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RealAu­dio

The pro­gram begins with a look at behind-the-scenes machi­na­tions of Prince Ban­dar of Sau­di Arabia—the for­mer Sau­di ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States. Ban­dar is so close to the Bush fam­i­ly, that he has been nick­named “Ban­dar Bush.” When it came to light that Ban­dar had worked with Tony Blair to cov­er-up the ongo­ing scan­dal involv­ing a British aero­space con­trac­tor and a Sau­di slush fund used to bribe West­ern cor­po­ra­tions and indi­vid­u­als, Ban­dar threat­ened Britain with a cut-off in intel­li­gence, assur­ing anoth­er 7/7. In this con­text, it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the behav­ior Ban­dar and oth­er Sau­di lumi­nar­ies demon­strat­ed in this coun­try in the after­math of 9/11. Were sim­i­lar threats made con­cern­ing the con­se­quences of a com­plete inves­ti­ga­tion into 9/11 and the Sau­di com­plic­i­ty with it? Next, the pro­gram reviews some of the links of SICO to the events in and around the 9/11 attacks. The Gene­va-based hold­ing com­pa­ny for the fab­u­lous­ly wealthy bin Laden family’s hold­ings, SICO is anoth­er play­er in the al-Yamamah slush-fund milieu. Mov­ing from the al-Yamamah milieu to the Repub­li­can Par­ty of the Unit­ed States, the pro­gram high­lights the fact that a for­mer GOP con­gress­man from Michi­gan has been indict­ed for assist­ing in the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism. The Unit­ed States is not alone in expe­ri­enc­ing an Islam­o­fas­cist Fifth Column—British author­i­ties feel that Islamists have infil­trat­ed essen­tial infra­struc­ture envi­ron­ments for the pur­pose of con­vey­ing vital and dead­ly intel­li­gence to ter­ror­ist ele­ments. An Amer­i­can Islamist may have com­mu­ni­cat­ed intel­li­gence to insur­gent forces in Iraq, per­mit­ting the evac­u­a­tion of WMD tech­nol­o­gy right under the noses of U.S. troops. Con­clud­ing with dis­cus­sion of the Iran­ian nuclear pro­gram, the broad­cast notes that Euro­pean intel­li­gence services—British in particular—do not agree with the U. S. Nation­al Intel­li­gence Esti­mate view that Iran aban­doned its WMD pro­gram sev­er­al years ago.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of SICO direc­tor Bau­doin Dunand’s links to Nazi banker Fran­cois Genoud; review of pay­ments made by Prince Bandar’s wife to two of the hijack­ers that crashed into the Pen­ta­gon; spec­u­la­tion that Prince Ban­dar and/or oth­er Saud­is may have made threats against the Unit­ed States if the 9/11 evi­den­tiary trail were prop­er­ly pur­sued; spec­u­la­tion that those threats may have giv­en rise to the so-called 9/11 Truth Move­ment; review of the pro­found link of the GOP to indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions con­nect­ed to Islamist financ­ing.

1. The pro­gram begins with a look at behind-the-scenes machi­na­tions of Prince Ban­dar of Sau­di Arabia—the for­mer Sau­di ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States. Ban­dar is so close to the Bush fam­i­ly, that he has been nick­named “Ban­dar Bush.” When it came to light that Ban­dar had worked with Tony Blair to cov­er-up the ongo­ing scan­dal involv­ing a British aero­space con­trac­tor and the al-Yamamah deal, Ban­dar threat­ened Britain with ter­ror­ism by threat­en­ing a cut-off in intel­li­gence, assur­ing anoth­er 7/7. In this con­text, it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the behav­ior Ban­dar and oth­er Sau­di lumi­nar­ies demon­strat­ed in this coun­try in the after­math of 9/11. Were sim­i­lar threats made con­cern­ing the con­se­quences of a com­plete inves­ti­ga­tion into 9/11 and the Sau­di com­plic­i­ty with it?! Note that Bandar’s wife had to leave the Unit­ed States after it was revealed that she had made pay­ments to two of the hijack­ers. A seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tion into “Ban­dar Bush”, his wife and 9/11 would have uncov­ered decades of polit­i­cal intrigue and covert oper­a­tions by ele­ments of the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment under­writ­ten by the Saud­is and the Safari Club milieu. Imag­ine the threats that Ban­dar must have made when THAT came to light! Is this why the so-called 9/11 “Truth” move­ment fan­ta­sizes and intones about “no plane” hit­ting the Pen­ta­gon? (For more about the Safari Club, see FTR#’s 522, 524. For more about Bandar’s wife and her pay­ments to the fam­i­lies of two hijack­ers, see FTR#’s 442, 447, 460. For more about Ban­dar, his accounts at the Rig­gs Bank and his involve­ment with decades of U.S. covert operations—see FTR#’s 461, 495, 517. One of Rig­gs Bank’s direc­tors is Jonathan Bush—President George W. Bush’s uncle.) “Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s rulers threat­ened to make it eas­i­er for ter­ror­ists to attack Lon­don unless cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tions into their arms deals were halt­ed, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments revealed yes­ter­day. Pre­vi­ous­ly secret files describe how inves­ti­ga­tors were told they faced ‘anoth­er 7/7’ and the loss of ‘British lives on British streets’ if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saud­is car­ried out their threat to cut off intel­li­gence. Prince Ban­dar, the head of the Sau­di nation­al secu­ri­ty coun­cil, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back infor­ma­tion about sui­cide bombers and ter­ror­ists. He faces accu­sa­tions that he him­self took more than £1bn in secret pay­ments from the arms com­pa­ny BAE. He was accused in yes­ter­day’s high court hear­ings of fly­ing to Lon­don in Decem­ber 2006 and utter­ing threats which made the prime min­is­ter, Tony Blair, force an end to the Seri­ous Fraud Office inves­ti­ga­tion into bribery alle­ga­tions involv­ing Ban­dar and his fam­i­ly. . . .”
(“BAE: Secret Papers Reveal Threats from Sau­di Prince” by David Leigh and Rob Evans; The Guardian; 2/15/2008.)

2. Next, we review some of the links of SICO to the events in and around the 9/11 attacks. The Gene­va-based hold­ing com­pa­ny for the fab­u­lous­ly wealthy bin Laden family’s hold­ings, SICO is anoth­er play­er in the al-Yamamah milieu. (For more about SICO and its rela­tion­ship to the 9/11 attacks, see FTR#’s 498, 499.) Note that Mahrous bin Laden, the head of SBG at the time of the 9/11 attacks, is any­thing but divorced from the milieu of Osama bin Laden. Mahrous par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood seizure of the Great Mosque in Mec­ca in 1979. (For more about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 343, 455, 473, 537.) Note, also, that Bau­doin Dunand is a promi­nent direc­tor of SICO. Dunand is a pro­tégé of the late Nazi spy and banker Fran­cois Genoud. (For more about Genoud, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 453, 456.) “ . . . After study­ing in Eng­land in the 1970s, Mahrous struck up a friend­ship with mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­ers, a Syr­i­an Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ist orga­ni­za­tion then in exile in Sau­di Ara­bia. Mem­bers of this orga­ni­za­tion used bin Laden com­pa­ny trucks to get weapons into the city of Mec­ca in 1979 when at least 500 dis­si­dents invad­ed and seized the Grand Mosque. The orga­ni­za­tion jus­ti­fied the attack by say­ing the Sau­di regime had lost its legit­i­ma­cy through ‘cor­rup­tion, osten­ta­tion and mind­less imi­ta­tion of the West’. All the men who took part in the attack were lat­er behead­ed in the squares of four Sau­di cities but Mahrous was freed from prison after a peri­od of deten­tion. Sau­di intel­li­gence lat­er said that the bin Ladens were the only peo­ple in pos­ses­sion of full maps of Mec­ca. It is believed that the bin Ladens’ close rela­tion­ship with the Sau­di roy­al fam­i­ly saved Mahrous. . . . The Sau­di Invest­ment Com­pa­ny is chaired by Beat­rice Dufour, of Iran­ian ori­gin and sis­ter-in-law of one of the bin Laden broth­ers, Yeslam. In 1983, her co-chair­man, Bau­doin Dunand, rep­re­sent­ed Swiss banker Fra­nois Genoud, who had helped finance Arab extrem­ists in Alge­ria and was on tri­al for par­tic­i­pa­tion in inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism. The board of direc­tors includ­ed mem­bers of the Shakarshi fam­i­ly, linked to a mon­ey-laun­der­ing scan­dal and drug-traf­fick­ing in Zurich. A mem­ber of the Shakarshi fam­i­ly was also a direc­tor of the SICO office in Lon­don. There have been alle­ga­tions that the Zurich com­pa­ny was a CIA front used to finance Afghan resis­tance — in which bin Laden was a prime mover — dur­ing the Sovi­et occu­pa­tion of the coun­try. Yeslam bin Laden con­tin­ues to main­tain rela­tions with the Shakarshis. The bin Laden fam­i­ly — and Yeslam in par­tic­u­lar — have long- stand­ing links to Al Bilad, a Lon­don-Gene­va com­pa­ny used as part of the nego­ti­a­tions over the Anglo-Sau­di Al Yama­ma arms-for-oil agree­ment, which was worth (pounds) 21.5 bil­lion. Present at the nego­ti­a­tions was the now dis­graced for­mer Tory min­is­ter Jonathan Aitken, sent by John Major to rep­re­sent the UK. Major claims he has no con­nec­tion to the bin Laden fam­i­ly, despite his links to them through his job as Euro­pean chair­man of the Car­lyle Group. Mark Thatch­er was also involved in the Al Yamamah deal. . . . .”
(“Fam­i­ly Ties; The Bin Ladens” by Neil MacK­ay; The Sun­day Her­ald; 10/7/2001.)

3. A for­mer GOP con­gress­man from Michi­gan has been indict­ed for assist­ing in the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism. This is busi­ness as usu­al for the GOP, many of whose bright­est stars are direct­ly con­nect­ed to and/or lob­by­ing for ter­ror­ist financiers. (For more about this sub­ject, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 356, 454, 462, 464, 467, 515, 538.) “For­mer U.S. Con­gress­man Mark Deli Sil­jan­der (R‑MI) was indict­ed Wednes­day for mon­ey laun­der­ing, con­spir­a­cy and obstruc­tion of jus­tice, in con­nec­tion with charges that a Mus­lim char­i­ty, the Islam­ic Amer­i­can Relief Agency (IARA), was involved in efforts to finance the Afghan jihad ter­ror­ist Gul­bud­din Hek­mat­yar. The IARA was named a spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed glob­al ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion by the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment in 2004. John F. Wood, U.S. Attor­ney for the West­ern Dis­trict of Mis­souri, declared: ‘An orga­ni­za­tion right here in the Amer­i­can heart­land alleged­ly sent funds to Pak­istan for the ben­e­fit of a spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed glob­al ter­ror­ist with ties to al-Qae­da and the Tal­iban…. The indict­ment also alleges that a for­mer con­gress­man engaged in mon­ey laun­der­ing and obstruc­tion of a fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion in an effort to dis­guise IARA’s mis­use of tax­pay­er mon­ey that the gov­ern­ment had pro­vid­ed for human­i­tar­i­an pur­pos­es.’ Accord­ing to the indict­ment, the IARA sent around $130,000 to bank accounts con­trolled by its par­ent orga­ni­za­tion, the Islam­ic Relief Agency (ISRA), in Peshawar, Pak­istan, where the mon­ey went to Hekmatyar’s activ­i­ties. The ISRA’s head­quar­ters are in Khar­toum, Sudan, with the Colum­bia, Mis­souri-based IARA as its Amer­i­can office until it was shut down. Accord­ing to the Trea­sury Depart­ment, ‘IARA is for­mer­ly affil­i­at­ed with Mak­tab Al-Khi­damat (MK), which was co-found­ed and financed by UBL [Osama bin Laden] and is the pre­cur­sor orga­ni­za­tion of al Qai­da.’ The IARA has also fun­neled mon­ey to Hamas. . . .”
(“A Con­gress­man for Jihad” by Robert Spender; FrontPageMagazine.com; 1/17/2008.)

4. British secu­ri­ty forces have tak­en stock of the fact that Islamists and ele­ments sym­pa­thet­ic to their cause have infil­trat­ed into sen­si­tive posi­tions in the UK, com­pris­ing a dead­ly Fifth Col­umn. (For more about the Islamist Fifth Col­umn in the U.S., see—among oth­er programs—the broad­casts anno­tat­ed in para­graph 3.) “Islamist extrem­ists have infil­trat­ed Gov­ern­ment and key pub­lic util­i­ties to pass sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion to ter­ror­ists, the secu­ri­ty ser­vices have warned. Counter-ter­ror­ism offi­cials say ‘insid­ers’ or their asso­ciates are almost cer­tain­ly work­ing ‘unde­tect­ed’ in sen­si­tive posts and are active­ly sup­port­ing the activ­i­ties of extrem­ists. In some cas­es, life­long rela­tion­ships between friends or rel­a­tives are being exploit­ed to obtain cru­cial infor­ma­tion from those in sen­si­tive posts. The devel­op­ment is detailed in intel­li­gence reports cir­cu­lat­ed to the Home Office, police and White­hall offi­cials. The Lon­don Under­ground, Gatwick air­port and BT are cit­ed as exam­ples of orga­ni­za­tions which have been tar­get­ed by indi­vid­u­als linked to ter­ror­ists. . . .”
(Revealed: Islamist extrem­ists have pen­e­trat­ed the heart of Britain; Dai­ly Mail; 7/8/07.)

5. There are indi­ca­tions that the Islamist Fifth Col­umn in the Unit­ed States may very well have leaked infor­ma­tion about Saddam’s WMD’s to ele­ments in Iraq. That dis­clo­sure may well have led to the suc­cess­ful evac­u­a­tion of the WMD’s from Iraq. (For an indi­ca­tion of how deeply root­ed the Fifth Col­umn in the Unit­ed States is, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#467.) “How the clas­si­fied mil­i­tary doc­u­ments from Iraq, which named the coor­di­nates of where the Army sus­pect­ed weapons of mass destruc­tion to be hid­den, end­ed up in an Ara­bic trans­la­tor’s apart­ment on Hoyt Street in Brook­lyn, is clear. Not like­ly to be known any­time soon is what, if any­thing, the army con­trac­tor did with the doc­u­ments. The U.S. attor­ney’s office in Brook­lyn, which is pros­e­cut­ing the case, appears to have lit­tle direct evi­dence that Noured­dine Mal­ki passed infor­ma­tion on to the insur­gency, either dur­ing his time in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, or upon his return to Amer­i­ca in 2005. But it has raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty that he may have done so. The gov­ern­ment has said Mal­ki reg­u­lar­ly called phone num­bers con­nect­ed to insur­gents and took bribes of at least $11,500 from Sun­ni trib­al lead­ers. The gov­ern­ment, pros­e­cu­tors wrote in one court fil­ing, could ‘estab­lish that the defen­dant had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide stolen clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion to anti-coali­tion forces.’ . . .”
(“Mys­tery Deep­ens Over WMD Doc­u­ments” by Joseph Gold­stein; The New York Sun; 2/6/2008.)

6. For­eign intel­li­gence ser­vices har­bor seri­ous doubts about the accu­ra­cy of a Nation­al Intel­li­gence Esti­mate that says that Iran is not attempt­ing to pro­duce nuclear weapons. The WMD sit­u­a­tion with regard to both Iran and Iraq will be dis­cussed at length in future broad­casts. “British spy chiefs have grave doubts that Iran has moth­balled its nuclear weapons pro­gramme, as a US intel­li­gence report claimed last week, and believe the CIA has been hood­winked by Teheran. Ana­lysts believe that Iran­ian staff, know­ing their phones were tapped, delib­er­ate­ly gave mis­in­for­ma­tion. The tim­ing of the CIA report has also pro­voked fury in the British Gov­ern­ment, where offi­cials believe it has under­mined efforts to impose tough new sanc­tions on Iran and made an Israeli attack on its nuclear facil­i­ties more like­ly. . . .”
(“Iran ‘Hood­winked’ CIA over Nuclear Plans” by Tim Ship­man, Phillip Sher­well and Car­olynne Wheel­er; Dai­ly Tele­graph; 12/12/2007.)