Recorded May 23, 2004
REALAUDIO

In addi­tion to updat­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion of ter­ror­ist financ­ing, this broad­cast high­lights behind-the-scenes deals between the Bush fam­ily, the oil indus­try and Saudi Ara­bia to manip­u­late the results of Amer­i­can elec­tions. The broad­cast also sets forth the impend­ing arrival in the United States of Tariq Ramada, the son of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood king­pin Said Ramadan and the heir to his father’s unsa­vory polit­i­cal tradition.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: A meet­ing of the Car­lyle Group allegedly involv­ing dis­cus­sion of the Saudi Bin­laden Group’s con­tin­ued fund­ing of Al Qaeda; con­tin­ued inves­ti­ga­tions of the fund­ing of ter­ror­ism by Saudi char­i­ties and busi­nesses tar­geted by Oper­a­tion Green Quest; review of some of the Bush administration’s con­nec­tions to the above-mentioned busi­nesses and char­i­ties; proof of Bank Al Taqwa’s involve­ment in the fund­ing of Al Qaeda; the alleged involve­ment of Yassin Al-Qadi in the fund­ing of ter­ror­ism; alle­ga­tions in a recent book that the Saudis were con­spir­ing with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to lower gas prices in order to assure Bush’s elec­tion; recent announce­ments by the Saudis that give cre­dence to the alle­ga­tions in that book; review of the 1970’s con­spir­acy between George H.W. Bush’s CIA, the Saudis and the petro­leum indus­try to cre­ate a phony oil short­age; the role of that phony oil short­age in desta­bi­liz­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion, jus­ti­fy­ing the defense and bud­getary poli­cies of the Reagan/Bush admin­is­tra­tions and jus­ti­fy­ing arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

1. Much of the first part of the pro­gram deals with the issue of ter­ror­ist funding—Operation Green Quest in par­tic­u­lar. Dis­cus­sion begins with an alle­ga­tion that the Car­lyle Group was con­sid­er­ing the issue of con­tin­ued fund­ing of Al Qaeda by the Saudi Bin­laden Group—the pri­mary Bin Laden fam­ily busi­ness enter­prise. (For more about the Car­lyle Group, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 329, 342, 347.) “Direc­tors of one of the world’s largest arma­ment com­pa­nies are plan­ning on meet­ing in Lis­bon in three weeks time. . . . The finan­cial assets of the Saudi Bin­laden Cor­po­ra­tion (SBC) are also man­aged by the Car­lyle Group. . . . The Por­tu­gal News has been told by a reli­able source that the Car­lyle Group meet­ing in Lis­bon will dis­cuss the rela­tion­ship between the Saudi Bin­laden Cor­po­ra­tion [sic] and Osama bin Laden. Many US offi­cials claim that the SBC con­tin­ues to finance his polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, and has done so for many years. If true, this would place George Bush senior and his col­leagues at the Car­lyle Group in an embar­rass­ing posi­tion. As man­agers of SBC’s finan­cial invest­ments they might well be accused of indi­rectly aid­ing and abet­ting the United States’ num­ber one enemy.”
(“US Arms Group Heads for Lis­bon”; The Por­tu­gal News; 4/4/2003.)

2. Next, the broad­cast turns to dis­cus­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, the code-name for the oper­a­tion directed at inter­dict­ing the terrorist-funding appa­ra­tus behind Al Qaeda. (For more about Oper­a­tion Green Quest, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#’s 356, 357, 359, 366, 382, 387, 390, 406, 415, 423, 425, 432, 433, 454.) The Hern­don Group and the Al-Rajhi inter­ests were tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. FTR#462 details the sub­ver­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, some of whose ele­ments and asso­ciates belong to the milieu tar­geted by the oper­a­tion. “Fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors plan to seek indict­ments in the next six to 12 months of a group of promi­nent Mus­lim busi­ness­men who are at the cen­ter of the U.S. government’s largest domes­tic inves­ti­ga­tion into the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism. In an unusual hear­ing sought by lawyers for the busi­ness­men, a fed­eral judge pressed pros­e­cu­tor Gor­don Kromberg to spell out the Jus­tice Department’s plans. The wealthy Islamic activists are involved in a group of com­monly con­trolled busi­nesses and char­i­ties in Hern­don, Va., that allegedly has finan­cial links to the Al-Rajhi bank­ing empire of Saudi Ara­bia.”
(“U.S. to Seek Charges in Ter­ror Probe” by Glenn R. Simp­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/26/’04; p. A6.)

3. “For­mer fed­eral offi­cials allege that the Al Rajhi Bank­ing and Invest­ment Corp. has links to the financ­ing of ter­ror­ists. The bank has denied the alle­ga­tions. Mr. Kromberg told the court that he expects to ask a grand jury to hand up charges, pos­si­bly involv­ing a rack­e­teer­ing con­spir­acy. ‘We think we have a good case and we are going to bring it,’ Mr. Kromberg said. Since the mid-1990’s, the U.S. gov­ern­ment has con­ducted an on-and-off inves­ti­ga­tion into whether the char­i­ties sup­port ter­ror­ist group such as Hamas, Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda. Some fig­ures in the Hern­don group have been promi­nent polit­i­cally in Wash­ing­ton, and sev­eral are affil­i­ated with a world-wide soci­ety called the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood that has ide­o­log­i­cal links to ter­ror­ist groups. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] . . .” (Idem.)

4. FTR#462 will develop appar­ent links between the tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids and the FBI. “ . . . Mr. Parker [lawyer for the Al Rajhi inter­ests Wilmer ‘Buddy’ Parker] asserted that FBI agents have recently told Ms. Luque that the Hern­don inquiry is no longer a ter­ror­ism case, prompt­ing a sharp rebut­tal from Mr. Kromberg, an assis­tant U.S. attor­ney. ‘For Mr. Parker to get up here and with a straight face tell this court that the FBI is not inves­ti­gat­ing this case and . . . that the jus­tice Depart­ment doesn’t believe that there is a real terrorist-financing case here, bog­gles the mind,’ he said.” (Idem.)

5. Yet another evi­den­tiary trib­u­tary con­nect­ing the Bush milieu to terrorist-funding activ­i­ties con­cerns the Riggs Bank, one of whose direc­tors is Jonathan Bush, the president’s uncle. (For more about Riggs Bank, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#431.) “The Sen­ate Finance Com­mit­tee chair­man has asked the 9/11 com­mis­sion to look into trans­ac­tions total­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars at two U.S. banks by Saudi Ara­bian diplo­mats. Sen. Charles Grass­ley (R., Iowa) sent let­ters to mem­bers of the com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the ter­ror­ist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, detail­ing ‘sus­pi­cious’ activ­ity by Saudi offi­cials and cit­i­zens at Fleet-Boston finan­cial Corp. and Riggs National Bank. Peo­ple famil­iar with the let­ter said Mr. Grass­ley cited Saudi Embassy pay­ments for Saudi cit­i­zens’ flight-training and pay­ments to Islamic groups sus­pected of sup­port­ing ter­ror­ism. . . .”
(“Sen­a­tor Requests 9/11 Panel Probe of Saudis, Banks” by Glenn R. Simp­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/29/2004; p. A5.)

6. Abdur­rah­man Alam­oudi is a prin­ci­pal fig­ure in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion, con­nected both to the GOP-affiliated Islamic Insti­tute milieu and to the Al Taqwa net­work dis­cussed below. (For more about Alam­oudi, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 433, 435.) “ . . . The Saudi dona­tions of con­cern to Sen. Grass­ley include pay­ments through Riggs to the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil of Alexan­dria, Va., two peo­ple involved in the mat­ter said. The council’s for­mer pres­i­dent, Abdur­rah­man Alam­oudi, is cur­rently jailed on charges of vi

olat­ing ter­ror­ism sanc­tions.” (Idem.)

7. Next, the pro­gram turns to the Bank Al Taqwa. A recent book about for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary O’Neill high­lights Al Taqwa’s role in the fund­ing of Al Qaeda. “ . . . Al Taqwa was an asso­ci­a­tion of off­shore banks and finan­cial man­age­ment firms that had helped al-Qaeda shift money around the world. It was based in the Bahamas, and vir­tu­ally all the known money of al-Qaeda at that point–$20 million—was housed there. It was iden­ti­fied thanks to a break that was any­thing but exotic: a Bahamian bank­ing offi­cial sim­ply blew the whis­tle on the group. Inter­nal Trea­sury doc­u­ments esti­mated that another $80 to $100 mil­lion of al-Qaeda funds was tucked into other, unde­tected accounts around the globe. . . .”
(The Price of Loy­alty; by Ron Suskind; Simon & Schus­ter [HC]; Copy­right 2004; 0–7432-5545–3; p. 198.)

8. Con­tin­u­ing the dis­cus­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, the broad­cast devel­ops the sub­ject of the Al Taqwa net­work. Infor­ma­tion about Al Taqwa’s role in financ­ing Al Qaeda was con­tained in a let­ter from a U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment offi­cial to a Swiss gov­ern­men­tal offi­cer. (For more about Al Taqwa, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#’s 343, 354, 356, 357, 359, 371, 377, 378, 382, 387, 415, 416, 423, 425, 432, 433, 435, 454, 455, 456.) “A Bahamian bank con­trolled by a con­tro­ver­sial Islamic financier in Switzer­land set up a highly secre­tive line of credit for a top asso­ciate of Osama bin Lden as part of an elab­o­rate scheme to finance attacks by Al Qaeda and other ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, accord­ing to a newly dis­closed U.S. Trea­sury doc­u­ment. In a Jan­u­ary 2002 let­ter to Swiss author­i­ties, a senior Trea­sury offi­cial pri­vately spelled out the U.S. government’s case that the Bahamian bank, one arm of an inter­na­tional finan­cial net­work known as Al-Taqwa (Ara­bic for ‘Fear of God’), had a lengthy his­tory of financ­ing and facil­i­tat­ing the activ­i­ties of ter­ror­ists, includ­ing pro­vid­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in fund­ing for Al Qaeda and Hamas.”
(“Pay­ing for Ter­ror: Trea­sury Depart­ment Doc­u­ments Detail the Murky World of Al Qaeda” by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosen­ball; MSNBC/Newsweek; 5/12/2004.)

9. “The Trea­sury let­ter, and another one involv­ing Saudi busi­ness­man Yassin A. Qadi, pro­vide a reveal­ing new win­dow into the murky world of ter­ror finance, at least as viewed by U.S. coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cials. Based largely on secret intel­li­gence sources, the Trea­sury doc­u­ments attempt to show how Qadi and Al-Taqwa and its founder, Youssef M. Nada, used con­cealed bank accounts, com­plex land deals and other hard-to-trace meth­ods to steer large sums of money to ter­ror­ists.” (Idem.)

10. “The let­ters were recently obtained by Ron Mot­ley, the lead lawyer in a mas­sive law­suit against Saudi busi­ness fig­ures and oth­ers accused of com­plic­ity in the financ­ing of the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks. In a little-noticed court fil­ing on Mon­day, Mot­ley placed the doc­u­ment in the pub­lic record, a move that seemed to star­tle at least one defense lawyer who noted that such pri­vate, government-to gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions are almost never made pub­lic. The let­ters were writ­ten by Trea­sury in an effort to per­suade the Swiss to take legal action to shut down the oper­a­tions of sus­pect orga­ni­za­tions. The most sig­nif­i­cant of the let­ters involves Al-Taqwa and its founder, Nada, an Egyptian-born busi­ness­man based in Switzer­land who has long been a promi­nent fig­ure in the world of Islamic finance and who has con­sis­tently denied any involve­ment in the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism. . . .” (Idem.)

11. “In the let­ter dated Jan. 4, 2002, George B. Wolfe, then Treasury’s deputy gen­eral coun­sel, tells Switzerland’s deputy chief fed­eral pros­e­cu­tor, Claude Nicati, that money pours in to branch offices of the Al-Taqwa net­work in Lugano and Malta from Kuwait and the United Arab Emi­rates for bin Laden. It alleges that, as late as Sep­tem­ber 2001, Nada and a busi­ness asso­ciate, Ali bin Mus­salim, pro­vided indi­rect invest­ment ser­vices for al Qaeda, invest­ing funds for bin Laden, and mak­ing cash deliv­er­ies on request to the Al Qaeda orga­ni­za­tion.” (Idem.)

12. “The most star­tling alle­ga­tion is that Nada’s Bank Al Taqwa appeared to be pro­vid­ing a clan­des­tine line of credit for a close asso­ciate of bin Laden, accord­ing to the Wolfe let­ter. This bin Laden lieu­tenant had a line of credit with a Mid­dle East finan­cial insti­tu­tion that drew on an iden­ti­cal account num­ber at Bank Al-Taqwa. Unlike other accounts, even accounts of pri­vate bank­ing cus­tomers, this account was blocked by the com­puter sys­tem and spe­cial priv­i­leges were required to access it. Not­ing that no iden­ti­fi­able names were asso­ci­ated with the account, the let­ter calls the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the account highly unusual, and sug­gest that they were cre­ated to con­ceal the asso­ci­a­tion of the bin Laden orga­ni­za­tion with Bank Al-Taqwa.” (Idem.)

13. “A legal source famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion into Al-Taqwa said that another U.S. intel­li­gence doc­u­ment states that the Al-Taqwa account was orig­i­nally set up for Mam­douh Mah­moud Salim, a one-time mem­ber of Al Qaeda’s gov­ern­ing Shura Coun­cil who was cap­tured in Ger­many after the 1998 U.S. Embassy bomb­ings in Africa and has been await­ing trial while in prison in the United States ever since. Just last week. Salim was sen­tenced to 32 years in prison in a sep­a­rate case stem­ming from charges that he stabbed a prison guard in the eye with a sharp­ened plas­tic comb as part of a failed plot with other accused Al Qaeda code­fen­dants to break out of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Cor­rec­tional Cen­ter in lower Man­hat­tan. (The prison guard suf­fered brain dam­age, lost an eye and is par­tially par­a­lyzed as a result of the attack.) After Salim’s arrest, other al Qaeda fig­ures con­tin­ued to access the account, the legal source said. The Wolfe let­ter also reveals for the first time that the gov­ern­ment of Jor­dan had accused Bank Al-Taqwa of financ­ing a ter­ror­ist net­work linked to bin Laden that was involved in plot­ting ter­ror attacks at West­ern and tourist tar­gets in Jor­dan dur­ing the mil­len­nium cel­e­bra­tions. . . .” (Idem.)

14. “ . . . In addi­tion, the let­ter notes that one of Al-Taqwa’s board mem­bers, Ahmed Huber, had con­firmed that he had met with mem­bers of bin Laden’s orga­ni­za­tion in Beirut and had defended the attacks on the World Trade Cen­ter and the Pen­ta­gon. Huber, a noto­ri­ous Swiss Holo­caust denier and far-right activist, is described in the Wolfe let­ter also states that another Al-Taqwa board mem­ber, Ahmed Idris Nasred­din, has sup­ported an Islamic cen­ter in Milan that the U.S. gov­ern­ment believes may be Al Qaeda’s most impor­tant base in Europe, and which was linked to the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing, among other ter­ror plots. . . .” (Idem.)

15. Another Trea­sury Depart­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­cerned Yassin Al-Qadi, another alleged ter­ror­ist financier. Al-Qadi is dis­cussed at greater length in FTR#462.) “ . . . The same goes for Qadi, a promi­nent Saudi busi­ness­man who, in a Nov. 29, 2001, let­ter to the Swiss writ­ten by then Trea­sury gen­eral coun­sel David Augh­auser, is a described as hav­ing a long his­tory of financ­ing and facil­i­tat­ing the activ­i­ties of ter­ror­ists and terrorist-related orga­ni­za­tions, often act­ing through seem­ingly legit­i­mate char­i­ta­ble enter­prises and busi­nesses.’ Qadi was the founder of Muwafaq (“Blessed Relief”) Foun­da­tion, an Islamic char­ity that employed or served as cover for a num­ber of Islamic extrem­ists con­nected with bin Laden and other ter­ror groups, accord­ing to the A

ufhauser let­ter. A lawyer for Qadi, whose assets have been blocked by the Trea­sury Depart­ment in the United States, said that the busi­ness­man is in the process of pre­sent­ing evi­dence to U.S. offi­cials chal­leng­ing the alle­ga­tions against him.” (Idem.)

16. “U.S. coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cials have pri­vately acknowl­edged their frus­tra­tion in pur­su­ing cases against both Al-Taqwa mem­bers and Qadi as well as numer­ous other tar­gets in terror-finance inves­ti­ga­tions. Intel­li­gence is one thing, but gath­er­ing the evi­dence to sup­port these alle­ga­tions is another story, said one for­mer top U.S. law-enforcement offi­cial who worked on terror-finance cases. Still, the jus­tice Depart­ment is not done try­ing. In a recent court hear­ing, Gor­don Kromberg, the senior fed­eral pros­e­cu­tor in charge of a long-running probe into Islamic char­i­ties based in North­ern Vir­ginia, includ­ing some whose direc­tors have been asso­ci­ated with Nada and Qadi, said that his case was pro­ceed­ing. ‘We expect them to be charged’, Kromberg said in a court hear­ing, refer­ring to the Islamic char­i­ties that have been tar­gets of the inves­ti­ga­tion. There will be indict­ments com­ing.’” (Idem.)

17. Among the insti­tu­tions allegedly used by Al Qadi to finance ter­ror­ism is the Al Hara­main Foun­da­tion, a Saudi-financed Islamic char­ity. That group is, in turn, tied to the Mus­lim World League, founded at the insti­ga­tion of Said Ramadan of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. “The Trea­sury Depart­ment has des­ig­nated an Islamic char­ity that is a sub­sidiary of the Mus­lim World League, a Saudi reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, as a ter­ror­ist entity. The Hara­main & al Masjid al Aqsa Foun­da­tion of Bosnia was des­ig­nated last week as a ‘global ter­ror­ist’ orga­ni­za­tion by the U.S. gov­ern­ment. The Trea­sury didn’t dis­close the group’s ties to the Mus­lim World League, which lists Al Hara­main as a sub­sidiary on its Web site. The League, which is con­trolled by the grand mufti of Saudi Ara­bia, seeks to spread fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam around the world, accord­ing to schol­ars. Saudi offi­cials insist the group is inde­pen­dent of the gov­ern­ment, although most scholars—and even one of the group’s own officials—have described it as government-sponsored.”
(“U.S. Trea­sury Ties Bosn­ian Arm of Saudi Char­ity to Ter­ror Funds” by Glenn R. Simp­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/11/2004; p. A6.)

18. “The Trea­sury des­ig­na­tion is only the sec­ond time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that the U.S. has moved against an entity con­trolled by the League, which has tremen­dous clout within Saudi Arabia’s deeply reli­gious soci­ety. U.S. offi­cials have been wary of tar­get­ing the league for diplo­matic rea­sons. . . .” (Idem.)

19. “ . . . The al Hara­main & al Masjid al Aqsa Char­ity Foun­da­tion of Bosnia was set up to aid Bosnia’s embat­tled Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion dur­ing that country’s civil war in the mid-1990’s. It is a sep­a­rate orga­ni­za­tion from the al Hara­main Foun­da­tion, another Saudi char­ity also under inves­ti­ga­tion for financ­ing ter­ror. Al Hara­main al Masjid’s board includes influ­en­tial Saudi financier Yassin Qadi, another alleged finan­cial sup­porter of ter­ror. Mr. Qadi’s lawyers had no imme­di­ate com­ment yes­ter­day, but Mr. Qadi has insisted the group, which was run by his long­time asso­ciate Wael Julaidan, had noth­ing to do with ter­ror­ism.” (Idem.)

20. Said Ramadan’s son Tariq is going to be occu­py­ing a posi­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame. (For more about Tariq Ramadan and alle­ga­tions by West­ern intel­li­gence experts that he is any­thing but a “mod­er­ate,” see—among other pro­grams—FTR#455.) “The Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame, the elite uni­ver­sity founded by the Holy Cross Order, (thanks to numer­ous read­ers for the cor­rec­tion of the found­ing order) in South Bend, Indi­ana, has offered a three-year pro­fes­sor­ship to the ‘mod­er­ate’ Mus­lim scholar Tariq Ramadan, a res­i­dent and cit­i­zen of Switzer­land. . . . For starters, he is the grand­son of Has­san Al Banna, the founder of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, an Islamist ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion born in Egypt in 1928. The Pales­tin­ian branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is none other than the ter­ror­ist move­ment Hamas, which rou­tinely com­mits bru­tal sui­cide attacks against Israeli civil­ians. . . .”
(“Dan­ger: Tariq Ramadan is Com­ing to the US”; p. 1.)

21. “ . . . Accord­ing to the French daily news­pa­per Le Monde, he is sus­pected of hav­ing links with al Qaeda. In fact, Ramadan is said to have orga­nized a meet­ing back in 1991 between Ayman al Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s num­ber two, and Omar Abdel Rah­man, plot­ter of the first World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing. Other trou­bling alle­ga­tions can be found in a law­suit filed by the vic­tims of the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks: Ramadan greatly influ­enced Jamel Beghal, a French cit­i­zen arrested for plot­ting to bomb the US Embassy in Paris and Ahmed Brahim, an al Qaeda mem­ber arrested in Spain.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

22. The con­clu­sion of the broad­cast deals with the Saudi/Bush/petroleum indus­try rela­tion­ship. A recent book by Bob Wood­ward main­tained that Saudi Prince Ban­dar (a long-time inti­mate and polit­i­cal co-conspirator of the Bush fam­ily) had promised George Bush that Saudi Ara­bia would attempt to influ­ence the price of oil in such a way as to assure that the cost per bar­rel would come down—thereby ben­e­fit­ing W’s chances for re-election. “ . . . Accus­ing Pres­i­dent Bush of hav­ing a ‘sweet­heart rela­tion­ship’ with Saudi Ara­bia, Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date John Kerry on Mon­day described as ‘dis­gust­ing’ a report that the Saudis had promised the pres­i­dent to lower oil prices before the Novem­ber vote. Kerry was respond­ing to an alle­ga­tion by reporter Bob Wood­ward that Saudi Ambas­sador Prince Ban­dar bin Sul­tan had promised Bush that his coun­try will increase oil out­put in the months before the election—which would have the effect of dri­ving down U.S. gaso­line prices and giv­ing the Bush re-election cam­paign a big boost.”
(“Elec­tion Gift? Kerry Blasts Price Deal Book Says Bush Made with Saudi Prince” by Robert Col­lier; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 4/20/2004; p. A1.)

23. “ ‘If . . . it is true that gas sup­plies and prices in Amer­ica are tied to the Amer­i­can elec­tion, tied to a secret White House deal, that is out­ra­geous and unac­cept­able to the Amer­i­can peo­ple,’ Kerry said dur­ing a cam­paign stop in Florida. Woodward’s new book about the Iraq war, Plan of Attack quotes Bush as say­ing ‘I’m wor­ried about the capac­ity of the oil mar­ket’ after an inva­sion of Iraq and ask­ing about Saudi Arabia’s abil­ity to increase pro­duc­tion. Wood­ward writes that Ban­dar said his coun­try ‘hoped to fine-tune oil prices over 10 months to prime the econ­omy for 2004.’” (Idem.)

24. Recent devel­op­ments indi­cate that Woodward’s alle­ga­tion is not with­out sub­stance. “In a sig­nif­i­cant shift, Saudi Arabia’s oil min­is­ter said Mon­day that crude prices have risen far enough, and he will urge OPEC to increase pro­duc­tion, revers­ing an out­put cut that began just last month. The change in Saudi oil pol­icy, Oil Min­is­ter Ali Naimi said, is due to con­cern that high prices could hurt the world econ­omy and reduce demand for oil. Oil prices have risen steadily in recent weeks, with U.S. crude oil prices touch­ing $40 a bar­rel Fri­day. . . .” (“Saudi Oil Offi­cial: Price High Enough” [AP]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 5/11/2004; p. 4C.)

25. Fur­ther indi­ca­tion that the Bush/Bandar accord is sub­stan­tive: “In an effort to drive down record crude oil prices, Saudi Ara­bia, the world’s largest oil pro­ducer, offered on Fri­day to increase its out­put by at least 500,000 bar­rels, to 9 mil­lion bar­rels a day, start­ing Jun

e 1. In con­trast to an ear­lier sug­ges­tion by the coun­try that OPEC increase its quo­tas, the offer is impor­tant because it would truly add more oil to the mar­ket rather than sim­ply for­mal­iz­ing exist­ing over­pro­duc­tion by the group’s mem­bers.”
(“Saudis Offer to Increase Oil Out­put by About 6%” by Neela Baner­jee; The New York Times; 5/22/2004.)

26. “With global demand relent­lessly high, oil prices rose above $40 a bar­rel in New York on May 11 and remained there until Fri­day. Nearly all oil-producing coun­tries are pump­ing at max­i­mum capac­ity, and almost all the world’s spare capac­ity is in Saudi Ara­bia. The offer, made by the Saudi oil min­is­ter, Ali al-Naimi, at a con­fer­ence in Ams­ter­dam and con­firmed by an offi­cial at the Saudi embassy in Wash­ing­ton, shows the mount­ing concern—even among oil pro­duc­ers reap­ing a wind­fall from high prices—that oil has become so expen­sive and volatile that it could slow eco­nomic growth and encour­age the devel­op­ment of alter­na­tive fuels, Saudi offi­cials and oil experts said.” (Idem.)

27. Excerpt­ing FTR#’s 214, 248, the broad­cast reviews infor­ma­tion about an arrange­ment among George H.W. Bush’s CIA, the Saudis, and the petro­leum indus­try to cre­ate a delib­er­ate, phony oil short­age. This oil short­age cre­ated dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Carter admin­is­tra­tion (and infla­tion), thereby help­ing to defeat him in 1980. In addi­tion, this phony oil short­age served as a pre­text for dras­ti­cally increas­ing defense spend­ing and arm­ing the Saudis with the lat­est Amer­i­can weaponry. The Saudi/Bush/petroleum indus­try axis manip­u­lated oil prices to defeat Carter in 1980. It appears that they are work­ing to manip­u­late oil prices in 2004 in an attempt to assure Bush’s re-(?) elec­tion. “It is hard to recall why he [Carter] was so despised when he was in office. Much of it has to do with the secret his­tory of oil pol­i­tics. Even dur­ing the 1976 elec­tion cam­paign, the oil com­pa­nies viewed the Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date as Pub­lic Enemy Num­ber One. Carter cer­tainly had some rad­i­cal ideas about energy pol­icy, which made the oil com­pa­nies fear­ful for the future and their profit lev­els. Carter’s first move after the elec­tion didn’t please them. He nom­i­nated for­mer CIA head and defense sec­re­tary James Schlesinger as his sec­re­tary of energy. . . .Worse still, Schlesinger was now a con­vert to ‘envi­ron­men­tal­ism.’ Con­ver­sa­tion and effi­ciency were the new buzz words. In their first few months in office in 1977, Schlesinger and Carter made energy their number-one pol­icy issue. . . .”
(The Secret War Against the Jews: How West­ern Espi­onage Betrayed the Jew­ish Peo­ple; John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 [HC]; St. Martin’s Press; ISBN 0–312-11057-X; p. 333.)

28. “Even before Amer­i­cans voted for Carter, the oil indus­try had launched a quiet cru­sade of its own, in antic­i­pa­tion of a Demo­c­ra­tic vic­tory. In the last months of the Ford admin­is­tra­tion, the CIA had devel­oped a series of papers on energy and oil issues. Just after his vic­tory in Novem­ber 1976, Carter was shown a clas­si­fied CIA analy­sis of global oil sup­plies. The ‘old spies’ we asked about this point insist that the report had a pow­er­ful impact on Carter and helped to define his poli­cies on the ‘energy cri­sis.’” (Idem.)

29. “When Carter launched his national energy plan in April 1977, he con­firmed that the CIA had pro­vided him with intel­li­gence assess­ments which made dire pre­dic­tions about future energy sup­plies in the Soviet Union. The CIA warn­ing made front-page news: ‘Rus­sia would be import­ing oil from the Mid­dle East by 1985.’ The Sovi­ets would need to buy three and a half mil­lion bar­rels per day, to be pre­cise, whereas in 1977 they actu­ally exported one and a half mil­lion bar­rels daily. ‘Pre­vi­ously, the assump­tion had been that the Sovi­ets would con­tinue to be self-sufficient in meet­ing their oil and gas needs.’” (Idem.)

30. “ . . . In effect, the CIA was telling Pres­i­dent Carter that the Soviet Union would face a domes­tic oil short­age in 1985, caus­ing the worst energy cri­sis in Amer­i­can his­tory. When the Sovi­ets ran out of domes­tic oil sup­plies, they prob­a­bly would look to the tra­di­tional oil sup­pli­ers of the United States, espe­cially Saudi Ara­bia and Kuwait. Our sources in the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity say that the CIA’s ‘oil short­fall’ prob­a­bly was the great­est intel­li­gence fraud in Amer­i­can his­tory. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 334.)

31. Bush’s father appears to have been a prin­ci­pal player in the cre­ation of the phony oil short­age. “ . . . Accord­ing to sev­eral of our sources, the scheme to man­u­fac­ture phony CIA esti­mates and push them on Carter began in the last days of Ger­ald Ford’s term. They claim that a cabal within the CIA real­ized that Carter would be the new pres­i­dent, pro­duced the first phony report, and then promptly gave it to Carter as soon as he won, know­ing how it would affect his view of the energy cri­sis. It should be recalled that George Bush was the direc­tor of the CIA at the time the oil scam was put in place in 1976. There is some evi­dence to sug­gest that it was Bush him­self who passed the fake oil esti­mates to Carter.” (Ibid.; pp. 334–335.)

32. “ ‘You have to under­stand who was screw­ing the Jews,’ one ‘old spy’ told us. ‘The whole phony scheme—the oil short­ages, the pre­dic­tions about Soviet troops in the Mid­dle East, the Saudi arms buildup—all of that crap started com­ing out of the agency back in ’76. The CIA told their boss what he wanted to hear, and in those days, the head of the CIA was an oil man.’” (Ibid.; p. 334.)

33. “ . . . The oil com­pa­nies and the Saudi gov­ern­ment both had access to sim­i­lar advice from old CIA hands. It almost seemed that Aramco had more of its ex-employees inside the CIA than the CIA had agents in the Mid­dle East. In pub­lic, the Saudis dis­missed the report as ‘ridicu­lous and obvi­ously untrue.’ In pri­vate, they went along with the CIA’s ‘declin­ing pro­duc­tion’ fraud. After some reflec­tion, the House of Saud real­ized that here was an oppor­tu­nity to sell less oil but make more money.” (Ibid.; p. 338.)

34. “In pub­lic, the Saudis con­tin­ued to insist that they had plenty of oil. In prac­tice, they helped cre­ate an oil short­age. The CIA had cre­ated a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Saudis’ reserves mys­te­ri­ously fell by mil­lions of bar­rels a day, and their pump­ing effi­ciency was said to be atro­cious and sure to get worse. In a very short time, Amer­i­can con­sumers would find them­selves run­ning out of gas.” (Idem.)

35. “ . . . In the short run, of course, the motive was more money for Amer­i­can oil com­pa­nies. Our sources in the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity say that the oil indus­try used its CIA con­tacts to fab­ri­cate both the Soviets-will-steal-our oil hys­te­ria as well as the dry-wells-in-Saudi Ara­bia pre­dic­tions. The imme­di­ate goal of the phony pre­dic­tions was to scare the White House into doing what the oil com­pa­nies wanted: (1) lift the laws hold­ing the price on domes­tic Amer­i­can oil; (2) pro­vide a panic to excuse rais­ing world oil prices; and (3) appease the Arabs, by arm­ing the Saudis instead of the Israelis.” (Ibid.; p. 339.)

36. “The oil men in the intel­li­gence ser­vices pro­moted the fear that the Sovi­ets would have no other option than to move down into the Mid­dle East, invade Saudi Ara­bia, Kuwait, and Iran, and seize U.S. oil for them­selves. If Carter didn’t move soon, there would be no hope of with­stand­ing a Soviet inva­sion o

f the Mid­dle East. The most pow­er­ful army in the area was Israel’s. But the Jews could hardly be expected to go to war to save the Arabs’ oil for the West’s often anti-Semitic oil com­pa­nies. The time had come for the pres­i­dent to make a clear-cut deci­sion: either bow to the Jews’ res­olute oppo­si­tion to U.S. arms sales to the Arabs and risk los­ing Mid­dle East­ern oil to the Sovi­ets, or arm the Arabs, thereby end­ing Israel’s mil­i­tary supremacy—a sac­ri­fice that would have to be made in the Amer­i­can national inter­est.” (Idem.)

37. “Our sources say that the oil com­pa­nies, and their friends in the CIA, had a very will­ing ally in the Saudis, who secretly coop­er­ated with the CIA’s fraud by arti­fi­cially decreas­ing pro­duc­tion and simul­ta­ne­ously increas­ing the price per bar­rel of oil. It was all meant to be a very prof­itable game, in which both the Saudis and the com­pa­nies would get huge wind­falls, while their Jew­ish ene­mies were finally put in their place. The Arabs soon would have the weapons they needed to see to that.” (Idem.)

38. “ . . . The fact is that the CIA reports on the Soviet threat were as false as they were fright­en­ing. As one of our sources put it: ‘Look, the Sovi­ets couldn’t even hang on to their pup­pet colony in Afghanistan. They were bleed­ing them­selves white. At one point dur­ing the Afghan war, the mil­i­tary was con­sum­ing nearly 28 per­cent of the gross pro­duc­tiv­ity of the Soviet Union. The last thing the Krem­lin wanted was all out war with the Moslem world. They couldn’t finance their own PLO hit squads, let alone start a sec­ond front in the Mid­dle East. The whole idea of the Russ­ian army march­ing into the Saudi oil fields was a fraud.’ But the fraud worked. Accord­ing to the Red scare scheme, there was only one thing to do: arm the Arabs so they could defend the oil fields them­selves.” (Ibid.; pp. 350–351.)

39. “The car­di­nal sin of states­man­ship is naivete. Carter and Turner never sus­pected that their own peo­ple would lie to them. The phony CIA oil reports com­pletely fooled them. ‘Don’t you get it?’ asked one of our sources. ‘The gas short­age dur­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion was as phony as the CIA’s pre­dic­tion about the Soviet oil short­age. The god­damn Mid­dle East was swim­ming in oil dur­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion, but less and less of it was shipped to Amer­ica. For chris­sakes, there was so much oil in South Amer­ica that they had to shut down refiner­ies in the Caribbean to keep it away from the U.S.’” (Ibid.; p. 353.)

40. “This source has a point. One of the largest refiner­ies in the West­ern Hemi­sphere is located on St. Croix, in the U.S. Vir­gin Islands. Most of its capac­ity went unused dur­ing the Carter administration’s ‘oil short­age,’ yet it was greatly expanded dur­ing Reagan’s term, despite the world glut of oil and falling prices. Most of the ‘old spies’ are adamant that the oil com­pa­nies cut refin­ery pro­duc­tion to cause as much dam­age to the Carter admin­is­tra­tion as pos­si­ble.” (Ibid.; pp. 353–354.)

41. “By mid-1981, it was embar­rass­ingly clear that all of the CIA’s pre­dic­tions, upon which Carter had relied, were com­pletely false. Not only was there not an oil cri­sis, the whole indus­try had sud­denly gone the other way. There was a world­wide sur­plus of oil, not a short­fall. The CIA fig­ures on Saudi oil were just as false as their Soviet pro­duc­tion esti­mates. By June that year, the Saudi Ara­bian gov­ern­ment had cre­ated an oil glut and was under intense pres­sure in the Arab world to cut its pro­duc­tion. The Mid­dle East was drown­ing in oil. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 354.)

42. Like his father and Ronald Rea­gan, George W. Bush’s com­bi­na­tion of tax cuts and mas­sive defense spend­ing are destroy­ing the Amer­i­can fis­cal land­scape. “ . . . Under the Repub­li­cans, lucra­tive arms fac­to­ries sprouted in what had pre­vi­ously been rural Demo­c­ra­tic states. The votes went where the jobs were. In the course of the Reagan-Bush admin­is­tra­tions, the defense bud­get was increased to a point where more money was spent on arms than in all the wars in U.S. his­tory com­bined. To accom­plish this mas­sive defense buildup, the Reagan-Bush admin­is­tra­tions bor­rowed three times more money than all U.S. pres­i­dents com­bined. The largest debt in Amer­ica his­tory was based on the faulty premise that the Soviet Union was going to attack the Mid­dle East.” (Ibid.; p. 355.)