Lis­ten: One Seg­ment

This pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of the polit­i­cal foun­da­tion of the events in, and around, the attacks of 9/11. Fur­ther devel­op­ing the view­point that 9/11 was an attack on the United States by the Under­ground Reich and its Islam­o­fas­cist allies, this broad­cast high­lights the strug­gle for the con­trol of the petro­leum wealth of the Mid­dle East.

1. Indica­tive of the Nazi influ­ence in the Mid­dle East is the rel­a­tive omnipres­ence of “The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion” in the region. This noto­ri­ous anti-Semitic forgery orig­i­nated in Czarist Rus­sia and became a piv­otal ele­ment of Hitler’s ide­ol­ogy. It is not native to the Mid­dle East.

“Stay in a five-star hotel any­where from Jor­dan to Iran, and you can buy the infa­mous forgery ‘Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion.’ . . . Such anti-Semitic imagery is now embed­ded in the main­stream dis­course con­cern­ing Jews in much of the Islamic world, in the pop­u­lar press and in aca­d­e­mic jour­nals. . . .The use of Nazi imagery, the news­pa­per car­i­ca­tures of Jews with fangs and exag­ger­ated hook noses, even the Arab text­books with their descrip­tions of Jews as evil world conspirators-all of that , Arab lead­ers often insist, reflect a dis­like for Israelis and Zion­ism but not for Jews and Judaism.”

(“Anti-Semitism Is Deep­en­ing Among Mus­lims” by Susan Sachs; The New York Times; 4/27/2002; p. B1.)

2. Next, the pro­gram revis­its a paper authored by Kevin Coogan that sum­ma­rizes an impor­tant book recently pub­lished in Switzer­land, as well as high­light­ing some of the key ques­tions con­cern­ing the Nazi/Islamist con­nec­tion explored in many of the For the Record programs.

“The first part of this report will pri­mar­ily sum­ma­rize infor­ma­tion from an impor­tant new book by Johannes and Ger­mana von Dohnanyi enti­tled Schmutzige Geschafte und Heiliger Krieg: Al-Qaida in Europa (Dirty Busi­ness and Holy War: Al-Qaida in Europe) pub­lished by Pendo Ver­lag (Zurich, 2002). The von Dohnanyis are long­time inves­tiga­tive reporters based in Milan. I will con­cen­trate on part of Chap­ter 4 (“The Financ­ing of Jihad”) and all of chap­ter 5 (“A Fatal Mix­ture”), which sum­ma­rizes pages 216–264. The sec­ond part of this report will focus more on Al-Taqwa mem­ber Achmed Huber and his pos­si­ble links to Said Ramadan, one of the most impor­tant Islamists in Europe but whose 1995 death has made him almost invis­i­ble in con­tem­po­rary accounts.”

(“Report on Islamists, The Far Right, and Al Taqwa” by Kevin Coogan; p. 1.)

3. The pro­gram begins with review of a point cov­ered in FTR 377. Al Taqwa direc­tor Achmed Huber recently attended a meet­ing of Euro­pean far-rightists in Switzer­land. It is worth not­ing in con­nec­tion with this meet­ing that one of the peo­ple in atten­dance was Gian­franco Fini, head of the Alleanza Nationale-successor to Mussolini’s fas­cist party and coali­tion part­ner with Sil­vio Berlusconi’s gov­ern­ing Forza Italia party in Italy.

“Per­haps the most recent remark­able story con­cern­ing Huber comes from a brief item in the Swiss tabloid Blick that in an April 26, 2002 arti­cle by Alexan­der Saut­ter that Huber was involved in a meet­ing of far-right lead­ers from Europe. A photo show­ing Huber with Jean Marie Le Pen accom­pa­nies the arti­cle. The Blick story (avail­able on the web) is as fol­lows: Mon Pelerin VD: Chris­t­ian Cam­buzat, the pro­moter (Scharf­macher) of the right extrem­ist Jean-Marie Le Pen (73): The guru assem­bles together some of the top lead­ers of the Euro­pean right. On the idyl­lic Mont Pelerin, they debate their crude ideas. At his secret visit to a spa in Switzer­land, Le Pen hardly remained alone. Right­ist lead­ers from all over Europe trav­eled to meet the extrem­ist pres­i­den­tial can­di­date who was hosted by Cam­buzat. Franz Schon­hu­ber (79). Founder of the Repub­li­can Party in Ger­many and a for­mer mem­ber of the SS. He talked with Le Pen who con­sti­tutes together with Schon­hu­ber the ‘Front National’ Fac­tion in the Euro­pean par­lia­ment. Gian­franco Fini (50). Ital­ian post-fascist, Mus­solini admirer, and founder of the Alleanze Nationale. He also was at the meet­ing with Le Pen and Schon­hu­ber. Ahmed Huber (74). The Swiss is on the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion black­list . . . ‘I met le Pen at Mont Pelerin as he went to Chris­t­ian Cambuzat’s spa,’ Huber told Blick yes­ter­day. At the extrem­ist ren­dezvous an Amer­i­can far right politi­cian was also sup­posed to have taken part. [Note: the Amer­i­can is not fur­ther identified.-KC] Chris­t­ian Cam­buzat said that Le Pen (after the elec­tion) had again become the sharpest weapon of the ‘Front National’ because Le Pen changed his image from a ven­omous old man to a ‘kindly U.S. TV evan­ge­list.’ Proudly Cam­buzat brags, ‘With me Le Pen can relax well’ [from his polit­i­cal endeavors-KC]. And openly link up with new con­tacts. [Although the Blick story does not give details, Cam­buzat runs a spa for the very rich, the Lemanique de Revi­tal­i­sa­tion, inside a hotel on the famous Mont Pelerin.]”

(Ibid.; pp. 14–15.)

4. After dis­cussing the rela­tion­ship between the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Al Taqwa, Broth­er­hood leader Said Ramadan and the latter’s con­nec­tion to an African-American Islamist who worked as an assas­sin for the Khome­ini gov­ern­ment in Iran, Kevin rumi­nates about the pos­si­ble sig­nif­i­cance of the Nazi/Islamist con­nec­tion high­lighted by the paper.

“The over­whelm­ing thrust of this report has been to give the reader a great deal of empir­i­cal infor­ma­tion that he or she may not have easy access to in order that they may eval­u­ate the claims for them­selves. I have avoided draw­ing any con­clu­sions because I do not feel qual­i­fied to draw con­clu­sions about the Islamist finan­cial machi­na­tions this report dis­cusses. How­ever I find it impos­si­ble not to put out a call for fur­ther research involv­ing the over­lap between Nazi and Islamist net­works that seem to have been in con­tin­ual con­tact from the 1930’s until today. In the case of Genoud, Huber, and Ramadan, this is becom­ing more and more impos­si­ble to avoid.”

(Ibid.; p. 15.)

5.

“My own belief is that it is less the appar­ently fan­tas­tic and ‘James Bond’-like qual­ity of this analy­sis that is most dif­fi­cult to under­stand. The real dif­fi­culty is the utter igno­rance of most West­ern­ers (Amer­i­cans in par­tic­u­lar) about the very exis­tence of such peo­ple as Fran­cois Genoud. Thus when Ernst Backes, one of Europe’s lead­ing experts in money laun­der­ing, told the Luxemourg-based eco­nomic jour­nal Plus Minus last year that he believed the finan­cial source of funds for the 9/11 ter­ror­ists would ulti­mately be traced back to Swiss bank accounts estab­lished by Genoud, few Amer­i­cans had any idea what Backes could pos­si­bly be talk­ing about. For this same rea­son there has been vir­tu­ally no inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into SICO’s Bau­doin Dunand’s rela­tion­ship to Genoud or (for that mat­ter) the role of Syrian-born Muham­mad Mar­dam Bay (believed to be related to a for­mer Syr­ian for­eign min­is­ter) has played both as a mem­ber of Magnin, Dunand & Asso­ciates as well as Bay’s pos­si­ble links with Genoud. And what does it mean when we are told that Youssef Nada, for exam­ple, is believed by Egypt­ian author­i­ties to have worked for Ger­man intel­li­gence in World War II?”

(Idem.)

6.

“It is not at all impos­si­ble that net­works first devel­oped in the 1930’s and who saw their eco­nomic power fan­tas­ti­cally mul­ti­plied in the wake of the enor­mous hike in oil prices in 1973 are now engaged in try­ing to enact a major finan­cial shift away from the dol­lar and Anglo-American finan­cial net­works and to shift the vast wealth of the Mus­lim oil states into a new Euro-based finan­cial net­work that would vastly increase the power of those banks and finan­cial inter­ests in Europe asso­ci­ated with ele­ments of far right elites that sur­vived World War II rel­a­tively intact.”

(Idem.)

7.

“If this were at all the case, it would not be a new devel­op­ment. The very same attempt to develop an inde­pen­dent Saudi-German hookup to sub­vert the U.S. and British dom­i­na­tion of the Saudi oil mar­kets was actu­ally attempted in the mid-1950’s. At that time, the Saudi royal family-using the advise of the famous Ger­man banker Hjal­mar Schacht-attempted to employ Aris­to­tle Onas­sis to trans­port Saudi oil on new oil tankers that would be con­structed in the ship­yards of Ger­many. This attempt to break the West­ern oil con­trol over Saudi Ara­bia was finally blocked by the United States, a story well doc­u­mented in Jim Hougan’s book Spooks (New York: William Mor­row, 1978.)”

(Ibid.; pp. 15–16.)

8.

“The doc­u­men­ta­tion regard­ing this com­plex ques­tion is there for any­one who wants to exam­ine it. Of course I am NOT attempt­ing to sug­gest a sim­ple mono-causal expla­na­tion for the cur­rent cri­sis. What I am sug­gest­ing is that sooner or later these con­nec­tions between the far right and groups like the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood that began in the 1930’s and con­tinue today will have to become the sub­ject of seri­ous and sober research in order to help us shed new light on the extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances we are liv­ing under today.”

(Ibid.; p. 16.)

9. In an edi­to­r­ial note to his sum­mary of the von Dohnanyi book, Kevin sets forth the authors’ impres­sive jour­nal­is­tic cre­den­tials and also notes that much of the doc­u­men­ta­tion comes from inves­tiga­tive sources not inde­pen­dently ver­i­fi­able by other researchers. He then delin­eates the pur­pose of his paper.

“The pur­pose of my sum­mary is to let informed stu­dents of these mat­ters be aware of the alle­ga­tions con­tained in Schmutzige Geschafte so they may form their own inde­pen­dent eval­u­a­tion of the evi­dence just as they would with sim­i­lar books such as Bin Laden: La Verite Interdite.”

(Ibid.; p. 12.)

10. Exem­pli­fy­ing the Nazi/Islamist ide­o­log­i­cal fusion, the pro­gram reviews a pro­nounce­ment by Huber men­tor Johann von Leers, a for­mer Goebbels pro­pa­ganda min­is­ter. The quote is from a let­ter from von Leers to Nazi asso­ciate H. Keith Thompson.

“One thing is clear-more and more patriot Ger­mans join the great Arab rev­o­lu­tion against beastly impe­ri­al­ism. . . . That is good! To hell with Chris­tian­ity, for in Christianity’s name Ger­many has been sold to our oppres­sors! Our place as an oppressed nation under the exe­crable West­ern colo­nial­ist Bonn gov­ern­ment must be on the side of the Arab nation­al­ist revolt against the West. Let Ade­nauer be furi­ous that hon­est Ger­man patri­ots are not extra­dited to him or to his British or Amer­i­can bosses, by those freedom-loving Arab coun­tries. May the British swine call us ‘meddlers’-in short time British med­dling in the Mid­dle East will be over, as it has fin­ished in Iraq where the infi­del ser­vants of British impe­ri­al­ism are all killed. I hamd ul Allah! . . . the back­ing given by USA to the Jew­ish tyrants in Ger­many will make the Ger­man nation revolt. Indeed, for our nation there is only one hope-to get rid of West­ern impe­ri­al­ism by join­ing the Arab-led anti-imperialist group.”

(Dreamer of the Day: Fran­cis Parker Yockey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tional (Copy­right 1999 [SC]; Autono­me­dia; ISBN 1–57027-039–2; pp. 382–383.)

11. A crit­i­cal player in the Mid­dle East on behalf of the Third Reich was Fritz Grobba.

“Dr. Fritz Grobba was another ally of both the Arabs and the Krem­lin. A Ger­man ‘Lawrence of Ara­bia,’ Grobba had been the Nazi ambas­sador to Bagh­dad in 1940 when Ger­man intel­li­gence backed an attempted anti-British revolt by Rashid Ali al-Galieni.”

(Ibid.; p. 383.)

12. Detail­ing the attempt at gain­ing con­trol of the Saudi oil wealth alluded to in the con­clu­sion of Kevin’s paper on the von Dohnanyi book, the broad­cast sets forth the maneu­ver­ing of for­mer Third Reich finance min­is­ter Hjal­mar Schacht.

“Another key fig­ure involved in Ger­man intrigue in the Mid­dle East was Hjal­mar Schacht. He first came to Egypt as Gen­eral Naguib’s ‘guest of honor’ after the coup against King Farouk. Schacht’s most dar­ing Mid­dle East power-play was the ‘Jid­dah Agree­ment’ between Ger­man indus­try and Saudi Ara­bia in Jan­u­ary 1954. Under the terms of the deal, Saudi Ara­bia agreed to estab­lish a fleet of super­tankers to be built in Ger­man ship­yards) that would carry Saudi oil around the world. Aris­to­tle Onas­sis was cho­sen to man­age the ship­ping side of the oper­a­tion. Besides mak­ing the Ruhr indus­tri­al­ists fan­tas­ti­cally wealthy, Jid­dah threat­ened to break the ‘Seven Sis­ters’ oil com­pa­nies’ hege­mony over the dis­tri­b­u­tion of Mid­dle East oil. The Jid­dah Agree­ment was ulti­mately blocked by the West­ern oil car­tel with help from the CIA. Yet Allen Dulles’s CIA was sur­pris­ingly hes­i­tant to con­front Schacht. Robert Maheu, one of the coor­di­na­tors of the Amer­i­can attack on Jid­dah, said of the CIA: ‘You can’t imag­ine how hard it was to con­vince them that the national inter­est was at stake.’”

(Idem.) One won­ders to what extent some of the Bush-related petro­leum inter­ests impli­cated in the back­ground of the 9/11 attacks have proven sim­i­larly recal­ci­trant to the con­cept of the national interest.

13. Schacht was not the only Third Reich vet­eran to achieve promi­nent post-war sta­tus with the Saudi power struc­ture. (One should remem­ber in that con­text, the promi­nent role of Allen Dulles and Jack Philby in the cre­ation of the Saudi state. Dulles, Philby and King Ibn Saud were on excel­lent terms with Nazi Germany.)

“Another promi­nent mem­ber of the German-China soci­ety was Werner-Otto von Hentig, a for­mer head of the Arab Divi­sion of Ribbentrop’s For­eign Office and a close friend of Fritz Grobba. King Saud made Hentig Saudi Arabia’s chief Euro­pean advi­sor in 1955. While serv­ing as Ger­man ambas­sador to Indone­sia, Hentig accom­pa­nied the Saudi del­e­ga­tion to the April 1955 Afro-Asian Con­fer­ence held in Ban­dung, Indone­sia, as a Spe­cial Coun­selor. He also helped bro­ker Soviet-Arab rela­tions in the Mideast.”

(Ibid.; p. 384.)

14. Fran­cois Genoud was friendly with Jid­dah Agree­ment author Schacht as well-an impor­tant fact to bear in mind in con­junc­tion with the attacks of 9/11 and some of the rumi­na­tion engaged in by Kevin in the con­clu­sion of his paper.

“In 1955, with the Grand Mufti’s friend Johann von Leers help­ing to run Egypt’s Pro­pa­ganda Min­istry and its all-important ‘Insti­tute for the Study of Zion­ism,’ Genoud began to see Egypt as a base for the anti-French FLN inde­pen­dence move­ment in Alge­ria. He worked in Tang­ier with an ex-SS offi­cer named Hans Reichen­berg to cre­ate the Arabo-Afrika import-export com­pany, which sup­plied the FLN with weapons. Arabo-Afrika was actu­ally a cover enter­prise estab­lished by Werner Naumann’s net­work, and included Genoud’s friend Dr. Hjal­mar Schacht.”

(Ibid.; p. 585.)