Is This For Real?

[Michael0701]

Has anyone else heard of this, or is it another urban legend:

 

It was 1987!  At a lecture the other day they were playing an old news video of Lt.Col. Oliver North testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings during the Reagan Administration.

There was Ollie in front of God and country getting the third degree, but what he said was stunning!

He was being drilled by a senator; "Did you not recently spend close to $60,000 for a home security system?"

Ollie replied, "Yes, I did, Sir."

The senator continued, trying to get a laugh out of the audience, "Isn't that just a little excessive?"

"No, sir," continued Ollie.

"No? And why not?" the senator asked.

"Because the lives of my family and I were threatened, sir."

"Threatened? By whom?" the senator questioned.

"By a terrorist, sir" Ollie answered.

"Terrorist? What terrorist could possibly scare you that much?"

"His name is Osama bin Laden, sir" Ollie replied.

At this point the senator tried to repeat the name, but couldn't pronounce it, which most people back then probably couldn't. A couple of people laughed at the attempt. Then the senator continued. Why are you so afraid of this man?" the senator asked.

"Because, sir, he is the most evil person alive that I know of", Ollie answered

"And what do you recommend we do about him?" asked the senator.

"Well, sir, if it was up to me, I would recommend that an assassin team be formed to eliminate him and his men from the face of the earth."

The senator disagreed with this approach, and that was all that was shown of the clip.

By the way, that senator was Al Gore

Also:

Terrorist pilot Mohammad Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986. The Israelis captured, tried and imprisoned him. As part of the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993, Israel had to agree to release so-called "political prisoners."

However, the Israelis would not release any with blood on their hands, The American President at the time, Bill Clinton, and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, "insisted" that all prisoners be released.

Thus Mohammad Atta was freed and eventually thanked the US by flying an airplane into Tower One of the World Trade Center. This was reported by many of the American TV networks at the time that the terrorists were first identified. It was censored in the US from all later reports.

 

 

[Doubting Thomas]

Untrue. snopes.com has an article on this. Go there and type "Oliver North" into the search function.

 

[Morat]

For the Oliver North one:

The terrorist North mentioned in his testimony was not Osama bin Laden, however. To the extent that bin Laden was known to the western world in 1987, it was not as a "terrorist" but as one of the U.S.-backed "freedom fighters" participating in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden's hatred of the U.S. and conversion to "terrorist" status is not believed to have come about until the Gulf War of 1990-91, when he was outspokenly critical of Saudi Arabian dependence upon the U.S. military and denounced U.S. support of a "corrupt, materialist, and irreligious" Saudi monarchy. (The Saudi Arabian government stripped bin Laden of his citizenship in 1994 for his funding of militant fundamentalist Islamic groups.)

No, Oliver North did not testify about or speak the name Osama bin Laden during the Iran-Contra hearings. He claimed that threats against his life had been made by terrorist Abu Nidal

Anyone even vaguely familiar with the timing of the Iran-Contra hearings and our dealings in Afghanistan should have twigged to the oddness of calling our favorite "freedom fighter" a terrorist.

Oliver North, in fact, responded to this:

I DON'T KNOW WHO SAW WHAT VIDEO "AT UNC." (OR ANYWHERE ELSE) BUT, FOR THE RECORD, HERE'S WHAT I DO KNOW:

1. IT WAS THE COMMITTEE COUNSEL, JOHN NIELDS, NOT A SENATOR WHO WAS DOING THE QUESTIONING.

2. THE SECURITY SYSTEM, INSTALLED AT MY HOME, JUST BEFORE I MADE A VERY SECRET TRIP TO TEHRAN, COST, ACCORDING TO THE COMMITTEE, $16K, NOT $60K.

3. THE TERRORIST WHO THREATENED TO KILL ME IN 1986, JUST BEFORE THAT SECRET TRIP TO TEHRAN, WAS NOT USAMA BIN LADEN, IT WAS ABU NIDAL (WHO WORKS FOR THE LIBYANS -- NOT THE TALIBAN AND NOT IN AFGHANISTAN).

4. I NEVER SAID I WAS AFRAID OF ANYBODY. I DID SAY THAT I WOULD BE GLAD TO MEET ABU NIDAL ON EQUAL TERMS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD BUT THAT I WAS UNWILLING TO HAVE HIM OR HIS OPERATIVES MEET MY WIFE AND CHILDREN ON HIS TERMS.

5. I DID SAY THAT THE TERRORISTS INTERCEPTED BY THE FBI ON THE WAY TO MY HOUSE IN FEB. 87 TO KILL MY WIFE, CHILDREN AND ME WERE LIBYANS, DISPATCHED FROM THE PEOPLE'S COMMITTEE FOR LIBYAN STUDENTS IN MCLEAN, VIRGINIA.

6. AND I DID SAY THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAD MOVED MY FAMILY OUT OF OUR HOME TO A MILITARY BASE (CAMP LEJEUNE, NC) UNTIL THEY COULD DISPATCH MORE THAN 30 AGENTS TO PROTECT MY FAMILY FROM THOSE TERRORISTS (BECAUSE A LIBERAL FEDERAL JUDGE HAD ALLOWED THE LYBIAN ASSASSINS TO POST BOND AND THEY FLED).

7. AND, FYI: THOSE FEDERAL AGENTS REMAINED AT OUR HOME UNTIL I RETIRED FROM THE MARINES AND WAS NO LONGER A "GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL." BY THEN, THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT HAD SPENT MORE THAN $2M PROTECTING THE NORTH FAMILY. THE TERRORISTS SENT TO KILL US WERE NEVER RE-APPREHENDED.

For the Atta one:

On 12 April 1986, Mahmoud Mahmoud Atta (also known as Mahmoud Abad Ahmad), a 33-year-old Jordanian native, ambushed a passenger bus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Atta (working with an accomplice) stopped the bus with a firebomb, then opened fire on it with an Uzi, killing the driver and seriously wounding three passengers.

Atta was arrested in Venezuela a year later, but because Venezuela had no extradition treaty with Israel, Venezuelan officials deported him for immigration violations to his country of origin, the United States. (Atta was a naturalized U.S. citizen.) Atta was arrested by FBI agents upon arrival at Kennedy International Airport and held in prison in the U.S. for more than three years before being extradited to Israel for trial in October 1990. His extradition was controversial because the nature of the extradition treaty in effect required that the accused's offense must be of a "non-political nature," and Atta maintained that he had committed political rather than criminal offenses. Nonetheless, the U.S. courts upheld Israel's extradition request on the grounds that Atta had attacked civilian rather than military targets and had therefore committed regular criminal acts, not political acts aimed at the overthrow of a government. In October 1991, an Israeli court found Atta guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Fast forward ten years. As the U.S. tries to piece together the terrorist plot that resulted in four hijacked airliners and the destruction of both World Trade Center towers, they discover that the mastermind was apparently one Mohamad Atta, who had entered into the U.S. unnoticed and spent well over a year here receiving training at more than one American flight school. Newspapers (both domestic and foreign) begin to criticize U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies for allowing a known terrorist to slip into the country so easily :
...
Clearly, the message quoted at the head of this article is wrong in its facts. The Atta who attacked a bus was arrested by the FBI and extradited to Israel, not "captured by Israelis," and his extradition didn't take place until two years after Reagan left office. In fact, the Oslo Agreement itself wasn't signed until nearly five years after Reagan left office. All of this makes it rather difficult to support the claim that Atta was released under the terms of the Oslo Agreement at the insistence of "President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State George Schultz" (which explains why this information "was missing from later reports").

What's puzzling to us is why newspapers -- much less "US authorities" -- should have been confused as to whether the two Attas were the same man (especially since one was fourteen years older than the other) or describing Atta as someone "suspected of" or "implicated in" a bus attack for which he had already been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment ten years earlier.

(According to The Jerusalem Post, Atta the bus bomber "was eventually freed after the Supreme Court ruled there were faults in the extradition process," but the article did not state when this reversal occurred. Newspaper accounts as late as 1993 still described Atta as "serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison.")

It's amazing the nastiness of some of the urban legends. Someone, somewhere, had to sit down and concot a deliberate lie in order to smear people. Not to mention, of course, that it only takes a little thought and a few minutes to check them out.

 

[Michael0701]

Thank you for clearing this up for me!! (It sure did smell a little fishy )

 

[Didymus]

and thanks to the internet these rumors really get around--as truth. scary