Recorded Sep­tem­ber 23, 2007
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO

Explor­ing the eco­nomic and polit­i­cal net­works that both pre­cip­i­tated and exe­cuted the 9/11 attacks, this pro­gram high­lights the links between Islamist ele­ments involved at the oper­a­tional level and indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that dom­i­nate the global geo-political land­scape. These networks—belonging to elite indus­trial, finan­cial and reli­gious insti­tu­tions, as well as pow­er­ful under­world syndicates—cooperate and inter­sect. The 9/11 attacks are emblem­atic of the results of this cor­po­rate, reli­gious and crim­i­nal alliance. The 9/11 attacks fur­ther cemented this insid­i­ous rela­tion­ship, advanc­ing the polit­i­cal, eco­nomic and social goals of the forces com­pris­ing it. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the allo­ca­tion of Iraqi petro­leum rights, the broad­cast notes that they will be going, in part, to the Hunt Oil Com­pany of Bush asso­ciate Ray Hunt. Heir to ultra-rightwing bil­lion­aire H.L. Hunt, Ray Hunt sat on George W. Bush’s for­eign intel­li­gence advi­sory board, a posi­tion that gave him imme­di­ate access to the most sen­si­tive intel­li­gence doc­u­ments about Iraq and other mat­ters. In addi­tion to the Hunt fam­ily, the Bushes count the pow­er­ful Bin Laden fam­ily among their asso­ciates. A dom­i­nant ele­ment of the Saudi power elite, the Bin Ladens have always dis­claimed any involve­ment with the activ­i­ties of Osama. Evi­dence to the con­trary has gen­er­ated lit­i­ga­tion against the Saudi Bin­ladin Group, the family’s pri­mary com­mer­cial entity. Turn­ing to the sub­ject of Semyon Mogile­vich, a pow­er­ful Russ­ian orga­nized crime fig­ure, the broad­cast notes that, in addi­tion to pur­chas­ing and oper­at­ing the Hun­gar­ian arms indus­try, traf­fick­ing in nuclear mate­ri­als and work­ing with Islamist ter­ror­ists, Mogile­vich works with the BND, Ger­man intel­li­gence. Another lumi­nary to be found in Mogilevich’s cor­ner is William Ses­sions, for­mer direc­tor of the FBI. Bar­gain­ing for Mogile­vich on pend­ing crim­i­nal charges in the U.S., Ses­sions has offered infor­ma­tion on Islamist ter­ror­ism in exchange for leniency. Also in Mogilevich’s cor­ner is the lob­by­ing firm of GOP heavy­weights Haley Bar­bour and Lanny Grif­fith, which has rep­re­sented and done busi­ness with the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Bank Al Taqwa and the Russ­ian con­glom­er­ate Alfa, itself linked to Islamists, Russ­ian orga­nized crime, the petro­leum indus­try and the Under­ground Reich. In addi­tion to the Bin Ladens, another pow­er­ful Saudi appar­ently involved with financ­ing Al Qaeda and other Islamist ter­ror­ist groups is Yassin Qadi, a major fun­der of the Ptech firm. Deeply involved with Islamist ele­ments in Turkey, Qadi has used those con­nec­tions to evade sanc­tions against him. After review­ing the strong rela­tion­ship between Al Taqwa’s Achmed Huber, the Turk­ish Islamist party and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Erbakan, the broad­cast notes the vir­u­lent anti-Semitism freely dis­sem­i­nated by Erbakan and oth­ers of his ilk. Far from being a rel­a­tively mar­ginal indi­vid­ual, 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta has, as Mr. Emory likes to say, more con­nec­tions than a switch­board. Listed as pres­i­dent of a Florida com­pany, Atta’s fel­low offi­cers include a key Moroc­can diplo­matic and com­mer­cial oper­a­tive and the Turk­ish naval attaché in Wash­ing­ton. Another of Atta’s south Florida asso­ciates was Ger­man national Wolf­gang Bohringer, per­sonal pilot for Czech crim­i­nal Vik­tor Kozeny and the son of the head of the Ger­man branch of the Sev­enth Day Adven­tist Church. Con­clud­ing with dis­cus­sion of the col­lab­o­ra­tion of the Ger­man Sev­enth Day Adven­tist estab­lish­ment with the Third Reich, the broad­cast under­scores the pos­si­bil­ity that the col­lab­o­ra­tion may have extended in to the post­war, under­ground phase of the Third Reich’s exis­tence, and that this may have fig­ured into the 9/11 operation.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the rela­tion­ship between the Hunt fam­ily and Ali bin Musalim, who man­aged the Al Qaeda account at bank Al Taqwa; review of the appar­ent involve­ment of the Bin Laden family’s SICO firm with the 9/11 attacks; review of the con­nec­tions between the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Bank Al Taqwa, the Repub­li­can Party and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion; review of the Qadi-financed Ptech’s devel­op­ment of threat-assessment soft­ware archi­tec­ture for the Air Force, the FAA and NORAD; review of whistle­blower Sibel Edmonds’ alle­ga­tions of Turk­ish links to an Islamist terrorist/drug traf­fick­ing network.

1. Begin­ning with an inter­est­ing con­nec­tion between the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, the pow­er­ful Hunt fam­ily of Texas and events in the Mid­dle East, the pro­gram notes that Hunt Oil and its chief Ray Hunt have reached accom­mo­da­tion with the Iraqi Kurds to develop and mar­ket oil from Kur­dish ter­ri­tory. In addi­tion to the fact that this frac­tures the frag­ile agree­ment among the var­i­ous eth­nic fac­tions in Iraq to share the oil wealth of that region, it raises inter­est­ing ques­tions about the Bush/Hunt rela­tion­ship. Ray Hunt—head of Hunt Oil and heir to H.L. Hunt—sits on Bush’s for­eign intel­li­gence advi­sory board and was there­fore privy to the most inti­mate intel­li­gence plan­ning and doc­u­ments. Mr. Emory notes in this con­text that the al Qaeda’s account at Bank Al Taqwa was man­aged by Ali bin Musalim, who con­spired with the Hunt fam­ily to cor­ner the world’s sil­ver mar­ket in the 1980’s. (For more about the al Qaeda account at Al Taqwa, the bin Musalim/Hunt con­nec­tion and the Under­ground Reich con­nec­tions of the Hunt fam­ily, see FTR#’s 461, 513, 556.) “An arti­cle in tomorrow’s Times reports that the long-negotiated com­pro­mise which seemed to be lead­ing towards an Iraqi oil law — a key ‘progress’ bench­mark — has appar­ently col­lapsed. All gone down the drain. The story though con­nects up with another one we told you about just a cou­ple days ago — the deci­sion of the Kur­dis­tan regional gov­ern­ment to sign an oil explo­ration deal with Dallas-based Hunt Oil, run by Mr. Ray L. Hunt. The Shia and Sunni lead­ers believe the Kurds are opt­ing for a sort of oil seces­sion that puts them out­side the whole con­cept of a law to share the country’s oil resources. And the Hunt deal is appar­ently the straw that broke the camel’s back, shall we say. But remem­ber, Hunt, in addi­tion to being the son of leg­endary Texas John Birch Soci­ety extrem­ist H.L. Hunt, is also a pal of the president’s. Indeed, Pres­i­dent Bush has twice appointed Hunt to his For­eign Intel­li­gence Advi­sory Board. So while the pres­i­dent is striv­ing to get the Iraqis to meet these bench­marks one of his own pals — and more impor­tantly, polit­i­cal appointees — is busy help­ing to tear the whole thing apart.”
(“Oil Bud­dies” by Josh Mar­shall; TPM Muck­racker; 9/13/2007.)

2. The orig­i­nal New York Times arti­cle alluded to the in blog above can be found in its entirety in the “Sup­ple­men­tal” sec­tion.
(“Com­pro­mise on Oil Law in Iraq Seems to Be Col­laps­ing” by James Glanz; The New York Times; 9/13/2007.)

3. In response to alle­ga­tions in one of the many law­suits stem­ming from 9/11, the Saudi Bin­ladin Group has denied involve­ment with the attacks and with al Qaeda. (To exam­ine evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries sug­gest­ing that SICO–the Euro­pean hold­ing com­pany for SBG and the Bin Laden family–was com­plicit with the attacks, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 498, 499.) “The Saudi Bin­ladin Group is not liable for the Sept. 11 attacks, attor­neys for the multi­na­tional engi­neer­ing firm wrote that in 1993, the ter­ror­ist mas­ter­mind was forced out as a share­holder in two com­pa­nies his fam­ily owns. The com­pany filed the defense papers late Fri­day in U.S. Dis­trict Court in answer to claims brought by rep­re­sen­ta­tives, sur­vivors and insur­ance car­ri­ers of the vic­tims. The plain­tiffs, who seek bil­lions of dol­lars in dam­ages, allege ‘The Saudi Bin­ladin Group is not liable for the Sept. 11 attacks, attor­neys for the multi­na­tional engi­neer­ing firm claim, because it made Osama bin Laden sur­ren­der his stake in the com­pany 14 years ago. Respond­ing in fed­eral court to law­suits over the attacks, the lawyers the Saudi Bin­ladin Group, along with numer­ous banks, char­i­ties and indi­vid­u­als world­wide, pro­vided mate­r­ial sup­port and assis­tance to al-Qaida prior to the attacks. . . .”
(“Bin­ladin Group: Not Liable for 9/11” by Larry Neumeis­ter; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 9/4/2007; p. A5.)

4. In pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of the work of Daniel Hop­sicker, we have exam­ined the asso­ci­a­tion between East­ern Euro­pean orga­nized fig­ures and the milieu of Mohamed Atta. In par­tic­u­lar, Czech Repub­lic orga­nized crime king­pin Vik­tor Kozeny main­tained a close rela­tion­ship with Wolf­gang Bohringer, one of Atta’s Ger­man asso­ciates. Another denizen of the Czech crime scene is Semyon Mogile­vich, asso­ci­ated with Kozeny accord­ing to some sources. Mogile­vich has, as Mr. Emory likes to say, “more con­nec­tions than a switch­board.” His asso­ci­a­tion with Islamists and his nuclear traf­fick­ing has gar­nered him some pow­er­ful allies in the United States—more about that below. Of con­sid­er­able inter­est is the appar­ent asso­ci­a­tion between Mogile­vich and the BND—the Ger­man fed­eral intel­li­gence ser­vice and the suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion to the Rein­hard Gehlen Nazi spy out­fit. (For more about Gehlen, see—among other programs—FTR#558.) Note that the “vet­er­ans of the Afghanistan war” men­tioned in the arti­cle below may refer to Russ­ian vet­er­ans, not Islamists as Mr. Emory sur­mised. Mr. Emory has heard it alleged by knowl­edge­able sources that Mogile­vich does use Islamists as oper­a­tives. In two posh vil­las out­side the small town of Ricany, near Prague, one of the most dreaded mob fam­i­lies in the world sav­agely mur­ders its ter­ri­fied vic­tims. The mob’s young enforcers, trained by vet­er­ans of the Afghanistan war, are infa­mous for their extreme bru­tal­ity. Their quarry, usu­ally busi­ness­men who have balked at extor­tion demands, are repeat­edly stabbed and tor­tured, then muti­lated before they are butchered. The car­nage is so hideous that it has scared the day­lights out of com­pet­ing crime groups in the area. The tor­ture cham­bers are run by what inter­na­tional police offi­cials call the Red Mafia, a noto­ri­ous Russ­ian mob fam­ily that in only six years has become a nefar­i­ous global crime car­tel. Based in Budapest, it has key cen­ters in New York, Penn­syl­va­nia, South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, and as far away as New Zealand. The enig­matic leader of the Red Mafia is a 52-year-old Ukrainian-born Jew named Semion Mogile­vich. He is a shad­owy fig­ure known as the ‘Brainy Don’–he holds an eco­nom­ics degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Lvov–and until now, he has never been exposed by the media. But the Voice has obtained hun­dreds of pages of clas­si­fied FBI and Israeli intel­li­gence doc­u­ments from August 1996, and these documents–as well as recent inter­views with a key crim­i­nal asso­ciate and with dozens of law enforce­ment sources here and abroad–describe him as some­one who has become a grave threat to the sta­bil­ity of Israel and East­ern Europe. . . . Alle­ga­tions of Mogilevich’s dev­il­ish array of crim­i­nal activ­i­ties are exten­sively detailed in the reports: The FBI and Israeli intel­li­gence assert that he traf­fics in nuclear mate­ri­als, drugs, pros­ti­tutes, pre­cious gems, and stolen art. His con­tract hit squads oper­ate in the U.S. and Europe. He con­trols every­thing that goes in and out of Moscow’s Shereme­tyevo Inter­na­tional Air­port, a ‘smug­glers’ par­adise,’ says Elson. Mogile­vich bought a bank­rupt air­line in a for­mer Cen­tral Asian Soviet repub­lic for mil­lions of dol­lars in cash so he could haul heroin out of the Golden Tri­an­gle. Most wor­ri­some to U.S. author­i­ties is Mogilevich’s appar­ently legal pur­chase of vir­tu­ally the entire Hun­gar­ian arma­ments indus­try, jeop­ar­diz­ing regional secu­rity, NATO, and the war against ter­ror­ism. In one typ­i­cal crim­i­nal deal, Mogile­vich and two Moscow-based gang­sters sold $20 mil­lion worth of pil­fered War­saw Pact weapons from East Ger­many, includ­ing ground-to-air mis­siles and 12 armored troop car­ri­ers, accord­ing to the clas­si­fied Israeli and FBI doc­u­ments. The buyer was Iran, says a top-level U.S. Cus­toms offi­cial who requested anonymity. . . . To the con­ster­na­tion of inter­na­tional law enforce­ment offi­cials, Mogile­vich began to legally pur­chase much of Hungary’s arms indus­try. . . . On April 28, the Ger­man national tele­vi­sion net­work ZDF reported that the BND (the Ger­man intel­li­gence agency) had entered into a secret con­tract with Mogile­vich to pro­vide infor­ma­tion on the Russ­ian mob. The charges were made by sev­eral sources, includ­ing Pierre Delilez, a highly regarded Bel­gium police inves­ti­ga­tor who spe­cial­izes in Russ­ian Orga­nized Crime. Because of this deal with the BND, police in Bel­gium, Ger­many, and Aus­tria have com­plained that it is now impos­si­ble to inves­ti­gate the ‘Brainy Don.’ . . .”
(“The Most Dan­ger­ous Mob­ster in the World” by Robert I Fried­man; Vil­lage Voice; 5/20–26/1998.)

5. Among those run­ning inter­fer­ence for Mogile­vich are for­mer FBI direc­tor William Ses­sions and the con­sult­ing firm of Mis­sis­sippi gov­er­nor Haley Bar­bour. Bar­bour main­tains a num­ber of inter­est­ing clients and asso­ciates, includ­ing ele­ments asso­ci­ated with the Al Taqwa net­work and the Alfa Group. (For more about these con­nec­tions, see FTR#’s 438, 573.) “For­mer Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion direc­tor William Ses­sions once con­demned Russia’s ris­ing mafia. ‘We can beat orga­nized crime,’ he told a Moscow secu­rity con­fer­ence in 1997. Today, Mr. Ses­sions is a lawyer for one of the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted’: Semyon Mogile­vich, a Ukraine-born Russ­ian whom the FBI says is one of Russia’s most pow­er­ful organized-crime fig­ures. Mr. Ses­sions is try­ing to nego­ti­ate a deal with the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice for his client, who is charged with rack­e­teer­ing and is a key fig­ure in a sep­a­rate Jus­tice Depart­ment probe of energy deals between Rus­sia and Ukraine. . . . In 2004, for instance, a United King­dom shell com­pany called Foru­per Ltd., which had no assets or employ­ees, paid Bar­bour Grif­fith $820,000. Foru­per was estab­lished by an attor­ney who struc­tured the natural-gas deals being inves­ti­gated by the U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment. Pros­e­cu­tors are inves­ti­gat­ing whether there are ties between the attor­ney who set up Foru­per and Mr. Mogile­vich, Mr. Sessions’s client. In its fil­ings, Bar­bour Grif­fith said the fees were for ‘pro­mo­tion of greater coop­er­a­tion and finan­cial ties between East­ern Europe and the West.’ . . . In 2002 and 2003, a group called ‘Friends of Ukraine’ paid Bar­bour Grif­fith $320,000. Tax records show that Friends of Ukraine, which no longer exists, was head­quar­tered at Bar­bour Griffith’s own office in Wash­ing­ton. The group’s chair­man was firm part­ner Lanny Grif­fith. Mr. Grif­fith said in an email that the firm as a pol­icy doesn’t dis­cuss client mat­ters but added that Bar­bour Grif­fith ‘has been scrupu­lous in our com­pli­ance’ with laws gov­ern­ing the dis­clo­sure of lob­by­ing clients. . . . Mr. Sessions’s client, Mr. Mogile­vich, is accused in a 45-count rack­e­teer­ing and money-laundering indict­ment in Philadel­phia of mas­ter­mind­ing an elab­o­rate stock fraud using a web of shell com­pa­nies in Europe. The Jus­tice Depart­ment also is inves­ti­gat­ing whether there are any ties between Mr. Mogile­vich and a recent series of billion-dollar natural-gas deals between Russ­ian gas giant OAO Gazprom and Ukraine, peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter said. The probe is being led by the Jus­tice Department’s Orga­nized Crime and Rack­e­teer­ing Sec­tion. Accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter, Mr. Ses­sions recently approached for­mer col­leagues at Jus­tice with an unusual offer: Mr. Mogile­vich would pro­vide the U.S. with intel­li­gence on Islamist ter­ror­ism if pros­e­cu­tors opened nego­ti­a­tions to resolve his legal prob­lems in the U.S. Fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors rejected that offer, lawyers and oth­ers famil­iar with the mat­ter said. . . .”
(“How Lob­by­ists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Wash­ing­ton” by Glenn R. Simp­son and Mary Jacoby; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/17/007; pp. A1-A16.)

6. Next, the pro­gram turns to the sub­ject of Yassin Qadi, a Saudi mag­nate long known to have funded Islamist ter­ror­ism. In addi­tion to hav­ing con­tributed directly to Islamic char­i­ties that sup­port Al Qaeda and other Islamist ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, Qadi helped to finance Ptech, a high tech firm that devel­oped the threat-assessment soft­ware archi­tec­ture for—get this—the Air Force, the FAA, NORAD and the Depart­ment of Energy (that man­ages nuclear power plants). In addi­tion to Qadi, Ptech has been financed by and directed by peo­ple asso­ci­ated with Al Qaeda, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the ele­ments busted in the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. (For more about Qadi, Ptech and Oper­a­tion Green Quest, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 462, 464, 467.) Alarm­ingly, Qadi also has close con­nec­tions with the “mod­er­ate” Islamist estab­lish­ment in Turkey. “Yassin Qadi is a well-known mul­ti­mil­lion­aire, founder of a large super­mar­ket chain here and a close friend of the Turk­ish pre­mier. ‘I trust him the same way I trust my father,’ Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan said on national tele­vi­sion last year. But the Saudi busi­ness­man also is a major financier of Islamic ter­ror­ism with close busi­ness asso­ciates who are mem­bers of Al Qaeda, accord­ing to the U.S. Trea­sury and the United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil. At Washington’s request, the asset freeze has largely crip­pled Mr Qadi’s inter­na­tional busi­ness empire. But pre­vi­ously undis­closed records show he has man­aged to free up mil­lions of dol­lars of hold­ings in Turkey, in appar­ent vio­la­tion of the Secu­rity Coun­cil sanc­tions and with­out incur­ring pun­ish­ment by Turk­ish author­i­ties. The case of Mr. Qadi shows the chal­lenges Wash­ing­ton faces in sep­a­rat­ing friend from foe in the Islamic world. The records detail­ing his busi­ness activ­i­ties also sug­gest how easy it can be to skirt sanc­tions designed to restrict fund­ing of ter­ror­ism, espe­cially for well-connected fig­ures. Mr. Qadi’s friend­ship with the prime min­is­ter also plays into the grow­ing debate in Turkey over the role of Islam in a sec­u­lar soci­ety. Turkey’s Par­lia­ment for the first time Tues­day elected a politi­cian with an Islamist back­ground, For­eign Min­is­ter Abdul­lah Gul, to the pres­i­dency. . . .”
(“Well Con­nected, a Saudi Mogul Skirts Sanc­tions” by Glenn R. Simp­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 8/29/2007.)

7. “ . . .Since com­ing to power in 1972, the Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Party has run one of the most pro-Western gov­ern­ments to rule Turkey. It has encour­aged a Western-style mar­ket econ­omy and made painful over­hauls in a bid to join the Euro­pean Union. The party just won an over­whelm­ing new man­date in par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. But ten­sions are likely to per­sist. U.S. diplo­mats lodged strong objec­tions last year when the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment inter­vened in Turk­ish courts to try to lift the freeze on Mr. Qadi’s assets, accord­ing to U.S. offi­cials. The Turk­ish gov­ern­ment reversed course. . . .” (Idem.)

8. More about Qadi’s Turk­ish Islamist ties: “ . . . Mr. Qadi, whose busi­ness empire is based mostly in Saudi Ara­bia, is a long­time part­ner of Turk­ish busi­ness­man Cuneyd Zapsu, as well as other key Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment fig­ures. Over the past year, Turk­ish media and oppo­si­tion lead­ers have dis­closed that Turkey’s finan­cial police inves­ti­gated the activ­i­ties of Mr. Qadi and alleged Al Qaeda sup­port­ers in Turkey. That led them to delve into the rela­tion­ships of Mr. Qadi and other Saudis with senior Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment fig­ures, includ­ing Mr. Erdo­gan. Among Mr. Qadi’s largest Turk­ish invest­ments is the discount-supermarket chain BIM, one of Turkey’s biggest com­pa­nies, with more than 1,500 out­lets and annual sales of about $1.5 bil­lion. BIM, which trades on the Istan­bul Stock Exchange, is a dis­counter mod­eled in part on Wal-Mart and other low-price chains. Mr. Zapsu also was among BIM’s found­ing part­ners. Mr. Zapsu, who in 2001 helped Mr. Erdo­gan found the Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Party, also sup­ported an Islamic char­ity Mr. Qadi founded that is at the cen­ter of the U.S. and Secu­rity Coun­cil deci­sion to freeze the Saudi businessman’s assets. A Turk­ish financial-police report seen by The Wall Street Jour­nal found that in the 1990s, Mr. Zapsu and his mother gave $300,000 to Mr. Qadi’s Muwafaq char­ity, which U.S. offi­cials labeled a front for Al Qaeda shortly after 9/11. Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency reports say Muwafaq, now defunct, spe­cial­ized in pur­chas­ing and smug­gling arms for Islamic rad­i­cals. The U.S. government’s spe­cial com­mis­sion on the Sept. 11, 2001, attack and law-enforcement agen­cies have cited Saudi-backed Islamic char­i­ties as a pri­mary source of fund­ing for Al Qaeda. Mr. Zapsu also has busi­ness ties to two Islamic banks funded with Saudi cap­i­tal — Dal­lah Al Baraka and Dar Al Mal Al Islam — that were accused of sup­port­ing Al Qaeda in civil suits filed by fam­i­lies of Sept. 11 vic­tims in the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York. Both defen­dants adamantly deny the alle­ga­tions, and the court dis­missed claims against Al Baraka. Mr. Zapsu said in an email that his busi­ness and per­sonal rela­tion­ships with Mr. Qadi were inves­ti­gated by Turk­ish police. He said pros­e­cu­tors decided last year ‘that there was no rea­son for a court case and no wrong­do­ing.’ Mr. Zapsu said he sold his inter­est in BIM in 2003 and no longer is involved with the com­pany. . . .” (Idem.)

9. The pro­gram high­lights Qadi asso­ciate (and Prime Min­is­ter Erdo­gan men­tor) Necmet­tin Erbakan, his Refah party and its rela­tion­ship to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The pro­gram high­lights Erbakan’s rela­tion­ship with Al Taqwa’s Ahmed Huber. It was Huber’s rela­tion­ship with Erbakan that pre­cip­i­tated Huber’s ascen­sion to his posi­tion as a direc­tor of Al Taqwa! (For more about Huber and Al Taqwa, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 343, 352, 354, 356, 357, 454, 455, 456, 537.) Speak­ing of the décor of Huber’s res­i­dence: “A sec­ond pho­to­graph, in which Hitler is talk­ing with Himm­ler, hangs next to those of Necmet­tin Erbakan and Jean-Marie Le Pen [leader of the fas­cist National Front]. Erbakan, head of the Turk­ish Islamist party, Refah, turned to Achmed Huber for an intro­duc­tion to the chief of the French party of the far right. Exit­ing from the meet­ing (which took place in Sep­tem­ber 1995) Huber’s two friends sup­pos­edly stated that they ‘share the same view of the world’ and expressed ‘their com­mon desire to work together to remove the last racist obsta­cles that still pre­vent the union of the Islamist move­ment with the national right of Europe.’ Lastly, above the desk is dis­played a poster of the imam Khome­ini; the meet­ing ‘changed my life,’ Huber says, with stars in his eyes. For years, after the Fed­eral Palace in Bern, Ahmed Huber pub­lished a Euro­pean press review for the Iran­ian lead­ers, then for the Turk­ish Refah. Since the for­mer lacked finan­cial means, Huber chose to put his efforts to the ser­vice of the lat­ter. An out­post of the Turk­ish Mus­lim Broth­ers, Refah thus became Huber’s prin­ci­pal employer; and it was through the inter­me­di­ary of the Turk­ish Islamist party that this for­mer par­lia­men­tary cor­re­spon­dent became a share­holder in the bank Al Taqwa.”
(Dol­lars for Ter­ror; Richard Labeviere; Algora Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 2000; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; p. 142.)

10. For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Erbakan is indeed a ripe one. It is not sur­pris­ing that he is asso­ci­ated with a Mus­lim Nazi like Ahmed Huber. A sam­ple of Erbakan’s received wis­dom: “Who recently said: ‘These Jews started 19 Cru­sades. The 19th was World War I. Why? Only to build Israel.’ Some holdover Nazi? Hardly. It was for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Necmet­tin Erbakan of Turkey, a NATO ally. He went on to claim that the Jews — whom he refers to as ‘bac­te­ria’ — con­trolled China, India and Japan, and ran the United States. . . .”
(“Look­ing for a Scape­goat” by Vic­tor Davis Han­son; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 9/13/2007; p. B7.)

11. Return­ing to the sub­ject of Daniel Hopsicker’s research into the activ­i­ties of 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta’s activ­i­ties in South Florida, the pro­gram notes that Atta was listed as the pres­i­dent of a com­pany in Orlando! Among his part­ners in this enter­prise were a Moroc­can national closely con­nected to the Moroc­can embassy in Wash­ing­ton D.C. “Gov­ern­ment records in Florida reveal that Mohamed Atta was the Pres­i­dent of a com­pany in Orlando with a busi­ness part­ner whose web of dummy shell com­pa­nies appear char­ac­ter­is­tic of the type used in ter­ror­ist financ­ing and illicit money laun­der­ing, the Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews has learned. One day after the 9/11 Com­mis­sion Report says the ter­ror­ist ring­leader fin­ished mak­ing with­drawals in Vir­ginia Beach, VA, total­ing $18,000 from a Sun­Trust Bank account, on April 5th, 2001 Has­san Erroudani, an Orlando man with close ties to the Moroc­can Embassy in Wash­ing­ton D.C., filed incor­po­ra­tion papers with the state of Florida list­ing the Pres­i­dent of KARAM LLC as ‘Mohamed Atta.’ The doc­u­ment lists an address for ‘Pres­i­dent’ Atta in Mar­seilles, France, which can be traced to a graphic design firm there. (Once again, Amanda Keller’s tes­ti­mony is vin­di­cated. Atta told her he was French.) Incor­po­ra­tion doc­u­ments give the names of the KARAM LLC’s offi­cers as Has­san Erroudani, Mohamed Atta, and Jamal Erroudani. Karam LLC was delisted in 2002 by the state of Florida for fail­ing to file an annual report. When the firm filed for rein­state­ment on Jan­u­ary 13, 2003, it once again listed ‘Mohamed Atta’ as a cor­po­rate offi­cer. But Atta had now been demoted to Com­pany Sec­re­tary. And his address has changed as well. Not to Par­adise, or Vir­gin City, but Orlando, a long way from heaven, accord­ing to those who’ve been there. Atta’s cur­rent address, if Florida Divi­sion of Cor­po­rate Records can be believed, is 4124 West Colo­nial Dr, Orlando, FL., the loca­tion of an Inter­na­tional House of Pan­cakes.”
(“Mohamed Atta, Florida Entre­pre­neur” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad Cow Morn­ing News; 6/12/2007.)

12. Erroudani’s links to the Moroc­can diplo­matic estab­lish­ment are pro­found. “Has­san Erroudani has close ties with the Moroc­can Embassy in Wash­ing­ton D.C. He is also the Pres­i­dent of the Moroccan-American Cham­ber of Com­merce. More­over Florida records show Erroudani is also busi­ness part­ners, in a com­pany called JMH INVESTMENT GROUP, with Mohammed Ariad, the eco­nomic coun­selor of the Moroc­can Embassy in Wash­ing­ton D.C. Atta was, of course, in Orlando on numer­ous occa­sions. For exam­ple, his car, a red 1989 Pon­tiac Grand Prix two-door coupe, was said to have been seen last in down­town Orlando. Still, the idea that the ‘Mohamed Atta’ who flew Flight 11 into the Twin Tow­ers on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 had been listed as a cor­po­rate offi­cer in a Florida com­pany, with­out it hav­ing become pub­lic knowl­edge by now, seemed a tad unlikely, per­haps even a lit­tle far-fetched. At least, it did, until after we spoke with KARAM LLC prin­ci­pal and founder Has­san Erroudani, who we reached by phone at his Orlando home. We hadn’t counted on either Erroudani’s flat refusal to answer any ques­tions about the ‘Mohamed Atta’ listed as an offi­cer in his com­pany, or his tone of evi­dent hos­til­ity. Trust us... We had been noth­ing if not polite, even to the point of sug­gest­ing a rea­son for why the whole thing might be just a big mis­un­der­stand­ing... ‘Was it per­haps just a case of two dif­fer­ent men with sim­i­lar names?’ we asked help­fully. Erroudani’s force­ful response: ‘I don’t have any­thing to say about that.’ And then he hung up. Why would some­one do that... unless they pos­sess what is com­monly known as guilty knowl­edge? His behav­ior seemed both inex­plic­a­ble and sus­pi­cious.” (Idem.)

13. Another of Atta’s com­pa­tri­ots in the Florida com­pany was the Turk­ish Naval Attache from Wash­ing­ton D.C. As Hop­sicker notes, a sig­nif­i­cant Turk­ish drug trafficking/Islamist con­nec­tion was exposed by whistle­blower Sibel Edmonds. Taken in com­bi­na­tion with Yassin Al Qadi’s Turkish/Islamist ties and the pro­found links between for­mer Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Erbakan’s links to the Al Taqwa net­work, the Oner/Atta con­nec­tion augurs poorly for the future. Will the only Mus­lim coun­try in NATO go Islamist, despite the Turk­ish military’s avowed sec­u­lar­ism? “Among the red flags denot­ing Has­san Erroudani’s var­i­ous enter­prises which we never got the oppor­tu­nity to ques­tion him about: He ran a wire trans­fer ser­vice called Rapid Cash from out of his home. (Atta and Mar­wan made fre­quent use of wire ser­vices to get money.) He owned a com­pany, Sea­west Car Import/Export, which appears to be in the busi­ness of export­ing lux­ury vehi­cles to the Mid­dle East. One of the cor­po­rate offi­cer in Sea­west, until recently, was one ‘Murat Oner.’ Lt Cdr Murat Oner is the Turk­ish Embassy’s Naval Attaché in Wash­ing­ton. (Recall whistle­blower Sibel Edmonds long and coura­geous strug­gle to tell Amer­ica what she knows about, among other things, Turk­ish influ­ence in the inter­na­tional drug trade.) . . .” (Idem.)

14. Con­clud­ing with infor­ma­tion sup­ple­ment­ing Daniel Hopsicker’s infor­ma­tion about Atta asso­ciate Wolf­gang Bohringer, the pro­gram high­lights the close col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Sev­enth Day Adven­tist Church and Nazi Ger­many. Bohringer’s father headed the Sev­enth Day Adven­tist denom­i­na­tion in Ger­many, as well as being a key mem­ber of the Fly­ing Club of Munich. This infor­ma­tion is pre­sented in the con­text of the well-documented and suc­cess­ful attempts by the Nazis to go under­ground after their mil­i­tary defeat. Var­i­ous insti­tu­tions were used as repos­i­to­ries for clan­des­tine Third Reich oper­a­tives, pos­si­bly includ­ing the Sev­enth Day Adven­tist denom­i­na­tion in Ger­many. (For more about the Nazis’ plans to go under­ground, see Kurt Reiss’s book The Nazis Go Under­ground avail­able for down­load for free on this web­site. More about these plans is avail­able in FTR#180.) “Nazi Ger­many was a hor­ri­ble place for small denom­i­na­tional churches because there was no reli­gious lib­erty. One small denom­i­na­tion that sur­vived was the Seventh-day Adven­tist denom­i­na­tion. When Adolf Hitler rose to power in Ger­many, the Ger­man Seventh-day Adven­tist denom­i­na­tion (here­after referred to as Adven­tists) believed it was time for a strong leader in Ger­many. Hitler seemed to be the best can­di­date because of ‘his per­sonal ded­i­ca­tion and his absti­nence from tea, cof­fee, alco­hol and meat, prac­tices shared by the Adven­tists, [there­fore] he was wel­comed as a savior.’[1] I hope to point out, because of the will­ing­ness to com­pro­mise the decent of the Ger­man Adven­tist denom­i­na­tion from the moral issues listed below, to where they ended at the end of World War II. They ended in com­pro­mise, loss of per­sonal integrity, and denom­i­na­tional integrity, split­ting of the denom­i­na­tion and were racially dam­aged as a Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion because they were unable to hold fast to the tenets of their beliefs. They tied the denom­i­na­tion to the Ger­man State giv­ing up their reli­gious free­dom in attempt to sur­vive through com­pro­mises. This posi­tion of com­pro­mise brought shame upon the Ger­man denom­i­na­tion as well as the world­wide denom­i­na­tion after the end of World War II. . . .”
(“Sev­enth Day Adven­tists” by Cor­rie Schroder.)

15. “ . . . The Seventh-day Adven­tists believe in reli­gious lib­erty, but instead of voic­ing their out­rage over the per­se­cu­tion of the Reform­ers and the Jews, the Adven­tist lead­ers decided to take action against these two groups. The Adven­tist lead­ers ‘issued direc­tives to pre­vent the Reform­ers from join­ing the Adven­tist Church.’[31] And they expelled Adven­tists who had a Jew­ish back­ground from the Church.[32] The Adven­tists were unwill­ing to even pro­tect their own mem­bers if they thought the Nazi gov­ern­ment would dis­ap­prove. The state was able to con­trol the Church because there was no reli­gious lib­erty. . . .” (Idem.)

16. “ . . . The Adven­tists believed that along with their wel­fare pro­gram, their health ideals were lead­ing the way for a new Ger­many. Adolf Minck, soon to be pres­i­dent of the Ger­man Adven­tist Church, said, ‘We are not unpre­pared for the new order. After all, we have helped pre­pare the way for it, and helped to bring it about.’[40] The prob­lem with sup­port­ing the Nazi gov­ern­ment in their health pro­gram was the government’s belief in the prin­ci­ples of Dar­win­ism. The Adven­tists denom­i­na­tional stance was against Darwin’s prin­ci­ples. The Ger­man Adven­tists sac­ri­ficed this prin­ci­ple for the Nazi gov­ern­ment. In order to gain favor with the Nazi gov­ern­ment, the Adven­tists changed what was writ­ten in their pub­li­ca­tions and reformed their health mes­sage. The Adven­tists ‘fre­quently print[ed] neg­a­tive com­ments about the Jews.’[41] They also tried to show that even though the Adven­tists teach­ings about the Sab­bath seemed Jew­ish, they were not Jewish.[42] The Adven­tists also believed in the ster­il­iza­tion pro­gram. Direct state­ments and the reprint­ing of non-Adventist arti­cles showed their sup­port for sterilization.[43] . . .” (Idem.)

17. The Sev­enth Day Adven­tist Church in Ger­many con­tin­ued to be a repos­i­tory for unre­con­structed Nazis sev­eral years after the war. Did this sit­u­a­tion per­sist for a longer period of time? Are there still key Under­ground Reich oper­a­tives in the Sev­enth Day Adven­tist Church? Is that the rea­son under­ly­ing the Bohringer/Atta asso­ci­a­tion? “ . . . The sur­vival of the church was what was impor­tant to the Ger­man Adven­tist lead­ers, and in order to sur­vive they needed to com­pro­mise. Only in May 1948, did the Gen­eral Con­fer­ence take a closer look at the Ger­man Adven­tists’ actions dur­ing the Nazi regime. The rea­son why the Gen­eral Con­fer­ence took inter­est was because of a let­ter writ­ten by Major J.C. Thomp­son, chief of the Reli­gious Affairs Sec­tion of the Amer­i­can Mil­i­tary Gov­ern­ment in Berlin.[78] The let­ter wanted to know why the Adven­tists had not removed all the Nazis from their lead­er­ship posi­tions within the denomination.[79] . . .” (Idem.)

18. 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.” In addi­tion, there will soon be a doc­u­men­tary about Mr. Emory, titled “The Anti-Fascist.” For more about this project, visit TheAntiFascist.com.