Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #413 Looking Back and Looking Ahead

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This pro­gram con­tin­ues the macro-polit­i­cal and macro-eco­nom­ic analy­sis of the events in and around the attacks of 9/11. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of an inter­sec­tion between the for­eign bank accounts in which Sad­dam Hus­sein placed his ill-got­ten gains and the gen­e­sis of the Bank Al Taqwa, the broad­cast high­lights the role in both sit­u­a­tions of Gian­lu­ca Boscaro. Boscaro died under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances while work­ing to straight­en out the finances loot­ed by Sad­dam, and was the lawyer in whose offices Al Taqwa was formed.

Next, the pro­gram reviews spec­u­la­tion con­cern­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the depre­da­tions of the Islam­o­fas­cists may be intend­ed to pre­cip­i­tate a shift of the vast cap­i­tal of the oil-pro­duc­ing Arab nations to Euro­pean banks asso­ci­at­ed with far-right elites. Large­ly depen­dent on for­eign invest­ment, such an event could seri­ous­ly affect Amer­i­can cap­i­tal mar­kets. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the war in Iraq may have seri­ous­ly under­mined the US posi­tion in that part of the world, to the ben­e­fit of Al Qae­da, is one to be seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered. Osama bin Laden’s pop­u­lar­i­ty is soar­ing among Mid­dle East­ern pop­u­la­tions.

The point man for Repub­li­can Party’s insane tax-cut­ting proposals—which are a dead­ly threat to the Amer­i­can economy—is Grover Norquist, who is also the Islamist point man in the Repub­li­can eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion. Norquist’s pro­nounce­ments are very close to sedi­tious, when he dis­cuss­es his plans for gov­ern­ment. Height­ened sym­pa­thy for Al Qae­da and appar­ent­ly resur­gent activ­i­ty may result in attacks on East­ern Sea­port cities. Bod­ing ill for the future, the pro­gram dis­cuss­es the fact that the reform of the polit­i­cal land­scape may also help the Islam­o­fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood gain polit­i­cal ground in Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries. In addi­tion, the sen­ti­ments among Euro­pean intel­li­gence agen­cies con­cern­ing the Iraq war may not be con­ducive to active­ly inter­dict­ing the attacks of Al Qae­da.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: France’s arrest of Ger­man al Qae­da sus­pect Chris­t­ian Ganczan­s­ki–an event that may shed light on the organization’s oper­a­tions; new dis­clo­sures con­cern­ing the AMIA bomb­ing in Argenti­na that may shed light on the pos­si­ble role of mem­bers of an Argen­tine branch of White Aryan Resis­tance, a group to which Tim­o­thy McVeigh may have belonged (Monz­er Al-Kassar’s name has also cropped up in con­nec­tion with the crime); a look at the alleged Olympics bomber’s Chris­t­ian Iden­ti­ty beliefs—an anti-semit­ic hate view that binds him ide­o­log­i­cal­ly to the mil­i­tant Islam­o­fas­cists.

1. Begin­ning with an impor­tant cor­re­la­tion of ele­ments from two past broad­casts, the pro­gram high­lights the work of Swiss lawyer Gian­lu­ca Boscaro, hired to inves­ti­gate the mon­ey secret­ed in the Ban­co del Got­tar­do by Sad­dam Hus­sein.

After the death of (Sad­dam finan­cial advis­er Saad) Al-Mah­di, his fam­i­ly hired Boscar­do to inves­ti­gate the miss­ing mon­ey in the Satan account. That lawyer, Gian­lu­ca Boscaro, died under sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances.

“ . . . Years after the death of al-Mah­di, his fam­i­ly decid­ed to pur­sue some of the mil­lions that had washed through the net­work of off­shore com­pa­nies. They hired Gian­lu­ca Boscaro, a Swiss lawyer, to bring a case which named, among oth­ers, Borradori’s accoun­tant and oth­er trustees . . . Through the legal action, Boscaro secured evi­dence of how, at least in part, Sad­dam had siphoned off a for­tune and hid­den it around the world. Increas­ing­ly para­noid about his own safe­ty, Boscaro told one friend that should any­thing unto­ward hap­pen to him, the doc­u­ments should be brought to pub­lic atten­tion.”

(“Banker Who Hid Saddam’s Mil­lions” by Stephen Grey, Nick Field­ing, Jon Ungoed-Thomas, Edin Hamz­ic, Pao­lo Fusi, Eben Black; Sun­day Times [Lon­don]; 4/13/2003.)

2.

“In the midst of the legal action in August last year, Boscaro, an adven­tur­ous man in his for­ties, died while tak­ing time off from the case to relax in the foothills of the Pied­mont moun­tains. At around 7:30 pm on a clear sun­ny evening, he was float­ing high in the sky beneath a paraglid­er. Sud­den­ly the canopy seemed to stall. Boscaro plunged to his death. It is a dan­ger­ous sport and such acci­dents are not uncom­mon, but offi­cials who exam­ined the canopy noticed cords were dam­aged. Police con­clud­ed it was an acci­dent, although friends of Boscaro dis­pute their find­ings. Acci­dent or mur­der? It may nev­er be known. But for Sad­dam, the end was near­ing. With­in months, coali­tion troops were on their way to Kuwait. How­ev­er, the many mil­lions Sad­dam siphoned off for his own pur­pos­es may nev­er be ful­ly traced, let alone recov­ered.”

(Idem.)

3. Review­ing the sto­ry of the found­ing of Al Taqwa, the pro­gram reviews the found­ing of the bank at the offices of Gian­lu­ca Boscaro. Note that the prin­ci­pal play­ers of the Al Taqwa milieu were present at this gath­er­ing, and that the Islam­o­fas­cist milieu and Sad­dam were (to a cer­tain extent) uti­liz­ing some of the same finan­cial vehi­cles. It is Mr. Emory’s view that–to a cer­tain extent—this rela­tion­ship reflects what might be termed “tax haven real-poli­tik.” In addi­tion, the rela­tion­ship may well be symp­to­matic of the Under­ground Reich’s use of Islam­o­fas­cism and sec­u­lar Arabo-fas­cism to wage proxy war against the US and Israel.

“On July 21, 1988, at the bureau of a Lugano-based notary named Gian­lu­ca Boscaro gath­ered Huber, the Swiss pro­fes­sor (Hochschulle­her) Mohammed Man­sour and his wife Zeinab Man­sour Fat­touh, as well as the Tunisian Youssef Nada and Ali Ghaleb Him­mat, who both live in the Ital­ian enclave of Cam­pi­one d’Italia in Switer­land. Him­mat had come from Dam­as­cus in 1958 and first set­tled down in Ger­many and then in Aus­tria. The Alexan­dri­an-born Egypt­ian Nada two years lat­er came first to Aus­tria and then to Ger­many. Nada’s old­est daugh­ter mar­ried the son of the direc­tor of the Islamist cen­ter in Aachen, al-Attar Issam, who is con­sid­ered by the Ger­man Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion (Ver­fas­sungschutz) one of the most dan­ger­ous Islamists in Ger­many. Nada lat­er set­tled down in Tici­no (Tessin). Both Nada and Him­mat are mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and in the 1990’s both took Ital­ian cit­i­zen­ship.”

(“Report on Islamists, The Far Right, and Al Taqwa” by Kevin Coogan.)

4. As a pre­lude to dis­cus­sion of the impli­ca­tions of the events in and around 9/11 for the Amer­i­can invest­ment cli­mate, the broad­cast reviews spec­u­la­tive dis­cus­sion from the Coogan essay about Al Taqwa and the far right.

“The over­whelm­ing thrust of this report has been to give the read­er a great deal of empir­i­cal infor­ma­tion that he or she may not have easy access to in order that they may eval­u­ate the claims for them­selves. I have avoid­ed draw­ing any con­clu­sions because I do not feel qual­i­fied to draw con­clu­sions about the Islamist finan­cial machi­na­tions this report dis­cuss­es. How­ev­er I find it impos­si­ble not to put out a call for fur­ther research involv­ing the over­lap between Nazi and Islamist net­works that seem to have been in con­tin­u­al con­tact from the 1930s until today. In the case of Genoud, Huber, and Ramadan, this is becom­ing more and more impos­si­ble to avoid.”

(Ibid.; p. 15.)

5.

“My own belief is that it is less the appar­ent­ly fan­tas­tic and ‘James Bond’-like qual­i­ty of this analy­sis that is most dif­fi­cult to under­stand. The real dif­fi­cul­ty is the utter igno­rance of most West­ern­ers (Amer­i­cans in par­tic­u­lar) about the very exis­tence of such peo­ple as Fran­cois Genoud. Thus when Ernst Back­es, one of Europe’s lead­ing experts in mon­ey laun­der­ing, told the Lux­e­mourg-based eco­nom­ic jour­nal Plus Minus last year that he believed the finan­cial source of funds for the 9/11 ter­ror­ists would ulti­mate­ly be traced back to Swiss bank accounts estab­lished by Genoud, few Amer­i­cans had any idea what Back­es could pos­si­bly be talk­ing about. For this same rea­son there has been vir­tu­al­ly no inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into SICO’s Bau­doin Dunand’s rela­tion­ship to Genoud or (for that mat­ter) the role of Syr­i­an-born Muham­mad Mar­dam Bay (believed to be relat­ed to a for­mer Syr­i­an for­eign min­is­ter) has played both as a mem­ber of Magnin, Dunand & Asso­ciates as well as Bay’s pos­si­ble links with Genoud. And what does it mean when we are told that Youssef Nada, for exam­ple, is believed by Egypt­ian author­i­ties to have worked for Ger­man intel­li­gence in World War II?”

(Idem.)

6.

“It is not at all impos­si­ble that net­works first devel­oped in the 1930’s and who saw their eco­nom­ic pow­er fan­tas­ti­cal­ly mul­ti­plied in the wake of the enor­mous hike in oil prices in 1973 are now engaged in try­ing to enact a major finan­cial shift away from the dol­lar and Anglo-Amer­i­can finan­cial net­works and to shift the vast wealth of the Mus­lim oil states into a new Euro-based finan­cial net­work that would vast­ly increase the pow­er of those banks and finan­cial inter­ests in Europe asso­ci­at­ed with ele­ments of far right elites that sur­vived World War II rel­a­tive­ly intact.”

(Idem.)

7.

“If this were at all the case, it would not be a new devel­op­ment. The very same attempt to devel­op an inde­pen­dent Sau­di-Ger­man hookup to sub­vert the U.S. and British dom­i­na­tion of the Sau­di oil mar­kets was actu­al­ly attempt­ed in the mid-1950’s. At that time, the Sau­di roy­al family—using the advise of the famous Ger­man banker Hjal­mar Schacht—attempted to employ Aris­to­tle Onas­sis to trans­port Sau­di oil on new oil tankers that would be con­struct­ed in the ship­yards of Ger­many. This attempt to break the West­ern oil con­trol over Sau­di Ara­bia was final­ly blocked by the Unit­ed States, a sto­ry well doc­u­ment­ed in Jim Hougan’s book Spooks (New York: William Mor­row, 1978.)”

(Ibid.; pp. 15–16.)

8.

“The doc­u­men­ta­tion regard­ing this com­plex ques­tion is there for any­one who wants to exam­ine it. Of course I am NOT attempt­ing to sug­gest a sim­ple mono-causal expla­na­tion for the cur­rent cri­sis. What I am sug­gest­ing is that soon­er or lat­er these con­nec­tions between the far right and groups like the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood that began in the 1930’s and con­tin­ue today will have to become the sub­ject of seri­ous and sober research in order to help us shed new light on the extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances we are liv­ing under today.”

(Ibid.; p. 16.)

9. Detail­ing the attempt at gain­ing con­trol of the Sau­di oil wealth allud­ed to in the con­clu­sion of Kevin’s paper on the von Dohnanyi book, the broad­cast sets forth the maneu­ver­ing of for­mer Third Reich finance min­is­ter Hjal­mar Schacht. In par­tic­u­lar, note Robert Maheu’s dis­cus­sion of how dif­fi­cult it was to con­vince Allen Dulles’ CIA that “the nation­al inter­est was at stake.” Recall that Dulles was at the core of the Transat­lantic finan­cial and indus­tri­al axis that lay at the core of the deci­sive­ly impor­tant struc­tur­al eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ship between the Wall Street, the Third Reich and the post­war Under­ground Reich.

“Anoth­er key fig­ure involved in Ger­man intrigue in the Mid­dle East was Hjal­mar Schacht. He first came to Egypt as Gen­er­al Naguib’s ‘guest of hon­or’ after the coup against King Farouk. Schacht’s most dar­ing Mid­dle East pow­er-play was the ‘Jid­dah Agree­ment’ between Ger­man indus­try and Sau­di Ara­bia in Jan­u­ary 1954. Under the terms of the deal, Sau­di Ara­bia agreed to estab­lish a fleet of super­tankers to be built in Ger­man ship­yards) that would car­ry Sau­di oil around the world. Aris­to­tle Onas­sis was cho­sen to man­age the ship­ping side of the oper­a­tion. Besides mak­ing the Ruhr indus­tri­al­ists fan­tas­ti­cal­ly wealthy, Jid­dah threat­ened to break the ‘Sev­en Sis­ters’ oil com­pa­nies’ hege­mo­ny over the dis­tri­b­u­tion of Mid­dle East oil. The Jid­dah Agree­ment was ulti­mate­ly blocked by the West­ern oil car­tel with help from the CIA. Yet Allen Dulles’s CIA was sur­pris­ing­ly hes­i­tant to con­front Schacht. Robert Maheu, one of the coor­di­na­tors of the Amer­i­can attack on Jid­dah, said of the CIA: ‘You can’t imag­ine how hard it was to con­vince them that the nation­al inter­est was at stake.’ [Empha­sis added.]”

(Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al; Kevin Coogan; Copy­right 1999 [SC]; Autono­me­dia; ISBN 1–57027-039–2; p. 383.)

10. In the con­text of the dis­cus­sion above, con­sid­er the impli­ca­tions of the events in and around 9/11 for the US eco­nom­ic invest­ment and eco­nom­ic land­scape.

“For years, the US has been viewed as the most attrac­tive region for glob­al investors, but con­cerns about the econ­o­my, the weak dol­lar and cor­po­rate gov­er­nance may be chang­ing that. A rush to the exit doors by over­seas investors would be a huge blow to Wall Street and the frag­ile econ­o­my. That’s because over­seas investors own about 45 per cent of all US gov­ern­ment bonds, 35 per­cent of cor­po­rate bonds and 12 per cent of equi­ty hold­ings.”

(“Wall St. Wary of Rush to the Exits” by Mary Chung; Finan­cial Times; 5/31–6/1/2003; p. 12.)

11.

“The stock mar­ket has already seen a with­draw­al of over­seas funds because of the three-year bear mar­ket. But those loss­es in stocks have been off­set by a heavy rota­tion of mon­ey into US gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate bonds. But the cur­rent dan­ger is that over­seas investors will reduce their US asset hold­ings or pull out com­plete­ly amid increas­ing doubts about the com­mit­ment of the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent George W. Bush to a strong dol­lar. Those doubts were com­pound­ed by the appar­ent uncon­cern of John Snow, Trea­sury Sec­re­tary, to the greenback’s sharp slide. While the White House may be play­ing down the drop, Wall Street is tak­ing notice. The wor­ry is that over­seas investors will find lit­tle incen­tive to keep funds in the US, espe­cial­ly if the dol­lar con­tin­ues to fal­ter. Clark Win­ter, glob­al invest­ment strate­gist at Cit­i­group Pri­vate Bank, said over­seas investors are find­ing alter­na­tives to the US, which has long been viewed as the region to ‘park’ mon­ey.”

(Idem.)

12. Repris­ing a major theme, the broad­cast dis­cuss­es the fis­cal sui­cide being imposed on the Unit­ed States by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion.

“ . . . Of course, the big betray­al was George W. Bush’s deci­sion to push this tax cut in the first place. There is no longer any doubt that the man who ran as a mod­er­ate in the 2000 elec­tion is actu­al­ly a rad­i­cal who wants to undo much of the Great Soci­ety and New Deal . . .”

(“Duped and Betrayed” by Paul Krug­man; The New York Times; 6/6/2003; p. 2.)

13. As dis­cussed in numer­ous pro­grams, Grover Norquist is of para­mount inter­est in the For The Record series as the point man for the administration’s sui­ci­dal tax cut­ting poli­cies and as the prin­ci­pal con­tact point for the Islamists on the GOP eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion. In addi­tion to slash­ing tax­es, he is inte­grat­ing the Islam­o­fas­cist ene­mies of this coun­try into its polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment, even as they are engag­ing the coun­try and a poten­tial­ly cost­ly war against the peo­ples of the Earth Island.

“ . . . Grover Norquist, the right-wing ide­o­logue who has become one of the most pow­er­ful men in Wash­ing­ton, once declared: ‘I don’t want to abol­ish gov­ern­ment. I sim­ply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bath­room and drown it in the bath­tub.’ Mr. Bush has made a pret­ty good start on that plan.”

(Idem.)

14. The War on Ter­ror may be head­ing into a more active and vig­or­ous (and more cost­ly) mode.

“Alsaha.com seems inno­cent enough. The Abu Dhabi-based Web site offers bul­letin boards where Ara­bic speak­ers can adver­tise for wives and exchange mes­sages about sports, pol­i­tics and the true mean­ing of Jihad. Since the 9–11 attacks, how­ev­er, the CIA and FBI have close­ly mon­i­tored Alsaha.com as a kind of ter­ror­ist ear­ly-warn­ing sys­tem. The rea­son: on Sept. 9, 2001, a mes­sage appeared on the Alsa­ha Web site pro­claim­ing that, in the next two days, a ‘big sur­prise’ was com­ing from the Sau­di Ara­bi­an region of Asir, the remote, moun­tain­ous province that pro­duced most of the 19 hijack­ers who struck on Sep­tem­ber 11.”

(“Al Qaeda’s Sum­mer Plans” by Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaid­man and Evan Thomas; Newsweek; 6/2/2003; p. 25.)

15.

“So last week, Newsweek has learned, the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty grew more than a lit­tle alarmed when it dis­cov­ered anoth­er cryp­tic post­ing on Alsaha.com ‘Oh broth­ers, fur­ther attacks are to come in the next 48 hours,’ it read. ‘All good Mus­lims in New York, Boston and oth­er cities on the sea­coast should leave.’ Was this a start­ing gun to sleep­er cells to spring into action? Anoth­er ora­cle that chaos was about to erupt in America’s crowd­ed North­east cor­ri­dor? The coun­tert­er­ror ana­lysts were unsure. The FBI and CIA had no oth­er direct warn­ings of an attack, and ana­lysts could not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the ter­ror­ists were plant­i­ng dis­in­for­ma­tion to stir pan­ic. Yet the ter­ror­ist ‘chat­ter’ lev­el was on the rise again. Elec­tron­ic inter­cepts from tapped phones and spy satel­lites sug­gest­ed that Al Qae­da oper­a­tives around the world were plan­ning some­thing.”

(Idem.)

16. 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.)

17. The Iraq inva­sion appears to have been very destruc­tive to America’s image in the Mid­dle East, and that, in turn appears to have ben­e­fit­ed the for­tunes of Al Qae­da.

“In the year that the US has fought ter­ror­ism, top­pled a Mid­dle East­ern dic­ta­tor­ship and launched a peace ini­tia­tive between Israelis and Pales­tini­ans, its stand­ing in the Mus­lim world has col­lapsed. A sur­vey pub­lished yes­ter­day by the Pew Glob­al Atti­tudes Project also sug­gests the Iraq war had widened the rift between west­ern Euro­peans and Amer­i­cans and soft­ened inter­na­tion­al sup­port for the war on ter­ror­ism. ‘The bot­tom has fall­en out of sup­port for Amer­i­ca in most of the Mus­lim world,’ reports the orga­ni­za­tion after a sur­vey last month of inter­na­tion­al pub­lic opin­ion.”

(“Mus­lims Reveal Fear and Loathing of Amer­i­ca” by James Poli­ti; Finan­cial Times; 6/4/2003; p. 1.)

18.

“As Pres­i­dent George W. Bush met Arab lead­ers yes­ter­day, the polls in the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty and Jor­dan revealed only 1 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion held favor­able views of the US . . . The sur­vey sug­gests many Mus­lims feel threat­ened by the U.S. In Pak­istan, whose gov­ern­ment sup­ports Mr. Bush’s ‘war on ter­ror­ism,’” 73 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion are ‘very’ or ‘some­what’ wor­ried about a mil­i­tary threat from the US. Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qae­da ter­ror­ist net­work, won sig­nif­i­cant back­ing as the leader most capa­ble of ‘doing the right thing regard­ing world affairs.’ Among Pales­tini­ans, Mr. bin Laden topped the poll with 71 per­cent say­ing they had ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ con­fi­dence in him.”

(Idem.)

19.

“Shrewd recruit­ing of new, young mil­i­tants has allowed Al-Qai­da to re-estab­lish itself here in Osama bin Laden’s home­land and around the world as an elu­sive and dead­ly threat that is seek­ing to launch new attacks in the Unit­ed States and oth­er coun­tries, many U.S. offi­cials now believe.”

(“Al-Qai­da Regain­ing Strength, Offi­cials Fear” by Josh Mey­er [Los Ange­les Times]; The San Jose Mer­cury News; 6/1/2003; p. 18A.)

20. Should the resent­ments felt by secu­ri­ty forces in oth­er coun­tries over the Iraq incur­sion, it could lead to a slow down in the effec­tive­ness of attempts to inter­dict al Qae­da oper­a­tions.

“Not only has Al-Qai­da sur­vived the U.S.-led crack­down against it, it has also found loop­holes in the tac­tics of its pur­suers and is exploit­ing them, accord­ing to inter­views with U.S. offi­cials here and in Wash­ing­ton. Of par­tic­u­lar con­cern, these offi­cials say, are indi­ca­tions that the ter­ror­ist net­work has infil­trat­ed an unknown num­ber of essen­tial­ly untrace­able oper­a­tives into the Unit­ed States. Some of them are believed to be plan­ning sui­cide bomb­ings of ‘soft tar­gets’ such as sub­ways with­in the next sev­er­al months, U.S. offi­cials said.”

(Idem.)

21. Declin­ing views of US for­eign pol­i­cy have also been evi­dent in Europe. Should Euro­pean secu­ri­ty inter­ests slack­en in their will­ing­ness to pur­sue Al Qae­da ele­ments, it could sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the dan­ger to US forces and inter­ests.

“Shay Berry has made plen­ty of trips to Europe, but last week he saw a few new things in Berlin: the Bun­destag, the Bran­den­burg Gate—and some pret­ty overt anti-Amer­i­can­ism. As the vis­i­tor from New York sat in a West Berlin bar, a man asked whether he and his friends were Amer­i­can, and then said, ‘I just want you to know I real­ly hope Sept. 11 hap­pens again.’”

(“Tourists Get a Euro-Trash­ing” by Kei­th John­son and Paul Glad­er; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 2/28/2003; p. W1.)

22. Huber recent­ly attend­ed a meet­ing of Euro­pean far-right­ists in Switzer­land which char­ac­ter­ized the grow­ing alliance between the Euro­pean Far Right and Islam­o­fas­cists. This also may hold seri­ous con­se­quences for the future of the war on ter­ror. There are numer­ous con­nec­tions between the racist right in a num­ber of coun­tries (includ­ing the US) and the Al Taqwa/Al Qae­da milieu.

“Per­haps the most recent remark­able sto­ry con­cern­ing Huber comes from a brief item in the Swiss tabloid Blick that in an April 26, 2002 arti­cle by Alexan­der Saut­ter that Huber was involved in a meet­ing of far-right lead­ers from Europe. A pho­to show­ing Huber with Jean Marie Le Pen accom­pa­nies the arti­cle. The Blick sto­ry (avail­able on the web) is as fol­lows: Mon Pelerin VD: Chris­t­ian Cam­buzat, the pro­mot­er (Scharf­mach­er) of the right extrem­ist Jean-Marie Le Pen (73): The guru assem­bles togeth­er some of the top lead­ers of the Euro­pean right. On the idyl­lic Mont Pelerin, they debate their crude ideas. At his secret vis­it to a spa in Switzer­land, Le Pen hard­ly remained alone. Right­ist lead­ers from all over Europe trav­eled to meet the extrem­ist pres­i­den­tial can­di­date who was host­ed by Cam­buzat. Franz Schon­hu­ber (79). Founder of the Repub­li­can Par­ty in Ger­many and a for­mer mem­ber of the SS. He talked with Le Pen who con­sti­tutes togeth­er with Schon­hu­ber the ‘Front Nation­al’ Fac­tion in the Euro­pean par­lia­ment. Gian­fran­co Fini (50). Ital­ian post-fas­cist, Mus­soli­ni admir­er, and founder of the Alleanze Nationale. He also was at the meet­ing with Le Pen and Schon­hu­ber. Ahmed Huber (74). The Swiss is on the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion black­list . . . ‘I met le Pen at Mont Pelerin as he went to Chris­t­ian Cambuzat’s spa,’ Huber told Blick yes­ter­day. At the extrem­ist ren­dezvous an Amer­i­can far right politi­cian was also sup­posed to have tak­en part. [Note: the Amer­i­can is not fur­ther identified.—KC] Chris­t­ian Cam­buzat said that Le Pen (after the elec­tion) had again become the sharpest weapon of the ‘Front Nation­al’ because Le Pen changed his image from a ven­omous old man to a ‘kind­ly U.S. TV evan­ge­list.’ Proud­ly Cam­buzat brags, ‘With me Le Pen can relax well’ [from his polit­i­cal endeavors—KC]. And open­ly link up with new con­tacts. [Although the Blick sto­ry does not give details, Cam­buzat runs a spa for the very rich, the Lemanique de Revi­tal­i­sa­tion, inside a hotel on the famous Mont Pelerin.]”

(Report on Islamists, the Far Right and Al Taqwa; pp. 14–15.)

23. Chris­t­ian Ganczars­ki, an appar­ent­ly impor­tant Al Qae­da oper­a­tive, has been arrest­ed in France after his sus­pi­cious­ly gen­tle han­dling by both Sau­di and Ger­man author­i­ties.

“French counter-ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tors Fri­day were ques­tion­ing a Ger­man sus­pect­ed of tak­ing part in the Al Qae­da bomb­ing of a Tunisian syn­a­gogue last year and of hav­ing ties to the Ham­burg cell that plot­ted the Sept. 11 attacks. The arrest Mon­day of Chris­t­ian Ganczars­ki, a 36-year-old con­vert to Islam, was part of a French oper­a­tion this week tar­get­ing poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous extrem­ists who have elud­ed cap­ture although they were known asso­ciates of the 9/11 plot­ters.”

(“France Inter­ro­gat­ing Two Al Qae­da Sus­pects” by Sebas­t­ian Rotel­la; Los Ange­les Times; 6/7/2003; p. A3.)

24.

“The day before Ganczarski’s cap­ture at Charles de Gaulle Air­port, French police at the air­port arrest­ed Karim Meh­di, a 34-year-old Moroc­can liv­ing in Ger­many. Meh­di had arrived from Ger­many and planned to catch a flight to Reunion Island a French ter­ri­to­ry and vaca­tion spot in the Indi­an Ocean east of Mada­gas­car. He alleged­ly planned to take part in ter­ror­ist attacks there, accord­ing to Lau­rent Ger­ard of the French Inte­ri­or Min­istry. Meh­di knew some of the Sept. 11 hijack­ers and their Ham­burg accom­plices, author­i­ties said. He was arraigned Thurs­day night in a sep­a­rate French inves­ti­ga­tion of the attacks, which was opened on behalf of four French vic­tims who died in the World Trade Cen­ter, accord­ing to a senior French law enforce­ment offi­cial . . .”

(Idem.)

25.

“Meh­di and Ganczars­ki know each oth­er from the Ger­man city of Duis­burg, where both lived, inves­ti­ga­tors said. Like a num­ber of con­verts involved in Al Qae­da, the Ger­man was fero­cious­ly mil­i­tant and his eth­nic­i­ty made him espe­cial­ly valu­able as a clan­des­tine oper­a­tive inves­ti­ga­tors say. . . About a month ago, Ganczars­ki and his fam­i­ly trav­eled to Sau­di Arabia—an odd des­ti­na­tion giv­en that he was pub­licly known as a sus­pect­ed extrem­ist and trav­el by West­ern­ers is care­ful­ly reg­u­lat­ed by Sau­di author­i­ties. Euro­pean inves­ti­ga­tors were ini­tial­ly dis­grun­tled by the Saud­is’ seem­ing tol­er­ance of his pres­ence but last week­end he was ‘more or less expelled’ by Sau­di author­i­ties to France where police were wait­ing for him at the air­port Mon­day night the French offi­cial said.”

(Idem.)

26. In sev­er­al pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we have ana­lyzed evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning between the AMIA bomb­ing in 1994, the first World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing, the Okla­homa City bomb­ing and Monz­er Al Kas­sar. The Argen­tine gov­ern­ment is now open­ing up those files.

“Argenti­na will release long-secret intel­li­gence files on the 1994 bomb­ing of a Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter here, the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Nestor Kirch­n­er announced, open­ing a new chap­ter in the inves­ti­ga­tion of the blood­i­est act of anti-Semi­tism in Latin Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions strong­ly resist­ed coop­er­a­tion between the Sec­re­tari­at of State intel­li­gence and pros­e­cu­tors inves­ti­gat­ing the bomb­ing of the Argen­tine Israelite Mutu­al asso­ci­a­tion which killed 85 peo­ple. ‘The most impor­tant news of the last nine years of our effort to find the truth,”Abraham Kaul, pres­i­dent of the mutu­al asso­ci­a­tion said at a news con­fer­ence late Thurs­day after a meet­ing with Kirch­n­er and the new intel­li­gence sec­re­tary, Ser­gio Aceve­do. ‘The pres­i­dent is deter­mined to solve this case.’”

(“Argenti­na to Open Intel­li­gence Files on 1994 Bomb­ing” by Hec­tor Tobar; Los Ange­les Times; A3.)

27. The pro­gram con­cludes with an appar­ent shift of focus on the part of Amer­i­can white extrem­ists from tar­get­ing blacks to tar­get­ing Jews as their main ene­mies.

“. . . These days, says [Mark] Potok [of the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter] Jews have replaced blacks the ene­my of extrem­ist groups. Loy With­er­spoon, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of reli­gious stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na-Char­lotte and an ordained Untied Methodist Min­is­ter, men­tioned the Ku Klux Klan and its vio­lent mix of racism and Chris­tian­i­ty. More time­ly, he spoke of ter­ror­ists who the Koran for vio­lent ends and their own polit­i­cal gain. Of the move­ments that jus­ti­fy vio­lence by their read­ing of scrip­tures, With­er­spoon said, ‘Peo­ple get caught up in these groups and become con­vinced.”

(“Bomb­ing Sus­pect Said to be Moti­vat­ed by Reli­gious Ven­om” by Ken Garfield [Knight Rid­der]; San Jose Mer­cury News 6/8/2003; p. 4A.)

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