posted April 17, 2005 01:57 PM            

Bombshell new evidence ignored by the FBI suggests a link between the Oklahoma City bombing and the man who masterminded the first World Trade Center bombing and who later drew up the blueprint for the 9/11 attacks, Fox News Channel's Rita Cosby is set to report Sunday night.

"It's amazing to me that not more has been made of those phone records,” Oklahoma City attorney Michael Johnston tells Cosby, for her tenth anniversary special on the 1995 attack.

The explosive new evidence shows that OKC bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols repeatedly called a boarding house in [the Philippines'] Cebu City, an establishment that has been linked to al Qaida Twin Tower bomber Ramzi Yousef.

The same kind of ANFO fertilizer fuel bomb was used in that attack and the one two years later that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah building.

Additional phone records dismissed by earlier investigations show that repeated calls were made from Terry Nichols' home to a place called Star Glad Lumber in the Philippines.

"Star Glad Lumber is operated by a man whose brother and cousin were both notorious terrorists, splinter groups of the Abu Sayyaf terror group in the Philippines,” Johnston tells Cosby.

After Yousef's Philippine bomb factory was uncovered in February 1995, Philippine police discovered three versions of the 9/11 plot on his laptop computer.

In one formulation, Yousef intended to plant bombs on 12 U.S. airliners flying over the Pacific, with each bomb to be detonated simultaneously.

A second variation involved bombing planes over U.S. territory.

A third version of the plans discovered on Yousef's computer envisioned hijacking multiple airliners in the U.S. and crashing them into national landmarks. The World Trade Center and Pentagon were mentioned specifically.

Investigators say that after his capture, Yousef's uncle, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, took the plans and presented them to Osama bin Laden, who decided to finance the third version.

Cosby's special report will also delve into claims made by Yousef's al Qaida partner in the Philippines, Abdul Hakim Murad - who was captured on the spot after Yousef fled.

On the morning of April 19, 1995 - the day of the OKC blast - Murad reportedly told a guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City where he was being held that he and Yousef were behind the attack.

Reporting for Insight Magazine in 2002, investigative journalist Kenneth Timmerman detailed the episode:

"Lt. Philip Rojas, a prison guard, asked Murad what he thought [about the blast] and found his response so startling that he informed his superiors. They, in turn, called the FBI.

"Special Agents Francis J. Pellegrino and Brian G. Parr arrived later that morning, within hours after the Oklahoma City blast. 'Murad responded to the guard's question by stating that the Liberation Army was responsible for the bombing,' they reported in a witness report. 'A short time later, Murad passed a note to the guard, again claiming that the Liberation Army was responsible for the bombing in Oklahoma City.'"

Timmerman said that the "Liberation Army" was a fictitious organization used as a code by Yousef, and other al Qaida members "whenever they are making announcements" of responsibility for terrorist attacks.