Recorded July 4, 2004
REALAUDIO

This pro­gram presents more infor­ma­tion about a Fifth Col­umn that Mr. Emory believes facil­i­tated the 9/11 attacks. (For more on this sub­ject, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#’s 405, 433, 464.) One of the prin­ci­pal ele­ments in the devel­op­ment of this Fifth Col­umn is GOP king­maker Grover Norquist’s active recruit­ment of Islamists to the Repub­li­can cause. Many of Norquist’s Islamist recruits had ter­ror­ist ties. Among the Norquist recruits is Faisal Gill, whose sen­si­tive posi­tion with the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity places him in pos­ses­sion of top-secret infor­ma­tion about the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of America’s sea­ports, avi­a­tion facil­i­ties and nuclear power plants. Gill, in turn, is linked to Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi, part of the Al Taqwa milieu impli­cated in the financ­ing of Al Qaeda. Gill’s appoint­ment is all the more alarm­ing in light of his appar­ent lack of intel­li­gence qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Much of the pro­gram is devoted to fur­ther scrutiny of Ptech—a soft­ware firm that devel­oped threat-assessment soft­ware for both the Air Force and the FAA. Ptech may also be part of the Fifth Col­umn for which the pro­gram is titled. (For more about Ptech, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#’s 462, 464.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Infor­ma­tion that indi­cates that Islamists did indeed work to estab­lish a Fifth Col­umn in the U.S. in order to gain access to sen­si­tive intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion; review of the sig­nif­i­cance of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the ter­ror­ist cos­mol­ogy; dis­cus­sion of the rela­tion­ship between Ptech and indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions under inves­ti­ga­tion in con­nec­tion with ter­ror­ism; the rela­tion­ship between BMI (involved in the for­ma­tion of Ptech) and Al Taqwa; con­nec­tions between BMI and Abdul­lah bin Laden (under inves­ti­ga­tion in con­nec­tion with ter­ror­ism); the Bush administration’s evac­u­a­tion of Abdul­lah bin Laden in the imme­di­ate after­math of the 9/11 attacks; links between BMI founder Soli­man Biheiri and Al Taqwa; links between Ptech and Yaqub Mirza (at the cen­ter of the insti­tu­tions involved in the 3/20/2002 Green Quest raids); indi­ca­tions that Ptech per­son­nel had access to FAA head­quar­ters for a period of two years; sus­pi­cious behav­ior by BMI founder Biheiri in the imme­di­ate after­math of 9/11; review of the FBI’s frus­tra­tion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest; more detailed exam­i­na­tion of the back­ground of Pak­isani Air Force offi­cers killed in the crash that took the life of (alleged) Al Qaeda col­lab­o­ra­tor Mushaf Ali Mir (the head of the Pak­istani Air Force); the res­ig­na­tion of a key infor­ma­tion ana­lyst for the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity the same day that Oper­a­tion Green Quest was for­mally elim­i­nated as an inde­pen­dent task force name.

1. Begin­ning with more infor­ma­tion about the Islamists asso­ci­ated with GOP king­maker Grover Norquist, the pro­gram high­lights the appoint­ment of Faisal Gill—a Norquist protégé—to a sen­si­tive intel­li­gence posi­tion with the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity. Note that Gill, in turn, is closely asso­ci­ated with Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi, an inti­mate of the Al Taqwa milieu. (For more about the Norquist/Islamist con­nec­tion, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 356, 357, 415, 435, 454, 462, 464. For more about Al Taqwa, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 343, 354, 371, 377, 382, 387, 416, 425, 433, 435, 455, 456.) “The pol­icy direc­tor for the Depart­ment of Home­land Security’s intel­li­gence divi­sion was briefly removed from his job in March when the Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion dis­cov­ered he had failed to dis­close his asso­ci­a­tion with Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi, a jailed Amer­i­can Mus­lim leader. Alam­oudi was indicted last year on terrorism-related money-laundering charges and now claims to have been part of a plot to assas­si­nate Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdul­lah.” (“How Secure is the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity?” by Mary Jacoby; Salon.com; 6/22/2004; p. 1; accessed at: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/22/gill/print.html .)

2. It is fright­en­ing to note the infor­ma­tion to which Gill’s appoint­ment has given him access. “After a flurry of inter­a­gency meet­ings, how­ever, Home­land Secu­rity decided to leave the pol­icy direc­tor, Faisal Gill, in place, accord­ing to two gov­ern­ment offi­cials with knowl­edge of the Alam­oudi inves­ti­ga­tion. A White House polit­i­cal appointee with close ties to Repub­li­can power bro­ker Grover Norquist and no appar­ent back­ground in intel­li­gence, Gill has access to top-secret infor­ma­tion on the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of America’s sea­ports, avi­a­tion facil­i­ties and nuclear power plants to ter­ror­ist attacks. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

3. “The FBI raised con­cerns with Home­land Secu­rity offi­cials in March after dis­cov­er­ing that Gill had failed to list on secu­rity clear­ance doc­u­ments his work in 2001 with the Amer­i­can Mus­lim coun­cil, the offi­cials said. The advo­cacy group, which was con­trolled by Alam­oudi, has been under scrutiny in an inves­ti­ga­tion of ter­ror­ism financ­ing. The lead agent in that inves­ti­ga­tion works for an arm of Home­land Secu­rity. Gill’s omis­sion of the infor­ma­tion on his ‘Stan­dard Form 86’ national secu­rity ques­tion­naire is a poten­tial felony vio­la­tion. There is no evi­dence, how­ever, that Gill has taken any action to com­pro­mise national secu­rity.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

4. “A Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity spokes­woman would not com­ment on Gill or when he was hired, except to say that a ‘thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion’ by the department’s Office of Secu­rity found no basis to deny the 32-year-old lawyer a secu­rity clear­ance. Among gill’s polit­i­cal patrons is Grover Norquist, head of Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform and a key ally of the White House. Gill listed Norquist as a ref­er­ence on employ­ment doc­u­ments, the gov­ern­ment offi­cials said. Gill also worked in 2001 for a Mus­lim polit­i­cal out­reach orga­ni­za­tion that Norquist co-founded with a for­mer top aide to Alam­oudi. [That is the Islamic Institute—D.E.] Norquist did not respond to phone calls, a fax and an e-mail seek­ing com­ment. . . .” (Idem.)

5. “Mark Zaid, a lawyer in pri­vate prac­tice in Wash­ing­ton who spe­cial­izes in secu­rity clear­ance cases, said it would be unusual for an agency to over­look omis­sions on a secu­rity clear­ance appli­ca­tion. ‘Most agen­cies get really upset and sus­pi­cious and act antag­o­nis­ti­cally toward appli­cants if they find they with­held infor­ma­tion,’ he said, adding that a minor vio­la­tion might be for­given. But he said if the issue con­cerned fail­ing to list employ­ment at ‘a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion or one that’s being inves­ti­gated, all sorts of red flags would go up.’ Gill’s place­ment in the sen­si­tive intel­li­gence job has alarmed gov­ern­ment offi­cials because it fits the oper­at­ing the­ory of pros­e­cu­tors and inves­ti­ga­tors that Alam­oudi was part of a long-term scheme by Islamic extrem­ists to place friendly, if per­haps unwit­ting, asso­ciates in key U.S. gov­ern­ment posi­tions.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

6. Doc­u­ments seized from Sami Al-Arian indi­cate that the Fifth Col­umn about which Mr. Emory has hypoth­e­sized in con­nec­tion with 9/11 was indeed con­tem­plated by peo­ple tar­geted by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. (Alam­oudi and Al-Arian are part of the milieu tar­geted in those raids. For more about Al-Arian, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 406, 462, 464.) “A doc­u­ment seized in a 1995 raid of a close Alam­oudi friend and polit­i­cal ally, for­mer Uni­ver­sity of South Florida pro­fes­sor Sami Al-Arian, out­lined a plan to ‘infil­trate the sen­si­tive intel­li­gence agen­cies or the embassies in order to col­lect infor­ma­tion and build close rela­tion­ships with the peo­ple in charge of these estab­lish­ments.’ The unsigned doc­u­ment, which author­i­ties believe was authored by Al-Arian in part because it was found among his papers, added: ‘We are in the cen­ter which leads the con­spir­acy against our Islamic world . . . Our pres­ence in North Amer­ica gi

ves us a unique oppor­tu­nity to mon­i­tor, explore and fol­low up.’ It instructed mem­bers of the ‘cen­ter,’ thought to refer to an Islamic think tank that Al-Arian founded, to ‘col­lect infor­ma­tion from those rel­a­tives and friends who work in sen­si­tive posi­tions in gov­ern­ment.’ [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s].” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

7. “Al-Arian is in a Florida prison await­ing trial next year on charges he was the North Amer­i­can leader of the Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad, a group that has tar­geted Israel with sui­cide bomb­ings. He denies all the charges. But inves­ti­ga­tors believe Al-Arian and Alam­oudi were part of a broader polit­i­cal Islamic move­ment in the United States that con­nects sym­pa­thiz­ers of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida.” (Idem.)

8. The arti­cle pre­sented here reviews the sig­nif­i­cance of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the con­text of the events of 9/11. “This move­ment, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, is the umbrella under which ter­ror groups have forged ‘a sig­nif­i­cant degree of coop­er­a­tion and coor­di­na­tion within our bor­ders,’ for­mer White House coun­tert­er­ror­ism chief Richard Clarke told the Sen­ate Bank­ing Com­mit­tee last year. ‘The com­mon link here is the extrem­ist Mus­lim Brotherhood—all of these orga­ni­za­tions are descen­dants of the mem­ber­ship and ide­ol­ogy of the Mus­lim Broth­ers.’ Alam­oudi, for exam­ple, has spo­ken openly of his admi­ra­tion for the anti-Israeli Hamas, which evolved from a branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Al-Arian’s cir­cle of asso­ciates, mean­while, over­laps with mem­bers of the Brook­lyn, N.Y., pre­cur­sor to al-Qaida that was respon­si­ble for the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing.” (Idem.)

9. “The ties among Alam­oudi, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Gill help explain why offi­cials are con­cerned about whether Gill was ade­quately vet­ted. These rela­tion­ships are dif­fi­cult to under­stand with­out immer­sion in the indict­ments, court tran­scripts and case exhibits; the con­cerned offi­cials said they fear that busy polit­i­cal oper­a­tives in the admin­is­tra­tion sim­ply do not grasp the national-security issues at stake. ‘There’s an over­all denial in the admin­is­tra­tion that the agenda being pushed by Norquist might be a prob­lem,’ one offi­cial said. ‘It’s so absurd that a Grover Norquist per­son could even be close to some­thing like this. That’s really what’s so insid­i­ous.’” (Idem.)

10. It is worth not­ing that some of the mod­er­ates involved in Alamoudi’s AMC (for which Gill was a spokesman) came to be sus­pi­cious of aspects of the organization’s behav­ior. “In 1999 a group of reform­ers ousted Alam­oudi as AMC exec­u­tive direc­tor amid ques­tions about the group’s opaque finances and mys­te­ri­ous Mid­dle East­ern fund­ing sources. Alam­oudi took a posi­tion at the affil­i­ated Amer­i­can Mus­lim Foun­da­tion but remained in con­trol of the AMC through friendly board mem­bers, the reform­ers said. ‘I had con­cerns about the reluc­tance to reveal infor­ma­tion about the finances. They said they’re not doing well, that they needed more money, but I looked at their office [in Wash­ing­ton], and it was very big,’ said one of the would-be reform­ers, Ikram Khan, a sur­geon in Las Vegas. Khan said he resigned from the AMC board when his friend, Nazir Khaja, a Pakistani-American physi­cian from Cal­i­for­nia who was try­ing to open the group’s books, told him that Alam­oudi was not coop­er­at­ing. ‘I said, ‘if this is the case, I can­not con­tinue to serve in the group,’ and I sent in my res­ig­na­tion let­ter,’ Khan said. . . .” (Idem.)

11. “U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment is exam­in­ing whether Alam­oudi was con­spir­ing with a Lon­don group the Saudi gov­ern­ment says is linked to Osama bin Laden. Who is Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi? We really don’t know,’ one of the con­cerned gov­ern­ment offi­cials said.’ So how can we say there is not a prob­lem with his for­mer aide? He [Gill] has access to infor­ma­tion about all our vulnerabilities—aviation, ports. He knows what is pro­tected and what is not.’” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

12. “Yet some offi­cials remain con­cerned that Gill appar­ently enjoys the polit­i­cal pro­tec­tion of Norquist, the archi­tect of the 1994 Repub­li­can elec­tion sweep that brought Geor­gia Repub­li­can Newt Gin­grich to power as House speaker. Norquist speaks of ‘crush­ing’ his polit­i­cal oppo­nents and dis­misses those who don’t agree with his anti-tax, anti-government agenda as ‘Bol­she­viks.’ His power derives from a for­mi­da­ble coali­tion of evan­gel­i­cal, busi­ness and other con­ser­v­a­tive groups that he con­trols to push favored GOP issues, as well as from his close rela­tion­ship with White House polit­i­cal chief Karl Rove.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

13. “In 1998, Norquist and a for­mer deputy to Alam­oudi at the AMC co-founded the non­profit Islamic Insti­tute as part of a drive to win Mus­lim vot­ers for Bush in 2000. Alam­oudi donated $35,000 to the insti­tute, records show. Soon, the Islamic Insti­tute, the AMC and Al-Arian were all work­ing together on a top pri­or­ity for Amer­i­can Mus­lims: an end to the use of clas­si­fied intel­li­gence to jail nonci­t­i­zens as national-security threats. Al-Arian’s brother-in-law had been jailed on the basis of such secret evi­dence link­ing him to Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad, and Al-Arian lob­bied heav­ily on Capi­tol Hill to end the prac­tice. In Octo­ber 2000, through the efforts of Norquist and Rove, Bush came out against secret evi­dence in a debate with Al Gore, and the AMC endorsed Bush for pres­i­dent. Al-Arian would later claim that the Mus­lim votes he rounded up for Bush in Florida helped decide the elec­tion.” (Idem.)

14. “Gill was in the mid­dle of these advo­cacy efforts. As direc­tor of gov­ern­ment affairs at Norquist’s Islamic Insti­tute, Gill lob­bied against the use of secret evi­dence, accord­ing to a May 2001 release on the institute’s Web site. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Gill was quoted in news arti­cles as a spokesman for the AMC. A Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle from May 2001, mean­while, iden­ti­fied Gill as a spokesman for the AMC. A Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle from May 2001, mean­while, iden­ti­fied Gill as a spokesman for the ‘fledg­ling’ Tax­pay­ers Alliance of Prince William County, Va., which is affil­i­ated with Norquist’s Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform. Accord­ing to the Post arti­cle, Norquist was slated to appear with Gill at an anti-tax rally.” (Idem.)

15. Next, the pro­gram returns to the sub­ject of Ptech, a com­pany that made threat-assessment soft­ware for the Air Force and the FAA. (For more about Ptech, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 462, 464.) Tar­geted by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest task force, Ptech mer­its con­sid­er­a­tion as (pos­si­bly) a part of the Under­ground Reich/Islamist Fifth Col­umn that facil­i­tated the 9/11 attacks. One of the terrorist-linked firms that assisted with the gen­e­sis of Ptech is BMI. “ . . . One came from BMI, a New Jer­sey com­pany that had leased com­puter equip­ment to the pair and that intro­duced Ptech to Sar­many, an invest­ment com­pany backed by Saudi financier Yasin al-Qadi. Sar­many invested $5 mil­lion in Ptech, a quar­ter of the $50 mil­lion Ptech raised from about 50 ‘angel’ investors. Al-Qadi vis­ited Ptech in 1994, and he and Ziade met sev­eral times in Saudi Ara­bia. . . ” (“Soft­ware Com­pany Tries to Sur­vive Ter­ror­ism Inves­ti­ga­tion” [AP]; USA Today; 12/6/2003; p. 2; accessed at: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techcorporatenews/2003–01-03-ptech_x.htm?POE=click-refer .)

16. “ . . . Al-Qadi’s appear­ance on the list was not the first time his name sur­faced in con­nec­tion with ter­ror­ism fund­ing, how­ever. Nor was al-Qadi the only link between Ptech and groups that have attracted author­i­ties’ atten­tion. In a 1998 FBI affi­davit, al-Qadi was said to have pro­vided a loan related to a com­plex land deal in Chicago that was used to fund Hamas, the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist group. The loan was instructed to be repaid to Qadi Inter­na­tional, care of BMI, the com­pany that intro­duced Ptech to Sar­many, and ‘Attn: Gamel Ahmed.’ Ahmed was Ptech’s comp­trol­ler for about a year-and-a-half in the mid 1990’s. Both BMI and Ptech also employed Hus­sein Ibrahim, an adjunct pro­fes­sor at Columbia. . .?

?? (Ibid.; p. 3.)

17. Note the rela­tion­ship between Ptech and the oper­a­tions of Yaqub Mirza. The lat­ter set up the char­i­ties and busi­nesses that were tar­geted by the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. “ . . . In March, fed­eral author­i­ties inves­ti­gat­ing ter­ror fund­ing raided busi­nesses con­trolled by Ster­ling Advi­sory Ser­vices, whose chief exec­u­tive Yaqub Mirza served on a Ptech advi­sory board. He had been rec­om­mended to Ptech by an investor (not al-Qadi), Ziade said. ‘He took some com­pa­nies pub­lic and under­stood high-tech, and I under­stood he had lot of con­nec­tions in the indus­try,’ Ziade said. A six-month back­ground check turned up noth­ing but praise. Ptech declined to say whether Mirza also invested in Ptech, but papers filed in Vir­ginia and obtained by The Inves­tiga­tive Project, an anti-terrorism think-tank, indi­cate Ster­ling con­trolled a com­pany called ‘Ptech Fund LLC.’” (Idem.)

18. Among the per­son­al­i­ties in the con­stel­la­tion sur­round­ing Ptech is Dr. Abdul­lah Azzam, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood men­tor to Osama bin Laden. (For more about Azzam, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 354, 465.) “ . . . Until August, Ptech employed Suheil Laher, listed as an offi­cer at Care Inter­na­tional, a Mass­a­chu­setts char­ity that has report­edly been inves­ti­gated by author­i­ties for pos­si­ble finan­cial ties to ter­ror­ists. And Ptech still employs Muhamed Mubayyid, Care’s trea­surer, who donated $360.00 to the Alk­i­fah refugees Cen­ter in Brook­lyn, N.Y., accord­ing to a receipt obtained by The Inves­tiga­tive Project. The cen­ter was named by fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors as the cen­ter of the con­spir­acy to bomb the World Trade Cen­ter in 1993. A note on the donation’s receipt reads: ‘Make checks payable to Dr. Abdul­lah Azzam.’ Azzam is believed to have been a men­tor of Osama bin Laden. . .” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

19. More about the terror-linked per­son­al­i­ties involved with BMI—part of the con­stel­la­tion of orga­ni­za­tions involved in gen­er­at­ing Ptech: “ . . . The money invested in BMI by the two char­i­ties came from a $10m endow­ment from unnamed Saudi donors, accord­ing to the affi­davit by David Kane, an agent with the Bureau of Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment. While it is not clear whether that money came from the Saudi gov­ern­ment, the affi­davit quotes a recent CIA report that says the Mus­lim World League ‘is largely financed by the gov­ern­ment of Saudi Ara­bia.’ Mr. Kane said that the char­i­ties gave $3.7m to BMI, which may have passed the money to indi­vid­u­als con­sid­ered ter­ror­ists by the U.S. They include Yassin Qadi accused by the US gov­ern­ment of trans­fer­ring mil­lions of dol­lars to Osama bin Laden through char­i­ties such as the Muwafaq Foun­da­tion; Mousa Abu Mar­zook, the self-professed head of the polit­i­cal branch of Hamas, the rad­i­cal Pales­tin­ian orga­ni­za­tion; and Moham­mad Salah, a mem­ber of Hamas who spent five years in an Israeli prison. . . .” (“Saudi-backed Char­i­ties ‘Aided ter­ror­ists’’ by Mar­i­anne Brun-Rovet and Edward Alden; The Finan­cial Times; 8/21/2003; p. 2.)

20. BMI’s founder—Soliman Biheiri—is linked to the prin­ci­pal fig­ures of Al Taqwa. “The alle­ga­tions against BMI were made to back up charges against Soli­man Biheiri, BMI’s founder and pres­i­dent, who was indicted two weeks ago on charges of lying to obtain US cit­i­zen­ship. The gov­ern­ment alleges that Mr. Biheiri also did busi­ness with other des­ig­nated ter­ror­ists. Mr. Biheiri’s lap­top com­puter con­tained con­tact infor­ma­tion for Ghaleb Him­mat and Youssef Nada, mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood extrem­ist group and peo­ple con­sid­ered ter­ror­ists by the US and the United Nations.” (Idem.)

21. Another of the investors in BMI was Abdul­lah bin Laden—under inves­ti­ga­tion for involve­ment in ter­ror­ism. “ . . . Pros­e­cu­tors iden­ti­fied a third BMI investor as Abdul­lah Awad bin Laden, who BMI part­ner­ship records and bank state­ments show put in more than $500,000.00. He is a nephew of Osama bin Laden, head of al Qaeda and the alleged mas­ter­mind of the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror attacks. Dur­ing the 1990’s, Abdul­lah Awad bin Laden ran the U.S. branch of a Saudi char­ity called the World Assem­bly of Mus­lim Youth. The Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and pri­vate ana­lysts labeled it a sus­pected ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion; the group says it doesn’t sup­port ter­ror­ism . . . Abdul­lah Awad bin Laden, who for­merly lived in Vir­ginia but left the U.S., after Sept. 11, 2001, has made no pub­lic state­ments and couldn’t be located. U.s. offi­cials believe he is in Saudi Ara­bia.” (“U.S. Details an Alleged Terror-Financing Web” by Glenn R. Simp­son; Wall Street Jour­nal; 9/15/2003; p. A5.)

22. More about the rela­tion­ship between BMI and Al Taqwa, as well as con­nec­tions between BMI and the afore­men­tioned Sami Al-Arian: “ . . . Mr. Kane said Mr. Beheiri has rela­tion­ships with the two founders of the now-banned al-Taqwa, both of whom are also offi­cially listed as ter­ror­ists by the U.S. He added that there are other ‘indi­ca­tions there were some con­nec­tions between Bank al-Taqwa and BMI,’ includ­ing ‘finan­cial trans­ac­tions.’ He was halted from say­ing any­thing fur­ther on the mat­ter by the pros­e­cu­tor, who said the infor­ma­tion is clas­si­fied for­eign intel­li­gence. Another of Mr. Biheiri’s asso­ciates, the gov­ern­ment alleged, is Sami Al-Arian the Tampa col­lege pro­fes­sor now under indict­ment in fed­eral court in Florida as an alleged leader of Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad, which com­petes with Hamas to kill Israeli civil­ians in sui­cide bomb­ings. . . .” (Idem.)

23. Among the fig­ures impli­cated in the web of intrigues dis­cussed above is Yaqub Mirza. (For more about Mirza, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 356, 357, 382, 462, 464.) “ . . . Round­ing out their evi­dence, pros­e­cu­tors dis­closed an e-mail they obtained show­ing that Mr. Biheiri was involved in Mr. Qadi’s finan­cial deal­ings with Yaqub Mirza, a Pak­istani engi­neer who man­ages a group of Saudi-backed Islamic char­i­ties which are also under inves­ti­ga­tion for sup­port­ing ter­ror­ism, accord­ing to a fed­eral search war­rant. The e-mail was taken from Mr. Mirza’s com­puter in the search. They said that one of the top fig­ures in the SAAR net­work, Ahmed Totonji, is a senior leader of the Mus­lim char­ity that Abdul­lah bin Laden helped run.” (Idem.)

24. Abdul­lah Bin Laden is linked to the WAMY, which in turn has areas of over­lap with Al Qaeda, the GOP’s eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion and the Al Taqwa milieu. (For more about this con­nec­tion, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 356, 357, 425.) “In fact, the F.B.I. had been keep­ing an eye on some of the bin Ladens. A clas­si­fied F.B.I. file exam­ined by Van­ity Fair and marked ‘Secret’ shows that as early as 1996, the bureau had spent nearly nine months inves­ti­gat­ing Abdul­lah and Omar bin Laden, who were involved with the Amer­i­can branch of the World Assem­bly of Mus­lim Youth (WAMY), a char­ity that has pub­lished writ­ings by Islamic scholar Sayyid Qutb, one of Osama bin Laden’s intel­lec­tual influ­ences.” (“Sav­ing the Saudis” by Craig Unger; Van­ity Fair; October/2003; p. 175.)

25. In addi­tion to Abdul­lah, Khalil bin Laden has been impli­cated in terrorist-related activ­i­ties. “Khalil bin Laden, who boarded a plane in Orlando that even­tu­ally took him back to Saudi Ara­bia, won the atten­tion of Brazil­ian inves­ti­ga­tors for pos­si­ble ter­ror­ist con­nec­tions. Accord­ing to a Brazil­ian paper, he had busi­ness con­nec­tions in the Brazil­ian province of Minas Gerais, not far from the tri-border region, an alleged cen­ter for train­ing ter­ror­ists. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 176.)

26. Note that Abdul­lah bin Laden was among the Saudis evac­u­ated by the Bush White House in the imme­di­ate after­math of 9/11. “F.B.I. offi­cials declined to com­ment on the inves­ti­ga­tion, which was reported in Britain’s The Guardian, but the doc­u­ments show that the file on Abdul­lah and Omar was reopened on Sep­tem­ber, 19, 2001, while the Saudi repa­tri­a­tion was still under way. ‘These doc­u­ments show there was an open F.B.I. inves­ti­ga­tion into these guys at the time of their depar­ture,’ says David Arm­strong, an inves­ti­ga­tor for the Pub­lic E

duca­tion Cen­ter, the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., foun­da­tion that obtained the doc­u­ments.” (Idem.)

27. Biheiri was alleged [by his estranged wife] to have destroyed doc­u­ments in the imme­di­ate after­math of 9/11. “ . . . Accord­ing to Ms. Mashid Fatoohi, she and Biheiri con­tin­ued to share the same house until he left the coun­try in 2002. After the events of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, she wit­nessed Biheiri destroy­ing records.” (“Dec­la­ra­tion in Sup­port of Pre-Trial Deten­tion” by David Kane; sub­mit­ted in con­nec­tion with Case No. 03–365-A—United States of Amer­ica vs. Soli­man S. Biheiri; p. 10; accessed at: http://www.4law.co.il/Lea99.pdf .)

28. In FTR#’s 462, 464 Mr. Emory raised the ques­tion of whether or not Ptech’s threat assess­ment soft­ware might account for some of the anom­alies in the per­for­mance of air-defense sys­tems on 9/11. An arti­cle from researcher Daniel Hop­sicker fur­ther devel­ops that ques­tion: “A soft­ware com­pany called Ptech, founded by a Saudi financier placed on America’s Ter­ror­ist List in Octo­ber 2001, had access to the FAA’s entire com­puter sys­tem for two years before the 9/11 attack. Last week, when the National 9/11 Com­mis­sion held hear­ings on The Avi­a­tion Secu­rity Sys­tem and the 9/11 Attack, gov­ern­ment and avi­a­tion offi­cials described a sys­tem unpre­pared for the events that unfolded on Sep­tem­ber 11. None of them, how­ever, men­tioned secu­rity breaches involv­ing ‘Saudi ter­ror­ists in the base­ment of the FAA.’” (“FBI Shut Down Saudi Ter­ror Cell Inves­ti­ga­tion in Boston—the Group had Access to All the FAA Com­puter Sys­tem for 2 Years pre-911” by Daniel Hop­sicker; mad­cownews; p. 2; accessed at http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/02/279945.shtml .)

29. Ptech is alleged to have had a team in the base­ment of FAA head­quar­ters for two years. “Yet that’s what hap­pened, accord­ing to a high-level risk ana­lyst who had trou­bling deal­ings with the firm. ‘Ptech had a cou­ple of very trou­bling client rela­tion­ships,’ states risk archi­tect and whistle­blower Indira Singh, ‘one of which was with the FAA. One of the ‘per­sons of inter­est’ in the inves­ti­ga­tion had a team in the base­ment of the FAA for two years.’” (Idem.)

30. “ ‘Ptech worked on a project that revealed all infor­ma­tion processes and issues that the FAA had with the National Air­space Sys­tems Agency, NAS,’ Singh said. ‘The project included inci­dent inves­ti­ga­tion, law enforce­ment, mil­i­tary avi­a­tion sys­tems, highly sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion, espe­cially if you wanted to exploit the FAA’s cur­rent capa­bil­i­ties and holes . . . to jam or slow down U.S. mil­i­tary response to a domes­tic hijack­ing, for exam­ple.’ [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Idem.)

31. A secu­rity expert fur­ther delin­eated the poten­tial dan­gers of Ptech’s con­tracts with the gov­ern­ment: “Ptech is a sys­tems engi­neer­ing and soft­ware con­sul­tant firm that helps other companies—including gov­ern­ment agencies—manage the ‘work flow’ of com­plex projects and oper­a­tions through so-called enter­prise soft­ware solu­tions. These cus­tomized pro­grams help orga­nize and arrange infor­ma­tion based on how each ‘cus­tomer’ oper­ates and allows exec­u­tives to make impor­tant deci­sions faster and more effi­ciently.” (“Open­ing Vir­tual Door to Gov­ern­ment” by Paul Eng; ABC News; 12/6/2002; accessed at: http://ABCNEWS.com .)

32. “Mark Rasche, a for­mer Jus­tice Depart­ment pros­e­cu­tor and now a senior vice pres­i­dent of a pri­vate secu­rity con­sult­ing firm called Solu­tion­ary in Omaha, Neb., is not aware of exactly what work Ptech might have done for its gov­ern­ment cus­tomers. And he is extremely cau­tious about how—or if—any sen­si­tive gov­ern­ment com­puter sys­tems might be com­pro­mised by Ptech’s pur­ported ter­ror­ism ties. ‘Their abil­ity to insert a virus, or a back­door, or logic bomb will be dic­tated by the type of soft­ware they were work­ing on, and their amount of access to [sen­si­tive] sys­tems,’ he said.” (Idem.)

33. “Still, he notes that even if Ptech’s soft­ware is free of mali­cious, hid­den codes, there is some con­cern. ‘The goal of [enter­prise] soft­ware is to improve infor­ma­tion flow in an agency. If I were to go to ABCNEWS and work to under­stand the way you dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion, I will know names of peo­ple, their titles, their job descrip­tions, how you com­mu­ni­cate [with each other], all of your ‘buzz words’ and all of that,’ he said. ‘The more I know, the more I can con­trol and dis­rupt your oper­a­tions.’” (Idem.)

34. “Rasche also says that gov­ern­ment agen­cies typ­i­cally work with out­side con­sult­ing com­pa­nies because pri­vate firms have exper­tise to stream­line com­plex gov­ern­ment processes. ‘The gov­ern­ment very rarely does any of its own soft­ware work,’ said Rasche. ‘But when you out­source [soft­ware work], you really want to vet who it is that’s design­ing the code.’” (Idem.)

35. As noted in FTR#’s 460, 462, 464, one of Al Qaeda’s alleged col­lab­o­ra­tors was the head of the Pak­istani Air Force, killed in a plane crash in Feb­ru­ary of 2003. When con­sid­ered in con­nec­tion with Ptech’s devel­op­ment of threat-assessment soft­ware for the Air Force and the FAA, the Mushaf Ali Mir/Al Qaeda link assumes larger sig­nif­i­cance. Might Ali Mir have pro­vided infor­ma­tion dto Al Qaeda and/or Ptech that could have assisted in the frus­tra­tion of air defense units on 9/11? “Nor was that the end of it. Dur­ing his inter­ro­ga­tion, Zubay­dah had also said that Osama bin Laden had struck a deal with Pak­istani air force chief Air Mar­shal Mushaf Ali Mir, and had told him that there would be unspec­i­fied attacks on Amer­i­can soil on 9/11. Seven months after the Saudi deaths, on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2003, Mir and six­teen oth­ers were killed when their plane crashed in a north­west province of Pak­istan. Sab­o­tage was widely spec­u­lated to be behind the crash but could not be proved.” (House of Bush/House of Saud; by Craig Unger; Scrib­ner [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Craig Unger; ISBN 0–7432-5337-X; p. 269.)

36. Two of the other vic­tims in the crash that killed Ali Mir had back­grounds as Air Con­trollers. Might they have been involved with Al Qaeda as well? Might this have sig­nif­i­cance for the Ptech con­nec­tion as well? “ . . . Air Com­modore Rizwan­ul­lah Khan . . . Dur­ing his tenure of ser­vice, he worked on var­i­ous appoint­ments includ­ing Senior Air Traf­fic Con­trol Offi­cer, Sar­godha. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] . . . Wing Com­man­der Syed Tabas­sam Abbas . . . worked on var­i­ous instruc­tional and staff appoint­ment includ­ing Air Traf­fic Con­troller, instruc­tor at Direc­torate of Stud­ies Risalpur [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] . . .” (“Ded­i­cated to the Glo­ri­ous PAF Sha­heeds” by Chief Patron DJ, Air Mar­shal Asghar Khan; Defence Jour­nal; March/2003; p. 1; accessed at: http://www.defencejournal.com/2003/mar/paf-shaheeds.htm .)

37. The pro­gram reviews the FBI’s frus­tra­tion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, the task force whose mem­bers exe­cuted the inves­ti­ga­tion into Ptech. (For more about the frus­tra­tion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 462, 464.) “ . . . But even while the White House was preach­ing coop­er­a­tion, the var­i­ous agen­cies that were being folded into Home­land Secu­rity were squab­bling with the FBI—the behe­moth in the domes­tic war on ter­ror. One prime exam­ple of the ten­sion is the inves­ti­ga­tion into Ptech, the Boston-area com­puter soft­ware firm that had mil­lions of dol­lars in sen­si­tive gov­ern­ment con­tracts with the Air Force, the Energy Depart­ment and, iron­i­cally enough, the FBI. In what turned into a minor embar­rass­ment for the bureau, the firm’s main investors included Yasin Al-Qadi, a wealthy Saudi busi­ness­man whom the Bush admin­is­tra­tion had for­mally des­ig­nated a ter­ror­ist financier under the Inter­na­tional Emer­gency Eco­nomic Pow­ers Act. Al-Qadi has vig­or­ously denied any con­nec­tion to ter­ror­ism.” (“Whose War on Ter­ror?”; Newsweek; 12/10/2003; p. 2; accessed at: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3068377/ .)

38. “The Ptech case turned into an ugly dis­pute last year when com­pany whistle­blow­ers told Green Quest agents about their own sus­pi­cions about the f

irm’s own­ers. Sources close to the case say those same whistle­blow­ers had first approached FBI agents, but the bureau appar­ently did lit­tle or noth­ing in response, With back­ing from the National Secu­rity Coun­cil, Green Quest agents then mounted a full-scale inves­ti­ga­tion that cul­mi­nated in a raid on the company’s office last Decem­ber. After get­ting wind of the Green Quest probe, the FBI stepped in and unsuc­cess­fully tried to take con­trol of the case.” (Idem.)

39. “The result, sources say, has been some­thing of a train wreck. Pri­vately, FBI offi­cials say Green Quest agents botched the probe and jeop­ar­dized other more promis­ing inquiries into Al-Qadi. Green Quest agents dis­miss the charges and say the prob­lem is that the bureau ws slow to respond to legit­i­mate alle­ga­tions that an out­side con­trac­tor with ter­ror­ist ties may have infil­trated gov­ern­ment com­put­ers. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] What­ever the truth, there is no dis­pute that the case has so far pro­duced no charges and indict­ments against Al-Qadi or any­one else con­nected with Ptech. The com­pany has denied wrong­do­ing.” (Idem.)

40. Next, the pro­gram reviews alle­ga­tions that Yaqub Mirza—at the epi­cen­ter of the orga­ni­za­tions tar­geted by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002—had con­tacts high-up in the FBI. “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; accessed at: http://www.nationalareview.com/script/printage.asp?ref=/comment/comment-katz-devon0 .)

41. As noted in pre­vi­ous pro­grams, Oper­a­tion Green Quest ceased to exist on 6/30/2003. Note that the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion is the case at the cen­ter of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. “ . . . 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.)

42. Clos­ing on a spec­u­la­tive note, the pro­gram notes the res­ig­na­tion of a key Home­land Secu­rity coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence offi­cial. That official—Paul J. Redmond—resigned on 6/30/2003. That is the same day that the Green Quest Task Force ceased to exist. Might there be any con­nec­tion between the two dates and the Ptech case? “Paul J. Red­mond, a top ter­ror­ism intel­li­gence expert at the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity, is retir­ing, offi­cials said Mon­day. Red­mond, assis­tant sec­re­tary for infor­ma­tion analy­sis and a for­mer CIA offi­cer, is leav­ing for health rea­sons, offi­cials said. . . . Pre­vi­ously, Red­mond served 33 years at the CIA, work­ing in Asia and Europe, He rose to top posi­tions in the agency’s coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence ranks before retir­ing in 1997.” (“Ex-CIA Expert Retires as Top Home­land Secu­rity Intel­li­gence Ana­lyst” [AP]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 6/30/2003; accessed at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/06/3 .)