Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 17, 1993 TAG: 9305170025
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Washington Post and The Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Two Reston, Va., men died in the shooting spree outside the agency's Langley, Va., headquarters.
Yosseff Bodansky, head of the staff of the House Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, says Kansi's Jan. 25 mission was part of a coordinated Iranian attack on the United States that, a month later, resulted in the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City.
His assertion is one of several that have been offered to try to explain the two attacks, which law-enforcement authorities have maintained are neither linked nor the work of a terrorist organization.
Frank Scafidi, a spokesman for the FBI's Washington field office, said Saturday that the investigation into the CIA killings has not yielded any information to support Bodansky's assertions.
"That's not to say something may not develop down the road, but as of today, we have no evidence that there was any state-sponsored terrorism at work in this particular situation," Scafidi said.
A spokesman for the CIA, Peter Earnest, would not comment, saying the agency does not comment on active investigations or on what appears in books and films.
Bodansky has said he had evidence of Kansi's ties with Iran but would not elaborate, saying he feared that telling more would reveal the sources of his information.
No one was available for comment this weekend at the Iranian mission to the United Nations.
Kansi, identified as the suspect in the shootings outside the CIA that left two people dead and three wounded, is believed to be hiding in Pakistan, authorities say.
The World Trade Center bombing on Feb. 26 has resulted in the arrests of several Muslims, all with ties to a spiritual leader whose base was a storefront mosque in Jersey City, N.J.
The parallels between the two cases have produced several theories. Bodansky argues that Kansi's mission was a "test run" that led to the New York bombing, which he said was the beginning of Iran's Islamic holy war against the United States.
Others have argued differently.
Steven Emerson, co-author of "Terrorist" and a Middle East specialist, said in an April opinion piece in The New York Times that both attacks pointed to loose networks of terrorists who answer to no one but themselves.
The independent and parttime "operatives," Emerson said, are harder to track and more dangerous than better-organized terrorists, because the part-timers are not hit men sent by another country.
Kansi himself had told people before the CIA killings that he was angry over the killing of Bosnian Muslims, and that he wanted to "make a big statement," sources have said.
A group that called itself the Liberation Army Fifth Battalion said in a letter to The New York Times that the Trade Center bombing was in response to U.S. support for Israel and other "dictator countries."
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB