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The pro­gram begins with a look at behind-the-scenes machi­na­tions of Prince Ban­dar of Saudi Arabia—the for­mer Saudi ambas­sador to the United States. Ban­dar is so close to the Bush fam­ily, that he has been nick­named “Ban­dar Bush.” When it came to light that Ban­dar had worked with Tony Blair to cover-up the ongo­ing scan­dal involv­ing a British aero­space con­trac­tor and a Saudi slush fund used to bribe West­ern cor­po­ra­tions and indi­vid­u­als, Ban­dar threat­ened Britain with a cut-off in intel­li­gence, assur­ing another 7/7. In this con­text, it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the behav­ior Ban­dar and other Saudi lumi­nar­ies demon­strated in this coun­try in the after­math of 9/11. Were sim­i­lar threats made con­cern­ing the con­se­quences of a com­plete inves­ti­ga­tion into 9/11 and the Saudi com­plic­ity with it? Next, the pro­gram reviews some of the links of SICO to the events in and around the 9/11 attacks. The Geneva-based hold­ing com­pany for the fab­u­lously wealthy bin Laden family’s hold­ings, SICO is another player in the al-Yamamah slush-fund milieu. Mov­ing from the al-Yamamah milieu to the Repub­li­can Party of the United States, the pro­gram high­lights the fact that a for­mer GOP con­gress­man from Michi­gan has been indicted for assist­ing in the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism. The United States is not alone in expe­ri­enc­ing an Islam­o­fas­cist Fifth Column—British author­i­ties feel that Islamists have infil­trated essen­tial infra­struc­ture envi­ron­ments for the pur­pose of con­vey­ing vital and deadly intel­li­gence to ter­ror­ist ele­ments. An Amer­i­can Islamist may have com­mu­ni­cated intel­li­gence to insur­gent forces in Iraq, per­mit­ting the evac­u­a­tion of WMD tech­nol­ogy right under the noses of U.S. troops. Con­clud­ing with dis­cus­sion of the Iran­ian nuclear pro­gram, the broad­cast notes that Euro­pean intel­li­gence services—British in particular—do not agree with the U. S. National Intel­li­gence Esti­mate view that Iran aban­doned its WMD pro­gram sev­eral years ago.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of SICO direc­tor Bau­doin Dunand’s links to Nazi banker Fran­cois Genoud; review of pay­ments made by Prince Bandar’s wife to two of the hijack­ers that crashed into the Pen­ta­gon; spec­u­la­tion that Prince Ban­dar and/or other Saudis may have made threats against the United States if the 9/11 evi­den­tiary trail were prop­erly pur­sued; spec­u­la­tion that those threats may have given rise to the so-called 9/11 Truth Move­ment; review of the pro­found link of the GOP to indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions con­nected to Islamist financing.

1. The pro­gram begins with a look at behind-the-scenes machi­na­tions of Prince Ban­dar of Saudi Arabia—the for­mer Saudi ambas­sador to the United States. Ban­dar is so close to the Bush fam­ily, that he has been nick­named “Ban­dar Bush.” When it came to light that Ban­dar had worked with Tony Blair to cover-up the ongo­ing scan­dal involv­ing a British aero­space con­trac­tor and the al-Yamamah deal, Ban­dar threat­ened Britain with ter­ror­ism by threat­en­ing a cut-off in intel­li­gence, assur­ing another 7/7. In this con­text, it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the behav­ior Ban­dar and other Saudi lumi­nar­ies demon­strated in this coun­try in the after­math of 9/11. Were sim­i­lar threats made con­cern­ing the con­se­quences of a com­plete inves­ti­ga­tion into 9/11 and the Saudi com­plic­ity with it?! Note that Bandar’s wife had to leave the United States after it was revealed that she had made pay­ments to two of the hijack­ers. A seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tion into “Ban­dar Bush”, his wife and 9/11 would have uncov­ered decades of polit­i­cal intrigue and covert oper­a­tions by ele­ments of the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment under­writ­ten by the Saudis and the Safari Club milieu. Imag­ine the threats that Ban­dar must have made when THAT came to light! Is this why the so-called 9/11 “Truth” move­ment fan­ta­sizes and intones about “no plane” hit­ting the Pen­ta­gon? (For more about the Safari Club, see FTR#’s 522, 524. For more about Bandar’s wife and her pay­ments to the fam­i­lies of two hijack­ers, see FTR#’s 442, 447, 460. For more about Ban­dar, his accounts at the Riggs Bank and his involve­ment with decades of U.S. covert operations—see FTR#’s 461, 495, 517. One of Riggs Bank’s direc­tors is Jonathan Bush—President George W. Bush’s uncle.) “Saudi Arabia’s rulers threat­ened to make it eas­ier for ter­ror­ists to attack Lon­don unless cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tions into their arms deals were halted, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments revealed yes­ter­day. Pre­vi­ously secret files describe how inves­ti­ga­tors were told they faced ‘another 7/7’ and the loss of ‘British lives on British streets’ if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis car­ried out their threat to cut off intel­li­gence. Prince Ban­dar, the head of the Saudi national secu­rity coun­cil, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back infor­ma­tion about sui­cide bombers and ter­ror­ists. He faces accu­sa­tions that he him­self took more than £1bn in secret pay­ments from the arms com­pany BAE. He was accused in yesterday’s high court hear­ings of fly­ing to Lon­don in Decem­ber 2006 and utter­ing threats which made the prime min­is­ter, Tony Blair, force an end to the Seri­ous Fraud Office inves­ti­ga­tion into bribery alle­ga­tions involv­ing Ban­dar and his fam­ily. . . .”
(“BAE: Secret Papers Reveal Threats from Saudi Prince” by David Leigh and Rob Evans; The Guardian; 2/15/2008.)

2. Next, we review some of the links of SICO to the events in and around the 9/11 attacks. The Geneva-based hold­ing com­pany for the fab­u­lously wealthy bin Laden family’s hold­ings, SICO is another player in the al-Yamamah milieu. (For more about SICO and its rela­tion­ship to the 9/11 attacks, see FTR#’s 498, 499.) Note that Mahrous bin Laden, the head of SBG at the time of the 9/11 attacks, is any­thing but divorced from the milieu of Osama bin Laden. Mahrous par­tic­i­pated in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood seizure of the Great Mosque in Mecca in 1979. (For more about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 343, 455, 473, 537.) Note, also, that Bau­doin Dunand is a promi­nent direc­tor of SICO. Dunand is a pro­tégé of the late Nazi spy and banker Fran­cois Genoud. (For more about Genoud, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 453, 456.) “ . . . After study­ing in Eng­land in the 1970s, Mahrous struck up a friend­ship with mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­ers, a Syr­ian Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ist orga­ni­za­tion then in exile in Saudi Ara­bia. Mem­bers of this orga­ni­za­tion used bin Laden com­pany trucks to get weapons into the city of Mecca in 1979 when at least 500 dis­si­dents invaded and seized the Grand Mosque. The orga­ni­za­tion jus­ti­fied the attack by say­ing the Saudi regime had lost its legit­i­macy through ‘cor­rup­tion, osten­ta­tion and mind­less imi­ta­tion of the West’. All the men who took part in the attack were later beheaded in the squares of four Saudi cities but Mahrous was freed from prison after a period of deten­tion. Saudi intel­li­gence later said that the bin Ladens were the only peo­ple in pos­ses­sion of full maps of Mecca. It is believed that the bin Ladens’ close rela­tion­ship with the Saudi royal fam­ily saved Mahrous. . . . The Saudi Invest­ment Com­pany is chaired by Beat­rice Dufour, of Iran­ian ori­gin and sister-in-law of one of the bin Laden broth­ers, Yeslam. In 1983, her co-chairman, Bau­doin Dunand, rep­re­sented Swiss banker Fra­nois Genoud, who had helped finance Arab extrem­ists in Alge­ria and was on trial for par­tic­i­pa­tion in inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism. The board of direc­tors included mem­bers of the Shakarshi fam­ily, linked to a money-laundering scan­dal and drug-trafficking in Zurich. A mem­ber of the Shakarshi fam­ily was also a direc­tor of the SICO office in Lon­don. There have been alle­ga­tions that the Zurich com­pany was a CIA front used to finance Afghan resis­tance — in which bin Laden was a prime mover — dur­ing the Soviet occu­pa­tion of the coun­try. Yeslam bin Laden con­tin­ues to main­tain rela­tions with the Shakarshis. The bin Laden fam­ily — and Yeslam in par­tic­u­lar — have long– stand­ing links to Al Bilad, a London-Geneva com­pany used as part of the nego­ti­a­tions over the Anglo-Saudi Al Yamama arms-for-oil agree­ment, which was worth (pounds) 21.5 bil­lion. Present at the nego­ti­a­tions was the now dis­graced for­mer Tory min­is­ter Jonathan Aitken, sent by John Major to rep­re­sent the UK. Major claims he has no con­nec­tion to the bin Laden fam­ily, despite his links to them through his job as Euro­pean chair­man of the Car­lyle Group. Mark Thatcher was also involved in the Al Yamamah deal. . . . .”
(“Fam­ily Ties; The Bin Ladens” by Neil MacKay; The Sun­day Her­ald; 10/7/2001.)

3. A for­mer GOP con­gress­man from Michi­gan has been indicted for assist­ing in the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism. This is busi­ness as usual for the GOP, many of whose bright­est stars are directly con­nected to and/or lob­by­ing for ter­ror­ist financiers. (For more about this sub­ject, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 356, 454, 462, 464, 467, 515, 538.) “For­mer U.S. Con­gress­man Mark Deli Sil­jan­der (R-MI) was indicted Wednes­day for money laun­der­ing, con­spir­acy and obstruc­tion of jus­tice, in con­nec­tion with charges that a Mus­lim char­ity, the Islamic Amer­i­can Relief Agency (IARA), was involved in efforts to finance the Afghan jihad ter­ror­ist Gul­bud­din Hek­mat­yar. The IARA was named a spe­cially des­ig­nated global ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion by the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment in 2004. John F. Wood, U.S. Attor­ney for the West­ern Dis­trict of Mis­souri, declared: ‘An orga­ni­za­tion right here in the Amer­i­can heart­land allegedly sent funds to Pak­istan for the ben­e­fit of a spe­cially des­ig­nated global ter­ror­ist with ties to al-Qaeda and the Tal­iban…. The indict­ment also alleges that a for­mer con­gress­man engaged in money laun­der­ing and obstruc­tion of a fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tion in an effort to dis­guise IARA’s mis­use of tax­payer money that the gov­ern­ment had pro­vided for human­i­tar­ian pur­poses.’ Accord­ing to the indict­ment, the IARA sent around $130,000 to bank accounts con­trolled by its par­ent orga­ni­za­tion, the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), in Peshawar, Pak­istan, where the money went to Hekmatyar’s activ­i­ties. The ISRA’s head­quar­ters are in Khar­toum, Sudan, with the Colum­bia, Missouri-based IARA as its Amer­i­can office until it was shut down. Accord­ing to the Trea­sury Depart­ment, ‘IARA is for­merly affil­i­ated with Mak­tab Al-Khidamat (MK), which was co-founded and financed by UBL [Osama bin Laden] and is the pre­cur­sor orga­ni­za­tion of al Qaida.’ The IARA has also fun­neled money to Hamas. . . .”
(“A Con­gress­man for Jihad” by Robert Spender; FrontPageMagazine.com; 1/17/2008.)

4. British secu­rity forces have taken stock of the fact that Islamists and ele­ments sym­pa­thetic to their cause have infil­trated into sen­si­tive posi­tions in the UK, com­pris­ing a deadly Fifth Col­umn. (For more about the Islamist Fifth Col­umn in the U.S., see—among other programs—the broad­casts anno­tated in para­graph 3.) “Islamist extrem­ists have infil­trated Gov­ern­ment and key pub­lic util­i­ties to pass sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion to ter­ror­ists, the secu­rity ser­vices have warned. Counter-terrorism offi­cials say ‘insid­ers’ or their asso­ciates are almost cer­tainly work­ing ‘unde­tected’ in sen­si­tive posts and are actively sup­port­ing the activ­i­ties of extrem­ists. In some cases, life­long rela­tion­ships between friends or rel­a­tives are being exploited to obtain cru­cial infor­ma­tion from those in sen­si­tive posts. The devel­op­ment is detailed in intel­li­gence reports cir­cu­lated to the Home Office, police and White­hall offi­cials. The Lon­don Under­ground, Gatwick air­port and BT are cited as exam­ples of orga­ni­za­tions which have been tar­geted by indi­vid­u­als linked to ter­ror­ists. . . .”
(Revealed: Islamist extrem­ists have pen­e­trated the heart of Britain; Daily Mail; 7/8/07.)

5. There are indi­ca­tions that the Islamist Fifth Col­umn in the United States may very well have leaked infor­ma­tion about Saddam’s WMD’s to ele­ments in Iraq. That dis­clo­sure may well have led to the suc­cess­ful evac­u­a­tion of the WMD’s from Iraq. (For an indi­ca­tion of how deeply rooted the Fifth Col­umn in the United States is, see—among other programs—FTR#467.) “How the clas­si­fied mil­i­tary doc­u­ments from Iraq, which named the coor­di­nates of where the Army sus­pected weapons of mass destruc­tion to be hid­den, ended up in an Ara­bic translator’s apart­ment on Hoyt Street in Brook­lyn, is clear. Not likely to be known any­time soon is what, if any­thing, the army con­trac­tor did with the doc­u­ments. The U.S. attorney’s office in Brook­lyn, which is pros­e­cut­ing the case, appears to have lit­tle direct evi­dence that Noured­dine Malki passed infor­ma­tion on to the insur­gency, either dur­ing his time in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, or upon his return to Amer­ica in 2005. But it has raised the pos­si­bil­ity that he may have done so. The gov­ern­ment has said Malki reg­u­larly called phone num­bers con­nected to insur­gents and took bribes of at least $11,500 from Sunni tribal lead­ers. The gov­ern­ment, pros­e­cu­tors wrote in one court fil­ing, could ‘estab­lish that the defen­dant had an oppor­tu­nity to pro­vide stolen clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion to anti-coalition forces.’ . . .”
(“Mys­tery Deep­ens Over WMD Doc­u­ments” by Joseph Gold­stein; The New York Sun; 2/6/2008.)

6. For­eign intel­li­gence ser­vices har­bor seri­ous doubts about the accu­racy of a National Intel­li­gence Esti­mate that says that Iran is not attempt­ing to pro­duce nuclear weapons. The WMD sit­u­a­tion with regard to both Iran and Iraq will be dis­cussed at length in future broad­casts. “British spy chiefs have grave doubts that Iran has moth­balled its nuclear weapons pro­gramme, as a US intel­li­gence report claimed last week, and believe the CIA has been hood­winked by Teheran. Ana­lysts believe that Iran­ian staff, know­ing their phones were tapped, delib­er­ately gave mis­in­for­ma­tion. The tim­ing of the CIA report has also pro­voked fury in the British Gov­ern­ment, where offi­cials believe it has under­mined efforts to impose tough new sanc­tions on Iran and made an Israeli attack on its nuclear facil­i­ties more likely. . . .”
(“Iran ‘Hood­winked’ CIA over Nuclear Plans” by Tim Ship­man, Phillip Sher­well and Car­olynne Wheeler; Daily Tele­graph; 12/12/2007.)