|
[back to parts 1-7]
Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists
by Alex Constantine
PART 8: A "DIRTY SON-OF-A-BITCH" & THE BLIND SHEIK
Emad Salem, the FBI informant - also the governmentís key witness
in the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and ten followers accused
of plotting to blow up the UN, an FBI office and two tunnels - was
a hopeless confabulator by his own admission. And a loaded one:
Salem was paid a million dollars for his testimony.
The Egyptian bodyguard for Shiekh Rahman admitted under questioning
that he had lied for years about his past. He boasted to his FBI
handlers that heíd been ìan intelligence officer in the Egyption
army,î when in fact, Salem said, heíd been a lowly ìtechnical officer.î
He freely offered that on one occasion, as the New York Times reported
in March 1995, ìhe even lied under oath in a criminal trial in Manhattan,
saying he had been wounded trying to protect President Anwar Sadat
of Egypt when he was assassinated in 1981.î1
Defense attorney William Kunstler investigated and discovered
that Salem was a lieutenant colonel in the Egyptian army, an unreliable
witness, one ìwho never stopped working for the Egyptian government.î
Kunstler grumbled that Salem - a bigamist with one wife in New York
and another in Egypt - was devoid of character: ìHe divulged that
he had had amnesia since January of 1992, and that he had been going
to a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Stein to help him with this
situation...î
It devolved under questioning that Mr. Salem had received a quarter
million to one million dollars for his services as an FBI informant
cum agent provocateur. In one meeting with FBI, Agent John Anticev
- secretly taped by Salem - there was an argument over escalating
expenses:
Anticev: ... It's like a little out of the ordinary.
Salem: Okay. Alright. I don't think it was. If that's what you
think guys, fine, but I don't think that because we was start already
building the bomb which is went off in the World Trade Center. It
was built by supervising supervision from the Bureau and the D.A.
and we was all informed about it and we know that the bomb start
to be built. By who? By your confidential informant...î3
Defense attorney Ron Kuby listened to the tape and commented:
ìWe have received information that [Salem] was visually observed
at the scene of the bombing shortly after the bombing took place.
Shortly after that, he was admitted to the hospital, suffering from
an ear problem that was consistent with exposure to blast. The mastermind
is the government of the United States."4
Apart from the compensation that Salem received as an FBI asset,
he was also funded, according to Kunstler, ìby other sources linked
to foreign governments, including money from an organization founded
[by] Rabbi Meir Kahane.î
ìHeís just a dirty son-of-a-bitch,î Kunstler opined.5
So were the zealots in Rahmanís Koran-happy wrecking crew. Four
of the bombers were convicted in 1994 on charges of conspiracy,
possession of explosives and assault. The defendents confessed that
they were incited to murder by US support for Israel. Ramsey Yousef,
the bomb plotís ìmastermind,î proclaimed at his sentencing hearing
in January 1998: ìYes, I am a terrorist and proud of it as long
as it is against the U.S. government."6
Sheik Omar Rahman was one of three ìspiritualî guides on Yousefís
cratered path through life. Though the cleric had been placed on
the national watch list, he entered the US with ease, thanks to
a ëmuch-disputedî visa issued to him by a CIA agent. Robert Freidman
wrote that Rahman was ìinfamous throughout the Arab world for his
role in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat.î7
TIME MACHINE: Egypt. The government was gripped by a civil war
with Islamic warriors , including hundreds of CIA-trained guerrillas
in the Afghan struggle. The main contender for power was an army
led by fundamentalist Mohammed Shawky al-Istambouli, brother of
Khalid al-Istambouli, an army lieutenant. Khalid and Ayman Zawahiri,
both assets of the CIA, led the death squad that murdered Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat in October 1981. This faction spun-off from
a larger army, the Dawa and Sharia, the umbrella group for all Mujahedins
fighting in the war against Soviet Russia, covertly sponsored by
the U.S. French, British and Israelis. Al-Istambouli traveled to
Peshawar, the Mujahedin base of operations, in 1983, and transfered
funding from Iran to Afghanistan. Al-Istambouli was sentenced to
death in absentia by an Egyptian court in December 1992 for plotting
to overthrow Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government and kill
Egyptian leaders...8
The charge that the Sheik operated with CIA sanction comes from
a number of sources, including an anonymous government official
who leaked that a CIA officer assigned as a consular official approved
the Sheikís visa from the Sudan after the consulate approved it,
according to the New York Times on July 14, 1993. Egyptian President
Mubarak suggested that the visa had been issued to Rahman as a payoff
for "services" rendered.
The Atlantic Monthly reported in 1996 that early off, "the sixty
or so CIA and Special Forces officers based [in Afghanistan] considered
[Rahman] a "valuable asset," according to one of them, and overlooked
his anti-Western message and incitement to holy war because they
wanted him to help unify the mujahideen groups..."8
"The sheik has been a CIA agent since his days in Afghanistan,"
Mubarak told Egypt's al-Gomhuria newspaper. "He still earns a salary."9
Researcher Paul Thompson has compiled a sourced timeline for the
Internet that dispells the notion that Rahman was an independent
operator:
ìAbdul-Rahman was heavily involved with the CIA and [Pakistan]
ISI efforts to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, and became famous
traveling all over the world for five years recruiting new mujaheddin.
[Atlantic Monthly, 5/96] He is ìinfamous throughout the Arab world
for his alleged role in the assassination of Egyptian president
Anwar el-Sadat.î Abdul-Rahman immediately begins setting up a terrorist
network in the US. [Village Voice, 3/30/93] He is known to have
befriended bin Laden while in Afghanistan, and bin Laden secretly
pays Abdul-Rahman's US living expenses. [Atlantic Monthly, 5/96,
ABC News, 8/16/02] Abdul-Rahman's ties to the assassination of Rabbi
Meir Kahane in later 1990 is ignored. As one FBI agent says in 1993,
he is ìhands-offÖ. It was no accident that the sheikh got a visa
and that he's still in the country. He's here under the banner of
national security, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA.î
A very high-ranking Egyptian official says Abdul-Rahman continues
to assist the CIA in recruiting new mujaheddin after moving to the
US. This official says, ìWe begged America not to coddle the sheikh.î
Egyptian intelligence warns the US that Abdul-Rahman is planning
new terrorist attacks, and on November 12, 1992, terrorists connected
to him machine-gun a busload of Western tourists in Egypt. But still
he lives freely in New York City. [Village Voice, 3/30/93] He is
finally arrested in 1993 and convicted for assisting in the 1993
WTC bombing. [Atlantic Monthly 5/96]î10
-------------
NOTES
1) Anon., ìN.Y. Terror Trial Witness Tells What a Liar He Was,î
San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, March 8, 1995.
2) Transcript of Paul DeRienzo's interview with William Kunstler,
Broadcast on WBAI in New York on August 3, 1993. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1995/03/08
/MN6657.DTL&type=printable
3) Tape transcript concerning Salemís expenses: http://anti-state.com/forum/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=11621
4) James S. Adam, ìTroubling Questions in Troubling Times,î October
5, 2001. http://www.serendipity.li/wot/adam.htm
5) DeRenzo.
6) 'Proud terrorist' gets life for Trade Center bombing, CNN report,
US News Story Page, January 8, 1998. http://www.cnn.com/US/9801/08/yousef.update/index.html
7) Robert J. Freidman, ìThe CIA and the Sheikh,î Village Voice,
March 30, 1993.
8) Mary Ann Weaver, ìBlowback,î The Atlantic Monthly, May 1996.
9) Freidman
10) Paul Thompson, ìComplete 911 Timeline: Incompetence, bad luck,
obstr. of justice,î Project: Complete 911 Timeline, Open-Content
project. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeli
ne&theme=incompetence
PART 9: KILLER PIMP IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT
ìI have, for better or worse, a track record...î - Richard Armitage,
Senate Confirmation Hearing, March 15, 2001.
Meanwhile, back at the Iran-contra ranch, on February 24, 1986,
4:44 pm, a furious military intelligence agent contracted by the
CIA, DIA and ISA dialed (202) 695-4351, the desk of Assistant Secretary
of Defense Richard Armitage, to inquire about ìhis alleged involvement
in a house of prostitution for senior military officers, intelligence
agents, and informants in Southeast Asia.î Scott Barnes, the interrogator,
also wanted to know ìabout his work with Vang Pao and drug money
laundering.î1 Barnes had discovered these connections while on assignment
in South Vietnam searching for POWs. He didnít find POWs, exactly.
What he found in Vietnam was American pilots with CIA connections
imprisoned on charges of attempting to smuggle opium out of the
country AFTER the war.
Four days later, he was on the phone with Dave Hall, assistant
special agent in charge of the Inspector Generalís office, to discuss
Armitageís ìconnection with drugs and prostitution in Southeast
Asia and his continued involvement with Mr. [Patrick] OíRourke running
guns.î The IG inspector said that he had heard of ìa possible connection,î
and put up, ìformer Ambassador Phil Habib was also involved.î An
Army major general had written the IG to expose ìArmitageís and
Habibís alleged involvement in prostitution in a Da Nang house of
prostitution and in [money] laundering out of Southeast Asia to
the Philippines and to Sidney, Australia, using Air America, Vang
Pao connections and secret airlines.î1
Drugs? Hookers? Secret airlines? Karen Hughes wouldnít approve.
The pimp climbed the geopolitical step-ladder of power...
1978: Armitage joins the staff of Senator Robert Dole of Kansas.
1980-81: He joins the presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan,
is appointed as senior advisor to the new presidentís Interim Foreign
Policy Advisory Board.
1985: Ferdinand Marcos is making a mess of it in the Philippines.
The embattled dictator is toying with the notion of reinstating
General Fabian Ver as armed forces chief of staff. The General has
been fingered by the Agrava Commission for complicity in the 1983
murder of President Begnino S. Aquino at an airstrip by gun-slinging
terrorists. Nonetheless, Marcos refuses stubbornly to appoint anyone
but General Ver to the post, an ìinterimî chief of staff is installed,
Reagan wrings his hands and sweats it out.
There are plans to dismantle Marcos and his dictatorship. In January,
a well-dressed wing formation of American officials swoop into Manila.
It is Paul Wolfowitz, assistant secretary of state for East Asia,
Richard Childress of the NSC, Richard Armitage, assistant secretary
of defense for international affairs. Theyíve come to whip Marcos
into line, insisting that he ìreformî his military forces to crush
the scattered but rising ìCommunistî backlash - that is, starving
peasants pushing against unemployment, death squad rule, crony capitalism
and general squalor - without provoking further scandals that could
return to haunt the Reagan administration...2
Since, Armitage has been a familiar face in government - as a
spook, he never really leaves it. Amongst positions held by him
since leaving public service in 1993, according to an Internet profile,
count ìa member of the Board of Directors of the General Dynamics
Electric Systems, Inc.; a member of the Board of Visitors of the
United States Naval Academy; holder of the Brig.Gen. H. L. Oppenheimer
Chair of Warfighting Strategy at the Marine Corps University; a
member of the National Defense Panel; a member of the Board of Directors
of the Roy F. Weston, Inc., and of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of
Commerce; Chairman of the Board of Visitors of the National Defense
University, a member of the Secretary Navy Committee on Women in
the Navy and Marine Corps; a member of the Board of Visitors of
the Naval War College and of the Advisory Board of the ManTech International
Corporation... He has received numerous military decorations from
the Governments of Thailand, Republic of Korea, Bahrain, and Pakistan.
He has been awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished
Public Service four times...î
Heís been a puffy-chested diplomat, military strategist, drug
runner, money launderer and ìsolicitor.î The rewards can be enormous
... And a good ìcounter-terroristî who knows the ropes, with the
right connections ...
He was one of the signatories of the notorious Project for the
New American Century (PNAC) letter to President Clinton in 1998.
Armitage was a board member for CACI, a private military contractor
(with revenues of $1.5 billion in 2004), headquartered in Arlington
Virginia. CICI employed four of the salacious, murderous interrogators
at Abu Ghraib prison.
In 1989, the year Marcos died of kidney failure in Hawaii, Bush
was in the White House and Armitage returned to the Philippines
to ìnegotiate military bases.î He would ìnegotiate military basesî
for the next three years.
A voice whispers, ìwhat was he really doing over there?î The Independence
web site offerws a peek at his secret life: ìRichard Armitage became
Deputy Secretary of State in March 2001.î A few months after George
W. Bush was selected president, Armitage moved over to ìagent in
placeî status. And a well-qualified one: ìHe was a professional
ASSASSIN in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam war. He
led ASSASSIN teams similar to the PHOENIX program that killed and
tortured tens of thousands of Asians.î
Thatís right. ìCOUNTER-terrorist.î
îAfter Vietnam he worked for the Defense Department on arms sales
in Iran and other countries.... He was an intimate insider in the
Iran/Contra illegalities. He has been accused of links to illicit
gambling, drug smuggling and expansion of organized crime in Russia,
Central Asia and the Far East...î3
This is the man who would play a leading role in Middle East ìsecurityî
policies under G.W. Bush.
Prior to his appointment to the State Department, Armitage was
a board member of Database Technologies (DBT)/ChoicePoint Inc. ChoicePoint
is a partner of the vast ìdata miningî company Science Applications
International Corp. The SAIC web site proclaims it has ëdeveloped
a strategic alliance with ChoicePoint Incorporated to provide our
clients with quick and effortless information retrieval from public
records data. ChoicePoint Incorporated maintains thousands of gigabytes
of public records data.í"
Picture, for a moment, a secret ìstrategic allianceî between Science
Applications International Corp., in San Diego, the penultimate,
classified military-industrial-intelligence contractor, and mass-murderer
Armitage, in control of all those gigabytes.
The emerging world as Armitage saw it during his Senate confirmation
hearing in March 2001: ìAmerican leadership will be the central
reality of the international system for as far as the eye can see...î
And he meant it.
----------------------
NOTES
1) Scott Barnes with Melva Libb, ìBOHICA,î Scott Barnes, Bohica
Corp., 1987. Phil Habit was known as ìMr. Foreign Serviceî to his
subordinates. Babib was raised in Brooklyn and joined the service
after WW II. Habib was at the forefront in negotiations to end the
Vietnam War, ambassador to East Asia under President Gerald Ford.
From 1981-83, he was Reaganís special envoy to the Middle East.
Raymond Bonner of the New York Times writes, ìSome of the missions
he undertook in his career are still not known about publicly. Nor
will they be, at least not from Habib.î
2) Raymond Bonner, Waltzing with a Dictator, New York Times Books,
1987.
3) http://www.independence.net/armitage/
Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists
Part 10: THE BROTHERS' KEEPERS
BY Alex Constantine
... Ramzi Yousef lit for Pakistan. After the 1993 WTC bombing,
he was sought around the world. A reward of $2-million was offered
for his capture. He vanished for a spell in the mountainous wastes
of western Pakistan, province of Baluchistan. But Youshef was soon
spotted, big man about town in Peshawar, then Karachi. He was something
of a celebrity amongst young Muslems aspiring to make their mark
as mass murderers.
ìHis boyhood friend Murad was living in Karachi,î according to
the LA Times. ìHe had recently returned from the U.S., where he
had earned a commercial pilot's license. Yousef came to see him.
He talked, Murad said, about the need for good Muslims to give their
lives, if needed, to the struggle.î They discussed prospective targets:
Benazir Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan. Nuclear power stations.
The U.S. Consulate in Karachi. A variety of other U.S. government
buildings. ìThere was a plan to assassinate President Clinton.î1
Ramzi took Murad to meet an old hand in the terror trade. ìHe
said his name was Abdul Magid. He was a Saudi import-export businessman.î
His real name, police discovered, was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. ìHe
wasn't Saudi, but like Yousef a Baluchi, born and raised by expatriates
in Kuwait. He is thought to be Yousef's uncle.î Like Ramzi Yousef,
Mohammed had studied engineering in the States. In 1984, he enrolled
at a two-year college in North Carolina. ìAfter college, he came
home to Pakistan and joined what appears to have been the family
business - jihad. A Kuwaiti newspaper has reported that he went
to work as secretary to an Afghan warlord.î
Yousef and Murad ìmoved to an open-air compound where Yousef taught
Murad to build bombs. Making chocolate, Yousef called it. In one
practice session, a detonator exploded in Yousef's face.î He recuperated,
and Mohammed ìshowed up out of nowhereî to pay the bills.
Khalid Mohammed, Yousef and a third recalcitrant, Wali Shah Khan,
arrived in the Philippines in early 1994. ìKhan had stopped en route
in Kuala Lumpur, where he and Hambali, the Indonesia patent medicine
salesman, incorporated an export company called Konsojaya. Its real
purpose, police say now, was to serve as a financial conduit for
the plotters.î1
Ramzi Yousef was blissfully re-united with his buds in Abu Sayyef,
the military-intelligence cut-out of the U.S. proxy army in the
Philippines.
The waltz of spooks and Islamic terrorists left recurrent footstep
patterns in the ashes they left behind. Like the World Trade Center
bombing, the 1998 US embassy blast in Nairobi was in part planned
and executed by a CIA-FBI informant. In 1993, according to court
affidavits, Mohammed was quizzed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
after an agent of al Quaeda was caught entering the US with his
driver's license and a false passport. The Mounties released Mohammed
when the FBI claimed him as a prized asset, and the former US Army
sergeant was free to continue running with al-Qaeda. Mohammed trained
Osama bin Ladenís bodyguards and the cell in Kenya responsible for
the bombing. The FBI informant was only picked up in late 1998 and
sentenced for his part in the crime.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on November 4, 2001: ìA former
U.S. Army sergeant who trained Osama bin Laden's bodyguards and
helped plan the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya was a
U.S. government informant during much of his terrorist career....
Ali Mohammed, an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen and longtime Silicon
Valley resident who pleaded guilty last year to terrorism charges,
approached the Central Intelligence Agency more than 15 years ago
and offered to inform on Middle Eastern terrorist groups.... Later,
according to the sources, Mohammed spent years ... training [bin
Laden's] Islamic guerrillas in camps in Afghanistan and the Sudan;
bringing Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is bin Laden's chief deputy, to
the Bay Area on a covert fund-raising mission; and planning the
1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, in which more than
200 people died.î
Mohammed pled guity. ìHe told a federal judge that he first was
drawn to terrorism in 1981, when he joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad,
a fundamentalist group implicated in that year's assassination of
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.î As weíve seen, Sadatís was a CIA
murder led by Ayman Zawahiri. ìFor almost as long as he was a terrorist,
Mohamed also was in contact with U.S. intelligence, according to
court records and sources.î
Mohammed quit the Egyptian Army ìto work as a counterterrorism
security expert for EgyptAir.î The mind reels... ìAfter that, he
offered to become a CIA informant, said the U.S. government official
who spoke on condition of anonymity.î
The trusted bin Laden aide worked in the mid-í80s as a supply
sergeant for a Green Beret unit, and an instructor on Middle Eastern
affairs in the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School. ìMohamed's
behavior and his background were so unusual that his commanding
officer, Lt. Col. Robert Anderson, became convinced that he was
both a ëdangerous fanaticí and an operative of U.S. intelligence.î2
An al Quaeda principal loosely tied to the 1993 WTC bombing was
Saudi merchant Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osamaís best friend and brother-in-law.
ìKhalifa's charity work in the Philippines did have some legitimacy,î
observed the Christian Science Monitor on January 21, 2003. ìHe
built schools, established healthcare clinics, and distributed food
aid. Many residents of the southern Philippines, Christians as well
as Muslims, remember Khalifa kindly. The gray area lies in how much
of Khalifa's charity money was diverted to terrorism. Khalifa says
none: ëI am not only sure, but challenging anyone to prove otherwiseí"
Abu Sayyaf defectors admitted they were given as much as 70 percent
of the charityís grants. ìUsing charities in the Philippines as
a cover, Khalifa is alleged to have funded the radical Islamic group
Abu Sayyaf.î He was said to have spearheaded a plot to hijack planes
and crash them into the Pentagon or CIA - ìwidely seen as a blueprint
for the Sept. 11 attacks.î3
----------------------------
NOTES
1) TERRY McDERMOTT, ìThe Plot - How terrorists hatched a simple
plan to use planes as bombsî Los Angeles Times, September 1, 2002.
2) Lance Williams and Erin McCormick, ìAl Qaeda terrorist worked
with FBI - Ex-Silicon Valley resident plotted embassy attacks,î
San Francisco Chronicle, November 4, 2001.
3) Catherine Taylor, ìFormer Bin Laden friend denies terror ties,î
Christian Science Monitor, January 21, 2003. .
PART XI: BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE "ENTERPRISE" BEHIND "TEAM
BUSH" & A FIRST GLIMPSE AT THE BLACK HEART OF THE 911 OCTOPUS
[Draft]
"ChoicePoint as a company and I as an individual continue to believe
[that] in a free society ... we do not always have the right to
anonymity." - ChoicePoint CEO Derek V. Smith
Richard Armitage left ChoicePoint in March 2000 when government
beckoned. He will always be one for the books, but before we move
on to the White House for a looksee, there is a dangling question
to address: What sort of company would take aboard this corrupt,
mass-murdering-drug-smuggling-money-laundering pimp? Any company
that would pay Dick Armitage good money to direct it could bear
some examination.
So you click in the business pages on the Internet and you search,
downloading any intelligence lead, every key buy-out announcement,
director profile, loss statement, press release and SEC reprimand.
You wade through trite press releases and confusing math. It takes
awhile. When you are finished, you know the meaning of shame.
ChoicePoint is much more than a corporate safe-house or pack-station
for Dick Armitage. And it isnít historically significant because
he worked there prior to taking the State Department appointment
as Powellís deputy. Just the opposite - Armitageís place in 911
history is assured because he was a director of ChoicePoint. ChoicePoint
is the explanation of everything and nothing, the means justifying
the means, founded on the sort of motives that turn some men, when
they dwell on it, into hermits or existentialists. ChoicePoint and
911 were inseparable, "joined at the hip." It is no exaggeration
to say that ChoicePoint has determined the countryís leadership,
sacrificed thousands of innocent lives, moved the country into a
police state and paved the road to war.
AN AGGRESSIVE TAKEOVER
The founder of the company "fell" off a roof in 1998. His name
was Rozar ("Razor" reversed). The obituary noted that Rick Rozar,
a "former private investigator," was a "benefactor to needy children."
He "fell from the roof at his Newport Beach home." He was 44 years
old.
The tiny computer company Rozar started up in 1978 would evolve
into one of the nation's leading public information brokers.
"Rozar, 44, was found by his fiancÈ about 3:45 p.m. Wednesday
outside the front door of his $3-million home on Bayside Drive,
overlooking Newport Bay, police said." Cause of death: "íIt appeared
that Rozar was working on a satellite dish system when he fell,í
said Newport Beach police Sgt. Mike McDermott."
Rozar started-up CDB Infotek "as an insurance investigations business.
He foresaw a growing marketplace for computerized databases that
would automate the process for investigators. Equifax's Insurance
Services Group bought a majority stake in the business in 1996,
with Rozar staying on as president and chief executive. "The company
was later spun off as part of ChoicePoint Inc., a publicly traded
company. He resigned when he sold his remaining interest this year."1
It was reported that Rozar "engineered the sale of 70% of the
business two years ago for more than $32 million, and sold his remaining
interest this year for an undisclosed amount." (Unfortunately, he
only lived long enough to spend a little of it - a $100,000 contribution
to the Republican Party.)
Two years later, ChoicePoint purchased Database Technologies (DBT).
This company, based in Boca Raton, was founded by Hank Asher. The
FBI had accused Asher of hob-nobbing with drug peddlers from the
Bahamas. The Bureau went so far as to cancel its CBT data management
contract for this very reason.2
That was a hint that something might not be quite right at ChoicePoint.
It wasnít CDBInfotek anymore - ChoicePoint was an Orwellian octopoid
in the works.
The Guardianís Tim Wheeler let drop his reporterís instinctive
caution in May 2003: "ChoicePoint Inc, a data-processing firm ...
is notorious for purging Black and Latino voters in Florida to help
George W Bush steal the 2000 election..."3
"To help George W. Bush steal the 2000 election..."
But there is no other way to interpret the documented interactions
between Katherine Harris and the executives of Database/Choicepoint
... in the last analysis, it wasnít Ralph Nader or even the Supreme
court. ChoicePoint decided the election.
Greg Palast, with Katherine Harrisís e-mails and financial documents
in hand, reported on the causes of the 2000 election after the event.
Recall the chaos in Florida when ChoicePoint, inadvertently or not,
"glitched" the votes: "Recent studies say nearly one-quarter to
31 percent of black men in Florida cannot vote ... The state's voter-purge
project has critics doubting both the accuracy and the motives of
the state's contractor, Database Technologies."
"Election supervisors in some counties -- including Palm Beach
County -- declared the company's information too dubious to use."
In a single glitch, "the company mistakenly listed 7,972 people
as possible felons, only to acknowledge later that they had been
convicted of misdemeanors..."4
This is not a portrait of a thriving democracy. This is fascism.
Most Americans are accomstomed, even habituated, to living with
it, but this is what fascism looks like.
"Glitches" do not discriminate along racial lines. Palastís contemporaneous
reports from Florida stated clearly that the purged black and Latino
votes were NOT the result of a mishap. Laura Flanders at FAIR reported
in late 2000, "many Floridians who found themselves ëscrubbedí off
the voting rolls WERENíT PURGED ACCIDENTALLY.... Florida Secretary
of State Katherine Harris paid a private firm, ChoicePoint, $4 million
to ëcleanseí the voting rolls, and the firm used the state's felon
ban to exclude eight thousand voters who had never committed a felony.
ChoicePoint is a Republican outfit."5
"I am disappointed that, to my knowledge, the culprits haven't
been legally pursued to the fullest extent of the law. Instead,
ChoicePoint continues to get government contracts..." - Former U.S.
Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Lithonia
Most native observers, swayed by media opinion formation, were
unaware that the fix was in, and concluded that the purged votes
could be explained away as computer error or KeystoneCop programming,
or something else ... if it werenít a step in an accelerated process
of fascist imposition on the United States, not isolated or incongruous
by any means. ChoicePoint is the product of privatization - like
scores of other "independent" contractors that serve the classified
sector - and performs many of the "dirty tricks" that were once
the province of the FBI, NSA, CIA and other clandestine agencies...
"I think clearly the government is now turning more and more to
private industry to do its dirty work, to gather information on
people, manipulate that information on people and, in so doing,
circumvent the Privacy Act." - former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, R-Smyrna
"Dirty work" turns a handsome profit. Within a decade since its
founding, ChoicePointís fortunes are swelling. The company's "market
capitalization grew by $500 million in the year from Oct. 1, 2001,
to $3.1 billion," according to the Atlanta Business Journals web
site. A year after 911, ChoicePoint was the eward winner in the
public-large company category (public companies with annual revenues
exceeding $150 million)."6 The company pulled in nearly $800 million
in fiscal 2002 revenue.7
MADAM BUTTERFLY
The Bush administration rewarded ChoicePoint handsomely for the
hand up in Florida. But the company had help down in Palm Beach
from Theresa "Madam Butterfly" LePore, the local ballots chief.
Palm Beach was one of the key problem areas during Florida balloting.
On Dec. 1, 2000, the Wall Street Journalís "Washington Wire" let
on that LePore "wasn't always an embattled Palm Beach ballots chief.
In the 1980s, she moonlighted as a flight attendant on private planes
owned by Saudi weapons dealer Adnan Khashoggi, a middleman in Reagan
administration arms sales to Iran."
Slate.Comís Timothy Noah did some background checking and reported,
"Khashoggi has close ties, from Iran-Contra and elsewhere, to the
Republicans, and vaguely defined ties to Dubya's father. (In a 1990
court case, Khashoggi's phone records revealed that Khashoggi had
spoken at least twice with George Bush's vice-presidential office
during 1985 and 1986.) LePore worked for Khashoggi during the 1980s,
when, according to her official biography, she was chief deputy
supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County, a job she held until
1996, when she was elected supervisor of elections."8
The Theresa LePore "Fan Club" web site offers a few pertinent
morsels of her biography: "Terry has been married for many years.
Twice, even. Her second husband is Mike Lally, heir to the Lally
family adverb fortune.... Terry got her first courthouse job at
the age of 16, and worked her way up to PBC Elections Supervisor
(with that arms smuggling gig on the side). Her salary in 2000 was
a bit over $100,000. ëWhen I ran, I chose Democrat because the incumbent
was Democrat and the county registration is predominantly Democrat.í
Is Terry a Democrat? It depends on what the definition of "Democrat"
is.... You might say that Terry was a Democrat in the same way that
Bill O'Reilly is an Independent." There were a grand total of 261
defective machines in Palm Beach "that should have been decertified
and replaced, but instead remained in use. After the fiasco, Terry
bought a new computer-based voting system that can't be verified.
Great way to avoid a messy recount -- make it impossible to do!
The new Sequoia system may have ruined the 2002 Primaries. But Terry
promises that the votes were correct, because the machine says so."9
During the recount, Noah read that the Palm Beach County's manual
count was duly turned in to Katherine Harris by the 5 p.m. deadline,
and only 1,000 out of 462,000 ballots had been counted. "It just
isn't possible that this partial recount failed to cover ... at
least one percent of the total votes." Noah phoned Bruce Rogow,
"lawyer to Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore.
ëThere is nothing in the statute that precluded her from accepting
the partial recount,í Rogow confirmed. Did she just cite the wrong
law? Is there some other statutory language that forbids a partial
recount? Nope, Rogow said."10
Now, Rogowís response is noteworthy in its own right, but his
name is only raised here to point out that Theresa LePoreís attorney
was on retainer by the University of Southern Florida, and also
represented accused terrorist Sami Al-Arian, George W. Bushís chum
(see Khashoggi, parts II & III). (At a faculty question-and answer
session at USF, where Sami taught, Rogow answered questions regarding
the universityís decision to fire Al-Arian. "Where has the money
to pay for the Al-Arian case come from?" they asked. Turns out that
Samiís legal fees, $54,000 all told, were "taken from a fund held
by the general counsel ... for the extra money, realizing there
will be a certain amount of legal fees each year." In other words,
the same university that was trying to fire him was tapping a slush
fund to cover his legal fees, a weird conflict of interest.11)
The Bush familyís warm relationship with Khashoggi, Al-Arian and
other Middle Eastern terrorists was not so unusual down in the CIAís
covert underground.
After all, the Muslim Brotherhood, Lois Battuello affirms, "had
been funded by clandestine services as early as 1954-56." [See Miles
Copeland, The Gameplayer, also Richard Labeviereís Dollars for Terror]
"Gul Hekmatyar, now on the most wanted list, is a Muslim Brother
and received support both financially and technically from them
and from clandestines like Kermit Roosvelt as early as 1977. There
was no presidential directive for support in Afghanistan signed
by President Carter until March 1979, and that was to provide limited
support in Afghanistan - to Shah Massoud and the more moderate Northern
Alliance." [See George Crile's Charlie Wilson's War, and Ghost Wars
by Steve Coll.]
"Any ëauthorizedí aid to Hekmatyar would have been underwritten
by G. H. W. Bush as DCIA. The CIA began funding The Safari Club
when it was created on September 1, 1976, under Bush, Nelson Rockefeller
as VP watch. [See Cooley, Holy Wars]
"Since the Safari Club consisted of the intelligence services
of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran to serve as a false flag for U.S.
operations in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia and its cadre
of operatives consisted of Muslim Brothers, the CIA funding went
through back channels, much as funding in the early 1980s in the
MAK program run by G. H. W. Bush as VP was filtered through Al Khalifa
Refugee Center." [See Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud,
and Cooley.]
With the election behind them, "Team Bush" headed for the Reichstag
with gold-plated lighters in their back pockets.
-----------------
NOTES
1) Scott Martelle, Barbara Marsh, "Rick Rozar, Founder of Internet
Firm, Dies," Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1998.
2) Greg Palast, Best Democracy Money Can Buy excerpt, November
26, 2000. http://www.GregoryPalast.com
3) Tim Wheeler, "Collecting data on everyone," Guardian, May 21,
2003.
4) http://www.bushwatch.com/bushdec1.htm
5) Laura Flanders, "A racist elephant in our living room," Working
for Change web site, 2000 http://www.workingforchange.com/printitem.cfm?itemid=10383
6) http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2003-12-04/cover_news.html
7) Charles Davidson, "ChoicePoint churning data into revenue,"
http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2002/12/16/focus4.html
9) Timothy Noah, "Did Adnan Khashoggi Throw the Election to Dubya?"
Slate.Com, Dec. 4, 2000.http://slate.msn.com/id/1006609/
10) Timothy Noah, "Katherine Harris Pulls the Helpless RoutineóAgain!"
Slate.Com, Nov. 27, 2000. http://slate.msn.com/id/1006559/
11) Rob Brannon, "Faculty questions USF lawyers on Al-Arian,"
The (USF) Oracle Online, September 26, 2002. http://www.usforacle.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/09/26/3d92ff350d0e1
PART XII: FRIENDLY FIRE - 1993 WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBERS
ABDUL RAHMAN YASSIN, NIDAL AYYAD, AND STATE-SPONSORED TERRORISM
ß Abdul Rahman Yasin and Nidal Ayyad were co-defendents in the
1993 bombing of the World Trace Center. When he met Ramzi Yousef
- who has in common with 911 terrorist Mohammed Atta ties to Pakistanís
ISI and, as we shall see, they all have a significant German connection
- Ayyad was employed by Allied Signal, Inc. in New Jersey, a CIA
front. The following excerpts relate the story of their involvement
in the plot and necessary background indicating state sponsorship
of terrorism of the "friendly fire" variety:
---------------------
ß THE 1993 WTC BOMBERS & ALLIED SIGNAL
http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/investigative/2002/fancher-trials.as
p
... A few days after arriving at JFK with Ajaj, Yousef made contact
with Sheik Rahman's followers. He met up with two men who had trained
at the rifle range on Long Island in 1989, Abouhalima and Salameh.
[Ramzi] Yousef moved into a Jersey City apartment with Salameh....
Abdul Yasin, an American-born engineering student of Iraqi descent,
and Nidal Ayyad, a Kuwaiti-born naturalized American citizen, who
had studied chemical engineering and worked at ALLIED SIGNAL in
Morristown, N.J. In addition to opening bank accounts with more
than $16,000, the men began trying to order chemicals, with varying
success. By early February, Yousef asked Eyad Ismoil, a childhood
friend who lived in Dallas, to fly to New York to help, prosecutors
claimed in the trial.
--------------
ß THE COMPONENTS FOR THE BOMB CAME FROM ALLIED SIGNAL, INC. :
http://www.mipt.org/usvsalameh2cirapp081997.asp
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
August Term, 1997
(Argued: December 18 & 19, 1997 Decided: August 04, 1998 )
Docket Nos. 94-1312, -1313, -1314, -1315
-----------x
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
MOHAMMED A. SALAMEH, NIDAL AYYAD, MAHMOUD ABOUHALIMA,
also known as Mahmoud Abu Halima, AHMAD MOHAMMAD AJAJ,
also known as Khurram Khan,
Defendants-Appellants,
RAMZI AHMED YOUSEF, BILAL ALKAISI, also known as
Bilal Elqisi, ABDUL RAHMAN YASIN, also known as Aboud,
Defendants.
... Once in New York, Yousef assembled a team of trusted criminal
associates, including Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmoud Abouhalima
and Abdul Rahman Yasin. Together, the conspirators implemented the
bombing plot that Ajaj and Yousef had hatched overseas. Ayyad and
Salameh opened a joint bank account into which they deposited funds
to finance the bombing plot. Some of that money was later used by
Salameh to rent a storage shed in Jersey City, New Jersey, where
the conspirators stored chemicals for making explosives. Yousef
also drew on that account to pay for materials described in Ajaj's
manuals as ingredients for bomb making.
The first target of the conspirators' plot was the World Trade
Center. Ayyad used his position as an engineer at ALLIED SIGNAL,
a large New Jersey chemical company, to order the necessary chemical
ingredients for bomb making, and to order hydrogen tanks from ALG
Welding Company that would enhance the bomb's destructive force.
Abouhalima obtained "smokeless powder," which the conspirators used
to make explosives. Smokeless powder, and all the other chemicals
procured by the conspirators for the bomb, were stored in the shed
rented by Salameh....
---------------
ß ALLIED SIGNAL IS A CIA FRONT. CAST: EDWIN PAULEY (see ìKhashoggi
& 911 Terrorists,î part II) WAS IN BUSINESS WITH G.H.W. BUSH. SAM
MOSHER IS SEEN TO BE IN CAHOOTS WITH EDWIN PAULEY.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0204/S00105.htm
What was so special about 1974?
Thursday, 18 April 2002, 10:44 am
Article: Linda Minor
The pilot who flew Ambassador Joseph Davies to Moscow was a Californian
named Robert W. Prescott, who founded the Flying Tiger Line in 1945....
In November, 1944 Prescott had met with a group of Los Angeles businessmen
in Acapulco, including one of [Edwin] Pauley's fellow UC Berkeley
regents, Samuel B. Mosher, who wanted to establish an air freight
line along the U.S. and Mexican west coast, to be called Aero-Azteca.
The investors included Signal Oil Company [predecessor of Allied
Signal]. They agreed to form a syndicate, with Mosher's group matching
whatever Prescott could raise. Prescott found 14 Navy surplus cargo
aircraft from the War Assets Administration and collected cash from
friends from the American Volunteer Pilots unit (AVP) who had flown
with him in China. This group of American civilians who fought with
Chiang Kai-Shek in China before the U.S. entered the war (all of
whom received the same commendation Cloud and Banner award given
to Pug Winokur's father during his war service) had an important
role in the setting up what William Casey would later call an "off-the-shelf"
method of financing covert operations for the CIA and other black
operations not disclosed to Congress.
The airline was initially called National Skyways Freight Corporation
and included General Claire Chennault and others. In 1946 Chennault
invited the men to go back to China to work for him at Civil Air
Transport, which he was in the process of founding. By 1970 Nixon's
attorney Herbert Kalmbach claimed to be representing the Flying
Tiger Line, which merged with Seaboard World Airlines in 1980 and
into Federal Express in 1989. In the beginning the California airline
transported mostly foodstuffs but in late 1946 was awarded its first
military contract with Army Air Transport Command--two flights daily
to Tokyo and to Honolulu for a total of 1.2 million miles per month.
The flights were to leave from San Francisco Fairfield Air Base,
but the company remained based at Lockheed in Burbank.
In Mosher's 1954 Who's Who listing his home address was given
as 10401 Wilshire, located just west of the Los Angeles country
club and one mile east of the office building David Murdock constructed
across the street from the Occidental Petroleum Co. The close proximity
is very intriguing, considering the fact that in 1966, the year
George Bush left Zapata, Mosher's Signal Oil sold its European refining
and marketing arms to Occidental, after Armand Hammer obtained a
concession from Libya's King Idris, who would later be replaced
by Quaddafi. Mosher's office address in 1954 was given as 811 W.
7th in Los Angeles. This is just over five miles from Pauley's Bandini
office. AtlanticRichfield's 12-story office building in Los Angeles
was at the corner of 6th and Flower, a mere two blocks from Mosher's
location. In 1954 Mosher was also serving as vice president and
director for American Independent Oil Co. (whose president was Ralph
K. Davies), and as director of the Southwest Exploration Co. and
the American President Lines, as well as numerous oil and gas associations.
-------------
ß FINANCING FOR THE 1993 BOMBING WAS WIRED FROM GERMANY...
Blast Suspects Got German Cash
By Sara Fritz and Robert L. Jackson
Los Angeles Times
NEW YORK - The men suspected of exploding a bomb underneath the
World Trade Center received tens of thousands of dollars from a
bank account in Germany, giving credence to the theory that it may
have been the act of a sophisticated international terrorist organization,
authorities said Thursday.
Officials still have not determined the precise amount of money
transferred to the suspects or the identity of the benefactors.
Furthermore, they said they believed that the total amounted to
less than $100,000 -- a relatively small sum in comparison to the
money a well-funded international terrorist group could afford to
spend. And they acknowledged they had no proof the money was spent
in connection with the bombing.
Nonetheless, as authorities followed the widening money trail,
sources said they were more inclined to suport the view publicly
expressed by FBI Assistant Director James Fox that the Feb. 26 bombing
was "organized by a large, well-know terrorist group."
Although the money received by the suspects was wired from a bank
in Germany, investigators said they suspect the funds actually originated
elsewhere -- possibly Iran or Iraq. In Egypt, according to a knowledgeable
source, followers of an Egyptian cleric whose New Jersey mosque
has figured in the bombing case are known to be funded with Iranian
money funneled through Sudan....
The money was wired to accounts at the National Westminister Bank
branch in Jersey City, N.J., just a few blocks from the mosque where
Omar's followers -- including at least two of the men arrested in
the case -- worshipped.
The two principle suspects, Mohammed A. Salameh and Nidal A. Ayyad,
held a joint account at the Jersey City bank that received some
of the money from Germany. In addition, money from the same foreign
source also was placed in individual accounts belonging to the men.
On Wednesday, investigators underestimated how much money the
suspects had received from abroad because they were only aware of
only the single joint account at the time.
Even though the suspects received tens of thousands of dollars,
each individual deposit was less than $10,000, sources said. Under
federal law, American banks handling transactions of $10,000 or
more must report them to the Treasury Department, often prompting
money launderers and criminals to break large transfers into smaller
amounts.
The transactions provide the first publicly available evidence
that those responsible for the bombing may not have been hapless
amateurs, as they have sometimes been portrayed...
Ayyad, who was arrested Wednesday, holds a college degree in chemical
engineering and was employed as a research engineer at the AlliedSignal
Corp. in Morristown, N.J. Authorities said Salameh telephone Ayyad
at least four times at his office on the day before the bombing,
apparently seeking advice on how to mix the chemicals.
--------------------
http://www.janrainwater.com/htdocs/3.htm
ß RAMZI YOUSEF AND PAKISTANíS INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, THE ISI - INDIVIDUALS
FROM THE ISI WILL ALSO HAVE A CENTRAL ROLE IN 911 ...
Yousef's terrorist motivations were not those of a militant Muslim
fundamentalist, according to Reeve, who describes him as an "evil
genius." He seems to have been a playboy, a sadist and someone with
a mammoth ego (which proved to be his undoing, as he could have
hidden out in the tribal areas of Pakistan undiscovered by the authorities.)
Reeve alleges that individuals within Pakistan's ISI may have provided
him with the documents that enabled him to enter the United States....
--------------------
ß ìBLOWBACKî
"Terrorism" and Blowback
Part Three: "Terrorism," Blowback and US Foreign Policy during
the Clinton Years
... Information gleaned from Salameh's pockets, his residence,
and the storage facility where the bomb had been prepared led to
the arrests of Ahmad Ajaj, Palestinian chemist Nidal Ayyad and Mahmud
Abouhalima. (The latter was extradited from Egypt where he had been
viciously tortured because of his connections with militants who
were attacking Egyptian installations.) Their trial began in September
and on May 24, 1994 the four were convicted of conspiracy to commit
terrorism and sentenced to 240 years in prison and sent to the top-security
US penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
Missing from the courtroom were ABDUL YASIN who had fled to Iraq...
-------------------
FBI Let Suspected Terrorist Get Away
By JOSH MEYER and ERIC LICHTBLAU, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON -- A suspected bomber on President Bush's new list
of "most wanted" terrorists was in the FBI's grasp eight years ago
for allegedly playing a role in the first attack on the World Trade
Center, but he was released and then allowed to leave the country,
authorities acknowledged Thursday.
Abdul Rahman Yasin, 41, is one of the 22 accused terrorists identified
by Bush on Wednesday as murderous extremists wanted by the U.S.,
whom authorities will aggressively pursue to bring to justice.
The FBI questioned Yasin at length soon after the February 1993
bomb blast at the trade center, which killed six people and injured
1,000. They asked about his sharing of apartments in Jersey City,
N.J., with others who were later indicted and convicted in the bombing,
and about how explosive chemicals got on one apartment's walls and
may have caused a burn mark found on his thigh.
FBI agents also questioned Yasin about his association with Ramzi
Ahmed Yousef, the man later convicted of masterminding the plot,
according to law enforcement authorities and Stephen Somerstein,
Yasin's lawyer.
"He . . . went in quite voluntarily, spoke at length to the FBI
and went home," Somerstein said Thursday. "And the FBI appeared
to be satisfied with that. They let him walk out the door."
A week after the bombing, on March 5, 1993, Yasin flew to Amman,
Jordan, while other co-conspirators flew to Jordan, Saudia Arabia
and Pakistan. He was indicted that August for his role in the bombing.
Officials at the Justice Department and the FBI declined comment.
---------------------
Saddam's desperate offers to stave off war
Julian Borger in Washington, Brian Whitaker and Vikram Dodd
Friday November 7, 2003
The Guardian
ß A MYSTERIOUS MEETING WITH RICHARD PERLE, EL HAGE AT THE MARLBOROUGH
HOTEL IN BLOOMSBURY CONCERNING YOSIN ... THE CIA REFUSES AN OFFER
FROM IRAQ TO TURN OVER A WTC BOMBER:
... According to the Knight-Ridder news agency, the Iraqis sought
a direct route to the Washington hawks in February. They found a
Lebanese-American businessman, IMAD ED-HAGE, who boasted he had
a direct line to the Pentagon.
Mr Hage told yesterday's New York Times that he was initially
approached by General Habbush's chief of foreign intelligence operations,
who turned up in Mr Hage's Beirut office and promptly collapsed,
apparently from stress.
When Mr Obeidi recovered, he urged Mr Hage to tell his Washington
contacts Iraq was ready to talk about anything, including oil concessions,
the Middle East peace process, and banned weapons. The Iraqi official
said the "Americans could send 2,000 FBI agents to look wherever
they wanted", according to Mr Hage.
A week later Mr Hage travelled to Baghdad and talked to Gen Habbush
himself. The general repeated the invitation to allow Americans
to search for weapons and added an offer to hand over a suspected
terrorist, ABDUL RAHMAN YASIN, who had been convicted in the US
for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre. The regime would
hold elections within two years, and the intelligence chief even
offered to fly to London to discuss the issue in person.
Mr Hage relayed these offers via an intermediary to the Pentagon,
but there was NO OFFICIAL RESPONSE. The Lebanese-American businessman
persisted, and arranged a meeting with Mr Perle, a member of the
Pentagon's advisory board.
It is understood that Mr Hage and Mr Perle met on March 7 in the
lobby of the Marlborough hotel in Bloomsbury. They then went to
an office nearby where over two hours Mr Hage outlined the Iraqi
offer to Mr Perle...
A US intelligence source insisted that the decision not to negotiate
came from the White House ... Mr Perle was travelling in Europe
yesterday and unavailable for comment. However, he told the New
York Times he had been TOLD BY THE CIA not to pursue contacts with
the Iraqis....
-------------
ß IRAQ, IN A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO MAKE PEACE WITH THE U.S. BEFORE
THE INVASION, OFFERED ONCE AGAIN TO TURN YASIN OVER. THE OFFER WAS
REBUFFED. IRAQ CONTENDS THAT YASIN FLED TO THE NORTHERN PROVICE
... HOME OF THE CIA-BACKED KURDS, ARCH ENEMIES OF SADDAM HUSSEIN.
Sabri, in a 13-page letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
to rebut US Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the
Security Council earlier this month, also said Baghdad is offering
to hand over to Washington Abdul-Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the
1993 World Trade Center bombing who is on the FBI's most-wanted
list. Sabri's letter, which was posted on the Iraqi Foreign Ministry's
web site Thursday, denied any link between Iraq and Zarqawi or Ansar,
saying both operated in NOTHERN IRAQI areas under the control of
Kurdish groups allied to Washington and beyond Baghdad's reach.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
|