Abu Zubaydah: needed a serious revision required in the official account of 9/11

Steven Gaal · October 25, 2012

CHANGE SUBJECT ?? not by any much

9/11 'Rosetta Stone?' - According to Posner, Zubaida claims that all of these people were intermediaries he dealt with in the frequent transfer of money to al-Qaeda. The phone numbers and other details he provides are consistent with information already known by US intelligence. Zubaida then lays out many secrets about the 9/11 attacks. One unnamed investigator will later call them “the Rosetta Stone” of 9/11. According to Zubaida, he was present in a meeting in 1996 where the Pakistanis and the Saudis struck a deal with Osama bin Laden (see 1996), promising him protection, arms, and supplies in exchange for not being the targets of future terror attacks. He claims both governments were told the US would be attacked on 9/11, but not given the details of how the attack would work. Within months, all of the people named by Zubaida will die mysteriously except for Prince Turki, who is made an ambassador, giving him diplomatic immunity. [Posner, 2003, pp. 186-94]

Edited October 25, 2012 by Steven Gaal

Len Colby · October 25, 2012

LOL you are citing Posner as a reliable source? Really? IIRC the claim about the men all dying came up before and it turned out only some of them had died, but even if Posner was correct you are changing the subject.

Steven Gaal · October 26, 2012

needed a serious revision required in the official account of 9/11 TITLE OF THREAD

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

IF SAUDI/BUSH NETWORK DID 911,then needed a serious revision required in the official account of 9/11.

Your claim of changing the topic is pure desperation on your part.

Len Colby · October 27, 2012

needed a serious revision required in the official account of 9/11 TITLE OF THREAD

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

IF SAUDI/BUSH NETWORK DID 911,then needed a serious revision required in the official account of 9/11.

Your claim of changing the topic is pure desperation on your part.

OK point taken but post #14 had nothing to do with the topic. And speaking of desperation a committed CT citing Posner?

Steven Gaal · October 29, 2012

IF SAUDI/BUSH NETWORK DID 911,then needed a serious revision required in the official account of 9/11.

Two Oklahoma Airports: David Boren, KuwAm, and 9/11

Submitted by Orangutan. on Mon, 10/29/2012 - 7:59am

Kevin Ryan

Posted on October 28, 2012

There are many connections between the events of 9/11 and Oklahoma City. Some of these connections revolve around the alleged 9/11 hijackers, the “20^th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui, and a couple of airports around Oklahoma City. Looking closer at the airport connections reveals startling coincidences with regard to the people who ran World Trade Center (WTC) security company Stratesec, as well as CIA Director George Tenet’s mentor, David Boren, who is currently the co-chairman of President Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

Independent investigators have shown that there are striking links between the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (OKC) and the events of 9/11.[1, 2] Recently, many 9/11 investigators have become more interested in learning the truth about the OKC bombing after being exposed to the excellent film A Noble Lie.[3]

The OKC investigations have revealed eyewitnesses accounts of the sighting in Oklahoma of Mohamed Atta and five other 9/11 hijacker suspects.[4] Last year, an article in the Oklahoma Gazette confirmed that records show Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Zacarias Moussaoui all “either visited or lived in Oklahoma from July 2000 to August 2001.”[5]

Between February and August of 2001, Zacarias Moussaoui lived in Norman, Oklahoma and attended Airman Flight School at Max Westheimer Airport, which is owned and operated by the University of Oklahoma. Moussaoui even lived in a university dormitory. According to Moussaoui’s indictment, Atta and Al-Shehhi had visited the same flight school in July, 2000, but did not take classes there.

Westheimer Aiport is just three miles northwest of Norman and was originally a U.S. Navy flight training field. A squadron of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), a federally supported, non-profit corporation that serves as the official civilian auxiliary of the U. S. Air Force, still gathers at Westheimer every week.[6] Coincidentally, several of the alleged 9/11 hijackers rented apartments in Delray Beach, Florida from a member of CAP. One of the apartments was said to be “a meeting ground for terrorists.” The CAP member landlord, Mike Irish, turned out to be the first intended victim of the October 2001 anthrax attacks. One of his employees actually died from the anthrax.[7]

In 2005, Airman Flight School shut down due to its inability to pay rent and the university newspaper revealed the name of the company that had leased the building. “The airport building is owned by the University of Oklahoma. A Cleveland County District Court order had granted possession of the building to the current landlord, Baker Hughes, Inc., of Houston, which leases the building from OU.” Baker Hughes is an oil services company that is among an elite few making a killing off of the Iraq War.[8]

Dale Davis, the vice president of Airman Flight School, said FBI agents showed up at the facility asking questions about Moussaoui and had been there before. “Davis said FBI agents had visited his school just two years earlier to inquire about Ihab Ali Nawawi, who took flight training there in 1993 and was later charged in connection with the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Africa, which were blamed on bin Laden’s group. Davis also confirmed that Atta and another suspected hijacker, Marwan al-Shehhi, visited Airman Flight School, staying overnight at the school’s dormitory in the nearby Sooner Inn, before deciding to train at another facility.”[9]

Weeks after 9/11, however, FBI Director Robert Mueller repeated his false assertion that federal authorities had no idea that terrorists were using U.S. flight schools to train for piloting commercial airliners. ”There were no warning signs that I’m aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country,” he said.[10] Apparently he had forgotten about the famous July 2001 Phoenix memo and several other related warnings focused on that exact risk.[11]

Established in 1989, Airman Flight School was owned by Jerry Carroll and Brenda Keene. Apparently Carroll and Keene bilked a number of their students out of their life savings as the flight school was going under. But the service was very good in some cases, considering that — “Flight instructor Juan Carlos [Merida] picked up Moussaoui at Will Rogers World Airport when he came to Oklahoma and took him back to the airport when he left.”[12]

Airman’s students sued Carroll and Keene when the business collapsed, along with KJB Flight Management, an entity of which Keene and David Batton were principals. KJB had tried to buy Airman and was managing the school until it closed.[13] David Batton was, at one time, the Cleveland County Assistant District Attorney. The Panamanian Juan Carlos Merida, who had picked up and dropped off Moussaoui from the airport, was later represented by Batton in legal proceedings related to suspicion of terrorism.[14]

Wiley Post and Hangar 8

According to FBI summary documents, Mohamed Atta was also spotted at nearby Wiley Post Airport in Bethany, Oklahoma within six months of the 9/11 attacks. An employee at private aviation company Million Air witnessed Atta flying at Wiley Post Airport along with two other alleged 9/11 hijackers, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Waleed Al-Shehri.[15] Other FBI summary documents indicate that Saeeed Al-Ghamdi was also seen flying in to Wiley Post Airport on an unspecified date and that Hani Hanjour had made inquiries to a company in The Netherlands that ran a flight school out of Wiley Post Airport.[16]

The suburb of Bethany is just seven miles west of Oklahoma City and a little over 20 miles from Norman. Wiley Post, located in Bethany, is one of three airports owned and operated by the Oklahoma City Department of Airports. Westheimer Airport in Norman, run by the university, provides a fourth option for public airport access.

Hangar 8 of Wiley Post Airport was, until 2005, the home of Aviation General, the aircraft company owned by Kuwaiti-American Corporation (KuwAm) and run by Wirt Dexter Walker III. KuwAm and its WTC security company Stratesec had strong connections to the Kuwaiti royal family, which benefited from 9/11 through the ouster of Saddam Hussein. The companies were also strongly linked to the Bush family network and to people who came from deep-state U.S. intelligence backgrounds.[17] Like his fellow KuwAm director Robert Dudley van Roijen, Walker is the son of a CIA officer. He is also a suspect in 9/11 insider trading.[18]

Aviation General was the parent of two wholly-owned subsidiaries: Commander Aircraft Company, which manufactured Commander-brand aircraft, and Strategic Jet Services, which provided aircraft brokerage and refurbishment services. Aviation General, Commander Aircraft, and Strategic Jet Services were all located in Hangar 8 of Wiley Post Airport.

Wiley Post Airport has approximately 24 hangars and Hangar 8 is set off away from the rest.[19] Although Aviation General and its subsidiaries all went bankrupt or were sold off in the few years after 9/11, Hangar 8 still houses three businesses. These include Jim Clark & Associates, Valair Aviation, and Oklahoma Aviation.

Jim Clark & Associates is an aircraft sales and brokerage firm, similar to Strategic Jet Services, and is located in Hangar 8. The company shared a phone number (405-787-6222) with another aircraft company called Sundancer Enterprises, out of Norman, OK.

Valair Aviation is an aircraft service company also located in Hangar 8. This is a service center that works on Commander-brand aircraft, the kind that Wirt Walker’s Commander Aircraft Company had manufactured there. Valair started as a division of Aero Commander, which was a subsidiary of Rockwell International and Gulfstream. By the year 2000, Valair (called the Service Center) had also become specialized in servicing Raytheon aircraft.

At first glance, the most interesting of these new Hangar 8 companies is the flight school called Oklahoma Aviation. This is due to an incredible coincidence regarding the young man who now runs the company, Shohaib Nazir Kassam.

Oklahoma Aviation first appeared on the internet in March, 2001 although the website was only one page with the company name for the first year. The company was officially founded in February 2004 by Tom Kilpatrick, the son of famous Oklahoman John Kilpatrick Jr., who had been president of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce.

Tom Kilpatrick didn’t know anything about aviation, so he hired Shoiam Kassam to be the Chief Flight Instructor and Rob Rothman as Assistant Chief Flight Instructor. Rothman was a recent graduate of the University of Oklahoma and member of the Civil Air Patrol. Rothman is now an officer in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Pensacola, Florida. The Air Force base is located at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola which, coincidentally, was the address used by several alleged 9/11 hijackers on their driver’s licenses.[20]

In March 2007, Oklahoma Aviation was purchased by another famous son of Oklahoma, Clayton Healey. Clay had just come off the ranch as a cowboy in 2003 and started AIC Title Service, which focused on aircraft company closures. Clay’s father was Skip Healey, a well known Republican National Committee member and oil company executive. The Healey’s were grandnephews of Lew Wentz, who had opened Oklahoma up to the oil industry.

By 2008, Oklahoma Aviation had the best airplanes around.[21] And somehow young Shoaib Kassam came to be listed as the owner of the company.[22] The Chief Flight Instructor today is Marcus Buchanan, who in 1998 was a student at the Airline Training Academy (ATA) in Orlando, Florida. This is the same ATA that went bankrupt while robbing its students and was then found to have financial connections to Wally Hilliard, who owned Huffman Aviation, where Atta and friends went after deciding not to train in Oklahoma.[23] Buchanan went from ATA to be a flight instructor at the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Aviation before moving to his current job in Hangar 8.

The part of this story that seems more incredible is that Kassam was, in March 2006, a government witness against Zacarias Moussaoui. He was actually Moussaoui’s flight instructor. To emphasize, the guy who is now occupying Wirt Walker’s offices in Hangar 8 at Wiley Post Airport not only knew Zacarias Moussaoui, he was the primary flight instructor of the “20^th hijacker” at Airman Flight School.

Kassam moved to Norman in 1998, at the age of 18, coming from Mombassa, Kenya. He was originally from Pakistan. Two years after he arrived in Norman, he completed his training to become a flight instructor. He was only 21 years of age when he spent 57 hours (unsuccessfully) trying to train Zacarias Moussaoui to fly.

During his testimony and cross-examination in the Moussaoui trial, Kassam was asked many times about Moussaoui’s religion. Both the prosecutor and the defense attorney were very interested in whether Moussaoui was a devout Muslim. After repeated questioning, Kassam said that yes, he thought that Moussaoui considered himself a Muslim.

“Q. And you mentioned that he was trying to get you back into the faith?

A. No. He just talked about, you know, church, I mean, sorry, mosques and going to pray and fasting, and just things like that.”[24]

There seemed to be some confusion on this issue in the courtroom. But Kassam was useful to the prosecution in that he confirmed that Moussaoui also called himself Zuluman Tangotango. This allowed prosecutors to introduce a mountain of emails from the address “pilotz123@hotmail,” purportedly belonging to Zuluman Tangtango. The email evidence played a significant role in Moussaoui’s conviction.

Kassam also remembered seeing Atta and Al-Shehhi at Airman. A student at the time of Atta and Alshehhi’s visit, Kassam recalled bumping into them when they were being given a tour of the Airman facility.

The history of Aviation General was, like that of Stratesec and the other companies that Wirt Walker ran, a record of well-financed business failure. As of 1998, Aviation General was losing millions of dollars every year. With very humble positive returns, the year 2000 results were the best in the company’s history, according to Walker.

In September 2000, John DeHavilland of British Aerocraft joined as CEO of Strategic Jet Services. Three months later, Walker’s president at Aviation General, Dean N. Thomas, died suddenly at a young age.[25] And by August 2001, Aviation General was reporting million-dollar losses again.

In late 2002, Strategic Jet Services “discontinued its operations and began the process of dissolving the company.”[26] Commander Aircraft Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy at the same time, and that was changed to Chapter 7 in January 2005. Commander Aircraft left Oklahoma in September 2005 to move to an “undisclosed location.” In an odd shell game reminiscent of the Stratesec dealings, what was left of Aviation General was sold to Tiger Aircraft, a small company with Taiwanese investors that went bankrupt in 2006.

Oklahoma Aviation was a flight school that was just getting off the ground in 2005, as it took over Hangar 8 from Aviation General and soon had the best planes. This was the opposite of the apparent financial fortunes of the Aviation General companies that all went belly up that year. And it was also unlike Airman Flight School which, although it was in the same area and same business as Oklahoma Aviation, shut down in 2005 because it could not pay the rent.

David Boren

On the morning of 9/11, CIA Director George Tenet was having breakfast in Washington with his long-time mentor, former Oklahoma Senator David Boren. While a Senator, Boren was the longest serving chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). According to Tenet, Boren plucked him from obscurity in 1987 to serve first as his aide and then, later as the staff director for the SSCI.

Boren was a member of the Yale secret society Skull & Bones, like George W. Bush was five years later. After serving four years as Governor of Oklahoma and 15 years in the U.S. Senate, he became the President of the University of Oklahoma, a position he has held since 1994. Boren lives in Norman where his university housed Airman Flight School, and where the alleged 9/11 hijackers sought training and Moussaoui lived and trained.

Boren went from his breakfast meeting with Tenet to join James Woolsey in helping to produce the media story. Although the CIA and FBI didn’t seem to have any idea what to look for prior to 9/11, Boren certainly seemed to know what the 9/11 attacks were all about as soon as they happened.

While being interviewed on September 11, Boren said:

“I think you have to have bin Laden on the suspect list. You probably have some nation states that ought to be on the suspect list as well [iraq, for example]. You know, looking at this, it’s very clear– and I think this hopefully will give us leads to trace back and find and affix responsibility– the training that had to have been there by those who took over the aircraft, the ability to pilot the aircraft. It appears that perhaps they were piloting the aircraft, the knowledge to turn off the transponders that would make it very difficult to trace these aircraft from the ground and through our air control system.

These were people that were highly trained; they knew what they were doing. It was all very carefully coordinated. So we’re dealing with people with a lot of sophistication here. Some of that training and some of that preparation is bound to have left clues that hopefully we’ll be able to thread through pretty quickly.”[27]

There certainly were a lot of clues, and many of them seemed to implicate David Boren and his university. Boren had no intention of mentioning those clues, however. He didn’t mention that the airport run by the university where he was president had been training Zacarias Moussaoui to fly. He also failed to point out that Mohamed Atta and other alleged 9/11 hijackers had called, emailed and visited his airport in the two years before 9/11. Additionally, it might have been of interest to the listeners that the FBI had showed up several times over the years to talk to the people at Airman Flight School, located at Boren’s airport, about the training of terrorism suspects.

Another relevant point of interest was that, just the month before, Boren had personally brought the former CIA Station Chief in Berlin to the university to teach in the Political Science department. David Edger, who had been involved in orchestrating another September 11th tragedy, the Coup in Chile, joined the faculty at the University of Oklahoma at Boren’s invitation. Edger’s most recent responsibility at the CIA was the monitoring of the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell, which included Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Ziad Jarrah.[28]

What are the odds that David Boren could have been so clueless about the training of al Qaeda operatives under his own nose? What are the odds that Zacarias Moussaoui’s primary trainer at Boren’s airport is now occupying the offices of Wirt D. Walker’s former businesses in Hangar 8 at Wiley Post Airport? Maybe we should find out.

[1] Jim Crogan, The Terrorist Motel, LA Weekly, July 24, 2002, http://www.laweekly....errorist-motel/

[2] Holland Van den Nieuwenhof, Key to the Truth in Oklahoma: 4.19.95 and 9.11.01, 911Blogger.com, April 14, 2008, http://911blogger.com/node/15075

[3] To get a copy, see the film’s website: A Noble Lie: Oklahoma City 1995, http://www.anoblelie.com/

[4] See, for example: Andrew W. Griffin, The OKC-9/11 link the media and authorities willfully ignored, Red Dirt Report, September 9, 2011, http://www.reddirtre...tory.aspx/19579

[5] Clifton Adcock, The Sooner State’s ties to the twin towers are tight, despite the distance, The Oklahoma Gazette, July 9, 2011, http://npaper-wehaa....article=1375779

[6] Wikipedia page for University of Oklahoma Westheimer Airport, http://en.wikipedia....theimer_Airport

[7] History Commons Complete 9/11 Timeline, Profile: Gloria Irish, http://www.historyco...=gloria_irish_1

[8] The Wall Street Journal, Baker Hughes Wins $640 Mln Iraq Oil Drilling Contract –Sources, December 20, 2011, http://online.wsj.co...220-711513.html

[9] Kevin Cullen and Ralph Ranalli, Flight School Says FBI Trailed Suspect Prior To Hijackings, The Boston Globe, September 18, 2001, accessed at http://911research.c...lobe091801.html

[10] Ibid

[11] History Commons Complete 9/11 Timeline, The Phoenix Memo and Related Investigations, http://www.historyco...te_911_timeline

[12] KXII.com, Oklahoma Flight School Owner Will File for Bankruptcy, October 10, 2005, http://www.kxii.com/...es/1772416.html

[13] Ibid

[14] Ralph Blumenthal, Unsuspecting flier ends up a suspect: Had contact with 9/11 figure, put on U.S. list, New York Times News Service, March 29, 2005, http://articles.chic...tration-license

[15] See FBI summary documents: FBI Case Summary for 9/11 from the 9/11 commission files, http://www.scribd.co...ommission-Files, FBI Case Summary for Marwan Al-Shehhi found at: http://www.scribd.co...Marwan-Alshehhi

[16] See FBI summary documents for Saeed Al-Ghamdi and Hani Hanjour found in 911 archives at Scribd.com: http://www.scribd.co...DocumentArchive

[17] Kevin R. Ryan, KuwAm and Stratesec: Directors and investors that link 9/11 to a private intelligence network, DigWithin.net, February 24, 2012, http://digwithin.net...esec-directors/

[18] Kevin R. Ryan, Evidence for Informed Trading on the Attacks of September 11, November 18, 2010, http://www.foreignpo...f-september-11/

[19] Wiley Post Airport website, Airport Guide, http://www.wileypost...ge/AirportGuide

[20] Newsweek, Alleged Hijackers May Have Trained At U.S. Bases, September 14, 2001, http://www.thedailyb...-u-s-bases.html

[21] Ja’Rena Lunsford, Company Takes Flight in Aviation Business, The Oklahoman, April 22, 2008, http://www.redorbit....ation_business/

[22] Oklahoma Aviation website, http://www.oklahomaa...om/aboutus.html

[23] Daniel Hopsicker, 9/11: The American Connection, Mad Cow Morning News, Issue 43, http://www.madcowprod.com/issue43.html

[24] Court transcript, UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA ALEXANDRIA DIVISION, proceeding from March 9, 2006, accessed at http://cryptome.org/...m-030906-01.htm

[25] NewsOK, Obituary for Dean N. Thomas, December 7, 2000, http://newsok.com/de...article/2722429

[26] Aviation General Inc, Form 8-K, March 26, 2004, http://www.wnd.com/m...106083004000089

[27] Transcript of PBS NewsHour show, Intelligence Investigation, September 11, 2001, http://www.pbs.org/n...elligence2.html

[28] History Commons Complete 9/11 Timeline, Profile: Airman Flight School, http://www.historyco..._flight_school_

Edited October 29, 2012 by Steven Gaal

Len Colby · October 30, 2012

To make a long story short some conspiracy kooks think there were “striking links between the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (OKC) and the events of 9/11” and some hijackers did limited amounts of flight training at schools near OKC and ugabuga a company at one of those airports supposedly was part of the same business group as one of the companies that provided electronic security at the WTC. Some of the hijackers rented a room from a woman whose hushand worked at the tabloid that got an Anthrax letter.

Ya know this all proves??

Edited October 30, 2012 by Len Colby

Steven Gaal · October 30, 2012

Last year, an article in the Oklahoma Gazette confirmed that records show Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Zacarias Moussaoui all “either visited or lived in Oklahoma from July 2000 to August 2001.”[5]

====================

According to FBI summary documents, Mohamed Atta was also spotted at nearby Wiley Post Airport in Bethany, Oklahoma within six months of the 9/11 attacks. An employee at private aviation company Million Air witnessed Atta flying at Wiley Post Airport along with two other alleged 9/11 hijackers, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Waleed Al-Shehri.[15] Other FBI summary documents indicate that Saeeed Al-Ghamdi was also seen flying in to Wiley Post Airport on an unspecified date and that Hani Hanjour had made inquiries to a company in The Netherlands that ran a flight school out of Wiley Post Airport.[16]

The suburb of Bethany is just seven miles west of Oklahoma City and a little over 20 miles from Norman. Wiley Post, located in Bethany, is one of three airports owned and operated by the Oklahoma City Department of Airports. Westheimer Airport in Norman, run by the university, provides a fourth option for public airport access.

Hangar 8 of Wiley Post Airport was, until 2005, the home of Aviation General, the aircraft company owned by Kuwaiti-American Corporation (KuwAm) and run by Wirt Dexter Walker III. KuwAm and its WTC security company Stratesec had strong connections to the Kuwaiti royal family, which benefited from 9/11 through the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ GEE DAVE EMORY OVERALL PRO ISRAEL

COLBY MUST LIKE HIM

FTR #522 The Safari Club

Posted by FTR ⋅ August 30, 2005Post a comment Email This Post Print This Post

Tags 9/11, A. Q. Khan, BCCI, bin Laden, Bush, Bush-George W, Carter, Chechen, CIA, Dulles, FBI, Fifth Column, Harry Truman, Iran, Iraqgate, Islamist, Israel, Mind Control, MLK, Money Laundering, Muslim Brotherhood, Nazi, Nixon, NSA, Oil, OSS, PIJ, Privatization, Ptech, Reagan, RFK, Riggs Bank, Rockefeller, Safari Club, Saudi, Shackley, SS, Terpil-Wilson, USSR, Watergate

Recorded August 14, 2005

REALAUDIO

Continuing with analysis of the Fifth Column that assisted the Islamo-fascists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, the program accesses information from a VERY important new book Prelude to Terror by Joseph J. Trento. In this book, the author sets forth information about the Safari Club, an “outsourced” intelligence network in which the Saudis financed a privatized espionage establishment that dominated American intelligence operations for the better part of a quarter of a century. Utilizing the Saudi GID and the Pakistani ISI as proxy agencies, this network ran the Iran-Contra, Iraqgate and Afghan mujahideen efforts. The most significant outgrowth of this network was the birth of al Qaeda, with all that has resulted from its conception. One of the points that Trento makes is the fact that outsourcing U.S. intelligence operations eliminated the necessary function of counterintelligence—monitoring one’s allies in order to verify their loyalty and competence. The failure to conform to this basic tenet of intelligence has haunted the U.S., and will continue to do so. It is important to note that the elder George Bush and the Reagan administrations were at the core of the Safari Club. The Safari Club was specifically created to circumvent Congressional and even Presidential oversight! Note that Mr. Emory incorrectly cited FTR#367 in his concluding remarks. The broadcast that details the subversion of France in the run-up to World War II is FTR#366. For more about the Fifth Column described here, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 412, 462, 464, 467, 474.

Program Highlights Include: The role of Prince Turki (Osama bin Laden’s case officer) in the Safari Club; the transfer of ultra-secret NSA software to the Saudis through the Safari Club; the capability of this NSA software to compromise the U.S. national security operations and law enforcement; the use of the Safari Club by the Saudis to spy on the United States; warnings by US intelligence analysts that we were backing the wrong Islamic elements in Afghanistan and that they would turn on us after the Soviets were defeated; the overruling of State Department employee Michael Springman when he tried to prevent dangerous Islamists from gaining visas to visit the United States; the Safari Club’s development of the BCCI as a financial base for funding highly illegal covert operations; the use of the Safari Club to develop the Islamic bomb (a subject that is covered at length in FTR#524.)

############

IF SAUDI/BUSH NETWORK DID 911,then needed a serious revision required in the official account of 9/11.

#####################################

Edited October 30, 2012 by Steven Gaal

Len Colby · October 31, 2012

Last year, an article in the Oklahoma Gazette confirmed that records show Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Zacarias Moussaoui all “either visited or lived in Oklahoma from July 2000 to August 2001.”[5]

====================

According to FBI summary documents, Mohamed Atta was also spotted at nearby Wiley Post Airport in Bethany, Oklahoma within six months of the 9/11 attacks. An employee at private aviation company Million Air witnessed Atta flying at Wiley Post Airport along with two other alleged 9/11 hijackers, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Waleed Al-Shehri.[15] Other FBI summary documents indicate that Saeeed Al-Ghamdi was also seen flying in to Wiley Post Airport on an unspecified date and that Hani Hanjour had made inquiries to a company in The Netherlands that ran a flight school out of Wiley Post Airport.[16]

The suburb of Bethany is just seven miles west of Oklahoma City and a little over 20 miles from Norman. Wiley Post, located in Bethany, is one of three airports owned and operated by the Oklahoma City Department of Airports. Westheimer Airport in Norman, run by the university, provides a fourth option for public airport access.

Hangar 8 of Wiley Post Airport was, until 2005, the home of Aviation General, the aircraft company owned by Kuwaiti-American Corporation (KuwAm) and run by Wirt Dexter Walker III. KuwAm and its WTC security company Stratesec had strong connections to the Kuwaiti royal family, which benefited from 9/11 through the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

As acknowledged above, what do you think this proves?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ GEE DAVE EMORY OVERALL PRO ISRAEL
COLBY MUST LIKE HIM

FTR #522 The Safari Club

An obscure kook who doesn't document his claims, he's more up your ally.

Steven Gaal · October 31, 2012

FTR #522 The Safari Club

An obscure kook who doesn't document his claims, he's more up your ally. // END Colby

PLEASE READ THE POST Mr. Colby.

Prelude to Terror by Joseph J. Trento. In this book, the author sets forth information about the Safari Club,

Len Colby · October 31, 2012

Saying X book supports your claims is not a real reference and Trento's take is very different from his

Steven Gaal · November 2, 2012

Thank Bush, Sr. for A.Q. Khan, UBL and the Plame Case

Sat Jul 07, 2007 at 10:46 PM PDT DAILY KOS

Lost in all the hullabaloo over Dubya's commutation of the jail sentence handed former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was this little gem of a news item from Pakistan:

Pakistan eases curbs on atomic scientist

By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Writer

Mon Jul 2, 1:49 PM ET

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A.Q. Khan, the scientist who became a national hero for developing Pakistan's atomic bomb and went on to sell nuclear secrets abroad, can leave house arrest to meet with friends and relatives, officials said Monday.

Strange coincidence? Perhaps. But, not unrelated. For it’s a small, small world in spookdom.

A strange coincidence, indeed.

More below . . .

A large part of Valerie Plame’s job at CIA was to track the illicit trade in nuclear technologies peddled by Dr. Khan’s network. Khan’s Nuclear Walmart made it very easy for customers to buy what they needed to start home bomb-making. Khan’s one-stop shop for WMDs made it just as easy for the CIA to keep track of nuclear programs in at least half-dozen unfriendly countries, and a variety of criminal organizations in a dozen more that supplied money and know-how. When Khan’s operation was publicized on June 1, 2001 by a Bush Administration official, that long-standing CIA counter-proliferation program was also effectively ended. That official was Richard Armitage, who is also said to be the first to out Plame, a key manager at CIA Counter-Proliferation.

There was never any chance that AQ Khan or Libby would do hard time - they were both "made men" who know too much.

A.Q. Khan

Khan was a founding member of the CIA and ISI partnership, going back to the mid-1970s, when he first started stealing U-235 enrichment technologies from the nuclear lab where he worked in the Netherlands. According to a BBC interview with the former Dutch PM, Ruud Lubbers, the Dutch police wanted to arrest A.Q. as early as 1975, but the CIA interceded to prevent Khan's arrest and enforcement of an INTERPOL warrant after he fled back the following year to Pakistan. During the six year period the warrant was on the books, Khan travelled freely to dozens of countries pursuing his global nuclear proliferation mission. http://news.bbc.co.uk/... ; http://www.hindu.com/...

The CIA's involvement and protection of Khan goes back years before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, so the Cold War rationale offered for the Agency's quarter-century long involvement with the Pakistan's nuclear program begins to break down under scrutiny. It wasn't just simply a matter of

doing a favor in exchange for the secret war in Afghanistan against Soviet invaders. Somebody wanted Pakistan to build atomic bombs, and the CIA was instrumental in allowing that to happen, as it was in the later spread of nuclear technologies to other countries.

The question is, why?

***

Intelligence historian Joe Trento writes in Prelude to Terror that the Reagan and Bush Administration entered into a quid pro quo with Pakistan and its Saudi and Gulf financial backers in exchange for their assistance in driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The financial, logistical, political and commercial networks that were cemented in place endured after the Russians retreated and the Soviet Union collapsed. To hear Trento tell it, the very same network of rogue spooks, corrupt bankers, and mercenary weapons designers was the seed from which BCCI, Iran-Contra, and 9-11 sprang.

This is the strange tale of the alliance of Middle East jihadists and their business partners, entrepreneurial elements of the CIA Old Guard led by George Herbert Walker Bush. Together, they developed a global network that peddled nuclear weapons, cultivated global terrorist groups, subverted the U.S. government, and tried to impose their own global dynasty under cover of a manufactured Forever War of religious genocide.

The Safari Club

The Khan network was the product of more than an alliance against the Soviet Union. It sprang out of a post-Watergate era partnership between disgraced former covert operators who had been thrown out of American intelligence, the Saudi Royal family, and third-country partners who provided manpower and technical assistance. It was called, "The Safari Club". In early 1976, under its outgoing Director George H.W. Bush, elements within the Agency turned to the Saudi royal family for help. Those were difficult times for CIA Old Guard. As ground involvement in Vietnam ended in 1973, the Agency ramped up the covert operations and secret wars that spread into Laos and Cambodia. The Phoenix Program targeted tens of thousands of South Vietnamese officials and suspected Vietcong sympathizers for assassination, a program in which James Mann tells us in Rise of the Vulcans a naval officer, named Richard Armitage, participated. http://www.warandpiece.com/...

Two years later, despite the extraordinary exertions of some within the Agency, and a fellowship of committed Cold warriors, Saigon fell. Within that group was the perception that the Cause had been betrayed by liberals, Democrats, and bean counters, and that would never again be allowed to happen.

1974 had seen the unraveling of the Watergate scandal, in which the hand of the CIA Old Guard in domestic politics was revealed. Finally, by 1976, it had become widely perceived as the rogue Agency. In the "Year of Intelligence," the Church and Pike Committees publicly exposed decades of shocking crimes carried out and covered up by the intelligence community. This forced newly-elected President Carter and Congress to finally exert real oversight and limit intelligence operations around the world.

In August 1977, CIA Director Stansfield Turner ordered 823 positions within the covert Directorate of Operations eliminated, firing most of the Agency's hard men such as Ted "Blonde Ghost" Shackley, Thomas Clines, and Edwin Wilson. Their response was to take their deadly talents and wares into the private sector. That same year, Armitage left his DIA post in Iran, where he worked with Richard Secord and the Shah’s Secret Police, SAVAK, and was reassigned to State Department cover in Thailand.

In a bid to reestablish their independence, Right-wing Agency operators turned to new sources of cash and foreign patronage, particularly the Saudis, for the resources needed to shake off strictures imposed by President Carter and the Democratic Congress.

Through the Safari Club, Trento writes, "the Saudi royal family had taken over intelligence financing for the United States" at 102. The shared cause of anticommunism justified the privatization and merger of U.S. and Saudi intelligence, but it also opened avenues for personal and political enrichment for those who would create and run a run a shadow oligarchy. It created a set of alliances and mutual obligations. It was also highly illegal under U.S. law for American intelligence officers and officials to accept private foreign cash -- whether or not this was the original intention, this ended up allowing the Saudis, Pakistanis, and other foreign members in the Safari Club blackmail and veto power over those U.S. officials involved. George H.W. Bush and those around him who had accepted the deal also had to live with it.

Another key figure in this saga is Prince Turki al-Faisal, until his sudden resignation on September 4, 2001, the 24-year veteran head of Saudi foreign intelligence, the General Intelligence Directorate - GID, and according to the Financial Times, Osama bin-Laden’s former case officer.

Turki gave a detailed description of the Safari Club in a 2002 speech to the Georgetown University alumni. Joseph Trento relates this oration:

"And now I will go back to the secret that I promised to tell you.

In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies, it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club.

The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran.

The principal aim of this club was that we would share information with each other in countering Soviet influence worldwide, and especially in Africa. In the 1970s, there were still some countries in Africa that were coming out of colonialism, among them Mozambique, Angola, and I think Djibouti. The main concern of everybody was that the spread of Communism was taking place while the main country that would oppose Communism was tied up. Congress had literally paralyzed the work not only of the U.S. intelligence community but of its foreign service as well.

And so the Kingdom, with these countries, helped in some way, I believe, to keep the world safe at the time when the United States was not able to do that. That, I think, is a secret that many of you don’t know. I am not saying it because I look to tell secrets, but because the time has gone and many of the actors are gone as well." Quoted in Trento 102

CIA Goes Mercenary for the Saudis

What did all that Saudi money that started flowing into pockets at the CIA at the end of the Nixon Administration go to? Perhaps the best answer available without a security clearance is found in David Corn's 1994 book, Blonde Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades. The main outlines of how the CIA's original mission of intelligence collection and analysis was subverted into one of intelligence falsified to support Presidential policy, assassination, torture, terrrism, overthrow of elected government, privatization of covert operations, and political warfare against Democratic Presidents and Congress follows the career of men such as Shackley, Wilson, Secord and, at the head of things, Bush, Sr. That set the pattern for the similar criminal abuses of intelligence carried out by Bush's son and those around him, many of whom started their careers during the Vietnam War. The chronology of events decades ago are summarized in this review of Corn's book: http://www.bearcave.com/...

In Vietnam the CIA moved away from intelligence gathering and toward covert action aimed at helping the Saigon government and defeating the North Vietnamese. Although some intelligence was gathered, any analysis that contradicted the view that the United States would prevail was ignored. During the early 1960's William Colby, who later became director of the CIA, was the Saigon station chief. Under Colby the CIA became involved in "pacification" programs, that attempted to track down the Viet Cong and their sympathizers in South Vietnam. In 1968, when Shackley became station chief, Colby was on leave from the CIA to head "Operation Phoenix", which became infamous as an assassination program responsible for killing those suspected of aiding the Viet Cong. The CIA also established Provincial Reconnaissance Units PRU and Provincial Interrogation Centers PIC, all staffed by South Vietnamese, who became known for their brutality.

Shackley's story continues:

Under Shackley, the Saigon station churned out intelligence reports. These were all reviewed by Shackley, who rejected any report without the proper positive "can do" tone. Although the United States had been involved in Vietnam since the mid-1950s, few agents had been developed and little real intelligence was reported. Much of the information that was forwarded to Langley came from interrogations from the PRUs. Most of this information was useless and the CIA failed to report the major build-up of North Vietnamese forces in preparation for the Tet offensive in 1968.

SNIP

The fight against communism was used to justify terrible atrocities and the United States government and the CIA lost its moral compass in Vietnam. The CIA in Vietnam naturally selected for people who would pursue the cold war fight without question. It is not surprising that the same people went on to do terrible things in South America during the 1970s and during the "Contra war" in the 1980s.

SNIP

When Shackley was recalled to Langley, in February of 1972, he was put in charge of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division.

SNIP

Shackley also inherited an operation that was funneling money to right wing opponents of Salvador Allende, in Chile. Eventually Allende was overthrown. This was followed by the first act of international terrorism on American soil, the September,1976 car bombing in Washington's Embassy Row that took the lives of former Chilean Ambassador, Orlando Letelier, and a passenger, Ronni Moffitt, sister of a liberal U.S. Congressman from Connecticut. The assassination was later shown to have been organized by a Chilean military officer on the CIA payroll and carried out by an American-born extreme Rightist who was let into the U.S. despite being on the State Department Watch List. See, George H.W. Bush, the CIA & a Case of State Terrorism by Robert Parry, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/...

David Corn recounts the events in the Chilean coup that overthrew what was then the second-oldest democracy in the world:

Salvador Allende died during the coup. When the smoke cleared, General Augusto Pinochet, the head of a military junta, was in dictatorial control. Political parties, including Langley's favored Christian Democrats, were banned. The Chilean Congress was closed. Elections were suspended. The press was censored. Allende supporters and opponents of the junta were jailed. Torture centers were established. Executions replaced soccer matches in Santiago's stadiums. Bodies floated down the Mapocho river. Due in part to the hard work of Shackley and dozens of other Agency bureaucrats and operatives, Chile was free of the socialists.

The reviewer recounts:

After serving as director of the Western Hemisphere Division, Shackley was promoted to the position of Associate Deputy Director for Operations, the number three position at the CIA. This was to be his last promotion. Shackley was a friend of Edwin Wilson, an ex-CIA contractor, who became an arms dealer. Wilson was jailed for shipping C4 plastic explosive and detonators to Libya. Admiral Stansfield Turner, who was head of the CIA during the Carter administration, never forgave Shackley for his association with Wilson. He transferred Shackley to the bureaucratic equivalent of Siberia and Shackley left the Agency in 1979.

After leaving the CIA Shackley worked briefly for Thomas Clines, who had worked for Shackley in Laos and Vietnam. Clines had left the CIA before Shackley, in 1978. Using money loaded to him by Edwin Wilson, Clines incorporated International Research and Trade, which became involved in shipping arms purchased in the United States to Egypt. The cost of shipping the arms was billed to the Defense Department, which later claimed that Clines and his associates had illegally inflated their billings. Shackley later left Clines' firm and formed his own company, Research Associates International, which specialized in providing intelligence to business. The loose fraternity of ex-CIA employees kept in touch with each other and with the United States government. During the Reagan administration, both Shackley and Clines became involved in the Iran-Contra affair, along with an associate from their days in Laos, Richard Secord. Clines was later convicted of under reporting income from his Iran-Contra dealings by at least $260,000 and served several months in a prison as a result. Shackley's involvement in the Iran-Contra affair is more difficult to discern.

Why did Khan and Pakistan get into the proliferation game, and why did it take twenty years to get him out?

The other major project of the alliance between Bush Sr. rump CIA and the Saudis was to finance and organize the construction in Pakistan of the "Islamic Atom Bomb." This illegal program continued in direct defiance of U.S. commitments to UN anti-proliferation treaties as well as in contravention of the official policy of the United States during the Carter and Clinton Administrations opposing further proliferation on the sub-Continent.

The first part of that question is easily enough answered by a combination of greed, patriotism, and ideological zeal on the part of all those involved. However, the more interesting question is why did the U.S. allow it to go on for the better part of a quarter century? Author Gordon Corera, Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity and the Rise and Fall of the A.Q. Khan Network provides part of the answer to both sides of the Khan and CIA enigma. The Economist offers a good, but incomplete, answer:

www.economist.com/books/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=7218482

Why did he do it? The Khan network began in support of Pakistan's determination to "eat grass or leaves" if need be to get its hands on a bomb to match India's. Quite when this Pakistan-centred import procurement network turned into the core of a global export-led proliferation network, run increasingly for private profit, isn't clear.

By all accounts, Pakistan bought North Korean nuclear-capable missiles in the early 1990s for cash. When money later got tight, it bartered nuclear expertise instead. Dealings with Iran and Libya over the years seem to have been driven increasingly by personal greed rather than by state policy or by Mr Khan's avowed nuclear patriotism.

He got away with it for so long, first, because Western governments in the 1980s saw fighting communism as more important than fighting proliferation—a false choice, argues Mr Corera — and, later on, because Pakistan's own nuclear buying provided a cover for its selling through the same intermediaries.

The picture was hard to piece together.

Eventually Western intelligence agencies, relying on traditional derring-do, penetrated the heart of the Khan operation.

As Trento and Corera tell us, development of a nuclear program was not a stand-alone operation for the Pakistanis. They could not afford to do it on their own, and the Saudis demanded service for their money. The same deal applied to the CIA -- those who took money, had to deliver something of value. To keep their patrons happy, Pakistani and rogue U.S. intelligence operators formed an alliance. The CIA operated as ISI's enabler, shielding Pakistan from investigation and retaliation, just as elements of the Agency had the Saudi money men. In exchange, Pakistan provided services in the areas such as recruiting, harboring, and training terrorists. Thus, by 1985 every side had what it needed. Pakistan had the prestige of being treated as a de facto nuclear power, Right-wing elements within the CIA and the Reagan-Bush Administration had the money they needed to carry out covert domestic and international operations -- ie, Iran-Contra -- and the Saudis had veto and blackmail power over the key figures in American politics, intelligence, law enforcement and the private sector to sheild the international financial crimes carried out by more enterprising helpers -- BCCI and the S&L scandal.

The Reagan-Bush Administration was the first American Presidency that was truly controlled by spooks and foreign interests. The political crimes carried out under Nixon and Ford had been more insular, domestic affairs. From that time onward, the Pakistani military was free to spin-off a nuclear weapons retail business involving a global free trade in atomic bomb parts, dirty money, and terrorist provocateurs. As the Kerry Commission Report makes clear, BCCI, the S&L rip-off, and Iran-Contra were international crimes involving Saudis and Pakistanis facilitated by corrupt American political and intelligence officials. Elements of U.S. intelligence, federal law enforcement, the State Department, and the Pentagon were, of course, well aware of this. Those U.S. officials who tried to put a stop to it encountered the CIA Old Boys, and were pushed aside or silenced.

One such casualty was a CIA officer named Richard M. Barlow, a specialist on Pakistan’s nuclear program, who the NYT reports was fired two decades ago after he blew the whistle on his superiors at DoD – Cheney, Wolfowitz, Libby, and Hadley -- for lying to Congress about the state of that country’s nuclear program. The destruction and intimidation of honest U.S. intelligence, military and law enforcement was another aspect of the ongoing Bush Saudi ISI criminal enterprise: http://topics.nytimes.com/...

NATIONAL DESK

Criticism of C.I.A. Analyst's Dismissal Bolsters a Fight for Whistle-Blower Protections

By JEFF GERTH

General Accounting Office questions Pentagon's dismissal of intelligence analyst eight years ago after he complained to his agency superiors that Federal officials were misleading Congress about Pakistan's nuclear abilities; criticizes earlier internal investigation by Defense Dept for concluding that whistle-blower protections already in place did not affect case of analyst, Richard M Barlow, who worked for Central Intelligence Agency; Barlow never disclosed his concerns outside CIA, and his cr...July 20, 1997 U.S. News

More recently that story was picked up by BBC, and reported here by Lukery, who has extensively covered the subject of FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who encountered the same network before 9/11 and was also silenced when she attempted to draw attention to it: http://www.dailykos.com/...

CIA Barlow was the CIA's key expert on Pakistan's nuclear program - he engineered sting operations and arrests of key AQ Khan personnel. For his efforts, Barlow was retaliated against - he says that Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz and Hadley "viciously tried to destroy my life, personally and professionally... in truly extraordinary ways that no one had ever seen before or since — at least not until the Wilsons (Joe, Valerie) were victims of the same people years later."

Barlow was recently featured in a BBC documentary about AQ Khan called "The Nuclear Walmart" which highlights that the US government was fully aware of the development of Pakistan's nuclear program, as well as Pakistan's proliferation to countries like North Korea and Iran - and sat by quietly and did nothing.

As we see it, there are several reasons why Khan's network continued as long as it did, and ended when it did. To recap: the Khan network started as part of a larger deal with the Saudis to revive the activist Right-wing of the CIA; was allowed to metasticize because it had US officials over a barrel; later, during the Clinton years, the A.Q. Khan operation was to some extent captured ( "turned" ) by (more or less) legitimate elements within CIA as a means to monitor and sabotage the nuclear program of several target countries, including North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Libya. The effectiveness of that Clinton-era program, I argue, was demonstrated last October when North Korea’s nuclear test shot was a dud. http://www.dailykos.com/...

Now, it becomes clearer how Khan came to act with near impunity for two decades, protected on several sides by the Pakistani government, his customers, monied Saudi backers, and several western intelligence agencies, including the Bush Sr. Old Spook crowd.

Then there's the final irony to this story. After Clinton-Gore were elected, proliferation continued, but his Agency minders were different. Khan was watched with care by career CIA officers and other U.S. officials as he spread his wares around the world. Those involved in this phase of the Agency operation were told by the Bush-era operatives that Khan had been "turned", which to some degree was quite plausible. The equipment that Khan sold to North Korea, Libya, and Iran was very expensive but very poor quality, prone to breakdown, constantly in need of spare parts, the flow of which was used to monitor the pace of production of fissionable material, which turned out to be far less than what any of these countries needed to make an enriched uranium bomb. By using Khan as a supplier, these countries actually set themselves back relative to what they might have achieved if they had made a real effort to obtain more modern, efficient designs available -- with much greater effort -- elsewhere on the international black market. See, http://www.democrati...erground.com... ; http://www.democrati...erground.com...

Two of those who monitored Khan were Valerie Plame and her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who followed Khan to Niger after A.Q. had visited that uranium-producing country in February, 1999. See, http://www.washingtonpost.com/... http://www.slate.com/...

Wilson’s uneventful follow-up trip to Niger in 2002 was to become a grand distraction in L’Affaire Plame. With so many people paying such close attention to him for so long, Khan must have felt as if he were truly untouchable.

But, after the 2000 election, the rules were changed about how the U.S conducted covert operations. With the Bush-Cheney Administration, quiet surveillance and penetration of Saudi-financed WMD and terrorist networks were out, and the very fact that target countries were running nuclear programs -- with the help of the CIA -- became a casus belli for military attack of "Axis of Evil" countries.

One can easily accept that the Buxxxxes, now back in power, were desperate enough to advance their war-making agenda that they were willing to sacrifice the CIA’s most effective nuclear counter-proliferation program.
An alternative explanation is that one faction of the Agency that had split in the 1970s was out to destroy its rival, which had managed the counter-proliferation and counter-terrorism divisions with a light touch during the Clinton years.
Or, it has been suggested, that certain third countries had also piggy-backed onto the A.Q. Khan network, and outed the Pakistanis in an attempt to spark a regional war as a way manipulate the U.S. into, once-and-for-all, disposing of their regional rivals.
Finally, there is evidence that the Bush team did some quick housekeeping once back in the White House, and simply did away with the source of so much incriminating evidence, the A.Q. Khan network had outlived its original purpose, and had to be shut down because it continued to use many of the same financial and logistical networks linked to the Saudis and Pakistanis, and that had already compromised too much.

Perhaps, some combination of these motives, along with a simple-minded executive decision to "take out" Khan explains it. The fact of the outing is indisputable, however. Within months of taking power, the Administration closed down much of the counter-proliferation and counter-terrorism programs they inherited. In May 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage, an old Bush Asia hand, met with Pakistani President Musharaff. Two weeks later, Khan was outed with the publication on June 1 of a story in Rupert Murdoch's Financial Times quoting Armitage as saying that a certain ranking "retired figure" within the Pakistani nuclear establishment had been trading weapons technology with North Korea. See, http://www.globalsecurity.org/... http://www.dailykos.com/...

Bush-Cheney Closed Down U.S. Counterterrorism Along with the CIA's Khan "Sting" Operation, Leading to 9-11

At the same time, major U.S. counter-terrorism operations with a nexus in Pakistan were closed down, as they used much of the same financial and logistical network as Khan, But, for some reason, terrorist operatives scattered around the world -- a number of them inside the U.S.-- were not rolled-up or otherwise neutralized. In early 2001, the FBI terminated Operation Monarch Crossing, which linked Saudi-controlled financing in the U.S. with Pakistani nuclear proliferation. http://www.storiesthatmatter.org/... The Bureau was also forced to shutter Operation Catchers Mitt, http://www.dailykos.com/... at the same time NSA and DIA were ordered to erase much of the data it had compiled in Able-Danger, another Clinton-era secret program mapping the al-Qaeda network inside the U.S.

There has been little attention paid to the Bush-Cheney Administration's orders to shut down these counter-terrorism programs. Given the larger context, it should come as no surprise that these people are willing to sacrifice just about anything to cover their tracks.

END OF PART 1

Originally posted to leveymg on Sat Jul 07, 2007 at 10:46 PM PDT.

############

IF SAUDI/BUSH NETWORK DID 911,then needed a serious revision required in the official account of 9/11.

#####################################

Edited November 2, 2012 by Steven Gaal

Len Colby · November 3, 2012

Thank Bush, Sr. for A.Q. Khan, UBL and the Plame Case

Sat Jul 07, 2007 at 10:46 PM PDT DAILY KOS

Lost in all the hullabaloo over Dubya's commutation of the jail sentence handed former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby w

Yawn citations are scanty and the author conflates failure to impede Khan and his “Nuclear Walmart” with the failure to go after AQ or pursue an effective anti-terrorism policy though there really is no connection between the two. It is an over long rambling essay that goes off on irrelevant tangents like the Phoenix Program and the 1973 coup in Chile The blog entry is further marred by errors and distortions. For example:

- “Through the Safari Club, Trento writes, "the Saudi royal family had taken over intelligence financing for the United States" at 102”

By “at 102” he meant “on page 102”, the author seems not even to have proofread this crap before posting it. The Trento quote referred to the post-Watergate period and Trento did not suggest it extended much afterward.

http://books.google....cIKIQC&pg=PA102

-“David Corn recounts the events in the Chilean coup that overthrew what was then the second-oldest democracy in the world”

A minor quibble but he obviously meant “the second-oldest democracy in Latin/South America” this is symptomatic of his carelessness.

- “Bush-Cheney Closed Down U.S. Counterterrorism Along with the CIA's Khan "Sting" Operation, Leading to 9-11…The Bureau was also forced to shutter Operation Catchers Mitt”

The cited source was another Kos entry by the same author, his cited source in that was a Newsweek press release about an article in that magazine. It indicated the program had been “curtailed” not “cancelled and there was no indication the curtailment ‘led to 9/11’ it was curtailed down in April 2001 when most of the plot was already in place. According to Newsweek “the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called "Catcher's Mitt" to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States, after a federal judge severely chastised the FBI for improperly seeking permission to wiretap terrorists”

To be fair the press release stated that “During the Bush administration's first few months in office, Attorney General John Ashcroft downgraded terrorism as a priority, choosing to place more emphasis on drug trafficking and gun violence, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas…” but their main source was Richard Clarke and one has to wonder how self-serving his claims were. According to the press release:

“…President Bill Clinton did no better to tame the terrorist threat during his last years in office. As Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll recently showed in his new book "Ghost Wars," those in the national-security bureaucracy under Clinton spent more time wringing their hands and squabbling with each other than going after Osama bin Laden.”

http://web.archive.o...nysu007a_1.html

- “…at the same time NSA and DIA were ordered to erase much of the data it had compiled in Able-Danger, another Clinton-era secret program mapping the al-Qaeda network inside the U.S.”

The was no indication the NSA was involved in “Able Danger”. Worse the participants claim they were order to delete their intel were blocked from sharing it with the FBI May – September 2000, well before Bush and Cheney were “elected” let alone sworn in. The participants most sensational claims are suspect, they claimed to have identified Mohamed Atta in Brooklyn at a time when he went by another name and was living in Hamburg

http://en.wikipedia....iki/Able_Danger

http://www.911myths....php/Able_Danger

http://www.historyco...line&startpos=0

IF SAUDI/BUSH NETWORK DID 911,then needed a serious revision required in the official account of 9/11.

You keep posting that as if it were some profound insight but it is obvious and an example of 'begging the question' a logical fallacy.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/begquest.html

Edited November 3, 2012 by Len Colby

Steven Gaal · November 3, 2012

WOW! NSA spying = Able Danger

In a moment of reflective clarity, it suddenly hit me why the public (and even private) investigations into the sudden disbanding of the Able Danger unit was so vehemently opposed by the Department of Defense: Able Danger was not really disbanded; it is still operating!

OK, to be less sensationalist, while the Able Danger unit itself was disbanded, the technology and practices of the unit were absorbed into the National Security Agency (NSA). There, the scope of operations was expanded to monitor not just foreign communications and public domain data, as Able Danger was said to have done, but also to monitor ALL communications within the US, as reported by whistleblowers within the NSA.

The investigation into the Able Danger unit of the past was stonewalled because it would inevitably lead to exposing the illegal activities being conducted today. I suspect hearings into Able Danger will not be opposed anymore, since NSA spying is already exposed.

Able Danger was a Defense Intelligence Agency operation that tracked Mohammed Atta and several other 9/11 conspirators in the years before the attack, revealed by (now muzzled) whistleblowers in late 2005. The best compilation of information about Able Danger is from History Commons at www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=ableDanger

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a participant in Able Danger, has a book "Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan -- and the Path to Victory." The Pentagon forced censorship of parts of it before it was published (since he had a security clearance that allowed for the censorship of his writing).

KOS BLOG

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FOR THE RECORD

FTR #423 I’ve Got a Secret: Update on 9/11 and Related Subjects

Listen:

MP3 Side 1 | Side 2

RealAudio

Bringing the investigation of 9/11 and related matters up to date, this program takes its name from an old TV quiz show titled, “I’ve Got a Secret.” Beginning with confirmation of the direct White House role in facilitating the escape from the United States of members of the Saudi elite (including Bin Laden family members implicated in terrorist matters), the broadcast discusses the many attempts by the Bush administration to suppress information about the 9/11 attacks. The well-publicized Bush administration suppression of (a section of) a congressional report on the attacks has helped to obscure information about a Saudi governmental role in the attacks. Part of the alleged Saudi governmental role (in the attacks) entails Saudi intelligence operatives’ participation in the conspiracy. In addition, Bush is censoring information about how much forewarning his administration had received about the attacks, as well as continued suppression of documentation of terrorist funding conduits. Much of the second side of the program consists of an update of the Al Taqwa/Nada Management connections, including further information about an Al Taqwa/Saddam Hussein link.

Program Highlights Include: Excerpts from a Vanity Fair article detailing the Bush efforts to evacuate the Bin Ladens from the US; the description features sections of a very important Wall Street Journal article that came out a week after the original broadcast) that further documents the Al Taqwa/Al Qaeda link; US corporations’ smuggling of high-tech equipment to Saddam Hussein through German and South Korean intermediaries; those intermediary companies’ use of the term “our common enemy ” to refer to the United States; Al Taqwa links to a Saudi allegedly connected to Al Qaeda funding; an Al Taqwa scheme to launder assets plundered from Kuwait in 1991; Al Gore’s attempts to prevail on the Saudis to stop funding terrorism.

1. Updating and developing a topic discussed in FTRs 337, 347, the broadcast details the evacuation from the United States of members of the Bin Laden family in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. For the first time, it has been confirmed that the upper echelons of the Bush administration were involved in the decision to evacuate the Bin Ladens at a time when the vast majority of Americans could not fly.

“Top White House officials personally approved the evacuation of dozens of influential Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, from the United States in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks when most flights were still grounded, a former White House adviser said today. The adviser, Richard Clarke, who ran the White House crisis team after the attacks but has since left the Bush administration, said he agreed to the extraordinary plan because the Federal Bureau of investigation assured him that the departing Saudis were not linked to terrorism. The White House feared that the Saudis could face ‘retribution’ for the hijackings if they remained in the United States, Mr. Clarke said. . . . ”

(“White House Approved Departure of Saudis After Sept. 11, Ex-Aide Says ” by Eric Lichtblau; The New York Times; 9/4/2003; p. A15.)

2.

” . . . Mr. Clarke first made his remarks about the plan in an article in Vanity Fair due out Thursday, and he expanded on those remarks today in an interview and in congressional testimony. The White House said today that it had no comment on Mr. Clarke’s statements. . . . ”

(Idem.)

3. As will be discussed below, at least two of the Bin Laden family evacuees appear to be involved with the Al Qaeda milieu.

“Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, seized on Mr. Clarke’s comments to call on the White House to conduct an investigation into the hasty departures of about 140 Saudis from the United States in the days after the attacks. Mr. Schumer said in an interview that he suspected that some of the Saudis who were allowed to leave, particularly two relatives of Mr. bin Laden who he said had links to terrorist groups themselves, could have shed light on the events of Sept. 11. ‘This is just another example of our country coddling the Saudis and giving them special privileges that others would never get,’ Mr. Schumer said. ‘It’s almost as if we didn’t want to find out what links existed. . . .’ ”

(Idem.)

4.

“But the Vanity Fair investigation quotes Dale Watson, the former head of counterterrorism at the F.B.I., as saying that the departing Saudis ‘were not subject to serious interviews or interrogations.’ Mr. Watson could not be reached for comment today. The article depicts an elaborate but hurried evacuation carried out within a week of the hijackings in which private planes picked up Saudis from 10 cities around the country. Some aviation and bureau officials said they were upset by the operation because the government had not lifted flight restrictions for the general public, but those officials said they lacked the power to stop the evacuation, the article says. . . ”

(Idem.)

5.

“Mr. Schumer said he doubted the thoroughness of a rushed review by the bureau, and in a letter to the White House today he said the Saudis appeared to have gotten ‘a free pass’ despite their possible knowledge about the attacks. ‘I find it hard to believe that two days after 9/11, the F.B.I. would even know what questions to ask and who to ask it of,’ Mr. Schumer said in an interview. ‘The F.B.I.‘s confidence that nothing of value was lost here is questionable.’ ”

(Idem.)

6. Although it was not directly accessed in the original broadcast, the Vanity Fair article referenced in the above New York Times story is excerpted here for the listeners’ scrutiny. Abdullah and Khalil Bin Laden were the two members of the Al Qaeda-linked family alluded to by Senator Schumer.

“The young bin Ladens and members of the House of Saud who were living in the United States in September 2001 were mostly students attending high school or college and young professionals. Several bin Ladens had attended Tufts University near Boston. Sana bin Laden had graduated from Wheelock College, in Boston. Abdullah bin Laden, a younger brother of Osama’s, was a 1994 graduate of Harvard Law School and had offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. . . . ”

(“Saving the Saudis ” by Craig Unger; Vanity Fair; October/2003; p. 165.)

7.

” . . .But half-brother Khalil Binladin decided to go back to Jidda. Khalil, who has a Brazilian wife, had been appointed Brazil’s honorary consul in Jidda, though he also owns a sprawling 20-acre estate in Winter Garden, Florida, near Orlando. ”

(Idem.)

8. Abdullah Bin Laden is linked to the WAMY, which in turn overlaps Al Qaeda, the GOP’s Republican ethnic outreach organization and the Al Taqwa milieu

“In fact, the F.B.I. had been keeping an eye on some of the bin Ladens. A classified F.B.I. file examined by Vanity Fair and marked ‘Secret’ shows that as early as 1996, the bureau had spent nearly nine months investigating Abdullah and Omar bin Laden, who were involved with the American branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a charity that has published writings by Islamic scholar Sayyid Qutb, one of Osama bin Laden’s intellectual influences. ”

(Ibid.; p. 175.)

9. In addition, Khalil bin Laden has interests in the tri-border area.

“Khalil bin Laden, who boarded a plane in Orlando that eventually took him back to Saudi Arabia, won the attention of Brazilian investigators for possible terrorist connections. According to a Brazilian paper, he had business connections in the Brazilian province of Minas Gerais, not far from the tri-border region, an alleged center for training terrorists. . . . ”

(Ibid.; p. 176.)

10.

“F.B.I. officials declined to comment on the investigation, which was reported in Britain’s The Guardian, but the documents show that the file on Abdullah and Omar was reopened on September, 19, 2001, while the Saudi repatriation was still under way. ‘These documents show there was an open F.B.I. investigation into these guys at the time of their departure,’ says David Armstrong, an investigator for the Public Education Center, the Washington, D.C., foundation that obtained the documents. ”

(Idem.)

11. Among the points apparently contained in the deleted portion of the congressional report on the 9/11 attacks is information implicating the Saudi government in the conspiracy.

“The 28 pages deleted from a congressional report on Sept. 11 depict a Saudi government that not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups through suspect charities and other fronts, according to sources familiar with the document. One U.S. official who has read the classified section said it described ‘direct involvement of senior (Saudi) government officials in a coordinated and methodical way directly to the hijackers,’ as well as ‘very direct, very specific links that cannot be passed off as rogue, isolated or coincidental.’ Another official said: ‘It’s really damning. What it says is that not only Saudi entities or nationals are implicated in 9/11, but the (Saudi) government as well.’ ”

(“Report Says Saudis Aided 9/11 Hijackers ” [Chronicle News Services]; The San Francisco Chronicle; 8/2/2003; p. A1.)

12. Bush himself was responsible for the refusal to declassify the report.

“President Bush refused today to declassify a 28-page chapter of a Congressional report on the September 2001 attacks. He said that disclosure of the deleted section, which centers on allegations about Saudi Arabia’s role in financing the hijackings, would ‘would help the enemy,’ and compromise the administration’s campaign against terror.”

( “Bush Refuses to Declassify Saudi Section of Report ” by David Johnston and Douglas Jehl; The New York Times; 7/30/2003; p. A1.)

13. According to some analysts, the classified information may implicate Saudi intelligence operatives in the machinations in, and around, 9/11.

“The classified part of a Congressional report on the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, says that two Saudi citizens who had at least indirect links with two hijackers were probably Saudi intelligence agents and may have reported to Saudi government officials, according to people who have seen the report. These findings, according to several people who have read the report, help to explain why the classified part of the report has become so politically charged, causing strains between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Senior Saudi officials have denied any links between their government and the attacks and have asked that the section be declassified, but President Bush has refused. ”

(“Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role by Saudi Spies ” by James Risen and David Johnston; The New York Times; 8/2/2003; p. 1.)

14.

“The report urges further investigation of the two men and their contacts with the hijackers, because of unresolved questions about their relationship and whether they had any involvement in the 9/11 plot. The edited 28-page section of the report, produced by a joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committees, also says that a Muslim cleric in San Diego was a central figure in a support network that aided the same two hijackers. Most connections drawn in the report between the men, Saudi intelligence and the attacks are circumstantial, several people who have read the report said. ”

(Idem.)

15. Beyond the 28 pages of classified material in the congressional report on 9/11, the Bush administration is actively covering up the extent to which it ignored intelligence warnings foreshadowing the attacks.

“It’s not just the Saudi secret that’s being kept. The recent report of the joint congressional committee that probed intelligence failures before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon reveals what the Bush administration doesn’t want Americans to know about the American government. You would not know this from media accounts about this report. They have dwelled on what the Bush administration doesn’t want us to know about the Saudi government.”

(“U.S. Clamps Secrecy on Warnings Before 9/11 ” Marie Cocco; Newsday; 8/7/2003; p. 1.)

16.

“This is the famous 28-page chapter, a series of blank lines across page after page, that the president refuses to declassify despite the pleadings of the bipartisan group of lawmakers and the Saudi government itself. The dustup over Saudi secrets is exquisitely convenient. It obscures George W. Bush’s relentless hold on U.S. secrets and on information he maintains should be secret, though it has not necessarily been before now. ”

(Idem.)

17.

“The report’s appendix hints at what these secrets are, and why they are kept. ‘Access Limitations Encountered by the Joint Inquiry,’ the section is titled. The White House refused to provide contents of the president’s daily brief. This would clear up questions about how much specific information President Bush received about an impending attack during the spring and summer of 2001—a period in which the intelligence community was reporting with alarm that a ‘spectacular’ attack against the United States involving ‘mass casualties’ was in the works. ”

(Idem.)

18. A recent Village Voice article highlighted some of the warnings.

” . . . The report lists 36 different summaries of warnings dating back to 1997. Among them: ‘In September 1998, the [intelligence Community] obtained information that Bin Laden’s next operation might involve flying an explosive-laden aircraft into a U.S. airport and detonating it.’ ‘In the fall of 1998, the [intelligence Community] obtained information concerning a Bin Laden plot involving aircraft in the New York and Washington, D.C. areas.’ ”

(“Bush’s 9–11 Secrets ” [ “Mondo Washington ”] by James Ridgeway; The Village Voice; 7/31/2003.)

19.

” ‘In March 2000, the [intelligence Community] obtained information regarding the types of targets that operatives of Bin Laden’s network might strike. The Statue of Liberty was specifically mentioned, as were skyscrapers, ports, airports and nuclear power plants’ . . . We don’t know because Bush has invoked executive privilege to withhold from Congress this key briefing on August 6, 2001. We do know that despite years of warnings from the intelligence community, the government apparently had taken no steps to protect the eastern seaboard or any other American border from attack. ”

(Idem.)

20. Perhaps the most revealing of the Bush administration’s attempts at playing “I’ve Got a Secret ” is its refusal to allow information about the funding sources of Al Qaeda into the public domain. It is the information uncovered as a result of “Operation Green Quest ” that connects the milieux of Al Taqwa, Al Qaeda, the GOP and elements of the Underground Reich.

“The Treasury Department rejected a request from senators Tuesday and refused to release a classified list of Saudi individuals or organizations suspected of financing terrorist groups. A Treasury spokesman, Rob Nichols, said a department official misspoke when he told senators last week the list was unclassified, which would mean it was not restricted information. ‘The last thing we want to do is tip off terrorists that we are on to them,’ Nichols said. ‘We don’t want to disrupt ongoing investigations, covert actions or potential law enforcement actions.’ ”

(“Gov’t Won’t Release Terror Financing List’ by Ken Guggenheim [AP]; p. 1.)

21.

“Administration attorneys are reviewing the degree to which the classified information can be provided or shared with Congress in closed session, said a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The refusal to release the list marks the second time in two weeks that the Bush administration has rejected requests by senators to declassify information about Saudi ties to terrorists.’ ”

(Idem.)

22. Further underscoring the Al Taqwa/Al Qaeda link discussed above, a recent deposition by a former FBI agent connects Youssef Nada and Ali Galeb Himmat (of Al Taqwa) with alleged funding of terrorists, including Al Qaeda.

“A group of Saudi-backed Islamic charities operating in the US gave material support to terrorists linked with al-Qaeda and Hamas, the US government has alleged for the first time. The allegations concerning the Muslim World League and an affiliate, the International Islamic Relief Organization, are likely to reignite concerns about Saudi Arabia’s possible role in funding terrorist organizations. The two charities are at the center of the largest-ever US investigation of terrorist financing. According to an affidavit made public this week, the charities gave money to BMI, a New Jersey-based company suspected of transferring funds to three individuals designated terrorists by the US government. . . ”

(“Saudi-backed Charities ‘Aided terrorists”’ by Marianne Brun-Rovet and Edward Alden; The Financial Times; 8/21/2003; p. 2.)

23.

” . . . The money invested in BMI by the two charities came from a $10m endowment from unnamed Saudi donors, according to the affidavit by David Kane, an agent with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While it is not clear whether that money came from the Saudi government, the affidavit quotes a recent CIA report that says the Muslim World League ‘is largely financed by the government of Saudi Arabia.’ Mr. Kane said that the charities gave $3.7m to BMI, which may have passed the money to individuals considered terrorists by the U.S. They include Yassin Qadi accused by the US government of transferring millions of dollars to Osama bin Laden through charities such as the Muwafaq Foundation; Mousa Abu Marzook, the self-professed head of the political branch of Hamas, the radical Palestinian organization; and Mohammad Salah, a member of Hamas who spent five years in an Israeli prison. . . . ”

(Idem.)

24.

“The allegations against BMI were made to back up charges against Soliman Biheiri, BMI’s founder and president, who was indicted two weeks ago on charges of lying to obtain US citizenship. The government alleges that Mr. Biheiri also did business with other designated terrorists. Mr. Biheiri’s laptop computer contained contact information for Ghaleb Himmat and Youssef Nada, members of the Muslim Brotherhood extremist group and people considered terrorists by the US and the United Nations. ”

(Idem.)

25. This description features important supplemental information from an article in The Wall Street Journal that came out after the broadcast was recorded. Further cementing the allegations concerning Abdullah bin Laden and the milieus of Al Taqwa and Al Qaeda, the article sets forth apparent connections between Mr. Biheiri and these same interests.

” . . . Prosecutors identified a third BMI investor as Abdullah Awad bin Laden, who BMI partnership records and bank statements show put in more than $500,000.00. He is a nephew of Osama bin Laden, head of al Qaeda and the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. During the 1990’s, Abdullah Awad bin Laden ran the U.S. branch of a Saudi charity called the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and private analysts labeled it a suspected terrorist organization; the group says it doesn’t support terrorism . . . Abdullah Awad bin Laden, who formerly lived in Virginia but left the U.S., after Sept. 11, 2001, has made no public statements and couldn’t be located. U.S. officials believe he is in Saudi Arabia. ”

(“U.S. Details an Alleged Terror-Financing Web ” by Glenn R. Simpson; Wall Street Journal; 9/15/2003; p. A5.)

26.

” . . . Mr. Kane said Mr. Biheiri has relationships with the two founders of the now-banned al-Taqwa, both of whom are also officially listed as terrorists by the U.S. He added that there are other ‘indications there were some connections between Bank al-Taqwa and BMI,’ including ‘financial transactions.’ He was halted from saying anything further on the matter by the prosecutor, who said the information is classified foreign intelligence. Another of Mr. Biheiri’s associates, the government alleged, is Sami Al-Arian the Tampa college professor now under indictment in federal court in Florida as an alleged leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which competes with Hamas to kill Israeli civilians in suicide bombings. . . . ”

(Idem.)

27. Among the figures implicated in the web of intrigues discussed above is Yaqub Mirza.

” . . . Rounding out their evidence, prosecutors disclosed an e-mail they obtained showing that Mr. Biheiri was involved in Mr. Qadi’s financial dealings with Yaqub Mirza, a Pakistani engineer who manages a group of Saudi-backed Islamic charities that are also under investigation for supporting terrorism, according to a federal search warrant. The e-mail was taken from Mr. Mirza’s computer in the search. They said that one of the top figures in the SAAR network, Ahmed Totonji, is a senior leader of the Muslim charity that Abdullah bin Laden helped run. ”

(Idem.)

28. Supplementing information presented in FTRs 413, 417, the broadcast sets forth documentation of an alleged scheme on the part of Al Taqwa to launder assets seized by Saddam Hussein after his invasion of Kuwait.

” . . . Estimates of Hussein’s hidden wealth range from several billion dollars to $40 billion, and the Bush administration fears that the money could finance not only resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq but terrorist activities. Most of Hussein’s fortune came from came kickbacks on oil sales and smuggled cigarettes and other luxury goods, financial sleuths say. According to the General Accounting office, the deposed dictator skimmed more than $6.6 billion from the U.N.-sponsored oil-for-food program. . . ”

(“Saddam Hussein Can Tap Billions in Dollars, Gold, Diamonds ” by Jay Bushinsky; San Francisco Chronicle; 8/16/2003; p. A7.)

29.

” . . . Paolo Fusi, an Italian reporter who began investigating Hussein’s money trail after Sept. 11 and is the author of ‘Saddam’s Cashier,’ says the ousted leader patterned his overseas empire after his political mentor—Egypt’s late President Gamal Abdel Nasser. ‘(Hussein) became an admirer of the Egyptian regime and its leader’s methods,’ said Fusi . . . Fusi began his inquiry in Geneva by interviewing Arab bankers, who led him to Hussein’s financial agents. Fusi also developed close ties with Italian judges, financial police and a Swiss-Italian attorney named Gianluca Boscaro, who reportedly secured evidence of how Hussein hid money around the world after being hired by the family of a man the dictator executed for skimming profits from the network. . . . ”

(Idem.)

30.

” . . . According to the Sunday Times of London, hundreds of documents show that Hussein held bank accounts at the Bahamas branch of Switzerland’s Banca del Gottardo and channeled millions of dollars to them from arms deals and construction contracts. . . . But Elio Borrodori, the subject of Fusi’s book, who served as a company trustee for Hussein in Liechtenstein and Switzerland for more than a decade, told reporters in April that he funneled millions in ‘commissions’ and ‘consultancy fees’ into a Banca del Gottardo account in Nassau codenamed Satan and controlled by a Hussein nephew named Saad al-Mahdi, based in Milan. ”

(Idem.)

31.

“Ernst Backes, an international banking expert in Luxembourg, says the network remained active after U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, reaching a financial peak of $31 billion annually. Fusi says an Italian government report showed one of the network’s boldest exploits—the laundering of millions of Iraqi and Kuwaiti dinars, the latter plundered by Iraqi troops during the Gulf War. ”

(Idem.)

32.

” ‘The money was packed into suitcases that were transported by truck from Slovenia to Zurich, where a fair exchange in gold and diamonds was guaranteed by Youssef Nada of al Taqwa Bank,’ Fusi said. (Al Taqwa Bank was included in President Bush’s list of al Qaeda money suppliers.) ‘The neatly packed bills then wee shipped to Lebanon and Syria, after which they disappeared . . . ”

Edited November 3, 2012 by Steven Gaal

Daniel Burnet · November 3, 2012

Edited August 28, 2015 by Daniel Burnet

Steven Gaal · November 4, 2012

Shortly after the first printing, the Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency saw copies of the book and insisted on censoring passages they deemed sensitive.Operation Dark Heart wiki

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

NSA/Pentagon Want to Suppress Lt. Col Anthony Shaffer's Book "Operation Dark Heart"

By Truth Excavator

September 12, 2010 at 00:37:54

Scott Shane of the New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON -- Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute.

The publication of "Operation Dark Heart," by Anthony A. Shaffer, a former DefenseIntelligence Agency officer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has divided military security reviewers and highlighted the uncertainty about what information poses a genuine threat to security.

===================================================

August 11, 2005: 9/11 Commission Admits Being Informed of Able Danger Unit that Identified Mohamed Atta in 2000

history commons

-----------------------

In response to new revelations about a military intelligence unit called Able Danger, which allegedly identified Mohamed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers more than a year before the attacks, Al Felzenberg—formerly the chief spokesman for the 9/11 Commission—acknowledges that a uniformed officer briefed two of the commission’s staff members about the unit in early July 2004 (see

July 12, 2004

). He also admits that the officer said the program had identified Mohamed Atta as part of an al-Qaeda cell in Brooklyn. This information was not mentioned anywhere in the commission’s final report. [

New York Times, 8/11/2005

] The existence of the Able Danger program was first revealed two days ago in an +

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

July 20, 2001: Call between KSM, Bin Al-Shibh about Moussaoui Intercepted

An unknown intelligence agency intercepts a telephone call between alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh. [

9/11 Commission, 2004

;

9/11 Commission, 3/18/2004

] In the call, KSM and bin al-Shibh discuss the state of the 9/11 plot, in particular the fact that Ziad Jarrah, one of the proposed pilots, may drop out. They speak in a code, substituting unexceptional words for what they really mean. [

9/11 Commission, 3/18/2004

] KSM instructs bin al-Shibh to send the “skirts,” meaning money forwarded to bin al-Shibh by an associate of KSM, to “Sally,” meaning Moussaoui. [

9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 246

] The reason for this is that “Teresa,” meaning Jarrah, is “late,” i.e. he is wavering and may drop out of the plot, due to possible conflicts with lead hijacker Mohamed Atta about Jarrah’s isolation from the conspiracy. It therefore appears that KSM is thinking of Moussaoui as a replacement for Jarrah. According to a 9/11 Commission memo, KSM says something like, “if there is a divorce, it will cost a lot of money.” Bin al-Shibh then tries to reassure him, saying it will be okay. The conversation also mentions “Danish leather,” an apparent reference to failed “20th hijacker” Mohamed al-Khatani (see

August 4, 2001

). [

9/11 Commission, 3/18/2004

] The agency which intercepts this call is never identified to the public, although the NSA is reportedly intercepting such calls to and from KSM at this time (see

Summer 2001

). The 9/11 Commission will mention the call in a staff statement and its final report, but will not mention that it was intercepted, merely citing detainee interrogations as the source of information about it. [

9/11 Commission, 6/16/2004, pp. 16-17

;

9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp.

246,530

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

September 10, 2001: NSA Monitors Call as 9/11 Mastermind KSM Gives 9/11 Hijacker Atta Final Approval to Launch Attacks

9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta calls 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) in Afghanistan. KSM gives final approval to Atta to launch the attacks. The specifics of the conversation haven’t been released. [

Independent, 9/15/2002

] Unnamed intelligence officials later tell Knight Ridder Newspapers that the call is monitored by the NSA, but only translated after the 9/11 attacks. KSM, “using coded language, [gives] Atta final approval” for the attacks. [

Knight Ridder, 9/9/2002

] NSA monitored other calls between KSM and Atta in the summer of 2001 but did not share the information about this with other agencies (see

Summer 2001

). Additionally, it will later be revealed that an FBI squad built an antenna in the Indian Ocean some time before 9/11 with the specific purpose of listening in on KSM’s phone calls, so they may have learned about this call to Atta on their own (see

Before September 11, 2001

).

+++++++++++++++++++++

February-July 2004: 9/11 Commission Does Not Find Material about Intercepts of Hijackers’ Calls in NSA Files

The 9/11 Commission’s cursory review of NSA material related to the attacks and al-Qaeda in general does not find any reports about NSA intercepts of communications between the hijackers in the US and an al-Qaeda communications hub in Sana’a, Yemen (see Early 2000-Summer 2001). Neither does it find any reports about calls intercepted by the NSA between alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and lead hijacker Mohamed Atta (see Summer 2001 and September 10, 2001). Author Philip Shenon will write about the commission’s review of the NSA files in a 2008 book and will discuss what Commission staffers found there, but will not mention these intercepts, some of which were mentioned in declassified portions of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry (see Summer 2002-Summer 2004). The review is only conducted by a few staffers (see January 2004, June 2004, and Between July 1 and July 17, 2004) and is not comprehensive, so it is unclear whether the NSA does not provide the reports to the 9/11 Commission, or the commission simply fails to find them in the large number of files the NSA made available to it. However, the staffers do find material possibly linking some of the hijackers to Iran and Hezbollah (see January-June 2004). [shenon, 2008, pp. 87-8, 155-7, 370-3] In its final report, the commission will make passing references to some of the calls the NSA intercepted without pointing out that the NSA actually intercepted them. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 87-88, 222] However, the endnotes that indicate the sources of these sections will not contain any references to NSA reports, but instead refer to an interview with NSA Director Michael Hayden and an FBI timeline of the hijackers’ activities. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 477, 518]

March 27, 2008: Attorney General Makes Puzzling Claim about Pre-9/11 Communication Intercept

Attorney General Michael Mukasey makes an apparent reference to the intercepts of the 9/11 hijackers’ calls by the NSA before the attacks in a speech pleading for extra surveillance powers. Mukasey says: “[Officials] shouldn’t need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that’s the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that’s the call that we didn’t know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went.” [FORA(.tv), 3/27/2008; New York Sun, 3/28/2008] According to a Justice Department response to a query about the speech, this appears to be a reference to the Yemen hub, an al-Qaeda communications facility previously alluded to by Mukasey in a similar context (see February 22, 2008). [salon, 4/4/2008] However, the hub was in Yemen, not Afghanistan and, although it acted as a safe house, it was primarily a communications hub (see Early 2000-Summer 2001). In addition, the NSA did not intercept one call between it and the 9/11 hijackers in the US, but several, involving both Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, not just one of the hijackers (see Spring-Summer 2000, Mid-October 2000-Summer 2001, and (August 2001)). Nevertheless, the NSA failed to inform the FBI the hub was calling the US (see (Spring 2000)). (Note: it is possible Mukasey is not talking about the Yemen hub in this speech, but some other intercept genuinely from an al-Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan—for example a call between lead hijacker Mohamed Atta in the US and alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who may have been in Afghanistan when such call was intercepted by the NSA (see Summer 2001 and September 10, 2001). However, several administration officials have made references similar to Mukasey’s about the Yemen hub since the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program was revealed (see December 17, 2005).)

Edited November 4, 2012 by Steven Gaal

Abu Zubaydah: needed a serious revision required in the official account of 9/11

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