What Involvement Did al-Qa'ida Have With The Oklahoma City Bombing?

Terry Nichols took many trips to the Philippines in the years before the bombing and raises the possibility that he received explosives training from Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

Yousef and Nichols were in Cebu City, a hotbed of activity by the radical Filipino group Abu Sayyaf, on the same days, and that Nichols continued to make phone calls to Cebu for some time afterwards.

This was pursued at the time by McVeigh's trial lawyer, Stephen Jones. He was hoping to prove that Nichols was the true mastermind behind the bombing. Evidence that has emerged since then actually tends to indicate the opposite. Nichols was not in Oklahoma City on the day, may not have been involved in assembling the bomb, and may not have carried out a crucial robbery that prosecutors say financed the operation.

There is a possibility that US investigators missed a valuable opportunity to pursue leads that could have helped them prevent the September 11th attacks, since at least two of the suicide-hijackers were based in the Philippines.

Founding member of Abu Sayyaf, Edwin Angeles, turned informer in February 1995 after being arrested in the Philippines. He told a local investigator that he had met an American nicknamed "The Farmer", who strong physical resemblance to Nichols. Yousef was also at the meeting.

Supposedly, there are similarities between the Oklahoma City bomb and the devices used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Does this mean that Nichols's true purpose in visiting the Philippines repeatedly during the early 1990s was to obtain explosives training?

After the judge in the McVeigh trial turned down Jone's request to admit Angeles' evidence, a Filipino prosecutor told a judge in Manila he had insufficient evidence to keep holding Angeles and he was released.

Angeles was beginning to give plenty of embarrassing information about officials in his own country and challenging the FBI's theory of the Oklahoma City bombing when he disappeared.

Nichols says that he was in Cebu City to visit the home of his mail-order bride. He spent a lot of time in the Philippines without her though and after he returned to the US he made 78 phone calls to Cebu City in the months before the Oklahoma bombing.