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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.”
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.”
I see Delta Oil mentioned. That brings in Osman Kaldirim. Kaldirim was on the board of the foundation that built the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City. I.e the mosque that the 9/11 hijackers visited. Kaldirim also shared an address in California with Ghassan Elashi head of the Holy Land Foundation.
Now wasnt the HLF based in Richardson Texas, and Richardson also the base of Richard Chichakli, ex US military and Viktor Bout’s business manager, his number 2?
And don’t I recall Bob Baer mentioned right at the start of Sleeping With the Devil that Viktor Bout was getting involved in the oil for food program, possibly the story was told under an alias for Bout.
And isn’t it true the HLF is admittedly a Brotherhood front. In fact important brotherhood memos found in the house of Ismail Elbarasse were submitted to that HLF trial. And a man from California who associated with the hijackers, Osama Basnan, lived next door to members of the Elbarasse family in Falls Church Va, on George Mason Drive.
And Osama Basnan was accused of being a Saudi spy and the accommodation where he is living is known by me to be a region associated with the Saudi embassy in DC where it’s staff are housed. That would make the Elbarrase family suspect Saudi agents or embassy associates as well.
Just a little something.
And for an added bonus just try googling Osman Kaldrim and the name Osama bin Laden.