View 1995 KFOR-TV Broadcast
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- Interview with Jayna Davis - 6/20/02
- My Word commentary by John Gibson -
6/20/02
THE BIG STORY WITH JOHN GIBSON
June 20, 2002
HEADLINE: Interview With Jayna Davis
GIBSON: Documents obtained by The Associated Press show that our government was warned that Islamic terrorists were planning attacks on American federal
buildings around the time of the Oklahoma City bombing. The Clinton
administration even stepped up security around such buildings.
So could this mean that Timothy McVeigh was acting in league with those
militants? My next guest says, yes, indeed.
Jayna Davis is a former Oklahoma City television reporter. She joins us now from Oklahoma City.
So, Jayna, this warning that was issued in February of 1995, a -- essentially
a couple of months before the Murrah building explosion -- do you think it was connected to that bombing?
JAYNA DAVIS, FORMER OKLAHOMA CITY TV REPORTER: Well, it dovetails with the information that we generated when I was
working as a reporter for the NBC affiliate here in Oklahoma City, and we gathered information from 24 witnesses
who identified eight Middle Eastern men, the majority of whom were of Iraqi
descend, working in collusion with Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols during
various stages of the bombing plot to blow up the Murrah building.
The warning you refer to, John, I have in my possession. It was issued by the
Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, and what --
why it's startling to me is because it stated in February of 1995 that there
would be an Iran-sponsored Islamic attack on U.S. soil. This specific target was
Washington, D.C., primarily Congress and the White House.
Once security was beefed up after the dissemination of this warning, then there was an updated warning that was then issued by the director of the
Congressional Task Force, Mr. Yossef Bodansky. He stated in the updated warning
the specific language that the terrorists planned to strike at the heart of the
U.S. but not acting alone.
The Islamic terrorists were going to employ the services and recruit what they call two lily whites. And in the jargon of the intelligence community, lily
whites means anybody that's not connected or ostensibly connected to any
Middle Eastern terrorist organizations and they have no police record,
they're clean, they wouldn't be flagged by any law- enforcement agencies.
Both Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh fit that criterion.
GIBSON: Now, Jayna, you have long held that a character named Hussain
Al-Hussaini is John Doe #2, and I think we have pictures of him here. This is Hussain Hasham
Al-Hussaini, and then, of course, we'll see the picture of
John Doe #2, and he does bear a resemblance to him. What evidence do
you have that Hussain Al-Hussaini, an Iraqi, was with Tim McVeigh?
DAVIS: Well, let's start with four days before the bombing. Two witnesses who
independently identified him out of a photo line-up of 35 photographs
of eight different Middle Eastern men. These witnesses identified him
independently of each other as drinking beer with Timothy McVeigh in a
tavern in Oklahoma City on April 15th of 1995.
Then there were two more witnesses that identified him jogging outside the
Murrah building, dressed in blue jeans with a backpack and a windbreaker, racing
from the Murrah building, one block east of the building, timing his
run, before daybreak, the day of April 19th. These witnesses walked past this individual
they saw running within about three to four feet and looked him square in the
face. He was positively identified...
GIBSON: Where is Hussain Al-Hussaini?
DAVIS: Well, we don't know. I do know that he went and moved to Boston sometime around 1997 and claimed that he was working at Boston International
Airport...
GIBSON: Logan?
DAVIS: ... in '97 and '98. Logan. Yes.
GIBSON: And he was an Iraqi soldier?
DAVIS: It's also important to note, John, he was identified in the Ryder truck with McVeigh 30 minutes prior to the bombing when McVeigh stopped to ask
for directions at 10th and Hudson, which is about five blocks north of the
Murrah building.
He was also identified at ground zero stepping out of the Ryder truck. He was
identified in the passenger seat -- I'm sorry -- in the driver's seat of a brown
Chevrolet pickup speeding away from the bomb site 60 seconds after the blast in
a truck that matched the description of the official FBI all-points bulletin
issued the morning of the bombing for Middle Eastern terrorists.
GIBSON: Jayna Davis, former Oklahoma City television reporter.
Jayna, thanks very much.
Coming up on THE BIG STORY, a closer look at our intelligence before
September 11th. We've been hearing a lot about that. Just now, in fact. The
National Security Agency had their hands on some key messages. Did they blow it?
THE BIG STORY WITH JOHN GIBSON
My Word
June 20, 2002
source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,55844,00.html
I think we're all convinced by now that George W. Bush has the crosshairs on Saddam Hussein. And it's clear from the latest Fox News Opinion Dynamic polling
that the American public supports action against Saddam by a huge margin, 75
percent for and 14 percent against. In electoral politics, that is a landslide.
But what do you think those numbers would be if it turns out that reporter
Jayna Davis is right, that the Iraqis were behind the Oklahoma City bombing, and
Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols were, in fact, so-called lily whites, recruited by
the Islamicists to act as fronts for Muslim or Iraqi or maybe even Iranian
terror against the U.S. here in the heartland?
And what if it turns out that Timothy McVeigh, as a matter of pride, profound
embarrassment, would never admit, never let it be known that he was acting in
concert with, on behalf of, an actual enemy of the United States, Iraq, an enemy
that he personally fought against, or what if he was so worried about the fate
of his beloved sister if he ever confessed that John Doe number two was in fact
Hussain al-Hussaini, the Iraqi identified by Jayna Davis?
How much angrier would the American public be to learn that the horror of
April '95 was in fact Iraqi terror carried out under the shroud of two disgruntled ticked off at the Feds over David Koresh white guys?
How angry would the American public be if it turns out that the prosecution
of McVeigh as the executive in charge of the Murrah bombing was in fact a
diversion so as to let the real perps slip away quietly to gloat about their
death and destruction in the safety of their lairs in Baghdad and Tehran?
This is nightmare scenario stuff, and what's so scary about this bad dream is
there's actual evidence underpinning the fear that it could be true. Did we execute Timothy McVeigh when there was evidence that might have
mitigated his involvement in the plot? Did we send McVeigh to his grave keeping the secret of
John Doe number two and the terrible secret of treason and the hand of Iraq in
that bombing?
Were we so anxious to get a conviction on the case and give the families
closure that we didn't follow the leads that would have led to an invasion of
Iraq years ago, the toppling of Saddam, and maybe, just maybe, the destruction of the terror network that later killed 3,000 in New York and Washington, D.C.?
These are provocative questions that deserve answers, and luckily Terry
Nichols is still breathing and facing a trial in Oklahoma. Let's hope the
prosecutors there get to the bottom of this once and for all.
That is "My Word."
Meanwhile, now it's time for "Your Word."
About Iraq being involved in 9/11, of course, personal favorite of mine, "You
make a great point that U.S. intelligence agency can and should find the
connection between Iraq and September 11 to provide a rational basis for a
regime change in that country. I wonder if they would have less trouble
connecting another country to the attack, namely Saudi Arabia. It seems to me
the Saudi connection is more easily identified but less interesting to the U.S.
government. If we're going to put an end to the terrorist aggression, we need to
follow the trail wherever it leads, and take on whoever is implicated." Phil in
Westchester, Virginia.
And about kicking Saddam out of the headman job in Iraq, an e-mailer in
Australia is worried. "What worries me is who would you replace Mr. Hussein with? What happens if there's a vacuum and the Iranians move in? You have made
glass out of sand in Afghanistan, blasted them to pieces, and yet we have a
hodgepodge of warlords now fighting as to who is going to be the big banana."
Keith Thomas in Brisbane, Australia.
And Mr. Thomas, as you well know, the big banana in Afghanistan is now Hamid
Karzai.
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