Recorded Octo­ber 16, 2005
REALAUDIO

This broad­cast sets forth ele­ments of a net­work that Mr. Emory believes to be a Bormann/Underground Reich net­work. This net­work was part of the appa­ra­tus involved in the exe­cu­tion of the 9/11 attacks. Begin­ning with review of the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft and its role in bring­ing 9/11 hijack ring­leader Mohamed Atta to Ger­many, the broad­cast traces the evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning out of that orga­ni­za­tion. In addi­tion to a fel­low­ship oper­ated on behalf of the Russ­ian Alfa con­glom­er­ate, the CDG net­work also encom­passes the Robert Bosch Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship. The Alfa firm, in turn, has pro­found links to crim­i­nal syn­di­cates in Asia, Rus­sia and Latin Amer­ica, as well as ele­ments that par­tic­i­pated in activ­i­ties over­lap­ping both the Iran-Contra and Iraq­gate affairs. One of the cen­tral ele­ments in this net­work is the royal fam­ily of Liecht­en­stein, a tiny Euro­pean coun­try that is an epi­cen­ter for money laun­der­ing. In addi­tion to par­tic­i­pat­ing in a front com­pany that was part of the Al Taqwa con­stel­la­tion that funded Bin Laden, the Liecht­en­stein royal fam­ily (in 2001) assumed the pow­ers of absolute monar­chy, just in time to inter­dict any legal inves­ti­ga­tions that might have gone in the direc­tion of 9/11. The head of the polit­i­cal party that fronted for Prince Hans Adam’s assump­tion of absolute power is a pow­er­ful lawyer who works for an Alfa sub­sidiary! The dove­tail­ing of pow­er­ful Ger­man cap­i­tal inter­ests appar­ently linked to the Bor­mann milieu with Russ­ian oli­garchic and crim­i­nal ele­ments appears to be an out­growth of tra­di­tional Ger­man “Ost­poli­tik.” For more about Ost­poli­tik, be sure to access Ger­many Plots with the Krem­lin by T. H. Tetens, avail­able for free down­load­ing at: Spitfirelist.com/Books.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Ger­man indus­trial fig­ures on the board of direc­tors of the CDS; a his­tory of the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft and its Amer­i­can sub­sidiary, the CDS; the Alfa Group’s links to Cheney’s Hal­libur­ton Oil com­pany; the Alfa Group’s links to Iraq­gate arms traf­fick­ing; the Alfa Group’s links to the oil-for-food scan­dal in Iraq; Alfa’s links to the Cali cocaine car­tel of Colom­bia; Alfa’s links to heroin traf­fick­ing; Attor­ney Nor­bert Seeger’s role with Alfa sub­sidiary Crown Resources; Nor­bert Seeger’s role as head of the Pro­gres­sive Cit­i­zens Party in Liecht­en­stein; links between Liecht­en­stein and the milieu of the CDU fund­ing scan­dal; Atta’s father’s friend­ship with the Ger­man cou­ple that spon­sored Atta’s entry into Ger­many under the aus­pices of the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft; review of John P. Schmitz’s links to many of the enti­ties and per­son­al­i­ties dis­cussed in the program.

1. We begin with a review of the rela­tion­ship between 9/11 hijack ring­leader Mohamed Atta and the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft, a joint U.S. Ger­man fel­low­ship pro­gram that spon­sored Atta’s entry to, and stay in, Ger­many. (For more about Atta and the CDS, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 477, 523.) “For at least four years while liv­ing in Ham­burg dur­ing the 1990’s, ter­ror­ist ring­leader Mohamed Atta was part of a ‘joint ven­ture’ between the U.S. and Ger­man gov­ern­ments, the Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews has learned, an elite inter­na­tional ‘exchange’ pro­gram run by a little-known pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion with close ties to pow­er­ful Amer­i­can polit­i­cal fig­ures like David Rock­e­feller and for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Henry Kissinger.”
(“Mohamed Atta Worked for Elite U.S.—German Gov­ern­ment Exchange Pro­gram” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews; 4/24/2003.)

2. “The jointly-funded gov­ern­ment effort picked up the tab for Atta on sojourns in Cairo, Istan­bul, and Aleppo in Syria dur­ing the years 1994 and 1995, as well as employ­ing him as a ‘tutor’ and ‘sem­i­nar par­tic­i­pant’ dur­ing 1996 and 1997. More­over, Atta’s finan­cial rela­tion­ship with the U.S.—German gov­ern­ment effort may even extended back to his ini­tial move from Egypt to Ger­many in 1992, after being ‘recruited’ in Cairo by a mys­te­ri­ous Ger­man cou­ple dubbed the ‘hijacker’s spon­sors’ in a recent news account in the Chicago Tri­bune.” (Idem.)

3. “Mohamed Atta, before becom­ing a ‘ter­ror­ist ring­leader,’ enjoyed the patron­age of a gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive known as the ‘Congress-Bundestag Pro­gram,’ over­seen by the U.S. State Depart­ment and the Ger­man Min­istry of Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment, the Ger­man equiv­a­lent of the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment busy cur­rently super­vis­ing the secre­tive bid­ding race for tens of bil­lions of dol­lars of post-war recon­struc­tion con­tracts in Iraq.” (Idem.)

4. “News that Mohamed Atta had been on the pay­roll of the elite inter­na­tional pro­gram sur­faced in a curi­ous way just a month after the 9/11 attack a brief seven-line report by Ger­man news­pa­per Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung on Oct. 18, 2001, under the head­line ‘Atta Was Tutor for Schol­ar­ship Hold­ers.’ The story quoted spokes­men for ‘Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft,’ described as a ‘Ger­man inter­na­tional fur­ther edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tion,’ as hav­ing admit­ted pay­ing Ham­burg cadre prin­ci­pal Atta as a ‘schol­ar­ship holder’ and ‘tutor,’ between 1995 and 1997.” (Idem.)

5. “But what makes the story curi­ous is that the Ger­man paper con­cealed the shock­ing impli­ca­tions of their story, that Mohamed Atta had been on the pay­roll of a joint U.S.—German gov­ern­ment pro­gram, through the sim­ple expe­di­ent of neglect­ing to men­tion that the ‘Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft’ was merely a pri­vate entity set up to admin­is­ter the ‘exchange’ ini­tia­tive of the two gov­ern­ments.” (Idem.)

6. The U.S. end of the pro­gram is run out of an address at United Nations Plaza in New York by CDS Inter­na­tional. The let­ters stand for Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety, also the name of its Ger­man coun­ter­part in Cologne, the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft. Both are named for Carl Duis­berg, a Ger­man chemist and indus­tri­al­ist who headed the Bayer Cor­po­ra­tion dur­ing the 1920’s . . . .” (Idem.)

7. “. . . Kissinger, to cite just one exam­ple, had at one time addressed over 100 inter­na­tional busi­ness lead­ers at an anniver­sary din­ner orga­nized and cel­e­brat­ing CDS Inter­na­tional held at the River Club of New York June 2, 1987. Kissinger con­grat­u­lated CDS Inter­na­tional on its 20 years of ser­vice in keep­ing close busi­ness ties, not only between Ger­many and the United States, but more recently through career devel­op­ment pro­grams for par­tic­i­pants from other coun­tries as well. Five years later, Mohamed Atta became one of these par­tic­i­pants from ‘other’ coun­tries. . . .” (Idem.)

8. “CDS Inter­na­tional, states the organization’s lit­er­a­ture, pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for young Ger­man engi­neers. Mohamed Atta wasn’t, strictly speak­ing, a ‘young Ger­man engi­neer,’ but appar­ently Kissinger’s praise for ‘career devel­op­ment pro­grams for par­tic­i­pants from other coun­tries as well’ had been taken to heart by the friendly folks at the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety. ‘These young Ger­man engi­neers earn real world expe­ri­ence and are given assign­ments to con­tribute from the start,’ a pro­gram spokesman enthused in a news­pa­per inter­view. The orga­ni­za­tion is today under­stand­ably shy about men­tion­ing that their most famous recent graduate’s ‘real world expe­ri­ence’ included mur­der­ing almost 3000 peo­ple in New York City in slightly less than two hours.” (Idem.)

9. “A finan­cial rela­tion­ship between the ter­ror­ist ring­leader and the U.S. and Ger­man Gov­ern­ments has not pre­vi­ously even been hinted at in America’s major media. The conspiracy-minded might con­clude that the fact that the scoop is going to the Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews may owe some­thing to the program’s raft of politically-powerful boost­ers. Hav­ing big juice in high places may also explain more equally-curious omis­sions in a sec­ond story about Mohamed Atta’s time in Ger­many, which appeared recently in the March 7, 2003 Chicago Tri­bune, under the head­line ‘9/11 haunts hijacker’s spon­sors; Ger­man cou­ple talks of liv­ing with pilot Atta.’” (Idem.)

10. It is inter­est­ing, and prob­a­bly sig­nif­i­cant that the mys­te­ri­ous Ger­man cou­ple who brought Atta into Ger­many under the aus­pices of the CDS came to meet him through their friend, Mohamed’s father. In FTR#523, we exam­ined the senior Atta’s appar­ent super­vi­sion of the hijack­ers in Florida. He was appar­ently the leader of the group, a fact cov­ered up by the FBI. In FTR#519, we looked at the senior Atta’s endorse­ment of the Lon­don sub­way attacks. “The arti­cle describes the 1992 meet­ing in Cairo between Atta and a Ger­man cou­ple run­ning an ‘inter­na­tional stu­dent exchange pro­gram,’ a meet­ing which the Tri­bune says led Atta to move to Ham­burg. Dur­ing a visit to the Egypt­ian cap­i­tal in fall 1991, the Tri­bune reported, the Ger­man cou­ple had stayed with friends who knew Atta’s father, a Cairo lawyer, and his father’s friends had then intro­duced the Ger­man cou­ple to Atta. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] ‘Atta, who had recently grad­u­ated with a degree in archi­tec­tural engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of Cairo, told the cou­ple he wanted to study archi­tec­ture in Ger­many, but he had no par­tic­u­lar idea where he should go,’ the paper reported.” (Idem.)

11. Notice the strange cir­cum­stances under which the face­less Ger­man cou­ple came to spon­sor Atta. Does this make sense? “Though the arti­cle neglects to men­tion it, the rea­son Atta found him­self with ‘no par­tic­u­lar idea where he should go’ was because although he had stud­ied engi­neer­ing at pres­ti­gious Cairo Uni­ver­sity, he had not fared well enough to gain admis­sion to its grad­u­ate school. The paper quotes the Ger­man wife telling inves­ti­ga­tors: ‘In this first con­ver­sa­tion, we sug­gested he con­tinue his stud­ies in Ham­burg and offered him a place to live at our house.’ Atta, she states, accepted their offer right away. This mag­nan­i­mous ges­ture by the Ger­man cou­ple to an undis­tin­guished young man they have just met raises seri­ous ques­tions. Per­haps their ges­ture is just the very milk of human kind­ness; per­haps it is some­thing else.” (Idem.)

12. Notice that the iden­tity of the Ger­man cou­ple who spon­sored Atta was kept secret by the Chicago Tri­bune. WHY?! “Why did this Ger­man cou­ple run­ning an inter­na­tional exchange pro­gram leap at the oppor­tu­nity to help a young man not con­sid­ered promis­ing enough to gain entrance to grad­u­ate school in Cairo, and offer him a place to live at their house. The Tri­bune doesn’t say. And they have made it dif­fi­cult for any­one lese to fol­low up on their story, because they neglected to iden­tify either the cou­ple or the ‘inter­na­tional’ pro­gram they ran by name. But although Tri­bune cor­re­spon­dent Steven­son Swan­son cites the Ger­man cou­ple for ‘hav­ing played such an impor­tant role in Atta’s move to Ger­many,’ he never gives either their names nor that of the orga­ni­za­tion they worked for.” (Idem.)

13. “This is some curi­ous, if you know what we mean. After all, the story is 1200 words in length. So it’s not as if they didn’t have room to print the names, is it? ‘Jane and John Doe from Help-A-Student Inter­na­tional’ would have been enough. You know: Who, What, When, Where, and Why. So, either The Tri­bune just for­got the ‘Who,’ or some­thing even weirder hap­pened.” (Idem.)

14. “After study­ing Ger­man in Cairo, Atta arrived in Ger­many on July 24, 1992, accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors’ records, and then lived rent-free for at least the next six months in the couple’s home in a quiet, middle-class neigh­bor­hood. And since just two years later Atta was on the pay­roll of the ‘Congress-Bundestag Pro­gram,’ it is rea­son­able to conclude–and no thanks to The Chicago Tri­bune–that it was also the ‘exchange pro­gram’ respon­si­ble for bring­ing him to Ger­many in the first place. . . CDS International’s elite spon­sors are appar­ently influ­en­tial enough to have kept their organization’s name out of the news­pa­pers. Or at any rate out of The Chicago Tri­bune.” (Idem.)

15. Next, Mr. Emory pon­tif­i­cates about evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning between a num­ber of ele­ments, which—taken together—appear to form parts of a net­work that involves ele­ments of Ger­man heavy indus­try and finance, mas­sive drug traf­fick­ing, arms traf­fick­ing and Russ­ian crim­i­nal ele­ments. The focal point of this part of the dis­cus­sion is the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft, the orga­ni­za­tion that traf­ficked Atta around in Ger­many and pos­si­bly the United States. As noted in FTR#477, Atta was asso­ci­ated with Ger­mans, Swiss and Aus­tri­ans in Florida. As noted in—among other programs—FTR#492, the Ger­man BKA (the fed­eral police of that coun­try) and/or Atta para­mour Amanda Keller iden­ti­fied many of Atta’s asso­ciates as sons and daugh­ters of promi­nent Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists. In the past, Mr. Emory has spec­u­lated about whether the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft might be an ele­ment of the Under­ground Reich. In FTR#305, we exam­ined the Bor­mann group’s con­trol of Ger­man indus­try, and in FTR#155, we noted that the chil­dren of key Bor­mann group mem­bers fol­low in their par­ents’ foot­steps. Are we look­ing at a Bormann/Underground Reich net­work here? One that over­saw the hijack­ers’ activ­i­ties? “ . . . ‘In the 1920’s, Carl Duis­berg, Gen­eral Direc­tor of Bayer AG in Ger­many, envi­sioned send­ing Ger­man stu­dents to the United States on work-study pro­grams. Duis­berg was con­vinced that inter­na­tional prac­ti­cal train­ing was crit­i­cal to the growth of Ger­man indus­try. Many of the return­ing trainees later rose to promi­nent posi­tions at AEG, Bayer, Bosch, Daim­ler Benz, and Siemens, bring­ing with them new meth­ods for mass pro­duc­tion, new ideas, and new busi­ness prac­tices. Fol­low­ing World War II, alumni from the first exchanges founded the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft (CDG) in 1949 to help engi­neers, busi­ness­men and farm­ers gain inter­na­tional work expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary for the rebuild­ing of Ger­many . . . .”
(“His­tory of the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety”.)

16. Note the promi­nent Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists on the board of direc­tors of the Duis­berg Soci­ety, and do not for­get the Bor­mann group’s stew­ard­ship of Ger­man indus­try in this con­text. “Board of Direc­tors Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety: . . . Gerd D. Mueller (retired) [mem­ber of Bun­destag on CSU ticket) Chair­man of the Board; Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent and CFO Bayer Cor­po­ra­tion . . . . Dr. Hans W. Decker; Trea­surer of the Board; Professor—Columbia Uni­ver­sity . . . Robert Fen­ster­ma­cher; Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of CDS Inter­na­tional, Inc. (ex offi­cio) . . . Carl Geer­cken; Part­ner Alston & Bird LLP . . . Dr. Olaf J. Groth; Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Strate­gic Analy­sis & Integration—Boeing Inter­na­tional Cor­po­ra­tion . . . Dr. H. Friedrich Holzapfel; Man­ag­ing Director—The Burling­ton Group . . . Dr. Gudrun Kochendoerfer-Lucius; Man­ag­ing Director—InWEnt (Capac­ity Build­ing Inter­na­tional, Ger­many) . . . Fritz E. Kropatscheck; Mang­ing Director—Deutsche Bank, A.G. (retired) . . . Wolf­gang Linz (retired) Exec­u­tive Direc­tor CDS Inter­na­tional, Inc. . . . Dr. Karl M. Mayer-Wittmann (retired); President—WEFA, Inc. . . . Frances McCaf­frey; Man­ager, Cen­ter Development—BMW of North Amer­ica . . . Dr. Horst K. Saal­bach Vice Chair­man of the Board–Festo Cor­po­ra­tion . . . Dr. Nor­bert Schnei­der; Chief Exec­u­tive Officer—Carl Duis­berg Cen­tren GmbH . . . .”
(“Board of Direc­tors: Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety”)

17. Another of the fel­low­ship pro­grams that oper­ates under the aus­pices of the CDS is the Alfa Fel­low­ship, that func­tions on behalf of the Alfa Group, a Russ­ian con­glom­er­ate with more links than a switch­board. Among the con­nec­tions of the Alfa group are pro­found links to cocaine and heroin traf­fick­ing, Hal­libur­ton Oil (Dick Cheney’s for­mer firm), and the oil-for-food scam in Iraq. The Iraqi oil scam, in turn, appears to be linked to Car­los Car­doen, one of the prin­ci­pal arms traf­fick­ers involved in the Iraq­gate scan­dal presided over by the elder George Bush. (For more about the elder George Bush’s involve­ment in the Iraq­gate scan­dal, see—among other programs—FTR#384.) Is this Russ­ian part of the net­work con­nected to the net­work that was traf­fick­ing Atta around in Florida? “ALFA FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM: Nearly fif­teen years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cold War-era poli­cies and con­cepts con­tinue to affect U.S. rela­tions with Rus­sia. . . . The Alfa Fel­low­ship Pro­gram is designed to address this prob­lem . . . .”
(“ALFA FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM”; Page on the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety web site.)

18. Dick Cheney’s for­mer firm—Halliburton—is con­nected to the Alfa com­pany. “Under the guid­ance of Richard Cheney, a get-the-government-out-of-my-face con­ser­v­a­tive, Hal­libur­ton Com­pany over the past five years has emerged as a cor­po­rate wel­fare hog, ben­e­fit­ing from at least $3.8 bil­lion in fed­eral con­tracts and taxpayer-insured loans. One of these loans was approved in April by the U.S. Export-Import Bank. It guar­an­teed $489 mil­lion in cred­its to a Russ­ian oil com­pany whose roots are imbed­ded in a legacy of KGB and Com­mu­nist Party cor­rup­tion, as well as drug traf­fick­ing and orga­nized crime funds, accord­ing to Russ­ian and U.S. sources and doc­u­ments.”
(“Cheney Led Hal­libur­ton to Feast at Fed­eral Trough: State Depart­ment Ques­tioned Deal with Firm Linked to Russ­ian Mob” by Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller [Cen­ter for Pub­lic Integrity]; 8/2/2000.)

19. “Those claims are hotly dis­puted by the Russ­ian oil firm’s hold­ing com­pany. Hal­libur­ton, which lob­bied for the Ex-Im loan after the State Depart­ment ini­tially asserted that the deal would run counter to the ‘national inter­est,’ will receive $292 mil­lion of those funds to refur­bish a mas­sive Siber­ian oil field owned by the Russ­ian com­pany, the Tyu­men Oil Co., which is con­trolled by a con­glom­er­ate called the Alfa Group. . . .” (Idem.)

20. Note that a Russ­ian intel­li­gence offi­cer iden­ti­fies Chechens as behind the Alfa Group-connected heroin traf­fic. Al Qaeda and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood are strongly con­nected to the groups active in Chech­nya. Again, is this oper­a­tion con­nected to Atta’s activ­i­ties in Florida? “ . . . That doc­u­ment and the FSB report claim that Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s largest and most prof­itable, as well as Alfa Eko, a trad­ing com­pany, had been deeply involved in the early 1990’s in laun­der­ing of Russ­ian and Colom­bian drug money and in traf­fick­ing drugs from the Far East to Europe. The for­mer KGB major, who with the fall of com­mu­nism in the late 1980’s had him­self been involved in the plan by the KGB and Com­mu­nist Party to loot state enter­prises, said that Alfa Bank was founded with party and KGB funds, and quickly attracted rogue agents who had served in anti-organized-crime units. ‘They (the rogue agents on the bank’s pay­roll) quickly deter­mined that deal­ing in drugs would bring the high­est prof­its with lit­er­ally no risk in Rus­sia,’ accord­ing to the for­mer KGB offi­cer. He claimed that a ‘large chan­nel of heroin tran­sit was estab­lished from Burma through Laos, Viet­nam, to the Far East [Siberia].’ From there the drugs were cam­ou­flaged as flour and sugar ship­ments and for­warded on to Ger­many. The drug oper­a­tion was con­trolled by a Chechen mob fam­ily, he said. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] . . .” (Idem)

21. The Cali cartel—connected to the Iran-Contra drug traf­fick­ing net­works that were linked to Atta’s oper­a­tions in Florida—is linked to the Alfa Group’s crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. “ . . . The FSB doc­u­ment claims that at the end of 1993, a top Alfa offi­cial met with Gilberto Rodriguez Ore­juela, the now-imprisoned finan­cial mas­ter­mind of Columbia’s noto­ri­ous Cali car­tel, ‘to include an agree­ment about the trans­fer of money into Alfa Bank from off­shore zones such as the Bahamas, Gibral­tar and oth­ers, The plan was to insert it back into the Russ­ian econ­omy through the pur­chase of stock in Russ­ian com­pa­nies.’ The account from the for­mer KGB offi­cer is unclear about Alfa’s alleged role with Rodriguez, but appar­ently con­firms that ‘in 1993–94 there were attempts of the so-called Chess Player [Rodriguez’s nick­name] to laun­der and legal­ize large amounts of crim­i­nal money in Rus­sia. He reported that there was evi­dence ‘regard­ing [Alfa Bank’s] involve­ment with the money laun­der­ing of . . . Latin Amer­i­can drug car­tels.’ . . .” (Idem.)

22. The pro­gram high­lights links between Alfa and peo­ple linked to the lead­er­ship of the Repub­li­can Party: “ . . . Tyu­men could have sig­nif­i­cant access to the White House should the Bush-Cheney ticket win in the Novem­ber pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Tyumen’s lead attor­ney at Akin Gump is James C. Lang­don Jr., a man­ag­ing part­ner at the firm. He is also one of George W. Bush’s ‘Pio­neers,’ one of the elite fund rais­ers who have brought in at least $100,0000 for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial hope­ful. . . .” (Idem.)

23. The dis­cus­sion con­cludes with the links of Alfa Group to the Iraqi oil-for-food scam and the Iraq­gate weapons traf­fick­ing of the 1980’s. “ . . . One out­fit that par­tic­i­pated in the Iraqi oil trade is the Alfa Group, a Moscow firm with hold­ings in bank­ing, tele­com, oil and com­modi­ties trad­ing, run by bil­lion­aire Mikhail Frid­man. Alfa quite legally pumped the price of its cheap Iraqi crude by trad­ing it to a suc­ces­sion of affil­i­ates and friends with ques­tion­able pasts. [includ­ing Alfa sub­sidiary Crown Trade & Finance] The daisy chain, known inter­nally as a ‘rondo,’ boosted Alfa’s pro­ceeds and also made the money harder to trace. Alfa deposited funds in a Gibral­tar tax haven. . . .”
(“The Sad­dam Shuf­fle” by Michael Maiello; Forbes; 11/15/2004.)

24. “ . . . A favorite rondo customer—and a point of entry to the U.S. market—was a Hous­ton com­pany, Bay­oil. It par­tic­i­pated in 32 Iraqi oil trades with Alfa com­pa­nies between August 1999 and Decem­ber 2000. Bay­oil also bought directly from Sad­dam. Sad­dam had been deal­ing with Bay­oil owner David Bay Chalmers Jr. before. Dur­ing the 1980’s Iran-Iraq war Bay­oil appar­ently got a fee of $2 a bar­rel for bro­ker­ing 20 mil­lion bar­rels of Iraqi oil to the Chilean arms dealer Car­los Car­doen. . . .” (Idem.)

25. Crown Resources and other Crown enti­ties are part of the Alfa Group, one of whose out­growths is the CDS sub­sidiary pro­gram the Alfa Fel­low­ship. One of the ques­tions Mr. Emory raises in this pro­gram con­cerns the post-Soviet Russ­ian oli­garchy and orga­nized milieu. In this pro­gram, we are see­ing ele­ments of inter­sec­tion between the Russ­ian criminal-oligarchical net­works and Ger­man cap­i­tal net­works that appear to be linked to the Under­ground Reich. This raises some inter­est­ing ques­tions. The Soviet Union was the eco­nomic bas­ket case of the world. How did some of these Russ­ian ele­ments obtain the sort of global power and influ­ence that they have? They had to have help, the advan­tages of loot­ing state monop­o­lies notwith­stand­ing. More about this below, in con­nec­tion with Alfa’s Crown sub­sidiary. “ A deal to sell the Swiss-based com­modi­ties oper­a­tion of for­mer U.S. fugi­tive financier Marc Rich to Russia-owned energy trad­ing group Crown Resources is off. . . . Crown is owned by the Alfa Group con­glom­er­ate. . . . .”
(“Marc Rich Deal to Sell Com­modi­ties Oper­a­tion to Russ­ian Group Fails” [AP]; 6/8/2001.)

26. One of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the Crown/Alfa net­work is Dr. Nor­bert Seeger, about whom we will more below. “ . . . 30. Dr. Nor­bert Seeger; Rech­tan­swalt, Vaduz [Liechtenstein]—Information includes: Knowl­edge of facts per­tain­ing to role of Crown Finance Foun­da­tion and other Crown enti­ties in money laun­der­ing and tax eva­sion activ­i­ties. . . .” (From the legal doc­u­ments in a lawsuit—“Rule 26 Ini­tial Dis­clo­sures; UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT; SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK; NOREX PETROLEUM LIMITED No. 02 Civ. 1499 (LTS)(KNF); Plain­tiff v. ACCESS INDUSTRIES, INC.; Et. Al. Defen­dants; PLAINTIFF’S RULE 26(a)(1) INITIAL DISCLOSURES; 1. INDIVIDUALS LIKELY TO HAVE DISCOVERABLE INFORMATION THAT MAY BE USED TO SUPPORT NOREX’S CLAIMS . . . . A. Indi­vid­u­als Asso­ci­ated With Plain­tiff”; p. 8.)

27. A crit­i­cal ele­ment of dis­cus­sion here con­cerns the tiny prin­ci­pal­ity of Liechtenstein—a small Euro­pean coun­try of 32,000 peo­ple, whose prin­ci­pal indus­try is money laun­der­ing. As we will see, Liecht­en­stein fig­ures sig­nif­i­cantly in the events in and around 9/11. In 2001, Prince Hans Adam became (for all intents and pur­poses) the only absolute monarch in Europe. This gam­bit was accom­plished through a pop­u­lar ref­er­en­dum, effected under the aus­pices of a front group—the Pro­gres­sive Cit­i­zens Party. The ref­er­en­dum ceded to the Prince vir­tu­ally all real power. In par­tic­u­lar, he had the abil­ity to com­pletely con­trol the judi­cial sys­tem, thereby con­trol­ling all legal inves­ti­ga­tions in the country—a par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing and impor­tant power in the very impor­tant year of 2001! This assump­tion of absolute power put Hans Adam in the posi­tion of being able to block or neu­tral­ize any legal inves­ti­ga­tion into any of the finan­cial shenani­gans that tran­spired in Liecht­en­stein, includ­ing 9/11-related activ­i­ties! As will be seen below, the main busi­ness in this tiny coun­try is money laun­der­ing. “ . . . In a ref­er­en­dum in March 23, 64% of vot­ers in Liecht­en­stein approved a mea­sure to give Prince Hans Adam II the power to dis­miss gov­ern­ments, approve judi­cial nom­i­nees and veto laws. It is the most power of any monarch in Europe. Hans Adam had threat­ened to leave the coun­try if the mea­sure was not approved. . . The Prince’s involve­ment in leg­is­la­tion con­sists in a right to take ini­tia­tives in the form of gov­ern­ment bills and in the right to veto par­lia­men­tary pro­pos­als. The Prince has the power to enact princely decrees. Emer­gency princely decrees are pos­si­ble when the secu­rity and wel­fare of the coun­try is at stake. A coun­tersig­na­ture by the head of gov­ern­ment is, nev­er­the­less required. The Prince has the right to con­vene and adjourn par­lia­ment and, for seri­ous rea­sons, to adjourn it for 3 months or to dis­solve it. On the basis of the names put for­ward by Par­lia­ment, the Prince nom­i­nates the gov­ern­ment dis­trict and high court judges, the judges of the Supreme Court, and the pres­i­dents and their deputies of the Con­sti­tu­tional Court and of the Admin­is­tra­tive Court of Appeal. The Prince’s other author­i­ties include exer­cis­ing the right to mit­i­gate and com­mute pun­ish­ments that have been imposed with legal force and the abolition–i.e., the dismissal—of inves­ti­ga­tions that have been ini­ti­ated. All judg­ments are issued in the name of the Prince. . . .”
(Wikipedia entry on the polit­i­cal sys­tem of Liechtenstein.)

28. The head of Liechtenstein’s Pro­gres­sive Cit­i­zens Party is Nor­bert Seeger—a prin­ci­pal fig­ure in Alfa’s Crown Resources sub­sidiary!! “ . . . Since 2001, it has been the Pro­gres­sive Cit­i­zens Party that has pro­vided all the mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment. The minor­ity par­ties, as oppo­si­tion par­ties, act as a check on the gov­ern­ment in Par­lia­ment and on par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sions. . . .” (Idem.)

29. “ . . . Polit­i­cal par­ties and lead­ers: Pro­gres­sive Cit­i­zens’ Party of FBPL. [Nor­bert Seeger]; . . .” (Idem.)

30. Next, the broad­cast reviews infor­ma­tion from FTR#442. One of the most impor­tant con­nec­tions illus­trated in this pro­gram is the evi­den­tiary trib­u­tary con­nect­ing the Bank Al Taqwa and the royal fam­ily of Liecht­en­stein. Recall that Bank Al Taqwa is a prin­ci­pal finan­cial source for Al Qaeda and other Mus­lim Broth­er­hood off­shoots. (For more about Bank Al Taqwa, see—among other pro­grams, FTR#’s 343, 456, 513.) One should not for­get that Al Taqwa itself orig­i­nates from a firm estab­lished in Vaduz, Liechtenstein—that nation’s cap­i­tal. Liecht­en­stein is one of the prin­ci­pal “funny money” cen­ters of Europe, and a major pivot point for the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. This infor­ma­tion should be eval­u­ated against the back­ground of the infor­ma­tion pre­sented in FTR#’s 352, 357, 359, 377, 378. Those broad­casts high­light the inter­sec­tion between the Al Taqwa milieu and Euro­pean far-right inter­ests, includ­ing the P-2 and Alleanza Nationale milieu in Italy. These links with pow­er­ful Euro­pean cap­i­tal inter­ests and far-right net­works indi­cate that there is much more going on here than just Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ism. In light of the links between Liecht­en­stein, Crown/Alpha (Nor­bert Seeger) and the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft, the Asat Trust/Liechtenstein royal fam­ily con­nec­tion assumes poten­tially larger sig­nif­i­cance. Do the var­i­ous ten­drils of the crea­ture por­trayed in this pro­gram descrip­tion con­sti­tute a Bormann/Underground Reich net­work deeply involved in 9/11?! “ . . . The pros­e­cu­tion also alleged that [alleged Al Qaeda financier Soli­man] Biheiri is linked to a secre­tive finan­cial net­work in Switzer­land and Liecht­ensstein called Al Taqwa, which Amer­i­can and Euro­pean inves­ti­ga­tors say is a finan­cial backer of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The Broth­er­hood, often depicted as the ide­o­log­i­cal par­ent of most rad­i­cal Islamic groups, recently has come under gov­ern­ment scrutiny for its pos­si­ble direct role in sup­port­ing ter­ror­ism, most promi­nently because of Al Taqwa.”
(“Ter­ror Fund Trail Leads to Alpine King­dom” by Marc Perel­man; For­ward; 10/17/2003.)

31. “The Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the United Nations have des­ig­nated the Al Taqwa net­work and its main officials—two self-avowed Mus­lim Broth­ers and an admit­ted Nazi sympathizer—as sup­port­ers of Al Qaeda. As a result, their assets have been frozen and they are the focus of a Swiss inves­ti­ga­tion. The Al Taqwa offi­cials have repeat­edly rejected the charges. At the [alleged Al Qaeda financier Soli­man] Biheiri deten­tion hear­ing last month, pros­e­cu­tor Steven Ward described Biheiri as the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s ‘finan­cial toe­hold in the U.S.’” (Idem.)

32. “The pros­e­cu­tion said it had estab­lished links between [alleged Al Qaeda financier Soli­man] Biheiri and the two prin­ci­pals of Al Taqwa, Youssef Nada and Ghaleb Him­mat. Accord­ing to tes­ti­mony from spe­cial agent Kane of the Bureau of Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment, the addresses of Nada and Him­mat were found in Biheiri’s lap­top com­puter. Kane told the court that there were ‘other indi­ca­tions’ of con­nec­tions between Al Taqwa and Biheiri’s com­pany BMI, includ­ing finan­cial trans­ac­tions. . . .” (Idem.)

33. “. . . One com­pany in the Al Taqwa galaxy that was des­ig­nated by the United States and the U.N. as a terrorist-related entity is a Liecht­en­stein entity called Asat Trust. Its direc­tor Mar­tin Wachter, told the For­ward this year that Asat Trust oper­ates merely as a reg­istry for busi­nesses and is not involved in the oper­a­tion of any com­pany. He added that the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment had wrong­fully des­ig­nated Asat Trust as a terrorist-related entity because it had once rep­re­sented Al Taqwa in a small real estate deal in Switzer­land.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

34. “Still, copies of busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments on file with author­i­ties in Liecht­en­stein show that Asat Trust has been inti­mately involved with the Al Taqwa net­work dur­ing the last 30 years, reg­is­ter­ing changes in com­pany names, per­son­nel and finan­cial struc­ture, which may explain why Asat Trust landed on the Amer­i­can and U.N. ter­ror­ist lists.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

35. The infor­ma­tion about the Al Taqwa links with the royal fam­ily of Liecht­en­stein is set forth as fol­lows: “The records also shed light on the involve­ment of one mem­ber of the royal fam­ily of Liecht­en­stein in Asat Trust. Accord­ing to the doc­u­ments, deceased Prince Emanuel von und zu Liecht­en­stein became a board mem­ber of Asat Trust in May 1970 and stayed until Novem­ber 1990, when he was replaced by Wachter, the trust’s cur­rent direc­tor. Flo­rian Krenkel, a spokesman for the royal fam­ily, said Prince Emmanuel had died in 1987 and that he was a dis­tant cousin from rul­ing Prince Hans Adam II. . . .” (Idem.)

36. “ . . . There also appears to be some links between Asat Trust and a bank owned by the Liecht­en­stein royal fam­ily. Sev­eral Asat Trust doc­u­ments fea­ture on their let­ter­heads ‘Bank in Liecht­en­stein AG’ beneath ‘Asat Trust.’ The royal fam­ily bank has changed its name and is now called LGT bank. A tele­phone and an e-mail query to the bank’s spokesman Hans-Martin Uehringer went unre­turned. . . .” (Idem.)

37. More about Liecht­en­stein and its money-laundering econ­omy: “High atop an Alpine ridge sits a prince in a 130-room cas­tle, in a tiny domain that has made a name for itself by hid­ing people’s money. It has also found a bit more inter­na­tional atten­tion than it would like.”
(“The Prince and His Black Sheep: This Is No Liecht­en­stein Fairy Tale” by John Tagli­abue; New York Times 4/8/2000.)

38. Note the ref­er­ences to Liechtenstein’s role in the CDU fund­ing scan­dal. (These are the ref­er­ences to the con­spir­acy involv­ing Kohl, the French oil com­pany and the “decrepit oil refin­ery.”) For more about the CDU fund­ing scan­dal, see—among other broadcasts—FTR#’s 193, 276, 278, 506. In FTR#’s 469, 476, we noted the links of John P. Schmitz to var­i­ous aspects of the 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tions, as well as his links to the Bush milieu. Schmitz was a ben­e­fi­ciary of the Robert Bosch Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship, a sub­sidiary pro­gram (along with the Alfa Fel­low­ship) of the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft. When work­ing with the Bun­destag, Schmitz worked with Math­ias Wiss­man, the for­mer trea­surer of the CDU! Later, Wiss­man went to work for Wilmer Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing, a law firm that also employed Schmitz and that rep­re­sents key Ger­man government-linked cor­po­ra­tions in their attempts to move into Amer­i­can mar­kets. (For more about this, see—among other programs—FTR#492.) Again, with the Asat Trust [Al Taqwa] link to the Liecht­en­stein Royal Fam­ily, as well as the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft/Atta/Alfa/Robert BoschFoun­da­tion Fel­low­ship rela­tion­ship, we may well be look­ing at a Bormann/Underground Reich net­work “in the raw.” “Last year, when Ger­man pros­e­cu­tors inves­ti­gated mil­lions of dol­lars of secret dona­tions to for­mer Chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl, the tail led to Liecht­en­stein, a prin­ci­pal­ity the size of Fort Wayne, Ind. When Swiss inves­ti­ga­tors looked into mil­lions of dol­lars of obscure ‘pay­ments’ involv­ing the sale of a decrepit refin­ery to a French oil com­pany, the money trail also led to Liecht­en­stein. In 1996, when Amer­i­can agents seized a Swiss laun­derer of Latin Amer­i­can drug prof­its, he con­fessed that he loved to do busi­ness in Liecht­en­stein since its banks never divulged much about its clients.” (Idem.)

39. “The affa­ble 55-year-old Prince Hans Adam II, whose ances­tors bought the coun­try from the Aus­trian crown some three cen­turies ago, sees his nation of 32,000 peo­ple as merely offer­ing bank­ing pri­vacy and low taxes. To him, bank secrecy and wafer-thin tax rates are ser­vices the coun­try just like its dairy prod­ucts and its lead­ing export, den­tal pros­thet­ics.” (Idem.)

40. “Since many of Europe’s wealthy face income tax rates exceed­ing 50 per­cent, Liecht­en­stein offers a secluded place to squir­rel away their for­tunes. It also has a top income tax rate of just 18.9 per­cent. Taxes for hold­ing com­pa­nies or enter­prises with no more than a mail­box here are a mere 1 per­cent.” (Idem.)

41. “But those kinds of lures have appar­ently attracted some unsa­vory ele­ments. Liechtenstein’s headaches began last Novem­ber, when the Ger­man news­magazine Der Spiegel pub­lished what it said were details of a Ger­man intel­li­gence report that made accu­sa­tions against Liecht­en­stein banks and fiduciaries—specialists in estab­lish­ing mail­box cor­po­ra­tions that are used to mask bank accounts. The enter­prises were tied to a Sicil­ian Mafia group, Latin Amer­i­can drug lords and Russ­ian gangs, the report said.” (Idem.)

42. “The arti­cle also asserted that a for­mer Liecht­en­stein prime min­is­ter had assem­bled a net­work of banks, gov­ern­ment work­ers and lawyers to help orga­nized crime. Prince Hans Adam, in an inter­view, accused Ger­many of seek­ing to ruin Liecht­en­stein as a tax haven. To do so, he added, the Ger­mans ‘did not hes­i­tate to com­mit char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion on a coun­try and on indi­vid­ual peo­ple.’ . . .” (Idem.)

43. Note that the Swiss cur­rency is Liechtenstein’s “coin of the realm”—something that would no doubt facil­i­tate the money laun­der­ing infra­struc­ture in that tiny nation. “ . . . In 1924, after the col­lapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire fol­low­ing World War I, Liecht­en­stein entered a cus­toms union with Switzer­land, whose cur­rency is the coin of the realm. . . . It is not lost on Liecht­en­stein­ers that while Ger­man gov­ern­ments pil­lory their sys­tem, Ger­man politi­cians use it to hide cam­paign dona­tions. In 1997, a local employee of one influ­en­tial fidu­ciary gave Der Spiegel diskettes con­tain­ing con­fi­den­tial client infor­ma­tion. Among Ger­mans stash­ing money here were not only well-known busi­ness peo­ple and an Olympic gold medal­ist, but also offi­cials of Chan­cel­lor Kohl’s polit­i­cal party, the Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­tic Union. . . .” (Idem.)

44. Liecht­en­stein protested that their finan­cial sys­tem was ade­quately trans­par­ent. “ . . . Yet when finan­cial inspec­tors from the Coun­cil of Europe vis­ited Liecht­en­stein in Sep­tem­ber, they came to very dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions. To lift bank secrecy, they found that requests must pass 12 appeal lev­els. They also found that the office for inves­ti­gat­ing bank reports of sus­pi­cious money has five over­worked employ­ees. So to learn where sus­pi­cious money comes from, the banks sim­ply ask their clients. ‘The exam­in­ers fail to see how ‘tip­ping off’ in such cir­cum­stances can be avoided,’ the inspec­tors politely con­cluded in their report.” (Idem.)

45. “Peter Csonka, the team’s sec­re­tary, said Liecht­en­stein had 80,000 trust companies—almost 3 for every citizen—as well as 280 lawyers and 80 trustees, most of whom ‘are in some busi­ness where the pur­pose is not totally clear.’ Finan­cial polic­ing, he said, ‘equals zero.’ . . .” (Idem.)

46. Note the prince’s rel­a­tive immu­nity, as well as his incli­na­tion to use pri­vate audi­tors to “keep the books” for the king­dom. Note, too, that Arthur Ander­sen was the audi­tor that facil­i­tated the Enron rip-off. “One hur­dle to reform, some say, is the grow­ing polit­i­cal dis­sent between the prince and the gov­ern­ment on mat­ters like con­sti­tu­tional reform and law enforce­ment. The prince, for instance, pro­poses con­tract­ing over­sight of the bank­ing sys­tem to pri­vate audi­tors, and sug­gests Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers or Arthur Ander­son. ‘I’m a pro­po­nent of out­sourc­ing what­ever can be done bet­ter,’ he said. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] For his part, Prime Min­is­ter Mario Frick wants the dele­tion of con­sti­tu­tional pas­sages assur­ing the prince’s immu­nity. ‘He could steal my car, and I can’t do any­thing about it,’ Mr. Frick said. The prince recently annoyed politi­cians by mail­ing his own pro­pos­als for reform to all house­holds and post­ing them on his Web site: www.fuerstenhaus.li. . . .” (Idem.)