Tuesday, May 13, 2008
By Jayna Davis' account, the Oklahoma City coverup began just hours after the blast, as rescue workers were digging through the rubble, searching for survivors. That's when federal agents, "without explanation" she says, canceled an all-points bulletin searching for Middle Eastern subjects seen speeding away from the Murrah Building moments after the bombing. The APB was based on eyewitness accounts.
Another key piece of evidence Oklahoma City conspiracy buffs point to is a conversation the CIA's Cannistraro had with an FBI agent in the immediate aftermath of the bombing. Cannistraro told the Bureau a Saudi Arabian intelligence source, after hearing the news of the Murrah Building attack, called to tell him he'd heard reports that an hit squad of terrorists, possibly Iraqi, had been sent to America. Cannistraro told the FBI he could not vouch for the information, but that the Saudi source had been credible in the past.
But Cannistraro stresses his Saudi source called him back days later to tell him the information about the hit squad was "bogus." "That part doesn't get into their story because they have their theory of what happened," he says. And the early APB about Middle Eastern subjects, too, turned out to be based on a bad tip. "The fact that a particular bulletin after the Oklahoma City bombing turned out to be inaccurate would not be a surprise at all," says Potok. "The vast majority of tips that day were worthless."
What gave Davis' investigation its initial momentum, back in 1995, was her claim to be able to identify the mysterious "John Doe 2." Davis and her team at KFOR-TV took a version of the John Doe 2 sketch, which some people suggest depicts a Middle Eastern man, and went to work. "We looked at the pattern of behavior of Timothy McVeigh and he frequented strip bars so we took out pictures of this Middle Eastern man and hit the streets looking for every establishment we could find," she says.
She eventually found two witnesses who claimed to have seen McVeigh drinking beer with John Doe No. 2 four days before the attack. Davis ran the story without revealing the man's name. Angered by her reports, which he felt made clear his identity, the man came forward and announced himself as Hussain al-Hussaini. An Iraqi soldier who surrendered during the Gulf War, lived in a Saudi Arabian refugee camp and eventually came to American and worked as a restaurant employee, al-Hussaini sued Davis for libel and defamation. The case was dismissed, with the judge noting Davis had proven al-Hussaini "bears a strong resemblance to the composite sketch of John Doe #2." Al-Hussaini is currently appealing.
Davis left KFOR-TV in 1997 after the New York Times bought the station and, she claims, showed no interest in her McVeigh work. During the al-Hussaini litigation, though, Davis was able to get access to some of al-Hussaini's medical records. The records reveal al-Hussaini quit his job at Boston's Logan Airport in 1997 because, as he complained to a nurse at psychiatric clinic at the time, "If anything happens here I'll be a suspect." Davis labels the exchange "shocking," since Logan is where two of the four hijacked planes on Sept. 11 originated from.
Critics say trying to selectively use a single quote to create a link between al-Hussaini's job at Logan four years before the 9/11 hijackings is irresponsible. "Al-Hussaini's just some poor sucker," says investigator McCauley, who finds nothing compelling about Davis' accumulated evidence. "All I know is he's not involved in the Oklahoma City bombing and he shouldn't be appointed a mass murderer. Because what happens if somebody plugs this guy in the head? Who's going to be responsible for that?"
Davis though, has no reservations about her public crusade to implicate al-Hussaini: "Absolutely not. I truly believe the evidence shows he was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing." Al-Hussaini's attorney could not be reached for comment.
Other experts on the bombing reject the notion that McVeigh, the model of an angry white American male, was befriending Middle Easterners in the days leading up to the terrorist attack. After returning home from the Gulf War, McVeigh "hits the road and gets into gun culture" where he's meeting "Bubbas, not Middle Eastern terrorists," says Lou Michel, coauthor along with Dan Herbeck of "American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Tragedy at Oklahoma City." "He was traveling to Michigan and Arizona, with some time in Kansas. That was his world, white America. He wasn't buddying up to African-Americans or Hispanics or Middle Easterners. That only happened when he went to prison."
But Davis remains undeterred, as she recites the minutia of her investigation with boundless enthusiasm: "I have 300 pages of Terry Nichols' home phone record if you want to go over them." She points to lots of other circumstantial evidence to support her premise that Middle Easterners were involved in the April 1995 attack. She says al-Hussaini cannot account for his whereabouts that morning, that former Iraqi soldiers living in Oklahoma City, and absent from work the day McVeigh rented his Ryder truck that carried the bomb, were overheard pledging their allegiance to Saddam when a radio newscast reported Islamic terrorists had claimed responsibility for the bombing, and that one of al-Hussaini's Oklahoma City employers was once suspected of having ties to the PLO. Davis says a brown Chevy pickup truck, just like the one seen by some witnesses speeding away from the Murrah Building, was also spotted in front of that employer's office days before the attack.
Davis says she also has 22 sworn affidavits from witnesses who link Middle Eastern men collaborating with McVeigh and Nichols during various stages of the bombing plot, including seven witnesses who place al-Hussaini in McVeigh's company before the bombing.
What is missing from Davis' dossier, though, is an explanation for why U.S. officials would ignore evidence of Middle Eastern terrorists' involvement in the bombing. Why would FBI agents who investigated the Oklahoma City massacre look the other way and allow an Iraqi terrorist to get off free? After all, the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building "was an attack on the federal family of employees," notes Cannistraro.
"The theory that makes the most sense to me is that [the government] just didn't want to deal with the panic of Middle Eastern terrorism coming home to roost," answers Davis. "Because if it was state-sponsored, that would have been tantamount to an act of war."
Perhaps more importantly, how would such a far-flung coverup, including dozens, if not hundreds, of investigators all working in concert to suppress evidence of a Middle Eastern connection, ever maintain itself over the years? Patterson at the Indianapolis Star argues it could have been a small number of officials in the Oklahoma City field office who decided not to pursue the Middle Eastern leads.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Davis got a break. After spending six years "pounding the pavement in Oklahoma City," as she puts it, and with little success getting noticed on the national stage, the dogged television reporter got an offer from Alexander Magnus, an ailing Chicago real estate magnate with a penchant for conspiracy theories, to help get the story told.
"He's a very nice gentleman who got involved in a lot of crazy conspiracy stuff," says Davis, referring to Magnus' suspicion that the government was behind the crash of TWA Flight 800 as well as the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Magnus died in August.
"He came to me and said I want to help you," says Davis. "I never wanted to be labeled right-wing. I fought that label for a long time but after working on this for six years without a dime of income I was penniless and could not break through the wall. And I knew I needed to get to Washington" to tell my story.
After consulting with her husband, Davis decided to accept Magnus' $57,000. "And if I hadn't, I wouldn't be talking to you right now" about this story, she says.
With Magnus' infusion of cash, Davis made two trips to Washington early this year, where she met with former CIA Director Woolsey, as well as Rep. Burton, who agreed to launch an investigation. Their interest then spread to conservative commentators in the press, and Fox News in general, where Davis has been welcomed on the air many times.
Another media connection paid off when a Philadelphia talk-show host and friend of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., embraced Davis' conspiracy theory and started discussing it on his show. Specter soon agreed to hear a presentation from Davis, which convinced him to promise her he'd support an inquiry into her evidence. That promise brought Davis fresh media attention from the Philadelphia press. The senator's enthusiasm may have cooled, though, after speaking with Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, who told Specter there was nothing to Davis' allegation. The senator is currently waiting to hear back from the FBI about its handling of the case.
Davis claims she simply wants the Department of Justice to interview her 22 witnesses and determine the validity of their claims. "I'm so ready to hang this up and let justice take its course. It's not my responsibility to do the work of the FBI or the DOJ."
Says Patterson, "Just investigate. If her witnesses don't know that they're talking about, you can say we're all crazy."
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