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Review­ing infor­ma­tion from FTR #663, the pro­gram begins with review of Dick Cheney’s omi­nous pre­dic­tion (fore­shad­ow­ing?) of a ter­ror­ist attack on the Unit­ed States with WMD’s–this (accord­ing to Cheney) because of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s aban­don­ment of W’s “anti” ter­ror poli­cies. Suc­cess­ful­ly leav­ing office with­out any seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tion of the GOP/Muslim Brotherhood/al Qae­da polit­i­cal nexus, the Bush/Cheney camp has left the incom­ing Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to deal with those very forces.

Com­pris­ing the bulk of the first side, the pro­gram reviews a very impor­tant arti­cle indi­cat­ing that some of those same GOP-con­nect­ed Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ele­ments are the so-called “mod­er­ates” reach­ing out to Oba­ma. Head­ed by Abubak­er Ahmed al-Shingi­eti (aide to indict­ed war crim­i­nal Omar al-Bashir), the AMCE out­reach group fea­tures Jamal al-Barz­in­ji and Yaqub Mirza, two of the key fig­ures in the SAAR net­work and the milieu tar­get­ed by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. (The only gov­ern­ment present­ly in pow­er con­trolled by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the mur­der­ous Sudanese regime, is per­pe­trat­ing geno­cide for the sec­ond time in a decade, giv­ing the lie to those who por­tray the Broth­er­hood as a “mod­er­ate” force.)

The bal­ance of the pro­gram high­lights intel­li­gence offi­cial Den­nis Blair’s stun­ning appoint­ment of Charles W. Free­man to a key intel­li­gence post in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. George H.W. Bush’s ambas­sador to Sau­di Ara­bia dur­ing the Gulf War, Free­man is inex­tri­ca­bly tied to that benight­ed coun­try, as well as the al-Taqwa milieu. Free­man heads the Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Coun­cil, a think tank devel­oped with seed mon­ey from Sau­di Ara­bia and fea­tur­ing many high­ly dubi­ous fig­ures on its board.

Of the many sus­pi­cious and/or malev­o­lent MEPC board mem­bers, per­haps the most impor­tant is Talat Oth­man. A pro­tégé of the BCCI milieu, busi­ness asso­ciate of George Bush, an inti­mate of (and inter­locu­tor for) the milieu of Youssef Nada and Al Qae­da, as well as a key play­er in the GOP eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion, MEPC board meme­ber Talat Oth­man embod­ies the over­lap of the oil busi­ness and the 9/11 Fifth Col­umn. Oth­man, in turn, is a pro­tégé of Abdul­lah Bak­shs, the U.S. busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Bin Laden fam­i­ly between 1976–1982.

On April 4 (2002), Trea­sury Sec­re­tary O’Neill met with pow­er­ful Islamist Repub­li­cans whose spheres of inter­est over­lap those of the insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als tar­get­ed by the Trea­sury Depart­ment on the March 20 (2002) coun­tert­er­ror raids. The for­mi­da­ble and Machi­avel­lian Karl Rove and pow­er­ful GOP oper­a­tive Grover Norquist and their Islam­ic Insti­tute are at the epi­cen­ter of this milieu. One of the most impor­tant of these inter­locu­tors on behalf of the Al Qaeda/Al Taqwa milieu was Oth­man. (O’Neill was forced to resign in late 2002, and Oper­a­tion Green Quest was blunt­ed.)

In addi­tion to Car­lyle Group head Frank Car­luc­ci and Oth­man, oth­er direc­tors of Freeman’s MEPC include Cur­tis Brand (retired Chair­man of Exxon­Mo­bil, Sau­di Ara­bia, Inc. and Dr. Fuad A. Rib­ani, Direc­tor, Research and Devel­op­ment of the Sau­di Bin­ladin Group.

Arguably the most impor­tant and omi­nous aspect of Free­man’s behav­ior is the fact that he had con­tact with, and ran inter­fer­ence for the bin Laden fam­i­ly after 9/11! This is deeply sin­is­ter and sug­gests at least the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Free­man may have been an acces­so­ry after the fact in 9/11. The ques­tion is–-“What did Charles Free­man know and when did he know it?” In fact the SICO com­pa­ny, run by Yeslam Bin­laden, is at the epi­cen­ter of the inves­ti­ga­tion into 9/11.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest tar­gets and their rela­tion­ship to ele­ments with which Oba­ma is faced and with which he is being bad­jack­et­ed; the bizarre and anti-Semit­ic man­i­fes­ta­tions of Free­man’s Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Coun­cil; the MEPC’s pub­li­ca­tion of the Mearsheimer/Walt paper on the “Israel Lob­by;” the fact that Obama’s diplo­mat­ic point man for Syr­ia–Fred­er­ic C. Hof–also serves on the Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Coun­cil; the fact that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has con­tin­ued to pros­e­cute the war against Islam­ic fas­cism and ter­ror.

1. Review­ing infor­ma­tion from FTR #663, the pro­gram sets forth Dick Cheney’s omi­nous pre­dic­tion (fore­shad­ow­ing?) of a ter­ror­ist attack on the Unit­ed States with WMD’s–this because (accord­ing to Cheney) because of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s aban­don­ment of W’s “anti” ter­ror poli­cies. NOTE: the mate­r­i­al in this broad­cast must be eval­u­at­ed in the con­text of the oth­er three pro­grams about the bad­jack­et­ing of Oba­ma, as well as the pro­grams deal­ing with 9/11 and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s response to it.

“In an inter­view two weeks after leav­ing office, for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney pre­dict­ed a ‘high prob­a­bil­i­ty’ of a nuclear or bio­log­i­cal attack in the next few years and said the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion was approach­ing a ‘tough, mean, dirty, nasty busi­ness’ of keep­ing the coun­try safe from ter­ror­ists too timid­ly.

Mr. Cheney sin­gled out Mr. Obama’s deci­sion to close the deten­tion facil­i­ty at Guan­tá­namo Bay, Cuba, and to ban coer­cive inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods as changes in course that could make the coun­try more vul­ner­a­ble.

He also sought to jus­ti­fy the Bush ter­ror­ist sur­veil­lance pro­gram and the antiter­ror­ism leg­is­la­tion called the USA Patri­ot Act. . . .”

“Cheney Pre­dicts ‘Prob­a­bil­i­ty’ of Attack” by Michael Fal­cone; The New York Times; 2/5/2008; p. A21.

2. The bulk of the first side of the pro­gram con­sists of review of a very impor­tant arti­cle indi­cat­ing that GOP-con­nect­ed Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ele­ments are the so-called “mod­er­ates” reach­ing out to Oba­ma.

“In the 1990s, the extrem­ist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood gov­ern­ment of Sudan, led by Pres­i­dent Omar al-Bashir, was con­tin­u­ing a geno­ci­dal jihad against the Chris­t­ian and ani­mist pop­u­la­tions inhab­it­ing the south of the coun­try that killed near­ly two mil­lion peo­ple and forced anoth­er four mil­lion from their homes. In July 2008, Bashir was indict­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court for war crimes relat­ed to the regime’s sub­se­quent geno­cide in Dar­fur.

As Bashir was wag­ing his holo­caust against the Chris­tians dur­ing the 1990s, one of his clos­est advi­sors and top aides was Abubak­er Ahmed al-Shingi­eti, who from 1993 to 1995 served as spokesman for Bashir’s gov­ern­ment (as he was iden­ti­fied in a 1994 New York Times arti­cle). Accord­ing to al-Shingieti’s own pub­lished résumé, he lat­er served Bashir as direc­tor of pub­lic affairs for the pres­i­den­cy from 1995 to 1998, as the geno­ci­dal jihad against the Chris­tians was at its height and Sudan was the hub of the inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic ter­ror net­work. As report­ed by the New York Times, eight indi­vid­u­als charged in the New York land­marks bomb­ing plot in 1993 were trav­el­ing on Sudanese pass­ports.

As a result of those arrests, Sudan was added to the U.S. State Depart­ment list of state spon­sors of ter­ror­ism in August 1993. That was not long after al-Shingieti’s boss began shel­ter­ing Osama bin Laden, who lived in Khar­toum from 1992 to 1996. With the close advi­so­ry role that bin Laden had with the Sudanese pres­i­dent and oth­er high-rank­ing offi­cials, it is high­ly like­ly that al-Shingi­eti would have had reg­u­lar direct con­tact with bin Laden, as well as a host of oth­er ter­ror­ist lead­ers who reg­u­lar­ly vis­it­ed Khar­toum dur­ing al-Shingieti’s tenure.

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant as al-Shingi­eti will be head­ing the U.S. Mus­lim out­reach to the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion as the pres­i­dent of Amer­i­can Mus­lims for Con­struc­tive Engage­ment (AMCE), a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort by U.S.-based Mus­lim Broth­er­hood front orga­ni­za­tions to infil­trate our fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. A recent open let­ter signed by al-Shingi­eti iden­ti­fies him as AMCE’s pres­i­dent. The group states its vision as:

The Unit­ed States Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty and the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment work­ing togeth­er con­struc­tive­ly in enhanc­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty and nation­al inter­ests of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

The lead orga­ni­za­tion in AMCE, the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute for Islam­ic Thought (IIIT), which al-Shingi­eti serves as region­al direc­tor, is the cur­rent focus of a fed­er­al grand jury probe into ter­ror­ist financ­ing. At least two oth­er AMCE groups, the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) and the Islam­ic Soci­ety of North Amer­i­ca (ISNA), were named by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors as unin­dict­ed co-con­spir­a­tors in the recent Holy Land Foun­da­tion ter­ror­ism finance tri­al, which result­ed in con­vic­tions on all 108 counts. And the Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety (MAS) was iden­ti­fied in fed­er­al court briefs by the Depart­ment of Jus­tice as ‘the overt arm of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Amer­i­ca.’. . .”

“Geno­cide Hench­man Lead­ing Mus­lim Out­reach to Oba­ma” by Patrick Poole; Paja­mas Media; 1/22/2009.

3. In addi­tion to al-Shingi­eti, the AMCE fea­tures Jamal al-Barz­in­ji and Yaqub Mirza, two of the key fig­ures in the SAAR net­work and the milieu tar­get­ed by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002.

” . . . And doc­u­ments received this past August by the Inves­tiga­tive Project through a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request revealed that AMCE steer­ing com­mit­tee mem­ber Jamal al-Barz­in­ji and AMCE advi­so­ry coun­cil mem­ber Yacub Mirza were list­ed in FBI mem­os as ‘mem­bers and lead­ers of the Ikhwan’, which is the Ara­bic term for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty senior agent David Kane has tes­ti­fied in a fed­er­al court affi­davit that ‘Barz­in­ji is not only close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with PIJ [Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad], but also with Hamas.’

A Decem­ber 2002 Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle relates some addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about the ter­ror­ist con­nec­tions of AMCE advi­so­ry coun­cil mem­ber Yacub Mirza:

Accord­ing to court records and Jus­tice Depart­ment doc­u­ments, Mr. Mirza and sev­er­al asso­ciates are sus­pect­ed of fund­ing the Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, which tar­gets Israeli civil­ians with sui­cide bombers. U.S. offi­cials pri­vate­ly say Mr. Mirza and his asso­ciates also have con­nec­tions to al-Qae­da and to oth­er enti­ties offi­cial­ly list­ed by the U.S. as spon­sors of ter­ror­ism.

Anoth­er FBI memo obtained by the Inves­tiga­tive Project states that al-Shingieti’s orga­ni­za­tion, IIIT, was one of the ‘khwan orga­ni­za­tions’ that ‘are involved in orga­niz­ing polit­i­cal sup­port which involves influ­enc­ing both pub­lic opin­ion in the Unit­ed States as well as the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment.’ This polit­i­cal influ­ence cam­paign was con­sid­ered the first phase in a plan ‘to insti­tute the Islam­ic rev­o­lu­tion in the Unit­ed States,’ accord­ing to the FBI doc­u­ment.

It is appro­pri­ate to revis­it these exten­sive con­tacts between AMCE mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions and offi­cials and the inter­na­tion­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work, and even activ­i­ty by AMCE lead­ers in sup­port of Islam­ic ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, because anoth­er Mus­lim Broth­er­hood strate­gic doc­u­ment entered into evi­dence by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in the Holy Land Foun­da­tion tri­al revealed that the activ­i­ty of these orga­ni­za­tions in the U.S. is part of a “grand jihad” to destroy the West from with­in:

The process of set­tle­ment is a “civ­i­liza­tion-jihadist process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan must under­stand that their work in Amer­i­ca is a kind of grand jihad in elim­i­nat­ing and destroy­ing the West­ern civ­i­liza­tion from with­in and “sab­o­tag­ing” its mis­er­able house by their hands and the hands of the believ­ers so that it is elim­i­nat­ed and God’s reli­gion is made vic­to­ri­ous over all oth­er reli­gions.

These con­nec­tions and the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s stat­ed goal of wag­ing a “grand jihad” inside the U.S. raise par­tic­u­lar con­cerns con­sid­er­ing state­ments report­ed by the Wall Street Jour­nal made by al-Shingieti’s cur­rent boss, Jamal al-Barz­in­ji, at a fall 2001 Orga­ni­za­tion of Islam­ic Con­fer­ence meet­ing in Qatar, brag­ging how he and his asso­ciates had suc­cess­ful­ly infil­trat­ed Wash­ing­ton:

At this time, the pres­i­dent and his admin­is­tra­tion are con­tin­u­al­ly seek­ing the coun­sel and input of Amer­i­can Mus­lim lead­ers. At no oth­er time has the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty in Amer­i­ca been more effec­tive in rela­tion to the process­es of Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment.

When con­sid­er­ing the con­cert­ed and exten­sive effort by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood to infil­trate the U.S. gov­ern­ment, we can gain insight into how Abubak­er al-Shingi­eti has tran­si­tioned from being a top offi­cial in the geno­ci­dal Sudanese Mus­lim Broth­er­hood regime, to a top offi­cial in the U.S.-based Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work, to lead­ing the U.S. Mus­lim community’s out­reach to the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion as the head of Amer­i­can Mus­lims for Con­struc­tive Engage­ment. . . .”

Idem.

4. The bal­ance of the pro­gram high­lights intel­li­gence offi­cial Den­nis Blair’s stun­ning appoint­ment  of Charles W. Free­man to a key intel­li­gence post in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. George H.W. Bush’s ambas­sador to Sau­di Ara­bia dur­ing the Gulf War, Free­man is inex­tri­ca­bly tied to that benight­ed coun­try, as well as the al-Taqwa milieu.

“At the request of House Repub­li­cans, a gov­ern­ment watch­dog is exam­in­ing whether the new chair­man of an influ­en­tial U.S. intel­li­gence pan­el has com­pro­mis­ing ties to Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s gov­ern­ment.

At issue is the appoint­ment of Charles Free­man, U.S. ambas­sador to Sau­di Ara­bia dur­ing the Gulf War, to lead the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil. It writes the nation­al intel­li­gence esti­mates, the best judg­ments on crit­i­cal secu­ri­ty issues from the 16 intel­li­gence agen­cies, for the pres­i­dent.

The nation­al intel­li­gence direc­tor, Den­nis Blair, said through a spokes­woman he believes the inspec­tor gen­er­al review­ing the mat­ter “will put to rest any ques­tions about Ambas­sador Free­man’s suit­abil­i­ty, char­ac­ter and finan­cial his­to­ry.”

A dozen House Repub­li­cans, includ­ing House Minor­i­ty Leader John Boehn­er of Ohio and par­ty whip Eric Can­tor of Vir­ginia, asked this week for a probe into whether Free­man has per­son­al, finan­cial or con­trac­tu­al links with the Sau­di gov­ern­ment. . . Free­man until recent­ly was pres­i­dent of the Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Coun­cil, a Wash­ing­ton think tank. The Repub­li­cans claim in their let­ter the Sau­di gov­ern­ment funds the orga­ni­za­tion and there­fore paid his $87,000 annu­al salary.”

“Review of Intel Offi­cial’s Ties to Sau­di Gov­’t” by Pamela Hess [AP]; news.yahoo.com; 3/5/2009.

5. More about Free­man’s back­ground. Note that the MEPC, which he heads, has strong links to Sau­di Ara­bia.

“Dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, a con­stant refrain of Barack Oba­ma and oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates was that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion had severe­ly politi­cized intel­li­gence, result­ing in such dis­as­ters as the war in Iraq.

The irony of course is that, if any­thing, Pres­i­dent Bush bad­ly failed at depoliti­ciz­ing a CIA that was often hos­tile to his agen­da. Wit­ness the repeat­ed leaks of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion that under­cut his poli­cies. It now appears Mr. Oba­ma has appoint­ed a high­ly con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure to head the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil, which is respon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing Nation­al Intel­li­gence Esti­mates. The news Web site Politico.com yes­ter­day report­ed that it could con­firm rumors that a for­mer Ambas­sador to Sau­di Ara­bia, Charles “Chas” Free­man Jr., has been appoint­ed chair­man. (My calls to the White House and the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence pro­duced nei­ther con­fir­ma­tion nor denial.)

With­out ques­tion, Mr. Free­man has a dis­tin­guished résumé, hav­ing served in a long list of State and Defense Depart­ment slots. But also with­out ques­tion, he has dis­tinc­tive polit­i­cal views and affil­i­a­tions, some of which are more than eye­brow-rais­ing.

In 1997, Mr. Free­man suc­ceed­ed George McGov­ern to become the pres­i­dent of the Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Coun­cil. The MEPC pur­ports to be a non­par­ti­san, pub­lic-affairs group that ‘strives to ensure that a full range of U.S. inter­ests and views are con­sid­ered by pol­i­cy mak­ers’ deal­ing with the Mid­dle East. In fact, its orig­i­nal name until 1991 was the Amer­i­can-Arab Affairs Coun­cil, and it is an influ­en­tial Wash­ing­ton mouth­piece for Sau­di Ara­bia.

As Mr. Free­man acknowl­edged in a 2006 inter­view with an out­fit called the Sau­di-US Rela­tions Infor­ma­tion Ser­vice, MEPC owes its endow­ment to the ‘gen­eros­i­ty’ of King Abdul­lah bin Abdul Aziz of Sau­di Ara­bia. Asked in the same inter­view about his orga­ni­za­tion’s cur­rent mis­sion, Mr. Free­man respond­ed, in a reveal­ing non sequitur, that he was ‘delight­ed that the King­dom of Sau­di Ara­bia has, after a long delay, begun to make seri­ous pub­lic rela­tions efforts.’

Among MEPC’s recent activ­i­ties in the pub­lic rela­tions realm, it has pub­lished what it calls an ‘unabridged’ ver­sion of ‘The Israel Lob­by and U.S. For­eign Pol­i­cy’ by pro­fes­sors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. This con­tro­ver­sial 2006 essay argued that Amer­i­can Jews have a ‘stran­gle­hold’ on the U.S. Con­gress, which they employ to tilt the U.S. toward Israel at the expense of broad­er Amer­i­can inter­ests. Mr. Free­man has both endorsed the paper’s the­sis and boast­ed of MEPC’s intre­pid stance: ‘No one else in the Unit­ed States has dared to pub­lish this arti­cle, giv­en the polit­i­cal penal­ties that the Lob­by impos­es on those who crit­i­cize it.’ . . .”

“Oba­ma’s Intel­li­gence Choice” by Gabriel Schoen­feld; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 2/25/2009.

6. A pro­tégé of the BCCI milieu, busi­ness asso­ciate of George Bush, an inti­mate of (and inter­locu­tor for) the milieu of Youssef Nada and Al Qae­da, as well as a key play­er in the GOP eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion, MEPC board meme­ber Talat Oth­man embod­ies the over­lap of the oil busi­ness and the 9/11 Fifth Col­umn. Oth­man, in turn, is a pro­tégé of Abdul­lah Bak­shs, the U.S. busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Bin Laden fam­i­ly between 1976–1982. Osama’s broth­er Salem Bin Laden was rep­re­sent­ed by anoth­er Bush busi­ness asso­ciate, James R. Bath-him­self a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Bin Mah­fouz busi­ness inter­ests (close­ly linked to the sup­port net­work under­ly­ing Al Qae­da.)

“His [Bak­shs] rep­re­sen­ta­tive with­in Harken Ener­gy is not unknown either. Talat Oth­man, is a mem­ber along­side Frank Car­luc­ci of one of America’s most pres­ti­gious think tanks, the Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Coun­cil as well as being a lead­ing Arab-Amer­i­can sup­port­er of the Repub­li­can par­ty.”

(For­bid­den Truth; Jean-Charles Bris­ard & Guil­laume Dasquie; Copy­right 2002 [SC]; Thunder’s Mouth/Nation Books; ISBN 1–56025-414–9; p. 133.)

7. More about the back­ground of for­mer Bin Laden fam­i­ly busi­ness agent Bak­shs,  men­tor and pro­tec­tor of MEPC borad mem­ber Talat Oth­man:

“Between 1976 and 1982, Abdul­lah Taha Bakhshs-an investor in Harken ener­gy, recall-was the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Bin Laden fam­i­ly in the Unit­ed States. He also rep­re­sents Khalid bin Mahfouz’s finan­cial inter­ests in the Mid­dle East. What’s more, sev­er­al sources empha­size the fact that he rep­re­sents the inter­ests of Khalid Sal­im bin Mah­fouz on the board of direc­tors of Invest­corp. In fact, Bin Mah­fouz holds a 25 per­cent stake in Invest­corp, thanks to Bakhsh’s ser­vices.”

(Ibid.; p. 136.)

8. On April 4 (2002), Trea­sury Sec­re­tary O’Neill met with pow­er­ful Islamist Repub­li­cans whose spheres of inter­est over­lap those of the insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als tar­get­ed by the Trea­sury Depart­ment on the March 20 coun­tert­er­ror raids. Pow­er­ful GOP oper­a­tive Grover Norquist and his Islam­ic Insti­tute was at the cen­ter of this nexus. (”O’Neill Met Mus­lim Activists Tied to Char­i­ties” by Glenn R. Simp­son [with Roger Thurow]; Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/18/2002; p. A4.)

9. One of the most impor­tant of these inter­locu­tors on behalf of the Al Qaeda/Al Taqwa milieu was Talat Oth­man.

“Among the Mus­lim lead­ers attend­ing [the meet­ing with O’Neill] was Talat Oth­man, a long­time asso­ciate and sup­port­er of Pres­i­dent Bush’s fam­i­ly, who gave a bene­dic­tion at the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia in August 2000. . . But he [Oth­man] also serves [with Islam­ic Insti­tute co-founder Jamal Barz­in­ji] on the board of Amana Mutu­al funds Trust, an invest­ment firm found­ed by M. Yac­qub Mirza, the North­ern Vir­ginia busi­ness­man who set up most of the enti­ties tar­get­ed by the Trea­sury and whose tax records were sought in the raid.”

(Idem.)

10. The Amana orga­ni­za­tion has numer­ous areas of over­lap with orga­ni­za­tions described as being impli­cat­ed in ter­ror­ism and the milieu of Al Qaeda/Al Taqwa.

“Two non­prof­its affil­i­at­ed with Mr. Mirza and named in the search war­rant, the SAAR Foun­da­tion Inc. and the Her­itage Edu­ca­tion Trust Inc., held large blocks of shares in Amana’s mutu­al funds in 1997, accord­ing to SEC records. The SEC doc­u­ments and oth­er records detail­ing con­nec­tions between Mr. Oth­man and the Islam­ic Insti­tute [on the board of which Mr. Oth­man serves] and the raid­ed groups were com­piled by the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty News Ser­vice, a Wash­ing­ton based non­prof­it research group.”

(Idem.)

11. Fur­ther details have emerged about the links between Oth­man, Al Taqwa and the GOP/Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Note that Jamal Barz­in­ji is part of the “mod­er­ate” Mus­lim out­reach to the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion.

“Mr. Oth­man also is on the board of Mr. Saffuri’s [and Norquist’s] Islam­ic Insti­tute, the GOP-lean­ing group that received $20,000.00 from the Safa Trust, one of the raid’s tar­gets. The pres­i­dent of the Safa Trust, Jamal Barz­in­ji, is a for­mer busi­ness asso­ciate of Switzer­land based investor Youssef Nada, whose assets were frozen last fall after the Trea­sury des­ig­nat­ed him a per­son sus­pect­ed of giv­ing aid to ter­ror­ists.”

(Idem.)

12. As seen below, Othman’s links to Bush are pro­found.

“Mr. Oth­man has ties to the Bush fam­i­ly going back to the 1980’s, when he served with George W. Bush on the board of a Texas petro­le­um firm, Harken Oil & Gas Inc. Mr. Oth­man has vis­it­ed the White House dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tions of both Pres­i­dent Bush and his father George H.W. Bush.”

(Idem.)

13. High­light­ing one of the prin­ci­pal focal points of the dis­cus­sion, the pro­gram fur­ther delin­eates major areas of inter­sec­tion between the labyrinthine net­work attacked in the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green
Quest raids, the Al Taqwa milieu, and the Repub­li­can Par­ty. A recent Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle described some of the orga­ni­za­tions tar­get­ed in the raids. Note that Oth­man asso­ciate Yac­qub Mirza is–along with Barzinji–one of the “mod­er­ates” involved with Mus­lim out­reach to the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. Barz­in­ji, Oth­man and Mirza are all part of the milieu tar­get­ed by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids.

“These include Al-Taqwa Man­age­ment, a recent­ly liq­ui­dat­ed Swiss com­pa­ny the U.S. gov­ern­ment believes act­ed as a banker for Osama bin Laden’s al Qae­da ter­ror­ist net­work. . . Two peo­ple affil­i­at­ed with the com­pa­nies and char­i­ties are linked by records to enti­ties already des­ig­nat­ed as ter­ror­ist by the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Hisham Al-Tal­ib, who served as an offi­cer of SAAR, the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute of Islam­ic Thought and Safa Trust Inc., anoth­er Mirza char­i­ty, dur­ing the 1970’s was an offi­cer of firms run by Youssef M. Nada, records show. Mr. Nada is a Switzer­land-based busi­ness­man whose assets have been frozen by the U.S. for alleged involve­ment in ter­ror­ist financ­ing, and is alleged by U.S. offi­cials to be a key fig­ure in the Taqwa net­work. . .Jamal Barz­in­ji, an offi­cer of Mr. Mirza’s com­pa­ny Mar-Jac and oth­er enti­ties, also was involved with Mr. Nada’s com­pa­nies in the 1970’s, accord­ing to bank doc­u­ments from Liecht­en­stein. A mes­sage was left yes­ter­day for Mr. Barz­in­ji at his address in Hern­don. Mr. Barz­in­ji and Mr. Tal­ib live across the street from each oth­er. A third busi­ness asso­ciate of Mr. Nada, Ali Ghaleb Him­mat (who also has been des­ig­nat­ed by the Trea­sury as aid­ing ter­ror­ism), is list­ed as an offi­cial of the Gene­va branch of anoth­er char­i­ty oper­at­ed by Mr. Mirza, the Inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic Char­i­ta­ble Orga­ni­za­tion.”

(”Funds Under Ter­ror Probe Flowed From Off­shore” by Glenn R. Simp­son [with Michael M. Phillips]; Wall Street Jour­nal; 3/22/2002; p. A4.)

14. In addi­tion to Car­lyle Group head Frank Car­luc­ci and Oth­man, oth­er direc­tors of Free­man’s MEPC include Cur­tis Brand (retired Chair­man of Exxon­Mo­bil, Sau­di Ara­bia, Inc. and Dr. Fuad A. Rib­ani, Direc­tor, Research and Devel­op­ment of the Sau­di Bin­ladin Group.

Source­watch arti­cle on Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Coun­cil.

15. More about Free­man’s MEPC and the views that they prop­a­gate were pre­sent­ed in an op-ed col­umn in The Wash­ing­ton Times. Note that that paper should be approached with the great­est cau­tion, as a gen­er­al consideration–available infor­ma­tion sug­gests that its par­ent organization–the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church–is an exten­sion of the Japan­ese Patri­ot­ic Soci­eties that brought fas­cism to Japan.

“Ambas­sador Charles W. ‘Chas’ Free­man Jr.‘s nom­i­na­tion as chair­man of the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil (NIC) has quick­ly become the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s most con­tro­ver­sial appoint­ment to date.

Mr. Free­man’s two post-gov­ern­ment activ­i­ties involved being a de fac­to employ­ee of Sau­di Ara­bia. In exchange, he received lav­ish sup­port for his Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Cen­ter (MEPC) and lucra­tive con­tracts for the con­sult­ing firm he found­ed to guide inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies into find­ing roy­al fam­i­ly-con­nect­ed part­ners with­in the Sau­di elite. This rais­es the rea­son­able ques­tions as to whether Ambas­sador Free­man act­ed as an unreg­is­tered Sau­di agent. This role has cre­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant con­cern about his impar­tial­i­ty as chief U.S. intel­li­gence ana­lyst on mat­ters that will clear­ly involve Sau­di views and inter­ests.

While many for­mer diplo­mats, espe­cial­ly for­mer Sau­di ambas­sadors, are not known for being big fans of Israel, Mr. Free­man presided over a cen­ter and pub­li­ca­tion fea­tur­ing hos­til­i­ty to Israel that is beyond the broad­est main­stream of U.S. think­ing on the region. In addi­tion, his slav­ish fol­low­ing of the Sau­di ‘par­ty line’ has involved Mr. Free­man in some embar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tions.

For exam­ple the MEPC, which receives major fund­ing from the Sau­di roy­al fam­i­ly, pub­lish­es a resource for Amer­i­can teach­ers called ‘Arab World Stud­ies Note­book.’ This note­book includes bizarre his­tor­i­cal anom­alies, such as that Mus­lims inhab­it­ed the New World in pre-Columbian times, and Eng­lish explor­ers met “Iro­quois and Algo­nquin chiefs with names like Abdul-Rahim and Abdal­lah Ibn Malik.”

Anoth­er MEPC project is the quar­ter­ly mag­a­zine, Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy, the edi­to­r­i­al pages of which are filled with dis­turbing­ly rad­i­cal anti-Israel polemics. Claims such as the Iraq war was waged for the Unit­ed States on behalf of Israel (fall 2008 issue) or that the Unit­ed States allows Israel to ‘call the shots’ on pol­i­cy in the region, includ­ing a strat­e­gy of ‘buy­ing off Fatah and starv­ing Hamas’ that is ‘an Israeli plan that Wash­ing­ton has had to accept’ (fall 2007 issue). Mr. Free­man’s will­ing­ness to push these extreme posi­tions for finan­cial reward is trou­bling.

The chair­man of the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil serves many of the same func­tions as the edi­tor of a jour­nal. He must review, edit, add con­text to and decide what to present in terms of good intel­li­gence.

Mr. Free­man’s judg­ment may be taint­ed because of a desire to stay in the good graces of the House of Saud for his post-NIC career. As long as we are fight­ing a glob­al war on Islam­ic ter­ror­ism, Mr. Free­man’s judg­ment as a de fac­to employ­ee of the Sau­di gov­ern­ment should trou­ble cit­i­zens and sup­port­ers of the Unit­ed States. . . .”

“BENOIT: Big Nation­al Intel­li­gence Mis­step” by Sam­my Benoit; The Wash­ing­ton Times; 3/4/2009.

16. Free­man had con­tact with, and ran inter­fer­ence for, the bin Laden fam­i­ly after 9/11! This is deeply sin­is­ter and sug­gests at least the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Free­man may have been an acces­so­ry after the fact in 9/11. The ques­tion is–“What did Charles Free­man know and when did he know it?” In fact the SICO com­pa­ny, run by Yeslam Bin­laden, is at the epi­cen­ter of the inves­ti­ga­tion into 9/11. Oth­er mem­bers of the bin Laden fam­i­ly have been linked to al-Qae­da.

Charles Free­man, Obama’s report­ed pick for chair­man of the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil, talked busi­ness with the Bin Laden fam­i­ly even after Sep­tem­ber 11.

Amid the crit­i­cism that has already emerged about Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s report­ed pick for the pow­er­ful posi­tion of chair­man of the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil, there is an as-yet unmen­tioned prob­lem that is like­ly cause even big­ger trou­bles: He had busi­ness ties to the bin Laden fam­i­ly after the 9/11 attacks.

Charles ‘Chas’ Free­man, a for­mer US ambas­sador to Sau­di Ara­bia, had busi­ness con­nec­tions with the bin Laden fam­i­ly and their Sau­di Bin­laden Group, a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar con­struc­tion con­glom­er­ate found­ed by the father of Osama bin Laden. As chair­man of Projects Inter­na­tion­al Inc., a com­pa­ny that devel­ops inter­na­tion­al busi­ness deals, Mr. Free­man assert­ed in an inter­view with the Asso­ci­at­ed Press less than a month after Sep­tem­ber 11 that he was still ‘dis­cussing pro­pos­als with the Bin­laden Group—and that won’t change.’

In an inter­view, Free­man con­test­ed the notion that inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies who had busi­ness with the bin Laden fam­i­ly should be ‘run­ning for pub­lic-rela­tions cov­er’, not­ing that bin Laden was still ‘a very hon­ored name in the king­dom [of Sau­di Ara­bia].’

In the same inter­view, Free­man also con­test­ed the notion that inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies who had busi­ness with the bin Laden fam­i­ly should be “run­ning for pub­lic-rela­tions cov­er,” not­ing that bin Laden was still ‘a very hon­ored name in the king­dom [of Sau­di Ara­bia]’, despite its fam­i­ly tie to the Al-Qae­da leader. (Free­man wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly avail­able for com­ment.)

Mr. Free­man fre­quent­ly main­tained that the larg­er bin Laden fam­i­ly was close­ly aligned with Amer­i­can inter­ests. Con­trary to the notion that the fam­i­ly was still sup­port­ing and even fund­ing Osama bin Laden, the bin Laden fam­i­ly and its busi­ness con­glom­er­ate were part of the ‘estab­lish­ment that Osama’s try­ing to over­throw,’ as Mr. Free­man told The Wall Street Jour­nal in a sep­a­rate inter­view less than two weeks after Sep­tem­ber 11.

How­ev­er, the Jour­nal also not­ed that Free­man’s con­nec­tions with the bin Laden fam­i­ly went beyond busi­ness: Free­man’s Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Coun­cil, a think tank ded­i­cat­ed to Mideast issues, was receiv­ing ‘tens of thou­sands of dol­lars a year from the bin Laden fam­i­ly’ at that time. Since the rumors of his appoint­ment broke, Free­man has been crit­i­cized because the pro-Sau­di MEPC also accept­ed dona­tions in the mil­lions of dol­lars from the Sau­di roy­al fam­i­ly.

Sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion by US intel­li­gence agen­cies and jour­nal­ists of bin Laden fam­i­ly ties to Al-Qae­da and Osama bin Laden raised ques­tions about the authen­tic­i­ty of the fam­i­ly’s claim of finan­cial and emo­tion­al dis­tance from the world’s most-want­ed ter­ror leader. A num­ber of experts, includ­ing Vin­cent Can­nistro, a for­mer CIA coun­tert­er­ror­ism spe­cial­ist, assert that while some mem­bers of the bin Laden fam­i­ly have dis­owned Osama bin Laden in a com­plete sense, oth­er fac­tions have not. Car­men bin Laden, a sis­ter-in-law of Osama, told Der Spiegel that ‘bin Ladens nev­er dis­owned Osama; in this fam­i­ly, a broth­er remains a broth­er, no mat­ter what he has done.’ . . .”

“Oba­ma Appo­ing­tee Had Ties to Bin Laden Fam­i­ly” by Ash­ley Rinds­berg; thedailybeast.com; 2/24/2009.

17. Oba­ma’s diplo­mat­ic point man for Syria–Frederic C. Hof–also serves on the Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Coun­cil.

“ ‘Mr. Hof cur­rent­ly serves on the Nation­al Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee of the Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Coun­cil. . . .”

“Fred­er­ic C. Hof”; sourcewatch.org.

18. An encour­ag­ing sign may be found in Oba­ma’s deci­sion to resist an order from a Bush judi­cial appointee that would have ben­e­fit­ed the jihadist Al-Hara­main.

“A fed­er­al appeals court reject­ed the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s attempt Fri­day to stop a judge in San Fran­cis­co from review­ing a chal­lenge to the wire­tap­ping pro­gram ordered by for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush.

Hours lat­er, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s Jus­tice Depart­ment filed papers that appeared to defy the judge’s order to allow lawyers for an Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tion to see a clas­si­fied sur­veil­lance doc­u­ment at the heart of the case. The depart­ment said the judge had no pow­er to enforce such an order.

Chief U.S. Dis­trict Judge Vaughn Walk­er had giv­en the depart­ment until Fri­day to explain how it would com­ply with his order last month that would let attor­neys for Al-Hara­main Islam­ic Foun­da­tion review the doc­u­ment after obtain­ing secu­ri­ty clear­ances.

The doc­u­ment report­ed­ly showed that the orga­ni­za­tion had been wire­tapped, evi­dence the group needs to estab­lish its right to chal­lenge the legal­i­ty of the sur­veil­lance. A gov­ern­ment agency inad­ver­tent­ly sent the papers in 2004 to Al-Hara­main dur­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion that result­ed in its clas­si­fi­ca­tion as a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.

Bush acknowl­edged in 2005 that he had ordered the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency to inter­cept phone calls and e‑mails between Amer­i­cans and sus­pect­ed for­eign ter­ror­ists with­out seek­ing approval from Con­gress and the courts. Oth­er suits chal­leng­ing the sur­veil­lance pro­gram have been dis­missed because plain­tiffs were unable to show they were tar­gets.

Al-Hara­main returned the clas­si­fied doc­u­ment to the gov­ern­ment and has been barred from rely­ing on it to prove its right to sue. But in a Jan. 5 rul­ing deny­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s request to dis­miss the group’s suit, Walk­er said Al-Hara­main had shown through offi­cials’ state­ments that it had prob­a­bly been wire­tapped. . . .”

“Feds Defy Judge’s Order in Islam­ic Group Case” by Bob Egelko; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 2/28/2009.