The CIA and the mass importation of Muslim patsies & proxies

[Paul Rigby]

Martin Walker, “Rivalry dogs hunt for New York bomber,” The Guardian, March 9, 1993

Washington – After nine days shoring up the 150ft crater under the bombed World Trade Centre in New York, FBI forensic experts finally started a comprehensive search at the epicentre of the blast yesterday, in a case that has begun spinning out of control in a welter of rumour, luck and circumstantial evidence.

Intense rivalry among investigators – the FBI, New York police and the Treasury’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) – has already brought a separate investigation into possible falsification of evidence by the ATF. The ATF has claimed credit for one of the more bizarre pieces of evidence that may have pointed to an Israeli link – a telephone number given by the man who rented the van that carried the explosives.

The same rivalries are being blamed for the press leak last week which said the van had been traced to the Jersey City rental agency where the Jordanian, Mohammed Salameh, was arrested when he went to claim his cash refund.

Once the rental agency was named, in the Newsday newspaper, the FBI telephoned Mr Salameh to say his refund was ready. He walked into his arrest.

The arrest, however, is said to have disrupted other monitoring operations by the New York police. Several potential suspects have, as a result, left the United States.

Sheikh Omar Abdel –Rahman, the fundamentalist cleric who runs the mosque were Mr Salameh worshipped, has disappeared after media speculation about the mosque’s involvement. Three other worshippers, who were arrested Friday, have been released.

The address Mr Salameh gave on the van rental form led the FBI to the apartment of Ibrahim Elgabrowny, a cousin of the Muslim militant El Sayid Nosair. Nosair is serving a prison term for involvement in the assassination of the extremist Jewish nationalist, American-born rabbi Meir Kahane.

Mr Elgabrowny is in custody, charged with resisting arrest when the FBI raided his apartment. Although suspected of deeper involvement, the FBI does not have the evidence to charge him in connection with the bombing.

But the telephone number given by Mr Salameh when he rented the van, which he insists was stolen from him the day before the blast, was traced to an apartment in the name of Josie Hadas. Neither the FBI nor the ATF would comment yesterday on reports that she has links with Israeli intelligence. But the Treasury confirmed yesterday that one agent was being questioned in “a procedural matter regarding the collection and preservation of evidence.”

Then there is the Nicaraguan connection. Five counterfeit Nicaraguan passports and birth certificates in the name of Nosair and his family were found in Mr Elgabrowny’s apartment.

The hunt is now focused the unidentified man who was seen with Mr Salameh when he rented the van and who was also tentatively identified by photofit drawings with the man seen driving the van into the World Trade Centre.

FBI sources said yesterday that they knew the name and whereabouts of this man, adding that a search of his apartment at the weekend had found electrical wiring and circuitry diagrams, and three identical small alarm clocks.

The forensic team searching the crater are looking for evidence of a timing device which could match up with these clocks.

As mosques and Islamic groups around the United States reported a spate of death threats and broken windows at the weekend, the investigation seemed to have stalled. Conspiracy theories linked to the Middle East are rife.

So far, there is only circumstantial evidence against Mr Salameh. He rented the van, reported it stolen the day before the blast, and then acted as if he were an innocent victim. He reported the theft to the police and went back to the rental agency to recover his deposit. The nitrate traces on the rental forms could indicate explosives, or urine.

When Mr Elgabrowny was arrested, the FBI said he “plunged his hands into a toilet bowl so that the urine would negate explosive tests on his hands.” His lawyer said he was washing his hands in a basin to prepare for prayer.

Zina Hemady (Cairo), “Mubarak: Muslim cleric on CIA payroll,” Washington Times, May 29, 1993, p.A7

Cairo – A radical Egyptian cleric whose followers are charged in the World Trade Centre bombing is a paid CIA agent, President Hosni Mubarak was quoted as saying in a government newspaper.

“The sheik [Omar Abdel-Rahman] has been a CIA agent since his days in Afghanistan…He still earns a salary,” Mr Mubarak told newspaper editors, columnists and intellectuals at a meeting in Cairo on Wednesday. “The visa he got was not issued by mistake. It is because of the services he did.”

Mr Mubarak’s comments were quoted Thursday in the government newspaper Al Gomhuria.

The statement challenges the U.S. government’s version of how Sheik Abdel-Rahman’s multiple-entry U.S. visa was issued in 1990 despite his presence on a State Department list of people ineligible for U.S. visits.

In New York, Barbara Nelson, Sheik Abdel-Raman’s immigration attorney, said: “That would be news to me…I know just the opposite. He has said he never worked for the CIA.”

The U.S. government’s version is that the American Embassy in Sudan didn’t notice the blind cleric’s name on the list of undesirables, despite notification eight days earlier that Sheik Abdel-Rahman was visiting Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

The sheik’s presence in the United States has strained relations between Washington and Cairo. But there was no indication why Mr Mubarak chose to go public with a version of events directly contradicting Washington’s.

Mr Mubarak was quoted as saying that the case has also led to a dispute in the United States between the FBI and the CIA.

The FBI, responsible for domestic security, wants Sheik Abdel-Rahman out of the country while the CIA wants him to stay, Mr Mubarak was quoted in the newspaper as saying.

Mr Mubarak’s spokesman could not be contacted for comment yesterday, the eve of a major Muslim holiday.

The sheik, acquitted in Egypt of sanctioning the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat, is spiritual leader of al-Gamaa al-Islamiya (The Islamic Group). It wants to replace Mr Mubarak’s secular government with a theocracy like Iran’s. Sheik Abdel-Rahman uses his New York-area base to disseminate his anti-Egyptian message.

Several suspects in the Feb. 26 bombing at New York’s World Trade Centre, which killed six persons and wounded more than 1,000, worshipped at a New Jersey mosque where Sheik Abdel-Rahman preaches.

His journey from Egypt followed a circuitous route through Sudan, Afghanistan and other countries. The State Department says its Khartoum Embassy tried to cancel his visa two weeks after it was issued. But Sheik Abdel-Rahman had left 11 days earlier for Afghanistan. He later went to the United States.

A State Department chronology on the sheik’s comings and goings also recounts a purported series of bureaucratic errors that allowed him to leave and return to the United States without interception. But the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service revoked his permanent residence in March 1992, just over a year after he got it.

The immigration service said it revoked the permit because Sheik Abdel-Rahman lied on his application, hiding that he was polygamist and has been convicted in Egypt of writing a bad check. He was two Egyptian wives.