For The Record

FTR #367 What’s Going On Here? Pt. 2 and Networking Pt. 3

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1. The broad­cast begins by review­ing 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.)

2. Sullivan & Cromwell fea­tured Allen and John Fos­ter Dulles as its (arguably) most impor­tant attor­neys.  It doesn’t require a great leap of imag­i­na­tion to see con­ti­nu­ity between that firm’s role on behalf of SBG (Saudi Bin Laden Group), the Dulles broth­ers’ involve­ment with the finan­cial net­works that financed the Third Reich and the firm’s efforts on behalf of U.S. finan­cial firms seek­ing to blunt the Trea­sury Department’s pro­posed new anti-terrorism reg­u­la­tions. “The U.S. finan­cial ser­vices indus­try has launched its first seri­ous chal­lenge to the slew of new reg­u­la­tions from Wash­ing­ton aimed at staunch­ing the flow of funds to ter­ror­ist groups.  (“Finance Sec­tor Hits at Moves to Curb Ter­ror Funds” by Edward Alden; Finan­cial Times; 7/3/2002; p. 2.)

3. “The con­cerns, spelled out this week by 11 indus­try trade groups rep­re­sent­ing nearly every major U.S. finan­cial insti­tu­tion, cast seri­ous doubt on the U.S. administration’s plans to imple­ment the most impor­tant of those reg­u­la­tions by a July 23 dead­line.” (Idem.)

4. “They could also mark the begin­ning of a split between the gov­ern­ment and indus­try over just how much new reg­u­la­tion in needed to dis­cour­age financ­ing of ter­ror­ist groups.” (Idem.)

5. “The Trea­sury depart­ment wants all banks and other finan­cial groups to set up elab­o­rate schemes to mon­i­tor cor­re­spon­dent and pri­vate bank­ing accounts opened in the U.s. by for­eign banks or indi­vid­u­als.  These are thought to be a main con­duit for dirty money flow­ing into the U.S. finan­cial sys­tem.” (Idem.)

6. “The rules could also seri­ously dis­rupt estab­lished finan­cial rela­tion­ships, the let­ter warned.  In the most extreme instances, finan­cial insti­tu­tions from a hand­ful of coun­tries such as Rus­sia, the Philip­pines and Egypt could be barred from deal­ing with U.S. banks unless they make avail­able data on all their cus­tomers world­wide.” (Idem.)

7. “H. Rod­gin Cohen, a lawyer with Sul­li­van & Cromwell, who led the effort on behalf of the 11 groups, said the Treasury’s def­i­n­i­tion of risky cor­re­spon­dent accounts was ‘so broad that they pick up basi­cally all rela­tion­ships between U.S. finan­cial insti­tu­tions and for­eign insti­tu­tions and for­eign finan­cial insti­tu­tions.” (Idem.)

8. The pro­gram high­lights the his­tor­i­cal par­al­lel between Sul­li­van & Cromwell’s efforts to weaken the Trea­sury Department’s anti-terrorism rules and the suc­cess­ful efforts of the Dulles broth­ers and their asso­ciates to inter­dict Oper­a­tion Safe­haven (a Trea­sury Depart­ment oper­a­tion aimed at inter­dict­ing the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal pro­gram.)  (For more about this sub­ject, see FTR#‘s 353, 366.)  “The dis­sent comes at a time when the U.S. effort to crack down on fund­ing for ter­ror­ist groups has largely stalled.  The cam­paign has focused on seiz­ing ter­ror­ist accounts, and the U.S. and its allies have frozen about $115m in sus­pected ter­ror­ist assets to date.  But the seizures have dried up as ter­ror­ist groups have moved their assets out of cash accounts and into com­modi­ties such as gold and dia­monds, Trea­sury offi­cials say.” (Idem.)  It should be noted that the dynamic involved here, the con­flict between pow­er­ful eco­nomic net­works and U.S. national inter­est and the safety of its cit­i­zens is cen­tral to an under­stand­ing of the events of 9/11.  It will be dis­cussed in future programs.

9. As the war wound to a close, Allen Dulles con­ducted suc­cess­ful nego­ti­a­tions with SS gen­eral Karl Wolff for the sur­ren­der of the SS forces in Italy. These nego­ti­a­tions were in direct con­flict with offi­cial pol­icy, which for­bade uni­lat­eral nego­ti­a­tions between the Third Reich and the West­ern allies “With sup­port from the top RSHA lead­er­ship, a decep­tion game was begun with both Allied intel­li­gence and the Catholic Church.  Uti­liz­ing Wall Street and Vat­i­can fears of com­mu­nism, some of Himmler’s top cronies, like SS Gen­eral Karl Wolff, became Damascus-road con­verts to a ‘kinder, gen­tler’ SS eager to estab­lish friendly rela­tions with both the Amer­i­cans and the Holy See.” (Dreamer of the Day: Fran­cis Parker Yockey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tional; by Kevin Coogan; Copy­right 1999 [SC]; Autono­me­dia; ISBN 1–57027-039–2; p. 321.)  (For more about this con­nec­tion, see FTR#121.)

10. The power of the Dulles broth­ers reached peaked dur­ing the Eisen­hower years, when John Fos­ter Dulles became sec­re­tary of state and Allen became direc­tor of the CIA.  It should be noted that the Dulles milieu main­tained a close oper­a­tional rela­tion­ship with the SS under­ground. “Until Dulles was named CIA direc­tor by Pres­i­dent Eisen­hower (and his brother, John Fos­ter Dulles, became direc­tor by Pres­i­dent Eisen­hower (and his brother, John Fos­ter Dulles, became sec­re­tary of state), oper­a­tional links to the Nazi under­ground came pri­mar­ily from the Office of Pol­icy Coor­di­na­tion (OPC), headed by Dulles pro­tégé Frank Wis­ner, the for­mer chief of OSS oper­a­tions in Bucharest, Roma­nia.  After the war, Dulles, Wis­ner, Angle­ton, and OPC’s Carmel Offie vir­tu­ally ran covert oper­a­tions in Italy as their own pri­vate affair.” (Ibid., p. 334.)

11. The Nazi/Dulles/CIA rela­tion­ship oper­ated largely through the Office of Pol­icy Coor­di­na­tion.  “The OPC’s bud­get was $4.7 mil­lion in 1949.  Three years later, when Dulles was still only CIA deputy direc­tor, it had reached $82 mil­lion.  OPC per­son­nel had humped from 302 to 6,954.  OPC was offi­cially incor­po­rated into the CIA in 1952 as the Agency’s direc­torate of Plans.  In 1956, after Pres­i­dent Eisen­hower estab­lished the Kil­lian Com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate the Agency, it was dis­cov­ered that more than half of the CIA’s per­son­nel and 80 per­cent of its bud­get had been devoted not to intelligence-gathering but to psy­cho­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal war­fare pro­grams.  Through­out this entire time, the Dulles net­work was inti­mately involved in com­plex deals with fac­tions inside the post­war SS.” (Idem.)

12. Another influ­ence on a Dulles/Order col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ship may have been psy­chol­o­gist Carl Jung, who was con­nected to Dulles and to the Third Reich. “Did Dulles offer to pro­tect ele­ments of the SS in return for its sup­port for CIA-backed anti-Soviet oper­a­tions in Europe and the Third World?  Did he think that grant­ing the Order a cer­tain amount of auton­omy was a small price to pay for bring­ing it into the Amer­i­can camp?  Might he even have been per­son­ally com­pro­mised in some way, or manip­u­lated by the Dulles fam­ily psy­chi­a­trist, Carl Jung?  Men Among the Runs, then, may have been less a con­ces­sion by Evola to Amer­i­can power than a sig­nal that some sort of under­stand­ing reached by Dulles and Wolff at the end of the war was now fully oper­a­tional.” (Idem.)

13. The Dulles net­works pre­cip­i­tated the Cru­sade for Free­dom, through which East­ern Euro­pean fas­cists were brought into the United States for polit­i­cal pur­poses. “The truth was quite sor­did: With the help of the Dulles-Angleton clique, the Vat­i­can had sent many of the East­ern Euro­pean Nazis to West­ern coun­tries, includ­ing the United States, Aus­tralia and Canada, where the right wing recruited them to get out the rest of the East­ern Euro­pean eth­nic vote.  The man who ran the polit­i­cal recruit­ment was Richard Nixon.” (The Secret War Against the Jews: How West­ern Espi­onage Betrayed the Jew­ish Peo­ple; John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 [SC]; St. Martin’s Press; ISBN 0–312-15648–0; p. 122.)

14. Frus­tra­tion over Truman’s 1948 elec­tion vic­tory over Dewey (which they blamed on the “Jew­ish vote”) impelled Dulles and his pro­tégé Nixon to work toward the real­iza­tion of the fas­cist free­dom fighter pres­ence in the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion. “As a young con­gress­man, Nixon had been Allen Dulles’s con­fi­dant.  They both blamed Gov­er­nor Dewey’s razor-thin loss to Tru­man in the 1948 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on the Jew­ish vote.  When he became Eisenhower’s vice pres­i­dent in 1952, Nixon was deter­mined to build his own eth­nic base.” (Idem.)

15. “Vice Pres­i­dent Nixon’s secret polit­i­cal war of Nazis against Jews in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics was never inves­ti­gated at the time.  The for­eign language-speaking Croa­t­ions and other Fas­cist émigré groups had a ready-made net­work for con­tact­ing and mobi­liz­ing the East­ern Euro­pean eth­nic bloc.  There is a very high cor­re­la­tion between CIA domes­tic sub­si­dies to Fas­cist ‘free­dom fight­ers’ dur­ing the 1950’s and the lead­er­ship of the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic cam­paign groups.  The motive for the under-the-table financ­ing was clear: Nixon used Nazis to off­set the Jew­ish vote for the Democ­rats.”  (Idem.)

16. In 1952, Nixon had formed an Eth­nic Divi­sion within the repub­li­can national Com­mit­tee.  “Dis­placed fas­cists, hop­ing to be returned to power by an Eisenhower-Nixon ‘lib­er­a­tion’ pol­icy signed on’ with the com­mit­tee.  In 1953, when Repub­li­cans were in office, the immi­gra­tion laws were changed to admit Nazis, even mem­bers of the SS.  They flooded into the coun­try.  Nixon him­self over­saw the new immi­gra­tion pro­gram.  As vice pres­i­dent, he even received East­ern Euro­pean Fas­cists in the White House.”  (Ibid.; pp. 122–123.)

17. The Nazi/fascist pres­ence in the Repub­li­can eth­nic out­reach pro­gram became per­ma­nent when George H.W. Bush was chair­man of the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee. “In 1968, Nixon promised that if he won the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, he would cre­ate per­ma­nent eth­nic coun­cil within the Repub­li­can Party.  Pre­vi­ously the Eth­nic Divi­sion was allowed to sur­face only dur­ing pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns.  Nixon’s promise was car­ried out after the 1972 elec­tion, dur­ing Bush’s tenure as chair­man of the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee.”  (Ibid.; p. 123.)

18. Bush’s appoint­ment to the CIA may well have been polit­i­cally moti­vated, in part, by his rela­tion­ship to the CFF milieu, the Dulles net­works and the Under­ground Reich.  Nixon’s des­ig­nated suc­ces­sor (Ger­ald Ford) appointed Bush, who con­sid­ers Nixon to be his polit­i­cal men­tor. ”. . . Nixon was forced to resign as a result of the Water­gate scan­dal.  At the same time, Bush was trans­ferred from his post as head of the Repub­li­can National com­mit­tee to the CIA. . . .There was a real risk in the 1970’s that the con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tions of Nixon might col­lide with the con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tions of Nazis.  Bush was sent to the CIA to ensure that Nixon’s garbage remained buried.” (Idem.)

19. William Casey was a long-time polit­i­cal ally of Prescott Bush, Sr. (W’s grand­fa­ther).  Nixon was also close to Bush, Sr. Ronald Rea­gan and William Casey also fig­ured promi­nently in the Cru­sade for Free­dom pro­gram.  “As a young movie actor in the early 1950’s, Rea­gan was employed as the public-spokesperson for an OPC front named the ‘Cru­sade for Free­dom.’  Rea­gan may not have known it, but 99 per­cent of the Crusade’s funds came from clan­des­tine accounts, which were then laun­dered through the Cru­sade to var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions such as Radio Lib­erty, which employed Dulles’s Fas­cists.  Bill Casey, who later became CIA direc­tor under Ronald Rea­gan, also worked in Ger­many after World War II on Dulles’s ‘Nazi ‘free­dom fight­ers’ pro­gram.  When he returned to New York spon­sored the immi­gra­tion of these Fas­cists to the United States.  Casey’s com­mit­tee replaced the Inter­na­tional Red Cross as the spon­sor for Dulles’s recruits.”  (Ibid.; p. 605.)

20. The for­mer World Anti-Communist League or WACL was among the orga­ni­za­tions that over­lapped the devel­op­ment of the fascist/GOP/Islamist milieu under­ly­ing the events of 9/11. (For more about Islam­os­fas­cist ele­ments in the GOP eth­nic out­reach com­mu­nity, see FTR#‘s 353, 356–361.)  A cen­tral ele­ment in the Islamist/WACL link was the World Mus­lim Con­gress, founded by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. “Two years later, in Jan­u­ary of 1955, Sadat became the sec­re­tary gen­eral of the Grand Mufti’s World Mus­lim Con­gress (WMC).  The WMC soon devel­oped close ties to CIA-backed orga­ni­za­tions like the Asian People’s Anti-Communist league (APACL).  It also cir­cu­late Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic writ­ings and main­tained espe­cially good ties with Ger­ald K. Smith.” (Dreamer of the Day: Fran­cis Parker Yockey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tional; p. 385.)

21. A pri­mary ele­ment in WACL was the ABN. “Fear­ing that a new con­flict with the Sovi­ets might be just around the cor­ner, Amer­i­can intel­li­gence des­per­ately wanted to reach an acco­mo­da­tion with the far right.  U.S. agents aggres­sively recruited top offi­cials from Alfred Rosenberg’s Ost­min­is­terium for anti-Soviet oper­a­tions.  Through umbrella orga­ni­za­tions like the Anti-Bolshevik bloc of nations (ABN), the CIA, in league with the Gehlen Org, recon­structed the pre-war coali­tion of ‘anti-comintern’ groups in East Europe, the Baltics, and the Ukraine, which had exten­sive ties to Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and the Rosen­berg appa­rat.” (Ibid.; p. 393.)

22. “This revamped ‘Anti-Kommintern’ then became the Euro­pean wing of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League (APACL), the pre­cur­sor orga­ni­za­tion to the World Anti-Communist League (WACL).”  (Ibid.; p. 599.)

23. The anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980’s saw the Grand Mufti-founded WMC become a prin­ci­pal ele­ment of that effort.  This effort, backed by Saudi and U.S. intel­li­gence, saw the emer­gence of Osama Bin Laden and the “Arab-Afghans.”  It was in this same period that Islamist ele­ments emerged as an impor­tant ele­ment within the Repub­li­can Party. “A few years later, the WMC, then headed by Pak­istani Dr. Ina­mul­lah Kahn, mailed Holocaust-denial lit­er­a­ture to every mem­ber of the U.S. Con­gress and the British Par­lia­ment.  The WMC’s offi­cial mouth­piece, Mus­lim World, car­ried the ads for The Pro­to­cols of the elders of Zion and Henry Ford’s The Inter­na­tional Jew. . . .Dr. Khan also served as an advi­sor to the Saudi Ara­bian royal fam­ily, which lav­ished funds on the WMC.  In addi­tion, the Saudi Ara­bian gov­ern­ment retained the ser­vices of Amer­i­can neo-nazi William Grim­stead as a Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ist. . .  Soon, the World Mus­lim Con­gress began work­ing closely with U.S. intel­li­gence and Pak­istani mil­i­tary offi­cials, who were covertly sup­port­ing the Afghan mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet-installed regime in Kabul.  This effort was strongly endorsed by Dr. Khan, who served for many years as the Pak­istani rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Nazi-infested World Anti-Commnist League, which played an impor­tant role in the Rea­gan administration’s ‘secret war’ in the Golden Cres­cent.”  (The Beast Reawak­ens; Mar­tin A. Lee; Copy­right 1997 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; ISBN 0–316-51959–6; pp. 225–226.)

24. For the con­ve­nience of the Inter­net user, some of the doc­u­men­ta­tion of the GOP/Islamofascist con­nec­tion is repro­duced from FTR#356.  [Jamal] Barz­inji con­sti­tutes one of a num­ber of links between the GOP/ethnic out­reach milieu and that of Al Taqwa and the events of 9/11. Barz­inji, in turn, over­laps insti­tu­tions with con­nec­tions to the Bin Laden fam­ily and Al Taqwa.  Barz­inji is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the World Assem­bly of Mus­lim Youth. (“Wah­habis in the Old Domin­ion” by Stephen Schwartz; The Weekly Stan­dard; 4/8/2002 [Vol­ume 007, Issue 29]; accessed at www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=1072&R=4FC12C2DAA .)

25. The WAMY is described as “. . .an arm of the Saudi regime with offices in Vir­ginia.  WAMY has been deeply involved in pro­vid­ing cover for Wah­habi ter­ror­ism.  The 2002 entry in the U.S. Busi­ness Direc­tory lists the pres­i­dent of the WAMY office in Annan­dale, Va., as Abdula bin Laden-the terrorist’s younger brother.”  (Idem.)

26. One of the key con­nect­ing links between the milieu of Al Queda, the high­est ranks of the Repub­li­can Party and Al Taqwa is the Amana Mutual Funds Trust.  (Idem.)

27. “Barz­inji serves as a trustee and offi­cer of the Amana Mutual Funds Trust, a growth and income mutual fund head­quar­tered in Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton, con­ve­niently near the Cana­dian bor­der.  Amana’s board also includes Yaqub Mirza, a Pak­istani physi­cist who shares Barzinji’s Hern­don office address and who is widely described as a finan­cial genius.  Another board mem­ber and ten­ant in the Hern­don office is Samir Salah.  He for­merly ran a branch of Al Taqwa in the Caribbean, heads a finan­cial firm linked to Saar, and directs Dar al-Hijra, a mosque in Falls Church, Va., notable for hard­line Wah­habi preach­ing.” (Idem.)

28. In pre­vi­ous pro­grams about Sep­tem­ber 11, Mr. Emory has pre­sented his hypoth­e­sis that an Under­ground Reich “Fifth Col­umn” within the U.S. polit­i­cal, eco­nomic and national secu­rity estab­lish­ment was involved in the attacks.  In that con­text it is inter­est­ing to con­sider Mr. Barzinji’s con­nec­tions.  “Front groups inter­fac­ing between the Wahhabi-Saudi money movers under fed­eral sus­pi­cion and the broader Amer­i­can pub­lic include two insti­tu­tions active in the reli­gious field: the Inter­na­tional Insti­tute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the Grad­u­ate School of Islamic and Social Sci­ences (GSISS).  The involve­ment of GSISS with the financ­ing of extrem­ism is espe­cially star­tling in that it alone is cre­den­tialed by the Depart­ment of Defense to cer­tify Mus­lim chap­lains for the U.S. armed forces.  Barz­inji has appeared on the boards of both.” (Idem.)

29. On April 4, Trea­sury Sec­re­tary O’Neill met with pow­er­ful Islamist Repub­li­cans whose spheres of inter­est over­lap those of the insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als tar­geted on March 20.  (“O’Neill Met Mus­lim Activists Tied to Char­i­ties” by Glenn R. Simp­son [with Roger Thurow]; Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/18/2002; p. A4.)

30. “Among the Mus­lim lead­ers attend­ing [the meet­ing with O’Neill] was Talat Oth­man, a long­time asso­ciate and sup­porter of Pres­i­dent Bush’s fam­ily, who gave a bene­dic­tion at the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia in August 2000. . .But he also serves [with Barz­inji] on the board of Amana Mutual funds Trust, an invest­ment firm founded by M. Yac­qub Mirza, the North­ern Vir­ginia busi­ness­man who set up most of the enti­ties tar­geted by the Trea­sury and whose tax records were sought in the raid.” (Idem.)

31. As Mr. Emory hypoth­e­sized in FTR#353, the Norquist/GOP/Islamist links are part of the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic out­reach pro­gram.  “The case also high­lights con­flicts between the Bush administration’s domes­tic polit­i­cal goals and its war on ter­ror.  GOP offi­cials began court­ing the U.S. Mus­lim com­mu­nity intensely in the late 1990’s, seek­ing to add that eth­nic bloc to the party’s polit­i­cal base.” (Idem.)

32. The meet­ing was described as highly unusual.  “Bruce Zagaris, an asset-forfeiture lawyer, who rep­re­sents clients in sim­i­lar cases, said a meet­ing between Trea­sury offi­cials and any­one who might be asso­ci­ated with an entity under inves­ti­ga­tion is very unusual.  ‘It’s vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble [to arrange such a meet­ing], espe­cially with the Trea­sury sec­re­tary,’ Mr. Zagaris said.  ‘It’s very dif­fi­cult to even get phone calls returned.’” (Idem.)

33. The Amana orga­ni­za­tion has numer­ous areas of over­lap with orga­ni­za­tions described as being impli­cated in ter­ror­ism and the milieu of Al Qaeda. “Two non­prof­its affil­i­ated with Mr. Mirza and named in the search war­rant, the SAAR Foun­da­tion Inc. and the Her­itage Edu­ca­tion Trust Inc., held large blocks of shares in Amana’s mutual funds in 1997, accord­ing to SEC records.  The SEC doc­u­ments and other records detail­ing con­nec­tions between Mr. Oth­man and the Islamic Insti­tute [on the board of which Mr. Oth­man serves] and the raided groups were com­piled by the National Secu­rity News Ser­vice, a Wash­ing­ton based non­profit research group.” (Idem.)

34. Fur­ther details have emerged about the links between Al Taqwa and the GOP/Bush admin­is­tra­tion.  “Mr. Oth­man also is on the board of Mr. Saffuri’s [and Norquist’s] Islamic Insti­tute, the GOP-leaning group that received $20,000.00 from the Safa Trust, one of the raid’s tar­gets.  The pres­i­dent of the Safa Trust, Jamal Barz­inji, is a for­mer busi­ness asso­ciate of Switzer­land based investor Youssef Nada, whose assets were frozen last fall after the Trea­sury des­ig­nated him a per­son sus­pected of giv­ing aid to ter­ror­ists.” (Idem.)

35. A recent Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle described some of the orga­ni­za­tions tar­geted in the raids.  “These include Al-Taqwa Man­age­ment, a recently liq­ui­dated Swiss com­pany the U.S. gov­ern­ment believes acted as a banker for Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda ter­ror­ist net­work. . .Two peo­ple affil­i­ated with the com­pa­nies and char­i­ties are linked by records to enti­ties already des­ig­nated as ter­ror­ist by the U.S. gov­ern­ment.  Hisham Al-Talib, who served as an offi­cer of SAAR, the Inter­na­tional Insti­tute of Islamic Thought and Safa Trust Inc., another Mirza char­ity, dur­ing the 1970’s  was an offi­cer of firms run by Youssef M. Nada, records show.  Mr. Nada is a Switzerland-based busi­ness­man whose assets have been frozen by the U.S. for alleged involve­ment in ter­ror­ist financ­ing, and is alleged by U.S. offi­cials to be a key fig­ure in the Taqwa net­work. . .Jamal Barz­inji, an offi­cer of  Mr. Mirza’s com­pany Mar-Jac and other enti­ties, also was involved with Mr. Nada’s com­pa­nies in the 1970’s, accord­ing to bank doc­u­ments from Liecht­en­stein.  A mes­sage was left yes­ter­day for Mr. Barz­inji at his address in Hern­don.  Mr. Barz­inji and Mr. Talib live across the street from each other.  A third busi­ness asso­ciate of Mr. Nada, Ali Ghaleb Him­mat (who also has been des­ig­nated by the Trea­sury as aid­ing ter­ror­ism), is listed as an offi­cial of the Geneva branch of another char­ity oper­ated by Mr. Mirza, the Inter­na­tional Islamic Char­i­ta­ble Orga­ni­za­tion.” (“Funds Under Ter­ror Probe Flowed From Off­shore” by Glenn R. Simp­son [with Michael M. Phillips]; Wall Street Jour­nal; 3/22/2002; p. A4.)

36. Othman’s links to Bush are pro­found.  “Mr. Oth­man has ties to the Bush fam­ily going back to the 1980’s, when he served with George W. Bush on the board of a Texas petro­leum firm, Harken Oil & Gas Inc.  Mr. Oth­man has vis­ited the White House dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tions of both Pres­i­dent Bush and his father George H.W. Bush.” (“O’Neill Met Mus­lim Activists Tied to Char­i­ties” by Glenn R. Simp­son [with Roger Thurow]; Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/18/2002; p. A4.)

37. Bush’s involve­ment with Harken has become a tar­get of scrutiny, in the wake of a vari­ety of alarm­ing dis­clo­sures about cor­po­rate mis­deeds. “The con­tro­versy involves Bush’s sale of shares of stock in Harken Energy Co., an oil and gas explo­ration com­pany.  Bush had acquired shares in the com­pany and joined its board in the mid-1980’s when Harken bought his money-losing energy firm, Spec­trum 7.”  (“Story Changes on Bush Stock Sale” by Zachary Coile; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 7/4/2002; p. A15.)

38. “On June 22, 1990, Bush sold 212,140 shares of Harken stock just two months before the com­pany reported a $23 mil­lion loss.  At the time he sold, the stock price was $4, but by the end of the year, it had fallen to $1 a share.” (Idem.)

39. “Fleis­cher told reporters that Bush believed that he had com­plied with the law by fil­ing an SEC Form 144, which alerted investors of his inten­tion to sell the stock.” (Idem.)

40. “But Bush did not file a sec­ond doc­u­ment, SEC Form 4, until 34 weeks after the sale of the stock.  U.S. secu­ri­ties law requires that cor­po­rate lead­ers at pub­licly traded firms report sales by the 10th day of the month fol­low­ing the sale.”  (Idem.)

41. “Fleis­cher blamed the lawyers at Harken for not fil­ing the sec­ond form.  ‘It was a mix-up with the attor­neys,’ he said.” (Idem.)

42. “But Fleis­cher later backed off his state­ment that it was the corporation’s respon­si­bil­ity to file the form on behalf of its direc­tors.  Fed­eral law says it’s the respon­si­bil­ity of the direc­tor, not the com­pany, to file the form.” (Idem.)

43. “Shortly after Bush sold his Harken stock , the SEC inves­ti­gated the deal for pos­si­ble insider trad­ing.  The inves­ti­ga­tion occurred while Bush’s father was pres­i­dent, and the agency ended its inquiry in 1993.” (Idem.)

44. “The con­tro­versy bub­bled to the sur­face again this week after the release of a 1991 SEC memo show­ing that Bush was late in fil­ing four Form 4s for sales of Harken stock worth $1,028,935.  Bush used $600,000 of money from the sales to buy part own­er­ship of the Texas Rangers base­ball team.” (Idem.)

45. Fur­ther detail­ing the back­ground of Oth­man, the broad­cast high­lights the con­nec­tions between peo­ple asso­ci­ated with the Nugan Hand Bank and Oth­man.  “Harken Energy was formed in 1973 by two oil­men who would ben­e­fit from a suc­cess­ful covert effort to desta­bi­lize Australia’s Labor Party gov­ern­ment (which had attempted to shut out for­eign oil explo­ration.)  A decade later, Harken was sold to a new invest­ment group headed by New York attor­ney Alan G. Quasha, a part­ner in the firm of Quasha, Wes­sely & Schnei­der. . .William Quasha [Alan’s father] had also given legal advice to two top offi­cials of the noto­ri­ous Nugan Hand Bank in Aus­tralia, a CIA oper­a­tion.  After the sale of Harken Energy in 1983, Alan Quasha became a direc­tor and chair­man of the board.  Under Quasha, Harken sud­denly absorbed Junior’s strug­gling Spec­trum 7 in 1986. (“Bush Fam­ily Value$: The Bush Clan’s Fam­ily Busi­ness” by Stephen Pizzo; Mother Jones; September/October 1992; accessed at www.motherjones.com/news_wire/bushboys.html .)

46. Oth­man also has links to Gaith Pharoan of the BCCI and, through him, to James R. Bath and the Bin Ladens.  “Sheikh Abdul­lah Bakhsh, in turn, was a busi­ness asso­ciate of BCCI front man Gaith Pharoan; he bought a chunk of Harken’s stock and placed his rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Talat Oth­man, on Harken Energy’s board of direc­tors.” (Idem.)

47. Next, the broad­cast turns to dis­cus­sion of Clearstream, a major vehi­cle for the financ­ing of BCCI and, as we shall see, Al Taqwa.  “A con­tro­ver­sial Euro­pean book that might help author­i­ties track ter­ror­ist fund­ing sources remains unpub­lished and rel­a­tively unknown in the United States.  Enti­tled Rev­e­la­tion$ [by Ernest Backes and Denis Robert], it exposes a secret bank­ing sys­tem that might be used by ter­ror­ists.  At the cen­ter is a clear­ing­house in Lux­em­bourg called Clearstream, which trans­fers money for inter­na­tional banks and major com­pa­nies.” (“A Book Too Hot For U.S. to Han­dle?  Track­ing Ter­ror­ist Money” by Lucy Komisar; Pacific News Ser­vice; 10/4/2001; accessed at www.pacificnews.org/content/pns/2001/oct/1004tracking.html .)

48. Fur­ther­more, the Clearstream/BCCI link was appar­ently known to Rudy Giu­liani (a U.S. attor­ney under the elder George Bush.)  “This reporter was shown copies of what Backes says are records of the secret accounts.  He keeps the orig­i­nals in caches out­side Lux­em­bourg.  The doc­u­ments are a mine of infor­ma­tion for any finan­cial inquiry, with detailed infor­ma­tion on every cross-border trans­fer in cash or secu­ri­ties.  Some U.S. officials-including New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani-may well be aware of the sys­tem detailed in the doc­u­ments. . . .When Mayor Giu­liani was an assis­tant pros­e­cu­tor in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing the Bank of Credit and Com­merce Inter­na­tional (BCCI) in the early 1990’s, he received doc­u­ments from Backes accord­ing to Rev­e­la­tion$.  ‘Giu­liani and agents of the FBI were delighted with the offi­cial doc­u­ments [which Backes sent him],’ the authors wrote.’” (Idem.)  Mr. Emory notes that the cur­rent direc­tor of the FBI, Robert Mueller, was in charge of the BCCI inves­ti­ga­tion and was less than vig­or­ous in his pur­suit of the truth.  It is Mr. Emory’s view that Mueller may well have been an inside plant, posi­tioned in order to pre­vent an unrav­el­ing of the BCCI money trail in the direc­tion of George W. Bush.

49. Mueller was recently a focus of some crit­i­cism for meet­ing with the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil, a Wahhabi-linked orga­ni­za­tion over­lap­ping both the GOP/ethnic wing and ter­ror­ist ele­ments.  “Amid accu­sa­tions it sup­ports extrem­ists abroad, the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil opened its four-day con­fer­ence Thurs­day with a lob­by­ing cam­paign on Capi­tol Hill to press law­mak­ers on issues rang­ing from Pales­tin­ian state­hood to tough­ened FBI sur­veil­lance tac­tics.” (“Mus­lims Con­verge on Capi­tol Hill in Lob­by­ing Bid”; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 6/29/2002; p. A5.)

50. “FBI direc­tor Robert Mueller was being pres­sured by con­ser­v­a­tives and Jew­ish groups to can­cel his Fri­day speech to the coun­cil, part of the administration’s attempts to reach out to seg­ments of the Amer­i­can Mus­lim com­mu­nity after the Sep­tem­ber 11 ter­ror attacks.” (Idem.)

51. Links between AMC and Islamic char­i­ties fun­nel­ing money to ter­ror­ists were at the core of the crit­ics’ argu­ments. “But crit­ics say the coun­cil has urged mem­bers in the past to con­tribute to some char­i­ties whose assets have since been frozen by the United States because of links to ter­ror­ists.” (Idem.)

52. Some of the GOP/Islamist/AMC links are even indeed alarm­ing.  “The record of the Coun­cil on American-Islamic Rela­tions (CAIR)-which, like the AMC, sends mem­bers to meet­ings orga­nized by Norquist and Saffuri-is no more encour­ag­ing.  When inter­viewed by Salon’s Jake Tap­per on Sep­tem­ber 26, CAIR Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Direc­tor Ibrahim Hooper refused to con­demn Osama bin Laden.  CAIR founder Nihad Awad, who appeared with Bush at the Wash­ing­ton Islamic Cen­ter, has argued that ‘there is ample evi­dence indi­cat­ing that both the Mossad and the Egypt­ian Intel­li­gence [ser­vice] played a role in the [1993 World Trade Cen­ter] explo­sion.’  And Siraj Wahaj, who has served as a CAIR board mem­ber, has been described by fed­eral pros­e­cu­tor Mary Jo White as a pos­si­ble con­spir­a­tor in the ’93 bomb­ing.” (“Fevered Pitch” by Franklin Foer; The New Repub­lic; 11/12/2001; pp. 5–6; accessed at www.thenewrepublic.com/111201/foer111201.html .)

53. One of the peo­ple that played a major role in both the ABN and the Repub­li­can eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion was Las­zlo Pasz­tor.  Pasz­tor was also the “lib­er­a­tion direc­tor” of the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion, an orga­ni­za­tion involved with a num­ber of Russ­ian and East­ern Euro­pean polit­i­cal ele­ments.  (For more about Pasz­tor, see also: RFA#‘s 36, 37, among other pro­grams.)  “The Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion, founded by Amer­i­can far Right strate­gist Paul Weyrich, became active in east­ern Euro­pean pol­i­tics after the Cold War.  Fig­ur­ing promi­nently in this effort was Weyrich’s right-hand man, Las­zlo Pasz­tor, a for­mer leader of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross orga­ni­za­tion in Hun­gary, which had col­lab­o­rated with Hitler’s Reich.  After serv­ing two years in prison for his Arrow Cross activ­i­ties, Pasz­tor found his way to the United States, where he was instru­men­tal in estab­lish­ing the ethnic-outreach arm of the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee.” (The Beast Reawak­ens; Mar­tin A. Lee; p. 303.)

54. Much of the sec­ond side of the pro­gram con­sists of review of por­tions of FTR#166.  That broad­cast, in turn reviews parts of RFA#36.  That tape seg­ment reca­pit­u­lates mate­r­ial about the inter­sec­tion between FCF, ABN, WACL.  (“The Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion Goes East” by Russ Bel­lant and Lou Wolff; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin; Issue #35; Win­ter 1990–1991.)

55. Not­ing the fas­cist her­itage of the FCF and its inter­sec­tion with the milieu of the Repub­li­can eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion, the pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of the FCF’s attack on the Men­with Hill (York­shire) and Ech­e­lon ele­ments of the vitally impor­tant NSA/GCHQ elec­tronic coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence func­tion.  (“Big Brother Is Lis­ten­ing to You” by Lisa S. Dean; San Fran­cisco Exam­iner; 7/5/1999.)  The pro­gram notes that the attack by the FCF on Echelon/Menwith Hill coin­cided with a Ger­man intel­li­gence and pub­lic rela­tions blitzkrieg against these same instal­la­tions.  The motive for the Ger­man “out­rage” was alleged indus­trial espi­onage. FTR#331 high­lighted the fact that Ger­many had the same capa­bil­ity, while charg­ing that the Echelon/Menwith Hill liai­son had pro­vided the United States with the same capa­bil­ity.  The pro­gram con­cep­tu­al­izes the FCF attack on Echelon/Menwith Hill as pre­sag­ing the 9/11 attack on the United States by the Under­ground Reich and its Islam­o­fas­cist allies.  By dis­cred­it­ing the U.S. elec­tronic intel­li­gence capa­bil­ity, pro­mot­ing domes­tic U.S. oppo­si­tion to Echelon/Menwith Hill and alert­ing Al Qaeda ele­ments to the capa­bil­i­ties of the inter­cept sys­tem, FCF and its Under­ground Reich allies helped pre­pare the way for the destruc­tion of 9/11.  The sub­ject of FCF and its attack on Echelon/Menwith Hill will be dis­cussed in future programs.

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