Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #545 Update on September 11 and Related Matters

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Intro­duc­tion: Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of Sau­di Arabia’s strate­gic use of its oil wealth in Lebanon and oth­er Arab nations, the pro­gram under­scores a num­ber of recent devel­op­ments rel­a­tive to the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion of 9/11 and relat­ed mat­ters. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the eco­nom­ic impact of petro­le­um wealth. In addi­tion to the enor­mous wealth pos­sessed by Sau­di Ara­bia and the polit­i­cal pow­er that stems from that largesse, the sig­nif­i­cance of the flow of cap­i­tal into the Arab oil pro­duc­ing coun­tries for the glob­al­ized econ­o­my is of pri­ma­ry impor­tance to the dis­cus­sion. Sau­di Arabia’s grow­ing eco­nom­ic pow­er has strength­ened its hand in Lebanese pol­i­tics, where Sau­di cap­i­tal was the dom­i­nant force behind the polit­i­cal career of the late Raf­ic (also Rafiq) Hariri. Arab coun­tries have threat­ened to move wealth out of dol­lar-denom­i­nat­ed assets and into Euros as an expres­sion of dis­plea­sure over the U.S. nega­tion of the Dubai Ports World takeover of oper­a­tions at major U.S. sea­ports. This could prove very threat­en­ing to the bank­rupt Unit­ed States. Despite pub­lic state­ments to the con­trary, it is not at all clear that Dubai Ports World will be com­plete­ly aban­don­ing the deal. Although offi­cial­ly a U.S. ally, the UAE has been very sup­port­ive of Islamist ter­ror­ist ele­ments. In that regard, the UAE can join Sau­di Ara­bia and Pakistan—also offi­cial­ly allies in the war on terror—as coun­tries that sup­port­ed Osama bin Laden and Al Qae­da.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Dis­cus­sion of pos­si­ble cul­prits in the mur­der of for­mer Lebanese Prime Min­is­ter Hariri; review of the pro­found con­nec­tions between orga­nized crime, cor­po­rate pow­er and Islamist ter­ror; review of the pro­found con­nec­tions between Sau­di Ara­bia, Pak­istan and inter­na­tion­al fas­cism; the Pak­istani for­eign service’s suc­cess­ful lob­by­ing pro­gram to get the U.S. to drop men­tion of that country’s role in 9/11; review of Pak­istani weapons deal­er R.G. Abbas’s fore­knowl­edge of 9/11; indi­ca­tions that Dubai Ports World will retain con­trol over its Mia­mi oper­a­tions; the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Dubai Ports World may retain a 49% inter­est in U.S. port oper­a­tions despite offi­cial reports to the con­trary; review of the new, suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of I.G. Farben’s hydro­gena­tion process for pro­duc­ing syn­thet­ic fuel.

1. Much of the first side of the pro­gram deals with Sau­di fund­ing of Lebanese pol­i­tics, a sub­ject cen­tral to dis­cus­sion of the recent­ly-assas­si­nat­ed politi­cian Raf­ic Hariri. Killed by a pow­er­ful bomb, Hariri was a Sau­di pro­tégé whose busi­ness and polit­i­cal careers were under­writ­ten by Sau­di cap­i­tal. As can bee seen, there is no short­age of pos­si­bil­i­ties con­cern­ing the pre­cise iden­ti­ty of the male­fac­tors who killed Hariri. Did Syr­i­an forces kill him? Were the U.S. and Sau­di Ara­bia look­ing to sup­plant the sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment of Lebanon with a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood gov­ern­ment? Were they plan­ning a sim­i­lar devel­op­ment in Syr­ia? Note that the Saud­is have delib­er­ate­ly cul­ti­vat­ed Lebanon (as well as oth­er Mid­dle East­ern nations) as prox­ies against Israel, uti­liz­ing their enor­mous, petro­le­um-derived wealth.

“ . . . Today, the Sauds enter­tain good rela­tions with Syr­ia, which pre­serves a tra­di­tion­al reverse alliance against Israel, and against Iraq since 1990. If nec­es­sary, this could prove use­ful against the Hashemites of Jor­dan, his­tor­i­cal ene­mies whom the Sauds dis­pos­sessed of Hed­jaz and the holy places at the begin­ning of the cen­tu­ry. Every­thing augurs well for future rela­tions with Dam­as­cus, since one of the des­ig­nat­ed Crown Prince’s wives — Has­sa al-Chaalane — is Syr­i­an and, what is more, sis­ter; of the wife of Rifaat el-Assad, the broth­er of the Syr­i­an pres­i­dent who is thus the broth­er-in-law of the next King of Ara­bia. These fam­i­ly and trib­al rela­tions can only con­sol­i­date a Riyadh-Dam­as­cus axis. . . . .”

(Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The Unit­ed States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000; Algo­ra Press [SC]; ISBN 1–822941-06–6; p. 247.)

2. One of the rea­sons for the Sau­di diplo­mat­ic hege­mo­ny in this part of the Arab world is their ongo­ing con­trol of Arab atti­tudes toward Pales­tine.

“ . . . ‘In fact,’ a for­mer French ambas­sador to Riyadh sum­ma­rizes, ‘Sau­di Ara­bia forms (with Egypt and Syr­ia) a self-suf­fi­cient ‘deci­sion- mak­ing tri­an­gle’ for every­thing that gen­er­al­ly relates to shap­ing the Arab atti­tude with respect to the Pales­tin­ian ques­tion. It is an unde­ni­able suc­cess of the Sauds’ ‘Arab diplo­ma­cy.’ Indeed, it is tra­di­tion­al­ly admit­ted that no war against Israel is pos­si­ble with­out Egypt, and no peace with­out Syr­ia. In spite of its sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing capac­i­ties, Sau­di Ara­bia — a giant banker, but a dwarf sol­dier — is in no posi­tion to be a major actor in the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian process. But, in this ‘deci­sion- mak­ing tri­an­gle’ with Egypt and Syr­ia, it is placed on an equal foot­ing with two Arab part­ners that are strate­gi­cal­ly much greater than itself. Lebanon is emblem­at­ic of the immense Sau­di capac­i­ties of financ­ing, and is tac­ti­cal­ly key for Sau­di spon­sor­ship of Islamist move­ments. Hav­ing lit­tle strate­gic impor­tance — even though it is on the front line vis-à-vis Israel — Lebanon indeed arous­es Riyad­h’s inter­est com­plete­ly out of pro­por­tion to its weight on the region­al scene. All the great Sau­di fam­i­lies are eco­nom­i­cal­ly omnipresent in Beirut, and Riyadh reg­u­lar­ly sup­ports the exchange rate of the Lebanese cur­ren­cy. The prin­ci­pal pan-Arab news­pa­pers, ini­tial­ly Lebanese, are con­trolled today by Sau­di finance; the Lebanese for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Raf­ic Hariri him­self owes a good share of his per­son­al for­tune to the roy­al fam­i­ly, which con­ced­ed to him a qua­si-monop­oly over the con­struc­tion and main­te­nance of innu­mer­able Prince­ly palaces, as well as major pub­lic works projects. Fur­ther­more, he holds a Sau­di pass­port, thus mak­ing an excep­tion to the rule that for­mal­ly pre­cludes dual cit­i­zen­ship with Sau­di Ara­bia. Hav­ing become one of the prin­ci­pal finan­cial out­posts of the king­dom, Lebanon is locat­ed at the cross­roads of the Sauds’ Arab and Mus­lim diplo­ma­cy. In Lebanon, a Sau­di ‘finan­cial pro­tec­torate’, all the under­writ­ers and the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Sau­di ‘gen­eros­i­ty’ meet. To counter the pro-Iran­ian Hezbol­lah engaged against Israel in south­ern Lebanon, but now rep­re­sent­ed in the Lebanese par­lia­ment, the Saud­is employ the same ‘recipe’ they apply every­where: they use mon­ey. This is a per­ilous approach, because the ben­e­fit is not always pro­por­tion­al to the cost. Thus, it some­times hap­pens that Islamist fac­tions financed by the Saud­is turn against their bene­fac­tors. . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 248.)

3. Note that Hariri vis­it­ed the noto­ri­ous “Three Bor­ders” area of Latin Amer­i­ca, long a strong­hold of Islamist ter­ror, as well as oth­er fas­cist and crim­i­nal ele­ments. Again, note that Hariri’s milieu was not lack­ing in poten­tial evil­do­ers, com­pli­cat­ing the search for his real killers.

“ . . . Latin Amer­i­ca. Once an oblig­a­tory way-sta­tion for war crim­i­nals and oth­er flee­ing Nazis, the region known as ‘the three bor­ders’ (Brazil, Argenti­na, Paraguay) is con­sid­ered by anti-ter­ror­ist experts to be a new base of rad­i­cal Islamism. Often, intel­li­gence agen­cies have traced the lead­ers of Hezbol­lah, Hamas and the inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­ers to this area. Form­ing a tri­an­gle between the towns of Puer­to Iguazu (Argenti­na); Foz do Iguacu (Brazil) and Ciu­dad del Este (Paraguay), the area holds a pop­u­la­tion of more than 400,000, a quar­ter of them for­eign­ers, with strong Near East­ern com­mu­ni­ties, espe­cial­ly Lebanese. At the cen­ter, the site of the mar­velous water­falls of Iguacu hosts more than 40,000 vis­i­tors a year, which makes the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and the mon­i­tor­ing of peo­ple par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult. In addi­tion, the topog­ra­phy, criss­crossed by innu­mer­able rivers and streams, makes it impos­si­ble to get an over­all view. This tor­ment­ed phys­i­cal and human geog­ra­phy encour­ages all sorts of traf­fic. Ciu­dad del Este has thus become the Latin-Amer­i­can cap­i­tal for coun­ter­feit­ing and for the smug­gling of weapons and explo­sives. Weapons come from the Unit­ed States via Paraguay, and are main­ly des­tined for the mar­kets of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo; they fol­low the route to Foz do Iguacu and cross the bor­der of Paraguay at Mato Grosso do Sul. Small land­ing strips in the region are also used for deliv­er­ing car­goes, and drugs.”

(Ibid.; p. 334.)

4. The Three Bor­ders area high­lights the rela­tion­ship between the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic over­world and under­world. As Labeviere notes, the inter­ests of so-called legit­i­mate polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial ele­ments, reli­gious extrem­ism and orga­nized crime are inex­tri­ca­bly linked. In Mr. Emory’s many inter­views with Daniel Hop­sick­er, the rela­tion­ship between crim­i­nal activiy, Islami­sist ter­ror and pow­er pol­i­tics is set forth in con­sid­er­able detail.

“A non-pro­duc­ing coun­try, Brazil is today the main region­al tran­sit cen­ter for the cocaine trade from Colom­bia and Bolivia, head­ing for the Unit­ed States and Europe, via Cape Verde, the Ivory Coast and South Africa. Experts esti­mate that 80% of Colom­bian cocaine pass­es through the Islam­ic-Latin-Amer­i­can tri­an­gle. The Latin-Amer­i­can, Chi­nese and Near East­ern mafias have made their head­quar­ters there. The mosque of Foz do Iguacu, which also has a Koran school, reg­u­lar­ly receives vis­its by reli­gious dig­ni­taries and Sau­di busi­ness­men, although the com­mu­ni­ties are main­ly Shi­ite. In 1997, the Lebanese for­mer prime min­is­ter Raf­ic Hariri was the hon­orary guest of the Arab com­mu­ni­ty of Ciu­dad del Este. Accom­pa­nied by a del­e­ga­tion by Gulf financiers, he was main­ly inter­est­ed in Near East­ern invest­ments in the region. At the time, the police ser­vices iden­ti­fied a close col­lab­o­ra­tor of Osama bin Laden in his ret­inue. Cer­tain­ly, the Lebanese for­mer prime min­is­ter is not con­sid­ered to be a dan­ger­ous ter­ror­ist him­self, but his many busi­ness engage­ments often lead him to min­gle with inter­me­di­aries who are direct­ly involved in Islamist mafia oper­a­tions that gen­er­ate inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism. The ‘Lebanese caul­dron’ alone deserves a close inves­ti­ga­tion into the gray areas of finance where pri­vate bank­ing, inter­na­tion­al busi­ness­men and major off­shore crim­i­nals meet. Whether in Latin Amer­i­ca or in Beirut, these busi­ness milieux reveal the osmo­sis that is going on between the crim­i­nal hier­ar­chies and the legal struc­tures of eco­nom­ic and finan­cial activ­i­ty world­wide. It is symp­to­matic that when one finds the heads of var­i­ous crim­i­nal groups, one reach­es the lim­it of the crim­i­nal activ­i­ty at the same time. The influ­ence of the Mafias is nev­er so great and so dan­ger­ous as when they lever­age their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties to ply all the levers that legal soci­ety offers in order to sub­vert that legal­i­ty itself. Mon­ey laun­der­ing is not only a mon­e­tary activ­i­ty aim­ing to legal­ize dirty mon­ey by inject­ing it into lic­it eco­nom­ic sec­tors; it is also exert­ed on orga­ni­za­tions and elite groups that also wish to be made respectable. One point is essen­tial: orga­nized crime is not only a prob­lem of crim­i­nal­i­ty any­more. It is a too broad a top­ic, these days, to be entrust­ed sole­ly to the crim­i­nol­o­gists. The econ­o­my of crime was based in the legal econ­o­my. If you make a clean dis­tinc­tion between orga­nized crime and the sphere of finance, you are con­demned to not under­stand either one. Cer­tain­ly, it is more com­fort­able to regard the Mafias and the crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions as malev­o­lent for­eign pow­ers. Real­i­ty is less appeal­ing and more com­plex: crim­i­nal­i­ty has become an essen­tial gear in the engine of con­tem­po­rary soci­eties.”

(Ibid.; pp. 334–335.)

5. Repris­ing infor­ma­tion from—among oth­er programs—FTR#456, the broad­cast notes the pro­found liniks between the Saud­is, the Pak­ista­nis, and inter­na­tion­al fas­cism. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the fact that the Saud­is hired an Amer­i­can neo-Nazi as a Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ist! Note that the Saud­is and Pak­ista­nis are two of our so-called allies in the war on ter­ror.” Both coun­tries are impli­cat­ed in 9/11.

“ . . . Anoth­er favorite IHR speak­er and col­lab­o­ra­tor was Issah Nakleh of the World Mus­lim Con­gress (WMC). Based in Pak­istan, the WMC was ini­tial­ly head­ed by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who, like his friend H. Kei­th Thomp­son, stood by the Third Reich until his death in 1974. A few years lat­er, the WMC, then head­ed by Pak­istani Dr. Ina­mul­lah Khan, mailed Holo­caust-denial lit­er­a­ture to every mem­ber of the U.S. Con­gress and the British Par­lia­ment. The WMC’s offi­cial mouth­piece, Mus­lim World, car­ried the ads for The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion and Hen­ry Ford’s The Inter­na­tion­al Jew, Dr. Khan’s con­gress also pub­lished Freema­son­ry, a book warn­ing that Jews were using lodge mem­bers to extend secret con­trol over reli­gion and society—a para­noid the­o­ry that has long been pop­u­lar among Lib­er­ty Lob­by sup­port­ers and neo-Nazi groups around the world. Acknowl­edg­ing their polit­i­cal kin­ship, WMC sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Khan sent a let­ter to the Spot­light prais­ing its ‘superb in-depth analy­sis’ and stat­ing that the paper deserved ‘the thanks of all right-mind­ed peo­ple.’ Dr. Khan also served as an advi­sor to the Sau­di Ara­bi­an roy­al fam­i­ly, which lav­ished funds on the WMC. In addi­tion, the Sau­di Ara­bi­an gov­ern­ment retained the ser­vices of Amer­i­can neo-Nazi William Grim­stead as a Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ist. . . . Soon, the World Mus­lim Con­gress began work­ing close­ly with U.S. intel­li­gence and Pak­istani mil­i­tary offi­cials, who were covert­ly sup­port­ing the Afghan mujahideen in their fight against the Sovi­et-installed regime in Kab­ul. This effort was strong­ly endorsed by Dr. Khan, who served for many years as the Pak­istani rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Nazi-infest­ed World Anti-Com­mu­nist League, which played an impor­tant role in the Rea­gan administration’s ’secret war’ in the Gold­en Cres­cent.”

(The Beast Reawak­ens; Mar­tin A. Lee; Copy­right 1997 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; ISBN 0–316-51959–6; pp. 225–226.)

6. The Pak­istani role in 9/11 was obscured, in part, by intense lob­by­ing (some of it finan­cial) by the Pak­istani for­eign office—the equiv­a­lent of our State Depart­ment.

“The Pak­istan for­eign office had paid tens of thou­sands of dol­lars to lob­by­ists in the US to get anti-Pak­istan ref­er­ences dropped from the 9/11 inquiry com­mis­sion report, The Fri­day Times has claimed. The Pak­istani week­ly said its sto­ry is based on dis­clo­sures made by for­eign ser­vice offi­cials to the Pub­lic Accounts Com­mit­tee at a secret meet­ing in Islam­abad on Tues­day. It claimed that some of the com­mis­sion mem­bers were also bribed to pre­vent them from includ­ing dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion about Pak­istan. The mag­a­zine said the PAC grilled offi­cials in the pres­ence of for­eign sec­re­tary Riaz Moham­mad Khan and spe­cial sec­re­tary Sher Afghan on the mon­ey paid to lob­by­ists. ‘The dis­clo­sure sheds doubt on the integri­ty and hon­esty of the mem­bers of the 9/11 inquiry com­mis­sion and, above all, the authen­tic­i­ty of the infor­ma­tion in their final report,’ it said. The report quot­ed an offi­cer as say­ing that dra­mat­ic changes were made in the final draft of the inquiry com­mis­sion after the lob­by­ists got to work. The pan­el was formed to probe the Sep­tem­ber 11 ter­ror attack and make sug­ges­tions to fight ter­ror­ism. After the com­mis­sion tipped the lob­by­ists about the dam­ag­ing rev­e­la­tions on Pak­istan’s role in 9/11, they con­tact­ed the pan­el mem­bers and asked them to go soft on the coun­try. The Fri­day Times claimed that a lot of mon­ey was used to silence these mem­bers. Accord­ing to the report, the lob­by­ists also helped Pak­istan win the sym­pa­thy of 75 US Con­gress­men as part of its strat­e­gy to guard Islam­abad’s inter­ests in Wash­ing­ton. ‘US soft­ened towards Pak­istan only because of the efforts of the for­eign office,’ an offi­cial was quot­ed as say­ing in the report. The Pak­istan for­eign office defend­ed the deci­sion to hire the lob­by­ists, say­ing it was an estab­lished prac­tice in the US. An observ­er at the Islam­abad meet­ing said mon­ey could play an impor­tant role in buy­ing pow­er­ful peo­ple. The remark came in response to com­ments made by some US offi­cials after 9/11 that ‘Pak­ista­nis will sell their moth­ers for a dol­lar.’ Pak­istan had emerged as front-run­ner in the fight against ter­ror­ism unleashed by the US after the ter­ror strikes. Wash­ing­ton pumped in bil­lions of dol­lars to win Pres­i­dent Per­vez Mushar­raf’s sup­port in launch­ing a crack­down on al Qai­da net­work thriv­ing on the Pak­istan-Afghanistan bor­der.”

(“Pak­istan Week­ly Spills 9/11 Beans”; The Tele­graph [Cal­cut­ta, India]; 3/13/2006.)

7. Next, the pro­gram reviews some star­tling infor­ma­tion first pre­sent­ed in FTR#500. Sting man Randy Glass received infor­ma­tion from a Pak­istani weapons deal­er whom he believed to be work­ing for the Pak­istani ISI. The dealer—R.G. Abbas—gave dra­mat­ic warn­ing of the 9/11 attack.

“ . . . At a din­ner in June 1999 at the Tribeca Grill, Glass was win­ing and din­ing Rhu­lum G. Abbas, a Pak­istani arms deal­er and his friends. Glass and ATF agent Dick Stoltz were pos­ing as weapons bro­kers, as part of a Fed­er­al sting oper­a­tion. The Pak­istani had close con­nec­tions to the Pak­istani intel­li­gence elite, the ISI. In fact, Glass lat­er told Date­line he believed Abbas was an ISI agent.”

(A chap­ter of Sander Hicks’ forth­com­ing book The Big Wed­ding [e‑mailed to Mr. Emory and par­tial­ly reprint­ed here with the per­mis­sion of the author]; pp. 1–2.)

8. At the meet­ing, Abbas made a chill­ing dis­clo­sure: that the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers were “com­ing down.”

“The tony Tribeca Grill, owned by Robert DeNiro, was just north of the World Trade Cen­ter in 1999. Abbas boast­ed to his din­ner com­pan­ions that he wouldn’t have any prob­lem tak­ing out the entire down­town restau­rant. ‘Because it’s full of Amer­i­cans.’ Towards the end of the meal, he ges­tured out towards the Twin Tow­ers. ‘Those tow­ers are com­ing down.’ [Empha­sis added.]”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

9. Abbas’s fore­shad­ow­ing of the WTC attacks was omit­ted from NBC’s “Date­line” show. Only The Palm Beach Post car­ried the account:

“Although Glass told ‘Date­line’ this sto­ry, it wasn’t broad­cast. The only media to report it was The Palm Beach Post, on Octo­ber 17, 2002: ‘In August 2001, just before Glass start­ed to serve a sev­en-month sen­tence for a $6 mil­lion jew­el­ry scam, he said he reached out to Sen. Bob Gra­ham and U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler. He said he told staffers for both law­mak­ers that a Pak­istani oper­a­tive work­ing for the Tal­iban known as R.G. Abbas made three ref­er­ences to immi­nent plans to attack the World Trade Cen­ter dur­ing the probe, which end­ed in June 2001. At one meet­ing at New York’s Tribeca Grill caught on tape, Abbas point­ed to the World Trade Cen­ter and said, ‘Those tow­ers are com­ing down,’ Glass said.’”

(Idem.)

10. “ ‘Date­line’ used Glass in a fol­low-up piece five months lat­er, but still failed to men­tion the cru­cial details about Abbas. I was eager to get Randy Glass on INN World Report and go where ‘Date­line’ and Sy Hersh feared to tread. R.G. Abbas and the ISI had their paw prints all over 9/11. The Times of India and French News Agency AFP had report­ed that the head of ISI, Gen­er­al Mah­mood, wired $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, through Saed Sheikh, right before 9/11. But no U.S. media out­let ever report­ed this. It was com­mon knowl­edge that the ISI and the CIA have been in bed togeth­er since Afghanistan’s Mujahideen/Soviet civ­il war. (As we’ll see in a sub­se­quent chap­ter, Pak­istani intrigue and intel­li­gence cre­at­ed the Bank of Cred­it and Com­merce Inter­na­tion­al, which part­nered with the CIA to cre­ate a $20 bil­lion empire of cor­rup­tion and covert ops.)”

(Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

11. The State Depart­ment appar­ent­ly had fore­knowl­edge of the attack.

“Lat­er Glass stat­ed that the State Depart­ment con­tact said, ‘Mushar­raf just took over and our posi­tion is that they’re a nuclear pow­er and they’ve been flex­ing their nuclear mus­cles with India and we are try­ing to pre­vent a nuclear cat­a­stro­phe. And we know about the threat, the ter­ror­ist threat, from Al Qae­da and Bin Laden fly­ing air­planes into the World Trade Cen­ter. And Mushar­raf has guar­an­teed us—because it’s his ISI behind it—that he can stop it if we sup­port him pub­licly.’”

(Ibid.; p. 17.)

12. “Look Randy, we know you’re a straight guy so we’re going to give you some infor­ma­tion. You can­not do two things: You can­not go to the media under any cir­cum­stance. This is—we’re play­ing in a nuclear mine­field now. Sec­ond­ly, you can’t tell the agents that you’re work­ing with now because they’re cut out of the loop. They know noth­ing.’”

(Idem.)

13. Still more indi­ca­tions that ele­ments in the State Depart­ment had fair­ly pre­cise knowl­edge about the plan to crash planes into the WTC:

“ . . . GLASS: When I called the State Depart­ment, I said to them, ‘Lis­ten, I already know about the World Trade Cen­ter.’ So they assumed that I knew more than I did. And I didn’t. I didn’t know any­thing about air­planes. . . .’ HICKS: So you bluffed and you kind of pre­tend­ed you knew more than you did and then what did they tell you? GLASS: But I didn’t even have to do that. I just said what I knew. I said ‘Look. Lis­ten, I know the World Trade Cen­ter is going to be attacked.’ And then this guy said to me ‘Randy lis­ten, you can­not men­tion any of these things, espe­cial­ly air­planes being used to fly into the World Trade Cen­ter.’ And when he said that I almost fell off of my fuck­ing chair. I mean, you have no idea. I thought I was gonna wear the tape out.”

(Ibid.; p. 18.)

14. Next, the pro­gram sets forth infor­ma­tion that Dubai Ports World may not sur­ren­der con­trol of its con­tro­ver­sial, pro­posed takeover of U.S. port facil­i­ties. The com­pa­ny may well retain its con­trol over its Mia­mi port oper­a­tions! Will some “inter­est­ing cargoes”—such as WMD’s—come in through Mia­mi? Per­haps in a con­trolled, pro­tect­ed, sea-borne drug ship­ment such as the air­borne deliv­er­ies that came in through Venice Cal­i­for­nia? Again, the rela­tion­ship between Islamism, cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ism, ter­ror­ism and orga­nized crime is front and cen­ter. (For more about Dubai’s links to the milieu of 9/11, see FTR 543.)

“The Dubai-owned com­pa­ny that promised to sur­ren­der its U.S. port oper­a­tions has no imme­di­ate plans to sell its U.S. sub­sidiary’s inter­ests at Miami’s sea­port, a senior exec­u­tive wrote Mon­day in a pri­vate e‑mail to busi­ness asso­ciates. Even if DP World were to sell its Mia­mi oper­a­tions to quell the con­gres­sion­al furor over an Arab-owned com­pa­ny man­ag­ing major U.S. ports, ‘that would prob­a­bly take a while,’ wrote Robert Scav­one, a vice pres­i­dent for DP World’s U.S. sub­sidiary. The e‑mail, obtained by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, added to ques­tions raised since DP World’s announce­ment last week that it will divest U.S. port oper­a­tions it acquired when it bought Lon­don-based Penin­su­lar and Ori­en­tal Steam Nav­i­ga­tion Co. DP World has said those oper­a­tions are worth rough­ly $700 mil­lion. The takeover touched off a polit­i­cal uproar over the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s ear­li­er approval of the deal with­out an inten­sive 45-day secu­ri­ty inves­ti­ga­tion. The com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly sought to qui­et the dis­pute by sub­mit­ting vol­un­tar­i­ly to such an inves­ti­ga­tion. Last week, DP World backed away from the deal fur­ther. It pledged to ‘trans­fer ful­ly’ its U.S. oper­a­tions to an unspec­i­fied Amer­i­can com­pa­ny and said DP World will not suf­fer eco­nom­ic loss. The com­pa­ny has stead­fast­ly declined to clar­i­fy its state­ment or the tim­ing of any pos­si­ble sale, and lead­ing con­gres­sion­al crit­ics have threat­ened to inter­vene if DP World’s plans fall short of a full divesti­ture of its U.S. oper­a­tions. Scav­one told AP in an inter­view that his e‑mail was intend­ed to reas­sure offi­cials at the Port of Mia­mi Ter­mi­nal Oper­at­ing Co. — which man­ages oper­a­tions there and is half-owned by a DP World sub­sidiary- that uncer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the Dubai ports deal would not affect its work in Mia­mi.”

(“DP World: No Plan to Sell Mia­mi Port Ops” by Ted Bridis [Asso­ci­at­ed Press]; Hous­ton Chron­i­cle; March 13, 2006.)

15. Dubai Ports World may be retain­ing a 49% stake in the ports oper­a­tion after all!!

“Dubai’s DP World is con­sid­er­ing a vari­ety of options for the US busi­ness of P&O, includ­ing retain­ing a 49 per cent stake in a new US-based com­pa­ny run­ning the oper­a­tions. Accord­ing to some­one involved in the deal, DP World will con­sid­er retain­ing a stake — and how large it might be — once the group has sift­ed through a list of expres­sions of inter­est in the assets, which include the rights to oper­ate five key con­tain­er ter­mi­nals. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny’s main focus now is thought to be co-oper­a­tion with the US Trea­sury to ensure that the deal ful­fils two lit­tle- noticed con­di­tions of the dis­pos­al: that DP World has time to make an order­ly sale and that it does not suf­fer eco­nom­ic loss. Dis­cus­sions are thought to be under way with the Trea­sury to decide how any loss will be cal­cu­lat­ed and how DP World can be reim­bursed. ‘My sense is that we are now try­ing to work out the details with the Trea­sury and oth­er gov­ern­ment depart­ments as to how we can do this in a con­trolled fash­ion which does­n’t prej­u­dice the com­pa­ny,’ some­one famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion said. DP World had drawn up a list of at least 15 poten­tial buy­ers, the per­son said. It is thought to include the pri­vate equi­ty com­pa­nies Black­stone and Car­lyle Group, New York’s Maher Ter­mi­nals and even Eller & Co, the Mia­mi-based con­tain­er ter­mi­nal oper­a­tor, which has a joint ven­ture agree­ment with P&O to run the Mia­mi Con­tain­er Ter­mi­nal. Eller, which launched a legal action in the UK and US to try to pre­vent P&O’s sale to DP World, is wide­ly regard­ed as too small to take on a busi­ness as large as P&O’s US con­cerns. The per­son involved in the deal said DP World need­ed to decide which expres­sions of inter­est were seri­ous and which came from ‘bot­tom- fish­ers’. Neil David­son, a con­tain­er ports ana­lyst for Drewry Ship­ping Con­sul­tants, said the assets were desir­able even though they were a rel­a­tive­ly small part of the P&O port­fo­lio and less prof­itable.”

(“Dubai May Retain Stake in US Assets” by Robert Wright; Finan­cial Times; 3/12/2006.)

16. High­light­ing the fun­da­men­tal con­flict between the dic­tates of glob­al­iza­tion and those of U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty, Arab nations are express­ing dis­plea­sure with the Dubai Ports World sit­u­a­tion, wrong­ly (though pre­dictably) attribut­ing Amer­i­can con­cern to “anti-Arab big­otry.” This is tan­ta­mount to the Third Reich attribut­ing resis­tance to their pro­gram of mil­i­tary con­quest to “anti-Ger­man bias.” Again, for more infor­ma­tion about the fun­da­men­tal con­flict between glob­al­iza­tion and U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty, see FTR#543. “The Dubai Ports World deba­cle could cause last­ing dam­age to Arab busi­ness ties with the US despite the emi­rate’s deci­sion to give up con­trol of the five US ports, accord­ing to ana­lysts and busi­ness­men in the Mid­dle East. Offi­cials in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, the fed­er­a­tion that includes Dubai, said yes­ter­day that the State- owned com­pa­ny’s retreat in the face of US con­gres­sion­al oppo­si­tion was designed to pro­tect the UAE’s close rela­tion­ship with the US. The deci­sion was typ­i­cal of a pro-west­ern Mid­dle East­ern state that has tra­di­tion­al­ly avoid­ed polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy.

‘We did not want the ports issue to sour the ties between the UAE and the US in any way,’ said a UAE offi­cial yes­ter­day, The UAE also played down the deci­sion to post­pone free-trade talks set for next week. A spokes­woman for the US trade rep­re­sen­ta­tive office said both sides need­ed addi­tion­al time to pre­pare for the last round of nego­ti­a­tions. But that an invest­ment by Dubai — the city-state seen in the region as an eco­nom­ic mod­el — should face such a pop­ulist Amer­i­can back­lash and cause a polit­i­cal storm in Wash­ing­ton has dis­mayed many Arab busi­ness­men. At a time of eco­nom­ic boom in the region, fuelled by high oil prices, many busi­ness­men are sug­gest­ing they would think twice before invest­ing in the US in future. A top flight busi­ness­man in the trans­port busi­ness, and with links to the US, por­trayed the out­come of the con­tro­ver­sy as a huge missed oppor­tu­ni­ty. He said the DP World deal would have giv­en US Cus­toms and Port Author­i­ties unpar­al­lelled insight and resources around the world. ‘If US cus­toms want­ed to make an inter­ven­tion on a sus­pect­ed con­tain­er they would have been able to do so as part of a seam­less sup­ply-chain ser­vice in the coun­try of their choice. This is already hap­pen­ing today. How­ev­er, the tie-up would only have cement­ed this rela­tion­ship fur­ther and dra­mat­i­cal­ly con­tributed to strength­en­ing secu­ri­ty,’ he said. ‘While Arab investors are still unsure of the details of DP World’s climb­down, there is broad sen­ti­ment that Wash­ing­ton too has lost. Abdul­haleq Abdul­lah, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Dubai Uni­ver­si­ty, said: ‘This does not send a good mes­sage to the Arab world in gen­er­al. As much as it is a loss for Dubai busi­ness, it is s big­ger polit­i­cal and strate­gic loss to Wash­ing­ton. They invoked pol­i­tics in a busi­ness trans­ac­tion. This is not what peo­ple in the out­side world expect from cham­pi­ons of glob­al­iza­tion.’”

(“Intru­sion of Pol­i­tics into Busi­ness Sours Arab Trade Ties” by Roula Kha­laf and William Wal­lis; Finan­cial Times; 3/11–12/2006.)

17. Arab cen­tral banks—gorged with petro­le­um wealth—have expressed their anger by threat­en­ing to move their assets into Euros. With the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and its GOP allies—viewed by Mr. Emory as a front for the Under­ground Reich—having bank­rupt­ed the U.S., this threat by the Arabs should not be tak­en light­ly.

“Mid­dle East­ern anger over the deci­sion by the US to block a Dubai com­pa­ny from buy­ing five of its ports hit the dol­lar yes­ter­day as a num­ber of cen­tral banks said they were con­sid­er­ing switch­ing reserves into euros. The Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, which includes Dubai, said it was look­ing to move one-tenth of its dol­lar reserves into euros. while the gov­er­nor of the Sau­di Ara­bi­an cen­tral bank con­demned the US move as ‘dis­crim­i­na­tion.’”

(“Arab Cen­tral Banks Move Assets out of Dol­lar” by Philip Thorn­ton; The Inde­pen­dent; 3/14/ 2006.)

18. The pro­gram con­cludes with review of two arti­cles first pre­sent­ed in FTR #544. Polit­i­cal events all over the world may be pro­found­ly affect­ed by the devel­op­ment of I.G. Farben’s hydro­gena­tion process, a devel­op­ment long pre­dict­ed by Mr. Emory.

“A nov­el way to cre­ate an ultra-clean fuel for cars that uses nat­ur­al gas instead of oil is on the verge of rapid growth, ana­lysts say, dri­ven by soar­ing oil prices and a thirst for alter­na­tive fuels. Oil com­pa­nies are invest­ing bil­lions in the nascent tech­nol­o­gy, called ‘gas-to-liq­uids’ or GTL, which can be used to pro­duce qual­i­ty diesel and a range of oth­er prod­ucts nor­mal­ly derived from crude. The process was devel­oped in Nazi Ger­many and apartheid South Africa, but in a few weeks will be test­ed on a com­mer­cial scale for the first time when the largest plant so far opens in Qatar. [Empha­sis added.] The Oryx GTL plant, a joint ven­ture between South Africa’s Sasol and Qatar Petro­le­um, is being watched close­ly by com­peti­tors and investors look­ing for the next big thing in ener­gy. . . . Car­mak­ers are also inter­est­ed. Roy­al Dutch Shell is work­ing with Toy­ota, Volk­swa­gen and Daim­ler­Chrysler to cre­ate vehi­cles that run on pure GTL diesel, which com­bines high pow­er with extreme­ly low emis­sions. . . . Shell and Exxon­Mo­bil plan to build much larg­er GTL plants in Qatar. . . . Nige­ria has a plant under con­struc­tion, built by Sasol and Chevron. BP plans to build a plant in Colom­bia. . . .”

(“Oil Giants Look to Gas Alter­na­tive” by Thomas Catan; Finan­cial Times; 3/6/2006; p. 15.)

19. A pre­vi­ous Finan­cial Times arti­cle dis­cussed the gen­e­sis of the GTL process:

“To be sure, GTL has been around for a while. The basic process was invent­ed in the 1920’s and then devel­oped by Nazi Ger­many and apartheid South Africa—both of which had prob­lems get­ting enough petrol for their vehi­cles. Ini­tial­ly, it was used to turn coal into a liq­uid. [Empha­sis added.] Today, it is used to turn nat­ur­al gas into a clean burn­ing fuel for use in diesel engines, naptha, lubri­cants and a range of oth­er prod­ucts. . . . .”

(“Ambi­tion to Become the World Cap­i­tal of Nov­el Technology—Gas-to-Liquid” by Thomas Catan; Finan­cial Times; 5/19/2005.)

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