First, the choice of a terrorist target in Oklahoma is very telling. Although Oklahoma is a conservative southern state that has a reputation for patriotism and sends an unusually high percentage of its young people into the military, it is also one of the bastions of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States. In 1991, the Oklahoma Klan leader Dennis Mahon led a rally in support of Saddam Hussein in Tulsa. And Oklahoma is also home to Elohim City, a neo-Nazi paramilitary compound that has served as a training ground for right-wing extremists for the past thirty years. Groups associated with Elohim City have included The Order, Covenant Sword and Arm, White Aryan Resistance and the Aryan Republican Army. The latter group included Timothy McVeigh among its members.
Extremists residing at Elohim City received military-style training from a number of sources. One of the trainers there was Andreas Carl Strassmeir of Germany, a neo-Nazi and the son of Guenter Strassmeir, a chief aide of disgraced former German chancellor Helmut Kohl. The elder Strassmeir is widely regarded as the architect of Kohl’s reunification plan that merged the former East Germany with the Federal Republic in 1991. And Guenter’s father was one of the original members of the Nazi Party in the early 1920’s.
Andreas Strassmeir is important to this story because he not only became a close friend and confidant of Timothy McVeigh, but also because he is regarded by many investigators as John Doe #2, the unknown person assisting McVeigh and Terry Nichols at the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing who was seen by a number of eyewitnesses.
In addition to training various neo-Nazi and militia groups, Strassmeir was involved in a number of very curious activities. According to an FBI report dated May 10, 1995, ”Additional documents reveal that at one time Strassmeir was attempting to purchase a 747 aircraft from Lufthansa; however, the reason for the purchase is not reflected in the documents.”
In 1995 it would not have been unreasonable for an FBI investigator to give Strassmeir’s attempted purchase of a Boeing 747 mere passing notice. In light of 9/11, however, Strassmeir’s aborted airliner purchase gives one pause and raises the real possibility that 9/11 type attacks were being planned as far back as 1995 by insiders in the neo-Nazi/Islamic terrorist network. (And flying a privately owned jet or one operated by remote control would save the problem of hijacking airliners en route.) Strassmeir left the United States shortly after the bombing and currently resides in Berlin.
Mutual Enemies, Mutual Interests
The many points of contact between the neo-Nazis and the Islamic terrorists and their mutual targets of large public buildings demonstrate what I would like to term the ”Strangers on a Train” scenario of current terrorist activity. In the Alfred Hitchcock movie of that name, two men unknown to each other meet on a train and start talking. Each needs to dispose of a person. They agree to kill each other’s intended victim, thereby eliminating the element of motive from the ensuing police investigations. In a similar manner, evidence of late tends to support the idea that Al Qaeda is farming out terrorist work — which is why American investigators have been so interested in the remote area of South America where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay border each other.
It is there that wealthy German ex-Nazis, Islamic terrorists, Basque and IRA terrorists on the lam as well as narco-terrorists are known to be in steady contact. The possibilities for Mafia-style terrorist ”contracts” are virtually unlimited.
It may come as something of a surprise to some when they realize just how well funded the various neo-Nazi organizations are. Authorities have known for years that a Swiss banker by the name of Francois Genoud has been funding neo-Nazi activities throughout the world. Genoud first gained prominence as the financial adviser to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He is alleged to have funded neo-Nazi activities through the use of confiscated Jewish funds that were deposited in Swiss banks by the Nazis. Genoud funded the legal defense of Eichmann during his trial in 1961. And most chilling of all, Genoud was closely associated with the Palestinian terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
