by Allan P. Dun­can Sep­tem­ber 4, 2004

Part 2: The Good Doc­tor Who Wasn’t So Good

In Part 1 of this series I intro­duced you to three men from Jer­sey City who attempt­ed to set up a weapons deal which includ­ed among oth­er things, hun­dreds of Stinger Mis­siles and com­po­nents for nuclear weapons. The weapons deal was part of a two and a half year inves­ti­ga­tion called Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back which cul­mi­nat­ed with the arrests of two of the Jer­sey City men in June of 2001.

Diaa Moshen was sen­tenced to 30 months in prison and Mohamed Malik was freed and had his case sealed and purged of all ref­er­ences to Pak­istan . Both men are now free and con­tin­ue to walk the streets of New Jer­sey .

The third man, Raja Ghu­lam Abbas, an alleged Pak­istani ISI Agent, fled the coun­try and the last I heard was liv­ing in Pak­istan .

Dur­ing a meet­ing at Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Grill on July 22, 1999 , Abbas point­ed towards the World Trade Cen­ter and stat­ed “those tow­ers are com­ing down.” Despite the fact that the meet­ing was record­ed and was being watched by mem­bers of the FBI’s Ter­ror­ism Task Force, the threat was appar­ent­ly not tak­en seri­ous­ly. (4)

Randy Glass, the for­mer con-man who posed as a weapons deal­er dur­ing Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back, was so upset about the ref­er­ences to the Tow­ers com­ing down, that after the inves­ti­ga­tion end­ed he noti­fied his elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Flori­da and report­ed the threats. Accord­ing to an arti­cle in the Palm Beach Post, titled Intel­li­gence Pan­el Hears from Glass, by John Pacen­ti pub­lished on Octo­ber 17, 2002 :

“In August 2001, just before Glass start­ed to serve a sev­en-month sen­tence for a $6 mil­lion jew­el­ry scam, he said he reached out to Sen. Bob Gra­ham and U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler. He said he told staffers for both law­mak­ers that a Pak­istani oper­a­tive work­ing for the Tal­iban known as R.G. Abbas made three ref­er­ences to immi­nent plans to attack the World Trade Cen­ter dur­ing the probe, which end­ed in June 2001.

At one meet­ing at New York ‘s Tribeca Grill caught on tape, Abbas point­ed to the World Trade Cen­ter and said, “Those tow­ers are com­ing down,” Glass said.” (8)

Fur­ther on in the arti­cle Pacen­ti reports:

“Gra­ham acknowl­edged at news con­fer­ence in Boca Raton last month that Glass had con­tact with his office before Sept. 11, 2001, about an attack on the World Trade Cen­ter. “I was con­cerned about that and a dozen oth­er pieces of infor­ma­tion which emanat­ed from the sum­mer of 2001,” the sen­a­tor said.” (8)

WPTV, an NBC affil­i­ate in Flori­da did a news report where Sen­a­tor Gra­ham is con­front­ed about the Glass info and a video of the sto­ry can be viewed online by check­ing out The Randy Glass Video in the Resources sec­tion at the end of this arti­cle.

In Part 1 of this series, I men­tioned the fact that Gen­er­al Mah­moud Ahmad, the head of the Pak­istani ISI, had been sacked from his posi­tion after it was deter­mined that he had autho­rized a wire trans­fer of $100,000 to Mohammed Atta short­ly before 9–11. (6)

On the morn­ing of 9–11, Gen­er­al Ahmad was at a break­fast meet­ing in Wash­ing­ton D.C. with Sen­a­tor Bob Gra­ham and Con­gress­man Porter Goss, the Chair­men of the Sen­ate and House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tees. (9) One would think that as soon as Sen­a­tor Gra­ham heard about the attack on the World Trade Cen­ter , he would have remem­bered the infor­ma­tion Randy Glass had shared with him about the threats.

Iron­ic, isn’t it, that Gra­ham was sit­ting with the head of the Pak­istani ISI at the exact same time the attacks took place when he had already been warned of a threat that had come direct­ly from the lips of an alleged Pak­istani ISI Agent? No won­der Sen­a­tor Gra­ham act­ed dumb when con­front­ed with the pre 9–11 Glass warn­ing in the WPTV news sto­ry.

I’ve also nev­er heard a response from either Sen­a­tor Bob Gra­ham or Con­gress­man Porter Goss about what their thoughts were when it was revealed that the guy they had break­fast with on 9–11 had actu­al­ly autho­rized the trans­fer of mon­ey to Mohammed Atta?

Porter Goss has now been nom­i­nat­ed by Pres­i­dent Bush to head the CIA. Many peo­ple have been lob­by­ing to have Goss ques­tioned about his meet­ing with Gen­er­al Ahmad on 9–11 but I’m bet­ting that nobody has the guts to even bring it up dur­ing his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings and it seems to be a fore­gone con­clu­sion that he will breeze though the hear­ings with no prob­lem.

I also allud­ed in Part 1, to frus­tra­tions voiced by intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­als over the lack of atten­tion Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back received from high­er ups in Law Enforce­ment. ATF Spe­cial Agent Dick Stoltz had this to say about Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back:

“Stoltz says he’s sur­prised that all the evi­dence and intel­li­gence the case gen­er­at­ed wasn’t pur­sued more aggres­sive­ly at the high­est lev­els of law enforce­ment in Wash­ing­ton .
“Quite frankly, I was always won­der­ing when maybe the case would be tak­en away from ATF,” says Stoltz.
So Stoltz thought that he was on to some­thing so big that ulti­mate­ly FBI, per­haps CIA might take over? “Oh, FBI at the min­i­mum,” says Stoltz.” (2)

Oth­er fed­er­al offi­cials had this to say:

“Some fed­er­al offi­cials were frus­trat­ed t
hat the FBI, while allow­ing a Flori­da agent to work on the probe, did not declare the case a coun­tert­er­ror­ism mat­ter. That would have giv­en ATF offi­cials bet­ter access to FBI infor­ma­tion and U.S. intel­li­gence from around the world, and would have drawn bureau­crat­ic back­ing from peo­ple all the way to the White House, offi­cials said.” (7)

In the same Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle, Dick Stoltz added this:

“Had more atten­tion been paid to this inside the gov­ern­ment, the case agents in the trench­es would have had more infor­ma­tion on who these Pak­istani peo­ple on U.S. soil were,” said Stoltz, who is now retired. “It would have steered us in oth­er direc­tions, and pos­si­bly jus­ti­fied con­tin­u­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. . . . We could­n’t under­stand why this was­n’t treat­ed as a nation­al secu­ri­ty mat­ter.” (7)

So why was Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back han­dled as a crim­i­nal mat­ter and not as a coun­tert­er­ror­ism case? I believe I may have dis­cov­ered the answer which will be revealed in the fol­low­ing sec­tion.

The Strange Sto­ry of Dr. Magdy Elamir

The August 2, 2002 edi­tion of Date­line NBC, brought to light the sto­ry of anoth­er North Jer­sey char­ac­ter named Dr. Magdy Elamir.

“Last fall, “Date­line” obtained infor­ma­tion about Magdy Elamir. He’s a promi­nent doc­tor, a neu­rol­o­gist with a prac­tice in Jer­sey City . Born and edu­cat­ed in Egypt , he moved to this coun­try about 20 years ago and since then has built a for­tune. He lives in a man­sion, is gen­er­ous to local char­i­ties and is an active sup­port­er of both polit­i­cal par­ties.
Should coun­tert­er­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tors take an inter­est in Dr. Elamir? Well, “Date­line” obtained a doc­u­ment last fall — for­eign intel­li­gence report, that makes a star­tling alle­ga­tion about the doc­tor — that he has had finan­cial ties with Osama bin Laden for years. The report was giv­en to a senior mem­ber of Con­gress, Ben Gilman, back in 1998, when he was Chair­man of the House Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions Com­mit­tee.
“We have a for­mer FBI per­son on our staff and I asked him to look it over,” says Con­gress­man Gilman. “He thought it was cred­i­ble enough to turn it over to the intel­li­gence peo­ple. And we turned it over to the FBI prac­ti­cal­ly imme­di­ate­ly.”
This was in 1998.
The report alleges that an H.M.O. owned by Dr. Elamir in New Jer­sey was “fund­ed by ben [sic] Laden” and that in turn Dr. Elamir was skim­ming mon­ey from the H.M.O. to fund “ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties.”

Has the FBI answered those ques­tions? Not to Con­gress­man Gilman’s sat­is­fac­tion. But what “Date­line” found intrigu­ing is that less than a year after the con­gress­man says the FBI received the report, Dr. Elamir’s HMO was tak­en over by the state of New Jer­sey , which opened a fraud inves­ti­ga­tion. Why? Because, accord­ing to sources close to the inves­ti­ga­tion, more than $15 mil­lion is unac­count­ed for. Where did the mon­ey go? “Date­line” has reviewed doc­u­ments that show at least some of it went into hard-to-trace off­shore bank accounts. Does that mean any of the miss­ing mon­ey went, as the intel­li­gence report sug­gests, to fund ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties? We don’t know.” (2)

This sto­ry real­ly caught my atten­tion since alle­ga­tions were made that Dr. Elamir had finan­cial ties to Osama Bin Laden for years and that Bin Laden had fund­ed an HMO that Elamir was oper­at­ing in New Jer­sey . The intel­li­gence report that Date­line refers to also infers that Dr. Elamir may have skimmed mon­ey from the HMO to fund “ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties”.

I decid­ed to look deep­er into this sto­ry and found the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion about Dr. Elamir:

“Magdy El Sayed El Amir, a native of Egypt, received his med­ical degree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cairo in 1977. After mov­ing to the US with his fam­i­ly, he com­plet­ed his neu­rol­o­gy and psy­chi­a­try res­i­den­cy before open­ing a store­front neu­rol­o­gy prac­tice in Jer­sey City , NJ , in 1982. The prac­tice catered to the area’s poor, many of whom were fee-for-ser­vice Med­ic­aid ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

Elamir (in this coun­try, he’d begun elid­ing the two parts of his last name) did a brisk busi­ness. Before long, his med­ical prac­tice became the nucle­us for oth­er health-relat­ed enter­pris­es, includ­ing sev­er­al MRI cen­ters, a lim­ou­sine and ambu­lance com­pa­ny, and a physi­cian billing and man­age­ment ser­vice. He also acquired real estate in Hud­son Coun­ty , where he prac­ticed, and in sev­er­al adjoin­ing coun­ties.” (10)

I also found out that in addi­tion to the HMO fraud case referred to in the Date­line sto­ry, that Dr. Elamir had a his­to­ry of involve­ment in oth­er fraud cas­es.

“In 1996 and 1997, Mary­land Casu­al­ty Insur­ance Co., Nation­al Con­sumer Insur­ance Co., and All­state New Jer­sey Insur­ance Co. cit­ed Elamir and numer­ous oth­er defen­dants in law­suits alleg­ing that they per­formed unnec­es­sary med­ical pro­ce­dures on “vic­tims” of staged auto acci­dents. As a result, All­state stopped pay­ing for MRIs at Elamir’s unli­censed cen­ters, and his cash flow dropped, Elamir’s attor­neys have said.

Elamir ran afoul of the fed­er­al Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion in 1997 after apply­ing for a license to per­form radioac­tive imag­ing in anoth­er of his offices. The NRC found that he had list­ed a Long Island doc­tor as his office’s radi­a­tion safe­ty offi­cer and the sole autho­rized user of the mate­r­i­al with­out the doc­tor’s knowl­edge, NRC dis­ci­pli­nary
records show. The physi­cian was not licensed in New Jer­sey , accord­ing to the state Board of Med­ical Exam­in­ers.

As a result, the NRC has pro­hib­it­ed Elamir from any involve­ment
with nuclear med­i­cine until 2002.” (11)

In 2001 Dr. Elamir was involved in anoth­er acci­dent fraud case in New Jer­sey :

“A Clifton lawyer and three doc­tors were arrest­ed in Wednes­day’s roundup of 192 defen­dants charged as part of an auto insur­ance fraud ring, mak­ing them the first pro­fes­sion­als to be arrest­ed under New Jer­sey ‘s anti-run­ner statute.

Hud­son Coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors said the ring staged acci­dents in Hud­son, Bergen, Pas­sa­ic and Essex coun­ties to try to col­lect $5 mil­lion in pho­ny claims, a few of which were paid by car­ri­ers coop­er­at­ing in the 19-month-long sting oper­a­tion.” (12)

Fur­ther on in the arti­cle:

“The oth­er doc­tor charged under the statute is neu­rol­o­gist Magdy Elamir of Sad­dle Riv­er . He is accused of pay­ing Poller in exchange for his send­ing patients to Elamir’s clin­ics for unnec­es­sary and expen­sive MRIs.

Neu­rol­o­gist Elamir, who oper­ates clin­ics in sev­er­al cities, is no stranger to author­i­ties. In June 2000, he was sued by the state for alleged­ly drain­ing $16.7 mil­lion from the assets of a Newark-based HMO he and his asso­ciates ran. The now-defunct HMO, Amer­i­can Pre­ferred Provider Plan, served 44,000 poor, most­ly Med­ic­aid patients.

State Bank­ing and Insur­ance Com­mis­sion­er Karen Suter said at the time that the assets were divert­ed to Elamir, his rel­a­tives and asso­ciates, and oth­er enter­pris­es he con­trolled, includ­ing HMOs in Michi­gan and Wash­ing­ton , D.C.

Bill Hine, a spokesman for Suter, says the suit against Elamir is in dis­cov­ery. The state is liq­ui­dat­ing the Wash­ing­ton HMO and has tak­en over the Michi­gan oper­a­tion and sold the assets, he adds.

Elamir’s clin­ics also came up in the dis­ci­pline case against for­mer Newark solo prac­ti­tion­er Patrick Pajerows­ki, dis­barred by the state Supreme Court in 1998 for using a run­ner. In that ethics case, two acci­dent vic­tims were vis­it­ed by the run­ner — Pajerowski’s office man­ag­er — who referred them to a Jer­sey City clin­ic oper­at­ed by Elamir, even though they told him they were not injured. No crim­i­nal charges were filed.” (12)

If that wasn’t enough, I also found that in 1999, Dr. Elamir was run­ning a num­ber of unli­censed MRI cen­ters:

“A Sad­dle Riv­er man accused by the state of siphon­ing more than $ 9
mil­lion from his finan­cial­ly ail­ing health main­te­nance orga­ni­za­tion also
owns five unli­censed MRI cen­ters that are not sub­ject to health and
safe­ty stan­dards, state offi­cials say.

Dr. Magdy Elamir, own­er of the Amer­i­can Pre­ferred Provider Plan
(APPP), which was tak­en over by the state last month, owns mag­net­ic
res­o­nance imag­ing cen­ters in Pater­son , Pas­sa­ic , Jer­sey City , Irv­ing­ton ,
and Newark .” (13)

So here we have a promi­nent neu­rol­o­gist who is alleged to have fun­neled mon­ey to Osama Bin Laden through his fraud­u­lent HMO, and we also dis­cov­er that he has been involved in at least two acci­dent fraud schemes, oper­at­ed unli­censed MRI cen­ters and had a license revoked by the Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion. The NRC license revo­ca­tion is espe­cial­ly trou­bling since unau­tho­rized and unli­censed per­son­nel at Dr. Elamir’s clin­ics were han­dling nuclear mate­ri­als.

In a doc­u­ment I found titled Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion Issuances, dat­ed July 1- Decem­ber 31, 1998 , Vol­ume 48 pages 1–415, on page 7 is list­ed:

Magdy Elamir , MD

( Newark , New Jer­sey )

Dock­et 1A 97–070

Mem­o­ran­dum and Order, LBP 98–25, Octo­ber 8, 1998 ……226

This doc­u­ment is in the form of a PDF file and when I scrolled down to page 226, I found five pages of infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the sus­pen­sion of Byprod­ucts Mate­r­i­al License # 29–30282-01. (14)

In an NRC News arti­cle pub­lished by the U. S. Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion on April 4, 1997 , it states:

“An NRC inspec­tion in Jan­u­ary found that the indi­vid­u­als act­ing as the autho­rized user of radioac­tive mate­ri­als at Newark Med­ical Asso­ciates and as its radi­a­tion safe­ty offi­cer were not list­ed on the license, as NRC requires. A sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion by the NRC’s Office of Inves­ti­ga­tions deter­mined that the appli­ca­tion for the license list­ed an indi­vid­ual as the sole autho­rized user and radi­a­tion safe­ty offi­cer with­out that indi­vid­u­al’s con­sent or knowl­edge. Inves­ti­ga­tors fur­ther found that the indi­vid­ual has nev­er been asso­ci­at­ed with Newark Med­ical Asso­ciates.” (15)

To make mat­ters worse, Dr. Elamir’s own brot
her, Mohamed El Amir, was impli­cat­ed in Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back:

“Date­line” has found anoth­er rea­son why fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors might want to pay close atten­tion to Dr. Elamir and his fam­i­ly. It’s some­thing we learned when we inter­viewed Randy Glass, the con-man turned under­cov­er oper­a­tive who helped the gov­ern­ment break up an ille­gal weapons ring alleged­ly tied to ter­ror­ist groups. It turns out that one of the peo­ple record­ed try­ing to arrange an arms deal with Randy Glass was Dr. Elamir’s own broth­er, Mohamed, an engi­neer, also a U.S. cit­i­zen now liv­ing in Egypt. And just lis­ten to what he was inter­est­ed in.
“There was a ware­house full of weapons in Italy that they need­ed shipped,” says Glass.
It was the spring of 1999. Mohamed Elamir explains that he wants false papers that would iden­ti­fy a ship­ment of weapons — as veg­eta­bles.
Randy Glass: “ But you’re talk­ing about, they’re say­ing they wan­na ship veg­eta­bles, right? Is what they want — is what they want on the paper­work, cor­rect?”
Mohamed El Amir: “Yep.”
Then Randy Glass cuts to the chase.
Randy Glass: “Lis­ten. My phone line is secure. And so I’m just gonna talk very open with you, OK?”
Mohamed El Amir: “Yep.”
Randy Glass: “OK. They want to ship things like tanks, cor­rect?”
Mohamed El Amir: “Uh-huh.”
Glass: “OK. How... OK. In or— ”
Mohamed El Amir: “No, no, no, no. Just ammu­ni­tion, not tanks.”
Randy Glass: “So they just wan­na do basi­cal­ly, small arms and ammu­ni­tion, right?”
Mohamed El Amir: “Yes.”

Did Mohamed give Glass any indi­ca­tion as to who was going to get these arms?
“Nev­er got a chance to ask him,” says Glass.
Glass says fed­er­al agents told him to drop the mat­ter.
So, what hap­pened to the case? “Noth­ing,” says Glass.
There was no fol­low-up. “No,” says Glass.
Was this a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty? “Hun­dred per­cent,” says Glass.
And Randy Glass doesn’t know the half of it, because that same intel­li­gence report that talks about Dr. Elamir also names his broth­er Mohamed as hav­ing ties to Osama bin Laden.” (2)

So at this point we now have infor­ma­tion that Dr. Magdy Elamir along with his broth­er Mohamed El Amir have ties to Osama Bin Laden and yet nei­ther one of them is arrest­ed. Randy Glass says in fact that “fed­er­al agents told him to drop the mat­ter.”

All of this infor­ma­tion made me won­der what a per­son has to do in New Jer­sey to lose his or her med­ical license? I also won­dered why Dr. Elamir had nev­er been arrest­ed for his con­nec­tions to Osama Bin Laden? The only log­i­cal rea­son I could fig­ure that Dr. Magdy Elamir was still prac­tic­ing med­i­cine was that he must have had one fine well con­nect­ed lawyer.

I then took a clos­er look at the arti­cles and court doc­u­ments I had col­lect­ed on Dr. Magdy Elamir and they revealed who his lawyer was.

“Elamir did not return repeat­ed phone calls seek­ing com­ment. But his
attor­ney, Michael Chertoff, said sev­er­al of the five MRI cen­ters may be
exempt from licens­ing require­ments, a posi­tion ques­tioned by state
health offi­cials.” (13)

The same arti­cle states that Dr. Elamir’s lawyer, Michael Chertoff, also rep­re­sent­ed him in the fraud­u­lent HMO case:

”Chertoff, who has rep­re­sent­ed Elamir at court hear­ings on the state
takeover of APPP, said he did not know why the MRI cen­ters did not
pro­vide finan­cial help for the trou­bled HMO, as envi­sioned in the
agree­ment.

Elamir has been accused by the state of divert­ing state Med­ic­aid
funds to oth­er busi­ness­es he owns. In a civ­il pro­ceed­ing, the state
alleges that Amer­i­can Pre­ferred Provider illegally“loaned“more than $ 4
mil­lion to two start-up HMOs in Michi­gan and Wash­ing­ton , D.C. , also
owned by Elamir, and that APPP paid Elamir and var­i­ous oth­er busi­ness­es
he owned more than $ 5 mil­lion out of Med­ic­aid funds.” (13)

I didn’t know who Michael Chertoff was when I ran across his name as the attor­ney who defend­ed Dr. Elamir in his fraud­u­lent HMO and MRI cas­es, so I did some research. I was com­plete­ly blown away by what I dis­cov­ered about Michael Chertoff.

As it turns out, Michael Chertoff was appoint­ed Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al, under John Ashcroft, in ear­ly 2001 and was placed in charge of the Crim­i­nal Divi­sion. (16) Since Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back was an active case when he took office, and cul­mi­nat­ed in arrests in June of 2001, the case would have fall­en under his per­vue since it was han­dled as a crim­i­nal case and not as a coun­tert­er­ror­ism case. This means that one of his for­mer clients, Dr. Magdy Elamir, along with his broth­er Mohamed El Amir, were now involved in a case under his super­vi­sion.

When the attacks on 9–11 occurred, Michael Chertoff was placed in charge of the inves­ti­ga­tion. On Oct. 25, 2001 , CBS report­ed that the Feds had launched Oper­a­tion Green Quest in an attempt to stop the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism. Here’s what Dr. Magdy Elamir’s for­mer attor­ney had to say on the sub­ject:

“The lifeblood of ter­ror­ism is mon­ey, and if we cut the mon­ey we cut the blood sup­ply,” said assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al Michael Chertoff, the head of the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s crim­i­nal divi­sion. (17)

The next day, on Octo­ber 26, 2001 , Michael Chertoff tes­ti­fied before Con­gress and had this to say:

“As an inte­gral part of this nation­al effort, the Depart­ment of Jus­tice and the FBI have estab­lished an inter­a­gency Finan­cial Review Group to coor­di­nate the inves­ti­ga­tion of the finan­cial aspects sur­round­ing the ter­ror­ist events of Sep­tem­ber 11^th and beyond. All mem­bers of this Com­mit­tee rec­og­nize the impor­tance of under­stand­ing the finan­cial com­po­nents of ter­ror­ist and crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions. These finan­cial links will be crit­i­cal to the larg­er crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, while also pro­vid­ing a trail to the sources of fund­ing for these heinous crimes. The impor­tance of “fol­low­ing the mon­ey,” in this instance, as well as in the inves­ti­ga­tion of all crim­i­nal enter­pris­es, can­not be over­stat­ed. /p>

The mem­bers of this Com­mit­tee are also well aware that mon­ey laun­der­ing con­sti­tutes a threat to the safe­ty of our com­mu­ni­ties, to the integri­ty of our finan­cial insti­tu­tions and to our nation­al secu­ri­ty.” (18)

On March 25, 2002 , CNN report­ed:

“Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al Michael Chertoff is the Dick Cheney of the Jus­tice Depart­ment. Brainy, intense and well con­nect­ed, the for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor can usu­al­ly be found at Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Ashcroft’s elbow as the depart­men­t’s top coun­tert­er­ror­ism tac­ti­cian. And last week Chertoff van­ished to an undis­closed loca­tion.

With no deputies along and no pub­lic­i­ty, Chertoff was on a stealthy swing through France , Bel­gium and the Nether­lands . His mis­sion: sell West­ern Euro­pean gov­ern­ments on a new Bush Admin­is­tra­tion plan to post U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment pros­e­cu­tors over­seas in unprece­dent­ed num­bers. “The sinews that hold a ter­ror­ist net­work togeth­er are mon­ey, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and trans­porta­tion,” Chertoff told TIME before his trip. To help sev­er those sinews, Chertoff wants to have Amer­i­can pros­e­cu­tors sta­tioned in key cap­i­tals, where they can work behind the scenes with their coun­ter­parts to over­come the legal and cul­tur­al obsta­cles to ship­ping evi­dence to the U.S. for use in court.”

Per­haps Chertoff could have saved some time and effort and looked in his own back­yard for evi­dence of ter­ror­ist financ­ing. To date, Dr. Magdy Elamir and his broth­er have not been arrest­ed and are still free.

I have a the­o­ry that Elamir was not arrest­ed, because if his case did come to court, then Chertoff’s role as his lawyer in the HMO case might have been exposed. Since Elamir’s HMO was sup­pos­ed­ly a front for Bin Laden and mil­lions of dol­lars were alleged­ly skimmed from the HMO to fund ter­ror­ism, Chertoff him­self might be impli­cat­ed in some way since he had to have had access to the HMO’s books and Elamir’s finances when he defend­ed him.

I also have a the­o­ry that this may be why Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back remained a crim­i­nal case and not a coun­tert­er­ror­ism case. As head of the Crim­i­nal Divi­sion in the Depart­ment of Jus­tice, the case would have been under the con­trol of Michael Chertoff him­self. Was this the real rea­son why the case came to a screech­ing halt with only a few arrests? Was this the rea­son why Randy Glass was told to drop the mat­ter by fed­er­al agents when the case start­ed focus­ing on Dr. Elamir’s broth­er Mohamed El Amir? Was this the rea­son why so many fed­er­al agents were frus­trat­ed because they felt the case hadn’t received the atten­tion of high­er ups in fed­er­al law enforce­ment? Maybe it had?

On April 22, 2003 Pres­i­dent Bush nom­i­nat­ed Michael Chertoff to be the Fed­er­al Cir­cuit Judge for the Third Cir­cuit. Judge Chertoff now pre­sides over fed­er­al cas­es in New Jer­sey , Penn­syl­va­nia , Delaware and the Vir­gin Islands .

Part 2: The Good Doc­tor Who Wasn’t So Good

Sources:

(1) Las Vegas Sun, Indict­ment Against Mosque Lead­ers Unsealed, by Kirstan Con­ley, Asso­ci­at­ed Press, August 10, 2004

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2004/aug/10/081003703.html

(2) Date­line NBC, On the trail of arms mer­chants, August 2, 2002

http://www.msnbc.com/news/788686.asp

(3) Date­line NBC, Stinger mis­sile sting oper­a­tion, March 18, 2003

http://www.msnbc.com/news/887141.asp?cp1=1

(4) Palm Beach Post, Con Man Turned Patri­ot Tells All, by John Pacen­ti, Cox News Ser­vice, August 2, 2002

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/coxnews080202.html

(5) Time Mag­a­zine, Al-Qae­da Mon­ey­man Caught, by Elaine Shan­non, May 1, 2003

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,448922,00.html

(6) Times of India , India helped FBI trace ISI-ter­ror­ist links, by Manoj Joshi, Octo­ber 9, 2001

(7) The Wash­ing­ton Post, U.S. Reopens Arms Case In Probe for Tal­iban Role, by John Mintz, August 2, 2002

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33797-2002Aug1?language=printer

(8) The Palm Beach Post, Intel­li­gence Pan­el Hears from Glass, by John Pacen­ti, Octo­ber 17, 2002

(9) The Wash­ing­ton Post, A Cloak But No Dag­ger, By Richard Lei­by, Sat­ur­day, May 18, 2002

(10) Med­ical Eco­nom­ics Archive, Why was this doc­tor allowed to start a health plan?, By Wayne J. Gugliel­mo, Senior Edi­tor, Oct. 25, 1999

(11) The Record ( Bergen Coun­ty , NJ ), Immigrant’s HMO Dreams End In Finan­cial Night­mare, By Lindy Wash­burn, Jan­u­ary 24, 1999

(12) New Jer­sey Law Jour­nal, Lawyer, Three Doc­tors Arrest­ed for Using Run­ners Charges are prod­uct of 19-month under­cov­er sting of sus­pect­ed auto insur­ance fraud ring, By Tim O’Brien, July 23, 200

(13) The Record ( Bergen Coun­ty , NJ ), State Eyes New Probe of HMO Oper­a­tor; His Five MRI Cen­ters Don’t Have Licens­es, Jan­u­ary 4, 1999

(14) Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion Issuances, July 1- Decem­ber 31, 1998 , Vol­ume 48 pages 1–415.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr0750/nrci48.pdf.

(15) NRC NEWS, U. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION, OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, REGION I, NRC STAFF BARS PRESIDENT OF NEW JERSEY MEDICAL FIRM, CONSULTANT , August 4, 1997

www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/ news/1997/97–098i.html

(16) Sen­ate Con­fir­ma­tions 2001

http://www.leadershipdirectories.com/fmfyb5.htm

(17) CBS News, Feds Launch ‘Oper­a­tion Green Quest’, Oct. 25, 2001

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/10/25/attack/main315901.shtml

(18) Pre­pared Tes­ti­mo­ny of the Hon­or­able Michael Chertoff Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Crim­i­nal Divi­sion Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Jus­tice, 10:00 a.m. , Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 26, 2001

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2001_hr/092601_chertoff.html

(19) CNN, Ashcroft’s man on a mis­sion, By Elaine Shan­non, May 25, 2002

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2002/04/01/mission.html

Resources:

The Randy Glass Time­line, cre­at­ed by Paul Thomp­son

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=randyglass

The Randy Glass Video, A fas­ci­nat­ing video relat­ing to an impor­tant unheed­ed warn­ing of the 9/11 attacks was shown on WPTV, an NBC TV sta­tion in Flori­da on Octo­ber 7, 2002.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=glass-graham_video_wmv

Sander Hicks Inter­views Randy Glass on INN TV

http://innworldreport.net/video/2004–07-02/glass.html