Recorded June 13, 2004
REALAUDIO

Pre­sent­ing more infor­ma­tion about the sub­ver­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest (the inves­ti­ga­tion into ter­ror­ist financ­ing), this pro­gram high­lights the struc­tural eco­nomic rela­tion­ships that bind the Bush milieu to that of the Saudis. These rela­tion­ships helped spawn the Islamist ele­ment in the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic out­reach wing, which over­laps the milieu tar­geted in the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. Cen­tral to the devel­op­ment of the Bush/Saudi rela­tion­ship is the milieu of the BCCI inves­ti­ga­tion. Not only did key play­ers in BCCI invest in Bush’s unsuc­cess­ful energy busi­nesses, but that invest­ment almost cer­tainly was for the pur­pose of cur­ry­ing favor with “the House of Bush”—the Saudis did not need to invest in unsuc­cess­ful oil drilling oper­a­tions! More­over, it appears that the Bush/Saudi/BCCI con­nec­tion is a cen­tral fac­tor moti­vat­ing those who are frus­trat­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into Oper­a­tion Green Quest. Cen­tral to the theme of this pro­gram is FBI chief Robert Mueller’s role in cov­er­ing up the Jus­tice Department’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the BCCI case when he was the US attor­ney in charge of the inves­ti­ga­tion, as well as the role of the bureau in the frus­tra­tion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Saudi invest­ment in Bush’s Harken Energy; the con­nec­tions of BCCI play­ers such as Khalid bin Mah­fouz in the Saudi financ­ing of Harken; the role of Abdul­lah Bakhsh of the BCCI in ele­vat­ing the posi­tion of Talat Oth­man to that of direc­tor of Harken Energy; Othman’s even­tual suc­ces­sion to the posi­tion of adviser to Bush, Sr.; review of the devel­op­ment of GOP oper­a­tive Grover Norquist’s Islamic Insti­tute and the con­nec­tions of the GOP/Islamist milieu to ter­ror­ism; Talat Othman’s deliv­ery of a Mus­lim bene­dic­tion at the GOP con­ven­tion in 2000; review of the con­nec­tions between the tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 2002 and the Al Taqwa net­work; the rela­tion­ship between Sami al-Arian and the tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 raids; Talat Othman’s inter­ces­sion on behalf of the tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids; fed­eral employ­ees’ “acci­den­tal” destruc­tion of key doc­u­ments in the al-Arian inves­ti­ga­tion; review of the FBI’s alleged stonewalling of other fed­eral agen­cies involved in com­bat­ing terror.

1. Trac­ing the his­tory of the Bush/Saudi rela­tion­ship, the broad­cast begins with dis­cus­sion of the role of rich Saudis in the financ­ing of Harken Energy—one of W’s failed oil ven­tures. For the pur­poses of this pro­gram, do not fail to note the pres­ence in the Harken machi­na­tions of peo­ple closely asso­ci­ated with the BCCI milieu. “ . . . And yet, with the Bush name now on its mar­quee, sud­denly all sorts of mar­velous things started to hap­pen to Harken—new invest­ments, unex­pected sources of financ­ing, serendip­i­tous drilling rights in far­away coun­tries. All thanks to peo­ple who now found Harken irresistible—many of them close to BCCI, the Saudi-dominated bank that had polit­i­cal con­nec­tions all over the world and whose biggest share­holder was Khalid bin Mah­fouz. It was a phan­tom courtship.”
(House of Bush/House of Saud; by Craig Unger; Scrib­ner [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Craig Unger; ISBN 0–7432-5337-X; p. 118.)

2. The Saudis’ back­ing of Harken makes no sense in terms of the petro­leum business—it only makes sense in the con­text of the pur­chas­ing of polit­i­cal influ­ence. “Even if Harken had not had its lia­bil­i­ties, for Saudi bil­lion­aires, whose wealth came from the biggest oil reserves in the world, invest­ing in Harken was at best truly a case of sell­ing coals to New­cas­tle, ice to the Eski­mos. ‘Think about it,’ explains Bush’s friend and busi­ness part­ner James Bath. ‘It doesn’t make sense. What we would con­sider a big oil drill here [in Texas] would be laugh­able to them.’” (Idem.)

3. Through the BCCI, the Saudis were able to gain a sig­nif­i­cant foothold in the U.S. “ ‘You had this ter­ri­bly com­pli­cated dance,’ recalls a for­mer senior Sen­ate inves­ti­ga­tor into BCCI. ‘It was not just that the Saudis used BCCI to buy power. There were peo­ple in the United States who saw the oppor­tu­nity to make scads of money. They weren’t exactly rap­ing the sys­tem. It was more like con­sen­sual sex.’” (Ibid.; p. 119.)

4. “Nei­ther George W. Bush nor Harken, it should be said, had any direct con­tact of any kind with bin Mah­fouz or BCCI. Bin Mah­fouz pro­fessed no knowl­edge of any inten­tion to cre­ate a spe­cial rela­tion­ship with Bush or Harken and, accord­ing to his attor­ney, ‘does not recall that the mat­ter of BCCI’s rela­tion­ship with Harken’ was brought up at BCCI board meet­ings or ‘in any other fash­ion.’ Like­wise, Harken offi­cials, includ­ing George W. Bush, said they were unaware of their new investors’ links to BCCI. On paper, there was no rela­tion­ship what­so­ever between the two insti­tu­tions or their prin­ci­pals.” (Idem.)

5. “But like so much of what went on with BCCI, this elab­o­rate dance often took place through con­vo­luted finan­cial trans­ac­tions and third par­ties. It was not essen­tial for the key play­ers in this aspect of the Saudi-Bush drama even to know each other to have pro­duc­tive rela­tion­ships. In fact, for many of the par­tic­i­pants, the less they knew the bet­ter.” (Idem.)

6. Exam­in­ing the his­tory of the evo­lu­tion of the Harken/Saudi/BCCI milieu and its influ­ence on Bush and events that took place dur­ing his pres­i­dency, the broad­cast high­lights Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh. It was as Bakhsh’s pro­tégé that Talat Oth­man made his entrée into the Bush camp. Oth­man is a key player in the sce­nario we are exam­in­ing in this pro­gram. “Before the deal could be final­ized, how­ever, the financ­ing from UBS ran into unre­lated dif­fi­cul­ties and fell apart. As a result, still another financier was needed to res­cue Harken. This time, Stephens intro­duced Harken to a new investor, Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh, a real estate mag­nate from Jed­dah, whose sub­se­quent injec­tion of cap­i­tal resulted in his own­er­ship of 17.6 per­cent of Harken’s stock.” (Ibid.; p. 121.)

7. “A well-known Saudi investor, Bakhsh had been a found­ing mem­ber of the board of Invest­corp, the enor­mous global invest­ment group. Bakhsh had had busi­ness deal­ings with the most promi­nent peo­ple in Saudi Ara­bia, includ­ing mem­bers of the Saudi royal fam­ily. He also had at least two ties to BCCI. Accord­ing to the [Wall Street] Jour­nal, he had been chair­man of the Saudi Finance Co., a hold­ing com­pany partly con­trolled by BCCI share­hold­ers. In addi­tion, he was well acquainted with bin Mah­fouz.” (Idem.)

8. There were denials all around con­cern­ing a causal rela­tion­ship between Bakhsh’s role on Harken’s board and the BCCI rela­tion­ship. Note that bin Mahfouz’s lawyer is Cherif Sedky, whom we will view later on in con­nec­tion with the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. “All par­ties concerned—bin Mah­fouz, Bakhsh, and Harken—have denied that Bakhsh’s role in Harken had any­thing to do with BCCI or his rela­tion­ship to bin Mah­fouz. ‘Mr. Bakhsh was not in any way rep­re­sent­ing Khalid bin Mahfouz’s inter­ests in any invest­ment by Mr. Bakhsh in Harken Energy,’ says Cherif Sedky. . . .” (Idem.)

9. More about the Bakhsh/Harken/Bush/Othman rela­tion­ship: “ . . . Yet there is evi­dence that Saudi favors to Bush inter­ests had begun to pay off. In August 1990, Talat Oth­man, a Chicago investor of Arab descent who rep­re­sented the inter­ests of Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh on the board of Harken Energy, was granted unusual access to the pres­i­dent and attended White House meet­ings with him to dis­cuss Mid­dle East policy—at a time of cri­sis dur­ing which the Gulf War was brew­ing. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’

s.] The White House, George W. Bush, and Harken all denied that Othman’s pres­ence was related to Bakhsh’s invest­ment.” (Ibid.; p. 125.)

10. Next, the pro­gram high­lights the role of then US Attor­ney Robert Mueller in help­ing to derail the BCCI inves­ti­ga­tion. Mueller is now head of the FBI. “ . . . In addi­tion, accord­ing to the 1992 Sen­ate BCCI inves­ti­ga­tion, the Bush Jus­tice Depart­ment went to great lengths to block pros­e­cu­tion of BCCI. The Sen­ate probe deter­mined that fed­eral offi­cials repeat­edly obstructed con­gres­sional and local inves­ti­ga­tions into BCCI, and for three years thwarted attempts by Man­hat­tan dis­trict attor­ney Robert Mor­gen­thau to obtain crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the bank.” (Ibid.; p. 126.)

11. Note that the Sen­ate probe into BCCI (which was headed by John Kerry) was highly crit­i­cal of the Jus­tice Department’s con­duct of the inves­ti­ga­tion. “The Sen­ate inves­ti­ga­tion con­cluded that in 1990 and 1991 the Bush Jus­tice Depart­ment, with Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral Robert Mueller lead­ing the way, con­sis­tently put forth the pub­lic impres­sion that it ws aggres­sively mov­ing against BCCI. But, in fact, the Sen­ate probe said the Jus­tice Depart­ment was actu­ally imped­ing ‘the inves­ti­ga­tions of oth­ers through a vari­ety of mech­a­nisms, rang­ing from not mak­ing wit­nesses avail­able, to not return­ing tele­phone calls, to claim­ing that every aspect of the case was under inves­ti­ga­tion in a period when lit­tle, if any­thing, was being done.’” (Idem.)

12. “Specif­i­cally, among other charges, the Sen­ate report alleged that a fed­eral pros­e­cu­tor lied to Morgenthau’s office about impor­tant mate­r­ial; that fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors failed to inves­ti­gate seri­ous alle­ga­tions that BCCI laun­dered drug money; and that Jus­tice Depart­ment per­son­nel in Wash­ing­ton, Miami, and Tampa actively obstructed and impeded con­gres­sional attempts to inves­ti­gate BCCI in 1990 . . .” (Idem.)

13. Much of the rest of the first side of the pro­gram is review of an excerpt from FTR#310 (recorded on 7/8/2001.) The excerpt focuses on Robert Mueller’s appoint­ment as head of the FBI, and notes Mueller’s less than enthu­si­as­tic inves­ti­ga­tion of the BCCI case. Mr. Emory notes that, had the BCCI case been thor­oughly and prop­erly inves­ti­gated, it would have impli­cated the elder Bush in the Iran/Contra and Iraq­gate scan­dals, both of which involved BCCI. Mr. Emory also notes that a proper inves­ti­ga­tion of the case might have led to the James R. Bath/George W. Bush/Harken Energy/ Saudi rela­tion­ship. That rela­tion­ship involved the busi­ness con­nec­tions between George W. Bush and James R. Bath. Bath was an early investor in Arbusto Energy, the first of W’s failed oil com­pany ven­tures. He was also the busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Bin Mah­fouz and Bin Laden fam­i­lies in Texas. Those fam­i­lies may well have put up some of the ini­tial cap­i­tal for Arbusto. With Mueller rul­ing the roost at the FBI, it appeared (on 7/8/2001) that an inves­ti­ga­tion uncov­er­ing the Bush family’s busi­ness deal­ings with the Bin Ladens was unlikely. As we saw in FTR#’s 454, 462, the bureau appears to be derail­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into Oper­a­tion Green Quest. Bush selected Robert Mueller, a mem­ber of his father’s Jus­tice Depart­ment, to be FBI direc­tor.
(“S.F. Pros­e­cu­tor Mueller Picked to Lead FBI, Mend Its Image” by Zachary Coile and Bob Egelko; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 7/6/2001; pp. A1-A12.)

14. In his work for the Bush Jus­tice Depart­ment, Mueller was less than vig­or­ous in his role over­see­ing the pros­e­cu­tion of Gen­eral Nor­iega of Panama and the BCCI case. (“In the Run­ning for FBI Direc­tor” by Stacy Finz; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 7/1/2001; pp. A1-A6.) Both the BCCI case and the Nor­iega case over­lap the Iran-Contra inves­ti­ga­tion.) The elder Bush was prin­ci­pally involved in the Iran-Contra imbroglio. Full dis­clo­sure con­cern­ing the BCCI case would have led to inves­ti­ga­tion of James R. Bath, the Texas busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Bin Laden fam­ily and one of the financiers of George W.’s first oil ven­ture. Was Mueller appointed to fore­stall any inves­ti­ga­tion of these links, thus safe­guard­ing the Georges Bush? (See also: FTR #’s 182, 186, 248, 256, 277, 292, 308, 315.)

15. The GOP recruited Islamists to its cause for the 2000 cam­paign. A num­ber of the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions recruited by Norquist are impli­cated in the events in, and around, 9/11. Many of them were also focal points of Oper­a­tion Green Quest. The Norquist/Islamist milieu also over­laps the Harken/Bush/BCCI milieu. “As a result, Norquist’s Mus­lim strat­egy was some­times criticized—usually from the right—for giv­ing cred­i­bil­ity to Mus­lim groups that seemed harm­less, but were in fact sup­port­ing extrem­ist inter­ests. . . . Nev­er­the­less, with Norquist work­ing behind the scenes, Bush aggres­sively pur­sued the Islamists in hopes of win­ning their endorse­ments. In appear­ances on TV, Bush and fel­low cam­paign staffers referred not just to churches and syn­a­gogues as places of wor­ship, but to mosques as well. Again and again, Gov­er­nor Bush sought out meet­ings with Mus­lim leaders—often with­out look­ing into their back­grounds. He invited the founder of the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil, Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi, to the governor’s man­sion in Austin. In the mid-1990’s, Alam­oudi had played an impor­tant role in recruit­ing as many as a hun­dred ‘Islamic lay lead­ers’ for the U.S. mil­i­tary. The Wall Street Jour­nal reported that he had arranged for ‘an arm of the Saudi gov­ern­ment’ called the Insti­tute of Islamic and Ara­bic Sci­ences to train ‘sol­diers and civil­ians to pro­vide spir­i­tual guid­ance when paid Mus­lim chap­lains aren’t avail­able.’ The Jour­nal added that there were indi­ca­tions that there were indi­ca­tions that ‘the school . . . dis­sem­i­nates the intol­er­ant and anti-Western strain of Islam espoused by the [Saudi] kingdom’s reli­gious estab­lish­ment.’ A self-proclaimed sup­porter of Hamas and Hezbol­lah, Alam­oudi report­edly attended a ter­ror­ist sum­mit in Beirut later in 2000 with lead­ers of Hamas, Hezbol­lah, and Al Qaeda. But such a mil­i­tant back­ground did not keep Alam­oudi away from Norquist and Bush. Accord­ing to an arti­cle by Frank Gaffney, Alam­oudi wrote two checks for $10,000 each, one an appar­ent loan, to help found Norquist’s Islamic Insti­tute.”
(House of Bush/House of Saud; by Craig Unger; Scrib­ner [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Craig Unger; ISBN 0–7432-5337-X; pp. 205–206.)

16. “On March 12, 2000, Bush and his wife, Laura, met with more Mus­lim lead­ers at a local mosque in Tampa, Florida. Among them was Sami Al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-born Pales­tin­ian who was an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida. . . . But Al-Arian had unusual cre­den­tials for a Bush cam­paigner. Since 1995, as the founder and chair­man of the board of World and Islam enter­prise (WISE), a Mus­lim think tank, Al-Arian had been under inves­ti­ga­tion by the FBI for his asso­ci­a­tions with Islamic Jihad, the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist group. Al-Arian brought in Ramadan Abdul­lah Shal­lah, the number-two leader in Islamic Jihad, to be the direc­tor of WISE. A strong advo­cate of sui­cide bomb­ings against Israel, Shal­lah was allegedly respon­si­ble for ki

lling scores of Israelis in such attacks.” (Ibid.; pp. 206–207.)

17. “Al-Arian also brought to Tampa as a guest speaker for WISE none other than Has­san Turabi, the pow­er­ful Islamic ruler of Sudan who had wel­comed Osama bin Laden and helped nur­ture al Qaeda in the early nineties. . . .Nor were those Al-Arian’s only ties to ter­ror­ists Accord­ing to Amer­i­can Jihad by Steven Emer­son, in may 1998 a WISE board mem­ber named Tarik Hamdi per­son­ally trav­eled to Afghanistan to deliver a satel­lite tele­phone and bat­tery to Osama bin Laden. In addi­tion, Newsweek reported that Al-Arian had ties to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Cen­ter. Among his claims to fame, the mag­a­zine said, Al-Arian had ‘made many phone calls to two New York-area Arabs who fig­ured in the World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tion.’” (Ibid.; p. 207.)

18. “There were also Al-Arian’s own state­ments. In 1998, he appeared as a guest speaker before the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil. Accord­ing to con­ser­v­a­tive author Ken­neth Tim­mer­man, Al-Arian referred to Jews as ‘mon­keys and pigs’ and added, ‘Jihad is our path. Vic­tory to Islam. Death to Israel. Rev­o­lu­tion! Rev­o­lu­tion! Until vic­tory! Rolling, rolling to Jerusalem!’ That speech was part of a dossier com­piled on al-Arian by fed­eral agents who have had him under sur­veil­lance for many years because of sus­pected ties to ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. In a video­tape in that file, al-Arian was more explicit. When he appeared at a fund-raising event, Tim­mer­man says, he’ begged for $500 to kill a Jew.’” (Idem.)

19. “Al-Arian would be arrested in Florida in Feb­ru­ary 2003 on dozens of charges, among them con­spir­acy to finance ter­ror­ist attacks that killed more than one hun­dred people—including two Amer­i­cans. The indict­ment alleged that ‘he directed the audit of all mon­eys and prop­erty of the PIJ [Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad] through­out the world and was the leader of the PIJ in the United States.’ The charges refer to the Islamic Jihad as ‘a crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion whose mem­bers and asso­ciates engaged in acts of vio­lence includ­ing mur­der, extor­tion, money laun­der­ing, fraud, and mis­use of visas, and oper­ated world­wide includ­ing in the Mid­dle Dis­trict of Florida.’ Al-Arian was still fac­ing pros­e­cu­tion in Decem­ber 2003.” (Ibid.; p. 208.)

20. Note that Harken direc­tor and polit­i­cal ally of George Bush Sr. and George Bush Jr. Talat Oth­man gave a Mus­lim bene­dic­tion at the Repub­li­can con­ven­tion. Be sure to review the dis­cus­sion of Oth­man above, and note Othman’s role in inter­ced­ing with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. “ . . . ‘The Al-Arian case was not a soli­tary lapse. . . . That out­reach cam­paign opened rela­tion­ships between the Bush cam­paign and some very dis­turb­ing per­sons in the Muslim-American com­mu­nity.’ Nev­er­the­less, Norquist con­tin­ued to build a coali­tion of Islamist groups to sup­port Bush. On July 31, 2000, the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion opened in Philadel­phia with a prayer by a Mus­lim, Talat Oth­man, in which Oth­man offered a duaa, a Mus­lim bene­dic­tion. It was the first time a Mus­lim had addressed any major U.S. polit­i­cal gath­er­ing. A third-generation Amer­i­can and a busi­ness­man from Chicago of Muslim-Arab descent, Oth­man was chair­man of the Islamic Insti­tute. He had also been the board mem­ber of Harken Energy rep­re­sent­ing the inter­ests of Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh, the Saudi investor who had helped Bush make his for­tune by bail­ing out Harken in the late eight­ies. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] When the con­ven­tion ended on August 3, after George W. Bush had for­mally been nom­i­nated for pres­i­dent, between his family’s extended per­sonal and finan­cial ties to the House of Saud and his campaign’s ties to Islamists, it could be said that he was truly the Ara­bian Can­di­date. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 208–209.)

21. Norquist’s Islamic Insti­tute sig­nif­i­cantly over­lapped indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions tar­geted in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. A sum­mary account of those raids and the inves­ti­ga­tion into the SAAR foun­da­tion and the Safa trust fol­lows: “ . . . In the early morn­ing hours of Wednes­day, March 20, 2002, 150 fed­eral agents—many with their guns drawn—raided four­teen offices and homes in the sub­urbs of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. FBI and Cus­toms agents loaded seven panel trucks with more than five hun­dred boxes of doc­u­ments, com­put­ers, and finan­cial records of more than one hun­dred char­i­ties, think tanks, and busi­nesses affil­i­ated with the Hern­don, Virginia—based SAAR Foun­da­tion. Most of the inter­re­lated busi­nesses and char­i­ties were run out of a sin­gle office at 555 Grove Street, a brown brick and glass three-story office com­plex on a quiet street.”
(Blood from Stones: The Secret Finan­cial Net­work of Ter­ror; by Dou­glas Farah; Broad­way Books [HC] {sub­sidiary of Ran­dom House}; Copy­right 2004 by Dou­glas Farah; ISBN 0–7679-15262–3; p. 152.)

22. “The SAAR Foun­da­tion, the back­bone of the clus­ter, takes its name from Sulaiman Abdul Aziz al Rajhi, head of one of Saudi Arabia’s wealth­i­est fam­i­lies, who fun­neled mil­lions of dol­lars through the clus­ter of busi­nesses and char­i­ties. The al Rajhi name was on the Golden Chain list of early al Qaeda sup­port­ers that was found in the Benev­o­lence files in Sara­jevo.” (Ibid.; pp. 152–153.)

23. “The SAAR Foun­da­tion was incor­po­rated in Hern­don, Vir­ginia, on July 29, 1983, and for­mally dis­solved on Decem­ber 28, 2000. How­ever, many of the foundation’s func­tions were taken over by the Safa Trust, an orga­ni­za­tion reg­is­tered at the same address and run by sev­eral of the same board mem­bers. Law enforce­ment offi­cials dubbed the maze of the over­lap­ping com­pa­nies, with shared direc­tors, the Safa Group. The groups often financed each other, send­ing the money in cir­cles. The scores of Safa orga­ni­za­tions are con­trolled by about fif­teen Mid­dle East­ern and Pak­istani men who serve with each other on a host of insti­tu­tional boards. Four senior lead­ers of the net­work are Iraqis who had lived in Saudi Ara­bia, and have been mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.” (Ibid.; p. 153.)

24. Note the role of Yaqub Mirza in the gen­e­sis of the orga­ni­za­tions asso­ci­ated with SAAR and Safa Trust. “In the United States, the men used Saudi money to launch some of the nation’s lead­ing Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions. In 1983, with money from the al Rajhi fam­ily, the SAAR Foun­da­tion was born. The direc­tor was Yaqub Mirza, a Pak­istani native with a Ph.D. in physics from the Uni­ver­sity of Texas. Other groups were formed shortly after­ward. Five of the top Safa exec­u­tives live in spa­cious homes on adjoin­ing lots in Safa Court in Hern­don, a twenty-two-acre par­cel of land bought by one of the SAAR-affiliated firms in 1987.” (Idem.)

25. “In time, the Safa net­work owned or invested in scores of busi­nesses world­wide: dairy farms in Zim­babwe; schools in Ivory Coast; a huge poul­try busi­ness in the state of Geor­gia; an Islamic mutual fund in Wash­ing­ton state; an invest­ment com­pany in Malaysia; shell com­pa­nies in Panama; and com­mer­cial apple orchards in Chile. By the late 1980’s, the SAAR Foun­da­tion had become one of the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., region’s biggest land­lords. ‘The funds came very eas­ily,’ said a busi­ness­man who dealt with SAAR. ‘If they wanted a few mil­lion dol­lars, they called the al Rajhis, who would send it along.’ At the same time, the lead­ers of the SAAR Foun­da­tion incor­po­rated and sat on the boards of char­i­ties and non­profit orga­ni­za­tions. Many were branches of Saudi char­i­ties that oper­ate world­wide. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 153–154.)

26. The pro­gram notes the sig­nif­i­cant over­laps between the SAAR net­work and the Al Taqwa net­work. “ . . . Oper­a­tion Green Quest was launched in Octo­ber 2001 as part of the Cus­toms Ser­vice ini­tia­tive to track bin Laden’s finan­cial empire. In a small, win­dow­less con­fer­ence room Green Quest agents charted the Byzan­tine rela­tion­ships among the more than one hun­dred Safa net­work enti­ties, a spi­der­web of over­lap­ping names and orga­ni­za­tions. Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tors also charted the rela­tion­ship among the Safa net­work enti­ties and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood through the Al Taqwa Man­age­ment empire of Yousef Nada. U.S. offi­cials said they had tracked about $20 mil­lion from Safa enti­ties flow­ing through Nada’s Bank al Taqwa, but said the total could be much higher.” (Ibid.; pp. 154–155.)

27. “The ties between Nada and Safa lead­ers were many and long-standing, as were their ties to other Broth­er­hood lead­ers. Two mem­bers of the Safa Group helped set up Bank al Taqwa in the Bahamas and sev­eral Safa lead­ers loaned Nada money. In 1976, two other men who later became promi­nent in the Safa Group founded Nada Inter­na­tional, a Broth­er­hood bank in Liecht­en­stein. For a time, Sulaiman Abdul al Rajhi, the SAAR Foun­da­tion founder, worked for Nada at that bank. Nada Inter­na­tional was des­ig­nated a ter­ror­ist financier by the Trea­sury Depart­ment after 9/11. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 155.)

28. Do not Fail to take note of the role in the SAAR/Safa Trust milieu of Cherif Sedky, the above-mentioned lawyer for Khalid bin Mah­fouz. The milieu tar­geted by the 3/20/2002 Green Quest raids is the BCCI/Harken milieu. It should not be sur­pris­ing, there­fore, to see the FBI, under Mueller, cov­er­ing up Oper­a­tion Green Quest. “ . . . SAAR lawyers said the $1.8 bil­lion was reported because of a cler­i­cal error, despite the fact that the ten-digit num­ber, $1,783,545,883, was repeated at least seven times on the form. Cherif Sedky, the foundation’s trea­surer, said that he ‘did not recall’ that amount of money flow­ing through the com­pany. . . . There is another thread in the Safa net­work that has drawn scrutiny from fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tors, For the last five years of its exis­tence, the trea­surer of the SAAR Foun­da­tion, the group’s cen­tral entity, was Cherif Sedky, an Amer­i­can lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the al Rajhi fam­ily. Sedky is also the rep­re­sen­ta­tive and busi­ness part­ner of Khalid bin Mah­fouz, one of the wealth­i­est men in the world and long­time banker to the Saudi royal fam­ily. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 156.)

29. The Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids were trig­gered by a raid on the afore­men­tioned Sami al-Arian, the sup­porter of Bush and asso­ciate of Grover Norquist. “ . . . The Safa Group might have escaped scrutiny in 2001, if not for a raid that occurred seven years ear­lier, lead­ing to another thread of inves­ti­ga­tion. In 1995, the FBI raided the home and offices of Sami al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-Palestinian com­puter sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida in Tampa. The feds sus­pected al-Arian, a slight, bearded, and bald­ing man, was secretly fun­nel­ing money to ter­ror­ists. They believed he was a senior mem­ber of the Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad, a group that unleashes sui­cide bombers against Israelis.” (Ibid.; p. 158.)

30. “Al-Arian was a vocal activist on Pales­tin­ian causes, and he fre­quently spoke at Islamic con­fer­ences. At one 1991 con­fer­ence, al-Arian, dressed in the flow­ing robes of an imam, was video­taped shout­ing in Ara­bic ‘Let us Damn Amer­ica, let us damn Israel. Let us damn their allies until death.’ In the early 1990s, al-Arian set up orga­ni­za­tions to raise money for orphans and wid­ows and the study of Islam. He used the orga­ni­za­tions to spon­sor Mus­lim con­fer­ences, includ­ing one that fea­tured Omar Abdul Rah­man, the blind Sheik who insti­gated the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter attack.” (Idem.)

31. “Al-Arian also spon­sored the U.S. visa of Ramadan Abdul­lah Shal­lah, who joined al-Arian on the uni­ver­sity fac­ulty from 1992 to 1994. But Shal­lah sud­denly dis­ap­peared in Octo­ber 1995, imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion of PIJ leader Fat’hi Ibrahim Shikaki. Shal­lah resur­faced a few days later at Shikaki’s funeral in Dam­as­cus, where the slain leader’s body was taken with full mil­i­tary hon­ors. Shal­lah, stand­ing by the cas­ket, had been named Shikaki’s suc­ces­sor. Al-Arian said he was ‘shocked’ at Shallah’s ties to PIJ. But the FBI finally swooped in.” (Ibid.; pp. 158–159.)

32. “The raid on al-Arian led to the Safa Group. The FBI found let­ters doc­u­ment­ing Safa enti­ties’ finan­cial sup­port of al-Arian to the tune of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars a year. In a Sep­tem­ber 7, 1993, let­ter, Safa Group lead­ers told one al-Arian-led group: ‘We con­sider you a part of us and an exten­sion of us and we as a part of you,’ adding that their finan­cial dona­tion of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars was ‘for you as a group, regard­less of the party or façade you use the dona­tion for.’” (Ibid.; p. 159.)

33. “But the al-Arian and Safa Group inves­ti­ga­tions lan­guished. In the 2000 elec­tions al-Arian sup­ported George W. Bush, urg­ing Mus­lims to vote Repub­li­can as the best hope of end­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion against Arab-Americans. Al-Arian and his fam­ily were pho­tographed with a beam­ing Bush and his wife, Laura, dur­ing a Florida cam­paign stop. Al-Arian liked to boast that he had deliv­ered ‘con­sid­er­ably more’ than the 537 votes that gave Bush his vic­tory in Florida and allowed him to cap­ture the White House. On June 20, 2001, al-Arian was invited to the White House as part of a large del­e­ga­tion of Mus­lims to be briefed by pres­i­den­tial adviser Karl Rove.” (Idem.)

34. Bush asso­ciate Talat Oth­man, a direc­tor of Norquist’s Islamic Insti­tute, went to bat on behalf of the tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 2002. “In 2002, dur­ing the pres­i­dency of George W. Bush, Oth­man again won access to the White House and met with Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury Paul O’Neill to dis­cuss U.S. gov­ern­ment raids on Mus­lim char­i­ties that were allegedly fund­ing ter­ror.”
(House of Bush/House of Saud; p. 125.)

35. Is it a “coin­ci­dence” that fed­eral employ­ees in Tampa “acci­den­tally” destroyed key paper­work in the al-Arian case?! “ . . . In Decem­ber 2003, clerks at a fed­eral cour­t­house in Tampa acci­den­tally destroyed search war­rants in the Al-Arian case. The doc­u­ments con­tained affi­davits from fed­eral agents that sup­ported 1995 searches of Al-Arian’s home and offices and were among thou­sands of doc­u­ments shred­ded some­time between 1998 and 2002. As this book went to press, there were seri­ous ques­tions as to whether the destruc­tion of the doc­u­ments might affect his pros­e­cu­tion.” (Ibid.; p. 208.)

36. Review­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sented in FTR#462, the pro­gram high­lights the FBI’s attempts at monop­o­liz­ing the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion. Other agen­cies allege that the bureau is actively sub­vert­ing their efforts at pur­su­ing the case. “ . . . But as the Green Quest team made head­lines, its inves­ti­ga­tions trig­gered a bit­ter dis­pute within the gov­ern­ment. Inter­nally, FBI offi­cials have derided Green Quest agents as a bunch of ‘cow­boys’ whose actions have under­mined more impor­tant, long-range FBI inves­ti­ga­tions into ter­ror­ist financ­ing. Green Quest sources, in turn, accuse the FBI of jeal­ousy. Now that the Customs-led Green Quest oper­a­tion has been folded into the new Home­land Secu­rity Depart­ment, Newsweek has learned, t

he FBI and its par­ent agency, the Jus­tice Depart­ment, have demanded that the White House instead give the FBI total con­trol over Green Quest.”
(“Whose War on Ter­ror?”; Newsweek; 12/10/2003; p. 1.)

37. “One senior law-enforcement offi­cial called the lack of coor­di­na­tion between the FBI and Green Quest ‘an intol­er­a­ble sit­u­a­tion’ and noted that the bureau–not Home­land Security—has been for­mally des­ig­nated by Pres­i­dent Bush as the ‘lead agency’ for ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tions. ‘You can’t have two lead agen­cies’ con­duct­ing ter­ror cases, the offi­cial said.” (Idem.)

38. “The FBI-Justice move, pushed by DOJ crim­i­nal Divi­sion chief Michael Chertoff and Deputy Attor­ney Gen­eral Larry Thomp­son, has enraged Home­land Secu­rity offi­cials, how­ever. They accuse the bureau of sab­o­tag­ing Green Quest investigations—by fail­ing to turn over crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion to their agents—and try­ing to obscure a decade­long record of lethargy in which FBI offices failed to aggres­sively pur­sue terror-finance cases.” (Idem.)

39. “‘They [The FBI] won’t share any­thing with us,’ said a Home­land Secu­rity offi­cial. ‘Then they go to the White House and they accuse us of not shar­ing . . . If they can’t take it over, they want to kill it.’ . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

40. Note that Yaqub Mirza, who set up the orga­ni­za­tions tar­geted in the inves­ti­ga­tions into SAAR and Safa Trust, is alleged to have influ­ence high inside the FBI. Mirza has not been charged by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tors. “ . . . Fur­ther­more, the FBI was aware that Ptech pro­vided com­puter soft­ware for sev­eral gov­ern­ment agen­cies, includ­ing the FBI itself, the FAA, the U.S. Trea­sury, the Depart­ment of Defense, the IRS, and the White House, prov­ing a vis­i­ble and viable threat to national secu­rity. The FBI ignored the repeated requests of con­cerned employ­ees. Fright­en­ingly, when an employee told the Pres­i­dent of Ptech he felt he had to con­tact the FBI regard­ing Qadi’s involve­ment in the com­pany, the pres­i­dent allegedly told him not to worry because Yaqub Mirza, who was on the board of direc­tors of the com­pany and was him­self a tar­get of a ter­ror­ist financ­ing raid in March 2002, had con­tacts high within the FBI. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s].” .”
(“Per­ilous Power Play: FBI vs. Home­land Secu­rity” by Rita Katz & Josh Devon; National Review; 5/27/2003; p. 2)

41. “Per­haps the FBI’s biggest blun­der was in ignor­ing the enor­mous alleged ter­ror­ist finan­cial net­work of com­pa­nies and non­profit orga­ni­za­tions mostly in Hern­don, Vir­ginia, named by inves­ti­ga­tors as the ‘SAAR Net­work.’ The FBI had been aware that the SAAR Net­work was fun­nel­ing money to al-Arian. The FBI chose to ignore the case for unknown rea­sons, though some have spec­u­lated it was due to the SAAR Network’s close asso­ci­a­tion to wealthy Saudis who funded the net­work.” (Idem.)

42. “It was not until Oper­a­tion Green Quest, a joint task force headed by U.S. Cus­toms which sought to dis­rupt ter­ror­ist financ­ing, picked up the scent of the SAAR Net­work that a raid occurred. In March, 2002, Green Quest, in a vic­tory for Amer­i­cans every­where, raided the SAAR Net­work in 15 loca­tions in the largest ter­ror­ist finan­cial bust in U.S. his­tory. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

43. “ . . . Now, the FBI is attempt­ing to wrest the SAAR Net­work inves­ti­ga­tion from Green Quest and take all the credit for Green Quest’s ded­i­ca­tion and hard work. The agree­ment between Ashcroft and Ridge is a crush­ing blow to Green Quest, as it effec­tively dis­solves the out­stand­ing task force. Accord­ing to the mem­o­ran­dum, ‘The sec­re­tary of [Home­land Secu­rity] agrees that no later than June 30, 2003, Oper­a­tion Green Quest (OGQ) will no longer exist as a pro­gram name.’ [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory;s].” (Ibid.; p. 3.)