a paper bag—behind his computer rental shop. The "hazard" is actually a bomb [BBC, 11/12/1987; Knight Ridder, 5/28/1995; Washington Post, 1998; World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] consisting of three 10-inch pipes filled with a mixture of potassium sulfate, potassium chloride, ammonium nitrate, and aluminum powder. The bomb contains shrapnel consisting of sharp chunks of metal, nails, and splinters. It explodes with enormous force, killing Scrutton almost instantly. [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] Like earlier bombs, this bomb contains the initials "FC" engraved on a metal component; authorities later learn that "FC" stands for "Freedom Club." [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). In 1967, Scrutton took a summer math course at the University of California at Berkeley while Kaczynski taught mathematics there; it is not known whether the two crossed paths during that time. [Washington Post, 4/14/1996]
Entity Tags: Hugh Scrutton, Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, University of California at Berkeley
1986-1993: CIA and Bin Laden Both Closely Tied to Recruiting and Fund-Raising Office for Afghanistan
Fawaz Damra. [Source: Associated Press]By the mid-1980s, Osama bin Laden and his mentor Abdullah Azzam jointly founded a charity front based in Pakistan which is called Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) (which means "services office") and is also known as Al-Kifah (which means "struggle") (see 1984). Branches start to open in the US; the first one apparently opens in Tucson, Arizona, where al-Qaeda has a sleeper cell (see 1986). But around 1986, Khaled Abu el-Dahab, the right hand man of double agent Ali Mohamed, informally founds the branch in Brooklyn, New York, and it soon becomes the most important US branch. [New York Times, 10/22/1998; Burr and Collins, 2006, pp. 269-270] On December 29, 1987, three men, Mustafa Shalabi, Fawaz Damra, and Ali Shinawy, formally file papers incorporating Al-Kifah, which is called the Al-Kifah Refugee Center. At first, it is located inside the Al Farouq mosque, which is led by Damra. But eventually it will get it own office space next to the mosque. Shalabi, a naturalized citizen from Egypt, runs the office with two assistants: Mahmud Abouhalima, who will later be convicted for a role in bombing the World Trade Center in 1993 (see February 26, 1993), and El Sayyid Nosair, who will assassinate a Jewish leader in New York in 1990 (see November 5, 1990). [New York Times, 4/11/1993; Newsweek, 10/1/2001; Cleveland Plain Dealer, 11/4/2001] Jamal al-Fadl, a founding member of al-Qaeda and future FBI informant (see June 1996-April 1997), also works at the Al-Kifah Refugee Center in its early days. [Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 155] The Brooklyn office recruits Arab immigrants and Arab-Americans to go fight in Afghanistan, even after the Soviets withdraw in early 1989. As many as 200 are sent there from the office. Before they go, the office arranges training in the use of rifles, assault weapons, and handguns, and then helps them with visas, plane tickets, and contacts. They are generally sent to the MAK/Al-Kifah office in Peshawar, Pakistan, and then connected to either the radical Afghan faction led by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf or the equally radical one led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. [New York Times, 4/11/1993] The CIA has some murky connection to Al-Kifah that has yet to be fully explained. Newsweek will later say the Brooklyn office "doubled as a recruiting post for the CIA seeking to steer fresh troops to the mujaheddin" fighting in Afghanistan. At the same time, the Brooklyn office is where "veterans of [the Afghan war arrived] in the United States—many with passports arranged by the CIA." [Newsweek, 10/1/2001] Robert I. Friedman, writing for New York magazine, will comment that the Brooklyn office was a refuge for ex- and future mujaheddin, "But the highlight for the center's regulars were the inspirational jihad lecture series, featuring CIA-sponsored speakers.… One week on Atlantic Avenue, it might be a CIA-trained Afghan rebel traveling on a CIA-issued visa; the next, it might be a clean-cut Arabic-speaking Green Beret, who would lecture about the importance of being part of the mujaheddin, or 'warriors of the Lord.' The more popular lectures were held upstairs in the roomier Al-Farouq Mosque; such was the case in 1990 when Sheikh [Omar] Abdul-Rahman, traveling on a CIA-supported visa, came to town." One frequent instructor is double agent Ali Mohamed, who is in the US Special Forces at the time (see 1987-1989). Bin Laden's mentor Azzam frequently visits and lectures in the area. In 1988, he tells "a rapt crowd of several hundred in Jersey City, 'Blood and martyrdom are the only way to create a Muslim society.… However, humanity won't allow us to achieve this objective, because all humanity is the enemy of every Muslim.'" [New York Magazine, 3/17/1995] Ayman Al-Zawahiri, future Al-Qaeda second in command, makes a recruiting trip to the office in 1989 (see Spring 1993). [New Yorker, 9/9/2002] The Brooklyn office also raises a considerable amount of money for MAK/Al-Kifah back in Pakistan. The Independent will later call the office "a place of pivotal importance to Operation Cyclone, the American effort to support the mujaheddin. The Al-Kifah [Refugee Center was] raising funds and, crucially, providing recruits for the struggle, with active American assistance." [Independent, 11/1/1998] Abdul-Rahman, better known as the "Blind Sheikh," is closely linked to bin Laden. In 1990, he moves to New York on another CIA-supported visa (see July 1990) and soon dominates the Al-Kifah Refugee Center. Shalabi has a falling out with him over how to spend the money they raise and he is killed in mysterious circumstances in early 1991, completing Abdul-Rahman's take over. Now, both the Brooklyn and Pakistan ends of the Al-Kifah/MAK network are firmly controlled by bin Laden and his close associates. In 1998, the US government will say that al-Qaeda's "connection to the United States evolved from the Al-Kifah Refugee Center." Yet there is no sign that the CIA stops its relationship with the Brooklyn office before it closes down shortly after the 1993 WTC bombing. [New York Times, 10/22/1998]
Entity Tags: Jamal al-Fadl, Khaled Abu el-Dahab, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Omar Abdul-Rahman, Mustafa Shalabi, Maktab al-Khidamat, Osama bin Laden, Fawaz Damra, El Sayyid Nosair, Mahmud Abouhalima, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Central Intelligence Agency, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, Al Farouq Mosque, Abdullah Azzam, Ali Shinawy, Ali Mohamed, Al-Kifah Refugee Center
(Mid-1986): Report Rates Vulnerability of Public Areas of WTC to Terrorist Attack as 'Very High'
Following the release of the Office of Special Planning's (OSP) report, which called the WTC a "most attractive terrorist target" (see November 1985), the New York Port Authority, which owns the center, seeks a second opinion on the OSP's recommendations. At a cost of approximately $100,000, it hires the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to review the general security of the WTC. SAIC states in its report that the attractiveness of the WTC's public areas to terrorists is "very high." Like the OSP, SAIC pays particular attention to the underground levels of the center and describes a possible attack scenario much like what occurs in the 1993 bombing. [Caram, 2001, pp. 105-106; New York County Supreme Court, 1/20/2004]
Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
October 11-12, 1986: Reagan, Gorbachev Almost Conclude Agreement to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons; Negotiations Founder on US Missile Defense Program
Gorbachev and Reagan at the Reykjavik summit. [Source: Ronald Reagan Library]President Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a second summit, to follow on the success of their first meeting almost a year before (see November 16-19, 1985). They base their discussion on Gorbachev's January proposals of deep cuts in the two nations' nuclear arsenals (see January 1986).
Elimination of All Nuclear Weapons by 1996 - Gorbachev and his negotiators begin by reiterating Gorbachev's proposals for a 50 percent cut in all nuclear weapons, deep reductions in Soviet ICBMs, and the elimination of all European-based intermediate nuclear weapons. Reagan and his negotiators counter with a proposal for both sides to destroy half of their nuclear ballistic missiles in the next five years, and the rest to be destroyed over the next five, leaving both sides with large arsenals of cruise missiles and bomber-based weapons. Gorbachev ups the ante, proposing that all nuclear weapons be destroyed within 10 years. Reagan responds that it would be fine with him "if we eliminated all nuclear weapons," implicitly including all tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and everywhere else. Gorbachev says, "We can do that," and Secretary of State George Shultz says, "Let's do it."
Agreement Founders on SDI - The heady moment is lost when the two sides fail to reach an agreement on SDI—the Americans' "Star Wars" missile defense system (see March 23, 1983). Gorbachev cannot accept any major reductions in nuclear weapons if the US has a viable missile defense system; Reagan is convinced that SDI would allow both sides to eliminate their nuclear weapons, and offers the SDI technology to the Soviets. Gorbachev finds Reagan's offer naive, since there is no guarantee that future presidents would honor the deal. Reagan, in another example of his ignorance of the mechanics of the US nuclear program (see April 1981 and After), does not seem to realize that even a completely effective SDI program would not defend against Soviet cruise missiles and long-range bombers, and therefore would not end the threat of nuclear destruction for either side. Author J. Peter Scoblic will later write, "[SDI] would have convinced the Soviet Union that the United States sought a first-strike capability, since the Americans were so far ahead in cruise missile and stealth bomber technology." Gorbachev does not ask that the US abandon SDI entirely, but simply observe the terms of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (see May 26, 1972) and confine SDI research to the laboratory. Reagan refuses. Gorbachev says that if this is the US's position, then they would have to "forget everything they discussed." Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze breaks in, saying that the two nations are "so close" to making history that "if future generations read the minutes of these meetings, and saw how close we had come but how we did not use these opportunities, they would never forgive us." But the agreement is not to be.
Participants' Reactions - As Shultz later says, "Reykjavik was too bold for the world." Shultz tells reporters that he is "deeply disappointed" in the results, and no longer sees "any prospect" for a third summit. Gorbachev tells reporters that Reagan's insistence on retaining SDI had "frustrated and scuttled" the opportunity for an agreement. Gorbachev says he told Reagan that the two countries "were missing a historic chance. Never had our positions been so close together." Reagan says as he is leaving Iceland that "though we put on the table the most far-reaching arms control proposal in history, the general secretary [Gorbachev] rejected it." Scoblic will later write, "In the end, ironically, it was Reagan's utopianism, hitched as it was to a missile shield, that preserved the status quo." [Washington Post, 10/13/1986; Scoblic, 2008, pp. 140-142]
Hardline Sabotage - One element that contributes to the failure of the negotiations is the efforts to undermine the talks by hardline advisers Richard Perle and Ken Adelman, who tell Reagan that confining SDI to research facilities would destroy the program. Perle and Adelman are lying, but Reagan, not knowing any better, believes them, and insists that SDI remain in development. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 143-144]
Going Too Far? - Reagan's negotiators, even the most ardent proponents of nuclear reduction, are shocked that he almost agreed to give up the US's entire nuclear arsenal—with Shultz's encouragement. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Francois Mitterand are horrified at the prospect, given that NATO's nuclear arsenal in Europe is the only real counterweight to the huge Red Army so close to the borders of Western European nations. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 140-142]
Failure of Trust - The US-Soviet talks may well have foundered on an inability of either side to trust the other one to the extent necessary to implement the agreements. During the talks, Soviet aide Gyorgy Arbatov tells US negotiator Paul Nitze that the proposals would require "an exceptional level of trust." Therefore, Arbatov says, "we cannot accept your position." [National Security Archives, 3/12/2008]
Entity Tags: Paul Nitze, J. Peter Scoblic, Kenneth Adelman, Gyorgy Arbatov, George Shultz, Francois Mitterand, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Perle, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev
December 15, 1986-1989: 'Blind Sheikh' Obtains First US Visas with Help from CIA
Radical Muslim leader Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman obtains his first US visa via the CIA. A State Department official will later discover this was the first of six US visas given to him between 1986 and 1990. All are approved by CIA agents acting as consular officers at US embassies in Sudan and Egypt. "The CIA officers claimed they didn't know the sheikh was one of the most notorious political figures in the Middle East and a militant on the State Department's list of undesirables." But one top New York investigator will later say, "Left with the choice between pleading stupidity or else admitting deceit, the CIA went with stupidity." [Boston Globe, 2/3/1995; New York Magazine, 3/17/1995] Abdul-Rahman uses the visas to attend conferences of Islamic students in the US. Then he visits Pakistan, where he preaches at Peshawar, visits the Saudi embassy in Islamabad, and is "lionized at receptions heavily attended by Americans." He plays a prominent role in recruiting mujaheddin fighters to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. [Kepel, 2002, pp. 300] In 1989, Abdul-Rahman is arrested in Egypt and held under very closely guarded house arrest, but he manages to escape one year later, possibly by being smuggled out of his house in a washing machine. The CIA gives him another US visa and he moves to the US (see July 1990). [New York Times, 1/8/1995] Journalist Simon Reeve will claim in his 1999 book The New Jackals that, "The CIA, it is now clear, arranged the visa[s] to try and befriend the Sheikh in advance of a possible armed fundamentalist revolution in Egypt." According to a retired CIA official, the CIA recalled mistakes made with the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and were trying to win Abdul-Rahman's trust. [Reeve, 1999, pp. 60]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Omar Abdul-Rahman, Simon Reeve
1987-1989: Ali Mohamed Meets with Islamic Militants Regularly While Instructor at US Base
The al-Kifah Refugee Center shared the same building as the Al-Farooq Mosque. [Source: National Geographic] (click image to enlarge)Ali Mohamed, while still an instructor at Fort Bragg, North Carolina (see 1986), frequently spends his weekends traveling to meet with Islamic activists at the Al-Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn. [Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 143-144] This center is the Brooklyn branch office of Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK)/Al-Kifah, which is a charity front in Pakistan closely tied to bin Laden and his mentor Abdullah Azzam. It also has ties to the CIA (see 1986-1993). Mohamed teaches the Islamic activists survival techniques, map reading and how to recognize tanks and other Soviet weapons. He frequently stays at the home of El-Sayyid Nosair (see November 5, 1990). In July 1989, the FBI monitors him teaching Nosair and some of the future members of the 1993 World Trade Center bomb plot how to shoot weapons (see July 1989). Towards the end of this period he informs his superiors that he has renewed his association with Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman. [New York Times, 12/1/1998; Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 143-144] Mohamed will move to Brooklyn in May 1990 while also keeping a residence in Santa Clara, California. His connections to the Islamist network develop rapidly from this point on. [New York Times, 12/1/1998; Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 144]
Entity Tags: Omar Abdul-Rahman, Ali Mohamed, Al-Kifah Refugee Center, El Sayyid Nosair, Afghan Refugee Services Inc., Al Farouq Mosque, Maktab al-Khidamat
February 20, 1987: 'Unabomber' Device Explodes, Injuring Utah Shop Owner; Eyewitness Generates Sketch of Suspect
The FBI's sketch of the as-yet-unidentified 'Unabomber.' [Source: FBI]Gary Wright, the owner of CAAMS Inc., a Salt Lake City, Utah, computer shop, is injured when he attempts to remove a "road hazard" at the rear entrance of his shop. The "hazard" is actually a bomb, similar to one that killed another computer shop owner in Sacramento, California, over a year ago (see December 11, 1985). A secretary saw a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses leave the bag containing the bomb; she becomes the first eyewitness in what will later become the "Unabomber" investigation (see April 3, 1996). [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] The "Unabomber" is improving his skills; this bomb contains a more sophisticated triggering device than earlier constructions. [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] Almost six years ago, Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber," planted another bomb in Salt Lake City (see October 8, 1981). But for now, the FBI has no knowledge of Kaczynski's identity. It has, however, found what it calls "an absolute link" between the Wright bombing and the "Unabom" serial bombings that have been going on since 1978 (see May 25-26, 1978). Federal bomb expert Ron Wolters says the bombs in the different cases display a high level of similarity. Police describe the as-yet-unidentified bomber as a disgruntled academician or computer worker. [Chicago Sun-Times, 2/24/1987]
Entity Tags: CAAMS Inc, Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, Ron Wolters, Gary Wright
April 1987: Hamid Gul Becomes Head of ISI
Hamid Gul serving as a Pakistani military officer in the 1980's. [Source: PBS / Nova]Gen. Hamid Gul is made head of Pakistan's ISI. [Yousaf and Adkin, 1992, pp. 91-92] General Gul is a favorite of CIA Station Chief Milt Bearden and US ambassador to Pakistan Arnie Raphel, who view him as an ally and a potential national leader of Pakistan. [Bearden and Risen, 2003, pp. 301] According to Bearden, however, he will later (sometime after 1990) turn against the US. [Bearden and Risen, 2003, pp. 358, 523-524] Evidence will later appear that in the late 1990s Gul is somehow able to give the Taliban advanced warning of US attempts to assassinate bin Laden with missile strikes (see July 1999). In 2004, allegations will appear in the US media that Gul was a key participant in the 9/11 plot and "bin Laden's master planner" (see July 22, 2004).
Entity Tags: Milt Bearden, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Mark Adkin, Arnie Raphel, Hamid Gul
September 1987-March 1989: Head US Consular Official Claims He's Told to Issue Visas to Unqualified Applicants
Michael Springmann. [Source: Michael Springmann]Michael Springmann, head US consular official in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, later claims that during this period he is "repeatedly ordered… to issue [more than 100] visas to unqualified applicants." He turns them down, but is repeatedly overruled by superiors. [BBC, 11/6/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 11/25/2001] In one case, two Pakistanis apply for visas to attend a trade show in the US, but they are unable to name the trade show or city in which it will be held. When Springmann denies them a visa, he gets "an almost immediate call from a CIA case officer, hidden in the commercial section [of the consulate], that I should reverse myself and grant these guys a visa." Springmann refuses, but the decision is reversed by the chief of the consular section. Springmann realizes that even the ambassador, Walter Cutler, is aware of the situation, which becomes "more brazen and blatant" as time goes on. On one occasion Springmann is even told, "If you want a job in the State Department in future, you will change your mind." [CBC Radio One, 7/3/2002; Trento, 2005, pp. 344-6] Springmann loudly complains to numerous government offices, but no action is taken. He is fired and his files on these applicants are destroyed. He later learns that recruits from many countries fighting for bin Laden against Russia in Afghanistan were funneled through the Jeddah office to get visas to come to the US, where the recruits would travel to train for the Afghan war. According to Springmann, the Jeddah consulate was run by the CIA and staffed almost entirely by intelligence agents. This visa system may have continued at least through 9/11, and 11 of the 19 9/11 hijackers received their visas through Jeddah (see November 2, 1997-June 20, 2001), possibly as part of this program (see October 9, 2002 and October 21, 2002). [BBC, 11/6/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 11/25/2001; CBC Radio One, 7/3/2002; Associated Press, 7/17/2002 ; Fox News, 7/18/2002]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, US Consulate, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Office, Michael Springmann
November 3, 1987 and After: 'Loner' David Koresh Takes Over Leadership of Waco Branch Davidians in Violent Coup
The flag of the Branch Davidians. [Source: Wikimedia]Vernon Wayne Howell, a Texas musician and a member of the Branch Davidian sect of Seventh-day Adventists, forcibly installs himself as the leader of the Branch Davidian sect near Waco, Texas. Howell is a self-described loner and dyslexic who dropped out of high school, but taught himself the Bible, memorizing most of it by age 12. He was expelled from the Church of Seventh-day Adventists in 1979 for being a bad influence on the church's young people, and in 1981 joined the Waco group of Branch Davidians in its 77-acre compound, "Mount Carmel," on the outskirts of the city. Howell had an affair with the leader of the group, self-described prophetess Lois Roden, some 30 years older than himself.
Power Struggle - After Roden died, Howell began a lengthy struggle for control of the group with Roden's son George Roden. In late 1987, Roden digs up the body of a member, Anna Hughes, and issues a challenge to Howell: the one who could raise her from the dead is the one to lead the community. Instead, Howell asks the local authorities to charge Roden with abusing a corpse. On November 3, Howell returns to the Mt. Carmel compound with seven male followers, all dressed in camouflage and bearing assault rifles, hunting rifles, shotguns, and ammunition. The two groups engage in a gunfight; during the exchange, Roden is shot in the chest and hands. Howell and his followers will be tried for attempted murder, but the others will be acquitted and Howell's trial will end in a mistrial. In 1989, Roden will try to murder a man with an axe, and will be committed to a mental instutition for the rest of his life. By 1990, Howell will have established himself as the leader of the Waco Branch Davidians, and will legally change his name to David Koresh, explaining that he believes he is now the head of the Biblical House of David. Koresh is a Hebrew translation of "Cyrus," the Persian king who allowed the Jews held captive in Babylon to return to Israel. [New York Times, 3/1/1993; Waco Tribune-Herald, 3/3/1993; Dean M. Kelley, 5/1995; PBS Frontline, 10/1995]
Adventists Join Koresh at Waco Compound - Seventh-day Adventists and others from around the world will journey to Waco to join the Davidians, who all told number somewhere around 75. According to a multi-part series by the Waco Tribune-Herald based on the recollections and observations of former members (see February 27 - March 3, 1993), the Davidians gather at the compound to "await the end of the world." The members believe that Koresh alone can open the so-called "Seven Seals" of Biblical prophecy, which will trigger the Apocalypse, destroy the world as we know it, and propel Koresh and his followers into heaven. The compound is heavily armed. [Waco Tribune-Herald, 3/3/1993] Most of the Davidians live communally in an L-shaped compound of beige buildings. A few of the more elderly members live in a trailer four miles from the main compound. The trailer has more amenities than the main building, which lacks central heating and indoor plumbing. The men live separately from the women and children. Members rise early, breakfasting together in a large cafeteria and then going to work. Some of the men have jobs in the Waco area, and many stay, working on what sect member Paul Fatta will describe as a three-year renovation of the compound but what law enforcement officials say is a network of tunnels and bunkers. The children are home-schooled by the women. [New York Times, 3/6/1993]
Former Member: Koresh Brought Apocalyptic Mindset, Violence to Group - According to Davidian David Bunds, who will later leave the group, Koresh, or Howells as he is known, was something of a destabilizing factor from the time of his arrival. Bunds will later say: "We were a very reserved, very conservative group. There were no emotional displays. Then along came Vernon Howell. I remember my father said one day, 'Well, that guy sounds like he's going to end up saying he's a prophet the way he's acting.'" Bunds will later say that while he was enthralled for a time by Koresh's personality and his apocalyptic preaching, he became increasingly disturbed at his insistence on having multiple "wives," his stockpiling of more and more weapons, and the increasingly violent methods of "discipline" being meted out to "disobedient" children and adults alike (adults, Bunds and other "defectors" will later say, are physically beaten by Koresh's cadre of militantly loyal "Mighty Men"). Bunds will be forced out of the group after questioning Koresh's Biblical interpretations, and for taking a sect member as his wife against Koresh's wishes. [Conway and Siegelman, 1995, pp. 244-246]
Federal Raid, Siege - The Waco Branch Davidians will kill four federal agents attempting to arrest Koresh on gun and sexual abuse charges (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993); most of them, including Koresh, will die in a fiery conflagration after a 51-day standoff (see April 19, 1993). After the February 1993 raid, Waco Chamber of Commerce president Jack Stewart will say: "The sad part about this group is that it has evolved from the peaceful, pastoral group that it started as in the 1930s. Only since this most recent leader have they begun to acquire some of the weaponry and attitudes that they have." [New York Times, 3/1/1993]
Entity Tags: Anna Hughes, Branch Davidians, David Koresh, George Roden, David Bunds, Seventh-day Adventists, Lois Roden, Jack Stewart, Paul Gordon Fatta
Late 1987 - April 8, 1998: White Separatists Tried, Acquitted of Sedition
Richard Butler, the head of the white separatist and neo-Nazi organization Aryan Nations (see Early 1970s), is indicted, along with 12 of his followers and fellow racists, by a federal grand jury for seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government by violence, conspiring to kill federal officials, and transporting stolen money across state lines. The sedition was allegedly developed at a 1983 Aryan Nations Congress meeting (see 1981 and After). The case is tried in Fort Smith, Arkansas, before an all-white jury. The goverment is unable to prove the case, and Butler and his fellow defendants are all acquitted. The judge refuses to accept the jury's statement that it is deadlocked on two counts, a ruling that leads to the blanket acquittals. Other white supremacists acquitted in the trial are Louis Beam (see February 1992), Richard Wayne Snell (see 9:00 p.m. April 19, 1995), and Robert Miles. US Attorney J. Michael Fitzhugh says he believes the prosecution proved its case, but "we accept the verdict of the jury." Six of the defendants are serving prison terms for other crimes. The prosecution says Butler, Beam, Miles, and the other 10 defendants had robbed banks and armored trucks of $4.1 million, including about $1 million that still is missing. The defense countered that the prosecution's case was based on conspiracy theories given by the prosecution's chief witness, James Ellison, an Arkansas white supremacist serving 20 years for racketeering. During the proceedings, Butler undergoes quadruple bypass surgery and a second surgery to unblock his carotid artery, all at government expense. [Associated Press, 4/8/1998; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010] Some time after the trial, one of the jurors marries one of the defendants, David McGuire. [Kaplan, 2000, pp. 19]
Entity Tags: Richard Wayne Snell, Robert Miles, Richard Girnt Butler, James Ellison, Louis R. Beam, Jr, J. Michael Fitzhugh, Aryan Nations, David McGuire
1988-Spring 1995: KSM's Brother Works for Charity Allegedly Connected to CIA
Zahid Shaikh Mohammed, the brother of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), works as the head of the Pakistani branch of the charity Mercy International. A book published in 1999 will allege that this charity, based in the US and Switzerland, was used by the CIA to funnel money to Muslim militants fighting against US enemies in places such as Bosnia and Afghanistan (see 1989 and After). It is not known when Zahid got involved with the charity, but he is heading its Pakistani branch by 1988, when his nephew Ramzi Yousef first goes to Afghanistan (see Late 1980s). [Reeve, 1999, pp. 120] In the spring of 1993, US investigators raid Zahid's house while searching for Yousef (see Spring 1993). Documents and pictures are found suggesting close links and even a friendship between Zahid and Osama bin Laden. Photos and other evidence also show close links between Zahid, KSM, and government officials close to Nawaf Sharif, who is prime minister of Pakistan twice in the 1990s. The investigators also discover that Zahid was seen talking to Pakistani President Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari during a Mercy International ceremony in February 1993. [Reeve, 1999, pp. 48-49, 120] But despite the raid, Zahid apparently keeps his job until about February 1995, when Yousef is arrested in Pakistan (see February 7, 1995). Investigators learn Yousef had made a phone call to the Mercy office, and there is an entry in Yousef's seized telephone directory for a Zahid Shaikh Mohammed. Pakistani investigators raid the Mercy office, but Zahid has already fled. [United Press International, 4/11/1995; Guardian, 9/26/2001; McDermott, 2005, pp. 154, 162] It is unclear what subsequently happens to Zahid. In 1999 it will be reported that he is believed to be in Kuwait, but in 2002 the Kuwaiti government will announce he is a member of al-Qaeda, so presumably he is no longer welcome there. [Reeve, 1999, pp. 48; Los Angeles Times, 9/1/2002] Mercy International's Kenya branch will later be implicated in the 1998 US embassy bombing in that country, as will KSM, Zahid's brother (see Late August 1998).
Entity Tags: Ramzi Yousef, Zahid Shaikh Mohammed, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Mercy International
March 24, 1988 - Late 1990: Future Oklahoma City Bombers Join Army
Entrance to Fort Riley, Kansas. [Source: US Military (.com)]Terry Nichols, a 33-year-old Michigan farmer and house husband described as "aimless" by his wife Lana, joins the US Army in Detroit. He is the oldest recruit in his platoon and his fellow recruits call him "Grandpa." During basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, Nichols meets fellow recruits Timothy McVeigh (see 1987-1988), who joined the Army in Buffalo, New York, and Arizona native Michael Fortier. All three share an interest in survivalism, guns, and hating the government, particularly Nichols and McVeigh; unit member Robin Littleton later recalls, "Terry and Tim in boot camp went together like magnets." For McVeigh, Nichols is like the older brother he never had; for Nichols, he enjoys taking McVeigh under his wing. Nichols also tells McVeigh about using ammonium nitrate to make explosives he and his family used to blow up tree stumps on the farm. The three are members of what the Army calls a "Cohort," or Cohesion Operation Readiness and Training unit, which generally keeps soldiers together in the same unit from boot camp all the way through final deployment. It is in the Army that McVeigh and Nichols become enamored of the novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978), which depicts a United States racially "cleansed" of minorities and other "undesirables" (McVeigh is already familiar with the novel—see 1987-1988). All three are sent to the 11 Bravo Infantry division in Fort Riley, Kansas, where they are finally separated into different companies; McVeigh goes to tank school, where he learns to operate a Bradley fighting vehicle as well as becoming an outstanding marksman. [New York Times, 5/4/1995; New York Times, 5/28/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 91-95; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 30; Nicole Nichols, 2003] McVeigh later says he joined the Army because he was disillusioned with the "I am better than you because I have more money" mindset some people have, and because he was taken with the Army's advertisement that claimed, "We do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day." [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] Fellow unit member Specialist Ted Thorne will later recall: "Tim and I both considered ourselves career soldiers. We were going to stay in for the 20-plus years, hopefully make sergeant major. It was the big picture of retirement." [Serrano, 1998, pp. 31]
Nichols Leaves Army, Tells of Plans to Form 'Own Military Organization' - In the spring of 1989, Nichols, who planned on making a career of military service, leaves the Army due to issues with an impending divorce and child care, but his friendship with McVeigh persists. Fellow soldier Glen Edwards will later say that he found Nichols's choice to serve in the Army unusual, considering his virulent hatred of the US government: "He said the government made it impossible for him to make a living as a farmer. I thought it strange that a 32-year-old man would be complaining about the government, yet was now employed by the government. Nichols told me he signed up to pull his 20 years and get a retirement pension." Before Nichols leaves, he tells Edwards that he has plans for the future, and Edwards is welcome to join in. Edwards will later recall, "He told me he would be coming back to Fort Riley to start his own military organization" with McVeigh and Fortier. "He said he could get any kind of weapon and any equipment he wanted. I can't remember the name of his organization, but he seemed pretty serious about it." [New York Times, 5/28/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 96, 101]
McVeigh Continues Army Career, Described as 'Strange,' 'Racist,' but 'Perfect Soldier' - McVeigh does not leave the Army so quickly. He achieves the rank of sergeant and becomes something of a "model soldier." He plans on becoming an Army Ranger. However, few get to know him well; only his closest friends, such as Nichols, know of his passion for firearms, his deep-seated racism, or his hatred for the government. McVeigh does not see Nichols during the rest of his Army stint, but keeps in touch through letters and phone calls. Friends and fellow soldiers will describe McVeigh as a man who attempts to be the "perfect soldier," but who becomes increasingly isolated during his Army career; the New York Times will describe him as "retreating into a spit-and-polish persona that did not admit nights away from the barracks or close friendships, even though he was in a 'Cohort' unit that kept nearly all the personnel together from basic training through discharge." His friends and colleagues will recall him as being "strange and uncommunicative" and "coldly robotic," and someone who often gives the least desirable assignments to African-American subordinates, calling them "inferior" and using racial slurs. An infantryman in McVeigh's unit, Marion "Fritz" Curnutte, will later recall: "He played the military 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All of us thought it was silly. When they'd call for down time, we'd rest, and he'd throw on a ruck sack and walk around the post with it." A fellow soldier, Todd Regier, will call McVeigh an exemplary soldier, saying: "As far as soldiering, he never did anything wrong. He was always on time. He never got into trouble. He was perfect. I thought he would stay in the Army all his life. He was always volunteering for stuff that the rest of us wouldn't want to do, guard duties, classes on the weekend." Sergeant Charles Johnson will later recall, "He was what we call high-speed and highly motivated." McVeigh also subscribes to survivalist magazines and other right-wing publications, such as Guns & Ammo and his favorite, Soldier of Fortune (SoF), and keeps an arsenal of weapons in his home (see November 1991 - Summer 1992). Regier will later tell a reporter: "He was real different. Kind of cold. He wasn't enemies with anyone. He was kind of almost like a robot. He never had a date when I knew him in the Army. I never saw him at a club. I never saw him drinking. He never had good friends. He was a robot. Everything was for a purpose." [New York Times, 5/4/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 86; Serrano, 1998, pp. 30; Nicole Nichols, 2003] McVeigh is taken with the increasing number of anti-government articles and advertisements in SoF, particularly the ones warning about what it calls the impending government imposition of martial law and tyranny, and those telling readers how to build bombs and other items to use in "defending" themselves from government aggression. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 27-28] McVeigh is not entirely "by the book"; he knows his friend Michael Fortier is doing drugs, but does not report him to their superior officers. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] McVeigh is promoted to sergeant faster than his colleagues; this is when he begins assigning the undesirable tasks to the four or five black specialists in the group, tasks that would normally be performed by privates. "It was well known, pretty much throughout the platoon, that he was making the black specialists do that work," Regier will recall. "He was a racist. When he talked he'd mention those words, like n_gger. You pretty much knew he was a racist." The black soldiers complain to a company commander, earning McVeigh a reprimand. Sergeant Anthony Thigpen will later confirm Regier's account, adding that McVeigh generally refuses to socialize with African-Americans, and only reluctantly takes part in company functions that include non-whites. Captain Terry Guild will later say McVeigh's entire company has problems with racial polarization, "[a]nd his platoon had some of the most serious race problems. It was pretty bad." In April 1989, McVeigh is sent to Germany for two weeks for a military "change-up program." While there, he is awarded the German equivalent of the expert infantryman's badge. In November 1989, he goes home for Thanksgiving with Fortier, and meets Fortier's mother Irene. In late 1990, McVeigh signs a four-year reenlistment agreement with the Army. [New York Times, 5/4/1995]
McVeigh Goes on to Serve in Persian Gulf War - McVeigh will serve two tours of duty in the Persian Gulf War, serving honorably and winning medals for his service (see January - March 1991 and After). Nichols and McVeigh will later be convicted of planning and executing the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995).
Entity Tags: Ted Thorne, Terry Guild, Todd Regier, Terry Lynn Nichols, Robin Littleton, Michael Joseph Fortier, Charles Johnson, Glen Edwards, Marion ("Fritz") Curnutte, Anthony Thigpen, Timothy James McVeigh, US Department of the Army
June-September 1988: Bush Campaign Plans 'Two-Track' Strategy, Orchestrates 'Independent' Ad Campaign Featuring Racist Appeal to Voters
The Bush presidential re-election campaign, trailing Democratic challenger Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, in the polls, decides on a "two-track" campaign strategy. The strategy is crafted by campaign manager Lee Atwater. The "high road" track will be taken by President Bush and the campaign directly, attacking Dukakis's record on law enforcement and challenging his reputation as having led Massachusetts into a period of economic growth (the so-called "Massachusetts Miracle"). The "low road," designed by Atwater to appeal to the most crude racial stereotypes (see 1981), is to be taken by ostensibly "independent" voter outreach organizations. Because of a loophole in campaign finance rules, the Bush campaign could work closely with "outside groups" and funnel money from "independent" organizations to the outside groups, while denying any connections with those groups were they to run objectionable or negative political ads. Atwater wants to avoid a potential backlash among voters, who may turn against the campaign because of their antipathy towards "attack politics." Atwater and his colleagues determine that the outside groups will use "brass knuckle" tactics to attack Dukakis, and because the ads come from these "independent" organizations, the Bush campaign can distance itself from the groups and even criticize them for being too negative. In 1999, InsidePolitics.org will write: "In so doing, Bush's presidential effort would train a generation of campaign operatives how to run a negative campaign. Its 'two-track' approach would become a model of how to exploit campaign finance laws and use outside groups to deliver hard-hitting messages on behalf of the candidate. Over the course of the following decade, this strategy would become commonplace in American elections." The idea of "outsourcing" attack ads had been popularized by the 1980 Reagan presidential campaign, which used what it called "independent expenditures" to finance "outside" attacks on its Democratic opponent, President Jimmy Carter. In 1988, "independent" conservative groups spend $13.7 million on the Bush campaign, most of which goes towards attacks on Dukakis. In comparison, progressive and liberal groups spend $2.8 million on behalf of Dukakis—an almost five-to-one discrepancy. Most of the outside money is spent on television advertising. InsidePolitics will write, "Increasingly, candidates were discovering, electoral agendas and voter impressions could be dominated through a clever combination of attack ads and favorable news coverage." [Inside Politics (.org), 1999] The result of Atwater's "two-track" strategy is the "Willie Horton" ad, which will become infamous both for its bluntly racist appeal and its effectiveness (see September 21 - October 4, 1988). An earlier "independent" ad attacking Dukakis's environmental record provides something of a template for the Horton ad campaign. The so-called "Boston Harbor" ad, which depicted garbage floating in the body of water, challenged Dukakis's positive reputation as a pro-environmental candndate. The ad helped bring Dukakis's "positives" down, a strong plus for Bush, whose record as an oil-company executive and reputation as a powerful political friend to the oil companies hurts him in comparison with Dukakis. In July 1988, Readers Digest, a magazine known for its quietly conservative slant, publishes a profile of Horton titled "Getting Away With Murder." The Bush campaign reprints the article and distributes it by the tens of thousands around the country. [Regardie's Magazine, 10/1/1990; Inside Politics (.org), 1999]
Entity Tags: Readers Digest, InsidePolitics (.org), George Herbert Walker Bush, Lee Atwater, National Security Political Action Committee, William ("Willie") Horton, Michael Dukakis
August 11-20, 1988: Bin Laden Forms Al-Qaeda
The notes from al-Qaeda's formation meeting. The short lines on the right side are the list of attendees. [Source: CNN]Osama bin Laden conducts two meetings to discuss "the establishment of a new military group," according to notes that will be found later. Notes will reveal the group is initially called al-Qaeda al-Askariya, which roughly translates to "the military base." But the name will soon shorten to just al-Qaeda, meaning "the base" or "the foundation." [Associated Press, 2/19/2003; Wright, 2006, pp. 131-134] With the Soviets in the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan, it is proposed to create the new group to keep military jihad, or holy war, alive after the Soviets are gone. The notes don't specify what the group will do exactly, but they conclude, "Initial estimate, within six months of al-Qaeda [founding], 314 brothers will be trained and ready." In fact, al-Qaeda will remain smaller than this for years to come. Fifteen people attend these two initial meetings. [Wright, 2006, pp. 131-134] In addition to bin Laden, other attendees include:
Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the head of the Egyptian militant group Islamic Jihad. [New Yorker, 9/9/2002]
Mohammed Atef, a.k.a. Abu Hafs.
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a.k.a. Abu Hajer.
Jamal al-Fadl.
Wael Hamza Julaidan.
Mohammed Loay Bayazid, a US citizen, who is notetaker for the meetings. [Wright, 2006, pp. 131-134]
Al-Fadl will reveal details about the meetings to US investigators in 1996 (see June 1996-April 1997). Notes to the meeting will be found in Bosnia in early 2002. [New Yorker, 9/9/2002] It will take US intelligence years even to realize a group named al-Qaeda exists; the first known incidence of US intelligence being told the name will come in 1993 (see May 1993).
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Mohammed Loay Bayazid, Mohammed Atef, Wael Hamza Julaidan, Jamal al-Fadl, Al-Qaeda, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, Ayman al-Zawahiri
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline, War in Afghanistan
November 1988: Wife of Future Oklahoma City Bombing Conspirator Files for Divorce
Courtroom sketch of Lana Padilla. [Source: Lawrence Journal-World]Michigan realtor Lana Padilla files for divorce from her husband Terry Nichols. Padillla, frustrated with her husband's tendency to drift from job to job, was disappointed in his failure to commit to an Army career (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990) and tired of trying to motivate him to begin a career. Padilla decides to move from their home in Michigan to Las Vegas, where the real estate market is booming. The divorce will be finalized in July 1989. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 72-74]
Entity Tags: Lana Padilla, Terry Lynn Nichols
December 22 or 23, 1988: Future Oklahoma City Bombing Conspirator's Brother Formulates Plan to Use 'Megabomb' to Destroy Building
James Nichols, a Michigan farmer, anti-government white separatist, and the brother of Terry Nichols (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990), formulates a plan to use a "megabomb" to destroy an Oklahoma City federal building; an unnamed FBI informant will later tell the FBI that James Nichols specifically indicates the Murrah Federal Building. Nichols, who says he is upset over the US's "role" in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, shares the plan with the informant, who will swear to the information in 1995, after James's brother Terry Nichols is arrested for helping destroy the Murrah Building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). "[James] Nichols… made a specific reference to a federal building in Oklahoma City and began looking through the toolshed and workbench for a newspaper clipping depicting the Oklahoma City building," the informant will say, according to an FBI affidavit. Nichols is unable to find the newspaper clipping, the informant will say, and instead draws a diagram remarkably similar to the Murrah Building. Nichols "later located a newspaper article containing a reference to the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and showed it" to the informer, the affidavit says. The informer is a regular visitor to the Nichols farm. [New York Times, 6/13/1995; Nicole Nichols, 2003] James Nichols routinely stamps US currency with red ink in a protest against the government, and calls his neighbors "sheeple" for obeying authority "like livestock." A neighbor, Dan Stomber, will recall Nichols criticizing him and others for using drivers' licences and Social Security cards, and for voting and paying taxes. "He said we were all puppets and sheeple," Stomber will tell a reporter. "That was the first time I ever heard that word." Stomber will not recall Nichols discussing any plans to bomb any federal buildings. [New York Times, 4/24/1995] After the Oklahoma City bombing, a friend of Nichols, an Indiana seed dealer named Dave Shafer, will tell authorities that Nichols showed him a diagram of a building remarkably similar to the Murrah Building, still under construction at the time, and said that building would be an excellent target. Shafer will say that he thought Nichols was joking. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 110] It is possible that Shafer and the unnamed FBI informant are the same person. Five years ago, a group of white supremacists had conceived of a plan to destroy the Murrah Building (see 1983).
Entity Tags: Terry Lynn Nichols, Murrah Federal Building, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Dave Shafer, James Nichols, Dan Stomber
1989 and After: CIA Supposedly Supports Muslim Charity Tied to Bin Laden
Mercy International USA's logo. [Source: Mercy International USA]The 1999 book Dollars for Terror will allege that in 1989, Mercy International, a "subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood, was able to establish its headquarters in the United States, in the state of Michigan, with the assistance of the CIA. The Agency provided significant logistical and financial support to this 'humanitarian' organization, enabling it to act clandestinely in the various Balkan conflicts as well as within the Muslim communities of several Russian republics." [Labeviere, 1999, pp. 364] Mercy International will later be tied to al-Qaeda in a number of ways. For instance, in the mid-1990s its Pakistan branch will be headed by Zahid Shaikh Mohammed, brother of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (see 1988-Spring 1995). [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/2002] Its Kenya branch will be tied to the 1998 US embassy bombing there. Its Philippine branch is tied to Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law. [Burr and Collins, 2006, pp. 128, 188-189] Branches of this charity in different countries have slightly different names such as Mercy International-USA and Mercy International Relief Agency, and it has been claimed that the US branch has no connection with the terrorism-related branches. However, a 2003 article will draw links between the US branch and other branches. [National Review, 9/4/2003]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Mercy International, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Zahid Shaikh Mohammed, Muslim Brotherhood
February 15, 1989: Soviet Forces Withdraw from Afghanistan
A convoy of Soviet tanks leaving Afghanistan. [Source: National Geographic]Soviet forces withdraw from Afghanistan, in accordance with an agreement signed the previous year (see April 1988). However, Afghan communists retain control of Kabul, the capital, until April 1992. [Washington Post, 7/19/1992] It is estimated that more than a million Afghans (eight per cent of the country's population) were killed in the Soviet-Afghan War, and hundreds of thousands had been maimed by an unprecedented number of land mines. Almost half of the survivors of the war are refugees. [New Yorker, 9/9/2002] Richard Clarke, a counterterrorism official during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and the counterterrorism "tsar" by 9/11, will later say that the huge amount of US aid provided to Afghanistan drops off drastically as soon as the Soviets withdraw, abandoning the country to civil war and chaos. The new powers in Afghanistan are tribal chiefs, the Pakistani ISI, and the Arab war veterans coalescing into al-Qaeda. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 52-53]
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Richard A. Clarke
Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline, War in Afghanistan
February 16, 1989-December 1990: CIA Continues to Work with 'Blind Sheikh' and Supports Mujaheddin Despite Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Although the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan in February 1989 (see February 15, 1989), the CIA continues to support the mujaheddin because the Soviet-allied Communist government stays in power in Kabul. Apparently, the CIA and the Saudi government continue to fund the mujaheddin at least until December 1990, although it could be longer because the Communist government remains in power in Kabul until 1992. The "Blind Sheikh," Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, reportedly has been working with the CIA in the 1980s to help unite the mujaheddin factions fighting each other (see Late 1980s). The Village Voice will later report that according to a "very high-ranking Egyptian official," Abdul-Rahman continues to work with the CIA after moving to Brooklyn in July 1990 (see July 1990). He "work[s] closely with the CIA, helping to channel a steady flow of money, men, and guns to mujaheddin bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan." But despite working with the CIA, Abdul-Rahman still considers the US the "Great Satan" and does not try to hide this. In one radio broadcast, he says that "Americans are descendants of apes and pigs who have been feeding from the dining tables of the Zionists, Communism, and colonialism." Matti Steinberg, an expert on Islamic fundamentalism, says that Abdul-Rahman's "long-term goal is to weaken US society and to show Arab rulers that the US is not an invulnerable superpower." The Egyptian official will later complain, "We begged America not to coddle the sheikh." [Village Voice, 3/30/1993]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Omar Abdul-Rahman, Matti Steinberg
Late March 1989 and After: Defense Secretary Cheney Advocates Enforced Regime Change in Soviet Union
When Dick Cheney becomes defense secretary (see March 20, 1989 and After), he brings into the Pentagon a core group of young, ideological staffers with largely academic (not military) backgrounds. Many of these staffers are neoconservatives who once congregated around Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (see Early 1970s). Cheney places them in the Pentagon's policy directorate, under the supervision of Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, himself one of Jackson's cadre. While most administrations leave the policy directorate to perform mundane tasks, Wolfowitz and his team have no interest in such. "They focused on geostrategic issues," one of his Pentagon aides will recall. "They considered themselves conceptual." Wolfowitz and his team are more than willing to reevaluate the most fundamental precepts of US foreign policy in their own terms, and in Cheney they have what reporters Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman call "a like-minded patron." In 1991, Wolfowitz will describe his relationship to Cheney: "Intellectually, we're very much on similar wavelengths."
A Different View of the Soviet Union - Cheney pairs with Wolfowitz and his neoconservatives to battle one issue in particular: the US's dealings with the Soviet Union. Premier Mikhail Gorbachev has been in office for four years, and has built a strong reputation for himself in the West as a charismatic reformer. But Cheney, Wolfowitz, and the others see something far darker. Cheney opposes any dealings with the Soviets except on the most adversarial level (see 1983), and publicly discusses his skepticism of perestroika, Gorbachev's restructing of the Soviet economy away from a communist paradigm. In April, Cheney tells a CNN news anchor that Gorbachev will "ultimately fail" and a leader "far more hostile" to the West will follow in his footsteps. Some of President Bush's more "realistic" aides, including James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, and Condoleezza Rice, as well as Bush himself, have cast their lot with Gorbachev and reform; they have no use for Cheney's public advocacy of using the USSR's period of transitional turmoil to dismember the nation once and for all.
Cheney's Alternative Policy - Cheney turns to the neoconservatives under Wolfowitz for an alternative strategy. They meet on Saturday mornings in the Pentagon's E ring, where they have one maverick Sovietologist after another propound his or her views. Almost all of these Sovietologists echo Cheney and Wolfowitz's view—the USSR is on the brink of collapse, and the US should do what it can to hasten the process and destroy its enemy for good. They assert that what the Soviet Union needs is not a reformer guiding the country back into a papered-over totalitarianism, to emerge (with the US's help) stronger and more dangerous than before. Instead, Cheney and his cadre advocate enforced regime change in the Soviet Union. Supporting the rebellious Ukraine will undermine the legitimacy of the central Soviet government, and supporting Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Republic, will strike at the heart of the Gorbachev regime. Bush and his core advisers worry about instability, but Cheney says that the destruction of the Soviet Union is worth a little short-term disruption.
Failure - Bush will not adopt the position of his defense secretary, and will continue supporting Gorbachev through the Soviet Union's painful transition and eventual dissolution. After Cheney goes public one time too many about his feelings about Gorbachev, Baker tells Scowcroft to "[d]ump on Dick" with all deliberate speed. During the final days of the Soviet Union, Cheney will find himself alone against Bush's senior advisers and Cabinet members in their policy discussions. [New Republic, 11/20/2003]
Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Brent Scowcroft, Boris Yeltsin, Franklin Foer, US Department of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, James A. Baker, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Condoleezza Rice, Mikhail Gorbachev, Spencer Ackerman
(April 25-May 1989): US Holds Secret Meetings with Egyptian Terror Group Headed by 'Blind Sheikh'
Members of Egyptian militant group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, whose spiritual head is the 'Blind Sheikh,' Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, hold a series of secret meetings with US officials at the American embassy in Cairo. The meetings are initiated by Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, which wants to co-operate with the US, because it thinks the US is co-operating with and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. At the meetings, representatives of the group tell the US:
Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya has between 150,000 and 200,000 members;
One of the representatives at the meetings sat on Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya's shura, or leadership council, between 1981 and 1988. The 11 members of the group's shura are named at the meetings, as is its operational commander;
Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya thinks highly of Saudi Arabian King Fahd, but believes he should take a stronger line against Iran. However, Abdul-Rahman met an Iranian delegation in Pakistan in autumn 1988;
The group will not attack US diplomats;
Abdul-Rahman travels to the US yearly, and also travels to Britain;
The group is not as secret and violent as represented by the Egyptian government and has undergone a "change in thinking," becoming concerned about its radical and violent image.
Embassy officials are skeptical about some of the claims, as the group's representatives reveal more than the officials think is prudent. One year after the meetings, Abdul-Rahman will be issued a US visa by a CIA officer and move to the US (see July 1990). [US Embassy in Cairo, 4/25/1989 ; US Embassy in Cairo, 5/3/1989 ]
Entity Tags: Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, United States, Omar Abdul-Rahman, US Embassy in Cairo
Summer 1989: Ali Mohamed Uses His US Military Expertise to Train Muslim Radicals
Ali Mohamed, a spy for bin Laden working in the US military, trains Islamic radicals in the New York area. Mohamed is on active duty at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at the time, but he regularly comes to Brooklyn on the weekends to train radicals at the Al-Kifah Refugee Center, a charity connected to both bin Laden and the CIA. Lawyer Roger Savis will later say, "He came quite often and became a real presence in that [Al-Kifah] office, which later metastasized into al-Qaeda.… He would bring with him a satchel full of military manuals and documents. It was Ali Mohamed who taught the men how to engage in guerrilla war. He would give courses in how to make bombs, how to use guns, how to make Molotov cocktails." Mohamed's gun training exercises take place at five different shooting ranges. One series of shooting range sessions in July 1989 is monitored by the FBI (Mohamed apparently is not at those particular sessions in person) (see July 1989). Mohamed's trainees include most of the future bombers of the World Trade Center in 1993. [Lance, 2006, pp. 47-49]
Entity Tags: Roger Savis, Al-Kifah Refugee Center, Ali Mohamed
June 4, 1989: US-Al-Qaeda Double Agent Ali Mohamed Shows US Military Training Videos to Muslim Radicals
Ali Mohamed, a spy for Osama bin Laden working in the US military, trains Muslim radicals. On this date, he travels with El Sayyid Nosair to the Al-Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, a charity connected to bin Laden and the CIA, and shows training videos from the Fort Bragg military base where US Special Forces train. A former FBI agent will later comment: "You have an al-Qaeda spy who's now a US citizen, on active duty in the US Army, and he brings along a video paid for by the US government to train Green Beret officers and he's using it to help train Islamic terrorists so they can turn their guns on us.… By now the Afghan war is over." [Lance, 2006, pp. 48] Nosair, who watches the videos, will assassinate a Jewish leader in New York one year later (see November 5, 1990).
Entity Tags: Al-Kifah Refugee Center, Ali Mohamed, El Sayyid Nosair
July 1989: FBI Monitors Future Bombers' Weapons Training Sessions; Fails to Follow Up
One of the Calverton surveillance photographs introduced as evidence in court (note that some faces have been blurred out). [Source: National Geographic]FBI agents photograph Islamic radicals shooting weapons at the Calverton Shooting Range on Long Island, New York. The radicals are secretly monitored as they shoot AK-47 assault rifles, semiautomatic handguns, and revolvers for four successive weekends. The use of weapons such as AK-47's is illegal in the US, but this shooting range is known to be unusually permissive. Ali Mohamed is apparently not at the range but has been training the five men there: El Sayyid Nosair, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, and Clement Rodney Hampton-El. Nosair will assassinate Rabbi Meir Kahane one year later (see November 5, 1990) and the others, except Hampton-El, will be convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see February 26, 1993), while Hampton-El will be convicted for a role in the "Landmarks" bombing plot (see June 24, 1993). Some FBI agents have been assigned to watch some Middle Eastern men who are frequenting the Al-Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn. Each weekend, Mohamed's trainees drive from Al-Kifah to the shooting range and a small FBI surveillance team follows them. The FBI has been given a tip that some Palestinians at Al-Kifah are planning violence targeting Atlantic City casinos. By August, the casino plot will have failed to materialize and the surveillance, including that at the shooting range, will have come to an end. Author Peter Lance will later comment that the reason why the FBI failed to follow up the shooting sessions is a "great unanswered question." [Lance, 2003, pp. 29-33; New York Times, 10/5/2003]
Entity Tags: Mahmud Abouhalima, Peter Lance, Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, El Sayyid Nosair, Calverton Shooting Range, Ali Mohamed, Al-Kifah Refugee Center
After August 2, 1989: Chalabi Forges Strong Ties with US Neocons
Ahmed Chalabi, the charismatic, MIT-educated head of Jordan's Petra Bank, flees to London before charges can be filed against him in regards to the collapse of his bank (see August 2, 1989 and April 9, 1992). Unworried about the Jordanian charges, Chalabi, whose formerly wealthy family fled Iraq in 1958, establishes a loose grouping of Iraqi exiles called the Iraqi National Congress, with the aim of overthrowing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Chalabi has already forged ties with some US neoconservatives like Albert Wohlstetter and Richard Perle. Now he begins cultivating ties with other influential neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Douglas Feith, and Perle's protege, David Wurmser. Chalabi makes the rounds of the symposia and conferences, and wins new allies in pro-Israeli think tanks such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). Chalabi's appeal to the neoconservatives is directly linked to his support for Israel as a regional power. The new Iraq he will build, he promises, will have strong relations with Israel. He even declares his intention to rebuild the oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa, which has been inoperative since the 1940s. The neoconservatives ignore his close ties with the Iranian Shi'ite theocracy, as well as the Petra Bank's funding of the Lebanese Shi'ite militia Amal. Instead, the neoconservatives view Chalabi as a potential savior of the Middle East. Patrick Clawson of WINEP says, "He could be Iraq's national leader." [Unger, 2007, pp. 123-125]
Entity Tags: Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Albert Wohlstetter, Ahmed Chalabi, David Wurmser, Douglas Feith, Iraqi National Congress, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Saddam Hussein, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Patrick Clawson
October 1989: US Must Prepare for 'Fourth-Generation Warfare,' Analysts Say
In a military journal, William S. Lind, a defense intellectual, and several officers warn that the US must transform its military to fight a new kind of war they call "fourth-generation warfare" or "4GW." Unlike previous types of warfare relying on massive firepower and centralized command structures, 4GW will resemble terrorism and guerrilla warfare and could emerge from non-Western areas like the Islamic world. They write: "The fourth generation battlefield is likely to include the whole of the enemy's society. Such dispersion, coupled with what seems likely to be increased importance for actions by very small groups of combatants, will require even the lowest level to operate flexibly on the basis of the commander's intent. Second is decreasing dependence on centralized logistics. Dispersion, coupled with increased value placed on tempo, will require a high degree of ability to live off the land and the enemy. Third is more emphasis on maneuver. Mass, of men or fire power, will no longer be an overwhelming factor. In fact, mass may become a disadvantage as it will be easy to target. Small, highly maneuverable, agile forces will tend to dominate. Fourth is a goal of collapsing the enemy internally rather than physically destroying him. Targets will include such things as the population's support for the war and the enemy's culture. Correct identification of enemy strategic centers of gravity will be highly important. In broad terms, fourth-generation warfare seems likely to be widely dispersed and largely undefined; the distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the vanishing point.… A fourth generation may emerge from non-Western cultural traditions, such as Islamic or Asiatic traditions. The fact that some non-Western areas, such as the Islamic world, are not strong in technology may lead them to develop a fourth generation through ideas rather than technology." [Marine Corps Gazette, 10/1989] After 9/11, this article and others developing similar ideas on the need for a smaller, more agile military, will be called remarkably prescient. New York Times columnist Bill Keller will comment: "The fourth-generation threat sounds, when you read this text today, uncannily like al-Qaeda. The authors suggested the threat would emerge from a non-Western culture like Islam, that it might be stateless, that, lacking modern means, its warriors would infiltrate our society and use our own technology against us, that they would regard our whole civilization as a battlefield. Fourth-generation warriors would 'use a free society's freedom and openness, its greatest strengths, against it.'" [CounterPunch, 9/29/2001; Hindu, 10/9/2001; Atlantic Monthly, 12/2001; New York Times Magazine, 3/10/2002] This article and others with a similar orientation will be praised in an article by "Abu 'Ubeid Al-Qurashi," reportedly the pseudonym of an Osama bin Laden aide and al-Qaeda theorist. He will say: "In 1989, some American military experts predicted a fundamental change in the future form of warfare.… [F]ourth-generation wars have already occurred and […] the superiority of the theoretically weaker party has already been proven; in many instances, nation-states have been defeated by stateless nations.… The time has come for the Islamic movements facing a general crusader offensive to internalize the rules of fourth-generation warfare." [MEMRI Special Dispatch, 2/10/2002; Insight on the News, 12/24/2002; American Conservative, 4/7/2003]
Entity Tags: William Lind, Al-Qaeda, Bill Keller
November 1989: Ali Mohamed Honorably Discharged from US Army
Ali Mohamed's US passport, issued in 1989. [Source: US Justice Department] (click image to enlarge)Ali Mohamed is honorably discharged from the US Army with commendations in his file, including one for "patriotism, valor, fidelity, and professional excellence." He remains in the Army Reserves for the next five years. [New York Times, 12/1/1998; Raleigh News and Observer, 10/21/2001] A US citizen by this time, he will spend much of his time after his discharge in Santa Clara, California, where his wife still resides. He will try but fail to get a job as an FBI interpreter, will work as a security guard, and will run a computer consulting firm out of his home. [San Francisco Chronicle, 9/21/2001]
Entity Tags: US Department of the Army, Ali Mohamed
November 24, 1989: Bin Laden's Mentor Assassinated
Sheikh Abdullah Azzam. [Source: CNN]Osama bin Laden's mentor Sheikh Abdullah Azzam is killed by a car bomb in Afghanistan. The killing will never be solved. Azzam has no shortage of enemies. Suspects will include the Mossad, CIA, Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the ISI, and bin Laden. The reason bin Laden will be suspected is because he and Azzam were increasingly at odds over what approach to take since the Soviet Union had been driven from Afghanistan earlier in the year (see February 15, 1989). [Slate, 4/16/2002; Coll, 2004, pp. 204] In 1998, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh will be arrested and later convicted for a role in the 1998 African embassy bombings. He reportedly will tell US interrogators that bin Laden "personally ordered the killing of Azzam because he suspected his former mentor had ties with the CIA." However, it is not known if Odeh was just passing on a rumor. [Gunaratna, 2003, pp. 32] Regardless, in the wake of Azzam's death, bin Laden will take control of Azzam's recruiting and support network, Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK)/Al-Kifah, and merge it with al-Qaeda, which was formed the year before (see August 11-20, 1988). [Slate, 4/16/2002; Coll, 2004, pp. 204]
Entity Tags: Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, Abdullah Azzam, Maktab al-Khidamat
1990: Security Chief Warns Port Authority that Terrorists Could Set Off a Truck Bomb in the WTC Parking Garage
Rick Rescorla, a security chief for a company at the World Trade Center, and Dan Hill, a former Army colleague of his, write a report in which they warn that terrorists could attack the WTC by detonating a truck filled with explosives in the underground parking garage, but the Port Authority, which manages the WTC, dismisses their warning. Rescorla, who previously served in the US Army, is now working as the director of security at brokerage firm Dean Witter, and his office is on the 44th floor of the WTC's South Tower. [Stewart, 2002, pp. 173-177; New Yorker, 2/11/2002]
Former Army Ranger Agrees to Identify WTC Vulnerabilities - Rescorla has become increasingly concerned about the possibility of a terrorist attack in the United States, especially after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up by a terrorist bomb over Scotland in December 1988, and he thinks the WTC is "an obvious target." He therefore asks his friend Hill to join him in New York and be his consultant. [Stewart, 2002, pp. 173] Hill, a former Army Ranger, has been trained in counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, demolition, and the use of explosives. [Stewart, 2002, pp. 152-153] "If anyone can figure out how to hurt this building, you can," Rescorla tells him, and adds, "I want to know the worst." Hill agrees to help Rescorla. After he arrives in New York, Rescorla takes him to the WTC. Rescorla explains the basic engineering of the Twin Towers and suggests they examine the buildings, starting at the bottom and then working up.
Parking Area Has No Visible Security - The two men begin by walking around the entire 16-acre WTC complex. Hill then asks Rescorla where the loading and docking operations are, and Rescorla takes him to a ramp that goes to the basement levels of the WTC. After they walk down the ramp, past a loading dock, and into a parking area, Hill asks, "Where are the guards?" Rescorla replies, "There are no guards." Hill then notices that all the major columns and supporting beams in the parking area are visible and exposed.
Hill Thinks Parking Area Is a 'Soft Touch' - After thinking for a few minutes, Hill says: "Hell, Rick. This is a soft touch. It's not even a challenge." He then explains to Rescorla how he would attack the WTC if he was a terrorist. According to journalist and author James B. Stewart, Hill says he would "bring in a stolen truck, painted like a delivery truck. He'd fill it with a mixture of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel, then drive down the ramp and park. With four or five men dressed in coveralls, he could plant additional charges near key supporting pillars within 15 minutes. Then he and the men would walk out and disperse, and he'd remove his coveralls." He would then take a taxi to another location, where he would have a van waiting with a woman, two children, and possibly a dog inside. He would use a cell phone or a beeper to detonate the truck bomb and then make his getaway. "Nobody's going to stop a family and a dog on Interstate 95," Hill tells Rescorla.
Port Authority Dismisses Rescorla's Concerns - Later on, the two men analyze Hill's findings and incorporate them into a report for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the WTC buildings. The following day, Rescorla meets with some Port Authority officials and notifies them of his and Hill's concerns, but they are uninterested. Rescorla later tells Hill that the officials' response was to say, "You worry about your floors and we'll worry about the rest, including the basements and parking." All the same, Rescorla sends copies of his and Hill's report to the Port Authority and also the New York City Police Department, but he receives no responses. Rescorla and Hill are unaware that the Port Authority's Office of Special Planning submitted a report in 1985 that warned of a bombing at the WTC of a similar kind to what they have envisioned, and also emphasized the vulnerability of the basement levels (see November 1985). However, no steps were taken to increase security at the WTC in response to that report. [Stewart, 2002, pp. 173-177] In February 1993, terrorists will attack the WTC in almost exactly the way that Hill predicts, by parking a van containing a 1,500-pound urea nitrate bomb in the basement and detonating it with a timer (see February 26, 1993). [Parachini, 2000, pp. 190-191 ]
Entity Tags: New York City Police Department, Rick Rescorla, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, World Trade Center, Daniel J. Hill
July 1990: 'Blind Sheikh' Enters US Despite Being on Terrorist Watch List, Takes Over Al-Kifah
Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman. [Source: FBI]Despite being on a US terrorist watch list for three years, radical Muslim leader Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman enters the US on a "much-disputed" tourist visa issued by an undercover CIA agent. [Village Voice, 3/30/1993; Atlantic Monthly, 5/1996; Lance, 2003, pp. 42] Abdul-Rahman was heavily involved with the CIA and Pakistani ISI efforts to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, and became famous traveling all over the world for five years recruiting new fighters for the Afghan war. The CIA gave him visas to come to the US starting in 1986 (see December 15, 1986-1989) . However, he never hid his prime goals to overthrow the governments of the US and Egypt. [Atlantic Monthly, 5/1996] FBI agent Tommy Corrigan will later say that prior to Abdul-Rahman's arrival, "terrorism for all intents and purposes didn't exist in the United States. But [his] arrival in 1990 really stoke the flames of terrorism in this country. This was a major-league ballplayer in what at the time was a minor-league ballpark. He was… looked up to worldwide. A mentor to bin Laden, he was involved with the MAK over in Pakistan." The charity front Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) is also known as Al-Kifah, and it has a branch in Brooklyn known as the Al-Kifah Refugee Center. The head of that branch, Mustafa Shalabi, picks up Abdul-Rahman at the airport when he first arrives and finds an apartment for him. Abdul-Rahman soon begins preaching at Al Farouq mosque, which is in the same building as the Al-Kifah office, plus two other locals mosques, Abu Bakr and Al Salaam. [Lance, 2006, pp. 53] He quickly turns Al-Kifah into his "de facto headquarters." [Atlantic Monthly, 5/1996] He is "infamous throughout the Arab world for his alleged role in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat." Abdul-Rahman immediately begins setting up a militant Islamic network in the US. [Village Voice, 3/30/1993] He is believed to have befriended bin Laden while in Afghanistan, and bin Laden secretly pays Abdul-Rahman's US living expenses. [Atlantic Monthly, 5/1996; ABC News, 8/16/2002] For the next two years, Abdul-Rahman will continue to exit and reenter the US without being stopped or deported, even though he is still on the watch list (see Late October 1990-October 1992).
Entity Tags: National Security Agency, Osama bin Laden, Meir Kahane, Omar Abdul-Rahman, Central Intelligence Agency, Al-Kifah Refugee Center, US Department of State, Abu Bakr Mosque, Al Farouq Mosque, Al Salaam Mosque, Anwar Sadat, World Trade Center
August 2, 1990: Iraq Invades Kuwait
Iraqi tanks poised to roll into Kuwait. [Source: Kristina Greve]Iraq invades Kuwait. In response, the US suspends National Security Directive 26 (see October 2-6, 1989), which established closer ties with Baghdad and mandated $1 billion in agricultural loan guarantees to Iraq. [Los Angeles Times, 2/23/1992] The secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, begins pressing President Bush to go to war with Iraq without securing Congressional approval. His rationale is two-fold: he doesn't need Congressional authority, and he might not get it if he asks. Cheney moves the Pentagon onto a full war footing, even going so far as to create what author and former White House counsel John Dean calls "his own concocted high-risk plans of battle, which he tried but failed to sell at the White House." Bush will juggle Cheney's view with that of House Speaker Tom Foley, who will give the president a document signed by 81 Democratic members who insist that if Bush wants to go to war, he needs the authorization of Congress. Dean will write that Cheney's arguments "are based on bogus legal and historical arguments that have been made before, but no one has pushed them longer or harder than he has." [Dean, 2007, pp. 89-91] Bush decides not to follow Cheney's advice. In 2007, author and reporter Charlie Savage will observe: "By urging Bush to ignore the War Powers Resolution on the eve of the first major overseas ground war since Congress enacted the law, Cheney was attempting to set a powerful precedent. Had Bush taken his advice and survived the political fallout, the Gulf War would have restored [former President] Truman's claim that as president he had 'inherent' powers to send American troops to the Korean War on his own" (see June 30, 1950). [Savage, 2007, pp. 62]
Entity Tags: John Dean, George Herbert Walker Bush, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Bush administration (41), Charlie Savage, US Department of Defense
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, US-Iraq 1980s
August 4, 1990: Iraqis Hold Hundreds of Americans Hostage; US Reluctant to Take Action
Over 100 Americans are trapped in the US Embassy in Kuwait City. Perhaps 2,000 Americans are hiding from Iraqi soldiers throughout the capital city, and at least 115 are already in Iraqi custody, essentially being held as hostages. Iraqi forces bring a number of Americans, mostly oilfield workers, to Baghdad, where they are put up at local hotels. The Iraqis do not allow the "freed" Americans to leave the hotels or meet with US Embassy officials. It is clear that though the Iraqis call them "guests," they are hostages. Deputy Chief of Mission Joseph Wilson, the ranking US diplomat in Baghdad, learns to his dismay that his superiors in the US are similarly reluctant to consider the Americans as hostages, arguing that if US officials begin calling them hostages, then the Iraqis will treat them as such. Perhaps Iraq is holding the Americans only until their control of Kuwait is complete, and will release them. But, except for the release of a single American girl (see Early August, 1990), the Iraqis release no hostages. Embassy personnel succeed in rounding up around 100 Americans, mostly workers for the Bechtel Corporation, and housing them in the confines of the Embassy building. [Wilson, 2004, pp. 117-118, 126]
Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Bechtel
August 8, 1990: Iraqis Use Americans as Human Shields
Deputy Chief of Mission Joseph Wilson and the other US diplomats in Baghdad learn that the Iraqis have taken about 115 Americans as hostages (see August 4, 1990) and are placing them at strategic sites they consider most likely to be targeted by US air and ground strikes—in essence using the hostages as human shields. Two thousand Americans still remain trapped in Kuwait City, where Iraqis are, Wilson will write, "terrorizing the population." [Wilson, 2004, pp. 126]
Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson
Mid-August 1990: US Air Force Official Determines Coordinates Used to Plot Strikes against Iraqi Targets
A sketch of a 1990 US Army GPS system similar to that used by the Air Force. [Source: Department of the Army]Shortly after Iraq invades Kuwait (see August 2, 1990), a US Air Force official arrives at the Baghdad airport with a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receiver in a briefcase. He is driven to the US Embassy. At the embassy, he takes a position in the courtyard and takes a single GPS reading. He then flies to the US, where he gives the GPS receiver to CIA officials in Langley, Virginia. The CIA determines the precise GPS location of the embassy from the Air Force officer's reading. That set of grid coordinates will serve as the center of the large and sophisticated coordinate system used to designate military strike targets in and around Baghdad during Operation Desert Storm (see January 16, 1991 and After). [NationMaster, 12/23/2007]
Entity Tags: US Department of the Air Force, Central Intelligence Agency
September 11, 1990: Bush Discusses 'New World Order,' Alarms White Separatists
A Web graphic opposing the 'New World Order.' [Source: Human Symbiose (.org)]In a speech discussing the post-Cold War world, President Bush outlines his vision of a "New World Order." Bush says: "We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective—a new world order—can emerge: a new era—freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace." The Southern Poverty Law Center will later write that many people, particularly white supremacists and separatists, take Bush's phrase "as a slip of the tongue revealing secret plans to create a one-world government." [Sweet Liberty, 9/11/1990; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001] In 1995, Michigan gun dealer and right-wing activist Frank Kieltyka will describe the "New World Order" to a Buffalo News reporter. According to Kieltyka, the "New World Order" is backed by the US government and led by, among other organizations, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). "We're moving towards the Communists," Kieltyka will warn. The belief in this "New World Order" will be emphasized in coming years in the militia movements and by right-wing publications such as The Spotlight, an openly racist, anti-government newsletter. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 157-158]
Entity Tags: Trilateral Commission, George Herbert Walker Bush, Frank Kieltyka, Council on Foreign Relations, Southern Poverty Law Center, The Spotlight
September 20, 1990: US Diplomat Joseph Wilson Faces Down Iraqis, Prevents Americans from Being Taken Hostage
As tensions escalate between the US and Iraq, Iraqi officials circulate a note to all the embassies in Baghdad, directing them to register all of the civilians in their care with the authorities. Failure to comply can result in execution, the note implies. Such registration can only be done in person at Iraqi governmental offices; Deputy Chief of Mission Joseph Wilson, the ranking US diplomat in Baghdad, knows that bringing American citizens in for registration may well result in those Americans being taken hostage. He is housing some 60 Americans at the ambassador's residence for their protection. He will later write: "It was clearly a way for the Iraqis to replenish their stock of hostages. The choice, theoretically, was either to turn over Americans or to defy the note and risk execution." Instead of making the choice, Wilson uses the order to publicly defy the Iraqis. He schedules a press conference and has a Marine make him a hangman's noose. Wearing the noose, he tells reporters that if Saddam Hussein "wants to execute me for keeping Americans from being taken hostage, I will bring my own f_cking rope." The press conference, like all of the embassy press conferences, is off the record, but journalists release the story anyway. A garbled, erroneous version from a French news outlet has the Iraqis planning to hang Wilson by sundown. Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, angered and embarrassed by the press coverage, attempts to dress down Wilson that evening, but Wilson refuses to back down. Instead, the Iraqis withdraw the request. Soon after, President Bush sends Wilson a cable lauding his courage and his outspokeness (see November 29, 1990). [Wilson, 2004, pp. 153-154; Unger, 2007, pp. 311] Conservative columnist Robert Novak co-writes a piece about Wilson that says, "He shows the stuff of heroism." Novak will later reveal the covert CIA status of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as an act of political retaliation (see July 14, 2003). [Wilson, 2004, pp. 153-154]
Entity Tags: Tariq Aziz, Joseph C. Wilson, Robert Novak, Saddam Hussein, George Herbert Walker Bush
October 1990: Future Oklahoma City Bomber Ordered to Begin Special Forces Training, Training Interrupted by Overseas Deployment
Timothy McVeigh's unit at Fort Benning, Georgia. McVeigh is highlighted. [Source: Associated Press]Army Sergeant Timothy McVeigh (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990) receives orders to attend Special Forces training classes beginning November 11, 1990. McVeigh's ambition is to become a Green Beret. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] However, his training is interrupted before it begins, as his unit is called up to go to Kuwait as part of Operation Desert Shield, later Desert Storm (see January 16, 1991 and After). McVeigh's unit will leave from Fort Riley, Kansas, to a staging area in Germany, and then on to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Before he leaves, McVeigh pays a brief visit to his hometown of Pendleton, New York (see 1987-1988), where he worries a close friend, his "surrogate mother" Lynn Drzyzga, by telling her, "I'm coming back [from Kuwait] in a body bag." She will later recall that watching McVeigh walk away "was just like my own son was leaving at that moment." [Serrano, 1998, pp. 32-33]
Entity Tags: Timothy James McVeigh, Lynn Drzyzga, US Department of the Army
Late October 1990-October 1992: 'Blind Sheikh' Able to Repeatedly Leave and Reenter US Despite Being on Watch List
In July 1990, the "Blind Sheikh," Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, was mysteriously able to enter the US and remain there despite being a well known public figure and being on a watch list for three years (see July 1990).
In late October 1990, he travels to London, so he is out of the US when one of his followers assassinates the Zionist rabbi Meir Kahane on November 5, 1990 (see November 5, 1990). He returns to the US in mid-November under the name "Omar Ahmed Rahman" and again has no trouble getting back in despite still being on the watch list. [Washington Post, 7/13/1993]
The State Department revokes his US visa on November 17 after the FBI informs it that he is in the US. [New York Times, 12/16/1990]
In December 1990, Abdul-Rahman leaves the US again to attend an Islamic conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. He returns nine days later and again has no trouble reentering, despite not even having a US visa at this point. [Washington Post, 7/13/1993]
On December 16, 1990, the New York Times publishes an article titled, "Islamic Leader on US Terrorist List Is in Brooklyn," which makes his presence in the US publicly known. The Immigration and Nationalization Service (INS) is said to be investigating why he has not been deported already. [New York Times, 12/16/1990]
Yet in April 1991, the INS approves his application for permanent residence.
He then leaves the US again in June 1991 to go on the religious hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and returns on July 31, 1991. INS officials identify him coming in, but let him in anyway. [New York Times, 4/24/1993; Washington Post, 7/13/1993]
In June 1992, his application for political asylum will be turned down and his permanent residence visa revoked. But INS hearings on his asylum bid are repeatedly delayed and still have not taken place when the WTC is bombed in February 1993 (see February 26, 1993). [Lance, 2003, pp. 105-106]
Abdul-Rahman then goes to Canada around October 1992 and returns to the US yet again. The US and Canada claim to have no documentation on his travel there, but numerous witnesses in Canada see him pray and lecture there. Representative Charles Schumer (D-NY) says, "Here they spent all this time trying to get him out. He goes to Canada and gives them the perfect reason to exclude him and they don't."
After the WTC bombing, the US could detain him pending his deportation hearing but chooses not to, saying it would be too costly to pay for his medical bills. [New York Times, 4/24/1993]
Abdul-Rahman will be involved in the follow up "Landmarks" plot (see June 24, 1993) before finally being arrested later in 1993. It will later be alleged that he was protected by the CIA. In 1995, the New York Times will comment that the link between Abdul-Rahman and the CIA "is a tie that remains muddy." [New York Times, 10/2/1995]
Entity Tags: US Department of State, Meir Kahane, US Immigration and Naturalization Service, Omar Abdul-Rahman, Charles Schumer, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency
November 5, 1990: First Bin Laden-Related Terror Attack in US as Jewish Rabbi Is Assassinated
Meir Kahane. [Source: Publicity photo]Egyptian-American El Sayyid Nosair assassinates controversial right-wing Zionist leader Rabbi Meir Kahane. Kahane's organization, the Jewish Defense League, was linked to dozens of bombings and is ranked by the FBI as the most lethal domestic militant group in the US at the time. Nosair is captured after a police shoot-out. [Village Voice, 3/30/1993] Within hours, overwhelming evidence suggests that the assassination was a wide conspiracy but the US government will immediately declare that Nosair was a lone gunman and ignore the evidence suggesting otherwise (see November 5, 1990 and After). Nosair will later be acquitted of Kahane's murder (though he will be convicted of lesser charges) as investigators continue to ignore most of the evidence in his case which links to a wider conspiracy (see December 7, 1991). Nosair is connected to al-Qaeda through his job at the Al-Kifah Refugee Center, an al-Qaeda front (see 1986-1993). A portion of Nosair's defense fund will be paid for by bin Laden, although this will not be discovered until some time later. [ABC News, 8/16/2002; Lance, 2003, pp. 34-37]
Entity Tags: Meir Kahane, Al-Qaeda, Al-Kifah Refugee Center, El Sayyid Nosair
November 5, 1990 and After: US Promotes Lone Gunman Theory in Kahane Assassination, Hiding Evidence of Al-Qaeda Links
Invesigators remove boxes of evidence from El Sayyid Nosair's residence hours after the assassination. [Source: National Geographic]US government agencies cover up evidence of a conspiracy in the wake of El Sayyid Nosair's assassination of controversial right-wing Zionist leader Rabbi Meir Kahane (see November 5, 1990). Nosair is captured a few blocks from the murder site after a police shoot-out. An FBI informant says he saw Nosair meeting with Muslim leader Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman a few days before the attack, and evidence indicating a wider plot with additional targets is quickly found. [Village Voice, 3/30/1993] Later that night, police arrive at Nosair's house and find a pair of Middle Eastern men named Mahmud Abouhalima and Mohammed Salameh there. They are taken in for questioning. Additionally, police collect a total of 47 boxes of evidence from Nosair's house, including: [Lance, 2003, pp. 34-35]
Thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Maps and drawings of New York City landmarks, including the World Trade Center.
Documents in Arabic containing bomb making formulas, details of an Islamic militant cell, and mentions of the term "al-Qaeda."
Recorded sermons by Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman in which he encourages his followers to "destroy the edifices of capitalism" and destroy "the enemies of Allah" by "destroying their… high world buildings."
Tape-recorded phone conversations of Nosair reporting to Abdul-Rahman about paramilitary training, and even discussing bomb-making manuals.
Videotaped talks that Ali Mohamed delivered at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Top secret manuals also from Fort Bragg. There are even classified documents belonging to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Commander in Chief of the Army's Central Command. These manuals and documents had clearly come from Mohamed, who completed military service at Fort Bragg the year before and frequently stayed in Nosair's house.
A detailed and top secret plan for Operation Bright Star, a special operations training exercise simulating an attack on Baluchistan, a part of Pakistan between Afghanistan and the Arabian Sea. [Raleigh News and Observer, 10/21/2001; Raleigh News and Observer, 11/13/2001; Wall Street Journal, 11/26/2001; ABC News, 8/16/2002; Lance, 2003, pp. 34-35]
Also within hours, two investigators will connect Nosair with surveillance photographs of Mohamed giving weapons training to Nosair, Abouhalima, Salameh, and others at a shooting range the year before (see July 1989). [Lance, 2003, pp. 34-35] But, ignoring all of this evidence, still later that evening, Joseph Borelli, the New York police department's chief detective, will publicly declare the assassination the work of a "lone deranged gunman." He will further state, "I'm strongly convinced that he acted alone.… He didn't seem to be part of a conspiracy or any terrorist organization." The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry will later conclude, "The [New York Police Department] and the District Attorney's office… reportedly wanted the appearance of speedy justice and a quick resolution to a volatile situation. By arresting Nosair, they felt they had accomplished both." [Village Voice, 3/30/1993; Lance, 2003, pp. 34-36] Abouhalima and Salameh are released, only to be later convicted for participating in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Investigators will later find in Nosair's possessions a formula for a bomb almost identical to one used in the WTC bombing. [New York Magazine, 3/17/1995] As one FBI agent will later put it, "The fact is that in 1990, myself and my detectives, we had in our office in handcuffs, the people who blew up the World Trade Center in '93. We were told to release them." The 47 boxes of evidence collected at Nosair's house that evening are stored away, inaccessible to prosecutors and investigators. The documents found will not be translated until after the World Trade Center bombing. Nosair will later be acquitted of Kahane's murder (though he will be convicted of lesser charges), as investigators will continue to ignore all evidence that could suggest Nosair did not act alone (see December 7, 1991). [ABC News, 8/16/2002; Lance, 2003, pp. 34-37] District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who prosecuted the case, will later speculate the CIA may have encouraged the FBI not to pursue any other leads. Nosair worked at the Al-Kifah Refugee Center which was closely tied to covert CIA operations in Afghanistan (see Late 1980s and After). [New York Magazine, 3/17/1995]
Entity Tags: Joseph Borelli, Mahmud Abouhalima, Meir Kahane, Federal Bureau of Investigation, El Sayyid Nosair, Al-Qaeda, Ali Mohamed, Central Intelligence Agency, Robert Morgenthau, Mohammed Salameh, Al-Kifah Refugee Center
November 8, 1990: Bush Announces Massive Troop Deployment in Persian Gulf
George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney. [Source: Representational Pictures]President Bush, reeling from the Republican defeat in the midterm elections two days before, announces the deployment of 200,000 more troops around the Persian Gulf to augment the 250,000 already in place. Bush announces the deployment without consulting or advising Congress, a brush-off that angers many legislators who feel that Bush kept this from Congress in order to make sure it did not become an election issue. Bush is also weighing the advice of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who argues that the president does not need the authorization of Congress to wage war. [Dean, 2007, pp. 90]
Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Richard ("Dick") Cheney
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, US-Iraq 1980s
Mid-November 1990: CIA Allegedy Blocks FBI Investigation of 'Blind Sheikh' in Kahane Assassination
The FBI is apparently under pressure to back off from investigating Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman. One week after the murder of Zionist rabbi Meir Kahane, a long-time FBI counterterrorism expert meets with one of his top undercover operatives. According to the FBI agent, the undercover operative asks, "Why aren't we going after the Sheikh [Abdul-Rahman]?" The FBI agent replies, "It's hands-off." He further explains, "It was no accident that the Sheikh got a visa and that he's still in the country. He's here under the banner of national security, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA." The agent concludes that Abdul-Rahman is untouchable. Noting how the government is already firmly suggesting that El Sayyid Nosair was the only one involved in Kahane's murder, he says, "I haven't seen the lone-gunman theory advocated [so forcefully] since John F. Kennedy." [Village Voice, 3/30/1993] The FBI will also fail to look at a wealth of evidence suggesting others were involved in the assassination (see November 5, 1990 and After).
Entity Tags: El Sayyid Nosair, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Meir Kahane, Omar Abdul-Rahman
November 29, 1990: UN Resolution Leads to 'Coalition' of Nations Opposing Iraq Occupation of Kuwait
The United Nations passes Resolution 678. The resolution gives Iraq until January 15, 1991 to withdraw entirely from Kuwait (see July 25, 1990) and restore its national sovereignty. The US uses UN authority to build a "coalition" of nations to support its upcoming "Desert Storm" operation designed to repel Iraqi forces from Kuwait (see January 16, 1991 and After). 34 countries contribute personnel: Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Spain, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. West Germany and Japan do not contribute forces, but they do contribute $6.6 billion and $10 billion, respectively, to the cause. While some countries join out of a sincere belief that Iraq must not be allowed to dominate the region and control Middle Eastern oil reserves (see August 7, 1990), others are more reluctant, believing that the affair is an internal matter best resolved by other Arab countries, and some fear increased US influence in Kuwait and the region. Some of these nations are persuaded by Iraq's belligerence towards other Arab nations as well as by US offers of economic aid and/or debt forgiveness. [NationMaster, 12/23/2007] As with all such UN resolutions, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein rejects this resolution. [PBS Frontline, 1/9/1996]
Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, United Nations
Late December 1990: National Intelligence Estimate Predicts Iraq will Withdraw Rather than Face US Invasion
With Iraqi forces occupying much of Kuwait (see August 2, 1990), the US intelligence community releases a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that predicts, wrongly, that Iraq will withdraw from Kuwait rather than face a US invasion (see January 16, 1991 and After). [New Republic, 11/20/2003] This is a follow-up to the consensus among US intelligence agencies that Iraq would not invade Kuwait (see Mid-1990).
Entity Tags: US intelligence
Timeline Tags: US-Iraq 1980s
1991-1996: Future Hamburg Cell Member Zammar Travels Widely, Becomes Al-Qaeda Operative
Mohammed Haydar Zammar, who will later be the chief recruiter for and a key member of the al-Qaeda Hamburg cell, travels widely and joins al-Qaeda. Zammar was born in Syria but his family moved to Hamburg, Germany, in 1971. He became a German citizen and renounced his Syrian citizenship about a decade later. By his late teens, he developed a friendship with Mamoun Darkazanli, a fellow Syrian, and both of them joined the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Muslim group banned in Egypt. Zammar worked as an auto mechanic until about 1991, when he decides to become a full time militant, and he mostly lives on government benefits after that.
Training and Fighting in Afghanistan - In 1991, Zammar goes to Afghanistan and trains at an elite camp linked to Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He fights with Hekmatyar's forces against the Communist Afghan government before returning to Hamburg by the end of 1991.
Active in Many Countries - Over the next five years, he makes about 40 trips out of Germany, often to countries where Islamist militants are fighting. In 1995, he fights in Bosnia with other Arabs against the Serbians. In 1996, he goes to Afghanistan again and formally pledges allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, according to an unnamed Arab intelligence agency.
His Travels Cause Attention - All of Zammar's traveling brings him to the attention of Turkish intelligence, and it notifies German intelligence about his radical militant links in 1996 (see 1996). Knowing that his militant activity is not illegal in Germany as long as he is not involved in a plot targeting Germany, Zammar speaks openly about his travels and exploits, and he becomes very well known within the Islamist extremist community in Hamburg. He begins recruiting others to become active militants and attend Afghan training camps. [Washington Post, 9/11/2002; New York Times, 1/18/2003]
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Mamoun Darkazanli, Mohammed Haydar Zammar