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Sunday, January 10, 2016

Greg Scarpa Jr. and the Homegrown Terrorist

February 26, 1993 was the date when Muslim terrorists drove a truck bomb weighing 1300lbs into the North Tower garage of the World Trade Center. It opened a 98 foot hole going down 4 levels and cut the power to the WTC.  This was the first strike on American soil by Al Qaeda.  The bomb maker Ramzi Yousef  was the nephew of  Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Ali Fadden who would be the mastermind behind 9-11.  Ramzi would be caught in the Philippines when his apartment caught on fire while making bombs to blow up planes in the air.

Ramzi was incarcerated while awaiting trial in 1996 in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). One of his fellow inmates was Greg Scarpa Jr., a Colombo crime family member.  Scarpa Jr made a deal with prosecutors and the FBI to help gather information from Ramzi and his fellow terrorists.  He convinced them that the Mafia was rooting for the terrorists.
On July 17, 1996 Ramzi asked to use Scarpa Jr.’s smuggled cellphone.  Ramzi had no idea it was part of the FBI sting and he called Khalid and they spoke about TWA 800 that had been destroyed.  In May, Scarpa Jr had told the FBI that Ramzi wanted to blow up planes to show they were serious.  The FBI and the US Attorney would later claim the Scarpa Jr. had pulled a scam and hoax on them and his information was worthless.

They convicted Scarpa Jr. on racketeering charges and he was given 40 years at Supermax in Florence, Colorado.  Scarpa Jr. was given a very long sentence and sent to Supermax which is strange because bosses like John Gotti did not even go there.  Vinny Basciano, who tried to have a prosecutor murdered, was sent there but he has been downgraded.

Once in Supermax, Scarpa Jr. was locked down for all but about 90 minutes a day.  It was during this time that he met Terry Nichols, who along with Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building on April 19, 1995 using a 4800 pound bomb inside a rental truck.  It killed 168 people and injured 600 more.

The US government had convicted Timothy McVeigh of being the mastermind and the one who detonated the bomb.  This, despite the fact they found a leg that did not belong to anyone in the building rubble after the blast.  They convicted Terry Nichols as a conspirator and one man testified against them.  Michael Fortier along with his wife had knowledge beforehand that they were planning the bombing.  

Scarpa Jr. gained Terry Nichols’ trust, and he ended up giving Scarpa Jr. the location of some explosives.  It was in Nichols’ old home in Herington, Kansas, and he told him it might be retrieved and used to mark the tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City blast in 2005.

He gave Scarpa written directions in a handwritten note, which can be seen online.  Scarpa went to the FBI and they flew out a polygraph expert, who concluded he was lying.  The FBI was sure the house was clean because they had searched it a number of times.

Scarpa contacted his own investigator who contacted members of Congress who went to the FBI.  The FBI finally got around to searching the old home and they found explosives just like Scarpa had told them.  They found Nitromethane and Kine-Stik wrapped just like Scarpa had told them.  They would not reduce his sentence and they claimed they had developed the information on the explosives from another source.  

This week, a Federal Judge ruled in Scarpa Jr.’s favor, and reduced his sentence by 10 years.  It may not help, because Scarpa Jr. is suffering from cancer. Buried in the transcripts, the Judge says, “It was my view and remains my view that Lin DeVecchio provided information to Scarpa Sr. that got people killed.”  The Judge is referring to the former FBI Agent DeVecchio, who was Greg Scarpa Sr.’s handler while he was murdering people on information he claimed he got from the FBI.

This all makes you wonder if the evidence Scarpa Jr. got on the Oklahoma Bombing was all true.   He was told they had help the Government did not know about.

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