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Com­pris­ing what might be termed a “cadence point” in Mr. Emory’s cov­er­age of the 9/11 attacks and relat­ed events, this broad­cast con­cludes the sequen­tial (and exhaus­tive) cov­er­age of those mon­u­men­tal occur­rences. Need­less to say, this cov­er­age will be updat­ed peri­od­i­cal­ly.

After review­ing the strange death of Gian­lu­ca Boscaro and his sem­i­nal role in the incor­po­ra­tion of the Al Taqwa finan­cial axis, the pro­gram sets forth alle­ga­tions con­cern­ing Al Taqwa-relat­ed com­pa­nies and Iraq’s UN-super­vised oil-for-food pro­gram. An arti­cle in For­ward spec­u­lates con­cern­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some of the mon­ey rout­ed through the Al Taqwa-relat­ed com­pa­nies may have been used to fund Al Qae­da. Not­ing the untime­ly demise of David Kel­ly, a British spe­cial­ist on bio­log­i­cal war­fare whose name was bruit­ed about as the source for a BBC report that the Blair gov­ern­ment had exag­ger­at­ed reports on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruc­tion. The remain­der of the pro­gram dis­cuss­es America’s grow­ing fis­cal per­il and reca­pit­u­lates dis­cus­sion from past broad­casts about the dan­ger of fas­cism pre­vail­ing in the Unit­ed States.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: A recount­ing of the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of liv­ing through the rise of Hitler; Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlusconi’s inves­ti­ga­tion under the “Clean Hands” inves­ti­ga­tion; the Ger­man oli­garchs’ long-stand­ing aware­ness of the prin­ci­ples of Karl Von Clause­witz; the Repub­li­cans’ fre­quent use of the term “Rev­o­lu­tion”; the fact that the U.S. is run­ning deficits that are big­ger as a per­cent­age of G.D.P. than those that dec­i­mat­ed Argenti­na; James Stew­art Martin’s warn­ings about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fas­cism com­ing to the Unit­ed States as the out­come of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis.

1. To begin with, the pro­gram reviews the strange death of Gian­lu­ca Boscaro, called in by the fam­i­ly of a Sad­dam asso­ciate who was mur­dered by Sad­dam for alleged­ly betray­ing the dic­ta­tor. Note that the “Satan” account was in the Ban­ca del Got­tar­do, inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Bank Al Taqwa.

“To cov­er the tracks, much of the mon­ey passed through account num­ber 70513 at the Ban­ca del Got­tar­do in Nas­sau in the Bahamas—the Satan account. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] One bank­ing slip indi­cat­ed a pay­ment as recent­ly as Decem­ber 1998. There were 47 oth­er bank accounts linked to the off­shore net­work. Bor­radori was usu­al­ly pres­i­dent and sig­na­to­ry for the com­pa­nies, and the day-to-day trans­ac­tions were han­dled by an accoun­tant for him. But the man in con­trol for the Iraqi regime was al-Mah­di. Some­thing of a play­boy, al-Mah­di jet­ted around Europe, while in Iraq, Sad­dam used some of the mil­lions to build extrav­a­gant palaces . . . Sad­dam, how­ev­er, appears to have sus­pect­ed al-Mah­di of steal­ing from the accounts. He was sum­moned to Bagh­dad and behead­ed for theft and behav­ior dis­re­spect­ful to Islam . . . .”

(“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. After the death of Hus­sein aide Al-Mah­di, his fam­i­ly hired a lawyer 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.”

(Idem.)

3.

“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 ere 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. Be sure to access three con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant arti­cles by the bril­liant Kevin Coogan detail­ing Al Taqwa: “Report on Islamists, The Far Right and Al Taqwa”; “Achmed Huber, The Aval­on Gemein­schaft, and the Swiss ‘New Right’”; and “The Mys­te­ri­ous Achmed Huber: Friend to Hitler, Allah and Ibn Ladin?”

This cita­tion should not be mis­un­der­stood to mean that Mr. Coogan endors­es the work­ing hypoth­e­sis pre­sent­ed in the “For The Record” series about 9/11 and Al Taqwa.

“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; pp. 7–8.)

4. Next, the pro­gram touch­es on the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Iraqi oil-for-food pro­gram may well have financed ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties.

“Among Iraq’s oil cus­tomers since1997is a Liecht­en­stein-based com­pa­ny called Galp Intert­na­tion­al Trad­ing Estab­lish­ment, a sub­sidiary of Portugal’s main oil com­pa­ny accord­ing to a list of oil pur­chasers obtained by the For­ward. The U.N. has not pub­lished the list. The com­pa­ny chose as its legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Liechtenstein—a tax haven known for host­ing thou­sands of shell companies—a com­pa­ny called Asat Trust accord­ing Liecht­en­stein busi­ness records.”

(“Oil for Food Sales Seen as Iraq Tie to Al Qae­da” by Marc Perel­man; For­ward; 6/20/2003; p. 1.)

5.

“Asat Trust was des­ig­nat­ed by the Unit­ed States and the U.N. as a financier of Al Qae­da through its links to Al Taqwa, a clus­ter of finan­cial enti­ties span­ning the Globe from the Bahamas to Italy and con­trolled by mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The oper­a­tion rais­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Iraq qui­et­ly fun­neled mon­ey to Al Qae­da by delib­er­ate­ly choos­ing an oil com­pa­ny work­ing with one of the ter­ror­ist group’s alleged finan­cial back­ers.”

(Idem.)

6.

“Anoth­er oil com­pa­ny that con­tract­ed with Iraq, Delta Ser­vices, is a now-defunct, Gene­va-based sub­sidiary of Delta Oil, a Sau­di com­pa­ny that enjoyed a close rela­tion­ship with the Tal­iban in Afghanistan at the time when they were har­bor­ing bin Laden. Delta Oil was a major actor in a major pipeline project to bring gas from Cen­tral Asia to Pak­istan through Afghanistan in the mid-1990’s along­side the Amer­i­can oil com­pa­ny Uno­cal and anoth­er Sau­di oil com­pa­ny con­trolled by a con­tro­ver­sial Sau­di mil­lion­aire. Delta Ser­vices land­ed Iraqi oil export con­tracts in 2000 and 2001, accord­ing to U.N. sources and a trade jour­nal. John Faw­cett and Chris­tine Negroni, two inves­ti­ga­tors work­ing for the New York law firm Kreindler & Kreindler, believe Delta Ser­vices won con­tracts to export 13 mil­lion bar­rels, mean­ing some $7 mil­lion were paid in kick­backs, or 70 cents per bar­rel . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

7.

“Galp Ener­gia, the Por­tugese nation­al oil com­pa­ny con­trol­ling Galp Inter­na­tion­al, did not answer a series of ques­tions sent via e‑mail. On Novem­ber 7, 2001, Pres­i­dent Bush said that the Al Taqwa net­work was rais­ing, man­ag­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing mon­ey for al Qae­da under the guise of a legit­i­mate bank­ing busi­ness activ­i­ty. The admin­is­tra­tion froze the assets of sev­er­al com­pa­nies linked to the bank, includ­ing Asat Trust. Swiss and Ital­ian police raid­ed the homes and offices of the top Al Taqwa offi­cials the same day, as well as those of Erwin Wachter, the head of Asat Trust. His son Mar­tin Wachter con­firmed that Galp Inter­na­tion­al was one of the com­pa­nies rep­re­sent­ed by Asat Trust and that Galp was deal­ing with Iraq under the oil-for-food pro­gram.”

(Idem.)

8. High­light­ing the broad scope of the events in and around the 9/11 attacks, the broad­cast touch­es on Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlus­coni, a for­mer mem­ber of the P‑2 Lodge and tar­get of the “Clean Hands Inves­ti­ga­tion” that also probed the Ban­ca del Got­tar­do. As men­tioned above, the Ban­ca del Got­tar­do is heav­i­ly over­lapped with the Bank Al Taqwa.

“Berlusconi’s cen­ter-right allies in par­lia­ment cham­pi­oned the leg­is­la­tion after his attor­neys tried and failed to have the 3‑year old tri­al delayed or moved from Milan, where Italy’s ‘Clean Hands’ anti-cor­rup­tion probes were begun a decade ago.”

(“Bribery Tri­al of Italy’s Leader Stops” by Nicole Win­field [AP]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle 6/19/2003; p. A13.)

9. Next, the pro­gram touch­es on the death of David Kel­ly, an alleged sui­cide. Kel­ly was a British sci­en­tist and exper­i­ment on the Iraqi bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. The refrac­to­ry atti­tude that Saddam’s regime had toward Kel­ly rais­es anew the ques­tions about the pos­si­ble foot-and-mouth epi­dem­ic that broke it in the UK—Iraq was devel­op­ing the dis­ease, accord­ing to the U.N. The type of foot-and-mouth that broke out in Britain had nev­er been seen in Europe—it was native to India and Pak­istan Did Kel­ly know about this devel­op­ment?

“A soft-spo­ken British sci­en­tist found dead in woods near his home was caught in the cross­fire in a dead­ly war of words between Britain’s pub­lic broad­cast­er and the gov­ern­ment over the Iraq con­flict. After police said Fri­day they had found a body match­ing that of defense min­istry biol­o­gist David Kel­ly, the tragedy pro­voked much soul-search­ing among friends, col­leagues and politi­cians. The beard­ed sci­en­tist was the sus­pect­ed ‘mole’ behind a British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion report alleg­ing that Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions supre­mo Alas­tair Camp­bell ‘sexed up’ a dossier lay­ing out the case for war with Iraq.”

(“British Sci­en­tist ‘Mole’ Caught in Cross­fire” by Paul Majendie; Reuters, 07/18/2003.)

10. It is inter­est­ing, and pos­si­bly sig­nif­i­cant, that Kelly’s friend, Tom Man­gold was the co-author of the book Plague Wars. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Man­gold indi­cat­ed that Kel­ly was the one per­son that Sad­dam did not want in the coun­try.

“Inevitably Kelly’s death revived vot­er mis­trust and ensured that the long-run­ning row over whether Sad­dam Hus­sein had weapons of mass destruc­tion showed no signs of fad­ing. ‘He is dead. We are now alone with our con­sciences,’ fam­i­ly friend and tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ist Tom Man­gold said of the for­mer weapons inspec­tor grilled in par­lia­ment over alle­ga­tions the gov­ern­ment hyped intel­li­gence to jus­ti­fy war against Iraq. ‘He was the one inspec­tor that Sad­dam Hus­sein per­son­al­ly want­ed kicked out of Iraq because David real­ly knew what was going on,’ Man­gold said.”

(Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

11. Note the impor­tance of Pruss­ian mil­i­tary the­o­reti­cian Von Clause­witz on the think­ing of Ger­man ecopo­lit­i­cal strate­gists.

“The end of bat­tle in 1945 had sig­naled the start of a new kind of war—a post-war. Germany’s clas­si­cal mil­i­tary the­o­rist, Von Clause­witz, is famous for hav­ing declared that ‘war is the con­tin­u­a­tion of diplo­ma­cy by oth­er means.’ In deal­ing with a Ger­many which had gone to school with Von Clause­witz for gen­er­a­tions, we knew that, con­verse­ly, a post-war is the con­tin­u­a­tion of war by oth­er means. Since Bis­mar­ck, wars and post-wars have formed a con­tin­u­ous series, chang­ing the qual­i­ty of the events only slight­ly from year to year, with no such thing as a clear dis­tinc­tion between heat of bat­tle and calm of peace. This post-war of the Ger­man occu­pa­tion was dif­fer­ent from the ‘cold war’ between the Unit­ed States and Rus­sia, which broke out at about the same time. The lat­ter com­pli­cat­ed the diag­no­sis, like a man get­ting typhoid fever and pneu­mo­nia at the same time.”

The Ger­man ecopo­lit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing had suc­cess­ful­ly con­fused the issues, to their great advan­tage.

(Idem.)

12. The cit­i­zens of the coun­try should be aware of the grav­i­ty of the country’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion.

“You see, a gov­ern­ment that has a rep­u­ta­tion for sound finance and hon­est bud­gets can get away with run­ning tem­po­rary deficits; if it lacks such a rep­u­ta­tion, it can’t. Right now the U.S. gov­ern­ment is run­ning deficits big­ger, as a share of G.D.P., than those that plunged Argenti­na into cri­sis. The rea­son we don’t face a com­pa­ra­ble cri­sis is that mar­kets, extrap­o­lat­ing from our respon­si­ble past, trust us to get our house in order.”

(“Pass­ing It Along” by Paul Krug­man; The New York Times; 7/18/2003; p. 2.)

13. Krug­man writes of Tom De Lay’s fre­quent use of the word rev­o­lu­tion. (Mr. Emory doesn’t think they are plan­ning a social­ist rev­o­lu­tion!)

“Mr. Con­fes­sore sug­gests that we may be head­ing for a replay of the McKin­ley era, in which the nation was gov­erned by and for big busi­ness. I think he’s actu­al­ly under­stat­ing his case: like Mr. DeLay, Repub­li­can lead­ers often talk of ‘rev­o­lu­tion,’ and we should take them at their word.”

(“Toward One-Par­ty Rule” by Paul Krug­man; The New York Times; 6/27/2003; p. A23.)

14. The pro­gram con­cludes with an account of a Ger­man uni­ver­si­ty professor’s account of what it was like to live dur­ing the rise of Hitler. Note the sim­i­lar­i­ty to aspects of the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal land­scape. Con­sid­er (and com­pare) George W. Bush (whom Mr. Emory views as a point ele­ment and front for the Under­ground Reich) and Hitler.

“What hap­pened here was the grad­ual habit­u­a­tion of the peo­ple, lit­tle by lit­tle, to being gov­erned by sur­prise, to receiv­ing deci­sions delib­er­at­ed in secret, to believ­ing that the sit­u­a­tion was so com­pli­cat­ed that the gov­ern­ment had to act on infor­ma­tion which the peo­ple could not under­stand because of nation­al­i­ty secu­ri­ty, so dan­ger­ous that even if the peo­ple the peo­ple could under­stand it, it could not be released because of nation­al secu­ri­ty. And their sense of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with Hitler, their trust in him may have inci­den­tal­ly have reas­sured those who would oth­er­wise have wor­ried about it. Their trust in him made it eas­i­er to reas­sure oth­ers who might have wor­ried about it.‘This sep­a­ra­tion of gov­ern­ment from peo­ple, this widen­ing of the gap, took place so grad­u­al­ly and so insen­si­bly, each step dis­guised (per­haps not even inten­tion­al­ly) as a tem­po­rary emer­gency mea­sure or asso­ci­at­ed with true patri­ot­ic alle­giance or with real social pur­pos­es. And all the crises and reforms (real crises and reforms too) so occu­pied the peo­ple that they did not see the slow motion under­neath, of the whole process of the Gov­ern­ment grow­ing remot­er and remot­er.”

(They Thought They Were Free: The Ger­mans 1933–1945; by Mil­ton May­er; copy­right 1955 [SC]; Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press; ISBN 0–226-51190–1; pp. 166–167.)

15.

“ ‘The dic­ta­tor­ship, and the whole process of its com­ing into being, was, above all divert­ing. It pro­vid­ed an excuse not to think for peo­ple who did not want to think any­way. I do not speak of your ‘lit­tle men,’ your bak­er and so on; I speak of my col­leagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fun­da­men­tal things and nev­er had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dread­ful, fun­da­men­tal things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with con­tin­u­ous changes and ‘crises’ and so fas­ci­nat­ed, yes, fas­ci­nat­ed, by the machi­na­tions of the ‘nation­al ene­mies,’ with­out and with­in, that we had no time to think about these things that were grow­ing, lit­tle by lit­tle, all around us. Uncon­scious­ly, I sup­pose, we were grate­ful. Who wants to think?”

(Ibid.; pp. 167–168.)

16. The pro­gram con­cludes with James Stew­art Martin’s warn­ing about the dan­gers of fas­cism com­ing to Amer­i­ca as the result of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis.

“The ecopo­lit­i­cal mas­ters of Ger­many boost­ed Hitler and his pro­gram into the driver’s seat at a time when the tide in the polit­i­cal fight between the Nazis and the sup­port­ers of the Weimar Repub­lic was swing­ing against the Nazis. All of the men who mat­tered in bank­ing and indus­tri­al cir­cles could quick­ly agree on one pro­gram and throw their finan­cial weight behind it. Their sup­port won the elec­tion for the Nazis. We must assume that the same thing is not yet true in the Unit­ed States. We do have eco­nom­ic pow­er so con­cen­trat­ed that it would lie in the pow­er of not more than a hun­dred men—if they could agree among themselves—to throw the same kind of com­bined eco­nom­ic weight behind a sin­gle pro­gram. They have not agreed yet. . . . If the Unit­ed States should run into seri­ous eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties, how­ev­er, most of the con­di­tions for a re-enact­ment of the Ger­man dra­ma would already exist on the Amer­i­can stage. The slight dif­fer­ences with­in the camp of the fra­ter­ni­ty then may be the only real bar­ri­er to the kind of inte­gra­tion of the finan­cial and indus­tri­al com­mu­ni­ty behind a sin­gle repres­sive pro­gram, like that which the financiers and indus­tri­al­ists of Ger­many exe­cut­ed through Hitler. Are we safe in assum­ing that it would take a grave eco­nom­ic cri­sis to pre­cip­i­tate the dan­gers inher­ent in eco­nom­ic con­cen­tra­tion? The basic inte­gra­tion of the finan­cial and indus­tri­al groups in the Unit­ed States is evi­dent when we look at the increase of con­cen­tra­tion in the past few years.”

(All Hon­or­able Men; James Stew­art Mar­tin; Copy­right 1950 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; p. 295.)

17. Again echo­ing James Stew­art Martin’s warn­ing to the world, Mr. Emory quotes the last para­graph of his 1950 book.

“The moral of this is not that Ger­many is an inevitable men­ace, but that there are forces in our own coun­try which can make Ger­many a men­ace. And, more impor­tant­ly, they could cre­ate a men­ace of their own here at home, not through a delib­er­ate plot to bring about a polit­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe but as a calm judg­ment of ‘busi­ness neces­si­ty.’ The men who would do this are not Nazis, but busi­ness­men; not crim­i­nals, but hon­or­able men.”

(All Hon­or­able Men; p. 300.)