Official Iraqi diplomatic communications – possibly at the nation’s New York-based mission – were used to transmit a terrorist message that helped the feds foil a 1973 plot to bomb the Big Apple.
Iraq’s role was detailed in declassified government documents made public as Black September terrorist Khalid Al-Jawary nears release from a Manhattan federal prison later this month.
Officials say Al-Jawary put two car bombs along Fifth Avenue and one near Kennedy Airport when then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was coming to New York in 1973.
The Associated Press reviewed the case in advance of the terrorist’s scheduled Feb. 19 release – after serving just half of his 30-year prison sentence.
According to the AP probe, just before Al-Jawary planted the bombs, the National Security Agency intercepted a message about where they had been placed.
The encrypted message was sent possibly from Iraq’s New York mission to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad, said Jim Welsh, a NSA analyst. Then the message was relayed to the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters, Welsh said.
Iraq reportedly backed Black September, the terrorists behind the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.