An FBI official who declined to be named tells TPMmuckraker that the JFK bomb plotters aren’t connected to any international terrorist organizations or other foreign powers. “They were not associated with anyone else,” the official says.
Over the weekend, reports out of Trinidad — where Abdul Nur, the fourth suspect in the plot, surrendered to authorities yesterday — suggested that the FBI had told Trinidad’s Police Special Branch to look at the plotters’ connections to Shiite terrorist groups, including those based in Iran and southern Iraq. The Trinidad & Tobago Express quoted sources in the Police Special Branch saying they were looking at whether alleged conspirator Kareem Ibrahim “has links to radical Shia groups in the Middle East” based on information provided to them by the FBI. That’s not the case, according to the official.
While the FBI official wouldn’t comment on the bureau’s “partnerships with a variety of law enforcement and intelligence agencies,” he added, “I think they were stretching,” referring to the paper’s sources in the Special Police Branch. If Trinidadian officials are in fact looking for Middle East connections to the JFK plot, they may be digging a dry hole. The plotters “may have been looking for help, and people to talk to, but I don’t think they had much success,” the official says.
