Posted on 05/27/2002 11:47:41 AM PDT by OKCSubmariner
Has someone been sitting on the FBI? (FBI Ordered Not To Investigate Saudis)
BBC Transcript | November 6, 2001 | BBC NewsNight
GREG PALAST:
The CIA and Saudi Arabia, the Bushes and the Bin Ladens. Did their connections cause America to turn a blind eye to terrorism?
UNNAMED MAN:
There is a hidden agenda at the very highest levels of our government.
JOE TRENTO, (AUTHOR, "SECRET HISTORY OF THE CIA"):
The sad thing is that thousands of Americans had to die needlessly.
PETER ELSNER:
How can it be that the former President of the US and the current President of the US have business dealings with characters that need to be investigated?
PALAST:
In the eight weeks since the attacks, over 1,000 suspects and potential witnesses have been detained. Yet, just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama Bin Laden's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the White House.
Their official line is that the Bin Ladens are above suspicion - apart from Osama, the black sheep, who they say hijacked the family name. That's fortunate for the Bush family and the Saudi royal household, whose links with the Bin Ladens could otherwise prove embarrassing. But Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of other members of the] Bin Laden family for links to terrorist organisations before and after September 11th.
This document is marked "Secret". Case ID - 199-Eye WF 213 589. 199 is FBI code for case type. 9 would be murder. 65 would be espionage. 199 means national security. WF indicates Washington field office special agents were investigating ABL - because of it's relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, WAMY - a suspected terrorist organisation. ABL is Abdullah Bin Laden, president and treasurer of WAMY.
This is the sleepy Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia where almost every home displays the Stars and Stripes. On this unremarkable street, at 3411 Silver Maple Place, we located the former home of Abdullah and another brother, Omar, also an FBI suspect. It's conveniently close to WAMY. The World Assembly of Muslim Youth is in this building, in a little room in the basement at 5613 Leesburg Pike. And here, just a couple blocks down the road at 5913 Leesburg, is where four of the hijackers that attacked New York and Washington are listed as having lived.
The US Treasury has not frozen WAMY's assets, and when we talked to them, they insisted they are a charity. Yet, just weeks ago, Pakistan expelled WAMY operatives. And India claimed that WAMY was funding an organisation linked to bombings in Kashmir. And the Philippines military has accused WAMY of funding Muslim insurgency. The FBI did look into WAMY, but, for some reason, agents were pulled off the trail.
TRENTO:
The FBI wanted to investigate these guys. This is not something that they didn't want to do - they wanted to, they weren't permitted to.
PALAST:
The secret file fell into the hands of national security expert, Joe Trento. The Washington spook-tracker has been looking into the FBI's allegations about WAMY.
TRENTO:
They've had connections to Osama Bin Laden's people. They've had connections to Muslim cultural and financial aid groups that have terrorist connections. They fit the pattern of groups that the Saudi royal family and Saudi community of princes - the 20,000 princes - have funded who've engaged in terrorist activity.
Now, do I know that WAMY has done anything that's illegal? No, I don't know that. Do I know that as far back as 1996 the FBI was very concerned about this organisation? I do.
PALAST:
Newsnight has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections between the State Department, the CIA and the Saudis. The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah is Michael Springman.
MICHAEL SPRINGMAN:
In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the Inspector General's office. I was met with silence.
PALAST:
By now, Bush Sr, once CIA director, was in the White House. Springman was shocked to find this wasn't visa fraud. Rather, State and CIA were playing "the Great Game".
SPRINGMAN:
What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets.
The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department's faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was being obstructed. Would you be surprised to find out that FBI agents are a bit frustrated that they can't be looking into some Saudi connections?
MICHAEL WILDES, ( LAWYER)
I would never be surprised with that. They're cut off at the hip sometimes by supervisors or given shots that are being called from Washington at the highest levels.
PALAST:
I showed lawyer Michael Wildes our FBI documents. One of the Khobar Towers bombers was represented by Wildes, who thought he had useful intelligence for the US. He also represents a Saudi diplomat who defected to the USA with 14,000 documents which Wildes claims implicates Saudi citizens in financing terrorism and more. Wildes met with FBI men who told him they were not permitted to read all the documents. Nevertheless, he tried to give them to the agents.
WILDES:
"Take these with you. We're not going to charge for the copies. Keep them. Do something with them. Get some bad guys with them." They refused.
PALAST:
In the hall of mirrors that is the US intelligence community, Wildes, a former US federal attorney, said the FBI field agents wanted the documents, but they were told to "see no evil."
WILDES:
You see a difference between the rank-and-file counter-intelligence agents, who are regarded by some as the motor pool of the FBI, who drive following diplomats, and the people who are getting the shots called at the highest level of our government, who have a different agenda - it's unconscionable.
PALAST:
State wanted to keep the pro-American Saudi royal family in control of the world's biggest oil spigot, even at the price of turning a blind eye to any terrorist connection so long as America was safe. In recent years, CIA operatives had other reasons for not exposing Saudi-backed suspects.
TRENTO:
If you recruited somebody who is a member of a terrorist organisation, who happens to make his way here to the US, and even though you're not in touch with that person anymore but you have used him in the past, it would be unseemly if he were arrested by the FBI and word got back that he'd once been on the payroll of the CIA. What we're talking about is blow-back. What we're talking about is embarrassing, career-destroying blow-back for intelligence officials.
PALAST:
Does the Bush family also have to worry about political blow-back? The younger Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company partly funded by Salem Bin Laden's chief US representative. Young George also received fees as director of a subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation, a little known private company which has, in just a few years of its founding, become one of Americas biggest defence contractors. His father, Bush Senior, is also a paid advisor. And what became embarrassing was the revelation that the Bin Ladens held a stake in Carlyle, sold just after September 11.
ELSNER:
You have a key relationship between the Saudis and the former President of the US who happens to be the father of the current President of the US. And you have all sorts of questions about where does policy begin and where does good business and good profits for the company, Carlyle, end?
PALAST:
I received a phone call from a high-placed member of a US intelligence agency. He tells me that while there's always been constraints on investigating Saudis, under George Bush it's gotten much worse. After the elections, the agencies were told to "back off" investigating the Bin Ladens and Saudi royals, and that angered agents. I'm told that since September 11th the policy has been reversed. FBI headquarters told us they could not comment on our findings. A spokesman said: "There are lots of things that only the intelligence community knows and that no-one else ought to know.
------------------------------------------------- This transcript provides interviews with author Joe Trento and other sources who are knowledgeable about the FBI documents and policies of the FBI being ordered off the investigations of Saudis described in the transcript.
I suspect (but do not know) that Joe Trento (an expert on the CIA) got the FBI documents from someone displeased (either CIA or FBI sources or both) with the way the FBI is being run.
FBI agents Coleen Rowley and Ken Williams went to the CIA after being stonewalled by the FBI in Washington about the FBI agents' informattion on Bin Laden hijacker pilot (Phoenix and Minneapois)training missions prior to 9/11/01. These FBI agents' actions also show their concern about how the FBI is being run and was an obvious effort to enlist the help of the CIA since it is well known that the CIA is still not happy with the way the FBI is being run.
Congress in 1997, determined that the FBI shared most of the blame for the Aldrich Ames debacle rather than the CIA becasue the FBI deliberately sat on important information for years that could have been used by the CIA and others to uncover Ames. There are those in the CIA and FBI who have never forgotten how badly the FBI treated the CIA over Ames.
I strongly recommend that people read the following article "Saudis helped 'sustain" al-Qaida?" from WorldNetDaily posted on FR on March 8, 2002. The link is http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/642487/posts.
The artricle describes how evidence collected by the US Mission in Saudi Arabia showing Saudi support for Al-Qaeda was deliberately not sent by the CIA station to Washington. THe article also has ex-diplomats alleging corruption between US officials and Saudi Government officials.
This article also raises questions about the way the CIA, not just the FBI, was being run to keep Saudi support for AlQeda from reaching Washington. Was it because of a renegade CIA station chief or CIA director, or was it because someone in the White House ordered the CIA not to send the reports to Washignton?
The FBI, the CIA and the present and past administrations (Bush and CLinton) should be asked about and to explain these matters to Congress. The cause of these problems must be identified and corrected to ensure a sucessful war on terrorism.
Were Presidents being sandbagged by their own FBI and CIA or were the Presidents asking that certain investigatory actions not be taken by the FBI and CIA for political reasons, actions that in retrospect may have helped make 9/11 less likely?
I am raising these questions in light of these articles because these are some of the questions which I believe COngress should try to have answered to improve security against terrorism and to maintain the confidence of the American people that they are being adequately protected by the FBI, CIA and their elected leaders in the White House, past and present. We need accoutability in order to correct any problems which could still be on going.
FBI director RobertMueller is in effect a holdover from the Clinton adminstration (appointed by Clinton as a US attorney in California) as is George Tenet at CIA. Are these men repeating any mistakes that may have been made under CLinton, now that they are serving under Bush? Are they getting the same instructions from Bush as they got from Clinton or are they sandbagging Bush? Something is wrong and needs to be investigated and corrected fast in my opinion
We did Mueller back when he was nominated, but because the Love Affair just started he became like another god here. After all he served daddy too. "Under the first President Bush, Mueller was Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division."
"heading up the investigations of the BCCI banking scandal"
From ---- http://www.iwar.org.uk/news-archive/2001/fbi/07-05-01.htm
Mueller did such a good job on BCCI (weren't there some Saudi's involved in that? :-) that EVERYBODY wanted to keep him......and PROMOTE him!
Following a standard pattern, Justice Department officials and the various divisions including the FBI, and other government agencies, kept the lid on the worldwide criminal activities of the bank. It wasn't until law enforcement agencies in Europe and a state prosecutor in New York City prepared to file charges that the bank's corrupt operations were shut down in the United States. By that time billions of dollars were lost by thousands of depositors all over the world.
BCCI was a private bank operating in over seventy countries, including the United States. At one time BCCI had over 400 branches in 78 countries, and assets of over $20 billion. Its holding company was based in Luxembourg and its principal operation in London. The primary bank supervisor for BCCI was Luxembourg Monetary Institute, the central bank of Luxembourg.
The BCCI scandal was related to other criminal activities, including BNL; Iraqgate; Iran and its Contra cousin; and others. BCCI and BNL both played a role in the Iraqi armament buildup, in which funds provided by U.S. taxpayers were forwarded by the Atlanta branch of Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. There were numerous cross-dealings between the banks. BCCI used its international connections to fund loans to BNL, which funded the Iraqi weapon buildups, which then required the U.S. taxpayer to fund much of the Persian Gulf War.
373) The Abu Nidal terrorist group and others obtained funds through BCCI, which helped to bring about the Pan Am 103 tragedy and others.
MORE ----- http://www.copi.com/defrauding_america/chp_23.htm
I am a gossipy old woman.
I am not a shill for anyone or anything.
I am not a government employee.
I am not an employee of any political organization.
I dislike every politician.
I dislike both political parties.
What I have said for most of my adult life us coming true...this lazy,immoral,illegal,incompetent,treasonous,corrupt government will get us all killed.
I come to my own conclusions by googling the heck out of everything.
Then cross googling.
What I say and post here on FR are my thoughts.
I am not doing anything for anybody but myself.
I believe that the chain of intelligence in America is broken.
I beleive that 9/11 could have been prevented.
I believe that Bush family and friends and current and former government employees ties to Saudi oil and other Saudi businesses have caused investigative stand downs and shutdowns.
I believe that partisan political feelings of all shades have led to this disaster.
I want the bipartisan,bicameral intelligence investigation now going on to dredge up horrific facts.
Both political parties will face the wrath of America for the preventable murder of thousands of Americans by agents,minions,cohorts and soldiers funded by business owners and stockholders and partners of Saudi and other Islamic interests which are co-owned,and held by American citizens,including the Bush family,and other government employess and appointees.
The blowback is "Blowing in the wind."
"The Saudi relationship is so sensitive that, for more than a decade, federal prosecutors and counter-terrorist agents have been ordered to shut down their investigations for reasons of foreign policy."
The Tale of an American Terrorist Network
Arutz 7 | May 29, 2002 | John Loftus
Link:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/691332/posts
Posted on 5/29/02 9:21 AM Pacific by Nachum
For twenty years I have served without compensation as a lawyer for federal whistleblowers within the US intelligence community. In the last year, I have received highly classified information from several of my confidential clients concerning a Saudi covert operation. The Saudi relationship is so sensitive that, for more than a decade, federal prosecutors and counter-terrorist agents have been ordered to shut down their investigations for reasons of foreign policy.
I am filing a lawsuit in Hillsborough County Court to expose the manner in which Florida charities were used as a money laundering operation for tax-deductible terrorism. The complaint cites specific testimony, including highly classified information which has never been released before.
The government of Saudi Arabia was laundering money through Florida charities run by University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, for the support of terrorist groups in the Middle East. Through the Al-Arian network and others, the Saudi Government secretly funded Al-Qaida, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Saudi purpose was twofold: the destruction of the State of Israel and the prevention of the formation of an independent Palestinian State.
Two particular terrorist groups, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were specifically chosen and funded by the Saudis for their willingness to undermine Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. The secret Saudi goal was to create such animosity between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that it would wreck any chance for the creation of an independent Palestinian State. Their tactics specifically called for the intimidation or murder of those Palestinians who were willing to work with Israel for peace.
To put it bluntly, the covert Saudi network in Florida funded the murders of fellow Muslims for the crime of wanting to create the first democratic Arab state. Whatever harm the Israelis may have done, they did build an excellent public education system, including several universities, for the benefit of their Palestinian neighbors. That was the problem.
While literacy in the Arab world is below 50%, in Israel it is 97%. Israel is the only place in the Middle East where an Arab woman can vote. After 50 years, Israel has created the first Arab class exposed to democracy, literacy and western values.
To the Saudis, a democratic Palestinian nation would be a cancer in the Arab world, a destabilizing example of freedom that would threaten Arab dictators everywhere. As King Fahd has said, “next to the Jews, we hate the Palestinians the most.” The harder the Israelis and Palestinians worked for peace, the more money King Fahd poured into his murder for hire program.
The Saudi Government has already begun its spin operations, claiming that this terror network was a rogue operation financed by a radical Saudi businessman without the support or knowledge of the Saudi Government. The truth is that many of the Saudi Princes, notably Prince Bandahar and Prince Alwaheed, are good and loyal friends of America who want to lead Saudi Arabia into the modern world. Unfortunately, they are now in the minority in their own country.
King Fahd is on his death bed, and his nephew and heir apparent, Crown Prince Abdullah, depends on the most radical southern and eastern clans for his political base. The southern faction is the center of popular support for Al-Qaida and the Taliban, because it is the home of the most extreme Muslim sect, the Wahabbis. Ninety nine percent of the Muslim world rejects the Wahabbi religious tenets as utterly repugnant to the teachings and examples of the Prophet as written down in the Hadith. Since most Wahabbis are functionally illiterate, they cannot read about this conflict on their own. Typically, they memorize a few passages of the Koran taken out of context, and never read the accompanying Hadith for explanation.
For example, the Wahabbis are taught by rote that Jews are sub-humans, who should be killed as a religious duty. In contrast, the Hadith explains that the prophet Mohammed honored Jews, married a Jewish wife, forbade forced conversions of Jews, always bowed in respect when a Jewish funeral passed and promised that good and faithful Jews would go to Paradise just as good Muslims and Christians would, and that the Jews would have their Holy Place in the west (meaning Jerusalem) while Muslims would have their Holy Place in the East (meaning Mecca).
Illiteracy is a weapon of oppression. The Saudis, and their Wahabbi proteges, the Taliban, have decreed that women cannot work or even sit in the front seat of a car. In contrast, the Hadith records that the Prophet worked for his wife and that she drove her own caravans in international commerce. The Wahabbis (both in Saudi Arabia and among the Taliban) discriminate viciously against women. The Prophet, who lovingly raised three daughters, insisted that women should have substantially equal rights in contract, ownership, and divorce. The prophet forbade racism, the Wahabbis practice it, especially against their non-Arab, Shiite minority..
The Muslim faith envisioned by the Prophet in the Koran and recorded by his contemporaries in the Hadith is a religion that practices tolerance towards all races and religions, stresses the extreme importance of literacy and education and elevates the status of women to unprecedented levels in many societies. This is the gentle, peaceful Muslim faith practiced everywhere in the world, except in Saudi Arabia and the Taliban provinces of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Muslim scholars speak derisively about the primitive Wahabbi apostasy, but rarely in public.
The reason for this deafening silence is simple, most mosques in the world are impoverished and depend upon Saudi subsidies for their operation. In return, however, the Saudis have gained a foothold for proselytizing and radicalizing the Muslim youth through religious education in the form of militant Wahabbism. Children learn to hate because they are being taught that way.
The Saudi charitable network in America that began with religious education evolved into other areas over the decades. The Saudis dabbled with funding anti-Semitic hate groups as a means of breaking down American support for Israel. After the fall of communism, the Saudis took over funding the most militant terror organizations for direct attacks against Jewish and Palestinian supporters of the peace process.
Year after year, members of the intelligence community warned that a rising wave of terror was coming. Oliver North wrote in his autobiography that every time he tried to do something about terrorism, he was told to stop because it would embarrass the Saudi Government. John O’Neill quit his job as head of FBI counter-terrorism for the same reason. Jonathan Pollard went to jail. Federal agents in Tampa, who had known about the Saudi-Sami Al-Arian connection since 1990, were ordered to drop the investigation in 1995. The Saudi influence buying machine had effectively shut down any threat of criminal prosecution. Those Americans, including a former president, who lobbied for the Saudis have a lot to answer for. So do the Saudis.
With the explosive growth of Al-Qaida and their Taliban allies, the Saudis finally recognized that they had gone too far. As Osama Bin Laden laughingly related on videotape, he was approached prior to the attack on the Twin Towers by his relatives, who offered him $300,000,000 to cancel the operation. Apparently, the Bin Laden family really had not broken off all ties and knew exactly what was coming. So, my clients say, did the Saudis.
Six months later, a much chagrined Prince Abdullah belatedly announced that the Saudis would release the names of the terrorists which their charities had “unwittingly” funded, but only in Somalia and Asia. The main Saudi charities in Herndon, Virginia, and the Al-Arian network in Florida are still untouched.
My clients are betting that the American influence peddlers hired by the Saudis will succeed once again in derailing a federal investigation. They came to me for help in exposing the cover-up. That is why I am filing this lawsuit.
In the months to come, the American public may finally begin to learn why the Saudi-Sami Al-Arian terror networks went untouched for so long. It wasn’t an intelligence failure, it was a foreign policy failure. The orders were not to embarrass the Saudi government. Year after year, the cover-up orders came from the State Department and the White House. The CIA, the FBI and the Justice Department just did what they were told.
No one intended the harsh consequences of letting the Saudi’s get away with it again and again. Only after September 11, when the Treasury Department found the financial transactions linking the Saudi charities directly to Osama bin Laden, did American officials realize the extent of their betrayal.
We are not alone in our grief and anger. Saudi money sabotaged every Israeli initiative to make peace. The bewildered Palestinians may finally realize that they have been stabbed in the back by an Arab brother. The rules have changed after September 11, but the bottom line remains the same: if we want to stop terrorism, we have to tell the Saudis to stop funding it.
---------------------------------- John Loftus, author of the best-selling Secret Wars Against the Jews, is an attorney.
Dear G_d Patrick...A Republic!
As much as I hate saying it you're part of the problem! You don't even know the form of government we are supposed to have! I say "supposed to have" because for all practical purposes you are correct. America is a democracy now.
Our Founders are turning over in their graves!
That is the first RATIONAL thing I have ever seen you post.
Please accept the following correction to my earlier reply:
"In a Constitutional Republic, we the people have the right to demand that even the President himself explain and account for his own actions and not by way of spin meisters out of the White House ,the FBI or DOJ."
In about 90% of my replies I have been using the word Republic myself. I agree with you that in this case it would have been better if I used the word Republic again. However, even in a COnstitutionl Republic like we are supposed to have, there is a constitutional guarantee for a "democratic process" when it comes to elections. But our rights thankfully are not supposed to come from elections or even just rulings by judges, but by constitutional guarantees (Bill of Rights and amendemnts to COnstitution).
I also believe that the Federal government assumes powers that it does not have but instead are given to the states by the Constitution. Some day soon these powers will again be assumed by their rightful owners, the states.
And the states and the Federal government have been assuming many of the powers and rights that are given and left to the people by the Constitution. Some day soon these powers and rights will by assumed by their rightful owners, the people.
To me, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written and approved by devinely inspired men who believed in God.
ARE NOT!!! I am !
THEY probably are out to get you too, but they'll get ME First!
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