Recorded July 8, 2007
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REALAUDIO

Illus­trat­ing inves­tiga­tive and his­tor­i­cal method­ol­ogy, this pro­gram excerpts sev­eral of Mr. Emory’s broad­casts recorded from 2001 to 2004. The excerpts doc­u­ment the sup­pres­sion of the 9/11 money trail. Begin­ning with FTR#310, the pro­gram high­lights the con­se­quences of the appoint­ment of Robert Mueller as FBI direc­tor. In that pro­gram, Mr. Emory sug­gested that Mueller’s appoint­ment may have been real­ized in order to cover up the BCCI milieu. (For more about BCCI, see—among other programs—FTR#589.) If prop­erly inves­ti­gated, the BCCI case would have revealed the elder George Bush’s involve­ment with drug and weapons traf­fick­ing and the younger George Bush’s busi­ness con­nec­tions to the fam­ily of Osama bin Laden. In the Jus­tice Depart­ment of the elder Bush, Mueller proved less than vig­or­ous in pur­su­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. In the spring of 2002, Mr. Emory recorded FTR#356, which noted the pro­found links between the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, the GOP hier­ar­chy and the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions busted in the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids on sus­pected ter­ror­ist fund­ing sources. Bush asso­ciate Talat Oth­man inter­ceded with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary O’Neill on behalf of the tar­gets of the raid. [Oth­man him­self is a pro­tégé of the BCCI milieu.] Much of this broad­cast con­sists of excerpts from sub­se­quent For The Record broad­casts chron­i­cling the FBI and Jus­tice Depart­ment obstruc­tion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, just as Mr. Emory fore­shad­owed in FTR#310. Note: this mate­r­ial is pre­sented to illus­trate inves­tiga­tive method­ol­ogy, as well as crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion link­ing the 9/11 money trail to asso­ciates of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. It is not pre­sented as an exer­cise in con­ceit or puffery.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The fact that Mr. Emory’s pre­dic­tion about Mueller’s appoint­ment aired right across the river from the World Trade Cen­ter the night before the attacks; dis­cus­sion of the frus­tra­tion of John O’Neill’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the attack on the U.S.S. Cole; O’Neill’s death the night after the air­ing of FTR#310 on WFMU; Bush asso­ciate Talat Othman’s links to GOP big­wig Grover Norquist and his Islamic Insti­tute; the FBI and CIA’s sur­veil­lance and harass­ment of Rita Katz and other Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tors; the con­tin­u­ing cover-up of the 9/11 money trail by ele­ments of the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity; the Bush administration’s early attempts at frus­trat­ing inves­ti­ga­tions of Saudi financ­ing of terrorism.

1. The pro­gram begins by review­ing infor­ma­tion from FTR#310 [the infor­ma­tion in para­graphs 1–3 is from that program’s descrip­tion]. Recorded in early July of 2001 [the record­ing date in the Spit­fire cat­a­log is incor­rect], the pro­gram was broad­cast on Mon­day, 9/10/2001 at 6pm on WFMU-FM, right across the river from what was to become Ground Zero the next day. Note that John O’Neill died in the attacks on 9/11. Mr. Emory’s broad­cast fore­shad­owed many aspects of the 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tion. In the early sum­mer of 2001, George W. Bush selected Robert Mueller, a mem­ber of his father’s Jus­tice Depart­ment, to be FBI direc­tor. (“S.F. Pros­e­cu­tor Mueller Picked to Lead FBI, Mend Its Image” by Zachary Coile and Bob Egelko; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 7/6/2001; pp. A1-A12.)

2. In his work for the Bush Jus­tice Depart­ment, Mueller was less than vig­or­ous in his role over­see­ing the pros­e­cu­tion of Gen­eral Nor­iega of Panama and the BCCI case. (“In the Run­ning for FBI Direc­tor” by Stacy Finz; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 7/1/2001; pp. A1-A6.) Both the BCCI case and the Nor­iega case over­lap the Iran-Contra inves­ti­ga­tion and the elder Bush was prin­ci­pally involved in the Iran-Contra imbroglio. Full dis­clo­sure con­cern­ing the BCCI case could lead to inves­ti­ga­tion of James R. Bath, the Texas busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Bin Laden fam­ily and one of the financiers of George W.’s first oil ven­ture. (See also: FTR #’s 182, 186, 248, 256, 277, 292, 308, 315.) Bin Laden’s forces have for­mally taken credit for bomb­ing the U.S.S. Cole dur­ing the cam­paign.
(“Islamic Mil­i­tants Brag They Bombed War­ship Cole” by Diana Elias [AP]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 6/20/2001; p. A8.) Mr. Emory has spec­u­lated that the Cole bomb­ing may have been exe­cuted for the ben­e­fit of the Bush cam­paign. (See also: L #’s 9, 10.)

3. In that con­text, the broad­cast sug­gests the pos­si­bil­ity that some of the dif­fi­cul­ties that the FBI (among other insti­tu­tions) has encoun­tered in con­nec­tion with the inves­ti­ga­tion of the Cole bomb­ing may result from obstruc­tion by the Bush camp. An inves­ti­ga­tion of the Saudi back­ers of Osama bin Laden leads to indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions con­nected to the GOP and pow­er­ful American-based transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions.
(“U.S. Faces Hur­dles in Approach to USS Cole Probe” by David S. Cloud and Neil King, Jr.; Wall Street Jour­nal; 7/6/2001; p. A10.)

4. Next, the pro­gram high­lights infor­ma­tion orig­i­nally pre­sented in FTR#356, recorded in April of 2002. On April 4 of 2002, Trea­sury Sec­re­tary O’Neill met with pow­er­ful Islamist Repub­li­cans, whose spheres of inter­est over­lap those of the insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als tar­geted by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids on March 20, 2002.
(“O’Neill Met Mus­lim Activists Tied to Char­i­ties” by Glenn R. Simp­son [with Roger Thurow]; Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/18/2002; p. A4.)

5. A prin­ci­pal fig­ure in the group that inter­ceded on behalf of the (alleged) Al Qaeda/Al Taqwa-connected tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids was Talat Oth­man, a close busi­ness and polit­i­cal asso­ciate of Pres­i­dent Bush. As Mr. Emory fore­shad­owed in FTR#310, when the money trail to 9/11 was inves­ti­gated, it revealed links between the ter­ror financ­ing struc­ture and the milieu of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Oth­man is deeply involved with the BCCI milieu. Again, for more about the Othman/BCCI milieu, see FTR#356 (For more about the Bush/Othman rela­tion­ship and the GOP/Islamist con­nec­tion, see—among programs—FTR#s 356, 368, 447, 454, 462, 464, 467, 515.) “Among the Mus­lim lead­ers attend­ing [the meet­ing with O’Neill] was Talat Oth­man, a long­time asso­ciate and sup­porter of Pres­i­dent Bush’s fam­ily, who gave a bene­dic­tion at the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia in August 2000 . . . But he also serves [with Barz­inji] on the board of Amana Mutual Funds Trust, an invest­ment firm founded by M. Yac­qub Mirza, the North­ern Vir­ginia busi­ness­man who set up most of the enti­ties tar­geted by the Trea­sury and whose tax records were sought in the raid.” (Idem.)

6. Oth­man has links to Gaith Pharoan of the BCCI. “Sheikh Abdul­lah Bakhsh, in turn, was a busi­ness asso­ciate of BCCI front man Gaith Pharoan; he bought a chunk of Harken’s stock and placed his rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Talat Oth­man, on Harken Energy’s board of direc­tors.” (“Bush Fam­ily Value$: The Bush Clan’s Fam­ily Busi­ness” by Stephen Pizzo; Mother Jones; September/October 1992; accessed at www.motherjones.com/news_wire/bushboys.html .) (For more about Nugan Hand, see RFA#’s 4, 25, 30.)

7. As Mr. Emory hypoth­e­sized in FTR#353, the Norquist/GOP/Islamist links are part of the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic out­reach pro­gram. Again, one should note that these ele­ments are directly con­nected to Al Qaeda and exem­plify the Saudi/petroleum/GOP/Bush struc­tural eco­nomic and polit­i­cal rela­tion­ships at the core of the cor­rup­tion of inves­ti­ga­tions into Al Qaeda and 9/11. “The case also high­lights con­flicts between the Bush administration’s domes­tic polit­i­cal goals and its war on ter­ror. GOP offi­cials began court­ing the U.S. Mus­lim com­mu­nity intensely in the late 1990’s, seek­ing to add that eth­nic bloc to the party’s polit­i­cal base.” (Idem.) (For more about the fas­cist her­itage of the GOP’s eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion, see, among other pro­grams, RFA #37, FTR#’s 29, 48, 113, 248, 346, 353.)

8. The Amana orga­ni­za­tion (on the board of which Oth­man serves) has numer­ous areas of over­lap with orga­ni­za­tions described as being impli­cated in ter­ror­ism and the milieu of Al Queda. “Two non­prof­its affil­i­ated with Mr. Mirza and named in the search war­rant, the SAAR Foun­da­tion Inc. and the Her­itage Edu­ca­tion Trust Inc., held large blocks of shares in Amana’s mutual funds in 1997, accord­ing to SEC records. The SEC doc­u­ments and other records detail­ing con­nec­tions between Mr. Oth­man and the Islamic Insti­tute [on the board of which Mr. Oth­man serves] and the raided groups were com­piled by the National Secu­rity News Ser­vice, a Wash­ing­ton based non­profit research group.” (Idem.)

9. Fur­ther details have emerged about the links between Al Taqwa and the GOP/Bush admin­is­tra­tion. “Mr. Oth­man also is on the board of Mr. Saffuri’s [and Norquist’s] Islamic Insti­tute, the GOP-leaning group that received $20,000.00 from the Safa Trust, one of the raid’s tar­gets. The pres­i­dent of the Safa Trust, Jamal Barz­inji, is a for­mer busi­ness asso­ciate of Switzer­land based investor Youssef Nada, whose assets were frozen last fall after the Trea­sury des­ig­nated him a per­son sus­pected of giv­ing aid to ter­ror­ists. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Idem.)

10. Othman’s links to Bush are pro­found. “Mr. Oth­man has ties to the Bush fam­ily going back to the 1980’s, when he served with George W. Bush on the board of a Texas petro­leum firm, Harken Oil & Gas Inc. Mr. Oth­man has vis­ited the White House dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tions of both Pres­i­dent Bush and his father George H.W. Bush.” (Idem.) (For more about Harken Oil and George W. Bush, see FTR’s 284, 355, 356, 368, 376.)

11. Next, the pro­gram reviews other areas of inter­sec­tion between the labyrinthine net­work attacked in the 3/20 raids, the Al Taqwa milieu, and the Repub­li­can Party. [FTR#342 doc­u­mented the role of six mem­bers of the Bin Laden fam­ily in the found­ing of Al Taqwa.] A recent Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle described some of the orga­ni­za­tions tar­geted in the raids: “These include Al-Taqwa Man­age­ment, a recently liq­ui­dated Swiss com­pany the U.S. gov­ern­ment believes acted as a banker for Osama bin Laden’s al Queda ter­ror­ist net­work. . .Two peo­ple affil­i­ated with the com­pa­nies and char­i­ties are linked by records to enti­ties already des­ig­nated as ter­ror­ist by the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Hisham Al-Talib, who served as an offi­cer of SAAR, the Inter­na­tional Insti­tute of Islamic Thought and Safa Trust Inc., another Mirza char­ity, dur­ing the 1970’s was an offi­cer of firms run by Youssef M. Nada, records show. Mr. Nada is a Switzerland-based busi­ness­man whose assets have been frozen by the U.S. for alleged involve­ment in ter­ror­ist financ­ing, and is alleged by U.S. offi­cials to be a key fig­ure in the Taqwa net­work. . .Jamal Barz­inji, an offi­cer of Mr. Mirza’s com­pany Mar-Jac and other enti­ties, also was involved with Mr. Nada’s com­pa­nies in the 1970’s, accord­ing to bank doc­u­ments from Liecht­en­stein. A mes­sage was left yes­ter­day for Mr. Barz­inji at his address in Hern­don. Mr. Barz­inji and Mr. Talib live across the street from each other. A third busi­ness asso­ciate of Mr. Nada, Ali Ghaleb Him­mat (who also has been des­ig­nated by the Trea­sury as aid­ing ter­ror­ism), is listed as an offi­cial of the Geneva branch of another char­ity oper­ated by Mr. Mirza, the Inter­na­tional Islamic Char­i­ta­ble Orga­ni­za­tion. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (“Funds Under Ter­ror Probe Flowed From Off­shore” by Glenn R. Simp­son [with Michael M. Phillips]; Wall Street Jour­nal; 3/22/2002; p. A4.)

12. Review­ing infor­ma­tion from FTR#343, we note that Nada him­self is alleged to have been agent of the Abwehr, the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence ser­vice of the Third Reich. “But Yussef Nada is even better-known to the Egypt­ian [intel­li­gence] ser­vices, who have evi­dence of his mem­ber­ship in the armed branch of the fra­ter­nity of the Mus­lim Broth­ers in the 1940’s. At that time, accord­ing to the same sources, he was work­ing for the Abwehr under Admi­ral Canaris and took part in a plot against King Farouk. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] This was not the first time that the path of the Mus­lim Broth­ers crossed that of the ser­vants of the Third Reich.” (Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The United States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000 [SC]; Algora Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; pp. 140–141.)

13. Next, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion first pre­sented in FTR#432 [5/30/04], and ana­lyzed at greater length in 454 [4/4/04]. This part of the broad­cast high­lights the administration’s frus­tra­tion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest–the law enforcement/intelligence com­mu­nity oper­a­tion aimed at inter­dict­ing fund­ing for Islamist ter­ror­ists, includ­ing Al Qaeda. (For more about Oper­a­tion Green Quest, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 356, 357, 359, 382, 387, 389, 406, 423, 425, 432, 433, 435, 439, 442, 447, 450, 462, 464, 467.) In addi­tion to the pro­found busi­ness con­nec­tions between the Bush milieu and the Saudis impli­cated in ter­ror­ist fund­ing, Oper­a­tion Green Quest uncov­ered con­crete links between the GOP and Mus­lim ele­ments involved with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Al Qaeda, Al Taqwa and Hamas. “ . . . But despite those efforts, the United States has made only lim­ited progress in block­ing the fund­ing of ter­ror­ists. Al Qaeda and other Islamic ter­ror­ist groups remain well financed. And one of their major sources of fund­ing, a net­work of Islamic char­i­ties financed by Saudi Ara­bia, remains rel­a­tively unin­ter­rupted. Its tough talk notwith­stand­ing, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has failed to take deci­sive action against this sig­nif­i­cant source of ter­ror financing—in part, it seems, to pro­tect the gov­ern­ment of Saudi Ara­bia and its friends in Wash­ing­ton.” (“Char­ity Cases: Why Has the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion Failed to Stop Saudi Fund­ing of Ter­ror­ism?” by David Arm­strong; Harper’s; March/2004; p. 81.)

14. Among the many con­crete efforts by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion on behalf of Saudi-related ele­ments impli­cated in Al Qaeda activ­i­ties was the administration’s redac­tion of 28 pages of a con­gres­sional report on 9/11. Those pages related to Saudi char­i­ties and indi­vid­u­als believed to be financ­ing Al Qaeda and other ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. “The Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has adopted an approach to Saudi ter­ror­ist fund­ing that would best be described as hands-off. For exam­ple, last sum­mer it cen­sored the twenty-eight pages on the sub­ject from a con­gres­sional report on the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks and refused to release the names of Saudi enti­ties sus­pected to be financiers of ter­ror­ism . . . .” (Idem.)

15. “ . . . In other cases, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion made a con­scious deci­sion not to pur­sue major Saudi con­duits for ter­ror­ist fund­ing. The clear­est exam­ple involves two osten­si­ble char­i­ties that are long known to have fun­neled money to Al Qaeda—the Inter­na­tional Islamic Relief orga­ni­za­tion (IIRO) and the Mus­lim World League (MWL). Both are financed directly by the Saudi gov­ern­ment. MWL is an evan­gel­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion that was cre­ated to help spread Wah­habism, the Saudi brand of Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ism; IIRO is a human­i­tar­ian relief orga­ni­za­tion that oper­ates pri­mar­ily in Mus­lim coun­tries. Yet a 1996 CIA report alleged that IIRO helped to fund six mil­i­tant train­ing camps in Afghanistan, and noted that the for­mer head of the group’s Philip­pines office—Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law—had been linked to plots to ‘tar­get the pope and U.S. air­lines.’ U. S. intel­li­gence offi­cials also believe that MWL employ­ees were involved in the 1998 bomb­ing of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Although both IIRO and MWL were known to have funded Al Qaeda, U.S. gov­ern­ment sources indi­cated to Newsweek in Octo­ber 2001 that the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion left the two orga­ni­za­tions off the list of des­ig­nated ter­ror­ist group in order to spare the Saudi gov­ern­ment from embar­rass­ment.” (Idem.)

16. Among the fish net­ted by Oper­a­tion Green Quest is Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi, him­self very close to the GOP. (For more about Alam­oudi, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 433, 435.) Note that the respon­si­bil­ity for Oper­a­tion Green Quest has been given to the FBI, which has been less than forth­com­ing with those involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion. This has largely neu­tral­ized the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion. (For more about this, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 425, 433, 435.) Note that Robert Mueller, head of the FBI, is com­pro­mised by his past (and less than vig­or­ous) inves­ti­ga­tions into the Saudi/Bush/intelligence con­nec­tion. As fore­shad­owed by Mr. Emory, Mueller and his bureau have been less than vig­or­ous in their inves­ti­ga­tion of the finan­cial trail to the 9/11 attacks, as well. (For more about this, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 310, 424.) “On top of this, the most promis­ing domes­tic inquiry into these Saudi groups has been dis­man­tled. In March 2002, as part of a Cus­toms Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tion known as Oper­a­tion Green Quest, gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tors raided the Vir­ginia offices of IIRO and MWL, along with a num­ber of other Saudi-backed char­i­ties and busi­nesses. Although the raids turned up con­crete evi­dence that ele­ments of the net­work had funded indi­vid­u­als and groups des­ig­nated as ter­ror­ists by the United States, no assets have been frozen and that the few, belated arrests in this case have been made on charges unre­lated to ter­ror­ist financ­ing. In par­tic­u­lar, Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi, who heads a group called the Suc­cess Foundation—which in the late 1990’s absorbed the U.S. oper­a­tions of IIRO—has been charged only with accept­ing money from Libya and with immi­gra­tion vio­la­tions, despite evi­dence, seized from the offices of Suc­cess and other groups he con­trols, of their mate­r­ial sup­port not just for Hamas but for two known Al Qaeda fronts. (Alam­oudi was once caught on tape remark­ing that he dis­ap­proved of the 1998 bomb­ings of U.S. embassies in Africa only because no Amer­i­cans were killed, and that instead he pre­ferred more ‘strate­gic’ tar­gets such as the Jew­ish com­mu­nity cen­ter in Buenos Aires, which had been bombed in 1994.) Now, under an agree­ment between Attor­ney Gen­eral John Ashcroft and depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity head Tom Ridge signed in May 2003, the Cus­toms Service—part of Home­land Secu­rity since last March—has relin­quished con­trol of its coun­tert­er­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tions to the FBI, which repeat­edly had refused to turn over crit­i­cal inves­tiga­tive files to Green Quest agents. This deal between Ashcroft and Ridge effec­tively shut down Green Quest, quash­ing the one serious—if flawed—probe into domes­tic ter­ror­ist financ­ing. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 81–82.)

17. In the con­text of the frus­tra­tion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, the pro­gram notes again the con­nec­tions between the insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als tar­geted in the 3/20/2002 raids and the GOP. (For more about this sub­ject, see—among other pro­grams— FTR#s 356, 368, 447, 454, 462, 464, 467, 515.) “ . . . But the dilemma, for the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, extends far beyond issues of his­tory. Many promi­nent politicians—not least among them the Bushes—have for years main­tained close polit­i­cal, busi­ness, and per­sonal deal­ings with the Saudi royal fam­ily and, more gen­er­ally, Saudi inter­ests. The extent of the administration’s dif­fi­cul­ties on this front became clear shortly after the Green Quest raids in March 2002. Just two weeks after the Cus­toms task force raided the Saudi-backed groups in north­ern Vir­ginia, two lead­ing Mus­lim activists with ties to the groups were allowed to meet with Paul O’Neill, then sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury Depart­ment (which, at the time, con­trolled Cus­toms) to com­plain about the con­duct of the raids. The meet­ing was arranged by Grover Norquist, the influ­en­tial Repub­li­can activist; Norquist is also the founder and for­mer chair of the Islamic Insti­tute, a con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lim out­reach group in which both of the men who met with O’Neill are offi­cers and which has received fund­ing from some of the raided indi­vid­u­als and groups, includ­ing Abdu­rah­man Alam­oudi.” (Idem.)

18. As dis­cussed above, Talat Oth­man (a close asso­ciate of Both Georges Bush) inter­ceded on behalf of the tar­gets of Oper­a­tion Green Quest. “And the con­nec­tions do not end there. One of the Mus­lim activists who met with O’Neill was Talat Oth­man, a long­time friend and for­mer busi­ness asso­ciate of Pres­i­dent Bush. The two served together on the board of the Texas-based oil com­pany Harken Energy start­ing in the late 1980’s and have remained close ever since. Oth­man sat on Harken’s board as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh, a Saudi busi­ness mag­nate and a close asso­ciate of sus­pected ter­ror­ist financier Khalid bin Mah­fouz. Bakhsh now heads an oil com­pany that is a sub­sidiary of Hal­libur­ton, the energy giant for­merly run by Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney.” (Idem.)

19. “In addi­tion to his work at the Islamic Insti­tute, Oth­man serves on the board of Amana Mutual Funds Trust, an Islamic invest­ment group that had close ties to raided enti­ties and yet was not itself tar­geted. At the time of the Green Quest raids, in March 2002, at least four fig­ures from the tar­geted groups were affil­i­ated with Amana, includ­ing M. Yaqub Mirza, the indi­vid­ual who set up the U.S. branch of MWL, the fund-raising arm of the U.S. branch of IIRO, and many of the other raided orga­ni­za­tions. Despite Mirza’s pres­ence on the board, and despite the fact that large sums of money from the sus­pect groups have moved through Amana, Green Quest agents chose not to raid the firm.” (Idem.)

20. Recap­ping infor­ma­tion pre­sented in FTR#’s 425, 569 [among other pro­grams], the broad­cast notes how the FBI and CIA turned on the inves­ti­ga­tors of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, includ­ing inves­ti­ga­tor Rita Katz, the author of Ter­ror­ist Hunter. 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.” (Ter­ror­ist Hunter by “Anony­mous” [Rita Katz]; CCC [imprint of Harper Collins]; Copy­right 2003 by Harper Collins [HC]; ISBN 0–06-052819–2; p. 327.)

21. 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.)

22. 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.)

23. “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.)

24. “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.)

25. The pro­gram con­cludes with review of infor­ma­tion from FTR#462 [5/30/04]. Sup­ple­ment­ing pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of the FBI’s fail­ure to coop­er­ate with other agen­cies in pur­su­ing Oper­a­tion Green Quest (FTR#’s 432, 433), the pro­gram notes that the effort has largely been frus­trated, cour­tesy of the Bureau. “While the U.S. mil­i­tary wages war in Iraq, the FBI and the new Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity are fight­ing their own fierce battle—against each other. The causus belli of this con­flict is Oper­a­tion Green Quest—the high-profile fed­eral task force set up to tar­get the financiers of Al Qaeda and other inter­na­tional ter­ror­ist groups. Ever since Green Quest was cre­ated by for­mer U.S. Cus­toms chief Robert Bon­ner just after the Sep­tem­ber 11 ter­ror attacks, Green Quest agents have con­ducted some of the Bush administration’s best-publicized and most con­tro­ver­sial terrorist-finance cases—including a series of raids against the offices of Islamic char­i­ties in the Wash­ing­ton area last year that drew strong protests from Amer­i­can Mus­lim and civil-rights groups. [These were the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002—D.E.]” (“Whose War on Ter­ror?”; Newsweek; 12/10/2003; p. 1; accessed at: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3068377/ .)

26. “But as the Green Quest team made head­lines, its inves­ti­ga­tions trig­gered a bit­ter dis­pute within the gov­ern­ment. Inter­nally, FBI offi­cials have derided Green Quest agents as a bunch of ‘cow­boys’ whose actions have under­mined more impor­tant, long-range FBI inves­ti­ga­tions into ter­ror­ist financ­ing. Green Quest sources, in turn, accuse the FBI of jeal­ousy. Now that the Customs-led Green Quest oper­a­tion has been folded into the new Home­land Secu­rity Depart­ment, Newsweek has learned, the FBI and its par­ent agency, the Jus­tice Depart­ment, have demanded that the White House instead give the FBI total con­trol over Green Quest. One senior law-enforcement offi­cial called the lack of coor­di­na­tion between the FBI and Green Quest ‘an intol­er­a­ble sit­u­a­tion’ and noted that the bureau-not Home­land Security—has been for­mally des­ig­nated by Pres­i­dent Bush as the ‘lead agency’ for ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tions. ‘You can’t have two lead agen­cies’ con­duct­ing ter­ror cases, the offi­cial said.” (Idem.)

27. Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tors from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity charge that the FBI is delib­er­ately sab­o­tag­ing their inves­ti­ga­tions. “The FBI-Justice move, pushed by DOJ crim­i­nal Divi­sion chief Michael Chertoff and Deputy Attor­ney Gen­eral Larry Thomp­son, has enraged Home­land Secu­rity offi­cials, how­ever. They accuse the bureau of sab­o­tag­ing Green Quest investigations—by fail­ing to turn over crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion to their agents—and try­ing to obscure a decades long record of lethargy in which FBI offices failed to aggres­sively pur­sue terror-finance cases.” (Idem.)

28. “ ‘They [The FBI] won’t share any­thing with us,’ said a Home­land Secu­rity offi­cial. ‘Then they go to the White House and they accuse us of not shar­ing . . . If they can’t take it over, they want to kill it.’ If noth­ing else, the bat­tle over Green Quest illus­trates the bureau­cratic ten­sions that still plague the war on ter­ror. The cre­ation of the Home­land Secu­rity Depart­ment was sup­posed to put an end to such turf fights. The new depart­ment took over a diverse assort­ment of fed­eral agen­cies that had var­i­ous respon­si­bil­i­ties for com­bat­ing ter­ror­ism, includ­ing the Cus­toms Ser­vice, the Immi­gra­tion and Nat­u­ral­iza­tion Ser­vice and the U.S. Bor­der Patrol.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

29. Among the more alarm­ing details about the Ptech deba­cle con­cerns a state­ment attrib­uted to the pres­i­dent of Ptech. He allegedly told a sub­or­di­nate that Yaqub Mirza—a mem­ber of the board of directors—had con­nec­tions high up in the FBI! Mirza set up the orga­ni­za­tions tar­geted in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002! Ptech devel­oped the threat-assessment soft­ware archi­tec­ture for the Air Force, the FAA, NORAD and the Depart­ment of Energy [among other agen­cies]. It is Mr. Emory’s belief that the Ptech sit­u­a­tion may well have had much to do with the anom­alous per­for­mance of air-defense units on 9/11. For more about Ptech, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 462, 464, 467. Note that the FBI dragged its feet in the Ptech inves­ti­ga­tion and it was the Cus­toms depart­ment that ulti­mately moved on Ptech, despite indi­ca­tions that the com­pany had been financed by peo­ple linked to ter­ror­ism, Al Qaeda in par­tic­u­lar. “Fur­ther­more, the FBI was aware that Ptech pro­vided com­puter soft­ware for sev­eral gov­ern­ment agen­cies, includ­ing the FBI itself, the FAA, the U.S. Trea­sury, the Depart­ment of Defense, the IRS, and the White House, prov­ing a vis­i­ble and viable threat to national secu­rity. The FBI ignored the repeated requests of con­cerned employ­ees. Fright­en­ingly, when an employee told the Pres­i­dent of Ptech he felt he had to con­tact the FBI regard­ing Qadi’s involve­ment in the com­pany, the pres­i­dent allegedly told him not to worry because Yaqub Mirza, who was on the board of direc­tors of the com­pany and was him­self a tar­get of a ter­ror­ist financ­ing raid in March 2002, had con­tacts high within the FBI. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]. After months of the FBI refus­ing to do any­thing sub­stan­tive, it took the efforts of U.S. Cus­toms, now a part of Home­land Secu­rity, to raid the busi­ness in Decem­ber 2002 and jump­start the inves­ti­ga­tion into the alleged ter­ror­ist finan­cial net­work.” (Idem.)

30. The FBI had pre­vi­ously ignored the orga­ni­za­tions set up by Mirza and tar­geted in the 3/20/2002 Green Quest raids (the SAAR net­work). “Per­haps the FBI’s biggest blun­der was in ignor­ing the enor­mous alleged ter­ror­ist finan­cial net­work of com­pa­nies and non­profit orga­ni­za­tions mostly in Hern­don, Vir­ginia, named by inves­ti­ga­tors as the ‘SAAR Net­work.’ The FBI had been aware of the SAAR Net­work was fun­nel­ing money to [Sami] al-Arian. The FBI chose to ignore the case for unknown rea­sons, though some have spec­u­lated it was due to the SAAR Network’s close asso­ci­a­tion to wealthy Saudis who funded the net­work.” (Idem.)

31. “It was not until Oper­a­tion Green Quest, a joint task force headed by U.S. Cus­toms which sought to dis­rupt ter­ror­ist financ­ing, picked up the scent of the SAAR Net­work that a raid occurred. In March, 2002, Green Quest, in a vic­tory for Amer­i­cans every­where, raided the SAAR Net­work in 15 loca­tions in the largest ter­ror­ist finan­cial bust in U.S. his­tory. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

32. More about the frus­tra­tion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest: “ . . . Now, the FBI is attempt­ing to wrest the SAAR Net­work inves­ti­ga­tion from Green Quest and take all the credit for Green Quest’s ded­i­ca­tion and hard work. The agree­ment between Ashcroft and Ridge is a crush­ing blow to Green Quest, as it effec­tively dis­solves the out­stand­ing task force. Accord­ing to the mem­o­ran­dum, ‘The sec­re­tary of [Home­land Secu­rity] agrees that no later than June 30, 2003, Oper­a­tion Green Quest (OGQ) will no longer exist as a pro­gram name.’ [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s].” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

33. “Green Quest, the most suc­cess­ful antiterrorist-financing task squad in his­tory of the United States, is being dis­banded because of the FBI’s lust for power and glory. At a time when al Qaeda is resurg­ing, the more agen­cies we have shar­ing infor­ma­tion and inves­ti­gat­ing ter­ror­ism, the bet­ter off this nation will be. Given the FBI’s track record, the bureau should be pun­ished, not rewarded for unjus­ti­fi­ably bul­ly­ing a new depart­ment into giv­ing it more power, espe­cially after FBI Direc­tor Robert Mueller admit­ted the bureau does not have the ana­lyt­i­cal capa­bil­ity to pro­vide effec­tive coun­tert­er­ror­ism. . . .” (Idem.)

34. Two video pro­duc­tions are being gen­er­ated by a cou­ple of doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers. One is a DVD of a three-lecture series called “The First Refuge of a Scoundrel: The Rela­tion­ship Between Fas­cism and Reli­gion.” To learn more about this, visit The Anti-Fascist YouTube.com page. In addi­tion, there will soon be a doc­u­men­tary about Mr. Emory, titled “The Anti-Fascist.” For more about this project, visit theantifascist.com.