Posted on 06/02/2006 4:41:37 AM PDT by Esther Ruth
Bin Laden family gave $1 million to Carter Ex-president reportedly met with terror leader's brothers in 2000
Posted: June 2, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Jimmy Carter speaking in Tokyo in 2003 (photo: United Nations University) Former President Jimmy Carter's center in Atlanta received more than $1 million from the family of Osama bin Laden, according to an investigative report.
A brother of the al-Qaida terrorist leader, Bakr M. bin Laden, funneled the money to the Carter Center in Atlanta through the Saudi Bin Laden Group, according to Melanie Morgan, chairman of a group opposing the Georgia Democrat called the Censure Carter Committee.
Morgan, a WorldNetDaily columnist, based her claim on papers she acquired from the Carter Center.
She points to a report showing Carter met with 10 of Osama bin Laden's brothers early in 2000. The former president and his wife, Rosalyn, followed up the meeting with a breakfast with Bakr bin Laden in September 2000 and secured the first $200,000 towards the more than $1 million that has gone to the Carter Center.
Morgan says the connection between Carter and the bin Laden family is exactly the kind of charge leveled by Michael Moore against President Bush in the film "Fahrenheit 9/11."
Morgan's group commented in a statement: "If you think this news troubles Michael Moore and his friends in the liberal, anti-war crowd, think again. You see, they’re not interested in the truth – they only seem interested in advancing their defeatist political message: America is almost always wrong–America is the source of many of the world’s problems."
There's some hypocrisy at work here, Morgan contends.
"Michael Moore used his film to viciously attack George W. Bush and undermine support for the war on terror," she told John Gibson on the Fox News Channel.
It turns out it was Carter, not Bush, hanging out with the bin Ladens, she said.
The Carters hosted Moore in the presidential viewing box at the 2004 Democratic National Convention while former President Bill Clinton addressed the delegates.
Gibson said the Carter Center declined the opportunity to respond to the charges.
Censure Carter is about to launch a second wave of national television ads urging Americans to rebuke Carter's efforts in North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere.
"The mainstream media is pretending that the Carter-bin Laden story is a non-issue, so the Censure Carter Campaign is out raising the money to air the facts in TV ads," the group says.
As WND reported last year, Morgan's Move America Forward said Carter was linked with a key figure in the U.N.'s oil-for-food scandal, Samir Vincent, who pleaded guilty to participating in numerous illegal activities.
Vincent admitted to receiving allocations for more than 9 million barrels of oil between 1996 and 2003 in return for serving as an agent of Saddam Hussein's regime. He worked at Hussein's direction, lobbying U.S. and U.N. officials to end sanctions and to instead implement the oil-for-food scam.
The first documented contact between Carter and Vincent was in September 1999. Vincent had organized a tour of Iraqi religious leaders to meet with individuals in the United States who might be persuaded to speak out against the sanctions against Iraq. The trip also included discussions of ways to oppose U.S. and British air strikes against Iraqi missile batteries in southern Iraq, which had fired on American and British aircraft engaged in enforcing the southern "No Fly Zone."
Alex, I'll take, "News stories that will NEVER EVER be on tha whirld newz tanite," for $5,000.
Jimmy Carter = Historical Father of the Culture of Corruption.
"didn't OBL's family disown him some years back?"
Yes, supposedly they did. (though who knows how many family members have really gone along with that?)
But the point of bringing up the family's relationship to Carter is this.......Michael Moore used the bin Laden name to demonize the Bush family. Now, there's a connection betwen the bin Laden name and Carter. So, that should demonize Carter too, right? Apparently not.
SO, it's just another example of Moore's lies and hypocrisy.
Not the point.....the point is that the darling of the left (i.e. Michael Moore) think that the mere connection though exaggerated by Moore was criticizable when it came to Bush Sr.
Paging Michael "Fat Boy" Moore. We have a storyline for you.
Depends on your definition of "worst". Certainly Clinton has to rank right up there. Carter takes the cake for wrong headed decisons. But Clinton sold the country to the Chinese and was just inattentive to duty for 8 years. Looks like a tie to me, except that we suffered under Clinton longer!
I hope one day we see Carter in leg chains....
I'm not aware of any connection they had other than being on a list of shareholders. People with lots of family money tend to be holders of shares in a wide range of companies, and often aren't even aware of what their holdings are. And Arab banks are notoriously vague even in their internal record-keeping, never mind any formal published records that could allow shareholders to know who the bank is dealing with. Major US banks have also been found to be laundering terrorist money, without the knowledge of senior executives or major shareholders, even though record-keeping and regulatory monitoring of US banks is detailed and extensive. In fact, Citibank and Bank of New York were found to be involved in Al Taqwa transactions, but there was no evidence that anyone at those institutions was aware of this, other than perhaps the account officer for the accounts through which the transactions were being made. No other bin Laden family members were on the list of Al Taqwa shareholders that was publicized, and women don't exactly call the shots in Islamic terrorist organizations, so I tend to think that these sisters had no real involvement. The Swiss banking authorities have certainly taken a much more active role in protecting Al Taqwa's operations than the bin Laden sisters have.
Clinton was a very bad person, Carter was a very bad president.
Clinton left the economy alone and let it grow. I was always better off 4 years after anytime of the Clinton presidency. Carter almost ruined me and just about anyone I knew.
Carter was depressing for the soul as well as the economy.
We were never so close to becoming part of the Soviet Union as we were with Carter.
Jul 5, 2004
The Big Guys Work For the Carlyle Group
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,370593,00.html
CARLYLE GROUP
What exactly does it do? To find out, we peeked down the rabbit hole.
By Melanie Warner
Are you the sort of person who believes in conspiracies--the Trilateral Commission secretly runs the world, that sort of thing? Well, then, here's a company for you. The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C., buyout firm, is one of the nation's largest defense contractors. It has billions of dollars at its disposal and employs a few important people. Maybe you've heard of them: former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, and former White House budget director Dick Darman. Wait, we're just getting warmed up. William Kennard, who recently headed the FCC, and Arthur Levitt, who just left the SEC, also work for Carlyle. As do former British Prime Minister John Major and former Philippines President Fidel Ramos. Let's see, are we forgetting anyone? Oh, right, former President George Herbert Walker Bush is on the payroll too.
The firm also has about a dozen investors from Saudi Arabia, including, until recently, the bin Laden family. Yes, those bin Ladens. Is it any wonder that Internet sites with names like paranoiamagazine.com are rife with stories about Carlyle's shadowy, corrupt global network? And it's not just wackos. "Be careful," a tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley wrote in an e-mail when he learned I was doing a story on Carlyle. "The rabbit hole runs really deep on this one.''
Leaving aside the conspiracies for a moment, what exactly does the Carlyle Group do? Start with the basics: It's one of the world's largest and most powerful private-equity investment firms, meaning it buys and sells privately held companies and divisions of large public companies for big profits. Founded in 1987 (and named after the favorite New York hotel of the firm's first investors, the Mellon family), Carlyle has raised a total of $14 billion from investors in just the past five years--more than any other private-equity firm has attracted in the same period, except the Blackstone Group and CSFB Private Equity.
Profits, too, have been pretty terrific. Not counting the standard 20% cut that goes to Carlyle's partners and managing directors, the firm's average annual rate of return has been 36%.
It's quite a success story, and to understand how Carlyle pulled it off, FORTUNE spent a month and a half peeking down that rabbit hole. One conclusion seems clear: While most of the conspiracy theories are amusingly overblown, this is a firm that's been built on the backs of Bush and other big shots who have lent Carlyle their names, their golden networks of friends in high places, and their insights into how government works. It wasn't until Carlucci joined, for instance, that Carlyle really took off. Founded by David Rubenstein, a lawyer who worked as an aide in the Carter White House, Bill Conway, a former CFO at MCI, and Dan D'Aniello, a former finance executive for Marriott, Carlyle early on invested in a motley assortment of deals--buying an airline-catering business, a health- food chain, and a biotech firm, for example. In 1990, Carlucci got the trio interested in the $150-billion-a-year U.S. defense industry, making introductions to companies that would turn into some of Carlyle's most lucrative investments. Rubenstein quickly realized the wisdom of recruiting a former Secretary of Defense and followed it up with a former Secretary of State, then a former White House budget director, and on and on.
The revolving door has long been a fact of life in Washington, but Carlyle has given it a new spin. Instead of toiling away for a trade organization or consulting firm for a measly $250,000 a year, former government officials can rake in serious cash by getting equity cuts on corporate deals. Several of the onetime government officials who have hooked up with Carlyle--Carlucci, Baker, and Darman, in particular--have made millions. Carlyle isn't the only organization doing it: Metropolitan West Financial in Los Angeles recently hired Al Gore to help with tech deals and make introductions overseas, for example. But Carlyle, which pioneered the idea, seems more adept at it than any other firm.
Unlike other private-equity groups, Carlyle concentrates on companies funded by the government, such as defense contractors, or those affected by government regulation, such as telecommunications firms, and then hires people with relevant government experience. As the company once put it in a brochure, "We invest in niche opportunities created in industries heavily affected by changes in governmental policies." Doing so, of course, raises the ultimate rabbit-hole question: Is Carlyle's approach just a smart twist on good old business networking or a step over the line into an ethical twilight zone in which the public trust is broken?
Half a mile from the White House, inside nondescript offices sparsely adorned with generic depictions of ships and ducks, co- founder Rubenstein sits with his hands folded on a table so shiny you can see your reflection. Next to him sits Chris Ullman, Carlyle's first-ever full-time PR person. Habitually wary of media attention, Rubenstein and his partners agreed to rare interviews with FORTUNE. That's because since Sept. 11 the firm has been under unusual fire. First there was the bin Laden thing. Shafig bin Laden, one of Osama's many brothers and a Carlyle investor, was in attendance at a Carlyle conference at a Washington hotel on that infamous day. As the media were quick to point out, this meant that George H.W. Bush was working for a firm that was helping to make the bin Ladens money. Even though the wealthy Saudi family has reportedly cut all ties to Osama, the press lambasted Carlyle.
By the way,
George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush attended the Carlyle conference dinner at the Ritz along with Shafig bin Laden on the evening of September 10,2001.
Will Michael Moore make a movie about Carter's connections to Bin Laden?
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=6793&hed=Carlyle's+Way
Carlyle's Way
Making a mint inside "the iron triangle" of defense, government and industry.
December 11, 2001
Like everyone else in the United States, the group stood transfixed as the events of September 11 unfolded. Present were former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker III, and representatives of the bin Laden family. This was not some underground presidential bunker or Central Intelligence Agency interrogation room. It was the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., the plush setting for the annual investor conference of one of the most powerful, well-connected, and secretive companies in the world: the Carlyle Group. And since September 11, this little-known company has become unexpectedly important.
That the Carlyle Group had its conference on America's darkest day was mere coincidence, but there is nothing accidental about the cast of characters that this private-equity powerhouse has assembled in the 14 years since its founding. Among those associated with Carlyle are former U.S. president George Bush Sr., former U.K. prime minister John Major, and former president of the Philippines Fidel Ramos. And Carlyle has counted George Soros, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud of Saudi Arabia, and Osama bin Laden's estranged family among its high-profile clientele.
What is she implying here?
George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush met with Shafig bin Laden on the evening of September 10,2001 at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington,D.C.
That meeting on 9/10 was completely insignificant and coincidental to 9/11.
What is she suggesting concerning the 2000 meeting?
I'm sorry, did the Censure Carter Committee do something to jeopardize their credibility? Since I work with them I was interested to know what's "out there" in terms of information that would make someone believe we were untrustworthy.
Please let me know so I can alert the rest of our team so as to address any concerns people might have.
Since the committee is led by Melanie Morgan of Move America Forward who has been in broadcast news for 20+ years including reporting from Beirut after the Marine barracks bombing, in Tianamen Square during the student uprising, and in Iraq to interview hundreds of soldiers as part of the "Voices of Soldiers" Truth Tour (for which she won the AP's Mark Twain Journalism Award) I don't know why someone would make a comment like you made in your post?
Again, unless my head is in the sand and there's some malicious story about the lies and deceptions at the Censure Carter Committee.
Please let me know!
I am not saying they did ANYTHING wrong at all. However, they are an advocacy group. By that fact alone, their assertions are suspect and would not be suitable for republication.
Please note: this is not an attack against them at all. I am sure they are correct in their investigation. But, let's say I was to hypothetically post their press release ('scuse me, article in WND) to a site that had both lib and conservative participants. I would be very correctly skewered...unless there was documentation that I could post or link that substantiated the claims.
That's why I say, show some source documentation. Don't just give me conclusions. Because then I have some evidence that I can use to back up the conclusion drawn.
The claims against Kerry's Vietnam performance raised by the Swiftees were just that: claims. But when the objective documentation rolled out that proved they were right, those claims turned into factual conclusions.
I'd love to see the same scenario happen against good ol' boy Jimmuh.
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