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When Trea­sury Sec­re­tary O’Neill resigned on Fri­day, Decem­ber 6, the pop­u­lar press reported the res­ig­na­tion as hav­ing been pre­cip­i­tated by the fail­ure of the econ­omy to respond to Bush’s eco­nomic pol­icy. Spec­u­la­tive in nature, this broad­cast ana­lyzes events in the sev­eral days lead­ing up to the res­ig­na­tion and poses the ques­tion of whether O’Neill’s exit might have been due to his con­duct of Oper­a­tion Green Quest. Specif­i­cally, the 3/20/2002 raids by Trea­sury Depart­ment agents impli­cated peo­ple con­nected to the Repub­li­can Party, the milieu of George Bush and the Al Taqwa milieu in the fund­ing oper­a­tions of Al Qaeda and Hamas.

1. One of the most impor­tant dynam­ics in this line of inquiry con­cerns the pro­found Saudi polit­i­cal and eco­nomic clout in the United States and within the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Was O’Neill’s res­ig­na­tion really due to Bush’s dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the results of O’Neill’s han­dling of the econ­omy? Or was it because of the Bush/Saudi axis dis­sat­is­fac­tion with O’Neill’s per­for­mance vis a vis the 3/20 raids? Recall that Talat Oth­man, a direc­tor of Bush’s failed Harken Energy firm, inter­ceded with O’Neill to express the dis­sat­is­fac­tion on the part of the “Wah­habi lobby” with the Green Quest raids. Oth­man was deeply involved with the milieu involved in Green Quest, hav­ing sat on the boards of direc­tors of a num­ber of the insti­tu­tions involved in, or directly over­lap­ping, the tar­gets of that operation.

2. Although media cov­er­age in the United States empha­sized the extent to which the Saudis were coop­er­at­ing in the finan­cial effort to inter­dict the eco­nomic fund­ing for Al Qaeda, the real­ity of the sit­u­a­tion is very dif­fer­ent. Even as the Amer­i­can media were trum­pet­ing the Saudi stance on ter­ror, the chief for­eign pol­icy advi­sor to Crown Prince Abdul­lah was stat­ing that the coun­try would not loosen its inves­tiga­tive stance on ter­ror­ist financing-in effect, telling the U.S. to go “shove it.” “Saudi Ara­bia said yes­ter­day it would not lower its stan­dard of evi­dence for des­ig­nat­ing finan­cial sup­port­ers of ter­ror­ism, set­ting the stage for con­tin­ued ten­sion with the US over the ade­quacy of Saudi mea­sures to crack down on the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism.” (“Saudis Resist US Push on Ter­ror Funds” by Edward Alden; Finan­cial Times; 12/4/2002; p. 3.)

3. It is inter­est­ing (and pos­si­bly sig­nif­i­cant) to note, in this con­text, the great con­fi­dence on the part of the Saudis that the US “would not act uni­lat­er­ally.” “But Adel al-Jubeir, for­eign pol­icy advi­sor to Crown Prince Abdul­lah, the Saudi leader, said he did not believe that the US would act uni­lat­er­ally against Saudi indi­vid­u­als or groups sus­pected of sup­port­ing ter­ror­ism. “When it comes to des­ig­na­tions of either indi­vid­u­als or orga­ni­za­tions. . . we work together.’ he said.” (Idem.)

4. As noted in FTR#386, a Trea­sury Depart­ment offi­cial (Jimmy Gurule) had trav­eled abroad shortly before this announce­ment to attempt to bring oth­ers in line. The fol­low­ing para­graph is worth con­tem­plat­ing in light of O’Neill’s back­ing of the 3/20 raids, Othman’s inter­ces­sion on behalf of the tar­gets of those raids on 4/4 and O’Neill’s res­ig­na­tion two days after this arti­cle was pub­lished. “The admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent George W. Bush is debat­ing whether to step up pres­sure on the Saudis by threat­en­ing on its own to des­ig­nate and freeze bank accounts of some Saudis sus­pected of financ­ing ter­ror­ism. Since last March, the two gov­ern­ments have agreed that all such actions should be taken jointly. [Empha­sis added.] Some offi­cials want the US to act alone if the Saudis fail to co-operate after the US presents addi­tional evi­dence regard­ing sus­pect indi­vid­u­als and groups. But oth­ers believe that main­tain­ing vol­un­tary co-operation from the Saudis is the only way to move for­ward.” (Idem.)

5. The day before O’Neill announced his res­ig­na­tion, the Ger­mans pub­li­cized a Saudi diplo­matic con­nec­tion to a sus­pect on trial in Ham­burg in con­nec­tion with 9/11. “Ger­man pros­e­cu­tors are inves­ti­gat­ing pos­si­ble links between the alleged al-Qaeda ter­ror­ist on trial in Ham­burg and diplo­mats and Islamic activists from Saudi Ara­bia. The busi­ness card of a mem­ber of staff at the Saudi embassy in Berlin was found among the pos­ses­sions of Mounir al-Motassadeq, the Moroc­can stu­dent charged with hav­ing helped plan the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks, when he was arrested last year, a spokes­woman for the chief fed­eral pros­e­cu­tor said yes­ter­day.” (“Ger­mans Probe Pos­si­ble al-Qaeda Diplo­matic Link” by Hugh Williamson; Finan­cial Times; 12/6/2002; p. 3.)

6. In addi­tion, the sus­pect was in tele­phonic con­tact with Saudi ele­ments. “Mr. Motas­sadeq is also thought to have made tele­phone calls to Saudi Ara­bia dat­ing back to Decem­ber 2000, accord­ing to Ger­man media reports. Note­books and com­puter files seized from Mr. Motassadeq’s Ham­burg flat con­tained many Saudi Ara­bian tele­phone num­bers. Tele­phone records indi­cate he called the num­bers many times. Mr. Motas­sadeq has admit­ted know­ing the Ham­burg hijack­ers involved in Sep­tem­ber 11, but denies involve­ment.” (Idem.)

7. Sig­nif­i­cantly, the plain­tiffs in a trillion-dollar suit filed by sur­vivors of the 9/11 attacks against a num­ber of ele­ments and indi­vid­u­als are co-plaintiffs in the Ham­burg trial. “The pos­si­ble Ham­burg al-Qaeda cell con­nec­tion with Saudi Ara­bia comes as inves­ti­ga­tions con­tinue in the US into links between the Sep­tem­ber 11 hijack­ers and the Saudi Ara­bian embassy in Wash­ing­ton. Sep­a­rately, rel­a­tives of Sep­tem­ber 11 vic­tims who are co-plaintiffs in the Ham­burg trial intend to use evi­dence from the court case in a civil law suit in the US against the Saudi Ara­bian royal fam­ily, a lawyer for the co-plaintiffs said yes­ter­day. The civil suit, filed in August, accuses three senior Saudi Ara­bian princes, Sudan’s gov­ern­ment and sev­eral Mid­dle East­ern banks of fund­ing al-Qaeda.” (Idem.)

8. More details emerged about the Saudi con­nec­tion to Motas­sadeq. “Ger­man author­i­ties inves­ti­gat­ing a Moroc­can man on trial on charges that he was involved in the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks say there is evi­dence that he had con­tact with a Saudi diplo­mat as well as the lead­ers of an extrem­ist group in Saudi Ara­bia. But Ger­man offi­cials said that despite their requests for help fol­low­ing up on these leads, responses had not been forth­com­ing from either Amer­i­can or Saudi author­i­ties.” (“Ger­man Offi­cials Prob­ing 9/11 Sus­pect Say U.S., Saudis Less than Coop­er­a­tive” by Desmond But­ler [New York Times]; The San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 12/8/2002; p. A6.)

9. The U.S. ret­i­cence to con­firm what had been voiced by the Ger­man author­i­ties is note­wor­thy. It may well be that the US “ret­i­cence” extends to allow­ing O’Neill to remain in office. The pos­si­bil­ity that the Amer­i­can intel­li­gence author­i­ties may not trust the Ger­mans com­pletely is another pos­si­bil­ity to con­sider. “In Wash­ing­ton, a Jus­tice Depart­ment spokesman who declined to be named called ques­tions about the Ger­man author­i­ties’ requests ‘too sen­si­tive’ for com­ment. After the arrest of the Moroc­can, Mounir el-Motassadeq, in Ham­burg last year, the police found the busi­ness card of an offi­cial in the Saudi Embassy in Berlin in his apart­ment. Pros­e­cu­tors say they also found records of numer­ous calls to Saudi Ara­bia, which have since been traced to mem­bers of an extrem­ist group in Riyadh called Dar al-Assima al-Nahr. Cell phone num­bers of the group’s lead­ers were found saved on Motassadeq’s com­puter.” (Idem.)

10. Not­ing the Bush administration’s con­nec­tions to the “Wah­habi Lobby,” it is inter­est­ing that Bush vis­ited the Islamic Cen­ter of Wash­ing­ton for a sec­ond time, two days before O’Neill resigned. Was Bush act­ing to please his Saudi busi­ness associates/masters? Some of the peo­ple with whom Bush appeared the first time are not at all dis­con­nected to the ter­ror­ist milieu. It is worth not­ing that the Coun­cil on American-Islamic Rela­tions is a deriv­a­tive of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, an Islam­o­fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion at the core of the Al Qaeda/Al Taqwa milieu. “Amer­i­can Mus­lim groups have urged Bush to speak out more force­fully against con­ser­v­a­tives who have maligned Islam as an enemy of the United States. Even these groups, how­ever, have been sur­prised by the num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties Bush has taken to deliver his ‘Islam is peace’ mes­sage, as Ibrahim Hooper of the Coun­cil on American-Islamic Rela­tions described it recently. ‘Even I get a lit­tle tired of that,’ Hooper said.” (“Bush Reaf­firms Islam’s Place in U.S. Soci­ety, Despite Crit­ics” Dana Mill­bank [Wash­ing­ton Post]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 12/6/2002; p. 12A.)

11. Not­ing the sequence of the events dis­cussed in this pro­gram, it is intrigu­ing that the res­ig­na­tion of key exec­u­tives with a Republican-linked PR firm that had been run­ning inter­fer­ence for the Saudis. The same day that Bush was kiss­ing A__ at the Islamic Cen­ter (and the day before) O’Neill resigned, peo­ple at Qorvis Com­mu­ni­ca­tions bailed out. The seis­mic pres­sures that were squeez­ing Bush and O’Neill may have pre­cip­i­tated their depar­ture as well. “Three of the found­ing part­ners of the Wash­ing­ton firm, Qorvis Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, have announced that they are leav­ing, and asso­ciates say their depar­ture reflects a deep dis­com­fort in rep­re­sent­ing the gov­ern­ment of Saudi Ara­bia against accu­sa­tions that Saudi lead­ers had turned a blind eye to ter­ror­ism. The firm, hired by the Saudi gov­ern­ment in the after­math of the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks, has been paid about $200,000 a month to help the Saudis bol­ster their bat­tered image with the Amer­i­can pub­lic.” (“3 Part­ners Quit Firm Han­dling Saudis’ P.R.” by Philip Shenon; New York Times; 12/6/2002; p. A12.)

12. Some of the past endeav­ors of Ms. Judy Smith (one of the depart­ing exec­u­tives) are inter­est­ing. “The most promi­nent of the depart­ing exec­u­tives is Judy Smith, a for­mer White House deputy press sec­re­tary who became the spokes­woman for Mon­ica Lewin­sky dur­ing Pres­i­dent Clinton’s impeach­ment, later a spokes­woman for the fam­ily of Chan­dra Levy, the mur­dered Wash­ing­ton intern. She and the other depart­ing partners-Bernie Mer­ritt and Jim Weber, two long­time Repub­li­can party strategists-announced on Wednes­day that they were leav­ing Qorvis to join a New York-based con­sult­ing and pub­lic rela­tions firm, Clark, and Wein­stock. Spokes­men for the Saudi Embassy and Qorvis did not return phone calls for com­ment.” (Idem.)

13. Despite dis­claimers, it would appear that their posi­tion as flak-catchers for the Saudis was becom­ing increas­ingly unten­able. “But friends and asso­ciates, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity, said the depar­tures had been prompted largely by grow­ing evi­dence of ties between promi­nent Saudis and the financ­ing of the ter­ror­ism net­work Al Qaeda, and by a con­cern that the firm and its rep­u­ta­tion were being over­whelmed by its work for Riyadh.” (Idem.)

14. The posi­tion of the Qorvis exec­u­tives was not helped by the recent state­ments of Prince Nayef, the Saudi Inte­rior Min­is­ter. (Nayef was recently named as a defen­dant in the trillion-dollar law­suit.) “The Saudi police min­is­ter has claimed Jews were behind the Sept. 11 attacks because they have ben­e­fited from sub­se­quent crit­i­cism of Islam and Arabs, accord­ing to media reports. Inte­rior Min­is­ter Prince Nayef made the remarks in the Arabic-language Kuwaiti daily Assyasah last month. The lat­est edi­tion of Ain al-Yaqeen, a weekly Inter­net mag­a­zine devoted to Saudi issues, posted the Assyasah inter­view and its own Eng­lish trans­la­tion. . . ‘We still ask our­selves: Who has ben­e­fited from Sept. 11 attacks? I think they (the Jews) were the pro­tag­o­nists of such attacks,’ Nayef was quoted as say­ing. He was quoted as say­ing he believed ter­ror­ist net­works had links to ‘for­eign intel­li­gence agen­cies that work against Arab and Mus­lim inter­ests; chief among them is the Israeli Mossad.’” (“Saudi’s Top Cop says Jews Behind 9/11″ by Alaa Shahine [AP]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 12/6/2002; p. A16.)

15. Inter­est­ingly (and, per­haps, sig­nif­i­cantly), among the voices cheer­ing O’Neill’s depar­ture (on Decem­ber ) was Grover Norquist, a key GOP oper­a­tive and the point man for that party’s links to the milieu of the 3/20 Green Quest raids. (For more about Norquist, see FTR#‘s 356, 357, 358.) Accel­er­at­ing Bush’s tax­a­tion poli­cies is ludi­crous. As men­tioned, Bush’s tax poli­cies have been dev­as­tat­ing to the United States-resulting in enor­mous “Born-Again” bud­get deficits and record current-accounts deficits. “Con­ser­v­a­tive activist Grover Norquist, pres­i­dent of Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, agrees. ‘If you want lower taxes,’ Norquist said, ‘the guy in this admin­is­tra­tion mak­ing sure we have lower taxes is Pres­i­dent Bush.’” (“Bush Ousts Top 2 Aides on Econ­omy” by Car­olyn Lochhead; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 12/7/2002; p. A18.)

16. A soft­ware com­pany in Mass­a­chu­setts that was raided by fed­eral author­i­ties is symp­to­matic of the eco­nomic clout wielded in the United States by the Saudis as a result of the invest­ment of their recy­cled oil wealth. The company-Ptech-appears to have been cap­i­tal­ized in part by Yasin al-Qadi, a defen­dant in the trillion-dollar law­suit men­tioned above and some­one con­nected to the milieu of Al Qaeda and Al Taqwa. One of the moti­vat­ing fac­tors in the raid con­cerned the clients served by Ptech. If the com­pany does have ties to Al Qaeda, the com­pro­mis­ing of the infor­ma­tion sys­tems of these clients may be very sig­nif­i­cant indeed, both in terms of the 9/11 attacks and in terms of pos­si­ble future inci­dents. “Fed­eral agents raided a small soft­ware com­pany in this Boston sub­urb early this morn­ing in an inves­ti­ga­tion into whether it has ties to Al Qaeda. The com­pany, Ptech Inc., counts among its clients the F.B.I., the Air Force, the Navy, the Depart­ment of Energy and NATO. Law enforce­ment offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton said the author­i­ties were try­ing to deter­mine whether it might have been try­ing to use the soft­ware it pro­duces to gain access to clas­si­fied or con­fi­den­tial gov­ern­ment data.” (“Fed­eral Agents Raid a Soft­ware Com­pany Out­side Boston, Seek­ing Links to Al Qaeda” by Pam Bel­luck and Eric Licht­blau; The New York Times; 12/7/2002; p. A11.)

17. “The raid, just after mid­night at the company’s head­quar­ters in a bay-front office park, stemmed from infor­ma­tion the gov­ern­ment had received from for­mer Ptech employ­ees sug­gest­ing that one of its investors was Yasin al-Qadi, a Saudi mil­lion­aire who is on a Trea­sury Depart­ment list of ‘blocked per­sons’ because of sus­pi­cion of ter­ror­ist ties.” (Idem.)

18. The broad­cast dis­cusses al-Qadi’s con­nec­tions to the Muwafaq Foun­da­tion, accused of fund­ing Al Qaeda. “He [al-Qadi] once headed a Saudi-based char­ity called the Muwafaq Foun­da­tion, which fed­eral author­i­ties con­sider a front for Osama bin Laden’s ter­ror net­work. The gov­ern­ment sus­pects that Mr. Qadi and other well-connected Saudis have trans­ferred mil­lions of dol­lars to Mr. bin Laden through trusts and char­i­ties like Muwafaq. Mr. Qadi denies hav­ing engaged in any such activ­ity. Law enforce­ment offi­cials said they were try­ing to deter­mine whether Mr. Qadi was in fact a backer of Ptech and whether the com­pany had fun­neled money to char­i­ties that might have con­tributed to Al Qaeda or other ter­ror­ist groups.” (Idem.)

19. One of al-Qadi’s asso­ciates in the Muwafaq foun­da­tion was Khalid bin Mah­fouz, mar­ried to Osama bin Laden and a prin­ci­pal fig­ure in the BCCI net­work. It is worth remem­ber­ing in this con­text that the afore­men­tioned Talat Oth­man was a pro­tégé of Abdul­lah Bak­shs, another of the BCCI inti­mates. When George W. Bush finally selected the man to head the “inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion” to inves­ti­gate 9/11, his choice was Henry Kissinger. Aside from the enor­mous bag­gage that Kissinger car­ries in other respects, he is no stranger to the BCCI. (Bush was reluc­tant to autho­rize such a com­mis­sion.) “The strangest player of all, pre­dictably, is Henry Kissinger, whose first act as chair­man of the ‘inde­pen­dent’ com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate 9/11 was to ini­ti­ate a cover-up, fully backed by the White House, of the iden­ti­ties of the clients of Kissinger Asso­ciates, his con­sult­ing firm. Mr. Kissinger con­sis­tently sees the con­fi­den­tial­ity of this list as a higher pri­or­ity than ser­vice to his coun­try. When the Senate’s Com­mit­tee on For­eign Rela­tions a decade ago inves­ti­gated the B.C.C.I. affair-a scan­dal that itself fig­ures in the tan­gled his­tory of Saudi/Al Qaeda money laundering-Kissinger Asso­ciates resisted the sub­poena by threat­en­ing lit­i­ga­tion ‘through an exten­sive appel­late process to the Supreme Court.’ (The quote is from the committee’s Decem­ber 1992 report on its inves­ti­ga­tion.) The Sen­ate retreated.” (“Pearl Har­bor Day, 2002″ by Frank Rich; The New York Times; 12/7/2002; p. A35.)

20. One of the most impor­tant recent polit­i­cal devel­op­ments is the estab­lish­ment of the Home­land Secu­rity Depart­ment. It is sig­nif­i­cant to note in the con­text of O’Neill’s res­ig­na­tion that inter­a­gency squab­bling over Oper­a­tion Green Quest over­laps the issue of intel­li­gence shar­ing in the Depart­ment. The direc­tor of the FBI (Robert Mueller) headed up the BCCI “inves­ti­ga­tion.” His agency has been at log­ger­heads with Trea­sury over Green Quest. “As an exam­ple of what the future may hold, some offi­cials point to a cur­rent case of inter­a­gency dis­agree­ment. The FBI and the Cus­toms Ser­vice have been squab­bling for months over Oper­a­tion Green Quest, the mam­moth Treasury-run task force that is inves­ti­gat­ing the fund­ing of ter­ror groups. Some FBI offi­cials have pushed hard to gain con­trol of the inves­ti­ga­tion, argu­ing that offi­cials at Cus­toms and its par­ent agency, the Trea­sury Depart­ment, do not have the coun­tert­er­ror­ism exper­tise that the probe requires. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from each side dis­par­aged the other in pri­vate brief­ings with Con­gress, accord­ing to sources famil­iar with the meet­ings.” (“Home­land Secu­rity Won’t Have Diet of Raw Intel­li­gence” by Dan Eggen and John Mintz; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 12/6/2002; p. A43.)

21. “To end the dis­pute, admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have ten­ta­tively decided to leave respon­si­bil­ity for the Green Quest probe with Cus­toms when that agency moves over to Home­land Secu­rity, while putting the FBI in charge of all other terrorism-related finan­cial probes, sources said.” (Idem.)

22. What role, if any the Treasury/FBI dis­pute may have played in the depar­ture of O’Neill is con­jec­tural. Over­all, the events lead­ing up to O’Neill’s depar­ture are more than a lit­tle interesting-particularly the polit­i­cal plate tec­ton­ics involv­ing the Saudi oil forces to which Bush is bound.