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1. The title of this broad­cast dis­cusses the type of rela­tion­ship that has led to the polit­i­cal real­i­ties that made them­selves man­i­fest on 9/11.  Much has been made of the term “con­spir­acy the­ory” (or “the­o­ries.”)  This pro­gram illus­trates the “net­work­ing” that occurs between indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions (with dif­fer­ent, and some times con­flict­ing, goals and moti­va­tions.)  Fre­quently, these rela­tion­ships (not nec­es­sar­ily con­spir­a­to­r­ial in and of them­selves) can be exploited in order to effect sin­is­ter goals.  One of the cen­tral points of dis­cus­sion con­cerns the nat­ural incli­na­tion of indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions to cover up mis­takes and wrong­do­ing in order to main­tain their own pub­lic and pro­fes­sional rep­u­ta­tions and sta­tus.  This “bureau­cratic iner­tia,” often hav­ing enrich­ment as its foun­da­tion, has (in Mr. Emory’s opin­ion) much to do with the “enabling” of events such as 9/11.

2. The broad­cast begins by high­light­ing the fact that legal advice to the Bin Laden con­struc­tion firm is pro­vided by the Sul­li­van & Cromwell law firm.

“Fur­ther­more, the fam­ily com­pany main­tained a satel­lite office in Mary­land dur­ing the 1990’s, employs a pub­lic rela­tions agency in Man­hat­tan, and receives legal advice from the white-shoe law firm Sul­li­van & Cromwell.”

(Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden; Peter L. Bergen; Copy­right 2002 [SC]; ISBN 0–7432-3495–2; p. 49.)

3. Next, the broad­cast reviews some of the “net­work­ing” that has occurred among the house of Saud, the Third Reich, the Dulles broth­ers (prin­ci­pal oper­a­tors in Sul­li­van & Cromwell) and British spy and Nazi agent Jack Philby.

“This period, stretch­ing from the end of World War I to just after the end of World War II, was char­ac­ter­ized by three very evil men: Jack Philby, a British spy; Ibn Saud, his Arab pro­tégé; and Allen Dulles, an Amer­i­can spy and Wall Street lawyer spe­cial­iz­ing in inter­na­tional finance.”

(The Secret War Against the Jews: How West­ern Espi­onage Betrayed the Jew­ish Peo­ple; John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 [HC]; St. Martin’s Press; ISBN 0–312-15648–0; p. 21.)

4.

“The racist nature of their secret war against Zion­ism does not appear in his­tory books for a sim­ple rea­son.  Jack Philby later was paid by West­ern oil com­pa­nies to write pro-Arab pro­pa­ganda dis­guised as his­tory.  Ibn Saud is remem­bered as the glo­ri­ous Arab leader who uni­fied Saudi Ara­bia and led the rich­est oil region in the world into part­ner­ship with the West.  Philby, if he is remem­bered at all, has the rep­u­ta­tion of a schol­arly British Ara­bist over­shad­owed by his son, Kim, the infa­mous Soviet dou­ble agent.”

(Idem.)

5.

“Jack Philby has become an obscure foot­note to the his­tory of the Cold war. But his legacy was far from minor. He is one of the lesser-known but most influ­en­tial per­sons in the mod­ern his­tory of the Mid­dle East, the rene­gade British intel­li­gence agent who plucked an obscure ter­ror­ist out of the desert and helped to make him the king of Saudi Ara­bia. Ibn Saud was very much his cre­ation. Philby stole the infor­ma­tion from British intel­li­gence files that engi­neered Saudi con­trol over the holi­est shrines of the Moslem world.”

(Idem.)

6.

“Jack Philby and Ibn Saud betrayed the British Empire and made the Amer­i­can oil com­pa­nies eco­nomic mas­ters of the region. The man who helped them do it was Allen Dulles, an Amer­i­can spy who had befriended Philby while he was coor­di­nat­ing Amer­i­can intel­li­gence gath­er­ing in the Mid­dle East in the first half of the 1920’s.”

(Idem.)

7.

“Between them, these three men built the very foun­da­tions of the mod­ern Mid­dle East. They were the archi­tects of the oil weapon, the insti­ga­tors of war, the manip­u­la­tors of his­tory. More impor­tant, Philby’s and Ibn Saud’s polit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal alle­giance was to Nazi Ger­many, while much of Dulles’s prof­its came from the same source.”

(Idem.)

8. The influ­ence of Sul­li­van & Cromwell before the period described above is the next topic of discussion.

“Before the United States had a for­mal intel­li­gence ser­vice, it had Sul­li­van & Cromwell.  Accord­ing to some accounts, this firm helped orga­nize the seizure of land for the Panama Canal.  Later it rep­re­sented the French gov­ern­ment, sev­eral titans of British indus­try, and more impor­tant for this story, most of the lead­ing banks of pre­war Nazi Germany.”

(Ibid.; p. 56.)

9.

“The 1930’s were not the first time that one of the Dulles boys had rep­re­sented Ger­man money.  Dur­ing and after World War I, Fos­ter tried des­per­ately to keep Kaiser Wil­helm II’s assets from being seized by the U.S. Alien Prop­erty Cus­to­dian.  As a mem­ber of the U.S. War Trade Board, Fos­ter had good sources of infor­ma­tion.  Ger­man bribes went all the way to the attor­ney general.”

(Idem.)

10.

“In defend­ing the crooked attor­ney gen­eral, Harry Daugh­erty, his trial coun­sel pointed out that there was a big­ger crook behind the scan­dal: the lawyer John Fos­ter Dulles, who ‘strut­ted about the [Ver­sailles] Peace Con­fer­ence pro­mot­ing him­self as [Sec­re­tary of State] ‘Lansing’s Nephew’ while ‘car­ry­ing a bag’-looking for a bribe-misdirecting his client by com­port­ing him­self over­all as a man who should be disbarred.’”

(Idem.)

11. The pro­gram then sets forth Lof­tus’ and Aarons’ descrip­tion of the role of Sul­li­van & Cromwell in the forg­ing of key indus­trial and finan­cial rela­tion­ships under­ly­ing not only the Third Reich, but much of the Amer­i­can eco­nomic land­scape as well.

“Unfor­tu­nately, Fos­ter was allowed to con­tinue the prac­tice of law.  As a reward for his ser­vices, he became the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of sev­eral major Ger­man com­pa­nies, such as I.G. Far­ben, which owned huge blocks of stock in Amer­i­can oil com­pa­nies.  Far­ben later became infa­mous as the holder of the patent for the poi­son gas used at Auschwitz and for work­ing thou­sands of Jews to death as slave labor­ers.  Foster’s dream was to make the world one big monop­oly, con­trolled by his Ger­man and Amer­i­can clients.”

(Idem.)

12.

“In 1934, Dulles helped draft the agree­ments estab­lish­ing the inter­na­tional car­tels, joint ven­tures, and the market-sharing among the Bel­gians, the British Impe­r­ial Chem­i­cal Indus­tries, and I.G. Far­ben.  As dis­cussed in Chap­ter 2, it was agree­ments such as that signed by the Rockefeller-controlled Stan­dard Oil Com­pany of New Jer­sey with Far­ben that helped the Third Reich to gain such impor­tant advances in the devel­op­ment of syn­thetic rub­ber and gaso­line.  In return, Far­ben became a share­holder in the New Jer­sey oil com­pany sec­ond only to John D., Jr., himself.”

(Idem.)

13.

“Sul­li­van & Cromwell seemed to have con­nec­tions every­where.  It was the orig­i­nal revolv­ing door between the gov­ern­ment and Wall Street.  As we explain in Chap­ter 10, after World War II the revolv­ing door became a way of life for the men who pop­u­lated the oil com­pa­nies and the espi­onage world.  By the time the team of Ronald Rea­gan and George Bush took over the White House in 1981, it was impos­si­ble to tell where pri­vate inter­ests ended and pub­lic duties began and ended.”

(Idem.)

14.

“Allen Dulles had joined Sul­li­van & Cromwell after quit­ting the State Depart­ment in 1926.  His brother Fos­ter had pre­vi­ously served with State Depart­ment intel­li­gence.  Allen was on the board of a lead­ing Ger­man bank.  Fos­ter was a direc­tor of I.G. Far­ben.  They dealt in mil­lions and traded with nations as equals.  In fact, they taught many of twentieth-century rob­ber barons how to rob.”

(Ibid.; pp. 56–57.)

15. As can be seen from the dis­cus­sion that fol­lows, the issue of “glob­al­iza­tion” is not a new one.

“The Dulles broth­ers were the ones who con­vinced Amer­i­can busi­ness­men to avoid U.S. gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion by invest­ing in Ger­many.  It began with the Ver­sailles Treaty, in which they played no small role.  After World War I, the defeated Ger­man gov­ern­ment promised to pay war repa­ra­tions to the Allies in gold, but Ger­many had no gold.  It had to bor­row the gold from Sul­li­van & Cromwell“s clients in the United States.  Nearly 70 per­cent of the money that flowed into Ger­many dur­ing the 1930’s came from investors in the United States, many of them Sul­li­van & Cromwell clients.”

(Ibid.; p. 57.)

16.

“Some of the biggest Amer­i­can finan­cial houses, such as Mor­gan et Cie and Chase, also invested heav­ily in Ger­many after World War I.  In return for their gold, the Amer­i­can clients received bonds and promis­sory notes backed by shares of stock in Swiss hold­ing com­pa­nies that owned stock in Ger­man banks.  These banks in turn owned the stock of major Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions, which in turn owned some of the most valu­able indus­trial patents in the world.”

(Idem.)

17.

“In fact, the Ger­man bankers had almost cre­ated a world­wide high-tech monop­oly.  Amer­i­can com­pa­nies, such as Du Pont and Gen­eral Motors, were more than will­ing to swap gold for patent rights, at bar­gain base­ment prices.  There was even talk of set­ting up a world­wide patent car­tel in Ger­many, so that the Amer­i­can investors could escape the stric­tures of the U.S. antitrust laws.  It was a heady time.  When the price of the mark sta­bi­lized and the Ger­man econ­omy started to revive dur­ing the 1930’s, the prof­its were enormous.”

(Idem.)

18.

“The Dulles broth­ers looked like geniuses.  Their ‘Dawes Plan’ of recy­cling U.S. gold so that Ger­many could meet its inter­na­tional repa­ra­tions pay­ments, while rebuild­ing its domes­tic indus­try, was a stun­ning suc­cess, at least for a while.  Under the plan, the United States lent Ger­many the money to pay Britain and France their war repa­ra­tions.  In turn, Britain and France repaid the United States.  As the biog­ra­pher of the Dulles fam­ily, Leonard Mosley, has noted: ‘Finan­cially speak­ing, it was a mad sort of merry-go-round, but it gave the states­men a breath­ing space.’”

(Idem.)

19.

“Per­haps it was only a coin­ci­dence, but it also made for big prof­its for the broth­ers’ clients.  The Ger­man econ­omy began to boom while the United States was in the early years of the Depres­sion.  That was hardly sur­pris­ing, since so much des­per­ately needed Amer­i­can cap­i­tal had been shunted off to Dulles clients in Germany.”

(Idem.)

20.

“These Ger­man clients were mostly not Nazis, at least not orig­i­nally.  Most were con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic monar­chists who believed in the tra­di­tions of the Kaiser, Pruss­ian nobil­ity, and the honor of the Ger­man offi­cer corps.  They hated the chaotic lib­er­als who ruled the Weimar Repub­lic.  Most of their money went into mod­er­ate or center-right polit­i­cal parties.”

(Ibid.; pp. 57–58.)

21. Next, the pro­gram dis­cusses the role of Sul­li­van & Cromwell client I.G. Far­ben in fund­ing the Nazi elec­toral tri­umph. The issue of “cam­paign finance reform” is not a new one, any­more than is “globalization.”

“If Hitler wanted a big­ger share of the vote in 1933, he had to go after a much big­ger source of fund­ing.  In Jan­u­ary 1932, Hitler met in Dus­sel­dorf with a group of twenty-five Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists.  This was the turn­ing point for the Nazi party.  With­out suf­fi­cient fund­ing, they would go down to defeat in 1933 as a lunatic fringe.  With heavy finan­cial back­ing, the Nazis could win a suf­fi­ciently sub­stan­tial minor­ity to obtain a share of power in the gov­ern­ment coalition.”

(Ibid.; p. 58.)

22.

“Hitler told the indus­tri­al­ists what they wanted to hear.  If they helped the Nazis increase their vote in 1933, it would be the last elec­tion they would ever have to worry about.  There would be no more elec­tions, no more prob­lems with unions, no more antibusi­ness lib­er­als.  When asked how he would han­dle infla­tion, he replied ‘with con­cen­tra­tion camps.’  Hitler would solve unem­ploy­ment by throw­ing out the Jews.  His words brought the house down.  The indus­tri­al­ists imme­di­ately pledged 3 mil­lion marks.”

(Idem.)

23.

“Per­haps 3 mil­lion marks was small change, but it as an axiom among politi­cians that the early dona­tions are the most valu­able.  The mem­bers of the Dus­sel­dorf Indus­trial Club in 1932 gave Hitler small but sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions when he needed them the most.  Among the con­trib­u­tors was the man­ager of Giesche, Germany’s largest zinc pro­ducer.  His com­pany was a client of Allen Dulles.  So was another 1932 con­trib­u­tor, I.G. Farben.”

(Idem.)

24.

“Before 1932, the Nazis had con­ducted a vicious pro­pa­ganda cam­paign against Far­ben ‘as an exploita­tive tool’ of ‘money-mighty Jews.’  In June 1932, two I.G. Far­ben offi­cials met secretly with Hitler at his home in Munich to try to end the cam­paign.  A deal was struck: In return for elec­tion dona­tions, Hitler halted the cam­paign and promised to keep tar­iff pro­tec­tion after he won power.  A sign of relief went up at the Stan­dard Oil Com­pany of New Jer­sey, which stood to lose mil­lions if Hitler kept his word and dis­man­tled its partner.”

(Ibid.; pp. 58–59.)

25.

“Fol­low­ing Hitler’s tri­umph and con­sol­i­da­tion, I.G. Far­ben led the way among the Ger­man cor­po­rate world, adapt­ing itself to the Nazi ide­ol­ogy and purg­ing itself of ‘unde­sir­able’  (i.e., Jew­ish) ele­ments.  ‘By 1937–38, it was no longer an inde­pen­dent com­pany but rather an indus­trial arm of the Ger­man state, and fully Naz­i­fied.’  Allen Dulles was pleased.  With clients like Far­ben, there were megaprof­its to be made all round-provided, of course, that one was pre­pared to aban­don the Jews.”

(Ibid.; p. 59.)

26. Illus­trat­ing the com­plex­ity of some of the equity arrange­ments made through these con­nec­tions, the pro­gram dis­cusses the Swiss banks’ role in the Ger­man buy­backs of Amer­i­can equity in some of Dulles’ clients.  By way of com­par­i­son, one should not over­look the fact that, as dis­cussed in FTR#‘s 356, 357 and 359 (among other pro­grams) Swiss bank­ing has been a major ele­ment in the Al Taqwa/Banco del Got­tardo nexus.

“It should not be a sur­prise that the Dulles broth­ers and their friends also rep­re­sented the help­ful Swiss banks, which ‘loaned’ the buy-back money to their Ger­man clients.  As col­lat­eral, the Swiss banks received stock in Ger­man banks that now con­trolled, on paper at least, the hold­ings of the major Ger­man corporations.”

(Ibid.; p. 61.)

27.

“The net effect was to use Swiss bank secrecy as a shield to pre­vent Hitler from real­iz­ing that the Amer­i­can and British investors still pulled the strings behind the scenes.  In fact, it was Hitler’s bank dis­clo­sure law of 1933 that forced a flood of Ger­man money over the bor­der into Switzer­land.  In 1934, the Swiss made dis­clo­sure of bank accounts a crime.”

(Idem.)

28.

“Some his­to­ri­ans believe that the Swiss shield law had a more nefar­i­ous pur­pose than pro­tect­ing American-owned busi­nesses from Hitler.  The Swiss bank laws also kept the Dulles broth­ers’ clients away from the pry­ing eyes of the Amer­i­can Jus­tice Depart­ment with its strict laws against monop­o­lies, trusts, and car­tels.  Apart from being ille­gal, help­ing the Nazi car­tels dom­i­nate world trade was against U.S. for­eign pol­icy.  Although the United States was not at war with Ger­many in 1939, it took a dim view of ‘neu­tral’ Amer­i­can busi­ness­men who acted in favor of the Third Reich.”

(Idem.)

29.

“Still, for two heady years the Dulles clients had the best of both worlds.  Between Sep­tem­ber 1939 and Decem­ber 1941, Amer­i­can investors struc­tured their multi­na­tional hold­ings to legally make a profit on both sides of the war.  As long as the United States remained offi­cially neu­tral, such con­duct was tech­ni­cally legal, or at least offered a plau­si­ble defense.  John Fos­ter Dulles remained on the board of I.G. Far­ben.  His brother Allen remained on the board of the Schroder bank, along with a scar­faced rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the SS.”

(Idem.)

30. After detail­ing the for­ma­tion of this com­plex trans-Atlantic finan­cial and indus­trial axis, the pro­gram reviews the Bush family’s role in this relationship.

“Apart from dis­clos­ing that ‘Grand­fa­ther Walker’ came from ‘ a devout Catholic fam­ily,’ was named after the poet George Her­bert, and formed his own invest­ment firm, George Bush revealed prac­ti­cally noth­ing about his grand­fa­ther in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy.  How­ever, there was another, far seamier side to George Walker.  Walker was one of Hitler’s most pow­er­ful finan­cial sup­port­ers in the United States.  The rela­tion­ship went all the way back to 1924, when Fritz Thyssen, the Ger­man indus­tri­al­ist, was financ­ing Hitler’s infant Nazi party.  As men­tioned in ear­lier chap­ters, there were Amer­i­can con­trib­u­tors as well.”

(Ibid.; p. 358.)  One should remem­ber in this con­text, that the Thyssen fam­ily (includ­ing the recently-deceased Hein­rich Thyssen-Bornemisza based, like Al Taqwa/Banco del Got­tardo, in Lugano, Switzer­land) became pri­mary ele­ments of the Bor­mann organization.

31.

“Some Amer­i­cans were just big­ots and made their con­nec­tions to Ger­many through Allen Dulles’ firm of Sul­li­van & Cromwell because they sup­ported fas­cism.  The Dulles broth­ers, who were in it for profit more than ide­ol­ogy, arranged Amer­i­can invest­ments in Nazi Ger­many in the 1930’s to ensure that their clients did well out of the Ger­man eco­nomic recov­ery.  ‘Dulles clearly empha­sized projects for Ger­many . . . and for Mussolini’s fas­cist state . . . All told, these and more than a dozen sim­i­lar trans­ac­tions had a com­bined value in excess of a bil­lion dollars.’”

(Idem.)

32. One of the Bush fam­ily hold­ings was the Hamburg-Amerika line.

“Walker also set up a deal to take over the North Amer­i­can oper­a­tions of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, a cover for I.G. Farben’s Nazi espi­onage united in the United States.  The ship­ping line smug­gled in Ger­man agents, pro­pa­ganda, and money for brib­ing Amer­i­can politi­cians to see things Hitler’s way.  The hold­ing com­pany was Walker’s Amer­i­can Ship­ping & Com­merce, which shared the offices at 39 Broad­way with Union Bank­ing.  In an elab­o­rate cor­po­rate paper trail, Harriman’s stock in Amer­i­can Ship­ping & Com­merce was con­trolled by yet another hold­ing com­pany, the Har­ri­man Fif­teen Cor­po­ra­tion, run out of Walker’s office.  The direc­tors of this com­pany were Aver­ill Har­ri­man, Bert Walker, and Prescott Bush.”

(Ibid.; p. 359.)

33.

“At some point, Prescott Bush [W’s grand­fa­ther] must have real­ized that his father-in-law was, to put it mildly, a very shady char­ac­ter.  A 1934 con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tion alleged that Walker’s ‘Hamburg-Amerika Line sub­si­dized a wide range of pro-Nazi pro­pa­ganda efforts both in Ger­many and the United States.”

(Idem.)

34. The pro­gram also reviews Allen Dulles’ role in the mask­ing of the Bush fam­ily Third Reich assets.

“To this day, we do not know if Prescott Bush stayed on board out of loy­alty to his father-in-law or because the money was so good.  Instead of divest­ing the Nazi money, Bush hired a lawyer to hide the assets.  The lawyer he hired had con­sid­er­able exper­tise in such under­handed schemes.  It was Allen Dulles.  Accord­ing to Dulles’s client list at Sul­li­van & Cromwell, his first rela­tion­ship with Brown Brother, Har­ri­man was on June 18, 1936.  In Jan­u­ary 1937, Dulles listed his work for the firm as ‘dis­posal of Stan [Stan­dard Oil] invest­ing stock.’”

(Ibid.; p. 360.)

35. The bulk of the sec­ond half of the pro­gram details a recent exam­ple of net­work­ing that high­lights some of the com­plex­i­ties that should be con­sid­ered in con­nec­tion with recent dis­clo­sures con­cern­ing fail­ures on the part of the FBI and CIA to pre­vent the attacks of 9/11, despite numer­ous clues.

36. Egyptian-born inter­net invest­ment advi­sor Amr “Anthony” Elgindy had inside data from the FBI in his pos­ses­sion at the time of his recent arrest.

“A for­mer FBI agent charged in a stock-manipulation scheme had clas­si­fied data among his belong­ings, and the trader he is accused of con­spir­ing with had inves­tiga­tive reports about com­pa­nies that were ille­gally taken from the FBI, pros­e­cu­tors told a fed­eral court judge.”

(“Trader, For­mer Agent In Alleged Stock Scam Had Data From FBI;” by Jerry Markon; Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/29/2002; p. C1.)

37. It was also dis­closed that atten­tion on Elgindy was focused as a result of the 9/11 secu­ri­ties manip­u­la­tion probe.  (For more about that sub­ject, see FTR#‘s 327, 331, 335, 357.)

“The inves­ti­ga­tion that led to charges against five peo­ple, includ­ing a cur­rent and a for­mer FBI agent, with using con­fi­den­tial gov­ern­ment data to manip­u­late stock prices was an almost acci­den­tal result of probes into the Sep­tem­ber 11 ter­ror attacks and to some degree con­victed spy Robert Hanssen . . . His adver­saries also pointed out that Mr. Elgindy is a Mus­lim whose brother, Khaled Elgindy, is active in Islamic advo­cacy groups in Washington.”

(“Ter­ror Probes Led to Stock-Fraud Case;” by Michael Schroeder, Gary Fields, Ianthe Jeanne Dugan and Aaron Elstein; Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/24/2002; pp. C1-C3.)

38. The U.S. attor­ney in the case charged that Mr. Elgindy may have had prior knowl­edge of the 9/11 attacks.

“In a court hear­ing in San Diego, Ken­neth Breen, an assis­tant United States attor­ney, said the adviser, Amr Ibrahim Elgindy, tried to sell $300,000 in stock on the after­noon of Sep­tem­ber 10 and told his bro­ker that the stock mar­ket would soon plunge . . . Mr. Elgindy. . . . recently moved $700,000 to Lebanon and is a seri­ous flight risk, Mr. Breen said. . . . At the hear­ing yes­ter­day, Mr. Breen said that on the after­noon of Sep­tem­ber 10, Mr. Elgindy con­tacted his bro­ker at Salomon Smith Bar­ney and asked him to sell $300,000 in stock in his children’s trust funds.  Dur­ing the Sep­tem­ber 10 con­ver­sa­tion, Mr. Elgindy pre­dicted that the Dow Jones indus­trial aver­age, which at the time stood at about 9,600, would soon crash to below 3,000, Mr. Breen said. . . .”

(“Stock Adviser Knew About 9/11 Attacks, U.S. Sug­gests” by Alex Beren­son; The New York Times; 5/25/2002; pp. B1-B14.)

39. The pro­gram also notes that Elgindy’s father was active on behalf of a Hamas member.

“His father, Ibrahim Elgindy, founded an umbrella group of Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions in Chicago and led a 1998 protest on behalf of Muham­mad A. Salah, whose assets were seized that year after the United States gov­ern­ment linked Mr. Salah to Hamas, the rad­i­cal Pales­tin­ian group.”

(Ibid.; p. B14.)

40. Mr. Salah’s sit­u­a­tion was the focal point of charges that the F.B.I. had bun­gled an inves­ti­ga­tion into his situation.

“An F.B.I. agent has sued the bureau for refus­ing to let him pub­lish a book about what he says were botched efforts to inves­ti­gate fund-raising by Hamas and other mil­i­tant Islamic net­works in the United States in the 1990’s. . . .Mr. Wright’s inves­ti­ga­tion led to the seizure in June 1998 of $1.4 mil­lion in the bank accounts of Mohammed Salah, a Chicago res­i­dent who had served time in an Israeli prison after being con­victed of help­ing to recruit and train for Hamas.”

(“F.B.I. Agent Sues Bureau for Bar­ring Ter­ror Book” by Judith Miller; The New York Times; 5/11/2002.)

41. It should be noted that one of the peo­ple Mr. Wright wanted to inves­ti­gate was Yassin Qadi, being inves­ti­gated in con­nec­tion with the milieu of 9/11.

“In his com­plaint, Mr. Wright said that the funds were linked to Yassin Qadi, a Saudi busi­ness­man, whom the fed­eral gov­ern­ment des­ig­nated last Octo­ber as a finan­cial sup­porter of Osama Bin Laden.”

(Idem.) (For more about Qadi, see FTR#330.)

42. The pro­gram also notes that Elgindy has worked on Mus­lim causes with the pow­er­ful Talat Oth­man, in turn con­nected to the milieu of George Bush, Youssef Nada, Al Taqwa, BCCI, and Harken Energy.  (For more about Oth­man, see FTR#356.)  (“Coun­cil of Islamic Orga­ni­za­tions of Greater Chicago;” p. 4; accessed at www.ciogc.org/about_cio.html .)

43. The U.S. has recently encoun­tered dif­fi­culty in attempt­ing to neu­tral­ize Al Taqwa.

” ‘The Amer­i­cans are good at intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion,’ says an Ital­ian offi­cial who has fol­lowed Bank al Taqwa, a Bahamas-based lender that the U.S. alleges financed the al Qaeda ter­ror­ist net­work.  ‘But they pro­vide lit­tle that can be used in court.  We’re still wait­ing for real information.’ ”

(“Bush Faces Widen­ing Gap with Europe” by Ian John­son, Christo­pher Cooper and Philip Shishkin; Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/21/2002; p. A15.)

44. The pro­gram notes that Ramzi Youssef’s uncle worked for Mercy International.

“A fur­ther inter­est­ing con­nec­tion between [World Trade Cen­ter bomber] Yousef and bin laden is Yousef’s uncle, Zahid Sheik, who was the regional man­ager of Mercy Inter­na­tional Relief, a char­ity based in Peshawar, dur­ing the mid-1990’s.  At the same time, Mercy Inter­na­tional Relief’s Nairobi branch worked closely with Al-Qaeda, issu­ing iden­tity cards to Bin Laden and Ali Mohammed.  After a police raid on Wadih el-Hage’s house in Nairobi in 1997, eight boxes of his per­sonal papers were stored at the charity’s office in the city.”

(Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden; p. 140.) (For more about Ali Mohammed, see FTR#‘s 338, 348, 350.)

45. The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the alleged con­nec­tion between Mercy Inter­na­tional and Al Taqwa.

“But Nasred­din Ahmed Idris’s real rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the head of Gulf Office is another mem­ber of the Mus­lim Broth­ers, Khal­doun Dia Eddine, who belongs to the Syr­ian branch of the orga­ni­za­tion.  He too was ‘employed’ by the bank Al Taqwa, which he rep­re­sented in Lugano before he took on the coor­di­na­tion of the activ­i­ties of ‘Mercy Inter­na­tional,’ an Islamic human­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tion.  The human­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tions, Islamic non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions (NGO’s), rep­re­sent one of the other ‘deriv­a­tive prod­ucts’ from Al Taqwa bank.”

(Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The United States and Islam; pp. 152–153.)  (For more about Mercy Inter­na­tional, see FTR#351.)