From the WTC to OKC: for years, The New American was the only national media organ exposing the critical links between the WTC-OKC-9/11 terror attacks.(AHEAD OF THE CURVE)(World Trade Center, Oklahoma City, organization)

In his 2004 book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, Richard Clarke, counter-terrorism adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, speculated that al-Qaeda operatives in the Philippines may have "taught Terry Nichols how to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building" in 1995. He suggested that Nichols, who was convicted of conspiring with Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing, may have met with al-Qaeda's master bomber, Ramzi Yousef, the convicted leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. "We do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned."

There is, of course, as THE NEW AMERICAN has reported over the years, a compelling body of evidence pointing to direct connections between the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 WTC bombing mastermind, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, are the common denominators, and the Philippines was the nexus of their operations. Besides their relationship as top al-Qaeda operatives, they are also related by blood; Khalid Sheik Mohammed is Ramzi Yousef's uncle. In 1994 and early 1995, both men were carrying out activities in the Philippines for Osama bin Laden, building the terror network and planning mayhem with al-Qaeda's affiliated terror group, Abu Sayyaf. Philippines police and intelligence reports place Terry Nichols in Cebu City, a hotbed of Abu Sayyaf activity, at the same time that Yousef, Mohammed, and other key al-Qaeda terrorists were there. But there is more connecting them than merely the unlikely "coincidence" involving the principals of three of the most notorious terrorist acts in an out-of-the-way corner of the world at the same time.

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Richard Clarke's mention of the possible Ramzi Yousef-Terry Nichols tie is significant as perhaps the most public reference to the connection by a high-level government terrorism expert. However, if one combines "Terry Nichols" and "Ramzi Yousef" into the same Internet search query, an abundance of data is now available. Over the last several years, a number of investigators have compiled impressive evidence corroborating and building on facts and leads reported in these pages by THE NEW AMERICAN'S Senior Editor William E Jasper over a decade ago. Undoubtedly, one of the most important contributions to this effort came with the publication in 2003 of 1,000 Years for Revenge by multiple Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter Peter Lance. In a chapter of that book, ...