EXCLUSIVE: How 9/11 mastermind revealed to mafia capo an Al Qaeda plot to bring down airliner just weeks before the TWA 800 crash – and the FBI were told

Previously confidential documents prove FBI knew of Osama bin Laden’s ‘chief bomb maker’s’ plan to bring down a plane in 1996

Man believed to be true architect of 9/11 attacks handed fellow prisoner a detailed description of the technique that would later be known as his ‘unique signature’



Ramzi Yousef planned to derail his own terror trial with the bombing

Claims that mob informant was dismissed as a hoaxer to conceal the truth of the FBI’s ‘unholy alliance’ with the Mafia



The FBI had advance warning of an al-Qaeda plot to bring down a commercial airliner on American soil just weeks before the 1996 TWA 800 crash that claimed 230 civilian lives.

Now, a series of previously-confidential FBI documents obtained by investigative journalist Peter Lance and seen by MailOnline, provide compelling evidence that the crash was an act of terror orchestrated by the man now believed by many to be the true architect of 9/11.



Speaking to MailOnline Lance said: ‘Who wants to have an act of terror on their watch especially an act of terror where an argument could be made that they could have stopped it?

‘The FBI were warned from their own guy. What happened was exactly what he had predicted, exactly. All the dots were connected.’

Terror cell: Chit-chat between World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and Mafia capo Gregory Scarpa Jr has been documented by the FBI

Mole: The FBI provided Gregory Scarpa Jr with a tiny spy-camera to photograph the ¿kites¿ or pieces of paper pushed from Yousef¿s cell. This one talks about an explosive that was found on the wreckage of TWA 800

Al-Qaeda never claimed responsibility for the aircraft crash. The official cause of the disaster remains an explosion of a fuel tank due to a short circuit aboard the plane.



In a chilling twist, the source of the FBI intelligence was mafia capo, Gregory Scarpa Jr. The son of one of the mob’s most prolific killers hoped that co-operating in the federal sting would lead to a lighter sentence for his own crimes.

The arrangement came about when, in the winter of 1996 Scarpa Jr found himself in a cell on the 9th floor tier of the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) the federal jail in lower Manhattan, between al Qaeda terrorists Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Hakim Murad.

Over the next 11 months until Feburary 1997 the Bureau recorded dozens of FBI 302 memos later known as 'The Scarpa Materials.'



According to Lance, the necessity to conceal ‘the unholy alliance’ of FBI and mob and protect a raft of Mafia indictments that might otherwise have been thrown out of court played a part in the Bureau’s decision to cover-up the TWA 800 plot.

In the aftermath of the crash the Feds attempted to dismiss Scarpa Jr’s intelligence as a hoax.

But the documents now reveal the fact that Scarpa Jr provided a diagram and detailed instructions for a detonation technique now known as ‘Yousef’s unique signature’ months before investigators found physical evidence to support it.

Informant: Gregory Scarpa Jr. The son of one of the mob's most prolific killers hoped that co-operating with the FBI would lead to a lighter sentence for his own crimes. He had access to Yousef's bomb-making diagrams

Cell chatter: Ramzi Yousef is serving a life sentence for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing but FBI documents show he may well be linked to the crash of TWA 800

It is 17 years since the Boeing 747 exploded shortly after take-off from JFK airport on July 17, 1996.

A four-year investigation into the disaster, at the time the worst in U.S. air history, concluded that it was an accident caused by over-heated fuel tank vapors.

But in recent weeks the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has been forced to defend the conclusion that remains disputed by many experts in the field.

A new documentary due to air on Wednesday, to coincide with the anniversary, forwards the theory that the aircraft was the target of a missile strike.

But the FBI memos unearthed by Lance, suggest an even more sinister and extraordinary truth of terrorism and cover-up.

Reconstructed: The remains of the TWA Flight 800 from New York to Paris that exploded off Long Island, New York, were reassembled from recovered wreckage

Sticking to their story: Officials have dismissed allegations of a cover-up, saying evidence strongly points to their conclusion that fuel vapors ignited because of an electrical spark

Speaking last week, Joseph Kolly, the current director of the NTSB’s Office of Research and Engineering and the man who was the chief fire and explosives investigator on the flight 800 investigation said he was ‘absolutely certain’ that a spark from damaged wiring triggered the explosion of overheated fuel vapors.

He said: ‘We went to the ‘nth degree and then some.’

According to Lance that simply is not the case.

In the spring of 1996 Ramzi Yousef, one of the conspirators in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, was awaiting trial in New York for his role in the so-called Bojinka plot.

Working with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef’s masterplan had been three-phase attack that involved assassinating the Pope, bombing 11 airliners flying from Asia to the States and crashing a plane into the CIA Headquarters in Fairfax.

Before that plot was disrupted Yousef conducted several ‘wet’ tests including the detonation of a Casio-nitro IED placed on board Philippines Airline Flight 434.

The bomb, concealed in the life-jacket pouch under seat 26K, exploded killing one person but leaving the craft otherwise intact.

The ‘event’ that took place on TWA 800 was just two rows further forward on an identical aircraft, placing the point of detonation directly – and fatally – above the fuel tank.

Left, Jim Speer, an accident investigator for the Airline Pilots Association inspects damage after the crash. Right, part of the plane's wing is seen in the water off New York



Yousef was being held in a cell next to Scarpa Jr, Lance explained: ‘The feds were so wary of Yousef’s skills at making improvised bombs that they wouldn’t even let him keep mouthwash or toothpaste in his cell.’

But they provided Scarpa Jr with a tiny spy-camera to photograph the ‘kites’ or pieces of paper pushed from Yousef’s cell through a connecting sink U-bend into his own.

Scarpa Jr had convinced his neighbor that the mafia was sympathetic to al Qaeda’s cause and that ‘his people’ on the outside could help make Yousef’s plans a reality.

The plot revealed in Yousef’s ‘kites’ was startling and clear.

Lance said: ‘They planned to bring down a plane and call for a mistrial in his case. Yousef, who was representing himself and doing not a bad job of it, would argue a bomb went off that was identical to the one I’m accused of and I’ve been in jail for a year and a half…’

Documents prove that the Feds set up a false telephone exchange, the Roma Corporation, which Scarpa Jr told Yousef could safely patch calls through to his people.

Federal translators listened to the calls. But while the translators spoke Arabic, Yousef spoke Balachi or Urdu.

Among the documents copied verbatim or photographed by Scarpa Jr is one entitled, How to Smuggle Explosives into an Airplane and dated 19 May 1996. Just two months before TWA Flight 800 came down.

Lance stated that one former FBI agent, familiar with the intelligence described it to him as ‘weapons grade plutonium.’

He said: ‘It was a blueprint that could have led the Bureau not just to Yousef’s role in the crash of TWA Flight 800 but to 9/11 as well.’

TWA Flight 800 was brought down the day before the most damning evidence in Yousef’s Bojinka trial was due to be revealed – a confession from a co-conspirator.

Thorough investigation: An image shows the reconstructed section of the plane. Although 90 per cent of the aircraft was recovered, only the section around the central fuel tank was reconstructed

In the aftermath of the flight crash Yousef asked for a mistrial as predicted in Scarpa Jr’s ‘kites.’ It was denied.

The information was so compelling that FBI ADIC James Kallstrom said he would bet his, ‘meager government salary at the time that it was a crime.’

Hundreds of agents were dispatched to the Long Island crash site.

Traces of the high explosive PETN were found on the plane’s right wing near the mid-section. Two metal seats in the 23rd row had fist-sized holes blown through them and explosive RDX was discovered near the PETN above the center wing fuel tank.

RDX was the very explosive mentioned in Yousef’s ‘How To…’ document.

Key to the official dismissal of the presence of a bomb was investigators’ contention that the presence of these explosives was actually due to a sniffer dog trial conducted on the craft some weeks earlier.

The officer conducting that K-9 test was Herman Burnett.

Partnership: The truth concealed behind the high profile Mobster arrests was that, for more 12 year, FBI Special Agent Robert Lin DeVecchio – known as Mr Organized Crime – had been working in corrupt tandem with capo Gregory Scarpa Sr, ‘the Killing Machine.’

In an interview with Mr Burnett, Lance revealed: ‘He told me categorically that he didn’t carry out the test on that plane.’

The test was conducted on a sister aircraft.

He added: ‘In other words there was no reason for explosives to be found.’

Still, the FBI speculated that, if not the sniffer dog test, the explosives could have been brought on accidentally by a passenger – a soldier who had served in Afghanistan for example.

But why were investigators at such odds to disprove or reason away the presence of a bomb if the evidence – and the intelligence – all pointed to Yousef?

According to Lance: ‘Their motivation? To avoid embarrassment, to disassociate from an act of terror and to preserve the cases going through the Eastern District courts at the time.’

The cases to which Lance is referring were the high profile Mafia trials following on from a string of indictments.

Lance uncovered the Yousef documents while investigating the Mafia - his book, Deal with the Devil, chronicles a 30 year relationship between the FBI and the Mob so shocking that it remained secret until now.

Different era: The crash occurred more than six years before 9/11 and the Mob was considered more than threat than al Qaeda

The truth concealed behind the high profile Mobster arrests was that, for about 12 years, FBI Special Agent Robert Lin DeVecchio – known as Mr Organised Crime – had been working in corrupt tandem with capo Gregory Scarpa Sr, ‘the Killing Machine.’

Scarpa Sr was a top echelon criminal informant for more than three decades. De Vecchio was his handler between 1980 and 1992.



Scarpa Jr’s role as an informant was a direct consequence of that. He saw how well it had worked for his own father (who died of AIDS in 1994).

In his own defence Scarpa Jr planned to argue that his father had acted with the sanction and protection of the FBI, killing with impunity while a paid informant and that he had acted on his father’s instruction.

The alliance between Scarpa Sr and the FBI could not be made public for fear of the indictments that depended on it unraveling in the scandal that would follow.

And so, Lance argues, the credibility of Scarpa Jr and his intelligence had to be sacrificed.

At the time, after all, pre 9/11 the public considered the Mob a more real threat than al Qaeda.

Lance said: ‘The bomb theory was the prime theory that summer (1996).

‘In August the official line was that they were one piece of evidence away from declaring it a crime scene. Then suddenly they did a 180.’

Ten years after the crash, in April 2006, FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds contacted Lance and put him in touch with an NSA source.

The source was so concerned that his home phone may have been bugged that he insisted on calling from a public payphone.

Lance recalled: ‘The guy told me that it was just after the 800 crash. He said, ‘I was working around one or two in the afternoon when the translation came back of this highly classified FBI intercept that the Bureau had picked up after the plane went down.’

The intercept was in Baluchi – Yousef’s native tongue.

The translation was delayed for some reason the source could not understand.

He told Lance: ‘When we got it back I was so shocked at what I read. I immediately took it over to one of our Baluchi people who expressed outright anger that he hadn’t been able to do the translation right away.

‘If he had, he felt that it might have affected the investigation.