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Con­tin­u­ing For The Record’s cov­er­age and analy­sis of the events in and around 9/11, this pro­gram sets forth some of the petro­le­um indus­try para-polit­i­cal and deep polit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing with the loom­ing con­flict in Iraq. In par­tic­u­lar, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s links to big oil and the Sau­di elite are weighed in con­junc­tion with the Iraq/US con­flict. Much of the broad­cast is devot­ed to dis­cus­sion of the US hos­til­i­ties with Mus­lim fun­da­men­tal­ist and Arab nation­al­ist move­ments. This pro­gram sup­ple­ments mate­r­i­al about the Under­ground Reich’s use of the Muslim/Arab pop­u­la­tions to wage “Proxy War” in the Mid­dle East. It is the theme of those brod­casts is that Al Qae­da and relat­ed insti­tu­tions (such as the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Al Taqwa milieu) con­sti­tute an ele­ment of a dual-pronged, Under­ground Reich attack on the Unit­ed States, not unlike that which led to the sub­ju­ga­tion of France in World War II.

1. Peter Dale Scott, the bril­liant Berke­ley pro­fes­sor, has not­ed the evo­lu­tion of “para-pol­i­tics” into “deep pol­i­tics.” Clan­des­tine pow­er-polit­i­cal relationships—“para-politics”—can become, over time, “deep pol­i­tics,” insti­tu­tion­al­ized and beyond the effec­tive con­trol of their cre­ators. Many of the para-polit­i­cal rela­tion­ships devel­oped by the US with the Under­ground Reich dur­ing the Cold War became insti­tu­tion­al­ized to the point at which the US appeared rel­a­tive­ly help­less in the face of the 9/11 attacks. The inabil­i­ty of the US to tran­scend the para-polit­i­cal forces that ulti­mate­ly turned on Amer­i­ca on 9/11 may well prove fatal. The enor­mous pow­er of the petro­le­um indus­try-an influ­ence that tran­scends ide­ol­o­gy and nation­al allegiance–is one of the para-polit­i­cal and deep polit­i­cal influ­ences cen­tral to an under­stand­ing of the events in and around 9/11. It is also very impor­tant not to over­sim­pli­fy that influ­ence.

2. The dis­cus­sion begins with the piv­otal role of Eliz­a­beth Cheney in US Mid­dle East diplo­ma­cy. (Ms. Cheney is Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney’s daugh­ter). Ms. Cheney occu­pies a crit­i­cal State Depart­ment office in charge of liai­son func­tions with so-called “friend­ly” gov­ern­ments in that part of the world. One should not for­get that she is also the daugh­ter of the for­mer CEO of Halliburton‑a major petro­le­um firm.

“Yet the work assigned to Ms. Cheney, a deputy US assis­tant under­sec­re­tary of state and daugh­ter of the vice-pres­i­dent, is hard­ly diplo­ma­cy as usu­al. The focus of her efforts is coun­tries in the Arab world. Her new­ly cre­at­ed post is at the fore­front of US efforts to insti­gate polit­i­cal reform among the author­i­tar­i­an regimes long regard­ed by Wash­ing­ton as allies.”

(“ ‘Iraq Will Cause a Change in the Region and Make Amer­i­ca’s Ene­mies Des­per­ate’ ” by Rhoula Kha­laf; Finan­cial Times; 1/16/2003; p. 11.)

3. Repeat­ing a very impor­tant ques­tion posed in FTR#393, the pro­gram sets forth Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s sud­den rever­sal of course with regard to allow­ing the Unit­ed States to use bases in that coun­try in a war with Iraq. Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly indi­cat­ed that they would not allow the use of such bases, they have now changed posi­tion. Was there a quid-pro-quo with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and will Bush and com­pa­ny now sup­press or dis­cour­age inves­ti­ga­tion of the Sau­di role in 9/11 in exchange for the use of these bases? Does this Sau­di rever­sal have any­thing to do with the “Polit­i­cal Plate Tec­ton­ics” dis­cussed in FTR 390?

“Sau­di Ara­bia has told Amer­i­can mil­i­tary offi­cials that the king­dom would make its air­space, air bases and an impor­tant oper­a­tions cen­ter avail­able to the Unit­ed States in the event of war with Iraq, senior mil­i­tary offi­cials say. Sau­di Ara­bia was the main stag­ing area for U.S. forces in the 1991 Per­sian Gulf War, but con­flict­ing pub­lic state­ments by top Sau­di offi­cials over the past sev­er­al months have cast doubt on the Saud­is’ sup­port for mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against Iraq this time around.”

(“Saud­is to Let U.S. Use Air Facil­i­ties in Iraq War” by Eric Schmitt [The New York Times’; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 12/29/2002; p. A8.)

4. Among the daunt­ing ques­tions sur­round­ing a poten­tial mil­i­tary involve­ment in Iraq is the cost of occu­py­ing and rebuild­ing Iraq after a war.

” . . . Nor does any­one know what van­quish­ing Sad­dam and then gov­ern­ing Iraq will cost in either dol­lars or lives. Lawrence Lind­sey, the chief White House eco­nom­ic advis­er, was fired after he put the bill at $100 bil­lion to $200 bil­lion. But William Nord­haus, the Yale econ­o­mist, puts the Lind­sey esti­mate at the low end, with the high end being $1.6 tril­lion over a decade. What­ev­er the num­ber the cost of the war isn’t being fac­tored at all into the bud­get pro­pos­al the White House will send to Con­gress, accord­ing to USA Today.”

(“Joe Mil­lion­aire for Pres­i­dent” by Frank Rich; The New York Times; 1/18/2003; p. A35.)

5. In con­nec­tion with the dis­cus­sion that fol­lows, it is worth not­ing that the Saud­is are uti­liz­ing their influ­ence with OPEC to increase pro­duc­tion, there­by reduc­ing the pos­si­ble dis­rup­tion to the world’s indus­tri­al econ­o­my of a US/Iraqi war.

“Sau­di Ara­bia yes­ter­day showed its mus­cle in push­ing through a large increase in the out­put quo­ta of the Opec oil car­tel, pleas­ing import­ing nations and gain­ing much of the addi­tion­al mar­ket share. ‘Sau­di Ara­bia will get a lot of recog­ni­tion from the world import­ing coun­tries, includ­ing the US, for this,’ said John Licht­blau, chair­man of the Petro­le­um Indus­try Research Foun­da­tion.”

(“Saud­is Lead Way on Rise in Opec Quo­ta” by Car­o­la Hoyos; Finan­cial Times; 1/13/2003; p. 2.)

6. Lis­ten­ers are no doubt famil­iar with the expres­sion “big things come in small pack­ages.” Short in length but large in sig­nif­i­cance is an arti­cle pub­lished in Newsweek. Aug­ment­ing the Bush fam­i­ly’s impor­tant con­nec­tions with the Sau­di pow­er elite, a key for­mer GOP con­gress­man has been hired by the Saud­is as a liai­son with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Tom Loef­fler is also close to Dick Cheney (along with Bush a for­mer petro­le­um com­pa­ny exec­u­tive). Bear in mind that Dick Cheney is also the father of Eliz­a­beth, the State Depart­ment offi­cial work­ing with “friend­ly” coun­tries in the region. Recall­ing a dis­cus­sion about the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids and the dis­missal of for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill, it is worth not­ing that one of Loef­fler’s func­tions will be coor­di­nat­ing with the Saud­is on the mat­ter of ter­ror­ism financ­ing.

“With mount­ing crit­i­cism from Con­gress over its record in the war on ter­ror, Sau­di Ara­bia is beef­ing up its forces in D.C. Newsweek has learned that to strength­en ties with the White House, the Saud­is have retained the high-pow­ered law firm of for­mer Texas GOP Con­gress­man Tom Loef­fler. Loef­fler, whose firm will be paid about $720,000 a year, is one of Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s top polit­i­cal mon­ey­men. He head­ed up fund-rais­ing for Bush’s first guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign and served as finance cochair for his pres­i­den­tial race. Loef­fler also is tight with Dick Cheney. ‘You could­n’t find any­body clos­er to this White House,’ said one D.C. con­sul­tant. A Sau­di offi­cial says Loef­fler will be used most­ly to lob­by on trade issues, but will branch out to mat­ters such as ter­ror­ism financ­ing when need­ed. [Empha­sis added.].”

(“Saud­is: Close Ties” by Michael Isikoff; Newsweek; 1/13/2003; p. 8.)

7. The pro­gram pos­es sev­er­al crit­i­cal ques­tions. Has a quid-pro-quo been struck between the Saud­is and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion? Are the Saud­is agree­ing to assist the US in Iraq (use of bases, help­ing to finance the recon­struc­tion of Iraq, pro­mot­ing increased OPEC pro­duc­tion) in exchange for a sup­pres­sion of the Sau­di links to 9/11? Will the Sau­di Bin Laden Group receive some of the key con­struc­tion con­tracts in a post­war Iraq as part of the deal? Will the Shi­ite major­i­ty in Iraq be mar­gin­al­ized, in def­er­ence to the Wahhabi/Sunni sect that dom­i­nates Sau­di Ara­bia (which bor­ders Iraq)? Is this hypoth­e­sis relat­ed to the “polit­i­cal plate tec­ton­ics”?

8. Fur­ther high­light­ing the Saudi/Bush admin­is­tra­tion maneu­ver­ing, the broad­cast dis­cuss­es Sau­di Prince Alwaleed’s fund­ing of a schol­ar­ship pro­gram estab­lished in the name of the elder George Bush.

“The reten­tion of Loef­fler comes on top of anoth­er move that crit­ics charge is designed to influ­ence the White House: A $500,000 gift by Sau­di Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to help fund the new­ly cre­at­ed George Her­bert Walk­er Bush Schol­ar­ship Fund at Phillips Acad­e­my, Andover . . . But Andover says the elite school won’t reject the prince’s mon­ey. And a Bush spokesper­son says the for­mer pres­i­dent, like his son an Andover grad­u­ate, ‘felt it had been giv­en in good faith.’ ”

(Idem.)

9. Next, the pro­gram fur­ther devel­ops infor­ma­tion about the Ger­man role in arm­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein with his nuclear tech­nol­o­gy. The doc­u­men­tary film dis­cussed below was part of the sub­ject mate­r­i­al in FTR 384.

“Steal­ing the Fire is an inves­tiga­tive film that pro­vides stag­ger­ing evi­dence show­ing how a Ger­man sci­en­tist, Karl Heinz Schaab, who helped devel­op the cen­trifuges nec­es­sary to extract weapons-grade Ura­ni­um 235, sold clas­si­fied doc­u­ments in the ear­ly 1990’s to Iraq.”

(“Steal­ing the Fire;” Eye Spy; Issue 13; p. 18.)

10. It is inter­est­ing to note that the co-pro­duc­er of the film dis­cov­ered the “clan­des­tine nuclear trail” while work­ing on a PBS show about the BCCI. The BCCI scan­dal is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the sub­ject of Sau­di Ara­bia and the events of 9/11. (For a sum­ma­ry account of the sig­nif­i­cance of the BCCI scan­dal in the con­text of 9/11, see FTR#391 and the pro­grams ref­er­enced in that pro­gram.)

” . . . The inves­ti­ga­tion start­ed many, many years ago. In 1992, Eric Nadler an inves­ti­gate jour­nal­ist, began research­ing mate­r­i­al on the under­ground traf­fick­ing of nuclear weapons. Ten years lat­er, he and co-pro­duc­er, John S. Fried­man, the founder of the Doc­u­men­tary Cen­ter at Colom­bia Uni­ver­si­ty have released their find­ings. Nadler told Paper­clips mag­a­zine. ‘I was work­ing for Front­line on PBS, and I was doing a sto­ry about the BCCI scan­dal, which was a crooked bank based in Pak­istan. I was doing a sto­ry called ‘The Arm­ing of Sau­di Ara­bia’ about the hid­den his­to­ry of Unit­ed States/Saudi rela­tions. I got very dis­turbed about the hid­den his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly about nuclear sto­ries that weren’t being cov­ered . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 18–19.)

11. Accord­ing to Mr. Nadler, Sau­di Ara­bia was heav­i­ly involved in financ­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein’s quest for the bomb. Like the Saud­is and the Bush fam­i­ly, Sad­dam Hus­sein’s own his­to­ry is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with that of the Third Reich. The For The Record series presents the view that Al Qae­da, the Wah­habi mil­i­tants, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the Iraqis and the PLO con­sti­tute “proxy war­riors” for the Under­ground Reich, against the USA, Britain and Israel. It is this “Proxy War” that is allud­ed to in the title of this broad­cast. (For dis­cus­sion of the Sau­di links to the Third Reich, see the dis­cus­sion and ref­er­ences in FTR 391.)

“. . . And I pro­duced for Front­line some­thing that aired in 1992, in which our team got clas­si­fied CIA and DIA doc­u­ments, which said the fol­low­ing: ‘We know that Sau­di Ara­bia has giv­en $5 bil­lion to Sad­dam Hus­sein’s nuclear pro­gram for the express pur­pose of build­ing a nuclear bomb.’ My inves­tiga­tive team at Front­line got the banks, we got the dates, we got the mon­ey trans­fers, and we put this on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion. [We showed] that Amer­i­ca’s biggest ally in the Gulf had giv­en $5 bil­lion to the Hitler of the Gulf to build nuclear weapons. And though USA Today put it on their tele­vi­sion page, it caused bare­ly a rip­ple in the pop­u­lar cul­ture. I was inter­est­ed in secret nuclear sto­ries from that moment on . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 19.)

12. In Steal­ing the Fire, the cen­tral fig­ure in the Iraqi/German nuclear con­nec­tion was one Karl Heinz Schaab.

” . . . He was fas­ci­nat­ed by Iraq’s deter­mined efforts to cre­ate nuclear weapons. By exam­in­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion of the Unit­ed Nations weapons inspec­tors, he came across a ‘mys­te­ri­ous man’-Karl Heinz Schaab. Nadler and Fried­man thought that by research­ing Schaab, this would open oth­er doors and reveal the com­pa­nies behind the ‘covert nuclear trad­ing deals . . .’ ”

(Idem.)

13. Schaab was a pro­tégé of Dr. Ger­not Zippe, one of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures involved with devel­op­ing the Third Reich’s nuclear pro­gram.

“Schaab was a stu­dent of Dr. Ger­not Zippe, an Aus­tri­an physi­cist often referred to as the ‘father of the cen­trifuge.’ And Steal­ing the Fire is as much about the cen­trifuge as the dirty deals done to get the tech­nol­o­gy to Iraq. Nadler says the equip­ment orig­i­nat­ed in the research lab­o­ra­to­ries of wartime Ger­many. Hence the infor­ma­tion sup­plied by Schaab in 1989 to the Iraqis basi­cal­ly orig­i­nat­ed from the failed Nazi atom­ic bomb pro­gram.”

(Idem.)

14. After dis­cussing Zippe’s cap­ture by the Sovi­ets and his work for the U.S.S.R. on nuclear mat­ters, the pro­gram sets forth his return to Degus­sa, the firm which pro­duced the Zyk­lon B for the gas cham­bers in World War II.

“The nuclear sci­en­tist worked at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia for a while, and de-briefed the Pen­ta­gon on the Russ­ian cen­trifuge. How­ev­er, he got home­sick and soon returned to Ger­many and found work at Degus­sa.”

(Idem.)

15. Zippe was not the only Third Reich alum­nus asso­ci­at­ed with Degus­sa’s nuclear export oper­a­tions.

“Dr. Alfred Boettch­er was an SS sci­en­tif­ic offi­cer who head­ed the pre­cious met­als divi­sion at Degus­sa in the post­war years. He lat­er became nuclear export attache for the West Ger­man Gov­ern­ment.”

(Ibid.; p. 21.)

16. Degus­sa sub­sidiary NUKEM was the divi­sion involved with the traf­fick­ing of nuclear mate­r­i­al to Iraq, as well as oth­er coun­tries attempt­ing to man­u­fac­ture nuclear weapons. Boettch­er and Zippe were joined by yet anoth­er Third Reich alum­nus in Ger­many’s work on behalf of Iraq’s nuclear efforts.

“Two trans­ac­tions that spring height­ened fears that Iraq intend­ed to use the Osir­ak reac­tor to pro­duce bomb-grade plu­to­ni­um. An Ital­ian com­pa­ny, in a semi-clan­des­tine deal, sold Iraq six tons of deplet­ed ura­ni­um pur­chased from the West Ger­man nuclear con­sor­tium NUKEM. Fear­ing that NUKEM might not deliv­er the ura­ni­um if they knew it was intend­ed for Iraq, the Ital­ians claimed it was for domes­tic use in Italy. But they need­n’t have wor­ried about NUKEM’s scru­ples. The con­sor­tium was a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of the Ger­man chem­i­cals giant Degus­sa, which had invent­ed and man­u­fac­tured Zyk­lon B, the pow­er­ful cyanide gas that streamed out of the show­er­heads in Hitler’s death camps, killing mil­lions of Euro­pean Jews. Degus­sa had also played a key role in the Nazi effort to build an atom bomb, stopped only when its Oranien­burg works near Berlin were flat­tened by U.S. bombers in 1945. That same year, the Third Reich was going up in flames, Degus­sa’s chair­man, Her­mann Schloss­er, donat­ed 45,000 reichs­marks to Hitler’s SS. Thir­ty-five years lat­er Schloss­er was still on the Degus­sa board, and in 1987 he was award­ed the Ger­man Fed­er­al Mer­it Cross for his ser­vices to indus­try. One of Schlosser’s ser­vices was ship­ping nuclear equip­ment and mate­ri­als to almost every devel­op­ing nation that was known to have a clan­des­tine bomb pro­gram. Anoth­er was open­ing the vast Iraqi mar­ket to Ger­man firms. His readi­ness to sup­ply nuclear mate­ri­als to both India and Pak­istan had impressed on Sad­dam Hus­sein that this was a man he could do busi­ness with.”

(The Death Lob­by: How the West Armed Iraq; Ken­neth Tim­mer­man; Copy­right 1991 [HC]; Houghton Mif­flin Com­pa­ny; p. 70.) (For more on the arm­ing of Iraq, see RFA-20, FTR #‘s 16, 24, 31, 52, 87, 287, 295.)

17. “Nadler called Degus­sa ‘the worst com­pa­ny ever.’ The inves­ti­ga­tor believes the direc­tors of the com­pa­ny were ‘not pros­e­cut­ed because of their inter­na­tion­al con­nec­tions to sev­er­al major US cor­po­ra­tions.”

(Ibid.; p. 20.)

18. It is sig­nif­i­cant that, accord­ing to Nadler, the Iraqis received soft­ware, not hard­ware. This com­pli­cates the issue of the weapons inspec­tions, at the fore­front of the Iraqi/US con­fronta­tion. In the con­text of the Under­ground Reich (heav­i­ly involved with Latin Amer­i­ca as well as the Mid­dle East), it is worth not­ing that Schaab was also involved with deals with mem­bers of the Brazil­ian armed forces.

“Schaab’s name was actu­al­ly found on doc­u­ments recov­ered by UN weapons inspec­tors in Iraq. He had been sell­ing the cen­trifuge secrets to Bagh­dad. Eye Spy asked Nadler just what exact­ly the Iraqis received for their mon­ey, ‘soft­ware not hard­ware,’ he said. He then con­firmed that with this data Iraq could eas­i­ly build a factory‑a pro­duc­tion line-for nuclear bombs. The inves­ti­ga­tors tracked Schaab to Brazil, where he tem­porar­i­ly fled to avoid pros­e­cu­tion. Here also was the loca­tion of fur­ther obscure deals with high rank­ing offi­cials of the Brazil­ian armed forces.”

(Ibid.; p. 20.)

19. Nadler notes the role of Ger­many as the great­est exporter of nuclear tech­nol­o­gy in the post­war peri­od. (The Ger­man role in the devel­op­ment of the Pak­istani bomb is dis­cussed in FTR#336. There is doc­u­ment­ed sym­pa­thy among some of the cre­ators of the Pak­istani bomb for the Tal­iban regime.)

“In a broad New York accent, Nadler told Eye Spy that the cen­trifuge pro­gram could eas­i­ly be hid­den from the weapons inspec­tors and rov­ing spy satel­lites. ‘The project could be under­ground-quite eas­i­ly.’ Liv­ing just a few hun­dred yards from the destroyed World Trade Cen­ter, Nadler believes that Sad­dam is any­thing from six months to five years away from hav­ing the bomb. The inves­ti­ga­tors research tends to sup­port the British intel­li­gence brief on Iraq’s WMD, and high­lights a con­tro­ver­sial deal between a NATO coun­try and Iraq. Nadler said that between 1945 and 1990, Ger­many was the ‘great­est pro­lif­er­a­tor of nuclear weapons tech­nol­o­gy in the world . . .’ ”

(Idem.)

20. Schaab appears to have been oper­at­ing with the bless­ings of the Ger­man gov­ern­ment.

” . . . On the Ger­man Gov­ern­men­t’s light sen­tence for Schaab, and the sug­ges­tion oth­er peo­ple might be involved, Nadler was diplo­mat­ic: ‘Schaab had a sto­ry and he stuck to it. He said that two oth­er men who are now dead were involved. But it’s quite clear that all this activ­i­ty had to be mon­i­tored and known by the Ger­mans. We can safe­ly say that the case was woe­ful­ly under-inves­ti­gat­ed, and, as one per­son says in our film, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment just want­ed it to go away. . .’ ”

(Idem.)

21. ” . . . Schaab took the secret plans of the cen­trifuge and sold hun­dreds of blue­prints to the Iraqis. And on a recent tele­vi­sion news pro­gram on Fox, Nadler said it is pos­si­ble that Iraq may have sold the plans to al-Qae­da. ‘The fact remains that the clas­si­fied plans for ura­ni­um enrich­ment tech­nol­o­gy were stolen and sold to the Iraqis; what they do with it is a mys­tery. The enrich­ment tech­nol­o­gy they have is very dif­fi­cult to detect with spy satel­lites. But Iraq is a state that spon­sors ter­ror­ist groups world­wide, and ter­ror­ist groups are known to be look­ing for weapons of mass destruc­tion. It’s not too far-fetched that a group like al-Qae­da could get their hands on this tech­nol­o­gy. Once the tech­nol­o­gy is in place, you don’t have one bomb, you’ve got the capa­bil­i­ty to assem­bly-line them, and that is tru­ly dis­turb­ing.”

(Idem.)

22. A recent report in the Ger­man press fin­gered Ger­many as the num­ber one sup­pli­er of weapons to Iraq and high­light­ed the fact that the trade con­tin­ued for a full decade after the Gulf War. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment was appar­ent­ly com­plic­it in this activ­i­ty.

“Iraq’s dec­la­ra­tion of its weapons pro­grams con­tains explo­sive news for Ger­many, a Berlin paper has report­ed. The dossier is said to detail covert arms deals between Ger­man defense firms and Iraq. Just as the heat­ed debates with­in the Ger­man gov­ern­ment over the role of Ger­man troops and equip­ment in a pos­si­ble war against Iraq seem to be cool­ing down, anoth­er poten­tial bomb­shell threat­ens to re-ignite the fires. On Tues­day, the Berlin-based left-wing paper, Tageszeitung report­ed that aspects of the 12,000-page Iraqi report on Iraq’s weapons pro­grams, sub­mit­ted to the U.S. last week, could prove high­ly embar­rass­ing for Ger­many. The news­pa­per-believed to be the first to have access to the top-secret dossier-has writ­ten that the Iraqi dec­la­ra­tion con­tains the names of 80 Ger­man firms, research lab­o­ra­to­ries and peo­ple, who are said to have helped Iraq devel­op its weapons pro­gram.”

(“Iraqi Report Could Prove Dam­ag­ing to Ger­many”; Detusche Welle; 12/17/2002; p. 1.)

23. “The most con­tentious piece of news for Ger­many is that the report names it as the num­ber one sup­pli­er of weapons sup­plies to Iraq. Ger­man firms are sup­posed to eas­i­ly out­num­ber the firms from oth­er coun­tries who have been export­ing to Iraq. They have deliv­ered tech­ni­cal know-how, com­po­nents, basic sub­stances and even entire tech­ni­cal facil­i­ties for the devel­op­ment of atom­ic, chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons of mass destruc­tion to Iraq right since 1975.”

(Idem.)

24. “In some cas­es, con­ven­tion­al mil­i­tary and tech­ni­cal deal­ings between Ger­many and Iraq are said to date till 2001, ten years after the sec­ond Gulf war and a time when inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions against Sad­dam Hus­sein are still in place. The paper reports that the dossier con­tains sev­er­al indi­ca­tions of cas­es, where Ger­man author­i­ties right up to the Finance min­istry tol­er­at­ed the ille­gal arms coop­er­a­tion and also pro­mot­ed it, to an extent . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

25. “Ger­man arms com­pa­nies in the mean­time have been con­duct­ing boom­ing busi­ness with Iraq in recent years. Accord­ing to the Ger­man Fed­er­al Sta­tis­tics Office, Ger­man mil­i­tary exports to Iraq have been steadi­ly ris­ing from year to year. From annu­al exports amount­ing to 21.7 mil­lion Euros in 1997, the vol­ume of exports for the fol­low­ing year shot to some 76.4 mil­lion Euros. The trend con­tin­ued in 2001 with exports to Iraq bring­ing Ger­man firms prof­its in the range of 336.5 mil­lion Euros. Ger­man goods worth 226.2 mil­lion Euros have already been shipped to Iraq in the first half of this year. Some of the offi­cial heavy­weights in the export scene are the Ger­man elec­tron­ics firm Siemens with med­ical equip­ment and ener­gy dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems and car­mak­er Daim­ler Chrysler. Both are report­ed to rake in rev­enues worth dou­ble-dig­it fig­ures in the mil­lions. . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

26. The sto­ry also notes the con­tra­dic­tion between Schroder’s paci­fist image and the real­i­ties of the German/Iraq arms trade. It will be inter­est­ing to see if there is diplo­mat­ic arm twist­ing by the US, using the Ger­man com­plic­i­ty in the arm­ing of Sad­dam Hus­sein to lever­age Ger­man coop­er­a­tion in the war-to-come.

“Anoth­er real fear is that Schroder’s image as a staunch paci­fist might now be sul­lied if it emerges that Ger­many has all along been help­ing the very leader who it has been unwill­ing to top­ple, to stock­pile his weapons. The report could also pro­vide the U.S. with an excuse to step up the pres­sure on Ger­many to give in to Amer­i­can mil­i­tary demands for deploy­ment of Ger­man troops and use of Ger­man mil­i­tary equip­ment in the case of a mil­i­tary attack on Iraq.”

(Ibid.; p. 3.)

27. Indica­tive of the German/Islamist link at the core of the Under­ground Reich/Islamist/secular Arabo-fas­cist proxy war­rior con­nec­tion is a recent dis­clo­sure con­cern­ing Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist orga­ni­za­tion just out­lawed in Ger­many.

“Ger­many’s top law enforce­ment offi­cial on Wednes­day out­lawed an Islam­ic group accused of estab­lish­ing con­tacts with neo-Nazis and spread­ing pro­pa­gan­da call­ing for the destruc­tion of Israel and the killing of Jews . . .”

(“Ger­many Bans Islam­ic Group” by Eric Geiger; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 1/16/2003; p. A9.)

28. “Found­ed in 1952, Hizb ut-Tahrir has said its goal is to restore the ‘Islam­ic way of life’ in the Mus­lim world and cre­ate a sin­gle Islam­ic ‘Caliphate’ from the west­ern coast of Africa to Chi­na. It is believed to be based in Britain, but no one knows for sure. . .”

(Idem.)

29. ” . . . In recent media reports, Ger­man intel­li­gence offi­cials have been described as being stunned that widened sur­veil­lance showed high-rank­ing Mus­lim lead­ers in Ger­many mak­ing con­tact with ter­ror sus­pects. Their iden­ti­ties are being zeal­ous­ly guard­ed but report­ed­ly include lead­ers of a nation­wide Turk­ish immi­grant orga­ni­za­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the most pow­er­ful oppo­si­tion group in Egypt.”

(Idem.)

30. Among the orga­ni­za­tions “fel­low trav­el­ling” with the Hizb ut-Tahrir is the NPD, the top Ger­man “neo”-Nazi group. Al Taqwa direc­tor Ahmed Huber and Horst Mahler are among the asso­ciates of the NPD.

“Hizb ut-Tahrir became well known in Ger­many after stag­ing a ral­ly at Berlin’s Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty in Octo­ber at which the main speak­er made anti-Amer­i­can com­ments, Schi­ly said. Mem­bers of Ger­many’s extreme right-win NPD, a par­ty the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to ban, also attend­ed the ral­ly, he said.”

(“Ger­many Bans Islam­ic Group it Says is Anti-Semit­ic” [Reuters]; South Flori­da Sun-Sen­tinel; 1/15/2003.)

31. Sup­ple­ment­ing and rein­forc­ing analy­sis pre­sent­ed in FTR#394, the pro­gram high­lights the fact that Ger­man intel­li­gence had the Ham­burg cell involved in the 9/11 attacks under sur­veil­lance by August of 1998. It was in that month that “the Bat­tle of Men­with Hill” began. Note that it was in August of 1998 that Osama bin Laden stopped using his cell phone. The For The Record series pos­es the ques­tion: what is the rela­tion­ship between Germany/EU’s attack on the Men­with Hill facil­i­ty and the ECHELON net­work, bin Laden’s aban­don­ment of his satel­lite phone, and the begin­ning of the sur­veil­lance of the Ham­burg cell at the epi­cen­ter of the 9/11 attacks?

“Three years before the Sept. 11 attacks, Ger­many’s domes­tic intel­li­gence ser­vice was track­ing promi­nent mem­bers of the Ham­burg ter­ror­ist cell that planned and exe­cut­ed the air­craft hijack­ings, accord­ing to new­ly obtained doc­u­ments. The doc­u­ments, includ­ing intel­li­gence reports, sur­veil­lance logs and tran­scripts of inter­cept­ed tele­phone calls, appear to con­tra­dict pub­lic claims by the Ger­man author­i­ties that they knew lit­tle about the mem­bers of the Ham­burg cell before the attacks.”

(“Ger­mans Were Track­ing Sept. 11 Con­spir­a­tors as Ear­ly as 1998, Doc­u­ments Dis­close” by Desmond But­ler; New York Times; 1/18/2003; p. A10.)

32. “As ear­ly as 1998, the records show, the Ger­mans mon­i­tored a meet­ing between men sus­pect­ed of plot­ting the attacks. The sur­veil­lance would lead a year lat­er to the Ham­burg apart­ment where Mohamed Atta and oth­er main plot­ters were liv­ing while attend­ing uni­ver­si­ties. While the records do not indi­cate that author­i­ties heard any men­tion of a spe­cif­ic plan, they depict a sur­veil­lance mis­sion exten­sive enough to raise anew the polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive ques­tion of whether the Ger­mans missed a chance to dis­rupt the cell dur­ing the ini­tial stages of plan­ning the attacks. Some Amer­i­can inves­ti­ga­tors and offi­cials have argued that the Ger­mans in the past missed evi­dence that could have stopped the plot. The Ger­mans have main­tained stead­fast­ly that the infor­ma­tion they had was too scanty to war­rant seri­ous alarm, and that their police and intel­li­gence agen­cies were not focused on Al Qae­da at the time.”

(Idem.)

33. “The doc­u­ments come from the files of var­i­ous Ger­man police and intel­li­gence agen­cies. They detail how close an inves­ti­ga­tion of Qae­da con­tacts in Ham­burg begun in 1997 by the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Pro­tec­tion Agency, Ger­many’s domes­tic intel­li­gence ser­vice, came to the main cell mem­bers. They were pro­vid­ed to The New York Times by some­one with offi­cial access to the files of the con­tin­u­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into the events lead­ing to the Sept. 11 attacks. When the doc­u­ments were described to offi­cials at the Ger­man Inte­ri­or Min­istry and the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion police, they declined to answer any ques­tions about them but did not dis­pute their authen­tic­i­ty . . .”

(Idem.)

34. “Mr. Motas­sad­eq admit­ted that he knew Mr. Atta and oth­er plot­ters and had attend­ed Qae­da train­ing camps in Afghanistan. He has main­tained in tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny that he did not know that his friends were plan­ning to attack the Unit­ed States. No evi­dence has been pre­sent­ed at his three-month tri­al that would reveal when the police first opened an inquiry into Mr. Motas­sad­eq. But the intel­li­gence agency doc­u­ments show that by August 1998 he was under sur­veil­lance and that the trail soon led to most of the main par­tic­i­pants in the lat­er attacks.”

(Idem.)

35. “Accord­ing to the doc­u­ments, the sur­veil­lance was in place on Aug. 29, 1998, when Mr. Motas­sad­eq and Mohamed Hay­dar Zam­mar, who had already been iden­ti­fied by police as a sus­pect­ed extrem­ist, met at the Ham­burg home of Said Baha­ji. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] The police mon­i­tored sev­er­al oth­er meet­ings between the men in the months that fol­lowed, the doc­u­ments said. The record of the meet­ing shows that police had iden­ti­fied Mr. Baha­ji, anoth­er per­son sus­pect­ed of being a cell mem­ber and believed to have been inti­mate­ly involved in the plan­ning and logis­tics of the plot, who fled to Pak­istan days before the attacks. Mr. Baha­ji lat­er moved in with Mr. Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh in the now-infa­mous apart­ment at 54 Marien­strasse in the Har­burg sec­tion of Ham­burg.”

(Idem.)

36. Embody­ing the his­tor­i­cal and strate­gic analy­sis of the Bat­tle of Men­with Hill, the pro­gram repris­es an excerpt of text from the descrip­tion for FTR 119, from Decem­ber, 1998 and FTR 103, August, 1998.) “In the wake of the Cold War, the lines of polit­i­cal strug­gle are being redrawn, with poten­tial con­flict between the Unit­ed States and Ger­many (and beyond, the Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed Euro­pean Union) threat­en­ing to replace the con­fronta­tion between the U.S. and for­mer U.S.S.R. In the field of intel­li­gence, the U.S.-German con­flict is already begin­ning to man­i­fest itself. This broad­cast sets forth some of the most impor­tant and recent devel­op­ments in the fric­tion between Amer­i­can and Ger­man intel­li­gence. After a brief dis­cus­sion of Ger­many’s expul­sion of an Amer­i­can diplo­mat who alleged­ly worked for the CIA, the broad­cast repris­es a sec­tion of FTR 103 [orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast in August of 1998]. This sec­tion of the pro­gram sets forth fric­tion between Ger­man intel­li­gence chief Bernd Schmid­bauer and the FBI over indus­tri­al spy­ing, as well as a con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant sto­ry about attempts by the Euro­pean Union (read ‘Ger­many’) to com­pro­mise the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agen­cy’s vital Men­with Hill elec­tron­ic lis­ten­ing post in Eng­land. Mr. Emory has char­ac­ter­ized that pres­sure on the NSA facil­i­ty as an act of war and believes it to be (in the ‘Infor­ma­tion Age’) as strate­gi­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant as the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor in World War II.”

37. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to observe the con­trast between their pro­nounce­ments in the imme­di­ate after­math of the attacks and the truth con­cern­ing the sur­veil­lance of the Ham­burg 9/11 cell. August of 1998 was a fate­ful month. That was when the attacks on the US embassies in Africa took place, attrib­uted by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood to Bill Clin­ton’s need to dis­tract from the Mon­i­ca Lewin­sky affair. It was in this same time peri­od that Sad­dam Hus­sein began tak­ing a more defi­ant line with UN weapons inspec­tors, per­haps tak­ing advan­tage of a weak­ened Bill Clin­ton. In this con­text, one should bear in mind that the Under­ground Reich (like Al Qae­da) is a “vir­tu­al state” lack­ing pre­cise geo­graph­i­cal bound­aries. The events tak­ing place inside the Unit­ed States and in Africa and Ger­many in August of 1998 could be seen as part of a coor­di­nat­ed effort, cul­mi­nat­ing in the polit­i­cal destruc­tion of the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion and, ulti­mate­ly, the 9/11 attacks. Even­tu­al­ly the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion was replaced by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, the cen­tral ele­ment in the Under­ground Reich pres­ence in the Unit­ed States.

38. In eval­u­at­ing the dis­cus­sion of the 9/11 attacks in the For The Record series, it is essen­tial to refer to FTR 391 a sum­ma­ry analy­sis of the attacks and relat­ed events.

39. In eval­u­at­ing the mate­r­i­al pre­sent­ed above, the evi­dent fact emerges that the elder George Bush was the pri­ma­ry Amer­i­can oper­a­tive involved in the US con­tri­bu­tion to the acqui­si­tion of Sad­dam’s arse­nal.