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Con­tin­u­ing For The Record’s cov­er­age and analy­sis of the events in and around 9/11, this pro­gram sets forth some of the petro­leum indus­try para-political and deep polit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing with the loom­ing con­flict in Iraq. In par­tic­u­lar, the Bush administration’s links to big oil and the Saudi elite are weighed in con­junc­tion with the Iraq/US con­flict. Much of the broad­cast is devoted to dis­cus­sion of the US hos­til­i­ties with Mus­lim fun­da­men­tal­ist and Arab nation­al­ist move­ments. This pro­gram sup­ple­ments mate­r­ial about the Under­ground Reich’s use of the Muslim/Arab pop­u­la­tions to wage “Proxy War” in the Mid­dle East. It is the theme of those brod­casts is that Al Qaeda and related insti­tu­tions (such as the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Al Taqwa milieu) con­sti­tute an ele­ment of a dual-pronged, Under­ground Reich attack on the United States, not unlike that which led to the sub­ju­ga­tion of France in World War II.

1. Peter Dale Scott, the bril­liant Berke­ley pro­fes­sor, has noted the evo­lu­tion of “para-politics” into “deep pol­i­tics.” Clan­des­tine power-political relationships—“para-politics”—can become, over time, “deep pol­i­tics,” insti­tu­tion­al­ized and beyond the effec­tive con­trol of their cre­ators. Many of the para-political rela­tion­ships devel­oped by the US with the Under­ground Reich dur­ing the Cold War became insti­tu­tion­al­ized to the point at which the US appeared rel­a­tively help­less in the face of the 9/11 attacks. The inabil­ity of the US to tran­scend the para-political forces that ulti­mately turned on Amer­ica on 9/11 may well prove fatal. The enor­mous power of the petro­leum industry-an influ­ence that tran­scends ide­ol­ogy and national allegiance–is one of the para-political and deep polit­i­cal influ­ences cen­tral to an under­stand­ing of the events in and around 9/11. It is also very impor­tant not to over­sim­plify that influence.

2. The dis­cus­sion begins with the piv­otal role of Eliz­a­beth Cheney in US Mid­dle East diplo­macy. (Ms. Cheney is Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney’s daugh­ter). Ms. Cheney occu­pies a crit­i­cal State Depart­ment office in charge of liai­son func­tions with so-called “friendly” gov­ern­ments in that part of the world. One should not for­get that she is also the daugh­ter of the for­mer CEO of Halliburton-a major petro­leum firm.

“Yet the work assigned to Ms. Cheney, a deputy US assis­tant under­sec­re­tary of state and daugh­ter of the vice-president, is hardly diplo­macy as usual. The focus of her efforts is coun­tries in the Arab world. Her newly cre­ated post is at the fore­front of US efforts to insti­gate polit­i­cal reform among the author­i­tar­ian regimes long regarded by Wash­ing­ton as allies.”

(“ ‘Iraq Will Cause a Change in the Region and Make America’s Ene­mies Des­per­ate’” by Rhoula Kha­laf; Finan­cial Times; 1/16/2003; p. 11.)

3. Repeat­ing a very impor­tant ques­tion posed in FTR#393, the pro­gram sets forth Saudi Arabia’s sud­den rever­sal of course with regard to allow­ing the United States to use bases in that coun­try in a war with Iraq. Hav­ing pre­vi­ously indi­cated that they would not allow the use of such bases, they have now changed posi­tion. Was there a quid-pro-quo with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and will Bush and com­pany now sup­press or dis­cour­age inves­ti­ga­tion of the Saudi role in 9/11 in exchange for the use of these bases? Does this Saudi rever­sal have any­thing to do with the “Polit­i­cal Plate Tec­ton­ics” dis­cussed in FTR 390?

“Saudi Ara­bia has told Amer­i­can mil­i­tary offi­cials that the king­dom would make its air­space, air bases and an impor­tant oper­a­tions cen­ter avail­able to the United States in the event of war with Iraq, senior mil­i­tary offi­cials say. Saudi Ara­bia was the main stag­ing area for U.S. forces in the 1991 Per­sian Gulf War, but con­flict­ing pub­lic state­ments by top Saudi offi­cials over the past sev­eral months have cast doubt on the Saudis’ sup­port for mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against Iraq this time around.”

(“Saudis to Let U.S. Use Air Facil­i­ties in Iraq War” by Eric Schmitt [The New York Times’; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 12/29/2002; p. A8.)

4. Among the daunt­ing ques­tions sur­round­ing a poten­tial mil­i­tary involve­ment in Iraq is the cost of occu­py­ing and rebuild­ing Iraq after a war.

” . . . Nor does any­one know what van­quish­ing Sad­dam and then gov­ern­ing Iraq will cost in either dol­lars or lives. Lawrence Lind­sey, the chief White House eco­nomic adviser, was fired after he put the bill at $100 bil­lion to $200 bil­lion. But William Nord­haus, the Yale econ­o­mist, puts the Lind­sey esti­mate at the low end, with the high end being $1.6 tril­lion over a decade. What­ever the num­ber the cost of the war isn’t being fac­tored at all into the bud­get pro­posal the White House will send to Con­gress, accord­ing to USA Today.”

(“Joe Mil­lion­aire for Pres­i­dent” by Frank Rich; The New York Times; 1/18/2003; p. A35.)

5. In con­nec­tion with the dis­cus­sion that fol­lows, it is worth not­ing that the Saudis are uti­liz­ing their influ­ence with OPEC to increase pro­duc­tion, thereby reduc­ing the pos­si­ble dis­rup­tion to the world’s indus­trial econ­omy of a US/Iraqi war.

“Saudi Ara­bia yes­ter­day showed its mus­cle in push­ing through a large increase in the out­put quota of the Opec oil car­tel, pleas­ing import­ing nations and gain­ing much of the addi­tional mar­ket share. ‘Saudi Ara­bia will get a lot of recog­ni­tion from the world import­ing coun­tries, includ­ing the US, for this,’ said John Licht­blau, chair­man of the Petro­leum Indus­try Research Foundation.”

(“Saudis Lead Way on Rise in Opec Quota” by Car­ola Hoyos; Finan­cial Times; 1/13/2003; p. 2.)

6. Lis­ten­ers are no doubt famil­iar with the expres­sion “big things come in small pack­ages.” Short in length but large in sig­nif­i­cance is an arti­cle pub­lished in Newsweek. Aug­ment­ing the Bush family’s impor­tant con­nec­tions with the Saudi power elite, a key for­mer GOP con­gress­man has been hired by the Saudis as a liai­son with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Tom Loef­fler is also close to Dick Cheney (along with Bush a for­mer petro­leum com­pany exec­u­tive). Bear in mind that Dick Cheney is also the father of Eliz­a­beth, the State Depart­ment offi­cial work­ing with “friendly” coun­tries in the region. Recall­ing a dis­cus­sion about the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids and the dis­missal of for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill, it is worth not­ing that one of Loeffler’s func­tions will be coor­di­nat­ing with the Saudis on the mat­ter of ter­ror­ism financing.

“With mount­ing crit­i­cism from Con­gress over its record in the war on ter­ror, Saudi Ara­bia is beef­ing up its forces in D.C. Newsweek has learned that to strengthen ties with the White House, the Saudis have retained the high-powered law firm of for­mer Texas GOP Con­gress­man Tom Loef­fler. Loef­fler, whose firm will be paid about $720,000 a year, is one of Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s top polit­i­cal mon­ey­men. He headed up fund-raising for Bush’s first guber­na­to­r­ial cam­paign and served as finance cochair for his pres­i­den­tial race. Loef­fler also is tight with Dick Cheney. ‘You couldn’t find any­body closer to this White House,’ said one D.C. con­sul­tant. A Saudi offi­cial says Loef­fler will be used mostly to lobby on trade issues, but will branch out to mat­ters such as ter­ror­ism financ­ing when needed. [Empha­sis added.].”

(“Saudis: Close Ties” by Michael Isikoff; Newsweek; 1/13/2003; p. 8.)

7. The pro­gram poses sev­eral crit­i­cal ques­tions. Has a quid-pro-quo been struck between the Saudis and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion? Are the Saudis agree­ing to assist the US in Iraq (use of bases, help­ing to finance the recon­struc­tion of Iraq, pro­mot­ing increased OPEC pro­duc­tion) in exchange for a sup­pres­sion of the Saudi links to 9/11? Will the Saudi Bin Laden Group receive some of the key con­struc­tion con­tracts in a post­war Iraq as part of the deal? Will the Shi­ite major­ity in Iraq be mar­gin­al­ized, in def­er­ence to the Wahhabi/Sunni sect that dom­i­nates Saudi Ara­bia (which bor­ders Iraq)? Is this hypoth­e­sis related to the “polit­i­cal plate tec­ton­ics”?

8. Fur­ther high­light­ing the Saudi/Bush admin­is­tra­tion maneu­ver­ing, the broad­cast dis­cusses Saudi Prince Alwaleed’s fund­ing of a schol­ar­ship pro­gram estab­lished in the name of the elder George Bush.

“The reten­tion of Loef­fler comes on top of another move that crit­ics charge is designed to influ­ence the White House: A $500,000 gift by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to help fund the newly cre­ated George Her­bert Walker Bush Schol­ar­ship Fund at Phillips Acad­emy, Andover . . . But Andover says the elite school won’t reject the prince’s money. And a Bush spokesper­son says the for­mer pres­i­dent, like his son an Andover grad­u­ate, ‘felt it had been given in good faith.’”

(Idem.)

9. Next, the pro­gram fur­ther devel­ops infor­ma­tion about the Ger­man role in arm­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein with his nuclear tech­nol­ogy. The doc­u­men­tary film dis­cussed below was part of the sub­ject mate­r­ial in FTR 384.

“Steal­ing the Fire is an inves­tiga­tive film that pro­vides stag­ger­ing evi­dence show­ing how a Ger­man sci­en­tist, Karl Heinz Schaab, who helped develop the cen­trifuges nec­es­sary to extract weapons-grade Ura­nium 235, sold clas­si­fied doc­u­ments in the early 1990’s to Iraq.”

(“Steal­ing the Fire;” Eye Spy; Issue 13; p. 18.)

10. It is inter­est­ing to note that the co-producer of the film dis­cov­ered the “clan­des­tine nuclear trail” while work­ing on a PBS show about the BCCI. The BCCI scan­dal is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the sub­ject of Saudi Ara­bia and the events of 9/11. (For a sum­mary account of the sig­nif­i­cance of the BCCI scan­dal in the con­text of 9/11, see FTR#391 and the pro­grams ref­er­enced in that program.)

” . . . The inves­ti­ga­tion started many, many years ago. In 1992, Eric Nadler an inves­ti­gate jour­nal­ist, began research­ing mate­r­ial on the under­ground traf­fick­ing of nuclear weapons. Ten years later, he and co-producer, John S. Fried­man, the founder of the Doc­u­men­tary Cen­ter at Colom­bia Uni­ver­sity have released their find­ings. Nadler told Paper­clips mag­a­zine. ‘I was work­ing for Front­line on PBS, and I was doing a story about the BCCI scan­dal, which was a crooked bank based in Pak­istan. I was doing a story called ‘The Arm­ing of Saudi Ara­bia’ about the hid­den his­tory of United States/Saudi rela­tions. I got very dis­turbed about the hid­den his­tory, espe­cially about nuclear sto­ries that weren’t being covered . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 18–19.)

11. Accord­ing to Mr. Nadler, Saudi Ara­bia was heav­ily involved in financ­ing Sad­dam Hussein’s quest for the bomb. Like the Saudis and the Bush fam­ily, Sad­dam Hussein’s own his­tory is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with that of the Third Reich. The For The Record series presents the view that Al Qaeda, the Wah­habi mil­i­tants, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the Iraqis and the PLO con­sti­tute “proxy war­riors” for the Under­ground Reich, against the USA, Britain and Israel. It is this “Proxy War” that is alluded to in the title of this broad­cast. (For dis­cus­sion of the Saudi links to the Third Reich, see the dis­cus­sion and ref­er­ences in FTR 391.)

“. . . And I pro­duced for Front­line some­thing that aired in 1992, in which our team got clas­si­fied CIA and DIA doc­u­ments, which said the fol­low­ing: ‘We know that Saudi Ara­bia has given $5 bil­lion to Sad­dam Hussein’s nuclear pro­gram for the express pur­pose of build­ing a nuclear bomb.’ My inves­tiga­tive team at Front­line got the banks, we got the dates, we got the money trans­fers, and we put this on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion. [We showed] that America’s biggest ally in the Gulf had given $5 bil­lion to the Hitler of the Gulf to build nuclear weapons. And though USA Today put it on their tele­vi­sion page, it caused barely a rip­ple in the pop­u­lar cul­ture. I was inter­ested in secret nuclear sto­ries from that moment on . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 19.)

12. In Steal­ing the Fire, the cen­tral fig­ure in the Iraqi/German nuclear con­nec­tion was one Karl Heinz Schaab.

” . . . He was fas­ci­nated by Iraq’s deter­mined efforts to cre­ate nuclear weapons. By exam­in­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion of the United Nations weapons inspec­tors, he came across a ‘mys­te­ri­ous man’-Karl Heinz Schaab. Nadler and Fried­man thought that by research­ing Schaab, this would open other doors and reveal the com­pa­nies behind the ‘covert nuclear trad­ing deals . . .’”

(Idem.)

13. Schaab was a pro­tégé of Dr. Ger­not Zippe, one of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures involved with devel­op­ing the Third Reich’s nuclear program.

“Schaab was a stu­dent of Dr. Ger­not Zippe, an Aus­trian physi­cist often referred to as the ‘father of the cen­trifuge.’ And Steal­ing the Fire is as much about the cen­trifuge as the dirty deals done to get the tech­nol­ogy to Iraq. Nadler says the equip­ment orig­i­nated in the research lab­o­ra­to­ries of wartime Ger­many. Hence the infor­ma­tion sup­plied by Schaab in 1989 to the Iraqis basi­cally orig­i­nated from the failed Nazi atomic bomb program.”

(Idem.)

14. After dis­cussing Zippe’s cap­ture by the Sovi­ets and his work for the U.S.S.R. on nuclear mat­ters, the pro­gram sets forth his return to Degussa, the firm which pro­duced the Zyk­lon B for the gas cham­bers in World War II.

“The nuclear sci­en­tist worked at the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia for a while, and de-briefed the Pen­ta­gon on the Russ­ian cen­trifuge. How­ever, he got home­sick and soon returned to Ger­many and found work at Degussa.”

(Idem.)

15. Zippe was not the only Third Reich alum­nus asso­ci­ated with Degussa’s nuclear export operations.

“Dr. Alfred Boettcher was an SS sci­en­tific offi­cer who headed the pre­cious met­als divi­sion at Degussa in the post­war years. He later became nuclear export attache for the West Ger­man Government.”

(Ibid.; p. 21.)

16. Degussa sub­sidiary NUKEM was the divi­sion involved with the traf­fick­ing of nuclear mate­r­ial to Iraq, as well as other coun­tries attempt­ing to man­u­fac­ture nuclear weapons. Boettcher and Zippe were joined by yet another Third Reich alum­nus in Germany’s work on behalf of Iraq’s nuclear efforts.

“Two trans­ac­tions that spring height­ened fears that Iraq intended to use the Osirak reac­tor to pro­duce bomb-grade plu­to­nium. An Ital­ian com­pany, in a semi-clandestine deal, sold Iraq six tons of depleted ura­nium pur­chased from the West Ger­man nuclear con­sor­tium NUKEM. Fear­ing that NUKEM might not deliver the ura­nium if they knew it was intended for Iraq, the Ital­ians claimed it was for domes­tic use in Italy. But they needn’t have wor­ried about NUKEM’s scru­ples. The con­sor­tium was a wholly owned sub­sidiary of the Ger­man chem­i­cals giant Degussa, which had invented and man­u­fac­tured Zyk­lon B, the pow­er­ful cyanide gas that streamed out of the show­er­heads in Hitler’s death camps, killing mil­lions of Euro­pean Jews. Degussa had also played a key role in the Nazi effort to build an atom bomb, stopped only when its Oranien­burg works near Berlin were flat­tened by U.S. bombers in 1945. That same year, the Third Reich was going up in flames, Degussa’s chair­man, Her­mann Schlosser, donated 45,000 reichs­marks to Hitler’s SS. Thirty-five years later Schlosser was still on the Degussa board, and in 1987 he was awarded the Ger­man Fed­eral Merit Cross for his ser­vices to indus­try. One of Schlosser’s ser­vices was ship­ping nuclear equip­ment and mate­ri­als to almost every devel­op­ing nation that was known to have a clan­des­tine bomb pro­gram. Another was open­ing the vast Iraqi mar­ket to Ger­man firms. His readi­ness to sup­ply nuclear mate­ri­als to both India and Pak­istan had impressed on Sad­dam Hus­sein that this was a man he could do busi­ness with.”

(The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq; Ken­neth Tim­mer­man; Copy­right 1991 [HC]; Houghton Mif­flin Com­pany; p. 70.) (For more on the arm­ing of Iraq, see RFA-20, FTR #‘s 16, 24, 31, 52, 87, 287, 295.)

17. “Nadler called Degussa ‘the worst com­pany ever.’ The inves­ti­ga­tor believes the direc­tors of the com­pany were ‘not pros­e­cuted because of their inter­na­tional con­nec­tions to sev­eral major US corporations.”

(Ibid.; p. 20.)

18. It is sig­nif­i­cant that, accord­ing to Nadler, the Iraqis received soft­ware, not hard­ware. This com­pli­cates the issue of the weapons inspec­tions, at the fore­front of the Iraqi/US con­fronta­tion. In the con­text of the Under­ground Reich (heav­ily involved with Latin Amer­ica as well as the Mid­dle East), it is worth not­ing that Schaab was also involved with deals with mem­bers of the Brazil­ian armed forces.

“Schaab’s name was actu­ally found on doc­u­ments recov­ered by UN weapons inspec­tors in Iraq. He had been sell­ing the cen­trifuge secrets to Bagh­dad. Eye Spy asked Nadler just what exactly the Iraqis received for their money, ‘soft­ware not hard­ware,’ he said. He then con­firmed that with this data Iraq could eas­ily build a factory-a pro­duc­tion line-for nuclear bombs. The inves­ti­ga­tors tracked Schaab to Brazil, where he tem­porar­ily fled to avoid pros­e­cu­tion. Here also was the loca­tion of fur­ther obscure deals with high rank­ing offi­cials of the Brazil­ian armed forces.”

(Ibid.; p. 20.)

19. Nadler notes the role of Ger­many as the great­est exporter of nuclear tech­nol­ogy in the post­war period. (The Ger­man role in the devel­op­ment of the Pak­istani bomb is dis­cussed in FTR#336. There is doc­u­mented sym­pa­thy among some of the cre­ators of the Pak­istani bomb for the Tal­iban regime.)

“In a broad New York accent, Nadler told Eye Spy that the cen­trifuge pro­gram could eas­ily be hid­den from the weapons inspec­tors and rov­ing spy satel­lites. ‘The project could be underground-quite eas­ily.’ Liv­ing just a few hun­dred yards from the destroyed World Trade Cen­ter, Nadler believes that Sad­dam is any­thing from six months to five years away from hav­ing the bomb. The inves­ti­ga­tors research tends to sup­port the British intel­li­gence brief on Iraq’s WMD, and high­lights a con­tro­ver­sial deal between a NATO coun­try and Iraq. Nadler said that between 1945 and 1990, Ger­many was the ‘great­est pro­lif­er­a­tor of nuclear weapons tech­nol­ogy in the world . . .’”

(Idem.)

20. Schaab appears to have been oper­at­ing with the bless­ings of the Ger­man government.

” . . . On the Ger­man Government’s light sen­tence for Schaab, and the sug­ges­tion other peo­ple might be involved, Nadler was diplo­matic: ‘Schaab had a story and he stuck to it. He said that two other men who are now dead were involved. But it’s quite clear that all this activ­ity had to be mon­i­tored and known by the Ger­mans. We can safely say that the case was woe­fully under-investigated, and, as one per­son says in our film, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment just wanted it to go away. . .’”

(Idem.)

21. ” . . . Schaab took the secret plans of the cen­trifuge and sold hun­dreds of blue­prints to the Iraqis. And on a recent tele­vi­sion news pro­gram on Fox, Nadler said it is pos­si­ble that Iraq may have sold the plans to al-Qaeda. ‘The fact remains that the clas­si­fied plans for ura­nium enrich­ment tech­nol­ogy were stolen and sold to the Iraqis; what they do with it is a mys­tery. The enrich­ment tech­nol­ogy they have is very dif­fi­cult to detect with spy satel­lites. But Iraq is a state that spon­sors ter­ror­ist groups world­wide, and ter­ror­ist groups are known to be look­ing for weapons of mass destruc­tion. It’s not too far-fetched that a group like al-Qaeda could get their hands on this tech­nol­ogy. Once the tech­nol­ogy is in place, you don’t have one bomb, you’ve got the capa­bil­ity to assembly-line them, and that is truly disturbing.”

(Idem.)

22. A recent report in the Ger­man press fin­gered Ger­many as the num­ber one sup­plier of weapons to Iraq and high­lighted the fact that the trade con­tin­ued for a full decade after the Gulf War. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment was appar­ently com­plicit in this activity.

“Iraq’s dec­la­ra­tion of its weapons pro­grams con­tains explo­sive news for Ger­many, a Berlin paper has reported. The dossier is said to detail covert arms deals between Ger­man defense firms and Iraq. Just as the heated debates within the Ger­man gov­ern­ment over the role of Ger­man troops and equip­ment in a pos­si­ble war against Iraq seem to be cool­ing down, another poten­tial bomb­shell threat­ens to re-ignite the fires. On Tues­day, the Berlin-based left-wing paper, Tageszeitung reported that aspects of the 12,000-page Iraqi report on Iraq’s weapons pro­grams, sub­mit­ted to the U.S. last week, could prove highly embar­rass­ing for Ger­many. The newspaper-believed to be the first to have access to the top-secret dossier-has writ­ten that the Iraqi dec­la­ra­tion con­tains the names of 80 Ger­man firms, research lab­o­ra­to­ries and peo­ple, who are said to have helped Iraq develop its weapons program.”

(“Iraqi Report Could Prove Dam­ag­ing to Ger­many”; Detusche Welle; 12/17/2002; p. 1.)

23. “The most con­tentious piece of news for Ger­many is that the report names it as the num­ber one sup­plier of weapons sup­plies to Iraq. Ger­man firms are sup­posed to eas­ily out­num­ber the firms from other coun­tries who have been export­ing to Iraq. They have deliv­ered tech­ni­cal know-how, com­po­nents, basic sub­stances and even entire tech­ni­cal facil­i­ties for the devel­op­ment of atomic, chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons of mass destruc­tion to Iraq right since 1975.”

(Idem.)

24. “In some cases, con­ven­tional mil­i­tary and tech­ni­cal deal­ings between Ger­many and Iraq are said to date till 2001, ten years after the sec­ond Gulf war and a time when inter­na­tional sanc­tions against Sad­dam Hus­sein are still in place. The paper reports that the dossier con­tains sev­eral indi­ca­tions of cases, where Ger­man author­i­ties right up to the Finance min­istry tol­er­ated the ille­gal arms coop­er­a­tion and also pro­moted it, to an extent . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

25. “Ger­man arms com­pa­nies in the mean­time have been con­duct­ing boom­ing busi­ness with Iraq in recent years. Accord­ing to the Ger­man Fed­eral Sta­tis­tics Office, Ger­man mil­i­tary exports to Iraq have been steadily ris­ing from year to year. From annual exports amount­ing to 21.7 mil­lion Euros in 1997, the vol­ume of exports for the fol­low­ing year shot to some 76.4 mil­lion Euros. The trend con­tin­ued in 2001 with exports to Iraq bring­ing Ger­man firms prof­its in the range of 336.5 mil­lion Euros. Ger­man goods worth 226.2 mil­lion Euros have already been shipped to Iraq in the first half of this year. Some of the offi­cial heavy­weights in the export scene are the Ger­man elec­tron­ics firm Siemens with med­ical equip­ment and energy dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems and car­maker Daim­ler Chrysler. Both are reported to rake in rev­enues worth double-digit fig­ures in the millions. . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

26. The story also notes the con­tra­dic­tion between Schroder’s paci­fist image and the real­i­ties of the German/Iraq arms trade. It will be inter­est­ing to see if there is diplo­matic arm twist­ing by the US, using the Ger­man com­plic­ity in the arm­ing of Sad­dam Hus­sein to lever­age Ger­man coop­er­a­tion in the war-to-come.

“Another real fear is that Schroder’s image as a staunch paci­fist might now be sul­lied if it emerges that Ger­many has all along been help­ing the very leader who it has been unwill­ing to top­ple, to stock­pile his weapons. The report could also pro­vide the U.S. with an excuse to step up the pres­sure on Ger­many to give in to Amer­i­can mil­i­tary demands for deploy­ment of Ger­man troops and use of Ger­man mil­i­tary equip­ment in the case of a mil­i­tary attack on Iraq.”

(Ibid.; p. 3.)

27. Indica­tive of the German/Islamist link at the core of the Under­ground Reich/Islamist/secular Arabo-fascist proxy war­rior con­nec­tion is a recent dis­clo­sure con­cern­ing Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist orga­ni­za­tion just out­lawed in Germany.

“Germany’s top law enforce­ment offi­cial on Wednes­day out­lawed an Islamic group accused of estab­lish­ing con­tacts with neo-Nazis and spread­ing pro­pa­ganda call­ing for the destruc­tion of Israel and the killing of Jews . . .”

(“Ger­many Bans Islamic Group” by Eric Geiger; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 1/16/2003; p. A9.)

28. “Founded in 1952, Hizb ut-Tahrir has said its goal is to restore the ‘Islamic way of life’ in the Mus­lim world and cre­ate a sin­gle Islamic ‘Caliphate’ from the west­ern coast of Africa to China. It is believed to be based in Britain, but no one knows for sure. . .”

(Idem.)

29. ” . . . In recent media reports, Ger­man intel­li­gence offi­cials have been described as being stunned that widened sur­veil­lance showed high-ranking Mus­lim lead­ers in Ger­many mak­ing con­tact with ter­ror sus­pects. Their iden­ti­ties are being zeal­ously guarded but report­edly include lead­ers of a nation­wide Turk­ish immi­grant orga­ni­za­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the most pow­er­ful oppo­si­tion group in Egypt.”

(Idem.)

30. Among the orga­ni­za­tions “fel­low trav­el­ling” with the Hizb ut-Tahrir is the NPD, the top Ger­man “neo”-Nazi group. Al Taqwa direc­tor Ahmed Huber and Horst Mahler are among the asso­ciates of the NPD.

“Hizb ut-Tahrir became well known in Ger­many after stag­ing a rally at Berlin’s Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­sity in Octo­ber at which the main speaker made anti-American com­ments, Schily said. Mem­bers of Germany’s extreme right-win NPD, a party the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to ban, also attended the rally, he said.”

(“Ger­many Bans Islamic Group it Says is Anti-Semitic” [Reuters]; South Florida Sun-Sentinel; 1/15/2003.)

31. Sup­ple­ment­ing and rein­forc­ing analy­sis pre­sented in FTR#394, the pro­gram high­lights the fact that Ger­man intel­li­gence had the Ham­burg cell involved in the 9/11 attacks under sur­veil­lance by August of 1998. It was in that month that “the Bat­tle of Men­with Hill” began. Note that it was in August of 1998 that Osama bin Laden stopped using his cell phone. The For The Record series poses the ques­tion: what is the rela­tion­ship between Germany/EU’s attack on the Men­with Hill facil­ity and the ECHELON net­work, bin Laden’s aban­don­ment of his satel­lite phone, and the begin­ning of the sur­veil­lance of the Ham­burg cell at the epi­cen­ter of the 9/11 attacks?

“Three years before the Sept. 11 attacks, Germany’s domes­tic intel­li­gence ser­vice was track­ing promi­nent mem­bers of the Ham­burg ter­ror­ist cell that planned and exe­cuted the air­craft hijack­ings, accord­ing to newly obtained doc­u­ments. The doc­u­ments, includ­ing intel­li­gence reports, sur­veil­lance logs and tran­scripts of inter­cepted tele­phone calls, appear to con­tra­dict pub­lic claims by the Ger­man author­i­ties that they knew lit­tle about the mem­bers of the Ham­burg cell before the attacks.”

(“Ger­mans Were Track­ing Sept. 11 Con­spir­a­tors as Early as 1998, Doc­u­ments Dis­close” by Desmond But­ler; New York Times; 1/18/2003; p. A10.)

32. “As early as 1998, the records show, the Ger­mans mon­i­tored a meet­ing between men sus­pected of plot­ting the attacks. The sur­veil­lance would lead a year later to the Ham­burg apart­ment where Mohamed Atta and other main plot­ters were liv­ing while attend­ing uni­ver­si­ties. While the records do not indi­cate that author­i­ties heard any men­tion of a spe­cific plan, they depict a sur­veil­lance mis­sion exten­sive enough to raise anew the polit­i­cally sen­si­tive ques­tion of whether the Ger­mans missed a chance to dis­rupt the cell dur­ing the ini­tial stages of plan­ning the attacks. Some Amer­i­can inves­ti­ga­tors and offi­cials have argued that the Ger­mans in the past missed evi­dence that could have stopped the plot. The Ger­mans have main­tained stead­fastly that the infor­ma­tion they had was too scanty to war­rant seri­ous alarm, and that their police and intel­li­gence agen­cies were not focused on Al Qaeda at the time.”

(Idem.)

33. “The doc­u­ments come from the files of var­i­ous Ger­man police and intel­li­gence agen­cies. They detail how close an inves­ti­ga­tion of Qaeda con­tacts in Ham­burg begun in 1997 by the Con­sti­tu­tional Pro­tec­tion Agency, Germany’s domes­tic intel­li­gence ser­vice, came to the main cell mem­bers. They were pro­vided to The New York Times by some­one with offi­cial access to the files of the con­tin­u­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into the events lead­ing to the Sept. 11 attacks. When the doc­u­ments were described to offi­cials at the Ger­man Inte­rior Min­istry and the con­sti­tu­tional pro­tec­tion police, they declined to answer any ques­tions about them but did not dis­pute their authenticity . . .”

(Idem.)

34. “Mr. Motas­sadeq admit­ted that he knew Mr. Atta and other plot­ters and had attended Qaeda train­ing camps in Afghanistan. He has main­tained in trial tes­ti­mony that he did not know that his friends were plan­ning to attack the United States. No evi­dence has been pre­sented at his three-month trial that would reveal when the police first opened an inquiry into Mr. Motas­sadeq. But the intel­li­gence agency doc­u­ments show that by August 1998 he was under sur­veil­lance and that the trail soon led to most of the main par­tic­i­pants in the later attacks.”

(Idem.)

35. “Accord­ing to the doc­u­ments, the sur­veil­lance was in place on Aug. 29, 1998, when Mr. Motas­sadeq and Mohamed Hay­dar Zam­mar, who had already been iden­ti­fied by police as a sus­pected extrem­ist, met at the Ham­burg home of Said Bahaji. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] The police mon­i­tored sev­eral other meet­ings between the men in the months that fol­lowed, the doc­u­ments said. The record of the meet­ing shows that police had iden­ti­fied Mr. Bahaji, another per­son sus­pected of being a cell mem­ber and believed to have been inti­mately involved in the plan­ning and logis­tics of the plot, who fled to Pak­istan days before the attacks. Mr. Bahaji later moved in with Mr. Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh in the now-infamous apart­ment at 54 Marien­strasse in the Har­burg sec­tion of Hamburg.”

(Idem.)

36. Embody­ing the his­tor­i­cal and strate­gic analy­sis of the Bat­tle of Men­with Hill, the pro­gram reprises an excerpt of text from the descrip­tion for FTR 119, from Decem­ber, 1998 and FTR 103, August, 1998.) “In the wake of the Cold War, the lines of polit­i­cal strug­gle are being redrawn, with poten­tial con­flict between the United States and Ger­many (and beyond, the German-dominated Euro­pean Union) threat­en­ing to replace the con­fronta­tion between the U.S. and for­mer U.S.S.R. In the field of intel­li­gence, the U.S.-German con­flict is already begin­ning to man­i­fest itself. This broad­cast sets forth some of the most impor­tant and recent devel­op­ments in the fric­tion between Amer­i­can and Ger­man intel­li­gence. After a brief dis­cus­sion of Germany’s expul­sion of an Amer­i­can diplo­mat who allegedly worked for the CIA, the broad­cast reprises a sec­tion of FTR 103 [orig­i­nally broad­cast in August of 1998]. This sec­tion of the pro­gram sets forth fric­tion between Ger­man intel­li­gence chief Bernd Schmid­bauer and the FBI over indus­trial spy­ing, as well as a con­sum­mately impor­tant story about attempts by the Euro­pean Union (read ‘Ger­many’) to com­pro­mise the National Secu­rity Agency’s vital Men­with Hill elec­tronic lis­ten­ing post in Eng­land. Mr. Emory has char­ac­ter­ized that pres­sure on the NSA facil­ity as an act of war and believes it to be (in the ‘Infor­ma­tion Age’) as strate­gi­cally sig­nif­i­cant as the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor in World War II.”

37. It is par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing to observe the con­trast between their pro­nounce­ments in the imme­di­ate after­math of the attacks and the truth con­cern­ing the sur­veil­lance of the Ham­burg 9/11 cell. August of 1998 was a fate­ful month. That was when the attacks on the US embassies in Africa took place, attrib­uted by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood to Bill Clinton’s need to dis­tract from the Mon­ica Lewin­sky affair. It was in this same time period that Sad­dam Hus­sein began tak­ing a more defi­ant line with UN weapons inspec­tors, per­haps tak­ing advan­tage of a weak­ened Bill Clin­ton. In this con­text, one should bear in mind that the Under­ground Reich (like Al Qaeda) is a “vir­tual state” lack­ing pre­cise geo­graph­i­cal bound­aries. The events tak­ing place inside the United States and in Africa and Ger­many in August of 1998 could be seen as part of a coor­di­nated effort, cul­mi­nat­ing in the polit­i­cal destruc­tion of the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion and, ulti­mately, the 9/11 attacks. Even­tu­ally the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion was replaced by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, the cen­tral ele­ment in the Under­ground Reich pres­ence in the United States.

38. In eval­u­at­ing the dis­cus­sion of the 9/11 attacks in the For The Record series, it is essen­tial to refer to FTR 391 a sum­mary analy­sis of the attacks and related events.

39. In eval­u­at­ing the mate­r­ial pre­sented above, the evi­dent fact emerges that the elder George Bush was the pri­mary Amer­i­can oper­a­tive involved in the US con­tri­bu­tion to the acqui­si­tion of Saddam’s arsenal.