Posted on 10/13/2001 12:09:56 PM PDT by Wallaby
Thanks for catching the omission.
DUBAI, Oct 11
He was referring to Mexico's off-shore reserves, exploited at a huge cost in an effort to diversify world supplies and reduce dependence on a region as troubled as the Middle East. "Peace in Afghanistan would allow numerous projects to go ahead, taking oil and gas from the Caspian, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to Pakistan, India and other markets," said Abi Aad. The West would benefit from these projects because they would avoid having to use long, costly and politically risky transport by road across Iran, the Caucasus and Russia, he said. "The economic impact on Gulf producers would be minimal, but they would see their influence on the market diminish in the short term. |
"But the Caspian will not be a long-term rival, as its reserves represent only 1.7 percent of the world total," Abi Aad said. Some oil experts attribute, in part, the cool reception Saudi Arabia afforded US-led strikes on Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime to vested oil interests. Saudi firm Delta Oil, headed by a relative of the ruling family, Sheikh Badr bin Mohammad al-Aiban, acquired a majority share in Afghanistan's Centgas consortium in 1998 after the withdrawal of US company Unocal in protest at the Taliban's treatment of women. A planned 2-billion-dollar, 1,400-kilometre-long (870 miles) gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan, to be built by the Centgas consortium was shelved in 1999 amid fears of political unrest and low oil prices. Delta Oil had resumed negotiations with the Taliban to complete the project, and experts say the end of the Islamic militia could spell the start of more lucrative opportunities for Western oil companies. "The energy map of central Asia and Afghanistan is about to be redrawn," said Michael Ritchie, editor of the London-based Neftecompass magazine. "A semblance of security and stability in the region could reopen the door to Western investors to again examine oil and gas pipeline projects aimed at unblocking countries like Turkmenistan," he said. "But the scenario remains a long-term one." All oil exploration and development work in Afghanistan was halted after the Soviet invasion in 1979. The country's provinces received refined products from neighbouring countries. Soviet estimates in the 1970s placed the country's proven oil reserves at about 95 million barrels, and proven gas reserves at 145 billion cubic metres (5 trillion cubic feet). Oil was locally produced near the northern city of Sherberghan from four wells initially established by the Soviet Union during its 1979-89 occupation of the country. Refining was, however, limited. |
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
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Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Washington The newspaper quoted "senior U.S. intelligence officials" as saying the money transfers, which began more than five years ago, have been used to finance several terrorist acts by bin Laden. Those terrorist acts included the attempted assassination in 1995 of Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak in Ethiopia, the officials were quoted as saying. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is expected to raise the issue with Prince Sultan, the Saudi defence minister, during his visit to Washington next week, USA Today added. The newspaper said that, according to a Saudi government audit acquired by U.S. intelligence, five of Saudi Arabia's top businessmen ordered the National Commercial Bank (NCB), the kingdom's largest, to transfer personal funds, along with 3 million dollars diverted from a Saudi pension fund, to New York and London banks.
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The money was deposited into the accounts of Islamic charities, including Islamic Relief and Blessed Relief, that serve as fronts for bin Laden.
USA Today said the money transfers were discovered in April after the royal family ordered an audit of NCB and its founder and former chairman, Khalid bin Mahfouz. Mahfouz is now under "house arrest" at a military hospital in the Saudi city of Taif, intelligence officials said. His successor, Mohammad Hussein Al-Amoudi, also heads the Capitol Trust Bank in New York and London, which U.S. and British officials are investigating for allegedly transferring money to bin Laden. Bin Laden faces U.S. criminal charges for allegedly masterminding the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Bin Laden, who is in Afghanistan, denies the charges. |
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
DATELINE: ARLINGTON, Va. A Saudi government audit obtained by U.S. intelligence shows that five top Saudi Arabian businessmen ordered the National Commercial Bank, the kingdom's largest, to transfer personal funds and $ 3 million from a Saudi pension fund to New York and London banks, the newspaper said. It said the money was deposited into accounts of Islamic charities, including Islamic Relief and Blessed Relief, that serve as fronts for bin Laden. Bin Laden, whose family runs the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia, has called for the overthrow of the Saudi government. USA Today quoted the further unidentified U.S. intelligence officials as saying the payments are "protection money" aimed at staving off attacks on the businessmen's properties.
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The money transfers were discovered in August after the Saudi royal family ordered and audit of the National Commercial Bank and its founder and former chairman, Khalid bin Mahfouz, the U.S. officials said.
The newspaper said Amoudi's Washington attorney, Vernon Jordan, who also is a confidant of President Clinton, could not be reached for comment. Bin Laden has been indicted by a U.S. grand jury on charges of ordering the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Bin Laden, believed to be living in Afghanistan, has denied the charges. |
This Osama dude and his cohorts of Newspeak charitable organizations and worldwide cells make the Soviets look like also-rans in comparison.
Thank God the adults, oilmen and bankers are back in charge. They'll straighten all this out.
The newspaper quoted "senior U.S. intelligence officials" as saying the money transfers, which began more than five years ago, have been used to finance several terrorist acts by bin Laden.1993?
The Bergen Record
Bin Laden is said to have advantage in communications
Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile wanted for allegedly masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, has better communications technology than the United States, according to the director of the National Security Agency.
Gen. Mike Hayden, who heads the U.S. supersecret intelligence agency, said in a rare interview that Bin Laden was able to orchestrate almost simultaneous bombings without NSA detection because he has more resources.
"Osama bin Laden has at his disposal the wealth of a $3 trillion a year telecommunications industry that he can rely on," Hayden told CBS' "60 Minutes II" in an interview that will be broadcast Tuesday night. "That's why. He has better technology."
Hayden said his agency is "behind the curve in keeping up with the global telecommunications revolution."
Prosecutors have portrayed the 1998 blasts at U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as part of a worldwide plot by Bin Laden. Twelve Americans were among the 224 people killed. Four men are standing trial in New York in the plot.
Later in the interview, Hayden recounted how a telecommunications failure within the agency made Americans around the world more vulnerable to terrorists for three days in January 2000. All the agency's computers at headquarters had failed.
"NSA headquarters was brain-dead. We had some residual ability at our locations around the world, but I don't want to trivialize this. This was really bad," Hayden said.
Considered the eavesdropping branch of the intelligence community, the NSA gathers information through satellites, telephone intercepts, and other methods. Not much else is known about the NSA. Employees joke that the agency's initials stand for "No Such Agency."
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
WASHINGTON
The money transfers, which began more than five years ago, have been used to finance several terrorist acts by bin Laden, including the attempted assassination in 1995 of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia, the officials said. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is expected to raise the issue with Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense minister, during his visit to Washington next week. Saudi Arabia, the main U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf, has pledged to fight terrorism. According to a Saudi government audit acquired by U.S. intelligence, five of Saudi Arabia's top businessmen ordered the National Commercial Bank (NCB), the kingdom's largest, to transfer personal funds, along with $ 3 million diverted from a Saudi pension fund, to New York and London banks. |
The money was deposited into the accounts of Islamic charities, including Islamic Relief and Blessed Relief, that serve as fronts for bin Laden. The businessmen, who are worth more than $ 5 billion, are paying bin Laden "protection money" to stave off attacks on their businesses in Saudi Arabia, intelligence officials said. Bin Laden, whose family runs the largest Saudi construction firm, has called for the overthrow of the Saudi government. The money transfers were discovered in April after the royal family ordered an audit of NCB and its founder and former chairman, Khalid bin Mahfouz, U.S. officials say. Mahfouz is now under "house arrest" at a military hospital in the Saudi city of Taif, intelligence officials said. His successor, Mohammad Hussein al-Amoudi, also heads the Capitol Trust Bank in New York and London, which U.S. and British officials are investigating for allegedly transferring money to bin Laden. Amoudi's Washington lawyer, Vernon Jordan, could not be reached for comment. Mahfouz's son, Abdul Rahman Mahfouz, is on the board of Blessed Relief in Sudan. Suspects in the Mubarak attack are linked to the charity. Bin Laden faces U.S. criminal charges for allegedly masterminding the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Bin Laden, who is in Afghanistan, denies the charges. Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan declined to comment on the reports. |
Washington DC
The USA's National Security Agency (NSA) has announced plans to privatise up to $5 billion worth of its non-mission-related information technology (IT) operations. The move is aimed at improving the NSA's eavesdropping capabilities in the information age and to save money. NSA Director Air Force Lt Gen Michael Hayden approved the outsourcing plan, described as the largest federal government IT competition, after a 15-month feasibility study called Project Groundbreaker. Bids are due in for the project by year-end.
BY: ANDREW KOCH JDW Washington Bureau Chief
Jane's Defence Weekly
AMERICAS, THE; Vol. 36; No. 6
August 8, 2001
Washington DC
The US National Security Agency (NSA) has chosen a team led by Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) to meet its information technology (IT) needs under a dramatically new management approach for the agency.
Under Project Groundbreaker, potentially worth $2 billion over 10 years, the 'Eagle Alliance' team of CSC, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman's Logicon unit, TRW, and CACI International will help the NSA update its IT infrastructure and attempt to make its multitude of incompatible computer networks into a seamless system.
The NSA, the part of the US intelligence community tasked with collecting, processing and disseminating signals intelligence (SIGINT) and conducting electronic eavesdropping, has been struggling to update its ageing IT infrastructure.
Project Groundbreaker is a strong signal that the agency is now willing to reach out to industry for help and is a major change from the NSA's previous practice where everything was done in-house.
The move is designed to allow NSA officials to focus on core tasks such as determining how to keep up with changing technology such as fibre-optic communications and commercially available encryption software, and to process the massive flood of electronic data it intercepts everyday.
It "allows us to refocus assets on the agency's core missions of providing foreign signals intelligence and protecting US national security-related information systems", NSA Director Lt Gen Michael Hayden said.
He told Jane's Defence Weekly last year that the NSA requires significant resources to develop critically needed new technologies, such as state-of-the-art capabilities to overcome enemy encryption techniques and web-based SIGINT systems capable of processing the vast amount of intercepted communications quickly (JDW 22 March 2000).
In addition to modernising the NSA's infrastructure, the effort could also set a precedent for the privatisation of IT functions at other federal government agencies such as the Departments of Energy and Defense.
Just kidding, Pal. Good to see ya. Stay well and vigilant....FRegards
"In early 1995, major U.S. oil companies formed a private Foreign Oil Companies group in Washington to further their interests in the Caspian. The group included Unocal and they set about hiring former politicians from the Bush and Clinton era to lobby their case in Washington.......
"..The sudden capture of Kabul by the Taliban in September 1996 prompted me to try and unravel two unanswered questions whcih many Western jouranlists were grappling with, but failed to answer. Were the Americans supporting the Taliban either directly or indirectly through Unocal or their allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia? And what was prompting the this massive regional polarization between the USA, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Taliban on one side, and Iran, Russia, the Central Asian States, and the anti-Taliban alliance on the other?...........
The Clinton administration now weighed in on behalf of Unocal. In March 1996 the US Ambassador to Pakistan Tom Simmons had a major row with Bhutto when he asked her to switch Pakistan's support from Bridas to Unocal.' Bhutto supported Bridas and Simmons accused Bhutto of extortion when she defended Bridas. She was furious with Simmons', said a senior aide to Bhutto present during the meeting....
When the Taliban captured Kabul in September 1996, Chris Taggert, a Unocal executive, told wire agencies that the pipeline project would be easier to implement now that the Taliban had captured Kabul- a statement that Unocal quickly retracted because it implied that Unocal favored a Taliban conquest.......
Then, within hours of Kabul's capture by the Taliban, the US State Department announced it would establish diplomatic relations with the Taliban by sending an official to Kabul- an announcement it also quickly retracted.......
Bridas had one advantage with the Taliban. Bridas told them it did not need to raise finances for the project through international lending institutions, which would first demand an internationally recognized government in Kabul. Instead Bridas had set up AP Pipelines, a 50-50 partnership with the Saudi company Ningarcho, which was extremely close to Prince Turki, the Saudi intelligence chief.....
Whatever Unocal gave to the Taliban only further convinced the anti-Taliban alliance and Iran and Russia that the compny was funding the Taliban, Unocal vehemently denied the charges. Later Unocal specified to me what it has spent on the project. 'We have estimated that we spent approximately $15-20 million on the CentGas project. This included humanitarian aid for earthquake relief, job-skill training and some new equipment like a fax machine and a generator', Unocal's President John Imle told me in 1999......"
He represented Bush in SEC case over sale of Harken Energy stockPresident Bush has chosen as ambassador to Saudi Arabia a Dallas attorney who represented him against insider trading allegations arising from his sale of stock in Harken Energy Co. 11 years ago.
Robert Jordan, a founding partner of the Dallas law office of Baker Botts, represented Mr. Bush during a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into the allegations involving Mr. Bush's lucrative sale of stock in Harken, where he had been a director.
The SEC found no merit in the charges. Critics have noted that Mr. Bush's father was president during the investigation and a longtime supporter, Richard Breeden, was the commission's chairman.
Mr. Bush has said he needed to sell his 212,000 shares of Harken stock for nearly $850,000, which later plummeted in value, in order to finance his purchase of an interest in the Texas Rangers baseball club.
He invested about $600,000 in the team and earned nearly $15 million when it was sold in 1998.
If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Jordan would represent the United States in the capital of one of its key allies in the Middle East.
"He understands the important relationship that exists between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and I am confident he will be an outstanding ambassador," Mr. Bush said in announcing his selection.
In a brief telephone interview Friday, Mr. Jordan said he was honored by the appointment, but could not discuss it in any detail until he is confirmed.
In the Senate, Allison Dobson, a spokeswoman for Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., whose foreign relations subcommittee will screen Mr. Jordan's nomination, said a staff review had just begun and any hearing was weeks off.
At the White House, deputy press secretary Scott McClellan said Mr. Bush has confidence in Mr. Jordan and foresaw no problems with his Senate confirmation.
"The president believes Mr. Jordan will do an outstanding job representing the United States," Mr. McClellan said.
Early in the new Bush administration, there have been reports of strained relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia over the continued violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
Just last week, it was reported that former President George Bush had called Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to reassure him that his son was determined to "do the right thing" in the region.[Am I the only one who thinks it unseemly for the President's dad to be making comfort calls?]
Mr. Jordan, 55, is a director of the State Bar of Texas and a past president of the Dallas Bar Association.
He is a Navy veteran and a graduate of Duke University. He also has a master's degree in government and international relations from the University of Maryland and a law degree from the University of Oklahoma.
A corporate lawyer familiar with the courtroom, Mr. Jordan has handled a wide range of domestic and international cases. His Houston-based firm, Baker Botts, deals heavily with energy and technology issues and has a branch office in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
James Baker, who was secretary of state in the administration of Mr. Bush's father and treasury secretary under President Ronald Reagan, also is a partner in the firm.
Although the White House has announced Mr. Jordan's selection, his nomination has not been formally submitted to the Senate. Mr. Jordan said he is still working on the voluminous personal and financial disclosures that are required for such appointments.
This is no biggy. Until oil, Yemen was the place to be, and the rest of the peninsula was the dumps. Once oil came, you had immigration from Yemen and Iran to the GCC nations, and to this day family ties dating back to the old country play a big role. Saudi Yemenis generally are 2 class citizens, but the Bin Ladins made good.
4)BCCI again and again and again. I wonder why. (I am having trouble keeping track of all of the names.)
IMO BCCI is best understood as a protection money by which the Gulf elite bought favors in DC & elsewhere. Think of it as a laundromat that, with the $$$$ involved, attracted the who's who.
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