Jamie Gorelick let Khalifa go in 1995!

[paulthompson]

I just stumbled across this document:



which shows future 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick let Khalifa go. Who's Khalifa? Here's stuff from my timeline on him:

December 14, 1994: Osama’s Brother-in-Law Held in U.S., Then Let Go Despite Terror Ties

Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law to bin Laden, is arrested in the U.S. Khalifa, who financed the Abu Sayyaf terror group in the Philippines, has recently been sentenced to death in Jordan for funding a group that staged a series of bombings in that country. The FBI finds and quickly translates literature in his luggage advocating training in assassination, explosives, and weapons, bombing churches, and murdering Catholic priests. At the time, he is linked to funding bin Laden’s terrorism efforts, as well as to terrorist Ramzi Yousef and other Operation Bojinka plotters. Bin Laden could be connected to many terrorist activities through Khalifa’s connections. However, Secretary of State Warren Christopher argues that Khalifa should be released to Jordan. Khalifa is sent to Jordan in May 1995, where his conviction has already been overturned. In a later retrial there, a witness recants and Khalifa is set free. Says one expert working at the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center at the TIME, “I remember people at the CIA who were ripshit at the time. Not even speaking in retrospect, but contemporaneous with what the intelligence community knew about bin Laden, Khalifa’s deportation was unreal.” (1000 YEARS FOR REVENGE, BY PETER LANCE, 9/03, PP. 233–35; NEW YORK TIMES, 5/2/02 (B); SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 4/18/95; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/26/95)

here's another bit:

Yousef also soon admits to ties with Wali Khan Shah, who fought with bin Laden in Afghanistan, and Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, one of bin Laden’s brothers-in-law, who is being held by the U.S. at the time. Despite Yousef ‘s confession, Khalifa is released a few months later. Although Yousef talks freely, he makes no direct mention of bin Laden, or the planned second wave of Operation Bojinka that closely parallels the later 9/11 plot.

---

I've strongly suspected that all the 9/11 Commissioners were picked because of skeletons in their closets, or conflicts of interest, to make sure the secrets of 9/11 stayed covered up. Now we can see one such skeleton for Gorelick. No wonder the 9/11 Commission early on decided not to look prior to 1998, and decided against all the evidence that Ramzi Yousef and his cell (which included Khalid Shaikh Mohammed) had nothing to do with al-Qaeda.

[gbwarming]

1. This memo does not say that Gorelick released Khalifa.

This memo restricts the countries Khalifa could be deported to, but does not show that Gorelick was responsible for deporting him. Do you have any other documentation that she was the one that decided to deport him? Also, Bojinka is mentioned in a couple of places but at the time this memo was written it had not been discovered(?).

I do wonder why he was not prosecuted if there was evidence.

[paulthompson]

2. Are you reading the same memo I am?

The one I linked to doesn't mention Bojinka at all. And in it, Gorelick writes that he "should be deported to Jordan," which is what happened. And then Jordan let him go.

There's a theory that he was deported in the immediate wake of the Oklahoma bombing, which happened a few months later. He was moved to a maximum security prison about a day or so after that bombing, and he immediately changed his stance from opposing the deportation to supporting it, so those facts certainly are curious.

Such theorists believe that if he were tried it could have opened a can of worms about foreign actors involved with the Oklahoma bombing. Khalifa was a big funder of the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines, and Terry Nichols may have had contacts with that group. Some even suggest that Ramzi Yousef taught Nichols how to make the bomb, as it is known they were in the same town in the Philippines at the same time (but no one knows if they met or not). Richard Clarke said in his Against All Enemies book that such a connection cannot be ruled out.

I haven't looked into the Oklahoma bombing enough to have an opinion on that potential connection. If that's true, that might exonerate Gorelick, though I'm sure the right wing would still have made a huge fuss about this if they knew it last year when they were calling for her resignation. But someone would be up the creek for presumably working out a deal with Khalifa and Jordan to bury the whole issue. Keep in mind that they'd caught Yousef and the rest of his cell (minus Khalid Shaikh Mohammed) at the time, so they might have thought, why expose that link if everyone involved is in jail anyway?

Another theory is that Khalifa's ties with the rich bin Laden family got him off. Supporting that is the fact that he was actually caught with a proper brother of bin Laden (Khalifa is a brother-in-law), and the brother was let go and not even specifically named.

There's no doubt the bin Ladens got special treatment. For instance, according to Douglas Farah at the Washington Post, just the next year, all bin Ladens living in the US got diplomatic passports, no matter who they were or what they did. An investigation into murder and terrorism by one them was apparently called off a short time later (Greg Palast at the BBC did some reporting about that, but he didn't know about the diplomatic passport factor when his report ran).

[gbwarming]

3. Ok, I see that, but I think you're ripping that phrase out of context

As I read this Gorelick isn't advocating the release, but in the case that he is deported she is setting the condition that he could only be released to Jordan.
"As Acting Attorney General, I conclude that, should deportation be ordered, deporting Mohammad Khalifah to any country other than Jordan would be prejudicial to the interests of the United States and the he should be deported to Jordan, pursuant to Section 342(a) of the INA, * U.S.C. 1253(a)."

I'll defer to your timeline knowledge, but I think that there was a death sentence on Khalifa in Jordan until March 1995 when it was overturned prior to his deportation in May. At the time the memo was written they had NOT caught Yousef (Feb 5 '95 in Pakistan). I still don't know why he wasn't prosecuted in the US if there was evidence, but at the time the memo was written if he was going to be deported Jordan seems like the logical place to send him.

Who ordered deportation? Gorelick didn't do it in this memo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Jamal_Khalifa
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/etc/cron.html

Edit - another link. I'm not familiar with intelwire, but it is an interesting article.
http://intelwire.egoplex.com/2004_09_07_exclusives.html

[John Doe II]

5. According to Intelwire

The U.S. government secretly detained Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law for four months in 1995, after the INS announced he had already been deported to Jordan, according to documents obtained by INTELWIRE using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The Jordan deportation was authorized by then-Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, at the request of Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
http://intelwire.egoplex.com/2004_09_07_exclusives.html

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. CNN published an article on May 13, 1996

which is the earliest article that I know of that discusses 'Project Bojinka'.


Terrorism trial begins in New York
3 men accused of plotting to bomb U.S. planes

May 13, 1996
Web posted at: 11:35 a.m. EDT

From Correspondent Brian Jenkins

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Jury selection began in New York Monday in the federal trial of three men accused of plotting to bomb 11 planes headed for the United States on a single day in 1995.

Ramzi Yousef is charged with masterminding the plot. He also will be tried later this year, accused of planning the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Four men are already serving life in prison for that crime.

The alleged plot was discovered in the Philippines in January 1995, when a fire broke out in a Manila apartment 200 yards from the Vatican's embassy, a week before the arrival of Pope John Paul II.

Police were shocked by what they found inside: a smoking mixture of explosives in a sink, street maps and garments like those worn by the Pope's entourage, suggesting a plot to kill the Pontiff.

They also say they found computer disks containing detailed plans to blow up U.S. airliners.

<snip>

Fingerprints on a bomb recipe notebook found in the burned apartment convinced the FBI that the brains behind "Project Bojinka" was Yousef, a young engineer born in either Iran or Pakistan, also accused in the World Trade Center bombing.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9605/12/terror.plot/