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NB: This stream contains both FTRs 431 and 432 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broadcast.
Updating the subject of the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002, the broadcast begins with White House stonewalling of the investigating commission looking into 9/11. Members of the commission are explicitly stating that the White House is hiding something for political reasons. One of the potentially most explosive aspects of the investigation concerns the GOP Ethnic connection to the Islamist milieu targeted under the 3/20/2002 raids. It is that series of businesses, religious charities and NGO’s that has provided the main link in funding for Hamas, Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad. Key White House aids Grover Norquist and Karl Rove were instrumental in generating the GOP Ethnic Outreach milieu’s Islamofascist connection. Recent testimony before Congress cited the targets of the 3/20/2002 raids as being central to interdicting the battle against Al Qaeda. Counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke stated that the Bush administration’s reorganization of the government was hurting the Green Quest investigation. Abdur Rahman Al-Alamoudi, pivotal to the operations of the Green Quest targets and an organizer of the vetting process for Muslim chaplains in the military is an associate of former Abwehr agent and Al Taqwa kingpin Youssef Nada.
Program Highlights Include: The operations of the Green Quest targets in the Balkans during the 1990’s; late President Alija Izetbegovic’s links to both the SS Handzhar of World War II and to Osama bin Laden; Alamoudi’s links to Osama bin Laden’s nephew Abdullah, evacuated by the Bush administration after the 9/11 milieu.
1. Beginning with White House reluctance to release documents to the 9/11 investigative commission, the program highlights growing friction between commissioners and the Bush administration. The commission may subpoena documents and is hinting fairly openly that the White House is hiding something. (Recall that people investigating the Green Quest targets were themselves surveiled by the FBI and CIA after the 3/20 raids.)
“The chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said the White House was continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he was prepared to subpoena the documents if they were not turned over within weeks. The chairman, Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, also said in an interview that he believed the bipartisan 10-member commission would soon be forced to issue subpoenas to other executive branch agencies because of continuing delays by the Bush administration in providing documents and other evidence. . .”
(“9/11 Probe Chief Frustrated” by Philip Shenon [New York Times]; San Francisco Chronicle; 10/26/2003; p. A4.)
2.
” . . . While Kean said he was barred by an agreement with the White House from describing the Oval Office documents at issue in any detail—he said the White House was ‘quite nervous’ about any public hint at their contents—other commission officials said that the weeks leading up to Sept. 11, 2001. The reports are known as the Presidential Daily Briefing. ‘These are documents that only two or three people would normally have access to,’ Kean said. ‘To make those available to an outside group is something that no other president has done in our history. But I’ve argued very strongly with the White House that we are unique, that we are not the Congress, that these arguments about presidential privilege do not apply in the case of our commission.’ ”
(Idem.)
3.
” . . .Kean’s comments on Friday came as another member of the commission, Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, became the first panel member to say publicly that the commission could not complete its work by its May 2004 deadline and the first to accuse the White House of withholding classified information from the panel for purely political reasons. ‘It’s obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here,’ he said in an interview in Washington.”
(Idem.)
4.
“He said that the White House and Bush’s re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. ‘As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted.’ ”
(Idem.)
5. While the White House stonewalls, Al Qaeda’s funding sources—especially elite Saudi elements directly connected to the Bush business milieu—continue to finance that organization.
“Al Qaeda’s financial spigot is still open, and the new Homeland Security Department is ill-equipped to turn it off, leading terrorism experts testified Wednesday before a congressional panel. Even after extensive government efforts to stop the money flow to al Qaeda, the terrorist still receives more than $5 million each year, much of it from Saudi Arabia, Jean-Charles Brisard, a former terrorism investigator for the French government told the Senate Banking Committee. ‘Saudi Arabia is present at every stage of al Qaeda financing, but primarily as the major source of funding,’ said Brisard, who is investigating the funding sources of al Qaeda on behalf of families who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. . . .”
(“Funds Still Flowing to Al Qaeda” by Rebecca Carr [Cox News Service]; San Francisco Chronicle; 10/23/2003; p. A6.)
6.
” . . . The Federal government now has the FBI, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Center and the Office of Foreign Asset Control to name a few of the government agencies that look into terror financing. ‘All coordinated by the White House now, but nonetheless all doing their own thing in their own space,’ [former counter-terror official Richard] Clarke said. ‘I believe there should be a single fusion center where all of those agencies move personnel on a permanent basis to work together.’ ”
(Idem.)
7.
“Shutting down front companies and charities that send money to terrorist regimes will go a long way toward stemming the flow of money to terrorists, said Matthew Levitt, senior fellow of terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former counter-terrorism analyst at the FBI. While Saudi Arabia has taken steps to crack down on charities that are diverting money to terrorist groups, it has not been enough, Levitt said. More than 50 percent of the money flowing into Hamas, for example, comes from Saudi Arabian sources, he said.”
(Idem.)
8.
“The US effort to shut down financial support for terrorist networks is being seriously hampered by a government reorganization that has left the most experienced agencies without any real power, the US government’s former top counter-terrorism official said yesterday. Richard Clarke, who headed counter-terrorism at the White House for the Clinton and Bush administrations before leaving government earlier this year, said the decision to put the Federal Bureau of Investigation in charge of terror finance investigations, and to give new powers to the Department of Homeland Security, had set the campaign back.”
(“Shake-Up Amid War on Terror ‘Has Hit Campaign’ ” by Edward Alden; Financial Times; 10/23/2003; p. 2.)
9. Of paramount importance in the context of the program is Clarke’s analysis that the Bush administration’s reorganization of the government has actually hampered the fight against terror financing. He specifically cites the shifting of responsibility for Operation Green Quest to the FBI as a reason to fear what is taking place. Recall that the Operation Green Quest milieu is inextricably linked to the GOP/Bush administration/Bush business nexus.
Recall, also, that Bush (Senior) Justice Department official Robert Mueller was placed in charge of the FBI in July of 2001. His “oversight” of the BCCI investigation compromises his ability to investigate Green Quest and the vitally important links between Bush and the Saudis.
” ‘Reorganizing the federal government in the middle of the war on terrorism was perhaps not the brightest thing we could have done,’ he told the committee. The administration agreed earlier this year to designate the FBI as the lead organization for investigating terror finance networks, moving a separate investigative team, known as Operation Green Quest from the Customs service to the FBI. In addition, customs was moved to the new homeland security department, breaking it away from other agencies in the Treasury department that play a key role in terror finance investigations and enforcement. The move came at a sensitive time when the Treasury was leading a series of actions, including the investigation into a broad network of Saudi-backed charities based in northern Virginia.”
(Idem.)
10.
” ‘Having the current structure where the FBI is in charge and tells everybody else what to do, is a recipe, I think for failure,’ said Mr. Clarke. He added: ‘The FBI by tradition doesn’t co-operate well with other federal agencies and it doesn’t share information it treats other federal agencies as second-class participants in the overall effort.’ ”
(Idem.)
11. Still more about Green Quest and the maze of Virginia charities and businesses that were involved with the operations of the Green Quest milieu:
“Dollar by dollar, U.S. prosecutors in Virginia are unraveling a world-wide financial network operated by alleged Islamic extremists. Investigators have laid out the network’s intricacy and geographic breadth in recent court filings related to a terror-finance investigation of a Virginia-based group of charities and businesses. Yesterday, they indicted a key figure they say is linked to Hamas and al Qaeda. The funds flowed from Saudi Arabia and Europe to the U.S.—possibly to help make the money look legitimate—and then through a maze of Virginia entities and back to Europe and the Middle East, authorities say. The money went through the secretive Swiss banks and Isle of Man trusts and ended up in suspect hands, including a charity founded by an alleged Tunisian terrorist and a group implicated in the plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport, court documents say.”
(“Unraveling Terror’s Finances” by Glenn R. Simpson; Wall Street Journal; 10/24/2003; p. A2.)
12. A pivotal individual in the milieu targeted by Green Quest is Abdur Rahman Alamoudi. Alamoudi is linked to Al Taqwa’s Youssef Nada (a former Third Reich intelligence agent), as well as the GOP/Grover Norquist milieu.
As discussed in FTRs 356, 386, 405, the Muslim Chaplains network within the US military is inextricably linked with Alamoudi and the Green Quest milieu.
“At the network’s center is Abdur Rahman Alamoudi, a Muslim-American activist who was indicted yesterday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA. On money laundering and tax, immigration and customs-fraud charges. The 18-count indictment isn’t directly related to the Virginia probe, focusing mostly on alleged illegal dealings with Libya. . . .In other recent filings, prosecutors unveiled evidence that they say links Mr. Alamoudi to Hamas, the Palestinian group designated as terrorist by the U.S., and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization. Prosecutors say Mr. Alamoudi’s Palmpilot contained contact information for seven men designed as ‘global terrorists’ by the U.S. in freezing their assets. They included Saudi businessman Yassin Qadi, and alleged supporter of Hamas and al Qaeda, and Swiss financier Yusuf Nada, an alleged al Qaeda banker. . .”
(Idem.)
13. As discussed in FTRs 423, 425, one of the Saudis flown out of the country in the wake of 9/11 (before they could be properly interrogated) was bin Laden’s nephew Abdullah, associated with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, an apparent Al Qaeda front. Abdullah is the nephew referred to here:
” . . . Another Virginia charity, the Taibah International Aid Association, worked in tandem with the Success foundation, prosecutors say. A nephew of Mr. bin Laden living in Virginia helped run Taibah, which had offices in the Balkans. Taibah personnel there told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that it supported the Global Relief Foundation, a charity designated by the U.S. as an al Qaeda front. . . .”
(Idem.)
14. The broadcast excerpts the obituary of former Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic, his association with the SS Handzhar Division in World War II, and the support he received from Osama bin Laden.
” . . . During World War II, when Bosnia became part of the puppet-Nazi state of the Croatian Ustashe, Mr. Izetbegovic joined the Young Muslims, a group torn between siding with the German-sponsored Handzar divisions organized by the German SS or with the Yugoslav communist partisans led by Josip Broz Tito. Mr. Izetbegovic supported the Handzars. After Tito’s Communist government was established in 1946, a military court sentenced Mr. Izetbegovic to three years in prison for his wartime activities. . . .”
(“Alija Izetbegovic, Muslim Who Led Bosnia, Dies at 78” by David Binder; The New York Times; 10/20/2003; p. 2.)
15.
” . . . Osama bin Laden visited him [Izetbegovic] in Sarajevo in 1993 and sponsored some fighters from Arabic countries to fight on the Muslims’ side in Bosnia, according to a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel. . .”
(Idem.)
16. Looking ahead to FTR#433, the program underscores the Islamofascist Alamoudi’s links with the Pentagon’s Chaplain vetting program.
” . . . He [Alamoudi] also set up a Pentagon program in the 1990’s to recruit Muslim chaplains for the armed services, now the subject of an espionage probe.”
(“Unraveling Terror’s Finances” by Glenn R. Simpson; Wall Street Journal; 10/24/2003; p. A2.)
17. The 2002 Raids referred to here are the Operation Green Quest Raids of March of that year.
” . . . The American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council is a subgroup of the American Muslim Foundation, whose leader has been arrested and accused of acting as a courier to funnel money from Libya to terrorist groups in Syria. The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Leesburg, VA., was raided by Customs in 2002 as part of an investigation into money being funneled to al Qaeda and other militant Islamic groups, senators added. . . .”
(“Military Adopts New Chaplain Policy” by Jesse J. Holland; San Francisco Chronicle; 10/15/2003; p. A10.)
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