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This broad­cast takes its name from an old tele­vi­sion game show. In turn, the title is a ref­er­ence to two deals (one appar­ent and one ver­i­fi­able) that are sig­nif­i­cant to an analy­sis of the events of 9/11, as well as the Iraq war. The appar­ent deal is one between Saudi Ara­bia and the United States. In exchange for a cover-up by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion of the Saudi links to 9/11 and the grant­ing of favors by the US to the Saudis in post-war Iraq, the Saudis are let­ting the US use Saudi bases against Iraq and are keep­ing oil pro­duc­tion at a level that will pre­vent an eco­nomic col­lapse. The other deal alluded to by the title is the Afghan pipeline deal that fig­ures in the 9/11 sce­nario. Most accounts of the nego­ti­a­tions focus on Uno­cal as the pri­mary busi­ness ele­ment on the US side. In fact, the nego­ti­a­tions were ini­ti­ated by the Argen­tinean oil com­pany Bridas, founded in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II. Inevitably, Bridas must have been con­nected to the Bor­mann/Juan Peron axis. The pro­gram lends cre­dence to the sce­nario con­cern­ing the Saudi deal-making in Wash­ing­ton D.C.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Saudi role in post-war Iraq; pro­jected Saudi influ­ence in keep­ing the Shi­ite major­ity sup­pressed in post-war Iraq; the Saudi agree­ment to keep pump­ing oil; the pos­si­ble award­ing of post-war recon­struc­tion con­tracts in Iraq to the Fluor cor­po­ra­tion; Fluor’s con­nec­tions to the Bin Laden eco­nomic inter­ests; sup­pres­sion by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion of Saudi reli­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion; Bush admin­is­tra­tion sup­pres­sion of Saudi links to 9/11 and related intel­li­gence fail­ures; com­par­i­son of 9/11 with the sub­ver­sion of France prior to, and dur­ing, World War II; the pro­jec­tion by Bush admin­is­tra­tion insid­ers of the need for a an event like “Pearl Har­bor”; attempts at por­tray­ing the inva­sion of Iraq as a Zion­ist con­spir­acy; the role of Bridas in ini­ti­at­ing the Afghan pipeline deal; the sub­se­quent nego­ti­a­tions of that deal in (of all places) Berlin; the cover-up of the Argentine/Nazi con­nec­tions of the Peron gov­ern­ment by the Per­o­nist regime of Car­los Menem; the indict­ment of Iran­ian nation­als for the AMIA bomb­ing; the con­nec­tions of that bomb­ing to the “tri-borders” area; review of Fran­cois Genoud asso­ciate Beau­doin Dunand’s role with the Bin Laden orga­ni­za­tion; an eerie fore­shad­ow­ing of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

1. Adding sub­stance to spec­u­la­tion, the pro­gram indi­cates that Saudi Arabia’s agree­ment to let the United States use bases in its ter­ri­tory for the attack on Iraq appears to be in exchange for influ­ence in post­war Iraq. In par­tic­u­lar, it looks as though the Saudis are bar­gain­ing for the con­tin­ued diminu­tion of the Shi­ite major­ity in that coun­try and (per­haps) the preser­va­tion of the mil­i­tary and rul­ing Baath party. “In an appar­ent attempt to secure an involve­ment in post-war plans for Iraq, Saudi Ara­bia has con­ceded to a range of US demands for facil­i­ties in the king­dom in the run up to any US attack, accord­ing to west­ern and Gulf diplo­matic sources. West­ern diplo­matic sources said the US had secured the use of the cru­cial air com­mand and con­trol cen­ter at the Prince Sul­tan air­base near Riyadh to co-ordinate the air cam­paign that will be mostly led out of neigh­bor­ing Qatar.” (“Saudis Con­cede to US Demands and Allow Use of Key Facil­i­ties” by Robin Allen and Roula Kha­laf; Finan­cial Times; 3/10/2003; p. 2.)

2. “As in the rest of the Gulf a chief con­sid­er­a­tion for Saudi Ara­bia after the war is to main­tain the ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity of Iraq and stem the influ­ence that Iran might have with Shia groups. The Saudis and oth­ers have argued that exist­ing Iraqi insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Ba’ath party and the mil­i­tary estab­lish­ment, should be main­tained in a post-war tran­si­tion to ensure sta­bil­ity and reduce the need for a long-term US pres­ence.” (Idem.)

3. Another part of the bar­gain dis­cussed above con­cerns Saudi oil pro­duc­tion. “Saudi Ara­bia said it will ensure the world will have enough oil in the event of a war with Iraq, even though OPEC mem­bers declined to endorse a pro­posal to sus­pend the cartel’s offi­cial pro­duc­tion lim­its if the U.S. invades. ‘There will be no short­age of oil,’ said Saudi Arabia’s oil min­is­ter, Ali Naimi. Mr. Naimi made the promise after mem­bers of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Petro­leum Export­ing Coun­tries tabled the Saudi-backed pro­posal. The Group left its out­put quo­tas unchanged even though world oil prices have surged to near $40 a bar­rel.” (“Saudis to Ensure Sup­ply of Oil If War Begins” by Bhushan Bahree and Thad­deus Her­rick; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 3/12/2003; p. A2.)

4. The pro­gram under­scores the fact that among the pri­mary bid­ders for recon­struc­tion con­tracts in post­war Iraq is the Fluor cor­po­ra­tion. ” . . . A hand­ful of U.S. con­struc­tion giants-including San Francisco’s Bech­tel Group Inc. as well as Hal­libur­ton Co. and Fluor Corp.-were invited to bid for the work on an emer­gency basis.” (“U.S. Tak­ing Bids for Rebuild­ing Iraq” by Peter Slevin and Mike Allen [Wash­ing­ton Post]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; p. B1.)

5. A Fluor sub­sidiary is closely asso­ci­ated with the Bin Laden busi­ness enter­prises. Inter­est­ingly (and, per­haps, sig­nif­i­cantly) the Daniels Realty Cor­po­ra­tion was involved with the recon­struc­tion of Kuwait after the first Gulf War. “Sico, as the par­ent com­pany of the group’s for­eign inter­ests, also has offices in Lon­don and in Cura­cao in the Dutch Antilles. The lat­ter out­post, estab­lished in 1984, man­ages among other things the rela­tions of the bin Laden group with an Amer­i­can com­pany, the Daniels Realty Cor­po­ra­tion, a sub­sidiary of the Fluor Cor­po­ra­tion, which, through the influ­ence of the bin Ladens, was awarded many recon­struc­tion con­tracts in Kuwait after the Gulf War.” (In the Name of Osama Bin Laden; by Roland Jacquard; Copy­right 2002 [SC]; Duke Uni­ver­sity Press; ISBN 0–8223-2991–3; p. 8.)

6. Indica­tive of pres­sure to cover-up the Saudi con­nec­tions to 9/11, a law­suit by alleged Al Qaeda financier Khalid Bin Fah­fouz (closely ass­so­ci­ated with the Bush busi­ness milieu) appears to be get­ting coop­er­a­tion from ele­ments of CIA. (For more about Bin Mah­fouz, see FTR 391 and the broad­casts ref­er­enced in the descrip­tion for it.) “When lawyers for the fam­i­lies of the Sept. 11 vic­tims filed a $1-trillion law­suit against banks, char­i­ties and indi­vid­u­als who pur­port­edly fun­neled money to Al Qaeda, they named as their lead inves­ti­ga­tor Jean-Charles Bris­ard, who had writ­ten a book on ter­ror­ist financ­ing. Now the French busi­ness ana­lyst and finan­cial inves­ti­ga­tor is him­self the sub­ject of a lawsuit-a libel suit filed by a bil­lion­aire Saudi banker, Khalid bin Mah­fouz whom Bris­ard has described as a key sup­porter of Osama bin Laden.” (“Top Inves­ti­gato in 9/11 Vic­tims’ Law­suit Faces Libel Action” by Ken Sil­ver­stein; Los Ange­les Times; 2/26/2003; p. A.18.)

7. “The suit against Bris­ard and coau­thor Guil­laume Dasquie, filed last Wednes­day in Belgium-and another filed two days ear­lier against The Mail on Sun­day, a British news­pa­per that has repeated sev­eral of Brisard’s assertions-lays out what is described as a series of sig­nif­i­cant errors in the book. If upheld, the libel action could under­mine Brisard’s cred­i­bil­ity and, by exten­sion, the Sept. 11 law­suit. Ronald Mot­ley, a lawyer for the Sept. 11 plain­tiffs, said he now plans to amend his com­plaint, filed in U.S. Dis­trict Court here, and addi­tion­ally charge Bin Mah­fouz with attempt­ing to intim­i­date a mate­r­ial wit­ness by pur­su­ing the libel action.” (Idem.)

8. ” ‘Bris­ard is an inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized expert, and Bin Mah­fouz is the king of ter­ror financiers and a rec­og­nized sup­porter of Bin Laden,’ Mot­ley said. But in the libel suit, Bin Mahfouz’s lawyers cited what they described as many false state­ments by Bris­ard and Dasquie-such as say­ing that the Saudi’s sis­ter is mar­ried to Bin Laden. The book, ‘For­bid­den Truth,’ describes a Saudi con­spir­acy to sup­port Al Qaeda. It calls Bin Mah­fouz the ‘banker of ter­ror’ and ‘one of the prin­ci­pal sup­port­ers of Osama bin Laden.’” (Idem.)

9. “Jean-Pierre van Cut­sem, an attor­ney for Bin Mah­fouz, is ask­ing for dam­ages, legal expenses and a halt to fur­ther pub­li­ca­tion of the book, which was pub­lished in late 2001 in France and last year in the United States and Britain. The com­plaint, filed in Bel­gium because France has a three-month statute of lim­i­ta­tions for libel cases, said the book is ‘based on false and unver­i­fied infor­ma­tion [that] cast a slur’ on Bin Mah­fouz, who has vig­or­ously denied sup­port­ing ter­ror­ist groups or activ­i­ties . . .” (Idem.)

10. The appar­ent rever­sal of field by for­mer CIA direc­tor James Woolsey is frankly sus­pi­cious under the cir­cum­stances. In dis­claim­ing his alle­ga­tions of Bin Mahfouz’s rela­tion­ship (by mar­riage) to Bin Laden, Woolsey says he was refer­ring to a “Mr. Hafous.” Khalid Bin Mah­fouz is one of the most pow­er­ful fig­ures in Saudi Ara­bia and Woolsey is no fool. Woolsey’s alleged con­fu­sion is not cred­i­ble under the cir­cum­stances and may well be indica­tive of pres­sure from ele­ments of CIA and/or the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that Bin Mahfouz’s attor­ney is Cherif Sedky, asso­ci­ated with the SAAR Foun­da­tion (itself a focal point of terrorism-funding inves­ti­ga­tions). The SAAR Foun­da­tion was cen­tral to the milieu tar­geted by the all-important “Oper­a­tion Green Quest” raids of 3/20/2002. ” . . . Spe­cific state­ments that Bin Mah­fouz con­sid­ers libelous include the book’s asser­tion, cit­ing con­gres­sional tes­ti­mony by for­mer CIA Direc­tor R. James Woolsey in 1998, that the banker’s ‘close ties’ to Bin Laden were strength­ened sister’s mar­riage to the ter­ror­ist leader. This state­ment was repeated in the Sept. 11 rel­a­tives’ law­suit, which iden­ti­fies the sis­ter as ‘Kaleda.’ Cherif Sedky, an Amer­i­can lawyer who lives in Saudi Ara­bia and is Bin Mahfouz’s chief legal advi­sor, said the banker has no sis­ter with that name, nor any sis­ter mar­ried to Bin Laden.” (Idem.)

11. “In his tes­ti­mony, Woolsey, who left the CIA in 1995, said his infor­ma­tion was not based on U.S. gov­ern­ment sources. In a recent inter­view, he said his tes­ti­mony referred to a ‘Mr. Hafous,’ not Mah­fouz. Other com­ments Woolsey made dur­ing his tes­ti­mony strongly sug­gest that he was refer­ring to Bin Mah­fouz, but he now dis­putes the remarks attrib­uted to him by Bris­ard. ‘I don’t know what to say other than that there was some con­fu­sion, but I never meant to refer to Bin Mahfouz’s sis­ter,’ Woolsey said . . . ” (Ibid.; pp. A18-19.)

12. “Bris­ard stands by his report­ing. He said last week a Bin Laden rel­a­tive con­firmed the mar­riage of Bin Laden and Bin Mahfouz’s sis­ter. He also said he has seen bank trans­fers and reports that clearly link Al Qaeda with National Com­mer­cial Bank. Bin Mahfouz’s name does not appear on the Trea­sury Department’s list of indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions that pro­vide finan­cial or other sup­port to ter­ror­ists, and his alleged role in spon­sor­ing ter­ror­ism is the sub­ject of debate within the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­nity.” (Idem.)

13. Among the indi­ca­tions of the con­tin­ued cod­dling of the Saudis is Bush admin­is­tra­tion sup­pres­sion of the Saudi regime’s con­tin­ued abo­li­tion of reli­gious free­dom in the king­dom. “In a move expected to infu­ri­ate reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives and human-rights advo­cates alike, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has decided to reject the rec­om­men­da­tion of a spe­cial gov­ern­ment com­mis­sion to place Saudi Ara­bia on an Amer­i­can black­list of coun­tries that vio­late reli­gious free­dom . . .” (“No ‘Par­tic­u­lar Con­cern’” by Michael Isikoff; Newsweek; 3/10/2003; p. 8.)

14. ” . . . One com­mis­sioner, Richard Land of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, weighed in with White House aides, describ­ing it as a high-priority item for evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians. Land tells Newsweek he was greatly influ­enced by a brief­ing the com­mis­sion got last fall in which human-rights groups and reli­gious dis­si­dents described how the Saudi reli­gious police raided the homes of for­eign work­ers prac­tic­ing Chris­tian­ity and threw them into over­crowded pris­ons with squalid con­di­tions. ‘It’s unthink­able to me that our gov­ern­ment is not press­ing the Saudis on this,’ says Land. But senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, includ­ing some at the White House, con­cluded that pub­licly chastis­ing the Saudis would be counterproductive-and might inter­fere with broader U.S. inter­ests in the region. That stand appeared to pay off last week: after months of resis­tance, Saudi Ara­bia agreed to allow the United States to use its air bases in the event of war with Iraq.” (Idem.)

15. Among those of us who carry sus­pi­cions con­cern­ing the Bush administration’s active cover-up of the Saudi links to 9/11 is Florida Sen­a­tor Bob Gra­ham. “What prompted Florida Sen­a­tor Bob Gra­ham to join the Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial sweep­stakes last week? The 66-year-old Graham-who recently had heart surgery-has toyed with the idea of run­ning for years, but says he always lacked ‘fire in the belly.’ What gave it to him this time, he tells Newsweek, was his expe­ri­ence last year over­see­ing a joint House-Senate inquiry into the events of 9–11. Gra­ham says he became ‘out­raged’ by the intel­li­gence and law-enforcement fail­ures dis­cov­ered by the inquiry-most of which he charges, are still being sup­pressed by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. The inquiry’s 400-page report can’t be pub­licly released because the admin­is­tra­tion won’t declas­sify key por­tions. Gra­ham says the report doc­u­ments far more mis­cues by the FBI and CIA than have been pub­licly revealed, as well as still unpur­sued leads point­ing to ‘facil­i­ta­tion’ of the hijack­ers by a ‘sov­er­eign nation.’ (Sources say the coun­try is Saudi Ara­bia.) ‘There’s been a cover-up of this,’ Gra­ham said.” (“Gra­ham His 9–11 ‘Out­rage’” by Michael Isikoff; Newsweek; 3/10/2003; p. 8.)

16. The 9/11 attacks con­sti­tute an event as com­pli­cated as they are impor­tant. The attacks could be viewed as “Pearl Har­bor meets the Reich­stag Fire.” They were, indeed, a sneak attack by a hos­tile for­eign power (the vir­tual state that is the Under­ground Reich.) It was also uti­lized by an inter­nal Fifth Col­umn that was con­nected to the attack­ers through struc­tural eco­nomic rela­tion­ships to insti­tute the foun­da­tions of fas­cism. This broad­cast com­pares the attacks to the Ger­man inva­sion of France in World War II. The Ger­man inva­sion was not a “provo­ca­tion” as such, but it was used to imple­ment fas­cism is France. (The Franco-German axis that opposed the Amer­i­can inva­sion of Iraq is reflec­tive of the foun­da­tions of the events prior to, dur­ing, and after World War II.) “Enough evi­dence has been pub­lished already to prove that France was stabbed in the back by those who saw in Hitler the new St. George who would slay the Com­mu­nist dragon. When Pierre Lazareff, for­mer editor-in-chief of Paris Soir (the French news­pa­per with the widest cir­cu­la­tion), reports roy­al­ists as say­ing: ‘We need the defeat to wipe out the Repub­lic;’ when Elie Bois, for­mer edi­tor of the Petit Parisien (the most influ­en­tial polit­i­cal news­pa­per), reports great indus­tri­al­ists admit­ting to him, dur­ing the win­ter of 1939–1940, that a plot had been orga­nized to replace the demo­c­ra­tic regime by a ‘gov­ern­ment of author­ity’ and that this plot pre­sup­posed a Nazi vic­tory; when Ana­tole de Monzie writes, in a book passed by the cen­sor of the Vichy gov­ern­ment, that Mar­shal Petain said in Feb­ru­ary, 1940: ‘They will appeal to me in the third week in May’; when Genevieve Tabouis tells of the work accom­plished in the Parisian salons by the Fifth Column’s ‘brigade mondaine’; when Henri de Ker­il­lis, for­mer offi­cer and nation­al­ist deputy, exposes the inroads of the Fifth Col­umn in the con­ser­v­a­tive and mil­i­tary cir­cles which he knew; when Henry Tor­res reveals to us what was going on in the offices of the offi­cial pro­pa­ganda . . . we have every rea­son to accept their affir­ma­tions, which tally so per­fectly with the events.” (Tri­umph of Trea­son; by Pierre Cot; Copy­right 1944 [HC]; Ziff-Davis; p. 63.)

17. Fore­shad­ow­ing the attacks in an omi­nous way is the phras­ing of an analy­sis of The Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tury. Com­posed of “embeds” in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, this group hypoth­e­sized about the need for a “Pearl Harbor-like event” in order to cat­alyze the Amer­i­can pub­lic behind their agenda. “In 1992, just before Bush’s father was defeated by Bill Clin­ton, Wol­fowitz wrote a blue­print to ‘set the nation’s direc­tion for the next cen­tury,’ which is now the for­eign pol­icy of George W. Bush. Enti­tled ‘Defense Plan­ning Guid­ance,’ it put an onus on the Pen­ta­gon to ‘estab­lish and pro­tect a new order’ under unchal­lenged Amer­i­can author­ity. The US, it said, must be sure of ‘deter­ring poten­tial com­peti­tors from even aspir­ing to a larger regional or global role’-including Ger­many and Japan. It con­tem­plated the use of nuclear, bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weaponry pre-emptively, ‘even in con­flicts that do not directly engage US inter­ests.’ Wolfowitz’s group for­mal­ized itself into a group called Project for the New Amer­i­can Cen­tury, which included Cheney and another old friend, for­mer Pen­ta­gon Under-Secretary for Pol­icy under Rea­gan, Richard Perle.” (“Two Men Dri­ving Bush into War” by Ed Vul­liamy; The Observer; 2/23/2003; pp. 3–4.)

18. “In a doc­u­ment two years ago, the Project pon­dered that what was needed to assure US global power was ‘some cat­a­strophic and cat­alyz­ing event, like a new Pearl Har­bor.’ The doc­u­ment had noted that ‘while the unre­solved con­flict with Iraq pro­vides imme­di­ate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion’ for inter­ven­tion, ‘the need for a sub­stan­tial Amer­i­can force pres­ence in the Gulf tran­scends the issue of the regime of Sad­dam Hus­sein.’” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

19. The blame for the agenda of the Under­ground Reich ele­ments in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is being shifted to “the Jews.” “Exhibit A for this plot is a doc­u­ment enti­tled ‘A Clean Break: A New Strat­egy for Secur­ing the Realm,’ pre­pared in 1996 by a group of Amer­i­can defense thinkers for the hard-line Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu of Israel. This study pro­posed an aggres­sive redi­rec­tion of Israeli strat­egy, includ­ing a plan for ‘remov­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein from Power.’ Three of the authors of the pre­scrip­tion Richard Perle, Dou­glas Feith and David Wurmser-are now promi­nent embeds’ in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion.” (“Is It Good for the Jews?” by Bill Keller; The New York Times; 3/8/2003; pp. 1–2.)

20. “The ‘Clean Break’ group, inter­est­ingly, did not call for an Amer­i­can con­quest of Sad­dam. . . .They pro­posed that Israel han­dle it together with Jor­dan and Turkey. Jordan’s Hasemite dynasty would share the man­age­ment of Iraq with the Shiites-presumably leav­ing the fate of the poor Kurds in Turk­ish hands. As for Amer­ica, the doc­u­ment pro­posed that Israel adopt a new pol­icy of self-reliance, imme­di­ately declin­ing eco­nomic aid and, even­tu­ally, mil­i­tary assis­tance. This was all a bit much, even for the ultra­na­tion­al­ist Mr. Netanyahu. A less conspiracy-minded observer might point out that the long­stand­ing Bushite ani­mos­ity toward Iraq is com­plex and hardly secret, and the fact that our inter­ests coin­cide with Israel’s does not mean that a Zion­ist fifth col­umn has hijacked the president’s brain. But that would not sat­isfy the yearn­ing for a sim­ple story.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

21. There has been con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble role in the 9/11 attacks of a pro­posed Afghan pipeline across Afghanistan. (For more about this pro­posed deal, see FTR#‘s 328, 334, 337, 362.) Inter­est­ingly (and, per­haps, sig­nif­i­cantly), this deal was first pro­posed by the Argen­tine oil com­pany Bridas, founded in the imme­di­ate post-World War II period under Juan Peron. “One man would meet these expec­ta­tions and was instru­men­tal in solic­it­ing out­side help to bring the Tal­iban to power. Nat­u­rally, it was an oil­man. But Car­los Bul­gheroni is not Saudi Ara­bian, or Pak­istani, or Amer­i­can; he is Argen­tinean. He is the pres­i­dent of Bridas, the fourth-largest energy group in Latin Amer­i­can, based in Buenos Aires and founded after World War II. In the 1970’s, Bridas exec­u­tives rec­og­nized the neces­sity of forg­ing part­ner­ships with new exec­u­tives in the for­mer Soviet Republics, espe­cially in Turk­menistan. From their offices in Islam­abad, they envi­sioned a sta­ble Afghanistan run by lead­ers who were will­ing to coop­er­ate with them so they could build oil and gas pipelines con­nect­ing Turke­menistan to Pak­istan. Bul­gheroni struck his first deal with the gov­ern­ment of Turke­menistan in Jan­u­ary 1992 to exploit a gas field in Daulatabad. On March 15, 1995, he brought together Pak­istani and Turk­men offi­cials, who signed an agree­ment in prin­ci­ple for the con­struc­tion of a pipeline cross­ing Afghanistan.” (For­bid­den Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplo­macy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden; by Jean-Charles Bris­ard & Guil­laume Dasquie; Copy­right 2002 Jean-Charles Bris­ard & Guil­laume Dasquie; pub­lished by Thun­ders Mouth Press/Nation Books [SC]; ISBN 1–56025-414–9; p. 17.)

22. “At that point, Bul­gheroni invited other oil com­pa­nies to join his busi­ness ven­ture, includ­ing Uno­cal, one of the largest oil cor­po­ra­tions in the United States. The Union Oil Com­pany of Cal­i­for­nia was founded in Santa Paula in 1890, and changed its name to Uno­cal Cor­po­ra­tion in 1983. One of the suc­cess sto­ries of the energy indus­try, it became, under the direc­tion of its pres­i­dent, Roger Beach, one of the ‘world’s largest inde­pen­dent oil and gas pro­duc­ers’ in the 1990s. A savvy busi­ness­man, Beach imme­di­ately rec­og­nized the poten­tial of Car­los Bulgheroni’s offer-so much so that he decided he could do with­out Bridas’s ser­vices and invest in the region with­out their help. To improve his bar­gain­ing posi­tion and get finan­cial back­ing, he enlisted the help of another group, the Saudi com­pany Delta Oil.” (Ibid.; pp. 17–18.)

23. These nego­ti­a­tions took place in Berlin. Was the Under­ground Reich mon­i­tor­ing these negotiations-perhaps uti­liz­ing them to help fur­ther the 9/11 attacks? Recall, in that con­text, that Al Qaeda was aware of these nego­ti­a­tions, that the now-bankrupt Enron was (appar­ently) bro­ker­ing the poten­tial deal, and that Al Qaeda may well have used the nego­ti­a­tions as “cover” for fur­ther­ing their plans for 9/11. “Accord­ing to Niaz Naik, at least three rounds of meet­ings took place in Ger­many, under Vendrell’s author­ity, in Novem­ber 2000, and then March and July 2001. The meet­ings focused on get­ting the Tal­iban to sign an armistice with the North­ern Alliance, cre­at­ing a gov­ern­ment of national unity, and obtain­ing the extra­di­tion of Osama bin Laden. ‘We would . . . try to con­vey to them that if they did cer­tain things, then, grad­u­ally, they could win the jackpot-get some­thing in return from the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity.’ The objec­tive was to con­vince the Tal­iban that once a broad-based gov­ern­ment of national unity was installed and the pipeline project was in the works, there would be bil­lions of dol­lars in commission-of which the Tal­iban, with their own resources, would get a cut.” (Ibid.; pp. 41–42.)

24. “Every­one involved wanted the rad­i­cal regime to peace­fully cede some of its power, and to sub­scribe to U.S. pri­or­i­ties. But the deal fell short. In Berlin, on July 17, a third secret meet­ing was sup­posed to occur. Two days ear­lier, on July 15, the weekly news­pa­per Focus announced that a meet­ing was sched­uled to take place in the Ger­man cap­i­tal between the Tal­iban for­eign min­is­ter and his coun­ter­part in the North­ern Alliance, Abdul­lah Abdul­lah. But the Tal­iban rep­re­sen­ta­tive never showed up . . . In the course of these last talks in Berlin, and in the absence of Tal­iban rep­re­sen­ta­tives, accord­ing to the Pak­istani rep­re­sen­ta­tive Naiz Naik, the small Amer­i­can del­e­ga­tion men­tioned using a ‘mil­i­tary option’ against the Tal­iban if they did not agree to change their posi­tion, espe­cially con­cern­ing Osama bin Laden.” (Ibid.; pp. 42–43.)

25. Indica­tive of the pro­found nature of the rela­tion­ship between Peron’s Argentina and the Under­ground Reich is the “dis­ap­pear­ance” of Argen­tine gov­ern­ment files about the impor­ta­tion of Nazi war crim­i­nals after World War II. (Recall that-as dis­cussed in FTR#‘s 130, 131, 305-the Peron regime was very close to the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. Bor­mann and Peron held a joint bank account, founded in 1941.) “Under fire because of a new book that doc­u­ments for the first time how Juan Peron clan­des­tinely maneu­vered to bring Nazi and other war crim­i­nals to Argentina after World War II, the Per­o­nist gov­ern­ment here is resist­ing calls to release long-secret offi­cial records about the col­lab­o­ra­tion. Accord­ing to the Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­ter here, both the For­eign Rela­tions Min­istry and the Inte­rior Min­istries have failed to respond to let­ters, sent to them shortly after the book was pub­lished here late last year, ask­ing that the records be made pub­lic. In addi­tion, seven mem­bers of con­gress have now called for an inves­ti­ga­tion into how cru­cial immi­gra­tion records were appar­ently destroyed six years ago in defi­ance of exist­ing laws.” (“Argentina, a Haven for Nazis, Balks at Open­ing Its Files” by Larry Rohter; The New York Times; 3/10/2003; p. 1.)

26. “The book, that ignited the con­tro­versy, pub­lished in the United States as The Real Odessa: Smug­gling the Nazis to Peron’s Argentina (Granta Books: 2002), has become a best seller here. Its author, Uki Goni, is an Argen­tine jour­nal­ist who had to do much of his research in Euro­pean archives after encoun­ter­ing closed doors here. ‘This is an issue of cred­i­bil­ity and trans­parency,’ Mr. Goni said in an inter­view.” (Idem.)

27. “But he also said he rec­og­nized the polit­i­cal explo­sive­ness of the doc­u­ments since they demon­strated ‘just how closely linked Argentina and the Third Reich were and prove the exis­tence of a secret post­war orga­ni­za­tion that involved Peron and pro­vided a safe haven to Nazis.’ Accord­ing to records Mr. Goni has uncov­ered here and abroad, Peron’s gov­ern­ment, which was in power from 1946 to 1955, shep­herded nearly 300 war crim­i­nals into the coun­try.” (Idem.)

28. Note that, among the Argentine/Nazi émigré milieu are Adolf Eich­mann and Klaus Bar­bie. The tri­als of both Bar­bie and Eich­mann were financed by Fran­cois Genoud. Klaus Barbie’s attor­ney was Jacques Verges, a pro­tégé of Genoud. Verges’ law partner-Isabel Coutant-Peyre-is the future wife of Car­los the Jackal, another pro­tégé of Genoud’s. Coutant-Peyre, in turn, is the French attor­ney for Zacharias Mous­saoui, the accused 20th hijacker. It can be asserted that the Moussaoui/Coutant-Peyre rela­tion­ship mir­rors the Franco/German axis and its geopo­lit­i­cal con­fronta­tion with the US. “Besides such noto­ri­ous fig­ures as Adolf Eich­mann, Josef Men­gele and Klaus Bar­bie, dozens of French, Bel­gian, Ital­ian, Croa­t­ian and Slo­vak fas­cists, many of them Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors sought in their home nations, were also admit­ted, some under aliases, oth­ers under their real names. The doc­u­ments indi­cate that the covert net­work was run directly from the pres­i­den­tial palace here by Rodolfo Freude, A German-Argentine who was one of Peron’s clos­est advis­ers. At the same time, Mr. Freude was both run­ning Peron’s pro­pa­ganda appa­ra­tus and serv­ing as direc­tor of the newly founded state intel­li­gence ser­vice . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

29. Born in Syria, linked to fas­cist ele­ments in Syria that are-in turn-linked to fas­cist ele­ments in the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, Car­los Menem rep­re­sents the Per­o­nist party. His admin­is­tra­tion destroyed the records about the Peron/Nazi con­nec­tion. ” . . . In 1992, the pres­i­dent at the time, Car­los Saul Menem, also a Per­o­nist, ordered that all doc­u­ments relat­ing to the Argen­tine government’s deal­ings with the Nazis be made pub­lic. But that decree, like the find­ings of a For­eign Min­istry com­mis­sion set up in 1997 to exam­ine sim­i­lar links, appears to have pro­duced lit­tle of use to his­to­ri­ans or vic­tims of the war crim­i­nals who set­tled here.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

30. The AMIA cen­ter in Argentina was a repos­i­tory for Jew­ish records about Argen­tine war crim­i­nals. Its destruc­tion in 1994 was allegedly aided by the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment. There are also sig­nif­i­cant evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries con­nect­ing the AMIA bomb­ing to the milieu of Tim­o­thy McVeigh and the Syr­ian milieu of Monzer al-Kassar and Car­los Menem. “An Argen­tine judge has ordered arrest war­rants for four Iran­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials who he says helped orga­nize and carry out the 1994 bomb­ing of a Jew­ish com­mu­nity cen­ter in Buenos Aires that left 85 peo­ple dead. But the judge balked at a rec­om­men­da­tion by pros­e­cu­tors that more than a dozen more senior Iran­ian offi­cials, includ­ing Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s spir­i­tual leader, also be indicted. He offered no pub­lic com­ment, and the deci­sion is likely to inten­sify crit­i­cism that he has not pur­sued the case aggres­sively enough. The 400-page rul­ing, by Judge Jose Galeano, made pub­lic Sat­ur­day, was the first time Argentina has for­mally accused Iran of involve­ment in the blast that occurred July 18, 1994, and was the dead­liest sin­gle anti-Semitic inci­dent since World War II.” (“Ira­ni­ans Accused in Bomb­ing of Argen­tine Jew­ish Cen­ter” by Larry Rohter [New York Times]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 3/10/2003; p. A9.)

31. The AMIA bomb­ing was allegedly staged in the “tri-border” area used by Islamists and Al Qaeda. This area was also a way sta­tion for Nazi war crim­i­nals on the run. “The CIA and Israel’s Mossad spy agency say ter­ror­ists used the tri-border area to plot deadly bomb­ings of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992 and a Jew­ish cen­ter in Buenos Aires in 1994. There is ample evi­dence that Hamas and Hezbollah-two mil­i­tant Islamist orga­ni­za­tions that con­duct ter­ror­ist operations-use the region as a finan­cial cen­ter.” (“Al-Qaida Pres­ence in Brazil Renews Fears in South Amer­ica” by Kevin G. Hall; San Jose Mer­cury News; 3/14/2003; p. 7A.)

32. The pro­gram fur­ther under­scores the fact that Genoud asso­ciate and attor­ney Beau­doin Dunand is the co-chairman of the board of direc­tors of Sico, the hold­ing com­pany for the Saudi Bin Laden Group. “This com­pany [Sico], estab­lished by the bin Ladens in 1980, is the flag­ship for the group’s activ­i­ties in Europe. It is headed by Yeslam bin Laden, and the board of direc­tors is made up almost exclu­sively of mem­bers of the fam­ily clan, except for a Swiss cit­i­zen, Bau­doin Dunand. This well-known lawyer from French-speaking Switzer­land, who is on the boards of sev­eral dozen com­pa­nies, came to pub­lic notice in 1983, when he agreed to rep­re­sent the Swiss banker Fran­cois Genoud, a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure who had been a dis­ci­ple of Hitler and sole heir of Goebbels’s copy­rights before becom­ing one of the financiers of the FLN dur­ing the Alger­ian War.” (In the Name of Osama Bin Laden; p. 17.)

33. In con­clu­sion, the pro­gram presents a gam­bit pro­posed by the Baader-Meinhof gang. Closely asso­ci­ated with Fran­cois Genoud, this orga­ni­za­tion pro­posed to send anthrax through the mail, not unlike what was done in the US just after 9/11. Was this a prece­dent for 9/11 and, per­haps, an oper­a­tional par­a­digm? “In the 1980’s, the Ger­man far-left Baader-Meinhof ter­ror­ist gang threat­ened to spread anthrax bac­te­ria through the mail in West Ger­many, but the threat was never car­ried out.” (Ibid.; p. 153.)