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This pro­gram presents more infor­ma­tion about the 9/11 attacks. (For more about the attacks see FTR#‘s 325–355.) Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion of the inter­sec­tion between the milieux of oil, inter­na­tion­al finance, fas­cism and “Islam­o­fas­cism” the pro­gram explores spheres of influ­ence in which the forces behind the 9/11 attacks oper­ate. Par­tic­u­lar empha­sis is on the con­nec­tion between the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s eth­nic out­reach oper­a­tions and the Wahhabi/Islamofascist ele­ments behind Al Que­da.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of Grover Norquist, the broad­cast high­lights the pro­found con­nec­tions between this promi­nent Repub­li­can (dubbed the “Field Mar­shal of the Bush Plan” by The Nation mag­a­zine) and pow­er­ful Islamists con­nect­ed to a series of finan­cial orga­ni­za­tions raid­ed by the Trea­sury Depart­ment on March 20. (For more about these raids, see FTR#353.) Norquist is a found­ing direc­tor of the Islam­ic Insti­tute, and his Janus-Mer­ritt Strate­gies LLC is con­nect­ed to the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil. (“Strange Bed­fel­lows: Grover Norquist and Abdu­rah­man Alam­ou­di” by Seth Gitell; The Boston Phoenix; 10/4–10/11/2001; accessed at http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/01848515.htm .)

2. Norquist asso­ciate Alam­ou­di stat­ed at an Octo­ber 2000 anti-Clin­ton ral­ly that he was a sup­port­er of Hamas and Hezbol­lah. (Idem.)

3. Norquist’s Islam­ic liaisons over­lap many of the orga­ni­za­tions (and indi­vid­u­als) raid­ed by Trea­sury as part of Oper­a­tion Green Quest. (“Wah­habis in the Old Domin­ion” by Stephen Schwartz; The Week­ly Stan­dard; 4/8/2002 [Vol­ume 007, Issue 29]; accessed at www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=1072&R=4FC12C2DAA .)

4. One of the key indi­vid­u­als in this milieu is Khalid Bin Mah­fouz, a long­time asso­ciate of the Bush fam­i­ly. (Idem.) (For more about Bin Mah­fouz, the milieu of Al Que­da, BCCI and the Bush­es, see FTR#‘s 330, 342, 344, 353, 354, 355.)

5. Among the key indi­vid­u­als in the “Green Quest” milieu is Jamal Barz­in­ji. (Idem.)

6. Barz­in­ji, in turn, over­laps insti­tu­tions with con­nec­tions to the Bin Laden fam­i­ly and Al Taqwa. (For more about Al Taqwa, see FTR#‘s 335, 336, 338, 340, 342, 343, 344, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355.)

7. Barz­in­ji is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the World Assem­bly of Mus­lim Youth. (Idem.)

8. The WAMY is described as “. . .an arm of the Sau­di regime with offices in Vir­ginia. WAMY has been deeply involved in pro­vid­ing cov­er for Wah­habi ter­ror­ism. The 2002 entry in the U.S. Busi­ness Direc­to­ry lists the pres­i­dent of the­WAMY office in Annan­dale, Va., as Abdu­la bin Laden-the ter­ror­ist’s younger broth­er.” (Idem.)

9. One of the key con­nect­ing links between the milieu of Al Que­da, the high­est ranks of the Repub­li­can Par­ty and Al Taqwa is the Amana Mutu­al Funds Trust. (Idem.)

10. “Barz­in­ji serves as a trustee and offi­cer of the Amana Mutu­al Funds Trust, a growth and income mutu­al fund head­quar­tered in Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton, con­ve­nient­ly near the Cana­di­an bor­der. Amana’s board also includes Yaqub Mirza, a Pak­istani physi­cist who shares Barz­in­ji’s Hern­don office address and who is wide­ly described as a finan­cial genius. Anoth­er board mem­ber and ten­ant in the Hern­don office is Samir Salah. He for­mer­ly ran a branch of Al Taqwa in the Caribbean, heads a finan­cial firm linked to Saar, and directs Dar al-Hijra, a mosque in Falls Church, Va., notable for hard­line Wah­habi preach­ing.” (Idem.)

11. In pre­vi­ous pro­grams about Sep­tem­ber 11, Mr. Emory has pre­sent­ed his hypoth­e­sis that an Under­ground Reich “Fifth Col­umn” with­in the U.S. polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment was involved in the attacks. In that con­text it is inter­est­ing to con­sid­er Mr. Barz­in­ji’s con­nec­tions. “Front groups inter­fac­ing between the Wah­habi-Sau­di mon­ey movers under fed­er­al sus­pi­cion and the broad­er Amer­i­can pub­lic include two insti­tu­tions active in the reli­gious field: the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute of Islam­ic Thought (IIIT) and the Grad­u­ate School of Islam­ic and Social Sci­ences (GSISS). The involve­ment of GSISS with the financ­ing of extrem­ism is espe­cial­ly star­tling in that it alone is cre­den­tialed by the Depart­ment of Defense to cer­ti­fy Mus­lim chap­lains for the U.S. armed forces. Barz­in­ji has appeared on the boards of both.”

12. On April 4, Trea­sury Sec­re­tary O’Neill met with pow­er­ful Islamist Repub­li­cans whose spheres of inter­est over­lap those of the insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als tar­get­ed on March 20. (“O’Neill Met Mus­lim Activists Tied to Char­i­ties” by Glenn R. Simp­son [with Roger Thurow]; Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/18/2002; p. A4.)

13. “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.)

14. As Mr. Emory hypoth­e­sized in FTR#353, the Norquist/GOP/Islamist links are part of the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s eth­nic out­reach pro­gram. “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.)

15. The meet­ing was described as high­ly unusu­al. “Bruce Zagaris, an asset-for­fei­ture lawyer, who rep­re­sents clients in sim­i­lar cas­es, said a meet­ing between Trea­sury offi­cials and any­one who might be asso­ci­at­ed with an enti­ty under inves­ti­ga­tion is very unusu­al. ‘It’s vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble [to arrange such a meet­ing], espe­cial­ly with the Trea­sury sec­re­tary,’ Mr. Zagaris said. ‘It’s very dif­fi­cult to even get phone calls returned.’ ” (Idem.)

16. The Amana orga­ni­za­tion 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.)

17. 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.” (Idem.)

18. 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.)

19. Fur­ther detail­ing the back­ground of Oth­man, the broad­cast high­lights the con­nec­tions between peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with the Nugan Hand Bank and Oth­man. “Harken Ener­gy was formed in 1973 by two oil­men who would ben­e­fit from a suc­cess­ful covert effort to desta­bi­lize Aus­trali­a’s Labor Par­ty gov­ern­ment (which had attempt­ed to shut out for­eign oil explo­ration). A decade lat­er, Harken was sold to a new invest­ment group head­ed by New York attor­ney Alan G. Quasha, a part­ner in the firm of Quasha, Wes­se­ly & Schnei­der. ...William Quasha [Alan’s father] had also giv­en legal advice to two top offi­cials of the noto­ri­ous Nugan Hand Bank in Aus­tralia, a CIA oper­a­tion. After the sale of Harken Ener­gy in 1983, Alan Quasha became a direc­tor and chair­man of the board. Under Quasha, Harken sud­den­ly absorbed Junior’s strug­gling Spec­trum 7 in 1986. (“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.)

20. Oth­man also has links to Gaith Pharoan of the BCCI and, through him, to James R. Bath and the Bin Ladens. “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.” (Idem.)

21. Next, the broad­cast turns to dis­cus­sion of Clearstream, a major vehi­cle for the financ­ing of BCCI and, as we shall see, Al Taqwa. “A con­tro­ver­sial Euro­pean book that might help author­i­ties track ter­ror­ist fund­ing sources remains unpub­lished and rel­a­tive­ly unknown in the Unit­ed States. Enti­tled Rev­e­la­tion$ [by Ernest Back­es and Denis Robert], it expos­es a secret bank­ing sys­tem that might be used by ter­ror­ists. At the cen­ter is a clear­ing­house in Lux­em­bourg called Clearstream, which trans­fers mon­ey for inter­na­tion­al banks and major com­pa­nies.” (“A Book Too Hot For U.S. to Han­dle? Track­ing Ter­ror­ist Mon­ey” by Lucy Komis­ar; Pacif­ic News Ser­vice; 10/4/2001; accessed at www.pacificnews.org/content/pns/2001/oct/1004tracking.html .)

22. Fur­ther­more, the Clearstream/BCCI link was appar­ent­ly known to Rudy Giu­liani (a U.S. attor­ney under the elder George Bush.) “This reporter was shown copies of what Back­es says are records of the secret accounts. He keeps the orig­i­nals in caches out­side Lux­em­bourg. The doc­u­ments are a mine of infor­ma­tion for any finan­cial inquiry, with detailed infor­ma­tion on every cross-bor­der trans­fer in cash or secu­ri­ties. Some U.S. offi­cials-includ­ing New York May­or Rudolph Giu­liani-may well be aware of the sys­tem detailed in the doc­u­ments. . . .When May­or Giu­liani was an assis­tant pros­e­cu­tor in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing the Bank of Cred­it and Com­merce Inter­na­tion­al (BCCI) in the ear­ly 1990’s, he received doc­u­ments from Back­es accord­ing to Rev­e­la­tion$. ‘Giu­liani and agents of the FBI were delight­ed with the offi­cial doc­u­ments [which Back­es sent him],’ the authors wrote.’ ” (Idem.) Mr. Emory notes that the cur­rent direc­tor of the FBI, Robert Mueller, was in charge of the BCCI inves­ti­ga­tion and was less than vig­or­ous in his pur­suit of the truth. It is Mr. Emory’s view that Mueller may well have been an inside plant, posi­tioned in order to pre­vent an unrav­el­ing of the BCCI mon­ey trail in the direc­tion of George W. Bush. (See FTR#‘s 310, 325, 349.)

23. The pro­gram also notes anoth­er spec­u­la­tive link between Al Que­da, Nazi banker and oper­a­tive Fran­cois Genoud and the 9/11 attacks. “Ernest Back­es, a lead­ing Euro­pean expert on mon­ey laun­der­ing, told the Lux­em­bourg-based finan­cial jour­nal Plus Minus that he believed that the 9/11 ter­ror­ist mon­ey trail would ulti­mate­ly lead back to Swiss bank accounts set up by an orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by Genoud. Reports of a pos­si­ble Genoud trail cite the involve­ment of a Swiss lawyer named Bau­doin [Dunant] on the man­age­ment com­mit­tee of the Gene­va branch of the Sau­di Invest­ment Com­pa­ny (SICO), which han­dles much of the bin-Laden fam­i­ly’s invest­ments abroad.” (“The Mys­te­ri­ous Achmed Huber: Friend to Hitler, Allah. . .and Ibn Laden?” by Kevin Coogan: Hit List; April/May 2002 [Vol­ume 3, #4]; p. 125.) (For more about Genoud in the con­text of the 9/11 attacks, see FTR#‘s 333, 335, 341, 343, 344, 350, 351, 351, 352, 354, 355.)

24. Clearstream, Al Taqwa and Bin Laden were fur­ther described by the remark­able Mr. Back­es in a recent arti­cle, also by Ms. Komis­ar. “In Novem­ber, U.S. author­i­ties named some banks that had bin Laden accounts, and it put them on a black­list. One was Al Taqwa, ‘Fear of God,’ reg­is­tered in the Bahamas with offices in Lugano, Switzer­land. Al Taqwa had access to the Clearstream sys­tem through its cor­re­spon­dent account with the Ban­ca del Got­tar­do in Lugano, which has a pub­lished Clearstream account (No. 74381). But Bin Laden may have oth­er access to the unpub­lished sys­tem. In what he calls a ‘spec­tac­u­lar dis­cov­ery,’ Ernest Back­es reports that in the weeks before CEO Andre Lus­si was forced to leave Clearstream last May, a series of 16 unpub­lished accounts were opened under the name of the Sau­di Invest­ment Com­pa­ny, or SICO, the Gene­va hold­ing of the Sau­di bin­laden Group, which is run by Osama’s broth­er Yeslam Bin­laden (some fam­i­ly mem­bers spell the name dif­fer­ent­ly.) Yeslam Bin­laden insists hat he has noth­ing to do with his broth­er, but evi­dence sug­gests SICO is tied into Osama’s finan­cial net­work. SICO is asso­ci­at­ed with Dar Al-Maal-Al-Isla­mi (DMI), an Islam­ic finan­cial insti­tu­tion also based in Gene­va and presided over by Prince Muhammed Al Faisal Al Saoud, a cousin of Sau­di King Fahd, that directs mil­lions a year to fun­da­men­tal­ist move­ments. DMI holds a share of the Al Shamal Islam­ic Bank of Sudan, which was set up in 1991 and part­ly financed by $50 mil­lion from Osama bin Laden. Fur­ther­more, one of SICO’s admin­is­tra­tors, Gene­va attor­ney Bau­doin Dunand, is a part­ner in a law firm, Magnin Dunand & Part­ners, that set up the Swiss finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny SBA, a sub­sidiary of the SBA Bank in Paris, which is con­trolled by Khaled bin Mah­fouz. Mah­fouz’s younger sis­ter is mar­ried to Osama bin Laden.” (“Bank­ing with Bin Laden” by Lucy Komis­ar [side­bar to “Explo­sive Rev­e­la­tion$”]; In These Times; 3/15/2002; accessed at www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/10feature1_side2.shtml .) (For more about SICO, Yeslam Bin Laden, and Bau­doin Dunand, see FTR#‘s 354, 355.)

25. Next, the pro­gram details the fact that Clearstream was recent­ly pur­chased by Deutsche Borse (the Ger­man stock exchange), which had pre­vi­ous­ly owned 50% of the house. (This took place after 9/11.) (“Deutsche Borse Buys Clearstream” by Jonathan Braude; The Deal.com; 2/1/2002; accessed at http://tdnycprodwww01.the...icle/Printerfriendly&ArtID=1012398846203.) (FTR#232 sets forth the own­er­ship of Deutsche Borse by major Ger­man com­mer­cial banks con­trolled by the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion.)

26. The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at links between Al Taqwa, Clearstream, the Ban­ca del Got­tar­do in Lugano, alleged Sovi­et bio­log­i­cal war­fare oper­a­tions and ele­ments con­nect­ed to the Balka­ns wars. “Begin­ning in 1973, Bio­preparat pro­duced and stock­piled hun­dreds of tons of anthrax and dozens of tons of plague and small­pox. Doc­u­ments obtained in Switzer­land by this reporter show that the Ban­ca del Got­tar­do in Lugano has been tight­ly involved in deals between Russ­ian weapons firms and Inter­plas­ti­ca, a com­pa­ny which begin­ning in the 1960’s spe­cial­ized in trade with the coun­tries of the East Bloc to pierce west­ern embar­goes. Inter­plas­ti­ca is reg­is­tered in Mor­bio Infe­ri­ore near Lugano, in the can­ton of Tessin in south­ern Switzer­land. Among the deals, doc­u­ments show that the Ban­ca del Got­tar­do financed a con­tract between Bio­preparat and Inter­plas­ti­ca in 1993. . . .Begh­jet Pacol­li . . .ran Inter­plas­ti­ca. Pacol­li, who was born in Koso­vo, sup­ports mil­i­tant Mus­lim groups. . . .Through the Fund for Recon­struc­tion of Koso­vo (FORK), in Lugano, he finances the Koso­vo Lib­er­a­tion Army or UCK, (known in the West as KLA) described by Robert Gel­bard, who was Amer­i­ca’s spe­cial envoy to Bosnia as ‘Islam­ic ter­ror­ists’ . . . .On Wednes­day, Novem­ber 6, the U.S. announced that it was adding to its black­list of banks and indi­vid­u­als believed con­nect­ed to the Bin Laden net­work the Al Taqwa bank, with oper­a­tions in Switzer­land, Italy, Liecht­en­stein and the Bahamas, and its chief exec­u­tive Youssef Nada and board mem­bers Mohamed Man­sour and Albert Huber. Mohamed Man­sour is on the board of the Bosn­ian Insti­tute in Zurich. So is Pacol­li. Pier Feli­ci Barchi, Nada’s lawyer, and Clau­dio Gen­er­ali, pres­i­dent of the Ban­ca del Got­tar­do, serve togeth­er on boards of a cap­i­tal man­age­ment foun­da­tion in Liecht­en­stein and sev­er­al enter­pris­es in Switzer­land. They are both lead­ers of the Lib­er­al Rad­i­cal Par­ty, which rules in Switzer­land and which, till now, has afford­ed the bank polit­i­cal pro­tec­tion from intru­sive inves­ti­ga­tions by author­i­ties. The U.S. should put an end to that.” (“Swiss Bank Han­dled Sale from Russ­ian Bioweapons Com­pa­ny” by Lucy Komis­ar; Earth Times News Ser­vice; Novem­ber 2001; accessed at www.earthtimes.org/nov/businessswissnov12_01.htm .) Mr. Emory notes that the bio­log­i­cal war­fare attack that presages the Nazi takeover in the book Ser­pen­t’s Walk is per­pe­trat­ed with genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered microor­gan­isms of Osten­si­bly Russ­ian ori­gin.