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When Wash­ing­ton Post reporters Wood­ward and Bern­stein con­sulted with their anony­mous infor­mant “Deep Throat,” he advised them to “fol­low the money.” This pro­gram high­lights the sig­nif­i­cance of the 9/11 money trail in under­stand­ing the fun­da­men­tals of that mon­u­men­tal inci­dent. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of Michael Chertoff—nominated to head up the Depart­ment of Home­land Security—the show sets forth Chertoff’s legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a New Jer­sey doc­tor (Dr. Magdy el-Amir) who appears to have actively funded bin Laden’s activ­i­ties. When Chertoff was over­see­ing the day-to-day oper­a­tions of the 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tions, he did not inves­ti­gate his for­mer client, rais­ing seri­ous ques­tions about con­flict of inter­est and his fit­ness to hold such a sen­si­tive posi­tion. The sec­ond half of the pro­gram updates var­i­ous aspects of the inves­ti­ga­tions into ter­ror­ist funding—Operation Green Quest, in particular.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Inves­ti­ga­tions into the rela­tion­ship of the Riggs Bank to the CIA and Prince Ban­dar of Saudi Ara­bia; the expan­sion of an inves­ti­ga­tion into Yeslam bin Laden’s rela­tion­ship to Al Qaeda; the sen­tenc­ing of two asso­ciates of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood to prison terms; the rela­tion­ship of Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi to GOP king­pin Grover Norquist; dis­clo­sure that stock trader Anthony Elgindy had been receiv­ing inside infor­ma­tion about the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion into 9/11; the fact that Elgindy had donated a con­sid­er­able amount of money to Mercy Inter­na­tional, an Islamic char­ity that is an off­shoot of Al Qaeda finan­cial repos­i­tory Bank Al Taqwa.

1. The first half of the pro­gram is devoted to the sub­ject of Michael Chertoff, the man who over­saw the most crit­i­cal aspects of the legal inves­ti­ga­tion of 9/11. Chertoff is the Bush admin­is­tra­tion nom­i­nee to head the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity. Chertoff rep­re­sented an appar­ent Al Qaeda fund­ing source—Dr. Magdy el-Amir. His suc­cess­ful defense of Dr. el-Amir and his appar­ent con­tin­ued cover-up of his client’s activ­i­ties raise seri­ous ques­tions about Chertoff’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the job. It appears that Chertoff is another of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials with pro­fes­sional con­nec­tions to the peo­ple involved with Al Qaeda and/or the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. “Michael Chertoff, appointed by Pres­i­dent Bush to head the Home­land Secu­rity Depart­ment, may have shielded from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion a for­mer client sus­pected by law enforce­ment of hav­ing fun­neled mil­lions of dol­lars directly to Osama bin Laden while in charge of the U.S. Government’s 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tion. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] Egyptian-born Dr. Magdy el-Amir, a promi­nent New Jer­sey neu­rol­o­gist, was at the cen­ter of ter­ror­ist intrigue in Jer­sey City.“
(“Did Bush’s New Home­land Chief Shield Ter­ror Ring in New Jer­sey?” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews; 1/12/2005; p. 1.)

2. Chertoff rep­re­sented Dr. Magdy el-Amir, who has a num­ber of con­nec­tions to the milieu of Al Qaeda: “El-Amir gave money to a con­spir­a­tor in the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter Bombing–Sheik Omar Abdel Rah­man. His brother in Cairo was caught on tape attempt­ing to buy weapons from an Amer­i­can under­cover agent for Islamic mil­i­tant groups. Before being arrested in a ter­ror­ist deal involv­ing oil and heroin for guns and train­ing, arms smug­gler Diaa Mohsen was paid at least $5,000 by one of Dr. el Amir’s com­pa­nies, NBC’s Date­line reported. And his HMO was sus­pected by law enforce­ment of being used to fun­nel money directly to Osama bin Laden.” (Idem.)

3. “Chertoff’s client ’caused more than $507 mil­lion to be paid by wire trans­fers to be paid by wire trans­fers to unknown par­ties,’ said the law­suit filed shortly before the state took over his fail­ing HMO. News accounts about el-Amir’s legal dif­fi­cul­ties con­tain unan­swered ques­tions about undue polit­i­cal influ­ence and its effect on national secu­rity. For exam­ple, how did el-Amir who only the month before had been granted a state license to oper­ate an HMO, fina­gle a lucra­tive con­tract from the state of New Jer­sey in 1995?” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

4. ” ‘Why was this doc­tor allowed to start a health plan?’ asked the Octo­ber 25, 1999 issue of the med­ical trade jour­nal Med­ical Eco­nom­ics. ‘How could this med­ical entre­pre­neur, who had no expe­ri­ence run­ning a managed-care or health insur­ance com­pany, receive a license for an HMO that now pro­vides care to 44,000 of New Jersey’s most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens?’ asked The Bergen Record. ‘More­over, how could the state pay such a novice $6 mil­lion a month in tax­pay­ers money to take on such a respon­si­bil­ity?’ Why did Michael Chertoff even take the case?” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

5. Like Grover Norquist’s asso­ciates in the Islamic Insti­tute (see the pro­gram descrip­tions noted above), Dr. el-Amir appears to have bought his extra­or­di­nary sta­tus with a gen­er­ous dona­tion to the Repub­li­can Party. His HMO may have been funded by Osama bin Laden, and funds skimmed from the HMO appar­ently went to sup­port Al Qaeda. “Answers were slow in com­ing, until it was revealed that at the same time el-Amir was pitch­ing state busi­ness he had begun mak­ing gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tions to the gov­ern­ing Repub­li­can party, donat­ing nearly $18,000 to var­i­ous GOP can­di­dates in 1996. And a for­eign intel­li­gence report made avail­able to the Chair­man of the House Inter­na­tional Com­mit­tee alleged that an HMO owned by Dr. el-Amir in New Jer­sey was ‘funded by bin Laden,’ and that in turn Dr. el-Amir was skim­ming money from the HMO to fund ‘ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties.’ . . .” (Idem.)

6. “Stuff like that doesn’t hap­pen, does it? In New Jer­sey? Barely three years after enrolling its first patient, APPP lay in finan­cial ruins, its net­work doc­tors and hos­pi­tals were sad­dled with mil­lions of dol­lars in unpaid claims, and its founder had retained the ser­vices of Michael Chertoff. Did Chertoff know where the stolen money was going?” (Idem.)

7. ” ‘Frankly, we can’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between ter­ror­ism and orga­nized crime and drug deal­ing,’ then-Asst. Attor­ney Gen­eral Michael Chertoff told the Sen­ate Bank­ing Com­mit­tee look­ing into the ter­ror­ists’ money trail in the after­math of 9/11. ‘These groups don’t hold them­selves inde­pen­dently: They work with one another. Ter­ror­ists get engaged in drug activ­ity. They have rela­tion­ships with orga­nized crime,’ Chertoff said.” (Idem.)

8. Note that Chertoff was in charge of the day-to-day oper­a­tions of the 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tion, even after suc­cess­fully shield­ing his for­mer client from inves­ti­ga­tion. “Chertoff was undoubt­edly worth every penny Dr. Magdy paid him: though doc­tors and hos­pi­tals cal­cu­lated they were owed more than $45 mil­lion, Dr. el-Amir faced no crim­i­nal charges. When the Mad­Cow Morn­ing News first reported on Mob and ter­ror­ist con­nec­tions to “Magic Dutch Boy’ Rudi Dekkers and the covert oper­a­tions con­ducted at the Venice Air­port, Michael Chertoff was run­ning the offi­cial U.S. inves­ti­ga­tion. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] Dekkers remains free. Magdy el-Amir con­tin­ues to live and prac­tice in New Jer­sey.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

9. “Now that Chertoff has been tapped to keep Amer­ica safe, ques­tions are sure to resur­face about whether he hadn’t him­self been instru­men­tal in help­ing to make Amer­ica dan­ger­ous. Doc­u­ments in the el-Amir case remain under seal. For­tu­nately, the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion does not. From the Bergen County Record (New Jer­sey) on Jan­u­ary 24, 1999: ‘For a while, Magdy el-Amir looked like the Hor­a­tio Alger of man­aged care in New Jer­sey. An Egypt­ian immi­grant who par­layed a store­front med­ical prac­tice in Jer­sey City into a multimillion-dollar health-care empire that served thou­sands of the state’s poor­est cit­i­zens, he lived in a Sad­dle River man­sion and con­tributed gen­er­ously to can­di­dates for polit­i­cal office’ . . .” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

10. ” ‘His health main­te­nance orga­ni­za­tion, Amer­i­can Pre­ferred Provider Plan Inc., is about to be sold by state reg­u­la­tors to sal­vage some money for doc­tors and hos­pi­tals who cal­cu­late they’re owed more than $45 mil­lion.’ In August 2002, NBC’s ‘Date­line’ reported on the el-Amir case: ‘Last fall, DATELINE obtained infor­ma­tion about this man, Magdy el-Amir, he’s a promi­nent doc­tor, a neu­rol­o­gist with a prac­tice in Jer­sey City. Born and edu­cated in Egypt, he moved to this coun­try about 20 years ago and since then has built a for­tune’ . . .” (Idem.)

11. ” ‘Well, take a look at this doc­u­ment obtained by DATELINE last fall. A for­eign intel­li­gence report that makes a star­tling alle­ga­tion about the doc­tor, that he has had finan­cial ties with Osama bin Laden for years. The report was given to a senior mem­ber of Con­gress, Ben Gilman, back in 1998 when he was chair­man of the House Inter­na­tional Rela­tions Com­mit­tee’ . . . The report alleges that an HMO owned by Dr. el-Amir in New Jer­sey was ‘funded by bin Laden,’ and that in turn, Dr. el-Amir was skim­ming money from the HMO to fund ‘ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties.’. . .” (Idem.)

12. ” ‘Less than a year after the con­gress­man says the FBI received the report, Dr. el-Amir’s HMO was taken over by the state of New Jer­sey. . . accord­ing to sources close to the inves­ti­ga­tion, more than $15 mil­lion is unac­counted for. Where did that money go? DATELINE has reviewed doc­u­ments that show at least some of it went into hard-to-trace off­shore bank accounts’ . . . But the intel­li­gence report sug­gests one thing that he doesn’t deny, that he has donated money to the mosque where the blind sheik once preached, Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is now in prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing’ . . .” (Idem.)

13. ” ‘DATELINE has found another rea­son why fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tors might want to pay close atten­tion to Dr. el-Amir and his fam­ily. It’s some­thing we learned when we inter­viewed Randy Glass, the con man-turned-undercover oper­a­tive who helped the gov­ern­ment break up an ille­gal weapons ring allegedly tied to ter­ror­ist groups. It turns out that one of the peo­ple recorded try­ing to arrange an arms deal with Randy Glass was Dr. el-Amir’s own brother, Mohamed, an engi­neer, also a US cit­i­zen now liv­ing in Egypt. And just lis­ten to what he was inter­ested in’ . . .” (Idem.)

14. ” ‘Mr. GLASS: (From tape) OK. They want to ship things like tanks, cor­rect?’ ‘Mr. EL AMIR: (From tape), Un-huh. . . No, no, no, no, just ammu­ni­tion, not tanks.’ ‘Glass says fed­eral agents told him to drop the mat­ter’ . . . ‘That same intel­li­gence report that talks about Dr. [Magdy] el-Amir also names his brother Mohamed as hav­ing ties to Osama bin Laden.’” (Idem.)

15. “The el-Amirs appear to be inti­mately linked with Osama bin Laden, mak­ing the fol­low­ing report from The Bergen Record quite puz­zling, dated Decem­ber 11, 1998: ‘A Supe­rior judge on Thurs­day ordered state Insur­ance Com­mis­sioner . . . to take con­trol of Amer­i­can Pre­ferred Provider Plan, Inc., a health-maintenance orga­ni­za­tion for Med­ic­aid patients allegedly bled dry by its Sad­dle River owner, neu­rol­o­gist Magdy el-Amir. . .’” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

16. ” ‘But in a hint of the grav­ity of his legal predica­ment, he was rep­re­sented in court by Michael Chertoff, the for­mer U.S. attor­ney in Newark and coun­sel to U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato’s White­wa­ter Inves­ti­ga­tion.’ Yes, the soon-to-be Home­land Secu­rity Chief Michael Chertoff rep­re­sented a known bin Laden oper­a­tive. Per­haps more trou­bling, Chertoff also headed the U.S.‘s inves­ti­ga­tion into the Sep­tem­ber 11th attack. From the New Jer­sey Law Jour­nal, August 4, 2003: ‘The Sept. 11th inves­ti­ga­tion was super­vised by Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral Michael Chertoff, head of the U.S. Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Divi­sion, who is now a Third Cir­cuit judge.” (Idem.)

17. “More on Chertoff from the New Yorker, Novem­ber 5, 2001: ‘Since the Sep­tem­ber 11th ter­ror­ist attacks, Chertoff’s office has become the fun­nel for what is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion in Amer­i­can his­tory, as pros­e­cu­tors and F.B.I. inves­ti­ga­tors pour in to seek the boss’s approval. What leads can we use from the search of a hijacker’s car in Port­land, Maine? Where do the hijack­ers’ credit-card records lead? . . . For day-to-day deci­sions, Chertoff has the last word’.” (Idem.)

18. “Though el-Amir’s HMO was known to be affil­i­ated with bin Laden since the mid-1990’s, Chertoff offers an alter­nate view of the HMO’s finan­cial state­ments. From The Record, Decem­ber 18, 1998: ‘El-Amir’s attor­ney, Michael Chertoff, the for­mer U.S. attor­ney in Newark, offered the doctor’s first in-depth defense to the state charges Thurs­day, insist­ing that el-Amir had not mis­ap­pro­pri­ated any funds from APPP [el-Amir’s HMO].’” (Idem.)

19. “Also from The Record, Decem­ber 16, 1998: ‘Michael Chertoff, a for­mer U.S. attor­ney, who is el-Amir’s attor­ney, said the state’s papers don’t give the com­plete pic­ture of the company’s finances. ‘It’s a one-sided pic­ture of what’s going on,’ he said. It would be unfor­tu­nate if the state’s approach is to find some­one to pun­ish, rather than solve the prob­lem.’ Chertoff said el-Amir would like to work with the state in its effort to reha­bil­i­tate the HMO.’” (Idem.)

20. “Chertoff’s com­ments on the case made the New York Times on Decem­ber 18, 1998: ‘Dr. el-Amir’s lawyer, Michael Chertoff, said that all trans­ac­tions were approved by state agen­cies and that his client has done noth­ing improper.’” (Idem.)

21. “The Bergen Record printed a post-trial wrap-up of the case on Feb­ru­ary 22, 2000: ‘A year after a Med­ic­aid HMO accused of mis­us­ing state and fed­eral funds was dis­solved by the state, its founder is still enjoy­ing a millionaire’s income while the hos­pi­tals and doc­tors who allegedly were defrauded delay pro­grams for the poor and fight for resti­tu­tion’ . . .APP’s founder, Sad­dle River neu­rol­o­gist Magdy el-Amir, con­tin­ues to prac­tice med­i­cine in a Jer­sey City store­front office and lives in a $ 1.8 mil­lion man­sion in one of Bergen County’s toni­est sub­urbs, court records show. His car leases alone total $65,000 per year, the records show. The Egypt­ian immi­grant also oper­ates a chain of MRI facil­i­ties in Newark, Irv­ing­ton, and Pater­son, a lim­ou­sine com­pany, and a med­ical man­age­ment com­pany. Com­bined with his med­ical prac­tice, his income totals more than $18,000 weekly, nearly $1 mil­lion a year, records show.’” (Ibid.; pp. 4–5.)

22. ” ‘He’s still in good spir­its,’ said Michael Chertoff, the for­mer U.S. attor­ney in Newark whom el-Amir hired as his defense lawyer. Pub­lic records in the civil case con­tain no ref­er­ence to a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion but court offi­cials said some doc­u­ments in the case were under seal. The state Attor­ney General’s Office would nei­ther con­firm nor deny an inves­ti­ga­tion. The state’s Med­ic­aid fraud divi­sion is not involved in the case, a Med­ic­aid spokesman said’ . . .” (Idem.)

23. Be sure to read Daniel’s orig­i­nal arti­cle in its entirety.

24. Repris­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sented in FTR#391, the pro­gram high­lights the sig­nif­i­cance of Osama bin Laden’s fund-raising capa­bil­i­ties for his rise in the Jihadist hier­ar­chy dur­ing, and after, the Mujahideen war against the Sovi­ets in Afghanistan. It was his abil­ity to use his fam­ily con­nec­tions to raise money that was the key to his ascen­dancy within the Muhahideen. “Years before the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks on New York and Wash­ing­ton, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda orga­ni­za­tion and other ter­ror­ist groups had sys­tem­at­i­cally built finan­cial net­works capa­ble of sus­tain­ing their aim of bring­ing their war to the United States on its own soil. Indeed, bin Laden ini­tially rose to promi­nence not as a fighter but as the most influ­en­tial financier of the mujahideen fight­ing to drive the Soviet army out of Afghanistan. ‘It is this finan­cial archi­tec­ture that con­tin­ued with him when he turned to ter­ror­ism, and it’s this finan­cial archi­tec­ture that is at the heart of how al Qaeda today gets its finances,’ said William F. Wech­sler, who spe­cial­ized in track­ing ter­ror­ist fund­ing while at the National Secu­rity Coun­cil dur­ing the last two years of the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion.“
(Blood From Stones; by Dou­glas Farah; Broad­way Books [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Dou­glas Farah; ISBN 0–7679-1562–3; p. 1.)

25. “When bin Laden was given sanc­tu­ary by the Tal­iban in Afghanistan in 1996, he was able to use his rolodex to solicit funds while build­ing a sta­ble base of oper­a­tions. Within a few years the al Qaeda money trail stretched from the trop­i­cal dia­mond fields of West Africa to the gold mar­kets of the United Arab Emi­rates, from the money mer­chants of Pak­istan to the sub­urbs of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. the meld­ing of the finan­cial resources with the con­trol of a coun­try made al Qaeda a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion with­out peer.” (Idem.)

26. Among the aspects of the 9/11 money trail that have been under inves­ti­ga­tion is the Riggs Bank. Hold­ing accounts used by the Saudi Embassy, the bank has been sus­pected of being a source for monies used in the exe­cu­tion of the 9/11 attacks. (The president’s uncle—Jonathan Bush—is a direc­tor of the bank.) One pow­er­ful obsta­cle to an open, trans­par­ent inves­ti­ga­tion of Riggs con­cerns the oper­a­tions con­ducted through that bank by Prince Bandar—Saudi Ambas­sador to the U.S., close friend and ally of the Bush fam­ily, and a long­time CIA asset. ” . . . Prince Bandar’s con­nec­tions to the CIA have long been a sig­nif­i­cant, albeit little-discussed, aspect of the Riggs affair. Dur­ing the ini­tial phase of the con­tro­versy over Saudi accounts at Riggs in early 2003. Prince Ban­dar detailed his work for the CIA in a meet­ing with Trea­sury Sec­re­tary John Snow, accord­ing to cur­rent and for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials who inter­preted the dis­clo­sure as an expla­na­tion for the prince’s large unex­plained cash trans­ac­tions at Riggs. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]“
(“Riggs Bank Had Long­stand­ing Link to the CIA” by Glenn R. Simp­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 12/31/2004; p. A4.)

27. Notice that some of the covert oper­a­tions with which Ban­dar was involved include the Iran-Contra affair and the Afghan mujahideen sup­port effort—both oper­a­tions with evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning for­ward to the events in and around 9/11.) “The meet­ing took place at the Trea­sury Department’s head­quar­ters on Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue, which is across the street from Riggs head­quar­ters. A spokesman for Prince Ban­dar declined to com­ment on the specifics of the dis­cus­sions with Mr. Snow, as did the Trea­sury Depart­ment. Dur­ing the 1980’s, Prince Ban­dar helped fund the anti­com­mu­nist Nicaraguan Con­tra rebels at the request of the White House and CIA, and later helped sup­port Afghan rebels fight­ing the Soviet Union. More recently, he helped bro­ker a diplo­matic rap­proche­ment between the U.S. and Libyan dic­ta­tor Moam­mar Gad­hafi.” (Idem.)

28. Next, the pro­gram revis­its the sub­ject of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. One of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the SAAR net­work milieu—Abdurahman Alamoudi—has been sen­tenced to prison with­out coop­er­at­ing with fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors. Alam­oudi is very close to the GOP/Islamist net­work con­structed by Grover Norquist, as well as to the Islam­o­fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work that spawned Al Qaeda. Another Broth­er­hood fig­ure who was (like Alam­oudi) con­nected to Youssef Nada was Soli­man Biheiri is also look­ing at some seri­ous time.

Two key fig­ures in a gov­ern­ment probe of alleged ter­ror financ­ing in the U.S. likely face long prison stints after last week. Mus­lim leader Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi, once a promi­nent lob­by­ist for Islamic causes, received a 23-year sen­tence for vio­lat­ing ter­ror­ism sanc­tions against Libya. Soli­man Biheiri, who man­aged money for a top Hamas leader as well as Mr. Alam­oudi, was con­victed of immi­gra­tion fraud and lying about his ties to the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist group. . . .“
(“Ter­ror Finance Sus­pects Face Prison” by Glenn R. Simp­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 10/18/2004; p. A10.)

29. ” . . . With his guilty plea, Mr. Alam­oudi promised to coop­er­ate with the Jus­tice Depart­ment, but the deci­sion by pros­e­cu­tors to pro­ceed with sen­tenc­ing indi­cates he has yet to give any­thing they con­sider use­ful. If that changes. Mr. Alam­oudi can apply for a reduc­tion in his sen­tence. . . .” (Idem.)

30. ” . . . The founder of BMI Inc., an Islamic invest­ment firm that went bank­rupt four years ago amid alle­ga­tions of fraud, Mr. Biheiri has acknowl­edged exten­sive deal­ings with numer­ous top Mus­lim Broth­er­hood fig­ures, offi­cials say. His con­vic­tions carry a sen­tence of as long as 15 years, and pros­e­cu­tors want to add a so-called ter­ror­ism enhance­ment that could boost it by an addi­tional 10 years. The gov­ern­ment wants the two men to coop­er­ate in a con­tin­u­ing probe of a net­work of Islamic orga­ni­za­tions cen­tered in a con­tin­u­ing probe of a net­work of Islamic orga­ni­za­tions cen­tered in Hern­don, Va., and founded by top U.S. lead­ers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The group, which received its orig­i­nal fund­ing from wealthy Islamists in the Mid­dle East and has mil­lions of dol­lars in assets, is under inves­ti­ga­tion for tax fraud and rack­e­teer­ing as well as pos­si­ble ties to ter­ror­ism.” (Idem.)

31. Fol­low­ing the update on Alam­oudi, Biheiri and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the pro­gram high­lights the con­tin­u­ing probe into the oper­a­tions of Osama’s half-brother Yeslam bin Laden and Yeslam’s SICO firm. Dis­claimers to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing, there are a num­ber of indi­ca­tions that SICO has been involved in Al Qaeda’s activ­i­ties. “A French judge has widened a probe into the finan­cial net­work sur­round­ing the fam­ily of Osama bin Laden after ques­tion­ing his half-brother and learn­ing of a 241 mil­lion euro trans­fer to Pak­istan, Le Monde daily said. Inves­ti­gat­ing mag­is­trate Renaud Van Ruym­beke received court autho­riza­tion to extend his inves­ti­ga­tion after Yeslam bin Laden was ques­tioned on Sept. 27 over alle­ga­tions of links with the orga­niz­ers of attacks in 2001 in the United States, the paper said in its Sat­ur­day edi­tion.“
(“French Mag­is­trate Widens Bin Laden Finance Probe” [Reuters]; 12/25/2004; p. 1.)

32. “As a result, Van Ruym­beke was adding ‘other instances of money laun­der­ing’ to the probe already under way, Le Monde said. The court was unreach­able for com­ment on Sat­ur­day. On Dec. 5, 2001, French author­i­ties opened an inves­ti­ga­tion into finan­cial trans­fers car­ried out through Paris between firms grouped within the Saudi Invest­ment Com­pany (SICO) run by Yeslam bin Laden, who also man­ages some assets of the family’s Saudi Bin­ladin Group (SBG). Yeslam bin Laden was ques­tioned by the French judge in 2002, and has handed over a copy of doc­u­ments detail­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the bin Laden fam­ily wealth to 54 broth­ers and sis­ters after the death of their father in 1967, the paper said.” (Idem.)

33. It appears that, his dis­claimer to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing, Yeslam has had con­tact with Osama in the past 20 years. “Although he denied hav­ing had any con­tact with his half-brother for the past 20 years, the paper said, doc­u­ments held by Swiss bank­ing author­i­ties sug­gest that Yeslam and Osama bin Laden held a joint account in Switzer­land between 1990 and 1997, accord­ing to Jean-Charles Brisard—a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor hired by fam­i­lies of the vic­tims of the Sept. 11 attacks. Yeslam told French inves­ti­ga­tors in Sep­tem­ber that he had omit­ted to men­tion the exis­tence of that account, while still insist­ing he had not had mixed with his half-brother, Le Monde said. Yeslam bin Laden’s Swiss-based lawyer, Pierre de Preux, could not imme­di­ately be reached by Reuters for com­ment. . . .” (Idem.)

34. ” . . . The French author­i­ties, how­ever, say the facts require fur­ther check­ing. Bris­ard noti­fied Van Ruym­beke on Sept. 6 this year of sev­eral sus­pi­cious funds trans­fers, Le Monde said. The inves­ti­ga­tor noted a 241 mil­lion euro trans­fer made to Pak­istan in 2000 from an account belong­ing to a com­pany called Cam­bridge, a SBG sub­sidiary that was opened at Deutsche Bank in Geneva, the paper added. U.S. author­i­ties are aware of the exis­tence of those funds, which they believe were trans­ferred into an account belong­ing jointly to Osama bin Laden and some­one of Pak­istani nation­al­ity, it said. The French author­i­ties say the pres­ence of SICO within the Saudi Bin­ladin Group’s orbit in Geneva jus­ti­fies its probe, Le Monde added.” (Idem.)

35. A fas­ci­nat­ing and impor­tant detail con­cern­ing the hijack­ers is the fact that Yeslam bin Laden’s SICO sub­sidiary trained its pilots at Huff­man Avi­a­tion in Venice, Florida!! Huff­man is the school at which Atta and com­pany were “trained.” Although he denies it, there are pro­found indi­ca­tions that Yeslam and SICO are involved with the activ­i­ties of Al Qaeda. This sub­ject will be dealt with at greater length below. ” . . . Swiss police ques­tioned Yeslam [bin Laden] because one of his com­pa­nies, Avcon Air Char­ter, had offered flight train­ing to clients at the Venice flight school attended by some of the hijack­ers. As a result of what Le Monde called ‘a still unex­plained coin­ci­dence,’ the pilots of Yeslam bin Laden’s com­pany trained at Huff­man Avi­a­tion in Florida, the paper stated. ‘I didn’t chose that flight school,’ Yeslam protested. ‘I don’t have con­tact with my half-brother since over 20 years ago.’”
(Wel­come to Ter­ror­land: Mohamed Atta & the 9–11 Cover-Up in Florida; by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad­cow Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Daniel Hop­sicker; ISBN 0–9706591-6–4; p. 178.)

36. “Swiss mag­a­zine L’Hebdo reported that Swiss fed­eral inspec­tors were seek­ing infor­ma­tion on the activ­i­ties of sev­eral bin Laden fam­ily com­pa­nies, includ­ing Geneva-based Saudi Invest­ment Com­pany, a finan­cial clear­ing­house for the family’s inter­na­tional invest­ments, and Avcon Busi­ness Jets SA, which owned a fleet of pri­vate jets which it leased to clients. . . .” (Idem.)

37. Review­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sented in FTR#356, the pro­gram notes that SICO opened 16 unpub­lished accounts with the Clearstream net­work in early 2001. The pos­si­bil­ity that these accounts were used to finance the activ­i­ties of 9/11, includ­ing (per­haps) the enor­mous amounts of cash avail­able to Rudi Dekkers, Atta and com­pany is one to be SERIOUSLY INVESTIGATED. Note in this con­text that Clearstream is owned by the Deutsche Borse, which in turn is owned by the major Ger­man com­mer­cial banks and they are con­trolled by the Bor­mann group. Note also that the BCCI heav­ily uti­lized the Clearstream net­work, as (appar­ently) did the 9/11 con­spir­a­tors. Robert Mueller cov­ered up the BCCI inves­ti­ga­tion and his FBI is now cov­er­ing up Oper­a­tion Green Quest—the inves­ti­ga­tion into the 9/11 money trail. “In Novem­ber, U.S. author­i­ties named some banks that had bin Laden accounts, and it put them on a black­list. One was Al Taqwa, ‘Fear of God,’ reg­is­tered in the Bahamas with offices in Lugano, Switzer­land. Al Taqwa had access to the Clearstream sys­tem through its cor­re­spon­dent account with the Banca del Got­tardo in Lugano, which has a pub­lished Clearstream account (No. 74381). But Bin Laden may have other access to the unpub­lished sys­tem. In what he calls a ‘spec­tac­u­lar dis­cov­ery,’ Ernest Backes reports that in the weeks before CEO Andre Lussi was forced to leave Clearstream last May, a series of 16 unpub­lished accounts were opened under the name of the Saudi Invest­ment Com­pany, or SICO, the Geneva hold­ing of the Saudi Bin­laden Group, which is run by Osama’s brother Yeslam Bin­laden (some fam­ily mem­bers spell the name dif­fer­ently.) Yeslam Bin­laden insists hat he has noth­ing to do with his brother, but evi­dence sug­gests SICO is tied into Osama’s finan­cial net­work. SICO is asso­ci­ated with Dar Al-Maal-Al-Islami (DMI), an Islamic finan­cial insti­tu­tion also based in Geneva and presided over by Prince Muhammed Al Faisal Al Saoud, a cousin of Saudi King Fahd, that directs mil­lions a year to fun­da­men­tal­ist move­ments. DMI holds a share of the Al Shamal Islamic Bank of Sudan, which was set up in 1991 and partly financed by $50 mil­lion from Osama bin Laden. Fur­ther­more, one of SICO’s admin­is­tra­tors, Geneva attor­ney Bau­doin Dunand, is a part­ner in a law firm, Magnin Dunand & Part­ners, that set up the Swiss finan­cial ser­vices com­pany SBA, a sub­sidiary of the SBA Bank in Paris, which is con­trolled by the bin Mah­fouz Fam­ily.“
(“Bank­ing with Bin Laden” by Lucy Komisar [side­bar to “Explo­sive Rev­e­la­tion$”]; In These Times; 3/15/2002.)

38. A for­mer co-chairman of the board of direc­tors of SICO (the hold­ing com­pany that man­ages the Bin Laden busi­ness inter­ests in Europe) is Bau­doin Dunand, a friend and pro­fes­sional asso­ciate of Fran­cois Genoud, one of the most impor­tant post­war oper­a­tives of the Under­ground Reich. Dunand is a direc­tor of SICO at present. Dunand’s involve­ment with the Bin Mah­fouz inter­ests is dis­cussed above. “This com­pany, estab­lished by the bin Ladens in 1980, is the flag­ship for the group’s activ­i­ties in Europe. It is headed by Yeslam bin Laden, and the board of direc­tors is made up almost exclu­sively of mem­bers of the fam­ily clan, except for a Swiss cit­i­zen, Bau­doin Dunand. This well-known lawyer from French-speaking Switzer­land, who is on the boards of sev­eral dozen com­pa­nies, came to pub­lic notice in 1983 when he agreed to rep­re­sent the Swiss banker Fran­cois Genoud, a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure who had been a dis­ci­ple of Hitler and sole heir of Goebbels’s copy­rights before becom­ing one of the financiers of the FLN dur­ing the Alger­ian War. The friend­ships of the bin Ladens some­times seem sur­pris­ing, but they are log­i­cal: Fran­cois Genoud has always been pro-Arab.“
(In the Name of Osama Bin Laden; by Roland Jacquard; Copy­right 2002 [SC]; Duke Uni­ver­sity Press; ISBN 0–8223-2991–3; pp. 17–18.)

39. The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Anthony Elgindy, sus­pected by some of hav­ing fore­knowl­edge of the 9/11 attacks. Elgindy was receiv­ing inside infor­ma­tion from a for­mer FBI agent, who was keep­ing him apprised of devel­op­ments in the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion of 9/11. “A for­mer FBI agent admit­ted that he gave online stock traders con­fi­den­tial details of fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tions, includ­ing a probe of the Sept. 11 ter­ror­ist attacks. One of the recip­i­ents was San Diego penny-stock picker Anthony Elgindy. Elgindy was inves­ti­gated by a Jus­tice Depart­ment task force exam­in­ing whether any­one might have known of the ter­ror­ists’ plans and prof­ited by sell­ing vul­ner­a­ble stocks just before the attacks, Jef­frey Royer said. . . .“
(“Ex-FBI Agent Admits He Gave Tips” [AP]; Los Ange­les Times; 1/5/2005)

40. “For five days, jurors have seen dozens of e-mail mes­sages, a litany of Inter­net chat room logs and count­less com­pany reports as fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors pre­sented their con­spir­acy case against Anthony Elgindy, the San Diego stock adviser accused of obtain­ing ille­gal infor­ma­tion from an F.B.I. agent to manip­u­late the stock mar­ket. But they will not hear evi­dence sup­port­ing an asser­tion that pros­e­cu­tors once made sug­gest­ing that Mr. Elgindy might have had advance knowl­edge of the Sept. 11 ter­ror­ist attacks, a judge said yes­ter­day.“
(“Judge in Stock Adviser’s Trial Bars Tes­ti­mony on Ter­ror­ism” by Eric Dash; New York Times; 11/9/2004.)

41. “The mat­ter came up in the fourth full day of tes­ti­mony in United States Dis­trict Court in Brook­lyn. Der­rick Cleve­land, a for­mer busi­ness asso­ciate of Mr. Elgindy who is now a gov­ern­ment wit­ness, was asked by an assis­tant United States attor­ney, Ken­neth Breen, about a mid-September 2001 F.B.I. inves­ti­ga­tion into Mr. Elgindy. When Mr. Cleve­land responded that the inves­ti­ga­tion was related to ‘ter­ror­ism,’ Judge Ray­mond J. Dearie brought the hear­ing to a halt. . . .” (Idem.)

42. It is note­wor­thy that Elgindy had con­tributed to Mercy Inter­na­tional, an off­shoot of the Bank Al Taqwa—the finan­cial arm of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. ” . . . Mr. Cleve­land was allowed to con­tinue with his tes­ti­mony, recount­ing how he learned that Mr. Elgindy was a sub­ject in a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion. Mr. Cleve­land said that Jef­frey A. Royer, an F.B.I. agent who was the source of that infor­ma­tion and a defen­dant in the case, told him that inves­ti­ga­tors were look­ing into $6 mil­lion that Mr. Elgindy had liq­ui­dated from two bro­ker­age com­pa­nies, Charles Schwab and Salomon Smith Bar­ney, shortly before Sept. 11. Mr. Royer also relayed infor­ma­tion that the gov­ern­ment was exam­in­ing the money Mr. Elgindy gave to Mercy Inter­na­tional, which Mr. Breen described as a Mid­dle East­ern char­ity.” (Idem.)

43. Illus­trat­ing the con­nec­tions between Mercy Inter­na­tional, Al Taqwa, Gulf Office and the Embassy bomb­ings in 1998, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion pre­sented in—among other pro­grams—FTR#‘s 349, 351, 361, 377. “The Milanese con­nec­tion orig­i­nates in the Bahamas. Since leav­ing its first head office in Nas­sau, Al Taqwa estab­lished itself at NIGH (Nasred­din Inter­na­tional Group Holdings)—10, Dewaux Street in Nas­sau. The NIGH hold­ing com­pany deserves close atten­tion. Yussef Nada’s assis­tant Ali Ghaleb Him­mat works there. The Bank of Gothard is NIGH’s bank, through account CC/B No. 313656, through the agency of Chi­asso, in the name of a Char­ity foun­da­tion. The Bank of Gothard also appears, in a con­fi­den­tial report on Al Taqwa’s activ­ity, under the head­ing of busi­ness con­nec­tions. The bank man­ager at Gothard, Clau­dio Gen­erale, told me, how­ever, that he does not know either Al Taqwa or its direc­tor, much less the hold­ing com­pany NIGH.“
(Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The United States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000 [SC]; Algora Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; p. 150.)

44. “The pres­i­dent and cre­ator of NIGH, Nasred­din Ahmed Idris, who also appears on the list of the first share­hold­ers in Al Taqwa, is hon­orary con­sul of Kuwait in Milan. Liv­ing in Italy, Switzer­land and Morocco, this busi­ness­man directs a mul­ti­tude of finan­cial com­pa­nies, most of which end up lead­ing again to the neb­ula of Al Taqwa. One of them, Gulf Office (Asso­ci­a­tion for Com­mer­cial, Indus­trial and Tourist Devel­op­ment between the Gulf States and Switzer­land), cur­rently dor­mant, had been housed in the same build­ing as the mosque of Lugano. In 1994, the Ital­ian judi­cial sys­tem had its sights on Gulf Office and con­ducted an inquiry into its activ­i­ties in the con­text of the oper­a­tion ‘clean hands’. . . .” (Idem.)

45. “But Nasred­din Ahmed Idris’s real rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the head of Gulf Office is another mem­ber of the Mus­lim Broth­ers, Khal­doun Dia Eddine, who belongs to the Syr­ian branch of the orga­ni­za­tion. He too was ‘employed’ by the bank Al Taqwa, which he rep­re­sented in Lugano, before he took on the coor­di­na­tion of the activ­i­ties of ‘Mercy Inter­na­tional,’ an Islamic human­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tion. The human­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tions, Islamic non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions (NGO’s), rep­re­sent one of the other ‘deriv­a­tive prod­ucts’ from Al Taqwa bank.” (Ibid.; p. 151.)

46. On the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day in the United States, an Israeli-owned resort was bombed in Mom­basa, Kenya. Mercy International’s sit­u­a­tion is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate in the con­text of that bomb­ing. “Lastly, in the spring of 1997, the Kenyan police also dis­man­tled sev­eral Islamic NGO’s in Mom­basa and the Sudan bor­der area, includ­ing an office of ‘Mercy Inter­na­tional.’” (Ibid.; p. 353.)

47. It is worth not­ing where Mercy Inter­na­tional relo­cated to: “Today, [1999] Mercy Inter­na­tional has moved its head­quar­ters to the United States: it declares a gross bud­get of $2 mil­lion.” (Ibid.; pp. 151–152.) Have Mercy!