OUR FRIENDS, THE SAUDIS...

...recruited thousands of US soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines during Gulf War I, with the intent of turning them into operatives at some future point. It was an al Qaeda operation.

An al Qaeda operative sought to recruit U.S. veterans as paramilitary trainers and combat volunteers in 1992 and 1993, at the explicit direction of a cleric who converted thousands of Gulf War soldiers to Islam on behalf of the Saudi government.

Clement Rodney Hampton-El was convicted of conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks in a 1993 terror plot linked to the World Trade Center bombing in February of that year.

An al Qaeda-trained bomb expert with ties to Ramzi Yousef and radical cleric Omar Abdel Rahman, Hampton-El testified that he was summoned to a meeting at the Saudi embassy in December 1992.

During the meeting, Hampton-El was informed that wealthy Saudis were sponsoring jihad operations in Bosnia, according to his testimony in the 1995 trial (U.S. v. Omar Abdel Rahman, et al). Hampton-El said he was allotted a budget of $150,000 to train volunteer mujahideen fighters and support their families in the U.S.

"They said that it would be a budget of $150,000," Hampton-El testified. "These moneys, a small portion would be given to me to establish a training program. The remaining would be given to people who went to Bosnia to help the people to support their families, to pay their bills, etc., here in America."

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Hampton-El's list of U.S. military contacts came from a Saudi-trained cleric named Bilal Philips, according to the testimony. Philips gave him the list at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, after a meeting that Hampton-El characterized as an Islamic conference for military personnel, according to the testimony.

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Bilal Philips began working for the Saudi government in March 1991, leading an educational program for American soldiers stationed in the Gulf. Ostensibly to teach the Americans about Islamic and Saudi culture, the program was in actuality an aggressive campaign to convert U.S. soldiers to Islam, by Philips' own admission.

As they say, read the whole thing:

Hampton-El was an American-born Muslim convert who fought with the mujahideen in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, he worked with the "Services Office," a predecessor group to al Qaeda which was run by bin Laden in the late 1980s. On returning from Afghanistan, he joined a terrorist cell in New York City that took its spiritual inspiration from "the blind Sheikh," Omar Abdel Rahman.

Hampton-El was described as an expert bomb-builder who obtained guns for the New York- based terrorists. He was photographed by the FBI wearing a "Services Office" T-shirt in 1989, while attending paramilitary training under convicted al Qaeda lieutenant Ali Mohammed, according to author Peter Lance in his book, "1000 Years for Revenge."

Members of the New York terror cell were arrested in a warehouse in June 1993, caught in the act of assembling ammonium nitrate-fueled bombs for a massive "Day of Terror" attack on New York City landmarks.

A similar bomb was used to destroy the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was a Gulf War veteran who briefly served in Saudi Arabia after the end of hostilities, at the same time the Saudis were proselytising to servicemen.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I don't exect the "mainstream" press to jump on this, but it's worth examining. It would make sense for al Qaeda to try and recruit US soldiers. What better way to develop deep striking capabilities against us than to penetrate the very forces that protect us? And what better way to move recruits around than to use our own global military?

We know a handful of terrorists have turned up in US uniform. We know that something happened to Tim McVeigh during his sojourn in Iraq, and that he returned from that experience already deeply hostile to US intentions around the world. The Waco incidents served as the last tipping point for him, but did not start his anti-government fervor. And we know that fellow OKC bomber Terry Nichols travelled to the Philippines in the months leading up to the bombing, to an area not far from where WTC '93 bomber Ramzi Yousef operated.

And Bilal Phillips has a Philipping connection, too:

In the mid-1990s, Bilal Philips taught at an Islamic school in Cotabato, the Philippines. Cotabato is a regional center for Islamic extremists in the region, including the Abu Sayyaf Group and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

According to terrorism expert Simon Reeves, writing in "The New Jackals," al Qaeda had recruited "dozens" of fighters from Cotabato and surrounding regions by the early 1990s. More recent estimates potentially place that figure much higher.

All terrorist roads from US attacks keep leading back to the Philippines in one or another, and roads from the Philippines keep leading back to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. And the Saudis.