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Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists
(Part 1-7)
By Alex Constantine
[to page 2, parts 8 &
up...]
Decades before burning skyscrapers, codified torture, secret trials
and mass detentions, there was Barrick Gold, a mining concern in
Canada with roots in the American intelligence establishment. It
is fitting that gold, the seductive but dead heart of world capitalism,
should christen a story about the most unconscionable event in Wall
Street history: 911.
Barrick's incorporation is obscure. Most accounts claim that the
firm was founded by Peter Munk, a former radio manufacturer who
made a splash in the Canadian press when he disposed of his shares
in the company shortly before it was declared insolvent, a golden
parachute paid for by investors and the Canadian taxpayer. His name
was instantly mud in the investment community, but fortunately for
Munk, no indictment was ever brought against him.
Today, his overall worth is estimated at $350 million.1 Munk's
redemption was the work of Saudi entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi, who
would go on to notoriety as an Ollie North intermediary in the Iran-Contra
affair. Khashoggi and Munk kicked off their partnership with a series
of hotel investments. In 1983, the Saudi entrepeneur raided his
fat cash reserves to purchase Barrick. Munk was installed as chairman.
Khashoggi distanced himself from Barrick shortly after the Iran-Contra
scandal broke (but held onto his stock, tied up as collateral for
North's arms transfers to Iran in 1985), notes Observer reporter
Gregg Palast in a book on the 2000 presidential election, before
Bush was invited in. That was in 1995: "Munk's reputation was restored,
at least in his own mind, in part by massive donations to the University
of Toronto. Following this act of philanthropy, the university awarded
Munk‚adviser Bush an honorary degree. Several students were arrested
protesting what appeared to them as a cash-for-honors deal."2
The bonds were positively Sicilian. in 1986, Khashoggi was was
arrested for fraud and held in a New York prison. Munk paid his
$4 million bail.3
Financial researcher Lois Battuello was Palast's key source of
information concerning Barrick. It was Battuello who gave Palast
a file on Barrick Resources International (BRI), the nascent firm
founded two years before Barrick Gold, a spin-off, by the Central
Intelligence Agency's Kermit Roosevelt to serve as a dummy business
front.
This was roughly the same time that Roosevelt cemented relations
with Khashoggi, who brought Munk along, on behalf of the CIA. In
1983, Battuello says, the disgraced entrepeneur "picked up the mantle
of this clandestine front (read looted taxpayer dollars) in Toronto
as though it was his operation. It was simply put together with
'evil money,' and it gave Adnan Khashoggi an excuse to be visible
in Toronto, where he established yet more businesses and outposts."4
The offshore division of Khashoggi's Barrick Resources, for instance,
controlled Jetborne, Inc., a company in Toronto used by Khashoggi
to ship arms to Iran under the direction of Reagan's NSC.5
Khashoggi's empire, raised on a bed of gold, metastisized rapidly.
In 1973, he dropped in his burgeoning portfolio a company in possession
of nearly two million acres of prime real estate, the Arizona-Colorado
Land & Cattle Company -- not far from the 100,000 acre Paloma Ranch
near Gila Bend, deeded to the CIA's Kermit Roosevelt and John B.
Anderson.6
Two years later, in cahoots with Sheik Kamal Adham -- then director
of Saudi intelligence (1963-79), brother-in-law of King Faisal and
the CIA's key liaison to the Arab world -- Khashoggi founded Oryx.
But the Saudi Sheik's thieving bonds with Khashoggi and the CIA
were forged decades earlier, with the incorporation of Barrick.
The company's seed investors were Saudis with Agency ties, including
Shiek Kamal Adham, Adnan Khashoggi, and Prince Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz
(a major investor in Barrick, code-named "Tumbleweed" by his CIA
contacts).7 By 1978, Adham was worth roughly $134 million.
It was but two years earlier that the son of Prescott Bush, a
well-heeled CIA director, struck up an alliance with Saudi Arabia
and Iran under the Shah. George H.W. Bush's left-hand man at Langley
was Kamal Adham. After leaving the CIA in January, 1977, Bush was
appointed to the executive committee chair of First International
Bancshares (FIB), the largest bank in the District of Columbia.
(In the 1980s, the Shiek and Abdul Khalil ((Adham's successor as
Saudi intelligence director)), then officers of BCCI, were implicated
in a hostile bid for FIB, by this time transmorgrified into a dummy
front for its scandal-infested parent, BCCI.)
Raymond Close, another revolving-door, covert dervish, CIA station
chief in Saudi Arabia, took arms from the Saudis and gave them to
Pakistan, and in '70s left the Agency and went to work for BCCI
director Kamal Adham.
Majority shares in Capcom, a BCCI susidiary, were held by Saudi
spooks Adham and Khalil. Capcom sidelines included money laundering
and drug trafficking.8 Adham was eventually prosecuted for fraud
in the BCCI case and paid a $100 million fine.
Oryx, the demonic corporate brat of Khashoggi and Adham, has recently
been linked by investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker (Welcome
to Terrorland) to Wallace Hilliard, proprietor of Huffman Aviation
in Florida, where Mohammed Atta's suicide cult trained in aero-terrorism.
Of the 220 flight schools in Florida, Atta had to pick Huffman.
Wallace Hilliard, Khashoggi's lackey, bought Huffman Aviation
in 1999, and hired Rudi Dekkers, a Dutchman, to run it. The following
year, Hilliard's LearJet was stopped on the runway at Orlando Executive
Airport by armed DEA agents.
At Huffman, too, the CIA was a silent partner. Sander Hickes,
a reporter for the Long Island Press, found that Hilliard "did business
with Myron Du Bain, who worked alongside late ex-CIA director John
McCone on the boards of several banks. Du Bain was chairman of the
Fireman's Fund Insurance Company in 1981 when the company announced
plans to acquire Employers Health, an insurance company cofounded
by Hilliard."9
In July, Daniel Hopsicker, after a two-year investigation into
Huffman Aviation, offered from his MadCowMorningNews web soapbox
the suggestion that Mohammed Atta had been engaged "in a lucrative
drug trafficking operation which linked Osama bin Laden's thugs
and drug lieutenants to their equally-thuggish American counterparts.
This places the two terrorists at the same airport where DEA agents
brandishing submachine guns seized a Lear jet belonging to the owner
of the flight school [Hilliard] where Atta and Al-shehhi were taking
lessons ... at that very moment."
DEA agents, Hopsicker wrote, "discovered 43 pounds of heroin aboard
Hilliard's Lear. The Orlando Sentinel hailed the bust as 'the largest
seizure in Central Florida's history.' After we'd learned the whole
story, we discovered the bust had been an accident, carried out
by low-level DEA operatives not clued-in to the protected nature
of the trade. Nor was this the only time Hilliard's name came up
in connection with narcotics trafficking."10
Likewise, Hilliard's Saudi boss would soon be immersed in criminal
activity of his own -- with direct ties to terrorism -- in Armenia.
Banking fraud was rampant there, Global News Wire reported in August,
2004, "thanks to the Arab millionaire Adnan Khashoggi -- an active
partner of Armenian businessmen in the illicit drug and arms trades."
Khashoggi's first bucket-shop banking operation was a branch of
the Caucasus Investment Bank in Susa. In quick succession, with
the assistance of Abu Muslum, an Arab businessman, he opened the
Hamaz and Beit ul-Muqaddas banks.
Rovsan Novruzoglu, a political scientist and director of the International
Strategic Research Center in Azerbaijan, observes that Adnan Khashoggi's
banks "played a big part in the formation of terrorist camps and
in the opening of laboratories for developing chemical and bacteriological
weapons in Nagornyy Karabakh."11
Back home, Hilliard's flight school, as Hopsicker reported, "was
training dozens of terrorists to fly -- including both pilots crashing
into the World Trade Center." ...
-------------
NOTES
1) Greg Palast, "Poppy Strikes Gold," excerpt from The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy," http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/07/09_gold.html.
2) Ibid.
3) Greg Palast, "Best democracy money can buy: Gregory Palast
examines the sources of the $500m that boosted Bush's bid for the
White House," Observer, November 26, 2000.
4) Lois Ann Battuello, e-mail exchange with author, October 1,
2004.
5) Ibid. Today, Khashoggi has interests in some 1500 companies,
and indirect involvement in others. The second largest shareholder
in Ruppert Murdoch's News Corp., for instance, is Prince Walid bin
Talal bin Abdulaziz as Saud (Prince Alwaleed), a Khashoggi colleague.
6) Ibid.
7) Jay Taylor, "Jay Taylor: J. Taylor's Gold and Technology Stocks"
(Volume 22 No. 15), January 3 2004.
8) Martin J. Rivers, "A Wolf in Sheikhs Clothing: Bush Business
Deals with 9 Partners of bin Laden's Banker," Geocities, March 15,
2004.
9) Sander Hicks, "No Easy Answer - Heroin, Al Qaeda And The Florida
Flight School," Long Island Press, February 19, 2004.
10) Daniel Hopsicker, "9/11's Big Dirty Secret," MadCowMorningNews,
July 19 2004, http://www.madcowprod.com.
11) M. Macidli, "Azerbaijani Daily Outlines Activities of International
Armenian Haybun Organization," Global News Wire, August 27, 2003.
Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists - Part II: An American
Pinay Circle
--------------
"... [An] experienced C.I.A. operative was similarly skeptical
about the rival agency's ability to transform itself. 'They're cops,'
he said of the F.B.I. agents. 'They spent their careers trying to
catch bank robbers while we spent ours trying to rob banks...'"
- Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command
--------------
Adnan Khashoggi's mercenary army of global corporate criminals
lives in Mafia mansions, basks in the political limelight, enjoys
privileges of royalty in tyrannical desert dystopias, sips vodka
in the shadow of gleaming Moscow spires. They are kings, Pentagon
officials, priests, S&L thieves, assassins, prostitutes, nazis,
Big Oil executives, metals merchants, New Age cultists, drug barons,
spooks, boiler-room con artists, mobsters, dictators by the horde.
And terrorists, of course.
Adnan Khashoggi is a Turkoman, the son of a doctor who tended
to Abdul al-Aziz Ibn Saud. His career as an international "connector"
began in the 1950s, while still an undergraduate at Chico State
College. His purchase of fifty Kenworth trucks for resale to Saudi
Arabia's bin Laden Group demonstrated his business savvy and provided
him the capital to launch his career as world-class death merchant.
In the early 1960s, he could be found languishing or plotting
world domination at Edwin Pauley's Coconut Island estate in Hawaii.
Pauley, then Democratic Party chairman, operated an oil company
called Zapata with the son of Prescott Bush, the Nazi collaborator.1
Houston attorney Linda Minor sidelines as an investigator into
banking and political malfeasance. She discovered that Pauley was
a slimy operator years before his alliance with Bush.
"He was a spy within the White House," Minor says, "acting as
a funnel for campaign funds to FDR, while at the same time gathering
and transmitting information about oil policy and captured Nazi
and Japanese assets back to his California business associates."
Pauley's political significance stems from his participation in
Gulf of Mexico oil exploration in the 1950's when, with a concession
from Mexico, he threw in with Howard Hughes and G.H.W. Bush.
"Pauley taught Bush how to launder money through corporate subsidiaries
to be used for political payoffs and the financing of political
campaigns," Minor notes. "Both Pauley and Bush used this system
to finance Richard Nixon's presidential campaigns."
The laundering scheme unravelled after the 1972 election, when
a check drawn at a Mexican bank -the subsidiary of a Houston corporation
controlled by associates of George H.W. Bush - surfaced in the Miami
bank account of a Watergate plumber.2
Saudi royals and domestic oil barons struck up alliances. Shiek
Kamal Adham - soon to conceive Oryx Investments, the owner of Huffman
Aviation, with Khashoggi and Hilliard - and a circle of cohorts
in sandals founded Arabian Shield Development Co. in Texas (since
re-named the Arabian American Development Company).
Sheikh Mohammad Salem Ben Mahfouz, c/o National Commercial Bank,
was an Arabian Shield investor.3 "During the 1980's," reports Martin
J. Rivers of the Center for Research on Globalization, "Sheikh Mahfouz's
syndicate performed major CIA-inspired banking operations for such
former CIA assets as Osama bin Laden ... Saddam Hussein, Manuel
Noriega and other drug dealing generals. George W. Bush, for his
part, had important business relationships ... with a total of nine
prominent individuals central to Mahfouz's financial empire."4
The early 1970s also brought Saudis recruited by the CIA to train
at American military bases, including Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
Bandar has long been an ally, if not an asset, of the CIA. When
DCI William Casey wanted a cell of alleged terrorists killed, King
Fahd sent Bandar to Langley to make the arrangements.5 The plan
backfired when the subsequent car bombing took down an apartment
building near Beirut, killing 80 innocent civilians.
After September 11, 2001, Bandar would fall under suspicion when
it was discovered that two of the terrorists involved were found
to have received financing from the Prince. Bandar was trained at
Ellington AFB near Houston.6
In the early 1970s, Lois Battuello says, "Khalid Abdullah and
Adnan Khashoggi were hovering around. Bandar first entered James
A. Baker's social circle in Texas where he met Joanne Herring, who
would later play a significant role in coaxing Texas democrat Charlie
Wilson to support Muslim Brother Gul Hekmatyar in Afghanstan by
the late-1970s."
The Oil-CIA-Saudi alliance was consummated with the establishment
of the Safari Club of elite cut-throats, founded with covert Agency
support on Sept. 1, 1976. Bush the elder was then DCI, and Nelson
Rockefeller vice president under Ford.
Battuello: "The Safari Club was a grouping that followed the pattern
of Europe's Pinay Circle - intelligence agents, politicians, businessmen
from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran."
Terrorism was a natural by-product of this alliance.
The CIA funded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1977, and trained Mujahadin
to support Hekmatyar of the Brotherhood in Afghanistan. The fundamentalism-happy
Muslim Brothers have served the CIA operationally for some 40 years,
an arrangement rubber-stamped by Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner and
Kermit Roosevelt.
Airline hijacker Mohammed Atta was ID'd as a Muslim Brother in
the Wall Street Journal and New York Times shortly after the jet
attacks on the World Trade Center. So were Khalid Shaik Mohammed
and Ramzi Yousef, reportedly guided to a sacrificial pyre in the
sky by Aman Zawahiri, Al Queada's second-in-command - also a co-conspirator
in the murder of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (while still operating
under the aegis of the CIA) and the 1993 WTC bomb plot.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a bund of Middle Eastern thugs ultimately
led by their generous American Big Brother. That they harbored enmity
against the United States was evident in the person of Sami Al-Arian.
Al-Arian, a friend of George W. Bush, once called for the blood
of American and Israeli infidels to a congregation of Muslims: "We
assemble today to pay respects to the march of the martyrs and to
the river of blood that gushes forth and does not extinguish, from
butchery to butchery, and from martyrdom to martyrdom, from Jihad
to Jihad!"7
Between 1988 and 1992, Al-Arian hosted a series of conferences
of "the world's top terrorist leaders" and openly associated with
Hamas officials in the States and elsewhere. Al-Arian was also alleged
to have "helped oversee terrorist cells in the Middle East," according
to Newsweek on July 16, 2001.8
John Loftus, a former State Department official and author of
The Secret War Against the Jews, tried for the better part of a
decade to have Al-Arian arrested. He was frustrated at every turn.
It took 911 to get the FBI's interest. Al-Arian was finally arrested
in February 2003 ... and out spilled his past as an FBI informant.
Lois Battuello: "He has been charged with moving money for Hamas,
Al Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and others -- all offshoots
of the Muslim Brothers. The only thing that explains the vast Al
Qaeda network in 60 plus countries is the Muslim Brotherhood, who
have been spread out around the globe for decades, ready to respond
to command. The Jihad wing of the Muslim Brothers formed in 1953,
an offshoot of the Al Banna main group. That this group responds
to 'command' is evident in Wesley Clarke's statement last winter:
'I know who is doing this (ordering Muslim Brother's activities)
and I know how to stop it (terrorist attacks) - but it takes being
President of the United States to do so.'" Command and control.9
-----------------
NOTES
1) Bruce Campbell Adamson, letter to Congressman Sam Farr, September
15, 2001, http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg96515.html
2) Linda Minor, "Follow the Yellow Brick Road: From Harvard to
Enron," http://www.newsmakingnews.com/lm4,30,02,harvardtoenronpt4.htm
3) Lois Battuello, e-mail exchange with author, October 2, 2004.
4) Martin J. Rivers, "A Wolf in Sheikh's Clothing: Bush Business
Deals with Nine Partners of bin Laden's Banker," geocities.com,
March 15, 2004, www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAR403A.html
5) Anon., "Bandar bin Sultan, a CIA Agent," House of Saud site,
http://www.geocities.com/saudhouse_p/irancont.htm
6) Battuello.
7) Debbie Schlussel, "Bush's Favorite Terrorist Buddy," WorldNetDaily,
October 1, 2001.
8) Ibid.
9) Battuello.
Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists
PART III: WE ROB BANKS
-- "The theological-political order that is promoted by the Islamist
ideology is perfectly in tune with the requirements of American
capitalism, [which] heralds the unilateral reign of uncontrollable
globalization in the hands of business mafias and religious fanatics."
- Richard Lebeviere, Dollars for Terror
In a televised post-911 address, President Bush probed the soul
of The Terrorist: "By sacrificing human life to serve their radical
visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power --
they follow in the path of fascism and Nazism and totalitarianism"
- a reasonable description of his business circle and its bomb-throwing
enforcers (or a Nietzchian slip).
On a daily basis, the press, seemingly blind to the domestic financial
connections to terrorism, grips the Octopus, scrapes a nerve, and
a tentacle buried in the mud trembles and unfurls, as in this recent
business wire report on Citigroup: "... links traverse a curious
variety of unexamined threads in the U.S. financial community. Online
Journal's Larry Chin (2-1-2002) reminded that 'Citigroup has repeatedly
been charged with money laundering. This, as it's Board of Directors
includes John Deutch, former CIA Director, Robert Rubin, former
Treasury Secretary and intimate friend of Enron's Ken Lay, but also
former CIA Executive Director Nora Slatkin...'"
Haunting, unexplained lapses on the part of government officials
- "FBI agents in the United States probing relatives [of] Osama
Bin Laden before September 11 were told to back off soon after George
W Bush became president, the BBC has reported ..." - aren't so anomalous
to the eye once it is open.
Not, as a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Service shrilled
in October 2003, so "incredible": "There are many business connections
between the Bush family and the elite of Saudi Arabia.... The powerful
- and very rich - Bin Laden family helped fund [W.'s] first venture
into oil. The cozy friendship continued for decades. After a terrorist
attack at a barracks in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 Americans,
the bin Laden family received a multi-billion dollar contract to
re-build. And incredibly, George Bush Sr. was in a business meeting
at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington on the morning of September
11th with one of Osama Bin Laden's brothers..."1
Another "incredible" lapse amused liberal talk show hosts at the
newly-chrustened Air America network in the summer of 2004: the
quizzing of Condoleeza Rice by the 911 Commission revealed that
Bush had received a "detailed and lengthy presidential daily briefing
from the CIA in which Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda's aim of launching
an attack against the U.S. [was] discussed." The White House refused
to release the report.2
Some things were simply no one's business - like the relationship
of the Bush clan to Adnan Khashoggi, who was beholden to and cherished
by the bin Ladens and Bush's Saudi business partners. Khashoggi
surfaced most visibly from the trenches of Iran-Contra affair; here,
too, scraps of the pre-history of 911 are scattered like bomb debris.
In 1985, Khashoggi turned to the Saudi National Commercial Bank,
controlled by Sheikh Mahfouz, to borrow $35-million dollars to buy
military hardware for shipment to Iran.
Was it such an anomaly, after all, that Mahfouz, the Saudi banker
and part-owner of BCCI - later a key suspect in the 911 plot - Adnan,
and Bush were tight? W. had been bailed out three times when his
business ventures went under. In 1988, the year his father won the
presidency, a gaggle of Saudis bought into Harken Oil. Later the
same year, Harken drilled for oil in the Persian Gulf, the company's
first offshore contract. Two of the investors in Harken were Mahfouz
and Osama's brother, Salem bin Laden.3
But reporters continued to be shocked by the continuous stream
of "revelations." "In politics, truth is often stranger than fiction,"
wrote Martin Rivers at the Center for Research on Globalization.
"Sheikh Mahfouz's sister is actually one of four wives of Osama
bin Laden, making the two men brothers-in-law, a fact that former
CIA Director James Woolsey revealed in 1998 Senate testimony. Thus,
Osama bin Laden is sleeping with the sister of Bush's [and Khashoggi's]
business partner. Really."
Absolutely, and reporters, tank-thinkers, even prosecutors were
"shocked" when they tripped on the miz-maze of illegal financial
transactions preceding 911.
On May 22, 2002, FBI agents Jeffrey A. Royer and Lynn Wingate
were indicted for engaging in securities fraud, racketeering and
obstruction of justice. An extortion charge was also filed against
Royer.
The next morning, the Washington Post printed the remarks of prosecuting
U.S. attorney Alan Vinegard: "The allegations reveal a shocking
partnership between an experienced stock manipulator and law enforcement
agents, undertaken for their illicit personal financial gain." Seems
Royer and Wingate dipped into the FBI's case-file database to keep
tabs on the investigation and pass confidential information on to
perpetrators in the stock scheme.
Kenneth Breen, an assistant federal attorney assigned to the case,
added that one Amr Ibrahim "Anthony" Elgindy, a financial consultant
and co-conspirator named in the indictment, notified his Salomon
Smith Barney broker to to sell off $300,000 worth of stocks from
his children's trust funds. While chatting with his broker by phone,
Anthony Elgindy predicted that a stock market crash was imminent
and the index would fall to 3000 (it did).4 The broker contacted
the FBI, but Elgindy explained away his apparent foreknowledge of
the 911 terrorist assaults with the alibi that he'd been trying
to unload the stock shares for several weeks (this explanation didn't
rule out the possiblility that Elgindy's foreknowkedge preceded
911 by the same margin, however).
Elgindy had co-conspired lustily for shares in a communications
company, GenesisIntermedia (GENI). It was a stock pumping orgy.
The proprietors of GENI were Adnan Khashoggi and Ramy El-Batrawi
(both career criminals lurking behind their GENI blind would be
instrumental in a wide-ranging disinfomation campaign waged to confuse
the public after 911).
In the sealed indictment, opened in November of the same year,
a bit of transcribed dialogue was included in the evidence file
that referred to an "Anthony" receiving "$1.8 million" to inflate
the price of GENI stock.
Elgindy ... didn't that name surface during the Iran-contra investigation?
Gary Dobray, in his "Body Politic" Internet column, found another
Iran-contra link, this one to Anthony's brother, Khaled: "Recently
the White House made this Iran-Contra co-conspirator [Elliot Abrams]
a new National Security Council official.... [Abrams] chaired the
US Commission on International Religious Freedom and, as fate would
have it, [sat] on the DC Human Rights Committee chaired by Abrams
was ... Anthony Elgindy's brother, Khaled Elgindy. Khaled is a DC
Arab activist who served as a policy analyst on Elliot Abrams' Human
Rights Committee. Anthony and Khaled's father, Ibrahim Elgindy,
was reported by the press to have founded an umbrella group of Muslim
organizations in Chicago and led a 1998 protest on behalf of Muhammad
Salah, a man the US government calls a designated global terrorist.
Salah confessed to Israeli authorities that he was raising money
for Hamas' suicide bombings and training cells in the US to make
bombs and explosives."5
There were more ties to Iran-Contra on the GENI payroll: The director
of GENI was Michael Roy Fugler. Fugler was a business front organizer
for CIA "informant" Barry Seal. Seal, of course, allegedly ran cocaine
into the U.S. until 1986, when he turned witness against his Colombian
suppliers.
He's dead, of course.
All of which goes to say that once you map this underworld out,
nothing surprises you anymore.
-----------------
NOTES
1) CBC Broadcast, "CONSPIRACY OR COINCIDENCE?," October 29, 2003.
See, http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/conspiracytheories/saudi.html
2) Ibid.
3) See Salon, November 19, 2001 and Intelligence Newsletter, March
2, 2000.
4) Anthony M. DeStefano, "Ex-Agent Had Key Data Stock scam charges
have eerie link," Newsday, May 29, 2002 http://prisonplanet.com/Ex_Agent_Had_Key_Data.htm.
5) Gary Dobray, http://www.onthecanvas.com/body_politic.htm
PART FOUR: A DUMMYíS GUIDE TO STOCK FRAUD, EXTORTION, CORPORATE
LOOTING & NUCLEAR TERRORISM
In December 2002, federal prosecutors unsealed a RICO complaint
in a Minnesota bankruptcy court filed by a Minneapolis securities
firm - MJK Clearing vs. Deutsche Bank Securities, Adnan Khashoggi,
Ramy El-Batrawi, GenesisIntermedia (GENI), et al. The complaint
posited that the Alex. Brown investment house had run a ìloaned
sharesî stock inflation game from its Toronto office. Two investors
stood to profit: Adnan Khashoggi and his lieutenant, Ramy El-Batrawi.
Others headed for the docket, Business Week reported in May 2003,
ranged from ìan executive at Deutsche Bank Securities in Toronto
to stock promoter Rafi Khan and a motley pair of New Jersey brokers,
one a convicted felonî1
Like Elgindy, Khashoggi seemed to be pre-cognitive. The plot depended
upon foreknowledge of the Wall Street stock tumble that would follow
the destruction of the Trade Center towers.
MJK Securities trustee James Stephenson filed the lawsuit, maintaining
that Khashoggi and El-Batrawi had loaned shares of the stock to
a number of brokerage houses. In exchange, they came away with cash
collateral.
ìTo maximize the amount of cash squeezed out of the stock-lending
process, the stock price had to rise, and according to lawsuits,
that was done by extensive hyping of the stock,î Business Week reported.
After 911, when GENI stocks deflated, Khashoggi and Ramy El-Batrawi,
the companyís CEO, strolled away with millions of dollars. This
left the brokerage houses stuck with his devalued paper. The case
has since branched into further investigations by the U.S. Attorney's
office in Los Angeles and the SEC.2
But in the early 00's, the trail of financial carnage blazed by
Khashoggi and his Egyptian crony at Genesis was pushed to the back
pages by a story about a rising scandal at Los Alamos Labs. The
director of the countryís jewel-in-the-crown nuclear R&D facility
was forced to resign after the public exposure of slush expense
accounts and the disappearance of classified nuclear technology.
With these outrages crowding the front page, the press also paid
little mind when, on February 28th, 2001, as the business wires
reported, Los Alamos National Laboratory entered into a contract
with Nuclear Solutions, Inc., the radioactive waste treatment people.
A year later, Nuclear Solutionsí CEO Dr. Paul A. Brown stepped
up to announce an agreement with Israelís Institute of Industrial
Mathematics to treat waste-water. At this time, Nuclear Solutions,
Inc. was dipping into the red. The Israeli contract would certainly
lead to more nuclear-waste reclamation projects, but Dr. Brown had
secrets that jumped his claim to optimism: an extortion plot and
a shower of death threats engineered by an Egyptian investment adviser
in Florida, the business partner of a wealthy Saudi ìarms dealer.î
Anthony Elgindy had recently been arrested for his involvement
in a stock swindle involving FBI agents and pilfered classified
crime data. The indictment filed against Anthony Elgindy noted that
the FBI agents recruited to his immediate crime family combed confidential
federal files, and learned that Dr. Brown at Nuclear Solutions had
a criminal history. With this information in hand, Elgindy immediately
shot off an e-mailed threat to Brown. He went on a binge of short-selling
shares in Nuclear Solutions, spread word of Dr. Brownís past on
the Internet, barraged him with threatening e-mails.3
But Dr. Brown was dead by the time Elgindy and his entourage were
in custody, and faced convicted felon status themselves. On April
7, 2002, he was killed in a car accident. He was driving alone on
an icy road late at night and lost control of the vehicle, according
to police reports. Coincidence or not, there was a drastic shift
in the direction of Nuclear Solutions from its niche in nuclear
waste clean-up to development, as the companyís web site boasts,
of: ìlicensable product technologies for use in products and services
intended for homeland security, defense, nanotechnology, and environmental
technology applications.î4
One of Nuclear Solutionsí contributions in the post-911 age of
stress was an invention for detecting smuggled or shielded nuclear
material - a device patented by Dr. Brown before his death.5
A month before the accident, Dr Brown (the target of death threats)
announced the appointment of John Dempsey to the office of executive
vice president and chief operating officer at Solutions. Dempsey
was a Naval veteran and nuclear engineer with 21 years at Bechtel,
the sprawling military-industrial construction company based in
San Franciso. (George Schultz, another Iran-contra conspirator,
hailed from Bechtel - and received a warning not to fly on September
11, 2001, according to press reports. Bechtel, of course, cleaned
up after the invasion of Iraq, a war ìprovokedî by the antics of
Saddam Hussein and his ìmobile bio-weapons labs,î according to associates
of Khashoggi.
Researcher Lois Battuello sees the saga of Nuclear Solutions as
a chapter in an unwritten tome on geopolitcal subterfuge. "As we
speak," she says, ìBushies have allocated money for more nuclear
weapon output -- not the reverse. The U.S. continues to use radioactive
waste in bombs.î The political establishment, she says, ìdoesn't
necessarily want to bury all of it. Egyptian Dr. Magdy Elamir created
radioactive sites around his MRI imaging clinics at nine locations
in New Jersey (nuclear medicine waste improperly disposed), and
just maybe this was on purpose.î
Is it possible, she asks, that ìThe Arabsî intended to liberate
Dr. Brownís nuclear waste-remediation technology for their own dirty-bomb
program? ìAfter all,î she says, ìwe read of the lads in England
using all those smoke detectors to put together a small dirty bomb
... To a certain extent, the NWO types need to keep up the fear
level and the terrorists are a great way to do it. So ëgive 'em
the means to an end.í When you have Elgindy, who is so Muslim Brotherish,
bashing this stock, you have to think in terms of how ëterroristsí
might benefit by Paul Brown's death - financially.
ìWhen that stock price slumped, man, potential investors beat
a hasty retreat. The irony is that Tony Elgindy is soon to be in
the big house, likely for the rest of his life.î6
---------------------
NOTES
1) Joseph Weber With Gary Weiss, ìA Saudi Financier's Squeeze
Play,î Busniess Week, May 12, 2003.
2) Ibid.
3) Mary La Rosa, ìNuclear Solutions Lost In Ambiguity,î Argentina
Indymedia, September 05, 2004. http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2004/09/220957.php
4) Nuclear Solutions, Inc. Press Release via Primezone Media Network:
http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/news_releases.mhtml?d=63833
5) La Rosa.
5) Lois Ann Battuello, e-mail exchange with author, October 3,
2004.
PART V: TAPED CONVERSATIONS & A SHOWER OF GOLD FOR AMERICA
After the nightmare of Black Tuesday, a tape recording of a private
conference at the Hotel Royale Monceau in Paris, France found its
way to Observer reporter Greg Palast. The topic of this meeting
of minds was protection money, as in how much of it to give bin
Laden to assure that no messy al Qaeda bombs exploded in Saudi Arabia.
This cabal was in general agreement that their friend Osama had
done quite well promoting Wahhabism in the Middle East. They were
very complimentary.
Some of the usual suspects attended this session:
ï Prince Turki al-Faisal.
ï Khalid bin Mahfouz.
ï Saudi Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh (bailed W. and his oil company from
bankruptcy).
ï Adnan Khashoggi.1
(The 9/11 families have mentioned a French intelligence report
of the meeting in a lawsuit filed against Saudi royals, according
to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on August 16, 2002.)
Reverse the tape, now. More wretched voices drift upward from
the charred recesses of 911 history...
On April 4, 1993, the Las Vegas Sun revealed that it had obtained
a tape recording of its own, this one from an unnamed intelligence
source. On the tape, Middle Eastern gold traders toyed with the
notion of killing President Bill Clinton.3
As if this little attention-getter wasnít enough, the Arab businessmen
went on to discuss options for dealing with widow Imelda Marcos
and her son, then exiled in Hawaii. From the balmy islands, Imelda
Marcos was heaving billions of dollars in gold on the black market,
frantically, before the remains of their tin dictatorship was seized
by the courts.
The sudden infusion of Philippine gold on the world market threatened
to depress the already-sagging price of the metal. This cabal settled
on a drastic solution - a strategic terrorist act staged to drive
up the price of gold.
The threats ìmay be nothing more than ill-conceived boasting,î
the Sun allowed. ìThere may well be no connection between the [1993]
New York blast - which DID impact installation of new computer programs
at a major commodity exchange [also, one of the largest repositories
of gold in the world, worth $1 billion, situated beneath the skyscraper4]
- and the Marcos efforts to sell.... Yet far-fetched as it sounds,
terrorist acts aimed at eroding public confidence in the worldís
most stable nation and commodity markets could make gold more attractive
and drive its price higher.î5
The Ford Econoline that exploded at the World Trade Center on
February 26, 1993 left behind one of the biggest crime scenes in
New York history, with six dead, 1,000 injured. The damage was estimated
at an excess of $500 million.
Police dubbed it ìthe case of the century.î6
Assistant FBI director James Fox explained to reporters that Mohammed
Salameh, a follower of Omar Abdel Rahman, had been IDíd as the bomber.
The New York Times reported that Rahman was a ìSuspect Tied to an
Islamic Fundamentalist Sect." Ramzi Yousef, suspected to be the
ìmastermindî of the plot, lit for Pakistan...
Khashoggi was given a taste of the Marcos gold back in 1963 -
when he was running with Edwin Pauley and George DeMorenschieldt
- converted into a certificate issued by the Bank of Switzerland
to one ìAdnan Kasogi.î
Adnan was a familar face around the Marcos palace. So was Kodama
Yoshio, a Khashoggi business partner - also a Japanese Naval rear
admiral during WW II, a CIA asset, a thug in the Yakuza crime organization,
a future mover in the Unification Church. Yoshio had shipped the
so-called ìGolden Lillyî Japanese gold war reserve to the Philippines
after the war.
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, in Gold Warriors (2002), detail a
ìgreat fortune discovered by U.S. intelligence services in 1946
... $13-billion in war loot amassed by underworld godfather Kodama
Yoshio who, as a ërear admiralí in the Imperial Navy working with
Golden Lily in China and Southeast Asia, was in charge of plundering
the Asian underworld and racketeers. He was also in charge of Japanís
wartime drug trade throughout Asia. After the war, to get out of
Sugamo Prison and avoid prosecution for war crimes, Kodama gave
$100-million to the CIA.î Kodama, the all-purpose Yakuza, ìpersonally
financed the creation of the two political parties that merged into
Japanís ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), strongly backed to
this day by Washington.î
As the Seagraves detail it, Kodama ìspent two years in Sugamo
Prison as an indicted war criminal, but was magically released in
mid-1948 when he made a deal with General Willoughby [a viable suspect
in the plot to murder John Kennedy] to give the CIA $100-million
(equal to $1-billion in todayís values.) This payment [was] placed
in one of the secret slush funds controlled by the CIA station at
the U.S. Embassy. Subsequently, Kodama was put directly on the CIA
payroll.î
Khashoggiís gold certificate was his own pay-off for services
rendered. Gary Weadon, in The Nazi Hydra in America, recalls that
Khashoggi was an agent of Lockheed with a Yakuza business partner
whoíd brought a furtune in gold to the Philippines: ìThis gold certificate
was issued just before Lockheed paid the first known bribe to Prince
Bernhard. Lockheed was being used by the CIA to funnel money worldwide.
Moreover, Lockheedís European Sales Director, Dutchman Fred Meuser,
had been a member of Prince Bernhardís wartime air force squadron.
An additional member of the Lockheed bribe team was CIA officer
Nicholas Deak.î
Deak had set up a brokering front to launder CIA funds and slip
them discreetly to Kodama. Deak merged with Lionel C. Perera, founder
of Perera, Manfra & Brookes. ìPerera was attached to the Chief of
Military Government Finance Office at the Third Armyís headquarters
in Germany at war's end, where he interviewed Colonel Rauch. Rauch
was the SS colonel responsible for hiding the Reich Bank gold reserves.î
Another Nazi entrusted with the postwar wealth of the SS was Francois
Genoud. In 1992, the Observer identified Genoud as "one of the world's
leading Nazis.î Authorites suggest that he ìtransferred the defeated
Nazis' gold into Swiss bank accounts." Genoud underwrote the postwar
Odessa organization.8 On March 12, 2002, the San Franciso Chronicle
let on that Swiss police ìbelieve Genoud founded al Taqwa Bank and
allocated its resources to support international terrorists such
as Vladimir Ilich Ramirez, alias Carlos the Jackal, and bin Laden.î9
A few days later, Salon reported that Osama bin Laden had received
funding from Al Taqwa, with ìshareholders that include prominent
Arab figures from numerous countries in the Middle East. Among the
shareholders are the grand mufti of the United Arab Emirates and
prominent families in the UAE and Kuwait. Two sisters of Osama bin
Laden are also on the list, undermining the bin Laden family's claim
that it separated itself from his terrorist pursuits after he was
expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1994.10
With all this subterfuge in the background, the Khashoggi-Lockheed
bribery scandal begs reappraisal. Marcos, Yoshia and Iran-contraís
John Singlaub were all charter members of the World Anti-Communist
League (WACL), a para-fascist organization of old guard Nazis, death
squad leaders, spooks and propagandists. WACL provides further right-wing
context; the CIA and WACL were arguably symbiotic.
David Guyatt reports that a letter from Henry Kissinger dated
February 21, 1986 was sent to Marcos, ordering the sale of 63,321
tons of gold to 2000 US and European banks. Marcos stubbornly refused
and was dethroned.11
-------------
NOTES
1) Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, London: Pluto
Press, 2002.
2) Gary Thompson and Steve Kanigher, ìCoverup Spans 50 Years,î
Las Vegas Sun, April 4, 1993.
3) Ibid.
4) ìWorld Trade Center of New York City, Web-Dictionary.org: ìOne
of the world's largest gold depositories was stored underneath the
World Trade Center, owned by a group of commercial banks. The 1993
bomb detonated close to the vault, but it withstood the explosion.
One source estimates the 1993 value of the gold at one billion dollars,
believed to be owned by Kuwaiti interests.î The gold was recovered
in late 2001. . 5) Anon., ìThe World Trade Center Bombing,î Law
Enforcement Agency Resource Network, http://www.adl.org/learn/jttf/wtcb_jttf.asp
6) See Santa Fe New Mexican, March 20, 2003.
7) Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, Gold Warriors, Bowstring, 2002.
Another, immense domestic gold reserve began as cachÈs of Nazi and
Japanese loot, seized by the allies, intended not as compensation
to victims and survivors of the war, but as an ìaction fundî - for
bribing foreign officials, influencing elections, and such - known
as the Black Eagle Trust. Seagraves: ìThe idea for a global political
action fund based on war loot actually originated during the Roosevelt
administration, with Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. During the
war, Stimson had a braintrust thinking hard about Axis plunder and
how it should be handled when peace came.... To eliminate any trace
of original ownership, the Nazis had melted it down, and recast
it as ingots hallmarked with the swastika and black eagle of the
Reichsbank.î The ìeggî of the Black Eagle Trust was laid at the
secret Bretton Woods conference in 1944, when representatives of
forty-four nations met to plan the postwar global economy. This
has been verified by documents and official sources. One of them
is former CIA Deputy Director Ray Cline [yet another Iran-contra
conspirator], who was aware of Nazi and Japanese gold recoveries
in 1945. ìAs recently as the 1990ís,î the Seagraves write, ìCline
continued to be involved in attempts to control Japanese war-gold
still in the vaults of Citibank.... Captain Lansdale returned to
Tokyo in November 1945 with Robert B. Anderson.î General MacArthur
then accompanied Anderson and Lansdale on a covert flight to manila,
where they set out for a tour of the vaults Santy already had opened.
In them, we were told, Anderson and MacArthur strolled down ërow
after row of gold bars stacked two meters tallí. From what they
saw, it was evident that over a period of years Japan had looted
many billions of dollars in treasure from all over Asia. What was
seen by Anderson and MacArthur was only the gold that had not reached
Japan. Far from being bankrupted by the war, Japan had been greatly
enriched.î And so had the U.S. after the war when the pelf was seized
and cabbaged away as a covert foreign policy slush fund.
8) David Lee Preston, ìHitler's Swiss Connection,î Philadelphia
Inquirer, Jan. 5, 1997.
9) Jay Bushinsky, ìSuspected financial ties to al Qaeda,î San
Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 2002.
10) Lucy Komisar, ìShareholders in the Bank of Terror? Salon,
March 15, 2002. See, http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/03/15/al_taqwa/
11) For Guyatt's reconstruction, See Gary Weadon excerpt, ìNazi
Gold,î chapter 10. http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/goldp10.html
From: Alex Constantine Subject: Adnan
KhashoggiLinked to 911 Terrorists, Part 6 Date: October 10, 2004
5:36:58 AM GMT+07:00 To: Mark Bilk
Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists
PART 6: INTERLUDE - LEGAL PLUNDERERS & PARIAHS
By Alex Constantine
ìThe first prisoner [at Guantinimo] formally charged with committing
war crimes was 34 year-old Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin
Ladenís driver.... His military-appointed attorney Navy Lieutenant
Commander Charlie Swift questioned the suitability of four members
of the panel judging him, contending they had PERSONAL CONNECTIONS
WITH THE 9/11 ATTACKS and the subsequent ëwar on terrorí and as
such, would be prone to partiality....î - News wires, August 29,
2004
"Any terrorist offence is the result of an intelligence failure..."
- Indian Intelligence Official
Two months after the horror show in Manhattan, a federal grand
jury issued subpoenas for the records of the Holy Land Foundation.
The same day, federal agents froze the assets of InfoCom Corp.,
an Internet provider in Richardson, Texas. Both companies relocated
to Richardson and opened on opposite sides of the street at the
same time. InfoCom had been raided five days before the WTC meltdown.
When a platoon of 80 federal officers pulled the plug, 500 websites
crashed.1
Agents of the FBI, Secret Service, INS, IRS and multiple branches
of law enforcement pored over the companyís files and copied every
hard disk on the premises for four days.
The charity and the Net provider were symbiotic. Ghassan Elashi,
marketing vice president of InfoCom, was chairman of the Holy Land
Foundation, a faith-based terrorist front, the government charged,
represented by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld.
After the raid on the foundation, the Boston Herald hit on the fact
that the charity was represented by ìa powerful Washington, D.C.
law firmî appended to the Bush White House, one that had ìearned
hefty fees representing controversial Saudi billionaires as well
as a Texas-based Islamic charity fingered last week as a terrorist
front.î Akin, Gump has handled the knotty legal affairs three wealthy
Saudi businessmen (Khalid bin Mahfouz, Salah Idris and Mohammed
Hussein Al-Amoudi) who are key suspects in the financing of Al Qaedaís
war.
Partners at Akin, Gump include James C. Langdon, a close friend
of G.W. Bush, and George R. Salem, chairman of the Republican partyís
Arab outreach program in the 2000 campaign; also Barnett A. ëSandyí
Kress, a former Dallas School Board president, appointed by Bush
to a post as an unpaid consultant on education policy to the White
House.
This firm, the Herald reported, keeps ìan office in Riyadh and
is a registered foreign agent of the Saudis. It was paid $77,328
in lobbying fees by the Saudis during the first six months of 2000,
public records show.î1
In 1999, Saudi authorites placed bin Mahfouz under house arrest
after the discovery that his bank, National Commercial, ìfunneled
millions to charities believed to be serving as bin Laden fronts.
One of his business partners, Al-Amoudi, was represented by Akin
Gump.î After the press reported in 1999 that the Feds were also
investigating Al-Amoudi's Capitol Trust Bank, Akin Gump quickly
issued a press release on behalf of their client denying any connections
to terrorism. The denial crumbled, though, when it was reported
that a year before, Akin Gump had co-sponsored ìan investment conference
in Ethiopia with Al-Amoudi.î2
Attorneys are paper mercenaries in the ditches in a strategy-of-tensions
war engineered for profit and the avancement of ìconservativeî geopolitical
aims.
When the victims and survivors of 911 filed a trillion-dollar
lawsuit against the Saudi ruling family, the kingdom assembled an
immense legal team to deflect the accusations.
Newsweekís web site reports: ìTheir opening defense salvo in what
promises to be a bruising legal battle was fired last week when
a trio of lawyers from Baker Botts, a pricey and prestigious Houston-based
legal firm, filed a motion on behalf of Prince Sultan bin Abdul
Aziz, the Saudi defense minister.î
The defense fell back on a claim of diplomatic immunity and motioned
to dismiss.
But in documenting their motion, the Baker-Botts team ìpresented
highly detailed new evidence of the Saudi governmentís role in funneling
millions of dollars to a web of Islamic charities that are widely
suspected by U.S. officials of covertly financing the operations
of Al Qaeda and other international terrorist groups.î
The Sultanís right honorable and learned legal defense attorneys
were paid millions of dollars in retainers. They brought along piles
of affidavits and cancelled checks, admitting in a brief that His
Highness had contributed over $2 million to the International Islamic
Relief Organization, a Saudi charity raided by federal agents, and
disbursed a total of $52,000 in grants to the World Assembly of
Muslim Youth, yet another organization on the FBIís charitable-front
blacklist.3
Former Secretary of State James Baker is a senior partner at the
Sultanís legal firm. Robert Jordan, one of President Bushís personal
attorneys, is U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Some legal firms retained by the Saudis in the 911 familiesí suit:
Ü Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering/Prince Mohammed al Faisal Ü Kellog,
Huber, Hansen, Todd & Evans/Prince Turki al Faisal Ü Jones, Day/the
Binladin Group Ü Ropes & Grey/Khaled bin Mahfouz Ü White & Case/the
Al-Rajhi Banking Group Ü King & Spalding/the Arab Bank and Youssef
Nada Ü Fulbright & Jaworski/Nimir Petroleum.4
Meanwhile, in Guantanamo, the Defense Departmentís prosecutorial
Kangaroos oversaw a tribunal that has drawn fire from human rights
activists since the word ìdetaineeî was first breathed by Donald
Rumsfeld. On June 12, 2004, New York Times Magazine ran a feature
on Naval Lt. Commander Charles Swift, a defense attorney appointed
by the Defense Department to represent the accused at the Cuban
tribunal.
Swift and his legal team submitted a provocative friend-of-the-court
brief to the Supreme Court, the Timesí Jonathan Mahler reported,
ìin which, among other things, they compared their commander in
chief, President Bush, to the villain of the American Revolution,
King George III.î
In April, Swift took it the next step - he filed a suit against
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush in a Seattle
federal courtroom, arguing that the tribunal for his client - still
not charged or given a trial date - violates the Constitution, the
Geneva Conventions, federal law and the Uniform Code of Military
Justice.4
"An optimist by nature,î Mahler noted, ìSwift was inclined to
believe that the post-9/11 military-tribunal process would be fair.
But over the course of the spring last year, as the Defense Department
continued to define the workings of the military tribunals, his
hopefulness began to fade.î Swift was told that hearsay was permissable
in court. He could only file appeals to the four-member review panel
selected by Rumsfeld.
ìWhat is more, the Defense Department (in effect, the prosecution)
was not only defining the crimes worthy of trial by military tribunal
but also doing so only after hundreds of suspects were already in
custody and had been repeatedly interrogated.
ìIt was like a Monty Python movie,î Swift said. ìThe government
had this wonderful suit of armor, a lance and a sword. And I had
been given a sharp stick..."5
[TO BE CONTINUED]
-----------------
NOTES
1) Maggie Mulvihill, ìWhite House Connection - ìSaudi Agents Close
to Bush,î Boston Herald, December 12, 2001. On September 7, 2004,
UKís Register reported that the FBI ìsuspected that the Holy Land
Foundation was being used to filter money through to Middle East
terrorists and so shut it down.î The proprietors were arrested ìon
18 December 2002 on charges of dealing illegally with Mousa abu
Marzook and illegally exporting computer equipment and technology
to Libya and Syria.î http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/09/iraq_domain_owner_convicted/
2) See, The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2001.
3) Anon., ìA Legal Counterattack,î http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3067906/
4) Ibid.
5) The Guantanimobile Project, Newswatch web page, ìMilitary Lawyer
Files Suit Against Tribunal System,î August 29, 2004 http://guantanamobile.org/blog/archives/cat_guantanamo_in_the_courts.html
Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists
PART 7: THE BROTHER-BRUDER-AKH AXIS
Prelude: Abu Sayyaf & the CIAíS Terror Incubator in the Philippines
Itís generally agreed that the same arm of Al Quaeda responsible
for the 1993 WTC bombing returned on 9/11/01 to finish the job.
Itís a reasonable assumption that the first attempt to level the
towers, and the subsequent paths of blind cleric Rahmanís fellow
conspirators, should provide some answers to questions left in the
wake of 911 concerning its obscure history and sponsorship.
Media histories of al-Queda trace its roots to Saudi Arabia. Founder
Osama Bin Laden pushed early funding through the International Islamic
Relief Organization (IIRO), as arranged in meetings between al Qaedaís
inner-circle and the charityís directors. (The Saudi government
funded terrorist attacks on Israel in utter secrecy throughout most
of the 1990ís via charities in Virginia and Florida.1) Ayman al-Zawahiri,
bin Ladenís lieutenant, was employed by the IIRO in Albania. The
Philippine branch office was run by Osamaís brother-in-law (1986-94),
who made a hand-off of cash to the Abu Sayyaf, an al Quaeda offshoot.2
The DoD, CIA and other opaque branches of government (oh, and
the Mafia), drawn by the lure of Japanese and German gold (see part
5), maintained a particularly busy presence in the Philippines as
the Marcos kleptocracy declined and fell. Khashoggiís Iran-contra
ally, Oliver North, oversaw ìback doorî shipments of the recovered
gold, much of it to Arab governments, some of it to Middle Eastern
terrorists trading on the black market. North met with Osama Bin
Ladenís money men often to negotiate exchange of the gold.3
The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), like Al Quaeda, owed its existence
to the intelligence establishment. The ASG was co-founded by Edwin
Angeles, an undercover agent for the Defense Intelligence Group
at the Department of National Defense, Republic of the Philippines.
His Muslim handle was ìIbrahim Yakubî and as the organizationís
operations officer and chief recruiter, he was largely responsible
for the spread - and criminalization - of the Abu Sayyaf.
Filipino television news reporter Arlyn de la Cruz, in her history
of the ASG, writes that Angeles/Yokub "holds the key to the deep
intricacies of how some government agencies manipulated the rawness
of the Abu Sayyaf during its early years." This observation still
applies, and can be said of al Quaeda, the CIA-bred Taliban mutation,
as well.
It was Angeles ìwho actually introduced the idea of kidnapping
as part of the fund-raising activities of the Abu Sayyaf," she recalls
- this would be the abduction of a wealthy woman in Davao. "Edwin
planned the abduction and even initiated the plan himself." The
victim was held not far from the Brigade Headquarters of the Philippine
Marines in Tabuk. She was released after her family paid the million-pesos
ransom to Abu Sayyaf.
The next abductee was Luis "Ton-Ton" Biel, a five year-old child,
and his grandfather ... then Claretian priest Bernardo Blanco. Soon,
the media were requesting interviews, and ìYokubî stepped before
the cameras to act the role of lethal but well-spoken religious
lunatic. Angeles, according to Cruz, was a "good speaker, a good
actor. He spoke like a Leftist leader espousing Fundamentalist principles.î4
The May 16 2004, an accidental blast at the Evergreen Hotel in
Davao was a clear statement that the ìAl Quaedaî offshoot still
functions as an intelligence front, a proxy army of the National
Security Council that exists to justify intervention in the Philippines.
The explosion - publicized in the States as the work of the dread
ASG - was set off by a store of dynamite belonging to one Michael
Meiring, an African-born, naturalized, proverbially Ugly American
citizen. Meiring claimed that Abu Sayyafís mad dogs had lobbed a
grenade into his hotel room, an alibi proven to be false upon examination
of the scene by local police. Meiring was so badly injured that
both of his legs had to be amputated at the knees.
The dynamite, the Manila Times reported, also tore off his ìmantle
of obscurity,î exposing the accident-prone Ugly American ìand his
numerous American and Filipino partners, to the public limelight.î6
From the rubble at the Evergreen Hotel emerged the story of ìa complex
man, whose trail leads back to South Africa and boxes supposedly
containing US Federal Reserve notes and bonds obtained from the
Abu Sayyaf.î The Times reported that employees of the hotel ìclaimed
that while they were cleaning Meiring's room before the explosion,
he warned them not to touch two metal boxes, which he said contained
important documents. Police investigators said they recovered blasting
caps and ammonium nitrate from the room, where Meiring had stayed
since Dec. 14 2001.î
Meiring refused to talk to Philipine police. Bloodied and burned
by the explosion, he was whisked out of the country on a chartered
plane, according Col. Lino Calingasan, a local immigratiion official,
by agents of the FBI and NSC. ìAmerican David Hawthorn, a close
friend of Meiring, claimed the blast victim had confessed passing
to Mandelaís government the proceeds of a box of old US federal
notes.î That box was one in a set of twelve, containing an estimated
$500-million in counterfeit American notes.
Hawthorn had been shown a letter from the South African government
and a US Treasury permit to support his story. Hawthorn also saw
a ëpacking listí that had ìa cover sheet printed with the words
ëUS ARMY,í the Army seal, some numbers and a group of upper case
letters. Meiring, he said, claimed the list represented the serial
numbers of the missing notes, dating back to 1937. Similar ëboxesí
were recovered by United States Secret Service and the Philippine
Central Bank late last year. Other counterfeit bonds and currency
were also recovered from a hotel in Davao a few months ago. It has
been reported that these were to be ... shipped to Las Vegas, Nevada.î
Philippine police discovered that Meiring, the NSC amputee, had
run with neo-nazis and Islamic radicals alike, including the Abu
Sayyaf and other radical fronts. His key contact in Nevada was financier
James Rowe of Nevada, an executive producer for Wild Rose Productions,
an independent documentary production company in New Green Valley,
near Las Vegas. Rowe, in turn, ran with white supremacists and tax
rebels in Nevada, also neo-nazis in the United States and Germany.
Another of Meiringís contacts back home was Chuck Ager, an ultracon
mining engineer in Colorado. Another was Nina North (possibly an
alias), a CIA operative who took over ìback doorî financial transactions
in black market gold formerly conducted by Oliver North. Another
was Filipino-American Bob Gould, a tax protester from Hayward, California
in league with Fred Obado, leader of the Kodar Kiram terrorist cell,
son of Sultan Jumalul Kiram.
Meiring operated a shell company called PAROUSIA - a term used
by right-wing Christian evangelicals, a reference to the second
coming of Christ.
But Meiers wasnít the only home-grown terrorist running loose
in the Philippines: ìThree Vietnamese terrorists arrested last year
for plotting to blow up the Vietnamese Embassy here were assets
of the US intelligence community,î the Times reported.7
KAHANA
Robert J. Freidman, a journalist for the Village Voice, wrote
one of the most signally important articles of the previous decade,
ìThe CIA and the Sheikh.î5 The feature was an inventory of critical
leads, eroded over time, sadly, by opportunities lost.
If the killers of Rabbi Meir Kahana, the vitriolic leader of the
Jewish Defense League, had been captured and sentenced, Freidman
contends, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing - and by extension,
911 - would have never have occurred.
ìOn November 5, 1990,î Freidman wrote, ìEl Sayyid Nosair, a pudgy,
bearded 34-year-old Egyptian American and a core member of the El
Salaam Mosque, calmly walked up to the podium of a conference room
in the Halloran House, a midtown Manhattan hotel, after Kahane had
finished a one-hour speech. Moments later, Kahane was shot once
in the throat at point-blank range with a .357 magnum, and Nosair
bolted outside. During a running gun battle down Lexington Avenue,
Nosair was wounded by an off-duty postal inspector and finally captured
by New York City police.î
An FBI informant told Freidman that Nosair frequented the El Salaam
Mosque in Jersey City. Nosair was close with Sheikh Abdel Rahman.
ìI told them that, four days before, I saw with my own eyes the
Sheikh meeting with Nosair at a Lebanese restaurant on Atlantic
Avenue in Brooklyn. It was 7 p.m. There was Nosair, the Sheikh,
a person escorting the Sheikh, and another person I don't know.
They were deep in conversation."
After the arrest of Kahaneís assailant, police found evidence
that Kahaneís murder ìwas just the first in a planned spree. Scrawled
on a bank calendar in Nosair's home was a ëhit listí that included
the names of a U.S. representative, two federal judges, and a former
assistant U.S. Attorney.î
The secretive clutch of Muslims from the Mosque often met with
Nosair to discuss means of destroying symbols of the Israeli-loving
Babylon they despised, "the Empire State Building, the Statue of
Liberty.î The World Trade Center.
ìMany are wondering why there wasn't a comprehensive, wide-ranging
investigation of Meir Kahane's murder,î Friedman reported. ìWhat
investigators would have found if they had done their job thoroughly
is that Sheikh Abdel Rahman and El Sayyid Nosair were at the heart
of a far-flung terrorist conspiracy.î ---------- 1) John Loftus,
ìWhat Congress does not know about Enron and 9/11,î May 31, 2002,
http://www.john-loftus.com/enron3.asp#congress
2) Dore Gold, ìThe Suicide Bombing Attacks in Saudi Arabia: A
Preliminary Assessment,î Jerusalem Issue Brief, Institute for Contemporary
Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 28, May 13, 2003, http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief2-28.htm
3) Edith Regalado, ìCIA whisks away Brit-Am blast victim; now
in US,î Philippine Star, July 9, 2002.
4) Anon., ìEdwin Angeles: The spy who came in from the cold,î
INQ7.net, http://www.inq7.net/specials/inside_abusayyaf/2001/features/spy_turns_bandit
.htm
5) Robert J. Freidman, ìThe CIA and the Sheikh,î Village Voice,
March 30, 1993.
6) See, http://www.voxfux.com/archives/00000105.htm for a summary
of the Manila Times series written by Dorian Zumel-Sicat and Jeannette
Andrade, May 29, 2002 through May 31, 2002. Also see, Manila Timesí
news reports to June 19, 2002.
7) Ibid.
Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists
PART 7 ADDENDUM: IRAN-CONTRA TIES TO THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING
"[McVeigh's attorneys] said they believe the FBI still has information
that others helped McVeigh.... They have even suggested that some
government authorities might have known about the bombing plot in
advance..." - Los Angeles Times, 6-7-01
OpEd prophets and televised martinets dismiss out-of-hand the
possibility that the government had anything to do with the bombing
of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. But
David Hoffman, a reporter in San Francisco, begged to differ. He
put together a dense book, The Oklahoma Bombing and the Politics
of Terror (Feral House), noting numerous connections of Iran-contraís
"Secret Team" to the bombing. Unfortunately, the FBI's Oliver "Buck"
Revell filed suit against Feral House when he discovered a single
unsubstantiated fact. The book was recalled. It is no longer available
(although Amazon.Com still has a limited number of copies and scalps
them for $100 a copy). Hoffman's investigation led him to conclude
that elements of the "Octopus" (linked in a "small world" way with
Buck Revell) were deeply involved in the bombing.
My own Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in America
(Feral House, 1997) has a chapter on the devastation in Oklahoma
City. That book is still on the shelves but no major publication
has ever reviewed it and its contents on the bombing have been completely
ignored by the revisionist press at large. I also came to conclude
that the Iran-contra crowd was responsible for the bombing and subsequent
cover-up.
The Teamís ties to known terrorists are already thoroughly documented.
The Iran-contra affair itself involved arms deals with terrorists.
After the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, Bob Woodward
reported in the Washington Post (12-4-88) that sensitive documents
aboard the plane would have linked Oliver North to Abu Nidal, the
most dangerous terrorist operating at the time. Nidal had access
to a quantity of Semtex H plastic explosive and air-pressure-sensitive
detonation bombs sold to Libya by the CIAís Edwin Wilson (see: Los
Angeles Times, 12-28-88). In 1989, Americans for Middle East Understanding
reported in The Link, a newsletter, that Donald Gregg, an advisor
to George Bush, Sr., was the administrationís contact to the Mike
Harari network. Harrari, an Isreali Mossad agent, led an assassination
squad in the 1970s that targeted Palestinians. One of the Harrari
groupís most notorious acts was the murder of a Moroccan waiter
in Norway ó mistakenly identified as an agent of the Ali Salamehís
Black Septembers.
There was a concerted attempt by Vincent Cannistraro, an Iran-contra
player, federal "experts" and CIA spin doctors to pin ultimate responsibility
for the Alfred P. Murrah FB bombing on Osama Bin Laden's mystery
terorists. Cannistraro ONCE blamed the murders In Oklahoma City
on "ENVIRONMENTALISTS out to DESTROY all human life on earth." He
NOW claims (see the June 11, 2001 issue of The New American, published
by the fascist John Birch Society) that he had intelligence information
BEFORE the blast concerning Middle Eastern terrorists. The contradiction
is glaring: If his claim has any weight, if he indeed KNEW that
Muslim extremists had designs on a major American target, WHY did
he tell reporters immediately after the blast that ENVIRONMENTALISTS
were responsible?
In The Boston Globe, on May 16, 1995, another CIA Iran-contra
figure, anti-terrorism "expert" Neil Livingstone, also claimed that
Middle Eastern terrorists engineered the Oklahoma blast. A veteran
of Air America, the notorious CIA opium courier in Southeast Asia,
Livingstone once publicly defended the Agencyís assassination manual.
He was recruited to Air America by James Cunningham, its founder
- later a central participant in CIA "renegade" Edwin Wilsonís arms
sales to Ghaddafi. Livingstone has long-standing ties to Israeli
intelligence and the fascist Popular Alliance Party of Spain. He
was also an executive at Robert Keith Grayís public relations firm
Gray & Co. in the District of Columbia. He was brought into the
firm by Charles Crawford, who ran the International Division that
served as a branch office of Oliver Northís civilian supply network.
Openly tying a Middle Eastern terrorists to the bombing diverts
attention from possible CIA involvement: "There is a remarkable
similarity between the methods used by Islamic terrorists in the
bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the attack on the World
Trade Center, and the bombing in Oklahoma. The truckload of explosives
is almost a signature or calling card and it is the weapon of choice
among these groups." Livingstone noted: "Very typically, these terrorists
have found homegrown radicals to use as dupes in the actual bombings.
They have supplied the money and the technical expertise and highly
skilled operatives to guide a project and then get out of town before
they can be apprehended." This is also the modus operandi of a certain
American intelligence agency.
For the record, there WAS indeed a Middle Eastern connection -
but like McVeigh and Nichols, the Muslim terrorists involved were
linked to the Iran-contra players and other ranking Pentagonians
who remained in the background of the 1987-88 congressional investigation
of Irangate (it focused on Oliver North's civilain network almost
exclusively and bent over backwards to avoid discussion of the core
military and intelligence ties).
The following text includes complementary segments from Hoffmanís
book and my own dealinbg with participants in the Iran-contra scandals
linked to the Oklahoma bombing. The original Hoffman chapter is
featured here, and from Virtual Government I've included only segments
that also explore the bleak, fascistic wasteland of the "Octopus."
ó Alex Constantine
1: The Octopus
"This underground empire is controlled by a handful of people
for money ó that's the only secret of the temple." ó Danny Casolaro
The nomenclature of the Lockerbie and World Trade Center bombings
provide a unique and unparalleled insight into the dynamics of the
Oklahoma City bombing. Each event gives the reader a glimpse of
how the Shadow Government operates, utilizing drug dealers, criminals,
and terrorists to do its bidding.
All three bombings were sting operations that utilized, and were
utilized by, terrorists bent on causing destruction.
But the question still remained: who was controlling the terrorists?
To understand that, one must peer through the doorway of time stretching
from WWII to the present.
To prepare for the invasion of Sicily during WWII, the OSS (which
later became the CIA) collaborated with the Corsican Mafia. The
arrangement permitted the Mafia use the port of Marseilles for heroin
smuggling in exchange for its assistance in defeating the Nazis.[1117]
After WWII, the heroin operation moved to Vietnam and Laos, then
to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as the CIA embroiled itself in a covert
war against the Soviets. Assistant Secretary of Defense for National
Security Affairs Richard Armitage sat on the "208 Committee," which
oversaw military aid to the Mujahadeen. Fazoe Haq, the governor
of the Northwest Frontier Province (the largest heroin growing province
in Afghanistan), who was originally worth $100,000, was suddenly
was worth $200 million after the war. Armitage was his main contact.[1118]
Vince Cannistraro (Mr. "Libya done it") also sat on the 208 Committee,
representing National Security Advisor Robert "Bud" McFarlane, Oliver
North's supervisor.[1119]
Shortly after the start of the Afghani operation, the CIA began
arming the Contras in Nicaragua. Cannistraro himself [along with
Duane "Dewy" Clarridge, then Chief of the CIA's Latin American Division]
headed Casey's original operation to arm the Contras, based on Reagan's
March, 1981 decision. As former Green Beret Andrew Eiva said, "Cannistraro
was up to his ears by 1985." This is significant, considering the
Boland Amendment, prohibiting aid to the Contras, was passed in
1984.[1120] Some of these are the same players who moved into other
Central American countries, setting up security services (death
squads) for U.S.-backed dictators, and profiting handsomely from
the cocaine trade.
If anyone thinks these are outrageous allegations, consider the
statements of Mike Levine, one of the DEA's most highly decorated
veterans: "For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations
like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting
the world's biggest drug dealers," including the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan,
the Contras in Central America, the DFS in Mexico, the Shan United
Army in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, and "any of a score
of other groups and/or individuals like Manuel Noriega. Support
of these people has been secretly deemed more important than getting
drugs off our streets...."[1121]
As "Special Consultant to the Pentagon on the MIAs," in Bangkok
in 1975, Armitage reportedly spent more time repatriating opium
profits then recovering POWs. In 1976, when Khun Sa was still selling
heroin to CIA officials, the head of the CIA was none other than
George Bush.[1124] Former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot,
who was appointed presidential investigator for POW/MIA affairs,
came upon the same information, and was warned by former Defense
Secretary Frank Carlucci to stop pursuing the connections to Armitage.
As he sadly explained to a group of POW/MIA families in 1987: "I
have been instructed to cease and desist."[1125] Ironically, between
1987 and 1991, Vice-President Bush served as head of the South Florida
Drug Task Force, and later as chair of the National Narcotics Interdiction
System, both set up to "stem" the flow of drugs into the U.S. While
Bush was drug czar, the volume of cocaine smuggled into the U.S.
tripled.[1126]
Celerino "Cele" Castillo, the DEA's head agent in El Salvador
and Guatemala from 1985 to 1991, told reporters and Senate investigators
of numerous known drug traffickers who used hangers controlled by
Oliver North and the CIA in El Salvador's Ilopango military airbase.
When Castillo naively tried to warn Bush at a U.S. embassy party
in Guatemala, Bush "just shook my hand, smiled and walked awayÖ"[1127]
"By the end of 1988," added Castillo, "I realized how hopelessly
tangled the DEA, the CIA, and every other U.S. entity in Central
America had become with the criminals. The connections boggled my
mind."[1128]
"The CIA ó they're making deals with the Devil," adds Mike Levine.
"Unfortunately, the Devil is smarter than they are."[1129]
Some of those devils, like Monzer al-Kassar ó "business partner"
of Richard Secord and Oliver North ó would be utilized to do the
Octopus's dirty work. Another name Khun Sa mentioned repeatedly
was Ted Shackley.[1130] A long-time CIA player, Theodore G. Shackley
(known as "The Blond Ghost") began his Agency career as CIA Station
Chief in Miami, where he directed the CIA's JM/WAVE Operation, a
post-Bay of Pigs attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro and wreck havoc
within that sovereign nation. Utilizing Cuban expatriates, the CIA
conducted hundreds of sabotage raids against Cuba in direct violation
of the U.S. Neutrality Act. Shackley also worked in close partnership
with Mob figures John Roselli, Sam Giancana, and Santos Trafficante.[1131]
While the operation was shut down in 1965, due mainly to revelations
of organized crime connections and drug smuggling, many of the participants
remained in Miami, continuing their illegal activities. Later, as
Station Chief of Laos, Shackley directed Major General Richard Secord's
air wing in tactical raids against the Communist Pathet Lao, who
happened to be General Vang Pao's main competition in the opium
trade. By keeping the Pathet Lao busy with the help of the CIA and
the American military, Pao's Hmong tribesmen were able to become
the region's largest heroin producers.[1132]
Of course, Shackley, his deputy Tom Clines (who supervised the
air base in Long Tieng), and their colleagues in CIA front companies
like Air America were only too happy to help, smuggling heroin to
the U.S. in the gutted bodies of dead GIs (with the assistance of
their old Mob buddy Santos Trafficante, who had helped form their
ZR/RIFLE assassination team, and Vietnamese Air Force General Nguyen
Cao Ky), and laundering the profits in the Nugan-Hand bank. As a
1983 Wall Street Journal article stated: Investigations following
Mr. Nugan's death and the failure of the bank revealed widespread
dealings by Nugan-Hand with international heroin syndicates, and
evidence of massive fraud against U.S. and foreign citizens. Many
retired high-ranking Pentagon and CIA officials were executives
of or consultants to Nugan-Hand.[1133][1134]*
Shackley, along with Nugan-Hand's attorney ó former CIA Director
William Colby ó directed the infamous "Phoenix Program," a largely
successful attempt to "neutralize" by torture and murder approximately
40,000 Vietnamese civilians suspected of being Viet Cong sympathizers.
One Phoenix operative, testifying before Congress, stated that Phoenix
was "a sterile, depersonalized murder programÖ it was completely
indiscriminate." The assassinations would continue in Nicaragua
under the code-name "Operation Pegasus."[1135][1136]
After becoming the head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere operations
(Latin American Division) in 1972, Shackley supervised the overthrow
of the Chilean government ("Operation Track II") by murdering democratically
elected President Salvador Allende. With the backing of the CIA
under Shackley, the military led a violent coup by Right-wing General
Augusto Pinochet, which resulted in the abolishment of the Constitution,
the closing of all newspapers save for two Right-wing dailies, the
outlawing of trade unions, the suppression of all political parties,
and the arrest, torture, and execution of thousands.[1137]
After a brief stint as Director of the Far East Division, Shackley
directed CIA agent Edwin Wilson in training the Shah of Iran's notorious
secret police, the Savak, who routinely tortured and murdered the
Shah's opponents. Later Shackley would assist more directly in these
efforts.[1138] In 1975, Shackley became Associate Director in the
Directorate of Operations, which put him in charge of Covert-Operations,
Counter-Intelligence, and ironically, Counter-Narcotics, all under
the command of George Herbert Walker Bush.
These associations naturally led to Shackley playing a role in
the formation of the "Secret Team," (to coin a phrase invented by
Col. L. Fletcher Prouty) the covert and illegal enterprise that
was the driving force behind the Iran-Contra operation. Donald Gregg,
one of Shackley's subordinates during his Saigon tenure, would later
become Assistant National Security Advisor during Iran-Contra, reporting
directly to Vice-President Bush. It was against this backdrop that
Shackley served as a "consultant" to players such as Bush, Secord,
North, and Casey in their illegal and bloody guns-for-drugs network
that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the flooding of
our streets with tons of drugs.
As Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny writes about Ted
Shackley in his book, The Crimes of Patriots:
Looking at the list of disasters Shackley has presided over during
his career, one might even conclude that on the day the CIA hired
Shackley it might have done better hiring a KGB agent; a Soviet
mole probably could not have done as much damage to the national
security of the United States with all his wile as Shackley did
with the most patriotic of intentions. Between Shackely's Cuban
and Indochinese campaigns, more dope dealers were probably put onto
the payroll of the United States Government, and protected and encouraged
in their activities, than if the government had simply gone out
and hired the Mafia ó which, in the case of the Cuban campaign,
it did. CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner forced Shackley to
resign from the Agency in 1979, due to his "unauthorized" dealings
with rogue agent Edwin Wilson, who was selling plastic explosives
to Libya (with Shackley's approval). Had he not left, Shackley would
likely have become head of the Agency.[1139]
George Bush, who headed the Agency in 1976, strongly desired to
continue in that post. He was not reappointed when Jimmy Carter
took office.[1140]* Moreover, Turner, who had little faith in HUMNIT
(Human Intelligence) sources, decided to reshape the CIA along more
advanced technological lines. As a result of Turner's infamous "Halloween
Massacre," the CIA cut its field agents from several thousand to
just over 300. As President Jimmy Carter would later state, "We
were aware that some of the unqualified and incompetent personnel
whom he discharged were deeply resentful."[1141] The old hands of
the Agency, who formerly had at their disposal almost unlimited
"Black Budget" funds for covert operations, were suddenly forced
into retirement, or forced into lockstep with Turner's new guidelines.
Although CIA Director William Casey hired 2,000 new covert operators
in 1980, many CIA critics felt Turner's actions had already caused
the secret cells of the good-old-boy networks to bury themselves
ó and their illegal activities ó even deeper.
It is this element, birthed in the hysteria of the Cold War, legitimized
by the paranoia of the National Security state, and nurtured by
the politics of greed, that has buried itself in the core of American
politics. As long-time Army Criminal Investigator Gene Wheaton defines
it: "An elite, very clandestine, very covert group within the intelligence
communityÖ. The CIA and DIA is just the lightening rod for the people
who really control things."
Those who could accept the idea of government foreknowledge of
the Oklahoma City bombing would be hard-pressed to accept the notion
that certain factions within the government might have orchestrated
the bombing itself. Those who have a difficult time accepting this
are stymied by what they perceive as "government."
As Wheaton explains, "The government is just a bunch of monuments,
office buildings, computers, and desks. They don't see the crazies
in the government ó the little conspiratorial cliques within the
government."[1142] These little conspiratorial cliques ó the same
players that Shackley intersects with, going back to Cuba, Laos,
Afghanistan and Nicaragua ó have been involved for decades in everything
from drug and gun-running, to assassinations, covert warfare, and
outright terrorism. It is a terrorism that increasingly has no particular
face, no ideological credo, no political goal. It is a terrorism
motivated by power and greed.[1143]
By no means the lone man behind the curtain, Ted Shackley represents
one of the more visible of this lexicon of covert operators upon
whom the powers that be depend on for their endless supply of "black
ops" and dirty tricks. Perhaps this is how Shackley knows, or seems
to know, the complex truth behind Oklahoma City. It is a truth that
remains hidden behind a sophisticated labyrinth of covert operatives,
all of whom converge at similar times and places. They are, as David
Corn writes, "the little faceless gray men we never see and seldom
hear about." Those we call the "Shadow Government," the "Parallel
Government," the "Enterprise," the "Octopus," or a half-a-dozen
other names, are carefully hidden behind an endless roster of official
titles and duties, and a plethora of familiar-sounding organizations
and institutions.
These same faceless little gray men would pop up in the Oklahoma
City bombing conspiracy like interminable weeds between the cracks
of the pavement. From the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra to Oklahoma
City, the names, faces, and players would coalesce for a brief moment
in time into an indistinguishable menagerie of politicos and spooks,
terrorists and assassins ó to commit their terrible deed, then fade
into the seamless world were little distinction is made between
assets and criminals.[1144]
Ted Shackley was officially forced to resign from the CIA due
to his dealings with friend and renegade agent Edwin Wilson. Wilson
and former CIA employee Frank Terpil had smuggled two tons of C-4
to Libya, and at the behest of Shackley, had set up terrorist training
camps there utilizing Green Berets led to believe they were working
for the Agency. The ostensible purpose of this maneuver was to permit
the CIA to gather information on Soviet and Libyan weapons and defense
capabilities, and to learn the identities of foreign nationals being
trained for guerrilla warfare. Upon obtaining their passports and
travel plans, Shackley would alert their home country's secret police,
who would then assassinate them upon their return.[1145]
While Wilson was sentenced to a long prison term, Terpil fled
to Cuba, and has since been involved in numerous dealings with the
PLO and other terrorists, supplying them with sophisticated assassination
weapons, detonators, and communication systems.[1146]
Terpil also supplied torture devices to Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin,
who used a bomb supplied by Terpil to assassinate Kenyan cabinet
member Bruce McKenzie.[1147]*
One month later, Terpil was implicated in the murder of three
executives of the IBEX corporation ó a high-technology company that
was doing business with the Savak. John Harper, IBEX's former director
of security, said that while in Tripoli, he saw a mock-up of the
ambush site at the training facility that Terpil and Wilson had
set up.[1148]Ü
Readers will recall this is the same Frank Terpil that was seen
by Cary Gagan in Mexico City with Omar (Sam Khalid?), six months
before the Oklahoma City bombing. "I saw him down in Mexico," recalled
Gagan, "in November of '94, in Mexico CityÖ with Omar."
Gagan said he and Omar met Terpil at the Hotel Maria Isabelle
in the Zona Rosa district. Gagan didn't know who Terpil was at the
time, but described him as a fat, balding, 60ish fellow, who was
"terribly dressed." In other words ó Frank Terpil.
"I heard the name because I knew Wilson's name from the Florence
Federal Penitentiary in Colorado." Gagan said that one of his intelligence
contacts, a man named Daniel, told him about Terpil. "The conversation
came up in reference to the Gander, Newfoundland crash," said Gagan.
Was Terpil in Mexico to supply explosives to Omar? While Gagan
wasn't privy to the conversation, he believes that was the purpose
of the meeting. When Wilson and Terpil were selling arms and explosives
to Libya, they were reporting to none other than Ted Shackley. Kwitny
notes that Wilson and Terpil were hiring anti-Castro Cubans from
Shackley's old JM/WAVE program [and Green Berets] to assassinate
President Qaddafi's political opponents abroad:
Some U.S. Army men were literally lured away from the doorway
of Fort Bragg, their North Carolina training post. The GIs were
given every reason to believe that the operation summoning them
was being carried out with the full backing of the CIA.Ö[1149]
Readers will also recall that while Timothy McVeigh was still
in the Army, he wrote his sister a letter telling her that he had
been picked for a Special Forces (Green Beret) Covert Tactical Unit
(CTU) that was involved in illegal activities. These illegal activities
included "protecting drug shipments, eliminating the [Octopus's
drug] competition, and population control."
This is exactly what Shackley, Clines, and Secord did in Laos
ó assassinating and bombing Vang Pao's opium competition out of
existence. Could this CTU McVeigh claims he was recruited for be
a latter-day version of Shackley's assassins? Former federal grand
juror Hoppy Heidelberg said McVeigh's letter indicates that he turned
them down, while former FBI SAC Ted Gundersen claims McVeigh actually
worked for the group for a while, then became disenchanted.[1150]
If McVeigh had actually been recruited for such a group, the question
arises of what cover-story he was given. As discussed, it is highly
likely he was told that he was on an important mission ó to infiltrate
a terrorist organization and prevent a bombing. Considering McVeigh's
background and character, it is unlikely he is a terrorist who set
out to murder 169 innocent people.
Also recall that McVeigh was seen with Hussain al-Hussaini. The
Iraqis would provide a convincing and plausible excuse if McVeigh
was led to believe he was part of a sting operation: "Son, you were
a hero in the Gulf War. Your country needs you now in the fight
against terrorism." It is a story a young, impressionable man like
McVeigh would fall for.
It is also possible that McVeigh was sheep-dipped as disgruntled
ex-GI for infiltration into the neo-Nazi community, which would
provide a doorway into the bombing conspiracy through places like
Elohim City.
Or perhaps, as a result of his becoming "disenchanted" and "leaving"
the CTU, he became targeted for "termination," and was set up as
a fall-guy. Such is standard operating procedure for those who attempt
to leave the world of covert operations.
Either way, the fact that there appeared to be two "Timothy McVeighs,"
just as there were two Oswalds, would suggest a sophisticated intelligence
operation, one that was designed to put McVeigh in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
Like Oswald, McVeigh probably believed himself to be a government
agent, part of a secret project. Like Oswald, McVeigh was not told
what the plan really involved, and was trapped, framed, and made
a patsy.
This goes a long way towards explaining why an armed McVeigh didn't
shoot and kill Officer Charles Hanger when he was stopped on the
Interstate after the bombing. Why would a man who had just killed
169 men, women, and children balk at killing a cop (a member of
the system that McVeigh allegedly hated) on a lonely stretch of
highway? The only possible answer is that McVeigh believed he was
part of a sting operation ó a government asset ó and would be protected.
Whatever McVeigh's actual purpose and intent, it is curious, to
say the least, that Ted Shackley would tell D'Ferdinand Carone that
the perpetrator of the bombing was somebody from here. How did he
know?
Roger Moore, the mysterious gun dealer whom the government claimed
McVeigh and Nichols robbed to "finance" the bombing, ran a company
next to Bahia Mar Marina in South Florida (a popular hang-out for
the Iran-Contra crowd), which manufactured high-speed boats. The
boats ó sold through Intercontinental Industries of Costa Rica (an
Ollie North "cut-out") ó were used to mine Nicaragua's harbors in
"Operation Cordova Harbor."[1151] One source I spoke to said Moore
had direct contact with Oliver North. "I don't know who his [Moore's]
contact was on Iran-Contra beyond Don Aranow. I know he had access
and would talk directly to Oliver North. He knew Felix Rodriquez
pretty well, he knew Nester Sanchez, Manny Diaz, all those guys
around Jeb [Bush] pretty well."
This source also claimed that Moore was a "paymaster" for Tom
Posey's Civilian Military Assistance (CMA) ó the covert paramilitary
operation that served as the primary nexus for arming the Contras.
A retired CIA/DIA agent I spoke to in Arkansas, said "[Moore]
was an Agency contractor."
Other sources say Moore was an informant for the FBI. He allegedly
tried to sell heavy weapons to the Militia of Montana (MOM) as part
of an FBI sting operation. A call to MOM indicated that Moore had
indeed stopped by for a friendly chat. He told Randy Trochmann,
one of MOM's leaders, that he was traveling the country meeting
with militia groups in an attempt to verify black helicopter sightings
and rumors of UN troop movements. This seems a peculiar pastime
for a man who worked for a network of spooks devoted to bypassing
and subverting the Constitution.[1152]*
What is also peculiar is a letter written by Moore to McVeigh
in early 1995. Introduced at the trial of Terry Nichols, the letter,
speaks of "a planÖ to bring the country down and have a few more
things happen."[1153]
Robert "Bud" McFarlane went on to form his own consulting firm,
and joined the board of American Equity Investors (AEI), founded
by Prescott Bush. AEI's board of directors reads like a Who's Who
of the spook world, including former CIA officials George Clairmont
and Howard Hebert, and CIA lawyer Mitch Rogovin, who was George
Bush's legal counsel when he was Director of the Agency.[1154]
AEI invested in a Tulsa, Oklahoma company: Hawkins Oil and Gas,
from 1988 to 1991. McFarlane was a "consultant" for Hawkins and
several other companies on the Ech power project in Pakistan, which
required frequent trips to that country.[1155] This was during the
tail end of the largest covert operation the U.S. ever conducted
ó the arming of the Mujahadeen, who trained in Pakistan. McFarlane
sat on the "208 Committee," who's job it was to procure weapons
for the Mujahadeen, and arms contracts for the Pakistani government.
Recall that Richard Armitage, who was the contact for Fazoe Haq,
governor of the Northwest Frontier Province, also sat on the "208
Committee." As Alfred A. McCoy writes in The Politics of Heroin
in Southeast Asia: It's known that the CIA paid the Afghan guerrillas,
who were based in Pakistan, through BCCI.Ö That the Pakistan military
were in fact banking their drug profits, moving their drug profits
from the consuming country back to Pakistan though BCCI. In fact
the boom in the Pakistan drug trade was financed by BCCI.Ö
BCCI also served as a conduit for the Iran-Contra operation, largely
through Gaith Pharon, former head of Saudi Intelligence, who operated
out of Islamabad, Pakistan. The Saudis played a major role in funding
the Mujahadeen and [via the request of Secord and McFarlane] the
Contras. McFarlane ó who former Mossad official Ari Ben Menashe
claims is a Mossad asset ó worked with the president of Hawkins'
International Division, Mujeeb Rehman Cheema, on the Ech project.
Was Hani Kamal's supposed statement that Khalid was connected to
the Mossad accurate? A prominent Muslim community leader, Cheema
claims he does not know Sam Khalid.[1156]
Interestingly, Gagan said that at one point, Terry Nichols rendezvoused
with his Middle Eastern friends at the Islamic society of Nevada.
Cheema is chairman of the Islamic Society of Tulsa. Is there a connection?
And what of Cheema's links to McFarlane? Was McFarlane using Hawkins
as a front for CIA activities in Pakistan?
It is perhaps prophetic that many of the terrorists implicated
in the major bombings of the last decade attended the terrorist
conference held in the Northwest Frontier Province town of Konli,
Pakistan in July of 1996. As noted, Osama bin Ladin, a Saudi who
funded the Mujahadeen and was implicated in the Riyadh and Dhahran
bombings, (a close associate of Sheik Abdel Omar Rahman, implicated
in the World Trade Center bombing), Ahmed Jibril (who bombed Pan
Am 103), and senior representatives of Iranian and Pakistani intelligence,
and Hamas, HizbAllah, and other groups attended the conference.[1157]
Stephen Jones claimed he had learned through the Saudi Arabian
Intelligence Service that Iraq had hired seven Pakistani mercenaries
ó Mujahadeen veterans ó to bomb targets in the U.S., one of which
was the Alfred P. Murrah Building.[1158]
Just who were these "Pakistani mercenaries," and were they really
working for Iraq?
--------------
2: From: "The Iran-contra Players and the CIA's War on America,"
Virtual Government, by Alex Constantine, Feral House, 1997:
[...]
Who should step forward immediately after the bombing but a chorus
of "National Security Experts" drawn from hundreds of propagandists
squatting in the duck-blinds of the corporate press.
The most strident terrorism "expert" consulted by the media was
Vincent Cannistraro, the former CIA officer who ran covert ops for
the NSC during the Iran-contra debacle ó with its cocaine backdrop.
In 1991, Cannistraro told the San Francisco Chronicle that sinister
"environmentalists" had mustered into "clandestine cells," plotting
to develop technologies to diminish, even "eliminate" the entire
human race.
Cannistraro performed a similar service for the Contragate contingent
at the NSC by blaming the Gander crash on Iraqui terrorists. In
fact, the plane was bearing a score of intelligence agents to the
U.S. when it crashed in Newfoundland. Several of them had gathered
damning information on John Singlaub, North and related Pentagon/CIA
subterfuges abroad.
In December 1990, Gene Wheaton, formerly an investigator for the
Christic Institute, concluded a probe of the Arrow Air jet crash
with the comment, "the official version is a cover-up, and the Canadian
and U.S. government officials who are responsible have been criminally
negligent or worse." On board had been over 20 crack commandos from
the Special Forces, identified on the passenger log as "warrant
officers." Arrow Air itself was a CIA dummy front, and bore a ton
of mystery cargo when the jet and its 256 passengers went down.
Wheaton discovered that Arrow had transported arms from Israel
to Iran on Northís behalf as part of the arms-for- hostages swap.
The mid-flight explosion, he claims, was a retaliatory strike by
the Iranians for a swindle perpetrated by the Reagan administrationís
pugnacious schemer, Oliver North. Five years on, seeds planted by
the Iran-contra players resulted in another bombing ó of the Alfred
Murrah Building in Oklahoma City....
Larry Nichols [a vocal Clinton critic] is a CIA veteran of the
contra guns-for-drugs network. Nichols fought under John Singlaub
in Vietnam, and reported to the World Anti-Communist League official
during the Nicaraguan contra war.
Singlaub is an anti-Communist of the 1950s genus, and it was during
that decade, as deputy CIA station chief in South Korea, that his
political psychopathology found an outlet. During the Korean war
he fell in with a circle of Seoulís most powerful politicians, spies
and industrialists. His sole ambition in life since appears to be
fundraising to destroy Communism. In Vietnam, Singlaub organized
the dreaded Phoenix Program under his Special Operations Group,
a bund of 10,000 troops unleashed in the south to conduct covert
raids, assassinations of Viet Minh by the tens of thousands, psychological
warfare and sabotage missions. Ollie North was one of John Singlaubís
second lieutenants.
Claire Sterling writes that Singlaub "the centurion came to be
regarded with awe by a whole generation of military men and intelligence
officers, many of whom shared his conservative views about the way
things should be in Asia. Around him grew a following that developed
into an infrastructure at the Pentagon and CIA."
The quarter of covert intelligence that took part in the Iran-contra
scandal was represented in the Oklahoma bombing case by Michael
Tigar, the attorney representing Terry Nichols. In the 1960s and
í70s, Tigar was employed by the law firm of Williams, Wadden & Stein.
He reported to Edward Bennett Williams, the head of the firm, a
powerful Beltway attorney on intimate terms with the CIA. Williams
often referred to Tigar as his "most brilliant protÈgÈ."
The law firm sprang into existence to cater to the same interagency
intelligence underground implicated in drug distribution, mind control
and a pile of exploding compost in Oklahoma City.
A senior partner of the firm was Brendon Sullivan, the high-strung
legal phenomenon who represented Oliver North during the Congressional
Iran-contra hearings.
Williams, a Jesuit, was offered the post of CIA director by two
presidents. He refused, possibly because he was already a de facto
CIA functionary, and thereby shaped history ó Gerald Ford gave the
job to George Bush instead. Robert Maheu, the CIA hit man, attended
Holy Cross with Williams and was a close friend. In 1958, the famed
attorney referred Maheu to Los Angeles mobster Johnny Roselli to
plot against Cuban premier Fidel Castro.
Junk bond magnate Michael Milken, a client of the firm, openly
wept at his funeral in 1988. Williamsí client roster included Joseph
McCarthy, Mafia don Frank Costello, Jimmy Hoffa, Frank Sinatra,
Armand Hammer and John Connally. He was general counsel to Georgetown
University, which has long maintained a symbiotic relationship with
Langley.
Tigar came to the firm after resigning his position as a Supreme
Court clerk. He represented some extremely high-powered clients
for a journeyman attorney. He coached Bobby Baker, the LBJ aide
imprisoned for tax fraud and influence peddling in 1967, before
Senate appearances. Tigar defended John Connally when the former
Texas governor was accused of pocketing a bribe. Connally was acquitted.
Tigar was rewarded with a prize bull. He packed the beast off to
Fidel Castro.
One San Francisco reporter described Tigar, with his danger-high-voltage
wardrobe and crewcut, as appearing "more like a Young Republican
than the spell-binding firebrand he was a dozen years ago." The
press has made much of his radical days at Berekely, his representation
of Angela Davis, but he has more than comforted critical neo-"conservatives"
by taking on far-right clients. One of the most controversial was
John Demjanjuk, the accused Nazi war criminal. Tigar also represented
Clayton Jackson, the California lobbyist convicted for money laundering,
racketeering and offering a bribe to state senator Alan Robbins.
He agreed to counsel Terry Nichols at the request of three federal
judges.
Like his mercurial attorney, Nichols was turned out by the same
national security bund behind the Iran-contra swaps and the World
Trade Center bombing, not to mention foreign coups, death squad
outrages, drug imports and a long history of homicidal covert operations.
After his arrest, federal agents discovered that Terry Nichols
had a locker full of gold and silver bullion stored in a locker
in Las Vegas. Gold, like guns and drugs, is a favored currency in
the international netherworld of "spycraft."
Nichols obtained the gold in November, 1994 while on a junket
to the Philippines.
Terry Nichols hid a dagger under his compost-smeared cloak. Lana
Padilla, his ex-wife, called a news conference on July 13 after
visiting him in prison. She said that Nichols made frequent trips
to the Philippines since 1989 ó so many, in fact, that the farmer
from Kansas had charged $40,000 in air fares to his credit cards.
Ms. Padilla also claimed that Tim McVeigh footed the bill for the
1989 trip.
The gold, Padilla said, was given to Nichols by a party unknown
in the Philippines ó allegedly a bearded Islamic involved in the
World Trade Center bombing.
Padilla said that Nichols never took Mary Fay, his current wife
(a mail-order bride from the Philippines), when he travelled, even
though her family lived in Cebu. Cebu is a well-known terrorist
haunt in the Phillipines.
Nichols told Lana, before departing for his last visit to the
Philippines, "I might not be coming back." He travelled with a gun,
she said ó and managed to pass through airport security gates. Before
he left, he entrusted her with $20,000 for McVeigh in case he never
returned. He did, and he was noticeably on edge, "Those people can
kill you," he said with a shudder, "Iím never going back there again."
Critics of the CIA have dismissed Padillaís tale of terrorists
in the Philippines as a ploy to distract attention from the true
source of the funds. One of Padillaíshrillest critics was Tony Sgarlatti,
host of "The Truth (as I see it)," a cable program originating in
Minnesota that purports to raise the lid on secret government. Sgarlattiís
video credits include "Proof that UFOs are Real" and "What the Government
isnít telling you about AIDS."
"Itís very clear that Lana is lying," Sgarlatti argued with prescient
confidence, noting that heíd spoken with an unnamed official of
the bombing investigative team.
"Lana is trying to make money selling her story to the tabloid
newspapers," Sgarlatti said. "Terry Nichols only knew Tim McVeigh
for a short time, about five weeks." The court affidavit of Terry
Nichols, however, states that he and McVeigh had experimented with
explosives as long ago as 1992.
Sgarlatti was employing a time-tested technique for discrediting
a troublesome witness ó the old tabloid fever gambit. As a matter
of fact, bearded Islamic bomb-tossers with safe houses in the Philippines
have proved useful to the national security crowd.
And the investigation of the World Trade Center bombing was not
as painstaking as it might have been. Sandbags |