Oklahoma City bombing al Qaeda links

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"YOUSEF, NICHOLS AND McVEIGH

But there are ample other avenues for investigation. For instance, Yousef can be directly tied to a documented al Qaeda effort to recruit Gulf War veterans.

Nichols appears to have spent most of 1992 in the United States, working at his brother's farm in Decker, MI, where he moved with Marife after their wedding.

Yousef traveled to the U.S. in September 1992 to begin work on the World Trade Center bombing plot. He and a traveling companion arrived in New York City carrying bomb-making manuals that included detailed instructions on how to build a truck bomb virtually identical to the one believed used in Oklahoma City.¹¹

In New York, Yousef made contact with a Brooklyn al Qaeda cell operating out of the al Kifah mosque in Brooklyn. The cell provided support and accomplices for the bomb plot, even as it laid its own plans for a "Day of Terror" attack later in 1993.

A key Brooklyn cell member was Clement Rodney Hampton-El, a U.S.-born black Muslim who had trained and fought for bin Laden in Afghanistan. Hampton-El was described as an expert bomb maker, like Yousef, who was also an Afghan veteran.

Hampton-El counted weapons procurement and recruiting among his chief responsibilities in the cell, and he traveled to gun shows around the region to further these goals. In late 1992, he was tasked to recruit former U.S. servicemen as trainers and mujahideen fighters for al Qaeda.¹²

Shortly after a December meeting in which Hampton-El was given a list of former U.S. servicemen to recruit, Terry Nichols abruptly left the U.S. and traveled to the Philippines for a trip of about 60 days.¹³ He was likely in the Philippines on the date of the WTC bombing in February.

McVeigh had traveled to Florida, where a burgeoning al Qaeda operation was busy recruiting U.S.-born operatives, including Jose Padilla, a former Latino gang member who converted to Islam around the same time.¹⁴

While working at gun shows in Florida, McVeigh met Roger Moore, a gun dealer with at least casual ties to domestic antigovernment and white separatist movements which would later play a role in the plot to bomb the Murrah building.¹⁵

Both al Qaeda and local white power organizations had operations based in the area at the time, and the local gun show scene was known as a venue for terrorists seeking weapons (including a regular show at the Fort Lauderdale Armory which was attended by McVeigh).¹⁶

Nichols went to the Philippines at a time when al Qaeda was recruiting and training Abu Sayyaf Group members. Several members of the Brooklyn terror cell said under surveilliance they planned to travel to the Philippines and wage jihad from there once they had completed their terrorist attacks in the U.S. Hampton-El traveled to the Philippines himself in May 1993. Like Terry Nichols and Jamal Khalifa, and in keeping with standard al Qaeda procedure, Hampton-El intended to marry a Filipina, which would facilitate his travel and residency in the country.^17"

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