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Intro­duc­tion: Observ­ing the fifth anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks; this pro­gram high­lights the hero­ic work of Rita Katz, a pri­vate cit­i­zen whose ground-break­ing research on the ter­ror­ist-fund­ing appa­ra­tus was first sub­vert­ed, and then ignored. The tar­gets of Katz’s research are con­nect­ed to both the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ter­ror­ist milieu of al-Qae­da, Hamas and Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad and to the upper ech­e­lons of the Repub­li­can Par­ty and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the inves­ti­ga­tion of Ms. Katz, John Lof­tus and the agents of Oper­a­tion Green Quest was active­ly neu­tral­ized by ele­ments of the FBI and CIA. Among the most com­plex events in recent his­to­ry, the 9/11 attacks have—understandably—been con­cep­tu­al­ized as a provo­ca­tion, designed to jus­ti­fy “U.S. impe­ri­al­ism” and the atten­u­a­tion of demo­c­ra­t­ic free­doms in this coun­try. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the attacks are anal­o­gous to the sub­ver­sion of France in World War II. The pri­ma­ry rea­son for the rapid capit­u­la­tion of the French to the Ger­man invaders was the fact that the French pow­er elite—who had strong busi­ness and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions with their Ger­man counterparts—welcomed the Ger­man inva­sion as a vehi­cle for elim­i­nat­ing French democ­ra­cy and insti­tut­ing fas­cism in France. The French pow­er elite ben­e­fit­ed from their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Third Reich’s wartime econ­o­my. It is Mr. Emory’s con­tention that the GOP pow­er elite—with strong eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions with the Under­ground Reich and the Sau­di and Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Islam­ic fas­cists behind the 9/11 attacks—helped facil­i­tate the attacks for sim­i­lar pur­pos­es. Far from expand­ing Amer­i­can pow­er, the attacks of 9/11 sig­naled the twi­light of the Unit­ed States, and the events that have fol­lowed will (bar­ring a sea-change in the tide of events) lead to this country’s doom. To flesh out their under­stand­ing of the sub­ver­sion of France pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II, lis­ten­ers should exam­ine FTR#’s 372, 412 and 441. In addi­tion, they should read Armies of Spies by Joseph Golomb and Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot. Both books are avail­able for free down­load.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Dis­cus­sion of the pro­found con­nec­tions between the tar­gets of Oper­a­tion Green Quest and Ptech—the com­pa­ny that devel­oped the threat assess­ment soft­ware for the Air Force, the FAA and the Depart­ment of Ener­gy; the con­fu­sion that reigned in U.S. air defense net­works on 9/11; Oper­a­tion Green Quest chief Michael Chertoff’s rela­tion­ship with alleged al-Qae­da financier Dr. Magdy el-Amir; the inves­ti­ga­tion of Sami al-Ari­an and how it led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002; the harass­ment and sur­veil­lance of Rita Katz and her Green Quest asso­ciates by first the FBI and then the CIA.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the response of air defense units to the 9/11 attacks, the pro­gram notes the evi­dent con­fu­sion that the mil­i­tary expe­ri­enced on that day. Mr. Emory notes that the threat assess­ment soft­ware archi­tec­ture for the Air Force, FAA and Norad was devel­oped by a com­pa­ny called Ptech. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the anom­alous behav­ior of the air defense units on 9/11 may very well have result­ed from the fact that the ele­ments that launched the 9/11 attacks were also devel­op­ing the soft­ware essen­tial to this country’s air defense net­works. Ptech has been cap­i­tal­ized to an enor­mous extent by indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that have been focal points of Oper­a­tion Green Quest—the attempt at inter­dict­ing ter­ror­ist mon­ey flows. As Mr. Emory notes, the milieu of Ptech is the milieu of Oper­a­tion Green Quest.

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is Yaqub Mirza, a direc­tor of Ptech (described as being very close to the FBI) and the unin­dict­ed indi­vid­ual who set up the fronts raid­ed in the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. It should be not­ed that Ptech has gone un-interdicted—and it devel­ops the threat assess­ment soft­ware for the Depart­ment of Ener­gy, which over­sees the country’s nuclear pow­er plants! As dis­cussed in FTR#’s 495, 500 Oper­a­tion Green Quest was head­ed by Michael Chertoff, who had rep­re­sent­ed Dr. Magdy el-Amir, a New Jer­sey-based physi­cian, who appears to have chan­neled prof­its from his med­ical prac­tice to al-Qae­da. Per­haps it should not be all that sur­pris­ing to view the sub­ver­sion of Green Quest in light of Chertoff’s stew­ard­ship of the task force. “New­ly dis­closed tapes offer evi­dence of the wide­spread con­fu­sion with­in the mil­i­tary as the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror­ist attacks were being car­ried out, fur­ther under­min­ing claims by the Pen­ta­gon that it moved quick­ly to try to inter­cept and shoot down one or more of the hijacked jets. When matched with the time­line of the attacks, the tapes make clear that infor­ma­tion about the hijack­ings was slow to reach the mil­i­tary on Sept. 11 and that much of the infor­ma­tion that did reach Air Force com­man­ders was faulty. The tapes were pro­vid­ed under sub­poe­na to the inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion that inves­ti­gat­ed the Sept. 11 attacks, and parts of them had pre­vi­ous­ly been made pub­lic by that com­mis­sion.” (“New Tapes Dis­close Con­fu­sion With­in the Mil­i­tary on Sept. 11” by Philip Shenon; New York Times; 8/3/2006; p. A16.)

2. “But the full col­lec­tion of near­ly 30 hours of tapes from the North Amer­i­can Aero­space Defense Com­mand, or Norad, were released by the Pen­ta­gon last year to Michael Bron­ner, a pro­duc­er on the recent film ‘Unit­ed 93,’ who described them in detail in an arti­cle post­ed this week on the Web site of Van­i­ty Fair mag­a­zine (www.vanityfair.com). The web site site includes links to excerpts from the actu­al tapes. The tapes demon­strate that for most of the morn­ing of Sept. 11, the air­space over New York and Wash­ing­ton was essen­tial­ly unde­fend­ed, and that jet fight­ers scram­bled to inter­cept the hijacked planes were involved in a fruit­less chase for planes that had already crashed.” (Idem.)

3. “Although much of the con­ver­sa­tion in the tapes is heavy with mil­i­tary jar­gon, it makes clear the ter­ror of the morn­ing, with mil­i­tary air con­trollers try­ing to mon­i­tor the where­abouts of hijacked planes bear­ing down on low­er Man­hat­tan and Wash­ing­ton. ‘I got an air­craft six miles east of the White House!’ one mil­i­tary com­man­der is quot­ed as bark­ing to a col­league. . . .” (Idem.)

4. “ . . . The Sept. 11 com­mis­sion sub­poe­naed the tapes and oth­er evi­dence after the panel’s inves­ti­ga­tors deter­mined that mate­r­i­al had been improp­er­ly with­held by Norad, which is respon­si­ble for air defense. Mem­bers of the com­mis­sion said the tapes demon­strat­ed that the Pentagon’s ini­tial account of its actions on Sept. 11 was wrong and that some mil­i­tary offices might have inten­tion­al­ly pro­vid­ed false state­ments to the com­mis­sion. . . .” (Idem.)

5. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the 9/11 attacks are anal­o­gous to the Ger­man inva­sion of France in World War II. The pri­ma­ry rea­son for the rapid capit­u­la­tion of the French to the Ger­man invaders was the fact that the French pow­er elite—who had strong busi­ness and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions with their Ger­man counterparts—welcomed the Ger­man inva­sion as a vehi­cle for elim­i­nat­ing French democ­ra­cy and insti­tut­ing fas­cism in France. The French pow­er elite ben­e­fit­ed from their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Third Reich’s wartime econ­o­my. It is Mr. Emory’s con­tention that the GOP pow­er elite—with strong eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions with the Under­ground Reich and the Sau­di and Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Islam­ic fas­cists behind the 9/11 attacks—helped facil­i­tate the attacks for sim­i­lar pur­pos­es. In addi­tion to sub­vert­ing what is left of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has dec­i­mat­ed the U.S. eco­nom­ic land­scape and enriched their busi­ness cronies and them­selves. Mr. Emory should not be mis­un­der­stood as deny­ing that con­fu­sion and incom­pe­tence played a role in the fail­ure of the U.S. to stop the attacks. Nev­er­the­less, the Fifth Column—an essen­tial ele­ment of which is the milieu of Ptech and the tar­gets of Green Quest—played a deci­sive role in the events of 9/11/2001. An excel­lent view of the Fifth Col­umn at work can be achieved by study­ing the sto­ry of Rita Katz, an Iraqi-born Jew. Flu­ent in Ara­bic, Ms. Katz infil­trat­ed the Islamist milieu that was tar­get­ed by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. It was Ms. Katz’s hero­ic research (along with the efforts of the equal­ly hero­ic John Lof­tus) that led to the Green Quest raids. The milieu of Ptech and the tar­gets of Oper­a­tion Green Quest have pro­found con­nec­tions to some of the most pow­er­ful peo­ple and insti­tu­tions in the GOP and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly Grover Norquist and Karl Rove. As will be seen below, after the raids of 3/20/2002, Rita Katz and the oth­er peo­ple involved in Oper­a­tion Green Quest were harassed, fol­lowed and inves­ti­gat­ed by both the FBI and the CIA!! With this sup­pres­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest and the harass­ment of the inves­ti­ga­tors, we are wit­ness­ing the tri­umph of trea­son. Here is Rita’s sto­ry: “ . . . I was expect­ing the usu­al team of two, three inves­ti­ga­tors, tops. To my sur­prise, Mark arrived with sev­en peo­ple in tow, all metic­u­lous­ly dressed in suits. There were Green Quest agents, IRS agents, and agents from Cus­toms’ Ster­ling, Vir­ginia, office, which had the juris­dic­tion over Hern­don and 555 Grove Street. Dave Kane, an agent from the Ster­ling office, a tall, thin man with a kind expres­sion, was among the group. He’d been with Cus­toms for three years, and like Mark, he too had had no expe­ri­ence with coun­tert­er­ror­ism until Green Quest, but he would lat­er become piv­otal in this inves­ti­ga­tion. I asked Jerome to join us, we arranged anoth­er desk to accom­mo­date the large group, and I began brief­ing them on 555.” (Ter­ror­ist Hunter by “Anony­mous” [Rita Katz]; CCC [imprint of Harp­er Collins]; Copy­right 2003 by Harp­er Collins [HC]; ISBN 0–06-052819–2; p. 313.)

6. Rita began to brief the agents on the milieu raid­ed on 3/20/2002—555 Grove Street, the SAAR net­work and numer­ous indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that over­lapped both of them. “ . . . I was impressed. Send­ing eight peo­ple to meet me meant that they were seri­ous. In 1999, I was approached by two agents of the FBI Vir­ginia office, who asked for infor­ma­tion on [Jamal] Barz­in­ji and oth­er SAAR direc­tors. We met. I worked with them for a few months. The FBI agents inves­ti­gat­ed and even inter­viewed some of the 555 peo­ple in the pres­ence of their lawyers. Sim­i­lar­ly to so many oth­ers, this FBI inves­ti­ga­tion on 555 slow­ly fad­ed away. To date, noth­ing hap­pened with it. Maybe this time, I thought, with Green Quest, it would be dif­fer­ent. I was high­ly moti­vat­ed to give them the SAAR story—and to per­suade them that it was very impor­tant.” (Idem.)

7. Flesh­ing out some of the key names in this nar­ra­tive, Tariq Ham­di was part of the SAAR milieu and an indi­vid­ual who deliv­ered a bat­tery to Osama bin Laden for use in his satel­lite phone. Sami al-Ari­an is a Pales­tin­ian-born Islam­o­fas­cist who is the dri­ving force behind Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad. Hailed as a hero by the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor, al-Ari­an is a stone Nazi killer. It was John Lof­tus’ inves­ti­ga­tion into Sami al-Ari­an that helped to force the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids, along with Rita Katz’s hero­ic research. (For more about al-Ari­an, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#538.) “We sat for six hours, I explained that SAAR was a net­work of think tanks, char­i­ties, non­prof­it and for-prof­it com­pa­nies, some hun­dred in all, based at 555 Grove Street. I explained who Sulaiman and Saleh al-Rajhi were. I told the agents how I’d first encoun­tered 555 Grove when I looked into Sami al-Ari­an and PIJ and when I was study­ing Hamas front groups. With HLF, the al-Aqsa Edu­ca­tion­al Fund, WISE, ICP, and many oth­er Islam­ic char­i­ties linked to ter­ror­ism, I told them, there was always some con­nec­tion to SAAR. My brief­ing, to this point, as I unwrapped the sto­ry in a chrono­log­i­cal order, was focused on the ties between SAAR and the Pales­tin­ian orga­ni­za­tions Hamas and PIJ. Inter­est­ing by itself, but Green Quest’s top pri­or­i­ty, name­ly al-Qae­da. So I intro­duced the Tariq Ham­di sto­ry to them and elu­ci­dat­ed his ties with Sami al-Ari­an, with IIIT, and with Bin Laden and his satel­lite phone. This lat­ter sto­ry aston­ished them. Then I pulled out my copies of Wadih al-Hage’s tele­phone books. None of the agents knew who al-Hage was! So I explained to them who he was and what he did. Then I showed them Saleh al-Rajhi’s name and num­bers in both of al-Hage’s books. The agents were speech­less as I con­tin­ued to brief them.” (Ibid.; p. 314.)

8. “The task force went to Flori­da, as I’d sug­gest­ed, and Mark called as soon as they’d returned. I knew bet­ter than to ask him what they’d got­ten there; I’d been work­ing with the gov­ern­ment for years, and the rules were clear to me. I giveth, it taketh away. End of sto­ry. ‘Remem­ber you told me about a tape where Sami is intro­duced as PIJ’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive and where he col­lects mon­ey for PIJ?’ Mark said. ‘Can you make a copy of that tape for me?’ Nat­u­ral­ly, I told him I would. But why would he need the tape from me? They’d just been in Tam­pa, where this and many oth­er tapes are kept! I guess they didn’t have time to copy all the mate­r­i­al, I thought. A few days lat­er, Mark called and asked me for copies of FBI and INS affi­davits I’d told him about. That was even more bizarre, but I faxed them to him. Lat­er that day, Dave Kane called me. ‘You said you had tran­scripts of Barz­in­ji and al-Alwani in ICP con­fer­ences,’ he said. ‘Yes?’ ‘Could I get them from you?’ ‘Sure.’ ‘Also, you men­tioned hav­ing copies of checks from IIIt to Sami. Could you fax me those?’” (Ibid.; p. 315.)

9. “ ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘I’d be more than hap­py to help you guys. But the copies I have of the checks are of poor qual­i­ty and are bare­ly leg­i­ble. The FBI in Tam­pa must have much clear­er copies, and prob­a­bly many more checks than I do. Why don’t you call them and ask them to fax you their copies of the checks?’ ‘I guess you’re right.’ There was some­thing fun­ny in his voice. ‘Could you please make copies of those checks, as best you can, and FedEx them to me any­way?’ These requests con­tin­ued for some time, and I was grad­u­al­ly able to fig­ure out what had hap­pened in Flori­da. I knew the play­ers; I knew the FBI team in Tam­pa well. These were the peo­ple who’d put me under inves­ti­ga­tion. These were the peo­ple who’d inves­ti­gat­ed John Can­field and kicked him off Sami’s inves­ti­ga­tion. They’d pro­vid­ed next to no help to Loraine, the INS immi­gra­tion attor­ney who’d come to me for help on her inves­ti­ga­tion after she’d come up dry with the FBI in Tam­pa. I didn’t expect much of that team of peo­ple. But I couldn’t have dreamed how bad it would be for Green Quest.” (Ibid.; pp. 315–316.)

10. “The Green Quest agents did meet with Can­field, who told them exact­ly what they should look for at the FBI facil­i­ties and where they’d be able to find it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, he didn’t have any doc­u­ments in his possession—he’d had to sur­ren­der every­thing to the FBI when he was dis­missed from the case. But he’d con­tin­ued to play ball with the FBI when­ev­er they called him for infor­ma­tion and so he took the Green Quest team to the FBI head­quar­ters in Tam­pa and intro­duced them to the investigation’s new head, Jer­ry. The Green Quest agents explained to Jer­ry what they were doing and asked him for the per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion on SAAR and their ties to Sami. They asked him for the mate­r­i­al obtained in the raids on Sami’s ICP and WISE. They were told that Sami was under FBI inves­ti­ga­tion. The mate­r­i­al the FBI had on Sami was there­fore con­fi­den­tial. Green Quest couldn’t get any of it. Remem­ber that we are talk­ing months after 9–11.” (Ibid.; p. 316.)

11. Note the FBI’s reluc­tance to help the Green Quest agents. As will be seen below, that reluc­tance to help blos­somed into open hos­til­i­ty. Along with ele­ments of the CIA, the FBI active­ly harassed and sur­veiled Rita Katz and oth­er Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tors. “The Green Quest agents tried to explain that there was no com­pe­ti­tion between them and the Tam­pa task force. They only want­ed the infor­ma­tion relat­ing to their inves­ti­ga­tion, not gen­er­al infor­ma­tion on Sami. So Jer­ry asked them to sub­mit a detailed, writ­ten report on Green Quest’s inves­ti­ga­tion, explain­ing exact­ly which mate­r­i­al they need­ed from the FBI and why they need­ed it. That activ­i­ty took up an entire after­noon of their vis­it in Tam­pa. That was enough to get Mar­cy Futer­man, the head of Green Quest, on the phone to her supe­ri­or in Cus­toms. Futer­man is a soft-spo­ken, moth­er­ly boss, but she’s pro­tec­tive of her team. She real­ized that with­out some noise, her agents might come back emp­ty-hand­ed. Her boss in Cus­toms called the FBI head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and asked for an autho­riza­tion for Green Quest to exam­ine the mate­r­i­al in Tam­pa. The FBI head­quar­ters autho­rized the request, called the Tam­pa office, and instruct­ed them to coop­er­ate with Green Quest.” (Idem.)

12. “Mark and his com­pan­ions sub­mit­ted their report to Jer­ry and were final­ly allowed to enter the evi­dence rooms. There were giv­en a few box­es, much like the sto­ry with Loraine, and told that these were the only box­es that con­tained rel­e­vant mate­r­i­al for their inves­ti­ga­tion. But this wasn’t all. They were instruct­ed only to look at the mate­r­i­al. They were not allowed to copy, scan, pho­to­copy, or record any­thing. The only thing they were allowed to do was jot down in their note­books what they saw. Fur­ther­more, they were super­vised by an FBI agent who watched them at all times to make sure they didn’t copy or take any­thing from the boxes—and to lis­ten to their con­ver­sa­tion. When they began dis­cussing doc­u­ments they thought were valu­able, as soon as they showed enthu­si­asm about what they found, they were told by their FBI min­der that it was time to take a break; it was time for lunch. The FBI seemed pet­ri­fied that Green Quest would find in the mate­r­i­al some­thing that the Bureau had over­looked, and every effort was made to pre­vent that from hap­pen­ing. The trip was a fail­ure in many ways, but Green Quest didn’t return to Wash­ing­ton com­plete­ly emp­ty-hand­ed. They came back with the superb reports that John had giv­en them. What they lacked was evi­dence, the mate­r­i­al that the FBI had yet wouldn’t let them have. This was the rea­son that mark and Dave Kane kept call­ing me to ask for copies of doc­u­ments and tapes.” (Ibid.; p. 317.)

13. “Green Quest is a super­vis­ing and coor­di­nat­ing task force that belongs to Cus­toms. It includes FBI agents and IRS agents, and it works in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Office of For­eign Assets Con­trol, OFAC, which also reports to Cus­toms. Green Quest super­vis­es local offices that lead inves­ti­ga­tions in their juris­dic­tions, and some­times, as in the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion, it is involved direct­ly. OFAC assist­ed Green Quest. So did the FBI guys I was in con­tact with a cou­ple of years before with regards to SAAR. Unlike their coun­ter­parts in Tam­pa, these FBI agents were coop­er­a­tive and help­ful, at least for a while. They for­ward­ed Green Quest many doc­u­ments they had. They, like Green Quest, seemed seri­ous to me in the good num­ber of months we worked togeth­er on the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion; I nev­er real­ly under­stood why their inves­ti­ga­tion didn’t take off.” (Ibid.; pp. 317–318.)

14. “For all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es, Mark and Dave were in charge of the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion. They were the ones who worked direct­ly with me. Mark rep­re­sent­ed Green Quest, and Dave rep­re­sent­ed the Cus­toms office in Ster­ling. They’d get the mate­r­i­al from me, write a report, and show it to a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, who’d weigh in on whether enough was there to mer­it the going-for­ward inves­ti­ga­tion of 555. Mark and Dave were under tremen­dous pres­sure from their supe­ri­ors. Every­one want­ed to move as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. So Mark and Dave on the government’s side, and Sam, Jerome, and I in the office, worked very hard on 555. Mark and Dave prac­ti­cal­ly worked day and night. I devot­ed most of my time to the inves­ti­ga­tion and their con­stant ques­tions, although dur­ing this time I was doing a mil­lion and one oth­er things as well. I con­duct­ed sev­er­al inves­ti­ga­tions of my own; I col­lab­o­rat­ed with fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors and FBI, Cus­toms, and INS agents from coast to coast. I con­tin­ued to attend Mus­lim con­fer­ences and ral­lies. I even found time to search for clues in trash again.” (Ibid.; p. 318.)

15. “ ‘You men­tioned Tariq Ham­di,’ Mark said to me one day. ‘How can you prove that he was in fact the one who deliv­ered the phone to Bin Laden?’ I told him it was in the tran­scripts of the embassy bomb­ing tri­al. I pulled out the rel­e­vant pages and with­in half an hour faxed them over to him. He called again. ‘In the notes I took while you briefed us,’ he said, ‘I wrote that Ham­di was also tied to Sami. We couldn’t find any men­tion of Hamdi’s name in the doc­u­ments we were allowed to see in Tam­pa.’ I e‑mailed him a pic­ture from the pub­li­ca­tion of the uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da, the USF Inter­na­tion­al Affairs Quar­ter­ly, show­ing Sami and Ham­di sit­ting with Has­san Tura­bi, the Sudanese leader who host­ed Bin Laden. Ham­di is iden­ti­fied there as a WISE asso­ciate. More­over, WISE, accord­ing to research data­bas­es, had a P.O. box that was reg­is­tered to Ham­di. I faxed Mark these doc­u­ments.” (Idem.)

16. The IIIT is the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute of Islam­ic Thought, an Islam­ic think tank that is also involved in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty. “A few min­utes lat­er he called again. ‘So how do you know Ham­di worked for IIIT?’ I told him that Tariq Ham­di was the pub­lish­er of IIIT’s quar­ter­ly pub­li­ca­tion, Islamiy­at al-Ma’rofaj (Islamiza­tion of Knowl­edge). I found the file and faxed mark the page from the pub­li­ca­tion with Hamdi’s name. He called again. ‘Okay, but how do you know he still works for them?’ Good ques­tion. I didn’t know. But this was a fine time to find out. So I called IIIT—after hours, because I hoped I could get the infor­ma­tion with­out speak­ing to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive. The voice mail guid­ed me through a list of choic­es. I chose the option of con­tact­ing the employ­ees of IIIT. I lis­tened to the record­ing, and sure enough, Ham­di had a voice mail box in the sys­tem. He was still work­ing for IIIT. I lis­tened to the record­ing, and sure enough, Ham­di had a voice mail box in the sys­tem. He was still work­ing for IIIT, then. Long after it was com­mon knowl­edge that Ham­di worked for Bin Laden, IIIT still had him on the pay­roll.” (Ibid.; p. 319.)

17. “The next day Mark called and asked, ‘How can you tell that Ham­di was indeed involved in any­thing else linked to al-Qae­da besides that sto­ry with the satel­lite phone? Maybe this was a one­time gig where he didn’t real­ly know what he was doing?’ This too was a legit­i­mate ques­tion, albeit a dif­fi­cult one to answer. After all, the gov­ern­ment didn’t pur­sue any charges against Ham­di. He lives hap­pi­ly ever after, and his wife, Wafa Hozien, teach­es in the Bethesda—Chevy Chase High School near Wash­ing­ton, D.C. She too was heav­i­ly involved in the activ­i­ties of ICP in Tam­pa, where she met her hus­band; she was the man­ag­ing edi­tor of Inquiry, ICP’s pub­li­ca­tion in Eng­lish, and she served as Sami al-Arian’s sec­re­tary.” (Idem.)

18. “Rumor had it that the FBI assumed that Ham­di had told them all he knew, and that there was no use in deal­ing with him any fur­ther. But was that indeed the case? I found my file on CDLR. CDLR, the Com­mit­tee for the Defense of Legit­i­mate Rights, is a Lon­don-based Sau­di dis­si­dent group that is an al-Qae­da front. From that file I pulled out news­pa­per clips from al-Zay­tu­na, the IAP pub­li­ca­tion adver­tis­ing the open­ing of a CDLR branch in the Unit­ed States in the mid-1990’s. In these ads two tele­phone num­bers were pub­lished. I’d been unable to obtain infor­ma­tion on those num­bers in the past. As a gov­ern­ment agent, how­ev­er, Mark had access to inves­tiga­tive tools that I didn’t. I gave the num­bers to him, and two days lat­er he called and told me that I was right: these two num­bers did belong to Ham­di. So Ham­di was the CDLR rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Unit­ed States and was thus tied to al-Qae­da in more than one way.” (Ibid.; pp. 319–320.)

19. “While Mark was cross-exam­in­ing me on IIIT, Dave was pound­ing me with the Mus­lim World League. Accord­ing to the way Mark and Dave addressed their ques­tions, I under­stood that they were divid­ing between them the orga­ni­za­tions con­nect­ed to the SAAR net­work. They went, sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly, from one cat­e­go­ry to anoth­er. As I’d done years before, they start­ed at the base of the pyra­mid, the U.S.-based orga­ni­za­tions, and slow­ly made their way toward the pyramid’s peak. When they got there, I knew, they’d find the Rajhi broth­ers. But at that point they were still climb­ing. Dave, for instance, asked me how I could tie the des­ig­nat­ed Rabi­ta Trust to MWL and to 555. I told him that Rabi­ta, accord­ing to MWL’s Web site, was a sub­sidiary of MWL. I told him that Rabita’s direc­tor, Naseef, list­ed his address at 555 Grove. I sent him all the cor­po­rate records.” (Ibid.; p. 320.)

20. “The rea­son Dave and Mark were unfa­mil­iar with such basic facts as the con­tents of MWL’s Web site was that they couldn’t browse the Inter­net at work. If gov­ern­ment agents were to browse sites such as MWL’s on their office com­put­ers, the traces (sig­na­tures) left while vis­it­ing them might raise sus­pi­cions in those who oper­ate the sites. Amaz­ing­ly, there was only one com­put­er in each of their offices that could not be traced as a gov­ern­ment com­put­er, and the queue for that machine is obvi­ous­ly long. After I taught mark and Dave how to use the Inter­net to find doc­u­ments, browse rel­e­vant sites, and fig­ure out who ran these sites, along with the oth­er research tools I often use, they began surf­ing late at night, at home. For long months, the inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ued in that fash­ion. Green Quest worked nights and week­ends, and so did I. They came to my office at least once a week. They need­ed me, and I was always there for them. Thus between Mark and Dave, Green Quest was study­ing the ties between SAAR and ter­ror­ism. They need­ed my input for every sin­gle step of their inves­ti­ga­tion because they knew so lit­tle at first.” (Ibid.; pp. 320–321.)

21. “But they were enthu­si­as­tic. After 9–11, the government’s pri­or­i­ties changed, and many agents were reas­signed to coun­tert­er­ror­ism. While some agents I’d worked with in the past had resent­ed such reas­sign­ment, or even seen it as a demo­tion, Mark’s and Dave’s moti­va­tion and will­ing­ness to learn were sky-high. Work­ing with such a team was an exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence for me. Although it was very labor-inten­sive. I only had to say a thing once and they’d look into it imme­di­ate­ly. I’d nev­er been involved with an inves­ti­ga­tion like this before, where the agents would take into con­sid­er­a­tion prac­ti­cal­ly every word that came out of my mouth. For years I’d been used to hear­ing that my leads would be ‘for­ward­ed,’ ‘looked into,’ and ‘considered’—attitudes that many a time led inves­ti­ga­tions nowhere. With Green Quest—not just with Mark and Dave and Mar­cy, but with the whole team—the sto­ry was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. They took seri­ous­ly the reli­gious­ly every­thing relat­ing to it.” (Ibid.; p. 321.)

22. Note that much of Rita’s research was gleaned from pub­lic sources. “It had become clear to me that SAR had been inves­ti­gat­ed by the gov­ern­ment many times. OFAC had infor­ma­tion on it, so did the FBI, and oth­er agen­cies had also noticed that some­thing fishy was going on at 555 Grove Street, Hern­don, Vir­ginia. But none of those agen­cies were able to tie the SAAR net­work to ter­ror­ism. The sus­pi­cions were there, but the inves­ti­ga­tions didn’t lead any­where. Until I got involved, that is. Using only pub­lic records, I stud­ied and researched and spent long nights and week­ends delv­ing deep­er and deep­er, until I put it all togeth­er, I made the con­nec­tion and found the miss­ing link between SAAR and ter­ror­ism. When Green Quest, with my guid­ance, looked deep­er and used sources Ii had no access to, they were able to sub­stan­ti­ate my find­ings. They told me that my infor­ma­tion, com­bined with the back­up of the clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion they had, pro­vid­ed sol­id grounds for inves­ti­ga­tion. They said that the stuff I couldn’t see was bet­ter than I’d every imag­ined. [Empha­sis added.] They, too, were becom­ing ter­ror­ist hunters.” (Ibid.; pp. 321–322.)

23. “From the kinds of ques­tions Dave and Mark were ask­ing me, I real­ized that they were work­ing on a search war­rant. Mark said that they were mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress with the inves­ti­ga­tion but had encoun­tered seri­ous prob­lems when they tried to con­vince the U.S. attor­ney that the res­i­dences of some of the indi­vid­u­als linked to 555 Grove need­ed to be searched in addi­tion to 555 itself. I’d explained to Green Quest that search­ing 555 alone would be insuf­fi­cient; that exam­in­ing the indi­vid­u­als involved in the net­work of companies—who incor­po­rat­ed what and with whom—was crit­i­cal; and that the gov­ern­ment had to inves­ti­gate these indi­vid­u­als at least as care­ful­ly as the mate­r­i­al at 555. But it seemed that the U.S. attor­ney found it high­ly unusu­al to search the res­i­dences of the direc­tors of the com­pa­nies, and there­fore he request­ed more evi­dence before he’d autho­rize the search war­rants.” (Ibid.; p. 322.)

24. “On my own ini­tia­tive, I called him and asked what exact­ly was need­ed. He told me that it was a major prob­lem to con­vince a judge that these indi­vid­u­als might have mate­r­i­al at home that could shed light on the inves­ti­ga­tion. I said that the indi­vid­u­als were the impor­tant play­ers, not the sham oper­a­tions they had cre­at­ed as a smoke screen. He wasn’t con­vinced and said that no judge would buy that. Then I came up with an idea. ‘What if,’ I told him, ‘I could show you that each of these indi­vid­u­als has incor­po­rat­ed a num­ber of com­pa­nies at 555, but used their res­i­den­tial address­es as the mail­ing address­es of these com­pa­nies?’ ‘Pre­pare that list for me,’ he said, ‘and I promise you we’ll go to their hous­es.’ My staff and I sat for forty-eight hours, pulling out the records of each of those indi­vid­u­als and check­ing who use his res­i­den­tial address for his com­pa­nies. My list was approved by the U.S. attor­ney. Then Mark called and said that although the oth­er address­es were approved, the U.S. attor­ney didn’t approve Hamdi’s address. I told Mark that when the bat­tery was deliv­ered to Ham­di, it was sent to his home address. Maybe he had oth­er things sent there, too, that the gov­ern­ment might want to know about. Mark called me lat­er. Hamdi’s house was now approved for search, too.” (Ibid.; pp. 322–323.)

25. As the date for raid­ing the SAAR net­work approached, Rita was vis­it­ed by sev­er­al FBI agents, who did not treat her as an ally. “In ear­ly March 2002, a gov­ern­ment agent named Bran­don called me at the office. He said he had a few ques­tions and would like to stop by to dis­cuss them. ‘What about?’ I asked. When agents call me they usu­al­ly want some­thing spe­cif­ic, some leads or doc­u­ments relat­ing to a cer­tain inves­ti­ga­tion. I always pre­pare mate­r­i­al for such meet­ings, so I asked what I should pre­pare for him. ‘We just want to get your opin­ion about some­thing.’ We? Opin­ion? This sound­ed very strange. He asked to meet me soon as pos­si­ble, prefer­ably the next day. He showed up rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly the fol­low­ing morn­ing with a woman who pre­sent­ed her­self as Ani­ta. I asked them for their ID’s and then I invit­ed them in. They asked if we could shut the door to the office. On one of my walls was a huge chart of the SAAR net­work. On my com­put­er mon­i­tor was a new SAAR chart I was work­ing on, at Dave and Mark’s request. Bran­don and Ani­ta sat down, and I expect­ed the reg­u­lar pleas­ant ques­tion-and-answer ses­sion where they ask for infor­ma­tion and I do my best to pro­vide it.” (Ibid.; p. 323.)

26. “Bran­don began. ‘We are aware of the fact that you are, ahem, very much involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion in Vir­ginia. As you may have guessed, the day for the raids on these enti­ties is approach­ing. And this is why we’re here.’ I cer­tain­ly knew that they were mak­ing progress with the war­rant, since I had pro­vid­ed much of the need­ed infor­ma­tion for it. I also knew that the raids we’re going to be exten­sive, as I had been asked to pro­vide proof for some of the loca­tions that were to be raid­ed, includ­ing the res­i­den­tial address­es I’ve men­tioned. ‘Go on?’ I became uneasy. I couldn’t see where this was lead­ing ‘Well, we have cer­tain con­cerns,’ he said. ‘Regard­ing the safe­ty of agents in the field.’ My throat dried up. What do you mean by that, exact­ly?’ I asked in a whis­per.” (Ibid.; pp. 323–324.)

27. The FBI agents who vis­it­ed Rita were not on her side. They assumed a rude hos­tile stance, hint­ing at dis­loy­al­ty on her part. “ ‘In oth­er words, we want­ed to make sure that they won’t be wait­ing for our agents out there.’ I regained my com­po­sure. ‘Let me make sure I got it right,’ I said. ‘Are you here to ask me whether I called Barz­in­ji, al-Alwani, or Jagh­lit to inform them that Green Quest and Cus­toms agents would be com­ing to raid their homes on such-and-such date? Do you sug­gest that I told them to wait for these agents with machine guns?’ I was shocked and humil­i­at­ed as nev­er before in my entire career. ‘No, don’t mis­un­der­stand, we were just wor­ried and want­ed to make sure that every­thing would go smooth­ly.’ ‘Do you know who you’re talk­ing to?’ I said, my tone sharp. ‘I don’t know you, and you cer­tain­ly don’t know me or who I am. This is my inves­ti­ga­tion, my baby, my project—solely—and you accuse me of leak­ing it? This is all my knowl­edge. It all comes from pub­lic records. I can leak any of it as I please. No one can pre­vent me from leak­ing it. I could have leaked it any­time, months ago, or years ago. Every­thing Green Quest has comes from me. Every­thing. I sat and taught them every­thing from the begin­ning, and this is what I get in return?’” (Ibid.; p. 324.)

28. “Ani­ta tried to undo the dam­age, say­ing that they were only the mes­sen­gers who’d been asked to come here, ask a few ques­tions, and ver­i­fy that the bad guys would be sur­prised and not the agents. ‘Even a crim­i­nal in cus­tody is informed that he is about to be ques­tioned about his alleged crime. You could have at least told me what this was about before you came,’ I spat. Now the tables had turned, and they were the ones on the defen­sive. They real­ly didn’t know who they were deal­ing with. But they nev­er both­ered to find out before they showed up in my office. Bran­don tried to change the sub­ject. He looked at the chart on my mon­i­tor and asked what it was. I told him that I was putting it togeth­er for Green Quest. He asked for a copy. I print­ed out five copies for him, and then I said: ‘You see this? This all comes from pub­lic doc­u­ments. And you know what—maybe this is not such a bad idea after all. Maybe I should share this with The New York Times, Sun­day edi­tion.” (Idem.)

29. Rita rebuked the agents for their antag­o­nis­tic treat­ment of her. “They should looked hor­ri­fied. ‘Shame on you,’ I said. ‘I devot­ed my life to this cause, and you accuse me of being a dou­ble agent. Get out of my office. Right now. Session’s over.’ They scur­ried out of there. I imme­di­ate­ly called Mar­cy Futer­man. She was out, and I was told she’d be out the entire week. I asked to speak with her assis­tant. ‘What’s going on?’ I began fir­ing the sec­ond he picked up the phone. ‘This is how you show your grat­i­tude, send­ing a team to inter­view me?’ I didn’t know if he or Mar­cy knew about the lit­tle inci­dent, but this was the best way to find out. ‘Just tell me whether Mar­cy approved that.’ ‘Mar­cy was informed about it, yes, but take my word for it, she would nev­er have approved such a thing,’ he said. He was sin­cere, and I real­ized that Mar­cy was caught between a rock and a hard place. ‘You know how high­ly she thinks of you. But you must real­ize that some things are beyond her. There was noth­ing she could do to pre­vent it.’” (Ibid.; p. 325.)

30. Rita’s hos­tile treat­ment at the hands of the FBI was also expe­ri­enced by some of her com­pa­tri­ots in Oper­a­tion Green Quest, who also felt they were being sur­veilled. “The next thing I did was page Mark. Unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, it was hours before he replied. He was dis­traught. I was try­ing to tell him that I’d been ques­tioned by some agents I’d nev­er heard of, but he kept repeat­ing that he had the feel­ing he was being fol­lowed. ‘I can’t seem to shake them. I had this feel­ing that I was fol­lowed through­out the day. I don’t know what they want of me, all I know is that I didn’t know is that I didn’t do any­thing wrong,’ he insist­ed. I called Dave. He, too, was upset. He, too, was under inves­ti­ga­tion. Why do I deserve this? I thought. Every time I’m onto some­thing good, every time an inves­ti­ga­tion is going well, I end up being inves­ti­gat­ed instead. It made me sad, and angry, and frus­trat­ed. This wasn’t the first time I’d been inves­ti­gat­ed since that busi­ness with John Can­field. Not at all. There were oth­er times, which I can’t men­tion here.” (Idem.)

31. More about the begin­ning of Rita’s betray­al by the FBI: “But this time it went a step fur­ther: this was the first time that I was direct­ly accused of endan­ger­ing fed­er­al agents. For many days I was grave­ly agi­tat­ed. I couldn’t focus on any­thing. I couldn’t sleep. I had recur­rent night­mares in which I was haunt­ed by these agents who came to ques­tion me. I knew my phone was tapped, I knew I was being fol­lowed, I knew some­one was lis­ten­ing to and record­ing every word I was say­ing. . . Worst of all, I had no one to turn to for help. Whom could I call, the gov­ern­ment? Maybe I was on the wrong side after all. Maybe, I thought, I should join 555, as these agents had sug­gest­ed. I’d def­i­nite­ly be much safer in the arms of SAAR than in the government’s. I do what I do because I’m try­ing to make the Unit­ed States a lit­tle safer, and this is the way the gov­ern­ment thanks me.” (Ibid.; p. 326.)

32. Next, Rita learns of the Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002, pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the research she gen­er­at­ed: “A cou­ple of weeks lat­er, on March 20, 2002, I returned from a meet­ing out of the office to dis­cov­er a pile of mes­sages from jour­nal­ists lying on my desk. I called the top one on the pile. ‘So what do you make of these raids in Vir­ginia?’ the reporter asked. ‘What are you talk­ing about?’ I guessed what he was refer­ring to, but I want­ed to make sure. ‘Ear­ly this morn­ing,’ he told me, ‘about a hun­dred and fifty agents from the FBI, police, Cus­toms, and INS raid­ed six­teen loca­tions in Vir­ginia and some poul­try fac­to­ry in Geor­gia. Haven’t you heard? It’s all over the news.’ So Green Quest and oth­er agents had raid­ed eigh­teen dif­fer­ent loca­tions in Vir­ginia tied to SAAR. It was the largest coun­tert­er­ror­ism raid ever in U.S. his­to­ry. The raids con­tin­ued the fol­low­ing day. Some one hun­dred com­put­er com­pa­nies were sub­poe­naed as well. [Empha­sis added.] Every­one knew about the raids. Every­one but me. I was the last to find out, and I watched the raids on TV, with feel­ings as mixed as one could ever have. Con­tent that the raid took place on the one hand, but feel­ing used and abused on the oth­er. This is how John Can­field must have felt when he was kicked off the PIJ inves­ti­ga­tion, I thought. . . .” (Idem.)

33. Rita’s asso­ciates in Green Quest were inves­ti­gat­ed and harassed by the FBI. In FTR#310 (record­ed in July of 2001) Mr. Emory hypoth­e­sized that Robert Mueller was appoint­ed head of the FBI in order to safe­guard the Bush administration’s links with the milieu of the BCCI and George W. Bush’s busi­ness links to the Bin Laden fam­i­ly. “ . . .For two months after the raids I didn’t hear a word from Green Quest. Then one day Mark sud­den­ly called and asked to see me. ‘Why?’ I said cyn­i­cal­ly. ‘Your inves­ti­ga­tion is over. You don’t need me any­more.’ He under­stood. ‘Please don’t be cross,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t talk to you. I too was under inves­ti­ga­tion. I was being fol­lowed, my phones were tapped, and I was ques­tioned. I was mis­er­able. They gave me a very hard time. Please don’t give any more grief. I don’t deserve it.’ What was this, I thought, anoth­er rerun of the sto­ry with John Can­field? What’s wrong with these peo­ple who keep inves­ti­gat­ing the inves­ti­ga­tors? ‘If you don’t believe me,’ he con­tin­ued, ‘talk to the U.S. attor­ney you worked with. He’ll tell you. He and every­one else on the team were under inves­ti­ga­tion.’ Mark, I knew, was not a guy to make some­thing like that up. But I was curi­ous, and I called the U.S. attor­ney to get his take. I didn’t press him too, much, because the whole thing was—and prob­a­bly still is—under inves­ti­ga­tion. But he did ver­i­fy every­thing Mark had told me. Prac­ti­cal­ly every­one involved with the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion had been under sur­veil­lance. The FBI was among the agen­cies con­duct­ing that inves­ti­ga­tion.” (Ibid.; p. 327.)

34. Note that the FBI gave more doc­u­ments to Zacarias Mous­saoui for his defense than to the Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tors. “No won­der! The FBI had long set its sights on this inves­ti­ga­tion, which became so major and so famous. The Bureau had already been med­dling in the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion in a man­ner less than gen­tle­man­ly; after the raids, peo­ple who had infor­ma­tion about the SAAR net­work called to offer their tips. Unaware of who was in charge of the inves­ti­ga­tion, some of those peo­ple called and gave their tips to the FBI. The FBI, instead of for­ward­ing the tips to the peo­ple in charge—Green Quest—kept the leads to them­selves and ini­ti­at­ed their own probes into those leads, shar­ing nei­ther with Cus­toms. More­over, at some point, the two FBI agents in Vir­ginia stopped help­ing Green Quest abrupt­ly and com­plete­ly. It was obvi­ous that they’d been instruct­ed to do that. The FBI con­tin­ues to refuse to give Green Quest doc­u­ments need­ed for its inves­ti­ga­tion. The FBI treats Green Quest worse than it does the ene­my; Zacarias Mous­saoui received from the FBI more doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to his investigation—including a good num­ber of clas­si­fied documents—than did Green Quest! And of course the ulti­mate scan­dal is that all this is tak­ing place after 9–11.” (Idem.)

35. “Now, as I write these lines, the FBI is try­ing to take over the inves­ti­ga­tion alto­geth­er. Once again, a replay of the sto­ry with Sami al-Ari­an and with John Can­field. The FBI claims that Cus­toms and Green Quest were right­ful­ly the ones to ini­ti­ate the inves­ti­ga­tion, when it seemed to be about mon­ey laun­der­ing. But now that it’s become a ter­ror­ism-relat­ed mat­ter, Cus­toms is inca­pable, you see, of deal­ing with it. Isn’t that peachy? Judg­ing by what the FBI did with oth­er inves­ti­ga­tions, if it indeed suc­ceeds in tak­ing over the SAAR probe, we can all kiss this inves­ti­ga­tion good-bye. How many ter­ror­ism-relat­ed suc­cess­es can the FBI take the cred­it for? Not too many, that’s for sure.” (Idem.)

36. The incon­ve­nient GOP ethnic/Green Quest con­nec­tion cit­ed in para­graph #5 may well explain the FBI’s and CIA’s hos­tile inter­est in the inves­ti­ga­tors of Oper­a­tion Green Quest. “Yet the FBI wasn’t the worst part in that sticky affair. The CIA was. The CIA was inves­ti­gat­ing me and the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors from Green Quest and Cus­toms. The CIA and the FBI inves­ti­gat­ed every­one who had any­thing to do with the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion. White vans and SUV’s with dark win­dows appeared near all the homes of the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors. All agents, some of whom were very expe­ri­enced with sur­veil­lance, knew they were being fol­lowed. So was I. I felt that I was being fol­lowed every­where and watched at home, in the super­mar­ket, on the way to work . . . and for what? . Now—I was being watched 24/7. It’s a ter­ri­ble sen­sa­tion to know that you have no pri­va­cy. . . . and no secu­ri­ty. That strange click­ing of the phones that wasn’t there before. . . the oh-so-crude­ly opened mail at home in the office. . .and the same man I spied in my neigh­bor­hood super­mar­ket, who was also on the train I took to Wash­ing­ton a week ago. . .Life can be mis­er­able when you know that someone’s always breath­ing down your neck.” (Ibid.; pp. 328–329.)

37. “The Cus­toms agents were ques­tioned. So were their super­vi­sors. So was the U.S. attor­ney on the SAAR case. One of the ques­tions they were all asked was whether they’d leaked mate­r­i­al to me. They all kept say­ing that this was the most pre­pos­ter­ous idea; they all said that before I came, none of them had the slight­est clue about SAAR and 555. They said that there was noth­ing of val­ue they could give me that I didn’t have already. That it was I who gave them the mate­r­i­al, not the oth­er way around. None of the inves­ti­gat­ed par­ties has the slight­est clue as to the real rea­son they were being inves­ti­gat­ed.” (Ibid.; p. 329.)

38. “Risk­ing crit­i­cism for being unfound­ed­ly para­noid, I must con­vey my the­o­ry about the inves­ti­ga­tion and CIA’s involve­ment in it, I don’t know for cer­tain what’s the deal with the CIA inves­ti­gat­ing the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors, but it sure feels as if some­one up in that agency doesn’t like the idea that the Sau­di Ara­bi­an boat is rocked. The raids on 555 had tak­en place already—the CIA couldn’t change that—but inves­ti­gat­ing and giv­ing the peo­ple behind the raids a hard time is a most effi­cient way of mak­ing sure the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion stops there. Which, come to think of it, may be the rea­son the gov­ern­ment looks so unfa­vor­ably on the law­suit filed by 9–11 vic­tims’ fam­i­lies against sev­er­al Sau­di enti­ties and indi­vid­u­als, accus­ing them of fund­ing ter­ror­ism and seek­ing dam­ages.” (Idem.)