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Focus­ing on an appar­ent resump­tion of Al Qaeda ter­ror­ist attacks in the Mid­dle East, the pro­gram high­lights the influ­ence of the Iraq war on Al Qaeda efforts. Much of the broad­cast cen­ters on Saudi “Islamo-imperialism”—the pro­found influ­ence that benighted coun­try has engi­neered from the dual influ­ences of its tremen­dous petroleum-derived wealth and the pres­ence of two of Islam’s holi­est sites within its bor­ders (Mecca and Med­ina.) These fac­tors, in addi­tion to the poverty of most Mus­lim con­gre­ga­tions around the world, have enabled the house of Saud to wield its total­i­tar­ian influ­ence with very lit­tle hin­drance. After set­ting forth an appar­ent upsurge of rad­i­cal Islamist sen­ti­ment around the world, the broad­cast details the Saudis’ pro­mo­tion of their extrem­ist Wah­habi­ism around the world. In addi­tion to reli­gion, the wealth derived from oil has enabled the Saudis to fund ter­ror­ists with rel­a­tive impunity. In addi­tion to review­ing the pow­er­ful Al Rajhi family’s alleged involve­ment with ter­ror financ­ing and the milieu of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002, the broad­cast under­scores the use of Saudi reli­gious char­i­ties and busi­ness fronts to finance groups like Al Qaeda. This has pre­sented great obsta­cles to inves­ti­ga­tors and legal sys­tems around the world, who have been impeded in their pur­suit of ter­ror­ists by the legal quan­daries pre­sented by the Islam­o­fas­cist abuse of reli­gion and business.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Recent attacks on US com­pounds in Saudi Ara­bia; the Saudis’ fail­ure to appre­hend the sus­pects in a raid shortly before the attacks; indi­ca­tions that the attack­ers had “con­nec­tions on the inside;” Saudi fail­ure to heed US warn­ings about an impend­ing attack; Yemeni author­i­ties’ per­mis­sion of an escape of Al Qaeda sus­pects in the attack on the USS Cole; Germany’s shock­ing fail­ure to pros­e­cute Al Qaeda sus­pect Chris­t­ian Ganczarski; the omi­nous loot­ing of the Iraqi Al Tawaitha nuclear facil­ity and the pos­si­bil­ity that it could lead to future “dirty bomb” attacks.

1. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of the appar­ent regroup­ing of Al Qaeda, dri­ven by a rise in Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ism, dri­ven by the U.S. inva­sion of Iraq.

“Lead­ers and oper­a­tives of Al-Qaida have regrouped and set up bases in at least a half-dozen loca­tions, includ­ing Kenya, Sudan, Pak­istan and Chech­nya, senior counter-terrorism offi­cials said Fri­day . . . Ear­lier in the year, it seemed as if the group had been seri­ously and pos­si­bly irrepara­bly dam­aged. But since the United States invaded Iraq in March, offi­cials said, the net­work had expe­ri­enced a spike in recruit­ment. ‘There is an increase in rad­i­cal fun­da­men­tal­ism all over the world,’ said a senior counter-terrorism offi­cial based in Europe.’”

(“Al-Qaida Set­ting Up New Bases” by David John­ston and Don Van Natta Jr. [New York Times]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 5/17/2003; p. 12A.)

2. The “regroup­ing out­lined above should come as no sur­prise, since the areas des­ig­nated as new Al Qaeda epi­cen­ters have pre­vi­ously served as the­aters of Al Qaeda oper­a­tions. At the foun­da­tion of Al Qaeda’s exis­tence is Saudi “Islamo-imperialism”—financed with that country’s vast petro­leum wealth and real­ized through its pos­ses­sion of Mecca and Med­ina. (The lat­ter are two of the three holi­est sites in Islam.) It is note­wor­thy that Saudi Ara­bia (which finances the PLO) has never signed the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights, pub­lish­ing instead an oppos­ing “Islamic Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights.” “In order to cre­ate a shadow of the U.N.’s sys­tem of inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions with Islamic equiv­a­lents, Saudi Ara­bia spon­sored the draft­ing of ‘an Islamic Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights,’ oppos­ing the ‘Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights,’ of 1948. Although it was a found­ing mem­ber of the U.N. in 1945, Saudi Ara­bia did not rat­ify this dec­la­ra­tion and has no inten­tion of rec­og­niz­ing it. Exam­in­ing the kingdom’s tools of ‘Mus­lim diplo­macy’ in this way illus­trates one of the major prin­ci­ples of the House of Saud. ‘The dynasty and the great fam­i­lies,’ explains a Euro­pean mil­i­tary attache, ‘share the con­vic­tion that the uni­ver­sal­ity of West­ern cul­ture is fac­ti­tious and that to escape its influ­ence it is nec­es­sary to pro­mote a Mus­lim counter-culture that will redeem all of humanity.’”

(Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The United States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000 [SC]; Algora Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; p. 238.)

3. Doc­u­ment­ing the method­ol­ogy of Saudi Islamo-imperialism, the broad­cast high­lights the country’s use of Non-Governmental Orga­ni­za­tions and Islamic char­i­ties to pro­mote Islamism around the world.

“The World Islamic League is one of the prin­ci­pal tools by which they exploit Islam at the inter­na­tional level. Cre­ated in Decem­ber 1962, as an out­growth of the ‘Islamic sum­mit’ con­vened that year in Mecca by King Fay­cal bin Abde­laziz, its statutes pro­vide that its Gen­eral Sec­re­tary must be of Saudi nation­al­ity and have a diplo­matic pass­port. In 1995, King Fahd him­self nom­i­nated Abdul­lah bin Saleh al-Obaid. One of his pre­de­ces­sors became the vice-president of the Majlis al-Choura (the Con­sul­ta­tive Assem­bly); the grand mufti of the king­dom Abdu­laziz Bin Baz, is pres­i­dent of its legal com­mit­tee. Rep­re­sented in 120 coun­tries, it remains an essen­tial for­eign pol­icy tool of the Saudis.”

(Idem.)

4.

“ ‘The League, or the orga­ni­za­tions that depend on it, has to its credit sev­eral spec­tac­u­lar con­struc­tions in Europe: the Islamic Cen­ter of Brus­sels and the mosques of Madrid, Rome, Kens­ing­ton and Copen­hagen,’ writes the jour­nal­ist Antoine Sfeir, edi­tor of Books of the East. ‘In France, the League does not directly inter­vene in finan­cial arrange­ments. It is used as an inter­me­di­ary for advis­ing and direct­ing pos­si­ble investors. It is used as an inter­me­di­ary for advis­ing and direct­ing pos­si­ble investors. It thus lent a hand to the National Fed­er­a­tion of Mus­lims of France (FNMF) when it needed it. It helps projects that are on the verge of bank­ruptcy: the mosque of Mantes-la-Jolie, launched with the joint gen­eros­ity of Morocco and Libya, was fin­ished thanks to that of the Saudis. Sim­i­larly, the mosque in Evry proved to be a finan­cial black­hole and cost the League nearly $5 million.’”

(Ibid.; pp. 238–239.)

5.

“A small part of the oil rev­enue is thus devoted to the con­struc­tion of mosques and Islamic cen­ters every­where in the world: Ottawa, Que­bec, Toronto, Brasilia, Lis­bon, Gibral­tar and Zanz­ibar . . . the mosque of the Islamic Cen­ter of Rome caused a great fuss because the plan for its minaret was higher than the dome of Saint-Peter (as well as the giant mosque of Beth­le­hem). Indone­sia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, Argentina, Mau­ri­ta­nia and Dji­bouti have also ben­e­fited from Saudi gen­eros­ity. Today, the king­dom finances 875 Islamic soci­eties and cen­ters in the world.”

(Ibid.; p. 239.)

6. Note that the WAMY and the IIRO have been deeply impli­cated in the fund­ing of Islamist terrorism.

“The Sauds’ ‘Mus­lim diplo­macy’ is also expressed through the financ­ing of char­i­ta­ble soci­eties and other char­i­ta­ble insti­tu­tions whose activ­i­ties always fall some­where between the reli­gious, the polit­i­cal and the human­i­tar­ian. It would be tire­some as well as use­less to enu­mer­ate an exhaus­tive list. Let us cite only the World Asso­ci­a­tion of Mus­lim Youth, and the Orga­ni­za­tion of the Inter­na­tional Islamic Relief Organization—IIRO, whose pub­li­ca­tions are par­tic­u­larly aggres­sive with respect to other reli­gions, espe­cially Christianity.”

(Idem.)

7.

“This last orga­ni­za­tion, which funds many ‘mis­sion­ar­ies’ abroad, uses them as the inter­me­di­ary in main­tain­ing rela­tion­ships with most, if not all, of the known Islamist groups. A sub­sidiary orga­ni­za­tion of the World Islamic League, the IIRO was deeply involved in Bosnia, and Pres­i­dent Izetbe­govic reg­u­larly trav­eled to Riyadh to request finan­cial aid from his co-religionists. The mate­r­ial and finan­cial sup­port avail­able to these ‘mis­sion­ar­ies’ makes one won­der whether one of their roles, and per­haps their pri­mary objec­tive, is to acquire the favor or the neu­tral­ity of the impov­er­ished coun­tries toward which they are directed, toward the Iran­ian intrigues and com­pe­ti­tion from Shi­ite expansion.”

(Idem.)

8.

“ ‘In the same way, Saudi ‘char­ity’ with regard to ‘minor­ity or oppressed Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions’ in Pales­tine, Afghanistan, Soma­lia, in Bosnia at one time, in Chech­nya and Kosovo today, is hard to see as being dis­in­ter­ested,’ explains an expert in Islamic finances. He adds: ‘Nev­er­mind what all the offi­cial state­ments claim, it is not Islam but money that is at the heart of the Saudi sys­tem.’ In addi­tion to the State appa­ra­tuses and the offi­cial foun­da­tions, these ‘diplo­matic funds’ require such flu­id­ity and such silence in the face of any prob­ing that it became nec­es­sary to cre­ate bank­ing fronts as dis­creet they are effective.’”

(Ibid.; pp. 239–240.)

9. The next por­tion of the pro­gram con­sists of the read­ing of three arti­cles in the same issue of The Wall Street Jour­nal. Although it was buried deep in the paper, an arti­cle about the BCCI case touched on that piv­otal insti­tu­tion. The BCCI case is at the core of the Saudi/Islamist/intelligence nexus, and is insep­a­ra­ble from the inves­ti­ga­tion into Al Qaeda.

“The liq­uida­tors of Bank of Credit & Com­merce Inter­na­tional, which col­lapsed in 1991, said they will pay a fur­ther $1.2 bil­lion to cred­i­tors fol­low­ing a set­tle­ment with for­mer employ­ees of the bank.”

(“BCCI Liq­uida­tors Plan to Pay $1.2 Bil­lion More to Cred­i­tors” by David Pringle; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/15/2003; p. C13.)

10. Through­out the For The Record series on 9/11 and related events, the eco­nomic aspects of the attacks have been a major focal point of dis­cus­sion. In par­tic­u­lar, the effect of the attacks and the Bush administration’s poli­cies on the com­pe­ti­tion between the dol­lar and the euro.

“Weak economies are not sup­posed to have strong cur­ren­cies, but Europe is eco­nom­i­cally weak and the euro has been soar­ing in the for­eign exchanges of late—not only against the dol­lar, but against all major cur­ren­cies. Against the dol­lar alone it is up 10.5% since the start of the year. What accounts for this shift?”

(“The Euro Also Rises” by Melvyn Krauss; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/15/2003; p. A16.)

11. Assess­ing Saudi investors’ poli­cies, the author of this arti­cle spec­u­lates that an accel­er­a­tion in ter­ror and/or the freez­ing of Saudi assets in the US may account for the change in the Saudis’ atti­tude. This is par­tic­u­larly sig­nif­i­cant in the con­text of Mr. Emory’s dis­cus­sion of the Mus­lim peo­ples of the Mid­dle East, their manip­u­la­tion by Islam­o­fas­cists, and their uti­liza­tion as proxy war­riors by the Under­ground Reich.

“Part of the euro’s recent strength can be explained by geopol­i­tics. The war to lib­er­ate Iraq is hav­ing reper­cus­sions. For exam­ple, we’re clos­ing down our air bases in Saudi Ara­bia, and Saudi investors who had poured bil­lions of petro-dollars into our econ­omy over the years now are con­cerned their funds might be frozen at some point. They have decided, foreign-exchange bro­kers tell me, to buy up euros. Per­haps the Saudis know some­thing we don’t yet about their country’s future behav­ior, and are hedg­ing their bets.”

(Idem.)

12. From the same issue of The Wall Street Jour­nal as the pre­vi­ous two sto­ries, we exam­ine an arti­cle about a sus­pected Al Qaeda financier that under­scores the insid­i­ous nature of the Saudis’ use of busi­nesses and char­i­ties to spread Islamism. High­light­ing the dif­fi­culty expe­ri­enced by judi­cial author­i­ties in pros­e­cut­ing ter­ror­ism under exist­ing laws, the broad­cast sets forth the sit­u­a­tion of a key Span­ish Islamist.

“When Mohammed Galeb Kalaje Zouaydi was arrested here in April 2002, Span­ish police thought they had cap­tured an impor­tant al Qaeda financier. Along with the sus­pect, inves­ti­ga­tors nabbed thou­sands of pages of records that laid out finan­cial per­sonal con­tacts with a rogue’s gallery of accused and con­victed Islamist ter­ror­ists. The con­tacts included sus­pected mem­bers of the Ham­burg cell that helped plot the Sept. 11 attacks.”

(“Map­ping the Trail of Ter­ror Money Proves Daunt­ing” by Keith John­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/15/2003; p. A1.)

13.

“Over six years, hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars flowed from Mr. Galeb’s bank accounts to alleged rad­i­cals through­out Europe, the records show. Here, inves­ti­ga­tors said, was the al Qaeda pay­mas­ter in the West—the key to unrav­el­ing the group’s money trail . . . The prob­lem: While inves­ti­ga­tors sus­pect Mr. Galeb has helped finance a net­work of ter­ror, another plau­si­ble inter­pre­ta­tion of the facts—and the one his back­ers assert—is that in most instances, he was merely mak­ing char­i­ta­ble dona­tions. Some of his seem­ingly sus­pi­cious finan­cial prac­tices may reflect tax cheat­ing, but noth­ing more, Mr. Galeb’s lawyer says. Mr. Galeb’s alleged tie to the Ham­burg cell was in fact a mun­dane trans­ac­tion related to the pur­chase of a used Ger­man car, the attor­ney adds.”

(Idem.)

14.

“Inves­ti­ga­tors in other coun­tries are grap­pling with sim­i­larly ambigu­ous sit­u­a­tions. In Ger­many, one of Mr. Galeb’s busi­ness part­ners, Mamoun Dark­azanli, had finan­cial deal­ings with sus­pected mem­bers of the Ham­burg al Qaeda cell. But there, too, inves­ti­ga­tors aren’t sure they can prove crim­i­nal intent, and, as a result, they haven’t arrested Mr. Dark­azanli . . . Dur­ing trips back to Madrid from Jed­dah in the mid-1990’s, Mr. Galeb attended the Abu Bakr mosque, where he struck up a friend­ship with Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas. Mr. Yarkas is a fel­low Syr­ian native who worked occa­sion­ally as a cloth­ing and used-car mer­chant. Span­ish police say they began watch­ing mr. Yarkas in 1995, after he tried to hand out lit­er­a­ture at the mosque encour­ag­ing holy war against the West.”

(Ibid.; pp. A1-A7.)

15.

“The police say Mr. Yarkas belonged to a rad­i­cal Mus­lim group in Madrid that pushed a hard-line doc­trine at the mosque. The imam there, Riay Tatary Bakry, says Mr. Yarkas was out­spo­ken but didn’t pro­mote rad­i­cal Islam at the mosque—which is what Mr. Yarkas’s lawyer also says. Mr. Galeb moved back to Spain in Decem­ber 1998, becom­ing a Span­ish cit­i­zen in 1999. He started a series of building-and real-estate firms to take advan­tage of the boom­ing Span­ish prop­erty market.”

(Ibid.; p. A7.)

16. Among the insti­tu­tions that fig­ures in the deal­ings of Mr. Galeb is the Al Rajhi Bank­ing & Invest­ment Corp. The Al Rajhis are among the most pow­er­ful fam­i­lies of the Saudi elite and their oper­a­tions were front and cen­ter in the tar­get­ing of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest Raids of 3/20/2002.

“The Span­ish police records show a com­pli­cated pat­tern of finan­cial deal­ings begin­ning in the early 1990’s. In 1993 and 1994, Mr. Galeb wrote two checks draw­ing a total of $100,000 from his account in the Al Rajhi Bank­ing & Invest­ment Corp. in Jed­dah, accord­ing to copies of finan­cial records. The checks were made out to his sis­ter Sau­san, who was then liv­ing in the Canary Islands. Mr. Galeb’s hand­writ­ten notes indi­cate that she was to use the money to invest in apart­ments being built in Madrid, which she did.”

(Idem.)

17. The pas­sage that fol­lows casts grave doubt on the self-professed inno­cence of these creatures.

“The devel­oper of the apart­ments, Gha­soub al Abrash Gha­ly­oun, was acquainted with both Mr. Galeb and Mr. Yarkas, police say. Mr. Abrash was arrested last year after Span­ish police searched his house and found hours of videos of New York’s World Trade Cen­ter, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and other promi­nent U.S. land­marks. The videos were recorded dur­ing a 1997 trip. Tran­scripts of accom­pa­ny­ing audio record­ings reveal jok­ing about women and dis­cus­sion of vis­it­ing Michael Jordan’s restau­rant in Chicago. But inter­spersed are darker moments: a fix­a­tion on struc­tural ele­ments, such as the sup­port­ing pil­lars of the Golden Gate Bridge and appre­hen­sion about unnamed ‘secu­rity forces’ con­fis­cat­ing the videos before they could be passed on to the ‘broth­ers’ in Syria.”

(Idem.)

18. Revis­it­ing the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002, the pro­gram sets forth the Al Rajhis’ pres­ence in this milieu.

“For those who still doubt the Saudi pres­ence in these net­works, what are we to make of the searches under­taken in Vir­ginia in March 2002 aimed at sev­eral char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions (includ­ing the Saar Foun­da­tion, Safa Trust, and the Inter­na­tional Insti­tute of Islamic Thought) as well as com­pa­nies directed by the same peo­ple (among them Mar­jac Invest­ments, Ster­ling Man­age­ment, Ster­ling Poul­try, and San­abel Inc.) sus­pected of hav­ing given their sup­port to terrorism.”

(For­bid­den Truth; Jean-Charles Bris­ard & Guil­laume Dasquie; Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books [SC]; Copy­right 2002 Jean-Charles Bris­ard & Guil­laume Dasquie; 2002; p. 57.)

19.

“The Saar Foun­da­tion was cre­ated in 1983. Its pres­i­dent is Yaqub Mirza and its trea­surer is Moham­mad Jagh­lit. It turns out that Cherif Sedky, who is a trustee of the Saar Foun­da­tion, is the legal coun­sel to Khalid bin Mah­fouz, one of the prin­ci­pal sup­port­ers of Osama bin Laden (see Chap­ter 12), and has recently pre­sented him­self as Khalid’s spokesman. What’s more, Cherif Sedky is a mem­ber of the board of two com­pa­nies belong­ing to Khalid bin Mah­fouz, Nimir Petro­leum (once asso­ci­ated with the Uno­cal con­sor­tium to con­struct a pipeline in Afghanistan), and the Credit Libanais SAL bank.”

(Idem.)

20.

“At the same time, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can author­i­ties, the Saar Foun­da­tion and its part­ners appear to have been financed by the Al Rajhi Saudi fam­ily, whose patri­arch, Sulaiman bin Abdu­laziz Al Rajhi, heads up an impor­tant invest­ment bank in Riyadh, Al Rajhi Bank­ing & Invest­ment Corp. It also turns out that Yaqub Mirza is directly tied to these inter­ests, since he heads San­abel Inc., at the same Vir­ginia address as the Saar Foun­da­tion. The Al Rajhi fam­ily con­trols the Saudi hold­ing com­pany San­abel Trade & Agri­cul­tural Indus­tries Co. Ltd. It’s not sur­pris­ing to dis­cover that the Al Rajhi fam­ily holds stock, along­side the Bin­ladin Group and Khalid bin Mah­fouz, in the Ara­bian Cement com­pany in Jed­dah, whose pres­i­dent is none other than . . . Prince Turki Abdu­laziz Al Saud.”

(Ibid.; pp. 57–58.)

21. The next sec­tion of the pro­gram doc­u­ments indi­ca­tions that the Arab author­i­ties in both Yemen and Saudi Ara­bia are com­plicit in the Al Qaeda activ­i­ties in those coun­tries. Yemen was the site of a recent prison break­out of key Al Qaeda sus­pects, includ­ing two who are deeply impli­cated in the Cole bombing.

“The Jus­tice Depart­ment announced the mur­der and con­spir­acy charges against Fahd al-Quso and Jamal Ahmed Mohammed Ali al-Badawi. Attor­ney Gen­eral John Ashcroft described the two as ded­i­cated al Qaeda ter­ror­ists recruited for the Cole attack by Osama bin Laden’s clos­est asso­ciates. The fugi­tives were among 10 sus­pected al Qaeda mem­bers who escaped from a sup­pos­edly high-security jail in Yemen last month.”

(“2 Charged in Cole Attack” by David Stout [New York Times]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 5/16/2003; p. A12.)

22. The appar­ent per­pe­tra­tors of recent Al Qaeda attacks in Saudi Ara­bia also man­aged to elude the grasp of Saudi secu­rity forces.

“The Islamic mil­i­tants behind the dev­as­tat­ing car bomb­ings in Riyadh, Saudi Ara­bia, were part of an al Qaeda cell whose mem­bers fought a gun­bat­tle last week with Saudi author­i­ties before escap­ing arrest, Saudi offi­cials say. At the time, police raided a sus­pected hide­out, uncov­er­ing a weapons cache that included 55 hand grenades, 829 pounds of explo­sives and 2,545 bul­lets of dif­fer­ent cal­iber. The May 6 raid took place at a safe house ‘sev­eral hun­dred yards from one of the build­ings hit’ by the triple bomb­ing, a senior U.S. offi­cial said. The cell was formed in the king­dom after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, offi­cials said. It is led by Khaled Jehani, who left Saudi Ara­bia when he was 18, later fought in Bosnia and Chech­nya and was based at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, the offi­cials added.”

(“Gun­bat­tle: Cell Mem­bers Escaped After Raid Last Week” by Alan Sipress and Peter Finn [Wash­ing­ton Post]; 5/14/2003; p. A1.)

23. The Saudis also dis­re­garded the sub­stance of recent US warn­ings con­cern­ing secu­rity in that country.

“In the month before Monday’s bomb­ings in Riyadh, the United States asked Saudi Ara­bia on at least five sep­a­rate occa­sions to deploy armed uni­formed gov­ern­ment guards around all West­ern tar­gets of a pos­si­ble ter­ror­ist attack, Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said today. Among those requests, the offi­cials said, was one by Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national secu­rity adviser who was diverted to Saudi Ara­bia dur­ing a trip to Moscow and Israel and was instructed by the White House to meet with Crown Prince Abdul­lah, the kingdom’s day-to-day leader.”

(“Five Requests to Saudis Went Unheeded, U.S. Says” by Dou­glas Jehl and David E. Sanger; The New York Times; 5/16/2003; p. A14.)

24. After ini­tially deny­ing that the US had fore­warned them, the Saudis have admit­ted that they were, in fact, warned.

“The top for­eign pol­icy adviser to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince admit­ted yes­ter­day that his gov­ern­ment had received an explicit US warn­ing of an immi­nent attack on one of the three com­pounds struck on Mon­day by al-Qaeda. The Saudi gov­ern­ment pre­vi­ously insisted that the US warn­ings, made in per­sonal vis­its and let­ters from senior US offi­cials, were too gen­eral to act on.”

(“Saudis Admit US Warned of Attack” by Edward Alden; The Finan­cial Times; 5/17–5/18/2003; p. 3.)

25. Under­scor­ing the extent to which the recent Al Qaeda attacks in Saudi Ara­bia were assisted by “those in the know,” the pro­gram doc­u­ments the excel­lent field intel­li­gence uti­lized by the attackers.

“ . . . A US offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity, said the esti­mated 19 men who hit the Al-Hamra Oasis Vil­lage, the Jadawel com­plex and the Vin­nell com­pound late Mon­day had watched the facil­i­ties for weeks or months and knew pre­cisely how to gain entry and do the most dam­age. They rented vil­las and apart­ments near the com­pounds, where they stud­ied the move­ments of those inside, he said. Before the assaults, they donned mil­i­tary uni­forms to con­fuse guards at the gates.”

(“Probe of Saudi Bomb­ings Reveals Well-Executed Plot” by David Kelly [Los Ange­les Times]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 5/18/2003; p. 18A.)

26.

“At Vin­nell, heav­ily guarded by Saudi National Guard sol­diers, the attack­ers knew the gate codes used to get inside. They det­o­nated their truck bomb in the most pop­u­lated area of the facil­ity. ‘The guards at Vin­nell were Saudi National Guards­men with .50 cal­iber machine guns,’ the offi­cial said. ‘The attack­ers knew all the mul­ti­ple con­trols at the gate. It wasn’t like push­ing a green but­ton and the gate went up.’ . . . The U.S. offi­cial said the assailants were highly moti­vated and had under­gone mil­i­tary train­ing, prob­a­bly in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida sus­pects in U.S. cus­tody first revealed infor­ma­tion about the plot, the offi­cial said.”

(Idem.)

27. Recent remarks by the Saudi inte­rior min­is­ter indi­cate that Saudi recal­ci­trance may not be a thing of the past.

“A team of 60 U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors scoured three charred blast sites on Sat­ur­day where ter­ror­ists had det­o­nated car bombs Mon­day night. The hunt for foren­sic evi­dence by the U.S. team at the three West­ern hous­ing com­pounds here was note­wor­thy because the Saudi author­i­ties have in the past severely restricted U.S. access to, and involve­ment in, the kingdom’s ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tions. But in a sign that the Saudis may be dis­pleased with the pres­ence of the large U.S. con­tin­gent, com­posed mainly of FBI agents, the Saudi inte­rior min­is­ter declared that the inves­ti­ga­tors would be lim­ited to observer roles in the inquiry. ‘They are not inves­ti­ga­tors,’ Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz said in an inter­view pub­lished today by the daily Al Riyadh. ‘They will not probe any­thing. These offi­cials came to inspect the inci­dents only.’”

(“U.S. Probes Saudi Blasts” by Don Van Natta [New York Times]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 5/18/2003; p. A14.)

28. Sup­ple­ment­ing a very impor­tant story detailed in FTR#393, the pro­gram presents fur­ther indi­ca­tions of the Ger­man gov­ern­ments’ com­plic­ity in Al Qaeda oper­a­tions. An appar­ent Al Qaeda func­tionary has been “cut loose” by the Ger­man authorities.

“A Ger­man man accused of ties to an al Qaeda attack in Tunisia last year has been released from deten­tion in Saudi Ara­bia after pros­e­cu­tors failed to con­vince a Ger­man court to issue an arrest war­rant. The case illus­trates the con­tin­u­ing dif­fi­cul­ties fac­ing pros­e­cu­tors in the war on terrorism.”

(“Ger­man Accused of Ter­ror­ist Link is Released” by David Craw­ford; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/14/2003; p. A12.)

29.

“Chris­t­ian Ganczarski has been linked to the bomb­ing of a syn­a­gogue on the island resort of Djerba last April that killed 19 peo­ple. A police bug on his phone in Ger­many recorded that the sui­cide bomber, Nizar Nawar, called Mr. Ganczarski shortly before the attack, ask­ing that Mr. Ganczarski pray for him. Ger­man police said they didn’t have enough evi­dence to charge the 36-year-old and in Novem­ber left Ger­many for Saudi Ara­bia, where he had pre­vi­ously lived after con­vert­ing to Islam. Mr. Ganczarski told inter­roga­tors that he had no advance knowl­edge of the bomb­ing or any other ter­ror­ist acts.”

(Idem.)

30.

“In early April, the Saudi gov­ern­ment sent a diplo­matic note to Ger­many say­ing it was going to deport Mr. Ganczarski, whose visa had expired in Decem­ber. Ger­many responded by say­ing it would try to get an arrest war­rant to use upon Mr. Ganczarski’s entry into the coun­try: pros­e­cu­tors felt they now had enough evi­dence to pros­e­cute Mr. Ganczarski.”

(Idem.)

31.

“ ‘At the end of that phone call, Mr. Banczarski knew a crime would be com­mit­ted,’ says Frauke-Katrin Scheuten, spokes­woman for Germany’s Fed­eral Prosecutor’s Office. But a Ger­man court decided against the gov­ern­ment last week, rul­ing that there wasn’t enough evi­dence that Mr. Ganczarski knew an attack was immi­nent. Pros­e­cu­tors say they are con­sid­er­ing an appeal but in the mean­time Saudi offi­cials have released him . . .”

(Idem.)

32.

“In a depo­si­tion made to police last Octo­ber, Mr. Gan­car­ski described his pre­vi­ous stay in Saudi Ara­bia, which he first vis­ited in 1993 with the back­ing of a senior Ger­man Islamic offi­cial. He and his fam­ily lived for more then a year with a uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor named Saud Kalif in Med­ina. Ger­man offi­cials say Mr. Ganczarski has returned to Mr. Khalif’s home, but that he is unhappy there because he is unable to find work.”

(Idem.)

33.

“Mean­while, Mr. Ganczarski’s fate is unclear. His Ger­man pass­port is valid until Novem­ber 2010, so he could leave Saudi Ara­bia for any coun­try and sim­ply dis­ap­pear. Even if he returned to Ger­many, pros­e­cu­tors now would have no grounds to detain Mr. Ganczarski or even to require that he speak to inves­ti­ga­tors. ‘He could wave to us when he gets off the plane,’ Ms. Scheuten says, ‘and all we could do is watch him drive away.”

(Idem.)

34. A ter­ri­fy­ing loose end in the Iraq war con­cerns the Al Tawaitha Nuclear Research Cen­ter. It was looted after the con­clu­sion of the recent hos­til­i­ties and the absence of account­ing for the mate­ri­als stored there (includ­ing par­tially enriched ura­nium) may presage the appear­ance of dirty bombs at some point in the future.

“Some of the lapses are fright­en­ing. The well-known Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Cen­ter, about 12 miles south of Bagh­dad, had nearly two tons of par­tially enriched ura­nium, along with sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ties of highly radioac­tive med­ical and indus­trial iso­topes, when Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency offi­cials made their last visit in Jan­u­ary. By the time U.S. troops arrived in early April, armed guards were hold­ing off looters—but the Amer­i­cans only dis­armed the guards, Al Tuwaitha depart­ment heads told Newsweek. ‘We told them, ‘This site is out of con­trol. You have to take care of it,’ says Munther Ibrahim, Al Tuwaitha’s head of plasma physics. ‘The sol­diers said, ‘We are a small group, We can­not take con­trol of this site.’’ As soon as the Amer­i­cans left, loot­ers broke in. the staff fled; when they returned, the con­tain­ment vaults’ seals had been bro­ken, and radioac­tive mate­r­ial was everywhere.”

(“WMD’s for the Tak­ing” by Rod Nord­land; Newsweek; 5/19/2003; p. 30.)