Recorded Feb­ru­ary 29, 2004
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Intro­duc­tion: High­light­ing var­i­ous aspects of the con­tin­u­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into the events in, and around, 9/11, this pro­gram focuses pri­mar­ily on the admin­is­tra­tions of the first and sec­ond George Bush and their cover-ups of Saudi involve­ment in ter­ror­ist financ­ing and the smug­gling of nuclear tech­nol­ogy. Par­tic­u­lar empha­sis is on the role of struc­tural eco­nomic rela­tion­ships in the frus­tra­tion of var­i­ous inves­ti­ga­tions into Islamist ter­ror­ism. In addi­tion, the pro­gram descrip­tion also notes the role of Third Reich alumni in the pro­lif­er­a­tion of nuclear tech­nol­ogy in the Mus­lim world. In addi­tion to the Saudis, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has also played a piv­otal role in Islamist ter­ror­ism over the years. This pro­gram brings up to date some of the lat­est infor­ma­tion about the Brotherhood’s activ­i­ties. Note that the pro­gram descrip­tion con­tains mate­r­ial not included in the orig­i­nal broadcast.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Bush administration’s back­track­ing on its stated inten­tion to coop­er­ate fully with the com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing 9/11; the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into the Riggs Bank and its alleged links to the financ­ing of 9/11 ter­ror­ists; the Bush administration’s sab­o­tag­ing of Oper­a­tion Green Quest (the inves­ti­ga­tion into the financ­ing of Al Qaeda and related ele­ments); review of the GOP con­nec­tions to the tar­gets of Oper­a­tion Green Quest; the role of the Afghan muja­hadeen sup­port effort in blunt­ing inves­ti­ga­tions of what was to become Al Qaeda; the expi­ra­tion of a U.N. task force inves­ti­gat­ing the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism; the role of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the found­ing of Bank Al Taqwa; the role of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the found­ing of the Mus­lim World League (the most impor­tant Saudi Islamist out­reach orga­ni­za­tion); the (sec­ond) Bush administration’s inter­dic­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion into Pak­istani nuclear smug­gling; the role of Euro­pean ele­ments in the traf­fick­ing of nuclear tech­nol­ogy; the first Bush administration’s blunt­ing of an early inves­ti­ga­tion of Pak­istani nuclear activ­ity; the pos­si­ble role of Nazi oper­a­tive Fran­cois Genoud in the events in and around 9/11.

1. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of one of many actions on the part of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion aimed at lim­it­ing or frus­trat­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into the events in, and around, Sep­tem­ber 11. After indi­cat­ing that he would coop­er­ate with the com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the 9/11 attacks, Bush then severely lim­ited the tes­ti­mony that would be given. “The White House said Sat­ur­day that Pres­i­dent Bush plans to meet with only a lim­ited num­ber of rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the Sept. 11 ter­ror­ist attacks, despite a state­ment issued Fri­day that sug­gested he would meet with the whole panel. The new details sur­prised some com­mis­sion members—who believed they had secured a promise from Bush for a pri­vate meet­ing with all 10 members—and could add to the ten­sions that have strained rela­tions between the two sides.” (“Bush Will Meet with Few Sept. 11 Panel Mem­bers” [Mer­cury News wire ser­vices]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 2/15/2004; p. 5A.)

2. In addi­tion, the admin­is­tra­tion will not per­mit dis­clo­sure of the (poten­tially com­pro­mis­ing) finan­cial con­nec­tions of panel mem­bers who will be inves­ti­gat­ing intel­li­gence fail­ures in con­nec­tion with the Iraq war. (For more about the com­po­si­tion of this panel, see FTR#445.) “The White House is declin­ing to make pub­lic the finan­cial his­to­ries of the com­mis­sion­ers Pres­i­dent Bush appointed to inves­ti­gate Amer­i­can intel­li­gence fail­ures. Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials say the arrange­ment has helped to attract the best-qualified peo­ple for the panel, but crit­ics say the White House’s refusal to dis­close finan­cial infor­ma­tion raises ques­tions about poten­tial con­flicts of inter­est that could cloud the commission’s work. Cit­ing an exemp­tion to fed­eral ethics reg­u­la­tions, the White House says the finan­cial dis­clo­sure state­ments filed by the commission’s nine mem­bers will remain con­fi­den­tial because they are not being paid for their work. . . .” (“Intel­li­gence Panel’s Finances Will Stay Pri­vate” by Eric Licht­blau; New York Times; 2/15/2004; p. 1; accessed at www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/politics/15PANE.html.)

3. One of the mem­bers of the panel (Lloyd M. Cut­ler) is a founder of a law firm that has done work for the Car­lyle Group, one of the many busi­ness ven­tures that joined the Bush and Bin Laden fam­i­lies. For more about the Car­lyle Group, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 284, 329, 347, 406, 438.) ” . . . Also on the panel is Lloyd M. Cut­ler, a promi­nent Wash­ing­ton lawyer who has served in sev­eral Demo­c­ra­tic admin­is­tra­tions. The firm he founded, Wilmer Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing, has done work for the Car­lyle Group, a large Wash­ing­ton equity firm that has used for­mer Pres­i­dent George Bush and other well-connected Repub­li­cans to advance its inter­ests in Saudi Ara­bia and else­where. Mr. Cut­ler said in an inter­view, how­ever, that he had not per­son­ally rep­re­sented the Car­lyle Group.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

4. Inves­ti­ga­tion of the 9/11 attacks is mov­ing in the direc­tion of the Riggs Bank, one of whose direc­tors is Jonathan Bush, an uncle of the Pres­i­dent. (For more about the Riggs bank, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 431, 442.) “Lawyers for the vic­tims of the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror attacks have sub­poe­naed Riggs National Corp. of Wash­ing­ton, seek­ing infor­ma­tion on its han­dling of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia’s bank accounts. Attor­neys are demand­ing access to a report by fed­eral bank­ing reg­u­la­tors that accuses Riggs of fail­ing to main­tain proper con­trols on the Saudi accounts, through which hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars flow annu­ally for embassy oper­a­tions and Saudi pro­grams in the U.S. The report by the Office of the Comp­trol­ler of Cur­rency details alleged lapses by the bank in con­nec­tion with funds that flowed to two of the Sept. 11 hijack­ers. Among other things, reg­u­la­tors found that Riggs failed to file reports on sus­pi­cious activ­ity involv­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars of trans­ac­tions by Saudi diplo­mats, their fam­i­lies and employ­ees. . . .” (“Lawyers for Vic­tims of 9/11 Seek Riggs Records on Saudi Accounts” by Glenn R. Simp­son; Wall Street Jour­nal; 2/26/2004; p. A4.)

5. ” . . . The Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion says that an unde­ter­mined sum of money from the accounts of Princess Haifa Al-Faisal, wife of Saudi Ambas­sador to the U.S. Ban­dar bin Sul­tan, flowed to ter­ror­ists Nawaf Al Hazmi and Khalid Al Mid­har through a third Saudi man, Omar Al-Bayoumi. The Saudis say Princess Haifa didn’t intend to give any money to the two men. Accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter, a dis­cus­sion of the accounts at Riggs was among the things the Bush admin­is­tra­tion insisted on remov­ing from the pub­lic ver­sion of the 850-page con­gres­sional intel­li­gence report on the attacks. The accounts are also part of a con­tin­u­ing FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into Saudi finan­cial activ­ity in the U.S.” (Idem.)

6. Next, the pro­gram high­lights the administration’s frus­tra­tion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, the law enforcement/intelligence com­mu­nity oper­a­tion aimed at inter­dict­ing fund­ing for Islamist ter­ror­ists. (For more about Oper­a­tion Green Quest, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 356, 357, 359, 382, 387, 389, 406, 423, 425, 432, 433, 435, 439.) In addi­tion to the pro­found busi­ness con­nec­tions between the Bush milieu and the Saudis impli­cated in ter­ror­ist fund­ing, Oper­a­tion Green Quest uncov­ered con­crete links between the GOP and Mus­lim ele­ments involved with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Al Qaeda, Al Taqwa and Hamas. ” . . . But despite those efforts, the United States has made only lim­ited progress in block­ing the fund­ing of ter­ror­ists. Al Qaeda and other Islamic ter­ror­ist groups remain well financed. And one of their major sources of fund­ing, a net­work of Islamic char­i­ties financed by Saudi Ara­bia, remains rel­a­tively unin­ter­rupted. Its tough talk notwith­stand­ing, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has failed to take deci­sive action against this sig­nif­i­cant source of ter­ror financing—in part, it seems, to pro­tect the gov­ern­ment of Saudi Ara­bia and its friends in Wash­ing­ton.” (“Char­ity Cases: Why Has the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion Failed to Stop Saudi Fund­ing of Ter­ror­ism?” by David Arm­strong; Harper’s; March/2004; p. 81.)

7. “The Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has adopted an approach to Saudi ter­ror­ist fund­ing that would best be described as hands-off. For exam­ple, last sum­mer it cen­sored the twenty-eight pages on the sub­ject from a con­gres­sional report on the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks and refused to release the names of Saudi enti­ties sus­pected to be financiers of ter­ror­ism. . . .” (Idem.)

8. ” . . . In other cases, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion made a con­scious deci­sion not to pur­sue major Saudi con­duits for ter­ror­ist fund­ing. The clear­est exam­ple involves two osten­si­ble char­i­ties that are long known to have fun­neled money to Al Qaeda—the Inter­na­tional Islamic Relief orga­ni­za­tion (IIRO) and the Mus­lim World League (MWL). Both are financed directly by the Saudi gov­ern­ment. MWL is an evan­gel­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion that was cre­ated to help spread Wah­habism, the Saudi brand of Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ism; IIRO is a human­i­tar­ian relief orga­ni­za­tion that oper­ates pri­mar­ily in Mus­lim coun­tries. Yet a 1996 CIA report alleged that IIRO helped to fund six mil­i­tant train­ing camps in Afghanistan, and noted that the for­mer head of the group’s Philip­pines office—Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law—had been linked to plots to ‘tar­get the pope and U.S. air­lines.’ U. S. intel­li­gence offi­cials also believe that MWL employ­ees were involved in the 1998 bomb­ing of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Although both IIRO and MWL were known to have funded Al Qaeda, U.S. gov­ern­ment sources indi­cated to Newsweek in Octo­ber 2001 that the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion left the two orga­ni­za­tions off the list of des­ig­nated ter­ror­ist group in order to spare the Saudi gov­ern­ment from embar­rass­ment.” (Idem.)

9. Among the fish net­ted by Oper­a­tion Green Quest is Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi, him­self very close to the GOP. (For more about Alam­oudi, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 433, 435, 439.) Note that the respon­si­bil­ity for Oper­a­tion Green Quest has been given to the FBI, which has been less than forth­com­ing with those involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion. (For more about this, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 425, 433, 435.) Note that Robert Mueller, head of the FBI, is com­pro­mised by his past (and less than vig­or­ous) inves­ti­ga­tions into the Saudi/Bush/intelligence con­nec­tion. (For more about this, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 310, 424.) “On top of this, the most promis­ing domes­tic inquiry into these Saudi groups has been dis­man­tled. In March 2002, as part of a Cus­toms Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tion known as Oper­a­tion Green Quest, gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tors raided the Vir­ginia offices of IIRO and MWL, along with a num­ber of other Saudi-backed char­i­ties and busi­nesses. Although the raids turned up con­crete evi­dence that ele­ments of the net­work had funded indi­vid­u­als and groups des­ig­nated as ter­ror­ists by the United States, no assets have been frozen and that the few, belated arrests in this case have been made on charges unre­lated to ter­ror­ist financ­ing. In par­tic­u­lar, Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi, who heads a group called the Suc­cess Foundation—which in the late 1990’s absorbed the U.S. oper­a­tions of IIRO—has been charged only with accept­ing money from Libya and with immi­gra­tion vio­la­tions, despite evi­dence, seized from the offices of Suc­cess and other groups he con­trols, of their mate­r­ial sup­port not just for Hamas but for two known Al Qaeda fronts. (Alam­oudi was once caught on tape remark­ing that he dis­ap­proved of the 1998 bomb­ings of U.S. embassies in Africa only because no Amer­i­cans were killed, and that instead he pre­ferred more ‘strate­gic’ tar­gets such as the Jew­ish com­mu­nity cen­ter in Buenos Aires, which had been bombed in 1994.) Now, under an agree­ment between Attor­ney Gen­eral John Ashcroft and depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity head Tom Ridge signed in May 2003, the Cus­toms Service—part of Home­land Secu­rity since last March—has relin­quished con­trol of its coun­tert­er­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tions to the FBI, which repeat­edly had refused to turn over crit­i­cal inves­tiga­tive files to Green Quest agents. This deal between Ashcroft and Ridge effec­tively shut down Green Quest, quash­ing the one serious—if flawed—probe into domes­tic ter­ror­ist financ­ing.” (Ibid.; pp. 81–82.)

10. Among the rea­sons for the blunt­ing of the Green Quest inquiries is the fact that the fund­ing con­duits that nour­ished Al Qaeda had their gen­e­sis dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tions and the first Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Those Islamic char­i­ties and busi­nesses that lent finan­cial sup­port to Bin Laden’s cadre had ear­lier served to fund the Afghan muja­hadeen fight­ing the Sovi­ets in the 1980’s. “Part of the Bush Administration’s reluc­tance to con­front the Saudis over ter­ror­ist financ­ing may have less to do with embar­rass­ing a key ally in the Mid­dle East than with embar­rass­ing the United States itself. Crack­ing down on IIRO and MWL, for exam­ple, would threaten to expose not only Saudi sup­port of ter­ror­ism but also America’s own role in help­ing to cre­ate what would even­tu­ally become part of Al Qaeda’s fund­ing net­work. Dur­ing the 1980’s, the United States actively pro­moted the use of these and other Islamic char­i­ties as part of a joint U.S.-Saudi effort to fund the Afghan muja­hedeen in their fight against the Soviet Union. The Reagan-Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, in coop­er­a­tion with the Saudi gov­ern­ment, fun­neled mil­lions of dol­lars to the Afghan rebels through these char­i­ties to pre­serve ‘deni­a­bil­ity’ of its sup­port for a covert proxy war. When the scheme suc­ceeded and the Sovi­ets with­drew in 1989, the United States sim­ply turned its back, leav­ing in place the fund­ing appa­ra­tus it had helped to cre­ate. It also left behind exten­sive train­ing and logis­ti­cal facil­i­ties, an elab­o­rate net­work of trans-Islamic orga­ni­za­tions, large quan­ti­ties of mil­i­tary hard­ware, and, more impor­tantly, a large and expe­ri­enced army of expert Islamic guerilla fight­ers anx­ious to carry on their strug­gle. It was at that point, in the midst of the first Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, that Osama bin Laden began trans­form­ing the muja­hedeen fund­ing net­work into a into a sup­port struc­ture for his newly cre­ated anti-Western jihadist organization—Al Qaeda.” (Ibid.; p. 82.)

11. “Mean­while, ele­ments of the erst­while muja­hedeen fund­ing net­work, most notably IIRO and MWL, were expand­ing their oper­a­tions and estab­lish­ing offices world­wide, includ­ing the United States. Dur­ing the next decade these orga­ni­za­tions became prime con­duits for Saudi financ­ing of groups, includ­ing al Qaeda, now regarded by the United States as ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. Thus the Islamic ter­ror­ism financ­ing struc­ture that the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion now pro­poses to crush is, in part, an out­growth of the Reagan-Bush Administration’s Cold War effort to under­mine the Soviet Union—a clas­sic exam­ple of ‘blow­back.’ For the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion to des­ig­nate groups such as IIRO and MWL as ter­ror­ist financiers would risk unwel­come ques­tions about the wis­dom of hav­ing funded and trained an army of Islamic mil­i­tants. Doing so would also expose the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity to crit­i­cism for its fail­ure to ade­quately mon­i­tor these for­mer allies and their exten­sive fund­ing net­work.” (Idem.)

12. In the con­text of the frus­tra­tion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, the pro­gram notes the con­nec­tions between the insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als tar­geted in the 3/20/2002 raids and the GOP. (For more about this sub­ject, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 356, 357, 368, 376, 415, 433, 435.) “But the dilemma, for the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, extends far beyond issues of his­tory. Many promi­nent politicians—not least among them the Bushes—have for years main­tained close polit­i­cal, busi­ness, and per­sonal deal­ings with the Saudi royal fam­ily and, more gen­er­ally, Saudi inter­ests. The extent of the administration’s dif­fi­cul­ties on this front became clear shortly after the Green Quest raids in March 2002. Just two weeks after the Cus­toms task force raided the Saudi-backed groups in north­ern Vir­ginia, two lead­ing Mus­lim activists with ties to the groups were allowed to meet with Paul O’Neill, then sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury Depart­ment (which, at the time, con­trolled Cus­toms) to com­plain about the con­duct of the raids. The meet­ing was arranged by Grover Norquist, the influ­en­tial Repub­li­can activist; Norquist is also the founder and for­mer chair of the Islamic Insti­tute, a con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lim out­reach group in which both of the men who met with O’Neill are offi­cers and which has received fund­ing from some of the raided indi­vid­u­als and groups, includ­ing Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi.” (Idem.)

13. Talat Oth­man (a close asso­ciate of both Georges Bush) inter­ceded on behalf of the tar­gets of Oper­a­tion Green Quest. (For more about this, see FTR#‘s 356, 376, 415.) “And the con­nec­tions do not end there. One of the Mus­lim activists who met with O’Neill was Talat Oth­man, a long­time friend and for­mer busi­ness asso­ciate of Pres­i­dent Bush. The two served together on the board of the Texas-based oil com­pany Harken Energy start­ing in the late 1980’s and have remained close ever since. Oth­man sat on Harken’s board as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh, a Saudi busi­ness mag­nate and a close asso­ciate of sus­pected ter­ror­ist financier Khalid bin Mah­fouz. Bakhsh now heads an oil com­pany that is a sub­sidiary of Hal­libur­ton, the energy giant for­merly run by Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney.” (Idem.)

14. “In addi­tion to his work at the Islamic Insti­tute, Oth­man serves on the board of Amana Mutual Funds Trust, an Islamic invest­ment group that had close ties to raided enti­ties and yet was not itself tar­geted. At the time of the Green Quest raids, in March 2002, at least four fig­ures from the tar­geted groups were affil­i­ated with Amana, iclud­ing M. Yaqub Mirza, the indi­vid­ual who set up the U.S. branch of MWL, the fund-raising arm of the U.S. branch of IIRO, and many of the other raided orga­ni­za­tions. Despite Mirza’s pres­ence on the board, and despite the fact that large sums of money from the sus­pect groups have moved through Amana, Green Quest agents chose not to raid the firm.” (Idem.)

15. As noted above and in—among other broadcasts—FTR#‘s 356, 357, 376, 390, 415, 423, 433, 435, the milieu of the SAAR net­work and the other objects of the Green Quest raids sig­nif­i­cantly over­laps the GOP’s eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. The fact that ele­ments of the Al Qaeda milieu appear to have been involved in West­ern intel­li­gence covert oper­a­tions in the Balkans, as well as the GOP ethnic/Green Quest con­nec­tion may well explain the FBI’s and CIA’s hos­tile inter­est in the inves­ti­ga­tors of Oper­a­tion Green Quest. The inves­ti­ga­tors who were so harassed included Rita Katz, A.K.A. “Anony­mous.” “The CIA was inves­ti­gat­ing me and the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors from Green Quest and Cus­toms. The CIA and the FBI inves­ti­gated every­one who had any­thing to do with the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion. White vans and SUV’s with dark win­dows appeared near all the homes of the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors. All agents, some of whom were very expe­ri­enced with sur­veil­lance, knew they were being fol­lowed. So was I. I felt that I was being fol­lowed every­where and watched at home, in the super­mar­ket, on the way to work . . . and for what? . . .” (Ter­ror­ist Hunter by “Anony­mous” [Rita Katz]; CCC [imprint of Harper Collins]; Copy­right 2003 by Harper Collins [HC]; ISBN 0–06-052819–2; p. 328.)

16. ” . . . The Cus­toms agents were ques­tioned. So were their super­vi­sors. So was the U.S. attor­ney on the SAAR case. One of the ques­tions they were all asked was whether they’d leaked mate­r­ial to me. They all kept say­ing that this was the most pre­pos­ter­ous idea; they all said that before I came, none of them had the slight­est clue about SAAR and 555. They said that there was noth­ing of value they could give me that I didn’t have already. That it was I who gave them the mate­r­ial, not the other way around. None of the inves­ti­gated par­ties has the slight­est clue as to the real rea­son they were being inves­ti­gated.” (Ibid.; p. 329.)

17. “Risk­ing crit­i­cism for being unfound­edly para­noid, I must con­vey my the­ory about the inves­ti­ga­tion and CIA’s involve­ment in it, I don’t know for cer­tain what’s the deal with the CIA inves­ti­gat­ing the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors, but it sure feels as if some­one up in that agency doesn’t like the idea that the Saudi Ara­bian boat is rocked. The raids on 555 had taken place already—the CIA couldn’t change that—but inves­ti­gat­ing and giv­ing the peo­ple behind the raids a hard time is a most effi­cient way of mak­ing sure the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion stops there. Which, come to think of it, may be the rea­son the gov­ern­ment looks so unfa­vor­ably on the law­suit filed by 9–11 vic­tims’ fam­i­lies against sev­eral Saudi enti­ties and indi­vid­u­als, accus­ing them of fund­ing ter­ror­ism and seek­ing dam­ages.” (Idem.)

18. A dis­turb­ing fact con­cerns the expi­ra­tion of a U.N. task force that had been enforc­ing reg­u­la­tions against the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism. Among the insti­tu­tions that appears to have sur­vived attempts at inter­dic­tion is the Al Taqwa net­work. (For more about the Al Taqwa network’s con­tin­ued oper­a­tions, see FTR#‘s 433. 435, 442. For more about Al Taqwa, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 343, 352, 354, 356, 357, 359, 377, 378, 382, 413, 415, 416, 423, 425, 432, 433, 435, 439, 442. See also: three very impor­tant arti­cles by Kevin Coogan: “The Mys­te­ri­ous Achmed Huber: Friend to Hitler, Allah and Ibn Ladin?” ; “Report on Islamists, The Far Right, and Al Taqwa” ; and “Achmed Huber, The Avalon Gemein­schaft, and the Swiss ‘New Right’”.) “A U.N. task force that fought the flow of money to Al Qaeda expired last month. After 9/11, U.N. mem­bers were required to freeze the assets of com­pa­nies, char­i­ties and indi­vid­u­als who law-enforcement and intel­li­gence agen­cies believed were fun­nel­ing cash to Osama bin Laden’s net­work of the Tal­iban regime. The mon­i­tor­ing group ruf­fled feath­ers last year when it com­plained that some sus­pect indi­vid­u­als and groups con­tin­ued to operate—including branches of a major Saudi char­ity, the Al-Haramain Foun­da­tion. Last week the Saudis and Trea­sury Sec­re­tary John Snow announced that a hand­ful of Al-Haramain offices, includ­ing two branches linked to the U.S. Embasy bomb­ings in Kenya and Tan­za­nia, only now are being closed. Al-Haramain’s Saudi HQ remains open. U.N. mon­i­tors also noted that prin­ci­pals in Al Taqwa, a Swiss-based Islamic finan­cial net­work linked to bin Laden, stayed in busi­ness by renam­ing a cou­ple of com­pa­nies in Liecht­en­stein. A res­o­lu­tion to reestab­lish the task force may be intro­duced this week. But some U.N. offi­cials fear the mon­i­tors’ power to crit­i­cize mem­ber coun­tries may be sharply cur­tailed.” (“No More Watch­dog” by Mark Hosen­ball; Newsweek; 2/2/2004; p. 8.)

19. Next, the pro­gram turns to the role of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, and its piv­otal role in the found­ing of Al Taqwa. (For more about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, see—among other programs–FTR#‘s 343, 344, 350, 351, 377, 381, 382, 414, 416, 439, 442. In addi­tion, see “Islamism, Fas­cism and Ter­ror­ism” by Marc Erik­son [Asia Times]; Parts I-IV. Parts I and II can be accessed at www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK08Ak03.html; Part III can be accessed at www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DL04Ak01.html; Part IV can be accessed at www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DL05Ak01.html.) This part of the pro­gram accesses infor­ma­tion from an inter­view with Richard Labeviere, author of Dol­lars for Ter­ror. Note the cen­tral role of the lead­er­ship of the Broth­er­hood (Said Ramadan in par­tic­u­lar) in the found­ing of Bank Al Taqwa. “LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR:–In one of your works, you claim that the father of Tariq Ramadan, Said, was one of the founders of bank Al Taqwa, sus­pected by the United States to have financed Al Qaeda. RICHARD LABEVIERE:–In April 1998 in Cairo, I inter­viewed Mustapha Masshur, the Guide of the Broth­er­hood of the Moslem Broth­ers, at the seat of this orga­ni­za­tion, located at the edge of the Nile. One had then evoked the oper­a­tion of the Islamic banks. The Guide assured me that Youssef Nada, the financier of the Moslem Broth­ers, and Said Ramadan, the father of Tariq Ramadan, were friendly since their escape from Egypt, in the mid­dle of the 1950’s and that they were at the ori­gin of the cre­ation of bank Al Taqwa, the fidu­ciary com­pany based in Lugano, whose seat was in the Bahamas. This estab­lish­ment man­aged the money of the mem­bers of the Broth­er­hood. The Guide, now deceased, said to me that the Ramadan broth­ers always acted in the logic of their great father—Hassan el Banna, and that they were regarded as agents of the inter­ests of the founder of the Broth­er­hood.” (“Secrets of the Finan­cial Holy War [Inter­view with Richard Labeviere]”; La Nou­vel Obser­va­teur; 1/31/2004; pp. 1–2; accessed at: http://www.bethel-fr.com/voxdei/infos/afficher_info.php3?cle+8439 .)

20. “N.O.:–That does not make any [of them], there­fore, the accom­plices of Bin Laden. R. LABEVIERE:–No, of course, But this bank, Al Taqwa, is sus­pect by the FBI, this shortly after the 11th of Sep­tem­ber, to have taken part in the financ­ing of Bin Laden. It [Al Taqwa] is repro­duced on the black list of the Amer­i­cans. How­ever, this kind of Islamic bank is quasi-impenetrable. It does not have the right to make inter­est, it thus makes assem­blages of risk capital.—Translation: it invests in con­crete oper­a­tions, financ­ing of NGO, etc. In fact, multi-stage finan­cial arrange­ments feed a myr­iad of char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions. It is what the spe­cial­ists call bleach­ing back [laundering]—it is a zigzag a labyrinth in which the inves­ti­ga­tors lose them­selves, inevitably. When one exam­ines the finan­cial exer­cises of these estab­lish­ments, a whole fringe of their activ­i­ties is reg­is­tered under the head­ing of zakat, the reli­gious tax, the oblig­a­tion of char­ity, a truly for­bid­den zone. How­ever one knows that the zakat is used to finance off­shore com­pa­nies, pro­tected per­fectly by the same bank secrecy, and also the Islamic NGO’s, which are com­pletely unver­i­fi­able and uncon­trolled. Thus, since Novem­ber 2001, bank Al Taqwa changed names but Youssef Nada, the friend of Said Ramadan, con­tin­ues its activ­i­ties. The inves­ti­ga­tion does noth­ing cre­ate pub­lic­ity.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

21. The pro­gram high­lights the power of Saudi cap­i­tal in pre­vent­ing the inter­dic­tion of Islamist fund­ing sources. Note the fail­ure of Carla del Ponte to move suc­cess­fully against Saudi cap­i­tal in Swiss banks. Del Ponte is a law part­ner of Pier Felice Barchi, the lawyer for Youssef Nada. (For more about del Ponte, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 359, 446.) “N.O.—What can make the Swiss author­i­ties wrap up the mat­ter? R. LABEVIERE:–The prob­lem is that in Switzer­land, the bank­ing inter­ests are the absolute pri­or­ity. For the Fed­eral gov­ern­ment. It is imper­a­tive not to annoy the Saudis and their bankers. The experts of FATF (Group of Finan­cial Action) con­sider the Saudi assets placed in Switzer­land at between 30–60 bil­lion dol­lars. It is a vital activ­ity for this coun­try [Switzer­land]. So, nobody really wants to unearth a scan­dal which could kill the hen that lays the golden eggs. Judge Carla del Ponte even (when she was Attor­ney Gen­eral of the Con­fed­er­a­tion) after the attack at Luxor in 1997, was accused of drag­ging her feat. To defend her­self, she explained that she was con­fronted with a wall of money.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

22. It is worth not­ing that Said Ramadan was instru­men­tal in the found­ing of the Mus­lim World League, one of the pri­mary Islamist out­reach organs of the Saudi gov­ern­ment. (See the Harper’s arti­cle above, for more about the MWL.) “N.O.:–But the Ramadans are not directly implied in this his­tory. R. LABEVIERE:–Historically, Said Ramadan was one of the founders of the Mus­lim World League, in 1961. It was he who advised the Saudis to finance the dawa in Europe, the prop­a­ga­tion of the faith, by money, a kind of finan­cial holy war. It is one of the key char­ac­ters of this ide­o­log­i­cal war. He [Said Ramadan] is a cen­tral fig­ure in the inter­na­tional branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The Egypt­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices sus­pect him of work­ing directly for the Amer­i­cans in the 1960’s.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

23. Accord­ing to the book Dol­lars for Ter­ror, the orig­i­nal move by Said Ramadan to Switzer­land was to coor­di­nate the activ­i­ties of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood with those of Nazi banker Fran­cois Genoud. It was in this pre­cise time period that Ramadan was instru­men­tal in the for­ma­tion of the Mus­lim World League. “Let us men­tion only the inci­dent of the trea­sure of the FLN, at the cen­ter of which the banker Fran­cois Genoud may be found. [Said] Ramadan and the Mus­lim Broth­ers thought that they could play a part in the Alger­ian process as they had done in Pales­tine in 1947. Said Ramadan thus left Munich to set­tle in the city of Calvin.” (Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The United States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000 [SC]; Algora Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; p. 154; visit www.algora.com .)

24. The pro­gram reviews an item of dis­cus­sion from FTR#352. An arti­cle in the San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle con­tains an alle­ga­tion that Fran­cois Genoud is believed to have founded Al Taqwa in order to fund ter­ror­ists such as Car­los the Jackal and Bin Laden. “Author­i­ties believe Genoud founded Al Taqwa Bank and allo­cated its resources to sup­port inter­na­tional ter­ror­ists such as Vladimir Ilich Ramirez, alias Car­los the Jackal, and Bin Laden.” (“Swiss Probe Anti-U.S. Neo-Nazi” by Jay Bushin­sky; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 3/12/2002; p. A12; visit http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/12/MN192483.DTL.) (For more about Genoud, see Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Shows M19 and M21, as well as FTR#‘s 333, 341, 343, 344, 350, 351, 354, 371, 377, as well as the FTR inter­views with Kevin Coogan.)

25. Repris­ing an item of dis­cus­sion from FTR#357, the pro­gram cites the opin­ion of Ernest Backes (one of Europe’s fore­most experts on money laun­der­ing) con­cern­ing the role of Fran­cois Genoud in the devel­op­ment of the events of 9/11. Genoud (who com­mit­ted sui­cide in 1996) was very close to Al Taqwa per­son­ages, espe­cially Achmed Huber. Accord­ing to Backes, Genoud was also a finan­cial adviser to the Bin Laden fam­ily. “Finan­cial expert Ernest Backes of Lux­em­bourg has [stud­ied] white-collar crime in the field of bank­ing for many years. Accord­ing to him, there are indi­ca­tions of unusual trans­ac­tions with which the groups [asso­ci­ated with] bin Laden could have earned money. ‘You can, for exam­ple, exam­ine whether, within a cer­tain time period there’s been an attack against the secu­ri­ties of a given air­line com­pany. Since these secu­ri­ties are safe in a ‘clear­ing sys­tem,’ you can’t get an over­all view, who the owner was at a given time.’ . . .Accord­ing to Backes’ infor­ma­tion, the trail leads to Switzer­land, to the accounts of an orga­ni­za­tion that was founded by the late lawyer Fran­cois Genoud and evi­dently still sur­vives. Says Backes, ‘One of the grounds for accu­sa­tion is that this Swiss attor­ney had the clos­est con­nec­tions with the Bin Laden fam­ily, that he was an advi­sor to the fam­ily, one of its invest­ment bankers. It’s known for cer­tain, that he sup­ported ter­ror­ism and was the estate execu­tor for Hitler and part of the ter­ror milieu.’”
(“Insider Trad­ing Prior to the Ter­ror Attacks in the US?: Spec­u­lat­ing on Terror—Who Prof­ited from the Attacks?” by Rolf Bovier & Pierre Matthias; Bay­erische Rund­funk Online (BR-Online); 9/25/2001.)

26. Before leav­ing the sub­ject of Genoud, the pro­gram reprises an item of infor­ma­tion from FTR#354. The co-chairman of the board of direc­tors of SICO, the hold­ing com­pany that man­ages the Bin Laden busi­ness inter­ests in Europe, is Bau­doin Dunant, a friend and pro­fes­sional asso­ciate of Fran­cois Genoud. “This com­pany, 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 Dunant. 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. The friend­ships of the bin Ladens some­times seem sur­pris­ing, but they are log­i­cal: Fran­cois Genoud has always been pro-Arab.“
(In the Name of Osama Bin Laden; by Roland Jacquard; Copy­right 2002 [SC]; Duke Uni­ver­sity Press; ISBN 0–8223-2991–3; pp. 17–18.)

27. The bal­ance of the pro­gram deals with the recent dis­clo­sures of a nuclear smug­gling ring, involv­ing Pakistan’s “father of the bomb” Dr. A.Q. Khan and the ele­ments that helped him smug­gle the nuclear tech­nol­ogy to other coun­tries. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion blocked inves­ti­ga­tion of this oper­a­tion, once again to pro­tect Saudi inter­ests, who were help­ing to finance the cre­ation of the so-called “Islamic Bomb.” “On November7, 2001, BBC TV and The Guardian of Lon­don reported that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion thwarted inves­ti­ga­tions of Dr. A.Q. Khan, who this week con­fessed to sell­ing atomic secrets to Libya, North Korea, and Iran. The Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has expressed shock at the dis­clo­sures that Pak­istan, our ally in the war on ter­ror, has been run­ning a nuclear secrets bazaar. In fact, accord­ing to the British news team’s sources, Bush did not know of these facts because, shortly after his inau­gu­ra­tion, his National Secu­rity Agency (NSA) effec­tively stymied the probe of Khan Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries. CIA and other agents could not inves­ti­gate the spread of ‘Islamic Bombs’ through Pak­istan because fund­ing appeared to orig­i­nate in Saudi Ara­bia.“
(“Khan Job: Bush Spiked Probe of Pakistan’s Dr. Strangelove, BBC Reported in 2001″ by Greg Palast; Gregpalast.com; 2/9/2004.)

28. “Accord­ing to both sources and doc­u­ments obtained by the BBC, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion ‘Spike’ of the inves­ti­ga­tion of Dr. Khan’s Lab fol­lowed from a wider pol­icy of pro­tect­ing key Saudi Ara­bi­ans includ­ing the bin Laden Fam­ily. Despite these tan­ta­liz­ing facts, Abdul­lah and his oper­a­tions were A-OK with the FBI chiefs, if not their work­ing agents. Just a dumb SNAFU? Not accord­ing to a top-level CIA oper­a­tive who spoke with us on con­di­tion of anonymity. After Bush took office, he said, ‘there was a major pol­icy shift’ at the National Secu­rity Agency. Inves­ti­ga­tors were ordered to ‘back off’ from any inquiries into Saudi Ara­bian financ­ing of ter­ror net­works, espe­cially if they touched on Saudi roy­als and their retain­ers. That put the bin Ladens, a fam­ily worth a reported $12 bil­lion and a vir­tual arm of the Saudi royal house­hold, off lim­its for inves­ti­ga­tion. Osama was the excep­tion; he remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely at how he filled his piggy bank. The key rule of any inves­ti­ga­tion, ‘fol­low the money,’ was now vio­lated, and investigations—at least before Sep­tem­ber 11-began to die.” (Idem.)

29. “And there was a lot to investigate—or, in the case of the CIA and FBI under Bush—a lot to ignore. Through well-known inter­na­tional arms deal­ers (I’m sorry, but in this busi­ness, sin­ners are bet­ter sources than saints) our team was tipped off to a meet­ing of Saudi bil­lion­aires at the Hotel Royale Mon­ceau in Paris in May 1996 with the finan­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Osama bin Laden’s net­work. The Saudis, includ­ing a key Saudi prince joined by Mus­lim and non-Muslim gun traf­fick­ers, met to deter­mine who would pay how much to Osama. This was not so much an act of sup­port but of protection—a pay-off to keep the mad bomber away from Saudi Ara­bia.” (Idem.)

30. “The cru­cial ques­tion here is that, if I could learn about this meet­ing, how did the CIA miss it? In fact, since the first edi­tion of this book, other sources have dis­closed that the meet­ing was mon­i­tored by French intel­li­gence. Since U.S. intel­li­gence was thus likely informed, the ques­tion becomes why didn’t the gov­ern­ment imme­di­ately move against the Saudis?” (Idem.)

31. ” I probed our CIA con­tact for specifics of inves­ti­ga­tions that were ham­pered by orders to back off of the Saudis. He told us that the Khan Lab­o­ra­to­ries inves­ti­ga­tion had been effec­tively on hold.” (Idem.)

32. The admin­is­tra­tion of the first Pres­i­dent Bush also turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear devel­op­ment, once again in order to help shield the Pak­istani role in the Afghan muja­hadeen war against the Sovi­ets. “Pak­istan warned the United States 14 years ago that it might give nuclear tech­nol­ogy to Iran, but the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Bush’s father did lit­tle to fol­low up, for­mer Pen­ta­gon offi­cials say. Word of the 1990 threat from Pakistan’s top gen­eral appar­ently was not passed along to the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion when it took office three years later, accord­ing to inter­views by the Asso­ci­ated Press. . . .” (“Pak­istan Threat­ened to Give Iran Nuclear Know-How in ’90″ by Matt Kel­ley [AP]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 2/28/2004; p. A3.)

33. ” . . . But for­mer gov­ern­ment arms con­trol offi­cials and declas­si­fied doc­u­ments show the United States knew about Pakistan’s nuclear pro­cure­ment net­work since 1983 and sus­pected the trans­fers to Iran since the mid-1980’s. The United States had hints of the trans­fers to North Korea in the mid-1990’s, offi­cials say. The clear­est evi­dence of the Iran link came in Jan­u­ary 1990, when Pakistan’s army chief of staff con­veyed his threat to arm Iran to a top Pen­ta­gon offi­cial. Henry Rowen, at the time an assis­tant defense sec­re­tary, said Pak­istani Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg had issued the warn­ing in a face-to-face meet­ing in Pak­istan. . . .” (Idem.)

34. ” . . . Sokol­ski and Rowen said for­mer Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion had done lit­tle to fol­low up on Beg’s warn­ing. ‘In hind­sight, maybe before or after that they did make some trans­fers,’ Rowen said. . . .” (Idem.)

35. “While Islam­abad and Wash­ing­ton squab­bled about the evi­dence, the Khan net­work pro­vided sophis­ti­cated tech­nol­ogy to Libya, North Korea and Iran, three coun­tries the United States con­sid­ered among the most dan­ger­ous. A decade ear­lier, the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion had looked the other way on Pakistan’s nuclear pro­gram, said Stephen Cohen, a State Depart­ment expert on the region from 1985 to 1987. Back then, Wash­ing­ton used Pak­istan as a con­duit for send­ing weapons and money to gueril­las fight­ing the Soviet inva­sion of Afghanistan. ‘They were cov­er­ing up our involve­ment in Afghanistan, pre­tend­ing we played no role in Afghanistan, so they expected us to cover up their role in procur­ing a weapons sys­tem they saw as vital to their sur­vival,’ said Cohen, now with the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion.” (Idem.)

36. Next, the pro­gram turns to the role of Euro­pean ele­ments in the Dr. A.Q. Khan net­work. “The Pak­istani sci­en­tist Abdul Qadeer Khan has been demo­nized in the West for sell­ing atomic secrets and equip­ment around the world, but the trade began in Europe, not Islam­abad, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments and experts who mon­i­tor pro­lif­er­a­tion. The records show that indus­try sci­en­tists and West­ern intel­li­gence agen­cies have known for decades that nuclear tech­nol­ogy was pour­ing out of Europe despite national export con­trol efforts to con­tain it. Many of the names that have turned up among lists of sup­pli­ers and mid­dle­men who fed equip­ment, mate­ri­als and knowl­edge to nuclear pro­grams in Pak­istan and other aspir­ing nuclear nations are well-known play­ers in Europe’s ura­nium enrich­ment indus­try, a crit­i­cal part of many nuclear weapons pro­grams. Some have been con­victed of ille­gal exports before. . . . ” (“Roots of Pak­istan Atomic Scan­dal Traced to Europe” by Craig S. Smith; New York Times; 2/19/2004; p. 1; accessed at www.nytimes.com/2004/02/19/international/europe/NUKE .)

37. ” . . . The prob­lem began with the 1970 Treaty of Almelo, under which Britain, Ger­many and the Nether­lands agreed to develop cen­trifuges to enrich ura­nium jointly, ensur­ing their nuclear power indus­try a fuel source inde­pen­dent of the United States. Ure­nco, or the Ura­nium Enrich­ment Com­pany, was estab­lished the next year with its pri­mary enrich­ment plant at Almelo, the Nether­lands.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

38. “Secu­rity at Ure­nco was by most accounts slip­shod. The con­sor­tium relied on a net­work of research cen­ters and sub­con­trac­tors to build its cen­trifuges, and top-secret blue­prints were passed out to com­pa­nies bid­ding on ten­ders, giv­ing engi­neers across Europe an oppor­tu­nity to appro­pri­ate designs. Dr. Khan, who worked for a Ure­nco Dutch sub­con­trac­tor, Physics Dynamic Research Lab­o­ra­tory, was given access to the most advanced designs, even though he came from Pak­istan, which has already known to har­bor nuclear ambi­tions. A 1980 report by the Dutch gov­ern­ment on his activ­i­ties said he vis­ited the Almelo fac­tory in May 1972 and by late 1974 had an office there. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

39. ” . . . That same year [1987], despite Amer­i­can warn­ings to Ger­many that such a sale was immi­nent, a Ger­man firm exported to Pak­istan a plant for the recov­ery of tri­tium, a volatile gas used to increase the power of nuclear bombs. The com­pany sim­ply called the plant some­thing else to obtain an export license. ‘The export con­trol office didn’t even inspect the goods,’ said Rein­hard Hueb­ner, the Ger­man pros­e­cu­tor who han­dled the sub­se­quent trial of the company’s chief, Rudolf Ort­may­ers, and Peter Finke, a Ger­man physi­cist who went to Pak­istan to train engi­neers there to oper­ate the equip­ment. Both men were sen­tenced to jail for vio­lat­ing export con­trol laws.” (Idem.)

40. Among the Ure­nco fig­ures involved in the smug­gling of nuclear mate­r­ial was Karl Heinz Schaab, who smug­gled crit­i­cal nuclear tech­nol­ogy to the Iraqis. “But there were clues that the tech­nol­ogy had spread even fur­ther: a Ger­man intel­li­gence inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined that Iraq and pos­si­bly Iran and North Korea had obtained Uranium-melting exper­tise stolen from Ure­nco in 1984, Mr. Hibbs reported in Nucle­on­ics Week sev­eral years later. In 1989, two engi­neers, Bruno Stemm­ler and Karl Heinz Schaab, who had worked for Germany’s MAN New Tech­nol­ogy, another Ure­nco sub­con­trac­tor, sold plans for advanced ura­nium enrich­ment cen­trifuges to Iraq. They went to Bagh­dad to help solve prob­lems in mak­ing the equip­ment work. In 1991, after the first Iraq war, inter­na­tional inspec­tors were stunned to dis­cover the extent of Sad­dam Hussein’s hid­den pro­gram. Mr. Schaab was later con­victed of trea­son but only served a lit­tle more than a year in jail. Mr. Stemm­ler died before he could be tried. . . .” (Idem.)

41. ” . . . As recently as last year, Ger­man cus­toms agents seized high-tensile-strength alu­minum tubes made by a Ger­man com­pany and bound for North Korea. The tubes matched the spec­i­fi­ca­tions for the hous­ings of Urenco’s uranium-enriching cen­trifuges.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

42. This descrip­tion con­cludes with a recap of infor­ma­tion about Karl –Heinz Schaab from FTR#395. Note that this infor­ma­tion was not in the broad­cast of FTR#447, itself. The Schaab/Urenco/Khan con­nec­tion will be explored at greater length in a future pro­gram. “Steal­ing the Fire is an inves­tiga­tive film that pro­vides stag­ger­ing evi­dence show­ing how a Ger­man sci­en­tist, Karl Heinz Schaab, who helped develop the cen­trifuges nec­es­sary to extract weapons-grade Ura­nium 235, sold clas­si­fied doc­u­ments in the early 1990’s to Iraq.” (“Steal­ing the Fire;” Eye Spy; Issue 13; p. 18.)

43. It is inter­est­ing to note that the co-producer of the film dis­cov­ered the “clan­des­tine nuclear trail” while work­ing on a PBS show about the BCCI. The BCCI scan­dal is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the sub­ject of Saudi Ara­bia and the events of 9/11. (For a sum­mary account of the sig­nif­i­cance of the BCCI scan­dal in the con­text of 9/11, see FTR#391 and the pro­grams ref­er­enced in that pro­gram.) ” . . . The inves­ti­ga­tion started many, many years ago. In 1992, Eric Nadler an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist, began research­ing mate­r­ial on the under­ground traf­fick­ing of nuclear weapons. Ten years later, he and co-producer, John S. Fried­man, the founder of the Doc­u­men­tary Cen­ter at Colom­bia Uni­ver­sity have released their find­ings. Nadler told Paper­clips mag­a­zine. ‘I was work­ing for Front­line on PBS, and I was doing a story about the BCCI scan­dal, which was a crooked bank based in Pak­istan. I was doing a story called ‘The Arm­ing of Saudi Ara­bia’ about the hid­den his­tory of United States/Saudi rela­tions. I got very dis­turbed about the hid­den his­tory, espe­cially about nuclear sto­ries that weren’t being cov­ered . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 18–19.)

44. Accord­ing to Mr. Nadler, Saudi Ara­bia was heav­ily involved in financ­ing Sad­dam Hussein’s quest for the bomb. Like the Saudis and the Bush fam­ily, Sad­dam Hussein’s own his­tory is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with that of the Third Reich. The For The Record series presents the view that Al Qaeda, the Wah­habi mil­i­tants, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the Iraqis and the PLO con­sti­tute “proxy war­riors” for the Under­ground Reich, against the USA, Britain and Israel. (For dis­cus­sion of the Saudi links to the Third Reich, see the dis­cus­sion and ref­er­ences in FTR#391.) “. . . And I pro­duced for Front­line some­thing that aired in 1992, in which our team got clas­si­fied CIA and DIA doc­u­ments, which said the fol­low­ing: ‘We know that Saudi Ara­bia has given $5 bil­lion to Sad­dam Hussein’s nuclear pro­gram for the express pur­pose of build­ing a nuclear bomb.’ My inves­tiga­tive team at Front­line got the banks, we got the dates, we got the money trans­fers, and we put this on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion. [We showed] that America’s biggest ally in the Gulf had given $5 bil­lion to the Hitler of the Gulf to build nuclear weapons. And though USA Today put it on their tele­vi­sion page, it caused barely a rip­ple in the pop­u­lar cul­ture. I was inter­ested in secret nuclear sto­ries from that moment on . . .” (Ibid.; p. 19.)

45. In Steal­ing the Fire, the cen­tral fig­ure in the Iraqi/German nuclear con­nec­tion was one Karl Heinz Schaab. ” . . . He was fas­ci­nated by Iraq’s deter­mined efforts to cre­ate nuclear weapons. By exam­in­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion of the United Nations weapons inspec­tors, he came across a ‘mys­te­ri­ous man’-Karl Heinz Schaab. Nadler and Fried­man thought that by research­ing Schaab, this would open other doors and reveal the com­pa­nies behind the ‘covert nuclear trad­ing deals . . .’” (Idem.)

46. Schaab was a pro­tégé of Dr. Ger­not Zippe, one of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures involved with devel­op­ing the Third Reich’s nuclear pro­gram. “Schaab was a stu­dent of Dr. Ger­not Zippe, an Aus­trian physi­cist often referred to as the ‘father of the cen­trifuge.’ And Steal­ing the Fire is as much about the cen­trifuge as the dirty deals done to get the tech­nol­ogy to Iraq. Nadler says the equip­ment orig­i­nated in the research lab­o­ra­to­ries of wartime Ger­many. Hence the infor­ma­tion sup­plied by Schaab in 1989 to the Iraqis basi­cally orig­i­nated from the failed Nazi atomic bomb pro­gram.” (Idem.)

47. After dis­cussing Zippe’s cap­ture by the Sovi­ets and his work for the U.S.S.R. on nuclear mat­ters, the pro­gram sets forth his return to Degussa, the firm which pro­duced the Zyk­lon B for the gas cham­bers in World War II. (For more on Degussa, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 87, 292, 294, 388.) “The nuclear sci­en­tist worked at the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia for a while, and de-briefed the Pen­ta­gon on the Russ­ian cen­trifuge. How­ever, he got home­sick and soon returned to Ger­many and found work at Degussa.” (Idem.)

11. Zippe was not the only Third Reich alum­nus asso­ci­ated with Degussa’s nuclear export oper­a­tions. “Dr. Alfred Boettcher was an SS sci­en­tific offi­cer who headed the pre­cious met­als divi­sion at Degussa in the post­war years. He later became nuclear export attache for the West Ger­man Gov­ern­ment.” (Ibid.; p. 21.)

48. Degussa sub­sidiary NUKEM was the divi­sion involved with the traf­fick­ing of nuclear mate­r­ial to Iraq, as well as other coun­tries attempt­ing to man­u­fac­ture nuclear weapons. Boettcher and Zippe were joined by yet another Third Reich alum­nus in Germany’s work on behalf of Iraq’s nuclear efforts. (For more on NUKEM, see Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M-8.) “Two trans­ac­tions that spring height­ened fears that Iraq intended to use the Osirak reac­tor to pro­duce bomb-grade plu­to­nium. An Ital­ian com­pany, in a semi-clandestine deal, sold Iraq six tons of depleted ura­nium pur­chased from the West Ger­man nuclear con­sor­tium NUKEM. Fear­ing that NUKEM might not deliver the ura­nium if they knew it was intended for Iraq, the Ital­ians claimed it was for domes­tic use in Italy. But they needn’t have wor­ried about NUKEM’s scru­ples. The con­sor­tium was a wholly owned sub­sidiary of the Ger­man chem­i­cals giant Degussa, which had invented and man­u­fac­tured Zyk­lon B, the pow­er­ful cyanide gas that streamed out of the show­er­heads in Hitler’s death camps, killing mil­lions of Euro­pean Jews. Degussa had also played a key role in the Nazi effort to build an atom bomb, stopped only when its Oranien­burg works near Berlin were flat­tened by U.S. bombers in 1945. That same year, the Third Reich was going up in flames, Degussa’s chair­man, Her­mann Schlosser, donated 45,000 reichs­marks to Hitler’s SS. Thirty-five years later Schlosser was still on the Degussa board, and in 1987 he was awarded the Ger­man Fed­eral Merit Cross for his ser­vices to indus­try. One of Schlosser’s ser­vices was ship­ping nuclear equip­ment and mate­ri­als to almost every devel­op­ing nation that was known to have a clan­des­tine bomb pro­gram. Another was open­ing the vast Iraqi mar­ket to Ger­man firms. His readi­ness to sup­ply nuclear mate­ri­als to both India and Pak­istan had impressed on Sad­dam Hus­sein that this was a man he could do busi­ness with.” (The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq; Ken­neth Tim­mer­man; Copy­right 1991 [HC]; Houghton Mif­flin Com­pany; p. 70.) (For more on the arm­ing of Iraq, see RFA-20, FTR #‘s 16, 24, 31, 52, 87, 287, 295.)

49. “Nadler called Degussa ‘the worst com­pany ever.’ The inves­ti­ga­tor believes the direc­tors of the com­pany were ‘not pros­e­cuted because of their inter­na­tional con­nec­tions to sev­eral major US cor­po­ra­tions.’” (Ibid.; p. 20.)

50. It is sig­nif­i­cant that, accord­ing to Nadler, the Iraqis received soft­ware, not hard­ware. This com­pli­cates the issue con­sid­er­ably. As will be noted in future pro­grams, just what hap­pened to this soft­ware is a source for con­cern. In the con­text of the Under­ground Reich (heav­ily involved with Latin Amer­ica as well as the Mid­dle East), it is worth not­ing that Schaab was also involved with deals with mem­bers of the Brazil­ian armed forces. “Schaab’s name was actu­ally found on doc­u­ments recov­ered by UN weapons inspec­tors in Iraq. He had been sell­ing the cen­trifuge secrets to Bagh­dad. Eye Spy asked Nadler just what exactly the Iraqis received for their money, ‘soft­ware not hard­ware,’ he said. He then con­firmed that with this data Iraq could eas­ily build a factory—a pro­duc­tion line-for nuclear bombs. The inves­ti­ga­tors tracked Schaab to Brazil, where he tem­porar­ily fled to avoid pros­e­cu­tion. Here also was the loca­tion of fur­ther obscure deals with high rank­ing offi­cials of the Brazil­ian armed forces.” (Ibid.; p. 20.)

51. Nadler notes the role of Ger­many as the great­est exporter of nuclear tech­nol­ogy in the post­war period. (The Ger­man role in the devel­op­ment of the Pak­istani bomb is dis­cussed in FTR#336. There is doc­u­mented sym­pa­thy among some of the cre­ators of the Pak­istani bomb for the Tal­iban regime.) ” . . . .The investigator’s research tends to sup­port the British intel­li­gence brief on Iraq’s WMD, and high­lights a con­tro­ver­sial deal between a NATO coun­try and Iraq. Nadler said that between 1945 and 1990, Ger­many was the ‘great­est pro­lif­er­a­tor of nuclear weapons tech­nol­ogy in the world . . .’” (Idem.)

52. Schaab appears to have been oper­at­ing with the bless­ings of the Ger­man gov­ern­ment. (For more on the Ger­man government—and Under­ground Reich–connection to the Iraqi nuclear pro­gram, see FTR#155.) ” . . . On the Ger­man Government’s light sen­tence for Schaab, and the sug­ges­tion other peo­ple might be involved, Nadler was diplo­matic: ‘Schaab had a story and he stuck to it. He said that two other men who are now dead were involved. But it’s quite clear that all this activ­ity had to be mon­i­tored and known by the Ger­mans. We can safely say that the case was woe­fully under-investigated, and, as one per­son says in our film, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment just wanted it to go away. . .’” (Idem.)

53. ” . . . Schaab took the secret plans of the cen­trifuge and sold hun­dreds of blue­prints to the Iraqis. And on a recent tele­vi­sion news pro­gram on Fox, Nadler said it is pos­si­ble that Iraq may have sold the plans to al-Qaeda. ‘The fact remains that the clas­si­fied plans for ura­nium enrich­ment tech­nol­ogy were stolen and sold to the Iraqis; what they do with it is a mys­tery. . . .”’ (Idem.)