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Fur­ther devel­op­ing con­nec­tions between a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ter­ror­ist inci­dents and ele­ments, this pro­gram focuses on Islam­o­fas­cist links to attacks out­side of the Mid­dle East, as well as evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries con­nect­ing these attacks to the milieu of the 9/11 attacks.

1. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of Dawud Salahud­din (nee David Belfield), an Afro-American Islamist, who mur­dered a sup­porter of Iran­ian Shah Reza Palavi (Ali Akbar Tabatabai). Salahud­din was heav­ily influ­enced by Said Ramadan, the head of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Sig­nif­i­cantly, Salahuddin’s con­tact with Ramadan came in the United States. “In May of 1975, Salahud­din met Said Ramadan, an Egypt­ian lawyer and Islamic scholar, who was the guest speaker at a prayer ser­vice at the Islamic Cen­ter, a large mosque on Mass­a­chu­setts Avenue in Wash­ing­ton. Ramadan, the founder and head of the Cen­tre Islamique, in Geneva, had been liv­ing in exile in Switzer­land since the nineteen-fifties. Salahud­din describes Ramadan, who was his adviser and spir­i­tual guide until his death, in 1995, as “the inter­na­tional point man for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.’ (The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, founded in Egypt in 1928, was, accord­ing to Salahud­din, the inspi­ra­tion for almost every mil­i­tant group in the Mus­lim world. Ramadan’s father-in-law [Has­san Al Banna] was its founder.” (“Annals of Crime: An Amer­i­can Ter­ror­ist;” by Ira Sil­ver­man; The New Yorker; 8/5/2002; p. 29.)

2. “Dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975, Ramadan stayed with Salahud­din in a house in Wash­ing­ton about a mile from the Howard Uni­ver­sity cam­pus. They often talked through the night. ‘I don’t think another human being, includ­ing my bio­log­i­cal par­ents, knew me any bet­ter,’ Salahud­din said. One sub­ject they dis­cussed was Salahuddin’s per­son­al­ity, par­tic­u­larly his capac­ity for vio­lent action. Ramadan, he said, assured him that if he were to com­mit such an act he wouldn’t be emo­tion­ally scarred by it-it would ‘be accom­plished and sim­ply for­got­ten.’” (Idem.)

3. “In Decem­ber of 1979, Salahud­din called Ramadan in Geneva to seek his advice about work­ing for the Ira­ni­ans as a secu­rity guard. It was ten months after the over­throw of the Shah, and Aya­tol­lah Khome­ini, now in power in Iran, was on guard against a counter-revolution. Salahud­din said he remem­bers Ramadan telling him to do every­thing he pos­si­bly could on Khomeini’s behalf. ‘His tone was emphatic,’ Salahud­din said, ‘and for me it was taken as a com­mand.’” (Idem.)

4. “Salahud­din told me that Ramadan hadn’t known about his plans to kill Tabatabai, but an arti­cle in the Wash­ing­ton Post on August 8/1980, reported that there were three calls around the time of the mur­der to Ramadan’s Geneva home from pay phones near the Iran­ian diplo­matic office. A law-enforcement source involved in the Tabatabai case told me that inves­ti­ga­tors believed the calls were made by a Salahud­din ‘han­dler,’ a Khome­ini oper­a­tive in the United States who was not charged in the mur­der.’” (Idem.)

5. “The man who recruited him to kill Tabatabai, Salahud­din told me, was ‘some­one in Wash­ing­ton’ who was ‘pass­ing along instruc­tions’ from the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment. He would not divulge the iden­tity of his ‘con­tact,’ and would say only that he believes he met him at the Iran­ian stu­dent cen­ter: ‘At no point did I adver­tise myself as a hit man, though it was clear to peo­ple who knew me that I had no pro­found fear of vio­lence or of the author­i­ties.’ Salahud­din said that he was given ‘a chunk of cash’ (actu­ally, five thou­sand dol­lars) and five weeks to get the job done.’” (Idem.)

6. In the years fol­low­ing the killing of Tab­batabai, Salahud­din worked as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Ramadan. “Salahud­din also trav­eled in the mil­i­tant Mus­lim world as a kind of diplo­mat for Said Ramadan: ‘I pre­sented myself as Ramadan’s envoy, and that was with his encour­age­ment.’ Salahud­din wrote that in 1986 he made ‘cer­tain rep­re­sen­ta­tions on behalf of Ramadan to Muam­mar Qadafi’ through one of Qaddafi’s cousins, and in 1995 he said he deliv­ered a mes­sage from Ramadan to Pres­i­dent Burhanud­din Rab­bani, in Afghanistan, warn­ing him that the Tal­iban had ties to the C.I.A. From Decem­ber of 1986 to May of 1988, Salahud­din said, he served in Afghanistan as a sol­dier with the mujahideen.’” (Ibid.; p. 30.)

7. The pro­gram then reviews Ramadan’s relo­ca­tion to Munich (Ger­many), allegedly under­taken because of the his­tor­i­cal and oper­a­tional con­nec­tions between the Broth­er­hood and the Third Reich. ” ‘Why Munich, why Ger­many?’ I asked Rifaat Said. ‘Because there, one finds old com­plic­i­ties that go back to the late 1930’s, when the Mus­lim Broth­ers col­lab­o­rated with the agents of Nazi Ger­many. . . By soak­ing up the sav­ings of these Mus­lim work­ers, Yussef Nada, like Said Ramadan, took advan­tage of an extremely favor­able con­text and used it as a spring­board for the Mus­lim Broth­ers’ eco­nomic activ­i­ties.’” (Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The United States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000 [SC]; Algora Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; p. 153.)

8. The pro­gram then high­lights Ramadan’s relo­ca­tion of the Brotherhood’s base of oper­a­tions from Munich to Geneva, in order to coor­di­nate activ­i­ties with those of the Alger­ian FLN and its Nazi banker Fran­cois Genoud. “Let us men­tion only the inci­dent of the trea­sure of the FLN, at the cen­ter of which the banker Fran­cois Genoud may be found. Ramadan and the Mus­lim Broth­ers thought that they could play a part in the Alger­ian process as they had done in Pales­tine in 1947. Said Ramadan thus left Munich to set­tle in the city of Calvin.” (Ibid.; p. 154.)

9. Next, the pro­gram focuses on the Okla­homa City bomb­ing and a pos­si­ble link between that attack and some of the hijack­ers impli­cated in the 9/11 attacks. A motel located at some dis­tance from Nor­man, Okla­homa (where some of the alleged hijack­ers appar­ently took flight train­ing) may pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion of con­nec­tions between Atta and accused 20th hijacker Zac­carias Mous­saoui. Atta allegedly tried to book rooms at this motel with Mous­saoui and another of the sus­pected hijack­ers. This is sig­nif­i­cant for sev­eral rea­sons. For one thing, the motel was far­ther away than other, reasonably-priced motels. Atta, for what­ever rea­son, wanted this motel. The fol­low­ing account may estab­lish a hard link between Atta and Mous­saoui. This same motel was appar­ently fre­quented by Mujahid Menepta, an asso­ciate of Mouss­saoui, who vis­ited the motel in the time before the 1995 Okla­homa City bomb­ing. This same motel was also reported to have been host to Tim McVeigh and alleged Mid­dle East­ern and/or Iraqi nation­als, with whom he may have been con­spir­ing. It is also worth not­ing that legal author­i­ties in this coun­try do not appear to have been overly eager to pur­sue these leads, per­haps out of a desire to avoid hav­ing to reopen the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Okla­homa City bomb­ing. “What hap­pened at the non­de­script road­side motel out­side Okla­homa City was just fleet­ing encounter dur­ing the twisted cross-country odyssey of the ter­ror­ists who would carry out the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks. Mohammed Atta, alleged leader of the plot, and two com­pan­ions wanted to rent a room, but couldn’t get the deal they wanted, so they left.” (“The Ter­ror­ist Motel” by Jim Cro­gan; L.A. Weekly; 7/26/–8/1/2002.)

10. “It was an inci­dent of no par­tic­u­lar impor­tance, except for one thing. The owner of the motel remem­bers Atta being in the com­pany of Zacara­ias Mous­saoui, the so-called “20th hijacker,’ who was arrested prior to “Sep­tem­ber 11 and now faces con­spir­acy charges in con­nec­tion with the ter­ror assaults.’” (Ibid,; p. 1.)

11. “If this rec­ol­lec­tion is cor­rect, the entire inci­dent, and its absence from the pub­lic record, raises new ques­tions about the FBI inves­ti­ga­tion of Mousaoui and even the 1995 destruc­tion of the Fed­eral Build­ing in Okla­homa City. Already the FBI has endured a with­er­ing polit­i­cal and media cri­tique for fail­ing to aggres­sively inves­ti­gate Mous­saoui and his con­tacts dur­ing his four weeks in cus­tody prior to the attacks on the World Trade Cen­ter and the Pen­ta­gon. Some FBI offi­cials have responded by char­ac­ter­iz­ing Mous­saoui as only a minor player. But the report from the motel owner, if proven, could change that. And it also could force the FBI to reopen its inves­ti­ga­tion of Mid­dle East­ern con­nec­tions to the 1995 Okla­homa City blast, because con­victed bombers Tim­o­thy McVeigh and Terry Nichols report­edly stayed at the same motel, inter­act­ing with a group of Iraqis dur­ing the weeks before the bomb­ing. (Ibid.; p.1)

12. “At press time, the erratic Mous­saoui, who is rep­re­sent­ing him­self, was attempt­ing to plead guilty and bring his trial to a close. The 34-year-old French cit­i­zen of Moroc­can descent had pre­vi­ously filed some 94 hand-scrawled, ram­bling motions attack­ing the government’s case and its right to pros­e­cute him.” (Idem.)

13. “But that cir­cus obscures a conun­drum of a dif­fer­ent sort. The government’s case, out­lined in its new six-count con­spir­acy indict­ment, is largely cir­cum­stan­tial, lack­ing any defin­i­tive link between Mous­saoui and the 19 hijack­ers iden­ti­fied by fed­eral author­i­ties. All of which makes the appar­ent shelv­ing of the Moussaoui-Atta sight­ing all the stranger. In fact, even though mul­ti­ple sources con­tend that the FBI inter­viewed the motel owner, there’s no indi­ca­tion that pros­e­cu­tors were told. It’s pos­si­ble that the FBI found the motel owner’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tions wrong or his story unre­li­able. But it’s still odd that, in inter­views with the Weekly, Jus­tice Depart­ment pros­e­cu­tors seemed to know noth­ing about the motel encounter, espe­cially because agents report­edly told the motel owner they would pass the infor­ma­tion on to Moussaoui’s defense time.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

14. “The motel co-owner, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity, said the inci­dent occurred around August 1, 2001, just six weeks before 9/11. ‘They came in around 10 or 11a.m. and started talk­ing to my desk clerk,’ he said. Even though he was work­ing about 10 feet away from the trio, the owner didn’t really pay any atten­tion at first. ‘They were ask­ing my clerk, who no longer works here, about a weekly rate for our rooms.’ (The for­mer clerk could not be reached for com­ment.)” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

15. “The motel, explained the owner, sets aside some rooms with small kitch­enettes to rent on a weekly basis. ‘But they were all taken.’ He said the clerk explained the sit­u­a­tion, but the vis­i­tors were per­sis­tent. ‘Finally, my clerk asked me to talk to them.’” (Idem.)

16. “The motel owner said that Mous­saoui and a man who appeared to be Mar­wan al-Shehhi-who helped crash a jet­liner into the south tower of the World trade Center-were friendly and said a few things, but Atta was clearly the leader. ‘He did most of the talk­ing and seemed very seri­ous,’ said the owner, adding, ‘I was stand­ing face to face, about two feet away from Atta, and talked to the three of them for about 10 min­utes. Atta asked if he could rent one of the other rooms at a weekly rate, and I told him no.” (Idem.)

17. ” ‘I asked him what they were doing here in the area. And Atta told me they were going to flight school. I thought he meant [Fed­eral Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion] train­ing in Okla­homa City. But Atta told me no, they were tak­ing flight train­ing in Nor­man.” (Idem.)

18. ” ‘I said I didn’t under­stand why they wanted to rent one of my rooms, since we were about 28 miles from Nor­man and there are a lot of rea­son­ably priced motels a lot closer. But he said they had heard good things about my place and wanted to stay there. I told them I was sorry, but we couldn’t accom­mo­date them. Atta finally said okay. Then they all thanked me for my time and left.’” (Idem.)

19. “After the attacks, said the motel owner, he rec­og­nized his vis­i­tors in pho­tos from tele­vi­sion reports. ‘I was really stunned,’ he said. Then he decided to call the FBI hot line. The motel owner said he didn’t hear right back from the FBI. In the interim, he also spoke to a for­mer law-enforcement offi­cer who was inves­ti­gat­ing reported sight­ings of Mujahid Abdulquaadir Menepta at the same motel dur­ing the mid-1990’s. Menepta, report­edly a friend of Moussaoui’s, was arrested 30 years ago in Col­orado for aggra­vated rob­bery and served more than three years in prison.” (Idem.)

20. “After Sep­tem­ber 11, Menepta pub­licly defended Mous­saoui, call­ing him a ‘scape­goat.’ The FBI arrested him as a mate­r­ial wit­ness and sub­se­quently charged Menepta with a fed­eral gun vio­la­tion. He pleaded guilty and in April 2002 was sen­tenced to 15 months in fed­eral prison. He was never charged with any terrorism-related crime. But dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing on the gun charge, Alco­hol, Tobacco and firearms Agent Jef­frey Whit­ney tes­ti­fied that a con­fi­den­tial source placed Menepta at a meet­ing of a rad­i­cal Islamic group in St. Louis where he allegedly threat­ened to shoot any police offi­cer who entered the mosque. Menepta’s attor­ney chal­lenged the cred­i­bil­ity of this report in court.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

21. “A for­mer desk clerk at the motel-a dif­fer­ent clerk from the one who pur­port­edly dealt with Atta and Moussaoui-told the Weekly that he remem­bered Menepta because in 1994 and 1995-prior to the Okla­homa City attack-Menepta fre­quently vis­ited the motel office. There, he bought cof­fee and talked for hours to this clerk.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

22. “The clerk and his wife, who both for­merly worked at the motel, said they picked Menepta’s pic­ture out of a photo lineup pre­pared by a law-enforcement offi­cer who had inter­viewed the motel owner. This offi­cer, who also spoke to the Weekly on con­di­tion of anonymity, said that after the motel owner told him about the Mous­saoui sight­ing, he con­tacted a mem­ber of Oklahoma’s Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force, which includes the FBI. The FBI finally acted on the tip. The motel owner said that on Decem­ber 19, 2001, he went to FBI offices in Okla­homa City for a for­mal inter­view, where he was debriefed by an FBI agent and by Okla­homa City Police Sergeant Jerry Flow­ers. ‘We talked for sev­eral hours, and I told them every­thing I knew.’ The motel owner said he would have taken a poly­graph exam but was not asked to do so. The Weekly’s law-enforcement source cor­rob­o­rates the Decem­ber 19 inter­view.” (Idem.)

23. “The motel owner never heard from pros­e­cu­tors in Moussaoui’s case but got one more call from the FBI sev­eral weeks later. ‘The agent told me they had passed on a copy of my state­ment to Moussaoui’s defense team, and I might be get­ting a call from them. But I was under no oblig­a­tion to talk to them. How­ever, I don’t know if that was the truth. Since then, I have never heard from any­one con­nected to Moussaoui’s case.’” (Idem.)

24. “One rea­son for the FBI’s appar­ent lack of inter­est might be this motel’s alleged con­nec­tion to Tim­o­thy McVeigh and a group of Iraqis who worked in Okla­homa City. Accord­ing to the motel owner and other wit­nesses and inves­ti­ga­tors inter­viewed by the Weekly, McVeigh and sev­eral of these Iraqis were motel guests in the months pre­ced­ing the 1995 bomb­ing. Wit­nesses also claimed they saw sev­eral of the Iraqis mov­ing bar­rels of mate­r­ial around on the bed of a truck. The motel owner said the mate­r­ial smelled of diesel fuel and he had to clean up a spill. Diesel fuel was a key com­po­nent of the truck bomb that blew up the Fed­eral Build­ing.” (Idem.)

25. “The motel owner said he and his staff reported this infor­ma­tion to the FBI in 1995. ‘We did have an ATF agent come out and col­lect the orig­i­nals of the room reg­is­tra­tions for that period, but we never heard back from them. And I never could get the reg­is­tra­tions returned.’ He added that his pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with the FBI made him reluc­tant to con­tact them about Mous­saoui. ‘But I decided it was my duty to tell them what had hap­pened. So I did.’” (Idem.)

26. “For­mer Okla­homa City TV reporter Jayna Davis also inter­viewed motel staff and for­mer guests. In the process, she col­lected signed affi­davits about their con­tacts with McVeigh and the Iraqis. She tried twice to give the Bureau this infor­ma­tion, but the FBI refused to accept her mate­ri­als. (The Weekly first reported on her inves­ti­ga­tion in an arti­cle pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2001.)” (Idem.)

27. “The Weekly’s law-enforcement source said he has reviewed Davis’ mate­r­ial and con­sid­ers it cred­i­ble. ‘Last Decem­ber I per­son­ally took the doc­u­ments to the Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force,’ he said. ‘I told them they should do their own inves­ti­ga­tion.’ The response was not encour­ag­ing. He said he was later informed that the Bureau brought in an ana­lyst, ‘but I was told it would prob­a­bly go nowhere. They were afraid the whole Okla­homa City bomb­ing can of worms would be opened up and the FBI would have to explain why they didn’t inves­ti­gate this mate­r­ial before.’” (Ibid.; pp. 4–5.)

28. “The Weekly con­tacted numer­ous local and fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tors and agen­cies, includ­ing the Okla­homa task force, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI and the Jus­tice Depart­ment. All declined to com­ment. Pros­e­cu­tors on the Mous­saoui case also declined offi­cial com­ment, but their reac­tions sug­gested they knew noth­ing of the motel encounter.” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

29. “After being told about the motel owner’s inter­view and alle­ga­tions, Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Robert Spencer responded with a one-word ques­tion about the sight­ing: ‘When?’ Spencer then declined fur­ther com­ment. Another Mous­saoui pros­e­cu­tor, David Novak, also declined com­ment. But Novak wanted to know the name of the motel owner.” (Idem.)

30. “Other sub­stan­tial con­nec­tions already tie the Sooner State to Mous­saoui and, sep­a­rately, sev­eral 9/11 hijack­ers.” (Idem.)

31. “Accord­ing to the Mous­saoui indict­ment, on Sep­tem­ber 29, 2000, Mous­saoui made e-mail con­tact with Air­man Flight School in Nor­man. Then, on Feb­ru­ary 23, 2001, he flew from Lon­don to Chicago and then to Okla­homa City. What he did in the next few days is unknown or at least not accounted for in the indict­ment. But on Feb­ru­ary 26, Mous­saoui opened a bank account in Nor­man, deposit­ing $32,000. From Feb­ru­ary 26 to May 29, he attended flight school in Nor­man. Then he sud­denly quit the school. Between July 29 and August 4, Mous­saoui made calls from pub­lic pay phones in Nor­man to Ger­many. On August 1 and 3, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh wired Mous­saoui a total of about $14,000 from two train stops in Ger­many to some­where in Okla­homa. This wire trans­fer does imply a con­nec­tion to ter­ror­ist plot­ters because al-Shibh, an alleged al Qaeda mem­ber, wired money to other hijack­ers. On August 3, Mous­saoui pur­chased two knives in Okla­homa City. And on August 10 or 11, an acquain­tance drove Mous­saoui from Okla­homa to Min­nesota for enroll­ment in a new flight school. Author­i­ties arrested Mous­saoui in Min­nesota on August 17 on an immi­gra­tion vio­la­tion. As has been widely reported, Mous­saoui attracted atten­tion because he said he was inter­ested in fly­ing a plane but not learn­ing how to take off or land. He was in fed­eral cus­tody when the 9/11 attacks occurred.” (Idem.)

32. “As for the ter­ror­ists who took part in 9/11, Atta and Mar­wan al-Shehhi vis­ited the Air­man Flight School in Nor­man in July 2000, accord­ing to the Mous­saoui indict­ment. (The motel owner iden­ti­fies al-Shehhi as the third per­son with Atta and Mous­saoui when they allegedly inquired about a room.) And on April 1, 2001, Nawaf al-Hazmi, who helped hijack Amer­i­can Air­lines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pen­ta­gon, was stopped for speed­ing in Okla­homa and given two tick­ets. The Okla­homa State trooper found no out­stand­ing war­rants and turned al-Nazmi loose. The media has since reported that the CIA had been track­ing al-Hazmi, but never told the immi­gra­tion ser­vice or the FBI that he was a sus­pected ter­ror­ist dur­ing his 21-month U.S. stay. Author­i­ties have never pub­licly accounted for Atta and al-Shehhi’s where­abouts dur­ing the time of the alleged motel encounter.” (Idem.)

33. “The Mous­saoui indict­ment lays out a tan­ta­liz­ing pos­si­ble asso­ci­a­tion between Atta and Mous­saoui, but never puts the two in the same place at the same time. The link could exist, how­ever, along a dusty Okla­homa road­side, off Inter­state 40, at a small motel that is indis­tin­guish­able from hun­dreds of oth­ers, except for its pos­si­ble con­nec­tion to ter­ror­ists.” (Idem.)

34. Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion of the “ter­ror­ist motel” in Okla­homa, the pro­gram high­lights asser­tions in a recent book that French intel­li­gence had alerted U.S. author­i­ties of Moussaoui’s Al Qaeda links well before 9/11. “One sin­gle but strik­ing exam­ple can illus­trate this cul­tural dif­fer­ence: the case of Zacarias Mous­saoui, the French cit­i­zen arrested in the United States on August 17, 2001-less than a month before the attacks-for visa vio­la­tions, who turned out to have been enrolled since Feb­ru­ary 2001 in a flight school in Okla­homa fre­quented by sev­eral of the sui­cide pilots of Sep­tem­ber 11. The so-called twen­ti­eth sui­cide bomber, whom the world dis­cov­ered after the attacks on the World trade Cen­ter, was not unknown to the West­ern intel­li­gence ser­vices. It is even cer­tain that offi­cials of these ser­vices, among them the direc­tor of the CIA, had him in mind when these mur­der­ous attacks occurred. Indeed, the direc­tor of the CIA admit­ted hav­ing a thick file on the sus­pect one month before the attacks.” (For­bid­den Truth; Jean-Charles Bris­ard & Guil­laume Dasquie; Copy­right 2002 [SC]; Thunder’s Mouth/Nation Books; ISBN 1–56025-414–9; p. 53.)

35. “Offi­cially, how­ever, nei­ther the FBI nor the CIA had seri­ous evi­dence that would allow Mous­saoui to be inter­ro­gated before the attacks. As proof of this, a request for spe­cial sur­veil­lance s part of an antiter­ror­ist pro­ce­dure had been refused to the FBI on the grounds that evi­dence for his involve­ment in ter­ror­ism was insuf­fi­cient. Mousaoui was there­fore held at an Immi­gra­tion and Nat­u­ral­iza­tion Ser­vice (INS) loca­tion in Min­neapo­lis and wasn’t trans­ferred to FBI cus­tody until after Sep­tem­ber 11. The Euro­pean intel­li­gence ser­vices, notably the French had already alerted the FBI to the Mous­saoui case, at least once in August 2001-but the infor­ma­tion sent, accord­ing to the Amer­i­cans was insuf­fi­cient to put him under sur­veil­lance. This offi­cial ver­sion is acknowl­edged freely. The FBI did not hes­i­tate in cer­tain cases to con­tact inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists bout the mat­ter in order to assure them, with­out mate­r­ial proof, that the infor­ma­tion I their pos­ses­sion was if not insuf­fi­cient, at least inad­mis­si­ble.” (Ibid.; pp.53–54.)

36. “We can reveal, how­ever, that one month before the attacks on Sep­tem­ber 11, French coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence ser­vices relayed evi­dence, the ‘insuf­fi­ciency’ of which remains to be proven. His­tory will judge. Indeed, accord­ing to cor­re­spond­ing ac counts taken from highly placed sources who have seen the rel­e­vant files, the French alerted the Amer­i­cans about Mous­saoui at this stage-“and not for the first time:–and passed on unam­bigu­ous intel­li­gence, leav­ing no doubt as to the sus­pects ter­ror­ist links. It was shown to the Amer­i­can via the usual chan­nels that that Mous­saoui had made his way to Afghanistan that he was trained in 1998 in a camp con­trolled by Al Qaeda and that a strong pos­si­bil­ity existed that he had been in con­tact with mem­bers of its net­work in Europe. Another twenty-page doc­u­ment that includes an inter­ro­ga­tion o his brother which con­firms the infor­ma­tion, was also sent to the Amer­i­can ser­vices.” (Idem.)

37. “So nearly one month before the Sepem­ber 11 attacks, or at least since the arrest of Mous­saoui on August 17, the U. S. author­i­ties had two fun­da­men­tal pieces of evi­dence before them: They knew that the sus­pect appre­hended on Amer­i­can soil was linked to the Al Qaeda net­work, which in itself should have been cause enough for prompt seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tions and they knew that he taken part in fly­ing lessons for civil air­craft.” (Ibid.; pp. 54–55.)

38. FTR#88 high­lighted an alleged link between the Okla­homa City bomb­ing and the AMIA bomb­ing in Argentina, through Argen­tine mem­bers of the secu­rity ser­vices belong­ing to the Amer­i­can white suprema­cist Tom Metzger’s White Aryan resis­tance. (“AMIA Bomb Plot­ters’ Con­nec­tion;” La Nacion; 7/27/97.)

39. FTR#328 set forth alle­ga­tions of involve­ment of Imad Muganiyeh in the AMIA bomb­ing, a sim­i­lar attack on the Israeli Embassy to Argentina in 1992 and Al Qaeda. Monzer Al-Kassar (a key oper­a­tive in the Iran-Contra scan­dal who worked for oper­a­tions run by the elder George Bush) is another indi­vid­ual whose name has cropped up in con­nec­tion with both of the Argen­tine bomb­ings. FTR#‘s 109, 328, 341 dis­cuss the links between the milieu of Al Kas­sar and the Syr­ian born for­mer Pres­i­dent of Argentina, Car­los Menem. A for­mer Iran­ian intel­li­gence oper­a­tive claims that the AMIA bomb­ing was per­pe­trated by Argentina and that the Menem gov­ern­ment was bribed to cover it up. It may well be the Al Kas­sar was oper­at­ing on con­tract for the Ira­ni­ans on either or both of the attacks. “The Iran­ian gov­ern­ment orga­nized and car­ried out the bomb­ing of a Jew­ish com­mu­nity cen­ter here eight years ago that killed 85 peo­ple and then paid Argentina’s pres­i­dent at the time, Car­los Saul Menem, $10 mil­lion to cover it up, a wit­ness in the case has said in sealed tes­ti­mony.” (“Iran Blew Up Jew­ish Cen­ter in Argentina, Defec­tor Says” by Larry Rohter; The New York Times; 7/22/2002; p. 1.)

40. “A 100-page tran­script of a secret depo­si­tion, pro­vided to The New York Times by Argen­tine offi­cials frus­trated that the case remains unsolved, sup­ports long-held sus­pi­cions of Iran­ian involve­ment and adds to the ques­tions sur­round­ing the con­duct of an inquiry that has been rife with irreg­u­lar­i­ties from the start.” (Idem.)

41. “Evi­dence has dis­ap­peared, leads have been ignored and wit­nesses have been threat­ened and appar­ently bribed. Accord­ing to the wit­ness, a high-level defec­tor from Iran’s intel­li­gence agency who gave his name as Abdol­ghas­sem Mes­bahi, Mr. Menem, who was pres­i­dent from 1989 to 1999, ben­e­fited for years from his ties to Iran­ian intel­li­gence offi­cials.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

42. “They courted him as a valu­able con­tact, Mr. Mes­bahi said, for his com­bi­na­tion of ris­ing polit­i­cal power, Mus­lim ances­try and con­nec­tions to Argentina’s small but influ­en­tial Syrian-Lebanese com­mu­nity. Mr. Menem, who is once again a lead­ing can­di­date for pres­i­dent, has already been tainted by polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion scan­dals and spent six months under house arrest last year on charges that he had over­seen an ille­gal arms smug­gling oper­a­tion while in office.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

43. “But the bomb­ing of the Argen­tine Jew­ish Mutual Aid Asso­ci­a­tion on July 18, 1994, the worst ter­ror attack ever car­ried out here, con­tin­ues to haunt him and all lev­els of the Argen­tine gov­ern­ment as a sym­bol of the absence of account­abil­ity that in recent months has brought this coun­try to the brink of col­lapse.” (Idem.)

44. “Argen­tine and Ger­man offi­cials describe him [Mes­bahi] as a senior oper­a­tive who has pro­vided valu­able infor­ma­tion about Iran­ian ter­ror­ist oper­a­tions in Europe and Asia through the mid-1990’s. He defected to Ger­many in 1996, report­edly because he was upset at his agency’s involve­ment in the killing of dis­si­dent intel­lec­tu­als in Iran and abroad.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

45. “Mr. Mes­bahi said the plan­ning for the attack in Buenos Aires began in 1992, led by Mohsen Rab­bani, cul­tural attache at the Iran­ian Embassy at the time, and super­vised by Hamid Maghashan, a senior offi­cial of the Iran­ian intel­li­gence agency. One cell focused on ‘coop­er­at­ing with mem­bers of the Argen­tine police, cor­rupt­ing them or threat­en­ing them to col­lab­o­rate with the attack,’ Mr. Mes­bahi said, accord­ing to the tran­script. ‘Another devoted itself to obtain­ing the explo­sives’ in Brazil, he said.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

46. “Nilda Garre, who led the Argen­tine government’s antiter­ror­ism unit in 2000 and 2001, and other Argen­tine offi­cials said Mr. Mesbahi’s account had been con­firmed by another Iran­ian who had vis­ited the Argen­tine Embassy in Tehran twice. Immi­gra­tion and For­eign Min­istry records here con­firm, the offi­cials said, that sev­eral Ira­ni­ans who were said to have been involved in the plot vis­ited Argentina in the months pre­ced­ing the bomb attack.” (Idem.)

47. “Mr. Mes­bahi said that after the attack, nego­ti­a­tions took place in Tehran with an emis­sary, a bearded man of about 50, sent by Mr. Menem. The result was that ‘$10 mil­lion was deposited into a num­bered account that Menem had indi­cated,’ Mr. Mes­bahi said, paid from a $200 mil­lion Swiss account con­trolled by Hashemi Raf­san­jani, who was Iran’s pres­i­dent at the time, and by a son of Aya­tol­lah Ruhol­lah Khome­ini.” (Idem.)

48. “Early this year the Swiss gov­ern­ment acknowl­edged that it had been asked to look into infor­ma­tion sup­plied by the Iran­ian infor­mant. Eamon Mullen, the Argen­tine government’s chief pros­e­cu­tor in the case, said in an inter­view that inves­ti­ga­tors had con­firmed that a deposit had been made into an account con­trolled by Mr. Menem at the bank by Mr. Mes­bahi and in the amount he had spec­i­fied.” (Idem.)

49. “In his tes­ti­mony, Mr. Mes­bahi said Iran’s con­tacts with Mr. Menem began in the mid-1980’s when he was the gov­er­nor of La Rioja Province. Because Mr. Menem was of Arab descent and they believed him to share their anti-Jewish sen­ti­ments, the Ira­ni­ans covertly fun­neled money to Mr. Menem in hopes that he would be elected pres­i­dent and pur­sue poli­cies favor­able to Iran, Mr. Mes­bahi said.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

50. “Argen­tine offi­cials say the bomb­ing at the Jew­ish com­mu­nity cen­ter was strik­ingly sim­i­lar to an attack on the Israeli Embassy here in 1992, in which 28 peo­ple died. In both cases a car bomb was used, the tar­geted build­ing was under­go­ing repairs and police offi­cers on a secu­rity detail inex­plic­a­bly van­ished just before the explo­sion.” (Idem.)

51. There are sub­stan­tive indi­ca­tions that in fact, a vig­or­ous cover-up of the crime has occurred. ” ‘From the start the Argen­tine gov­ern­ment, espe­cially in the per­son of Judge Galeano, has never shown a will to inves­ti­gate and clear up this mat­ter,’ said Alberto Zuppi, a lawyer and for­mer Jus­tice Min­is­ter who now rep­re­sents Memo­ria Activa, an asso­ci­a­tion of the fam­i­lies of bomb­ing vic­tims. ‘Every­thing has been done so as not to get to the bot­tom of this mat­ter,’ Mr. Zuppi said, ‘and the result is that much time and evi­dence have been lost.’” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

52. “Ques­tions have been raised in par­tic­u­lar about an unusual video­tape of a meet­ing between Judge Galeano [who over­saw the case] and Car­los Alberto Telledin, a car thief who was jailed shortly after the com­mu­nity cen­ter attack because he had briefly owned the van used in the bomb­ing. The video­tape, stolen from Judge Galeano’s office and later broad­cast on tele­vi­sion, shows the two men dis­cussing a $400,000 pay­ment that Mr. Telledin says he received.” (Idem.)

53. “Judge Galeano declined numer­ous requests for an inter­view. But Clau­dio Lif­schitz, for­merly Judge Galeano’s chief inves­ti­ga­tor, said the judge Galeano had been act­ing to pro­tect his patrons in the intel­li­gence ser­vice, who reported to Mr. Menem, par­tic­u­larly from the tes­ti­mony of the Iran­ian defec­tor, Mr. Mes­bahi, who was known as Wit­ness C.” (Idem.)

54. “Accord­ing to Ms. Garre, a for­mer deputy inte­rior min­is­ter who is now a mem­ber of Con­gress, 66 cas­settes of inter­cepted tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions dis­ap­peared simul­ta­ne­ously from the offices of the Fed­eral Police and intel­li­gence ser­vices. She also said police log­books had been altered and elec­tronic address books and plan­ners of var­i­ous sus­pects erased as part of an offi­cial cover-up.” (Ibid.; p. 6.)

55. The involve­ment of the Argen­tine intel­li­gence ser­vices and fed­eral police in the AMIA bomb­ing was among the alleged motives for the coverup. ” ‘Not only has there been no sup­port for get­ting to the bot­tom of this case, you can also say that some gov­ern­ment organs have actively sab­o­taged the inves­ti­ga­tion,’ Ms. Garre said. ‘State intel­li­gence and the fed­eral police are clearly involved,’ she added, ‘but there is also evi­dence point­ing to the involve­ment of agen­cies rang­ing from Immi­gra­tion to the For­eign Min­istry.’” (Idem.)

56. One should bear in mind the links of Menem, his ex-wife Amira Yoma, Menem aide Alfredo Yabran (also impli­cated in the 1992 and 1994 bomb­ings), Monzer Al-Kassar and Al Kas­sar asso­ciate (and Syr­ian intel­li­gence agent) Ibrahim Al-Ibrahim (for­merly a brother-in-law of Menem) to the tiny town of Yabrud, Syria. All of these per­son­ages are from that town. “In addi­tion, Judge Galeano appears to have steered away from some areas of inquiry that other inves­ti­ga­tors think might have yielded use­ful infor­ma­tion. ‘If the Iran­ian track has hardly been looked at, said Ariel Said, the lead inves­ti­ga­tor of a con­gres­sional com­mit­tee look­ing into irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the case, ‘the local Islamic com­mu­nity, which is pre­dom­i­nantly Syrian-Lebanese and directly linked to Menem, has been looked at even less.’” (Idem.)

57. Argen­tine inves­ti­ga­tors have allegedly linked Monzer Al-Kassar to both bomb­ings. (“Gov­ern­ment Wor­ried About Visit of Al-Kassar;” Clarin; 8/2/98.)

58. As noted above and in FTR#‘s 109, 328, Al-Kassar, a Syr­ian intel­li­gence offi­cer close to him, for­mer Argen­tine pres­i­dent Car­los Menem’s first wife and Menem asso­ciate Alfredo Yabran are all from the same city in Syria. (Idem.)

59. The recent dis­cov­ery of a Swiss bank account opened in Mr. Menem’s name lends cred­i­bil­ity to the alle­ga­tions about Menem’s alleged com­plic­ity in the AMIA bomb­ing. The account is an insti­tu­tion absorbed into the Bank of Gothard (Banco del Got­tardo), itself an insti­tu­tion uti­lized by ter­ror­ist net­works, includ­ing Al Qaeda. “A scan­dal over the Swiss bank accounts of Argentina’s flam­boy­ant for­mer pres­i­dent, Car­los Menem, flared again yes­ter­day, cast­ing doubt on his bid to recap­ture the pres­i­dency. Eduardo Duhalde, the interim Pres­i­dent, has requested a meet­ing with his Swiss coun­ter­part Kas­par Vil­liger, at the United Nations Gen­eral Assem­bly next month to dis­cuss two accounts linked to the for­mer pres­i­dent.” (“Doubt Over Menem’s Elec­tion Bid as Bank-Account Scan­dal Flares” by Thomas Catan and Frances Williams; Finan­cial Times; 8/17–8/18/2002; p. 2.)

60. “The sec­ond account reported to have been opened while Mr. Menem was pres­i­dent, was at a Zurich insti­tu­tion since absorbed by Gothard bank. Swiss inves­ti­ga­tors are under­stood to have linked the account to a Liecht­en­stein foun­da­tion con­trolled by Ramon Her­nan­dez, Mr. Menem’s per­sonal sec­re­tary. It is said to con­tain about $6m.” (Idem.)

61. “The inves­ti­ga­tions in Switzer­land and Argentina broadly cen­ter on two sets of alle­ga­tions the first is that Mr. Menem received mil­lions of dol­lars in pay­offs for car­ry­ing out ille­gal arms ship­ments to Ecuador and Croa­tia. The sec­ond is that he received a $10m bribe to cover up alleged Iran­ian involve­ment in the 1994 bomb­ing of a Jew­ish com­mu­nity cen­ter in Buenos Aires that claimed 85 lives. Both Mr. Menem and Iran vehe­mently deny the alle­ga­tion, which was made sev­eral years ago by a high-level Iran­ian defec­tor.” (Idem.)

62. Not­ing the evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries between these dif­fer­ent ter­ror­ist inci­dents and some of the links between these dis­parate events and the over­lap­ping milieux of Nazis/white suprema­cists and Islam­o­fas­cists, one should not lose sight of the pos­si­bil­ity that some or all may have been orches­trated by what Mr. Emory calls the Under­ground Reich.