Lis­ten: One Seg­ment

1. Fur­ther explor­ing the events of 9/11/2001, this broad­cast begins with dis­cus­sion of Laila Helms, the pub­lic rela­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Tal­iban in the Unit­ed States. Dis­cussed else­where, Ms. Helms is not the niece of for­mer CIA direc­tor Richard Helms, as alleged in an arti­cle cit­ed, but is mar­ried to Helms’ nephew. (“She Spoke for Tal­iban and Now Pays a Price” by Alessan­dra Stan­ley; New York Times; 11/27/2001; p. B6.)

2. Helms is described as “well con­nect­ed” and that appears to be an accu­rate assess­ment. (Idem.)

3. Among those who vouch for her are Milt Bear­den, the for­mer CIA sta­tion chief in Peshawar (Pak­istan) dur­ing the time that it served as the pri­ma­ry Amer­i­can base for oper­a­tions against the Sovi­ets. (Idem.)

4. In addi­tion, Ms. Helms was born into a fam­i­ly that served as min­is­ters under the for­mer king of Afghanistan. (Idem.)

5. She was also exec­u­tive direc­tor of Friends of Afghanistan, which gen­er­at­ed sup­port for the effort against the Sovi­ets. (Idem.)

6. In 1988, she and her hus­band moved to Bearden’s for­mer province of Peshawar. (Idem.) It does not seem unrea­son­able to won­der if “Friends of Afghanistan” may have been asso­ci­at­ed with the CIA.

7. Much of the broad­cast focus­es on Ali Mohamed, an Egypt­ian-born U.S. Army vet­er­an who was a dou­ble agent for Al Qae­da. (“Ali Mohamed Served in the U.S. Army—And Bin Laden’s Cir­cle” by Peter Wald­man, Ger­ald F. Seib, Jer­ry Markon, and Christo­pher Coop­er; Wall Street Jour­nal; 11/26/2001; pp. A1-A6.) (It has been posit­ed that the oper­a­tional ele­ment behind the 9/11 attacks involved a “fifth col­umn” with­in U.S. intel­li­gence that “dou­bled” on oth­er ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty sin­cere­ly con­cerned with safe­guard­ing the Unit­ed States.)

8. Orig­i­nal­ly involved with an Egypt­ian Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ist group that mur­dered Anwar Sadat, Mohamed helped train the group that bombed the World Trade Cen­ter in 1993. (Ibid.; p. A1.)

9. Mohamed also worked for the Army at Ft. Bragg, North Car­oli­na. (Idem.) In addi­tion, it appears that he worked for the CIA against the Sovi­ets dur­ing the Afghan war of the 1980’s. (Ibid.; p. A6.)

10. Mohamed informed for the FBI, and also worked for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rah­man, con­vict­ed in con­nec­tion with the first World Trade Cen­ter con­spir­a­cy and relat­ed events. (Idem.) (Rah­man, too, was a vet­er­an of the anti-Sovi­et Afghan war and his sons appar­ent­ly work for Bin Laden.)

11. One fas­ci­nat­ing detail of the dis­cus­sion con­cerns a com­ment made by Sheikh Rah­man in a con­ver­sa­tion with one of his fol­low­ers and over heard by FBI eaves­drop­pers. “ ‘Slow down; slow down a lit­tle bit,’ the sheik cau­tioned, whis­per­ing for fear the FBI was bug­ging his apartment—which it was. “The one who killed Kennedy was trained for three years.’ It was nev­er made clear in lat­er court tes­ti­mo­ny which assas­si­na­tion the sheik was talk­ing about.” (Idem.) It should be not­ed that both Kennedy assas­si­na­tions were sup­pos­ed­ly the work of “lone nuts” and not the result of con­spir­a­cies. Sirhan Sirhan, the pat­sy for the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Kennedy, was a Pales­tin­ian Arab (who sup­pos­ed­ly killed Kennedy because of his sup­port for Israel.) There are numer­ous evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries con­nect­ing both Kennedy assas­si­na­tions to the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King, as well as the shoot­ing of George Wal­lace. It can be sup­psed that the exec­u­tive author­i­ty in the assas­si­na­tions was the same milieu that lay behind the 9/11 attacks.

12. Mr. Mohamed also helped plan the attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.) (Idem.)

13. One of Sheikh Rahman’s sons was report­ed to have been cap­tured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. (“Key al Qae­da Offi­cial Caught” by Bob Dro­gin and Josh Mey­er [Los Ange­les Times]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 11/29/2001; p. A1.)

14. Next, the pro­gram high­lights a Syr­i­an con­nec­tion to Bin Laden. (“Fam­i­ly Ties that Bind and Bedev­il” by Michael Slack­man; Los Ange­les Times; 11/13/2001; pp. A1-A4.)

15. One of Bin Laden’s wives is from a small town in Syr­ia that is an epi­cen­ter of the Alaw­ite sect, which con­trols the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment and secu­ri­ty forces. (Ibid.; p. A4.) Monz­er Al-Kas­sar has strong con­nec­tions to the Syr­i­an intel­li­gence ser­vices and has alleged­ly been involved with a milieu that over­laps the ele­ments behind the 9/11 attacks.

16. Next, the broad­cast sets forth more infor­ma­tion about the al-Taqwa firm, alleged­ly involved with the 9/11 attacks. (“Bankrolling bin Laden” by Mark Huband; Finan­cial Times; 11/29/2001; p. 6.)

17. Al-Taqwa exec­u­tive Ghaleb Him­mat is pres­i­dent of the Munich-based Islam­ic Com­mu­ni­ty of Ger­many that expressed “plea­sure” over the 9/11 attacks at a closed meet­ing. (Idem.)

18. The pro­gram also dis­cuss­es the role of Sau­di sup­port for Islam­ic fight­ers in Bosnia, an appar­ent base for Euro­pean oper­a­tions of Al Qae­da. (Idem.)

19. The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at an Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ist doc­u­ment penned by Bosn­ian pres­i­dent Ali­ja Izetbe­gov­ic in 1970. (Ger­man and U.S. Involve­ment in the Balka­ns: A Care­ful Coin­ci­dence of Nation­al Poli­cies? by T.W. (“Bill”) Carr, pre­sent­ed at a sym­po­sium on the Balkan War “Yugoslavia: Past and Present.”)