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For The Record  

FTR #423 I’ve Got a Secret: Update on 9/11 and Related Subjects

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Bring­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion of 9/11 and relat­ed mat­ters up to date, this pro­gram takes its name from an old TV quiz show titled, “I’ve Got a Secret.” Begin­ning with con­fir­ma­tion of the direct White House role in facil­i­tat­ing the escape from the Unit­ed States of mem­bers of the Sau­di elite (includ­ing Bin Laden fam­i­ly mem­bers impli­cat­ed in ter­ror­ist mat­ters), the broad­cast dis­cuss­es the many attempts by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to sup­press infor­ma­tion about the 9/11 attacks. The well-pub­li­cized Bush admin­is­tra­tion sup­pres­sion of (a sec­tion of) a con­gres­sion­al report on the attacks has helped to obscure infor­ma­tion about a Sau­di gov­ern­men­tal role in the attacks. Part of the alleged Sau­di gov­ern­men­tal role (in the attacks) entails Sau­di intel­li­gence oper­a­tives’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the con­spir­a­cy. In addi­tion, Bush is cen­sor­ing infor­ma­tion about how much fore­warn­ing his admin­is­tra­tion had received about the attacks, as well as con­tin­ued sup­pres­sion of doc­u­men­ta­tion of ter­ror­ist fund­ing con­duits. Much of the sec­ond side of the pro­gram con­sists of an update of the Al Taqwa/Nada Man­age­ment con­nec­tions, includ­ing fur­ther infor­ma­tion about an Al Taqwa/Saddam Hus­sein link.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Excerpts from a Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle detail­ing the Bush efforts to evac­u­ate the Bin Ladens from the US; the descrip­tion fea­tures sec­tions of a very impor­tant Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle that came out a week after the orig­i­nal broad­cast) that fur­ther doc­u­ments the Al Taqwa/Al Qae­da link; US cor­po­ra­tions’ smug­gling of high-tech equip­ment to Sad­dam Hus­sein through Ger­man and South Kore­an inter­me­di­aries; those inter­me­di­ary com­pa­nies’ use of the term “our com­mon ene­my ” to refer to the Unit­ed States; Al Taqwa links to a Sau­di alleged­ly con­nect­ed to Al Qae­da fund­ing; an Al Taqwa scheme to laun­der assets plun­dered from Kuwait in 1991; Al Gore’s attempts to pre­vail on the Saud­is to stop fund­ing ter­ror­ism.

1. Updat­ing and devel­op­ing a top­ic dis­cussed in FTRs 337, 347, the broad­cast details the evac­u­a­tion from the Unit­ed States of mem­bers of the Bin Laden fam­i­ly in the imme­di­ate after­math of 9/11. For the first time, it has been con­firmed that the upper ech­e­lons of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion were involved in the deci­sion to evac­u­ate the Bin Ladens at a time when the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans could not fly.

“Top White House offi­cials per­son­al­ly approved the evac­u­a­tion of dozens of influ­en­tial Saud­is, includ­ing rel­a­tives of Osama bin Laden, from the Unit­ed States in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks when most flights were still ground­ed, a for­mer White House advis­er said today. The advis­er, Richard Clarke, who ran the White House cri­sis team after the attacks but has since left the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, said he agreed to the extra­or­di­nary plan because the Fed­er­al Bureau of inves­ti­ga­tion assured him that the depart­ing Saud­is were not linked to ter­ror­ism. The White House feared that the Saud­is could face ‘ret­ri­bu­tion’ for the hijack­ings if they remained in the Unit­ed States, Mr. Clarke said. . . . ”

(“White House Approved Depar­ture of Saud­is After Sept. 11, Ex-Aide Says ” by Eric Licht­blau; The New York Times; 9/4/2003; p. A15.)

2.

” . . . Mr. Clarke first made his remarks about the plan in an arti­cle in Van­i­ty Fair due out Thurs­day, and he expand­ed on those remarks today in an inter­view and in con­gres­sion­al tes­ti­mo­ny. The White House said today that it had no com­ment on Mr. Clarke’s state­ments. . . . ”

(Idem.)

3. As will be dis­cussed below, at least two of the Bin Laden fam­i­ly evac­uees appear to be involved with the Al Qae­da milieu.

“Sen­a­tor Charles E. Schumer, Demo­c­rat of New York, seized on Mr. Clarke’s com­ments to call on the White House to con­duct an inves­ti­ga­tion into the hasty depar­tures of about 140 Saud­is from the Unit­ed States in the days after the attacks. Mr. Schumer said in an inter­view that he sus­pect­ed that some of the Saud­is who were allowed to leave, par­tic­u­lar­ly two rel­a­tives of Mr. bin Laden who he said had links to ter­ror­ist groups them­selves, could have shed light on the events of Sept. 11. ‘This is just anoth­er exam­ple of our coun­try cod­dling the Saud­is and giv­ing them spe­cial priv­i­leges that oth­ers would nev­er get,’ Mr. Schumer said. ‘It’s almost as if we did­n’t want to find out what links exist­ed. . . .’ ”

(Idem.)

4.

“But the Van­i­ty Fair inves­ti­ga­tion quotes Dale Wat­son, the for­mer head of coun­tert­er­ror­ism at the F.B.I., as say­ing that the depart­ing Saud­is ‘were not sub­ject to seri­ous inter­views or inter­ro­ga­tions.’ Mr. Wat­son could not be reached for com­ment today. The arti­cle depicts an elab­o­rate but hur­ried evac­u­a­tion car­ried out with­in a week of the hijack­ings in which pri­vate planes picked up Saud­is from 10 cities around the coun­try. Some avi­a­tion and bureau offi­cials said they were upset by the oper­a­tion because the gov­ern­ment had not lift­ed flight restric­tions for the gen­er­al pub­lic, but those offi­cials said they lacked the pow­er to stop the evac­u­a­tion, the arti­cle says. . . ”

(Idem.)

5.

“Mr. Schumer said he doubt­ed the thor­ough­ness of a rushed review by the bureau, and in a let­ter to the White House today he said the Saud­is appeared to have got­ten ‘a free pass’ despite their pos­si­ble knowl­edge about the attacks. ‘I find it hard to believe that two days after 9/11, the F.B.I. would even know what ques­tions to ask and who to ask it of,’ Mr. Schumer said in an inter­view. ‘The F.B.I.‘s con­fi­dence that noth­ing of val­ue was lost here is ques­tion­able.’ ”

(Idem.)

6. Although it was not direct­ly accessed in the orig­i­nal broad­cast, the Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle ref­er­enced in the above New York Times sto­ry is excerpt­ed here for the lis­ten­ers’ scruti­ny. Abdul­lah and Khalil Bin Laden were the two mem­bers of the Al Qae­da-linked fam­i­ly allud­ed to by Sen­a­tor Schumer.

“The young bin Ladens and mem­bers of the House of Saud who were liv­ing in the Unit­ed States in Sep­tem­ber 2001 were most­ly stu­dents attend­ing high school or col­lege and young pro­fes­sion­als. Sev­er­al bin Ladens had attend­ed Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty near Boston. Sana bin Laden had grad­u­at­ed from Whee­lock Col­lege, in Boston. Abdul­lah bin Laden, a younger broth­er of Osama’s, was a 1994 grad­u­ate of Har­vard Law School and had offices in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts. . . . ”

(“Sav­ing the Saud­is ” by Craig Unger; Van­i­ty Fair; October/2003; p. 165.)

7.

” . . .But half-broth­er Khalil Bin­ladin decid­ed to go back to Jid­da. Khalil, who has a Brazil­ian wife, had been appoint­ed Brazil’s hon­orary con­sul in Jid­da, though he also owns a sprawl­ing 20-acre estate in Win­ter Gar­den, Flori­da, near Orlan­do. ”

(Idem.)

8. Abdul­lah Bin Laden is linked to the WAMY, which in turn over­laps Al Qae­da, the GOP’s Repub­li­can eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion and the Al Taqwa milieu

“In fact, the F.B.I. had been keep­ing an eye on some of the bin Ladens. A clas­si­fied F.B.I. file exam­ined by Van­i­ty Fair and marked ‘Secret’ shows that as ear­ly as 1996, the bureau had spent near­ly nine months inves­ti­gat­ing Abdul­lah and Omar bin Laden, who were involved with the Amer­i­can branch of the World Assem­bly of Mus­lim Youth (WAMY), a char­i­ty that has pub­lished writ­ings by Islam­ic schol­ar Sayyid Qutb, one of Osama bin Laden’s intel­lec­tu­al influ­ences. ”

(Ibid.; p. 175.)

9. In addi­tion, Khalil bin Laden has inter­ests in the tri-bor­der area.

“Khalil bin Laden, who board­ed a plane in Orlan­do that even­tu­al­ly took him back to Sau­di Ara­bia, won the atten­tion of Brazil­ian inves­ti­ga­tors for pos­si­ble ter­ror­ist con­nec­tions. Accord­ing to a Brazil­ian paper, he had busi­ness con­nec­tions in the Brazil­ian province of Minas Gerais, not far from the tri-bor­der region, an alleged cen­ter for train­ing ter­ror­ists. . . . ”

(Ibid.; p. 176.)

10.

“F.B.I. offi­cials declined to com­ment on the inves­ti­ga­tion, which was report­ed in Britain’s The Guardian, but the doc­u­ments show that the file on Abdul­lah and Omar was reopened on Sep­tem­ber, 19, 2001, while the Sau­di repa­tri­a­tion was still under way. ‘These doc­u­ments show there was an open F.B.I. inves­ti­ga­tion into these guys at the time of their depar­ture,’ says David Arm­strong, an inves­ti­ga­tor for the Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter, the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., foun­da­tion that obtained the doc­u­ments. ”

(Idem.)

11. Among the points appar­ent­ly con­tained in the delet­ed por­tion of the con­gres­sion­al report on the 9/11 attacks is infor­ma­tion impli­cat­ing the Sau­di gov­ern­ment in the con­spir­a­cy.

“The 28 pages delet­ed from a con­gres­sion­al report on Sept. 11 depict a Sau­di gov­ern­ment that not only pro­vid­ed sig­nif­i­cant mon­ey and aid to the sui­cide hijack­ers but also allowed poten­tial­ly hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to flow to al Qae­da and oth­er ter­ror­ist groups through sus­pect char­i­ties and oth­er fronts, accord­ing to sources famil­iar with the doc­u­ment. One U.S. offi­cial who has read the clas­si­fied sec­tion said it described ‘direct involve­ment of senior (Sau­di) gov­ern­ment offi­cials in a coor­di­nat­ed and method­i­cal way direct­ly to the hijack­ers,’ as well as ‘very direct, very spe­cif­ic links that can­not be passed off as rogue, iso­lat­ed or coin­ci­den­tal.’ Anoth­er offi­cial said: ‘It’s real­ly damn­ing. What it says is that not only Sau­di enti­ties or nation­als are impli­cat­ed in 9/11, but the (Sau­di) gov­ern­ment as well.’ ”

(“Report Says Saud­is Aid­ed 9/11 Hijack­ers ” [Chron­i­cle News Ser­vices]; The San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 8/2/2003; p. A1.)

12. Bush him­self was respon­si­ble for the refusal to declas­si­fy the report.

“Pres­i­dent Bush refused today to declas­si­fy a 28-page chap­ter of a Con­gres­sion­al report on the Sep­tem­ber 2001 attacks. He said that dis­clo­sure of the delet­ed sec­tion, which cen­ters on alle­ga­tions about Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s role in financ­ing the hijack­ings, would ‘would help the ene­my,’ and com­pro­mise the admin­is­tra­tion’s cam­paign against ter­ror.”

( “Bush Refus­es to Declas­si­fy Sau­di Sec­tion of Report ” by David John­ston and Dou­glas Jehl; The New York Times; 7/30/2003; p. A1.)

13. Accord­ing to some ana­lysts, the clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion may impli­cate Sau­di intel­li­gence oper­a­tives in the machi­na­tions in, and around, 9/11.

“The clas­si­fied part of a Con­gres­sion­al report on the ter­ror­ist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, says that two Sau­di cit­i­zens who had at least indi­rect links with two hijack­ers were prob­a­bly Sau­di intel­li­gence agents and may have report­ed to Sau­di gov­ern­ment offi­cials, accord­ing to peo­ple who have seen the report. These find­ings, accord­ing to sev­er­al peo­ple who have read the report, help to explain why the clas­si­fied part of the report has become so polit­i­cal­ly charged, caus­ing strains between the Unit­ed States and Sau­di Ara­bia. Senior Sau­di offi­cials have denied any links between their gov­ern­ment and the attacks and have asked that the sec­tion be declas­si­fied, but Pres­i­dent Bush has refused. ”

(“Report on 9/11 Sug­gests a Role by Sau­di Spies ” by James Risen and David John­ston; The New York Times; 8/2/2003; p. 1.)

14.

“The report urges fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion of the two men and their con­tacts with the hijack­ers, because of unre­solved ques­tions about their rela­tion­ship and whether they had any involve­ment in the 9/11 plot. The edit­ed 28-page sec­tion of the report, pro­duced by a joint pan­el of the House and Sen­ate intel­li­gence com­mit­tees, also says that a Mus­lim cler­ic in San Diego was a cen­tral fig­ure in a sup­port net­work that aid­ed the same two hijack­ers. Most con­nec­tions drawn in the report between the men, Sau­di intel­li­gence and the attacks are cir­cum­stan­tial, sev­er­al peo­ple who have read the report said. ”

(Idem.)

15. Beyond the 28 pages of clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al in the con­gres­sion­al report on 9/11, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is active­ly cov­er­ing up the extent to which it ignored intel­li­gence warn­ings fore­shad­ow­ing the attacks.

“It’s not just the Sau­di secret that’s being kept. The recent report of the joint con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee that probed intel­li­gence fail­ures before the ter­ror­ist attacks on the World Trade Cen­ter and the Pen­ta­gon reveals what the Bush admin­is­tra­tion does­n’t want Amer­i­cans to know about the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment. You would not know this from media accounts about this report. They have dwelled on what the Bush admin­is­tra­tion does­n’t want us to know about the Sau­di gov­ern­ment.”

(“U.S. Clamps Secre­cy on Warn­ings Before 9/11 ” Marie Coc­co; News­day; 8/7/2003; p. 1.)

16.

“This is the famous 28-page chap­ter, a series of blank lines across page after page, that the pres­i­dent refus­es to declas­si­fy despite the plead­ings of the bipar­ti­san group of law­mak­ers and the Sau­di gov­ern­ment itself. The dust­up over Sau­di secrets is exquis­ite­ly con­ve­nient. It obscures George W. Bush’s relent­less hold on U.S. secrets and on infor­ma­tion he main­tains should be secret, though it has not nec­es­sar­i­ly been before now. ”

(Idem.)

17.

“The report’s appen­dix hints at what these secrets are, and why they are kept. ‘Access Lim­i­ta­tions Encoun­tered by the Joint Inquiry,’ the sec­tion is titled. The White House refused to pro­vide con­tents of the pres­i­den­t’s dai­ly brief. This would clear up ques­tions about how much spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion Pres­i­dent Bush received about an impend­ing attack dur­ing the spring and sum­mer of 2001—a peri­od in which the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty was report­ing with alarm that a ‘spec­tac­u­lar’ attack against the Unit­ed States involv­ing ‘mass casu­al­ties’ was in the works. ”

(Idem.)

18. A recent Vil­lage Voice arti­cle high­light­ed some of the warn­ings.

” . . . The report lists 36 dif­fer­ent sum­maries of warn­ings dat­ing back to 1997. Among them: ‘In Sep­tem­ber 1998, the [Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty] obtained infor­ma­tion that Bin Laden’s next oper­a­tion might involve fly­ing an explo­sive-laden air­craft into a U.S. air­port and det­o­nat­ing it.’ ‘In the fall of 1998, the [Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty] obtained infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing a Bin Laden plot involv­ing air­craft in the New York and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. areas.’ ”

(“Bush’s 9–11 Secrets ” [ “Mon­do Wash­ing­ton ”] by James Ridge­way; The Vil­lage Voice; 7/31/2003.)

19.

” ‘In March 2000, the [Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty] obtained infor­ma­tion regard­ing the types of tar­gets that oper­a­tives of Bin Laden’s net­work might strike. The Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty was specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned, as were sky­scrap­ers, ports, air­ports and nuclear pow­er plants’ . . . We don’t know because Bush has invoked exec­u­tive priv­i­lege to with­hold from Con­gress this key brief­ing on August 6, 2001. We do know that despite years of warn­ings from the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, the gov­ern­ment appar­ent­ly had tak­en no steps to pro­tect the east­ern seaboard or any oth­er Amer­i­can bor­der from attack. ”

(Idem.)

20. Per­haps the most reveal­ing of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s attempts at play­ing “I’ve Got a Secret ” is its refusal to allow infor­ma­tion about the fund­ing sources of Al Qae­da into the pub­lic domain. It is the infor­ma­tion uncov­ered as a result of “Oper­a­tion Green Quest ” that con­nects the milieux of Al Taqwa, Al Qae­da, the GOP and ele­ments of the Under­ground Reich.

“The Trea­sury Depart­ment reject­ed a request from sen­a­tors Tues­day and refused to release a clas­si­fied list of Sau­di indi­vid­u­als or orga­ni­za­tions sus­pect­ed of financ­ing ter­ror­ist groups. A Trea­sury spokesman, Rob Nichols, said a depart­ment offi­cial mis­spoke when he told sen­a­tors last week the list was unclas­si­fied, which would mean it was not restrict­ed infor­ma­tion. ‘The last thing we want to do is tip off ter­ror­ists that we are on to them,’ Nichols said. ‘We don’t want to dis­rupt ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions, covert actions or poten­tial law enforce­ment actions.’ ”

(“Gov­’t Won’t Release Ter­ror Financ­ing List’ by Ken Guggen­heim [AP]; p. 1.)

21.

“Admin­is­tra­tion attor­neys are review­ing the degree to which the clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion can be pro­vid­ed or shared with Con­gress in closed ses­sion, said a gov­ern­ment offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. The refusal to release the list marks the sec­ond time in two weeks that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has reject­ed requests by sen­a­tors to declas­si­fy infor­ma­tion about Sau­di ties to ter­ror­ists.’ ”

(Idem.)

22. Fur­ther under­scor­ing the Al Taqwa/Al Qae­da link dis­cussed above, a recent depo­si­tion by a for­mer FBI agent con­nects Youssef Nada and Ali Galeb Him­mat (of Al Taqwa) with alleged fund­ing of ter­ror­ists, includ­ing Al Qae­da.

“A group of Sau­di-backed Islam­ic char­i­ties oper­at­ing in the US gave mate­r­i­al sup­port to ter­ror­ists linked with al-Qae­da and Hamas, the US gov­ern­ment has alleged for the first time. The alle­ga­tions con­cern­ing the Mus­lim World League and an affil­i­ate, the Inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic Relief Orga­ni­za­tion, are like­ly to reignite con­cerns about Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s pos­si­ble role in fund­ing ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. The two char­i­ties are at the cen­ter of the largest-ever US inves­ti­ga­tion of ter­ror­ist financ­ing. Accord­ing to an affi­davit made pub­lic this week, the char­i­ties gave mon­ey to BMI, a New Jer­sey-based com­pa­ny sus­pect­ed of trans­fer­ring funds to three indi­vid­u­als des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ists by the US gov­ern­ment. . . ”

(“Sau­di-backed Char­i­ties ‘Aid­ed ter­ror­ists”’ by Mar­i­anne Brun-Rovet and Edward Alden; The Finan­cial Times; 8/21/2003; p. 2.)

23.

” . . . The mon­ey invest­ed in BMI by the two char­i­ties came from a $10m endow­ment from unnamed Sau­di donors, accord­ing to the affi­davit by David Kane, an agent with the Bureau of Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment. While it is not clear whether that mon­ey came from the Sau­di gov­ern­ment, the affi­davit quotes a recent CIA report that says the Mus­lim World League ‘is large­ly financed by the gov­ern­ment of Sau­di Ara­bia.’ Mr. Kane said that the char­i­ties gave $3.7m to BMI, which may have passed the mon­ey to indi­vid­u­als con­sid­ered ter­ror­ists by the U.S. They include Yassin Qadi accused by the US gov­ern­ment of trans­fer­ring mil­lions of dol­lars to Osama bin Laden through char­i­ties such as the Muwafaq Foun­da­tion; Mousa Abu Mar­zook, the self-pro­fessed head of the polit­i­cal branch of Hamas, the rad­i­cal Pales­tin­ian orga­ni­za­tion; and Moham­mad Salah, a mem­ber of Hamas who spent five years in an Israeli prison. . . . ”

(Idem.)

24.

“The alle­ga­tions against BMI were made to back up charges against Soli­man Biheiri, BMI’s founder and pres­i­dent, who was indict­ed two weeks ago on charges of lying to obtain US cit­i­zen­ship. The gov­ern­ment alleges that Mr. Biheiri also did busi­ness with oth­er des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ists. Mr. Biheir­i’s lap­top com­put­er con­tained con­tact infor­ma­tion for Ghaleb Him­mat and Youssef Nada, mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood extrem­ist group and peo­ple con­sid­ered ter­ror­ists by the US and the Unit­ed Nations. ”

(Idem.)

25. This descrip­tion fea­tures impor­tant sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion from an arti­cle in The Wall Street Jour­nal that came out after the broad­cast was record­ed. Fur­ther cement­ing the alle­ga­tions con­cern­ing Abdul­lah bin Laden and the milieus of Al Taqwa and Al Qae­da, the arti­cle sets forth appar­ent con­nec­tions between Mr. Biheiri and these same inter­ests.

” . . . Pros­e­cu­tors iden­ti­fied a third BMI investor as Abdul­lah Awad bin Laden, who BMI part­ner­ship records and bank state­ments show put in more than $500,000.00. He is a nephew of Osama bin Laden, head of al Qae­da and the alleged mas­ter­mind of the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror attacks. Dur­ing the 1990’s, Abdul­lah Awad bin Laden ran the U.S. branch of a Sau­di char­i­ty called the World Assem­bly of Mus­lim Youth. The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and pri­vate ana­lysts labeled it a sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion; the group says it does­n’t sup­port ter­ror­ism . . . Abdul­lah Awad bin Laden, who for­mer­ly lived in Vir­ginia but left the U.S., after Sept. 11, 2001, has made no pub­lic state­ments and could­n’t be locat­ed. U.S. offi­cials believe he is in Sau­di Ara­bia. ”

(“U.S. Details an Alleged Ter­ror-Financ­ing Web ” by Glenn R. Simp­son; Wall Street Jour­nal; 9/15/2003; p. A5.)

26.

” . . . Mr. Kane said Mr. Biheiri has rela­tion­ships with the two founders of the now-banned al-Taqwa, both of whom are also offi­cial­ly list­ed as ter­ror­ists by the U.S. He added that there are oth­er ‘indi­ca­tions there were some con­nec­tions between Bank al-Taqwa and BMI,’ includ­ing ‘finan­cial trans­ac­tions.’ He was halt­ed from say­ing any­thing fur­ther on the mat­ter by the pros­e­cu­tor, who said the infor­ma­tion is clas­si­fied for­eign intel­li­gence. Anoth­er of Mr. Biheir­i’s asso­ciates, the gov­ern­ment alleged, is Sami Al-Ari­an the Tam­pa col­lege pro­fes­sor now under indict­ment in fed­er­al court in Flori­da as an alleged leader of Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, which com­petes with Hamas to kill Israeli civil­ians in sui­cide bomb­ings. . . . ”

(Idem.)

27. Among the fig­ures impli­cat­ed in the web of intrigues dis­cussed above is Yaqub Mirza.

” . . . Round­ing out their evi­dence, pros­e­cu­tors dis­closed an e‑mail they obtained show­ing that Mr. Biheiri was involved in Mr. Qadi’s finan­cial deal­ings with Yaqub Mirza, a Pak­istani engi­neer who man­ages a group of Sau­di-backed Islam­ic char­i­ties that are also under inves­ti­ga­tion for sup­port­ing ter­ror­ism, accord­ing to a fed­er­al search war­rant. The e‑mail was tak­en from Mr. Mirza­’s com­put­er in the search. They said that one of the top fig­ures in the SAAR net­work, Ahmed Toton­ji, is a senior leader of the Mus­lim char­i­ty that Abdul­lah bin Laden helped run. ”

(Idem.)

28. Sup­ple­ment­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in FTRs 413, 417, the broad­cast sets forth doc­u­men­ta­tion of an alleged scheme on the part of Al Taqwa to laun­der assets seized by Sad­dam Hus­sein after his inva­sion of Kuwait.

” . . . Esti­mates of Hus­sein’s hid­den wealth range from sev­er­al bil­lion dol­lars to $40 bil­lion, and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion fears that the mon­ey could finance not only resis­tance to the U.S. occu­pa­tion of Iraq but ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties. Most of Hus­sein’s for­tune came from came kick­backs on oil sales and smug­gled cig­a­rettes and oth­er lux­u­ry goods, finan­cial sleuths say. Accord­ing to the Gen­er­al Account­ing office, the deposed dic­ta­tor skimmed more than $6.6 bil­lion from the U.N.-sponsored oil-for-food pro­gram. . . ”

(“Sad­dam Hus­sein Can Tap Bil­lions in Dol­lars, Gold, Dia­monds ” by Jay Bushin­sky; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 8/16/2003; p. A7.)

29.

” . . . Pao­lo Fusi, an Ital­ian reporter who began inves­ti­gat­ing Hus­sein’s mon­ey trail after Sept. 11 and is the author of ‘Sad­dam’s Cashier,’ says the oust­ed leader pat­terned his over­seas empire after his polit­i­cal mentor—Egypt’s late Pres­i­dent Gamal Abdel Nass­er. ‘(Hus­sein) became an admir­er of the Egypt­ian regime and its lead­er’s meth­ods,’ said Fusi . . . Fusi began his inquiry in Gene­va by inter­view­ing Arab bankers, who led him to Hus­sein’s finan­cial agents. Fusi also devel­oped close ties with Ital­ian judges, finan­cial police and a Swiss-Ital­ian attor­ney named Gian­lu­ca Boscaro, who report­ed­ly secured evi­dence of how Hus­sein hid mon­ey around the world after being hired by the fam­i­ly of a man the dic­ta­tor exe­cut­ed for skim­ming prof­its from the net­work. . . . ”

(Idem.)

30.

” . . . Accord­ing to the Sun­day Times of Lon­don, hun­dreds of doc­u­ments show that Hus­sein held bank accounts at the Bahamas branch of Switzer­land’s Ban­ca del Got­tar­do and chan­neled mil­lions of dol­lars to them from arms deals and con­struc­tion con­tracts. . . . But Elio Bor­rodori, the sub­ject of Fusi’s book, who served as a com­pa­ny trustee for Hus­sein in Liecht­en­stein and Switzer­land for more than a decade, told reporters in April that he fun­neled mil­lions in ‘com­mis­sions’ and ‘con­sul­tan­cy fees’ into a Ban­ca del Got­tar­do account in Nas­sau code­named Satan and con­trolled by a Hus­sein nephew named Saad al-Mah­di, based in Milan. ”

(Idem.)

31.

“Ernst Back­es, an inter­na­tion­al bank­ing expert in Lux­em­bourg, says the net­work remained active after U.N. sanc­tions were imposed on Iraq at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, reach­ing a finan­cial peak of $31 bil­lion annu­al­ly. Fusi says an Ital­ian gov­ern­ment report showed one of the net­work’s bold­est exploits—the laun­der­ing of mil­lions of Iraqi and Kuwaiti dinars, the lat­ter plun­dered by Iraqi troops dur­ing the Gulf War. ”

(Idem.)

32.

” ‘The mon­ey was packed into suit­cas­es that were trans­port­ed by truck from Slove­nia to Zurich, where a fair exchange in gold and dia­monds was guar­an­teed by Youssef Nada of al Taqwa Bank,’ Fusi said. (Al Taqwa Bank was includ­ed in Pres­i­dent Bush’s list of al Qae­da mon­ey sup­pli­ers.) ‘The neat­ly packed bills then wee shipped to Lebanon and Syr­ia, after which they dis­ap­peared . . . ”

(Idem.)

33. A very reveal­ing arti­cle from USA Today high­lights high-tech assets sold to Sad­dam by US cor­po­ra­tions. The phras­ing “our com­mon ene­my ” in ref­er­ence to the Unit­ed States is more than a lit­tle reveal­ing under the cir­cum­stances. One of the pos­si­bil­i­ties that must be seri­ous­ly enter­tained under the cir­cum­stances is a Bormann/Underground Reich role in these trans­ac­tions.

“U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors exam­in­ing bank and gov­ern­ment records here say they have unearthed evi­dence that high-tech hard­ware man­u­fac­tured by at least 30 U.S. com­pa­nies was sold to Iraq in vio­la­tion of Unit­ed Nations sanc­tions and U.S. cus­toms reg­u­la­tions. Offi­cials are try­ing to deter­mine whether any of those com­pa­nies know­ing­ly vio­lat­ed the sanc­tions and U.S. Cus­toms laws – or unwit­ting­ly sold the goods, includ­ing com­put­ers, lab­o­ra­to­ry equip­ment and air­craft parts, to third par­ties who then dealt with Sad­dam Hus­sein’s regime. Inves­ti­ga­tors declined to name the U.S. com­pa­nies. . . . Cus­toms agents say they have uncov­ered cor­re­spon­dence from com­pa­nies in Ger­many and South Korea that referred to the Unit­ed States as ‘our com­mon ene­my’ in appar­ent efforts to ingra­ti­ate them­selves with Iraq. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]. ”

(“Records Show Iraq Was Buy­ing For­bid­den U.S. High-Tech Goods ” by Don­na Lein­wand and Jim Michaels; USA Today; 8/29–9/1/2003; p. 1A.)

34. For those benight­ed souls still pre­tend­ing to them­selves that there is no dif­fer­ence between Al Gore and George Bush, con­sid­er that Al Gore met twice with Sau­di offi­cials and threat­ened them with severe eco­nom­ic sanc­tions unless they stopped fund­ing ter­ror­ism. George Bush’s efforts in that regard have been less than vig­or­ous.

” . . . Mr. New­som [Trea­sury Depart­ment offi­cial Rick New­comb] is expect­ed to tes­ti­fy that for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore arranged two meet­ings with Sau­di offi­cials in 1999 and 2000, and threat­ened Sau­di Ara­bia with severe sanc­tions if they did not staunch the flow of ter­ror­ist mon­ey from the coun­try. . . . ”

(“Links of Saud­is to Char­i­ties Come Under Sen­ate Review’ by Tim­o­thy L. O’Brien with Don Van Nat­ta Jr.; The New York Times; 7/31/2003; p. 1.)

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