Record­ed Octo­ber 16, 2005

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Intro­duc­tion: This broad­cast sets forth ele­ments of a net­work that Mr. Emory believes to be a Bormann/Underground Reich net­work. This net­work was part of the appa­ra­tus involved in the exe­cu­tion of the 9/11 attacks.

Begin­ning with review of the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft and its role in bring­ing 9/11 hijack ring­leader Mohamed Atta to Ger­many, the pro­gram traces the evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning out of that orga­ni­za­tion. In addi­tion to a fel­low­ship oper­at­ed on behalf of the Russ­ian Alfa con­glom­er­ate, the CDG net­work also encom­pass­es the Robert Bosch Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship.

The Alfa firm, in turn, has pro­found links to crim­i­nal syn­di­cates in Asia, Rus­sia and Latin Amer­i­ca, as well as ele­ments that par­tic­i­pat­ed in activ­i­ties over­lap­ping both the Iran-Con­tra and Iraq­gate affairs. One of the cen­tral ele­ments in this net­work is the roy­al fam­i­ly of Liecht­en­stein, a tiny Euro­pean coun­try that is an epi­cen­ter for mon­ey laun­der­ing.

In addi­tion to par­tic­i­pat­ing in a front com­pa­ny that was part of the Al Taqwa con­stel­la­tion that fund­ed Bin Laden, the Liecht­en­stein roy­al fam­i­ly (in 2001) assumed the pow­ers of absolute monar­chy, just in time to inter­dict any legal inves­ti­ga­tions that might have gone in the direc­tion of 9/11. The head of the polit­i­cal par­ty that front­ed for Prince Hans Adam’s assump­tion of absolute pow­er is a pow­er­ful lawyer who works for an Alfa sub­sidiary!

The dove­tail­ing of pow­er­ful Ger­man cap­i­tal inter­ests appar­ent­ly linked to the Bor­mann milieu with Russ­ian oli­garchic and crim­i­nal ele­ments appears to be an out­growth of tra­di­tion­al Ger­man “Ost­poli­tik.” For more about Ost­poli­tik, be sure to access Ger­many Plots with the Krem­lin by T. H. Tetens, avail­able for free down­load­ing at: Spitfirelist.com/Books.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Ger­man indus­tri­al fig­ures on the board of direc­tors of the CDS; a his­to­ry of the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft and its Amer­i­can sub­sidiary, the CDS; the Alfa Group’s links to Cheney’s Hal­libur­ton Oil com­pa­ny; the Alfa Group’s links to Iraq­gate arms traf­fick­ing; the Alfa Group’s links to the oil-for-food scan­dal in Iraq; Alfa’s links to the Cali cocaine car­tel of Colom­bia; Alfa’s links to hero­in traf­fick­ing; Attor­ney Nor­bert Seeger’s role with Alfa sub­sidiary Crown Resources; Nor­bert Seeger’s role as head of the Pro­gres­sive Cit­i­zens Par­ty in Liecht­en­stein; links between Liecht­en­stein and the milieu of the CDU fund­ing scan­dal; Atta’s father’s friend­ship with the Ger­man cou­ple that spon­sored Atta’s entry into Ger­many under the aus­pices of the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft; review of John P. Schmitz’s links to many of the enti­ties and per­son­al­i­ties dis­cussed in the pro­gram.

1. We begin with a review of the rela­tion­ship between 9/11 hijack ring­leader Mohamed Atta and the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft, a joint U.S. Ger­man fel­low­ship pro­gram that spon­sored Atta’s entry to, and stay in, Ger­many. (For more about Atta and the CDS, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 477, 523.)

“For at least four years while liv­ing in Ham­burg dur­ing the 1990’s, ter­ror­ist ring­leader Mohamed Atta was part of a ‘joint ven­ture’ between the U.S. and Ger­man gov­ern­ments, the Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews has learned, an elite inter­na­tion­al ‘exchange’ pro­gram run by a lit­tle-known pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion with close ties to pow­er­ful Amer­i­can polit­i­cal fig­ures like David Rock­e­feller and for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Hen­ry Kissinger.”

(“Mohamed Atta Worked for Elite U.S.—German Gov­ern­ment Exchange Pro­gram” by Daniel Hop­sick­er; Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews; 4/24/2003.)

2. “The joint­ly-fund­ed gov­ern­ment effort picked up the tab for Atta on sojourns in Cairo, Istan­bul, and Alep­po in Syr­ia dur­ing the years 1994 and 1995, as well as employ­ing him as a ‘tutor’ and ‘sem­i­nar par­tic­i­pant’ dur­ing 1996 and 1997. More­over, Atta’s finan­cial rela­tion­ship with the U.S.—German gov­ern­ment effort may even extend­ed back to his ini­tial move from Egypt to Ger­many in 1992, after being ‘recruit­ed’ in Cairo by a mys­te­ri­ous Ger­man cou­ple dubbed the ‘hijacker’s spon­sors’ in a recent news account in the Chica­go Tri­bune.”

(Idem.)

3. “Mohamed Atta, before becom­ing a ‘ter­ror­ist ring­leader,’ enjoyed the patron­age of a gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive known as the ‘Con­gress-Bun­destag Pro­gram,’ over­seen by the U.S. State Depart­ment and the Ger­man Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment, the Ger­man equiv­a­lent of the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment busy cur­rent­ly super­vis­ing the secre­tive bid­ding race for tens of bil­lions of dol­lars of post-war recon­struc­tion con­tracts in Iraq.”

(Idem.)

4. “News that Mohamed Atta had been on the pay­roll of the elite inter­na­tion­al pro­gram sur­faced in a curi­ous way just a month after the 9/11 attack a brief sev­en-line report by Ger­man news­pa­per Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung on Oct. 18, 2001, under the head­line ‘Atta Was Tutor for Schol­ar­ship Hold­ers.’ The sto­ry quot­ed spokes­men for ‘Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft,’ described as a ‘Ger­man inter­na­tion­al fur­ther edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tion,’ as hav­ing admit­ted pay­ing Ham­burg cadre prin­ci­pal Atta as a ‘schol­ar­ship hold­er’ and ‘tutor,’ between 1995 and 1997.”

(Idem.)

5. “But what makes the sto­ry curi­ous is that the Ger­man paper con­cealed the shock­ing impli­ca­tions of their sto­ry, that Mohamed Atta had been on the pay­roll of a joint U.S.—German gov­ern­ment pro­gram, through the sim­ple expe­di­ent of neglect­ing to men­tion that the ‘Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft’ was mere­ly a pri­vate enti­ty set up to admin­is­ter the ‘exchange’ ini­tia­tive of the two gov­ern­ments.”

(Idem.)

6. The U.S. end of the pro­gram is run out of an address at Unit­ed Nations Plaza in New York by CDS Inter­na­tion­al. The let­ters stand for Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety, also the name of its Ger­man coun­ter­part in Cologne, the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft. Both are named for Carl Duis­berg, a Ger­man chemist and indus­tri­al­ist who head­ed the Bay­er Cor­po­ra­tion dur­ing the 1920’s . . . .”

(Idem.)

7. “. . . Kissinger, to cite just one exam­ple, had at one time addressed over 100 inter­na­tion­al busi­ness lead­ers at an anniver­sary din­ner orga­nized and cel­e­brat­ing CDS Inter­na­tion­al held at the Riv­er Club of New York June 2, 1987. Kissinger con­grat­u­lat­ed CDS Inter­na­tion­al on its 20 years of ser­vice in keep­ing close busi­ness ties, not only between Ger­many and the Unit­ed States, but more recent­ly through career devel­op­ment pro­grams for par­tic­i­pants from oth­er coun­tries as well. Five years lat­er, Mohamed Atta became one of these par­tic­i­pants from ‘oth­er’ coun­tries. . . .”

(Idem.)

8. “CDS Inter­na­tion­al, states the organization’s lit­er­a­ture, pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for young Ger­man engi­neers. Mohamed Atta was­n’t, strict­ly speak­ing, a ‘young Ger­man engi­neer,’ but appar­ent­ly Kissinger’s praise for ‘career devel­op­ment pro­grams for par­tic­i­pants from oth­er coun­tries as well’ had been tak­en to heart by the friend­ly folks at the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety. ‘These young Ger­man engi­neers earn real world expe­ri­ence and are giv­en assign­ments to con­tribute from the start,’ a pro­gram spokesman enthused in a news­pa­per inter­view. The orga­ni­za­tion is today under­stand­ably shy about men­tion­ing that their most famous recent grad­u­ate’s ‘real world expe­ri­ence’ includ­ed mur­der­ing almost 3000 peo­ple in New York City in slight­ly less than two hours.”

(Idem.)

9. “A finan­cial rela­tion­ship between the ter­ror­ist ring­leader and the U.S. and Ger­man Gov­ern­ments has not pre­vi­ous­ly even been hint­ed at in Amer­i­ca’s major media. The con­spir­a­cy-mind­ed might con­clude that the fact that the scoop is going to the Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews may owe some­thing to the program’s raft of polit­i­cal­ly-pow­er­ful boost­ers. Hav­ing big juice in high places may also explain more equal­ly-curi­ous omis­sions in a sec­ond sto­ry about Mohamed Atta’s time in Ger­many, which appeared recent­ly in the March 7, 2003 Chica­go Tri­bune, under the head­line ‘9/11 haunts hijack­er’s spon­sors; Ger­man cou­ple talks of liv­ing with pilot Atta.’”

(Idem.)

10. It is inter­est­ing, and prob­a­bly sig­nif­i­cant that the mys­te­ri­ous Ger­man cou­ple who brought Atta into Ger­many under the aus­pices of the CDS came to meet him through their friend, Mohamed’s father. In FTR#523, we exam­ined the senior Atta’s appar­ent super­vi­sion of the hijack­ers in Flori­da. He was appar­ent­ly the leader of the group, a fact cov­ered up by the FBI. In FTR#519, we looked at the senior Atta’s endorse­ment of the Lon­don sub­way attacks.

“The arti­cle describes the 1992 meet­ing in Cairo between Atta and a Ger­man cou­ple run­ning an ‘inter­na­tion­al stu­dent exchange pro­gram,’ a meet­ing which the Tri­bune says led Atta to move to Ham­burg. Dur­ing a vis­it to the Egypt­ian cap­i­tal in fall 1991, the Tri­bune report­ed, the Ger­man cou­ple had stayed with friends who knew Atta’s father, a Cairo lawyer, and his father’s friends had then intro­duced the Ger­man cou­ple to Atta. [Empha­sis added.] ‘Atta, who had recent­ly grad­u­at­ed with a degree in archi­tec­tur­al engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cairo, told the cou­ple he want­ed to study archi­tec­ture in Ger­many, but he had no par­tic­u­lar idea where he should go,’ the paper report­ed.”

(Idem.)

11. Notice the strange cir­cum­stances under which the face­less Ger­man cou­ple came to spon­sor Atta. Does this make sense?

“Though the arti­cle neglects to men­tion it, the rea­son Atta found him­self with ‘no par­tic­u­lar idea where he should go’ was because although he had stud­ied engi­neer­ing at pres­ti­gious Cairo Uni­ver­si­ty, he had not fared well enough to gain admis­sion to its grad­u­ate school. The paper quotes the Ger­man wife telling inves­ti­ga­tors: ‘In this first con­ver­sa­tion, we sug­gest­ed he con­tin­ue his stud­ies in Ham­burg and offered him a place to live at our house.’ Atta, she states, accept­ed their offer right away. This mag­nan­i­mous ges­ture by the Ger­man cou­ple to an undis­tin­guished young man they have just met rais­es seri­ous ques­tions. Per­haps their ges­ture is just the very milk of human kind­ness; per­haps it is some­thing else.”

(Idem.)

12. Notice that the iden­ti­ty of the Ger­man cou­ple who spon­sored Atta was kept secret by the Chica­go Tri­bune. WHY?!

“Why did this Ger­man cou­ple run­ning an inter­na­tion­al exchange pro­gram leap at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to help a young man not con­sid­ered promis­ing enough to gain entrance to grad­u­ate school in Cairo, and offer him a place to live at their house. The Tri­bune doesn’t say. And they have made it dif­fi­cult for any­one lese to fol­low up on their sto­ry, because they neglect­ed to iden­ti­fy either the cou­ple or the ‘inter­na­tion­al’ pro­gram they ran by name. But although Tri­bune cor­re­spon­dent Steven­son Swan­son cites the Ger­man cou­ple for ‘hav­ing played such an impor­tant role in Atta’s move to Ger­many,’ he nev­er gives either their names nor that of the orga­ni­za­tion they worked for.”

(Idem.)

13. “This is some curi­ous, if you know what we mean. After all, the sto­ry is 1200 words in length. So it’s not as if they did­n’t have room to print the names, is it? ‘Jane and John Doe from Help-A-Stu­dent Inter­na­tion­al’ would have been enough. You know: Who, What, When, Where, and Why. So, either The Tri­bune just for­got the ‘Who,’ or some­thing even weird­er hap­pened.”

(Idem.)

14. “After study­ing Ger­man in Cairo, Atta arrived in Ger­many on July 24, 1992, accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors’ records, and then lived rent-free for at least the next six months in the cou­ple’s home in a qui­et, mid­dle-class neigh­bor­hood. And since just two years lat­er Atta was on the pay­roll of the ‘Con­gress-Bun­destag Pro­gram,’ it is rea­son­able to conclude–and no thanks to The Chica­go Tri­bune–that it was also the ‘exchange pro­gram’ respon­si­ble for bring­ing him to Ger­many in the first place. . . CDS Inter­na­tion­al’s elite spon­sors are appar­ent­ly influ­en­tial enough to have kept their organization’s name out of the news­pa­pers. Or at any rate out of The Chica­go Tri­bune.”

(Idem.)

15. Next, Mr. Emory pon­tif­i­cates about evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning between a num­ber of ele­ments, which—taken together—appear to form parts of a net­work that involves ele­ments of Ger­man heavy indus­try and finance, mas­sive drug traf­fick­ing, arms traf­fick­ing and Russ­ian crim­i­nal ele­ments. The focal point of this part of the dis­cus­sion is the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft, the orga­ni­za­tion that traf­ficked Atta around in Ger­many and pos­si­bly the Unit­ed States. As not­ed in FTR#477, Atta was asso­ci­at­ed with Ger­mans, Swiss and Aus­tri­ans in Flori­da. As not­ed in—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#492, the Ger­man BKA (the fed­er­al police of that coun­try) and/or Atta para­mour Aman­da Keller iden­ti­fied many of Atta’s asso­ciates as sons and daugh­ters of promi­nent Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists. In the past, Mr. Emory has spec­u­lat­ed about whether the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft might be an ele­ment of the Under­ground Reich. In FTR#305, we exam­ined the Bor­mann group’s con­trol of Ger­man indus­try, and in FTR#155, we not­ed that the chil­dren of key Bor­mann group mem­bers fol­low in their par­ents’ foot­steps. Are we look­ing at a Bormann/Underground Reich net­work here? One that over­saw the hijack­ers’ activ­i­ties?

“ . . . ‘In the 1920’s, Carl Duis­berg, Gen­er­al Direc­tor of Bay­er AG in Ger­many, envi­sioned send­ing Ger­man stu­dents to the Unit­ed States on work-study pro­grams. Duis­berg was con­vinced that inter­na­tion­al prac­ti­cal train­ing was crit­i­cal to the growth of Ger­man indus­try. Many of the return­ing trainees lat­er rose to promi­nent posi­tions at AEG, Bay­er, Bosch, Daim­ler Benz, and Siemens, bring­ing with them new meth­ods for mass pro­duc­tion, new ideas, and new busi­ness prac­tices. Fol­low­ing World War II, alum­ni from the first exchanges found­ed the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft (CDG) in 1949 to help engi­neers, busi­ness­men and farm­ers gain inter­na­tion­al work expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary for the rebuild­ing of Ger­many . . . .”

(“His­to­ry of the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety”.)

16. Note the promi­nent Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists on the board of direc­tors of the Duis­berg Soci­ety, and do not for­get the Bor­mann group’s stew­ard­ship of Ger­man indus­try in this con­text.

“Board of Direc­tors Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety: . . . Gerd D. Mueller (retired) [mem­ber of Bun­destag on CSU tick­et) Chair­man of the Board; Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent and CFO Bay­er Cor­po­ra­tion . . . . Dr. Hans W. Deck­er; Trea­sur­er of the Board; Professor—Columbia Uni­ver­si­ty . . . Robert Fen­ster­ma­ch­er; Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of CDS Inter­na­tion­al, Inc. (ex offi­cio) . . . Carl Geer­ck­en; Part­ner Alston & Bird LLP . . . Dr. Olaf J. Groth; Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Strate­gic Analy­sis & Integration—Boeing Inter­na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tion . . . Dr. H. Friedrich Holzapfel; Man­ag­ing Director—The Burling­ton Group . . . Dr. Gudrun Kochen­do­er­fer-Lucius; Man­ag­ing Director—InWEnt (Capac­i­ty Build­ing Inter­na­tion­al, Ger­many) . . . Fritz E. Kropatscheck; Mang­ing Director—Deutsche Bank, A.G. (retired) . . . Wolf­gang Linz (retired) Exec­u­tive Direc­tor CDS Inter­na­tion­al, Inc. . . . Dr. Karl M. May­er-Wittmann (retired); President—WEFA, Inc. . . . Frances McCaf­frey; Man­ag­er, Cen­ter Development—BMW of North Amer­i­ca . . . Dr. Horst K. Saal­bach Vice Chair­man of the Board–Festo Cor­po­ra­tion . . . Dr. Nor­bert Schnei­der; Chief Exec­u­tive Officer—Carl Duis­berg Cen­tren GmbH . . . .”

(“Board of Direc­tors: Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety”)

17. Anoth­er of the fel­low­ship pro­grams that oper­ates under the aus­pices of the CDS is the Alfa Fel­low­ship, that func­tions on behalf of the Alfa Group, a Russ­ian con­glom­er­ate with more links than a switch­board. Among the con­nec­tions of the Alfa group are pro­found links to cocaine and hero­in traf­fick­ing, Hal­libur­ton Oil (Dick Cheney’s for­mer firm), and the oil-for-food scam in Iraq. The Iraqi oil scam, in turn, appears to be linked to Car­los Car­doen, one of the prin­ci­pal arms traf­fick­ers involved in the Iraq­gate scan­dal presided over by the elder George Bush. (For more about the elder George Bush’s involve­ment in the Iraq­gate scan­dal, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#384.) Is this Russ­ian part of the net­work con­nect­ed to the net­work that was traf­fick­ing Atta around in Flori­da?

“ALFA FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM: Near­ly fif­teen years after the fall of the Sovi­et Union, Cold War-era poli­cies and con­cepts con­tin­ue to affect U.S. rela­tions with Rus­sia. . . . The Alfa Fel­low­ship Pro­gram is designed to address this prob­lem . . . .”

(“ALFA FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM”; Page on the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety web site.)

18. Dick Cheney’s for­mer firm—Halliburton—is con­nect­ed to the Alfa com­pa­ny.

“Under the guid­ance of Richard Cheney, a get-the-gov­ern­ment-out-of-my-face con­ser­v­a­tive, Hal­libur­ton Com­pa­ny over the past five years has emerged as a cor­po­rate wel­fare hog, ben­e­fit­ing from at least $3.8 bil­lion in fed­er­al con­tracts and tax­pay­er-insured loans. One of these loans was approved in April by the U.S. Export-Import Bank. It guar­an­teed $489 mil­lion in cred­its to a Russ­ian oil com­pa­ny whose roots are imbed­ded in a lega­cy of KGB and Com­mu­nist Par­ty cor­rup­tion, as well as drug traf­fick­ing and orga­nized crime funds, accord­ing to Russ­ian and U.S. sources and doc­u­ments.”

(“Cheney Led Hal­libur­ton to Feast at Fed­er­al Trough: State Depart­ment Ques­tioned Deal with Firm Linked to Russ­ian Mob” by Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller [Cen­ter for Pub­lic Integri­ty]; 8/2/2000.)

19. “Those claims are hot­ly dis­put­ed by the Russ­ian oil firm’s hold­ing com­pa­ny. Hal­libur­ton, which lob­bied for the Ex-Im loan after the State Depart­ment ini­tial­ly assert­ed that the deal would run counter to the ‘nation­al inter­est,’ will receive $292 mil­lion of those funds to refur­bish a mas­sive Siber­ian oil field owned by the Russ­ian com­pa­ny, the Tyu­men Oil Co., which is con­trolled by a con­glom­er­ate called the Alfa Group. . . .”

(Idem.)

20. Note that a Russ­ian intel­li­gence offi­cer iden­ti­fies Chechens as behind the Alfa Group-con­nect­ed hero­in traf­fic. Al Qae­da and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood are strong­ly con­nect­ed to the groups active in Chech­nya. Again, is this oper­a­tion con­nect­ed to Atta’s activ­i­ties in Flori­da?

“ . . . That doc­u­ment and the FSB report claim that Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s largest and most prof­itable, as well as Alfa Eko, a trad­ing com­pa­ny, had been deeply involved in the ear­ly 1990’s in laun­der­ing of Russ­ian and Colom­bian drug mon­ey and in traf­fick­ing drugs from the Far East to Europe. The for­mer KGB major, who with the fall of com­mu­nism in the late 1980’s had him­self been involved in the plan by the KGB and Com­mu­nist Par­ty to loot state enter­pris­es, said that Alfa Bank was found­ed with par­ty and KGB funds, and quick­ly attract­ed rogue agents who had served in anti-orga­nized-crime units. ‘They (the rogue agents on the bank’s pay­roll) quick­ly deter­mined that deal­ing in drugs would bring the high­est prof­its with lit­er­al­ly no risk in Rus­sia,’ accord­ing to the for­mer KGB offi­cer. He claimed that a ‘large chan­nel of hero­in tran­sit was estab­lished from Bur­ma through Laos, Viet­nam, to the Far East [Siberia].’ From there the drugs were cam­ou­flaged as flour and sug­ar ship­ments and for­ward­ed on to Ger­many. The drug oper­a­tion was con­trolled by a Chechen mob fam­i­ly, he said. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] . . .”

(Idem)

21. The Cali cartel—connected to the Iran-Con­tra drug traf­fick­ing net­works that were linked to Atta’s oper­a­tions in Florida—is linked to the Alfa Group’s crim­i­nal activ­i­ties.

“ . . . The FSB doc­u­ment claims that at the end of 1993, a top Alfa offi­cial met with Gilber­to Rodriguez Ore­juela, the now-impris­oned finan­cial mas­ter­mind of Columbia’s noto­ri­ous Cali car­tel, ‘to include an agree­ment about the trans­fer of mon­ey into Alfa Bank from off­shore zones such as the Bahamas, Gibral­tar and oth­ers, The plan was to insert it back into the Russ­ian econ­o­my through the pur­chase of stock in Russ­ian com­pa­nies.’ The account from the for­mer KGB offi­cer is unclear about Alfa’s alleged role with Rodriguez, but appar­ent­ly con­firms that ‘in 1993–94 there were attempts of the so-called Chess Play­er [Rodriguez’s nick­name] to laun­der and legal­ize large amounts of crim­i­nal mon­ey in Rus­sia. He report­ed that there was evi­dence ‘regard­ing [Alfa Bank’s] involve­ment with the mon­ey laun­der­ing of . . . Latin Amer­i­can drug car­tels.’ . . .”

(Idem.)

22. The pro­gram high­lights links between Alfa and peo­ple linked to the lead­er­ship of the Repub­li­can Par­ty:

“ . . . Tyu­men could have sig­nif­i­cant access to the White House should the Bush-Cheney tick­et win in the Novem­ber pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Tyumen’s lead attor­ney at Akin Gump is James C. Lang­don Jr., a man­ag­ing part­ner at the firm. He is also one of George W. Bush’s ‘Pio­neers,’ one of the elite fund rais­ers who have brought in at least $100,0000 for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial hope­ful. . . .”

(Idem.)

23. The dis­cus­sion con­cludes with the links of Alfa Group to the Iraqi oil-for-food scam and the Iraq­gate weapons traf­fick­ing of the 1980’s.

“ . . . One out­fit that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Iraqi oil trade is the Alfa Group, a Moscow firm with hold­ings in bank­ing, tele­com, oil and com­modi­ties trad­ing, run by bil­lion­aire Mikhail Frid­man. Alfa quite legal­ly pumped the price of its cheap Iraqi crude by trad­ing it to a suc­ces­sion of affil­i­ates and friends with ques­tion­able pasts. [includ­ing Alfa sub­sidiary Crown Trade & Finance] The daisy chain, known inter­nal­ly as a ‘ron­do,’ boost­ed Alfa’s pro­ceeds and also made the mon­ey hard­er to trace. Alfa deposit­ed funds in a Gibral­tar tax haven. . . .”

(“The Sad­dam Shuf­fle” by Michael Maiel­lo; Forbes; 11/15/2004.)

24. “ . . . A favorite ron­do customer—and a point of entry to the U.S. market—was a Hous­ton com­pa­ny, Bay­oil. It par­tic­i­pat­ed in 32 Iraqi oil trades with Alfa com­pa­nies between August 1999 and Decem­ber 2000. Bay­oil also bought direct­ly from Sad­dam. Sad­dam had been deal­ing with Bay­oil own­er David Bay Chalmers Jr. before. Dur­ing the 1980’s Iran-Iraq war Bay­oil appar­ent­ly got a fee of $2 a bar­rel for bro­ker­ing 20 mil­lion bar­rels of Iraqi oil to the Chilean arms deal­er Car­los Car­doen. . . .”

(Idem.)

25. Crown Resources and oth­er Crown enti­ties are part of the Alfa Group, one of whose out­growths is the CDS sub­sidiary pro­gram the Alfa Fel­low­ship. One of the ques­tions Mr. Emory rais­es in this pro­gram con­cerns the post-Sovi­et Russ­ian oli­garchy and orga­nized milieu. In this pro­gram, we are see­ing ele­ments of inter­sec­tion between the Russ­ian crim­i­nal-oli­garchi­cal net­works and Ger­man cap­i­tal net­works that appear to be linked to the Under­ground Reich. This rais­es some inter­est­ing ques­tions. The Sovi­et Union was the eco­nom­ic bas­ket case of the world. How did some of these Russ­ian ele­ments obtain the sort of glob­al pow­er and influ­ence that they have? They had to have help, the advan­tages of loot­ing state monop­o­lies notwith­stand­ing. More about this below, in con­nec­tion with Alfa’s Crown sub­sidiary.

“ A deal to sell the Swiss-based com­modi­ties oper­a­tion of for­mer U.S. fugi­tive financier Marc Rich to Rus­sia-owned ener­gy trad­ing group Crown Resources is off. . . . Crown is owned by the Alfa Group con­glom­er­ate. . . . .”

(“Marc Rich Deal to Sell Com­modi­ties Oper­a­tion to Russ­ian Group Fails” [AP]; 6/8/2001.)

26. One of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the Crown/Alfa net­work is Dr. Nor­bert Seeger, about whom we will more below.

“ . . . 30. Dr. Nor­bert Seeger; Rech­tan­swalt, Vaduz [Liechtenstein]—Information includes: Knowl­edge of facts per­tain­ing to role of Crown Finance Foun­da­tion and oth­er Crown enti­ties in mon­ey laun­der­ing and tax eva­sion activ­i­ties. . . .” (From the legal doc­u­ments in a lawsuit—“Rule 26 Ini­tial Dis­clo­sures; UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT; SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK; NOREX PETROLEUM LIMITED No. 02 Civ. 1499 (LTS)(KNF); Plain­tiff v. ACCESS INDUSTRIES, INC.; Et. Al. Defen­dants; PLAINTIFF’S RULE 26(a)(1) INITIAL DISCLOSURES; 1. INDIVIDUALS LIKELY TO HAVE DISCOVERABLE INFORMATION THAT MAY BE USED TO SUPPORT NOREX’S CLAIMS . . . . A. Indi­vid­u­als Asso­ci­at­ed With Plain­tiff”; p. 8.)

27. A crit­i­cal ele­ment of dis­cus­sion here con­cerns the tiny prin­ci­pal­i­ty of Liechtenstein—a small Euro­pean coun­try of 32,000 peo­ple, whose prin­ci­pal indus­try is mon­ey laun­der­ing. As we will see, Liecht­en­stein fig­ures sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the events in and around 9/11. In 2001, Prince Hans Adam became (for all intents and pur­pos­es) the only absolute monarch in Europe. This gam­bit was accom­plished through a pop­u­lar ref­er­en­dum, effect­ed under the aus­pices of a front group—the Pro­gres­sive Cit­i­zens Par­ty. The ref­er­en­dum ced­ed to the Prince vir­tu­al­ly all real pow­er. In par­tic­u­lar, he had the abil­i­ty to com­plete­ly con­trol the judi­cial sys­tem, there­by con­trol­ling all legal inves­ti­ga­tions in the country—a par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing and impor­tant pow­er in the very impor­tant year of 2001! This assump­tion of absolute pow­er put Hans Adam in the posi­tion of being able to block or neu­tral­ize any legal inves­ti­ga­tion into any of the finan­cial shenani­gans that tran­spired in Liecht­en­stein, includ­ing 9/11-relat­ed activ­i­ties! As will be seen below, the main busi­ness in this tiny coun­try is mon­ey laun­der­ing.

“ . . . In a ref­er­en­dum in March 23, 64% of vot­ers in Liecht­en­stein approved a mea­sure to give Prince Hans Adam II the pow­er to dis­miss gov­ern­ments, approve judi­cial nom­i­nees and veto laws. It is the most pow­er of any monarch in Europe. Hans Adam had threat­ened to leave the coun­try if the mea­sure was not approved. . . The Prince’s involve­ment in leg­is­la­tion con­sists in a right to take ini­tia­tives in the form of gov­ern­ment bills and in the right to veto par­lia­men­tary pro­pos­als. The Prince has the pow­er to enact prince­ly decrees. Emer­gency prince­ly decrees are pos­si­ble when the secu­ri­ty and wel­fare of the coun­try is at stake. A coun­tersig­na­ture by the head of gov­ern­ment is, nev­er­the­less required. The Prince has the right to con­vene and adjourn par­lia­ment and, for seri­ous rea­sons, to adjourn it for 3 months or to dis­solve it. On the basis of the names put for­ward by Par­lia­ment, the Prince nom­i­nates the gov­ern­ment dis­trict and high court judges, the judges of the Supreme Court, and the pres­i­dents and their deputies of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court and of the Admin­is­tra­tive Court of Appeal. The Prince’s oth­er author­i­ties include exer­cis­ing the right to mit­i­gate and com­mute pun­ish­ments that have been imposed with legal force and the abolition–i.e., the dismissal—of inves­ti­ga­tions that have been ini­ti­at­ed. All judg­ments are issued in the name of the Prince. . . .”

(Wikipedia entry on the polit­i­cal sys­tem of Liecht­en­stein.)

28. The head of Liechtenstein’s Pro­gres­sive Cit­i­zens Par­ty is Nor­bert Seeger—a prin­ci­pal fig­ure in Alfa’s Crown Resources sub­sidiary!!

“ . . . Since 2001, it has been the Pro­gres­sive Cit­i­zens Par­ty that has pro­vid­ed all the mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment. The minor­i­ty par­ties, as oppo­si­tion par­ties, act as a check on the gov­ern­ment in Par­lia­ment and on par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sions. . . .”

(Idem.)

29. “ . . . Polit­i­cal par­ties and lead­ers: Pro­gres­sive Cit­i­zens’ Par­ty of FBPL. [Nor­bert Seeger]; . . .” (Idem.)

30. Next, the broad­cast reviews infor­ma­tion from FTR#442. One of the most impor­tant con­nec­tions illus­trat­ed in this pro­gram is the evi­den­tiary trib­u­tary con­nect­ing the Bank Al Taqwa and the roy­al fam­i­ly of Liecht­en­stein. Recall that Bank Al Taqwa is a prin­ci­pal finan­cial source for Al Qae­da and oth­er Mus­lim Broth­er­hood off­shoots. (For more about Bank Al Taqwa, see—among oth­er pro­grams, FTR#’s 343, 456, 513.) One should not for­get that Al Taqwa itself orig­i­nates from a firm estab­lished in Vaduz, Liechtenstein—that nation’s cap­i­tal. Liecht­en­stein is one of the prin­ci­pal “fun­ny mon­ey” cen­ters of Europe, and a major piv­ot point for the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. This infor­ma­tion should be eval­u­at­ed against the back­ground of the infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in FTR#’s 352, 357, 359, 377, 378. Those broad­casts high­light the inter­sec­tion between the Al Taqwa milieu and Euro­pean far-right inter­ests, includ­ing the P‑2 and Allean­za Nationale milieu in Italy. These links with pow­er­ful Euro­pean cap­i­tal inter­ests and far-right net­works indi­cate that there is much more going on here than just Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism. In light of the links between Liecht­en­stein, Crown/Alpha (Nor­bert Seeger) and the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft, the Asat Trust/Liechtenstein roy­al fam­i­ly con­nec­tion assumes poten­tial­ly larg­er sig­nif­i­cance. Do the var­i­ous ten­drils of the crea­ture por­trayed in this pro­gram descrip­tion con­sti­tute a Bormann/Underground Reich net­work deeply involved in 9/11?!

“ . . . The pros­e­cu­tion also alleged that [alleged Al Qae­da financier Soli­man] Biheiri is linked to a secre­tive finan­cial net­work in Switzer­land and Liecht­ensstein called Al Taqwa, which Amer­i­can and Euro­pean inves­ti­ga­tors say is a finan­cial backer of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The Broth­er­hood, often depict­ed as the ide­o­log­i­cal par­ent of most rad­i­cal Islam­ic groups, recent­ly has come under gov­ern­ment scruti­ny for its pos­si­ble direct role in sup­port­ing ter­ror­ism, most promi­nent­ly because of Al Taqwa.”

(“Ter­ror Fund Trail Leads to Alpine King­dom” by Marc Perel­man; For­ward; 10/17/2003.)

31. “The Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the Unit­ed Nations have des­ig­nat­ed the Al Taqwa net­work and its main officials—two self-avowed Mus­lim Broth­ers and an admit­ted Nazi sympathizer—as sup­port­ers of Al Qae­da. As a result, their assets have been frozen and they are the focus of a Swiss inves­ti­ga­tion. The Al Taqwa offi­cials have repeat­ed­ly reject­ed the charges. At the [alleged Al Qae­da financier Soli­man] Biheiri deten­tion hear­ing last month, pros­e­cu­tor Steven Ward described Biheiri as the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s ‘finan­cial toe­hold in the U.S.’”

(Idem.)

32. “The pros­e­cu­tion said it had estab­lished links between [alleged Al Qae­da financier Soli­man] Biheiri and the two prin­ci­pals of Al Taqwa, Youssef Nada and Ghaleb Him­mat. Accord­ing to tes­ti­mo­ny from spe­cial agent Kane of the Bureau of Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment, the address­es of Nada and Him­mat were found in Biheiri’s lap­top com­put­er. Kane told the court that there were ‘oth­er indi­ca­tions’ of con­nec­tions between Al Taqwa and Biheiri’s com­pa­ny BMI, includ­ing finan­cial trans­ac­tions. . . .”

(Idem.)

33. “. . . One com­pa­ny in the Al Taqwa galaxy that was des­ig­nat­ed by the Unit­ed States and the U.N. as a ter­ror­ist-relat­ed enti­ty is a Liecht­en­stein enti­ty called Asat Trust. Its direc­tor Mar­tin Wachter, told the For­ward this year that Asat Trust oper­ates mere­ly as a reg­istry for busi­ness­es and is not involved in the oper­a­tion of any com­pa­ny. He added that the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment had wrong­ful­ly des­ig­nat­ed Asat Trust as a ter­ror­ist-relat­ed enti­ty because it had once rep­re­sent­ed Al Taqwa in a small real estate deal in Switzer­land.”

(Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

34. “Still, copies of busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments on file with author­i­ties in Liecht­en­stein show that Asat Trust has been inti­mate­ly involved with the Al Taqwa net­work dur­ing the last 30 years, reg­is­ter­ing changes in com­pa­ny names, per­son­nel and finan­cial struc­ture, which may explain why Asat Trust land­ed on the Amer­i­can and U.N. ter­ror­ist lists.”

(Ibid.; p. 3.)

35. The infor­ma­tion about the Al Taqwa links with the roy­al fam­i­ly of Liecht­en­stein is set forth as fol­lows:

“The records also shed light on the involve­ment of one mem­ber of the roy­al fam­i­ly of Liecht­en­stein in Asat Trust. Accord­ing to the doc­u­ments, deceased Prince Emanuel von und zu Liecht­en­stein became a board mem­ber of Asat Trust in May 1970 and stayed until Novem­ber 1990, when he was replaced by Wachter, the trust’s cur­rent direc­tor. Flo­ri­an Krenkel, a spokesman for the roy­al fam­i­ly, said Prince Emmanuel had died in 1987 and that he was a dis­tant cousin from rul­ing Prince Hans Adam II. . . .”

(Idem.)

36. “ . . . There also appears to be some links between Asat Trust and a bank owned by the Liecht­en­stein roy­al fam­i­ly. Sev­er­al Asat Trust doc­u­ments fea­ture on their let­ter­heads ‘Bank in Liecht­en­stein AG’ beneath ‘Asat Trust.’ The roy­al fam­i­ly bank has changed its name and is now called LGT bank. A tele­phone and an e‑mail query to the bank’s spokesman Hans-Mar­tin Uehringer went unre­turned. . . .”

(Idem.)

37. More about Liecht­en­stein and its mon­ey-laun­der­ing econ­o­my:

“High atop an Alpine ridge sits a prince in a 130-room cas­tle, in a tiny domain that has made a name for itself by hid­ing people’s mon­ey. It has also found a bit more inter­na­tion­al atten­tion than it would like.”

(“The Prince and His Black Sheep: This Is No Liecht­en­stein Fairy Tale” by John Tagli­abue; New York Times 4/8/2000.)

38. Note the ref­er­ences to Liechtenstein’s role in the CDU fund­ing scan­dal. (These are the ref­er­ences to the con­spir­a­cy involv­ing Kohl, the French oil com­pa­ny and the “decrepit oil refin­ery.”) For more about the CDU fund­ing scan­dal, see—among oth­er broad­casts—FTR#’s 193, 276, 278, 506. In FTR#’s 469, 476, we not­ed the links of John P. Schmitz to var­i­ous aspects of the 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tions, as well as his links to the Bush milieu. Schmitz was a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the Robert Bosch Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship, a sub­sidiary pro­gram (along with the Alfa Fel­low­ship) of the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft. When work­ing with the Bun­destag, Schmitz worked with Math­ias Wiss­man, the for­mer trea­sur­er of the CDU! Lat­er, Wiss­man went to work for Wilmer Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing, a law firm that also employed Schmitz and that rep­re­sents key Ger­man gov­ern­ment-linked cor­po­ra­tions in their attempts to move into Amer­i­can mar­kets. (For more about this, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#492.) Again, with the Asat Trust [Al Taqwa] link to the Liecht­en­stein Roy­al Fam­i­ly, as well as the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft/Atta/Alfa/Robert BoschFoun­da­tion Fel­low­ship rela­tion­ship, we may well be look­ing at a Bormann/Underground Reich net­work “in the raw.”

“Last year, when Ger­man pros­e­cu­tors inves­ti­gat­ed mil­lions of dol­lars of secret dona­tions to for­mer Chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl, the tail led to Liecht­en­stein, a prin­ci­pal­i­ty the size of Fort Wayne, Ind. When Swiss inves­ti­ga­tors looked into mil­lions of dol­lars of obscure ‘pay­ments’ involv­ing the sale of a decrepit refin­ery to a French oil com­pa­ny, the mon­ey trail also led to Liecht­en­stein. In 1996, when Amer­i­can agents seized a Swiss laun­der­er of Latin Amer­i­can drug prof­its, he con­fessed that he loved to do busi­ness in Liecht­en­stein since its banks nev­er divulged much about its clients.”

(Idem.)

39. “The affa­ble 55-year-old Prince Hans Adam II, whose ances­tors bought the coun­try from the Aus­tri­an crown some three cen­turies ago, sees his nation of 32,000 peo­ple as mere­ly offer­ing bank­ing pri­va­cy and low tax­es. To him, bank secre­cy and wafer-thin tax rates are ser­vices the coun­try just like its dairy prod­ucts and its lead­ing export, den­tal pros­thet­ics.”

(Idem.)

40. “Since many of Europe’s wealthy face income tax rates exceed­ing 50 per­cent, Liecht­en­stein offers a seclud­ed place to squir­rel away their for­tunes. It also has a top income tax rate of just 18.9 per­cent. Tax­es for hold­ing com­pa­nies or enter­pris­es with no more than a mail­box here are a mere 1 per­cent.”

(Idem.)

41. “But those kinds of lures have appar­ent­ly attract­ed some unsa­vory ele­ments. Liechtenstein’s headaches began last Novem­ber, when the Ger­man news­magazine Der Spiegel pub­lished what it said were details of a Ger­man intel­li­gence report that made accu­sa­tions against Liecht­en­stein banks and fiduciaries—specialists in estab­lish­ing mail­box cor­po­ra­tions that are used to mask bank accounts. The enter­pris­es were tied to a Sicil­ian Mafia group, Latin Amer­i­can drug lords and Russ­ian gangs, the report said.”

(Idem.)

42. “The arti­cle also assert­ed that a for­mer Liecht­en­stein prime min­is­ter had assem­bled a net­work of banks, gov­ern­ment work­ers and lawyers to help orga­nized crime. Prince Hans Adam, in an inter­view, accused Ger­many of seek­ing to ruin Liecht­en­stein as a tax haven. To do so, he added, the Ger­mans ‘did not hes­i­tate to com­mit char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion on a coun­try and on indi­vid­ual peo­ple.’ . . .”

(Idem.)

43. Note that the Swiss cur­ren­cy is Liechtenstein’s “coin of the realm”—something that would no doubt facil­i­tate the mon­ey laun­der­ing infra­struc­ture in that tiny nation.

“ . . . In 1924, after the col­lapse of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire fol­low­ing World War I, Liecht­en­stein entered a cus­toms union with Switzer­land, whose cur­ren­cy is the coin of the realm. . . . It is not lost on Liecht­en­stein­ers that while Ger­man gov­ern­ments pil­lo­ry their sys­tem, Ger­man politi­cians use it to hide cam­paign dona­tions. In 1997, a local employ­ee of one influ­en­tial fidu­cia­ry gave Der Spiegel diskettes con­tain­ing con­fi­den­tial client infor­ma­tion. Among Ger­mans stash­ing mon­ey here were not only well-known busi­ness peo­ple and an Olympic gold medal­ist, but also offi­cials of Chan­cel­lor Kohl’s polit­i­cal par­ty, the Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic Union. . . .”

(Idem.)

44. Liecht­en­stein protest­ed that their finan­cial sys­tem was ade­quate­ly trans­par­ent.

“ . . . Yet when finan­cial inspec­tors from the Coun­cil of Europe vis­it­ed Liecht­en­stein in Sep­tem­ber, they came to very dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions. To lift bank secre­cy, they found that requests must pass 12 appeal lev­els. They also found that the office for inves­ti­gat­ing bank reports of sus­pi­cious mon­ey has five over­worked employ­ees. So to learn where sus­pi­cious mon­ey comes from, the banks sim­ply ask their clients. ‘The exam­in­ers fail to see how ‘tip­ping off’ in such cir­cum­stances can be avoid­ed,’ the inspec­tors polite­ly con­clud­ed in their report.”

(Idem.)

45. “Peter Cson­ka, the team’s sec­re­tary, said Liecht­en­stein had 80,000 trust companies—almost 3 for every citizen—as well as 280 lawyers and 80 trustees, most of whom ‘are in some busi­ness where the pur­pose is not total­ly clear.’ Finan­cial polic­ing, he said, ‘equals zero.’ . . .”

(Idem.)

46. Note the prince’s rel­a­tive immu­ni­ty, as well as his incli­na­tion to use pri­vate audi­tors to “keep the books” for the king­dom. Note, too, that Arthur Ander­sen was the audi­tor that facil­i­tat­ed the Enron rip-off.

“One hur­dle to reform, some say, is the grow­ing polit­i­cal dis­sent between the prince and the gov­ern­ment on mat­ters like con­sti­tu­tion­al reform and law enforce­ment. The prince, for instance, pro­pos­es con­tract­ing over­sight of the bank­ing sys­tem to pri­vate audi­tors, and sug­gests Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers or Arthur Ander­son. ‘I’m a pro­po­nent of out­sourc­ing what­ev­er can be done bet­ter,’ he said. [Empha­sis added.] For his part, Prime Min­is­ter Mario Frick wants the dele­tion of con­sti­tu­tion­al pas­sages assur­ing the prince’s immu­ni­ty. ‘He could steal my car, and I can’t do any­thing about it,’ Mr. Frick said. The prince recent­ly annoyed politi­cians by mail­ing his own pro­pos­als for reform to all house­holds and post­ing them on his Web site: www.fuerstenhaus.li. . . .”

(Idem.)