September 11 Commission Report - Gnostic Liberation Front
September 11 Commission Report - Gnostic Liberation Front
September 11 Commission Report - Gnostic Liberation Front
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong><br />
COMMISSION<br />
REPORT<br />
Revised December 2008<br />
Final <strong>Report</strong> of the Investigation Into:<br />
the Murders of Nicholas Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley;<br />
the Individuals Responsible for the Attack on the World Trade Center;<br />
National Security Issues as the Root Cause for the Attack on the World<br />
Trade Center.<br />
UNPUBLISHED EDITION<br />
(Fifth Edition, December 2008)<br />
Not for sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office<br />
Internet:.com<br />
ISBN:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 1
FAIR USE NOTICE: This report contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been<br />
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is being made available in efforts to advance<br />
understanding of criminal justice, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social<br />
justice issues, etc. The belief is this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for<br />
in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material in<br />
this report is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the<br />
included information for research and educational purposes, by publicizing contact information. For more<br />
information on this law go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use<br />
copyrighted material from this report for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain<br />
permission from the copyright owner (JP Heidner).<br />
LIABILITY: The writer(s) disclaims all liability for any loss, damage, injury or expense however caused,<br />
arising from the use of or reliance upon, in any manner, the information provided through this report and<br />
does not warrant the truth, accuracy or completeness of the information provided. In all likelihood, a few<br />
of the hypotheses generated from this information will be shown to be false – when the investigative<br />
records are made public, and for that, the writer apologizes in advance.<br />
INTENT: The writer warrants that the information presented in this report is an accurate reflection of<br />
information presented on public news sites on the internet. Information on these sites is sometimes<br />
presented by individuals or organizations which may be viewed as pursuing objectives which are hateful<br />
and malicious. If information on such sites appears to have merit, and that information is consistent with<br />
other facts in the investigation, the factual information from that site is included as best possible, without<br />
any reflection on the merit of that site’s objectives. The intent of this report is to 1) provide a hypothetical<br />
explanation for the events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001 that incorporates currently public information not<br />
included in the official government report, and 2) focus public attention on circumstances that strongly<br />
suggest there has been wrong doing by public officials and organizations involved in misuse of government<br />
resources, 3) explain why officials may have been motivated to mislead the American public, and 4)<br />
provide a foundation of research and hypothesis for future research. Information presented in this report<br />
documents that the federal institutions responsible for investigating these events are currently involved in<br />
efforts to suppress the facts under the guise of National Security. Hence, this information is being made<br />
public in the hope that unknown officials with appropriate level of authority can re-institute the appropriate<br />
investigation, or that private investigative resources can further substantiate (or disprove) these claims.<br />
Copyright © 2008<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 2
CONTENTS<br />
List of Illustrations and Tables 6<br />
Summary of Findings 8<br />
Preface 25<br />
Methodology 26<br />
1. UNMASKING THE FACES BEHIND THE<br />
TERRORIST THREAT<br />
2. THE SMOKING GUN – NICK BERG 32<br />
2.1 Nick Berg was not killed by Muslim Terrorists 32<br />
2.2 Nick Berg was executed by the elements of the Mossad 34<br />
2.3 Why the Mossad killed Nick Berg -Motive – Cover-up for<br />
the World Trade Center Attack<br />
2.4 Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden 45<br />
3. EUGENE ARMSTRONG AND JACK HENSLEY 49<br />
3.1 Working for Gulf Services 50<br />
3.2 Eugene Armstrong 51<br />
3.3 Jack Hensley 51<br />
3.4 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi 53<br />
4. CENTRAL ASIAN OIL: MOTIVE FOR 9/<strong>11</strong>? 56<br />
4.1 Caspian Oil 68<br />
4.2 Azerbaijan 71<br />
4.3 Richard Secord, UBS and the Azerbaijan Connection 74<br />
4.4 Afghanistan 79<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 3<br />
29<br />
39
4.5 Afghanistan and the Intelligence Block 89<br />
4.6 Afghan Heroin 90<br />
4.7 Kazakhstangate 94<br />
4.8 Nazarbayev, The Russian/Israeli Mafiya and Angola 100<br />
5. RUSSIAN AND ISRAELI MAFIYA 107<br />
5.1 Project for the New American Century 107<br />
5.2 Follow the Money <strong>11</strong>0<br />
5.3 The Threat to German Banking <strong>11</strong>6<br />
5.4 The Link Between the Mossad and German Banking <strong>11</strong>9<br />
5.5 Unplanned Consequences: The Invasion of Iraq 125<br />
6. DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD TRADE<br />
CENTER<br />
7.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 4<br />
129<br />
6.1 The Link between the WTC, Illegal Gold and Money-139<br />
Laundering<br />
6.2 The Destruction of Buildings Seven and Six 143<br />
GOLD TRADING AND MONEY LAUNDERING<br />
INVESTIGATIONS CANCELLED BY<br />
DESTRUCTION OF THE WTC<br />
151<br />
7.1 Tonnes of Illegal Gold 153<br />
7.2 Gold Laundering 161<br />
7.3 Burying the Truth 176<br />
8. GOLD BACKED BONDS, CANTOR<br />
FITZGERALD AND THE OFFICE OF NAVAL<br />
INTELLIGENCE<br />
179
8.1 Federal Reserve and the Elimination of Regulatory Control 192<br />
8.2 The Naval Intelligence Threat 199<br />
8.3 Collapse of the Soviet Economy and the Brady Bonds 206<br />
8.4 8.4 Riggs Bank as an Agent for the Collapse of the Soviet 206<br />
Union<br />
8.5 8.5 Ambassador Lee Wanta and the Riggs-Valmet226<br />
Connection<br />
8.6 The Yeltsin Family and the Investigations in the World Trade 232<br />
Center<br />
8.7 Armageddon 240<br />
9. BANK CARTEL OR OIL CARTEL? A<br />
QUESTION OF GREATER MOTIVE<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 5<br />
243<br />
9.1 The Swiss-German Banking Connection 244<br />
10. REUNION: IRAN-CONTRA AND THE<br />
OCTOBER SURPRISE<br />
252<br />
10.1 The Iran-Contra Syndicate 258<br />
<strong>11</strong>. WHITEHOUSE ASSASSINS 261<br />
<strong>11</strong>.1 Threat 1: Texas Whitehouse – August 2001 261<br />
<strong>11</strong>.2 Threat 2 and 3: Attempts at the Colony Resort –<strong>September</strong> 10 261<br />
and <strong>11</strong><br />
<strong>11</strong>.3 Threat 4: In the Air – <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> 263<br />
<strong>11</strong>.4 Lessons from History 265<br />
<strong>11</strong>.5 Attempted Assassination of Reagan 269<br />
12. POTENTIAL “PERSONS OF INTEREST” 280
13.<br />
14.<br />
12.1 Murder of Nick Berg 280<br />
12.2 Deutsche Bank Executives 283<br />
12.3 Israeli “Fixers”-Arms Merchants 287<br />
12.4 “Fixers” in Florida 292<br />
12.5 Huffman Flight School “Fixers” in Florida 293<br />
12.6 Mohammed Atta 298<br />
12.7 Atta’s Connections to Pakistani and Syrian Intelligence 305<br />
12.8 Iran-Contra Re-Union 3<strong>11</strong><br />
COVER-UP: CREDIBILITY OF THE AMERICAN<br />
PRESS AND GOVERNMENT<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 6<br />
315<br />
13.1 Control of the Media 316<br />
13.2 Systemic Fear 317<br />
13.3 Media Control – the Facts 329<br />
POLICY AND PHILOSOPHY: DEMOCRACY<br />
AND PATRIOTISM AS COVER-UPS FOR<br />
TERROR AND GREED<br />
341<br />
15. EPILOGUE 350<br />
Appendix A: CIA – Banking Connections 355<br />
Appendix B: Stratesec 357<br />
Appendix C: World’s Greatest Treasure Hunt 361<br />
Appendix D: The Federal Reserve and the Three<br />
Card Monte<br />
List of Tables and Illustrations<br />
Figure 1: Chart of Conspirators 23<br />
Figure 2: Map of Central Asia 56<br />
370
Figure 3: US Bases and the Afghan Pipelines 58<br />
Figure 4: US Bases and the Iraqi Pipeline 59<br />
Figure 5: Central Asian Pipelines 69<br />
Table 1: Unclaimed Stock Options <strong>11</strong>1<br />
Table 2: World Trade Center Deaths By Building 134<br />
Table 3: Towers One and Two: Deaths By Company/Floor 136<br />
Table 4: Other Buildings: Deaths By Company and Floor 134<br />
Table 5: USA Today List of Deaths by Floor 138<br />
Table 6: Investigative & Evidentiary Agencies in the World<br />
Trade Center – Building 7<br />
Table 7: Gold Weight/Value Conversion Chart for Purpose of<br />
Discussion<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 7<br />
144<br />
163<br />
Table 8: Overview of Gold Price History 163<br />
Figure 6: World Production of Gold (Tonnes) 164<br />
Table 9: Who Owns the Media 340<br />
Examples of CIA – Banking Linkage 355
Summary of Findings<br />
The <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> <strong>Report</strong>: Final <strong>Report</strong> of the Investigation into the<br />
Murders of Nicholas Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley<br />
This report uses publicly available information to substantiate a hypothetical explanation<br />
of the causes and key conspirators in the attack on the World Trade Center. The findings<br />
of this investigation are not meant to be construed as proof or a statement of guilt, but<br />
rather are meant to serve as ‘probable cause’ for further investigation. These findings are<br />
substantiated, documented and amplified by the report that follows.<br />
To that end, this report finds that:<br />
I. Murder of Nicholas Berg<br />
A. The organization that murdered Nicholas Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack<br />
Hensley, reported to be terrorists including Abu Musab Zarqawi, was most likely<br />
an Israeli intelligence operation - and in all likelihood part of a larger organization<br />
responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center;<br />
1. Nick Berg was probably murdered by a group including Steven Stephanowicz,<br />
an employee of Titan Corp., a subcontractor to CACI –which has<br />
demonstrable links to Israeli Intelligence, Richard Armitage and the CIA.<br />
CACI was responsible for interrogation at Abu Ghraib when Nick berg was<br />
killed.<br />
2. Stephanowicz was found (by U.S. military investigators) to be directly and<br />
indirectly responsible for most of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, which<br />
demonstrates his ability to orchestrate the executions of Berg, Armstrong and<br />
Hensley. His presence at the scene of the crime, and a similarity to the tallest<br />
executioner in the photos of the execution makes him a likely candidate for<br />
suspicion.<br />
B. Nicholas Berg was probably operating as an agent for the Israeli government (in<br />
the US and Iraq), and possibly as a double agent, working for a US intelligence<br />
organization;<br />
C. Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley were also probably government agents in<br />
US intelligence operations;<br />
D. Nicholas Berg was probably murdered by Israeli agents to prevent his knowledge<br />
of the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) from being handed over to the<br />
FBI, or as revenge for having provided that information to the FBI.<br />
II. Attack on the World Trade Center<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 8
A. Israelis have been extensively identified as involved in the WTC attack activities<br />
and having inside knowledge of the flights and time of attack. Seven lines of<br />
investigation support this claim<br />
1. Two Israelis placed explosives in the twin Towers and Buildings 7 and 6, four<br />
buildings that housed multiple investigative agencies of the Federal<br />
Government and the State of New York. Khaled Odtallah (from Jerusalem)<br />
provided fake ID to Rocky Hammad (from Gaza). Hammad was employed by<br />
Sergie Dimitry Davidenko (from Ukraine) to work on the water system the<br />
weekend prior to the attack. The attacking plane hit the floor of the South<br />
Tower where the 5000 gallon reserve water tank was staged. Sergie Dimitry<br />
Davidenko has disappeared since 9/<strong>11</strong>. Davidenko is a proficient ham radio<br />
operator from the Ukraine and an ‘applied mathematician’ whose work is<br />
referenced by at least two recent articles on missile test systems. He most<br />
likely configured the guidance system which guided the plane into the<br />
building.<br />
2. The guidance system on the market that best meets the requirements of<br />
guiding a multiple plane attack from a single source is provided by System<br />
Planning Corporation, where Rabbi Dov Zakheim, key PNAC (Project for a<br />
New American Century) member, is Executive Vice President. Zakheim is on<br />
record as having “an abiding commitment to the People and the State of<br />
Israel.”<br />
3. Israelis were so close to the operation they knew the flights and time. They<br />
were able to warn the employees of Odigo, an Israeli firm, two hours before<br />
the attack. The CEO of Odigo has confirmed the advance warning.<br />
4. Israel had agents involved in monitoring the supposed hijackers in both<br />
Norman, Oklahoma and Sheridan, Florida, at the flight schools attended by<br />
the hijackers.<br />
5. The Israeli Prime Minister has acknowledged providing advance warning of<br />
the attack to the Bush administration.<br />
6. The company that manages security at the Boston airport from which two<br />
planes departed, is managed by former Israeli intelligence and military<br />
personnel.<br />
7. Israeli agents were arrested videotaping the attack from a roof-top, suggesting<br />
a-priori knowledge. These agents were released to Israel without charges.<br />
B. Israeli intelligence organizations have been found to previously have been<br />
responsible for ‘false flag’ operations in multiple locations, presenting themselves<br />
as Muslim terrorists. In 2000, <strong>11</strong> Israelis masquerading as Muslims were<br />
apprehended by the Indian government in their attempt to hijack an Indian<br />
airliner.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 9
C. The Israeli intelligence organization with responsibility for these attacks has<br />
extensive links to the Russian Mafiya and ex-KGB resources, all of which had<br />
motive, involvement and knowledge pertinent to crimes being investigated by<br />
several agencies in the World Trade Center;<br />
D. The Israeli links to <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th are based on Russian KGB/oligarch émigrés to<br />
Israel who have created a rogue operation in the KGB, but are funded through<br />
operations born from the <strong>September</strong> 1991 bonds created by Bush, Greenspen et<br />
al.<br />
E. Six groups were involved in the attack on the WTC”<br />
1. The group that initiated the attack most likely consisted of an international<br />
network of financial executives representing primarily the Bank of New York,<br />
the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Riggs Bank, Deutschebank and the<br />
Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), and should include representatives from<br />
Bank Menatep, Swiss-American Bank, Credit Suisse, Investor AB, and<br />
Allianz, and their respective subsidiaries and major investment partners. This<br />
decision was meant to stop multiple money laundering investigations which<br />
would have traced illegal money laundering operations to accounts that held<br />
stolen national treasuries. Only a very few of the individuals in this group<br />
would have participated in or been knowledgeable of the decision. With a<br />
decision being made in 1998, the attack on the WTC was probably delayed<br />
until <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, to allow the Bush Family and Russian Mafiya to<br />
cover the settlement of the fraudulent Durham/Brady Bonds .<br />
2. The group which probably planned and set-up the attack on the World Trade<br />
Center was most likely a mix of Russian/Israeli Mafiya, ex-KGB and Israeli<br />
secret service, with the assistance of David Kimche (Mossad agent), Meir<br />
Dagan (head of the Israeli Mossad), Adnan Khashoggi and Sheikh Kamal<br />
Adham (former head of Saudi Intelligence), Richard Armitage and Richard<br />
Secord. Kimche, Armitage and Secord are the only field intelligence<br />
operatives identified in the world press as having field management<br />
responsibility for Al Qaeda mercenaries. Khashoggi is documented to have<br />
coordinated similar types of false “terrorist” attacks in Russia, with the<br />
participation of CIA and Israeli agents working with Chechen Mafya (with its<br />
strong likages to the Yeltsin Family.)<br />
3. The group that probably arranged for operational cover in the US, and<br />
intelligence support the operation required most likely consists of re-united<br />
participants in the Iran-Contra dealings of the 1980’s. This group has been<br />
working in concert in Central Asia, using Baku, Azerbaijan as a base of<br />
operations since the early 1990s. This group of former Iran-Contra<br />
conspirators includes:<br />
a) Adnan Khashoggi: whose Azerbaijan banks "played a big part in the<br />
formation of terrorist camps and in the opening of laboratories for<br />
developing chemical and bacteriological weapons in Nagornyy Karabakh”<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 10
was a major mover of illegal gold; major investor and founder in Barrick;<br />
was a major investor in Oryx (financial backer of Huffman Aviation- the<br />
flight school that provided training to eleven 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers); and business<br />
partner with General William Lyon – founder of diploma mills which are<br />
linked to the access to the US for two hijackers. Khashoggi also is linked<br />
to the funding of the “9/<strong>11</strong> Truth Movement” in an attempt to monitor and<br />
control civilian inquiries into the events surrounding 9/<strong>11</strong>.<br />
b) Richard Secord: a former U.S. Air Force major general who had been<br />
helping to recruit and train the Azerbaijani army as well as regional secret<br />
services in conjunction with David Kimche, and was reported to have<br />
assisted in the recruitment of Al Qaeda mercenaries and Osama Bin Laden<br />
for deployment in Azerbaijan;<br />
c) Richard Armitage: who managed illegal gold funds for George HW Bush<br />
during Iran-Contra period; who acted as a consultant to Halliburton and<br />
Unocal at the time, and was President of the US-Azerbaijani Chamber of<br />
Commerce. Armitage had demonstrated a history of visits to Pakistan and<br />
the rest of Central Asia, and was reported to have assisted in the<br />
recruitment of Al Qaeda mercenaries and Osama Bin Laden for<br />
deployment in Azerbaijan;<br />
d) Farhad Azima, a US arms merchant with Iranian background, a member of<br />
the US-Azerbaijani Chamber of Commerce, who assisted Richard Secord<br />
in recruiting, transporting and training mujahedin mercenaries. He was<br />
owner of the Azerbaijan Airlines, and has a twenty year old relationship<br />
with the Iran-Contra syndicate. He is significant co-investor with Wally<br />
Hilliard of Huffman Aviation in a small California electronics company<br />
(Spatialight Inc).<br />
e) Khalid bin Mahfouz, owner, with the bin Laden family and members of<br />
the Saudi royal family of the Saudi oil companies Delta Oil and Nimir Oil.<br />
Both are partners with Unocal in Azerbaijan and partners in multiple Bush<br />
family enterprises. He is a major investor along with Khashoggi in Barrick<br />
and TrizecHahn. (TrizecHahn was the landlord to the corporate<br />
headquarters of Halliburton and Enron.)<br />
f) Dick Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, lobbyist for the Azerbaijan<br />
International Operating Company, on US-Azerbaijani Chamber of<br />
Commerce; participant in Congressional hearings that let Iran-Contra<br />
participants off-the-hook. Dick Cheney’s role in the attack on the WTC is<br />
most thoroughly treated in the book Crossing the Rubicon, by Michael C.<br />
Ruppert, where Cheney is demonstrated to be fully accountable for the<br />
activities of NORAD and FEMA on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. John Mann, in Rise of<br />
the Vulcans- The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, describes Cheney as<br />
“one of the principal defenders of the Reagan administration’s conduct in<br />
Iran Contra.”<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page <strong>11</strong>
g) David Kimche, Israeli Mossad agent who brought Israeli agents and<br />
mercenaries into Azerbaijan at the request of Secord, and worked with<br />
Secord and the regional secret service organizations of Azerbaijan and<br />
Kazakhstan. He was a participant in the October Surprise and Iran-Contra<br />
scandal, and consultant to Manuel Noriega.<br />
h) Porter Goss, former CIA agent and Congressman, now Director of the<br />
CIA. He met with Mahmoud Ahmad, Director of the Pakistani Secret<br />
Service (ISI) shortly before and after 9/<strong>11</strong>. Mahmoud Ahmad was<br />
responsible for providing $100,000 in funding to Mohammed Atta. Goss<br />
has not been identified with any Azerbaijani activity, but has been<br />
identified with Iran-Contra activity.<br />
i) George Bush Sr., who (according to several eyes witnesses) authorized the<br />
Iran-Contra and October Surprise operations (although Congressional<br />
investigators concluded he was not involved), initiated the US covert<br />
operations in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, authorized the creation of the<br />
illegal Durham/Brady Bonds which went secretly to Russia, and<br />
authorized the assignment of $10 billion in un-mined gold reserves to<br />
Barrick. He later sat on the Advisory Board of Directors for Barrick.<br />
j) Robert Mueller, who as US Attorney headed the Iran-Contra and the BCCI<br />
investigations and trial found little fault with Bush Sr., also was<br />
responsible for the FBI investigation of 9/<strong>11</strong>.<br />
4. Members of the US group that arranged for the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> cover-up most<br />
likely used the attack for multiple purposes related to financial gain and<br />
obstruction of justice, and set the timing of the attack to resolve a major<br />
financial fraud involving $240 billion in securities backed by illegal gold<br />
holdings (Durham/Brady Bonds).<br />
5. The organization that managed the details of the US attack operation was most<br />
likely an Israeli secret service unit including Mohammed Atta (who organized<br />
the aerial attack), Rudi Dekker (responsible mostly for visas), and Khaled<br />
Odtllah (who was responsible for arranging explosives in the WTC);<br />
a) There are seven pieces of information that suggest Mohammed Atta,<br />
identified as the leader of the 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers, was probably a Mossad<br />
agent:<br />
(1) Comments by his father saying his son was with the Mossad, and alive<br />
after 9/<strong>11</strong>;<br />
(2) A number of clues suggesting he may not have been on the flight, and<br />
possibly disappeared out a back door at the Boston airport;<br />
(3) Atta expressed interest in a company specializing in space technology.<br />
This company was later acquired by Israel;<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 12
(4) His ability to speak Hebrew;<br />
(5) His involvement with German, Pakistani, Saudi and Syrian<br />
intelligence and US military and intelligence organizations;<br />
(6) The cover-up of the identity of his German host family by US<br />
investigators; and<br />
(7) His dual personality attested to by his friends on two continents.<br />
6. The group that actually was set up to take the blame were Muslim radicals<br />
recruited by either Yeslam Bin Laden (brother of Osama Bin Laden) or<br />
Richard Secord (CIA) and David Kimche (Mossad) at the probable request of<br />
Adnan Khashoggi and Sheikh Kamal Adham (business partners of George<br />
Bush Sr.).<br />
a) At least seven of these hijackers used names and other personal<br />
information acquired by identity theft. Five of these seven names had<br />
affiliations with US military training institutions. Most of the passports<br />
used by the hijackers came from the US embassy in Saudi Arabia. Khaled<br />
Odtallah (from Jerusalem) was responsible for establishing false American<br />
identities for the group inside the World Trade Center. These facts suggest<br />
the attackers were organized by intelligence agencies rather than terrorists.<br />
These facts lead to the assumption the attack was a joint effort between<br />
Israeli and Saudi Intelligence, with US support.<br />
b) Two of the hijackers had records of previous employment by the Saudi<br />
Intelligence.<br />
c) The individual that most likely acted as intermediary between Iran-Contra<br />
syndicate and the bankers was Edgar Bronfman. Bronfman is a significant<br />
owner of Barrick and TrizecHahn, and President of the World Jewish<br />
Congress (WJC). Acting in the role of President of the WJC, Bronfman<br />
negotiated the terms and conditions of the release of the Holocaust gold<br />
from the Swiss banks in 1998. It is hypothesized that as part of his<br />
negotiations, he was asked by the bankers to facilitate a termination of<br />
multiple US federal and NY investigations into Swiss banks. His<br />
negotiations brought an immediate end to US Department of Justice and<br />
US Congressional pressure to investigate Marcos gold accounts in the<br />
Swiss banks, Swiss holdings of Holocaust gold, and Philippine actions<br />
against the Swiss for holding the Marcos gold. An investigation of the<br />
Marcos accounts (and tracing the final disposition of the gold) would have<br />
exposed a broader money and gold-laundering scheme, which would have<br />
resulted in further exposures of crimes by the Russian/Israeli Mafiya (in<br />
particular, the “Yeltsin Family”) and the Iran-Contra syndicate.<br />
d) The plan proposed by Bronfman was probably provided to him by David<br />
Kimche, one of the initial Israeli intelligence agents that in 1980 proposed<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 13
the October Surprise plan to prevent the release of US hostages by the<br />
Ayatollah Khomeini. That plan subsequently resulted in a series of Iran-<br />
Contra deals to covertly fund pro-US revolutionary activity in Iran and<br />
Nicaragua. Kimche was actively working with Richard Secord and<br />
Richard Armitage (all three were involved in Iran-Contra scandal) in<br />
Azerbaijan, with multiple Central Asian Intelligence organizations, at the<br />
time the decision to attack the WTC was made.<br />
e) The plan proposed by Bronfman provided for the termination of<br />
investigations by various agencies of the US government into various<br />
Swiss accounts and Deutschebank transactions involved in money and<br />
gold laundering. This plan would require the destruction of the entire<br />
World Trade Center, which housed the investigative offices of the FBI,<br />
SEC, IRS, Secret Service, Department of Defense, US Customs, and bank<br />
records for the Export-Import bank, Deutsche Bank, and the investigative<br />
arm of the New York State Tax Department. Bronfman, as a major<br />
investor in Barrick, stood to benefit directly from a cessation of these<br />
investigations (and in his case, the FBI investigation into gold price<br />
fixing). The Bush family, as well as the Russian Mafiya, would benefit as<br />
well from the termination of these investigations, all linked. Later, Bush<br />
intelligence operatives would add the Pentagon to the list of targets, to<br />
destroy the Office of Naval Intelligence which was also engaged in a<br />
major investigation of money laundering most likely related to the Bank of<br />
New York/Russian Mafiya money laundering scandal.<br />
f) The detailed plan to crash commercial airliners into the World Trade<br />
Center was actually created in 1976 by the C-Battery 2/81st Field<br />
Artillery, US Seventh Army in Europe. It would have been provided to<br />
Kimche, most likely, by Richard Armitage, who worked in the Defense<br />
Intelligence Agency from May 1975 to November 1976, and went on to<br />
covert CIA operations.<br />
F. There was a diversified group of American, Canadian, Russian, Swiss and<br />
German business executives (bankers and traders) and government officials that<br />
allowed the attack on the World Trade Center to happen, and prevented the true<br />
story of what happened from being told, for the purposes of financial gain and<br />
protection from prosecution for complicity in illegal gold laundering activity and<br />
the fraudulent sale of gold backed securities. Under Federal law 18 U.S.C. 371 –<br />
Conspiracy Statute, they are equally guilty as if they had initiated the decision.<br />
This group includes, but is not limited to Adnan Khashoggi; Kamal Adham;<br />
George Bush Sr.; Tye Burt- former Chairman of Deutsche Bank Canada and<br />
Deutsche Bank Alex Brown Securities Canada; Otto Pohl, former President of the<br />
German central bank (Bundesbank) and chief officer of the International Bank of<br />
Settlements and IMF; Edgar Bronfman and Mayo Shattuck, who left his position<br />
as CEO of Deutschebank America on <strong>September</strong> 12, 2001 and is financial advisor<br />
to Khashoggi and Bronfman. The circumstances leading to this conclusion are:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 14
1. There are between 6,000 and 280,000 tonnes of illegal, stolen gold stored in<br />
bullion banks throughout the world. This gold needs to be laundered. This<br />
gold has been stolen from the national treasuries of the Philippines, Soviet<br />
Union, France, and Czechoslovakia. There are numerous sources that identify<br />
George Bush Sr. and Adnan Khashoggi, with Ferdinand Marcos, as<br />
extensively involved in the theft of the Philippines treasury.<br />
2. Commodity experts that watch the gold market have made claims that<br />
significant, inexplicable amounts of gold were showing up in the market<br />
throughout the 1990s. These increases are attributed to ‘gold futures’ sales -<br />
in the absence of any other explanation.<br />
3. There has been no known formal investigation into the possible laundering of<br />
this gold other than possibly the FBI investigation buried in the World Trade<br />
Center. This investigation was linked to the GATA/Howe lawsuit against the<br />
bullion banks, including the Deutsche Bank.<br />
4. A significant group of powerful individuals, with demonstrated links to the<br />
movement of illegal gold, have been directly involved in the creation of a gold<br />
producing company, which was in a court battle over the legality of some of<br />
its trades. (It resulted in a sealed agreement in January of 2006.) A significant<br />
group of these individuals have a history of connections to money laundering<br />
activity. These groups include George Bush Sr., Adnan Khashoggi, Khalid<br />
bin Mahfouz and Edgar Bronfman.<br />
5. The success of this company in gold hedging defies expert industry expert<br />
comprehension. The company has been extremely successful mining land that<br />
industry experts thought was “doubtful” in its potential. These inexplicable<br />
conditions could be explained under a hypothesis of gold laundering.<br />
6. Two of the individuals (Khashoggi and Mahfouz) that started, controlled and<br />
owned significant portions of this gold company are the same people that<br />
started, controlled and owned a company that staged and ‘trained’ eleven of<br />
the 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers, who were involved in the destruction of the World Trade<br />
Center. This ‘terrorist’ event effectively ended the FBI investigation of global<br />
gold trades this company was involved in.<br />
G. German, Swiss, Russian and Saudi financial executives, combined with their U.S.<br />
business partners (Carlyle Group) initially requested the attack on the World<br />
Trade Center for the purposes of:<br />
1. Stopping a series of on-going FBI and other federal agency investigations<br />
which were in the process of exposing multi-billion dollar, illegal, gold and<br />
money laundering activities and securities fraud. Tracking transactions into<br />
and out of accounts of individuals associated with these investigations would<br />
have exposed the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 15
• illegal retention of the national bullion treasuries of the Soviet Union, the<br />
Philippines, France, Czechoslovakia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Angola and<br />
more, as well as<br />
• the major participation of the “Bush Family” in the Bank of New<br />
York/Russian Mafiya money-laundering scandal, with its ultimate source<br />
of funding in the Bardy/Durham bond fraud of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 1991;<br />
2. Destroying potentially incriminating Deutschebank and US Export-Import<br />
bank records and investigative reports (FBI, SEC, Secret Service, IRS, US<br />
Customs, NY State Tax Auditors) associated with those gold and money<br />
laundering and securities fraud activities;<br />
3. Enhancing their competitiveness and short term profitability in the European<br />
investment banking market; and<br />
4. Revenge against “United States and its economy” for past economic<br />
transgressions against the German banking industry.<br />
H. The pinpointed targets of the 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers were the North Tower (FBI offices on<br />
floors 23 and 24 and the Cantor Fitzgerald offices), Building 7 (various Federal<br />
investigative agencies), the Pentagon (Office of Naval Investigation), and the<br />
South Tower (Eurobrokers and the NY State Tax Investigation Department).<br />
Flight 93, delayed for 40 minutes at the gate and downed in Pennsylvania, was<br />
probably intended for Building 7. Building 6 (US Customs) was destroyed by an<br />
internal explosion. These buildings were targeted because they housed the<br />
investigative offices and evidence of multiple investigations into money and gold<br />
laundering and securities fraud.<br />
I. There are seven conditions pertinent to the collapse of Building 7 that are not<br />
explained by any official explanation of the events at the WTC. These seven<br />
conditions are all explained with the theory of ‘targeted destruction.’ This report<br />
concludes that within minutes of it being known that Building 7 was not going to<br />
be hit by a third plane, it was ordered evacuated by an unknown individual so that<br />
incendiary explosions could be ignited without the presence of witnesses. These<br />
devices would have targeted federal and bank offices on multiple floors. The 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
<strong>Commission</strong> <strong>Report</strong> and FEMA have been unable to explain:<br />
1. Source of fires throughout the building;<br />
2. Lack of response by firefighters to those fires;<br />
3. Order for evacuation of the Mayor’s emergency command center on Floor 23<br />
of Building Seven, when no comparable order was given for the WTC<br />
command Center in the North Tower. This center was evacuated shortly<br />
before the collapse of Tower 1 (10:29), but after the crash of Flight 93<br />
(10:07), when it became clear Flight 93 would not reach its target. No one<br />
claims responsibility for the evacuation order;<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 16
4. Documented seismic spike just prior to the collapse of the Building 7 in the<br />
same magnitude as those preceding the collapse of the North and South<br />
Towers;<br />
5. The reason for the tape-recorded “pulling” comment by the building’s owner,<br />
who has since refused to explain his comment;<br />
6. Ability to bring down Building Seven with controlled demolitions, when it<br />
takes days to place explosives for controlled takedowns;<br />
7. Misleading references to the locations of the fires, which are generally<br />
referred to as a couple of lower floors, but occurred throughout the building as<br />
documented by photographic evidence;<br />
J. The airline attacks on the World Trade Center were cover-up for explosives<br />
placed in the building. There are nine categories of evidence which support the<br />
statement that the North and South Towers were subjected to “targeted”<br />
demolitions:<br />
1. Numerous eyewitness statements of explosions in and throughout the<br />
building;<br />
2. Seismographic recording of the incidents showing massive underground<br />
explosions just prior to the collapse of Towers 1, 2 and 7;<br />
3. Analysis of videotape of the collapse of the South Tower which shows the<br />
order in which floors are collapsing by exploding windows, demonstrating<br />
non-sequential explosions on lower floors;<br />
4. Video tape evidence recorded on-site at the WTC by a rescuing fireman;<br />
5. The pattern of deaths in the North Tower reinforces the theory that there were<br />
explosives set at lower levels of the North Tower, especially in the vicinity of<br />
floors 23 and 24 of the North Tower (Tower 1), which suffered inexplicable<br />
and unusually high death rates;<br />
6. Multiple testimonies from a) small rescue team, 2) trapped workers and 3)<br />
people leaving the building which help explain events on the 23rd floor –site<br />
of a secretive FBI office which housed investigations into illegal gold-price<br />
fixing, gold trades and the Kazakhgate investigation linking Dick Cheney and<br />
George Bush Sr. to illegal bribes paid to Kazakhstan officials;<br />
7. An FBI agent in the North Tower Operations Center received a call on his cell<br />
phone advising him the North Tower would soon collapse. The timing of this<br />
call, approximately 15 minutes before the building collapsed, suggests<br />
someone was in control of the primary demolitions in the basement;<br />
8. Investigating government agencies have not been able to explain how fires<br />
reached required temperatures to melt steel and thus cause the towers to<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 17
collapse. An official letter from Underwriter Laboratories to the National<br />
Institute of Standards and Technology, explains why the government’s official<br />
stance on how/why the buildings collapsed has no merit;<br />
9. Unexplained and forgotten CNN video footage of the explosion inside WTC<br />
6, which housed US Customs Agency, the agency that coordinated multiple<br />
federal agency money laundering investigations with its El Dorado task force.<br />
K. The attack on the Pentagon was for the purpose of destroying the Office of Naval<br />
Intelligence. This Office was investigating a gold backed securities fraud which<br />
might have been perceived as a threat to national security, but would link the<br />
Bush family to multiple illegal activities.<br />
L. The attacks of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> were timed to coincide with multiple war-games,<br />
which included scenarios of airline hijacking and building attacks. This<br />
coincidence creates a scenario of ‘plausible deniability’ under which FAA and<br />
NORAD officials can argue there was no air response because they were<br />
“confused” as to whether the attacks were part of the games or not.<br />
1. These war games were being monitored by Vice President Dick Cheney at the<br />
time of the attack, rather than the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.<br />
2. The war games which were usually scheduled for October were rescheduled<br />
for early <strong>September</strong> by an unknown decision-maker.<br />
3. The war games probably included an unreported computer simulation of a<br />
financial attack on the US economy (as performed during war games in 1997<br />
and 2000 by Cantor Fitzgerald.) It is hypothesized that this simulation<br />
computer program was the source of the illegal trades conducted in the<br />
minutes preceding the attack, and those illegal trades were meant to cover the<br />
settlement of the 10 year Durham/Brady Bonds which came due on <strong>September</strong><br />
<strong>11</strong>.<br />
M. The former heads of at least three Intelligence agencies and a private, commercial<br />
intelligence operation, all pro-US organizations - have been linked to funding of<br />
the 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers:<br />
1. Mahmoud Ahmad, Head of ISI Pakistani Intelligence (Wired $100,000 to Atta<br />
shortly before the attack);<br />
2. Mohamad Majed Said, a former head of Syrian Intelligence (provided<br />
employment for Atta in Germany); and<br />
3. Kamal Adham, the former head of Saudi Intelligence (funded Huffman<br />
Aviation via Oryx.).<br />
4. Mohammed Atta, while in Germany, was also an employee of, with travel<br />
funded by, Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft. This is a joint US-German scholarship<br />
program, reportedly controlled on the US side by the US Information Agency<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 18
(State Department). The German side of this program is administered jointly<br />
with Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung, a commercial<br />
intelligence operation that studies global trading in weapons and drugs,<br />
money-laundering and, coincidentally, anthrax. It has board members from the<br />
Deutschebank and Allianz. Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft also has a fellowship<br />
funded by Alpha Bank, represented in the U.S. by ex-Bush administrators<br />
Lanny Griffith and Ed Rogers.<br />
The leadership of these three Muslim countries (Pakistan, Syria, and Saudi<br />
Arabia) is significantly detached from their mainstream population’s conservative<br />
beliefs, and their leadership is generally aligned with US leadership on key<br />
financial objectives.<br />
N. There are five indicators that World Trade Center security management (with the<br />
top security manager being George Tabeek) were co-conspirators in the attack:<br />
III. Cover-up<br />
1. The power shut-down during the weekend prior to the attack could not happen<br />
without security approval because it involved shutting off a primary building<br />
utility and security surveillance;<br />
2. Permits to work in the building on the water system over the weekend could<br />
not happen without security approval because it involved shutting off a<br />
primary building utility and safety system. The attacking plane hit the floor<br />
where the 5000 gallon reserve water tank for the sprinkler system was staged.;<br />
3. Bomb sniffing dogs were removed from service the day before the<br />
unexplained “power down”, during which all internal electronic surveillance<br />
(cameras, videos) were turned off. Rocky Hammad’s activity in the Towers<br />
occurred during this power down. The person who authorized these activities<br />
has not been found. Removal of the bomb sniffing security dogs could not<br />
happen without security approval. The dogs were brought back on the day of<br />
the attack, probably after any explosives were allowed in the building;<br />
4. A CIA front company known as Stratesec Incorporated, formerly Securacom<br />
had a maintenance agreement for ‘access control’ with the WTC. A Director<br />
on the Board for this company is Marvin Bush, brother of President George<br />
Bush. This company is linked to the aerial attack on government investigative<br />
offices in the Pirelli Building in the financial district in Milan, Italy in April of<br />
2002.<br />
5. The New York City Emergency Command Center, located on the 23rd floor<br />
of Building 7, was ordered to evacuate hours in advance of the building’s<br />
collapse, but within a few minutes after Flight 93 was downed in<br />
Pennsylvania. Fires started after the evacuation. In the North and South<br />
Towers, there was no order to evacuate, and employees remained until the<br />
end.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 19
A. Representatives of at least three US government agencies (CIA, FBI, and NSA)<br />
were aware of the plans for the attack on the World Trade Center after having<br />
been advised by the intelligence agencies of Israel, Germany, UK and Russia.<br />
B. Key military officials in the US war games seem to have been involved in<br />
preventing an air response to the hijackers, thus allowing them to execute their<br />
attack.<br />
C. At least five employees of US investigative agencies have attempted to make<br />
public the level of deception being used to cover up the truth, but have been<br />
silenced by court order under the blanket of “National Security.” Numerous New<br />
York public employees with testimony relevant to the cover-up have been<br />
effectively gagged under the blanket of National Security by having their jobs<br />
threatened for speaking out. Another agent, Brad Doucette – 20 year veteran FBI<br />
agent in charge of counter-terrorism - was “suicided” in April in 2003, shortly<br />
after reporting controversial findings.<br />
D. The US government seems unwilling to pursue the true criminals in this case<br />
because of the political consequences of exposing the complicity of various key<br />
US politicians and political contributors in the various gold laundering activities,<br />
or involvement in a cover-up. This group includes, but is not limited to:<br />
1. George HW Bush Sr., who is directly responsible for:<br />
• contributing to the success of what could appear to be a major gold<br />
laundering operation by approving changes in law which allowed the<br />
company to obtain an estimated $10 billion in gold reserves for a cost of<br />
$10,000; assisting in the operations acquisition of additional African<br />
reserves, and serving as a Director on its Advisory Board;<br />
• authorizing the fraudulent Durham/Brady Bonds;<br />
• initiating a range of illegal covert activities in Central Asia to support<br />
personal business partners in the oil industry.<br />
2. The Bronfman family, with major connections to both the Democratic and<br />
Republic administrations;<br />
3. Various executives of financial institutions (named in the report), the Federal<br />
Reserve banks, the SEC and other American bullion banks involved in the<br />
gold price-fixing practices and securities fraud;<br />
4. Various associates in the Iran-Contra affair, who remained in various political<br />
offices.<br />
E. There were a series of seven actions undertaken by the Federal Reserve during the<br />
days and weeks that followed the attack on the WTC which served the purpose of<br />
covering-up the settlement and refinancing the fraudulent 10 year Durham/Brady<br />
Bonds which came due on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. Those actions include<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 20
1. the <strong>Commission</strong> for the first time invoked its emergency powers under<br />
Securities Exchange Act Section 12(k);<br />
2. SEC lifted “Rule 15c3-3 - Customer Protection--Reserves and Custody of<br />
Securities” which allowed them to suspend all reporting and identity security<br />
controls;<br />
3. The SEC temporarily injected $300 Billion into the US money supply while<br />
settling the fraudulent securities;<br />
4. Government Securities Clearing Corporation sent a memo to banks<br />
encouraging them to make security ‘substitutions’ on “immediately maturing<br />
collateral;”<br />
5. Government Securities Clearing Corporation treated the ‘fails’ as two separate<br />
groups, suggesting there was a large group of trades that required ‘special<br />
treatment’ for “other” problems;<br />
6. GSCC issued another memo allowing blind broker settlements. A “blind<br />
broker” is a mechanism for inter-dealer transactions that maintains the<br />
anonymity of both parties to the trade;<br />
7. SEC held an unusual “snap” auction of new ten-year securities to facilitate<br />
sale of government securities probably used to refinance the fraudulent<br />
Durham/Brady Bonds.<br />
F. There were a series of four attempts to assassinate President George Bush (Jr.),<br />
orchestrated by the same group that executed the attack on the WTC. This report<br />
concludes there was a quid pro quo between the Bush and Bin Laden families to<br />
mutually sacrifice sons. When the assassination attempts failed, Bin Laden was<br />
allowed to escape. It is speculated that is why George Bush Sr. was dining with<br />
Bin Laden on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001. This theory is supported by the eerie parallels<br />
between these attempts on the life of George Bush Jr. in 2001, and the Hinkley<br />
attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan, suggesting that George Bush Sr. is familiar<br />
with the concept of family sacrifice. The simultaneous NORAD and FEMA<br />
exercises, scheduled to happen the same time as both attempted assassinations,<br />
suggests Bush’s concerns about the transfer of Presidential Power during both<br />
assassination attempts. On both occasions, a Bush family member was with a<br />
family member of the ‘accused shooter,” and the “accused shooter” was a family<br />
acquaintance. Each assassination attempt (Reagan and Bush) consisted of<br />
multiple attempts, with a final effort layered with contingencies.<br />
G. Numerous individuals received significant financial benefit from acting with<br />
foreknowledge of this attack, over-and-above protection from criminal<br />
investigation. Adnan Khashoggi was a clear beneficiary with his MJK Securities<br />
fraud. Other information suggests Israeli investors were responsible for the<br />
supposed inside trading profits made that day. Additionally, Russian Mafiya<br />
members, who had financially benefited from the default on approximately $240<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 21
Billion in gold backed loans from President George Bush Sr., had their defaults<br />
covered by the attack. Investigation of these individuals should be renewed to<br />
determine their complicity with the business executives responsible for this<br />
attack.<br />
H. Two key individuals throughout the entire timeline of this investigation are Adnan<br />
Khashoggi, and Sheikh Kamal Adham, most infamous for their role in the BCCI<br />
bank scandal and Iran-Contra scandal (Israeli weapons sold to Iran), but also<br />
linked to the recent MJK Securities fraud case and multiple Savings and Loans<br />
failures in the 1980s, the Harken Energy scandal, and the 1980 October Surprise.<br />
They are personal friends and business partners with George Bush Sr. This report<br />
finds evidence of them being directly linked to:<br />
1. the theft, illegal hoarding, use and distribution of massive quantities of illegal<br />
treasury gold,<br />
2. the creation of a potential international gold laundering operation, the<br />
probable investigation into which was halted by the destruction of the World<br />
Trade Center,<br />
3. the creation and funding of a flight school used to provide visas for eleven<br />
WTC attackers, and<br />
4. The recruitment of flight school trainees either through their family<br />
relationships with Yeslam Bin Laden, the brother of Osama Bin Laden, or<br />
through long-time business partners Richard Secord and David Kimche,<br />
5. The recruitment of hijackers previously settled in the US. Adnan Khashoggi<br />
(owner of Genesis Aviation) is a business partner with retired General<br />
William Lyon (on the Board of Kellstrom Industries, Inc., an Israeli owned<br />
company) in a venture called Wings of Democracy, an attempt to penetrate<br />
the commercial Iraq air business. Lyon is the founder of several university<br />
diploma-mill operations in California (American Commonwealth University,<br />
also known as William Lyon University) which are speculated to be CIA front<br />
operations used for providing US visas to foreign operatives. These<br />
operations are directly associated with the entry to the US by two of the 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
hijackers in the early 1990s. Lyon is a major Republican fund raiser in Orange<br />
County, associate of Karl Rove, financial backer of the swift Boat Veterans,<br />
and keynote speaker at the Republican national convention.<br />
Conclusion<br />
Once the clues have been put together, and the individuals behind the organizations or<br />
quasi-organizations are identified and studied, it becomes clear there are three individuals<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 22
whose names repeatedly appear: Adnan Khashoggi, Kamal Adham, and George Bush Sr.<br />
These three men have strong, personal and business relationships with each other and<br />
other individuals whose names appear consistently. These relationships have been<br />
defined in the above chart. The attack on the World Trade Center was a complicated<br />
operation. These men have the experience and track record to demonstrate that they are<br />
capable of efforts to overthrow governments without regard for human life.<br />
There is also a group of financial backers behind the individuals identified by this report.<br />
They appear on numerous boards involved in these activities, and appear to have no<br />
function other than to represent the interests of large holding companies which operate as<br />
cover for massive family wealth. The individuals identified in this report can be<br />
identified because of their actions, while those not identified are the silent, more powerful<br />
individuals who finance these operations. One example would be Lord Powell, who<br />
represents the Rothschild family investments, and sits on the Boards of Barrick, as well<br />
as Diligence, which does business with a known criminal terrorist operation known as<br />
Farwest, Ltd.<br />
Figure 1: Chart of Conspirators<br />
There are many other incidental findings which are indicative of additional criminal<br />
activity. This list includes, but is not limited to:<br />
• Placement and detonation of explosive charges in the World Trade Center;<br />
• Murder of witnesses;<br />
• Terrorist activities;<br />
• Obstruction of justice and destruction of Government evidence in a criminal<br />
investigation; and<br />
• Criminal conspiracy and money laundering activity by US bankers, financial<br />
executives and government officials;<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 23
• Violations of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act;<br />
• Violations of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act.<br />
Evidence supporting these claims is provided. A list of those who could be considered “a<br />
person of interest” is identified at the end of this report. Not one is a known member of<br />
any officially classified terrorist group.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 24
Preface<br />
This project started with a curiosity about the questionable circumstances surrounding the<br />
murder of Nick Berg, a US entrepreneur in Iraq who reportedly was in the wrong place at<br />
the wrong time. That curiosity led to research, which led to this report. Herein is a story<br />
– a true story - that needs to be told. Even without the ‘need’ for it to be told, it represents<br />
a mesmerizing story of intrigue, assassination, mystery, scandal, fraud, theft, cover-up,<br />
and twisted patriotism. It is a true story about real individuals, the list of which includes<br />
terrorists, spies (KGB, Mossad, CIA, FBI), murder victims, assassinated corporate heads,<br />
politicians, billionaires, international bank board members, Russian Mafiya, American<br />
mafia, Nazis, an Imperial family, and even a Grand Master of the Teutonic Order<br />
(Templars) from the crusades! It is a story about money laundering, illegal gold,<br />
securities fraud, conflict diamonds, weapons trading, drugs, espionage and international<br />
stock market manipulation. It is a story about a several layers of façade and false leads.<br />
It is a story in which the motive for the crime is measured in hundreds of billions of<br />
dollars, and has relatively little to do with oil. It is a story which explains the execution<br />
of seemingly innocent civilians in Iraq, the attack on the World Trade Center, and the<br />
attack on the US economy. It is a story that provides coherent meaning to what has been<br />
viewed as a collage of seemingly inconsistent, contradictory, inexplicable and just plain<br />
inconvenient facts.<br />
The search for an acceptable explanation for the death of Nick Berg in the summer of<br />
2004 engendered more questions than answers – at first. The answers to these questions<br />
resulted in an interpretation of current events in the Middle East and the US that seemed<br />
far removed from any currently available explanations or hypotheses. The conclusion of<br />
this investigation is that Nick Berg was in all likelihood an agent of an Israeli secret<br />
service, executed by elements of the Israeli secret service, for reasons that are explained<br />
in the report. That hypothesis was so seemingly incredible that it begged “challenging.”<br />
The hypothesis has been challenged numerous times, and each time there are multiple<br />
accounts in the media that provide answers that are consistent with the conclusions<br />
presented in the research. Examples of such “if –then” tests (such as if X happened, then<br />
shouldn’t Y happen?) are:<br />
• If the hypothesis used to explain the reasons for Nick Berg’s execution is accurate,<br />
shouldn’t it also be valid for subsequent executions by the same group? (It is!)<br />
• If the Deutsche Bank was attempting to cover-up illicit gold movements, should one<br />
expect to find news which links the Deutsche Bank to illicit gold hoardings, measured<br />
in hundreds of tonnes? (There are such reports!)<br />
• If the German banking cartel had responsibility for initiating the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> attack,<br />
should one be able to demonstrate their ability to activate Muslim and Mossad agents.<br />
(It can be demonstrated, with multiple connections.)<br />
In none of the testing of hypotheses did the available information contradict one of the<br />
major conclusions of this paper: the official US government interpretation of terrorist<br />
activity confronting America is deliberately misleading, and the list of “bad guys” is<br />
totally different than what the public has been led to believe.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 25
Methodology<br />
Please note that this report generally follows several important rules of research:<br />
This report uses as many independent sources as possible, rather than relying on<br />
government press releases and mainstream media. In this report, there is evidence<br />
from U.S. agents themselves, that the US government has forced a CIA translator, a<br />
CIA agent and three FBI agents to fabricate and distort information on the 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
investigation. These people are in court to bring out the truth, and protect themselves<br />
from repercussions. These five are only the ones coming forward publicly. The<br />
public needs to ask - how many more remain silent? (Internet reports suggest up to<br />
200 government agents are ready to testify against the administration.) There is also<br />
evidence from two college professors that the CIA deliberately falsified video-tape<br />
evidence. There is evidence presented from Underwriter Laboratories that the<br />
government has presented false information.<br />
Questions are best formulated by studying a situation and asking “What information<br />
is missing?” With the hundreds of investigative reporters in the world attempting to<br />
uncover the truth about 9/<strong>11</strong>, major points of evidence are totally ignored by the US<br />
government and many conspiracy theorists, and treated as ‘inconvenient’ facts. This<br />
report does not ignore them. Surprisingly, there is a strong coherency to what are<br />
reported as coincidences and inconsistencies – and all the “wild conspiracy theories”<br />
actually hang together.<br />
This reports looks at these events as crimes rather than political terrorist activities<br />
which are intended to create fear. The basic rules for identifying “who did it” still<br />
apply: motive, opportunity, weapon, and ‘follow the money.’<br />
If one uses the same standard of evidence as applied under the Uniform Code of<br />
Military Justice to the alleged terrorists appearing before military tribunals, then<br />
hearsay evidence is acceptable.<br />
Some readers may conclude this report attempts to establish guilt by association and<br />
character, an invalid principle in the U.S. courtroom. Guilt is determined by due<br />
process – not a report. There are Constitutional processes for determining guilt, and<br />
this report does not seek to supplant them. However, the American criminal justice<br />
system has established and sanctioned two practices which are based on guilt by<br />
association and characterization: profiling and prosecution under the RICO<br />
conspiracy laws. This report assumes that if an organization (or partnership) has<br />
several key members that are publicly associated (not necessarily convicted) with<br />
similar criminal activity, activities of the entire organization warrant suspicion. If<br />
publicly available information about that organization reinforces those suspicions,<br />
those suspicions should be investigated and reported. That is what this report does – it<br />
summarizes that information and suggests that a different theory explaining the<br />
attacks of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> is consistent with the facts ignored by the official 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
<strong>Commission</strong>. Current interpretations of events in the Middle East (either that of the<br />
US Government or various conspiracy theorists) do not help us understand the facts<br />
as they are known today. There are too many dangling leads. This report attempts to<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 26
address the ‘loose ends’ in this interpretation of the news. Major crimes have been<br />
committed and not one person has been convicted. “Terrorists” charged for<br />
supporting 9/<strong>11</strong> in Germany and Spain have been found not guilty. Osama Bi Laden<br />
is not charged with 9/<strong>11</strong> on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list because the FBI has no<br />
evidence connecting him to the crime. This report attempts to redefine leads that<br />
might result in holding people accountable for their crimes.<br />
This research represents a significant paradigm shift from most of the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong><br />
research available. That shift is brought about by two very significant challenges created<br />
by the information presented.<br />
• The first challenge: look at all the information before assigning guilt. Much of the<br />
current criticism of American public officials involved in cover-up activities has a<br />
tendency to focus on the ‘American and Israeli participants.’ Another large band of<br />
criticism is saved for the Saudi royal family, because of their familial relations to<br />
Osama Bin Laden and significant financial contributions to American politics.<br />
However, if one looks at the record of how these American and Saudi officials<br />
actually executed their operations (ranging from criminal to legal, but generally<br />
considered unscrupulous) there is a consistent participation by the Russian/Israeli<br />
Mafiya and the German banking cartel, which includes certain Swiss banks. As one<br />
digs deeper, one finds the Russian/Israeli Mafiya are quite significantly involved in<br />
these events, and the bank cartel may well be the greatest benefactor of the crime and<br />
cover-up. The research paradigm must include foreign nationals from Germany and<br />
Russia.<br />
• The second challenge: the timing of the attack on the WTC suggests a pace of events<br />
where the planners were comfortable with a two-to-three year execution phase. A<br />
decision to destroy the WTC was made in 1999 or 1998, with the key ‘hijackers’ in<br />
that plot being assigned in early 1999. The research paradigm needs to be focused on<br />
events in 1998 and 1999, not the events in January through July of 2001. Similarly,<br />
in suggesting that the maturity date of 10 year gold backed bonds issued on<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 1991 was a significant factor in the timing of the attack, that period<br />
needs to be understood as well.<br />
Addressing these two challenges will lead to the conclusion that a German/Swiss bank<br />
cartel undertook a decision in 1998 to destroy a number of US investigations that<br />
threatened their illegally gained wealth. Adnan Khashoggi was the common thread in<br />
most of those investigations, so the Cartel would have needed to approach him as well as<br />
Edgar Bronfman, Khashoggi’s business partner. They in turn, would have most likely<br />
approached their old colleagues: Bush Sr., Secord, Armitage, Kimche, and Azima. These<br />
five, in turn, would have used the foot-soldiers at their disposal: Al Qaeda and the<br />
Russian/Israeli Mafiya.<br />
This investigation is not an attempt to support a particular political viewpoint. In the end,<br />
there is no final proof and there is no confession. If there was a confession, it would<br />
disappear as if it never existed, and every mention of it would be erased. People who<br />
present information critical of the Iran-Contra Syndicate often commit suicide within 24<br />
hours, and their reports disappear (e.g., Brad Doucette, John Millis and Gary Webb). A<br />
list of nineteen such murdered individuals is compiled in this report. The crimes<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 27
described here-in are very complex, and executed by both professional and vicious<br />
criminals. The cover-up of these crimes is done by people who cause their accusers and<br />
whistleblowers to lose promotions, jobs, freedom and possibly even lives. While “proof”<br />
is hard to come by, there is a very compelling case of circumstantial evidence. The<br />
explanation provides better answers for more of the open issues than the official 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
<strong>Commission</strong> <strong>Report</strong>. It also provides a better explanation than suggested by a number of<br />
conspiracy theorists who suggest the Bush administration and CIA or Israeli government<br />
are at fault. All three of those explanations leave too many unanswered questions, and<br />
none really explain the reason the World Trade Center was brought down with a series of<br />
explosions, or how suspicious trading indicated there were those with foreknowledge of<br />
the crime. Conspiracy theorists also like to conveniently forget that the attack on the<br />
World Trade Center was planned and initiated before the Republican National<br />
Convention, before George Bush Jr. was even an official candidate for President, much<br />
less President. Moreover, there is nothing in the historical record to suggest he is capable<br />
of architecting such a solution.<br />
At the end of the day, it’s always about the money, and the money trail points to none of<br />
the official suspects – Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda. However, even after identifying a<br />
more realistic suspect, there is no good news in this story for anyone. It is still a story<br />
about corrupt and greedy people – however noble they thought their intentions – they are<br />
directly responsible for the unnecessary death and suffering of thousands and thousands<br />
of innocent people like your parents, children and friends, for no reason other than selfgratification<br />
and ego.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 28
1<br />
Unmasking the Faces Behind the Terrorist Threat<br />
In the realm of geopolitical turmoil, where political terrorism has taken on an<br />
international scope, the world has recently seen the emergence of two major terrorist<br />
groups – Osama Bin Laden’s ‘Al Qaeda’ and more recently, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.<br />
Terrorist incidents around the globe have been attributed to both groups, with Abu Musab<br />
al-Zarqawi establishing global notoriety with the video-taped beheading of three hostages<br />
in Iraq. In October of 2004, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi swore allegiance to Bin Laden,<br />
bringing about a merger of what had been seen as separate, but possibly “linked” groups.<br />
In a world were the international press had reported that the two leaders were not on<br />
friendly terms, and viewed each other as possible rivals, this surprising turn of events<br />
drew very little attention in the media. What the Muslim terrorists accomplished, with<br />
much fanfare and publicity, was to create the link between Al Qaeda and Iraq that helped<br />
justify the US invasion – a link that could not be proven, until someone created it and<br />
drew world attention to it.<br />
In retrospect, what the world knows about these two groups poses some interesting<br />
comparisons, and contradicts the conventional knowledge about these groups. This<br />
report attempts to bring a different perspective to the facts as commonly interpreted, and<br />
provides an explanation for some significant failures of conventional wisdom.<br />
The official U.S. government explanation for the success of Osama Bin Laden is that the<br />
foundation for his ability to conduct and support international terror is based on his<br />
inherited family wealth, family connections to conservative Saudi philanthropists, and an<br />
education that allows him to invest wisely. The conventional ‘unofficial’ explanation is<br />
that the CIA and British intelligence made Osama the success he is, and as long as he<br />
threatened the stability of Iran, or the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, he received all the<br />
arms and money he required. It allowed him to finance an impressive organization,<br />
capable of forging passports, moving people across oceans and borders, training 1,000<br />
potential terrorists a month, and making major arms purchases. Subsequent to the<br />
sequestering of his funds after the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>th attack on the World Trade Center, he<br />
appears to have been marginalized – with claim to no major terrorist attacks for over five<br />
years.<br />
Contrast that to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who comes from an impoverished family with<br />
little education. He is a common criminal street thug, with no known source of funding,<br />
and essentially comes out of nowhere with newly discovered politico-religious fervor.<br />
Without a funding source comparable to Osama Bin Laden, he is able to launch a multinational<br />
assault with purported attacks in Hamburg, Chechnya, Madrid (train bombing),<br />
Mombassa (hotel bombing) and now, all over Iraq (kidnappings).<br />
“Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the organisation responsible for the beheadings in Iraq, is regularly<br />
portrayed by the US government as a terrorist mastermind, responsible for activity in places as<br />
widespread as Hamburg, Chechnya, Madrid and Mombasa. But while there is no doubt that Zarqawi<br />
has committed awful crimes, experts say that accusing him has become an easy fall-back for the<br />
authorities as they struggle to contain the insurgency. There is no unanimity on whether Zarqawi is a<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 29
henchman of Osama bin Laden or a rival.” [A thug who will stop at nothing to create pure Islamic zone<br />
in Middle East, Ewen MacAskill and Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, <strong>September</strong> 23, 2004]<br />
By executing three American hostages – Nick Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley<br />
- on videotape (the killing of the British hostage, interestingly, was not video taped), he<br />
gained as much international recognition as Osama Bin Laden, to whom he reportedly<br />
later swore allegiance and loyalty. If funding is a prerequisite to the level of activity<br />
supported by terrorists, one is forced to conclude that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is funded<br />
from some unknown source. One is also forced to conclude that al-Zarqawi had access to<br />
passport forgery capabilities, and that he had significant connections for the purchase of<br />
weapons, explosives, chemicals and more. More simply, the newer, more public Abu<br />
Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq represented a mature, sophisticated intelligence operation.<br />
In retrospect, it seems as though the videotaped executions attributed to al-Zarqawi were<br />
nothing more than an extremely vicious publicity ploy. The kidnappings never really<br />
entailed any negotiations around conditions for release, as if the intent all along had been<br />
to execute the hostages. A careful review of the facts which surround these executions<br />
suggests that little is at is appears. An alternative interpretation of the events is<br />
suggested:<br />
1. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is most likely a Mossad counter-espionage front (Whether<br />
this group is the original al-Zarqawi, or someone assuming his identity becomes<br />
immaterial.) This front was probably established under the direction of General Meir<br />
Dagan, current head of the Mossad who was responsible for setting up an Israeli<br />
intelligence network in Iraq after the Iraqi-Kuwait War;<br />
2. The executed hostages of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were probably not innocent<br />
bystanders and victims, but rather players in the world of espionage. To that point, a<br />
number of other, less publicized beheadings were broadcast as the executions of CIA<br />
agents. (In passing, one should note that no “Israeli” agents have been publicly<br />
executed by this group, although it is reported that Dagan did set up a network in<br />
Iraq.)<br />
3. The hostages executed in Iraq were most likely executed by the Mossad for five<br />
reasons: 1) to create publicity and credibility for their Muslim front in Iraq, 2) to<br />
create American support for Israel against the Muslim threat to Israel’s existence, 3)<br />
to clean-up loose ends in their own intelligence world, 4) to send a message to other<br />
operatives and intelligence trespassers that the Middle East belongs to the Mossad,<br />
and that Mossad deals with its enemies harshly, and 5) to foster divisiveness amongst<br />
the Iraqi Muslim population, ultimately resulting in break-up of Iraq into smaller<br />
countries – a Balkanization of Iraq.<br />
4. There are, in all likelihood, two arms to the Mossad: one of which is patriotic and<br />
public-service oriented, with another that is a more-or-less a rogue operation, heavily<br />
infiltrated by Russian mafia, ex-KGB and ex-Israeli Special Forces. This latter side is<br />
the ‘dark side’. This group has extensive connections to the international black<br />
market in armaments originaring from former Soviet republics. It is linked to the<br />
conservative right wing of Israeli politics: Sharon and the Likud Party. The different<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 30
sides of the Mossad work together when it serves their own purposes – but neither<br />
controls the other.<br />
However incredible this may seem, a review of the public record suggests this<br />
interpretation is far more credible than the current, common view that the Muslim<br />
terrorists are fanatics striking out against America, and these are random executions<br />
meant to create fear. The commonly held interpretation offered by US government press<br />
agents is not credible under scrutiny. The probability that a terrorist group could<br />
coincidently target three (or more) intelligence agents is pretty slim. The probability that<br />
the level of sophistication demonstrated by Musab al-Zarqawi is not the product of a<br />
well-established intelligence organization is also pretty slim.<br />
The contention that Musab al-Zarqawi is a “front” for a Western ally is not isolated to<br />
this terrorist group. As shall later be shown, this contention is consistent with the reports<br />
that show that most of the Muslim terrorist groups which ring the former Soviet Union<br />
(the “Islamic <strong>Liberation</strong> Party, the World Wide Islamic <strong>Front</strong>, the Defenders of the<br />
Shariat, the Mukhadjiri movement, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and Al Qaeda)<br />
are funded and controlled out of Western capitals by Western diplomats.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 31
2<br />
The Smoking Gun – Nick Berg<br />
People who usually turn a blind eye to conspiracies took note of the suspicious nature and<br />
inconsistencies of the Nick Berg tragedy. People who have never said “something smells<br />
bad here,” were saying just that. Websites across the world were abuzz with<br />
observations, supported in some cases by the major media, that suggested that it was not<br />
Al Qaeda or Musab al-Zarqawi that executed Nick Berg, but speculated that it was either<br />
agents of the US Government or the Israeli secret service. The general trend of the public<br />
opinion on websites suggests that because the US had the most to gain by creating a<br />
distraction to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandals which were filling the front pages of<br />
the press at that time, they are the most likely culprits. The clues, however, point to<br />
elements of the Mossad. In doing so, the clues suggest that Mr. Berg was no innocent<br />
bystander caught between good and evil. Mr. Berg could find his friends amongst<br />
terrorists, the Whitehouse staff and the Russian Mafiya. Mr. Berg probably knew exactly<br />
what he was getting into, and the risks! In all likelihood, he was a smoking gun that<br />
pointed to dark, ugly secrets.<br />
Three premises need to be established: 1) Nick Berg was not killed by Al Qaeda or<br />
Musab al-Zarqawi, 2) Nick Berg was killed by the Mossad, and 3) the Mossad had<br />
motive to kill Nick. It is this last premise that suggests that the Mossad are the real<br />
terrorists, and it reinforces the view that the Mossad deliberately tries to manipulate<br />
American public at the expense of the lives of American citizens. Knowing that,<br />
however, is not enough. The Mossad – as are all intelligence agencies - are middlemen.<br />
They always work for a higher authority, and surprisingly, in this case, that authority is<br />
not Israel. The higher authority does not represent a ‘Zionist’ threat. The reader may, at<br />
this point, be tempted to disregard this analysis, because its premise is almost too<br />
unbelievable to be considered as plausible. Please, read on – because the information is<br />
truly overwhelming.<br />
2.1 Nick Berg was not killed by Muslim Terrorists<br />
Across many websites, one will find various lists of questions, inconsistencies and<br />
observations that suggest the credibility of the videotape of Nick Berg’s execution is<br />
seriously challenged, and nothing less than food for suspicion. Fourteen significant<br />
inconsistencies and coincidences in such a short video should not be casually dismissed.<br />
These inconsistencies include:<br />
• Why does a man who wears a scarf to hide his identity announce his name to the<br />
public?<br />
• Why is the Muslim executioner’s face covered with a scarf when tradition suggests<br />
that Muslim executioners do not wear facial coverings?<br />
• Why would a fanatical Muslim violate other Muslim tradition such as using the left<br />
hand to cover a cough, or<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 32
• Why would a fanatical Muslim wear a large gold ring?<br />
• Why would five Muslim executioners be dressed in all-black commando style outfits<br />
(except for the clean white sneakers), when you rarely see terrorists in uniform in<br />
other videos and news clips?<br />
• Why would five Muslim/terrorist executioners be seen to be ‘stocky,’ when every<br />
terrorist you’ve ever seen on news video is gaunt?<br />
• Why would there be a general consensus that the dialect spoken by the terrorist in the<br />
video was not the same as that of the terrorist identified by the CIA, Al-Zarqawi?<br />
(Interestingly, the US Army had reported Al-Zarqawi killed by the bombing of<br />
Falluja, a month earlier.) Even more interesting, their Arabic is heavily accented<br />
(Russian, Jordanian, Egyptian). An aside comment in the video - in Russian - has<br />
been translated as "do it quickly". The Russian presence becomes an increasingly<br />
important factor as this story emerges. It is not insignificant.<br />
• Why didn’t that same terrorist walk with a limp that the one-legged Al-Zarqawi would<br />
have? (Although subsequent news reports contend no one is actually sure if Al-<br />
Zarqawi is a double amputee, single amputee or an amputee of any sort.)<br />
• Why would someone stage a public execution, by cutting off the head of a man<br />
already dead?<br />
• How does a prisoner of Muslim terrorists come to be wearing an orange jumpsuit, the<br />
garb of US prison inmates?<br />
• How does it happen that the white chair shown in the execution video is the same<br />
style and color of the chairs shown in videos of Abu Ghraib prison, and the painted<br />
wall and floor boards the same color as that of Abu Ghraib? (Interestingly,<br />
subsequent news revelations by U.S. General Karpansky about the prison have<br />
identified “secret” holding sites, which allowed Israeli interrogators to keep prisoners<br />
out of public site.)<br />
• Why would the Iraqi Police deny holding Berg as a prisoner when the FBI claimed he<br />
was an Iraqi Police prisoner?<br />
• Why would the US Military deny holding Berg as a prisoner, when the FBI had<br />
notified his parents, after investigating, that Berg was a prisoner of the US military?<br />
• Why would firearms experts state that the AK-47 carried by one of the purported<br />
terrorists in the video was actually a “Galil” – an Israeli made, enhanced AK-47. It is<br />
very expensive and generally unavailable to Muslim “terrorists.”<br />
There are just too many coincidences and inconsistencies to be ignored. (Web sites on the<br />
Internet list as many as fifty such discrepancies, but these appear to be the most<br />
pertinent.) Together, they suggest that someone pretended to be Al Qaeda or Musab al-<br />
Zarqawi, and did a relatively poor job at it.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 33
2.2 Nick Berg was executed by the elements of the Mossad<br />
The clues to this premise are not found in lists across the internet (although the Israeli<br />
manufactured Galil is a pretty specialized clue), but rather in the limited information in<br />
the news about Nick Berg. It becomes an exercise in ‘connecting the dots,’ which –after<br />
being connected, show a very different picture. The more dots – the better the resolution.<br />
When the dots are connected, they suggest Berg was not an innocent businessman who<br />
was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What does the world know about Mr. Berg,<br />
given subsequent stories and insights into his life?<br />
Berg like to travel, and his passport indicated several trips to the Mideast prior to his final<br />
visit to Iraq. Berg previously traveled as a ‘good Samaritan’ to Ghana, Kenya and<br />
Uganda. In itself, this is a fairly benign statement, unless one is aware of the Mossad’s<br />
extensive history of activity in these three countries for strategic military reasons. He also<br />
traveled in Iraq, Israel and Iran. For the last thirty years, the Mossad has been involved in<br />
all five countries because of the strong Muslim influence in these countries. As a point of<br />
reference which helps demonstrate the significance of this travel pattern, the reader might<br />
research the history of Tony Weber in the 1970’s, a known double CIA/Mossad agent in<br />
Ghana who went there as a US AID worker (an agency with which Mohammed Atta –<br />
the alleged leader of the attack on the World Trade Center – has been reported to have<br />
had links).<br />
Berg traveled to Israel to study Hebrew and Arabic. Again, this is another incidental fact,<br />
until you consider a recently released CIA report from 1979, which described Mossad<br />
practices: “One of the established goals of the intelligence and security services is that<br />
each officer be fluent in Arabic. A nine month intensive Arabic course is given<br />
annually…. As further training, these Mossad officers work in the (Israeli controlled<br />
Arab lands) for two years to sharpen their language skills.”<br />
Berg told friends he was looking for work in Northern Iraq from a “former customer”.<br />
The only telecommunications contracts issued by the US occupation government during<br />
that year were to the Israeli firm of Iridium Satellite, whose major customer is the US<br />
Department of Defense. This then, was the only possible customer he could have. This<br />
also means he worked for Iridium Satellite before going to Iraq. The Mossad’s<br />
involvement in the Israeli telecommunications industry has been extensively documented,<br />
especially with their involvement in such Israeli firms as Verint (formerly Comverse<br />
Infosys) and its infamous wiretap computer programs, and Amdoc, which processes the<br />
phone data of all the major US phone companies, coincidentally gaining access to all US<br />
phone records. The Iridium Satellite connection is complex, because in addition to it<br />
being listed as an Israeli owned firm, Mike Ruppert reports (Crossing the Rubicon, 2004,<br />
p128) that Iridium was bought by the Bin Laden group in 1999 from Motorola. The Bin<br />
Laden group is controlled by the family of Osama Bin Laden. Cooperation between the<br />
Saudi elite and Israeli Mossad is based on a common enemy – the fundamentalist<br />
Shi’ites. This cooperation will be demonstrated over and over again throughout this<br />
report.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 34
Prior to being in Iraq, Nick Berg developed a relationship with Aziz Kadoory Aziz, also<br />
known as Aziz al-Taee. In Iraq, he linked up Aziz again. Aziz talked to Nick on the last<br />
day he was seen, and reports that Nick had found transportation to Jordan with “friends.”<br />
Aziz has a relevant background. Having left Iraq in 1993, he came to Philadelphia,<br />
where he got involved with the Russian Mafiya - a network run by a Soviet immigrant<br />
named Valery Sigal. (Sigal was arrested at least three times, once for involvement in<br />
distribution of drugs, and once for involvement with stolen computers, and once for<br />
selling counterfeit disks.) Aziz met Nick in the US, and Nick used his office in Baghdad.<br />
This strange linkage to the Russian underworld will continue to become a highly<br />
redundant phenomenon as this investigation unfolds, as many of the Israeli secret service<br />
are demonstrated to have roots in the underworld of the former Soviet Union.<br />
More curious though than the link to the Russian Mafiya is Aziz’s link to Washington<br />
DC based, neo-conservative, pro-Israeli group known as PNAC (Project for a New<br />
American Century), and a web site fronting for this group having labeled Nick Berg’s<br />
company (Prometheus Methods Tower Service) as a “traitor.” (See Section 4.1: Project<br />
for a New American Century) This website had trademarked a list known as the “Traitors<br />
List,” where those listed are accused of being anti-American. Nick’s father and Nick’s<br />
company were both identified on this list as “Traitors.” The owner of this site would<br />
later hire Jeff Gannon/(aka Jeff Guckert) as its Media Director. It seems that shortly after<br />
the murder of Nick Berg, Joe Aziz returned to the US to make a living with speaking<br />
engagements promoting the official US Government position in Iraq. As part of this<br />
promotional tour, Joe Aziz was escorted and introduced in US political circles by Jeff<br />
Gannon/Jeff Guckert of the Talon News Service. (Gannon/Guckert would later be<br />
exposed as a $200 an hour male prostitute who made over 200 trips to the Whitehouse,<br />
according to Secret Service log books at the Whitehouse.)<br />
Shortly after Nick Berg’s company was labeled “traitor” by the PNAC website, Nick was<br />
befriended by a convicted felon who traveled to Iraq with Nick and become the last<br />
known person to see Nick alive. After Nick’s murder, this same ‘instant business partner’<br />
was then shopped around Washington DC by the same group that had labeled Nick’s<br />
company “traitor,” and promoted by a pro-Israeli website. (The role of the PNAC<br />
members in the events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> is discussed in detail in later chapters.)<br />
Berg’s execution took place in Mosul. Mosul has been a hotbed of Mossad activity for<br />
strategic defense reasons. The Mossad has long worked in this region to promote its<br />
strategy of a weaker Iraq, created by supporting and fomenting rebellion in the Kurdish<br />
northeast. If the Mossad is active in Iraq at all, it will be active in Mosul.<br />
It has been reported by people who knew Nick in Iraq that Nick had the peculiar habit of<br />
traveling and working at night. When he was picked up by the Iraqi Police he was held<br />
because of "suspicious activity." His residence in Mosul was also suspicious. Staff at Al-<br />
Fanar Hotel in Baghdad apparently told The Associated Press that Berg stayed there for<br />
several days until April 10. It was reported that a U.S. Consul contract worker checked at<br />
the hotel on 4/14, and staff there did not remember Berg. It seems that a lot of people<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 35
who knew Nick Berg in his last days also had memory problems and retracted their<br />
stories: the police, the military, the hotel staff, and later, the press in Norman, Oklahoma.<br />
It would appear that some intelligence organization with influence was “cleaning up”<br />
after the execution of Nick berg.<br />
Prior to 9/<strong>11</strong> and his murder in Iraq, Nick Berg spent time in Norman, Oklahoma at the<br />
University of Oklahoma. In Norman, this highly ‘tech-savvy’ student supposedly shared<br />
his email password with an Arab stranger, possibly even Zacarias Moussaoui himself.<br />
The FBI found Nick’s email password (not his email address – his password that allowed<br />
him to send emails) amongst the information it confiscated from Moussaoui, an indicted<br />
9/<strong>11</strong> conspirator.<br />
"The FBI searched Zacarias Moussaoui's computer after the 9/<strong>11</strong> attack and found Nick Berg's email<br />
account and password on it. When interviewed by them, Berg reportedly explained that when he was a<br />
student at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 1999, he allowed a stranger on a bus ride to use his<br />
email. The stranger turned out to be an associate of Moussaoui, we are told, and gave him Berg's<br />
password and email account name. This was reported by CNN and other news organizations. There are<br />
several big reasons to be extremely skeptical about this story and to wonder what kind of fools the FBI<br />
agents were who bought it. One glaring fact is that, according to his indictment, Moussaoui did not<br />
show up in the United States until February of 2001." [Anyone Shopping for a Bridge in Brooklyn? If<br />
You Believe Nick Berg's Story to the FBI I'll Sell You One, by Michael Wright]<br />
An interesting side-bar note on this event is that it is possible Nick knew more than one<br />
of these “terrorists.”<br />
“Previous reports spoke of but one, met on the bus. Berg's father, however, alluded to more than one.<br />
Ewing2000 quotes NewsMax -- not a reliable source -- to the effect that Berg met with Zacarias<br />
Moussaoui himself, an assertion conflicting with previous reports that Berg met a Moussaoui associate.<br />
More than that: The FBI apparently thinks that Berg"may have known" Moussaoui's two roommates,<br />
also tied to Al Qaeda.” [Unidentified web source- type any text into Google to locate source]<br />
The question arises: why was Nick Berg at the University of Oklahoma in Norman,<br />
Oklahoma? In Norman OK, one also finds the Norman Flight School, which has also<br />
been documented as a gathering location for such terrorists as Mohammed Atta, Marwan<br />
al-Shehhi, Nawaf Alhazmi, and Khalid Mohammed. The link between the Norman<br />
Flight School and the University of Oklahoma is that students from the Norman Flight<br />
School stay in dormitories on the University campus. Students and police have testified to<br />
the strange behavior of Mr. Berg – in particular of his sleeping on couches in dormitories<br />
around campus. It might be fair to surmise that he was looking for someone by spending<br />
time in the dorm lounges. He was also arrested twice by the campus police for<br />
trespassing, but these records have disappeared. A couple of other random bits of<br />
information put more context to this scenario. The Mossad has been identified as active<br />
in Oklahoma City as far back as the Oklahoma City bombing. It is oddly strange that a<br />
student who is interested in telecommunication technology transfers to the Norman<br />
campus of the University of Oklahoma? One generally goes to a third college when you<br />
want to specialize – there is no Telecommunications Program in Norman.<br />
Is it possible that Nick (or a close associate) was the unknown “white male student” that<br />
made reservations on an Oklahoma University library computer terminal, for Flight 77<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 36
that crashed into the Pentagon on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>? Was it possible his two arrests for<br />
trespassing on the campus (by Campus Police) were associated with his gathering of<br />
intelligence? Given that he spent no time in jail as a repeast offender for burglary or<br />
trespassing, should one assume he had ‘highly placed’ protection? (Possibly the President<br />
of OSU, Mr, David Boren, former CIA Director.)<br />
Around the same time, Mr. Berg had work installing telecommunications equipment at<br />
the Republican National Convention in 2000. Here, Ellis Kitchen, who managed the<br />
telecommunications implementation at the convention, would have pulled him into this<br />
assignment. Ellis is an interesting person, with virtually no public record. As a public<br />
official without a biography, all we know is that he ran special technology projects for the<br />
George Bush Whitehouse between 2001 and 2003, and that he arranged ‘secure satellite<br />
communications’ for sixty countries during that time. Two themes emerge on this<br />
information: high tech satellite communications, and the need to keep a low personal<br />
profile. Even more interesting are the three additional coincidences embedded in this<br />
tidbit of information. 1) Mr. Berg had connections in the Bush Whitehouse when he was<br />
executed. 2) In the space of less than a year, Nick Berg was bumping up against<br />
international terrorists, the PNAC, the Russian Mafiya, and the elite of the Republican<br />
Party security apparatus. The closeness of these two activities provided a much more<br />
compelling reason for the FBI to be investigating Nick Berg. 3) The security checks of<br />
the Republican National party convention – classified by the Secret Service as a National<br />
Security Special Event, who therefore vetted all convention personnel – somehow<br />
overlooked the public record that Nick Berg had been twice arrested for trespassing just<br />
months before. However, maybe this record was overlooked because of the vouching of<br />
George Tenet, Bush’s Director of the CIA. Tenet, (who had extremely close, personal ties<br />
to the President of the University of Oklahoma at Norman: David Boren - a former CIA<br />
director himself,) was in a position to provide a personal reference and introduction for<br />
Mr. Berg.<br />
Mr. Berg was the supposed owner of an unregistered, non-existent company called<br />
Prometheus Methods Tower Service. The fact that his company was not registered<br />
anywhere is not a big issue in-and-of-itself. A lot of consulting entrepreneurs do not<br />
register as a company. The company name also seems fairly benign: “Prometheus<br />
Methods.” The very interesting aspect of this clue, however, is the company name.<br />
‘Prometheus Methods’ refers to one thing only – an extremely sophisticated computer<br />
program for solving extremely complex problems, using parallel processing. Again, this<br />
would be a benign fact until you learn that the creator of Prometheus Methods works for<br />
Sandia International, a weapons research firm, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, and a<br />
significant player in research and development for US national security. The Prometheus<br />
Methods technology is based on MPI programming, which simplifies the generation of<br />
code generation for running programs on multiple processors, creating in effect, a large<br />
supercomputer. Also, seemingly benign and unrelated, is the Mossad connection to spy<br />
ware distributed through its Israeli companies Odigo (instant messaging), Zone Labs and<br />
Cydoor (maker of Kazaa, and probably contributing to the core code of Grokster as<br />
well). By planting spy ware and backdoors on over 50 million home computers, the<br />
Mossad has created the foundation for the largest wide area network computational grid<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 37
on the globe. A documented example of this is Zone Labs. Zone Labs is an Israeli<br />
owned (Checkpoint Technologies Software Company) provider of “security software<br />
product” for home PCs.<br />
“A Perfect Spy? It seems that ZoneAlarm Security Suite has been phoning home, even when told not<br />
to. Last fall, InfoWorld Senior Contributing Editor James Borck discovered ZA 6.0 was surreptitiously<br />
sending encrypted data back to four different servers, despite disabling all of the suite’s<br />
communications options. Zone Labs denied the flaw for nearly two months, then eventually chalked it<br />
up to a “bug” in the software -- even though instructions to contact the servers were set out in the<br />
program’s XML code. A company spokesmodel says a fix for the flaw will be coming soon and<br />
worried users can get around the bug by modifying their Host file settings. However, there’s no truth to<br />
the rumor that the NSA used ZoneAlarm to spy on U.S. citizens.” [ZoneAlarm phones home, Apple<br />
throws Intel a bone Does crabby columnist deserve a raise, or is he just being shellfish? Robert X.<br />
Cringely® infoworld, January 13, 2006]<br />
The appropriate question is, how does an entrepreneur who repairs communication<br />
towers happen to be familiar with a truly obscure algorithm that has no publicly known<br />
connection to tower communications, but is a key component of the national intelligence<br />
arsenal.<br />
It is fair to speculate that he probably learned of this method from Dr. Arthur Breipohl, of<br />
the University of Oklahoma at Norman. Dr. Breipohl specializes in the analysis of<br />
random data and processes, and was a consultant to Sandia International for many years.<br />
(This story will coincidently (?) run into another main character named Dr. Diethart<br />
Breipohl of Germany, former CFO for Allianz. Arthur Breipohl, of Norman, was<br />
reportedly born in Higginsville, MO in 1931, the son of immigrant parents. If one looks<br />
at the pictures of Arthur and Diethart however, one might swear they were brothers. At<br />
the moment, their relationship has not been proven, but most likely they are cousins.) In<br />
a final piece of irony (?), the essence of Prometheus Methods is to create programs that<br />
solve problems on a single processor without communicating with the other processors,<br />
until called into play by a master or ‘global’ program – exactly like the organization he<br />
was watching, and also part of.<br />
A strong case can be made for the argument that Mr. Berg was an agent of the Mossad<br />
starting as what is referred to as a sayanim. (These are citizens in countries other than<br />
Isarel who have 100% Jewish heritage, can be considered sympathetic to the fate of<br />
Israel, and are recruited for specific Israeli intelligence needs.) Nearly everything the<br />
public knows about Nick can link him to the Mossad. Most people are murdered by<br />
someone they know. The Galil (the Israeli version of the AK47) and the strategic<br />
interests of the Mossad puts them at the scene of the crime. There are plenty of<br />
documented cases where the Mossad has been caught in the midst of a false flag<br />
operation, including the creation of phony Al Qaeda cells. The Mossad deals brutally<br />
with those who cross it. Rabbi Dov Zakheim, former Undersecretary of Defense, who has<br />
acknowledged knowing Mossad agents, described how Israelis deal with those perceived<br />
as traitors:<br />
"… I had heard of the virtual brutality with which the Israelis dealt with those who opposed them,<br />
especially if they were Jewish. …. Since the Israelis played hardball, and played it personally, I figured<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 38
that I would soon be on their hit list." [Dov S. Zakheim, Flight of the Lavi: Inside a U.S. Israeli Crisis,<br />
Brassey's, Washington 1996, p 21]<br />
From another source, one finds the same approach to guaranteeing silence:<br />
“Moser is a Jewish word for "rat-fink" or informer--punishable by death according to historical<br />
culture.” [Missile & remote control systems added to small jets before 9-<strong>11</strong>; same parts found at<br />
Pentagon, Tom Flocco, TomFlocco.com, 5/26/2005]<br />
The MO (mode of operation) for this crime fits the Mossad. What remains to be<br />
determined is motive.<br />
2.3 Why the Mossad killed Nick Berg –Motive<br />
There are two possible explanations for motive.<br />
At one level, Berg committed a serious breach of security when he publicly created a link<br />
between the Mossad and the US telecommunications sector by naming his company after<br />
“Prometheus Methods.” By naming the company after this program, he demonstrated a<br />
willingness to be cavalier with security and intelligence information. It may be that this<br />
name was purposely meant to be a pointer back to Dr. Breipohl, for reason which will<br />
become a little clearer, later in the article. On several occasions in the recent past, the<br />
FBI has rigorously investigated Mossad penetration of the US telecommunications<br />
infrastructure, without any successful prosecution. Berg may have been the link they<br />
needed to indict the Mossad on this issue. Maybe that alone was cause for the Mossad to<br />
eliminate him. The probable cause is more ominous.<br />
A second theory is a founded on – but varies significantly from - research by Michael<br />
Phillip Wright and available on his website, and supported by an article in the British<br />
magazine Eye Spy (viii, 2002). There are literally dozens of websites that support<br />
versions or portions of this conspiratorial view of the WTC tragedy (including a 60<br />
minute special by Fox News that was never aired, but released on CD,) in which the<br />
Mossad is demonstrated to be at the core of activity leading up to the attack. This theory<br />
suggests that the WTC attack was a FBI/CIA sting operation that went wrong. In this<br />
theory, the CIA and FBI, through its informants and through various intelligence<br />
agencies, were very well aware of, and allowed, the activities of 9/<strong>11</strong>. They believed the<br />
planes would be hijacked – with nothing more spectacular planned. They had a number<br />
of agents on each plane (assuming they knew that four or more planes were targeted) who<br />
were unable to prevent the disaster when they discovered the plan was not unfolding as<br />
they had been advised. These theories have no explanation as to why the “sting” went<br />
wrong. This report suggests the reason the plan failed was because the CIA was being<br />
misled by the Mossad, who wanted this event to be fully executed. In this theory, Mr.<br />
Nicholas Berg was a small player, but had the knowledge and the willingness to disclose<br />
his role. To prevent this, he needed to be silenced.<br />
This second theory becomes more viable when one considers that the Russians, Germans,<br />
British and Israelis have gone on public record as saying that they had notified the US<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 39
administration a couple of months prior to the attack that terrorists were planning on<br />
using planes to attack significant national institutions.<br />
"Israeli intelligence officials say that they warned their counterparts in the United States last month<br />
that large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent.<br />
The Telegraph has learnt that two senior experts with Mossad, the Israeli military intelligence service,<br />
were sent to Washington in August to alert the CIA and FBI to the existence of a cell of as many of<br />
200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation...."[Israeli security issued urgent warning to CIA of<br />
large-scale terror attacks, Daily Telegraph, <strong>11</strong>/19/2001]<br />
"…The Mossad, Israel's feared secret service, gave the US an urgent warning, according to recent<br />
reports from Germany. These reports say that on August 23, 2001, the Mossad gave the CIA a list of<br />
terrorists living in the US and said that they appeared to be planning to carry out an attack in the near<br />
future. Apparently this warning and list were not treated as particularly urgent by the CIA and also not<br />
passed on to the FBI." [Deer Spiegel, 10/1/02]<br />
"August 23, 2001: According to German newspapers, the Mossad gave the CIA a list of 19 terrorists<br />
living in the US and said that it appeared that they were planning to carry out an attack in the near<br />
future. It is unknown if these are the same exact 19 names as the actual hijackers or if the number is a<br />
coincidence. However, at least four names did refer to actual 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers: Napa Alhazmi, Khalid<br />
Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi, and Mohamed Atta." [Die Zeit, 10/1/02, Der Spiegel, 10/1/02, BBC,<br />
10/2/02, Haaretz, 10/3/02]<br />
"As late as August 24, less than two weeks before the attacks, a Mossad warning, confirmed by<br />
German intelligence, BND, said that 'terrorists plan to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to<br />
attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." [Globe-Intel. Number 104, 21/05/02]<br />
"On Monday 6, August, 2001, at 17:50, Ambassador Ischinger personally notified the President of the<br />
United States that information developed by the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz as well as the<br />
BND indicated that an attack by a radical Arab group partially based in Germany was to occur on 10-<br />
<strong>11</strong> <strong>September</strong>, 2001." The information was "gratefully received" by the US President who stated at the<br />
time that he was also aware of the same pending assaults. Subsequent to these attacks, the office of the<br />
US President, through the US Department of State, made an urgent request to the government of the<br />
Federal Republic of Germany that no reference whatsoever should be made to the official warnings<br />
given by Ambassador Ischinger." [Translation of BND <strong>Report</strong> on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001]<br />
"... According to our intelligence agents among terrorists there were at least two Uzbeks, natives of<br />
Fergana who arrived in the USA on forged documents about ten months ago.... The organization of the<br />
International Terrorist, according to Russian Intelligence Service agents had been planning an<br />
operation against the USA more than a year and a half." [Russia Warned US of Impending 9-<strong>11</strong><br />
Attacks, Izvestia (Russian Newspaper), <strong>11</strong>/12/2001]<br />
"Russian President Vladimir Putin has said publicly that he ordered his intelligence agencies to alert<br />
the United States last summer that suicide pilots were training for attacks on U.S. targets."[Clues<br />
Alerted White House to Potential Attacks, Fox News, 5/17/2002]<br />
“There was a story that ran on the front page of The London Telegraph, The Jerusalem Post, BBC.com<br />
and several other news websites on the morning of Sept 12, 2001 that said George Tenet had received<br />
a detailed warning of the attack 12 days before from the head of MI-6 on a special line that was only<br />
used for fully vetted, verified info that was urgent and impending, requiring immediate action.”<br />
If there is any thought that the official explanation for 9/<strong>11</strong> makes this type of<br />
information moot, that thought should be reconsidered. The 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> <strong>Report</strong><br />
attempts to gloss over reports from other intelligence agencies, and contends that there<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 40
was a “major failure” in communications. Willie Brown, former Mayor of San<br />
Francisco, knows that is not true. <strong>Report</strong>ed and dropped by the press:<br />
"For Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something was amiss came late Monday when he got a<br />
call from what he described as his airport security -- a full eight hours before yesterday's string of<br />
terrorist attacks -- advising him that Americans should be cautious about their air travel." [Willie<br />
Brown got low-key early warning about air travel, Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross, San Francisco<br />
Chronicle, 9/12/2001]<br />
A subsequent report clarifies that the source of the information was Condoleeza Rice,<br />
Head the National Security Agency.<br />
"According to a report today Friday, May 17, 2002, on Pacifica Radio, the warning to San Francisco's<br />
mayor came from squeaky-clean Condoleezza Rice."<br />
[http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/02/05/Bush_knew2.html]<br />
This suggests the people who were in a position to stop this act were possibly acting<br />
negligently. Ms. Rice has denied this claim, the response to which has already been made<br />
by a former FBI translator:<br />
"A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information<br />
to the panel investigating the <strong>11</strong> <strong>September</strong> attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's<br />
plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened. She said the claim by the<br />
National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous<br />
lie". 'I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida would attack cities with aeroplanes' " [Whistleblower<br />
the White House wants to silence speaks to The Independent, The Independent, Andrew Buncombe,<br />
4/2/2004]<br />
Similarly, Congressional Intelligence committee leadership was aware of the specific<br />
threat to the World Trade Center towers. Randall Glass, FBI informant on the Kevin<br />
Ingram money laundering sting, has gone on record as having advised Florida Senator<br />
Bob Graham and his staff that Pakistani agents had specifically identified the Towers as<br />
targets in the very near term. It will later be shown that the FBI advised its FBI office in<br />
the North Tower of the World Trade Center to “harden” its data storage center in<br />
preparation for just such an attack. The data center was “hardened” a few months before<br />
the attack.<br />
While one can understand how representatives of the Israeli government might be aware<br />
of such plans, the fact that the only other national intelligence agencies to warn the US<br />
were Russian and German is of particular importance. Why would the Russians, Germans<br />
and Israelis be knowledgeable about these plans? This might be viewed as a meaningless<br />
question, but the answer is extremely important. The answer to this question is provided<br />
later, as the participation of the criminal organizations of these three countries unfold.<br />
Berg, as a probable agent of the Mossad, was identified by the FBI as having more than<br />
coincidental interplay with the 9/<strong>11</strong> terrorists prior to the actual event. There is a large<br />
quantity of publicly available information and documented fact which can testify to the<br />
Mossad’s foreknowledge of the attack, found in six pieces of evidence:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 41
1. the notices sent to Israeli’s in the WTC two hours prior to the attack, advising them to<br />
not be in the building-(The occurrence of this message is now publicly confirmed by<br />
the executives of that Israeli company – Odigo.)<br />
2. the five Israelis caught by the police on 9/<strong>11</strong>, dancing and shouting in joy at the<br />
destruction of the WTC, (After being detained for several months, these Israelis were<br />
released to the Israeli government, and returned to Israel.) These five were part of a<br />
group of 100 detained in the weeks immediately after 9/<strong>11</strong>.<br />
“Five of the Israelis, say Galloway, were arrested after "Angry witnesses had seen the five at a<br />
waterfront park in New Jersey apparently laughing and clowning, and photographing themselves<br />
in front of the burning towers." An FBI surveillance team had been monitoring the five and took<br />
photographs of their activities. One of the five Israeli had assumed a first name of Omer, which is<br />
close to the Arabic name Omar. Another had a German passport in addition to his Israeli passport.<br />
A third had an international flight booked to Thailand for <strong>September</strong> 13-two days after the<br />
highjackings. Yet another of the five Israelis was discovered by the FBI to be a former<br />
paratrooper, assigned to an elite Israeli defense forces unit. Two more Israeli Jews were arrested in<br />
a truck on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania, near the site of the crash of American Airlines flight 93.<br />
A box cutter like the ones used in the airliner highjackings was found in their truck along with<br />
other incriminating evidence… FBI investigators believe that most of the 100 men detained are<br />
part of an Israeli intelligence unit operating out of New Jersey, near where the Anthrax letters<br />
were mailed.<br />
Israeli officials are desperately trying to paint the incident as a "mere mistake"-just some silly<br />
young men clowning around, unconnected to an official intelligence group.” [Israelis trapped in<br />
terror roundups cause worry at home, anger at U.S. Jim Galloway, The Atlanta Constitution,<br />
November 18, 2001]<br />
3. the coincidental presence of an Israeli anti-terrorist, special forces martial arts training<br />
expert, on Flight 77. His name was Daniel Lewin. Even more coincidental, he was<br />
the only person shot on all four planes, and he was shot by terrorist sitting next to<br />
him. The news of a gun being used on this passenger, initially reported in the media,<br />
has since been “retracted” as an erroneous, “officially never happened” message.<br />
What are the odds that a terrorist, unassisted, would be sitting next to (or behind) a<br />
counter-terrorist expert, have a gun (on a plane!), know that he needed to kill the man<br />
next to him, and know that a box-knife wasn’t going to be of much use against a<br />
person with Lewin’s combat skills?<br />
"The "Executive Summary," based on information relayed by a flight attendant to the American<br />
Airlines Operation Center, stated "that a passenger located in seat 10B shot and killed a passenger<br />
in seat 9B at 9:20 a.m. The passenger killed was Daniel Lewin, shot by passenger Satam Al<br />
Suqami." The FAA claims that the document is a "first draft," declining to release the final draft,<br />
as it is "protected information." [See the FAA memo, originally posted at World Net Daily]<br />
"A report in Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on Sept. 17 identifies Lewin as a former member of the<br />
Israel Defense Force Sayeret Matkal, Israel's most successful special-operations unit. "[UPI,<br />
3/6/02].<br />
4. the existence of Mossad living quarters within a block of the addresses known to<br />
shelter Muslim terrorists in Florida and Oklahoma City (as documented by the US<br />
Drug Enforcement Agency),<br />
"Mohammed Atta, the presumed lead hijacker had lived at 3389 Sheridan St, only a few blocks<br />
away from the Fake Israeli Art Students! "[Le Monde 3/5/02; Reuters 3/5/02; Jane's Intelligence<br />
Digest, 3/15/02; Salon, 5/7/02]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 42
5. the actual arrest and release of Mossad agents in Florida, who were mistaken to be<br />
terrorists by local citizens, but were actually tracking Muslim terrorists. These agents<br />
were also released and returned to Israel.<br />
6. Actual warnings of the attack from the Israeli secret service to members of the CIA.<br />
On this point, it is appropriate to point out that all agencies have their “rogues” –<br />
which does not detract from the integrity of honest and committed patriots, who<br />
probably sought to prevent this attack. This report contends that rogue Mossad/ex-<br />
KGB agents played a significant role in the attack.<br />
Moreover, members or associates of the Mossad were in a position to enable the hijackers<br />
to get through airport security. Security at Logan Airport, from which two planes were<br />
hijacked, is managed by International Consultants on Targeted Security, (ICTS) through<br />
its' subsidiary Huntleigh USA. It is run by "former (Israeli) military commanding<br />
officers and veterans of government intelligence and security agencies" (according to the<br />
Huntleigh Web site). The company was owned primarily by Menachem Atzmon and his<br />
business partner Ezra Harel (57%). Atzmon is the former financial controller for the<br />
Likud, (the ultra right wing Israeli political party) and spent several years in prison for<br />
campaign fraud. The Likud connection will later be shown to be important.<br />
"<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001: Later in the day, weapons are found planted inside three other US airplanes. A<br />
US official says of the hijackings, "These look like inside jobs." The only footage of the hijackers<br />
boarding airplanes on 9/<strong>11</strong> is of two boarding a connecting flight in Maine. Could the reason that no<br />
other footage has been released be that the hijackers entered the airplanes via backdoors with the help<br />
of accomplices? As a matter of fact, "Sources tell Time that US officials are investigating whether the<br />
hijackers had accomplices deep inside the airports' 'secure' areas." [Time, 9/22/01]<br />
There is plenty of information to conclude that agents of the Mossad not only knew of the<br />
attack far in advance, but may have actually facilitated it. Now, here was Berg – who<br />
could directly link the Mossad to the terrorists prior to 9/<strong>11</strong>, who had a loose lip, had<br />
been uncovered by the FBI, and was being pressured by the FBI. That is why Moussaoui<br />
had Berg’s email password – Berg and Moussaoui were on the same team. Berg was the<br />
smoking gun that had to be eliminated. Berg was the proof of complicity between what<br />
is made to appear to be two separate groups: Al Qaeda and the Mossad.<br />
There is far too much ‘obviously planted’ information in the official FBI story line that<br />
suggests that someone wanted the world to believe Al Qaeda attacked the WTC, and that<br />
the real instigators may not have been who they pretended to be. (If you haven’t taken<br />
the time to familiarize yourself with the research on the ‘planted information’, conduct an<br />
Internet search for one of the many sites that publish the lists). There is documentation in<br />
the commercial press regarding how the Mossad sets up phony Al Qaeda cells, and how<br />
they have been known to run ‘false-flag’ operations for the past thirty years. Rowan<br />
Scarborough, in The Washington Times, on <strong>September</strong> 10, 2001, reported the release of a<br />
68-page paper by the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). This<br />
report commented on the Israeli secret service: “Of the MOSSAD, the Israeli intelligence<br />
service, the SAMS officers say: "Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target<br />
U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act." Evidently the School of<br />
Advanced Military Studies did not embrace the Mossad as an organization it could<br />
wholly trust.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 43
The information that identifies CIA/FBI involvement with the actual World Trade Center<br />
terrorists in the months prior to 9/<strong>11</strong> is far too compelling to ignore.<br />
• Government officials from Russia, Israel and Germany have publicly stated they<br />
shared specific information and warnings with the CIA. (The CIA has denied this.)<br />
• The CIA/FBI has had known operatives working in Norman, Oklahoma.<br />
"As early as 1996 the FBI began investigating the activities of Arab students at US flight schools.<br />
Government officials admitted that “law enforcement officials were aware that fewer than a dozen<br />
people with links to bin Laden had attended US flight schools.” FBI agents visited two flight<br />
schools in 1996 to get information about several Arab pilots who received training there. The two<br />
schools were among those attended by Abdul Hakim Murad, who had told Philippine and US<br />
police about plans to fly a hijacked plane into CIA headquarters. In 1998 FBI agents questioned<br />
officials from Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma about a graduate identified in court<br />
testimony as a pilot for Osamabin Laden. This was the school later attended by Zacarias<br />
Moussaoui. A Washington Post article concludes: “Since 1996, the FBI had been developing<br />
evidence that international terrorists were using US flight schools to learn to fly jumbo jets. A<br />
foiled plot in Manila to blow up U.S. airliners and later court testimony by an associate of bin<br />
Laden had touched off FBI inquiries at several schools, officials say.” [Washington Post,<br />
<strong>11</strong>/23/2001, “FBI Knew Terrorists Were Using Flight Schools,” by Steve Fainaru and James V.<br />
Grimaldi]<br />
"Beginning in early 2001 a trial was held in New York City of four defendants charged with<br />
involvement in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The trial revealed<br />
that two bin Laden operatives had received pilot training in Texas and Oklahoma and another had<br />
been asked to take lessons. L’Houssaine Kherchtou, a bin Laden associate turned government<br />
witness, told the court how he was asked to take flying lessons in 1993. Another bin Laden aide,<br />
Essam al-Ridi, testified that he had bought a military aircraft for bin Laden and flown it to Sudan.<br />
Al-Ridi became a government witness in 1998, giving the FBI inside information about a pilottraining<br />
scheme three years before the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> attack. While the proceedings of the trial<br />
extended from February to July 2001, they did not produce any heightened alert in relation to US<br />
commercial aviation." [Court transcript available at www.cryptome.org[<br />
"(David) Edger "arrived on the OU (Oklahoma University) campus in August 2001 to begin his<br />
duties as a visiting professor in the political science department. Up until that month he had<br />
responsibility for surveillance of the Al Qaeda cell in Germany, whose membership included<br />
Ramzi bin Al-Shibh, paymaster for the Al Qaeda organization, and Mohammed Atta, a hijacker on<br />
one of the airliners which crashed into the World Trade Center (WTC). Edger was described by<br />
The Norman Transcript as an "expert in intelligence collection, counterintelligence investigations,<br />
and political action”. The newspaper also reports that he has directed espionage and counterespionage<br />
activities. Edger was in Chile in 1973 when the CIA was overthrowing the Allende<br />
government." [Current Results about possible connections between Thomas Volz (CIA) and David<br />
Edger (ex-CIA), By Ewing2001, 8/26/2003]<br />
• There are FBI agents that have been trying to expose as false the US government<br />
claims that it was not aware of the details of the terrorist threat.<br />
"David Schippers, the well-respected veteran D. C. lawyer (he served as lead prosecutor for the<br />
Clinton impeachment and is admired for his decades of effort fighting organized crime), has gone<br />
public with an announcement that he is representing three FBI agents who had evidence of the<br />
9/<strong>11</strong> attacks months beforehand and were ready to arrest the suspects, but were blocked by their<br />
superiors and taken off the case. Schippers had been in contact with these FBI agents since before<br />
the attacks (owing to ongoing investigations he had been making into the 1995 Oklahoma City<br />
bombing) and for several months before 9/<strong>11</strong> attempted personally to present information about<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 44
the upcoming attacks to Attorney General Ashcroft and several members of Congress, including<br />
House Speaker Dennis Hastert. In every case, he was stonewalled. After 9/<strong>11</strong>, he continued to<br />
follow up with this issue privately through his own government connections, but to no avail. So,<br />
he has taken to the airwaves (talk radio only so far; it looks like there's a blackout on this in the<br />
mainstream media). Judicial Watch, a legal reform watchdog organization, is now representing<br />
one of the agents (who has filed an official complaint with the FBI, by the way) and is advocating<br />
for a full investigation." [http://www.judicialwatch org/ 1075. shtml]<br />
There were at least four organizations involved in the planning of the 9/<strong>11</strong> attack on the<br />
WTC: terrorists, the Mossad, the FBI, and the CIA. (The role of an additional<br />
organization will later be elaborated.) These four were pretty much aware of each other’s<br />
participation in the scenario that was unfolding. If the CIA and FBI were already aware<br />
of the presence of the Mossad, why would they be so interested in Nick Berg? Probably<br />
because he could offer the FBI information they did not have – the realization that the<br />
WTC terrorists were really Mossad agents to begin with; that the Mossad really were not<br />
watching the terrorists, but were there to watch their back, if not to make sure they<br />
completed the assignment for which they were recruited.<br />
"It is very evident from surveillance conducted against Mossad agents in the Federal Republic as well<br />
as interceptions of Israeli diplomatic communication from the Federal Republic to Tel Aviv, that the<br />
Mossad has successfully penetrated various extremist Arab groups in both the Federal Republic and<br />
the United States. These investigations disclosed in late May of 2001 that an attack was to be made<br />
against certain specified targets in the American cities of Washington and New York. But it was<br />
apparent that the Mossad was not only fully aware of these attacks well in advance but actually,<br />
though their own agents inside these Arab groups, assisted in the planning and the eventual execution<br />
of the attacks. That the Israeli government was fully aware of these attack is absolutely certain and<br />
proven. Diplomatic traffic between the Israeli Embassy in the Federal Republic and the Israeli Foreign<br />
Office made it very clear that Minister President Sharon was fully aware of this pending attack and<br />
urgently wished that no attempt was made to prevent the attacks." [Translation of BND <strong>Report</strong> on<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001]<br />
Why would elements of the Mossad do such a thing? There are multiple reasons for this<br />
attack, and these will be explained further on in the report. For the moment, it is safe to<br />
say the reasons include the same reason they publicized the death of Nick Berg: to<br />
influence the American public to wage war on Israel’s enemies, and support the new,<br />
right wing Israeli assault on Palestine. Nick Berg knew that, and had to be silenced. Nick<br />
Berg’s father stated that “Al Qaeda had killed their best friend”- which most likely was<br />
the case because Nick was the one person who could clear Al Qaeda of responsibility for<br />
the attack on the World Trade Center. Clearing the name of Al Qaeda, however, is only a<br />
small part of this investigation, because if Al Qaeda did not orchestrate the attack, it begs<br />
the question: who did?<br />
2.4 Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden<br />
With the evidence pointing at Israeli agents, an appropriate question to reflect on is<br />
“What about the ‘confession’ of Osama Bin Laden on videotape captured during the<br />
invasion of Afghanistan? Did he not admit to being responsible the attack?” Americans<br />
probably have all seen the officially translated version of that videotape, where Osama<br />
talks about planning the structural collapse of the building with the jet fuel in the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 45
airliners, and about how the operatives knew nothing of the plan until the last minute.<br />
With Osama directly implicating himself and Mohammed Atta, how does that fit with<br />
this analysis?<br />
The answer to this question is a lot easier to establish than some of the other questions<br />
presented by this investigation. There are a number of observations found in the foreign<br />
press that need to be brought into play, to make four arguments:<br />
1. The videotape “proof” presented by the US Justice Department is a doctored tape.<br />
"Whether or not the voice was his can be debatable. The Arabic-speaking contact of Pravda.Ru in<br />
Lisbon pointed out that anyone could have dubbed on the voices because there are no close-ups of<br />
the lips of the people while speaking. What he could hear was a lot of mumbling and during the<br />
mumbling, the supposed translation comes up with some incriminating phrases." [Timothy<br />
Bancrofy-Hinche, Pravda.Ru]<br />
"Prof. Gernot Rotter, professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the Asia-Africa Institute at the<br />
University of Hamburg sums it up: "The American translators who listened to the tapes and<br />
transcribed them apparently wrote a lot of things in that they wanted to hear but that cannot be<br />
heard on the tape no matter how many times you listen to it." [German TV channel "Das Erste",<br />
on the show Monitor, 12/20/2001]<br />
"Arabist Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini, one of the translators, states, "I have carefully examined the<br />
Pentagon's translation. This translation is very problematic. At the most important places where it<br />
is held to prove the guilt of Bin Laden, it is not identical with the Arabic." [German TV channel<br />
"Das Erste", on the show Monitor, 12/20/2001]<br />
If for some reason, someone would not want to believe the US Government would do<br />
such things, they should talk to Sibel Edmonds, a translator for the FBI, who claimed,<br />
before being legally silenced by the US Attorney General, that her work was distorted:<br />
"FBI translator Sibel Edmonds was offered a substantial raise and a full time job to encourage her<br />
not to go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and<br />
adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>,<br />
2001 by the FBI and CIA. Edmonds, a ten year U.S. citizen who has passed a polygraph<br />
examination, speaks fluent Farsi and Turkish and had been working part time with the FBI for six<br />
months--commencing in December, 2001.<br />
"In a 50 reporter frenzy in front of some 12 news cameras, Edmonds said "Attorney General John<br />
Ashcroft told me 'he was invoking State Secret Privilege and National Security' when I told the<br />
FBI I wanted to go public with what I had translated from the pre 9-<strong>11</strong> intercepts."<br />
“I appeared once on CBS 60 Minutes but I have been silenced by Mr. Ashcroft, the FBI follows<br />
me, and I was threatened with jail in 2002 if I went public," Edmonds told tomflocco.com.[DOJ<br />
Asked FBI Translator To Change Pre 9-<strong>11</strong> Intercepts, by Tom Flocco, 3/24/2004]<br />
To reinforce her story, consider the following report in the Washington Post of a<br />
former CIA agent, suing in US court, that he was forced to distort information about<br />
weapons of mass destruction, and was punished for not complying with the<br />
command.<br />
"WASHINGTON — A senior CIA operative who handled sensitive informants in Iraq asserts that<br />
CIA managers asked him to falsify his reporting on weapons of mass destruction and retaliated<br />
against him after he refused. The operative, who remains under cover, claims in a lawsuit made<br />
public yesterday that a co-worker warned him in 2001 "that CIA management planned to 'get him'<br />
for his role in reporting intelligence contrary to official CIA dogma." ….(The context of the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 46
lawsuit) context make clear the officer's work related to prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of<br />
mass destruction." [Ex-CIA officer alleges agency retaliated after he didn't falsify report, Dana<br />
Priest, The Washington Post, 12/9/2004]<br />
So far, the evidence has demonstrated that an FBI translator, two freelance<br />
translators, a CIA agent and three FBI agents have publicly stated that the US<br />
government has actively falsified evidence in this investigation. For some, this will<br />
come as no surprise.<br />
2. Osama, while never claiming responsibility, has actually denied responsibility, and<br />
said the video ‘discovered’ by the US forces in Afghanistan is a fake. This reference<br />
in the Pakistani press is generally ignored.<br />
"(There is) an interview with the real Osama bin Laden, published in a Karachi, Pakistan<br />
newspaper, the Daily UMMAT, on <strong>September</strong> 28. In that interview, bin Laden denied any<br />
involvement in the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> attacks in the US, and pointed out Islam strictly forbids the<br />
killing of women and children, even in the heat of battle. "[www.Public-Action.com]<br />
In subsequent messages, he continually seeks to instigate defiance against Western<br />
culture – but he has never officially accepted responsibility for the attack on the<br />
WTC.<br />
3. Osama, according to a number of intelligence agencies, is not the person to be<br />
blaming. Whoever actually runs the terrorist operation is an unknown entity.<br />
"Prince Nayef, head of Saudi security observed last week, Osama bin Laden is largely a<br />
figurehead. Its real leaders, said the prince, echoing this column's view, remain as yet unknown<br />
and are likely outside Afghanistan. "[Toronto Sun, 12/17/2001]<br />
4. If Bin Laden is the guilty terrorist the US Government claims he is, why has the<br />
government gone out of its way to avoid capturing him? At least three times (some<br />
reports suggest the US avoided arresting him on at least <strong>11</strong> occasions) prior to the<br />
WTC attack, and once after, American officials have declined to take the steps<br />
necessary when they knew where he was:<br />
"…Bin Laden… was originally offered for extradition by Sudan, but then apparently allowed to<br />
head for Afghanistan in 1996 with barely a whimper from the US. Here is the world's most wanted<br />
man, explaining how he acquired his substantial arsenal during the 1980s: 'I settled in Pakistan, in<br />
the Afghan border region. There I received volunteers, trained by Pakistani and American officers.<br />
The weapons were supplied by the Americans, the money by the Saudis'....." [Guardian,<br />
12/18/2001]<br />
"The Taliban's unprecedented offer to extradite bin Laden to a third country, well before the Sept.<br />
<strong>11</strong> attacks, was reported by the Times of London in February. In <strong>September</strong>, this newspaper<br />
reported on the often cozy relationship between Washington and the Taliban. Last month, the<br />
Washington Post reported that Sudan had offered in 1996 to extradite bin Laden, who was wanted<br />
at that time for attacks on U.S. servicemen in Saudi Arabia.” [Toronto Star, <strong>11</strong>/27/2001]<br />
"Dubai … was the backdrop of a secret meeting between Osama bin Laden and the local CIA<br />
agent in July. A partner of the administration of the American Hospital in Dubai claims that public<br />
enemy number one stayed at this hospital between the 4th and 14th of July..... While he was<br />
hospitalised, bin Laden received visits from many members of his family as well as prominent<br />
Saudis and Emiratis. During the hospital stay, the local CIA agent, known to many in Dubai, was<br />
seen taking the main elevator of the hospital to go to bin Laden's hospital room. A few days later,<br />
the CIA man bragged to a few friends about having visited bin Laden. Authorised sources say that<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 47
on July 15th, the day after bin Laden returned to Quetta, the CIA agent was called back to<br />
headquarters]... According to Arab diplomatic sources as well as French intelligence, very specific<br />
information was transmitted to the CIA with respect to terrorist attacks against American interests<br />
around the world, including on US soil. A DST report dated 7 <strong>September</strong> enumerates all the<br />
intelligence, and specifies that the order to attack was to come from Afghanistan." [The CIA met<br />
Bin Laden while undergoing treatment at an American Hospital last July in Dubai, Le Figaro,<br />
<strong>11</strong>/10/2001]<br />
"US generals made it clear by the end of November that they believed senior al-Qa'eda operatives<br />
were inside Tora Bora. A convoy of several hundred Arab fighters, including bin Laden and his<br />
close associates, entered it from Jalalabad on the night of Nov 12, and the US bombing around the<br />
base intensified three days later. The US strategy bore little logic for those suffering the brunt of<br />
the attacks. 'When we round up a pack of stray sheep, we send in shepherds from four sides, not<br />
just one,' said Malik Osman Khan, a one-eyed tribal chief whose 16-year-old son Wahid Ullah was<br />
one of more than 100 Afghan civilians killed in the intense US bombing ....The eastern<br />
Afghanistan intelligence chief for the country's new government, Pir Baksh Bardiwal, was<br />
astounded that the Pentagon planners of the battle for Tora Bora had failed to even consider the<br />
most obvious exit routes. He said: 'The border with Pakistan was the key, but no one paid any<br />
attention to it. And there were plenty of landing areas for helicopters had the Americans acted<br />
decisively. Al-Qa'eda escaped right out from under their feet.'..."[Daily Telegraph, 2/23/2002]<br />
Bin Laden may be a lot of things, both good and bad, but it seems that being the “fall<br />
guy” (whether intentional or not) for the WTC attack seems to be the most appropriate<br />
interpretation of his role. The US (and British) governments set him up with financing,<br />
weapons and connections. They studiously avoided capturing him, both before and after<br />
the attack on the World Trade Center, and after his classification as “criminal<br />
mastermind.” Unable to find real evidence, they have created fake video evidence of his<br />
guilt. The government has not produced a single shred of reliable evidence, after years<br />
and billions of dollars of searching. A credible case has not been made for his guilt, other<br />
than from a source – American intelligence agencies - that is known by its own<br />
employees to fabricate and distort information.<br />
These facts should not be construed as denial of obvious: Al Qaeda does exist. There are<br />
thousands of angry, young, dispossessed Arab men and women, many of whom are<br />
willing to die to strike out against the powers than have disenfranchised them. Are they<br />
real? Yes. There are angry young men and women whose lives are filled with anger at<br />
seeing their values, families and lives trampled on by what they perceive as greed and<br />
exploitation. Are they a threat to the US? Possibly. Are a certain segment of them<br />
nothing more than criminals? Yes. Were elements of Al Qaeda involved in the attack on<br />
the World Trade Center? Probably. Is Al Qaeda responsible for the attack on the World<br />
Trade Center? – It will become more and more obvious as the results of this investigation<br />
are revealed that Al Qaeda is not the responsible party. Al Qaeda operatives were clearly<br />
used, but by whom, remains unproven by anyone. This report provides testimony to<br />
suggest there is plausible reason to believe that Al Qaeda operatives were being used and<br />
directed by US and Israeli intelligence as a “false flag” operation.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 48
3<br />
Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley<br />
The re-occurrence of grisly, videotaped beheadings of two American hostages in Iraq, in<br />
a manner very similar to the execution of Nick Berg, provided an opportunity to test the<br />
hypothesis that these executions were not quite what they appeared to be. Like the<br />
execution of Nick Berg, there is reason to believe the executions of Americans Eugene<br />
Armstrong and Jack Hensley were not terrorist attacks on innocent victims, but were in<br />
fact, executions administered by the Israeli secret service on individuals who had<br />
willingly cast their fortunes and lives on the sea of international espionage. These<br />
individuals (and their families) were probably being punished - not to influence US<br />
policy, but because they jeopardized the very existence or authority of the Mossad in<br />
Iraq.<br />
In Section 2, (written prior to the murders of Armstrong and Hensley) it was argued that<br />
the execution of Nick Berg was actually a cover-up of the Mossad’s involvement in the<br />
United States and the attack of 9/<strong>11</strong>, and at the same time, a message to their own<br />
organization that ‘loose lips’ are dealt with severely.<br />
When these two Americans were executed three and a half months later - purportedly by<br />
the same individual, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - it seemed appropriate to test the basic<br />
premise of the prior interpretation of events. The initial hypothesis going into the<br />
research was that if these latter public executions did not withstand scrutiny similar to<br />
that imposed on the Nick Berg affair, it may be possible that the interpretation of events<br />
was ‘unreliable.’ The question was: were Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley also spies<br />
killed by the Mossad? Unfortunately, that appears to be the case.<br />
The known facts surrounding this affair are scarcer than those around l’ affaire de Berg<br />
but they point to one conclusion: both Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley most likely<br />
worked in or for the American intelligence world, and were not innocent victims.<br />
The analysis starts with the observation that these gentlemen were not average<br />
Americans. They were not – as the news would suggest - a couple of normal, civil<br />
engineers who were trying to help in the reconstruction of Iraq. They were not normal<br />
‘guys’ who might have worked at one or two local construction or engineering<br />
companies, got laid off, and applied for an overseas job. Like Berg, these gentlemen:<br />
• Traveled internationally, and extensively so;<br />
• Demonstrated exceptional risk-taking behaviors in terms of going places they should<br />
not be;<br />
• Worked for companies with significant contracts to the US intelligence world;<br />
• Consorted with known spies or terrorists;<br />
• Had the FBI investigating their lives; and<br />
• Left behind puzzling questions and contradictions about them in their life stories.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 49
This is not normal.<br />
3.1 Working for Gulf Services<br />
Both gentlemen worked for a major US defense contractor that won the largest of four<br />
contracts to build ‘bases’ in Iraq. They were not there to build schools, repair utilities, or<br />
rebuild Iraq, as they had informed their friends and family. In fact, their work and the<br />
contract won by their employer are ‘classified.’ All we know is what they told their<br />
friends and family, and that appears to be contradictory with the official documentation.<br />
Why the lies?<br />
Second, they were not living on a secure construction site as foreigners usually do under<br />
such contracts, but rather “lived in a wealthy Baghdad neighborhood of villas surrounded<br />
by walls and protected by metal gates and armed guards outside the high-security area<br />
known as the Green Zone.” As one security guard in Iraq noted regarding a contractor<br />
that would live under such conditions: “It is unbelievably naïve.” Interviewing a fellow<br />
employee, an African newspaper quoted the fellow contractor: “Those who have no<br />
military experience almost never travel outside the camps of the military zone designated<br />
Multi-National Division (South East) without an escort. The majority are accompanied by<br />
soldiers in "snatch wagons" - armoured Land Rovers - providing cover with heavy<br />
machine guns and SA80 rifles. Ex-military types, armed to the teeth, also provide<br />
escorts. He took an unnecessary risk. We live on camp and travel with green fleet [the<br />
British army]. There are no ifs, buts and ands about it. It's company policy, we don't<br />
travel without the army. If the army say you don't move, you don't move.”<br />
In fairness, it must be noted that the three kidnapped gentlemen had private security<br />
guards. They were not totally reckless. However, in the week prior to their kidnapping,<br />
they were notified by their guards that the lives of their guards had been threatened, and<br />
that the guards then actually abandoned them. This situation raises significant questions:<br />
1. Why would either government or private guards not be replaced or reinforced by their<br />
employing agency? The scenario suggests the guards were ‘private’ in nature, and<br />
not provided by an agency, but rather by the three hostages themselves.<br />
2. Why would three gentlemen – working hard to send money home (“to make ends<br />
meet”) be taking risks and unnecessarily be spending their own cash on ‘guards’?<br />
3. Why would these gentlemen remain at this home, in a war zone, in an unsecured<br />
region of the city, after being advised of death threats specifically targeted at them?<br />
These are conditions which suggest that the three kidnapped men were involved in<br />
activities above and beyond ‘helping the people of Iraq, and taking care of their families.”<br />
The company that employed them is Gulf Supplies and Commercial Services. The<br />
contract was for $46 million, and was largest of four similar contracts in Iraq, larger than<br />
the other three combined. One would think a major defense contractor is subject to<br />
public scrutiny – but not so Gulf Commercial Services. They have no website that<br />
distributes information, nor is there another single reference to them on the Internet<br />
search engines, other than their linkage to this atrocity. When approached by the media,<br />
the normal media report is that “GSCS has not replied to requests for further<br />
information.”<br />
One reporter was able to gain some insight into Gulf Supplies from confidential sources,<br />
but this information is not verified by another source. Gulf Supplies is a 13-year-old firm<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 50
that provides “technical, logistical and operational support to local and international<br />
clients doing business in the Middle East, Arabian Gulf and Central Asia regions.” Its<br />
customers include Bechtel, CH2M Hill Cos. Ltd., Fluor Corp., Kellogg Brown and Root,<br />
and Parsons Infrastructure and Technology. GSCS has no recorded history of<br />
international construction – unlike an international construction company such as Flour<br />
City International, which recorded one Eugene Armstrong as a Board Director. Gulf<br />
Services maintains itself as a ghost company from the United Arab Emirate. When<br />
people and organizations go out of their way to prevent disclosure, it begs the question –<br />
what is there to hide?<br />
3.2 Eugene Armstrong<br />
Unlike Hensley, Armstrong has not had published the traditional funeral and obituary<br />
announcements. His life is fairly well hidden from the news and Internet references.<br />
The little information available about Mr. Eugene Armstrong is very telling. His cousin,<br />
who managed to avoid the ‘family spokesperson’ control clamped on the families of<br />
these two victims, described Armstrong as a traveling worker, who lived as a youngster<br />
in Germany, and had major work engagements in Bosnia, Angola, and Thailand. (Is it<br />
possible he first crossed paths with Kenneth Bigley in Thailand?) If he was a normal<br />
contractor in these areas, his behavior did not demonstrate it. As an acquaintance of<br />
Armstong’s reported, "He talked about how in Bosnia no one would ride in a pickup<br />
truck with him toward the end because he had so many bullet holes in his truck and he'd<br />
had so many windshields blown out that he was considered to be bad luck." This is<br />
highly reminiscent of Nick Berg’s behavior – being in places he shouldn’t be, often<br />
enough to get caught at it. Evidently, his life-style in Baghdad demonstrated the same<br />
tendency towards risk taking.<br />
Interestingly, November 1995 finds one Eugene Armstrong testifying in Washington as<br />
the spokesperson for the CIA representing of the “Ames Damage Assessment team.”<br />
Ames was the Russian mole in the CIA who leaked the names of hundreds of agents,<br />
causing the death of more than a few. Armstrong was the CIA agent that summarized the<br />
impact of that leak on the CIA field organization. Ames will later be shown (in this<br />
report) to have played a key role in promoting George HW Bush’s role in various aspects<br />
of the financial scandals associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union.<br />
3.3 Jack Hensley<br />
The opening lines of the Jack Hensley story usually read like this: “The past couple of<br />
years were hard on Jack Hensley: part-time jobs at a convenience store, a post office and<br />
as a substitute teacher were not quite enough to support his wife and 13-year-old<br />
daughter, and new opportunities seemed scarce.” This generally strikes us as a story of a<br />
normal guy who fell on hard times, and went to Iraq to make ends meet. For a man who<br />
left a lucrative, professional position – to spend time with his family – ‘going back’ was<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 51
probably not what he wanted. However, he did choose to “go back”- to life a travel and<br />
risk-taking.<br />
Jack liked to travel. Jack his met wife in Columbia, South America. It has also been<br />
noted that he worked for a year and a half in Saudi Arabia. It is also known that Hensley<br />
worked for at least 17 years at Getronics, managing large-scale telecommunications<br />
projects. Getronics is a global firm with locations in 44 countries. Because nothing is<br />
known of these seventeen years, it is speculated that Jack did a number of international<br />
projects, and then left the company to spend time his daughter, after having been absent<br />
as a father. It is of pertinent interest that in reviewing the 150 pages of messages on the<br />
Jack Hensley memorial website that there are numerous people who wrote saying ‘I<br />
worked with Jack…’ at Wang, at his bar etc. – but not a single person, in over 1500<br />
messages said, I worked with Jack at Getronics. It suggests a 17 year black hole.<br />
Getronics holds a number of contracts with the US Defense Intelligence Agency and<br />
National Security Agency, and is described as “one of the leading suppliers of innovative<br />
seat management and secure computing to the DoD (Department of Defense)…and the<br />
intelligence community.” Then, in the space of about three years, there were a series of<br />
acquisitions of the Getronics assets. It was purchased by DigitalNet, which was<br />
purchased by the British firm BAE Systems (formerly British Aerospace)– the fourth<br />
largest arms manufacturer in the world. BAE North America was then purchased by<br />
IDT, (Integrated Defense Technologies), which was then purchased by DRS<br />
Technologies. BAE North America is a leading manufacturer of ‘high performance radio<br />
frequency surveillance equipment used in signals intelligence operations.” [Aerospace &<br />
Defense Market Update, October 2002]. According to DRS’s annual report, DRS is<br />
working heavily with Lockheed-Martin on the “Navy’s network centric tactical warfare<br />
environment.”<br />
Interestingly, Mr. Hensley took interest in conspiracy theorists. In June of 2000, he<br />
traveled to North Carolina to join a radio audience at WTZY, to listen to the conservative<br />
conspiracy advocate Craig Roberts. Jack Hensley was quoted by the local news after the<br />
show: "I like what he's doing, in general – digging and bringing things out that people<br />
need to know." This sounds like Jack had a tendency towards ‘loose lips’ – which is<br />
what got Berg killed.<br />
The second miscellaneous bit of information was shared by his brother, Ty Hensley. Ty<br />
“said he felt that despite their demands, the hostage takers always intended to kill the<br />
hostages. They never called an embassy to communicate their demands, he said. ‘The<br />
terrorists wanted to kill my brother and hurt my family,’ Ty Hensley said.”<br />
The third bit of information comes from Jack’s wife. When asked if she could comment<br />
on what she new about her husband’s kidnapping, “She said she did not know if there had<br />
been any communication between her husband's captors and the Iraqi or American<br />
governments. ‘Nothing that I am privy to. I know there is far more superior intelligence<br />
behind this, both here in the states and in Baghdad, that they know things that I don't<br />
know and, to be honest, I don't need to know them,’ Pati Hensley said. ‘I just need them<br />
to follow through and do what they can to save these two gentlemen’."<br />
The oddities in the Hensley family messages are this: 1) Ty seems fairly convinced that<br />
the attack on Jack is an attack on his family (Was he told this, and if so, why?), and 2)<br />
Pati’s use of the words ‘superior intelligence’ and her desire to not know the truth,<br />
suggests a familiarity with intelligence operations beyond that of a innocent bystander.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 52
These small bits of information beg a number of questions:<br />
• How does a ‘technology expert’ and a ‘professional managing large scale telecomm<br />
projects’ for a Defense company end up being hired to supposedly repair barracks in<br />
Iraq? One must assume he was doing something else.<br />
• Is there a connection with the type of telecommunications work done by Nick Berg?<br />
• Why is there an inconsistent message from the public about why he was in Iraq? His<br />
acquaintances and family are telling the press he was there to build schools and<br />
rebuild Iraq. Why would he tell them that? One must assume it was a cover.<br />
• Why does his wife need to spend time with FBI investigators, reported by the press to<br />
be at her house? Usually, this type of activity is covered by a representative from the<br />
State Department.<br />
All the evidence suggests Jack was a great guy – someone you’d want as a friend. At the<br />
same time, he was a guy who took risks he did not have to - in terms of where he lived,<br />
who he lived with and what he did. There was part of his world his wife didn’t want to<br />
know about.<br />
3.4 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi<br />
Finally, there should be a discussion of the group taking the blame for this outrage.<br />
Looking at a picture of the executioners, the outfits are the same as those from the Nick<br />
Berg execution, the physical size is the same, and the orange jumpsuits are back in the<br />
picture. The video and pictures suggest are these are the same guys that executed Nick<br />
Berg. The US Embassy issued a statement that it’s probably the same group. But… does<br />
the world really know who they are, and is it really Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?<br />
“Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the organisation responsible for the beheadings in Iraq, is regularly<br />
portrayed by the US government as a terrorist mastermind, responsible for activity in places as<br />
widespread as Hamburg, Chechnya, Madrid (train bombing) and Mombassa (hotel bombing). But<br />
while there is no doubt that Zarqawi has committed awful crimes, experts say that accusing him has<br />
become an easy fall-back for the authorities as they struggle to contain the insurgency. There is no<br />
unanimity on whether Zarqawi is a henchman of Osama bin Laden or a rival.”[“A Thug who will stop<br />
at nothing to create pure Islamic Zone in Middle East,” Ewen MacAskill and Rory McCarthy,<br />
Guardian Unlimited, <strong>11</strong>/23/2004]<br />
First, the profile presented by the Guardian Unlimited is not the picture of an Islamic<br />
fundamentalist terrorist. It is the profile an international hit-man, not unlike Carlos the<br />
“Jackal” Ramirez – who, once captured, was buried by the authorities so deep in prison<br />
no one could ever hear his story. (Who is hiding what dark secrets in that case?)<br />
Second, these Iraqi executions do not follow the modus operandi of Abu Musab al-<br />
Zarqawi. His infamous reputation is built on use of weapons of mass murder (bombings<br />
and chemicals) used against those whose religions he disagrees with: Shia Muslims and<br />
Jews. These executions meet none of the three characteristics of his group’s modus<br />
operandi: 1) mass murder, 2) religious affiliation or c) use of bombs and chemicals. Nor<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 53
do the other incidents attributed to his group have attributes of the executions: videotape,<br />
political extortion and kidnapping. There are two totally different modus operandi here,<br />
inexplicable unless there is a totally different agenda or person committing the crimes.<br />
More importantly, however, it should be noted that possibly the only other group that<br />
would have the same enemies as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and have the organization and<br />
skill to execute globally – would be the Mossad.<br />
In a parallel analysis Michel Chossudovsky has documented and argued that Abu Musab<br />
al-Zarqawi was always meant to be a headline for the US war in Iraq.<br />
“An internal document produced by U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, states that "the Zarqawi PSYOP<br />
program is the most successful information campaign to date." (WP, op cit).<br />
The senior commander entrusted with Pentagon's PSYOP operation is General Kimmitt who now<br />
occupies the position of senior planner at US Central Command (USCENTCOM), responsible for<br />
directing operations in Iraq and the Middle East.<br />
"In 2003 and 2004, he coordinated public affairs, information operations and psychological operations<br />
in Iraq -- though he said in an interview the internal briefing must be mistaken because he did not<br />
actually run the psychological operations and could not speak for them. Kimmitt said, "There was<br />
clearly an information campaign to raise the public awareness of who Zarqawi was, primarily for the<br />
Iraqi audience but also with the international audience." [Who is behind "Al Qaeda in Iraq"? Pentagon<br />
acknowledges fabricating a "Zarqawi Legend", Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, April 18,<br />
2006]<br />
Of great intrigue, Zarqawi’s exit from Iraq was also announced by a major media event.<br />
In early 2006, a Christian Science Monitor reporter was “kidnapped” by Zarqawi’s<br />
followers. These followers – according to her report - kept her in a sound proof room, but<br />
allowed her to overhear that Zarqawi would soon be replaced as leader. A month after the<br />
reporter’s release, Zarqawi was reportedly killed in a US bombing. Once again, Zarqawi<br />
is linked to a major media event that seems to be suspect in its circumstances, but results<br />
in intelligence useful to theose who benefit from the attack on Iraq.<br />
A geopolitical explanation is required at this point. Ninety percent of the world Muslim<br />
population is Sunni, and ten per cent is Shia, also known as Shiite. (This schism between<br />
the Muslims dates back 1400 years.) Although a global minority, the conservative Shia<br />
currently controls Iran, and represents 60% of the population of Iraq. Saddam<br />
Hussein was secular, favored the Sunni’s and kept the Shia under control. The threat to<br />
Israel of “real democracy” in Iraq is that it would allow the Shia clerics to re-gain the<br />
control of Iraq that was taken from them by the Sunni’s 500 years ago, and then by the<br />
British in 1920. Shia control of both Iraq and Iran, thus creating a Shia ‘power bloc’<br />
would be an unacceptable threat to Israel, because of the Shiite cleric’s religious<br />
preoccupation with the holy cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. However, with<br />
Shiites focused on their grievances with Sunnis, and both groups attacking each other,<br />
Israel remains safe. With Shiites unable to merge and unify the wealth of Iran and Iraq,<br />
Israel remains safe. Hence, it is ‘fortuitous’ for Israel that there are such a groups as Abu<br />
Musab al-Zarqawi and Al Qaeda that can fragment Muslim unity and polarize the<br />
religious sectors. If these two organizations didn’t exist, Israel might have to invent<br />
them. Once again – as in the Nick Berg story – there arises the specter of the Mossad<br />
masquerading as Muslim terrorists, dealing out death and horror and fanning the flames<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 54
of American outrage, and Muslim disunity. (It is also fortuitous that current efforts in<br />
January 2005 at implementing “partial voting” – using Bush’s argument that “some<br />
democracy is better than none” – happens to disenfranchise a good portion of the Shia<br />
population.)<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 55
4<br />
Central Asian Oil: Motive for 9/<strong>11</strong>?<br />
‘Connecting the dots’ helps demonstrate that the seemingly inconsequential and random<br />
executions of Berg, Hensley and Armstrong are not as they appear, and that Nick Berg’s<br />
murder, timed as it was, was an attempt to silence an FBI investigation into his past. This<br />
report continued the investigation into his past, and discovered his probable involvement<br />
with the attackers of the World Trade Center, the Mossad, the Russian/Israeli Mafiya,<br />
the PNAC (Project for a New American Century), and the Republican Party. It would<br />
seem that someone in one of these groups needed to silence Nick Berg before the FBI got<br />
too close to whatever insights Nick Berg could provide. Someone had something to hide.<br />
Might the secret be that all five groups were linked somehow?<br />
Nick Berg was brought to the attention of the FBI because of his connection to 9/<strong>11</strong>. It is<br />
appropriate to continue the investigative thread around the events of 9/<strong>11</strong>. How were the<br />
groups Nick Berg was linked to associated with the events of 9/<strong>11</strong>? Having established<br />
that Osama Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda are not necessarily the guilty parties in this event, it<br />
becomes necessary to determine who else may have been responsible. So begins the<br />
quest for understanding the motive for 9/<strong>11</strong>.<br />
Figure 2<br />
Many analysts believe the driving force for the attack on the WTC was the US energy<br />
industry’s need, most pertinently headed by Enron’s need, to consummate a pipeline deal<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 56
with Afghanistan, and secure access to Central Asian oil and gas reserves. There are two<br />
(at least) versions of this theory<br />
1. In one version of this explanation, the first Bush administration, under the guidance<br />
of Zbniew Brezinski and Henry Kissinger, formulated and initiated a strategy to<br />
control Central Asian Oil. U.S. covert activities in the region were guided by that<br />
strategy. Prior to his departure from office of the Presidency, Bush put into motion a<br />
number of covert activities that would ensure the continuation of his strategy, despite<br />
prohibitive legislation to the contrary. Those activities would include sending his<br />
former Iran-Contra operatives (Richard Secord, Richard Armitage and Farhad Azima)<br />
into Azerbaijan, and James Giffen in Kazakhstan.<br />
2. In a second version of the Oil cartel explanation, oil industry executives unduly<br />
influenced the American political process through massive contributions to political<br />
campaigns, thus ‘purchasing’ secret influence over policy, regardless of the law of the<br />
land. Under this latter hypothesis, in it’s simplest form, the Taliban government had<br />
reneged on a deal with Unocal (US) and Delta Oil (Saudi) in August of 2001, to allow<br />
Unocal & Delta to build and control a pipeline from the Caspian Basin through<br />
Afghanistan; and awarded the contract to Bridas, an Argentinean firm. The Bush<br />
administration - heavily populated by former energy sector professionals (Bush- Bush<br />
Exploration, Harken Energy, Spectrum 7 Energy Corp. Arbusto Energy Inc; Cheney-<br />
Halliburton; Condoleezza Rice – Chevron; Secretary of the Army, Mr. Tom White –<br />
Enron, to list a few), and with the energy lobby representing the single greatest source<br />
of Bush campaign contributions, planned, executed and covered-up the attack on the<br />
WTC to justify a war with the Taliban government, and a subsequent invasion of Iraq.<br />
According to this explanation of the attack on the World Trade Center, the attack<br />
provided an all-too-convenient excuse for a series of actions that benefited the oil<br />
industry, actions that could not have occurred without the “excuse” of 9/<strong>11</strong> being<br />
used to mobilize the American public and “justify” attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan.<br />
With either theory, there are seven arguments that support the premise that the energy<br />
industry was the primary beneficiary of the attack on the World Trade Center.<br />
• U.S. companies were allowed to benefit from the regained pipeline construction<br />
contracts;<br />
• Enron’s investment in an Indian energy plant, and a Pakistani docking facility at<br />
the Arabian Sea terminal were to have been salvaged, possibly helping Enron<br />
avoid bankruptcy;<br />
• The U.S. strategic interests (both economic and defense) were served by<br />
preventing the flow Caspian Oil through either Russia or Iran,<br />
• The attack allowed the US to create a permanent footprint of US military bases<br />
throughout the area, setting up a sphere of influence in the fourth largest oil<br />
region in the world and establishing a launching pad for an invasion of Iran.<br />
Additionally the establishment of U.S. bases in Afghanistan geographically<br />
mirrors the route of the planned natural gas pipeline. The U.S. had been locked<br />
out of the bidding for this pipeline, just months prior to the invasion. A major<br />
investment by Enron in the region was threatened by the loss of this pipeline.<br />
Now, in a fortuitous change of governments caused by the destruction of a<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 57
conservative Muslim government (in the name of democracy, for the benefit of<br />
specific U.S. oil interests,) these contracts would be awarded to U.S. construction<br />
firms.<br />
Figure 3<br />
US Bases and the Afghan Pipelines<br />
“The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv astutely notes: "If one looks at the map of the big<br />
American bases created (in the Afghan war), one is struck by the fact that they are<br />
completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean."<br />
Ma'ariv also states, "Osama bin Laden did not comprehend that his actions serve<br />
American interests... If I were a believer in conspiracy theory, I would think that bin<br />
Laden is an American agent. Not being one I can only wonder at the coincidence."<br />
[Chicago Tribune, 3/18/02]<br />
• As part of the need to secure Central Asian/Middle Eastern oil, the attack on the<br />
World Trade Center was also leveraged as an excuse to invade Iraq. There was no<br />
proven link between terrorism and the Iraqi government, although a very large<br />
segment of Americans believe this to be true, and President Bush has done nothing to<br />
counter this belief.<br />
“January 31, 2003, when a reporter asked both Bush and British Prime Minister Blair, “Do you<br />
believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 58
<strong>September</strong> the <strong>11</strong>th?” Bush replied, “I can't make that claim.” Blair then replied, “That answers your<br />
question.”[White House, 1/31/2003] A New York Times/CBS poll from earlier in the month<br />
indicates that 45 percent of Americans believe Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was “personally<br />
involved” in the 9/<strong>11</strong> attacks. [New York Times, 3/<strong>11</strong>/2003] The Christian Science Monitor notes,<br />
“Sources knowledgeable about US intelligence say there is no evidence that Hussein played a role in<br />
the Sept. <strong>11</strong> attacks, nor that he has been or is currently aiding Al Qaeda. Yet the White House<br />
appears to be encouraging this false impression….” For instance, Bush claims Hussein has supported<br />
“Al Qaeda-type organizations,” and “Al Qaeda types.” [New York Times 3/9/2003]<br />
Never-the-less, the invasion of Iraq occurred, and while museums, schools and hospitals<br />
went unprotected – securing the oil fields and pipelines remained the primary defensive<br />
strategy for security forces. There too, as in Afghanistan, the placement of military bases<br />
follows the pipeline, as seen in Figure 4. It is fairly safe to assume that the same pattern<br />
of military base placement occurs in the rest of Central Asia as well.<br />
Figure 4<br />
US Bases and the Iraqi Pipeline<br />
Map created by overlaying maps found at the BBC website<br />
• The construction of permanent bases in both countries suggests that the US plans to<br />
‘occupy’ in some sense, these countries – thereby laying claim to the governments<br />
and mineral privileges. Construction contracts for ‘bases’ went to firms traditionally<br />
strong in the petrochemical industry.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 59
"US military bases here (Afghanistan), “originally agreed as temporary and emergency expedients,<br />
are now permanent.” [Guardian, 1/16/2002]<br />
"It is reported that the US military is drawing up a plan for a long-term military “footprint” in<br />
Central Asia. The US says it plans no permanent bases, but the leaders of Central Asia speak of<br />
the US being there for decades, and inside US bases temporary structures are being replaced by<br />
permanent buildings." [AP, 4/30/2002, Washington Post, 8/27/2002, Los Angeles Times,<br />
4/4/2002]<br />
• The observation that a large segment of the Bush administration’s national security<br />
and defense planning structure came from the energy industry, and set national<br />
defense policy lends some suspicion to the objectivity of that policy.<br />
Any and all arguments might easily lead one to conclude that the invasions sparked by<br />
the attack on the World Trade Center were conducted more for the benefit of the<br />
American oil industry that for the sake of world security against “terrorists.” (Although<br />
conspiracy theorists could make a better argument that the invasion of Afghanistan was<br />
meant to control the world heroin trade, with Afghanistan producing 80% to 90% of the<br />
world’s heroin. The world narcotics industry is larger than the gas and oil industry<br />
combined, and more profitable. The current drug war for control of Afghan heroin pits<br />
the Russian military against a strange alliance of the Yeltsin crime Family and its U.S.<br />
allies.)<br />
The hypothesis that the Administration of President Bush “initiated” the attack on the<br />
World center as an excuse for war is based on a set of clues that suggest the President -<br />
knowing the attack would happen - planned the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in<br />
advance. This would require that the President, like the authors of the Project for a New<br />
American Century, believed that a “Pearl Harbor” event was a necessary condition to<br />
invade Afghanistan and Iraq.<br />
What will be demonstrated in this report is that the WTC did not have to be destroyed for<br />
the Central Asian pipeline deals in Afghanistan and Azerbaijan to be successful.<br />
However, the bribes and money laundering behind these pipeline deals were “illegal,”<br />
and the investigative evidence pointing to the money laundering was the target of the<br />
attack on the WTC. While the actual illegal trading and bribing activity leaves very little<br />
physical evidence, money always leaves an audit trail, and that trail was being tracked<br />
and documented in Building Seven, the North Tower and Buildings Four and Six– hence<br />
the need to destroy the entire World Trade Center. In a manner highly reminiscent of the<br />
investigation of the BCCI bank fraud, once the bank’s criminal activities were exposed,<br />
bank records in England were destroyed in multiple warehouses by no less than seven<br />
separate fires, and sixteen material witnesses were murdered.<br />
“There's a lot about BCCI that outsiders will never know. Once the investigations started, there were<br />
seven fires in the fireproof London warehouses where BCCI stored records. In one of them, four<br />
firemen were killed.” [BCCI: The Case that Kerry Cracked, Lucy Komisar]<br />
“The Manhattan D.A. who closed the American branch (of the BCCI) announced that 16 witnesses had<br />
died in the course of investigating the bank's entanglements in covert operations of the CIA, arms<br />
smuggling to Iraq, money laundering and child prostitution.” [The False Memory Alex Constantine,<br />
Copyright © January, 1996]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 60
“There were a lot of BCCI documents in Panama that disappeared because they would have implicated<br />
too many people.” [Outlaw Bank: BCCI, Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, Random House, New<br />
York, 1993, p.79]<br />
The individuals involved in the destruction of the warehouses of BCCI evidence and the<br />
destruction of the WTC are same the individuals linked to the Central Asian money<br />
laundering crimes as well as the theft of Russian and Philippine gold treasuries.<br />
Understanding that the invasion of Afghanistan was not a necessary condition for the<br />
securing of the pipelines allows the analysis to entertain other theories as to why these<br />
individuals felt the need to murder thousands of people in the WTC attacks.<br />
Events in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and related activities in Angola are<br />
generally viewed as independent scenarios, but should not be. When approached from<br />
the perspective of four separate but linked operations, there is a consistent pattern that is<br />
not obvious when analyzing these events one at a time.<br />
• Each operation involves brutal warlords or dictators controlling access to oil.<br />
• Each operation includes reports of US agents trying to legally control access to that<br />
oil by aiding and abetting these dictators and warlords with bribes and IMF loans.<br />
• Each operation involves the provision of weapons, mercenaries and bribes in<br />
exchange for mineral, oil or pipeline rights.<br />
• Each operation involves complex money laundering schemes, involving billions of<br />
U.S. taxpayer dollars provided by the US Export-Import Bank and the IMF.<br />
• Each opeartion involves Halliburton, Saudi oil and American oil companies.<br />
• Each operation involves money flowing through the Deutschebank and/or the Union<br />
Bank of Switzerland (UBS.)<br />
What is generally found to be missing in the reports on these operations are answers to<br />
the questions: “Who is providing the weapons?” and “Where is all the money going?”<br />
The answers are always the same. The Russian/Israeli Mafiya provides the weapons; the<br />
German/Swiss Banking Cartel moves and hides the money (for very significant profit),<br />
and the western oil companies claim the oil revenues. There are generally a number of<br />
smaller banks and other financial intermediaries involved, but the final resting place of<br />
the stolen treasuries generally appears to be a solid bank with vaults deep in the Swiss<br />
Alps.<br />
The provision of illegal weapons around the globe is heavily dominated by the<br />
Israeli/Russian Mafiya, who source their weapons from former Soviet regimes as well as<br />
Israeli firms. Even when the US intelligence agencies wanted weapons for the Contra<br />
rebels, they turned to Russian/Israeli traders (Russians seeking protection from<br />
international law in Israel, with a good participation by indigenous Israelis.) With the<br />
arms merchants, comes the same banking network, the same German banking cartel,<br />
generally fronted by the Deutsche Bank. However, and all too often, news reporters and<br />
investigators lose track of most of the money. That is because the real profiteers are the<br />
bankers, with the old bloodlines of Europe. If every banker that touches the money takes<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 61
2-5%, and the crime requires six or seven fixers, the money disappears fast. (The real<br />
pay-off to the bankers comes when these dictators and war lords die – leaving secreted<br />
accounts in the hands of the bankers.) In that respect, the examples discussed later<br />
(Angola and the Bank of New York) are illustrative in that it generally takes at least four<br />
or five financial companies operating as middlemen to launder the money, not to mention<br />
the bonuses to the buyer and seller. This is probably why Enron and Halliburton have set<br />
up so many offshore subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands – to cut out the middleman and<br />
circumvent US and international law. (Enron was reported to have over 300 Cayman<br />
subsidiaries, Halliburton at least twenty.)<br />
“Cheney's leadership also saw a dramatic increase in subsidiaries located in offshore tax havens—at<br />
least 20 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, alone. —Laura Peterson<br />
“Halliburton is now being investigated by the Securities and Exchange <strong>Commission</strong> for Enron-style<br />
accounting practices that took place while Cheney was CEO.”<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/30/business/30HALL.html<br />
“Halliburton has also provided oil services to Iran in contravention of U.S. sanctions by operating<br />
through a foreign subsidiary based in the Cayman Islands which opened an office in Tehran in 2000.”<br />
—Laura Peterson<br />
These oil and gas operations, however, help expose a larger criminal pattern. In this<br />
pattern, the leaders of these countries (or in the case of Afghanistan, tribes) allow their<br />
national treasuries to be siphoned-off in an array of financial maneuvers abetted by large<br />
corporations and international scam artists, and hide this money with the expertise of the<br />
German/Swiss Banking Cartel. This pattern is exposed in Germany, the Soviet Union,<br />
Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Angola, and Philippines and with all probability,<br />
the US.<br />
Here is the larger story: the theft of these treasuries is what the destruction of the WTC<br />
was meant to cover-up. Investigations into these lesser operations in Azerbaijan,<br />
Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and Angola would have stumbled on Swiss and Deutschebank<br />
accounts and transfers that if investigated, would expose a grander scheme. In this grand<br />
scheme, the Bush ‘syndicate’ are “nickel players” in a “dollar-ante” game, and while<br />
their support was provided to the cartel in the form of cover-up, they were paying their<br />
dues as ‘wannabe’-players. Their goal – other than the furtherance of the security of the<br />
United States- is to become coupon clippers at the Board of Director meetings, to become<br />
the guys that bring the money to the meeting, rather than being the guys who leave the<br />
meetings with all the dirty work. Had George Bush and his Iran-Contra colleagues<br />
allowed the German/Swiss bank scheme to come unraveled, their own involvement in<br />
various money-laundering schemes as well as ‘misplacement’ of $3.3 trillion of the US<br />
assets would come under investigation. They- as the implementers of these schemes –<br />
would be held liable if exposed, while the financial backers walked away clean. Such is<br />
the deep pocket methodology that controls the legal system.<br />
Not widely reported, the US government has somehow “misplaced” 3.3 trillion dollars<br />
during the late 1990s. Donald Rumsfeld announced to the press on <strong>September</strong> 10, 2001<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 62
that 2.2 trillion dollars was missing from the DOD accounts – but the world was too preoccupied<br />
the next day to worry about the world’s largest heist.<br />
“the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Department of Defense (DOD) and<br />
some of the other federal agencies for which … DynCorp manages highly sensitive information<br />
systems are reported to be missing…over $3 trillion since fall of 1997….” [ The Hijackers of Harvard,<br />
Catherine Austin Fitts (Former Assistant Secretary of Housing, First Bush Administration), On-Line<br />
Journal.com, 2/21/2002]<br />
The interesting point made by Catherine Fitts (Former Assistant Secretary of Housing,<br />
First Bush Administration) is that the “same people” involved in the BCCI fraud, (hence<br />
the theft of the Russian and Philippine treasuries) are now associated with what some call<br />
the world’s largest money-laundering scheme – Enron – about the same time as 3.3<br />
trillion dollars goes missing from the US Treasury.<br />
“Catherine: I was hired by the first Bush administration to help clean up $100 billion sized financial<br />
frauds. These had to do with Iran Contra, the S&L crisis, BCCI and the HUD scandal. I was there for<br />
18 months…we've seen the government readily permit the transfer of Enron Online -- which I believe<br />
was a money-laundering and slush fund operation -- to the Swiss bank, UBS, one of their largest<br />
creditors. So now it's very possible that a great deal of information that would be needed for a proper<br />
investigation is under the protection of the privacy laws of a Swiss bank. And by the way, it's very<br />
interesting, and perhaps quite significant, to note that the newest Board member of UBS, the bank that<br />
purchased the Enron Online operation, is the former chairman of Arthur Anderson. Enron was also<br />
permitted to have the gold bullion and gold derivatives trading operation transferred. Understand that<br />
to be able make these two transfers, as quickly and quietly as they were, in the middle of an initial<br />
bankruptcy filing, was nothing short of miraculous based on what I'm told by bankruptcy attorneys. In<br />
combination with the shredding, it permitted the coordination of cover-up of two things: money<br />
laundering and a lot of financial fraud between the banks and the entity itself.” [Enron: An Anatomy<br />
of a Cover-Up. Dennis Bernstein's interview with Catherine Austin Fitts, 3/12/2002]<br />
“We had a huge amount of money disappear from the accounts of all these federal agencies: General<br />
Accounting Office (GAO) (and Inspector General) reports and testimony document that $59 billion<br />
was missing from HUD in fiscal 1999, and $17 billion was missing in fiscal 1998, and they refused to<br />
say how much was missing in fiscal 2000. So I was trying to figure out how you could launder<br />
hundreds of billions of dollars (stolen from the federal government) starting in the fall of 1997,<br />
because that is so much money that you can't just run it (launder it) through a pizza restaurant. You are<br />
talking about a huge amount of money and you are talking about something that JP Morgan, Lockheed,<br />
DynCorp and Arthur Anderson would have to be part of.” [Enron: An Anatomy of a Cover-Up.<br />
Dennis Bernstein's interview with Catherine Austin Fitts, 3/12/2002]<br />
“So, in the fall of 1997 there was an explosion of revenues (at Enron Online), with nobody being able<br />
to explain where the revenues came from. They just say it's very complicated, it's "derivatives," you<br />
know. Well that's ridiculous. In my experience, if you can't explain something, then something is<br />
wrong. So I'm looking for the missing money: there is over $3.3 trillion missing from federal<br />
government agencies over a 3-year period, and my big question is, “Is Enron the laundromat," and is<br />
that why Congress is covering this up?”<br />
“Fitts: As far as I'm concerned, Ken Lay was just the lead patsy. We're talking about a top ten Fortune<br />
500 company with annual revenues exceeding $100 billion---which suddenly fell off the map. What<br />
the Enron CEO's made was nothing compared to what the inside-trading investors made---both with<br />
corporate assets liquidated out before the implosion or in the pump and dump of stocks. And many of<br />
these investors look to be from the same syndicate that I saw playing the Iran-Contra/S&L game in the<br />
eighties…. in testimony already, former Chief Accountant of the SEC, Lynn Turner, offered that these<br />
banks and investment banks "shopped their structured finance vehicles'' around to other corporations.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 63
Turner indicated that in one case where the SEC was able to intercede on his watch, a bank had people<br />
sign privacy agreements as not to divulge details of the scheme proposed to regulators and others.”<br />
[The Real Deal About Enron (Part 1), Catherine Austin Fitts, Sanders Research Associates 4/3/2003]<br />
Fitts’ questions are pertinent in that besides the obvious energy scams (such as that which<br />
created a financial crisis for the State of California) Enron also created Enron Online, the<br />
world’s largest on-line trading site. This site traded oil, gas, electricity as energy<br />
commodities, but included (surprisingly) gold, gold derivatives and even bundled<br />
mortgage derivatives from HUD. During the Enron bankruptcy proceedings, Enron On-<br />
Line was reportedly “given” to UBS at no cost, and any potential audit trail fell under the<br />
control of a protected Swiss bank. Enron On-line would have been a critical component<br />
of a laundry scheme to convert large blocks of stolen wealth into other forms of assets. If<br />
Enron On-line didn’t exist, major money launderers would have had to create it to<br />
manage the thousands of daily transactions required for major money laundering activity.<br />
While Enron On-line allowed computers to create volumes of small trades to avoid<br />
regulatory control, the collapse of Enron and it’s bankruptcy assignment to UBS shielded<br />
the audit trail from exposure. The rest of the evidence was destroyed with the WTC.<br />
The money of the various oil operations involved in Central Asia (including Halliburton<br />
and Enron, both key players in Afghanistan,) starts to cross paths at the Deutsche Bank<br />
and UBS. Here is where one finds the ‘old men of Europe’ – secretive names that rarely<br />
show up in the press, and old family names changed to hide the lineage. Here is where<br />
the money stops. When all the investigations spawned by the money-laundering of the<br />
late 1990s began to narrow the search to these banks, it was these old men and families of<br />
Europe who had to be protected. These are the families that “own” the banks through<br />
holding companies based in offshore countries, where the laws are controlled so that the<br />
owners’ names do not need to be divulged. The physical assets however, are in Swiss<br />
vaults, as the offshore banks can never offer the types of security guarantees offered by a<br />
Swiss bank. Here, they can be ‘frozen’ under a new set of anti-money laundering laws<br />
that went into effect in 1998, thus magnifying the risk the U.S. investigations posed.<br />
Clues that Point to Money-Laundering<br />
To fully understand the Afghani events, which many 9/<strong>11</strong> writers focus on, one must<br />
understand a coordinated set of covert activities being undertaken in Central Asia at that<br />
time. Prior to the attack on the World Trade Center, there were a number of seemingly<br />
independent, US covert operations occurring in many Central Asian countries, but<br />
primarily: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan. This report suggests<br />
the Kazakhstan operation is also linked to covert activities in Angola. The central figures<br />
in these ‘theatres of operations’ are Richard Cheney, Richard Secord, Richard Armitage<br />
and George Bush Sr. Research demonstrates that covert activities in these regions were<br />
supported by additional participants from the Iran-Contra and October Surprise Scandals<br />
of the 1980s. These participants include David Kimche (Mossad), Adnan Khashoggi<br />
(Saudi), and Farhad Azima (arms merchant and airline owner). The central institutions<br />
in these operations are Halliburton, Unocal, Delta Oil, Enron, Union Bank of Switzerland<br />
(UBS), Credit Suisse, the Bank of New York, and the Deutschebank. In the background<br />
of these operations one finds the Russian/Israeli Mafiya and arms merchants. Their base<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 64
of operations was Azerbaijan. (For the benefit of readers not familiar with the events of<br />
the Iran-Contra scandal, and how this group single-handedly turned the Carter-Reagan<br />
election in favor of Reagan, and how they subverted the will of Congress – these events<br />
are reviewed in Section 4.3 Richard Secord, UBS and the Azerbaijan Connection.)<br />
This is an extremely high-powered group of individuals which had been thoroughly<br />
tested on more than one occasion in its ability to execute large scale covert operations<br />
and maintain silence in the face of being ‘caught in the act.’ They were the “A” team.<br />
Their reunion in Azerbaijan demands an answer to the question: “Why was this high<br />
powered team working together in a small, impoverished corner of the world?” The<br />
answer to that question is revealed in this report. As their activities are disclosed, and the<br />
dots connected, it becomes clear that this group – more so than Osama Bin Laden and Al<br />
Qaeda - had the wherewithal to direct the events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. More importantly, it<br />
will be shown that Osama Bin Ladin (and his mujahedin) was a contractor to this group,<br />
and that even up to 2001, the press was reporting that Osama Bin Ladin was a<br />
‘figurehead’ for Al Qaeda, with the real leadership being unknown. Kimche, as an<br />
integral member of this “A” team, had developed a loyal following with ex-KGB agents<br />
he had helped escape to Israel, and had access to both the Mossad and the Russian/Israeli<br />
Mafiya. Together, this “A Team” had access to all the right resources, had connections to<br />
the same banks and had a vested interest in helping bring to an end the investigations into<br />
their gold and money-laundering, illegal bribes and securities fraud.<br />
There are three primary clues in the volumes of 9/<strong>11</strong> data that point to the conclusion that<br />
the attack on the WTC was an attempt to stop investigations into money-laundering. Each<br />
clue reinforces the legitimacy of the other clues. Those clues are:<br />
1. The accusation of Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator who was silenced with a<br />
constraining order from public comment by Attorney General Ashcroft. After the<br />
attack on the World Trade Center, the FBI hired extra translators to help with a<br />
backlog of taped phone transmissions. One of these translators was Sibel Edmonds<br />
who has gone on public record accusing the Bush administration of covering up its<br />
knowledge of events which would help explain 9/<strong>11</strong>. Sibel Edmonds - after reading<br />
and interpreting raw intelligence data - contends that the 9/<strong>11</strong> perpetrators were<br />
protected by Dick Cheney’s “intelligence block” which prevented the investigation<br />
into terrorists. Since making her accusations, she has been silenced by a restraining<br />
order from US Attorney General Ashcroft, in the name of national security. The<br />
essence of her accusation is as follows:<br />
“To this date the public has not been told of intentional blocking of intelligence, and has not been<br />
told that certain information, despite its direct links, impacts and ties to terrorist related activities,<br />
is not given to or shared with Counterterrorism units, their investigations, and countering terrorism<br />
related activities. This was the case prior to 9/<strong>11</strong>, and remains in effect after 9/<strong>11</strong>. If<br />
Counterintelligence receives information that contains money laundering, illegal arms sale, and<br />
illegal drug activities, directly linked to terrorist activities; and if that information involves certain<br />
nations, certain semi-legit organizations, and ties to certain lucrative or political relations in this<br />
country, then, that information is not shared with Counterterrorism, regardless of the possible<br />
severe consequences. In certain cases, frustrated FBI agents cited `direct pressure by the State<br />
Department,' and in other cases `sensitive diplomatic relations' is cited. The Department of Justice<br />
Inspector General received detailed and specific information and evidence regarding this issue<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 65
(Please refer to DOJ-IG report Re: Sibel Edmonds and FBI Translation, provided to you prior to<br />
the completion of your report). I provided your investigators with a detailed and specific account<br />
of this issue, the names of other witnesses willing to corroborate this, and the names of certain<br />
U.S. officials involved in these transactions and activities. (Please refer to tape-recorded 3.5 hours<br />
testimony by Sibel Edmonds, provided to your investigators on February <strong>11</strong>, 2004).” [Letter to<br />
Thomas Kean from Sibel Edmonds]<br />
“… (Sibel Edmonds) claims that certain well known politicians in this country have been<br />
receiving illegal campaign contributions from organizations involved in drugs and arms<br />
trafficking, and terrorism. That fact is extremely important because Edmonds claims that she<br />
discovered evidence of the 9/<strong>11</strong> plot in intercepts that were not part of counter-terrorism<br />
investigations, but that were part of counter-intelligence investigations related to money<br />
laundering. And that money laundering was for cleansing the proceeds from arms and drug<br />
smuggling. Most likely, she was translating intercepts of Azerbaijani businessmen or politicians<br />
that were involved in laundering large quantities of cash raised by Afghan heroin smuggling. She<br />
has also made clear that the drug dealers and the arms dealers are mixed up together and that the<br />
divisions become blurred between these organizations. So, what kind of people have experience<br />
in money laundering, arms smuggling, and drug smuggling, but who also are known to have been<br />
involved in Azerbaijan? The most famous Americans with such experience are the veterans of the<br />
Laos war during Vietnam. Many of them were later implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, which, of<br />
course, involved money laundering, arms, and drug smuggling. Among these crafty spooks are<br />
such veterans as Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, Farhad Azima and Richard Armitage. To this<br />
list, we must also add a little known charlatan named Gary Best.”<br />
This revelation offers a close link to what FBI translator Sibel Edmonds told TomFlocco.com<br />
three weeks ago regarding what she heard during FBI intercept translations, telling us she<br />
personally identified ten well-known Americans who are politicians and heads of federal agencies<br />
linked to drug-money laundering in the federal banking system which was used for political<br />
campaigns--but also linked to financing the World Trade Center/Pentagon 9-<strong>11</strong> attacks. She has<br />
yet to divulge the names, however. [Missile & remote control systems added to small jets before<br />
9-<strong>11</strong>; same parts found at Pentagon, Tom Flocco, TomFlocco.com, 5/26/2005]<br />
To understand the activities Sibel Edmonds was referring to, operations in both in<br />
Azerbaijan and Afghanistan must be understood, because the types of activities Sibel<br />
was reporting were happening in both countries. Sibel Edmonds’s language skills as<br />
a translator were Turkish, Farsi (Iran) and Azerbaijani, so there is a predisposition to<br />
assume she was prevented by the block from translating records from the Azerbaijani<br />
region.<br />
2. The co-location in the North Tower of the WTC of the FBI investigation into two<br />
seemingly independent crimes: illegal gold trades and Kazakhstangate – the illegal<br />
payment of bribes to Kazakhstan officials by Mobil Oil representatives Giffen and<br />
Williams. Co-location suggests the two investigations were related, but there is other<br />
reason to believe that to be the case. Additional evidence suggests the money<br />
laundering involved in both cases crosses paths through the Deutsche Bank and<br />
Credit Suisse. Evidence is later presented in the report which indicates that the secret<br />
services of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan were working together, in unison with Richard<br />
Secord and David Kimche (Mossad), so any investigation into Kazakhstan bank<br />
accounts probably would have carried over into Azerbaijani bank activity.<br />
3. FBI counter-terrorism chief John O’Neill’s accusation that Vice President Dick<br />
Cheney officially blocked investigation into Afghan terrorist activities by the FBI so<br />
to protect oil industry interests. O’Neill’s accusations, however, are broader than just<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 66
Dick Cheney’s “intelligence block.” As early as 1996, the Department of State had<br />
been blocking his investigations in the Middle East - Yemen and Saudi Arabia<br />
specifically.<br />
“Jean-Charles Brisard, who wrote a report on bin Laden's finances for the French intelligence<br />
agency DST and is co-author of Hidden Truth, met O'Neill several times last summer. He<br />
complained bitterly that the US State Department - and behind it the oil lobby who make up<br />
President Bush's entourage - blocked attempts to prove bin Laden's guilt.<br />
The US ambassador to Yemen, Ms Barbara Bodine, forbade O'Neill and his team … from entering<br />
Yemen. In August 2001, O'Neill resigned in frustration and took up a new job as head of security<br />
at the World Trade Centre. He died in the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>th attack.<br />
Brisard and his co-author Guillaume Dasquié, the editor of Intelligence Online, say their book is a<br />
tribute to O'Neill. The FBI agent had told Brisard: "All the answers, everything needed to<br />
dismantle Osama bin Laden's organisation, can be found in Saudi Arabia."<br />
But US diplomats shrank from offending the Saudi royal family. O'Neill went to Saudi Arabia<br />
after 19 US servicemen died in the bombing of a military installation in Dhahran in June 1996.<br />
Saudi officials interrogated the suspects, declared them guilty and executed them - without letting<br />
the FBI talk to them. "They were reduced to the role of forensic scientists, collecting material<br />
evidence on the bomb site," Brisard says.<br />
O'Neill said there was clear evidence in Yemen of bin Laden's guilt in the bombing of the USS<br />
Cole in which 17 US servicemen died, but that the State Department prevented him from getting<br />
it." [Oil Interests: Bush Obstructed FBI Investigation, By V.K.Shashikumar, New Delhi,<br />
November 21, 2001]<br />
These clues (1. the accusations of Sibel Edmonds, 2. the FBI investigations into<br />
Kazakhstan, and 3. the accusations of John O’Neill) point to five distinctly separate, but<br />
inherently related sets of events, occurring in the same time period – starting in the early<br />
1990s through 2001. Together, these seemingly unrelated events demonstrate a larger<br />
pattern of investigation into the German banking cartel by US investigators.<br />
• the James Giffen (aka Geffen)/Bryon and the Credit Suisse scandal involving Mobil<br />
Oil, Phillips Oil, Chevron and Halliburton in Kazakhstan, which while reported as<br />
isolated to the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), seems to avoid reporting<br />
involvement of Marc Rich (Russian Mafiya/Israeli) and his use of the Bank of New<br />
York/Cayman Islands/Deutsche Bank chain for his money laundering and oil swap<br />
operations ;<br />
• the Mega Oil operations in Azerbaijan, involving the former Iran-Contra guns for<br />
drugs operatives and their UBS accounts;<br />
• Enron and Unocal operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, using Deutsche Bank<br />
channels to funnel money through the Pakistanis to the Afghanis;<br />
• the Kevin Ingram scandal in which this Deutsche Bank executive was convicted of<br />
laundering money for weapons purchases for Muslim terrorists through Pakistani<br />
agents; and<br />
• The Bank of New York Russian money laundering scandal, in which Russian funds<br />
were being sent back to Russia via the Cayman Islands, where they were being picked<br />
up by the Deutsche Bank and Banker’s Trust.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 67
These were the five incidents brought to light as part of a broader investigation by the<br />
agencies housed in the WTC, Together they suggest that consecutive US administrations<br />
had sought to further the interests of the US and Saudi Oil companies in Central Asia and<br />
Russia, and had undertaken covert operations to do so. In and by itself, while these<br />
activities to some may be reprehensible, they are not all illegal (In many countries,<br />
money-laundering is not illegal). There is however, a common thread buried in the detail<br />
which is illegal: money laundering used for heroin, weapons and bribes, as well as at<br />
least three assassinations. Finally, lest not anyone forget, there were probably up to<br />
several trillion dollars of stolen national treasuries open to discovery and disclosure in<br />
these accounts. With the same ‘players’ being involved in so many of these activities,<br />
their German/Swiss bank accounts represents a house of cards, and any one investigation<br />
into any one of the aforementioned crimes could lead to a major exposure of the world’s<br />
greatest criminals – and their criminal bankers!<br />
4. 1 Caspian Oil<br />
Before the Central Asian money-laundering activities can be explained, the Afghan<br />
pipeline, and the lesser discussed BTC (Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan) pipeline from Azerbaijan<br />
through Turkey, need to be understood with some geographical context. At one time, the<br />
Caspian Sea Basin was considered to be the fourth largest oil reserve in the world,<br />
although the actual reserves have been significantly downgraded to between 6% and 25%<br />
of the original estimates since 9/<strong>11</strong>. The oil fields were largely undeveloped by the<br />
Soviet Union during its reign of control. Three of the four largest oil fields in the<br />
Caspian basin are located in Kazakhstan: Tengiz, Karachaganak and Kashagan. The<br />
fourth field is located in Azerbaijan: the Azeri-Chirac-Guneshli field. The region also<br />
includes the world’s fourth largest natural gas reserves in Turkmenistan. Kazakhstan,<br />
Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are landlocked, thus requiring pipelines to export the<br />
reserves to market.<br />
The current pipelines out of the Caspian move oil north, through Russia. An alternative<br />
pipeline was planned to the south, through Iran. Having Caspian oil and gas flow through<br />
either Russia or Iran was not a situation that the US and Saudi oil companies wished to<br />
have happen. Nor was Russia willing to allow US owned oil flow through its pipeline.<br />
The only options available to the US and Saudi oil firms were controlling the Afghan<br />
and/or the BTC pipeline through Turkey. The Russians were investing in surrogate<br />
military forces which they hoped would control the political situations in Azerbaijan and<br />
Afghanistan to a point that US and Saudi interests and partners were prevented from<br />
controlling the oil and gas. In the meantime, the US and Saudis were investing in<br />
surrogate forces in Dagestan, Chechnya and Azerbaijan to help counter Russian forces.<br />
Most Americans continue to believe the Chechnyan conflict was a religious, political<br />
conflict. The truth however is that the conflict in Chechnya was always about controlling<br />
the pipeline (and the heroin traffic).<br />
Generally ignored in the economic overview of Caspian Oil, is a discussion of the vast<br />
gold wealth, as well as opium and heroin, found in this region. Long before oil became a<br />
global battleground, gold and heroin trafficking had attracted the Russian/Israeli Mafiya<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 68
to this region. Kazakhstan is reported to hold 20% of the world’s gold reserves. The<br />
Caspian basin was Russian Mafiya turf before the oil companies appeared on the scene,<br />
and payoffs to the Russian/Israeli Mafiya were absolutely critical. Under American law,<br />
Figure 5<br />
Central Asian Pipelines<br />
these payoffs were illegal, and punishable by severe penalties. Keeping the payments<br />
secret is equally important to the Russian/Israeli Mafiya, who are being prosecuted in<br />
French, English, Russian and Nederland’s courts for tax evasion and money laundering.<br />
(Historic example – the FBI could only convict Al Capone of tax evasion. The same<br />
phenomenon seems to hold for these Russian/Israeli criminals as well.)<br />
With regional wealth, one finds significant inroads by Russian and Saudi organized<br />
crime:<br />
“Kazakhstan's location as a transit point from Central Asia to Russia-and hence to Europe-makes it a<br />
channel for drug smuggling and people trafficking, particularly where women are concerned. The<br />
president's tight control over the security services and the main lucrative industries in Kazakhstan<br />
arguably limits to some extent the ability of Kazakh organised criminal groups to penetrate the official<br />
economy. However, Russian mafia groups-with links to the Russian oil and gas industry-are reported<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 69
to have played a part in organising some of Kazakhstan's oil deals with both Russian and Western<br />
companies”. [Country Profile: Kazakhstan, Economist On-Line Store]<br />
“The Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi families are not coincidentally involved in oil field development<br />
projects in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.” [Part 1: Big Oil, the United States and<br />
corruption in Kazakhstan, Larry Chin, Online Journal Contributing Editor May 12, 2002]<br />
As the Soviet Union faded into history in 1991, the region struggled - as it still does –<br />
with different groups competing for control of the resources. Those historic struggles of<br />
area ethnic groups were re-surfaced, and added to that mix were elements of<br />
Russian/Israeli organized crime, US covert intelligence and Saudi investors. These latter<br />
two groups were simply “buying” their way into a territory opening itself up to market<br />
forces – much like one buys distribution access to retail in New York City by paying<br />
tribute to the Mafia.<br />
While US and Saudi oil companies were “buying” access to Caspian oil, many other<br />
western companies were being forced out of the region. It was reported that 35 Canadian<br />
businesses had been forced to evacuate Russia as a result of Mafiya pressures during the<br />
late 1990s. Two companies managed to establish a rapprochement with the Mafiya: one<br />
of them was Barrick Gold. Also, from Barrick’s Annual <strong>Report</strong>, one discovers that<br />
Barrick had leveraged for itself a significant position in Kazakhstan, in a partnership with<br />
Celtic Resources Holdings Limited PLC:<br />
“We have an equity position in Celtic and have back-in rights to participate on an exclusive basis for<br />
up to 50% in any assets acquired in Kazakhstan and to certain other assets including the<br />
Nezhdaninskoye project.”<br />
In connection with Barrick’s plan to develop a business unit in Russia and Central Asia, Barrick<br />
acquired a 10% equity interest in Highland Gold Mining Ltd. (“Highland”) in October 2003. In<br />
January 2004, Barrick acquired an additional equity interest, bringing its total equity interest to<br />
approximately 14% at December 31, 2004, in Highland and certain participation and other rights with<br />
respect to properties in Russia. In January 2005, Barrick acquired a 9% equity interest in Celtic<br />
Resources Holdings PLC (“Celtic”). In addition, Barrick acquired additional subscription rights for<br />
shares in Celtic and certain rights with respect to a property in Russia and certain participation rights<br />
with respect to properties in Kazakhstan.” [Barrick Annual Information Form, December, 2004]<br />
Barrick’s singular ability to maintain a presence in Russia and Central Asia, when all<br />
legitimate companies are being forced out, or taken over, suggests they have a special<br />
relationship with the ex-KGB Russian/Israeli Mafiya. This relationship is best explained<br />
by the earlier hypotheses of this report that Barrick may be a major gold laundering<br />
operation used to launder thousands of tons of gold stolen from various treasuries,<br />
including those of the former Soviet Union. It can be further explained by the<br />
“partnership” between Barrick and Nelson Gold, noted in the Barrick annual report.<br />
Nelson Gold is a subsidiary of Nelson Resources – run by Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, and<br />
probably successor to Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev will later be<br />
shown to be extensively involved in money laundering and illegal oil deals, with this<br />
same cast of suspicious characters. This relationship does not bring any new evidence to<br />
this report other than to validate that the individuals being investigated for Central Asian<br />
activities are the same as those involved in the probable Barrick’s gold operation.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 70
4.2 Azerbaijan<br />
Because of the restraining order imposed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, analysts<br />
can only speculate that Sibel Edmonds is referring to payments and transaction stemming<br />
from the Mega Oil/ Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) operation in<br />
Azerbaijan. (Another possible group is the Farwest/Diligence/Halliburton, which is<br />
reviewed in a later section, but essentially involves the same players.) This speculation is<br />
due to Edmond’s linguistic skills being limited to Turkic languages, with her attention<br />
being focused on activities in that region of the Caspian.<br />
In Azerbaijan, one finds a large cast of participants all linked through supporting roles in<br />
the Iran-Contra Scandal and its cover-up. (The Iran-Contra scandal, the October Surprise<br />
manipulation of the Presidential election by George Bush Sr., the deliberate sabotage of a<br />
US rescue attempt of US hostages in Iran, and the cover-up of these activities is reviewed<br />
in a subsequent section of this report, to demonstrate the collaborative history of these<br />
individuals.) In Azerbaijan, these individuals are<br />
• Adnan Khashoggi, whose Azerbaijan banks "played a big part in the formation of<br />
terrorist camps and in the opening of laboratories for developing chemical and<br />
bacteriological weapons in Nagornyy Karabakh.’<br />
• Richard Secord, a former U.S. Air Force major general who been helping to recruit<br />
and train the Azerbaijani army as well as regional secret services;<br />
• Richard Armitage, acting as a consultant to Halliburton and Unocal at the time, and<br />
President of the US-Azerbaijani Chamber of Commerce;<br />
• Farhad Azima, arms merchant with Iranian background, member of US-Azerbaijani<br />
Chamber of Commerce, assisted Richard Secord in recruiting and training mujahedin<br />
mercenaries, owns the Azerbaijan Airlines, and has a twenty year old relationship<br />
with the Bush family enterprise;<br />
• Khalid bin Mahfouz, owner, with the bin Laden family and members of the Saudi<br />
royal family of the Saudi companies Delta Oil and Nimir Oil. Both are partners with<br />
Unocal in Azerbaijan.<br />
• Dick Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, lobbyist for the Azerbaijan International<br />
Operating Company, on US-Azerbaijani Chamber of Commerce;<br />
• David Kimche, Israeli Mossad agent who brought Israeli agents into Azerbaijan at the<br />
request of Secord, and worked with Secord and the regional secret service<br />
organizations.<br />
The essence of the Azerbaijan operation was an effort by former Iran-Contra conspirators<br />
to illegally support (support was made illegal by the US Congress) the despotic<br />
government of Azerbaijan in its war against Russian backed Armenia. In doing so, they<br />
supposedly sought to protect for US and Saudi Oil interests a western access to the<br />
Caspian Oil basin, and one of the four largest oil fields in the region. They did so by<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 71
illegally recruiting Afghan mujahedin mercenaries to fight for Azerbaijan (against<br />
Russian backed Armenians), using Mega Oil as the financial cover. (This approach<br />
appears to be part of the CIA handbook. This same approach of using an oil company as<br />
cover for covert operations was used in the 1970s, with right wing CIA trained death<br />
squads in South America masquerading as Bridas employees. This is the same Bridas<br />
that competed for the Afghan pipeline rights.)<br />
“Over the course of the next two years, the company they founded procured thousands of dollars worth<br />
of weapons and recruited at least two thousand Afghan mercenaries for Azerbaijan - the first<br />
mujahedin to fight on the territory of the former Communist Bloc. And they did it under the guise of<br />
an oil company… - MEGA Oil - … we have discovered no documentary evidence to tie MEGA Oil, as<br />
an entity, definitively to the United States government. There is however considerable evidence that all<br />
three prime movers in the company - former Iran-Contra conspirator Richard Secord, legendary Air<br />
Force special operations commander Harry "Heinie" Aderholt, and the man known as either a<br />
diabolical con-man or a misunderstood patriot, Gary Best - were in the past involved in some of the<br />
most infamous activities of in the history of the CIA.” [God Save the Shah: American Guns, Spies and<br />
Oil in Azerbaijan; by Mark Irkali, Tengiz Kodrarian and Cali Ruchala; May 22, 2003]<br />
It is of small historic note that of the mercenaries procured by Secord, one of them was<br />
actually Osama Bin laden:<br />
“In the summer of 1993, Azerbaijan’s President Heydar Aliyev hired over 1,000 Islamist mercenaries<br />
in the war against Nagorno Karabakh Armenians. They were flown on civilian aircraft from<br />
Afghanistan to Azerbaijan. The mercenaries, including Arab veterans of the Afghan war (`1979-89`),<br />
took an active role in the Karabakh conflict (Moscow News 9/13/00). One of Bin Laden’s associate<br />
claimed that Bin Laden himself led mujahedin in at least two battles in Nagorno Karabakh.”<br />
[Associated Press <strong>11</strong>/14/99]<br />
Secord also brought the Mossad into Azerbaijan, which confirms reports that Israelis<br />
fought side-by-side with mujahedin. In the news report of David Kimche’s involvement,<br />
is the very important observation that not only are the Mossad in Azerbaijan, but that the<br />
secret service organizations of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are all working in<br />
unison with the Mossad and Richard Secord. When trying to understand why such a high<br />
powered team as the Iran-Contra/October Surprise team – is reconstructed in a little<br />
country like Azerbaijan, it becomes clear that Azerbaijan is merely a base of operations<br />
for the broader Central Asian operation initiated by Bush in 1991.<br />
“According to Wolfgang Bueschel in BCDX 351, "Mr. Vafa Culuzadeh, adviser of former Azerbaijan<br />
President Ebulfez Elicibey, told the Italian press agency IPS in October 1992 from Baku, that the<br />
Israelian secret service specialist David Kimche and... Richard Secord, who was involved in the `Iran-<br />
Contra`-Affair, visited Azerbaijan, (and) presented a delegation of more Israelian secret service<br />
personnel. Mr. Culuzadeh took part on a return visit to Israel, (and) lead a delegation of<br />
Azerbaijan/Uzbek/Kazakh secret services." David Kimche is a `30-year` veteran of the Mossad and<br />
was an important force behind the Reagan administration's `arms-for` hostages swap with Iran and its<br />
secret aid to the Nicaraguan rebels (coined `Iran-Contra`.) In fact, it was Kimche who helped to<br />
organize the Contras, who supplied them with Israeli military advisers, who sold the US government<br />
Palestinian weapons Israel had seized in 1982, and who claimed he could get access to the `hostagetakers`<br />
in Lebanon.” [Voice of Southern Azerbaijan, Nick Grace C., 4/13/1998]<br />
Secord’s employer in this operation - President Heydar Aliyev – was no novice in the<br />
realm of covert operations, being a former top KGB official.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 72
“The elections confirmed Ilham Aliev as the nation's new ruler. He is the son of Heidar Aliev, a former<br />
top KGB official and Kremlin adviser, who became president two years after Azerbaijan became<br />
independent in 1991. The elder Aliev died last month while receiving medical treatment in the United<br />
States.” [Washington Trades Human Rights for Oil in Azerbaijan, Jim Lobe]<br />
The operations were “covert” because American support was illegal according to Section<br />
907 of the "Freedom Support Act"<br />
“The Americans' avowed priority in the Caucasus was to find a method to deliver the crude from the<br />
Caspian oil shelf to market, avoiding both Russia and Iran as middlemen. Since the oil would flow<br />
from Azerbaijan, this strategic goal was quite at odds with the American government's favouritism<br />
towards Armenia in the Karabakh War.<br />
In fact, providing support of any kind to Azerbaijan was illegal. Congress passed a law (Section 907 of<br />
the "Freedom Support Act") effectively banning foreign aid - and, needless to say, all military aid - to<br />
Azerbaijan. Thus America's top long-term interest in the Caspian was threatened by the promises of<br />
Armenian-American retribution at the polls - a very real threat considering Armenian electoral power<br />
in the key state of California. ” [God Save the Shah, Part Three,Mark Irkali, Tengiz Kodrarian and<br />
Cali Ruchala, May 22, 2003]<br />
Those who allege that MEGA Oil at least began as a project approved by Washington<br />
point to the involvement of Richard Secord, whose visit to Azerbaijan in early 1992 came<br />
at MEGA's expense and coincided with the company's negotiations with Mutalibov on<br />
building Azerbaijan's army. Secord's only public comment on the matter to date was to<br />
state that Mutalibov couldn't decide whether he wanted his American friends to build an<br />
army or a Praetorian Guard to hold onto power.<br />
The fact that Congress had outlawed support to Azerbaijan would not have mattered to<br />
Secord. At the heart of the Iran-Contra controversy was a Congressional ban on aid to<br />
the Contras strikingly similar to Section 907, and Secord's primary role in that first<br />
scandal was as the head of a private corporation which worked at the behest of Oliver<br />
North for covert and illegal weapons procurement for the Nicaraguan Contras. Secord<br />
appears to have been violating congressional intent in Azerbaijan exactly as he had for<br />
the Contras. It should not be assumed that he was just once again demonstrating patriotic<br />
fervor. Many forget that Secord's involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair was motivated to<br />
a large degree by personal profit. The special investigator's report on Iran-Contra<br />
concluded that:<br />
"one of Secord's central purposes in establishing and carrying out the operations of the enterprise was<br />
the accumulation of untaxed wealth in secret overseas accounts... that [Secord] received at least $2<br />
million from his participation in the enterprise during 1985 and 1986, that he set up secret accounts to<br />
conceal his untaxed income, and that he later lied and encouraged others to lie to keep it concealed."<br />
[God Save the Shah, Part Three, by Mark Irkali, Tengiz Kodrarian and Cali Ruchala, May 22, 2003]<br />
Secord was reportedly investigated by the US Department of Justice for his involvement<br />
in Azerbaijan, but there has been no mention of this report in the US press, and the<br />
investigation appears to have been ‘buried.’<br />
The collapse of the Azerbaijan regime was prevented by this tactic long enough so that<br />
when the 9/<strong>11</strong> tragedy occurred, the Bush administration was able to remove the law that<br />
prevented the US from giving aid to despotic governments.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 73
“The only thing preventing the Americans from offering the same sort of "help" to Azerbaijan had<br />
been Section 907. In the interest of national security, and to help in "enhancing global energy security"<br />
during this War on Terror, Congress granted President Bush the right to waive Section 907 in the<br />
aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>th. It was necessary, Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress, to<br />
"enable Azerbaijan to counter terrorist organizations." [God Save the Shah, Part Four, by Mark Irkali,<br />
Tengiz Kodrarian and Cali Ruchala, May 22, 2003]<br />
4.3 Richard Secord, UBS and the Azerbaijan Connection<br />
The key player in the operation to control Azerbaijan politics was Richard Secord, and<br />
Mega Oil. Richard Secord is the same individual who was intimately involved in<br />
multiple sets of illegal activities with George Bush Sr.: the alledged sabotage of the US<br />
attempt to rescue 52 US citizens in Iran; the October Surprise scandal, and the Iran-<br />
Contra scandal. It is through Secord that one realizes that Adnan Khashoggi had a<br />
second viable connection which would allow him to recruit the 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers. Secord<br />
was recruiting mercenaries for Azerbaijan that had the exact same profile as the 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
hijackers, and while doing so, he was working with a Mossad agent (David Kimche) who<br />
had placed Israeli mercenaries in Azerbaijan and Nicaragua. In recruiting these<br />
mujahadin, Secord was pushing the funding through UBS, thus exposing the bankers at<br />
UBS to further investigation.<br />
“…found this cluster of accounts buried in the Union Bank of Switzerland, including General Richard<br />
Secord's Mega Oil Corporation. There was a cluster of two or three hundred accounts, controlled by all<br />
of the aforementioned, wherein money continuously passed back and forth, almost in a loop, in these<br />
accounts. Where the money was coming from, where those dollars were being generated, was oil.<br />
Kurdistan, Azerbaijan, Dagestan. Uzbekistan. That’s where the money is." [Kurds Get Saddam; Next<br />
- Kurdistan or Cabalistan? Al Martin]<br />
Richard Secord and Mega Oil have a long history which intertwines with the Bush<br />
Family Trust, Harken Energy (George Bush Jr.’s insider trading scandal and ‘pump and<br />
dump’ scheme), UBS and the BCCI group of Saudi investors.<br />
“Saudi European Investment Corp was basically a dummy company set up to launder all the stolen<br />
money from Lincoln savings. Gaith Pharon, Head of Saudi Intelligence & Harken Energy Saudi<br />
European Director … also acted as registered agent for numerous Bush-controlled corporations for<br />
Bush interests in the Middle East. These involved Bahrain oil interests controlled by Richard Secord's<br />
Mega Oil. These would then get sold back to Harken Energy. Of course most of them were worthless.<br />
The leader of Bahrain, Prince Abdullah, was also one of the directors of the Saudi European<br />
Investment.<br />
This entire daisy chain fraud and money laundering is actually a global fraud network because of its<br />
offshore and transnational connections. Saudi European Investment Corp was laundering money into<br />
Union Bank of Switzerland and also into BCCI accounts. BCCI of course is the notorious worldwide<br />
CIA-criminal bank, Bank of Credit and Commerce International. ….Years later it would be revealed<br />
that Agha Hasna Abedi (the founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International -BCCI)and<br />
accomplice Gaith Pharon went right ahead anyway succeeding with the takeover in 1982 of the<br />
National Bank of Georgia (Corporate Crime <strong>Report</strong>er, July 22, 1991). Abedi used front man Gaith<br />
Pharon to act as his intermediary, taking over Lance's stake in the National Bank of Georgia for<br />
BCCI.” [Waste Not, Published: July 1997 Author: Brian Lipsett and Ellen Connett Posted on<br />
09/10/1999]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 74
“In 1987, Stephen’s deal [Jackson Stephens, head of Stephens, Inc., a large investment bank in Little<br />
Rock, Arkansas] made arrangements with Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) to provide $25 million to<br />
Harken in return for a stock interest in Harken. As part of the Stephens-brokered], Sheikh Abdullah<br />
Bakhsh, a Saudi real estate tycoon and financier, joined Harken's board as a major investor. Stephens,<br />
UBS, and Bakhsh each have ties to the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International<br />
(BCCI). It was Stephens who suggested in the late 1970s that BCCI purchase what became First<br />
American Bankshares in Washington, D.C. BCCI later acquired First American's predecessor,<br />
Financial General Bankshares. At the time of the Harken investment, UBS was a joint-venture partner<br />
with BCCI in a bank in Geneva, Switzerland.” [The Harken Connection, "The Family That Preys<br />
Together” Jack Colhoun, Covert Action Quarterly, Issue No. 41, Summer, 1992]<br />
In actuality then, the Azerbaijani Mega Oil operation – if it is the investigation referred to<br />
by Sibel Edmonds– would have involved the same cast of illegal money launderers as<br />
associated with the Barrick gold laundering hypothesis: the BCCI Saudis and Adnan<br />
Khashoggi, the Bush enterprise, and illegal weapons merchants. As with the<br />
Giffen/Williams scandal in Kazakhstan, this operation began under President George<br />
Bush Whitehouse sponsorship.<br />
“In 1991, Azerbaijan began negotiating with Amoco, BP, McDermott, Pennzoil, Ramco, Unocal,<br />
TPAO, Statoil and other corporations on a deal to develop the Azeri, Chirag and Gunashli fields in the<br />
Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan's State Oil Company (SOCAR) is to have a 20 percent<br />
share in the project and the Russian company Lukoil will take a 10 percent holding. The deal was<br />
signed in <strong>September</strong> 1994, and in December the consortium had formed as the Azerbaijan International<br />
Operating Company (AIOC), with Terry D. Adams as chairman. American corporations (Amoco,<br />
Pennzoil, Unocal, Exxon) have a 40 percent interest in the $8 billion AIOC. British corporations (BP,<br />
Ramco Khazar) have a 19 percent interest. SOCAR (Azerbaijan), Lukoil (Russia), Den Norske Stats<br />
Olieselscap (Norway), Turkie Petrollari (Turkey), Itochu (Japan), and Delta Nimir Khazar (Saudi<br />
Arabia) are also involved.<br />
The AIOC consortium's plan to build a pipeline from Baku to Ceylon, Turkey, has gotten lobbying<br />
assistance from former British Energy Minister Tim Eggar (now CEO of the British corporation<br />
Monument Oil), former British Foreign Minister Malcolm Rifkind (now a director of the British oil<br />
corporation Ramco), two former U.S. National Security Advisors, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent<br />
Scowcroft (now a director of AIOC), as well as former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker (oil<br />
corporation attorney), former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen, former U.S. Defense<br />
Secretary Dick Cheney (then CEO of oil services corporation Halliburton, now candidate for U.S. Vice<br />
President), and former White House chief of staff John Sununu. Iran-Contra figure and former U.S. Air<br />
Force major general Richard Secord has been helping to train the Azerbaijani army.” [Oil Wars: The<br />
Balkans, George Draffan, www.endgame.org,a case study for the report The Corporate Consensus]<br />
“Giffen’s lawyers contend that “his actions were taken with the knowledge and support of senior<br />
officials of the U.S. intelligence and national security agencies,” including the CIA, the National<br />
Security Council (NSC), the Department of State and the White House, which could effectively<br />
“immunize Giffen” as the judge phrased it.” [Manhattan Judge Rules On Pre-Trial Motions In<br />
“Kazakhgate” Case, Marlena Telvick, 09/07/2004]<br />
The connection is fairly explicit, with Giffen being responsible for a meeting between<br />
Nazarbayev and George Bush Sr. in May of 1992<br />
“Giffen was consolidating his position as a trusted adviser to Nazarbayev. According to U.S. officials,<br />
he helped set up Nazarbayev's first presidential visit to Washington in May 1992, when he met with<br />
President George Bush. His company, Mercator, took charge of many arrangements for the visit, from<br />
making appointments to paying bills. Such was Giffen's pull that he began traveling to and from<br />
Kazakhstan on a Kazakh diplomatic passport, even though he remained a U.S. citizen. ...According to<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 75
foreign law enforcement sources, Swiss investigating magistrate Daniel Devaud examined between 50<br />
and 60 accounts in at least four different banks: Credit Agricole Indosuez, Credit Suisse, Pictet and<br />
United European Bank. Many of the most controversial transactions went through Credit Agricole<br />
Indosuez, an affiliate of the French bank Credit Agricole. (Author’s note: Credit Agricole Indosuez<br />
would later absorb the operations of the scandal ridden BCCI as it was shut down.)” [American at<br />
Center of Kazakh Oil Probe, Michael Dobbs, David Ottaway and Sharon LaFraniere, Washington Post<br />
Staff Writers]<br />
In addition to covert Whitehouse sponsorship, significant lobbying assistance was<br />
provided by The United States Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (USACC).<br />
“Azerbaijan is key to understanding the region and the power. During the past decade the only western<br />
source of power and force projection into the region was with the USACC. The United States<br />
Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. It was this body that has, and remains, the source of negotiations,<br />
planning and structure in the region. Prior to many of its board members entering the present White<br />
House along with Mr. Bush, they were the force behind the U.S. Congressional effort called the Silk<br />
Road Strategy of `1996-1998`; the Caspian initiative; Black Sea pipeline routes and the division of the<br />
Caspian Sa, etc. The USACC Advisory Board consisted of "only" these seven men: Dr. Henry<br />
Kissinger, James A Baker III, Lloyd Bentsen, Zibigniew Brzezinski, Dick Cheney, Brent Scowcroft,<br />
John Sununu. It is noted here that the current Vice President’s daughter, Elizabeth `Cheney-Perry`, has<br />
been named Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs for regional economic issues; she left<br />
Armitage Associates for the job. The USACC `Vice-Chairman` of the Board is James A Baker IV<br />
(Baker Botts, L.L.P.); Chairman Emeritus is T. Don Stacy (VP, Amoco); with Richard Armitage as<br />
Board President, until he resigned to become Colin Powell’s Deputy, which rounds out the US elite<br />
running the USACC. The remaining Board of Directors are a who’s who of the oil and gas<br />
multinational corporate interests of the west and specifically the United States. On the Board of<br />
Trustees or USACC the latter interests hold sway again with three primary exceptions: Senator Sam<br />
Brownback (`R-KS`) and Joseph R. Pitts (`R-PA`) (whose efforts formed the 1996 legislative<br />
backbone of the House/Senate Silk Road Strategy for Afghanistan, [Unocal, Texaco] et al) and<br />
Richard Perle (US Defense Policy Board). The Legal Counsel for USACC is Ted Jones of the Texas<br />
Law firm Baker Botts L.L.P. (James A Baker III & IV’s law firm.); Treasurer is Karl Mattison (VP,<br />
Riggs Bank, NA). It was the James A. Baker III Institute of Rice University which outlined the Cheney<br />
Strategic Energy Initiative which later became the Administration’s Strategic Energy National Security<br />
Policy. (Clearly Dick Cheney wouldn’t be interested in giving Congress the names of who he<br />
consulted on the Energy Initiative as they would amount to the remainder of the Board of Directors<br />
and Board of Trustees of USACC.)” [U.S. political objectives in the Middle East will Fail, Creating a<br />
New Cold War with China and Russia; Target is Iran not Iraq., By. Craig B Hulet]<br />
From the point of view of this group, the grander ‘Silk Road’ strategy was one of<br />
capturing the Caspian Oil:<br />
“…what are Bush’s political objectives? It is not so much Iraq’s WMD as we are led to believe; it is<br />
more about Iran. Bush will try to outflank Iran and not allow oil and gas pipelines to run through Iran<br />
from the Northern Caspian region, Russia, Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan/ Kazakhstan, South to the<br />
Persian Gulf and into Pakistan. Bush, inextricably tied to western oil interests, wants to run their<br />
pipelines through Afghanistan into Pakistan as the counter weight on the Eastern front. Then pipelines<br />
through Iraq, an Iraq controlled by the U.S., is the counterweight on the Western front. Control<br />
Baghdad, you control the Euphrates and Tigris rivers’ trade waterways. But Russia will try to dominate<br />
in the North, with pipelines running North and Northwest into Russia and across to the Black Sea;<br />
China will try to dominate the East with pipelines running East and Southeast into China, "The Silk<br />
Road" route. Put succinctly: Russia wants the Black Sea routes, China the Silk Road routes, Bush<br />
wants everything to flow South from the entire region into his deep pockets via the Persian Gulf routes.<br />
Geography rules even if borders no longer matter. Also, recently reported (Jan.14, 2003 NYT), Russia<br />
is negotiating massive pipeline routes from its Siberian oil fields: one from Angarsk into the northern<br />
industrial region of China and a separate one which would bypass China. Negotiating with the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 76
Japanese for a pipeline which would run from Lake Baikal to the port of Nakhodka, near Vladivostok<br />
on the Sea of Japan. Oil is the Great Game and everyone is in on it. Russia and China have already<br />
opened dialogue on security issues with India, and Japan will not remain in economic doldrums<br />
forever. [U.S. political objectives in the Middle East will Fail, Creating a New Cold War with China<br />
and Russia; Target is Iran not Iraq, Craig B Hulet, 7/9/2003]<br />
The grander strategy however seemed to find a way to enrich the business partners, going<br />
as far back as Iran-Contra, and resulted in a series of coincidences that suggests that the<br />
Iran Contra group of businessmen could have been responsible for the attack on the<br />
World Trade Center. The Secord/Armitage foray into Azerbaijan introduces some<br />
relatively curious coincidences pertinent to the attack on the WTC.<br />
Two of the reported hijackers were reported to be Uzbek; a number of other hijackers<br />
traveled to, and fought in, Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan. Secord, and his 1,000<br />
Afghan Mujahedin fought along side of Chechen, Turkish and Israeli forces as well as<br />
American mercenaries. The Afghan Mujahedin mercenaries hired by Secord are reported<br />
to have also fought in other regions of the Caucuses: in Chechnya and Georgia and<br />
Dagestan, and to have been a destabilizing force in the entire Caucuses region.<br />
Additionally, Secord had twice traveled to Uzbekistan, and the CIA had recently set up a<br />
sizable operation in the area:<br />
“Only belatedly have major outlets like the Wall Street Journal (Oct. 2), The Associated Press (Oct. 5),<br />
and the Washington Post (Oct. 5) begun to acknowledge, in stories placed well back in the paper, and<br />
with much less emphasis, that the Northern Alliance – our allies against the Taliban – are now in real<br />
control of the heroin trade. Smuggling routes have shifted from south through Pakistan northward<br />
through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. They acknowledge the obvious – that the Taliban is<br />
no longer the primary supplier of heroin. How could they be?...<br />
In March 2001 FTW reported from Moscow that Uzbekistan was “awash” in a sea of poppies. Since<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> we have seen Uzbekistan not surprisingly become the hub for all U.S. military<br />
operations going into Afghanistan. It was, in fact, the very first place that U.S. military and “special<br />
operations” forces deployed – within days of the attacks. Unmentioned in press stories is the fact that<br />
firms like Southern Air, Evergreen and other CIA proprietary or contract operations have been<br />
establishing a presence in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent for more than a year.<br />
…as we are hearing the first reports that the Uzbeki government, fighting its own battle against a<br />
Muslim insurgency, will permit offensive operations from its military bases, FTW has had two reports<br />
that CIA operative Richard Secord has recently traveled to Tashkent. Secord’s documented history of<br />
involvement in heroin smuggling, from Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the 1960’s and his criminal<br />
involvement in illegal operations, including drug smuggling during the Iran-Contra years, tells us<br />
exactly what is happening. These same intelligence sources have also reported that many other CIA<br />
veterans of Iran-Contra and Vietnam – despite their age – are converging on Tashkent like bees to a<br />
field of flowers – poppy flowers.” [Russia and Oil the Real Objectives With Heroin As A Weapon of<br />
War, A Replay of CIA’s Vietnam-era Drug Dealing - FTW Revises Its Map On Economic Impacts, by<br />
Michael C. Ruppert http://www copvcia.com/stories/oct_2001/heroin.html, FTW, 10/10/2001]<br />
Another “Neocon” active in the region and supporting Muslim “terrorists” was Richard<br />
Perle:<br />
“Perle was also a major player in the Bosnia Defense Fund, which acted as a financial liaison to funnel<br />
money between Muslim nations and the government of Bosnia. An adviser for the now-defunct Riggs<br />
Bank, which handled the finances for the Bosnia Defense Fund and its accounts at the Bosnian Central<br />
Bank in Sarajevo, claimed that Perle was not alarmed when he was told that some of the Bosnian<br />
Defense Fund money was bleeding over into the hands of people connected with terrorism in Bosnia.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 77
Perle's response to the concern of the adviser was reportedly, "Just make it fucking happen."<br />
[http://waynemadsenreport.com/2007_01010<strong>11</strong>0.php]<br />
Assuming these reports about Secord and Perle to be true, Secord, Perle and the<br />
neoconservative group is in a position to be considered as much a logical source for the<br />
9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers as is Osama Bin Laden.<br />
Another ‘coincidence” would be Adnan Khashoggi’s role as a banker in that conflict,<br />
funding the anti-Armenian “terrorists”:<br />
“… in Armenia. Banking fraud was rampant there, Global News Wire reported in August, 2004,<br />
"thanks to the Arab millionaire Adnan Khashoggi-- an active partner of Armenian businessmen in the<br />
illicit drug and arms trades." Khashoggi's first bucket-shop banking operation was a branch of the<br />
Caucasus Investment Bank in Susa. In quick succession, with the assistance of Abu Muslum, an Arab<br />
businessman, he opened the Hamaz and Beit ul-Muqaddas banks. Rovsan Novruzoglu, a political<br />
scientist and director of the International Strategic Research Center in Azerbaijan, observes that Adnan<br />
Khashoggi's banks "played a big part in the formation of terrorist camps and in the opening of<br />
laboratories for developing chemical and bacteriological weapons in Nagornyy Karabakh."<strong>11</strong> 1) M.<br />
Macidli, "Azerbaijani Daily Outlines Activities of International Armenian Haybun Organization,"<br />
Global News Wire, August 27, 2003. [Saudi Entrepreneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 9/<strong>11</strong> Terrorists<br />
(Part 1-7) By Alex Constantine ]<br />
Finally, this report would also be remiss in not bringing to the reader’s attention the role<br />
of some other Iran-Contra and BBCI bank fraud players not often identified with the<br />
Azerbaijan operations: including Dick Cheney, Brent Scowcraft, Khalid bin Mahfouz and<br />
Farhad Azima. The first two are former Congressmen who were involved in<br />
Congressional Committees that investigated the Iran Contra scandal, and found no<br />
involvement by Vice President Bush. (This involvement is further discussed in Section:<br />
10 Iran-Contra Scandal and October Surprise)<br />
“You might be interested in a lobbying group known as the US-Azerbaijani Chamber of Commerce.<br />
You can learn about it here. http://elitewatch.9/<strong>11</strong>review.org/USACC.html<br />
The members include James Baker, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Zbiniew Brezinski (the<br />
mastermind of arming Islamic militants in Afghanistan to fight the Russians), and Lloyd Bentsen.<br />
Dick Cheney resigned from the board when he was elected to VP. Richard Armitage resigned from the<br />
Presidency when he was appointed to the state dept.<br />
Armitage seems like one of the few upright and honest members of this administration, but he has a<br />
dark history of drug trafficking for the CIA in Laos, among other things.<br />
Which leads us to the most notorious member of the board, Farhad Azima. Farhad Azima has<br />
smuggled guns, drugs, weapons systems, and mujahidin for the CIA for over 35 years, as the head of<br />
about a dozen different cargo airlines. He leased the plane Ollie North took to Tehran. He also was<br />
involved in the Savings and Loan scandal, and the Clinton fund raising scandal, and he recently gave<br />
Dick Gephardt $4000 in his run in the primaries. He knows how to grease the skids. Back in 1992, he<br />
[Farhad Azima ]and infamous AF Gen. Richard Secord flew Afghans into Azerbaijan and trained them<br />
to fight against Armenia. These soldiers wound up in Chechnya and Georgia and Dagestan and have<br />
destabilized the entire Caucuses region.” [http://elitewatch.9/<strong>11</strong>review.org/USACC.html]<br />
It is not coincidence that Secord’s CIA mercenaries went to Chechnya. The Chechnyan<br />
conflict too, was part of a grander strategy to control Caspian Oil, and deter it from<br />
entering Russian markets.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 78
"With regard to Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and<br />
indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In this regard, the involvement of<br />
Pakistan's ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war.<br />
"Russia's main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington's<br />
perfunctory condemnation of Islamic terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen war are the<br />
Anglo-American oil conglomerates which are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline<br />
corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin." [Chossudovsky]<br />
“One of the main goals of the Russian attack on Chechnya in December of 1994 was to ensure control<br />
of the oil pipeline which runs from Baku, via Grozny, the Chechen capital, to the Russian city of<br />
Tikhoretsk. The pipeline ends at the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, designed by Russia to be<br />
the terminal for the proposed Kazakh and Azerbaijani pipelines. In addition, Grozny boasts a large<br />
refinery with a processing capacity of 12 million tons per year. During its brief self- proclaimed<br />
independence under President Jokhar Dudayev from 1991 to 1994, Chechnya illegally exported crude<br />
oil and refined products worth hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars. The rebel government worked<br />
closely with corrupt politicians in Moscow to obtain export licenses. Partly to cut off this activity,<br />
Russia launched a massive but covert military action in the fall of 1994 to support opponents of<br />
Dudayev. In 1994, Dudayev turned to radical Islamic elements in the Middle East and Central Asia for<br />
support. This exacerbated the religious aspect of the conflict between the Muslim Chechens and<br />
Christian Orthodox Russians. The overt military action began on December 12, 1994, when the<br />
Russian army marched on Grozny, destroying Chechnya's capital city by brutal aerial, tank, and<br />
artillery bombardment. Since the start of the campaign, over 30,000 people have been killed, and more<br />
than 300,000 have become refugees. Hostilities continue, with hostage-taking crises erupting in July<br />
1995 and January 1996.” [Turkmen Oil and Natural Gas: The Viability of Delivering Prosperity to<br />
Global Markets , Turkmen Oil and Natural Gas. The Manadal Projects, American University]<br />
Additionally involved in Azerbaijan is Iran-Contra participant and Barrick co-founder<br />
Khalid bin Mahfouz, as a major investor in Delta Oil and Unocal (both also involved in<br />
the Afghanistan pipeline operations)<br />
“French sources have located Khalid bin Mahfouz and his family at the center of a nexus involving<br />
other firms owned by his family, the bin Laden family and members of the Saudi royal family. Some<br />
of these were oil companies, like the Saudi companies Delta Oil and Nimir Oil. Both are partners with<br />
UNOCAL in Azerbaijan, and Delta was a partner in UNOCAL's efforts in 1996 to build a pipeline<br />
through Afghanistan. Bin Mahfouz himself was named to the governing council of the Saudi oil giant<br />
Aramco by King Fahd in 1989 (Brisard 187).” [Synopsis: The "Truth" Which Is Now "Forbidden" on<br />
Bin Mahfouz, Bin Laden, the CIA, BCCI, & Saudi Regime, Source: socrates.berkeley.edu via mailarchive.com<br />
, Published: January 1, 2002 Author: Peter Dale Scott, For Education and Discussion<br />
Only. Not for Commercial Use.]<br />
4.4 Afghanistan<br />
The Afghan pipeline from the Caspian, through Afghanistan to India and the Arabian<br />
Sea, was originally conceived and proposed by Bridas, the Argentine energy company, in<br />
1991. For many years, Bridas invested and promoted the pipeline, in the midst of great<br />
political instability in Afghanistan. Bridas initially approached Unocal to be a partner,<br />
but Unocal decided that a partnership with Bridas was unnecessary. Unocal marshaled a<br />
heavy campaign to change the hearts and minds of Central Asian politicians, and where<br />
they could not change their minds, Unocal replaced the politicians. All this was<br />
occurring in a country preoccupied with tribal warfare, where warlords maintained<br />
personal armies of between 15,000 and 30,000 warriors. These armies were fed by<br />
weapons and cash from the Russian and US intelligence operations, and where possible,<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 79
self-funded through the sale of heroin, opium and female slaves using either the Soviet<br />
military or the CIA as a middleman.<br />
The initial conquest of Afghanistan by the Taliban was initially viewed by the US,<br />
Pakistani and Saudi politicians as a favorable development.<br />
“The Taliban conquer Kabul, establishing control over much of Afghanistan [Associated Press,<br />
8/19/02]. A surge in the Taliban's military successes at this time is later attributed to an increase in<br />
direct military assistance from Pakistan's ISI. [New York Times, 12/8/01] The oil company Unocal is<br />
hopeful that the Taliban will stabilize Afghanistan and allow its pipeline plans to go forward.<br />
According to some reports, “preliminary agreement [on the pipeline] was reached between the [Taliban<br />
and Unocal] long before the fall of Kabul . . . . Oil industry insiders say the dream of securing a<br />
pipeline across Afghanistan is the main reason why Pakistan, a close political ally of America's, has<br />
been so supportive of the Taliban, and why America has quietly acquiesced in its conquest of<br />
Afghanistan.” [Daily Telegraph, 10/<strong>11</strong>/96] The 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> later concludes that some State<br />
Department diplomats are willing to “give the Taliban a chance” because it might be able to bring<br />
stability to Afghanistan, which would allow a Unocal oil pipeline to be built through the country. [9/<strong>11</strong><br />
<strong>Commission</strong> <strong>Report</strong>, 3/24/04]<br />
Recognizing the significance of the pipeline for its many military and economic benefits,<br />
the US –under both Clinton and Bush – encouraged the Afghan and Indian participants in<br />
the pipeline to support the US effort rather than the previous Argentine contracts.<br />
“Bridas officials are stunned when they witness Turkmenistan's President Niyazov sign an agreement<br />
with Unocal and its partner, Delta Oil Company (owned by Saudi Arabia) to build a pipeline through<br />
Afghanistan, thus essentially abrogating Turkmenistan's earlier contract with Bridas.<br />
On Oct. 21, (1995) the nod went to the Americans as Niyazov announced the selection of Unocal.<br />
Looking on at the announcement ceremony was former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, now a<br />
Unocal consultant."[Gas Pipeline Bounces Between Agendas, Washington Post, 5 October 1998]<br />
“In the Spring of 1996 the United States pressured Prime Minister Bhutto to change her allegiance<br />
from Bridas to Unocal. Her failure to comply was "one of the factors" in her downfall, according to the<br />
Herald of Pakistan.”<br />
Part of the list of wealthy individuals trying to promote this Unocal pipeline was none<br />
other than Adnan Khashoggi:<br />
“Hank Greenberg has had a long time relationship with Henry Kissinger, the partner of Richard Perle<br />
in Trireme Partners, the firm that, according to Seymour Hersh, attempted to negotiate deals with<br />
Saudi Arabia using Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi as an intermediary. Greenberg and<br />
Khashoggi, according to CIA sources, have long had an interest in exploiting the oil and natural gas<br />
reserves of Uzbekistan and the construction of pipelines across the Uralskaya region of Russia.<br />
Uzbekistan has also featured prominently in oil and natural gas plans of Enron and UNOCAL.<br />
According to Enron insiders, on Saturday, <strong>September</strong> 7, 1996, 42 representatives of Enron and<br />
UNOCAL met in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, with Khashoggi, Taliban representatives, and Uzbek<br />
government officials. The subject was the CentGas pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan, a project<br />
that involved UNOCAL, Enron, and Saudi support. Current Afghan President Hamid Karzai was a<br />
consultant on the pipeline for UNOCAL…. The Tashkent meeting was followed by a spring 1997<br />
meeting between Enron, UNOCAL, and Taliban representatives at the posh Houstonian Hotel in<br />
Houston.” [Intelligence Whispers, Wayne Madsen <strong>Report</strong>, June 20, 2005]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 80
Two years later, another historic milestone occurred that would change what appeared to<br />
be a new-found, amicable relationship between the US and Afghanistan. In 1998, (the<br />
same year the decision to destroy the WTC was made) Osama Bin Laden – exiled from<br />
Saudi Arabia - issued a fatwa, or religious proclamation, calling for the death of all<br />
Americans, including civilians, men, women, and children. This fatwa is reported to have<br />
resulted in attacks on the USS Cole and US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. While the<br />
Taliban was not responsible for the attacks, the relationship between Afghanistan and the<br />
US started to sour after President Clinton ordered the bombing of terrorist camps in<br />
Afghanistan in response to the attacks on the USS Cole and US embassies.<br />
Understanding the fatwa bombings<br />
Because of the suspicious and questionable nature of the evidence presented regarding<br />
Osama Bin Laden, the question was investigated: Is it possible the US Embassy<br />
bombings were not what they appeared to be? The evidence available suggests the<br />
embassy bombings may have been CIA operations, planned by CIA operative Ali<br />
Mohammed, and supported by MI5 (British Intelligence).<br />
"U.S. investigators are concentrating on a possible U.S. Army connection between John Muhammad<br />
and former U.S. Army Sergeant Ali Mohammed. A former Egyptian Army officer, Ali Mohammed left<br />
the US Army Special Forces in 1989 after a three-year enlistment. He was arrested by U.S. authorities<br />
after the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa and pleaded guilty to charges of aiding Osama bin<br />
Laden.<br />
Ali Mohammed was the chief planner of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es<br />
Salaam and, more interestingly, entered the United States under a covert CIA visa program. Ali<br />
Mohammed received an M-16 Expert Badge and a Secret clearance from the Army and was a special<br />
instructor at the JFK Special Operations Warfare School in Fort Bragg, North Carolina."<br />
[http://libertythink.com/2003_09_14_archives.html]<br />
”An alleged member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network wanted in connection with the bombings<br />
of US embassies in Africa claimed yesterday he was in frequent touch with British security services,<br />
including a named MI5 agent. Khalid Al-Fawwaz, 38, whose fight against extradition will be heard by<br />
the law lords today, has demanded to see MI5 intelligence reports which his lawyers insist are crucial<br />
to his defence. Mr Al- Fawwaz, a Saudi, says his meetings with an MI5 officer took place at the Old<br />
War Office building in Whitehall, and will reveal the limited extent of his involvement with Bin<br />
Laden's organisation.” [Suspect claims MI5 can clear his name: Man wanted over embassy bombs<br />
takes case to lords, Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins, The Guardian Unlimited, 10/22/2001]<br />
This evidence is reinforced by reports that high ranking US and British authorities<br />
actively discouraged and prevented investigations into the crimes.<br />
"In a dramatic interview with ABCNEWS, FBI special agents and partners Robert Wright and John<br />
Vincent say they were called off criminal investigations of suspected terrorists tied to the deadly<br />
bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. U.S. officials say al Qaeda was responsible for the embassy<br />
attacks and the Sept. <strong>11</strong>, 2001, attacks in the United States.... The suspected terrorist cell in Chicago<br />
was the basis of the investigation, yet Wright, who remains with the FBI, says he soon discovered that<br />
all the FBI intelligence division wanted him to do was to follow suspected terrorists and file reports —<br />
but make no arrests.... 'The supervisor who was there from headquarters was right straight across from<br />
me and started yelling at me: 'You will not open criminal investigations. I forbid any of you. You will<br />
not open criminal investigations against any of these intelligence subjects,' ' Wright said. Even though<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 81
they were on a terrorism task force and said they had proof of criminal activity, Wright said he was<br />
told not to pursue the matter.... even after the bombings, Wright said FBI headquarters wanted no<br />
arrests. 'Two months after the embassies are hit in Africa, they wanted to shut down the criminal<br />
investigation,' said Wright. 'They wanted to kill it.' ... The move outraged Chicago federal prosecutor<br />
Mark Flessner, who was assigned to the case despite efforts Wright and Vincent say were made by<br />
superiors to block the probe....'There were powers bigger than I was in the Justice Department and<br />
within the FBI that simply were not going to let it [the building of a criminal case] happen. And it<br />
didn't happen,' Flessner said. He said he still couldn't figure out why Washington stopped the case... On<br />
Sept. <strong>11</strong>, 2001, the two agents watched the terror attacks in horror, worried that men they could have<br />
stopped years earlier may have been involved.'"[Called Off the Trail? ABCNews, 19 Dec 2002]<br />
“ The Observer has obtained a copy of a personal memo sent from Sudan to Louis Freeh, former<br />
director of the FBI, after the murderous 1998 attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.<br />
It announces the arrest of two named bin Laden operatives held the day after the bombings after they<br />
crossed the Sudanese border from Kenya. They had cited the manager of a Khartoum leather factory<br />
owned by bin Laden as a reference for their visas, and were held after they tried to rent a flat<br />
overlooking the US embassy in Khartoum, where they were thought to be planning an attack. US<br />
sources have confirmed that the FBI wished to arrange their immediate extradition. However, Clinton's<br />
Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, forbade it.... Sudan held the suspects for a further three weeks,<br />
hoping the US would both perform their extradition and take up the offer to examine their bin Laden<br />
database."[Resentful west spurned Sudan's key terror files, Observer, 30 <strong>September</strong> 2001]<br />
“The Libyan al-Qaeda cell included Anas al-Liby, who remains on the US government's most wanted<br />
list with a reward of $25 million for his capture. He is wanted for his involvement in the African<br />
embassy bombings. Al-Liby was with bin Laden in Sudan before the al-Qaeda leader returned to<br />
Afghanistan in 1996. Astonishingly, despite suspicions that he was a high-level al-Qaeda operative, al-<br />
Liby was given political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000....."[MI6 'halted<br />
bid to arrest bin Laden', Observer, 10 November 2002]<br />
Another example of this unwillingness to detain key Al Qaeda mercenaries is the case of<br />
Abu Haf (aks Abu Hafs, Abu Hafsi). Abu Haf was a significant Al Qaeda operative in the<br />
original US strategy to deploy Al Qaeda against the Russians.<br />
Al-Qaida emerged from another organisation, Maktab al-Khidamat, the services bureau<br />
that Abdallah Azzam set up in the early 1980s to support Afghan resistance. Azzam was<br />
assassinated in 1989; he was succeeded by Bin Laden, one of his leading disciples, who<br />
transformed the organisation into al-Qaida.<br />
“During a recent interview in Amman, Azzam’s son Hudayfa, who has spent almost 20 years among<br />
Arab militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, told me: “Most Yemeni fighters, simple minded warriors<br />
whose only ambition was martyrdom, left Afghanistan after the fall of the Communist government.<br />
The Egyptians stayed because they had other ambitions as yet unfulfilled. When Osama bin Laden<br />
joined them, after he left Sudan in 1996, they focused on shifting his basic thinking from opposition to<br />
American hegemony in the Middle East towards a Takfirist perspective.“When I met Osama bin Laden<br />
in 1997 in Islamabad, he was flanked by three members of the Egyptian camp: the Somali Abu Obaida,<br />
and the Egyptians Abu Haf and Saiful Adil..” [Global jihad splits into wars between Muslims: Al-<br />
Qaida: the unwanted guests, Syed Saleem Shahzad, Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2007]<br />
In 1994, he joined the US operation to disrupt Russian control of oil in Chechnya.<br />
At the end of 1994, this Jordanian, together with a group of his associated, moved to Chechnya, joining<br />
military activity against the Russian troops. [World Secret Services and the Caucasian Emissary of Al-<br />
Qaeda, Michel Elbaz , 30.<strong>11</strong>.2006]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 82
“In 1996, Abu Hafs relocated to Georgia "on Osama Bin Laden's order" to take charge of al-Qaeda<br />
operations in the Pankisi Gorge. Abu Hafs is allegedly in charge of the distribution of all al-Qaeda<br />
funds sent to Chechnya. (Before his death last year, Russian intelligence usually attributed this role to<br />
al-Walid.) Abu Hafs is also described as having been in charge of weapons supplies to the fighters in<br />
the Pankisi Gorge. (This statement implies that arms were being shipped in to the fighters. Aside from<br />
the practical difficulties of such international shipments, it is known that Gelaev arranged the reoutfitting<br />
of his men from Georgian sources in exchange for joining the fighting in Abkhazia. Russian<br />
arms are also available from the cash-strapped Russian rump garrisons in Georgia.) In the FSB's<br />
account, Abu Hafs returned to Chechnya in 2002 … There were numerous reports of Abu Hafs'<br />
largesse, building both a mosque and hospital in the Pankisi Gorge.” [Abu Hafs Al-Urdani: The Quiet<br />
Mujahid, Andrew Mc Gregor, Chechnya Weekly, Volume 6, Issue 5 (February 02, 2005)]<br />
Even after the fatwa embassy bombings in 1998 and the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001 attack,<br />
Abu Haf was allowed to continue his work against the Russians unimpeded by the US,<br />
until the Russians killed him in 2006. The US allies in Georgia never attempted to arrest<br />
him during his many years in Georgia, even though the National Security Agency<br />
identified his location by a cell phone call to him in 2001. A US financed operation in<br />
2002 to ‘clean up’ the Pankisi Gorge allowed him to escape.<br />
“…since 1996 and till his very death, Abu Hafs’ activity was closely related with Georgia, its secret<br />
services did not pay any attention to him for quite a long time. In the second half of the 1990s, they<br />
showed almost no interest towards the Arab Islamists, who, like Abu Hafs, were basing in the Akhmet<br />
region (Pankisi Gorge), in the northern part of the country. At that time the local secret services were<br />
occupied by operations directed against the inner opposition and against the separatist enclaves in the<br />
territory of the republic. Moreover, given its complicated relationship with Russia, Georgia was<br />
showing silent empathy to the Chechen separatists, and therefore did not cause particular obstacles to<br />
the Arab mujahideen connected with them. Only following <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> attacks, and as a result of<br />
Moscow’s growing pressure, in 2001-2002 Tbilisi, with the help of Washington, somehow began<br />
coping with the foreign mujahideen’ issue. In spring 2002 Abu Hafs moved to Chechnya, and in<br />
February of the following year the Georgian Minister of Interior Koba Narchemashvili publicly<br />
announced that the Jordanian is not in the country any more. He also affirmed that the local secret<br />
services had not collected intelligence about this person during the six years of his stay in Georgia. In<br />
spite of the fact that later Abu Hafs had repeatedly visited Georgia, and even stayed here for the most<br />
part of 2005, no effort of his arrest was ever made.” [World Secret Services and the Caucasian<br />
Emissary of Al-Qaeda, Michel Elbaz , 30.<strong>11</strong>.2006]<br />
“At the same time, Georgian officials described an incident in which an Arab fighter with apparent<br />
links to Al Qaeda might have been allowed to get away. Georgian officials said they believed that the<br />
man, Abu Hafsi, had been running financial operations in the gorge and had supervised the building of<br />
a military hospital there. He slipped away, presumably to Chechnya, officials said.” [U.S. Entangled<br />
in Mystery of Georgia's Islamic Fighters, Dexter Filkins , June 15, 2003, NYTimes]<br />
Similarly, Peter Lance, in his 2006 research into the FBI’s mishandling of terrorist<br />
investigations title Triple Cross, documents how the FBI failed to bring to justice:<br />
• Ihab Mohammed Ali Nawawi, who trained at Airman Flight School in Norman<br />
Oklahoma and became Bin Laden’s personal pilot;<br />
• Ali Mohammed, a major Al Qaeda operative in the US and abroad linked to the<br />
embassy bombings;<br />
• Mohammed Jamal Khalifa: Osama Bin Laden’s brother-in-law who was connected by<br />
evidence to multiple Al Qaeda operations, but was extradited to Jordan to be set free;<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 83
• Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a major Al Qaeda operative considered the ‘mastermind<br />
of the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> attacks;<br />
• Al-Midhar Nawaf al-Hamzi, 9/<strong>11</strong> hijacker;<br />
• Khalid al Midhar, 9/<strong>11</strong> hijacker.<br />
At one point, Lance attributes these failures to a “stovepiping” between U.S. agencies in<br />
their failure to share intelligence before 9/<strong>11</strong>.” (Page 333). Elsewhere, he suggests “If<br />
they failed to connect the dots, it wasn’t because a legal barrier or “wall” had been<br />
erected. It was because of management interference, incompetence, or sheer lack of will.”<br />
(Page 72). Lance however is able to tell his readers that the “Malaysian Summit ... that<br />
set the stage for not only the Cole bombing and the 9/<strong>11</strong> attacks” “was monitored, as it<br />
took place, at the highest levels of the intelligence community – even at the White House.<br />
White House National Security Advisor Sandy Berger was reportedly kept up to speed on<br />
the conference and …FBI director Louis Freeeh himself was briefed.” (Page 337).<br />
The simplest explanation is not government incompetence. There are so many examples<br />
of Al Qaeda operatives being released so many times, that one can only conclude that<br />
these men were and are protected by the US intelligence world, because they serve the<br />
US National Security apparatus.<br />
Understanding the attack on the USS Cole also provides insights, with indications the<br />
attack required a complicated and sophisticated bomb, which was built in Lebanon by the<br />
Hezbollah, and transported with the assistance of the Syrian Intelligence.<br />
“The Oct. 12 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen is the work of network headed by Osama bin Laden.<br />
However, the sophisticated nature of the bomb--which was placed within a metal container to channel<br />
the blast into the Cole's hull--suggests state involvement. The bomb-makers were Hezbollah terrorists<br />
led by Imad Mughniyah. Everything was done in Lebanon under the protection of the Syrian army who<br />
then helped the transfer of the bomb to the terrorists. Iran delivered the first material necessarily to<br />
make the bomb. This delivery cannot be done without the agreement and the help of Damascus.”<br />
[Syria – Al Qaida Connection, Dr. J. R. Albani, Senior Official in the Guardians of the Cedars, May<br />
24, 2003]<br />
The evidence suggests there are multiple intelligence organizations (known to have<br />
cooperated with U.S. intelligence in the past) involved in these fatwa bombings. In an<br />
earlier decade, agents from Iran and Syria worked directly with US intelligence to<br />
execute the October Surprise and the Iran-Contra weapons deals. Syrian troops fought<br />
along side US troops in the first Gulf War. The rhetorical question that might be asked is:<br />
would agencies that have been traditional allies of the US now be part of an attack on the<br />
US? Even the agencies of United States’s avowed enemies do not attack the U.S.<br />
This multi-national conspiracy known as the fatwa bombings was coordinated by the<br />
same team now operating in Azerbaijan. This is a consistent theme with the evidence.<br />
Mohammed Atta was involved in multiple intelligence organizations, the same as those<br />
identified as backing the US embassy bombings. The 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers had histories with<br />
multiple western intelligence agencies. Moreover, a number of them, including<br />
Mohammed Atta, seemingly had links to the US Military.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 84
“Three of the alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car registrations as the Naval<br />
Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.—known as the “Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation,” according to a highranking<br />
U.S. Navy source. Another of the alleged hijackers may have been trained in strategy and<br />
tactics at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said another high-ranking Pentagon official. The<br />
fifth man may have received language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex.<br />
Both were former Saudi Air Force pilots who had come to the United States, according to the Pentagon<br />
source.” [The Pentagon has turned over military records on five men to the FBI, George Wehrfritz,<br />
Catharine Skipp and John Barry, Newsweek, 9/15/2001]<br />
“As the investigation gathered strength yesterday, unusual leads began to surface, among them the<br />
possibility that some of the hijackers may have received training at Pensacola Naval Air Station in<br />
Florida or other U.S. military facilities. Two of 19 suspects named by the FBI, Saeed Alghamdi and<br />
Ahmed Alghamdi, have the same names as men listed at a housing facility for foreign military trainees<br />
at Pensacola. Two others, Hamza Alghamdi and Ahmed Alnami, have names similar to individuals<br />
listed in public records as using the same address inside the base. In addition, a man named Saeed<br />
Alghamdi graduated from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio,<br />
while men with the same names as two other hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, appear<br />
as graduates of the U.S. International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., and the<br />
Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, respectively.” [Washington<br />
Post, 9/16 2001]<br />
The observation that 9/<strong>11</strong> required involvement by multiple intelligence agencies has<br />
been made by at least two well-respected intelligence observers from Russia and<br />
Germany.<br />
“(General) Ivashov hits the nail square on the head. “The organizers of [the nine eleven] attacks were<br />
the political and business circles interested in destabilizing the world order” because they “were not<br />
satisfied with the rhythm of the globalization process or its direction.” As others have explained—most<br />
notably Andreas Von Bulow, Bundestag member of a parliamentary commission which oversaw the<br />
three branches of the German secret service—only “secret services and their current chiefs” (or<br />
retired staff with “influence inside the state organizations”) have the “ability to plan, organize and<br />
conduct an operation of such magnitude. Generally, secret services create, finance and control<br />
extremist organizations. Without the support of secret services, these organizations cannot exist—let<br />
alone carry out operations of such magnitude inside countries so well protected.” Thus the obvious<br />
patsy “Osama bin Laden and ‘Al Qaeda’ cannot be the organizers or the performers of the <strong>September</strong><br />
<strong>11</strong> attacks” because they “do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders” (or the military<br />
and intelligence experience and knowledge required). Instead, “a team of professionals had to be<br />
created and the Arab kamikazes are just extras to mask the operation.” [Russian General - 9/<strong>11</strong> a<br />
Globalist inside Job, January 22,2006]<br />
Moreover, the more one looks at these Muslim ‘terrorist’ organizations, one finds they<br />
are generally headquartered in Western capitals. The ring of ‘terrorist groups’ (including<br />
Al Qaeda) supported by the US and its allies and which ring the former Soviet Union<br />
have a consistent funding and support from the US and its allies. In addition to Syrian,<br />
Saudi and Pakistani intelligence support for Muslim terrorist groups, one also finds<br />
extensive British support.<br />
“A terrorist network whose purpose is to undermine Russia is organized and coordinated from London.<br />
There, under the wing of British intelligence, thrive the world's most radical Islamic terrorist<br />
organizations, such as the "Islamic <strong>Liberation</strong> Party", the "Worldwide Islamic <strong>Front</strong>", the "Defenders<br />
of Shariat", the "Mukhadjiri" movement, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and others. I've named<br />
only those organizations which are forbidden in the majority of Islamic countries. In London also are<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 85
located the nerve centers of Chechen terrorism along with the bank accounts of the terrorists.” [Who's<br />
Noticing the NATO danger? General Leonid Ivashov , Sovetskaya Rossiya , April 8, 2004 ]<br />
Even after the World Trade Center attack of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, Britain was ‘protecting’<br />
known Al Qaeda officials.<br />
“Investigators from Spain, Germany and Italy are desperate to question Abu Qatada, who they claim is<br />
a pivotal figure in cells they have under arrest in their own countries. Their requests to question him<br />
and some of the other suspects directly have been rejected by the Government. Investigators in Spain<br />
who named Abu Qatada as 'the spiritual leader of al-Qaeda in Europe', say their own terror trials are<br />
hindered by Britain's refusal to let them interrogate the cleric. The Jordanian Government has<br />
sentenced him to life imprisonment for his role in planning a bombing campaign to coincide with the<br />
millenium celebrations and cannot understand why Abu Qatada is not extradited. In spite of holding<br />
most of the terror suspects for many months, the men are providing the security services and police<br />
with little intelligence on terrorist activity in the United Kingdom."[ London Times 19 December<br />
2003]<br />
"Described by some justice officials as the spiritual leader and possible puppet master of al-Qaeda's<br />
European networks, Abu Qatada has been missing since mid-December after British authorities<br />
confiscated his passport, froze his assets and ordered him confined to his London home. With Jordan<br />
seeking his return to serve a life sentence for terror-related crimes, some observers figured Abu Qatada<br />
went underground—and perhaps left Britain—to avoid extradition. But senior European intelligence<br />
officials tell TIME that Abu Qatada is tucked away in a safe house in the north of England, where he<br />
and his family are being lodged, fed and clothed by British intelligence services".['Sheltering A Puppet<br />
Master?' Time Magazine 7 July 2002]<br />
The Mujahedin mercenaries hired by Richard Secord to fight in Azerbaijan fought for<br />
multiple causes in multiple countries. Their use as instruments of US policy in<br />
Afghansistan, Kosovo, Chechnya, Georgia, Azerbaijan has been documented in hundreds<br />
of reports. Their protection by US and British policy makers long after the fatwa<br />
proclamation is equally well documented. The reader needs to suspend judgment when it<br />
comes to accepting at face value the claim that the hijackers and fatwa bombers were in<br />
the service of Osama Bin Ladin. The timing of the fatwa and the embassy bombings is<br />
consistent with the timing of a decision to destroy the World Trade Center, in such a way<br />
that it is possible that the fatwa and bombings were part of a larger plan to blame the<br />
WTC attack on ‘terrorists’. Evidence has been presented that the individuals responsible<br />
for these bombings were US trained, and belonged to a resource pool available to Secord,<br />
Armitage and Kimche. This is another in a list of hundreds of coincidences that support<br />
the conclusion that the Al Qaeda explanation offered by the US investigation is a<br />
falsehood.<br />
U.S. Control of Afghanistan<br />
In December 1998, following the US bombardment of Afghanistan and the anti-Taliban<br />
campaign of the Feminist Majority that was directed against Unocal, that company<br />
withdrew from the pipeline consortium. Unocal, in a related news release, also<br />
announced a 40 percent drop in capital spending for 1999 because of low oil prices,<br />
which it suggested, would prevent moving ahead on the pipeline in a timeframe required<br />
by the Taliban. The Taliban wanted the financial rewards associated with a pipeline, and<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 86
Unocal was not in a position to provide it in the desired timeframe for political and<br />
financial reasons. Hence, the Taliban opened the door once again to Bridas. The Unocal<br />
move, however was purely a political response to US public opinion, and the true<br />
intentions never were to give up on the contract. When the Taliban indicated a renewed<br />
willingness to work with Bridas, the US negotiators responded with threats of invasion.<br />
The timing of these threats is a critical clue. The July, 2001 threats could only be made<br />
with a pre-knowledge of a “Pearl Harbor” event by at least one of the three negotiators:<br />
Tom Simons, Karl Inderfurth or Lee Coldren.<br />
“Three former American officials, Tom Simons (former US Ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth<br />
(former Deputy Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs), and Lee Coldren (former State Department<br />
expert on South Asia) meet with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers in a Berlin hotel. [Salon,<br />
8/16/02] This is the third of a series of back-channel conferences called “brainstorming on<br />
Afghanistan.” Taliban representatives sat in on previous meetings, but boycotted this one due to<br />
worsening tensions. However, the Pakistani ISI relays information from the meeting to the Taliban.<br />
[Guardian, 9/22/01] At the meeting, Coldren passes on a message from Bush officials. He later says, “I<br />
think there was some discussion of the fact that the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that<br />
they might be considering some military action.” [Guardian, 9/26/01] Accounts vary, but former<br />
Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik later says he is told by senior American officials at the meeting<br />
that military action to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan is planned to “take place before the snows<br />
started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.” The goal is to kill or capture both<br />
bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, topple the Taliban regime, and install a transitional<br />
government of moderate Afghans in its place. Uzbekistan and Russia would also participate. Naik also<br />
says, “It was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered<br />
immediately by the Taliban.” [BBC, 9/18/01] One specific threat made at this meeting is that the<br />
Taliban can choose between “carpets of bombs” —an invasion—or “carpets of gold” — the pipeline.<br />
[Brisard, Dasquie and Madsen, 2002, pp 43] Naik contends that Tom Simons made the “carpets”<br />
statement. Simons claims, “It's possible that a mischievous American participant, after several drinks,<br />
may have thought it smart to evoke gold carpets and carpet bombs. Even Americans can't resist the<br />
temptation to be mischievous.” Naik and the other American participants deny that the pipeline was an<br />
issue at the meeting. [Salon, 8/16/02] Creative Commons<br />
Just prior to the time these statements were being made to the Taliban, Richard Armitage<br />
was in Islamabad, and it is speculated by this report that the above three agents were<br />
working under his direction. Armitage’s expertise in the Afghan region was substantial<br />
in that he holds the ‘highest Pakistani civil decoration that could be awarded to a<br />
foreigner’ for his role during the Afghan war in the 1980s.<br />
While Unocal publicly appeared to back away from any association with the Taliban, it<br />
maintained a presence in Afghanistan, and the US intelligence agencies worked on behalf<br />
of Unocal (and Enron) to promote an environment that would support a re-instatement of<br />
the pipeline. At that time, there were twenty CIA agents working for Enron using a<br />
leave-of-absence from the agency. They all managed to return to their positions within<br />
the agency when Enron went under.<br />
A key player in facilitating that covert operation was Dick Cheney.<br />
“A chief benefactor in the CentGas (Central Asian Pipeline) deal would have been Halliburton, the<br />
huge oil pipeline construction firm that also had its eye on the Central Asian oil reserves. At the time,<br />
Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney.” [Provisional leader Karzai links to US Oil, Indymedia<br />
Somewhere, Wayne Madsen, 2002-01-21]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 87
Cheney was initially involved in the pipeline negotiations while CEO of Halliburton. As<br />
newly elected Vice President of the U.S, he would intercede in January of 2001,<br />
supposedly at the request of Enron, to impose an “intelligence block” that would prevent<br />
numerous US investigative agencies from interfering with or monitoring discussions<br />
between Afghan, Saudi and US covert operatives who were “fixing” the situation.<br />
During this time while the block was in effect, two key leaders of the Northern Alliance<br />
(Abdul Haq and Ahmad Shah Masoud (Masood)) were assassinated, and the Taliban<br />
leadership was “courted” with cash.<br />
“Abdul Haq, the assassinated former mujaheddin leader from Jalalabad, and the leadership of the<br />
Northern Alliance… When Haq entered Afghanistan from Pakistan last October (2001), his position<br />
was immediately known to Taliban forces, which subsequently pinned him and his small party down,<br />
captured, and executed them….” [Provisional leader Karzai links to US Oil , Indymedia Somewhere,<br />
Wayne Madsen, 2002-01-21]<br />
"The Taliban's execution of Afghan opposition leader Abdul Haq will be a subject of contention at a<br />
congressional hearing today and could lead to new scrutiny of the CIA's close ties to Pakistan’s<br />
intelligence service. A House International Relations subcommittee is expected to air charges that<br />
Pakistani agents betrayed Abdul Haq, and the CIA didn't do enough to save him. Recriminations are<br />
rising in the aftermath of Abdul Haq's execution Friday in Afghanistan. His champions say the hero<br />
during the war with the Soviet Union was a potential unifying force for anti-Taliban opposition<br />
factions... Abudul Haq's death has prompted some of the strongest criticism of the U.S. war effort. 'A<br />
lot of people are very upset,' says Al Santolly, an aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. 'The whole<br />
episode shows a lack of coherence in the (Bush administration) policy.' The crux of the criticism over<br />
his death is the CIA's relationship with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)... The CIA went<br />
along with the ISI, including the ISI's creation of the Taliban, critics say... Vince Cannistraro, a former<br />
CIA director of counterterrorism, says there is 'credible information' that the ISI tipped off an Afghan<br />
tribal leader about Abdul Haq's whereabouts, and the tribal leader told the Taliban. A senior official of<br />
the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance made the same charge on Tuesday, as did several congressional<br />
aides." [Taliban foe's death sparks criticism of U.S. goals," USA Today, 10/31/2001]<br />
“<strong>September</strong> 9, the leader of the Northern Alliance, Commander Ahmad Shah Masood, was<br />
assassinated. The Northern Alliance informed the Bush administration that the ISI of Pakistan was<br />
implicated in the murder.”[ Mahmoud Ahmad and The Secret Cult of 9-<strong>11</strong>, Laura Knight-Jadczyk]<br />
A significant amount of money was spent in courting the Taliban leadership. There are<br />
accounts that both the US and Russian fixers were each plowing $20 million per month<br />
into the Afghan leadership.<br />
What is widely perceived as a collapse of negotiations is thought to be the impetus for the<br />
invasion of Afghanistan. However, key Northern Alliance resistance leadership had<br />
already been removed. The Taliban, to a large degree, supported a US pipeline, and only<br />
this fact can explain the limited assault on Taliban forces by US troops, once the invasion<br />
began, and the willingness of US forces to let thousands of Taliban fighters to escape.<br />
With the dispersal of the Taliban and the elimination of Northern Alliance leadership, it<br />
was easy for the US to install as president its own candidate, an oil industry executive<br />
who formerly worked for Unocal - Hamid Karzai. Coincidentally, it also created<br />
conditions allowing for a change in heroin traffic through Northern Afghanistan,<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 88
switching traffic from the Russian military routes through Moscow to the more southern<br />
routes controlled by the Chechen Mafiya and Yeltsin Family.<br />
4.5 Afghanistan and the Intelligence Block<br />
John O’Neill was confounded by the same ‘intelligence block’ as Sibel Edmonds, and<br />
before his murder indicated the ‘block’ was preventing investigation into arms and drug<br />
smuggling and money laundering because it was connected to the Taliban and the need<br />
for Enron to salvage its Indian electrical generating plant investment. Without the<br />
pipeline, the plant was a financial failure with an estimated at $3 billion price tag.<br />
Salvaging its value might have prevented Enron’s bankruptcy, but most likely only would<br />
have delayed it.<br />
“… in January 2001, Vice President Cheney allegedly reinstated the intelligence block and expanded it<br />
to effectively preclude any investigations whatsoever of Saudi-Taliban-Afghan oil connections.<br />
Former FBI counter-terrorism chief John O’Neil resigned from the FBI in disgust, stating that he was<br />
ordered not to investigate Saudi-Al Qaida connections because of the Enron pipeline deal. Loftus has<br />
confirmed that it was O’Neill who originally discovered the AL Qaida pipeline memo after the<br />
Embassy bombings in Africa….” [What Congress does not know about Enron and 9/<strong>11</strong>, John Loftus]<br />
“Loftus asserts that the Enron block, which remained in force from January 2001 until August 2001<br />
when the pipeline deal collapsed, is the reason that none of FBI agent Rowley’s requests for<br />
investigations were ever approved. As numerous British and French authors have concluded, the<br />
information provided by European intelligence sources prior to 9/<strong>11</strong> was so extensive, that it is no<br />
longer possible for either CIA or the FBI to assert a defense of incompetence.” [May 31, 2002 For<br />
Immediate Release, By Atty. John J. Loftus ]<br />
“During the investigation of the August 7, 1998, US embassy bombings, FBI counterterrorism expert<br />
John O'Neill finds a memo by Al Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef on a computer. The memo shows that<br />
bin Laden's group has a keen interest in and detailed knowledge of negotiations between the Taliban<br />
and the US over an oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan. Atef's analysis suggests that the Taliban<br />
are not sincere in wanting a pipeline, but are dragging out negotiations to keep Western powers at<br />
bay.” [Salon, 6/5/02]<br />
“Their ongoing terrorist investigations appear to have been hindered during the same sensitive time<br />
period while the Enron Corporation was still negotiating with the Taliban. An inadvertent result of the<br />
Taliban pipeline cover-up was that the Taliban's friends in Al Qaida were able to complete their last<br />
eight months of preparations for 9/<strong>11</strong> while the Enron secrecy block was still in force….” [What<br />
Congress does not know about Enron and 9/<strong>11</strong>, John Loftus]<br />
The real need for the ‘intelligence block’ becomes confusing, because there was a public<br />
courting between the Taliban and Enron, and the US government was inviting Taliban<br />
leaders to the United States through July of 2001 to negotiate successful closure to the<br />
pipeline deal. If the discussions were public, what might be the need for an “intelligence<br />
block?” Indeed, Enron felt it had successfully achieved its objectives.<br />
“The Enron Corporation gave the Taliban millions of dollars in a no-holds-barred bid to strike a deal<br />
for an energy pipeline in Afghanistan -- while the Taliban were already sheltering terror kingpin<br />
Osama Bin Laden!<br />
Enron executives even met with Taliban officials in Texas, where they were given the red-carpet<br />
treatment and promised a fortune if the deal went through.… As The ENQUIRER revealed two weeks<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 89
ago, Enron secretly employed CIA agents to carry out its dealings overseas. And a CIA insider<br />
disclosed: "Enron was wooing the Taliban and was willing to make the Taliban a partner in the<br />
operation of a pipeline through Afghanistan. Three days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade<br />
Center and the Pentagon, Unocal announced it had withdrawn from the Afghanistan pipeline project.<br />
But the CIA insider said Enron and its CEO Kenneth Lay held on, waiting for the Taliban to give up<br />
Bin Laden as the Bush administration was demanding. "Enron figured the Taliban wanted to stick to<br />
their deal, that they wanted riches the same way Enron did.” [March 4, 2002, American Patriot<br />
Friends Network]<br />
The evidence suggests:<br />
1. The intelligence block was unnecessary to protect Enron and Unocal, unless their<br />
agents were engaged in negotiations that could not be made public because they were<br />
illegal. The pipeline was a done deal, despite common perceptions in the press;<br />
2. The attack on the WTC was not required to cement the pipeline deal.<br />
• The pro-Russian opposition leadership of the Northern Alliance had been<br />
assassinated (Abdul Haq and AhmadShah Masood), as had key Taliban<br />
resistance.<br />
• the Taliban had been bought off;<br />
“the chief Taliban leader based in Kandahar, Mullah Mohammed Omar, now on America's<br />
international Most Wanted List, was firmly in the UNOCAL camp.… Mullah Omar knew<br />
UNOCAL had pumped large sums of money to the Taliban hierarchy in Kandahar and its<br />
expatriate Afghan supporters in the United States. Some of those supporters were also close to<br />
the Bush campaign and administration. And Kandahar was the city near which the CentGas<br />
pipeline was to pass, a lucrative deal for the otherwise desert outpost…” [Provisional leader<br />
Karzai links to US Oil, Indymedia Somewhere, Wayne Madsen, January 21, 2002]<br />
• The Pakistanis while very pro Taliban, were more pro-Pakistani, and knew the<br />
pipeline meant large dividends for them. Payoffs to the Pakistanis – especially<br />
the by the Saudis measured in the hundreds of millions.<br />
This should suggest that if the intelligence block and the attack on the WTC were<br />
unnecessary to secure the Afghan pipeline, both were needed for something else. This<br />
report concludes that while the attack on Afghanistan was part of a larger strategy, the<br />
attack was not a necessity as reported by a large school of conspiracy theorists. The deal<br />
was sealed. It was a fait accompli. An attack on the WTC was not necessary to secure the<br />
pipeline, but was more of a coup de grace for any vestige of resistance. It was not the oil<br />
negotiations that were being covered up by the “intelligence block” –but the illegal<br />
money behind the negotiations. Most importantly, the decision to destroy the WTC was<br />
made long before the crisis in pipeline negotiations occurred in mid-1999. The<br />
recruitment of Atta’s hijackers was already underway.<br />
4.6 Afghan Heroin<br />
Unocal – as part of the negotiations with the Taliban up until the attack – had a<br />
documented record of supporting local warlord business enterprises in Asia, which<br />
resulted in dealing with drugs and money laundering<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 90
“An article in The Nation magazine asserts that Unocal's pipeline partner, the Myanmar Oil and Gas<br />
Enterprise (MOGE) is the main conduit for the laundering of drug money by the junta. Secretary of<br />
State Madeleine Albright has said, "Burma's drug traffickers, with official encouragement, are<br />
laundering their profits through Burmese banks and companies -- some of which are joint ventures<br />
with foreign businesses." The State Department reports that Burma exports 60% of the heroin found on<br />
US streets…” [Unocal, Heroin and Forced Labor, Rogue Oil Company Undermines US Foreign<br />
Policy, Free Burma Coalition, Los Angeles, 9/1/1998]<br />
The “leap” of faith that needs to be made, and the hypothesis here, is that if Unocal and<br />
Enron were comfortable in laundering money for drugs in Burma, wouldn’t they also be<br />
likely to do so in Afghanistan? It appears as though the same mujahedin dealing with<br />
the US team in Azerbaijan were moving heroin, and laundering the funds through the<br />
Deutsche Bank:<br />
“Additional direct CIA and Deutschebank ties to heroin smuggling and money laundering were also<br />
revealed by the FT story. "In the 1980's, at the insistence of the Central Intelligence Agency, the<br />
Internal Political Division of the [Pakistani] Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), headed by Brig Imtiaz...<br />
started a cell for the use of heroin for covert actions. This cell promoted the cultivation of opium and<br />
the extraction of heroin in Pakistan as well as in those parts of Afghanistan under Mujahedeen control<br />
for being smuggled into the Soviet-controlled areas to get the Soviet troops addicted.” [Part III in a<br />
Special FTW Series on Insider Trading and <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th : All Roads Lead to Deutschebank and<br />
Harken Energy, W’s Own 1991 Insider Trading Scam – the Mother of All Enrons, by Tom Flocco and<br />
Michael C. Ruppert, Edited by Michael C. Ruppert, © Copyright 2002, From The Wilderness<br />
Publications]<br />
“Just 32 days before the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, a Financial Times of Asia<br />
(FT) Wire-Business Line report linked Deutschebank to the United States Central Intelligence Agency<br />
(CIA), Pakistani and Afghani heroin smuggling, and money laundering of narcotics proceeds (8-10-<br />
2001). Retired Pakistani intelligence chief Brig Imtiaz was jailed for eight years on July 31, 2001 for<br />
laundering heroin profits -- for covert actions -- via a CIA-linked drug smuggling cell, using<br />
Deutschebank and other financial entities and properties.”<br />
"[In Dec. 2001] Pakistan and the United States have turned to a tried and trusted 'friend' in their efforts<br />
to exert control over events in Afghanistan - convicted Pakistani drug baron and former<br />
parliamentarian, Ayub Afridi.... Without fanfare, Afridi was freed from prison in Karachi last<br />
Thursday after serving just a few weeks of a seven-year sentence for the export of 6.5 tons of hashish,<br />
seized at Antwerp, Belgium, in the 1980s. No reasons were given for Afridi's release..... It is a matter<br />
of record that top US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials believed in the early 1980s that they<br />
would never be able to justify a multibillion-dollar budget from the government to provide support to<br />
the mujahedin in the fight against the Red Army. As a result, they decided to generate funds through<br />
the poppy-rich Afghan soil and heroin production and smuggling to finance the Afghan war. Afridi<br />
was the kingpin of this plan.... "[US turns to drug baron to rally support, Asia Times, 12/5/2001]<br />
Quite simply, these were the illegal deals being hidden by the intelligence block. These<br />
are the conversations that could put executives from Enron and Unocal in prison, as well<br />
as Deutschebank executives and US intelligence operatives. These deals were hidden.<br />
The US oil companies got the oil. The Mafiya got the heroin. The Deutsch Bank got its<br />
20% laundering fee.<br />
"Criminals now pay around 20 percent in laundering commissions. Just a few years ago, they were<br />
paying only five to six percent. That change is the result of better legislation, better regulation, better<br />
enforcement and better international cooperation."[Russia: U.N. wants Russian help in $3 trillion crime<br />
fight, By Konstantin Trifonov ,06/05/2001, Reuters English News Service , (C) Reuters Limited 2001]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 91
It was this “better legislation, better regulation, better enforcement and better<br />
international cooperation” that indirectly brought about the destruction of the World<br />
Trade Center.<br />
The Pakistani-Deutschebank money-laundering story was indicative of a broader,<br />
ongoing investigation of money laundering involving weapons and drugs being<br />
undertaken by US agencies, which named the Deutsche Bank in at least three indictments<br />
across separate crimes. Initially, the US Department of Justice indicted two American<br />
executives of the Bank of New York in <strong>September</strong> 1999 for laundering money for the<br />
Russian Mafiya– an investigation started in 1998 at the request of the Russians. The<br />
investigation was dropped prematurely (which was then picked up by European<br />
investigators), the Deutsche Bank connection to the laundering was not publicized in the<br />
US press, and the only person punished for a multi-billion dollar fraud was a bank<br />
secretary who went to jail for two weeks. The investigation was initially associated with<br />
nothing more than illegal money transfers. After the Swiss investigators revitalized the<br />
investigation a couple years later, the involvement of Marc Rich, an international arms<br />
merchant was identified, as were other associates of the Yeltsin Family. The extensive<br />
connections between Jonathon Bush, the Riggs Bank and the Russian money-laundering<br />
scandal were totally ignored by the U.S, press.<br />
Subsequent investigations produced an unrelated, but second money-laundering<br />
conviction in July of 2001 (that of General Imtiaz), and was still generating leads. A few<br />
weeks after convicting Imtiaz the Deutsche Bank was named in a third indictment of<br />
money laundering and weapons sales:<br />
“In the trial of a former Deutschebank executive Kevin Ingram, who pled guilty to laundering drug<br />
money to finance terrorist operations linked to Al Qaeda just two weeks before the 9-<strong>11</strong> attacks,<br />
indications surfaced that the Justice Department had penetrated the terrorists’ financial network. A<br />
Nov. 16 Associated Press story by Catherine Wilson stated, "Numerous promised wire transfers never<br />
arrived, but there were discussions of foreign bankers taking payoffs to move the money to purchase<br />
weapons into the United States, said prosecutor Rolando Garcia." [The Case for Bush Administration<br />
Advance Knowledge of 9-<strong>11</strong> Attacks, Michael C. Ruppert, FTW Publications © COPYRIGHT 2002]<br />
“On August 28, 2001, 14 days before the Trade Center attacks, former Deutschebank senior bond<br />
investment trader Kevin Ingram, pled guilty in a $2.2 million dollar money laundering conspiracy,<br />
resulting from a government sting operation investigating the illegal sale of night vision goggles,<br />
Beretta machine pistols, M-16 machine guns with silencers, rocket-propelled grenade launchers,<br />
mortars, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), TOW anti-tank missiles, and Stinger missiles, according to<br />
court papers examined by the New York Post.” [Profits of Death (A Special FTW Series) Part II --<br />
Trading with the Enemy, Tom Flocco - Edited by Michael C. Ruppert, Copyright 2001. From The<br />
Wilderness Publications]<br />
“Interesting confirmation of the U.S. government's familiarity with banking operations connected to<br />
terrorist activities was revealed in an <strong>11</strong>/16/01 AP story by Catherine Wilson. In describing events in a<br />
Florida prosecution of Egyptians connected to Ingram's case she wrote, "Numerous promised wire<br />
transfers never arrived, but there were discussions of foreign bankers taking payoffs to move the money<br />
to purchase weapons into the United States, said [federal] prosecutor Rolando Garcia." This is yet<br />
another clear indication that intelligence agencies routinely monitor banking transactions in terroristrelated<br />
cases. It has not been disclosed whether Ingram's plea bargain produced testimony in this case.”<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 92
[Profits of Death (A Special FTW Series) Part II -- Trading with the Enemy, Tom Flocco - Edited by<br />
Michael C. Ruppert, Copyright 2001. From The Wilderness Publications]<br />
However, it should be noted that the US Justice Department investigations were<br />
significantly less than thorough and addressed substantially less than the tip of the<br />
iceberg. The original Bank of New York investigation found $500 million to be<br />
laundered for the Russians. After the Swiss re-opened the case, the actual amount<br />
laundered was reported to be closer to $10 billion. Subsequent estimates provided at the<br />
Russian criminal trials suggested the amounts might be closer to $15 billion.<br />
“An aggressive European investigation of international crime has revealed alleged Russian mafia<br />
leaders operating in the United States. The U.S. Justice Department, write PNS contributors Lucy<br />
Komisar and Ivan Feranec, dropped the ball three years ago during the Bank of New York scandal,<br />
which now threatens to explode. Nearly three years ago, the Justice Department called the Bank of<br />
New York (BoNY) money-laundering scandal "just" a Russian tax-evasion scheme. Now, European<br />
investigations show that BoNY was a channel for organized crime. And according to a document<br />
obtained by Pacific News Service, some of the alleged Russian mafia leaders have operated freely in<br />
the United States. The widening scandal reveals Washington's dangerous reluctance to confront<br />
international criminal networks.” [U.S. Investigators Missed Russian Mob in N.Y. Bank Scandal,<br />
Lucy Komisar And Ivan Feranec, Pacific News Service, 8/6/2002]<br />
In fact, there are grounds to assume that the Justice Department was under similar<br />
instructions from the administration to initially “block” the sharing of information on this<br />
case, just as the CIA put a block on FBI investigations:<br />
“In June, at a conference on dirty money at Washington's Brookings Institution, New York District<br />
Attorney Robert Morgenthau questioned whether the Justice Department "thoroughly investigated" the<br />
case (Bank of New York). A top official in the district attorney's office said the Justice Dept. would not<br />
provide his office with information and told them to drop the case.<br />
Morgenthau ran into similar federal displeasure a decade ago when he brought criminal charges against<br />
leaders of the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which collapsed in<br />
a mega-fraud that made $8 billion "disappear." [U.S. Investigators Missed Russian Mob in N.Y. Bank<br />
Scandal, Lucy Komisar And Ivan Feranec, Pacific News Service, 8/6/2002]<br />
A similar lack of aggressiveness on the part of the Justice Department also may have<br />
contributed to the success of Adnan Khashoggi’s GenesisIntermedia to defraud MJK<br />
securities in <strong>September</strong> 2001. It appears that GenesisIntermedia, and its Pakistani<br />
promoter Rafi Khan, had been under intensive investigation by a number of U.S.<br />
authorities, including the United States Securities and Exchange <strong>Commission</strong>, more than<br />
a year before those stocks mysteriously disappeared, forcing MJK into bankruptcy:<br />
“As noted in SEC court filings, the period of investigation dates back to June, 2000, less than a month<br />
after Mr. (Rafi Mohamad) Khan signed his consent settlement with the regulator.” [Street Wire, Brent<br />
Mudry, <strong>11</strong>/14/2002]<br />
Finally, of ‘interesting’ historical note, there was another trial related to the Kevin Ingram<br />
money laundering investigation. A New Jersey surgeon, who was a brother to one of the<br />
terrorists in the Ingram deal, was indicted for fraud and accused of diverting government<br />
funds to terrorists. Although $15 million dollars of taxpayer funds were never recovered,<br />
he was released without conviction. His lawyer was a de jure Israeli citizen named<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 93
Michael Chertoff, who would later head up the official 9/<strong>11</strong> investigation, and become<br />
Secretary of Homeland Security.<br />
On one hand, in the US, Europe and Central Asia, Deutschebank executives were being<br />
identified by the US Department of Justice– a key indicator that a major investigation of<br />
the Deutsche Bank was under way or being threaded together. On the other hand, it<br />
appears as though the investigations were deliberately constrained in their thoroughness,<br />
at the direction of the US Attorney General. Whatever results were being realized, the<br />
attack on the WTC certainly help put an end to that investigation:<br />
“Michigan Senator Carl Levin's Minority Banking <strong>Report</strong> of February 2001 calls correspondent<br />
banking the "gateway to money laundering," a financial technique wherein illicit money is moved from<br />
bank to bank with "no questions asked," thereby cleansing funds prior to being used for legitimate<br />
purposes. Via correspondent banking relationships, banks not licensed in the U.S. may gain access to<br />
American financial markets by establishing a correspondent relationship with banks that are.<br />
Deutschebank is licensed in the U.S. and maintained offices at the World Trade Center. All U.S.<br />
Deutschebank records were destroyed in the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> attacks.” [Part III in a Special FTW Series<br />
on Insider Trading and <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th , All Roads Lead to Deutschebank and Harken Energy, W’s<br />
Own 1991 Insider Trading Scam, Tom Flocco and Michael C. Ruppert, Edited by Michael C. Ruppert,<br />
© Copyright 2002, From The Wilderness Publications]<br />
“But more importantly WTC 7…. housed high-level government offices including the FBI, CIA and<br />
the Secret Service. WTC 7 was also the storage facility for millions of files pertaining to active cases<br />
involving international drug dealing, organized crime, terrorism and money laundering.” [PBS<br />
Documentary: Silverstein, FDNY Razed WTC 7, Jeremy Baker]<br />
Conclusion: there were honest and diligent investigators who were getting too close to<br />
the German cartel’s key customers. Despite efforts by high level politicians to constrain<br />
investigations, progress could not be prevented without raising too much suspicion. The<br />
evidence was destroyed in a manner similar to the destruction of the BCCI fraud records,<br />
and the investigators were re-assigned to the war on “terror.”<br />
4.7 Kazakhstangate<br />
The location of FBI files in the North Tower of the WTC related to the Giffen and<br />
Williams bribery case has lead to the speculation that the attack on the WTC might have<br />
been an attempt to silence this investigation. Indeed, information presented in Section 6<br />
of this report suggests that the FBI offices were specifically targeted for destruction. In<br />
researching the set of events leading to this investigation, the evidence shows the<br />
Giffen/Willimas Kazakhstan operation was a key component of the Caspian Oil pipeline<br />
strategy. The relationship between Kazakhstangate, and the war on Afghanistan, can be<br />
understood by the following US announcement in December 2001:<br />
“During a visit to Kazakhstan in Central Asia, Secretary of State Powell states that US oil companies<br />
are likely to invest $200 billion in Kazakhstan alone in the next five to ten years.” [New York Times,<br />
12/15/01 Creative Commons]<br />
The motive for that investment was the knowledge that the US would be able to finalize<br />
and control a pipeline through Afghanistan, to the immensely rich Tengiz oil field.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 94
“The Tengiz oil field on Kazakhstan’s Caspian coast is one of the 10 largest oil deposits in the world,<br />
and was first developed in 1993 in a joint venture headed by Chevron, which owns 50 percent of the<br />
consortium. The resulting enterprise, Tengizchevroil, was later joined by Mobil (now ExxonMobil), a<br />
25 percent owner. The government of Kazakhstan owns another 20 percent, and Russian-American<br />
joint venture Lukoil holds a 5 percent share.” [blog]<br />
US oil company control of this field (75%) is largely attributable to three gentlemen:<br />
James Giffen (an independent agent) and Bryan Williams of Mobil Oil, and Dick<br />
Cheney, of Halliburton. (The role of Condoleezza Rice, who by her credentials, surely<br />
had a role – remains unreported.)<br />
“Chevron’s involvement throughout the region is quite ubiquitous. Alexander’s Gas and Oil<br />
Connections reported the company has invested more than $20 billion in Kazakhstan alone. From 1989<br />
to 1992 National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was on the board of directors of Chevron, and<br />
was its main expert on Kazakhstan. [The Forging of "Pipelineistan", Dave Allen Pfeiffer, From The<br />
Wilderness (FTW) Publications, www.copvcia.com, July 2002]<br />
During the course of acquiring rights to this oil field, it appears that Giffen and Williams<br />
acted illegally in the manner in which they won these contracts. That story is the essence<br />
of Kazakhstangate! But there is much more to the story than initially published. It<br />
appears that Dick Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, may have also been involved in illegal<br />
activity in Kazakhstan (in the same manner as French investigators suggested he was in<br />
Nigeria.) Just as intriguing, government prosecutors attempted to gloss over the<br />
involvement of President George Bush Sr.in the Giffen/Williams investigation, by<br />
limiting the period of activity in the indictment to after 1995. Giffen’s lawyers argued<br />
that there were documents showing his instructions from the Whitehouse going back as<br />
early as 1992, and earlier, suggesting involvement of George Bush Sr.!<br />
“THE COURT: … I am looking at Exhibit S to your motion papers, which was a letter dated May 22,<br />
2003, to Mr. Neiman in which you asked for documents relating to communications between Mr.<br />
Giffen and a series of individuals at the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council,<br />
the Department of State and the White House. What timeframe –<br />
MR. SCHWARTZ: It appears, your Honor, if I look at this, we did not specify a timeframe. Your<br />
Honor, I would suggest that an appropriate timeframe would be going back to the creation of the<br />
Republic of Kazakhstan in 1992, that that's when Mr. Giffen was in routine contact --<br />
THE COURT: That is three years before the time period covered by this Indictment.<br />
MR. SCHWARTZ: But the documents, your Honor, will corroborate the very important relationship<br />
he had. If there was evidence in this case that over a period of time he formed the state of mind that it<br />
was very, very important to keep the CIA abreast of what was going on in Kazakhstan, that wasn't<br />
something that occurred starting in 1995. That was something that occurred long before -- I would<br />
suggest even going back, your Honor, to the days of the Soviet Union, when Mr. Giffen was very<br />
active on behalf of American interests in the Soviet Union. But we RT would be prepared to take<br />
documents from 1992, from the creation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.” [UNITED STATES<br />
DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,<br />
New York, N.Y. v. 4 JAMES H. GIFFEN, June 3, 2004, Eurasia-Internet, 6/21/ 2004]<br />
This relationship to the Bush Sr. Whitehouse should not be viewed as coincidental.<br />
MEGA Oil, with its ties to the Bush family and Saudis, (Section 4) also initiated its<br />
covert activities on the opposite side of the Caspian - in Azerbaijan - in 1992 under<br />
George Bush Sr.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 95
Information will later be presented in this report (Section 6) as to the destruction of the<br />
FBI office on the 23 rd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. That office<br />
not only contained investigative documents relating to the illegal gold trades of numerous<br />
banks, but also included an investigation into the bribery and money laundering charges<br />
brought against James Giffen and Bryan Williams of Mobil Oil, who made illegal<br />
payments to Kazakhstan officials – President Nazarbayev in particular – on behalf of<br />
Mobil oil.<br />
“As Cheney, a millionaire petroleum executive who served as defense secretary in the administration<br />
of George Bush, the candidate's father, rose to accept the vice-presidential nomination from the<br />
cheering Republican convention in Philadelphia, Swiss prosecutors quietly moved to impound over<br />
$130 million in allegedly laundered funds deposited in Swiss banks.<br />
According to preliminary findings of the Swiss inquiry, the frozen funds represent under-the-table<br />
payoffs slipped to the top government officials of Kazakhstan by giant U.S. petroleum companies<br />
seeking favored access to that oil-rich country, a former Soviet province that attained independence<br />
after the collapse of communism.<br />
Advised by Swiss authorities that the suspect accounts -- more than $85 million found hidden in<br />
private numbered accounts controlled by Kazakh President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev in a single<br />
Geneva bank, Banque Pictet -- may violate the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, federal authorities<br />
in New York launched an investigation of their own.<br />
According to this memorandum, the Giffen probe was triggered by the findings of FBI agents in New<br />
York indicating that the millions impounded at Banque Pictet and other Swiss money-centers<br />
represented illegal payoffs to Kazakh officials by three major U.S. oil companies: Exxon Mobil, BP<br />
Amoco, and Phillips Petroleum.<br />
Giffen’s alleged role was that of the go-between who secretly transferred these huge bribes from the<br />
U.S. oil corporations along circuitous international money-laundering routes to Kazakhstan's president<br />
and his top aides.” [Martin Mann, August 14, 2000]<br />
“A federal grand jury in Washington has been hearing evidence on the swap allegations, along with<br />
allegations of money laundering and bribery… In Mobil's case, the company's in-house investigators<br />
came to believe that the proposed swap between Kazakhstan and Iran was but one element in a<br />
complex of seemingly high-risk business deals that were devised by Bryan Williams. Kazakhstan's<br />
desire to swap oil with Iran was widely known in the oil industry. Kazakhstan's only ports are on the<br />
Caspian Sea, which has no route by water to the ocean, whereas Iran can ship oil south through the<br />
Persian Gulf and on to the Indian Ocean. In May, 1995, however, the Clinton Administration had<br />
issued an executive order strengthening the sanctions against Iran. Under the executive order,<br />
American companies were prohibited from trading with Iran, which included any involvement in a<br />
swap, without a license from the Treasury Department”. [The Price of Oil, Seymour M. Hersh, The<br />
New Yorker, July 9, 2001]<br />
Included in the investigation were William’s accounts at Credit Suisse:<br />
“The Department of Justice criminal division’s supplemental request for assistance to the Swiss<br />
Federal Office of Justice dated April 27, 2001 states “On March 4, 1998 after the executive ceased<br />
employment at Mobil, Mobil inventoried the contents of his office. Among the items found in the<br />
executive’s office at Mobil was information suggesting that he had control over three bank accounts at<br />
Credit Suisse in Geneva.” [Manhattan Judge Rules On Pre-Trial Motions In “Kazakhgate” Case<br />
Marlena Telvick, 09/07/2004]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 96
Giffen and Williams were found guilty in 2003 of money laundering, and no one else was<br />
charged. Williams was sentenced to 5 years, and no report of Giffen being sentenced has<br />
been found as of February 2007!<br />
According to sources in Kazakhstan, the FBI investigation extended to much more<br />
activity than the illegal swaps with Iran, leaving investigators to speculate what had been<br />
dropped from the indictments:<br />
“The contracts investigated in the Kazakhgate trial, (were) first of all regarding the Tengiz, Kashagan,<br />
and Karachaganak fields and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium.” [The end of the “controlled”<br />
democracy, Interview with Akezhan Kazhegeldin, Prime Minister of Kazakhstan]<br />
Dick Cheney was extensively involved in at least two of the four areas of the Kazakhstan<br />
investigation: the Caspian Pipeline Consortium and the Tengiz oil field contracts. As the<br />
CEO of Halliburton, his company was a direct beneficiary of construction of the pipeline.<br />
As a member of Kazakhstan’s Oil Advisory Board, with Giffen, he helped broker the<br />
Chevron Oil deal for the Tengiz oil fields. Interestingly, the Chevron press release<br />
distinctly mentions the payment of bonuses to Kazakhstan.<br />
“Cheney sits on Kazakstan's Oil Advisory Board, a sounding board for the country's president. ... Dick<br />
Cheney helped broker the Chevron-Kazakhstan deal when he sat on the Kazakhstan Oil Advisory<br />
Board in the mid-'90s….” [Amarillo Globe-News, June 13, 1998]<br />
“REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN AND CHEVRON CORPORATION ANNOUNCE FORMATION<br />
OF THEIR JOINT VENTURE<br />
Almaty, April 6, 1993 -- The Republic of Kazakhstan and Chevron Corporation today announced the<br />
formation of their joint venture company, Tengizchevroil (TCO), to develop the Tengiz and Korolev<br />
oil fields on the northeastern Caspian Sea coast. ….<br />
Tengizchevroil is owned 50/50 by Tengizneftegaz, a subsidiary of Kazakhstanmunaigaz, the national<br />
oil company, currently operating the field and by Chevron Overseas Company, a unit of Chevron's<br />
international exploration and production subsidiary. The joint venture has been formed as an export<br />
project to generate hard currency revenues in international oil markets.<br />
To acquire its 50 percent interest in the joint venture, Chevron will pay the government of Kazakhstan<br />
bonuses as well as provide funds for development….” [Chevron Press Release Archives]<br />
To shed more light on Cheney’s role, just a Giffen and Williams cheated their partner<br />
(Farhat Tabbah), so did Cheney ‘cheat’ his original partner: Scott Van Dyke of Anglo<br />
Dutch Tenge – an oil company. As part of his efforts to get Chevron into Kazakhstan,<br />
Mr. Cheney breached his confidentiality agreement, for which Halliburton was later<br />
found guilty:<br />
“A jury has awarded $70 million to a Houston man who claimed that Halliburton and another oil<br />
company cheated him out of the chance to develop an oil field in Kazakhstan in the late 1990s. . . .<br />
Scott Van Dyke and his company, Anglo Dutch Tenge, sued the Halliburton and Ramco Oil in 2000. A<br />
jury found in favor of Van Dyke's company on Friday. Van Dyke's attorney John O'Quinn said his<br />
client was promised a concession for an oil field near the Caspian Sea when he met the Turkish<br />
president. When he was unable to fund development of the field, Van Dyke sought out an equity<br />
partner. Halliburton contacted him in 1997 and signed a confidentiality agreement not to disclose data<br />
that Van Dyke allowed the company to review, O'Quinn said. After opting not to invest, Halliburton<br />
located another company with ties to the Kazakhstan government and bought the field out from under<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 97
Van Dyke, according to the lawsuit. Halliburton will appeal $77 million jury verdict.” [OilOnline,<br />
<strong>11</strong>/4/2003]<br />
Because of Mr. Cheney’s involvement on the Advisory Board to President Nazarbayev in<br />
the creation of these various contracts being investigated by the FBI, it probably seemed<br />
appropriate for President Nazarbayev to approach Cheney and request that Cheney run<br />
interference on the FBI investigation. Evidently, there was an effort by the Department of<br />
Justice to keep Nazarbayev’s name out of the trial, so it is possible Cheney encouraged<br />
the Justice Department to “exempt Mr. Nazarbayev from prosecution” despite<br />
Whitehouse claims to the contrary:<br />
“WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have said that President Nursultan Nazarbayev of<br />
Kazakhstan accepted large bribes in connection with dispensing his country's oil concessions during<br />
the 1990's, and later tried to obstruct the federal inquiry into the payments, which came from<br />
American oil companies, according to legal documents.<br />
The allegations were made by the Justice Department in a sealed motion and described recently in a<br />
letter of complaint from Kazakhstan's lawyers to the deputy attorney general. The letter was part of a<br />
quiet effort to exempt Mr. Nazarbayev from prosecution.<br />
Mr. Nazarbayev and his representatives have raised the issue with Vice President Dick Cheney and<br />
other senior officials several times, but the effort to curb the investigation has been unsuccessful,<br />
according to court records and officials of both governments. Administration officials said<br />
Washington had rebuffed the Kazakhs' efforts.” [Bribery Inquiry Involves Kazakh Chief, and He's<br />
Unhappy, New York Times, Jeff Gerth, 12/<strong>11</strong>/2002]<br />
To a large degree, Mr. Nazarbayev’s name was not mentioned in the indictment, and he<br />
was referred to as “co1” in the court documents (suggesting that contrary to what the<br />
administration reported, the administration influenced the prosecutor to keep<br />
Nazarbayev’s name out of the documents.) It is worth noting that while the Bush<br />
administration publicly announced that Nazarbayev’s request to stifle the investigation<br />
had been “rebuffed,” the facts suggest that is not what happened, and that the<br />
administration actually did go out of its way to control the results:<br />
“A source familiar with the grand jury investigations… said Ashcroft has quietly moved… to exert<br />
control over the New York grand jury from Washington and to exercise “unusual” influence over the<br />
Washington investigations. FTW has also received multiple reports that several high-ranking career<br />
prosecutors in both New York and Washington have raised serious objections to Ashcroft’s actions and<br />
his failure to publicly recluse himself in these cases.<br />
Channing Phillips, speaking for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. told FTW, “I checked<br />
with [Assistant U.S. Attorney] Wendy Wysong and she confirmed that the investigation is still<br />
ongoing. There are three aspects to these investigations: one in New York, one in Washington [at the<br />
U.S. Attorney’s office] and one at main Justice [DoJ headquarters]. If the attorney general had reclused<br />
himself, we would know about it, and we are not aware of any such development.” ….Ashcroft’s<br />
decision in this case had an impact on the grand jury process. According to the Times, “Officials in<br />
Washington have not said where grand juries investigating the attacks will sit, or where the indictments<br />
may eventually be brought.…”<br />
The two grand juries have been investigating allegations that ExxonMobil, the world’s largest<br />
corporation, and BP-Amoco paid cash bribes to the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev,<br />
and his oil minister, Nurlan Balgymbayev, and that Mobil engaged in an illegal oil swap of Kazakh oil<br />
through Iran in 1997. Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force -- now the center of a<br />
constitutional battle over the release of its records -- was meeting representatives of both companies<br />
after the grand juries had been empanelled as a result of information received from a Middle Eastern<br />
source in 1997 and inquiries from Swiss banks in 1999. The fact that these known targets of criminal<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 98
investigations had access to the vice president’s energy task force would be comparable to having<br />
allowed Manuel Noriega, while under indictment for drug smuggling, to consult in the war on drugs.<br />
At issue is a 25 percent stake purchased by Mobil in Kazakhstan’s Tengiz oil field, following an earlier<br />
purchase of 50 percent by Chevron and an apparently desperate attempt a year later to start making<br />
money from the fields by engaging in an illegal swap with Iran as a means of getting the Tengiz oil to<br />
market…. it is clear that Kazakhstan-related issues were discussed behind Cheney’s closed doors. In<br />
an analysis of the final report of the vice president’s energy task force, released in May, The<br />
Washington Times on July 20 wrote, “While saying private investors must lead the way, the Cheney<br />
report devotes considerable time to the Kazakh market, urging U.S. government agencies to ‘deepen<br />
their commercial dialogue’ with Kazakhstan.” [The Elephant in the Living Room – Part I, Michael C.<br />
Ruppert © Copyright 2002, From The Wilderness Publications, 3/ 26/2002]<br />
Nazarbayev also turned to the Russian/Israeli Mafiya to help keep the matter quiet, as<br />
reported by a Prime Minister under Nazarbayev:<br />
“…members of the Eurasia Group (the Alexander Mashkevich syndicate) have promised the President<br />
that they (will) hush up the Kazakhgate investigation through their ethnic contacts in the U.S.” [The<br />
end of the “controlled” democracy, Interview with Akezhan Kazhegeldin, Prime Minister of<br />
Kazakhstan]<br />
The Mafiya boss that made the claim to be able to “protect” Nazarbayev from US courts<br />
with his US contacts was Alexander Mashkevich. Also known as Alexandr Mashkevic,<br />
he holds both Kazakh and Israeli citizenship, and is President of the Euro-Asian Jewish<br />
Congress.<br />
Mashkevich and other members of the Trio (Patokh Chodiev and Alijan Ibragimov) worked with U.S.<br />
businessman and former Exxon Mobil executive, James Giffen, who is awaiting trial in a New York<br />
court under the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Passed in 1997, the F.C.P.A. cites it is<br />
unlawful for any American to bribe foreign officials, either directly or through an agent, "for the<br />
purpose of obtaining or retaining business." Swiss investigators found that Japan Chrome, one of<br />
Trio’s companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, transferred millions of dollars into the<br />
accounts of another offshore company, Hovelon, owned by Giffen. These funds along with millions<br />
more were then transferred into an offshore account of a company owned by Nazarbayev.<br />
Mashkevich and fellow Trio members are awaiting pending trials in Belgium for money laundering,<br />
falsifying documents and criminal association. Even though these charges were filed five years ago,<br />
legal proceedings have been slow and the cases haven’t started.<br />
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Mashkevich]<br />
Turning to the Mafiya and other Washington DC channels for assistance in keeping this<br />
scandal quiet was probably consistent with the scope of this scandal, as the Russian<br />
Mafiya was considered by Mobil executives to be significant recipients of the funds:<br />
“The Orenburg losses were noticed by financial analysts at Mobil's headquarters, in Fairfax, Virginia,<br />
but they didn't take their concerns to the C.E.O. "These accountants went to Williams and said 'What's<br />
going on?' "a former company officer recalled. "He said Noto (ex-Mobil President) knew all about it<br />
and had approved it." Nothing more was done. The losses soon became known throughout<br />
headquarters. "It wasn't that the money was lost but the specifics of how it was handled that shook<br />
Fairfax up," Don Voelte, the former Mobil vice-president, told me. "When I ran into Bryan and said,<br />
'What happened?' he said the Russian mafia had got hold of it, and it was gone." [The Price of Oil,<br />
Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, July 9, 2001]<br />
“Giffen also arranged to do all the legal work and lobbying through his white-shoe law firm, Shearman<br />
and Sterling. Nazarbayev poured millions of dollars into the firm, even though no one seemed to know<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 99
where the money ultimately ended up.” [Part 1: Big Oil, the United States and corruption in<br />
Kazakhstan, Larry Chin, Online Journal Contributing Editor, May 12, 2002]<br />
At a superficial level, the FBI was able to prosecute two American business executives<br />
for violating the law with an oil swap between Iran and Kazakhstan. Dick Cheney’s role<br />
in this particular set of crimes, and his efforts to have Nazarbayev exempted from<br />
prosecution remained unreported in the press. There were extraordinary measures taken<br />
by Bush’s Attorney General to influence the outcome of this grand jury investigation –<br />
the reason for such an important intervention has never been explained. The question<br />
remains: what were they trying to hide? The answer to this question is provided in<br />
Section 8, where George HW Bush’s Russian strategy is clarified.<br />
There is however, at least one other set of activities that Cheney was most probably<br />
involved in which were unreported oil swaps between Kazakhstan and Angola, with a<br />
significant shipment of Russian weapons.<br />
This deal included the Russian/Israeli Mafiya, and two individuals later identified with<br />
the laundering of Russian diamonds by passing them off as blood diamonds or conflict<br />
diamonds: Lev Leviev (Leveyev) and Arcadi Gadamayek (aka Arcadi Gaidamak, Arcady<br />
Gaydamak, Gaydamac or Arye/Ari Barlev). (The blood diamond connection was<br />
originally reported in the press to be an Al Qaeda money laundering operation. The<br />
‘blood diamond’ investigation was just another investigation dropped by the FBI, most<br />
likely when it became apparent it was really a Mossad operation, with a potential link<br />
between the Mossad and the US hijackers. This subject is explored in Section 12.3<br />
Israeli “Fixers”)<br />
There are two sets of clues, which lead to the hypothesis that Halliburton was involved in<br />
illegal oil swaps with Angola. First, Halliburton (under Cheney) apparently was involved<br />
in bribery in that region of Africa, with enough evidence for the Department of Justice to<br />
open an investigation:<br />
“Feb. 4 - The Justice Department has opened up an inquiry into whether Halliburton Co. was involved<br />
in the payment of $180 million in possible kickbacks to obtain contracts to build a natural gas plant in<br />
Nigeria during a period in the late 1990’s when Vice President Dick Cheney was chairman of the<br />
company” [Another Halliburton Probe, Michae Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, February 4,<br />
2004]<br />
Granted that Nigeria and Angola are different countries, it demonstrates that Halliburton<br />
under Cheney was amenable to methods that were not above suspicion.<br />
Second, Halliburton and the oil companies in Kazakhstan are the same companies that<br />
benefited from major contracts from questionable activities in Angola, using the same<br />
financial conduits used by Giffen and Williams and the US oil companies in Kazakhstan.<br />
These activities are explored in the following Section.<br />
4.8 Nazarbayev, the Russian/Israeli Mafiya and Angola-gate<br />
The evidence presented thus far indicates:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 100
• US oil companies in Kazakhstan were in need of moving oil out of Kazakhstan<br />
because their oil pipeline was not finished, the Russians were not allowing oil to be<br />
moved through Russia, and US law prohibited moving it through Iran;<br />
• The individuals arranging swaps to move oil out of the country ran a large number of<br />
swaps, but the swap with Iran drew the most attention because of the illegality of<br />
trading with Iran;<br />
What will now be demonstrated is that:<br />
• These same businessmen were running oil deals between Angola and Russia. Like<br />
Iran, Angola had it’s own maritime access, so a swap between Kazakhstan and<br />
Angola would serve the same purpose as a swap between Iran and Kazakhstan –<br />
except the Angola swap would not violate the law.<br />
• These same oil businessmen in Angola and Kazakhstan were dealing with the same<br />
Russian/Israeli Mafiya oil and weapons traders.<br />
President Nazarbayev, besides being an absolute source of authority in Kazakhstan, has<br />
been in close league with the Russian Mafiya for many years. Three of the world’s<br />
foremost Russian/Israeli Mafiosi – Arcady Gadamayek, Alexander Mashkevich and<br />
Grigori Loutchansky, all have had major deals with Nazarbayev and his family. What the<br />
records shows is that Nazarbayev was involved with Arcady Gadamayek during the same<br />
time frame that Gadamayek, Lev Leviev and Pierre Falcone (a French criminal) were<br />
running their Angola-gate scam. Seymour Hersh reports that there are thousands of<br />
illegal oil transactions involving Kazakhstan that never come to public attention – and<br />
that the Giffen/Willams Iran swap only came to light because they attempted to “stiff” a<br />
partner, (Farhat Tabbah) who then complained to the UK authorities. The facts suggest<br />
Nazarbayev may have been part of an Angola deal on the basis of an oil swap, with<br />
Halliburton benefiting in both Angola and Kazakhstan. If true, this would implicate<br />
Halliburton and Cheney as complicit in multiple frauds, violation of international law and<br />
murder in Angola, and that the investigation into Angolan financial fraud would be linked<br />
to the same German and Swiss bank accounts that the entire house of cards was built<br />
with. An intelligence block and court intervention by Cheney in Kazakhstan may have<br />
been necessary to cover-up linkages to additional crimes related to activities in Angola.<br />
This investigation begins with an understanding that Nazarbayev – the key contact for<br />
Giffen and Halliburton – had significant Mafiya connections:<br />
1) Nazarbayev’s daughter and son-in-law are employed by the Russian Mafiya at<br />
Nordex, a well documented Russian/Israeli Mafiya front:<br />
“By 1994, Nordex's turnover had reached some $3 billion and it had 40 subsidiaries and jointventure<br />
firms in the West, and some 100 such affiliates in the former Soviet empire. It employs<br />
close to 8,000 people. Among the big names associated with Nordex are Robert Maxwell's sons<br />
Kevin and Ian in London, the daughter and son-in-law of President Nursultan Nasarbayev of<br />
Kazakhstan, and until recently former Israeli finance minister Yitzhak Moda'i.” [Maxwell -<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 101
Mogilevich -Russian Mafia in Bulgaria -5 Guilty in Lukanov Murder –Part 2,Stefan<br />
Lemieszewski, December 1, 2003]<br />
The role of Nordex in the larger Bush and Yeltsin conspiracy to defraud the Soviet<br />
economy of hundreds of billions is clarified in Section 8.<br />
2) The Prime Minister of Kazakhstan reported that the Russian Mafiya was seeking to<br />
intercede to keep Nazarbayev’s name out of the American Kazakhstan scandal, also –<br />
while working for Nazarbayev- was receiving Mafiya funds:<br />
“And RFE Turkmen Service reported on the alleged bribe of $100 million made by Loutchansky<br />
to Akezhan Kazhegeldin, the prime minister of Kazakhstan.”<br />
[http://www.rferl.org/bd/tu/reports/2001/04/0-080401.html ]<br />
3) A large portion of the Mobil funds sent to Kazakhstan went to the Mafiya. (See<br />
Previous reference: The Price of Oil, Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, 2001-07-<br />
09)<br />
4) Nazarbayev was a business associate of Arcadi Gaydamak.<br />
“Gaydamak cultivated relations with Russian leaders and the country's emerging tycoons. His<br />
contacts in the post Soviet power structure came to include Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov;<br />
the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev; the former military chief and later governor<br />
of Russia's Karatchevo Cherkesia province, Vladimir Semenov; and the Russian oil magnate<br />
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, president of Yukos Oil. In December 2000, Gaydamak was appointed<br />
chairman of the Russian Credit Bank, a post that was filled when he stepped down in 2001 by the<br />
economics minister and adviser to former President Boris Yeltsin, Aleksandr Livsits.” [The<br />
Influence Peddlers, from the <strong>11</strong>-part series: Making a Killing, The Business of War, The Center<br />
for Public Integrity]<br />
Gaydamak was actively involved, on at least two occasions, in moving Russian and<br />
Eastern bloc weapons into Angola in exchange for oil. Gadamayek, Lev Leviev and<br />
Pierre Falcone arranged to provide Russian weapons for Angolan oil and conflict<br />
diamonds. No one has asked how Russia got the Angolan oil, but there is an extremely<br />
high probability that Gadamayek arranged an oil swap with Kazakhstan, and then moved<br />
Kazak oil –purchased from US companies - through the Russian pipeline. If true, the key<br />
US companies used to facilitate this swap would have been Mobil Oil (ExxonMobil),<br />
Phillips and Halliburton. This would allow the US oil companies to sell their landlocked<br />
Kazak oil without the need of a pipeline. The Angolan oil was probably swapped for<br />
Kazakhstan oil and sold on the Russian market to pay for weapons.<br />
Before this could happen, the Russians demanded that the Angola ‘debt’ to Russia be<br />
resolved. Hence, Angola had to arrange for a large loan to pay back previous Russian aid<br />
loans, with a payback arrangement established somewhere in the range of 30 cents on the<br />
dollar. This loan appears to have been arranged by Dick Cheney and Halliburton at the<br />
US Export Import Bank, and moved by Marc Rich through Glencore International,<br />
through Sonangal (the Angolan treasury), UBS (Gaydamak’s account) on to Bank<br />
Agricole Indosuez (formerly BCCI), Unicom Bank (Russia) and various offshore<br />
accounts. Along the way, hundreds of millions disappeared. Naturally, part of the deal<br />
was large oil and construction contracts for Phillips Oil, Exxon Mobil and Halliburton in<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 102
Angola. Unfortunately, while the swap may have been legal, the arms portion of the deal<br />
was prohibited under International Agreement: “arms purchases by the government and<br />
UNITA remained prohibited under the 1991 Bicesse Accords negotiated in Portugal”<br />
“Perhaps the most ironic link described in the Global Witness report is one involving the former<br />
"fugitive financier" Marc Rich. He appears as a major player in the arms-for-oil scandal through a<br />
Swiss-based oil trading company named Glencore. The firm played a major role in guaranteeing a total<br />
of $1 billion in oil-backed loans for Angola in 1998. The first set of oil-backed loans in 1993 involved<br />
Glencore, Falcone, and Gaydamak. Soon after, Gaydamak arranged for the sale of Russian helicopters<br />
and ammunition through a Slovak company called ZTS-OSOS. The 1998 billion-dollar loan deal<br />
included the Export-Import Bank loans being pushed by Halliburton and Cheney.” [<strong>Report</strong> Alleges US<br />
Role in Angola Arms-for-Oil Scandal, Special to CorpWatch, Wayne Madsen, May 17, 2002]<br />
“Glencore UK Ltd. is to obtain loans for future Angolan oil sales from commercial banks … The<br />
proceeds of these oil-backed loans is transferred by Glencore UK Ltd into our accounts for use by<br />
Sonangol, the Angolan state oil export company, so that it can finance the repurchase of these [debt]<br />
obligations. Sonangol then transfers through our bank to the buyer, Abalone Investements [sic]<br />
Limited, its remuneration for its role as determining intermediary in this operation to buy back the<br />
Angolan debt and the price fixed by the Russian Finance Ministry for the repurchase of its obligations.<br />
Then, UBS will transfer the amount corresponding to the cost of these obligations to Unicombank. In<br />
return and simultaneously, Abalone Investments Ltd receives from the UBS the obligations purchased<br />
and their repayment certificates, and returns them to Sonangol on behalf of Angola which can cancel<br />
them and thus progressively erase its debt to Russia.” [TIME FOR TRANSPARENCY, Coming clean<br />
on oil, mining and gas revenues: A report by Global Witness. March 2004]<br />
As a point of historical reference, it is appropriate to document at this time the Marc Rich<br />
was not a ‘novice’ in this business, and had decades of experience, including some<br />
participation in the Iran-Contra deals of the 1980s. Paul Klebnikov, Russian expert and<br />
Senior Editor at Forbes Magazine, has documented Marc Rich's early years as one of the<br />
Russian oligarchs involved in plundering Russia’s treasury through ‘privatization.’ Rich<br />
also had a business relationship with David Kimche of the Mossad, previously shown to<br />
have been helping Richard Secord move mercenaries and weapons into Azerbaijan, and<br />
Al Schwimmer, implicated in numerous Savings and Loans scandals in the 1980s.<br />
“In 1988 the Iranian journalist Amir Taheri revealed that in the Victoria district of London Schwimmer<br />
operated an arms procurement operation along with his partners David Kimche, the British born Israeli<br />
diplomat and longtime intelligence operative, and Yaacov Nimrodi, the former Iranian Jew who had<br />
been Israel’s main operative in the court of the Shah for many years. It was from this office that the<br />
huge Iran arms and illegal oil traffic was directed from 1981-1987, including the activities of Marc<br />
Rich.<br />
There is another knot of connections between Schwimmer and Rich, as well. Before becoming .… an<br />
arms procurer in the 1940s, Schwimmerhad been a shady American business man with connections to<br />
Mafia figures including Miki Cohen and Meyer Lansky, as well as Hank Greenspun, who was the most<br />
important “legitimate” front man and ‘fixer’ for the Mafia takeover of Las Vegas.All of the men<br />
mentioned participated in the 1940s Zionist arms network, as well as in the European crime network<br />
which the Mossad organized in the … temporary refugee camps of postwar Europe.” [Fallujah 101: A<br />
history lesson about the town we are currently destroying, Rashid Khalidi, <strong>11</strong>/12/2004]<br />
Also for historical reference, it should be noted that an apparent bonus was given to<br />
Angola’s President Dos Santos by Halliburton. That bonus was the targeted assassination<br />
of Jonas Savimbi, previously hailed by Ronald Reagan as the “George Washington of<br />
Angola.”<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 103
“The net effect of the Angolan arms buildup was the scrapping of the 1994 Lusaka Peace Agreement<br />
between Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and long-time UNITA rebel leader Jonas<br />
Savimbi, a one-time favorite of the Central Intelligence Agency and a person who President Reagan<br />
once hailed as the "George Washington of Angola."<br />
Jardo Muekalia, who headed UNITA's Washington office until it was forced to close in 1997, says that<br />
that the military forces that ultimately succeeded in assassinating Savimbi were supported by<br />
commercial satellite imagery and other intelligence support provided by Houston-based Brown &<br />
Root, Cheney's old outfit….<br />
According to Global Witness, the links between Angola's corrupt government and the Bush<br />
administration are just as odorous as those linking Luanda's leadership to past and current members of<br />
the French government, both Socialist and Gaullist. In addition to the French oil giant Total-Fina-Elf,<br />
oil companies like Chevron, Texaco, Philipps Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, and BP-Amoco -- all with<br />
close links to Bush and his White House oil team -- were heavily involved in propping up dos Santos<br />
in return for profitable off-shore oil concessions.” [<strong>Report</strong> Alleges US Role in Angola Arms-for-Oil<br />
Scandal, Special to CorpWatch, Wayne Madsen, May 17, 2002]<br />
The Marc Rich (Glencore) connection is insightful because it identifies the probable link<br />
between the Russian/Israeli Mafiya and the oil swap industry, and the structure of its<br />
money laundering methods. These methods demonstrate involvement by the Deutsche<br />
Bank. During the US Justice Department 1998-1999 investigation of the Bank of New<br />
York’s money-laundering on behalf of the Russian Mafiya, Marc Rich was implicated:<br />
“The probe, one of the largest in recent history, was born out of the U.S. Justice Department<br />
investigation of the Bank of New York's role in large-scale money laundering from Russia in 1999.<br />
The "Spiderweb" probe focused on the repatriation of funds from the Bank of New York and offshore<br />
centers to Russia through Italian and other European front companies….<br />
"Basically, the Russians were sending all the money that they could out of the country, and at one<br />
point, many of the same people decided they wanted to bring the money back," one Italian investigator<br />
said….<br />
"I have an Interpol report that states that Marc Rich was one of the founding partners of Nordex," he<br />
said. According to prosecutors, Nordex, a company based in Vienna, Austria, with offices in Germany,<br />
Ireland, Lithuania, Russia, Switzerland and Ukraine, is accused of having had a central role in the<br />
money-laundering operation uncovered by the "Spiderweb" operation….<br />
…Mr. Rich, as the principal director of Glencore International AG, had a direct relationship with<br />
Benex. Although the true owners of Benex were never conclusively identified in Miss White's<br />
investigation, Benex's offices, located on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills, N.Y., shared the same<br />
building with two companies connected with Mr. Loutchansky….<br />
U.S. and Italian authorities say that a good part of the money laundered on behalf of the Russian mafia<br />
and businesses passed through Benex's Bank of New York account and that from June to December of<br />
1998 there had been a number of wire transfers from the "Glencore of Rich" to Benex for a total of<br />
$178,000.…” [Marc Rich Linked To $9 Billion Money Laundering Investigation, P.K. Semler,<br />
Washington Times, June 23, 2002]<br />
Marc Rich’s Glencore was involved in laundering Russian Mafiya money through the<br />
Bank of New York. (Pierre Falcone, the French/Algerian arms merchant indicted in the<br />
Angola-gate arms deal also maintained an account at this bank as well.) According to<br />
Australian sources, from the Bank of New York, the money was moved to the Pacific<br />
island country of Nauru. What is interesting is the revelation that at the same time that<br />
the Bank of New York was required to shut down relations with Nauru as a result of the<br />
investigation so did the Deutsche Bank and Banker’s Trust. (Banker’s Trust is a Deutsche<br />
Bank subsidiary, whose CEO-Buzzy Krongard went on to be the No. 2 Director at the<br />
CIA), The simultaneous cessation of relations of these banks with Naura suggests these<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 104
anks were part of the same money-laundering investigation, and conduit used by Marc<br />
Rich, on behalf of the Angolagate gang and the Russian Mafiya.<br />
“Melnikov said Nauru "has the most attractive regime" for Russians trying to hide money offshore.<br />
Most of the operation is via the Internet through the government’s Nauru Agency Corporation in the<br />
main village of Yaren.<br />
It was central to the laundering of between 7-10 billion dollars through the Bank of New York<br />
(BNY)last year.<br />
Following that Deutsche Bank and Bankers Trust, which operate a global money transfer system for<br />
retail banks, and by the US Republic National Bank and BNY placed a ban on any US dollar trades<br />
with Nauru, as well as Palau and Vanuatu.” [Accused of Russian Mafia connections, Pacific’s Nauru to<br />
clean up its banks, Michael Field, AFP, 4/26/2000]<br />
These banks are also reportedly used in laundering the heisted Philippines, and probably<br />
Russian treasury gold:<br />
“REPUBLIC NATIONAL BANK OF NEW YORK: The bank is a reputed money laundry for<br />
smuggled gold as used by the intelligence agencies, such as the American CIA.” [Reputed Cocaine<br />
Bank Money Laundry Wizard for George Bush Family Arrested in Chicago, Sherman H. Skolnick]<br />
The elegance and complicated nature of the Angola oil scam does not stop with these<br />
revelations. After moving these funds through offshore accounts to Angola, and then to<br />
UBS before hitting the Russian banks as repayment, the funds were then stolen from the<br />
Russian bank in a scam quite similar to the one Adnan Khashoggi used to defraud MJK<br />
Securities in 2001. The money was loaned by the Russian Banks and transferred to<br />
accounts in the Cayman Islands, using stock for collateral which then turned out to be<br />
worthless. The net result would be US taxpayer dollars being transferred to the<br />
Russian/Israeli Mafiya, oil contracts for US oil companies (including Halliburton) and the<br />
dictators of Angola and Kazakhstan taking a personal percentage on the swap, and the<br />
Russian banks losing their debt repayment. Deals such as these are the foundation of “the<br />
New World Order,” proclaimed by George Bush on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 1991.<br />
The US Export-Import Bank funding was used to buy weapons and towards the end of its<br />
journey, was put in the Bank Rossiisky (third largest bank in Russia), where Gaydamak<br />
was a director. (Bank Rossiisky is later documented to be a part of the Riggs-Valmet<br />
banking network, run by Jonathon Bush, brother of President Bush Sr.) The money was<br />
then loaned to Russian and Angolan officials using securities as collateral. The collateral<br />
turned out to be worthless, and the Bank nearly went Bankrupt.<br />
“BANK ROSSIISKY KREDIT: Stole eXile's money. President Vitaly Malkin said to control bank<br />
account that helped funnel $700 million in Angolan money intended to pay back Soviet-era debt which<br />
instead was kicked back to Russian and Angolan officials. Vavilov was also involved.” [The Man<br />
Behind The Man, Alexander Makarkin, The Exile, Issue #167, May 29, 2003]<br />
Lending credibility to the claim that there was most likely a link between Angola-gate<br />
and Kazakhstan-gate, reports indicate that the bribes to Kazakhstan officials involved<br />
three of the same banks as the Angola-gate money laundering operation: Bank of New<br />
York, Banker’s Trust (aka Deutschebank) and Credit Agricole Indosuez. Credit Agricole<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 105
Indosuez was a correspondent bank with Bankers Trust in New York, New York – and<br />
was operated using the assets of the closed BCCI bank.<br />
.<br />
"According to a formal request filed under a treaty between the United States and Switzerland, the<br />
Justice Department says that on March 19, 1997, Amoco Kazakhstan Petroleum, one of the companies<br />
involved in the big offshore project in the Caspian Sea, transferred $61 million from Banker’s Trustin<br />
New York in two payments to account 1215320 at Credit Agricole Indosuez, a bank in Geneva. (The<br />
Amoco unit is now part of BP). [THE ELEPHANT IN THE LIVING ROOM - PART I, Michael C.<br />
Ruppert, © Copyright 2002, From The Wilderness Publications, 3/26/2002]<br />
“One such document, a letter of credit from a Republic National Bank of New York account in<br />
Switzerland, shows that Mobil transferred 100 mln usd in May of 1997 to a Swiss bank account held<br />
by the Treasury of Kazakhstan but which Kazhegeldin believes to have been controlled exclusively by<br />
treasury director Saouat Mynbaev.” [Ex-Kazakhstan premier says US firms' oil fees diverted to<br />
ministers, Interview with Akezhan Kazhegeldin, Justin Cole, AFX, 7/17/2001]<br />
“A recent book by S. Mendybayev and V. Shelgunov under the title "Cleptocrats" contains more<br />
detailed information regarding the accounts controlled by Nazarbayev-Balgimbayev-Giffen (Moscow,<br />
Sputnik Co., 2001): "<strong>Report</strong>ers provided information on the Nazarbayev family foreign accounts,<br />
including the names of banks and the amounts on those accounts. In Swiss Pictet - over $300 mln,<br />
$150 - 200 mln in Credit Suisse, hundreds of millions of dollars in the National Republic Bank of New<br />
York. In these and other cases those amounts were detected or frozen in the course of investigation.<br />
Naturally, much more money could have passed through those accounts in previous years.” [Total<br />
claimant, Tsentralno-Asiatskiy Bulletin, International Eurasian Institute for Economic and Political<br />
Research, Valery Steshin, 9/6/2001]<br />
Russia got the oil. Angola got the weapons. The whereabouts of about a half million<br />
dollars is known – and the rest (About $1.4 billion) disappeared, and in a bizarre twist of<br />
fate, the Angolan debt to Russia was transferred to the US taxpayers under the guise of<br />
loans, compliment of Halliburton and Cheney. Somewhere in between, brutal dictators<br />
and corrupt businessmen got “bonuses.”<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 106
5<br />
Russian and Israeli Mafiya<br />
Before Nick Berg traveled to Israel and Iraq, he was engaged with Joe Aziz, a business<br />
partner that had connections to the Russian Mafiya and the Project for a New American<br />
Century. Joe Aziz is reported to be the last person to see Berg alive before he was<br />
kidnapped and executed. To investigate the death of Nick Berg, one must understand the<br />
Russian/Israeli Mafiya and the PNAC. Like the terrorists and the Mossad, both the PNAC<br />
and Russian/Israeli Mafiya have been accused of having a role in the attack on the World<br />
Trade Center. What these latter two groups have in common is a strong affiliation to<br />
Israel. Because of the reported Israeli role in various events and circumstances leading<br />
up to the attack on the World Trade Center, and because of the reported ties of these<br />
groups to Israel, this investigation pursued an understanding of those allegations. The<br />
result of the investigation was the discovery of a set of business and political<br />
relationships that started in Russia in the 1980s and moved to Israel in the 1990s. These<br />
relationships created a bond between elements of the Russian Mafiya and elements of the<br />
CIA involved in economic warfare operations which facilitated the collapse of the Soviet<br />
Union. This alliance has evolved into the dark side of the current Neocon movement.<br />
The destruction of the World Trade Center targeted with pinpont precision those offices<br />
that held evidence of their relationships.<br />
5.1 Project for the New American Century<br />
There is a group of independent writers that claim the attacks on the World Trade Center<br />
were conducted not by a U.S. oil cartel, but rather by right-wing elements of the Mossad<br />
with the intent of providing a justification for a U.S. attack on Iraq. Under this scenario,<br />
writers refer to the bulk of evidence presented earlier in this article, as well as the history<br />
of the policy making group that can claim responsibility for swaying George Bush to<br />
attack Iraq. This group is referred to under several names – neo-conservatives, neocons,<br />
neokons, PNAC, and Hillary Clinton’s unidentified “right wing conspiracy.”<br />
"In 1997 a group of neo-conservatives founded the 'Project for the New American Century' (PNAC) -<br />
A year later PNAC called for the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq - In 2000 they predicted<br />
that the shift in US foreign policy towards that aim would come about slowly, unless there were "some<br />
catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor". That event happened on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>th<br />
2001 - Ten people in the Bush administration are currently members of PNAC. They include Dick<br />
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad and<br />
member of the advisory Defense Science Board, Richard Perle" [The Dossier, ukonline.co.uk]<br />
The publicly acknowledged intent of the PNAC group is the ‘furtherance of democracy,’<br />
in a manner that was inconceivable under prior U.S. administrations. Essentially, the<br />
PNAC model for U.S. foreign policy is one of unilateral aggression, putting the U.S.<br />
foreign policy in the company of many historical imperialist powers: the Christian<br />
Crusaders, the Ottoman Turks, the British Empire, Napoleon’s France, Hussein’s Iraq,<br />
Hitler’s Germany, and Stalin’s Russia, to mention a recent few.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 107
"Bill Kristol, (is) one of the most sought-after political commentators in the US, editor of The Weekly<br />
Standard, and President of The Project for a New American Century. In his talk, entitled “US Foreign<br />
Policy after 9-<strong>11</strong>: The Bush Doctrine,” Kristol declared that “for the US, the world really changed on<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. We are no longer prepared to rely mainly on negotiations, trade pressures, arms control<br />
regimes and international institutions in order to solve critical world problems. The Israeli operation<br />
against the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak is our new paradigm. Time is not on our side. We need to act<br />
soon, act preemptively, and act alone if necessary. Osirak is now the model of how foreign policy has<br />
to be conducted,” said Kristol. “Indeed, today the US is committed to forcing regime change in Iran,<br />
Iraq, and North Korea,” continued Kristol “We will be much more aggressive in pursuing this goal; no<br />
longer are we content to wait for history to work things through. Unfortunately, Europe does not yet<br />
seem to understand our new world. They wish to return to pre-<strong>September</strong> 2001 rules.” [Begin –Sadat<br />
Center For Strategic Studies, May 2002 No. 14 ]<br />
"Later in the year, Bush's influential advisor Richard Perle states, “No stages. This is total war. We are<br />
fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to<br />
do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq … this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our<br />
vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever<br />
diplomacy, but just wage a total war … our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”<br />
[New Statesman, December 16, 2002]<br />
While the praises for the victory of democracy in these conquered countries of<br />
Afghanistan and Iraq are sung by the Bush administration, those who visit these countries<br />
are aware of the realities of this new policy, which do little to change the ways these<br />
countries operate:<br />
"Apart from notional freedoms, little has changed. The warlords installed to power by America are as<br />
bad as the Taliban, terrorising whole communities, and ensuring that 90 per cent of Afghan women<br />
remained oppressed and that pledges of Western reconstruction aid remain empty promises."[The<br />
Betrayal Of Afghanistan, John Pilger, The Guardian, November 22,2003]<br />
The background of many of these key policy players however, suggests they are far more<br />
interested in the security of Israel than that of the US. Two of the key architects of this<br />
group – Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz- have a well documented (both Congressional<br />
and FBI investigations) past of being alleged agents for the Israeli government, and have<br />
been directly responsible for the employment by US Policy making groups (Office of<br />
Special Plans- OSP) of at least four other similarly documented and alleged agents of<br />
Israel: Douglas J. Feith (Undersecretary of Defense for Policy), Lawrence Franklin<br />
(currently under investigation by the FBI as being a potential Israeli spy), Michael<br />
Ledeen and Dr. Stephen Bryen. Lawrence Franklin works in an office overseen by<br />
Douglas J. Feith, the Defense Undersecretary for Policy. Feith is an influential aide to<br />
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Also included in this list is Dr. Rabbi Dov<br />
Zakheim, who at the time was acting as chief-financial officer for the Department of<br />
Defense. A signer of the “Pearl Harbor” statement and an original member of the<br />
PNAC, Dr. Dov Zakheim’s personal and family’s significant involvement in Yeshivat<br />
Sha’alvim is a clear demonstration of his loyalties. "Sha'alvim is a dynamic and<br />
comprehensive educational community where … students are imbued with …an abiding<br />
commitment to the People and the State of Israel.”[www.shaalvim.org]<br />
From all available evidence it was these “unofficial” political advisers organized by<br />
Wolfowitz, Feith and Rumsfeld in the US Office of Special Planning (OSP) who were the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 108
source of the fabricated evidence, which was used to “justify” the invasion and<br />
occupation of Iraq.<br />
"Precisely because of the qualms the administration encountered, it created a rogue intelligence<br />
operation, the Office of Special Plans (OSP), located within the Pentagon and under the control of neoconservatives.<br />
The OSP roamed outside the ordinary inter-agency process, stamping its approval on<br />
stories from Iraqi exiles that the other agencies dismissed as lacking credibility, and feeding them to<br />
the president. At the same time, constant pressure was applied to the intelligence agencies to force their<br />
compliance. In one case, a senior intelligence officer who refused to buckle under was removed."<br />
[NEWS BRIEF: "There was no failure of intelligence: US spies were ignored, or worse, if they failed<br />
to make the case for war", The Guardian (London), February 5, 2004, carried in Daily News Updates<br />
2/8/2004.,http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,<strong>11</strong>4<strong>11</strong>16,00.html ]<br />
These fabrications which took America to war with Iraq were based on a long standing<br />
Likud policy paper authored by Perle and Feith in 1996.<br />
"The OSP and the other members of the networks that operated throughout key US agencies shared a<br />
right-wing, pro-militarist ideology and are fanatically pro-Israel. Feith and Perle authored an infamous<br />
policy paper in 1996 for the Likud Party extremist, Benjamin Netanyahu, entitled “A Clean Break: A<br />
New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” This strategy called for the destruction of Saddam Hussein and<br />
his replacement by a Hashemite monarch. Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iran would then have to<br />
be overthrown or destabilized for Israel to be secure in a kind of ‘Greater US-Israel Co-Prosperity<br />
Sphere.’ The OSP was an arm of the Wolfowitz-Feith policy of furthering the policies of the most<br />
extremist groups of the Sharon regime, forging close ties with a parallel ad hoc intelligence operation<br />
in the Israeli regime according to a report from the British newspaper, The Guardian" [“Who<br />
fabricated the Iraq War Threat: An Inside View” James Petras, Centre for Research on Globalisation,<br />
August 22, 2003]<br />
To that end, the invasion of Iraq was as much a foregone conclusion as was the invasion<br />
of Afghanistan. It was a decision made by this group years before ‘weapons of mass<br />
destruction’ were presented to the public as the excuse for invasion, and years before the<br />
attack on the World Trade Center. Nothing would have prevented the invasion, because<br />
it could easily have been prevented – and spared thousands of lives and injured.<br />
According to the Chicago Tribune, Saddam Hussein was more than ready to leave Iraq,<br />
just like the Taliban was ready to surrender Bin Laden, but the US Government chose to<br />
start a war instead.<br />
"As Trireme (Richard Perle’s and Henry Kissinger’s venture capital firm)solicited investors at the end<br />
of 2002, Harb al-Zuhair (a wealthy and politically connected Saudi businessman) made a trip to his<br />
native Iraq, and met with government officials including Saddam's intelligence chief -- Tahir Abd' Jalil<br />
Habbush al-Tiktriti, head of Iraq's Mukhabarat, or General Intelligence Service. He returned with an<br />
important message for the U.S. government: On the eve of war, Saddam wanted to throw in the towel,<br />
Zuhair reported to Khashoggi. The Iraqi dictator sought back channel negotiations with America that<br />
might offer him a safe exit. Harriman and Khashoggi decided to arrange for Zuhair to tell his story to<br />
Perle…."[Hersh uncovered Pentagon adviser Richard Perle’s role in securing homeland security<br />
contracts, David Jackson, Chicago Tribune, June 25, 2004]<br />
Both so called “conspiracy” interpretations (one in which oil interests are responsible,<br />
another in which pro-Israeli Neocons are responsible) provide compelling insights, and<br />
may explain the Bush administration’s behavior after the WTC tragedy, but do little to<br />
explain events leading up to the attack. The hard truth is, this tragedy was beginning to<br />
unfold long before Bush won the election, and before he won the Republican National<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 109
convention. President Bush initially declined the recommendations of the<br />
PNAC, preferring to invade Afghanistan before paying attention to Iraq. Information<br />
suggests that Bush may have been knowledgeable and supportive of allowing what he<br />
was probably told would be a ‘controlled’ terrorist attack, but there is nothing to suggest<br />
he was responsible for its initiation. (The circumstance of him not actually making the<br />
decision would not exonerate him of conspiracy in murder. However, by focusing solely<br />
on the Bush administration involvement in a cover-up, more powerful criminals may be<br />
over-looked. Bush and his father had very significant responsibility for the attack on the<br />
WTC, but no one has ever suggested he is capable of being its mastermind.) The<br />
Republican National Convention had not even occurred when the actual perpetrators of<br />
the attack on the World Trade Center were organizing in the US. Similarly, all the<br />
credible information available and reviewed elsewhere in this report suggests Osama Bin<br />
Laden was not responsible. Who then was? There is a need to identify a new and viable<br />
master criminal behind these tragedies. For all the effort being put into the search for<br />
who is responsible, there are no alternatives being offered other than Osama Bi Laden or<br />
the Bush administration: but neither of these is a credible suspect. President George W.<br />
Bush and Osama Bin Laden were involved, but neither were calling the shots, nor<br />
capable of calling the shots. The search should pick up on a trail dropped by nearly<br />
everyone doing research long ago.<br />
5.2 Follow the Money<br />
Without a serious investigation into the financial aspects of the attack of 9/<strong>11</strong>, it is<br />
difficult to understand who benefited, and therefore, who had motive. This report<br />
hypothesizes that the participants and planners of the 9/<strong>11</strong> events profited by over several<br />
hundred billion U.S. dollars, and stopped investigations into financial crimes, securities<br />
fraud and bank fraud valued at a comparable amount. The press often refers to illegal<br />
stock trades that occurred at the time the towers were attacked. These - however<br />
significant - will turn out to be relatively small earnings when compared to motive<br />
associated with the other incentives. This report will investigate four sources of financial<br />
motive:<br />
• Illegal stock trades;<br />
• Brady Bond (See Section 8 of this report) and MJK Securities Fraud;<br />
• Gold price-fixing and probable laundering of stolen gold; and<br />
• Control of equity banking market share.<br />
An often forgotten set of events leading up to the WTC attack include the financial<br />
market “put” options placed up to four days before the attack. These were initially the<br />
most obvious trades with the “unclaimed” payout.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page <strong>11</strong>0
Target Put<br />
Options<br />
Table 1<br />
Unclaimed Stock Options<br />
Time when trades were<br />
placed<br />
Merrill Lynch & Co 12,215 four trading days before the<br />
attacks<br />
Morgan Stanley Dean<br />
Witter & Co<br />
Of Interest<br />
Occupied 22 floors of the<br />
World<br />
2,157 three trading days Occupied 22 floors of the<br />
World Trade Center<br />
United Airlines 4,744 two and three trading days<br />
American Airlines 4,516 one trading day<br />
These are the data points one always sees in the news, but there were other trades –<br />
significant trades, mostly in financial companies!<br />
• "Citigroup Inc., which has estimated that its Travelers Insurance unit may pay $500 million in claims<br />
from the World Trade Center attack. It had a jump in trading of October options that profit if shares<br />
fall below $40 apiece. Almost 14,000 of those options contracts were traded from Sept. 6 to Sept. 10 --<br />
about 45 times the previous daily average. Citigroup shares fell $2.85 today to $39.60. "<br />
• " Bear Stearns & Cos., where investors traded 3,979 contracts from Sept. 6 to Sept. 10 on <strong>September</strong><br />
options that profit if shares fall below $50. The previous average volume for those options was 22<br />
contracts. Bear Stearns shares fell $3.79 today to $46.45. "<br />
• " Marsh & McLennan Cos., the biggest insurance brokerage, which had 1,700 employees working in<br />
the World Trade Center. Traders on Sept. 10 exchanged 1,209 contracts on options that profit if<br />
company shares fall below $90 through the third week of <strong>September</strong>. Previously, 13 contracts had<br />
traded on an average day. Marsh & McLennan shares fell $2.50 today to $84.50.'<br />
• "The Wall Street Journal reported on October 2 that the ongoing investigation by the SEC into<br />
suspicious stock trades had been joined by a Secret Service probe into an unusually high volume of<br />
five-year US Treasury note purchases prior to the attacks. The Treasury note transactions included a<br />
single $5 billion trade. As the Journal explained: “Five-year Treasury notes are among the best<br />
investments in the event of a world crisis, especially one that hits the US. The notes are prized for their<br />
safety and their backing by the US government, and usually rally when investors flee riskier<br />
investments, such as stocks.” The value of these notes, the Journal pointed out, has risen sharply since<br />
the events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. The article went on to quote Michael Shamosh, a bond-market strategist<br />
for Tucker Anthony Inc., who said, “If they were going to do something like this they would do it in<br />
the five-year part of the market. It’s extremely liquid, and the tracks would be hard to spot.” The SEC<br />
has been extremely tight-lipped about its probe, in which it has enlisted securities firms and<br />
government agencies in Europe, Canada and other countries. But on Tuesday the Investment Dealers<br />
Association, a trade association for the Canadian securities industry, posted on its web site a list sent<br />
by the American SEC of 38 stocks. The US agency had asked the Canadians to look into trading in<br />
these stocks between August 27 and <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. As soon as US officials became aware of the<br />
Internet posting, they demanded that the Investment Dealers Association yank it from the web site, and<br />
the Canadian organization complied. However, reporters and others were able to copy the list before it<br />
was pulled. The list includes the parent companies of American, Continental, Delta, Northwest,<br />
Southwest, United and US Airways, as well as Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruise lines, aircraft<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page <strong>11</strong>1
maker Boeing and defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Several insurance companies are on the list—<br />
American International Group, Axa, Chubb, Cigna, CNA Financial, John Hancock and MetLife. The<br />
SEC list also includes several big companies that were tenants in the collapsed Twin Towers of the<br />
World Trade Center: investment firms Morgan Stanley, the complex’s largest occupant; Lehman<br />
Brothers; Bank of America; and the financial firm Marsh & McLennan. Other major companies listed<br />
include General Motors, Raytheon, LTV, WR Grace, Lone Star Technologies, American Express,<br />
Bank of New York, Bank One, Citigroup and Bear Stearns. [Suspicious trading points to advance<br />
knowledge by big investors of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> terror attacks, Barry Grey, October 5, 2001]<br />
It is also fair to speculate that the breadth of the pre-attack investments trades was far<br />
broader than ever admitted to by the investigators. The general literature suggests trading<br />
in four companies, using one mentioned bank – the Deutschebank. Generally excluded<br />
from discussions of those reports is a subsequent report from a survivor of the World<br />
Trade Center.<br />
"...Convar, a German firm hired to retrieve data from damaged computer systems left in the rubble of<br />
the World Trade Center, found that there was a deluge of electronic trading just minutes before the first<br />
plane struck. Quoting a December 16 report from Reuter's, writer Kyle Henry found a compelling<br />
quotation from one of Convar's directors: Peter Henschel, director of Convar...said, 'not only the<br />
volume, but the size of the transactions was far higher than usual for a day like that.' Richard Wagner,<br />
a data retrieval expert, estimated that more than $100 million in illegal transactions appeared to have<br />
rushed through the WTC computers before and during the disaster….The Reuter's story was partially<br />
confirmed for me when I was contacted by a Deutsche Bank employee who had survived the attacks by<br />
fleeing the WTC after the first plane hit. According to the employee, about five minutes before the<br />
attack the entire Deutsche Bank computer system had been taken over by something external that no<br />
one in the office recognized and every file was downloaded at lightening speed to an unknown<br />
location." [Crossing the Rubicon, Chapter 14, Michael Ruppert]<br />
The four stock trades usually mentioned, however, are the “unclaimed’ trades –<br />
suggesting a potentially larger number of successful trades having taken place. The<br />
reality was far greater than generally reported. Trades were placed across the globe, far in<br />
excess of the few million dollars of “unclaimed” trades. More simply, a lot of the trades<br />
were successfully claimed.<br />
"ABC World News reported on Sept. 20, "Jonathan Winer, an ABC News consultant said, 'it's<br />
absolutely unprecedented to see cases of insider trading covering the entire world from Japan, to the<br />
U.S., to North America, to Europe."<br />
"How much money was involved? Andreas von Bülow, a former member of the German Parliament<br />
responsible for oversight of Germany's intelligence services estimated the worldwide profits amount at<br />
$15 billion, according to Tagesspiegel on Jan. 13. Other experts have estimated the profit at $12<br />
billion. CBS News gave a conservative estimate of $100 million." [The Case for Bush Administration<br />
Advance Knowledge of 9-<strong>11</strong> Attacks, Michael C. Ruppert, April 22, 2002]<br />
"According to Phil Erlanger, a former Senior Technical Analyst with Fidelity, and founder of a Florida<br />
firm that tracks short selling and options trading, insiders made off with billions (not mere millions) in<br />
profits by betting on the fall of stocks they knew would tumble in the aftermath of the WTC and<br />
Pentagon attacks." [http://www.erlangersqueezeplay.com]<br />
A very important element of this trading “mystery” is that the “pre-<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>” stock<br />
trades are the trades commonly discussed, and generally ignored are the trades that<br />
occurred on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, during the course of the attack.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page <strong>11</strong>2
"Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert estimated that more than $100 million in illegal transactions<br />
appeared to have rushed through the WTC computers before and during the disaster."<br />
“Henschel said the companies in the United States were working together with the FBI… to piece<br />
together what happened on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> and that he was confident the destination of the dubious<br />
transactions would one day be tracked down. ``We have been quite surprised that so many of the hard<br />
drives were in good enough shape to retrieve the data,'' he said. ``The contamination rate is high. The<br />
fine dust that was everywhere in the area got pressed under high pressure into the drives. But we've<br />
still been able to retrieve 100 percent of the data on most of the drives we've received. ``We're helping<br />
them find out what happened to the computers on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> as quickly as possible. I'm sure that<br />
one day they will know what happened to the money…”[German Firm Probes Final World Trade<br />
Center Deals. Erik Kirschbaum, Reuters, 12/16/2001]<br />
Richard Wagner – a security expert – included in his assessment that the transactions<br />
were illegal. Henschel describes the transactions as trades. These small observations are<br />
important for two reasons:<br />
1. At the time of the attack, neither the stock exchange nor the commodity exchange had<br />
opened. The put options were placed before <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. This should lead to the<br />
conclusion that the transactions being referred to are securities trades, probably being<br />
run through computers at Cantor Fitzgerald, Garbon Inter-capital (now ICAP PLC),<br />
or Euro Brokers. Most of their day’s business had been conducted by 9:00 am.<br />
Cantor Fitzgerald and Euro-Brokers would take almost direct hits by jets attacking the<br />
North and South Towers.<br />
2. In noting that the transactions were illegal “trades”, Wagner shares a piece of<br />
information not released by the FBI or 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong>. Hence, we are forced to<br />
conclude he was referring to illegal securities transactions. This assumption is<br />
supported by information that suggests it took the Federal Reserve’s Government<br />
Securities Clearing organization over a month to rectify the accounting caused by<br />
these trades.<br />
“As GSCC has previously informed you, however, during the period immediately after the<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> events, many securities clearances were processed successfully through the Fedwire<br />
book entry system without GSCC's knowledge. As GSCC did not know that these items had been<br />
delivered, it continued to mark the transactions as if they were fails. As a result of these<br />
"incorrect" fails, certain members are owed fail marks by GSCC, and other members owe fail<br />
mark amounts to GSCC. GSCC has a complete database of all obligations and clearance<br />
transactions for the entire period, and will attempt to identify all adjustments required by early<br />
next week. GSCC staff will be in touch with all affected members.” [Reconciliation Process,<br />
GSCC087.01, October 5, 2001]<br />
The issues around these bond trades (as opposed to stock trades) will be discussed<br />
thoroughly in a separate section of the report (Section 8).<br />
There are so many coincidences and ambiguities surrounding the settlement of these<br />
trades, that there is reason to believe that they are related to the true reason for the attack,<br />
rather than being what the Federal Reserve refers to as technical errors. If nothing else,<br />
for now, it is noted that according to Henschel, the information regarding these illegal<br />
securities trades was recovered and given to the FBI. Neither the FBI nor the 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
<strong>Commission</strong> have reported on these findings.<br />
During the week of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, demand for almost 86 tonnes of gold, or almost $900<br />
million dollars, was created by demands in the Far East. These purchases did not go into<br />
the jewelry market, but were primarily targeted at investment hedge funds.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page <strong>11</strong>3
"While hedge funds are a rapidly growing part of the financial industry, the fact that they operate<br />
through private placements and restrict share ownership to rich individuals and institutions frees them<br />
from most disclosure and regulation requirements that apply to mutual funds and banks. Funds legally<br />
domiciled outside the main financial market countries are generally subject to even less regulation."<br />
[Hedge Funds: What Do We Really Know? Barry Eichengreen, Donald Mathieson, ©1999<br />
International Monetary Fund]<br />
It is proposed that to launder the profits of the anonymous trades, the profits from the<br />
attack on the World Trade Center were shifted into gold certificates purchased by hedge<br />
funds (probably via Enron On-Line) - both of which are easy to conceal ownership with,<br />
especially in places like Thailand and Vietnam, which is where this gold went. With the<br />
range of leverage currently used by financial institutions (between 100:1 and 400:1,<br />
although it does go as high as 600:1), it might be fair to say the people responsible for<br />
this crime converted it into a leveraging of between $75 and $200 Billion dollars.<br />
Additionally, as will be discussed in Section 7.2, there were individuals like Adnan<br />
Khashoggi and institutions like Deutsche Bank Securities that may have made other types<br />
of investments that benefited from the effects of 9/<strong>11</strong>, as discovered during the MJK<br />
Securities fraud suit in 2005. Khashoggi and the Deutschebank were both found liable for<br />
the losses in 2006.<br />
These options suggest a number of observations being made in advance about who stood<br />
to “lose” or “gain” during the aftermath of the attack:<br />
• The first target and primary target (as determined by the level of investment and<br />
number of days preceding the attack) was Merrill Lynch.<br />
• The secondary targets were Morgan Stanley and insurance companies.<br />
• It appears as an afterthought that someone decided the airlines stood to lose as well. It<br />
is very possible that these airline trades were not placed by the true criminals, but<br />
were the product of normal, but sporadic trading. Given that nearly all airlines were<br />
spiked during the time period – not just those involved in the attack – the following<br />
explanation makes more sense.<br />
"Adam Hamilton of Zeal LLC, a consulting company that does research on markets worldwide,<br />
has crunched the numbers and recently told Insight magazine: "The market was in bad shape in the<br />
summer and early fall, and you know there were a lot of people who believed that there would be a<br />
sell-off in the market long before Sept. <strong>11</strong>. For instance, American Airlines was at $40 in May and<br />
fell to $29 on Sept. 10; United was at $37 in May and fell to $31 on Sept. 10. These stocks were<br />
falling anyway, and it would have been a good time to short them." The downward trend in the<br />
airline stocks was backed up in the pre-Sept. <strong>11</strong> trading picture."<br />
"Insight reported that there were repeated spikes in put options on American Airlines during the<br />
year before Sept. <strong>11</strong> (June 19 with 2,951 puts, June 15 with 1,144 puts, April 16 with 1,019 and<br />
Jan. 8 with 1,315 puts). In the same period, United Airlines had slightly more action (Aug. 8 with<br />
1,678 puts, July 20 with 2,995, April 6 with 8,212 and March 13 with 8,072)." [Dave Eberhart,<br />
“Still Silence From 9-<strong>11</strong> Stock Speculation Probe”, NewsMax, June 3, 2002]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page <strong>11</strong>4
On the other hand, almost always, if investors believe the airline industry is due to drop,<br />
they will short all three major carriers. This was not the case here because Delta did not<br />
see spikes similar to UAL and AMR.<br />
• It appears financial companies were the focal point of investors with apriori<br />
knowledge of the attack on the WTC. These criminals were sophisticated investors,<br />
with inside knowledge which identified the insurers of these building and financial<br />
targets. Inside knowledge of this sort might easily be established by a competitor<br />
who worked that market – a competitor like Allianz, one of the primary corporate<br />
entities in the German/Suisse Bank Cartel.<br />
• The attack was on financial companies (especially investment banking) in the World<br />
Trade Center as well as financial companies in general, including Citibank, Bear<br />
Stearns & Cos., Marsh & McLennan Cos. American Express, Bank of New York, and<br />
Bank One, which are not in the World Trade Center. The plan was to create an event<br />
that would shake the American economy to its core, and cripple the highly leveraged<br />
investment banks. In another of a long list of strange co-incidents, all of these banks<br />
have a unique and special relationship with the President Bush when it comes to<br />
economic policy.<br />
"President George W. Bush played host to the heads of several top US banks at a private meeting<br />
in the White House this week, in an effort to persuade the markets of his commitment to deficit<br />
reduction. Mr. Bush's invitation underscores his desire to secure Wall Street's support for the<br />
ambitious economic reform agenda planned for his second term. Vice President Dick Cheney,<br />
political strategist Karl Rove, chief of staff Andrew Card, outgoing commerce secretary Don<br />
Evans and the White House economic team were also present for the talks with the heads of<br />
Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wachovia, Credit Suisse First Boston, Morgan<br />
Stanley, Citigroup, and American Express." [Bush Holds Private Meeting With Bank Chiefs,<br />
Copyright 2004, InvestmentsMagazine.com, November 18, 2004]<br />
• Interestingly, if oil was the objective as claimed by so many, someone might have<br />
invested in ‘Call options’ on companies who would obviously benefit –such as<br />
Halliburton. This didn’t happen, because an invasion of Iraq was not contemplated.<br />
(More on this later.) Moreover, in one story that received no follow-up, oil related<br />
companies were traded with “calls” shortly after the attack.<br />
"Sadi, a Geneva-based investment group that is controlled by the Bin Laden family, is under<br />
investigation for an appalling interpretation of insider-trading. Twenty minutes before the terrorist<br />
attacks on New York and Washington, the Sadi group instructed to sell certain stock portfolios at<br />
several European stock markets. In the days following the attacks, large buying-orders, especially<br />
in the oil and chemical sector, were placed. The world-wide investigation in the Sadi-group's<br />
actions have been felt also on the Italian stock market based in Milan. "[Stock Speculations of Bin<br />
Laden Investment Group Investigated]<br />
Another set of clues that have been commented on, and again generally ignored – is a<br />
series of articles in Pravda during the summer of 2001, and comments by Vladimir Putin.<br />
In these comments, Russian intelligence was predicting a catastrophic financial event in<br />
late August of 2001 (a couple weeks before <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>). This unidentified event was<br />
expected to bring about the collapse of the dollar, and Russians were being advised to get<br />
out of dollars. Similarly, the chief economic strategist for Dresdner Wasserstein was<br />
predicting a major crash in the American stock-market for that same time-frame, in a<br />
sense, encouraging the Dresdner Wasserstein customer base to get out of dollar based<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page <strong>11</strong>5
assets. (Dresdner is part of the German Bank cartel.) These are clear indicators that the<br />
financial impact of the attack was a consideration by those with pre-knowledge. (There is<br />
another conclusion to be drawn from the Russian and German financial forecasts, which<br />
stood alone in the midst of other financial forecasts at that time– that a financial collapse<br />
was actually possible. This forecasted collapse actually was a very real possibility, and<br />
the prevention of this collapse was one of the specific reasons for the attack on the World<br />
Trade Center. This possibility is analyzed in depth in Section 8 of the report, where it is<br />
hypothesized that $240 Billion in fraudulent 10 year bonds under the control of Cantor<br />
Fitzgerald needed to be re-issued to prevent the financial collapse of the US securities<br />
market.)<br />
The first and cardinal rule of any criminal investigation has been totally ignored in an<br />
attack on the headquarters of three of the world’s largest investment banks. That rule is<br />
“Follow the money.” The 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> <strong>Report</strong> does not even acknowledge the<br />
occurrence of any of this crime. The terrorist gambit has convinced most of the world this<br />
atrocity was the responsibility of fanatics with little concern for wealth. As a result, what<br />
little thought was given to the “apparent” money trail – the put options – was dropped as<br />
incidental to a bigger evil –global terrorism. What if, however, the attack was about “the<br />
money?”<br />
The original hypothesis of this investigation was that the financial beneficiaries of these<br />
crimes were part of a German and Swiss banking cartel. Subsequent investigation of that<br />
cartel and the cover-up it required, resulted in findings that suggested that an American<br />
financial cartel of commercial banks may have participated in the planning and execution<br />
of the attack (the Federal reserve Banks). These two cartels were interlocked by a<br />
common customer base of money launderers, heroin dealers and corrupt politicians.<br />
5.3 The Threat to German Banking<br />
For the moment, please assume the actual targets were the three largest equity banking<br />
firms of Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co (MSDW), and<br />
Goldman Sachs – filling 22, 22, and 15 floors of the WTC respectively. (Goldman Sachs<br />
had a significant presence in the WTC, but the instigators did not take “put options” on<br />
Goldman Sachs.) In the course of a normal investigation, one might ask – who stood to<br />
gain from the direct disruption of these financial giants. These giants, along with<br />
Citibank and JP Morgan Chase represented the five major threats to the German banking<br />
market, and as a result the Dresdner Bank (a subsidiary of Allianz) and Deutsche<br />
Bank stood to gain from a temporary disruption of the capabilities of Merrill Lynch,<br />
MSDW, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase. A brief bit of background on<br />
these two German banks, and the German banking industry in general, is relevant.<br />
Banks have created a bank-center culture, with banking centers created in New York,<br />
London, Paris, Tokyo and Frankfurt. These centers have become fairly ‘incestuous,’<br />
swapping employees and favors. These centers represent common interests and policies<br />
generally based on their country’s primary currency values. Today, Paris and Frankfurt<br />
are creating a unity around the Euro, and incorporating Basel into the Frankfurt center,<br />
while London and New York operate around the dollar.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page <strong>11</strong>6
During World War II, the two German banks represented the primary banking powers in<br />
Nazi Germany. There are three events that occurred during the last 50 years which have<br />
provided a basis for resentment on their part with the American banking community.<br />
When the Allies took over Germany, the British generally left the banking structure in<br />
their zone as they found it. The Americans, however, broke up these banks into 30<br />
autonomous regional banks and put in place a number of regulations to prevent these<br />
banks from ever re-establishing themselves as major global powers. Those rules,<br />
however, were ultimately circumvented, and the banks manage to re-establish themselves<br />
in the 1960’s.<br />
Just as these banks were re-emerging as global players, the Richard Nixon administration<br />
unilaterally took the dollar off the Bretton Woods System of Fixed Exchange Rates,<br />
which then created an advantage for the American banks and economy that has taken the<br />
rest of the world several decades to recover from. It seriously undermined the German<br />
competitiveness in the export market, which took the Germans years to recover from. The<br />
advantages that came with the move off the Bretton Woods agreement – in terms of<br />
enhanced perceived value of the dollar– has given a global advantage to the New York<br />
bank center for almost two decades.<br />
Over the next three decades, Europe was able to muscle its way back to a position where<br />
the banks were almost on par with New York. Together, the two banks represented a<br />
coordinated and balanced global strategy: Deutsche Bank had 21 of its 28 foreign<br />
affiliates in Africa and Asia, Dresdner had 16 of its 21 affiliates in Latin America. Not<br />
all of this “comeback” can be attributed to the inherent attractiveness of the Euro or<br />
European currencies. At one point, Tokyo banks, representing the growth of the orient,<br />
stood to overwhelm European banks in the 80’s. In response to this threat, the<br />
International Bank of Settlements (heavily weighted by participants from Paris, Frankfurt<br />
and Basel, and taking advantage of the unfortunate absence of the American delegate)<br />
voted to establish new bank capitalization requirements which targeted the Tokyo<br />
banking practices of defining property value as equity with which to create loans. This<br />
redefinition of the asset base with the stroke of a pen essentially drove the collapse of the<br />
Tokyo banking system, and subsequently, the rest of the Pacific Rim. (Currently, this<br />
same group is driving another round of re-defining capitalization requirements which are<br />
designed to cripple the US banking industry by regulating the use of government debt as<br />
a capital base. Given that a devaluation of the dollar is globally perceived as inevitable,<br />
requiring the US banking system to hold large amounts of US government debt will<br />
automatically devalue the reserves of the American banks. American bankers watching<br />
this regulation emerge over the years have converted their primary strategies from<br />
traditional banking to equity banks, hence the battle with the German equity banks.)<br />
A third American attack on the German banking industry took place in 1993, led by<br />
George Soros and George Bush Sr.<br />
“His US contacts put Soros very close to the financial and secret service circles around George Bush.<br />
His most important deposit bank and main lender during his attack on the European monetary system<br />
in Sept. 1993 was CITICORP, America's largest bank. Soros called upon the international investors to<br />
unhinge the Deutsche Mark. When in late 1989 a reunification became probable, a high ranking<br />
Citicorp manager who before had been advisor in the Dukakis campaign said: "German unity will be<br />
catastrophic for our interests. We have to take action to insure a decline of the Deutsche Mark by about<br />
30% so that Germany will not be able to built up Eastern Germany to become the economic factor<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page <strong>11</strong>7
within a new Europe." [George Soros and the Rothschilds Connection, Jan Von Helsing ("Secret<br />
Societies and their Power in the 20th Century")]<br />
One might conclude from the financial banking history of the last 50 years that the<br />
German bankers play hard, and have some legitimate reason for resentment of the US<br />
banking circles. This brings the analysis back to new threats to the German banking<br />
center in 2001.<br />
• Merrill Lynch was in the process of bringing electronic banking to the European<br />
market, being the first overseas bank to directly attempt to challenge the German’s<br />
lock on their traditional customer base. As a German foundation, Merrill Lynch had<br />
acquired Sannwald Jaenecke Bank, and was heavily recruiting German resources.<br />
Neither Dresdner (a subsidiary of Allianz), Commerzbank nor Deutsche Bank were in<br />
a position to counter that technology.<br />
• The US banks were positioning themselves for a major penetration of the European<br />
equity market. In the US, equity banking fees were at 6-7% less than 1998 levels,<br />
while in Europe, the market was expected to be 44% above 1998 levels. The<br />
profitability on this business had increased due to the introduction of the Euro, which<br />
simplified and encouraged cross border banking. Because of a history of national<br />
banking, cross border trades were allowed to increase commission rates, thus making<br />
the European business even more attractive.<br />
• Five US banks were seen as threatening the equity banking market formerly<br />
dominated by Germany: Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Goldman<br />
Sachs, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase. Goldman Sachs had 15 floors in the WTC,<br />
Merrill Lynch had 22 floors as did Morgan Stanley. (Investment Banking in Europe,<br />
August 2001, Freeman and Co. LLC)<br />
• More importantly though, in 2000, both Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and MSDW<br />
had risen to the top three investment banks in Europe, bumping Dresdner out of the<br />
top 5 and pushing the Deutsche Bank to the number 4 slot. The European market for<br />
equity underwriting was expected to generate $913 billion in new offerings, which<br />
would have generated $23 billion in revenue. Twenty three billion dollars, while<br />
significant, is relatively small in comparison to the larger losses if Merrill Lynch,<br />
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs cemented themselves into the European market.<br />
Dresdner was already suffering financially due to this competition. Faced with<br />
insolvency, it had to be rescued by a white knight investor named Allianz – the one<br />
major insurance company that remained untouched by the WTC attack.<br />
That being said, the German banking group, after years of planning a comeback and<br />
revenge, was anticipating a collapse of the US economy within a month of the date of the<br />
WTC attack. The chief economic strategist for Dresdner Wasserstein was publicly<br />
predicting a major crash in the American stock-market for that same time-frame, publicly<br />
covering Dresdner Wasserstein’s (and other Germans’) retreat out of dollar based assets,<br />
when other forecasters saw little reason to move away from the dollar at that time.<br />
So far, one might say the German banks had specific motivation for seeing a collapse of<br />
the US bank challengers:<br />
1. $23 Billion in banking revenues at risk to American competition;<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page <strong>11</strong>8
2. seething resentment due to U.S. attempts to destroy them after WWII and take unfair<br />
advantage of them in the 1970’s.<br />
3. There is a third reason. At stake was –and remains – the discovery of hundreds of<br />
billions of dollars of stolen national treasuries held in the German/Swiss vaults. This<br />
discovery was imminent, based on U.S. investigations under way in the late 1990s.<br />
This premise will be developed in Sections 4 and 9.<br />
Motive, however, is not enough. One needs to be able to demonstrate that these “old men<br />
of Europe” had the means and connections to execute this deed. These old men that<br />
virtually rule the world banking environment needed to be able to reach deep into the<br />
Mossad, and finance the attack on the American equity banking establishment. Once the<br />
dark side of the Mossad was involved, its criminal elements used it’s pre-knowledge of<br />
the attacks to benefit from this knowledge by manipulating the stock market across thirty<br />
eight stocks. They used the Deutsche Bank subsidiary of AB Brown, and made<br />
investments in exchanges that were weak in control: Canada. (As a small historic note,<br />
Alex Brown Deutschbank is the result of a merger between the Deutschebank and Alex<br />
Brown Investments, long associated with the Harriman and Bush families across four<br />
generations.)<br />
5.4 The Link between the Mossad and German Banking<br />
There is a common perception that the Mossad is an organization of extremely efficient<br />
and dedicated patriots of Israel. Most likely, most agents are just that. There is however,<br />
another side of the Mossad. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a<br />
steady stream of ex-KGB agents and Russian Mafiya thugs into the Mossad. This has<br />
resulted in a unique relationship between the Mossad and former KGB intelligence<br />
groups. When the Cold War came to an end, and the Soviet Union started to collapse<br />
economically, the KGB did exactly what the Nazis did towards the end of WWII. They<br />
started stripping national and party assets and bank accounts, and investing the funds in<br />
foreign companies. At the same time, millions of Soviet citizens were allowed to<br />
immigrate to Israel, to the point where one in five Israelis is Russian or of Russian<br />
heritage.<br />
"Starting in December 1990, Vladimir Ivashko and Nikolai Kruchina, and senior officers of the KGB,<br />
organized a new department of the KGB which began transferring of a major part of Communist Party<br />
money to the bank accounts of dozens of foreign enterprises created by the KGB for laundering<br />
money. The classic example of this relationship is found in a company called Nordex, an international<br />
company based in Austria. Nordex is widely recognized as having been a front for post Cold War<br />
KGB money-laundering. "<br />
"A classified report from the German intelligence agency BND on Loutchansky, obtained by Time,<br />
charged that Nordex had been created as an espionage front "to earn hard currency for the KGB." The<br />
report continued, "Nordex subsidiaries are alleged to be defrauding Russian firms, i.e., the Russian<br />
state, of several millions in hard currency annually." [Time, July 8, 1996]<br />
In return for laundering money through Israel, Nordex (a company owned by Robert<br />
Maxwell, a widely recognized Mossad agent) provided cover for Israeli agents applying<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page <strong>11</strong>9
for access to Eastern Europe and Russia. This interplay between rogue agents of the<br />
KGB, Russian Mafiya and Israeli secret service soon resulted in a major corruption of the<br />
Israeli secret service.<br />
"By the time Netanyahu was running for Prime Minister in 1996, in the wake of the Rabin<br />
assassination, the Russian Mafiya factor had become so prominent, that some top Israeli law<br />
enforcement officials broke their code of silence and went public with their concerns. Moshe Shahal,<br />
the country's chief of internal security, warned that "Elements of the Russian Mafiya are effectively<br />
trying to control Israel. The gangsters are now trying to buy and influence politicians," he warned.<br />
Shahal and others warned of credible reports that the Russian Mafiya was prepared to spend between<br />
$1.5 and $4 billion to "secure political power," according to Robinson." [Sharon and His Mafiya Allies<br />
Plot Israel Election Theft, Jeffrey Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review, January 10, 2003.]<br />
Using Nordex as the example, and knowing other such companies existed, the search<br />
started for a link between German banking and the Russian/Israeli underworld. Another<br />
such KGB money-laundering company in Austria and Bulgaria is reputed to be MG<br />
Corp. or Multi-Group. Just like in other countries (e.g. Nordex in Austria), Multigroup<br />
was involved in the scheme to loot the country after the breakup of the USSR. The<br />
scheme involved the highest levels of the Communist Party and the KGB/Mafiya with<br />
help from Westerners. This former Maxwell subsidiary came into the public light in<br />
1996, when the President of MG (Iliya Pavlov), was assassinated the day after he testified<br />
in the trial of the murder of the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Andrei Lukanov. The BBC<br />
(3/8/2003) reported that: “Mr. Lukanov, who masterminded the downfall of Bulgaria's<br />
long-serving communist leader Todor Zhivkov in 1989, was found shot in front of his<br />
Sofia home in October 1996. At the time, Bulgarian media said Mr. Lukanov's death was<br />
a contract killing related to his business activities.”<br />
Pavlov – the President of MG Corp. - was ranked as the wealthiest person in Bulgaria and<br />
the eighth richest in Eastern Europe. Pavlov’s wife, Toni Chergelanova, was the daughter<br />
of Chergelanov, the chief of the Bulgarian Intelligence Service, according to the Nova<br />
Makedonija (<strong>11</strong>/2/1995). This connection identifies Multigroup’s links to the KGB and<br />
Mafiya, as well as intelligence organizations in Macedonia and Serbia.<br />
In looking at this revolving doorway for the Mossad into Eastern Europe, and<br />
KGB/Russian mafia into Israel, the Board of Directors and current ownership of Multi-<br />
Group is quite interesting. Allianz, (owner of Dresdner Bank) owns 10.1% of MG,<br />
Deutsche Bank owns 9.04%, and the Kuwait Investment Office owns 7.9%. On its board<br />
we find:<br />
• Dr. Diethart Breipohl, Icking, (until June 3, 2003) Former Member of the<br />
Management Board of Allianz AG, former CFO of Allianz, (and in the all-too-small<br />
world, probable cousin to Dr. Arthur Breipohl of Norman Oklahoma.)<br />
• Dr. Jürgen Krumnow, Königstein/Ts., Member of the Advisory Board of Deutsche<br />
BankAG<br />
• Bernhard Walter, Bad Homburg v.d.H., Former Spokesman of the Board of Managing<br />
Directors of Dresdner Bank AG<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 120
• Board representatives from ThyssenKrupp and Siemens. (These are mentioned only<br />
because it is of interest to those who track the financial lineage of where the Nazi’s<br />
put their stolen assets at the end of the war. All of these were heavy recipients of<br />
Third Reich funding: Deutsche Bank, Dresdner, Allianz, Krupp, Siemens, and<br />
Thyssen. Deutsche Bank was founded by Georg von Siemens.)<br />
This interest in MG by such banking luminaries really places munitions and explosives in<br />
the ‘key competencies’ of German bankers. If Board Members are usually selected so<br />
they can bring the appropriate experience and expertise to the direction of the company,<br />
why would so many financial types be sitting on the board of a company whose primary<br />
holding (at the time) was Dynamit Nobel – defined in the company literature and press as<br />
a “specialty chemical company” – whose specialty was munitions and land-mines.<br />
This is not an unimportant factor. Directing a company whose product is highly desired<br />
by terrorists and war lords allows one to come into regular contact with warlords of<br />
various sorts who are willing to arrange just about anything to get the weapons that allow<br />
them to stay in power. Through its sales and distribution channels of independent<br />
distributors, the Board can set up nearly anyone it chooses to represent the product line,<br />
while claiming to maintain total lack of accountability for its sales. Deutsche Bank seems<br />
to have had a number of such arms merchants using its banking services.<br />
"Just 32 days before the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, a Financial Times of Asia<br />
(FT) Wire-Business Line report linked Deutschebank to the United States Central Intelligence Agency<br />
(CIA), Pakistani and Afghani heroin smuggling, and money laundering of narcotics proceeds (8-10-<br />
2001). Retired Pakistani intelligence chief Brig Imtiaz was jailed for eight years on July 31, 2001 for<br />
laundering heroin profits -- for covert actions -- via a CIA-linked drug smuggling cell, using<br />
Deutschebank and other financial entities and properties." [Tom Flocco and Michael C. Ruppert,<br />
Edited by Michael C. Ruppert, © Copyright 2001, From The Wilderness Publications]<br />
"On June 15, 2001, the New York Post, reported that experts said the most likely buyers (of weapons)<br />
connected to the former Deutschebank securities trader and the two Pakistanis were current U.S. ally<br />
Pakistan or Osama bin Laden."<br />
The German bankers had financial and emotional motive to attack the World Trade<br />
Center, and they had the connections and capability. At any time they could reach<br />
directly into any number of the organizations that used Russian/Israeli Mafiya or Muslim<br />
‘muscle’:1) using their drug connections in Pakistan and Afghanistan; 2) using their<br />
Mossad connections; 3)using their Saudi family connections, including Bin Laden, or 4)<br />
using their old Iran-Contra connections- Secord, Armitage, Kimche and Khashoggi. The<br />
choice will lean towards the final group for five reasons.<br />
1. First, many of the mercenaries hired by Richard Secord and David Kimche fit the<br />
travel profile of the suspected hijackers: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Bosnia,<br />
Uzbekistan and Dagestan. This was Secord’s and Kimche’s theatre of operations<br />
more so than Osama Bin Ladin’s.<br />
2. Second, only the Iran-Contra team could provide a mix of Saudi, Israeli, and Muslim<br />
terrorists, with support by US officials, that matched the profile of the hijackers who<br />
participated in the attack on the WTC;<br />
3. Third, Adnan Khashoggi is known to have funded the Huffman Flight School in<br />
Florida that <strong>11</strong> of the hijackers used to get visas, and funded the Al Qaeda<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 121
mercenaries in Azerbaijan. Another Iran-Contra/Azerbaijan figure - Farhad Azima -<br />
is a partner with the US owner of Huffman Aviation, whose name is Wally Hilliard.<br />
Hilliard and Azima are both major owners of a small electronics company in<br />
California (Spatialight Inc).<br />
4. Fourth, two of the hijackers who had been in the US since the early 1990s are<br />
associated with American Commonwealth University, (aka William Lyon University)<br />
in San Diego. This diploma mill was set up by General William Lyon (financier for<br />
the Swift Boat Veterans in the 2004 Presidential Campaign) largely as a method for<br />
applying for education visas to the US. A number of CIA agents are linked to this<br />
back door into the US.<br />
a. “Still, we are left with the question of why both Bush Jr. and Clinton would hold back<br />
disclosure of Saudi funding of terror. I got the first glimpse of an answer from Michael<br />
Springmann, who headed up the US State Department's visa bureau in Jeddah, Saudi<br />
Arabia, during the Reagan-Bush Sr. years. "In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by<br />
high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were,<br />
essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I<br />
complained bitterly at the time there." That was Springmann's mistake. He was one of<br />
those conscientious midlevel bureaucrats who did not realize that when he filed reports<br />
about rules violations he was jeopardizing the cover for a huge multicontinental<br />
intelligence operation aimed at the Soviets. Springmann assumed petty thievery: someone<br />
was taking bribes, selling visas; so he couldn't understand why his complaints about rulebreakers<br />
were "met with silence" at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.” [Greg Palast<br />
Interview by Bruce David, Hustler, On-line]<br />
This doorway would only have been known to recruiters like Khashoggi, Armitage<br />
and Secord. Adnan Khashoggi (Genesis Aviation) is a business partner with retired<br />
General William Lyon (on the Board of Kellstrom Industries, Inc., an Israeli owned<br />
company) in a venture called Wings of Democracy, an attempt to penetrate the<br />
commercial Iraq air business.<br />
5. Fifth and finally, the Iran-Contra team was and is the “A” team. These operatives<br />
have been proven and trustworthy over numerous scandals and illegal operations –<br />
never having been caught, and never having broken silence. They were the team that<br />
could handle “big ticket” ops, and had a vested interest in protecting the Bank Cartel<br />
as well.<br />
It is important to recall that it was the Israelis (via Kimche) who originally approached<br />
these same people with the plan for preventing President Jimmy Carter’s October<br />
Surprise, and illegally selling arms to the Iranians. George Bush Sr. recognized the<br />
opportunity as a chance to secure the Presidency for Reagan and Vice Presidency for<br />
himself. In this case, the Bush family would recognize the opportunity to use such an<br />
event to advance its previously illegal oil industry strategy. (Providing U.S. aid to<br />
Azerbaijan was illegal until after 9/<strong>11</strong>.) There is far more evidence implicating the<br />
original Iran-Contra group (which includes the lawmakers and administrators that let<br />
them go unpunished.)<br />
The scenario is summed up like this: two top German banks closley linked with two<br />
Swiss banks, working with four other companies who all benefited immensely from the<br />
Nazi looting of German government accounts (Allianz, Thyssen, Krupp and Siemens),<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 122
have purchased major ownership positions of a company formerly owned by a<br />
Russian/Israeli Mossad agent (Robert Maxwell), managed by the son-in-law of the<br />
Bulgarian Secret Police, and invested in by the KGB and Russian Mafiya. (Now there is<br />
one hell of a company picnic!) This group uses its contacts to set up a false flag operation<br />
to destroy (murder) its key banking competitors: Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and<br />
Goldman Sachs, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase. The Iran-Contra/Azerbaijan recruiters<br />
set up a rogue Mossad/false flag operation to attack the WTC, and monitor their recruits<br />
closely to ensure the success of the attack. These same rogue agents – barely<br />
distinguishable from the Russian Mafiya – capitalize on this knowledge in their own<br />
manner by shelling short 38 stocks on the stock market.<br />
"Between August 26 and <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, a group of speculators, identified by the American<br />
Securities and Exchange <strong>Commission</strong> as Israeli citizens, sold “short” a list of 38 stocks that could<br />
reasonably be expected to fall in value as a result of the pending attacks. These speculators operated<br />
out of the Toronto, Canada and Frankfurt, Germany, stock exchanges and their profits were<br />
specifically stated to be “in the millions of dollars.” [SEC Secret Probe of Stock Dealings Before 9/<strong>11</strong>]<br />
There is a bit of a jump from “Israeli citizens” to “Russian Mafiya” that is made with the<br />
presented information. The actual clues which allow this assumption are the trade<br />
exchanges used for the suspicious trades. The Toronto Exchange is extremely well<br />
known for it’s listing of mining and mineral companies. At the end of 1996, there were<br />
about 1400 mining companies listed on Canadian stock exchanges. The Canadian<br />
financial services sector appears to have raised more equity capital for the mineral<br />
industry than was raised in Australia, the United States and South Africa combined.<br />
These companies are heavily traded by players in gold and diamonds – of which there are<br />
more than a few in Israel. These are companies that hone the skills of a speculator. The<br />
reality of the Israeli role in the minerals and mining market is that it is dominated by<br />
black marketers and Russian Mafiya. These are the folks that ‘trade’ arms for gold and<br />
diamonds. These are the distributors for companies such as MultiGroup’s Dynamit<br />
Nobel. People such as Shaptai Kalmonovitch or Yair Klein (with ten more identified in<br />
Section <strong>11</strong>):<br />
"Russian-born Shaptai Kalmanovitch and his Israeli-based enterprise, the LIAT construction and<br />
Finance Company. While in Sierra Leone, Kalmanovitch brought in other money launderers, drug<br />
traffickers and arms dealers, all scrambling to gain access to diamonds. In 1986, Marat Balagula,<br />
considered the ‘Godfather’ of Russian mafia in Brooklyn, N.Y., found a safe haven in Sierra Leone<br />
and was known to be operating with Kalmanovitch. Balagula was considered one of the initiators of<br />
the Antwerp operations of the Russian Mafia. He and Kalmanovitch became involved briefly in the<br />
importation to Sierra Leone of gasoline, in a deal reportedly backed by a fugitive American<br />
businessman, Marc Rich, and guaranteed by the Luccheses, an old-time American crime family….<br />
Kalmanovitch was reportedly expelled later from the South African ‘homeland’ of Bophutatswana and<br />
arrested in Israel, where he stood trial as a spy for the Soviet Union. He was released in 1993 and is<br />
currently thought to be living in the Baltic region. A more credible and better organized Israeli<br />
company appeared in Sierra Leone soon after Kalmanovitch's arrest. The N.R. SCIPA Group, owned<br />
by Nir Guaz (known as ‘The Skipper’), set up diamond buying offices in Freetown and Kenema." [The<br />
Heart of the Matter: Sierra Leone, Diamonds & Human Security, Ian Smillie, Lansana Gberie, Ralph<br />
Hazleton]<br />
"In January 1999, the West African ECOMOG force apprehended an Israeli named Yair Klein<br />
attempting to sell helicopter spare parts to the Freetown authorities just after the devastating attack by<br />
the RUF on the capital. Klein is a former Israeli military officer. He was (at the time of writing this<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 123
eport) facing trial in a Freetown court, accused of spying for the rebels, and supplying them with arms<br />
through Liberian networks directly linked to the Liberian President. Klein had been involved in the<br />
training of Taylor’s elite fighters and before that, through his company, Spearhead Inc., he worked in<br />
Colombia. He is still wanted by Colombian authorities for providing ‘instruction and training in<br />
terrorist activities’ to paramilitary and vigilante groups in Colombia’s Magdalena valley region<br />
between 1987 and 1989, according to the warrant issued by Colombian judicial authorities for his<br />
arrest in February 1994. The trainees later joined the Medellin drug cartel. Freetown authorities say<br />
that Klein provided them with information about the RUF’s drug and arms trade, implicating the<br />
Liberian president. Curiously, the same informant claimed that Israel has been quietly putting pressure<br />
on the authorities to have Klein, a former senior member of the Israeli reserve force, released.' [The<br />
Heart of the Matter: Sierre-Leone, Diamonds and Human Security, Ian Smillie, Lansana Gberie, Ralph<br />
Hazleton]<br />
Here is the perfect win-win scenario for everyone except the victims in the WTC and the<br />
citizens of the U.S. The German/Swiss financiers eliminate their competition. The<br />
Mossad whips up American public support for the Israeli counter-terrorist assault on<br />
Palestine, the Russian/Israeli Mafiya exploits the stock market, and a group of exploited<br />
Muslims get to die as martyrs. George Bush and his administration of oil industry<br />
executives ignore numerous warnings of the attack because they are expecting a hijacking<br />
they think they can both control and leverage as an excuse to further their own<br />
aims. These warnings come from the same intelligence groups whose darker side is<br />
populated with thugs and criminals.<br />
By not stopping the event – the U.S. oil oligarchs conveniently had an excuse to invade<br />
Afghanistan and secure their takeover the natural gas and pipeline construction contracts,<br />
where previously they had been frozen out of by the Taliban.<br />
"The BBC reported that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American<br />
officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that 'military action against Afghanistan would go<br />
ahead by the middle of October'. Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a<br />
source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from<br />
the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to<br />
the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US<br />
representatives told them 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet<br />
of bombs' .... The 9/<strong>11</strong> attacks allowed the US to press the 'go' button for a strategy in accordance with<br />
the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. (It allowed<br />
the US to build and control two pipelines, one of which) would extend eastwards through Afghanistan<br />
and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron's beleaguered power plant<br />
at Dabhol on India's west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic<br />
survival was dependent on access to cheap gas..."[The Guardian, <strong>September</strong> 6, 2003]<br />
"Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July<br />
that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.... he said it was<br />
doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately<br />
by the Taleban." ["US planned attack on Taliban," BBC Online, <strong>September</strong> 18, 2001]<br />
In addition to an excuse to invade Afghanistan, the attack on the WTC provided the<br />
“Pearl Harbor” catalyst that was envisioned by the tight-knit group of neo-conservative<br />
defense analysts (PNAC) as the necessary and sufficient condition to invade Iraq, and<br />
then the rest of the Middle East. This invasion was required for the ‘security’ of Israel.<br />
The explanation and hypotheses in this report addresses many of the strange information<br />
coincidences and contradictions that exist in the world as we know it:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 124
• How is it that Russian, German and Israeli intelligence organizations knew in advance<br />
of the attack on the WTC?<br />
• How is it that Russian and German financial advisors could forecast such a pinpointed<br />
time for a collapse of the dollar, which coincided with an attack on the WTC?<br />
• Why would the Israeli secret service – purportedly an ally of the United States – go to<br />
such extensive lengths to execute this attack on the WTC and US intelligence agents<br />
in Iraq?<br />
• How can so much evidence point to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda without them<br />
being the responsible parties?<br />
• Why were large investment banks targets of the WTC conspiracy?<br />
• How is it that Nazi sympathizers and Israeli patriots could find themselves on the<br />
same side of a fight?<br />
• Why would the Bush Whitehouse cover-up the warnings it had received?<br />
• Why would the Bush Whitehouse attack Iraq, when Saddam had nothing to do with<br />
the international terrorists?<br />
This hypothetical explanation seems to fit together previously contradictory and<br />
inconsistent pieces of information known about the attack. This explanation however, is<br />
only the tip of the iceberg. The attack was meant to cover-up far more than moneylaundering<br />
and illegal gold trades. It was meant to accomplish far more than cripple<br />
American banking competition. It was meant to preserve for its owners the greatest<br />
treasure on earth – the stolen national treasuries of the world, and prevent investigators<br />
from auditing the bank records leading to that treasure.<br />
5.5 Unplanned Consequences: The Invasion of Iraq<br />
Here is the ironic twist in the story. The invasion of Iraq was not part of the original<br />
plan of the banking executives that required this attack. This same group that planned<br />
and financed the WTC attack had a vested interest in Saddam Hussein staying in power,<br />
and keeping the US and Israel out of Iraq. As this report later unveils Adnan<br />
Khoshoggi’s involvement in the attack on the WTC, it should be noted that in a meeting<br />
arranged by him with Richard Perle (the Whitehouse ‘neocon’ advisor), Khashoggi tried<br />
to broker a deal that would prevent the attack on Iraq. The American government ‘nixed’<br />
the deal.<br />
“According to both Khashoggi and Zuhair, there were two items on the agenda. The first was to give<br />
Zuhair a chance to propose a peaceful alternative to war with Iraq; Khashoggi said that he and Perle<br />
knew that such an alternative was far-fetched, but Zuhair had recently returned from a visit to<br />
Baghdad, and was eager to talk about it….<br />
Perle, in a series of telephone interviews, acknowledged that he had met with two Saudis at the lunch<br />
in Marseilles, but he did not divulge their identities. (At that time, I still didn't know who they were.)<br />
"There were two Saudis there," he said. "But there was no discussion of Trireme. It was never<br />
mentioned and never discussed." He firmly stated, "The lunch was not about money. It just would<br />
never have occurred to me to discuss investments, given the circumstances." Perle added that one of<br />
the Saudis had information that Saddam was ready to surrender. "His message was a plea to negotiate<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 125
with Saddam." [Why Was Richard Perle Meeting With Adnan Khashoggi? Seymour M. Hersh, The<br />
New Yorker, March <strong>11</strong>, 2003]<br />
The financial organization behind Total Elf Fina – the major oil company representing<br />
European oil interests in Iraq – is inextricably linked to the same old men of Europe than<br />
requested the attack on the WTC, and the Russian/Israeli Mafiya that helped execute it.<br />
The group that started the series of events that precipitated the Invasion of Iraq wants Iraq<br />
for its own. The Mossad wants to keep other intelligence organizations out of its sphere<br />
of influence. Hence, it executes American agents. The bankers – whose fortunes are<br />
heavily linked to the Euro – want the Iraq oil revenues to use Euros as the reserve<br />
currency rather than the dollar. The Russian Mafiya, who has a significant ownership in<br />
the Russian oil industry, had the balance of the oil contracts being offered by Saddam that<br />
were not taken up by the French Total Elf Fina interests.<br />
The Bush White House needed to invade Iraq, not so much for the oil – but to prevent the<br />
further erosion of the value of the dollar – which was heightened by the attack on the<br />
WTC, the American banking system, and the American economy. This attack was<br />
discussed in the very first National Security Agency meeting held by President Bush on<br />
January 31, 2001, and planned long before the attack on the WTC, the attack on<br />
Afghanistan, and the warnings from foreign intelligence. The following memo has been<br />
released from White House archives, and shows WhiteHouse planning in regards to Iraq<br />
starting as early as January 2001. (As a side note, when inspecting the document it is an<br />
amazing point of interest that the NSA was using a briefing from the Deutschebank to<br />
help create the Bush administration policy for Iraq.)<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 126
“I got the document here, on the website about Ron Suskind's book about Paul O'Neill, The Price of<br />
Loyalty. It is the agenda for President Bush's first National Security Council meeting. The agenda is<br />
stamped "January 31, 2001." That was less than two weeks after the inauguration. The purpose of the<br />
meeting was "To review the current state-of-play (including a CIA briefing on Iraq) and to examine<br />
policy questions on how to proceed." The third item on the agenda: "Tab C: Executive Summary:<br />
Political-Military Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq Crisis."<br />
This indicates that the Bush administration thought that planning for Post-Saddam Iraq was the most<br />
important security issue they faced. Why else would it be the topic at the very first NSC meeting? It<br />
would be a matter of interest to see what conclusions they reached "on how to proceed," but that<br />
remains secret information.” [Question: What is this, and why is it important? trots.blogspot.com,<br />
Sunday, May 29, 2005]<br />
Morevover, the attack on Iraq was part of a larger strategy, as later related by four star<br />
General Wesley Clark in his 2006 book, Winning Modern Wars:<br />
"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had<br />
time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This<br />
was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven<br />
countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan." [The Secrets<br />
Clark Kept: What the General Never Told Us About the Bush Plan for Serial War, Sydney H.<br />
Schanberg, The Village Voice, <strong>September</strong> 29, 2003]<br />
Saddam Hussein threatened to break the US stranglehold on the oil market, which<br />
required US Dollars as the reserve currency for trading oil. If he had been successful, the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 127
value of the dollar would have dropped precipitously. Bush had to prevent that, and<br />
create a managed decline. Whether deliberate or not, by invading Iraq, Bush parried the<br />
financial attack on the US economy created by the attack on the World Trade Center.<br />
This may have been the issue that put George Bush in alignment with the PNAC, whereas<br />
he had not been earlier. It is fair to conclude that just as the Bush ‘machine’ was used by<br />
the German Bank Cartel in their attack on America, so was the German plan turned<br />
against themselves, when the attack was used to deny them the benefits of their<br />
investments in Iraq. There is testimony and documentation that Bush planned the attack<br />
on Iraq before <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. There is evidence he planned the attack on Afghanistan<br />
before <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. The Bush administration avoided opportunities in both instances<br />
which would have made the attacks unnecessary. In both instances, he used the attack on<br />
the World Trade Center as an excuse for attacking countries he planned to invade before<br />
the attack on the World Trade Center. He was advised of the plan to attack the World<br />
Trade Center by the intelligence agencies of foreign governments, yet he did nothing. In<br />
fact, some would argue that his government took actions that made it difficult to respond<br />
to an aerial attack. Who “used” who in this conspiracy is debatable? Did the Germans<br />
use Bush, or vice versa? Did the Israelis use both? Most certainly.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 128
6<br />
Destruction of the World Trade Center<br />
Since <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, there has been an undercurrent of testimony that the collapse<br />
of the WTC Towers was preceded by a series of explosions inside the towers, which<br />
appeared to those fleeing as totally unrelated to the holocaust created on the upper floors<br />
by the jet airliners. To a very large degree, those statements have been “sealed” by the<br />
FBI along with statements by the NY Fire Department and rescue workers. That<br />
information will never see the light of day for the next twenty years. There are however,<br />
ten sets of publicly available information which strongly suggest other explosions<br />
occurred in conjunction with the airline attacks on the WTC:<br />
1 Public knowledge of numerous eyewitness statements that there were multiple<br />
explosions. No one ever expected these statements to be sealed and kept off the<br />
record, but everyone knows multiple statements were made. Some witnesses have<br />
gone public:<br />
“A second WTC maintenance worker has now come forward with eye-witness testimony that a<br />
massive explosion erupted in the lower levels of the north tower at approximately the same time<br />
the jetliner struck the tower’s top floors.<br />
Jose Sanchez, 45, of New Jersey in a never-released tape recorded statement made in early 2002 to<br />
William Rodriguez, the first WTC maintenance man to claim a bomb exploded in the north tower<br />
basement, said he heard what sounded like a “huge bomb,” causing lights to flicker on and off,<br />
while he worked in a small sub-level 4 workshop.” [2nd Janitor Comes Forward With Testimony<br />
About Bombs In Towers, Greg Szymanski, July 12, 2005, www.politicalsoundoff.com]<br />
“Louie Cacchioli, 51, told People Weekly on Sept. 24: "I was taking firefighters up in the elevator<br />
to the 24th floor to get in position to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We<br />
think there were bombs set in the building."<br />
Auxiliary Lieutenant Fireman and former Auxiliary Police Officer, Paul Isaac Jr. “many other<br />
firemen know there were bombs in the buildings, but they’re afraid for their jobs to admit it<br />
because the ‘higher-ups’ forbid discussion of this fact.” Paul further elaborated that former CIA<br />
director Robert Woolsey, as the Fire Department’s Anti-terrorism Consultant, is sending a gag<br />
order down the ranks. “There were definitely bombs in those buildings.” [“Bombs in the Building:<br />
World Trade Center ‘Conspiracy Theory’ is a Conspiracy Fact,” Randy Lavello,<br />
PrisonPlanet.com]<br />
“Jim Marrs, an award-winning journalist and author on the New York Times bestseller list, relays<br />
these words from Ross Milanytch, who stared in horror from the 22nd floor of a building near the<br />
WTC: “I saw small explosions on each floor.” (Source: The War on Freedom: The 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
Conspiracies) Likewise, Teresa Veliz, a facilities manager who fled from the 47th floor of the<br />
North Tower, described the scene as she made it down to street level: “There were explosions<br />
going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place and<br />
someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons.” (Source: <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>: An<br />
Oral History by Dean E. Murphy – Doubleday Books, 2002) Phillip Morelli, a construction<br />
worker, told reporters at a New York television station (NY1 News) that on the morning of 9-<strong>11</strong><br />
when the North Tower was struck, he was thrust to the ground by two explosions in the fourth<br />
sub-basement. Somewhat later, another explosion (which made the walls explode) once again<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 129
hurled him to the ground. Morelli then exited that building and went inside the South Tower’s subbasement,<br />
where once again he felt the same type of underground explosions.<br />
“Chief Engineer magazine also ran an article in their We Will Never Forget commemorative issue<br />
on those who were eyewitnesses to the 9-<strong>11</strong> terrorist attacks. One of these men was Stationary<br />
Engineer Mike Pecoraro, who worked in the WTCs second sub-basement. After hearing some<br />
loud explosions, they ventured to a machine shop and found, much to their amazement, “There<br />
was nothing there but rubble. We’re talking about a 50-ton hydraulic press – gone!” Pecoraro then<br />
went on to say that “he was convinced a bomb had gone off in the building.” [Bombs in the World<br />
Trade Center, Victor Thorn, Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.]<br />
2. The reference to the possibility of planting explosives in the building should draw<br />
attention to an internet posting by an IT worker from that Tower:<br />
"On the weekend of 9/8, 9/9 there was a 'power down' condition in WTC tower 2, the south tower.<br />
This power down condition meant there was no electrical supply for approx 36 hrs from floor 50<br />
up. I am aware of this situation since I work in IT and had to work with many others that weekend<br />
to ensure that all systems were cleanly shutdown beforehand ... and then brought back up<br />
afterwards. The reason given by the WTC for the power down was that cabling in the tower was<br />
being upgraded.<br />
"Of course without power there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors and many,<br />
many 'engineers' coming in and out of the tower. I was at home on the morning of 9/<strong>11</strong> on the<br />
shore of Jersey City, right opposite the Towers, and watching events unfold I was convinced<br />
immediately that something was happening related to the weekend work."[San Francisco<br />
Indymedia, Allen Aslan Heart, April 23, 2004 © 2004]<br />
In a similar vein, other suspicious work on the WTC was reported after the fact:<br />
“A photo ID pass for Sept. 5 found on one of the men charged with fraudulently obtaining a<br />
Tennessee driver's license from a Memphis woman gave him access to the six underground levels<br />
of the One World Center building. But which tenant hired Sakher 'Rocky' Hammad, 24, to work<br />
on its sprinklers is lost, said Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman Alan Hicks<br />
on Friday. Hammad told federal authorities that he was working on the sprinklers six days before<br />
the twin towers were brought down by terrorists, court testimony revealed this week.<br />
But Hicks said the Port Authority, which owned the building, did its own sprinkler work, and that<br />
any other work involving sprinklers would have been arranged by an individual tenant. "We don't<br />
know (which one) because all our records were destroyed in the World Trade Center, as were<br />
some of the people who know that," Hicks said. [License Suspect Had WTC Repair Pass, But Port<br />
Authority Did its Own Work, GoMemphis, Bartholomew Sullivan, February 16, 2002]<br />
The <strong>September</strong> 5th date is important, because that is the day after the WTC bombsniffing<br />
dogs were removed from service, without reason.<br />
"The World Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security alert was lifted at the<br />
landmark <strong>11</strong>0-story towers, security personnel said yesterday. Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One,<br />
said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past two weeks because of numerous<br />
phone threats. But on Thursday, (Sept 4) bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed. "Today was the<br />
first day there was not the extra security," Coard said. "We were protecting below. We had the ground<br />
covered. We didn't figure they would do it with planes. There is no way anyone could have stopped<br />
that.” [Heightened Security Alert Had Just Been Lifted, Curtis L. Taylor and Sean Gardiner,<br />
<strong>September</strong> 12, 2001]<br />
Also reported in the world of coincidences, the woman (Katherine Smith) who provided<br />
the false ID to Rocky Hammad was killed in a bizarre auto accident the day before she<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 130
was to testify in court about her role in the fake IDs. A suicide note was found, but the<br />
FBI determined that gasoline was poured on her clothes before she died. [AP, 2/13/2002,<br />
Reuters, 2/15/2002] In most news reports, this was left to the world of intriguing<br />
coincidence. Once again, the general reports have not emphasized certain pieces of<br />
information because they are inconvenient to the common perspective. Further<br />
investigation into the facts indicates that Katherine Smith was also the witness of record<br />
into a trial of individuals providing false identification to two of the hijackers. She was<br />
killed before being able to testify in this trial as well. The middle-man between Rocky<br />
Hammad and Katherine Smith who procured the false identification was Khaled Odtllah.<br />
Odtallah had come to the US from Jerusalem, Israel where his wife, son and ten siblings<br />
still live. Katherine Smith was murdered in his car. While Rocky Hammad is generally<br />
reported to be from Jordan, his mother lives in Gaza, Israel and his father in New York<br />
City, under a name other than Hammad. Hammad’s employment letter which covered<br />
his access to the WTC was from Denko Mechanical, Ltd. This company is actually a<br />
small shop run by Sergie Dimitry Davidenko, who has disappeared since 9/<strong>11</strong>. Research<br />
on his name indicates he is most likely a proficient ham radio operator, Ukrainian, and an<br />
‘applied mathematician’ – whose work is referenced by at least two recent articles on<br />
missile test systems. Later on, when evidence is presented that the planes which flew<br />
into the WTC towers were guided by radio guidance systems, the involvement and<br />
disappearance of man with these skills becomes increasingly suspect.<br />
The link between the work on the sprinkler system and the attack on the WTC becomes<br />
even more compelling when one realizes that a major component of that system – a 5,000<br />
gallon water tank – was located on one of the floors of the South Tower struck by the<br />
attacking jet. The appropriate suggestion is that Rocky Hammad was given access to<br />
plant signal transmitters in the utility room that held the water tanks, and the jets were<br />
guided into their targets by this signal. (This information is elaborated in Section 6.6.).<br />
Another intriguing hypothetical possibility is that Hammad – if working on the sprinkler<br />
system in the basement – may have been creating a “poor man’s nuclear bomb,” in which<br />
a liquid combustionable agent (such as 50,000 gallons of fuel oil) is vaporized (with a<br />
sprinkler system) and ignited. This might possibly explain the disappearance of that 50<br />
ton hydraulic press, or a nuclear like explosion in the basement of the towers.<br />
Similary, there are other references to the possibilities of explosives being planted. The<br />
recovery of a MSNBC newscast from the morning of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, which was<br />
either totally overlooked by the investigating commission, or purposely buried (until<br />
recent discovery).<br />
“MSNBC news anchor Rick Sanchez on the morning of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>th 2001…’Police have found<br />
what they believe to be a suspicious device and they fear that it may lead to another explosion….I<br />
spoke with some police officials moments ago, Chris, and they told me they have reason to believe that<br />
one of the explosion at the (WTC) besides the ones made with the planes, may have been caused by a<br />
van that was parked on the building that may have had an explosive device in it.” [Police Found<br />
Suspected Bombs In WTC On 9/<strong>11</strong>, Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet, December 5, 2005]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 131
3 The investigating government agencies have difficulty in explaining how the towers<br />
collapsed. The WTC towers were designed to withstand a direct hit from a Boeing<br />
airliner, as testified to by the architect. There is at least one demolition expert who<br />
stated in the press that the collapse of the buildings looked controlled, but later<br />
mysteriously and without explanation recanted that opinion after being visited by the<br />
FBI. Even the FEMA report suggests the only possibility it could find for the ignition<br />
of the huge diesel fuel tank under Building 7 was statistically improbable, if not<br />
impossible.<br />
4 An official letter from Underwriter Laboratories to the National Institute of Standards<br />
and Technology, saying the government’s official stance on why the buildings<br />
collapsed has no merit.<br />
“We know that the steel components were certified to ASTM E<strong>11</strong>9. The time temperature curves<br />
for this standard require the samples to be exposed to temperatures around 2000F for several<br />
hours. And as we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications. Additionally, I think we can<br />
all agree that even un-fireproofed steel will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly<br />
3000F (2). Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2000F would melt the high-grade steel used in those<br />
buildings makes no sense at all. …Your comments suggest that the steel was probably exposed to<br />
temperatures of only about 500F (250C), which is what one might expect from a thermodynamic<br />
analysis of the situation. However the summary of the new NIST report seems to ignore your<br />
findings, as it suggests that these low temperatures caused exposed bits of the building’s steel core<br />
to "soften and buckle." (5) Additionally this summary states that the perimeter columns softened,<br />
yet your findings make clear that "most perimeter panels (157 of 160) saw no temperature above<br />
250C."…. This story just does not add up.” [The collapse of the WTC, Kevin Ryan, Underwriters<br />
Laboratories, November <strong>11</strong>, 2004]<br />
The issue of the jet fuel causing the steel infrastructure to melt is a hypothesis offered by<br />
the government that does not appear to have merit. As a secondary line of evidence on<br />
this issue, please refer to the following:<br />
“One worker who had tunneled into the debris said he had found the remains of people strapped into<br />
what seemed to be airplane seats. Another, in one of the most searing discoveries among the ruins,<br />
found the body of a flight attendant, her hands bound.” [The Trade Center, Heart-Rending Discoveries<br />
as Digging Continues in Lower Manhattan, Susan Sachs, The New York Times <strong>September</strong> 15, 2001]<br />
It is difficult to imagine that an explosion creating temperatures hotter than a blast<br />
furnace would leave these types of remains.<br />
5 Seismographic recording of the incidents, which suggests there were at least two<br />
subsequent explosions, and possibly three, after the planes hit the towers. At 9:06,<br />
three minutes after the second attack, there is a reading which exceeds the norm and<br />
equals the magnitude of the first two impacts. There are also readings which suggest<br />
smaller explosions consistent with the timing reported for the devastation on Floor 22<br />
of the North Tower, approximately 9:07. Prior to the collapse of Towers 1 and 2 and<br />
Building 7, there are very sizeable explosions, accompanied by eye-witness<br />
testimony, of explosions in the basements of those towers;<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 132
6 Analysis of videotape of the collapse of the South Tower, which shows clouds of dust<br />
and smoke blowing out from floors in a nonsequential manner, which would be<br />
inconsistent with a theory of floors collapsing sequentially.<br />
“The evidence showing that the World Trade Center towers were demolished is compelling. Here<br />
are a few photos of explosives detonating during the collapse of the South Tower. Each frame is<br />
numbered by its position in the video. The video was shot at 30 frames per second. So an eight<br />
frame interval covers about one quarter of a second. Frame 147 shows a row of explosives<br />
detonating right across the east face at the 79th floor. Frame 203 shows a row of explosives<br />
detonating right across the east face at the 75th floor.<br />
It has been claimed that the explosions of dust that span the east face of the tower, were caused by<br />
air being forced from the windows as each of the floors above collapsed. This explanation is<br />
obviously incorrect. If it was correct, such lines of dust would have been expelled from the<br />
windows of each floor in succession. That is, we would have seen such lines of dust expelled from<br />
floors 79, 78, 77, 76 and 75 in succession, but what we observe is an explosion of dust at floor 79,<br />
no new clouds of dust for a few floors, then another explosion of dust at floor 75.<br />
“It is worth noting that the second line of (much larger) explosions occur at the center of a section<br />
of mechanical floors (the three mechanical floors appear as a slightly darker gray band across the<br />
building and are important for the strength they impart to the building). It is possible that the<br />
mechanical floors 76 and 75 (and also 74) have no windows, but of course, if this is so, it raises<br />
many more questions than it answers. In particular, if the mechanical floors have no windows,<br />
then the explosions of dust from floor 75 cannot be caused by air being forced from them as the<br />
floors above collapsed. There should have been dust from the windows on floors 78, 77, 76, 74, 73<br />
etc.<br />
……. it would be feasible to gain covert access to the mechanical floors of the WTC to plant<br />
demolition charges. Even the 79th floor could be reached via the elevator shafts at the core of the<br />
building. Since the World Trade Center is a series of floors suspended from the core and<br />
stabilized by the external columns, it should only be necessary to rig the demolition charges where<br />
the floor supports connect to the core columns.<br />
The dust due to the visible explosions is a whitish grey. The dust from the demolition of the upper<br />
section (which is disintegrating as it falls) is dark grey. One wonders what caused this difference."<br />
[http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/DemolitionWTC.htm]<br />
7 Video tape evidence recorded on-site at the WTC by a rescuing fireman:<br />
“When the above-noted fire crew and cameraman Jules Naudet arrived at WTC's tower one along<br />
with other fire crews and entered the building's ground floor lobby, they were to a one completely<br />
puzzled -- actually astonished -- to find SIGNIFICANT and widespread damage to the entire<br />
lobby area; although NOT of a deep, structural kind. Moreover, NOWHERE was there ANY<br />
indication whatsoever of an incendiary-type explosion or ANY kind of fire in this area. Yet the<br />
incredible number of blown-out windows and other extensive though rather superficial damage<br />
throughout the lobby area was profoundly perplexing to these EXPERIENCED professional<br />
firefighters in relation to the impact of the plane eighty stories above. As one put it: "The lobby<br />
looked like the plane hit the lobby!" But it DIDN'T: it hit EIGHTY STORIES ABOVE. There is<br />
NO WAY the impact of the jet caused such widespread damage eighty stories below.<br />
[www.apfn.org]<br />
8 The pattern of casualties in the Towers reinforces the theory that there were<br />
explosives set at lower levels of the building, especially in the vicinity of floors 23<br />
and 24 of the North Tower (Tower 1). In the following charts, the casualties are<br />
summarized by company, and then by the building and floor those companies were<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 133
associated with. The remarkable aspect of those tables is that in addition to the<br />
widespread devastation of the top floors one would expect, one also unexpectedly<br />
finds significant clusters of casualties in the vicinity of the 23rd and 24th floor of<br />
Tower 1, and the 10th – 12th floors in Tower 2. These two clusters, as well casualties<br />
from two companies in the basement are consistent with reports of explosions from<br />
within lower levels of the Towers, and from the basement.<br />
World Trade Center: Deaths by Building<br />
Total World Trade Center Deaths<br />
Tower 1 1275<br />
Tower 2 490<br />
1 Liberty Plaza <strong>11</strong><br />
2 World Financial 4<br />
3 World Financial 6<br />
Building 4 2<br />
Building 5 3<br />
Building7 7<br />
Total WTC Employees 1798<br />
Non Employees 731<br />
2529<br />
Other Buildings: Deaths by Company and Floor<br />
Company<br />
<strong>Report</strong>ed<br />
Deaths Floor Building<br />
Genuity 3 20 1 Liberty Plaza<br />
Zurich American Insurance 4 21,28,53 1 Liberty Plaza<br />
Compaq 4 27 1 Liberty Plaza<br />
Merrill Lynch 3 Unknown 2 World Financial<br />
Nomura Research Institute Ltd. 1 Unknown 2 World Financial<br />
American Express 5 1,2,22,23,30-51 3 World Financial<br />
Marriott World Trade Center Hotel 1 3 World Financial<br />
New York State Supreme Court 2 8 Bldg 5<br />
Deutsche Bank 2 4,5,6 Bldg 4<br />
Credit SuisseFirst Boston 1 7,8,9 Bldg 5<br />
Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. 1 22 Bldg 7<br />
Internal Revenue Service 1 24,25 Bldg 7<br />
American Express 5 7,8,13 Bldg 7<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 134
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 135
Tower One: Deaths by Company/Floor<br />
Company <strong>Report</strong>ed<br />
Deaths<br />
Floor Building<br />
CBS 2 <strong>11</strong>0 Tower 1<br />
Bronx Builders 5 107 Tower 1<br />
Risk Waters Group 17 106 Tower 1<br />
Windows on the World 72 106 Tower 1<br />
Cantor Fitzgerald 661 101-105 Tower 1<br />
Nishi-Nippon Bank 2 102 Tower 1<br />
Kidder Peabody-Paine Webber 2 101 Tower 1<br />
Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc. 281 93-100 Tower 1<br />
Fred Alger Management 35 93 Tower 1<br />
Carr Futures 69 92 Tower 1<br />
Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. 2 89 Tower 1<br />
May Davis Group 1 87 Tower 1<br />
Julien J. Studley Inc. 2 86 Tower 1<br />
LG Insurance Co. 1 84 Tower 1<br />
General Telecom 13 83 Tower 1<br />
Bank of America 3 81,9-<strong>11</strong> Tower 1<br />
First Liberty Investment Group 1 79 Tower 1<br />
International Office Centers 2 79 Tower 1<br />
Alliance Consulting 7 77 Tower 1<br />
World Trade Center 2 77 Tower 1<br />
subtotal for floors 77-<strong>11</strong>0 <strong>11</strong>80<br />
Sidley Austin Brown & Wood 1 54, 56-59 Tower 1<br />
Hill International 1 52 Tower 1<br />
Rohde & Liesenfeld 2 32 Tower 1<br />
Empire Health <strong>11</strong> 17,19,20,23,24,<br />
27-31<br />
Tower 1<br />
Lehman Brothers 1 2,4-21,24-<br />
26,29*<br />
Tower 1<br />
Port Authority of NY and NJ 76 3,14,19,24,28,3<br />
1<br />
Tower 1<br />
Garban Intercapital 1 25,26 Tower 1<br />
Instinet (Reuters) 4 13,14 Tower 1<br />
subtotal for floors 32 and below 95<br />
Tower 1 Total 1275<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 136
Tower Two: Deaths By Company/Floor<br />
Company <strong>Report</strong>ed<br />
Deaths<br />
Floor Building<br />
Sandler O'Neill & Partners 67 104 Tower 2<br />
Aon Corp. 170 92,99,100 Tower 2<br />
Fiduciary Trust International 78 90,94-97 Tower 2<br />
Regus 5 93 Tower 2<br />
Washington Group International 13 22, 91st Tower2<br />
New York State Department of Taxation<br />
and Finance<br />
39 86,87 Tower 2<br />
Harris Beach LLP 5 85 Tower 2<br />
Euro Brokers Inc. 60 12, 84 Tower 2<br />
Chuo Mitsui Trust and Banking Co. 2 83 Tower 2<br />
IQ Financial Systems 3 83 Tower 2<br />
Fuji Bank 15 79-82 Tower 2<br />
First Commercial Bank 1 78 Tower 2<br />
Baseline Financial Services 4 77-78 Tower 2<br />
Morgan Stanley 9 43-46,56,59-74 Tower 2<br />
Seabury & Smith Co. 1 49 Tower 2<br />
Lee Hecht Harrison 1 21 Tower 2<br />
The Westfield Group 1 17 Tower 2<br />
Verizon 2 LL,9-12 Tower 2<br />
Deloitte Consulting 1 10 Tower 2<br />
Summit Security Services <strong>11</strong> B2 Tower 2<br />
Xerox Corp. 2 BSMT Tower 2<br />
Tower 2 Total 490<br />
The above charts were calculated from the CNN final list of causalities. The chart on the<br />
following page, from USAToday, seems to be a gross miscalculation, but is presented as<br />
the only other attempt to look at casualties in this manner.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 137
USA Today List of Deaths by Floor<br />
North- Tower Floors South-<br />
1<br />
Tower 2<br />
203 106-<strong>11</strong>0 30<br />
744 101-105 148<br />
Plane struck 93rd to 192 96-100 92<br />
98th 221 92-95 102<br />
6 86-90 105<br />
20 81-85 92 Plane struck<br />
9 76-80 26 78th to 84th<br />
2 71-75 1<br />
5 66-70 1<br />
6 61-65 1<br />
1 56-60 1<br />
0 51-55 0<br />
4 46-50 0<br />
0 41-45 0<br />
3 36-40 0<br />
4 31-35 0<br />
8 26-30 0<br />
0 21-25 0<br />
1 16-20 0<br />
0 <strong>11</strong>-15 0<br />
2 6-10 0<br />
1 1-5 0<br />
1432 599<br />
[http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/12/19/usatcov-wtcsurvival.htm<br />
Special <strong>Report</strong>: World Trade Center , Interactive graphic: For thousands, a sealed<br />
fate] http://www.capnhq.gov/nhq/capnews/02-01/feats.htm<br />
9 Testimony from a small rescue team, (with a great deal of corroborating testimony)<br />
that ventured onto the 22nd floor of Tower 1 prior to the collapse of the tower.<br />
“The 48 Hours anchor was interviewing the Head of Security of the WTC about the evacuation<br />
who had received a call, after the South tower was down, from the Port Authority's Command<br />
Center on the 22nd floor asking for rescue. The Head of Security himself traveled to that floor in<br />
the company of a NY Fireman where they found the offices devastated to the point where they had<br />
to "tunnel through debris" to "dig out" the two or three Port Authority workers who were trapped<br />
there. All of this happened 73 floors below crash bombing impact.” [Dick Eastman, 223 S. 64th<br />
Ave, Yakima, Washington]<br />
It is with the realization that explosives were planted in the Towers, and that they were<br />
targeted at certain floors, that the deeper motives for this crime become apparent.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 138
6.1 The Link between the WTC, Illegal Gold and Money Laundering<br />
The first nine pieces of information only lend credence to the tenth data point, which is<br />
where the interest needs to focus. The testimony comes from the Security Manager -<br />
George Tabeek - who was accompanied by a fireman -Andy Desperito - during a reported<br />
rescue effort on the 22nd floor. The two had reported via radio a massive amount of<br />
debris they had to crawl over and through during the course of their search. The<br />
conclusion of this effort was that the debris came from above the 22nd floor, i.e., the 24th<br />
and 23rd floors. There is significant corroborating testimony for this. There is additional<br />
information which suggests that these floors were inhabited by the FBI, and used to store<br />
their records regarding the investigations into an alleged, international gold price-fixing<br />
scheme and international drug money-laundering. Two witnesses document the presence<br />
of FBI agents in the vicinity of the alleged explosion. The co-location of these records<br />
should not be viewed as co-incidental. This report later argues that the alleged gold<br />
price-fixing scheme was in fact a gold laundering scheme.<br />
“The contention that the destruction of the WTC was used to destroy evidence contained on the 23rd<br />
and 24th floors of the North Tower is now incontrovertible. …Here is evidence supplied by the Head<br />
of Security of the World Trade Center on network television indicating that the floors used by the FBI<br />
(22nd, 23rd and 24th floors) of the North Tower -- 70 floors below the crash-bombing impact -- had<br />
been devastated and reduced to debris. This same Head of Security himself dug through the debris to<br />
save persons who were trapped there. It was on these floors that the evidence and investigation briefs<br />
on two highly important cases were being stored:<br />
1) The case against Mobil Oil and James Giffen on illegal oil swaps between Iran and Kazakhstan (at<br />
that time before a New York grand jury as described in great detail by Seymour Hersh in the July 9<br />
New Yorker magazine);<br />
2) The evidence in the investigation of Gold Price Fixing which stemmed from charges brought against<br />
Alan Greenspan, Morgan & Company and Goldman Sachs<br />
At noon I received a phone call from New England from Steve. He was reviewing recorded footage of<br />
coverage of the destruction of the WTC on NBC's program "48 Hours." Steve has reviewed the footage<br />
many times and taken detailed notes. I took notes at my computer as he spoke. After the south tower<br />
collapsed, men went up to the 22nd floor of the WTC and "dug" someone out of the "rubble" he found<br />
there. It is known that these floors contained the New York FBI offices. Peter Jennings actually did a<br />
two-day network news story on the effects of the destroyed evidence and files on American financial<br />
crime investigations around the world. The 48 Hours anchor was interviewing the Head of Security of<br />
the WTC about the evacuation. He had received a call, after the South Tower was down, from the Port<br />
Authority's Command Center on the 22nd floor asking for rescue. The Head of Security himself<br />
traveled to that floor in the company of a NY Fireman where they found the offices devastated to the<br />
point that they had to "tunnel through debris" to "dig out" the two or three Port Authority workers who<br />
were trapped there. All of this happened 73 floors below crashbombing impact.” [WTC Attack<br />
Destroyed Criminal Evidence , Dick Eastman, http://www.conspiracyplanet.com, 10/26/2001]<br />
Eastman’s report is substantiated by other reports from CBS News and an individual<br />
chronicler of events. These reports suggest that while one drama unfolded throughout the<br />
WTC conplex, another drama was unfolding on the 22 nd Floor of the North Tower.<br />
"... George Tabeek, who was the Trade Center's security manager... got a call that three Port Authority<br />
workers were trapped in a command center on the 22nd floor. He informed a fire battalion chief that<br />
he was going up to rescue them. The chief assigned a group of firefighters, led by Lt. Andy Desperito.<br />
The men walked up to the 22nd floor. Tabeek didn’t know that a second jet had just struck Tower 2.<br />
When they reached the 22d floor of Tower 1, Desperito and his men tunneled through the debris and<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 139
opened up a path for those trapped inside. ..."[http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,315156-<br />
412,00.shtml ]<br />
"...we hit a major bottleneck as we got close to the 24th. In fact, we came to a total standstill. I could<br />
see that the holdup was due to the fact that people from the 24th were trying to make their escape into<br />
the stairwell too. White smoke seeped in slowly through the open door, and it was getting harder to<br />
breathe in there by the minute. I looked around at the pure concrete surrounding us. God, we've got to<br />
get the hell out of here... if this place caves, we're in big trouble. I was counting the minutes. When<br />
we finally got to the door at the 24th, two women were holding the door open and screaming as they<br />
looked down the hall. Morbid curiosity got the best of me. I peeked my head through the door and saw<br />
that ceiling had caved in from the above floors. It looked like a tornado had come through the place.<br />
[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PASCDiscuss/message/7,"From: j_montev@yahoo.com, "Date: Mon<br />
Sep 17, 2001 5:25 pm , "Subject: Personal Account]<br />
Moreover, it was reported that there were two FBI agents in that area and on Floor 22 of<br />
the North Tower until the end. This reinforces the argument there was a “secreted” FBI<br />
office in that vicinity.<br />
"An FBI agent told Mr. Cho his job was done that he too needed to escape. Pumping with adrenaline,<br />
Mr. Cho ignored the warning. Instead, he helped the agent clear floors. Then, at 9.50am, the south<br />
tower collapsed, taking thousands with it. When the FBI agent received a call saying their tower<br />
(North) would soon also fall, Mr. Cho joined the mad rush down the final 20 flights....<br />
[http://special.scmp.com/aua/ZZZQTXCVJRC.html]<br />
"Sometime around 9:30 I noticed the pedestrian traffic slowing down and decided it was time to get to<br />
the SCC. I managed to climb the 22 flights of stairs with only two short breaks and arrived at the 22nd<br />
floor about 9:45. I thought that was pretty good for a 67-year-old "geezer." A few fire fighters were<br />
there to challenge my presence, and then helped me move more of the debris away from the door and<br />
assist me in getting to the sally port without falling through the now-open elevator shaft. Evidently,<br />
this wall had exploded into the corridor and was the stuff that had blocked the staff from exiting the<br />
SCC. When I got into the SCC, I found several of my co-workers, including George Tabeek (manager<br />
of security operations), Tom Comerford (information services project manager - system), Fire Lt. Andy<br />
Desperito (who later died when the North Tower collapsed), an unidentified FBI agent and my SCC<br />
staff. We all conferred on the status of the SCC, the two towers, and the various security and building<br />
management systems." [http://www.capnhq.gov/nhq/capnews/02-01/feats.htm]<br />
The pattern of increased death in the vicinity also reinforces Eastman’s contention that<br />
area was “targeted.” In the vicinity of the blast was Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a<br />
company that lost eleven people: nine employees and two consultants. They have no<br />
explanation for the deaths.<br />
“At Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, nine employees and two consultants died. Some deaths are<br />
understood: One man, for example, stayed on the 27th floor with a disabled friend; both died. Other<br />
deaths remain a mystery. "We suspect some were in elevators" when the plane hit, vice president<br />
Deborah Bohren said. "But we don't really know." [World Trade Center Locked Stairwells/Evacuation<br />
Problems, Accumulating Comments on…. (c) 2001, Mike Barkley]<br />
Similarly, Summit Security Services, Inc., reported to be headquartered in the basement<br />
of the South Tower also was reported to have an office on the 22 nd floor of the North<br />
Tower, with a number of employees working in that command center rather than the<br />
basement. They lost <strong>11</strong> employees in the blast. [Nico Haupt on WTC "Security<br />
Connections".2004, 9/<strong>11</strong>research in NYC,<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 140
http://sync.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=169<br />
x2228]<br />
Whatever happened on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th floor is clearly a mystery. At one level,<br />
there is confirmed and inexplicable death and extraordinary destruction. At another level,<br />
we find deception and inconsistency. There are at least three mysteries:<br />
1. What happened on the 22 nd Floor Command Center?<br />
As the WTC drama unfolded, CBS was reporting a “rescue mission” was happening on<br />
the 22 nd floor of the North Tower. In a related Internet journal, a firefighter’s interview<br />
suggests there might not have been the rescue previously described by CBS news:<br />
“So we started up the stairs. We’d go up six stories and then we’d rest, our third rest was gonna be on<br />
the 22nd floor, we get up to the 22nd floor, our lieutenants had heard that there was some sort of<br />
command center on that floor and they wanted to go see what was going on and what we were gonna<br />
do when we got up a little higher or if they even had a destination for us. But we were told in the<br />
lobby, get up as high as you can. So I guess they were gonna play it by ear and see what happened you<br />
know as we got up, as things progressed. At that time the two officers went away to try to talk to<br />
somebody at the command station where at the end of the hall there was a partial collapse that came<br />
out of the elevator shaft, so they had to climb through some rubble to get to where that command<br />
center was.” [Interviews and introduction, Fire Department of New York Firehouse 16-7. 234 East<br />
29th Street, Manhattan. Edward Helmore, <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001]<br />
The revelation which suggests a rescue was not required is that two officers were not so<br />
much on a rescue as they were going “to talk to somebody” at a previously undisclosed<br />
Port Authority “command center,” and that they went alone – leaving the firefighters<br />
behind. This observation is supported by other testimony, where Tabeek is seen standing<br />
and conversing for an extended period on the 22 nd floor by someone who arrives at 9:45.<br />
Tabeek arrived at the 22nd floor just as the South Tower was being hit (9:02). At about<br />
9:45, he is seen standing and talking with an FBI agent and the Information Technology<br />
Manager. The South Tower collapses at 9:59, and Tabeek is still there:<br />
"...the bomb resistance, bullet proof glass put in the Security Control Center on the south wall of the<br />
22nd floor of One World Trade Center months earlier withstood the blast of Two World Trade Center<br />
coming down immediately outside those windows. Undoubtedly this saved my life and the lives of at<br />
least seven others in the room with me." [George Tabeek, Eulogy for Douglas G. Karpiloff]<br />
The reason for standing in one place and having a “meeting” for nearly an hour, while<br />
everyone else is evacuating, and the building is burning, remains a significant mystery.<br />
The contention that there may not have been a rescue is also suggested by Alan Reiss,<br />
who reported that the occupants of the command center freed themselves from the inside<br />
of the control room, rather than requiring rescue!<br />
"The ceiling came down and some of the walls and we realized we were trapped," says Reiss, who<br />
thought he might die. "But I wasn't gonna give up that easy. There was two or three feet of debris in<br />
front of this heavy, bulletproof door." Reiss and others used an ax to push the door open, and then ran<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 141
through the clouds of dust. Says Greene: "It just completely engulfed the north tower where I was and I<br />
started crawling." [Port Authority Heroes: Part 2, CBS News, New York, October 19, 2001]<br />
Here is where the mystery and questions begin. Tabeek, who supposedly received a call<br />
for help, volunteered to go on a rescue mission that apparently didn’t need to happen. He<br />
was given resources to assist in the rescue that he did not need, and which he left behind.<br />
The one resource (Desperito) that continued on the mission with him did not return.<br />
There are conflicting stories about how Desperito died.<br />
Tabeek testified that he was with Desperito when he died, that he died when the South<br />
Tower collapsed, and that he was in the control room during the collapse of the South<br />
Tower. Tabeek also reports that seven others plus him survived when the South Tower<br />
collapsed because of the hardened glass in the command center. However, the “67 year<br />
old geezer” testified that Desperito died later, and Tabeek elsewhere testifies that<br />
Desperito and he were elsewhere when the South Tower collapsed! Moreover, Tabeek<br />
would later change his story so that Deperito died on the West Street “overpass” rather<br />
than on the 22 nd floor. From Tabeek’s story below, one might also come to the conclusion<br />
that he feigns sincerity “too much.”<br />
“Security Manager George Tabeek and Firefighter Andy Desperito were continuing to rescue others.<br />
They raced into an overpass above West Street, just as the second tower began to collapse. "All of a<br />
sudden, all hell broke loose," says Tabeek. "We got hit with debris, couldn't see. I couldn't get air. I<br />
was choking. He was there one second. Next second, he was gone from my side or from behind me."<br />
Tabeek held onto a column while debris rained down on him: "It kept building up on me when it was<br />
coming down, almost up to my shoulder blades. And I kept pushing it off. All of a sudden, everything<br />
just stopped. Dead silence. I got hit with a blast of heat and I got burnt on my face and my hand."<br />
Shaking free of the rubble, he looked everywhere for the firefighter who'd been at his side for the past<br />
hour. Desperito was nowhere to be found. "I started calling, 'Andy, Andy. Where are you? Tell me<br />
where you are. Let me help you. Where are you?'" says Tabeek. Desperito, 44, died on that overpass.<br />
He was married with three children.” [Port Authority Heroes: Part 2, CBS News New York, Oct. 19,<br />
2001]<br />
Evidence suggests that the mission involved an FBI office that was targeted for<br />
destruction. Desperito was an ‘expert’ witness to that destruction. He died standing next<br />
to the person who had to be involved in authorizing the removal of the bomb-sniffing<br />
dogs, and the approvals required for turning off the sprinkler systems for repair work by<br />
Rocky Hammad. There are no witnesses to his death other than Tabeek. Another<br />
potential witness (Cho) who stopped to help the FBI ‘pick up’ was told to leave. The<br />
floors officially reported to be occupied by the Port Authority do not include the 22nd<br />
floor. There is a report of an FBI agent ‘clearing the floor’ in an area where there are no<br />
reported FBI offices, and there is another report of an FBI agent seen on the 22nd Floor.<br />
Nine minutes before the Tower collapses, the FBI receives an advisory call that the<br />
Tower was about to come down! Who knew that?<br />
2. Why was the FBI center hardened, while the rest of the building was not?<br />
The FBI facility had been recently upgraded with additional security to protect itself from<br />
just such a terrorist attack. The 22nd floor was a hardened, bomb-proof, highly secured<br />
computer center, which seems consistent with Dick Eastman’s claim that this location<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 142
was used for storing files and evidence. There is probably every reason to believe these<br />
files were backed-up in an off-site facility, and are available yet today.<br />
"Security guard Hermina Jones said officials had recently taken steps to secure the towers against<br />
aerial attacks by installing bullet proof windows and fireproof doors in the 22nd-floor computer<br />
command center. “[Heightened Security Alert Had Just Been Lifted, Curtis L. Taylor and Sean<br />
Gardiner, <strong>September</strong> 12, 2001]<br />
As to why the facility had been upgraded, one discovers the FBI was planning for such an<br />
attack.<br />
“Alan Reiss, former director WTC and Bernard Kerik both testified, that they knew ex-FBI anti terror<br />
chief John O'Neill, who told them that there would be a pending attack on the Twin Towers. In fact,<br />
Larry Silverstein hired O'Neill (on behalf of Jerome Hauer, ex-OEM.)” [INN World <strong>Report</strong> Panel<br />
Round <strong>11</strong>: Updates incl. tripod, May 19, 2004]<br />
3. Why had bomb-sniffing dogs been removed between <strong>September</strong> 5 th and 10 th ?<br />
Adding to the mystery however, just in time to miss the crews from a weekend power<br />
shutdown and sprinkler system repair, the bomb-sniffing dogs were removed on<br />
<strong>September</strong> 5th.<br />
"The World Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security alert was lifted at the<br />
landmark <strong>11</strong>0-story towers, security personnel said yesterday. Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One,<br />
said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past two weeks because of numerous<br />
phone threats. But on Thursday, bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed. "Today was the first day<br />
there was not the extra security," Coard said. "We were protecting below. We had the ground covered.<br />
We didn't figure they would do it with planes. There is no way anyone could have stopped that.”<br />
[Heightened Security Alert Had Just Been Lifted, Curtis L. Taylor and Sean Gardiner, <strong>September</strong> 12,<br />
2001]<br />
There is testimony that on the day of the attack, the dogs had been re-instated and were<br />
present. The question remains – why were they removed for the weekend?<br />
In an eerie manner, the ad hoc internet testimonials and death notices from that day<br />
support the argument that bombers targeted that section of the North Tower to destroy<br />
FBI files. There were strange activities associated with those floors. There was an<br />
extremely high death count for these floors some fifty stories below the attack. If the<br />
security protection against bombs was removed, one cannot say for certainty there were<br />
no bombs. If the facility was hardened to protect against an attack from the outside, the<br />
destruction had to be caused from the inside. The one outsider who witnessed the<br />
destruction, and could professionally testify as to how it occurred, died in manner which<br />
has multiple versions.<br />
6.2 The Destruction of Buildings Seven and Four<br />
Building Seven has never been a focal point of the media or any remarkable<br />
investigation. This report contends that there is plenty of evidence suggesting that<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 143
Building Seven was a primary target, and a small amount of evidence suggesting<br />
Building 4 was a target as well. Building Seven housed government offices of the CIA,<br />
SEC, IRS and Secret Service, which held documents for thousands of investigations of<br />
financial crime. The center also housed the El Dorado group, an interagency moneylaundering<br />
group of specialists under the control of the US Customs agency. Never<br />
explained fires raged for hours on the floors of those offices, and seismic recording show<br />
the same burst of energy prior to the building coming down, as was experienced just prior<br />
to the collapse of both Towers 1 and 2. There has never been even a plausible<br />
explanation for the deliberate destruction of Building Seven. Building Seven was<br />
probably the target for United Airlines Flight 93, delayed at the gate for 40 minutes, and<br />
downed in Pennsylvania, before it could reach its unknown target. Just a very few<br />
minutes after Flight 93 downed, Building 7 was ordered evacuated by parties unknown<br />
today. After everyone had evacuated, the fires started!<br />
There are a number of anomalies regarding the collapse of Building Seven that remain<br />
unanswered by anyone. These unexplained occurrences include:<br />
1. Unexplained source of fires throughout the building;<br />
2. Unexplained lack of response by firefighters to those fires;<br />
3. Unexplained order for evacuation of the Mayor’s emergency command center on<br />
Floor 23 of Building Seven, when no comparable order was given for the WTC<br />
command Center in the North Tower;<br />
4. Unexplained seismic spike just prior to the collapse of the building in the same<br />
magnitude as those preceding the collapse of the North and South Towers;<br />
5. Unexplained reason for “pulling” the building;<br />
6. Unexplained ability to bring down Building Seven with controlled demolitions, when<br />
it takes days and weeks to place them;<br />
7. Unexplained misleading references to the locations of the fires;<br />
The result of the loss of this building was a major loss of investigative documentation by<br />
US agencies. Agencies known to have lost evidence include the Export-Import Bank<br />
(source of loans to Afghanistan and Angola), CIA, SEC, IRS and Secret Service.<br />
Investigative & Evidentiary Agencies in the World Trade Center – Building 7<br />
Export-Import Bank of the US Floor 6<br />
US Secret Service Floors 9 & 10<br />
Securities and Exchange <strong>Commission</strong> Floors <strong>11</strong>,12 &13<br />
Internal Revenue Service Floors 24 & 25<br />
CIA Floor 25<br />
Department of Defense Floor 25<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 144
The key matter for consideration and inquiry is that, according to John O’Neal, and Sibel<br />
Edmonds, the FBI (whose files were in the North Tower) was denied information by the<br />
CIA and Secret Service, whose files would have been kept in Building Seven. One has to<br />
presume that any files relating to financial investigations of money laundering related to<br />
“intelligence” operations and the Russian/Israeli Mafiya around Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan<br />
and Afghanistan were kept in Building Seven or Tower 1. These Towers also held<br />
investigative information for the Bank of New money laundering scandal, which will<br />
later be shown to be intricately linked to covert oil operations in the aforementioned<br />
countries. From another perspective, three of the agencies involved in the Enron<br />
investigation were housed in the WTC: SEC, the Justice Department, and the FBI. (With<br />
a great deal of certainty this report concludes that Enron was a major money-laundering<br />
vehicle for the financial rape of Russia, buying and selling petrochemical contracts from<br />
the U.S. subsidiaries of the Russian oligarchs.) Both DoD and HUD had contracts with<br />
Enron, and those agencies were reported by Rumsfeld (on <strong>September</strong> 10, 2001) to be<br />
unable to account for some $3.3 trillion in funding. The IRS, in Building 7 was looking at<br />
Barrick’s offshore hedge book. What is suggested about the collapse of Building 7 by<br />
reports other than FEMA’s report?<br />
Unexplained Evacuation of the Control Center<br />
In the key emergency control center of New York in Building 7, someone gave the order<br />
to evacuate the building and the control center. No one knows who gave that order. In the<br />
Buildings that were hit by planes, personnel were not given that order, and remained in<br />
the control centers until the end.<br />
“WTC7 has received a lot of attention because of its inexplicable collapse at 5:20 PM on <strong>September</strong><br />
<strong>11</strong>.WTC7 purportedly burned for hours before collapsing, but the source of the fire remains a mystery,<br />
as does the complete failure of the building's modern fire-protection systems. Another interesting fact<br />
is that the entire twenty-third floor of WTC7 was a state-of-the-art command center, reportedly set up<br />
by Mayor Giuliani. That floor was designed to serve as a base of operations during times of crisis. It<br />
was reinforced to withstand winds of 160 miles per hour, and had an independent air and water supply.<br />
On <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, the command center was monitoring the situation in lower Manhattan -- until<br />
personnel there received an order to evacuate. One official told the filmmakers: "to this day, we don't<br />
know who gave that order." [www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr43.html]<br />
Lost Documentation<br />
Investigators of financial crimes throughout the U.S. lost evidence in thousands of cases,<br />
including original SEC filings falsely reporting the Deutschebank’s lack of involvement<br />
in the Cayman shell companies of Enron.<br />
“So very unfortunately, lots of documentation and evidence was lost with the collapse of WTC 7. The<br />
CIA's clandestine New York station was lost, seriously disrupting United States intelligence<br />
operations…. Unfortunately, "Some further email records the committee has requested cannot be<br />
retrieved," wrote Citigroup Deputy General Counsel Jane Sherburne in an Aug. 7 letter to House<br />
Committee on Financial Services. "The backup tapes were lost when the building in which they were<br />
stored (7 WTC) was destroyed in the terrorist attack on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001."<br />
[www.thestreet.com/markets/matthewgoldstein/1004<strong>11</strong>94.html] (Author’s note: No IT professional<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 145
stores back-up tapes in the same building as the hardware they are sourced from. Off-site storage for<br />
the WTC was vigorously pursued after the 1993 attack.)<br />
“But more importantly WTC 7…. housed high-level government offices including the FBI, CIA and<br />
the Secret Service. WTC 7 was also the storage facility for millions of files pertaining to active cases<br />
involving international drug dealing, organized crime, terrorism and money laundering.” [PBS<br />
Documentary: Silverstein, FDNY Razed WTC 7, Jeremy Baker]<br />
“WTC 7 had a clandestine CIA bunker on the 23rd floor, and offices were occupied by the Department<br />
of Defense (DOD), INS (Immigration & Natural Services), the IRS (Internal Revenue System), as well<br />
as some of the banks involved in shady wire transactions to the supposed Arab terrorists involved in<br />
9/<strong>11</strong>. Additionally, the SEC had much of its filings in WTC 7 - including Enron's SEC filings. WTC 7<br />
was likely a central planning station for what really happened on 9/<strong>11</strong>.” [9-<strong>11</strong> Science <strong>Report</strong>, Dr,<br />
Stefan G.E. Grossman, Appendix D]<br />
"Maybe no financial institution lost more critical documents than the Securities and Exchange<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>, which had its New York regional office at 7 World Trade Center. While the regulatory<br />
agency was fortunate in that it lost no employees in the terror attacks, it suffered setbacks in a number<br />
of long-running securities investigations."<br />
[www.thestreet.com/markets/matthewgoldstein/1004<strong>11</strong>94.html]<br />
"Regardless of what the regulators say, they lost a ton of files," says Bill Singer, a New York securities<br />
lawyer, who says one case he had pending before the SEC quickly settled because so many of the<br />
original documents were destroyed. "In my opinion it was a wholesale loss of documents."<br />
[www.thestreet.com/markets/matthewgoldstein/1004<strong>11</strong>94.html]<br />
“What's curious, especially given all the Wall Street scandals later in the year, is that Building 7 was<br />
where the SEC was storing files related to numerous Wall Street investigations. All the files for<br />
approximately 3,000 to 4,000 SEC cases were destroyed. Some were backed up in other places, but<br />
many were not, especially those classified as confidential. [National Law Journal, 9/17/01] Lost files<br />
include documents that could show the relationship between Citigroup and the WorldCom bankruptcy.<br />
[The Street, 8/9/02] The Equal Employment Opportunity <strong>Commission</strong> estimates over 10,000 cases will<br />
be affected. [New York Law Journal, 9/14/01] The Secret Service also lost investigative files. Says one<br />
agent: "All the evidence that we stored at 7 World Trade, in all our cases, went down with the<br />
building." [Tech TV, 7/23/02] It is also eventually revealed that there was a secret CIA office in<br />
Building 7. [CNN, November 4, 2001]” [http://www.thenewliberator.com/wethepeople.htm, Douglas<br />
R Page, April 3, 2003]<br />
Inexplicable Fires and the Absence of Firefighters<br />
There has been no explanation of how the fires started all over the building, or why there<br />
was no firefighting assistance, especially after the other buildings collapsed hours earlier.<br />
“The 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> report discusses inextinguishable fires on the 5 th through 7 th floor. Other<br />
sources report fires on 7, 8, 10, <strong>11</strong>, 12, 19, 27 and 28, but a “photo seems to have smoke pouring out<br />
of the windows on almost every floor.”<br />
“Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says.<br />
Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency<br />
generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was<br />
connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our current working<br />
hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."<br />
How can a fire burn for seven hours without spreading to other offices or other floors? Perhaps some<br />
diesel fuel was dripping from a supply pipe. Since the fire was small, and since the building had a steel<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 146
frame with concrete floors, the fire could not travel to other offices. So how could such an insignificant<br />
fire bring down an entire skyscraper?”<br />
Controlled “Pulling” of Building Seven<br />
The owner of the building is recorded on tape referring to decision to “pull” the building.<br />
The building comes down in a totally controlled manner – without any attempt to explain<br />
how that happened.<br />
“In a PBS documentary “America Rebuilds," Larry Silverstein admitted that WTC 7 was "pulled," that<br />
is, intentionally demolished: "I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander,<br />
telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had<br />
such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull<br />
and we watched the building collapse." [http://www.pbs.org/americarebuilds/] Note: Silverstein does<br />
NOT say they actually “pulled” the building. Note that intentional demolition undermines the FEMA<br />
assessment: "The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain<br />
unknown at this time."<br />
“How did the owner of the WTC Building 7 manage to have the building pulled (a term meaning the<br />
application of a controlled demolition) when no one could have safely entered the burning building to<br />
do so, even if there were time to do so - which there was not. Set up for a demolition requires many<br />
days of preparation and work. In addition, why would he want this done. What of importance was in<br />
the building, which was relatively new? ….. In the documentary 9/<strong>11</strong> In Plane Site, you will see the<br />
statement by the developer that he decided to have the building pulled. The website, www.WTC7.net,<br />
gives you the background, and asks many questions about how this building, which suffered limited<br />
fire damage form unknown sources, collapsed almost 8 hours after the Trade Center Towers collapsed.<br />
Other steel frame buildings adjacent to WTC 2, suffered severe damage and burned for almost 24<br />
hours after the Towers collapsed, but they did not collapse. We have no other answers. If you do,<br />
contact us at jerry@jerrypippin.com.”<br />
“Why would the Real Estate magnet, Mr. Silverstein buy the WTC properties from the Port Authority<br />
of NY/NJ, only 2 months before 9/<strong>11</strong>, knowing that the original buildings were all in need of a major<br />
costly renovation to rid them of asbestos? Perhaps he knew that if the buildings were destroyed, he<br />
could collect the insurance, rebuild and still make a big profit? Did he know what was about to happen<br />
and know that it would be a very profitable investment?”<br />
Recently, witnesses have come forth saying there was plenty of discussion by fire<br />
officials saying that Building 7 would be ‘pulled.’<br />
“Two more ground zero emergency rescue personnel are on the record as stating they were told<br />
Building 7 was going to be brought down on 9/<strong>11</strong> hours before its symmetrical implosion, completely<br />
contradicting the official explanation of accidental collapse….Yesterday we reported on the testimony<br />
of an anonymous EMT named Mike who told Loose Change producer Dylan Avery that hundreds of<br />
emergency rescue personnel were told over bullhorns that Building 7, a 47 story skyscraper adjacent<br />
the twin towers that was not hit by a plane yet imploded symmetrically later in the afternoon on 9/<strong>11</strong>,<br />
was about to be "pulled" and that a 20 second radio countdown preceded its collapse.<br />
Indira Singh was a volunteer civilian Emergency Medical Technician at the World Trade Center on<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>th. She was a Senior Consultant for JP Morgan Chase in Information Technology and<br />
Risk Management. Singh was responsible for setting up triage sites for the seriously injured and<br />
walking wounded. These sites were closed down and consolidated one by one as the day wore on.<br />
Appearing on the Pacifica show Guns and Butter, Singh describes her experience to host Bonnie<br />
Faulkner. Click here to listen with commentary by Alex Jones.<br />
SINGH: "After midday on 9/<strong>11</strong> we had to evacuate that because they told us Building 7 was coming<br />
down. [More Ground Zero Heroes On The Record: Building 7 Was Deliberately Brought Down, Paul<br />
Joseph Watson & Alex Jones, Prison Planet, February 9, 2007]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 147
Seismic Spike Prior to Collapse<br />
Much attention is paid to the “seismic spike” that preceded the collapse of the North and<br />
South Towers. Rarely mentioned, if the explosions in North and South were deliberate –<br />
so was that of Building 7.<br />
“As with the Twin Towers, the seismic of the building 7 collapse indicates the release of a strong<br />
underground explosion energy just prior to the collapse, see chart from the data of Columbia<br />
University…”[ Massive pre-attack ‘insider trading’ offer authorities hottest trail to accomplices, Kyle<br />
F. Hence, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca , April 21, 2002]<br />
The End of Building 7 and Investigative Effort<br />
Building Seven was targeted for destruction, no more or less that the North and South<br />
Towers. If one assumes 1) the fires were targeted, as were the explosives in the North<br />
and South Tower; 2) planted explosives brought down the building; 3) the key reason for<br />
the attack was to destroy investigative evidence – and all the evidence suggests that is the<br />
case – the reason for the “pulling” of Building 7 becomes obvious. Virtually every<br />
destructive symptom experienced by the North and South Towers was experienced by<br />
Building 7, except that there was no assault by a plane to explain them away.<br />
No less important than the destruction of the information in Building 7 and the rest of the<br />
WTC, however, was the associated direction by the Bush administration to refocus the<br />
efforts of the US federal investigative apparatus:<br />
“On page B1 of the Sunday New York Times [NYTimes "Trial Balloon" 10/21/2001], Philip Shenon<br />
and David Johnston reveal that the Bush administration is "discussing proposals that would lead to the<br />
most fundamental reorganization of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its history, shifting its focus<br />
to counterterrorism and away from crime fighting, senior officials said…. Also in the article:<br />
"...Attorney General Ashcroft and the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III, have agreed that the<br />
emphasis on counterterrorism will be permanent and that other major changers are inevitable. ..."<br />
"...Mr. Mueller, as the bureau's new director. Mr. Mueller had earned a fearsome reputation from<br />
previous jobs, for shaking up government agencies, notably the United States attorney's office in San<br />
Francisco, where he forced out most of the senior management." [Ending of FBI anti-drug trafficking<br />
& banking "white-collar" crime role, Dick Eastman, October 22, 2001]<br />
The Curious Loss of Building 4<br />
There are three curiosities to the destruction of Building 4, which was destroyed mostly<br />
when The South Tower collapsed on it. There has been a remarkable lack of substantive<br />
reporting on whether or not there was a significant amount of gold bullion stored under<br />
and missing from this building.<br />
“WTC 4's basement housed precious metal vaults, the apparent disappearance of most of whose<br />
billion-dollar contents has gone curiously unreported.”<br />
“There appear to be no reports of precious metals discovered between November of 2001 and the<br />
completion of excavation several months later. It would seem that at least the better part of a billion<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 148
dollars worth of precious metals went missing. It is not plausible that whatever destroyed the towers<br />
vaporized gold and silver, which are dense, inert metals that are extremely unlikely to participate in<br />
chemical reactions with other materials. “<br />
“The circumstances surrounding part of the gold that was recovered offer clues to what may have<br />
happened to the unrecovered gold. According to reports, two truckloads of gold were found in a<br />
delivery tunnel under 5 World Trade Center in a 10-wheel lorry which had been crushed by falling<br />
steel. The vault was under 4 World Trade Center, which was closer to the South Tower, and more<br />
heavily damaged. There were no bodies discovered with the lorry, suggesting that whoever was<br />
removing the gold was warned of the imminent collapse of the South Tower.“<br />
The intriguing aspects of this loss are:<br />
1) There are photos of the remnants of Building 4, which comment on the appearances<br />
of damage done by raging fires:<br />
“The portion of WTC 4 that remained standing had a blackened appearance suggesting that it<br />
sustained severe fires. However, FEMA's report does not describe the fires in WTC 4….”<br />
Given the debates over the causes of fires in the Twin towers and Building 7, it<br />
becomes apparent there is no reason that there should have been fires in Building 4.<br />
(The fact that almost half the building was occupied by the Deutschebank, a target of<br />
many federal investigations, has been overlooked.)<br />
2) The picture of standing walls however suggests the damage done by the collapse of<br />
the adjacent tower was less than complete. Vaults like that in the basement are<br />
designed to withstand direct nuclear attack, suggesting that if the vault was destroyed,<br />
it probably wasn’t by the collapse of the adjacent tower.<br />
3) The only gold found in the recovery that was reported to be at that site was actually<br />
on the move at the time of the attack, and considerably less that reported to be on-site.<br />
This may suggest the vault wealth had been removed, and the vault emptied (!) in<br />
advance, but there has been no reporting on this matter.<br />
These are insignificant observations, in the total scheme of things. However, they add to<br />
the list of inexplicable circumstances which suggest that the destruction of the buildings<br />
other than the Twin Towers was planned well in advance.<br />
The Unmentioned Loss of WTC 6<br />
A key hypothesis of this report is that the attack on the World Trade Center was intended<br />
to stop investigations into various forms of money laundering by officials of the US and<br />
the Russian/Israeli Mafiya. It would not be appropriate to avoid a discussion of Building<br />
6, which housed U.S. Customs – one of the key U.S. Agencies with responsibility for<br />
investigating money laundering. The fate of Building 6 is ignored in virtually every<br />
report available, but the couple of references found are totally aligned with the hypothesis<br />
that these agencies were targeted.<br />
“CNN broadcast the image of smoke rising up from street level near the base of Building 6, the<br />
Customs House. This video footage had originated at 9:04, about one minute after United 175 struck<br />
the South Tower. Remember that WTC 6 was on the north side of the north tower, so any explosions<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 149
there cannot be regarded as having been generated by the impact to the South Tower. A powerful<br />
explosion inside WTC 6 had hurled a cloud of gas and debris 170 meters high. A CNN archivist<br />
commented, “We can’t figure it out.”(Marrs 36) This incident was soon eclipsed by the collapse of the<br />
South Tower, and has tended to be forgotten. The various official reports have had precious little to say<br />
about WTC 6. Overhead views of the ruins later showed a large crater in the steel structure of WTC 6;<br />
it was clear that this crater could not have been caused by fire.” [The Collapse of World Trade Center<br />
1, 2, and 7, Webster Tarpley, http://www.reopen9/<strong>11</strong>.org/Tarpley_ch_6.pdf.]<br />
“there was a giant explosion that shot 550 feet into the air above the U.S. Customs House at WTC 6,<br />
just northwest of the towers before they fell, a totally separate event that clearly had nothing to do with<br />
the plane crashes or hijackings, incontrovertible evidence that something else was going on? Neither<br />
did I, but 9/<strong>11</strong> IPS has the footage from CNN.” [Michael Dare, http:// www.9/<strong>11</strong>inplanesite.<br />
com/9/<strong>11</strong>review_disinfotainment.html]<br />
There is also eyewitness testimony to the deliberate destruction on this facility.<br />
“Explosions Inside WTC 6 Lobby<br />
KT: You mentioned you were running west on Vesey Street, what happened after that?<br />
PO: I just kept running. I was aware there were other people running as well. After passing the cars on<br />
fire, I was trying to find someplace safe. I tried to run into the lobby of 6 World Trade, but there were<br />
federal police -- maybe 4 to 6 of them -- standing in the open doorways. As I tried to run in, they<br />
wouldn't let me, waving me out, telling me "you can't come in here, keep running." As I turned to start<br />
running west again, I saw a series of flashes around the ceiling of the lobby all going off one-by-one<br />
like the X-mass lights that "chase" in pattern. I think I started running faster at that point.<br />
KT: Did you hear any "popping" sounds when each of these flashes in the WTC 6 lobby were going<br />
off?<br />
PO: Yes, that part was like a movie. The pops were at the same time as the flashes.<br />
KT: Can you estimate either how many flashes you saw or how many of these "pops" you heard inside<br />
this lobby?<br />
PO: At least 6 before I was turned away.”<br />
[Ground Zero EMT Patricia Ondrovic talks about her harrowing day at the WTC on 9/<strong>11</strong>, February 10,<br />
2006]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 150
7<br />
GOLD TRADING AND MONEY LAUNDERING INVESTIGATIONS<br />
CANCELLED BY DESTRUCTION OF THE WTC<br />
The 23 rd floor of the North Tower of the WTC held FBI records pertinent to<br />
investigations of international gold movements and violations of the US Foreign Corrupt<br />
Practices Act. The stimulus for the FBI investigation was a lawsuit initiated by GATA<br />
against a number a major bullion international banks and the former US Secretary of the<br />
Treasury. The lawsuit alleged that these banks conspired to manipulate and artificially<br />
depress the price of gold. The evidence presented by GATA was quite compelling, and<br />
suggested that 1) these parties had used national gold reserves to illegally regulate the<br />
price of gold, 2) these banks had created a significant risk that threatened the liquidity of<br />
all of the key players, and 3) that the national gold reserves had been illegally depleted as<br />
a result. The basis for this suit was analysis of gold market prices and trades that<br />
suggested approximately 14,000 tonnes of paper gold had been artificially created to keep<br />
gold prices depressed. This report speculates that gold prices were not being<br />
manipulated, but rather 14,000 tonnes of stolen gold was being illegally laundered.<br />
The logic of what GATA called a scam ‘on the American citizens and individual gold<br />
buyers’ was this. Bullion banks “loan” gold to each other at 1% or 2% interest. When<br />
they borrow gold to cover needs, they buy a gold future and assign it the lender. Thus the<br />
lender always has the “same” amount of gold, except some is ‘paper gold.’ According to<br />
GATA, these banks would loan gold to each other, and then sell the real gold, using the<br />
proceeds to invest in equities, which paid a higher return. This is a good deal when the<br />
investment’s return on the equity is greater than the costs of the increased price of gold.<br />
The GATA claim is that this process had been going on secretly for a number of years,<br />
with US private banks making hefty profits using US treasury gold. This process is not<br />
illegal – fixing-prices is. At some point in the process, these banks had loaned out more<br />
gold than could be produced by all the gold mines in the world in the next two and a half<br />
years. Because the world started viewing the dollar as overvalued, there was a move<br />
towards gold, which stood to drive the price of gold up – dangerously so. These banks<br />
then had to borrow and sell even more US gold, and then (it is contended) brought in the<br />
London banks to support them, to keep the price of gold artificially down. The prices had<br />
to be kept artificially low because if there was an actual call on the gold loans by one<br />
bank, it would bring them all down like a house of cards. There was not enough physical<br />
gold available to make good all the futures being held by the banks.<br />
It has been speculated that it was these banks – with a focus on the American banks -that<br />
somehow brought about an attack on the FBI office, using the cover of the airliner assault<br />
to destroy the evidence against them. According to this theory, the attack needed to<br />
happen before October 9, 2001, when this lawsuit opened in court. It may be fair to<br />
speculate that U.S. bank executives were not worried about being convicted for violation<br />
of dubious and ambiguous laws. However – win or lose, this report speculates there was<br />
at least one group of bank executives that had plenty of reason to worry if this lawsuit<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 151
saw the open courtroom, and that is the group that set out to destroy the World Trade<br />
Center. These are the executives who were worried that an investigation and trial would<br />
expose their gold laundering activity. This report speculates that gold being sold on the<br />
market was not ‘artifically created,’ but rather illegal, stolen gold that needed to be<br />
laundered. If the illegal gold was confiscated by the judicial system, the bankers<br />
responsible for protecting the gold would be help responsible, and their lives – most<br />
likely – would be forfeit.<br />
The argument that the attack on the WTC was an attempt to silence an investigation into<br />
gold transactions and money laundering has never seriously been considered. In a world<br />
that has recently seen reports of the disappearance of 4,000 to 60,000 tonnes of illegal<br />
gold stolen from various national treasuries, no one seems to have asked: how is this gold<br />
being laundered. The selling behavior demonstrated by the bullion banks could also be<br />
interpreted as selling off huge, illegal gold hoards at a previously agreed upon price point.<br />
The hypothesis that a large portion of this may be laundered by the Deutsche Bank<br />
becomes more compelling when one focuses on the Deutsche Bank, and its possible<br />
reasons for wanting this investigation quashed – which no one, except maybe the FBI,<br />
has focused on. The Deutsche Bank (along with Dresdner, and US banks) had been<br />
conducting gold sales for years, and indeed, it was speculated in the GATA suit that the<br />
European banks in general had illegally dumped large amounts of their reserve gold to<br />
buoy up bank profitability.<br />
"Deutsche Bank, the largest German bank, which had precious metals derivatives at the end of 1996<br />
with a total notional value under US$5 billion, by the end of 1999 had grown this business to a total<br />
notional value in excess of $50 billion, or by more than 10 times in three years. What is more, a huge<br />
amount of this growth came in 1999, especially in the last half, as can be seen by comparing the<br />
average notional value for 1999 ($37.7 billion) with the year-end notional value ($51.2 billion). Note<br />
also that this growth was almost all in the longer maturities. Nor can the 1999 growth in Deutsche<br />
Bank's precious metals derivatives be ascribed in any major way to its acquisition of Banker's Trust. Its<br />
OCC report for March 31, 1999, listed precious metals derivatives with a total notional value of around<br />
$6 billion, which by June 30 were just over $1 billion….."<br />
"The only major gold fund manager that I know who never owned a single share of Bre-X told me that<br />
he never bought the stock because: (1) even if you believed the company's story, the stock almost<br />
always looked too expensive; and (2) however great the ore deposit, large gold reserves are not built as<br />
quickly or as easily as Bre-X claimed to do. So too, the amazing emergence of Deutsche Bank from<br />
almost no gold derivatives business in 1996 to a book with a notional value approaching 5000 tonnes,<br />
larger by far than the book of any of the three principal U.S. commercial banks in this business, does<br />
not pass the smell test. Indeed, it is very hard to see any reason for the rapid creation of this huge<br />
position in gold derivatives other than to try to manipulate and control gold prices.<br />
[www.goldensextant.com, MPEG Commentary]<br />
The question needs to be asked, however: what if the German banks, but primarily the<br />
Deutsche Bank – and possibly some American banks - were not selling its gold reserves,<br />
but rather was laundering gold for its clients from the dark side? Until this report, there<br />
has been no mention of this possibility. Not too long ago, several previous board<br />
members of the Deutsche Bank were indicted for helping high profile clients avoid taxes<br />
by laundering money into Switzerland. The bank certainly also had a reputation for the<br />
less dignified money laundering activity associated with ‘organized crime’ and the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 152
Chairman of the Deutsche Bank Board admitted the bank was “possibly” had been<br />
“misused” by these same Russian Mafiya types, previously linked to the Mossad by this<br />
report.<br />
"On <strong>September</strong> 5, 1999, the German newspaper Weld am Sonntag quoted Deutschebank CEO Rolf<br />
Breuer saying that "It could be that we were abused as an intermediate coordinating point" in the fastdeveloping<br />
Russian money laundering scandal. Deutschebank and its U.S. affiliate Bankers Trust (BT)<br />
filed "suspicious transaction" reports about Russian clients, as BT had "correspondent banking"<br />
relationships with Russia's Inkombank, which "allegedly had ties to organized crime," according to<br />
USA Today ( 8-27-1999 ). Moreover, an Inner City Press story (9-<strong>11</strong>-1999) also revealed that German<br />
magazine Der Spiegel quoted Breuer as admitting that it was "possible" his bank was "misused" as an<br />
intermediary for money laundering." [The Profits of Death, Part III, Tom Flocco and Michael C<br />
Ruppert, From The Wilderness Publications, 2002]<br />
"On August 28, 2001, 14 days before the Trade Center attacks, former Deutschebank senior bond<br />
investment trader Kevin Ingram, pled guilty in a $2.2 million dollar money laundering conspiracy,<br />
resulting from a government sting operation investigating the illegal sale of night vision goggles,<br />
Beretta machine pistols, M-16 machine guns with silencers, rocket-propelled grenade launchers,<br />
mortars, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), TOW anti-tank missiles, and Stinger missiles, according to<br />
court papers examined by the New York Post." [The Profits of Death, Part III, Tom Flocco and<br />
Michael C Ruppert, From The Wilderness Publications, 2002]<br />
Any serious investigation into illegal gold laundering by the FBI probably would have<br />
exposed transactions no one wanted to make public. Any FBI evidence would have to be<br />
destroyed, and the investigation stopped. One of the more convenient aspects of the<br />
attack on the WTC is that while destroying relevant FBI investigation materials, it also<br />
destroyed all US Deutschebank records:<br />
"Michigan Senator Carl Levin's Minority Banking <strong>Report</strong> of February 2001 calls correspondent<br />
banking the "gateway to money laundering," a financial technique wherein illicit money is moved from<br />
bank to bank with "no questions asked," thereby cleansing funds prior to being used for legitimate<br />
purposes. Via correspondent banking relationships, banks not licensed in the U.S. may gain access to<br />
American financial markets by establishing a correspondent relationship with banks that are.<br />
Deutschebank is licensed in the U.S. and maintained offices at the World Trade Center. Deutschebank<br />
is licensed in the U.S. and maintained offices at the World Trade Center. All U.S. Deutschebank<br />
records were destroyed in the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> attacks." [The Profits of Death, Part III, Tom Flocco and<br />
Michael C Ruppert, From The Wilderness Publications, 2002]<br />
The original GATA lawsuit was dismissed, and the FBI investigation was ended. A<br />
reorganization of the FBI in 2002 refocused agency attention on terrorism, leaving bank<br />
crime to “other agencies.” Another civil suit seeking to avoid the shortcomings of the<br />
first suit, was initiated in 2003, and was scheduled to be heard in April of 2005 – after<br />
successfully surviving the defendant’s motions to dismiss. It was settled out-of-court,<br />
under sealed conditions in 2006.<br />
7.1 Tonnes of Illegal Gold<br />
What the GATA and the subsequent suit never considered was that while “large,<br />
inexplicable” amounts of gold (estimated at 6,000 to 14,000 tonnes) were being released<br />
on the market by the bullion banks, possibly this was a gold laundering operation.<br />
Certainly enough stolen gold had poured into Germany and Switzerland from various<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 153
sources to explain a majority of the German trades (and possibly trades by US banks as<br />
well), and these flows will be documented in this report:<br />
• 3,000 tonnes of gold stolen from Russia by the KGB, a theft made public in<br />
<strong>September</strong> 1991 by Grigory Yavlinski;<br />
• 40 tonnes of Czech gold;<br />
• an undisclosed amount of Third Reich (Nazi) gold stolen from the Holocaust victims<br />
and their survivors as well as undisclosed treasury gold removed from the banks of<br />
conquered countries;<br />
• at least 1,000 tonnes of Philippines gold from the Marcos family, which had<br />
previously been the wealth of the Japanese Imperial family hidden during World War<br />
II.. (Some estimates of this Golden Lily treasury reach up towards 60,000 tonnes.)<br />
"Approximately 1,000 tons of the loot was liberated by Ferdinand Marcos before his ouster. Billions<br />
of dollars worth were shipped overseas by American intelligence agents and the Mafia. Much of the<br />
horde was cabbaged away in a high-security, subterranean storage cache buried beneath the Zurich<br />
airport. This vault was once used to conceal European gold from Hitler’s greedy SS scavengers.<br />
Fifty years later, some of the same bullion has found its way into the campaign coffers of ultraconservative<br />
political candidates in the U.S., according to the Las Vegas Sun. But Marcos didn’t<br />
recover the lion’s share of the pelf. A six-month series in the Sun reported in 1993 that Marcos<br />
abandoned thousands of tons of gold hidden in his homeland. Gary Thompson, the newspaper’s<br />
former managing editor, and journalist Steve Kanigher published copies of gold certificates from<br />
Credit Suisse, deposit records from the Union Bank of Switzerland the correspondence of Corazon<br />
Aquino and letters to Reagan administration officials documenting witness accounts that lackeys of<br />
the CIA and Army Special Forces carted off an unknown quantity of the bullion…. Citibank was<br />
drawn into the operation to negotiate ownership of a Philippine gold horde secreted in the<br />
Bahamas…. From the balmy islands, Imelda Marcos was heaving billions of dollars in gold on the<br />
black market, frantically, before the remains of their tin dictatorship was seized by the courts. The<br />
sudden infusion of Philippine gold on the world market threatened to depress the already-sagging<br />
price of the metal. This cabal settled on a drastic solution - a strategic terrorist act staged to drive up<br />
the price of gold. " [Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 9/<strong>11</strong> Terrorists, Alex<br />
Constantine]<br />
While the early reports of this Philippine treasure were generally regarded by the media<br />
as rumor, the story was subsequently well substantiated by the reporting of David Guyatt<br />
and others. A major source for this documentation was a death bed statement by<br />
Brigadier-General Erle Cocke, in April 2000. Cocke was a banker before he became a<br />
black operative. He had worked as a “fixer” for "every President since Truman."<br />
Additionally, he was an Alternate Executive Director of the World Bank for four years, a<br />
member of the US delegation to the UN for two years running, with the pay and rank of a<br />
US Ambassador, a Knight of Malta and a Shriner Mason. According to these sources:<br />
"the OSS--the wartime forerunner of America's spy agency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-began<br />
recovering the bullion plundered from a dozen or so nations. This bullion formed what became<br />
known as the "Black Eagle" fund, which was part of a secret agreement eclipsed behind the 1944<br />
Bretton Woods Agreement. Consequently, the metal was placed under the care of OSS (and later CIA)<br />
operative Severino Garcia Santa Romana, who put it under the control of numerous corporate entities<br />
he formed for the purpose. These entities, in turn, proceeded to establish 176 bank accounts in 42<br />
different countries in which to deposit these assets under private treaty agreement……. Santa Romana<br />
died in 1974, and following his death his former attorney and trustee was able to "acquire"<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 154
considerable portions of Santa Romana's estate by illicit means. The lawyer was Ferdinand Marcos,<br />
who went on to become President of the Philippines and a favourite friend of the United States until his<br />
overthrow in 1986. The acquisition of these assets helped give rise to stories of "Marcos gold"--a<br />
legend that was supplemented by additional later recoveries of WWII gold and other loot using a<br />
Filipino Army battalion under the overall command of Marcos henchman General Fabian Ver."<br />
[Project Hammer Reloaded ,Part 1 of 2, Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 10, Number 5<br />
(August-<strong>September</strong> 2003), by David G. Guyatt]<br />
"Additional evidence of Marco’s recovering the Golden Lily treasure comes from the Filipino<br />
newspaper, The Inquirer. In 1998 the paper published an article entitled "Soldiers of Fortune." The<br />
article revealed that all members of the 16th Infantry Battalion had signed a joint affidavit declaring<br />
that, together with members of the 51st Engineering Brigade, they had recovered 60,000 metric tons of<br />
gold from thirty sites between 1973 and 1985. Both units operated in strict secrecy under Marcos’<br />
henchman Fabian Ver." [Nazi Gold, Part 10: The Emperor's Golden Lily, Glen Yeadon , Copyright<br />
2001-2004]<br />
There are other versions of this story. From an individual who provided a day of<br />
testimony to the lawyers who went after the gold:<br />
“I was frankly stunned to read, in Lear's own typed wording, that he was supposed to secure the planes<br />
for the gold shipment for a company in Amsterdam called Kindrich International, and that 106 tons of<br />
gold were to be flown from Guam to Taiwan, where it was to be smelted down, and then to Zurich,<br />
Switzerland via Dubai or Abu Dhabi. According to his memo, there were several other people involved<br />
in the operation: Juanita Hanson was the managing director of Kindrich International; Bob Kerkez was<br />
instrumental in some way from West Germany; Hank Warton of Miami, Florida was in charge of the<br />
operation; Vern Peoples in Las Vegas was in charge of coordinating with Lear, and Jack Taggert was<br />
to receive a "10% cut" for setting it up. I couldn't help but wonder what Lear's slice was to be for his<br />
participation in the deal.” [The Marcos Gold Mystery, Lars Hansson]<br />
In the version provided by Paul Manning, many of the details of the “Golden Lily’ are<br />
reconfirmed, and indicate yet another – this time, British – group moved gold to<br />
Switzerland as well.<br />
“In his transfer plan of 1944, Lord Privy Seal Kido was con-fronted with the problem of physically<br />
moving the emperor's gold kilo bars from the Imperial Palace to some safe haven where their value<br />
would be credited to the imperial account in Switzerland. In 1944, when Japanese fighter planes still<br />
con-trolled the air space of northern Asia, this proved a soluble problem. The major Swiss banks, such<br />
as Swiss Bank Corpora-tion, have five key areas throughout the world where gold and silver bars can<br />
be deposited in Swiss controlled vaults, with a credit then telegraphed to the relevant bank in<br />
Switzerland. These key localities are known in the Swiss banking business as "Loco," so once Kido<br />
had dispatched a Japanese imperial courier plane with fighter escort to Hong Kong and Macao and<br />
other sites with imperial kilo bars they quickly became a deposit credit in the Swiss receiver bank. By<br />
the end of the war the deposits on hand were astronomical, and during the postwar rehabilitation of<br />
Japan, the imperial fortune kept increasing from the interest charges for loans to various zaibatsu<br />
companies who were struggling-as were German firms-for a comeback in world markets.<br />
As a result of these tranfers, American SOAP* fiscal investigators found the imperial vaults pretty<br />
nearly bare when they went poking through the recorded assets in the imperial palace following<br />
Japanese surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri on <strong>September</strong> 2, 1945. They found jewelry, gold, silver,<br />
coins totaling 3,010,066 yen, and as the yen at that time was worth about 360 to the U.S. dollar, it was<br />
a token $2 million.” [Martin Bormann – Nazi in Exile, Paul Manning]<br />
“…by 1944 Japan had taken 25 tons of gold from the vaults and mines of various Asiatic countries it<br />
had overrun. Like so many other moveable assets, the 25 tons of gold bullion disappeared in 1944, and<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 155
this is a secret known only to a cadre of top leadership among the zaibatsu.” [Martin Bormann – Nazi<br />
in Exile, Paul Manning]<br />
As part of this illegal gold movement, it is extremely important to notice where at least<br />
50 tonnes of it went, because it starts a chain of events involving the banks of Bankers<br />
Trust, JP Morgan and the Deutschebank Alex Brown. It is also important to note that the<br />
gold started to be moved into the market place in the early 1980’s by Marcos himself and<br />
in the late 1980’s by his wife. It was during this time that George Bush Sr. got involved.<br />
"In 1982, Ferdinand Marcos arranged via his right-hand man, General Fabian Ver, to transfer 50<br />
tonnes of gold bullion to Switzerland via two chartered 747 aircraft. These were arranged by an<br />
individual using the name Ron Lusk, who had been retained by Ver to deliver the gold to Bankers<br />
Trust, Zurich." [Project Hammer Reloaded, Part 1 of 2, Nexus Magazine, Volume 10, Number 6<br />
(October-November 2003), David G. Guyatt]<br />
"(in) 1983…, according to U.S. intelligence insiders, then-Vice President Bush authorized a Boeing<br />
747 with a special "carriage" to airlift several tons of gold bars from Clark Air Force base in the<br />
Philippines to LaGuardia Airport in New York." [Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine<br />
operation paid for "vote switching" software, Online Journal, Wayne Madsen http://www.politrix.org]<br />
"(David) Guyatt goes on to claim that a letter from Henry Kissinger …demanded that Marcos sell<br />
"63,321 tons of gold to 2000 US and European banks ….." The letter was dated February 21, 1986.<br />
Marcos refused and was overthrown as a result of his refusal. Imelda Marcos, however, chose to sell<br />
the gold to avoid criminal charges, and the gold was transferred aboard the US Eisenhower to the<br />
United States." [Nazi Gold, Part 10: The Emperor's Golden Lily, Glen Yeadon , Copyright 2001-2004]<br />
The question may be asked: how and why did George Bush Sr. get control of a portion of<br />
that gold. The answer is reported by Wayne Madsen.<br />
“The Bush family off-shore money tranches originated with gold bars and jewels spirited out of the<br />
Philippines upon the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. The Marcos fortune was the price<br />
exacted by Vice President Bush for his being granted asylum in Hawaii. The gold bars were<br />
transported from the Philippines to the International Diamond Exchange Vaults near Rockefeller<br />
Center. A CIA proprietary firm called Oceaneering International of Houston procured barges to move<br />
some of the gold from secured warehouses to a specially-configured Boeing 747 which then flew the<br />
cargo to New York. Oceaneering sealifted the remaining gold to Oregon. After George W. Bush’s<br />
victory in 2000, the last of the gold and jewels stored in New York was moved to UBS Bank in Zurich.<br />
Marcos and Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi set about to create Five Star Trust in 1983 as a means<br />
to create a vehicle to use the Philippine wealth to create and funnel fungible assets abroad. In 1989,<br />
Five Star Trust was officially established in the Isle of Man by a Houston-based attorney who was a<br />
close friend of the Bush family.” [http://www.waynemadsenreport.com]<br />
Is should be of historic note that it was three of George Bush’s key aids who played<br />
primary roles in convincing President Ronal Reagan to withdraw his support for Marcos,<br />
thus forcing Marcos to seek asylum and deal with George Bush Sr.<br />
“Armitage, Wolfowitz and Sigur were at the center of what was in many ways the most surprising<br />
change in the Reagan administration’s foreign policy; the decision to encourage Philippine President<br />
Ferdinand Marcos to give up power in 1986.” [Rise of the Vulcans- The History of Bush’s War<br />
Cabinet, James Mann, Penguin, 2004, p128.]<br />
In answering the question as to “why?” the records point to the conclusion that George HW Bush set<br />
up a private funding mechanism for his own personal, ‘dark-ops’ foreign policy. This was a fund<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 156
protected from Congressional oversight and a fund that would allow him to authorize and fund<br />
operations that violated United States law. This fund would subsequently be used to wage war against<br />
the former Soviet Union by financing Muslim terrorists and Russian Mafiya oligarchs in his continued<br />
efforts to destabilize the Soviet Union. It would be used illegally to fight “Communists” in South<br />
America. Some of the Marcos/Bush gold was even considered for use in the Iran-Contra dealings:<br />
“In 1985, [Oliver North] attempted to sell 44 tons of Marcos bullion, worth $465 million, on the black<br />
market. He blithely suggested skimming $5 million to finance the Nicaraguan contra war, but the deal<br />
fell through when North, true to form, stiffed the Israeli middlemen on the Marcos payroll. Tapes and<br />
documents implicating American officials in the gold transfers were withheld from the Iran-contra<br />
committee by Major General Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and William Odom,<br />
director of the NSA. "It wasn't so much the mention of gold that concerned them," say Thompson and<br />
Kanigher. "It was Marcos talking (on tape) about contributions to U.S. presidential campaigns and the<br />
use of the gold proceeds to fund illegal arms deals." [Iran-Contra Connections to the Oklahoma<br />
Bombing, by Alex Constantine © 2000 Alex Constantine. All rights reserved]<br />
This Marcos gold would be a fund the use of which had to be protected from ever being<br />
exposed to the world. It would be a fund that investigators housed in the World Trade<br />
Center were on the path to uncover. It would provide the basis for the “National<br />
Security” rationale for all the cover-up associated with the government investigation of<br />
the destruction of the WTC.<br />
Bankers Trust, where Marcos placed his gold in 1982, becomes an important name in this<br />
report in that the merger of Bankers Trust (formed by JP Morgan in 1903) and<br />
Deutschebank Alex. Brown was conducted by “Buzz” Krongard, with the assistance of<br />
his primary staff assistant, Mayo Shattuck. What it suggests is that Krongard, Shattuck,<br />
executives of JP Morgan, and executives of the Deutschebank were in a position to be<br />
knowledgeable about the illicit gold movements that ultimately were covered up by the<br />
destruction of the World Trade Towers. Krongard has been implicated as a potential<br />
“person of interest” in the alleged cover-up by the US Government of what really<br />
happened on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> because of his association to the bank to which many illegal<br />
stock trades were traced, and the unexplained ‘shutdown’ of that investigation.<br />
"By profession, Krongard is a banker and formerly was the Chairman and CEO of investment bank<br />
Alex. Brown, Inc. In <strong>September</strong> 1997, Krongard engineered the merger of Alex. Brown with Bankers<br />
Trust and became the Vice Chairman of the board of directors of Bankers Trust. A few months later, in<br />
January 1998, he was recruited as a "counselor" to CIA boss George Tenet. In March 2001, he was<br />
promoted to Executive Director, making him the No. 2 man of the spy agency." [Project<br />
Hammer Reloaded, Part 1 of 2, Nexus Magazine, Volume 10, Number 6 (October-November 2003),<br />
David G. Guyatt]<br />
What is not recognized by many is that Krongard’s main assistant at Alex Brown was<br />
Mayo Shattuck. Mayo – who was also the personal financial advisor to Edgar Bronfman<br />
and Adnan Khashoggi - resigned as CEO of Deutschebank, America on <strong>September</strong> 12,<br />
2001, and went on become CEO of the company that would replace the bankrupted<br />
Enron as the primary energy market maker. Mayo’s Deutschebank operation in the WTC<br />
was buried on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. Also rarely mentioned is the fact the Senator Carl Levin’s<br />
Senate Hearings into US money-laundering identified AB Brown – where Krongard,<br />
Shattuck and Beese were the top three executives - as one of the top twenty US banks<br />
involved in money-laundering. Finally, one should note that Krongard was mentor to<br />
another placement from the CIA training facilities of the U.S. War College and John<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 157
Hopkins. That protégé was named J. Carter Beese, who was one of George Bush<br />
appointees to the board of directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation in<br />
1992, and later would become Chairman of Riggs Bank, as well as an SEC<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>er (appointed by Bush.) J. Carter Beese Jr. was Chairman at Alex from 1994<br />
to 1997, and would move from there to also be vice-Chairman of Bankers Trust. Beese<br />
went from Banker’s Trust to become President of Riggs Capital Partners, which will later<br />
be demonstrated to play a major role in George’s Bush’s 1991 10 year bond fraud, one of<br />
the major drivers behind the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> tragedy. Beese was the son of an FBI agent,<br />
and would live the life of a “made” man:<br />
“In the annals of charmed lives, the Honorable J. Carter Beese had made an improbable and<br />
Algeresque journey from son of an FBI agent in New Jersey to the rarified halls of government and<br />
business. From afar, his life seemed miraculously blessed. The road to Alex Brown in the early 80s had<br />
three typical entry points: Gilman, Griswold or The Harvard Business School, rather than his New<br />
Jersey and Rollins College roots.” [A Tribute to the Honorable J Carter Beese Jr., Edwin Warfield,<br />
April 12, 2007, http://www.citybizlist.com/blog/warfield/2007/04/tribute-to-honorable-j-carter-beesejr.html]<br />
Beese, like many CIA trainees, would have his life ended in April 2007 with a reported<br />
suicide, at the age of 50.<br />
It also suggests that the management of the JP Morgan syndicate of financial institutions<br />
was in a position to be aware of these illegal gold transactions, as were other American<br />
financial institutions such as Citibank and Drexel.<br />
"Drexel, Burnham, Lambert, New York, was a recipient of gold bullion from Philippine dictator<br />
Ferdinand Marcos in January 1984." [Project Hammer Reloaded , Part 1 of 2, Extracted from Nexus<br />
Magazine, Volume 10, Number 5 (August-<strong>September</strong> 2003), by David G. Guyatt]<br />
Another potential source of illegal gold in the market was uncovered in the 1990’s by the<br />
WJC. (World Jewish Congress). Recent disclosures from World War II documents<br />
released in the 1990’s demonstrated that the Swiss banks had understated the amount of<br />
gold received from Nazi Germany during the war. This gold appears to have originated<br />
with holocaust victims and the national treasuries of conquered nations. Technically, this<br />
gold was to have been returned to those nations and families it was confiscated from.<br />
Swiss banks denied the existence of this and the Marcos gold, despite historical evidence<br />
to the contrary. It was only when a janitor for one of the banks discovered and saved<br />
records of this gold in the process of being destroyed by the banks, and handed over these<br />
records to the press, did the whole Swiss denial begin to crumble. At that point, the<br />
World Jewish Congress began to apply more pressure on the Swiss banks, and on the US<br />
Congress to penalize the Swiss banks. At about the same time, the Philippine<br />
government was pressuring the banks for a return of the Marcos gold, and the American<br />
legal system was seeking billions from the Marcos accounts on behalf of victims of<br />
Marcos torture that had won a lawsuit against the Marcos estate in Hawaiian courts. On<br />
top of these legal probes into the illegal gold holdings of the Swiss banks came the<br />
GATA lawsuit and its associated FBI investigation. (This is elaborated in Section 9.1)<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 158
The amounts of illegal gold from all of these various sources may have been adequate to<br />
explain the “inexplicable” gold volume being sold in the gold market, as suggested by<br />
GATA statistics. This illegal gold is also of interest because one of the key individuals<br />
heading the international law suit against the Swiss banks was the President of the WJC –<br />
Edgar Bronfman. The Bronfman family, along with executives of JP Morgan, (as will<br />
later be demonstrated), were key investors in a Canadian company called Barrick –<br />
named as a defendant in the second gold price-fixing suit, and the largest producer of<br />
“paper” gold in the world. This report speculates that Barrick was operating as a ‘front’<br />
for moving stolen gold into the market.<br />
Winning or losing this lawsuit would be quite immaterial to a large number of people<br />
unless the banks had to reveal the sources of their gold, which generally had been<br />
funneled into Swiss accounts by German banks and its global network of banks. A<br />
substantial future revenue stream would be lost to the German banks if the underworld<br />
lost trust in them. It would also be fair to speculate that a few bankers would suffer cruel<br />
deaths if the details of these gold thefts were revealed. It is hypothesized that the<br />
exposure of this gold laundering activity was the ‘issue’ that allowed German banking<br />
executives and Russian KGB/Mafiya lords to sit at the same table and discuss a mutual<br />
interest in destroying the World Trade Center. It created the incentive to leverage<br />
Russian/Israeli Mafiya relationships within the Israeli Mossad, and initiate the attack on<br />
the World Trade Center.<br />
Interestingly, it was also this same type of interest in ‘preventing public disclosure, or<br />
exposure’ that may have encouraged Bush to divert attention away from this economic<br />
motive for a crime.<br />
"There is substantial evidence suggesting that a detailed investigation into Deutschebank's connection<br />
to Islamic terrorists and 9-<strong>11</strong> might reopen a mysteriously closed 1991 investigation of criminal insider<br />
trading connected to Harken Energy, a Houston company where George W. Bush served on the board<br />
of directors as a major stockholder with his some of his father's key campaign contributors. On January<br />
30, 1990 Harken, with a remarkably unsuccessful history of drilling projects, signed major oil drilling<br />
contracts with Bahrain. Five months later, Bush's company suffered an unexplained huge loss of stock<br />
value just prior to the Gulf War -- but not before the future president had already cashed out, making<br />
close to a million dollars selling his own stock. The future president completed his key insider trade<br />
eight days before Harken announced a $23 million second quarter corporate loss and about six weeks<br />
before the invasion. Having just profited by nearly $1 million--representing a 200 % insider windfall--<br />
the SEC investigation of George W. was led by general counsel James R. Doty who, according to a<br />
UPI report, mysteriously neglected to interview any of the Harken directors --including the younger<br />
Bush -- regarding "enforcement" oversight. Moreover, Doty had previously served as George W.<br />
Bush's personal lawyer to Bush 43's purchase of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise. So, in the end, a<br />
future president--George W. Bush -- was cleared of insider trade wrongdoing by his personal attorney<br />
and by his father's counsel " [The Profits of Death, Part III, Tom Flocco and Michael C Ruppert, From<br />
The Wilderness Publications, 2002]<br />
The argument made by Flocco and Ruppert, while valid, misses the real cover-up. An<br />
investigation into the Deutsche Bank connection to the terrorists would have<br />
demonstrated that at the heart of the connection was a need to cover-up probable illegal<br />
gold movements. Moreover, the names of two banks (JP Morgan and Deutschebank) and<br />
three individuals (George Bush Sr., Adnan Khashoggi and Edgar Bronfman) reported to<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 159
e involved in these probable illegal gold movements are linked to a single gold<br />
company: Barrick. These names are not linked as a group to any other gold company.<br />
These individuals, along with Shiek Kamal Adham, (the former head of the Saudi<br />
intelligence agency and a regular business partner of Khashoggi) have been widely<br />
reported as involved (but not convicted) in money laundering schemes and illegal gold<br />
movements:<br />
• George HW Bush: the Iran-Contra scandal, the Marcos gold;<br />
• Adnan Khashoggi: the BCCI-Vatican Bank money laundering scandal, Iran-Contra,<br />
MJK securities fraud, and the US savings and loans bankruptcies, the Sand casino<br />
bankruptcy, and the Marcos gold;<br />
• Shiek Kamal Adham: the BCCI-Vatican Bank scandal, Iran-Contra; and<br />
• Edgar Bronfman: Harris Bank and Household Bank money laundering, the Nazi gold<br />
hoards, as well as the family history in Canada of bootleg alcohol smuggling.<br />
If four suspected money-launderers, at least two of which are involved in prior<br />
movements of this gold, are all financially involved in a company responsible for the<br />
generation of billions of dollars of paper gold, and producing bullion from mining<br />
deposits with a history of dubious value, then should not those facts warrant suspicion of<br />
that company’s intent?<br />
In fact, the Barrick gold operation is a phenomenon that could not have occurred without<br />
the assistance of President George Bush Sr. In his last days as President, Bush pardoned<br />
his former political colleagues convicted in the Iran-Contra Scandal, including Adnan<br />
Khashoggi. The Iran-Contra conspirators executed their crime with the heavy<br />
involvement of three individuals who continue to appear throughout this report:<br />
• Adnan Khashoggi;<br />
• Khalid bin Mahfouz, owner of 20% of BCCI; and<br />
• Shiek Kamal Adham, who belonged to a group that owned approximately 55% of<br />
BCCI, and was on the board of directors with Mahfouz.<br />
At the same time that Bush pardoned the convicted Iran-Contra conspirators, he<br />
authorized a procedural change which allowed Barrick (a company started with funding<br />
from Khashoggi and Shiek Kamal Adham as an original investors) to claim $10 billion in<br />
unmined reserves in Nevada, for the meager cost of $10,000. It is speculated this process<br />
needed to be expedited because it was anticipated the Clinton administration would not<br />
approve transaction without sizeable royalty requirements. This report speculates that<br />
Bush expedited the approval so that laundering of gold could happen much sooner – that<br />
having the reserves on the books was a necessary step to begin laundering the stolen<br />
treasuries. Not often reported, Barrick claims it paid $63 million for the company that<br />
owned those rights, although the details of that investment are not known. Even at that<br />
rate, $63 million for $10 billion in assets seems like a suspicious arrangement.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 160
About the same time Khashoggi and Adham were investing in Barrick, a partner of their<br />
BCCI partner (Khalid bin Mahfouz) was becoming a 12% investor in Harken, which<br />
would later be identified with George Bush Jr.’s insider trader.<br />
"In 1987 an obscure Saudi financier named Adbullah Taha Bakhsh invested in Harken, a Texas oil<br />
company of which George W. Bush was a director from 1986 to 1993. The deal consisted of<br />
recapitalizing the company, which was going through difficult times. This Saudi investor is none other<br />
than the partner of Khalid bin Mahfouz and Ghaith Pharaon. And so Taha Bakhsh became an <strong>11</strong>.5<br />
percent shareholder in Harken Energy Corp. Between 1976 and 1982, Abdullah Taha Bakhsh – an<br />
investor in Harkin Energy, recall – was the representative for the bin Laden family." [The Real<br />
Intelligence Cover-Up: America's Unholy Alliance, Joe Trento's Column, 8/6/2003]<br />
The current Bush administration has dropped all investigations of potential financial<br />
crimes associated with the destruction of the WTC. It has forced the FBI to drop the<br />
GATA/gold price-fixing investigation so as to focus on ‘terrorism.’ The Bush<br />
administration dropped the investigation of illegal stock trades once they were traced<br />
back to Israel. The 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> report does not mention them, and there is no SEC<br />
nor FBI report on the investigation. Any formal announcement of the findings<br />
disappeared a long time ago, and an only inadvertent leak let the world know what really<br />
happened. An investigation into the destruction of the WTC as a classic criminal act<br />
rather than an act of political terror would most likely result in exposure bringing<br />
disrepute to the Bush family, and some of the most powerful banking executives in the<br />
world. Criminal charges would also be possible. It would also start in motion actions<br />
required to return billions of dollars of illegal gold to their rightful national treasuries. It<br />
would probably bring about the collapse of a number of major financial institutions.<br />
Therein lays the heart of real the National Security issue.<br />
7.2 Gold Laundering – A Hypothesis<br />
Before attempting to unravel the mechanism by which the laundering of illegal gold may<br />
have been perpetrated, one needs to understand the magnitude and difficulty of this<br />
crime. Gold, because of its scarcity and value, is a closely monitored commodity. Gold<br />
traders across the world monitor supply and demand, and report regularly on web sites.<br />
They watch it so closely, that when unexplained amounts of gold on the market in the<br />
1990s started to depress prices, they traced it to bullion bank sales of reserves. The<br />
annual mining and production of physical gold contributes only about 2,500 tonnes per<br />
year (See Figure 4 for annual production rates). The price of gold has remained relatively<br />
stable from 1992 to 2003 (See Table 4). Had there been a significant ‘dump’ of illegal<br />
gold in the magnitude of 2,000 to 3,000 tonnes or more in a short span of time, the<br />
transaction would have been easily identified by the market watchers as laundering<br />
activity. Hence, illegal gold from Russia, Switzerland or the Philippines would have had<br />
to been moved into the market slowly, with a credible paper trail. The strategy for<br />
laundering gold without depressing prices would have been a rate of laundering in the<br />
range of 10% of market supply and demand, possibly 200 to 300 tonnes per year.<br />
Anyone sitting on stolen gold could not dump it immediately, but would require<br />
institutional help in laundering 5% to 10% of the hoard per year, over ten to fifteen years<br />
– unless they got greedy, and wanted a faster payout.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 161
The following Table 3 demonstrates the range of value for 1,000 or 2,000 tonnes of gold.<br />
Based on market conditions, estimated illegal gold from the Philippines (at least 1,000<br />
tonnes) and Russia (3,000 tonnes) might be worth up to $40 to $50 billion if<br />
unlaundered. If it was laundered and converted into the foundation for derivatives, at a<br />
ratio between 100:1 and 400:1, the managed value falls somewhere potentially between<br />
$4 trillion and $20 trillion.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 162
Gold Weight/Value Conversion Chart for Purpose of Discussion<br />
Troy Ounces Tonnes Low Value High Value<br />
1 $270 $320<br />
32,150.7 1 $8,680,689 $10,288,224<br />
1,000,000 31.1 $270,000,000 $320,000,000<br />
24,000,000 746.5 $6,480,000,000 $7,680,000,000<br />
32,150,700 1,000 $8,680,689,000 $10,288,224,000<br />
64,301,400 2,000 $17,361,378,000 $20,576,448,000<br />
Overview of Gold Price History<br />
Year High Low Year High Low<br />
1972 $70 $44 1988 $485 $389<br />
1973 $126 $64 1989 $417 $359<br />
1974 $195 $<strong>11</strong>7 1990 $424 $346<br />
1975 $185 $135 1991 $403 $344<br />
1976 $142 $102 1992 $360 $330<br />
1977 $168 $127 1993 $407 $326<br />
1978 $244 $166 1994 $398 $370<br />
1979 $524 $217 1995 $397 $372<br />
1980 $850 $474 1996 $416 $367<br />
1981 $599 $391 1997 $368 $283<br />
1982 $489 $297 1998 $315 $273<br />
1983 $512 $374 1999 $324 $253<br />
1984 $407 $303 2000 $326 $264<br />
1985 $341 $284 2001 $291 $257<br />
1986 $443 $326 2002 $343 $278<br />
1987 $503 $390 2003 $417 $320<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 163
3000<br />
2500<br />
2000<br />
1500<br />
1000<br />
500<br />
0<br />
1980<br />
1983<br />
Figure 6<br />
World Production of Gold (Tonnes)<br />
1986<br />
1989<br />
How might a bank launder $10 billion dollars, or 1,000 tonnes in gold? (Ten billion is a<br />
nice, round number, which conveniently matches the ‘market rumors’ of how much gold<br />
the Deutschebank has borrowed from the Bundesbank, i.e., how much gold the<br />
Deutschebank has put into the market. This is about half of the amount reported stolen<br />
from the Russian treasury in 1991.) There are two possible ways.<br />
1. If laundering gold, a German bank would “borrow” $10 billion in gold from the<br />
Bundesbank with the publicly acknowledged intent to sell it on the open market,<br />
(to facilitate the carry trade, producer hedging, etc.) Then it would put the<br />
Bundesbank gold in its own vault and launder $10 billion in Russian bullion.<br />
Ultimately, the German bank would have to re-purchase $10 billion in gold, to<br />
create a record of repayment to the Bundesbank. Unfortunately, doing so would<br />
create a physical gold imbalance on its own balance sheet. What would need to<br />
happen is that the bank would need to create the financial transaction of a gold<br />
purchase, without ever actually receiving the physical gold. A gold future from a<br />
gold producer or bullion bank would work for this.<br />
2. Another option for laundering gold would be to turn over to the buyer of the gold<br />
a “gold future certificate” saying the purchaser could take delivery of gold from a<br />
producer that had promised the gold to the bank, and then launder the stolen gold<br />
through the mining and production company. The mining and production<br />
company could claim the gold came from either the mine or a bank.<br />
How could this be done? Quite simply, by buying, creating or corrupting a major gold<br />
producing company, that would be willing to facilitate such a fraud. The steps to doing<br />
so might be:<br />
1. Create a major gold mining and producing company.<br />
2. Attract capital from a few significant investors that would have a tendency to avoid<br />
intense scrutiny of operations.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 164<br />
1992<br />
1995<br />
1998<br />
2001
3. Create credibility for the company by giving it the reserves large enough to<br />
accommodate the appearance of being able to support large volume trade.<br />
4. Install trusted management to establish credibility and respectability in the investment<br />
market while watching over the company’s less reputable activity.<br />
5. Create a ‘flood’ of small transactions to cover larger gold movements.<br />
6. Scale up the gold laundering volume based on market limitations.<br />
In reviewing recent history, there are familiar names (with a few mentioned elsewhere in<br />
this report in relation to other activities) who appear to have undertaken exactly the six<br />
steps outlined above, by creating and using Barrick Gold. Barrick is easily worthy of<br />
suspicion, but note that this is an unproven hypothetical scenario:<br />
• It has attracted investors and management who have a public history of being<br />
associated with in illegal or potentially fraudulent activity;<br />
• It has passed the smell test of the American judicial system that says it should go to<br />
trial over gold price-fixing charges;<br />
"GATA consultant Reginald H. Howe brought a similar federal lawsuit in Boston in 2000. It was<br />
dismissed on jurisdictional grounds in 2002. Since then GATA has documented and publicized<br />
evidence of manipulation of the gold market by Barrick, Morgan Chase, other bullion banks, and<br />
the U.S. government." [Class-Action Suit Seeks Damages For Gold Investors from Barrick and<br />
J.P. Morgan Chase, Business Wire, <strong>11</strong>/27/2004]<br />
• It demonstrated financial performance in accomplishingwhat no other gold or<br />
derivatives trading company had been able to do: it has achieved financial success<br />
that seems inexplicable to industry experts: unparalleled growth in volume, 62<br />
straight financial quarters of profitability in the extremely risky futures commodity<br />
market, and growth while all competitors are in decline or closing.<br />
For the record, GATA’s charges have been neither upheld nor denied by the US<br />
courts system, although the charges had enough merit to have survived requests from<br />
the Barrick legal team to dismiss the suit.<br />
A review of the six steps will demonstrate the involvement of various individuals and<br />
companies in the creation of a potential gold laundering machine.<br />
Step 1: Create a major gold mining and producing company.<br />
In 1983, two investors of international renown, worked with Peter Munk to establish<br />
Barrick.<br />
"At its inception, Barrick’s principal investors were Saudi Arabians who had close ties to the Saudi<br />
Intelligence Services, or to the CIA, or to both. Those Saudi Investors were Sheikh Kamal Adham, the<br />
head of Saudi Intelligent Services at the same time that President Bush was head of the CIA; Adnan<br />
Khashoggi, the first of the Saudi investors in Barrick; and Prince Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz, one of the<br />
biggest of the initial shareholders in Barrick and now head of Saudi Intelligence Services. Sheikh<br />
Adhamwas the CIA’s principal liaison to the Middle East and was so closely tied to the CIA that he<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 165
even had an agency codename: “Tumbleweed.” [J. Taylor's Gold and Technology Stocks, Jay Taylor,<br />
1/3/2004]<br />
One of these same investors – Khashoggi – was a primary money mover for the Marcos<br />
family, thus linking him to the origins of one of the major sources of gold at the heart of<br />
this crime, and linking Barrick to a source of knowledge of illegal gold.<br />
"Khashoggi had long been associated with Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and the so-called Marcos<br />
gold. Indeed, so trusted was he that Marcos had him fronting for two "eclipsed" Marcos accounts--one<br />
in the name of Etablissement Mabari with the private Swiss bank of Lombard Odier & Cie, and the<br />
other in the name of Etablissement Gladiator at COGES Corraterie Gestion SA, Geneva." [Nexus<br />
Magazine, Volume 10, Number 6 (October-November 2003), David G. Guyatt ]<br />
"Marcos and Khashoggi set about to create Five Star Trust in 1983 as a means to create a vehicle to use<br />
the Philippine wealth to create and funnel fungible assets. In 1989, Five Star Trust was officially<br />
established in the Isle of Man by a Houston-based attorney who was a close friend of the Bush<br />
family… Five Star entities, active and dissolved, have been discovered in the Isle of Man, the island of<br />
Nevis, the Bahamas, Florida, Kentucky, and Texas. Other Five Star-related entities stored large sums<br />
of money in the Cook Islands, according to U.S. intelligence sources, and these funds were directly<br />
linked to Khashoggi and BCCI …. Five Star's accounts are said to funnel more funds from Saudi<br />
Arabia as well as cash reserves hidden away in offshore artificial shells by Enron before it collapsed ."<br />
[Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine operation paid for "vote switching" software,<br />
Online Journal ,Wayne Madsen http://www.politrix.org]<br />
Khashoggi’s acquaintance with Munk is reported to go back as far as 1974, when they<br />
were investment partners. Peter Munk is a Hungarian who fled from Hungary to<br />
Switzerland with his parents to escape the Holocaust.<br />
Peter Munk was brought into business prominence by Sir Henry Keswick, with an able<br />
assist from Sir Peter Abeles. Peter Abeles was a business partner of Bernie Houghton and<br />
Michael Hand of the Nugan Hand Bank in Australia. Nugan Hand was a major CIA front<br />
for moving Marcos gold and laundering narco trade profits weapons. Keswick himself<br />
appears as no stranger to the money-laundering world. “According the the author’s of the<br />
book “Dope Inc,” the Keswick family control a substantial part of the world’s narcotic<br />
trade and use HSBC, the bank they are said to control, to ‘provide centralized<br />
redsicounting facilities for financing of the drugs trade.” [David Guyatt, Project Hammer<br />
Reloaded, 2003] Munk’s origin’s with the ‘Hungarian Mafia’ in Australia easily could<br />
have provided him with a connection to the Marcos/CIA gold stores.<br />
“Munk's approved biography reports that this Vansittart activated the formidable Sir Henry Keswick,<br />
who made arrangements to lift Munk into a new career. Keswick's family merchant banking firm,<br />
Jardine Matheson, had long been the British Empire's leading, out-in-the-open organizer of Asian<br />
illegal narcotics trafficking and drug-money-laundering. (Keswick, Jardine Matheson, and their<br />
cohorts are central figures in {EIR'}s book {Dope, Inc.} (Washington, D.C.: Executive Intelligence<br />
Review, third edition, 1992.)<br />
Jardine Matheson made Munk the chief executive of a Bahamas-registered hotel corporation called<br />
Southern Pacific Properties (SPP), with Jardine money, and Jardine's chief executive, David<br />
Newbigging, as a director. Then, Jardine's historical dope partner, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam<br />
Navigation Company (P&O), joined the Munk enterprise; P&O's Lord Geddes himself joined<br />
Newbigging on the Munk-SPP board. In future years, as Munk rose to world prominence in the gold<br />
business, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. and the Royal Bank of Canada, two ``Dope, Inc.''<br />
financial agencies, would provide credit in the billions of dollars for Munk's expansion.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 166
Munk-SPP became a giant hotel owner in Australia and the South Pacific islands, and seized control of<br />
the Travelodge chain.<br />
Munk's rise in Australia was aided by his lifelong close association with fellow Hungarian emigre Sir<br />
Peter Abeles, Australia's transport mogul. Munk's stepfather had been secretary and assistant to<br />
Abeles's father in Vienna in the late 1940s. Abeles is reportedly known in Europe as ``the White<br />
Knight,'' in reference both to his British knighthood, and his reported large role in the cocaine trade….<br />
In 1974, Munk signed an investment partnership agreement with arms-trafficking billionaire Adnan<br />
Khashoggi of Saudi Arabia. According to Munk's approved biography, the new alliance was cemented<br />
when Munk and Khashoggi were summoned to the London headquarters of Peninsular and Orient.<br />
P&O's hereditary boss was Lord Inchcape, whose predecessor in the 1920s (also Lord Inchcape) had<br />
directed Britain's India <strong>Commission</strong> to continue the Empire's opium production.<br />
Munk later told his biographer that he was nervous--Khashoggi was late and perhaps ``the P&O<br />
directors wouldn't wait for us and it would seriously harm the relationship. It was already remarkable<br />
that they should have a Jew and an Arab together in their dining room.'' But, the mighty Lord Inchcape<br />
convinced Khashoggi to plunge in, and Khashoggi now provided most of the cash for the Munk<br />
enterprise<br />
Khashoggi and his associates, backers of the British- and Bush-linked faction of the arms trade, created<br />
Barrick Petroleum Corp. in 1981, registered as a Delaware, U.S.A., corporation. Junior partner Munk,<br />
having returned from London, set up a parallel ``Barrick Resources'' in Canada.<br />
But Munk's name was anathema to Canadian investors. So, Khashoggi was brought in to lend his<br />
prestige to Munk. Khashoggi made a televised publicity tour of the Toronto stock exchange, and<br />
announced that he had purchased 10,000 (Canadian) Barrick shares. At that point, in fact, Khashoggi,<br />
his brother, and their international associates already controlled the company, partially through<br />
Khashoggi's Lichtenstein-U.S.A. conglomerate, ``Triad.''<br />
Munk was now launched as a corporate chairman in Canada. But this first Barrick, an oil development<br />
firm, went bust and lost all its money.<br />
In 1983, the Khashoggi-led group formed the gold company whose name was soon changed to Barrick<br />
Gold Corp. Sheik Kamal Adham was reportedly one of the new company's founding co-owners.<br />
Adham, the chief of Saudi intelligence, had coordinated royalist guerrillas in Yemen, with British arms<br />
secretly provided through Khashoggi.<br />
[Inside story: the Bush gang and Barrick Gold Corporation, Anton Chaitkin, Afrocentric News<br />
Network, http://www.afrocentricnews.com/html/bush_gang.html]<br />
Barrick Gold was reportedly started in 1983, but remained inconspicuous for the period<br />
between 1983 and 1988. What is known is that in 1986, prior to his involvement in<br />
Barrick, Khashoggi failed in his attempts at another gold start-up company as chairman<br />
of a Denver-based exploration group called Mali American Mines. Investors were not<br />
impressed with the offering, and Khashoggi left Las Vegas without the necessary capital.<br />
(Elizabeth Taylor is reported to have been at the intial attempt to solicit investors in Las<br />
Vegas.)<br />
Khashoggi’s partner on the Barrick investment - Sheikh Kamal Adham – also has a<br />
checkered past of being involved in money laundering business deals:<br />
"The great Afghan expert on Muslim strategy, General Kamal Adham, also the former head of the<br />
Saudi intelligence agency, is now under house arrest. He was responsible for arranging the meeting<br />
between Hekmatyar and a Soviet representative, Yu Voroustsov, in Taif Saudi Arabia. The meeting<br />
was requested by Dr. Najeebullah, the former President of Afghanistan in 1989. The reason for the<br />
arrest of Kamal Adham is said to be his role in heroin money laundering and recycling of drug money<br />
through BCCI." ['Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had links with KGB', The News International, Imran Akbar,<br />
10/8/1992]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 167
Sheikh Kamal Adham was a co-investor in the BCCI bank with Khalid bin Mahfouz<br />
(Mahfouz owned 20% and Kamal Adham was part of an Arab group that owned 55%.<br />
Both were BCCI bank directors. This bank was documented by the USDEA as<br />
responsible for over 120 money laundering incidents.) This relationship is of note<br />
because Mahfouz is the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden. Additionally, one finds<br />
“Abdullah Taha Bakhsh … represents Khalid bin Mahfouz’s financial interests in the<br />
Middle East.” Bakhsh, amongst other roles, was a 12% owner of Harken Energy - George<br />
Bush Jr’s company. Khashoggi and Shiekh Kamal Adham would combine forces eleven<br />
years later to create the Oryx Corporation (Dubai). Oryx would be the owner of Rudy<br />
Dekker’s flight school in Florida, where Mohammed Atta and many of the supposed 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
hijackers received flight training.<br />
This report finds both Khashoggi and Shiek Kamal Adham (now deceased) both having<br />
criminal records, both having been linked to financial fraud, and both directly linked to:<br />
1. the distribution of massive quantities of illegal gold,<br />
2. the creation of potential gold laundering operations, the investigation into which<br />
was covered up by the destruction of the World Trade Center,<br />
3. the funding of a flight school used to train WTC attackers, and<br />
4. the recruitment of flight school trainees through Khashoggi ’s relationship with<br />
Yeslam Bin Ladin, the brother of Osama Bin Laden, or Adham’s relationship<br />
with Osama Bin Laden as brother-in-law.<br />
At this point in time, Khashoggi remains protected by agencies of the US government (in<br />
the name of National Security) against arrest and prosecution by several nations.<br />
Step 2: Attract capital from a few significant investors that would have a tendency<br />
to avoid intense scrutiny of operations.<br />
During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, there would be at least two additional major<br />
investors brought into Barrick, as Khashoggi backed out. Khashoggi used his stock in<br />
Barrick as collateral to finance the arms sent to Iran by the US under President Reagan,<br />
and CIA Director George Bush. The second group – after the Saudis - would be the<br />
Bronfman family, who merged its mammoth real estate firm, Trizec, with Barrick Gold.<br />
Today, the Bronfman family of New York is a widely respected name.<br />
"To Montrealers, Charles Bronfman is the shy former owner of the Expos baseball team. In Israel, he is<br />
the country's most important foreign investor. But in Manhattan, where he now resides, Charles is<br />
merely the Big Apple's third-most-famous Bronfman. Nephew Edgar Jr. gets most of the attention as<br />
president and CEO of family-controlled Seagram Co. Ltd., which he has transformed from a purveyor<br />
of premium spirits into an international film and music powerhouse (through its Universal Studios and<br />
Polygram divisions). Elder brother Edgar Sr. is president of the World Jewish Congress and led the<br />
public battle to force Swiss banks to settle the claims of Holocaust survivors. But despite his low<br />
profile, Charles Bronfman has an array of interests: he controls Israel's largest conglomerate, Koor<br />
Industries Ltd., and is chairman of The Jerusalem <strong>Report</strong>. He is a renowned philanthropist, dispensing<br />
more than US$20 million annually through his personal foundation. Two years ago, he moved from<br />
Montreal to Manhattan after growing weary of the unstable political climate in Quebec. In 1991,<br />
Revenue Canada allowed his family trusts to move $2 billion offshore without paying taxes." [The rich<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 168
100, Ellen Himelfarb; Laura Janeshewski; Carolyn Pritchard; Cynthia Reynolds; Et al, Copyright UMI<br />
Company 1999, 07/30/1999]<br />
After that recognition though, comes the recognition of other relationships which help<br />
explain how a ‘family’ like the Bronfman family might get involved in a business that<br />
might have links to illegal gold laundering. First, the Bronfman family uses the legal<br />
services of White & Case, who also represented the Marcos family, JP Morgan, and<br />
Banker’s Trust. (Bankers Trust reportedly was in possession of illegal gold from Marcos<br />
requiring laundering, and JP Morgan later – as shall soon be demonstrated –<br />
surreptitiously invested in Barrick.)<br />
The Bronfman’s also have reported connections to the Israeli Mafia and the Bush<br />
administration through Arie Genger.<br />
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "back channel" to the Bush Administration is Israeli-American<br />
businessman Arie Genger. Genger has been used to send messages between U.S. Secretary of State<br />
Colin Powell and Sharon. Genger met Sharon in 1981 when he was working for Sharon's good friend,<br />
Meshulam Riklis, one of the top operators in the Israeli Mafia. Genger heads the privately held, New<br />
York-based, Trans-Resources Inc, which owns Haifa Chemicals in Israel. He has numerous business<br />
connections to top Z-lobby and other notorious types. He sits on the investment committee of The<br />
Challenge Fund-Etgar LP which is chaired by Edgar Bronfman." [Sharon’s “Private Channel” to<br />
Bush Administration is a Riklis Man, Ha'aretz, 12/30/2001]<br />
The most telling report regarding the Bronfman’s proclivity for possibly turning a blind<br />
eye to illegal money laundering is their involvement in Bank of Montreal, Harris<br />
Bank and Household Bank. If the following report is true, recruiting the Bronfmans for<br />
ownership of a gold laundering operation would have been ideal.<br />
"In Chicago, is a branch of a huge Canadian octopus, the Bank of Montreal, owned by the …<br />
Bronfman family. … Their branch in Chicago, Harris Bank, has for some time been THE heavy weight<br />
in foreign currency trading, handling and exchanging most every type of money instrument. Several<br />
years ago Harris Bank merged with a known reputed money laundry, Household Bank, with units of<br />
Household International, headquartered in the Chicago-area. Household is the successor and alter ego<br />
to Nugan Han Bank that operated in California, Australia, Manila, Saudi, London, and a few other<br />
places. The General Counsel of Nugan Hand was William Colby, former Director of Central<br />
Intelligence. Former Generals and Admirals, close to CIA, operated Nugan Hand's worldwide offices.<br />
It was a CIA proprietary operation, transferring clandestine funds, for "national security", for Southeast<br />
Asia secret operations, including assassinations, such as the Phoenix Program, murdering some 63,000<br />
Viet Namese civilians who opposed the Saigon government. Also disguised as something else were the<br />
skimming off of U.S. weapons shipped to Viet Nam, some 20 per cent of which were stolen upon<br />
being off-loaded. Dope funds from the "Golden Triangle". Large U.S. military gambling pools. The<br />
dark underside of the real financial world. Nugan Hand was "The House". Colby became the unlisted<br />
general counsel of Household, Nugan Hand's alter ego. Amid a scandal starting with the assassination<br />
of one of its founders in 1980, and the shredding of its financial records, Nugan Hand disappeared.<br />
Rising from the espionage ashes, to continue the reputed money laundering, was Household, which<br />
had previously been mostly a loan shark operation, Household Finance Corporation. At about the time<br />
Harris Bank took over many of the units of Household Bank, 1996, the unlisted "general counsel" of<br />
Household, William Colby, was assassinated, covered up, his friends say, as a supposed "boating<br />
accident". Colby was about to make public statements about Nugan Hand, about Household, and a few<br />
other entities which he began to realize were not really carrying out a "national security" purpose but<br />
were a vast dirty money machine. Major owners of Harris Bank were the Peter Fitzgerald family of<br />
Chicago. He was ahead by between 25 to 50 million dollars when Harris Bank became a unit of Bank<br />
of Montreal.(His mandatory financial disclosure was reported in the Washington Post, 6/12/99, page<br />
A-3). Fitzgerald also reportedly has a sizable interest in one or more Mexican Banks, reportedly major<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 169
dope money laundries, including Grupo Financiero Bancomer which was reportedly involved in a<br />
federal "sting" resulting in indictments May 19, 1998. [www.usdoj.gov/criminal/tost8ind.htm]<br />
Bancomer with branches in New York and Los Angeles reportedly operates through Harris Bank, by<br />
postal and wire transmissions, in what is called tri-national cash management system of Harris. The<br />
prosecutions were called "Operation Casablanca". The Chicago Tribune, sensitive to bank scandals,<br />
played down Bancomer's problem. (Head of Tribune Company for many years was board chairman of<br />
the Federal Reserve District Bank in Chicago.) "[Clinton's Money Laundry, Sherman H. Skolnick,<br />
June 13, 1999]<br />
The third major group that would invest in Barrick in a significant way did so rather<br />
surreptitiously. In 1994, the controlling shareholder of Barrick was Horsham. The<br />
President of Horsham was Tariq Kadri, Khashoggi’s long-time lawyer. That year,<br />
Horsham joined with Argo Partnership (in which J.P. Morgan had a partnership interest),<br />
and acquired controlling interest of Trizec Corp. In 1996, Horsham acquired the<br />
remaining equity in Trizec Corp, and merged with Argo to become TrizecHahn<br />
Corporation – which became the controlling shareholder of Barrick with about 16% of its<br />
stock. A subsequent investigation by Donald W Doyle (CEO of Blanchard & Company)<br />
showed that Argo was owned jointly by JP Morgan Capital Corp and JP Morgan<br />
Securities Inc. The Managing Director of JP Morgan Capital Corp. was appointed to the<br />
Board of Directors of TrizecHahn, which in turn controlled Barrick. JP Morgan in turn,<br />
has a vested interest in Citibank, which was also reported to be one of the larger<br />
recipients of illegal gold from Marcos.<br />
"Citibank's largest stockholder was J. P. Morgan, which in December 2000 merged with Chase<br />
Manhattan to form the all-powerful J. P. Morgan Chase. Bankers Trust was a J. P. Morgan creation<br />
from day one." [Nexus Magazine, Volume 10, Number 6 (October-November 2003), David G.<br />
Guyatt]<br />
The three major investment groups associated with Barrick each have a history of being<br />
linked – but not convicted – with money laundering schemes and illegal money<br />
movements. Should the convergence of these three groups in the financial control of<br />
Barrick be considered coincidental?<br />
Step 3: Create credibility for the company by giving it the reserves large enough to<br />
accommodate the appearance of being able to support large volume.<br />
If a new gold mining and producing company was going to be required to sell futures in<br />
the magnitude of $10 to $30 billion, it would need to demonstrate significant reserves to<br />
provide a credible offering in the international marketplace. In 1983 Barrick Gold Corp.<br />
was a start-up company with a single mine in Canada and a founder with no experience in<br />
the gold business – Peter Munk. According to his biography in the Canadian Mining Hall<br />
of Fame:<br />
"…in 1983 … he bought a stake in an Alaskan placer mine and half the Renabie mine in Ontario. Gold<br />
production was a mere 3,000 oz. that year; revenue, roughly $1.7 million. He then purchased the<br />
Camflo mine in Quebec, which gave him a stellar technical team led by mining engineer Robert Smith.<br />
Munk then turned his attention to a Nevada heap-leach project producing a mere 40,000 oz. gold each<br />
year. The industry doubted its potential…"[Canadian Mining Hall of Fame]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 170
By 2001 Barrick had amassed off-balance-sheet assets that were worth more than the<br />
market capitalization of the next five biggest gold-mining companies in the world<br />
combined. Barrick did not do this alone.<br />
"At the very end of his presidency (President) Bush gave a sweetheart deal to the Canadian company<br />
Barrick Goldstrike. They got the rights to US land worth $10 billion in return for a nominal payment to<br />
the treasury of $10,000. In one of his last acts as president Bush pardoned Khashoggi's alleged (Iran-<br />
Contra) co-conspirators, who were key members of Bush's own cabinet. As a result, no case could be<br />
made against Khashoggi – or against Bush himself…..To express its gratitude for these favors Barrick<br />
Goldstrike hired (Bush) right after he left office and donated $148,000 to the Republican Party, at least<br />
that is the amount that can be traced." [Bush the Elder’s Scheme to Sell Pardons and Get a Payoff –<br />
Where is the Outrage Over a 10 Billion Dollar Taxpayer Ripoff?, Jock Gill, February 26, 2001]<br />
Again, for the record, Barrick bought the American company (for $63 million) which in<br />
turn, purchased the land rights. In 1996, Barrick is again reported as having received help<br />
from the elder George Bush in getting the Congo’s government monopoly reserve – the<br />
Gold Office of Kilomoto, worth 100 tonnes of gold reserve.<br />
If the reports of the 1992 purchase are correct, that would mean the mineral deposits<br />
acquired by Barrick for $10,000 represent about 32 million troy ounces. In 1997, the<br />
Annual <strong>Report</strong> of Barrick reported that the company’s gold reserve in 1994 was 37.6<br />
million ounces. This would imply that without the ‘Bush bonanza’, Barrick might not<br />
have the credible reserves to engage in the transactions it did over the next seven years. It<br />
is also possible that the Bush gift is what brought the Americans and JP Morgan into the<br />
game plan. It is reported that Khashoggi sold his investment in Barrick to finance his<br />
portion of the Iran-Contra guns for drugs deal, hence the Reagan/Bush administrations<br />
complicity in Barrick may go back even further than the 1992 sweetheart deal.<br />
Khashoggi and Bush, both deeply implicated in the Iran Contra scandal (laundering drugs<br />
and money for weapons) – created Barrick. Any serious investigation into the gold<br />
dealings of the bullion banks would have exposed this complicity. Prevention of this<br />
exposure may have been a primary motivation for misdirecting or stunting the<br />
investigation into the attack on the World Trade Center. Even worse - it may also have<br />
been a motive for allowing the carnage to take place.<br />
Step 4: Install trusted management to establish credibility in the investment market<br />
while watching over the company.<br />
Barrick, started by several individuals with documented histories of fraud or<br />
unscrupulous behavior, has had the ability to attract a board of Directors that includes<br />
more than a few of the most powerful men in the world. As far back as the Annual<br />
<strong>Report</strong>s for Barrick’s can be located, one of the most consistent members of the Advisory<br />
Board has been Karl Otto Pohl, former President of the German central bank<br />
(Bundesbank) and chief officer of the International Bank of Settlements and IMF. This<br />
would be pretty powerful talent for a start-up company, but would make sense if the<br />
Bundesbank had an interest in staying close to the management and activities of Barrick.<br />
In a potential gold laundering scheme by a German bank, complicity by the Bundesbank<br />
would be a requirement, as the Bundesbank would be the initial provider of legal gold<br />
being used to cover the sale of illegal gold.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 171
In 2002, just after the Deutsche Bank Alex Brown Securities Canada and Adnan<br />
Khashoggi were being sued by MJK Securities for fraud, former Canadian CEO of<br />
Deutschebank became an Executive Director board member of Barrick’s. That individual<br />
was Tye W. Burt - the former Chairman of Deutsche Bank Canada and Deutsche Bank<br />
Alex Brown Securities Canada, and Managing Director and Head of Deutsche Bank’s<br />
Global Metals and Mining Group. Again, an executive of Khashoggi’s financial partner<br />
(Deutsche Bank Canada) is brought into a control position.<br />
Barrick’s Advisory Board<br />
Additionally, one will discover that the Advisory Board of Barrick has brought in a large<br />
number of board members that create “credibility” for Barrick: Former President George<br />
Bush (Sr.) served as Honorary Senior Advisor, Senator Howard H. Baker, a former<br />
Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate and White House Chief of Staff; and Senator William<br />
Cohen, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense have also served.<br />
Senator William Cohen, as vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,<br />
was responsible for negotiating the “most significant reforms to result from the<br />
Iran/Contra hearings.” In 1989, he was the vice-chairman of the Select Committee on<br />
Intelligence in the Senate.<br />
President Bush's ambassador to Canada (1989-92), Edward N. Ney, had been for many<br />
years a Bush political operative and an international coordinator of Bush's “privatized''<br />
intelligence activities. In 1992, Ney quit as ambassador and became a director of the<br />
Barrick Gold Corp. As long time Chairman, President and CEO of Young & Rubicam<br />
Inc., the world’s largest independent advertising communications company, he founded<br />
Burson-Marsteller, a subsidiary used extensivley by groups that have been exposed as<br />
infringing on the public interest.<br />
“Burson-Marsteller (B-M) is the world's largest PR firm, with 63 offices in 32 countries and almost<br />
$200 million in income in 1994. Although its name is unknown to most people-- even to many in<br />
activist circles-- B-M is fast becoming an increasingly important cog in the propaganda machine of the<br />
new world order…. On the human rights front, B-M has represented some of the worst violators of our<br />
age. These include:<br />
• The Nigerian government during the Biafran war, to discredit reports of genocide.<br />
• The … junta that ruled Argentina during the 70's and early 80's, to attract foreign investment.<br />
• The totalitarian regime of South Korea, to whitewash the human rights situation there during the<br />
1988 Olympics.<br />
• The Indonesian government, which got into power through a CIA- sponsored bloodbath. (It should<br />
be pointed out, however, that B-M denies that it is handling the issue of genocide in East Timor)<br />
…<br />
• the late communist Romanian despot Nicolae Ceaucescu.<br />
• Other third world human rights violators that have been represented by B-M include the<br />
governments of Singapore and Sri Lanka….<br />
One of The Brock Group’s (TBG- a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller) top executives happens to be<br />
former Miami businessman and ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich. During the Reagan<br />
administration, the Cuban-born Reich headed the US state department's Office of Public Diplomacy<br />
(OPD), whose task was to disseminate disinformation about the Sandinistas and discourage reporting<br />
critical of the contras. This outfit, whose operations were later found to be illegal by the US General<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 172
Accounting Office, was staffed with five psychological warfare specialists from the 4th Psychological<br />
Operations Group of Fort Bragg. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, the OPD...helped<br />
spread a scurrilous story that some American reporters had received sexual favors from Sandinista<br />
prostitutes in return for writing slanted stories. In 1987, after the US Congress shut down the OPD,<br />
congressman Jack Brooks called it an important cog in the (Reagan) administration's effort to<br />
manipulate public opinion and congressional action.” [Burson-Marsteller: PR for the new world order,<br />
Carmelo Ruiz, July 6, 1997, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/061.html]<br />
Additionally, one more recently finds Andrew Young and Vernon Jordan on the<br />
Advisory Board. In wondering how these two Washington “fixers” added to the value of<br />
the company, one discovers their role in silencing a request for a congressional<br />
investigation into Barrick.<br />
… was Barrick’s Congo gold mine funding both sides of a civil war and perpetuating that bloody<br />
conflict? Only one Congressperson demanded hearings on the matter…Cynthia McKinney.... it wasn’t<br />
covered at all in the U.S. press.<br />
The New York Times wrote about McKinney that Atlanta’s prominent Black leaders -- including<br />
Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP and former Mayor Maynard Jackson -- who had supported<br />
Ms. McKinney in the past -- distanced themselves from her this time.<br />
Atlanta has four internationally recognized black leaders. Martin Luther King III did not abandon<br />
McKinney. I checked with him. Nor did Julian Bond (the Times ran a rare retraction on their website at<br />
Bond’s request). But that left Atlanta’s two other notables: Vernon Jordan and Andrew Young. Here,<br />
the Times had it right; no question that these two black faces of the Atlanta Establishment let<br />
McKinney twist slowly in the wind -- because, the Times implied, of her alleged looniness. But maybe<br />
there was another reason Young and Jordan let McKinney swing. Remember Barrick? George Bush’s<br />
former gold-mining company, the target of McKinney?s investigations? Did I mention to you that<br />
Andy Young and Vernon Jordan are both on Barrick’s payroll? Well, I just did.<br />
Did the Times mention it? I guess that wasn’t fit to print. [The Screwing of Cynthia McKinney, Greg<br />
Palast, AlterNet. June 18, 2003]<br />
Representing the Bronfman family on the Advisory Board is J. Trevor Eyton.<br />
“Eyton started his career in British intelligence's Argus-Hollinger nexus, next to media magnate<br />
Conrad Black. Since 1979, he has managed Brascan and other entities for the Bronfman family. He<br />
was appointed a Canadian senator as a reward for channelling the Bronfmans' money into buying the<br />
1984 election for Mulroney's party, and to help get the Bush- and Mulroney-backed NAFTA three-way<br />
accord with the United States and Mexico through the Canadian Parliament. When the Bronfmans<br />
fused with Barrick, Eyton joined its board.”<br />
[http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/bushgold.htm]<br />
One also finds Lord Robert Powell, representative of the Rothschild family wealth. (His<br />
name will also appear on the Board for Diligence/New Bridge, which is connected to the<br />
events of 9/<strong>11</strong> described in Section 8.) Brian Mulroney, former Prime Minister of<br />
Canada, and Paul G Desmarais Sr, probably the wealthiest individual in Canada are also<br />
on the Board.<br />
Of special interest is Mr. Brian Mulroney, former Prime Minister of Canada. Mr.<br />
Mulroney appears to be more than a passive participant who garners respectability for<br />
Barrick. Besides being on the advisory board of Barrick, he has been a Director of<br />
TrizecHahn Corporation since 1996. In 1992, prior to President’s Bush executive change<br />
to the procedures which allowed Barrick to contractually lock-up the gold reserves, Mr.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 173
Mulroney met with President Bush on three occasions. Mr. Mulroney, at this time was<br />
working closely with Karlheinz Schreiber, an infamous German-Canadian arms dealer.<br />
"… shortly after stepping down as prime minister in 1993, Brian Mulroney accepted $300,000 over 18<br />
months from Karlheinz Schreiber, an infamous German-Canadian arms dealer. In cash. To help<br />
promote a fresh pasta business and develop international contacts, said a spokesman for Mr.<br />
Mulroney." [Canada’s Mulroney Baloney, Stevie Cameron, Globe & Mail, November 22, 2003]<br />
Discovery of payments from Schreiber to Mulroney was later used by the Royal<br />
Canadian Mounted Police to accuse Mr. Mulroney of accepting kickbacks to facilitate a<br />
$1.5 billion deal with Franz Josef Strauss, then head of the Bavarian government and<br />
chairman of Airbus Industrie. Mr. Mulroney sued for defamation, and won.<br />
"In 1995, with the RCMP digging into the circumstances surrounding the deal, a government lawyer<br />
wrote to the Swiss authorities asking them for help. The letter alleged that Mr Schreiber had used a<br />
Zurich bank account to pay the former prime minister, Brian Mulroney, a C$5m (£2.1m) kickback. Mr<br />
Mulroney sued and two years later won an apology and a settlement of C$2m. The government also<br />
apologised to Mr Schreiber, but did not offer him any compensation." [Schreiber: The man who would<br />
topple kings, The Guardian, John Hooper, January 14, 2000]<br />
The key piece of information in this story is that Mr. Mulroney had a business<br />
relationship with Karlheinz Schreiber. The question then becomes, what type of<br />
businessman is Mr. Schreiber?<br />
"Although Germany has been trying to extradite him from Canada since August, 1999, on fraud<br />
charges involving three government contracts in Canada and one in Saudi Arabia, it was Mr.<br />
Schreiber's 1991 secret political contribution of one million Deutsche marks (DM) to Germany's<br />
Christian Democrats that brought him international infamy. Delivered in a suitcase to the party's<br />
treasurer, and as usual in cash, the undeclared donation brought down Helmut Kohl, the former<br />
chancellor of Germany, in the worst political crisis in that country since the war. Known as the<br />
Spendenaffare or slush-fund scandal, it spawned two parliamentary inquiries. Investigations showed it<br />
was Mr. Schreiber who organized the payment of secret commissions on a DM 446-million deal to sell<br />
Thyssen tanks to the Saudis in the 1991 gulf war. Half the money went for secret commissions to pay<br />
bribes and kickbacks. None of this money was his own; it was provided by German munitions<br />
companies. Mr. Schreiber's job was to spread it where needed and by his own admission, his main<br />
beneficiaries were politicians. He took a percentage as his fee." [Schreiber: The man who would topple<br />
kings, The Guardian, John Hooper, January 14, 2000]<br />
Once again, a key participant in the Barrick organization is linked to individuals who<br />
have been linked to money laundering and weapons deals. Wouldn’t it seem as more<br />
than coincidence if one of the German munitions firms bank-rolling Schrieber was<br />
Dynamit Nobel, controlled by the German bank Cartel?<br />
This is a very credible group of individuals, all working to support the image of<br />
respectability for a company started by individuals repeatedly associated with investor<br />
fraud and financial misrepresentation. It is probably also of coincidence that in the<br />
months prior to acquisition of American mineral rights by Barrick, Brian Mulroney met<br />
with President Bush on three occasions. This contact may or may not have been<br />
necessary, because court documents from the Iran/Contra trials have shown that<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 174
Khashoggi on at least two occasions had direct phone contact with George Bush Sr. The<br />
two were not strangers.<br />
Step 5: Create a ‘flood’ of small transactions to cover larger gold movements.<br />
In the second suit which accused the bullion banks of illegal price fixing, initiated by<br />
Blanchard in 2003, Blanchard alleged that:<br />
"…Barrick used private derivative contracts and engaged in off-balance sheet accounting to conceal<br />
the addition of billions of dollars worth of gold…..Barrick's actions made it "virtually impossible for<br />
gold analysts and investors to determine the size and the market impact of its trading positions”….J.P.<br />
Morgan financed Barrick's alleged short selling with remarkably advantageous terms not available to<br />
others. None of the lawsuit's allegations have been proven in court." [Barrick Gold, J.P. Morgan Chase<br />
accused of manipulating gold market, CBC News Online, December 18, 2002]<br />
Analysts were essentially saying that billions of dollars of gold had been added to the<br />
market in a series on transactions that were virtually impossible to analyze. In one year<br />
alone, according to the annual report, Barrick placed over 6.8 million options – a<br />
haystack of transactions. It is speculated by this report that most of these transaction were<br />
managed through Enron’s gold trading desk, with the records of those transactions now<br />
protected by UBS, Switzerland.<br />
Step 6: Scale up the gold laundering volume based on market limitations.<br />
In 1988, when Barrick started, it reported sales of 341 thousand ounces (10 tonnes) of<br />
gold. By 2001 its annual sales of gold equaled 6.3 million ounces (194 tonnes). Its short<br />
positions for 2000 and 2001 totaled 14.3 million ounces, which is significantly more than<br />
the annual gold sales of all the central banks in the 1990’s. Global investment demand<br />
for 2000 and 2001 combined was 6.7 million ounces. (J Taylor’s Gold and Technology<br />
Stocks, Donald W Doyle, Vol. 22, No 15, 12/15/2003). Clearly, with a large assist from<br />
Bush, this fledgling gold company became the major gold mover in the world.<br />
All of these suspicions may be unfounded, but the circumstantial evidence certainly<br />
warrants thoughtful consideration and investigation:<br />
There are thousands of tonnes of illegal, stolen gold in bullion banks throughout the<br />
world, which need to be laundered.<br />
Commodity experts that watch the gold market have made claims that significant,<br />
inexplicable amounts of gold are showing up in the market.<br />
There has been no known formal investigation into the possible laundering of this<br />
gold other than the FBI investigation buried in the World Trade Center.<br />
A significant group of powerful individuals, with demonstrated links to the movement<br />
of illegal gold, have been directly involved in the creation of a gold producing<br />
company, which is now in a court battle over the legality of some of its trades.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 175
A significant group of powerful individuals with reputed connections to money<br />
laundering activity are associated with the management and ownership of this gold<br />
producing company.<br />
The success of this company in gold hedging defies expert industry expert<br />
comprehension. The company has been extremely successful mining land that<br />
industry experts thought was “doubtful” in its potential.<br />
Some of the same people that started, controlled and owned significant portions of<br />
this gold company started, controlled and owned a company that staged and ‘trained’<br />
eleven of the 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers, who were involved in the destruction of the World Trade<br />
Center. This ‘terrorist’ event effectively ended the investigation in global gold<br />
movements.<br />
7.3 Burying the Truth<br />
Someone wanted to make sure that the buildings of the World Trade Center came down,<br />
and that no one was able to remove information from the 23 rd and 24 th floor of the North<br />
Tower before it happened. The evidence that these floors were targeted is very<br />
substantial. There is also substantial evidence presented that other buildings in the WTC<br />
–in addition to the Twin Towers - were “targeted” as well. A key investigation into global<br />
gold movements was halted first by the destruction of evidence, and then by the removal<br />
of investigative resources. Continuing that investigation would have brought to light a<br />
host of crimes against the nations of the world. While many organizations would benefit<br />
from the closure of that investigation, one group (so far) stands out in terms of motive<br />
and capability, and a demonstrated past for involvement in comparable crimes. This is the<br />
German-Swiss bank cartel, which is connected to multiple investigations of corruption,<br />
bribery, and money laundering that were terminated by the destruction of the WTC.<br />
Other organizations stand out as being involved in activity that benefited from the<br />
cessation of the investigation, but do appear to have the same degree of motive or<br />
capability. To that extent, these other organizations and their respective leadership had a<br />
“capability” (contacts to other ‘black ops’ groups) to execute the destruction of the WTC,<br />
but the heavy involvement of rogue Israeli agents suggests a different buyer for this<br />
cover-up than a U.S. buyer. The financial organization most associated with these rogue<br />
Israeli agents, ex-KGB and Russian Mafiya figures is a group of German/Swiss banking<br />
executives. However, the German-Swiss cartel had an American partner. In Section 8,<br />
this report will demonstrate how George Bush Sr. operated through Valmet SA (a Swiss<br />
subsidiary of Riggs Bank) to penetrate the KGB and help launch the Russian oligarchs<br />
which brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. George Bush Sr., and remnants of<br />
his 1980s “Activity Group”- also known as the Iran-Contra conspirators, are also seen at<br />
the core of the motive and planning for the 9/<strong>11</strong> conspiracy.<br />
“Conspiracy” is more than a ‘theoretical boogeyman,’ or a word which can be used as an<br />
ad hominum argument in an attempt to sidestep the real issue. “Conspiracy” is a crime<br />
recognized by 18 U.S.C. 371.<br />
"CONSPIRACY - 18 U.S.C. 371 makes it a separate Federal crime or offense for anyone to conspire<br />
or agree with someone else to do something which, if actually carried out, would amount to another<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 176
Federal crime or offense. So, under this law, a 'conspiracy' is an agreement or a kind of 'partnership' in<br />
criminal purposes in which each member becomes the agent or partner of every other member.<br />
In order to establish a conspiracy offense it is not necessary for the Government to prove that all of the<br />
people named in the indictment were members of the scheme; or that those who were members had<br />
entered into any formal type of agreement; or that the members had planned together all of the details<br />
of the scheme or the 'overt acts' that the indictment charges would be carried out in an effort to commit<br />
the intended crime.<br />
What the evidence in the case must show beyond a reasonable doubt is:<br />
First: That two or more persons, in some way or manner, came to a mutual understanding to try to<br />
accomplish a common and unlawful plan, as charged in the indictment;<br />
Second: That the person willfully became a member of such conspiracy;<br />
Third: That one of the conspirators during the existence of the conspiracy knowingly committed at<br />
least one of the methods (or 'overt acts') described in the indictment; and<br />
Fourth: That such 'overt act' was knowingly committed at or about the time alleged in an effort to carry<br />
out or accomplish some object of the conspiracy." [The 'Lectric Law Library's Legal Lexicon On<br />
Conspiracy]<br />
Using this definition, there has been, according to the hearsay and circumstantial<br />
evidence presented in this report, six major conspiracies:<br />
1. Conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center.<br />
2. Conspiracy to fix gold prices. This conspiracy is currently be adjudicated in the US<br />
courts.<br />
3. Conspiracy to launder illegally obtained gold.<br />
4. Three conspiracies to cover-up complicity in each of the aforementioned<br />
conspiracies.<br />
The investigative departments of the U.S. government probably know the names of the<br />
bankers and the investors who profited from pre-knowledge of the attack, and have gone<br />
to great length to cover this up. The cover-up has not been for the benefit of the German<br />
or Israeli governments, but rather for the benefit of the German-Swiss banks, U.S. banks,<br />
the U.S. oil industry, and coincidentally, two Presidents from the Bush family, and their<br />
business partners. To reveal the truth would:<br />
• invalidate any reasons the US had for invading Afghanistan and Iraq, thus bringing to<br />
end huge profits being made in the Defense and Oil industries;<br />
• put administrators of the Bush and Clinton administrations at risk of charges and<br />
conviction of various crime ranging from price-fixing to conspiracy;<br />
• put the legacy of the Bush Presidencies at risk;<br />
• put various financial executives at risk for prison; and<br />
• expose billions of dollars of hidden slush funds, stolen from the banks and citizens of<br />
numerous countries.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 177
Most of the truth was buried with the World Trade Center –but not all!<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 178
8<br />
Gold-Backed Bonds, Cantor Fitzgerald and the Office of Naval<br />
Intelligence<br />
A small and unseemly clue opened the door to an investigation which suggests that<br />
Cantor Fitzgerald, at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and the<br />
Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), in the Pentagon, were specific and related targets of<br />
the 9/<strong>11</strong> attacks. This theory is corroborated by a wide range of information, which taken<br />
together suggests that while the attacks on the WTC may have been initiated to bring to<br />
an end investigations into money and gold laundering, the actual timing of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong><br />
was set by George Bush Sr. to cover his tracks left by a ten year old securities fraud in<br />
which he partnered with the Russian oligarchs and rogue KGB that overthrew the Soviet<br />
government. This fraud is linked to the banks and accounts which were a part of the Bank<br />
of New York money laundering scandal, and the Marcos gold theft, which served as the<br />
collateral for the securities. When one begins to ponder why investigations into what<br />
may be the world’s largest money-laundering scandal – the Bank of New York/Russian<br />
Mafiya scandal - was completely sidestepped by the U.S. judicial system, or why the<br />
Enron losses were never fully tracked down, the answer is found in the revelation that<br />
these were extensions of a Bush family foreign policy to decimate the Soviet Union. A<br />
normal day on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> would have begun the exposure of an illegal foreign policy<br />
and crimes that have enriched the Bush family, their political and business network and,<br />
of course, the German-Swiss bankers, and with it, their US counterparts.<br />
Just as the FBI offices on the 23 rd floor of the North Tower seem to have been targeted<br />
with explosives, both Cantor Fitgerald (North Tower) and the ONI (Pentagon) seem to<br />
have been targeted for assured destruction by near-direct hits from hi-jacked airliners. A<br />
new target needs to be added to this list: Eurobrokers (South Tower). The small clue<br />
which led to further investigation and this hypothesis was found in the observation of the<br />
Director of Convar, a German company responsible for recovering data from computer<br />
hard drives recovered from the World Trade Center:<br />
"...Convar… found that there was a deluge of electronic trading just minutes before the first plane<br />
struck. Quoting a December 16 report from Reuter's, writer Kyle Henry found a compelling quotation<br />
from one of Convar's directors: Peter Henschel, director of Convar...said, 'not only the volume, but the<br />
size of the transactions was far higher than usual for a day like that.' Richard Wagner, a data retrieval<br />
expert, estimated that more than $100 million in illegal transactions appeared to have rushed through<br />
the WTC computers before and during the disaster….The Reuter's story was partially confirmed …by<br />
a Deutsche Bank employee who had survived the attacks by fleeing the WTC after the first plane hit.<br />
According to the employee, about five minutes before the attack the entire Deutsche Bank computer<br />
system had been taken over by something external that no one in the office recognized and every file<br />
was downloaded at lightening speed to an unknown location." [Crossing the Rubicon, Chapter 14,<br />
Michael Ruppert ]<br />
The illegal ‘put’ options discussed earlier in the report and by all other independent<br />
reports were “stock-related.” Now, a whole new type of transaction is being unwittingly<br />
revealed. At that time of day, the only transactions being processed in the World Trade<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 179
Center were bonds and government securities. The US stock market did not open that<br />
day, and even if it had, would not have been open at the time of the attack.<br />
“The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market never opened for trading the day of the<br />
attacks. The facilities of the New York Board of Trade in Four World Trade Center were destroyed.<br />
Regional stock exchanges, the Chicago Board of Trade, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange all<br />
closed as well. European markets remained officially open but “most traders found it difficult to do<br />
much business.” (Schroeder 2001) Equity markets reopened on Monday morning, <strong>September</strong> 17.”<br />
[Payment System Disruptions and the Federal Reserve Following <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, Jeffrey M.<br />
Lacker, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, 23219, USA, Federal Reserve Bank<br />
of Richmond Working Paper 03-16, December 23, 2003]<br />
“Trading in U.S. government securities starts at 8 a.m. in New York, and repo trading starts as early as<br />
7 a.m. 3 “(T)he bulk of government securities cash and repo trading takes place before 9:00 a.m., … so<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> was close to a full trading day.” (Green 2003, p. 3) According to Jeff Ingber, the general<br />
counsel for the Government Securities Clearing Corporation, on the morning of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, some<br />
$500 billion in repo transactions and about $80 billion in government securities trades had already<br />
been executed when the planes hit. (Shephard 2002) Reconciling these trades would occupy backoffice<br />
personnel for weeks.” [Payment System Disruptions and the Federal Reserve Following<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, Jeffrey M. Lacker, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia,<br />
23219, USA, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Working Paper 03-16, December 23, 2003]<br />
There were only three companies in the WTC that serviced government securities and<br />
“repos” (A repurchase agreement -“repo” or “RP”- is a sale of securities coupled with an<br />
agreement to repurchase the securities at a higher price on a later date):<br />
• Cantor Fitzgerald, (which lost 661 of its employees when the high-jacked airline hit<br />
the tower immediately below its offices in the North Tower.)<br />
• Garbon Inter-capital (now ICAP PLC, on the 25 th and 26 th floor of the North Tower,<br />
sitting right over the destroyed FBI offices), and<br />
• Euro Brokers (a much smaller broker, which lost 60 employees when the high-jacked<br />
airline hit the tower immediately below its offices in the South Tower).<br />
Had the towers not collapsed, it is fair to surmise that the three government bond<br />
operations would have been effectively compromised.<br />
Of the three bond traders, Cantor Fitzgerald was by far the largest, being the largest<br />
government securities trader in the world and moving up to a half of the U.S. securities.<br />
“the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which also keeps tabs on primary-dealer trading activity (but<br />
on a delayed basis), says primary dealer trades with interdealer brokers averaged $101 billion a day<br />
last year, while primary dealer trades with others averaged $86 billion a day. Cantor doesn't disclose<br />
volume numbers, but it claims to do more than 50% of all interdealer trades in the Treasury market and<br />
more than 90% of all interdealer trades of the 30-year Treasury bond.”<br />
[http://www.thestreet.com/tsc/basics/tscglossary/govpx.html]<br />
Co-incidentally, in August of 2001, the Deutschebank – the bank of origin for numerous<br />
illegal stock trades or “put options” made in the days preceding the attack- had just<br />
signed an agreement with Cantor Fitzgerald to install Cantor Fitzgerald’s eSpeed trading<br />
system.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 180
“On August 1, 2001 eSpeed announced that it had signed an agreement with Deutsche Bank, one of the<br />
world's leading international financial service providers, whereby the European bank will channel its<br />
electronic market-making engines and liquidity for a broad range of European fixed income products<br />
through the eSpeed® system. The agreement makes eSpeed a primary distribution channel for<br />
Deutsche Bank in the wholesale market. This liquidity arrangement with Deutsche Bank furthers<br />
eSpeed's goal to become the leading fixed income trading platform in Europe.” [eSpeed <strong>Report</strong>s<br />
Record Second Quarter 2001 Results, August 1, 2001 - eSpeed, Inc.]<br />
At the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald was reported to set up operations with Buttonwood<br />
International Group and PNB Paribas.<br />
“…the eSpeed New Jersey office provided electronic trading services in derivatives and commodities<br />
using a software package called TreasuryConnect, which had been bought from an Enron subsidiary<br />
and licenced on August 1, 2001 to …Global Custodian and …BNP Paribas. By <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001,<br />
BNP Paribas had a network of about 70 global trade centers operating 24/7 around the world….<br />
By hitting the 89th floor of One World Trade Center, al-Qaeda’s first-time pilot hijacker of American<br />
Airlines Flight <strong>11</strong>, managed to miss the Buttonwood ‘Global Custodians’ offices on the 79th floor<br />
below, while killing all of their Cantor-eSpeed competitors on the 101st floor and above.” [9/<strong>11</strong> and<br />
the mob, Judi McLeod & David Hawkins, July <strong>11</strong>, 2005]<br />
Without the actual trade data (which the FBI has, according to Convar) it stands to reason<br />
that most, if not all, of these ‘illegal trades’ on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>were being pumped through<br />
Cantor Fitzgerald – the largest of the US bond traders, the only company which had no<br />
on-site survivors that day, and the company that had just set up computerized trading<br />
with the source bank of the illegal stock trades. Information on these reported ‘illegal’<br />
trades was recovered by Convar and given to the FBI, and subsequently “buried” by the<br />
FBI and the 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong>.<br />
“Henschel said the companies in the United States were working together with the FBI… to piece<br />
together what happened on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> and that he was confident the destination of the dubious<br />
transactions would one day be tracked down....we've still been able to retrieve 100 percent of the data<br />
on most of the drives we've received. We're helping them find out what happened to the computers on<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> as quickly as possible. I'm sure that one day they will know what happened to the<br />
money…” [German Firm Probes Final World Trade Center Deals. Erik Kirschbaum, Reuters,<br />
December 16, 2001]<br />
With a small clue leading to two strange coincidences and a potential cover-up, all of<br />
which point to Cantor Fitzgerald, the question should be asked: Was there specific reason<br />
for Cantor Fitzgerald to be targeted?<br />
In researching the background of Cantor Fitzgerald, there are five reference points that<br />
provide further grounds for suspicion that the Cantor Fitzgerald office was a specific<br />
target. These include:<br />
1. At least seven of the top Cantor Fitzgerald executives were absent from the office at<br />
the time of the attack. The President of Cantor Fitzgerald was taking his child to a<br />
first day of kindergarten, and six more executives were scheduled for a fishing trip<br />
that day. The trip was reportedly cancelled due to inclement weather at 8:00 am, but<br />
every picture of the WTC that day shows cloudless skies. Moreover, theses charters<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 181
generally leave between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning, and if the charter was to be<br />
cancelled, it would have been cancelled a lot earlier.<br />
“… a six-member eSpeed carbon-credit trading team escaped death. Their annual one-day fishing<br />
trip had to be cancelled about 8 a.m. on the fateful morning of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, due to alleged bad<br />
weather over the Atlantic. Can anyone confirm the weather? New York looked pretty sunny.<br />
Hearing that the Twin Towers had been hit, the six lucky fishers hightailed it to New Jersey, to<br />
what Joseph Noviello, executive vice president said of Rochelle Park, N.J., "where we had<br />
duplicates of everything that was destroyed at our offices in the world Trade Center.” [9/<strong>11</strong> and<br />
the mob, Judi McLeod & David Hawkins, July <strong>11</strong>, 2005]<br />
What then seems so out-of-place about seven executives being absent from work<br />
during peak trading hours? Three of these executives had been key participants in a<br />
US Navy/Cantor-Fitgerald sponsored, wargame simulation of an attack on US<br />
securities just a year earlier. One of the three, Retired Admiral William ( aka Bud or<br />
Bill) Flanagan, is identified as a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington<br />
Group International. Bill Flanagan’s role in this theory is of import because he seems<br />
to have 1) had a major role in the ‘economic war games’ which should have been<br />
conducted simultaneously with the other six simulations being executed that day, 2)<br />
had corporate responsibility for two firms that benefited financially from the tragedies<br />
of 9/<strong>11</strong> (Titan and CACI), and 3) had responsibility for a third firm that may have<br />
played a role in the actual attack (Raytheon).<br />
• Washington Group International had just purchased the Engineering Division of<br />
Raytheon. Raytheon had five executives die on three of the four attack flights that<br />
day, and Raytheon would be reported to have been responsible for retrofitting<br />
planes on behalf of the Defense Department (in secured civilian hangars,) to look<br />
like the plane that hit the Pentagon.<br />
“According to two civilian defense contractor employees working at commercial corporate<br />
facilities at Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport (left), in the months before the<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> attacks U.S. Air Force defense contractors brought in A-3 Sky Warrior aircraft<br />
under cover of darkness to be completely refitted and modified at the small civilian airport in<br />
Colorado. The revelations are important evidence for a reportedly ongoing secret 9/<strong>11</strong> probe<br />
because widely available Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA)<br />
photographs taken during the attacks clearly show that the few aircraft parts found at the<br />
Pentagon belonged to a small jet very similar to a modified A-3 Sky Warrior--not the<br />
American Airlines Boeing 757….<br />
Air-traffic controllers from the Washington, DC sector originally said the incoming plane was<br />
a military jet according to reports; but no grand jury has called them to testify and they have<br />
been strangely gagged from speaking out.<br />
"Only the Raytheon executives and the Air Force would have known which team installed a<br />
particular system on the A-3 and who was involved in the operation," said Schwarz.<br />
Coincidentally, five key Raytheon executives died on 9-<strong>11</strong>: Stanley Hall--Director of<br />
Electronic warfare program management (American 77), Peter Gay--VP of Electronic<br />
Systems on special assignment at the El Segundo, CA division office where the Global Hawk<br />
UAV remote control system is made (American <strong>11</strong>), Kenneth Waldie--Senior Quality Control<br />
Engineer for Electronic Systems (American <strong>11</strong>), David Kovalcin--Senior Mechanical<br />
Engineer for Electronic Systems (American <strong>11</strong>), and Herbert Homer--Corporate Executive<br />
working with the Department of Defense (United 175).<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 182
Curiously, the five Raytheon executives chose three of the four doomed jets and all happened<br />
to fly on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>.” [Fort Collins, Colorado, May 26, 2005, TomFlocco.com]<br />
• Washington Group International would later benefit significantly from military<br />
contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq.<br />
“On April 4, 2003, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Transatlantic Programs Center<br />
announced that it had awarded three contracts "to rapidly execute design and construction<br />
services as needed anywhere" in the area of operations for the U.S. military's Central<br />
Command (CENTCOM). The one-year contracts, awarded to Fluor Intercontinental, Perini<br />
Corporation and Washington Group International, are indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity<br />
(ID/IQ) contracts with a guaranteed minimum value of $500,000 and a maximum of $100<br />
million. In late <strong>September</strong> 2003, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued additional task<br />
orders totaling $278 million on the three contracts, and the Corps decided to raise the contract<br />
ceiling from $100 million to $500 million.”<br />
“According to the Pentagon, the same U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contracts won by<br />
Washington Group International, along with Fluor Continental and Perini, will cover work<br />
performed by the companies in Afghanistan. There, they will rebuild damaged roads and<br />
replace a destroyed bridge in Afghanistan as part of their individual contracts to support<br />
CENTCOM. Those contracts have a minimum value of $500,000 and a maximum of $500<br />
million.” [Center for Public Integrity]<br />
• Flanagan would then become a VP of Titan Corp., the Defense contractor<br />
responsible for those contractors charged in the Abu Ghraib torture cases, and<br />
according to this report’s speculation, the murder of Nick Berg. Titan Corp. is<br />
also a major owner of Skyways Aircraft, a business partner with another shell<br />
company called Royal Sons Inc. of St Petersburg, FL. This latter company used a<br />
mailing address which was the same as Huffman Aviation, which was the flight<br />
training school used by 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers.<br />
According to SEC documents, in early February of 2000 Titan put up $72,386 for restricted<br />
shares of a shell company Farkas created which later became SkyWay. …Several top<br />
executives of SkyWays Aircraft, the American firm which owned the DC9 in partnership with<br />
Royal Sons Inc. of St Petersburg, FL. including the company’s President, James Kent, are<br />
former members of U.S. military intelligence….The plane's registered owner, “Royal Sons<br />
LLC,” a Florida air charter company, at one time used the address of a hanger at the Venice<br />
Fl. Airport owned by infamous flight school Huffman Aviation. No one at the Venice Airport<br />
remembered them. [Dusty & 'the boys' II: Secrets of the Black Budget Scandal, Daniel<br />
Hopsicker, MadCow Morning News, May 7 2007]<br />
The “war games” connection is important and disturbing. As documented later in this<br />
report, Cantor Fitzgerald had, in 1997 and 2000, participated in official US war games.<br />
At least six major U.S. war games were under way on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, having been “rescheduled”<br />
from their original date in October. (The question needs to be asked and<br />
answered: why were the games rescheduled, and why was the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th date<br />
chosen?) There has to be an assumption that in a major war game exercise, Cantor would<br />
have been involved again. Flanagan and the other executives involved in supporting<br />
those games should have been at the office, but were not.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 183
2. Cantor Fitzgerald has what is described in the press as a long-standing relationship<br />
with the Office of Naval Intelligence, the one and only intelligence group that had<br />
offices remaining in the section of the Pentagon that was struck by the attacking<br />
flight.<br />
“Mr. Barnett's work with Cantor Fitzgerald…stemmed from a long-standing relationship between<br />
the firm and the Naval War College.” [At The Pentagon, Quirky PowerPoint Carries Big Punch: In<br />
a World of 'Gap' States, Mr. Barnett Urges Generals To Split Forces in Two, Greg Jaffe, Staff<br />
<strong>Report</strong>er Of The Wall Street Journal, May <strong>11</strong>, 2004]<br />
What defines the nature of the long-standing relationship has yet to be defined. At<br />
least one internet blogger has commented that Cantor-Fitzgerald was able to<br />
somehow provide an alternative source of funding for defense projects that somehow<br />
were not approved by Congress. There has been no verification of this claim.<br />
Nevertheless, the Navy had worked with Cantor-Fitzgerald over the prior four years<br />
in at least two war games: 2000, and 1997. The 1997 participation by Cantor<br />
Fitzgerald is documented in: “Jeffrey Sands, The Critical Link: Financial Implications<br />
of Threats to National Security (a report on the Economic Security Exercise,<br />
cosponsored by the U.S. Naval War College and Cantor Fitzgerald, Newport, R.I.,<br />
December 1997.”) A relevant piece of information notes that it was William<br />
Flanagan, as a representative for Cantor Fitzgerald, that approached Mr Barnett to<br />
lead this work.<br />
3. A group of Cantor Fitzgerald executives and traders had been the primary<br />
‘financial/private sector’ participants in economic war games the year earlier, and in<br />
1997 as well. These war games had been set up, and participated in by various U.S.<br />
intelligence agencies and the Council on Foreign Relations, and run out of the Cantor<br />
Fitzgerald offices. It is of notable coincidence that the few published notes on the<br />
games indicated the primary trades analyzed during the games were trades in<br />
government securities, oil and gold. The coincidence is rooted in the observation that<br />
it is these three types of assets that have become the focal point of nearly any and all<br />
contrarian theories explaining the events of 9/<strong>11</strong>.<br />
“Early in the year 2000, I was approached by senior executives of the Wall Street bond firm<br />
Cantor Fitzgerald. They asked me to oversee a unique research partnership between the firm and<br />
the Naval College that would later yield a series of high-powered war games involving national<br />
security policymakers, Wall Street heavyweights, and academic experts. Our shared goal was to<br />
explore how Globalization was remaking the global security environment-in other words, the<br />
Pentagon's New Map.” [Thomas P.M. Barnett, the Pentagon's New Map]<br />
“On Jan. 22, 2000, the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) Project held its second big event: a<br />
scenario of a global financial meltdown, run as a war-game simulation at its Manhattan<br />
headquarters. For the simulation, the CFR conscripted 75 people, including bankers, former<br />
Treasury Secretaries, and former State Department officials. Participants were divided into four<br />
teams, sent into four rooms, with the ability to communicate with each other and with a command<br />
headquarters through the computers. The four teams covered 1) monetary-financial, which dealt<br />
with the functions of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors; 2) economic and trade, which dealt<br />
with the functions of the U.S. Treasury Department; 3) regulatory matters; and 4) national<br />
security—…former CIA director James Woolsey played the role of Secretary of Defense. … a<br />
major objective of the exercise was to bail out the financial markets. According to an article in the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 184
March 10 issue of Euromoney magazine, written by an eyewitness reporter during the simulation,<br />
two of the largest mutual funds in America went to the Securities and Exchange <strong>Commission</strong><br />
saying that they were experiencing redemption rates that could threaten their firms. The article<br />
reported, "They need an injection of cash to meet the payments without having to dump their<br />
portfolio on the market at fire-sale rates. . . . on the panel was four-star Adm. William Flanagan<br />
(ret.)” [CFR Bankers Plan for Financial Crash, Richard Freeman, Executive Intelligence Review,<br />
July 28, 2000]<br />
A list of participants in the economic war game, suggests that Cantor Fitzgerald, the<br />
U.S. Navy and various intelligence operations dominated the simulation. (Note that<br />
the Cantor Fitzgerald ‘executives’ involved in the games “survived,’ and the Cantor<br />
Fitzgerald ‘traders’ were victims.)<br />
− ADM William Flanagan, USN (ret), securities director, Cantor Fitzgerald LP<br />
− Philip Ginsberg, financial director, Cantor Fitzgerald LP<br />
− Calvin Gooding, trader, Cantor Fitzgerald LP (Died in 9/<strong>11</strong> attack)<br />
− Kent Karosen, director, Cantor Fitzgerald LP<br />
− Glenn Kirwin, senior trader, Cantor Fitzgerald LP (Died in 9/<strong>11</strong> attack)<br />
− Norm Green, deputy national intelligence officer for science & technology, National<br />
Intelligence Council<br />
− Damian Harte, vice president, Westdeutsche Landesbank G.Z.<br />
− Carolyn Landry, banking and finance analyst, National Intelligence Council<br />
− RADM Peter Long, Provost, U.S. Naval War College<br />
− John Rice, U.S. Treasurer, Citicorp Bank<br />
− CDR Gary Shrout, public affairs officer, U.S. Naval War College<br />
− Robert Stevens, National Information Protection Center, FBI<br />
− Robert S. Wood, dean, U.S. Naval War College.<br />
− Charles Nemfakos, Senior Civilian Official for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the<br />
Navy for Financial Management and Comptroller (ASN (FM&C).<br />
− Leif Rosenberger, Economic Advisor to Admiral Blair, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific<br />
Command.’s chief economic intelligence analyst. , Soviet foreign policy/Asian analyst at CIA<br />
− Douglas H. Paal, senior analyst for the CIA<br />
The disturbing element of this information is that on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, there were a<br />
number of officially sanctioned war games under way.<br />
“During the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001 attacks the US was holding multiple annual and one-time war<br />
games with at least one resembling the actual attacks. The war games included:<br />
• a National Reconnaissance Office exercise on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, in which a small corporate jet<br />
would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after<br />
experiencing a mechanical failure. The NRO, whose name was classified until 1992[1], is the<br />
branch of the CIA in charge of spy satellites.[2]<br />
• Global Guardian, an annual exercise that would pose an imaginary crisis to the United States<br />
Strategic Command. It had been running for several days. The exercise allegedly involved a<br />
simulated Russian bomber attack. [3] Global Guardian is performed in conjunction with<br />
Vigilant Guardian, the annual training exercise (usually occurring in October) conducted by<br />
NORAD as well as exercises under the direction of Air Combat Command (Crown Vigilance)<br />
and US Space Command (Apollo Guardian)[4]. "Vigilant Guardian" is a HQ-sponsored CPx<br />
(Command Post Exercise), meaning it is conducted in offices and with computers, but without<br />
actual planes in the air. All of NORAD was involved in "Vigilant Guardian"[5]. However, it<br />
did include radar injects, or false blips, which could explain the FAA's observation of a<br />
'phantom flight <strong>11</strong>' on FAA radar well after the plane struck the WTC and after NORAD<br />
claims to have called off all war games.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 185
• Vigilant Warrior, a NORAD live-fly (confirmed by its second name 'warrior') exercise<br />
mentioned in Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies page 4-5 (possibly the same as Vigilant<br />
Guardian, or possibly the complementary "offense" or "red team" portion of the drill<br />
involving real planes acting as simulated hijacked plane)<br />
• Operation Northern Vigilance, which involved deploying fighter jets to locations in Alaska<br />
and northern Canada. According to the Toronto Star: " Part of this exercise is pure simulation,<br />
but part is real world: NORAD is keeping a close eye on the Russians, who have dispatched<br />
long-range bombers to their own high north on a similar exercise." Planned on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>,<br />
it was called off when the Federal Aviation Administration had evidence of a hijacking [6].<br />
• Operation Northern Guardian "In late August 2001, two-thirds of the 27th Fighter Squadron<br />
are sent overseas. Six of the squadron's fighters and <strong>11</strong>5 people go to Turkey to enforce the<br />
no-fly zone over northern Iraq as part of Operation Northern Watch. Another six fighters and<br />
70 people are sent to Iceland to participate in "Operation Northern Guardian." These were<br />
real-world operations which resulted in many fighters from Langley AFB to be unavailable<br />
for scrambling on 9/<strong>11</strong>.[7]<br />
• TRIPOD II, a joint FEMAand Department of Justice biowarfare vaccination exercise,<br />
scheduled for <strong>September</strong> 12 at New York's Pier 29, and revealed in testimony by former New<br />
York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at the 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong>. The command center assembled at Pier<br />
29 was used for FEMA response to the events of 9/<strong>11</strong> after Giuliani's Office of Emergency<br />
Management offices were evacuated and later destroyed in WTC 7.<br />
The Vigilant Guardian war game was discussed in chapter 1, footnote <strong>11</strong>6 of the 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong><br />
<strong>Report</strong>: "<strong>11</strong>6. On 9/<strong>11</strong>, NORAD was scheduled to conduct a military exercise, Vigilant Guardian,<br />
which postulated a bomber attack from the former Soviet Union. We investigated whether military<br />
preparations for the large-scale exercise compromised the military's response to the real-world<br />
terrorist attack on 9/<strong>11</strong>.” [War games in progress on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, From Wikipedia, the<br />
free encyclopedia.]<br />
Other than the curious coincidence of these war games being re-scheduled for<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> is the learning that the normal practice for these war games is to<br />
schedule them in October.<br />
“Thompson (Paul Thompson, the 9/<strong>11</strong> Timeline) cites multiple reports (see 8:30 am) indicating<br />
that Global Guardian is normally held in October, and that the run-through in 2001 was in fact<br />
originally scheduled for late October and then re-scheduled for early <strong>September</strong> at some point<br />
after March 2001. Who made that scheduling decision? That may be the most crucial question of<br />
all in determining the criminal culpability for 9/<strong>11</strong> among US officials.” [New Wargames<br />
Findings, Nicholas Levis, 9/<strong>11</strong>Truth.org, Aug. 2005]<br />
Additionally, it is noteworthy that the New York Federal Reserve was coincidentally<br />
operating out of its back-up data facility on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>.<br />
“On <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, we at the Federal Reserve never had to shift our Fedwire operations. On that<br />
day the operations were being managed by staff at our backup facility, a procedure we undertake<br />
regularly. Fedwire was up and running at all times.” [Jamie B. Stewart, Jr., First Vice President<br />
and Chief Operating Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, remarks before the<br />
Bankers' Association for Finance and Trade, April 25, 2002]<br />
If the Navy had this relationship with Cantor-Fitzgerald, and had made economic<br />
attacks a part of their war gaming drills during two prior occasions, it seems<br />
appropriate to assume that on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, an employee(s) of Cantor-Fitzgerald<br />
might have been tasked with running computer simulations of an economic attack on<br />
the US securities market, not knowing a real attack was underway. In the simulaton,<br />
one would have a computer program the simulates an “attacking” server and a<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 186
“response” server. One server simulates buys, and the other simulates sells. It does<br />
not take a lot of effort to switch simulations from targeting test database servers to<br />
real-life production database servers. However, if the war game servers are<br />
simulating banks, none of the originating bank trade data ever gets copied to a<br />
disaster recovery server (test servers are not copied to disaster recovery sites), nor<br />
does it get found on an originating bank server. Hence, under a scenario like this, one<br />
half of the clearing and settlement data would be missing – which is exactly what<br />
caused and led to the US securities settlement problems in the weeks that followed<br />
the attack. (This situation is described at length further on in this Section.) At least<br />
two of the traders who knew how to run those programs were present and died in the<br />
attack.<br />
One of the many strange observations from the technology reviews of the events<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> is that the government security trading system(s) never went down and<br />
trade data was never lost! Much is made on Convar’s observation that there was lost<br />
data of illegal trades, but subsequent reports suggest the data was never really lost!<br />
"All the data and software was mirrored to Rochelle Park," said Noviello, adding that the facility<br />
was established as a full-fledged data center, not just a recovery site, in February. Many Rochelle<br />
Park systems are primary, as well as backup… A triangular architecture, with points at the WTC,<br />
Rochelle Park and London connected by DS 3 pipes, worked exactly as planned. "When one<br />
corner went down, we never stopped trading," Kiewel said. "The system kept functioning in<br />
Europe and Asia." …said Noviello, adding, "we did not lose any data." [Cantor Fitzgerald - Forty-<br />
Seven Hours, Edward Cone, CIO Insight and Sean Gallagher, October 29, 2001, Copyright ©<br />
2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in eWEEK]<br />
“With many key facilities for the fixed income markets located in or near the World Trade Center,<br />
the loss of communication services prevented market participants from interacting with one<br />
another and with clearing and settlement providers, such as the GSCC and the Bank of New York<br />
(BONY). Clearing and settlement of fixed income transactions in general was a major problem in<br />
the days and weeks after the attacks, especially since the bulk of government securities cash and<br />
repo trading occurs early in the day – meaning that significant amounts of data from the IDBs on<br />
almost a full day’s trading in this area was lost and had to be meticulously reconstructed. BONY,<br />
which was the clearing bank for many major market participants and maintained some ofGSCC’s<br />
settlement accounts, had to evacuate four facilities including its primary telecommunications data<br />
center and over 8,300 staff located near the WTC. BONY conducted processing activities as part<br />
of clearing and settlement of government securities transactions at several of these facilities.<br />
…The critical payment systems, such as Fedwire and CHIPS, continued to operate with minimal<br />
disruption on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001. While both Fedwire and CHIPS (as well as some of their<br />
customers/users) were affected by communications disruptions in the aftermath of the terrorist<br />
strikes, transactions could continue being processed because the actual processing facilities are<br />
not located in lower Manhattan. Retail payment systems, including check clearing and ACH<br />
transactions, also generally fared well following the attacks and continued to operate without<br />
significant disruptions. Some check clearing functions were delayed, however, due to the<br />
grounding of air transportation. The U.S. banking system as a whole continued to function<br />
relatively smoothly on and after <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001.” [Survey and Analysis of Security Issues in<br />
the U.S. Banking and Finance Sector – <strong>September</strong> 2003 Institute for Security Technology Studies<br />
AT Dartmouth College , Copyright 2003]<br />
What a detailed review of the technology experts review of activities that day<br />
suggests is that the primary trading systems did not go down and data was not lost<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 187
ecause of system redundancy, mirroring, and extensive back-up centers. What did<br />
fail was the telecommunications infrastructure which prevented buyers and sellers of<br />
securities from making “subsequent” trades. Hence, the settlement and clearing data<br />
should have been “whole,” and a securities buy record and sell records should have<br />
been able to be matched in the setllement process.<br />
There is one last element of the settlement process that was disrupted by the attack on<br />
the WTC. The actual certificates for the securities were destroyed.<br />
“The difficulty with lost certificates was dramatically demonstrated during the <strong>September</strong><br />
<strong>11</strong>,2001, tragedy when thousand of certificates were destroyed in vaults maintained by brokerdealers.”<br />
[Federal Register / Vol. 67, No. 151 / Tuesday, August 6, 2002 / Notices]<br />
“Settlement: The Central Securities Depository (CSD) implements the settlement instructions:<br />
securities are delivered, and funds paid. The depository controls the actual securities, and so can<br />
register and transfer ownership. …. However, some trades, such as mortgage-backed securities,<br />
still require physical movement of paperwork. The deal is not complete and “irrevocable” until<br />
this is done.” [Harvard Research Group Experience- Expertise- Insight- Results Harvard Research<br />
Group, Inc. Copyright © 2003 Harvard Research Group]<br />
(There will be some readers who observe that securities no longer require ‘physical<br />
certificates,’ and in many cases this is true. In fact, many US government securities<br />
are managed that way. Unfortunately, the certificates that were at the core of this plot<br />
had to be physical, because they were originally created for cross-border transactions,<br />
and the evidence cited from the Federal Register indicates they did indeed exist. One<br />
internet blogger argued that if the certificates needed to be destroyed, that would not<br />
warrant destroying the whole complex. In fact, all indications are, including on-line<br />
testimonial from a Garbon employee, that the certificates were held in vaults in the<br />
basement of the Tower.)<br />
An overview of this situation is worth providing:<br />
Illegal trades were reported on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, which had to be government<br />
securities trades, as the stock markets had not yet opened.<br />
Computers at Cantor Fitzgerald are known to have hosted programs that simulate<br />
attacks on US securities.<br />
These programs should have been operational on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> as part of a<br />
broader synchronization of Department of Defense War Games.<br />
The terrorist attack on the financial center of the US failed to bring down any core<br />
trading system or Cantor Fitzgerald’s eSpeed trading system.<br />
The only trading system that reported problems was the securities clearing and<br />
settlement system, which publicly attributed its problems to communication<br />
failures with the Bank of New York.<br />
As will be demonstrated in Section 8.1 Federal Reserve and the Elimination of<br />
Regulatory Control, the Clearing process was hung up for weeks on an inability to<br />
“match”, although the matching data is reported to have been whole. This issue<br />
has never been publicly addressed in any article or speech by the Federal Reserve,<br />
and can only be identified by the ‘orders’ issued by the Federal Reserve in the<br />
aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. This ‘matching’ had nothing to do with the Bank of<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 188
New York’s telecommunications problems, and had everything to do with<br />
missing seller data and certificates.<br />
4. Cantor Fitzgerald has been reported as the “holder” of $240 billion of ten year old<br />
‘Durham/Brady Bonds’ that were due on or around <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th . (There are no<br />
officially classified, “Brady Bonds” from the “Brady Plan” for the Russian debt, – but<br />
because of the similar purpose of these $240 Billion in bonds, they are continually<br />
referred to in the press as such.) These bonds were reported to have been put into the<br />
market by Alan Greenspan, Oliver North, and George Bush Sr. in 1991, backed by<br />
gold securities and Swiss gold bullion, backed (in full or part) by the “Durham Trust”.<br />
The interesting aspect of these accusations is that the Chairman of the Federal<br />
Reserve– a privately held, commercial group of banks – and the President of the<br />
United States are reported to have illegally created these securities, and the ONI –<br />
destroyed in the attack on the Pentagon – was hot on the trail of these securities.<br />
“Sioux City, Iowa -- July 25, 2005 TomFlocco.com -- According to leaked documents from an<br />
intelligence file obtained through a military source in the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), on or<br />
about <strong>September</strong> 12, 1991 non-performing and unauthorized gold-backed debt instruments were<br />
used to purchase ten-year "Brady" bonds. The bonds in turn were illegally employed as collateral<br />
to borrow $240 billion--120 in Japanese Yen and 120 in Deutsch Marks--exchanged for U.S.<br />
currency under false pretenses; or counterfeit and unlawful conversion of collateral against which<br />
an unlimited amount of money could be created in derivatives and debt instruments….<br />
The illegal transactions are also linked to the murder of a U.S. Army colonel charged with<br />
overseeing approximately 175 secret CIA bank accounts, according to the officer’s wife, Mrs. V.<br />
K. Durham. During multiple interviews, Durham told TomFlocco.com that Bush 41 and Clinton<br />
administration officials visited her husband Colonel Russell Hermann several times in the months<br />
prior to and three days before his torture and murder on August 29, 1994.<br />
Durham told us that Colonel Hermann told her "Bush, Greenspan and North were trying to get me<br />
to sign off on the CI Ltd., the Central Intelligence, Ltd. Iran and Latin American contra accounts.<br />
They held about $13-17 billion in physical gold."<br />
Durham told us the $240 billion in stolen currency was obtained resulting from George H. W.<br />
Bush’s presidential abuse of power, when he authorized former Treasury Secretary Nicholas<br />
Brady and former Secretary of State James Baker III to make fraudulent use of the Durham Family<br />
Trust collateral without her permission. There is evidence that Colonel Hermann’s and V. K.<br />
Durham’s signatures were forged on a Goldman-Sachs bank account certification requesting the<br />
conversions to U.S. currency.<br />
The money was never repaid since the ten-year Brady bonds--purchased before <strong>September</strong> 13,<br />
1991 using the fraudulent collateral and gold bullion as security came due on <strong>September</strong> 12,<br />
2001--the day after the 9.<strong>11</strong> attacks, having allegedly been underwritten and held by the trustee,<br />
Cantor-Fitzgerald bond brokerage firm [whose offices on floors101-105 in the North Tower of the<br />
World Trade Center (WTC) were destroyed on 9.<strong>11</strong> along with the Brady bond evidence….<br />
Durham called Dave Ehler, a staff-member to her congressman, Iowa Representative Steve King<br />
(R-5-IA), to tell him that Bush, Greenspan and North were in her husband’s hospital room three<br />
days before his murder and to introduce him to three separate witnesses who identified the three<br />
and described the encounters to Ehler--one who saw North in Hermann’s hospital room on a<br />
separate occasion, one who witnessed (along with Durham) Colonel Hermann’s statement<br />
regarding the Bush Sr--Greenspan--North visit to his hospital room, and one who saw the actual<br />
murder contract on Colonel Hermann’s life and told Ehler he is in possession of the transcript.<br />
Durham said the conversations with Ehler were tape recorded and moved to multiple secure<br />
locations to protect the evidence.”<br />
“Durham, 69 and living in Iowa, has also contacted her senator, Banking Committee Chairman<br />
Charles Grassley (R-IA) and along with her congressman, Representative Steve King (R-5-IA),<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 189
provided both with all the evidence in this report and much more; however, Durham said both<br />
legislators were told "not to investigate" by officials at the very highest levels of government.<br />
Dave Ehler, the aide from Congressman King’s Storm Lake, Iowa office (tape-recorded by<br />
Durham) told her that "orders had come down from the top: ‘do not investigate.’"<br />
Durham told us that a Central Intelligence agent said Cantor-Fitzgerald held the 10-year Brady<br />
bonds; and her secure family trust was the owner of Bonus Commodity Contract 3392 and<br />
Certificate of Debt Number 181 of May 1, 1875 [Special Bonus Certificate No. 3392/181],<br />
originally issued by the government of Peru in 1875 and illegally used by the U.S. government as<br />
the collateral to purchase the bonds which secured the currency transfers--all of which came due in<br />
the middle of the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> attacks.<br />
ONI officials themselves--some of whom were probing the fraudulent 10-year debt instruments<br />
allegedly held by Cantor-Fitzgerald in the doomed North Tower--also perished along with the<br />
investigation files, all of which were curiously in the path of the 9.<strong>11</strong> Pentagon impact.” [Cash<br />
payoffs, bonds and murder linked to White House 9/<strong>11</strong> finance, Tom Flocco, tomflocco.com]<br />
It appears that someone in the ONI was investigating these transactions, and released the<br />
same evidentiary documents to multiple sources:<br />
“In fact, it appears that such bogus gold certificates are being used in some interesting ways by<br />
certain Wall Street and Washington types to artificially prop up the U.S. economy to cover up the<br />
fraudulent numbers…. I now have in my possession evidence, and sent it out overnight to 10 other<br />
secure sources to protect the information, that a 10-year Brady Bond deal was being worked on<br />
and closed toward in the end of 1991, or was to have matured and been due somewhere on or after<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001.…<br />
Part of the story can be found by looking into Securities and Exchange <strong>Commission</strong> v. John<br />
D'Aquisto Securities. The name of John D'Aquisto (convicted) also appears numerous times as do<br />
Merkav International and Marion Aiken (convicted), First Guilford Financial Limited, London,<br />
but domiciled in Isle of Man … along with three of its officers Steve Billand, Charles A.M.<br />
Duncan, Jeff Muller, and others related to other companies in Russia, Australia, Ireland, the<br />
Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario, all patterns to look for in picking up the<br />
trails of such scams. It is the "multi-jurisdiction" facet that makes these deals hard to detect, track<br />
and litigate for fraud. It is by design and intent so they can perpetrate fraud and get away with it.<br />
One of the D'Aquisto documents was from a "Bay State Trust" based in Zurich, dated 10<br />
<strong>September</strong> 1991, and just more of a trail that needs to be fully investigated due to the contents of<br />
that letter.” [Part 4: More reasons to not investigate 9-<strong>11</strong>, Karl W. B. Schwarz]<br />
The exposure of these bonds, which lend new meaning to Alan Greenspan’s oft<br />
referred to “unconventional” monetary tools, and the testimony that their settlement<br />
date coincided with 9/<strong>11</strong>, support a theory that Cantor Fitzgerald was a specific target<br />
of the attack. It would certainly provide a compelling argument of motive for<br />
administration complicity in the attack. Having $240 Billion in bonds fail in public<br />
might cause a crisis, such as that predicted by the Russian Intelligence and the<br />
Dresdner bank. The Russians and Germans were forecasting a financial catastrophe<br />
for late August of 1991. Their ability to do so is consistent with the documentation<br />
that the bonds were made payable in Deutschmarks and Yen, and were used by<br />
George Bush Sr. to buoy (or buy) the Russian economy in early <strong>September</strong> 1991, a<br />
few days after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian and German ability to<br />
forsee this matter is also consistent with the not widely reported ‘fake advice notices’<br />
used to steal $220 billion from the Soviet Treasury. (See Appendix C of this <strong>Report</strong>.)<br />
Both the Russians, who received the funding, and the Germans (via the<br />
Deutschbank), who were also involved in the transaction, were in a position to<br />
understand the magnitude of the financial crisis created by the inability to settle these<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 190
onds. (As an interesting note, at the time, Germany and Japan, whose currency was<br />
used to finance the fraudulent transactions, were considered “enemies” of the US<br />
foreign policy team. Zalmay Khalizad, who was drafting US policy statements at the<br />
time for Wolfowitz and Bush, suggested that “competition with Japan and Germany<br />
should be confined to economics; the United States should make sure it had no<br />
military rivals.” [Rise of the Vulcans- The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, James<br />
Mann, Penguin, 2004, p2<strong>11</strong>.])<br />
5. Cantor Fitzgerald had a track record of willingness to ignore multiple aspects of legal<br />
and financial regulations. In 1997 and 1999, Cantor Fitzgerald was found guilty in<br />
false representation of securities ownership, false documentation and related illegal<br />
activities.<br />
“The CFTC order finds that Cantor violated the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) by aiding and<br />
abetting the fraud and registration violations of First Republic Financial Corporation, formerly<br />
known as Vancorp Financial Services (VFS), an unregistered commodity pool operator.<br />
The CFTC order finds that, although Cantor became aware that VFS falsely represented the<br />
ownership of a securities trading account VFS had opened in its own name, Cantor allowed the<br />
account to be traded in VFS' name. The account was actually owned by a commodity pool, the<br />
order finds. The order also finds that Cantor failed to determine the ownership of the VFS account,<br />
and failed to obtain the trading authority needed to allow VFS to enter trades in this account. In<br />
addition, the order finds that Cantor assisted VFS in obtaining $950,000 to which VFS was not<br />
entitled by making wire transfer payments to First Republic Securities, a wholly owned subsidiary<br />
of VFS, out of customer funds held in the account at Cantor.” [CFTC ACCEPTS SETTLEMENT<br />
OF CANTOR FITZGERALD & CO. CHARGED WITH AIDING AND ABETTING FRAUD<br />
AND REGISTRATION VIOLATIONS OF FEDERAL COMMODITY LAW, Release: # 3987-97<br />
(CFTC Docket No. 94-14), January 28, 1997]<br />
“Factual Summary: In connection with its activities as a Nasdaq market maker, Cantor Fitzgerald<br />
& Co. engaged in the following activities …1. The Fraudulent Coordination of Quote<br />
Movements….2. Undisclosed Arrangements to Coordinate Quotations….3. Best Execution<br />
Violations (Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. failed, or caused the failure,to provide best execution in the<br />
handling of customer orders in one or more of the respects) ….4. Failure to Honor<br />
Quotations….5. Failure to Keep Accurate Books and Records….6. Failure to Reasonably<br />
Supervise Nasdaq Trading….7. Unlawful Profits and Other Gains….” [SECURITIES AND<br />
EXCHANGE COMMISSION, ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDING, File No. 3-9803, January<br />
<strong>11</strong>, 1999]<br />
These facts support the reports there were $240 billion in fraudulent securities being<br />
handled by Cantor Fitzgerald, an organization proven to have abetted similar frauds<br />
across multiple accounts. A year earlier, a group of Cantor Fitzgerald’s traders and<br />
executives participated in providing analysis to the Office of Naval Intelligence and the<br />
Council on Foreign Relations on the impact of a financial attack on the US. To do such,<br />
they would have needed to create a massive computer simulations of trades, the programs<br />
for which could easily be used to pump volumes of actual illegal trades into the real-life<br />
system. With war games being held on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, staff at Cantor Fitzgerald may<br />
have been running those simulations again. To anyone else, running those programs<br />
during the actual war games would seem appropriate and justified. The only variable that<br />
such a plot would require is an ability to totally disregard the SEC’s legal “settlement<br />
process,” which could only be accomplished one way: to declare a national emergency<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 191
and enact a clause in the Securities and Exchange Act which allows it to be suspended in<br />
case of a national emergency.<br />
Once the illegal trades were in the system, they would have to be settled with Federal<br />
Reserve. $240 billion in illegal transactions might be a little difficult to sweep under the<br />
carpet. Coincidentally, the attack on the World Trade Center has been the only occasion<br />
in which the emergency powers of the Securities and Exchange Act have been enacted,<br />
which allow the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to not only over-ride the formal<br />
settlement process, but virtually every control on reporting and ownership as well. If the<br />
transactions had to be swept under the carpet, <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> was the only time in US<br />
history that it could be done.<br />
8.1 Federal Reserve and the Elimination of Regulatory Control<br />
A review of actions taken by the Federal Reserve in the days and weeks following the<br />
attack on the World Trade Center reinforces the theory that the attack was used to coverup<br />
illegal trades with the support of the Federal Reserve. (Please note, that contrary to<br />
popular belief, the Federal Reserve is not an agency of the US Government, but a<br />
commercial affiliation of privately held banks.)<br />
“The Court of Appeals, Poole, Circuit Judge, held that federal reserve banks are not federal<br />
instrumentalities for purposes of the Act, but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled<br />
corporations. …Each Federal Reserve Bank is a separate corporation owned by commercial banks in<br />
its region. The stockholding commercial banks elect two thirds of each Bank's nine member board of<br />
directors. The remaining three directors are appointed by the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal<br />
Reserve Board regulates the Reserve Banks, but direct supervision and control of each Bank is<br />
exercised by its board of directors.” [Lewis v. United States, 680 F.2d 1239 (1982), No. 80-5905,<br />
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit., Decided April 19, 1982, As Amended June 24, 1982.]<br />
Hence, the SEC activities following the attack on the WTC could only have happened<br />
with the approval of those who owned the Federal Reserve Banks.<br />
“According to the N.Y. Fed itself, as of June 30, 1997 the top eight shareholders were<br />
• Chase Manhatten Bank<br />
• Citibank<br />
• Morgan Guaranty Trust Company<br />
• Fleet Bank<br />
• Bankers Trust<br />
• Bank of New York<br />
• Marine Midland Bank<br />
• Summit Bank.”<br />
[Myth #5. The Federal Reserve is owned and controlled by foreigners, Edward Flaherty, Ph.D.<br />
Department of Economics College of Charleston, S.C,<br />
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/3616/flaherty5.html].<br />
Of these eight banks, five of them were extensively involved in the 1989 Russian<br />
currency destabilization program: Chase, Citibank, Morgan, Bank of New York and<br />
Marine Midland. One of them - the Bank of NewYork – was extensively reported to be<br />
involved in the laundering of Russian accounts owned by the very individuals this report<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 192
links to the 1991 fraud. It was also one of two clearing and settlement operations which<br />
would have cleared and settled $240 billion in fraudulent notes under the relaxed rules<br />
about to be discussed.<br />
While the rouble destabilization program has never been officially recognized, the<br />
evidence for its occurrence has been documented.<br />
“The national debt rose steeply, and there was no source that could increase government revenue. The<br />
currency came under great pressure. In 1991, Prime Minister Pavlov warned that foreign forces were<br />
engineering an organised attack on the rouble. Reddaway and Glinsky point out that in the prevailing<br />
atmosphere of euphoria, he was ridiculed. But now this attack on the rouble between 1989 and 1991 is<br />
a documented matter. Authors quote from a book by an American journalist, Claire Sterling, which<br />
gives details of the senseless traffic in roubles. She described how trucks and railway cars full of<br />
rouble notes were seen in France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzer-land, Italy and Poland. The<br />
Soviet embassy in Rome was actively involved in the transportation and sale of these bank notes.<br />
Sterling's book also describes a worldwide operation of currency dealers and money launderers<br />
involving several Western banks. Reddaway and Glinsky think that there must be more than profitmaking<br />
to this criminal activity. They maintain that anyone interested in the break-up of the Soviet<br />
Union would also have a keen interest in subverting the Soviet currency. Furthermore, those involved<br />
in the narcotics trade wanted to invest in Russian property, and they wanted some front-men in Russia<br />
who could launder their money.”<br />
[“Russia's decade of tragedy, A Review of The Tragedy of Russia's Reforms by Peter Reddaway and<br />
Dimitri Glinsky and Failed Crusade by Stephen F. Cohen,” Govind Talwalkar, <strong>Front</strong>line, Volume 18<br />
- Issue 22, Oct. 27 - Nov. 09, 2001]<br />
The cost of that effort is estimated to be between $500 billion and one trillion US dollars.<br />
“…finance capital fled Russia at an estimated $10-billion to $15-billion per year (Fidel Castro<br />
estimated it 2-to-4 times higher,14 former President Gorbachev estimates a total of $1-trillion)….”<br />
Subversive funds flowed in through the collapsed Russian borders (much of it from the National<br />
Endowment for Democracy (NED) and George Soros’ destabilization foundations [George Soros,<br />
“Imperial Wizard: Master Builder of the New Bribe Sector, Systematically Bilking the World,”<br />
CovertAction Quarterly (November 2002), pp. 1-7.] to organize political parties and coordinate a<br />
media to promote Adam Smith “free trade.” [WHY? The Deeper History Behind the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>,<br />
2001 Terrorist Attacks on America, Containing and Destabilizing the Soviet Federation and Eastern<br />
Europe (3rd Edition, 2005), J.W. Smith, http://www.ied.info/books/why/contain.html#endNote19]<br />
What the public record demonstrates is that both the Federal Reserve and the Bank of<br />
New York were closely involved with the Yeltsin family as early as 1990.<br />
• Kagalovsky and Yeltsin travelled to Vienna together:<br />
“In a Moscow airport in 1990, Natasha Kagalovsky, a Bank of New York Co. executive, struck up<br />
a chance conversation with Boris Yeltsin, soon to be Russia's president. As they waited to board a<br />
flight both had booked to Vienna, she says, Mr. Yeltsin asked: "How come you don't have a bank<br />
office in Moscow?" [Natasha Kagalovsky Rose Fast, Fell Hard at Bank of New York, Ann Davis<br />
and Paul Beckett, Wall Street Journal, November 23, 1999]<br />
• Gerald Corrigan (President of the New York Federal reserve) also met “discreetly”<br />
with Boris Yeltsin before the August coup<br />
“In the summer of 1991, Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Mr.<br />
Corrigan and several other Western officials traveled to Moscow to assess the "economic reforms"<br />
required for Russian membership in the International Monetary Fund and the eventual release of<br />
billions of dollars in loans a year later. …<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 193
One evening, as Secretary Brady and Chairman Greenspan went off to dine with Mr. Gorbachev,<br />
an aide to Mr. Corrigan, who was not invited along for dinner, suggested that he meet "discreetly"<br />
with Mr. Yeltsin….<br />
"Mr. Yeltsin deeply appreciated the courtesy of Mr. Corrigan's visit," according to one official<br />
familiar with the details of the trip. About a month later, when the attempted military coup against<br />
Mr. Gorbachev thrust Mr. Yeltsin to the forefront, the Russian president did not forget his<br />
newfound dining companion and billiard partner, Gerald Corrigan.<br />
In November 1991, the New York Fed chief began a series of "technical assistance" trips to<br />
Russia, and in January 1992 hosted a dinner for 200 bankers and other close friends in Mr.<br />
Yeltsin's honor at the New York Fed's Italian-revival building in lower Manhattan. The two nowintimate<br />
friends reportedly danced and tossed back shots of vodka until the wee hours of the<br />
morning.”<br />
Corrigan’s real assignment - the role neither he nor the Bush administration will discuss openly -<br />
is to float Moscow on a multibillion dollar tide of multilateral loans [Propping Up Russia’s<br />
Finances, Christopher Whalen, JoC Newspaper, <strong>September</strong> 29, 1992]<br />
• Gerald Corrigan has also been associated Bush progran to destabilize the Russian<br />
currency in a quiet partnership with BCCI banker Alfred Hartmann and Mark Palmer<br />
“(Soros) has been controlled for some time by a fellow called Hartmann. Hartmann was operating<br />
out of Zug, Switzerland, which is one of the banking centers, through the N.M. Rothschild<br />
Continuation Trust. Hartmann was the man who controlled the BNL and BCCI simultaneously, or<br />
coordinated it, which were not Pakistani or Gulf banks; they were British Commonwealth banks,<br />
controlled through this Rothschild intermediation. He worked for them, and still does. Now on the<br />
American side, his controller or coordinator has been Gerald Corrigan, who's going to work for<br />
him on the Russian side, and a State Department official, R. Mark Palmer, who went to work for<br />
Soros even before he fully quit his job at the State Department.”[There Is a Worldwide Crash in<br />
Progress; We Are In A Depression Already'', Lyndon Larouche, interviewed by Mel Klenetsky,<br />
August 4, 1993, Shofar FTP Archive File: people/l/larouche.lyndon/eir.080493]<br />
Soros, as it would turn out, was working with known Mossad agents Shaul Eisenberg<br />
and Marc Rich, representing to a large degree the Rothschild family interests.<br />
“The friends of Soros lost no time in capitalizing on this situation. Marc Rich began buying<br />
Russian aluminum at absurdly cheap prices, with his hard currency. Rich then dumped the<br />
aluminum onto western industrial markets last year, causing a 30% collapse in the price of the<br />
metal, as western industry had no way to compete. There was such an outflow of aluminum last<br />
year from Russia, that there were shortages of aluminum for Russian fish canneries. At the same<br />
time, Rich reportedly moved in to secure export control over the supply of most West Siberian<br />
crude oil to western markets. Rich's companies have been under investigation for fraud in Russia,<br />
according to a report in the Wall Street Journal of May 13, 1993.<br />
Another Soros silent partner who has moved in to exploit the chaos in the former Soviet Union, is<br />
Shaul Eisenberg. Eisenberg, reportedly with a letter of introduction from then-European Bank<br />
chief Jacques Attali, managed to secure an exclusive concession for textiles and other trade in<br />
Uzbekistan. When Uzbek officials confirmed defrauding of the government by Eisenberg, his<br />
concessions were summarily abrogated. The incident has reportedly caused a major loss for Israeli<br />
Mossad strategic interests throughout the Central Asian republics. “[The Secret Financial Network<br />
Behind "Wizard" George Soros , William Engdahl, Executive Intelligence Review (EIR),<br />
November 1, 1996]<br />
“Soros's circle includes indicted metals and commodity speculator and fugitive Marc Rich of Zug,<br />
Switzerland and Tel Aviv; secretive Israeli arms and commodity dealer Shaul Eisenberg, and<br />
"Dirty Rafi" Eytan, both linked to the financial side of the Israeli Mossad; and, the family of Jacob<br />
Lord Rothschild.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 194
Understandably, Soros and the Rothschild interests prefer to keep their connection hidden far from<br />
public view, so as to obscure the well-connected friends Soros enjoys in the City of London, the<br />
British Foreign Office, Israel, and the U.S. financial establishment. The myth, therefore, has been<br />
created, that Soros is a lone financial investment "genius" who, through his sheer personal<br />
brilliance in detecting shifts in markets, has become one of the world's most successful<br />
speculators. According to those who have done business with him, Soros never makes a major<br />
investment move without sensitive insider information.<br />
On the board of directors of Soros's Quantum Fund N.V. is Richard Katz, a Rothschild man who is<br />
also on the board of the London N.M. Rothschild and Sons merchant bank, and the head of<br />
Rothschild Italia S.p.A. of Milan. Another Rothschild family link to Soros's Quantum Fund is<br />
Quantum board member Nils O. Taube, the partner of the London investment group St. James<br />
Place Capital, whose major partner is Lord Rothschild. London Times columnist Lord William<br />
Rees-Mogg is also on the board of Rothschild's St. James Place Capital.” “[The Secret Financial<br />
Network Behind "Wizard" George Soros , William Engdahl, Executive Intelligence Review (EIR),<br />
November 1, 1996]<br />
• At a dinner party thrown by Corrigan for Yeltsin in June 1992, guests on the<br />
invitation list who have been mentioned as persons of interest in this review were:<br />
− President Bush<br />
− Nicholas F. Brady, Secretary of the Treasury<br />
− Defense Secretary Dick Cheney<br />
− Alan Greenspan, chairman, Federal Reserve<br />
− Condoleezza Rice, associate professor of political science, Stanford<br />
University.<br />
− Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser.<br />
• Ms. Natasha Kagalovsky, of the Bank of New York money-laundering scandal, was<br />
part of Gerald Corrigan’s (then President of the New Yorkfederal Reserve Bank) ‘offthe-record’<br />
mission requested by George Bush to ‘rescue’ the Russian banking<br />
system. Corrigan made six trips to visit Yeltsin starting in <strong>September</strong> 1991, before he<br />
‘muscled’ other large banks into bankrolling the Russian drain [see Natasha<br />
Kagalovsky Rose Fast, Fell Hard at Bank of New York, Ann Davis and Paul Beckett,<br />
Wall Street Journal, November 23, 1999]<br />
The Bank of New York would continue to be at the center of virtually every moneylaundering<br />
scandal coming out of Russia, including Alexander Konanykhine’s European<br />
Union Bank (of Antigua) and Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Bank Menatep, and Nordex.<br />
Now, it would be identified as the bond clearing house to be at the center of failed<br />
communications as $240 billion in fraudulent bonds were settled under suspicious<br />
circumstances in the aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. The Federal Reserve would be reported<br />
by records unoffically released from the Office of Naval Investigation as having been<br />
involved in a number of secretive transactions in 1990 and 1991 that ranged between $60<br />
and $100 billion dollars. In these transactions, the money moved through the Hong Kong<br />
Shanghai Bank (London), Chase Manhattan Bank, Key Bank (Ogden) and the<br />
MidAltalntic National Bank.<br />
The Bank of New York has been able to fend off any serious investigation from Federal<br />
agencies regarding these various money-laundering schemes, but only with a tremendous<br />
amount of poltical support, and lack of outcry from the American public. As far as the<br />
public was concerned, this was Russian money – and therefore had little effect on their<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 195
lives. The exposure of the Brady/Durham bond fraud would have been too impactful for<br />
the Americanpublic to ignore. The regulations of the SEC would have resulted in an<br />
immediate exposure of this crime during settlement. Hence, the only option available to<br />
the people that pulled this fraud together was to create a national emergency which would<br />
allow the Federal Reserve board to suspend the SEC regulations, and the clearing<br />
agencies (Bank of New York and GSCC) to mask their operations. This national<br />
emergency was the attack on the World Trade Center<br />
As a result of having had a dry run at this situation only the year before during the naval<br />
war games, the management of the Federal Reserve had a precise strategy of how to deal<br />
with this situation. Within hours of the attack on the WTC:<br />
“…the <strong>Commission</strong> for the first time invoked its emergency powers under Securities Exchange Act<br />
Section 12(k) and, on Friday <strong>September</strong> 14, issued several orders and an interpretive release to ease<br />
certain regulatory restrictions temporarily. Last Friday, <strong>September</strong> 21, we extended this relief for an<br />
additional five business days.” [Testimony Concerning The State of the Nation's Financial Markets in<br />
the Wake of Recent Terrorist Attacks, Harvey L. Pitt, Chairman, U.S. Securities & Exchange<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> Before the Committee on Financial Services United States House of Representatives,<br />
<strong>September</strong> 26, 2001]<br />
Section 12k – “Trading suspensions; emergency authority”- of the Securities Exchange<br />
Act, when invoked, allows the Federal Reserve to do essentially and literally whatever it<br />
thinks appropriate.<br />
“The <strong>Commission</strong>, in an emergency, may by order summarily take such action to alter, supplement,<br />
suspend, or impose requirements or restrictions with respect to any matter or action subject to<br />
regulation by the <strong>Commission</strong> or a self-regulatory organization under this title, as the <strong>Commission</strong><br />
determines is necessary in the public interest and for the protection of investors…to maintain or restore<br />
fair and orderly securities markets (other than markets in exempted securities)”<br />
Recall, though: this national emergency was declared even thoughthe entire system<br />
remained whole, and as documented earlier, none of the trading data was lost:<br />
“…the U.S. financial system largely remained open throughout the day and thereafter. Banks and other<br />
financial intermediaries stayed open. Key wholesale and retail payments system remained operational,<br />
like other financial activities, except to the extent that telecommunications disruptions had a temporary<br />
or local effect. Even firms in the World Trade Center were able to resume business from other offices<br />
or from contingency sites within hours of the attack.” [Implications of 9/<strong>11</strong> for the Financial Services<br />
Sector , Remarks by Vice Chairman Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. At the Conference on Bank Structure and<br />
Competition, Chicago, Illinois, May 9, 2002]<br />
On the first day of the crisis, the SEC lifted “Rule 15c3-3 - Customer Protection--<br />
Reserves and Custody of Securities,” which set trading rules for the following processes:<br />
− The [seller] is not permitted to substitute other securities for those subject to this agreement an<br />
therefore must keep the [buyer's] securities segregated at all times, unless in this agreement the<br />
[buyer] grants the [seller] the right to substitute other securities<br />
− Notification in the event of failure to make a required deposit.<br />
− Physical possession or control of securities.<br />
− Required Disclosure<br />
− Control of securities/Requirement to reduce securities to possession or control.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 196
In addition to suspending rules which controlled substitution, reporting, disclosure and<br />
control in the matching process, the Federal Reserve immediately injected $120Billion<br />
into the system, and kept injecting until it reached $300 Billion in incremental money<br />
supply.<br />
“Banking system balances went from $13 billion on <strong>September</strong> 10 to over $120 billion on the<br />
13th….Federal Reserve credit extension following <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> was unsterilized, in the sense that it<br />
resulted in a net increase in the monetary base.” [Payment System Disruptions and the Federal Reserve<br />
Following <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, Jeffrey M. Lacker, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Richmond,<br />
Virginia, 23219, USA, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Working Paper 03-16, December 23, 2003]<br />
The lifting of these rules, and the immediate infusion of over $120 billion in Reserve<br />
funds was inadequate to resolve what was identified as the “fail” problem: the inability<br />
to match the buyer’s funds and seller’s certificates. Hence, on the 19 th of <strong>September</strong>,<br />
after lifting the constraint, the Government Securities Clearing Corporation (GSCC) sent<br />
a memo to banks encouraging them to make substitutions on “immediately maturing<br />
collateral”, which is what the Brady Bonds were. In other words, the Fed enabled<br />
participants to replace any older, allegedly illegal 10 year notes with new notes.<br />
“…collateral substitutions can and should be made with regard to immediately maturing collateral.”<br />
[Reminder of Bond Market Association Recommendations, GSCC073.01, <strong>September</strong> 19, 2001]<br />
Then, it treated the ‘fails’ as two separate groups, suggesting there was a large group of<br />
trades that required ‘special treatment’ for “other” problems.<br />
“GSCC has listed, on two new, separately re-created databases, those deliveries from members that<br />
were bought into our account last week without our ability to view those transactions. This will allow<br />
us to identify with confidence those "fails" that are in fact incorrect, as well as other problems such as<br />
erroneous deliveries made to GSCC.” [GSCC075.01, <strong>September</strong> 20, 2001]<br />
Subsequent to that ruling, the GSCC issued another memo allowing blind broker<br />
settlements. A “blind broker” is a mechanism for inter-dealer transactions that maintains<br />
the anonymity of both parties to the trade. The broker serves as the agent to the<br />
principals' transactions.<br />
“The only repo transactions entered into by blind brokers should be those done in direct furtherance of<br />
clean-up and reconciliation efforts. No new blind brokered business should be executed.”<br />
[GSCC080.01, <strong>September</strong> 25, 2001]<br />
At this point in time, the Federal Reserve and its GSCC had created a settlement<br />
environment totally void of controls and reporting – where it could substitute valid, new<br />
government securities for the mature, illegal securities, and not have to record where the<br />
bad securities came from, or where the new securities went – all because the primary<br />
broker for US securities had been eliminated. These clearing operations were being run in<br />
one of three ‘temporary’ facilities set up by the Bank of New York. (A more technical<br />
explanation of how this process was deployed is described in Appendix D,)<br />
This act alone, however was inadequate to resolve the problem, because the Federal<br />
Reserve did not have enough “takers” of the new 10 year notes which this report suspects<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 197
were substitutes for the fraudulent notes. Rather than simply having to match buy and<br />
sell orders, which was the essence of resolving the “fail” problem, it appears the Fed was<br />
doing more than just matching and balancing – it was pushing new notes on the market<br />
with a special auction.<br />
“Acute settlement problems with the on-the-run ten-year note led the U.S. Treasury to reopen the<br />
issue on October 4 and hold an unusual “snap” auction of new ten-year securities.” [Payment System<br />
Disruptions and the Federal Reserve Following <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, Jeffrey M. Lacker, Federal<br />
Reserve Bank of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, 23219, USA, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond<br />
Working Paper 03-16, December 23, 2003]<br />
If the Federal Reserve had to cover-up the elimination of $240 Billion in bogus securities,<br />
they could not let the volume of capital shrink by that much in the time of a monetary<br />
crisis. They would have had to push excess liquidity into the market, and then phase it<br />
out for a soft landing, which is exactly what appears to have happened. In about two<br />
months, the money supply was back to where it was prior to 9/<strong>11</strong>.<br />
The need for an extra $300Billion in liquidity at the time of the “crisis” seems to be a bit<br />
of a mystery, and there has not been a significant effort to explain it. The immediate<br />
demand for cash (ATM machines, checking accounts etc.) never exceeded $2 Billion.<br />
The U.S. banks had already agreed amongst themselves to not force balance settlements,<br />
so the Federal Reserve ‘loans’ which were supposedly necessary to save the banking<br />
system never needed to happen. The SEC had indicated the financial companies could<br />
continue financial reporting as if any transactions from that day had never occurred.<br />
Most importantly, all the transactions pumped into the WTC financial centers were<br />
replicated in their Disaster Recovery sites, which were up and running in two days. All<br />
the original settlement data from buyers and sellers should have been there, unless<br />
someone electronically tunneled into the trading systems masquerading as a bank and<br />
unloaded bogus data, which is what Convar suggested had happened. Given security on<br />
inter-bank financial transactions, the likelihood of this borders on impossible.<br />
With the regulatory changes that followed in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the<br />
WTC, it was not the banking system that required a $300 billion monetary infusion. The<br />
$300 billion was required for something else. This report hypothesizes that the delays in<br />
structuring settlements of “fails” were caused by an absence of matching buy/sell records,<br />
because the trade data was actually provided by a program run from a war game<br />
simulation server from within the World Trade Center, and connected to the trading<br />
system. The fraudulent bonds were put up for a settlement that was not forthcoming, and<br />
in the settlement process at the Fed, were replaced with new Federal Reserve securities.<br />
Hence, the bogus bonds were replaced with legitimate U.S. debt, and the $240 Billion in<br />
bogus bonds were written off the books as the Fed’s reduction in the temporary boost in<br />
M3 required to “prevent a crisis.”<br />
The only conclusion one could reach is that if there were $240 billion in illegal securities<br />
in circulation, all due at once, one could not imagine a more opportune moment to make<br />
those securities disappear than the suspension of all regulations and the perceived<br />
justification to increase the monetary supply by at least twice that amount. The<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 198
coincidence of these two situations happening at the same time, by accident, can only be<br />
described as highly improbable. This report hypothesizes that once it was determined to<br />
support the destruction of the World Trade Center to derail investigations into Swiss and<br />
German gold accounts, the actual attack was postponed and timed to coincide with the<br />
need to resolve the fraudulent bond deal. Given that the same international banking<br />
cartel was involved in all the crimes mentioned, and that the Bush covert operations of<br />
1991 stood as the source of all of them, it probably matters little if one or more of these<br />
crimes provided the key motivation.<br />
8.2 The Naval Intelligence Threat<br />
There are a number of public sources of information that suggest that the Office of Naval<br />
Intelligence (ONI) represented a threat to the Bush administration, and the alleged<br />
Greenspan/Bush $240 Billion security fraud. The threat manifested itself in a number of<br />
different manners, through a number of individuals – suggesting that the friction between<br />
the Bush organization and the Office of Naval Intelligence was more than personal, it<br />
was institutional. Al Martin, former ONI operative testified to this friction:<br />
"The ONI already had a deep existing covert illegal structure. They had a mechanism before the CIA<br />
even existed. They had contacts in foreign intelligence services and in foreign governments that the<br />
CIA never could have hoped to obtain."<br />
"Also ONI controlled its own assets, which the CIA had to build from scratch later on. The CIA can't<br />
control any of its own assets domestically because it's against the law for it to do so, thus the ONI is<br />
obviously in a superior position. For instance, you don't see an airfield that says 'Owned by the CIA' on<br />
it in the United States. The ONI doesnt have any such restrictions because it's part of the US Navy."<br />
"ONI is where the real deep control is. It's where the real deep secrets are kept. That was what ONI<br />
always did the best. Keeping secrets. Accumulating secrets. Warehousing secrets for the purposes of<br />
control." When I asked him 'what secrets?' he (Al Martin) replied, "One thing I can tell you is the<br />
ONI was instrumental in dethroning former Mexican President Louis Portillo. Portillo got very friendly<br />
with George Bush and the CIA, and ONI had never alligned with the Bush faction. I know what people<br />
think, but that's not true. From what I can tell, it has never been alligned, but has always been hostile to<br />
that Eastern Country Club Bush Cabal and their friends in the CIA. The Bill Casey faction is the<br />
George Bush-Allen Dulles Faction." [The Man Who Knows Too Much , An Interview with Al Martin,<br />
author of "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider," Uri Dowbenko]<br />
Because of that, it is speculated that the entire ONI needed to be seriously disrupted. The<br />
attack of Flight 77 did just that, taking out not only the Navy Command Center, but a<br />
small Navy intelligence group as well.<br />
“When hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at more than 500 mph, slamming<br />
through concrete and corridors, spewing fuel and fire, it destroyed much of the Navy Command<br />
Center. It smashed directly into the offices of the CNO-IP. …Even in the acronym-happy Pentagon,<br />
the term CNO-IP is obscure. It stands for Chief of Naval Operations Intelligence Plot. Its small,<br />
typically young staff keeps a round-the-clock watch on geopolitical developments and military<br />
movements<br />
Brilliant futures were forged in the CNO-IP. Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, later deputy CIA director,<br />
served there; so did Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.). Radi, who stood the Intelligence Plot watch in his<br />
twenties, later moved to the White House Situation Room.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 199
In mid-August, …the CNO-IP was moving to renovated offices in the Navy Command Center, on the<br />
first floor of the D-Ring, on the Pentagon's west side.<br />
One hundred twenty-five Pentagon workers were killed that day. Forty-two died in the Navy<br />
Command Center. Seven served in the Intelligence Plot.” [The Last Watch, Richard Leiby,<br />
Washington Post, 1/20/2002]<br />
“As pointed out by Carol Valentine and Dick Eastman, the first floor of the western wedge of the<br />
Pentagon was occupied in part by the office of the "Chief of Naval Operations Intelligence Plot", who<br />
had moved into their new offices (early) and many were killed, as reported by the Washington Post,<br />
1/20/2002 (quoted by Valentine, not independently confirmed by the authors.) Valentine noted that<br />
this Naval Intelligence office was responsible for breaking open the Jonathon Pollard affair, and<br />
Eastman speculated that had they survived, they might have had the responsibility to mount an<br />
independent investigation of all the events of 9-<strong>11</strong> and its associated "intelligence<br />
failures".[anonymous internet blogger]<br />
The agency know as th “Naval Operations Intelligence Plot” was responsible for<br />
production of daily intelligence briefing and other intelligence materials for the Chief of<br />
Naval Operations, Secretary of the Navy, and other senior military and civilian officials,<br />
including the Director of the ONI. ONI was also part of the Command Center. At an<br />
organizational level, it is reported that the ONI was at odds with Bush and his primary<br />
enforcement agencies- the CIA and NSA.<br />
“Tom Heneghen, . . . who claims an intelligence network ranging from Gore to France, made several<br />
stunning claims about 9/<strong>11</strong>: --- According to Heneghen, a missle shield over Washington, DC was<br />
deactivated several weeks before 9/<strong>11</strong>, . . . in preparation for the upcoming 'wargames' that served as<br />
cover for the Bush/Pentagon coup of 9-<strong>11</strong>. The Office of Naval Intelligence, which has never been on<br />
particularly good terms with the NSA, the CIA, or its offshoots, is investigating this angle and emails<br />
on the CyberNet system that can prove this.”[9/<strong>11</strong> Whispers: Washington Defense Shield Deactivated<br />
Due to Wargames? Liberty Think, 1/4/2005]<br />
This general friction between the groups is demonstrated by several examples. At an<br />
individual level, there were several individuals who threatened to expose the Bush<br />
administration ‘shortcomings’ – if not crimes: officers Vreeland, Russbacher, and<br />
Phillport.<br />
The case of Mr. Delmart “Mike Vreeland has been debated and disputed, with serious<br />
allegations of fraud made against him by a “number” of U.S. citizens. These allegations<br />
have been reviewed and set aside by a Canadian court as without merit. The essence of<br />
the story is that Vreeland was apprehended by Canadian authorities on his way back from<br />
Russia to the U.S. Previous to that, Vereeland had been a US agent in Iraq. Vreeland,<br />
while in jail, told Canadian authorities he was with the ONI, and documented - before<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> - that the attack on the WTC would happen. Unfortunately, his reported<br />
ONI ‘handler’ died in the attack on the Pentagon. Vreeland himself has disappeared, and<br />
is assumed to be in hiding, after finally being released.<br />
“Sometime around August <strong>11</strong> or 12, Vreeland wrote a set of notes. They listed a number of potential<br />
terrorist targets including the Sears Towers, World Trade Center, White House, and Pentagon. The<br />
notes also included the phrase, "Let one happen. Stop the rest!!!" He sealed them in an envelope and<br />
handed them to his Canadian jailers.” [Down the rabbit hole with the man who says he tried to warn<br />
the world about 9/<strong>11</strong>, Sander Hicks, Guerilla News Network, Sept. 26, 2002]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 200
“Lt. Vreeland gave clues that his main contact/control was Jack Punches. From the memorial pages:<br />
U.S. Navy Capt. (Ret.) Jack Punches worked in the Pentagon as deputy head, Navy Interagency<br />
Support Branch. Punches was killed in the attack of Flight ”<br />
“I was sent (to Moscow) by the U.S. government and the ONI [Office of Naval Intelligence]. I got my<br />
orders between Sept. 4 and Sept. 7, 2000. Marc Bastien departed for Russia on Sept. 7, 2000. I had<br />
orders to meet him. Bastien was going to work at the Canadian embassy regarding diagrams and<br />
blueprints of a weapons defense system. The U.S. government had a direct influence on his mission.<br />
The name of the defense system is SSST [Stealth Satellite System Terminator]. There are five different<br />
individual and unique defensive and strike capabilities of the system. The only portion that I have<br />
publicly spoken on is one frame regarding actual current orbiting satellites, which are not at this time<br />
owned by the US government. On advice of counsel I cannot discuss the other components.<br />
This one component is a satellite system. Within the confines of the system there are multiple,<br />
deployable space/orbital EMP [Electromagnetic Pulse] missiles that are not aimed at the ground. They<br />
are targeted at everyone else's satellites. These would kill worldwide communications. The satellites of<br />
some countries that are shielded with titanium are protected from these weapons. The protected<br />
countries are Russia and China, but U.S. satellites are vulnerable and Putin has told Bush that the U.S.<br />
missile defense system doesn't work, and that Bush knows it.<br />
The reason why I went to Russia was because I needed to meet with Bastien and another individual<br />
from the Russian Ministry of Defense named Oleg. The purpose was to get the Canadian diplomat who<br />
had made contact with Oleg to get the book of designs out of the ministry's R&D. That was done. We<br />
copied the entire book. Then we took certain documents, and we changed serious portions of the<br />
defense design so the program wouldn't work. They know this now.” [FTW Interview: Delmart "Mike"<br />
Vreeland, What the CIA Doesn't Want You to Know, Michael C. Ruppert, FromTheWilderness.com]<br />
What is generally ignored by most writers is that Vreeland claimed to have documents<br />
(over 100 pages of bank transactions with 6 transactions per page, with one on Aug <strong>11</strong>,<br />
1989 for $100 Billion.) exposing a massive, fraudulent theft of billions of dollars from<br />
the U.S. Treasury. He shared these documents with Michael C. Ruppert, who discusses<br />
them in his report Crossing the Rubicon. What is important to note is that these<br />
transactions start as early as 1989, and the ONI documents were also released to Ruppert<br />
and others by another Navy Intelligence agent. These documents suggest that the ONI<br />
was probably investigating a large money-laundering scheme, as rumored in some of the<br />
press. In reviewing these documents, it becomes clear that for the 18 months covered by<br />
these documents, Robert Hermann (later to become Vice President and the principle tax<br />
strategy architect for Enron, although the ONI documents may be referring to Robert<br />
Hermann of the National Security Agency, who worked extensively in the White House.)<br />
was working with international banking cartels to refinance third world debt in the urgent<br />
need to prevent the collapse of the US banking system. (Michael Bowe and James Dean<br />
provide an excellent overview of this period in their report: “Has the Market Solved the<br />
Sovereign-Debt Crisis?” Princeton Studies in International Finance, No. 83, August<br />
1997.) Working with a strategy labeled “concerted market-based debt relief” Hermann,<br />
Brady, Bush and Greenspan were apparently creating securities ironically named “Exit<br />
Bonds.”<br />
“Exit bonds are new bonds issued at discount in exchange for old debt. Exit bonds, like buybacks, were<br />
rare before Brady, because of similar coordination challenges reinforced by legal clauses in syndicated<br />
loan agreements. Because exit bonds are generally either collaterized or made senior to the reminaing<br />
old debt, they can be exchanged for old debt at a fraction of its value. If the bonds are fully<br />
collateralized, for example, they are as good as cash…” [Michael Bowe and James W Dean, Has the<br />
Market Solved the Sovereign-Debt Crisis?, Princeton Studies in International Finance, No. 83, August<br />
1997]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 201
The public record on the refinancing of Soviet debt is largely undocumented, but there is<br />
no doubt that it was being refinanced, with the secretive or “quiet” process largely under<br />
way in early 1991. Also, the individual reporting the news, and knowledgeable of the<br />
discussions, was aware that the U.S. was doing the financing.<br />
"The Soviet Union is already in a piecemeal debt rescheduling with a series of 'quiet' Western<br />
government 'refinancings' likely this year -- all in the interest of avoiding a more formal and debilitating<br />
Paris Club process," Center Board member Robinson said….Robinson added, "Under present<br />
circumstances, it only makes sense that the appropriate authorities conduct a thorough investigation of<br />
Moscow's banking activities and loan and interbank deposit portfolios before any further Western<br />
taxpayer guaranteed credits are pledged to Moscow." ["Moral Hazard ": Moscow’s Dubious Banking<br />
Operations May Make the BCCI and BNL Affairs Look Like Small Change, Center for Security Policy,<br />
July 23, 1991]<br />
During this global debt-forgiveness/restructuring process, the Bush administration would<br />
have needed to force the Durham Trust to relinquish control of its gold-collateral<br />
Peruvian debt bonds, which is what Durham claims did happen. According to the<br />
Vreeland and ONI documents, during the refinancing process, significant portions of the<br />
collaterized bonds of numerous international financiers “disappeared” for a large number<br />
of months while under control of the Bush Whitehouse, which also fits with Durham’s<br />
claims. Because of the delays in refinancing, a number of foreign countries took the<br />
Whitehouse to court to demand their collateral back. These proceeding were sealed (as<br />
have been 9/<strong>11</strong> lawsuits against the government) from public disclosure for reasons of<br />
‘national security.’ During this same time period, the financial markets experienced one<br />
of their rare “interest rate inversions,” where short term rates provided better yields that<br />
long term rates. Between inversion earnings and interest, investment of the “lost”<br />
collateral would have generated over $300 billion in profits during the period of their<br />
absence. What this report speculates is that two years later, these earnings and lost<br />
collateral would re-emerge as collateral and funding for the re-financing of the<br />
Russian/Soviet debt (private and government), default on which was imminent. This debt<br />
(along with that of Peru, Brazil, Mexico and a dozen other states) had to be refinanced to<br />
prevent the collapse of the American banking system. The cash generated by refinancing<br />
the Soviet debt was withheld from Gorbachev until the coup which ousted him, and only<br />
then was funneled to the Russian Menatep Bank. Menatep Bank, with its relations with<br />
Bank of New York, Nordex and the Riggs National Bank subsidiary Riggs-Valmet,<br />
would be at the core of the plundering of the Russian economy, pumping Russian, Kazak<br />
and other CIS international trade flow through the aforementioned financial conduits.<br />
The Bush administration’s attempts to minimize and ignore the Bank of New York<br />
money-laundering scandal have been documented elsewhere in this report. What is now<br />
suggested is that in attempting to protect the German and Swiss bankers, the Bush<br />
administration was protecting its own family. Jonathon Bush was a key executive director<br />
of Riggs at the time, and its Chairman, Robert L. Allbritton, was a family friend and<br />
major financial backer of the Bush family. The Russian Mafiya connection to Riggs and<br />
the Bush family is explored in Section 8.3.<br />
Vreeland’s story, attacked for its credibility by several writers, is consistent with other<br />
known facts. It is of related note that in 1999, on two occasions the American press and<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 202
Congress expressed concern about Russian EMP capabilities, suggesting that Vreeland’s<br />
claim to be collecting information in Russia about an EMP system has some merit:<br />
“Pentagon intelligence sources tell us that Russia in early April resumed testing a high-altitude weapon<br />
that fires off an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. The EMP bursts are similar to the disruption of<br />
electronics caused by a nuclear blast that can shut down everything from computers to cars. The<br />
Pentagon views the Russian EMP weapon as a serious development that may be part of Moscow's<br />
ongoing anti-satellite weapons development program. U.S. satellites are the Achilles' heel of the U.S.<br />
military's high-technology force used for sending orders to forces around the world as well as<br />
communicating with troops and organizing logistics. A recent test of a ground laser against a U.S.<br />
satellite shocked military leaders by demonstrating how vulnerable U.S. satellites are to disruption.”<br />
[The Washington Times 06/18/1999; pp A5 by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough]<br />
"The PRC is believed to be developing space-based and ground-based anti-satellite laser weapons.<br />
Such weapons would be of exceptional value for the control of space and information. The Select<br />
Committee judges that the PRC is moving toward the deployment of such weapons." "Based on the<br />
significant level of PRC-Russian cooperation on weapons development, it is possible that the PRC will<br />
be able to use nuclear reactors to pump lasers with pulse energies high enough to destroy satellites."<br />
"In addition, Russian cooperation could help the PRC to develop an advanced radar system using lasers<br />
to track and image satellites." [The Cox <strong>Report</strong>, House Select Committee on U.S. National Security<br />
and Military/Commercial Concerns with the P.R.C., Christopher Cox, Chairman, January 3, 1999]<br />
When asked about how he learned of the pending attack on the World Trade Center,<br />
Vreeland indicated he learned of the attack from notes from a US agent found in a<br />
document “sent to Vladimir Putin by K. Hussein, Saddam Hussein's son.”<br />
“When did you first learn details of the attacks that were to happen on Sept. <strong>11</strong>? In the first week of<br />
December 2000.<br />
How did you learn of the details? One document was written in English by a U.S. agent, who had<br />
picked up a copy of a document that had been sent to V. Putin by K. Hussein, Saddam Hussein's son.<br />
This is what the translation of the doc indicates. The Iraqis knew in June 2000 that I was coming. I<br />
didn't get my orders until August. The letter said that Bastien and Vreeland would be dealt with "in a<br />
manner suitable to us." The letter specifically stated on page two, "Our American official guarantees<br />
this." [FTW Interview: Delmart "Mike" Vreeland,What the CIA Doesn't Want You to Know, Michael<br />
C. Ruppert, FromTheWilderness.com]<br />
It would be appropriate to assume that the son referenced (“K”) is actually Qusay who<br />
ran the Iraqi secret service. Qusay, as the official leader of the Iraqi military and<br />
intelligence was known to be engaged in extensive relations with the Syrians and the<br />
Syrian intelligence. It will be documented elsewhere in this report that that Syrian<br />
Intelligence had long been aware of the plans for the attack on the World Trade Center,<br />
and had actually been linked to the financing of Mohammed Atta while he was in<br />
Germany, through the former head of Syrian Intelligence. It would not be unexpected to<br />
have Qusay being informed of the attack by the Syrian intelligence, who were and still<br />
are playing both sides of the American-Iraq conflict.<br />
In providing the 100 pages of documents, Vreeland was demonstrating knowledge of an<br />
international re-financing process that has remained extensively “cloaked” from the<br />
public press, and exposed to several others by reported ONI officers. (One might suspect<br />
that a global event as momentous as refinancing several trillion in world debt would have<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 203
een authoritatively studied in economic and business journals, and at least commented<br />
on in the media news. The event happened, but there is no reported news of it!)<br />
There is nothing in his story to indicate that Vreeland is lying, and several clues in his<br />
story which suggest it to be true. It also suggests there was another agent in US<br />
intelligence that knew of the attack, and that Vreeland was sent to collect the evidence to<br />
make sure it didn’t see the light of day. In doing so, his Canadian colleague in the<br />
operation was ‘suicided’ shortly after Vreeland’s mission was completed.<br />
The allegations of Vreeland’s fraud and misconduct which are being used to discredit<br />
him are “well documented claims” but before the validity of Vreeland’s case is<br />
discounted, the reader should bear in mind the example of U.S. Navy Captain Gunther<br />
Russbacher. Russbacher is the Navy pilot who came forth and testified to Congress that<br />
George Bush Sr. did indeed go to Paris as alleged in the October Surprise/Iran-Contra<br />
plot.<br />
“In 1968, he was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence with a permanent commission…. In<br />
October 1980, he was command pilot for the aircraft used allegedly to fly George Bush to Paris.From<br />
March to July 1982.… His group met with Mossad (Israeli intelligence) people in Alicante for the final<br />
delivery of weapons to Iran. In March 1985, he was incarcerated at Segoville, TX for an escape from<br />
federal conviction resulting from 1973 where he was caught with numerous bags of bearer bonds while<br />
dressed as a U.S. Air Force major.” [Who Is this Man Who Claims He Flew Bush to Paris, Harry V.<br />
Martin , Napa Sentinel, 1991 ]<br />
Subsequent to their turning on the Bush presidents, both Vreeland and Russbacher found<br />
themselves incarcerated for numerous crimes which they and their lawyers claimed were<br />
trumped up fabrications. The point to be made is that Vreeland’s claims, if true, can only<br />
be discounted by the U.S. Government if he is locked away and made to be a fraud, just<br />
as was done with Russbacher. (It is of some note that the Canadian legal system finally<br />
released Vreeland, suggesting the claims of fraud lacked credibility.) The coincidence<br />
here is that this generally happens to anyone who turns on the Bush administration. This<br />
pattern of “setting up” and eliminating whistleblowers by the Bush administration is more<br />
thoroughly addressed, with more examples, such as LT Colonel Anthony Shaffer and<br />
four star General Kevin Byrnes in Section 12 of this report.<br />
Another loose cannon in Navy Intelligence turned out to be Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, a<br />
22 year active duty serviceman who stepped forward and brought the Able-Danger<br />
Operation to light, after the 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> ignored testimony from several individuals<br />
of this group’s awareness of Mohammed Atta as a known terrorist operating in the US a<br />
year before 9/<strong>11</strong>.<br />
“Navy Capt. Scott J. Phillpott, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who managed the program for the<br />
Pentagon's Special Operations Command, confirmed "Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-<br />
February of 2000."[An Incomplete Investigation: Why Did the 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> Ignore `Able<br />
Danger'?, Louis Freeh, Wall Street Journal., November 17, 2005]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 204
More important than loose cannons like Vreeland, Russbacher, and Phillport, someone in<br />
ONI was leaking the story of the Brady (Durham) Bonds to the public, and conducting its<br />
own money-laundering investigation:<br />
“Sioux City, Iowa -- July 25, 2005 TomFlocco.com -- According to leaked documents from an<br />
intelligence file obtained through a military source in the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), on or<br />
about <strong>September</strong> 12, 1991 non-performing and unauthorized gold-backed debt instruments were used<br />
to purchase ten-year "Brady" bonds. The bonds in turn were illegally employed as collateral to borrow<br />
$240 billion--120 in Japanese Yen and 120 in Deutsch Marks--exchanged for U.S. currency under false<br />
pretenses; or counterfeit and unlawful conversion of collateral against which an unlimited amount of<br />
money could be created in derivatives and debt instruments.<br />
Moreover, Durham alleges from conversations before her husband’s murder, that any 10-year Brady<br />
bond payoff for notes due on 9-12-2001 would have led to additional evidence of trillions in stolen<br />
funds from the U.S. Treasury and the identity of the perpetrators--providing an important reason to<br />
take out Cantor-Fitzgerald offices in the North Tower and a Pentagon ONI file section on <strong>September</strong><br />
<strong>11</strong>. Besides the intelligence file leaked to Durham, other documents were obtained by TomFlocco.com<br />
from whistleblower Stewart Webb’s intelligence sources.<br />
Durham’s documents were delivered to the door of her home in February, 2000 by a uniformed Naval<br />
intelligence officer who told her, "the officer who asked me to bring these documents to you said you<br />
will know what to do with them," whereupon he quickly turned and left before she could see his<br />
uniform ID name tag.<br />
The same documents from the leaked file were separately compared and authenticated by another<br />
unnamed (for personal safety reasons) intelligence officer who provided identical copies to<br />
Independent Presidential Candidate Karl Schwarz, who said that agent did not know the identity of the<br />
original Naval intelligence officer who passed the intelligence file through V. K. Durham to<br />
TomFlocco.com….<br />
ONI officials themselves--some of whom were probing the fraudulent 10-year debt instruments<br />
allegedly held by Cantor-Fitzgerald in the doomed North Tower--also perished along with the<br />
investigation files, all of which were curiously in the path of the 9.<strong>11</strong> Pentagon impact....<br />
Keith Johnson, the Queen’s signatory at Wachovia Bank told her about the Office of Naval Intelligence<br />
being hit at the Pentagon on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>--that there had been an ongoing investigation of money<br />
laundering.” [Cash payoffs, bonds and murder linked to White House 9/<strong>11</strong> finance Documents point to<br />
attack on America by White House crime families, Tom Flocco, tomflocco.com., <strong>September</strong> 4, 2005]<br />
In the public discussion of the Brady (Durham) Bonds, there has been no attempt to<br />
ascertain the reason why the ONI would be investigating the Brady Bonds. This report<br />
suggests two possible reasons why ONI could be involved in an investigation: 1) That<br />
officials in ONI determined that the maturity of the bonds represented a threat to the<br />
security of the U.S., (the level of involvement of various Intelligence operations in<br />
economic security has already been shown); and 2) the Bonds were used to invest in<br />
Russian defense companies to make their technology available to the U.S. However, the<br />
privatization of these defense firms actually put them in the control of the Russian<br />
Mafiya, which allowed the weapons to continue to be used against the U.S. by selling<br />
them to drug cartel czars, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, China and anyone else for that matter<br />
who could afford them.<br />
A final note, in the small world of all-to-many coincidences: the Office of Naval<br />
Intelligence received a new General Counsel 90 days prior to its destruction. It was an<br />
appointment by the Bush administration from the Greenberg Traurig law firm. This was<br />
Bush’s attempt to put a member of the Bush political network in control of a potentially<br />
loose cannon. (Rest assured that lawyers from firms as successful as Greenberg Traurig<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 205
do not view appointments to government agencies as income enhancing ‘rewards.’) The<br />
Greenberg Traurig law firm has played key roles in various aspects of the Bush agenda<br />
on five prior occasions:<br />
“[1] represented President Bush in the Bush-Gore 2000 Florida election vote recount, --- [2] personally<br />
represents Governor Jeb Bush, --- [3] hired son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on election<br />
day 2000--after which Justice Scalia cast one of the 5 to 4 deciding votes which placed Bush in<br />
presidency, --- [4] Miami-headquartered firm partially funded/sponsored delegation to Israel by House-<br />
Senate Armed Services Committee members and government contractors to witness and be briefed on<br />
interrogation resistance procedures and torture techniques....One of lobbyists joining them to Israel<br />
included Jack London, CEO, CACI Int'l Inc., firm implicated in outsourced Iraqi torture at Abu Ghraib<br />
prison, --- [5] firm has prominent administrative positions in Massachusetts 9/<strong>11</strong> Fund which also<br />
involves Bush family banking house Brown Brothers Harriman, --- [6] one appointed as General<br />
Counsel of the Department of the Navy and its Office of Naval Intelligence just 90 days before the<br />
attacks.” [IN THE 9-<strong>11</strong> NETWORK]<br />
A pro-Bush General Counsel would be able to control an amazing amount of information<br />
released by ONI, and provide an instant counter-weight to years of Naval tradition and<br />
relationships that has made the Navy a force of the highest integrity.<br />
8.3 Collapse of the Soviet Economy and the Brady/Durham Bonds<br />
As the story of the Brady Bonds unfolds, there is an unsettling re-occurrence of<br />
references to Russia.<br />
• Russia is identified in the released ONI documents as the recipient of the funds.<br />
• Russia’s secret service was predicting a collapse of the U.S. financial system in<br />
August of 2001, a timing commensurate with the maturity of the fraudulent bonds.<br />
• Vreeland was returning from Russia with knowledge of the 9/<strong>11</strong> attack.<br />
• In other sections of this report, the Russian Mafiya is constantly identified as having a<br />
presence in 9/<strong>11</strong> activities via their significant presence in the Israeli Mossad.<br />
• The Russian Mafiya is shown with a connection to the last person that saw Nick Berg.<br />
• The Russian Mafiya is reported to be the last group that had contact with the<br />
individual that flew a plane into the Pirelli Building in Milan, in an event viewed as<br />
all-too-similar to the WTC tragedy. (See Appendix B).<br />
• The Russian Mafiya is noted to have threatened to use their American connections to<br />
end the investigation into Nazarbayev’s illegal activites.<br />
There are over 100 counties on this planet that could be referenced as the source of these<br />
incidents, but there is a persistent reoccurrence of “Russians” in the reports of activities<br />
related to the events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001. This anomaly warranted an exploration and<br />
discussion of “Russia” in general and specific terms.<br />
8.4 Riggs Bank as an Agent for the Collapse of the Soviet Union<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 206
What the record shows is that the $240 Billion in Durham/Brady Bonds – assuming the<br />
multiple reports of their existence to be accurate – did not originally show up in the<br />
American money market, but were most likely used to re-finance private and government<br />
Russian debt and buy into key industries.<br />
It is generally thought that prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet debt never<br />
exceeded $70 billion, and hence the idea that $240 billion in Brady bonds was required<br />
has been a reason for ignoring Durham’s claims. More recent research however by Pierre<br />
Verluise, indicates this debt was actually more in the range of $200 billion.<br />
“… Between 1985 and 1991, Soviet debt tripled from $22.5 billion to $70 billion. Calculating theses<br />
figures is an extremely difficult task (one which Mr. Verluise has accomplished admirably for the<br />
period under study), but the total debt is now estimated at between $80 billion and $ 200 billion.”<br />
[The New Russian Loan, by Pierre Verluise, "The New Russian Loan", review by John Laughland, in<br />
The Wall Street Journal Europe, April 26 - 27, 1996]<br />
Verluise, a French researcher, as well as the Centerfor Security Policy points out that the<br />
refinancing actually began in 1991<br />
“Between 1991 and 1994, according to Mr. Verluise’s sources, successive rescheduling simply led to<br />
direct subsidy of Russia by the West.” [The New Russian Loan, by Pierre Verluise, "The New Russian<br />
Loan", review by John Laughland, in The Wall Street Journal Europe, April 26 - 27, 1996]<br />
This report speculates that the cash generated by refinancing that debt was with-held<br />
from Gorbachev and the Soviet system, thus helping to precipitate its collapse – a<br />
collapse initiated by US covert financial operations set in motion by George HW Bush,<br />
and executed by Lee Wanta. Upon the collapse of the Soviet system, the cash was<br />
released to Yeltsin, who then pushed it into Bank Menatep. Menatep was controlled by<br />
Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Menatep, Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky, Abramovich,<br />
Konanykhine and the Yeltsin family of soon-to-be oligarchs, were being advised by the<br />
Valmet Group, a subsidiary of the Riggs Bank which is widely recongnized as a CIA<br />
operation controlled by the Bush ‘family.’<br />
“… (the ) Valmet Group was part of an extensive network that spread from Russia to the secretive<br />
financial system of Dubai, then on to Africa, London and the United States. Wrapped up in the<br />
network was not only Khodorkovsky's Menatep, but the founders of Rossiisky Kredit and Stephen<br />
Curtis, a former Dubai-based lawyer who via Samuelson became a consultant to Berezovsky and<br />
Khodorkovsky, setting up a legal framework for their offshore transactions. … The company's<br />
reputation was in tatters following a series of scandals in the late 1990s in which it was alleged to have<br />
been part of an extensive money-laundering network involving the Bank of New York and<br />
Menatep…” [Biography Of Mikhail Khodorkovsky from The Moscow Times, Catherine Belton, The<br />
Moscow Times, May 17, 2005]<br />
“…Valmet, a Geneva-based global trust business… agreed in early 1989 to advise Khodorkovsky's<br />
group of young businessmen. Valmet later held the key to the Group Menatep fortune, holding shares<br />
via nominee ownership schemes and organizing the transfer of vast sums of money via its network.”<br />
[Biography Of Mikhail Khodorkovsky from The Moscow Times, Catherine Belton, The Moscow<br />
Times, May 16, 2005]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 207
“…Valmet was also one of the first companies that US and Swiss investigators looked at during the<br />
Bank of New York money laundering scandal that erupted in August 1999 after more than $7bn in<br />
suspect Russian funds was found to have been funnelled through the venerable bank. It didn't help that<br />
Valmet had been moving the funds alleged to have been looted from Avisma though accounts at the<br />
bank.” [Truth and Beauty... (and Russian Finance) The Summer of our Discontent, Eric Krause, July<br />
22, 2004]<br />
The documentation that shows the relationship of Riggs to Valmet suggests it was more<br />
than just an “investment” by Riggs, but rather a partnership vehicle between Riggs and<br />
Menatep, between the Bush family and the Yeltsin family, which provided guidance, a<br />
foundation for tax evasion, and special favors such as visas to the U.S. In the beginning,<br />
Riggs had controlling interest. Valmet, as a Riggs “investment,” would have been under<br />
the control of Jonathon Bush, brother of George Bush Sr. Valmet also would have been<br />
under the influence of J. Carter Beese, Vice Chairman and Director of Riggs, who was an<br />
executive at Alex Brown, where A.B. Krongard (Executive Director of the CIA mentored<br />
him during the period of the Federal Reserve cover-up.)<br />
“Press reports have also noted that George W. Bush's uncle, Jonathan Bush, heads a subsidiary of the<br />
bank. However, other significant ties between the Bush administration, federal banking regulators, and<br />
Riggs officials have never been publicly disclosed Riggs & Co. Vice Chairman and Director J. Carter<br />
Beese is a close associate of George W. Bush and the Bush family. He was a Bush Pioneer in 2000 and<br />
a leading donor to the Bush Florida recount effort. He holds a presidential appointment and has served<br />
as a confidential advisor to George W. Bush on the nomination of high-level regulators at the<br />
Securities and Exchange <strong>Commission</strong>. In 1992, following more than a decade of service to the Bush<br />
family's political endeavors, George H. W. Bush appointed Beese to the post of SEC <strong>Commission</strong>er.<br />
Beese also helped to found the Carlyle Group, a conglomerate with historical ties to the bin Laden<br />
family and George H. W. Bush. While serving as an executive at Alex. Brown, Beese was mentored<br />
closely by A. B. Krongard, appointed by George W. Bush as Executive Director of the CIA, the third<br />
highest-ranking position at the Agency.” [New Evidence in the Riggs Case: The Bush<br />
Administration's Links to the "Bank of Presidents"A Public Accountability Initiative <strong>Report</strong>,<br />
10/15/2004]<br />
Riggs bought controlling interest of Valmet in 1988 and immediately began business<br />
contacts with Russian KGB operatives Aleksey (aka Alexei) Kondaurov and Fillipp (aka<br />
Phillip) Bobkov. (Kondaurov was also a sponsor of Col. Anton Surikov, who would later<br />
help found Farwest, which partnered with Diligence and Halliburton.) Through Valmet,<br />
Riggs engaged with the Russians and KGB as their “consultant” in 1989, and helped<br />
them set up Bank Menatep. This was during the same time period that the Russian debt<br />
was entering into the refinancing process.<br />
“Until 1994, Riggs National Bank in Washington owned 51 percent of Valmet Group, which operates<br />
through a chain of corporate entities in the Dutch Antilles, Switzerland and elsewhere ….” [The Isle of<br />
Man as an Enclave of Intrigue,Alan Cowell and Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times,<strong>September</strong> 24,<br />
1999]<br />
“But even though Riggs' stake was reduced in 1994 when the increasingly powerful Menatep bought a<br />
20 percent share, it retained a 5 percent stake.” [The Friends and Foes of a Rising Oilman, Catherine<br />
Belton, Moscow Times, May 27, 2005]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 208
“Until 1998, Riggs owned a share of Valmet, an Isle of Man operation that set up shell companies and<br />
accounts to hide and launder money for companies controlled by the oil mogul Mikhail Khodorkovsky,<br />
now in a Russian jail….”[Profit Laundering and Tax Evasion, Lucy Komisar, Dissent, Spring 2005]<br />
“Riggs Bank had been around for more than 160 years. It was known as the "bank of presidents"<br />
served 21 first families over the years and financed the purchase of Alaska. Since 1981 it was owned<br />
by the Texan Joe L. Allbritton and his family. Allbritton is close to the Bush family and has<br />
contributed (along with Riggs' client Saudi Prince Bandar) over $100,000 to the Bush Presidential<br />
Library. (And sshhhh!; President George Bush's uncle, Jonathan Bush, was the CEO of Riggs Bank's<br />
investment arm).”<br />
It is reported that Riggs-Valmet offered US citizenship to its clients, and that its Rusian<br />
criminal clients did indeed receive US citizenship.<br />
“Riggs Valmet announced in 1991 it was getting into the business of arranging for wealthy people to<br />
obtain U.S. citizenship by making large investments in the U.S.” [Joe L. Allbritton, the Riggs<br />
Chairman Wanted Washington & International Clout….” 'Bank of Presidents' Stumbles’ Glenn R<br />
Simpson, Wall Street Journal, Apr 10, 2004,]<br />
One of Riggs key clients –Alexander Knonaykhine – was apparently a beneficiary of this<br />
program,<br />
“The complaint was filed with Attorney General Valentin Roschacher in Bern; the Swiss anti-money<br />
laundering law allows such private actions….The complaint alleges that Khodorkovsky, Lebedev, and<br />
Golubovich are or were owners in Switzerland of the Swiss companies Menatep SA, Freiburg,<br />
Menatep Finances SA, Geneva and Valmet SA, Geneva. (insert: also known as Riggs-Valmet, SA)It<br />
claims that since its creation, “the Bank Menatep SA has been mixed with the affairs of members of<br />
the Russian oligarchy and criminal organizations, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexander<br />
Konanykhine. (Konanykhine got asylum in the U.S. in 1999, was ordered deported last fall to face<br />
charges in Russia, then had the order stayed and will have a new asylim hearing. American and<br />
Russian law enforcement officials believe he was in charge of moving billions of dollars out of Russia<br />
for the KGB; Konanykhin denies it.) It is also related to another mafia figure, Semyon Mogilvich,<br />
called the godfather of organized crime in Russia.” [Khodorkovsky's High Stakes Gamble, Catherine<br />
Belton, The Moscow Times, May 16, 2005]<br />
The records shows that Riggs-Valmet – and Konanykhine – were assisted in this effort to<br />
procure access to the U.S. by a company run by George Bush’s former Chief of Staff.<br />
“Concurrently, I was a business partner of the late U.S. Attorney John M. Mitchell, Chairman of<br />
Global Research International, and a principal in the firm of Murphy and Associates, Inc., founded by<br />
Admiral Daniel J. Murphy, U.S. Navy Retired and former Chief of Staff to then-Vice President Bush.<br />
… This project was brought to me by Carter Cornick, Eugene Propper and Jonathan Ginsberg of the<br />
Washington, DC. based law firm of Ginsberg, Feldman and Bress. Cornick, Propper and Ginsberg<br />
wanted my help in assisting them in accessing officials who could facilitate a favorable negotiation<br />
climate for the establishment of a bank and expedite the procurement of the passports.” [Statement of<br />
Karon von Gerhke-Thompson, Vice President, First Columbia Company, Inc.]<br />
Note: all traces of Karon Von Gerhke-Thompson and First Columbia Company had<br />
disappeard by 2004, according to Alan Block and Constance Weaver. (All Is Clouded<br />
By Desire: Global Banking, Money Laundering and International Organized Crime,<br />
2004, p134.)<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 209
More important than demonstrating the ‘partnership’ between the Bush organization and<br />
the Russian crime organization, the Riggs-Valmet/Konanykhine affair demonstrates that<br />
the Bush organization actively attempted to ‘bury’ and hide the Russian moneylaundering<br />
scheme on multiple occasions.<br />
Miss Gerhke-Thompson, upon learning Konanykhine’s intent, went to the CIA and<br />
volunteered to report his money-laundering activities. Her efforts to voluntarily report the<br />
activities of Khonankhine were brought to an abrupt end when she was “outed” to the<br />
KGB as a U.S. operative by double-agent Aldrich Ames. Khonankhine “fired” Miss<br />
Gerhke-Thompson upon being informed by the KGB that she was feeding information to<br />
the CIA.<br />
“The operation was abruptly ended in <strong>September</strong> of 1993 when Konanykhine telephoned his<br />
Washington associate Elena Cidorchuk-Heinz-Volevok from Turkey to instruct her to terminate the<br />
contract with First Columbia Company, Inc., and to cut off all further communications with us. She<br />
cited Konanykhine's decision to terminate the contract was based on his belief that I was a phoney.<br />
In April of 1994, I was advised by two CIA intelligence officers that the operation had been<br />
compromised by convicted spy Aldrich Ames. Mr. V corroborated that I had been compromised on the<br />
operation. He personally had routed the traffic on the operation to Ames who was responsible for<br />
monitoring money laundering operations at the CNC—the CIA's Counter Narcotics Center. An FBI<br />
report submitted to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed that Ames and<br />
Konanykhine were in Turkey in <strong>September</strong> of 1993 at the same time, in the same location, and at the<br />
precise time that Konanykhine telephoned his assistant from Turkey to terminate the contract with First<br />
Columbia Company, Inc.” [Statement of Karon von Gerhke-Thompson, Vice President, First<br />
Columbia Company, Inc.]<br />
The matter might have ended there, but in a subsequent report of the damage done to the<br />
US intelligence operations by Ames, the CIA illegally excluded from its report to the<br />
Congressional Oversight Committees (as mandated under the National Security Act of<br />
1947) any mention of Miss Gerhke-Thompson’s activities.<br />
“The failure of the CIA's money-laundering investigation, she said, was the only operation<br />
compromised by Ames that was not reported to Congress as required by US law.” [White House under<br />
fire for 'covering up' Russian corruption, Julian Borger, The Guardian (UK), <strong>September</strong> 23, 1999]<br />
When Miss Gerhke-Thompson discovered that the CIA had omitted her operation from<br />
its damage assessment, she directly reported it to Congress, against great political<br />
pressure.<br />
“Since my involvement with the Central Intelligence Agency and my efforts to bring the issues of<br />
Russian money laundering operations to the attention of appropriate oversight committees, Washington<br />
has been ever a city at my throat. And my career has been dormant.” [Statement of Karon von Gerhke-<br />
Thompson, Vice President, First Columbia Company, Inc.]<br />
At this point of the inquiry, the appropriate question might be posed: why did Ames use<br />
the KGB to “protect” Konanykhine? If Ames’ Soviet handlers were protecting<br />
Konanykhine, who was clearly and publicly aligned at this time with George Bush, it<br />
suggests that Ames, his Soviet handlers, and Konanykhine were all part of larger Bush<br />
plan. It is speculated that Bush tried to keep his operation quiet by suppressing the<br />
Gerhke-Thompson incident during congressional hearings, and had pressure put on her to<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 210
emain quiet. If Ames was exposed in the congressional hearings and press as protecting<br />
a pro-Bush oligarch, that alliance would expose all his other “revelations” of American<br />
agents as an effort to eliminate Soviet patriots rather than American agents. Could it be<br />
that rather than exposing pro-American KGB agents who were then executed, Ames was<br />
actually setting up for slaughter KGB agents that posed a risk to the Bush strategy? There<br />
is additional information about Ames that suggests that while he posed as a Soviet<br />
“mole” and was convicted as such, he was actually part of a larger operation to eliminate<br />
a faction of the KGB that Bush and his rogue KGB colleagues needed out of the way.<br />
This theory of rogue KGB operatives aligned with Bush certainly helps explain the large<br />
number of ex-KGB agents that were immensley rewarded for their defection from the<br />
Soviet Union, and Konanykhine’s need for over 100 visas, part of a larger 300 visa<br />
requirement:<br />
“When Frank (Carlucci ) and Dick (Armitage) left the Government, they immediately went to Moscow<br />
and opened up an office of the Blackstone Investment Group. Although it was supposed to be an<br />
investment office, it was essentially a conduit for money coming out of Washington to purchase KGB<br />
documents. In 1991, an enormous sale from the KGB files was consummated for $36 million. It<br />
always struck me as somewhat humorous that the sheer volume of documents purchased was so large<br />
that it took the entire cargo bay of a Southern Air Transport C-130, which was used to fly the stuff out<br />
of Moscow.<br />
The purchased documents were a real grab bag of what would have been very politically damaging<br />
documents, especially for Republicans in the United States - had they ever been made public. . . .<br />
It's interesting to note that the only general in the KGB who objected to the sale (now chief of the<br />
North American Desk) was the very loyal and patriotic General Alexander Karpov.<br />
Included in the deal, by the way, was a package (let's call it a travel package) wherein over 300 KGB<br />
generals and colonels were allowed to enter the United States and were provided with very<br />
comfortable homes, mostly in northern Virginia. Most KGB generals now get a check for $12,000 a<br />
month from the Agency. KGB colonels get $8,000 a month plus a panoply of favors. Most of these<br />
guys are now in the import-export business. The have offices in and around McLean, Virginia. It's also<br />
interesting to note that four former KGB generals have import-export offices in the same building in<br />
McLean where Oliver North has his office.“ [From The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra<br />
Insider, by Al Martin]<br />
It’s also important to note two other items around Blackstone involvement in this<br />
analysis: 1) Blackstone has been accused by a former ONI operative of being involved in<br />
the theft of Russian assets, and profiteering from their involvement in Russia, and 2)<br />
Blackstone was the financial backer for Larry Silverstein’s purchase of Building 7 of the<br />
WTC six weeks before the attack.<br />
“Because of Blackstone's involvement in many high-level high-profile frauds like the Russian Bailout and<br />
the Mexican Bailout, one could assume that the company itself was a CIA "cut-out," an actual propretary of<br />
the Agency. "No, it's not," says Martin. "They're just sympathizers. They're an asset of the agency. They're<br />
not a cut-out. They're just one of the legion of financial companies, mostly domiciled in Washington or<br />
northern Virginia, which the CIA turns to, on occasion, to launder money, or for some other illegal<br />
purpose." [ The Man Who Knows Too Much , An Interview with Al Martin, author of "The Conspirators:<br />
Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider, " Uri Dowbenko]<br />
In explaining how the Russian fraud worked, Al Martin explained how Blackstone<br />
opearte in Mexico and seemingly in Russia:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 2<strong>11</strong>
…. You would buy essentially worthless Mexican bonds, and you could give a Mexican company in a file<br />
drawer a face lift, and then you could get Brady Bonds in exchange for them, which were backed by the US<br />
Government." "Or, to back those up, to securitize essentially worthless Mexican corporate securities -- you<br />
could take a security that was essentially worth two or three cents on the dollar and make it suddenly worth<br />
thirty or forty cents on the dollar in the marketplace. The only thing Brady Bonds are is a collateral<br />
guarantee." "A Brady Bond is essentially a strip-down, what's called a strip or a stripped down US<br />
Treasury bond that essentially guarantees the ultimate mature capital value of a note. It does not however<br />
guarantee the interest of that note. It only guarantees the return of capital.” [ The Man Who Knows Too<br />
Much , An Interview with Al Martin, author of "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider, " Uri<br />
Dowbenko]<br />
Maybe the most puzzling and intriguing aspect of this attempted cover-up of Riggs<br />
involvement in money-laundering is the possibility that this normal CIA operation (using<br />
Gerhke-Thompson) was shut-down by Aldrich Ames who was a member of a rogue CIA<br />
operation, thus making Ames a “false” double agent. This suggests Ames was not a mole<br />
at all, but rather instructed by a ‘hidden’ superior to provide specific information to the<br />
Soviets. The official damage assessment report on Ames shows that he was clearly<br />
“protected” for years, receiving promotions his superiors thought were unwarranted,<br />
having investigations into his life-style and income delayed on multiple occasions by reassigning<br />
investigators to other projects, omissions in the investigation of his bank<br />
accounts, and disregarding other bank reports that Ames was depositing large sums of<br />
cash. While the on-and-off internal investigation which lasted four years went through<br />
only one of his bank’s records, it conveniently ignored his accounts in two other banks:<br />
the Riggs National Bank, and the Dominion Bank of Virginia, which later became the<br />
First Union National Bank of Virginia. Domion’s major bank executive would<br />
subsequently move to Riggs, and become Vice President of Administration at Riggs.<br />
Finally, it might be mentioned that one of the agents responsible for the damage<br />
assessment – Jack Armstrong - was murdered in Iraq by a group linked to the people<br />
Ames was protecting (See Section 3). If one looks hard enough, there is substantial<br />
reason to believe that Ames was operating under the direct instruction of George HW<br />
Bush, and as one of his last acts as a mole, prevented the exposure of Bush’s rogue<br />
Riggs-Valmet operation to the rest of the CIA. There is no doubt that Riggs-Valmet had<br />
set up a wide net of partnerships with elements of the KGB. The question is: did Ames<br />
really out US agents to the KGB, or was he really damaging hard-line KGB under a<br />
pretense they were double agents.<br />
A second take on the Karon von Gerhke-Thompson also suggests there were two CIAs. If<br />
Khonankhine was working with quasi-official U.S./Bush administration channels, why<br />
was it that his activities needed to be shielded from the CIA? One part of the Bush/CIA<br />
network was working with working with Khonankhine and the Yeltsin family, while<br />
another faction of the CIA was unaware of this alliance. When the “non-Bush” faction of<br />
the CIA discovered the Russian activity, the non-Bush operation was shut down by the<br />
Bush/Russian alignment faction in the CIA, working through Ames. The entire episode<br />
was shielded from congressional oversight by CIA management, until an indignant<br />
citizen (Gerhke-Thompson) took the matter directly to Congress.<br />
The outake of this information is that the Valmet-Riggs operation was ‘favored’ and<br />
‘protected’ by elements of the Bush network. The Russian/Israeli Mafiya was directed to<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 212
a company owned by Bush's former chief-of-staff for passport priveleges. When a<br />
patriotic citizen took the truth to the CIA, the operation was halted by a rogue CIA<br />
operation aligned with elements of the KGB. The existence of the investigation into<br />
Riggs-Valmet was then illegally covered-up by the CIA in their report to Congress, and<br />
the citizen’s efforts to bring this to the attention of Congress were harshly discouraged.<br />
One might conclude – just by the protection received – that the Riggs-<br />
Valmet/Menatep/Bank of New York money laundering operation was being treated as a<br />
“CIA” national security operation. There is more information that suggests Riggs-<br />
Valmet was in part, an intelligence operation.<br />
Most importantly, in Novemebr, 1898 Alton G Keel Jr left the Whitehouse to take a<br />
position in the international banking group of Riggs Bank and worked directly with<br />
Valmet’s Christian Michel. Keel had worked for Admiral John Poindexter, of the<br />
Iran/Contra scandal as Acting Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security<br />
Affairs, and later became Director of National Security Council. By 1992, he had left<br />
Riggs and subsequently worked for Kissinger Associates and became CEO and founding<br />
partner to Carlyle International. Keel left the operation in December 1991.<br />
It is also disclosed that Valmet was funded by contracts from the World Bank (now<br />
managed by Paul Wolfowitz, leading PNAC member and neo-conservative) to conduct<br />
what might be considered economic espionage: the touring and documentation of Russian<br />
manufacturing operations under the guise of “audits.”<br />
“As the government prepared to sell off part of its oil industry in the controversial loans for shares<br />
auctions of 1995, Samuelson and Michel were already getting a bird's-eye view of the choicest assets.<br />
Via a consulting arm of Valmet, GT Valmet, they won a contract in 1995 from the World Bank to make<br />
sure that $1.6 billion it had extended in loans was being spent properly by production units such as<br />
Yuganskneftegaz and Purneftegaz. These units, which were visited by Valmet consultants, formed the<br />
backbone of the soon-to-be-privatized oil companies Yukos and Sibneft.<br />
By that time, Valmet was also acting as a consultant to Berezovsky, the Kremlin intriguer who won<br />
close ties with the Yeltsin family. Both Khodorkovsky and Berezovsky ended up big winners in the<br />
auctions of Yukos and Sibneft, gaining controlling stakes for just over $300 million and just over $100<br />
million, respectively.” [Biography Of Mikhail Khodorkovsky from The Moscow Times, Catherine<br />
Belton, The Moscow Times, May 17,2005]<br />
With this ‘consulting’ role of the World Bank being referenced, the reader must keep in<br />
mind that it was the British disclosure that IMF/World Bank loans were being used<br />
illegally by the the Yeltsin family that first initiated the Bank of New York moneylaundering<br />
scandal. Management of the IMF & World Bank are intimately involved in<br />
spiderweb of intrigue.<br />
There was other activity being undertaken at Valmet SA which reinforces the argument<br />
that it was a covert operations being run by George Bush Sr. If Valmet’s involvement<br />
with the Russians seemed to largely focus on acquiring the petrochemical resources of<br />
the former Soviet republics, it was also involved with another group which played a<br />
comparable strategic role in the grand strategy for the Middle East. The group would be<br />
the PKK – the Kurdistan Worker’s Party –whose support would be critical in any<br />
attempts to destabilize Iraq. If Iraq was to be “Balkanized,” with Kurdistan becoming an<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 213
entity owning the major oil assets of Northern Iraq, the PKK was the group to court.<br />
Valmet SA was used to launder the funds to the PKK<br />
“The "Kurdish Foundation Trust" and the "Mamoian (aka Mamoyan) Foundation" are the most<br />
important ones among them. These foundations, one established on the island of Jersey in the Channel<br />
Islands and the other in Switzerland are claimed to launder the money the PKK earns from drug<br />
trafficking and other illegal means in order to finance MED TV. These foundations have transferred<br />
their legal and financial administration to the VALMET SA company in Switzerland to hide their<br />
relationship with the PKK. Proof is available on the fact that the supporters of the PKK are investing<br />
large amounts of money in the accounts of this company in National Westminster bank of London. ….<br />
On <strong>September</strong> 1996 and January 1998, following raids on to the studios of the television station, MED<br />
TV's accounts were seized by the authorities because they could not show the source of their income.”<br />
[ Behind Closed Doors, Sebahattin Onkibar (Turkiye), Turkish Press Review, May 20,1999 from<br />
Directorate General of Press and Information, Office of the Prime Minister of Turkey]<br />
“According to December 13, 2000, testimony by Frank Cilluffo, to the U.S. House Committee on the<br />
Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) “is heavily involved in the<br />
European drug trade, especially in Germany and France. French law enforcement estimates that the<br />
PKK smuggles 80 percent of the heroin in Paris.” Cilluffo is Deputy Director, Global Organized Crime<br />
Program Counterterrorism Task Force at Washington, D.C.'s Center for Strategic and International<br />
Studies.” [Not In Our Name and the World Wide Terrorism Web, Michael Tremoglie,<br />
<strong>Front</strong>PageMagazine.com, March 19, 2003]<br />
While the reference to the PKK is meant to help make credible the argument that Riggs-<br />
Valmet was a CIA covert operations, it is important to mention that the Kurdistan link to<br />
the Bush family was initially provided by the same gentleman that initiated the Iran-<br />
Contra scandal and October Surprise, other Bushmanaged operations: Israeli Mossad<br />
agent David Kimche.<br />
“The history of Kurdish-Israeli contacts is well documented. It was Israel´s Middle East man, the<br />
former Mossad official David Kimche, who established direct contacts with the Kurdish leadership<br />
back in the mid-1960s. In 1997, the London-based Al-Hayat published my interview with Kimche in<br />
which he explained that, when the contacts were made, Israel´s then Prime Minister Levi Eshkol had<br />
taken a strategic decision to establish relations with ethnic minorities in the Arab world. Kimche met<br />
with then Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani, and shortly afterwards Israel began delivering aid to the<br />
Kurds. Othman, who was at the time Barzani´s trusted liaison with the outside world, confirmed<br />
Kimche´s account. He pointed out, however, that Barzani was hoping that the contacts with Israel<br />
would help him establish relations with the United States.” [Kamran Karadaghi is an Iraqi political<br />
commentator based in London. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star,<br />
http://www.rojname.com/lastnews/cache-archive/9259/]<br />
At the same time as Valmet was working covertly with the Russians and Kurds, Riggs<br />
Bank had a Vice President acting as treasurer of the US Azerbaijan Chamber of<br />
Commerce (Karl Mattison), demonstrating yet again Riggs involvement in Middle<br />
Eastern/Central Asian politics:<br />
“The USACC Advisory Board consisted of "only" these seven men: Dr. Henry Kissinger, James A<br />
Baker III, Lloyd Bentsen, Zibigniew Brzezinski, Dick Cheney, Brent Scowcroft, John Sununu. It is<br />
noted here that the current Vice President’s daughter, Elizabeth `Cheney-Perry`, has been named<br />
Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs for regional economic issues; she left Armitage<br />
Associates for the job. The USACC `Vice-Chairman` of the Board is James A Baker IV (Baker Botts,<br />
L.L.P.); Chairman Emeritus is T. Don Stacy (VP, Amoco); with Richard Armitage as Board President,<br />
until he resigned to become Colin Powell’s Deputy, which rounds out the US elite running the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 214
USACC. The remaining Board of Directors are a who’s who of the oil and gas multinational corporate<br />
interests of the west and specifically the United States. On the Board of Trustees or USACC the latter<br />
interests hold sway again with three primary exceptions: Senator Sam Brownback (`R-KS`) and Joseph<br />
R. Pitts (`R-PA`) (whose efforts formed the 1996 legislative backbone of the House/Senate Silk Road<br />
Strategy for Afghanistan, [Unocal, Texaco] et al) and Richard Perle (US Defense Policy Board). The<br />
Legal Counsel for USACC is Ted Jones of the Texas Law firm Baker Botts L.L.P. (James A Baker III<br />
& IV’s law firm.); Treasurer is Karl Mattison (VP, Riggs Bank, NA). It was the James A. Baker III<br />
Institute of Rice University which outlined the Cheney Strategic Energy Initiative which later became<br />
the Administration’s Strategic Energy National Security Policy. (Clearly Dick Cheney wouldn’t be<br />
interested in giving Congress the names of who he consulted on the Energy Initiative as they would<br />
amount to the remainder of the Board of Directors and Board of Trustees of USACC.)” [U.S. political<br />
objectives in the Middle East will Fail, Creating a New Cold War with China and Russia; Target is<br />
Iran not Iraq., By. Craig B Hulet]<br />
In summarizing the role of Riggs-Valmet (referred to in Russian press as ‘Rigs Valmet’),<br />
what the timeline of world events shows is that as George Bush steered the re-financing<br />
of Third World debt under the astute guidance of the soon-to-become Enron Vice<br />
President Robert Hermann. During this refinance process (according to ONI released<br />
documents), an undisclosed amount of financial collateral “disappeared” into the U.S.<br />
banking system, thus delaying the re-settlement of the Third World debt. In the<br />
meantime, George Bush’s brother Jonathon, who was in charge of “investments” for<br />
Riggs Financial Management, took controlling interest in a company called Valmet, and<br />
opened a Swiss subsidiary, which became the “financial consultants” to the KGB and<br />
future criminal oligarchs of Russia and other criminal groups. The Riggs-Valmet<br />
“consultants” helped the KGB and oligarchs create Bank Menatep, which later became a<br />
business partner with Riggs, in owning an undisputed money-laundering, tax evasion<br />
vehicle for its Russian and U.S. customers. It is speculated that the third world debt<br />
collateral was withheld long enough that the Soviet economy collapsed due to lack of<br />
capitalization, the goal of the destabilization program. The collateral funds – or part of<br />
the $300 billion plus that could have been generated in interest by the missing third world<br />
debt collateral - were then restored to Yelstin by George Bush Sr. Yeltsin then moved<br />
the collateral funds into Bank Menatep, that proceeded to use the funding with the<br />
Yeltsin oligarchs to “buy-up” Russian industry for pennies on the dollar. Through an<br />
array of financial actions, that wealth was then transferred through Nordex, Marc Rich,<br />
the Bank of New York, Riggs-Valmet (and its shell companies) and several other banks<br />
identified collectivly by Ambassador Wanta, Vreeland and the Office of Naval<br />
Intelligence, to Swiss and German banks, while nominally ‘held’ in off-shore banks.<br />
In creating the “cash” that was to fund the oligarchs’ takeover of Russian industry in<br />
1991, a $240B jump in the M3 measure of money would have to occur if regular Federal<br />
Reserve or large bank channels were used, and there was no such jump. Having the<br />
bonds backed by “private” collateral – such as the Durham Trust or Swiss gold – the<br />
generation of the money supply did not need to settle through any bank linked to the<br />
Federal Reserve, especially if they were shopped overseas, which is what happened. They<br />
were funded via Israel and supposedly backed by gold from Switzerland, according to the<br />
released documents. Hence, the Marcos gold confiscated by George Bush (and<br />
acknowledged to exist in records from Congressional hearings as a source of funding for<br />
Iran-Contra operations) or the Russian treasury gold (theft of which was facilitated by<br />
Leo Wanta), probably served as collateral for these loans. The interesting thing to keep in<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 215
mind is that if Brady type bond payments are defaulted, the maturity value is guaranteed<br />
by US Treasury Bonds, thereby explaining the need for the Federal Reserve intervention<br />
if 2001.<br />
“The initial asset securitisation formula that converted international bank loans into dollar<br />
denominated, high yield, tradable sovereign bonds was named the Brady Programme, after the US<br />
Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady in 1989. The objective of the Brady Bond programs was to create<br />
liquidity for the giant American banks by enabling them to remove their troubled Third World<br />
sovereign loans off their books, albeit at a haircut to face value. Morever, the Brady Programmes also<br />
provided sovereign borrowers with debt relief because they reduced their interest burden, extended the<br />
payback maturities and Uncle Sam guaranteed the principal via collateralised zero coupon US<br />
Treasury bonds.<br />
The Brady Bond is therefore a blend of zero coupon US Treasury securities and Third World sovereign<br />
risk paper. This has enormous valuation implications for an investor in Brady Bonds because its value<br />
is based not just on a sovereign borrower's credit or willingness to repay but also the movement of long<br />
US Treasury bond interest rates, since zero coupon bonds are an intrinsic component of the Brady<br />
collateral.<br />
The US Treasury maintains the zero coupon collateral at an account with the New York Fed. Rolling<br />
interest rates guarantee "rolling" forward every time a coupon payment is made to bondholders. This is<br />
another quirk of a Brady Bond. If a borrower defaults, say, in year 6 of a 30-year bond, the US<br />
Treasury zero coupon collateral still provides a positive yield to maturity.<br />
Brady Bonds have fixed, step, floating rate or even hybrid coupon that payout semi-annual payments<br />
and are generally amortising. They are issued as both Bearer or Registered instruments. Certain Par<br />
and Discount Brady are even issued with warrants. Brady Programmes now cover a spectrum of<br />
nations worldwide 13 years after the landmark Mexican deal. In Latin America, Brady's exist for<br />
Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Dominican Republic,<br />
Nicaraguan, and Uruguay. Elsewhere, Poland, Bulgaria, Morocco, Jordan, Nigeria and Russia have<br />
Brady Bonds in existence. While most Brady's are dollar instruments, they are also available on<br />
occasion in the Euro, sterling, Swiss francs and the Canadian dollar. [Matein Khalid, Strategist,<br />
Capital Markets and Research, www.pressreleasenetwork.com/newsletter/nlfin_view.phtml?nl_id=40]<br />
That recognized, $240B is not an amount that can be hidden anywhere in the world with<br />
having a major impact on the financial markets – except for Russia in 1991 and 1992,<br />
where there was virtually no financial reporting during the chaos of the collapse.<br />
However incredulous this statement may seem, that is exactly what happened with the<br />
collapse of the Soviet Union and its banking system – money just “disappeared.” Prior to<br />
the collapse, $30 Billion in new German credits just disappeared from the Soviet banks<br />
into Swiss and other offshore banking entities.<br />
“…West Germany had compensated the USSR very handsomely in cash for allowing Germany to be<br />
reunited, and the cash had been embezzled. As the Russian deputy finance minister admitted in 1991,<br />
“A gigantic sum was received...from Germany--64 billion Deutsche marks [about $30 billion]--and it<br />
all slipped through our fingers.” [The IMF Behind the Scenes]<br />
As documented earlier in this report, the entire national treasury of gold was reported (in<br />
August 1991) by the Soviets to have simply disappeared.<br />
“Valued at $35 billion, Russia's gold reserves were estimated to be 100 million troy ounces - just under<br />
3000 tonnes. Then in <strong>September</strong> 1991, a palpitating Grigory Yavlinski, the economic supremo,<br />
revealed to delegates at the Group-of-Seven industrial countries meeting in Bangkok, that a mere 240<br />
tons were all that was left. Two months later, in November, even that had disappeared. "Not a gram of<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 216
gold remains; the vaults are empty," said Victor Geraschenko, chief of Gosbank, the Russian Central<br />
Bank.” [Gangster’s Paradise, David Guyatt, 1997]<br />
What Guyatt reports next about the disappearance of this Russian gold is critical – the<br />
gold is reported to have been used as security for a financial scam. This report contends<br />
that this Russian gold was merged with Bush’s Marcos gold to serve as collateral to fund<br />
the oligarch’s take-over of Russian industry, once the Bush/Wanta destabilization<br />
program achieved its goal of cutting off other sources of capital to the Soviet economy.<br />
“In one operation valued at $4 billion, over 300 tons were secretly shipped to Switzerland, some of it<br />
subsequently arriving in London. Unlike Britain, the Swiss authorities do not keep records of gold<br />
imports which makes it a favourite centre for disguising the point of origin - a very effective method of<br />
laundering suspicious transactions. The bullion, some sources now believe, was used as collateral in a<br />
secondary scam that set-out to vacuum-up all the available Rouble bank-notes in existence at the time<br />
and sell them at knock down prices to organised crime syndicates from around the world.” [Gangster’s<br />
Paradise, David Guyatt, 1997]<br />
In 1991 the Soviet Union was totally bankrupt. Yeltsin came to the US in August of 1991<br />
(and again in 1992) for loans to prevent economic and social chaos in the former Soviet<br />
countries. Gorbachev met with Bush on the same subject in Helsinki on <strong>September</strong> 9.<br />
President Bush, with a failing U.S. economy and an upcoming election was not is<br />
position to publicly offer U.S. taxpayer assistance to the Soviets. The Gramm-Rudmann<br />
Act had forced congress into a public confession that it was unable to balance the budget.<br />
Hence, no representative of the US was going to officially approve loans to the collapsing<br />
Soviet economy because at that time, the U.S. budget had not been balanced. Officially<br />
receiving no ‘announced’ promises of assistance, (it was not until April 1992, that Bush<br />
and Kohl promised a meager $24 billion in loans) Yeltsin returned to Russia where he<br />
graciously announced the US would be the primary partner in the privatization of former<br />
Soviet firms, even though no funding had been publicly “provided” for this opportunity.<br />
“The first detailed statement of Russian economic policy issued by the Yeltsin-Gaidar government was<br />
addressed not to the Russian people but to the IMF in Washington. This was the “Economic Policy<br />
Memorandum” of February 27, 1992. From that point on, Russia was bound by IMF conditions and by<br />
the encroachments on national sovereignty that they implied. With this document, as Nelson and Kuzes<br />
say, “the Russian government was acknowledging the West’s leading role as a participant in Russian<br />
reform planning. The Western approach had prevailed in the Kremlin.” Because the IMF was<br />
recommending fast-track privatizations, the Russian memorandum stressed that the privatization<br />
process would be “considerably speeded up.” Gaidar’s priority was clearly to obtain foreign financial<br />
support, not domestic political backing. But even this task was not successfully fulfilled, since what<br />
Russia got in early 1992 was IMF conditions in exchange for (at least initially) no money.” [The<br />
Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy, Peter Reddaway and Dmitri<br />
Glinski, United States Institute of Peace Press, www.usip.org]<br />
Something however, must have transpired in Washington. On <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 1991 Bush<br />
addressed Congress and first spoke a new partnership between the U.S. and the former<br />
members of the Soviet Union. Immediately after Yeltsin’s trip to Washington, on<br />
<strong>September</strong> 14, 1991 - three days after the bonds were issued - the greatest moneylaundering<br />
machine in Russian history came into existence: Nordex and the International<br />
Foundation for Privatization and Private Investment.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 217
“On 14 <strong>September</strong> 1991, Vladimir Shcherbakov, the last First Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet<br />
Union, formed with two other partners, one of which was the now notorious Austrian firm, Nordex<br />
GmbH, the International Foundation for Privatization and Private Investment [FPI]. FPI’s charter was<br />
legitimized by Gorbachev’s signature and approved by 13 heads of what were still constituent<br />
republics…. The CIA has determined that through Nordex, FPI seized the export earnings from<br />
Russia’s natural resource companies – oil, gas, platinum, gold, diamonds – and from industrial firms<br />
exporting items such as steel and aluminum and then stashed the hefty profits in Western bank<br />
accounts.” [The Rape of Russia, Anne Williamson, testimony before the Committee on Banking and<br />
Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives, presented Sept. 21, 1999]<br />
“Nordex had been founded by the Russian/Israeli Mafiya criminal Loutchansky, who after 1991 would<br />
become a key business partner with Boris Yeltsin in Russia and Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan. On<br />
December 14, 1989, when working for Adazhi (Loutchansky) went to Vienna to establish a company -<br />
Nordex GmbH, which later became the in-between in funneling raw resources from the east to the<br />
west". [The Loutchansky phenomenon, from the book "The Nazarbayevs: Sources of Prosperity"<br />
Sagyndyk Mendybaven, Nikolai Fomin, Victor Shelgunov, IAC Eurasia-Internet, 27 July 2000 ]<br />
“Nordex’s relationship with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev was oiled by various favors<br />
according to documents obtained by TIME. In early 1992, Nordex shipped a Mercedes to the<br />
President’s office in the capital of Almaty (the document doesn’t indicate who paid for the car). When<br />
Nazarbayev visited London in 1994, it paid 25,000 in public relations expenses. He company’s<br />
business dealings in Kazakhstan included a joint trading company, a gold-mining venture and, in 1995,<br />
management of one of the largest steel mills in the world: Karmet in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Grigori<br />
Loutchansky’s friend Oleg Soskovets, the First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, allegedly pressured a<br />
local firm that managed Karmet to bring Nordex in as its partner. The government of Kazakhstan later<br />
tore up the management contract and drew up a new one for a partnership that was to include Nordex,<br />
a subsidiary of American steel giant USX and Israel’s Eisenberg Group.” [The Russia Connection,<br />
S.C. Gwynne and Larry Gurwin, Time, July 8, 1996]<br />
(Research note-Please see the documented reference linking the Eisenburg Group to Stratesec<br />
Incorporated, formerly Securacom- the CIA front company that held a maintenance contract for<br />
equipment controlling access to the WTC-Appendix B.)<br />
Shortly after Yeltsin’s visit to the U.S., the recently created Bank Menatep - having no<br />
capital and no performing loans - all of a sudden was dispersing credit from a Central<br />
Russian government, that had reportedly no treasury, no credit and was unable to collect<br />
taxes. Naturally, there are no financial or economic records for the period because of the<br />
economic chaos. The great mystery then is, where did the funding for the new Russian<br />
privatization program come from?<br />
Funds that officially were loaned to Russia in 1992 just disappeared in the ensuing fraud,<br />
just as the previous funding had.<br />
“There is also some question about what finally happened to the foreign loans Russia received during<br />
the second half of 1992. A Russian observer has concluded that “their scale, as well as the total<br />
absence of any form of public control over their granting, objectively strengthens the point of view,<br />
according to which the reasons for seeking this loan were political and even criminal.” [The Tragedy<br />
of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy, Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski,<br />
United States Institute of Peace Press, www.usip.org]<br />
"In July 1994, Nordex company was granted the credit of $5 mln. The credit was granted without any<br />
collateral, purposes of the credit were not defined either. In 1995, re-crediting was made. As a result,<br />
the credit was not repaid.” [The origin of the Kazakh vestige in Swiss banks, Victor Svetin,<br />
Rossiiskaya Gazeta, March 2, 2000]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 218
Somehow, however, during the next two to three years $167 Billion in new credit was<br />
generated, and $500 Billion in exports left the country. Even Cathrine Belton -<br />
Khodorkovsky’s biographer - admits that no one is able to explain where Bank Menatep<br />
received its funding. As for the exports, it turns out they consisted largely a combination<br />
of clever money laundering arrangements constructed as gas, oil and weapons exports.<br />
(The sale of weapons by the Soviet military was similar in nature to the sales of U.S.<br />
military weaponry left behind in Vietnam after that war – a sale which is reported to have<br />
propelled Armitage and Secord into the weapons-for-heroin-for-money trade. Later, the<br />
same Russian military responsible for the sale of weapons to Columbian drug dealers and<br />
third world war lords would be linked to the Afghan heroin trade, and a strange<br />
distribution partnership with the US heroin conduits. This report speculates that the<br />
ongoing business partnership in Russia between Farhad Azima (Iran-Contra conspirator)<br />
and Victor Bout (Russian arms smuggler) is at the foundation of this distribution<br />
alliance.)<br />
It was the FPI/Nordex operation that started selling off Soviet weaponry to African states<br />
and Columbian drug barons. This is one of several links between the Yeltsin crime family<br />
and the Columbian drug cartels.<br />
“Shcherbakov even boasted about FPI’s "new approach to the problem of the property of the Western<br />
Army Groups in Eastern Germany that comes down to its joint exploitation by Russian and German<br />
businesses", an eyepopping admission since a year after the interview was published, the Russian<br />
scandal was Bonn’s claim that Soviet weaponry sales to rogue regimes originating in the Western<br />
Army Group had amounted to a $4 billion criminal take.” [The Rape of Russia, Anne Williamson,<br />
testimony before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services of the U.S. House of<br />
Representatives, presented Sept. 21, 1999]<br />
The magnitude of money generation that occurred in the newly formed states of the<br />
former Soviet Republic would not be achieved without collateral. The Russians had none<br />
and there was no one who was willing to put any collateral into what was perceived as a<br />
‘black hole’ named Russia, at least publicly. The question remains unanswered in the<br />
press: who funded the privatization of Russian industry?<br />
Enter George HW Bush Sr. and Alan Greenspan. In 1991, the U.S. economy was in its<br />
own recession, the Congress could not balance the budget, and Alan Greenspan was<br />
balking at providing monetary stimulus to the U.S. At that time, given the domestic<br />
needs of the US economy, the American voting public would not tolerate a major multibillion<br />
dollar bailout of Russia, and the 1992 presidential race between Bush and Clinton<br />
was already under-way. Because of the ‘currency destabilization program’, there was no<br />
commercial or government group willing to back loans to the Soviet Union, except<br />
George H.W. Bush. Simultaneously, Boris Yeltsin came to the U.S. in August of 1991<br />
with hat in hand, looking for a bailout that would prevent total anarchy in the former<br />
Soviet republics. Boris Yeltsin was turned away - at least publicly. In the background<br />
however, starting August 26, 1991 and within days of Yeltsin’s visit, the Bush money<br />
machine started sending daily cash infusions to Russia. On the basis of documents<br />
provided by the ONI to several reporters, these loans:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 219
• Funded a “joint venture” with Russia (document source: Hamilton & Hyun<br />
Investment Corp., memo to William Sommerville, August 26, 1991; Addendum 1 to<br />
Joint Venture Agreement, Contec Development Pty., 9/26/91);<br />
That partnership most probably was the International Foundation for Privatization and<br />
Private Investment:<br />
“On 14 <strong>September</strong> 1991, Vladimir Shcherbakov, the last First Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet<br />
Union, formed with two other partners, one of which was the now notorious Austrian firm,<br />
Nordex GmbH, the International Foundation for Privatization and Private Investment [FPI]. FPI’s<br />
charter was legitimized by Gorbachev’s signature and approved by 13 heads of what were still<br />
constituent republics…. The CIA has determined that through Nordex, FPI seized the export<br />
earnings from Russia’s natural resource companies – oil, gas, platinum, gold, diamonds – and<br />
from industrial firms exporting items such as steel and aluminum and then stashed the hefty profits<br />
in Western bank accounts.” [The Rape of Russia, Anne Williamson, testimony before the<br />
Committee on Banking and Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives, presented<br />
Sept. 21, 1999]<br />
• Were backed by Swiss gold held in Kloten, Switzerland (document source: Robert<br />
Perry, Bay State Trust, memo to D’Acquisto and Peterson, <strong>September</strong> 10, 1991;<br />
Hamilton & Hyun Investment Corp., memo to William Sommerville, August 26,<br />
1991);<br />
It is imporatnt to note this is where the Marcos gold hoard was stashed by President<br />
Bush.<br />
"Approximately 1,000 tons of the loot was liberated by Ferdinand Marcos before his ouster.<br />
Billions of dollars worth were shipped overseas by American intelligence agents and the Mafia.<br />
Much of the horde was cabbaged away in a high-security, subterranean storage cache buried<br />
beneath the Zurich airport." [Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 9/<strong>11</strong> Terrorists, Alex<br />
Constantine]<br />
• Consisted, in part, of payments of currency from Lehman of at least $100 million per<br />
day for an indefinite period of time (document source: Daniel International Fax of<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 220
12/16/1991) (It is of interest to note that at that time, Lehman was a subsidiary of<br />
American Express, of which Dick Ceneny’s wife, Lynn, is a board member.);<br />
• Consisted (in part) of cash funneled to Russia through the Deutschbank (document<br />
source: Hamilton & Hyun Investment Corp., memo to William Sommerville, August<br />
26, 1991).<br />
As the clues provided by the ONI documents are detailed, one recognizes the name of a<br />
familiar organization identified with most of the illegal activity in this report - the<br />
Deutschebank. A key question becomes: did the US get involved in a joint venture with<br />
Russia? The answer is yes! – through the “Russian American Enterprise Fund” set up at<br />
the request of George Bush and Gerald Corrigan, President of the Federal Reserve Bank<br />
of New York<br />
In subsequent economic negotiations with the G7 heads of state, what resulted was an<br />
amazing concession by Yeltsin to the US, allowing it to be the chief architect of its<br />
privatization plan by which state industries would be ultimately owned by anonymous<br />
shell companies in off-shore banks. The amazing aspect at the time was there was no<br />
immediately apparent financial concession from the U.S. in exchange for this very<br />
significant opportunity. Palms & Co. had profiles of over 200 Russian defense enterprises<br />
which were eligible for acquisition. Funding for this privatization was arranged to come<br />
from:<br />
• Sovlink Fund (Solomon Brothers, Investment Banker, New York)<br />
• Russian Partners Fund (Paine Webber)<br />
• Russian American Enterprise Fund (Lehman Brothers Fund)<br />
• Barings Securities Fund<br />
• Defense Enterprise Fund<br />
• CS First Boston<br />
• Fidelity Investments<br />
• The World Bank<br />
• International Finance Corporation<br />
• CCF-Moscow (Credit Commerciale de France, Paris)<br />
• First Russian Investment Fund (Framlington Investment Managers, London)<br />
• All State Insurance Co. Venture Capital Department<br />
• L & A Juice Company, Los Angeles (through them Coca Cola Foods)<br />
• Russian American Investment Fund - Strobe Talbott Ambassador at Large for Russian Affairs<br />
• John I Haas Co. (for breweries revitalization and through them August Busch, Sam Adams, Sam<br />
Koch A.B. Miller)<br />
• Defense Nuclear Agency Washington D.C. (defense plant conversion)<br />
• Newstar Fund (Att&T & General Motors Pension Plans)<br />
• European Bank for Reconstruction & Development<br />
• U.S. Trade Development Agency<br />
• Overseas Private Investment Corporation<br />
• U.S. Department of Commerce "BISNIS"<br />
• Center for International Private Enterprise<br />
• U.S. Agency for International Development<br />
• European Union Technical Assistance Programme ($500 million)<br />
• Russian Venture Capital Fund of America (Palms & Company)<br />
• Ukrainian Venture Capital Fund of America (Palms & Company)<br />
• United States Interbank Currency Exchange (Palms & Company)<br />
• Russia And The Republics Equity Partners LP. (RARE)<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 221
• Baltic American Enterprise Fund<br />
• Bulgarian American Enterprise Fund<br />
• Templeton Russia Fund<br />
• BEA Associates Russia Fund<br />
• Vladivostok Fund<br />
• Scudder Stevens & Clark, Inc.<br />
• Smith New Court PLC<br />
The above list was part of the official privatization program which began in the spring of<br />
1992:<br />
“In May 1992, former Gorbachev economic adviser Grigoriy Yavlinskiy moved his think tank<br />
"Epitsentr" to the region and himself spent 100 days there formulating a systematic plan for the<br />
region's privatization program.” [Russian Defense Indusrty Conversion Investment Program, Dr. Pyotr<br />
Johannevich van de Waal, Palms, Sovetnik Pravitelstva CWA, Tovarichestvo Palmsa, Inc. ]<br />
The unofficial privatization program had begun much earlier. What is not generally<br />
reported though generally understood in Russia is that the privatization of former state<br />
owned property started long before the G7 meeting in 1992, and long before the official<br />
western loans of 1992. Privatization started with the creation of the FPI on <strong>September</strong><br />
14, 1991 – 3 days after the Brady Bonds were reportedly issued.<br />
“A former employee of FPI, speaking through clenched teeth, reported, "It [FPI] is not a well-known<br />
organization, but it’s one of the most wealthy and most powerful organizations in Russia," and their<br />
work was engineering commission-paying deals for money or privilege with the Kremlin, thereby<br />
organizing a pipeline of tribute typical of corrupt regimes. "I can’t say it publicly, I can’t prove my<br />
position with documents, but I know they were privatizing companies, the very best companies, before<br />
we had a privatization program." [The Rape of Russia, Anne Williamson, testimony before the<br />
Committee on Banking and Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives, presented Sept.<br />
21, 1999]<br />
The unofficial privatization program was seemingly orchestrated by the new oligarchs<br />
under the guidance of the Riggs-Valmet consultants, controlled by Jonathon and George<br />
HW Bush. (One would not want to overlook the significant role of Bruce Rappaport in<br />
this major crime. Rappaport, former owner of the Bank of New York, working through<br />
his Swiss-American Bank, had been a major financier of Bush’s Iran/Contra Deals, and<br />
was now intimately connected to the Yeltsin family through Bank Menatep.)<br />
Simultaneously, during <strong>September</strong> of 1991, the laws in Russia were changed by Yeltsin<br />
to allow the immediate transfer of state resources to “foreign firms.”<br />
“In <strong>September</strong> 1991, a foreign investment law promoting the transfer of capital, technology, and knowhow<br />
went into effect. Nonresidents may acquire partial shareholdings or form wholly owned<br />
subsidiaries in Russia. Foreign firms may obtain licenses to exploit natural resources. Foreign investors<br />
can be exempted from import duties and export taxes, and there is limited relief from profits tax,<br />
varying by sector and region.”<br />
[http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Europe/Russia-Foreign-Investment.html]<br />
In this privatization of Russia over the next several years, newly created banks were<br />
provided with funding (credits) from a central source that had no visible means of<br />
generating capital, and then loaned money to key industries, being taken over by the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 222
“oligarchs.” In doing so, the Yelstsin administrators (the “Family”) took hefty profits up<br />
front.<br />
“Borovoi gave an example of how government funds are looted: If a government ministry wants<br />
funding, it must allocate up to 3 percent of the requested sum for bribes to lawmakers and officials.<br />
The lawmakers then approve the request, and the ministry must then pay up to half of the funding to<br />
the lawmakers and officials to get the money.” [Organized Crime Thriving in Russia, Barry Renfrew,<br />
AP Wire, August 31, 1999]<br />
As those companies defaulted on their loans, the banks (and not surprisingly, the Board<br />
Directors of those banks) became the primary owners of Russian industry, with<br />
significant percentages held by various off shore ‘holding companies.’ (At this point, it<br />
may be fair to speculate that the Bush family and affiliates own a share of those “holding<br />
companies,” given the role of Jonathon Bush and Valmet in the financial plundering of<br />
Russia, and Neil Bush’s ongoing relations with Russian investors.) Subsequent, “official”<br />
loans from the IMF, went to cover investment banker’s fees and bank interest<br />
“Russia’s bankers made serious money on Yeltsin’s electoral weakness by buying government bonds<br />
at distressed prices using cheap money handed over from government deposits. The lion’s share of the<br />
domestic bonds’ high yields have always been paid with IMF loans. Russia’s first representative to the<br />
World Bank, Leonid Grigoriev, explained, "Of course, the government was to return this money and<br />
that is why the yields on 3-month paper reached as much as 290 percent. The government’s paying<br />
such huge, impossible rates on treasury bills, well, it’s completely unbelievable. It had nothing to do<br />
with the market and therefore such yields can only be understood as a payback, just a different<br />
method." [The Rape of Russia, Anne Williamson, testimony before the Committee on Banking and<br />
Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives, presented Sept. 21, 1999]<br />
The U.S. arranged for additional funding to be provided to Russian Defense firms<br />
through a collection of banks and financial institutions. U.S. Defense firms and financial<br />
agencies started buying into former Soviet firms. The first official US program began in<br />
1992:<br />
“The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program was initiated in FY 1992 to reduce the threat posed by<br />
weapons of mass destruction remaining in the former Soviet Union. In June 1994, DoD (Department of<br />
Defense) established the Defense Enterprise Fund to assist Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine<br />
in the privatization of defense industries and conversion of military technologies and capabilities for<br />
civilian use.”<br />
At the same time in Russia, defense firms and energy companies were being consolidated<br />
under the banner of privatization:<br />
“Military Industrial Investment Company (VPIK): Also known as the Defense Industrial Investment<br />
Company (DIIC), VPIK was organized by a combination of government and industry to aid the<br />
defense industry in adjusting to the transformation to a market economy. Its major goal is to finance<br />
complete and partial conversion of defense enterprises throughout Russia and promote the<br />
development and production of dual-use technologies. Several large defense plants, including major<br />
aerospace and communications firms are among its founding members. The most prominent members<br />
are listed below.”<br />
• Russian groups involved in this conversion were led by Viktor Chernomyrdin, and included:<br />
• The Military Industrial Stock Exchange<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 223
• The Russian Commodity-Raw Material Exchange<br />
• The Moscow Central Stock Exchange<br />
• The Central Scientific Research Institute of Machine Building<br />
• The Plleshakov Scientific Production Association<br />
• Khrunichev Plant<br />
• The Economic News Agency<br />
• The KAMI stock Exchange<br />
• Military Unit 57275<br />
• The Impluse Scientific Production Association<br />
• Drzerzhinskiy Military Academy”<br />
This was the beginning of the era of the “oligarchs” -<br />
“The really good stuff - oil companies, metals plants, telecoms - was distributed to essentially seven<br />
individuals, "the oligarchs", on insider auctions whose results were agreed beforehand. Once effective<br />
control was established, directors - uncertain themselves of the durability of their claim to the newlyacquired<br />
property - chose to asset strip with impunity instead of developing their new holdings.” [The<br />
Rape of Russia, Anne Williamson, testimony before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services<br />
of the U.S. House of Representatives, presented Sept. 21, 1999]<br />
One of the chief oligarchs associated with the Yeltsin Family was Boris Berezovsky, who<br />
would later become a business partner with Neil Bush in a company called Ignite.<br />
“Berezovsky, described as “a former Kremlin kingmaker,” served as executive secretary of the CIS<br />
under former President Boris Yeltsin… Berezovsky was one of the chief oligarchs in Russia who<br />
acquired massive wealth by taking control of the Soviet Union’s state assets after the fall of<br />
communism. Berezovsky owned several banks and TV stations in Russia when he was accused of<br />
defrauding a regional government of $13 million. In 2000, he fled the country and moved to London,<br />
where he now lives under the name Platon Elenin. In fact, Berezovsky has Israeli citizenship, a fact<br />
that caused a scandal of Watergate proportions in Russia in 1996 when it was exposed by a Russian<br />
newspaper. [Israeli Oligarch’s Ill-Gotten Loot Channeled to Dubya’s Brother, Christopher Bollyn,<br />
AmericanFreePress.net, Issue #43, October 24, 2005]<br />
Neil Bush would establish another indirect link to the Yeltsin Family by his involvement<br />
with Diligence, a relationship discussed in the next section.<br />
Berezovsky brought to the Yeltsin “Family” a key relationship with the Chechen mafia,<br />
whose revolutionary counter-parts were trained in CIA funded camps in Afghanistan.<br />
“…in the conditions of Russian gangster style capitalism Berezovsky managed to take control over<br />
major Russian enterprises. This was accompanied by murders, most of them have not been exposed,<br />
writes Bernstein. Khlebnikov "reveals the important elements of closely-intertwined banking<br />
structures, industrial enterprises and Swiss holding companies, created by Berezovsky and others to<br />
snatch large shares of Russian wealth. He examines the critically important role of what he calls the<br />
Chechen mafia in ensuring the force used by criminal capitalism and shows the close contacts between<br />
Berezovsky and the leaders of the Chechen rebellion against Russian rule, notes the New York Times<br />
analyst.” [Pravda.RU ,2001-05-31]<br />
The relationship between the Yeltsin “Family” of Russian bureaucrats, the Russian/Israeli<br />
Mafiya, Loutchansky, Marc Rich, Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, Kazakhstan President<br />
Nazarbayev, and the Chechen Mafia is a critical piece of the puzzle in understanding the<br />
willingness of both the Russian/Israeli Mafiya and the Bush Family in facilitating the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 224
events of 9/<strong>11</strong>, and the decision taken in 1998 to destroy the WTC. It is critical for three<br />
reasons:<br />
1. It demonstrates joint motive for the Russian/Israeli Mafiya and Bush Family business<br />
partners to destroy the numerous investigative offices in the World Trade Center;<br />
2. It demonstrates a willingness by both the Bush Family and Yeltsin Family to employ<br />
groups of ex-military professionals that can arrange for major political terrorist<br />
activities<br />
3. It demonstrates an ongoing linkage between the Bush Family and the Yeltsin Family<br />
which has been demonstrated to fund and arrange political terrorism by Chechen<br />
Mafia for political gain in Russia. In this respect, both political Families seem to have<br />
sponsored major terrorist acts. They both publicly attributed those acts to ‘Al Qaeda’<br />
terrorists. They both used the same intermediary Adnan Khashoggi – to arrange it<br />
them. (Documented in Section 8.6)<br />
All of these groups are linked to the same set of banks used to launder gold and other<br />
assets. They have done business with each other, and hence their illegal assets are<br />
traceable through these various accounts. Having investigators have probable cause to<br />
investigate some of these accounts put them all at risk. All pressure for investigations, all<br />
investigations, disappeared after <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001.<br />
Notes:<br />
1. Of interesting historic note, this is the same timeframe in which President Bush, by Executive Order<br />
(rather than Congressional law) authorized the selling of US Government assets.<br />
“President Bush's Executive Order (No. 12803) on Infrastructure Privatization of April 30, 1992<br />
cleared away federal barriers to cities and states selling or leasing existing public works<br />
infrastructure to private investors….President Bush's Executive Order on Infrastructure<br />
Privatization offers state and local government the option of selling or leasing any infrastructure<br />
enterprise that had previously received federal aid, as long as it repays the depreciated value of the<br />
federal grants. And it directs the relevant federal agencies—principally the Environmental<br />
Protection Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Federal Highway<br />
Administration—to work with their grantees in removing obstacles, should they opt to pursue<br />
privatization.” [What Cities and States Have to Sell, Robert W. Poole, Jr., David Haarmeyer, and<br />
Lynn Scarlett, April 1992]<br />
2. Simultaneously, Adnan Khashoggi directed his Barrick operation to file its applications for 1,144 acres<br />
of land in Nevada during March and April 1992.<br />
“Barrick filed its applications for 1,144 acres of land in March and April 1992. That summer, a<br />
pilot program for ``expedited processing'' of Nevada patents was instituted by BLM chief Delos Cy<br />
Jamison, a Republican who had been appointed to that post by President George Bush in 1989.<br />
Jamison concocted this speed-up procedure with the BLM Nevada state director, without informing<br />
his own staff. ``Bells went off in my head when I heard about it,'' a former BLM staffer told EIR.<br />
Philip M. Hocker, president of the Mineral Policy Center, an environmentalist outfit, testified to a<br />
Congressional subcommittee on March <strong>11</strong>, 1993: ``Under a new and unpublicized `pilot project,'<br />
the BLM allowed Barrick to hire outside mineral examiners to perform the evaluation of<br />
`discovery' on Barrick's mining claims. The specialists who determined whether these claims<br />
should be patented for $5 per acre received payment for their work directly from the company<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 225
which wanted a `yes' answer. This is a flagrant conflict of interest, which BLM is not only<br />
allowing, but encouraging. Barrick is the only company to complete this process so far.''<br />
Only Barrick got expedited treatment. Its patenting was rushed through in record speed; the BLM<br />
district manager approved the report of the outside consultant hired by Barrick the day after it was<br />
filed, in February 1993. Other companies remained stuck in the BLM backlog.” [George Bush's $10<br />
billion giveaway to Barrick Gold, Mark Sonnenblick, Executive Intelligence Review]<br />
3. As an interesting side note another firm that started buying into the former Soviet satellite industry was<br />
Iridium, formerly identified in this report as the satellite company operating in Iraq, with heavy<br />
ownership out of Israel and the Bin Ladin family. Might this have been the firm Vreeland was<br />
investigating? Just as significant, with the Department of Defense officially investing in Russian<br />
defense firms, might this have been the basis for ONI running its own money-laundering investigation?<br />
4. The quiet role of Jonathon Bush through the years has been over-looked by investigators to date. It is<br />
important to recall that in addition to directing the covert activities of Valmet, he was the ‘money-man’<br />
for the Bush family. It was Jonathon who provided campaign investors for all of the Bush candidates,<br />
and it was Jonathon who brought the initial Wall Street money to the initial George Bush Jr. companies<br />
that were to fail later. To contend that Jonathon avoided politics would be incorrect, as the record<br />
shows he officially represented his brother in 1989 during a tour of Eastern Europe and the Ukraine.<br />
(See American Dynasty, Kevin Phillips, 2004, p72.)<br />
8.5 Ambassador Lee Wanta and the Riggs-Valmet Connection<br />
The strange case of Lee Wanta, a U.S. citizen and covert operative for almost thirty years<br />
and Somalian Ambassador to Switzerland and Canada, is a saga that serves to validate<br />
the theory that George H.W. Bush was pumping massive, illegal funding into rogue<br />
elements of the Soviet KGB, which then spawned the Russian oligarchs. Wanta has<br />
produced for the public record a large volume of bank records which he claims were<br />
authorized by George H.W. Bush in an effort to destabilize the Russian ruble. The<br />
records of the bank transfers in themselves seem meaningless. However, when one<br />
studies some of the foreign banks receiving the funding, and their subsequent loan losses<br />
to the Russian oligarchs, whose financial empires were designed under the construction<br />
of the Valmet-Riggs consultants, one finds a pattern that would indicate that money was<br />
pushed to the oligarchs for their use in buying up Russian industries. As one follows<br />
Wanta’s documents back to the U.S., one finds an elaborate pattern of cover-up.<br />
Credo (aka Kredo) Bank<br />
Classic examples of the type of ‘Russian destabilization’ driven by the Bush plan as<br />
headed by Lee Wanta are found in the bank transfer documents made public by Wanta,<br />
who was later imprisoned for his indiscretions of making public his activities. In those<br />
transfers, one finds reference to transfers from the New Republic/USA Financial Group<br />
to the Credo (aka Kredo) Bank in Moscow. The Credo Bank would fund the privatization<br />
of the Russian steel/iron/aluminum firms under the reported control of Roman<br />
Abramovich, a major oligarch in the “Yeltsin Family.” In 1996, Credo Bank was faced<br />
with failure for lack of payment from one major lender – the Western Siberian<br />
Steelworks.<br />
The downsizing at Credobank follows in the wake of serious cash flow problems brought on by the<br />
default of one of its largest creditors, Western Siberian Steelworks, which has failed to pay back a loan<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 226
of 600 billion rubles made earlier this year. [Credobank Exiting City As Assets, Deposits Fall, Richard<br />
Sleder, The St Petersburg Times,]<br />
In understanding the ownership of “Western Siberian Steelworks,”(aka ZapSib),<br />
ownership is traced to the Evraz Group S.A., supposedly controlled by Roman<br />
Abramovich (now using the name Abramov):<br />
“– Evraz Group S.A. (LSE: EVR), one of the leading vertically integrated steel production and mining<br />
businesses with operations mainly in Russia, today announces the commissioning of a double-strand<br />
slab continuous caster with annual capacity of up to 2.5 million tonnes at OAO West Siberian Iron and<br />
Steel Plant (ZapSib). This investment is in line with Evraz Group’s strategy….” [NOVOKUZNETSK,<br />
Russia RNWire]<br />
Evraz Group S.A. (“Evraz Group”) is a limited liability company registered under the laws of<br />
Luxembourg on December 31, 2004. The registered address of Evraz Group is 1, Allee Scheffer L-<br />
2520, Luxembourg. Evraz Group’s parent is Crosland Global Limited (“CGL” or the “Parent”) which<br />
is under control of Mr. Abramov. Evraz Group was formed through a reorganisation in which 95.83%<br />
of the shares in Mastercroft Limited (“Mastercroft”), a limited liability company registered in Cyprus,<br />
directly owned by Crosland Limited (“Crosland”), the parent of CGL, were contributed into Evraz<br />
Group in April 2005. [Evraz Group S.A., Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements, Year ended<br />
December 31, 2005]<br />
Unfortunately, Abramovich seems to have had a number of U.S. and Israeli “backers,”<br />
who remained unreported in this deal (just like Khodokovsky turned out to have a hidden<br />
partner with Jacob Rothschild).<br />
“The Kurbanov claim was the first to intimate publicly that Abramov may not have been the<br />
controlling shareholder he claimed. Since the December filing, the lawyers involved in the Kurbanov<br />
case have been negotiating with him for weeks, but they no longer return calls to discuss the case.<br />
Before they fell silent, one of them told The Russia Journal that she believed Abramov’s purported<br />
control shareholding in Evraz included other trusts. One which had come under Russian media scrutiny<br />
was the estate of a senior executive of the group, Andrei Sevenyuk, who was killed in an aircraft crash<br />
in <strong>September</strong> 2004. Before his death, Sevenyuk had hinted to The Russia Journal that he was in control<br />
of a sizeable stake in the company. Subsequently, uncorroborated reports suggest that his survivors<br />
accepted Abramov’s payment of $124 million for a shareholding of 4.17%, leaving what Morgan<br />
Stanley estimated as a residual 0.8% bloc of shares still in the Sevenyuk estate’s control. Moscow<br />
newspaper reports have speculated, however, that when he was alive, Sevenyuk controlled at least<br />
15%. If true, then together, Sevenyuk and Kurbanov may have been the beneficial owners of<br />
approximately half the shares Abramov claimed for himself.<br />
Until and unless he settled with them, or with their heirs, Abramov ran the risk of trying to sell what<br />
wasn’t his.<br />
Other court claims dispute the ownership which Evraz claims in its prime assets. A claim filed in<br />
federal and local courts last November in the US state of Delaware four companies representing an<br />
Israeli and US investors had once controlled about 72% of the shares of the Kachkanarsky oreprocessing<br />
combine (GOK), an iron-ore and vanadium mine that is today Evraz’s most important<br />
source of the raw material. The claimants say that between 1999 and 2001, they were forcibly deprived<br />
of their asset. According to the plaintiffs’ complaint in Delaware’s Chancery Court, Evraz, one of the<br />
eleven listed defendants, is described as having been “owned, directly or indirectly, by [Mikhail]<br />
Chernoi, [Oleg] Deripaska, [Iskander] Makhmudov, and [Mikhail] Nekrich, and operated and managed<br />
by them, or under their direction and control.” [Abramovich Kicks a Ghost, Ft Puts Foot in Mouth,<br />
John Helmer, The Russia Journal, March 22, 2006]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 227
So the question them becomes, who put together this complex web of financial ownership<br />
and offshore holding companies, initially funded with 600 billion rubles from the<br />
Credobank? What one learns is that Abramovich was a client of Valmet and Menatep,<br />
who structured his other financial operations.<br />
The first link has emerged between the Bank of New York money-laundering scandal and a member of<br />
President Yeltsin's "family", a mysterious businessman known as a kingmaker in the Kremlin. The<br />
Times has learnt that Roman Abramovich, a tycoon, controls the trading arm of one of Russia's largest<br />
oil companies through an Isle of Man company that has figured in the Bank of New York affair. Mr<br />
Abramovich runs the Siberian oil giant Sibneft, which sells its oil through a company called Runicom.<br />
His name has emerged after speculation that Swiss investigators are looking into the role of Runicom<br />
as part of the widening investigation into the laundering of up to $15 billion of Russian money through<br />
American banks. Runicom is owned by at least two offshore companies set up by the Valmet Group, a<br />
financial services concern partly owned by Menatep, a failed Russian bank that used the Bank of New<br />
York. [Yeltsin 'Family' Tycoon Linked to Cash Scandal , James Bone, David Lister, Fiona Flick, The<br />
Times (UK), <strong>September</strong> 7, 1999]<br />
Moreover, it should be noted that Runicom was under the ownership of Valmet when it<br />
was originally controlled by Riggs, according to Alan Block and Constance Weaver, All<br />
is Clouded by Desire, p.141.<br />
Altalanos Ertekforgalmi Bank (AEB)<br />
A second financial conduit for the Wanta ‘ruble destabilization’ program was the<br />
Altalanos Ertekforgalmi Bank (AEB) in Budapest, Hangary. AEB had an evolving role<br />
in this financial scheme starting in 1990, when 50% of AEB was bought by the CEDC<br />
(Central European Development Corporation.) The CEDC is actually operated out of<br />
Singer Island, Florida, and was created in 1989 apparently for the sole purpose of<br />
procuring the AEB, as it has not done a lot else.<br />
“R. Mark Palmer, the United States Ambassador here, is resigning from the State Department to<br />
manage a new consortium of North American financiers that today announced the purchase of half<br />
interest in a Hungarian bank, the first in what was projected as a series of ambitious investments in<br />
Eastern Europe.<br />
R. Mark Palmer, the United States Ambassador here, is resigning from the State Department to manage<br />
a new consortium of North American financiers that today announced the purchase of half interest in a<br />
Hungarian bank, the first in what was projected as a series of ambitious investments in Eastern Europe.<br />
The chairman of the group, the Central European Development Corporation, is Ronald S. Lauder, a<br />
former American Ambassador to Austria …<br />
The announcement of the $10 million bank deal…will turn 50 percent of the General Banking and<br />
Trust Company, one of prewar Hungary's most venerable institutions, over to a group of high-profile<br />
businessmen, several of Hungarian descent. The deputy chairman is Andrew Sarlos, a Toronto-based<br />
real estate developer. Other major investors include Melvin Simon, the American shopping mall<br />
magnate, and Albert Reichmann, owner of Olympia & York Real Estate Company in Canada. Mr.<br />
Lauder, whose family owns the Estee Lauder Cosmetics Company, holds 50 percent of the shares.”<br />
[U.S. Envoy in Hungary Quits To Handle Investment in East, Celestine Bohlen, The New York Times,<br />
January 26, 1990]<br />
In addition to being a Bush appointee, R. Mark Palmer, it turns out appears to have been<br />
a collaborator with George Soros in his efforts to unhinge Eastern European currencies.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 228
“(Soros) has been controlled for some time by a fellow called Hartmann. Hartmann was operating out<br />
of Zug, Switzerland, which is one of the banking centers, through the N.M. Rothschild Continuation<br />
Trust. Hartmann was the man who controlled the BNL and BCCI simultaneously, or coordinated it,<br />
which were not Pakistani or Gulf banks; they were British Commonwealth banks, controlled through<br />
this Rothschild intermediation. He worked for them, and still does. Now on the American side, his<br />
controller or coordinator has been Gerald Corrigan, who's going to work for him on the Russian side,<br />
and a State Department official, R. Mark Palmer, who went to work for Soros even before he fully quit<br />
his job at the State Department.”[There Is a Worldwide Crash in Progress; We Are In A Depression<br />
Already'', Lyndon Larouche, interviewed by Mel Klenetsky, August 4, 1993, Shofar FTP Archive File:<br />
people/l/larouche.lyndon/eir.080493]<br />
“So Soros, the big derivatives speculator operating in central Europe, the man who ran the run against<br />
the pound, the run against the franc, and so forth, is a creature of this. This involved Gerald Corrigan<br />
of the New York Fed, now retiring to join Soros's Russian operation; and this involved R. Mark<br />
Palmer, a State Department official. So this is an Anglo-American operation by those interests which<br />
ran BCCI, BNL, to try to bankrupt European currencies.” [How Europe's Economic Crisis Could<br />
Become the Worst Crisis in Six Centuries, Lyndon Larouche, interviewed by Mel Klenetsky, August<br />
18, 1993]<br />
Ronald Lauder, (heir to the $4.2 Billion Estee Lauder estate) was the major investor in<br />
the operation, apparently, and also is connected to groups previously referred to in this<br />
report. He would turn out to be a major western investor in subsequent privatization<br />
investments. Lauder became a Reagan appointee as Ambassador of Austria largely as a<br />
result of his work as New York Finance Campaign chairman for the Republican Party,<br />
and is linked closely to the Bronfman family in his role as Treasurer of the World Jewish<br />
Congress.<br />
“Ronald Lauder: heir of his mother Estée Lauder's cosmetic billions, rightist ideologue, and leading<br />
Likud contributor and funding coordinator. Ronald Lauder is treasurer of the World Jewish Congress<br />
and a Trustee of the Special Reserve Fund of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith. His<br />
Ronald S. Lauder foundation, operating in the former East Bloc, paid for the ADL to open an office in<br />
Vienna, Austria, where Lauder was U.S. Ambassador in the 1980s. One of the WJC and ADL's top<br />
priorities in Central and Eastern Europe is the protection of hedge fund operator George Soros. The<br />
Lauder Foundation works in tandem with Soros's Open Society Institute, which advocates legalization<br />
of all narcotics and support for the Columbian FARC and other narco-terrorist agencies. After serving<br />
as U.S. Ambassador to Austria in the 1980s, Lauder personally became a major investor in "privatized"<br />
Eastern European properties.<br />
Lauder was named (by Secretary of State Sir Lawrence Eagleburger, former President of Kissinger<br />
Associates), to head the Central European Development Corporation (CEDC) that was created under a<br />
Federal act to function as a kind of pig trough for those with influence around the diplomatic<br />
community. CEDC is a consortium that mingles U.S. Congress-appropriated monies with those from<br />
private businessmen. With offices in Berlin and Budapest, CEDC invests in "privatized" Eastern<br />
European businesses for a nickel on the dollar.” [A Bigger Scandal: Illegal U.S. Funding of Sharon's<br />
Likud, Anton Chaitkin, Executive Intelligence Review, January 24, 2002]<br />
As it would turn out, AEB was a bank asset which, while half owned by U.S. investors,<br />
was apparently controlled by the Yeltsin family. The bank was later was absorbed by<br />
Gazprom, which in turn was controlled by Khodorkovsky and Viktor S. Chernomyrdin,<br />
long-time aide to Boris Yeltsin. In 1996, the U.S. investors would hand over their 50%<br />
of the bank to Gazprom for an undisclosed sum. The bank would then become a moneylaundering<br />
conduit for Yeltsin family, just as Valmet SA was transferred to the Yeltsin<br />
family from Riggs bank ownership. In both cases (Valmet and AEB) the U.S. partners<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 229
‘took the money and ran.’ This aspect of the overall strategy suggests that rather than<br />
being involved in a program to enhance democracy and capitalism, and to provide for<br />
‘national security,’ the sole purpose, as so keenly summarized by Anne Williamson, was<br />
the financial ‘rape of Russia.’<br />
As in Yukos Oil ownership, the ownership of Gazprom has been purposefully murky.<br />
Khordorkovsky’s role has long been hidden from the public, while most believed that<br />
Chernomyrdin was the key controller. AEB was one of their two banks, with AEB having<br />
no real assets, but serving primarily as a passthrough operation for moving funds<br />
offshore. Khordorkovsky (aided by consultants from Riggs-Valmet) was a significant<br />
architect of the financial structure from the earliest days.<br />
“All along, Mr. Khodorkovsky cultivated relationships with the powerful. As early as 1991, he had an<br />
office in the Russian government building, where he advised officials and charmed them with his quiet<br />
displays of respect. Ivan S. Silayev, Prime Minister of Russia before the Soviet Union's fall, was one of<br />
his first employers. … In a brief but crucial period in 1993, Mr. Khodorkovsky became a deputy to the<br />
energy minister, who was reorganizing Russia's oil industry into groupings that would later become<br />
companies, setting the stage for privatization. Alfred Kokh, the official responsible for running<br />
privatization, recalled that Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin frequently called him about the sale<br />
of Yukos.<br />
"I felt that Khodorkovsky influenced Chernomyrdin strongly," Mr. Kokh said.” [Russian Tycoon<br />
Moves Into Politics and Then Jail, Sabrina Tavernise and Timothy L. O'Brien, The New York Times,<br />
November 10, 2003]<br />
“According to Eric Kraus of Sovlink, another investment house, Khodorkovsky may have already been<br />
indirectly controlling a good-sized stake in Gazprom, the state gas monopoly and the largest company<br />
in Russia.” [Robber Baron, Gideon Lichfield, New Republic On Line, November 17, 2003]<br />
Just as Yukos used Menatep Bank and Valmet SA, Gazprom used AEB for its capital<br />
flight transfers.<br />
“When Gazprom bought it, AEB was a loss-maker. But within a year it was turning a profit and posted<br />
a $31 million profit in 2000. The secret of its success? AEB handles all payments for Gazprom's gas<br />
exports to Central and Eastern Europe. In the last year alone, AEB handled $2.3 billion in payments to<br />
Gazprom. Kent Moors, who has studied Russian capital flight for years as the head of the East<br />
European investment consultancy Asida, which is based in the United States, says that AEB is one of<br />
the ways Gazprom management move their cash out of Russia. "AEB is a small part of a widely<br />
distributed system of offshore companies and foreign partners, with whom the Gazprom managers shift<br />
their cash abroad or park it there," Moors said. Which may explain why the more profit AEB makes<br />
the more stakes Gazprombank sells to obscure holding companies — and to Rakhimkulov.<br />
Gazprombank has now parted with three-quarters of its original 100-percent stake in AEB. Hungary's<br />
official financial watchdog, PSZAF, said that Gazprombank in May 1997 held only half of AEB — 20<br />
percent belonged to the Singapore-registered holding company ACMA Investments and its subsidiary<br />
Citycom. At the same time, the companies Interenergo and Intergazprom Invest, which belongs to the<br />
British Virgin Islands-registered Undall, each held a 10 percent stake. In May 1999 another 10 percent<br />
stake went to IGM Kereskedelmi, which is owned by Cubbaren Ltd., registered on the Isle of Man.<br />
Rakhimkulov has also become an AEB shareholder after Gazprombank sold him an 8.5 percent stake<br />
on Dec. 21, 2000, according to PSZAF.” [Gazprom Assets A Family Affair, Florian Hassel, Moscow<br />
Times, May 21, 2001]<br />
Most of these transfers appear to have constituted illegal transfers, which suggests why<br />
the key architects are facing prosecution and prison terms.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 230
“Often called a "state within a state," Gazprom controls a quarter of the world's natural gas reserves<br />
with eight times the energy reserves of Exxon Mobil Corp. Gazprom accounts for 7 percent of Russia's<br />
economy. It also represents the most visible symbol of the struggle to establish Western-style rules of<br />
corporate governance and investor rights a decade into Russia's experiment with capitalism. Minority<br />
shareholders complain that Gazprom insiders benefit from shady deals while the company has been<br />
stripped of valuable properties.” [A 'Crossroads' Battle in Russia: Fight for Gas Firm Seen as Test for<br />
Putin and Reform, Peter Baker, Washington Post, May 21, 2001]<br />
“Outspoken Gazprom board member and critic Boris Fyodorov, a former finance minister, said that by<br />
his estimation some "$2 billion to $3 billion disappears from Gazprom each year through corruption,<br />
nepotism and simple theft." He was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying in Washington this week that when<br />
he first demanded an independent audit of Gazprom last year, Gazprom management threatened to<br />
throw him in jail.” [Gazprom Assets A Family Affair, Florian Hassel, Moscow Times, May 21, 2001]<br />
It is important to remember that the World Trade Center was destroyed to cover up and<br />
terminate investigations in a wide array of illegal banking transactions linked to the<br />
policy and programs of George HW Bush Sr. Transactions at Altalanos Ertekforgalmi<br />
Bank (AEB) would/should have been a target for investigation, linking Bush to the Bank<br />
of New York Money Laundering scandal.<br />
Westdeutsche Landesbank<br />
Similarly, another bank that was a recipient of Wanta controlled funding - Westdeutsche<br />
Landesbank, had moneys routed to the Khodorkovsky group, and found itself with<br />
difficulty trying to collect that loan.<br />
Khodorkovsky's group urged the foreign banks to accept a three-year repayment plan, secured by oil<br />
exports rather than Yukos shares. But the two largest creditors, Daiwa Bank and West Merchant Bank<br />
(a subsidiary of Westdeutsche Landesbank), refused. [The World's Billionaires: The Oligarch Who<br />
Came in from the Cold, Paul Klebnikov, Forbes, March 18, 2002]<br />
“It began after the ruble's collapse last summer, when one of Russia's key financial institutions,<br />
Menatep, defaulted on $236 million in loans to Germany's Westdeutsche Landesbank, Daiwa<br />
Securities of Japan and Standard Bank of South Africa. The loans had been collateralized by a pledged<br />
30 percent stake in the enormous oil company Yukos that was also controlled by Menatep's billionaire<br />
owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. But before the foreign institutions could act, Yukos — whose reserves<br />
are considered by some to be equal to Texaco's — received local court approval to bar minority<br />
investors from shareholders meetings of its key subsidiairies. Meetings were then held where the<br />
subsidiaries were transferred almost free of charge to obscure offshore companies also suspected to be<br />
part of Khodorkovsky's empire. That left the foreign banks with nothing more than shares in a holding<br />
company that suddenly had no holdings — and thus was almost worthless.” [Corporate Governance<br />
Goes Global: Riding the Rising Tide, Rob Wright, IFC Corporate Relations Unit, Impact, Summer<br />
1999]<br />
It is also clearly reported that the Landesbank was included into the investigation of the<br />
Bank of New York activities.<br />
“Though the exact figure has not been determined, this vast sum not only lined the pockets of the new<br />
Russian kleptocracy, but also flowed into the coffers of US and European financial institutions. (The<br />
BNY case may well involve a number of major European banks. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal,<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 231
citing sources familiar with the investigation, said that Credit Suisse, Union Bank of Switzerland,<br />
Dresdner Bank, Westdeutsche Landesbank and Banque Internacionale of Luxembourg are being<br />
scrutinized for their role in the matter.)” [Bank of New York probe exposes ties between Western<br />
financiers and Russian Mafia, James Brookfield, 27 August 1999, wsws.org]<br />
Deutsch Landesbank, however was connected to a second, later investigation into the<br />
holdings of Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich. In 2001, both of these<br />
investigations were ongoing, and centered in the World Trade Center.<br />
“According to recent media reports, Russian companies allegedly controlled by Boris Berezovsky and<br />
Roman Abramovich were responsible for laundering up to $7.2 billion in Russian "funny money"<br />
mostly through German banks over the past four years. It is not yet clear whether the scheme involved<br />
"just" tax evasion or more serious criminally related money-laundering activity. This scandal, if<br />
confirmed, involves the venerable Westdeutsche Landesbank, known as WestLB, and a slew of other<br />
German financial institutions. Outwardly, this case is reminiscent of other money-laundering schemes<br />
such as those involving the Bank of New York and Citigroup. All of them involve moving large sums<br />
of money between Caribbean offshore locations such as the British Virgin Islands or even more exotic<br />
places like Nauru and Western Samoa….. The investigation may soon be handed over to the FBI<br />
however…. Several venerable banks, including the Bank of New York and Republic Bank of New<br />
York, were at the center of a much larger scandal in the fall of 1999, in which transactions in excess of<br />
$6 billion were uncovered. The transfer originated in Russia and involved some 10,000 transactions<br />
since October 1998. The federal investigation - involving the FBI, the New York Federal Reserve<br />
Board, the New York Banking <strong>Commission</strong> and the British law enforcement and national security<br />
agencies - is still going on.” [Coming Clean, Ariel Cohen, Moscow Times, January 23, 2001]<br />
This report emphasizes that the German /Suisse banks referenced in the investigation<br />
include those very banks reported to be at the heart of the need to cover up investigations<br />
at the World Trade Center: Credit Suisse, Union Bank of Switzerland, Deutsch Bank,<br />
Dresdner Bank, and now, including Westdeutsche Landesbank.<br />
8.6 The Yeltsin Family and the Investigations in the World Trade<br />
Center<br />
There were at least seven active investigations into the Yeltsin family when the World<br />
Trade Center – home of the U.S. major financial investigative organizations – went<br />
down. In all probability, there might have been up to fifteen or twenty investigations<br />
opened, and most of them would never see the light of day. All of these investigations<br />
are tied to accounts that would ultimately link back to the Bush family financing.<br />
1. In 1998, Loutchansky, Marc Rich and Berezovsky (Berezovskii) – all associates of<br />
the Yeltsin family - were being investigated in conjunction with the Bank of New<br />
York money-laundering scandal that the Bush administration, (through Ashcroft) first<br />
tried to bury as insignificant – only to have it put back on the front page of the press<br />
by Swiss investigators, and then Russian investigators. (To put the Yeltsin “Family”<br />
in context, it should be noted that the crime organization named after him ousted him<br />
shortly after he lost value as anything other than a figurehead.)<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 232
“It is not the Yeltsin family in a literal sense: Boris Yeltsin was "thrown out" a long time ago; it is<br />
a group that holds the real power. And Chernoi can cover its crimes and develop its business with<br />
the help of the state.” [Le Monde: French Editorial Says Russian President Putin Unable To Effect<br />
Changes, Counter Mafia, Corruption]<br />
This investigation opened inroads into accounts at Menatep Bank, Runicom,<br />
Inkombank, EuropeanUnion bank, Riggs-Valmet, Bank Rossisky-Kredit, Alpha<br />
Bank, many of which were linked to Bush operatives and the Yeltsin Family<br />
counterparts going as far back as 1991.<br />
2. Nazarbayev and his Swiss accounts were being investigated by the Swiss for illegal<br />
activities, linked to Bush Sr. and Richard Cheney in the Griffen scandal.<br />
3. Later Mikhail Khodorkovsky would be implicated in the Bank of New York moneylaundering<br />
scandal because of his control of Menatep Bank, but would be more<br />
closley tied to use of the Riggs-Valmet money-laundering conduit. His imprisonment<br />
for tax evasion would be portrayed in the U.S .press as “political” repression by the<br />
Putin regime, and hardly a mention of the Riggs Bank connection would be<br />
published. The Bush family remained loyal to Khodorkovsky after his arrest, with<br />
George Bush Jr. acting on his behalf.<br />
US President George W. Bush used a meeting Friday with Russian non-governmental groups to<br />
express concern over the fate of the jailed founder of Russian oil firm Yukos, participants said.<br />
"He talked about Khodorkovsky, he talked about his wife," said Maria Gaidar, head of the liberal<br />
Russian youth movement Da (Yes), who attended the meeting with Mr Bush at the residence of<br />
the US consul general in Saint Petersburg. "He said that … he was concerned" about the welfare<br />
of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, she said, referring to the Yukos founder sentenced in May 2005 to<br />
eight years in prison after conviction on tax evasion, massive fraud and embezzlement charges.<br />
[Bush 'concern' over jailed oil baron, correspondents in St Petersburg, Herald Sun (Queensland),<br />
July 15, 2006]<br />
Upon his arrest, Khodorkovsky’s secretive business arrangement with the Rothschild<br />
family was exposed, as Jacob Rothschild took over Khodorkovsky’s 26% control of<br />
Yukos. Khodorkovsky’s seat on the board of directors for Yukos went to former<br />
Halliburton executive Edgar Ortiz, a former Halliburton vice president during US<br />
Vice President Dick Cheney's time as Halliburton CEO, and as President and CEO of<br />
Halliburton, took over the relationship with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan<br />
Republic (SOCAR). (See Halliburton Man to Sub for Khodorkovsky, Simon<br />
Ostrovsky, Moscow Times, April 30, 2004.)<br />
4. Yeltsin’s accounts in UBS were being investigated by the Swiss at the same as the<br />
1998 decision to attack the World Trade Center was made.<br />
“There were the first names, the last names, and the accounts accessed at the Banca del Gottardo<br />
in Lugano and at the UBS in Geneva.” [Investigation of Yeltsin's Swiss Accounts, Milan's<br />
Corriere della Sera in Italian, 25 August 1999 (translation for personal use only) Article by Carlo<br />
Bonini and Giuseppe D'Avanzo: "Switzerland, Credit Cards Accuse Yeltsin"]<br />
5. Loutchansky, as shown earlier, was being investigated by the Swiss as well.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 233
“Time Magazine reporters …took up Loutchansky's offer to examine his books in July 1996. Time's<br />
report detailed deals involving PM Viktor Chernomyrdin, Moscow Mayor Yury Lyuzhkov and former<br />
Soviet Minister of Metallurgy and hometown Yeltsin crony Oleg Soskovets, scud missiles, nuclear<br />
smuggling and multimillion dollar transfers through a network of Swiss bank accounts and dummy<br />
companies set up in tax havens like the Isle of Man and Liechtenstein.” [Russia's X mysteries, Anne<br />
Williamson, WorldNetDaily.com, <strong>September</strong> 17, 1999]<br />
6. The missing Russian treasury gold was probably under scrutiny by the FBI<br />
investigation of gold-price fixing, an investigation that would have encompassed<br />
accounts from Barrick Gold and Deutschebank.<br />
7. The Westdeutsche Landesbank realated mney-laundering of Boris Berezovsky and<br />
Roman Abramovich<br />
All of the investigations targeted individuals who were at some point financed by Bush<br />
Sr. and his business associates, and used government funds to fraudulently enrich various<br />
business partners and themselves. All the investigations were housed in the World Trade<br />
Center. All of these Russian/Israeli Mafiya frauds were being investigated by agencies in<br />
the WTC and had their investigative resources refocused on “Al Qaeda.” It should not be<br />
forgotten that Al Qaeda has been a documented CIA front established under George Bush<br />
Sr. when he was CIA Director, vice President and officially the chief of National Security<br />
under Reagan, and as President. As the senior US Intelligence czar for 20 years, if anyone<br />
ever ‘owned’ Al Qaeda, it was George HW Bush.<br />
“George Bush, who, as vice president, beginning in 1981, carried out Executive Order 12333, which<br />
placed all U.S. intelligence operations under Bush's personal control.” [Executive Outcomes ties lead<br />
to London and Bush, Roger Moore and Linda de Hoyos, Executive Intelligence Review January 31,<br />
1997, pp. 42-43]<br />
All of these individuals are linked in multiple ways to the Bush and Yeltsin “Families.”<br />
The Yeltsin Family Partnership in State Sponsored Terror<br />
The Yelstin Family has on multiple occasions, demonstrated a willingness to use<br />
personally funded, private military force for political reasons. (This technically fits the<br />
definition of terrorism.) For example, and most recently, when Vladimir Putin ejected<br />
most of the oligarchs and the Yeltsin Family from their seats of political power,<br />
Berezovsky countered by threatening a coup!<br />
“…Putin has also fired Aleksandr Voloshin, his chief of staff (formally, it is Voloshin who resigned).<br />
Voloshin was one of the architects of Russia's capitalism. This completes the political clean-up: now<br />
the Putin government is entirely run by Putin men (many of whom are veterans of the old KGB, the<br />
Soviet secret police). [October 2003) Putin vs the oligarchs. TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi]<br />
“Wanted Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has gone public with his plans to seize power in Russia by<br />
force. The London-based oligarch said in an interview with the Ekho Moskvy radio station Wednesday<br />
that he had been working on the coup plan for 18 months.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 234
Berezovsky, a notorious critic of Putin’s regime, said he aimed to replace the “anti-constitutional<br />
regime” in Russia. “The regime has lost its legitimacy. Neither Putin nor the parliament are legitimate.<br />
They are anti-constitutional, because they have made a number of anti-constitutional decisions, such as<br />
replacing elected governors by appointed ones. This is absolutely against the spirit and the language of<br />
the constitution.” Today’s regime would never allow a fair election, Berezovsky added, so the only<br />
way out is a coup.” [January 26, 2006 mosnews.com]<br />
This however, is not the first time the Yeltsin Family has demonstrated a willingness to<br />
resort to political terror for its own agenda. This willingness to use terrorists for their<br />
political agenda is best understood by understanding the ‘muscle’ in the Yeltsin Family,<br />
starting with Aleksander Voloshin.<br />
“Who are the strong men of the Yeltsin "family?" (Khaydarov) Roman Abramovitch represents them.<br />
He manages their shares, for example 50 percent of Russal, based on the agreement signed with the<br />
Chernoi group in early 2000. Then, there is of course Vladimir Voloshin, head of the presidential<br />
administration under Yeltsin, and whom Putin was not able to get rid of. His story is known, starting<br />
with the scandal of the AVVA financial pyramid (created with Boris Berezovskiy). He controls the<br />
"family's" interests and takes care of anything that could harm it. If he cannot do so, he turns to Roman<br />
Abramovitch, to Oleg Deripaska, or Valentin Yumashev (former head of the presidential<br />
administration, author of Boris Yeltsin's books, and husband of the former president's daughter Tatiana<br />
Diachenko).” [Le Monde: French Editorial Says Russian President Putin Unable To Effect Changes,<br />
Counter Mafia, Corruption]<br />
“Voloshin, 47, was considered the Kremlin's "gray eminence" by many, mediating the interests of the<br />
Russian state and the country's oligarchs. Officially, Voloshin ranked third in the Russian power<br />
hierarchy, after the president and prime minister. However, Voloshin is believed to have decided many<br />
sensitive political issues on Putin's behalf, effectively making him the second most powerful political<br />
figure in the country. Voloshin became head of then-President Boris Yeltsin's administration in March<br />
1999 on the strength of heavy lobbying from now-exiled Boris Berezovskii, with whom he worked<br />
during the 1990s to build that oligarch's vast business interests. After Putin's election as president in<br />
2000, Voloshin opted to support his new boss and helped ease Berezovskii into exile instead of a likely<br />
prison term.….It was Voloshin who brokered deals between bureaucrats and the business world and<br />
applied the necessary influence to enforce agreements.” [Filling Russia's Voloshin Vacuum, Peter<br />
Lavelle, RFE/RL Newsline, November 03, 2003]<br />
“… the Russian Prosecutor-Generals Office announced that it had launched an inspection into the prior<br />
commercial activities of one the country’s most powerful officials, presidential chief of staff Alexander<br />
Voloshin. Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov said that the initial probe may or may not result in a<br />
criminal case. In the early 1990s, Voloshin worked with Berezovsky on the so-called "pyramid"<br />
schemes, say Russian media outlets. According to the reports, Voloshin ran several companies that<br />
were accused of embezzling millions of US dollars, but the case never led to criminal charges. Ustinov<br />
eventually backed down and said there was no criminal investigation relative to Voloshin.”<br />
[Transparency International: Putin undertakes apparent crackdown on corruption, Toni Schönfelder ,<br />
Asia Times, Jan 23, 2002, Moscow]<br />
“…during the spring and summer of 1999 members of Yeltsin’s close entourage (the so-called Family)<br />
were as prepared … to violate the letter of the Russian Constitution as well as Russian law in order to<br />
prevent a transfer of power to persons they did not trust to look out for their physical well-being or<br />
their financial interests. … the Yeltsin Family were more than ready to involve Russia in a “short<br />
victorious war” as well as to destabilize Moscow and various regions of Russia to the point where the<br />
parliamentary elections of 1999 and the presidential vote of 2000 would need to be canceled or<br />
postponed for several years. As in 1994, a military conflict was in fact launched (the incursions into<br />
Dagestan), but due to unanticipated contingencies, it did not prove necessary to cancel the upcoming<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 235
elections.” [“Storm in Moscow”: A Plan of the Yeltsin “Family” to Destabilize Russia , John B.<br />
Dunlop , The Hoover Institution , October 8, 2004 ]<br />
Understanding that Aleksandr Voloshin is one of the key figures in the Yeltsin Family<br />
allows the report to define the context for the meeting in the summer of 1999, in which<br />
Adnan Khashoggi coordinated a meeting between Voloshin, the Chechen-Muslim<br />
separatist Basayev (who trained in US funded Al Qaeda camps), and a representative of<br />
the Columbia cocaine network, and a former KGB agent ‘connected’ to the CIA<br />
(Surikov).<br />
“French intelligence sources report, via the Russian press : according to these source Basayev met in<br />
summer 1999 in France with Aleksandr Voloshin, chief of staff for then- president Yeltsin (and later<br />
Putin), and Anton Surikov, a former Soviet military intelligence officer who worked with Basayev<br />
when he was leading the Abkhaz separatist movement in Georgia, with Moscow's blessing. Voloshin is<br />
claimed to have provided $10 million to Basayev in order to fund the invasion in Dagestan…..<br />
The most thorough study, by John Dunlop of the Hoover Institution, blames the plotting on three<br />
protégés of the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovskii – Valentin Yumashev, Alexander Voloshin, and<br />
Roman Abramovich – who at this point were members of Yeltsin's "Family" in the Kremlin. (As for<br />
Berezovskii himself, Dunlop writes that by mid-1999 "all of his real but beginning-to-dwindle political<br />
influence was obtained through the intercession of D'yachenko” [Yeltsin's daughter] and Yumashev.")<br />
[The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/<strong>11</strong>, Peter Dale Scott,<br />
October 29, 2005]<br />
“In March of 2002 Interfax reported that, through his long-time business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili,<br />
Berezovskii had “supplied Chechen figures Kazbek Makhashev and Movladi Udugov with money to<br />
purchase the raid against Dagestan. According to witnesses, Berezovskii contributed 30 million rubles<br />
for the purpose.” This payment, amounting to more than $1 million, if it occurred, may have been only<br />
one of several intended to underwrite a “short victorious war” in Dagestan.” [“Storm in Moscow”: A<br />
Plan of the Yeltsin “Family” to Destabilize Russia , John B. Dunlop , The Hoover Institution , October<br />
8, 2004 ]<br />
“The investigative weekly then went on to summarize what it had learned from French and Israeli<br />
intelligence, as well as from its own journalistic digging: “A luxurious villa in the French city of<br />
Beaulieu, located between Nice and the principality of Monaco. This villa, according to the French<br />
special services, belongs to the international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. He is an Arab from Saudi<br />
Arabia, a billionaire with a complicated reputation. According to the French special services, and also<br />
to the French press, in June of 1999 there took up residence at the villa a Venezuelan banker named<br />
Alfonso Davidovich. In the Latin American press, he is said to be responsible for laundering the funds<br />
of the Columbian left insurrection organization FARC, which carries out an armed struggle with the<br />
official authorities, supported by the narcotics business.”<br />
“It soon emerged,” Versiya continued, “that a very frequent visitor to Davidovich was a certain French<br />
businessman of Israeli-Soviet origin, a native of Sokhumi [Abkhazia], 53-year-old Yakov Kosman.<br />
“Soon,” the account continues, “the special services succeeded in establishing that Kosman and<br />
Tsveiba went to the Nice airport, where they met two men who had arrived from Paris. Judging from<br />
their documents, one of those who arrived was Sultan Sosnaliev, who in the years of the Georgian-<br />
Abkhaz war served as the minister of defense of Abkhazia. Second there emerged from the airport one<br />
more native of Sokhumi—Anton Surikov. According to rumors, during the years of the war in<br />
Abkhazia, he was subordinated to Sosnaliev and was responsible for questions of the organization of<br />
sabotage and was friendly with field commander Shamil’ Basaev, who at that time headed the Chechen<br />
battalion.”<br />
The next arrival came by sea: “According to the precise information of the French and the Israelis, on<br />
3 July at the port of Beaulieu a private English yacht ‘Magiya’ [Magic] arrived from Malta. From it to<br />
the shore came two passengers. If one is to believe the passport information, one of the ‘Englishmen’<br />
was a certain Turk, in the past an advisor to the Islamicist premier of Turkey, [Necmettin] Erbakan, a<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 236
ather influential figure in the Wahhabi circles of Turkey, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. From<br />
sources in the Russian special services we learned that Mekhmet is also a close friend of the not<br />
unknown Khattab.”<br />
“The second person,” the account goes on, “to the surprise of the intelligence officers, was the<br />
Chechen field commander Shamil’ Basaev.” [“Storm in Moscow”: A Plan of the Yeltsin “Family” to<br />
Destabilize Russia , John B. Dunlop , The Hoover Institution , October 8, 2004 ]<br />
Yakov Kosman would also be identified as part of the Russian/Israeli Mafiya.<br />
“Yakov Abramovich Kosman (b. 1946), resides in Nice, France. Has German and, possibly, Israeli<br />
citizenship. Involved in real estate operations and banking. Has contacts with Kosovo Albanian<br />
criminal societies in European countries. In 1997-2000 he served as financial consultant to Hashim<br />
Thaçi, the chief commander of KLA. The new president of Far West, Ltd.” [The Global Drug Meta-<br />
Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/<strong>11</strong>, Peter Dale Scott (18,734 words) October 29,<br />
2005]<br />
Also, one needs to understand that one of Farwest’s key partners who arranged the<br />
Khashoggi villa meeting of June 199 – Anton Surikov – was an apparent American agent<br />
in the Soviet Union, and it was Surikov that mentored Basayev, who had received his<br />
initial training in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan. As noted earlier in this report,<br />
Surikov is also a protege of KGB leaders Alexie Kondaurov and Fillipp Bobkov, who<br />
sponsored Khordokovsky in his early days. Surikov’s other employer (IPROG) is funded<br />
by grants from Khordokovsky. (Surikov’s involvement in Farwest may help explain how<br />
Halliburton received – according to the Halliburton spokesperson – CIA clearance to use<br />
Farwest as a recruiter in Central Asia and Africa.)<br />
“Anton Surikov is well-known person…. I’ve known him since Afghanistan. … I think Anton went<br />
over to the Americans already back then…. He has a distant relative in the United States who,<br />
basically, held very high post in the CIA and was in Peshawar in the 1980s. Anton always kept this<br />
fact in secret, back in the Soviet time and later on. After all, he occupied very high positions in the<br />
Department, in the government and in the Duma. Just imagine, he worked in all these high-level jobs<br />
and nobody cared! As a matter of fact, our bosses used his connections as the informal channel of<br />
communication with the Americans. That’s why Anton could have his way. And later on it was Anton<br />
who groomed Basayev in Abkhazia as early as in 1992. Everyone knows about this. Even nowadays,<br />
last summer he called Basayev on the satellite phone in my presence. He sounded very friendly:<br />
“Shamil, dear brother, I hug you…” [Revelations of the Fugitive Kremlin Financier, recorded Vadim<br />
Andreev, Translation and comments by burtsev.ru, January 19, 2004]<br />
Basayev’s Muslim separatists later would be accused in the world press of the Moscow<br />
Dubrovka theater tragedy in November 2002, and the <strong>September</strong> 2004 Beslan school<br />
attack in which hundreds of children died. Despite the charges, there would be widespread<br />
reports in the independent press, and a documentary, based on eye-witness<br />
testimony, that these attacks were actually orchestrated by Russian secret police for the<br />
intent of fanning the flames of Russian nationalism, to the political benefit of the Yeltsin<br />
Family. These witnesses were arrested and held until they recanted their testimony. What<br />
is intriguing about these events, like the World Trade Center tragedy, is that American<br />
intelligence, in the U.S. and Russia, created Muslim terrorists, made them the “public<br />
enemy” and then blamed them for events which served their personal, political interests.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 237
The group of ex-military rogues that Voloshin worked with to orchestrate these acts of<br />
political terrorism would be the same group of Russian expatriates that would form a<br />
Swiss company called “Farwest.” In the French meeting at Khashoggi’s villa, this group<br />
was represented by Anton Surikov and Alfonso Davidovich. Farwest is mainly comprised<br />
of ex-Russian military officers closely linked to the Afghan heroin trade. The<br />
Davidovich connection is a starting point for explaining the well reported cocaine-forweapons<br />
trade between the Columbians and the Russian military. Farwest appears to be<br />
a group of ex-military professonals that provides “buyers” like the Yeltsin Family with<br />
heroin, cocaine and terrorist muscle. As one understands the service offering of a group<br />
like Farwest, it is important to see who else their customers are. Farwest has two key<br />
customers whose management shows up repeatedly in the plan to destroy the World<br />
Trade Center. Those customers are Halliburton (during the Cheney era) and a pair of<br />
companies known as Diligence and New Bridge, which share the same board members.<br />
These may well be a few of the “important politicians” that Sibel Edmonds claims are<br />
associated with the Central Asian drug and money laundering trade.<br />
“Diligence LLC (http://www.diligencellc.com/index.html) was formed by past members of the CIA<br />
and Britain's MI5 Intelligence Services. They have included experts in international law, journalism<br />
and intelligence services from post-Cold War which enables them to vet all sorts of future investment<br />
projects while providing security advice. They are related to New Bridge Strategies, sharing addresses<br />
and many of the same board members. “<br />
“About Diligence LLC Headquartered in Washington, D.C with offices in Miami, London and<br />
Geneva, Diligence LLC specializes in the provision of timely and accurate commercial and<br />
competitive information, pre-employment vetting services, analysis, due diligence, and security<br />
services to Fortune 500 companies and leading financial institutions around the world. For more<br />
information, visit www.diligencellc.com”<br />
Here are some of the key players in Diligence/New Bridge – which shows an ongoing<br />
business involvement of the Bush Family as well as Shiek Kamal Adham and Adnan<br />
Khashoggi.<br />
• Joe Allbaugh, the deputy chairman of Diligence, resigned his post as head of FEMA<br />
on March 1, 2003, a post granted to him after serving as National Campaign Manager<br />
for the Bush-Cheney 2000 election and chief of staff to then-Gov. Bush of Texas.<br />
• Neil Bush has been paid a $60,000 annual consulting fee. Neil’s role is to "help<br />
companies secure contracts in Iraq," the Financial Times reports.<br />
• Lord Powell of Bayswater (also on the Board of Barrick, with Adham and<br />
Khashoggi), representative of the Rothschild family investment firms,<br />
• Richard Burt: chairman of Diligence, was a Director of Deutsche Bank-Alex Brown<br />
fund, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany.<br />
• Ed Rogers and Lanny Griffith, former George H.W. Bush aids. Ed Rogers has been a<br />
lobbyist for Shiek Kamal Adham and Adnan Khoshoggi, as well as the Russian Alpha<br />
Group/Alpha Bank owned by Mikhail Friedman.<br />
• President of the company, John Howland, and principal Jamal Daniel were business<br />
partners of first brother Neil Bush<br />
• Whitley Bruner, formerly head of the CIA Baghdad station, is now director of the<br />
Iraq branch of Diligence.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 238
Again, the report demonstrates that Farwest – a Swiss company comprised of<br />
Russian/Israeli Mafiya terrorists and drug dealers – openly admits to having Halliburton<br />
and Diligence as their customers, which is mostly comprised of senior Bush apparatus<br />
operatives! What is equally as interesting is the second appearance of Lord Powell in this<br />
network of Bush apparatus companies. Powell was first identified with this group as a<br />
Board member of Barrick – and now in Diligence. Powell is a major representative of<br />
Rothschild family holding companies. In one of the more rare occasions of the Rothschild<br />
family, their role and benefit in this scenario was later revealed in the press. Essentially,<br />
Jacob Rothschild has had secret agreements with at least one of the oligarchs<br />
(Khodorkovsky), which suggests that there may be more of these "previously unknown<br />
arrangements."<br />
“LONDON (Agence France-Presse) — Control of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's shares in the Russian oil<br />
giant Yukos have passed to renowned banker Jacob Rothschild, under a deal they concluded prior to<br />
Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest, the Sunday Times reported. Voting rights to the shares passed to Mr.<br />
Rothschild, 67, under a "previously unknown arrangement" designed to take effect in the event that<br />
Mr. Khodorkovsky could no longer "act as a beneficiary" of the shares, it said…. Mr. Rothschild now<br />
controls the voting rights on a stake in Yukos worth almost $13.5 billion, the newspaper said in a<br />
dispatch from Moscow. Mr. Khodorkovsky owns 4 percent of Yukos directly and 22 percent through a<br />
trust of which he is the sole beneficiary, according to Russian analysts.” [Arrested oil tycoon passed<br />
shares to banker, Washington Times, November 03, 2003,<br />
http://washingtontimes.com/world/2003<strong>11</strong>02-<strong>11</strong>1400-3720r.htm]<br />
Farwest, despite the reports of its ‘private military and security capabilities,’ is primarily<br />
a drug syndicate, as testified to by a Russian source with inside information:<br />
"The distribution of responsibilities in the OPS as follows. Filin, partly Likhvintsev, Davidovich, and<br />
Kosman, the four of them are at the top and excersize general leadership. Filin is responsible for the<br />
headquarters of Far West, Ltd. in Switzerland. Filin and Davidovich are responsible for purchasing<br />
cocaine in Colombia and the FLW office in Bogotá.Likhvintsev is responsible for cocaine traffic<br />
through the port of St. Petersburg and its delivery to the Azeris. Saidov is in contact with Jamaat<br />
Shariat and is responsible for purchasing Afghan heroin coming through Turkmenistan to Dagestan.<br />
He is also responsible for the port of Novorossiisk and the FWL office in the Crimea. Surikov is<br />
responsible for contacts with Hizb-ut-Tahrir in Udmurtia, Tatarstan and Bashkiria, as well as for<br />
purchasing there the Afghan heroin that comes through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. He is also<br />
responsible for the FWL office in Izhevsk 7 and for shipping of "special merchandise" (i.e.,. heroin -<br />
burtsev.ru) to the port of Novorossiisk (for this he uses the Adygei ethnic criminal group). Kosman is<br />
responsible for the transfer of the heroine, delivered to Europe from the Novorossiisk, to Kosovo<br />
Albanians in Mediterranean and for the FWL office in Kosovo. Filin, Kosman, and Davidovich are<br />
responsible for financial transactions related to drug trafficking and for laundering the proceeds in<br />
Caribbean offshores. Saidov is responsible for financial transactions and money laundering in the Gulf<br />
and for the FLW office in Dubai. Filin and Likhvintsev are in communication with their accomplices<br />
in their former directorate (GRU - burtsev.ru). Likhvintsev is in contact with their "protection" at "the<br />
top" (in the Kremlin - burtsev.ru). Butkevichius supervises the FWL office in Georgia and is<br />
responsible for the OPS communication with Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili. Surikov is responsible<br />
for receiving intelligence from the corrupted officers of secret services about the information which<br />
these services gather about the OPS and their competitors. Surikov (and Baranov) is also responsible<br />
for politics, informational campaigns in mass media (presently Filin, Saidov, and Roeva also take part<br />
in these activities) and for communication with YUKOS (through Kondaurov). Lunev is responsible<br />
for physical actions against their opponents. He is also responsible for the FWL offices in Iraq and<br />
Afghanistan and for their business there with KBR/Halliburton (formerly headed by Dick Cheney),<br />
hiring for them mercenaries. They closed their office in Angola. Before, Likvintsev was responsible<br />
for it. Filin and Surikov are responsible for their connections in the United States, Davidovich with<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 239
Venezuela, Saidov with Saudi Arabia, Saidov and Surikov with Turkey, Saidov with the Chechens and<br />
Hizb ut-Tahrir in Central Asia." [Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa, from the dossier compiled by<br />
burtsev.ru]<br />
With the groups links to Kondaurov and Bobkov, the claim they are linked to the drug<br />
trade is re-inforced by Bobkov’s continued involvement in the same:<br />
“The case of Filipp Bobkov, the former First Deputy Chairman of the KGB, exemplifies the role of the<br />
mobbed-up KGB networks. Bobkov was "cashiered" from the KGB for his role in the bloody KGB-<br />
Spetnaz crackdown on the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius in 1991. As a "private" citizen, Bobkov<br />
pursued the KGB-ordained strategy of marketing his services to Western investors, and quickly<br />
assumed control of a banking group in Moscow. Bobkov swiftly assembled a collection of KGB<br />
veterans who had been stationed in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. This was the nucleus of what<br />
has become known as the "Moscow Narco-Group," which coordinates drug-running operations in<br />
Romania, Colombia, Peru, and Cuba. Its main base of operations is the Russian naval base at Cam<br />
Ranh Bay in Vietnam - a communist regime which is next in the queue for "joint ventures" and<br />
American foreign aid.” [Russia's Global Crime Cartel, William Norman Grigg, The New American,<br />
Vol. 12, No. <strong>11</strong>, May 27, 1996, Copyright 2004 American Opinion Publishing Incorporated,<br />
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no<strong>11</strong>/vo12no<strong>11</strong>_russian_crime.htm]<br />
If Farwest is primarily a drug operation, there are some very well placed members of the<br />
Bush apparatus dealing with them. It might be easy to conclude that this Russian Mafiya-<br />
Farwest-Diligence network is irrelevant and proves nothing regarding 9/<strong>11</strong>. With some<br />
reflection however, the implications are very significant:<br />
• It demonstrates that Adnan Khashoggi, a key participant in multiple aspects of the<br />
9/<strong>11</strong> motive and planning, clearly has no hesitation to facilitate operations which<br />
result in political terror and mass murder, and a documented track record of doing just<br />
that!<br />
• It demonstrates that the Bush family financial apparatus, including Dick Cheney,<br />
conducts on-going business with an organization (Farwest) that arranges contract<br />
political terror using Muslim terrorists with the same background as Al Qaeda, and is<br />
a major drug conduit!<br />
• It demonstrates that the Russian/Israeli Mafiya family (the Yeltsin Family in<br />
particular) that has reaped billions of dollars from Bush largesse since 1991 uses the<br />
same political terrorist professionals as the Bush Family!<br />
• It demonstrates that the Bush Family had other channels besides Armitage and Secord<br />
to hire Al Qaeda trained mercenaries!<br />
• It demonstrates that Sibel Edmonds could easily have translated conversations which<br />
demonstrated major U.S. political connections to drug deals and money laundering in<br />
Central Asia. The Chechnyan crime operation is linked to the Yeltsin Family,<br />
Farwest, and Diligence, and hence in many ways to the Bush political and family<br />
network.<br />
8.7 Armageddon<br />
Two highly incredible and widely ignored stories crossed paths in three places: the World<br />
Trade Center, Russia and the Pentagon – the Derk Vreeland story and the Brady Bond<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 240
story. On the surface of those stories, as commonly presented on the Internet, there<br />
seemed to be more reason to discount them than pursue them. To a large degree, these<br />
stories appear to have been dismissed by independent 9/<strong>11</strong> investigators, with the<br />
exception of acknowledgement by Flocco, Schwarz and Ruppert. However, an<br />
investigation pursuing the smaller details of those stories, (e.g., reading the specifics of<br />
the alleged ONI documents, attempting to validate Vreeland’s statements) suggests that<br />
these stories not only fit the world circumstances, but they provide explanations for gaps<br />
in the understanding of what really transpired on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001. Without these<br />
stories, there would be open issues as to why the Pentagon was a target, why was<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> the chosen date after literally years of planning, and what was behind the<br />
illegal trades that the FBI refuses to release?<br />
Equally important, this information reinforces the theory that the attack was an attempt to<br />
cover up massive money and gold laundering activity by destroying multiple<br />
investigations in the World Trade Center. It is now clear that additional investigations<br />
were being conducted by the ONI which was housed in the section of the Pentagon hit by<br />
Flight 77. It is now clear that the actual gold used to kick-off the Durham/Brady Bond<br />
scam came from Swiss accounts managed by the individual responsible for the 1991<br />
Brady Bonds – George HW Bush. In that sense, an investigation of those accounts for<br />
any reason would have brought global visibility to a $240Billion “scam” in which the<br />
Russian Mafiya and George HW Bush, with support from major American financial<br />
houses, attempted to take over major segments of Russian industry during the<br />
privatization of the collapsing Soviet economy, a collapse largely facilitated by a Bushmanaged<br />
currency destabilization program. It sheds new light on the growing relations<br />
between the Russian Mafiya and the Bush family personal investments.<br />
Finally, it provides a basis for understanding why so many individuals have kept quiet<br />
about what they know about the truth behind 9/<strong>11</strong>. These are the people who do not have<br />
all the facts, but have enough information from their small role in attack to know the<br />
official “Al Qaeda” story does not ring true. However, these are people who personally<br />
have benefited from the tragedy, though corporate bonuses, promotions and investments.<br />
These were the World Trade Center executives invited to celebrity golf games and<br />
fishing trips on 9/<strong>11</strong> so they need not be present when their firms went down into the<br />
rubble.<br />
“Business executives, some of whom worked in the WTC, were in Nebraska to attend a meeting at<br />
Offutt Air Force Base hosted by billionaire Warren Buffett on the morning of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>th. The<br />
same base would be visited later that day by George W. Bush.” [http://9/<strong>11</strong>research.<br />
wtc7.net/sept<strong>11</strong>/analysis/anomalies.html]<br />
These are the bankers, accountants, the traders, consultants and executives who get to<br />
keep their jobs, bonuses and very fat paychecks and support their families while others<br />
slide into poverty, or are murdered. These are the officers and generals that use their<br />
skills to murder the very people they swore to protect from the very evil they have now<br />
become. They have traded their souls to keep their lives and comfort. They quell their<br />
consciences by convincing themselves of the lie that the people in the World Trade<br />
Center, Pentagon and on four airlines had to die to save the U.S. economy, and are<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 241
collateral damage in a final round of the “Cold War.”. They tell themselves that<br />
thousands of innocent citizens needed to die so that America could continue to fund the<br />
Russian/Israeli Mafiya in a war against an enemy that ceased to be a threat decades ago.<br />
They tell themselves that witnesses need to be murdered and wars need to happen so that<br />
‘the chosen’ Americans can maintain their lifestyles, not because their lives are<br />
endangered by “terrorists.” They justify the misery and deaths of thousands with their<br />
own self-gratification. These are people across the globe, in the US, Canada, Switzerland,<br />
Germany, Israel, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, UK and more. These are executives that<br />
feed from stolen national treasuries, burden taxpayers with debt that has no social value<br />
and steal from the poor and unfortunate so that they can drive bigger cars, own more<br />
luxurious homes, and indulge their desires. They know, yet they continue to feed this<br />
growing corruption.<br />
For them, this is ‘realpolitik.’ For them, the world is either good or evil, black or white,<br />
winners or losers. They are the absolutists rooted in dualism. For them, self-indulgence<br />
at the expense of others is winning, is good and wears a white hat! However, these are<br />
the people every major western and eastern religion has – for thousands of years – argued<br />
are evil, black and losers. It is a debate as old as mankind, and it’s parallel is the parable<br />
of Cain and Able.<br />
The only difference here is scale. It is no longer enough to steal from your neighbor and<br />
kill a person to cover it up. It is no longer enough to raid a village and burn it down to<br />
enhance your wealth. It is no longer necessary to send an army to steal the wealth of a<br />
nation. It is about ever-increasing scale. The events of the World Trade Center represent<br />
a modern morality play no different than Cain and Able, with brother killing brother to<br />
control his wealth in order to be seen more favorably in the eyes of his god, and then<br />
trying to hide the crime. As the scale grows, the world darws closer to another<br />
Armegeddon.<br />
Note:<br />
The great irony of the parallel between the WTC and the parable of Cain and Able, is that<br />
heritage of Cain is traceable to the Bush family.<br />
“…it came to pass that the posterity of Cain became exceedingly wicked, every one successively dying<br />
one after the other, more wicked than the former. They were intolerable in war, and vehement in<br />
robberies; and if any one were slow to murder people, yet was he bold in his profligate behaviour, in<br />
acting unjustly, and doing injury for gain. “ [Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, A.D. 93]<br />
While most readers would respond to the aforementioned claim by suggesting that the<br />
linkage Josephus references is several thousand years distant from the current Bush<br />
family, there are some that have researched this type of linkage in depth. Suffice it to<br />
mention that the name of the son of Cain (Tubal) is traced through the ages to the Free-<br />
Masons (with 13 of 43 presidents), and accordingly to its Skull and Bones offshoots, and<br />
the Bush family.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 242
9<br />
Bank Cartel or Oil Syndicate – A Question of Greater Motive<br />
Merriam Webster defines cartel as “a combination of independent commercial or<br />
industrial enterprises designed to limit competition or fix prices.” A syndicate is defined<br />
as “a loose association of racketeers in control of organized crime.” A syndicate can also<br />
be called a ‘cartel.’ In this investigation, there is bank cartel allegedly attempting to<br />
control gold prices, and an oil syndicate allegedly attempting to limit competition in the<br />
Central Asian region. Both of these cartels seem to have “motive” for disrupting the<br />
money laundering investigations initiated in the late 1990s, and continuing into the<br />
present. Both of these cartels had extensive contacts in the murky underworld of the<br />
Russian/Israeli Mafiya and U.S. Intelligence. They work together, and use each other’s<br />
services. The over-riding question appears to be: which cartel bears responsibility for the<br />
attack on the WTC?<br />
When the details of Central Asian covert oil operations are explored one finds the same<br />
criminals involved as in the Harken Energy, Iran Contra and BCCI scandals, the Barrick<br />
operation and the rape of the Soviet and Philippine treasuries. The Oil Cartel money<br />
laundering paths clumsily and inadvertently intersect at several places: the Deutsch Bank<br />
and the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), the Bank of New York and an interesting<br />
parallel involvement by Barrick. These banks continuously “appear” and have an active<br />
role in billion dollar deals which over time are shown to involve fraud, theft,<br />
expropriations, illegal drugs and weapons or some other illegal activity that leaves some<br />
national treasury poorer for their involvement and hundreds of millions of dollars<br />
unaccounted for. By facilitating and negotiating these deals, these bankers are coconspirators.<br />
(The person who drives the get-away car is just as guilty of the crime, even<br />
if that person contends he or she had no knowledge of a crime being committed, and the<br />
role of a banker’s due diligence requirements generally suggests they fully understand the<br />
crimes they are supporting.) These companies have facilitated the theft of treasuries from<br />
the Soviet Union, France, Czechoslovakia, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Angola, and<br />
possibly the U.S. These banking organizations - joined with Enron On-line - have the<br />
infrastructure for both rapid global distribution and high volume capacity required to<br />
mask the flow of illegal funds, and convert them into physical assets (bearer bonds,<br />
commodity futures and gold certificates) which cannot be traced. Time and again, these<br />
same financial institutions are identified as conduits for illegal activity and actively<br />
engaging known criminals as business partners, and hence become criminals themselves.<br />
Because of their widespread criminal activity, they have been the object of numerous<br />
investigations by agencies across the world. In most of these cases, the witnesses recant,<br />
die inexplicably or are ‘suicided.’ Massive heart attacks also seem to afflict these people<br />
more frequently than the normal citizenry. However, the trail left by the flow of money<br />
cannot be erased. (Although the destruction of the WTC, the BCCI records in London<br />
warehouses, the allowed shredding of Enron records suggests that these trails can be<br />
erased with proper financing.) Additionally, the citizens of the US, France, Germany and<br />
Switzerland are comparably socially minded, and have recently passed laws to allow<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 243
investigators into those banks to help bring to an end what is commonly recognized as<br />
criminal activity.<br />
The investigators from the US agencies at the WTC may never have known how close<br />
they were getting to the criminal core of this Cartel – but the bankers and owners of those<br />
accounts would have known.<br />
9.1 The Swiss-German Banking Connection<br />
There are a number of Swiss banks that regularly are mentioned in reports of moneylaundering<br />
and protection of stolen national assets. Amongst them, one stands out: UBS,<br />
but often mentioned as well is the Credit Suisse Bank. UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland<br />
or Schweizerische Bankgesellschaft, formerly Banque Federale or Federal Bank of<br />
Switzerland) is the long time banker to the Marcos family, Adnan Khashoggi and the<br />
Saudi Royal family, and assorted international criminals. This Swiss bank is one of<br />
several strongly attached to the German industrial and banking cartels, with a history<br />
traceable back to the Third Reich.<br />
“Deutsche had as its principal connection Credit Suisse, and also did business with the Swiss Bank<br />
Corporation and the Banque Federale (UBS). Funds transferred from Berlin for a client list approved<br />
by Bormann went into numbered accounts, and were either held there for local investment or soon<br />
shifted to neutral nations elsewhere in Europe or overseas, to be credited to the accounts of appropriate<br />
German corporate subsidiaries, or else to entirely new corporations awaiting these start-up monies that<br />
would enable them to go into business using German patents. As these new corporations prospered,<br />
they generated more money and profits, becoming important elements in the Bormann global<br />
economic scheme. Seven hundred and fifty new corporations were established in the last months of the<br />
war under the direction of Reichsleiter Bormann, using the technique perfected by Hermann Schmitz.”<br />
[Martin Bormann – Nazi in Exile, Paul Manning]<br />
UBS operated with the Deutschebank to funnel laundered Third Reich funds into many of<br />
the subsidiaries created by German industrialists at the end of the war, especially I.G.<br />
Farben and Thysssen A.G. This was done to protect assets from confiscation by the<br />
Allies. In 1978, these two banks would create UBS-DB Corporation, an American firm.<br />
It would later become Atlantic Capital Corporation (wholly owned by the Deutsche<br />
Bank), and continue to help UBS customers place investments in the U.S.<br />
UBS was one of the few banks used by the Germans during WWII to launder and hold<br />
“holocaust victim gold” as well as the stolen treasuries of Europe, including gold reserves<br />
from France and Czechoslovakia. At the time the Nazis stole the French treasury, the<br />
gold holdings of France were reported to be greater than the combined holdings of Fort<br />
Knox and the Bank of England.<br />
It is often reported that most of the Nazi gold treasury was recovered by the allies and<br />
redistributed, as per agreement, to the countries from which it had been stolen.<br />
“At the end of the war, total gold deposited at the Reichsbank amounted to RM655.4 million valued at<br />
the official price of RM2,784 per kilo. In February-March 1945, most of these stocks were transferred<br />
to the Merker’s salt mine in Thuringia. This gold was confiscated by Eisenhower’s army in April<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 244
1945. It was redistributed later to countries whose own gold stocks had been taken over by the Third<br />
Reich.” [David Marsh, The Bundesbank: The Bank that Rules Europe, Mandarin Press, 1992, p300.]<br />
In actuality, very little of the gold was ever returned, and is reported to have been kept by<br />
UBS.<br />
“In 1940, the gold reserves of the Banque de France by far exceeded the combined reserves of Fort<br />
Knox and the Bank of England. The Nazis stole the entire French reserves before the end of 1940, and<br />
much of it ended up in Swiss vaults. After WW2, the Swiss Government came visibly under pressure<br />
from the Allies and consented to various demands, including the turning over some SFR 250 mio<br />
worth of Nazi gold to the United States. According to findings by the Swiss historian Werner Rings,<br />
much of this gold was of French origin (foundry markings). Not only are the circumstances and<br />
conditions murky, but it is also still far from clear how much French gold was returned to France,<br />
how much found its way to the American reserves, and how much was turned into "Swiss gold".<br />
Interestingly, some European historians suspect that several parts of the U.S. and other Allied<br />
governments participated in the post-war disappearance of Jewish and non-Jewish assets confiscated<br />
by the Nazis.” [Observations concerning the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the<br />
World Jewish Congress et al. and the Swiss Bankers Association signed May 2 1996 in New York, by<br />
anonymous, 5/25/1996 ]<br />
“…the Kennedy Administration, in 1963, found it opportune and possible to lend a helpful hand for<br />
UBS to become Switzerland's biggest bank by almost doubling its equity overnight with confiscated<br />
Nazi assets.” [Who Wants To Sack Heidyland? Anton Keller, Secretary, Philip Wainwright, Legal<br />
Adviser Swiss Investors Protection Association, Geneva - e-mail: swissbit@solami.com, 1/1/1998]<br />
After the war, the Swiss banks took elaborate measures to ‘hide’ the Nazi gold and<br />
prevent confiscation by the Allies. Although the Allies were able to seize some, the actual<br />
amount deposited by the Nazi government and German industrialists could not be<br />
ascertained. The ‘undiscovered’ gold in the banks would be the gold pursued in 1990s in<br />
international courts and world public opinion by the Jewish World Congress and Edgar<br />
Bronfman. Shortly after the war, the Swiss passed laws to ensure that they would be able<br />
to hold on to whatever the Allies did not confiscate.<br />
“The most famous case of stolen art which has occupied art historians, journalists and politicians since<br />
the 50ies is the origin of the private collection of the Swiss arms manufacturer Dieter Bührle<br />
(Oerlikon-Bührle). The Bührle dynasty has provided Germany essential weapons in both world wars.<br />
In WW2 some 80 % of all German anti-aircraft weapons and ammunition were manufactured in<br />
Switzerland [particularly by Oerlikon-Bührle], with deliveries continuing [into] 1945. For these last<br />
deliveries Germany paid with stolen art treasures, much of which collected by Feldmarschall Hermann<br />
Göring. One large and clearly identifiable Jewish collection stolen in Paris thus found its way to the<br />
Dieter Bührle collection and - due to Swiss law and practices - Mr.Bührle has been able to fend off<br />
French government-supported recovery attempts over the last 40 years. The Swiss penal code gives<br />
good title to anybody who managed to hold on to stolen art for more than 30 years. Moreover, Swiss<br />
wartime emergency legislation and postwar judgements presume good title for any asset, irrespective<br />
of criminal or non-criminal origin, acquired by Swiss citizens from Germany during the Nazi period.<br />
The only limitation seems to have been robbery committed by the Swiss acquirer himself.”<br />
[Observations concerning the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the World Jewish<br />
Congress et al. and the Swiss Bankers Association signed May 2 1996 in New York, anonymous, May<br />
25, 1996]<br />
The next great gold bonanza to get channeled to the Swiss banks was the Marcos gold.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 245
“Gary Thompson, the newspaper's former managing editor, and journalist Steve Kanigher published<br />
copies of gold certificates from Credit Suisse, deposit records from the Union Bank of Switzerland, the<br />
correspondence of Corazon Aquino and letters to Reagan administration officials documenting witness<br />
accounts that … the CIA and Army Special Forces carted off an unknown quantity of the bullion.”<br />
[Iran-Contra Connections to the Oklahoma Bombing, gathered by Alex Constantine © 2000 Alex<br />
Constantine. All rights reserved]<br />
In both instances of the holocaust victim and Philippine gold, the Swiss banks adamantly<br />
resisted years of effort by the governments of Israel and the Philippines to have the gold<br />
returned to its rightful owners. Interestingly, UBS and other Swiss banks reversed their<br />
position on ‘not returning’ holocaust gold to family survivors in August of 1998, after<br />
several months of negotiations with Edgar Bronfman, a co-investor of Adnan Khashoggi<br />
in Barrick Gold and President of the World Jewish Congress. Surprising, the release of<br />
the holocaust gold plays a key role in understanding why the World Trade Center was<br />
attacked on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>.<br />
The reason the Swiss banks relinquished in this, after more than 50 years of denial was<br />
not so much a result of newly defined morality, but rather the result of pressure from U.S.<br />
investigators and lawmakers on three separate fronts, and by Swiss lawmakers on a fourth<br />
front:<br />
1. There were claims by the Philippine government that the Marcos family had secreted<br />
away $13.4 billion of the Philippine treasury. In 1991, at the end of the Marcos<br />
presidency in the Philippines, there were a number of reports that Marcos had<br />
secreted away in UBS, large quantities of the Philippine national treasury. There are<br />
reports that these funds came from multiple sources: the looted Japanese treasury,<br />
Nazi gold money-laundering, and embezzlement of US aid. The point that has not<br />
been disputed is that regardless of the source, there was “a lot” of illegal gold and<br />
money moved to Switzerland by Marcos, with the assistance of Adnan Khashoggi.<br />
George Bush Sr., as CIA director, would also be involved in helping Marcos move<br />
bullion out of the Philippines. Investigators from the Philippines starting making<br />
claims on these funds, providing proof the funds were secreted away at the UBS, but<br />
because of the banking laws of Switzerland, the bank would never confirm to the<br />
Philippine government of President Aquino that it had the missing Philippine funds.<br />
2. The U.S. Department of Justice, representing eight U.S. nationals that had won a<br />
lawsuit against the Marcos estate for torture and deprivation of rights, was pressing<br />
for an investigation into the Swiss accounts. A number of human rights groups took<br />
on the Marcos family in US courts for violation of human rights, and won a major,<br />
billion dollar settlement against the Marcos family. Ferdinand Marcos had died in<br />
1989, but the judgment was levied on his estate. After losing the suit, the Marcos<br />
family claimed it did not have the resources to settle the claim. That is when the<br />
Department of Justice was brought in to investigate the accounts identified in the<br />
Swiss banks as Marcos accounts. When the possibility of the estate being hidden in<br />
UBS was exposed by the efforts of the Philippine government, the Department of<br />
Justice began an investigation.<br />
3. The search for holocaust gold was re-activated in 1996 when newly declassified<br />
documents of the Swiss government inadvertently suggested the banks were still<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 246
holding on to financial assets that belonged to holocaust victims and their families.<br />
The search erupted into a scandal in 1997, when a janitor at UBS discovered and<br />
retrieved documents being shredded that supported the claims of the holocaust<br />
victims and their families. U.S. lawmakers initiated hearings and an investigation on<br />
behalf of the U.S. families involved, which then reviewed the claims of the<br />
Philippines, as the lawmakers made a case against the Swiss banks. The product of<br />
these hearings and investigations was the Eizenstat <strong>Report</strong> and Related Issues<br />
Concerning United States and Allied Efforts to Restore Gold and their Assets Looted<br />
by Nazis During World War II, June 25, 1997, House of Representatives, Committee<br />
on Banking and Financial Services.<br />
4. The final front was new anti-money laundering regulations which took hold in<br />
Switzerland in late 1998. This new legislation put criminal penalties on bankers who<br />
knowingly supported money-laundering activities.<br />
As state local and national lawmakers from the U.S. began to lobby in favor of sanctions<br />
against the Swiss banks as a penalty for withholding the gold, Edgar Bronfman, as the<br />
new president of the World Jewish Congress, negotiated a settlement with the banks. The<br />
contention of this report, based on the circumstances and no actual proof, is that<br />
Bronfman, as a significant owner of Barrick, which was the primary beneficiary of the<br />
Khashoggi - conceived gold laundering operation and connections to the German bank<br />
cartel, went to Switzerland to establish a settlement that would stop the investigation, and<br />
prevent further disclosure of the true assets being held in accounts at UBS. This report<br />
alleges that the threat posed by the three sets of claimants was that allowing investigators<br />
into the accounts of Marcos and the transfers from the Deutschebank, the true magnitude<br />
of the holdings would be disclosed, additional transfers out of those accounts would be<br />
traced, and the whole gold laundering operation would be unraveled. Further<br />
investigation would have resulted in having the Department of Justice pursuing assets<br />
into accounts that moved gold into or through Barrick for laundering. With the exposure<br />
of more that one laundering operation, the entire operation would come undone.<br />
The inevitable question should be: If Bronfman convinced the Swiss bankers to hand<br />
over roughly $8 billion ($1.25 billion to the holocaust victims, $ 4.6 to the Philippine<br />
government, and another $2 billion to the 8 U.S. victims of the torture suit) compared to<br />
less than the $1 billion they were originally planning on paying ($185 million to the<br />
holocaust victims and $800 million to the Philippine government)- what did the UBS get<br />
in return? Was the question: could Bronfman satisfactorily bring to end investigative<br />
pressure on the Swiss banks? Did Bronfman turn to his long-time partner of twenty years<br />
-Adnan Khashoggi (whose name was attached to most of these investigations) – and ask<br />
if he could “fix” a solution?<br />
There was another complicating factor in bringing closure to the “bullion” issues. The<br />
Swiss and Deutschebank knew that resolving the Holocaust and Marcos gold disputes<br />
was not the end of the pressure on the banks. There were three more open investigations:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 247
• In 1998, Russian investigators traced a $300,000 ransom payment from the Bank of<br />
New York, which opened up the Bank of New York/Russian Mafiya bank scandal.<br />
This scandal would later be shown to be connected to the Swiss banks and the<br />
Deutsche Bank.<br />
“The plundering exemplified in the BNY case is of an immense magnitude, particularly in its<br />
relation to the size of the Russian economy. One analyst estimated that the $10 billion allegedly<br />
laundered over the past year constitutes fully 6 percent of the Russian gross domestic product, and<br />
40 percent of the Russian federal government's budget. And this is only the sum that may have<br />
passed through one channel over one year. An article in Saturday's Financial Times of London<br />
cited a report prepared by Fitch IBCA, an international credit rating agency, that estimated a total<br />
of $136 billion was taken out of all of Russia between 1993 and 1998. Another estimate, provided<br />
in Lloyd's article for the Times, puts the total in the neighborhood of $200-500 billion. Though the<br />
exact figure has not been determined, this vast sum not only lined the pockets of the new Russian<br />
kleptocracy, but also flowed into the coffers of US and European financial institutions. (The BNY<br />
case may well involve a number of major European banks. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal,<br />
citing sources familiar with the investigation, said that Credit Suisse, Union Bank of Switzerland<br />
(UBS), Dresdner Bank, Westdeutsche Landesbank and Banque Internacionale of Luxembourg are<br />
being scrutinized for their role in the matter.)” [Bank of New York probe exposes ties between<br />
Western financiers and Russian Mafia, World Socialist Website, James Brookfield, 8/27/ 1999]<br />
It is of significant note that two primary owner-investors in two of the key banks<br />
involved in the Russian money laundering scandal were Bruce Rappaport, a Swiss-<br />
Israeli banker who was involved with Khashoggi and George Bush Sr. in the Iran-<br />
Contra, October Surprise and BCCI scandals, and Dr. Alfred Hartmann.<br />
“…what has never been identified in a single major Western press investigation was that the<br />
Rothschild group was at the heart of the vast illegal web of BCCI. The key figure was Dr. Alfred<br />
Hartmann, the managing director of the BCCI Swiss subsidiary, Banque de Commerce et de<br />
Placement SA; at the same time, he ran the Zurich Rothschild Bank AG, and sat in London as a<br />
member of the board of N.M. Rothschild and Sons, Hartmann was also a business partner of<br />
Helmut Raiser, friend of de Picciotto, and linked to Nordex.<br />
Hartmann was also chairman of the Swiss affiliate of the Italian BNL bank, which was implicated<br />
in the Bush administration illegal transfers to Iraq prior to the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The<br />
Atlanta branch of BNL, with the knowledge of George Bush when he was vice president,<br />
conduited funds to Helmut Raiser's Zug, Switzerland company, Consen, for development of the<br />
CondorII missile program by Iraq, Egypt, and Argentina, during the Iran-Iraq War. Hartmann was<br />
vice-chairman of another secretive private Geneva bank, the Bank of NY-Inter-Maritime Bank, a<br />
bank whose chairman, Bruce Rappaport, was one of the illegal financial conduits for Col. Oliver<br />
North's Contra drugs-for-weapons network during the late 1980. North also used the BCCI as one<br />
of his preferred banks to hide his illegal funds.” [The Secret Financial Network Behind "Wizard"<br />
George Soros, William Engdahl, EIR Investigation Executive Intelligence Review (EIR),<br />
November 1, 1996]<br />
Another key player already linked to the Bank of New York/Russian Mafiya money<br />
laundering scandal was Jonathon Bush and his invlovement with Valmet SA,<br />
A thorough investigation into these Swiss accounts probably would have uncovered links<br />
involving Richard Cheney, and Marc Rich, amongst others, to the Nigerian and Angolan<br />
oil scandals, in which dollars flowed from the U.S. to Russia. (See Section 4.8. A<br />
relevant note on this point, it is reported that Richard Cheney’s Chief-of Staff was<br />
Scooter Libby, formerly known as Liebowitz. Prior to becoming Cheney’s singular most<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 248
powerful advisor, he was Marc Rich’s US lawyer for fifteen years, and a signer of the<br />
famous neo-conservative document which identified the need for a new “Pearl Harbor” to<br />
bring America into a new era of unilateral domination by use of force.) Additional<br />
investigations that might have exposed this network of accounts included:<br />
• In 2000, Reginald Howe introduced his GATA lawsuit, naming the Deutschebank as<br />
a key party to the gold price-fixing lawsuit, prompting an investigation by the FBI<br />
into Swiss and Deutschebank gold trading accounts. The FBI records for this<br />
investigation were co-located with records to the Giffen/Mobil Oil investigation,<br />
which may or may not be meaningful.<br />
• In the Fall of 1997, The UK courts began inquiries into claims about the Kazakhstan<br />
breach of contract claim made by Farhat Tabbah against James Giffen, which opened<br />
a Pandora’s box on illegal bribes. (See Section 4.7 for more detail.) Shortly thereafter,<br />
the investigation spilled over to Switzerland (1999), and then to the U.S. courts<br />
(2000).<br />
“In the fall of 1997, an international businessman named Farhat Tabbah filed suit in London<br />
against three American businessmen, the oil minister of Kazakhstan, and a subsidiary of the Mobil<br />
Corporation.” [The Price of Oil; What was Mobil up to in Kazakhstan and Russia? Semour M.<br />
Hersh, New Yorker (Magazine), 7/9/2001 Pp. 48-65]<br />
“Switzerland first launched investigations earlier, in 1999, during which time it froze over 12<br />
Kazakh bank accounts, upon suspicions of money laundering. When the Kazakh government tried<br />
to lean on the Swiss to back off, the Swiss responded by sending the US Department of Justice<br />
documents from the case.” [From Angola to Kazakhstan: How to Cure Corruption in Oil Rich<br />
States, by Jonathan Reingold, 5/14/04, The Upside Down World news]<br />
“Kazhegeldin said that Swiss regulators informed the US authorities last year that "substantial<br />
amounts of money belonging to certain prominent US oil companies, including Amoco<br />
Kazakhstan Petroleum Company, Amoco Kazakhstan Inc, Mobil Oil Corp and Phillips Petroleum<br />
Kazakhstan Inc" were transferred to a Swiss bank account controlled by Kazak government<br />
advisor James Giffen between 1997 and 1998.” [Ex-Kazakhstan premier says US firms' oil fees<br />
diverted to ministers, Interview with Akezhan Kazhegeldin, Justin Cole, AFX, 17 July 2001]<br />
Only the Swiss bankers would have seen these investigations unfolding in such a way<br />
that would find them involved and potentially guilty under new Swiss laws.<br />
“In March 1998, the Swiss Federal Banking <strong>Commission</strong> (SFBC) adopted modified Guidelines<br />
concerning the prevention and combating of money laundering which came into force on 1 July 1998<br />
(Circ. 98/1) to bring them into line with the new Money Laundering Act ”<br />
The Barrick-Bank Cartel Connection<br />
The relationship between Enron, Cheney, Bush and U.S. intelligence has already been<br />
presented. The relationship between U.S. intelligence and UBS goes back for 60 years.<br />
Since WWII, UBS, notably stands out as part of a mix of Swiss banks heavily involved<br />
with the U.S. Intelligence community, far removed from Congressional oversight:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 249
“Various Swiss banking scandals have brought to the surface the tip of the iceberg of long-standing<br />
post-WW2 links between the 3 big Swiss banks and the American intelligence community. Some of<br />
these links - notably that with the Union Bank of Switzerland - seem to have their origins in the U.S.<br />
exploitation of the cavalier treatment of Jewish pre-WW2 deposits. The outgrowth of these cancers is<br />
manifest in the BCCI affair (over-lapping directorship of Dr. Alfred Hartmann), in the SASEA affair<br />
and in the Shakarchi affair which was not only admitted, by the U.S. Embassy in Berne, as a CIA<br />
affair, but even brought down Switzerland's Minister of Justice Elisabeth Kopp. Another CIA link was<br />
amply documented in the case of Colonel North and other U.S. officials operating through the Credit<br />
Swiss which was found to have been blackmailed by the intelligence community since the fourties.”<br />
[OBSERVATIONS concerning the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the World Jewish<br />
Congress et al. and the Swiss Bankers Association signed May 2 1996 in New York , by anonymous,<br />
May 25, 1996 ]<br />
The interplay of Barrick, the Bank Cartel and the Oil Cartel crisscross in a manner that<br />
strongly suggests ongoing partnership rather than coincidence. There are three pieces of<br />
evidence that identify a linkage between the management/ownership of Barrick, the Oil<br />
Cartel and the German Bank Cartel. Like Catherine Fitts, this report finds the individuals<br />
involved in planning, executing and covering the WTC attack to be the same as those<br />
involved in Barrick and covert oil operations in Central Asia.<br />
1. Of first note, the Houston office building that housed both Enron and Halliburton<br />
corporate headquarters was owned by Trizec Hahn. As earlier discussed, Trizec<br />
Hahn was a merger of Peter Munk’s (Barrick Gold) and the Canadian Bronfman<br />
family:<br />
“Barrick was controlled by Peter Munk, who was set up as chairman, he claimed, by Adnan<br />
Khashoggi who owned the company stock. Until recently the entire section of office buildings in<br />
downtown Houston where Enron and Halliburton (through its subsidiary, Dresser Industries)<br />
leased space was owned by TrizecHahn. The acquisition of this real estate was accomplished in a<br />
manner similar to the way Lonrho acquired Hondo--debentures, secured by stock options, not<br />
repaid. Munk had merged his company with Trizec, a company created by William Zeckendorf<br />
and a syndicate composed of Hill Erlanger of Boston and a branch of the Canadian Bronfman<br />
family.” [Follow the Yellow Brick Road: From Harvard to Enron, Part One, Linda Minor,<br />
Newsmakingnews.com, © 2002]<br />
This may seem trivial at first glance, but the CEO’s of both companies (Kenneth Lay<br />
and Dick Cheney are close associates of the Bush family, whose relationship to the<br />
founder of Barrick– Adnan Khashoggi – are extensive and stretched over at least two<br />
decades.<br />
2. Barrick is also directly linked to UBS and the German bank cartel, through use of it’s<br />
subsidiary gold refinery: Argor-Heraeus S.A. Owership of this refinery was<br />
transferred from UBS to Commerzbank, also part of the German bank cartel in 1999.<br />
“Barrick's gold is refined to market delivery standards by MKS Finance S.A. in Switzerland and<br />
Argor-Heraeus S.A. also in Switzerland (Goldstrike production)”<br />
“1999: UBS announces the selling of its 75% position in the Argor-Heraeus SA to W.C Heraeus,<br />
Hanau, Germany, which already has a 25% stake in the UBS subsidiary. Argor-Heraeus in<br />
Mendrisio, Switzerland, operates in the precious metal processing business, mainly gold (March<br />
<strong>11</strong>). (UBS web site)”<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 250
“London--Apr 29/99--Germany's Commerzbank has acquired a 35% interest in Argor-Heraeus<br />
SA, a Swiss gold refinery with an annual refining capacity of 400 tonnes and a production<br />
capacity for cast ingots of 2.5 million per year. "The acquisition has made Commerzbank into one<br />
of the few banks worldwide which are directly involved not only in precious metals trading but<br />
also in purchasing unmarketable physical gold, thus covering the whole spectrum of preciousmetals<br />
transactions," a press release issued today said.”<br />
3. Barrick is linked closely to the Banking Cartel through, one of the most longest<br />
members of the Advisory Board - Karl Otto Pohl, former President of the German<br />
central bank (Bundesbank) and chief officer of the International Bank of Settlements<br />
and IMF. Also on the Barrick Board was former Canadian Deutschebank executive<br />
Tye W. Burt - the former Chairman of Deutsche Bank Canada and Deutsche Bank<br />
Alex Brown Securities Canada, and Managing Director and Head of Deutsche Bank’s<br />
Global Metals and Mining Group. Burt was involved when the Canadian<br />
Deutschebank backed Khashoggi in the MJK Securities fraud. Burt left the bank<br />
shortly after the fraud was discovered. Note also, two of the initial big investors in<br />
Barrick – Khashoggi and Bronfman – used the same personal financial advisor: Mayo<br />
Shattuck of the Deutschebank Alex Brown. Mayo Shattuck was the chief assistant to<br />
Buzzy Krongard when he worked at Deutschebank Alex Brown. Both, through their<br />
executive roles at Deutschebank Alex Brown were in a position to be familiar with<br />
the Khashoggi/Marcos gold deposits at that Bank. Remember that Krongard<br />
managed the merger between Bankers Trust and Deutschebank Alex Brown, and that<br />
Banker’s Trust is the bank that received significant amounts of the Marcos gold with<br />
the assistance of Khashoggi.<br />
4. The Deutsche Bank was identified as a major gold trading partner with Barrick in<br />
both the Blanchard and Howe law suits.<br />
5. Enron - an energy trading company - had created a gold bullion and gold derivatives<br />
trading operation. When Enron went bankrupt, Enron On-Line was bought by UBS.<br />
A competitive market for trading energy and gold bullion was set-up by former<br />
Deutschebank executive Mayo Shattuck as new CEO at Constellation Energy, using<br />
former Enron employees.<br />
These five points suggest that if it doesn’t exist already, there exists the potential for a<br />
cozy relationship between the US oil cartel, the German Banking cartel and Barrick.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 251
10<br />
Reunion: Iran-Contra Scandal and October Surprise<br />
It is difficult to understand the personal relationships which unite those who had motive<br />
and opportunity for the bombing of the World Trade Center, and the cover-up of their<br />
involvement, without understanding the events of the early 1980s known as the Iran-<br />
Contra scandal and the October Surprise. This section of the report is meant to provide<br />
that understanding. It is a story about how a number of individuals defied the will of the<br />
American public to provide weapons to brutal dictators, influenced the American<br />
presidential election by killing American soldiers, supported the South American drug<br />
trade, and pocketed hefty profits - all in the name of “patriotism.”<br />
There are a series of events which initiated the illicit trade of Israeli weapons sent to Iran<br />
and the Nicaraguan Contras, in exchange for CIA sponsored drug money, funneled<br />
through the BCCI over a period of years. The first of these events was a series of three<br />
meetings meant to prevent the “October Surprise” – the rumored release of 52 American<br />
hostages by the government of Iran in October, 1980 as a display of cooperation with the<br />
Carter Administration. Bush and Reagan, in their campaign against Carter, feared the an<br />
October release of the hostages would provide Carter with a burst of popularity adequate<br />
to win the election. The “October Surprise” story is one of George Bush preventing the<br />
release of hostages as means of helping ensure that he and Reagan won the election.<br />
The Iran Contra scandal began with a group of U.S. and Israeli intelligence operatives<br />
attempting to remove the Shiite Iranian government of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and<br />
replace it with a more moderate and friendly regime. The Israelis had already begun a<br />
covert program of selling weapons to Iran to counter what they believed was a more<br />
immediate threat of Iraq, but President Carter attempted to halt that program.<br />
“Late July: A clandestine meeting between American and Iranian officials takes place in Hamburg,<br />
Germany. Former CIA operative Larry Kolb, present at the meeting, says it will become one of the<br />
most "investigated, reinvestigated...misreported, misunderstood, and infamous" meetings in American<br />
foreign policy history. The purpose seems to be part of an attempt to either destabilize the radical<br />
Shi'ite government of the Ayatollah Khomeini, or to plan for a more moderate, US-friendly regime to<br />
follow Khomeini. Some of the participants include businessman and Saudi operative Adnan<br />
Khashoggi, Iranian arms dealer and SAVAK member Manucher Ghorbanifar, CIA operatives Kolb<br />
and Miles Copeland, NSC consultant and hardline neoconservative Michael Ledeen, Israeli Foreign<br />
Minister and intelligence head David Kimche, Israeli arms dealer Al Schwimmer, former Israeli<br />
military attache to Teheran Jacob Nimrodi, and Hassan Karrubi, a confidante of Iranian moderate Ali<br />
Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. Karrubi proposes that the US, in contradiction to its arms embargo against<br />
Iran, agree to sell Iran a variety of aircraft parts and TOW missiles in return for Khomeini toning down<br />
his opposition to US influence in Iran, along with an agreement to broker the release of the four<br />
remaining American hostages in Beirut and a decrease in Iranian support of terrorism. (Hostage<br />
Benjamin Weir will later be released, apparently as a resut of the meeting.) Khashoggi says that, to<br />
avoid any trail of arms deals from the US to Iran, that the deal be brokered through Israel<br />
The Israelis initiated arms shipments to Iran as a counter to Iraq. When President Jimmy Carter<br />
ordered a halt to the Israeli weapons sales the Israelis may have set up the October Paris meeting that<br />
William Casey, Donald Gregg and George Bush allegedly attended in 1980.” [Did Bush go to Paris?,<br />
Harry V. Martin, Copyright, Napa Sentinel, 1991, Last in an Ten Part Series]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 252
President Carter did initiate a rescue attempt of the hostages, which failed when the<br />
helicopters carrying the rescue teams crashed in the desert. Later, it would be rumored<br />
that the rescue attempt was sabotaged:<br />
“<strong>Report</strong>s that have surfaced from the intelligence community indicate that the rescue attempt may have<br />
been sabotaged…” [Hostage deal, Inslaw cases connected in Congressional probe, Harry V. Martin,<br />
Copyright, Napa Sentinel 1991 ]<br />
In asking who may have sabotaged the attempt to rescue 52 American citizens, Barbara<br />
Honnegger, former Whitehouse staff in the Reagan administration suggested it was some<br />
of the same people that planned and executed the October Surprise and the Iran-Contra<br />
deals.<br />
“Honegger: ... and then of course we have Richard Secord, Oliver North and Albert Hakim. Richard<br />
Secord was one of the chief planners for the so- called failed Desert 1 rescue attempt, North was<br />
involved in that rescue attempt, in the mother ship, which was on the Turkish border awaiting the cue<br />
from Secord to fly in and rescue the hostages, and Albert Hakim was in charge of the ground<br />
operations of the rescue attempt, in particular, obtaining the trucks and other vehicles which were<br />
going to be needed. Hakim skipped town, left Tehran 24 hours before the rescue was to take place, and<br />
the reason for that, as detailed in my research documentation, was that Secord, North and Hakimhad no<br />
intention of seeing Desert 1 carry through, and so sabotaged the operation.”<br />
The sabotage of the rescue attempt, as was the October Surprise, was part of a bigger<br />
effort to prevent the re-election of Jimmy Carter and place Ronald Reagan in the<br />
Presidency.<br />
“Richard Wirthlin, the pollster for the Reagan-Bush campaign, said that if the hostages were released<br />
before the election Carter would gain a boost of 5 or 6 percentage points in the polls, or even as much<br />
as 10 percent, giving him a sure victory for that election.” [Hostage deal, Inslaw cases connected in<br />
Congressional probe, Harry V. Martin,Copyright, Napa Sentinel 1991 ]<br />
“What is also known, is that the Carter Administration, according to Gary Sick, was on<br />
the verge of obtaining the release of the hostages in October 1980, which probably would<br />
have assured his reelection. After the date that Bush allegedly went to Paris, the<br />
negotiations with the Iranians collapsed.”<br />
There were two subsequent clandestine meetings, one at L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in<br />
Washington, D.C, and a second in Paris. During these meetings, a number of American,<br />
Israeli and Iranian officials and arms dealers negotiated and executed the prevention of an<br />
“October Surprise” release of the hostages by Iran. Harry Martin has best related the<br />
account:<br />
“The Israelis, because of their role of mediator between the United States and Iran and also as the<br />
deliverers of U.S. weapons to Iran after the conclusion of the meetings, are believed to have arranged<br />
the meetings in the first place.”<br />
“Russbacher (CIA operative and one of the pilots of the plane that took Bush to Paris) states that Bush,<br />
while in Paris, met with Hashemi Rafsanjani, the second in command to the Ayatollah and now the<br />
president of Iran, and Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian businessman who was extremely powerful.<br />
Arrangements were apparently made to pay Iran $40 million to delay the release of hostages in order to<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 253
thwart President Jimmy Carter's re-election bid. The $40 million was the beginning of terms that<br />
created the Iran-Contra scandal that is now being reopened by Congress.”<br />
“A total of $40 million was transferred from a Mexican account and Bush presented a draft of the<br />
transfer to the Iranians. Within six weeks after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, covert shipments of<br />
arms were sent to Iran. When the shipments were discovered around 1985, it became known as the<br />
Iran-Contra scandal….”<br />
“Strangely enough, Bush made no public appearances during that time, three week's before the<br />
election, and has yet to prove where he was during the "missing" 21 hours. According to the pilot,<br />
Bush only stayed a few hours in Paris and was flown back to the United States. On October 21, the<br />
Iranians changed their entire negotiating position with the Carter Administration, the results of a<br />
completed deal with the Republicans.”<br />
“Right after the alleged Paris meeting, the Iranians not only backed away from negotiations with the<br />
Carter administration for the release of hostages, but they also dispersed the hostages throughout Iran<br />
to prevent a second rescue attempt, a rescue attempt that was apparently leaked to them from the<br />
Reagan campaign headquarters and probably by Richard Allen. …<br />
Moments after Ronald Reagan became President, the hostages were released. Within weeks, shipments<br />
of military equipment and spare parts were flown to Iran. Mossad agents have testified to the Iran<br />
weapons deal. The French have memos about the plan. The former President of Iran confirms the<br />
Republican-Iranian deal to delay the release of the hostages, and even former President Jimmy Carter,<br />
who had preferred to remain silent, has come forward to indicate that Gregg was a mole and was<br />
possibly responsible for the October Surprise. Gregg worked for Bush when Bush was head of the<br />
CIA.” [Did Bush go to Paris?, Harry V. Martin, Copyright, Napa Sentinel, 1991, Last in an Ten Part<br />
Series]<br />
As events unfolded over time, it was George Bush Sr. who advocated a more pro-Arab<br />
policy, which in turn, irritated the Israelis, who now had the ability to blackmail the Bush<br />
family at whim.<br />
“But once the Reagan-Bush team came to power, Bush began to push a pro-Arab position within the<br />
government, or, in essence, a pro-oil position. This irritated the Israelis and they felt the United States<br />
was beginning to betray them. Israel made a deal with the Soviet Union for closer relationships and<br />
also sought more Soviet Jews for immigration, thus keeping the Likud Party in power. Israeli agents<br />
are the ones who broke the story of the Iran-Contra scandal in a Lebanese newspaper, as retaliation<br />
against Bush. It is also the Israelis who witnessed arms deals, including the transfer of INSLAW's<br />
PROMIS software, in a Chilian meeting. The same names, Dr. Earl Brian and Donald Greggs come up<br />
in those testimonies.” [Bush Made Deal With Iranians, Pilot Says, Harry V. Martin, Copyright<br />
FreeAmerica and Harry V. Martin, 1995]<br />
“If the Paris meeting did take place, the Israeli government may have been able to blackmail the<br />
Reagan and Bush administrations. Richard Curtiss writes in the Washington <strong>Report</strong> on Middle East<br />
Affairs, "Whenever the Reagan administration and the hard-line Israeli governments of Menachem<br />
Begin and his successors went eyeball-to-eyeball, it was always the U.S. that blinked. The U.S.<br />
declined to press Begin on such topics as the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, the invasion of Lebanon,<br />
the occupation of West Beirut, the Sabra-Shatila massacres, and even the Reagan Plan for Middle East<br />
peace. The Reagan administration apparently was vulnerable to highly damaging Israeli blackmail, and<br />
at least some top officials of both governments knew it." He adds, "It also explains how and why the<br />
Reagan administration so easily fell into the catastrophic series of arms-for-hostages blunders, clearly<br />
instigated as well as carried out by Israel, that became known as Irangate, or the Iran-Contra scandal.<br />
The renewed arms shipments in 1985 and 1986 were initiated by reopening exactly the same channels<br />
used in 1980 and 1981 by some of the same principals on both sides." [Did Bush go to Paris?, Harry V.<br />
Martin, Copyright, Napa Sentinel, 1991, Last in an Ten Part Series]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 254
The entire Iran-Contra affair fell apart and became public when the Nicaraguan<br />
government shot down a U.S. plane carrying weapons to the Contra rebels, and captured<br />
the U.S. pilot. The discovery of these shipments - a violation of U.S. law - initiated a<br />
series of Congressional investigations and an investigation by an Independent Counsel.<br />
The meetings held to prevent an October Surprise were never mentioned, and the two<br />
pilots who flew Bush to Paris were immediately imprisoned and discredited when they<br />
sought to testify in front of Congress. A court would later find the charges against the<br />
pilots to be without support, but their testimony had been blocked.<br />
“Gunther Russbacher.. claimed to have videotape proof and sixteen witnesses to his having<br />
flown George Bush to one of the October Surprise meetings.” [The Death of my Friend and<br />
Investigator of Government Corruption Paul Wilcher, Sarah McClendon, Sarah McClendon’s<br />
Washington <strong>Report</strong>, July 4, 1993]<br />
Ari Ben-Menashe a major Israeli coordinator of these deals, would also testify that he<br />
had personally seen George HW Bush at the Paris meeting<br />
“ In June, I also testified under oath, in closed session, before the Senate Foreign Relations<br />
committee. I stated unequivocally that I had, seen Bush in Paris.” [Ari Ben-Menashe. Profits of<br />
War, Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network, Sheridan Square Press, 1992, p344.]<br />
According to Ari Ben-Menashe, a major Israeli coordinator of these deals, four of the<br />
five supply chains set up to arm Iran were never investigated, and continued to<br />
operate right through the Congressional Hearings on Iran Contra.<br />
“…Tower knew perfectly well there was an ongoing arms channel. Yet the Tower <strong>Commission</strong><br />
made no mention of it. In February 1987, while Tower was investigating a minor part of the<br />
sales to Iran, the Joint Israel-Iran Committee, together with Robert Gates, ran the biggest ever<br />
arms supply operation to Iran. The official inquiry was better than any smokescreen we…could<br />
have dreamed up.” [Ari Ben-Menashe. Profits of War, Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms<br />
Network, Sheridan Square Press, 1992, p191.]<br />
There were a few indictments and convictions as a result of the Iran-Contra affair, but<br />
generally those involved were exonerated. Bush later pardoned the few lower level<br />
government officials that were indicted and convicted. Dick Cheney was one of the<br />
Congressional committee members that decided that no crimes had been committed, and<br />
Bush was not involved.<br />
Extensive reporting on this very successful operation to deceive the American public and<br />
to implement a foreign policy which can only be defined as “Bush’s personal foreign<br />
policy,” has provided some additional insights into additional aspects of the operation,<br />
which only become meaningful when considered over a greater time period. Involved in<br />
the background of Iran Contra and the October Surprise this report finds the same<br />
individuals showing up in the activities surrounding the destruction of the World Trade<br />
Center:<br />
Gaith Pharon (very heavily involved in managing the Bush family investments) and<br />
BCCI:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 255
“BCCI also served as a conduit for the Iran-Contra operation, largely through Gaith Pharon, former<br />
head of Saudi Intelligence, who operated out of Islamabad, Pakistan. The Saudis played a major role in<br />
funding the Mujahadeen and [via the request of Secord and McFarlane] the Contras.” [Iran-Contra<br />
Connections to the Oklahoma Bombing , gathered by Alex Constantine © 2000 Alex Constantine. All<br />
rights reserved]<br />
Oliver North trying to use Marcos gold to finance the Contras:<br />
“In 1985, [Oliver North] attempted to sell 44 tons of Marcos bullion, worth $465 million, on the black<br />
market. He blithely suggested skimming $5 million to finance the Nicaraguan contra war, but the deal<br />
fell through when North, true to form, stiffed the Israeli middlemen on the Marcos payroll. Tapes and<br />
documents implicating American officials in the gold transfers were withheld from the Iran-contra<br />
committee by Major General Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and William Odom,<br />
director of the NSA. "It wasn't so much the mention of gold that concerned them," say Thompson and<br />
Kanigher. "It was Marcos talking (on tape) about contributions to U.S. presidential campaigns and the<br />
use of the gold proceeds to fund illegal arms deals." [Iran-Contra Connections to the Oklahoma<br />
Bombing , by Alex Constantine © 2000 Alex Constantine. All rights reserved]<br />
Richard Armitage later becoming a consultant of Unocal; coordinating Al Qaeda in<br />
Azerbaijan and Pakistan, and dispersing cash to the Russian KGB in 1991:<br />
“Deputy Defense Secretary Richard Armitage is another Iran-contra conspirator who worked for<br />
Unocal.” [ONLINE JOURNAL www.onlinejournal.comSpecial <strong>Report</strong> Saudis, Enron money helped<br />
pay for US rigged election,Wayne Madsen Online Journal Contributing Writer <strong>11</strong>/25/2004]<br />
Congressmen Cheney and Scowcraft directing committees to find Bush “not involved”<br />
in the Iran-Contra scandal, and later being incorporated into the Central Asian deals:<br />
“The Tower <strong>Commission</strong> was appointed to investigate the Iran-Contra affair, chaired by Texas<br />
Senator, John Tower. This is the same John Tower who, according to CIA man Gunthar Russbacher,<br />
was on the plane with Bush when he flew to Paris for the October Surprise meeting with the Iranians!<br />
…Also on the Tower <strong>Commission</strong> was Brent Scowcroft a Kissinger 'yes man' and an executive of<br />
Kissinger Associates; and Ed Muskie, … Muskie was himself implicated in both the October Surprise<br />
and Iran-Contra.… Bush appointed Brent Scowcroft as his National Security Advisor. The Senate<br />
refused to accept Tower's appointment (as Secretary of Defense) and he began to speak of the injustice<br />
he believed had been done to him. He died in a plane crash on April 5th, 1991. When the Senate turned<br />
down Tower, a decision Bush probably engineered, he selected Dick Cheney as defense secretary.<br />
Cheney was the senior Republican member of another committee which cleared Bush of involvement<br />
in Iran-Contra, the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran.” [ “and<br />
the truth shall set you free”, David Icke]<br />
Farhad Azima in the 1990’s not only running freight airlines in Azerbaijan and Central<br />
Asia, but having his airlines involved in moving Mujahadin merecenaries in and out of<br />
the Chechnyan conflict. A number of alleged hijackers would be connected with that<br />
conflict. Additionally, Azima would become friends and co-investor with Wally Hilliard,<br />
who would later be a financier in Huffman Aviation, where a number of 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers<br />
trained.<br />
Congressman Porter Goss involved with Iran-Contra activities. Goss was the Chairman<br />
of the House Select Committee on Intelligence who met with Mahmoud Ahmad, the head<br />
of Pakistani Intelligence (ISI) who sent $100,000 to Mohammed Atta. Goss is reported<br />
to have met with Ahmad both shortly before and after the 9-<strong>11</strong> attacks.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 256
“Porter Goss was a young CIA officer assigned to JM/WAVE. Goss had, by his own accounts, been<br />
recruited to the CIA while in his third year at Yale University. His two years of military service were,<br />
in all likelihood, actually CIA assignments. In 1961, Goss was officially brought into the CIA and sent<br />
to JM/WAVE. He later would continue to participate in the anti-Castro operations, based out of CIA<br />
stations in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. Later, Goss was sent to London and then Paris,<br />
where he was involved in the infiltration of labor organizations, until he developed a near-fatal<br />
infection and was forced, officially, to retire from the spy world. In his role in JM/WAVE, Goss<br />
served with some of the CIA's most hardened Cold Warriors, including Miami Station Chief Theodore<br />
G. Shackley, later a central figure in the Iran/Contra debacle; (and) Felix Rodriguez, another leading<br />
Iran-Contra player;….” [The Coming Senate Battle: Open the Porter Goss File Part 1,Jeffrey<br />
Steinberg, Michele Steinberg and Scott Thompson, Executive Intelligence Review <strong>September</strong> 3, 2004]<br />
“According to Al Martin, in 1983 Goss was involved in Iran-Contra profiteering with Jeb and Neil<br />
Bush’s Destin Country Club development fraud – a fraud out of which he made about $3 million<br />
illegally. He then became involved with Carlos Cardoen and Swissco Management, and the fraud that<br />
Swissco Management committed, not only in Florida, but throughout the United States, in those socalled<br />
illicit 'tax-swap deals,' which Senator Bob Graham of Florida also profited in.” [Prime Suspect<br />
of the Largest Mass Murder in U.S. Nominated to Head C.I.A., Carol Brouillet, Fourth of July, 2004 ]<br />
“Chalmers is a longtime denizen of the Labyrinth. In the mid-1980s, he joined up with Chilean gunrunner<br />
Carlos Cardoen, the Financial Times reported. Cardoen was a CIA frontman used by Presidents<br />
Ronald Reagan and Bush I to funnel cluster bombs and other weapons secretly to Saddam Hussein<br />
during the Iran-Iraq War.” [UN oil for food scandal, Global Eye, Gut Check, Chris Floyd, April 22,<br />
2005]<br />
Bankers (Dr. Alfred Hartmann and Bruce Rappaport) and lawyers (Willard Zucker<br />
and Kenneth Bialkin) involved in financing this illegal trade and laundering money<br />
through Swiss accounts to be the same individuals who manage funds for the Bin Laden<br />
and Mahfouz families, and having corporate pilots for SICO (Saudi Investment<br />
Company) being trained at Huffman Aviation along with known 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers.<br />
“(Dr. Alfred) Hartmann was also chairman of the Swiss affiliate of the Italian BNL bank, which was<br />
implicated in the Bush administration illegal transfers to Iraq prior to the 1990 Iraqi invasion of<br />
Kuwait. The Atlanta branch of BNL, with the knowledge of George Bush when he was vice president,<br />
conduited funds to Helmut Raiser's Zug, Switzerland company, Consen, for development of the<br />
CondorII missile program by Iraq, Egypt, and Argentina, during the Iran-Iraq War. Hartmann was<br />
vice-chairman of another secretive private Geneva bank, the Bank of NY-Inter-Maritime Bank, a bank<br />
whose chairman, Bruce Rappaport, was one of the illegal financial conduits for Col. Oliver North's<br />
Contra drugs-for-weapons network during the late 1980. North also used the BCCI as one of his<br />
preferred banks to hide his illegal funds.” [The Secret Financial Network Behind "Wizard" George<br />
Soros, William Engdahl , EIR Investigation Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), November 1, 1996]<br />
“Kenneth Bialkin, the attorney for Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, whose money purchased arms<br />
for Iran via the good offices of Col. Oliver North, as part of the arms-for-hostages negotiations;<br />
Willard Zucker, who ran the Lake Resources front company in Geneva, Switzerland, which laundered<br />
the Iranian arms profits to the Contras; Edmond Safra, who, with Willard Zucker, owned the corporate<br />
jets used by Oliver North and National Security Advisor Robert MacFarland in traveling to secret<br />
conferences in Iran.” [The Hour of the Time,Tape No. 480,: "ADL #7"November 10, 1994]<br />
“Charles Rochat and Baudoin Dunand—two SICO directors—liquidated some financial entities in<br />
early 2001 in partnership with Willard Zucker, one of Oliver North’s cronies in the Iran-Contra<br />
machinations. SICO trained pilots for its aviation subsidiary at tiny Huffman Aviation in Venice<br />
Florida. (Huffman was the school through which Mohamed Atta and several of the 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers<br />
infiltrated the United States.)” [ http://www.spitfirelist.com/f498.html]<br />
The bin Laden family:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 257
October 1980: Salem bin Laden, Osama’s eldest brother, is later described by a French secret<br />
intelligence report as one of the two closest friends of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd. As such, he often<br />
performs important missions for Saudi Arabia. The French report speculates that he is somehow<br />
involved in secret Paris meetings between the US and Iranian emissaries this month. <strong>Front</strong>line, which<br />
published the French report, notes that such meetings have never been confirmed. Rumors of these<br />
meetings have been called the October Surprise and some have speculated Bush Sr. negotiated in these<br />
meetings a delay of the release of the US hostages in Iran…(PBS <strong>Front</strong>line, 2001).” [Paul Thompson,<br />
“The Complete 9/<strong>11</strong> Timeline: Introduction, Credits and Links (v1.7,) October 28, 2002, from Michael<br />
C Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, 2004, p133 New Society Publishers]<br />
10.1 Iran-Contra Syndicate<br />
The aspects of the Iran-Contra scandal and October Surprise which are relevant to the<br />
WTC tragedy is that they demonstrate the origins of over 20 years relationships between<br />
individuals that carried though the 1990s into the twenty-first century. However, it was<br />
not just a matter of excessive political fervor as was often suggested by political<br />
commentaries and editorials. Many of these same individuals would later be<br />
demonstrated to have personal business relationships with each other, and would be<br />
reported to be involved in other activities resulting in criminal charges and laws suits.<br />
Table 8 constructs an overview of individuals who are involved in activities discussed in<br />
this report, including the Harken Energy, the Marcos gold heist, the Barrick gold trading<br />
operation, the October Surprise, Iran-Contra, BCCI, Kazakhstan-gate, Azerbaijan, and<br />
Afghanistan. What stands out is the continued involvement of several individuals of<br />
substantial notoriety, and a few banks:<br />
Table 8<br />
Iran-Contra/Azerbaijan<br />
Individuals Banks<br />
Adnan Khashoggi UBS Union Bank of Switzerland<br />
George Bush Sr. & Jr . Deutschebank<br />
Richard Secord Credit Suisse<br />
Richard L Armitage BCCI ( later Indosuez)<br />
Farhad Azima Bank of New York.<br />
Richard Cheney Potomac Capital Inc.<br />
Porter Goss<br />
Khalid bin Mafhouz<br />
All the reports seem to suggest this group represents the core of an organized, criminal<br />
syndicate operating over a twenty year span, across the globe. As a syndicate, they<br />
probably had a great deal to hide, and much benefit to be gained by the destruction of<br />
evidence in the various investigative offices of the World Trade Center. In that respect<br />
however, they had no more - and maybe even less - incentive than the Russian Mafia, the<br />
Italian Mafia or the Columbian drug cartel. What all these syndicates had in common,<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 258
esides criminal activity, is their use of these banks. The Deutschebank represented a<br />
global pipeline for money, and the UBS was the primary holding tank and refinery.<br />
Other, smaller Swiss banks were under intense investigation that involved transactions<br />
from New York and the Deutschebank, and accounts that had secreted away the<br />
treasuries of many nations – but these can be best described as the criminel nouveau riche<br />
(the New World Order), skimming a small piece- “table scraps” - from the German cartel<br />
take. Prior to 1998, the Swiss banks had never had to give up the criminal proceeds of its<br />
many customers. If it hadn’t been for a negotiated ‘deal’ by Edgar Bronfman on the<br />
Marcos and Nazi gold, independent investigators would have continued to drill down into<br />
those accounts and their audit trails. That deal, however, was not enough to shut down<br />
other investigations: the GATA lawsuit and FBI investigation, Kazakhstan-gate, Angolagate,<br />
Pakistani/CIA heroin trafficking and more. The attack on the WTC diverted the<br />
attention the entirety of the world’s largest investigative bodies, and destroyed whatever<br />
working papers they may have had. Given the evidence known today, planning for the<br />
attack started in 1998 [USA Today, 6/18/2002]. The cover story offered by the leadership<br />
of a probable criminal syndicate is that Al Qaeda orchestrated this attack, when the truth<br />
is more likely that the attack was orchestrated by a bigger, more powerful cartel that<br />
could easily blackmail the US government into support and a cover-up if it needed to do<br />
that.<br />
Finally, it is worth noting that as time passes, the Bush directed oil related activity in<br />
Central Asia may turn out to be a massive replay of the Harken Energy scam, or just a<br />
remarkably co-incidental similarity. More widely recognized as a demonstration of<br />
George Bush Jr.’s inability to manage and properly report insider trading, Harken Energy<br />
is not often given credit for being the large pump and dump scheme it was.<br />
"George Bush, Sr. and James Baker and Senator Tower would heavily short Harken stock. I have a list<br />
of everybody because I was one of them but to a much smaller extent. Harken stock was trading at 7-<br />
3/4 or 8, when George Jr, was put in charge of it. A year later, the stock was trading at 1-1/8 bid, 3/8<br />
offer. They pumped the stock back up through a lot of bogus press releases and by using essentially<br />
worthless leases in Bahrain and essentially worthless South American oil leases and through<br />
sympathetic geologists making them appear to be really worth something and making it appear that<br />
Harken's about to make a strike when in fact it's all made up. It's all fictitious. And through carefully<br />
crafted broker releases and broker statements and press releases, you can pump the stock back up. This<br />
has happened sixteen times to my knowledge. Harken would get pumped back up from the dead, from<br />
say a buck, buck and a half, back to seven, seven and a half, then it would get dumped again. [The<br />
Man Who Knows Too Much, An Interview with Al Martin, author of "The Conspirators: Secrets of an<br />
Iran Contra Insider" (PART 1), by Uri Dowbenko]<br />
With the success of Harken behind him, and towards the end of his Presidency, the record<br />
will show that President Bush Sr. sent trusted operatives (Secord, Armitage and Giffen)<br />
into Central Asia. They made significant inroads into bringing investment capital to the<br />
region, and building trusting relationships with the corrupt dictators that ran those<br />
countries. The record will show that key members of the Iran-Contra group controlled<br />
major information resources for this area: The Azerbaijan American Chamber of<br />
Commerce, and the Kazakhstan Oil Advisory Council. They pumped the opportunity to<br />
justify loans of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in the region from the Overseas Private<br />
Investment Corporation and the U.S. Export-Import Bank. This opportunity was<br />
significantly overstated by 93% to 96% according to more recent, third party estimates:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 259
“Early estimates of Caspian Sea oil reserves ranged from <strong>11</strong>5 billion to 200 billion barrels. These<br />
estimates have been rightfully viewed with scepticism as they were based on a 10 percent probability<br />
of recovery -- that is, they were considering oil that could not be recovered. Now this assessment has<br />
been severely downgraded by oil industry insiders. Speaking on April 8 in Almaty, Kazakhstan at the<br />
Eurasian Economic Summit, Gian Maria Gros-Pietro, chairman of Italy's Eni oil company, said the<br />
Caspian contains 7.8 billion barrels of oil, the Interfax news agency reported. This is confirmed by<br />
Agip’s statement in Energy Day of May 30 that the recoverable reserve potential of Kashagan is only<br />
1.2 billion barrels. With these revisions, it is questionable whether the Caspian Sea region will ever<br />
approach the importance of the Middle East with regard to energy reserves, according to the<br />
Association for the Study of Peak Oil’s (APSO) June newsletter.” [The Forging of "Pipelineistan",<br />
Dave Allen Pfeiffer, From The Wilderness (FTW) Publications, www.copvcia.com, July 2002 ]<br />
With the price of oil being pumped to all time highs in 2005, properties in Central Asia<br />
are now being sold-off to Russian and Chinese investors. Central Asia – the world’s<br />
largest pump and dump scam!<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 260
<strong>11</strong><br />
Whitehouse Assassins<br />
Someone in the Whitehouse was involved in the orchestration of activity of the WTC<br />
attackers. It was not President Bush, but rather someone trying to assassinate him.<br />
In the days prior to <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, another crime was planned that would have<br />
fundamentally changed the response to the attack on the World Trade Center. That crime<br />
was the planned assassination of George W. Bush Jr. The pre-scripted response of the<br />
Secret Service to this type of claim would be that the President is always a primary target,<br />
which is undoubtedly true. However, in the days leading up to the attack on the World<br />
Trade Center, there were a series of clues suggesting an assassination was planned, by<br />
someone with inside knowledge of the President’s routine. Four assassination scenarios<br />
were planned by someone with inside knowledge – all four failed. These scenarios are<br />
intrinsically linked to the attack of the World Trade Center: same people, same<br />
techniques, and same objectives. These scenarios do not fit with a conspiracy theory that<br />
suggests President Bush was responsible the attacks. They do suggest however, that<br />
someone with inside knowledge was responsible.<br />
<strong>11</strong>.1 Scenario 1: Threat to the Texas Whitehouse<br />
For some unknown reason, after all the warnings from foreign and domestic intelligence<br />
agencies during the summer of 2001 that an attack on America was imminent, President<br />
Bush decided to place “special” protection around his Texas ranch in the month prior to<br />
9-<strong>11</strong>.<br />
"Former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney said she was disturbed about the implications that<br />
‘24-hour fighter cover was placed over the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas’ during his vacation there<br />
from August 4-30, 2001." [Counterpunch, 9/18/02]<br />
It’s fair to state this is not normal procedure, because this type of protection was not in<br />
place over Washington D.C., which we know to be the case, for no other reason than the<br />
fact that the Pentagon, a few miles from the Whitehouse, was hit on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. It is<br />
then important to ask – what changed for the President? Why the additional protection?<br />
Was the President warned he would be the target of an air attack?<br />
The coverage was started the very day of his vacation, indicating the knowledge of the<br />
attack was received prior to that time. Which mean that the attack was planned, and<br />
discovered by intelligence agencies, prior to August 4th. This then would mean that<br />
someone would have to know when and where the President was planning vacation.<br />
Also, because the attack did not occur as warned, it might be fair to surmise that the<br />
attackers were forewarned of the defensive measures taken.<br />
<strong>11</strong>.2 Scenarios 2 and 3: Attempts at the Colony Resort<br />
Scenario 2 occurred the morning of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, at 6:00 AM, the hotel at which<br />
President Bush was staying, in Sarasota, Florida. As reported in the local press, the<br />
President received a visit from a “news crew.”<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 261
"At about the same time Bush was getting ready for his jog, a van carrying several Middle Eastern men<br />
pulled up to the Colony's guard station. The men said they were a television news crew with a<br />
scheduled "poolside" interview with the president. They asked for a certain Secret Service agent by<br />
name. The message was relayed to a Secret Service agent inside the resort, who hadn't heard of the<br />
agent mentioned or of plans for an interview. He told the men to contact the president's public relations<br />
office in Washington, DC, and had the van turned away." [Possible Longboat terrorist incident Is it a<br />
clue or is it a coincidence? By Shay Sullivan, City Editor, The Longboat Observer, 9/26/2001]<br />
The fascinating aspect of this forgotten news is found in another event on the other side<br />
of the world, just two days prior. Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Afghani resistance<br />
against the invading Soviets during the 1980s and then against the repressive Taliban<br />
regime that sheltered bin Laden, was assassinated by a suicide squad of two Tunisian<br />
operatives posing as journalists, using a bomb inside a video camera during an interview<br />
at his headquarters. Given the coincidence, one must assume the intent of the Florida<br />
news journalists was comparable to that of Tunisian journalists that assassinated<br />
Massoud.<br />
Scenario 3 was scheduled as a back-up plan. President Bush is reported to be a regular<br />
jogger. What is not widely known (but reported twice in the press), and is certainly<br />
commonly known amongst his staff, is that the President loves to jog on the beach, with<br />
about a four mile jog. A couple of miles up the beach from the Colony Resort, (and 4.28<br />
miles by road) is the Holiday Inn, which was checked into by none other than Mohamed<br />
Atta – the accused organizer of the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> attack.<br />
"Just three nights before President George W Bush arrived at the swank Colony Resort on Longboat<br />
Key on the evening of Sept 10, 2001, Mohamed Atta was staying at a slightly-less tony hotel just two<br />
miles down the beach, the Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites—Longboat Key, according to eyewitnesses who<br />
contacted the FBI in the immediate aftermath of the attack." [Bush and Atta Visit Same Resort in the<br />
Hours Leading to 9-<strong>11</strong>, Daniel Hopsicker, Venice, FL, 7/29/2002]<br />
While publicly written off to coincidence by the FBI, under scrutiny this event seems<br />
more than coincidental. The location of the hotel on the same beach would have been<br />
perfect for sniper or suicide assassination while the President was reaching the half-way<br />
mark of his normal jog.<br />
The timing of Atta’s check-in is not a coincidence either. The scheduling for the tour of<br />
schools that the President was taking was deliberately left open. “Potential’ schools on<br />
the tour were not identified until August 28, and not selected until possibly <strong>September</strong><br />
6th. Because the date of each school’s visit was not disclosed, Atta would need to be in<br />
place at one of the schools starting the 7th.<br />
"On August 28, 2001 we got the news that Emma Booker had finished the preliminary offerings for the<br />
Presidential visit. We knew that we were on the list for a visit, and the final selection would be in a<br />
week. We were informed that we would not know the exact date because of security reasons. We were<br />
advised to "keep the news close to home."[Kathy Williams, EEB Classroom Teacher,<br />
www.sarasota.k12.fl.us/emma/9.<strong>11</strong>.01/essay.williams.htl]<br />
Bush’s visit to Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, on <strong>September</strong><br />
<strong>11</strong>, 2001 had been in the planning stages since August but was only publicly announced<br />
on the morning of <strong>September</strong> 7, the same day that Attachecked into the hotel. For Atta to<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 262
know the cities on the tour, much less the hotel being stayed at, and the start date, would<br />
definitely require insider knowledge.<br />
Ignoring probabilities, there are over 150 hotels in Sarasota, with possibly five that have a<br />
location on the beach where President Bush would probably take his morning jog. Atta<br />
would have had to have known, in advance, where the President was staying. He also<br />
would have needed advance knowledge of the President’s visit to arrange travel to arrive<br />
in Sarasota on the 7th and meet a co-conspirator. He would also have needed to know the<br />
President’s itinerary for the day, to have ‘coincidentally’ sent a faux news team at 6:00<br />
AM, precisely the time the president was waking. There is too much insight into the<br />
closely guarded plans and schedule of the President to claim all this is coincidence.<br />
• Coincidence that having previously resided in Sarasota, Atta did not stay with friends.<br />
• Coincidence Atta was on the same beach as the President.<br />
• Coincidence Atta was on the President’s probable jogging course on the beach.<br />
• Coincidence that the Presidential morning routine coincided with the news team visit.<br />
• Coincidence that the timing of Atta’s arrival in Sarasota was optimal to cover the<br />
President’s just announced tour schedule.<br />
The Secret Service was aware of an active plot to assassinate the president, and were<br />
taking extra precautions.<br />
• It is public record that the Secret Service set up surface-to air missile defense on the<br />
roof of the hotel, which is not by any means a normal practice for a presidential visit.<br />
• They dissuaded President Bush from jogging on the beach, as was his intent – instead<br />
taking him to a more secure golf club.<br />
• Once the attack on the World Trade Center had occurred and the scope of the attack<br />
was apparent, the President was swept away by the Secret Service. They were in<br />
such fear, they boarded Airforce One and took off with out air protection.<br />
"… incredibly, Air Force One took off without any military fighter protection. This defies all<br />
explanation. Recall that at 9:03 a.m., one of Bush's security people said, "We're out of here. Can<br />
you get everyone ready?" [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/10/02] Certainly, long before Bush left the<br />
elementary school at 9:35 a.m., arrangements would have been made to get fighters to Sarasota."<br />
Maybe there is an argument that suggests that air coverage for Air Force One was not<br />
deemed necessary because acording to some, the President knew of the plans of attack in<br />
advance, and knew he was not in danger. This, however, would imply the entire Secret<br />
Service contingent was equally aware of the plans to attack the WTC, which is a difficult<br />
assumption to grant. Something transpired between the time they left the school and<br />
reached the Airport– something that heightened their need to protect the President, and<br />
created a sense of urgency that did not exist at the school.<br />
<strong>11</strong>.3 Scenario in the Air<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 263
During this flight, the President received a message that indicated that he would be a<br />
target. This information is provided by the Whitehouse - that there may have been a plan<br />
to assassinate the president – but no subsequent information about this threat has ever<br />
been released.<br />
"White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said there was "real and credible information that the White<br />
House and Air Force One were targets." [White House, 9/12/01] On <strong>September</strong> 13, New York Times<br />
columnist William Safire wrote - and Bush's political strategist Karl Rove confirmed - that there was<br />
an "inside" threat that "may have broken the secret codes (showing a knowledge of presidential<br />
procedures)." [New York Times, 9/13/01]<br />
"In the New York Times on <strong>September</strong> 13, entitled “Inside the Bunker,” Safire described a conversation<br />
with an unnamed “high White House official,” who told him, “A threatening message received by the<br />
Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that ‘Air Force One is next.’” Safire<br />
continued: “According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of<br />
procedures that made the threat credible.” Safire reported that this information was confirmed by<br />
Rove, who told him Bush had wanted to return to Washington but the Secret Service “informed him<br />
that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures<br />
and whereabouts.”<br />
All four of these scenarios point to an insider’s attempt to assassinate the President. If it<br />
is accepted that the attacks of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> were conducted under the watchful eye and<br />
planning of elements of the Israeli Mossad, it should be fair to assume that the<br />
Whitehouse insider has connections to the Mossad. Unfortunately, these suspects are<br />
plentiful, and have been previously identified in this report:<br />
"Perle and Wolfowitz- have a well documented (both Congressional and FBI investigations) past of<br />
being known agents for the Israeli government, and have been directly responsible for the employment<br />
by US Policy making groups (Office of Special Plans OSP) of at least four other well demonstrated<br />
agents of Israel: Douglas J. Feith (Undersecretary of Defense for Policy), Lawrence Franklin (currently<br />
under investigation by the FBI as being as Israeli spy), Michael Ledeen and Dr. Stephen Brye.<br />
Lawrence Franklin works in an office overseen by Douglas J. Feith, the Defense undersecretary for<br />
policy. Feith is an influential aide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Also included in this list is<br />
Dr. Rabbi Dov Zakheim, who at the time was acting as chief-financial officer for the Department of<br />
Defense."<br />
Many – if not all - of these men were in position to have the inside information required<br />
to execute these threats. As employees of the Defense Department, all one of them had to<br />
do was watch the schedule and movements of the Secret Service surface-to-air missile<br />
launcher, and they would know the whereabouts and plans of the President.<br />
This group already had won the hearts and minds of Cheney and Rumsfeld- both<br />
hypocritical cowards who would advocate war while hiding from the need to serve. The<br />
President had not yet bought into their rhetoric, and had his own agenda. By eliminating<br />
President Bush, this group would have moved forward with their own plans more<br />
expeditiously under the Presidency of Cheney.<br />
Claiming that one of these Whitehouse advisors had less than honorable intentions may<br />
be characterized by some as being ‘without foundation and unwarranted’, but in 2004, it<br />
became a matter of public record that the FBI also believed there was an Israeli mole<br />
working at the highest levels of the US Government.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 264
"The FBI believes Israel has a spy at the very highest level of the Pentagon who may have sought to<br />
influence U.S. policy on Iran and Iraq CBS News reported on Friday. …"The FBI has a full-fledged<br />
espionage investigation under way and is about to ... roll up someone agents believe has been spying,<br />
not for an enemy, but for Israel, from within the office of the secretary of defense (Donald Rumsfeld),"<br />
the network reported." [FBI Suspects Israel Has Mole in Pentagon, Reuters, 8/27/2004]<br />
<strong>11</strong>.4 Lessons from History<br />
The attempted assassination attempts on George Bush Jr. represent what may be the most<br />
difficult aspect of this plan to understand. There might have been plausibility to the<br />
argument that the assassination attempts were arranged by the Mossad as some sort of<br />
revenge for the betrayals of Israel by the father, or because George Bush Jr, was not<br />
totally aligned with the PNAC. A lesson from recent American history however,<br />
suggests there was another rationale. For this lesson, the attempted assassination of<br />
Ronald Reagan is referenced.<br />
There is a fascinating clue buried in the volumes of 9/<strong>11</strong> data that has a significance not<br />
mentioned by any report to date. On <strong>September</strong> 10, 2001 – the day before attack,<br />
consistent with the timing of the attempts to assassinate the President – the Federal<br />
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was activated and called to New York. On<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, with the top management of FEMA already gathered at the Big Sky Resort<br />
in Montana, all ten regions of FEMA were activated by an already standing meeting of<br />
the regional directors above the underground security facility built for national<br />
emergencies. [see Michael C Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, p416-417.] Big Sky Resort<br />
hosts the famous underground bunkers built by Oliver North under the direction of Vice<br />
President George Bush Sr., for the emergency “shadow government.” In the last 20<br />
years, FEMA has been activated at a national level for other than disaster related matters<br />
four times:<br />
1. In 1981 when President Reagan signed Presidential Director Number 54 that allowed<br />
FEMA to engage in a secret national "readiness exercise" –scheduled for the day after<br />
the attempted assassination of Reagan. This exercise was cancelled by Vice President<br />
George Bush after he became acting President.<br />
2. In 1990 when Desert Storm was enacted;<br />
3. In 1987 after the Rodney King verdict; and<br />
4. In <strong>September</strong> 2001, the day before the attack on the World Trade Center and<br />
attempted assassination of George Bush.<br />
The general populace considers FEMA a benign government institution created by<br />
Congress to help state and local governments in case of an emergency. The reality, and<br />
the law behind the organization, is that FEMA is what is called into play when martial<br />
law is being considered.<br />
“As Russell R. Dynes, director of the Disaster Research Center of the University of Delaware, wrote in<br />
The World and I, "...The eye of the political storm hovered over the Federal Emergency Management<br />
Agency. FEMA became a convenient target for criticism." Because FEMA was accused of dropping<br />
the ball in Florida, the media and Congress commenced to study this agency. What came out of the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 265
critical look was that FEMA was spending 12 times more for "black operations" than for disaster<br />
relief. It spent $1.3 billion building secret bunkers throughout the United States in anticipation of<br />
government disruption by foreign or domestic upheaval. Yet fewer than 20 members of Congress ,<br />
only members with top security clearance, know of the $1.3 billion expenditure by FEMA for nonnatural<br />
disaster situations. These few Congressional leaders state that FEMA has a "black curtain"<br />
around its operations. FEMA has worked on National Security programs since 1979, and its<br />
predecessor, the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency, has secretly spent millions of dollars before<br />
being merged into FEMA by President Carter in 1979.<br />
These Presidential powers have increased with successive Crime Bills, particularly the 1991 and 1993<br />
Crime Bills, which increase the power to suspend the rights guaranteed under the Constitution and to<br />
seize property of those suspected of being drug dealers, to individuals who participate in a public<br />
protest or demonstration. Under emergency plans already in existence, the power exists to suspend the<br />
Constitution and turn over the reigns of government to FEMA and appointing military commanders to<br />
run state and local governments. FEMA then would have the right to order the detention of anyone<br />
whom there is reasonable ground to believe...will engage in, or probably conspire with others to<br />
engage in acts of espionage or sabotage. The plan also authorized the establishment of concentration<br />
camps for detaining the accused, but no trial. …<br />
On July 5, 1987, the Miami Herald published reports on FEMA's new goals. The goal was to suspend<br />
the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal<br />
dissent, or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad. Lt. Col. North was the architect.<br />
National Security Directive Number 52 issued in August 1982, pertains to the "Use of National Guard<br />
Troops to Quell Disturbances."<br />
The crux of the problem is that FEMA has the power to turn the United States into a police state in<br />
time of a real crisis or a manufactured crisis. Lt. Col. North virtually established the apparatus for<br />
dictatorship. Only the criticism of the Attorney General prevented the plans from being adopted. But<br />
intelligence reports indicate that FEMA has a folder with 22 Executive Orders for the President to sign<br />
in case of an emergency. It is believed those Executive Orders contain the framework of North's<br />
concepts, delayed by criticism but never truly abandoned …under the FEMA plan, there is no<br />
contingency by which Constitutional power is restored. [FEMA - The Secret Government, By Harry V.<br />
Martin with research assistance from David Caul, Copyright: FreeAmerica and Harry V. Martin, 1995]<br />
“Reagan’s secret program set aside these constritutional and statutory requirements under some<br />
circumstances; it established its own process for creating a new American president, ignoring the<br />
hierarchy of presidential succession established by law….’It was decided that it would be easier to<br />
operate without them (Congress).’ If Congress did reconvene, then it might elect a new Speaker of the<br />
House, who would then conceivably have a rival claim to the presidency, one with greater legitimacy<br />
tha a secretary of agriculture or commerce set up as “president” under Reagan’s secret program.”<br />
[Rise of the Vulcans- The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, James Mann, Penguin, 2004, pp 141-142.]<br />
“Executive Order <strong>11</strong>051 gives FEMA the authority to execute all Exceutive Orders granting…powers<br />
in event of a crisis. Executive Order <strong>11</strong>310 requires the Justice department to enforce any and all<br />
powers granted to FEMA in a crisis. Executive Order <strong>11</strong>921 declares that when a state of emergency<br />
is declared by the president, Congress cannot review the action for six months.” [William R. Pitts,<br />
“Only Cowards Cancel Elections,” Truthout Perspective, July 14, 2004.]<br />
What seriously needs to be entertained is that FEMA was engaged with the idea that a<br />
Constitutional change of government would be required by the events of that day –<br />
March 30, 1984 (when Reagan was shot) and <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001(with assassination<br />
atempts on Bush.)<br />
If there is any doubt that this was part of the strategy, one only needs to refer to the<br />
actions of President Bush’s brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who on <strong>September</strong> 7,<br />
2001, with an Executive Order, paved the way to declare martial law in Florida.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 266
“I hereby declare that a state of emergency exists in the state of Florida...The Authority to suspend the<br />
effect of any statute or rule governing the conduct of state business, and further authority to suspend<br />
the effect of any order or rule of any government entity...The authority to seize and utilize any and all<br />
real or personal property as needed to meet this emergency...The authority to order the evacuation of<br />
any or all persons from any location in the State...The authority to regulate the return of the evacuees<br />
to their home comunities...I hereby order the Adjutant General to activate the Florida National Guard<br />
for the duration of this emergency.” ~Florida Governor Jeb Bush, <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001<br />
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed Executive Order 01-261 <strong>September</strong> 7,<br />
2001, four days before the WTC tragedy of Sept. <strong>11</strong>, which paves the way for a declaration of martial<br />
law in his state. The governor, in his EO, delegated to, “...the Adjutant General of the state of Florida<br />
all necessary authority....to order members of the Florida National Guard into Active Service.”<br />
Immediately after the second WTC tower fell, Governor Jeb Bush signed EO 01-262 to<br />
make Florida the first state to declare a state of emergency although his state did not<br />
experience any terrorist events that day. Governor Bush is reportedly the only governor in<br />
the U.S. outside of NY and D.C. to make a declaration of martial law in the wake of the<br />
WTC tragedy. Interestingly, Governor Bush's declaration came before authorities in New<br />
York or Washington, D.C. declared states of emergency.<br />
What is being suggested in this action is a level of treasonous, criminal intent not seen<br />
since John F Kennedy assassination or the attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan. There is<br />
no statute of limitations on murder – and some day the individuals responsible for the<br />
attack on the WTC may be prosecuted. For many reasons however, the plot by Vice<br />
President George Bush to assassinate Ronald Reagan will never be prosecuted, or even<br />
mentioned in a Congressional hearing or Grand Jury. It needs to be addressed here, if for<br />
no other reason that to convince the reader that the Iran-Contra team, re-assembled for<br />
the attack on the World Trade Center, has fulfilled the dictate of the Neoconservative<br />
‘court philosopher’ – Michael Ledeen:<br />
“In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to 'enter into evil.' This is<br />
the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired and challenging... we are rotten.... It’s<br />
true that we can achieve greatness if, and only if, we are properly led” .[Michael Ledeen, from his<br />
book Universal Fascism]<br />
The historical record clearly suggests that the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan<br />
by Robert Hinckley was part of a more intricate plot to control the government of the<br />
United States, leaving George Bush Sr. in charge. Interestingly, that transition from<br />
Reagan to Bush would begin the fulfillment of Barbara Bush’s desire recorded in the<br />
1940’s, to be First lady. (see Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and<br />
the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, Penguin, 2004, p.76)<br />
To understand the events leading up to George Bush Sr.’s first attempt to control the<br />
Presidency, one needs to put Reagan’s role in perspective. He was suffering from the<br />
early stages of Alzheimer’s, leaving much of the actual decision-making to his staff.<br />
“Ronald Reagan was 70 years old when he took office, the oldest man ever to be inaugurated as<br />
president. His mind wandered; long fits of slumber crept over his cognitive faculties. On some days he<br />
may have kept bankers' hours with his papers and briefing books and meetings in the Oval Office, but<br />
he needed a long nap most afternoons and became distraught if he could not have one. His custom was<br />
to delegate all administrative decisions to the cabinet members, to the executive departments and<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 267
agencies. Policy questions were delegated to the White House staff, who prepared the options and then<br />
guided Reagan's decisions among the pre-defined options. This was the staff that composed not just<br />
Reagan’s speeches, but the script of his entire life: for normally every word that Reagan spoke in<br />
meetings and conferences, every line down to and including "Good morning, Senator," every word was<br />
typed on three by five file cards from which the Reagan would read.” [George Bush: The<br />
Unauthorized Biography , by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter -XVII- The Attempted<br />
Coup D'Etat of March 30, 1991]<br />
In the months prior to the assassination attempt, Bush orchestrated a number of<br />
organizational changes that put him squarely in control of intelligence and foreign policy.<br />
“White House press secretary James Brady could say in early March, 1981: "Bush is functioning much<br />
like a co-president. George is involved in all the national security stuff because of his special<br />
background as CIA director. All the budget working groups he was there, the economic working<br />
groups, the Cabinet meetings. He is included in almost all the meetings." [Hinckley and Bush Families<br />
were close Friends, Connie Cook Smith, http://www.conniescomments.blogspot.com]<br />
During the several months prior to the assassination attempt, Vice President Bush manipulated the<br />
President into allowing him to take over from Al Haig, the key meetings used to make administrative<br />
decisions. Eight days before the attempt, Bush finalized his plan to control crisis management.<br />
“The struggle between Haig and Bush culminated towards the end of Reagan's first hundred days in<br />
office. Haig was chafing because the White House staff, meaning Baker, was denying him acess to the<br />
president…. Then, on Sunday, March 22, Haig's attention was called to an elaborate leak to reporter<br />
Martin Schram that had appeared that day in the Washington Post under the headline "White House<br />
Revamps Top Policy Roles; Bush to Head Crisis Management." Haig's attention was drawn to the<br />
following paragraphs:<br />
Partly in an effort to bring harmony to the Reagan high command, it has been decided that Vice<br />
President George Bush will be placed in charge of a new structure for national security crisis<br />
management, according to senior presidential assistants. This assignment will amount to an<br />
unprecedented role for a vice president in modern times. In the Carter administration, the crisis<br />
management structure was chaired by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser.” [George<br />
Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter -XVII- The<br />
Attempted Coup D'Etat of March 30, 1991]<br />
The key player in placing George Bush Sr. in control of the “Special Situations Group”<br />
ultimately turned out to be James Baker III (Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty, Penguin<br />
Books, 2004, pp 207-208). (This centralized control over crisis management would be recreated<br />
in May and June of 2001 by George Bush Jr, who would appoint Vice President<br />
Dick Cheney as centrally in control of all NORAD defense, FEMA, and terrorist counterintelligence<br />
activities. [see Michael C Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, pp 337 and 574.]<br />
It might also be worth noting that Cheney received the Vice Presidential nomination<br />
because of George Bush Sr., and was made CEO of Halliburton due to Bush’s family<br />
connections with the Halliburton Board, connections going back to when Bush’s father<br />
Prescott was a Director of Dresser. [see Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty, Penguin<br />
Books, 2004, pp. 93 and 420] In every respect, Dick Cheney is a creation of George<br />
Bush Sr.)<br />
A key variable in this power play was Executive Order Number 12656 - which appointed<br />
the National Security Council as the principal body that should consider emergency<br />
powers in case of national emergency. Under the old regime, while a Vice President<br />
follows President in the line of succession, the Secretary of State (Al Haig) who is next in<br />
succession controls the National Security Council. Bush changed that formula, giving<br />
himself total control of the government- “in the event of a crisis.” Under Bush’s<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 268
guidance, FEMA was structured to create three possible succession teams. Of the three<br />
teams set-up to possibly rule the US in case of a ‘transition crises,’ Dick Cheney and<br />
Donald Rumsfeld were responsible for two of them! George Bush, of course, would be<br />
in charge of the third. [see James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans- The History of Bush’s War<br />
Cabinet, Penguin, 2004, p142.]<br />
While running the government in the immediate aftermath of the assasination attempt,<br />
Bush had FEMA activated for a testing of new procedures. This “test” was to be<br />
administered by none other than Lt. Colonel Oliver North.<br />
“…Reagan signed Presidential Director Number 54 that allowed FEMA to engage in a secret national<br />
"readiness exercise" under the code name of REX 84. The exercise was to test FEMA's readiness to<br />
assume military authority in the event of a "State of Domestic National Emergency" concurrent with<br />
the launching of a direct United States military operation in Central America. The plan called for the<br />
deputation of U.S. military and National Guard units so that they could legally be used for domestic<br />
law enforcement. These units would be assigned to conduct sweeps and take into custody an estimated<br />
400,000 undocumented Central American immigrants in the United States. The immigrants would be<br />
interned at 10 detention centers to be set up at military bases throughout the country<br />
REX 84 was so highly guarded that special metal security doors were placed on the fifth floor of the<br />
FEMA building in Washington, D.C. Even long-standing employees of the Civil Defense of the<br />
Federal Executive Department possessing the highest possible security clearances were not being<br />
allowed through the newly installed metal security doors. Only personnel wearing a special red<br />
Christian cross or crucifix lapel pin were allowed into the premises. Lt. Col. North was responsible for<br />
drawing up the emergency plan, which U.S. Attorney General William French Smith opposed<br />
vehemently. The plan called for the suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government<br />
over to FEMA, appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and the<br />
declaration of Martial Law. The Presidential Executive Orders to support such a plan were already in<br />
place. . [FEMA - The Secret Government, Harry V. Martin with research assistance from David Caul,<br />
Copyright: FreeAmerica and Harry V. Martin, 1995]<br />
<strong>11</strong>.5 Attempted Assassination of Reagan<br />
The exercise for”testing” the emergency preparedness plan was ironically scheduled for<br />
April 1. Two days before it was to be set in motion, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to kill<br />
President Reagan. It would be a few more hours for Bush to be able to say he was in<br />
control, because Al Haig - immediately following the assassination attempt, went to<br />
calm the public by saying on National TV: “I am in control... until the Vice President<br />
returns.” The press however, was taken aback –in that this seemed un-Constitutional.<br />
“What they don't understand is all that Constitution stuff is pushed aside once they declare National<br />
Emergencies. Then they go into FEMA and they have whole other orders of succession that have to do<br />
more with the military and the Pentagon than with any of the civilian sector.” [John Judge November<br />
2000 Interview]<br />
Most citizens assume that as per a law passed under the Presidential Succession Act of<br />
1947, the House Speaker and President Pro Tem of the Senate, in that order, are placed in<br />
the statutory line of succession ahead of the Cabinet officers. This modifies the<br />
Presidential Succession Act of 1885, which provided that after the Vice President, the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 269
line of succession would begin with the Secretary of State and would continue through<br />
the Cabinet department. While the 25 th Amendment, passed in 1967 addresses the<br />
replacement of the President and Vice-President, it does not clarify subsequent order.<br />
Opinion about the correct order is not unanimous.<br />
“Next are the hardy perennial (questions). First among these is whether the Speaker of the House and<br />
the President Pro Tem of the Senate are officers in the sense intended by article II of the Constitution.<br />
Are they therefore constitutionally eligible to succeed to the presidency? There has been a simmering<br />
controversy over this question for many years. A second question is more political or perhaps<br />
philosophical: should the officers in line to succeed the President and Vice President be elected<br />
Members of the House and Senate, as currently provided, or should we return to the Succession Act of<br />
1886 and put appointed Cabinet officers at the top of the list?” [ 2004 PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION<br />
ACT, HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE<br />
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, ONE HUNDRED<br />
EIGHTH CONGRESS,SECOND SESSION,OCTOBER 6, 2004; Testimony of Thomas H. Neale]<br />
Evidently, after 9/<strong>11</strong>, this interpretation of the law was so uncertain that Bush<br />
implemented the famous “shadow government” without advising those in the presidential<br />
line of succession<br />
“Key congressional leaders said yesterday the White House did not tell them that President Bush has<br />
moved a cadre of senior civilian managers to secret underground sites outside Washington to ensure<br />
that the federal government could survive a devastating terrorist attack on the nation's capital.<br />
There are two other branches of government that are central to the functioning of our democracy. I<br />
would hope the speaker and the minority leader would at least pose the question, 'What about us?'<br />
Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee Senate Majority<br />
Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said he had not been informed about the role, location or even the<br />
existence of the shadow government that the administration began to deploy the morning of the Sept.<br />
<strong>11</strong> hijackings. An aide to House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said he similarly was<br />
unaware of the administration's move.<br />
Among Congress's GOP leadership, aides to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.), second in line to<br />
succeed the president if he became incapacitated, and to Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.)<br />
said they were not sure whether they knew.<br />
Aides to Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) said he had not been told. As Senate president pro tempore,<br />
he is in line to become president after the House speaker.” [Congress Not Advised Of Shadow<br />
Government , Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, 3/2/2002]<br />
Only by understanding the tension between Bush and Haig in 1981, and the recent efforts<br />
by Bush to control decisions in the Whitehouse, does Haig’s historic statement take on<br />
its real context. Haig would press - in private – for an investigation into any possible<br />
conspiracy around the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. His request was overridden<br />
by George Bush, who now controlled the emergency security meeting.<br />
Being in the key position to control key meetings, Bush’s first actions were to cancel<br />
three activities: 1) any independent investigation into the attempted assassination, 2) a<br />
NORAD defense exercise which had mobilized the military, and 3) a FEMA exercise,<br />
which had the potential to take over the government.<br />
“Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger's memoir of that afternoon reminds us of two highly relevant<br />
facts. The first is that a "NORAD [North American Air Defense Command] exercise with a simulated<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 270
incoming missile attack had been planned for the next day." Weinberger agreed with General David<br />
Jones, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that this exercise should be cancelled. [fn 12] ]<br />
[George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography , by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter -<br />
XVII- The Attempted Coup D'Etat of March 30, 1991] (Note: “Richard Bartholomew, a researcher in<br />
Texas, told me that he himself talked to Strategic Air Command bomber pilots who, like the pilots I<br />
talked to that were in the air the hour of the Kennedy assassination, told him that on March 31 they had<br />
no code books aboard.” [John Judge November 2000 Interview])<br />
“Weinberger also recalls that the group in the Situation Room was informed by James Baker that<br />
"there had been a FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Administration] exercise scheduled for the<br />
next day on presidential succession, with the general title 'Nine Lives.' By an immediate consensus, it<br />
was agreed that exercise should also be cancelled." [George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography , by<br />
Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter -XVII- The Attempted Coup D'Etat of March 30,<br />
1991]<br />
“As Weinberger recounts the same moments: "[Attorney General Bill French Smith] then reported that<br />
all FBI reports concurred with the information I had received; that the shooting was a completely<br />
isolated incident and that the assassin, John Hinckley, with a previous record in Nashville, seemed to<br />
be a 'Bremmer' type, a reference to the attempted assassin of George Wallace." [fn 16] Those who<br />
were not watching carefully here may have missed the fact that just a few minutes after George Bush<br />
had walked into the room, he had presided over the sweeping under the rug of the decisive question<br />
regarding Hinckley and his actions: was Hinckley a part of a conspiracy, domestic or international?<br />
Not more than five hours after the attempt to kill Reagan, on the basis of the most fragmentary early<br />
reports, before Hinckley had been properly questioned, and before a full investigation had been<br />
carried out, a group of cabinet officers chaired by George Bush had ruled out a priori any<br />
conspiracy.” [George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin,<br />
Chapter -XVII- The Attempted Coup D'Etat of March 30, 1991]<br />
In the following months, while Reagan was recovering, Bush would be granted even<br />
more power over foreign policy and intelligence operations by a ‘secret memorandum’<br />
from the President that was signed “for the President” by NSA Advsor William C Clarke.<br />
“Bush's position as chief of all covert action and de facto head of U.S. intelligence--in a sense, the<br />
acting President--was formalized in a secret memorandum. The memo explained that `` National<br />
Security Decision Directive 3, Crisis Management, establishes the Special Situation Group (SSG),<br />
chaired by the Vice President. The SSG is charged ... with formulating plans in anticipation of crises. ''<br />
It is most astonishing that, in all of the reports, articles and books about the Iran-Contra covert actions,<br />
the existence of Bush's SSG has received no significant attention. Yet its importance in the<br />
management of those covert actions is obvious and unmistakable, as soon as an investigative light is<br />
thrown upon it. The memo in question also announced the birth of another organization, the Standing<br />
Crisis Pre-Planning Group (CPPG), which was to work as an intelligence-gathering agency for Bush<br />
and his SSG. This new subordinate group, consisting of representatives of Vice President Bush,<br />
National Security Council (NSC) staff members, the CIA, the military and the State Department, was<br />
to `` meet periodically in the White House Situation Room.... '' They were to identify areas of potential<br />
crisis and `` [p]resent ... plans and policy options to the SSG '' under Chairman Bush. And they were to<br />
provide to Bush and his assistants, `` as crises develop, alternative plans, '' `` action/options '' and ``<br />
coordinated implementation plans '' to resolve the `` crises. '' Finally, the subordinate group was to give<br />
to Chairman Bush and his assistants `` recommended security, cover, and media plans that will<br />
enhance the likelihood of successful execution. '' It was announced that the CPPG would meet for the<br />
first time on May 20, 1982, and that agencies were to `` provide the name of their CPPG representative<br />
to Oliver North, NSC staff.... '' The memo was signed `` for the President '' by Reagan's national<br />
security adviser, William P. Clark. It was declassified during the congressional Iran-Contra hearings.”<br />
[George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin , Chapter -XVIII-<br />
Iran- Contra]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 271
As a result of the closed-door meeting in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of<br />
Reagan, there was no independent investigation, no grand jury, no congressional<br />
hearings. The public received whatever information the FBI fed them. (The value of this<br />
historical lesson was not lost on Bush, whose son attempted to stop every investigation<br />
into the attack on the World Trade Center, saying there was no need for an investigation,<br />
and exerted significant energy in attempting to prevent an investigation.) The world was<br />
told that Hinckley acted alone, in an attempt to win the actress Jodie Foster’s attention, as<br />
did the main character in the movie Taxi Driver. Hinckley was tried, and found innocent<br />
on a defense of insanity. It was the insanity defense that raised the vague and disturbing<br />
references in the press that he may have been some type of “Manchurian Candidate”<br />
assassin – unknowingly programmed to assassinate the President.<br />
The actual facts of the case suggest a set of circumstance far different than published for<br />
media consumption. Al Haig had very reasonable grounds to think that there may have<br />
been a conspiracy to assassinate Reagan. Recent events and events of that day suggested<br />
that the lone-gunman theory could not explain everything.<br />
First, (while unreported until much later), there was reason to believe that there had been<br />
a previous attempt to assassinate Reagan several weeks prior to March 30.<br />
“As reporters dug deeper into the alleged shooting, one asked a Secret Service contact if there had<br />
been any recent shooting incidents monitored by his agency. "The answer came back. On March 8, as<br />
a motorcade drove west on Canal Road, officers had heard a 'popping sound' from a 'steep, rocky cliff'<br />
on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. But it had been President Reagan's motorcade, not Bush's.<br />
And the noises never proved to be gunfire." [fn 9] Had there been an attempt to assassinate Reagan,<br />
or to intimidate him? In any case Senator Howard Baker, the GOP majority leader at that time, was<br />
overheard making jokes about the allegedly discredited Rumor at a weekend party, and this was duly<br />
noted in the Washinton Post of March 25.” [George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography , by Webster<br />
G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter -XVII- The Attempted Coup D'Etat of March 30, 1991]<br />
The prior attempt aside, there were other unreported occurrences on March 30th that<br />
could lead Haig to believe that something was suspiciously awry.<br />
“When the President was shot… he was pushed into the car by a man named Jerry Parr(sp?) that was<br />
his Secret Service guard. Jerry Parr fell on top of him and, I just saw in the ‘Reader's Digest’ where<br />
Jerry Parr was telling his "valiant story." And the limousine tore off, didn't it? Now it was ‘five<br />
minutes later’ that the ambulance arrived and they put the Secret Service man, the Washington, D.C.<br />
policeman, and Brady in the ambulance and ‘it’ roared off. Using normal time-rate/distance, who<br />
should have arrived at George Washington University Hospital first? The President should have. Well,<br />
who did? You know it's a trick question. The ambulance arrived 15 minutes before the President.<br />
When asked, "What happened?" the Secret Service simply responded, "We got lost."<br />
The Secret Service does not get lost in Washington, D.C. They don't get lost in most places of the<br />
world. And so, now the investigation starts to get a little interesting. When they take Ronald Reagan in,<br />
they can see that he... matter of fact, his heart almost stopped. And he is convulsing; there's blood on<br />
his lips. They know he's hurt... seriously. But they can find no wounds. They X-ray him ‘3 times’ and<br />
can find nothing. Finally, a nurse notices a tiny entrance wound right at the seventh rib, underneath the<br />
armpit. And a doctor takes a probe, and ... very carefully, because they couldn't see it on X-ray, the<br />
doctor is able to extract what he said was a planchet, thinner than a dime, that was one-quarter inch<br />
from Ronald Reagan's aorta.” [Excerpts from a talk given by Lt. Col. "Bo" Gritz in Mesa, Arizona on<br />
4/4/1992]<br />
“NBC correspondent Judy Woodruff said that at least one shot was fired from the hotel, above<br />
Reagan's limousine. She later elaborated, saying a Secret Service agent had fired that shot from the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 272
hotel overhang. Could Reagan's wound have been inflicted by friendly fire? Or, more ominously, did<br />
Woodruff glimpse a bona fide "second gunman" - a la JFK in Dealey Plaza? Either way, Woodruff's<br />
account might explain how a slug managed to strike Reaganwhen his limo's bulletproof door stood<br />
between him and Hinckley. Sizing up the Hinckley-Bush nexus, conspiracy researcher John Judge has<br />
theoretically dubbed this "the shot from the Bushy knoll." According to conspiratologist Barbara<br />
Honegger, White House correspondent Sarah McClendon made the somewhat more subjective<br />
comment that Reagan's Secret Service retinue wasn't in its "usual tight formation" around Reagan in<br />
front of the Hilton. Were the Gipper's bodyguards out to throw the game?” [Hinckley: Hit Man for the<br />
Government?]<br />
“…. the Secret Service helped to set-up Reagan too. Reagan was told not to wear his vest that day --<br />
his protective vest…. They did not call the procedure with the limousine. He should have come out the<br />
door and gone directly into the limousine. That's how he arrived.<br />
He came, the Secret Service formed two rows on either side of the back door, they opened the back<br />
door and he goes in. When you hire a limousine, they don't go to the house down the street, they come<br />
to your door. When you're the president, they'll move it six inches to make sure that it's in the right<br />
place. It was in the right place when he arrived. He got out and went in through the phalanx of the two<br />
rows of agents. He's safe into the VIP entrance.<br />
He comes out the same exit and where's the car?' It is nowhere near the door. It's 40-50 feet down the<br />
pavement. So, he's got to walk out into the open. What's supposed to happen? The Secret Service is<br />
supposed to surround him like a diamond and protect him. One guy goes forward, McCarthy, to open<br />
the door for him. The rest don't surround him. They all file out like a line of ducks off to the right and<br />
they leave Reagan walking in the open with Brady and these other guys. Then, the shooting happens.<br />
The damage that was done there once the shooting started was quite extensive. Brady was hit which<br />
literally took a large chunk of his brain and knocked him on to the ground. A black cop was nicked in<br />
the neck, a big beefy cop, and he spun and hit the ground hard by the shot. McCarthy, 160 pounds, was<br />
lifted by the shot, that hit him in the groin at the back door of the car, and thrown through the air to the<br />
front bumper of the car. He himself says that was no 22.<br />
All of the early press reports said that Hinkley was firing a 38 and that is much more consistent with<br />
these kinds of reactions. A 22 will hurt you, enter you and do damage inside you, but it's not going to<br />
knock you over. A 38 is a much larger caliber of bullet. Hinkley purchased a 38 at a pawn shop on Elm<br />
Street in Dallas -- the same street where Kennedy was assassinated…. Then the official story changes<br />
after three or four hours and Hinkleysupposedly had a 22. I went through the ABC footage and you can<br />
actually see the replacement of the 22 and the pick-up of the 38 by a Secret Service agent.” [John<br />
Judge November 2000 Interview]<br />
“That motorcycle rentinue did not leave with Reagan's limousine when he did leave. He has no escort<br />
when he goes. That is not explainable either, especially if there has just been an assassination attempt -<br />
- why he would be put out there without escort. But he does, he goes without anybody.”<br />
“This cop comes over, off of his motorcycle, spreads his arms and kind of moves back and forth in<br />
front of -- at the edge of the crowd. He's not serving any purpose but he's there and after a moment the<br />
camera pans back and you can see at his feet, this 22, as if he's dropped it. One of his hands goes in<br />
towards the center of his coat and then comes out and right after that, as the camera is panning all<br />
around, it pans right between his feet, and you can see this 22 that becomes the official weapon.<br />
There is also a weapon near Brady's head that one of the Secret Service guys drops. That's how they<br />
explain the 38, saying that it was a confusion because it was really the Secret Service guy's gun. I<br />
believe, Hinkley was firing a 38. Hinkley damaged everybody but Reagan, also put holes in the car and<br />
the building across the street. But he only had six rounds and each one of those is explained and then a<br />
seventh round has to explain the wound in Reagan.<br />
Reagan's wound is so minimal that it doesn't match either a 22 or a 38. It is described as a little thin<br />
razor line when they finally get his clothes off. They think he's having a heart attack -- actually his lung<br />
had collapsed because of the thing penetrating him. Then finally a nurse sees a little line of blood<br />
underneath his left arm pit. She determines that something has gone in but it's a little razor cut. They<br />
know what a bullet hole looks there in the emergency room at G.W.U.. They get them all the time.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 273
They do poke around until they finally find this thing in the x-ray. They try three times to get it out and<br />
finally pull it out and it is a little disc, a flattened disc, that was described as `thin as a dime' and `razoredged.'<br />
This fits the profile of these aerodynamic discs that are used by the intelligence agencies in<br />
weapons that the Church Committee showed during the time that they did their testimony. They are<br />
fired with a CO2 (carbon dioxide) cartridge, so they are relatively silent. They just make a little puff.<br />
They have an accuracy up to a great length. They can be fired out of a regular gun or even out of these<br />
little tubes with the CO2 cartridge at the back. They also can be loaded with toxins.<br />
One of the uses they had for them was making them out of plastic and filling them with shellfish toxin<br />
which goes in and makes a razor split in the skin which wouldn't be noticed during an autopsy. The xray<br />
won't pull up the plastic and the shellfish toxin, once it gets into any part of the bloodstream, will<br />
cause a heart attack within 30 seconds. Very lethal -- several milligrams of the shellfish toxin is<br />
enough of a dose. Whether this thing had a poison load in it or not, who knows? But it didn't<br />
immediately kill him so if it did have such a load, it didn't work. It didn't shoot off.<br />
It bounced off of his rib. It would have cut into his aorta but bounced on his rib and missed the aorta by<br />
a quarter of an inch and went into the lung instead. But they did finally get it out. The lung was<br />
collapsed from it but they got him stabilized.” [John Judge November 2000 Interview]<br />
In addition to these irregular, undisclosed and downplayed events, the press immediately<br />
stumbled across what was referred to by a Bush spokesperson as a “bizarre coincidence”<br />
– a relationship between the Hinckley and the Bush families, which had known each<br />
other for years. The first allegation was that Hinckley’s father was a major campaign<br />
contributor to George Bush. For some reason, the relationship was “denied.”<br />
“Later in the day Bush spokesman Peter Teeley surfaced to deny any campaign donations from the<br />
Hinckley clan to the Bushcampaign. When asked why Sharon Bush and Neil Bush had made reference<br />
to large political contributions from the Hinckleys to the Bush campaign, Teeley responded, "I don't<br />
have the vaguest idea." "We've gone through our files," said Teeley, "and we have absolutely no<br />
information that he [John W. Hinckley Sr.] or anybody in the family were contributors, supporters,<br />
anything." [George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin,<br />
Chapter -XVII- The Attempted Coup D'Etat of March 30, 1991]<br />
The actual facts about the contributions and the relations between the families would turn<br />
out to be quite different, with the relationship between Bush and Hinckley to be quite<br />
substantial.<br />
“When Brady was shot, no question. Here we've got John Hinckley, Jr., Oh, by the way, is John<br />
Hinckley, Jr., just some kind of a "weirdo?" Isn't it strange that John Hinckley, Sr., is the owner of<br />
Vanderbilt Oil? And, of course, George Bush is the owner of Zapata Oil. Was it a coincidence, then,<br />
that John Hinckley, Sr., and George Bush are neighbors ‘for years’ in Houston, Texas, working<br />
together? Is it any coincidence that John Hinckley, Sr., when you go back through the FEC, the Federal<br />
Election <strong>Commission</strong>, his own record of giving maximum donations every year to Mr. Bush even<br />
when he started running for Congress…” [Excerpts from a talk given by Lt. Col. "Bo" Gritz in Mesa,<br />
Arizona on 4/4/1992]<br />
“When the Hinckley oil company, Vanderbilt Oil started to fail in the 1960s, Bush, Sr.'s, Zapata Oil<br />
financially bailed out Hinckley's company. Hinckley had been running an operation with six dead<br />
wells, but he began making several million dollars a year after the Bush bailout.” [Hinckley – Bush<br />
Family Friend - Nears Release, von A. Weist, <strong>11</strong>/28/2003]<br />
The second allegation was that Hinckley’s brother and Bush’s brothers were not only<br />
friends, but had recently partied together and were scheduled to have dinner with each<br />
other that very day! (A parallel event in the 9/<strong>11</strong> annals would be that George Bush Sr.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 274
was dining with the Bin Ladin family the day of the attack. This coincidence will take on<br />
even more meaning a little further into the report.)<br />
“The Rocky Mountain News article signed by Charles Roos carried Neil Bush's confirmation that if the<br />
assassination had not happened, Scott Hinckley would have been present at a dinner party at Neil<br />
Bush's home that very same night. According to Neil, Scott Hinckley had come to the home of Neil<br />
and Sharon Bush on January 23, 1981 to be present along with about 30 other guests at a surprise<br />
birthday party for Neil, who had turned 26 one day earlier. Scott Hinckley had come "through a close<br />
friend who brought him," according to this version, and this same close female friend was scheduled to<br />
come to dinner along with Scott Hinckley on that last night of March, 1981.” [George Bush: The<br />
Unauthorized Biography, by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter -XVII- The Attempted<br />
Coup D'Etat of March 30, 1991]<br />
A third ‘coincidence’ was the possibility that Neil Bush actually had known John<br />
Hinckley, the would-be assassin.<br />
“In 1978, Neil Bush served as campaign manager for his brother, George W. Bush, the Vice President's<br />
eldest son, who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. Neil lived in Lubbock, Texas, throughout<br />
much of 1978, where John Hinckley lived from 1974 through 1980.” [George Bush: The Unauthorized<br />
Biography, by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter -XVII- The Attempted Coup D'Etat of<br />
March 30, 1991]<br />
A fourth coincidence, was that on the very day John Hinckley attempted to kill Reagan,<br />
three Department of Energy auditors were pressuring Hinckley’s brother Scott, with a $2<br />
million penalty. This penalty would later disappear.<br />
“Neil Bush, a landman for Amoco Oil, told Denver reporters he had met Scott Hinckley at a surprise<br />
party at the Bush home January 23, 1981 [Nine weeks before Hinckley's brother John Jr. attempted to<br />
assassinate President Reagan-which would have elevated Bush Sr. to the presidency], and<br />
approximately three weeks after the U.S. Department of Energy had begun what was termed a "routine<br />
audit" of the books of the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, the Hinckley oil company. In an incredible<br />
coincidence, on the morning of March 30 [the day of the Reagan assassination attempt by John<br />
Hinckley, Jr.], three representatives of the U.S. Department of Energy told Scott Hinckley, John<br />
Hinckley Jr.'s older brother and Vanderbilt's vice president of operations, that auditors had uncovered<br />
evidence of pricing violations on crude oil sold by the company from 1977 through 1980. The auditors<br />
announced that the federal government was considering a penalty of two million dollars. [This, on the<br />
same day that his brother John--the youngest son of Vice President Bush's close friend--attempted the<br />
assassination!] Scott Hinckley reportedly requested "several hours to come up with an explanation" of<br />
the serious overcharges. The meeting ended a little more than an hour before John Hinckly Jr. shot<br />
President Reagan.”<br />
With the subsequent revelation of these facts about the relationship between the Bush and<br />
Hinkley families, the question needs to be asked: Could the Hinckley family have been<br />
“behind” the Bush family quest for political power? Might they have sent their own son<br />
to do this deed as repayment of an obligation, and did Scott need to be pressured into<br />
silence? Also, what about these vague references as to whether John Hinckley could be<br />
some kind of Manchurian Candidate assassin, unknowingly programmed? To answer<br />
these questions, a little more about the Hinckley family needs to be understood.<br />
John’s father – Jack – in addition to being a successful oil-man, was one of two key<br />
individuals in a group known as US Ministries for World Vision, and very possibly a CIA<br />
agent in Guatemala in the period when Armitage and Secord were establishing their<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 275
credentials as weapons dealers. (Armitage worked for Erich von Marbod at that time,<br />
who according to James Mann, in the Rise of the Vulcans, “was the man to see” “if you<br />
wanted to steer arms to a foreign government.”)<br />
"Jack" Hinckley, as the gunman's father was frequently called, during the 1970's became a close<br />
associate of Robert Ainsworth, the director of US Ministries for World Vision, Inc. Jack Hinckley's<br />
profile was that of a born again Christian. Jack Hinckley and Ainsworth traveled together to the Sahel<br />
region of Africa, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Even before joining World Vision, Jack Hinckley had<br />
carried on "relief work" in Guatemala. "Jack and I became very close," Ainsworth said. "Jack was a<br />
successful businessman. On occasion he would ask us to pray for his son. It's not that Jack felt that<br />
John would do something bad, just that John had no direction, John had not found himself."<br />
World Vision is one of the notorious non-governmental organizations that function as a de facto arm of<br />
US intelligence under current arrangements. Robert Ainsworth's pedigree is impressive: he was a<br />
foreign area analyst for the US State Department; an advisor in Vietnam during the war there; and<br />
chaired an international committee involved in the negotiation of the Chemical and Bacteriological<br />
Warfare Treaty of 1973.<br />
The largest contributor to World Vision is the US State Department Agency for International<br />
Development (AID)…. Pax Christi, the Catholic human rights organization, has accused World Vision<br />
of functioning as a "Trojan horse for US foreign policy." The entire milieu is thus redolent of the US<br />
intelligence agencies. [George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton<br />
Chaitkin, Chapter -XVII- The Attempted Coup D'Etat of March 30, 1991]<br />
World Vision was a religious ministry with “missions” in South America. It had<br />
established relations with Bob Jones, founder of the People’s Temple, which established<br />
its infamy in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978.<br />
“With his new wealth, Jones was able to travel to California and establish the first People's Temple in<br />
Ukiah, California, in 1965. Guarded by dogs, electric fences and guard towers, he set up Happy<br />
Havens Rest Home.[98] Despite a lack of trained personnel, or proper licensing, Jones drew in many<br />
people at the camp. He had elderly, prisoners, people from psychiatric institutions, and 150 foster<br />
children, often transferred to care at Happy Havens by court orders.[99] He was contacted there by<br />
Christian missionaries from World Vision, an international evangelical order that had done espionage<br />
work for the CIA in Southeast Asia.[100] He met "influential" members of the community and was<br />
befriended by Walter Heady, the head of the local chapter of the John Birch Society.[101] He used the<br />
members of his "church" to organize local voting drives for Richard Nixon's election, and worked<br />
closely with the republican party.[102] He was even appointed chairman of the county grand<br />
jury.[103]” [The Black Hole of Guyana : The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre , by John Judge,<br />
1985]<br />
The American public recalls the Jonestown Massacre as the greatest single mass-suicide<br />
event of the century. With the news of the mass deaths reported in Guyana, U.S. Green<br />
Berets landed at the Jones camp to ‘police’ the area. News started to circulate of “masssuicide.”<br />
The source of the "Kool-Aid Suicide" stories was the U.S. State Department,<br />
which presented the story immediately after the "suicides" were reported as though it was<br />
the only obvious truth. A U.S. Army spokesman pronounced with complete authority,<br />
"No autopsies are needed. The cause of death is not an issue here." As usual, the facts<br />
suggested a rather different story. In The Black Hole of Guyana: The Untold Story of the<br />
Jonestown Massacre, John Judge painstakingly documents that Jonestown was a CIA<br />
operation for converting dispossessed and lonely refugees into assassins. In an operation<br />
that was falling under Congressional investigation, the evidence had to be eliminated –<br />
and nearly all the inhabitants were murdered. A few that made it back to the US were<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 276
murdered, one-by-one as they were found. However utterly unbelievable this appears,<br />
there are many independent, published first hand accounts describing this event.<br />
“To comprehend this well-financed, sinister operation, we must abandon the myth that this was a<br />
religious commune and study instead the history that led to its formation. Jonestown was an<br />
experiment, part of a 30-year program called MK-ULTRA, the CIA and military intelligence code<br />
name for mind control.[170] A close study of Senator Ervin's 1974 report, Individual Rights and the<br />
Government's Role in Behavior Modification, shows that these agencies had certain "target<br />
populations" in mind, for both individual and mass control. Blacks, women, prisoners, the elderly, the<br />
young, and inmates of psychiatric wards were selected as "potentially violent."[171] There were plans<br />
in California at the time for a Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, expanding on the<br />
horrific work of Dr. José Delgado, Drs. Mark and Ervin, and Dr. Jolly West, experts in implantation,<br />
psychosurgery, and tranquilizers. The guinea pigs were to be drawn from the ranks of the "target<br />
populations," and taken to an isolated military missile base in California.[172] In that same period,<br />
Jones began to move his Temple members to Jonestown. The were the exact population selected for<br />
such tests.[173]” [The Black Hole of Guyana : The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre , by John<br />
Judge, 1985]<br />
Jonestown, after the massacre, was taken over by Jack Hinckley’s World Vision, another<br />
CIA operation! World Vision would also establish “camps” in the US: Florida, and Fort<br />
Chafey in Arkansas. (It would also open in Azerbaijan in 1994, with the Director of the<br />
operation being the wife of the US Ambassador.)<br />
“Another World Vision employee, Mark David Chapman, worked at their Haitian refugee camp in Ft.<br />
Chaffee, Arkansas. He was later to gain infamy as the assassin of John Lennon in New York City.[282]<br />
World Vision works with refugees worldwide. At the Honduran border, they are present in camps used<br />
by American CIA to recruit mercenaries against Nicaragua. They were at Sabra and Shatilla, Camps in<br />
Lebanon where fascist Phalange massacred the Palestinians.[283] Their representatives in the Cuban<br />
refugee camps on the east coast included members of the Bay of Pigs operation, CIA-financed<br />
mercenaries from Omega 7 and Alpha 66.[284] Are they being used as a worldwide cover for the<br />
recruitment and training of these killers? They are, as mentioned earlier, working to repopulate<br />
Jonestown with Laotians who served as mercenaries for our CIA.[285]” [The Black Hole of Guyana :<br />
The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre , by John Judge, 1985]<br />
“World Vision also took over the camp at Jonestown just after the massacre there. Mark David<br />
Chapman, (who killed John Lennon) was a member of World Vision. John Hinkley Jr. who tried to<br />
kill Ronald Reagan, was a member of World Vision.” [World Vision Christian ministry or CIA front?<br />
Posted By: EBW,Date: Saturday, 25 June 2005]<br />
“The chairman of the board for some period was John W. Hinkley Sr. The son worked at Fort Chafey<br />
at the Thai refugee camps. There were pictures of him after the Reagan shooting running in his World<br />
VisionT-shirt around the edge of the camp.” [John Judge November 2000 Interview]<br />
This portion of John Hinckley Jrs’ life was not mentioned in any official biography, or<br />
the FBI investigation documentation about Hinckley now available on the web. All of<br />
the sudden, the argument about Hinckley being a “Manchurian candidate” do not seem so<br />
far fetched.<br />
It is worth noting that Hinckley’s own notes, written both prior to the assassination<br />
attempt and while in his cell, make reference to a conspiracy. In both cases, the notes<br />
were suppressed.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 277
“Hinckley's parents' memoir refers to some notes penciled notes by Hinckley which were found during<br />
a search of his cell and which "could sound bad." These notes "described an imaginary conspiracy-either<br />
with the political left or the political right [...] to assassinate the President." Hinckley's lawyers<br />
from Edward Bennett Williams's law firm said that the notes were too absurd to be taken seriously and<br />
they have been suppressed. [fn 21]<br />
In July 1985, the FBI was compelled to release some details of its investigation of Hinckley under the<br />
Freedom of Information Act. No explanation was offered of how it was determined that Hinckley had<br />
acted alone, and the names of all witnesses were censored. According to a wire service account, "the<br />
file made no mention of papers seized from Hinckley's prison cell at Butner, North Carolina, which<br />
reportedly made reference to a conspiracy. Those writings were ruled inadmissible by the trial judge<br />
and never made public." [fn 22] The FBI has refused to release 22 pages of documents concerning<br />
Hinckley's "associates and organizations," 22 pages about his personal finances, and 37 pages about his<br />
personality and character. The Williams and Connolly defense team argued that Hinckley was insane,<br />
controlled by his obsession with Jodie Foster. The jury accepted this version, and in July, 1982,<br />
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity.” [George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography ,<br />
by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter -XVII- The Attempted Coup D'Etat of March 30,<br />
1991]<br />
The record shows that Hinkley was involved in a CIA assassination training operation<br />
run by his father, a close friend and business associate of George Bush, former CIA<br />
Director. Hinckley claimed there was a conspiracy, and those notes were suppressed, as<br />
was any other investigation.<br />
The record shows that the day after Ronald Reagan was shot, a small group of men, led<br />
by Vice President George Bush, declared that there was no conspiracy – that the culprit<br />
had been caught, and it was clear he had acted alone. As a result, there was no<br />
investigation, no grand jury, no Congressional hearings. (The value of this historical<br />
lesson was not lost on Bush Jr., who attempted to stop every investigation into the attack<br />
on the World Trade Center, saying there was no need for an investigation.) The actual<br />
facts of the case - both cases - suggest something far different.<br />
<strong>11</strong>.6 Final Lessons<br />
The eerie parallels between the events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> and the attempted Reagan<br />
assassination suggest that in both cases, the conspirators might have been using a ‘play<br />
book.’<br />
1. Use shooters that do not have a lot to lose: The Hinckley’s thought their son had not<br />
found himself, and was a disappointment. Osama Bin Ladin was thought to be on his<br />
deathbed.<br />
2. Control the shooter: The CIA seems to prefer loners and unattached people for wet<br />
work because it reduces the complications of controlling any backlash. In this case,<br />
control is enhanced by using the shooter’s family.<br />
• In both cases, a member of the Bush family was with the family of the shooter as<br />
the crime came down. This may serve to remind the shooter that his family is<br />
vulnerable.<br />
• There may be a need for a quid pro quo. If the Bin Ladin family was giving up a<br />
son, maybe they felt Bush Sr. should do the same. When the attacks on Bush Jr.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 278
failed, maybe it was decided to let Osama Bin Ladin live. Maybe Bush met with<br />
Bin Ladin to save his son’s life. The Hinkley arrangement would suggest that the<br />
elder Bush is not above believing that a family may need to make great sacrifices.<br />
But as the record shows, assassinating a President is extremely difficult.<br />
3. Remove security: Reagan was told to not wear a vest. His security detail left him<br />
exposed. On 9/<strong>11</strong>, the air defenses were down. The bomb-sniffing dogs at the World<br />
Trade Center had been removed early enough for someone to plant explosives. Air<br />
defenses failed miserably.<br />
4. Have a back-up plan: As a shooter, Hinkley failed. The back-up shooter on the roof<br />
failed. The delay in getting him medical attention failed. The CO2 planchet failed, but<br />
ultimately all together they achieved the desired result. On 9/<strong>11</strong>, the planes failed to<br />
bring down the towers. One plane missed its target. The fires and local explosives did<br />
not bring down the tower. The explosions in the basement ultimately completed the<br />
job.<br />
5. Control and if possible, prevent investigation by announcing you have the guilty: In<br />
both cases it was claimed immediately that the guilty parties were obvious and there<br />
was no need for an elaborate investigation.<br />
6. Have a transition plan: In both situations, FEMA was engaged as a justification – if<br />
necessary – for keeping Congress out of the succession picture.<br />
All of these points, however, are speculation.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 279
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 280<br />
12<br />
Potential “Persons of Interest”<br />
This chapter sets out to identify a list of individuals who can be considered as “person of<br />
interest” in investigating the various crimes identified in this report. Those crimes<br />
include, but should not be limited to:<br />
• Conspiracy in the murder of Nick Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley.<br />
• Conspiracy in the attack of the World Trade Center and cover-up. This set of crimes<br />
includes hiring those who organized it, flew in the plane, as well as those who<br />
brought down the building with explosives. For this, the focus will be on the<br />
German/Swiss banking world, Russian/Israeli Mafiya, the re-assembled Iran-<br />
Contra/Azerbaijan gang, the President, Vice-President, Secretary of State, various<br />
officers in the CIA, FBI, Department of Justice, FEMA and NORAD.<br />
• Conspiracy to launder money and steal national treasuries.<br />
• Treason<br />
To focus on seeking out those responsible for a cover-up is to distract the world from the<br />
real crimes: the theft of the wealth of nations for personal use, and the murder of<br />
thousands of people for personal gain.<br />
12.1 Murder of Nick Berg<br />
This report suggests Nick Berg was murdered by individuals meeting the following five<br />
criteria:<br />
• An extremely vicious person;<br />
• A member of the Israeli intelligence;<br />
• Near the Iraq prison Abu Ghraib;<br />
• Would have been aware of Nick Berg’s release from jail;<br />
• With links to the 9/<strong>11</strong> conspirators;<br />
One individual that meets all of these criteria is Steven Stevanowicz (aka Stephanwicz,<br />
Staphanovic or Stephanowitz), an employee of Titan Corp. and a contract interrogator at<br />
Abu Ghraib. Stevanowicz was found to be directly responsible for the brutal<br />
interrogations at that prison. Titan Corp. was acting as a subcontractor to CACI in<br />
interrogation and translating. CACI, it turns out has significant links which meet two of<br />
the five criteria: links to Israeli intelligence and links to the 9/<strong>11</strong> conspirators.
It should come as no surprise that Israeli intelligence has played a key role in the Iraqi<br />
invasion and prisoner interrogation.<br />
“Israeli interrogators are working in tandem with the US-led occupation troops in detention facilities<br />
across Iraq, a senior US officer revealed Saturday, July 4. Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, the US officer at<br />
the heart of the Abu Gharib prison scandal, said she herself met an Israeli interrogator at a secret<br />
intelligence center in Baghdad [Israel Continues Interrogation Work in Iraq, Islamonline.net & News<br />
Agencies , 7/15/2004]<br />
“Seymour Hersh said that one of the Israeli aims was to gain access to detained members of the Iraqi<br />
secret intelligence unit, who reportedly specialize in Israeli affairs. Hersh further unveiled on June 22<br />
that Israeli intelligence and military operatives were now quietly at work in northern Iraq, providing<br />
training for Kurdish commando units and running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and<br />
Syria. The report added that Mossad operatives work undercover in northern Iraq as businessmen and<br />
in some cases do not carry Israeli passports.” [Israel Continues Interrogation Work in Iraq,<br />
Islamonline.net & News Agencies, 7/15/2004]<br />
"One of Staphanovic's co-workers, Joe Ryan - who was not named in the Taguba report - now says that<br />
he underwent an "Israeli interrogation course" before going to Iraq.” [Israeli Mossad/Shin Bet<br />
Associated with Prison Torture, Robert Fisk, 5/26/2004]<br />
One of the key linkages in this Israeli involvement is CACI. CACI is linked to the 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
conspirators through Richard Armitage. Richard Armitage was Board member of CACI<br />
from 1999 to 2001, and a key participant in most of the activities shown to be relevant to<br />
the 9/<strong>11</strong> attack: Iran-Contra, Azerbaijan covert operations, arms shipments to<br />
Afghanistan, the PNAC. Through the years, he has had a relationship with David<br />
Kimche of the Mossad.<br />
“So who is Richard Armitage? None other than a former board member of CACI--the private<br />
contractor that employed four interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison--interrogators who worked with the<br />
205th Military Intelligence Brigade there.” [Richard Armitage and CACI: What's Behind the Attacks<br />
on Australia's Latham? David Palmer]<br />
Members of the Board of CACI have also been documented as having close relations<br />
with the Israeli defense organization.<br />
“Both Titan and CACI have directors with strong ties to the Israeli military establishment.<br />
The director of Titan with the largest stake in the company is Edward H. Bersoff, who received the<br />
Distinguished Leadership Award by the Washington Chapter of the American Jewish Committee in<br />
1999. Bersoff has been an honored speaker at the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, along with<br />
the likes of Sharon’s right-wing ally Binjamin Netanyahu.<br />
On January 14, Dr. J.P. (Jack) London, chairman, president, and CEO of CACI International, flew to<br />
Israel to receive the Albert Einstein Technology Award from the Jerusalem Fund. The award was<br />
presented by Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Uri Lupolianski, Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox<br />
Jewish Mayor at a ceremony in the occupied city on January 14, 2004.<br />
“Titan's linguist contract with the U.S. Army” was noted as a “primary driver” behind the companies<br />
increased revenues. The only language tool Titan offers on its website is for “Levantine Arabic,” i.e.<br />
the Arabic spoken in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. Last July, however, Titan Systems Corporation of<br />
Fairfax, Va., placed an ad for “native Arabic, Aramaic, Kurdish, Persian, Pashto, Turkish and Dari<br />
speakers.” Titan’s ad for interpreters required the native speakers be U.S. citizens and fluent in<br />
English. It is extremely unlikely that any native speaker of Arabic would be named “John Israel.”<br />
[Who is Behind the Abuse at Abu Ghraib? Christopher Bollyn – Rumor Mill News May 6, 2004]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 281
At least two of the CACI subcontractors at Abu Ghraib have been widely viewed as<br />
Israeli agents.<br />
“Although it is still largely undocumented if any of the contractor named in the report of General<br />
Antonio Taguba were associated with the Israeli military or intelligence services, it is noteworthy that<br />
one, John Israel, who was identified in the report as being employed by both CACI International of<br />
Arlington, Virginia, and Titan, Inc., of San Diego, may not have even been a U.S. citizen. The Taguba<br />
report states that Israel did not have a security clearance, a requirement for employment as an<br />
interrogator for CACI. According to CACI's web site, "a Top Secret Clearance (TS) that is current and<br />
US citizenship" are required for CACI interrogators working in Iraq. In addition, CACI requires that its<br />
interrogators "have at least two years experience as a military policeman or similar type of law<br />
enforcement/intelligence agency whereby the individual utilized interviewing techniques."<br />
Speculation that "John Israel" may be an intelligence cover name has fueled speculation whether this<br />
individual could have been one of a number of Israeli interrogators hired under a classified contract.<br />
Because U.S. citizenship and documentation thereof are requirements for a U.S. security clearance,<br />
Israeli citizens would not be permitted to hold a Top Secret clearance. However, dual U.S.-Israeli<br />
citizens could have satisfied Pentagon requirements that interrogators hold U.S. citizenship and a Top<br />
Secret clearance. Although the Taguba report refers twice to Israel as an employee of Titan, the<br />
company claims he is one of their sub-contractors. CACI stated that one of the men listed in the report<br />
"is not and never has been a CACI employee" without providing more detail.” [The Israeli Torture<br />
Template, By Wayne Madsen, www.counterpunch.org 5/10/2004]<br />
“A Lawsuit has been filed by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of<br />
nine Iraqis against two US contractors ….: Titan Corporation of San Diego and CACI International of<br />
Arlington, VA. Employees Stephen Stephanowicz and John Israel of CACI and Adel Nakkla of Titan,<br />
all of whom are believed to have ties with Israeli intelligence.” [Will Jewish-led legal group tell the<br />
full truth as it demands prosecution of torturers? Brendan Andrews ,San Diego 6/9/2004]<br />
Key to this issue is Stefan Stephanowicz. There are several points in his known history<br />
that substantiate suspicion of him. Through CACI, he meets all five of the criteria:<br />
The pictures of what was done to the prisoners under his direction, with the internet<br />
pictures being substantially more brutal than those published in the papers, is testimony<br />
to the utter brutality of this interrogator. He has demonstrated on multiple occasions, that<br />
he is capable of the brutality required for a beheading.<br />
• Several web sites refer to the Jewish heritage of his name, making him a candidate for<br />
potential recruitment as sayanim by the Mossad when he lived in the US.<br />
• In 1999, while a member of the US Naval Reserve, he moved to Australia to work as<br />
an IT recruiter. This would suggest he established special arrangements with the US<br />
Navy Reserve to allow this happen. He moved to Adelaide, Australia, which would<br />
subsequently be mentioned as a home to scandal involving Mossad agents trying to<br />
obtain Australian passports.<br />
• The man is 6 foot, five inches tall. If one views the photographs of the Nick Berg<br />
execution, one of the participants – the one in the white head dressing, and the “too<br />
short” pant legs – has been estimated to be 6’4”. One doesn’t find a lot of Arabic<br />
men fitting that height description. The photographic evidence does not rule him out.<br />
• He was at Abu Ghraib when Berg was released, and would have known of the<br />
release.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 282
If indeed it was Stephanowicz that murdered Nick Berg, the entire “team” of six<br />
interrogators identified in the Gonzalez report should be investigated. (Remember, there<br />
were five terrorists in the beheading video, with a sixth holding the camera.) It would<br />
also be fair to bring into the indictment whoever at CACI and Titan Corp. sent them to<br />
Israel for training. That is the trail of evidence that will lead to the individuals in the<br />
Mossad that ultimately owned the Zarqawi/Stephanowicz cell.<br />
Should an investigation of Titan be undertaken, there are least two reports which suggest<br />
suspicious activity related to their work in Iraq and the US. First, Titan translators in Iraq<br />
have an exceedingly high death rate (for translators), suggesting they are “targeted.” (13<br />
of 29 seems statistically significant given these are not combat position.)<br />
“As of early April, San Diego's Titan Corp has lost at least 13 employees - including four Americans -<br />
since the defense company began providing interpreters to the US Army in Iraq, according to<br />
published reports. Nine of the 13 killed from July through December were Iraqis, although not all of<br />
the deaths were combat-related. [Corporate Mercenaries in Iraq: Part 1: Profit comes with a price,<br />
David Isenberg, 5/20/2004]<br />
CACI had 29 employees at Abu Ghraib alone, eight interrogators, 10 screeners, nine analysts and two<br />
report writers, according to Senate testimony on the abuse case.<br />
“[http://www.rotten.com/library/crime/corporate/caci_internatonal/]<br />
The question that needs to be asked here is: Is the Mossad eliminating its own recruits as<br />
the Abu Ghraib scandal grows, just as they needed to eliminate Nick Berg?<br />
12.2 Deutsche Bank Executives<br />
This report contends that key owners and executives of the Deutsche Bank and related<br />
cartel members (especially UBS, Bank of New York) had motive, opportunity and<br />
capability to initiate the attack on the World Trade Center. Their motives were primarily<br />
financial:<br />
• $23 billion in annual potential equity banking revenues;<br />
• Hundreds of billions of illegal gold reserves, and profits from managing those. Those<br />
revenues alone could easily reach $20 to $30 billion a year.<br />
The relationships upon which this cartel is founded go back in history to World War II,<br />
when gold stolen from treasuries and personal fortunes was transferred from the Third<br />
Reich to a group of industrialist and financiers. This group built a financial empire<br />
founded on fraud and crime, refusing to return this wealth to its rightful heirs.<br />
With the not too distant history of German banking involvement with the Third Reich, it<br />
may be tempting for some to jump to the conclusion that these bankers are somehow<br />
connected to the rumored return of that regime. Nothing could be further from the truth.<br />
The history of German Banking – if not international banking – suggests that while a few<br />
bankers may succumb to the political winds of the time, they generally remain “adaptive”<br />
and learn to coexist with the current regime. Two recent studies support this conclusion:<br />
"They (German bank elite) built strong relationships over a period of ten, twenty and even thirty years.<br />
They often shared similar convictions on issues such as class, business, and the importance of U.S.-<br />
German economic ties. In many cases, they shared business partnerships and investments as well. This<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 283
does not mean that they had a single point of view concerning Hitler, either before or after the Nazis<br />
climb to power in 1930-33. Contrary to the popular myths concerning the Dulles brothers, for example,<br />
Allen Dulles was a relatively early advocate of U.S. backing for the British in their showdown with<br />
Germany, while John Foster Dulles remained considerably more tolerant of Nazism. Others were<br />
prominent Jews who were destined to be dispossessed by the Nazis. Banker Eric Warburg was forced<br />
to sell off most of his German properties in the early 1930s, but he returned for the reconstruction after<br />
1945. Some members of the elite did become creatures of Hitler, however, such as Dresdner Bank's<br />
Karl Lindemann, who was characterized as a "rabid Nazi" by one of the bank's senior executives.<br />
Despite their differences, these U.S.-German "reference groups" or "linkage groups," as they became<br />
known to sociologists, shared common convictions that were to them far more fundamental: the central<br />
importance of maintaining the viability of capitalism as a national and world economic system, and the<br />
key role of U.S. and German productive capacity and markets within that effort. Measured against<br />
these more basic values, the Nazis and their whole brutal apparatus were seen by much of the elite as<br />
transitory, at least during the 1920s and 1930s. From the standpoint of corporate ideology, this elite<br />
saw itself as a new generation of the so-called managerial revolution; they considered themselves to be<br />
"forward thinking" and unencumbered by the stuffy formalism of earlier times." [Christopher Simpson,<br />
The Splendid Blond Beast, Common Courage Press, 1995]<br />
"Right from the start, the NSDAP ideology was hostile to the financial sector. Financial capital,<br />
according to Nazi ideology, was more profit-earning than working capital, was disembedded from its<br />
national context and was in the service of Jewish interests. In his 1925 published pamphlet "Mein<br />
Kampf", Hitler (1925/1999: 213) wrote, "the hardest battle would have to be fought, not against hostile<br />
nations, but against international capital" which was "robbing the enterprises" (ibid: 314). Thus the<br />
strong continuity of the bank's entanglement with industrial corporations over the Nazi period and<br />
beyond was not a forgone conclusion. The relationship between different groups of industry and the<br />
NSDAP is the subject of numerous controversial debates… but there seems to be a consensus that<br />
"Hitler's assistants" were located more in the heavy-industry sector – the political commitment of Fritz<br />
Thyssen is a well-known example of this – than in the financial sector …..Nazi elite failed to make an<br />
extensive reform of the banking sector their top priority. The cartel-like banking system and the banks'<br />
ties with industrial corporations were not dissolved….the "Schutzstaffel" (SS) agitated against banks as<br />
rent seekers of the war and demanded the nationalization of the large banks. Again, the banks’<br />
influence over industrial companies was a main point of criticism (James 1995: 390-395). Hitler<br />
refused such demands, arguing that National Socialists should not assume any responsibility towards<br />
banks……By and large, the company network remained stable in the years of the Nazi dictatorship."<br />
[Martin Höpner and Lothar Krempel, MPIfG Working Paper 03/9, The Politics of the German<br />
Company Network, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, <strong>September</strong> 2003]<br />
The three largest German banks of Deutsche Bank, Dresdner and Commerzbank did<br />
indeed control most of industrial Germany, but that did not by default make their<br />
management Nazis. Sparing them the indignity of that accusation however, should not be<br />
construed as exoneration. These banks – especially the Deutsche Bank – seem to have a<br />
consistent reputation for being involved with organized crime, and they seem to deal with<br />
virtually any organized criminal element one can name. Moreover, it is fair to observe<br />
that more than one of these gentlemen has the potential to be linked to a German version<br />
of ‘Manifest Destiny’. Some of these gentlemen have lineages that are hundreds of years<br />
old, with a familial legacy of conquest and imperialism to live up to. Such men might<br />
easily subscribe to a German version of the New World Order.<br />
Accountability for corporate institutions can best be attributed to the Board of Directors.<br />
That being said, it would be inappropriate to claim that every – or even the majority of -<br />
Board member of Dresdner, Deutsche Bank and Allianz is responsible for the actions of a<br />
few rogue executives. The key issue is going to be: how few and how powerful are these<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 284
ogue bankers? Research has suggested that the following candidates for this infamous<br />
distinction should include former Deutschebank Board members:<br />
• Michael Freiherr Truchseß von Wetzhausen - on the Board of the Deutschebank until<br />
June 2003. With a family name several hundred years old, his ancestor was a Grand<br />
Master of the Templars. His father was an SS Lieutenant at Dachau, killed by<br />
Americans troops from Brooklyn. If anyone was a candidate to represent the old<br />
school of the German Motherland – this individual has the best credentials. If<br />
revenge is considered a motive, he should become a suspect.<br />
• Dr. Diethart Breipohl. Former CFO of Allianz, this Board member of Allianz has<br />
probably served on more boards throughout Europe than any other board member<br />
from this group. This individual is clearly a ‘power.’ A partial list of his leverage is<br />
as follows:<br />
− prior to 12/1999 member of the executive committee of the alliance AG<br />
− prior to 12/1999 member of the supervisory board of the RWE AG<br />
− Member of the supervisory board of the alliance AG (2000)<br />
− Member of the supervisory board of the Rheinelektra AG (today: Lahmeyer<br />
AG)<br />
− Member of the supervisory board of the Beiersdorf Co. AG<br />
− Member of the supervisory board of the Continental AG<br />
− Member of the supervisory board of the Grundig AG<br />
− Member of the supervisory board of the metal company AG<br />
− Member of the supervisory board of the Bavarian Hypo and association bank<br />
− Mostly it is his involvement in Multigroup that puts his name on a list of<br />
suspects.<br />
Six Board Members – or former members - of the Deutsche Bank being investigated for<br />
approving tax evasion (also known as money laundering) activities should also be<br />
included as prime suspects. These gentlemen have all apparently demonstrated a<br />
willingness to allow illegal activity.<br />
"Investigators claim the bank helped clients transfer money anonymously to Switzerland and<br />
Luxembourg with the knowledge of these board members. Frankfurt's chief prosecutor, Job Tilmann,<br />
said they suspect Deutsche Bank employees not only "systematically" aided customers in such<br />
transfers, but also that Breuer and other executives were aware of the practice. "This is not about a few<br />
individual cases," Tilmann said. "The number of instances in question is so large that we're led to<br />
believe it has been part of a more widespread practice." [Deutsche Bank’s chairman faces probe into<br />
tax evasion charges,” Vanessa Fuhrmans, Financial Express, 6/18/1999]<br />
Rolf Breuer, Deutsche Bank AG Chairman;<br />
Carl von Boehm-Bezing, Deutsche Bank Board Member;<br />
Juergen Krumnow, Deutsche Bank Board Member;<br />
Tessen von Heydebreck Deutsche Bank Board Member. A descendent of<br />
William the Conqueror;<br />
Ulrich Weiss, former Deutsche Bank Board Member; and<br />
Georg Krupp, former Deutsche BankBoard Member.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 285
These eight men would not constitute the entirety of the cartel, but it does represent a list<br />
of German financial executives with questionable activities of a money laundering nature<br />
in their background.<br />
On the North American continent, it is appropriate to designate at least two former high<br />
ranking Deutsche Bank Executives:<br />
• Mayo Shattuck: former Deutsche Bank Board Director and CEO of Deutsche Bank<br />
Alex Brown who resigned on 12 <strong>September</strong> 2001, Trustee of the Bronfman family<br />
fortune and financial advisor to Adnan Khashoggi. Mayo would move on to become<br />
CEO of an energy company and soon created a company whose primary business was<br />
trading energy derivatives and power –replacing Enron in a market vacuum after it’s<br />
collapse.<br />
• Tye W. Burt - the former Chairman of Deutsche Bank Canada and Deutsche Bank<br />
Alex Brown Securities Canada, and Managing Director and Head of Deutsche Bank’s<br />
Global Metals and Mining Group., and on the Advisory Board of Barrick Gold.<br />
Additionally, Marcus and Jacob Wallenburg need to be added to this list because of their<br />
involvement with the cartel and Donald Rumsfeld. Their family roots with this cartel<br />
were long disguised, but the release of post-war national archives in both Sweden and the<br />
US changed the world’s view.<br />
“…a darker chapter is being written now about the Wallenberg family and its extensive business<br />
empire, as Sweden confronts dismaying new evidence that the country's wartime collaboration was<br />
more extensive than is widely known, and that the Wallenberg family profited from secret dealings<br />
with the Nazis. For instance, documents from World War II contain evidence that Jacob and Marcus<br />
Wallenberg, Raoul's cousins, used their Enskilda Bank to help the Nazis dispose of assets seized from<br />
Dutch Jews who died in the Holocaust.<br />
According to extensive documentation, the Wallenberg bank also provided illicit cover so a German<br />
company could operate in the United States - with help from a future US secretary of state, John Foster<br />
Dulles. The documents indicate that the company, Bosch, paid its fee in gold, but that the Wallenbergs<br />
insisted that the gold be used to buy Swiss securities because they feared the gold had been stolen by<br />
the Nazis.” [Family long viewed as heroic profited from Nazi deals , Walter V. Robinson, Boston<br />
Globe Staff, 07/06/97 ]<br />
“There were many other Swedish corporations that enjoyed profitable relationships with the Nazis.<br />
However, the one most cherished by the Nazis was the Enskilda bank, owned by the Wallenbergs.<br />
With good relationships with a bank the Nazis could borrow funds and launder their stolen gold.<br />
Safehaven documents revealed that the US had been tracking the pro-Nazi activities of the<br />
Wallenbergs for several years. In February 1945, Morgenthau, in a letter to Secretary of State, Edward<br />
Stettinius, charged that Enskilda was making substantial loans to the Nazis without collateral and<br />
making covert investments for German capitalists in US industries. Note that Morgenthau's letter<br />
confirms Bormann's plan to allow Nazis to invest in the United States as a means of preserving their<br />
assets. He further charged that the bank was repeatedly connected with large black market operations.<br />
In the letter Morgenthau identified Jacob Wallenberg as strongly pro-Nazi and rebuts the claim that<br />
Marcus was pro-Ally. The Wallenbergs were playing both sides,…. Marcus Wallenberg came to the<br />
United States in 1940 and attempted to purchase on behalf of German interest an American held block<br />
of German securities…. Enskilda Bank has been repeatedly connected with large block market<br />
operations in foreign currencies, including the dollars reported to have been dumped by the Germans.”<br />
[Nazi Gold , Part 5:Operation Andrew & Sweden's Neutrality<br />
“According to Hewitt's report, it was Wallenberg's opinion that the only alternatives to Hitler were<br />
Himmler, backed primarily by the Waffen SS and the Gestapo, or the Wehrmacht secret opposition<br />
cells if they could survive Gestapo harassment and rally the main body of the army before Hitler<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 286
ecame aware of what was going on and destroyed them.’ [Dispatch from Wartime Sweden:<br />
Reichsführer Himmler Pitches Washington, John H. Waller]<br />
The relationship between the Wallenbergs and Himmler’s industrial underworld efforts<br />
have carried into the present times, with the primary vehicles of the Wallenberg empire<br />
being ESB (the Wallenberg financial company), Investor AB (the primary holding<br />
company for Wallenberg wealth), and ABB Ltd – (the engineering company that built<br />
and sold components for nuclear armaments to North Korea.) It is from the Boards of<br />
these companies one finds the entwined relationships of the Wallenbergs with the<br />
German cartel, with Jacob Wallenberg currently having a position on the Board of<br />
Directors of the Deutschebank. Even more interesting, one finds the name of Donald<br />
Rumsfeld on two of these boards: Investor AB and ABB. (Of note: While on the Board<br />
of ABB, Rumsfeld approved the sale of equipment vital to North Korea’s nuclear<br />
capability. His recollection of this has failed, but other board members have recollected<br />
his participation.)<br />
All of these bankers had a vested interest in seeing the various investigations in World<br />
Trade Center disappear. While there were thousands of individuals who benefited from<br />
the destruction of that evidence, this group benefited the most, along with the criminals<br />
they were protecting.<br />
12.3 Israeli “Fixers”<br />
The suspects that concocted and executed these crimes begin to emerge in the murky<br />
world of the Israeli Mossad. By historic example, the October Surprise meetings, (which<br />
were the beginning of the Iran-Contra affair, the sabotage of US rescue attempts of<br />
hostages, and the $40 million payment from George HW Bush to the Iranians to not<br />
release the hostages) were initiated by the Israelis. These Israelis (led by David Kimche)<br />
wanted to be able to continue to arm the Iranians and feed the war between Iran and Iraq.<br />
Profiteering on the side was also part of the agenda.<br />
“… in January 1986, Nimrodi, Schwimmer, and Kimche were replaced by the prime minister's<br />
counterterrorism expert, Amiram Nir. According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth, Prime<br />
Minister Peres was uncomfortable with the idea of an Israeli, especially one of his friends, making<br />
commissions on the transactions. Perhaps more pointedly, Haaretz reported that some Israeli mediators<br />
had "meddled" with the bank account in Switzerland that was used to channel money from the Iranians<br />
to the Americans and eventually to the contras (New York Times, December 1, 1987).” [Contragate<br />
and Counterterrorism: An Overview, Gregory Shank, Crime and Social Justice, Vol. 31, No. 2,2003]<br />
It is the conclusion of this report that because of the extensive involvement of Israeli<br />
intelligence agents in so many aspects of the attack on the World Trade Center, and their<br />
key connections to both the German/Swiss banks and Iran-Contra/Azerbaijan group of<br />
‘businessmen,’ that it was they who first proposed destroying the entire World Trade<br />
Center to solve the Bank Cartel’s problem. This solution – if blamed on Muslim<br />
terrorists – would fit their national agenda of enlisting American opinion against the<br />
Palestinians, the Hezbollah and the Iraqis. There are two primary “persons of interest.”<br />
David Kimche is a 30 year veteran of the Mossad and was involved not only in the very<br />
first October Surprise meeting, but through the entire Iran-Contra scandal as well. He has<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 287
maintained a relationship with Saudi, Syrians, Iranians and his North American<br />
intelligence cohorts through Richard Secord. He is connected to Adnan Khashoggi as<br />
well. When Israelis were “recruited” for conflict in Azerbaijan, he was responsible for the<br />
recruiting. Over the years, he has developed deep relationships with the pro-Israeli<br />
movement in the US though his work with Jon Kimche. His involvement has been<br />
documented in various sections of this report. He is a major “hidden” conspirator in this<br />
crime. Today, in his leadership role of the Glocal Forum, David Kimche is in a perfect<br />
position to recruit and run sayanim in and out of third world contries on a regular basis.<br />
The other primary candidate of suspicion is Meir Dagan, the current head of the Israeli<br />
Mossad. Since Dagan’s ascent in 2002 to head of the Mossad, over 200 agents, including<br />
seven section heads, have left the agency. These ‘early retirements’ are generally<br />
attributed to a concern and disagreement over his priorities and methods. Dagan’s<br />
experience puts him in a central position for suspicion in all of the charges, ranging from<br />
directly or indirectly ordering the brutal execution of American and other hostages in<br />
Iraq, to the planning and execution of the attack on the World Trade Center.<br />
Meir Dagan, son of a Russian immigrant, started his military career in the late 1970’s,<br />
running the Sayeret Rimon. Sayeret Rimon was the first of its kind - a special forces unit<br />
which became the first “Mistaravim type unit.” Mistaravim, in Hebrew, means to<br />
‘disguise as an Arab.’ During his eighteen months of running this unit, he deployed a<br />
host of innovative techniques for the Israeli Special Forces:<br />
• Hiring Palestinians as point men. He would use special persuasion to convince<br />
convicted and imprisoned Palestinian felons to act as fronts for his units;<br />
• capturing Palestinian freedom fighters, he would simply execute a number of them<br />
with a bullet to the head;<br />
• failing an ability to capture his targets, he would have them assassinated, quite often<br />
by car bombing; and then<br />
• Attributing his attacks and car bombing to other fictitious groups.<br />
After the first Invasion of Iraq by the US, Dagan was tasked with building the Mossad<br />
infrastructure inside of Iraq, using many of the same tactics he deployed while with the<br />
Sayeret Rimon. (This report contends that operation is still active, that Zarqawi was an<br />
agent of that group, and that it still foments civil unrest in Iraq through its traditional<br />
methods. The assault on an Iraqi jail by the British troops in Iraq to free two arrested<br />
terrorists is largely thought to be a rescue of Israeli agents before they were discovered.)<br />
He retired from the military after this assignment, but he designed and built the<br />
organization that has executed numerous competitors to the Mossad in Iraq. As the top<br />
commander of the Mossad at the time of the executions of Berg, Hensley and<br />
Armstrong – if the Mossad is responsible, then he is to be held accountable.<br />
In the late 1990s, Dagan became the Economic and Commerce Representative of Israel to<br />
Nigeria. Other than a simple notice of his holding this position, there is nothing in the<br />
press about his activities during this time. To understand the importance of his role as a<br />
chief architect of Israeli trade in Central Africa during this time, it is important to put this<br />
time and place in context. The last fifty years have been a time of great turmoil in Central<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 288
Africa. Nigeria is considered to be a relatively stable and neutral country. To the west of<br />
Nigeria are Liberia and Sierre Leone. To the southeast of Nigeria are the Congo and<br />
Angola. All four of these countries were (and still are) subject to continuous internal<br />
strife, allowing the most powerful warlord in each country the right to exploit vast<br />
mineral deposits such as oil, lumber or “conflict diamonds.”<br />
Conflict diamonds are diamonds used by ‘illegal rebel forces’ to finance their rebellions.<br />
They are thought to be mined by individuals or small independent mining companies,<br />
taking wealth from land previously assayed by larger diamond firms as barren. These<br />
diamonds are then ‘confiscated’ by rebel warlords. The truth of the matter is that at the<br />
end of the Cold War, and collapse of the Soviet Union, about $12 billion in rough uncut<br />
diamonds from government reserves, originating from Russian mines, disappeared.<br />
These stones are most likely now being laundered by trading them to various warlords in<br />
exchange for cash, weapons and mineral concessions, primarily crude oil and wood. The<br />
legal sales contracts for these raw materials are made at ridiculously low prices, with cash<br />
coming across the table and under the table. As a result, there is very little “paper” profit<br />
in these trades to be used to develop the economies of those countries. Conveniently, the<br />
middlemen placing the stones in the market are also the same agents connecting the<br />
warlords with Israeli arms merchants. Technically, it’s illegal to sell “conflict diamonds”<br />
in the De Beers dominated market. They do however show up there from time-to-time.<br />
However, an alternative channel has opened up within the last decade: Lev Leviev.<br />
Lev Leviev is a secondary candidate. Because of his involvement in blood diamonds,<br />
Angola, arms deals and a supply chain comparable to Barrick, it is speculated his<br />
accounts are involved in this tragedy. Leviev belongs to a group of rogue Israeli<br />
intelligence and military operatives who are attached to 9/<strong>11</strong> through a false flag<br />
operation. He was born in Soviet Uzbekistan, and emigrated to Israel with his father in<br />
1971. After a short career in the diamond industry, being one of the ‘select few 150’<br />
authorized to buy directly from De Beers, he set out to create an alternative diamond<br />
supply chain. This personal vision of Leviev’s was conceived – coincidentally - at the<br />
end of the Cold War, about the same time the Russian criminals were looking for a way<br />
to launder $12 billion in diamonds heisted from the Russian treasury, over the next ten to<br />
twenty years. Leviev is considered to be the primary means by which the Russian<br />
diamond stockpile is being liquidated. (“Israel Tycoon Lev Leviev”, Paul Westman,<br />
9/<strong>11</strong>/2003.) Leviev also has been reported (unconfirmed) to own a very significant share<br />
of a shipping company that illegally broke its lease with the World Trade Center and<br />
moved out seven days before the attack on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001.<br />
[www.freerepublic.com/focus/news] That company would be Zim-American Israel<br />
Navigation, which is largely owned by the Israel Corporation (i.e., the government of<br />
Israel. Prior to that Zim was owned by Shaul Eisenburg, and the Eisenburg Group.<br />
Eisenburg was widely reported in the mainstream media as a Mossad agent, and would<br />
later be the private sector employer for David Kimche). The second largest investor in the<br />
Israel Corp. is Leumi Bank (about 20%). Leumi Bank has about four major investments,<br />
one of which is in Lev Leviev’s major companies. Less than a year after the attack, one<br />
of their ships would be impounded for attempting to ship Israeli manufactured weapons<br />
to Iran. It has not been confirmed that Lev owns a significant portion of Zim, but he is<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 289
surely well connected to it. Lev Leviev is an extremely lucky man. He is also extremely<br />
generous in his charitable contributions, and as a result, extremely well connected across<br />
the globe.<br />
Diamond laundering would have to be a bit more difficult than laundering gold, because<br />
there are not a lot of places that can be described as sources of diamonds. The ‘deal’<br />
would probably go like this: the stones stolen from Russia are laundered into the market<br />
in exchange for contracts for legal raw materials (oil and wood). They surface on the<br />
market as blood diamonds or conflict diamonds, supposedly mined in alluvial fields and<br />
small mines throughout Africa – even though prior investigation by De Beers had found<br />
these locations barren. Leviev’s supply chain is able to re-absorb the uncut stones into<br />
any of Leviev’s twelve cutting factories, and sell them on the open market. This supply<br />
chain completely bypasses the De Beers mechanisms and controls put in place which<br />
would identify the sources of these illegal “conflict diamonds.” According to a UN<br />
Security <strong>Report</strong>, this is the Israeli “fix:”<br />
"In all three cases (the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola and Sierre Leone), the pattern is the<br />
same. Conflict diamonds are exchanged for money, weapons and military training. These diamonds<br />
are then transported to Tel Aviv by former Israeli Air Force Pilots….In Israel, these diamonds are then<br />
cut and sold at the Ramat Gan Diamond Centre…."[Liberian Orbit, 10/1/2001]<br />
Feeding this Central African blood frenzy are numerous private military companies<br />
(PMC’s- agents formerly referred to as mercenaries) and arms merchants. A majority of<br />
these arms merchants and PMC’s involved in selling weapons, aircraft and military<br />
training to both sides of third world civil wars and warlords are Russian/Israeli. On this<br />
list are:<br />
Victor Bout (Russian/Tajikistan born, started business in Afghanistan, became an Israeli<br />
citizen), who had extensive dealings selling armaments and weapons to the Taliban. He is<br />
reported to have partnered with Farhad Azima on at least one Russian air deal. He is<br />
now running weapons into Iraq on behalf of the US government because of the dangers<br />
associated with flying in. Nevertheless, there are outstanding warrants for his arrest in<br />
multiple countries.<br />
• Israeli Arcadi Gaydamak, whose key partner at one time was Alimjar Tokhtakhounov<br />
– a leading member of the Russian mafia. His dealings with Angola are detailed in<br />
Section 4.8. He has done business with Nazarbayev.<br />
• former Mossad agents Danny Yatom and Avi Dagan, who created the PMC Strategic<br />
Consulting Group;<br />
• Moshe Levy, owner of the Lordan-Levdan, a PMC working in the Congo;<br />
• Zeev Zachrin, former Brigadier general in Israel;<br />
• Dan Gertler, owner of the Israeli firm International Diamond Industries, who has been<br />
connected with diamond purchases in exchange for weapons and training in Liberia,<br />
Sierre Leone and the Congo, working with Yair Klein<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 290
• former Israeli Col. Yair Klein (imprisoned in Sierre Leone) who has been widely<br />
reported to have provided weapons and training to Sierra Leone, Liberia, the<br />
Colombian drug cartels and Al Qaeda ; and<br />
• Simon Yelnik, Israeli arms dealer and former director of security for Zaire’s dictator<br />
Mobutu Sese Seko;<br />
• Ori Zoller, Israeli arms dealer, citizen and representative of Israeli Military Industries,<br />
as well as former member of the Israeli Special Forces and intelligence.<br />
These are just some of the people who have profited from the theft of Russian gold,<br />
diamonds and weaponry. Their names, and their company names, should appear on a<br />
wide range of accounts that cross the trail of this massive theft of national treasuries. A<br />
large part of what they do is technically legal, but history demonstrates over and over that<br />
these deals are accompanied by bribes, hidden profits and tax avoidance – and usually<br />
murder.<br />
At the same time these types of trades were occurring, supposed Al Qaeda agents were<br />
accused of trading weapons for diamonds to rebel groups in Central Africa. The story is<br />
that Al Qaeda was attempting to generate cash by selling arms received from the<br />
Americans. Of the six alleged Al Qaeda members known to have been involved in these<br />
trades, one of them - Pakistani Asfia Siddiqui, and the only prominent female figure in Al<br />
Qaeda in this investigation – was considered by US intelligence to be a “fixer” for the Al<br />
Qaeda operatives in the U.S. [“Al Qaeda bought diamonds before 9/<strong>11</strong>”, AP,<br />
6/28/2004]. She was part of an operation that bought weapons from Bulgarian arms<br />
distributor: Nataco Holding PLC, and moved them into Liberia. Part of that shipment<br />
included 10 million rounds of ammunition from - guess who!<br />
Also linked to this purported Al Qaeda connection is Aziz Nassour, a Lebanese organized<br />
crime figure reported to have sold diamonds to Al Qaeda. His associate for this deal -<br />
named Samih Ossaily - is his cousin, another Lebanese underworld figure. Their deal,<br />
supposedly on behalf of Al Qaeda, was to bring arms to Liberia using a Moscow based<br />
air cargo company named Aviatrend. However, both Aziz and Ossaily have a prior track<br />
record of dealing of behalf of the Mossad, working with Ori Zoller and Simon Yelnik.<br />
On prior deals, Nassour’s buyers have been arrested shortly after their dealing with<br />
Nassour, while he remains free. These buyers were reported to be Hezbollah and AMAL<br />
representatives, traditional enemies of Israel. It was concluded that Nassour was a<br />
Mossad agent.<br />
Was Asfia Siddiqui really an Al Qaeda member? In the US, what the world knows of<br />
Asfia was that she was originally from Pakistan, an active – yet seemingly peaceful -<br />
advocate of the Muslim religion, an MIT neurophysiologist, lived in Boston, was married<br />
and had three children, and was abandoned by her husband. Her lawyer and family claim<br />
they have proof that she was in the US when she is reported to have been in Central<br />
Africa. Her parents and lawyer claim she is a victim of identity theft, as were twelve of<br />
the individuals accused of being 9-<strong>11</strong> hijackers. Unfortunately, she and her children have<br />
disappeared. The questions that need to be asked to make sense of this scenario include:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 291
Was the real Asfia’s identity stolen by the Mossad, as were the identities of many of the<br />
9-<strong>11</strong> hijackers?<br />
• Were Nassour and Ossailly tools of the Mossad, being used by the Mossad to<br />
infiltrate the Lebanese Hezbollah?<br />
• Was the entire diamond for weapons operation an attempt by the Mossad to establish<br />
credibility for their undercover agents, which would enable them to infiltrate the<br />
Lebanese underworld and their many links to Hezbollah?<br />
• Was Asfia’s identity stolen by a Mossad agent to manage an ‘Al Qaeda/Mossad’ cell<br />
in Boston, from which two planes in the WTC attack originated?<br />
• Is it coincidence that Al Qaeda members are reported to ‘appear’ in Central Africa at<br />
the same time that Meir Dagan, the master of “Mistaravim” appears in Nigeria?<br />
The preponderance of information seems to suggest that the Central African “Al Qaeda”<br />
link is a Mossad, false flag operation. As noted in a recent report:<br />
"Strategically, Al Qaida diamond trade would be impossible without Israeli intelligence<br />
complicity….For the Sharon government, the de facto financial support of Al Qaida terror around the<br />
world, as well as Hezbollah, serves Sharon’s long-term strategy of detonating a clash of civilizations<br />
between the West and all Islam." [The Politics of Three, Paul W Rasche]<br />
Three additional arguments support this view: 1) Conservative Muslims do not take<br />
orders from women, but it is common in the Israeli armed forces; 2) Israelis are strongly<br />
motivated to “sell” to both sides of a civil war, allowing them insight into Muslim<br />
rebellions in Central Africa; and 3) the US government states that it could never prove<br />
that the actual Al Qaeda profited from conflict diamonds, and quickly dropped the<br />
investigation. (Note: this would be a fifth US investigation mentioned in this report which<br />
was stopped when it bumps into Israeli ‘players.’) This operation included the same<br />
assortment of the dark side of the Mossad: Russian Mafiya figures, Israeli secret service,<br />
and East European weapons manufacturers and distributors. This time however, there are<br />
phone records that link these false Al Qaeda elements in Africa to managing supposed Al<br />
Qaeda terrorists in Boston – a source of the attack on the World Trade Center.<br />
12.4 “Fixers” in Florida<br />
No review of the participants in this tragedy can be complete without a commentary on<br />
the activities in southern Florida which played a significant role in the attack on the<br />
World Trade Center. At least fourteen of the hijackers were reported to have ‘studied’ in<br />
one or more of the following flight schools in southern Florida:<br />
School Management/Owner Nationality of<br />
Manager<br />
Huffman Flight<br />
School<br />
Florida Flight<br />
Training Center<br />
School Location Change of<br />
Ownership<br />
Rudy Dekker Netherlands Venice Airport 1999<br />
Arne Kruithof Netherlands Venice Airport 1999<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 292
Pelican Flight<br />
Training<br />
Center (Professional<br />
Aviation)<br />
Pascal Schreier and<br />
Sandra Hamouda<br />
Germany<br />
French-Tunisian<br />
Charlotte County<br />
Airport,<br />
Punta Gorda<br />
Feb 2001<br />
What these four schools (Schreier was involved in two schools, the first of which went<br />
bankrupt within two months of Atta’s arrival) had in common was:<br />
Recent change in ownership;<br />
New ownership/management by nationals from Northern Europe;<br />
High percentage of Arabic nationality students;<br />
All three owner/managers had a personal relationship with Mohammed Atta;<br />
All spoke German; and<br />
All three were acquaintances.<br />
"It appears that Schreier, Hilliard and Dekkers were also in business together. Later, we learned that<br />
the new owners of Huffman Aviation were from the largest flight school in the Netherlands, which<br />
used to train up in Lakeland, Florida. It was near Rotterdam, the city from which Arne Kruithof hailed.<br />
Pascal Schreier was also apparently involved with Wally and Rudi’s failed aviation ventures. The true<br />
name of their flop airline, which flew as Florida Air, was Sunrise Airlines. And Pascal Schreier owned<br />
a company called Florida Sunrise with an address at the Venice Airport. It was too close for<br />
coincidence." [Welcome to Terrorland: Mohammed Atta and the 9-<strong>11</strong> Cover-Up in Florida, Daniel<br />
Hopsicker, 2004]<br />
An analysis of the schools and people who owned and managed them suggests the whole<br />
process of preparing the Arabic hijackers was controlled at two levels: one which would<br />
create and feed the pipeline of terrorists into the US, and another that ensured that the<br />
Arab recruits would execute the given task of attacking the World Trade Center.<br />
12.5 Huffman Flight School<br />
The Huffman Flight School garners the most media attention, for at least four reasons.<br />
First, it was the primary training school for Mohammed Atta and four of his reported ‘cell<br />
member’ colleagues from Hamburg. Second, it is also known that recruiting for the<br />
school was actively conducted by Yeslam Bin Laden, brother of Osama Bin Laden.<br />
Third, the school was responsible for training of the bin Laden family pilots for SICO,<br />
it’s Swiss investment arm, run by two former BCCI agents. Fourth, the school has an<br />
intriguing story behind its ownership. Actual financial ownership of the school has not<br />
been thoroughly documented, but the consensus appears to be that it was under the<br />
ownership of Oryx Investments, an investment holding company formed in Dubai by<br />
Adnan Khashoggi, Sheik Kamal Adham, director of Saudi intelligence (1963-79), Prince<br />
Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz (a major investor in Barrick, codenamed “Tumbleweed” by his<br />
CIA contacts) and Wallace J. Hilliard.<br />
• Wally Hilliard is a semi-retired insurance entrepreneur/multi-millionaire, and many<br />
observers – including the FBI – view him as an innocent victim in his connections to<br />
the terrorists. Unfortunately, while Wally Hilliard continues to claim he was duped,<br />
many of his business partners have well documented links to the intelligence and<br />
criminal underworlds. He also appears to have political friends that might ensure his<br />
protection from any prosecution. Wally made his first fortune by selling an insurance<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 293
company - Employers Health -that he had co-founded in Green Bay. That company<br />
was sought for purchase by the Fireman’s Fund Insurance, who’s Chairman was<br />
Myron Du Bain. Myron, it seems, was a close associate of John McCone (former<br />
CIA Director), and they held simultaneous seats on the boards of several major<br />
financial institutions, including the United California Bank. It is fair to speculate that<br />
Myron is responsible for introducing Wally to the fast paced world of weapons<br />
merchants and drug smugglers. Wally is reported in the Florida press to have been the<br />
owner of a Lear jet that was seized in Florida with 45 pounds of heroin on it, but his<br />
involvement in that crime was cleared by the DEA and FBI. He is also reported to be<br />
an avid flyer, and to have purchased between 30 and 40 jets in Florida. Evidently,<br />
these were required for creating an airline that would service the Caribbean, and his<br />
newly emerging business interests in Cuba. Significantly, he and his investment<br />
partner in Oryx, Adnan Khashoggi, have spent several years attempting to establish<br />
businesses in Cuba, and open a casino on a small island in the Caribbean. It is worth<br />
noting that on a number of these planes, he was a business partner with Mark Shubin.<br />
Shubin’s father was a KGB Colonel who was imprisoned in Russia after being caught<br />
spying for the US. Mark’s father and family were allowed to leave Russia as part of<br />
the Gary Powers (U2 Spy Plane incident) spy-for-spy trade. Mark Shubin later went<br />
on to work for the CIA as a pilot. [Welcome to Terrorland: Mohammed Atta and the<br />
9-<strong>11</strong> Cover-Up in Florida, Daniel Hopsicker, 2004, pp 262-264]<br />
Hilliard’s involvement in airline building, with his airplanes being used by terrorists<br />
and drug smugglers, has put him in relationships with powerful people. His business<br />
associate in many of these planes - Mark Shubin– was also involved with Ken Good<br />
in several businesses.<br />
"(Ken) Good had been one of Neil Bush’s cronies in the Silverado Savings and Loan debacle.<br />
Kenneth Good was a big part of the Silverado Savings and Loan collapse. He was in business with<br />
Neil Bush. In fact, Ken Good had been so clearly a Bush family retainer that it strained credulity<br />
to think that Shubin—and Wally Hilliard—now were not similarly connected. In 1983, Neil Bush,<br />
President George H.W. Bush’s son, and our current president’s brother, became partners in an oil<br />
venture with Ken Good and William Walters, a Denver developer. Two years later, Bush joined<br />
the board of Silverado, a Denver S&L to which Walters and Good already owed more than $100<br />
million that was never to see the light of day again. Neil Bush received a $100,000 ‘gift’ from<br />
Good, as well as other major financial assistance. Yet he was pressing Silverado’s management—<br />
without mentioning these favors—to let Good off the hook on his debts. There was no conflict of<br />
interest. It was all just a coincidence." [Welcome to Terrorland: Mohammed Atta and the 9-<strong>11</strong><br />
Cover-Up in Florida, Daniel Hopsicker, 2004, pp 264-265]<br />
Wally Hilliard, besides having a reach into the Bush family through Shubin (and vice<br />
versa), was also fortunate to have his emerging airlines endorsed by Florida Governor Jeb<br />
Bush and Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, who established her national<br />
notoriety as the person who presided over the Florida vote count that resulted in the<br />
Presidency of George Bush. Mr. Hilliard: respected, connected, protected and suspected.<br />
He may be innocent, but his reported associations link him to the worlds of gambling,<br />
drugs, smuggling and financial fraud. One final note of interest: Hilliard is a significant<br />
investor in a small California defense/electronics company (Spatialight, Inc.) with Farhad<br />
Azima, another of the Iran-Contra/Azerbaijan group.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 294
Adnan Khashoggi - is first and foremost one of the world’s elite arms merchants.<br />
Referred to as a “notable member of this elite group” he was described in the Small<br />
Arms Survey of 2004 with the following words:<br />
"Some brokers with powerful political clout, like Khashoggi, are virtually ‘untouchable’ insofar as<br />
their relationships and dealings involving government officials at the highest echelons go. Any<br />
persecution of these brokers, or denunciation of their activities as illicit, could result in the<br />
incrimination of states, or the exposure of embarrassing covert activities by the governments<br />
themselves." [Small Arms Survey, Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva,<br />
Switzerland, 2004]<br />
Khashoggi has his fingerprints on so many aspects of 9/<strong>11</strong> that he may well be “the”<br />
key conspirator. Gaining notoriety by being at the heart of the Iran-Contra ‘guns for<br />
drugs scandal’ during the Reagan administration, Khashoggi has since leveraged his<br />
notoriety to the point where he is a familiar face with film and rock stars, presidents,<br />
sultans, sheiks, kings and queens, investment bankers and of course, war lords. While<br />
most famous for his connections with the Arab banking community, he is also well<br />
established with the Deutsche Bank, most recently continuing his notoriety in the<br />
U.S. press by being sued, with Deutsche Bank Securities of Canada , for fraudulent<br />
manipulation of security prices. In the case of MJK Clearing vs Deutsche Bank<br />
Securities, Adnan Khashoggi et al., filed in December 2002, the facts presented<br />
suggest that in addition to misrepresentation by the defendants, an ‘unanticipated drop<br />
in stock prices’ on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001 enhanced their ability to increase the payout<br />
of the purported fraud. (Business Week, May 2003.)<br />
As part of the ever increasingly tangled web of relationships, Khashoggi also had ties<br />
not only to the Deutsche Bank, but the Bronfman family as well (additional key<br />
investors in Barrick) by way of another Deutsche Bank executive: Mayo Shattuck.<br />
"Khashoggi, a trusted adviser to the Saudi royal family, is one of the "high net worth individuals"<br />
whose past investments have been handled by Mayo Shattuck, formerly head of Alex. Brown<br />
(mentioned earlier). ". In 1997, Mayo Shattuck was made Trustee of the Bronfman (mentioned<br />
earlier) family fortune. He resigned as CEO of Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown on 12 <strong>September</strong><br />
2001, the day following the tragic events in New York City and Washington, DC--the day that has<br />
come to be known as "9-<strong>11</strong>" [David G. Guyatt, Nexus Magazine, Volume 10, Number 6, October-<br />
November 2003]<br />
His ties to the Bronfmans went well beyond Shattuck, as Khashoggi and Bronfman<br />
would become investment partners in Barrick, through Trizec Hahn (landlord to the<br />
headquarters of Halliburton and Enron, in the same building). Khashoggi was also<br />
identified as an early participant in the October Surprise meetings and subsequent<br />
Iran-Contra deals. He would later create Oryx, which funded Hoffman Aviation –the<br />
training school where many of the hijackers validated their “education” visas.<br />
After the invasion of Iraq, Adnan Khashoggi (Genesis Aviation) became a business<br />
partner with retired General William Lyon (on the Board of Kellstrom Industries,<br />
Inc., an Israeli owned company) in a venture called Wings of Democracy, an attempt<br />
to penetrate the commercial Iraq air business. Lyon is the founder of several<br />
university diploma-mill operations in California (American Commonwealth<br />
University, aka William Lyon University). These operations are directly associated<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 295
with the entry to the U.S. by two of the 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers in the early 1990s. Lyon is a<br />
major Republican fund raiser in Orange County, associate of Karl Rove, major<br />
financial backer of the Swift Boat Veterans, and keynote speaker at the Republican<br />
national convention.<br />
Khashoggi is also of interest due to his relationship with Yaslem Bin Laden, a known<br />
business partner of his on a limited number of investments. In this case, Yaslem<br />
admits to have recruited young Arabs from across the world for Huffman Aviation, a<br />
school owned by his former and ongoing business partner, Adnan Khashoggi.<br />
Similary, Khashoggi has banks in Azerbaijan, where he easily could have coordinated<br />
the recruitment of hijackers with the assistance of his other business associates<br />
Richard Secord and David Kimche (Mossad).<br />
• Sheik Kamal Adham The last and least mentioned investor in Oryx was Sheik<br />
Kamal Adham, director of Saudi intelligence (1963-79), brother-in-law of King Faisal<br />
and the CIA's key liaison in the Arab world, a relationship established with George<br />
HW Bush when he was Director of the CIA.<br />
"In the 1980s, the Sheik Kamal Adham and Abdul Khalil (Adham's successor as Saudi<br />
intelligence director), became officers of BCCI, and were implicated in a hostile bid for FIB, and<br />
became embroiled in the BCCI bank scandal. In a related venture, Majority shares in Capcom, a<br />
BCCI subsidiary, were held by Adham and Khalil. Capcom activities included money laundering<br />
and drug trafficking. Adham was eventually prosecuted for fraud in the BCCI case and paid a<br />
$100 million fine." [Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 9/<strong>11</strong> Terrorists, Alex<br />
Constantine]<br />
Also of interest is the report that two of the 19 reported hijackers were actually from<br />
Saudi Intelligence:<br />
"Two of the hijackers—part of the team that flew a plane into the Pentagon—had very visible<br />
connections to Saudi intelligence and the CIA. Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar were well<br />
known to the CIA and FBI. The claim that an FBI informant in San Diego who knew the men and<br />
assisted them but never mentioned any of this to his FBI handlers has another, darker explanation.<br />
A former CIA officer who worked in Saudi Arabia described what he says happened: "We had<br />
been unable to penetrate Al Qaeda. The Saudi's claimed that they had done it successfully. Both<br />
al-Hazimi and al-Mihdhar were Saudi agents. We thought they had been screened. It turned out<br />
the man responsible for recruiting them had been loyal to Osama bin Laden. The truth is bin Laden<br />
himself was a Saudi agent at one time. He successfully penetrated Saudi intelligence and created<br />
his own operation inside. The CIA relied on the Saudis vetting their own agents. It was a huge<br />
mistake. The reason the FBI was not given any information about either man is because they were<br />
Saudi assets operating with CIA knowledge in the United States." [The Real Intelligence Cover-<br />
Up: America's Unholy Alliance, Joe Trento's Column, 8/6/2003 ]<br />
It is possible that like the Israelis, the Saudis’ with interest in global gold movements<br />
decided to place two of their own team with the hijackers to ensure success of the<br />
mission.<br />
• Prince Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz was an initial investor in Barrick, and had remained<br />
primarily a investor through the 1980s and 1990s. However, two weeks before<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, he is appointed as the new head of Saudi Intelligence.<br />
“August 31, 2001: Turki al-Faisal, head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service for 24 years, is<br />
replaced. No explanation is given. He is replaced by Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz, his nephew and the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 296
king's brother, who has "no background in intelligence whatsoever." [AFP, 8/31/01, Seattle Times,<br />
10/29/01, Wall Street Journal, 10/22/01]<br />
Needless to say, if one had to find the type of criminals necessary to provide the Arabic<br />
hijackers which would create the appearance of an Arabic terrorist operation, these latter<br />
three gentlemen were and are the right men to bring to the task. Finding willing<br />
terrorists, however, was probably the easier part of this operation. After all, there are<br />
reported to be thousands of these ‘terrorists’ just looking for the opportunity to strike at<br />
America. The more difficult part of this operation would be to manage and steer these<br />
terrorists, which would be the task of Mohammed Atta and his friends from northern<br />
Europe. Here is where the proclivity for being two-sided was required of a perennial<br />
middle-man. Adnan Khashoggi was that middle-man with a reputation of dealing with<br />
anyone and everyone, and being able to misrepresent the total picture. Khashoggi’s<br />
relationship with Richard Perle is well documented in the press. Adnan would have no<br />
difficulty on one hand, encouraging his friend and partner Yeslam Bin Laden, to find<br />
recruits for this mission. On the other hand, he was probably required to work into the<br />
management team of this attack three probable sayanim: Pascal Schreier, Rudy<br />
Dekkers and Arne Kruithof, and one deep cover Mossad agent - Mohammed Atta– who<br />
would have been provided to him by the Mossad. This report, with the evidence<br />
provided, will conclude that Mohammed Atta was actually a deep Mossad agent rather<br />
than an Al Qaeda operative.<br />
The circumstances and backgrounds of these flight school operators suggest that while<br />
there are no documented reports to that these men were agents of the Mossad, their<br />
similar profiles make them candidates for consideration:<br />
They show up in Florida, all at about the same time and vicinity, and at the same time<br />
that Nick Berg was settling in to Norman, Oklahoma;<br />
They all know each other;<br />
They shared the same customer base- primarily Tunisian, Moroccan and Syrian<br />
flight students;<br />
They were young, single, and athletic, and two have names well documented in<br />
Europe as Jewish (Arne Kruithof appears to be an exception to the attributes of<br />
being single and of Jewish heritage.);<br />
Dekkers, while thought to be Dutch, confided to an acquaintance in Florida that<br />
he was German, not Dutch. It seems odd that a man who runs an air flight<br />
training school knew little about flying – especially with the name “Dekkers.”<br />
Dekkers is a relatively famous name in European flight circles, with a number of<br />
individuals with that last name having gained respect as an “expert authority” in<br />
the field. It may be fair to surmise that Dekkers was a “created” identity, and he<br />
was given that name to lend credibility to his cover.<br />
One needs to ask: If someone was setting up a pipeline to train Arabic hijackers,<br />
why not set-up Arabic individuals as owner-managers? Why risk the potential<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 297
exposure? Khashoggi had set up numerous organizations and operations with<br />
Arabic management across the globe. Why was this different?<br />
A final note on the Huffman School confirms the significance of this entity as a clue in<br />
the mystery of 9/<strong>11</strong>, even though not referenced by the official government report.<br />
“Hopsicker has confirmed that within hours of the attacks, Florida Governor Jeb Bush had a military C<br />
130 Hercules transport fly in to the Venice airport where a hastily loaded rental truck, filled with the<br />
records of Huffman Aviation …was driven into the plane. The C130 immediately took off for parts<br />
unknown.” [Michael C Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, P. 350]<br />
12. 6 Mohammed Atta<br />
With Mohammed Atta, there are a number of circumstantial pieces of information which<br />
might lead one to believe Atta is not the person he is generally made out to be. More<br />
important, one might be persuaded by the evidence that he could be a deep cover Mossad<br />
agent.<br />
He was on very friendly, personal terms with the operating management of these<br />
training schools – including drugs, loose women and nightlife. The behaviors<br />
attributed to him during his stay in Florida are quite inconsistent with the<br />
description of him by his friends in Germany.<br />
"I think freedom and the possibility to tell your opinion openly was of great interest for him or<br />
it was of big interest for him but all these good of the western world like you told me cars,<br />
girls, motor cycles, or things like that, he was not interested in…. he didn't show any<br />
fanaticism against America…." [Liz Jackson interviews Volker Hauth, 10/18/2001]<br />
“Sure enough. We found an Associated Press story on Sept 26, 2001 headlined “SunCruz<br />
Casinos turns over documents in terrorist probe.”<br />
“SunCruz Casinos has turned over photographs and other documents to FBI investigators<br />
after employees said they recognized some of the men suspected in the terrorist attacks as<br />
customers.… Names on the passenger list from a Sept. 5 cruise matched those of some of the<br />
hijackers... Two or three men linked to the Sept. <strong>11</strong> hijackings may have been customers on a<br />
ship that sailed from Madeira Beach on Florida's gulf coast.” Less than a week before the<br />
9.<strong>11</strong> attack, Atta and several other hijackers were aboard one of Abramoff’s casino boats. “<br />
Atta seems to have a history of two personalities.<br />
Atta does not fit the profile of a suicide bomber: he is college educated, from a well-todo<br />
family in Egypt, apparently quite wealthy (according to witnesses in Florida); and not<br />
a religious fanatic, – as demonstrated by his behaviors in Florida. His friends knew him<br />
as a political activist, but not a religious fanatic.<br />
In Europe, his modus operandi that is documented by the German Intelligence<br />
was a strong anti-Semitic stance. With this factor, one might assume he was sent<br />
to Germany to work his way into neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic groups – until his<br />
assignment changed;<br />
It seems strange to mention there is no evidence that Atta actually died in the<br />
attack on the World Trade Center, but the world does not know for sure that Atta<br />
died in that attack. There is, of course his bag, left at an airport, and someone<br />
using a ticket with his name. There is however, no radio voice recording or<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 298
security video recording from the plane or Boston, or visual confirmation of the<br />
man boarding or on board. His father said the security video picture of<br />
“Mohammed Atta” at the Portland airport was not his son. This issue of identity<br />
theft has plagued identification of many of the supposed 9/<strong>11</strong> suspects. What the<br />
world may have been presented is conveniently planted information which<br />
suggests Mohammed Atta died.<br />
The bag that has been produced as key evidence is troubling. Atta is the only<br />
individual on the flight whose bag did not make the plane. He supposedly<br />
checked two bags in Portland, so it seems fortuitously and coincidentally odd that<br />
one bag was left behind. Two simultaneous coincidences seriously challenge<br />
credibility.<br />
There is the curious aspect of his last will and testament found in the bag<br />
conveniently left behind. Foreign press describe the document as "a cross<br />
between a chilling spiritual exhortation aimed at the hijackers and an operational<br />
mission checklist." Much has been written about the will, but not in the following<br />
context. Atta supposedly wrote it in 1996 and carried it with him for five years.<br />
The world is expected to believe that after all this concern and care for his last<br />
will and testament, he deliberately took the will with him, knowing it would be<br />
destroyed, but it accidently was saved for posterity by poor baggage handling that<br />
affected only this bag on this flight. This is a significant contradiction in behavior<br />
that is best explained by a theory that the bag, and will, was planted as evidence,<br />
by undiscovered co-conspirators. There might be an official counter to this theory<br />
that the bag was a plant, by recognizing that “second copy was found in a car<br />
parked outside Boston airport, allegedly rented by Atta.” This however, raises<br />
equally disturbing questions which remain unanswered.<br />
1. If Atta flew into Boston on the morning of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> as alleged, why did<br />
he leave a rental car in the parking lot at the Boston airport – overnight -<br />
where it could be discovered in advance, thus jeopardizing the entire<br />
operation. Should both pieces of “evidence” (bag and car) be viewed as<br />
plants, left by people who wanted the world to believe this was an Arabic,<br />
terrorist attack?<br />
2. The FBI- on the basis of security videos - is convinced that on <strong>September</strong> 4, a<br />
white Mitsubishi sedan with Atta was seen “casing” the airport parking lot<br />
several times within the space of a few days. On <strong>September</strong> 10, that car is left<br />
at the airport by Atta, who then drives north to Portland, Maine, with another<br />
hijacker, and flies back to the airport where he left the car. These would seem<br />
to be the activities of an individual planning a get-away, more than anything<br />
else. How does one explain the presence of this vehicle: plant or getaway car?<br />
• The discovered bag also presents a troubling question. The bag supposedly did<br />
not get loaded on the plane because it did not arrive within the necessary ten<br />
minutes of departure, while the other one did. This means the flight from<br />
Portland on which Atta is reported to have arrived, might have landed<br />
exceptionally close to departure time of the connecting flight. Is the world<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 299
expected to believe that after years of planning this attack, the attack leader was<br />
willing to risk the mission by planning on a connecting flight being ‘on-time’?<br />
(Especially when he was within driving distance of the airport.) This however,<br />
was probably not the case, which actually makes the bag story more suspicious.<br />
American Airlines Flight <strong>11</strong> left at 7:59 AM, but the FBI maintain Atta was on<br />
the phone, in the Boston airport at 6:45 – meaning the bag had well over an hour<br />
and fifteen minutes to be transferred. This would throw weight to the argument<br />
the bag was a plant, put into play by someone who understood the bag handling<br />
process and had access to those portions of the airport. Remember that employees<br />
of the Israeli owned firm of Huntleigh USA, managed by former Israeli security<br />
forces, had access throughout the airport.<br />
Atta’s father, in an interview shortly after the attack, made what seemed to be<br />
astounding claims at the time.<br />
"…(he) claimed that his son had called him two days after the attack, and described it as "a<br />
normal conversation." …. Asked what country Muhammad had called from, he said, "The<br />
name of the country isn't written on the phone." Asked where Muhammad was now, he said,<br />
"Ask Mossad." [Muhammad Atta Sr is in the center of the media storm, Ashraf Khalil]<br />
This claim needs to be added to the separate contention by his father that the<br />
person captured in the video boarding the Portland flight was not his son.<br />
At this point in time, these claims seem to be more consistent with the facts than those<br />
presented by the FBI. One of the people who knew Atta best – his father - claims he was<br />
working for the Mossad.<br />
Consistent with these claims that Atta might have been a Mossad agent, there is<br />
now second theory about Atta developing in the official German circles- that Atta<br />
worked with Western Intelligence agencies:<br />
"Suspicion is growing in Hamburg, Germany that Atta maintained ties with Western<br />
intelligence agencies while in Technical School, says one former German intelligence official,<br />
pointing to Atta's participation in an elite program sponsored by the German equivalent of the<br />
Agency for International Development, an arm of the government which often harbors<br />
intelligence operatives in the U.S." [Mohamed Atta Connected To Saudi Royal Family?<br />
Daniel Hopsicker , 3/<strong>11</strong>/2002]<br />
"The only information we have connecting the three Hamburg suspects is the FBI's assertion<br />
that there is a connection," said a high-ranking (German) police source involved in the<br />
investigation…. "We have come across absolutely no evidence of our own."[Los Angeles<br />
Times, Carol J. Williams, 10/23/2001 Staff Writer]<br />
One might argue that because Atta was the most seasoned “pilot” of the group, his<br />
presence on one of the flights leaving Boston was absolutely imperative. This is<br />
probably not true. A recent disclosure based on a slow-motion analysis of the<br />
plane flying into the South Tower (Building 2) shows that in the last seconds, the<br />
plane actually levels out and veers sharply rather than continue its descent, as if it<br />
was targeting floor 78. While the analysis concludes it was targeting floor 78,<br />
please note that an airliner of that magnitude is several stories in itself, and<br />
actually struck several floors simultaneously. According to the residence charts,<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 300
there were no occupants on floors 77 and 76. These were utility floors that<br />
contained a 5,000 gallon water tank for the fire sprinkler system. This link<br />
between a plane targeting the a floor with the sprinkler system, and the earlier<br />
revelation (pages 48-49) that Sakher 'Rocky' Hammad, with forged identity<br />
documents, had been working on the Tower’s sprinkler system along with four<br />
other individuals, 6 days before the attack, provide support for another theory as<br />
to how a group of such inexperienced pilots could target these buildings with such<br />
precision. Access by sprinkler repairmen might have enabled the conspirators to<br />
plant a small transmitter which would bring the plane right to the tower. The<br />
system of choice for this would have been the CTS (Command Transmitter<br />
System) and FTS (Flight Termination System) produced by the System Planning<br />
Corporation. This system remotely controls test missiles and drones intended for<br />
destruction, and is adaptable to planes, boats and motor vehicles. Some of its key<br />
selling points for the testing of missiles, include:<br />
− “Primary operators can be located up to several hundreds of miles away from the site of<br />
…termination<br />
− “Each remote (termination) site can be individually controlled, or all (10) remote sites can be<br />
operated from a centralized location”<br />
− “The FTS is capable of 20 different zones, allowing simultaneous missions from one CTS"<br />
[System Planning Corporation]<br />
As part of another string of remarkable coincidences, a key Vice Presidential<br />
Executive of System Planning Corporation is Rabbi Dov Zakheim.<br />
"Who is Rabbi Dov S. Zakheim? Well, first of all he is a Jewish Rabbi, but not just any Jewish<br />
Rabbi. For the past three years he has worked as Chief Financial Officer of the United States Dept.<br />
of Defense at the Pentagon. Prior to that from 1985 until March 1987, Rabbi . Zakheim was<br />
Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Planning and Resources. In that capacity, he played an<br />
active role in the Department's system acquisition and strategic planning processes and he guided<br />
Department of Defense policy in a number of international economic for a. …Rabbi Zakheim also<br />
co-authored the Project for the New American Century's infamous tract, "Rebuilding America's<br />
Defenses," in which the Bush Administration's entire design for renewed global conquest was laid<br />
down a full year prior to 9-<strong>11</strong>. Rabbi Zakheim was also Corporate Vice President of System<br />
Planning Corporation. "[Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer, 6/13/ 2004]<br />
If the Mossad needed a remote control device for this mission, it had a ready made<br />
advocate in Rabbi Zacheim, who co-authored the need for a new “Pearl Harbor” to<br />
justify invasions of Iraq, Syria and Iran. If the Mossad needed someone to install the<br />
system in the Towers, it had Sergei Dimtry Davidenko – that mathematician that<br />
hired the Israelis to fix the water system in the Tower 6 days before the attack.<br />
Starting in July, 1992, Atta moved from his parent’s home in Cairo to continue his<br />
education and start a new life with a German – reportedly Christian - family in<br />
Hamburg. After a year, he reportedly began to develop strong ant-Semitic feelings,<br />
and was asked to leave this home. This short period of his life is a mystery. The<br />
world has been advised of Atta’s parent’s name, the name of his neighbor in Cairo, as<br />
well as the names of his landlords, friends and colleagues in Germany and Florida.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 301
All of these people have been interviewed and identified for the public. However, the<br />
identity of this family that started him on his new life in Hamburg has been kept<br />
secret; a favor not bestowed on any of his other acquaintances. These people spent<br />
more time with him than any one else, but their identities are shielded. What<br />
inconvenient fact about this family remains to be discovered?<br />
• A fact curiously missing from the 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> report, but identified by his<br />
girlfriend in Florida is that he spoke Hebrew.<br />
• Also curiously missing from the 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> <strong>Report</strong>, but reported by Hopsicker,<br />
Atta was enrolled as a student at the International Officer’s School of Maxwell<br />
Airforce Base, and witnesses recall him having been introduced around at an officers'<br />
club party.<br />
“On Maxwell Air Force Base (General Charles G. Boyd, BENS): On <strong>September</strong> 17th, 2001 the<br />
Air Force confirmed, that Mohammed Atta trained at a US Air Base. "...Air Force spokesman Col.<br />
Ken McClellan said a man named Mohamed Atta -- which the FBI has identified as one of the five<br />
hijackers of American Airlines Flight <strong>11</strong> -- had once attended the International Officer's School at<br />
Maxwell/Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. NOTE: McClellan later denied his own<br />
report and claimed, it was another Atta, who worked there."<br />
http://www.pressconnects.com/archive/attack/stories/091701N1.html<br />
• There seems to be a case being made that the Hamburg cell of which Atta was a<br />
member was not created by Al Qaeda, but was created by someone who then<br />
“volunteered” the cells services to Al Qaeda. This suggests a “planted” operation<br />
rather than a ‘home-grown’ operation.<br />
“As reported by Finn in his June 12 2002 Washington Post article: "After the Sept. <strong>11</strong> attacks,<br />
Zammar was questioned and released by German police who kept him under surveillance.<br />
German officials said they did not have enough evidence to charge Zammar, and he left<br />
Germany freely on Oct. 27, ostensibly to obtain a divorce from a Moroccan woman . . .<br />
German officials said they have confirmed that Zammar reached Morocco, but he<br />
subsequently disappeared."Thus, Zammar was no longer a German problem. As reported by<br />
Finn, "Zammar's partner and six children", who were still in Hamburg, "filed an official<br />
missing persons report with German authorities." Finn also offers another reason why<br />
Zammar was -- and should be regarded as -- one of the more key operatives in the <strong>September</strong><br />
<strong>11</strong> plot: " At some point, probably in 1998 or early 1999, the Hamburg group decided to<br />
`offer themselves' to al Qaeda, [a] U.S. counterterrorism official said, describing Zammar as a<br />
central player in that process." [Securing The Plot -- The Lead-Up To 9/<strong>11</strong>]<br />
• Atta’s interests seemed to coincide with those of traditional espionage. An email list<br />
of his was reported to the FBI by one of the recipients. Upon investigation, it was<br />
reported by a recipient of one of his emails, that Atta had a number of email addresses<br />
of defense contractors:<br />
"…the email addresses of several of the names on Atta's 'terrorist e-list' appear to have been, or<br />
still are, employees of US defense contractors. One name on Atta's email list, for example,<br />
apparently worked at a Canadian company called Virtual Prototypes." [The Online Journal,<br />
Mohamed Atta Kept Terrorist E-List , Daniel Hopsicker, 4/24/2002]<br />
Virtual Prototypes Inc., would later change its name to eNGENUITY Technologies.<br />
It seems as though the type of work done at eNGENUITY was of more interest to the<br />
Israeli government, than it might be of use to a group such as Al Qaeda, which has no<br />
known space systems.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 302
"Montreal, Canada - August 4, 2004 - eNGENUITY Technologies [TSX: EGY], a leading<br />
provider of solutions for the development of high-end visualization and simulation applications,<br />
today announced that the System Missile and Space Group of the Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI)<br />
MLM division has purchased multiple licenses of eNGENUITY’s STAGE Scenario toolkit to<br />
build training scenarios for IAI’s Air Operations C4I Suite (AOCS), an advanced air space<br />
monitoring system.”<br />
• It is worth noting that Atta is on record as having a business partner in Florida named<br />
Hassan Erroudani,<br />
“Government records in Florida reveal that Mohamed Atta was the President of a company in<br />
Orlando with a business partner whose web of dummy shell companies appear characteristic of the<br />
type used in terrorist financing and illicit money laundering, … One day after the 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
<strong>Commission</strong> <strong>Report</strong> says the terrorist ringleader finished making withdrawals in Virginia Beach,<br />
VA. totaling $18,000 from a SunTrust Bank account, on April 5th, 2001 Hassan Erroudani, an<br />
Orlando man with close ties to the Moroccan Embassy in Washington D.C., filed incorporation<br />
papers with the state of Florida listing the President of KARAM LLC as “Mohamed Atta.” [Daniel<br />
Hopsicker , Mohamed Atta, Florida Entrepreneur: Terrorist Ringleader was President of Orlando,<br />
Mad Cow Morning News, June 12 2007]<br />
Where this becomes interesting is that Erroudani is publicly linked with support from<br />
the Allied Media Group, whose customers on their website include:<br />
USAF<br />
US Army<br />
FBI<br />
US Treasury<br />
Department of Justice<br />
Department of State<br />
CACI<br />
Young & Rubicam<br />
BURSON MARSTELLER<br />
Allied Media works to recruit ‘translators’ and other third world contractors for the<br />
above agencies, which is a role played by Osama Bin Ladin going back to 1979.<br />
• A closing observation would be that Atta’s long term associate during his stay in<br />
Florida claimed to be a CIA agent while operating ‘flight training schools.’ There is a<br />
lot of evidence to support that claim.<br />
“… the FBI launched a manhunt scouring the South Pacific for Wolfgang Bohringer, a German<br />
pilot fingered as one of Atta's closest associates in “Welcome to TERRORLAND,” after he resurfaced<br />
in the middle of the South Pacific recently to launch a highly-dubious enterprise on a tiny<br />
island over 1000 miles from a city of any size, where he planned to open a flight school which<br />
would only teach pilots how to fly DC3’s. Bohringer was hanging out with Mohamed Atta all over<br />
Southwest Florida in the year before 9/<strong>11</strong> while serving as the personal pilot of fugitive financier,<br />
Victor Kozeny, the so-called “Pirate of Prague.” Kozeny ran afoul of U.S. officials after<br />
attempting to bribe his way to ownership of the state oil company in Azerbaijan. His endeavor was<br />
assisted by shady American financing, including money from AIG Insurance, whose subsidiary<br />
Coral Reinsurance, according to the Arkansas Project, was implicated during the 1980's in cocaine<br />
trafficking through Mena, Arkansas.” [Russian Mobster Tied to 9/<strong>11</strong> In Assassination Plot in<br />
Ukraine, Daniel Hopsicker, MadCow Morning News, November 29, 2006]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 303
“<strong>Report</strong>er Barbara Dreaver of New Zealand network TVNZ broke the story of the terror alert<br />
yesterday: "The isolated Kiribati islands are grappling with being catapulted into the world of<br />
terrorism. The man causing the alarm is Wolfgang Bohringer, who sailed into Kiribati's Fanning<br />
Island a year ago.”"It's absolutely gut wrenching frightening," says Fanning Island resident Chuck<br />
Corbett. Corbett had gotten in touch with us two months ago after reading several stories about<br />
Bohringer in the MadCowMorningNews. He is an easy-going but inquisitive American. What they<br />
learned, a Kiribati government authority told New Zealand reporter Dreaver, was that “there was<br />
maybe a little more to the proposal (to redo a landing strip and provide air service to the island)<br />
than there appeared to be.” “Then there was the cash. Lots of it,” according to New Zealand TV. "I<br />
would offer to go shopping for him," says Corbett. "He would always give me a $100 bill. Once it<br />
was seven $100 bills and they were always crisp and neat." For Corbett, who spent months with<br />
Bohringer, things did not add up. "One particular night he laid out seven passports on the table,”<br />
Corbett said. “I recall one from Ireland, from the Bahamas, one from Grenada, India, the US,<br />
Germany and one or two others. The Kiribati government is calling for the US, New Zealand and<br />
Australia to help them with security, reported New Zealand’s Barbara Dreaver. New Zealand’s<br />
ONE News spoke to an FBI Agent who confirmed that the FBI is continuing its search for the<br />
mysterious Wolfgang Bohringer, and his cash-laden yacht. They want answers to why Bohringer<br />
would set up a flight school using DC3’s on an island bordering US waters, and “are very keen to<br />
find out where he is.'” [FBI Terror Alert in South Pacific for Wolfgang Bohringer/Terror Alert<br />
suspect fingered by Mohamed Atta's American girlfriend, Daniel Hopsicker,<br />
MadCowMorningNews ,, November 16, 2006, http://www.madcowprod.com/<strong>11</strong>162006.html]<br />
When Bohringer was located, he was immediately released upon arrest.<br />
“The JTTF swiftly descended on Wolfgang Bohringer, outside Fanning Island, in the South<br />
Pacific, about 1000 miles south of Hawaii, on the 17th of November. Sources reported that the<br />
arresting officers said, “The first thing out of his mouth made him go from a ‘5’ to an ‘8’” (on a<br />
scale of importance). Allegedly, Bohringer had claimed, “You can’t arrest me, I’m working for the<br />
CIA.” It looks like Bohringer was right. The day after the arrest, The Megaphone’s JTTF sources<br />
did an about-face. With a mix of threats and attempts at persuasion, they claimed that an error had<br />
been made: Bohringer had not been arrested. It was someone else. They couldn’t say who. That<br />
identity was secret.” [Mohamed Atta's Best Friend Caught in South Pacific: “You can’t arrest me,<br />
I’m working for the CIA,” Sander Hicks, New York Megaphone, December 19, 2006,<br />
http://www.9<strong>11</strong>truth.org/article.php?story=20061219213258655]<br />
The Atta-Bohringer connection provides an interesting linkage back to George HW<br />
Bush’s secret war against the Soviet Union in 1991. Bohringer’s extensive<br />
relationship to Viktor Kozeny is actually one of several connections to US<br />
Intelligence, the first being his claim to his arresting officers that he was a CIA<br />
operative, apparently a substantiated claim in that Bohringer was released within<br />
hours after his arrest. The other linkages are through his nominal employer, Viktor<br />
Kozeny, who appears as a front man for Western Intelligence in the early 1990s no<br />
more or less than Leo Wanta.<br />
• Kozeny received funding for his Azerbaijan bribery and money laundering efforts<br />
to purchase SOCAR, the Azerbaijan State Oil Company, from AIG. AIG has<br />
been, since WWII, a major CIA intelligence operation. History records that the<br />
OSS learned that in the 1940’s that the Nazis owned 45% of the world’s insurance<br />
companies, and used the background files from these companies to plan their<br />
espionage and bombing raids. With this lesson, when William ‘Wild Bill’<br />
Dovovan created the CIA, part of his legacy was an extensive partnership with<br />
AIG. [see "The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men," Mark Fritz. The Los Angeles<br />
Times 2000 <strong>September</strong> 22, 200]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 304
• Kozeny’s contact at AIG was Frank Gardiner Wisner [see Capturing the Pirate of<br />
Prague, Rob Urban and David Glovin, International Eurasian Institute for<br />
Economic and Political Research, Bloomberg Markets, February 23, 2006] Frank<br />
G Wisner was head of Office of Strategic Services operations in southeastern<br />
Europe at the end of World War II, and the head of the Directorate of Plans of the<br />
Central Intelligence Agency during the 1950s.]<br />
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wisner]<br />
• One of Kozeny’s key promoters was Senator George Mitchell. Mitchell had<br />
served in the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps from 1954 until 1956, and<br />
later served on the Iran-Contra Senate Hearings and while challenging some of<br />
Oliver North’s assumptions about patriotism, inevitably supported the conclusions<br />
of the committee.<br />
• When Kozeny and his investment ‘partners’ were brought to US court for money<br />
laundering and bribery, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin dismissed most of the charges.<br />
[see Federal Prosecutors Hope To Revive Oil Bribery Case, Free Internet Press,<br />
2007-08-23]. Scheindlin is the same judge that dismissed charges against Osama<br />
Awadallah, who was an associate of the two San Diego based <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong><br />
terrorists. Her ruling prevented the FBI from collecting information on the two<br />
terrorists.<br />
• Kozeny was initially funded by loans from Alpha Bank, which is represented in<br />
the US by ex-Bush administrators Lanny Griffith and Ed Rogers of Barbour,<br />
Griffith and Rogers [Seller of Privatization Securities Is Indicted in the U.S.,<br />
Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times, October 3, 2003]. Kozeny used his scam<br />
proceeds to repay Alpha Bank. It is of related note that Alpha Bank funds a<br />
fellowship for Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft, which also funded Mohammed Atta’s<br />
entrance to Germany. [For The Record#573, Alfa Males—One Helluva<br />
Conspiracy Theory, Part II, Recorded on 10/15/2006.]<br />
12.7 Atta’s Connections to Pakistani, Syrian and German Intelligence<br />
There is a significant amount of undisputed public data that clearly indicates Mohammed<br />
Atta was receiving support from the Syrian and Pakistani Intelligence organizations.<br />
Virtually every analysis of the attack on the WTC ignores this data because it does not fit<br />
theories that Al Qaeda or the Bush Oil interests were responsible. This information<br />
might suggest that Syria or Pakistan, rather than Khashoggi and the rogue<br />
Russian/Israelis controlled the operation. However, when probed for an explanation for<br />
this cooperation between the Pakistani and Syrian Intelligence groups, the only<br />
explanation that seems to be plausible points back to Khashoggi and George Bush Sr..<br />
This is a generally ignored data point that suggests the attack on the WTC was not an Al<br />
Qaeda operation. Shortly after the attack, the Indian press released a report that the<br />
Director of the ISI (Pakistani) Intelligence (director-general Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad)<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 305
had been responsible for wiring $100,000 to an account belonging Mohammed Atta in<br />
the weeks before <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>.<br />
“According to accounts in both The Times of India and India Today, former ISI chief Lt. Gen.<br />
Mahmud Ahmad instructed Sheikh to send the $100,000 to Atta. "A direct link between the ISI and<br />
the WTC attack could have enormous repercussions," the Times article said. "The U.S. cannot but<br />
suspect whether there were other senior Pakistani Army commanders who were in the know of things."<br />
“It added: "Evidence of a larger conspiracy could shake U.S. confidence in Pakistan's ability to<br />
participate in the anti-terrorism coalition." The Times says Ahmad lost his job only after India shared<br />
with the FBI evidence showing a link between the general and Sheikh's wiring of funds to Atta.” [Did<br />
ally Pakistan play role in 9-<strong>11</strong>? Indian intelligence finds more linksto terrorist attacks in U.S., Delhi By<br />
Paul Sperry© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com]<br />
It appears as though the Indians were using this opportunity to eliminate an enemy of the<br />
state of India (Mahmoud Ahmad), and were quite successful in doing so. By publicly<br />
releasing the information to the press (an action usually avoided as a professional<br />
courtesy) the U.S. was forced to act. The charges were never refuted. Mahmoud Ahmad<br />
was forced to retire, with no subsequent investigation, no lock-up and interrogation at<br />
Guantanamo by US Intelligence, no confiscation of bank accounts. In fact, he was<br />
treated quite similarly as the Israeli agents detained in the U.S. When trying to<br />
understand the absence of any punitive action by U.S. authorities for his role in funding<br />
the attack, one must consider his connections. Mahmud Ahmad was in the U.S., having<br />
breakfast with Senators Graham and Kyl, and Congressman Porter Goss (who would later<br />
be rewarded with being made Director of the CIA), when the attack on the World Trade<br />
Center happened.<br />
“…the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Chairman of the Senate<br />
Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, and the Chairman of the<br />
House Intelligence Committee doing on the morning of 9/<strong>11</strong> before that first plane hit? Senator Bob<br />
Graham, Senator Jon Kyl and Congressman Porter Goss were having breakfast with Mahmud Ahmad,<br />
then Pakistani Chief of Intelligence - the same man who ordered $100,000 to be wired into hijacker<br />
Mohammed Atta’s bank account [Slick Trick, By Ellen W. Horowitz, Israel Hasbara Committee]<br />
“General Ahmad had already been reported as having breakfast in the nation's capital with Senator Bob<br />
Graham and Representative Porter Goss on the morning of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> (both Graham and Goss<br />
would go on to co-chair the joint Senate-House 9/<strong>11</strong> inquiry). In fact, as early as <strong>September</strong> 9—two<br />
days before 9/<strong>11</strong>, for those who didn't notice—Karachi News had weighed in with the following<br />
observation:<br />
"ISI Chief Lt-Gen [Mahmud Ahmad's] week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation<br />
about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council . . . What<br />
added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time Ziauddin Butt, [General Ahmad's]<br />
predecessor, was here during Nawaz Sharif's government, the domestic politics turned topsy-turvy<br />
within days. That this is not the first visit by [General Ahmad] in the last three months shows the<br />
urgency of the ongoing parleys." [Truth, lies, and the legend of 9/<strong>11</strong> Part 1 of 10 parts: There's<br />
something about Omar, By Chaim Kupferberg, OnLine Journal]<br />
“… the afternoon of 9-<strong>11</strong>, as well as on <strong>September</strong> 12 and 13, Ahmad met with Richard Armitage”<br />
“... Most controversially, Goss was having a breakfast meeting in Washington with the then ISI chief<br />
Mahmoud Ahmad at the exact instant the 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers flew their planes into the World Trade Center.<br />
Ahmad was a Taliban supporter who was subsequently removed from his job when he continued to bat<br />
for the outlaw regime post 9/<strong>11</strong>.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 306
Some reports have suggested that Ahmad and the ISI had links to -- or foreknowledge about -- 9/<strong>11</strong>. A<br />
money transfer from Karachi to the hijackers in Florida has never been fully explored or explained.<br />
Ahmad was never called to account for this or his support to the Taliban post 9/<strong>11</strong> even as General<br />
Musharraf moved him into the shadows. Goss himself visited Pakistan just a few days before 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
for talks with the then pariah military establishment of Gen. Musharraf. By Goss's own account, the<br />
visit was more Kashmir-centered.” [Times of India -AUGUST 10, 2004, GlobalFree Press<br />
http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=485]<br />
Why this individual, with clear and undeniable financial links to the attack on the WTC<br />
and a long record of U.S. support is not mentioned in the official <strong>Commission</strong> <strong>Report</strong> on<br />
9/<strong>11</strong>, remains a significant mystery. It is however, of important note that Porter Goss –<br />
former CIA agent, and now Director of the CIA, and identified by a former-Iran-Contra<br />
conspirator as someone with responsibility for the cover-up of the Iran-Contra drug deals<br />
and subsequent media damage, was working with a documented source of hijacker<br />
funding before and after the attack on the World Trade Center. Additionally, Mahmoud<br />
Ahmad met with Richard Armitage, another Iran-Contra conspirator, whose field work<br />
with the Mujahedin spanned fifteen years or so. Once again, the link between the Iran-<br />
Contra criminals and 9-<strong>11</strong> terrorists is demonstrated.<br />
The explanation offered for the meetings between Mahmoud and Porter, Goss and<br />
Armitage (as offered by Porter and Goss) is that Mahmoud Ahmad was in Washington to<br />
‘turn over’ Osama Bin Ladin, who was expected to die shortly. Bin Ladin, dying, was a<br />
convenient ‘patsy.’ The FBI could have arrested him in July of 2001, but evidently had<br />
contravening orders. The CIA knew Osama was at a military hospital in Pakistan, just as<br />
they had known earlier he was in a hospital in Dubai. Rather than negotiate with Ahmad,<br />
they could have arrested Bin Ladin. He was on the FBI most wanted list.<br />
“According to the Reuters report: "At the time, bin Laden had a multi-million dollar price on his head<br />
for his suspected role in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa". So why did the<br />
hospital staff, who knew that Osama was at the American Hospital in Dubai, not claim the reward?<br />
The Figaro report points to complicity between the CIA and Osama rather than "negotiation". (see<br />
excerpt below). Consistent with several other reports, it also points to the antagonism between the FBI<br />
and the CIA.<br />
If the CIA had wanted to arrest Osama bin Laden prior to <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, they could have done it then<br />
in Dubai (July 2001). But they would not have had a the war on terrorism pretext for waging a major<br />
military operation in the Middle East and Central Asia.” [Where was Osama bin Laden on 9/<strong>11</strong>? Bush<br />
Administration knew the Whereabouts of Osama, by Michel Chossudovsky ]<br />
“Barry Petersen, CBS Correspondent (voice-over): Everyone remembers what happened on <strong>September</strong><br />
<strong>11</strong>. Here`s the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for<br />
Osama bin Laden.<br />
CBS News has been told that the night before the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was<br />
in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later<br />
pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.<br />
Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in<br />
Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her<br />
identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret<br />
team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person….<br />
"The military had him surrounded," says this hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked,<br />
"and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time," he says, "I have seen many<br />
pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers<br />
talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 307
after." Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments, back and stomach<br />
problems. Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban says the military was often there<br />
to help before 9/<strong>11</strong>.<br />
Inpatient dialysis treatment tends to be longer than 24 hours in most American hospitals, which<br />
suggests that Osama would have been discharged from the Hospital on or "after" <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>.<br />
If the CBS report is accurate and Osama had indeed been admitted to the Pakistani military hospital on<br />
<strong>September</strong> 10, courtesy of America's ally, he was in all likelihood still in hospital in Rawalpindi on the<br />
<strong>11</strong>th of <strong>September</strong>, when the attacks occurred. In all probability, his whereabouts were known to US<br />
officials on the morning of <strong>September</strong> 12, when Secretary of State Colin Powell initiated negotiations<br />
with Pakistan, with a view to arresting and extraditing bin Laden.<br />
These negotiations, led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, head of Pakistan's military intelligence, on<br />
behalf of the government of President Pervez Musharraf, took place on the 12th and 13th of <strong>September</strong><br />
in Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's office.” [M. Chossudovsky, Cover-up or Complicity<br />
of the Bush Administration? --The Role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI) in the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong><br />
Attacks, 2 November 2001, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO<strong>11</strong>1A.html]<br />
“….he did not agree on the issue of surrendering Osama bin Laden. The maximum that he agreed to<br />
was to form a court, an Islamic religious scholar's court, to try him.” [A General Turn Around, By<br />
Zahid Hussain, Newsline, 2/2003]<br />
“Looking more closely at Saeed Sheikh (who studied for some time at the Fabian Socialists' London<br />
School of Economics), on February 5, 2002 Sheikh voluntarily surrendered to Pakistani authorities<br />
who wanted to take him into custody for the kidnapping and killing of Daniel Pearl. Sheikh reportedly<br />
was taken to Rawalpindi (where Gen. Ahmad is now living in seclusion), where Ahmad ally Gen.<br />
Mohammed Aziz Khan has lived. Khan has been with the ISI and is now head of Pakistan leader Gen.<br />
Musharraf's Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Khan also hosted parties where Sheikh was frequently in<br />
attendance before October 8, 2000. The reason Sheikh was taken to Rawalpindi reportedly was so that<br />
Gen. Khan could convince Sheikh not to reveal the ISI-bin Laden connection. Gen. Khan had helped<br />
Osamabin Laden get dialysis treatment and helped the Taliban and Al Qaeda relocate in safe<br />
sanctuaries in Pakistan after the U.S. attacked the Taliban.<br />
Have you ever wondered why Sheikh was not charged for his alleged involvement in the attacks of 9-<br />
<strong>11</strong>, and why the U.S. did not request his extradition for the murder of Daniel Pearl who was<br />
investigating the ISI-Al Qaeda connection? Could it be because Sheikh would have exposed the link<br />
between Gen. Musharraf, the ISI and bin Laden? On November 27, 2004 Gen. Musharraf's military<br />
spokesman, Major-General Shaukat Sultan, announced that they were pulling Pakistani forces who had<br />
been searching for Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda away from checkpoints and some<br />
other positions along the border with Afghanistan, and they would no longer be searching specifically<br />
for them there.” [Copyright © 2004 Cutting Edge Ministries]<br />
As for Atta’s connections to Syrian Intelligence, it is reported that Atta worked for a<br />
company in Germany that was a Syrian intelligence front:<br />
“…CIA-Syria cooperation was far more extensive, former and serving U.S. intelligence officials said.<br />
According to these sources, Syria and the CIA have a joint exploitation center based in Aleppo, plus<br />
Syria turned over to the agency all its intelligence networks in Germany as well as all of Syria's cover<br />
companies there. As a result, the agency learned that Sept. <strong>11</strong>, 2001, hijacker Mohammed Atta once<br />
worked in Germany for a Syrian cover company, these sources said. …a former senior CIA official<br />
said.[ U.S. Syria raid killed 80, Richard Sale, UPI Intelligence Correspondent, July 21, 2003]<br />
“Tatex Trading has employed, at various times in the past 15 years, two Syrian-born German<br />
citizens… who are high on the list of Sept. <strong>11</strong> suspects….Investigators also say Atta himself worked<br />
for a time at Tatex…The origins of Tatex Trading itself have become of interest to investigators…<br />
Tatex investor is Mohamad Majed Said, a former head of Syria's General Intelligence Directorate…” [<br />
The Chicago Tribune November 3, 2002]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 308
There are relatively reliable sources suggesting Atta received funding from the Syrian<br />
intelligence organization. (It is of worth to note that Syria supported the US with troops<br />
during the first Gulf War.)<br />
Finally, this report should mention that Atta may have also been funded, while in Europe,<br />
by a joint U.S.-German intelligence operation. In coming to Germany, Atta was funded<br />
with a scholarship and employed as a tutor by the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft.<br />
“The organization that apparently sponsored Atta’s travels was the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft (its<br />
American component is the Carl Duisberg Society)—named for one of the principal figures in the<br />
founding of I.G. Farben. “News that Mohamed Atta had been on the payroll of an elite international<br />
program known as the ‘Congress-Bundestag Program first surfaced a month after the 9/<strong>11</strong> attack in a<br />
brief seven-line report by German newspaper Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung on 10/18/2001 under the<br />
headline ‘Atta was Tutor for Scholarship Holders… Atta had therefore been on the payroll of a joint<br />
U.S.-German government program was concealed by the newspaper through the simple expedient of<br />
neglecting to mention that the ‘Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft’ was merely a private entity set up to<br />
administer an official U.S. and German government initiative,” (For the Record, #408)<br />
Subsequent Internet reports linked the Carl Duisberg Society to administration by the<br />
U.S. Information Agency, but this had not been verified by any government<br />
documentation. Most of the funding for the U.S. program seems to come from Robert<br />
Bosh Stiftung GmbH, on whose board sits Dr. jur. Ulrich Cartellieri (Deutschebank) and<br />
Dr. jur. Peter Adolff (Allianz). Alpha Bank, represented in the US by ex-Bush<br />
administrators Lanny Griffith and Ed Rogers, also funds a fellowship for Carl Duisberg<br />
Gesellschaft. [For The Record#573, Alfa Males—One Helluva Conspiracy Theory, Part<br />
II, Recorded on 10/15/2006.] The more interesting aspect of Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft<br />
is that it’s Managing Director is Bernd Schleich, the same individual who is Managing<br />
Director of InWEnt (Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung. If one investigates<br />
the activites and research of InWEnt, it appears to be a commercial intelligence operation<br />
that does studies on such matters as money-laundering, weapons trades, drug smuggling,<br />
anthrax control in such places as South America, Central Asia and Africa. Atta’s<br />
involvement with Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft may be co-incidental but in light of the<br />
revelations about Syrian and Pakistani intelligence connections, Atta’s links to German<br />
and US intelligence are probably real, and not coincidental.<br />
There seems to be little dispute that Mohammed Atta was connected to both the Pakistani<br />
Intelligence and the Syrian Intelligence, and received funding from both. In both cases,<br />
when this was reported to US investigators, the investigation on those sources of funding<br />
came to a grinding halt under the argument of ‘national security.’ The government<br />
leaders of Pakistan and Syria, in the pre- and post-9/<strong>11</strong> world, have demonstrated<br />
themselves to be supportive of US counter-terrorist efforts, and their intelligence<br />
organizations have provided some, but probably less than total disclosure. However, the<br />
rank-and-file of the intelligence and military organizations in both Syria and Pakistan<br />
demonstrate loyalties to Muslim groups that have established themselves as de facto<br />
governments in Lebanon and Afghanistan, and are far more religiously conservative than<br />
are their top government leaders. Is it possible that both Syria and Pakistan intelligence<br />
organizations were taking direction from a higher authority, working with rogue Mossad<br />
direction, while their rank-and-file were committed to more nationalistic, Islamic values?<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 309
That type of scenario is not so far removed from a similar situation in the US intelligence<br />
organizations, where a conflict exists between “professional” agents and the more<br />
“political” agents – the latter whose careers ride with political fortunes rather than tenure,<br />
merit and service.<br />
There does not appear to be any direct evidence, but pertinent history does demonstrate<br />
the ability of the Mossad, Syrian and Pakistani intelligence to work together for financial<br />
gain. The case is point is the October Surprise incident, and the subsequent Iran-Contra<br />
scandal. In those operations, Gaith Pharon, former Head of Saudi Intelligence, worked<br />
with a core team of Iranians and Israelis to support George Bush Sr.’s deception of the<br />
American public. (See Section 9: Iran-Contra and the October Surprise) Twenty years<br />
later, reports indicate that Gaith Pharon plays a dominant role in the direction of Afghan<br />
Mujahedeen through his operations in Pakistan, and has considerable influence in Syria<br />
and Saudi Arabia.<br />
“BCCI also served as a conduit for the Iran-Contra operation, largely through Gaith Pharon, former<br />
head of Saudi Intelligence, who operated out of Islamabad, Pakistan. The Saudis played a major role in<br />
funding the Mujahadeen and [via the request of Secord and McFarlane] the Contras”. [Iran-Contra<br />
Connections to the Oklahoma Bombing , gathered by Alex Constantine© 2000 Alex Constantine. All<br />
rights reserved]<br />
“Gaith Pharon … A main figure in the BCCI scandal even though he played a minor role compared to<br />
Khaled bin Mahfouz and others. Lives between Saudi Arabia and Syria. Escapes Interpol by taking his<br />
yacht to international waters. Syrian intelligence warns him ahead of time. His father was a close<br />
advisor to King Faisal and builder of Saudi politics.”<br />
[http://www.geocities.com/saudhouse_p/industry.htm]<br />
“According to the <strong>September</strong> 17, 2001 issue of the German weekly Die Zeit, Mohamed Atta, visited<br />
Syria several times between 1994 and 1999. Syrian territory was used to prepare the different attacks<br />
held against the Pentagon and New York City. Yes! when Mr Chareh Spoke about complicity he was<br />
thinking on Syria complicity in the <strong>11</strong>th <strong>September</strong> attacks.” [Syria – Al Qaida Connection, Dr. J. R.<br />
Albani, http://www.free-lebanon.com/LFPNews/2003/May/connection/connection.html]<br />
Gaith has always been close to Adnan Khashoggi. If Khashoggi was – at a high level –<br />
directing this effort, he could easily have engaged Syrian and Pakistani Intelligence<br />
through Gaith Pharon. With their long history of working with the Bush family, engaging<br />
the Bush family to cover-up for them would not have been a problem. Engaging the<br />
Israelis for the operation would have been just as easy.<br />
Virtually all the biographical information about Atta presented by the German and US<br />
government, which documents his career as a terrorist may be perfectly accurate. Under<br />
consideration of the circumstances, however, one is forced to question whether Atta was<br />
actually an Al Qaeda agent or Israeli agent acting in a manner so as to gain the trust of<br />
the Arabic groups he was infiltrating. If Atta was a Mossad agent, as his father claimed,<br />
many of the anomalies are explained:<br />
• the comments by his father;<br />
• the possible disappearance out a back door at the Boston airport;<br />
• the interest in space technology later acquired by Israel;<br />
• his ability to speak Hebrew;<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 310
• his involvement with German intelligence and US military organizations;<br />
• the cover-up of his German host family; and<br />
• his dual personality attested to by his friends on two continents.<br />
The primary investigator of all these activities and relationships has been Daniel<br />
Hopsicker, who has been reporting new details on these businesses and their owners for<br />
almost three years. Most of his focus has been on demonstrating the extensive<br />
involvement of the FBI and CIA in regional drug activities, and the total inadequacy of<br />
the 9-<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> report on the activities of various “persons of interest” in southern<br />
Florida. After all this time, Hopsicker still wonders how to explain all the German,<br />
Russian and ex-KGB names and faces he uncovered while investigating this story, most<br />
of which remains unreported by him for want of a reason. If one looks for an alternative<br />
explanation that suggests heavy Mossad involvement in the Florida flight schools, the<br />
link to the ex-KGB and Russian element falls is easily understood.<br />
12.8 The Iran-Contra Re-Union<br />
Throughout this report, there have been names of individuals previously associated with<br />
treason, bank fraud, money-laundering, gun-running which all seem to find a common<br />
background in the events referred to as Iran-Contra, the October Surprise, the BCCI bank<br />
scandal, the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal. This group appears to have moved it’s<br />
base of operations to Azerbaijan, a small country whose dictator is widely recognized to<br />
be a criminal in his own right. This group includes:<br />
• Adnan Khashoggi, whose Azerbaijan banks "played a big part in the formation of<br />
terrorist camps and in the opening of laboratories for developing chemical and<br />
bacteriological weapons in Nagornyy Karabakh;’ major mover of illegal gold; major<br />
investor and founder in Barrick; major investor in Oryx – financial backer of<br />
Huffman Aviation; business partner with General William Lyon – founder of diploma<br />
mills which provided access for two hijackers.<br />
• Richard Secord, a former U.S. Air Force major general who been helping to recruit<br />
and train the Azerbaijani army as well as regional secret services in conjunction with<br />
David Kimche;<br />
• Richard Armitage, managed illegal gold funds for George HW Bush during Iran-<br />
Contra period; acting as a consultant to Halliburton and Unocal at the time, and<br />
President of the US-Azerbaijani Chamber of Commerce; demonstrated history of<br />
visits to Pakistan and the rest of Central Asia;<br />
• Farhad Azima, arms merchant with Iranian background, member of US-Azerbaijani<br />
Chamber of Commerce, assisted Richard Secord in recruiting and training mujahadin<br />
mercenaries, owned the Azerbaijani Airlines, and has a twenty year old relationship<br />
with the Bush family enterprise; significant co-investor with Wally Hilliard of<br />
Huffman Aviation in Spatialight. Inc.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 3<strong>11</strong>
• Khalid bin Mahfouz, owner, with the bin Laden family and members of the Saudi<br />
royal family of the Saudi companies Delta Oil and Nimir Oil. Both are partners with<br />
Unocal in Azerbaijan; partner in multiple Bush family enterprises; participant in<br />
Barrick and Trizec Hahn;<br />
• Brent Scowcroft, Director in the Azerbaijan International Operating Company;<br />
participant in congressional hearings that let Iran-Contra participants off-the-hook.<br />
• Dick Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, lobbyist for the Azerbaijan International<br />
Operating Company on US-Azerbaijani Chamber of Commerce; participant in<br />
Congressional hearings that let Iran-Contra participants off-the-hook.<br />
• David Kimche, Israeli Mossad agent who brought Israeli agents into Azerbaijan at the<br />
request of Secord, and worked Secord and the regional secret service organizations;<br />
participant in the October Surprise and Iran-Contra scandal;<br />
This report hypothesizes that this group conspired to provision and execute a plan to<br />
destroy the World Trade Center on behalf of the German/Swiss banking cartel. The idea<br />
for the attack most likely came from the Israelis, as did the original thinking for the<br />
October Surprise and Iran-Contra. The proposal probably came from Kimche, through<br />
Bronfman to the cartel, as the quid pro quo required to successfully negotiate a solution<br />
to the U.S. gold related investigations plaguing the Swiss banks in 1998. In exchange for<br />
a lucrative payout on the gold issue, Bronfman promised the banks protection against<br />
further investigations by various US agencies housed in the World Trade Center, which<br />
were drilling deep into accounts that might expose larger bank vulnerabilities.<br />
Bronfman’s connections with the Clinton administration brought “Buzzy’ Krongard into<br />
the CIA in 1998 to coordinate the cover. However, this would not be enough. Khashoggi<br />
was a person all parties could work with, and had demonstrated his ability to arrange<br />
financing for covert activities which could be well hidden. Khashoggi, with Bronfman,<br />
was able to arrange for additional U.S. support by engaging his former Iran-Contra<br />
colleagues. Once Khashoggi had coordinated the involvement of the Iran-Contra-<br />
Azerbaijan team, Secord probably arranged recruitment and Armitage probably managed<br />
diplomatic cover (e.g., Pakistani involvement, German involvement, Syrian<br />
involvement…) Kimche probably managed ‘insurance,’ making sure the back-up plans<br />
for destruction of the buildings held up and the designated hijackers did what they were<br />
recruited to do. As a quid pro quo for the use of Osama Bin Ladin as a fall guy, Bush Sr.<br />
probably had to allow the Saudis to attempt to kill his son. When they failed, he was<br />
required to allow Osama Bin Ladin to live.<br />
At the end of the day, this attack was going to happen whether the Bush enterprise<br />
wanted it or not, whether Bush was president or not. Bush knew that, and capitalized on<br />
it rather than prevent it. Bush knew that if the actual planners were identified by US<br />
investigators, they would take him down with them. Thus, he put in motion an elaborate<br />
cover-up which involved a “controlled” patsy – Osama Bin Laden.<br />
Once the primary plan was in motion, other plans were set in motion to capitalize on the<br />
event. The Bush administration had its plans- essentially to move its Central Asian oil<br />
agenda further, faster. The Israelis had their plans, which was to use the event to further<br />
its own security interest in the Middle East. Khashoggi made a few million on his MJK<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 312
scandal. The Bush enterprise was able to legalize investments and aid in Azerbaijan, thus<br />
enabling them to continue their standard pump and dump practice of oil stocks. Equally<br />
important, it allowed the Bush enterprise to push billions of US taxpayer dollars from Aid<br />
for International Development, the Overseas Private Investment Corp. and the Export<br />
Import Bank through the Riggs Bank, where they were taking their percentage whether<br />
the investments paid off or not.<br />
It seems as though the Bush family had been setting up its own international banking<br />
pipeline to compete with the Deutschebank. This would prove to be the Riggs Bank,<br />
with its small set of global offices providing banking services to nearly every foreign<br />
embassy in the US.<br />
“CAMBRIDGE, MA – January 1, 2005 – On December 31st, the Wall Street Journal's Glenn Simpson<br />
reported that Riggs Bank, currently under federal investigation for failure to comply with anti-money<br />
laundering laws, has longstanding ties to the CIA. Riggs is being investigated for failing to report<br />
suspicious transactions involving the accounts of Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar, former Chilean<br />
dictator Augusto Pinochet, and Teodoro Obiang, the current President of Equatorial Guinea. The<br />
relationship was significant enough that top Riggs executives received U.S. government security<br />
clearances; Simpson also noted that both Pinochet and Prince Bandar have worked with the CIA in the<br />
past. However, the nature of the bank's relationship with the CIA is largely unknown.” [The Public<br />
Accountability Initiative]<br />
“On July 21st, following the revelation that Riggs had also aided dictator Augusto Pinochet in hiding<br />
money looted from the Chilean national treasury, Bush stated, "It's important for the facts to be en la<br />
mesa, as we say, on the table...Riggs Bank is being fully investigated, and they'll be investigated in a<br />
very open way."<br />
Press reports have also noted that George W. Bush's uncle, Jonathan Bush, heads a subsidiary of the<br />
bank. However, other significant ties between the Bush administration, federal banking regulators, and<br />
Riggs officials have never been publicly disclosed Riggs & Co. Vice Chairman and Director J. Carter<br />
Beese is a close associate of George W. Bush and the Bush family. He was a Bush Pioneer in 2000 and<br />
a leading donor to the Bush Florida recount effort. He holds a presidential appointment and has<br />
served as a confidential advisor to George W. Bush on the nomination of high-level regulators at the<br />
Securities and Exchange <strong>Commission</strong>. In 1992, following more than a decade of service to the Bush<br />
family's political endeavors, George H. W. Bush appointed Beese to the post of SEC <strong>Commission</strong>er.<br />
Beese also helped to found the Carlyle Group, a conglomerate with historical ties to the bin Laden<br />
family and George H. W. Bush. While serving as an executive at Alex. Brown, Beese was mentored<br />
closely by A. B. Krongard, appointed by George W. Bush as Executive Director of the CIA, the third<br />
highest-ranking position at the Agency.” [New Evidence in the Riggs Case: The Bush<br />
Administration's Links to the "Bank of Presidents"A Public Accountability Initiative <strong>Report</strong>,<br />
10/15/2004]<br />
“Beginning in administration of George H.W. Bush, Riggs forged an unorthodox financial relationship<br />
with the Department of Treasury. As a major contractor, Riggs provides data processing, account<br />
management and software development services for the Federal government. Through a partnership<br />
with the Treasury Department's Financial Management Service, Riggs manages the Federal<br />
government's financial flow and reconciles its accounts. The bank has collected an estimated $3<br />
million per year in fees from the Federal government for the service and beat out many larger banks to<br />
win the account.” [New Evidence in the Riggs Case: The Bush Administration's Links to the "Bank of<br />
Presidents" A Public Accountability Initiative <strong>Report</strong>, 10/15/2004]<br />
“Under the Bush Administration, Riggs has also been a major recipient of Federal assistance through<br />
the Eximbank. Over the past four years, Riggs has received Federal-backed financing for export<br />
transactions to nations such as Bulgaria, Venezuela, Nigeria and Brazil.39.”[New Evidence in the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 313
Riggs Case: The Bush Administration's Links to the "Bank of Presidents" A Public Accountability<br />
Initiative <strong>Report</strong>, 10/15/2004]<br />
The Bush family enterprises have never been about the oil – it’s always been about the<br />
money, and as their old family friend Richard Secord has noted:<br />
“Nobody makes money unless there’s a boogeyman.”<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 314
13<br />
Cover-up: Credibility of the American Press and Government<br />
For most Americans, the findings of this report raise the question of credibility. Whom<br />
should one believe: the government? the American press? the sources in this report?<br />
When it comes to trusting the government sources regarding the matters covered in this<br />
report, the only published opinion survey on the substance of this report found that nearly<br />
half of the American public does not find the official government story credible! From<br />
Zogby International, the official polling agency for Reuters in the US, one learns<br />
“… half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that some of<br />
our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, and that<br />
they consciously failed to act," according to the poll conducted by Zogby International. The poll of<br />
New York residents was conducted from Tuesday August 24 through Thursday August 26, 2004.<br />
Overall results have a margin of sampling error of +/-3.5. The poll is the first of its kind conducted in<br />
America that surveys attitudes regarding US government complicity in the 9/<strong>11</strong> tragedy. Despite the<br />
acute legal and political implications of this accusation, nearly 30% of registered Republicans and over<br />
38% of those who described themselves as "very conservative" supported the claim.” [ Half of New<br />
Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-<strong>11</strong> Attacks and “Consciously<br />
Failed” To Act; 66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York’s<br />
Attorney General, New Zogby International Poll Reveals<br />
http://www.zogby.com ,Released: August 30, 2004]<br />
Similarly, Time Magazine reported in December 2005 that 48% of Americans believe<br />
President Bush deliberately misled the American public to build his case for invading<br />
Iraq. [The New Rules of Engagement, Michael Ware, Time, December 12, 2005, p.38]<br />
With this type of public support (or lack there-of), challenging the credibility of the US<br />
Government official story should not be interpreted as an unpatriotic act, although it will<br />
be.<br />
The credibility of this report, challenging the credibility of the official US government<br />
position, does generate some concern. It might be very easy to dismiss the findings in<br />
this report by arguing that the independent, free press has not reported on these findings,<br />
therefore they must not be true. Actually, the free press has done its job, but it appears<br />
that when it comes to matters of organized crime, the free press has been reduced to a<br />
handful of courageous individuals who have suffered much to bring Americans the truth.<br />
Without them, this report could not exist. This report attempts to recognize those<br />
reporters by using their words directly, rather than burying the recognition in a footnote.<br />
To assist the reader is assessing the issue of credibility and reliability of an independent,<br />
free press, this section presents three arguments and supportive evidence which<br />
demonstrates that the level of control of ‘the media’ by an ‘organized crime’ syndicate is<br />
both insidious and pervasive:<br />
1. Through control of various positions in the government and through close<br />
relations with owners of the press, the Bush political and family network is able to<br />
bury news it believes will expose their crimes;<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 315
2. Any individual who challenges the Bush syndicate as a witness, reporter, or<br />
whistleblower, or resists pressure to publish the news as preferred by the Bush<br />
network, is definitely risking their career, their life and the lives of their family.<br />
This is particularly true in the case of news reporters. As a result, the Bush<br />
political and family network suppresses the news through “terrorism” ranging<br />
from intimidation to murder, to mass murder. At least nine investigative reporters<br />
have been murdered while following up on the Bush syndicate.<br />
3. In addition to suppressing the news through fear and influence, there is a large<br />
propaganda effort which is used to feed the media “controlled’ news.<br />
Using these tactics, the Bush network provided cover-up for those responsible for 9/<strong>11</strong>.<br />
The phrase “Bush network” or “Bush syndicate” can only be understood in historic<br />
context. In July of 1980, CIA agents began discussions with the Iranians and Israelis<br />
which would ultimately evolve into what was known as the Iran-Contra Scandal. The<br />
Senior member of that group was Vice Presidential candidate George Bush, former<br />
Director of the CIA and the primary decision-maker of that clandestine group. That same<br />
group of individuals would grow to include many others involved in the cover-up of<br />
those meetings, and subsequent arms-for-drugs deals. Because of Bush’s senior position<br />
with that group, which ultimately allowed him to become President, this group is referred<br />
to by this report as a “Bush syndicate.” Bush would later use his Presidential powers to<br />
protect this group from prosecution, and pardon those he could not protect. The “Bush<br />
network” is a reference to a group of business and political associates who trade money<br />
and favors, leaving the ‘wet work’ to the “syndicate.” Many of those same individuals in<br />
both groups would work for his son, George Bush Jr., ten years later. The Bush “family”<br />
includes the syndicate, the network, and the actual family members. It includes a wide<br />
range of international money-movers and fraudsters who have been involved in moneylaundering,<br />
bank fraud, tax evasion and other assorted criminal activities. The Bush<br />
family justifies these crimes in the name of “patriotism.” Just as Al Capone viewed<br />
himself as a “public benefactor” and sought to keep America “whole, safe, and<br />
unspoiled” from the foreign menace – the Bush family has somehow distorted its<br />
criminal history as patriotic endeavor. This will not surprise those who follow the<br />
workings of Bush’s henchmen: “His Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, likes to quote<br />
Al Capone: "You will get more with a kind word and a gun than you will with a kind<br />
word alone."<br />
13.1 Control of the Media<br />
There are some stories that are so “big,” one wonders how the American press can ignore<br />
them while the rest of world is receiving reports. One such story, for illustrative purposes<br />
is the following:<br />
“Today, on Democracy Now!, the U.S. broadcast premiere of a documentary film called “Afghan<br />
Massacre: The Convoy of Death.” The film provides eyewitness testimony that U.S. troops were<br />
complicit in the massacre of thousands of Taliban prisoners during the Afghan War. It tells the story of<br />
thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military’s Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 316
According to eyewitnesses, some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers<br />
and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison. Eyewitnesses say when the prisoners began<br />
shouting for air, U.S.-allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the truck, killing many of them. The rest<br />
suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of<br />
their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds. Witnesses<br />
say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were<br />
dead. They also say US Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the<br />
desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Now, up to three thousand bodies lie buried in a<br />
mass grave. The film has sent shockwaves around the world. It has been broadcast on national<br />
television in Britain, Germany, Italy and Australia. It has been screened by the European parliament. It<br />
has outraged human rights groups and international human rights lawyers. They are calling for<br />
investigation into whether U.S. Special Forces are guilty of war crimes. But most Americans have<br />
never heard of the film. That’s because not one corporate media outlet in the U.S. will touch it. It has<br />
never before been broadcast in this country.” [Convoy of Death. Why have US television stations<br />
refused to broadcast this documentary? News You Won’t Find on CNN,<br />
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3267.htm]<br />
Never the less, these stories are never quite picked up by the US major media. Nor are the<br />
stories about murdered reporters and investigators who chase the Iran-Contra criminals.<br />
Nor are the hundreds of odd coincidences that overwhelm the 9-<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> <strong>Report</strong>,<br />
but are totally ignored in the mainstream media. One begins to ask, where is the<br />
coverage of these stories? This chapter attempts to explain why that coverage is lacking.<br />
The story begins when Bush Sr. ran the CIA as its Director, and later as unofficial acting<br />
President under Reagan, and then as President himself. These tours allowed George<br />
Bush Sr. almost 25 years of opportunity to put in place a major propaganda machine<br />
which has allowed him and his son to control, create, falsify, distort and bury the news.<br />
This gave him 25 years to perfect a strategy initiated by Averill Harriman who owned<br />
Time Magazine, or CIA Director William Casey being the controlling stockholder in<br />
ABC. Hence, this report needs to document a two front strategy by the Bush family to<br />
manage the news: cover-up and propaganda.<br />
13.2 Systemic Fear<br />
After investigating these crimes across thousands of news stories and websites, it<br />
becomes clear that there is a pattern of intimidation which silences those who would<br />
attempt to expose the Bush family, and there are dozens of examples of this. There are<br />
six levels of escalation in this systematic use of fear:<br />
• Level 1: When individuals report information that conflicts with the “officially<br />
sanctioned” story or even portrays a negative image of the Bush administration,<br />
its policies or personalities, these individuals are instructed and coached to drop<br />
the matter or ignore it. Sometimes, Level One may result in warnings be issued<br />
before a possible witness contemplates coming forward, as in the air traffic<br />
controllers on 9/<strong>11</strong>.<br />
“One air traffic controller from another Northeast sector revealed to a 9-<strong>11</strong> widow that FBI<br />
threats were made of both a personal and career nature: "You are ordered never to speak about<br />
what you saw on your screen during the attacks; and if you do, things will not go well for you<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 317
and your family." [Missile & remote control systems added to small jets before 9-<strong>11</strong>; same<br />
parts found at Pentagon, Tom Flocco, TomFlocco.com, 5/26/2005]<br />
• Level 2: If they are conscientious, and press the matter with their supervisors<br />
they are warned there will be repercussions for officially pursuing the matter,<br />
such as career limitations. (Examples: Dan Rather, James Norman, formerly<br />
Senior Editor of Forbes Magazine and now with Media Bypass Magazine, New<br />
York Firefighters, LA Police Department, district immigration adjudications<br />
officer Mary Schneider, Karon von Gerhke-Thompson, witness in the Riggs-<br />
Valmet money laundering scandal). The following example is of interest because<br />
it not only shows how the government distorts information, but then turns on<br />
those who expose the distortion!<br />
“The scandal: The Department of Justice completely botched the nation's first post-9/<strong>11</strong><br />
terrorism trial, as seen when the convictions of three Detroit men allegedly linked to al-Qaida<br />
were overturned in <strong>September</strong> 2004. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft had claimed<br />
their June 2003 sentencing sent "a clear message" that the government would "detect, disrupt<br />
and dismantle the activities of terrorist cells."<br />
The problem: The DOJ's lead prosecutor in the case, Richard Convertino, withheld key<br />
information from the defense and distorted supposed pieces of evidence - like a Las Vegas<br />
vacation video purported to be a surveillance tape. But that's not the half of it. Convertino<br />
says he was unfairly scapegoated because he testified before the Senate, against DOJ wishes,<br />
about terrorist financing. Justice's reconsideration of the case began soon thereafter.<br />
Convertino has since sued the DOJ, which has also placed him under investigation.” [The<br />
Scandal Sheet , Peter Dizikes, Salon.com, January 18, 2005 ]<br />
• Level 3: If they continue to press the matter they are ‘set-up’ for criminal or<br />
procedural infractions, investigated, and then lose their security clearances, are<br />
suspended, or fired. They are then often slandered by others in the media.<br />
(Examples: Mike German, Sibel Edmonds, General Kevin Byrnes, LT Colonel<br />
Anthony Shaffer, LA Police Department for the Contra investigations, Richard<br />
Brenneke, Gary Webb.)<br />
• Level 4: If the matter is serious enough to cause broad exposure, the Attorney<br />
General’s office issues a restraining court order on them to cease and desist in the<br />
interest of National Security (no further explanation by the government is<br />
required) and threatened with jail if they talk about it further. (examples: Sibel<br />
Edmonds, John O’Neill, U.S. Navy Captain Gunther Russbacher, 3 un-named FBI<br />
agents currently under gag order in their suit against the US Government)<br />
• Level 5: The person persists and is sent to jail to be silenced. (examples: Fritz<br />
Walser, U.S. Navy Captain Gunther Russbacher, Richard Brenneke, Michael<br />
Riconosciuto, Derk Vreeland, Kenneth Ford Jr., Lee Wanta)<br />
• Level 6: This level can be jumped to at any point in time, and is reserved for<br />
serious and extremely damaging threats. At this level, people experience beatings,<br />
suicide (window jumps and a bullet in the head are popular), airplane crashes and<br />
other forms of fatal occurrences such as going out in a boat by yourself and<br />
drowning. There are at least nineteen clearly documented examples of such terror.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 318
An internet search on any or all of these nineteen individuals will more than<br />
substantiate this claim. All of these individuals were witnesses, prosecutors,<br />
investigators or reporters on crimes related to the Iran-Contra/<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> group<br />
of criminals. Examples:<br />
1. Emilia DiSanto, chief Congressional investigator looking into the<br />
Abramoff scandal<br />
2. Jonathan Moyle, reporter<br />
3. Darlene Novinger, FBI<br />
4. Brad Doucette, 20 year veteran FBI<br />
5. John Millis, Executive Director of the House Permanent Select Committee<br />
on Intelligence, his report has not been released<br />
6. Nasser Beydoun, a witness at the Cardoen trial, was murdered in Brazil in<br />
June 1995.<br />
7. Katherine Smith, witness in 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
8. Darrell MacIntyre, US Attorney’s office<br />
9. Jim Hatfield, reporter/author<br />
10. Mark Lombardi, researcher/reporter<br />
<strong>11</strong>. Daniel Casolaro, reporter covering the Iran-Contra link to South American<br />
drugs - the manuscript of the book Casalaro was working on has never<br />
been found.<br />
12. Steve Kangas, reporter/author<br />
13. Gary Webb, reporter/author<br />
14. Brian Downing Quig – investigative journalist<br />
15. Lawrence Ng, reporter<br />
16. Colonel Russell Hermann, CIA bank account and Brady Bond<br />
administrator<br />
17. Lori Kaye Klausutis, former congressional staff aide<br />
18. Col. Ted Westhusing, Military Investigator in Iraq<br />
19. Marc Bastien, co-operative with OSI Agent Derk Vreeland<br />
The classic Level 6 ‘hit’ is the serial murder of ten people to cover at least two<br />
murders. The Washington Beltway Sniper murders of Linda Franklin and James<br />
D. Martin (of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National<br />
Meteorological Center, Camp Springs, Maryland) should clearly be reviewed<br />
further: Franklin, for possible connections to the Riggs Bank/Pinochet money<br />
laundering scandal, and Martin, for whatever satellite research he was working<br />
on. This ‘hit’ was not the random serial murder it was perceived as. John<br />
Muhammad, the Beltway Sniper, was trained as a sniper by U.S. Army Sergeant<br />
Ali Mohammed, who in turn was a former Egyptian Army officer. Ali<br />
Mohammed left the US Army Special Forces in 1989 after a three-year enlistment<br />
and was arrested by U.S. authorities after the U.S. embassy bombings in East<br />
Africa, supposedly as an Al Qaeda operative. Franklin was FBI analyst<br />
responsible for electronic monitoring of bank transfers working for Bureau of<br />
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, just before the Riggs Bank/Pinochet money<br />
laundering scandal broke, a scandal in which Pinochet was illegally trafficking<br />
weapons with Carlos Cardoen to Iran i.e., part of the Iran-Contra connection.<br />
Cardoen was also a business partner of Porter Goss, who met with Mahmoud<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 319
Ahmad before and after the 9/<strong>11</strong> attack. Mahmoud provided Atta with $100,000<br />
shortly before the attack on the World Trade Center. The Riggs Bank has been<br />
found by government auditors on several occasions to be negligent of money<br />
laundering, but with Jonathon Bush (George Bush’s uncle) on the Board of<br />
Directors, it has escaped any real penalties. In looking at the other victims of the<br />
Beltway Sniper, it was of note that James Martin worked for a known NSA/CIA<br />
cover operation. Internet investigation of his occupation produces a real dark hole,<br />
which for a well-publicized murder victim suggests purposeful cover-up.)<br />
Another amazing example of the ability of this group to execute multiple hits, is found in<br />
the story of five potential witnesses of the attack on 9/<strong>11</strong>. As evidence mounts that the<br />
plane that hit the Pentagon was an A-3 specially outfitted at a non-military airfield, the<br />
search for witnesses turned up this amazing coincidence:<br />
"Only the Raytheon executives and the Air Force would have known which team installed a particular<br />
system on the A-3 and who was involved in the operation," said Schwarz. Coincidentally, five key<br />
Raytheon executives died on 9-<strong>11</strong>: Stanley Hall--Director of Electronic warfare program management<br />
(American 77), Peter Gay--VP of Electronic Systems on special assignment at the El Segundo, CA<br />
division office where the Global Hawk UAV remote control system is made (American <strong>11</strong>), Kenneth<br />
Waldie--Senior Quality Control Engineer for Electronic Systems (American <strong>11</strong>), David Kovalcin--<br />
Senior Mechanical Engineer for Electronic Systems (American <strong>11</strong>), and Herbert Homer--Corporate<br />
Executive working with the Department of Defense (United 175).<br />
Curiously, the five Raytheon executives chose three of the four doomed jets and all happened to fly on<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. [Missile & remote control systems added to small jets before 9-<strong>11</strong>; same parts found at<br />
Pentagon, Tom Flocco, TomFlocco.com, 5/26/2005]<br />
In reflecting on these deaths, the high rate of “reporters” on the list supports the argument<br />
that the American media is being controlled through fear. Statistics suggests that having<br />
nine people on this list who were all involved with investigating the same set of Iran-<br />
Contra criminals, is virtually impossible:<br />
“Examining the male U.S suicide rate for recent years (http://www.suicidology.org/stats2001) we can<br />
extrapolate a conservative estimate of 17 male suicides per 100,000 people, or 0.017%. The odds of 3<br />
specific (all male?) biographers committing suicide would be the cube of 17/100000, or 4.913 x 10^-<br />
12...about 5 chances in one trillion. (That's over 300,000 times LESS likely than drawing a Royal<br />
Flush in 5 card stud poker with no wild cards.)” [http://www.bcrevolution.ca]<br />
If at three suicides the odds are impossible, how then can one ignore ten “suicides.”<br />
The murder does not stop with this list of nineteen though! It is not just reporters being<br />
eliminated, but other potential loose lipped participants, prosecutors and witnesses as<br />
well, with a list of murder victims potentially as high as 400 or more:<br />
“Navy Lt. Commander Alexander Martin was, in effect, the chief accountant for the Reagan/Bush drug<br />
operations run by Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, through an obscure arm of the White House National<br />
Security Council called the National Programs Office. In a radio interview with talk show host Tom<br />
Valentine last July, Martin spoke not only of drugs and money, but death. "Out of roughly 5,000 of us<br />
who were originally involved in Iran-Contra, approximately 400, since 1986, have committed suicide,<br />
died accidentally or died of natural causes. In over half those deaths, official death certificates were<br />
never issued. In 187 circumstances, the bodies were cremated before the families were notified.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 320
"Martin then said he was lying low.” [The Still Before the Storm, James Norman, Media Bypass<br />
magazine, December 1995]<br />
“The Manhattan D.A. who closed the American branch (of the BCCI) announced that 16 witnesses had<br />
died in the course of investigating the bank's entanglements in covert operations of the CIA, arms<br />
smuggling to Iraq, money laundering and child prostitution.” [The False Memory Hoax, Alex<br />
Constantine, Copyright © January, 1996]<br />
“There's a lot about BCCI that outsiders will never know. Once the investigations started, there were<br />
seven fires in the fireproof London warehouses where BCCI stored records. In one of them, four<br />
firemen were killed.” [BCCI: The Case that Kerry Cracked, Lucy Komisar]<br />
“From October 30th to Christmas eve there were four attempts to kill, me and our friend William<br />
Smith, who everyone thinks is a high ranking Naval Intelligence officer. During that same time over<br />
fifty CIA operatives, their wives and families were killed in an attempt by the Robert Gates faction of<br />
the CIA to cover its tracks before Clinton's team came to power. After the last attempt on my life, my<br />
husband's SEAL team arranged safe passage for me to Vienna, Austria, where I stayed until Robert<br />
Gates was removed as Director of the CIA.” [Correspondence from Rayelan Allan Russbacher,<br />
February 1993, http://crashrecovery.org/wackenhut/wackenhut3.pdf]<br />
“The witnesses were quite fearful about several recent "suicides, car wrecks--mysterious deaths-directly<br />
related to the aviation experts" working on the systems that were installed on the A-3’s at Fort<br />
Collins-Loveland--having breached the government-blocked information flow at great personal risk,<br />
according to Schwarz--but providing more evidence for a New York 9/<strong>11</strong> investigation.” [Missile &<br />
remote control systems added to small jets before 9-<strong>11</strong>; same parts found at Pentagon, Tom Flocco,<br />
TomFlocco.com, 5/26/2005]<br />
As a result of these tactics, and others to be described later in this section, the conclusion<br />
is well made by the BBC reporter, Greg Palast (a former US reporter who moved to the<br />
UK to maintain his professional integrity and ability to report.)<br />
“On my BBC television show, Newsnight, an American journalist confessed that, since the 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
attacks, US reporters are simply too afraid to ask the uncomfortable questions that could kill careers:<br />
"It's an obscene comparison, but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires<br />
around people's necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you<br />
will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck," Dan Rather said. Without his<br />
makeup, Rather looked drawn, old and defeated in confessing that he too had given in. "It's that fear<br />
that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore in on the<br />
tough questions so often." [Greg Palast Interview by Bruce David, Hustler, On-line]<br />
The same terror tactics are now being applied to foreign journalists as well:<br />
“US was for the first time listed among the top 10 (ranking 6th in the world's leading jailers of<br />
journalists), the Committee to Protect Journalists has said…. US detention centers in Iraq were holding<br />
four journalists, while the US Naval Base at Guantanamo held one.” [US among top 10 nations jailing<br />
scribes, Dharam Shourie,Rediff, December 14, 2005]<br />
“American troops in Baghdad yesterday blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working<br />
for the Guardian and Channel 4, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife<br />
and children. Ali Fadhil, who two months ago won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of<br />
the year award, was hooded and taken for questioning. He was released hours later. Dr Fadhil is<br />
working with Guardian Films on an investigation for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme into claims<br />
that tens of millions of dollars worth of Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British have been<br />
misused or misappropriated. The troops told Dr Fadhil that they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 321
and seized video tapes he had shot for the programme. These have not yet been returned.” [U.S. troops<br />
seize (UK) Channel 4/Guardian journalist, by Brian Boyko, The Guardian, January 9, 2006]<br />
“The British government has threatened newspapers with prosecution [Guardian Unlimited] under the<br />
Official Secrets Act if it releases the memo where Bush claimed to want to bomb Al Jazeera<br />
headquarters in Doha, Qatar. The Daily Kos reports that the two Brits who leaked the memo to<br />
newspapers are already being prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.” [Bombing Al Jazeera Story<br />
Update, http://brianboyko.com/category/iraq-war/]<br />
These tactics have silenced the ‘witnesses’ who would challenge the Bush organization<br />
over the past 25 years. Never the less, investigations are sometimes spurred by<br />
organizations, groups and individuals not under the influence of the US government. For<br />
instance:<br />
− the Kazakhstan-Mobil Oil bribery case was initiated in British courts;<br />
− the Russian money-laundering scandal was opened first by the Russians, closed<br />
by the US Attorney General without a scandal, and then re-opened by the Swiss<br />
who discovered the problem to be far more massive than US investigators<br />
reported;<br />
− the French legal system is in the process of bringing Richard Cheney and<br />
Halliburton to task for the Nigerian oil scandals. (The US investigation of<br />
Cheney for violation of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was mentioned in<br />
one US story by the Boston Globe;)<br />
− the Marcos gold/Swiss bank scandal would have died had it not been for a Swiss<br />
janitor;<br />
− the Iran-Contra scandal was actually pushed into the media by the Israelis, who<br />
felt betrayed by George Bush Sr;<br />
− the Valerie Plame (forged Iraq WMD evidence) scandal was initiated by a<br />
“blogger.”<br />
To deal with these emergent scandals, the Bush organization has, over the years<br />
developed an effective system for “killing” bad news, as well as its bearers, and<br />
managing the flow of negative information that manages to surface to the public attention<br />
through minor news channels. This system includes several means to control the<br />
information made available to the American citizenry:<br />
1. Control of the legal and investigative systems (FBI, DEA, CIA, Congressional<br />
Hearings, Independent <strong>Commission</strong>s),<br />
2. Control of the major media through the three “F’s: fool’em, feed’em and<br />
force’m.”<br />
Here is the real terrorist threat. People who make a living reporting the news and<br />
investigating crime are pretty much aware of what happens when a member of their<br />
profession pursues investigation of these crimes: they know of these deaths and career<br />
terminations, and live their lives in fear of those consequences. To avoid those<br />
consequences, nearly all reporters and investigators generally stop at Level 1 or Level 2,<br />
and the investigation is dropped. The group behavioral phenomenon is that of the fable<br />
of “the emperor has no clothes!” The crowd of reporters remains quiet as a group, except<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 322
for a little boy who shouts out the truth. In the fable, the boy is rewarded by the king, but<br />
in today’s reality, he gets a 38 magnum bullet in the head for his honesty.<br />
13.3 Fool’em: Control of the legal and investigative systems.<br />
Through political appointments to key positions in the Department of Justice, FBI, CIA,<br />
and Customs as well as other ‘secretive’ intelligence agencies, decisions to pursue or not<br />
pursue investigations are controlled. There are at least eighteen “intelligence agencies” in<br />
the US Government. Most of them and other “investigative” groups such as the FBI,<br />
DEA etc. came to fear the CIA in the period after George Bush Sr.’s control. All<br />
investigations deferred to the CIA and “national security.” Now, after twenty-five years,<br />
the Bush family controls them all through the Department of Homeland Security. In the<br />
future, the legacy of Herbert Hoover as a blackmailer and political bully will pale in<br />
comparison to the legacy of the Bush dynasty. Here are thirteen examples, documented<br />
here or elsewhere in this report, which demonstrate the ability and willingness of the<br />
administration to interfere with and control investigations with which the Bush<br />
administrations have been identified:<br />
− As demonstrated with the Convar investigation of illegal electronic trades in the<br />
World Trade Center. This information, which clearly identified some of the<br />
criminals, was never acted on or published by the FBI.<br />
“Henschel said the companies in the United States were working together with the FBI… to piece<br />
together what happened on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> and that he was confident the destination of the dubious<br />
transactions would one day be tracked down. ``We have been quite surprised that so many of the<br />
hard drives were in good enough shape to retrieve the data,'' he said.``The contamination rate is<br />
high. The fine dust that was everywhere in the area got pressed under high pressure into the drives.<br />
But we've still been able to retrieve 100 percent of the data on most of the drives we've received.<br />
``We're helping them find out what happened to the computers on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> as quickly as<br />
possible. I'm sure that one day they will know what happened to the money…” [ German Firm<br />
Probes Final World Trade Center Deals. Erik Kirschbaum, Reuters, 12/16/2001]<br />
− As demonstrated in the James Griffen/Mobil Oil bribery incident, the Attorney<br />
General’s office under John Ashcroft was able to keep Nazarbayev’s and George<br />
Bush Sr.’s names out of the trial proceedings.<br />
− As demonstrated in the Bank of New York money laundering scandal, the US<br />
Attorney General’s office was able to resolve the case of multi-billion dollar money<br />
laundering with a two-week jail sentence for a bank clerk. The Swiss investigators<br />
re-opened the case, after it was discovered the transactions were significantly<br />
underestimated by U.S. investigators.<br />
“A source familiar with the grand jury investigations… said Ashcroft has quietly moved… to<br />
exert control over the New York grand jury from Washington and to exercise “unusual” influence<br />
over the Washington investigations. FTW has also received multiple reports that several highranking<br />
career prosecutors in both New York and Washington have raised serious objections to<br />
Ashcroft’s actions and his failure to publicly recluse himself in these cases. [The Elephant in the<br />
Living Room – Part I, Michael C. Ruppert © Copyright 2002, From The Wilderness Publications,<br />
3/ 26/2002]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 323
− As demonstrated by the FBI prematurely dropping the investigation of the forged<br />
Niger documents which provided Bush’s “proof” of Iraq’s nuclear arsenal.<br />
− As demonstrated by the investigations into the Marcos gold, where individuals<br />
responsible for letting the world know the gold actually still existed, contrary to the<br />
claims of the Swiss banks, were imprisoned until they recanted:<br />
“Upon Cosandey's orders, Jacobi and his informers Fritz Walser and Tony Silano were arrested<br />
and charged with economic espionage on July 10, 1991 in Munich, Germany. Walser was an<br />
informer who knew a banker who had penetrated the banks' computer systems, Chavez said.<br />
Walser's contacts also reportedly confirmed the existence of 1,241 tons of Marcos gold deposits at<br />
UBS under account number 7257. It was the same account passed on to the government by<br />
Adoracion Edralin Lopez, a Marcos relative, Chavez said. He said the discovered Marcos accounts<br />
were later transferred in the name of the late dictator's Swiss lawyer Bruno de Preux and his son,<br />
Cyril. Switzerland sought Jacobi's extradition from Germany but lost in a German court, which<br />
decided that the charge against him was "politically motivated." (Fritz) Walser would later claim<br />
everything he revealed had been a hoax, in exchange for his freedom. His revised statement was<br />
later used by Swiss authorities to claim that the $13.4-billion Credit Suisse account under "I.<br />
Arenetta" and the 7257 accounts were a hoax.” [Recovering the Marcos Wealth Show Us the<br />
Money, By Marites N. Sison ]<br />
− As demonstrated in control that allows individuals to be “protected” from<br />
investigative queries, as are Adnan Khashoggi, Richard Armitage and Farhad Azima:<br />
“Former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, who was appointed presidential investigator for<br />
POW/MIA affairs, came upon the same information, and was warned by former Defense Secretary<br />
Frank Carlucci to stop pursuing the connections to Armitage. As he sadly explained to a group of<br />
POW/MIA families in 1987: "I have been instructed to cease and desist."[<strong>11</strong>25] [Iran-Contra<br />
Connections to the Oklahoma Bombing, gathered by Alex Constantine© 2000 Alex Constantine.<br />
All rights reserved]<br />
“Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi is charged by the State of New York in aiding and abetting<br />
former Filipino first lady Imelda Marcos in hiding billions from her country after she and husband<br />
Ferdinand Marcos were forced to flee the island nation. The charges are brought by New York<br />
Attorney General Rudolph Giuliani, who apparently has a personal score to settle with Khashoggi<br />
after Khashoggi defeated Giuliani's client John Tumpane in a business lawsuit. After a long and<br />
heated court battle, during which time Khashoggi was forced to stay in New York City under<br />
house arrest, the jury acquits Khashoggi of all charges. According to a former Army intelligence<br />
officer, Giuliani gets the indictments filed after months of effort by threatening George Bush that<br />
if he doesn't stop blocking the indictment, that he will call a press conference and complain that<br />
the White House is interfering with the criminal justice system merely to protect Bush's friend<br />
Khashoggi. (Larry Kolb).” [http://www.iraqtimeline.com/1990.html]<br />
“According to statements from a former Justice Department prosecutor to the Houston Post at that<br />
time, he was ordered to "back off" on his investigation into Indian Springs Bank shareholder<br />
Azima because "Azima had CIA connections and a 'get-out-of-jail-free card.'" [The Inside Story of<br />
John Lear, Bill Cooper and "The Greatest Cover-Up in Human History," An Affidavit by Lars C.<br />
Hansson, July 18, 1991]<br />
− As demonstrated in the control of post 9/<strong>11</strong> terrorist investigations by FBI agents:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 324
“WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - Officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation mishandled a Florida<br />
terror investigation, falsified documents in the case in an effort to cover repeated missteps and<br />
retaliated against an agent who first complained about the problems, Justice Department<br />
investigators have concluded….The agent who first alerted the F.B.I. to problems in the case, a<br />
veteran undercover operative named Mike German, was "retaliated against" by his boss, who was<br />
angered by the agent's complaints and stopped using him for prestigious assignments in training<br />
new undercover agents, the draft report concluded. Mr. German's case first became public last<br />
year, as he emerged as the latest in a string of whistle-blowers at the bureau who said they had<br />
been punished and effectively silenced for voicing concerns about the handling of terror<br />
investigations and other matters since Sept. <strong>11</strong>, 2001. Mr. German's case dates to 2002, when the<br />
F.B.I. division in Tampa opened a terror investigation into a lead that laundered proceeds, possibly<br />
connected to a drug outfit, might be used to finance terrorists overseas. …...the inspector general<br />
found that the F.B.I. had "mishandled and mismanaged" the investigation, partly through the<br />
failure to document important developments for months at a time. The report also found that<br />
supervisors were aware of problems in the case but did not take prompt action to correct them.”<br />
[<strong>Report</strong> Finds Cover-Up in an F.B.I. Terror Case, Eric Lichtblau, New York Times, December 4,<br />
2005]<br />
− As demonstrated in the unwillingness to prosecute BCCI:<br />
“The influential Chairman of the Banking <strong>Commission</strong> in the U.S. House of Representatives,<br />
Henry Gonzales, chided the Bush and Reagan administrations for refusing to prosecute the BCCI.<br />
In addition the Dept. of Justice repeatedly declined to co-operate in the Congressional<br />
investigations into the BCCI scandal and the closely linked scandal of the "Banco Nazional del<br />
Lavoro" (BNL). This bank had made billions of dollars from loans that Bush had granted the Iraqi<br />
government shortly before the Gulf War. Gonzales had said that the Bush administration had had a<br />
Department of Justice which he thought "the most corrupt, most unbelievably corrupt Department<br />
of justice that I have ever experienced during my 32 years in Congress". [George Soros and the<br />
Rothschilds Connection, Jan Von Helsing ("Secret Societies and their Power in the 20th<br />
Century")]<br />
− As demonstrated in Bush’s determination to regularly eliminate special investigators<br />
from investigations of his political colleagues – eliminating special investigators on<br />
the same case twice!<br />
“WASHINGTON — A US grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist<br />
Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal<br />
prosecutor, and the probe ended soon after.” [ LA Times, Aug 8, 2005]<br />
“The investigation into Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican lobbyist, took a provocative new<br />
turn Thursday when the Justice Department said the chief prosecutor in the inquiry would step<br />
down next week because he had been nominated to a federal judgeship by President Bush.” [SF<br />
Chronicle, Jan 27, 2006]<br />
− As demonstrated by George Bush Sr’s. willingness to blatantly interfere with a<br />
criminal investigation:<br />
“May-June 1989 - Trial of executives of Sunrise Savings and Loan in Florida which collapsed in<br />
1985 with bailout costs to the American taxpayer of $680 MILLION dollars. The Miami Herald, a<br />
Knight-Ridder newspaper covered every day of the trial. Yet when one witness testified that thenvice<br />
President George Bush had interferred in the investigation of Sunrise in 1984, a year before<br />
it collapsed, the Miami Herald somehow missed this story. The Bush-appointed Federal attorney<br />
in Miami never investigated this testimony, nor did he make an attempt to indict the man for<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 325
perjury, whose testimony, by the way, was corroborated by another ex-Sunrise employee.”<br />
[http://www.pd.com/~franklin/MN1.html]<br />
− As demonstrated in the control of Congressional hearings that simply refuses to listen<br />
to qualified whistleblowers:<br />
The following is a press release issued by the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition<br />
regarding the silence of the top congressional representatives on intelligence committees about ex-<br />
NSA officer Russ Tice's unheard charges:<br />
On December 22, 2005, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) made public<br />
the request by a former NSA intelligence analyst and action officer to report to Congress probable<br />
unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while he was an intelligence officer with the<br />
National Security Agency (NSA) and with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). NSWBC<br />
urged the congress to hold hearings and let Mr. Tice testify. Today, more than four months after<br />
Mr. Tice’s letters were sent to the chairs of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and<br />
publicized in the media, he has yet to receive a response and be given an opportunity to lawfully<br />
disclose his first-hand account of criminal acts conducted by the National Security Agency.<br />
[Congressional Chairmen on intelligence won't hear out NSA whistleblower, RAW STORY,<br />
April 26, 2006 ]<br />
− As demonstrated by planting false information in the press in the original exposure of<br />
the Iran/Contra operation:<br />
“WASHINGTON-- Nicaraguan rebels falsely assumed responsibility for an arms-laden plane<br />
downed over Nicaragua in 1986 in an effort to shield then-Vice President George Bush from the<br />
controversy that soon blossomed into the Iran-Contra scandal, a senior Contra official said in early<br />
May 1989. According to the Contra official, who requested anonymity but has direct knowledge<br />
of the events, a Contra spokesman, Bosco Matamoros [official FDN representative in Washington,<br />
D.C.], was ordered by [FDN Political Director] Adolfo Calero to claim ownership of the downed<br />
aircraft, even though the plane belonged to Oliver North's secret Contra supply network.... Calero<br />
called (Matamoros) and said, `` Take responsibility for the Hasenfus plane because we need to<br />
take the heat off the vice president, '' the Contra source said.... The senior Contra official said that<br />
shortly after Calero talked to Matamoros, Matamoros called a reporter for the New York Times<br />
and `` leaked '' the bogus claim of responsibility. The Times ran a story about the claim on its front<br />
page.” [Official: Contras Lied to Protect VP Bush, Alfonso Chardy, Knight-Ridder Newspapers]<br />
− As demonstrated by putting the same individual in charge of major investigations of<br />
crimes linked to the Bush group. In this case, Robert S. Mueller (U.S. Attorney and<br />
FBI Director) has been the chief investigator and prosecutor over the BCCI scandal,<br />
the Iran-Contra criminal investigation, the Noriega-CIA drug connections, and<br />
finally, the 9/<strong>11</strong> investigation. His protégé, Leslie Caldwell, was responsible for the<br />
Arthur Anderson investigation, and later the Enron investigation.<br />
“In the 1980s, Mueller was third in command in the FBI under George Terwilliger. Mueller<br />
apparently put in a lot of overtime working to keep the Iran-Contra scheme under wraps, and then,<br />
once things got sticky for Reagan, helped the Dept. of Justice's Domestic Criminal Section Chief<br />
Dave Margolis and International Criminal Section Chief Mark Richards limit liability for Reagan,<br />
and then Bush, Sr. According to political watchdog Al Martin, Mueller personally handled<br />
damage containment for Bush Sr. during Bush's potentially scandalous dealings with Jordanian<br />
coffee merchant Mansour Barbouti. Barbouti was involved in the illegal exportation of chemicals<br />
used in chemical weapons to both Iraq and Iran.” [Scapegoat! How Bush Nearly Ruined the FBI,<br />
Cheryl Seal, Democrats.com]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 326
“In the case of Noriega and Gotti, they were silenced through the capable tools of the American<br />
justice system. And overseeing the prosecutions - Noriega, Gotti, and BCCI - happened to be a<br />
man who would, years later, be entrusted with overseeing the investigation into the causes of 9/<strong>11</strong><br />
- Robert Mueller III. ”[Backdrop - Detecting The Puppet Masters, Part 6 of Truth, Lies, and The<br />
Legend of 9/<strong>11</strong>: Truth Lies Legend]<br />
Other items warranting mention are:<br />
• four probable violations of SEC regulations by George Bush Jr. while with<br />
Harken which have been overlooked,<br />
• closing down of criminal investigations into Jeb Bush’s partners Camilo Padreda<br />
and Miguel Recarey,<br />
• Bush Sr’s., destruction of SEC records of Zapata Oil,<br />
• Interference with bank regulators during the Riggs money-laundering<br />
investigation, where Jonathon Bush is a director.<br />
The Bush family has three generations of experience in circumventing investigation into<br />
their financial conduct. They have appointed six of the Supreme Court Justices, and<br />
given major federal appointments to two of the Justice’s children, after having been given<br />
the Presidential office by Supreme Court dictate.<br />
13.4 Feed’em: Control, Fabricate and Falsify Evidence<br />
The American press corps has recently been stripped of its ability to conduct any serious<br />
investigative reporting, an observation reported only in the foreign press (BBC and<br />
Guardian.) What is being experienced is not only a failure of the press to step up to<br />
professional standards of investigative reporting, but an additional willingness to let<br />
investigative government agencies conduct less than thorough investigations, and be<br />
satisfied to reports the “results” of aborted government investigations.<br />
“… political courage is especially rare. <strong>Report</strong>ers in Washington are kept in line by the standard threat:<br />
annoy us, and your stories dry up. In normal times this matters less, because there may be enough<br />
dissidents to produce alternative information. But the Bush White House's sophisticated news<br />
management has given them control. One official who has worked in administrations of both colours<br />
explained: "The Republicans regard themselves as patrician gatekeepers of the news. They say 'If<br />
you're really good, we'll give you information and if you're really, really good, we'll give you more<br />
information.' The Democrats thought; 'My God, there are all those reporters out there! We better talk to<br />
them!'"[Bushwhacked, Matthew Engel, Guardian, January 13, 2003]<br />
In addition to the examples listed above, here are several more examples of where the<br />
American press seemed all-to-willing to accept less than factual reporting by US<br />
Government agencies.<br />
− As demonstrated by professional testimony regarding the Osama Bin Ladin videotapes,<br />
these tapes do not say what the government translators reported;<br />
− The ‘weapons of mass destruction evidence” which was used to justify an<br />
invasion of Iraq:<br />
“WASHINGTON — The FBI has reopened an inquiry into one of the most intriguing aspects<br />
of the pre-Iraq war intelligence fiasco: how the Bush administration came to rely on forged<br />
documents linking Iraq to nuclear weapons materials as part of its justification for the<br />
invasion. The documents inspired intense U.S. interest in the buildup to the war — and they<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 327
led the CIA to send a former ambassador to the African nation of Niger to investigate whether<br />
Iraq had sought the materials there. The ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV, found little<br />
evidence to support such a claim, and the documents were later deemed to have been forged.<br />
But President Bush referred to the claim in his 2003 State of the Union address in making the<br />
case for the invasion. Bush's speech, Wilson's trip and the role Wilson's wife played in<br />
sending him have created a political storm that still envelops the White House. The<br />
documents in question included letters on Niger government letterhead and purported<br />
contracts showing sales of uranium to Iraq. They were provided in 2002 to an Italian<br />
magazine, which turned them over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. The FBI's decision to<br />
reopen the investigation reverses the agency's announcement last month that it had finished a<br />
two-year inquiry and concluded that the forgeries were part of a moneymaking scheme — and<br />
not an effort to manipulate U.S. foreign policy. Those findings concerned some members of<br />
the Senate Intelligence Committee after published reports that the FBI had not interviewed a<br />
former Italian spy named Rocco Martino, who was identified as the original source of the<br />
documents. The committee had requested the initial investigation.” [FBI Is Taking Another<br />
Look at Forged Prewar Intelligence, Peter Wallsten, Tom Hamburger and Josh Meyer, Los<br />
Angeles Times, December 3, 2005]<br />
− The Bush administration’s actions to prevent the facts around 9/<strong>11</strong> from being<br />
exposed have been documented in other parts of this report. This behavior<br />
however, is not isolated, and reflects a broader pattern of lies and deception. Other<br />
examples of falsification of evidence can include the following three stories:<br />
“U.S. congressional leaders who have been touting Iraq's new "free press" as a sign of<br />
progress in the troubled country are upset at the Pentagon's admission last week that it has<br />
been paying for "good news" stories written by the military and placed in Iraqi media by a<br />
Washington-based public relations firm. In a briefing for the powerful chairman of the Senate<br />
Armed Services Committee, Republican John Warner of Virginia, the military acknowledged<br />
that news articles written by U.S. troops had been placed as paid advertisements in the Iraqi<br />
news media, and not always properly identified. Warner told reporters after receiving a<br />
briefing from officials at the Pentagon that senior commanders in Iraq were trying to get to<br />
the bottom of a program that apparently also paid monthly stipends to friendly Iraqi<br />
journalists.” [The Bad News Is That the Good News Is Fake, William Fisher, Inter Press<br />
Service News Agency December 6, 2005]<br />
“When a CIA briefer did not provide him with the answers he desired, Cheney reportedly<br />
demanded that she be replaced. Congressman Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat and<br />
member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in July 2003 that he knew of at least three<br />
intelligence analysts who felt pressured to warp their findings.” [The Rise and Rise of<br />
Richard B. Cheney, John Nichols, The New Press, 2004, p212.]<br />
“Cheney got on well with the king (Fahd) and his minions, who would not learn until<br />
sometime later that the defense secretary and his aides had deceived them – displaying<br />
doctored satellite photos to suggest that an Iraqi invasion force had moved to the border in<br />
preparation for an invasion of Saudi Arabia.” [The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney, John<br />
Nichols, The New Press, 2004, p<strong>11</strong>4.]<br />
For those who might need evidence that this ‘fabrication’ also happens in the US as well<br />
as outside of it’s borders, this report suggests an Internet search on the Jeff Gannon (aka<br />
Guckert) affair, of a Whitehouse “plant” in the Press Corps, or the discovery that the<br />
Bush administration paid consultants to write favorable news coverage. The falsification<br />
of news is actually quite easy though. The ‘inside’ view of the news media is that in<br />
nearly all cases, the media does little “investigative” analysis any more<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 328
“….in fact as (Dan) Rather explained it to me: the networks are really dependent upon press releases<br />
from the State Department about going to press conferences, and they need that, what’s called target<br />
footage - pictures from the smart bombs that go tick-tick-tick, boom! And all those cool pictures are<br />
what keeps stations like CNN alive, and their advertising alive. So, what you have to do is, we have to<br />
understand that we’re talking about a press corps which has stopped reporting, and what they’re doing<br />
is just repeating; they take a press release, they rewrite it, they stand up in front of the camera and they<br />
say… “This is Jo Schmo in front of the White House, and the president just said …” That’s not<br />
reporting, that’s not getting the story.” [Greg Palast Interview, Bruce David, Hustler, On-line]<br />
Another example of this fabrication and control is the 9-<strong>11</strong> Truth Movement, which<br />
masquerades as data collection point for “conspiracy” information. This organization is<br />
actually funded by a business partner of Adnan Khashoggi. Any conclusions drawn on<br />
the purpose of that arrangement are left to the reader.<br />
“Khashoggi’s henchman Ramy El-Batrawi, currently under indictment with Big K for looting over<br />
$120 million from a bankrupt company called GenesisIntermedia, the company that owns the<br />
marketing rights to the creative output of Mars & Venus snake oil salesman John Gray. Gray is also<br />
the man who funded the disinformation campaign calling itself the 9.<strong>11</strong> Truth movement.” [FAA<br />
Stonewalls Release of DC9 ‘Cocaine One’ Records: Homeland Security Inc Scandal Off And Running<br />
, Daniel Hopsicker, Mad Cow Morning News, June 22 2006]<br />
If the “press” no longer presents the fair and balanced reporting the American populace<br />
assumes it to provide, an understanding of how that condition came to be is warranted.<br />
The following section provides that understanding.<br />
13.5 Media Control - the Facts<br />
When people think of “controlling the media” they envision an Orwellian nightmare,<br />
where a faceless bureaucracy has taken control of all the media. This section contends<br />
that ‘media control’ is defined as the significant influence of five or six key individuals<br />
who can intervene not only around key events, but can create an atmosphere of fear that<br />
intimidates the reporters into compliance and biased reporting in the major media outlets.<br />
Using this definition, the report will provide information which demonstrates that a few<br />
key individuals in the US have that ability, have exerted their influence on news<br />
organizations, and have controlled the news in favor of the Bush family. This, combined<br />
with the physical intimidation of independent reporters by a group of murderous thugs<br />
which supports the Bush family, suggests that “media control” is far more pervasive than<br />
generally perceived. It is that influence that has prevented critical public analysis of the<br />
events of 9/<strong>11</strong> by the media, and prevented analyses such as this report from being<br />
publicly discussed in the mainstream media.<br />
First, it is important to understand that the US media is not an industry of multiple<br />
independent news outlets from which the truth will spring. The public record clearly<br />
demonstrates substantial consolidation of the media under five corporations.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 329
“In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge<br />
corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and<br />
Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC<br />
is a close sixth.”<br />
The amount of stock required to control such an organization is relatively small, much<br />
smaller than normally thought required to “control” a corporation:<br />
“Billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, the world's fifth richest man (as listed by Forbes magazine),<br />
now owns 5.46% of the voting shares of NewsCorp, Rupert Murdoch's media empire that includes Fox<br />
News Channel. The business media—including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and the rest—<br />
portray this as an act of the Prince's friendship with Murdoch, and an effort to help the media mogul<br />
fight off a hostile takeover attempt by John Malone's Liberty Media, which has acquired 18%. That is<br />
second only to Murdoch's 30% share. Fidelity Management and Research comes in third at 5.8%.<br />
To the casual observer, 5.46% may be small change. Not so. There is potential clout in that 5.46%,<br />
especially since it is ostensibly meant to bail Murdoch out of a jam. Moreover, in most of my years at<br />
CBS, there was never any doubt that the "big boss" was the legendary William S. Paley. And his stake<br />
in what was then the nation's largest media company (the "Tiffany network") was a mere 8%. The rest<br />
included banks, insurance companies and others whose interests were not "hands on" and would not<br />
challenge Paley's supremacy.”<br />
The analysis suggests a very credible position that five individuals with significant stock<br />
could significantly control America’s major media outlets. If the loyalty of five such<br />
individuals was somehow ‘procured’ – it might produce significant control and<br />
significant manipulation of the media. Further evidence suggests that is exactly what has<br />
happened. In fact, theories of their “collusion” parallel those theories of the Bilderberg<br />
group:<br />
“A quiet gathering of the media's top elites to discuss mergers, with a keynote address by the head of<br />
the CIA, escaped mention in the mainstream press. Each year, at the posh ranch of investment banker<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 330
Herbert Allen Jr., the world's media elites meet to discuss strategy, possible mergers and editorial<br />
policy. It can only be called a media version of Bilderberg as government, corporate and media<br />
officials are meeting in secret, behind the usual wall of security. "Of all the people in the Bush<br />
Administration, perhaps no one was of more interest to the public last week than CIA Director George<br />
J. Tenet," Rick Ellis wrote (http://www.allyourtv.com, July 16, 2003. "As the center of a whirlwind of<br />
controversy over claims that the agency had made mistakenly allowed President Bush to assert Iraq<br />
had attempted to buy uranium from Niger, Tenet was being sought by everyone from Dateline to<br />
Senate Intelligence Subcommittee. He was talking last week, but it wasn't to the public. He was in Sun<br />
Valley, Idaho, giving a private intelligence briefing to participants of the private (Allen & Company,<br />
Inc.) Media conference. "The annual gathering includes nearly every major player of the world's<br />
media, technology and entertainment industries, and it's a reminder of just how insular, isolated and<br />
powerful the world's media owners are from the billions who consume their products. Organized by<br />
investment banker Herbert Allen, the get-together is a summer camp for Citizen Kane's, a place where<br />
the rich and powerful are able to meet over picnic lunches and fishing streams as they help determine<br />
what you'll be watching for the next few years," Ellis wrote. [SourceWatch: a project of the Center for<br />
Media & Democracy, http://www. sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Herbert_Allen]<br />
(Author’s note: It was the 2002 media meeting at Herbert Allen’s ranch at which the Russian<br />
Khodorkovsky, key owner of Menatep Bank, met with Lord JacobRothschild. Shortly after that<br />
meeting, Khodorkovsky handed over to Rothschild his proxy rights to a 26% controlling interest in<br />
Yukos in an attempt to secure his holdings from reclamation by the Russian government, who contends<br />
that he illegally acquired control of the largest oil company in Russia. It is reported that shortly after<br />
this meeting Khodorkovsky met with Vice President Dick Cheney for private talks. Section 8 of this<br />
report describes how these players are linked to the destruction of the World Trade Center and the<br />
Bush family.)<br />
The breadth of control of these five organizations is demonstrated in Table 8. In dealing<br />
with these five groups - one at a time - one needs to understand the payoff promised to<br />
the industry CEOs by George Bush (and delivered afterwards) prior to his election.<br />
“Shortly after George W. Bush declared his candidacy for president in June of 1999, General Electric<br />
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jack Welch was contacted by Bush political advisor Karl Rove.<br />
Welch later informed associates that Rove told him a Bush administration would initiate<br />
comprehensive deregulation of the broadcast industry. Rove guaranteed that deregulation would be<br />
implemented in a way that would create phenomenal profits for conglomerates with significant media<br />
holdings, like GE. Rove forcefully argued that General Electric and the other media giants had a<br />
compelling financial interest to see Bush become president.” [Democracy, General Electric Style,<br />
David Podvin and Carolyn Kay, October 23, 2001]<br />
The impact of this campaign promise was clearly felt on the election, and subsequent new<br />
reporting. The major networks, led by their respective CEOs and Chairmen, led<br />
Americans to the conclusion the George Bush should be their President. What<br />
Americans experienced in the media, as a result of promise of corporate deregulation,<br />
were stories heavily favoring Bush, illegal calling of the election on TV to influence a<br />
vote, and a cover-up of the independent Florida voting audit result which was intended to<br />
prove that Bush had won legitimately.<br />
“A study produced by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Princeton Survey Research<br />
Associates examined 1,149 stories from 17 news publications, programs and websites. The research<br />
revealed that there were almost twice as many positive stories about Bush as there were about Gore.<br />
Even more important than this blatant pro-Bush bias, the study found that the coverage de-emphasized<br />
the philosophical differences between the candidates. This was critical, because public opinion polls<br />
showed that the voters agreed with Gore on the issues. By robbing Gore of his greatest advantage, the<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 331
media organizations were Bush’s greatest allies.” [Democracy, General Electric Style, David Podvin<br />
and Carolyn Kay, October 23, 2001]<br />
The piece of information that makes the Project for Excellence study so intriguing is that<br />
Bush was being identified in more positive stories than Gore, even when the press corp in<br />
general is consistently more liberal than conservative.<br />
"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters<br />
tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the<br />
study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."<br />
"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so,<br />
there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co-author<br />
Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar. …Of the 20 major media<br />
outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los<br />
Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street<br />
Journal. Only Fox News' "Special <strong>Report</strong> With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of<br />
the average U.S. voter. [Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist, Meg Sullivan, December<br />
14, 2005]<br />
The only valid explanation of a liberal press favoring Bush is ‘pressure’ from<br />
management, a conclusion that other research appears to validate. That same<br />
inexplicable behavior was experienced again shortly after the election, when eight major<br />
newspapers abandoned their pledge to the American public:<br />
“On January 9, 2001, eight media organizations announced their intention to form the Consortium that<br />
would examine and classify the votes in the Florida presidential election. The eight news organizations<br />
were The New York Times, The Washington Post, Dow Jones and Company (The Wall Street<br />
Journal), the Associated Press, The Tribune Company (The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago<br />
Tribune, among others), The Palm Beach Post, The St. Petersburg Times, and CNN (which later<br />
dropped out).<br />
The Consortium sought to gain credibility for the integrity of its recount by hiring the not-for-profit<br />
National Opinion Research Center to perform the actual ballot handling tasks and to compile the<br />
relevant information. NORC was assigned to provide the raw data to each of the members of the<br />
Consortium. It would then be up to the individual media outlets to decide how they would interpret and<br />
report the data to the American people. ….As for what will happen next, the executive said, “Once the<br />
dominant pro-Gore trend became apparent, the Consortium was never going to release the results; the<br />
pressure from the big money boys was too great. Terrorism just provided a better excuse for<br />
withholding the information than the ‘technical difficulties’ stalling tactic that was otherwise going to<br />
be used. The Consortium is determined to make sure that the original results of their recount will never<br />
see the light of day.” [The Media Cover-Up of the Gore Victory Part One: Reliable Source Reveals the<br />
Cover-Up, David Podvin, Carolyn Kay]<br />
The media en masse again would support Bush when the first a major piece of news<br />
critical of Bush was made available, and the major media companies pretended the news<br />
did not exist.<br />
“L.A. Weekly has learned that CBS, NBC and ABC all refused Fahrenheit 9/<strong>11</strong> DVD advertising<br />
during any of the networks’ news programming. Executives at Sony Pictures, the distributor of the<br />
movie for the home-entertainment market, were stunned.” [When Might Turns Right - Golly GE, Why<br />
Big Media is Pro-Bush, Nikki Finke, LA Weekly, October 1 - 7, 2004]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 332
President Bush’s courtship of the media did not stop with pre-election promises.<br />
Subsequent actions directly provided billions of dollars of benefits at the expense of the<br />
taxpayers:<br />
“Six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush FCC appointee Michael<br />
Powell (son of Colin Powell) announced a ruling that affected corporations having licenses to operate<br />
130 UHF TV stations broadcasting on certain frequencies. The FCC gave the media companies<br />
approval to sell those taxpayer-owned licenses and keep the tens of billions of dollars that will be<br />
generated by the sales.” [Democracy, General Electric Style, David Podvin and Carolyn Kay, October<br />
23, 2001]<br />
One-at-a-time, the dynamics of influence and fear were experienced in the American<br />
media:<br />
NBC<br />
With General Electric being almost as large of a news organization as the next four<br />
largest combined, the role of its CEO Jack Welch is extremely insightful.<br />
“The crucial step that Welch took was to make it well known throughout NBC News that the standard<br />
for the promotion of journalists would be the same as it was for every other employee in the<br />
corporation: outstanding contribution to the financial well being of General Electric. The journalists<br />
who had their paychecks signed by Welch knew that favorable coverage of George W. Bush would be<br />
considered an outstanding contribution to the financial well being of General Electric….Welch’s<br />
successful behind-the-scenes campaign to influence media coverage in a way that would get Bush into<br />
the White House has not been visible to the public, with one exception. On election night, according to<br />
an eyewitness, Welch was so angry that his own NBC News team would not call the race for Bush that<br />
he personally went to the studio from which Tom Brokaw was anchoring the coverage. Welch quietly<br />
watched the broadcast for a few minutes. Two people who were present claim that, when Brokaw and<br />
Tim Russert did not take the hint that their boss had come into the newsroom because he wanted<br />
something from them, he explicitly announced that he wanted them to call the election for Bush. They<br />
did. As a result, Bush entered the Florida recount phase with the tremendous advantage of having<br />
already been declared the winner.” [Democracy, General Electric Style, David Podvin and Carolyn<br />
Kay, October 23, 2001]<br />
From additonal sources:<br />
“During a March 12 interview with C-SPAN president and chief executive officer Brian Lamb,<br />
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann said: "There are people I know in the hierarchy of NBC, the company,<br />
and GE [General Electric Co., NBC's parent corporation], the company, who do not like to see the<br />
current presidential administration criticized at all. ... There are people who I work for who would<br />
prefer, who would sleep much easier at night if this never happened." [Olbermann: There are execs at<br />
NBC "who do not like to see the current presidential administration criticized at all, Mar 13, 2006,<br />
http://mediamatters.org/items/200603130006]<br />
“CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin said Thursday she was referring to her time spent at MSNBC when<br />
she said she felt pressure not to report stories critical of the Bush administration during the time<br />
leading up to the Iraq war…. During her CNN appearance, Yellin said the press corps was under<br />
enormous pressure from corporate executives to make sure the war was presented "in a way that was<br />
consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings….The charges<br />
against MSNBC aren't new, however. A prime-time show with Phil Donahue received consistent<br />
pressure to present panels tilted in favor of the war, said Jeff Cohen, that program's former senior<br />
producer. Donahue's show was on for less than a year before being cancelled less than a month before<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 333
CBS<br />
the war began" [CNN reporter talks of pressure to be patriotic, David Bauder, Associated Press, May<br />
29, 2008]<br />
“Millions of Americans supported Bush because they believed he would promote family values;<br />
Karmazin threw the support of CBS News behind Bush on the basis that family values were a<br />
campaign mirage, and that Bush had no intention of implementing them into public policy. While Bush<br />
has been president, Stern has continued to shout the same vulgarities and peddle the same sleaze over<br />
the air, but the intense pressure that was applied by the FCC during the Democratic era has not<br />
continued during the “family values” administration.” [Democracy, General Electric Style, David<br />
Podvin and Carolyn Kay, October 23, 2001]<br />
A classic example of CBS killing a story that reflected poorly on the Bush administration<br />
comes from Greg Palast:<br />
“….five months before the election, Katherine Harris, acting under orders from Jeb Bush, knocked<br />
57,000 voters off the rolls. They were suspected of being evildoers and felons and, therefore, not<br />
allowed to vote in Florida. Here's the news: Of the 57,000 people, 97% were innocent of crimes, but<br />
they were guilty of being black. Half of them were African-American or Hispanic-in other words,<br />
Democratic voters. Was the state guessing who the people of color were? In Florida, it's like South<br />
Africa; they list your race right on your registration. There was no guessing. These people not only lost<br />
their vote, but lost their president. BBC figures Gore lost 22,000 votes this way, but you didn't read<br />
that in the U.S. press. You didn't read in the U.S. press that they say they're going to allow the voters<br />
back on in 2003. That means that they were screwed for the election of 2002 as well. I ran the story of<br />
the theft of the election on the BBC. Then a hotshot with CBS News calls me and says, "Oh, that's a<br />
great story, can we have a piece of it? We want something new." I said, "Yeah, I got something for<br />
you: Jeb Bush's office, the governor of Florida, is involved in knocking off the voters too, not just<br />
Katherine Harris, and there's a letter dated <strong>September</strong> 18, 2000, which directs county-election officials<br />
to deliberately violate the law and not register a bunch of people who are Democrats. These are people<br />
who committed crimes in other states. Jeb can't legally stop them from voting, but he did anyway. And<br />
he knows that these people are Democrats, because there's something about going to jail that turns<br />
people [into] Democrats, about 93% [of ex-cons vote Democrat.]<br />
(Interviewer): So, people who were either black or who had previously gone to jail were just<br />
automatically eliminated?<br />
PALAST: Right. Jeb sent out the letter anyway, <strong>September</strong> 18, 2000, despite two court orders saying<br />
he couldn't do that. I had an insider in his office, some poor woman, shaking, saying, "I gotta read you<br />
this letter." She knew about the court orders. Okay, so I said, to CBS, "That's a story." CBS News<br />
didn't run the story-one night, two nights. I said, "What happened?" They said, "It didn't stand up." I<br />
said, "How do you know the story didn't stand up?" "Well, we called Jeb Bush's office, and they said,<br />
'We didn't do it.'…: In fact, just so you know, the NAACP took my information, sued Katherine Harris<br />
and the State of Florida; and they won. And you haven’t seen that reported in the American press: they<br />
won. Turns out, by the way, it wasn’t 57,000 people; 94,000 people were targeted to have their names<br />
illegally removed. And the State of Florida said, “You got us.” Katherine Harris has faced up to it,<br />
even though you don’t see it in the papers.” [Greg Palast Interview by Bruce David, Hustler, On-line]<br />
Time Warner and CNN<br />
In 1994, Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s Seagram company acquired a 14.5% stake in Time<br />
Warner, and has been a controlling player ever since. The role of Edgar Bronfman in the<br />
larger illicit laundering scandal has been amply detailed throughout this report. Here is<br />
the same individual being one of the key media influencers in the US. Here is at least one<br />
example of their deliberate squelching of the news to support a cover-up.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 334
“Further investigation and probing of several other CNN sources closely connected with the<br />
production of the Asner segment on Showbiz Tonight reported that high-level members of CNN<br />
management advised the producers of the show to "kill it. " This statement was clearly made to stifle<br />
any further coverage of 9/<strong>11</strong>…”.[CNN Fears 9/<strong>11</strong> Truth - Cancels Ed Asner's Appearance,<br />
Infowars.com, March 28, 2006]<br />
Disney and ABC<br />
Disney and ABC appears to be another example, very similar to NBC and CBS, where<br />
the corporate profit motive determined the content of the “message” to the American<br />
public.<br />
“The attitude at ABC was an extension of the personality of Disney Chairman Michael Eisner. Eisner<br />
does not like those who make waves, as the host of Politically Incorrect recently learned. After Bill<br />
Maher said that it was cowardly of America to fight battles by launching missiles from a safe distance,<br />
Eisner went out of his way to very publicly slap Maher down. This episode provided outsiders with a<br />
rare glimpse inside the corporate culture of … do not rock the boat or you’re in trouble. “Eisner will<br />
always stand up for principle, no matter what the cost,” says a former Disney executive, “as long as<br />
that principle involves increasing his personal compensation.” As a result, the candidate who held out<br />
the prospect of fabulous wealth for the broadcast industry got favorable coverage from ABC News. In<br />
fact, Bush received better coverage than Gore from the entire mainstream media.” [Democracy,<br />
General Electric Style, David Podvin and Carolyn Kay, October 23, 2001]<br />
It was Disney under Eisner that attempted to bury a film by Michael Moore that was<br />
critical of the Bush family, suggesting collusion with the Saudi Royal family.<br />
“Mr. Moore’s agent, Ari Emanuel, said that Michael D. Eisner, Disney’s chief executive, asked him<br />
last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed concern that it<br />
would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida,<br />
where Mr. Bush’s brother, Jeb, is governor. “Michael Eisner asked me not to sell this movie to<br />
Harvey Weinstein; that doesn’t mean I listened to him,” Mr. Emanuel said. “He definitely indicated<br />
there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that’s why he didn’t want me<br />
to sell it to Miramax. He didn’t want a Disney company involved.”<br />
But that was then and this is now. Disney has turned most of ABC’s extensive radio network and<br />
owned-and-operated stations into a 24/7 orgy of right-wing talk. Disney’s chief lobbyist, Preston<br />
Padden, is not only one of Washington, D.C.’s most infamous Republican lobbyists, but he used to<br />
work for Rupert Murdoch. And Padden was set to use all of his considerable influence in Congress and<br />
the White House on Disney’s behalf if that big bad Goliath, Comcast, really tried to gobble up the<br />
Mouse House. As a result, no one thought it just coincidental when W pleaded just days after 9/<strong>11</strong> for<br />
Americans “to return to the kind of lives we were leading before [that], especially air travel. Get on<br />
board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Go down<br />
to Disney World in Florida; take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed.” It was<br />
as close to a White House commercial for Disney as any corporation could dare hope.<br />
Then Bush followed that up weeks later with a PR visit to Orlando, Florida, where the Magic Kingdom<br />
had suffered a 25 percent drop in ticket sales, where a national photo showed the theme park’s deserted<br />
entrance. And since then, in addition to the usual tax breaks from W’s brother, Jeb, Disney World has<br />
benefited from special security measures, including extra protection and a federally declared “no<br />
flyover zone.” [When Might Turns Right - Golly GE, Why Big Media is Pro-Bush , Nikki Finke, LA<br />
Weekly, October 1 - 7, 2004]<br />
Behind all this, and what is rarely disclosed, is that in 1985, the largest shareholder in the<br />
owner of ABC, at the time being Capital Cities, was CIA Director Wiliam Casey. This<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 335
effectively put the CIA in control of ABC news. [see Gold Warriors: America’s Secret<br />
Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold, Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, Verso, 2005, p.188 ]<br />
News Corporation and FOX<br />
The role of Murdoch’s FOX news as a mouthpiece for the Bush family is legendary. If<br />
nothing else, having George Bush’s cousin as the Senior News Editor at FOX should be<br />
an insightful tip.<br />
“As Slate reports, Murdoch "put George W. Bush cousin John Ellis in charge of [Fox's] Election Night<br />
vote-counting operation: Ellis made Fox the first network to declare Bush the victor" even as the New<br />
Yorker reported that Ellis spent the evening discussing the election with George W. and Jeb Bush.<br />
After the election, Fox bragged that it attracted 6.8 million viewers on Election Night, meaning Ellis<br />
was in a key position to tilt the election for President Bush.” [Slate, <strong>11</strong>/22/00; New Yorker, <strong>11</strong>/20/00]<br />
Similarly, having former Republican Party advisor Roger Ailes as a Fox News Director is<br />
another insight to the FOX predisposition. [Michael C Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, p.<br />
263.]<br />
“Ailes, 48, is the legendary dark prince of political advertising, the Republican consultant who helped<br />
engineer Richard Nixon's resurrection in 1968 and who scripted Ronald Reagan's second-debate<br />
comeback against Walter Mondale in 1984. This time Ailes has been the unseen hand behind Bush's<br />
best moments: the "Pierre" put-down of former Delaware Governor Pete du Pont in a debate last<br />
October, the hard-hitting anti-Dole advertising in February's New Hampshire primary, and the on-air<br />
pummeling of CBS's Dan Rather last January…. Ailes' involvement has been crucial to Bush's<br />
candidacy. When Bush arrived in New Hampshire reeling from a third-place finish in the Iowa<br />
caucuses, Ailes labored all night over the television ad that quashed Robert Dole's insurgent campaign.<br />
Known as the "Senator Straddle" commercial, the blunt spot asserted that Dole had waffled on tax<br />
hikes, oil-import fees and arms control.” [The Man Behind the Message: If anyone can build a better<br />
candidate, it is Roger Ailes, Richard Stengel, Time Magazine, August 22, 1988]<br />
But there is more.<br />
“Murdoch's media empire still has close ties with the Bush family. The relationship was recently put<br />
under the spotlight when it was revealed that Fox News Channel chairman Roger Ailes, a former<br />
Republican party strategist, secretly acted as an advisor to the president in the days after the<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> terrorist strikes.” [US media dig deep for politicians, Annie Lawson, Guardian, April 7,<br />
2003]<br />
“Discussions with former Fox News employees on several levels claim they were ordered to carry<br />
propaganda, discredit and skew news against Democrats, meld news and commentary and negatively<br />
caricature Mr Bush's presidential opponent, John Kerry, all under the network's slogans of ‘Fair and<br />
Balanced’, and ‘We <strong>Report</strong>, You Decide’.”[The Advertiser, Stan James, October 16, 2004]<br />
“When he decided to create his own U.S. radio and television network, Fox, he was confronted by an<br />
American law no broadcaster had ever circumvented, though many had tried. The law requires that no<br />
foreign entity may own more than 24.9 percent of a U.S. radio or television station. Murdoch changed<br />
his citizenship from Australian to United States, but that gesture was not enough. He still failed to<br />
comply with the broadcast law that requires the broadcaster's parent corporation to be based within the<br />
United States. Murdoch refused to move the company because he had special tax advantages in<br />
Australia. Instead, he used his new American power base of four newspapers and two magazines as<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 336
levers for his legendary political behind-the-scenes navigating to obtain special favors. It was a shock<br />
to other foreign firms, which had attempted but never succeeded in entering U.S. broadcasting, when<br />
Murdoch was granted the first waiver of that United States-only ownership law that had ever been<br />
granted. It still has never been granted to anyone else.”<br />
“While the media can’t avoid talking about the Abramoff Scandal, they can—and do—blow smoke<br />
and spread confusion and misinformation. A most popular example is the false claim that Democrats as<br />
well Republicans took money from Abramoff. In fact, Abramoff gave more than $127,000 to<br />
Republican candidates and committees between 2001 and 2004, and nothing to Democrats. Indeed,<br />
TV pundits themselves have closer ties to Abamoff. In March, 2003, Hollywood <strong>Report</strong>er online<br />
reported that “Fox News Channel’s Tony Snow is master of ceremonies, and Fox’s Brit Hume and<br />
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews are aboard” for an event whose “purpose is to raise about $300,000 for the<br />
Capital Athletic Foundation.” The Capital Athletic Foundation is one of Abramoff’s various slush<br />
fund fronts. Ostensibly devoted to “needy and deserving” sportsmanship programs, the Washington<br />
Post discovered that though it collected nearly $6 million in its first four years of operation, “less than<br />
one percent of its revenue has been spent on sports-related programs for youths.” The fundraiser was<br />
cancelled because of the invasion of Iraq. But the Beltway newsmen’s involvement raises serious<br />
questions about their objectivity and distance from the subject of scandal. No one is saying they are<br />
dirty. But neither can they be considered objective in reporting about a widespread scandal that they<br />
themselves have gotten entangled in, however innocently. And yet, they are among the leading voices<br />
telling America how to think about it.” [Abramoff Scandal Threatens GOP But Media Runs<br />
Interference, Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor, Harbor Independent News, January 2006]<br />
Clear Channel<br />
“Global radio giant Clear Channel recently reignited concerns about companies that control<br />
mainstream media and snuggle up to political parties, following its controversial sponsorship of prowar<br />
rallies in the US. The media group, which controls 1,225 radio stations across the US and is the<br />
world's largest radio empire, also attracted scathing criticism for dropping the Dixie Chicks from its<br />
network playlist after its lead singer publicly declared her opposition to the war.<br />
The company's founder, Lowry Mays, ensured the majority of the $503,910 donations made in 2001-<br />
02 landed in the Republican party's coffers. But his company's links with the Bush family run deeper.<br />
Media watchdog takebackthemedia.com this week published the elaborate web of connections that<br />
further align Clear Channel with the Bush family. Mays, who took advantage of radio deregulation<br />
and transformed Clear Channel into a global multimedia player, is associated with the president<br />
through the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO). Mays sits on the<br />
governing board, alongside Clear Channel vice-chairman Thomas Hicks, whose family is believed to<br />
have contributed over $500,000 to Bush campaigns over the years.<br />
Hicks, a long-time friend and supporter of President Bush, heads the UTIMCO board but his position<br />
was recently embroiled in controversy when it emerged he awarded UTIMCO-funded contracts to<br />
firms politically associated with the Bush dynasty.<br />
Hicks also bought the Texas Rangers baseball team from Bush for $250 million in 1998, three times<br />
the amount that Bush and his partners had originally paid.” [US media dig deep for politicians, Annie<br />
Lawson, Guardian, April 7, 2003]<br />
Bertelsmann<br />
The fifth largest Media Empire belongs to the Mohn family of Germany, which appears<br />
to maintain relative silence in American politics. However, a deep probe into the<br />
ownership suggests the significant but subtle influence of the Bush syndicate partners.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 337
“If one drives southwest from Hanover, Germany, and is careful to remain on Berliner Strasse for<br />
about 125 kilometers, one will come to Gutersloh, a pleasant town of sculptured tulip gardens, highspired<br />
churches, and tree-lined streams and lakes. It is a town of thirty-six thousand that lists as an<br />
honorary citizen, among others, Reinhard Mohn. This is the ancestral home of the Mohn family, who<br />
happen to own the privately owned firm of Bertelsmann A.G., the fifth largest media corporation in the<br />
United States and, among other things, the largest printer of English-language books in the world.<br />
…Like the other members of the Big Five that dominate the American media world, Bertelsmann's list<br />
of media companies is lengthy. It requires nine typed pages. Thirty percent of its holdings are in the<br />
United States, bringing from this source alone $63 billion annually.<br />
Most of Bertelsmanns eighty-two book subsidiaries were once freestanding, independent publishing<br />
houses, some of them household words not so many years ago Alfred Knopf, Pantheon, Random<br />
House, Ballantine, Bantam, Crown, Doubleday, and Modem Library. Its magazine groups include<br />
familiar names like Family Circle and Parents (joint ventures). The twenty different record labels<br />
issued by Bertelsmann include RCA, RCA Victor, and Windham Hill. Like others in the Big Five,<br />
Bertelsmann has shared enterprises with its "competitors," including a 50-50 ownership with Disney of<br />
a German TV operation, Super RTL.<br />
With all its power, Bertelsmann is haunted by a ghost....With the advent of Hitler and Nazism in the<br />
1930s and the aftermath horrors of the Holocaust in World War <strong>11</strong>, questions were asked how the<br />
company had emerged from the war ready to resume its growth around the world. To queries like<br />
"What did you do under Hitler?" the Bertelsmann official answer was, in effect, "We suffered for our<br />
anti-Nazism." Postwar records seemed to confirm this because in 1944 there was a temporary closure<br />
of the Bertelsmann plant in Gutersloh. But as postwar German archives became available, Gennan<br />
sociologist Hersch Fischler discovered that, during the war, Bertelsmann had, in fact, been the largest<br />
publisher under Hitler. Among its 19 million books, it had large contracts from the Nazi Propaganda<br />
Ministry, including anti-Semitic tracts supporting Hitler's insistence that Germans needed to take over<br />
central and western Europe. One book echoed Hitler's propaganda claim. Bertelsmann's anti-Semitic<br />
tracts were standard literature for Hitler's Brown Shirts.” [The New Media Monopoly, Ben Bagdikian,<br />
Beacon Press, 2004]<br />
While the Bertelsmann Media giant is owned mostly by the quiet Mohn family of<br />
Germany, they have cast their lot with a familiar global financial powerhouse: Group<br />
Bruxells Lambert, largely controlled by Andre Desmarais. The reader will recall that<br />
Desmarais was identified as a board member of Barrick Gold, along with George Bush<br />
Sr., Adnan Khashoggi, the Bronfmann family and a host of German/Swiss bank cartel<br />
members. Desmarais had himself placed on the Board of BertelsmannAG, suggesting<br />
another media company controlled by one of the extended Bush syndicate.<br />
“In February 2001, Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, one of Belgium’s top 10 companies and 25 percent<br />
owned by Power Corp., acquired control of BertelsmannAG. Andre Desmarais, President and Chief<br />
Executive Officer of Power Corp., was named to the BAG board.<br />
As it turns out, the publishing company controlled by Canada’s powerful Desmarais family has a less<br />
than honourary history. Indeed, during the days of the Third Reich, BertelsmannAG was the biggest<br />
publisher of Nazi texts, with production more prolific than the National Socialist Party’s own printing<br />
business. The Nazi chapter of BertelsmannAG began in 1933, but was only documented and disclosed<br />
by a historian Saul Friedlander in 1999.<br />
Bertelsmann published the nefarious, The Christmas Book for Hitler Youth.<br />
The publishing empire which employs some 80,000 workers in 51 countries, posted an overall cash<br />
flow of $18.3-billion in 2002.<br />
Originally run by the Heinrich Mohn family, the company donated money to the SS and to various<br />
ecology Save-the-Earth factions of the Nazi movement.” [Canada's global connections, Judi McLeod,<br />
Canadafreepress.com, December, 15, 2004.]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 338
Additionally, another Barrick Board member – Otto Pohl – is also a director of<br />
Bertelsmann.<br />
13.6 Final Steps in Ending a Free Press<br />
The Bush syndicate has figured out how to control the traditional press. The internet,<br />
however, remains free. This report is an example of how the Internet allows information<br />
to be shared that has been buried by a controlled press. Freedom, however, threatens this<br />
syndicate. Hence, in 2005, Representatives of the Bush syndicate went to court to try to<br />
limit political expression on the internet.<br />
“The Federal Election <strong>Commission</strong> (FEC) is currently under court order to consider extending<br />
regulation and restriction of political speech outlined by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002<br />
(BCRA, also known as McCain-Feingold). The court order was the result of a lawsuit filed by<br />
advocates of regulated speech, including the architects of BCRA, Sens. John McCain and Russ<br />
Feingold. Users of the Internet, such as online publications and blogs, so far have enjoyed a broad<br />
exemption from the speech restrictions favored by reformers. But the court-ordered rule-making by the<br />
FEC could change that…..<br />
FEC <strong>Commission</strong>er Brad Smith: I think because anything they can't control scares them. And I think<br />
that as they are zealots, they are perpetually afraid somebody, somewhere is going to spend some<br />
money to influence politics and they think that that is a bad thing. They don't say that, of course. They<br />
say they are still very concerned about First Amendment rights and citizens participating in politics<br />
and so on. But if you are really looking at what their record is, if you look at what they do, if you look<br />
at what they testify before the commission about, what they are afraid of is that people would be<br />
participating in politics and in ways that they cannot control. So while there is no demonstrative threat<br />
yet, it's just a possibility that this could be a threat that has led them to swing into action.” [An End To<br />
'Everybody's Press? Nick Schulz, www.techcentralstation.com, June 13, 2005]<br />
Summary<br />
The current methods ofterror, propaganda and media control all suggest that the country<br />
is being controlled by something other than the democratic process. If one adds to that a<br />
massive amount of research that indicates last two presidential elections were tampered<br />
with in the polls of numerous states, the path the U.S. is being steered to take is a dark<br />
one indeed. The next section of this report suggests that the Bush administration and the<br />
Neoconservative movement it uses as its front are really more like a totalitarian<br />
movement, than a party in the democratic process.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 339
Parent<br />
Networks<br />
Cable Interests<br />
General<br />
Electric<br />
$100.5 billion<br />
NBC includes<br />
programming,<br />
news and more<br />
than 13 TV and<br />
radio stations<br />
Owns 25-50% of<br />
the following:A<br />
& E (with Disney<br />
and Hearst)<br />
American Movie<br />
Classics (25%)<br />
Biography<br />
Channel (with<br />
Disney and<br />
Hearst) Bravo<br />
(50%) Bravo<br />
International<br />
CNBC Court TV<br />
(with Time<br />
Warner) Fox<br />
Sports Net<br />
History Channel<br />
(with Disney and<br />
Hearst)<br />
Independent Film<br />
Channel MSG<br />
Network MSNBC<br />
(50%) National<br />
Geographic<br />
Worldwide News<br />
Sport Prime<br />
Prism (with<br />
Rainbow, a<br />
subsidiary of<br />
Cablevision, and<br />
Liberty Media, a<br />
subsidiary of<br />
TCI) Romance<br />
Classics Sports<br />
Channel<br />
Time<br />
Warner<br />
$26.8 billion<br />
TURNER<br />
BROAD-<br />
CASTING<br />
includes sports<br />
teams,<br />
programming,<br />
production,<br />
retail, book<br />
publishing and<br />
multimedia<br />
WB Television<br />
Network<br />
HBO (75%)<br />
Cinemax HBO<br />
Direct Broadcast<br />
Court TV (33%<br />
with GE) TBS<br />
Superstation<br />
Turner Classic<br />
Movies TNT<br />
Cartoon Network<br />
Comedy Central<br />
(37.5% with<br />
Viacom) Sega<br />
Channel<br />
OVATION<br />
(50%) Women's<br />
Information<br />
Television<br />
(WIN) (partial)<br />
TVKO (75%) 4<br />
regional all-news<br />
channels CNN<br />
CNN/SI (with<br />
Sports<br />
Illustrated)<br />
CNNfn (financial<br />
network)<br />
CNNRadio<br />
Headline News<br />
Sportsouth CNN<br />
International<br />
CNN Airport<br />
Network<br />
Who Owns the Media<br />
The Walt<br />
Disney Co.<br />
$23 billion<br />
ABC includes<br />
ABC Radio,<br />
ABC Video and<br />
ABC Network<br />
News<br />
Disney Channel<br />
Disney<br />
Television (58<br />
hours/week<br />
syndicated<br />
programming)<br />
Toon Disney<br />
Touchstone<br />
Television A&E<br />
(37.5% with<br />
Hearst and GE)<br />
Lifetime Network<br />
(50%) ESPN<br />
(80% with<br />
Hearst) ESPN2<br />
(80% with<br />
Hearst) ESPN<br />
Classic (80%<br />
with Hearst)<br />
ESPN West (80%<br />
with Hearst)<br />
ESPNews (80%<br />
with Hearst)<br />
Buena Vista<br />
Television<br />
Biography<br />
Channel (with<br />
GE and Hearst)<br />
History Channel<br />
(37.5% with<br />
Hearst and GE)<br />
Classic Sports<br />
Network E!<br />
(35%)<br />
Viacom<br />
$18.9 billion<br />
CBS includes<br />
stations, CBS<br />
Radio, CBS<br />
Telenoticias and<br />
CBS Network<br />
News<br />
UPN includes<br />
programming<br />
and TV stations<br />
(50%)<br />
Nickelodeon<br />
MTV M2:<br />
Music<br />
Television VH1<br />
Showtime Nick<br />
at Nite's<br />
TVLand<br />
Paramount<br />
Networks<br />
Comedy Central<br />
(50% with Time<br />
Warner) TNN:<br />
The Nashville<br />
Network Movie<br />
Channel FLIX<br />
All News<br />
Channel (50%)<br />
Sundance<br />
Channel (45%)<br />
Midwest Sports<br />
Channel CBS<br />
Telenoticias<br />
(30%) Home<br />
Team Sports<br />
(66% with News<br />
Corporation)<br />
News<br />
Corporation<br />
$13 billion<br />
FOX includes<br />
programming<br />
and stations<br />
Fox Family<br />
Channel (50%)<br />
Fox News<br />
Channel fx<br />
(50% with TCI's<br />
Liberty Media)<br />
fxM (50% with<br />
TCI's Liberty<br />
Media) Fox<br />
Sports Net (25%<br />
with TCI, GE<br />
and Cablevision)<br />
The National<br />
Geographic<br />
Channel (50%)<br />
FIT TV<br />
Partnership<br />
Regional<br />
networks,<br />
including TV<br />
Guide Channel<br />
and Fox Sports<br />
New York<br />
Other Major Players:<br />
AT&T (TCI) - Recently acquired by AT&T, TCI's hold on cable, internet and local phone services contributed to $7.6 billion in 1997<br />
revenues. TCI is the second-largest US cable television system provider, and it has 10% ownership of Time-Warner/Turner. The<br />
company owns all or part of USA Network, Sci-Fi Network, E!, Court TV, Starz! and Starz! 2, Black Entertainment Television, BET<br />
on Jazz, BET Movies/Starz! 3, CNN, TNT, Headline News, Prime Sports Channel, The Learning Channel, Discovery Channel, QVC,<br />
Q2, Fox Sports Net, The Travel Channel, Prevue Channel, Animal Planet, The Box, Telemundo, International Channel, Encore, MSG<br />
Network, Action Pay-per-view, and the Home Shopping Network.<br />
Sony - Sony's main media interests, earning $9 billion in 1997 sales, are in film and television production, movie theaters and music.<br />
Universal (Seagram) - In addition to Universal Studios, with its production facilities and theme parks, the company owns the USA<br />
and Sci-Fi cable networks.<br />
Source: Who Controls the Media? Professor John Lye - Last Updated (Friday, 08 October 2004), also National Organization of<br />
Women<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 340
14<br />
Policy and Philosophy: Democracy and Patriotism as Coverups<br />
for Terror and Greed<br />
The political movement founded by George H.W. Bush has a history of being tainted by<br />
allegations of criminal misconduct, most of which has never been proven in a court of<br />
law. Voters are often reminded that the allegations around Iran-Contra, cocaine dealings,<br />
savings and loan frauds, bank fraud and money laundering, and violations of the U.S.<br />
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act have never been proven in court of law. Voters are never<br />
reminded that investigations into these crimes have been stopped or corrupted; witnesses<br />
have been bribed, intimidated and murdered, and evidence has been suppressed under the<br />
guise of ‘national security.’ If the record was one such that there had been only one<br />
whispered allegation or possibly two – there might be a reasonable position in giving the<br />
accused the benefit of the doubt, which the U.S. legal system does. However, over the<br />
past twenty years, those individuals intimately linked to the Bush family success have<br />
been accused over-and-over again of felony crimes, only to escape prosecution and<br />
punishment because of the Bush apparatus political influence. Their public accusers have<br />
been slandered, ruined, imprisoned and murdered. The news of these crimes is selectively<br />
ignored under the guidance of a few media oligarchs who are indebted to - and in fear of -<br />
the Bush machine.<br />
In so many ways, the alleged crimes and behavior patterns of the Bush family are such as<br />
to suggest they trumpet the coming of a new totalitarian order – the “new world order”<br />
first mentioned in a speech to Congress by George H.W. Bush on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 1991.<br />
The movement, however, began much earlier, in 1975, when Bush came to power as CIA<br />
Director under President Gerald Ford. It was at that time that his future war cabinet<br />
“eviscerated” Kissinger’s policies of détente and balance of power, and by eliminating<br />
Kissinger, sought to take the United States down a path of global domination by<br />
eliminating the policy of “balance” of power.<br />
“The report, delivered at the end of 1976, presented an analysis of Soviet motivations profoundly<br />
different from the one U.S. intelligence had been offering. The team (appointed by Bush, including<br />
Wolfowitz) concluded it was possible to interpret the available intelligence data as showing that the<br />
Soviet Union was striving for military superiority over the United States and that it viewed détente as a<br />
means of achieving that goal. “All evidence points to an undeviating Soviet Commitment to what is<br />
euphemistically called the “worldwide triumph of socialism,’ but in fact connotes global Soviet<br />
hegemony” the report said. It criticized the CIA for relying too much on satellites and other<br />
technology and for failing to give enough weight to what the Soviet leaders were saying.” …The<br />
evisceration of Henry Kissinger and détente represented a turning point for America’s relations with<br />
the world….Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz all played key roles in these changes…”.[Rise of the<br />
Vulcans- The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, James Mann, Penguin, 2004, p74.]<br />
The new policy which strives for world hegemony was founded in the thinking of the<br />
Bush advisors who would later proclaim themselves the “Vulcans” in the late 1980s<br />
(after the Roman god of fire and volcanoes, maker of iron, arms and armor), and later<br />
became leaders of the Neoconservative movement of the late 1990s. Their policy of<br />
world domination, initially expressed in 1976, is reported by numerous resources, to be<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 341
encompassed in such phrases as “global hegemony,” “permanent superiority,” and<br />
“perpetual war.”<br />
“Already in 1992, toward the end of the first Bush White House, then Undersecretary of Defense<br />
Wolfowitz and Secretary of Defense Cheney came up with a bold new plan to rethink U.S. military<br />
policy, which was circulated in the top-secret Defense Policy Guidance report. So disturbing was this<br />
report that a Pentagon official, who believed this strategy debate should be carried out in the public<br />
domain, leaked it. Indeed, it was described by some as nothing less than a plan for the U.S. to “rule<br />
the world,” without acting through the U.N. and by using pre-emptive attacks on potential threats<br />
(Armstrong Armstrong, David 2002 “Dick Cheney’s Song of America: Drafting a Plan for Global<br />
Dominance.” Harper’s (October): 76-83; Johnson, Chalmers 2004 The Sorrows of Empire:<br />
Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 20-25). …<br />
Although this plan was quickly rejected after its leak, it resurfaced in a new form in 1997, with the<br />
founding of the Project for a New American Century by Irving Kristol’s son, William. As William<br />
Kristol and Robert Kagan had already argued in Foreign Affairs in 1996, America now has an<br />
opportunity to exercise a “benevolent hegemony” over the world while promoting democracy and free<br />
markets – an opportunity it would be foolish to let slip away.” (“Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign<br />
Policy.” William Kristol and Robert Kagan ,Foreign Affairs July/August 1996)<br />
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19960701faessay4210/william-kristol-robert- kagan/toward-a-neoreaganite-foreign-policy.html).<br />
[America, Left Behind: Bush, the Neoconservatives, and Evangelical<br />
Christian Fiction, Hugh B. Urban, Journal of Religion & Society, Volume 8 (2006), ISSN 1522-5658 ]<br />
“Inside the Pentagon, Wolfowitz had delegated the job of coming up with the new Defense Planning<br />
Guidance to (Scooter) Libby, his protégé and top assistant …. Libby in turn, assigned the task of<br />
writing the new strategy to (Zalmay) Khalilzad…. Khalilzad’s draft suggested that the competition<br />
with Japan and Germany should be confined to economics; the United States should make sure it had<br />
no military rivals…. Libby wanted to shift the emphasis subtly. The point shouldn’t be to block rival<br />
powers, but rather for the United States to become so militarily strong, so overwhelmingly that no<br />
country would dream of ever becoming a rival. America should build up its military lead to such an<br />
extent that other countries would be dissuaded from even starting to compete with the United States.<br />
The costs would be too high….Thus the United States would be the world’s lone superpower not just<br />
today or ten years from now but permanently….This Pentagon strategy for permanent American<br />
military superiority was issued under Cheney’s name, and Cheney played the key role in making the<br />
document public.” [Rise of the Vulcans - The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, James Mann, Penguin,<br />
2004, pp209-213.]<br />
“Against the looming threat of peace and prosperity, Dick Cheney assured that in the words of Gore<br />
Vidal, the decades to come would be defined by “perpetual war.” Cheney was as fervently anti-<br />
Communist as the next right-winger, but when the Communist-led governments ceased to pose even<br />
the slightest challenge to the United States or its allies, the secretary of defense jettisoned the rationale<br />
for the cold war while maintaining the form and substance of the struggle.” [The Rise and Rise of<br />
Richard B. Cheney, John Nichols, The New Press, 2004, p104.]<br />
The Neoconservative movement however was more than an expression of government<br />
policy. It became - it evolved into - an ideology of faith, as shown by its advocates.<br />
“As Halper and Clarke suggest, [The Faith Factor, Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, Time, June 21,<br />
2004, p.30] the Neoconservative persuasion can perhaps best be characterized by three features: first,<br />
“a belief deriving from religious conviction that the human condition is defined as a choice between<br />
good and evil and that the true measure of political character is found in the willingness by the former<br />
to confront the latter;” second, “an assertion that the fundamental determinant of the relationship<br />
between states rests on military power and the willingness to use it….” [America, Left Behind: Bush,<br />
the Neoconservatives, and Evangelical Christian Fiction, Hugh B. Urban, Journal of Religion &<br />
Society, Volume 8 (2006), ISSN 1522-5658 ]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 342
“As Kristol argues, strong religious faith and a belief in the transcendent basis of moral law is crucial<br />
to the health of the country and the strength of the economy: “The three pillars of modern conservatism<br />
are religion, nationalism, and economic growth. Of these, religion is easily the most important,<br />
because it is the only power that . . . can shape people’s characters and regulate their motivation”.<br />
The loss of a strong moral and religious compass, in turn, has led to the intense crisis that modern<br />
liberal America faces, which he described as a “steady decline in our democratic values, sinking to<br />
new levels of vulgarity.” [America, Left Behind : Bush, the Neoconservatives, and Evangelical<br />
Christian Fiction, Hugh B. Urban, Journal of Religion & Society, Volume 8 (2006), ISSN 1522-5658 ]<br />
The Neoconservative movement as expressed by its apostles, promised the fulfillment of<br />
a “Utopian” vision with apocalyptic connotations – the ultimate, Utopian destiny of<br />
human kind.<br />
“…the Neoconservative “persuasion” has attracted a wide range of powerful figures, from Bush<br />
cabinet members like Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney, to intellectuals like Franci<br />
Fukuyama. Indeed, one of the most important texts for Neoconservative ideology is Fukuyama’s<br />
widely-read work, The End of History and the Last Man, which posits that American government and<br />
free market capitalism represent the final stage of human development with few flaws (cf. Burbach and<br />
Tarbell: 83).” [America, Left Behind: Bush, the Neoconservatives, and Evangelical Christian Fiction,<br />
Hugh B. Urban, Journal of Religion & Society, Volume 8 (2006), ISSN 1522-5658 ]<br />
Clearly, the Neoconservative movement was and is more than expression of guidance for<br />
American foreign policy. William Kristol and Michael Ledeen, as the Nietschean<br />
Zarathustras of the Neoconservative movement, both advocate a disdain for all that has<br />
preceded them with the proclamation that “history begins today” and that the future of<br />
humanity is best determined by the global hegemony of their interpretation of “good<br />
versus evil” based on their Judaeo-Christian Old Testament culture. Their interpretation<br />
of what that culture demands is one that rationalizes a conscious choice and the practice<br />
of evil, hatred, suffering, and arrogance in pursuit of their “Utopian vision.” The<br />
philosophical rationalization of evil and hatred has resulted in a US foreign policy which<br />
blatantly deploys unjustified war, murder, rape, torture, theft, fraud, lying, forgery and<br />
bribery under the immunity of patriotism and national security and under the façade of<br />
promoting democracy.<br />
The Vulcan/Neoconservative ideology of world hegemony can be interpreted as<br />
‘patriotic’ or impassioned love of country – but it is also a reflection of a deeper,<br />
unnerving psyche. That psyche is best described by Hannah Arendt, whose classic study<br />
of German and Russian totalitarianism provides insight to the many similarities between<br />
the Neoconservative movement and those movements that gave birth to the totalitarian<br />
phenomenon.<br />
“The struggle for total domination of the total population of the earth… is inherent in the totalitarian<br />
regimes themselves…Totalitarianism in power uses the state administration for its long-range goal of<br />
world conquest and for the direction of the branches of the movement; it establishes the secret police<br />
as the executors and guardians of its domestic experiment in constantly transforming reality into<br />
fiction; and it finally erects concentration camps as special laboratories to carry through its experiment<br />
in total domination.” [The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, Harvest Book, 1968, pp. 392]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 343
“To be sure, totalitarian dictators do not consciously embark upon the road to insanity….they consider<br />
the country where they happened to seize power only the temporary headquarters of the international<br />
movement on the road to conquest, that they reckon victories and defeats in terms of centuries or<br />
millennia , and that global interests always overrule the local interests of their own territory.” [The<br />
Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, Harvest Book, 1968, p4<strong>11</strong>.]<br />
The Weltanschauung and ideology of the Neoconservative movement is not inherently<br />
totalitarian, and a desire for global domination does not automatically qualify the<br />
movement as Totalitarian. Unfortunately, it is but one of many characteristics that the<br />
Neoconservative movement has in common with the horrors of the mid-Twentieth<br />
Century dictators now known as Totalitarian. If one highlights the characteristics of<br />
‘Totalitarian” regimes, the parallels between those abominations and the neoconservative<br />
movement become clear. Here are nine more similarities between Bush’ Neoconservative<br />
cabal, and the totalitarian regimes of Germany and the Soviet Union.<br />
1. The movement considers itself above the law.<br />
“…the fundamental difference between the totalitarian and all other concepts of law comes to light.<br />
Totalitarian policy does not replace one set of laws with another, does not establish its own consensus<br />
iuris, does not create by one revolution, a new form of legality. Its defiance of all, even its own<br />
positive laws implies that it believes it can do without any consensus iuris whatever, and still not<br />
resign itself to the tyrannical state of lawlessness, arbitrariness and fear.” [The Origins of<br />
Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, Harvest Book, 1968, p462.]<br />
Time and again, in protecting his business partners from criminal investigation and<br />
pardoning them from crimes against the state, Bush has maintained that patriotism is<br />
more important than the law, and that he as President, was above it.<br />
‘President Bush December 24 granted pardons to former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and<br />
five other individuals for their conduct related to the Iran-Contra affair.<br />
Bush said Weinberger -- who had been scheduled to go on trial in Washington January 5 on charges<br />
related to Iran-Contra -- was a "true American patriot," who had served with "distinction" in a series of<br />
public positions since the late 1960s.<br />
"I am pardoning him not just out of compassion or to spare a 75-year-old patriot the torment of lengthy<br />
and costly legal proceedings, but to make it possible for him to receive the honor he deserves for his<br />
extraordinary service to our country," Bush said in a proclamation granting executive clemency.<br />
The president also pardoned five other persons who already had pleaded guilty or had been indicted or<br />
convicted in connection with the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages investigation. They were Elliott<br />
Abrams, a former assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs; former National Security<br />
Adviser Robert McFarlane; and Duane Clarridge, Alan Fiers, and Clair George, all former employees<br />
of the Central Intelligence Agency.<br />
Explaining those pardons, Bush said the "common denominator of their motivation -- whether their<br />
actions were right or wrong -- was patriotism." [Bush Pardons Weinberger, Five Others Ties to Iran-<br />
Contra, Dian McDonald; USIA White House Correspondent Washington, December 24, 1992]<br />
Similarly, his son George W. Bush, has taken this interpretation of the law to a new level,<br />
creating for himself interpretations of the law that allow him to suspend any law, in<br />
secret, at his discretion.<br />
‘When the New York Times revealed that George W. Bush had ordered the National Security Agency<br />
to wiretap the foreign calls of American citizens without seeking court permission, as is indisputably<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 344
equired by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by Congress in 1978, he faced a<br />
decision. Would he deny the practice, or would he admit it? He admitted it. But instead of expressing<br />
regret, he took full ownership of the deed, stating that his order had been entirely justified, that he had<br />
in fact renewed it thirty times, that he would continue to renew it and--going even more boldly on the<br />
offensive--that those who had made his law-breaking known had committed a "shameful act." As<br />
justification, he offered two arguments, one derisory, the other deeply alarming. The derisory one was<br />
that Congress, by authorizing him to use force after <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, had authorized him to suspend<br />
FISA, although that law is unmentioned in the resolution. Thus has Bush informed the members of a<br />
supposedly co-equal branch of government of what, unbeknownst to themselves, they were thinking<br />
when they cast their vote. The alarming argument is that as Commander in Chief he possesses<br />
"inherent" authority to suspend laws in wartime. But if he can suspend FISA at his whim and in secret,<br />
then what law can he not suspend? What need is there, for example, to pass or not pass the Patriot Act<br />
if any or all of its provisions can be secretly exceeded by the President?<br />
Bush's choice marks a watershed in the evolution of his Administration….<br />
The Administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of<br />
one in embryonic form. Until recently, these were developing and growing in the twilight world of<br />
secrecy. Even within the executive branch itself, Bush seemed to govern outside the normally<br />
constituted channels of the Cabinet and to rely on what Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff<br />
has called a "cabal." Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported the same thing. Cabinet<br />
meetings were for show. Real decisions were made elsewhere, out of sight. Another White House<br />
official, John DiIulio, has commented that there was "a complete lack of a policy apparatus" in the<br />
White House. "What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm."<br />
As in many Communist states, a highly centralized party, in this case the Republican Party, was<br />
beginning to forge a parallel apparatus at the heart of government, a semi-hidden state-within-a-state,<br />
by which the real decisions were made.’ [The Hidden State Steps Forward, Jonathan Schell, The<br />
Nation, December 22, 2005]<br />
“… in the United States, this president (George HW Bush ) and Congress seem hell bent on defying<br />
the popular will. The American people, in poll after poll and survey after survey, are revealed to be<br />
opposed to the direction of the war in Iraq, illegal immigration, amnesty, a guest-worker program, the<br />
outsourcing of jobs and certainly the outsourcing of our security. It has become increasingly clear over<br />
the last several years that the least represented constituency in either Congress or the White House is<br />
the middle class, working men and women who are the foundation of our country.” [Dobbs: President,<br />
Congress Defying People's Will, Lou Dobbs, CNN, March 31, 2006]<br />
“I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being president. Maybe<br />
somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an<br />
explanation.” George Bush Jr. [Michael C Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, p. 480.]<br />
2. The movement is founded on terror.<br />
‘Terror becomes total when it becomes independent of all opposition; it rules supreme when nobody<br />
any longer stands in its way. If lawfulness is the essence of non-tyrannical government and lawlessness<br />
is the essence of tyranny, then terror is the essence of totalitarian domination.’ [The Origins of<br />
Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, Harvest Book, 1968, p.464.]<br />
The Neoconservative movement, under the Bush family, has engaged in total terror,<br />
including murder, conspiracy with organized crime, drug-running, torture, secret camps.<br />
‘He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the<br />
word. He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without<br />
any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign<br />
countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured. In rationalizing these and other<br />
acts, his officials have laid claim to the unlimited, uncheckable and unreviewable powers he has<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 345
asserted in the wiretapping case. He has tried to drop a thick shroud of secrecy over these and other<br />
actions.’ [The Hidden State Steps Forward, Jonathan Schell, The Nation, December 22, 2005]<br />
3. The success of the movement is founded on apathy in the voting populace.<br />
‘Totalitarian movements are possible wherever there are masses who for one reason or another<br />
have acquired the appetitive for political organization. Masses are not held together by a<br />
consciousness of common interest and they lack that specific class articulateness which is<br />
expressed in determined, limited, and obtainable goals. The term masses applies only where we<br />
deal with people who either because of their sheer numbers, or indifference, or a combination of<br />
both, cannot be integrated into any organization based on common interest, into political parties or<br />
municipal governments or professional organizations or trade unions. Potentially, they exist in<br />
every country and form the majority of those large numbers of neutral, politically indifferent<br />
people who never join a party and hardly ever go to the polls.’ [The Origins of Totalitarianism,<br />
Hannah Arendt, Harvest Book, 1968]<br />
4. The movement is funded not so much by the willing populace, but rather by stealing<br />
the resources of subjugated territories<br />
“Like a foreign conqueror, the totalitarian dictator regards the natural and industrial riches of each<br />
country, including his own, as a source of loot and a means of preparing the next step of<br />
aggressive expansion. Since this economy of systematic spoliation is carried out for the sake of<br />
the movement and not of the nation, no people and no territory, as the potential beneficiary, can<br />
possible set a saturation point to the process. The totalitarian dictator is like a foreign conqueror<br />
who comes from nowhere, and his looting is likely to benefit nobody.” [The Origins of<br />
Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, Harvest Book, 1968, p. 417]<br />
The Bush movement has been propelled into history by “dark ops” across the globe,<br />
funded by the initial theft of the World War II Asian treasuries recovered by<br />
Ferdinand Marcos, and subsidized by criminal profits from weapons for drugs for<br />
cash. The involvement of the Bush apparatus in facilitating this trade between crime<br />
organizations, terrorist organizations and mainstream political parties is seen in<br />
Vietnam, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Albania, Columbia, Nicaragua, to mention the<br />
obvious examples. Using these funds, they have destabilized these same areas for the<br />
sake of controlling oil, while their Russian/Israeli Mafiya partners reap the gold and<br />
diamond mineral wealth.<br />
5. The movement began with a benign front.<br />
“The world…usually gets its first glimpse of a totalitarian movement through its front<br />
organizations. The sympathizers, who are to all appearance still innocuous fellow-citizens in a<br />
non-totalitarian society, can hardly be called single minded fanatics; through them, the movements<br />
make their fantastic lies more generally acceptable, can spread their propaganda in milder, more<br />
respectable forms….” [The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, Harvest Book, 1968] (367)<br />
For Americans, the first glimpses of this new movement came from the “Project for a<br />
New American Century” and “American Enterprise Institute.” These are the public<br />
fronts. The non-public, secretive fronts are not so obvious, and are described under<br />
Arendt’s totalitarian characteristic – new levels of secrecy.<br />
6. The movement defines new levels of militancy and secrecy.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 346
“Another advantage of the totalitarian pattern is that it can be repeated indefinitely and keeps the<br />
organization in a state of fluidity which permits it constantly to insert new layers, and define new<br />
degrees of militancy.” [The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, Harvest Book, 1968] 368<br />
“Real power begins where secrecy begins.” [The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt,<br />
Harvest Book, 1968] 403<br />
For Arendt, militancy and secrecy were state or party sponsored. In this report, the<br />
evidence has shown the emergence and use of private military armies by the Bush<br />
administration and business partners in pursuit of their goals, as aligned through their<br />
party allegiances. Such organizations have names which hide the fact that their sole<br />
business is selling war and murder, packaged as “security.”<br />
• Diligence<br />
• FarWest<br />
• CACI<br />
• Strategic Consulting Group<br />
• Titan Inc.<br />
• Stratesec<br />
There is however another layer of militancy, where organizations are fronts for illegal<br />
intelligence operations, free of Congressional or Parliamentary oversight. These are<br />
organizations where public leaders can deploy stolen public treasuries for the<br />
purposes of advancing their personal business interests. They come under such<br />
innocent names as<br />
• International Republican Institute (not affiliated with the Republican Party)<br />
• World Vision<br />
• Wings of Democracy<br />
• US-Azerbaijani Chamber of Commerce<br />
• Office of Special Plans<br />
• Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung<br />
• Azerbaijan International Operating Company<br />
• American Commonwealth University<br />
These organization and corporations are only a few of the “fronts” deployed by this<br />
movement’s members.<br />
7. It is a movement that masks its realities with lies.<br />
“A mixture of gullibility and cynicism is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements, and the<br />
higher the rank, the more cynicism weighs down gullibility. The essential conviction shared by all<br />
ranks, from fellow-traveler to leader, is that politics is a game of cheating and that the first<br />
commandment of the movement: “The Fuehrer is always right,” is as necessary for the purpose of<br />
world politics, i.e.., world-wide cheating, as the rules of military discipline are for the purpose of war<br />
….<br />
The result of this system is that the gullibility of sympathizers makes lies credible to the outside world,<br />
while at the same time the graduated cynicism of membership and elite formation eliminates the<br />
danger that the leader will ever be forced by the weight of his own propaganda to make good his own<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 347
statements and feigned respectability. It has been one of the chief handicaps of the outside world in<br />
dealing with totalitarian systems that it ignored this system and therefore trusted that on one hand, the<br />
very enormity of totalitarian lies would be their undoing and that, on the other, it would be possible to<br />
take the Leader at his word and force him, regardless of his original intentions, to make it good. The<br />
totalitarian system, unfortunately, is foolproof against such normal consequences; its ingeniousness<br />
rests precisely on the elimination of the reality which either unmasks the liar or forces him to live up to<br />
his pretense.” [The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, Harvest Book, 1968, p.384.]<br />
In their proclaimed battle of good versus evil, Neoconservatives claim – as did Hitler<br />
and Stalin –that they stand for democracy and patriotism, and all the goodness those<br />
conditions bring. What they leave behind in the Philippines, Albania, Chechnya,<br />
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Angola, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq and other places is a<br />
new tyranny, the only difference is that the new tyrannies pay tribute to the “new<br />
world order:” the friends and corporations aligned with the Neoconservative<br />
movement and Bush family. What they leave behind in the U.S. is equally tragic.<br />
Their ‘patriotic’ contribution to the nation is found in the subtle theft of untold<br />
hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars via<br />
• Treasury backed loans from The World Bank, the IMF, and the Inter-American<br />
Development Bank, which end up in Swiss an other off-shore accounts;<br />
• A fee on all cash transactions of the U.S. Treasury. In their outsourcing of the<br />
various federal functions, every dollar going into and out of the Treasury would<br />
flow through the Riggs Bank, in Washington D.C., of which Jonathon Bush is a<br />
Director, and former Vice Chairman and Director J. Carter Beese became a<br />
founder of the Carlyle Group and an SEC <strong>Commission</strong>er. When attention was<br />
focused on the Bank for its unwillingness to clamp down on illegal moneylaundering,<br />
the bank changed its name.<br />
• Secret, uncompetitive bid contracts for hundreds of billions of dollars that<br />
produce no substantial value, and where even the results of government audits<br />
which report fraud are disregarded.<br />
8. It is a movement that finds alliances with organized crime, brutal warlords, and drugrunners.<br />
“…there is no doubt that the elite and the mob notwithstanding, there is no doubt that the elite was<br />
pleased whenever the underworld frightened respectable society into accepting it on an equal footing.<br />
The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price, the destruction of civilization, for the<br />
fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced their way in. They were<br />
not particularly outraged at the monstrous forgeries in historiography of which all totalitarian regimes<br />
are guilty and which announce themselves clearly enough in totalitarian propaganda.” [The Origins of<br />
Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, Harvest Book, 1968, p 332.]<br />
Is there a better example of this than the Board of Diligence, with all its connection to the<br />
Neoconservative movement, dealing on a regular basis with a front for the Chechen<br />
Mafiya and other mercenaries, whose targets are children and sleeping families?<br />
9. It is a movement that openly admits that intolerance, evil and hatred are acceptable<br />
behaviors.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 348
“Leo Strauss is one of the icons of the modern conservative movement. His influence today is<br />
particularly strong among conservatives working on issues of public policy, including foreign<br />
affairs. His intellectual heirs include William Kristol…William Bennet, Fukyama and Harvey<br />
Mansfield, as well as quite a few officials in the Pentagon and National Security<br />
community….One core idea in Strauss’s work was a denunciation of the spirit of moral<br />
tolerance….[Rise of the Vulcans- The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, James Mann, Penguin,<br />
2004, p26.]<br />
“The defense of the country is one of those extreme situation in which a leader is justified in<br />
committing evil.” [Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, Michael Ledeen, 2000, pp <strong>11</strong>7]<br />
“…in order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to ‘enter into evil.’ ”<br />
[Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, Michael Ledeen, 2000, pp 90]<br />
There should be no ambiguity as to what the Neoconservative/Bush movement<br />
represents.<br />
10. It is an organization that openly justifies the murder of innocent civilians to promote<br />
their personal definitions of public policy<br />
According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new<br />
organization — the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" — will carry out secret<br />
missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into<br />
committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.<br />
In other words — and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the<br />
intention of Rumsfeld's plan — the United States government is planning to use "cover and<br />
deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent<br />
people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other<br />
members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of<br />
innocent people — your family, your friends, your lovers, you — in order to further their<br />
geopolitical ambitions. [Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Provoke Terrorist Attacks, Chris<br />
Floyd, CounterPunch, November 1, 2002]<br />
These were the people that had no difficulty in ordering the deaths of thousands of<br />
innocents on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 349
15<br />
Epilogue<br />
The murder of Nick Berg by Mossad agents posing as Muslim terrorists was meant to<br />
accomplish three goals:<br />
• Eliminate any potential smoking gun which could implicate rogue Mossad agents and<br />
their employers in the bombing of the World Trade Center;<br />
• Send a message to the US intelligence world, that “trespassing” on their turf was still<br />
punishable by death. Just as the Israelis deliberately murdered 34 U.S. sailors on the<br />
USS Liberty in 1967 for conducting surveillance on Israel, so did they murder Nick<br />
Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley; and<br />
• Continue the pretense that Muslim terrorists are a threat to American citizens, so as to<br />
encourage the American public to support the Israeli ambition in the Middle East and<br />
support US assaults on Iraq and Iran.<br />
In trying to understand why the primary intelligence agency of a supposed U.S. ally<br />
would help destroy the World Trade Center, and try to assassinate President Bush, darker<br />
secrets were uncovered. It appears that contrary to what the U.S. Government (under the<br />
guidance of George W. Bush) has convinced the public, Muslim terrorists did attack the<br />
World Trade Center, but not for the purpose of jihad. These Muslim terrorists most likely<br />
were contract operatives working under the guidance of the Mossad and rogue U.S.<br />
intelligence operatives. Their objective was to bring to an end numerous U.S.<br />
investigations into secret Swiss bank accounts and Deutschebank transactions which<br />
would have exposed numerous criminal activities by the Russian Mafiya and the George<br />
HW Bush Sr. intelligence operations going back as far as 1991. Those investigations<br />
would have exposed:<br />
• illegal theft of national treasuries of Russia and the Philippines;<br />
• the use of heroin sales proceeds to fund covert intelligence operations in Central Asia<br />
(mostly in Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Georgia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, etc.);<br />
• illegal bribes to various Central Asian oligarchs from major corporate financial<br />
contributors to the Bush campaigns, as well as directly from George Bush Sr.; and<br />
• illegal gold and money laundering operations; and<br />
• Fraudulent Brady Bonds issued to Russian criminal oligarchs.<br />
These are the types of illegal activities that Sibel Edmonds identified as having been<br />
covered-up by a “National Security” block and Attorney General gag order imposed on<br />
her, and the activities independently confirmed by research of intelligence leaked to the<br />
public domain. Like the Iran Contra scandal of the 1980’s, George Bush Sr. used a wide<br />
array of illegal activities to fund intelligence operations for a foreign policy he deemed<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 350
appropriate, and decided to pursue without Congressional confirmation, and in violation<br />
of the law. That foreign policy translated into illegal activities to take over the Central<br />
Asian and Russian oil and gas fields of the former Soviet Union through use of privately<br />
funded armies and financial fraud – just as he had illegally funded covert activities to<br />
promote foreign policy in Iran and Nicaragua. Illegal activities also included his payoffs<br />
to Russian oligarchs with 10 year Brady Bonds to ensure the collapse of the former<br />
Soviet Union. However much one may agree with those ‘foreign policy’ objectives, the<br />
activities undertaken at Bush’s order were illegal, and ultimately needed to be covered-up<br />
by the destruction of the World Trade Center, and the senseless murder of thousands of<br />
innocents.<br />
All of these illegal activities were threatened with exposure by various investigations in<br />
to Swiss accounts by U.S. federal agencies, and possibly the New York State Tax<br />
department. The accounts that were attracting the most investigative evidence were the<br />
Khashoggi accounts, which were used to hide proceeds from the transfer of the Philippine<br />
treasury stolen by Ferdinand Marcos, with the assistance of George Bush Sr.<br />
Khashoggi’s accounts were linked, through his Azerbaijani banks, to illegal funding of<br />
mercenaries in Central Asia, and probably the Afghan heroin trade, as well his<br />
connections to arranging terrorist events for the Russians. However, the Russian<br />
accounts were rapidly drawing attention as well.<br />
There were other investigations that threatened to expose a network of illegal funding, as<br />
well as illegal profiteering. These included investigations into<br />
1. The Deutschebank and Barrick gold trades investigated by the FBI in conjunction<br />
with the GATA lawsuit (This investigation would have exposed the gold laundering<br />
operations used by the German bank cartel to launder Russian Mafiya and Philippine<br />
gold);<br />
2. The Swiss accounts of Kazakhstan President Nazarbayev, which led to the Giffen-<br />
Williams-Mobil Oil money laundering scandal (There is evidence that the Russian<br />
Mafiya associates of Nazarbayev threatened to bring an end to the investigation);<br />
3. The Swiss accounts of various Russian oligarchs related to the Bank of New<br />
York/Riggs-valmet /Russian Mafiya money laundering scandal and the illegal Brady<br />
Bonds of <strong>September</strong> 12, 1991;<br />
4. The Export-Import Loans to Halliburton that probably funded illegal activities in<br />
Angola, Georgia, and Kazakhstan; and<br />
5. The Swiss accounts which held World War II holocaust gold, which would have been<br />
audited as a result of the GATA investigation.<br />
A potentially bigger time-bomb than any of these investigations would be the exposure of<br />
the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 1991 Brady Bonds. Although a decision to destroy the World Trade<br />
Center was made in late 1998, the execution of the attack had to be delayed until<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001 because the cover-up of the ten year Brady Bond fraud could only be<br />
done in conjunction with these bonds being re-financed on maturity. By declaring a<br />
national emergency with the attack on the World Trade Center, Alan Greenspan - one of<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 351
the co-initiators of the bonds with George Bush Sr. and Oliver North – allowed for the refinancing<br />
of the fraudulent bonds during the activities that followed <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>.<br />
To ensure the destruction of the FBI and other investigative agency offices in the various<br />
buildings of the World Trade Center, these rogue Mossad agents planted explosives<br />
throughout Buildings 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7, during the blackout weekend prior to the attack.<br />
This cover-up also required manipulating Muslim fanatics into creating a diversion which<br />
would cover-up the explosions. To accomplish this, the rogue, Russian based Mossad<br />
used the traditional Mossad to create and manipulate a false flag operation. Nick<br />
Berg was part of this operation. The FBI was hot on his trail, and he needed to be<br />
silenced.<br />
With the involvement of Israelis, Russian Mafiya and German and Swiss bank<br />
executives, it was easy for the intelligence agencies of these countries to discover the<br />
plot, and send warnings to the US government. Top leaders in the Bush administration<br />
were already aware.<br />
Prior knowledge of this attack was leveraged by a group of bureaucrats and military<br />
professionals, and possibly the President himself (but more likely his father, the former<br />
President), who had pre-inauguration plans to launch attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq,<br />
using the attack as a “Pearl Harbor” justification. Their plan was to use the incident to<br />
further their personal agendas in American foreign policy: the enrichment of US oil<br />
interests, and the security of Israel through the destruction of its enemies in Palestine,<br />
Iraq, Iran, and Syria.<br />
In this hypothetical explanation of events, there may be error in some of the conclusions.<br />
There is however, no error in the pattern of evidence that shows, over and over again, that<br />
the two main groups involved in the destruction of the World Trade Center were the<br />
Mossad and the Bush intelligence apparatus, with assistance from the Syrian, Saudi and<br />
Pakistani intelligence operations, as well as a commercial German intelligence operation.<br />
These groups, using Deutschebank and Swiss bankers as co-conspirators, have been<br />
funding illegal, covert activities for years and using these same Muslim fanatics as their<br />
contract agents throughout Central Asia, Asia, and Africa.<br />
The criminals responsible for these crimes are probably quite easy to find (with the right<br />
resources), and easy to convict – if on no other grounds than tax evasion or violation of<br />
the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. (It is another co-incidence that the plane that hit the<br />
South Tower of the World Trade Center hit the office of the New York State Tax<br />
investigators.) However, it is immensely inexpedient to find the real criminals. Finding<br />
the actual criminals would mean the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were<br />
unwarranted. If the true criminals were brought to justice, it could easily bring down the<br />
administration of President Bush, and begin an unraveling of the controls being<br />
implemented by invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. To do so might seriously undermine<br />
the credibility of the U.S. administration, and most likely put its officials at risk in<br />
international courts. It would disrupt the massive money laundering capabilities of the<br />
Deutschebank and probably some U.S. banks (which unfortunately, would only force<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 352
criminals to another channel.) It might even provide cause for the ousting of the hawkish<br />
Israeli government, and breathe new life into the Palestinian Peace process. On the other<br />
hand, it might bring to an end thirty five years of global conflict instigated by the Bush<br />
family sense of “patriotism and duty.”<br />
It would be unrealistic to expect any branch of the U.S. Government to seriously pursue<br />
this investigation. The systemic terror that is inflicted on government agents that want to<br />
become whistleblowers has been reported on extensively, with at least twenty murders<br />
attributed to the crime family associated with the attack on the World Trade Center and<br />
Pentagon. It has also become convenient for corporate owners of the media<br />
conglomerates to not hold the administration accountable. There is no serious<br />
investigative analysis of events and activities that challenge these criminals and at least<br />
one key investigation by FOX was prevented from airing. It has been all too easy forget<br />
questions such as “who benefited from the trades the day the World Trade Center was<br />
attacked?” The press has been first been intimidated into silence by the accusation of<br />
being anti-patriotic. If that type of intimidation does not silence critics, there are more<br />
aggressive types of intimidation. “Bad luck and accidents” seem to plague members of<br />
the press that displease the government: lost assignments, lost jobs, even lost lives. (For<br />
instance, one of the very few victims of the post 9-<strong>11</strong> anthrax attack was the editor of a<br />
newspaper who only two months before had published what some considered<br />
embarrassing pictures of the Bush daughters. No periodical has touched the story since.)<br />
Those few who find the courage to speak up are legally gagged with court orders on the<br />
pretext of National Security. It is no wonder that the mainstream media does not explore<br />
the implications of these peripheral news items.<br />
There have been too many unanswered questions surrounding the events addressed in this<br />
report, and there have been too many questions that have not been asked. There has been<br />
a tendency for writers to ignore facts that did not fit neatly into their explanation. When<br />
a person starts looking at the pieces of information, especially those generally ignored<br />
because they are “peripheral, inconsequential, coincidental, and just plain inconvenient,”<br />
the answers become clear. The answers do not lead to terrorists and oil conspiracies –<br />
it’s about the money. All of the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th crimes were justified, in some twisted<br />
manner, as being the “right thing to do” for stock-holders, country, family, citizens or<br />
self. Deep down, however, it is all too apparent that it was always just about the money.<br />
Is this report proof? No. Is it possible that it happened like this? Yes. Did it happen this<br />
way? To answer this last question, it can be said that this explanation offers a more<br />
complete, inclusive interpretation of the events than explanations offered by the Bush<br />
administration, the 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> or multiple conspiracy theorists.<br />
As citizens, Americans must ask themselves – because the rest of the world has already<br />
concluded this – is America under President Bush guilty of some of the same practices as<br />
numerous third world and European dictators? Are Americans guilty of attempting to<br />
destroy a culture because they disagree with their values and covet what the Muslims<br />
own? Will Americans tell lies to the world and hide the murder and torture of thousands?<br />
Will Americans illegally imprison citizens because it serves government needs, rather<br />
than because of something they have done? Will Americans sanction ‘death squads?’<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 353
Will Americans intimidate with threats those who seek to report the truth? Are<br />
Americans turning a blind eye to these activities as did the world during the 1930s and<br />
1940s? Will Americans allow their country to be controlled by the real terrorists? This<br />
report does not answer those questions, but it does document and explain the reasons why<br />
Americans are in the predicament of answering them. Every American must answer the<br />
questions for himself or herself. How one lives with this answer is a personal choice, a<br />
personal responsibility, and the legacy left to their children.<br />
From the Hagakure:<br />
To tell others that<br />
It is a rumor<br />
Will not do.<br />
When your own heart asks,<br />
How will you respond?<br />
Gosen waka shu<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 354
Appendix A: Banking Links with US Intelligence<br />
When investigating this series of events that ties together terrorists, spies and bankers,<br />
there is a need to define the context of these relationships. There is a more than cozy<br />
relationship that exists between the intelligence community and the banking industry.<br />
One only needs to look at the background of a number of US intelligence executives to<br />
identify this very compelling pattern of career advancement.<br />
That pattern suggests that after intelligence executives serve their time managing millions<br />
or billions of dollars of funds for which he cannot be held accountable (in the US, the<br />
annual intelligence budget is over $40 Billion) – they are rewarded by being promoted to<br />
the lofty air of financial executive. In exchange for that reward, they bring a range of<br />
‘relationships’ to the bank which historically have proven financially lucrative. (One<br />
might safely assume they are not being hired for their acumen and experience as financial<br />
geniuses.) In a more than unique turnabout, the Deutsche Bank eversed the process and<br />
placed a banking executive (A.B. Krongard) as an Executive Director of the CIA! (This<br />
was Mr. Tenet’s gift to the Mossad.)<br />
This is the world this article must explore – the marriage of intelligence organizations,<br />
banks, and illegal money. The world where banks make money off the ‘dark side’ of the<br />
economy: money laundering, bankrolling wars and revolutions, hiding the import and<br />
export of weapons and munitions, managing large, ill-gotten slush funds etc. The fact<br />
that the US banking industry has bought into this model is obvious. Examples include:<br />
Table 2<br />
Examples of Intelligence – Banking Linkage<br />
Name CIA Connection Financial Connection<br />
Bill Casey CIA Director Chairman of the Securities and<br />
Exchange <strong>Commission</strong><br />
David Doherty General Counsel of the Central<br />
Intelligence Agency.<br />
George Herbert<br />
Walker Bush<br />
A.B. "Buzzy"<br />
Krongard<br />
Vice President of the New York Stock<br />
Exchange<br />
CIA Director consultant to the Carlyle Group, joint<br />
investments with the bin Laden family,<br />
executive committee chair of First<br />
International Bancshares (FIB)<br />
Executive Director of the<br />
Central Intelligence Agency<br />
Chairman of the investment bank A.B.<br />
Brown and former Vice Chairman of<br />
Banker's Trust.<br />
John A McCone CIA Director Director of United California Bank,<br />
Western Bankcorporation; Pacific<br />
Mutual Life Insurance<br />
John Deutch CIA Director the board at Citigroup<br />
Nora Slatkin CIA Executive Director sits on Citibank's board<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 355
Robert "Bud"<br />
McFarlane<br />
CIA Director Board of Directors of American Equity<br />
Investors (AEI)<br />
William Colby CIA Director General Counsel of the Nugan Hand<br />
Bank, unlisted counsel to Household<br />
Bank<br />
Mitch Rogovin CIA Legal Counsel Board of Directors of American Equity<br />
Investors (AEI)<br />
George<br />
Clairmont and<br />
Howard Hebert<br />
CIA officials Board of Directors of American Equity<br />
Investors (AEI)<br />
Bobby Inman CIA Director and ONI Board of Directors, Federal Reserve,<br />
Dallas<br />
Maurice "Hank"<br />
Greenburg<br />
floated as a possible CIA<br />
Director in 1995<br />
CEO of AIG insurance, manager of the<br />
third largest capital investment pool in<br />
the world<br />
This model also applies to the non US intelligence agencies. The European model,<br />
however is a bit different. Because of the sophisticated nature of interlocking corporate<br />
directorships in Europe, European intelligence agents are retired into industry, IT<br />
consulting and business consulting career slots rather than banking. On both sides of the<br />
ocean, banking has a ‘dark side’ which engages ex-intelligence agents who forge a link<br />
that converts illegal funds into respectability.<br />
On the US side, the offshoot of these practices are such scandals as the Iran Contra<br />
scandal and the Nugan-Hand banking scandal. On the European side, one finds such<br />
scandals as the BCCI-Vatican Bank scandal, the theft of Czech gold reserves, the<br />
disappearance of Soviet gold reserves and the laundering of Marcos gold from the<br />
Philippines. The thread that runs through these scandals is gold and money laundering–<br />
which brings this article to a major connection to the destruction of the World Trade<br />
Center, and a second compelling link to the German banking industry.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 356
Appendix B: Stratesec<br />
Stratesec Incorporated, formerly Securacom, Incorporated, has been subjected to a great<br />
deal of attention because of its contract to provide security and access control services to<br />
the World Trade Center. The attention is provided only by ‘conspiracy theorists’<br />
primarily because of one of it’s Board Of Directors members is Marvin Bush, brother of<br />
President George Bush and son of George Bush Sr. The official 9/<strong>11</strong> <strong>Commission</strong> totally<br />
ignored this security operation, but any investigation which hypothesizes that explosives<br />
were placed in the building cannot ignore it.<br />
In reviewing the information available, the company appears to be nothing more than an<br />
intelligence agency ‘front’ which operates as a courier for special visitors and other items<br />
requiring undisclosed transit. To accomplish this, they operate as a maintenance<br />
organization for security access control at major airports, financial centers and federal<br />
government groups which have investigative/intelligence capabilities. They are<br />
permitted secured, unquestioned access through airports and other buildings using this<br />
cover. Their only significant asset is a plane.<br />
The conclusion that it is an intelligence agency front company is suggested by the<br />
following clues:<br />
1. The primary owner of the company is Wirt D. Walker, III, who also is chief owner<br />
and CEO of Aviation General.<br />
“The Group's principal activities are carried out through two subsidiaries: Commander Aircraft<br />
Company and Strategic Jet Services, Incorporated. Commander Aircraft Company manufactures,<br />
markets and provides support services for its line of single engine and high performance commander<br />
aircraft. It also provides consulting, brokerage and refurbishment services for all types of pistonpowered<br />
aircraft through its Aviation Services division. Strategic Jet Services provides consulting,<br />
brokerage, sales and refurbishment services for jet aircraft. The Group markets its aircraft through<br />
factory direct sales and marketing organization.”<br />
What is of note of these subsidiaries is that Commander Aircraft manufactures and<br />
provides training aircraft and flight simulators to flight training schools. Two schools<br />
that did business with Wirt’s company are a flight school in Florida investigated for<br />
training a 9/<strong>11</strong> hijacker, and another in Egypt – where Mohammed Atta initially<br />
received his flight training, before he went to Germany.<br />
“Aviation General, formerly Commander Aircraft, brokered the sale of airplanes to the National Civil<br />
Aviation Training Organization (NCATO), located in Giza, Egypt, the hometown of lead hijacker<br />
Mohammed Atta. NCATO is the only civilian pilot training school in Egypt. NCATO has a training<br />
agreement with Embry-Riddle University in Daytona Beach, Florida, the flight school that was<br />
investigated by the FBI for possibly training at least one of the 9/<strong>11</strong> hijackers.” [[MARVIN BUSH<br />
EMPLOYEE'S MYSTERIOUS DEATH – Connections to 9/<strong>11</strong>?, Wayne Madsen]<br />
2. When one begins to investigate Strategic Jet Services, one finds a company that<br />
refurbished and sells used military aircraft, and had a President with a resume any<br />
intelligence operator could envy:<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 357
“Dan Cretsinger is a graduate of the College of the Air Force and the Federal Aviation Academy in<br />
Oklahoma. He has over 25 years experience in the aviation industry. Mr. Cretsinger has held<br />
supervisory / management positions with the Federal Aviation Administration, the United States Air<br />
Force, Beechcraft, Cessna, Sandar Corporation and was President of Strategic Jet Services….Mr.<br />
Cretsinger was lead negotiator for Aerolineas Argentina Airlines during their $465 million merger with<br />
Iberia Airlines of Spain. His expertise ranges from airline fleet analysis and acquisition to route<br />
planning and structuring for domestic and international airlines. A few of his clients include TelMex -<br />
Mexico City, Doyle Wilson Homes-Austin, TX, The Eisenberg Group-Tel Aviv,[author’s note: In the<br />
1980s the Eisenberg Group acquired control of the Israel Corp. Subsequently many of the original<br />
investors withdrew, leaving the chairmanship to Eisenberg. By 1998 The Israel Corp. had investments<br />
in more than 100 businesses, including the Israeli shipping company that moved out of the WTC<br />
several weeks before the attack. The Eisenburg Group was also involved as a partner with Nordex in<br />
its dealings with Nazarbayev.] Dent Wizards-Sarasota, FL, Hallmark Cards-Quincy, IL, Tarom<br />
Airlines-Romania, Trans World Airlines, Aerolineas Argentinas, Aero Peru, and Aeroflot Airlines-<br />
Moscow. Mr. Cretsinger, who is a member of Who's Who Worldwide, was awarded the "1994/95<br />
Who's Who Registry of Business Leaders". Additionally, Mr. Cretsinger is a rated commercial jet pilot<br />
with over 5,000 flight hours. He is a single and multi-engine flight instructor with Instrument and Jet<br />
type ratings and a Certified Aircraft Appraiser in good standing with the National Organization of<br />
Certified Aircraft Appraisers. Currently, Mr. Cretsinger specializes in certified Aircraft Appraisals<br />
from Piper Cubs to Boeing Executive Jets. “<br />
[National Organization of Certified Aircraft Appraisers]<br />
3. The company Aviation General, was apparently acquired from James Bath.<br />
“Marvin Bush and Wirt Walker appear to have taken over the Saudi real estate investment and aircraft<br />
brokerage business once run out of Texas by Houston-based James Bath in association with Salem bin<br />
Laden, the late brother of Osama bin Laden, and Khalid bin Mahfouz.”<br />
James Bath, who served in the National Guard with George Bush Jr., and was<br />
described as having a similar ‘excused’ absence from service attendance as George, is<br />
thought to have worked (with George Bush Jr.) as a CIA pilot during the period of<br />
absence, under the Direction of then Director of the CIA, George Bush Sr. George Jr.,<br />
is known to have flown aircraft at one point for a private Alaskan air freight company<br />
that was later reputed to run arms to African nations.<br />
4. Another Board Member of Stratesec is retired Lt. General James Alan Abrahamson,<br />
who is in regular business contact with former CIA director James Woolsey<br />
“Lieutenant General James Alan Abrahamson, chairman of StratCom International, Inc. and former<br />
director of the Star Wars programme initiated during the Reagan administration, … is in partnership<br />
(http://www.benadorassociates.com/ijaz.php) with Mansoor Ijaz, the "founder and chairman of<br />
Crescent Investment Management LLC, a New York investment partnership between Ijaz, Lt. Gen.<br />
James Alan Abrahamson (USAF Ret), former director of President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense<br />
Initiative, and Turkey's Global Group. Former CIA Director, R. James Woolsey, Jr. serves as vice<br />
chairman of Crescent's Board of Governors...." [From SourceWatch]<br />
There are too many links to intelligence operations for this to not be an intelligence front<br />
company. If that is true, the key question is: was Stratesec involved in the attack on the<br />
World Trade Center by providing access to the building to those who may have planted<br />
explosives. The evidence is very sketchy, but there is one key event that cannot go<br />
without mention. Shortly after the attack on the World Trade Center, a Swiss pilot (Luigi<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 358
Fasulo) crashed a Rockwell Commander plane (built by Aviation General), into the<br />
Pirelli building in the financial district of Milan, Italy. Interestingly, two floors above<br />
where the plain crashed into the building, the 27 th floor crashed down onto the 26 th , in a<br />
manner similar to the way the 23 rd floor of the North Tower in the WTC came down.<br />
There is nothing in any news report suggesting that the crash caused structural damage,<br />
and there were no interviews allowed with the building inhabitants. Also, as in the WTC<br />
attack, there has been virtually no public discussion of what the ‘target’ was, other than it<br />
being the Regional Lombardy center, which regulated the economic and financial affairs<br />
of the wealthiest state in Italy. There is the extremely interesting side note that suggests<br />
the owner of the aircraft (and supposedly it’s pilot, although the head was never found)<br />
was a distributor for Aviation General, who then moved into the finance industry, as do<br />
many CIA operatives. (See Appendix A). Equally important, the owner of the aircraft<br />
was involved in the global air freight business, which would create another coincidence<br />
linking the Milan tower attack to Stratesec.<br />
“The paper identified the pilot as Luigi Fasulo, who made a fortune in the airplane<br />
business then lost it all after becoming a self-styled investor…..La Repubblica said<br />
Fasulo had made his money with planes, owning a small company that rented out and<br />
sold aircraft. His fortunes failed when he switched focus and become a self-styled banker<br />
and financier, the paper said without giving sources.” [Agence-France Press, Original<br />
link: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020419/1/2o9ix.html]<br />
“One of Fasulo's companies — Playmatic SA — was listed in the 2002 Swiss company<br />
directory as being bankrupt. A sign attached to Fasulo's mailbox in the lobby of the<br />
modest apartment building in Lugano where he lived indicated another company, Eurotex<br />
Corp. Panama. There was also an address for a third firm, Avioservizi SA of Chiasso,<br />
which also was listed in the 2002 directory.” [USAToday, Friends of Milan crash pilot<br />
deny son's suicide claim, 04/20/2002]<br />
Avioservizi is an Italian air freight and forwarder with connections to:<br />
Israele Ashdod, Haifa<br />
Cipro Limassol, Famagusta<br />
Giordania Aqaba<br />
Tunisia Radès<br />
Mauritius Port Louis<br />
Madagascar Tamatave<br />
India Chennai, Mumbay<br />
Cina Shanghai<br />
Hong Kong Hong Kong<br />
Thailandia Bangkok<br />
USA (New York, Los Angeles)<br />
Also, one finds the ever present connection to Russian.<br />
“EuroTex - THE EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGY<br />
TRANSFER is an international non-profit making association, established in 1999 under<br />
the Belgian law, and devoted to the transfer of knowledge, innovation and technology<br />
between countries of the Western, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Commonwealth<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 359
of Independent States, to the mutual benefit of all countries involved: The<br />
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) consists of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus,<br />
Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan,<br />
Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. The name EuroTex stands for the word<br />
European and for the Russian word Òåõíîëîãèÿ (Technology)”.<br />
Fasulo was reputedly killed by the Russian mafia, with his death made to look like a<br />
suicide. The Italian government did its best to portray the attack as an accident, when<br />
most facts clearly indicate it was not. This report will not explore those facts, other than<br />
to suggest that Fasulo was not an innocent Swiss businessman who accidentally crashed<br />
into the financial regulation center of Lombardy. Most likely, Fasulo was an American<br />
intelligence agent who needed to destroy some investigation in the Pirelli building. He<br />
was connected to Aviation General in a business manner, and dealt with global freight<br />
movements out of the Italian financial district. Both occupations lend credence to his<br />
being an agent as well.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 360
Appendix C: World’s Greatest Treasure Hunt<br />
There are two major lost treasures in the world today: the Golden Lily treasure and the<br />
lost Soviet Treasury. The recently announced and forthcoming Khordokorvsky moneylaundering<br />
trial is the tip of the iceberg of the hunt for the Soviet Treasury, and a lot of<br />
people are being murdered in the quiet hope that this investigation and trial passes<br />
without any public revelation as to where that treasure resides. Originally having an<br />
estimated value between $200 billion and $500 billion in 1991, this treasure would be<br />
worth well over a trillion dollars today.[1] The core of this trial will be an investigation<br />
into the financial dealings of Khordokorvsky and his dealings going as far back as 1989,<br />
when he - sponsored by Aleksey Kondaurov and Phillip Bobkov of the KGB[2] – began<br />
his alleged theft of the Soviet Treasury with the help of a small financial consulting firm<br />
known as Riggs-Valmet[3], who helped craft his financial strategy and tactics (as well as<br />
those of oligarch Roman Abramovich.) Thus began an operation that became and remains<br />
one of the most closely guarded secrets of both the KGB/FSB and the CIA, with neither<br />
willing to admit involvement or “knowledge.” To maintain that secret, those with<br />
knowledge of the whereabouts of the funds or the nature of the transactions have<br />
committed suicide, or have been poisoned, or shot, died in a helicopter crash, or simply<br />
threatened into silence. Even more intriguing, this money laundering may well be at the<br />
core of one of the world’s most infamous cover-ups.<br />
The trial is viewed quite differently by the various stakeholders. From the official US<br />
point of view, the trial represents an authoritarian leader’s attempt to turn back the clock<br />
and eliminate the democratic reforms realized in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet<br />
Union in <strong>September</strong> 1991. From the Russian citizen’s point of view, the trial is an<br />
attempt to find justice for deliberate actions that were directly responsible for causing the<br />
deaths, wiping out life savings, jobs, pensions and destroying the lives of millions of<br />
Russians.[4] From the official Russian point of view, it is an attempt to bring back under<br />
control of the Russian bureaucracy, billions of dollars of industrial assets that were stolen<br />
by Western investors. There is a fourth group of stakeholders – the men behind these<br />
crimes. They consist of a group of financiers and government agents who are responsible<br />
for inestimable pain and suffering in Russia, and destroyed the only real chance that<br />
Russia and the US ever had to create a lasting peace. For this group of stakeholders,<br />
murder is their safeguard.<br />
At least six individuals who represented a threat to expose information about the thefts<br />
have met violent or suspicious deaths:<br />
Alexander Litvenenko was poisoned in the ultimate media murder, with a dose of<br />
radioactive poison worth $24 to 35 million dollars. Litvenenko, whose original<br />
assignment with the FSB was to investigate corruption, was in regular contact with the<br />
oligarchs that had been party to those transactions now being questioned, and had passed<br />
documents to Leonid Nevzlin just shortly before he was murdered. [5]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 361
Andrei Kozlov, First Deputy Head of Russia’s Central Bank was shot, along with his<br />
family when he got too close to the answers.<br />
“…in 1991-92, 400 billion rubles were embezzled from the Russian Central Bank…. when the Central<br />
Bank became object of an unprecedented criminal attack known as the fake advice notes fraud…. MP<br />
Nikolai Leonov, speaking on TV, directly stated that Kozlov’s death was directly connected with fake<br />
advice notes, Head of the Russian Audit Chamber Sergey Stepashin said the same. I think they are<br />
right. Andrei Kozlov was really occupied with investigation of causes of those events” [6]<br />
Stephen Curtis was one of the original Valmet-Riggs consultants, and after<br />
Khorodkovsk’s arrest, had gone to the authorities and was prepared to testify. Shortly<br />
thereafter, he died, in what an inquest determined to be an accident.<br />
Mr. Curtis had received threatening telephone calls and was under surveillance for two years before his<br />
helicopter crashed during a routine flight from Bournemouth International Airport in Dorset in March<br />
2004. Shortly before the crash, Mr. Curtis told family members that if something happened to him, it<br />
wouldn’t be an accident. [7]<br />
Nikolai Kruchina Central Committee treasurer, one of the “reported” two individuals<br />
who knew where the stolen treasury went to, committed suicide by jumping out a<br />
window after the first August 1991 coup.<br />
Andrei Sevenyuk had been going public with his involvement with Roman Abramovich,<br />
who gained control of the Siberian oil giant Sibneft, and was a beneficiary holder of<br />
Abramovich’s shares. He died in a helicopter crash in <strong>September</strong> of 2004. His death and<br />
involvement is of interest because of his key role with Abramovich, who is not only<br />
linked to Riggs-Valmet, but also received funding from the Kredo (aka Credo) Bank,<br />
identified by Leo Wanta as a participant in his Bush sanctioned activities to destabilize<br />
the Russian currency.[8]<br />
Yuri Golubev, a founder of Yukos, an acting President of Group Menatep and a very<br />
close advisor of Khodorkovsky was found dead in January, 2007, with no explanation.<br />
By themselves, these incidents and the trial and investigation they are related to would<br />
have little interest for the average US citizen. The plot however becomes more intriguing<br />
when one learns that after all these years of investigation, little is yet known about where<br />
the 400 billion roubles went, and that given the ‘official’ conversion rate of 1.8<br />
roubles/dollar at which most of these roubles disappeared, the US dollar equivalent was<br />
$222 Billion. [9]<br />
The $222 Billion was lifted from the Soviet Treasury by way of fraudulent “advice<br />
notes.” This trick is well explained by Novoye Vremya in Newtimes.RU, <strong>September</strong><br />
2006 (which was closed within a couple months of publishing this article). The essence<br />
of the fraud was to place fraudulent notes in a remote, regional bank and then withdraw<br />
the funds immediately from the Moscow Central Bank. When the Central Bank went to<br />
collect on the notes, the fraudulent notes, and any electronic traces of them had been<br />
erased. Hence, in order to perpetrate the fraud, the criminals initially involved in this theft<br />
required $220 Billion in fake notes to place with the regional banks. This number will<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 362
egister quickly with those who have followed the $240 Billion Durham/ Brady Bond<br />
allegations from exactly the same timeframe. According to the allegations of Mrs. V.K.<br />
Durham, (who claims her husband - Russell Hermann - was a financial manager for the<br />
CIA,) then-President George W. Bush fraudulently created $240 Billion of bonds using a<br />
trust created by her husband in her name. The bonds authorized by Bush were never<br />
found. However, according to information leaked from the US Office of Naval<br />
Investigations (ONI), and Mrs. Durham – these ten year, fraudulent bonds ended up<br />
mostly in the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald where they matured on or about <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>,<br />
2001. [10]<br />
It is only a coincidence, of course, that the offices of the ONI in the Pentagon and Cantor<br />
Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center took direct hits from the hijacked airliners on the<br />
day those bonds would have matured. It is also only coincidental that the offices of the<br />
US Federal agencies that were involved in investigating the related Russian moneylaundering<br />
scandal (US Customs, FBI, SEC, IMF, Export-Import Bank) were also<br />
destroyed, and that immediately thereafter, President HW Bush terminated the<br />
investigation of the Bank of New York’s involvement in the scandal.<br />
Unfortunately, the coincidences do not stop there.<br />
• Building 6 of the World Trade Center (hardly remembered by anyone), which was<br />
home to the US inter-agency task force on money-laundering, according to video<br />
footage, was cratered by an explosion from the inside before the two Towers aside<br />
it collapsed onto it. Only a mushroom like cloud appears in the news video but<br />
subsequent photos show a huge crater in the center of the building prior to being<br />
buried by the collapsing towers.<br />
• Mr. Delmart “Mike” Vreeland, who warned prison officials of the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong><br />
attack from inside a Canadian prison, was an ONI agent. His supervisor was killed<br />
in the attack on the Pentagon.<br />
• There were several reports of thousands of fraudulent transactions being ‘pushed<br />
through computers’ during the attack. While bloggers gravitate to comments about<br />
the infamous “put options,” the stock market had not opened yet, and did not open<br />
that day. The fraudulent trades on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> had to be in bonds, which started<br />
trading at 7:00am that day.<br />
• The activities of the Federal Reserve’s Government Securities Clearing Corporation<br />
in the weeks that followed the attacked suspended all controls on bond settlements<br />
for fifteen days in such a manner as to allow blind trades and collateral<br />
substitutions. If fraudulent bonds needed to be ‘removed’ from the system, those<br />
fifteen days were the only time is US history it could have been accomplished.<br />
• The Federal Reserve temporarily pumped $300 billion of excess liquidity into the<br />
bond market in the weeks after the attack. The tactical banking safeguards<br />
introduced the day of the attack should have eliminated the need for the excess<br />
monetary supply. Well over $240 Billion in bonds were withdrawn by the Federal<br />
Reserve in the aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>.<br />
The Russian treasure hunt threatens to expose more than just the dark cold war secret that<br />
the US was responsible for over an estimated 3 million deaths by facilitating the theft of<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 363
the Soviet Treasury, and possibly involved in the murder of another three thousand by<br />
attempting to cover up the source of the fraudulent bonds. The investigation of the theft<br />
of the Soviet Treasury would open lines of inquiry into the roles of the two western banks<br />
extensively involved: the Bank of New York (founded by the Dulles Brothers) and<br />
Riggs-Valmet (a well established CIA cover for financial operations, with an extensive<br />
role for Jonathon Bush, brother of George W. Bush.)<br />
The investigation could conceivably attempt to discover how 3000 tonnes of Russian<br />
gold were laundered.[<strong>11</strong>] There are persistent rumors that this gold played a role in the<br />
Russian bank note scam.[12] More than likely this would lead to another investigation<br />
buried in the rubble of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>. This FBI investigation (related to a lawsuit<br />
claiming the US banks were illegally selling US gold stock to fix the price of gold) was<br />
stored in the hardened FBI storage facility on the 23 rd floor of the North Tower. There are<br />
a surprising number of personal accounts (available on the internet) of what happened<br />
that day on the 23 rd floor, all of which indirectly support Dick Eastman’s original claim<br />
that the facility was deliberately targeted by explosives to destroy the evidence in it. After<br />
9/<strong>11</strong>, the FBI investigation into gold price-fixing allegations was dropped so that agents<br />
could be focused on pursuing terrorists. The original lawsuit by Reginald H. Howe in<br />
2000 was not allowed to proceed by the court. A subsequent lawsuit by Donald W Doyle<br />
(CEO of Blanchard & Company) [13] (amended to address the courts instructions to<br />
Howe), focused on a company call Barrick Gold, and accused it of working with banks to<br />
‘fix’ gold prices. This lawsuit was settled out of court in 2006 and the agreement sealed.<br />
Three efforts (a reported FBI investigation and two law suits) to make public the role of<br />
Barrick in the gold trades of the 1990s have been squelched or sealed. A new<br />
investigation by the Russians may shed new light on the subject. What is left behind is<br />
another troubling set of coincidences. The group that played key roles in the creation and<br />
direction of Barrick has a number of inter-locking relationships with individuals<br />
associated with the theft of the Soviet Treasury. Moreover, this same group has a publicly<br />
reported track record of money-laundering connections.<br />
Adnan Khashoggi, an original co founder of Barrick, has been linked by the French<br />
intelligence, the press and the Heritage Foundation to a Swiss ‘security’ company<br />
comprised of ex-KGB and Russian military. This company – Far West – was co founded<br />
by Col. Anton Surikov (aka Suirokov), an associate of Alexei Kondaurov, who continues<br />
to fund Surikov through IPROG. Kondaurov was one of Khordokorvsky’s original KGB<br />
sponsors, and played executive roles in Menatep and Yukos.<br />
Shiek Kamal Adham, another original co founder of Barrick who - like Khashoggi - is<br />
linked to various money-laundering scandals: the BCCI scandal, the Vatican Bank<br />
scandal, and the Iran-Contra scandal. Shiek Adham and Khashoggi are reported by<br />
Daniel Hopsicker to have been co-investors in Oryx Investments with Wally Hilliard.<br />
Oryx reportedly financed the aviation company that ‘trained’ the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> hijackers.<br />
Shiek Adham retained Ed Rogers (former George W. Bush assistant, vice Chairman of<br />
Diligence, and of the Washington lobbying firm of Barbour Griffith and Rogers) as his<br />
personal lobbyist. Diligence also is reported to be a customer of Far West.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 364
George W Bush, temporarily on the ‘Advisory” board of Barrick, gave Barrick credibility<br />
in the international market by providing Barrick with an estimated $10 Billion of gold<br />
reserves. At the same time that Bush pardoned the convicted Iran-Contra conspirators, he<br />
authorized a procedural change in Federal law which allowed Barrick (a company started<br />
with funding from Khashoggi and Shiek Kamal Adham) to claim $10 billion in un-mined<br />
reserves in Nevada, for the meager cost of $10,000. It is speculated this process needed to<br />
be expedited because it was anticipated the Clinton administration would not approve<br />
transaction without sizeable royalty requirements. Not often reported, Barrick claims it<br />
paid $63 million for the company that owned those rights, although the details of that<br />
investment are not known. Even at that rate, $63 million for $10 billion in assets seems<br />
like a suspicious arrangement.<br />
Lord Robert Powell, who sits on the Boards of Diligence and Barrick, and represents the<br />
Rothschild interests. Rothschild came up as the surprising trustee of Khordokorvsky’s<br />
shares in Yukos when Khordokorvsky was sent to jail, and was originally identified as an<br />
interested party in financing Khordokorvsky in 1989. [14]The strange connection<br />
between the four board members of Barrick, the management of Diligence and the crime<br />
group that operates under the corporate umbrella of Far West is disturbing in that Far<br />
West is accused by several researchers as being involved in the “Russian 9/<strong>11</strong>” and at the<br />
same time, they work closely with investors who benefited ‘significantly’ from the<br />
destruction of the World Trade Center.<br />
Edgar Bronfmann and the Bronfmann family (at one time major holders of Barrick stock)<br />
have an interesting legacy of investing in money laundering operations.<br />
"In Chicago, is a branch of a huge Canadian octopus, the Bank of Montreal, owned by the …<br />
Bronfman family. … Their branch in Chicago, Harris Bank, has for some time been THE heavy weight<br />
in foreign currency trading, handling and exchanging most every type of money instrument. Several<br />
years ago Harris Bank merged with a known reputed money laundry, Household Bank, with units of<br />
Household International, headquartered in the Chicago-area. Household is the successor and alter ego<br />
to Nugan Han Bank that operated in California, Australia, Manila, Saudi, London, and a few other<br />
places. The General Counsel of Nugan Hand was William Colby, former Director of Central<br />
Intelligence. Former Generals and Admirals, close to CIA, operated Nugan Hand's worldwide offices.”<br />
[15]<br />
Barrick, as a corporation has a “partnership” with Nelson Gold, noted in the Barrick<br />
annual report. Nelson Gold is a subsidiary of Nelson Resources – run by the son-in-law<br />
of Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan. George HW Bush kept Nazarbayev’s<br />
name out of another money-laundering investigation – the investigation of James Griffen.<br />
Griffen was sent to Kazakhstan by the George W Bush Whitehouse, and Griffen’s<br />
lawyers contend his actions were protected because he acted as an agent of the US<br />
government . The files for that investigation were also coincidently stored on the 23 rd<br />
floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.<br />
A Russian investigation into the whereabouts of the stolen Soviet Treasury could<br />
certainly move beyond the fraudulent advice notes and the Soviet gold and could open a<br />
can of worms in addition to the Bank of New York scandal, the well concealed Riggs-<br />
Valmet operation and the Barrick operation. Other potential embarrassments include<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 365
Menatep’s partnerships with Global Asset Management, the Blackstone Group, the<br />
Carlyle Group and AIG Capital Partners, which are reported to be financial allies of the<br />
Bush family interests. [16] Two additional embarrassments for the Bush legacy would be<br />
the media exposure of the Leo Wanta ‘rouble destabilization’ program, news of which<br />
has been pretty well contained to the blogger community. While Wanta himself has said<br />
little, the released documents reference several Central Asian banks used by him for his<br />
officially sanctioned ‘ruble destabilization program.’<br />
One path for the Russian investigation to pursue Wanta is the Altalanos Ertekforgalmi<br />
Bank (AEB) in Budapest, Hungary. AEB had an evolving role in the financial rape of the<br />
Soviet Union starting in 1990, when 50% of AEB was bought by the CEDC (Central<br />
European Development Corporation.) The CEDC is actually operated out of Singer<br />
Island, Florida, and was created in 1989 apparently for the sole purpose of procuring the<br />
AEB, as it apparently has not done a lot else of public record. CEDC was managed by<br />
former US Ambassador to Hungary, R. Mark Palmer. (In addition to being a Bush<br />
appointee, R. Mark Palmer, it turns out appears to have been a collaborator with George<br />
Soros in his efforts to unhinge Eastern European currencies, working through the N.M.<br />
Rothschild Continuation Trust.) AEB initially server as a tool for the Wanta rouble<br />
destabilization program, and is identified in his public records. As it would turn out, AEB<br />
was a bank asset which, while half owned by U.S. investors, was apparently controlled by<br />
the Yeltsin family. The bank was later was absorbed by Gazprom, which in turn was<br />
controlled by Khodorkovsky and Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, long-time aide to Boris<br />
Yeltsin. In 1996, the U.S. investors would hand over their 50% of the bank to Gazprom<br />
for an undisclosed sum. The bank would then become a money laundering conduit for<br />
Yeltsin family, just as Valmet SA was transferred to the Yeltsin family from Riggs bank<br />
ownership. In both cases (Valmet and AEB) the U.S. partners ‘took the money and ran.’<br />
Similarly, another bank which was a recipient of Wanta controlled funding intended to<br />
destabilize the rouble was Westdeutsche Landesbank. The bank is reported to have<br />
loaned moneys to the Khodorkovsky group, and found itself with difficulty trying to<br />
collect that loan. Investigation into these transactions were linked to the Bank of New<br />
York scandal, derailed by George HW Bush. [17]<br />
A public investigation into the money-laundering that surrounded the theft of the Soviet<br />
Treasury has been studiously avoided in the West. Yeltsin’s control of Russia prevented<br />
any serious investigation by the Russians, but Putin’s takeover changed all that. Putin is<br />
going after Yeltsin’s cronies and their Western backers. At this point, it can be argued<br />
that the deaths referenced in this article should be attributed to the West rather than Putin.<br />
Putin is trying to regain the lost treasury, and he would seem to need the information<br />
these men had more so than not. It would appear that the West has much to lose if the<br />
ultimate destination of the stolen treasury is found, and anything that obfuscates the<br />
money trail works to the advantage of the Western investors. If that same group of<br />
investors has somehow played a role in the destruction of the World Trade Center to<br />
cover up US investigations related to the theft of the Soviet Treasury, one suspects<br />
additional murders would be no moral barrier.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 366
Notes<br />
1. “Eight metric tons of platinum, 60 metric tons of gold, hoards of diamonds and an<br />
estimated $15 billion to $50 billion in cash were, according to reformist<br />
lawmakers probing KGB crimes, only a small part of state property stolen under<br />
secret Communist Party Central Committee decrees and transferred to unknown<br />
hands by the KGB's espionage branch between 1989 and 1991…Less than $2.5<br />
billion of the $300 to $500 billion Dollar siphoned out of Russia from 1991 to<br />
1997 has returned to be invested in Russia.” Statement of Richard L Palmer,<br />
President of Cachet International, Inc. on the Infiltration of the Western Financial<br />
System By Elements of Russian Organized Crime Before the House Committee<br />
on Banking and Financial Services on <strong>September</strong> 21, 1999<br />
http://financialservices.house.gov/banking/92199pal.htm<br />
2. Catherine Belton, Khodorkovsky's High Stakes Gamble, The Moscow Times,<br />
May 16, 2005.<br />
3. For those readers unfamiliar with the history of Riggs-Valmet “Christian Michel,<br />
a founder of Valmet, a Geneva-based global trust business, which agreed in early<br />
1989 to advise Khodorkovsky's group of young businessmen. Valmet later held<br />
the key to the Group Menatep fortune, holding shares via nominee ownership<br />
schemes and organizing the transfer of vast sums of money via its network.”<br />
Catherine Belton, Khodorkovsky's High Stakes Gamble, The Moscow Times,<br />
May 16, 2005. Abramovich’s connection to Riggs-Valmet is found in: Yeltsin<br />
'Family' Tycoon Linked to Cash Scandal , James Bone, David Lister, Fiona Flick,<br />
The Times (UK), <strong>September</strong> 7, 1999.<br />
4. “Healthcare financing and payment of pensions drastically decreased, a crisis<br />
happened to the financial system; all savings of the population “burned” in<br />
inflation. Life span decreased. Thus, if we sum up, the theft of the Central Bank in<br />
its economic consequences was comparable to a nuclear aggression against our<br />
country.” From: “President of information protection company: “The West is not<br />
very highly concerned with the threat of cyber terrorism,” Anatoly Klepov,<br />
www.regnum.ru/english/749825.html, December 14, 2006. “Some 70 percent of<br />
Russians now live below or just above the poverty level, and capital investment<br />
(the source of future prosperity) is only 10 percent of what it was a decade ago. In<br />
addition, basic social statistics reveal a "catastrophe of historic proportions," as<br />
Nicholas Eberstadt documented in the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review, a<br />
venue that's not likely to wax nostalgic for the USSR. Eberstadt, extrapolating<br />
from World Health Organization estimates, argues that more than 3 million<br />
"excess deaths"--people who died who wouldn't have, according to old<br />
demographic patterns--occurred between 1992 and 1998. With deaths exceeding<br />
births, the population is shrinking annually, something rarely seen unless there is<br />
war or famine.” (Robbing Russia ,<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 367
http://www.thenation.com/doc/19991004/editors2, <strong>September</strong> 16, 1999 (October<br />
4, 1999 issue)<br />
5. “Murdered Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko passed documents to former<br />
Yukos CEO in Israel months before his death – report,” November 25, 2006, 9:10<br />
AM (GMT+02:00)<br />
6. “The West is not very highly concerned with the threat of cyber terrorism,”<br />
REGNUM News Agency, December 15, 2006,<br />
http://www.regnum.ru/english/749825.html<br />
7. “Focusing on Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the Leadership of Group MENATEP”,<br />
October 27, 2005, http://www.supportmbk.com/update/<strong>11</strong>-03-2005_briefing.cfm<br />
8. “Abramovich Kicks a Ghost, Ft Puts Foot in Mouth, John Helmer,” The Russia<br />
Journal, March 22, 2006<br />
9. A lot of analysts like to use unofficial market rates of approximately 50 to 100<br />
roubles per dollar, but prior to the collapse, official transactions happened at the<br />
official rate of 1.8. “new rouble exchange rate (90 roubles, in place of the existing<br />
1.8 roubles)” “The Banking System: Teething Troubles,” Novoye Vremya,<br />
Newtimes.RU, <strong>September</strong> 2006, http://www.newtimes.ru/eng/detail.asp?art_id=691. A<br />
second source for the 1.8 rubles per dollar rate: “Scientific - industrial union of<br />
Volsky in his concern " Simako" used a special arrangement in the party. They<br />
received large financial grants, converted roubles into foreign currency at the rate<br />
of 1,8 roubles per dollar. ["New Russian" capitalists and the gold of the<br />
Communistic Party of the USSR, 2001, #19 Discreditable materials,<br />
http://www.russiamonitor.org/en/main.asp?menu_id=1_a_786_19]<br />
10. Cash payoffs, bonds and murder linked to White House 9/<strong>11</strong> finance, Tom<br />
Flocco, tomflocco.com; also see “Part 4: More reasons to not investigate 9-<strong>11</strong>”,<br />
Karl W. B. Schwarz<br />
<strong>11</strong>. The key point is that in 2006, there appears to be no clear understanding of where<br />
the treasury went. “There is no comprehensive understanding on the country<br />
today on what happened in Russia then….The reality is, in 1991-92 a cyber war<br />
broke up in Russia. Management of national strategic financial resources was<br />
partially taken under control by criminal subjects, but we are still unable to define<br />
it clearly, whether it was crime or, maybe, some external forces stood behind<br />
them and tried to destabilize the situation in Russia. For some time, they had<br />
managed to take under control vast financial flows of Russia’s National Bank.”<br />
President of information protection company: “The West is not very highly<br />
concerned with the threat of cyber terrorism,” Anatoly Klepov,<br />
www.regnum.ru/english/749825.html, December 14, 2006<br />
12. Russian gold as part of bank note scam. "In one operation valued at $4 billion,<br />
over 300 tons were secretly shipped to Switzerland, some of it subsequently<br />
arriving in London. Unlike Britain, the Swiss authorities do not keep records of<br />
gold imports which makes it a favourite centre for disguising the point of origin -<br />
a very effective method of laundering suspicious transactions. The bullion, some<br />
sources now believe, was used as collateral in a secondary scam that set-out to<br />
vacuum-up all the available Rouble bank-notes in existence at the time and sell<br />
them at knock down prices to organised crime syndicates from around the world."<br />
Gangster’s Paradise, David Guyatt, 1997; "Valued at $35 billion, Russia's gold<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 368
eserves were estimated to be 100 million troy ounces - just under 3000 tonnes.<br />
Then in <strong>September</strong> 1991, a palpitating Grigory Yavlinski, the economic supremo,<br />
revealed to delegates at the Group-of-Seven industrial countries meeting in<br />
Bangkok, that a mere 240 tons were all that was left. Two months later, in<br />
November, even that had disappeared. "Not a gram of gold remains; the vaults are<br />
empty," said Victor Geraschenko, chief of Gosbank, the Russian Central Bank."<br />
Gangster’s Paradise, David Guyatt, 1997<br />
13. "GATA consultant Reginald H. Howe brought a similar federal lawsuit in Boston<br />
in 2000. It was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds in 2002. Since then GATA has<br />
documented and publicized evidence of manipulation of the gold market by<br />
Barrick, Morgan Chase, other bullion banks, and the U.S. government." Class-<br />
Action Suit Seeks Damages For Gold Investors from Barrick and J.P. Morgan<br />
Chase, Business Wire, <strong>11</strong>/27/2004<br />
14. Arrested oil tycoon passed shares to banker, Washington Times, November 03,<br />
2003, http://washingtontimes.com/world/2003<strong>11</strong>02-<strong>11</strong>1400-3720r.htm<br />
15. "Clinton's Money Laundry, Sherman H. Skolnick, June 13, 1999<br />
16. “According to PBS in 2003, Khodorkovskii's firm Menatep shared business<br />
interests with the western investment firms Global Asset Management, the<br />
Blackstone Group, the Carlyle Group and AIG Capital Partners.”[The Global<br />
Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/<strong>11</strong>, Peter Dale<br />
Scott (18,734 words) 10/29/05<br />
17. Corporate Governance Goes Global: Riding the Rising Tide, Rob Wright, IFC<br />
Corporate Relations Unit, Impact, Summer 1999; The World's Billionaires: The<br />
Oligarch Who Came in from the Cold, Paul Klebnikov, Forbes, March 18, 2002;<br />
Bank of New York probe exposes ties between Western financiers and Russian<br />
Mafia, James Brookfield, 27 August 1999, wsws.org<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 369
Appendix D: The Federal Reserve and the Three Card Monte<br />
On of the most common scams on the streets of America is a set up of three card Monte.<br />
The intricacies of the scam are legion, but essentially, the dealer’s sleight of hand which<br />
fools the ‘mark’ is covered by a rapid rotation of the three cards. It was the rapid rotation<br />
of the securities settlement fails in the aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th that appears to have<br />
allowed the Bank of New York and the Federal Reserve to engage in a securities<br />
refinancing that scammed the American taxpayer by $240 billion.<br />
A review of the explanations for actions of the Federal Reserve after <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong><br />
exposes an amazingly complex web of analysis and speculation. These reports published<br />
by the Federal Reserve argue that the Federal Reserve’s actions increasing the monetary<br />
supply by over $300 billion were justified to overcome operational difficulties in the<br />
financial sector. While impressive as the reports are, what is noted by the casual reader is<br />
that all of the Federal Reserve analysis is speculative and suggestive, using phraseology<br />
such as “may have,” “likely,” “presumably,” or “should have.” There are few - if any -<br />
definitive statements about root cause and the appropriateness of the response.<br />
The general perspective of the industry is captured in such comments as:<br />
“The destructive force of the attacks themselves caused severe disruptions to the U.S. banking system,<br />
particularly in banks’ abilities to send payments. The physical disruptions caused by the attacks<br />
included outages of telephone switching equipment in Lower Manhattan’s financial district, impaired<br />
records processing and communications systems at individual banks, the evacuation of buildings that<br />
were the sites for the payments operations of large banks, and the suspended delivery of checks by air<br />
couriers.” [Liquidity Effects of the Events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, James J. McAndrews and Simon M.<br />
Potter, FRBNY Economic Policy Review / November 2002, p. 59]<br />
“Following <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, open market operations were aimed at satisfying the financing needs of the<br />
severely disrupted government securities dealer community, leaving to the discount window the task of<br />
elastically providing balances to satisfy demand at the target rate. The huge additions of funds<br />
following <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> were therefore a by-product of operating procedures designed to target the<br />
overnight funds rate.[3]” [Payment System Disruptions and the Federal Reserve Following <strong>September</strong><br />
<strong>11</strong>, 2001, Jeffrey M. Lacker, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, 23219, USA,<br />
November 17, 2003 printed in Journal of Monetary Economics, Volume 51, Issue 5, July 2004, Pages<br />
935-965]<br />
“Fails rose initially because of the destruction of trade records and communication facilities. They<br />
remained high because the method typically used to avert or remedy a fail—borrowing a security<br />
through a special collateral repurchase agreement—proved as costly as failing to deliver<br />
the security.” [When the Back Office Moved to the <strong>Front</strong> Burner: Settlement Fails in the Treasury<br />
Market after 9/<strong>11</strong>, Michael J. Fleming and Kenneth D. Garbade, FRBNY Economic Policy Review /<br />
November 2002, p 35.]<br />
Reading statements like this are suggestive that there were massive, wide spread<br />
disruptions in the system. These were the conditions that “led policymakers to depart so<br />
significantly from previous debt management practices.” [When the Back Office Moved<br />
to the <strong>Front</strong> Burner: Settlement Fails in the Treasury Market after 9/<strong>11</strong>, Michael J.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 370
Fleming and Kenneth D. Garbade, FRBNY Economic Policy Review / November 2002,<br />
p1.]<br />
While the facts presented by the Federal Reserve analyst’s reports are true, as presented<br />
they tend to distort what really happened in the aftermath of the attack. In truth, while<br />
the analysts reported disruptions at over 800 banks, a deeper look at the reports indicated<br />
that only “a few’ were seriously disrupted. The order of magnitude of disruption at any<br />
bank has never quantified, with the exception of one. Even that statement however,<br />
detracts from the data which suggest that the disruptions were essentially concentrated in<br />
one bank – the Bank of New York. (The same Bank of New York was being<br />
investigated for money laundering charges in relation to the economic pillaging by<br />
Russian by criminal oligarchs who benefited from the illegal securities purportedly being<br />
laundered in the aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th .) This is because while the Fed was<br />
reporting outstanding account balances over $100 billion per day (while not identifying<br />
the banks involved), the Wall Street Journal reported:<br />
“At one point during the week after <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, BoNY publicly reported to be overdue on $100<br />
billion in payments. (Beckett, Paul, and Jathon Sapsford, Rebuilding Wall Street: How Wall Street's<br />
Nervous System Caused Pain, Wall Street Journal, <strong>September</strong> 21,2001)” reported in [Payment System<br />
Disruptions and the Federal Reserve Following <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, Jeffrey M. Lacker, Federal<br />
Reserve Bank of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, 23219, USA, November 17, 2003 p.6.]<br />
The Deutschebank which sat inside the World Trade Center reported no such account<br />
balance increase, and JP Morgan, the other of only two clearing banks which uses the<br />
same traders and communications hub, reported no such increase in its account balance.<br />
Understanding what was happening at the BoNY becomes critical to understanding the<br />
securities settlement issues:<br />
“GSCC and several dealers could not verify what came into and what left their custodial accounts at<br />
BoNY, they could not advise BoNY of securities they expected to receive, and they could not give<br />
BoNY instructions for delivering securities. Additionally, GSCC was unable to verify the movement of<br />
funds into and out of its account at BoNY (GSCC Important Notice GSCC068.01).” [When the Back<br />
Office Moved to the <strong>Front</strong> Burner: Settlement Fails in the Treasury Market after 9/<strong>11</strong>, Michael J.<br />
Fleming and Kenneth D. Garbade, FRBNY Economic Policy Review / November 2002, p 46.]<br />
In a world of coincidence The Bank of New York (which had over 8000 employees in its<br />
downtown location), lost three employees that day. One of those three employees was a<br />
man who was in the best position to explain how the attacks would have impacted BoNY.<br />
His name was Michael Diaz-Piedra III, a former West Point graduate and son of a Cuban<br />
exile. Michael was the Vice-President of Disaster Recovery Planning for the Bank of<br />
New York. In the aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, he was reported as being an employee of<br />
Bank of America, or holding another position at the BoNY.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 371
Finally, with respect to the Bank of New York operations and the level of disruption<br />
experienced on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th , an important element needs to be highlighted.<br />
Disruptions to the financial system were attributed to the loss of the communications hub<br />
in downtown Manhattan. The hub was decimated when the WTC collapsed onto it.<br />
However, the BoNY Funding Transfer operations, which reportedly could not<br />
communicate with the Fed, were located in Utica, New York, and had none of its<br />
communication abilities impaired. Moreover, the four BoNY back-up datacenters were<br />
all located within 46 miles of Manhattan, and could and did deliver data on tape regularly<br />
to the Fed via courier.<br />
In a reported setting of half truths and speculation made to appear as facts, review of the<br />
reports of the financial aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th suggest:<br />
• The disruptions to the U.S. financial system were not as widespread as the reports<br />
from the Federal Reserve would have the public believe, but that the public had to<br />
be made to perceive a widespread need for declaring a national financial<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 372
emergency, suspending key provisions of the Federal Reserve Act and driving the<br />
‘ten-year special rate’ to almost zero.<br />
• Certain key unknown figures in the Federal Reserve may have ‘conspired’ with<br />
key unknown figures at the Bank of New York to create a situation where $240<br />
billion in illegal securities created in 1991 as part of an official covert operation to<br />
overthrow the Soviet Union, could be cleared without publicly acknowledging<br />
their existence.<br />
• These securities, originally managed by Cantor Fitzgerald, were cleared and<br />
settled in the aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th through the BoNY. The $100 billion<br />
account balance bubble reported by the Wall Street Journal as being experienced<br />
in the BoNY was tip of a three day operation, when these securities were moved<br />
from off-balance-sheet to the balance sheet. (The off-balance-sheet process is<br />
described by banking advisor to the US Presidents Earl Cocke, who admitted<br />
under sworn testimony to managing Project Hammer funds – the suspected source<br />
of these illegal securities.)<br />
• By reducing the ‘ten-year special rate’ to almost zero, the Fed structurally<br />
increased the number of refinancing (Repo) settlement fails. Under the umbrella<br />
of this artificially created statistical bump of fails, the high level of fails due to the<br />
laundering of the $240 billion was able to be processed unnoticed.<br />
• The cover for this bubble is found in the footnotes to the BoNY annual and<br />
quarterly reports, which report that the BoNY took over $330 billion of<br />
commercial securities business from U.S. Trust between June and October of<br />
2001, although the assets under control of U.S. Trust in 2000 were reported by<br />
two sources as $80 or $86 billion. [Charles Schwab Shells Out for U.S. Trust,<br />
Nick Paumgarten, The New York Observer, January 23, 2000; Schwab to Pay<br />
$2.73 Billion For U.S. Trust, New York Times, Patrick McGeehan, January 14,<br />
2000]<br />
Federal Reserve Management of the Aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong><br />
There were two key disruptions reported in the financial markets:<br />
1) Excessive account balances in a few banks reportedly contributing to an increase in<br />
the account balance in a wide array of banks which required a massive infusion of<br />
credit to stabilize the Federal Reserve system. These accumulations started appearing<br />
on <strong>September</strong> 12 th and ran through the 18 th, . They resulted in the addition of $300<br />
billion to the US monetary supply, which initiated the on-set of the sub-prime market.<br />
2) A reported excessive number of fails in securities settling requiring the lifting of<br />
controls on settlements. There were two reasons reported for these fails:<br />
• Missing trade data due to loss of communications and data;<br />
• Refinancing (Repo) settlements had lost any financial incentive to avoid fails<br />
because the special rate for 10 year notes was dropped to almost zero.<br />
The first wave of fails is attributed to the BoNY situation.<br />
“In the absence of complete information on deliveries into and out of its account at BoNY on<br />
<strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, and as a result of its assumption of settlement fails on the starting legs of blind-<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 373
okered RPs, GSCC recorded (after the close of business on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>) $266 billion in<br />
transactions that apparently failed to settle.… Continuing connectivity problems prevented GSCC<br />
from giving BoNY delivery instructions after the close of business on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> and prevented<br />
it from acquiring information on activity in its account at BoNY during the day on <strong>September</strong> 12.<br />
Consequently, GSCC recorded $440 billion in settlement fails as of the close of business on<br />
<strong>September</strong> 12.” [When the Back Office Moved to the <strong>Front</strong> Burner: Settlement Fails in the<br />
Treasury Market after 9/<strong>11</strong>, Michael J. Fleming and Kenneth D. Garbade, FRBNY Economic<br />
Policy Review / November 2002, p 46.]<br />
Excessive Balances Increasing the Supply of Money<br />
On over-riding consideration in the Fed’s management of the aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th<br />
was the concentration in account balances at the Federal Reserve.<br />
“It is clear that the concentration in account balances at the Federal Reserve—rising more than<br />
fourteen-fold from its normal levels on the days following the terrorist attacks—was a most unusual<br />
event…. If a large proportion of the balances in the banking system concentrate in one bank’s account,<br />
then other banks will face, all else being equal, higher costs of making payments, or alternatively may<br />
face liquidity constraints on their borrowing, which could preclude their submission of further<br />
payments.” [Liquidity Effects of the Events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, James J. McAndrews and Simon<br />
M. Potter, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review, November 2002, p65. ]<br />
It may seem a small detail, but note the qualifying statement: “all else being equal.” An<br />
alternative explanation could be to move off-balance sheet liabilities to the balance sheet<br />
and claim the offsetting claims are in the ruble of the World Trade Center.<br />
Chart taken from [Liquidity Effects of the Events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, James J.<br />
McAndrews and Simon M. Potter, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic<br />
Policy Review, November 2002, p.64.]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 374
A key consideration is the pre-9/<strong>11</strong> daily average for this balance: “For commercial<br />
banks, these balances consist of either required reserve balances, excess reserve balances,<br />
or service-related balances.3 These balances and service-related balances for August<br />
2001 averaged $14.65 billion per day.4 (Liquidity Effects of the Events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>,<br />
2001, James J. McAndrews and Simon M. Potter, Federal Reserve Bank of New York<br />
Economic Policy Review, November 2002, p.60.) This makes the actual surges due to<br />
the attack show a net impact of $352 billion on the account balance over the remainder of<br />
the week .<br />
Federal Reserve Balance<br />
adjusted for normal daily<br />
average to reflect true<br />
impact of attack.<br />
<strong>Report</strong>ed<br />
Balance<br />
(Billions)<br />
Adjusted Balance<br />
Due to Attack<br />
(Billions of<br />
Dollars)<br />
<strong>September</strong> 12 44 29<br />
<strong>September</strong> 13 104 89<br />
<strong>September</strong> 14 121 106<br />
<strong>September</strong> 15 <strong>11</strong>1 96<br />
<strong>September</strong> 16 46 31<br />
What appears to be the case is that the Federal Reserve imbalances reported on three<br />
consecutive days in the aftermath were largely concentrated at the Bank of New York,<br />
which is reported to represent over 90% of the imbalance, suggesting the Bank had been<br />
the recipient of massive fund transfers, and unable to send out transfers.<br />
“At one point during the week after <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, BoNY publicly reported to be overdue on $100<br />
billion in payments. (Beckett, Paul, and Jathon Sapsford, Rebuilding Wall Street: How Wall Street's<br />
Nervous System Caused Pain,Wall Street Journal, <strong>September</strong> 21,2001)” reported in [Payment System<br />
Disruptions and the Federal Reserve Following <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, Jeffrey M. Lacker, Federal<br />
Reserve Bank of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, 23219, USA, November 17, 2003 p.6.]<br />
This supposedly was due to major communication and system failures.<br />
“The crucial government bond processing, for example, had a system in which a second computer was<br />
receiving and processing all the data going into the main computer, making it ready to pick up at a<br />
moment's notice…. As it turned out, though, even the expensive backup system was unable to get the<br />
government bond business up and running smoothly. That is largely because of problems maintaining<br />
the communications links that receive information on trades from its customers and report their<br />
positions back to them. ''In many cases our backup sites were dealing with our customers' backup<br />
sites,'' Mr. Renyi said. And though the bank had established communications lines in advance<br />
connecting these various backup centers, they often were of low capacity and typically had not been<br />
fully tested and debugged. Even a week after the attack, the Bank of New York was having trouble<br />
with some crucial communications links, like its connection to the Government Securities Clearing<br />
Corporation, a central part of the government bond market. On several days that week, the bank had to<br />
drive computer tapes with its trades to G.S.C.C. offices.” [Wall St. Lifeline Shakes Off Dust, and<br />
Critics; Disruptions Put Bank of New York to the Test , Saul Hansell with Riva D. Atlas, New York<br />
Times, October 6, 2001]<br />
“On <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, we were able to continue processing, as our funds transfer business unit is in Utica,<br />
New York, until the telecommunications lines went down later in the day in lower Manhattan. After<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 375
that, excess liquidity quickly built up because we were unable to process all securities and cash<br />
transactions in a normal manner. The increase in the balance sheet went away very quickly, however,<br />
as we returned to normal processing by Friday and handled the backlog over the weekend.” [ Emerging<br />
Stronger from 9/<strong>11</strong>/01: An Interview with Todd Gibbons, RMA (Risk Management Association)<br />
Journal, The, Dec, 2001]<br />
In fact, none of the BoNY’s systems failed or went non-operational.<br />
“Bank executives argue that some of the criticism has taken on some aspects of urban legend,<br />
especially the notion that the bank was in disarray because the main backup for its computer center in<br />
Lower Manhattan was at another location in Lower Manhattan. The bank says that all of its several<br />
computer centers in Manhattan were always set to revert to centers outside the city in case of<br />
emergency, and they did on Sept. <strong>11</strong>.” [Wall St. Lifeline Shakes Off Dust, and Critics; Disruptions Put<br />
Bank of New York to the Test , Saul Hansell with Riva D. Atlas, New York Times, October 6, 2001]<br />
Even more to the point, the Bank’s Fund Transfer operations are located in Utica New<br />
York, and its communication systems remained untouched.<br />
Where the inconsistent reporting gets interesting is that Todd Gibbons of the BoNY<br />
reported an “increase” in the volume of securities on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>.<br />
“The contingency site muse be able not only to accommodate normal business loads, it must be able to<br />
accommodate extreme business surges, such as we saw in the first day in the equities market. Our<br />
contingency plans had included the ability to handle a great amount of excess capacity; and we were<br />
able to handle the increase in volumes….” [ Emerging Stronger from 9/<strong>11</strong>/01: An Interview with<br />
Todd Gibbons, RMA (Risk Management Association) Journal, The, Dec, 2001]<br />
However, the overall volumes for the day were 25% less than normal and one third of the<br />
volume or $400 billion came in after normal business hours in very few transactions. As<br />
seen in the chart below, overall transactions for the day were seemingly down even more<br />
significantly than volume, but the transactions that came in after closing were extremely<br />
large, averaging in size in packages of $35million or more. This would be consistent with<br />
a hypothesis that $240 billion of securities were being pushed surreptitiously into the<br />
money supply. Additionally, the conflicting information from the BoNY and Fed suggest<br />
the activity in the bank was different that that being reported to the public.<br />
“August 2001, the value of Fedwire funds transfers averaged more than $1.6 trillion per day, while<br />
banks held about $15 billion on account.<strong>11</strong> ….The value of funds sent on <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> was $1.2<br />
trillion, about three-fourths of the average for the benchmark period. However, unlike volume, the<br />
value of funds sent had returned to normal levels on the twelfth and was then at elevated levels for the<br />
next seven business days.” [Liquidity Effects of the Events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, James J.<br />
McAndrews and Simon M. Potter, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review,<br />
November 2002, p.61]<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 376
[Liquidity Effects of the Events of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, James J. McAndrews and Simon M. Potter,<br />
Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review, November 2002, p65. ]<br />
The Federal Reserve, without providing the detail required to substantiate it’s claims,<br />
would have the public believe that there were widespread liquidity issues, when in fact<br />
the issues were very concentrated primarily, if not singularly, in the BoNY, which has<br />
been the subject of an ongoing major money-laundering investigation for many years.<br />
These account balance issues resulted in the defacto expansion of the monetary supply,<br />
details of which are no longer reported by the Federal Reserve. The reported cause of<br />
this market malfunction is seemingly suspect. By comparison, the Deutschebank which<br />
sat inside the World Trade Center reported no such account balance increase, and JP<br />
Morgan, the other of two clearing banks which uses the same traders and<br />
communications hub reported no such increase in account balance. Additionally, while<br />
problems were being documented between the BoNY and GCSS, no other institution had<br />
those problems.<br />
“…it is worth noting that settlements occurred at the major large-value private sector settlement<br />
systems (the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation and the Clearing House Inter-bank Payments<br />
System [CHIPS]) on the eleventh and subsequent days.” [Liquidity Effects of the Events of <strong>September</strong><br />
<strong>11</strong>, 2001, James J. McAndrews and Simon M. Potter, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic<br />
Policy Review, November 2002, p64. ]<br />
There is every reason to believe activities in the BoNY in the aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th<br />
are worthy of suspicion.<br />
The Fails<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 377
In the aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th , the analysts at the Fed attributed the security<br />
settlement failures to two causes:<br />
• the initial inability to match up trades with correspondent data, and<br />
• the use of ‘strategic’ fails by brokers in the aftermath, when the special rate on<br />
securities was so low that there was no incentive to avoid the refinancing fail.<br />
This reduction in the special rate was attributed to operations to increase liquidity<br />
in response to excess balance issue discussed in the section above.<br />
One key Federal Reserve researcher summarized it accordingly:<br />
“Fails rose initially because of the destruction of trade records and communication facilities. They<br />
remained high because the method typically used to avert or remedy a fail—borrowing a security<br />
through a special collateral repurchase agreement—proved as costly as failing to deliver the security.<br />
The U.S. Treasury responded to the fails problem by reopening the on-the-run ten-year note. The<br />
increased supply made borrowing the note more attractive than failing.” [When the Back Office<br />
Moved to the <strong>Front</strong> Burner: Settlement Fails in the Treasury Market after 9/<strong>11</strong>, Michael J. Fleming and<br />
Kenneth D. Garbade, FRBNY Economic Policy Review / November 2002, p 35.]<br />
The standard remedy for a fail—borrowing a security through a special collateral<br />
repurchase agreement— fell apart when the Fed dropped the special rate to nearly zero.<br />
“The Desk “had to accept the vast majority of propositions – even those offered at rates well below the<br />
new 3 percent target level – in order to arrange RPs of sufficient size.” (Markets Group of the Federal<br />
Reserve Bank of New York 2002, p. 24) On Wednesday, the Desk accepted all propositions submitted,<br />
the lowest of which was ¾ percent: see Table 2. The effective federal funds rate sank to 1¼ percent on<br />
Tuesday and below that on Wednesday” [Payment System Disruptions and the Federal Reserve<br />
Following <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>, 2001, Jeffrey M. Lacker, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Richmond,<br />
Virginia, 23219, USA, November 17, 2003 p.18.]<br />
“The incentive of a seller to borrow securities to avoid or cure a fail declines with the specials rate for<br />
the security. When the specials rate is near zero, a seller has little to gain lending money (at nearly no<br />
interest) to borrow the needed securities.13 This suggests that market participants may have little<br />
incentive to break daisy chains and round robins when the specials rate for a security is near zero. This<br />
aspect of the market is important to understanding the fails problem after <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong>…. the specials<br />
rate for a security will be driven to its lower limit more frequently when the fed funds rate, and hence<br />
the general collateral rate, is lower. This follows because the gross compensation earned by a lender of<br />
securities at any given specials rate is the difference between the general collateral rate and the specials<br />
rate.” [When the Back Office Moved to the <strong>Front</strong> Burner: Settlement Fails in the Treasury Market after<br />
9/<strong>11</strong>, Michael J. Fleming and Kenneth D. Garbade, FRBNY Economic Policy Review / November<br />
2002, p 44-45.]<br />
As shown in the following chart, the specials rate dropped by 200 -300 basis points,<br />
creating a disincentive to resolve short term, repo fails and creating a statistical flurry of<br />
fails.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 378
[When the Back Office Moved to the <strong>Front</strong> Burner: Settlement Fails in the Treasury Market after 9/<strong>11</strong>,<br />
Michael J. Fleming and Kenneth D. Garbade, FRBNY Economic Policy Review / November 2002, p 41.]<br />
The response of the Fed in bringing a new issue to the market at this time seems to have<br />
inadvertently (an assumption which should be challenged) been the source of continued<br />
lower “special rates” on the ten year note, and exacerbated the fail problem through the<br />
end of the year. In the extended condition of a high level of settlement fails, it would<br />
require little effort to ‘statistically hide’ the settlement of the remaining $240 billion that<br />
may not have been cleared in the immediate aftermath. The three week lull of fails in<br />
October could easily represent the 30 day short term refinancing of the debt. As the debt<br />
came back to the market for permanent refinancing, a shortage of investors would result<br />
in more fails.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 379
[When the Back Office Moved to the <strong>Front</strong> Burner: Settlement Fails in the Treasury Market<br />
after 9/<strong>11</strong>, Michael J. Fleming and Kenneth D. Garbade, FRBNY Economic Policy Review /<br />
November 2002, p 43.]<br />
The critical perspective here is that in making the original paper on $240 Billion in<br />
illegitimate notes disappear in the rubble of the World Trade Center, it would be<br />
implausible to refinance them in a few days without the financial world taking note.<br />
Notes could conceivably be refinanced for 30 days in the repo market<br />
Summary<br />
There is a contention that at the core of the <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> th attack, someone was planning<br />
to cover the 1991 issuance of $240 billion in illegal securities used to finance the collapse<br />
the Soviet Union. The facts surrounding the financial aftermath of <strong>September</strong> <strong>11</strong> suggest<br />
this is not only possible, but that reports describing the aftermath have deliberately been<br />
misleading.<br />
• The US dollar money supply was significantly increased in the aftermath of 9/<strong>11</strong>;<br />
• The bank at the core of the illegal money laundering by ex-Soviet criminals was<br />
the source of the increased money supply (BoNY);<br />
• The generally disseminated rationale for BoNY’s operational problems seems to<br />
have affected no other bank in a similar manner or magnitude and is inconsistent<br />
with reports on the BoNY operations in the aftermath;<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 380
• A key witness who might provide insight to these issues is a statistically aberrant<br />
death;<br />
• The source of the BoNY’s $330 billion in assets is cloaked under the privilege of<br />
“private banking” as footnote in the annual report;<br />
• The only alleged “severe” disruption to the financial systems was the Federal<br />
Reserves account balance and the securities trading fails – both systems required<br />
to hide the laundering of $240 billion in illegal securities.<br />
This is not a ‘proof’ that $240 billion was laundered, but it provides probable cause for<br />
paying serious attention to Durham’s claim that it was indeed what happened. When<br />
one looks deep enough into the murky cloud of black ops and secret financing – the<br />
world of Durham’s husband - her claims regarding 1991 and 2001 begin to gather<br />
credibility.<br />
THE SEPTEMBER <strong>11</strong> COMMISSION REPORT Page 381