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New Jersey and Terrorism… Perfect Together PART 1

Ter­ror­ism is oper­at­ing in NJ unchecked, and Bush’s Jus­tice Dept knows about it.

A FOUR PART SERIES
by Allan P. Dun­can

Intro­duc­tion

Between the Fall of 1998 and June 2001, a group of Mid­dle East­ern men liv­ing in New Jer­sey is caught on tape in an ATF weapons sting con­spir­ing to buy mil­lions of dol­lars of weapons includ­ing com­po­nents for nuclear bombs. Three years after the oper­a­tion end­ed, all of the peo­ple involved in the deal are free.

Fed­er­al agents who worked on the case were frus­trat­ed because it was han­dled as a crim­i­nal case instead of a coun­tert­er­ror­ism case. In an in depth look at Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back I reveal that one of the sus­pects who was accused of skim­ming mil­lions of dol­lars from a fraud­u­lent HMO to off­shore accounts where the mon­ey alleged­ly went to finance ter­ror­ism, was defend­ed in the HMO case by a lawyer who lat­er became the Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al in charge of the Crim­i­nal Divi­sion, under John Ashcroft. The lawyer, Michael Chertoff, was in his posi­tion as Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al when Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back end­ed and his client was nev­er arrest­ed even though an intel­li­gence doc­u­ment claimed he and his broth­er in Egypt had links to Osama Bin Laden.

Is this why the ATF oper­a­tion was han­dled as a crim­i­nal case and not a ter­ror­ism case by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment?

I will also exam­ine the his­to­ry of ter­ror links to the North Jer­sey area from before the 1993 bomb­ing of the World Trade Cen­ter right up until 9–11. Michael Chertoff, by the way, was the U.S. Attor­ney for the Dis­trict of New Jer­sey from 1990–1994 and was in office when the first attack on the World Trade Cen­ter took place. For rea­sons that escape me, the Jer­sey City area and par­tic­u­lar­ly the Al Salam mosque from which the Blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rah­man spewed his hatred, was allowed to con­tin­ue to be one of the major hubs of ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty in the Unit­ed States.

Part 1: The Jer­sey City Rat Pack

Recent head­lines over the past two weeks announced the arrest of two lead­ers of an Albany , New York mosque for alleged­ly laun­der­ing mon­ey involved in the sale of a shoul­der fired mis­sile. The arrests were the result of a year long weapons sting con­duct­ed by the FBI. (1)

Any­time some­one involved in plan­ning ter­ror­ism on US soil is tak­en off the streets it should be plas­tered all over the head­lines to announce to the world that anoth­er ter­ror­ist is in the slam­mer and is unable to hurt, maim or kill inno­cent Amer­i­can cit­i­zens.

This case pales in com­par­i­son, how­ev­er, to a pre‑9–11 weapon sting in which a 32 mil­lion dol­lar deal for a ship load of weapons, 500 Stinger Mis­siles, nuclear trig­gers, weapons grade plu­to­ni­um and “heavy water” for a nuclear dirty bomb were the weapons of choice of Mid­dle East­ern men seek­ing to arm Osama Bin Laden and the Tal­iban. This case nev­er made scream­ing head­lines when it end­ed in June 2001 and most peo­ple have nev­er head about it. The attacks on 9–11 were three months away and the Amer­i­can press was not as eager to pounce on every sto­ry that even men­tioned the word ter­ror­ist. In addi­tion to the weapons deal, the World Trade Cen­ter was specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned as a future tar­get by one of the char­ac­ters in this dra­ma and yet none of the peo­ple involved in this case are cur­rent­ly in prison. Why?

I ran across ref­er­ences to Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back while doing research on ter­ror­ism and Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion well over a year ago. I found out that a for­mer con man named Randy Glass had posed as an under­cov­er weapons deal­er in an attempt to lure Mid­dle East­ern weapons buy­ers to the US in a sting oper­a­tion run by the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co and Firearms (ATF) with sup­port from the FBI and Cus­toms.

The sting oper­a­tion was doc­u­ment­ed in two episodes of Date­line NBC; On the trail of arms mer­chants, which aired on August 2, 2002 (2), and Stinger mis­sile sting oper­a­tion, which was broad­cast on March 18, 2003 . (3)

The case came to a screech­ing halt with the arrest of only a hand­ful of sus­pects in June of 2001 even though there was ample evi­dence that some of the peo­ple who were attempt­ing to buy these weapons had con­nec­tions with the Tal­iban, Al Qae­da and Osama Bin Laden him­self. The two Date­line NBC sto­ries cit­ed the frus­tra­tion of Spe­cial Agents who worked on the oper­a­tion and ques­tioned why the case hadn’t received more atten­tion from high­er ups in fed­er­al law enforce­ment.

I decid­ed to look deep­er into the case myself and dis­cov­ered some shock­ing infor­ma­tion. I have held onto this infor­ma­tion for over a year. I had passed it on to a few lawyers and jour­nal­ists in hopes that they would fol­low-up on my dis­cov­er­ies, but to date none of them have, so I have decid­ed to divulge the info myself.

I dis­cov­ered that the “ter­ror sup­port sys­tem sup­ply­ing U.S. ene­mies with sophis­ti­cat­ed weapons” includ­ed three men from New Jer­sey . As I looked deep­er into the sto­ry, I real­ized that one of the men lived in the same coun­ty wher
e I worked at the time, and that all of them had worked in the city where one of my clos­est rel­a­tives lives.

Need­less to say, I was shocked to think that two of these same men who plot­ted to secure com­po­nents for nuclear weapons and one of whom alleged­ly fun­neled mil­lions of dol­lars to Osama Bin Laden in the years lead­ing up to 9–11, were still free and allowed to roam the streets of New Jer­sey.

Enter the play­ers in the Gar­den State Soap Opera…

Diaa Moshen

The August 2, 2002 edi­tion of Date­line NBC revealed that Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back began in the Fall of 1998 and was a two and a half year inves­ti­ga­tion. One of the first con­tacts Randy Glass made was with an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen born in Egypt who moved to New Jer­sey about 32 years ago named Diaa Mohsen. Moshen implied that he rep­re­sent­ed Arab men and that they need­ed to be very care­ful as to how they did busi­ness.

As the rela­tion­ship between Randy Glass and Diaa Moshen devel­oped they talked specif­i­cal­ly about what kinds of weapons Moshen’s con­tacts want­ed and who they would be going to. The fol­low­ing quotes are excerpts from taped con­ver­sa­tions between Glass and Moshen from the Date­line tran­script:

Diaa Mohsen: “They use rock­et grenades. They have how­itiz­er. They have like 120 mil­lime­ter how­itiz­er.”
Randy Glass: “What is that? That’s like a — what’s a how­itiz­er? It’s like a can­non?”
Diaa Mohsen: “Artillery.”
Glass: “It’s like artillery like in the movies.”
Diaa Mohsen: “Yeah”.”

“And then Glass’s con­tact tells him where the poten­tial cus­tomers can be found.

Diaa Mohsen: “I’ll take you to the bor­der between Afghanistan and Pak­istan .”

Final­ly, he con­firms just what kind of peo­ple he’s deal­ing with.

Diaa Mohsen: “You know those f——-g peo­ple, they are ter­ror­ists.”
Randy Glass: “So these are ter­ror­ists?”
Diaa Mohsen: “Sure.”

Randy Glass: “That’s won­der­ful.”

And what else do the ter­ror­ists want? Spe­cial tech­nol­o­gy, he says, for the dead­liest of weapons.

Randy Glass: “What is that?”
Diaa Mohsen: “One of the com­po­nents for a nuclear weapon.””
(2)

Mohsen want­ed proof that Glass could actu­al­ly deliv­er weapons, so on Jan­u­ary 21, 1999 a meet­ing was set up in a park­ing lot in New Jer­sey where Randy showed him a Stinger Mis­sile. A pho­to was tak­en of Moshen hold­ing the weapon and he was then off to Egypt to prove to his asso­ciates that Glass was legit.

Dick Stoltz, a dec­o­rat­ed vet­er­an agent with ATF, posed as an asso­ciate of Randy’s dur­ing the oper­a­tion. Their ini­tial meet­ing with some Egypt­ian men fell through, but they were soon put in touch with more peo­ple in Jer­sey City who were eager to deal with them.


Mohamed Malik


The next per­son Diaa Moshen put Randy Glass in touch with was, Mohamed “Mike” Malik, a small busi­ness­man in Jer­sey City who owned con­ve­nience stores, a laun­dro­mat and a long dis­tance phone card com­pa­ny. On the phone with Malik, Randy agrees to trav­el to New York City to meet a buy­er referred to in the Date­line tran­script as “Abbas”. I have since deter­mined that the full name of “Abbas” was Raja Ghu­lam Abbas.

Excerpts from the Date­line tran­script:

“On July 22, 1999 , Glass flew to New York for a meet­ing at the trendy Tribeca Grill, a restau­rant part­ly owned by actor Robert DeNiro. It was din­ner for four: Glass, his first con­tact, Diaa Mohsen; the Jer­sey City busi­ness­man Mike Malik and the mys­tery man; Abbas.”

“Abbas gave Glass a busi­ness card say­ing he worked for Malik’s long dis­tance phone card com­pa­ny. Glass was wear­ing a wire.

Mixed in with the din­ner crowd were agents from the FBI’s Ter­ror­ism Task Force in case any­thing went wrong. Glass says Abbas was all busi­ness.
“Basi­cal­ly what he told me was that they were inter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing a large amount of sophis­ti­cat­ed weapons sys­tems,” says Glass. “And they want­ed an actu­al ship load, not a small amount.”
And who was Abbas rep­re­sent­ing in this trans­ac­tion?
“Abbas was rep­re­sent­ed to me as being an ISI agent,” says Glass.
ISI is the offi­cial intel­li­gence agency, like the CIA, of Pak­istan . And this is where the stakes real­ly get high. Because, if Abbas was telling the truth, Randy Glass and the feds were about to cut an ille­gal weapons deal with a Pak­istani intel­li­gence oper­a­tive linked to ter­ror­ists.”

“Then, in the mid­dle of a crowd­ed New York restau­rant, Glass s
ays the talk turned to some­thing much more omi­nous: com­po­nents for nuclear weapons, trig­ger­ing devices and plu­to­ni­um.
“They inquired if it was avail­able,” says Glass.
What did Glass say? “Yes,” says Glass.
And they respond­ed? “They were inter­est­ed,” says Glass.
Dick Stoltz, the vet­er­an under­cov­er agent with the Bureau of Alco­hol Tobac­co and Firearms who worked the case, con­firms Randy Glass’s account.
Stoltz had to real­ize that the peo­ple being talked about as cus­tomers for these weapons were the most want­ed ter­ror­ists in the world.
“That’s cor­rect,” says Stoltz.
Bin Laden? “Cor­rect,” says Stoltz.
Did Stoltz think they were seri­ous? “Oh absolute­ly,” he says.
In fact, Stoltz says Randy Glass’s din­ner com­pan­ions were checked out by U.S. intel­li­gence experts and found to have real con­nec­tions.
“We did con­firm through var­i­ous sources that Abbas and Malik did have links to weapons traf­fick­ing groups and mil­i­tant oper­a­tions,” says Stoltz.”
(2)

About this meet­ing, John Pacen­ti, in a Palm Beach Post arti­cle dat­ed August 2, 2002 titled, Con Man Turned Patri­ot Tells All states:

“At the meet­ing Abbas said Amer­i­cans are the ene­my and they will have no prob­lem blow­ing up this entire restau­rant because it’s full of Amer­i­cans,” Glass said. “As we leave the restau­rant, Abbas turns and says, ‘those tow­ers (the World Trade Cen­ter ) are com­ing down.’ ”

Despite that infor­ma­tion, avail­able to the gov­ern­ment two years before the World Trade Cen­ter attack, the FBI’s ter­ror­ism task force did­n’t appear to take the threat seri­ous­ly, Glass said.” (4)

So now we have an alleged mem­ber of the Pak­istani ISI, Raja Ghu­lam Abbas, meet­ing with Randy Glass in New York City , talk­ing about buy­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed weapons, com­po­nents for nuclear arms and talk­ing about the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers com­ing down. Abbas also presents a busi­ness card show­ing that he is in busi­ness with Mohamed “Mike” Malik. The entire meet­ing was record­ed and accord­ing to Randy, mem­bers of the FBI Ter­ror­ism Task Force were present in case any­thing went wrong.

A few weeks after the meet­ing the buy­ers flew to Flori­da to see the weapons for sale. From the August 2nd Date­line tran­script we find this:

“Stoltz says that more than any­thing else they want­ed mate­ri­als for nuclear weapons, espe­cial­ly a sub­stance called heavy water, which is used to make weapons grade plu­to­ni­um.

Some­times, as on this tape, Abbas used a code name, refer­ring to heavy water as “sweet water.”

Abbas: “And we hook up to the guys which ... in Pak­istan work for us . . .”
Randy Glass: “Yeah, of course.”
Abbas: “So we say to him what­ev­er you need, any­thing up to the sweet water, you know?”
Randy Glass: “Yes.”

“They would tell me: ‘The peo­ple that I’m deal­ing with, they have to have the heavy water,’” says Stoltz.
And unless they got it, Stoltz was told the deal was off. That was a deal break­er.
“That was a deal break­er,” says Stoltz. “They were flex­i­ble maybe on mil­i­tary parts for air­planes or small arms or maybe even Stingers, but they always came back to square one. Heavy water.”
For nuclear weapons?
“Cor­rect,” says Stoltz.
And that wasn’t all the arms deal­ers want­ed. “Date­line” has learned that Mike Malik gave the under­cov­er agents a list of radioac­tive chem­i­cals that could be used to make a so-called dirty bomb — con­ven­tion­al explo­sives laced with radioac­tive mate­ri­als. Bin Laden’s ter­ror­ists are believed to have talked about det­o­nat­ing such a bomb in a major U.S. city to spread tox­ic radi­a­tion.
Malik and Abbas were so seri­ous about clos­ing a deal, Stoltz says, they went back to Pak­istan to talk to their cus­tomers in per­son. Then, Stoltz says, Abbas informed him there was one more con­di­tion: he want­ed to bring a Pak­istani nuclear sci­en­tist to Amer­i­ca who could inspect the nuclear mate­ri­als that would be part of the deal. And he told Stoltz the name of the sci­en­tist.
Did Stoltz check this out?
“Of course it was passed up the line and it was con­firmed that this per­son did exist and that’s what he did for the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment,” says Stoltz. “That he was in the field of atom­ic weapons. He was a sci­en­tist.”” (2)

Now we have Mohamed “Mike” Malik not only trav­el­ing with Abbas to Flori­da with a pri­or­i­ty of secur­ing heavy water for a dirty bomb, but Malik him­self com­ing up with a shop­ping “list of radioac­tive chem­i­cals that could be used to make a so-called dirty bomb — con­ven­tion­al explo­sives laced with radioac­tive mate­ri­als.”

The group final­ly reached an agree­ment in Decem­ber of 2000.

“The buy­ers would pay $32 mil­lion over sev­er­al years. The first ship­ments would be con­ven­tion­al weapons. Nuclear com­po­nents would come lat­er. A Flori­da bank account was set up to receive the $32 mil­lion wire trans­fer that was sup­posed to come from a bank in the Mid­dle East­ern emi­rate of Dubai . Fed­er­al agents wait­ed six months, but the mon­ey nev­er came.
“And at that point, it was decid­ed that we would take the case down,” says Stoltz. “We thought we had gone about as far as we could with it.”

The Date­line sto­ry states that,

Discussion

One comment for “New Jersey and Terrorism… Perfect Together PART 1”

  1. I was inter­est­ed to see who Diaa Mohsen lived with at 927 Pavo­nia.

    John W Yen­go, seemed to be the same John Yen­go who hung out with mob­sters such as Elvis Irizarry.

    Posted by adam | April 17, 2016, 7:51 am

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