Recorded Sep­tem­ber 10, 2006
REALAUDIO

Observ­ing the fifth anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks; this pro­gram high­lights the heroic work of Rita Katz, a pri­vate cit­i­zen whose ground-breaking research on the terrorist-funding appa­ra­tus was first sub­verted, and then ignored. The tar­gets of Katz’s research are con­nected to both the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ter­ror­ist milieu of al-Qaeda, Hamas and Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad and to the upper ech­e­lons of the Repub­li­can Party and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Not sur­pris­ingly, the inves­ti­ga­tion of Ms. Katz, John Lof­tus and the agents of Oper­a­tion Green Quest was actively neu­tral­ized by ele­ments of the FBI and CIA. Among the most com­plex events in recent his­tory, the 9/11 attacks have—understandably—been con­cep­tu­al­ized as a provo­ca­tion, designed to jus­tify “U.S. impe­ri­al­ism” and the atten­u­a­tion of demo­c­ra­tic free­doms in this coun­try. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the attacks are anal­o­gous to the sub­ver­sion of France in World War II. The pri­mary rea­son for the rapid capit­u­la­tion of the French to the Ger­man invaders was the fact that the French power elite—who had strong busi­ness and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions with their Ger­man counterparts—welcomed the Ger­man inva­sion as a vehi­cle for elim­i­nat­ing French democ­racy and insti­tut­ing fas­cism in France. The French power elite ben­e­fited from their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Third Reich’s wartime econ­omy. It is Mr. Emory’s con­tention that the GOP power elite—with strong eco­nomic and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions with the Under­ground Reich and the Saudi and Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Islamic fas­cists behind the 9/11 attacks—helped facil­i­tate the attacks for sim­i­lar pur­poses. Far from expand­ing Amer­i­can power, the attacks of 9/11 sig­naled the twi­light of the United States, and the events that have fol­lowed will (bar­ring a sea-change in the tide of events) lead to this country’s doom. To flesh out their under­stand­ing of the sub­ver­sion of France prior to, and dur­ing, World War II, lis­ten­ers should exam­ine FTR#’s 372, 412 and 441. In addi­tion, they should read “Armies of Spies” by Joseph Golomb and the [incom­pletely repro­duced] “Tri­umph of Trea­son” by Pierre Cot. Both books are avail­able for down­load for free at: http://spitfirelist.com/Books/books.html.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Dis­cus­sion of the pro­found con­nec­tions between the tar­gets of Oper­a­tion Green Quest and Ptech—the com­pany that devel­oped the threat assess­ment soft­ware for the Air Force, the FAA and the Depart­ment of Energy; the con­fu­sion that reigned in U.S. air defense net­works on 9/11; Oper­a­tion Green Quest chief Michael Chertoff’s rela­tion­ship with alleged al-Qaeda financier Dr. Magdy el-Amir; the inves­ti­ga­tion of Sami al-Arian and how it led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002; the harass­ment and sur­veil­lance of Rita Katz and her Green Quest asso­ciates by first the FBI and then the CIA.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the response of air defense units to the 9/11 attacks, the pro­gram notes the evi­dent con­fu­sion that the mil­i­tary expe­ri­enced on that day. Mr. Emory notes that the threat assess­ment soft­ware archi­tec­ture for the Air Force, FAA and Norad was devel­oped by a com­pany called Ptech. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the anom­alous behav­ior of the air defense units on 9/11 may very well have resulted from the fact that the ele­ments that launched the 9/11 attacks were also devel­op­ing the soft­ware essen­tial to this country’s air defense net­works. Ptech has been cap­i­tal­ized to an enor­mous extent by indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that have been focal points of Oper­a­tion Green Quest—the attempt at inter­dict­ing ter­ror­ist money flows. As Mr. Emory notes, the milieu of Ptech is the milieu of Oper­a­tion Green Quest. (For more about this, see—among other programs–FTR#’s 462, 464.) Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is Yaqub Mirza, a direc­tor of Ptech (described as being very close to the FBI) and the unin­dicted indi­vid­ual who set up the fronts raided in the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. It should be noted that Ptech has gone un-interdicted—and it devel­ops the threat assess­ment soft­ware for the Depart­ment of Energy, which over­sees the country’s nuclear power plants! As dis­cussed in FTR#’s 495, 500 Oper­a­tion Green Quest was headed by Michael Chertoff, who had rep­re­sented Dr. Magdy el-Amir, a New Jersey-based physi­cian, who appears to have chan­neled prof­its from his med­ical prac­tice to al-Qaeda. Per­haps it should not be all that sur­pris­ing to view the sub­ver­sion of Green Quest in light of Chertoff’s stew­ard­ship of the task force. “Newly dis­closed tapes offer evi­dence of the wide­spread con­fu­sion within the mil­i­tary as the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror­ist attacks were being car­ried out, fur­ther under­min­ing claims by the Pen­ta­gon that it moved quickly to try to inter­cept and shoot down one or more of the hijacked jets. When matched with the time­line of the attacks, the tapes make clear that infor­ma­tion about the hijack­ings was slow to reach the mil­i­tary on Sept. 11 and that much of the infor­ma­tion that did reach Air Force com­man­ders was faulty. The tapes were pro­vided under sub­poena to the inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion that inves­ti­gated the Sept. 11 attacks, and parts of them had pre­vi­ously been made pub­lic by that com­mis­sion.” (“New Tapes Dis­close Con­fu­sion Within the Mil­i­tary on Sept. 11” by Philip Shenon; New York Times; 8/3/2006; p. A16.)

2. “But the full col­lec­tion of nearly 30 hours of tapes from the North Amer­i­can Aero­space Defense Com­mand, or Norad, were released by the Pen­ta­gon last year to Michael Bron­ner, a pro­ducer on the recent film ‘United 93,’ who described them in detail in an arti­cle posted this week on the Web site of Van­ity Fair mag­a­zine (www.vanityfair.com). The web site site includes links to excerpts from the actual tapes. The tapes demon­strate that for most of the morn­ing of Sept. 11, the air­space over New York and Wash­ing­ton was essen­tially unde­fended, and that jet fight­ers scram­bled to inter­cept the hijacked planes were involved in a fruit­less chase for planes that had already crashed.” (Idem.)

3. “Although much of the con­ver­sa­tion in the tapes is heavy with mil­i­tary jar­gon, it makes clear the ter­ror of the morn­ing, with mil­i­tary air con­trollers try­ing to mon­i­tor the where­abouts of hijacked planes bear­ing down on lower Man­hat­tan and Wash­ing­ton. ‘I got an air­craft six miles east of the White House!’ one mil­i­tary com­man­der is quoted as bark­ing to a col­league. . . .” (Idem.)

4. “ . . . The Sept. 11 com­mis­sion sub­poe­naed the tapes and other evi­dence after the panel’s inves­ti­ga­tors deter­mined that mate­r­ial had been improp­erly with­held by Norad, which is respon­si­ble for air defense. Mem­bers of the com­mis­sion said the tapes demon­strated that the Pentagon’s ini­tial account of its actions on Sept. 11 was wrong and that some mil­i­tary offices might have inten­tion­ally pro­vided false state­ments to the com­mis­sion. . . .” (Idem.)

5. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the 9/11 attacks are anal­o­gous to the Ger­man inva­sion of France in World War II. The pri­mary rea­son for the rapid capit­u­la­tion of the French to the Ger­man invaders was the fact that the French power elite—who had strong busi­ness and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions with their Ger­man counterparts—welcomed the Ger­man inva­sion as a vehi­cle for elim­i­nat­ing French democ­racy and insti­tut­ing fas­cism in France. The French power elite ben­e­fited from their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Third Reich’s wartime econ­omy. It is Mr. Emory’s con­tention that the GOP power elite—with strong eco­nomic and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions with the Under­ground Reich and the Saudi and Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Islamic fas­cists behind the 9/11 attacks—helped facil­i­tate the attacks for sim­i­lar pur­poses. In addi­tion to sub­vert­ing what is left of Amer­i­can democ­racy, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has dec­i­mated the U.S. eco­nomic land­scape and enriched their busi­ness cronies and them­selves. Mr. Emory should not be mis­un­der­stood as deny­ing that con­fu­sion and incom­pe­tence played a role in the fail­ure of the U.S. to stop the attacks. Nev­er­the­less, the Fifth Column—an essen­tial ele­ment of which is the milieu of Ptech and the tar­gets of Green Quest—played a deci­sive role in the events of 9/11/2001. An excel­lent view of the Fifth Col­umn at work can be achieved by study­ing the story of Rita Katz, an Iraqi-born Jew. Flu­ent in Ara­bic, Ms. Katz infil­trated the Islamist milieu that was tar­geted by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. It was Ms. Katz’s heroic research (along with the efforts of the equally heroic John Lof­tus) that led to the Green Quest raids. As noted in—among other programs—FTR#’s 356, 357, 415, 435, 454, 468, 515, 538—the milieu of Ptech and the tar­gets of Oper­a­tion Green Quest have pro­found con­nec­tions to some of the most pow­er­ful peo­ple and insti­tu­tions in the GOP and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, par­tic­u­larly Grover Norquist and Karl Rove. As will be seen below, after the raids of 3/20/2002, Rita Katz and the other peo­ple involved in Oper­a­tion Green Quest were harassed, fol­lowed and inves­ti­gated by both the FBI and the CIA!! With this sup­pres­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest and the harass­ment of the inves­ti­ga­tors, we are wit­ness­ing the tri­umph of trea­son. Here is Rita’s story: “ . . . I was expect­ing the usual team of two, three inves­ti­ga­tors, tops. To my sur­prise, Mark arrived with seven peo­ple in tow, all metic­u­lously dressed in suits. There were Green Quest agents, IRS agents, and agents from Cus­toms’ Ster­ling, Vir­ginia, office, which had the juris­dic­tion over Hern­don and 555 Grove Street. Dave Kane, an agent from the Ster­ling office, a tall, thin man with a kind expres­sion, was among the group. He’d been with Cus­toms for three years, and like Mark, he too had had no expe­ri­ence with coun­tert­er­ror­ism until Green Quest, but he would later become piv­otal in this inves­ti­ga­tion. I asked Jerome to join us, we arranged another desk to accom­mo­date the large group, and I began brief­ing them on 555.” (Ter­ror­ist Hunter by “Anony­mous” [Rita Katz]; CCC [imprint of Harper Collins]; Copy­right 2003 by Harper Collins [HC]; ISBN 0–06-052819–2; p. 313.)

6. Rita began to brief the agents on the milieu raided on 3/20/2002—555 Grove Street, the SAAR net­work and numer­ous indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that over­lapped both of them. “ . . . I was impressed. Send­ing eight peo­ple to meet me meant that they were seri­ous. In 1999, I was approached by two agents of the FBI Vir­ginia office, who asked for infor­ma­tion on [Jamal] Barz­inji and other SAAR direc­tors. We met. I worked with them for a few months. The FBI agents inves­ti­gated and even inter­viewed some of the 555 peo­ple in the pres­ence of their lawyers. Sim­i­larly to so many oth­ers, this FBI inves­ti­ga­tion on 555 slowly faded away. To date, noth­ing hap­pened with it. Maybe this time, I thought, with Green Quest, it would be dif­fer­ent. I was highly moti­vated to give them the SAAR story—and to per­suade them that it was very impor­tant.” (Idem.)

7. Flesh­ing out some of the key names in this nar­ra­tive, Tariq Hamdi was part of the SAAR milieu and an indi­vid­ual who deliv­ered a bat­tery to Osama bin Laden for use in his satel­lite phone. Sami al-Arian is a Palestinian-born Islam­o­fas­cist who is the dri­ving force behind Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad. Hailed as a hero by the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor, al-Arian is a stone Nazi killer. It was John Lof­tus’ inves­ti­ga­tion into Sami al-Arian that helped to force the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids, along with Rita Katz’s heroic research. (For more about al-Arian, see—among other programs—FTR#538.) “We sat for six hours, I explained that SAAR was a net­work of think tanks, char­i­ties, non­profit and for-profit com­pa­nies, some hun­dred in all, based at 555 Grove Street. I explained who Sulaiman and Saleh al-Rajhi were. I told the agents how I’d first encoun­tered 555 Grove when I looked into Sami al-Arian and PIJ and when I was study­ing Hamas front groups. With HLF, the al-Aqsa Edu­ca­tional Fund, WISE, ICP, and many other Islamic char­i­ties linked to ter­ror­ism, I told them, there was always some con­nec­tion to SAAR. My brief­ing, to this point, as I unwrapped the story in a chrono­log­i­cal order, was focused on the ties between SAAR and the Pales­tin­ian orga­ni­za­tions Hamas and PIJ. Inter­est­ing by itself, but Green Quest’s top pri­or­ity, namely al-Qaeda. So I intro­duced the Tariq Hamdi story to them and elu­ci­dated his ties with Sami al-Arian, with IIIT, and with Bin Laden and his satel­lite phone. This lat­ter story aston­ished them. Then I pulled out my copies of Wadih al-Hage’s tele­phone books. None of the agents knew who al-Hage was! So I explained to them who he was and what he did. Then I showed them Saleh al-Rajhi’s name and num­bers in both of al-Hage’s books. The agents were speech­less as I con­tin­ued to brief them.” (Ibid.; p. 314.)

8. “The task force went to Florida, as I’d sug­gested, and Mark called as soon as they’d returned. I knew bet­ter than to ask him what they’d got­ten there; I’d been work­ing with the gov­ern­ment for years, and the rules were clear to me. I giveth, it taketh away. End of story. ‘Remem­ber you told me about a tape where Sami is intro­duced as PIJ’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive and where he col­lects money for PIJ?’ Mark said. ‘Can you make a copy of that tape for me?’ Nat­u­rally, I told him I would. But why would he need the tape from me? They’d just been in Tampa, where this and many other tapes are kept! I guess they didn’t have time to copy all the mate­r­ial, I thought. A few days later, Mark called and asked me for copies of FBI and INS affi­davits I’d told him about. That was even more bizarre, but I faxed them to him. Later that day, Dave Kane called me. ‘You said you had tran­scripts of Barz­inji and al-Alwani in ICP con­fer­ences,’ he said. ‘Yes?’ ‘Could I get them from you?’ ‘Sure.’ ‘Also, you men­tioned hav­ing copies of checks from IIIt to Sami. Could you fax me those?’” (Ibid.; p. 315.)

9. “ ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘I’d be more than happy to help you guys. But the copies I have of the checks are of poor qual­ity and are barely leg­i­ble. The FBI in Tampa must have much clearer copies, and prob­a­bly many more checks than I do. Why don’t you call them and ask them to fax you their copies of the checks?’ ‘I guess you’re right.’ There was some­thing funny in his voice. ‘Could you please make copies of those checks, as best you can, and FedEx them to me any­way?’ These requests con­tin­ued for some time, and I was grad­u­ally able to fig­ure out what had hap­pened in Florida. I knew the play­ers; I knew the FBI team in Tampa well. These were the peo­ple who’d put me under inves­ti­ga­tion. These were the peo­ple who’d inves­ti­gated John Can­field and kicked him off Sami’s inves­ti­ga­tion. They’d pro­vided next to no help to Loraine, the INS immi­gra­tion attor­ney who’d come to me for help on her inves­ti­ga­tion after she’d come up dry with the FBI in Tampa. I didn’t expect much of that team of peo­ple. But I couldn’t have dreamed how bad it would be for Green Quest.” (Ibid.; pp. 315–316.)

10. “The Green Quest agents did meet with Can­field, who told them exactly what they should look for at the FBI facil­i­ties and where they’d be able to find it. Unfor­tu­nately, he didn’t have any doc­u­ments in his possession—he’d had to sur­ren­der every­thing to the FBI when he was dis­missed from the case. But he’d con­tin­ued to play ball with the FBI when­ever they called him for infor­ma­tion and so he took the Green Quest team to the FBI head­quar­ters in Tampa and intro­duced them to the investigation’s new head, Jerry. The Green Quest agents explained to Jerry what they were doing and asked him for the per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion on SAAR and their ties to Sami. They asked him for the mate­r­ial obtained in the raids on Sami’s ICP and WISE. They were told that Sami was under FBI inves­ti­ga­tion. The mate­r­ial the FBI had on Sami was there­fore con­fi­den­tial. Green Quest couldn’t get any of it. Remem­ber that we are talk­ing months after 9–11.” (Ibid.; p. 316.)

11. Note the FBI’s reluc­tance to help the Green Quest agents. As will be seen below, that reluc­tance to help blos­somed into open hos­til­ity. Along with ele­ments of the CIA, the FBI actively harassed and sur­veiled Rita Katz and other Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tors. “The Green Quest agents tried to explain that there was no com­pe­ti­tion between them and the Tampa task force. They only wanted the infor­ma­tion relat­ing to their inves­ti­ga­tion, not gen­eral infor­ma­tion on Sami. So Jerry asked them to sub­mit a detailed, writ­ten report on Green Quest’s inves­ti­ga­tion, explain­ing exactly which mate­r­ial they needed from the FBI and why they needed it. That activ­ity took up an entire after­noon of their visit in Tampa. That was enough to get Marcy Futer­man, the head of Green Quest, on the phone to her supe­rior in Cus­toms. Futer­man is a soft-spoken, moth­erly boss, but she’s pro­tec­tive of her team. She real­ized that with­out some noise, her agents might come back empty-handed. Her boss in Cus­toms called the FBI head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and asked for an autho­riza­tion for Green Quest to exam­ine the mate­r­ial in Tampa. The FBI head­quar­ters autho­rized the request, called the Tampa office, and instructed them to coop­er­ate with Green Quest.” (Idem.)

12. “Mark and his com­pan­ions sub­mit­ted their report to Jerry and were finally allowed to enter the evi­dence rooms. There were given a few boxes, much like the story with Loraine, and told that these were the only boxes that con­tained rel­e­vant mate­r­ial for their inves­ti­ga­tion. But this wasn’t all. They were instructed only to look at the mate­r­ial. They were not allowed to copy, scan, pho­to­copy, or record any­thing. The only thing they were allowed to do was jot down in their note­books what they saw. Fur­ther­more, they were super­vised by an FBI agent who watched them at all times to make sure they didn’t copy or take any­thing from the boxes—and to lis­ten to their con­ver­sa­tion. When they began dis­cussing doc­u­ments they thought were valu­able, as soon as they showed enthu­si­asm about what they found, they were told by their FBI min­der that it was time to take a break; it was time for lunch. The FBI seemed pet­ri­fied that Green Quest would find in the mate­r­ial some­thing that the Bureau had over­looked, and every effort was made to pre­vent that from hap­pen­ing. The trip was a fail­ure in many ways, but Green Quest didn’t return to Wash­ing­ton com­pletely empty-handed. They came back with the superb reports that John had given them. What they lacked was evi­dence, the mate­r­ial that the FBI had yet wouldn’t let them have. This was the rea­son that mark and Dave Kane kept call­ing me to ask for copies of doc­u­ments and tapes.” (Ibid.; p. 317.)

13. “Green Quest is a super­vis­ing and coor­di­nat­ing task force that belongs to Cus­toms. It includes FBI agents and IRS agents, and it works in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Office of For­eign Assets Con­trol, OFAC, which also reports to Cus­toms. Green Quest super­vises local offices that lead inves­ti­ga­tions in their juris­dic­tions, and some­times, as in the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion, it is involved directly. OFAC assisted Green Quest. So did the FBI guys I was in con­tact with a cou­ple of years before with regards to SAAR. Unlike their coun­ter­parts in Tampa, these FBI agents were coop­er­a­tive and help­ful, at least for a while. They for­warded Green Quest many doc­u­ments they had. They, like Green Quest, seemed seri­ous to me in the good num­ber of months we worked together on the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion; I never really under­stood why their inves­ti­ga­tion didn’t take off.” (Ibid.; pp. 317–318.)

14. “For all prac­ti­cal pur­poses, Mark and Dave were in charge of the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion. They were the ones who worked directly with me. Mark rep­re­sented Green Quest, and Dave rep­re­sented the Cus­toms office in Ster­ling. They’d get the mate­r­ial from me, write a report, and show it to a fed­eral pros­e­cu­tor, who’d weigh in on whether enough was there to merit the going-forward inves­ti­ga­tion of 555. Mark and Dave were under tremen­dous pres­sure from their supe­ri­ors. Every­one wanted to move as quickly as pos­si­ble. So Mark and Dave on the government’s side, and Sam, Jerome, and I in the office, worked very hard on 555. Mark and Dave prac­ti­cally worked day and night. I devoted most of my time to the inves­ti­ga­tion and their con­stant ques­tions, although dur­ing this time I was doing a mil­lion and one other things as well. I con­ducted sev­eral inves­ti­ga­tions of my own; I col­lab­o­rated with fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors and FBI, Cus­toms, and INS agents from coast to coast. I con­tin­ued to attend Mus­lim con­fer­ences and ral­lies. I even found time to search for clues in trash again.” (Ibid.; p. 318.)

15. “ ‘You men­tioned Tariq Hamdi,’ Mark said to me one day. ‘How can you prove that he was in fact the one who deliv­ered the phone to Bin Laden?’ I told him it was in the tran­scripts of the embassy bomb­ing trial. I pulled out the rel­e­vant pages and within half an hour faxed them over to him. He called again. ‘In the notes I took while you briefed us,’ he said, ‘I wrote that Hamdi was also tied to Sami. We couldn’t find any men­tion of Hamdi’s name in the doc­u­ments we were allowed to see in Tampa.’ I e-mailed him a pic­ture from the pub­li­ca­tion of the uni­ver­sity of South Florida, the USF Inter­na­tional Affairs Quar­terly, show­ing Sami and Hamdi sit­ting with Has­san Turabi, the Sudanese leader who hosted Bin Laden. Hamdi is iden­ti­fied there as a WISE asso­ciate. More­over, WISE, accord­ing to research data­bases, had a P.O. box that was reg­is­tered to Hamdi. I faxed Mark these doc­u­ments.” (Idem.)

16. The IIIT is the Inter­na­tional Insti­tute of Islamic Thought, an Islamic think tank that is also involved in ter­ror­ist activ­ity. “A few min­utes later he called again. ‘So how do you know Hamdi worked for IIIT?’ I told him that Tariq Hamdi was the pub­lisher of IIIT’s quar­terly pub­li­ca­tion, Islamiyat al-Ma’rofaj (Islamiza­tion of Knowl­edge). I found the file and faxed mark the page from the pub­li­ca­tion with Hamdi’s name. He called again. ‘Okay, but how do you know he still works for them?’ Good ques­tion. I didn’t know. But this was a fine time to find out. So I called IIIT—after hours, because I hoped I could get the infor­ma­tion with­out speak­ing to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive. The voice mail guided me through a list of choices. I chose the option of con­tact­ing the employ­ees of IIIT. I lis­tened to the record­ing, and sure enough, Hamdi had a voice mail box in the sys­tem. He was still work­ing for IIIT. I lis­tened to the record­ing, and sure enough, Hamdi had a voice mail box in the sys­tem. He was still work­ing for IIIT, then. Long after it was com­mon knowl­edge that Hamdi worked for Bin Laden, IIIT still had him on the pay­roll.” (Ibid.; p. 319.)

17. “The next day Mark called and asked, ‘How can you tell that Hamdi was indeed involved in any­thing else linked to al-Qaeda besides that story with the satel­lite phone? Maybe this was a one­time gig where he didn’t really know what he was doing?’ This too was a legit­i­mate ques­tion, albeit a dif­fi­cult one to answer. After all, the gov­ern­ment didn’t pur­sue any charges against Hamdi. He lives hap­pily ever after, and his wife, Wafa Hozien, teaches in the Bethesda—Chevy Chase High School near Wash­ing­ton, D.C. She too was heav­ily involved in the activ­i­ties of ICP in Tampa, where she met her hus­band; she was the man­ag­ing edi­tor of Inquiry, ICP’s pub­li­ca­tion in Eng­lish, and she served as Sami al-Arian’s sec­re­tary.” (Idem.)

18. “Rumor had it that the FBI assumed that Hamdi had told them all he knew, and that there was no use in deal­ing with him any fur­ther. But was that indeed the case? I found my file on CDLR. CDLR, the Com­mit­tee for the Defense of Legit­i­mate Rights, is a London-based Saudi dis­si­dent group that is an al-Qaeda front. From that file I pulled out news­pa­per clips from al-Zaytuna, the IAP pub­li­ca­tion adver­tis­ing the open­ing of a CDLR branch in the United States in the mid-1990’s. In these ads two tele­phone num­bers were pub­lished. I’d been unable to obtain infor­ma­tion on those num­bers in the past. As a gov­ern­ment agent, how­ever, Mark had access to inves­tiga­tive tools that I didn’t. I gave the num­bers to him, and two days later he called and told me that I was right: these two num­bers did belong to Hamdi. So Hamdi was the CDLR rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the United States and was thus tied to al-Qaeda in more than one way.” (Ibid.; pp. 319–320.)

19. “While Mark was cross-examining me on IIIT, Dave was pound­ing me with the Mus­lim World League. Accord­ing to the way Mark and Dave addressed their ques­tions, I under­stood that they were divid­ing between them the orga­ni­za­tions con­nected to the SAAR net­work. They went, sys­tem­at­i­cally, from one cat­e­gory to another. As I’d done years before, they started at the base of the pyra­mid, the U.S.-based orga­ni­za­tions, and slowly made their way toward the pyramid’s peak. When they got there, I knew, they’d find the Rajhi broth­ers. But at that point they were still climb­ing. Dave, for instance, asked me how I could tie the des­ig­nated Rabita Trust to MWL and to 555. I told him that Rabita, accord­ing to MWL’s Web site, was a sub­sidiary of MWL. I told him that Rabita’s direc­tor, Naseef, listed his address at 555 Grove. I sent him all the cor­po­rate records.” (Ibid.; p. 320.)

20. “The rea­son Dave and Mark were unfa­mil­iar with such basic facts as the con­tents of MWL’s Web site was that they couldn’t browse the Inter­net at work. If gov­ern­ment agents were to browse sites such as MWL’s on their office com­put­ers, the traces (sig­na­tures) left while vis­it­ing them might raise sus­pi­cions in those who oper­ate the sites. Amaz­ingly, there was only one com­puter in each of their offices that could not be traced as a gov­ern­ment com­puter, and the queue for that machine is obvi­ously long. After I taught mark and Dave how to use the Inter­net to find doc­u­ments, browse rel­e­vant sites, and fig­ure out who ran these sites, along with the other research tools I often use, they began surf­ing late at night, at home. For long months, the inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ued in that fash­ion. Green Quest worked nights and week­ends, and so did I. They came to my office at least once a week. They needed me, and I was always there for them. Thus between Mark and Dave, Green Quest was study­ing the ties between SAAR and ter­ror­ism. They needed my input for every sin­gle step of their inves­ti­ga­tion because they knew so lit­tle at first.” (Ibid.; pp. 320–321.)

21. “But they were enthu­si­as­tic. After 9–11, the government’s pri­or­i­ties changed, and many agents were reas­signed to coun­tert­er­ror­ism. While some agents I’d worked with in the past had resented such reas­sign­ment, or even seen it as a demo­tion, Mark’s and Dave’s moti­va­tion and will­ing­ness to learn were sky-high. Work­ing with such a team was an exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence for me. Although it was very labor-intensive. I only had to say a thing once and they’d look into it imme­di­ately. I’d never been involved with an inves­ti­ga­tion like this before, where the agents would take into con­sid­er­a­tion prac­ti­cally every word that came out of my mouth. For years I’d been used to hear­ing that my leads would be ‘for­warded,’ ‘looked into,’ and ‘considered’—attitudes that many a time led inves­ti­ga­tions nowhere. With Green Quest—not just with Mark and Dave and Marcy, but with the whole team—the story was com­pletely dif­fer­ent. They took seri­ously the reli­giously every­thing relat­ing to it.” (Ibid.; p. 321.)

22. Note that much of Rita’s research was gleaned from pub­lic sources. “It had become clear to me that SAR had been inves­ti­gated by the gov­ern­ment many times. OFAC had infor­ma­tion on it, so did the FBI, and other agen­cies had also noticed that some­thing fishy was going on at 555 Grove Street, Hern­don, Vir­ginia. But none of those agen­cies were able to tie the SAAR net­work to ter­ror­ism. The sus­pi­cions were there, but the inves­ti­ga­tions didn’t lead any­where. Until I got involved, that is. Using only pub­lic records, I stud­ied and researched and spent long nights and week­ends delv­ing deeper and deeper, until I put it all together, I made the con­nec­tion and found the miss­ing link between SAAR and ter­ror­ism. When Green Quest, with my guid­ance, looked deeper and used sources Ii had no access to, they were able to sub­stan­ti­ate my find­ings. They told me that my infor­ma­tion, com­bined with the backup of the clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion they had, pro­vided solid grounds for inves­ti­ga­tion. They said that the stuff I couldn’t see was bet­ter than I’d every imag­ined. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] They, too, were becom­ing ter­ror­ist hunters.” (Ibid.; pp. 321–322.)

23. “From the kinds of ques­tions Dave and Mark were ask­ing me, I real­ized that they were work­ing on a search war­rant. Mark said that they were mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress with the inves­ti­ga­tion but had encoun­tered seri­ous prob­lems when they tried to con­vince the U.S. attor­ney that the res­i­dences of some of the indi­vid­u­als linked to 555 Grove needed to be searched in addi­tion to 555 itself. I’d explained to Green Quest that search­ing 555 alone would be insuf­fi­cient; that exam­in­ing the indi­vid­u­als involved in the net­work of companies—who incor­po­rated what and with whom—was crit­i­cal; and that the gov­ern­ment had to inves­ti­gate these indi­vid­u­als at least as care­fully as the mate­r­ial at 555. But it seemed that the U.S. attor­ney found it highly unusual to search the res­i­dences of the direc­tors of the com­pa­nies, and there­fore he requested more evi­dence before he’d autho­rize the search war­rants.” (Ibid.; p. 322.)

24. “On my own ini­tia­tive, I called him and asked what exactly was needed. He told me that it was a major prob­lem to con­vince a judge that these indi­vid­u­als might have mate­r­ial at home that could shed light on the inves­ti­ga­tion. I said that the indi­vid­u­als were the impor­tant play­ers, not the sham oper­a­tions they had cre­ated as a smoke screen. He wasn’t con­vinced and said that no judge would buy that. Then I came up with an idea. ‘What if,’ I told him, ‘I could show you that each of these indi­vid­u­als has incor­po­rated a num­ber of com­pa­nies at 555, but used their res­i­den­tial addresses as the mail­ing addresses of these com­pa­nies?’ ‘Pre­pare that list for me,’ he said, ‘and I promise you we’ll go to their houses.’ My staff and I sat for forty-eight hours, pulling out the records of each of those indi­vid­u­als and check­ing who use his res­i­den­tial address for his com­pa­nies. My list was approved by the U.S. attor­ney. Then Mark called and said that although the other addresses were approved, the U.S. attor­ney didn’t approve Hamdi’s address. I told Mark that when the bat­tery was deliv­ered to Hamdi, it was sent to his home address. Maybe he had other things sent there, too, that the gov­ern­ment might want to know about. Mark called me later. Hamdi’s house was now approved for search, too.” (Ibid.; pp. 322–323.)

25. As the date for raid­ing the SAAR net­work approached, Rita was vis­ited by sev­eral FBI agents, who did not treat her as an ally. “In early March 2002, a gov­ern­ment agent named Bran­don called me at the office. He said he had a few ques­tions and would like to stop by to dis­cuss them. ‘What about?’ I asked. When agents call me they usu­ally want some­thing spe­cific, some leads or doc­u­ments relat­ing to a cer­tain inves­ti­ga­tion. I always pre­pare mate­r­ial for such meet­ings, so I asked what I should pre­pare for him. ‘We just want to get your opin­ion about some­thing.’ We? Opin­ion? This sounded very strange. He asked to meet me soon as pos­si­ble, prefer­ably the next day. He showed up rel­a­tively early the fol­low­ing morn­ing with a woman who pre­sented her­self as Anita. I asked them for their ID’s and then I invited them in. They asked if we could shut the door to the office. On one of my walls was a huge chart of the SAAR net­work. On my com­puter mon­i­tor was a new SAAR chart I was work­ing on, at Dave and Mark’s request. Bran­don and Anita sat down, and I expected the reg­u­lar pleas­ant question-and-answer ses­sion where they ask for infor­ma­tion and I do my best to pro­vide it.” (Ibid.; p. 323.)

26. “Bran­don began. ‘We are aware of the fact that you are, ahem, very much involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion in Vir­ginia. As you may have guessed, the day for the raids on these enti­ties is approach­ing. And this is why we’re here.’ I cer­tainly knew that they were mak­ing progress with the war­rant, since I had pro­vided much of the needed infor­ma­tion for it. I also knew that the raids we’re going to be exten­sive, as I had been asked to pro­vide proof for some of the loca­tions that were to be raided, includ­ing the res­i­den­tial addresses I’ve men­tioned. ‘Go on?’ I became uneasy. I couldn’t see where this was lead­ing ‘Well, we have cer­tain con­cerns,’ he said. ‘Regard­ing the safety of agents in the field.’ My throat dried up. What do you mean by that, exactly?’ I asked in a whis­per.” (Ibid.; pp. 323–324.)

27. The FBI agents who vis­ited Rita were not on her side. They assumed a rude hos­tile stance, hint­ing at dis­loy­alty on her part. “ ‘In other words, we wanted to make sure that they won’t be wait­ing for our agents out there.’ I regained my com­po­sure. ‘Let me make sure I got it right,’ I said. ‘Are you here to ask me whether I called Barz­inji, al-Alwani, or Jagh­lit to inform them that Green Quest and Cus­toms agents would be com­ing to raid their homes on such-and-such date? Do you sug­gest that I told them to wait for these agents with machine guns?’ I was shocked and humil­i­ated as never before in my entire career. ‘No, don’t mis­un­der­stand, we were just wor­ried and wanted to make sure that every­thing would go smoothly.’ ‘Do you know who you’re talk­ing to?’ I said, my tone sharp. ‘I don’t know you, and you cer­tainly don’t know me or who I am. This is my inves­ti­ga­tion, my baby, my project—solely—and you accuse me of leak­ing it? This is all my knowl­edge. It all comes from pub­lic records. I can leak any of it as I please. No one can pre­vent me from leak­ing it. I could have leaked it any­time, months ago, or years ago. Every­thing Green Quest has comes from me. Every­thing. I sat and taught them every­thing from the begin­ning, and this is what I get in return?’” (Ibid.; p. 324.)

28. “Anita tried to undo the dam­age, say­ing that they were only the mes­sen­gers who’d been asked to come here, ask a few ques­tions, and ver­ify that the bad guys would be sur­prised and not the agents. ‘Even a crim­i­nal in cus­tody is informed that he is about to be ques­tioned about his alleged crime. You could have at least told me what this was about before you came,’ I spat. Now the tables had turned, and they were the ones on the defen­sive. They really didn’t know who they were deal­ing with. But they never both­ered to find out before they showed up in my office. Bran­don tried to change the sub­ject. He looked at the chart on my mon­i­tor and asked what it was. I told him that I was putting it together for Green Quest. He asked for a copy. I printed out five copies for him, and then I said: ‘You see this? This all comes from pub­lic doc­u­ments. And you know what—maybe this is not such a bad idea after all. Maybe I should share this with The New York Times, Sun­day edi­tion.” (Idem.)

29. Rita rebuked the agents for their antag­o­nis­tic treat­ment of her. “They should looked hor­ri­fied. ‘Shame on you,’ I said. ‘I devoted my life to this cause, and you accuse me of being a dou­ble agent. Get out of my office. Right now. Session’s over.’ They scur­ried out of there. I imme­di­ately called Marcy Futer­man. She was out, and I was told she’d be out the entire week. I asked to speak with her assis­tant. ‘What’s going on?’ I began fir­ing the sec­ond he picked up the phone. ‘This is how you show your grat­i­tude, send­ing a team to inter­view me?’ I didn’t know if he or Marcy knew about the lit­tle inci­dent, but this was the best way to find out. ‘Just tell me whether Marcy approved that.’ ‘Marcy was informed about it, yes, but take my word for it, she would never have approved such a thing,’ he said. He was sin­cere, and I real­ized that Marcy was caught between a rock and a hard place. ‘You know how highly she thinks of you. But you must real­ize that some things are beyond her. There was noth­ing she could do to pre­vent it.’” (Ibid.; p. 325.)

30. Rita’s hos­tile treat­ment at the hands of the FBI was also expe­ri­enced by some of her com­pa­tri­ots in Oper­a­tion Green Quest, who also felt they were being sur­veilled. “The next thing I did was page Mark. Unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally, it was hours before he replied. He was dis­traught. I was try­ing to tell him that I’d been ques­tioned by some agents I’d never heard of, but he kept repeat­ing that he had the feel­ing he was being fol­lowed. ‘I can’t seem to shake them. I had this feel­ing that I was fol­lowed through­out the day. I don’t know what they want of me, all I know is that I didn’t know is that I didn’t do any­thing wrong,’ he insisted. I called Dave. He, too, was upset. He, too, was under inves­ti­ga­tion. Why do I deserve this? I thought. Every time I’m onto some­thing good, every time an inves­ti­ga­tion is going well, I end up being inves­ti­gated instead. It made me sad, and angry, and frus­trated. This wasn’t the first time I’d been inves­ti­gated since that busi­ness with John Can­field. Not at all. There were other times, which I can’t men­tion here.” (Idem.)

31. More about the begin­ning of Rita’s betrayal by the FBI: “But this time it went a step fur­ther: this was the first time that I was directly accused of endan­ger­ing fed­eral agents. For many days I was gravely agi­tated. I couldn’t focus on any­thing. I couldn’t sleep. I had recur­rent night­mares in which I was haunted by these agents who came to ques­tion me. I knew my phone was tapped, I knew I was being fol­lowed, I knew some­one was lis­ten­ing to and record­ing every word I was say­ing. . . Worst of all, I had no one to turn to for help. Whom could I call, the gov­ern­ment? Maybe I was on the wrong side after all. Maybe, I thought, I should join 555, as these agents had sug­gested. I’d def­i­nitely be much safer in the arms of SAAR than in the government’s. I do what I do because I’m try­ing to make the United States a lit­tle safer, and this is the way the gov­ern­ment thanks me.” (Ibid.; p. 326.)

32. Next, Rita learns of the Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002, pre­cip­i­tated by the research she gen­er­ated: “A cou­ple of weeks later, on March 20, 2002, I returned from a meet­ing out of the office to dis­cover a pile of mes­sages from jour­nal­ists lying on my desk. I called the top one on the pile. ‘So what do you make of these raids in Vir­ginia?’ the reporter asked. ‘What are you talk­ing about?’ I guessed what he was refer­ring to, but I wanted to make sure. ‘Early this morn­ing,’ he told me, ‘about a hun­dred and fifty agents from the FBI, police, Cus­toms, and INS raided six­teen loca­tions in Vir­ginia and some poul­try fac­tory in Geor­gia. Haven’t you heard? It’s all over the news.’ So Green Quest and other agents had raided eigh­teen dif­fer­ent loca­tions in Vir­ginia tied to SAAR. It was the largest coun­tert­er­ror­ism raid ever in U.S. his­tory. The raids con­tin­ued the fol­low­ing day. Some one hun­dred com­puter com­pa­nies were sub­poe­naed as well. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] Every­one knew about the raids. Every­one but me. I was the last to find out, and I watched the raids on TV, with feel­ings as mixed as one could ever have. Con­tent that the raid took place on the one hand, but feel­ing used and abused on the other. This is how John Can­field must have felt when he was kicked off the PIJ inves­ti­ga­tion, I thought. . . .” (Idem.)

33. Rita’s asso­ciates in Green Quest were inves­ti­gated and harassed by the FBI. In FTR#310 (recorded in July of 2001) Mr. Emory hypoth­e­sized that Robert Mueller was appointed head of the FBI in order to safe­guard the Bush administration’s links with the milieu of the BCCI and George W. Bush’s busi­ness links to the Bin Laden fam­ily. “ . . .For two months after the raids I didn’t hear a word from Green Quest. Then one day Mark sud­denly called and asked to see me. ‘Why?’ I said cyn­i­cally. ‘Your inves­ti­ga­tion is over. You don’t need me any­more.’ He under­stood. ‘Please don’t be cross,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t talk to you. I too was under inves­ti­ga­tion. I was being fol­lowed, my phones were tapped, and I was ques­tioned. I was mis­er­able. They gave me a very hard time. Please don’t give any more grief. I don’t deserve it.’ What was this, I thought, another rerun of the story with John Can­field? What’s wrong with these peo­ple who keep inves­ti­gat­ing the inves­ti­ga­tors? ‘If you don’t believe me,’ he con­tin­ued, ‘talk to the U.S. attor­ney you worked with. He’ll tell you. He and every­one else on the team were under inves­ti­ga­tion.’ Mark, I knew, was not a guy to make some­thing like that up. But I was curi­ous, and I called the U.S. attor­ney to get his take. I didn’t press him too, much, because the whole thing was—and prob­a­bly still is—under inves­ti­ga­tion. But he did ver­ify every­thing Mark had told me. Prac­ti­cally every­one involved with the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion had been under sur­veil­lance. The FBI was among the agen­cies con­duct­ing that inves­ti­ga­tion.” (Ibid.; p. 327.)

34. Note that the FBI gave more doc­u­ments to Zacarias Mous­saoui for his defense than to the Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tors. “No won­der! The FBI had long set its sights on this inves­ti­ga­tion, which became so major and so famous. The Bureau had already been med­dling in the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion in a man­ner less than gen­tle­manly; after the raids, peo­ple who had infor­ma­tion about the SAAR net­work called to offer their tips. Unaware of who was in charge of the inves­ti­ga­tion, some of those peo­ple called and gave their tips to the FBI. The FBI, instead of for­ward­ing the tips to the peo­ple in charge—Green Quest—kept the leads to them­selves and ini­ti­ated their own probes into those leads, shar­ing nei­ther with Cus­toms. More­over, at some point, the two FBI agents in Vir­ginia stopped help­ing Green Quest abruptly and com­pletely. It was obvi­ous that they’d been instructed to do that. The FBI con­tin­ues to refuse to give Green Quest doc­u­ments needed for its inves­ti­ga­tion. The FBI treats Green Quest worse than it does the enemy; Zacarias Mous­saoui received from the FBI more doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to his investigation—including a good num­ber of clas­si­fied documents—than did Green Quest! And of course the ulti­mate scan­dal is that all this is tak­ing place after 9–11.” (Idem.)

35. “Now, as I write these lines, the FBI is try­ing to take over the inves­ti­ga­tion alto­gether. Once again, a replay of the story with Sami al-Arian and with John Can­field. The FBI claims that Cus­toms and Green Quest were right­fully the ones to ini­ti­ate the inves­ti­ga­tion, when it seemed to be about money laun­der­ing. But now that it’s become a terrorism-related mat­ter, Cus­toms is inca­pable, you see, of deal­ing with it. Isn’t that peachy? Judg­ing by what the FBI did with other inves­ti­ga­tions, if it indeed suc­ceeds in tak­ing over the SAAR probe, we can all kiss this inves­ti­ga­tion good-bye. How many terrorism-related suc­cesses can the FBI take the credit for? Not too many, that’s for sure.” (Idem.)

36. The incon­ve­nient GOP ethnic/Green Quest con­nec­tion cited in para­graph #5 may well explain the FBI’s and CIA’s hos­tile inter­est in the inves­ti­ga­tors of Oper­a­tion Green Quest. “Yet the FBI wasn’t the worst part in that sticky affair. The CIA was. The CIA was inves­ti­gat­ing me and the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors from Green Quest and Cus­toms. The CIA and the FBI inves­ti­gated every­one who had any­thing to do with the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion. White vans and SUV’s with dark win­dows appeared near all the homes of the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors. All agents, some of whom were very expe­ri­enced with sur­veil­lance, knew they were being fol­lowed. So was I. I felt that I was being fol­lowed every­where and watched at home, in the super­mar­ket, on the way to work . . . and for what? . Now—I was being watched 24/7. It’s a ter­ri­ble sen­sa­tion to know that you have no pri­vacy. . . . and no secu­rity. That strange click­ing of the phones that wasn’t there before. . . the oh-so-crudely opened mail at home in the office. . .and the same man I spied in my neigh­bor­hood super­mar­ket, who was also on the train I took to Wash­ing­ton a week ago. . .Life can be mis­er­able when you know that someone’s always breath­ing down your neck.” (Ibid.; pp. 328–329.)

37. “The Cus­toms agents were ques­tioned. So were their super­vi­sors. So was the U.S. attor­ney on the SAAR case. One of the ques­tions they were all asked was whether they’d leaked mate­r­ial to me. They all kept say­ing that this was the most pre­pos­ter­ous idea; they all said that before I came, none of them had the slight­est clue about SAAR and 555. They said that there was noth­ing of value they could give me that I didn’t have already. That it was I who gave them the mate­r­ial, not the other way around. None of the inves­ti­gated par­ties has the slight­est clue as to the real rea­son they were being inves­ti­gated.” (Ibid.; p. 329.)

38. “Risk­ing crit­i­cism for being unfound­edly para­noid, I must con­vey my the­ory about the inves­ti­ga­tion and CIA’s involve­ment in it, I don’t know for cer­tain what’s the deal with the CIA inves­ti­gat­ing the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors, but it sure feels as if some­one up in that agency doesn’t like the idea that the Saudi Ara­bian boat is rocked. The raids on 555 had taken place already—the CIA couldn’t change that—but inves­ti­gat­ing and giv­ing the peo­ple behind the raids a hard time is a most effi­cient way of mak­ing sure the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion stops there. Which, come to think of it, may be the rea­son the gov­ern­ment looks so unfa­vor­ably on the law­suit filed by 9–11 vic­tims’ fam­i­lies against sev­eral Saudi enti­ties and indi­vid­u­als, accus­ing them of fund­ing ter­ror­ism and seek­ing dam­ages.” (Idem.)