Terrorist Onslaught Had Been Expected
The world’s intelligence agencies - including the FBI and CIA have known for months that Middle Eastern terrorists were plotting a terror onslaught aimed at the United States.
Wednesday’s carnage in Oklahoma City could be the result, U.S. officials say.
An FBI communique distributed Wednesday afternoon indicated that FBI investigators suspect the attack was carried out by the Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group often tied to Iran. The communique speculated that the attack was retaliation for the prosecution of Muslim fundamentalists accused of the bombing of the World Trade Center, according to a security professional familiar with the communique.
The communique said people saying they represented three groups claimed responsibility for the attack: remnants of the Branch Davidians, the Nation of Islam and Islamic Jihad.
“We are currently inclined to suspect the Islamic Jihad as the likely group,” the FBI notice said.
Officials with the Nation of Islam and members of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco denied any involvement in the incident, which fell on the second anniversary of a fire that destroyed the Branch Davidian compound near Waco.
That fire ended a 51-day standoff involving the FBI and some of the same agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who were assigned to a ninth-floor office at the Oklahoma City federal building. ATF officials said none of their employees was among those killed Wednesday.
The investigation into the bombing is continuing, and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno pointedly refused to hint where it is leading or who might be responsible.
“We are pursuing all leads,” she said.
But other U.S. officials confirmed privately that one likely source of the terror is Islamic extremist groups linked to Iran.
One likely reason is revenge for the ongoing New York trial of Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, accused of plotting the World Trade Center bombing.
A U.S. intelligence report obtained by the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., SunSentinel details a meeting of terrorist groups and their backers last fall in the Middle East to plot retribution around the time of Rahman’s trial.
“The Americans have forgotten what they learned in Lebanon,” the report quotes a top Iranian official as saying at the meeting. “We should retaliate directly in a way similar to the World Trade Center, but many times over.”
Rahman is the head of Gamaat Islamiyia, or The Islamic Group, That group is part
of a loose collection of anti-Western radical groups that seeks to promote a theocratic vision of Islam fashioned after Iran’s revolution.
Wednesday’s devastating car bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City confirmed the worst fears of U.S. and Western intelligence agencies, a U.S. official said.
“All the indications we have is that this is coming from the Middle East,” said the U.S. official, who asked for anonymity. “These are the same leads we have gotten for months, but could not pinpoint where it would happen.”
Among the indications that point to the Middle East:
Car bombs are a specialty of Iranian-supported Shiite terrorist groups in the Middle East.
Such bombs were used by terrorists in the 1983 bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 2413 in 1983; bombings of the Israeli Embassy and Jewish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and at the World Trade Center.
The fertilizer-and-oil mixture believed to have been used in Oklahoma City is the same type of bomb used in the World Trade Center.
And three top suspects the FBI identified it is seeking in bulletins Wednesday are three young men, two of whom looked like Middle Easterners.
Timing is another factor.
The U.S. intelligence report states the terrorists planned attacks during Rahman’s trial. The report is so detailed that it includes the names of major terrorists, foreign officials who have helped them, and dates and places where they met.
“This organization, which has infiltrated a large number of countries, is planning to launch a campaign of terrorist operations against U.S. embassies and interests abroad, in addition to targets inside the United States itself,” the report says.
One passage noted: “secret meetings have been held at the highest levels, since last summer, to prepare a detailed list of targets, to lay down plans to attack these targets, and to train the commando groups who will carry out these operations.”
One key meeting specifically identified in the intelligence report took place last October in the Firozi Palace, the late Shah’s winter place in Tehran. That meeting was attended by top Iranian officials, including Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian and Mohsen Resai, commander of the Revolutionary Guard.