Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash drive that can be obtained here. (The flash drive includes the anti-fascist books avail­able on this site.)

Recorded Feb­ru­ary 27, 2005
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO

Randy Glass hold­ing Stinger missile

Intro­duc­tion: This inter­view high­lights the work of inves­ti­ga­tor, social worker and ex-cop Allan Dun­can and publisher/author Sander Hicks. Set­ting forth the story of counter-terror sting “Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back,” the pro­gram presents the stun­ning fore­cast of the 9/11 attacks recorded by the FBI in 1999. Appar­ent Pak­istani intel­li­gence agent R.G. Abbas (while attempt­ing to pro­cure weaponry for Al Qaeda and the Tal­iban) dis­closed that the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers were “com­ing down.” Sting­man Randy Glass was “wear­ing a wire” and Abbas’ state­ment was recorded! Nonethe­less, few news media have reported this. After review­ing infor­ma­tion about Home­land Secu­rity Chief Michael Chertoff and his con­nec­tions to Bin Laden col­lab­o­ra­tor Dr. Magdy El-Amir, the pro­gram presents Randy Glass’ asser­tion that Abbas and his asso­ciates Diaa Moshen and Mohamed (Mike) Malik were inter­ested in procur­ing nuclear weaponry for Al Qaeda. Glass reported his infor­ma­tion about the impend­ing attack on the World Trade Cen­ter to Florida Sen­a­tor Robert Gra­ham in July of 2001. When Glass relayed his infor­ma­tion to the State Depart­ment in the sum­mer of 2001, a top aide to Colin Pow­ell dis­closed that it was known that a plan was afoot to fly air­planes into the World Trade Cen­ter, but that Glass couldn’t dis­cuss it.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Ter­ror­ist weapons-supplier Diaa Moshen’s claim that he pos­sessed a “spe­cial pass­port” that enabled him to come and go with impunity; the unusu­ally light treat­ment accorded Moshen and Mike Malik after they were appre­hended as part of Oper­a­tion Diamondback.

Sander Hicks can be reached through Vox Pop and
Drench Kiss Media Cor­po­ra­tion
1022 Corte­lyou Road
Flat­bush, Brook­lyn 11218

Allan Dun­can, who lives in New Hope, PA, can be reached at: ADuncan282@aol.com

1. After dis­cus­sion of the oper­a­tional links between Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity head Michael Chertoff and Dr. Magdy El-Amir, guests Sander Hicks and Allan Dun­can fur­ther devel­oped the story of Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back. (For more about the rela­tion­ship between Chertoff and Dr. El-Amir, see FTR#’s 495, 499.) Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back was the sting oper­a­tion that revealed some of Dr. El-Amir’s links to the milieu of Osama bin Laden. That oper­a­tion fea­tured Randy Glass as the oper­a­tive pos­ing as an arms dealer doing busi­ness with ter­ror­ists. In relat­ing the story of Randy Glass, Allan and Sander set forth a chill­ing account of a meet­ing that took place in July of 1999 at the Tribeca Grill in Man­hat­tan. Glass (act­ing as an under­cover sting man for the FBI) was meet­ing with a Rhu­lum G. Abbas, an agent of the Pak­istani intel­li­gence ser­vice, the ISI.

 . . . At a din­ner in June 1999 at the Tribeca Grill, Glass was win­ing and din­ing Rhu­lum G. Abbas, a Pak­istani arms dealer and his friends. Glass and ATF agent Dick Stoltz were pos­ing as weapons bro­kers, as part of a Fed­eral sting oper­a­tion. The Pak­istani had close con­nec­tions to the Pak­istani intel­li­gence elite, the ISI. In fact, Glass later told Date­line he believed Abbas was an ISI agent. . .

(A chap­ter of Sander Hicks’ forth­com­ing book The Big Wed­ding [e-mailed to Mr. Emory and par­tially reprinted here with the per­mis­sion of the author]; pp. 1–2.)

2. At the meet­ing, Abbas made a chill­ing dis­clo­sure: that the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers were “com­ing down.”

The tony Tribeca Grill, owned by Robert DeNiro, was just north of the World Trade Cen­ter in 1999. Abbas boasted to his din­ner com­pan­ions that he wouldn’t have any prob­lem tak­ing out the entire down­town restau­rant. ‘Because it’s full of Amer­i­cans.’ Towards the end of the meal, he ges­tured out towards the Twin Tow­ers. ‘Those tow­ers are com­ing down.’ [Empha­sis added.]

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

3. Abbas’s fore­shad­ow­ing of the WTC attacks was omit­ted from NBC’s “Date­line” show. Only The Palm Beach Post car­ried the account:

Although Glass told ‘Date­line’ this story, it wasn’t broad­cast. The only media to report it was The Palm Beach Post, on Octo­ber 17, 2002: ‘In August 2001, just before Glass started to serve a seven-month sen­tence for a $6 mil­lion jew­elry scam, he said he reached out to Sen. Bob Gra­ham and U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler. He said he told staffers for both law­mak­ers that a Pak­istani oper­a­tive work­ing for the Tal­iban known as R.G. Abbas made three ref­er­ences to immi­nent plans to attack the World Trade Cen­ter dur­ing the probe, which ended in June 2001. At one meet­ing at New York’s Tribeca Grill caught on tape, Abbas pointed to the World Trade Cen­ter and said, ‘Those tow­ers are com­ing down,’ Glass said.’

(Idem.)

4. “ ‘Date­line’ used Glass in a follow-up piece five months later, but still failed to men­tion the cru­cial details about Abbas. I was eager to get Randy Glass on INN World Report and go where ‘Date­line’ and Sy Hersh feared to tread. R.G. Abbas and the ISI had their paw prints all over 9/11. The Times of India and French News Agency AFP had reported that the head of ISI, Gen­eral Mah­mood, wired $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, through Saed Sheikh, right before 9/11. But no U.S. media out­let ever reported this. It was com­mon knowl­edge that the ISI and the CIA have been in bed together since Afghanistan’s Mujahideen/Soviet civil war. (As we’ll see in a sub­se­quent chap­ter, Pak­istani intrigue and intel­li­gence cre­ated the Bank of Credit and Com­merce Inter­na­tional, which part­nered with the CIA to cre­ate a $20 bil­lion empire of cor­rup­tion and covert ops.)

(Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

5. One of the oper­a­tives “stung” by Randy Glass was Egypt­ian arms dealer Diaa Moshen, who oper­ated in con­junc­tion with Dr. Magdy El-Amir’s brother. (See FTR#’s 495, 499.)

In prepa­ra­tion for my inter­view, I had Randy overnight us copies of the ‘Date­line NBC’ shows. I was actu­ally pretty impressed. For a selec­tive net­work news show, they were pretty gutsy. They played tapes Randy had made of Egypt­ian arms dealer Diaa Moshen talk­ing like Don Cor­leone, explain­ing in ner­vous barks of laugh­ter that his friends the Pak­ista­nis were in cahoots with Osama bin Laden. On sur­veil­lance video­tape, Moshen and Abbas walk into a ware­house and look at Stinger mis­siles. Glass is along­side them, play­ing the part of the wise guy to a hilt. He later told me, ‘I’m an adren­a­line junkie. I love the action.’

(Ibid.; p. 3.)

6. In his dis­cus­sion with Diaa Moshen, Glass elicited a dis­clo­sure that Moshen pos­sessed a spe­cial pass­port that enabled him to come and go as he pleased internationally.

Diaa Moshen, accord­ing to Glass, was a ‘lunatic capa­ble of killing any­body any­time any­where, period. And he has, like, Man­son type fol­low­ers. Believe me, you have no idea. I’ve met them, I know.’ Moshen is kind of an evil celebrity in his native Egypt, being a for­mer mem­ber of the Egypt­ian National Soc­cer Team. On ‘Date­line’, Glass asks him, ‘How do you travel to all of these places with­out com­ing up on the radar screen of the CIA or other intel­li­gence agen­cies in the world? This doesn’t make sense to me.’ Moshen explained that he enjoyed own­ing a ‘spe­cial pass­port. . . . I enter any fuck­ing coun­try and be protected.’

(Idem.)

7. Among the fright­en­ing dis­clo­sures con­cern­ing Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back is the alle­ga­tion that Diaa Moshen was seek­ing mate­ri­als to fab­ri­cate a nuclear weapon. Specif­i­cally, Moshen was seek­ing deu­terium oxide (“heavy water”) in order to facil­i­tate the con­struc­tion of an atomic bomb.

In the August ’02 ‘Date­line’ story, Moshen and the Pak­ista­nis don’t just want anti-aircraft mis­siles, they want the hard stuff: ‘heavy water’ a.k.a. ‘sweet water.’ That would be an order for Deu­terium Oxide, which is water, H2O, but with scram­bled hydro­gen iso­topes. Heavy water can turn nat­ural ura­nium into plu­to­nium. It’s the garage way to make a ther­monu­clear bomb. You bypass hav­ing to enrich the Ura­nium. Heavy Water is what Nazi Ger­many was try­ing to use dur­ing World War II. And it’s the method the Pak­ista­nis wanted to use, with Glass and Moshen’s sup­ply run.

(Idem.)

8. Despite the dire nature of the under­tak­ings in which they were involved, Moshen and his asso­ciate Mike Malik received extra­or­di­nar­ily lenient treat­ment: Moshen got 30 months in prison and Malik was set free. Why?!

Heavy water was ‘the deal breaker.’ Glass promised Moshen they could find some. Accord­ing to ‘Date­line,’ the deal fell apart when $32 mil­lion failed to mate­ri­al­ize from the Pak­ista­nis. Accord­ing to Glass, the $32 mil­lion was wired over, but the Feds ‘bounced it back’ in order to not ‘embar­rass’ the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment. After 9/11, Dia Moshen and cohort Mike Malik were arrested. But Mike Malik walked, free on a mil­lion dol­lar bond. Ter­ror­ist nuclear weapons bro­ker Diaa Moshen got sen­tenced to a cool 30 months in prison. ‘The whole thing was a fix.’ Glass says today. . . Although cru­cial details were left on the cut­ting room floor by ‘Date­line’, their seg­ment ends with this com­ment: ‘For his part, Randy Glass says there’s a lot more on those tapes, leads the gov­ern­ment could pur­sue, peo­ple still out there only too happy to sup­ply weapons to the net­work of terror.’

(Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

9. Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back sting man Randy Glass noti­fied Sen­a­tor Bob Gra­ham about the impend­ing attacks on the World Trade Cen­ter in July of 2001. In an online TV pro­gram, Sander Hicks inter­viewed Randy Glass and pro­vided some details about Glass’s attempts at warn­ing the author­i­ties of the impend­ing attack on the World Trade Center.

SANDER HICKS: Which leads me to my next ques­tion. I know that you then, in July of 2001, con­tacted your Sen­a­tor Bob Gra­ham in Florida, Con­gress­man Wexler, as well as your per­sonal friend, the State Sen­a­tor there in Florida.

RANDY GLASS: Yes I did.

SANDER HICKS: And what was opened from those con­tacts? Those faxes that you faxed them?

RANDY GLASS: Well, let me just—we’re skip­ping way ahead—let me just tell you that this meet­ing was in July of 1999, okay? So, I think it’s very impor­tant to note that Abbas, Malik and Moshen came to Florida and we had shown—when I say ‘we,’ the gov­ern­ment had set me up with an arms warehouse.

(Ibid.; p. 10.)

10. Glass opined that the ISI (Pak­istani intel­li­gence) was a major force behind both Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks.

SANDER HICKS: Right, because it was a sting oper­a­tion try­ing to find out who the ter­ror­ists were that wanted to buy weapons.

RANDY GLASS: Cor­rect.

SANDER HICKS: And these ter­ror­ists were linked to what groups?

RANDY GLASS: To Al Qaeda, the Tal­iban, Osama bin Laden. But basi­cally if I would have to say that even the Saudis that pulled off the 9/11 attack, if I were to say that there was a state-sponsored orga­ni­za­tion, I would say that it was Pak­istan and their ISI, which is like our equiv­a­lent to our CIA.

(Idem.)

11. Appar­ent ISI oper­a­tive R.G. Abbas (who fore­cast the destruc­tion of the WTC tow­ers) brought Pak­istani nuclear sci­en­tific per­son­nel into the attempt to obtain mate­r­ial for a nuclear device. The Pak­istani sci­en­tist was described as an asso­ciate of Mr. Khan, the focal point of the much-publicized inter­na­tional nuclear smug­gling ring.

SANDER HICKS: So, which of these three guys had links to ISI?

RANDY GLASS: Mohamed Malik and Abbas. Abbas was a high-ranking ISI official.

SANDER HICKS: Okay. So this led you to some inside knowl­edge about 9/11, correct?

RANDY GLASS: Oh, absolutely.

SANDER HICKS: What was your inside knowledge?

RANDY GLASS: Okay, the inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ued on, okay? And Abbas brought—sent—he went back to Pak­istan. He and Mohamed Malik got on a plane and flew back to Pak­istan. Malik came back. Abbas sent other oper­a­tives from the ISI includ­ing one of their nuclear sci­en­tists, asso­ciate of their main nuclear sci­en­tist, Khan. He sent back one of his asso­ciates to inspect weapons-grade plu­to­nium to make sure that it was weapons-grade plu­to­nium and nuclear trig­gers. As well as other sophis­ti­cated weapons sys­tems. 9/11 was sup­posed to be a nuclear attack.

(Ibid.; p. 11.)

12.

SANDER HICKS: July, 2001, you knew enough about 9/11—

RANDY GLASS: Yeah.

SANDER HICKS: That you con­tacted Sen­a­tor Bob Gra­ham.
RANDY GLASS: Yes.

SANDER HICKS: I have the fax here on my desk.

RANDY GLASS: Yeah.

SANDER HICKS: We’ll show it on screen.

RANDY GLASS: Okay.

SANDER HICKS: And you knew enough about the World Trade Cen­ter being attacked that you wanted to con­tact the Sen­a­tor at—who was on the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee and let him know.

RANDY GLASS: Cor­rect. And I did.

SANDER HICKS: What was the result of that?

RANDY GLASS: I was put in touch with one of Sen­a­tor Graham’s work­ers in his—on his staff. His name was Charles Yonts. And I spoke to Mr. Yonts about a half a dozen times. I pro­vided him with all of the infor­ma­tion and mate­r­ial that I had about air­planes being flown into the World Trade Center.

SANDER HICKS: Right. And then I know Kath­leen Wal­ters at WPTV/NBC. Chan­nel 5 in Florida, had a very com­bat­ive inter­view with Sen­a­tor Gra­ham.
RANDY GLASS: Cor­rect.

(Ibid.; pp. 11–12.)

13. After 9/11, Florida TV reporter Kath­leen Wal­ters had a testy con­fronta­tion with Sen­a­tor Gra­ham over his fore­knowl­edge of the attacks:

SANDER HICKS: She cor­nered him at a press conference?

RANDY GLASS: Yes. This was after 9/11.

SANDER HICKS: And we’re about to see a tape of that. What can you tell use about this tape?

RANDY GLASS: Well, I can tell you that Sen­a­tor Gra­ham admit­ted to Kath­leen Wal­ters on that video that I had in fact given him warn­ing before 9/11 about the attack, about air­planes being flown into the World Trade Center.

SANDER HICKS: Okay, now that’s major. So, on that tape that we’re about to see, he effec­tively admits that you did, in July of 2001, know about 9/11 and noti­fied him, a U.S. Sen­a­tor of the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Committee.

RANDY GLASS: Yes.

(Ibid.; p. 13.)

14.

KATHLEEN WALTERS: A few months before Sep­tem­ber 11, your office received infor­ma­tion from ATF infor­mant Randy Glass who was work­ing with the Ter­ror­ism Task Force and he also advised your office that ter­ror con­tentions to bring down the World Trade Cen­ter. And this was before Sep­tem­ber 11th.

SENATOR GRAHAM: [nods.]

(Idem.)

15.

KATHLEEN WALTERS: Your office tells me it for­warded infor­ma­tion from Mr. Glass to the Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee and my ques­tion is, why did no one from the Com­mit­tee fol­low up with Mr. Glass to pur­sue this?

SENATOR GRAHAM: Well because we in turn gave that infor­ma­tion to the appro­pri­ate intel­li­gence agency. We are an over­sight and leg­isla­tive agency. The actual oper­a­tions of col­lec­tion of infor­ma­tion, inter­view­ing pos­si­ble sources is the respon­si­bil­ity of the FBI if it’s a domes­tic mat­ter, or the CIA if it’s foreign.

KATHLEEN WALTERS: How seri­ous were, you know, when you heard about Mr. Glass and the infor­ma­tion he had, obvi­ously got a lot of expo­sure on ‘Date­line.’ How big of a con­cern did you per­son­ally have when you heard about this seri­ous infor­ma­tion that he had?”

(Ibid.; p. 14.)

16.

SENATOR GRAHAM: Well, I was con­cerned about that and a dozen other pieces of infor­ma­tion, which were ema­nat­ing in the sum­mer of 2001. All of which we trans­mit­ted to the appro­pri­ate intel­li­gence agency. In the report that we issued this week, there were four to five pages of inci­dents where peo­ple were [indis­tinct] cred­i­ble to use com­mer­cial air­lin­ers as weapons of mass destruc­tion by fly­ing them into a build­ing. So that was not, or should have not have been a sur­prise that this was a tech­nique that had the poten­tial of mov­ing from a threat to the real­ity that it became on Sep­tem­ber 11th. . . .

(Idem.)

17. “Later that week, I called Randy back to go over some facts so I could write a proper intro­duc­tion. It was the day of the broad­cast, a sunny Fri­day, and Randy dropped a bomb in my lap. The story he told me then made me wish there had been more time at INN. But now, in book form, the story can be unfolded at the care­ful pace it deserves. I had ques­tions about the fax that Randy had shown me, the July 2001 let­ters to Sen­a­tor Graham’s office, and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Wexler. I asked Glass why he told Sen­a­tor Gra­ham he was gravely con­cerned, ‘I’ve told you repeat­edly about my ter­ror­ist case—the sophis­ti­cated weapons system—nuclear components—the threats of blow­ing up the World Trade Cen­ter and who knows what else. These peo­ple hate Amer­i­cans. This infor­ma­tion I’ve got­ten from the State Depart­ment about the air­planes being used. . . .’ Wait a minute. We were talk­ing about Pak­istani spy-terrorists. Since when are we talk­ing about the ‘State Department?’”

(Ibid.; pp. 15–16.)

18. In a stun­ning devel­op­ment, a State Depart­ment offi­cial con­tacted by Randy Glass revealed that ele­ments of the gov­ern­ment knew about the plan to fly planes into the World Trade Center.

Glass said, ‘The only infor­ma­tion that the terrorists—the guys ever talked about –was just the World Trade Cen­ter. They didn’t ever say any­thing to me or to Dick, to my knowl­edge, that air­planes were going to be used. The State Depart­ment guy told me that. In other words, I called up and I bluffed him. I called up and I don’t know what they knew that I knew. I just knew that Amer­ica was going to be attacked. I didn’t know if it was going to be the World Trade Cen­ter or what it was going to be. These peo­ple had talked about pur­chas­ing these weapons to use against us.

(Ibid.; p. 16.)

19. Pakistan’s sta­tus as an ally in the “war on ter­ror” (!) led to the State Department’s san­i­tiz­ing of any men­tion of Pak­istan or of the fact that the ter­ror­ists Glass had tar­geted were seek­ing nukes.

A lit­tle later, I inter­rupted Glass and threw him a curve­ball to see what he’d say—‘When Dick Stoltz on ‘Date­line’ says stuff like, ‘Well, gee, we really thought that FBI or CIA would take over this case.’ Is it pos­si­ble that the rea­son that the CIA didn’t take over this case is because the CIA has been work­ing with Pak­istani intel­li­gence?’ Glass replied, ‘Of course. That was the whole thing. . . .the State Depart­ment was the vehi­cle that was used to shut down the case. . . So when I called the State Department—because I knew they were the ones who ordered the case shut down. . .The State Depart­ment orders the com­plaint san­i­tized, and Bar­barini [another ATF agent who worked with Glass] is all pissed off because he’s the guy given the job to rewrite the com­plaint and if you look—it’s a pub­lic record, you can get if off the internet—and if you look, you’ll see there’s no men­tion of Pak­istan. There’s no men­tion of us show­ing them plu­to­nium. There’s no men­tion that incrim­i­nates Pak­istan. I mean, Pak­istan is not in there one time. And these were all Pak­istani peo­ple who were here.

(Idem.)

20.

HICKS: Was that Chuck or was that the other guy?

GLASS: The other guy.

HICKS: Ahh.

(Ibid.; p. 17.)

21. “Later Glass stated that the State Depart­ment con­tact said, ‘Musharaf just took over and our posi­tion is that they’re a nuclear power and they’ve been flex­ing their nuclear mus­cles with India and we are try­ing to pre­vent a nuclear cat­a­stro­phe. And we know about the threat, the ter­ror­ist threat, from Al Qaeda and Bin Laden fly­ing air­planes into the World Trade Cen­ter. And Musharaf has guar­an­teed us—because it’s his ISI behind it—that he can stop it if we sup­port him publicly.’

(Idem.)

22. “Look Randy, we know you’re a straight guy so we’re going to give you some infor­ma­tion. You can­not do two things: You can­not go to the media under any cir­cum­stance. This is—we’re play­ing in a nuclear mine­field now. Sec­ondly, you can’t tell the agents that you’re work­ing with now because they’re cut out of the loop. They know nothing.’”

(Idem.)

23. Still more indi­ca­tions that ele­ments in the State Depart­ment had fairly pre­cise knowl­edge about the plan to crash planes into the WTC:

GLASS: When I called the State Depart­ment, I said to them, ‘Lis­ten, I already know about the World Trade Cen­ter.’ So they assumed that I knew more than I did. And I didn’t. I didn’t know any­thing about airplanes. . . .’

HICKS: So you bluffed and you kind of pre­tended you knew more than you did and then what did they tell you? GLASS: But I didn’t even have to do that. I just said what I knew. I said ‘Look. Lis­ten, I know the World Trade Cen­ter is going to be attacked.’ And then this guy said to me ‘Randy lis­ten, you can­not men­tion any of these things, espe­cially air­planes being used to fly into the World Trade Cen­ter.’ And when he said that I almost fell off of my fuck­ing chair. I mean, you have no idea. I thought I was gonna wear the tape out.”

(Ibid.; p. 18.)

24. “Glass was ret­i­cent to talk too specif­i­cally about the State Depart­ment higher-up. But each time he revealed a lit­tle more. Over the course of our talks in Decem­ber, he revealed that the guy who knew about ‘planes being flown into the World Trade Cen­ter’ was one of Colin Powell’s right-hand men. . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 19.)

25. One of the final ele­ments of dis­cus­sion con­cerned the pro­mo­tion of Dave Frasca, an FBI counter-terror offi­cial. Despite a dubi­ous record, he was pro­moted upward.