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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.)