That Boston story REALLY WAS was about acts of terrorism, and here's why

[ftr23532]

Oh, were you expecting a post on some terror charade involving cartoon food products? ;) Sorry, this is about a different story coming out of Boston. It looks like the Justice Department might go 'Al Capone' style, and charge a Boston-based subsidiary of one of the central banks involved in terror financing with tax-evasion. As we'll see below, this could be quite significant. Here's the http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB117021371480893282-lMyQjAxMDE3NzMwMTIzMTEzWj.html">article:

Terror Inquiry Turns to Tax Law
Efforts to Probe Financing
Of Islamic Extremists
Centers on IRS Violations
By GLENN R. SIMPSON
January 31, 2007; Page A3

The Justice Department is investigating possible criminal tax-law violations by a Boston private-equity firm that manages hundreds of millions of dollars for Muslim investors in Europe and the Middle East and is affiliated with a Swiss investment group U.S. authorities suspect of financing Islamic extremists.

Federal prosecutors disclosed a grand-jury probe of Overland Capital Group Inc. in filings last week with U.S. District Court in Boston. While the Boston grand jury is examining suspected tax evasion related to complex investment structures, the case is being handled by a prosecutor from the Justice Department's counter terrorism division, the filing states.

In the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. counterterrorism agencies have been stymied in several attempts to bring terrorism cases against wealthy individuals from the Middle East. Some prosecutors have pushed the government to use tax laws as a more effective approach, a method famously employed against gangster Al Capone in 1931.
...

One of the possible reasons it's been so hard to bring terrorism cases against wealthy individuals from the Middle East is that they've been hiring http://fortherecordessays.blogspot.com/2006/11/part-12-slick-powerful-brotherhood_11.html">the most politically connected law-firms in the country to defend them.

Also, inter-agency infighting and turf wars were a big reason terror-financing investigations were thwarted, with the Treasury and Customs department frequently charging the FBI with thwarting their investigations. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3068377/">This was especially the case with the important "Operation Greenquest" task force http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/10/25/attack/main315901.shtml">started soon after 9/11 (although that was all 'fixed' when the Treasury and Customs got folded into DHS, at which point Chertoff transferred authority to the FBI and Operation Greenquest died a slow, bureaucratic death).

Continuing...

...
Overland, which doesn't disclose its ownership, says on its Web site that it has made more than $1.5 billion in U.S. investments for its clients, largely in real estate, since its founding in October 2001.

Legal records say Overland is controlled by a Geneva-based financial group known as Dar Al-Maal Al-Islami Trust, which was founded by a senior member of the royal family of Saudi Arabia. The U.S. government is treating the companies as related: The Justice Department is examining "acts and practices" of Overland and a DMI subsidiary "that implicate potential violation of the Internal Revenue Code," the filing states.

DMI is the hub of a network of banks and investment funds across Europe and the Middle East that cater to Muslims interested in strictly following Quranic principles, such as a ban on collecting interest. Some DMI affiliates came under scrutiny by U.S. counterterrorism agencies in the mid-1990s for suspected connections to extremists, government records show.
...

DMI also happens to be a major shareholder in the al-Taqwa network, which is the primary financial vehicle for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is the god father of modern Sunni Islamist movements and the US has been working with them since the 50's (they were great anti-Communists). Muslim Brotherhood affiliated and/or inspired groups include Hamas, al-Qaeda, the Iraqi Islamic Party (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/iip.htm">the largest Sunni Islamist party in Iraq). Even the Iranian Revolutionary ayatollahs had ties to the Brotherhood (check out the part on the Devotees of Islam in this http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/01/holy_warrior.html?welcome=true">MoJo article). Al-Taqwa also has http://fortherecordessays.blogspot.com/2006/11/part-3-down-al-taqwa-rabbit-hole-so_11.html">a number of connections to European far-Rightists (one of its directors is a neo-Nazi-turned-Islamist, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64385-2002Apr28?language=printer">for instance) . This entire DMI/al-Taqwa milieu has a heavy overlap with the DC-based SAAR network of charities, institutions and financial companies that was http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8858-2002Mar23">raided in March of 2002 as part of the Operation Greenquest terror-financing investigation. In addition, the SAAR network (now called the Safa Trust) http://www.sptimes.com/2003/03/11/news_pf/Floridian/Friends_in_high_place.shtml">is closely connected to Grover Norquist's "Islamic Institute", which was part of the GOP's Muslim voter outreach program, an important voter demographic in states like Michigan and Florida. Another figure involved with this network, like Talaat Othman, sat on the board of Harken Energy.

Continuing...

...
In general, the U.S. and other Western governments are investigating whether terrorist groups are able to move money with help from sympathizers in the Islamic-banking movement. Intelligence and law-enforcement officials say they are concerned the industry's often-opaque practices lend themselves to money laundering and other financial crimes.

DMI officials have said the company has no involvement with terrorists or extremists. "We have never had any relationship with these kinds of people," said Mouaouia Mokhtari, DMI's director of corporate affairs. None of DMI's officials have ever been charged with terror-related offenses.

...

DMI and Overland are partners in a joint venture in Bahrain, and numerous corporate filings in the U.S. name DMI's chief executive as the president of various Overland-backed investment ventures.

Corporate and bank records show Overland has borrowed large sums from a DMI subsidiary, the Bahamas-registered Islamic Investment Co. of the Gulf Ltd. Legal records also describe DMI as an indirect 60% shareholder in Overland. Two former Overland employees also claim in a civil lawsuit that Overland is owned or controlled by DMI.

Overland identifies potential real-estate investments in the U.S., such as luxury condominiums and apartments, according to its Web site. Its investments include a stake in 30 rental units atop the Four Seasons Hotel in Houston. It then arranges for its clients to participate in these deals.

The nature of the tax inquiry isn't explained in the government's filings. But Overland's foreign backers have structured many of their U.S. investments through a network of shell companies in offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, according to corporate and legal records.

Using such offshore companies, investors can structure their U.S. investments as loans instead of equity. That offers potential tax benefits because interest income to foreign investors is taxed far more lightly than profits from an equity investment. Such arrangements are legal, but only if they aren't primarily intended to circumvent Internal Revenue Service rules.
...

The al-Taqwa network also did much of its work out of a Bahamas-based subsidiary, Bank al-Taqwa, via a correspondent account with a major Swiss Bank http://fortherecordessays.blogspot.com/2006/11/part-10-look-at-world-of-money_11.html">that has a very interesting history. One of the reasons the Swiss investigation into al-Taqwa http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/06/07/schuster.column/">died was the withholding of evidence by the Bahamas. Interestingly, http://www.bahamasb2b.com/news/wmview.php?ArtID=59">Bank al-Taqwa's lawyer, Sean Hanna, is the http://freeport.nassauguardian.net/national_local/52811313498658.php">son of the Bahamas Governor General. Sean Hanna http://www.thenassauguardian.com/editorial/76814193240345.php">died unexpectedly six months after the investigation was closed.

Continuing...

...
Dar Al-Maal Al-Islami (Arabic for "Islamic House of Finance") was founded in the early 1980s by Saudi Prince Mohammed Al-Faisal Al-Saud, a pioneer in so-called Islamic banking. Senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an international fundamentalist group, have held positions at various DMI affiliates, according to corporate records.

The Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in the 1920s, is the ideological inspiration for the terrorist groups al Qaeda and Hamas, but it now says it has renounced violence.

A DMI affiliate called Faisal Private Bank (Switzerland) SA, formerly known as Faisal Finance, has been named in two major terrorism probes. In one of these, the Justice Department alleges that Faisal Finance wired $665,000 to the account of a top Hamas leader, Mousa Abu Marzouk. (The source of those funds hasn't been disclosed.)
...

Mohammed al-Faisal is also http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/27/04/news1.shtml">an investor and board member of the al-Shamal bank, a bank that Osama bin Laden invested $50 million to help start. Al-Faisal's sister, Haifa, is the wife of Prince Bandar and has http://www.msnbc.com/avantgo/839269.htm">quite an interesting 9/11-related history of her own.

Continuing...

...
In the same prosecution, the Justice Department alleges that in 1993, a Saudi businessman used Faisal Finance to transfer $30,000 to an alleged Hamas leader in Chicago named Muhammad Salah, who is currently on trial in Chicago on terrorism-related conspiracy charges. The same Saudi businessman, Yassin Qadi, also used Faisal Finance for a $1.25 million transfer to an alleged al Qaeda front company in 1998, according to legal and bank records.

Faisal Finance hasn't been charged with any crimes, but shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Qadi was named a "Specially Designated Terrorist" by the Treasury Department for alleged support of al Qaeda. Mr. Qadi has denied financing terrorists. Another Faisal Finance client, al Qaeda leader Mamduh Mahmud Salim, was convicted of conspiring to kill American citizens and is now in federal prison.
...

Yassin Qadi, an accused al-Qaeda financier that also bankrolled P-Tech. P-tech is a 'risk-assessment' firm http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1579595,00.asp">hired by numerous government agencies to analyze vulnerabilities in their computer networks. Its clients included the FBI, DoE, the Air Force, NATO, the Navy, the FAA, the House of Representatives, and the White House (and that's just some of its clients). The FBI knew about P-tech's ties to Yassin al-Qadi http://wbztv.com/iteam/local_story_343145212.html">and sat on it for a year before it was raided in October 2002. It's the kind of interesting relationship between these fellows and companies involved with national security that http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3221">seems to continue to this day

Both Yassin Qadi and Mousa Abu Marzouk were targets of the "http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/a-vulgar-betrayal/1402/">Operation Vulgar Betrayal" investigation at the center of FBI Whistle blower Robert Wright's complaints about pre-9/11 FBI high-level obstruction http://fortherecordessays.blogspot.com/2006/11/part-12-slick-powerful-brotherhood_11.html">into the investigation of this network.

Continue...

...
DMI and Faisal Finance are defendants in civil litigation in the southern district of New York brought by families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, who claim they funded al Qaeda. The firms have denied any involvement with terrorism.

A copy of the Justice Department filing was made available to The Wall Street Journal by Geoffrey Harper, a lawyer for a former Overland employee, Laird Fairchild. Mr. Harper said his client has provided information to the grand jury. Mr. Fairchild and another former Overland employee are in a legal dispute with Overland and DMI, claiming wrongful dismissal.

Write to Glenn R. Simpson at [email protected]

For a bit more on DMI's high-level and confusing connections, let's look at an excerpt from Kevin Coogan's must-read "http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/557998/">Report On Islamists, The Far Right, And Al Taqwa":

...
Prince Mohammad al Faisal al Saud is not only a pious Muslim but he belongs to the innermost circle of the Saudi dynasty as the son of the former King al Saud, cousin of the first rank to King Fahd and brother to the longtime head of the Saudi secret service, Prince Turki al-Faisal who stepped down in August 2001.

Since 1983 the Prince became in charge of the trust company Dar al-Mal al-Islami (DMI), founded two years earlier and which is based in Cointrin near Geneva. It has an estimated $3.5 billion dollars, the greatest part (according to the former DMI manager Ziad Keilaney) coming either from the private holdings of the King’s family or other wealthy Saudis. The DMI, along with the Saudi banking concern Dallah al-Baraka, is one of the most important sources for the spreading of Wahhabi ideas in Islam.

The DMI also controls the Islamic Investment Company of the Gulf, the Bahrain based Faisal Islamic Bank and the Geneva-registered Faisal Finance. The vice-president of Faisal Finance SA is a Somali named Omar Abdi Ali who is also to be found in the top management of DMI. DMI directly financed two "humanitarian" organizations, the International Development Foundation (IDF) and the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO).

In June 2000 the DMI completed the fusion of Faisal Islamic Bank and the International Investment Company to the Bahrain-registered Shamil Bank. A few months later the Shamil Bank opened its first foreign affiliate in Yemen. The Shamil Bank was 60% controlled by representatives of DMI in Nassau while the rest was from unknown private investors. The Shamil Bank held in turn 20% of the shares of the Arab Albanian Islamic Bank in Tirana. The bank employed at least one member of Al Qaida, an Egyptian named Ibrahim al-Jajjar, who in 1998 was involved in a planned assault on the American Embassy in Tirana.

Prince Mohammed al-Faisal al-Saud and his Somali top deputy Omar Abdi Ali are also represented in the highest management of the Shamil Bank. Another member is Haydar bin Laden, one of the many half brothers of Osama.

(At the beginning of 2001 the sister company of Faisal Finance was hit by the economic currency crisis and the collapse of the Turkish economy. In Geneva Prince Mohammed and his friends decided to get rid of the Turkish company. In May 2001 Faisal Finance was taken over by the Turkish big businessman Sabri Ulker and his USA-registered Islamic Finance group, American Finance House—Lariba and renamed Family Finance.)

...

Yeslam Bin Laden
The French Swiss Lucien Rouiller was until 2001 not only an advisor to the DMI in Cointrin but he was also an advisor to Faisal Finance SA and the Faisal Islamic Bank. At the same time Rouiller was linked to the Geneva-registered MKS Finance SA owned by the Shakarchi brothers. In the 1980s Shakarchi Trading sent not just $25 million of CIA money to Afghanistan but also was involved in drug money for the Turkish mafia. For a time a member of the family was represented on the advisory board of Russell-Wood in London as well. And this complicated and many-branched business was the British branch of the Geneva-registered Saudi Investment Company (SICO). SICO was founded in May 1980 as the Swiss investment center for the bin Laden family under the name Cygnet SA and later renamed SICO. It belongs to the Swiss-based Yeslam bin Laden, one of Osama’s many half brothers. Yeslam has been zealous in promoting the idea that the bin Laden family has nothing to do with Osama. Yet Osama’s mother in the beginning of 2001 visited Afghanistan for an expensive marriage ceremony of her grandson (which was broadcast over al-Jazeera) and she speaks regularly on the phone to Osama. Another half brother of Osama’s, Sheik Ahmad, told CNN how much he admires Osama’s deep piety as well as his determination to achieve a goal. And more and more French and American experts are suspecting financial support from his family that has economic consequences. After 9/11 members of the Caryle Group (which includes George Bush Sr.) asked the bin Laden group to withdraw its investments. Also an investment of at least $20 million by the bin Laden group in a sister society of the Deutsche Bank in London was suddenly not welcomed.
...

And finally, to get a sense of just how interconnected so many of these issues are, let's look at this tid bit of interesting info http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/10/feature1_side2.shtml">in the sidebar of http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/explosive_revelation_part_2/">an article by money-laundering expert http://www.thekomisarscoop.com/">Lucy Komisar on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearstream#The_Clearstream_Affair">Clearstream affair:

Banking with Bin Laden

Following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States started focusing its investigation on the financial trail of Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network.

Like any other large, global operation, international terrorists need to move large sums of money across borders clandestinely. In November, U.S. authorities named some banks that had bin Laden accounts, and it put them on a blacklist.

One was Al Taqwa—“Fear of God”—registered in the Bahamas with offices in Lugano, Switzerland. Al Taqwa had access to the Clearstream system through its correspondent account with the Banca del Gottardo in Lugano, which has a published Clearstream account (No. 74381).

But bin Laden may have other access to the unpublished system. In what he calls a “spectacular discovery,” Ernest Backes reports that in the weeks before CEO André Lussi was forced to leave Clearstream last May, a series of 16 unpublished accounts were opened under the name of the Saudi Investment Company, or SICO, the Geneva holding of the Saudi Binladen Group—which is run by Osama’s brother, Yeslam Binladen (some family members spell the name differently).

Yeslam Binladen insists that he has nothing to do with his brother, but evidence suggests SICO is tied into Osama”s financial network. SICO is associated with Dar Al-Maal-Al-Islami (DMI), an Islamic financial institution also based in Geneva and presided over by Prince Muhammed Al Faisal Al Saoud, a cousin of Saudi King Fahd, that directs millions a year to fundamentalist movements. DMI holds a share of the Al Shamal Islamic Bank of Sudan, which was set up in 1991 and partly financed by $50 million from Osama bin Laden.

Furthermore, one of SICO’s administrators, Geneva attorney Baudoin Dunand, is a partner in a law firm, Magnin Dunand & Partners, that set up the Swiss financial services company SBA—a subsidiary of the SBA Bank in Paris, which is controlled by Khaled bin Mahfouz. Mahfouz’s younger sister is married to Osama bin Laden.

There's a lot more under the http://fortherecordessays.blogspot.com/2006/11/part-11-opaque-world-of-clearstream_11.html">DMI/SICO/Clearstream/Shakarchi/drug-smuggling/money-laundering/terror-financing/far-Right rock but that stuff instead scary enough to drum up support for bombing Iran. So instead, we'll return to your http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16902707/">regularly scheduled programming...

[nam78_two]

1. Hmmm...interesting stuff...

Bookmarked for later.

[ftr23532]

2. DMI and the folks it's connected to are a major component of the modern day war machine

DMI is one of those financial institutions set up by the Saudis to basically promote Wahhabism and garner support for the Saudi Monarchy around the the globe. They've been doing it for decades in conjunction with the Muslim Brotherhood (which the US has been working with the decades). Regions with a sizable Muslim population that happens to be sitting on some precious resources or some other strategic value tend to find lots of charitable donations and institutions backed by groups like DMI show up, followed by a sustained campaign for Jihad (take Chechnya, http://fortherecordessays.blogspot.com/2006/11/part-9-former-soviet-repub_116329179859796154.html">for example). Conflict ensues and big bucks are made by the war mongers. It's a big part of how the folks at the top work together to keep our glorious "Clash of Civilizations" going, all the while distracting Middle East populations from their own obscene regimes. As Douglas Farah, the former WaPo reporter on this topic, http://www.douglasfarah.com/article/155/the-hamas-verdicts-and-new-methods#comment">puts it:

...
Radicalization is seldom an overnight event. It is the product of environment, constant messages affirming jihad as Allah’s will, and countless other factors that build up over time. This is why the structure, funded by radical salafist blessing in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations, has to be the real target. Isolating individual acts within that will almost always lead to charges (as we have recently seen in Britain, and see here with CAIR, ISNA and others) of “taking statements out of context,” “Islamophobia” etc.
...

That's why it would be amazing if the folks here trying to actually these guys down were allowed to succeed, and why I suspect they'll be thwarted yet again. It would be great if it was different this time.

[KoKo]

3. Good reading there....Bookmarking for later...thanks..K&R

[KoKo]

5. Kick for the Night Crowd!

:kick:

[KoKo]

6. Kick for the Night Crowd..good reading here!

:kick:

[ftr23532]

4. whoops, I forgot to add this link to fascists and Turkish drug smuggling re: the Shakarchis

Here http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=3062584#3066097">we go. It's a reminder of not only that this kind of stuff potentially ties into the http://sibeledmonds.blogspot.com/">Sibel Edmonds story too, but just how intertwined things are in the shadow world of power politics.

[KoKo]

7. Hope DU'ers will look at this post tonight when they have time to do it1

:kick:

[ftr23532]

9. thanks for the exposure!

I appreciate it :hi:

[nam78_two]

8. kick

Some interesting stuff there :kick:

[ftr23532]

10. Thanks!

:bounce:

[nam78_two]

11. !

:bounce: back!

I really like the green bouncies...How ya doing ftr :hi:?

[ftr23532]

15. I'm getting nice and caffeinated on a lazy Saturday afternoon

Just a few more sips and the transition from :hangover: to :woohoo: should be complete!

[KoKo]

12. Kick........an excellent read since Saudi's are shooting down our Helicopters!

:kick:

[scarletwoman]

13. Wow! I wish I had seen this post sooner so I could have recommended it.

When I saw the word, "Boston" in the title yesterday, I just passed it by because I was purposely avoiding ALL threads about the Boston/cartoon terror brouhaha.

Now that I see what your post is really about, I'm very grateful I finally took a look. You have performed an incredible service by putting all those links together -- VERY impressive and valuable work.

Anyway, the very least I can do is kick this up. And if/when this thread sinks away, I urge you to re-post the whole thing again -- maybe with a different subject line that better reflects the true scope of your content.

Good job!
sw

[ftr23532]

14. Thanks, and, yes, it was a bad subject line

I was hoping to snarkily piggy-back on all the Boston Hooplah, which I think may have piggy-back-fired. :dunce:

[scarletwoman]

16. "piggy-back-fired" -- LOL!!!!

That's WONDERFUL!!!! :rofl:

(*ahem*)

Well, all I can tell you is that it did in my case. I only ended up clicking here because KoKo posted a link to your thread in another thread -- make sure you thank her!

I mean it, I really hope you'll repost this! It really merits a much bigger readership (and I could vote for a re-post). It needs to go in the research forum, too.

In appreciation,
sw

[ftr23532]

18. Thanks...

...and I think I'm going to repost this (or at least summarize and link to this post), and combine it with a topic I've recently been looking into. It turns out the largest Sunni Islamist group in Iraq, the Iraqi Islamic Party, is another branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. They've also been the most willing of the Sunni groups to participate in the Shiite Islamist-led government. Here's a November 2005 MoJo article by Robert Dreyfuss that gives us a sense of the http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/11/deadly_dance.html">power politics at work over there right now:

...
The problem goes far beyond the Shiites in Iraq. In the Sunni parts of that country, the power of Islamism is growing, too -- and by this I do not mean the forces associated with Al Qaeda but the radical-right Muslim Brotherhood, represented there by the Iraqi Islamic Party, and other manifestations of the Salafi- and Wahhabi-style religious right. In Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere, the radical religious right is also gaining strength. Meanwhile; sometimes deliberately, sometimes by sheer ignorance and incompetence, the Bush administration is encouraging the spread of political Islam. Were we to "stay the course," not only Iraq but much of the rest of the Middle East could fall to the Islamic right.

Does this mean that Al Qaeda-style fanatics will take power? No. Whether in the form of Iraq's Shiite theocrats or the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Egypt, the Islamic right cannot be compared to Al Qaeda. Yet, just as the U.S. Christian right has its clinic bombers, just as the Israeli Jewish right spawned the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin and settler-extremists who kill dozens at Muslim holy sites, the Islamic right provides ideological support and theological justification for more extreme (and, yes, terrorist) offspring. Even the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization with a long history of violence, which once maintained a covert "secret apparatus" and a paramilitary arm, has not convincingly renounced its past, nor demonstrated that it sees democracy as anything more than a tool it can use to seize power.

Shiite "Islamofascists" Rule Iraq

The case of Iraq could not be clearer. In 2002, as Vice President Dick Cheney pushed the White House and the Pentagon inexorably toward war, it was increasingly obvious to experienced Iraq hands that post-Saddam Iraq would be ruled by its restive Shiite majority. It was no less obvious that the dominant force within that Shiite majority would be the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, and a parallel force associated with Al Dawa (The Islamic Call), a forty-five year-old Shiite underground terrorist party. From the mid-1990s on, and especially after 2001, the United States provided overt and covert assistance to these organizations as part of the effort to force regime change in Iraq. Like Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, with which both worked closely and which had offices in Teheran, SCIRI and Dawa were based in Iran. SCIRI, in fact, was founded in 1982 by Ayatollah Khomeini and its paramilitary arm, the Badr Brigade, was trained and armed by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Certainly, to the Bush administration, SCIRI and Dawa were known quantities.

David Phillips, the former adviser to the State Department's war-planning effort and author of Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco, has assured me that, in the run-up to the war, many of his colleagues were well aware that SCIRI-type Islamists, not Chalabi, would inherit post-Saddam Iraq. Other insiders, too, have told me of foreign-policy professionals and Iraq specialists in the U.S. intelligence community who warned (to no avail) that SCIRI would be a major force in Iraq after any invasion. The point is, whether they bothered to pay attention or not, the Bush-Cheney team was informed, well in advance, that by toppling Saddam there was a strong possibility they would be installing a Shiite theocracy.

Today, the unpleasant reality is that 150,000 U.S. troops, who are dying at a rate of about 100 a month, are the Praetorian Guard for that radical-right theocracy. It is a regime that sponsors Shiite-led death squads carrying out assassinations from Basra (where freelance reporter Steven Vincent, himself murdered by such a unit, wrote that "hundreds" of former Baathists, secular leaders, and Sunnis were being killed every month) to Baghdad. Scores of bodies of Sunnis regularly turn up shot to death, execution-style.

The latest revelation is that SCIRI's Badr Brigade, now a 20,000-strong militia, operated a secret torture prison in Baghdad holding hundreds of Sunni detainees. There, prisoners had their skin flayed off, electric shocks applied to their genitals, or power drills driven into their bones. SCIRI and Al Dawa are the senior partners in an Iraqi government which has imposed a unilateralist constitution on the country that elevates the power of the Shiite-dominated provinces and enshrines their vision of Islam in the body politic. Two weeks ago, during his visit to Washington, D.C., I asked Adel Abdul Mahdi, a top SCIRI official and Iraq's deputy president, about the charges of death squads and brutality. "All of the terrorists are on the other side," he sniffed. "What you refer to is a reaction to that."

Perhaps the ultimate irony of Bush's war on terrorism is this: While the President asserts that the war in Iraq is the central front in the struggle against what he describes as "Islamofascism," real "Islamofascists" are already in power in Baghdad -- and they are, shamefully, America's allies.

...

No wonder Operation Greenquest wasn't allowed to go forward. The article goes on to describe now the Muslim Brotherhood is poised to seize power in countries like Syria and Egypt if their regimes fall. It's increasingly looking to me like we should view the civil war in Iraq so much as Sunni vs Shia, but instead Islamist vs Secular. And we're backing the Islamists. And when you factor in that the Muslim Brotherhood has significant ties to the Iranian regime, it becomes is more clear just how incredibly crass our policy is. It's like this whole war was literally a set up to put the theocrats in power throughout that region. These "Islamofascists" that we're supposedly fighting are our friggin' allies.

[ftr23532]

20. And I forgot, and extra thanks to Koko and Nam!

:bounce: :bounce:

[nam78_two]

17. I hope more DUers will read this

I finished it and its quite interesting...
Its a little heavy reading with all the various links but thanks for putting this together like this.

:kick:

[Roland99]

19. Yowza! Some great info there!

[me b zola]

21. Excellent post

Haven't had a chance to follow all of the links yet, I'll get to that tonight.

Yeah, I think your subject line "piggy-back fired" on you, for the same reason as the above poster I didn't check out your thread in time to recommend--which I would've loved to do.

Anyhoo, outstanding work. :thumbsup:

[Octafish]

22. James R Bath ties the bin Mahfouz and bin Laden clans to the House of Bush...

Bath served in the Texas Air National Guard with George W Bush. (Unlike Bush, Bath was a real combat pilot, having served in Southeast Asia.)

Poppy Bush recruited Junior's buddy to keep an eye on the Saudis, who were investing their petrobillions in Texas and Texas-based politicians and their families.

Here's the court document formalizing Bath's role with the bin Ladens.



For those new to the subject, here's where Bath and Bush got drummed off the flight line for failing to take their physical exams just after the TANG started testing pilots for illegal drugs:



The short story:

The Bush-Saudi Connection

By Michelle Mairesse

EXCERPT…

Special Saudis

Michael Springmann, formerly chief of the visa section at the US Embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, claims that he rejected hundreds of suspicious visa applications, but the C.I.A. officer overruled him and ordered the visas to be issued. Springmann protested to the State Department, the Office of Diplomatic Security, the F.B.I., the Justice Department and congressional committees, but in vain. (10)

Springmann observed that 15 of the 19 people who allegedly flew airplanes into buildings in the United States got their visas from the same CIA-dominated consulate in Jeddah. As a special favor to residents of Saudi Arabia (including non-Saudi citizens), applicants for non-immigrant visas can apply at private travel agencies and receive their visa through the mail. During the months following the 9-11 attack, 102 applicants received their visas by mail, 2 more were interviewed, and none were rejected.

The Saudis always got special treatment. In a November 6, 2001 BBC broadcast Greg Palast revealed just how special that treatment was. Even after Pakistan expelled the World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and India claimed that the organization was linked to terrorist bombings in Kashmir and the Philippines military accused WAMY of funding Muslim insurgency, the F.B.I. got orders to leave the "charitable association" alone.

After 9/11, investigators of the Islamic charities discovered overwhelming evidence that Saudis at all levels worked in tandem with the terrorists. David Kaplin reports, “At the Saudi High Commission in Bosnia, which coordinated local aid among Saudi charities, police found before-and-after photos of the World Trade Center, files on pesticides and crop dusters, and information on how to counterfeit State Department badges. At Manila's international airport, authorities stopped Agus Dwikarna, an al Haramain representative based in Indonesia. In his suitcase were C4 explosives.” The interlocking charities make it difficult to follow the money trail. “Many share directors, office space, and cash flow. For two years, investigators have followed the money to offshore trusts and obscure charities which, according to court records, they believe are tied to Hamas, al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups.” (US News and World Report, December 15, 2003).

"The White House 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." (11)

In the Boston Globe, March 11, 20004, Carl Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties, states that the 9/11 commission should ask who authorized the evacuation of 140 Saudi nationals on at least 8 aircraft making stops in 12 cities immediately following the attacks. “Many of the passengers were high-ranking members of the royal House of Saud. About 24 of them were members of the bin Laden family, which owned the Saudi Binladin Group, a multibillion-dollar construction conglomerate.” Unger obtained passenger lists for 4 of the flights, which are posted on his website: www.houseofbush.com and includes the name of Prince Ahmed bin Salman.

SNIP…

Unger believes that this episode “raises particularly sensitive questions for the administration. Never before in history has a president of the United States had such a close relationship with another foreign power as President Bush and his father have had with the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud. I have traced more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts that went from the House of Saud over the past 20 years to companies in which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent positions -- Harken Energy, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Group among them. Is it possible that President Bush himself played a role in authorizing the evacuation of the Saudis after 9/11? What did he know and when did he know it?”

CONTINUED…

http://www.hermes-press.com/BushSaud.htm

Thank you for an excellent OP and thread, ftr23532. The things one can learn on the Internet are amazing. If only ABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutworks, NYT, WaPo and LAT would only try -- we would live in a different country, the one delineated by the Constitution of the United States.

[ftr23532]

24. that is some excellent and very relevant info to highlight these ties

The Bush/Bath/bin Laden/bin Mafouz connections are as important as they are revealing. And those are awesome images, BTW...it's one thing to read an article about these connections, but it's another to actually see the signatures.

I decided to do some googling and see if there were any interesting business ties between the Bushies and the al-Rajhis (aka the funders of the SAAR network). I couldn't find any, but here's I hadn't come across before while googling this that http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004154">connects Springman and the hijacker visas to the al-Rajhis:

...
State's obliviousness to reality--and security--had an even more incredible result: One of the 10 travel-agency companies contracted as a Visa Express vendor is a subsidiary of a suspected financier of terrorism. Fursan Travel & Tourism is owned by the Al-Rajhi Banking & Investment Corporation, or RBIC, which is one of the alleged financiers of al Qaeda listed in the "Golden Chain" documents seized in Bosnia in March 2002 (detailing the early supporters of al Qaeda back in the late 1980s, after the Soviets left Afghanistan). RBIC was also the primary bank for a number of charities raided in the United States after Sept. 11 for suspected ties to terrorist organizations. RBIC maintained accounts for the International Islamic Relief Organization, the Saudi Red Crescent Society, the Muslim World League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. RBIC also was used to wire money to the Global Relief Foundation in Belgium, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization.

Records recovered by Spanish authorities show that several members of an al Qaeda affiliate there held accounts at RBIC, and the terror cell's chief financier told a business partner to use RBIC for their transactions in a fax recovered by Spanish police. And they were not the only al Qaeda terrorists who did business there. Abdulaziz Alomari, who helped Mohamed Atta crash American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center and was one of the three terrorists who received a visa through Visa Express, held an account at RBIC as well. Because his visa application form--which I obtained--does not indicate which travel agency he used, it is not known whether Alomari submitted his application to the agency owned by RBIC.

The founder and namesake of RBIC, Suleiman Abdul Aziz al-Rajhi, also started the SAAR Foundation, whose successor, Safa Trust (SAAR liquidated, but most of the same people and operations carried over to Safa) was at the center of the FBI's investigation into the extensive financial network of mostly Saudi-financed terrorist activities in the U.S. Operation Greenquest, as it was called, resulted in the raiding of 23 different Muslim organizations' offices, including Safa Trust and several charities that had bank accounts with RBIC. Although the raids occurred after September 11, the FBI had been investigating the elaborate financial arrangements--which regularly included SAAR--for years before the September 11 attacks.

Yet the State Department was so careless in choosing its Visa Express vendors that one owned by a suspected financier of terrorism became deputized to handle the collection and initial processing of U.S. visas.
...

Bin Mahfouz was also on the "Golden Chain" list according to a 2003 WSJ article "Al Qaeda List Points to Saudi Elite", which was also written by Glenn R. Simpson (the author of the DMI above article that's written some excellent stuff on this topic). When looking at the bin Ladens, bin Mahfouz's, and al-Rajhis it seems like the deal the House of Saud makes is they'll give a clan a monopoly, but that clan has to do some dirty work. That's one of things that surprised me the most about DMI: it actually directly involved Saudi royalty instead of one of their proxy clans.

And here's some random but still kind of interesting stuff I stumbled upon while googling. The headline is http://www.onwindows.com/article.asp?id=620">kind of chilling:

Biometric ATMs overseas now, but why not here?
Orr, Bill
Publication: ABA Banking Journal
Date: Thursday, June 1 2006
Subject: Banking industry (Technology application), Biometry (Usage), Asynchronous transfer mode (Usage), Banking industry (Contracts), Automatic banking equipment industry (Contracts)
Location: Saudi Arabia, United States

Diebold, a global leader in providing financial self-service hardware and software, recently announced that it is installing 82 biometric ATMs in Saudi Arabia's Al Rajhi Bank. The terminals will enable some 400,000 retirees to access their Social Security retirement accounts by inserting magnetic-stripe cards and pressing their index fingers into a little metal cradle, which reads fingerprints. No PIN required. Diebold had previously piloted its biometric technology in Chile, Spain, Columbia, and Dubai.

Seven years ago, Diebold piloted a biometric ATM installation at National Bank United in Dallas-Fort Worth, using iriss-can technology, the most accurate and most costly biometric method. Looking back from the present, Jim Block, Diebold's director of advanced technology, sees the U.S. experiment as a success: "We furthered our understanding of the technology. Customers liked the PINless ATMs. But the bank never scaled up, and the pilot was discontinued."

Still, Diebold is enthusiastic about biometrics, Block says. In the '90s, the industry focused on technology. Now they've got that down, and the emphasis is on integrating the technology into a bank's business infrastructure, he explains. Today, biometrics is used in applications where security is paramount--such as access to a bank's safe or a customer's safe-deposit box. At an NCR installation at Bancafe bank in Columbia, biometrics are used so growers can have money from the sale of their coffee beans in city markets deposited in a bank account and withdrawn as needed, rather than carry Large amounts of money going back to their villages over mountain roads.

How much longer before we see an article about "People are concerned about voter fraud. Why not use biometric voting machines? Diebold's eye-ball-scan-1000 offers the most secure and cost-effective option...". :silly:

[nam78_two]

23. kick

:kick:

[Nutmegger]

25. R&K and welcome to DU.

[ftr23532]

26. thanks!

:hi:

[Marie26]

27. Kick

Incredible research effort.