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Updat­ing the sub­ject of the 9/11 attacks and related events, this pro­gram high­lights var­i­ous aspects of the Under­ground Reich and the numer­ous eth­nic, reli­gious and polit­i­cal ele­ments and envi­ron­ments that it encom­passes or overlaps.

1. An inter­est­ing alle­ga­tion about con­nec­tions between the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, the first attack on the World Trade Cen­ter and the milieu of Al Qaeda was fur­ther devel­oped by a writer for the Manilla Times. A deathbed con­fes­sion by the wife of the late Edwin Ange­les pro­vides much food for thought and grounds for fur­ther research.  “(NOTE: Basi­lan Provin­cial Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer Christo­pher Puno was present in the ward at Basi­lan Com­mu­nity Hos­pi­tal when I [Sicat] inter­viewed Elmina Abdul, less than two weeks prior to her death.) Elmina Abdul, widow of one of the Abu Sayyaf co-founders, Edwin Ange­les, died in the pre-dawn hours of Sat­ur­day, March 30. Ten days before she died, she talked with this writer in con­fi­dence while lying on her deathbed at Basi­lan Com­mu­nity Hos­pi­tal. I was the last, if not the only reporter, to ever talk with her.” (“Deathbed Con­fes­sion: Abu Part of Okla­homa Blast” by Dorian Zumel Sicat; Manilla Times; 4/2/2002.)

In addi­tion to his alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in Abu Sayyaf (a Philip­pine affil­i­ate of al Qaeda), Ange­les claimed to his wife that he also informed for the Philip­pine mil­i­tary intel­li­gence ser­vices. (Note that this claim has nei­ther been con­firmed nor dis­proved. If true, it would sug­gest that the pow­ers that be in this coun­try have dis­sem­bled with regard to what they knew and when they knew it con­cern­ing Okla­homa City, the first World Trade Cen­ter attack, and 9/11. The large and grow­ing com­mu­nity of “con­spir­acy geeks” would mis­in­ter­pret this as mean­ing that “the gov­ern­ment did it”-ignoring the tor­tu­ous method­ol­ogy of counter-intelligence, as well as over­sim­pli­fy­ing the con­cept of “gov­ern­ment.” “Elmina was Edwin’s fourth and last wife. She met him in 1995 while he was in the Basi­lan Provin­cial Jail. They were mar­ried in 1997, almost a year before Ange­les was sum­mar­ily exe­cuted in Basi­lan in 1998. What she told me at that final inter­view was at once reveal­ing and shock­ing. Edwin had told Elmina the entire chron­i­cle of his expe­ri­ence as a co-founder of the ASG and a deep-cover agent of the Depart­ment of National Defense, begin­ning in 1991. Edwin told her that he expected to be killed soon and he was.” (Idem.)

2. “Among the most inter­est­ing rev­e­la­tions that Ange­les shared with Elmina was about a meet­ing between him­self, Ram­sey Yousef, Abdul Murad (both of whom are now serv­ing mul­ti­ple prison terms for ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties, includ­ing the first World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing in 1993), Abdu­ra­jak Abubakar Jan­jalani, uniden­ti­fied mem­bers of the Moro Islamic Lib­er­a­tion Front (MILF), and two men who Ange­les only iden­ti­fied as Iraqis. The meet­ing, accord­ing to Elmina, was held in a ware­house near a Dole (Phil.) plant in South Cota­bato, between Gen­eral San­tos City and Davao del Sur. There were two other men at that meet­ing: a man who Ange­les iden­ti­fied as Nichols and as ‘code name Farmer,’ and another Amer­i­can who he did not iden­tify by name. (It is impor­tant to note that most Fil­ipinos com­monly describe Cau­casians in the coun­try as Amer­i­cans.) The meet­ing, accord­ing to Elmina took place in 1994. She could not remem­ber the exact date.” (Idem.)

“In that meet­ing, accord­ing to Elmina, Ange­les told her that the major topic of the dis­cus­sion was the bomb­ing of spec­i­fied tar­gets and how to build bombs. Ange­les told Elmina that Nichols was later sent to a place that he (Ange­les) didn’t name for more detailed instruc­tion on how Nichols and his other ‘Amer­i­can’ friend could build a bomb to destroy a build­ing in the United States. She did not specify–she could not remember–which build­ing that was to be.” (Idem.)

3. “Elmina also told me that before he was gunned down, Edwin showed her doc­u­ments that proved that he actu­ally was a deep-cover agent for the Depart­ment of National Defense. He said that those doc­u­ments were pre­sented in court in his defense and that was the rea­son that he was acquit­ted of the charges against him. That is a mat­ter of record. But since I have never seen the doc­u­ments, I will not name the ‘high rank­ing’ Defense offi­cials whose sig­na­tures were said to appear on those doc­u­ments.” (Idem.)

4. Note that “Bojinka” was the appar­ent tem­plate for the 9/11 attacks. “Ange­les also told Elmina about Project Bojenko, an [allegedly] Iraqi-financed oper­a­tion of ter­ror that tar­geted sev­eral build­ings in the US, the bomb­ing of sev­eral US air­lin­ers, bomb­ing US embassies over­seas, and hit­ting other US inter­ests. Among the build­ings in the US, accord­ing to Elmina, were another attack on the World Trade Cen­ter; the Fed­eral Build­ings in San Fran­cisco, and in ‘a place he called Uklahuma (Okla­homa).’” (Idem.)

5. “When I asked Elmina why she thought that Ange­les was killed, she only told me: ‘The trai­tors killed him. They used him, then they killed him.’” (Idem.)

I asked her if she meant the Defense offi­cials who recruited him as a deep cover agent, tears fell from her eyes. She waved her hand, indi­cat­ing that she didn’t want to talk any more. She was weak. I nod­ded, stroked her head and left Elmina Abdul to rest. That was the last time that I saw her alive.” (Idem.)

6. “Was there an inter­na­tional con­spir­acy of ter­ror forged in a meet­ing in an aban­doned ware­house in 1994 that included Ange­les and Nichols, who he referred to as ‘the Farmer?’ Did that con­spir­acy include mem­bers of Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi gov­ern­ment (or at least Iraqis)? Does the ASG actu­ally receive finan­cial and mate­r­ial assis­tance from Al-Qaeda and [or] Iraq in order to carry on its cam­paign of ter­ror? Elmina did not give pre­cise, clear answers to those ques­tions. She was relat­ing what Ange­les had told her not long before he died.” (Idem.)

“There is one thing clear: Edwin Ange­les did meet with Nichols and another ‘Amer­i­can’ along with some state-sponsored inter­na­tional ter­ror­ists. Elmina knew that she was dying. She knew that all our efforts to help her recover would not be enough to save her. She told me what she knew to be the truth, as her hus­band told it to her.” (Idem.)

“At the begin­ning of the inter­view I asked Elmina why she was will­ing to talk to me after such a long silence. She told me: ‘I am going to die soon. I want to tell the truth about my hus­band so that peo­ple will know.’” (Idem.)

7. After vis­it­ing the Philip­pines, we visit South Africa of the apartheid era, and then South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. The focal point of our itin­er­ary is the mys­te­ri­ous and sin­is­ter Dr. Larry Ford. A right-wing extrem­ist with ties to the CIA, Ford worked for “Project Coast”-an apartheid-era South African bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal war­fare pro­gram that involved assas­si­na­tions and (appar­ently) the exter­mi­na­tions of entire vil­lages. In the wake of the anthrax attacks, ques­tions about Dr. Ford and his milieu grew more pointed. After a failed assas­si­na­tion attempt on Ford’s busi­ness part­ner and Ford’s sub­se­quent sui­cide, inves­ti­ga­tors turned up a cache of auto­matic weapons, chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons and C-4 plas­tic explo­sives. ” . . . What the searchers did not find was anthrax, and the fear of what remained unfound, along with dozens of other ques­tions, set off inves­ti­ga­tions that ranged from Bev­erly Hills to South Africa and back to the Nevada desert . . . .” (“Cal­i­for­nia Doctor’s Sui­cide Leaves Many Trou­bling Mys­ter­ies Unsolved” by Jo Thomas; New York Times; 11/3/2002.)

8. “Since then, pieces of Dr. Ford’s other life have begun to emerge. Taken together, they form a trou­bling and con­fus­ing pic­ture — of a man with ties to racist, antigov­ern­ment groups in the United States who also devel­oped a rela­tion­ship with apartheid South Africa’s secret bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weapons pro­gram, Project Coast.” (Idem.)

“For the most part, though, inves­ti­ga­tors say they are stymied, a long way from under­stand­ing what Dr. Ford was doing with his guns and his germs. In South Africa, doc­u­ments from Project Coast were either destroyed or clas­si­fied and put on CD-ROM’s in a mil­i­tary vault. The frag­ments of Larry Ford’s other life remain just that — fright­en­ing, tan­ta­liz­ing frag­ments.” (Idem.)

“Still, while no one is sug­gest­ing any link to the anthrax attacks of last fall, the ques­tions Dr. Ford left behind nag deeper now, in the ambi­ent anx­i­ety of the post-Sept. 11 world . . . . ” (Idem.)

9. One of the influ­ences on Dr. Ford was the Nazi tract “The Turner Diaries” — pub­lished by the same pub­lisher (National Van­guard Books) that pub­lishes Serpent’s Walk. This is par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing in light of the influ­ence of Turner Diaries on McVeigh, Nichols & their appar­ent co-conspirators in the Okla­homa City bomb­ing. “After his death, Detec­tive Ray said, the author­i­ties learned that Dr. Ford had been a con­sul­tant to Project Coast, which has been accused of cre­at­ing weapons for use against ene­mies of apartheid. They also dis­cov­ered that he had held extreme racist views and had once told a girl­friend that to under­stand him, she should read ‘The Turner Diaries,’ the anti-Semitic and white suprema­cist novel, pop­u­lar among far-right groups, that pros­e­cu­tors say inspired the Okla­homa City bomb­ing . . . . ” (Idem.)

10. Ford’s work in South Africa involved, among other things, work col­lect­ing amni­otic fluid from South African women-apparently in con­junc­tion with his work on AIDS. “Ulti­mately, he was given space in an aero­space med­i­cine lab­o­ra­tory to work on sev­eral projects using amni­otic fluid col­lected from thou­sands of women in South African mil­i­tary hos­pi­tals. Why these projects were spon­sored by the mil­i­tary, and what became of them, is unclear.” (Idem.)

[Wouter Bas­son was the over­seer of Project Coast.] “How­ever, a South African mil­i­tary doc­u­ment about AIDS research, found in Dr. Basson’s pos­ses­sion by inves­ti­ga­tors, men­tioned ‘the acqui­si­tion of any rel­e­vant C.B.W. lit­er­a­ture from Dr. Ford.’ The abbre­vi­a­tion C.B.W. is com­monly used to refer to chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons . . . . ” (Idem.)

11. It should be noted that Ford’s tracks led to Nevada, where he appar­ently had been in con­tact with right-wing extrem­ist groups. [Nevada was also where Larry Ford, an Aryan Nations activist, had been appre­hended try­ing to trans­port weapons-grade anthrax. See FTR #89.] “Per­haps the deep­est fear in the entire affair was that Dr. Ford had been work­ing with anthrax. That trail, too, has run cold.” (Idem.)

“After Dr. Ford’s sui­cide, the police got tips that he had buried anthrax in a gold mine. They searched fruit­lessly in Cal­i­for­nia. Four months later, doc­u­ments in a Nevada trash dump showed that Dr. Ford had been in touch with peo­ple involved in anti-tax and antigov­ern­ment groups. Some of them had tried to use bac­te­ria to extract gold from dirt.” (Idem.)

“In Decem­ber 2000, inves­ti­ga­tors searched a derelict gold milling site out­side Hen­der­son, Nev. They found a sep­a­ra­tor fun­nel, a white liq­uid and Dr. Ford’s busi­ness card. A fed­eral agent said they also found direc­tions for mak­ing chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, includ­ing anthrax. But that was all. The site’s pro­pri­etor had recently died of unre­lated causes.” (Idem.)

12. After our trip to Nevada, we travel to Italy, where inves­ti­ga­tors have uncov­ered infor­ma­tion fur­ther devel­op­ing the Under­ground Reich/“neo”-Nazi/Islamist link that we saw in our stopover in Manilla. One of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the inves­ti­ga­tion of Al Taqwa (an alleged ele­ment of the al Qaeda net­work) is the remark­able Achmed Huber. Huber was alleged to have bro­kered a deal for Russ­ian weapons on behalf of the Al Qaeda milieu. “A Tunisian-born ter­ror­ism sus­pect placed two weeks ago on Washington’s list of most-wanted mil­i­tants con­fessed two years before to Ital­ian police that he helped run an elab­o­rate arms smug­gling ring that aided Islamic mil­i­tants, but it’s not clear whether Ital­ian and U.S. offi­cials acted on the infor­ma­tion. The case, revealed in a con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ment obtained by MSNBC.com, raises new ques­tions about intel­li­gence gath­er­ing in the war on al-Qaida.” (“Police Spoke to U.S. Ter­ror Sus­pect” by Lucy Komisar; MSNBC.COM; 9/16/2002.)

Inter­est­ingly (and per­haps sig­nif­i­cantly) the account pre­sented here was appar­ently known the author­i­ties in Italy two years ago. As noted in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, this under­scores the on-going ques­tion of “what did they know and when did they know it?” “Accord­ing to the con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ment obtained by MSNBC.com, the Tunisian who the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment recently added to its ter­ror­ist black­list had two years ago reported to Ital­ian author­i­ties a scheme for mov­ing weapons from Rus­sia through Uzbek­istan to Pak­istan where they ‘would end in the mil­i­tary train­ing camps for Islamic ter­ror­ists in Pak­istan, Iraq and Afghanistan.’” (Idem.)

“The infor­mant, Sek­seka Habib Wad­dani, 32, then liv­ing in Milan, told Ital­ian police that the arms were being ‘sold by the Russ­ian Repub­lic’ because they were no longer mod­ern. He said the weapons included pis­tols, Kalash­nikov machine guns, mis­siles and grenades. The clas­si­fied Ital­ian police report prompts ques­tions about when the United States learned of Wad­dani, and whether any action was taken by Ital­ian or U.S. offi­cials after Waddani’s claim that large amounts of weapons were being sold to Islamic ter­ror­ists.” (Idem.)

13. “On Aug. 29 of this year, the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment announced it was adding Wad­dani to its list of top sus­pected ter­ror­ists, not­ing Italy’s charges against him — for involve­ment with the Algerian-based Salafist Group for Call and Com­bat, which oper­ates in North Africa, Spain and Italy and ‘has sup­ported al-Qaida activ­i­ties.’ The Trea­sury Depart­ment said Wad­dani was indicted by the Ital­ians for traf­fick­ing in arms, explo­sives, chem­i­cal weapons, iden­tity papers, receiv­ing stolen goods and aid­ing ille­gal immi­gra­tion. Judge Luca Pis­torelli in Milan told MSNBC.com that Wad­dani is at large: ‘We sup­pose he is in France; or maybe he went back to Tunisia.’” (Idem.)

“It was not imme­di­ately clear whether Ital­ian offi­cials acted on the weapons smug­gling infor­ma­tion Wad­dani pro­vided, or whether U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors had been noti­fied by their Ital­ian coun­ter­parts of the encounter with the Tunisian sus­pect. When con­tacted by MSNBC.com, a CIA spokesman said the agency ‘respect­fully declines to com­ment.’” (Idem.)

“At the Trea­sury Depart­ment, Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Pub­lic Affairs Rob Nichols said, ‘I checked with our war room. I can­not answer your ques­tions, as they con­tain sen­si­tive or clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion . . . .’” (Idem.)

14. “The weapons smug­gling in Europe, Wad­dani said, flowed through a maze of com­pa­nies and cities. Wad­dani told the Ital­ian police that trans­ac­tions in Switzer­land were han­dled by HSS, a ‘trad­ing com­pany’ that ‘belongs to a Pak­istani named Haji Agka and to a Tunisian fam­ily of Zurich, Ahmed and Shoyab Shar­ifi. These lat­ter are inti­mate friends of the head of the Mus­lim com­mu­nity of Zurich, [Albert] Achmed Huber,’ who facil­i­tated ‘peri­odic and reg­u­lar’ ship­ments of weapons, Wad­dani said.” (Idem.)

“The United States put Huber on its al-Qaida ter­ror­ist black­list last Novem­ber, cit­ing his mem­ber­ship on the board of al-Taqwa, the Lugano, Switzerland-based bank accused of mov­ing bin Laden’s money.” (Idem.)

15. From Italy and Zurich (with a lay­over in Rus­sia), we fly across the Mediter­ranean to the burn­ing sands of Saudi Ara­bia. As dis­cussed in so many of the pro­grams deal­ing with Saudi char­i­ties uti­lized to sup­port Al Qaeda, the efforts of the United States to inter­dict the flow of funds to ter­ror­ists has been inad­e­quate. The pro­found con­nec­tions between the petro­leum indus­try, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the Saudi elite have appar­ently led to a less-than-vigorous effort in that regard. (For more about al-Haramain, see FTR #381.) “Last March, just days after a visit by Paul O’Neill, US Trea­sury Sec­re­tary, Saudi Ara­bia blocked the funds of the Soma­lian and Bosn­ian branches of al-Haramain Islamic Foun­da­tion. The group, whose head­quar­ters are in Riyadh, was ‘divert­ing char­i­ta­ble funds’ to ter­ror­ist groups linked to al-Qaeda, author­i­ties alleged. It was the first time since the ter­ror­ist attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11 last year that Saudi Ara­bia had moved against one of the char­i­ties thought to be the biggest source of fund­ing for al-Qaeda. The crack­down, the two gov­ern­ments declared, would ‘open a new phase in inter­na­tional co-operation to destroy the ter­ror­ist financ­ing net­work.’” (“The Money Trail: How a Crack­down on Sus­pect Char­i­ties Is Fail­ing to Stem the Flow of Funds to Al-Qaeda” by Edward Alden; Finan­cial Times; 10/18/2002; p. 11.)

16. Even the mod­est efforts reported above appear to have been (to a cer­tain extent) illu­sory. “Last month, how­ever, Saudi news­pa­pers reported that the al-Haramain Islamic Foun­da­tion was expand­ing its oper­a­tions in both Bosnia and Soma­lia, and had opened a $530,000 Islamic cen­tre in Sara­jevo. US offi­cials are aware of the devel­op­ments and are inves­ti­gat­ing. The fail­ure to curb al-Haramain-to date the only char­ity tar­geted jointly by the US and Saudi Arabia-is the lat­est sign that Mr. O’Neill’s pledge to shut down ‘the quar­ter­mas­ters of ter­ror’ is founder­ing.” (Idem.)

17. A study by the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions con­cluded that the attempts at inter­dict­ing ter­ror­ist fund­ing were inad­e­quate. (More infor­ma­tion about the CFR report is pre­sented below.) “The exec­u­tive order issued by George W. Bush after Sep­tem­ber 11, call­ing for a world­wide crack­down on fund­ing for ter­ror­ist groups, remains a key ele­ment of the US war on ter­ror­ism. But accord­ing to a study by the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, released yes­ter­day, a lack of co-operation by Saudi Ara­bia and some other US allies resulted in lit­tle dis­rup­tion to the web of char­i­ties, busi­nesses and other fund-raising ven­tures that pro­vide al-Qaeda with huge sums of money.” (Idem.)

18. Just how alarm­ing and dra­matic this fail­ure has been is under­scored by a report com­piled by Cana­dian intel­li­gence. “Oth­ers have reached sim­i­lar con­clu­sions. Cana­dian intel­li­gence agen­cies esti­mated in a July 25 report, obtained by the National Post news­pa­per, that Saudi-based char­i­ties alone are fun­nel­ing between $1 mil­lion and $ 2 mil­lion a month to al-Qaeda. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] Last month, the United Nations warned that al-Qaeda con­tin­ues to have access to between $30 mil­lion and $300 mil­lion in funds con­trolled by oth­er­wise legit­i­mate busi­nesses and char­i­ties. While about $112 in funds linked to al-Qaeda and the Tal­iban has been frozen, that fig­ure rep­re­sents only ‘a small frac­tion of the funds and resources’ avail­able to those groups, the UN added.” (Idem.)

19. Euro­pean coun­tries have been less than coop­er­a­tive with the effort at inter­dict­ing ter­ror­ist financ­ing. In part, this reflects (in Mr. Emory’s opin­ion) a geopo­lit­i­cal strug­gle between the German-dominated Euro­pean Union and the United States-a strug­gle that is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the Sec­ond World War. “Despite ear­lier claims of suc­cess in the finan­cial war on ter­ror­ism, the US gov­ern­ment itself is also start­ing to acknowl­edge pub­licly the prob­lems it faces. As Alan Lar­son, under­sec­re­tary of state for eco­nomic affairs, admit­ted last week, it is ‘unques­tion­ably true’ that al-Qaeda retains the finan­cial means to carry out strikes dam­ag­ing to the US. ‘I don’t think lack of resources is a major imped­i­ment to the oper­a­tions of ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions at this stage,’ he said . . . The results, how­ever, have been dis­ap­point­ing. Wash­ing­ton is increas­ingly frus­trated by the refusal of most Euro­pean coun­tries to ban fundrais­ing for the polit­i­cal arm of Hamas, the rad­i­cal Pales­tin­ian group, and for Hezbol­lah, the Iranian-backed mil­i­tant group.” (Idem.)

20. The pro­gram touches on the rack­e­teer­ing charges that are being pur­sued by US pros­e­cu­tors in con­nec­tion with some of the Saudi char­i­ties. “The most glar­ing short­falls, how­ever, have been in Saudi Ara­bia and other Gulf states. Crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions in the US have turned up a series of incrim­i­nat­ing links between Saudi-based char­i­ties and al-Qaeda. US pros­e­cu­tors last week charged the Chicago-based head of the Benev­o­lence Inter­na­tional Foun­da­tion, a large Islamic char­ity founded in Saudi Ara­bia, with oper­at­ing a ‘rack­e­teer­ing enter­prise’ that raised money from wealthy Saudi donors inter­ested in sup­port­ing al-Qaeda, and hid the trail by min­gling those funds with legit­i­mate char­i­ta­ble dona­tions. Sev­eral other char­i­ties with strong Saudi ties are also under scrutiny by US law enforce­ment offi­cials.” (Idem.)

21. “Yet the US and Saudi Ara­bia have co-operated in only two joint efforts aimed at shut­ting down sus­pected ter­ror­ist financiers. In the case of al-Haramain, the ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tion was lim­ited to the Bosn­ian and Soma­lian branches in an effort to avoid embar­rass­ing the Saudis by directly impli­cat­ing the Riyadh head office of the char­ity. Since then, evi­dence uncov­ered by Russ­ian intel­li­gence and by the US has indi­cated that funds from al-Haramain have been used to finance com­bat oper­a­tions by rebel groups in Chech­nya and to sup­port al-Qaeda-linked rad­i­cals in Indone­sia. In the sec­ond case, the two gov­ern­ments in August jointly des­ig­nated as a ter­ror­ist financier wa’el Hamza Julaidan, head of Rabita Trust-a Saudi char­ity already tar­geted by the US . . . . ” (Idem.)

22. After our sojourn in the Mid­dle East, we return to the United States, where we revisit the raids in the Wash­ing­ton area con­ducted as part of Oper­a­tion Green Quest. “Despite patchy inter­na­tional sup­port, US law enforce­ment offi­cials are pur­su­ing crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions that could, they say, break the cur­rent stale­mate in the war against ter­ror financ­ing. The biggest obsta­cle to co-operation from Saudi Ara­bia and other US allies is that those coun­tries demand proof that their cit­i­zens have been fund­ing ter­ror­ist groups before tak­ing action. Such proof, US inves­ti­ga­tors hope, may not be long in coming.”

“In a series of raids in Vir­ginia and Geor­gia in March, the FBI and Cus­toms seized com­put­ers and doc­u­ments from 19 orga­ni­za­tions and 10 inter­net ser­vice providers sus­pected of sup­port­ing for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. A range of Saudi-supported char­i­ta­ble groups ere tar­geted, includ­ing the Mus­lim World League, the Inter­na­tional Islamic Relief Orga­ni­za­tion and the SAAR Foun­da­tion. All the groups deny involve­ment in ter­ror­ism. In its 2000 tax return the Saar Foun­da­tion reported char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions total­ing $1.7bn, though the foun­da­tion has since said this was a cler­i­cal error.”

Even though we have left Lugano Switzer­land behind us, we’ll have plenty of memen­tos of our visit to that beau­ti­ful city, cour­tesy of the Al Taqwa sub­sidiaries con­nected to the “Green Quest” tar­gets. “Inves­ti­ga­tors are still sift­ing through truck­loads of seized doc­u­ments. The pic­ture that is emerg­ing is one of a com­plex net­work of char­i­ta­ble groups, front com­pa­nies, legit­i­mate busi­nesses and money-moving oper­a­tions that have numer­ous ties to sus­pected ter­ror­ists or terrorist-supporting groups. Sev­eral of the ten­ta­cles reach to al-Taqwa, the Swiss-based finan­cial group that was shut down last year on US charges that it was financ­ing Hamas and al-Qaeda.” (Idem.)

“US inves­ti­ga­tors are try­ing to deci­pher how these enti­ties fit together, to build a strong crim­i­nal case. ‘They have lay­ered busi­nesses with all these revenue-generating arms, some legit­i­mate and some char­i­ta­ble, and all fil­ter­ing funds into these com­pa­nies,’ says one offi­cial, refer­ring gen­er­ally to the US inves­ti­ga­tion of sus­pected ter­ror­ist financiers. ‘It’s been extremely chal­leng­ing to sort through all this and con­nect the sus­pects both directly to the ter­ror­ists and the funds.’” (Idem.)

23. After vis­it­ing Wash­ing­ton, D.C., we take the shut­tle flight to New York, where the afore­men­tioned Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions report exco­ri­ates the Bush administration’s duplic­ity with regard to George W’s Wah­habi busi­ness part­ners. “Al Qaeda’s ter­ror net­work derives most of its financ­ing from char­i­ties and indi­vid­u­als in Saudi Ara­bia, but the king­dom has ‘turned a blind eye to this prob­lem,’ accord­ing to a new report by experts on ter­ror­ist finances. The report faults the United States for fail­ing to con­front the Saudis, say­ing Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment offi­cials have asserted that Saudi Ara­bia is coop­er­at­ing on stop­ping ter­ror­ist financ­ing ‘when they know very well all the ways in which it is not.’ [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]. The report released Wednes­day was pre­pared by a com­mit­tee spon­sored by the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions in New York. Although exam­ples of the mis­use of Saudi dona­tions by ter­ror­ists have been pre­vi­ously reported, the council’s study goes fur­ther by con­clud­ing for the first time that Saudi Ara­bia is the sin­gle largest source of ter­ror­ist financ­ing.” (“Other Devel­op­ments: Saudi Fund­ing Links” [Chron­i­cle news ser­vices]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 10/17/2002; p. A18.)

24. “While the United Nations and oth­ers have recently warned that the finan­cial war on ter­ror was sput­ter­ing, ana­lysts inside and out-side gov­ern­ment said the con­clu­sions of the panel carry par­tic­u­lar weight because it is bipar­ti­san. The Saudi gov­ern­ment had no imme­di­ate response to the report. But the report drew a sharp rebut­tal from the Bush admin­is­tra­tion.” (Idem.)

25. Efforts to gain Euro­pean coop­er­a­tion in the finan­cial war on ter­ror have received impe­tus from a Trea­sury Depart­ment mis­sion to the con­ti­nent. “U.S. intel­li­gence has iden­ti­fied about a dozen of al-Qaeda’s prin­ci­pal finan­cial back­ers, most of them wealthy Saudis, and a top finan­cial inves­ti­ga­tor is headed to Europe seek­ing a uni­fied front to freeze their assets in the hope of crip­pling the ter­ror net­work senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said Thurs­day. Jimmy Gurule, the Trea­sury Department’s under­sec­re­tary for enforce­ment, said he will begin a six-day visit to Europe on Sun­day to present his coun­ter­parts with ‘spe­cific infor­ma­tion on selec­tive, high-impact tar­gets’ so they can ‘be des­ig­nated ter­ror­ist financiers and have their assets blocked . . .” Moves to Freeze Assets of Wealthy al Qaeda Back­ers” by Dou­glas Farah [Wash­ing­ton Post]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 10/182002; p. A3.)

“Another senior offi­cial said the list tar­gets those who have given tens of mil­lions of dol­lars to Osama bin Laden’s ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion through the years by rout­ing the money through char­i­ties and legit­i­mate busi­nesses around the world.” (Idem.)

“Since the Sept. 11 ter­ror attacks, the United States has frozen $112 mil­lion in alleged ter­ror­ist assets, des­ig­nated 240 peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions ter­ror­ist sup­port­ers and moved against sev­eral large Islamic char­i­ties in the United States. But senior offi­cials said that, until recently, they had not been able to trace the money to its source. Now, they said, recent intel­li­gence gath­ered through inter­views with cap­tured al Qaeda oper­a­tives and other meth­ods has given them a clearer pic­ture of where much of al Qaeda’s money comes from.” (Idem.)

The Trea­sury inves­ti­ga­tors’ trip to Europe should be alto­gether absorb­ing, in light of the pro­found Euro­pean con­nec­tions of many of the Saudi ter­ror con­duits. (For more about this, see, among other pro­grams, FTR#‘s 355, 359, 377.) “The list, the offi­cial said, goes ‘to the check writ­ers who give the money to al Qaeda, not just the facil­i­ta­tors and those who move the money around. We are finally get­ting to the source. The offi­cial said most of the alleged financiers are wealthy Saudi bankers and busi­ness­men. Because the Saudi gov­ern­ment has pre­vi­ously proved unco­op­er­a­tive in con­fronting its promi­nent cit­i­zens about links to ter­ror, the United States has not yet sought its help in the new effort, offi­cials said. Instead, the gov­ern­ment hopes to freeze their assets in Europe, where the Saudi finan­cial and busi­ness empires have much of their money, and put together the broad­est pos­si­ble con­sen­sus to demand that the Saudi gov­ern­ment crack down on the alleged ter­ror financiers, they said.” (Idem.)

26. Mean­while, back in the “States,” the Bush admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to drag its feet on a full inves­ti­ga­tion of 9/11. “Pres­i­dent Bush’s aides won’t say whether he would veto an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion of the Sept. 11 ter­ror attacks if he doesn’t get to pick the chair­man or limit the panel’s sub­poena power. ‘We’re not inter­ested in issu­ing ulti­ma­tums,’ admin­is­tra­tion spokesman Scott McClel­lan said. ‘We’re inter­ested in reach­ing out to resolve the issue.’ Nego­ti­a­tions to resolve dif­fer­ences between ver­sions of leg­is­la­tion passed by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate are bogged down over those two demands.” (“Talks on 9/11 Com­mis­sion My Hinge on Bush Views” by Paul Leav­itt with staff and wire reports; USA Today; 10/24/2002; p. 6A.)

“The Bush admin­is­tra­tion, which ini­tially opposed the com­mis­sion, now says it favors one, but wants the pres­i­dent to pick the per­son who will head the panel. Con­gres­sional back­ers favor bipar­ti­san co-chairs. The White House also wants to bar the com­mis­sion from issu­ing any sub­poe­nas that aren’t endorsed by mem­bers of both par­ties. Con­gres­sional back­ers say any five mem­bers of the 10-member com­mis­sion should be able to issue a sub­poena.” (Idem.)

27. Fear of fly­ing would not appear to be the rea­son that Bush and com­pany fear a law­suit that has been filed against pow­er­ful (alleged) Saudi back­ers of Al Qaeda, includ­ing mem­bers of the Royal fam­ily. Rather, it appears that “oiled waters” that are jointly nav­i­gated by the Bush fam­ily and their Wah­habi bud­dies might become very choppy indeed if the suit were to be vig­or­ously pros­e­cuted. “The Bush admin­is­tra­tion is closely mon­i­tor­ing a pri­vate law­suit accus­ing mem­bers of the Saudi royal fam­ily of ties to Al Qaeda, and may move in a fed­eral court here to dis­miss or delay the suit, which was brought by rel­a­tives of Sept. 11 vic­tims, accord­ing to admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials. Gov­ern­ment lawyers, the offi­cials said are try­ing to deter­mine whether the case threat­ens to dam­age Saudi-American rela­tions, which would give them rea­son to block the suit. The suit seeks $1 tril­lion in dam­ages and is being pur­sued here by nearly 3,000 of the rel­a­tives. A State Depart­ment offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity, said he knew of no plans by the United States to take action in court, but he said the issue of the law­suit had been raised in recent meet­ings of top Amer­i­can and Saudi offi­cials. ‘The Saudis have made their con­cerns known at a senior level,’ he said.” (“U.S. May Ask Court to Dis­miss a $1 Tril­lion Suit Link­ing Saudis to Al Qaeda and 9/11″ by Philip Shenon; The New York Times; 10/25/2002; p. A15.)

28. Does the “W” in George W. Bush” stand for “Wah­habi?” “Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials say senior Saudi offi­cials have com­plained to their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts that the suit could dam­age the already strained rela­tion­ship between the two coun­tries. The Saudis have been espe­cially alarmed, the Amer­i­cans say, because the list of defen­dants includes two of the most promi­nent mem­bers of the Saudi royal fam­ily: Prince Sul­tan bin Abde­laziz al-Saud, the defense min­is­ter, and Prince Turki bin Faisal, the for­mer spy chief and the new Saudi ambas­sador to Britain. The Saudi Embassy in Wash­ing­ton said it had no com­ment on the law­suit, and did not respond to requests for com­ment from Prince Sul­tan or Prince Turki . . . .” (Idem.)

“The law­suit repeats accu­sa­tions that have been widely cir­cu­lated since Sep­tem­ber 11 about Saudi finan­cial sup­port for al Qaeda, mostly through Islamic char­ity groups and Saudi banks.” (Idem.)

29. The itin­er­ary of John Allen Muham­mad (the accused sniper) and his trav­el­ing com­pan­ion Lee Malvo is an inter­est­ing one. Mr. Emory sug­gests that one of the inves­tiga­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties that should be explored con­cerns the pos­si­bil­ity that Muham­mad may have been financed and/or manip­u­lated by the Islam­o­fas­cist net­works tar­geted in Oper­a­tion Green Quest. Those oper­a­tions were based largely in the Vir­ginia and Mary­land belt­way area around Wash­ing­ton D.C. This is one of the pri­mary areas tar­geted by the sniper. As noted below, Belling­ham (Washington)-a long way from the D.C. area-was one of the pair’s geo­graph­i­cal bases. As dis­cussed in FTR #356, Belling­ham is the epi­cen­ter of the oper­a­tions of Yaqub Mirza, one of the finan­cial wiz­ards who orga­nized the net­work tar­geted by the March 20 raids. “But what pre­cip­i­tated the killings, what guided the seem­ingly ran­dom selec­tion of inno­cents, and even what drew Mr. Moham­mad, 41, and the boy to the Wash­ing­ton area is far from clear . . . .” (“Sus­pects Spent Year Trav­el­ing, Nearly Des­ti­tute” by Blaine Harden and Tim Golden; The New York Times; 10/25/2002; p. A1.)

30. Mr. Muhammad’s con­ver­sion to Islam and his tour of duty with the U.S. Army took place in 1985. Another path­way of inves­ti­ga­tion con­cerns the fact that the GSISS-one of the insti­tu­tions in the net­work raided on 3/20-is the only insti­tu­tion qual­i­fied to cer­tify Mus­lim chap­lains for the armed forces. In the mid 1980’s, Mus­lims from around the world (includ­ing African-American Mus­lims) were being recruited to serve in Afghanistan (the oper­a­tional birth­place of al Qaeda.) The pos­si­ble inter­re­la­tion­ship between these ele­ments should be explored. “Until the events of this fall in Wash­ing­ton, the piv­otal year in Mr. Muhammad’s life appears to have been 1985. That Novem­ber, he sep­a­rated from his wife and son and joined the Army. He also con­verted to Islam . . . ” (Ibid.; p. A24.)

31. Muham­mad served in the secu­rity detail of the Nation of Islam, an orga­ni­za­tion that has asso­ci­ated with White Suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions in the past. What effect, if any, this had on Muhammad’s strange jour­ney con­sti­tutes another ele­ment to be fur­ther inves­ti­gated. ” ‘The only thing that really sticks out is, he was really excited that he was attend­ing the Mil­lion Man March,’ Mr. Dud­ley said. He said that Mr. Muham­mad helped pro­vide secu­rity for Louis Far­rakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, who orga­nized the march in Wash­ing­ton in 1995 . . . . ” (Idem.)

32. The trav­els of Mr. Muham­mad despite his appar­ent lack of financ­ing attracted the inter­est of a staff mem­ber of a home­less shel­ter in the Mirza-epicenter, Belling­ham. Another con­sid­er­a­tion to be weighed in this con­text con­cerns the fact that the Islamist sup­port net­work in the Wash­ing­ton belt­way area was suf­fi­ciently strong to nour­ish the sojourn of Said Ramadan-the head of the Mus­lim Brotherhood-during his stay there. While in that area in the 1970’s, he suc­cess­fully recruited from among rad­i­cal­ized African-Americans in the area. Was Muham­mad recruited, or manip­u­lated by sim­i­lar ele­ments? “By early this year, Mr. Malvo and Mr. Muham­mad were liv­ing together in the Light­house Mis­sion, a home­less shel­ter in Belling­ham. But they did not always seem to belong. ‘I always thought, this guy has no vis­i­ble means of sup­port, but he’s fly­ing to Jamaica, he’s fly­ing to D.C., to Louisiana,’ said Rory Reublin, a staff mem­ber. ‘that one of the nag­ging sus­pi­cions I had in the back of my head.’” (Idem.)