Record­ed May 23, 2004
REALAUDIO

In addi­tion to updat­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion of ter­ror­ist financ­ing, this broad­cast high­lights behind-the-scenes deals between the Bush fam­i­ly, the oil indus­try and Sau­di Ara­bia to manip­u­late the results of Amer­i­can elec­tions. The broad­cast also sets forth the impend­ing arrival in the Unit­ed States of Tariq Rama­da, the son of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood king­pin Said Ramadan and the heir to his father’s unsa­vory polit­i­cal tra­di­tion.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: A meet­ing of the Car­lyle Group alleged­ly involv­ing dis­cus­sion of the Sau­di Bin­laden Group’s con­tin­ued fund­ing of Al Qae­da; con­tin­ued inves­ti­ga­tions of the fund­ing of ter­ror­ism by Sau­di char­i­ties and busi­ness­es tar­get­ed by Oper­a­tion Green Quest; review of some of the Bush administration’s con­nec­tions to the above-men­tioned busi­ness­es and char­i­ties; proof of Bank Al Taqwa’s involve­ment in the fund­ing of Al Qae­da; the alleged involve­ment of Yassin Al-Qadi in the fund­ing of ter­ror­ism; alle­ga­tions in a recent book that the Saud­is were con­spir­ing with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to low­er gas prices in order to assure Bush’s elec­tion; recent announce­ments by the Saud­is that give cre­dence to the alle­ga­tions in that book; review of the 1970’s con­spir­a­cy between George H.W. Bush’s CIA, the Saud­is and the petro­le­um indus­try to cre­ate a pho­ny oil short­age; the role of that pho­ny oil short­age in desta­bi­liz­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion, jus­ti­fy­ing the defense and bud­getary poli­cies of the Reagan/Bush admin­is­tra­tions and jus­ti­fy­ing arms sales to Sau­di Ara­bia.

1. Much of the first part of the pro­gram deals with the issue of ter­ror­ist funding—Operation Green Quest in par­tic­u­lar. Dis­cus­sion begins with an alle­ga­tion that the Car­lyle Group was con­sid­er­ing the issue of con­tin­ued fund­ing of Al Qae­da by the Sau­di Bin­laden Group—the pri­ma­ry Bin Laden fam­i­ly busi­ness enter­prise. (For more about the Car­lyle Group, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 329, 342, 347.) “Direc­tors of one of the world’s largest arma­ment com­pa­nies are plan­ning on meet­ing in Lis­bon in three weeks time. . . . The finan­cial assets of the Sau­di Bin­laden Cor­po­ra­tion (SBC) are also man­aged by the Car­lyle Group. . . . The Por­tu­gal News has been told by a reli­able source that the Car­lyle Group meet­ing in Lis­bon will dis­cuss the rela­tion­ship between the Sau­di Bin­laden Cor­po­ra­tion [sic] and Osama bin Laden. Many US offi­cials claim that the SBC con­tin­ues to finance his polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, and has done so for many years. If true, this would place George Bush senior and his col­leagues at the Car­lyle Group in an embar­rass­ing posi­tion. As man­agers of SBC’s finan­cial invest­ments they might well be accused of indi­rect­ly aid­ing and abet­ting the Unit­ed States’ num­ber one ene­my.”
(“US Arms Group Heads for Lis­bon”; The Por­tu­gal News; 4/4/2003.)

2. Next, the broad­cast turns to dis­cus­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, the code-name for the oper­a­tion direct­ed at inter­dict­ing the ter­ror­ist-fund­ing appa­ra­tus behind Al Qae­da. (For more about Oper­a­tion Green Quest, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 356, 357, 359, 366, 382, 387, 390, 406, 415, 423, 425, 432, 433, 454.) The Hern­don Group and the Al-Rajhi inter­ests were tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. FTR#462 details the sub­ver­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, some of whose ele­ments and asso­ciates belong to the milieu tar­get­ed by the oper­a­tion. “Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors plan to seek indict­ments in the next six to 12 months of a group of promi­nent Mus­lim busi­ness­men who are at the cen­ter of the U.S. government’s largest domes­tic inves­ti­ga­tion into the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism. In an unusu­al hear­ing sought by lawyers for the busi­ness­men, a fed­er­al judge pressed pros­e­cu­tor Gor­don Kromberg to spell out the Jus­tice Department’s plans. The wealthy Islam­ic activists are involved in a group of com­mon­ly con­trolled busi­ness­es and char­i­ties in Hern­don, Va., that alleged­ly has finan­cial links to the Al-Rajhi bank­ing empire of Sau­di Ara­bia.”
(“U.S. to Seek Charges in Ter­ror Probe” by Glenn R. Simp­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/26/’04; p. A6.)

3. “For­mer fed­er­al offi­cials allege that the Al Rajhi Bank­ing and Invest­ment Corp. has links to the financ­ing of ter­ror­ists. The bank has denied the alle­ga­tions. Mr. Kromberg told the court that he expects to ask a grand jury to hand up charges, pos­si­bly involv­ing a rack­e­teer­ing con­spir­a­cy. ‘We think we have a good case and we are going to bring it,’ Mr. Kromberg said. Since the mid-1990’s, the U.S. gov­ern­ment has con­duct­ed an on-and-off inves­ti­ga­tion into whether the char­i­ties sup­port ter­ror­ist group such as Hamas, Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, and al Qae­da. Some fig­ures in the Hern­don group have been promi­nent polit­i­cal­ly in Wash­ing­ton, and sev­er­al are affil­i­at­ed with a world-wide soci­ety called the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood that has ide­o­log­i­cal links to ter­ror­ist groups. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] . . .” (Idem.)

4. FTR#462 will devel­op appar­ent links between the tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids and the FBI. “ . . . Mr. Park­er [lawyer for the Al Rajhi inter­ests Wilmer ‘Bud­dy’ Park­er] assert­ed that FBI agents have recent­ly told Ms. Luque that the Hern­don inquiry is no longer a ter­ror­ism case, prompt­ing a sharp rebut­tal from Mr. Kromberg, an assis­tant U.S. attor­ney. ‘For Mr. Park­er to get up here and with a straight face tell this court that the FBI is not inves­ti­gat­ing this case and . . . that the jus­tice Depart­ment doesn’t believe that there is a real ter­ror­ist-financ­ing case here, bog­gles the mind,’ he said.” (Idem.)

5. Yet anoth­er evi­den­tiary trib­u­tary con­nect­ing the Bush milieu to ter­ror­ist-fund­ing activ­i­ties con­cerns the Rig­gs Bank, one of whose direc­tors is Jonathan Bush, the president’s uncle. (For more about Rig­gs Bank, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#431.) “The Sen­ate Finance Com­mit­tee chair­man has asked the 9/11 com­mis­sion to look into trans­ac­tions total­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars at two U.S. banks by Sau­di Ara­bi­an diplo­mats. Sen. Charles Grass­ley (R., Iowa) sent let­ters to mem­bers of the com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the ter­ror­ist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, detail­ing ‘sus­pi­cious’ activ­i­ty by Sau­di offi­cials and cit­i­zens at Fleet-Boston finan­cial Corp. and Rig­gs Nation­al Bank. Peo­ple famil­iar with the let­ter said Mr. Grass­ley cit­ed Sau­di Embassy pay­ments for Sau­di cit­i­zens’ flight-train­ing and pay­ments to Islam­ic groups sus­pect­ed of sup­port­ing ter­ror­ism. . . .”
(“Sen­a­tor Requests 9/11 Pan­el Probe of Saud­is, Banks” by Glenn R. Simp­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/29/2004; p. A5.)

6. Abdur­rah­man Alam­ou­di is a prin­ci­pal fig­ure in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion, con­nect­ed both to the GOP-affil­i­at­ed Islam­ic Insti­tute milieu and to the Al Taqwa net­work dis­cussed below. (For more about Alam­ou­di, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 433, 435.) “ . . . The Sau­di dona­tions of con­cern to Sen. Grass­ley include pay­ments through Rig­gs to the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil of Alexan­dria, Va., two peo­ple involved in the mat­ter said. The council’s for­mer pres­i­dent, Abdur­rah­man Alam­ou­di, is cur­rent­ly jailed on charges of vi

olat­ing ter­ror­ism sanc­tions.” (Idem.)

7. Next, the pro­gram turns to the Bank Al Taqwa. A recent book about for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary O’Neill high­lights Al Taqwa’s role in the fund­ing of Al Qae­da. “ . . . Al Taqwa was an asso­ci­a­tion of off­shore banks and finan­cial man­age­ment firms that had helped al-Qae­da shift mon­ey around the world. It was based in the Bahamas, and vir­tu­al­ly all the known mon­ey of al-Qae­da at that point–$20 million—was housed there. It was iden­ti­fied thanks to a break that was any­thing but exot­ic: a Bahami­an bank­ing offi­cial sim­ply blew the whis­tle on the group. Inter­nal Trea­sury doc­u­ments esti­mat­ed that anoth­er $80 to $100 mil­lion of al-Qae­da funds was tucked into oth­er, unde­tect­ed accounts around the globe. . . .”
(The Price of Loy­al­ty; by Ron Suskind; Simon & Schus­ter [HC]; Copy­right 2004; 0–7432-5545–3; p. 198.)

8. Con­tin­u­ing the dis­cus­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, the broad­cast devel­ops the sub­ject of the Al Taqwa net­work. Infor­ma­tion about Al Taqwa’s role in financ­ing Al Qae­da was con­tained in a let­ter from a U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment offi­cial to a Swiss gov­ern­men­tal offi­cer. (For more about Al Taqwa, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 343, 354, 356, 357, 359, 371, 377, 378, 382, 387, 415, 416, 423, 425, 432, 433, 435, 454, 455, 456.) “A Bahami­an bank con­trolled by a con­tro­ver­sial Islam­ic financier in Switzer­land set up a high­ly secre­tive line of cred­it for a top asso­ciate of Osama bin Lden as part of an elab­o­rate scheme to finance attacks by Al Qae­da and oth­er ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, accord­ing to a new­ly dis­closed U.S. Trea­sury doc­u­ment. In a Jan­u­ary 2002 let­ter to Swiss author­i­ties, a senior Trea­sury offi­cial pri­vate­ly spelled out the U.S. government’s case that the Bahami­an bank, one arm of an inter­na­tion­al finan­cial net­work known as Al-Taqwa (Ara­bic for ‘Fear of God’), had a lengthy his­to­ry of financ­ing and facil­i­tat­ing the activ­i­ties of ter­ror­ists, includ­ing pro­vid­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in fund­ing for Al Qae­da and Hamas.”
(“Pay­ing for Ter­ror: Trea­sury Depart­ment Doc­u­ments Detail the Murky World of Al Qae­da” by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosen­ball; MSNBC/Newsweek; 5/12/2004.)

9. “The Trea­sury let­ter, and anoth­er one involv­ing Sau­di busi­ness­man Yassin A. Qadi, pro­vide a reveal­ing new win­dow into the murky world of ter­ror finance, at least as viewed by U.S. coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cials. Based large­ly on secret intel­li­gence sources, the Trea­sury doc­u­ments attempt to show how Qadi and Al-Taqwa and its founder, Youssef M. Nada, used con­cealed bank accounts, com­plex land deals and oth­er hard-to-trace meth­ods to steer large sums of mon­ey to ter­ror­ists.” (Idem.)

10. “The let­ters were recent­ly obtained by Ron Mot­ley, the lead lawyer in a mas­sive law­suit against Sau­di busi­ness fig­ures and oth­ers accused of com­plic­i­ty in the financ­ing of the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks. In a lit­tle-noticed court fil­ing on Mon­day, Mot­ley placed the doc­u­ment in the pub­lic record, a move that seemed to star­tle at least one defense lawyer who not­ed that such pri­vate, gov­ern­ment-to gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions are almost nev­er made pub­lic. The let­ters were writ­ten by Trea­sury in an effort to per­suade the Swiss to take legal action to shut down the oper­a­tions of sus­pect orga­ni­za­tions. The most sig­nif­i­cant of the let­ters involves Al-Taqwa and its founder, Nada, an Egypt­ian-born busi­ness­man based in Switzer­land who has long been a promi­nent fig­ure in the world of Islam­ic finance and who has con­sis­tent­ly denied any involve­ment in the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism. . . .” (Idem.)

11. “In the let­ter dat­ed Jan. 4, 2002, George B. Wolfe, then Treasury’s deputy gen­er­al coun­sel, tells Switzerland’s deputy chief fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, Claude Nicati, that mon­ey pours in to branch offices of the Al-Taqwa net­work in Lugano and Mal­ta from Kuwait and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates for bin Laden. It alleges that, as late as Sep­tem­ber 2001, Nada and a busi­ness asso­ciate, Ali bin Mus­sal­im, pro­vid­ed indi­rect invest­ment ser­vices for al Qae­da, invest­ing funds for bin Laden, and mak­ing cash deliv­er­ies on request to the Al Qae­da orga­ni­za­tion.” (Idem.)

12. “The most star­tling alle­ga­tion is that Nada’s Bank Al Taqwa appeared to be pro­vid­ing a clan­des­tine line of cred­it for a close asso­ciate of bin Laden, accord­ing to the Wolfe let­ter. This bin Laden lieu­tenant had a line of cred­it with a Mid­dle East finan­cial insti­tu­tion that drew on an iden­ti­cal account num­ber at Bank Al-Taqwa. Unlike oth­er accounts, even accounts of pri­vate bank­ing cus­tomers, this account was blocked by the com­put­er sys­tem and spe­cial priv­i­leges were required to access it. Not­ing that no iden­ti­fi­able names were asso­ci­at­ed with the account, the let­ter calls the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the account high­ly unusu­al, and sug­gest that they were cre­at­ed to con­ceal the asso­ci­a­tion of the bin Laden orga­ni­za­tion with Bank Al-Taqwa.” (Idem.)

13. “A legal source famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion into Al-Taqwa said that anoth­er U.S. intel­li­gence doc­u­ment states that the Al-Taqwa account was orig­i­nal­ly set up for Mam­douh Mah­moud Sal­im, a one-time mem­ber of Al Qaeda’s gov­ern­ing Shu­ra Coun­cil who was cap­tured in Ger­many after the 1998 U.S. Embassy bomb­ings in Africa and has been await­ing tri­al while in prison in the Unit­ed States ever since. Just last week. Sal­im was sen­tenced to 32 years in prison in a sep­a­rate case stem­ming from charges that he stabbed a prison guard in the eye with a sharp­ened plas­tic comb as part of a failed plot with oth­er accused Al Qae­da code­fen­dants to break out of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Cor­rec­tion­al Cen­ter in low­er Man­hat­tan. (The prison guard suf­fered brain dam­age, lost an eye and is par­tial­ly par­a­lyzed as a result of the attack.) After Salim’s arrest, oth­er al Qae­da fig­ures con­tin­ued to access the account, the legal source said. The Wolfe let­ter also reveals for the first time that the gov­ern­ment of Jor­dan had accused Bank Al-Taqwa of financ­ing a ter­ror­ist net­work linked to bin Laden that was involved in plot­ting ter­ror attacks at West­ern and tourist tar­gets in Jor­dan dur­ing the mil­len­ni­um cel­e­bra­tions. . . .” (Idem.)

14. “ . . . In addi­tion, the let­ter notes that one of Al-Taqwa’s board mem­bers, Ahmed Huber, had con­firmed that he had met with mem­bers of bin Laden’s orga­ni­za­tion in Beirut and had defend­ed the attacks on the World Trade Cen­ter and the Pen­ta­gon. Huber, a noto­ri­ous Swiss Holo­caust denier and far-right activist, is described in the Wolfe let­ter also states that anoth­er Al-Taqwa board mem­ber, Ahmed Idris Nasred­din, has sup­port­ed an Islam­ic cen­ter in Milan that the U.S. gov­ern­ment believes may be Al Qaeda’s most impor­tant base in Europe, and which was linked to the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing, among oth­er ter­ror plots. . . .” (Idem.)

15. Anoth­er Trea­sury Depart­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­cerned Yassin Al-Qadi, anoth­er alleged ter­ror­ist financier. Al-Qadi is dis­cussed at greater length in FTR#462.) “ . . . The same goes for Qadi, a promi­nent Sau­di busi­ness­man who, in a Nov. 29, 2001, let­ter to the Swiss writ­ten by then Trea­sury gen­er­al coun­sel David Augh­auser, is a described as hav­ing a long his­to­ry of financ­ing and facil­i­tat­ing the activ­i­ties of ter­ror­ists and ter­ror­ist-relat­ed orga­ni­za­tions, often act­ing through seem­ing­ly legit­i­mate char­i­ta­ble enter­pris­es and busi­ness­es.’ Qadi was the founder of Muwafaq (“Blessed Relief”) Foun­da­tion, an Islam­ic char­i­ty that employed or served as cov­er for a num­ber of Islam­ic extrem­ists con­nect­ed with bin Laden and oth­er ter­ror groups, accord­ing to the A

ufhauser let­ter. A lawyer for Qadi, whose assets have been blocked by the Trea­sury Depart­ment in the Unit­ed States, said that the busi­ness­man is in the process of pre­sent­ing evi­dence to U.S. offi­cials chal­leng­ing the alle­ga­tions against him.” (Idem.)

16. “U.S. coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cials have pri­vate­ly acknowl­edged their frus­tra­tion in pur­su­ing cas­es against both Al-Taqwa mem­bers and Qadi as well as numer­ous oth­er tar­gets in ter­ror-finance inves­ti­ga­tions. Intel­li­gence is one thing, but gath­er­ing the evi­dence to sup­port these alle­ga­tions is anoth­er sto­ry, said one for­mer top U.S. law-enforce­ment offi­cial who worked on ter­ror-finance cas­es. Still, the jus­tice Depart­ment is not done try­ing. In a recent court hear­ing, Gor­don Kromberg, the senior fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor in charge of a long-run­ning probe into Islam­ic char­i­ties based in North­ern Vir­ginia, includ­ing some whose direc­tors have been asso­ci­at­ed with Nada and Qadi, said that his case was pro­ceed­ing. ‘We expect them to be charged’, Kromberg said in a court hear­ing, refer­ring to the Islam­ic char­i­ties that have been tar­gets of the inves­ti­ga­tion. There will be indict­ments com­ing.’” (Idem.)

17. Among the insti­tu­tions alleged­ly used by Al Qadi to finance ter­ror­ism is the Al Hara­main Foun­da­tion, a Sau­di-financed Islam­ic char­i­ty. That group is, in turn, tied to the Mus­lim World League, found­ed at the insti­ga­tion of Said Ramadan of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. “The Trea­sury Depart­ment has des­ig­nat­ed an Islam­ic char­i­ty that is a sub­sidiary of the Mus­lim World League, a Sau­di reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, as a ter­ror­ist enti­ty. The Hara­main & al Masjid al Aqsa Foun­da­tion of Bosnia was des­ig­nat­ed last week as a ‘glob­al ter­ror­ist’ orga­ni­za­tion by the U.S. gov­ern­ment. The Trea­sury didn’t dis­close the group’s ties to the Mus­lim World League, which lists Al Hara­main as a sub­sidiary on its Web site. The League, which is con­trolled by the grand mufti of Sau­di Ara­bia, seeks to spread fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam around the world, accord­ing to schol­ars. Sau­di offi­cials insist the group is inde­pen­dent of the gov­ern­ment, although most scholars—and even one of the group’s own officials—have described it as gov­ern­ment-spon­sored.”
(“U.S. Trea­sury Ties Bosn­ian Arm of Sau­di Char­i­ty to Ter­ror Funds” by Glenn R. Simp­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/11/2004; p. A6.)

18. “The Trea­sury des­ig­na­tion is only the sec­ond time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that the U.S. has moved against an enti­ty con­trolled by the League, which has tremen­dous clout with­in Sau­di Arabia’s deeply reli­gious soci­ety. U.S. offi­cials have been wary of tar­get­ing the league for diplo­mat­ic rea­sons. . . .” (Idem.)

19. “ . . . The al Hara­main & al Masjid al Aqsa Char­i­ty Foun­da­tion of Bosnia was set up to aid Bosnia’s embat­tled Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion dur­ing that country’s civ­il war in the mid-1990’s. It is a sep­a­rate orga­ni­za­tion from the al Hara­main Foun­da­tion, anoth­er Sau­di char­i­ty also under inves­ti­ga­tion for financ­ing ter­ror. Al Hara­main al Masjid’s board includes influ­en­tial Sau­di financier Yassin Qadi, anoth­er alleged finan­cial sup­port­er of ter­ror. Mr. Qadi’s lawyers had no imme­di­ate com­ment yes­ter­day, but Mr. Qadi has insist­ed the group, which was run by his long­time asso­ciate Wael Julaidan, had noth­ing to do with ter­ror­ism.” (Idem.)

20. Said Ramadan’s son Tariq is going to be occu­py­ing a posi­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame. (For more about Tariq Ramadan and alle­ga­tions by West­ern intel­li­gence experts that he is any­thing but a “mod­er­ate,” see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#455.) “The Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame, the elite uni­ver­si­ty found­ed by the Holy Cross Order, (thanks to numer­ous read­ers for the cor­rec­tion of the found­ing order) in South Bend, Indi­ana, has offered a three-year pro­fes­sor­ship to the ‘mod­er­ate’ Mus­lim schol­ar Tariq Ramadan, a res­i­dent and cit­i­zen of Switzer­land. . . . For starters, he is the grand­son of Has­san Al Ban­na, the founder of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, an Islamist ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion born in Egypt in 1928. The Pales­tin­ian branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is none oth­er than the ter­ror­ist move­ment Hamas, which rou­tine­ly com­mits bru­tal sui­cide attacks against Israeli civil­ians. . . .”
(“Dan­ger: Tariq Ramadan is Com­ing to the US”; p. 1.)

21. “ . . . Accord­ing to the French dai­ly news­pa­per Le Monde, he is sus­pect­ed of hav­ing links with al Qae­da. In fact, Ramadan is said to have orga­nized a meet­ing back in 1991 between Ayman al Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s num­ber two, and Omar Abdel Rah­man, plot­ter of the first World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing. Oth­er trou­bling alle­ga­tions can be found in a law­suit filed by the vic­tims of the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks: Ramadan great­ly influ­enced Jamel Beghal, a French cit­i­zen arrest­ed for plot­ting to bomb the US Embassy in Paris and Ahmed Brahim, an al Qae­da mem­ber arrest­ed in Spain.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

22. The con­clu­sion of the broad­cast deals with the Saudi/Bush/petroleum indus­try rela­tion­ship. A recent book by Bob Wood­ward main­tained that Sau­di Prince Ban­dar (a long-time inti­mate and polit­i­cal co-con­spir­a­tor of the Bush fam­i­ly) had promised George Bush that Sau­di Ara­bia would attempt to influ­ence the price of oil in such a way as to assure that the cost per bar­rel would come down—thereby ben­e­fit­ing W’s chances for re-elec­tion. “ . . . Accus­ing Pres­i­dent Bush of hav­ing a ‘sweet­heart rela­tion­ship’ with Sau­di Ara­bia, Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date John Ker­ry on Mon­day described as ‘dis­gust­ing’ a report that the Saud­is had promised the pres­i­dent to low­er oil prices before the Novem­ber vote. Ker­ry was respond­ing to an alle­ga­tion by reporter Bob Wood­ward that Sau­di Ambas­sador Prince Ban­dar bin Sul­tan had promised Bush that his coun­try will increase oil out­put in the months before the election—which would have the effect of dri­ving down U.S. gaso­line prices and giv­ing the Bush re-elec­tion cam­paign a big boost.”
(“Elec­tion Gift? Ker­ry Blasts Price Deal Book Says Bush Made with Sau­di Prince” by Robert Col­lier; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 4/20/2004; p. A1.)

23. “ ‘If . . . it is true that gas sup­plies and prices in Amer­i­ca are tied to the Amer­i­can elec­tion, tied to a secret White House deal, that is out­ra­geous and unac­cept­able to the Amer­i­can peo­ple,’ Ker­ry said dur­ing a cam­paign stop in Flori­da. Woodward’s new book about the Iraq war, Plan of Attack quotes Bush as say­ing ‘I’m wor­ried about the capac­i­ty of the oil mar­ket’ after an inva­sion of Iraq and ask­ing about Sau­di Arabia’s abil­i­ty to increase pro­duc­tion. Wood­ward writes that Ban­dar said his coun­try ‘hoped to fine-tune oil prices over 10 months to prime the econ­o­my for 2004.’” (Idem.)

24. Recent devel­op­ments indi­cate that Woodward’s alle­ga­tion is not with­out sub­stance. “In a sig­nif­i­cant shift, Sau­di Arabia’s oil min­is­ter said Mon­day that crude prices have risen far enough, and he will urge OPEC to increase pro­duc­tion, revers­ing an out­put cut that began just last month. The change in Sau­di oil pol­i­cy, Oil Min­is­ter Ali Nai­mi said, is due to con­cern that high prices could hurt the world econ­o­my and reduce demand for oil. Oil prices have risen steadi­ly in recent weeks, with U.S. crude oil prices touch­ing $40 a bar­rel Fri­day. . . .” (“Sau­di Oil Offi­cial: Price High Enough” [AP]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 5/11/2004; p. 4C.)

25. Fur­ther indi­ca­tion that the Bush/Bandar accord is sub­stan­tive: “In an effort to dri­ve down record crude oil prices, Sau­di Ara­bia, the world’s largest oil pro­duc­er, offered on Fri­day to increase its out­put by at least 500,000 bar­rels, to 9 mil­lion bar­rels a day, start­ing Jun

e 1. In con­trast to an ear­li­er sug­ges­tion by the coun­try that OPEC increase its quo­tas, the offer is impor­tant because it would tru­ly add more oil to the mar­ket rather than sim­ply for­mal­iz­ing exist­ing over­pro­duc­tion by the group’s mem­bers.”
(“Saud­is Offer to Increase Oil Out­put by About 6%” by Neela Baner­jee; The New York Times; 5/22/2004.)

26. “With glob­al demand relent­less­ly high, oil prices rose above $40 a bar­rel in New York on May 11 and remained there until Fri­day. Near­ly all oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries are pump­ing at max­i­mum capac­i­ty, and almost all the world’s spare capac­i­ty is in Sau­di Ara­bia. The offer, made by the Sau­di oil min­is­ter, Ali al-Nai­mi, at a con­fer­ence in Ams­ter­dam and con­firmed by an offi­cial at the Sau­di embassy in Wash­ing­ton, shows the mount­ing concern—even among oil pro­duc­ers reap­ing a wind­fall from high prices—that oil has become so expen­sive and volatile that it could slow eco­nom­ic growth and encour­age the devel­op­ment of alter­na­tive fuels, Sau­di offi­cials and oil experts said.” (Idem.)

27. Excerpt­ing FTR#’s 214, 248, the broad­cast reviews infor­ma­tion about an arrange­ment among George H.W. Bush’s CIA, the Saud­is, and the petro­le­um indus­try to cre­ate a delib­er­ate, pho­ny oil short­age. This oil short­age cre­at­ed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Carter admin­is­tra­tion (and infla­tion), there­by help­ing to defeat him in 1980. In addi­tion, this pho­ny oil short­age served as a pre­text for dras­ti­cal­ly increas­ing defense spend­ing and arm­ing the Saud­is with the lat­est Amer­i­can weapon­ry. The Saudi/Bush/petroleum indus­try axis manip­u­lat­ed oil prices to defeat Carter in 1980. It appears that they are work­ing to manip­u­late oil prices in 2004 in an attempt to assure Bush’s re-(?) elec­tion. “It is hard to recall why he [Carter] was so despised when he was in office. Much of it has to do with the secret his­to­ry of oil pol­i­tics. Even dur­ing the 1976 elec­tion cam­paign, the oil com­pa­nies viewed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date as Pub­lic Ene­my Num­ber One. Carter cer­tain­ly had some rad­i­cal ideas about ener­gy pol­i­cy, which made the oil com­pa­nies fear­ful for the future and their prof­it lev­els. Carter’s first move after the elec­tion didn’t please them. He nom­i­nat­ed for­mer CIA head and defense sec­re­tary James Schlesinger as his sec­re­tary of ener­gy. . . .Worse still, Schlesinger was now a con­vert to ‘envi­ron­men­tal­ism.’ Con­ver­sa­tion and effi­cien­cy were the new buzz words. In their first few months in office in 1977, Schlesinger and Carter made ener­gy their num­ber-one pol­i­cy issue. . . .”
(The Secret War Against the Jews: How West­ern Espi­onage Betrayed the Jew­ish Peo­ple; John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 [HC]; St. Martin’s Press; ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; p. 333.)

28. “Even before Amer­i­cans vot­ed for Carter, the oil indus­try had launched a qui­et cru­sade of its own, in antic­i­pa­tion of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry. In the last months of the Ford admin­is­tra­tion, the CIA had devel­oped a series of papers on ener­gy and oil issues. Just after his vic­to­ry in Novem­ber 1976, Carter was shown a clas­si­fied CIA analy­sis of glob­al oil sup­plies. The ‘old spies’ we asked about this point insist that the report had a pow­er­ful impact on Carter and helped to define his poli­cies on the ‘ener­gy cri­sis.’” (Idem.)

29. “When Carter launched his nation­al ener­gy plan in April 1977, he con­firmed that the CIA had pro­vid­ed him with intel­li­gence assess­ments which made dire pre­dic­tions about future ener­gy sup­plies in the Sovi­et Union. The CIA warn­ing made front-page news: ‘Rus­sia would be import­ing oil from the Mid­dle East by 1985.’ The Sovi­ets would need to buy three and a half mil­lion bar­rels per day, to be pre­cise, where­as in 1977 they actu­al­ly export­ed one and a half mil­lion bar­rels dai­ly. ‘Pre­vi­ous­ly, the assump­tion had been that the Sovi­ets would con­tin­ue to be self-suf­fi­cient in meet­ing their oil and gas needs.’” (Idem.)

30. “ . . . In effect, the CIA was telling Pres­i­dent Carter that the Sovi­et Union would face a domes­tic oil short­age in 1985, caus­ing the worst ener­gy cri­sis in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. When the Sovi­ets ran out of domes­tic oil sup­plies, they prob­a­bly would look to the tra­di­tion­al oil sup­pli­ers of the Unit­ed States, espe­cial­ly Sau­di Ara­bia and Kuwait. Our sources in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty say that the CIA’s ‘oil short­fall’ prob­a­bly was the great­est intel­li­gence fraud in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 334.)

31. Bush’s father appears to have been a prin­ci­pal play­er in the cre­ation of the pho­ny oil short­age. “ . . . Accord­ing to sev­er­al of our sources, the scheme to man­u­fac­ture pho­ny CIA esti­mates and push them on Carter began in the last days of Ger­ald Ford’s term. They claim that a cabal with­in the CIA real­ized that Carter would be the new pres­i­dent, pro­duced the first pho­ny report, and then prompt­ly gave it to Carter as soon as he won, know­ing how it would affect his view of the ener­gy cri­sis. It should be recalled that George Bush was the direc­tor of the CIA at the time the oil scam was put in place in 1976. There is some evi­dence to sug­gest that it was Bush him­self who passed the fake oil esti­mates to Carter.” (Ibid.; pp. 334–335.)

32. “ ‘You have to under­stand who was screw­ing the Jews,’ one ‘old spy’ told us. ‘The whole pho­ny scheme—the oil short­ages, the pre­dic­tions about Sovi­et troops in the Mid­dle East, the Sau­di arms buildup—all of that crap start­ed com­ing out of the agency back in ’76. The CIA told their boss what he want­ed to hear, and in those days, the head of the CIA was an oil man.’” (Ibid.; p. 334.)

33. “ . . . The oil com­pa­nies and the Sau­di gov­ern­ment both had access to sim­i­lar advice from old CIA hands. It almost seemed that Aram­co had more of its ex-employ­ees inside the CIA than the CIA had agents in the Mid­dle East. In pub­lic, the Saud­is dis­missed the report as ‘ridicu­lous and obvi­ous­ly untrue.’ In pri­vate, they went along with the CIA’s ‘declin­ing pro­duc­tion’ fraud. After some reflec­tion, the House of Saud real­ized that here was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sell less oil but make more mon­ey.” (Ibid.; p. 338.)

34. “In pub­lic, the Saud­is con­tin­ued to insist that they had plen­ty of oil. In prac­tice, they helped cre­ate an oil short­age. The CIA had cre­at­ed a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy. The Saud­is’ reserves mys­te­ri­ous­ly fell by mil­lions of bar­rels a day, and their pump­ing effi­cien­cy was said to be atro­cious and sure to get worse. In a very short time, Amer­i­can con­sumers would find them­selves run­ning out of gas.” (Idem.)

35. “ . . . In the short run, of course, the motive was more mon­ey for Amer­i­can oil com­pa­nies. Our sources in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty say that the oil indus­try used its CIA con­tacts to fab­ri­cate both the Sovi­ets-will-steal-our oil hys­te­ria as well as the dry-wells-in-Sau­di Ara­bia pre­dic­tions. The imme­di­ate goal of the pho­ny pre­dic­tions was to scare the White House into doing what the oil com­pa­nies want­ed: (1) lift the laws hold­ing the price on domes­tic Amer­i­can oil; (2) pro­vide a pan­ic to excuse rais­ing world oil prices; and (3) appease the Arabs, by arm­ing the Saud­is instead of the Israelis.” (Ibid.; p. 339.)

36. “The oil men in the intel­li­gence ser­vices pro­mot­ed the fear that the Sovi­ets would have no oth­er option than to move down into the Mid­dle East, invade Sau­di Ara­bia, Kuwait, and Iran, and seize U.S. oil for them­selves. If Carter didn’t move soon, there would be no hope of with­stand­ing a Sovi­et inva­sion o

f the Mid­dle East. The most pow­er­ful army in the area was Israel’s. But the Jews could hard­ly be expect­ed to go to war to save the Arabs’ oil for the West’s often anti-Semit­ic oil com­pa­nies. The time had come for the pres­i­dent to make a clear-cut deci­sion: either bow to the Jews’ res­olute oppo­si­tion to U.S. arms sales to the Arabs and risk los­ing Mid­dle East­ern oil to the Sovi­ets, or arm the Arabs, there­by end­ing Israel’s mil­i­tary supremacy—a sac­ri­fice that would have to be made in the Amer­i­can nation­al inter­est.” (Idem.)

37. “Our sources say that the oil com­pa­nies, and their friends in the CIA, had a very will­ing ally in the Saud­is, who secret­ly coop­er­at­ed with the CIA’s fraud by arti­fi­cial­ly decreas­ing pro­duc­tion and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly increas­ing the price per bar­rel of oil. It was all meant to be a very prof­itable game, in which both the Saud­is and the com­pa­nies would get huge wind­falls, while their Jew­ish ene­mies were final­ly put in their place. The Arabs soon would have the weapons they need­ed to see to that.” (Idem.)

38. “ . . . The fact is that the CIA reports on the Sovi­et threat were as false as they were fright­en­ing. As one of our sources put it: ‘Look, the Sovi­ets couldn’t even hang on to their pup­pet colony in Afghanistan. They were bleed­ing them­selves white. At one point dur­ing the Afghan war, the mil­i­tary was con­sum­ing near­ly 28 per­cent of the gross pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the Sovi­et Union. The last thing the Krem­lin want­ed was all out war with the Moslem world. They couldn’t finance their own PLO hit squads, let alone start a sec­ond front in the Mid­dle East. The whole idea of the Russ­ian army march­ing into the Sau­di oil fields was a fraud.’ But the fraud worked. Accord­ing to the Red scare scheme, there was only one thing to do: arm the Arabs so they could defend the oil fields them­selves.” (Ibid.; pp. 350–351.)

39. “The car­di­nal sin of states­man­ship is naivete. Carter and Turn­er nev­er sus­pect­ed that their own peo­ple would lie to them. The pho­ny CIA oil reports com­plete­ly fooled them. ‘Don’t you get it?’ asked one of our sources. ‘The gas short­age dur­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion was as pho­ny as the CIA’s pre­dic­tion about the Sovi­et oil short­age. The god­damn Mid­dle East was swim­ming in oil dur­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion, but less and less of it was shipped to Amer­i­ca. For chris­sakes, there was so much oil in South Amer­i­ca that they had to shut down refiner­ies in the Caribbean to keep it away from the U.S.’” (Ibid.; p. 353.)

40. “This source has a point. One of the largest refiner­ies in the West­ern Hemi­sphere is locat­ed on St. Croix, in the U.S. Vir­gin Islands. Most of its capac­i­ty went unused dur­ing the Carter administration’s ‘oil short­age,’ yet it was great­ly expand­ed dur­ing Reagan’s term, despite the world glut of oil and falling prices. Most of the ‘old spies’ are adamant that the oil com­pa­nies cut refin­ery pro­duc­tion to cause as much dam­age to the Carter admin­is­tra­tion as pos­si­ble.” (Ibid.; pp. 353–354.)

41. “By mid-1981, it was embar­rass­ing­ly clear that all of the CIA’s pre­dic­tions, upon which Carter had relied, were com­plete­ly false. Not only was there not an oil cri­sis, the whole indus­try had sud­den­ly gone the oth­er way. There was a world­wide sur­plus of oil, not a short­fall. The CIA fig­ures on Sau­di oil were just as false as their Sovi­et pro­duc­tion esti­mates. By June that year, the Sau­di Ara­bi­an gov­ern­ment had cre­at­ed an oil glut and was under intense pres­sure in the Arab world to cut its pro­duc­tion. The Mid­dle East was drown­ing in oil. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 354.)

42. Like his father and Ronald Rea­gan, George W. Bush’s com­bi­na­tion of tax cuts and mas­sive defense spend­ing are destroy­ing the Amer­i­can fis­cal land­scape. “ . . . Under the Repub­li­cans, lucra­tive arms fac­to­ries sprout­ed in what had pre­vi­ous­ly been rur­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic states. The votes went where the jobs were. In the course of the Rea­gan-Bush admin­is­tra­tions, the defense bud­get was increased to a point where more mon­ey was spent on arms than in all the wars in U.S. his­to­ry com­bined. To accom­plish this mas­sive defense buildup, the Rea­gan-Bush admin­is­tra­tions bor­rowed three times more mon­ey than all U.S. pres­i­dents com­bined. The largest debt in Amer­i­ca his­to­ry was based on the faulty premise that the Sovi­et Union was going to attack the Mid­dle East.” (Ibid.; p. 355.)