Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #361 Networking

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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.)

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