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For The Record  

FTR #408 Update on 9/11, Including the Iraq War

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Bring­ing up to date a num­ber of avenues of inves­ti­ga­tion, this pro­gram high­lights some of the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the Under­ground Reich in con­nec­tion with the events of 9/11 and the Iraq war. Begin­ning with the obit­u­ary of a for­mer CIA offi­cial who recruit­ed both the Gehlen spy orga­ni­za­tion and the Baath par­ty of Iraq on behalf of the US effort dur­ing the Cold War, the broad­cast under­scores how Euro­pean, sec­u­lar Arabo-fas­cist and Islam­o­fas­cist ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the Under­ground Reich came to be “embed­ded” with the US polit­i­cal and nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ments. These ele­ments have now turned with a vengeance upon the Unit­ed States. After pre­sent­ing infor­ma­tion about Ger­man intel­li­gence over­tures to Sad­dam Hus­sein pri­or to the Iraq war, FTR#408 devel­ops infor­ma­tion about the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft’s appar­ent spon­sor­ship of Mohammed Atta’s sojourn in Ger­many and (per­haps) his pres­ence in the Unit­ed States. Named after one of the key prog­en­i­tors of I.G. Far­ben, this pri­vate foun­da­tion is sup­port­ed by both the Ger­man and Amer­i­can gov­ern­ments. Most of the sec­ond half of the pro­gram deals with the grow­ing influ­ence of the Islam­o­fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood with­in Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions of both Europe and the Mid­dle East, as well as fas­cist influ­ence with­in the anti-war move­ments in both Europe and the US.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Mus­lim Brotherhood’s pres­ence with­in the French Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty (UOIF); the con­nec­tions between theUOIF and the Bank Al Taqwa; the Turk­ish Mus­lim Brotherhood’s links to the gov­ern­ing AK par­ty in Turkey; evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries con­nect­ing the Islamist Mil­li Gorus orga­ni­za­tion in Ger­many with Necmet­tin Erbakan—an asso­ciate of Al Taqwa’s Ahmed Huber; Huber’s efforts on behalf of the Refah par­ty of Erbakan and Refah’s spon­sor­ship of Huber’s jour­nal­is­tic efforts; the asso­ci­a­tion of the British anti-war move­ment with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood; oper­a­tional links between ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s EURO orga­ni­za­tion with Inter­na­tion­al ANSWER; the efforts of the Ger­man neo-Nazi NPD (with which Huber is asso­ci­at­ed) to infil­trate and con­trol the Ger­man anti-war move­ment; review of the NPD’s links to Islamist move­ments in Ger­many; efforts of the Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad on behalf of Sad­dam Hus­sein; review of Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad’s links to the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic out­reach milieu and Grover Norquist.

1. The pro­gram opens with a reveal­ing obituary—that of for­mer CIA offi­cer James H. Critch­field. A pri­ma­ry fig­ure in the recruit­ment of the Gehlen spy orga­ni­za­tion, Critch­field also helped with the CIA back­ing for Sad­dam Hussein’s fas­cist Baath par­ty. Both the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion and Sad­dam Hus­sein ulti­mate­ly came back to haunt the Unit­ed States.

The Amer­i­can align­ment with these fas­cist elements—both asso­ci­at­ed with the Under­ground Reich—set the stage for the “dou­bling” of these ele­ments on the U.S.

“James H. Critch­field, a pow­er­ful CIA insid­er dur­ing the Cold War whose anti-Sovi­et mis­sions includ­ed recruit­ing for­mer Third Reich oper­a­tives and sup­port­ing the Iraqi polit­i­cal par­ty that put Sad­dam Hus­sein in pow­er, died Tues­day from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer in Williams­burg, Va. He was 86. Mr. Critch­field a dec­o­rat­ed U.S. Army offi­cer dur­ing World War II, was best known in intel­li­gence cir­cles as the CIA’s liai­son to the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion, a group of for­mer Third Reich intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary offi­cials ini­tial­ly recruit­ed by the U.S. Army because of their pur­port­ed knowl­edge of the Sovi­et Union.”

(“James Critchfield—CIA Go-Between with Nazi Offi­cials” [AP]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 4/24/2003; p. A21.)

2.

“That group turned out to be taint­ed with fab­ri­ca­tors, dou­ble agents and Nazi war crim­i­nals and has been the focus of a task force cre­at­ed to over­see the 1999 Nazi War Crimes Dis­clo­sure Act, which has result­ed in the biggest declas­si­fi­ca­tion of U.S. intel­li­gence records in his­to­ry. Mr. Critch­field him­self drew par­al­lels between the moral com­pro­mis­es made at the end of World War II with his rec­om­men­da­tion in the ear­ly 1960’s that the Unit­ed States sup­port the Baath Par­ty, which staged a 1963 coup against the Iraqi gov­ern­ment that the CIA believed was falling under Sovi­et influ­ence . . .”

(Idem.)

3. Interestingly—and pos­si­bly significantly—Critchfield became a con­sul­tant after retire­ment. In FTR#’s 214, 334, we dis­cussed the appar­ent col­lu­sion between George Bush’s CIA, the Saud­is and retired intel­li­gence offi­cers asso­ci­at­ed with the petro­le­um indus­try in arrang­ing the pho­ny “oil short­age” of 1979, which desta­bi­lized the Carter admin­is­tra­tion and set the stage for the enor­mous mil­i­tary build-up under the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion. Com­bined with the Rea­gan administration’s tax cuts, that build-up led to the enor­mous bud­get deficits of the Rea­gan years. We are set to repeat that sit­u­a­tion under George Bush.

“With the grow­ing polit­i­cal impor­tance of Mid­dle East oil, he became the CIA’s nation­al intel­li­gence offi­cer for ener­gy in the ear­ly 1970’s, then an ener­gy pol­i­cy plan­ner at the White House. After retir­ing from the CIA in 1974, Mr. Critch­field became a con­sul­tant.”

(Idem.)

4. An Iraqi exile, writ­ing in the Finan­cial Times, not­ed the fas­cist influ­ence on Sad­dam Hus­sein.

“The tyrant who styled him­self a 20th cen­tu­ry Sal­adin was born in a small vil­lage orga­nized around its tribe. An orphan, Sad­dam was brought up by his mater­nal uncle, a dis­grace accord­ing to Iraqi trib­al norms, which cher­ish pater­nal descent. In his ado­les­cence, he embraced a form of Ara­bist ide­ol­o­gy, influ­enced by Nazi ideals, which was advo­cat­ed by his uncle.”

(“End of a Dic­ta­tor” by Faleh A. Jabar; Finan­cial Times; 4/12/13/2003; p. I.)

5. Sup­ple­ment­ing infor­ma­tion from pre­vi­ous pro­grams about Ger­man sup­port for Sad­dam Hus­sein and the Under­ground Reich’s use of Iraq and oth­er Mid­dle East­ern nations and peo­ples as proxy war­riors, the broad­cast sets forth infor­ma­tion about efforts by Ger­man intel­li­gence to court Iraq in the run-up to the recent war.

“Germany’s intel­li­gence ser­vices attempt­ed to build clos­er links to Saddam’s secret ser­vice dur­ing the build-up to war last year, doc­u­ments from the bombed Iraqi intel­li­gence HQ in Bagh­dad obtained by The Tele­graph reveal. They show that an agent named as Johannes William Hoffn­er, described as a ‘new Ger­man rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Iraq’ who had entered the coun­try under diplo­mat­ic cov­er, attend­ed a meet­ing with Lt. Gen. Taher Jalil Haboosh, the direc­tor of Iraq’s intel­li­gence ser­vice.”

(“Ger­man Spies Offered Help to Sad­dam in Run-Up to War” by David Har­ri­son; Dai­ly Tele­graph; 4/24/2003; p. 1.)

6.

“Dur­ing the meet­ing, on Jan­u­ary 29, 2002, Lt. Gen Haboosh says that the Iraqis are keen to have a rela­tion­ship with Germany’s intel­li­gence agency ‘under diplo­mat­ic cov­er’, adding that he hopes to devel­op that rela­tion­ship through Mr. Hoffn­er. The Ger­man replies: ‘My Orga­ni­za­tion wants to devel­op its rela­tion­ship with your orga­ni­za­tion.’ In return, the Iraqis offered to give lucra­tive con­tracts to Ger­man com­pa­nies if the Berlin gov­ern­ment helped pre­vent an Amer­i­can inva­sion of the coun­try.”

(Idem.)

7.

“ . . . The meet­ing between the Iraqi and Ger­man agents took place some six months before Chan­cel­lor Schroder’s Social Demo­c­rat-led gov­ern­ment began its pol­i­cy of direct oppo­si­tion to the idea of an Amer­i­can/Bri­tish-led war against Iraq. The pol­i­cy was adopt­ed in the heat of last year’s Ger­man gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, at a time when the Social Democ­rats were wide­ly pre­dict­ed to lose the con­test. Mr. Schroder was re-elect­ed as chan­cel­lor last Sep­tem­ber, large­ly because of the pop­u­lar­i­ty of his government’s out­spo­ken oppo­si­tion to the war against Iraq. The appar­ent­ly ver­ba­tim account of the meet­ing between Lt. Gen Haboosh and Mr. Hoffn­er was among doc­u­ments recov­ered by The Tele­graph in the rub­ble of the Iraqi intel­li­gence head­quar­ters in Bagh­dad, which was heav­i­ly bombed.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

8. In return for Ger­man sup­port, the Iraqi regime was pre­pared to reward Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions with lucra­tive con­tracts.

“Dur­ing the meet­ing, Lt Gen Haboosh tells the Ger­man agent that Iraq has ‘big prob­lems’ with Britain and the Unit­ed States. ‘We have prob­lems with Britain because it occu­pied Iraq for 60 years and with Amer­i­ca because of its aggres­sion for 11 years,’ he says. He adds, how­ev­er, that Iraq has no prob­lems with Ger­many and sug­gests that Ger­many will be reward­ed with lucra­tive con­tracts if it offers inter­na­tion­al sup­port to Iraq. ‘When the Amer­i­can con­spir­a­cy is fin­ished, we will make a cal­cu­la­tion for each state that helps Iraq in its cri­sis.’”

(Idem.)

9.

“He also urges Mr. Hoffn­er to lob­by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment to raise its diplo­mat­ic mis­sion in Bagh­dad to full ambas­sado­r­i­al lev­el. Mr. Hoffn­er says that it would be a deci­sion for the Ger­man for­eign min­istry, but Germany’s diplo­mat­ic pres­ence in the Iraqi cap­i­tal made it eas­i­er for him to enter Iraq because he was able to use diplo­mat­ic cov­er. Last night, a spokesman for the Ger­man gov­ern­ment said it was ‘well known’ that it had been offered lucra­tive con­tracts by Bagh­dad pro­vid­ing it main­tained an anti-Iraq war stance. ‘Iraq made these kinds of promis­es before the war and praised Ger­many for its posi­tion,’ he said.”

(Idem.)
10. A riv­et­ing alle­ga­tion about Mohammed Atta’s Ger­man con­nec­tions is fea­tured on inves­tiga­tive reporter Daniel Hopsicker’s web­site.

“For at least four years while liv­ing in Ham­burg dur­ing the 1990’s ter­ror­ist ring­leader Mohamed Atta was part of a ‘joint ven­ture’ between the U.S. and Ger­man Gov­ern­ments, the Mad­Cow­Morn­ing News has learned, an elite inter­na­tion­al ‘exchange’ pro­gram run by a lit­tle-known pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion with close ties to pow­er­ful Amer­i­can polit­i­cal fig­ures like David Rock­e­feller and for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Hen­ry Kissinger. The joint­ly-fund­ed gov­ern­ment effort picked up the tab for Atta on sojourns in Cairo, Istan­bul, and Alep­po in Syr­ia dur­ing the years 1994 and 1995 and employed him as a ‘tutor’ and ‘sem­i­nar par­tic­i­pant’ dur­ing 1996 and 1997.”

(“Atta Worked for Elite US-Ger­man Exchange Pro­gram” by Daniel Hop­sick­er; Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews; 4/24/2003; p. 1.)

11. Note that Atta’s Ger­man spon­sor­ship may have dat­ed to 1992 (when the elder George Bush was in office. (As dis­cussed in FTR#403, the germ for the Project for a New Amer­i­can Century’s blue­print for US con­trol of the Mid­dle East was for­mu­lat­ed by Paul Wol­fowitz in 1992, when he was work­ing for the elder Bush. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the 1992 spon­sor­ship of Atta by his mys­te­ri­ous Ger­man bene­fac­tors and Wolfowitz’s 1992 pro­jec­tions are con­nect­ed is not one to be too read­i­ly dis­missed.

“More­over Atta’s finan­cial rela­tion­ship with the U.S.-German gov­ern­ment effort may even have extend­ed back to his ini­tial move from Egypt to Ger­many in 1992, after being ‘recruit­ed’ in Cairo by a mys­te­ri­ous Ger­man cou­ple dubbed the ‘hijacker’s spon­sors’ in a recent news account in the Chica­go Tri­bune. In the years before he became a ‘ter­ror­ist ring­leader,’ Atta was enjoy­ing the patron­age of a gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive over­seen by the U.S. State Depart­ment and the Ger­man Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment, the Ger­man equiv­a­lent of the U.S. Agency cur­rent­ly super­vis­ing the secre­tive bid­ding race for tens of bil­lions of dol­lars of post-war recon­struc­tion con­tracts in Iraq, the Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment.”

(Idem.)

12. The orga­ni­za­tion that appar­ent­ly spon­sored Atta’s trav­els was the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft (its Amer­i­can com­po­nent is the Carl Duis­berg Society)—named for one of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the found­ing of I.G. Far­ben.

“News that Mohamed Atta had been on the pay­roll of an elite inter­na­tion­al pro­gram known as the ‘Con­gress-Bun­destag Pro­gram first sur­faced a month after the 9/11 attack in a brief sev­en-line report by Ger­man news­pa­per Frank­furter Alge­meine Zeitung on 10/18/2001 under the head­line ‘Atta was Tutor for Schol­ar­ship Hold­ers.’ The sto­ry quot­ed a spokesman for ‘Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft,’ described as a ‘Ger­man inter­na­tion­al fur­ther edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tion,’ as hav­ing admit­ted pay­ing Ham­burg cadre prin­ci­pal Atta as a ‘schol­ar­ship hold­er’ and ‘tutor,’ as the spokesman put it, between 1995 and 1997.”

(Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

13.

“But the shock­ing rev­e­la­tion that Atta had there­fore been on the pay­roll of a joint U.S.-German gov­ern­ment pro­gram was con­cealed by the news­pa­per through the sim­ple expe­di­ent of neglect­ing to men­tion that the ‘Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft’ was mere­ly a pri­vate enti­ty set up to admin­is­ter an offi­cial U.S. and Ger­man gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive. The U.S. end of the pro­gram is run out of an address at Unit­ed Nations Plaza in New York by CDS Inter­na­tion­al. The let­ters stand for Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety, which is also the name of its Ger­man coun­ter­part in Cologne, the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft. Both are named for Carl Duis­berg, a Ger­man chemist and indus­tri­al­ist who head­ed the Bay­er Cor­po­ra­tion dur­ing the 1920’s.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

14.

“CDS Inter­na­tion­al, states the organization’s lit­er­a­ture, pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for young Ger­man pro­fes­sion­als. ‘These young Ger­man engi­neers earn real world expe­ri­ence and are giv­en assign­ments to con­tribute from the start,’ a pro­gram spokesman enthused in a news­pa­per inter­view . . .”

(Idem.)

15.

“Hav­ing pow­er­ful friends in such high places may also explain the curi­ous omis­sions in a sec­ond sto­ry about Mohamed Atta’s time in Ger­many which appeared recent­ly in The Chica­go Tri­bune, head­lined ‘9/11 Haunts Hijacker’s Spon­sors; Ger­man Cou­ple Talks , of Liv­ing with Pilot Atta.’ The March 7, 2003 describes the 1992 meet­ing in Cairo which led Mohamed Atta to move to Ham­burg, between Atta and a Ger­man cou­ple, which the paper does not name, who ran an inter­na­tion­al stu­dent exchange pro­gram, which the paper also leaves anony­mous. ”

(Idem.)

16.

“Dur­ing a vis­it to the Egypt­ian cap­i­tal in fall 1991, said the Tri­bune, the Ger­man cou­ple had stayed with friends who knew Atta’s father, a Cairo lawyer, and his father’s friends had then intro­duced the Ger­man cou­ple to Atta. ‘Atta who had recent­ly grad­u­at­ed with a degree in archi­tec­tur­al engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cairo, told the cou­ple he want­ed to study archi­tec­ture in Ger­many, but he had no par­tic­u­lar idea where he should go,’ the paper report­ed . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 3.)

17.

“ ‘In this first con­ver­sa­tion, we sug­gest­ed he con­tin­ue his stud­ies in Ham­burg and offered him a place to live at our house,’ the paper quotes the Ger­man wife telling inves­ti­ga­tors from the BKA, the Ger­man equiv­a­lent of the FBI. Atta, she states, accept­ed their offer right away. Why did an (unnamed) Ger­man cou­ple, run­ning an (unnamed) inter­na­tion­al exchange pro­gram leap at the chance to engage a young man who was not even con­sid­ered promis­ing enough to gain entrance to a local Cairo grad­u­ate school? The Tri­bune doesn’t say.”

(Idem.)

18.

“After study­ing Ger­man in Cairo, Atta arrived in the coun­try on July 24, 1992, accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors’ records, and then lived rent-free for at least the next six months in the couple’s home in a qui­et, mid­dle-class neigh­bor­hood. It is more than curi­ous that although Tri­bune cor­re­spon­dent Steven­son Swan­son cites the Ger­man cou­ple for ‘hav­ing played such an impor­tant role in Atta’s move to Ger­many,’ he nev­er gives their names, nor that of the orga­ni­za­tion they worked for. But since just two years lat­er, Atta was on the pay­roll of the ‘Con­gress-Bun­destag Pro­gram,’ it is rea­son­able to con­clude that this same gov­ern­ment-fund­ed pro­gram was respon­si­ble for bring­ing him to Ger­many in the first place, under the aegis of an unnamed Ger­man cou­ple. His elite spon­sors are appar­ent­ly pow­er­ful enough to keep the organization’s name out of the news­pa­pers, or at any rate, out of the Chica­go Tri­bune.”

(Idem.)

19. Much of the rest of the pro­gram deals with grow­ing influ­ence of the Islam­o­fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Mid­dle East and in Europe. Begin­ning with an exam­i­na­tion of a Ger­man Islamist group affil­i­at­ed with the Refah Par­ty (the Turk­ish branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood), the pro­gram high­lights con­nec­tions between that par­ty and the AK par­ty cur­rent­ly gov­ern­ing Turkey.

“Mil­li Gorus, Germany’s largest Islam­ic asso­ci­a­tion, recent­ly gained the offi­cial sup­port of the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment, despite being watched by Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vices due to alleged extrem­ist lean­ings. On April 19, Turkey’s reli­gious-con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment ordered its embassies to offer the Islamis­che Gemein­schaft Mil­li Gorus (IGMG) their sup­port. The group, formed in 1985 in Cologne to sup­port Turk­ish nation­al­ism and oppose the sep­a­ra­tion of state and reli­gion, has long been crit­i­cized by Ger­man offi­cials as being anti-Semit­ic and against lib­er­al West­ern val­ues.”

(“Turkey Offers Sup­port for Con­tro­ver­sial Islam­ic Group”; Deutsche Welle; 4/23/2003; p. 1.)

20.

“Turk­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Abdul­lah Gul on Sat­ur­day refused to dis­cuss his spe­cif­ic direc­tions to diplo­mats regard­ing Mil­li Gorus, say­ing only the gov­ern­ment ‘has for some time tried to strength­en the ties between our coun­try and our cit­i­zens over­seas.’ The deci­sion comes only two weeks after an agree­ment between Ger­many and Turkey on com­bat­ing orga­nized crime incensed many mem­bers of Turkey’s rul­ing AK par­ty because it includ­ed Mil­li Gorus with groups like the Kur­dish ter­ror­ist out­fit PKK. Since many Ak mem­bers have ties to Islam­ic reli­gious groups, Gul was com­pelled to say he did not con­sid­er Mil­li Gorus a ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion.”

(Idem.)

21.

“Some observers say the attempt to reform its pub­lic image could be at least part­ly linked to the rise of Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdo­gan and his AK par­ty. Com­ing to pow­er in a land­slide vic­to­ry last year, Erdo­gan styles his par­ty as a mod­ern con­ser­v­a­tive group based on Mus­lim val­ues. He has dis­tanced him­self from for­mer men­tor Necmet­tin Erbakan, who found­ed the Islam­ic-influ­enced Wel­fare Par­ty. Erbakan’s nephew, Mehmet Sabri Erbakan, was IGMG chair­man until he left office after alleged­ly hav­ing an extra-mar­i­tal affair.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

22. Flesh­ing out dis­cus­sion of Necmet­tin Erbakan, his Refah par­ty and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the pro­gram high­lights Erbakan’s rela­tion­ship with Ahmed Huber and the man­ner in which that rela­tion­ship pre­cip­i­tat­ed Huber’s ascen­sion to his posi­tion as a direc­tor of Al Taqwa.

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.’”

(Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The Unit­ed States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000 [SC]; Algo­ra Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; p. 142.)

23.

“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.”

(Idem.)

24. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence in the UOIF, which had a strong show­ing in the recent French elec­tions.

“ . . . The group that made a sur­pris­ing­ly strong show­ing in the elec­tion is the Union of Islam­ic Orga­ni­za­tions in France. It preach­es a strict, con­ser­v­a­tive inter­pre­ta­tion of Islam, derives much of its sup­port from the poor sub­urbs of Paris and oth­er major cities and is said to derive its inspi­ra­tion from the banned fun­da­men­tal­ist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which orig­i­nat­ed in Egypt. It won 14 of 41 seats in the gov­ern­ing admin­is­tra­tive coun­cil. The orga­ni­za­tion has come under fire from those who claim it has close links with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which calls for Islam­ic rule via Islam­ic law, per­son­al purifi­ca­tion and polit­i­cal action, and can­not be offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized by a sec­u­lar coun­try like France.”

(“French Threat­en Expul­sions After Islam Rad­i­cal Vic­to­ry” by Elaine Sci­oli­no; The New York Times; 4/16/2003; pp. 1–2.)

25. The UOIF has also had con­tact with the milieu of the Bank Al Taqwa.

“ . . . It [Al Taqwa] effect­ed sev­er­al fund trans­fers to the prof­it of a chief of this orga­ni­za­tion, the Lebanese Fay­cal Maoulaoui, for­mer leader of the ‘Union of Islam­ic Orga­ni­za­tions of France’ (UOIF), the Mus­lim Broth­ers’ orga­ni­za­tion in France. The trans­fers intend­ed for Maoulaoui were exe­cut­ed by the inter­me­di­ary of an account opened through the agency of Paribas in Lugano.”

(Dol­lars for Ter­ror; p. 148.)

26. Next, the pro­gram reviews links between Said Ramadan and Nazi oper­a­tive Fran­cois Genoud.

“Let us men­tion only the inci­dent of the trea­sure of the FLN, at the cen­ter of which the banker Fran­cois Genoud may be found. Ramadan and the Mus­lim Broth­ers thought that they could play a part in the Alger­ian process as they had done in Pales­tine in 1947. Said Ramadan thus left Munich to set­tle in the city of Calvin. And so, with the finan­cial sup­port of King Faisal of Sau­di Ara­bia, Said Ramadan estab­lished the Fraternity’s polit­i­cal out­post for Europe in Gene­va . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 154.)

27. Said Ramadan’s son is also close to the UOIF.

“ . . . Like his broth­er Mr. Ramadan Tariq, Mr. Ramadan Hani is thus an impor­tant fig­ure in the Euro­pean Islamist move­ment and enter­tains close rela­tions with the Union of Islamist Orga­ni­za­tions of France (UOIF). This asso­ci­a­tion has par­tic­i­pat­ed in demon­stra­tions in favor of wear­ing the Islam­ic head­scarf and its sym­pa­thies extend to the Pales­tin­ian move­ment Hamas.”

(Ibid.; p. 155.)

28. A key com­po­nent of the British anti-war move­ment (the Mus­lim Asso­ci­a­tion of Britain) is also close­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

“The Mus­lim Asso­ci­a­tion of Britain makes a sim­i­lar point. ‘We don’t shy away from it,’ said rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anas al-Tikri­ti. ‘Even Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair have high­light­ed it.’ The Mus­lim asso­ci­a­tion has been crit­i­cized not only because of its empha­sis on the Pales­tin­ian issue, but also because of its asso­ci­a­tion with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, an Islamist group banned in Egypt. The Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment has accused the broth­er­hood of using ral­lies over the Mid­dle East and Iraq to foment a revolt. The Mus­lim association’s Web site promi­nent­ly men­tions the Brotherhood’s pres­i­dent Muham­mad Ma’Mun al-Hudayabi, who has praised sui­cide bombers in Israel and the anti-Jew­ish group Hamas, the Islam­ic Resis­tance Move­ment . . . Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, the coali­tion that orches­trat­ed many of the region’s largest anti-war protests, is staunch­ly pro-Pales­tin­ian. ANSWER hopes to oppose war with Iraq while build­ing sup­port for the Pales­tin­ian cause. Large Pales­tin­ian flags are com­mon at ral­lies.”

(“Pales­tin­ian Issue Adds Ten­sion to Ral­lies” by Fawn Vra­zo; San Jose Mer­cury News; 4/5/2003; p. 14A.)

29. Exem­pli­fy­ing what has come to be known as a “red/brown coali­tion” the Inter­na­tion­al ANSWER orga­ni­za­tion has incor­po­rat­ed David Duke’s orga­ni­za­tion into its “coali­tion of the will­ing.” (In FTR#398 and FTR#401, we exam­ined ANSWER’s con­nec­tions to the Stalinist/Maoist WWP, its incor­po­ra­tion of Islam­o­fas­cist ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with Ahmed Huber and the role of its point man Ram­sey Clark in cov­er­ing up the assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, his broth­er Robert and Mar­tin Luther King.) “The Euro­pean-Amer­i­can Uni­ty and Rights Orga­ni­za­tion (EURO) joined last month’s Inter­na­tion­al Answer ral­ly against war on Iraq. EURO’s nation­al pres­i­dent is David Duke, a for­mer leader of the Ku Klux Klan. His lat­est arti­cle on the EURO web­site claims that Israel was respon­si­ble for the attacks of 11 Sep­tem­ber. Anoth­er EURO fea­ture is enti­tled ‘Under­stand­ing Jew­ish Suprema­cism.’”

(“War Games” by Kate Tay­lor; The Search­light; April/2003 [No. 334.]; p. 11.)

30. Asso­ciates of Ahmed Huber, the Ger­man neo-Nazi NPD has involved itself with the Ger­man peace move­ment.

“Right-wing extrem­ists are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly try­ing to estab­lish a pres­ence in the Ger­man anti-war move­ment. In recent weeks, fas­cists have jumped on the peace cam­paign band­wag­on in Halle/Saale, Anklam, Neu­rup­pin, Greif­swald and Munich. The peace move­ment has respond­ed weak­ly, show­ing pan­ic and help­less­ness or play­ing down and ignor­ing the pres­ence of the far right . . . The anti-fas­cist and peace move­ments must meet this chal­lenge urgent­ly, espe­cial­ly now that the Nation­aldemokratis­che Partei Deutsch­lands (NPD) in par­tic­u­lar, but also the mil­i­tant Freie Kam­er­ad­schaften and oth­er extrem­ists, are mobi­liz­ing in prepa­ra­tion for ‘Day X,’ the day that war on Iraq actu­al­ly breaks out.”

(“Ger­many: Nazis Invade Ger­man Peace Move­ment; The Search­light; April/2003 [No. 334.]; p. 25.)

31. Anoth­er Ger­man Islamist group is affil­i­at­ed with the NPD.

“Hizb ut-Tahrir, which was found­ed by a Pales­tin­ian in 1953, came to the atten­tion of the Ger­man gov­ern­ment in the wake of the attacks on New York City and Wash­ing­ton on Sept. 11, 2001. Sev­er­al of the hijack­ers and oth­er fig­ures in that plot belonged to rad­i­cal Islam­ic groups in Ham­burg. It is not clear if mem­bers of Hizb ut-Tahrir are linked to Al Qae­da, but its Web site calls on its mem­bers to fight against the Unit­ed States because of what it calls America’s ‘cru­sade’ against Mus­lims. Last Octo­ber, the group staged a demon­stra­tion at the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin at which anti-Amer­i­can speech­es were made. In what would seem to be an odd coali­tion, the group main­tains at least some ties with a right-wing Ger­man fringe group, the Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, some of whose mem­bers attend­ed the Berlin ral­ly. The com­mon ground between the two groups would seem to be a hatred of Jews.”

(“Ger­man Police Raid an Islam­ic Mil­i­tant Group” by Richard Bern­stein; The New York Times; 4/11/2003; p. 1.)

32. In a man­i­fes­ta­tion of “pol­i­tics makes strange bed­fel­lows,” among the forces that sent vol­un­teers to Iraq to fight against the inva­sion is Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad. Among the asso­ciates of that orga­ni­za­tion is Sami Al-Ari­an, whose activ­i­ties pre­cip­i­tat­ed the law­suit filed by the hero­ic John Lof­tus. That law­suit, in turn, led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002 and the law­suit against the Sau­di elite on behalf of sur­vivors of the vic­tims of the 9/11 attacks. Al-Arian’s milieu is inex­tri­ca­bly linked to Grover Norquist, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the Repub­li­can eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion.

“ . . . In Lebanon on Wednes­day, the group Fatah report­ed that hun­dreds of Pales­tini­ans from refugee camps there have gone to Iraq on sui­cide mis­sions. Ear­li­er, Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad said in Syr­ia that it had posi­tioned a dozen sui­cide ter­ror­ists inside Bagh­dad.”

(“Sui­cide Bombers Eager to Enlist” by Ellen Hale; USA Today; 4/4/2003; p. 6A.)

33. Although not part of the orig­i­nal broad­cast, a very impor­tant arti­cle from The Wall Street Jour­nal is pre­sent­ed here in order to under­score the sig­nif­i­cance of the grow­ing Mus­lim Broth­er­hood influ­ence described above. It will be many years before the sub­stan­tive results of the Iraq war are evi­dent. One of the fears that Mr. Emory has expressed about the Iraq sit­u­a­tion con­cerns the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the war is a trap set by the Under­ground Reich—designed to lure the U.S. into a con­flict with the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion of the Earth Island and (ulti­mate­ly) its eco­nom­ic and/or phys­i­cal destruc­tion. The obser­va­tions of the head of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Egypt are worth not­ing in this regard. It is doubt­ful that the U.S. will acqui­esce in the ascen­sion of either the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood or mil­i­tant Shi­ites asso­ci­at­ed with Iran. Should the advent of democ­ra­cy in Iraq (or else­where) lead to such an even­tu­al­i­ty, the results are like­ly to be alto­geth­er unpleas­ant.

“ . . . Yet with only a day to orga­nize, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood got tens of thou­sands of mourn­ers to show up. ‘We have cell­phones and the Inter­net and we live in the mod­ern world,’ says the dead leader’s deputy, Mamun Hodaibi. ‘There was no secret to get­ting the word out.’ This orga­ni­za­tion­al strength, despite years of sup­pres­sion, spot­lights a pow­er­ful conun­drum in the Mid­dle East. Pres­i­dent Bush hopes that by estab­lish­ing a rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment in Bagh­dad, the U.S. will spark a wave of demo­c­ra­t­ic reform in oth­er author­i­tar­i­an nations in the region. Among oth­er ben­e­fits, such a move­ment, by giv­ing voice to the mass­es, might lessen the odds of their turn­ing toward malign rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies such as Al Qae­da. Yet the groups that are most orga­nized, broad-based, and best posi­tioned to ben­e­fit from any creep­ing Mid­dle East democ­ra­cy are Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ist forces such as the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. They are the polit­i­cal ele­ments the U.S. would least like to encour­age. ‘I’m sure George Bush nev­er meant to help us,’ says Mr. Nodaibi, 83 years old. ‘But he did.’”

(“If Iraq War Opens Mideast Polit­i­cal­ly, Islamists Are Ready” by Christo­pher Coop­er; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/1/2003; p. A1.)

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