Record­ed April 25, 2004
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Intro­duc­tion: Expos­ing a tru­ly ter­ri­fy­ing polit­i­cal real­i­ty, this pro­gram details the devel­op­ment of the Triple Bor­der area of Latin Amer­i­ca as an oper­a­tional epi­cen­ter for ter­ror­ist groups. In addi­tion to Islamist groups such as Al Qae­da and Hezbol­lah, the region has become a base for neo-Nazi oper­a­tives, as well as groups from Euro­pean coun­tries. The area is formed by the junc­tion of Argenti­na, Brazil and Paraguay and the prox­im­i­ty of these three enor­mous­ly cor­rupt coun­tries has made the region a hotbed of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty of all kinds. Among the most alarm­ing aspects of this inves­ti­ga­tion is the appar­ent oper­a­tional liai­son between Al Qae­da and neo-Nazi ele­ments. This broad­cast presents fright­en­ing alle­ga­tions con­cern­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of a for­mer Green Beret and mem­ber of the Aryan Nations in the 9/11 attacks. In addi­tion, the dis­cus­sion high­lights alle­ga­tions of two pri­or warn­ings of the 9/11 attacks. Both warn­ings alleged­ly orig­i­nat­ed from the Triple Bor­der area and both were appar­ent­ly ignored.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The role of weapons deal­er Monz­er Al-Kas­sar in the Con­dor mis­sile project being devel­oped by Argenti­na; Al-Kassar’s role in the bomb­ing of the Israeli Embassy in Argenti­na in 1992; the Triple Border’s sig­nif­i­cance in the plan­ning of both of the above attacks; alle­ga­tions that a joint CIA/Argentinean intel­li­gence infil­tra­tion of the Triple Bor­der area was ignored by US author­i­ties; a report that Aryan Nations ele­ments have been oper­at­ing in the Triple Bor­der area since 1985; the pres­ence of IRA splin­ter ele­ments and Span­ish ETA ter­ror­ists in the Triple Bor­der area; indi­ca­tions that US author­i­ties remain lethar­gic about inves­ti­gat­ing the Triple Bor­der area; review of the con­nec­tions between Amer­i­can neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion White Aryan Resis­tance (to which Tim­o­thy McVeigh alleged­ly belonged) and peo­ple involved with the AMIA bomb­ing; review of Nation­al Alliance leader William Pierce’s fore­shad­ow­ing of the 9/11 attacks.

1. Intro­duc­ing the top­ic of the Triple Bor­der area as a major epi­cen­ter of terrorism—Islamic ter­ror­ism in particular—the broad­cast begins with dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that 9/11 con­spir­a­tor Ramzi bin al-Shibh may have spent time in that region in con­nec­tion with his Al Qae­da activ­i­ties. “ . . . The 30-year-old bin al-Shibh ws a major catch. He was from a remote region of Yemen and had gone to Ger­many in 1995, plead­ing for polit­i­cal asy­lum from per­se­cu­tions in Sudan. He was denied, but man­aged to re-enter the coun­try with a stu­dent visa, and by 1998 he had moved into an apart­ment at 54 Marien­strasse in Ham­burg with Mohammed Atta, the man thought to be the leader of the Sep­tem­ber 11 hijack­ers, and two oth­er al-Qae­da oper­a­tives. Bin al-Shibh nei­ther worked nor reg­u­lar­ly attend­ed class­es at the school where he had enrolled; instead, he spent his time going to the Al-Quds mosque, where the vir­u­lent anti-West­ern ser­mons seem to have inspired him to ded­i­cate his life to what he under­stood to be jihad.”
(“Ter­ror­is­m’s New Geog­ra­phy” by Sebas­t­ian Junger; Van­i­ty Fair; December/2002; p. 192.)

2. “Bin al-Shibh applied to a flight school I the Unit­ed States, was accept­ed, and applied for U.S. entry visas at least four times, but was reject­ed. As a Yemeni, he was con­sid­ered a high risk to over­stay his visa. Appar­ent­ly unable to join Atta and the oth­ers for the hijack­ings, he instead became a logis­tics coor­di­na­tor. He wired mon­ey, ran errands, and main­tained a base of oper­a­tions in Ham­burg. In Jan­u­ary 2000 in Kuala Lumpur, he attend­ed a meet­ing believed to have been relat­ed to the upcom­ing attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and in July 2001 he met Atta and four oth­ers in Tar­rag­o­na, Spain, to make arrange­ments for Sep­tem­ber 11.” (Idem.)

3. “On Sep­tem­ber 5, 2001, he went back to Spain with a return tick­et to Ger­many for two weeks lat­er, but the tick­et was nev­er used. Inves­ti­ga­tors believe he went to Afghanistan and then to Pakistan—he cer­tain­ly wound up there—but there is anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty. Accord­ing to sources in Argen­tinean intel­li­gence, bin al-Shibh has known, con­firmed con­tacts with a Lebanese busi­ness­man work­ing in Ciu­dad del Este, Paraguay, and in Foz do Iguacu, Brazil, where Argenti­na, Brazil and Paraguay con­verge. Triple Bor­der has a large Lebanese expa­tri­ate pop­u­la­tion, a thriv­ing black mar­ket in cheap elec­tron­ics, and a 10-year his­to­ry of Islam­ic extrem­ism.” (Idem.)

4. “It is pos­si­ble that bin al-Shibh—instead of going to Afghanistan to fight and die in a hope­less strug­gle against the Unit­ed States—went to Triple bor­der. If not, he almost cer­tain­ly had asso­ciates who did. Brazil­ian author­i­ties have inter­cept­ed numer­ous phone calls from clan­des­tine tele­phone exchanges in Triple Bor­der and Afghanistan, and last year a CNN reporter in Kab­ul found a large tourist poster from Triple Bor­der at an al-Qae­da safe house.” (Idem.)

5. Next, the pro­gram delin­eates the cir­cum­stances of the CIA’s fail­ure to ade­quate­ly mon­i­tor Al Qae­da activ­i­ty in the region. Ini­tial efforts at coor­di­nat­ing infil­tra­tion of the Triple Bor­der area in con­junc­tion with Argen­tinean intel­li­gence broke down—accounts of just why the break­down occurred dif­fer. “ ‘The day after Sep­tem­ber 11, the C.I.A. dis­patched a team down there,’ says Mag­nus Ranstorp, direc­tor of the Cen­tre for the Study of Ter­ror­ism and Polit­i­cal Vio­lence at the uni­ver­si­ty of St. Andrews in Fife, Scot­land. ‘For me the Tri-Bor­der area is the Hilton of Islam­ic extrem­ism. It’s one of the most lucra­tive safe havens in the world. It’s been on the radar since the ear­ly 90’s, and no one has done any­thing about it.’” (Idem.)

6. “The remark­able lapse of Amer­i­can efforts to mon­i­tor al-Qae­da in Triple Bor­der can be traced back to 1999, when rela­tions between the C.I.A. and Argentina’s Sec­re­tari­at of State Intel­li­gence (SIDE) suf­fered a com­plete break­down. Sev­er­al years ear­li­er, the C.I.A. had asked its coun­ter­parts at SIDE to infil­trate the Triple Bor­der area in order to obtain infor­ma­tion on Islam­ic extrem­ist groups there, par­tic­u­lar­ly on Hezbol­lah. The oper­a­tion was called ‘Cen­tau­ro.’” (Idem.)

7. “The report, which was hand­ed over in 1999, con­tained infor­ma­tion that the C.I.A. reject­ed as implau­si­ble, accord­ing to SIDE. (An intel­li­gence insid­er believes that the C.I.A. did pur­sue the infor­ma­tion, but encoun­tered resis­tance high­er up. ‘I was per­son­al­ly involved in track­ing ter­ror­ists to Triple Bor­der,’ says ex‑C.I.A. offi­cer Robert Baer. ‘We were aware it was a plat­form for them to go after the U.S.’)” (Idem.)

8. “SIDE agents had iden­ti­fied al-Qae­da oper­a­tives in Triple Bor­der, record­ed meet­ings of Islam­ic extrem­ists in the mosques in Ciu­dad del Este and in Foz do Iguacu, infil­trat­ed moles into ter­ror­ist groups, detailed al-Qae­da indoc­tri­na­tion and fund-rais­ing efforts, and pro­vid­ed evi­dence of ter­ror­ist train­ing camps on the Paraguay-Brazil bor­der. Accord­ing to Argen­tinean news sources, the C.I.A. accused SIDE of retal­i­at­ing by leak­ing a pho­to­graph of then C.I.A. Buenos Aires sta­tion chief Ross New­land to a local news­pa­per in Jan­u­ary 2001. Sev­er­al months lat­er, New­land returned to the Unit­ed States, and the C.I.A. sev­ered almost all ties with SIDE, dump­ing it instead into the hands of the F.B.I., which also failed to exploit the infor­ma­tion. The Cen­tau­ro oper­a­tion lan­guished until the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks, when the C.I.A. re-dis­cov­ered its inter­est in Triple Bor­der.” (Ibid.; pp. 192–198.)

9. More about Bin al-Shibh’s pres­ence in the Triple Bor­der area in con­nec­tion with his Al Qae­da activ­i­ties. “Bin al-Shibh’s cap­ture was announced the night of Septem­ber 12, but I didn’t hear about it until the next morn­ing, because I was on a flight to Buenos Aires. I was going there to meet with a for­mer Argen­tinean intel­li­gence agent named Mario Aguilar Risi, who claimed to know a lot about bin al-Shibh. I knew Risi through a mutu­al con­tact. All sum­mer, Risi had been telling me that he had tracked bin al-Shibh and oth­er top al-Qae­da and Hezbol­lah oper­a­tives to Brazil and Paraguay, and he had sur­veil­lance pho­tos to prove it. It was a dra­mat­ic story—maybe over­ly so—and the 55-year-old Risi him­self was already a rather dra­mat­ic sto­ry in his own right. He had spent sev­er­al years in jail, two of them for extor­tion, but was known in Argenti­na for hav­ing had fore­knowl­edge of two dead­ly Buenos Aires car bomb­ings, sus­pect­ed to have been the work of Hezbol­lah. Now he claimed that he had hard intel­li­gence on al-Qae­da activ­i­ty in Triple Bor­der.” (Ibid.; p. 198.)

10. Among the ter­ror­ist ele­ments with which Bin al-Shibh alleged­ly net­worked was Imad Mughniyah—a Hezbol­lah oper­a­tive who has appar­ent­ly oper­at­ed in con­junc­tion with Bin Laden’s orga­ni­za­tion. (For more about Mugh­niyah, see FTR#328.) “Specif­i­cal­ly, he said, he had recent­ly tracked Ramzi bin al-Shibh to Sao Paulo, Brazil, before the ter­ror­ist left the coun­try using a false pass­port. In Brazil, bin al-Shibh had sup­pos­ed­ly met with a top Hezbol­lah ter­ror­ist named Imad Mugh­niyah, at the Mask­oud Plaza hotel. The Mak­soud Plaza is one of the fan­ci­est hotels in Sao Paulo, and when the ter­ror­ists left by the front door, accord­ing to Risi, a for­mer Argen­tinean police offi­cer snapped a pho­to of them. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er was named ‘Ale­jan­dro’ and worked for Risi gath­er­ing coun­tert­er­ror­ism intel­li­gence. Risi claimed that the pho­to of bin al-Shibh ws in a secure loca­tion in Triple Bor­der, along with sur­veil­lance pho­tos and tapes of oth­er ter­ror­ists. And if I didn’t believe him, I was wel­come to come down and see for myself.” (Idem.)

11. Next, the broad­cast revis­its the sub­ject of the AMIA bombing—one of the first Islamist ter­ror­ist inci­dents in Latin Amer­i­ca and appar­ent­ly con­nect­ed to the bomb­ing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires two years ear­li­er. (For more about the AMIA bomb­ing, see FTR#’s 5, 29, 109, 328, 330, 341.) “Ter­ror­ism estab­lished itself beyond a doubt in Argenti­na in the ear­ly 1990’s. Around 10 o’clock on the morn­ing of July 18, 1994, a white Renault Traf­fic packed with 600 pounds of ammo­ni­um nitrate—a fertilizer—and fuel explod­ed next to the Argen­tine-Israeli Mutu­al Asso­ci­a­tion in down­town Buenos Aires. The explo­sion was so pow­er­ful that it brought down most of the sev­en-sto­ry build­ing. The driver—no one knows who he was—disappeared. Eighty-six of the 100 or so peo­ple then I the build­ing died in the blast. A woman who hap­pened to be cross­ing the street just before the explo­sion had near­ly been hit by the Renault van as it took the turn onto Calle Pas­teur, and recalled glar­ing at it, but did not get a good look at the dri­ver. She could not say whether he was old or young, Arab-look­ing or not; all she could say was that he had seemed to be alone.” (Idem.)

12. Among the prin­ci­pal play­ers in the bomb­ings was Monz­er al-Kas­sar. (For more about Al-Kas­sar, see—among oth­er programs—RFA#’s 32, 35, 38—avail­able from Spitfire—as well as FTR#’s 109, 341.) Mate­r­i­al dis­cussed in this pro­gram alleges an Al-Kas­sar role in the Con­dor mis­sile project, dis­cussed in FTR#’s 155, 384.) “Ter­ror­ists had struck once before. Two years ear­li­er, a Ford F‑100 truck loaded with the high explo­sive Sem­tex had blown up in front of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and killed 29 peo­ple. The truck had been bought in Ciu­dad del Este with hun­dred-dol­lar bills report­ed­ly traced to a cur­ren­cy-exchange house in Lebanon that belonged to Monz­er al-Kas­sar, an infa­mous arms deal­er. Al-Kas­sar had exten­sive ties to the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment and its intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus and was sus­pect­ed of a laun­dry list of ille­gal arms deals and ter­ror­ist acts, includ­ing the 1985 hijack­ing of the Achille Lau­ro cruise ship. He was also sus­pect­ed of bro­ker­ing a deal in 1989 between Argen­tinean pres­i­dent Car­los Men­em and Syr­ia, where­by the Syr­i­ans would make a $100 mil­lion ‘cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion’ to Men­em in exchange for the sale of a nuclear reac­tor and an Argen­tinean mis­sile sys­tem called Con­dor II. A bilat­er­al pact between Syr­ia and Iran tied both coun­tries to the pur­chas­es.” (Idem.)

13. “The Con­dor mis­sile had a range of 1,000 kilo­me­ters and was wide­ly con­sid­ered to be supe­ri­or to the Russ­ian Scud mis­siles that were already avail­able to Syr­ia. Under heavy pres­sure from the Unit­ed States, Menem—a close friend of the first Pres­i­dent George Bush, who forced through a $300 mil­lion deal for Enron in Argenti­na, in which the com­pa­ny received huge tax breaks—made a good­will vis­it to Israel and reneged on both the mis­sile-sys­tem and nuclear-reac­tor sales. Crit­ics accused him of pur­su­ing a ‘car­nal’ rela­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States, and with­in months ter­ror­ists had car­ried out the first of their two attacks.” (Idem.)

14. The arti­cle dis­cuss­es the Syr­i­an back­ground of Men­em and his entourage, as well as some of the scan­dals sur­round­ing his wife. (For more about this sub­ject, see FTR#’s 109, 341, 373.) The pro­gram then pro­ceeds to dis­cuss the cov­er-up of the AMIA bombing—set forth in con­sid­er­able detail in FTR#109. “To no one’s sur­prise, the inves­ti­ga­tion into the bomb­ing of the Argentine—Israeli Mutu­al Association—known by its Span­ish acronym, AMIA—was bun­gled from the start. The crime scene was tram­pled by the police, res­cuers, and the sim­ply curi­ous, and near­ly all the phys­i­cal evidence—including body parts of the victims—was col­lect­ed in plas­tic bags and dropped off at an open-air dump. Three years lat­er the bags were dug up and thrown into the Rio de la Pla­ta. Nev­er­the­less, some progress was made in the case, though in the hall of mir­rors that is Argen­tinean pol­i­tics it was hard to tell who was a vil­lain and who was a scape­goat. Inves­ti­ga­tors traced the white van used in the attack to Police Com­mis­sion­er Juan Jose Ribel­li, who for years had been sus­pect­ed of using his posi­tion to run an extreme­ly lucra­tive side busi­ness traf­fick­ing stolen cars to Paraguay. Inves­ti­ga­tors soon dis­cov­ered that Ribel­li had received a $2.5 mil­lion pay­ment from an unknown source—possibly as a pay­off for the crime, or for tak­ing the fall. (Ribel­li claims it was an inher­i­tance.) And 66 record­ings from police wire­taps of a Ribel­li asso­ciate mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. In the end, 14 more police­men and four of their asso­ciates were arrest­ed for the bomb­ing.” (Idem.)

15. An infor­mant attempt­ed to alert the Argen­tinean author­i­ties to the impend­ing AMIA bombing—to no avail. “And it got even stranger. Fif­teen days before the AMIA bomb­ing, it turned out, a shad­owy Brazil­ian named Wil­son Dos San­tos had vis­it­ed the Argen­tinean Con­sulate in Milan and tried to warn offi­cials of the upcom­ing attack. His girl­friend was part of the ter­ror cell that had car­ried out the embassy attack in ’92, he said, and they had anoth­er attck planned, for a build­ing in Buenos Aires that was ‘under construction’—the AMIA build­ing. The Argen­tinean diplo­mats dis­missed him out of hand, but after the attack he was quick­ly found in Brazil by none oth­er than Mario Aguilar Risi, who had also had advance warm­ing of the attack from his own sources.” (Idem.)

16. “Risi had just been cleared of kid­nap­ping charges and been released from prison. While in jail, Risi says, he wrote numer­ous let­ters to Argentina’s then inte­ri­or min­is­ter, Car­los Corach, as well as to a fed­er­al judge, explain­ing that he had deep sources in ter­ror­ist cells in Argenti­na, Paraguay, and Brazil, and that these cells were plan­ning a dev­as­tat­ing attack on the AMIA build­ing. He was ignored, the attack occurred, and as soon as Risi was released from prison he tracked down Dos San­tos. In Brazil he video­taped him­self with Dos San­tos, who made a brief state­ment that he was return­ing to Buenos Aires to tell the truth.” (Idem.)

17. “Accord­ing to Risi, dos San­tos had agreed to tes­ti­fy as long as his iden­ti­ty was not revealed, but in Buenos Aires, as soon as he made his state­ment to the pre­sid­ing judge, Juan Jose Galeano, his name and pho­to­graph were leaked to he press. Dos San­tos imme­di­ate­ly recant­ed every­thing, explain­ing that the AMIA warn­ing had sim­ply been a lucky guess. Judge Clau­dio Bona­dio threw him in jail to await tri­al for per­jury charges.” (Idem.)

18. More about the failed inves­ti­ga­tion: “The investigation—or cover-up—blundered along for years. Its most vocal crit­ic was the num­ber-two inves­ti­ga­tor in the case, Clau­dio Lif­schitz. Two and a half years into the inves­ti­ga­tion, Lif­schitz quit in dis­gust and wrote a book called AMIA: Why the Inves­ti­ga­tion Was Made to Fail. It alleged that the entire probe had been com­pro­mised in an effort by Pres­i­dent Men­em to cov­er up his ties to Syr­ia and Iran. The two bomb­ings went unsolved for years, but sup­port for Lifschitz’s accu­sa­tions emerged sud­den­ly last July, when The New York Times and The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that a for­mer Iran­ian intel­li­gence offi­cer, using the name Abdol­has­sem Mes­bahi and oth­er wise known as ‘Wit­ness C,’ had tes­ti­fied to Argen­tinean inves­ti­ga­tors that the 1992 embassy bomb­ing was planned by a diplo­mat at the Iran­ian Embassy in Buenos Aires and super­vised by a senior Iran­ian intel­li­gence offi­cer. Months after the bomb­ing, Mes­bahi said, an emis­sary from Men­em flew to Teheran to accept a $10 mil­lion pay­off to cov­er up the first bomb­ing as well as any ‘future’ acts of ter­ror­ism. The mon­ey, accord­ing to Mes­bahi, was deposit­ed in a num­bered Swiss bank account con­trolled by Menem—a fact lat­er con­firmed by Swiss inves­ti­ga­tors.” (Idem.)

19. The evi­den­tiary path­way fol­lowed in the AMIA bomb­ing led to the Triple Bor­der area. “Over and over again the AMIA inves­ti­ga­tors had come upon ref­er­ences to Triple Bor­der. It is the per­fect place for the Hezbol­lah: deep in the mato grosso (out­back), near the enor­mous Iguacu Falls, sur­round­ed on three sides by cor­rupt gov­ern­ments, a com­mu­ni­ty of 30,000 Mus­lims has estab­lished itself to take advan­tage of the boom­ing cross-bor­der trade. Most are Lebanese who fled the civ­il war in their coun­try, and most are decent, hard-work­ing peo­ple, but the oppor­tu­ni­ties for ille­gal activ­i­ties are almost infi­nite, and the mon­ey to be made is immense. . . .” (Idem.)

20. After dis­cussing the failed poli­cies that led to the gen­e­sis of a large-scale criminal/underground econ­o­my in the Triple Bor­der area, the broad­cast dis­cuss­es how the Mus­lim emi­gres took advan­tage of the sit­u­a­tion. These cir­cum­stances led to the devel­op­ment of the Triple Bor­der area as a ter­ror­ist epi­cen­ter, ful­ly uti­lized by the Islamists. Among the prin­ci­pal Islamist oper­a­tives in the Triple Bor­der are appears to have been Assad Ahmad Mohamad Barakat, who worked with Hezbol­lah and Al Qae­da. “ . . . Hezbol­lah and Hamas cells eas­i­ly inte­grat­ed them­selves into this tight­ly knit Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty. Not only is it an ide­al place to blend in, but a huge amount of mon­ey is fun­neled back to Lebanon to sup­port the cause. Bank records show that a Lebanese busi­ness­man named Assad Ahmad Mohamad Barakat—who owns one of the largest shop­ping malls in Ciu­dad del Este—has trans­ferred thou­sands of dol­lars to Hezbol­lah over the years. A month after the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks, Paraguayan police, under intense pres­sure from the Unit­ed States, swept Ciu­dad del Este and arrest­ed a dozen or so sus­pect­ed mon­ey-laun­der­ers. Barakat him­self man­aged to escape the raid, but in his office the police found scores of copies of an al-Qae­da pro­mo­tion­al video. He had been mak­ing them, appar­ent­ly, to dis­trib­ute to extrem­ists in Triple Bor­der. Car­los Cal­cena, the Paraguayan pros­e­cu­tor in charge of the case, has tracked tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in mon­ey trans­fers from the port town of Iquique, Chile, to Ciu­dad del Este, to a Chase Man­hat­tan bank account in the name of “Mr. Barakat’ in Long Island City, New York.” (Ibid.; p. 200.)

21. “Barakat was even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed in Brazil last sum­mer, but his finan­cial empire is enor­mous and rel­a­tive­ly intact. The Bank of Eng­land Finan­cial Sanc­tions Relat­ed to Ter­ror­ism list includes 28 entries under the name Barakat or Al-Barakat, includ­ing com­pa­nies in Boston, Min­neapo­lis, and Seat­tle (It’s unknown how many belong to the same fam­i­ly.) there was even a Barakat Trad­ing Com­pa­ny in the Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Hotel in Kab­ul before the Tal­iban fell.” (Idem.)

22. “Since the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks, the Unit­ed States has sent a team of 40 F.B.I. agents to Ciu­dad del Este to help local author­i­ties tack­le the ter­ror­ism and mon­ey prob­lem, but it may be too late. Accord­ing to Cal­cena, as much as $50 mil­lion is believed to have flowed from Triple Bor­der to Hezbol­lah accounts in the past sev­en years. It is enough to finance almost any kind of attack—or cover-up—imaginable.” (Idem.)

23. One of two appar­ent warn­ings of the 9/11 attacks orig­i­nat­ing from the Triple Bor­der area came from a Moroc­can Al Qae­da recruit who “rolled over” after being arrest­ed for rob­bing a taxi. His warn­ing went for naught. “If there was any doubt among U.S. offi­cials before Sep­tem­ber 11 that Triple Bor­der was a haven for al-Qae­da, it should have been erased by the case of a young Moroc­can named Gued­dan Abdel Fatah. In Jan­u­ary 2001, Fatah was detained for alleged­ly hav­ing a false pass­port in Sao Paulo after try­ing to rob a taxi. Eight months later—just days pri­or to Sep­tem­ber 11—Fatah hand­ed a typed let­ter to attor­ney Edith Espinosa at the prison where he was incar­cer­at­ed and begged her to give it to the Fed­er­al Police in Brazil in the pres­ence of U.S. embassy and Israeli diplo­mat­ic offi­cials. In the let­ter, he said that he urgent­ly need­ed to talk with the author­i­ties because there were going to be ‘two explo­sions’ in the Unit­ed States in the near future. The lawyer neglect­ed to pass the let­ter along, and six days lat­er al-Qae­da agents flew planes into the twin tow­ers of the World Trade Cen­ter and the Pen­ta­gon.” (Idem.)

24. “Just hours after the attack, Sao Paulo police com­mis­sion­er Cesar Tosel­li went to the Carandiru prison to inter­ro­gate Fatah. The young Moroc­can had a chill­ing sto­ry to tell. He said he had gone to Triple Bor­der the year before and for sev­er­al months attend­ed meet­ings at a mosque in Foz do Iguacu where Shi­ite and Sun­ni Muslims—ordinarily enemies—talked open­ly about ‘blow­ing up’ the Unit­ed States. Fatah said he main­tained con­tact with eight for­eign­ers from these meet­ings, includ­ing four Pak­ista­nis, a Cos­ta Rican, and an Indi­an. The Indi­an sup­pos­ed­ly had cod­ed phone con­ver­sa­tions from a pay phone with some­one in the Unit­ed States. Dis­il­lu­sioned and fright­ened by the vio­lence of their plans, Fatah said, he fled the area and con­tact­ed the Amer­i­can and Israeli Embassies in Brazil and the Amer­i­can Con­sulates in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro to warn them. He was ignored. Out of mon­ey and des­per­ate, he alleged­ly tried to rob a taxi for plane fare home and ws caught; he remained in prison as a ‘priv­i­leged informer,’ under police pro­tec­tion

.” (Idem.)

25. Among the Islamist ter­ror inci­dents with evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing toward the Triple Bor­der area is the 1997 mas­sacre at Lux­or, Egypt by Al Qae­da-relat­ed ele­ments. “Fatah’s sto­ry jibes with what is already known about Triple Bor­der. Said Mohk­les, alleged mas­ter­mind of the 1997 mas­sacre in Lux­or, Egypt, in which 58 west­ern tourists were killed in a machine-gun attack while they admired an ancient tem­ple, lived qui­et­ly in Triple Bor­der for years. He was arrest­ed in Jan­u­ary 1999 by Uruguayan police after British intel­li­gence picked up cod­ed phone con­ver­sa­tions in which he dis­cussed start­ing a ter­ror­ist cell in Lon­don. Mohk­les was alleged to have received help from Mohammed Kassem Jomaa, the may­or of Chui, a small town in Brazil. Jomaa was ques­tioned by author­i­ties after the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks because of his asso­ci­a­tion with Mohk­les, as well as for sus­pect­ed links to Osama bin Laden. And Imad Mugh­niyah, the Hezbol­lah for­eign-oper­a­tions chief who might rival Osama bin Laden as the most want­ed man in the world, has been indict­ed in Argenti­na for orga­niz­ing the AMIA and Israeli Embassy attacks; Mugh­niyah has a $25 mil­lion boun­ty on his head for a long list of ter­ror­ist acts, includ­ing the 1983 Marine-bar­racks and U.S. Embassy bomb­ings in Lebanon.” (Idem.)

26. More about the con­nec­tion between Osama bin Laden and Imad Mugh­niyah: “The asso­ci­a­tion between bin Laden and Mugh­niyah dates back to the ear­ly 1990’s, when a for­mer Amer­i­can Green Beret named Ali Mohamed—who recent­ly plead­ed guilty to con­spir­ing with al-Qae­da to bomb U.S. embassies in Africa—arranged secu­ri­ty for the two men when they met in Sudan. Mughniyah’s alleged use of bomb attacks to dri­ve Amer­i­can forces out of Beirut in the 1980’s was like­ly a mod­el for bin Laden’s attempts to rive Amer­i­can forces from Sau­di Ara­bia. Three years after the Sudan meet­ing, a ter­ror­ist group thought to be asso­ci­at­ed with bin Laden det­o­nat­ed a truck bomb at the Kho­bar Tow­ers com­plex, near a U.S. mil­i­tary base in Sau­di Ara­bia, killing 19 ser­vice­men. Mugh­niyah was impli­cat­ed by U.S. author­i­ties in that attack. He has also been impli­cat­ed in car­ry­ing out or direct­ing at least three hijack­ings, includ­ing that of an Air India flight, in which ter­ror­ists armed with knives and scis­sors took over the cock­pit and suc­cess­ful­ly land­ed the plane on their own. They knifed a pas­sen­ger and forced oth­ers to watch him bleed to death, pre­sum­ably to encour­age coop­er­a­tion. That same tac­tic was used by Atta and the oth­er hijack­ers on Sep­tem­ber 11.” (Ibid.; pp. 200–202.)

27. The pro­gram sets forth more infor­ma­tion about Sebas­t­ian Junger’s con­tact Mario Aguilar Risi. “I met Mario Aguilar Risi in the lob­by of the Buenos Aires Sher­a­ton on an after­noon last Sep­tem­ber. He was short and well dressed in a suit and tie, and had deep cir­cles under his eyes and an exhaust­ed, bas­set-hound expres­sion that sug­gest­ed an enor­mous­ly stress­ful life. His beard, stained by cig­a­rette smoke above his mouth, had turned most­ly white, and his hair was thin. He talked fast and almost with­out pause, slow­ing only to draw out the names of terrorists—Mughniyah, bin al-Shibh, for instance—and he appar­ent­ly could talk about ter­ror­ism non-stop for hours.” (Ibid.; p. 202.)

28. “He said he was a for­mer Argen­tinean intel­li­gence offi­cer who had worked in counter-espi­onage, coun­terin­sur­gency, and crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions. He claimed he had also worked—along with 30 or so oth­er Argen­tinean agents—for the C.I.A. on the Nicaraguan bor­der, train­ing the con­tras to infil­trate and desta­bi­lize the San­din­ista gov­ern­ment in the 1980’s. He served in intel­li­gence in the Falk­lands War—called the Malv­inas War in Argentina—and sev­er­al years lat­er was cho­sen by Argen­tinean pres­i­dent Raul Alfon­sin to inves­ti­gate the 1985 kid­nap­ping of a Jew­ish busi­ness­man named Osval­do Sivak. It was the Sivak affair that got him into trou­ble, he said through his covert sources he found out that Sivak was dead, but the polit­i­cal cli­mate was too unsta­ble for the gov­ern­ment to admit that. When Sivak’s fam­i­ly lent the inves­ti­ga­tion a large sum of mon­ey, sev­er­al top gov­ern­ment ministers—knowing Sivak was dead—simply divid­ed up the mon­ey as well—‘Frankly, it came in use­ful,’ he said—and then took the fall for it, even being charged with the kid­nap­ping itself. He was even­tu­al­ly released from jail and oth­ers were charged with the crime.” (Idem.)

29. One of Risi’s infor­mants in the Triple Bor­der area was a man named Ale­jan­dro, who infil­trat­ed the Islamist milieu in the area. (Ale­jan­dro is dis­cussed at greater length lat­er on in the broad­cast.) “Risi had sto­ries to tell about Triple Bor­der as well. His part­ner, Ale­jan­dro, he said, suc­ceed­ed in infil­trat­ing the world of ter­ror­ist cells and was trained at one of their camps on the Brazil­ian-Paraguayan bor­der. There they used cutouts of ‘Amer­i­can sol­diers and Jews’ for tar­get prac­tice. Ale­jan­dro was now a foot sol­dier in a Hezbollah—al-Qaeda cell, Risi said, and was used to pro­vide secu­ri­ty when­ev­er a real­ly big name came to town. In 1998, accord­ing to Ale­jan­dro, two imams from African coun­tries had come in to help plan the U.S. Embassy bomb­ings in Kenya and Tan­za­nia. Risi said he con­tact­ed the U.S. author­i­ties in Buenos Aires to warn them, but he was ignored. Two months lat­er, truck bombs destroyed both embassies, killing 224 peo­ple.” (Idem.)

30. Risi alleged­ly warned U.S. author­i­ties about the (then) upcom­ing 9/11 attacks. “Risi came pre­pared for the meet­ing with a lock­ing brief­case filled with doc­u­ments and pho­tographs. Shuf­fling through mate­r­i­al as he talked, he pulled out let­ters that he claimed to have sub­mit­ted to Argen­tinean and Amer­i­can author­i­ties over the years. They were writ­ten in a painful­ly pre­cise script, and some are stamped at the bot­tom with the date and ‘AM Embassy,’ or ‘Embassy of the Unit­ed States.’ One, dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 2001, but not bear­ing an embassy stamp, pur­ports to warn Ambas­sador James Walsh of the upcom­ing attacks on Sep­tem­ber 11. ‘Mr. Ambas­sador,’ the let­ter begins, ‘as a cit­i­zen of Argenti­na I, Mario Aguilar, am writ­ing you to make you aware of very seri­ous and urgent infor­ma­tion. . . .With­in the next six months there will be four large-scale attacks in the Unit­ed States by al-Qae­da.’ In the let­ter Risi list­ed the White House, Con­gress, the Pen­ta­gon, and the Twin Tow­ers as pos­si­ble tar­gets for planes loaded with explo­sives flown by sui­cide pilots. ‘I can expand on this,’ he fin­ish­es, ‘if this is of inter­est to your gov­ern­ment. I am at your dis­pos­al as an unin­ter­est­ed par­ty.’” (Idem.)

31. More about Risi’s infor­ma­tion about Islamist oper­a­tions in the Triple Bor­der area: “And he had photos—dozens of them. One showed a man known as Ahad in front of some street ven­dors in Ciu­dad del Este. Ahad, Risi said is want­ed in con­nec­tion with the AMIA bomb­ing and is thought to be con­nect­ed to al-Qae­da. The pho­to was sup­pos­ed­ly tak­en by a cam­era hid­den in a shoe box. Anoth­er pho­to showed a man Risi described as a Hezbol­lah agent named Said, walk­ing down a street in Ciu­dad del Este. Accord­ing to Risi, Said is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Mugh­niyah as well as al-Qae­da, and served as an instruc­tor at one of its train­ing camps. There were pho­tos of what Risi says are al-Qae­da body­guards with machine guns, of al-Qae­da safe hous­es, of ille­gal busi­ness­es owned by Hezbol­lah agents; there was even a pho­to of a C.I.A. infor­mant in Foz do Iguacu.” (Idem.)

32. “ ‘Do you know who this man is also work­ing for?’ Risi asked in dis­gust. ‘Hezbol­lah. And who do you think pays him more?’” (Idem.)

33. In addi­tion to a major Al Qae­da pres­ence in Triple Bor­der, there appear to be oth­er ter­ror­ist groups oper­at­ing in the area. It is inter­est­ing to note alleged net­work­ing between the Basque ETA group and Span­ish Al Qae­da ele­ments. One won­ders if this liai­son may have led to some of the con­fu­sion con­cern­ing the author­ship of the March 11 train bomb­ing in Madrid—initially attrib­uted to ETA but ulti­mate­ly demon­strat­ed to be the work of Al Qae­da. “Triple Bor­der, Risi said, was a major logis­ti­cal and plan­ning base for al-Qae­da, a place where its mem­bers could get mon­ey, fake pass­ports, and easy access to every coun­try in South Amer­i­ca. It was also a place where they could relax—they could drink, they could have girls, they could do what­ev­er they want­ed, with­out some scowl­ing imam look­ing over their shoul­der, The ter­ror­ists weren’t just Islam­ic rad­i­cals, either. They were from the Irish Repub­li­can Army, the Basque sep­a­ratist group ETA, and Colombia’s FARC. Accord­ing to Risi, a cousin of the Lebanese busi­ness­man Barakat, now in prison in Brazil, was the main al-Qae­da con­tact in Spain. A Spaniard, whose name won’t be divulged here so as not to hin­der coun­tert­er­ror­ism efforts, was ETA’s con­tact in Triple Bor­der and had trained Ale­jan­dro in one of the camps.” (Ibid.; pp. 202–205.)

34. Next, the broad­cast presents infor­ma­tion about alleged Aryan Nations par­tic­i­pa­tion in the events of 9/11. Risi alleges that a for­mer Green Beret with Viet­nam com­bat expe­ri­ence and oper­at­ing on behalf of Aryan Nations works as a train­er in the Triple Bor­der area and that this same indi­vid­ual alleged­ly assist­ed Mohammed Atta in the 9/11 attacks. “ . . . And there were Amer­i­cans at the camp as well. Risi learned about one of them and on Jan­u­ary 12, 1996, he says, he took a poly­graph test and made a state­ment to the Fed­er­al Court in Buenos Aires tes­ti­fy­ing to every­thing he knew about this Amer­i­can. The man—whose name also won’t be divulged—is an ex-Spe­cial Forces sol­dier who had been a com­mu­ni­ca­tions expert in Viet­nam and had seen com­bat there. He returned home to join the Michi­gan Mili­tia, then con­vert­ed to Islam, worked in Jor­dan, and became asso­ci­at­ed with anoth­er Amer­i­can, who had been inves­ti­gat­ed by the D.E.A. for activ­i­ties in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. Now, accord­ing to Risi, the Viet­nam vet, who speaks Span­ish, is in Triple Bor­der with two oth­er Amer­i­can extrem­ists, act­ing as an instruc­tor at one of the ter­ror­ist train­ing camps. He is also respon­si­ble for secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions and pro­vid­ed armed guards when top al-Qae­da and Hezbol­lah associates—in par­tic­u­lar, Muganiyah—were in town.” (Ibid.; p. 205.)

35. Risi alleges that Aryan Nations ele­ments had peo­ple in Triple Bor­der as ear­ly as 1985, and he says they are work­ing with Islamist ter­ror­ists in the U.S. (For more about neo-Nazi con­nec­tions to the 9/11 attacks, see FTR#443.) “Accord­ing to Risi, the man had also been in the Unit­ed States on Sep­tem­ber 11 and had pro­vid­ed logis­ti­cal sup­port to Atta before the attacks.” (Idem.)

36. Junger notes that white suprema­cists would not face the tac­ti­cal lim­i­ta­tions that Islam­ic extrem­ists face with regard to oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States. “The lack of pub­lic dis­course about col­lab­o­ra­tion between white suprema­cists and Islam­ic extrem­ists may sim­ply be due to the fact that it is almost too alarm­ing to con­tem­plate. Every­thing that Arabs now have a hard time doing in this country—going to flight school, buy­ing weapons and explo­sives, dri­ving trac­tor-trail­ers into Manhattan—could eas­i­ly be done by a white suprema­cist from Ida­ho. (For the record, if he drove a trac­tor-trail­er car­ry­ing 80,000 pounds of high explo­sives, it could lev­el two square blocks in Man­hat­tan.)” (Idem.)

37. “There is rea­son to believe that white suprema­cists see the U.S. gov­ern­ment and its Israeli ally as a far greater threat to their free­dom than the one posed by Islam­ic extrem­ists. Short­ly after the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks, Bil­ly Rop­er, a for­mer mem­ber of the neo-Nazi Nation­al Alliance, based in West Vir­ginia, said in an Inter­net post­ing obtained by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, ‘We may not want them mar­ry­ing our daugh­ters, just as they would not want us mar­ry­ing theirs. . . . But any­one who is will­ing to dri­ve a plane into a build­ing to kill Jews is alright by me. I wish our mem­bers had half as much tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude.’” (Idem.)

38. “Accord­ing to Risi, Aryan Nations had peo­ple in Triple Bor­der as ear­ly as 1985, and they were coop­er­at­ing with Islam­ic extrem­ists in the Unit­ed States. (Stephen Jones, the chief defense lawyer for Tim­o­thy McVeigh, sus­pects that con­vict­ed Kuwaiti ter­ror­ist Ramzi Yousef sup­plied tech­ni­cal exper­tise in the 1995 Okla­homa City Alfred P. Mur­rah Fed­er­al Build­ing bomb­ing.). . .” (Idem.)

39. More about Risi’s man Ale­jan­dro, who suc­cess­ful­ly infil­trat­ed the Islamists in the Triple Bor­der area: “ . . . He had been trans­port­ed to the ter­ror­ist world, he said, in a white Mer­cedes that stopped in front of a bar in Ciu­dad del Este where he had been told to wait. He was giv­en a pair of blacked-out glass­es and dri­ven around for a few hours, asked some questions—including whether he want­ed to be paid, to which he said yes—and then dropped off again. A few days lat­er he went through the same rou­tine, except this time it was in a four-by-four, and they drove him out to a train­ing camp.” (Ibid.; p. 206.)

40. Ale­jan­dro notes that after com­plet­ing train­ing, some oper­a­tives are giv­en mis­sions, while oth­ers “go dor­mant.” “The camp was a clear­ing in the jun­gle with a tem­po­rary wood­en bar­racks where the men slept on bench­es and cots. There were 25 to 30 recruits, most­ly from oth­er coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca. They were trained to break into hous­es, blow up build­ings, and dis­as­sem­ble cars for place­ment of car bombs. They prac­ticed shoot­ing every kind of weapon—Uzis, AK-47’s, grenade launchers—and were also taught to kill with a knife. Their train­ing was with live ammu­ni­tion, and Ale­jan­dro was shot twice. He sur­vived, though, he said, anoth­er man at the camp died of his wounds. ‘You’re trained to kill Amer­i­cans and Jews,’ Ale­jan­dro said. ‘At the end you’re giv­en a mis­sion or go dor­mant.’” (Idem.)

41. “The instruc­tors were aloof and unfriend­ly and did not both­er to talk pol­i­tics or ide­ol­o­gy; they just taught how to kill. Occa­sion­al­ly they showed videos of ter­ror­ist attacks—car bomb­ings in Spain, for example—and com­ment­ed on whether they had been done well or not. Ale­jan­dro claimed that one of the camps is on 17,000 acres of jun­gle owned by Assad Barakat. I asked him what areas they were in. ‘Pedro Juan Cabanarel­lo . . . Miran­da . . . Boa Vista.’ He said, run­ning his fin­ger along a map, trac­ing the bor­der between Brazil and Paraguay. ‘Guaira.’ Through a con­tact in Wash­ing­ton, I’d got­ten hold of a list, from U.S. intel­li­gence sources, of names of sus­pect­ed train­ing camps in Triple Border—and Guaira was on the list. ‘What was your mis­sion when you got out?’ I asked. ‘I was sent to Buenos Aires,’ Ale­jan­dro said, ‘ to see if I could recruit peo­ple who looked Argen­tinean.’” (Idem.)

42. Appar­ent­ly, Risi’s con­tacts with Junger did not go unno­ticed by Argen­tinean intel­li­gence, who were less than thrilled with the event. “When I met with Risi in my hotel room. I was leav­ing the coun­try that evening, and when he walked in he embraced me and sat down in a chair and lit a cig­a­rette. Peo­ple were look­ing for us, he said. A friend in Argen­tinean intel­li­gence had called to tell him that they knew he was meet­ing with an Amer­i­can and that they were con­cerned.” (Idem.)

43. “He had more bad news. He would not be able to get the pho­to­graph of bin al-Shibh and Mugh­niyah, because all the best mate­r­i­al was hid­den in Triple Bor­der and would take a while to retrieve. Fur­ther­more, he want­ed mon­ey. Such pho­tos were worth a for­tune, he said, and he would be stu­pid to just let them go. The mon­ey would be used to con­tin­ue sur­veil­lance work in Triple Bor­der. Even­tu­al­ly he want­ed to work with some­one he could trust in Amer­i­ca intel­li­gence, some­one who would not just try to steal his sources or tell him to go away. The pho­tos he had already shown me and the let­ters he said he had sent to the U.S. Embassy and to Argen­tinean author­i­ties were mine to have. . . .” (Idem.)

44. A Paraguayan pros­e­cu­tor alleges that his efforts at inform­ing the FBI of 400 mem­bers of sleeper cells in Triple Bor­der were turned away by the bureau. “ . . . The idea that Risi had been ignored by both Amer­i­can and Argen­tinean intel­li­gence is unfor­tu­nate­ly all too believ­able. Exam­ples of apa­thy and incom­pe­tence abound. I spoke with a Paraguayan prosecutor—who refused to allow his name to be used in this article—who told me that in 2000 he had offered the F.B.I. names of more than 400 mem­bers of ‘sleep­er cells’ in Triple Bor­der. He claims he was rebuffed and found him­self the object of a vicious smear cam­paign.” (Idem.)

45. “Fur­ther­more, we are talk­ing about a coun­try where the pres­i­dent was alleged­ly paid off by Iran to quash an inves­ti­ga­tion into a ter­ror­ist attck in his own coun­try. In a place where that could hap­pen, what couldn’t? ‘I wouldn’t be sur­prised if bin al-Shibh had been down there,’ says Ranstorp, who acts as a ter­ror­ism con­sul­tant for the U.S. gov­ern­ment. ‘It’s the per­fect area to gen­er­ate mon­ey, first and fore­most, and to sell trans­ferrable skills. It’s the ulti­mate embod­i­ment of ter­ror­ism and orga­nized crime fus­ing togeth­er.’” (Idem.)

46. “Sev­er­al days before I left Argenti­na, Miguel Angel Toma, the head of SIDE, flew to Wash­ing­ton to meet with George Tenet, head of the C.I.A. Accord­ing to Robert Baer, they dis­cussed an indict­ment the U.S. was prepar­ing against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who had been with bin al-Shibh in Karachi last June, although he had man­aged to elude cap­ture. Mohammed was thought to have been Qatar in 1996. Around the time that Imad Mugh­niyah had sneaked into the coun­try by freighter, and was then thought to have gone to Triple Bor­der. . . .” (Idem.)

47. The pro­gram recaps Nation­al Alliance chief William Pierce’s fore­shad­ow­ing of the 9/11 attacks. (Recall that, as dis­cussed in FTR#335—among oth­er programs—Pierce’s Nation­al Alliance has oper­a­tional con­nec­tions with the NPD of Ger­many. Al Taqwa direc­tor Ahmed Huber is active with the NPD.) “Upon perus­ing his speech­es from 1998–99, I dis­cov­ered that Pierce, who heads the so-called ‘Nation­al Alliance,’ did indeed utter some most inter­est­ing (pre-Sept. 11th–if not prophetic—remarks about Osama bin Laden and bio-ter­ror­ism. The run­ning theme in Pierce’s com­men­taries is—to para­phrase his hero Hitler—that Osama Bin Laden’s warn­ing to Amer­i­ca is ‘I Am Com­ing.’ And so is bio-ter­ror­ism.”
(“Neo-Nazis and 9/11” by Jack McCarthy; Coun­ter­punch; 10/29/2001.)

48. “In one chill­ing com­men­tary Pierce, (after not­ing that Bin Laden and the rest of the lost gen­er­a­tion of angry Moslem youth had it with their par­ents’ com­pro­mis­es and were hell bent on revenge against infi­del Amer­i­ca) issued this stark, prophet­ic warn­ing in a 1998 radio address titled, ‘Stay Out of Tall Build­ings.’ ‘New York­ers who work in tall office build­ings any­thing close to the size of the World Trade Cen­ter might con­sid­er wear­ing hard hats . . .’ Pierce warned. . . . [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s].” (Idem.)

49. The pro­gram con­cludes by high­light­ing an alleged link between the Okla­homa City bomb­ing and the AMIA bomb­ing, through Argen­tine mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty ser­vices belong­ing the Amer­i­can white suprema­cist Tom Metzger’s White Aryan resis­tance. For more about this sub­ject, see FTR#109.
(“AMIA Bomb Plot­ters’ Con­nec­tion;” La Nacion; 7/27/97.)